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abduction | ## 1. Abduction: The General Idea
You happen to know that Tim and Harry have recently had a terrible row
that ended their friendship. Now someone tells you that she just saw
Tim and Harry jogging together. The best explanation for this that you
can think of is that they made up. You conclude that they are friends
again.
One morning you enter the kitchen to find a plate and cup on the
table, with breadcrumbs and a pat of butter on it, and surrounded by a
jar of jam, a pack of sugar, and an empty carton of milk. You conclude
that one of your house-mates got up at night to make him- or herself a
midnight snack and was too tired to clear the table. This, you think,
best explains the scene you are facing. To be sure, it might be that
someone burgled the house and took the time to have a bite while on
the job, or a house-mate might have arranged the things on the table
without having a midnight snack but just to make you believe that
someone had a midnight snack. But these hypotheses strike you as
providing much more contrived explanations of the data than the one
you infer to.
Walking along the beach, you see what looks like a picture of Winston
Churchill in the sand. It could be that, as in the opening pages of
Hilary Putnam's book *Reason, Truth, and History*,
(1981), what you see is actually the trace of an ant crawling on the
beach. The much simpler, and therefore (you think) much better,
explanation is that someone intentionally drew a picture of Churchill
in the sand. That, in any case, is what you come away believing.
In these examples, the conclusions do not follow logically from the
premises. For instance, it does not follow logically that Tim and
Harry are friends again from the premises that they had a terrible row
which ended their friendship and that they have just been seen jogging
together; it does not even follow, we may suppose, from all the
information you have about Tim and Harry. Nor do you have any useful
statistical data about friendships, terrible rows, and joggers that
might warrant an inference from the information that you have about
Tim and Harry to the conclusion that they are friends again, or even
to the conclusion that, probably (or with a certain probability), they
are friends again. What leads you to the conclusion, and what
according to a considerable number of philosophers may also warrant
this conclusion, is precisely the fact that Tim and Harry's
being friends again would, if true, *best* *explain* the
fact that they have just been seen jogging together. (The proviso that
a hypothesis be true if it is to explain anything is taken as read
from here on.) Similar remarks apply to the other two examples. The
type of inference exhibited here is called *abduction* or,
somewhat more commonly nowadays, *Inference to the Best*
*Explanation*.
### 1.1 Deduction, induction, abduction
Abduction is normally thought of as being one of three major types of
inference, the other two being deduction and induction. The
distinction between deduction, on the one hand, and induction and
abduction, on the other hand, corresponds to the distinction between
necessary and non-necessary inferences. In deductive inferences, what
is inferred is *necessarily* true if the premises from which it
is inferred are true; that is, the truth of the premises
*guarantees* the truth of the conclusion. A familiar type of
example is inferences instantiating the schema
>
> All *A*s are *B*s.
>
>
> *a* is an *A*.
>
>
> Hence, *a* is a *B*.
>
But not all inferences are of this variety. Consider, for instance,
the inference of "John is rich" from "John lives in
Chelsea" and "Most people living in Chelsea are
rich." Here, the truth of the first sentence is not guaranteed
(but only made likely) by the joint truth of the second and third
sentences. Differently put, it is not necessarily the case that if the
premises are true, then so is the conclusion: it is logically
compatible with the truth of the premises that John is a member of the
minority of non-rich inhabitants of Chelsea. The case is similar
regarding your inference to the conclusion that Tim and Harry are
friends again on the basis of the information that they have been seen
jogging together. Perhaps Tim and Harry are former business partners
who still had some financial matters to discuss, however much they
would have liked to avoid this, and decided to combine this with their
daily exercise; this is compatible with their being firmly decided
never to make up.
It is standard practice to group non-necessary inferences into
*inductive* and *abductive* ones. Inductive inferences
form a somewhat heterogeneous class, but for present purposes they may
be characterized as those inferences that are based purely on
statistical data, such as observed frequencies of occurrences of a
particular feature in a given population. An example of such an
inference would be this:
>
> 96 per cent of the Flemish college students speak both Dutch and
> French.
>
>
> Louise is a Flemish college student.
>
>
> Hence, Louise speaks both Dutch and French.
>
However, the relevant statistical information may also be more vaguely
given, as in the premise, "Most people living in Chelsea are
rich." (There is much discussion about whether the conclusion of
an inductive argument can be stated in purely qualitative terms or
whether it should be a quantitative one--for instance, that it
holds with a probability of .96 that Louise speaks both Dutch and
French--or whether it can *sometimes* be stated in
qualitative terms--for instance, if the probability that it is
true is high enough--and sometimes not. On these and other issues
related to induction, see Kyburg 1990 (Ch. 4). It should also be
mentioned that Harman (1965) conceives induction as a special type of
abduction. See also Weintraub 2013 for discussion.)
The mere fact that an inference is based on statistical data is not
enough to classify it as an inductive one. You may have observed many
gray elephants and no non-gray ones, and infer from this that all
elephants are gray, *because that would* *provide the best
explanation for why you have observed so many gray elephants*
*and no non-gray ones*. This would be an instance of an
abductive inference. It suggests that the best way to distinguish
between induction and abduction is this: both are *ampliative*,
meaning that the conclusion goes beyond what is (logically) contained
in the premises (which is why they are non-necessary inferences), but
in abduction there is an implicit or explicit appeal to explanatory
considerations, whereas in induction there is not; in induction, there
is *only* an appeal to observed frequencies or statistics. (I
emphasize "only," because in abduction there may also be
an appeal to frequencies or statistics, as the example about the
elephants exhibits.)
A noteworthy feature of abduction, which it shares with induction but
not with deduction, is that it violates *monotonicity*, meaning
that it may be possible to infer abductively certain conclusions from
a *subset* of a set *S* of premises which cannot be
inferred abductively from *S* as a whole. For instance, adding
the premise that Tim and Harry are former business partners who still
have some financial matters to discuss, to the premises that they had
a terrible row some time ago and that they were just seen jogging
together may no longer warrant you to infer that they are friends
again, even if--let us suppose--the last two premises alone
do warrant that inference. The reason is that what counts as the best
explanation of Tim and Harry's jogging together in light of the
original premises may no longer do so once the information has been
added that they are former business partners with financial matters to
discuss.
### 1.2 The ubiquity of abduction
The type of inference exemplified in the cases described at the
beginning of this entry will strike most as entirely familiar.
Philosophers as well as psychologists tend to agree that abduction is
frequently employed in everyday reasoning. Sometimes our reliance on
abductive reasoning is quite obvious and explicit. But in some daily
practices, it may be so routine and automatic that it easily goes
unnoticed. A case in point may be our trust in other people's
testimony, which has been said to rest on abductive reasoning; see
Harman 1965, Adler 1994, Fricker 1994, and Lipton 1998 for defenses of
this claim. For instance, according to Jonathan Adler (1994, 274f),
"[t]he best explanation for why the informant asserts that
*P* is normally that ... he believes it for duly responsible
reasons and ... he intends that I shall believe it too,"
which is why we are normally justified in trusting the
informant's testimony. This may well be correct, even though in
coming to trust a person's testimony one does not normally seem
to be aware of any abductive reasoning going on in one's mind.
Similar remarks may apply to what some hold to be a further, possibly
even more fundamental, role of abduction in linguistic practice, to
wit, its role in determining what a speaker means by an utterance.
Specifically, it has been argued that decoding utterances is a matter
of inferring the best explanation of why someone said what he or she
said in the context in which the utterance was made. Even more
specifically, authors working in the field of pragmatics have
suggested that hearers invoke the Gricean maxims of conversation to
help them work out the best explanation of a speaker's utterance
whenever the semantic content of the utterance is insufficiently
informative for the purposes of the conversation, or is too
informative, or off-topic, or implausible, or otherwise odd or
inappropriate; see, for instance, Bach and Harnish 1979 (92f), Dascal
1979 (167), and Hobbs 2004. As in cases of reliance on speaker
testimony, the requisite abductive reasoning would normally seem to
take place at a subconscious level.
Abductive reasoning is not limited to everyday contexts. Quite the
contrary: philosophers of science have argued that abduction is a
cornerstone of scientific methodology; see, for instance, Boyd 1981,
1984, Harre 1986, 1988, Lipton 1991, 2004, and Psillos 1999.
According to Timothy Williamson (2007), "[t]he abductive
methodology is the best science provides" and Ernan McMullin
(1992) even goes so far to call abduction "the inference that
makes science." To illustrate the use of abduction in science,
we consider two examples.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was discovered that the
orbit of Uranus, one of the seven planets known at the time, departed
from the orbit as predicted on the basis of Isaac Newton's
theory of universal gravitation and the auxiliary assumption that
there were no further planets in the solar system. One possible
explanation was, of course, that Newton's theory is false. Given
its great empirical successes for (then) more than two centuries, that
did not appear to be a very good explanation. Two astronomers, John
Couch Adams and Urbain Leverrier, instead suggested (independently of
each other but almost simultaneously) that there was an eighth, as yet
undiscovered planet in the solar system; that, they thought, provided
the best explanation of Uranus' deviating orbit. Not much later,
this planet, which is now known as "Neptune," was
discovered.
The second example concerns what is now commonly regarded to have been
the discovery of the electron by the English physicist Joseph John
Thomson. Thomson had conducted experiments on cathode rays in order to
determine whether they are streams of charged particles. He concluded
that they are indeed, reasoning as follows:
>
>
> As the cathode rays carry a charge of negative electricity, are
> deflected by an electrostatic force as if they were negatively
> electrified, and are acted on by a magnetic force in just the way in
> which this force would act on a negatively electrified body moving
> along the path of these rays, I can see no escape from the conclusion
> that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of
> matter. (Thomson, cited in Achinstein 2001, 17)
>
>
>
The conclusion that cathode rays consist of negatively charged
particles does not follow logically from the reported experimental
results, nor could Thomson draw on any relevant statistical data. That
nevertheless he could "see no escape from the conclusion"
is, we may safely assume, because the conclusion is the best--in
this case presumably even the only plausible--explanation of his
results that he could think of.
Many other examples of scientific uses of abduction have been
discussed in the literature; see, for instance, Harre 1986,
1988 and Lipton 1991, 2004. Abduction is also said to be the
predominant mode of reasoning in medical diagnosis: physicians tend to
go for the hypothesis that best explains the patient's symptoms
(see Josephson and Josephson (eds.) 1994, 9-12; see also
Dragulinescu 2016 on abductive reasoning in the context of
medicine).
Last but not least, abduction plays a central role in some important
philosophical debates. See Shalkowski 2010 on the place of abduction
in metaphysics (also Bigelow 2010), Krzyzanowska, Wenmackers, and
Douven 2014 and Douven 2016a for a possible role of
abduction in the semantics of conditionals, and Williamson
2017 for an application of abduction in the philosophy of logic.
Arguably, however, abduction plays its most notable philosophical role
in epistemology and in the philosophy of science, where it is
frequently invoked in objections to so-called underdetermination
arguments. Underdetermination arguments generally start from the
premise that a number of given hypotheses are empirically equivalent,
which their authors take to mean that the evidence--indeed, any
evidence we might ever come to possess--is unable to favor one of
them over the others. From this, we are supposed to conclude that one
can never be warranted in believing any particular one of the
hypotheses. (This is rough, but it will do for present purposes; see
Douven 2008 and Stanford 2009, for more detailed accounts of
underdetermination arguments.) A famous instance of this type of
argument is the Cartesian argument for global skepticism, according to
which the hypothesis that reality is more or less the way we
customarily deem it to be is empirically equivalent to a variety of
so-called skeptical hypotheses (such as that we are beguiled by an
evil demon, or that we are brains in a vat, connected to a
supercomputer; see, e.g., Folina 2016). Similar arguments have been
given in support of scientific antirealism, according to which it will
never be warranted for us to choose between empirically equivalent
rivals concerning what underlies the observable part of reality (van
Fraassen 1980).
Responses to these arguments typically point to the fact that the
notion of empirical equivalence at play unduly neglects explanatory
considerations, for instance, by defining the notion strictly in terms
of hypotheses' making the same predictions. Those responding
then argue that even if some hypotheses make exactly the same
predictions, one of them may still be a better explanation of the
phenomena predicted. Thus, if explanatory considerations have a role
in determining which inferences we are licensed to make--as
according to defenders of abduction they have--then we might
still be warranted in believing in the truth (or probable truth, or
some such, depending--as will be seen below--on the version
of abduction one assumes) of one of a number of hypotheses that all
make the same predictions. Following Bertrand Russell (1912, Ch. 2),
many epistemologists have invoked abduction in arguing against
Cartesian skepticism, their key claim being that even though, by
construction, the skeptical hypotheses make the same predictions as
the hypothesis that reality is more or less the way we ordinarily take
it to be, they are not equally good explanations of what they predict;
in particular, the skeptical hypotheses have been said to be
considerably less simple than the "ordinary world"
hypothesis. See, among many others, Harman 1973 (Chs. 8 and 11),
Goldman 1988 (205), Moser 1989 (161), and Vogel 1990, 2005; see
Pargetter 1984 for an abductive response specifically to skepticism
regarding other minds. Similarly, philosophers of science have argued
that we are warranted to believe in Special Relativity Theory as
opposed to Lorentz's version of the aether theory. For even
though these theories make the same predictions, the former is
explanatorily superior to the latter. (Most arguments that have been
given for this claim come down to the contention that Special
Relativity Theory is ontologically more parsimonious than its
competitor, which postulates the existence of an aether. See
Janssen 2002 for an excellent discussion of the various reasons
philosophers of science have adduced for preferring Einstein's
theory to Lorentz's.)
## 2. Explicating Abduction
Precise statements of what abduction amounts to are rare in the
literature on abduction. (Peirce did propose an at least fairly
precise statement; but, as explained in the supplement to this entry,
it does not capture what most nowadays understand by abduction.) Its
core idea is often said to be that explanatory considerations have
confirmation-theoretic import, or that explanatory success is a (not
necessarily unfailing) mark of truth. Clearly, however, these
formulations are slogans at best, and it takes little effort to see
that they can be cashed out in a great variety of prima facie
plausible ways. Here we will consider a number of such possible
explications, starting with what one might term the "textbook
version of abduction," which, as will be seen, is manifestly
defective, and then going on to consider various possible refinements
of it. What those versions have in
common--unsurprisingly--is that they are all inference
rules, requiring premises encompassing explanatory considerations and
yielding a conclusion that makes some statement about the truth of a
hypothesis. The differences concern the premises that are required, or
what exactly we are allowed to infer from them (or both).
In textbooks on epistemology or the philosophy of science, one often
encounters something like the following as a formulation of
abduction:
ABD1
Given evidence *E* and candidate explanations
*H*1,..., *H**n* of
*E*, infer the truth of *that* *H**i*
which best explains *E*.
An observation that is frequently made about this rule, and that
points to a potential problem for it, is that it presupposes the
notions of candidate explanation and best explanation, neither of
which has a straightforward interpretation. While some still hope that
the former can be spelled out in purely logical, or at least purely
formal, terms, it is often said that the latter must appeal to the
so-called theoretical virtues, like simplicity, generality, and
coherence with well-established theories; the best explanation would
then be the hypothesis which, on balance, does best with respect to
these virtues. (See, for instance, Thagard 1978 and McMullin 1996.)
The problem is that none of the said virtues is presently particularly
well understood. (Giere, in Callebaut (ed.) 1993 (232), even makes the
radical claim that the theoretical virtues lack real content and play
no more than a rhetorical role in science. In view of recent formal
work both on simplicity and on coherence--for instance, Forster
and Sober 1994, Li and Vitanyi 1997, and Sober 2015, on simplicity and
Bovens and Hartmann 2003 and Olsson 2005, on coherence--the first
part of this claim has become hard to maintain; also, Schupbach and
Sprenger (2011) present an account of explanatory goodness directly in
probabilistic terms. Psychological evidence casts doubt on the second
part of the claim; see, for instance, Lombrozo 2007, on the role of
simplicity in people's assessments of explanatory goodness and
Koslowski *et al*. 2008, on the role of coherence with
background knowledge in those assessments.)
Furthermore, many of those who think ABD1 is headed along the right
lines believe that it is too strong. Some think that abduction
warrants an inference only to the *probable* truth of the best
explanation, others that it warrants an inference only to the
*approximate* truth of the best explanation, and still others
that it warrants an inference only to the *probable*
*approximate* truth.
The real problem with ABD1 runs deeper than this, however. Because
abduction is ampliative--as explained earlier--it will not
be a sound rule of inference in the strict logical sense, however
abduction is explicated exactly. It can still be *reliable* in
that it mostly leads to a true conclusion whenever the premises are
true. An obvious necessary condition for ABD1 to be reliable in this
sense is that, *mostly*, when it is true that *H* best
explains *E*, and *E* is true, then *H* is true as well
(or *H* is approximately true, or probably true, or probably
approximately true). But this would not be *enough* for ABD1 to
be reliable. For ABD1 takes as its premise only that some hypothesis
is the best explanation of the evidence *as compared to other
hypotheses in a* *given set*. Thus, if the rule is to be
reliable, it must hold that, at least typically, the best explanation
relative to the set of hypotheses that we consider would also come out
as being best in comparison with any other hypotheses that we might
have conceived (but for lack of time or ingenuity, or for some other
reason, did not conceive). In other words, it must hold that at least
typically the *absolutely* best explanation of the evidence is
to be found among the candidate explanations we have come up with, for
else ABD1 may well lead us to believe "the best of a bad
lot" (van Fraassen 1989, 143).
How reasonable is it to suppose that this extra requirement is usually
fulfilled? Not at all, presumably. To believe otherwise, we must
assume some sort of privilege on our part to the effect that when we
consider possible explanations of the data, we are somehow predisposed
to hit, inter alia, upon the absolutely best explanation of those
data. After all, hardly ever will we have considered, or will it even
be possible to consider, *all* potential explanations. As van
Fraassen (1989, 144) points out, it is *a priori* rather
implausible to hold that we are thus privileged.
In response to this, one might argue that the challenge to show that
the best explanation is always or mostly among the hypotheses
considered can be met without having to assume some form of privilege
(see Schupbach 2014 for a different response, and see Dellsen
2017 for discussion). For given the hypotheses we have managed to come
up with, we can always generate a set of hypotheses which jointly
exhaust logical space. Suppose
*H*1,...,*H**n* are the
candidate explanations we have so far been able to conceive. Then
simply define *H*n+1 := !*H*1
[?] ... [?] !*H**n* and add this new
hypothesis as a further candidate explanation to the ones we already
have. Obviously, the set
{*H*1,...,*H*n+1} is exhaustive,
in that one of its elements must be true. Following this in itself
simple procedure would seem enough to make sure that we never miss out
on the absolutely best explanation. (See Lipton 1993, for a proposal
along these lines.)
Alas, there is a catch. For even though there may be many hypotheses
*H**j* that imply *H*n+1 and, had
they been formulated, would have been evaluated as being a better
explanation for the data than the best explanation among the candidate
explanations we started out with, *H*n+1 itself will
in general be hardly informative; in fact, in general it will not even
be clear what its empirical consequences are. Suppose, for instance,
we have as competing explanations Special Relativity Theory and
Lorentz's version of the aether theory. Then, following the
above proposal, we may add to our candidate explanations that neither
of these two theories is true. But surely this further hypothesis will
be ranked quite low *qua* explanation--if it will be
ranked at all, which seems doubtful, given that it is wholly unclear
what its empirical consequences are. This is not to say that the
suggested procedure may never work. The point is that in general it
will give little assurance that the best explanation is among the
candidate explanations we consider.
A more promising response to the above "argument of the bad
lot" begins with the observation that the argument capitalizes
on a peculiar asymmetry or incongruence in ABD1. The rule gives
license to an absolute conclusion--that a given hypothesis is
true--on the basis of a comparative premise, namely, that that
particular hypothesis is the best explanation of the evidence relative
to the other hypotheses available (see Kuipers 2000, 171). This
incongruence is not avoided by replacing "truth" with
"probable truth" or "approximate truth." In
order to avoid it, one has two general options.
The first option is to modify the rule so as to have it require an
absolute premise. For instance, following Alan Musgrave (1988) or
Peter Lipton (1993), one may require the hypothesis whose truth is
inferred to be not only the best of the available potential
explanations, but also to be *satisfactory* (Musgrave) or
*good enough* (Lipton), yielding the following variant of
ABD1:
ABD2
Given evidence *E* and candidate explanations
*H*1,..., *H**n* of
*E*, infer the truth of *that* *H**i*
which explains *E* best, provided *H**i* is
satisfactory/good enough *qua* explanation.
Needless to say, ABD2 needs supplementing by a criterion for the
satisfactoriness of explanations, or their being good enough, which,
however, we are still lacking.
Secondly, one can formulate a symmetric or congruous version of
abduction by having it sanction, given a comparative premise, only a
comparative conclusion; this option, too, can in turn be realized in
more than one way. Here is one way to do it, which has been proposed
and defended in the work of Theo Kuipers (e.g., Kuipers 1984, 1992,
2000).
ABD3
Given evidence *E* and candidate explanations
*H*1,..., *H**n* of
*E*, if *H**i* explains *E* better than
any of the other hypotheses, infer that *H**i* is
closer to the truth than any of the other hypotheses.
Clearly, ABD3 requires an account of closeness to the truth, but many
such accounts are on offer today (see, e.g., Niiniluoto 1998).
One noteworthy feature of the congruous versions of abduction
considered here is that they do not rely on the assumption of an
implausible privilege on the reasoner's part that, we saw, ABD1
implicitly relies on. Another is that if one can be certain that,
however many candidate explanations for the data one may have missed,
none equals the best of those one *has* thought of, then the
congruous versions license exactly the same inference as ABD1 does
(supposing that one would not be certain that no potential explanation
is as good as the best explanation one has thought of if the latter is
not even satisfactory or sufficiently good).
As mentioned, there is widespread agreement that people frequently
rely on abductive reasoning. Which of the above rules *exactly*
is it that people rely on? Or might it be still some further rule that
they rely on? Or might they in some contexts rely on one version, and
in others on another (Douven 2017, forthcoming)? Philosophical
argumentation is unable to answer these questions. In recent years,
experimental psychologists have started paying attention to the role
humans give to explanatory considerations in reasoning. For instance,
Tania Lombrozo and Nicholas Gwynne (2014) report experiments showing
that *how* a property of a given class of things is explained
to us--whether mechanistically, by reference to parts and
processes, or functionally, by reference to functions and
purposes--matters to how likely we are to generalise that
property to other classes of things (see also Sloman 1994 and Williams
and Lombrozo 2010). And Igor Douven and Jonah Schupbach (2015a),
(2015b) present experimental evidence to the effect that
people's probability updates tend to be influenced by
explanatory considerations in ways that makes them deviate from
strictly Bayesian updates (see below). Douven (2016b) shows that, in
the aforementioned experiments, participants who gave more weight to
explanatory considerations tended to be more accurate, as determined
in terms of a standard scoring rule. (See Lombrozo 2012 and 2016 for
useful overviews of recent experimental work relevant to explanation
and inference.) Douven and Patricia Mirabile (2018) found some
evidence indicating that people rely on something like ABD2, at least
in some contexts, but for the most part, empirical work on the
above-mentioned questions is lacking.
With respect to the normative question of which of the previously
stated rules we *ought* to rely on (if we ought to rely on any
form of abduction), where philosophical argumentation should be able
to help, the situation is hardly any better. In view of the argument
of the bad lot, ABD1 does not look very good. Other arguments against
abduction are claimed to be independent of the exact explication of
the rule; below, these arguments will be found wanting. On the other
hand, arguments that have been given in favor of abduction--some
of which will also be discussed below--do not discern between
specific versions. So, supposing people do indeed commonly rely on
abduction, it must be considered an open question as to which
version(s) of abduction they rely on. Equally, supposing it is
rational for people to rely on abduction, it must be considered an
open question as to which version, or perhaps versions, of abduction
they ought to, or are at least permitted to, rely on.
## 3. The Status of Abduction
Even if it is true that we routinely rely on abductive reasoning, it
may still be asked whether this practice is rational. For instance,
experimental studies have shown that when people are able to think of
an explanation for some possible event, they tend to overestimate the
likelihood that this event will actually occur. (See Koehler 1991, for
a survey of some of these studies; see also Brem and Rips 2000.) More
telling still, Lombrozo (2007) shows that, in some situations, people
tend to grossly overrate the probability of simpler explanations
compared to more complicated ones. Although these studies are not
directly concerned with abduction in any of the forms discussed so
far, they nevertheless suggest that taking into account explanatory
considerations in one's reasoning may not always be for the
better. (It is to be noted that Lombrozo's experiments
*are* directly concerned with some proposals that have been
made for explicating abduction in a Bayesian framework; see Section
4.) However, the most pertinent remarks about the normative status of
abduction are so far to be found in the philosophical literature. This
section discusses the main criticisms that have been levelled against
abduction, as well as the strongest arguments that have been given in
its defense.
### 3.1 Criticisms
We have already encountered the so-called argument of the bad lot,
which, we saw, is valid as a criticism of ABD1 but powerless against
various (what we called) congruous rules of abduction. We here
consider two objections that are meant to be more general. The first
even purports to challenge the core idea underlying abduction; the
second is not quite as general, but it is still meant to undermine a
broad class of candidate explications of abduction. Both objections
are due to Bas van Fraassen.
The first objection has as a premise that it is part of the meaning of
"explanation" that if one theory is more explanatory than
another, the former must be more informative than the latter (see,
e.g., van Fraassen 1983, Sect. 2). The alleged problem then is that it
is "an elementary logical point that a more informative theory
cannot be more likely to be true [and thus] attempts to describe
inductive or evidential support through features that require
information (such as 'Inference to the Best Explanation')
must either contradict themselves or equivocate" (van Fraassen
1989, 192). The elementary logical point is supposed to be "most
[obvious] ... in the paradigm case in which one theory is an
extension of another: clearly the extension has more ways of being
false" (van Fraassen 1985, 280).
It is important to note, however, that in any other kind of case than
the "paradigm" one, the putative elementary point is not
obvious at all. For instance, it is entirely unclear in what sense
Special Relativity Theory "has more ways of being false"
than Lorentz's version of the aether theory, given that
they make the same predictions. And yet the former is generally
regarded as being superior, *qua* explanation, to the latter.
(If van Fraassen were to object that the former is not really more
informative than the latter, or at any rate not more informative in
the appropriate sense--whatever that is--then we should
certainly refuse to grant the premise that in order to be more
explanatory a theory must be more informative.)
The second objection, proffered in van Fraassen 1989 (Ch. 6), is
levelled at probabilistic versions of abduction. The objection is that
such rules must either amount to Bayes' rule, and thus be
redundant, or be at variance with it but then, on the grounds of
Lewis' dynamic Dutch book argument (as reported in Teller 1973),
be probabilistically incoherent, meaning that they may lead one to
assess as fair a number of bets which together ensure a financial
loss, come what may; and, van Fraassen argues, it would be irrational
to follow a rule that has this feature.
However, this objection fares no better than the first. For one thing,
as Patrick Maher (1992) and Brian Skyrms (1993) have pointed out, a
loss in one respect may be outweighed by a benefit in another. It
might be, for instance, that some probabilistic version of abduction
does much better, at least in our world, than Bayes' rule, in
that, on average, it approaches the truth faster in the sense that it
is faster in assigning a high probability (understood as probability
above a certain threshold value) to the true hypothesis (see Douven
2013, 2020, and Douven and Wenmackers 2017; see Climenhaga
2017 for discussion). If it does, then following that rule
instead of Bayes' rule may have advantages which perhaps are not
so readily expressed in terms of money yet which should arguably be
taken into account when deciding which rule to go by. It is, in short,
not so clear whether following a probabilistically incoherent rule
must be irrational.
For another thing, Douven (1999) argues that the question of whether a
probabilistic rule is coherent is not one that can be settled
independently of considering which other epistemic and
decision-theoretic rules are deployed along with it; coherence should
be understood as a property of packages of both epistemic and
decision-theoretic rules, not of epistemic rules (such as
probabilistic rules for belief change) in isolation. In the same
paper, a coherent package of rules is described which includes a
probabilistic version of abduction. (See Kvanvig 1994, Harman 1997,
Leplin 1997, Niiniluoto 1999, and Okasha 2000, for different responses
to van Fraassen's critique of probabilistic versions of
abduction.)
### 3.2 Defenses
Hardly anyone nowadays would want to subscribe to a conception of
truth that posits a necessary connection between explanatory force and
truth--for instance, because it stipulates explanatory
superiority to be necessary for truth. As a result, a priori defenses
of abduction seem out of the question. Indeed, all defenses that have
been given so far are of an empirical nature in that they appeal to
data that supposedly support the claim that (in some form) abduction
is a reliable rule of inference.
The best-known argument of this sort was developed by Richard Boyd in
the 1980s (see Boyd 1981, 1984, 1985). It starts by underlining the
theory-dependency of scientific methodology, which comprises methods
for designing experiments, for assessing data, for choosing between
rival hypotheses, and so on. For instance, in considering possible
confounding factors from which an experimental setup has to be
shielded, scientists draw heavily on already accepted theories. The
argument next calls attention to the apparent reliability of this
methodology, which, after all, has yielded, and continues to yield,
impressively accurate theories. In particular, by relying on this
methodology, scientists have for some time now been able to find ever
more instrumentally adequate theories. Boyd then argues that the
reliability of scientific methodology is best explained by assuming
that the theories on which it relies are at least approximately true.
From this and from the fact that these theories were mostly arrived at
by abductive reasoning, he concludes that abduction must be a reliable
rule of inference.
Critics have accused this argument of being circular. Specifically, it
has been said that the argument rests on a premise--that
scientific methodology is informed by approximately true background
theories--which in turn rests on an inference to the best
explanation for its plausibility. And the reliability of this type of
inference is precisely what is at stake. (See, for instance, Laudan
1981 and Fine 1984.)
To this, Stathis Psillos (1999, Ch. 4) has responded by invoking a
distinction credited to Richard Braithwaite, to wit, the distinction
between premise-circularity and rule-circularity. An argument is
premise-circular if its conclusion is amongst its premises. A
rule-circular argument, by contrast, is an argument of which the
conclusion asserts something about an inferential rule that is used in
the very same argument. As Psillos urges, Boyd's argument is
rule-circular, but not premise-circular, and rule-circular arguments,
Psillos contends, *need not* be viciously circular (even though
a premise-circular argument is always viciously circular). To be more
precise, in his view, an argument for the reliability of a given rule
*R* that essentially relies on *R* as an inferential
principle is not vicious, provided that the use of *R* does not
guarantee a positive conclusion about *R*'s reliability.
Psillos claims that in Boyd's argument, this proviso is met. For
while Boyd concludes that the background theories on which scientific
methodology relies are approximately true on the basis of an abductive
step, the use of abduction itself does not guarantee the truth of his
conclusion. After all, granting the use of abduction does nothing to
ensure that the best explanation of the success of scientific
methodology is the approximate truth of the relevant background
theories. Thus, Psillos concludes, Boyd's argument still
stands.
Even if the use of abduction in Boyd's argument might have led
to the conclusion that abduction is *not* reliable, one may
still have worries about the argument's being rule-circular. For
suppose that some scientific community relied not on abduction but on
a rule that we may dub "Inference to the Worst
Explanation" (IWE), a rule that sanctions inferring to the
*worst* explanation of the available data. We may safely assume
that the use of this rule mostly would lead to the adoption of very
unsuccessful theories. Nevertheless, the said community might justify
its use of IWE by dint of the following reasoning: "Scientific
theories tend to be hugely unsuccessful. These theories were arrived
at by application of IWE. That IWE is a reliable rule of
inference--that is, a rule of inference mostly leading from true
premises to true conclusions--is surely the worst explanation of
the fact that our theories are so unsuccessful. Hence, by application
of IWE, we may conclude that IWE is a reliable rule of
inference." While this would be an utterly absurd conclusion,
the argument leading up to it cannot be convicted of being viciously
circular anymore than Boyd's argument for the reliability of
abduction can (if Psillos is right). It would appear, then, that there
must be something else amiss with rule-circularity.
It is fair to note that for Psillos, the fact that a rule-circular
argument does not guarantee a positive conclusion about the rule at
issue is not sufficient for such an argument to be valid. A further
necessary condition is "that one should not have reason to doubt
the reliability of the rule--that there is nothing currently
available which can make one distrust the rule" (Psillos 1999,
85). And there is plenty of reason to doubt the reliability of IWE; in
fact, the above argument *supposes* that it is unreliable. Two
questions arise, however. First, why should we accept the additional
condition? Second, do we really have *no* reason to doubt the
reliability of abduction? Certainly *some* of the abductive
inferences we make lead us to accept *falsehoods*. How many
falsehoods may we accept on the basis of abduction before we can
legitimately begin to distrust this rule? No clear answers have been
given to these questions.
Be this as it may, even if rule-circularity is neither vicious nor
otherwise problematic, one may still wonder how Boyd's argument
is to convert a critic of abduction, given that it relies on
abduction. But Psillos makes it clear that the point of philosophical
argumentation is not always, and in any case need not be, to convince
an opponent of one's position. Sometimes the point is, more
modestly, to assure or reassure oneself that the position one
endorses, or is tempted to endorse, is correct. In the case at hand,
we need not think of Boyd's argument as an attempt to convince
the opponent of abduction of its reliability. Rather, it may be
thought of as justifying the rule from within the perspective of
someone who is already sympathetic towards abduction; see Psillos 1999
(89).
There have also been attempts to argue for abduction in a more
straightforward fashion, to wit, via enumerative induction. The common
idea of these attempts is that every newly recorded successful
application of abduction--like the discovery of Neptune, whose
existence had been postulated on explanatory grounds (see Section
1.2)--adds further support to the hypothesis that abduction is a
reliable rule of inference, in the way in which every newly observed
black raven adds some support to the hypothesis that all ravens are
black. Because it does not involve abductive reasoning, this type of
argument is more likely to also appeal to disbelievers in abduction.
See Harre 1986, 1988, Bird 1998 (160), Kitcher 2001, and Douven
2002 for suggestions along these lines.
## 4. Abduction versus Bayesian Confirmation Theory
In the past decade, Bayesian confirmation theory has firmly
established itself as the dominant view on confirmation; currently one
cannot very well discuss a confirmation-theoretic issue without making
clear whether, and if so why, one's position on that issue
deviates from standard Bayesian thinking. Abduction, in whichever
version, assigns a confirmation-theoretic role to explanation:
explanatory considerations contribute to making some hypotheses more
credible, and others less so. By contrast, Bayesian confirmation
theory makes no reference at all to the concept of explanation. Does
this imply that abduction is at loggerheads with the prevailing
doctrine in confirmation theory? Several authors have recently argued
that not only is abduction compatible with Bayesianism, it is a
much-needed supplement to it. The so far fullest defense of this view
has been given by Lipton (2004, Ch. 7); as he puts it, Bayesians
should also be "explanationists" (his name for the
advocates of abduction). (For other defenses, see Okasha 2000, McGrew
2003, Weisberg 2009, and Poston 2014, Ch. 7; for discussion, see Roche
and Sober 2013, 2014, and McCain and Poston 2014.)
This requires some clarification. For what could it mean for a
Bayesian to be an explanationist? In order to apply Bayes' rule
and determine the probability for *H* after learning *E*,
the Bayesian agent will have to determine the probability of *H*
conditional on *E*. For that, he needs to assign unconditional
probabilities to *H* and *E* as well as a probability to
*E* given *H*; the former two are mostly called "prior
probabilities" (or just "priors") of, respectively,
*H* and *E*, the latter the "likelihood" of
*H* on *E*. (This is the official Bayesian story. Not all of
those who sympathize with Bayesianism adhere to that story. For
instance, according to some it is more reasonable to think that
conditional probabilities are basic and that we derive unconditional
probabilities from them; see Hajek 2003, and references
therein.) How is the Bayesian to determine these values? As is well
known, probability theory gives us more probabilities once we have
some; it does not give us probabilities from scratch. Of course, when
*H* implies *E* or the negation of *E*, or when
*H* is a statistical hypothesis that bestows a certain chance on
*E*, then the likelihood follows "analytically."
(This claim assumes some version of Lewis' (1980) Principal
Principle, and it is controversial whether or not this principle is
analytic; hence the scare quotes.) But this is not always the case,
and even if it were, there would still be the question of how to
determine the priors. This is where, according to Lipton, abduction
comes in. In his proposal, Bayesians ought to determine their prior
probabilities and, if applicable, likelihoods on the basis of
explanatory considerations.
Exactly how are explanatory considerations to guide one's choice
of priors? The answer to this question is not as simple as one might
at first think. Suppose you are considering what priors to assign to a
collection of rival hypotheses and you wish to follow Lipton's
suggestion. How are you to do this? An obvious--though still
somewhat vague--answer may seem to go like this: Whatever exact
priors you are going to assign, you should assign a higher one to the
hypothesis that explains the available data best than to any of its
rivals (provided there is a best explanation). Note, though, that your
neighbor, who is a Bayesian but thinks confirmation has nothing to do
with explanation, may well assign a prior to the best explanation that
is even higher than the one you assign to that hypothesis. In fact,
his priors for best explanations may even be consistently higher than
yours, not because in his view explanation is somehow related to
confirmation--it is not, he thinks--but, well, just because.
In this context, "just because" is a perfectly legitimate
reason, because any reason for fixing one's priors counts as
legitimate by Bayesian standards. According to mainstream Bayesian
epistemology, priors (and sometimes likelihoods) are up for grabs,
meaning that one assignment of priors is as good as another, provided
both are coherent (that is, they obey the axioms of probability
theory). Lipton's recommendation to the Bayesian to be an
explanationist is meant to be entirely general. But what should your
neighbor do differently if he wants to follow the recommendation?
Should he give the same prior to any best explanation that you, his
explanationist neighbor, give to it, that is, *lower* his
priors for best explanations? Or rather should he give even
*higher* priors to best explanations than those he already
gives?
Perhaps Lipton's proposal is not intended to address those who
already assign highest priors to best explanations, even if they do so
on grounds that have nothing to do with explanation. The idea might be
that, as long as one does assign highest priors to those hypotheses,
everything is fine, or at least finer than if one does not do so,
regardless of one's reasons for assigning those priors. The
answer to the question of how explanatory considerations are to guide
one's choice of priors would then presumably be that one ought
to assign a higher prior to the best explanation than to its rivals,
if this is not what one already does. If it is, one should just keep
doing what one is doing.
(As an aside, it should be noticed that, according to standard
Bayesian usage, the term "priors" does not necessarily
refer to the degrees of belief a person assigns before the receipt of
*any* data. If there are already data in, then, clearly, one
may assign higher priors to hypotheses that best explain the
then-available data. However, one can sensibly speak of "best
explanations" even before any data are known. For example, one
hypothesis may be judged to be a better explanation than any of its
rivals because the former requires less complicated mathematics, or
because it is stated in terms of familiar concepts only, which is not
true of the others. More generally, such judgments may be based on
what Kosso (1992, 30) calls *internal features* of hypotheses
or theories, that is, features that "can be evaluated without
having to observe the world.")
A more interesting answer to the above question of how explanation is
to guide one's choice of priors has been given by Jonathan
Weisberg (2009). We said that mainstream Bayesians regard one
assignment of prior probabilities as being as good as any other.
So-called objective Bayesians do not do so, however. These Bayesians
think priors must obey principles beyond the probability axioms in
order to be admissible. Objective Bayesians are divided among
themselves over exactly which further principles are to be obeyed, but
at least for a while they agreed that the Principle of Indifference is
among them. Roughly stated, this principle counsels that, absent a
reason to the contrary, we give equal priors to competing hypotheses.
As is well known, however, in its original form the Principle of
Indifference may lead to inconsistent assignments of probabilities and
so can hardly be advertised as a principle of rationality. The problem
is that there are typically various ways to partition logical space
that appear plausible given the problem at hand, and that not all of
them lead to the same prior probability assignment, even assuming the
Principle of Indifference. Weisberg's proposal amounts to the
claim that explanatory considerations may favor some of those
partitions over others. Perhaps we will not always end up with a
unique partition to which the Principle of Indifference is to be
applied, but it would already be progress if we ended up with only a
handful of partitions. For we could then still arrive in a motivated
way at our prior probabilities, by proceeding in two steps, namely, by
first applying the Principle of Indifference to the partitions
separately, thereby possibly obtaining different assignments of
priors, and by then taking a weighted average of the thus obtained
priors, where the weights, too, are to depend on explanatory
considerations. The result would again be a probability
function--the uniquely correct prior probability function,
according to Weisberg.
The proposal is intriguing as far as it goes but, as Weisberg admits,
in its current form, it does not go very far. For one thing, it is
unclear how exactly explanatory considerations are to determine the
weights required for the second step of the proposal. For another, it
may be idle to hope that taking explanatory considerations into
account will in general leave us with a manageable set of partitions,
or that, even if it does, this will not be due merely to the fact that
we are overlooking a great many prima facie plausible ways of
partitioning logical space to begin with. (The latter point echoes the
argument of the bad lot, of course.)
Another suggestion about the connection between abduction and Bayesian
reasoning--to be found in Okasha 2000, McGrew 2003, Lipton 2004
(Ch. 7), and Dellsen 2018--is that the explanatory
considerations may serve as a heuristic to determine, even if only
roughly, priors and likelihoods in cases in which we would otherwise
be clueless and could do no better than guessing. This suggestion is
sensitive to the well-recognized fact that we are not always able to
assign a prior to every hypothesis of interest, or to say how probable
a given piece of evidence is conditional on a given hypothesis.
Consideration of that hypothesis' explanatory power might then
help us to figure out, if perhaps only within certain bounds, what
prior to assign to it, or what likelihood to assign to it on the given
evidence.
Bayesians, especially the more modest ones, might want to retort that
the Bayesian procedure is to be followed if, and only if, either (a)
priors and likelihoods can be determined with some precision and
objectivity, or (b) likelihoods can be determined with some precision
and priors can be expected to "wash out" as more and more
evidence accumulates, or (c) priors and likelihoods can both be
expected to wash out. In the remaining cases--they might
say--we should simply refrain from applying Bayesian reasoning. A
fortiori, then, there is no need for an abduction-enhanced Bayesianism
in these cases. And some incontrovertible mathematical results
indicate that, in the cases that fall under (a), (b), or (c), our
probabilities will converge to the truth anyhow. Consequently, in
those cases there is no need for the kind of abductive heuristics that
the above-mentioned authors suggest, either. (Weisberg 2009, Sect.
3.2, raises similar concerns.)
Psillos (2000) proposes yet another way in which abduction might
supplement Bayesian confirmation theory, one that is very much in the
spirit of Peirce's conception of abduction. The idea is that
abduction may assist us in selecting plausible candidates for testing,
where the actual testing then is to follow Bayesian lines. However,
Psillos concedes (2004) that this proposal assigns a role to abduction
that will strike committed explanationists as being too limited.
Finally, a possibility that has so far not been considered in the
literature is that abduction and Bayesianism do not so much work in
tandem--as they do on the above proposals--as operate in
different modes of reasoning; the Bayesian and the explanationist are
characters that feature in different plays, so to speak. It is widely
accepted that sometimes we speak and think about our beliefs in a
categorical manner, while at other times we speak and think about them
in a graded way. It is far from clear how these different ways of
speaking and thinking about beliefs--the epistemology of belief
and the epistemology of degrees of belief, to use Richard
Foley's (1992) terminology--are related to one another. In
fact, it is an open question whether there is any straightforward
connection between the two, or even whether there is a connection at
all. Be that as it may, given that the distinction is undeniable, it
is a plausible suggestion that, just as there are different ways of
talking and thinking about beliefs, there are different ways of
talking and thinking about the *revision* of beliefs. In
particular, abduction could well have its home in the epistemology of
belief, and be called upon whenever we reason about our beliefs in a
categorical mode, while at the same time Bayes' rule could have
its home in the epistemology of degrees of belief. Hard-nosed
Bayesians may insist that whatever reasoning goes on in the
categorical mode must eventually be justifiable in Bayesian terms, but
this presupposes the existence of bridge principles connecting the
epistemology of belief with the epistemology of degrees of
belief--and, as mentioned, whether such principles exist is
presently unclear. |
abelard | ## 1. Life and Works
### 1.1 Life
Abelard's life is relatively well-known. In addition to events
chronicled in the public record, his inner life is revealed in his
autobiographical letter *Historia calamitatum* ["The
Story of My Troubles"] and in his famous correspondence with
Heloise.
Abelard was born into the lesser nobility around 1079 in Le Pallet, a
small town in Brittany near Nantes. He received early training in
letters, and took to his studies with enthusiasm; his later writings
show familiarity with Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Ovid, Lucan, Seneca,
and Vergil. Abelard eventually renounced his inheritance, including
its attendant knighthood, to pursue philosophy. He did so by
travelling to study with well-known philosophers, most notably
Roscelin and William of Champeaux.
During the first years of the twelfth century, Abelard felt confident
enough to set himself up as a lecturer, first at Melun and then at
Corbeil, competing mainly with William of Champeaux (Paris) for
students and reputation. The strain proved too
much--Abelard's health failed, and he returned to Brittany
for several years.
Abelard returned to Paris sometime between 1108 and 1113 with his
health restored and his ambition intact. He attended William of
Champeaux's lectures, and entered into debate with William over
the problem of universals. According to Abelard's report, he
bested his teacher in debate, and gained his reputation as a
dialectician of note, teaching at several schools. Around 1113 Abelard
decided to study theology; he sought out the most eminent teacher of
theology of his day, Anselm of Laon (not to be confused with Anselm of
Canterbury), and became his student. It was not a good choice:
Anselm's traditional methods did not appeal to Abelard, and,
after some back-and-forth, Abelard returned to Paris to continue on
his own. It would be the last time he studied with anyone.
Upon returning to Paris, Abelard became scholar-in-residence at Notre
Dame, a position he held until his romantic entanglement with
Heloise led to his castration, at which point he entered
the Benedictine monastery of Saint Denis and Heloise
entered the convent of Argenteuil. After his recovery, Abelard resumed
teaching at a nearby priory, primarily on theology and in particular
on the Trinity. His method of philosophical analysis was seen as a
direct challenge to more traditional approaches, and a synod, convened
in Soissons to examine Abelard's writings, condemned them and
required Abelard to make a public avowal of faith, an experience he
found humiliating; shortly afterwards he was allowed to settle in a
wild and uninhabited section of land, to devote himself to
contemplation.
It was not to be. Abelard says that poverty forced him to resume
teaching. He and the students who flocked to him in droves constructed
an oratory named the Paraclete, where he continued to write, teach,
and research. This idyll came to an end around 1126, when Abelard
accepted an invitation to become abbot of the monastery of Saint
Gildas de Rhuys in Brittany; shortly afterwards he handed over the
Paraclete to Heloise and the other nuns, whose convent had
been expropriated. Abelard found the monks of Saint Gildas difficult
and obstructive--even dangerous--and he claims that there
were several attempts on his life while in residence. During this
period he wrote the *Historia calamitatum* and corresponded
with Heloise.
By the mid-1130s Abelard was given permission to return to Paris
(retaining his rank as abbot) and to teach in the schools on the Mont
Ste.-Genevieve. It was during this time that his theological treatises
were brought to the attention of Bernard of Clairvaux, who objected to
some of Abelard's conclusions as well as to his approach to
matters of faith. After some inconclusive attempts to resolve their
differences, Abelard asked the archbishop of Sens to arrange a public
dispute between himself and Bernard on 3 June 1140, to settle their
disagreements. Bernard initially refused the invitation on the grounds
that one should not debate matters of faith, but then accepted it and,
unknown to Abelard, arranged to convene another commission of enquiry
to review Abelard's works on suspicion of heresy. When Abelard
discovered that there was no debate but instead a kangaroo court, he
refused to take part, announcing his intention to appeal to the Pope
directly. He walked out of the proceedings and began travelling to
Rome. The Council condemned nineteen propositions it claimed to find
in his works and adjourned. Bernard launched a successful campaign
petitioning the Papal Court before Abelard was out of France; a letter
from the Pope upholding the decision of the Council of Soissons
reached Abelard while he was at Cluny; Abelard was ordered to silence.
By all accounts Abelard complied immediately, even meeting peacefully
with Bernard in reconciliation. Peter the Venerable, the abbot of
Cluny, wrote to the Pope about these matters, and the Pope lifted
Abelard's sentence. Abelard remained under the protection of
Peter the Venerable first at Cluny, then at St. Marcel, as his health
gradually deteriorated. Abelard died on 21 April 1142. His body was
interred at the Paraclete, and today is (with Heloise) in
Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Abelard's students were active as kings, philosophers, poets,
politicians, theologians, and monks; they include three popes and
several heads of state. Explicit references to Abelard's
thinking in the later Middle Ages are few, likely because of the cloud
cast by the verdict of the Council of Soissons, but it is clear that
he had a seminal influence on twelfth-century philosophy and perhaps
on later fourteenth-century speculation as well.
### 1.2 Works
The dates of composition and even the number of Abelard's
writings remain largely obscure and a matter of controversy among
scholars. One reason for this is that Abelard constantly revised and
rewrote, so that several distinct versions of a given work might be in
circulation; another reason is that several of his writings might
represent 'teaching notes' constantly evolving in courses
and seminars. Hence it is not clear that 'date of
composition' is a well-defined notion when applied to the body
of Abelard's work that we now possess. Apart from
Abelard's correspondence, which can be dated with relative
precision, Abelard's extant work falls into three
categories.
The first category consists of Abelard's works on
*dialectic*--works concerned with logic, philosophy of
language, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. His two masterworks
are:
* *Logica* '*ingredientibus*',
"Logic" (starting with the words 'To those
beginning...').
* *Dialectica*, "Dialectic."
Both of these works follow the pattern of the *logica vetus*,
the "old logic" inherited from antiquity: Porphyry's
introduction to Aristotle, the *Isagoge*; Aristotle's
*Categories* and *On Interpretation*; Boethius's
*Introduction to the Categorical Syllogism*, *Categorical
Syllogisms*, *Hypothetical Syllogisms*, *On Topical
Difference*, and *On Division*. Abelard's works cover
the material presented in the old logic, though they do so in
different ways. His *Logica*
'*ingredientibus*' is a close textual commentary on
the old logic, though only some of it survives, namely the
commentaries on the *Isagoge*, the *Categories*, *On
Interpretation*, and *On Topical Differences*; his
*Dialectica* is an independent treatise on dialectic that
treats the same material thematically, though neither the beginning
(covering the *Isagoge* and the start of the
*Categories*) nor the ending (on division and definition) have
been preserved. In addition, there are four lesser works on
dialectic:
* *Introductiones parvulorum*, "Introductory
Logic."
* *Logica* '*nostrorum petitioni
sociorum*', "Logic" (starting with the words
'At the request of our friends...').
* *Tractatus de intellectibus*, "A Treatise on
Understandings."
* *Sententiae secundum Magistrum Petrum*, "Master
Peter's Views."
The first of these is a series of elementary commentaries on the old
logic (though again not completely preserved); their simple level has
led some scholars to think they must come from early in
Abelard's career, others to deny that they are Abelard's
work at all. Second, the *Logica* '*nostrorum
petitioni sociorum*' is something of a work-in-progress: it
assumes knowledge of Abelard's earlier *Logica*
'*ingredientibus*' and discusses advanced points
not dealt with there, but for long stretches it is also a
straightforward paraphrase of or commentary on Porphyry's
*Isagoge*; it has textual parallels with some of
Abelard's other works and shows some knowledge of theology. The
third work deals with concepts, or 'understandings', from
both the point of view of logic (roughly as providing the meanings of
terms) and from the point of view of the philosophy of mind (as
vehicles for mental content). The last work may be no more than a
report of some of Abelard's lectures, and is concerned with
logical and metaphysical puzzles about wholes and parts.
The second category consists of Abelard's works on ethics:
* *Ethica seu Scito teipsum*, "Ethics, or, Know
Yourself."
* *Collationes*, "Conversations" a.k.a.
*Dialogus inter Philosophum, Iudaeum, et Christianum*,
"The Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a
Christian".
The *Ethics* offers an analysis of moral worth and the degree
of praise or blame that should attach to agents and their actions; it
breaks off at the beginning of the second book. The
*Conversations* is a pair of debates (among characters who
appear to Abelard in a dream) over the nature of happiness and the
supreme good: the Philosopher, who claims to follow only natural
reason, first debates with the Jew, who follows the Old Law; the
Philosopher then debates the Christian, who defends Christian ethics
from a philosophical point of view. Abelard also wrote a slight work
of practical advice for his son:
* *Carmen ad Astralabium*, "Poem for
Astralabe."
Moral advice and edifying sentiments are found in this series of
distichs.
The third category consists of Abelard's works of philosophical
theology. His three main works are devoted to a philosophical analysis
of the Trinity, the several versions representing successive stages of
his thought and his attempts at orthodoxy (each rewritten several
times):
* *Theologia* '*summi boni*'.
"Theology" (that begins with the words 'The highest
good...').
* *Theologia christiana*, "Christian
Theology."
* *Theologia* '*scholarium*',
"Theology" (that begins with the words 'In the
schools...').
The first version of the *Theology* seems to have been the work
condemned at the Council of Soisssons, the last the work condemned at
the Council of Sens. In addition to these three works, in which
problems in philosophical theology are treated thematically, Abelard
also wrote several commentaries:
* *Expositio orationis dominicae*, "Analysis of the
Lord's Prayer."
* *Expositio symboli Apostolorum*, "Analysis of the
Apostle's Creed."
* *Expositio fidei in symbolum Athanasii*, "Analysis of
Faith in the Athanasian Creed."
* *Hexaemeron*, "Commentary on *Genesis*
1-2:25."
* *Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos*,
"Commentary on St. Paul's Letter to the
Romans."
The first three commentaries are brief, but Abelard's
discussions of the first verses of *Genesis* and of
Paul's letter are extensive and detailed (the latter also
relevant to Abelard's ethical theory). Abelard also took up
questions about faith and reason in a short work:
* *Soliloquium*, "Soliloquy."
This brief inner dialogue, modelled on Augustine's
*Soliloquies*, has "Peter" talking things over with
"Abelard." Theological questions of a more practical
nature were raised by Heloise in a series of questions she
asked on her behalf and on behalf of the nuns of the Paraclete:
* *Problemata Heloissae cum Petri Abaelardi
solutionibus*, "Heloise's Problem-List
(with Abelard's Solutions)."
Practical issues are also addressed in Abelard's sermons, hymns,
and lamentations (*planctus*). Finally, Abelard composed an
extremely influential theological work that contains no theoretical
speculation at all:
* *Sic et non*, "For and Against."
Abelard assembles a series of 158 questions, each of which is
furnished with patristic citations that imply a positive answer
(*sic*) to the question and other patristic citations implying
a negative answer (*non*). Abelard does not attempt to
harmonize these apparently inconsistent remarks, but in his preface he
lays down rules for proper hermeneutic investigation: look for
ambiguity, check the surrounding context, draw relevant distinctions,
and the like.
Abelard's students and disciples also record many of his views,
though this material has yet to be explored carefully. There are
references in Abelard's extant works to other works we do not
have: *Grammatica*, "Grammar"; *Rhetorica*,
"Rhetoric"; a commentary on *Ezekiel* written at
the beginning of his studies in theology; and others. It is possible
some of these works may yet be found.
## 2. Metaphysics
Abelard's metaphysics is the first great example of nominalism
in the Western tradition. While his view that universals are mere
words (*nomina*) justifies the label, nominalism--or,
better, irrealism--is the hallmark of Abelard's entire
metaphysics. He is an irrealist not only about universals, but also
about propositions, events, times other than the present, natural
kinds, relations, wholes, absolute space, hylomorphic composites, and
the like. Instead, Abelard holds that the concrete individual, in all
its richness and variety, is more than enough to populate the world.
Abelard preferred reductive, atomist, and material explanations
whenever possible; he devoted a great deal of effort to pouring cold
water on the metaphysical excesses of his predecessors and
contemporaries.
Abelard defends his thesis that universals are nothing but words by
arguing that ontological realism about universals is incoherent. More
exactly, he holds that there cannot be any real object in the world
satisfying Boethius's criteria for the universal, namely
something present as a whole in many at once so as to constitute their
substance (i.e. to make the individual in which it is present what it
is). Hence, Abelard concludes, universality is not an ontological
feature of the world but a semantic feature of language.
Suppose universals were things in the world, so that one and the same
item is completely present in both Socrates and an ass at the same
time, making each to be wholly an animal. Abelard points out that then
the same thing, *animal*, will be simultaneously rational (due
to its role in constituting the species *human being*) and
irrational (due to its role in constituting the species *ass*).
But then contraries are simultaneously present in the same thing as a
whole, which is impossible.
To the rejoinder that rationality and irrationality are not actually
present in the same thing, Abelard offers a twofold reply. First, he
rejects the claim that they are present only potentially. Each species
is actually informed by a contrary, and the genus is actually present
in each as a whole; hence it is actually informed by one contrary in
one species and by the other in the other; since it is wholly one and
the same in each, it is therefore actually informed by contraries, and
the contradiction results. Second, Abelard undertakes to establish
that contraries will be present not merely in the genus but even in
the selfsame individual. For Socrates is (an) animal, and so is
Brunellus the Ass; but by transitivity--since each is wholly and
completely *animal*--Socrates is Brunellus, and hence both
rational and irrational. Put a different way, each is essentially an
animal, and furthermore essentially rational and essentially
irrational.
If we object to this last piece of reasoning, on the grounds that
individuals are unique in virtue of their non-essential features,
Abelard replies that this view "makes accidents prior to
substance." That is, the objection claims that individual things
are individual in virtue of features that contingently characterize
them, which confuses things with their features.
Prospects are no better for realism if the universal is identified not
with a single thing but with a collection of things. Abelard points
out that collections are posterior to their parts, and, furthermore,
the collection is not shared among its parts in the way a universal is
said to be common to many. Nor does it help to try to identify the
universal with the individual in some fashion, for example in claiming
that Socrates *qua* human is taken as the universal *human
being*; Abelard argues that if the universal really is the
individual, then we are stuck with the consequence that either
individuals such as Socrates are common to many, or there are as many
universals as there are individuals, each of which is absurd.
Abelard concludes that universality is merely linguistic, not a
feature of the world. More precisely, Abelard holds that common nouns
(such as 'animal'), verbs, and negative names (such as
'not-Socrates') are correctly predicable of many, and so
count as universals. These terms are semantically general, in that
their sense applies to more than one thing, but they do not thereby
name some general thing; instead, they distributively refer to each of
the individuals to which the term applies. For example, the term
'animal' has the sense *living substance*, which is
inherently general, and it refers to each individual animal since each
is a living substance--as Abelard puts it, since each has the
status of being a living substance. But this is to leave the domain of
metaphysics for semantics; see the discussion of Abelard's
philosophy of language in
Section 4.
Abelard maintains that everything in the world apart from God and
angels is either form, matter, or a composite of form and matter. The
matter of something is that out of which it is made, whether it
persists in the finished product (as bricks in a house) or is absorbed
into it (as flour in bread). Ultimately, all material objects are
composed of the four elements earth, air, fire, and water, but they do
not retain their elemental forms in most combinations. In general, the
form of a material object just is the configuration of its material
parts: "We call the form strictly what comes from the
composition of the parts." The form of a statue, for example, is
its shape, which is no more than the arrangement of its
matter--the curve of the nose, the size of the eyes, and so on.
Forms are therefore *supervenient* on matter, and have no
ontological standing independent of it. This is not to deny that forms
exist, but to provide a particular explanation of what it is for a
form to inhere in a given subject, namely for that subject to have its
matter configured in a certain way. For example, the inherence of
shape in the statue just is the way in which its bronze is arranged.
Hence material things are identical with what they are made
of--with one exception: human beings, whose forms are their
immaterial (and immortal) souls. Strictly speaking, since human souls
are capable of existence in separation form the body, they are not
forms after all, though they act as substantial forms as long as they
are joined to the body.
Material composites of form and matter, humans excepted, are integral
wholes made up of their discrete material parts as configured in a
given way. Abelard countenances many types of integral wholes:
collections, no matter how their members are selected; structured
composites, whether naturally unified (such as Socrates and his limbs)
or artificially unified (such as the walls, floor, and roof of a
house); continuous quantities that are homogeneous material
'substances,' namely stuffs, such as water or gold;
geometrical objects, such as lines, defined by the relative position
of their parts; temporal wholes, such as a day and the hours that make
it up. Most of these wholes are ontologically nothing beyond their
material parts. Whether structured composites have any independent
ontological standing depends on the status of their organizing
forms.
Abelard's theory of substantial integral wholes is not a pure
mereology in the modern sense, since he holds that there are
privileged divisions: just as a genus is properly divided into not
just any species but its proximate species, so too the division of a
whole must be into its principal parts. Intuitively, some wholes have
a natural division that takes precedence over others; a sentence, for
example, is divided into words, syllables, and letters, in precisely
that order. According to Abelard, the principal parts of a whole are
those whose conjunction immediately results in the complete whole. His
intent seems to be that the nature of the composition (if any) that
defines the integral whole also spells out its principal parts. A
house consists of floor, walls, and roof put together in the right
way. It is an open question whether each principal part (such as the
wall) requires the existence of all of its subparts (every brick). The
principal parts of a collection, for example, are just each of the
members of the collection, whatever may be the case with any given
member's subparts; the principal parts of an aggregation are the
members located in proximity to one another.
Individuals have natures, and in virtue of their natures they belong
to determinate natural kinds. But an individual's nature is not
something really shared with or common to other individuals;
Abelard's refutation of realism has shown that this is
impossible. Instead, Abelard takes a natural kind to be a well-defined
collection of things that have the same features, broadly speaking,
that make them what they are. Why a given thing has some features
rather than others is explained by how it got that way--the
natural processes that created it result in its having the features it
does, namely being the kind of thing it is; similar processes lead to
similar results. On this reading, it is clear that natural kinds have
no special status; they are no more than discrete integral wholes
whose principle of membership is similarity, merely reflecting the
fact that the world is divided into discrete similarity-classes of
objects. Furthermore, such real relations of similarity are nothing
themselves above and beyond the things that are similar. The division
into natural kinds is, presumably, a 'shallow fact' about
the world: matters could have been otherwise had God ordained them
differently; fire might be cold, heavy bodies fall upwards, frogs
reason. If these causal powers were different, then natural kinds
might be different as well, or might not have been as sharply
differentiated as they are now. Given how matters stand, natural kinds
carve the world at its joints, but they are the joints chosen by
God.
## 3. Logic
Abelard was the greatest logician since Antiquity: he devised a purely
truth-functional propositional logic, recognizing the distinction
between *force* and *content* we associate with Frege,
and worked out a complete theory of entailment as it functions in
argument (which we now take as the theory of logical consequence). His
logical system is flawed in its handling of topical inference, but
that should not prevent our recognition of Abelard's
achievements.
Abelard observes that the same propositional content can be expressed
with different force in different contexts: the content *that
Socrates is in the house* is expressed in an assertion in
'Socrates is in the house'; in a question in 'Is
Socrates in the house?'; in a wish in 'If only Socrates
were in the house!' and so on. Hence Abelard can distinguish in
particular the assertive force of a sentence from its propositional
content, a distinction that allows him to point out that the component
sentences in a conditional statement are not asserted, though they
have the same content they do when asserted--'If Socrates
is in the kitchen, then Socrates is in the house' does not
assert that Socrates is in the kitchen or that he is in the house, nor
do the antecedent or the consequent, although the same form of words
could be used outside the scope of the conditional to make such
assertions. Likewise, the distinction allows Abelard to define
negation, and other propositional connectives, purely
truth-functionally in terms of content, so that negation, for
instance, is treated as follows: not-*p* is false/true if and
only if *p* is true/false.
The key to the theory of argument, for Abelard, is found in
*inferentia*, best rendered as 'entailment', since
Abelard requires the connection between the propositions involved to
be both necessary and relevant. That is, the conclusion--more
exactly, the sense of the final statement--is required by the
sense of the preceding statement(s), so that it cannot be otherwise.
Abelard often speaks of the sense of the final statement being
"contained" in the sense of the preceding statement(s),
much as we speak of the conclusion being contained in the premisses.
An entailment is complete (*perfecta*) when it holds in virtue
of the logical form (*complexio*) of the propositions involved.
By this, Abelard tells us, he means that the entailment holds under
any uniform substitution in its terms, the criterion now associated
with Bolzano. The traditional four figures and moods of the
categorical syllogism derived from Aristotle, and the doctrine of the
hypothetical syllogism derived from Boethius, are all instances of
complete entailments, or as we should say, valid inference.
There is another way in which conclusions can be necessary and
relevant to their premisses, yet *not* be formally valid (not
be a complete entailment). The necessary connection among the
propositions, and the link among their senses, might be a function of
non-formal metaphysical truths holding in all possible worlds. For
instance, human beings are a kind of animal, so the consequence
'If Socrates is a human being, Socrates is an animal'
holds of necessity and the sense of the antecedent compels that of the
consequent, but it is not formally valid under uniform substitution.
Abelard takes such incomplete entailments to hold according to the
theory of the topics (to be forms of so-called topical inference). The
sample inference above is validated by the topic "from the
species", a set of metaphysical relations one of which is
expressible in the rule "Whatever the species is predicated of,
so too is the genus" which grounds the inferential force of the
entailment. Against Boethius, Abelard maintained that topical rules
were only needed for incomplete entailment, and in particular are not
required to validate the classical moods of the categorical and
hypothetical syllogism mentioned in the preceding paragraph.
Abelard spends a great deal of effort to explore the complexities of
the theory of topical inference, especially charting the precise
relations among conditional sentences, arguments, and what he calls
"argumentation" (roughly what follows from conceded
premisses). One of the surprising results of his investigation is that
he denies that a correlate of the Deduction Theorem holds, maintaining
that a valid argument need not correspond to an acceptable conditional
sentence, nor conversely, since the requirements on arguments and
conditionals differ.
In the end, it seems that Abelard's principles of topical
inference do not work, a fact that became evident with regard to the
topic "from opposites": Abelard's principles lead to
inconsistent results, a result noted by Alberic of Paris. This led to
a crisis in the theory of inference in the twelfth century, since
Abelard unsuccessfully tried to evade the difficulty. These debates
seem to have taken place in the later part of the 1130s, as Abelard
was about to become embroiled with Bernard of Clairvaux, and his
attention was elsewhere.
## 4. Philosophy of Language
Much of Abelard's philosophy of language is devoted to analyzing
how a given expression or class of expressions function logically:
what words are quantifiers, which imply negation, and the like, so
that the logic described above may be applied. To do so, he relies on
the traditional division, derived from Aristotle, that sees the main
linguistic categories as *name*, *verb*, and their
combination into the *sentence*.
Abelard takes names to be conventionally significant simple words,
usually without tense. So understood there are a wide variety of
names: proper and common names; adjectives and adverbs; pronouns,
whether personal, possessive, reflexive, or relative; conventional
interjections such as 'Goodness!'; and, arguably,
conjunctions and prepositions (despite lacking definite
signification), along with participles and gerundives (which have
tense). Abelard usually, though not always, treats compound names such
as 'street-sweeper' reductively. Even so his list is not
general enough to catalogue all referring expressions. In point of
fact, much of Abelard's discussion of the semantics of names
turns on a particular case that stands for the rest: common names.
These are at the heart of the problem of universals, and they pose
particular difficulties for semantics.
When Abelard puts forward his claim that universality is only a
linguistic phenomenon, so that universals are "nothing more than
words," he raises the objection that unless common names are the
names of common items, they will be meaningless, and so his view is no
better than that of his teacher Roscelin (who held that universals
were mere mouth noises). In reply Abelard clearly draws a distinction
between two semantic properties names possess: reference
(*nominatio*), a matter of what the term applies to; and sense
(*significatio*), a matter of what hearing the term brings to
mind, or more exactly the informational content (*doctrina*) of
the concept the word is meant to give rise to, a causal notion. A few
remarks about each are in order.
Names, both proper and common, refer to things individually or
severally. A name is linked with that of which it is the name as
though there were someone who devised the name to label a given thing
or kind of thing, a process known as "imposition"
(modelled on Adam's naming the animals in Genesis 2:19), rather
like baptism. This rational reconstruction of reference does not
require the person imposing the name, the "impositor", to
have anything more than an indefinite intention to pick out the thing
or kind of thing, whatever its nature may be:
>
> The inventor [of names] intended to impose them according to some
> natures or distinctive properties of things, even if he himself did
> not know how to think correctly upon the nature or distinctive
> property of a thing.
>
A name "has a definition in the nature of its imposition, even
if we do not know what it is." Put in modern terms, Abelard
holds a theory of *direct reference*, in which the extension of
a term is not a function of its sense. We are often completely
ignorant of the proper conceptual content that should be associated
with a term that has been successfully imposed.
A proper name--the name of a primary substance--signifies a
concrete individual (*hoc aliquid*), picking out its bearer as
personally distinct from all else. Therefore, proper names are
semantically singular referring expressions, closely allied to
indexicals, demonstratives, and singular descriptions (or descriptive
terms). Common names, by contrast, are semantically allied with
expressions that have what Abelard calls "plural
signification". On the one hand, common names are like plural
nouns; the common name 'man' is grammatically singular but
operates like the plural term 'men'--each refers to
every man, although the plural term signifies individuals as part of a
collection, whereas the common name distributively refers to each
individual. On the other hand, common names are like terms such as
'trio' or 'pair' in that they pick out a
determinate plurality of individuals, but only on an occasion of use,
since their extension is variable.
Thus a common name distributively refers to concrete individuals,
though not to them *qua* individuals. Instead, it severally
picks out those individuals having a given nature: 'human
being' refers to Socrates and to Plato, in virtue of each of
them being human. This is not a shared feature of any sort; Socrates
just is what he is, namely human, and likewise Plato is what he is,
namely human too. Abelard states his deflationary position clearly in
his *Logica* '*ingredientibus*':
>
> Now it seems we should stay away from accepting the agreement among
> things according to what is not any thing--it's as though
> we were to unite in nothing things that now exist!--namely, when
> we say that this [human] and that one agree in the human status, that
> is to say: in that they are human. But we mean precisely that they are
> human and don't differ in this regard--let me repeat: [they
> don't differ] in that they are human, although we're not
> appealing to any *thing* [in this explanation].
>
Socrates and Plato are real; their agreement is real, too, but it
isn't to be explained by appealing to any thing--their
agreement just is their each being human. From a metaphysical point of
view they have the same standing as human beings; this does not
involve any metaphysically common shared ingredient, or indeed appeal
to any ingredient at all. That is the sense in which there is a
"common reason" for the imposition of a common name.
For all that signification is posterior to reference, names do have
signification as well. Abelard holds that the signification of a term
is the informational content of the concept that is associated with
the term upon hearing it, in the normal course of events. Since names
are only conventionally significant, which concept is associated with
a given name depends in part on the psychological conditioning of
language-users, in virtue of which Abelard can treat signification as
both a causal and a normative notion: the word 'rabbit'
ought to cause native speakers of English to have the concept of a
rabbit upon hearing it. Abelard is careful to insist that the
signification is a matter of the informational content carried in the
concept--mere psychological associations, even the mental images
characteristic of a given concept, are not part of what the word
*means*. Ideally, the concept will correspond to a real
definition that latches onto the nature of the thing, the way
'rational mortal animal' is thought to be the real
definition of 'human being', regardless of other
associated features (even necessary features such as risibility) or
fortuitous images (as any mental image of a human will be of someone
with determinate features). Achieving such clarity in our concepts is,
of course, an arduous business, and requires an understanding of how
understanding itself works (see the discussion of Abelard's
philosophy of mind in
Section 5).
Yet one point should be clear from the example. The significations of
some names, such as those corresponding to natural-kind terms, are
abstractions in the sense that they include only certain features of
the things to which the term refers. They do not positively exclude
all other features, though, and are capable of further determinate
specification: 'rational mortal animal' as the content of
the concept of 'human being' signifies all humans,
whatever their further features may be--tall or short, fat or
thin, male or female, and so on.
What holds for the semantics of names applies for the most part to
verbs. The feature that sets verbs apart from names, more so than
tense or grammatical person, is that verbs have connective force
(*vis copulativa*). This is a primitive and irreducible feature
of verbs that can only be discharged when they are joined with names
in the syntactically appropriate way, reminiscent of the
'unsaturatedness' of concepts in Frege. Sentences are made
up of names and verbs in such a way that the meaning of the whole
sentence is a function of the meaning of its parts. That is,
Abelardian semantics is fundamentally compositional in nature. The
details of how the composition works are complex. Abelard works
directly with a natural language (Latin) that, for all its
artificiality, is still a native second tongue. Hence there are many
linguistic phenomena Abelard is compelled to analyze that would be
simply disallowed in a more formal framework.
For example, Abelard notes that most verbs can occur as predicates in
two ways, namely as a finite verbal form or as a nominal form combined
with an auxiliary copula, so that we may say either 'Socrates
runs' or 'Socrates is running'; the same holds for
transitive predication, for instance 'Socrates hits Plato'
and 'Socrates is hitting Plato.' Abelard argues that in
general the pure verbal version of predication is the fundamental
form, which explains and clarifies the extended version; the latter is
only strictly necessary where simple verbal forms are lacking. (The
substantive verb 'is' requires special treatment.) Hence
for Abelard the basic analysis of a predicative statement recognizes
that two fundamentally different linguistic categories are joined
together: the name *n* and the simple verbal function
*V*( ), combined in the well-formed sentence
*V*(*n*).
Abelard argues that sentences (*propositiones*) must signify
more than just the understandings of the constituent name and verb.
First, a sentence such as 'Socrates runs' deals with
Socrates and with running, not with anyone's understandings. We
talk about the world, not merely someone's understanding of the
world. Second, sentences like 'If something is human, it is an
animal' are false if taken to be about understandings, for
someone could entertain the concept *human* without
entertaining the concept *animal*, and so the antecedent would
obtain without the consequent. Third, understandings are evanescent
particulars, mere mental tokenings of concepts. But at least some
consequential sentences are necessary, and necessity can't be
grounded on things that are transitory, and so not on understandings.
Sentences must therefore signify something else in addition to
understandings, something that can do what mere understandings cannot.
Abelard describes this as signifying what the sentence says, calling
what is said by the sentence its *dictum* (plural
*dicta*).
To the modern philosophical ear, Abelard's *dicta* might
sound like propositions, abstract entities that are the timeless
bearers of truth and falsity. But Abelard will have nothing to do with
any such entities. He declares repeatedly and emphatically that
despite being more than and different from the sentences that express
them, *dicta* have no ontological standing whatsoever. In the
short space of a single paragraph he says that they are "no real
things at all" and twice calls them "absolutely
nothing." They underwrite sentences, but they aren't real
things. For although a sentence says something, there is not some
thing that it says. The semantic job of sentences is to *say*
something, which is not to be confused with naming or denoting some
thing. It is instead a matter of proposing how things are, provided
this is not given a realist reading. Likewise, the truth of true
sentences is not a property inhering in some timeless entity, but no
more than the assertion of what the sentence says--that is,
Abelard adopts a deflationary account of truth. A sentence is true if
things stand in the way it says, and things make sentences true or
false in virtue of the way they are (as well as in virtue of what the
sentences say), and nothing further is required. The sentence
'Socrates runs' is true because Socrates runs, which is
all that can be said or needs to be said.
## 5. Philosophy of Mind
Aristotelian philosophy of mind offers two analyses of intentionality:
the conformality theory holds that we think of an object by having its
very form in the mind, the resemblance theory that we do so by having
a mental image in the mind that naturally resembles the object.
Abelard rejects each of these theories and proposes instead an
adverbial theory of thought, showing that neither mental images nor
mental contents need be countenanced as ontologically independent of
the mind. He gives a contextual explication of intentionality that
relies on a linguistic account of mental representation, adopting a
principle of compositionality for understandings.
The first Aristotelian analysis takes understanding to be the
mind's acquisition of the form of the object that is understood,
without its matter. For an understanding to be about some
thing--say, a cat--is for the form of the cat to be in the
mind or intellective soul. The inherence of the form in matter makes
the matter to be a thing of a certain kind, so that the inherence of
the form *cat* in matter produces an actual cat, whereas the
(immaterial) inherence of the form *cat* in the mind transforms
the mind into an understanding of a cat: the mind becomes (formally)
identical with its object. Since the 'aboutness' of
understanding is analyzed as the commonness or identity of form in the
understanding and the thing understood, we may call this approach the
*conformality theory* of understanding. This theory captures
the intuition that understanding somehow inherits or includes
properties of what is understood, by reducing the intentionality of
understanding to the objective identity of the form in the mind and
the form in the world.
The second Aristotelian analysis takes understanding to be the
mind's possession of a concept that is a natural likeness of, or
naturally similar to, that of which it is a concept. For an
understanding to be about some thing, such as a cat, is for there to
be an occurrent concept in the mind that is a natural likeness of a
cat. The motivation for calling the likeness "natural" is
to guarantee that the resemblance between the understanding and what
is understood is objective, and that all persons have access to the
same stock of concepts. (The conformality theory does this by
postulating the objective existence of forms in things and by an
identical process in all persons of assimilating or acquiring forms.)
We may call this approach the *resemblance theory* of
understanding: mental acts are classified according to the distinct
degree and kind of resemblance they have to the things that are
understood.
The resemblance theory faces well-known problems in spelling out the
content of resemblance or likeness. For example, a concept is clearly
immaterial, and as such radically differs from any material object.
Furthermore, there seems to be no formal characteristic of a mental
act in virtue of which it can non-trivially be said to resemble
anything else. To get around these difficulties, mediaeval
philosophers, like the British Empiricists centuries later, appealed
to a particular kind of resemblance, namely pictorial resemblance. A
portrait of Socrates is about Socrates in virtue of visually
resembling Socrates in the right ways. And just as there are pictorial
images that are about their subjects, so too are there mental images
that are about things. These mental images, whether they are concepts
or are contained in concepts, explain the way in which a concept is
'about' an object. For an understanding to be about a cat
is for it to be or contain a mental image of a cat. The phenomenon of
mental 'aboutness' is explicated by the more familiar case
of pictorial aboutness, itself reduced to a real relation of
resemblance.
Despite their common Aristotelian heritage, the conformality theory
and the resemblance theory are not equivalent. The transformation of
the mind through the inherence of a form is not necessarily the same
as the mind's possession of a concept. Equally, natural likeness
or resemblance need not be understood as identity of form; formal
identity need not entail genuine resemblance, due to the different
subjects in which the form is embodied.
The standard way to reconcile the conformality theory and the
resemblance theory is to take the mind's possession of a concept
to be its ability to transform itself through the inherence of a form,
construing formal identity as natural likeness, where having a form in
the mind that is identical to the form of the object understood just
is to have a mental image of that very object.
Abelard argues against conformality as follows. Consider a tower,
which is a material object with a certain length, depth, and height;
assume that these features compose its form, much as the shape of a
statue is its form. According to Aristotelian metaphysics, the
inherence of a form in a subject makes the subject into something
characterized by that form, as for instance whiteness inhering in
Socrates makes him something white. The forms of the tower likewise
make that in which they inhere to be tall, wide, massive--all
physical properties. If these forms inhere in the mind, then, they
should make the mind tall, wide, and massive, an absurd conclusion:
the mind "cannot extend itself in length or width." Yet it
is a cardinal thesis of the conformality theory that the mind has the
identical form that is possessed by the external object, the tower,
although the form of (say) length is by its very nature physical.
Thus, Abelard concludes, conformality is incoherent.
Abelard's main objection to the resemblance theory is that
mental images *qua* images, like any sign, are inert: they
require interpretation. A sign is just an object. It may be taken in a
significative role, though it need not be. Abelard notes that this
distinction holds equally for non-mental signs: we can treat a statue
as a lump of bronze or as a likeness. Mental images are likewise
inert. For a sign to function significatively, then, something more is
required beyond its mere presence or existence. But the resemblance
theory doesn't recognize the need to interpret the mental image
as an image, and thereby mistakenly identifies understanding with the
mere presence of a mental image in the mind. Abelard concludes that
mental images have only an instrumental role in thought, describing
them as "intermediary signs of things" (*intersigna
rerum*). Intentionality derives instead from the act of attention
(*attentio*) directed upon the mental image. Proof is found in
the fact that that we can "vary the understanding" simply
by attending to different features of the mental image: the selfsame
image--say, a fig tree--can be used to think about this very
fig tree, or trees in general, or plant life, or my lost love with
whom I sat under it, or anything whatsoever. There is no intrinsic
feature of the mental image in virtue of which it is about any given
thing; if there were, Abelard notes, we could determine by inspection
what a sign is about--but we can't. Mental images,
therefore, can't explain the intentionality of understanding,
because their role is merely instrumental. We think with them, and
cannot avoid them; but they do not explain intentionality.
Abelard draws the conclusion that intentionality is a primitive and
irreducible feature of the mind, our acts of attending to things.
Different acts of attention are intrinsically different from one
another; they are about what they are about in virtue of being the
kind of attention they are. Hence Abelard adopts what is nowadays
called an *adverbial* theory of thought.
Given that intentionality is primitive, Abelard adopts a contextual
approach to mental content: he embeds these irreducible acts of
attention in a structure whose articulation helps define the character
of its constituent elements. The structure Abelard offers is
linguistic, a logic of mental acts: just as words can be said to
express thoughts, so too we can use the articulated logic of language
to give a theory of understanding. In short, Abelard gives something
very like a linguistic account of mental representation or
intentionality. To this end he embraces a principle of
compositionality, holding that what an understanding is about is a
function of what its constituent understandings are about. The unity
of the understanding of a complex is a function of its logical
simplicity, which is characterized by the presence of what Abelard
calls "a single dominant conjunction" (the logical
operator of greatest scope). Hence the understanding of a complex may
be treated as a complex of distinct understandings, aggregated in the
same thought, with its (logical) structure flowing from the
'dominant conjunction' over the other logical operations
governing its constituent understandings. Abelard's acts of
attention thus display the logical structure of the understanding they
express, and thereby give the semantics of written or spoken language.
Much of Abelard's writings on logic and dialectic are given over
to working out the details as a scheme for explicating mental
content.
## 6. Ethics
Abelard takes the rational core of traditional Christian morality to
be radically *intentionalist*, based on the following
principle: the agent's intention alone determines the moral
worth of an action. His main argument against the moral relevance of
consequences turns on what contemporary philosophers often refer to as
moral luck. Suppose two men each have the money and the intention to
establish shelters for the poor, but one is robbed before he can act
whereas the second is able to carry out his intention. According to
Abelard, to think that there is a moral difference between them is to
hold that "the richer men were the better they could become
... this is the height of insanity!" Deed-centred morality
loses any kind of purchase on what might have been the case. Likewise,
it cannot offer any ground for taking the epistemic status of the
agent into account, although most people would admit that ignorance
can morally exculpate an agent. Abelard makes the point with the
following example: imagine the case of fraternal twins, brother and
sister, who are separated at birth and each kept in complete ignorance
of even the existence of the other; as adults they meet, fall in love,
are legally married and have sexual intercourse. Technically this is
incest, but Abelard finds no fault in either to lay blame.
Abelard concludes that in themselves deeds are morally indifferent.
The proper subject of moral evaluation is the agent, via his or her
intentions. It might be objected that the performance or
nonperformance of the deed could affect the agent's feelings,
which in turn may affect his or her intentions, so that deeds thereby
have moral relevance (at least indirectly). Abelard denies it:
>
> For example, if someone forces a monk to lie bound in chains between
> two women, and by the softness of the bed and the touch of the women
> beside him he is brought to pleasure (but not to consent), who may
> presume to call this pleasure, which nature makes necessary, a fault?
>
We are so constructed that the feeling of pleasure is inevitable in
certain situations: sexual intercourse, eating delicious food, and the
like. If sexual pleasure in marriage is not sinful, then the pleasure
itself, inside or outside of marriage, is not sinful; if it is sinful,
then marriage cannot sanctify it--and if the conclusion were
drawn that such acts should be performed wholly without pleasure, then
Abelard declares they cannot be done at all, and it was unreasonable
(of God) to permit them only in a way in which they cannot be
performed.
On the positive side, Abelard argues that unless intentions are the
key ingredient in assessing moral value it is hard to see why
coercion, in which one is forced to do something against his or her
will, should exculpate the agent; likewise for ignorance--though
Abelard points out that the important moral notion is not simply
ignorance but strictly speaking negligence. Abelard takes an extreme
case to make his point. He argues that the crucifiers of Christ were
not evil in crucifying Jesus. (This example, and others like it, got
Abelard into trouble with the authorities, and it isn't hard to
see why.) Their ignorance of Christ's divine nature didn't
by itself make them evil; neither did their acting on their (false and
mistaken) beliefs, in crucifying Christ. Their non-negligent ignorance
removes blame from their actions. Indeed, Abelard argues that they
would have sinned had they thought crucifying Christ was required and
did *not* crucify Christ: regardless of the facts of the case,
failing to abide by one's conscience in moral action renders the
agent blameworthy.
There are two obvious objections to Abelard's intentionalism.
First, how is it possible to commit evil voluntarily? Second, since
intentions are not accessible to anyone other than the agent,
doesn't Abelard's view entail that it is impossible to
make ethical judgements?
With regard to the first objection, Abelard has a twofold answer.
First, it is clear that we often want to perform the deed and at the
same time do not want to suffer the punishment. A man wants to have
sexual intercourse with a woman, but not to commit adultery; he would
prefer it if she were unmarried. Second, it is clear that we sometimes
"want what we by no means want to want": our bodies react
with pleasure and desire independently of our wills. If we act on such
desires, then our action is done "of" will, as Abelard
calls it, though not voluntarily. There is nothing evil in desire:
there is only evil in acting on desire, and this is compatible with
having contrary desires.
With regard to the second objection, Abelard grants that other humans
cannot know the agent's intentions--God, of course, does
have access to internal mental states, and so there can be a Final
Judgement. However, Abelard does not take ethical judgement to pose a
problem. God is the only one with a right to pass judgement. Yet this
fact doesn't prevent us from enforcing canons of human justice,
because, Abelard holds, human justice has primarily an exemplary and
deterrent function. In fact, Abelard argues, it can even be just to
punish an agent we strongly believe had no evil intention. He cites
two cases. First, a woman accidentally smothers her baby while trying
to keep it warm at night, and is overcome with grief. Abelard
maintains that we should punish her for the beneficial example her
punishment may have on others: it may make other poor mothers more
careful not to accidentally smother their babies while trying to keep
them warm. Second, a judge may have excellent (but legally
impermissible) evidence that a witness is perjuring himself; since he
cannot show that the witness is lying, the judge is forced to rule on
the basis of the witness's testimony that the accused, whom he
believes to be innocent, is guilty. Human justice may with propriety
ignore questions of intention. Since there is divine justice, ethical
notions are not an idle wheel--nor should they be, even on
Abelard's understanding of human justice, since they are the
means by which we determine which intentions to promote or discourage
when we punish people as examples or in order to deter others.
There is a sense, then, in which the only certifiable sin is acting
against one's conscience, unless one is morally negligent. Yet
if we cannot look to the intrinsic value of the deeds or their
consequences, how do we determine which acts are permissible or
obligatory? Unless conscience has a reliable guide, Abelard's
position seems to open the floodgates to well-meaning
subjectivism.
Abelard solves the problem by taking obedience to God's
will--the hallmark of morally correct behaviour, and itself an
instance of natural law--to be a matter of the agent's
intention conforming to a purely formal criterion, namely the Golden
Rule ("Do to others as you would be done to"). This
criterion can be discovered by reason alone, without any special
revelation or religious belief, and is sufficient to ensure the
rightness of the agent's intention. But the resolution of this
problem immediately leads to another problem. Even if we grant Abelard
his naturalistic ethics, why should an agent care if his or her
intentions conform to the Golden Rule? In short, even if Abelard were
right about morality, why be moral?
Abelard's answer is that our happiness--to which no one is
indifferent--is linked to virtue, that is, to habitual morally
correct behaviour. Indeed, Abelard's project in the
*Collationes* is to argue that reason can prove that a merely
naturalistic ethics is insufficient, and that an agent's
happiness is necessarily bound up with accepting the principles of
traditional Christian belief, including the belief in God and an
Afterlife. In particular, he argues that the Afterlife is a condition
to which we ought to aspire, that it is a moral improvement even on
the life of virtue in this world, and that recognizing this is
constitutive of wanting to do what God wants, that is, to live
according to the Golden Rule, which guarantees as much as anything can
(pending divine grace) our long-term postmortem happiness.
The Philosopher first argues with the Jew, who espouses a
'strict observance' moral theory, namely obedience to the
Mosaic Law. One of the arguments the Jew offers is the Slave's
Wager (apparently the earliest-known version of Pascal's Wager).
Imagine that a Slave is told one morning by someone he doesn't
know whether to trust that his powerful and irritable Master, who is
away for the day, has left instructions about what to do in his
absence. The Slave can follow the instructions or not. He reasons that
if the Master indeed left the instructions, then by following them he
will be rewarded and by not following them he will be severely
punished, whereas if the Master did not leave the instructions he
would not be punished for following them, though he might be lightly
punished for not following them. (This conforms to the standard payoff
matrix for Pascal's Wager.) That is the position the Jew finds
himself in: God has apparently demanded unconditional obedience to the
Mosaic Law, the instructions left behind. The Philosopher argues that
the Jew may have other choices of action and, in any event, that there
are rational grounds for thinking that ethics is not a matter of
action in conformity to law but a matter of the agent's
intentions, as we have seen above.
The Philosopher then argues with the Christian. He initially maintains
that virtue entails happiness, and hence there is no need of an
Afterlife since a virtuous person remains in the same condition
whether dead or alive. The Christian, however, reasons that the
Afterlife is better, since in addition to the benefits conferred by
living virtuously, the agent's will is no longer impeded by
circumstances. In the Afterlife we are no longer subject to the body,
for instance, and hence are not bound by physical necessities such as
food, shelter, clothing, and the like. The agent can therefore be as
purely happy as life in accordance with virtue could permit, when no
external circumstances could affect the agent's actions. The
Philosopher grants that the Afterlife so understood is a clear
improvement even on the virtuous life in this world, and joins with
the Christian in a cooperative endeavour to define the nature of the
virtues and the Supreme Good. Virtue is its own reward, and in the
Afterlife nothing prevents us from rewarding ourselves with virtue to
the fullest extent possible.
## 7. Theology
Abelard held that reasoning has a limited role to play in matters of
faith. That he gave reasoning a role at all brought him into conflict
with those we might now call *anti*-dialecticians, including
his fellow abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. That the role he gave it is
limited brought him into conflict with those he called
"pseudo-dialecticians," including his former teacher
Roscelin.
Bernard of Clairvaux and other anti-dialecticians seem to have thought
that the meaning of a proposition of the faith, to the extent that it
can be grasped, is plain; beyond that plain meaning, there is nothing
we can grasp at all, in which case reason is clearly no help. That is,
the anti-dialecticians were *semantic realists* about the plain
meaning of religious sentences. Hence their impatience with Abelard,
who seemed not only bent on obfuscating the plain meaning of
propositions of the faith, which is bad enough, but to do so by
reasoning, which has no place either in grasping the plain meaning
(since the very plainness of plain meaning consists in its being
grasped immediately without reasoning) or in reaching some more
profound understanding (since only the plain meaning is open to us at
all).
Abelard has no patience for the semantic realism that underlies the
sophisticated anti-dialectical position. Rather than argue against it
explicitly, he tries to undermine it. From his commentaries on
scripture and dogma to his works of speculative theology, Abelard is
first and foremost concerned to show how religious claims can be
understood, and in particular how the application of dialectical
methods can clarify and illuminate propositions of the faith.
Furthermore, he rejects the claim that there is a plain meaning to be
grasped. Outlining his method in the Prologue to his *Sic et
non*, Abelard describes how he initially raises a question, e.g.
whether priests are required to be celibate, and then arranges
citations from scriptural and patristic authorities that at least seem
to answer the question directly into positive and negative responses.
(Abelard offers advice in the Prologue for resolving the apparent
contradictions among the authorities using a variety of techniques:
see whether the words are used in the same sense on both sides; draw
relevant distinctions to resolve the issue; look at the context of the
citation; make sure that an author is speaking in his own voice rather
than merely reporting or paraphrasing someone else's position;
and so on.) Now each authority Abelard cites seems to speak clearly
and unambiguously either for a positive answer to a given question or
for a negative one. If ever there were cases of plain meaning, Abelard
seems to have found them in authorities, on opposing sides of
controversial issues. His advice in the Prologue amounts to saying
that sentences that seem to be perfect exemplars of plain meaning in
fact have to be carefully scrutinized to see just what their meaning
is. Yet that is just to say that they do not have plain meaning at
all; we have to use reason to uncover their meaning. Hence the
anti-dialecticians don't have a case.
There is a far more serious threat to the proper use of reason in
religion, Abelard thinks (*Theologia christiana* 3.20):
>
> Those who claim to be dialecticians are usually led more easily to
> [heresy] the more they hold themselves to be well-equipped with
> reasons, and, to that extent more secure, they presume to attack or
> defend any position the more freely. Their arrogance is so great that
> they think there isn't anything that can't be understood
> and explained by their petty little lines of reasoning. Holding all
> authorities in contempt, they glory in believing only
> themselves--for those who accept only what their reason persuades
> them of, surely answer to themselves alone, as if they had eyes that
> were unacquainted with darkness.
>
Such pseudo-dialecticians take reason to be the final arbiter of all
claims, including claims about matters of faith. More exactly, Abelard
charges them with holding that (a) everything can be explained by
human reason; (b) we should only accept what reason persuades us of;
(c) appeals to authority have no rational persuasive force. Real
dialecticians, he maintains, reject (a)-(c), recognizing that
human reason has limits, and that some important truths may lie
outside those limits but not beyond belief; which claims about matters
of faith we should accept depends on both the epistemic reliability of
their sources (the authorities) and their consonance with reason to
the extent they can be investigated.
Abelard's arguments for rejecting (a)-(c) are
sophisticated and subtle. For the claim that reason may be fruitfully
applied to a particular article of faith, Abelard offers a particular
case study in his own writings. The bulk of Abelard's work on
theology is devoted to his dialectical investigation of the Trinity.
He elaborates an original theory of identity to address issues
surrounding the Trinity, one that has wider applicability in
metaphysics. The upshot of his enquiries is that belief in the Trinity
is rationally justifiable since as far as reason can take us we find
that the doctrine makes sense--at least, once the tools of
dialectic have been properly employed.
The traditional account of identity, derived from Boethius, holds that
things may be either generically, specifically, or numerically the
same or different. Abelard accepts this account but finds it not
sufficiently fine-grained to deal with the Trinity. The core of his
theory of identity, as presented in his *Theologia christiana*,
consists in four additional modes of identity: (1) essential sameness
and difference; (2) numerical sameness and difference, which Abelard
ties closely to essential sameness and difference, allowing a more
fine-grained distinction than Boethius could allow; (3) sameness and
difference in definition; (4) sameness and difference in property
(*in proprietate*). Roughly, Abelard's account of
essential and numerical sameness is intended to improve upon the
identity-conditions for things in the world given by the traditional
account; his account of sameness in definition is meant to supply
identity-conditions for the features of things; and his account of
sameness in property opens up the possibility of there being different
identity-conditions for a single thing having several distinct
features.
Abelard holds that two things are *the same in essence* when
they are numerically the same concrete thing (*essentia*), and
essentially different otherwise. The Morning Star is essentially the
same as the Evening Star, for instance, since each is the selfsame
planet Venus. Again, the formal elements that constitute a concrete
thing are essentially the same as one another and essentially the same
as the concrete thing of which they are the formal constituents:
Socrates is his essence (Socrates is what it is to be Socrates). The
corresponding general thesis does not hold for parts, however. Abelard
maintains that the part is essentially different from the integral
whole of which it is a part, reasoning that a given part is completely
contained, along with other parts, in the whole, and so is less than
the quantity of the whole.
Numerical difference does not map precisely onto essential difference.
The failure of numerical sameness may be due to one of two causes.
First, objects are not numerically the same when one has a part that
the other does not have, in which case the objects are essentially
different as well. Second, objects are numerically different when
neither has a part belonging to the other. Numerical difference thus
entails the failure of numerical sameness, but not conversely: a part
is not numerically the same as its whole, but it is not numerically
different from its whole. Thus one thing is essentially different from
another when either they have only a part in common, in which case
they are not numerically the same; or they have no parts in common, in
which case they are numerically different as well as not numerically
the same. Since things may be neither numerically the same nor
numerically different, the question "How many things are
there?" is ill-formed as it stands and must be made more
precise, a fact Abelard exploits in his discussion of the Trinity.
Essential and numerical sameness and difference apply directly to
things in the world; they are extensional forms of identity. By
contrast, sameness and difference in definition is roughly analogous
to modern theories of the identity of properties. Abelard holds that
things are *the same in definition* when what it is to be one
requires that it be the other, and conversely; otherwise they differ
in definition.
Finally, things are *the same in property* when they specify
features that characterize one another. Abelard offers an example to
clarify this notion. A cube of marble exemplifies both whiteness and
hardness; what is white is essentially the same as what is hard, since
they are numerically the same concrete thing, namely the marble cube;
yet the whiteness and the hardness in the marble cube clearly differ
in definition--but even so, what is white is characterized by
hardness (the white thing is hard), and conversely what is hard is
characterized by whiteness (the hard thing is white). The properties
of whiteness and hardness are "mixed" since, despite their
being different in definition, each applies to the selfsame concrete
thing (namely the marble cube) as such and also as it is characterized
by the other.
The interesting case is where something has properties that
"remain so completely unmixed" that the items they
characterize are *different in property*. Consider a
form-matter composite in relation to its matter. The matter out of
which a form-matter composite is made is essentially the same as the
composite, since each is the entire material composite itself. Yet
despite their essential sameness, they are not identical; the matter
is not the composite, nor conversely. The matter is not the composite,
for the composite comes to be out of the matter, but the matter does
not come to be out of itself. The composite is not the matter, since
"nothing is in any way a constitutive part of or naturally prior
to itself." Instead, the matter is prior to the composite since
it has the property *priority* with respect to the composite,
whereas the composite is posterior to its matter since it has the
property *posteriority* with respect to its matter. Now despite
being essentially the same, the matter is not characterized by
posteriority, unlike the composite, and the composite is not
characterized by priority, unlike the matter. Hence the matter and
composite are different in property; the properties *priority*
and *posteriority* are unmixed--they differ in
property.
Now for the payoff. Abelard deploys his theory of identity to shed
light on the Trinity as follows. The three Persons are essentially the
same as one another, since they are all the same concrete thing
(namely God). They differ from one another in definition, since what
it is to be the Father is not the same as what it is to be the Son or
what it is to be the Holy Spirit. The three Persons are numerically
different from one another, for otherwise they would not be three, but
they are not numerically different from God: if they were there would
be three gods, not one. Moreover, each Person has properties that
uniquely apply to it--*unbegotten* to the Father,
*begotten* to the Son, and *proceeding* to the Holy
Spirit--as well as properties that are distinctive of it, such as
*power* for the Father, *wisdom* for the Son, and
*goodness* for the Holy Spirit. The unique properties are
unmixed in Abelard's technical sense, for the Persons differ
from one another in their unique properties, and such properties do
not apply to God; the distinctive properties are mixed, though, in
that God is characterized by each (the powerful God is the wise God is
the good God). Further than that, Abelard holds, human reason cannot
go; but reason validates the analysis (strictly speaking only a
"likeness" or analogy) as far as it can go. |
abhidharma | ## 1. Abhidharma: its origins and texts
The early history of Buddhism in India is remarkably little known and
the attempt to construct a consistent chronology of that history still
engrosses the minds of contemporary scholars. A generally accepted
tradition has it that some time around the beginning of the third
century BCE, the primitive Buddhist community divided into two parties
or fraternities: the Sthaviras (Pali, Theriyas) and the
Mahasanghikas, each of which thenceforth had its own
ordination traditions. Throughout the subsequent two centuries or so,
doctrinal disputes arose between these two parties, resulting in the
formation of various schools of thought (*vada;
acariyavada*) and teacher lineages
(*acariyakula*) (*Vin* 51-54; *Mhv* V
12-13. See Cousins 1991, 27-28; Frauwallner 1956, 5ff
& 130ff; Lamotte 1988, 271ff; Wynne 2019, 269-283).
According to traditional Buddhist accounts, by the time the
Mahayana doctrines arose, roughly in the first century BCE,
there were eighteen sub-sects or schools of Sthaviras, the tradition
ancestral to the Theravada ("advocates of the doctrine of
the elders"). The number eighteen, though, became conventional
in Buddhist historiography for symbolic and mnemonic reasons
(Obeyesekere 1991) and, in fact, different Buddhist sources preserve
divergent lists of schools which sum up to more than eighteen. The
likelihood is that the early formative period of the Buddhist
community gave rise to multiple intellectual branches that developed
spontaneously due to the geographical extension of the community over
the entire Indian subcontinent and subject to the particular problems
that confronted each monastic community (*sangha*). Each
*sangha* tended to specialize in a specific branch of
learning, had its own practical customs and relations with lay
circles, and was influenced by the particular territories, economy,
and use of language and dialect prevalent in its environment. Indeed,
the names of the "eighteen schools" are indicative of
their origins in characteristic doctrines, geographical locations, or
the legacy of particular founders: for instance,
Sarvastivada ("advocates of the doctrine that all
things exist"), Sautrantikas ("those who rely on the
*sutras")*/Darstantikas
("those who employ
examples"),[1]
and Pudgalavada ("those who affirm the existence of the
person"); Haimavatas ("those of the snowy
mountains"); or Vatsiputriyas ("those
affiliated with Vatsiputra") respectively. As noted by
Gethin (1998, 52), rather than sects or denominations as in
Christianity, "at least some of the schools mentioned by later
Buddhist tradition are likely to have been informal schools of thought
in the manner of 'Cartesians,' 'British
Empiricists,' or 'Kantians' for the history of
modern
philosophy."[2]
It is customarily assumed that the multiple ancient Buddhist schools
transmitted their own versions of Abhidharma collections, but only two
complete canonical collections are preserved, representing two
schools: the Sarvastivada, who emerged as an independent
school from within the Sthaviras around the second or first century
BCE, became dominant in north, especially northwest India, and spread
to central Asia; and the Sinhalese Theravada, a branch of the
Sthaviras that spread out in south India and parts of southeast Asia.
These two extant collections comprise the third of the "three
baskets" (Skt., *tripitaka*, Pali,
*tipitaka*) of the Buddhist canon. The exegetical
traditions of the Sarvastivada and Theravada understand
their respective canonical Abhidharma to consist of a set of seven
texts, though each school specifies a different set of texts. The
Sarvastivadin *Abhidharma-pitaka* consists of
the *Sangitiparyaya* (*Discourse on the
Collective Recitation*), the *Dharmaskandha*
(*Compendium of* *Dharmas*), the
*Prajnaptisastra* (*Manual of
Concepts*), the *Vijnanakaya*
(*Compendium of Consciousness*), the
*Dhatukaya* (*Compendium of Elements*), the
*Prakaranapada* (*Literary*
*Exposition*), and the *Jnanaprasthana*
(*The Foundation of Knowledge*). These seven texts survive in
full only in their ancient Chinese translations. The Theravadin
*Abhidhamma-pitaka* comprises the
*Dhammasangani* (*Enumeration of*
*Dhammas*), the *Vibhanga* (*Analysis*),
the *Dhatukatha* (*Discourse on Elements*),
the *Puggalapannatti* (*Designation of
Persons*), the *Kathavatthu* (*Points of
Discussion*), the *Yamaka* (*Pairs*), and the
*Patthana* (*Causal Conditions*). These
seven texts are preserved in Pali and all but the *Yamaka* have
been translated into English.
Later generations composed commentaries on the canonical Abhidharma
and introduced a variety of exegetical manuals that expound the
essentials of the canonical systems. These post-canonical texts are
the products of single authors and display fully developed polemical
stances and sectarian worldviews of their respective schools. Much of
the Theravada Abhidhamma system is contained in
Buddhaghosa's comprehensive *Visuddhimagga* (*The Path
of Purification*, fifth century CE). More direct introductory
Abhidhamma manuals are Buddhadatta's
*Abhidhammavatara* (*Introduction to
Abhidhamma*, fifth century CE) and Anuruddha's
*Abhidhammatthasangaha* (*Compendium of the Topics of
Abhidhamma*, twelfth century CE). The Sarvastivada
tradition preserves in Chinese translation three different recensions
of an authoritative Abhidharma commentary or
*vibhasa* dated to the first or second century
CE, the last and best known of which is called the
*Mahavibhasa*. The
*vibhasa* compendia document several centuries
of scholarly activity representing multiple Sarvastivada
branches, most notably the Sarvastivadins of Kashmir who are
known as Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika. The
Sarvastivada manual most influential for later Chinese and
Tibetan Buddhism, however, is Vasubandhu's
*Abhidharmakosa* (*Treasury of Abhidharma*, fifth
century CE). The *Abhidharmakosa*'s auto-commentary
contains substantial criticism of orthodox Sarvastivada
positions, which later Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika
masters attempted to refute. Particularly famous in this category is
the *Nyayanusara* (*Conformance to Correct
Principle*) of Sanghabhadra, a contemporary of Vasubandhu.
This comprehensive treatise reestablishes orthodox
Sarvastivada views and is considered one of the final
Sarvastivada works to have
survived.[3]
In sum, the Abhidharma/Abhidhamma texts are by and large compositions
contemporary with the formative period in the history of the early
Buddhist schools, providing the means by which one group could define
itself and defend its position against the divergent interpretations
and criticisms of other parties. Although much of the Abhidharma
mindset and something of its method draw on the
Agamas/Nikayas, i.e., the collections of
*sutras* (Pali, *suttas*), the main body of its
literature contains interpretations of the Buddha's discourses
specific to each school of thought and philosophical elaborations of
selectively emphasized doctrinal issues. These continued to be refined
by subsequent generations of monks who contributed to the
consolidation of the two surviving Theravada and
Sarvastivada schools.
### 1.1 Literary style and genre
Scholarly opinion has generally been divided between two alternative
interpretations of the term *abhidharma*, both of which hinge
upon the denotation of the prefix *abhi*. First, taking
*abhi* in the sense of "with regard to,"
*abhidharma* is understood as a discipline whose subject matter
is the *Dharma*, the Buddha's teachings. Second, using
*abhi* in the sense of preponderance and distinction,
*abhidharma* has also been deemed a distinct, higher teaching;
the essence of the Buddha's teachings or that which goes beyond
what is given in the Buddha's discourses, in a sense somewhat
reminiscent of the term "metaphysics" (e.g.,
*Dhs-a* 2-3; Horner 1941; von Hinuber 1994).
Buddhist tradition itself differentiates between the
Sutranta and Abhidharma methods of instructing the teachings
by contrasting the Sutranta "way of putting
things" in partial, figurative terms that require further
clarification, versus the Abhidharma exposition and catechism that
expound the teachings fully, in non-figurative terms (*A* IV
449-456; *Dhs-a* 154). This coincides with additional
distinctions the tradition makes between texts that have implicit
meaning (Skt., *neyartha*, Pali, *neyyattha*)
versus those that have explicit meaning (Skt.,
*nitartha*, Pali *nitattha*) (*A*
I 60; *Ps* I 18), and texts that are expressed in conventional
terms (Skt., *samvrti*, Pali, *sammuti*)
versus others that are expressed in ultimate terms (Skt.,
*paramartha*, Pali, *paramattha*) (*Vibh*
100-101; *Mp* I
94-97).[4]
From Abhidharma perspective, the *sutras* were conveyed
in conventional terms whose ultimate meaning required further
interpretation.
The texts of the canonical Abhidharma are works that evolved over
decades, if not centuries, out of materials already present in the
Sutra and Vinaya portions of the canon. This is evidenced in two
characteristics of the genre that can be traced to earlier Buddhist
literature. The first is the analytical style of the texts, which
attempt to summarize meticulously the significant points of the Dharma
and provide a comprehensive taxonomy of the mental and physical
factors that constitute sentient experience. This analytical
enterprise includes the arrangement of major parts of the material
around detailed lists of factors and combinations of sets of their
categories yielding matrices (Skt., *matrka*,
Pali, *matika*) of doctrinal topics. Already in the
collections of the Buddha's discourses, certain texts are
arranged according to taxonomic lists, providing formulaic treatment
of doctrinal items that are expounded elsewhere. Lists were clearly
powerful mnemonic devices, and their prevalence in early Buddhist
literature can be explained partly as a consequence of its being
composed and for some centuries preserved
orally.[5]
For instance, one of the four primary Agamas/Nikayas, the
collection of "grouped" sayings
(*samyukta/samyutta*), groups the Buddha's
teachings according to specific topics, including the four noble
truths, the four ways of establishing mindfulness, the five
aggregates, the six sense faculties, the seven constituents of
awakening, the noble eightfold path, the twelve links of dependent
origination, and others. Similar taxonomic lists form the table of
contents of the *Vibhanga* and
*Puggalapannatti* of the Theravada and the
*Sangitiparyaya* and *Dharmaskandha* of
the Sarvastivada, which are structured as commentaries on
those lists.
The second characteristic of Abhidharma literature is its bent for
discursive hermeneutics through catechetical exposition. The texts
seem to be the products of discussions about the doctrine within the
early Buddhist community. Again, such discussions are already found in
the Agama/Nikaya collections (e.g., *M* I
292-305, III 202-257): they often begin with a doctrinal
point to be clarified and proceed to expound the topic at stake using
a pedagogical method of question and answer. The texts also record
more formal methods of argumentation and refutation of rival theories
that shed light on the evolution of the Abhidharma as responding to
the demands of an increasingly polemical environment. The process of
institutionalization undergone by Buddhist thought at the time and the
spread of the Buddhist community across the Indian subcontinent
coincided with a transition from oral to written methods of textual
transmission and with the rise of monastic debates concerning the
doctrine among the various Buddhist schools. Intellectual assimilation
and doctrinal disputes also existed between the Buddhist monastic
community and the contemporaneous Sanskrit Grammarians, Jains, and
Brahmanical schools with their evolving scholastic and analytical
movements, which must also have contributed to the Abdhidharma
discursive hermeneutics and argumentative style. The dialectic format
and the display of awareness of differences in doctrinal
interpretation are the hallmarks of the *Kathavatthu* and
the *Vijnanakaya*. Later on, post-canonical
Abhidharma texts became complex philosophical treatises employing
sophisticated methods of argumentation and independent investigations
that resulted in doctrinal conclusions quite far removed from their
canonical antecedents.
Abhidharma literature, then, arose from two approaches to discussing
the Dharma within the early Buddhist community: the first intended to
summarize and analyze the significant points of the Buddha's
teachings, the second to elaborate on and interpret the doctrines by
means of monastic disputations (Bronkhorst 2016, 29-46; Cousins 1983,
10; Dessein 2016, 4-7; Gethin 1992b, 165; Gethin 2022, 227-242).
### 1.2 Abhidharma exegesis: from *Dharma* to *dharmas*
The Buddha's discourses collected in the
Agamas/Nikayas analyze sentient experience from different
standpoints: in terms of name-and-form (*nama-rupa*),
the five aggregates (Skt., *skandha*, Pali, *khandha*),
the twelve sense fields (*ayatana*), or the eighteen sense
elements (*dhatu*). All these modes of analysis provide
descriptions of sentient experience as a succession of physical and
mental processes that arise and cease subject to various causes and
conditions. A striking difference between the Sutranta and
the Abhidharma worldviews is that the Abhidharma reduces the time
scale of these processes so they are now seen as operating from moment
to moment. Put differently, the Abhidharma reinterprets the terms by
which the *sutras* portray sequential processes as
applying to discrete, momentary events (Cousins 1983, 7; Ronkin 2005,
66-78).
These events are referred to as *dharmas* (Pali,
*dhammas*), differently from the singular
*dharma/dhamma* that signifies the Buddha's teaching(s).
The Agamas/Nikayas use the form *dharmas* to convey a
pluralistic representation of encountered phenomena, i.e., all sensory
phenomena of whatever nature as we experience them through the six
sense faculties (the five ordinary physical senses plus mind
[*manas*]). The canonical Abhidharma treatises, however, draw
subtle distinctions within the scope of the mental and marginalize the
differences between multiple varieties of mental capacities. Within
this context, *dharmas* are seen as the objects of a specific
mental capacity called mental cognitive awareness (Skt.,
*manovijnana*, Pali,
*manovinnana*) that is considered the
central cognitive operation in the process of sensory perception.
Mental cognitive awareness is a particular type of consciousness that
discerns between the stimuli impinging upon the sense faculties and
that emerges when the requisite conditions come together.
*Dharmas* are not merely mental objects like ideas, concepts,
or memories. Rather, as the objects of mental cognitive awareness,
*dharmas* may be rendered apperceptions: rapid
consciousness-types (*citta*) that arise and cease in
sequential streams, each having its own object, and that interact with
the five externally directed sensory modalities (visual, auditory,
etc.) of cognitive awareness. The canonical Abhidharma texts portray
*dharmas*, then, as psycho-physical events with diverse
capacities by means of which the mind unites and assimilates a
particular perception, especially one newly presented, to a larger set
or mass of ideas already possessed, thus comprehending and
conceptualizing
it.[6]
Ultimately, *dharmas* are all that there is: all experiential
events are understood as arising from the interaction of
*dharmas*. While the analogy of atoms may be useful here,
*dharmas* notably embrace both physical and mental phenomena,
and are generally understood as evanescent events, occurrences, or
dynamic properties rather than enduring
substances.[7]
The Abhidharma exegesis thus attempts to provide an exhaustive
account of every possible type of experience--every type of
occurrence that may possibly present itself in one's
consciousness--in terms of its constituent *dharmas*. This
enterprise involves breaking down the objects of ordinary perception
into their constituent, discrete *dharmas* and clarifying their
relations of causal conditioning. The overarching inquiry subsuming
both the analysis of *dharmas* into multiple categories and
their synthesis into a unified structure by means of their manifold
relationships of causal conditioning is referred to as the
"*dharma* theory."
## 2. The *dharma* taxonomy: a metaphysics of experience
The Abhidharma attempts to individuate and determine the unique
identity of each *dharma* yield complex intersecting taxonomies
of *dharmas* organized by multiple criteria or sets of
qualities. Abhidharma texts of different schools proposed different
*dharma* taxonomies, enumerating a more or less finite number
of *dharma* categories. It is important to remember, though,
that the term *dharma* signifies both any category that
represents a type of occurrence as well as any of its particular
tokens or instances. The Theravada introduced a system of
eighty-two *dhamma* categories, meaning that there are
eighty-two possible types of occurrence in the experiential world, not
eighty-two occurrences. These are organized into a fourfold
categorization. The first three categories include the bare phenomenon
of consciousness (*citta*) that encompasses a single
*dhamma* type and of which the essential characteristic is the
cognizing of an object; associated mentality (*cetasika*) that
encompasses fifty-two *dhammas;* and materiality or physical
phenomena (*rupa*) that include twenty-eight
*dhammas* that make up all physical occurrences
(*Abhidh-av* 1). All the eighty-one *dhamma* types in
these three broad categories are conditioned
(*sankhata*). Conditioned *dhammas* arise and
cease subject to numerous causes and conditions and constitute
sentient experience in all realms of the round of rebirth
(*samsara*).[8]
The eighty-second *dhamma* that comprises the fourth category
is unconditioned (*asankhata*): it neither arises nor
ceases through causal interaction. The single occurrence in this
fourth category is nirvana (Pali, *nibbana*).
The Sarvastivada adopted a system of seventy-five basic
types of *dharmas* organized into a fivefold categorization.
The first four categories comprise all conditioned
(*samskrta*) *dharmas* and include, again,
consciousness (*citta*, one single *dharma*); associated
mentality (*caitta*, encompasses forty-six *dharmas*);
and physical phenomena (*rupa*, eleven *dharmas*);
but also factors dissociated from thought
(*cittaviprayuktasamskara*, fourteen
*dharmas*). The last category is mentioned neither in the
*sutras* nor in the Theravada lists, but is found
predominantly in northern Indian Abhidharma texts of all periods. The
specific *dharmas* included within it vary, but they are all
understood as explaining a range of experiential events, being
themselves dissociated from both material form and thought. The fifth
category in the Sarvastivada taxonomy, that of the
unconditioned (*asamskrta*), comprises three
*dharmas*, namely, space and two states of cessation
(*nirodha*), the latter being a term that connotes the
culmination of the Buddhist path (Cox 1995; 2004A, 553-554).
The Abhidharma analyzes in great detail each of these categories, thus
creating relational schemata whereby each acknowledged experience,
phenomenon, or occurrence can be determined and identified by
particular definition and function. Especially important is the
analysis of consciousness or *citta*, on which much of
Abhidharma doctrinal thought is built. Consider the Theravada
analysis of consciousness, whose basic principles are shared with the
other Abhidharma systems.
The epitome of the operation of consciousness is *citta* as
experienced in the process of sensory perception that, in Abhidharma
(as in Buddhism in general), is deemed the paradigm of sentient
experience. *Citta* can never be experienced as bare
consciousness in its own origination moment, for consciousness is
always intentional, directed to a particular object that is cognized
by means of certain mental factors. *Citta*, therefore, always
occurs associated with its appropriate *cetasika*s or mental
factors that perform diverse functions and that emerge and cease
together with it, having the same object (either sensuous or mental)
and grounded in the same sense faculty. Any given consciousness
moment--also signified by the very term *citta*--is
thus a unique assemblage of *citta* and its associated mental
factors such as feeling, conceptualization, volition, or attention, to
name several of those required in any thought process. Each assemblage
is conscious of just one object, arises for a brief instant and then
falls away, followed by another *citta* combination that picks
up a different object by means of its particular associated mental
factors.
The classic Abhidhamma scheme as gleaned from the first book of the
*Abhidhamma-pitaka*, the
*Dhammasangani*, and as organized by the
commentarial tradition describes eighty-nine basic types of
consciousness moments, i.e., assemblages of *citta* and
*cetasika* (*Dhs* Book I; *Vism* XIV
81-110; *Abhidh-av* 1-15; *Abhidh-s*
1-5). It classifies these basic *citta* types most
broadly according to their locus of occurrence, beginning with the
sense-sphere (*kamavacara*) that includes forty-five
*citta* types, most prominently those that concern the
mechanics of perception of sensuous objects; next come eighteen
form-sphere (*rupavacara*) consciousnesses that
concern the mind that has attained meditative absorption
(*jhana*); followed by eight formless-sphere
(*arupavacara*) consciousnesses that constitute the
mind that has reached further meditative attainments known as formless
states; finally, there are eighteen world-transcending
(*lokuttara*) consciousnesses that constitute the mind at the
moment of awakening itself: these have nirvana as their object. Within
these four broad categories many other classifications operate. For
instance, some *dhammas* are wholesome, others unwholesome;
some are resultant, others are not; some are motivated, others are
without motivations. These attribute matrices, writes Cox (2004A,
552), form "an abstract web of all possible conditions and
characteristics exhibited by actually occurring *dharmas.* The
individual character of any particular *dharma* can then be
specified in accordance with every taxonomic possibility, resulting in
a complete assessment of that *dharma*'s range of
possible occurrences."
Various scholars have argued that this system reflects a dynamic
conception of *dharmas:* that Abhidharma understands
*dharmas* as properties, activities, or patterns of
interconnection that construct one's world, not as static
substances (e.g., Cox 2004A, 549ff; Gethin 1992A, 149-150;
Karunadasa 2010, Ch. 4; Nyanaponika 1998, Ch. 2 & 4; Ronkin 2005,
Ch. 4; Waldron 2002, 2-16). The Abhidharma lists of dharmas are
"explicitly open" and reflect "a certain reluctance
and hesitancy to say categorically that such and such is the
definitive list of dharmas" (Gethin 2017, 252), leaving room for
continued debates about what is and is not a dharma. For the
Abhidharma, as for Buddhism in general, the limits of one's
world are set by the limits of one's lived experience, and the
causal foundation for lived experience is the operation of one's
cognitive apparatus. According to the Buddhist path, the nature of
lived experience as based on one's cognitive apparatus is to be
contemplated by investigating the very nature of one's mind
through the practice of meditation. From this perspective, Abhidharma
represents the theoretical counterpart to the practice of meditation.
Within this context of Buddhist practice, *dharmas* are
distinct (but interrelated) functions, energies, or causally
significant aspects--in this sense
"components"--of consciousness moments.
The categorial analysis of *dharmas* is therefore a meditative
practice of discernment of *dharmas:* it is not intended as a
closed inventory of all existing *dharmas* "out
there" in their totality, but rather "has a dual
soteriological purpose involving two simultaneous processes"
(Cox 2004A, 551). First, as "evaluative" analysis, the
*dharma* typology maps out the constituents and workings of the
mind and accounts for what makes up ordinary wholesome consciousness
as opposed to the awakened mind. For instance, consciousness types
that arise in a mind that has attained meditative absorption become
increasingly refined and may never involve certain tendencies or
defilements that might potentially occur in ordinary (even wholesome)
consciousness. To watch *dharmas* as *dharmas*, writes
Gethin (2004, 536), "involves watching how they arise and
disappear, how the particular qualities that one wants to abandon can
be abandoned, and how the particular qualities that one wants to
develop can be developed. Watching *dhammas* in this way one
begins to understand [...] certain truths
(*sacca*)--four to be exact--about these
*dhammas:* their relation to suffering, its arising, its
ceasing and the way to its ceasing. And in seeing these four truths
one realizes the ultimate truth--*dhamma*--about the
world."[9]
The second, "descriptive" soteriological process involved
in the categorization of *dharmas* reveals the fluid nature of
sentient experience and validates the fundamental Buddhist teaching of
not-self (Skt., *anatman*, Pali, *anatta*). The
increasingly detailed enumerations of *dharmas* demonstrate
that no essence or independent self could be found in any phenomenon
or its constituents, since all aspects of experience are impermanent,
arising and passing away subject to numerous causes and conditions.
Even the handful *dharmas* that are categorized as
unconditioned (that is, having no cause and no effect) are shown to be
not-self. The practice of the discrimination of *dharmas* thus
undermines the apparently solid world we emotionally and
intellectually grasp at that is replete with objects of desire and
attachment. "Try to *grasp* the world of the
*Dhammasangani*, or the
*Patthana*," Gethin notes (1992B, 165),
"and it runs through one's fingers."
Nevertheless, the very notion of the plurality of *dharmas* as
the building blocks or the final units of analysis of sentient
experience signifies a considerable shift in the Buddhist
understanding of *dharma*. Abhidharma thought was gradually
drawn into espousing a naturalistic explanation of *dharmas* as
the fundamental constituents of the phenomenal world, increasingly
associating *dharmas* as primary existents. The category of the
unconditioned within the *dharma* taxonomy also asserted the
possibility of enduring or permanent *dharmas*, in contrast to
all other *dharmas* that arise and cease through causal
interaction. The Abhidharma exegesis, then, occasioned among Buddhist
circles doctrinal controversies that could be termed ontological
around such issues as what the nature of a *dharma* is; what,
in the internal constitution of a *dharma*, makes it the very
particular it is; the manner of existence of *dharmas;* the
dynamics of their causal interaction; and the nature of the reality
they constitute. The distinctive principles and their ensuing
ontological interpretations constructed by the Buddhist schools were
largely shaped by a radical construal of impermanence as
momentariness.
## 3. Time: from impermanence to momentariness
Both the Sarvastivada and the post-canonical Theravada
constructed a radical doctrine of momentariness (Skt.,
*ksanavada*, Pali,
*khanavada*) that atomizes phenomena temporally
by dissecting them into a succession of discrete, momentary events
that pass out of existence as soon as they have originated. Albeit not
a topic in its own right in the Buddha's discourses, the
doctrine of momentariness appears to have originated in conjunction
with the principle of impermanence (Skt., *anitya*, Pali,
*anicca*). This idea is basic to the Buddha's
empirically-oriented teaching about the nature of sentient experience:
all physical and mental phenomena are in a constant process of
conditioned construction and are interconnected, being dependently
originated (e.g., *A* I 286; *M* I 230, 336, 500;
*S* II 26, III 24-5, 96-9, IV 214). The Suttanta
elaboration on these three interlocking ideas results in a formula
(*A* I 152) that states that conditioned phenomena (Skt.,
*samskara*, Pali,
*sankhara*) are of the nature of origination
(*uppada*), "change of what endures"
(*thitassa annathatta*), and dissolution or
cessation (*vaya*). This formula is known as the "three
characteristics of what is conditioned"
(*tisankhatalakkhana*). The
Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika introduced four
characteristics of conditioned phenomena: origination, endurance,
decay, and dissolution. These are classified under the *dharma*
category of "factors dissociated from thought."
The Buddhist schools used the characteristics of conditioned phenomena
as a hermeneutic tool with which to reinterpret impermanence in terms
of momentariness. The Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika
proposed a fully-fledged doctrine of momentariness according to which
all physical and mental phenomena are momentary. The
Sarvastivadins use the term "moment"
(*ksana*) in a highly technical sense as the
smallest, definite unit of time that cannot be subdivided, the length
of which came to be equated with the duration of mental events as the
briefest conceivable entities. There is no Sarvastivadin
consensus on the length of a moment, but the texts indicate figures
between 0.13 and 13 milliseconds in modern terms (Gethin 1998, 221;
von Rospatt 1995, 94-110). This usage presupposes an atomistic
conception of time, for time is not reckoned indefinitely divisible.
Indeed, the term *ksana* is often discussed in
juxtaposition to the concepts of material atoms and syllables, which
are likewise comprehended as indivisible.
Within the Sarvastivada framework, material reality
(*rupa-dharma*) is reduced to discrete momentary atoms,
and much attention is drawn to ontological and epistemological
questions such as whether sense objects are real at any time, or
whether atoms contribute separately or collectively to the generation
of perception. Atomic reality is understood as constantly changing:
what appears to us as a world made up of enduring substances with
changing qualities is, in fact, a series of moments that arise and
perish in rapid succession. This process is not random, but operates
in accordance with the specific capability and function of each atom.
The spirit of this atomistic analysis of material reality applies
equally to mental reality: consciousness is understood as a succession
of discrete consciousness moments that arise and cease extremely
rapidly.[10]
Thus, the ratio of change between material and mental phenomena in
any given moment is one to one: they occur in perfect synchronicity
(Kim 1999, 54). On this point the Sautrantika agreed with the
Sarvastivada.
The Sarvastivadins ("advocates of the doctrine that
all things exist") were unique in their stance that the
characteristics of conditioned phenomena exist separately as real
entities within each moment. Their claim, then, is that all
conditioned *dharmas*--whether past, present, or
future--exist as real entities (*dravyatas*) within the
span of any given moment. This induced a host of problems, one of
which is that the Sarvastivada definition of a moment is
difficult to reconcile with its conception as the shortest unit of
time (von Rospatt 1995, 44-46 & 97-98). The
Sarvastivada replies to this criticism by stating that the
activities (*karitra*) of the four characteristics of
conditioned phenomena are sequential: the limits between the birth and
dissolution of any event are referred to as one moment. This solution,
however, implies that a single event undergoes four phases within a
given moment, which inevitably infringes upon its momentariness (Cox
1995, 151; von Rospatt 1995, 52ff).
The Theravadins created their own distinct version of the
doctrine of momentariness. They do not seem to have been as concerned
as the Sarvastivadins with the ontology and epistemology of
material and mental realities per se. Rather, they were more
preoccupied with the psychological apparatus governing the process of
cognizing of sense data, and hence with the changing ratio between
material and mental phenomena. The *Yamaka* of the canonical
Abhidhamma offers what is probably the first textual occurrence of the
term "moment" (*khana*) in the sense of a
very brief stretch of time that is divided into origination and
cessation instants (Kim 1999, 60-61). Relying on the three
characteristics of conditioned phenomena, the Pali commentaries later
present a scheme wherein each moment of every phenomenon is subdivided
into three different instants of origination
(*uppadakkhana)*, endurance
(*thitikkhana*) and cessation
(*bhanga**kkhana*) (*Spk* II 266;
*Mp* II 252). These are three phases of a single momentary
phenomenon defined as one single *dhamma* or consciousness
moment. A *dhamma* occurs in the first sub-moment, endures in
the second, and ceases in the third (Karunadasa 2010, 234ff). The
commentarial tradition thus analyzes phenomena temporally by
dissecting them into a succession of discrete, momentary events that
fall away as soon as they have originated in consciousness. As one
event is exhausted, it conditions a new event of its kind that
proceeds immediately afterwards. The result is an uninterrupted,
flowing continuum (*santana*) of causally connected
momentary events. These succeed each other so fast that we conceive of
the phenomena they constitute as temporally extended.
The Theravadins use the term *khana* as the
expression for a brief instant, the dimension of which is not fixed
but may be determined by the context. For example,
*citta**kkhana* refers to the instant taken by one
mental event. In this basic sense as denoting a very brief stretch of
time, the term "moment" does not entail an atomistic
conception of a definite and ultimate, smallest unit of time, but
leaves open the possibility that time is infinitely divisible (von
Rospatt 1995, 59-60 & 94-95). Here the three moments
of origination, endurance, and cessation do not correspond to three
different entities. Rather, they represent three phases of a single
momentary phenomenon and are defined as one single consciousness
moment: a *dhamma* occurs in the first sub-moment, endures in
the second sub-moment and perishes in the third one. In this way, the
Theravadins avoided some of the difficulties faced by the
Sarvastivada-Vaibhasikas, of how to compress the
characteristics of the conditioned into one single indivisible moment
and of how to account for their ontological status. The
Theravadins also claimed that only mental phenomena are
momentary, whereas material phenomena (e.g., common-sense objects)
endure for a stretch of time. The Theravadin commentarial
tradition subsequently elaborated on this proposition and produced a
unique view of the ratio between material and mental phenomena,
asserting that a material phenomenon lasts for sixteen or seventeen
consciousness moments (*Kv* 620; *Vibh-a* 25-28;
*Vism* XX 24-26; Kim 1999, 79-80 &
SS3.1).
Despite their different interpretations of the concept of
momentariness, the early Buddhist schools all derived this concept
from the analysis of impermanence in terms of the dynamics of
*dharmas* qua physical and mental events. The equation of a
moment with the duration of these transient events as extremely short
occurrences--even the shortest conceivable--led to the
direct determination of the moment in terms of these occurrences. Yet
the doctrine of momentariness spawned a host of problems for the
Buddhist schools, particularly with regard to the status of the
endurance moment and to the explanation of continuity and conditioning
interaction among the *dharmas* (see section 5 below). If
*dharmas* go through an endurance phase or exist as real
entities within the span of any given moment, how can they be
momentary? And if experience is an array of strictly momentary
*dharmas*, how can continuity and causal conditioning be
possible?
One might argue that the conceptual shift from
"impermanence" to "endurance" is a result of
scholastic literalism and testifies to the Abhidharma tendency towards
reification and hypostatization of *dharmas* (Gombrich 1996,
36-37, 96-97 & 106-107). Nevertheless, the
object of the doctrine of momentariness is not so much existence in
time or the passage of time per se, but rather, in epistemological
terms and a somewhat Bergsonian sense, the construction of temporal
experience. Instead of a transcendental matrix of order imposed on
natural events from without, time is seen as an inherent feature of
the operation of *dharmas*. The doctrine of momentariness
analyzes *dharmas* as they transpire through time: as
psycho-physical events that arise and cease in consciousness and, by
the dynamics of their rise and fall, construct time. The sequence of
the three times is therefore secondary, generated in and by the
process of conditioned and conditioning *dharmas.* In fact, the
conceptual shift from the principle of impermanence to the theory of
momentariness is a shift in time scales. While the Sutranta
worldview interprets the three times as referring to past, present,
and future lives, the Abhidharma sees them as phases that any
conditioned *dharma* undergoes each and every moment.
Impermanence marks *dharmas* over a period of time, but is also
encapsulated in every single consciousness moment (*Vibh-a*
7-8; Sv 991; *Vism* XIV 191; Collins 1992, 227).
## 4. Intrinsic nature: between categorization and ontology
To preserve the principle of impermanence and explain continuity and
causal conditioning in ordinary experience, the Buddhist schools
introduced novel interpretations of the nature of *dharmas*. At
the heart of these interpretations is the concept of intrinsic nature
(Skt., *svabhava*, Pali, *sabhava*) that plays
a major role in the systematization of Abhidharma thought, is closely
related to the consolidation of the *dharma* theory, and is
regarded as that which gave an impetus to the Abhidharma growing
concern with ontology.
The term *svabhava/sabhava* does not feature in the
*sutras/suttas* and its rare mentions in other
Sarvastivada and Theravada canonical texts offer no
account of *dharma* as defined by a fixed intrinsic nature that
verifies its real
existence.[11]
This situation changes significantly in the post-canonical
literature, in which *svabhava* becomes a standard concept
extensively used in *dharma* exegesis. A recurring idea in the
exegetical Abhidharma literature from the period of the early
*vibhasa* compendia onward is that
*dharmas* are defined by virtue of their
*svabhava*. For instance, a definition transmitted in the
*Abhidharmakosabhasya* reads:
"*dharma* means 'upholding,' [namely],
upholding intrinsic nature (*svabhava*)," and the
*Mahavibhasa* states that "intrinsic
nature is able to uphold its own identity and not lose it [...]
as in the case of unconditioned *dharmas* that are able to
uphold their own identity" (Cox 2004A, 558-559).
Similarly, a definition prevalent in Theravadin Abhidhamma
commentaries is: "*dhammas* are so called because they
bear their intrinsic natures, or because they are borne by causal
conditions" (e.g., *Dhs-a* 39-40; *Patis-a*
I 18; *Vism-mht* I 347). The commentaries also regularly
equate *dhammas* with their intrinsic natures, using the terms
*dhamma* and *sabhava* interchangeably. For
example, the *Visuddhimagga* proclaims that
"*dhamma* means but intrinsic nature"
(*Vism* VIII 246), and the sub-commentary to the
*Dhammasangani* indicates that "there is no
other thing called *dhamma* apart from the intrinsic nature
borne by it" and that "the term *sabhava*
denotes the mere fact of being a *dhamma*"
(*Dhs-mt* 28 & 94; see also Karunadasa 2010: Ch.
1).
These commentarial definitions of *dharmas* as carrying their
intrinsic natures should not be interpreted ontologically as implying
that *dharmas* are substances having inherent existence. The
Pali commentaries, cautions Gethin (2004, 533), "are often
viewed too much in the light of later controversies about the precise
ontological status of *dharmas* and the Madhyamaka critique of
the notion of *svabhava* in the sense of 'inherent
existence.'" In fact, defining *dharmas* as bearing
their intrinsic natures conveys the idea that there is no enduring
agent behind them. Adding that *dharmas* are borne by causal
conditions counters the idea of intrinsic natures borne by underlying
substances distinct from themselves. Just as *dharmas* are
psycho-physical events that occur dependently on appropriate
conditions and qualities, their intrinsic natures arise dependently on
other conditions and qualities rather than on a substratum more real
than they are (*ibid;* Karunadasa 1996, 13-16;
Nyanaponika 1998, 40-41).
We must also note that the context within which *dharmas* are
rendered in terms of their intrinsic natures is that of
categorization, where multiple criteria and qualities are applied to
create a comprehensive taxonomic system that distinguishes the
particular character of any given *dharma*. Cox (2004A:
559-561) has shown that in the early period of northern Indian
Abhidharma texts, as represented by the
*Sariputrabhidharmasastra* and
portions of the *Mahavibhasa*, the concept
of intrinsic nature develops within the context of the method of
inclusion (*samgraha*), that is, the process by which the
inclusion of *dharmas* within a specific category is to be
applied. *Dharmas* are determined (*parinispanna*)
by the intrinsic nature that defines them and hence should not be
considered to possess a separately existing intrinsic nature.
"'Determination' implies two further features of
*dharmas* [...] First, just as categories in a
well-structured taxonomic schema are distinct and not subject to
fluctuation, so also *dharmas*, as 'determined,'
are clearly and unalterably discriminated: they are uniquely
individualized and as such are not subject to confusion with other
*dharmas*. [Second,] determination by intrinsic nature
undergoes no variation or modification, and hence, *dharmas*,
which are in effect types or categories of intrinsic nature, are
established as stable and immutable" (*ibid*, 562). In
the early Sarvastivada exegetical texts, then,
*svabhava* is used as an atemporal, invariable criterion
determining *what* a *dharma* is, not necessarily
*that* a *dharma* exists. The concern here is primarily
with what makes categorial types of *dharma* unique, rather
than with the ontological status of *dharmas*.
Nevertheless, from the foregoing categorial theory, the mature
Abhidharma drew ontological conclusions with regard to the reality of
*dharmas*. This transition in the conception of *dharma*
coincided with an inherent ambiguity in the term
*svabhava*, which is grounded logically and etymologically
in the term *bhava* that came to denote "mode of
existence" (*ibid*, 565-568). In the
*vibhasa* compendia and contemporaneous texts,
"the explicit emphasis upon categorization *per se*
recedes in importance as the focus shifts to clarifying the character
and eventually the ontological status of individual *dharmas*.
Accordingly, the term *svabhava* acquires the dominant
sense of 'intrinsic nature' specifying individual
*dharmas* [...] And determining individual
*dharmas* through unique intrinsic nature also entails
affirming their existence, as a natural function both of the
etymological sense of the term *svabhava* and of the role
of *dharmas* as the fundamental constituents of experience.
This then leads to the prominence of a new term that expressed this
ontological focus: namely, *dravya"* (*ibid*,
569). *Dravya* means "real existence" and, within
the Sarvastivada framework, *dharmas* that are
determined by intrinsic nature exist as real entities
(*dravyatas*), as opposed both to composite objects of ordinary
experience that exist provisionally and to relative concepts or
contingencies of time and place that exist relatively. The presence of
intrinsic nature indicates that a *dharma* is a primary
existent, irrespective of its temporal status, namely, whether it is a
past, present or future *dharma*, and hence the
Sarvastivada declaration that "all things
exist."
The Theravada rejected the Sarvastivada ontological
model, claiming that *dhammas* exist only in the present. But
the Theravada Abhidhamma shares with the Sarvastivada
the same principles of *dhamma* analysis as a categorial theory
that individuates sentient experience. Here, too, the taxonomic
function of *sabhava* gave rise to ontological
connotations of existence in the characterization of *dhammas*.
As the final units of Abhidhamma analysis, *dhammas* are
reckoned the ultimate constituents of experience. "There is
nothing else, whether a being, or an entity, or a man or a
person," a famous Pali commentarial excerpt proclaims
(*Dhs-a*
155).[12]
While this statement is meant to refute the rival Pudgalavada
position of the reality of the person by insisting that there is no
being or person apart from *dhammas*, there emerges the idea
that the phenomenal world is, at bottom, a world of *dhammas:*
that within the confines of sentient experience there is no other
actuality apart from *dhammas* and that what constitutes any
given *dhamma* as a discrete, individualized particular is its
intrinsic nature. The Theravada elaborates on the concept of
*sabhava* in juxtaposition to its theory of momentariness,
and it acquires the sense of what underlies a *dhamma*'s
endurance moment and as a point of reference to the moments of
origination and cessation. Before a *dhamma* eventuates it does
not yet obtain an intrinsic nature and when it ceases it is denuded of
this intrinsic nature. As a present occurrence, though, while
possessing its intrinsic nature, it exists as an ultimate reality and
its intrinsic nature is evidence of its actual existence as such
(*Dhs-a* 45; *Vism* VIII 234, XV 15). One commentarial
passage even goes so far as naming this instant "the acquisition
of a self" (*Vism-mht* I 343).
## 5. Causation: existence as functioning
The Abhidharma's ontological investigations occasioned a host of
doctrinal problems that became the subject of an ongoing debate among
the Buddhist schools. One primary controversy centered on the
principle of impermanence: if all phenomena are impermanent, the
Sautrantika challenged the Sarvastivada and the
Theravada, then *dharmas* must be changing continuously
and can neither exist in the past and future nor endure for any period
of time, however short, in the present. On the other hand, the
systematic analysis of experience in terms of momentary
*dharmas* required the Abhidharma to provide a rigorous account
of the processes that govern psychological and physical continuity.
What fuels these processes is causal interaction, but the very notion
of causation is allegedly compromised by the theory of momentariness.
If causes, conditions, and their results are all momentary events, how
can an event that has ended have a result? How can an event that
undergoes distinct stages of origination, endurance, and cessation in
a brief moment have causal efficacy? Notwithstanding their doctrinal
differences, both the Sarvastivada and the Theravada
Abhidhamma had to confront these challenges, and they did so by
formulating complex theories of immediate contiguity that grant causal
efficacy.
The Sarvastivada developed an analysis of causal
conditioning in terms of intricate interrelations among four types of
condition (*pratyaya*) and six types of cause (*hetu*).
As documented in the *Abhidharmakosabhasya*
(AKB 2.49) based on canonical texts including the
*Vijnanakaya*, the
*Prakaranapada*, and the
*Jnanaprasthana*, the four conditions are: 1)
root cause (literally "cause as condition,"
*hetupratyaya*), reckoned the foremost in inciting the process
of fruition and origination; 2) immediate antecedent, which holds
between a consciousness moment and its immediately preceding moment in
that consciousness series; 3) object support, which applies to all
*dharmas* insofar as they are intentional objects of
consciousness; and 4) predominance, which facilitates sensory
discriminative awareness, e.g., the faculty of sight's
predominance over visual cognitive awareness. The six causes are: 1)
instrumentality (*karanahetu*), deemed the primary
factor in the production of a result; 2) simultaneity or coexistence,
which connects phenomena that arise simultaneously; 3) homogeneity,
explaining the homogenous flow of *dharmas* that evokes the
seeming continuity of phenomena; 4) association, which operates only
between mental *dharmas* and explains why the elements of
consciousness always appear as assemblages of mental factors; 5)
dominance, which forms one's habitual cognitive and behaviorist
dispositions; and 6) fruition, referring to whatever is the result of
actively wholesome or unwholesome *dharmas*. The four
conditions and six causes interact with each other in explaining
phenomenal experience: for instance, each consciousness moment acts
both as the homogenous cause as well as the immediate antecedent
condition of the rise of consciousness and its concomitants in a
subsequent
moment.[13]
Underlying this analysis of causal conditioning is the notion of
existence as efficacious action, or karma. Karma, a fundamental
principle in Buddhist thought from its inception, is what fuels the
repetitive experience in *samsara*, the round of
rebirth.[14]
In Abhidharma exegesis, the efficacious action or distinctive
functioning of *dharmas* is understood predominantly as causal
functioning. For the orthodox
Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika, the existence of
*dharmas* as real entities (*dravyatas*) is determined
by both their intrinsic nature and particular causal functioning.
Intrinsic nature, however, is an atemporal determinant of real
existence. What determines a *dharma*'s spatio-temporal
existence is its distinctive causal functioning: past and future
*dharmas* have capability (*samarthya*) of
functioning, while present *dharmas* also exert a distinctive
activity (*karitra*). Present activity is an internal
causal efficacy that assists in the production of an effect within a
*dharma*'s own consciousness series. It is this activity
that determines a *dharma*'s present existence and
defines the limits of the span of its present moment. Capability, by
contrast, is a conditioning efficacy externally directed towards
another consciousness series: it constitutes a condition that assists
another *dharma* in the production of its own effect (Cox
2004A, 570-573; Williams 1981, 240-243). A
*dharma*'s present activity arises and falls away, but
past and future *dharmas* all have potential for causal
functioning and exist as real entities due to their intrinsic nature.
For the Sarvastivada, this model--which insists on
constant change within the limits of the present moment and implies
the existence of *dharmas* in the three time
periods--preserves both the principle of impermanence yet
explains continuity and causal efficacy.
The Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika distinction between a
*dharma*'s activity and capability implies that each
*dharma* or consciousness moment effects the next moment within
its series, but it can also act as a contributory condition towards
producing a different sort of effect. Activity engenders the next
moment within a *dharma*'s series, while capability
generates a different effect and explains the causal efficacy of past
*dharmas*. Williams (1981, 246-247) helpfully notes that
we may render this "horizontal" and "vertical"
causality, within a consciousness series and transcending it
respectively. For example, an instant of visual awareness horizontally
produces the next moment of visual awareness and may or may not,
depending on other factors such as light and so on, vertically produce
vision of the object. "It follows that to be present is to have
horizontal causality, which may or may not include vertical
causality--a fact which serves to remind us that we are dealing
here with primary existents which are frequently positioned within the
system in terms of what they do" (*ibid*). Thus activity
or horizontal causality--a *dharma*'s function of
precipitating the next moment of its own consciousness
series--individuates that *dharma* as a particular event
of its kind. A *dharma*'s capability or vertical
causality, by which it facilitates the occurrence of other
*dharmas* outside its consciousness series, locates it within
the web of interrelations that connects it with the incessant rise and
fall of other *dharmas*, and hence further individuates it as
that very particular *dharma* by manifesting its unique quality
and intensity of operation.
The Saturantika and the Theravada developed alternative
theories of causal conditioning in conjunction with their rejection of
the Sarvastivada ontological model and their claim that
*dharmas* exist only in the present. The Sautrantika
explained causal interaction among past and future *dharmas* by
reference to the idea of "seeds" (*bija*), or
modifications in subsequent *dharma* series. The
Sautrantika theory of seeds is the precursor of two extremely
important concepts of later Mahayana Buddhist thought,
namely, the Yogacara's concepts of "store
consciousness" (*alayavijnana*) and of
Buddha-nature (*tathagatagarbha*) (Cox 1995, 94-95; Gethin
1998, 222). The Theravada theory of causal conditioning, as set
out in the *Patthana*, proposes a set of
twenty-four conditional relations (*paccaya*) that account for
all possible ways in which a phenomenon may function in conditioning
the rise of another phenomenon. The twenty-four conditional relations
are: 1) root cause (*hetupaccaya*); 2) object support; 3)
predominance; 4) proximity; 5) contiguity; 6) simultaneity; 7)
reciprocity; 8) support; 9) decisive support; 10) pre-existence 11)
post-existence; 12) habitual cultivation; 13) karma; 14) fruition; 15)
nutriment; 16) controlling faculty; 17) *jhana* - a
relation specific to meditation attainments; 18) path - a
relation specific to the stages on the Buddhist path; 19) association;
20) dissociation; 21) presence; 22) absence; 23) disappearance; 24)
non-disappearance.[15]
The majority of the Theravada twenty-four conditions have
counterparts in the Sarvastivada theory and both systems
show various other parallel interests and points of resemblance. The
likelihood, then, is that the two systems originated before the two
schools separated and continued to evolve after their separation
(Conze 1962, 152-153; Kalupahana 1961, 173).
Their differences notwithstanding, both the Sarvastivada and
the Theravada theories of causal conditioning are based on the
notions that *dharmas* are psycho-physical events that perform
specific functions, and that to define what a *dhamma* is
requires one to determine what it does (Gethin 1992A, 150). It turns
out, then, that the relative positioning of each *dharma*
within a network of causes and conditions is, first and foremost, a
means for its individuation. Only in a subsidiary sense is this
network an analysis of causal efficacy. What reappears here is the
categorial dimension of the *dharma* analysis qua a
metaphysical theory of mental events in terms of sameness of
conditional relations. Analogous to the space-time coordinate system
that enables one to identify and describe material objects, the
network of conditional relations may be seen as a coordinate system
that locates within it any given *dharma*, implying that to be
a *dharma* is to be an event that has a place in that web of
relations--an idea reminiscent of Donald Davidson's
principle of sameness of causes and effects as a condition of identity
of events (2001 119-120 & 154-161). Two
*dharma* instances of the same type would fit into the web of
causal conditions in exactly the same way, but would then be
distinguished as individual instances on the grounds of their unique
degrees and modes of causal efficacy.
## 6. Epistemology: Perception and the theory of the consciousness process
In attempting to account for what effects liberating insight and what
makes up the awakened mind, Abhidharma inquiries extended into the
field of epistemology. We have seen that the Abhidharma's
analysis of sentient experience reveals that what we perceive as a
temporally extended, uninterrupted flow of phenomena is, in fact, a
rapidly occurring sequence of causally connected consciousness moments
or *cittas* (i.e., assemblages of *citta* and
*caitta/cetasika*), each with its particular object. The mature
Abhidharma thus assimilates the analysis of
phenomena-in-time-as-constituted-by-consciousness with a highly
complex description of the consciousness process, dissolving the
causal relations between ordered successions of consciousness moments
into the activity of perception. As previously noted in section 2, for
the Abhidharma, as in Buddhist epistemology in general, sensory
perception is the paradigm of perceptual, sentient experience. Like
every instance of consciousness, sensory perception is intentional,
encapsulated in the interaction among the sense faculties, their
corresponding types of discriminative consciousness, and their
appropriate sense objects. Different Buddhist schools, however, held
different positions on the distinctive nature of perceptual
experience, and on the specific roles of the sense faculties and
status of sense objects in it. The Theravada Abhidhamma and the
Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika both espouse a view that
proposes a direct contact between perceptual consciousness and its
sense objects, the latter being understood as *sensibilia*, for
what we perceive are not objects of common sense but their sensible
qualities. We may characterize this view as phenomenalist realism
(Dreyfus 1997, 331 & 336).
The Theravada Abhidhamma sets out its theory of the consciousness
process (*citta-vithi*) in its commentaries and manuals,
mainly in the works of Buddhaghosa, Buddhadatta (5th century CE), and
Anuruddha (10th or 11th century CE), based on earlier descriptions in
the *Dhammasangani* and the
*Patthana* (*Vism* XIV 111-124,
XVII 126-145; *Dhs-a* 82-106 & 267-287;
*Vibh-a* 155-160; *Abhidh-s* 17-21). The
theory is not separate from the *dhamma* taxonomy and the
analysis of *citta* as previously outlined in section 2.
Rather, in congruency with the notion of existence (whether categorial
or ontological) as functioning, it analyzes sensory perception as
resulting from particular functions that are performed by the
eighty-nine *citta* types revealed by the foregoing taxonomy.
According to this analysis, the specific functions in the
consciousness flow occur at particular instants of that continuum, as
the normal flow of consciousness involves the mind picking up and
putting down sense objects by means of successive sets of associated
mental factors. The result is a fairly static account of mental and
material phenomena as they arise in consciousness over a series of
consciousness
moments.[16]
Restricting the account to the consciousness process of ordinary
beings, two types of process are described: five-sense-door processes
(*pancadvara*) and mind-door processes
(*manodvara*). These may occur in succession, or mind-door
processes may occur independently. Five-sense-door processes account
for sensory perception as information is directly received from the
fields of the five physical sense faculties. Mind-door processes
internalize the information received through the sense faculties and
characterize the mind that is absorbed in thought or memory. Objects
at the "door" of the mind, which is treated in Buddhist
thought as a sixth sense faculty, may be past, present, or future,
purely conceptual or even transcendent. Normally, however, the object
at the mind door will be either a past memory or a concept. If there
is no perceptual activity, as is the case in deep, dreamless sleep,
the mind is in a state of rest called inactive mode
(*bhavanga*). Throughout one's life, the same type
of *citta* performs this function of the inactive mind that is
the natural mode to which the mind reverts. The mind switches from its
inactive mode to a simple mind-door process when a concept or memory
occurs and no attention is directed to the other five sense fields.
The simplest mind-door process is a succession of the following
functions: 1) adverting to the object of thought: a function that
lasts one moment and becomes internalized as an object support; 2)
impulsion: occurs for up to seven moments and performs the function of
the mind's responding actively to the object with wholesome or
unwholesome karma; 3) retaining: holding on to the object of the
consciousness process for one or two moments.
The mind switches from its inactive mode to any of the five-sense-door
processes when an object occurs at the "door" of the
appropriate sense faculty. This process of sensory perception involves
a greater number of functions: 1) disturbed inactive mind: a function
that arises due to the stimulus of the sense object. It lasts for two
moments, during which sensory contact takes place, i.e., a physical
impact of the sense object on the physical matter of the appropriate
sense faculty; 2) adverting: lasts one moment, during which the mind
turns towards the object at the appropriate sense "door;"
3) perceiving: lasts one moment and is the sheer perception of the
sense object with minimal interpretation; 4) receiving: lasts one
moment and performs the intermediary role of enabling transit to and
from the appropriate discriminative consciousness, whether visual,
auditory, etc.; 5) investigating: lasts one moment and performs the
role of establishing the nature of the sense object and of determining
the mind's response to that object that has just been
identified; 6) impulsion: same as in the mind-door process; 7)
retaining: same as in the mind-door process. As an example, visual
perception involves not only seeing itself, but also a succession of
moments of fixing of the visual object in the mind, recognition of its
general features, and identification of its nature. In both the
mind-door and five-sense door processes, the sense faculty and its
sense object condition the arising of a present moment of a
corresponding apprehending consciousness, that is, perception here is
modeled on simultaneous conditioning. And in both the mind-door and
five-sense door processes, when the retaining function ceases, the
mind reenters its inactive mode.
The consciousness types that perform most of the functions that make
up the mind-door and the five-sense-door processes fall into the
category of resultant *cittas*, that is, those that are the
result of past actively wholesome or unwholesome consciousness. This
means that the experience of the sense data presented to one's
mind is determined by one's previous actions and is beyond of
one's immediate control. Whenever one remembers or
conceptualizes, sees, hears, smells, tastes, or touches something that
is desirable or pleasing, one experiences a result of previous
wholesome consciousness. And vice versa with objects that are
undesirable or unpleasing and previous unwholesome consciousness
respectively. Only in the final stage of the consciousness process,
when the mind has chosen to respond actively to its object in some
way, actively present wholesome or unwholesome consciousness operates
and constitutes karma that will bear future results. The Abhidhamma
thus "provides an exact small-scale analysis of the process of
dependent arising" (Gethin 1998, 216).
The Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika proposes a similar
account of sensory perception, but argues that the sensory object
exists as a real entity. The Sautrantika theory of perception,
however, is rather different. It rests on the Sautrantika radical
view of momentariness, according to which there is no real duration
but only a succession of infinitesimal moments, and on its view of
causation, according to which causes cease to exist when their effects
come into existence. The application of these principles to sensory
perception makes it difficult to explain how perception directly
apprehends sense objects, for it implies that objects have ceased when
their apprehending consciousness arises. The Sautrantika reply is
that consciousness does not have direct access to its sense objects.
By contrast to phenomenalist realism, the Sautrantika view of
perceptual consciousness may be characterized as representationalism:
it sees perception as apprehending its objects indirectly, through the
mediation of aspects (*akara*) representative of
their objects (Dreyfus 1997, 335 & 380-381).
What is common to all the three main Abhidharma
traditions--Theravada, Sarvastivada, and
Sautrantika--is that they manifest a somewhat similar
paradigm shift towards reducing the phenomenal, causally conditioned
world into the activity of cognition and consciousness. This shift was
part of a broader movement in Indian philosophy in which Hindu, Jain,
and Buddhist thinkers turned away from traditional metaphysical
questions about the nature of the external world and the self, and
focused instead on the study of epistemology, logic, and language.
Their purpose was to provide systematic accounts of the nature and
means of valid cognition. Within Buddhist circles, this
epistemological turn saw the rise of thinkers such as Asanga and
Vasubandhu, the founders of the Yogacara (400-480 CE),
and, most notably, Dignaga and Dharmakirti (around 500 CE)
who developed sophisticated logical and philosophical systems
(*ibid*, 15-19). The Abhidharma, then, sets the stage for
this epistemological turn. The new emphasis becomes dominant from the
period of the *vibhasa* compendia onward and is
evident in a shift in the terminology used by the Abhidharma to
describe the nature of *dharmas*. This terminological shift is
indicated by the terms "particular inherent
characteristic" (Skt., *svalaksana*, Pali,
*salakkhana*) and "general characteristic"
(Skt., *samanyalaksana*, Pali,
*samanyalakkhana*).
The term *laksana/lakkhana* means a mark, or
a specific characteristic that distinguishes an indicated object from
others. The Logicians use this term in the sense of
"definition" of a concept or logical category. The
Abhidharma applies it to the practice of the discernment of
*dharmas*, distinguishing between multiple generic
characteristics a *dharma* shares with other *dharmas*
and (at least) one particular inherent characteristic that defines a
*dharma* as that very individual occurrence distinct from any
other instances of its type. The post-canonical Abhidharma thus
assimilates the concept of the particular inherent characteristic with
that of intrinsic nature. "*Dhammas*," the
Theravadin commentarial literature states, "are so called
because they bear their particular inherent characteristics"
(*Vibh-a* 45; *Vibh-mt* 35; *Patis-a*
I 79; *Vism* XV 3), and a particular characteristic "is
the intrinsic nature that is not held in common by other
*dhammas*" (*Vism-mht* II 137). Used in
conjunction or interchangeably with intrinsic nature, the particular
inherent characteristic constitutes a *dhamma*'s unique
definition (*Vism* VI 19, 35). It is an epistemological and
linguistic determinant of a *dhamma* as a knowable instance
that is defined by a distinct verbal description.
The *Mahavibhasa* of the
Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika similarly distinguishes
between a *dharma*'s particular inherent and generic
characteristics and identifies the former with intrinsic nature, thus
discriminating "levels in the apprehension or discernment of
*dharmas* that serve to clarify the ambiguity encountered in
the application of the term *svabhava* to both individual
*dharmas* and to categorial groups" (Cox 2004A, 575). The
difference between the analytical description of *dharmas* in
terms of their intrinsic nature or their characteristics, notes Cox
(*ibid*, 576), is that "whereas intrinsic nature acquires
its special significance in the context of exegetical categorization,
the starting point for the characteristics lies in perspectivistic
cognition. Ontology is a concern for both systems, but the shift in
terminology from intrinsic nature to the characteristics reflects a
concurrent shift from a category-based abstract ontology to an
epistemological ontology that is experientially or cognitively
determined." This new epistemological emphasis looms in through
a modified definition of existence proposed by the mature
Sarvastivada exegesis that sees the causal efficacy
underlying all existence as cognitive. Representing this development
in the history of Sarvastivada thought is Sanghabhadra
(fifth century CE), who states in his
*Nyayanusara:* "to be an object-field that
produces cognition (*buddhi*) is the true characteristic of
existence" (*ibid*). This means that *dharmas* as
the constituents of our experiential world are objectively
identifiable through cognition.
In sum, the Abhidharma project, as evident by the *dharma*
theory and its supporting doctrines, is, at bottom, epistemologically
oriented. Yet the project also intends to ascertain that every
constituent of the experiential world is knowable and nameable, and
that the words and concepts used in the discourse that develops around
the discernment of these constituents uniquely define their
corresponding referents. The *dharma* analysis therefore paves
the way for conceptual realism: a worldview that is based on the
notion of truth as consisting in a correspondence between our concepts
and statements, on the one hand, and the features of an independent,
determinate reality, on the other hand. Conceptual realism does not
necessarily have implications for the ontological status of this
reality as externally existing. But to espouse such a position is to
make a significant move away from the earliest Buddhist teaching that
presents the Buddha's view of language as
conventional.[17] |
abilities | ## 1. A taxonomy
What *is* an ability? On one reading, this question is a demand
for a *theory* of ability of the sort described above. On
another reading, however, this question simply asks for a rough guide
to what *sort* of things we are speaking of when we speak of
'abilities'. So understood, this question is not asking
for a theory of ability, but for an explanation of what exactly a
theory of ability would be a theory *of*. This section will
offer an answer to this question on this second, more modest,
reading.
### 1.1 Dispositions and other powers
It will be helpful to begin by considering a topic that is related to,
but nominally distinct from, abilities: dispositions.
Dispositions are, at first pass, those properties picked out by
predicates like 'is fragile' or 'is soluble',
or alternatively by sentences of the form '*x* is
disposed to break when struck' or '*x* is disposed
to dissolve when placed in water.' Dispositions so
understood have figured centrally in the metaphysics and philosophy of
science of the last century (Carnap 1936 & 1937, Goodman 1954),
and also in influential accounts of the mind (Ryle 1949). They are
like abilities in many significant respects, in particular in the fact
that they are properties of things that can exist even when not
manifested: as a glass may be fragile even when it is not broken, so
may a person have the ability to raise her arm even when she is not
raising her arm.
While dispositions have been central to contemporary philosophical
discussions, they do not exhaust the range of the possibilities
inherent in things. Especially notable, for present purposes, are
those that are intimately connected to agency. These include the
susceptibility of things to be acted on in certain ways -- such
as the edibility of an apple, or the walkability of a trail --
that the psychologist J.J. Gibson called affordances (Gibson, 1979).
These include also the powers of action that we ascribe to things, of
the kind observed by Thomas Reid: 'Thus we say, the wind blows,
the sea rages, the sun rises and sets, bodies gravitate and
move' (Reid 1788/2010, 16; Reid himself regarded these locutions
as "misapplications" of active verbs, based on erroneous
views of the grounds of powers). Finally, and crucially, these include
the powers of agents themselves.
In light of this ontological diversity, it will be useful to have a
term that encompasses all the possibilities inherent in things and in
agents. Let us reserve the word 'power' for that general
class. Dispositions, as defined above, are a proper subset of powers
more generally. Affordances, as sketched above, are another one. And
abilities, in a sense still to be defined, are yet another.
It may yet be that dispositions are especially privileged among the
powers. For instance, they might be more fundamental than the other
powers, in the sense that other powers may be reduced to them. It has
been proposed, for instance, that affordances may be reduced to
dispositions (Scarantino 2003). And we will consider in some detail,
in Section 5.1, the proposal that abilities themselves may be reduced
to dispositions. But our initial hypothesis is that dispositions are
simply one member of the broader family of powers, albeit one that has
received a great measure of attention in the philosophical
literature.
### 1.2 Demarcating abilities
Abilities, then, are a kind of power. What kind of power, precisely,
is an ability? As the term will be understood here, there are two
additional conditions that a power must meet in order for it to be an
ability. First, abilities are distinguished by their subjects.
Abilities are properties of agents, rather than of things that are not
agents. Objects have dispositions and affordances -- as a glass
is disposed to break when struck, or affords the drinking of liquid
-- but they do not have abilities. Being a power of an agent is
not, however, a sufficient condition for being an ability. This is
because agents have powers that are not abilities. Therefore, second,
abilities need to be distinguished by their objects: abilities relate
agents to *actions*.
Some examples may make the need for this second condition clear. Some
powers, though properties of agents, do not intuitively involve any
relation to action. Consider the power of understanding language.
Understanding a sentence, while it is not wholly passive or arational,
is not typically an action. In contrast, speaking a sentence is. Thus
the power to understand French will not be an ability, on the present
taxonomy. In contrast the power to speak French will be an ability,
since it involves a relation to action. (See van Inwagen 1983,
8-13.)
So, as the term will be understood here, an ability is a power that
relates an agent to an action. This way of demarcating abilities,
while serviceable for our purposes, is not unproblematic. For it
inherits the problems involved in drawing the distinction between
actions and non-actions. First, there is the problem that the domain
of action is itself a contentious matter. Second, there is the problem
that, even if we have settled on an account of action, it is plausible
that the domain of action will be *vague*, so that there are
some events that are not definitely actions, but that are not
definitely not actions either. Arguably both of these points about
action apply, also, to the property of being an agent. If this is
right, then the present account of ability, which is cashed out in
terms of agency and action, will be correspondingly contentious and
vague. Borderline cases may, in the end, generate problems for the
theory of ability. But such problems will not be central here. For
giving such a theory will be difficult enough even when we focus on
paradigm cases of agency and action, and so on paradigm cases of
ability.
Note there is a similarity between the present category of ability, as
distinct from other powers, and the traditional category of active
powers, where active powers are those that essentially involve the
will (Reid 1788/2000). But it is not clear that these distinctions
overlap exactly. For example, the power to will itself will clearly be
an active power. It is less clear whether it will count as an ability,
for the answer to that question will turn on the contentious question
of whether willing is itself an action.
### 1.3 'Know how' and the intelligent powers
Some will expect that an account of ability would also be an account
of what it is to *know how* to perform an action, on the
supposition that one knows how to perform a certain action just in
case one has the ability to perform that action. This supposition,
which we may call the *Rylean* account of know how (since it is
most explicitly defended in Ryle 1949, 25-61), has been called
into question by Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (Stanley and
Williamson 2001). Let us briefly consider Stanley and Williamson's
argument and how it bears on the theory of ability.
Stanley and Williamson argue, on broadly linguistic grounds, that our
default view of know how ought to be rather different from Ryle's.
Part of the argument for this is that standard treatments of embedded
questions ('know who', 'know where', and so
forth; see Karttunen 1977) suggest a rather different treatment. On
this treatment, to know how to *A* is to know a certain
proposition. At first pass, in Stanley and Williamson's
presentation, for *S* to know how to *A* is for
*S* to know, of some contextually relevant way of acting
*w*, that *w* is a way for *S* to *A*.
Stanley and Williamson develop and defend such a treatment, and offer
independent considerations for rejecting Ryle's own arguments for
the Rylean view. On their view, then, to know how to *A* is
*not* to have an ability.
Stanley and Williamson's arguments are far from widely accepted
(see Noe 2005), but they tell at the very least against simply
*assuming* that an account of ability will also be an account
of know how. So we will leave questions of know how to one side in
what follows. It is also reasonable to hope that an account of
ability, while it may not simply *be* an account of know how,
will at least shed light on disputes about know how. For so long as we
lack a theory of what an ability is, the precise content of the Rylean
view (and of its denial) remains unclear. So it may be that getting
clear on abilities may help us, perhaps indirectly, to get clear on
know how as well. (Additional discussion of these questions may be
found in Stanley's book-length development of his and
Williamson's initial position (Stanley 2011), as well as the
papers collected in (Bengson and Moffett 2011).
Whatever our view of ability and know how, there is a further question
at the intersection of these topics that bears consideration. This is
how to accommodate those powers of agents that appear to be especially
closely connected to practical intelligence, such as skills and
talents -- which we might collectively call the *intelligent
powers*. Are the intelligent powers simply a species of ability,
or do they demand an independent treatment? There are a number of
recent proposals to be considered here. (Robb forthcoming) proposes a
dispositionalist theory of talent, on which a talent is a disposition
to maintain and develop a skill. (McGeer 2018) emphasizes the
significance of a distinctive kind of intelligent power, which she
(following Ryle) calls an 'intelligent capacity,' and of
which she too offers a broadly dispositionalist account. These
proposals suggest a more general program of dispositionalism about the
intelligent powers, which has suggestive parallels to the
dispositionalism about ability that we will consider in Section 5.1.
Still more generally, accurately accounting for the nature of the
intelligent powers, and the relationship of these to abilities and to
the powers more generally, remains an open and intriguing problem.
## 2. Two fundamental distinctions
If one wants to give a theory of ability of the sort described at the
outset, it is helpful for that theory to observe some formal
distinctions that have been marked in the literature. This section
canvasses two of the most important formal distinctions.
### 2.1 General and specific ability
The previous section was primarily concerned with distinguishing
abilities from other powers. But there is also a distinction to be
made within the class of abilities itself. This is the distinction
between *general* and *specific* abilities
(Honore 1964, Mele 2002).
The distinction between general and specific abilities may be brought
out by way of example. Consider a well-trained tennis player equipped
with ball and racquet, standing at the service line. There is, as it
were, nothing standing between her and a serve: every prerequisite for
her serving has been met. Such an agent is *in a position to*
serve, or has serving as an *option*. Let us say that such an
agent has the *specific ability* to serve.
In contrast, consider an otherwise similar tennis player who lacks a
racquet and ball, and is miles away from a tennis court. There is
clearly a good sense in which such an agent has the ability to hit a
serve: she has been trained to do so, and has done so many times in
the past. Yet such an agent lacks the *specific ability* to
serve, as that term was just defined. Let us say that such an agent
has the *general ability* to serve.
The concern of this article will be general abilities in this sense,
and unqualified references to 'ability' should be read in
that way. But specific abilities will also be at issue. This is for at
least two reasons.
The first is one of coverage: many of the proposals that are relevant
to the understanding of ability, especially the classical
'conditional analysis' (discussed in Section 3.1 below),
are naturally read as proposals about specific ability in the present
sense, and a suitably broad conception of ability lets us keep these
proposals within our domain of discussion.
The second reason is more properly philosophical. If we accept the
distinction between general and specific abilities, then we want for
our account of ability to accommodate both of them, and ultimately to
explain how they are related to each other. For this distinction is
not plausibly diagnosed as mere ambiguity; it rather marks off
something like two modes of a single kind of power. There are at least
two kinds of proposals one may make here. One, arguably implicit in
many of the 'new dispositionalist' approaches to ability,
is that general ability is in some sense prior to specific ability: to
have a specific ability is simply to have a general ability and to
meet some further constraint, such as having an opportunity. Another
proposal (suggested in Maier 2015) is that specific ability is in some
sense prior to general ability: to have a general ability is simply to
have a specific ability under a certain range of circumstances.
The idea that there is some sort of bipartite distinction to be made
between abilities has been a prominent theme in contemporary work on
ability. It has been endorsed and developed, in different contexts, by
Glick (2012), Vihvelin (2013), and Whittle (2010). It is an open
question whether the bipartite distinctions in ability introduced by
these authors are the same as one another, or the same as the one
introduced here. It could be that there are *several* bipartite
distinctions to be made in this area, or that we simply have one
distinction under several names.
### 2.2 Abilities and ability-ascriptions
Much philosophical discussion of ability has taken place in the
formal, as opposed to the material, mode. Thus we are often asked to
distinguish *senses* of 'ability', or to think
about what 'can' means. This subtle shift between
discussing ability and discussing the ascription of ability is often
harmless. Nonetheless, it is important to bear in mind the distinction
between these questions, and to mark this distinction explicitly at
the outset.
On the one hand, there are questions about ability itself. The central
question here to give an account of what an ability is, in the sense
foregrounded at the outset. Subsidiary questions here include, for
example, whether abilities may exist when they are unexercised,
whether abilities are intrinsic or extrinsic features of their
bearers, and whether agents have abilities in deterministic worlds.
These are, broadly speaking, questions about the metaphysics of
ability.
On the other hand, there are questions about ability-ascriptions.
Abilities are characteristically ascribed (in English) with sentences
involving the modal auxiliaries 'can' and 'is able
to.' Accordingly, the central question here is to give a
semantics for sentences involving those expressions. Subsidiary tasks
include resolving certain open problems in the semantics of these
expressions, such as the 'actuality entailment' observed
in (Bhatt 1999), and integrating a semantics for agentive modals with
a semantics for modal expressions more generally. These are, broadly
speaking, questions about the semantics of agentive modality.
On certain conceptions of the philosophical enterprise, the project of
giving a theory of ability and that of giving a semantics for
ability-ascriptions are closely connected, and even collapse into each
other. Nonetheless, there is at least a methodological distinction to
be marked here. Having marked that distinction, this discussion will
primarily be concerned with the first of these projects, the project
of giving a theory of ability. Nonetheless, the project of giving a
semantics for ability-ascriptions will also frequently be relevant. As
with the distinction between general and specific abilities, this is
for two reasons, one of coverage and one more properly
philosophical.
The first reason, that of coverage, is the following. Many of the most
prominent theories of ability defended in the philosophical literature
have in fact been, in the first place, theories of
ability-ascriptions. Indeed, the central thought in much work on
ability in the analytic tradition has been a kind of semantic
deflationism, on which we may give a semantics for ability-ascriptions
that does not quantify over abilities themselves. This is arguably the
main theme of the hypothetical theories to be considered in Section 3,
and the modal theories to be considered in Section 4. Given this
tendency in thinking about ability, an overview of philosophical work
on ability that neglected the role of ability-ascriptions would be
seriously incomplete.
There is also the second, more philosophical, reason. Any account of
abilities owes us, among other things, an account of
ability-ascriptions. This is perhaps true of philosophical topics
generally, but it is true of ability in particular. Even philosophers
who are explicit in their 'refusal to take language as a
starting point in the analysis of thought and modality' (Lewis
1986, xi) are prone to make explicit appeal to language when the topic
turns to ability, as occurs in (Lewis 1976) or (Taylor 1960). This is
for any number of reasons, but perhaps especially because it is
difficult to even identify the topic under consideration without using
or mentioning certain phrases, notably 'can' and 'is
able to.'
Happily, the topic of ability-ascriptions is one on which linguists
and philosophers have made significant progress. While there has long
been considerable philosophical interest expressions such as
'can' and 'is able to,' there is nothing
recognizable as a rigorous semantic theory of such terms prior to the
foundational work of Angelika Kratzer, recently revised and collected
in (Kratzer 2012). Kratzer's work has been central to natural
language semantics, and its significance for philosophical work is
still being appreciated. The question of whether it is correct as an
account of the semantics of agentive modality is an open one:
important challenges include (Hackl 1998) and, more recently,
(Mandelkern, Schultheis, and Boylan, 2017), (Schwarz 2020), and
(Willer forthcoming). The Kratzer semantics, and a view of ability on
which that semantics plays a foundational role, will be considered in
some detail in Section 4. The more methodological point being made
here is that any adequate account of ability ought to provide an
account of ability-ascriptions, and as such may want to reckon with
this ongoing debate in the semantics of modal expressions.
## 3. Hypothetical theories of ability
The bulk of theories of ability that have been defended in the
historical and contemporary literature have been what we might call
*hypothetical* theories. On such views, to have an ability is
for it to be the case that one *would* act in certain ways if
one were to have certain volitions. One arrives at different theories
depending on how one understands the volitions in question and how
exactly these actions would hypothetically depend on them, but
nonetheless these views constitute something like a unified family.
Given their prominence and unity, it is natural to begin our survey of
theories of ability with them.
### 3.1 The conditional analysis
The most prominent hypothetical theory of ability is what has come to
be called the 'conditional analysis'. In this section, we
will survey that form of analysis, the problems for it, and
alternatives to it that are supposed to overcome those problems.
The conditional analysis of ability has at least two aspects. First,
*S* has an ability to *A* just in case a certain
conditional is true of her. Second, that conditional has the following
form: *S* would *A* if *S* were to have a certain
volition. The precise form such an analysis will take will depend on,
first, how we interpret this conditional and, second, which volition
figures in the antecedent.
It has been standard in the literature, when this first question has
been raised, to understand the conditional as a *subjunctive*
conditional (Ginet 1980), and we will assume in what follows that this
is the best form of the conditional analysis. There has been some
disagreement about whether it is a *might* or a *would*
conditional that is relevant (for an account of this distinction, see
Lewis 1973, 21-24), as well as about which volition is relevant.
In the following, we will take the relevant conditional to be a
*would* conditional, and the relevant volition to be
*trying*, though nothing will hang on these selections, and the
points to be raised would apply also to other forms of conditional
analysis, *mutatis mutandis*.
We thus arrive at the following form of the conditional analysis:
(CA)
*S* has the ability to *A* iff *S* would
*A* if *S* tried to *A*.
If (CA) were true, it would constitute a theory of ability in that it
would say under exactly what conditions some agent has the ability to
perform some action without making reference to the idea of ability
itself. (Note that a variant on (CA) that is sometimes discussed,
according to which *S* has the ability to *A* iff
*S* *could* *A* if *S* tried to
*A*, would not meet this standard, since the
'could' seems to make a claim about *S*'s
abilities. So such a view is not really a conditional
*analysis*. Indeed, it is not even clear that it involves a
genuine conditional, for reasons discussed in Austin 1970
(211-213).
The conditional analysis so understood has been subject to a fair
amount of criticism, which will be reviewed in the following section.
It bears noting, however, just how apt an account of ability it seems
at first pass. It satisfies, at least at first approximation, the
extensional constraints: there are many actions with respect to which
a typical agent satisfies the relevant conditional, and also many
actions with respect to which she does not, and these roughly
correspond to her abilities. This imposes a demand even on those who
wish to reject (CA), namely to explain *why*, if (CA) is simply
false, it so closely approximates to the truth about abilities.
Its approximate satisfaction of the extensional constraints is also
plausibly a reason why something like (CA) has found so many
thoughtful advocates. It is at least strongly suggested, for example,
by the following remarks from Hume's *Enquiry*:
>
> For what is meant by liberty, when applied to voluntary actions? We
> cannot surely mean that actions have so little connexion with motives,
> inclinations, and circumstances, that one does not follow with a
> certain degree of uniformity from the other, and that one affords no
> inference by which we can conclude the existence of the other. For
> these are plain and acknowledged matters of fact. By liberty, then, we
> can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the
> determinations of the will; this is, if we choose to remain at rest,
> we may; if we choose to move, we also may. Now this hypothetical
> liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a
> prisoner and in chains. (8.1; Hume 1748, 72)
>
Of course, Hume and many of those who have followed him have been
attempting to do something rather *more* than to offer a theory
of ability. Hume's intent was to show that disputes over
'question of liberty and necessity, the most contentious
question of metaphysics' have been 'merely verbal'
(8.1; Hume 1748, 72). Whatever we may think of this striking claim,
however, there is a dialectical gap between it and the alleged truth
of (CA). To anticipate a theme that will be central in what follows,
we must be careful to distinguish between, on the one hand, the
adequacy of various views of ability and, on the other, the more
contentious metaphysical questions about freedom to which they are
doubtlessly related. It is the former that will be our concern in this
section.
### 3.2 Problems for the conditional analysis
(CA) says that satisfying a certain conditional is both sufficient and
necessary for having a certain ability. There are two kinds of
counterexamples that may be brought against (CA): counterexamples to
its sufficiency, and to its necessity. Let us take these in turn.
Counterexamples to the *sufficiency* of (CA) have been most
prominent in the literature. Informally, they are suggested by the
question: 'but could *S* try to *A*?' There
are a variety of ways of translating this rhetorical question into a
counterexample. We may distinguish two: *global*
counterexamples, according to which (CA) might *always* get the
facts about ability wrong, and *local* counterexamples,
according to which (CA) might *sometimes* get the facts about
ability wrong.
Begin with global counterexamples. Let us say that
*determinism* is true at our world. Familiar arguments purport
to show that, if this is the case, then no one has the ability to do
anything, except perhaps for what she actually does (for several
developments of such an argument, see van Inwagen 1983, 55-105).
But if (CA) is true, then agents would have the ability to perform
various actions that they do not actually perform. For it is plausible
that the conditionals in terms of which (CA) analyzes ability would
still be true in a deterministic world. But then, since it makes false
predictions about such a world, which for all we know may be our own,
(CA) is false.
The difficulties involved in this sort of counterexample are clear.
The proponent of (CA) will reject the arguments for the
incompatibility of ability and determinism as unsound. Indeed, it is
precisely her thought that such arguments are unsound that has
typically led her to take ability to be analyzed in terms like those
of (CA). So global counterexamples, while they may be successful, are
*dialectically ineffective* relative to the range of questions
that are at issue in the debates over ability.
It seems, however, that we can show that (CA) is false even relative
to premises that are shared between various disputants in the free
will debates. This is what is shown by *local* counterexamples
to (CA). One such example is given by Keith Lehrer:
>
> Suppose that I am offered a bowl of candy and in the bowl are small
> round red sugar balls. I do not choose to take one of the red sugar
> balls because I have a pathological aversion to such candy. (Perhaps
> they remind me of drops of blood and ... ) It is logically
> consistent to suppose that if I had chosen to take the red sugar ball,
> I would have taken one, but, not so choosing, I am utterly unable to
> touch one. (Lehrer 1968, 32)
>
Such an example shows that (CA) is false without assuming anything
contentious in debates over freedom. It turns rather on a simple
point: that psychological shortcomings, just as much as external
impediments, may undermine abilities. (CA), which does not recognize
this point, is therefore subject to counterexamples where such
psychological shortcomings become relevant. We may, if we like,
distinguish 'psychological' from
'non-psychological' ability, and claim that (CA) correctly
accounts for the latter (this sort of strategy is suggested, for
example, by Albritton 1985). But our ordinary notion of ability, that
of which we are attempting to give a theory, seems to involve
*both* psychological and non-psychological requirements. And if
that is correct, then Lehrer's example succeeds as a
counterexample to (CA) as a theory of our ordinary notion of
ability.
Counterexamples to the *necessity* of (CA) have been less
frequently discussed (though see Wolf 1990), but they also raise
important issues about ability. Consider a case where a good golfer
misses an easy putt. Given that this golfer tried to make the putt and
failed to, it is false that she would have made the putt if she had
tried to; after all, she *did* try it and did not make it.
(This thought is vindicated by standard views of subjunctive
conditionals; see Bennett 2003, 239). But, as a good golfer, she
presumably had the ability to make the putt. So this seems to be a
case where one can have an ability without satisfying the relevant
conditional, and hence a counterexample to the necessity of (CA).
Here the defender of (CA) might avail herself of the distinction
between specific and general abilities. (CA), she might say, is an
account of what it is to have a specific ability: that is, to actually
be in a position to perform an action. The golfer *does* lack
this ability in this case, as (CA) correctly predicts. It is
nonetheless true that the golfer has the *general* ability to
sink putts like this. But (CA) does not purport to be an analysis of
general ability, and as such is compatible with the golfer having that
sort of ability. Again, the plausibility of this response will hang on
the viability of the distinction between specific and general
abilities.
We have seen that (CA) faces serious problems, especially as a
*sufficient* condition for ability, even once we set to one
side contentious claims about freedom and determinism. If this is
correct, then (CA) must either be modified or rejected outright. Let
us first consider the prospects for modification.
### 3.3 The conditional analysis: some variations
The guiding idea of hypothetical accounts is that abilities are to be
defined in terms of what someone would do were he in certain
psychological conditions. There are a number of ways of developing
this idea that do not fit into the form of (CA). At least two such
proposals deserve attention here.
Donald Davidson takes concerns about the sufficiency of (CA),
especially as developed in Chisholm 1964, to tell decisively against
it. More specifically, he takes the lesson of this problem to be is
that:
>
> The antecedent of a causal conditional that attempts to analyze
> 'can' or 'could' or 'free to' must
> not contain, as its dominant verb, a verb of action, or any verb
> which makes sense of the question, Can someone do *it*?
> (Davidson 1980, 68)
>
Davidson suggests that we may overcome this difficulty at least by
endorsing:
>
> *A* can do *x* intentionally (under the description
> *d*) means that if *A* has desires and beliefs that
> rationalize *x* (under *d*), then *A* does
> *x*. (Davidson 1980, 68)
>
Davidson proceeds to consider a number of further problems for this
proposal and for the causal theory of action generally, but he takes
it to suffice at least to overcome standard objections to the
sufficiency of (CA).
The trouble is that it is not at all clear it does so. For these
objections did not essentially depend on a verb of action figuring in
the antecedent of the analyzing conditional. Consider Lehrer's
case again. It seems true that *if* Lehrer's imagined agent
has desires and beliefs that rationalized that action under the
description 'eating a red candy'--namely, adopting
the analysis of Davidson 1963, a desire for a red candy and a belief
that this action is a way of eating a red candy--she would eat a
red candy. But the trouble is precisely that, in virtue of her
psychological disability, she is incapable of having this desire, and
so cannot perform this action intentionally. For this reason it does
not seem that Davidson's proposal successfully overcomes the
sufficiency problem, at least not on Lehrer's way of developing
that problem.
A second and rather different approach to modifying (CA) has been
taken in recent work by Christopher Peacocke. Peacocke accepts that
(CA) is insufficient in light of counterexamples like Lehrer's.
But he argues that we might *supplement* (CA) in order to
overcome these difficulties. In the terms of the present discussion,
Peacocke's proposal is: *S* has the ability to *A*
just in case: (i) (CA) is true of *S* *and* (ii) the
possibility in which *S* tries to *A* is a
'close' one. The closeness of a possibility as it figures
in (ii) is to be understood, at first pass, in terms of what we can
reasonably *rely on*: a possibility is a distant one just in
case we can reasonably rely on it not obtaining; otherwise it is a
close one (Peacocke 1999, 310). To modify one of Peacocke's
examples, the possibility of toxic fumes being released into a train
car that is safely insulated is a distant one; on the other hand, the
possibility of toxic fumes being released into a train car where they
just happen to be blocked by a fortuitous arrangement of luggage is a
close one.
Peacocke's thought is that this suffices to overcome the
sufficiency objection: though Lehrer's agent satisfies (i), she
does not satisfy (ii): given the facts about his psychology, the
possibility that he tries to *A* is not a close one. The
trouble, however, is that Peacocke's proposal is subject to
modified versions of Lehrer's counterexample. Consider an agent
whose aversion to red candies is not a permanent feature of her
psychology, but an unpredictable and temporary 'mood'.
Consider the agent at some time when she is in her aversive mood. This
agent satisfies (i), for the same reason as above, and she also
satisfies (ii): given the fragility of her mood, the possibility of
her trying is a close one in the relevant sense. Yet such an agent
lacks the ability to eat a red candy, in precisely the same way as she
does in Lehrer's original example.
It is an interesting question how we might develop other
'supplementation' strategies for (CA) (such strategies are
also suggested by Ginet 1980), though the track record of this method
of analysis in other domains (for instance, the project of
'supplementing' the analysis of knowledge in terms of
justified true belief, in response to (Gettier 1963)) does not inspire
confidence.
## 4. Modal theories of ability
There is a surprising disconnect between the way abilities have been
discussed in the philosophical literature in the tradition of Hume and
the way that they have been approached in more recent work in logic
and linguistics. Here, ability claims are understood as categorical
possibility claims: claims about what some agent does in some
non-actual state of affairs (or 'possible world'). Let a
*modal theory of ability* be any theory on which claims about
an agent's abilities are understood in terms of claims about
what that agent in fact does at some possible world (or set of
worlds). The idea that some such modal theory of ability must be true
is a presumption of much formal work on ability and
ability-ascriptions. Yet there are serious challenges to the idea that
ability is in this sense a modality.
### 4.1 The modal analysis
Intuitively, claims about ability are claims about possibility. It is
in some sense a truism that someone is able to perform some act just
in case it is possible for her to perform it.
To develop this purported truism, begin with the thought that for
*S* to have an ability to *A* it is necessary, but not
sufficient, that it be possible that *S* does *A*. This
claim will be contentious for various more specialized sorts of
possibility, such as *nomic* possibility. But if we may help
ourselves to the idea of possibility *simpliciter*
('metaphysical possibility,' on at least one reading
of that phrase), then this claim appears plausible. (We will survey
some historical and contemporary challenges to it below in Section
4.2.) On the other hand it seems implausible that this sort of
possibility is a sufficient condition: there are any number of acts
that that are metaphysically possible to perform that an agent might
nonetheless not be able to perform.
This suggests a natural hypothesis. To have an ability is for it to be
possible to *A* in some *restricted* sense of
possibility. As nomic possibility is possibility relative to the laws
of nature, and epistemic possibility is possibility relative to what
an agent knows, so may ability be possibility relative to some
independently specifiable set of conditions.
To render this hypothesis precisely, we may help ourselves to the
formal framework of 'possible worlds,' which offers an
elegant and powerful semantics for modal language. On this framework,
a proposition is possible just in case it is true at some possible
world. We can then say an agent is able to *A* just in case she performs
that act at some world (or set of worlds) that satisfy some
independently specifiable set of conditions.
We thus arrive at the modal analysis of ability:
(MA) *S* has the ability to *A* iff *S*
does *A* at some world (or set of worlds) satisfying condition
*C*.
(MA) is actually not itself an analysis but rather a template for a
general family of analyses. Different members of this family will be
distinguished by the different candidates they might propose for *C*, as
well as whether they quantify over individual worlds or sets of
worlds. Nonetheless, these analyses demonstrate sufficient theoretical
unity that they may be viewed, at an appropriate level of abstraction,
as a single approach to the analysis of ability.
Two points about (MA) bear noting. First, 'modal' here is
being used in a relatively strict and narrow way. Sometimes
'modal' is used loosely to describe phenomena that are
connected to possibility (and necessity) in some way or other. As
noted above, it is a truism that there is some connection between
ability and necessity, and so that ability is in this loose sense
'modal.' The proponent of (MA) is concerned with modality
in a stricter sense: she proposes that ability may be analyzed in
terms of the precise framework of propositions and possible worlds
just adumbrated. The opponent of (MA), in turn, grants that ability
has something to do with possibility but denies that any such analysis
succeeds.
Second, while (MA) has been presented as an alternative to (CA), (CA)
is arguably just one particular version of (MA). For, as noted above,
(CA) appeals to a subjunctive conditional, and the standard semantics
for the subjunctive conditional (developed in slightly different ways
in Stalnaker 1968 and Lewis 1973) is told in terms of quantification
over possible worlds. Specifically (on Stalnaker's version) a
subjunctive conditional is true just in case its consequent is true at
the world where its antecedent is true that is otherwise maximally
similar to the actual world. In these terms, (CA) is roughly
equivalent to the following:
>
> (CAmodal) *S* has the ability to *A*
> iff *S* does *A* at a world at which *S* tries
> to *A* that is otherwise maximally similar to the actual world.
>
This is patently a version of (MA), with '*S* tries
to *A* and is otherwise maximally similar to the actual
world' serving as condition *C*.
If this is correct, then most discussions of the analysis on ability
in the twentieth century have focused on a special and somewhat
idiosyncratic case of a much broader program of analysis, namely the
program of giving a modal analysis of ability. The considerations
brought forth in the remainder of this section, in contrast, are
concerned with the general case.
### 4.2 The modal analysis: logical considerations
There are two questions that might be raised for this proposal about
ability. First, does ability indeed admit of some kind of modal
analysis? Second, if it does, how exactly are we to spell out the
details of that analysis -- in particular, how are we to
articulate condition C? Let us begin with the first, more basic,
question.
According to (MA), performing an act at some possible world (or set of
worlds) is both necessary and sufficient for having the ability to
perform that act. One way of challenging this claim is to deny the
necessity claim: that is, to argue that it is sometimes the case that
an agent is able to perform an act that she does not perform at any
possible world.
This is an argument that has in fact been made by several authors.
Descartes, for one, appears to have argued that God is such an agent
(Curley 1984). A genuinely omnipotent being, one might argue, should
be able to perform any act whatsoever, even the impossible ones. This
view of omnipotence is contentious, but it is not clear that it should
be ruled out formally, by the very analysis of ability, as (MA) does.
Spencer (2017) argues that even non-omnipotent agents may sometimes
have the ability to perform acts that they do not perform at any
possible world.
Let us grant, however, that the possibility of performing an act is a
necessary condition for performing that act, and that in this sense an
attribution of ability entails a possibility claim. One might
nonetheless resist the view that ability admits of a modal analysis in
the manner suggested by (MA).
That is the kind of argument developed in a prescient discussion by
Anthony Kenny (Kenny 1975; the presentation of Kenny here is indebted
to the discussion in Brown 1988). Kenny argues that, if something like
(MA) is indeed true, then ability should obey the principles that
govern the possibility operator in standard modal logics. Kenny claims
that ability fails to satisfy the following two principles:
(1) \(A \to \Diamond A.\)
Informally, (1) expresses the principle that if an agent performs an
action, then she has the ability to perform this action. This is,
Kenny argues, false of ability.
(2) \(\Diamond(A \lor B) \to (\Diamond A \lor \Diamond B).\)
Informally, (2) expresses the principle that if an agent has the
ability to perform one of two actions, then she has the ability to
perform either the first action or the second action. This is, Kenny
argues, false of ability.
Let us begin with (1). Kenny claims that this principle is false in
light of cases like the following: 'A hopeless darts player may,
once in a lifetime, hit the bull, but be unable to repeat the
performance because he does not have the ability to hit the
bull' (Kenny 1975, 136). This kind of 'fluky
success' has been extensively discussed in the philosophical
literature -- perhaps most famously in Austin (1956) -- in
order to make a variety of points. Kenny's insight is to observe
that these simple cases tell against the modal analysis of ability, as
they violate an axiom of many modal logics, namely any system as
strong as the system **T**.
A simple response to this point is to deny that **T** (or
any stronger logic) is the correct logic for ability. To deny this is
still to allow for a treatment of ability within the framework of
possible worlds. Notably, the modal logic **K** is one
that fails to validate (1). A natural response to Kenny's first
point, then, is to say that **K**, rather than
**T** or some stronger system, is the correct modal logic
of ability.
This response is not available, however, in response to Kenny's
second objection. Recall that objection was that (2) is true of
possibility but not of ability. Here the retreat to weaker modal
logics will not work, since (2) is provable on the weakest standard
modal logic, namely **K**. Yet the parallel claim does
not seem true of ability. Kenny gives the following example:
>
> Given a pack of cards, I have the ability to pick out on request a
> card which is either black or red; but I don't have the ability to
> pick out a red card on request nor the ability to pick out a black
> card on request. (Kenny 1975, 137)
>
This then appears to be a case where *S* has the ability to
*A* or *B* but lacks the ability to *A* and lacks
the ability to *B*. So it appears that (2) is false of ability.
In light of this Kenny concludes that 'if we regard possible
worlds semantics as making explicit what is involved in being a
possibility, we must say that ability is not any kind of
possibility' (Kenny 1975, 140).
To appreciate Kenny's conclusion, it is instructive to work
through why precisely this is a counterexample to (MA). Consider an
agent *S* who has the ability to pick a red card or a black
card, but does not have the ability to pick a red card or the ability
to pick a black card. According to (MA), *S* has the ability
to *A* iff *S* does *A* at some world (or set of
worlds) satisfying condition *C*. Consider the case where (MA)
appeals to a single world, not a set of worlds. If *S* has the
ability to pick a red card or pick a black card, then by (MA) there is
a world *w* satisfying condition *C* where *S*
picks a red card or black card. Then either *S* picks a red
card at *w* or *S* picks a black card
at *w*. Then, applying (MA) now in the other
direction, *S* has the ability to pick a red card or *S*
has the ability to pick a black card. But that, by assumption, is not
the case. Since (MA) is the only substantive premise appealed to that
argument, (MA) must be rejected.
Note that this argument turned essentially on adopting the version of
(MA) which appealed to a single world, rather than a set of worlds. So
one way of responding to this objection is by appealing to sets of
worlds in the modal analysis of ability. This is precisely the
proposal of Mark Brown, who argues that, if we take accessibility
relations to hold between a world and a set of worlds, then we
may capture talk of ability within a possible worlds framework that is
broadly in the spirit of standard views (Brown 1988; see also Cross
1986). Alternatively, we may take this sort of point to militate in
favor of a return to hypothetical theories of ability, since, at least
on Lewis's view of subjunctive conditionals, it may be that a
disjunction follows from a counterfactual claim without either of its
disjuncts following from that claim (Lewis 1973, 79-80). Modal
accounts that appeal to sets of worlds are 'non-normal' in
the sense that they do not satisfy the axiom **K**, but
they remain true to the letter of (MA) as well as the spirit of modal
analyses generally, insofar as they avail themselves only of possible
worlds and quantification thereover.
### 4.3 The modal analysis: linguistic considerations
In the material mode, the modal analysis gives an account of what it
is to have an ability in terms of quantification over possible worlds.
In the formal mode, it gives a semantics for the ascription of ability
-- paradigmatically, sentences involving 'can' or
'is able to' -- in terms of quantification over
possible worlds.
This formal aspect of the modal analysis has been prominent in the
philosophical and linguistic literature because the standard semantics
for ability ascriptions is an explicitly modal one. This is the view
developed in a series of papers by Angelika Kratzer (Kratzer 2012).
Kratzer treats expressions such as '*S*
can *A*' and '*S* is able
to *A*' as possibility claims. That is, '*S*
is able to *A*' is true just in case there is a possible
world *w* meeting certain conditions at which *S*
does *A*. The conditions are that (i) *w* be accessible
given some contextually-specified set of facts (the
*modal base*) and (ii) that *w* be at least as good,
according to a contextually-specified ranking of worlds
(the *ordering source*), as any other accessible world. The
Kratzer semantics is thus an instance of the modal analysis on its
semantic formulation:
>
> (MAsemantic) '*S* is able to *A*'
> is true iff *S* does *A* at some world (or set of
> worlds) satisfying condition *C*.
>
A number of objection have been brought against the modal analysis in
this latter, formal, aspect.
One objection prominent in the recent literature (Mandelkern et al.
2017; Schwarz 2020) is that Kratzer's semantics, or any analysis
of the form of (MAsemantic), appears to have trouble
marking an intuitive distinction between what someone is able to do
and what it is possible for her to do. Let us say that an unskilled
darts-player is about to throw a dart. She utters:
>
> (3) I am able to hit the bullseye
>
Intuitively, what she says is false: she is not able to hit the
bullseye, as she is a poor darts-player. Yet there is an accessible
and perfectly good possible world *w* at which she hits the
bullseye -- which is just to say, in the object language, that it
is possible for her to hit the bullseye.
This case suggests the Kratzer semantics lacks the resources to
capture the distinctively agentive force of a sentences such as (3).
There are, in addition, a number of other outstanding empirical
problems for Kratzer's semantics for ability modals. One is the
problem of accounting for 'compulsion' modals such as
'I cannot but tell the truth' (Mandelkern et al. 2017).
Another is that of accommodating the 'actuality
entailment' whereby, in many languages, certain ability
sentences entail that the act in question was actually performed
(Bhatt 1999; see also Hacquard 2009). Whatever our verdict on
(MAsemantic), the semantics of ability-ascriptions remains
an unresolved and potentially rich issue at the boundary of
linguistics and the philosophy of action.
## 5. New approaches to ability
The foregoing has indicated serious concerns about the adequacy of the
orthodox approaches to ability and its ascription: the conditional
analysis (CA), and the modal analysis (MA), of which (CA) is arguably
just a special case. This raises the question of what a
non-hypothetical and non-modal account of ability and its ascription
might look like.
Since abilities are, as noted in Section 1.1, a kind of power, one
natural idea is to analyze abilities in terms of some other kind of
power. This appeal may proceed in different ways. One is by appealing
to dispositions, and by analyzing abilities in terms of this
purportedly better-understood kind of power. Another is by departing
more radically from the standard ontology of recent metaphysics, and
analyzing ability in terms of some new and distinctive variety of
power. We will consider these approaches in turn in Sections 5.1 and
5.2. Finally, in Section 5.3, we will turn to miscellaneous
alternative approaches to ability, which reject the conditional and
modal analyses, but which do not purport to analyze abilities in terms
of powers either.
### 5.1 The 'new dispositionalism'
In recent years several authors have revisited the thought that we may
give a broadly hypothetical account of ability, without endorsing the
problematic claim (CA). This is the view of ability that has been
defended by Smith (2003), Vihvelin (2004, 2013), and Fara
(2008). Following Clarke (2009), we may label this view the
'new dispositionalism.'
What unifies the new dispositionalists is that they return to the
conditional analysis of ability in light of two thoughts. The first
thought is one already noted: that there is a variety of power,
dispositions, that is similar in many respects to abilities. The
second thought is that there are well-known problems of giving a
conditional analysis of *dispositions*, in light of which many
authors have been inclined to reject the long-assumed link between
dispositions and conditionals. Taken together, these thoughts yield a
promising new line on abilities: that though we ought to reject the
conditional analysis of abilities, we may yet defend a
*dispositional* account of abilities.
Why ought we reject the conditional analysis of dispositions? Consider
the following analysis of the disposition to break when struck:
>
> (CD) *x* is disposed to break when struck iff *S* would
> break if *S* were struck.
>
Despite the intuitive appeal of (CD), there appear to be at least two
kinds of counterexamples to it. First, consider a crystal glass that,
if it were about to be struck, would transform into steel. This glass
is disposed to break when struck, but it is not true that it would
break if struck--the transformation renders this false. This is a
case of *finking*, in the language of Martin 1994. Second,
consider a crystal glass stuffed with styrofoam packaging. This glass
is disposed to break when struck, but it is not true that it would
break if struck--the packaging prevents this. This is a case of
*masking*, in the language of Johnston 1992. In light of such
cases, it seems we ought to reject (CD).
The bearing of these points on our earlier discussion of the
conditional analysis is the following. There appear to be quite
*general* problems for giving a conditional analysis of powers.
So it may be that the failures of the conditional analysis of ability
were not due to any fact about abilities, but rather to a shortcoming
of conditional analyses generally. One way of overcoming this problem,
if this diagnosis is correct, is to analyze abilities directly in
terms of dispositions.
Such an analysis is proposed by Fara 2008, who argues:
>
> *S* has the ability to *A* in circumstances *C*
> iff she has the disposition to *A* when, in circumstances
> *C*, she tries to *A*. (Fara 2008, 848)
>
The similarity of this analysis to the hypothetical analyses canvassed
earlier are clear. This raises several immediate questions, such as
whether this analysis can overcome the problem of sufficiency that
plagued those approaches (see Fara 2008, 851-852 for an
affirmative answer, and Clarke 2009, 334-336 for some doubts).
What is most striking about the new dispositionalists, however, is how
they bring this sort of account of ability to bear on certain familiar
cases.
Consider how the new dispositionalism bears on so-called
'Frankfurt cases.' These are cases due to Frankfurt
1969, where an agent chooses to and performs some action *A*
while at the same time there is some other action *B* such
that, had the agent been about to choose *B*, an
'intervener' would have altered the agent's brain so
that the agent would have chosen, and performed, *A* instead.
One question about such cases is whether the agent, in the actual
sequence of events, had the ability to *B*. Frankfurt's
intuition, and that of most others, is that she did not. Given the
further claim that the agent is nonetheless morally responsible for
doing *A*, this case appears to be a counterexample to the what
Frankfurt calls the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP): an
agent is morally responsible for *A*ing only if she had the
ability to perform some action other than *A*.
The new dispositionalists disagree. Let us focus on Fara's
diagnosis of the case. The question of whether the agent had the
ability to *B* turns, for Fara, on the question of whether she
was disposed to *B* when she tried to *B*. Fara
claims that she *does* have such a disposition. The
presence of the intervener is, on Fara's view, like the
aforementioned styrofoam packaging in a crystal glass. It
*masks* the disposition of the glass to break when struck, but
does not *remove* that disposition. Similarly, Fara argues, the
presence of the intervener *masks* the agent's disposition
to *B* when she tries to *B*, but does not
*remove* that disposition. (There is some disagreement among
the new dispositionalists about whether this is a case of finking or
masking; see Clarke 2009, 340 for discussion). So, *pace*
Frankfurt, the agent does have the ability to *B* after all.
And so we have, in this case at least, no counterexample to PAP.
A natural worry at this point is that the new dispositionalist has
simply *changed the subject*. For it seems clear that, in
a perfectly ordinary sense of ability, Frankfurt's agent
*lacks* the ability to do otherwise. An account of ability
which denies this seems to be speaking of some other concept
altogether. One way of bringing out what is missing is the idea that
there seems to be a connection between my abilities, in the sense of
ability that is relevant to free will, and what is *up to me*.
Clarke claims that this sort of connection fails on the new
dispositionalist view of ability:
>
> Although the presence of a fink or mask that would prevent one's
> *A*ing is compatible with having a general capacity (the
> unimpaired competence to *A*), there is an ordinary sense in
> which in such circumstances an agent might well be unable to
> *A* ... If there is something in place that would prevent
> me from *A*ing should I try to *A*, if it is not up to
> me that it would so prevent me, and if it is not up to me that such a
> thing is in place, then even if I have a capacity to *A*, it is
> not up to me whether I exercise that capacity. (Clarke 2009, 339)
>
Thus the objection is that, while the new dispositionalist has perhaps
offered a theory of *something*, it is not a theory of
ability.
How should the new dispositionalist respond? One thought is that we
are here again encountering the distinction between general and
specific abilities. The new dispositionalist might contend that, while
the agent in a Frankfurt case may lack the specific ability to do
otherwise, she has the general ability to do otherwise, and that it is
this general ability of which the new dispositionalist is giving an
account.
This response, however, postpones a crucial and much broader question.
The question is this: should 'ability' in (PAP) be
understood as general ability, or specific ability? If general ability
is what matters, then Frankfurt cases may indeed not tell against
(PAP), for the agent retains the general ability to do otherwise. If
it is specific ability that matters, however, the challenge to
(PAP) stands (see also Whittle 2010). This is a vital question for
understanding the purported connection between agents' abilities
and questions of moral responsibility, whatever our verdict on new
dispositionalism itself. (See Cyr and Swenson 2019 for a helpful
recent discussion of these issues).
### 5.2 Abilities as distinctive powers
As noted in Section 1.1, dispositions are simply one member of the
broader family of powers, albeit one that has figured prominently in
recent metaphysics. An alternative account of abilities might give an
account of abilities in terms of some other kind of power, perhaps one
better-suited to the distinctive aspects of abilities.
One account of this kind is developed in a series of works by Barbara
Vetter (especially Vetter 2015). Vetter proposes that our basic modal
notion should be *potentiality*. On a traditional view (which
Vetter rejects) dispositions involve a dyadic relation between a
stimulus and a manifestation (for example: a glass is disposed to
break when struck). In contrast, potentials involve a monadic relation
to a manifestation (for example: a glass has the potential to break).
This makes potentials especially well-suited to give an account of
abilities, which also appear to involve a monadic relation to an act,
namely the act denoted by the complement of an ability-ascription (for
example: I am able to play tennis). To have an ability, Vetter argues,
is simply to have a certain kind of potentiality. Vetter also provides
an explicit semantics for agentive modality in terms of the ascription
of potentiality (Vetter 2013), which constitutes a systematic
alternative to (MA).
Yet another view is suggested by recent work by Helen Steward
emphasizing the traditional idea of a 'two-way power'
(Steward 2012, Steward 2020; see also Alvarez 2013). Steward argues
that actions are exercises of two-way powers -- 'powers
which an agent can exercise or not at a given moment, even holding all
prior conditions at that moment fixed' (Steward 2020, 345).
These are to be contrasted with one-way powers, which manifest
whenever their manifestation conditions are realized, as a fragile
glass breaks whenever it is struck. Unlike both the new
dispositionalists on the one hand and Vetter on the other, Steward
sees a fundamental asymmetry between agents, who are bearers of
two-way powers, and mere objects, who are are bearers only of one-way
powers. It is natural then to think that what it is to have an ability
is to have a two-way power of a certain kind, and that a theory of
ability should follow from an account of agency and the two-way
powers.
We thus have at least three 'power-based' views of
abilities: the new dispositionalism, Vetter's potentiality-based
view, and Steward's two-way power-based view. It is instructive
to consider how these three accounts differ with respect to two larger
philosophical projects.
One is the project of giving an analysis of modal language, including
ability-ascriptions, in terms of possible worlds. The new
dispositionalist rejects (CA) and (MA) but she is still, in principle,
sympathetic with that project, insofar as she allows that disposition
ascriptions themselves may be ultimately understood in terms of
quantification over possible worlds. This kind of view is explicitly
endorsed, for instance, by Smith (2003). In contrast, Vetter is
explicitly opposed to this project, while Steward's view appears
neutral on this question.
Another is the project of arguing that agents' abilities are, or
are not, compatible with the possibility of determinism. This is a
question we touched on briefly in Section 5.1. As noted there, the new
dispositionalists are motivated, in part, by the project of arguing
for compatibilism. In contrast, Steward is explicitly concerned to
defend incompatibilism. (Vetter appears to be neutral on this
question.) The question of how the analysis of ability bears on the
free will debates looms over many of these discussions, and we will
confront it directly and at some length below in Section 6.
### 5.3 Other approaches
Still other approaches to ability reject (CA) and (MA) while rejecting
also the thought that some appeal to power -- be it a
disposition, a potentiality, or a two-way power -- is needed to
account for abilities.
One recurrent thought is that, despite the various challenges that
have been brought against it, ability is still intimately connected to
some kind of relation between an agent's volitions (tryings,
intendings) and her actions. One semantically sophisticated
development of this thought is Mandelkern et al, 2017, which proposes
to take as basic a notion of 'practically available
actions,' and to develop in terms of these a semantics for
agentive modality, one on which conditionals linking volitions to
actions continue to play an essential role. Another approach, in a
recent book-length treatment of ability (Jaster 2020), proposes that
abilities should be thought of in terms of proportions of cases where
an agent successfully does what she intends to do (compare the
approach to dispositions advocated in Manley and Wasserman 2008). Both
of these approaches are explicit in their denial of (CA), but they
share -- with the new dispositionalists -- the thought that
the analysis of ability should somehow appeal to a pattern of
dependence between volition and action.
This is not surprising. The conditional analysis is a redoubtable
proposal, endorsed by many of the major figures in English-language
philosophy. In light of that, it seems reasonable to try to discard
the letter of (CA), but retain its spirit. For it may be that the
historical failure of (CA) is due to difficulties and oversights that
our perhaps firmer grasp of technical issues allows us to overcome.
This is a sensible and well-motivated project, though it remains to be
seen whether it will be, in the end, a successful one.
There remain still other accounts that do not fit easily into the
taxonomy provided here. These include primitivist proposals, which
take ability or some closely related notion as analytically
fundamental. One development of this idea is Maier 2015, who proposes,
contrary to most authors, that specific ability is fundamentally prior
to general ability. He argues that we should give an account of
general ability in terms of specific abilities, which he calls
'options': roughly, an agent has the general ability to A
iff she normally has A as an option. Options, in turn, are primitives.
Much here will hang on saying more about options, and in what sense
they figure as primitives in the theory of agency.
Finally, an outline of a proposal by David Lewis (dated to 2001 but
only recently published as Lewis 2020) offers an altogether different
approach to ability. Lewis is motivated, like many proponents of (CA),
by the goal of defending compatibilism, but he takes (CA) to be
unsatisfactory. He therefore proposes a non-conditional analysis of
ability. His analysis, roughly, is that *S* has the ability to
perform an action *B* just in case there is some basic
action *A* such that (i) *S*'s doing *A*
would cause or constitute *S*'s doing *B* and (ii)
there is no obstacle to *S*'s doing *A*. The
problem of giving a theory of ability then becomes the problem of
giving a theory of obstacles, something at which Lewis, in his
outline, makes a beginning. (See Beebee et al 2020 for
additional discussion).
Lewis's proposal is an inspiration for further research in at
least two ways. First, it indicates that Lewis, a systematic philosopher of modality, saw the
problem of giving an analysis of ability as a significant outstanding
project. Second, it demonstrates that genuinely novel approaches to
ability remain available, and the project of giving a theory of
ability may yet be in its early stages.
## 6. Abilities and the free will debates
Thus far our questions about abilities have been formal ones: we have
been asking what it is to have an ability without concerning ourselves
with the substantive work that a theory of ability might have to do.
But there is much work to be had for a theory of ability: abilities
have figured as unexplained explainers in a range of philosophical
theories, for example in accounts of concepts (Millikan 2000), of
knowledge (Greco 2009, Sosa 2007), and of 'knowing what it's
like' (Lewis 1988). Perhaps the most prominent substantive role
for a theory of ability has been the uses to which accounts of
ability have been put in the free will debates. So let us close with a
brief survey of what work a theory of ability might be expected to do
in those debates.
Questions about abilities have figured most prominently in debates
over compatibilism. 'Compatibilism' is used in many ways,
but let us understand it here as the thesis that the ability to
perform actions one does not perform is compossible with the truth of
determinism, which we may take to be the view that the facts about the
past and the laws jointly determine the facts about the present and
all future moments. (We should sharply distinguish this view, which we
might call *classical compatibilism*, from more recent views
such as the 'semi-compatibilism' of Fischer and Ravizza
1998). Insofar as compatibilism, so understood, has been explicitly
defended, these defenses have made appeal to theories of ability,
notably the conditional analysis and its variants, as well as the
dispositionalist analysis favored by the new dispositionalists.
In the discussion of the conditional analysis, we distinguished
between *global* and *local* counterexamples to
hypothetical theories of ability, where the former appealed to the
fact that any such theory would render ability compatible with
determinism which, according to the objector, it is not. There we
noted the dialectical limitations of such counterexamples, namely the
contentiousness of their main premise. But compatibilists have often
been guilty of what seems to be the opposite mistake. Namely, they
have offered theories of ability which show abilities to be compatible
with determinism, and have argued *from* this to the claim that
such abilities are indeed compatible with determinism.
The shortcomings of this strategy are nicely diagnosed by Peter van
Inwagen. After surveying the local counterexamples that arise for
various hypothetical theories of ability, van Inwagen imagines that we
have arrived at the best possible hypothetical theory of ability,
which he labels 'the Analysis'. van Inwagen then
writes:
>
> What does the Analysis do for us? How does it affect our understanding
> of the Compatibility Problem? It does very little for us, so far as I
> can see, unless we have some reason to think it is *correct*.
> Many compatibilists seem to think that they need only present a
> conditional analysis of ability, defend it against, or modify it in
> the face of, such counter-examples as may arise, and that they have
> thereby done what is necessary to defend compatibilism. That is not
> how I see it. The particular analysis of ability that a compatibilist
> presents is, as I see it, simply one of his premisses; his central
> premiss, in fact. And premisses need to be defended. (van Inwagen
> 1983, 121)
>
van Inwagen's point is that, provided the incompatibilist has
offered *arguments* for the claim that such abilities are
incompatible with determinism--as, in van Inwagen's
presentation, the incompatibilist has--the production of an
analysis is as yet no answer to those arguments. For those arguments
are also arguments, *inter alia*, against the
compatibilist's favored account of ability.
There are, then, several obstacles for the compatibilist who wishes to
appeal to an account of ability in defense of compatibilism. First,
there is the general difficulty of actually giving an extensionally
adequate theory of ability. In addition, we have now turned up a
couple of more specific challenges to the compatibilist. There is van
Inwagen's point just outlined, namely that arguments for the
incompatibility of abilities and determinism are, *inter alia*,
arguments against any theory of ability that is congenial to the
compatibilist. And, finally, there is the point that we encountered in
our discussion of the new dispositionalism in Section 5.1, which is
that certain platitudes about ability -- in particular, those
involved in certain judgments about moral responsibility -- may
be recalcitrant to compatibilist treatments. Taken together, these
points seem to pose a serious obstacle to any theory of ability that
is both compatible with determinism and in accord with our ordinary
judgments about what ability requires.
What is the compatibilist to say in light of these obstacles? One
response is to make a distinction between two kinds of compatibilist
project. (Compare Pryor 2000 on responses to skepticism). One project
is to *convince* someone moved by the incompatibilist's
arguments to retreat from her position. Call this *ambitious*
compatibilism. For precisely the reasons van Inwagen gives, it is
doubtful that any theory of ability will suffice for a defense of
ambitious compatibilism. There is another project, however, that the
compatibilist might be engaging in. Let us say that, for some reason
or other, she herself is not convinced by the incompatibilist's
argument. She is still left with an explanatory burden, namely to
explain, if only to her *own* satisfaction, how it *could
be* that abilities are compatible with the truth of determinism.
Here the compatibilist's aim is not to convince the
incompatibilist of the error of her ways, but simply to work out a
satisfactory conception of compatibilism. Let us call this
*modest* compatibilism. This distinction is not often made, and
it is not always clear which of these projects classical
compatibilists are engaged in. If the latter project is indeed part of
classical compatibilism, then we may grant many of the above points
while still granting the theory of ability a central place in defenses
of compatibilism. For it may be that, though a theory of ability is of
no use to the ambitious compatibilist, it has a crucial role to play
in the defense of modest compatibilism.
Even these compatibilist aspirations, however, may be overly
optimistic, or at least premature. For in surveying theories of
ability we have turned up serious difficulties, for both hypothetical
and non-hypothetical approaches, which do not appear to turn on issues
about determinism. So it may be that the best hope for progress is to
pursue theories of ability while setting to one side the problems
raised in the free will debates. For given the difficulties posed by
abilities, and given the significance of theories of ability for areas
of philosophy quite removed from the free will debates, there is
something to be said for pursuing a theory of ability while embracing,
if only temporarily, a certain quietism about the puzzles that
determinism may pose. |
abner-burgos | ## 1. Life
There are not many sources on the life of Abner. The majority of the
sources are autobiographical passages in his works (especially
*Mostrador de Justicia*). Abner was born around 1260, probably
in the Jewish community of Burgos, one of the major communities in
Castile. While still Jewish, Abner worked as a book trader, a rabbi,
and he may have been a physician as well. During this time he was the
head of a yeshiva (Jewish academy) in Burgos, but we do not know if
this yeshiva was a public institution or just a private group of
students that met in his home. We know from a former pupil, Rabbi
Isaac Pulgar, and from the sources that he utilizes in his works, that
during the Jewish period of his life, Abner was a philosopher, being a
part of the Maimonidean-Averroist trend of Jewish philosophy at the
time.
In spite of the majority opinion of modern
scholars,[1]
Abner probably was not a Kabbalist before his conversion to
Christianity. This mistake is based essentially on two sources: the
fact that some of Abner's arguments for the Trinity and Incarnation
can be interpreted as deriving from Kabbalistic sources, and the
existence of another Rabbi Abner (not a common name for Jews of his
time), a Kabbalist whom Rabbi Isaac of Acre cited many times. In my
opinion, Abner's argument for the Trinity and Incarnation is not based
on Kabbalistic sources, but stems from his Neo-Platonic and standard
Christian scriptural
background.[2]
Additionally, Abner (the apostate) did not use many important
Kabbalistic
sources.[3]
His opinions are not the same as the other Rabbi Abner's (the one
that Rabbi Isaac of Acre quotes), and we can see that the two authors
do not share the same background, nor do they use the same sources,
with Abner utilizing almost entirely sources taken from the Jewish
philosophical and traditional rabbinic
corpuses.[4]
almost all of Rabbi Abner's sources are taken from the commentary of
Nahmanides to the Torah, a book that Abner the apostate almost never
quoted.
The beginning of Abner's doubts about Judaism began with the incident
of a false messiah in Avila in 1295. According to Abner, the Jews of
the community, which is in North Castile, went outside the city to
welcome the messiah, but instead of the messiah they received a
rainfall of crosses that stuck to their clothes. Some of the Jews who
witnessed the miracle went to Abner for advice. This event instilled
in Abner some doubts about the question of the reason for the ongoing
exile of Israel and the truth of Judaism. After twenty-two years of
feeling ambivalent (i.e., around 1317) Abner wrote about his first
revelation in a
dream.[5]
In his dream he saw a man that told him to be "a teacher of
righteousness" (*mostrador de justicia*, not
coincidentally the name of Abner's main book) and to bring his people
to freedom from exile. This dream just accents the uncertainty of the
Jewish Rabbi. After three more years of studies he had a second dream
wherein he had the same revelation, this time noticing that on the
clothes the man wore were crosses like the cross of Jesus the
Christian. This dream prompted him toward his final conversion around
1320/1321. After his conversion, Abner became the sacristan of the
collegiate church of Valladolid and devoted himself to the propagation
of Christianity amongst his former fellows Jews (he had come to the
conclusion that conversion to Christianity was the only way to be
saved from the Exile). We know he wrote an extended polemicist oeuvre
and that he took part in the anti-Jewish polemic effort in North
Castile around 1336-1339. There was a public disputation between
Abner and a rabbi that occurred probably around 1335-1336 on the
subject of the prayer of the Jews against the apostates. This dispute
was the main reason for the decree against this part of the Jewish
prayer (*birkat**ha-minim*) by Alfonso XI in 1336. Abner
probably died in 1347 or later.
## 2. Works
Abner's works may be divided into three different categories: polemic,
scientific and philosophic.
Polemic works: *Mostrador**de Justicia* is the earliest
and most important work of those writings of Abner that have survived.
Only a translation (probably by Abner himself) in Castilian exists
today, whereas the original Hebrew was lost. The book starts with a
brief introduction wherein Abner writes about the reasons for his
conversion (the incident in Avila and his two dreams). The main part
of the book is a debate between a Christian (the master) and a Jew
(the rebel). In contrast to other works similar to this type of
polemic debate, in the Mostrador, the rebel does not become a
Christian, and despite his losing the debate, the Jew continues to
believe in his ostensibly false religion. The book is divided into ten
chapters, with each chapter being subdivided into a number of
paragraphs. Each paragraph is a speech by one of the protagonists of
the
debate.[6]
Summary of the chapters:
I.
Abner indicated which books could be used as a basis for proof
during polemic debates. In this chapter the master and the rebel agree
that both sides may bring in proofs from philosophical arguments.
II.
Abner's proof of the giving of a new law upon the coming of the
Messiah.
III.
An explanation and justification for the revelation of a new
law.
IV.
The arguments of those who deny that the messiah was to come and
die and bring atonement for the sin of Adam; and what refutes those
arguments.
V.
The arguments of the rebel which contradict the master's position
on the Trinity and the Incarnation of the person of the Son in the
human form of the Christ, and the masters answer to those
arguments.
VI.
The rebel's arguments against incarnation of the divinity in the
human form of the Christ and how the master tries to refute those
arguments.
VII.
An attempt to prove that the hope that the Jews have in the
coming of the prophesied Christ is a false hope, and that Jesus of
Nazareth was the Christ who came according to the time that was
indicated for the coming of the Christ in the books of the prophets
and the sages.
VIII.
Arguments of the Jews that the Christ has not yet come, which is
the basis for their claim that the Christians are the people of Edom
or Esau, which was to be destroyed and to fall before the coming of
the Christ; and an attempt to refute those arguments.
IX.
An attempt to prove that the hope that the Jews have for the
coming of the Christ at any time is a false hope, and for this reason
the Jews are still in exile from the Land of Israel.
X.
Abner's attempt to prove that the Christians, according to the
customs and commandments which they have in their laws, should be
called the Holy Nation of Israel, and that the Jews, according to the
customs and commandments which they have in the laws of the Talmud are
not fit to return to the Land of Israel; and the rebel's attempt to
refute those arguments.
*Responses to the Blasphemer (Teshuvot la-Meharef)*: this book
survived both in the original
Hebrew[7]
and in a Castilian
translation.[8]
This book is a response to the different letters that Abner's only
known student, Rabbi Isaac Pulgar, wrote against his determinist and
Christian
writings.[9]
Abner did not divide this book into formal sections, though the book
contains four main subjects presented in a contiguous fashion: (1) an
introduction wherein Abner attacks his former pupil on his
philosophical position and other personal matters between the two; (2)
the Trinity and how it can be based on philosophy, scripture and
quotes from the Jewish rabbinic literature; (3) the necessary
existence of the incarnation of divinity in the world; and (4) a proof
of the aforementioned Christian beliefs derived from scripture and
other Jewish sources (Talmud and Midrashim). In this last part, which
takes up almost half the book, Abner argues that the messiah had
already come and that Christianity is true.
While Abner's arguments regarding the Trinity and Incarnation are
generally more developed in *Mostrador**de Justicia*,
the philosophical importance of this work resides with his critique of
the Jewish philosopher. Here Abner distinguishes between the regular
Jewish people (that have some hope to become Christian and to be
saved) and Jewish philosophers (like Pulgar). The latter are hopeless
and are left with no religion, mostly due to their opinions that only
the people who attain scientific knowledge have some kind of existence
after death. Due to their feeling elevated over others, these
philosophers have no hope of improving and accepting the truth of
Christianity. Parts of Abner's critique of Jewish philosophers in this
book most probably influenced Crescas.
*Libro de la Ley* (*Book of the Law*). This work
survived only
fragmentally[10]
in Castilian. The major argument of Abner in this book is that the
Jewish people forgot the secrets of the Torah, which are manifested by
the Christian doctrines, especially the Trinity.
*Sefer Teshuvot ha-Meshubot* (*The Book of Responses to the
Apostasies*) exists only in
Hebrew.[11]
There are three polemic
letters[12]
that deal especially with scriptural arguments on the subject of the
coming of the
messiah.[13]
## 3. The Trinity and Incarnation
The two major subjects of the philosophical polemical works of Abner
are the Trinity and Incarnation. Abner had an original view on the
Trinity. In his opinion, one can prove philosophically the reality of
the
Trinity.[14]
He claimed that only the division of the divine source of the world
can explain the diversity of the world. The infinite force of God (the
father) would burn the finite matter of the world if it were not for
some "transformer" that adapted the divine force to the
finitude of matter (the son). Abner distinguished between two parts of
the son. The superior son is part of the transcendent divinity. The
inferior son is the divine essence in all the different parts of the
world. The transformer of the divine force and essence is the superior
son.
Regarding the theory of the divine attributes, Abner also had an
original opinion. He distinguished between the attributes that are the
essence of God and the attributes that are essential to God. The
attributes of the essence of God divide themselves only within the
personas of the Trinity. The rest of the attributes are only essential
to God (and could be attributed to any one of the personas). This
division of the divine attributes influenced Rabbi Hasdai Crescas,who
later influenced Spinoza.
Abner's opinion on Incarnation was also very original. According to
Abner, the essence of God is in the entire world. The world is
composed only of corrupted matter and of divine essence in different
degrees of purity. Even the most corrupted matter has inside itself
some divine essence. The divine essence gives the corporeal form to
matter and produces in it its dimensions. The uniqueness of a human
being is the capacity to purify one's matter, thereby reaching a
higher degree of divine essence. According to Abner, what made Jesus
unique was that he was born of the highest matter, enabling him to
unite with the highest degree of divine essence that a human can
attain. Abner thought that the superior son does not incarnate in this
world. Jesus was only the highest degree of the inferior son that is
present in the essences of the entire world.
The opinion of Abner on Incarnation is closely related to his view of
the doctrine of Original Sin. In Abner's opinion, the reason for the
original sin was Adam's lack of comprehension. Adam thought that his
intellect, which is an incarnation of divinity in people, was God, and
he therefore wrongly concluded that he was God. In order to fix Adam's
error, humanity needed the Torah of Moses, which emphasized the unity
of God in an exaggerated form and therefore explained (somewhat
inaccurately) that God does not incarnate in the World at all. Only
after this critical step, humanity was able to understand that, though
there is divinity in humans, this divinity is not an independent God,
but rather a part of the divine essence in the whole world. The Law of
Moses that came to purify the world from idolatry has some problems.
It does not enable the full emancipation of humanity from sin and
error. Abner claimed that the negation of the incarnation of God in
the world leads to negating the possibility of life after death. The
possibility of life after death comes from understanding the
incarnation of divinity in all humans. Negating life after death
causes immorality. The Torah has to put up with all these inaccuracies
in order to achieve its main goal, which is taking humanity out of the
sin of idolatry (by believing that God is one). The outcome, though
better than its predecessor, is ultimately a lost situation which
humanity cannot overcome on its own. For that reason, God sent Jesus
(who was born with a higher degree of matter and divine essence). Due
to the divinity within Jesus, his miracles and his resurrection,
people are able to understand that within everything in the world
there is some divine essence that is part of the inferior son, and
that the origin of all the divinity in the world is the superior son.
This understanding enables salvation from the original sin and
represents a true understanding of the relation between God and the
world. The role of the sacramentental Mass is to remind us of the
divine aspect of Jesus' essence, as well as of all the miracles that
Jesus performed and to continue their influence in our present
time.
We see that this opinion regarding the Trinity and Incarnation
contradict the official dogma of the Catholic Church at the time of
Abner. In his opinion, the incarnation of divinity in Jesus did not
bypass the regular process of the emanation of the divine essence in
the world. Rather, the manifestation of Jesus represented the pinnacle
of incarnation of divinity, which, though indeed present in the entire
world, yet in Jesus occurred in the purest form possible. This opinion
of Abner, similar to his other philosophical views, was a part of the
radical Neo-Platonic interpretation of Christianity. The difference
between him and the other Neo-Platonic Christian philosophers, like
Master Eckard, is the different sources from which they were
influenced. Abner did not utilize the traditional Neo-Platonic
Christian sources, like Dionysius the Areopagite. We do not see in any
part of his work that he was aware of the existence of these sources.
On the other hand, Abner did utilize some Arabic and Jewish sources.
The origin of his uncommon position on Christianity is found in his
opposition to the common Aristotelian-Maimonidean-Averroist trend of
Jewish philosophy. Abner, similar to Spinoza after him, thought that
the explanations of these thinkers on the question of the creation of
the world by a perfect God were not sufficient and ultimately
inaccurate. In place of these responses, Abner proposed his radical
interpretation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, an
interpretation that was uninfluenced by the theological Christian
tradition.
## 4. Determinism
One of the more important philosophical opinions of Abner was his
deterministic
view.[15]
Abner devoted his book *Ofrenda de Zelos* (*Minhat*
*Kena'ot* in the original lost Hebrew text), along with other
works that have since been lost, to the question of determinism and
free
will.[16]
In the beginning of this book, Abner describes the opinion of his
former pupil Rabbi Isaac Pulgar, who denies God's foreknowledge of
human decisions. After the explication of this opinion and its
negation, Abner explains his deterministic opinion. Abner believed
that people have free will in a limited sense, but act in a determined
way in the broader sense. People are free in their relation to
themselves, meaning that if a person is separated from the causes that
influence him or her (e.g., education, society's influences) while
debating between two options, one is then really free to choose either
of the two options. In this specific case a person can then utilize
his or her will and choose freely between the two options. However, if
one takes into account all the causes that influence his or her will,
we may conclude that these causes limits that person's will to only
one of the two options. In the opinion of Abner, people are like wax,
as follows: Wax may be melted and sculpted into many different shapes.
However, the person who sculpts the wax determines its present form as
only one of those options. The same is true about people: In
themselves, they have the ability to choose between different
possibilities, but their relation to the outside world determines
their choices. We can see from this example how strong the determinist
view of Abner was. It is important to note that Abner defines the will
of people as an accord between the attractive force and the
imagination, two forces common to humans and animals.
Abner explains in the same way the meaning of possibility and
accident. Things are only possible in their relation to themselves. In
relation to the entire world and its causality, everything is truly
determined. Accidents are only accidents relative to the seeming
unlikelihood of their occurrence. However, relative to all the causal
processes of the world, we see that even in the most unusual of
circumstances the occurrence of what appears to be an accident in fact
had to happen. In short, there are no accidents (according to the
popular meaning of accident) for Abner.
This deterministic description of the world (based on rational
arguments) resolves the theological problem of the contradiction
between the free will of people and the foreknowledge of God. In the
opinion of Abner free will does not really exist. For him, God is the
first cause; He knows all the laws of the world and therefore knows
everything that He has determined.
This deterministic description leads to two theological problems. The
first is why God sent commandments to people who cannot truly decide
whether to obey them or disobey them. The second question that arises
is how people can receive reward or punishment for actions and
decisions that they do not really have any control over? Abner answers
the second question by explaining that forbidden things are naturally
bad. The punishment of the sinner is not a special act of divine
providence; rather it is the natural consequence of his bad action.
This leads us to the answer to the first question. According to Abner,
the goal of the Torah is to influence people to do what is right. The
Torah and prophets (and God who sent them) act in the world in
conformity to His nature. The only way to influence someone to do
something is to give him enough causes to do it. The Torah is only
another cause that influences people to do what is good. Abner
compares reward and punishment to a father that obligates his son to
take medication. The medicine will always work even if the son takes
it unhappily. The same is true with regard to all actions of people.
When people do what is right, they believe they will receive a reward,
while if they do what is wrong, they believe they will receive a
punishment--even if they do not essentially have the choice to do
anything else.
It is interesting to note that this philosophical book that Abner
wrote at the end of his life, more than twenty years after his
conversion, is almost without Christian
references.[17]
In spite of this, the book is full of references to Jewish sources,
including the Talmud and quotations of Jewish authorities like
Maimonides.[18]
We see that Abner, even many years after his conversion, wrote to the
Jewish community and was part of the internal Jewish debate about the
question of determinism. In fact, Abner is the first medieval Jewish
philosopher to argue for a deterministic explanation of the world. His
opinion influenced Rabbi Hasdai Crescas (who paraphrased an important
part of *Ofrenda de Zelos* in his major philosophical work
*The Light of the
Lord*[19]),
and through him, Spinoza. Some Jewish philosophers, like Rabbi Isaac
Pulgar, Rabbi Mosses from Narbonne, and Rabbi Josef Ben Shem
Tov[20]
respond explicitly to the determinist opinion of Abner, such that
there is no doubt that his opinion had a major influence on the
internal Jewish debate on the question of free will throughout the
14th and 15th centuries.
## 5. Critics of the Aristotelian science
As we stated before, the major work of science of Abner (*the New
Philosophy*) is lost. We can still try to reconstruct some of his
scientific opinions through some parts of his other works,
specifically the existing work *Meyasher Aqob*, Rabbi Isaac
Pulgar's brief summary of the lost work, and some scientific passages
in *Mostrador de
Justicia*.[21]
The first interesting opinion of Abner is his view on prime matter.
Abner denied a necessary link, which the Aristotelians affirmed,
between bodies and accidents (magnitude, weight, quantity, etc.),
maintaining that a body untainted by all these accidents can
nonetheless have actual existence. He explicated his view in the
dogmatic context of the question of the rite of
Mass.[22]
The rebel's main philosophical arguments against the Mass are as
follows: (1) How can several bodies occupy the same place? (2) How can
Jesus' body be in the bread and wine without changing them? (3) How
can the same body be two different materials at the same time? (4) How
can one debase Jesus by eating and digesting him? At the start of his
answer Abner emphasizes that the Mass is miraculous. Nevertheless, he
does go on to offer a scientific explanation of transubstantiation.
For Abner, everybody has a layer of pure divine existence, to which
are superadded other forms and accidents; but if the body is stripped
of all of these accretions it will be reduced to the original divine
substance only. In this state the body will have no boundary,
quantity, or weight to occupy the universe, and consequently is
infinite. This body is the foundation of the entire material world,
and normally--with the exception of the sacrament of the Mass and
Incarnation--it does not exist without accidents (at least not in
the sublunary world). This matter is identified with the flesh of
Jesus, which has divine existence only, which means that Jesus' body
is identified with prime matter.
The above description eliminates for Abner all of the difficulties
posed by the rebel. The problem of the co-presence of two bodies in
one place is eliminated, because all bodies, once they have been
stripped of their form and accidents, incorporate the infinite body of
Jesus, which fills the entire universe. After these forms have been
removed, the bread and wine are identified with Jesus' body. The very
same principle eliminates the problem of the simultaneous existence of
Jesus' body in several places, since his body fills the entire
universe and transcends all definitions of place. Because his body
also transcends the definition of quantity, the problem of limited
quantity is removed as well.
Another subject about which Abner critiques Aristotelian science is
the definition of place and the relation between place and body. In
the thought of Aristotle, the definition of place is 'the limit
of the encompassing body'. In his opinion, place has an
important role in movement. The definition of a natural movement is
the movement of a body to its natural place in the world. Aristotle
explains that both the natural place attracts the body and that the
body moves on his own to its natural place.
Abner distinguishes between the physical object and extension or
dimension. According to Abner, dimension is "a simple and subtle
quantity detached from all movable bodies"; in other words, it
is space, independent of any physical body. Dimension is measurable
per se, and is not linked to what occupies it. Nevertheless, Abner's
definition of place is still associated with body: "place"
is the dimension occupied by a body, and it is the body that turns it
into "place." According to Abner, the movement of bodies
is not due to their being attracted to some place where they must rest
before resuming their movement; rather, they move because of the
interaction of several forces, quite independent of any particular
place. A body that is thrown upward rises, but if it suddenly begins
to fall because of an opposing force, there would not be a moment of
rest between the two opposing motions.
Thus Abner dismisses Aristotle's concept that a body is attracted to
its natural place. Different places are not characterized by different
qualities (inasmuch as all places are equal and are merely points in
space). Hence a body has no cause to move to a particular place and no
place is a final cause of its motion.
We know from Rabbi Isaac Pulgar that Abner also criticized the
opinions of Aristotle on the possibility of a void and argues for the
existence of voids in his lost scientific book *The New
Philosophy*. Because of the influence of Abner on Rabbi Hasdai
Crescas, we can assume that his criticism is closely related to the
criticism of Crescas in the beginning of the first speech of *Or
Hashem*
Abner wrote his criticism of Artistotelian science at the beginning of
the 14th century, approximately the same time that Ockham
wrote his criticism of this science. In the writing and the thought of
Abner we do not see any kind of influence of Ockham or of other late
scholastics (the only scholastic philosopher that he cites is Thomas
Aquinas and there are no quotations from Christian sources on a
scientific subject). It is interesting to note that the systematic
criticism of Aristotelian science started approximately at the same
time in the Jewish milieu (with the writings of Abner) and in the
Christian milieu, with probably no relation one to the other.
Abner's criticism of Aristotelian science had an important influence
on Crescas's thought, and through him to Pico Della Mirandola and
general Western philosophy.
## 6. The influence of Abner
One must distinguish between two kinds of influence Abner had. Abner
influenced with his polemical works the Jewish-Christian debate until
the end of the Middle Ages. Some born-Christians, like Alfonso de
Espina, and especially Jewish apostates, like Pablo de Santa Maria,
utilized his polemical works. Against this trend, there are more than
five Jewish polemicist works that explicitly answer the polemical
arguments of
Abner.[23]
Despite the utilization of Abner in debates, his works had almost no
philosophical influence on Christian theology because the Christian
participants in the debates utilized the quotations of the Jewish
sources by Abner and not his theological arguments as such, which in
their content were very different from the official Catholic
dogma.
The second way in which Abner had lasting influence was on the purely
philosophical plane. It should be noted that the direct philosophical
influence of Abner was only on the Jewish community. In fact we do not
see that any Christian philosophers read the works of Jewish apostates
in any other forum apart from the purely polemical one. By contrast,
in the Jewish community the works of Abner had an important impact
until the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. The deterministic
opinion of Abner is with no doubt one of the major causes to the
extensive number of works written on this subject in the
14th and 15th centuries by Jewish philosophers.
For the most part, these works were against the opinion of Abner. The
most impressive philosophical influence of Abner was on Rabbi Hasdai
Crescas (died in 1410/1411). Crescas was the main Jewish philosopher
during the end of the Middle Ages. Despite their opposite positions in
the Jewish-Christian debate (Crescas wrote one of the more
philosophical anti-Christian
works),[24]
Crescas borrowed some of the major original philosophical opinions of
Abner, including determinism, the difference between the attributes of
the essence and the attributes that are essential, and the criticism
of Aristotelian science. With regard to this entire subject, Crescas
molded his opinion using Abner combined with other sources. In spite
of this important change, we can clearly see signs of the philosophy
of Abner in the writing of Crescas, and these signs constitute nearly
all the post medieval influence of Abner on Jewish and general Western
philosophy. |
abrabanel | ## 1. Life and Works
There exists a large debate in the secondary literature concerning the
place and role of Jews in Renaissance culture. One group envisages a
synthesis between Jewish culture on the one hand, and the ideals of
the Renaissance on the
other.[2]
Jews, according to this interpretation, could quite easily remain
Jewish while still sharing in the values and culture of non-Jewish
society. Another group, however, maintains that such a synthesis is
historically untenable because Jews remained a small, persecuted
minority left to the whims of various local
governments.[3]
These two approaches leave us with radically different conceptions of
Renaissance Jewish philosophers. According to the first approach, a
Jewish intellectual could quite easily partake of the ideals and
categories of Renaissance Humanism and Neoplatonism. According to the
second approach, however, such a synthesis could never occur, and, as
a result, most Renaissance Jewish thinkers were more indebted to the
legacy of Maimonides than the various trajectories of Renaissance
thought. A more productive approach, however, exists between these
two: The Italian Renaissance provided certain elite Jews with new
literary genres, intellectual categories, and educational ideals with
which to mine the depths of their tradition.
### 1.1 Life
Judah Abrabanel was born in Lisbon, Portugal, sometime between 1460
and 1470. He was the firstborn of Don Isaac Abrabanel
(1437-1508), who was an important philosopher in his own right.
In addition to their intellectual skills, the Abrabanel family played
an important role in international commerce, quickly becoming one of
the most prominent families in Lisbon.
Despite the conservative tendencies in the thought of his father,
Don Isaac insured that his children received educations that included
both Jewish and non-Jewish subjects. Rabbi Joseph ben Abraham ibn
Hayoun, the leading rabbinic figure in Lisbon, was responsible for
teaching religious subjects (e.g., Bible, commentaries, and halakhic
works) to Judah and his brothers. As far as non-Jewish works and
subjects were concerned, Judah, like most elite Jews of the fifteenth
century, would have been instructed in both the medieval Arabo-Judaic
tradition (e.g., Maimonides, Averroes), in addition to humanistic
studies imported from
Italy.[4]
By profession, Judah was a doctor, one who had a very good
reputation and who served the royal court. In 1483, his father
was implicated in a political conspiracy against Joao II, the Duke of
Braganza, and was forced to flee to Seville, in Spain, with his
family. Shortly after his arrival, undoubtedly on account of his
impressive connections and diplomatic skills, Isaac was summoned to the
court of Ferdinand and Isabella, where he was to become a financial
advisor to the royal family. Despite his favorable relationship
with them, Isaac was unable to influence them to rescind their famous
edict of expulsion--calling on all Jews who refused to convert
to Christianity--to depart from the Iberian
Peninsula.
Judah seems also to have been well connected at the Spanish court and
was one of the physicians who attended the royal family. After the
edict of expulsion had been issued, Ferdinand and Isabella requested
that he remain in Spain. To do this, however, he still would have had
to convert to Christianity. Yet, in order to try and keep Judah in
Spain, a plot was hatched to kidnap his firstborn son, Isaac ben
Judah. Judah, however, discovered the plot and sent his son, along
with his Christian nanny, on to Portugal, where he hoped to meet up
with them. Upon hearing that a relative of Isaac Abrabanel had
re-entered Portugal, Joao II had the young boy seized and forcefully
converted to Christianity. It is uncertain whether or not Judah ever
saw or heard from his son again. In a moving poem, entitled
*Telunah 'al ha-zeman* ("The Travails of
Time"), he writes:
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > Time with his pointed shafts has hit my heart
> >
> >
> > and split my guts, laid open my entrails,
> >
> >
> > landed me a blow that will not heal
> >
> >
> > knocked me down, left me in lasting pain...
> >
> >
> > He did not stop at whirling me around,
> >
> >
> > exiling me while yet my days were green
> >
> >
> > sending me stumbling, drunk, to roam the world...
> >
> >
> > He scattered everyone I care for northward,
> >
> >
> > eastward, or to the west, so that
> >
> >
> > I have no rest from constant thinking, planning--
> >
> >
> > and never a moment's peace, for all my
> > plans.[5]
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
Like many of those Jews who refused to convert, Judah and his
immediate family, including his father, made their way to Naples.
There, Ferdinand II of Aragon, the king of Naples, warmly welcomed the
Abrabanel family, owing to its many contacts in international
trade. In 1495, however, the French took control of Naples, and Judah
was again forced to flee, first to Genoa, then to Barletta, and
subsequently to Venice. It seems that he also traveled around Tuscany,
and there is some debate as to whether or not he actually met the
famous Florentine Humanist, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (it seems
unlikely that he did). In 1501, after the defeat of the French in
Naples, he was invited back to be the personal physician of the
Viceroy of Naples, Fernandez de Cordoba. Among all of these
peregrinations, Judah found the time to write (but not publish) his
*magnum opus*, the *Dialoghi d'amore*. He seems to
have died sometime after 1521. Other than these basic facts, we know
very little of the life of Judah Abrabanel.
Especially enigmatic are the last years of his life, between 1521 when
he was requested to give medical attention to Cardinal San Giorgio
until 1535 when Mariano Lenzi published the *Dialoghi*
posthumously in Rome. There is some evidence that Judah moved to Rome
near the end of his life; some suggest that he fell in with a
Christian group of Neoplatonists. Indeed, the 1541 edition of the work
mentions that Judah converted to Christianity (*dipoi fatto
christiano*). This, however, seems highly unlikely as (1) it is
not mentioned in the first edition, the one on which all subsequent
editions and translations were based, and (2) there is no internal
evidence in the *Dialoghi* to suggest this. In fact, one of the
characters in the work implies the exact opposite, stating that
"all of us believe in the sacred Mosaic law" (*noi
tutti che crediamo la sacre legge
mosaica*).[6]
It seems, then, that either a careless or over-zealous editor
inserted the phrase "*dipoi fatto christiano*" into
a later edition of the *Dialoghi*.
### 1.2 Works
The only major work that we possess of Judah Abrabanel is the
*Dialoghi d'amore*. There is some debate as to when the
work was actually written. Many point to the year 1501-1502 owing to a
phrase in the third book: "According to the Jewish tradition, we
are in the year 5262 from the beginning of creation" (*Siamo,
secondo la verita ebraica, a cinque milia ducento sessanta due
del principio de la
creazione*).[7]
The year 5262 of the Jewish calendar corresponds to 1501-1502 of the
Gregorian calendar. Yet, manuscripts other than that based on the 1535
edition have the date of 5272 (i.e., 1511-1512). This is significant
because many who argue that the *Dialoghi* could not possibly
have been written in Italian point to the fact that Judah would not
have been fluent in Italian. Yet, if we assume the 1511-1512 date to
be correct this would place him in Italy for close to twenty years,
more than enough time to gain proficiency in Italian (especially given
the fact that he would have already known at least one Spanish
vernacular and, as a physician, Latin).
We also know that Judah wrote poetry (see the poem quoted above). In
addition to his biographical poem, he also composed poetic
introductions to three of his father's last works: *Rosh
Amanah, Zevach Pesach*, and *Nachalat Avot.*
Finally, we possess a letter dating to 1566 from one Amatus Lusitanus,
a physician who wrote that he attended to a patient by the name of
Judah "who was the grandson of the great Platonic philosopher,
known as Judah or Leon Abrabanel, who gave to us the most beautiful
dialogues on love." Further in this letter, he mentions that
Judah also composed a work entitled *De Coeli Harmonia*
("On the Harmony of the Spheres") and that, according to
the introduction, he dedicated it to the "divine Pico della
Mirandola." Unfortunately, this work has not survived. If he
dedicated to Pico as the letter indicates, it would most likely have
been composed before the *Dialoghi* and also, based on the
title, it would have been composed in Latin.
### 1.3 *Dialoghi d'amore* and the Question of Language
The central question concerning the language of the
*Dialoghi*'s composition is: How could a Jewish refugee
from Portugal show such facility with Italian, let alone the Tuscan
dialect, since Judah seems to have spent very little time in
Tuscany?[8]
Those who argue
for a Latin original point to the fact that (1) he was a physician and
would have known Latin, and (2) a phrase by Yosef Shlomo Delmedigo
(1591-1655) in his *Mikhtav Ahuz* suggesting that he was going
to translate Judah's work from Latin. Those who argue for a
Hebrew original point to another phrase, this time by Claudio Tolemei
(1492-1556), a non-Jew, which states that Judah composed his treatise
in *sua lingua* ("his own language").
Although, as others have pointed out, such a phrase could quite easily
refer to "his own style."
However, given the evidence, an Italian original for the work seems
most likely since (1) all the manuscripts, including Mariano
Lenzi's edition of 1535, are in Italian; (2) it seems that Judah
had lived in Italy for close to twenty years by the time that he wrote
the *Dialoghi* (more than enough time for someone to gain an
intimate knowledge of Italian, especially someone proficient in Latin
and Spanish vernaculars); (3) neither later Jewish authors, e.g.,
Azaria
de'Rossi,[9]
nor non-Jewish authors, e.g., Tullia
d'Aragona,[10]
had any reason to suspect that it was written in a language other than
Italian; (4) if we assume the later date of 1511-1512, many non-Tuscan
Italian authors of this period called for the adoption of Tuscan as a
literary language, owing primarily to the fact that this was the
language of Petrarch (1304-1374) and Boccaccio
(1313-1375);[11]
and, (5) as for the
question of the Tuscan dialect of the work, many Italian printers of
the early sixteenth century "Tuscanized" Italian according
to set
criteria.[12]
Moreover, many Jewish authors in the fifteenth- and
sixteenth-centuries increasingly resorted to Romance vernaculars in
order to attract a Jewish audience (including *conversos* and
ex-*conversos*), which no longer understood Hebrew. In
sixteenth-century Italy, larger trends in rhetoric and the use of
language increasingly led to the creation of the ideal of a pure
Italian language. In this regard, Judah becomes an important
transitional thinker in the encounter between Judaism and the Italian
Renaissance. Whereas his father, Don Isaac, could still adapt
humanistic themes to his Hebrew writings, which were still primarily in
conversation with medieval
thought,[13]
increasingly in Judah's generation the only way
to engage in a full-scale examination of the universal tendencies
associated with Humanism was to write in the vernacular.
Finally, the very genre of the *Dialoghi*, that of the
*trattato d'amore* ("treatise on love"), was
the product of the Italian vernacular of the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries. When, for example, Judah discusses the
concept of love as a universal or cosmic principle he draws upon, as
will be clearer below, a particular vocabulary and set of concepts that
only make sense when contextualized within this already
existing
discourse.[14]
## 2. Faith, Reason, and Myth
Two features that are new in Judah's work and, thus, serve to
differentiate his thought from that of his Jewish and Islamic
predecessors are: (1) his almost complete lack of concern with the
venerable antagonism between faith and reason, and (2) his interest in
elucidating the concomitant intersection between Greek myth and
Judaism.
The tension between faith and reason had been at the heart of
medieval Jewish philosophy. This became especially pronounced in
post-Maimonidean philosophy, which witnessed the radicalization of a
number of principles (e.g., eternality of the universe, denial of
bodily resurrection), and which threatened to undermine traditional
religious belief. This led to a *Kulturkampf* between
those who thought that non-Jewish learning (i.e., philosophy) had a
valid role to play in the Jewish curriculum versus those who claimed
that such "foreign" works led to apostasy. The
reverberations of these conflicts, known collectively as the
"Maimonidean controversies," were severe.
The antagonism between faith and reason is immediately palpable in
the thought of Judah's father, who constantly tried to uphold
traditional Jewish belief against what he considered to be the
onslaught of philosophical radicalism. Yet, in the thought of
Judah this "conflict" between the hitherto venerable
antagonists virtually disappears. The question we have to ask,
then, is why? The most likely reason is to be located in the
notion of *sophia perennis*, which played an important role in
the thought of Florentine humanists. According to this doctrine,
there exists a unity to all knowledge irrespective of its source.
As a result, the rationalism of philosophy could quite easily be
reconciled with that of revelation because both were regarded as
articulating the same truth. Evidence of this may be seen in
Judah's frequent citation of biblical passages to support
philosophical principles and *vice versa*. Furthermore, because
Judah is primarily unconcerned with the antagonism between faith and
reason, he becomes one of the first Jewish philosophers to ignore
esotericism (viz., that philosophical truths must be kept from
the unenlightened) as a philosophical principle. For him,
traditional esoteric topics, such as metaphysics, now become part and
parcel of the beautiful and dramatic unfolding of God's beauty in
the universe, and such topics are open to all (including women, as the
character of Sophia demonstrates).
Further evidence of Judah's use of the concept of *sophia
perennis* may be witnessed in his orientation towards ancient Greek
myth. The "rediscovery" of ancient Greek and Roman
literature was one of the hallmarks of the Renaissance, and in the
thought of Judah we certainly see this, only now with a distinctly
Jewish "twist." On one level, he wants to show that there
exists a fundamental identity between Greek myth and the teachings of
the Torah. Yet, on a deeper level he wants to argue that the
Greeks ultimately derived their teachings from the ancient Israelites
and subsequently corrupted
them.[15]
For instance, Judah argues that Plato studied among
the ancient Israelites in
Egypt,[16]
and that Plato's myth of the Androgyne, found
in the *Symposium*, is actually a Greek plagiarism of a Jewish
source:
>
>
>
> Sophia: The story is beautiful and ornate (*la favola e
> bella e ornata*), and it is impossible not to believe that it
> signifies some philosophical beauty (*bella filosofia*), more
> especially since it was composed by Plato himself, in the
> *Symposium*, in the name of Aristophanes. Tell me,
> therefore, Philo what is the allegory?
>
>
>
>
> Philo: The myth was handed down by earlier writers than the
> Greeks--in the sacred writings of Moses, concerning the creation
> of the first human parents, Adam and Eve...it was from [Moses]
> that Plato took his myth, amplifying and polishing it after Greek
> oratory, thus giving a confused account of Hebrew matters (*facendo
> in questo una mescolanza inordinate de le cose
> ebraiche*).[17]
>
>
>
Judah seeks to accomplish at least two things with passages such as
this. First, he claims, polemically, that the Jewish tradition,
especially its mythopoeic tradition, is the source of all subsequent
literary and philosophical streams of western civilization. Secondly
(and this is less evident in the above passage than in other ones), he
tries to wrest Christian-centric interpretations of biblical passages
(e.g., the Garden of Eden and the concept of original sin), including
those offered by thinkers such as Ficino and Pico della
Mirandola,[18]
away
from what he considers to be the original intentionality of the
text. Rather, he claims that the Jewish version or interpretation of
such texts is actually more in keeping with the spirit of the
Renaissance than those offered by Christians. The corollary of this is
that any individual, Jewish or Gentile, should quite easily be able to
accept equally the truths of Judaism and those of
philosophy.[19]
## 3. Beauty and Love
In the thought of Judah Abrabanel, the concepts of beauty
(*bellezza*) and love (*amore*) become technical terms
through which he examines virtually every traditional philosophical
issue. Frequently, however, his discussion of one of these terms
is predicated on the existence of the other; as a result, beauty and
love are inseparable in the *Dialoghi*, undoubtedly mirroring
Judah's understanding of the way in which these two principles
operate in the universe. The intimate relationship between these
two principles may be witnessed in his definition of beauty as that
"which delights the mind that recognizes it and moves it to
love" (*dilettando l'animo col suo conoscimento, il
muove ad
amare*).[20]
Without Beauty, in other words, the intellect is
unable to desire something outside of itself and, thus, it is
effectively unable to cognize. Judah subsequently argues that the lower
senses (i.e., taste, smell or touch) cannot grasp Beauty; only the
higher senses (e.g., sight and hearing) can--in addition, of
course, to the imagination and the
intellect.[21]
Moreover, since Beauty is
mirrored throughout the universe, physical objects (notes, melodies,
etc.) both participate in and point the way towards this incorporeal
Beauty:
Beauty is only found in the objects of sight (*oggetti del
viso*), such as beautiful forms and shapes and beautiful pictures,
the perfect symmetry of the parts with the whole, well-proportioned
limbs, beautiful colors and clear light, the sun, the moon and the
stars, and the heavens in all their splendor. This grace exists
in objects of sight by reason of their spiritual nature, and it is the
custom to enter through the clear and spiritual eyes, to delight our
soul and move it to a love of such an object; and this is what it is
that we call beauty. It is also found in objects of hearing, such
as beautiful oratory, voices, speech, song music, consonance,
proportion and harmony. For in the spiritual nature of these
things is found grace which moves the soul to delight and to love
through the medium of the spiritual sense of hearing. Thus grace
and beauty are found among beautiful things that are endowed with a
spiritual nature (*sensi
spirituali*).[22]
Based on this and other passages, Judah argues that it is primarily
by means of the beauty of created things that the individual is able to
apprehend and move towards incorporeal or spiritual Beauty. Love
is what is ultimately responsible for directing the soul and the
intellect of the individual to increasingly spiritual matters.
## 4. Philosophy of Beauty
### 4.1 The Elevation of Rhetoric, Aesthetics, and the Imagination
We witness the further departure of Judah's thought from that
of his predecessors when we examine his discussion of rhetoric and
aesthetics. Medieval Aristotelians tended to locate rhetoric in
the *trivium* (which also included logic and dialectic), and,
thus, as propaedeutic to "higher" sciences such as
metaphysics. In the Renaissance, however, eloquence was equated
with wisdom, and the good rhetorician had to be proficient in all
branches of human knowledge. This led many Jewish Renaissance
thinkers to examine not only the classical authors (e.g., Cicero and
Quintilian), but also to mine the Bible for its use of language and
style. Whereas Maimonides and other Jewish Aristotelians had been
interested in biblical rhetoric as a means to reproduce imaginative
representations of philosophical truths to those unlearned in
philosophy, Renaissance thinkers held that rhetoric was the art form
*par excellence*, one that enabled the individual to command
respect in public
life.[23]
Furthermore, following Maimonides (e.g., *Guide* I.2), many
medieval thinkers envisaged beauty as contingent upon consensus and not
a matter of the intellectual faculty. In the Renaissance, by
contrast, beauty was elevated to an ideal that, *inter alia*,
moved the intellect, by means of desire, to either perfect that which
exists below it or to be perfected by that above. This principle
was subsequently shared by philosophers, poets, and visual artists,
and, quite frequently, there existed a fluid line separating these
professions.
This elevation of rhetoric and aesthetics in the Renaissance led to a
subsequent interest in the imagination, a faculty frequently
mistrusted, but often deemed necessary to medieval political
philosophy. Mistrusted because, following Plato's critique, the
imagination had the power to deceive and distort; yet, at the same
time necessary because the imagination was the defining element of
prophecy. (In medieval Aristotelianism, the prophet was regarded as a
perfect philosopher with a perfected imaginative faculty to coin
images for the uneducated masses.) Only now, because Judah was not
particularly concerned with philosophical esotericism, the products of
the imagination, i.e., images, were not to be appreciated on a
pedagogical level alone, but more importantly on an aesthetic
one. Following Ficino, Judah argues that the artist--more
specifically, the artist's imagination--becomes the vessel
through which God
speaks.[24]
### 4.2 Cosmology and Metaphysics
Although there exists an intimate connection between sensual and
cosmic beauty it is by means of the latter that Judah frames his
discussion of cosmology, ontology, and psychology. Beauty, to
reiterate, is what inspires love and desire, and thereby connects all
levels of the universe into an interlocking and organic relationship.
The result is that everything, both sensual and intelligible, has the
potential to image and reflect God's beauty.
Judah's cosmology is a case in point. In the
*Dialoghi* he presents two distinct accounts of the origin of
the universe. This issue--viz., was the universe
created or is it eternal--was one of the touchstones in the
debate not only between philosophers and non-philosophers, but also
among philosophers. At stake in these debates was God's
omnipotence and omniscience: If the world was created, then clearly God
is transcendent to the world as both its Creator and Sustainer; if not,
then God's power to act is potentially curtailed by another
principle's eternality. In his discussion of these
matters, Judah adopts two models: one based on Islamicate Neoplatonism
and the other on the Plotinian triad.
According to the first model, Judah argues--citing Ghazali,
Avicenna and Maimonides--that God in His complete simplicity and
"by the love of His infinite beauty produces out of Himself alone
the first intelligence and mover of the first heaven" (*con
l'amore de la sua immense bellezza immediate da se sola la
prima intelligenzia movtrice del primo cielo
produce*).[25]
The first
intelligence, in turn, contemplates (1) the beauty of its cause to
produce the second intellect, and (2) its own beauty to produce the
first heavenly sphere. This theory of emanation, based on the
love of
beauty,[26]
pervades the entire universe (both supra- and sub-lunar). The
Active Intellect, the lowest of the ten heavenly intellects and
associated with the sphere of the moon, becomes the intellect of the
corporeal world. By contemplating its own beauty it produces the
forms found in this world, and in contemplating the beauty of its
cause, it produces human intellects. Following this, Judah offers
a Plotinian account based on a celestial
triad.[27]
He now distinguishes between
three types of beauty that pervade the cosmos. The first is God
*qua* the Source of beauty (*l'attore di
bellezza*), the second is beauty itself (*bellezza*; i.e.,
intelligible beauty), and the third is the physical universe produced
by this idea in the intellect of God (*il participante di
bellezza*).[28]
Judah subsequently uses the latter model, combined with kabbalistic
embellishment, to interpret the first creation account in Genesis,
where the physical world is now described as the offspring between
God, the male principle, and intelligible beauty, now personified as a
female.[29]
Corporeal
beauty, according to this model, becomes the primogeniture of
God's love for His female consort, wisdom. Since this
physical world is intimately connected to God, it cannot be
negated. Rather, this world becomes necessary, and this is a
leitmotiv that runs throughout the work, for humans to make physical
beauty "spiritual in our
intellect."[30]
One must, in other words,
orientate oneself towards sensible beauty in such a manner that one
reverses the ontological chain.
### 4.3 Psychology and Prophecy
The above discussion is directly related to the way in which
Judah's envisages both psychology and prophecy. According
to him, the five external senses divide into (1) those that are
primarily material (*materiali*): touch (*tatto*), taste
(*gusto*), and smell (*odorato*); and (2) those that are
increasingly spiritual (*spirituali*): hearing (*per
l'audito*) and sight (*per
l'occhi*).[31]
It seems that only
the latter are able to penetrate behind the purely physical so as to
abstract the spiritual from the corporeal. Hearing, intimately
connected to the Renaissance ideal of rhetoric, consists of the ability
to discern "fine speeches, excellent reasoning, beautiful verses,
sweet music, and beautiful and harmonious
melodies."[32]
Sight, ranked just
above the faculty of hearing, owing to the primacy that Judah puts on
vision, deals with "beautiful colors, regular patterns, and light
in all its varied
splendor."[33]
The senses, thus, function hierarchically as a
prolegomenon to any form of higher knowledge, with the imagination
forming the threshold (*mezzo*) between the senses and the
intellect.
Central to the unfolding argument in the *Dialoghi* is the
concept of ocular power (*forza oculare*). In the first
dialogue, Judah describes two modes of apprehending spiritual
matters. The first is through the faculty of sight and the second
through the
intellect.[34]
For the eye, like the intellect, is illumined
by means of light, thereby establishing a relationship between the eye,
the object seen, and the space that separates
them.[35]
Just as the sun supplies light to the eye, the divine intellect
illumines the human intellect during the act of intellection. It is
light, then, that enables us to "comprehend all the beautiful
shining objects of the corporeal
world."[36]
Sight becomes the model by which we engage the universe: it is what
makes knowledge possible since it is only through vision of tangible
particulars that we acquire knowledge of intelligibles.
Judah subsequently distinguishes between three types of
vision. The highest type is that of God's visual
apprehension of himself; following this is that associated with the
angelic world, which sees God directly though not on equal terms;
finally, there is human vision, which is the weakest of the three types
and can only visualize the divine
indirectly.[37]
The best
that most humans can do in this world is to obtain knowledge
of incorporeal essences through corporeal particulars. Judah does
admit, though, that some special individuals are able to unite with
the angelic world, which he describes as the Agent Intellect
(*intelleto agente*). When such unification
(*copulare*) occurs, the individual "sees and desires
divine beauty as in a crystal or a clear mirror, but not
directly" (*vede e desia la bellezza divine come in uno mezzo
cristiallino, o sia chiaro specchio, ma non in se stessa
immediate*).[38]
Judah refers to this act as prophecy.
Like Maimonides, Judah claims that Moses did not prophesy through the
imagination, but only through the intellect, which he nevertheless
describes in highly visual terms as beholding "the most beautiful
figure of God" (*la bellissima figura di
Dio*).[39]
In the third dialogue, Abrabanel further divides the human into a
tripartite structure consisting of the body (*il corpo*), the
soul (*l'anima*), and the intellect
(*l'intelletto*).[40]
The soul, which I have interpreted as the
imaginative faculty because of the properties assigned to
it,[41]
is once again the intermediary (*mezzo*) between the body (and
the senses) and the
intellect.[42]
Although he does not come right out and define the functioning of the
soul in any detail, he does claim that it is indispensable to the
proper working of the body and the intellect. Moreover, it is
this faculty that is in constant danger of being corrupted by unhealthy
corporeal desire and, most importantly for the present, it is
ultimately responsible for translating the corporeal into the
incorporeal and *vice versa*. This soul, in turn,
>
>
>
> has two faces (*due faccie*) , like those of the moon turned
> towards the sun and the earth respectively, the one being turned
> towards the intellect above it, and the other toward the body
> below. The first face looking towards the intellect is the
> understanding with which the soul reasons of universals and spiritual
> knowledge, extracting the forms and intellectual essences from
> particular and sensible bodies (*estraendo le forme ed essenzie
> intellettuali da li particulari e sensibili corpi*)...the
> second face turned towards the body is sense, which is particular
> knowledge of corporeal things known ... These two faces have
> contrary or opposed notions; and as our soul with its upper face or
> understanding makes the corporeal incorporeal (*l'incorporeo
> al corporeo*), so the lower face, or sensible cognition,
> approaching the objects of sense and mingling with them, draws the
> incorporeal to the
> corporeal.[43]
>
>
>
## 5. Philosophy of Love
### 5.1 Judah's Recasting of Love as a Philosophical Principle
The traditional philosophical notion of love, going back at least to
the time of Plato, is that love results from the imperfection and
privation of that which loves. One loves, in other words, what
one does not possess (see, e.g., Plato, *Symposium*
200a-201e).[44] Accordingly,
that which is imperfect loves that
which is perfect, and, that which is perfect (i.e., God) neither loves
nor desires. Aristotle likewise claimed that that which is less
perfect (e.g., slaves, children, wives and ruled) should have more love
for that which is more perfect (e.g., freeborn, parents, husbands, and
rulers) than *vice versa*. The First Cause, then, is loved
but does not love. This discussion would predominate from Late
Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
Judah's theory of love, by contrast, was intimately connected
to the literary interests of humanism and the aesthetic sensibilities
of Renaissance
artists.[45]
As a consequence, Judah faults previous
thinkers for (1) not ascribing love to God and (2) confining their
discussion of love primarily to that between humans, thereby ignoring
the dynamic role of God in relationships based on this principle.
Using the name of Plato as a metonym for other philosophers, he is
critical of this approach:
>
>
>
> Plato in his *Symposium* discusses only the kind of love that
> is found in men, which has its final cause in the lover but not in the
> beloved (*terminato ne l'amante ma non ne l'amato*),
> for this kind mainly is called love, since that which ends in the loved
> one is called friendship and benevolence (*che quel che si
> termina ne l'amato si chiama amicizia e
> benivolenzia*). He rightly defines this love as a desire of
> beauty (*desiderio di bellezza*). He says that such love
> is not found in God, because that which desires beauty and
> doesn't have it is not beautiful, and God, who is the highest
> beauty, does not lack beauty nor can he desire it, whence he cannot
> have love, that is, of such a kind (*Tale amore dice che non si
> truova in Dio, pero che quel che desia bellezza non
> l'ha ne e bello, e a Dio, che e sommo
> bello, non gli manca bellezza ne la puo desiare,
> onde non puo avere amore, cioe di tal
> sorte*).[46]
>
>
>
Judah seeks to provide a corrective to this and, in the process,
offer what he considers to be a more comprehensive theory of
love. In particular, he intertwines love and beauty such that the
lover of beauty seeks to unite with the source of beauty, something
that the lover subsequently seeks to reproduce himself (the lover is
always male, according to Judah because it is responsible for
impregnating the passive and receptive female principle). This
can take the form of God's creation of the universe, the
artist's creation of a work of art, and the philosopher's
composition of a pleasing work of philosophy. In his discussion
of love, Judah also departs from other Renaissance thinkers. Whereas
Ficino had equated human love with sensual love between humans, Judah,
drawing upon Maimonidean precedents, resignifies human love as, on one
level, that which the intellect has for
God.[47]
Perhaps, Judah's biggest departure from earlier thinkers is
his ascription of love to God. Here, however, his discussion is
not entirely new; rather, he picks up on a number of issues discussed
in the work of Hasdai Crescas (ca. 1340-ca. 1410), the important critic
of Aristotelianism and Maimonideanism. For Crescas, breaking from
both the Platonic and Aristotelian positions, love need not be
associated with privation or imperfection:
>
>
>
> Inasmuch as it is known that God, may He be blessed, is the sources
> and fountain of all perfection, and in virtue of his perfection, which
> is His essence, He loves the good, as may be seen from His actions in
> bringing into existence the entire universe, sustaining it perpetually,
> and continuously creating it anew, and all be means of His simple will,
> it must necessarily be that the love of the good is an essential
> property of perfection. It follows from this that the greater
> perfection [of the lover] the greater will be the love and the pleasure
> in the
> desire.[48]
>
>
>
Love, for Crescas, is tantamount to God's creative
activity. In the third book of the *Dialoghi* Judah picks
up this theme:
>
>
>
> Divine Love (*L'amor divino*) is the inclination
> (*tendenzia*) of God's most beautiful wisdom toward the
> likeness of His own beauty, to wit, the universe created by Him,
> together with its return to union with His supreme wisdom; and His
> pleasure is the perfect union of His image with Himself (*la
> perfetta unione di sua immagine in se stesso*), and of His
> created universe with Himself as
> Creator.[49]
>
>
>
Judah's subsequent discussion of love, however, departs
significantly from either Crescas or other Renaissance thinkers.
This is especially the case when it comes to Judah's refusal to
abnegate sensual love. Rather, he celebrates such love as the
gateway to cosmic or spiritual love. Sensual love, for him,
becomes that which orientates the individual towards the Divine.
Unlike Crescas, however, Judah does not reject the Maimonidean concept
of God as divine intellect. Furthermore, Judah's discussion
finds no homolog in the thought of Crescas or even Maimonides when it
comes to the concept of God's beauty.
### 5.2 "The Circle of Love" (*il circulo degli amari*)
Near the end of the third dialogue, Judah introduces the
"circle of love," *il circulo degli amari*, as
follows:
>
>
>
> The circle of all things (*il circulo di tutte*) begins from
> their first origin, and passing successively through each thing in
> turn, returns to its first origin as to its ultimate end (*ultimo
> fine*), thus containing every degree of being in its circular form
> (*comprendendo tutti li gradi de le cose a modo circulare*), so
> that the point which is the beginning also comes to be the end.
> This circle has two halves (*due mezzi*), the first from the
> beginning to the point most distant from it, the mid-point, and the
> second from this mid-point to the beginning
> again.[50]
>
>
>
This circle, in other words, begins with the divine, whose love
creates and sustains the universe: "each degree of being with
paternal love procreates its immediate inferior, imparting its being or
paternal beauty to it, although in a lesser degree as is only
fitting."[51]
This emanative framework, the love of that which is more beautiful for
that which is less beautiful, comprises the first half of the
circle. Every thing in the universe exists on a hierarchical
chain of being, from the pure actuality of the divine to the pure
potentiality of prime matter. Just as the superior desires the
perfection of the inferior, the inferior desires to unite with the
superior. The first half of the circle spans from God to utter
chaos, whereas, the second half of this circle works in reverse.
It is the love of the inferior for the superior, predicated on the
former's privation and subsequent desire to unite with the
superior.
## 6. The End of Human Life
The *telos* of Judah's system occurs when the intellect
is "absorbed in the science of the Divine and of things
abstracted from matter, rejoicing in and becoming enamored of the
highest grace and beauty which is in the creator and artificer of all
things, so that it attains its ultimate
happiness."[52]
Within this
context, Judah employs a well-known and well-used metaphor in his
discussion of the imaginative faculty, that of the mirror
(*specchio*).[53]
In the medieval Islamicate philosophical tradition,
following Plotinus, the mirror (Ar. *mir'a*), is
frequently used as an image for the perfected soul, at whose vanguard
resides the
intellect.[54]
Just as the mirror reflects what is placed in
front of it, the soul, in a state of perfection, reflects the higher
principles of the universe. Early on in the *Dialoghi*,
Philo asks Sophia, "Do you not see how the form of man is
impressed on and received by a mirror, not as a complete human being,
but within the limits of the mirror's powers and capabilities,
which reflect the figure only and not the
essence."[55]
Later, in dialogue
three, he argues that it is through our own "intellectual
mirror" that we apprehend the divine:
>
>
>
> It is enough for our intellectual mirror (*specchio
> intellettuale*) to receive and image (*figurare*) the
> infinite divine essence (*l'immensa essenzia divina*)
> according to the capacity of its intellectual nature; though there is a
> measureless gulf fixed between them, so far does its nature fall short
> of that of the object of its
> understanding.[56]
>
>
>
By corporealizing the spiritual and spiritualizing the
corporeal, the intellect, in tandem with the imagination, enables
individuals to gain knowledge of the divine world. Unlike
Maimonides and other medieval Aristotelians who equated the natural
world with impermanence and evil, Judah argues that this world is the
natural receptacle of heavenly powers: "Hence earth is the proper
and regular consort of heaven, whereof the other elements are but
paramours. For it is upon the earth that heaven begets all on the
greater part of its
progeny."[57]
In an interesting passage, Judah, like
Maimonides before him, compares matter to a
harlot.[58]
Yet, unlike Maimonides, he
reaches a radically different conclusion. For Judah, "it is
this adulterous love that beautifies the lower world with such wondrous
variety of the fair-formed
things."[59]
In keeping with Judah's
claim that "the lower can be found in the
higher,"[60]
this world becomes one
gigantic mirror that reflects spiritual beauty, and in which one can
grasp divine
intelligibles.[61]
Just as Philo is enthralled by Sophia's
beauty, the individual, upon contemplating physical objects that are
beautiful, apprehends the divine:
>
>
>
> God has implanted His image and likeness in His creatures through
> the finite beauty imparted to them from His surpassing beauty.
> And the image of the infinite must be finite, otherwise it would not be
> a copy, but that of which it is the image. The infinite beauty of
> the Creator is depicted and reflected in finite created beauty like a
> beautiful face in a mirror and although the image is not commensurate
> with its divine pattern, nonetheless it will be its copy, portrait, and
> true likeness (*Si depinge e immagina la bellezza infinita del
> creatore ne la bellezza finita creata come una bella figura in uno
> specchio: non pero commisura l'immagine il divino
> immaginato, ma bene gli sara simulacro similitudine e
> immagine*).[62]
>
>
>
It is ultimately the love of beauty in the soul of the individual,
combined with the cognizance that one lacks it in its entirety, that
moves not only the soul of the individual, but also the entire
cosmos. Virtuous love, which Philo answers in response to
Sophia's fourth question concerning the parents of love, is the
highest form of love and, significantly, one can have this for either
corporeal or spiritual things. Indeed, Philo intimates that such
virtuous love can only emerge from sensible
phenomena:[63]
When [the soul] perceives a beautiful person whose beauty is in
harmony with itself, it recognizes in and through this beauty, divine
beauty, in the image of which this person is also
made.[64]
The goal of Judah's system is to ascend through this
hierarchy, that gateway to which is the sensual enjoyment that one
derives from physical objects. Only after this can one appreciate
spiritual beauty, an appreciation of which culminates in basking in the
divine presence. Judah discusses this process in the following
manner:
>
>
>
> We ought principally to love the higher forms of beauty separated
> from formless matter and gross corporeality (*amiamo le grandi
> bellezze separate da la deforme material e brutto corpe*)
> , such as the virtues and the sciences, which are ever beautiful
> and devoid of all ugliness and defect. Here again we may ascend
> through a hierarchy of beauty from the lesser to the greater
> (*ascendiamo per le minori a le maggiori bellezze*) and from the
> pure to the purest leading to the knowledge and love, not only of the
> most beautiful intelligences, souls and motors of the heavenly bodies,
> but also of the highest beauty and of the supremely beautiful, the
> giver of all beauty, life, intelligence and being. We may scale
> this ladder only when we put away earthly garments and material
> affection (*potremo fare quando noi abbandonaremo le vesti corporee
> e le passioni
> materiali*)...[65]
>
>
>
Even though the corporeal was, at the outset of this journey,
indispensable; the higher one moves up the hierarchy the less important
the material becomes. As far as the individual is concerned, the
highest felicity resides in the union with God, which the Italian
describes erotically as *felice coppulativa*:
>
>
>
> Because the love of the human soul is twofold, it is directed not
> only towards the beauty of the intellect, but also towards the image of
> that beauty in the body. It happens that at times the love of
> intellectual beauty is so strong that it draws the soul to cast off all
> affection for the body; thus the body and soul in man fall apart, and
> there follows the joyful death in union with the divine (*la morte
> felice
> coppulativa*).[66]
>
>
>
## 7. Reception History and Influence
One of the most surprising features concerning the reception history
of the *Dialoghi* is that a work of Jewish philosophy would
subsequently become a European bestseller among non-Jews. In the
years immediately following its Italian publication, the
*Dialoghi* was translated into virtually every European
vernacular. This popularity might be the result of the prominent
role that grace (*grazia*) plays in the *Dialoghi* or the
fact that Judah frequently stresses the interlocking relationship
between the corporeal and the spiritual, something that seems to have
resonated with contemporaneous Christian treatments of the incarnation
in literary
fiction.[67]
This popularity of the work has led some to posit that Judah
Abrabanel's thought is epigonic, responsible for disseminating
the thought of "great thinkers" such as Marsilio Ficino
(1433-1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) to a wider
audience. This essay's point of departure, however, has
been that the thought of Judah Abrabanel, while dependent upon certain
features of these earlier thinkers, nevertheless makes significant
departures from them in terms of his construction of an overarching
system that revolves around the twin principles of love and beauty
Paradoxically, the initial response of Jews to the *Dialoghi*
was for the most part negative. Some of the earliest criticisms,
especially those of Saul ha-Kohen Ashkenazi, fault Judah with
rationalizing kabbalistic principles. Ashkenazi, in a letter to
Don Isaac Abrabanel, criticizes Judah for his lack of philosophical
esotericism, and for spending too much time on linguistic matters, such
as riddles and eloquence. Such antagonism reflects the broader
context of the Maimonidean controversies, in which philosophers sought
to make philosophy known to a broader Jewish public often by means of
dramatic dialogues or philosophical novels. Those opposed to the
Aristotelian-Maimonidean paradigm of philosophy often blamed such
treatises for weakening the faith of Jews by diminishing their
commitment to the *halakhah* (law) and, thus, making them more
susceptible to conversion. Despite such initial criticisms,
however, subsequent generations stressed the interrelationship between
Platonism and kabbalah on the one hand, and philosophy and aesthetics
on the other. Notable individuals include Azariah de Rossi (d.
ca. 1578) and Judah Moscato (d. ca. 1594).
The actual influence that the *Dialoghi* would have on
subsequent thinkers is more difficult to judge. Essentially,
Judah adopted certain trajectories of medieval cosmology and
psychology, combined them with Renaissance notions of beauty, and
thereby created a full-blown aesthetics of Judaism. This led him
to conceive of the universe as a living, dynamic structure, in which
all levels share in a symbiotic and organic relationship. Unlike
many of his medieval predecessors, he did not define this world, the
world of form and matter, in terms of privation or its distance from
the divine. On the contrary, he envisages this world as the arena
wherein individuals encounter, through sensual particulars, the beauty
and love of the divine. Abrabanel's emphasis, like
that of many of his Renaissance contemporaries, on aesthetics and the
phenomenal world would eventually become an important dimension of
16th- and 17th -century natural philosophy. We do know, for
example, that Baruch Spinoza had a copy of the *Dialoghi* in his
library. |
abstract-objects | ## 1. Introduction
The abstract/concrete distinction has a curious status in contemporary
philosophy. It is widely agreed that the ontological distinction is of
fundamental importance, but as yet, there is no standard account of
how it should be drawn. There is a consensus about how to classify
certain paradigm cases. For example, it is usually acknowledged that
numbers and the other objects of pure mathematics, like pure sets, are
abstract (if they exist), whereas rocks, trees, and human beings are
concrete. In everyday language, it is common to use expressions that
refer to concrete entities as well as those that apparently refer to
abstractions such as democracy, happiness, motherhood, etc. Moreover,
formulations of mathematical theories seem to appeal directly to
abstract entities, and the use of mathematical expressions in the
empirical sciences seems indispensable to the formulation of our best
empirical theories (see Quine 1948; Putnam 1971; and the entry on
indispensability arguments in the philosophy of mathematics).
Finally, apparent reference to abstract entities such as sets,
properties, concepts, propositions, types, and possible worlds, among
others, is ubiquitous in different areas of philosophy.
Though there is a pervasive appeal to abstract objects, philosophers
have nevertheless wondered whether they exist. The alternatives are:
*platonism*, which endorses their existence, and
*nominalism*, which denies the existence of abstract objects
across the board. (See the entries on
nominalism in metaphysics
and
platonism in metaphysics.)
But the question of how to draw the distinction between abstract and
concrete objects is an open one: it is not clear how one should
characterize these two categories nor is there a definite list of
items that fall under one or the other category (assuming neither is
empty).
The first challenge, then, is to articulate the distinction, either by
defining the terms explicitly or by embedding them in a theory that
makes their connections to other important categories more explicit.
In the absence of such an account, the philosophical significance of
the contrast remains uncertain, for the attempt to classify things as
abstract or concrete by appeal to intuition is often problematic. Is
it clear that scientific theories (e.g., the general theory of
relativity), works of fiction (e.g., Dante's *Inferno*),
fictional characters (e.g., Bilbo Baggins) or conventional entities
(e.g., the International Monetary Fund or the Spanish Constitution of
1978) are abstract?
It should be stressed that there may not be one single
"correct" way of explaining the abstract/concrete
distinction. Any plausible account will classify the paradigm cases in
the standard way or give reasons for proceeding otherwise, and any
interesting account will draw a clear and philosophically significant
line in the domain of objects. Yet there may be many equally
interesting ways of accomplishing these two goals, and if we find
ourselves with two or more accounts that do the job rather well, there
may be no point in asking which corresponds to the real
abstract/concrete distinction. This illustrates a general point: when
technical terminology is introduced in philosophy by means of
examples, but without explicit definition or theoretical elaboration,
the resulting vocabulary is often vague or indeterminate in reference.
In such cases, it usually is pointless to seek a single correct
account. A philosopher may find herself asking questions like,
'What is idealism?' or 'What is a substance?'
and treating these questions as difficult questions about the
underlying nature of a certain determinate philosophical category. A
better approach may be to recognize that in many cases of this sort,
we simply have not made up our minds about how the term is to be
understood, and that what we seek is not a precise account of what
this term already means, but rather a *proposal* for how it
might fruitfully be used for philosophical analysis. Anyone who
believes that something in the vicinity of the abstract/concrete
distinction matters for philosophy would be well advised to approach
the project of explaining the distinction with this in mind.
So before we turn to the discussion of abstract objects in earnest, it
will help if we clarify how some of the key terms will be used in what
follows.
### 1.1 About the Expression 'Object'
Frege famously distinguished two mutually exclusive ontological
domains, *functions* and *objects*. According to his
view, a function is an 'incomplete' entity that maps
arguments to values, and is denoted by an incomplete expression,
whereas an object is a 'complete' entity and can be
denoted by a singular term. Frege reduced properties and relations to
functions and so these entities are not included among the objects.
Some authors make use of Frege's notion of 'object'
when discussing abstract objects (e.g., Hale 1987). But though
Frege's sense of 'object' is important, it is not
the only way to use the term. Other philosophers include properties
and relations among the abstract objects. And when the background
context for discussing objects is type theory, properties and
relations of higher type (e.g., properties of properties, and
properties of relations) may be all be considered
'objects'. This latter use of 'object' is
interchangeable with
'entity.'[1]
Throughout this entry, we will follow this last usage and treat the
expressions 'object' and 'entity' as having
the same meaning. (For further discussion, see the entry on
objects.)
### 1.2 About the Abstract/Concrete Distinction
Though we've spoken as if the abstract/concrete distinction must
be an exhaustive dichotomy, we should be open to the possibility that
the best sharpening of it will entail that some objects are neither
abstract nor concrete. Holes and shadows, if they exist, do not
clearly belong in either category; nor do ghosts, Cartesian minds,
fictional
characters,[2]
immanent universals, or tropes. The main constraint on an account of
the distinction is that it draws a philosophically significant line
that classifies at least many of the standard examples in the standard
ways. It is not a constraint that everything be shoehorned into one
category or the other.
Finally, some philosophers see the main distinction not as between
abstract and concrete objects but as between abstract objects and
*ordinary* objects, where the distinction is a modal one
- ordinary objects are possibly concrete while abstract objects
(like the number 1) *couldn't* be concrete (Zalta 1983,
1988). In any case, in the following discussion, we shall assume that
the abstract/concrete distinction is a division among existing
objects, and that any plausible explanation of the distinction should
aim to characterize a distinction among such objects.
## 2. Historical Remarks
### 2.1 The Provenance of the Distinction
The contemporary distinction between abstract and concrete is not an
ancient one. Indeed, there is a strong case for the view that, despite
occasional exceptions, it played no significant role in philosophy
before the 20th century. The modern distinction bears some resemblance
to Plato's distinction between Forms and Sensibles. But
Plato's Forms were supposed to be causes *par
excellence*, whereas abstract objects are generally supposed to be
causally inert. The original
'abstract'/'concrete' distinction was a
distinction among words or terms. Traditional grammar distinguishes
the abstract noun 'whiteness' from the concrete noun
'white' without implying that this linguistic contrast
corresponds to a metaphysical distinction in what these words stand
for. In the 17th century, this grammatical distinction was transposed
to the domain of ideas. Locke speaks of the general idea of a triangle
which is "neither Oblique nor Rectangle, neither Equilateral,
Equicrural nor Scalenon [Scalene]; but all and none of these at
once," remarking that even this idea is not among the most
"abstract, comprehensive and difficult" (*Essay*,
IV.vii.9). Locke's conception of an abstract idea as one that is
formed from concrete ideas by the omission of distinguishing detail
was immediately rejected by Berkeley and then by Hume. But even for
Locke there was no suggestion that the distinction between abstract
ideas and concrete or particular ideas corresponds to a distinction
among *objects*. "It is plain, ..." Locke
writes, "that General and Universal, belong not to the real
existence of things; but are Inventions and Creatures of the
Understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern only signs,
whether Words or Ideas" (III.iii.11).
The abstract/concrete distinction in its modern form is meant to mark
a line in the domain of objects or entities. So conceived, the
distinction becomes a central focus for philosophical discussion
primarily in the 20th century. The origins of this development are
obscure, but one crucial factor appears to have been the breakdown of
the allegedly exhaustive distinction between mental and material
objects, which had formed the main division for ontologically-minded
philosophers since Descartes. One signal event in this development is
Frege's insistence that the objectivity and aprioricity of the
truths of mathematics entail that numbers are neither material beings
nor ideas in the mind. If numbers were material things (or properties
of material things), the laws of arithmetic would have the status of
empirical generalizations. If numbers were ideas in the mind, then the
same difficulty would arise, as would countless others. (Whose mind
contains the number 17? Is there one 17 in your mind and another in
mine? In that case, the appearance of a common mathematical subject
matter would be an illusion.) In *The Foundations of
Arithmetic* (1884), Frege concludes that numbers are neither
external *concrete* things nor mental entities of any sort.
Later, in his essay "The Thought" (1918), Frege claims the
same status for the items he calls *thoughts*--the senses
of declarative sentences--and also, by implication, for their
constituents, the senses of subsentential expressions. Frege does not
say that senses are *abstract*. He says that they belong to a
*third realm* distinct both from the sensible external world
and from the internal world of consciousness. Similar claims had been
made by Bolzano (1837), and later by Brentano (1874) and his pupils,
including Meinong and Husserl. The common theme in these developments
is the felt need in semantics and psychology, as well as in
mathematics, for a class of objective (i.e., non-mental) non-physical
entities. As this new *realism* was absorbed into
English-speaking philosophy, the traditional term
'abstract' was enlisted to apply to the denizens of this
*third realm*. In this vein, Popper (1968) spoke of the
'third world' of abstract, objective entities, in the
broader sense that includes cultural products such as arguments,
theories, and works of art.
As we turn to an overview of the current debate, it is therefore
important to remember that the use of the terms *platonist*
(for those who affirm the existence of abstract objects) and
*nominalist* (for those who deny existence) is somewhat
lamentable, since these words have established senses in the history
of philosophy. These terms stood for positions that have little to do
with the modern notion of an abstract object. Modern platonists (with
a small 'p') need not accept any of the distinctive
metaphysical and epistemological doctrines of Plato, just as modern
nominalists need not accept the distinctive doctrines of the medieval
nominalists. Moreover, the literature also contains mention of
*anti-platonists*, many of whom see themselves as
*fictionalists* about abstracta, though this doesn't help
if it turns out that the best analysis of fictions is to regard them
as abstract objects. So the reader should therefore be aware that
terminology is not always well-chosen and that the terms so used
sometimes stand for doctrines that are more restricted than the
traditional doctrines that go by the same name. Henceforth, we simply
use *platonism* for the thesis that there exists at least one
abstract object, and *nominalism* for the thesis that the
number of abstract objects is exactly zero (Field 1980).
### 2.2 An Initial Overview of the Contemporary Debate
Before we survey the various proposals for drawing the
abstract/concrete distinction, we should briefly say why the
distinction has been thought to matter. Among philosophers who take
the distinction seriously, it is generally supposed that while
concrete objects clearly exist, abstract entities are problematic in
distinctive ways and deny the existence of abstract entities
altogether. In this section we briefly survey the arguments for
nominalism and the responses that platonists have offered. If the
abstract objects are unified as a class, it is because they have some
feature that generates what seems to be a distinctive problem--a
problem that nominalists deem unsolvable and which platonists aim to
solve. Before we ask what the unifying feature might be, it may
therefore help to characterize the various problems it has been
thought to generate.
The contemporary debate about platonism developed in earnest when
Quine argued (1948) that mathematical objects exist, having changed
his mind about the nominalist approach he had defended earlier
(Goodman & Quine 1947). Quine's 1948 argument involves
three key premises, all of which exerted significant influence on the
subsequent debate: (i) mathematics is indispensable for empirical
science; (ii) we should be ontologically committed to the entities
required for the truth of our best empirical theories (all of which
should be expressible in a first-order language); and (iii) the
entities required for the truth on an empirical theory are those in
the range of the variables bounded by its first-order quantifiers
(i.e., the entities in the domain of the existential quantifier
'\(\exists x\)' and the universal quantifier
'\(\forall x\)'). He concluded that in addition to the
concrete entities contemplated by our best empirical science, we must
accept the existence of mathematical entities, even if they are
abstract (see also Quine 1960, 1969, 1976).
Quine's argument initiated a debate that is still alive. Various
nominalist responses questioned one or another of the premises in his
argument. For instance, Field (1980) challenged the idea that
mathematics is indispensable for our best scientific
theories--i.e., rejecting (i) above--and thus faced the task
of rewriting classical and modern physics in nominalistic terms in
order to sustain the challenge. Others have taken on the somewhat less
daunting task of accepting (i) but rejecting (ii) and (iii);
they've argued that even if our best scientific theories, in
regimented form, quantify over mathematical entities, this
doesn't entail a commitment to mathematical entities (see
Azzouni 1997a, 1997b, 2004; Balaguer 1996, 1998; Maddy 1995, 1997;
Melia 2000, 2002; Yablo 1998, 2002, 2005, 2009; Leng 2010.) Colyvan
(2010) coined the expression 'easy-roaders' for this
second group, since they avoided the 'hard road' of
paraphrasing our best scientific theories in non-mathematical
terms.
By contrast, some mathematical platonists (Colyvan 2001; Baker 2005,
2009) have refined Quine's view by advancing the so-called
'Enhanced Indispensability Argument' (though see Saatsi
2011 for a response). Some participants describe the debate in terms
of a stalemate they hope to resolve (see Baker 2017, Baron 2016, 2020,
Knowles & Saatsi 2019, and Martinez-Vidal
& Rivas-de-Castro 2020, for
discussion).[3]
Aside from the debate over Quine's argument, both platonism and
nominalism give rise to hard questions. Platonists not only need to
provide a theory of what abstract objects exist, but also an account
of how we cognitively access and come to know non-causal, abstract
entities. This latter question has been the subject of a debate that
began in earnest in Benacerraf (1973), which posed just such a dilemma
for mathematical objects. Benacerraf noted that the causal theory of
reference doesn't seem to make it possible to know the truth
conditions of mathematical statements, and his argument applies to
abstract entities more generally. On the other hand, nominalists need
to explain the linguistic uses in which we seem to appeal to such
entities, especially those uses in what appear to be good
explanations, such as those in scientific, mathematical, linguistic,
and philosophical pursuits (see Wetzel 2009, 1-22, for a
discussion of the many places where abstract *types* are used
in scientific explanations). Even though nominalists argue that there
are no abstracta, the very fact that there is disagreement about their
existence suggests that both platonists and nominalists acknowledge
the distinction between the abstract and concrete to be a meaningful
one.
On the platonist side, various proposals have been raised to address
the challenge of explaining epistemic access to abstract entities,
mostly in connection with mathematical objects. Some, including
Godel (1964), allege that we access abstract objects in virtue of
a unique kind of perception (intuition). Maddy (1990, 1997) developed
two rather different ways of understanding our knowledge of
mathematics in naturalistic ways. Other platonists have argued that
abstract objects are connected to empirical entities, either via
abstraction (Steiner 1975; Resnik 1982; Shapiro 1997) or via
abstraction principles (Wright 1983; Hale 1987); we'll discuss
some of these views below. There are also those who speak of existent
and intersubjective abstract entities as a kind of mental
representation (Katz 1980).
A rather different line of approach to the epistemological problem was
proposed in Linsky & Zalta 1995, where it is suggested that
one shouldn't attempt to explain knowledge of abstracta on the
same model that is used to explain knowledge of concrete objects. They
argue that not only a certain plenitude principle for abstract objects
(namely, the comprehension principle for abstract objects put forward
in Zalta 1983, 1988--see below) yields unproblematic
'acquaintance by description' to unique abstract objects
but also that their approach actually comports with naturalist
beliefs. Balaguer (1995, 1998) also suggests that a plenitude
principle is the best way forward for the platonist, and that our
knowledge of the consistency of mathematical theories suffices for
knowledge of mathematical objects. And there are views that conceive
of abstract objects as constituted by human--or, in general,
intelligent--subjects, or as abstract artifacts (see Popper 1968;
Thomasson 1999).
A number of nominalists have been persuaded by Benacerraf's
(1973) epistemological challenge about reference to abstract objects
and concluded that sentences with terms making apparent reference to
them--such as mathematical statements--are either false or
lack a truth value. They argue that those sentences must be
paraphrasable without vocabulary that commits one to any sort of
abstract entity. These proposals sometimes suggest that statements
about abstract objects are merely instrumental; they serve only to
help us establish conclusions about concrete objects. Field's
*fictionalism* (1980, 1989) has been influential in this
regard. Field reconstructed Newtonian physics using second-order logic
and quantification over (concrete) regions of space-time. A completely
different tactic for avoiding the commitment to abstract, mathematical
objects is put forward in Putnam (1967) and Hellman (1989), who
separately reconstructed various mathematical theories in second-order
*modal* logic. On their view, abstract objects aren't in
the range of the existential quantifier at the actual world (hence, we
can't say that they exist), but they do occur in the range of
the quantifier at other possible worlds, where the axioms of the
mathematical theory in question are true.
These nominalistic approaches must contend with various issues, of
course. At the very least, they have to successfully argue that the
tools they use to avoid commitments to abstract objects don't
themselves involve such commitment. For example, Field must argue that
space-time regions are concrete entities, while Putnam and Hellman
must argue that by relying on logical possibility and modal logic,
there is no commitment to possible worlds considered as abstract
objects. In general, any nominalist account that makes essential use
of set theory or model-theoretic structures must convincingly argue
that the very use of such analytic tools doesn't commit them to
abstract objects. (See Burgess & Rosen 1997 for a systematic
survey of different proposals about the existence of abstract
objects.)
Another nominalistic thread in the literature concerns the suggestion
that sentences about (posited) abstract objects are quasi-assertions,
i.e., not evaluable as to truth or falsehood (see Yablo 2001 and
Kalderon 2005). Still others argue that we should not believe
sentences about abstracta since their function, much like the
instrumentalism discussed earlier, is to ensure empirical adequacy for
observational sentences (Yablo 1998). This may involve differentiating
between apparent content, which involves posited abstract objects, and
real content, which only concerns concrete objects (Yablo 2001, 2002,
2010, 2014). (For more on these fictionalist accounts, see Kalderon
2005, Ch. 3, and the entry on
fictionalism.)
A final group of views in the literature represents a kind of
agnosticism about what exists or about what it is to be an object, be
it abstract or concrete. These views don't reject an external
material world, but rather begin with some question as to whether we
can have experience, observation, and knowledge of objects directly,
i.e., independent of our theoretical frameworks. Carnap (1950 [1956]),
for example, started with the idea that our scientific knowledge has
to be expressed with respect to a linguistic framework and that when
we wish to put forward a theory about a new kind of entity, we must
have a linguistic framework for talking about those entities. He then
distinguished two kinds of existence questions: internal questions
*within the framework* about the existence of the new entities
and external questions about the reality of the framework itself. If
the framework deals with abstract entities such as numbers, sets,
propositions, etc., then the internal question can be answered by
logical analysis of the rules of the language, such as whether it
includes terms for, or implies claims that quantify over, abstract
objects. But, for Carnap, the external question, about whether the
abstract entities really exist, is a pseudo-question and should be
regarded as nothing more than the pragmatic question of whether the
framework is a useful one to adopt, for scientific or other forms of
enquiry. We'll discuss Carnap's view in more detail in
subsection 3.7.1.
Some have thought that Carnap's view offers a
*deflationist* view of objects, since it appears that the
existence of objects is not language independent. After Carnap's
seminal article, several other deflationist approaches were put
forward (Putnam 1987, 1990; Hirsch 2002, 2011; Sider 2007, 2009;
Thomasson 2015), many of them claiming to be a vindication of
Carnap's view. However, there are deflationist proposals that
run counter to Carnap's approach, among them, deflationary
nominalism (Azzouni 2010) or agnosticism about abstract objects (Bueno
2008a, 2008b, 2020). Additionally, philosophers inspired by
Frege's work have argued for a minimal notion of an object (Rayo
2013, Rayo 2020 [Other Internet Resources]; and Linnebo
2018). We'll discuss some of these in greater detail below, in
subsection 3.7.2. A final agnostic
position that has emerged is one that rejects a strict version of
platonism, but suggests that neither a careful analysis of
mathematical practice (Maddy 2011), nor the enhanced version of the
indispensability argument (Leng 2020) suffice to decide between
nominalism and moderate versions of platonism. Along these lines,
Balaguer (1998) concluded that the question doesn't have an
answer, since the arguments for 'full-blooded' platonism
can be matched one-for-one by equally good arguments by the
anti-platonist.
For additional discussion about the basic positions in the debate
about abstract and concrete objects, see Szabo 2003 and the
entries on
nominalism in metaphysics
and
platonism in metaphysics,
nominalism in the philosophy of mathematics and
platonism in the philosophy of mathematics.
## 3. What is an Abstract Object?
As part of his attempt to understand the nature of possible worlds,
Lewis (1986a, 81-86) categorizes different ways by which one can
draw the abstract/concrete
distinction.[4]
These include: *the way of example* (which is simply to list
the paradigm cases of abstract and concrete objects in the hope that
the sense of the distinction will somehow emerge); *the way of
conflation* (i.e., identifying abstract and concrete objects with
some already-known distinction); *the way of negation* (i.e.,
saying what abstract objects are by saying what they are not, e.g.,
*non*-spatiotemporal, *non*-causal, etc.); and *the
way of abstraction* (i.e., saying that abstract objects are
conceptualized by a process of considering some known objects and
omitting certain distinguishing features). He gives a detailed
examination of the different proposals that typify these ways and then
attempts to show that none of them quite succeeds in classifying the
paradigms in accord with prevailing usage. Given the problems he
encountered when analyzing the various ways, Lewis became pessimistic
about our ability to draw the distinction cleanly.
Despite Lewis's pessimism about clarifying the abstract/concrete
distinction, his approach for categorizing the various proposals, when
extended, is a useful one. Indeed, in what follows, we'll see
that there are a number of additional *ways* that categorize
attempts to characterize the abstract/concrete distinction and
theorize about abstract objects. Even if there is no single,
acceptable account, these various ways of drawing the distinction and
theorizing about abstract objects do often cast light on the questions
we've been discussing, especially when the specific proposals
are integrated into a supplementary (meta-)ontological project. For
each method of drawing the distinction and specific proposal adopting
that method acquires a certain amount of explanatory power, and this
will help us to compare and contrast the various ideas that are now
found in the literature.
### 3.1 The Way of Example and the Way of Primitivism
According to the *way of example*, it suffices to list paradigm
cases of abstract and concrete entities in the hope that the sense of
the distinction will somehow emerge. Clearly, a list of examples for
each category would be a heuristically promising start in the search
for some criterion (or list of criteria) that would be fruitful for
drawing the distinction. However, a simple list would be of limited
significance since there are too many ways of extrapolating from the
paradigm cases to a distinction that would cover the unclear cases,
with the result that no clear notion has been explained.
For example, pure sets are paradigm examples of abstract entities. But
the case of impure sets is far from clear. Consider the unit set whose
sole member is Joe Biden (i.e., {Joe Biden}), the Undergraduate Class
of 2020 or The Ethics Committee, etc. They are sets, but it is not
clear that they are abstract given that Joe Biden, the members of the
class and committee are concrete. Similarly, if one offers the
characters of Sherlock Holmes stories as examples to help motivate the
primitive concept abstract object, then one has to wonder about the
object London that appears in the novels.
The refusal to characterize the abstract/concrete distinction while
maintaining that both categories have instances might be called the
*way of primitivism*, whenever the following condition obtains:
a few predicates are distinguished as primitive and unanalyzable, and
the explanatory power rests on the fact that other interesting
predicates can be defined in terms of the primitives and that
interesting claims can be judged true on the basis of our intuitive
understanding of the primitive and defined notions. Thus, one might
take abstract and concrete as primitive notions. It wouldn't be
an insignificant result if one could use this strategy to explain why
abstract objects are necessarily existent, causally ineffiacious,
non-spatiotemporal, intersubjective, etc. (see Cowling 2017:
92-97).
But closer inspection of this method reveals some significant
concerns. To start with, when a distinction is taken as basic and
unanalyzable, one typically has to offer some intuitive instances of
the primitive predicates. But it is not always so easy to do this. For
example, when mathematicians take *set* and *membership*
as primitives and then assert some principles of set theory, they
often illustrate their primitives by offering some examples of sets,
such as The Undergraduate Class of 2020 or The Ethics Committee, etc.
But these, of course, aren't quite right, since the members of
the class and committee may change while the class and committee
remain the same, whereas if the members of a set change, one has a
different set. A similar concern affects the present proposal. If one
offers sets or the characters of the Sherlock Holmes novels as
examples to help motivate the primitive concept *abstract
object*, then one has to wonder about impure sets such as the unit
set whose sole member is Aristotle (i.e., \(\{\textrm{Aristotle}\}\))
and the object London that appears in the novels.
### 3.2 The Way of Conflation
According to the *way of conflation*, the abstract/concrete
distinction is to be identified with one or another metaphysical
distinction already familiar under another name: as it might be, the
distinction between sets and individuals, or the distinction between
universals and particulars. There is no doubt that some authors have
used the terms in this way. (Thus Quine 1948 uses 'abstract
entity' and 'universal' interchangeably.) This sort
of conflation is however rare in recent philosophy.
### 3.3 The Way of Abstraction
Another methodology is what Lewis calls the *way of
abstraction*. According to a longstanding tradition in
philosophical psychology, abstraction is a distinctive mental process
in which new ideas or conceptions are formed by considering the common
features of several objects or ideas and ignoring the irrelevant
features that distinguish those objects. For example, if one is given
a range of white things of varying shapes and sizes; one ignores or
*abstracts from* the respects in which they differ, and thereby
attains the abstract idea of whiteness. Nothing in this tradition
requires that ideas formed in this way represent or correspond to a
distinctive kind of object. But it might be maintained that the
distinction between abstract and concrete objects should be explained
by reference to the psychological process of abstraction or something
like it. The simplest version of this strategy would be to say that an
object is abstract if it is (or might be) the referent of an abstract
idea; i.e., an idea formed by abstraction. So conceived, the *way
of abstraction* is wedded to an outmoded philosophy of mind.
It should be mentioned, though, that the key idea behind the *way
of abstraction* has resurfaced (though transformed) in the
structuralist views about mathematics that trace back to Dedekind.
Dedekind thought of numbers by the *way of abstraction*.
Dedekind suggested that when defining a number-theoretic structure,
"we entirely neglect the special character of the elements,
merely retaining their distinguishability and taking into account only
the relations to one another" (Dedekind 1888 [1963, 68]). This
view has led some structuralists to deny that numbers are abstract
objects. For example, Benacerraf concluded that "numbers are not
objects at all, because in giving the properties (that is, necessary
and sufficient) of numbers you merely characterize an *abstract
structure*--and the distinction lies in the fact that the
'elements' of the structure have no properties other than
those relating them to other 'elements' of the same
structure" (1965, 70). We shall therefore turn our attention to
a variant of the *way of abstraction*, one that has led a
number of philosophers to conclude that numbers are indeed abstract
objects.
### 3.4 The Way of Abstraction Principles
In the contemporary philosophical literature, a number of books and
papers have investigated a form of abstraction that doesn't
depend on mental processes. We may call this the *way of
abstraction principles*. Wright (1983) and Hale (1987) have
developed an account of abstract objects on the basis of an idea they
trace back to certain suggestive remarks in Frege (1884). Frege notes
(in effect) that many of the singular terms that appear to refer to
abstract entities are formed by means of functional expressions. We
speak of *the shape of* a building, *the direction of* a
line, *the number of* books on the shelf. Of course, many
singular terms formed by means of functional expressions denote
ordinary concrete objects: 'the father of Plato',
'the capital of France'. But the functional terms that
pick out abstract entities are distinctive in the following respect:
where \(f(a)\) is such an expression, there is typically an equation
of the form:
\[
f(a)\! =\! f(b) \text{ if and only if } Rab
\]
where \(R\) is an equivalence relation, i.e., a relation that is
reflexive, symmetric and transitive, relative to some domain. For
example:
The direction of \(a\) = the direction of \(b\) if and only if \(a\)
is parallel to \(b\)
The number of \(F\text{s}\) = the number of \(G\text{s}\) if and only
if there are just as many \(F\text{s}\) as \(G\text{s}\)
These biconditionals (or *abstraction principles*) appear to
have a special semantic status. While they are not strictly speaking
*definitions* of the functional expression that occurs on the
left hand side, they would appear to hold in virtue of the meaning of
that expression. To understand the term 'direction' is (in
part) to know that the direction of \(a\) and the direction of \(b\)
are the same entity if and only if the lines \(a\) and \(b\) are
parallel. Moreover, the equivalence relation that appears on the right
hand side of the biconditional would appear to be semantically and
perhaps epistemologically prior to the functional expressions on the
left (Noonan 1978). Mastery of the concept of a direction presupposes
mastery of the concept of parallelism, but not vice versa.
The availability of abstraction principles meeting these conditions
may be exploited to yield an account of the distinction between
abstract and concrete objects. When '\(f\)' is a
functional expression governed by an abstraction principle, there will
be a corresponding kind \(K\_{f}\) such that:
\(x\) is a \(K\_{f}\) if and only if, for some \(y\), \(x\! =\!
f(y)\).
For example,
\(x\) is a cardinal number if and only if for some concept \(F\),
\(x\) = the number of \(F\text{s}\).
The simplest version of the *way of abstraction principles* is
then to say that:
\(x\) is an abstract object if (and only if) \(x\) is an instance of
some kind \(K\_{f}\) whose associated functional expression
'\(f\)' is governed by a suitable abstraction
principle.
The strong version of this account--which purports to identify a
necessary condition for abstractness--is seriously at odds with
standard usage. Pure sets are usually considered paradigmatic abstract
objects. But it is not clear that they satisfy the proposed criterion.
According to a version of naive set theory, the functional
expression '*set of*' is indeed characterized by a
putative abstraction principle.
The set of \(F\text{s}\) = the set of \(G\text{s}\) if and only if,
for all \(x\), \(x\) is \(F\) if and only if \(x\) is \(G\).
But this principle, which is a version of Frege's Basic Law V,
is inconsistent and so fails to characterize an interesting concept.
In contemporary mathematics, the concept of a set is not introduced by
an abstraction principle, but rather axiomatically. Though attempts
have been made to investigate abstraction principles for sets (Cook
2003), it remains an open question whether something like the
mathematical concept of a set can be characterized by a suitably
restricted abstraction principle. (See Burgess 2005 for a survey of
recent efforts in this direction.) Even if such a principle is
available, however, it is unlikely that the epistemological priority
condition will be satisfied. That is, it is unlikely that mastery of
the concept of set will presuppose mastery of the equivalence relation
that figures on the right hand side. It is therefore uncertain whether
the *way of abstraction principles* will classify the objects
of pure set theory as abstract entities (as it presumably must).
On the other hand, as Dummett (1973) has noted, in many cases the
standard names for paradigmatically abstract objects do not assume the
functional form to which the definition adverts. Chess is an abstract
entity, but we do not understand the word 'chess' as
synonymous with an expression of the form '\(f(x)\)',
where '\(f\)' is governed by an abstraction principle.
Similar remarks would seem to apply to such things as the English
language, social justice, architecture, and Charlie Parker's
musical style. If so, the abstractionist approach does not provide a
necessary condition for abstractness as that notion is standardly
understood.
More importantly, there is some reason to believe that it fails to
supply a *sufficient* condition. A mereological fusion of
concrete objects is itself a concrete object. But the concept of a
mereological fusion is governed by what appears to be an abstraction
principle:
The fusion of the \(F\text{s}\) = the fusion of the \(G\text{s}\) if
and only if the \(F\text{s}\) and \(G\text{s}\) cover one
another,
where the \(F\text{s}\) *cover* the \(G\text{s}\) if and only
if every part of every \(G\) has a part in common with an \(F\).
Similarly, suppose a train is a maximal string of railroad carriages,
all of which are connected to one another. We may define a functional
expression, 'the train of \(x\)', by means of an
'abstraction' principle: The train of \(x\) = the train of
\(y\) if and only if \(x\) and \(y\) are connected carriages. We may
then say that \(x\) is a train if and only if for some carriage \(y\),
\(x\) is the train of \(y\). The simple account thus yields the
consequence that trains are to be reckoned abstract entities.
It is unclear whether these objections apply to the more sophisticated
abstractionist proposals of Wright and Hale, but one feature of the
simple account sketched above clearly does apply to these proposals
and may serve as the basis for an objection to this version of the
*way of abstraction principles*. The neo-Fregean approach seeks
to explain the abstract/concrete distinction in *semantic*
terms: We said that an abstract object is an object that falls in the
range of a functional expression governed by an abstraction principle,
where '\(f\)' is *governed* by an abstraction
principle when that principle holds in virtue of the *meaning*
of '\(f\)'. This notion of a statement's holding in
virtue of the meaning of a word is notoriously problematic (see the
entry
the analytic/synthetic distinction).
But even if this notion makes sense, one may still complain: The
abstract/concrete distinction is supposed to be a metaphysical
distinction; abstract objects are supposed to differ from concrete
objects in some important ontological respect. It should be possible,
then, to draw the distinction directly in metaphysical terms: to say
what it is *in the objects themselves* that makes some things
abstract and others concrete. As Lewis writes, in response to a
related proposal by Dummett:
>
>
> Even if this ... way succeeds in drawing a border, as for all I know
> it may, it tells us nothing about how the entities on opposite sides
> of that border differ in their nature. It is like saying that snakes
> are the animals that we instinctively most fear--maybe so, but it
> tells us nothing about the nature of snakes. (Lewis 1986a: 82)
>
>
>
The challenge is to produce a non-semantic version of the
abstractionist criterion that specifies directly, in metaphysical
terms, what the objects whose canonical names are governed by
abstraction principles all have in common.
One response to this difficulty is to transpose the abstractionist
proposal into a more metaphysical key (see Rosen & Yablo
2020). The idea is that each Fregean number is, by *its* very
nature, the number of some Fregean concept, just as each Fregean
direction is, by *its* very nature, at least potentially the
direction of some concrete line. In each case, the abstract object is
*essentially* the value of an abstraction function for a
certain class of arguments. This is not a claim about the meanings of
linguistic expressions. It is a claim about the essences or natures of
the objects themselves. (For the relevant notion of essence, see Fine
1994.) So for example, the Fregean number two (if there is such a
thing) is, essentially, by its very nature, the number that belongs to
a concept \(F\) if and only if there are exactly two \(F\text{s}\).
More generally, for each Fregean abstract object \(x\), there is an
abstraction function \(f\), such that \(x\) is essentially the value
of \(f\) for every argument of a certain kind.
Abstraction functions have two key features. First, for each
abstraction function \(f\) there is an equivalence relation \(R\) such
that it lies in the nature of \(f\) that \(f(x)\! =\! f(y)\) iff
\(Rxy\). Intuitively, we are to think that \(R\) is metaphysically
prior to \(f\), and that the abstraction function \(f\) is
*defined* (in whole or in part) by this biconditional. Second,
each abstraction function is a *generating* function: its
values are essentially values of that function. Many functions are not
generating functions. Paris is the capital of France, but it is not
essentially a capital. The number of solar planets, by contrast, is
essentially a number. The notion of an abstraction function may be
defined in terms of these two features:
\(f\) is an *abstraction function* if and only if
1. for some equivalence relation \(R\), it lies in the nature of \(f\)
that \(f(x)\! =\! f(y)\) if and only if \(Rxy\); and
2. for all \(x\), if \(x\) is a value of \(f\), then it lies in the
nature of \(x\) that there is (or could be) some object \(y\) such
that \(x\! =\! f(y)\).
We may then say that:
\(x\) is an *abstraction* if and only if, for some abstraction
function \(f\), there is or could be an object \(y\) such that \(x\!
=\! f(y)\),
and that:
\(x\) is an abstract object if (and only if) \(x\) is an
abstraction.
This account tells us a great deal about the distinctive natures of
these broadly Fregean abstract objects. It tells us that each is, by
its very nature, the value of a special sort of function, one whose
nature is specified in a simple way in terms of an associated
equivalence relation. It is worth stressing, however, that it does not
supply much *metaphysical* information about these items. It
doesn't tell us whether they are located in space, whether they
can stand in causal relations, and so on. It is an open question
whether this somewhat unfamiliar version of the abstract/concrete
distinction lines up with any of the more conventional ways of drawing
the distinction outlined above. An account along these lines would be
at odds with standard usage, but may be philosophically interesting
all the same. In any case, the problem remains that this metaphysical
version of *the way of abstraction principles* leaves out
paradigmatic cases of abstract objects such as the aforementioned game
of chess.
### 3.5 The Ways of Negation
According to the *way of negation*, abstract objects are
defined as those which *lack* certain features possessed by
paradigmatic concrete objects. Many explicit characterizations in the
literature follow this model. Let us review some of the options.
#### 3.5.1 The Combined Criterion of Non-Mental and Non-Sensible
According to the account implicit in Frege's writings:
An object is abstract if and only if it is both non-mental and
non-sensible.
Here the first challenge is to say what it means for a thing to be
'non-mental', or as we more commonly say,
'mind-independent'. The simplest approach is to say that a
thing depends on the mind when it would not (or could not) have
existed if minds had not existed. But this entails that tables and
chairs are mind-dependent, and that is not what philosophers who
employ this notion have in mind. To call an object
'mind-dependent' in a metaphysical context is to suggest
that it somehow owes its existence to mental activity, but not in the
boring 'causal' sense in which ordinary artifacts owe
their existence to the mind. What can this mean? One promising
approach is to say that an object should be reckoned mind-dependent
when, by its very nature, it exists *at a time* if and only if
it is the object or content of some mental state or process *at
that time*. This counts tables and chairs as mind-independent,
since they might survive the annihilation of thinking things. But it
counts paradigmatically mental items, like a purple afterimage of
which a person \(X\) may become aware, as mind-dependent, since it
presumably lies in the nature of such items to be objects of conscious
awareness whenever they exist. However, it is not clear that this
account captures the full force of the intended notion. Consider, for
example, the mereological fusion of \(X\)'s afterimage and
\(Y\)'s headache. This is surely a mental entity if anything is.
But it is not necessarily the object of a mental state. (The fusion
can exist even if no one is thinking about *it*.) A more
generous conception would allow for mind-dependent objects that exist
at a time in virtue of mental activity at that time, even if the
object is not the object of any single mental state or act. The fusion
of \(X\)'s afterimage and \(Y\)'s headache is
mind-dependent in the second sense but not the first. That is a reason
to prefer the second account of mind-dependence.
If we understand the notion of mind-dependence in this way, it is a
mistake to insist that abstract objects be mind-independent. To strike
a theme that will recur, it is widely supposed that sets and classes
are abstract entities--even the *impure* sets whose
urelements are concrete objects. Any account of the abstract/concrete
distinction that places set-theoretic constructions like
\(\{\textrm{Alfred}, \{\textrm{Betty}, \{\textrm{Charlie},
\textrm{Deborah}\}\}\}\) on the concrete side of the line will be
seriously at odds with standard usage. With this in mind, consider the
set whose sole members are X's afterimage and Y's
headache, or some more complex set-theoretic object based on these
items. If we suppose, as is plausible, that an impure set exists at a
time only when its members exist at that time, this will be a
mind-dependent entity in the generous sense. But it is also presumably
an abstract entity.
A similar problem arises for so-called *abstract artifacts*,
like Jane Austen's novels and the characters that inhabit them.
Some philosophers regard such items as eternally existing abstract
entities that worldly authors merely describe but do not create. But
of course the commonsensical view is that Austen created *Pride and
Prejudice* and Elizabeth Bennett, and there is no good reason to
deny this (Thomasson 1999; cf. Sainsbury 2009). If we take this
commonsensical approach, there will be a clear sense in which these
items depend for their existence on Austen's mental activity,
and perhaps on the mental activity of subsequent
readers.[5]
These items
may not count as mind-dependent in either of the senses canvassed
above, since *Pride and Prejudice* can presumably exist at a
time even if no one happens to be thinking at that time. (If the world
took a brief collective nap, *Pride and Prejudice* would not
pop out of existence.) But they are obviously mind-dependent in some
not-merely-causal sense. And yet they are still presumably abstract
objects. For these reasons, it is probably a mistake to insist that
abstract objects be mind-independent. (For more on mind-dependence,
see Rosen 1994, and the entry
platonism in the philosophy of mathematics.)
Frege's proposal in its original form also fails for other
reasons. Quarks and electrons are usually considered neither sensible
nor mind-dependent. And yet they are not abstract objects. A better
version of Frege's proposal would hold that:
An object is abstract if and only if it is both non-physical and
non-mental.
Two remarks on this last version are in order. First, it opens the
door to thinking that besides abstract and concrete entities (assuming
that physical objects, in a broad sense, are concrete), there are
mental entities that are neither concrete nor abstract. As mentioned
above (section 1.2), there is no need to insist that the distinction
is an exhaustive one. Second, while the approach may well draw an
important line, it inherits one familiar problem, namely, that of
saying what it is for a thing to be a *physical* object (Crane
and Mellor 1990; for discussion, see the entry on
physicalism).
In one sense, a physical entity is an entity in which physics might
take an interest. But physics is saturated with mathematics, so in
this sense a great many paradigmatically abstract objects--e.g.
\(\pi\)--will count as physical. The intended point is that
abstract objects are to be distinguished, not from *all* of the
objects posited by physics, but from the *concrete objects*
posited by the physics. But if that is the point, it is unilluminating
in the present context to say that abstract objects are
non-physical.
#### 3.5.2 The Non-Spatiality Criterion
Contemporary purveyors of the *way of negation* typically amend
Frege's criterion by requiring that abstract objects be
non-spatial, causally inefficacious, or both. Indeed, if any
characterization of the abstract deserves to be regarded as the
standard one, is this:
An object is abstract if and only if it is non-spatial and causally
inefficacious.
This standard account nonetheless presents a number of
perplexities.
First of all, one must consider whether there are abstract objects
that have one of the two features but not the other. For example,
consider an impure set, such as the unit set of Plato (i.e.,
\(\{\textrm{Plato}\}\)). It has some claim to being abstract because
it is causally inefficacious, but some might suggest that it has a
location in space (namely, wherever Plato is located). Or consider a
work of fiction such as Kafka's *The Metamorphosis*. It,
too, has some claim to being abstract because it (or at least its
content) is non-spatial. But one might suggest that works of fiction
as paradigmatic abstract objects seem to have causal powers, e.g.,
powers to affect us.
In the remainder of this subsection, we focus on the first criterion
in the above proposal, namely, the non-spatial condition. But it gives
rise to a subtlety. It seems plausible to suggest that, necessarily,
if something \(x\) is causally efficacious, then (since \(x\) is a
cause or has causal powers) \(x\), or some part of \(x\), has a
location in time. So if something has no location in time, it is
causally inefficacious. The theory of relativity implies that space
and time are nonseparable, i.e., combined into a single
*spacetime* manifold. So the above proposal might be restated
in terms of a single condition: an object is abstract if and only if
it is non-spatiotemporal. Sometimes this revised proposal is the
correct one for thinking about abstract objects, but our discussion in
the previous section showed that abstract artifacts and mental events
may be temporal but non-spatial. Given the complexities here, in what
follows we use spatiotemporality, spatiality, or temporality, as
needed.
Some of the archetypes of abstractness are non-spatiotemporal in a
straightforward sense. It makes no sense to ask where the cosine
function was last Tuesday. Or if it makes sense to ask, the sensible
answer is that it was nowhere. Similarly, for many people, it makes no
good sense to ask when the Pythagorean Theorem came to be. Or if it
does make sense to ask, the only sensible answer for them is that it
has always existed, or perhaps that it does not exist 'in
time' at all. It is generally assumed that these paradigmatic
'pure abstracta' have no non-trivial spatial or temporal
properties; that they have no spatial location, and they exist nowhere
in particular in time.
Other abstract objects appear to stand in a more interesting relation
to spacetime. Consider the game of chess. Some philosophers will say
that chess is like a mathematical object, existing nowhere and
'no when'--either eternally or outside of time
altogether. But the most natural view is that chess was invented at a
certain time and place (though it may be hard to say exactly where or
when); that before it was invented it did not exist at all; that it
was imported from India into Persia in the 7th century; that it has
changed over the years, and so on. The only reason to resist this
natural account is the thought that since chess is clearly an abstract
object--it's not a physical object, after all!--and
since abstract objects do not exist in space and time--by
definition!--chess must resemble the cosine function in its
relation to space and time. And yet one might with equal justice
regard the case of chess and other abstract artifacts as
counterexamples to the hasty view that abstract objects possess only
trivial spatial and temporal properties.
Should we then abandon the non-spatiotemporality criterion? Not
necessarily. Even if there is a sense in which some abstract entities
possess non-trivial spatiotemporal properties, it might still be said
that concrete entities exist in spacetime *in a distinctive
way*. If we had an account of this distinctive *manner* of
spatiotemporal existence characteristic of concrete objects, we could
say: An object is abstract (if and) only if it fails to exist in
spacetime *in that way*.
One way to implement this approach is to note that paradigmatic
concrete objects tend to occupy a relatively determinate spatial
volume at each time at which they exist, or a determinate volume of
spacetime over the course of their existence. It makes sense to ask of
such an object, 'Where is it now, and how much space does it
occupy?' even if the answer must sometimes be somewhat vague. By
contrast, even if the game of chess is somehow
'implicated' in space and time, it makes no sense to ask
how much space it now occupies. (To the extent that this does make
sense, the only sensible answer is that it occupies no space at all,
which is not to say that it occupies a spatial point.) And so it might
be said:
An object is abstract (if and) only if it fails to occupy anything
like a determinate region of space (or spacetime).
This promising idea raises several questions. First, it is conceivable
that certain items that are standardly regarded as abstract might
nonetheless occupy determinate volumes of space and time. Consider,
for example, the various sets composed from Peter and Paul:
\(\{\textrm{Peter}, \textrm{Paul}\},\) \(\{\textrm{Peter},
\{\textrm{Peter}, \{\{\textrm{Paul}\}\}\}\},\) etc. We don't
normally ask where such things are, or how much space they occupy. And
indeed many philosophers will say that the question makes no sense, or
that the answer is a dismissive 'nowhere, none'. But this
answer is not forced upon us by anything in set theory or metaphysics.
Even if we grant that *pure* sets stand in only the most
trivial relations to space, it is open to us to hold, as some
philosophers have done, that impure sets exist where and when their
members do (Lewis 1986a). It is not unnatural to say that a set of
books is located on a certain shelf in the library, and indeed, there
are some theoretical reasons for wanting to say this (Maddy 1990). On
a view of this sort, we face a choice: we can say that since impure
sets exist in space, they are not abstract objects after all; or we
can say that since impure sets are abstract, it was a mistake to
suppose that abstract objects cannot occupy space.
One way to finesse this difficulty would be to note that even if
impure sets occupy space, they do so in a derivative manner. The set
\(\{\textrm{Peter}, \textrm{Paul}\}\) occupies a location in virtue of
the fact that its concrete elements, Peter and Paul, together occupy
that location. The set does not occupy the location *in its own
right*. With that in mind, it might be said that:
An object is abstract (if and) only if it either fails to occupy space
at all, or does so only in virtue of the fact some other
items--in this case, its urelements--occupy that
region.
But of course Peter himself occupies a region in virtue of the fact
that his *parts*--his head, hands, etc.--together
occupy that region. So a better version of the proposal would say:
An object is abstract (if and) only if it either fails to occupy space
at all, or does so of the fact that some other items *that are not
among its parts* occupy that region.
This approach appears to classify the cases fairly well, but it is
somewhat artificial. Moreover, it raises a number of questions. What
are we to say about the statue that occupies a region of space, not
because its *parts* are arrayed in space, but rather because
its constituting *matter* occupies that region? And what about
the unobserved electron, which according to some interpretations of
quantum mechanics does not really *occupy* a region of space at
all, but rather stands in some more exotic relation to the spacetime
it inhabits? Suffice it to say that a philosopher who regards
'non-spatiality' as a mark of the abstract, but who allows
that some abstract objects may have non-trivial spatial properties,
owes us an account of the *distinctive relation* to spacetime,
space, and time that sets paradigmatic concreta apart.
Perhaps the crucial question about the 'non-spatiality'
criterion concerns the classification of the parts of space itself. If
they are considered concrete, then one might ask where the
spatiotemporal points or regions are located. And a similar question
arises for spatial points and regions, and for temporal instants or
intervals. So, the ontological status of spatiotemporal locations, and
of spatial and temporal locations, is problematic. Let us suppose that
space, or spacetime, exists, not just as an object of pure
mathematics, but as the arena in which physical objects and events are
somehow arrayed. It is essential to understand that the problem is not
about the numerical coordinates that represent these points and
regions (or instants and intervals) in a reference system; the issue
is about the points and regions (or instants and intervals). Physical
objects are located 'in' or 'at' regions of
space; as a result, they count as concrete according to the
non-spatiality criterion. But what about the points and regions of
space itself? There has been some debate about whether a commitment to
spacetime substantivalism is consistent with the nominalist's
rejection of abstract entities (Field 1980, 1989; Malament
1982). If we define the abstract as the 'non-spatial',
this debate amounts to whether space itself is to be reckoned
'spatial'. To reject that these points, regions, instants,
and intervals, are concrete because they are not *located*,
entails featuring them as abstract. However, to think about them as
abstract sounds a bit weird, given their role in causal processes.
Perhaps, it is easier to treat them as concrete if we want to
establish that concrete entities are spatiotemporal--or spatial
and temporal.
The philosopher who believes that there is a serious question about
whether the parts of space-time count as concrete would thus do well
to characterize the abstract/concrete distinction in other terms.
Still--as mentioned above--the philosopher who thinks that
it is defensible that parts of space are concrete might use
non-spatiality to draw the distinction if she manages to provide a way
of accounting for how impure sets relate to space differs from the way
concreta do.
#### 3.5.3 The Causal Inefficacy Criterion
According to the most widely accepted versions of the *way of
negation*:
An object is abstract (if and) only if it is causally
inefficacious.
Concrete objects, whether mental or physical, have causal powers;
numbers and functions and the rest make nothing happen. There is no
such thing as causal commerce with the game of chess itself (as
distinct from its concrete instances). And even if impure sets do in
some sense exist in space, it is easy enough to believe that they make
no *distinctive* causal contribution to what transpires. Peter
and Paul may have effects individually. They may even have effects
together that neither has on his own. But these joint effects are
naturally construed as effects of two concrete objects acting jointly,
or perhaps as effects of their mereological aggregate (itself usually
regarded as concretum), rather than as effects of some set-theoretic
construction. Suppose Peter and Paul together tip a balance. If we
entertain the possibility that this event is caused by a set, we shall
have to ask which set caused it: the set containing just Peter and
Paul? Some more elaborate construction based on them? Or is it perhaps
the set containing the molecules that compose Peter and Paul? This
proliferation of possible answers suggests that it was a mistake to
credit sets with causal powers in the first place. This is good news
for those who wish to say that all sets are abstract.
(Note, however, that some writers identify ordinary physical
events--causally efficacious items par excellence--with
sets. For David Lewis, for example, an event like the fall of Rome is
an ordered pair whose first member is a region of spacetime, and whose
second member is a set of such regions (Lewis 1986b). On this account,
it would be disastrous to say both that impure sets are abstract
objects, and that abstract objects are non-causal.)
The biggest challenge to characterizing abstracta as causally
inefficacious entities is that *causality* itself is a
notoriously problematic and difficult to define idea. It is
undoubtedly one of the most controversial notions in the history of
thought, with all kinds of views having been put forward on the
matter. Thus, *causally efficacious* inherits any unclarity
that attaches to *causality*. So, if we are to move the
discussion forward, we need to take the notion of
causation--understood as a relation among events--as
sufficiently clear, even though in fact it is not. Having acknowledged
this no doubt naive assumption, several difficulties arise for
the suggestion that abstract objects are precisely the causally
inefficacious objects.
The idea that causal inefficacy constitutes a *sufficient*
condition for abstractness is somewhat at odds with standard usage.
Some philosophers believe in 'epiphenomenal qualia':
objects of conscious awareness (sense data), or qualitative conscious
states that may be caused by physical processes in the brain, but
which have no downstream causal consequences of their own (Jackson
1982; Chalmers 1996). These items are causally inefficacious if they
exist, but they are not normally regarded as abstract. The proponent
of the causal inefficacy criterion might respond by insisting that
abstract objects are distinctively neither causes *nor
effects*. But this is perilous. Abstract artifacts like Jane
Austen's novels (as we normally conceive them) come into being
*as a result* of human activity. The same goes for impure sets,
which come into being when their concrete urelements are created.
These items are clearly *effects* in some good sense; yet they
remain abstract if they exist at all. It is unclear how the proponent
of the strong version of the causal inefficacy criterion (which views
causal inefficacy as both necessary and sufficient for abstractness)
might best respond to this problem.
Apart from this worry, there are no decisive intuitive counterexamples
to this account of the abstract/concrete distinction. The chief
difficulty--and it is hardly decisive--is rather conceptual.
It is widely maintained that causation, strictly speaking, is a
relation among events or states of affairs. If we say that the
rock--an object--caused the window to break, what we mean is
that some event or state (or fact or condition) *involving* the
rock caused the break. If the rock itself is a cause, it is a cause in
some derivative sense. But this derivative sense has proved elusive.
The rock's hitting the window is an event in which the rock
'participates' in a certain way, and it is because the
rock participates in events in this way that we credit the rock itself
with causal efficacy. But what is it for an object to
*participate* in an event? Suppose John is thinking about the
Pythagorean Theorem and you ask him to say what's on his mind.
His response is an event--the utterance of a sentence; and one of
its causes is the event of John's thinking about the theorem.
Does the Pythagorean Theorem 'participate' in this event?
There is surely *some* sense in which it does. The event
consists in John's coming to stand in a certain relation to the
theorem, just as the rock's hitting the window consists in the
rock's coming to stand in a certain relation to the glass. But
we do not credit the Pythagorean Theorem with causal efficacy simply
because it participates in this sense in an event which is a
cause.
The challenge is therefore to characterize the distinctive manner of
'participation in the causal order' that distinguishes the
concrete entities. This problem has received relatively little
attention. There is no reason to believe that it cannot be solved,
though the varieties of philosophical analysis for the notion of
*causality* make the task full of pitfalls. Anyway, in the
absence of a solution, this standard version of the *way of
negation* must be reckoned a work in progress.
#### 3.5.4 The Discernibility / Non-Duplication Criteria
Some philosophers have supposed that, under certain conditions, there
are numerically different but indiscernible concrete entities, i.e.,
that there are distinct concrete objects \(x\) and \(y\) that
exemplify the same properties. If this can be sustained, then one
might suggest that distinct abstract objects are always discernible
or, in a weaker formulation, that distinct abstract objects are never
duplicates.
Cowling (2017, 86-89) analyzes whether the abstract/concrete
distinction thus rendered is fruitful, though criteria in this line
are normally offered as glosses on the universal/particular
distinction. As part of his analysis, he deploys two pairs of (not
uncontroversial) distinctions: (i) between qualitative and
non-qualitative properties, and (ii) between intrinsic and extrinsic
properties. Roughly, a non-qualitative property is one that involves
specific individuals (e.g., *being the teacher of Alexander the
Great*, *being Albert Einstein*, etc.), while qualitative
properties are not (e.g., *having mass*, *having a
shape*, *having a length*, etc.). Intrinsic properties are
those an object has regardless of what other objects are like and
regardless of its relationships with other objects (e.g., *being
made of copper*). By contrast, an object's extrinsic
properties are those that depend on other entities (e.g., *being
the fastest
car*).[6]
With these distinctions in mind, it seems impossible that there be
distinct abstract entities which are qualitatively indiscernible; each
abstract entity is expected to have a unique, distinctive qualitative
intrinsic nature (or property), which is giving reason for its
metaphysical being. This wouldn't be the case for any concrete
entity given the initial assumption in this section. Therefore, the
following criterion of discernability could be pondered:
\(x\) is an abstract object iff it is impossible for there to be an
object which is qualitatively indiscernible from \(x\) but distinct
from \(x\).
However, one can develop a counterexample to the above proposal, by
considering two concrete objects that are indiscernible with respect
to their intrinsic qualitative properties. Cowling (2017) considers
the case of a possible world with only two perfectly spherical balls,
\(A\) and \(B\), that share the same intrinsic qualitative properties
and that are floating at a certain distance from each other. So \(A\)
and \(B\) are distinct concrete objects but indiscernible in terms of
their intrinsic qualitative
properties.[7]
But Lewis has pointed out that "if two individuals are
indiscernible then so are their unit sets" (1986a, 84). If this
is correct, \(\{A\}\) and \(\{B\}\) would be indiscernible, but (at
least for some philosophers) distinct abstract objects, contrary to
the discernibility criterion.[8] It is possible to counter-argue that we could
happily accept impure sets as concrete; after all, it was always a bit
unclear how they should be classified. Obviously, this has the
problematic consequence of having some sets--pure sets--as
abstract and other sets--impure sets--as concrete. But the
idea that abstract objects have distinctive intrinsic natures allows
one to establish a criterion less strong than that of discernibility;
if an entity has a distinctive intrinsic nature, it cannot have a
duplicate. So, the next criterion of non-duplication can be put
forward:
\(x\) is an abstract object iff it is impossible for there to be an
object which is a duplicate of \(x\) but distinct from \(x\).
But there is a more serious counterexample to this criterion, namely,
immanent universals. These are purportedly concrete objects, for they
are universals wholly present where their instances are. But this
criterion renders them abstract. Take the color scarlet; it is a
universal wholly present in every scarlet thing. Each of the scarlets
in those things is an immanent universal. These are non-duplicable,
but at least according to Armstrong (1978, I, 77, though see 1989,
98-99), they are paradigmatically concrete: spatiotemporally
located, causally efficacious, etc. Despite how promising they
initially seemed, the criteria of discernibility and non-duplicability
do not appear to capture the abstract/concrete distinction.
### 3.6 The Way of Encoding
One of the most rigorous proposals about abstract objects has been
developed by Zalta (1983, 1988, and in a series of papers). It is a
formal, axiomatic metaphysical theory of objects (both abstract and
concrete), and also includes a theory of properties, relations, and
propositions. The theory explicitly defines the notion of an
*abstract object* but also implicitly characterizes them using
axioms.[9]
There are three central aspects to the theory: (i) a predicate \(E!\)
which applies to concrete entities and which is used to define a modal
distinction between *abstract* and *ordinary* objects;
(ii) a distinction between *exemplifying* relations and
*encoding* properties (i.e., encoding 1-place relations); and
(iii) a comprehension schema that asserts the conditions under which
abstract objects exist.
(i) Since the theory has both a quantifier \(\exists\) and a predicate
\(E!\), Zalta offers two interpretations of his theory (1983,
51-2; 1988, 103-4). On one interpretation, the quantifier
\(\exists\) simply asserts *there is* and the predicate \(E!\)
asserts *existence*. On this interpretation, a formula such as
\(\exists x \neg E!x\), which is implied by the axioms described
below, asserts "there is an object that fails to exist".
So, on this interpretation, the theory is Meinongian because it
endorses non-existent objects. But there is a Quinean interpretation
as well, on which the quantifier \(\exists\) asserts
*existence* and the predicate \(E!\) asserts
*concreteness*. On this interpretation, the formula \(\exists x
\neg E!x\) asserts "there exists an object that fails to be
concrete". So, on this interpretation, the theory is Platonist,
since it doesn't endorse non-existents but rather asserts the
existence of non-concrete objects. We'll henceforth use the
Quinean/Platonist interpretation.
In the more expressive, modal version of his theory, Zalta defines
*ordinary* objects \((O!)\) to be those that might be concrete.
The reason is that Zalta holds that possible objects (i.e., like
million-carat diamonds, talking donkeys, etc.) are not concrete but
rather possibly concrete. They exist, but they are not abstract, since
abstract objects, like the number one, couldn't be concrete.
Indeed, Zalta's theory implies that abstract objects \((A!)\)
aren't possibly concrete, since he defines them to be objects
that aren't ordinary (1993, 404):
\[\begin{align}
O!x &=\_\mathit{df} \Diamond E!x \\
A!x &=\_\mathit{df} \neg O!x
\end{align}\]
Thus, the ordinary objects include all the concrete objects (since
\(E!x\) implies \(\Diamond E!x\)), as well as possible objects that
aren't in fact concrete but might have been. On this theory,
therefore, *being abstract* is not the negation of *being
concrete*. Instead, the definition validates an intuition that
numbers, sets, etc., aren't the kind of thing that could be
concrete. Though Zalta's definition of *abstract* seems
to comport with the *way of primitivism*--take
*concrete* as primitive, and then define *abstract* as
*not possibly concrete*--it differs in that (a) axioms are
stated that govern the conditions under which abstract objects exist
(see below), and (b) the features commonly ascribed to abstract
objects are *derived* from principles that govern the property
of being concrete. For example, Zalta accepts principles such as:
necessarily, anything with causal powers is concrete (i.e., \(\Box
\forall x(Cx \to E!x)\)). Then since abstract objects are, by
definition, concrete at no possible world, they necessarily fail to
have causal powers.
(ii) The distinction between *exemplifying* and
*encoding* is a primitive one and is represented in the theory
by two atomic formulas: \(F^nx\_1\ldots x\_n\) \((x\_1,\ldots ,x\_n\)
*exemplify* \(F^n\)) and \(xF^1\) \((x\) *encodes*
\(F^1).\) While both ordinary and abstract objects exemplify
properties, only abstract objects encode
properties;[10]
it is axiomatic that ordinary objects necessarily fail to encode
properties \((O!x \to \Box \neg \exists FxF).\) Zalta's proposal
can be seen a positive metaphysical proposal distinct from all the
others we have considered; a positive proposal that uses encoding as a
key notion to characterize abstract objects. On this reading, the
definitions and axioms of the theory convey what is meant by
*encoding* and how it works. Intuitively, an abstract object
*encodes* the properties by which we define or conceive of it,
but exemplifies some properties contingently and others necessarily.
Thus, the number 1 of Dedekind-Peano number theory encodes all and
only its number-theoretic properties, and whereas it contingently
exemplifies the property *being thought about by Peano*, it
necessarily exemplifies properties such as *being abstract*,
*not having a shape*, *not being a building*, etc. The
distinction between exemplifying and encoding a property is also used
to define identity: ordinary objects are identical whenever they
necessarily exemplify the same properties while abstract objects are
identical whenever they necessarily encode the same properties.
(iii) The comprehension principle asserts that for each expressible
condition on properties, there is an abstract object that
*encodes* exactly the properties that fulfill (satisfy) that
condition. Formally: \(\exists x(A!x \:\&\: \forall F(xF \equiv
\phi))\), where \(\phi\) has no free \(x\)s. Each instance of this
schema asserts the existence of an abstract object of a certain sort.
So, for example, where '\(s\)' denotes Socrates, the
instance \(\exists x(A!x \:\&\: \forall F(xF \equiv Fs))\) asserts
that there is an abstract object that encodes exactly the properties
that Socrates exemplifies. Zalta uses this object to analyze the
complete individual concept of Socrates. But any condition \(\phi\) on
conditions on properties with no free occurrences of \(x\) can be used
to form an instance of comprehension. In fact, one can prove that the
object asserted to exist is unique, since there can't be two
distinct abstract objects that encode exactly the properties
satisfying \(\phi\).
The theory that emerges from (i)-(iii) is further developed
with additional axioms and definitions. One axiom asserts that if an
object encodes a property, it does so necessarily \((xF \to \Box
xF).\) So the properties that an object encodes are not relative to
any circumstance. Moreover, Zalta supplements his theory of abstract
objects with a theory of properties, relations, and propositions. Here
we describe only the theory of properties. It is governed by two
principles: a comprehension principle for properties and a principle
of identity. The comprehension principle asserts that for any
condition on objects expressible without encoding subformulas, there
is a property \(F\) such that necessarily, an object \(x\) exemplifies
\(F\) if and only if \(x\) is such that \(\phi\), i.e., \(\exists
F\Box \forall x(Fx \equiv \phi)\), where \(\phi\) has no encoding
subformulas and no free \(F\text{s}\). The identity principle asserts
that properties \(F\) and \(G\) are identical just in case \(F\) and
\(G\) are necessarily encoded by the same objects, i.e., \(F\! =\! G
=\_\mathit{df} \Box \forall x(xF \equiv xG)\). This principle allows
one to assert that there are properties that are necessarily
equivalent in the classical sense, i.e., in the sense that \(\Box
\forall x(Fx \equiv Gx)\), but which are
distinct.[11]
Since \(\alpha\! =\! \beta\) is defined both when \(\alpha\) and
\(\beta\) are both individual variables or both property variables,
Zalta employs the usual principle for the substitution of identicals.
Since all of the terms in his system are rigid, substitution of
identicals preserves truth even in modal contexts.
The foregoing principles implicitly characterize both abstract and
ordinary objects. Zalta's theory doesn't postulate any
concrete objects, though, since that is a contingent matter. But his
system does include the Barcan formula (i.e., \(\Diamond \exists xFx
\to \exists x\Diamond Fx\)), and so possiblity claims like
"there might have been talking donkeys" imply that there
are (non-concrete) objects at our world that are talking donkeys at
some possible world. Since Zalta adopts the view that ordinary
properties like being a donkey necessarily imply concreteness, such
*contingently nonconcrete* objects are ordinary.
Zalta uses his theory to analyze Plato's Forms, concepts,
possible worlds, Fregean numbers and Fregean senses, fictions, and
mathematical objects and relations generally. However, some
philosophers see his comprehension principle as too inclusive, for in
addition to these objects, it asserts that there are entities like
*the round square* or *the set of all sets which are not
members of themselves*. The theory doesn't assert that
anything *exemplifies* being round and being square--the
theory preserves the classical form of predication without giving rise
to contradictions. But it does assert that there is an abstract object
that encodes being round and being square, and that there is an
abstract object that encodes the property of being a set that contains
all and only non-self-membered sets. Zalta would respond by suggesting
that such objects are needed not only to state truth conditions, and
explain the logical consequences, of sentences involving expressions
like "the round square" and "the Russell set",
but also to analyze the fictional characters of inconsistent stories
and inconsistent theories (e.g., Fregean extensions).
It should be noted that Zalta's comprehension principle for
abstract objects is unrestricted and so constitutes a
*plenitude* principle. This allows the theory to provide
objects for arbitrary mathematical theories. Where \(\tau\) is a term
of mathematical theory \(T\), the comprehension principle yields a
unique object that encodes all and only the properties \(F\) that are
attributed to \(\tau\) in \(T\) (Linsky & Zalta 1995,
Nodelman & Zalta
2014).[12]
Zalta's theory therefore offers significant explanatory power,
for it has multiple applications and advances solutions to a wide
range of puzzles in different fields of
philosophy.[13]
### 3.7 The Ways of Weakening Existence
Many philosophers have supposed that abstract objects exist in some
thin, deflated sense. In this section we consider the idea that the
abstract/concrete distinction might be *defined* by saying that
abstract objects exist in some less robust sense than the sense in
which concrete objects exist.
The traditional platonist conception is a realist one: abstract
objects exist in just the same full-blooded sense that objects in the
natural world exist--they are mind-independent, rather than
artifacts of human endeavor or dependent on concrete objects in any
way. But a number of deflationary, metatontological views, now
established in the literature, are based on the idea that the problems
traditional platonists face have to do with "some very general
preconceptions about what it takes to specify an object" rather than
with "the abstractness of the desired object" (Linnebo 2018,
42). These views suggest that abstract objects exist in some weaker
sense. Various approaches therefore articulate what may be called the
ways of weakening existence. One clear precedent is due to Carnap 1950
[1956], whose deflationary approach may go the furthest; Carnap
rejects the metaphysical pursuit of what "really exists"
(even in the case of concrete objects) since he maintains that the
question "Do \(X\text{s}\) really exist?" are
pseudo-questions (if asked independently of some linguistic
framework).
But there are other ways to suggest that abstract objects have
existence conditions that demand little of the world. For example,
Linsky & Zalta (1995, 532) argued that the mind-independence
and objectivity of abstract objects isn't like that of physical
objects: abstract objects aren't subject to an
appearance/reality distinction, they don't exist in a
'sparse' way that requires discovery by empirical
investigation, and they aren't complete objects (e.g.,
mathematical objects are defined only by their mathematical
properties). They use this conception to *naturalize*
Zalta's comprehension principle for abstract objects.
Other deflationary accounts develop some weaker sense in which
abstract objects exist (e.g., as 'thin' objects). We
further describe some of these proposals below and try to unpack the
ways in which they characterize the weakened, deflationary sense of
existence (even when such characterizations are not always
explicit).
#### 3.7.1 The Criterion of Linguistic Rules
Carnap held that claims about the "real" existence of
entities (concrete or abstract) do not have cognitive content. They
are pseudo-statements. However, he admitted: (a) that there are
sentences in science that use terms that designate mathematical
entities (such as numbers); and (b) that semantic analysis seems to
require entities like properties and propositions. Since mathematical
entities, properties, and propositions are traditionally considered
abstract, he wanted to clarify how it is possible to accept a language
referring to abstract entities without adopting what he considered
pseudo-sentences about such entities' objective reality.
Carnap's famous paper (1950 [1956]) contained an attempt to show
that, without embracing Platonism, one can use a language referring to
abstract entities.
To achieve these goals, Carnap begins by noting that before one can
ask existence questions about entities of a determinate kind, one
first has to have a language, or a *linguistic framework*, that
allows one to speak about the kinds of entity in question. He then
distinguishes 'internal' existence questions expressed
within such a linguistic framework from 'external'
existence questions about a framework. Only the latter ask whether the
entities of that framework are objectively real. As we'll see
below, Carnap thought that internal existence questions within a
framework can be answered, either by empirical investigation or by
logical analysis, depending on the kind of entity the framework is
about. By contrast, Carnap regards external questions (e.g., 'Do
\(X\text{s}\) exist?', expressed either about, or independent
of, a linguistic framework) as pseudo-questions: though they appear to
be theoretical questions, in fact they are merely practical questions
about the utility of the linguistic framework for science.
Carnap's paper (1950 [1956]) considers a variety of linguistic
frameworks, such as those for: observable things (i.e., the
spatiotemporally ordered system of observable things and events),
natural numbers and integers, propositions, thing properties, rational
and real numbers, and spatiotemporal coordinate systems. Each
framework is established by developing a language that typically
includes expressions for one or more kinds of entities in question,
expressions for properties of the entities in question (including a
general category term for each kind of entity in question), and
variables ranging over those entities. Thus, a framework for the
system of observable things has expressions that denote such things
('the Earth', 'the Eiffel Tower', etc.),
expressions for properties of such things ('planet',
'made of metal', etc.), and variables ranging over
observables. The framework for natural numbers has expressions that
denote them ('0', '2+5'), expressions for
properties of the numbers ('prime', 'odd'),
including the general category term 'number'), and
variables ranging over numbers.
For Carnap, each statement in a linguistic framework should have a
truth value that can be determined either by analytical or empirical
methods. A statement's truth value is analytically determinable
if it is logically true (or false), or if it's truth is
determinable exclusively from the rules of the language or on the
basis of semantic relationships among its component expressions. A
statement is empirically determinable when it is confirmable (or
disconfirmable) in the light of the perceived evidence. Note that the
very attempt to confirm an empirical statement about physical objects
on the basis of the evidence requires that one adopt the language of
the framework of things. Carnap warns us, however, that "this
must not be interpreted as if it meant ... acceptance of a
*belief* in the reality of the thing world; there is no such
belief or assertion or assumption because it is not a theoretical
question" (1950 [1956, 208]). For Carnap, to accept an ontology
"means nothing more than to accept a certain form of language,
in other words to accept rules for forming statements and for testing,
accepting, or rejecting them" (1950 [1956, 208]).
Carnap takes this approach to every linguistic framework, no matter
whether it is a framework about physical, concrete things, or a
framework about abstract entities such as numbers, properties,
concepts, propositions, etc. For him, the pragmatic reasons for
accepting a given linguistic framework are that it has explanatory
power, unifies the explanation of disparate kinds of data and
phenomena, expresses claims more efficiently, etc. And we often choose
a framework for a particular explanatory purpose. We might therefore
choose a framework with expressions about abstract entities to carry
out an *explication* (i.e., an elucidation of concepts), or to
develop a semantics for natural language. For Carnap, the choice
between platonism or nominalism is not a legitimate one; both are
inappropriate attempts to answer an external pseudo-question.
As sketched earlier, the truth of such existence claims as
'there are tables' and 'there are unicorns',
which are expressed within the framework for observable entities, is
to be determined empirically, since empirical observations and
investigations are needed. These statements are not true in virtue of
the rules of the language. By contrast, existence claims such as
'there are numbers' ('\(\exists xNx\)')
expressed within the framework of number theory, or 'there is a
property \(F\) such that both \(x\) and \(y\) are \(F\)'
('\(\exists F(Fx \:\&\:
Fy)\)') expressed within the framework of property
theory, can be determined analytically. For these statements either
form part of the rules of the language (e.g., expressed as axioms that
govern the terms of the language) or are derivable from the rules of
the language. When these statements are part of the rules that make up
the linguistic framework, they are considered *analytic*, as
are the existential statements that follow from those
rules.[14]
All of the existence assertions just discussed are therefore
*internal* to their respective linguistic frameworks. Carnap
thinks that the only sense that can be given to talk of
"existence" is an internal sense. Internal questions about
the existence of things or abstract objects are not questions about
their real metaphysical
existence.[15]
Hence, it seems more appropriate to describe his view as embodying a
deflationary notion of object. For Carnap concludes "the
question of the admissibility of entities of a certain type or of
abstract entities in general as designata is reduced to the question
of the acceptability of the linguistic framework for those
entities" (1950 [1956, 217]).
Thus, for each framework (no matter whether it describes empirical
objects, abstract objects, or a mix of both), one can formulate both
simple and complex existential statements. According to Carnap, each
simple existential statement is either empirical or analytic. If a
simple statement is empirical, its truth value can be determined by a
combination of empirical inquiry and consideration of the linguistic
rules governing the framework; if the simple existential statement is
analytic, then its truth value can be determined simply by considering
the linguistic rules governing the framework. Whereas the simple
existential statements that require empirical investigation assert the
existence of possible concrete entities (like 'tables'
or 'unicorns'), the simple existential statements that are
analytic assert the existence of abstract entities. Let us call this
criterion for asserting the existence of abstract objects the
*criterion of linguistic rules*.
The case of mixed frameworks poses some difficulties for the view.
According to the Criterion of Linguistic Rules,
\(x\) is abstract iff "\(x\) exists" is analytic in the
relevant language.
But this criterion suggests that *impure* sets,
object-dependent properties, abstract artifacts, and the rest are not
abstract. For this criterion appears to draw a line between certain
pure abstract entities and everything else. The truth of simple
existence statements about \(\{\textrm{Bob Dylan}\}\) or
Dickens' *A Christmas Carol*, which usually are
considered abstract entities, does not depend solely on linguistic
rules. The same goes for simple and complex existential statements
with general terms such as 'novel', 'legal
statute', etc.
In the end, though, Carnap doesn't seem to be either a realist
or nominalist about objects (abstract or concrete). Carnap rejects the
question whether these objects are real in a metaphysical sense. But,
contrary to the nominalist, he rejects the idea that we can truly deny
the real existence of abstract objects (i.e., a denial that is
external to a linguistic framework). This attitude, which settles the
question of which framework to adopt on pragmatic grounds (e.g., which
framework best helps us to make sense of the data to be explained), is
the reason why we've labeled his view as a *way of weakening
existence*. See the entry on
Carnap
for further details.
Proposals by other philosophers are related to Carnap's view.
Resnik (1997, Part Two) has put forward a *postulational
epistemology* for the existence of mathematical objects. According
to this view, all one has to do to ensure the existence of
mathematical objects is to use a language to posit mathematical
objects and to establish a consistent mathematical theory for
them.[16]
Nevertheless, their existence does not result from their being
posited. Instead, we recognize those objects as existent because a
consistent mathematical theory for them has been developed. Resnik
requires both a linguistic stipulation for considering mathematical
objects and a coherency condition for recognizing them as existent.
Thomasson (2015, 30-34) advocates for an approach which she
takes to be inherited from Carnap. She calls it *easy
ontology*. Since she is not trying to find ultimate categories or
a definitive list of basic (abstract or concrete) objects, she prefers
a simpler kind of realism (see Thomasson 2015, 145-158). She
argues that everyday uses of existential statements provide acceptable
ontological commitments when those assertions are supported either by
empirical evidence or merely by the rules of use that govern general
terms (e.g., sortal terms); in both cases she says that
"application conditions" for a general term are fulfilled
(see Thomasson 2015, 86, 89-95). She, too, therefore offers a
*criterion of linguistic rules* for accepting abstract objects.
Given her defense of simple realism, it appears that she takes both
observable objects and theoretical entities in science as
concrete.
#### 3.7.2 The Criterion of Minimalism
In what follows, two ways of formulating criteria for the
abstract/concrete distinction are considered. The views start with the
idea that our concept of an object allows for objects whose existence
places very few demands on reality over and above the demands imposed
by claims that do not mention abstract objects. Those philosophers who
maintain this philosophical thesis are what Linnebo (2012) calls
metaontological *minimalists*. Their proposals are typically
put forward in connection with issues in the philosophy of
mathematics, but then applied to other domains.
Parsons (1990), Resnik (1997), and Shapiro (1997) contend that, in the
case of mathematical theories, coherence suffices for the existence of
the objects mentioned in those
theories.[17]
They do not offer an explicit criterion for distinguishing abstract
and concrete objects. Nevertheless, their proposals implicitly draw
the distinction; abstract objects are those objects that exist in
virtue of the truth of certain modal claims. In particular, the
existence of mathematical objects is "grounded in" pure
modal truths. For example, numbers exist "in virtue of"
the fact that there could have been an \(\omega\)-sequence of objects;
sets exist because there might be entities that satisfy the axioms of
one or another set theory, etc. Since these pure modal truths are
necessary, this explains why pure abstract objects exist necessarily.
It also explains a sense in which they are insubstantial: their
existence is grounded in truths that do not (on the face of it)
require the actual existence of anything at
all.[18]
Linnebo (2018) advances a proposal about how to conceive abstract
objects by revising our understanding of Fregean biconditional
principles of abstraction (see
subsection 3.4).
Some philosophers take these Fregean abstraction principles to be
analytic sentences. For example, Hale & Wright (2001; 2009)
consider the two sides of an abstraction principle as equivalent as a
matter of meaning; they 'carve up content' in different
ways (to use Frege's metaphor). But Linnebo (2018, 13-14)
rejects this view and the view that such biconditional principles are
analytic.
He suggests instead that we achieve reference to abstract (and other
objects) by means of a *sufficiency operator*, \(\Rightarrow\),
which he takes to be a strengthening of the material conditional. He
starts with *conditional* principles of the form "if
\(Rab\), then \(f(a) \! =\! f(b)\)" (e.g., "if \(a\) and
\(b\) are parallel, then the direction of \(a\) = the direction of
\(b\)") and takes the right-hand side to be reconceptualization
of the left-hand side. He represents these claims as \(\phi
\Rightarrow \psi\), where the new operator
'\(\Rightarrow\)' is meant to capture the intuitive idea
that \(\phi\) *is* (*conceptually*) *sufficient
for* \(\psi\), or *all that is required for*
\(\psi\) *is* \(\phi\). For \(\phi\) to be sufficient for
\(\psi\), sufficiency must be stronger than
*metaphysically implies* but weaker than *analytically
implies* (see Linnebo 2018, 15). The notion Linnebo considers is a
'species of metaphysical grounding'. Hence, sufficiency
statements allow us to conceptualize statements mentioning abstract
objects (or other problematic objects) in terms of metaphysically less
problematic or non-problematic objects.
It is important for Linnebo that sufficiency be asymmetric. He
wouldn't accept mutual sufficiency, i.e., principles of the form
\(Rab \Leftrightarrow f(a) \! =\! f(b)\), since these would imply that
both sides are equivalent as a matter of meaning. Instead, the point
is that the seemingly unproblematic claim \(Rab\) renders the claim
\(f(a) \! =\! f(b)\) unproblematic, and this is best expressed by
sufficiency statements of the form \(Rab \Rightarrow f(a) \! =\!
f(b)\), on which the left side *grounds* the right side. So
Linnebo's notion of reconceptualization is not the Fregean
notion of recarving of content.
Moreover, in a sufficiency statement, Linnebo doesn't require
that the relation \(R\) be an equivalence relation; he requires only
that \(R\) be symmetric and transitive. It need not be reflexive, for
the domain might contain entities \(x\) such that \(\neg Rxx\) (e.g.,
in the case of the sufficiency statement for directions, not every
object \(x\) in the domain is such that \(x\) is parallel with
\(x\)--being parallel is restricted to lines). Linnebo calls such
symmetric and transitive relations *unity* relations. When a
sufficiency statement--\(Rab \Rightarrow f(a) \! =\!
f(b)\)--holds, then new objects are identified. The new objects
are specified in terms of the less problematic entities related by
\(R\); for example, directions become specified by lines that are
parallel. According to Linnebo, the parallel lines become
*specifications* of the new objects. A unity relation \(R\) is
therefore the starting point for developing a sufficient (but not
necessary and sufficient) condition for reference.
Sometimes the new objects introduced by conditional principles do not
make demands on reality; when that happens, they are said to be
*thin* (for example, directions only require that there be
parallel lines). However, when the new objects introduced by
sufficiency statements make more substantial demands on reality, the
objects are considered *thick*. Suppose \(Rab\) asserts \(a\)
and \(b\) are spatiotemporal parts of the same cohesive and naturally
bounded whole. Then \(a\) and \(b\) become specifications for physical
bodies via the following principle: \(Rab \Rightarrow \mathrm{Body}(a)
\! =\! \mathrm{Body}(b)\). In this case, the principle "makes a
substantial demand on the world" because it requires checking
that there are spatiotemporal parts *constituting a continuous
stretch of solid stuff* (just looking at the spatiotemporal parts
does not suffice to determine whether they constitute to a body; see
Linnebo 2018, 45).
However, Linnebo does not identify being abstract with being thin
(2012, 147), for there are thin objects in a relative sense that are
not abstract, namely those that make no substantial demands on the
world beyond those introduced in terms of some antecedently given
objects. The mereological sum of your left hand and your laptop makes
no demand on the world beyond the demands of its
parts.[19]
Instead, he suggests that abstract objects are those that are thin
and that *have a shallow nature*. The notion of *shallow
nature* is meant to capture "the intuitive idea that any
question that is solely about \(F\text{s}\) has an answer that can be
determined on the basis of any given specifications of these
\(F\text{s}\)" (2018, 192-195). For example, directions
have a shallow nature because any question about directions (e.g., are
they orthogonal, etc.?) can be determined solely on the basis of the
lines that specify them. Shapes have a shallow nature because any
question about them (e.g., are they triangular, circular, etc.?) can
be determined solely on the basis of their underlying concrete
figures. By contrast, mereological sums of concrete objects are
*not* shallow because there are questions about them that
cannot be answered solely on the basis of their specifications; for
instance, the weight of the mereological sum of your laptop and your
left hand depends not only on their combination but also on the
gravitational field in which they are
located.[20]
Linnebo thus contrasts abstract objects, which are thin and have a
shallow nature, with concrete objects, which do not have a shallow
nature. Linnebo extends this view in several ways. He constructs an
account of mathematical objects that goes beyond the *way of
abstraction principles* by providing a reconstruction of set
theory in terms of 'dynamic abstraction' (2018,
ch. 3). This form of minimalism also allows for abstract objects
of a mixed nature; namely, those that are *thin relative to*
other objects. For example, the type of the letter 'A' is
abstract because it is thin and has a shallow nature, but it is thin
with respect the tokens of the letter 'A'.
This view, as Linnebo himself admits, faces some problems. One of them
is that the methodologies used by working mathematicians, such as
classical logic, impredicative definitions, and taking arbitrary
subcollections of infinite domains, seem to presuppose objects that
are more independent, i.e., objects that don't have a shallow
nature (2018, 197; for a discussion of independence, see
Section 4.1 of the entry on
platonism in mathematics).
Another problem (2018, 195) is that
in order for an object to count as having a *shallow nature*,
an *intrinsic* unity relation has to be available. An
investigation is required to establish that there is such an intrinsic
unity relation in each case. It is far from clear that a conditional
principle with an *intrinsic* unity relation is available for
each of problematic cases mentioned in this entry, such as chess,
legal institutions or the English language. Finally, Linnebo
doesn't discuss the question of whether sets of concrete
urelements are themselves abstract or concrete. At present, there may
be an important question left open by his theory that other theories
of abstract objects answer.
### 3.8 Eliminativism
We come finally to proposals that reject the abstract/concrete
distinction. We can consider three cases. First, there are the
nominalists who both reject abstract entities and reject the
distinction as illegitimate. They focus on arguing against the
formulations of the distinction proposed in the literature. A second
group of eliminativists reject real objects of any kind, thereby
dismissing the distinction as irrelevant; these are the ontological
nihilists. A final group of eliminativists agree that there are
prototypical cases of concrete objects and abstract objects, but
conclude that a rigorous philosophical distinction can't be made
clearly enough to have any explanatory power (see Sider 2013, 287).
This recalls Lewis' pessimism (1986a, 81-86) about the
possibility of establishing a distinction that is sufficiently clear
to be theoretically interesting.
## 4. Further Reading
Berto & Plebani (2015) provide an useful introduction to ontology
and metaontology. Putnam (1971) makes the case for abstract objects on
scientific grounds. Bealer (1993) and Tennant (1997) present *a
priori* arguments for the necessary existence of abstract
entities. Fine (2002) systematically studies of abstraction principles
in the foundations of mathematics. Wetzel (2009) examines the
type-token distinction, argues that types are abstract objects while
the tokens of those types are their concrete instances, and shows how
difficult it is to paraphrase away the many references to types that
occur in the sciences and natural language. Zalta (2020) develops a
type-theoretic framework for higher-order abstract objects (which
includes abstract properties and abstract relations in addition to
ordinary properties and relations) and offers both comparisons to
other type theories and applications in philosophy and linguistics.
Moltmann (2013) investigates the extent to which abstract objects are
needed when developing a semantics of natural language; in this book,
and also in her article (2020), she defends a
'core-periphery' distinction and suggests that natural
language ontology contains references to abstract objects only in its
periphery. Falguera and Martinez-Vidal (2020) have edited a
volume in which contributors present positions and debates about
abstract objects of different kinds and categories, in different
fields in philosophy. |
essential-accidental | ## 1. The Modal Characterization of the Essential/Accidental Property Distinction
According to the *basic modal characterization* of the
distinction between essential and accidental properties, which is the
characterization given at the outset,
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an object \(o\)
just in case it is necessary that \(o\) has \(P\), whereas
\(P\) is an *accidental property* of an object \(o\)
just in case \(o\) has \(P\) but it is possible that
\(o\) lacks \(P\).
Putting this into the language of *possible worlds* that
philosophers often adopt,
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an object \(o\)
just in case \(o\) has \(P\) in all possible worlds, whereas
\(P\) is an accidental property of an object \(o\) just in
case \(o\) has \(P\) but there is a possible world in which
\(o\) lacks \(P\).
Although the basic idea behind the modal characterization is clear
enough from these statements, a moment's reflection reveals a
little bit of trouble. Many properties (some philosophers would say
*all* properties) are such that in order for an object to
possess them, that object must exist. According to the basic modal
characterization, any such property, if possessed by a contingently
existing object, will be counted as an *accidental* property of
that object. But this seems wrong. Consider the property of being a
dog. It is plausible (and for present purposes we assume it is true)
that an object must exist in order to possess this property. Now
consider a particular dog named 'Emma', who in fact exists
but who might not have existed. There is a possible world in which
Emma does not exist. And in this world (given our assumption) Emma is
not a dog, since Emma does not exist there. So, according to the basic
modal characterization, being a dog is an *accidental* property
of Emma. But however we characterize the distinction between essential
and accidental properties, the characterization should not by itself
rule out the intuitively compelling claim that Emma is
*essentially* a dog. So the basic modal characterization seems
flawed.
In response to this point, it is tempting to turn to a variant of the
basic modal characterization, *the existence-conditioned modal
characterization*, according to which
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an object \(o\)
just in case \(o\) has \(P\) and it is necessary that \(o\) has \(P\) if
\(o\) exists, whereas \(P\) is an *accidental
property* of an object \(o\) just in case \(o\) has
\(P\) but it is possible that \(o\) lacks \(P\) and yet
exists.
But this formulation too is less than satisfactory. A widely noted
problem for this way of drawing the distinction is that it makes
existence into an essential property of each object, since no object
could lack existence and yet exist. Thus, this characterization of the
essential/accidental property distinction effectively rules out a
theist's claim that only God has existence as an essential
property. But a good characterization of the distinction should not
rule on a substantive matter in this way.
Arguably neither of these problems is devastating. Those who favor the
basic characterization can say that typically when someone claims, for
example, that Emma is essentially a dog, what is really meant is not
that Emma has essentially the property of *being a dog*, but
instead that Emma has essentially the property of *being a dog if
existent*. Existence will be treated specially on this approach:
the claim that an object has existence as an essential property will
not be taken as the claim that the object has as an essential property
the property of *being existent if existent*; instead the claim
will be taken at face value. Those who favor the existence-conditioned
characterization can say that when someone says that only God has
existence as an essential property, what is really meant is that only
God has existence as a *necessary* property, where a necessary
property of an object is a property that the object possesses in all
possible worlds. (According to the basic modal characterization, an
essential property is the same as a necessary property.) Both
approaches may be faulted for making a special case of the property of
existence. But that is not perhaps such a great fault, given that
existence does seem to be a special case and that it is treated
specially in other areas of philosophy as well. (It is perhaps worth
pointing out that according to many philosophers--Kant, Russell,
and Frege to name three--existence is not a property at all. If
this is right, then existence is indeed a very special case.) In what
follows, we shall not be concerned with the details arising from the
need for some sort of existence condition--either in the
statement of the definition of an essential property (as on the
existence-conditioned modal characterization) or in the properties
that are taken to be essential (as on the basic modal
characterization). There are other ways of explaining the distinction
between essential and accidental properties of objects in modal terms
(to be discussed in SS2), but what we have called the *basic
modal characterization* and the *existence-conditioned modal
characterization* are the standard ways. Together, usually
indiscriminately, these amount to what we call the *modal
characterization*.
The central notion involved in any modal characterization of the
distinction between essential and accidental properties is that of
*metaphysical necessity/possibility*. But, since there are a
number of notions that correspond to the many ways that we use the
words 'necessity' and 'possibility', it is
helpful to contrast the relevant notion of necessity/possibility with
some other notions with which it might be confused.
If one claims that something is possible, it is sometimes natural to
take this to mean that one does not know it to be false. For example,
suppose that you ask someone whether Socrates ever went to Sparta and
she answers that it is possible. It is natural to understand her as
saying that she does not know that Socrates did not go to Sparta.
Thus, the possibility that is expressed here is a kind of
*epistemic* possibility (in particular, one according to which
\(p\) is epistemically possible for an agent \(X\) just in
case not-\(p\) is not known by \(X)\). This notion of
epistemic possibility is clearly distinct from the notion of
metaphysical possibility, since there are cases of epistemic
possibilities that are not metaphysical possibilities. Of
Goldbach's Conjecture (that every even number greater than two
is the sum of two primes) and its denial, each is epistemically
possible but one (we know not which) is not metaphysically possible.
And there are cases of metaphysical possibilities that are not
epistemic possibilities. That there are only two planets in our solar
system is metaphysically possible but not epistemically possible for
most of us, given that most of us know that there are not only two
planets in our solar system. (This is not to deny that there may be
some notions of epistemic possibility--for example, maximally
complete ways the universe can coherently *be conceived* to
be--for which it is at least plausible to suppose that every
metaphysical possibility is also an epistemic possibility. Even if
this is so, the notions of metaphysical possibility and epistemic
possibility are distinct.)
In addition to various notions of epistemic possibility, philosophers
have been concerned with three particular notions of possibility that
are generally regarded as non-epistemic: *logical possibility*,
*metaphysical possibility*, and *physical possibility*.
On one common view, the physical possibilities are a subset of the
metaphysical possibilities, which in turn are a subset of the logical
possibilities. (But see Fine (2002) for an opposing view.) Here are a
couple of examples of things that are logically possible but neither
metaphysically nor physically possible: the Eiffel Tower's being
red all over and green all over at the same time; the Eiffel
Tower's being red but not
extended.[1]
Here is an example of something that is logically and metaphysically
possible but not physically possible: the Eiffel Tower's
traveling faster than the speed of light. The Eiffel Tower's
being both red and not red at the same time is possible in none of the
senses while its traveling faster than a speeding bullet is possible
in all of them.
To supplement these examples, it would be nice to give
characterizations of the three notions that are free from controversy.
That is easier said than done. Nonetheless, we offer some
characterizations that are relatively uncontroversial. Metaphysical
possibility is often taken as a primitive notion that figures into the
idea of a physical possibility: a proposition is physically possible
if and only if it is metaphysically compossible with the laws of
physics. (Other nomological possibilities, such as chemical or
biological possibility, can be understood similarly.) Assuming that
the notion of a
logical truth
is understood, then the logical necessities are simply the logical
truths, so that the logical possibilities are those things whose
negations are not logical truths.
We end this overview of the modal characterization of the
essential/accidental property distinction by mentioning a notion that
is close to, but different from, that of an essential property. It is
easy to confuse the notion of an essential property--a property
that a thing could not *lack*--with the notion of a
property that a thing could not *lose*, so it is worth taking a
minute to reflect on the difference. Of course, any property that a
person could not lack is one that that person could not lose, since by
losing a property the person comes to lack it. Still, the
"reverse" does not hold. There are properties that a
person could not lose--like the property of having spent
Christmas 2007 in Tennessee--that are nevertheless not essential
to that person.
## 2. Other Ways of Characterizing the Essential/Accidental Property Distinction
The modal characterization of an essential property of an object as a
property that an object *must* possess fits well with (at least
one aspect of) our everyday understanding of the notion of
essentiality, which often seems simply to be the notion of necessity.
To say that something is essential for something else is typically
just to say that the first is necessary for the second. But however
well this account fits with (this aspect of) our everyday
understanding of essentiality, it has some consequences that may be
surprising: this characterization classifies the property of being
such that there are infinitely many primes (or, perhaps, being such
that there are infinitely many primes if the thing in question is
existent) as essential to Socrates (as well as to all other things),
since Socrates (like all other things) must have this property.
Socrates must have this property for the simple reason that it is
necessary that there are infinitely many primes. Moreover, this
characterization classifies the property of being the sole member of
the unit set \(\{2\}\) as essential to the number 2, given that it is
necessary that 2 is the sole member of the unit set \(\{2\}\).
Some philosophers, most prominently Kit Fine (1994), have found these
results disturbing. Fine thinks that the notion of an essential
property of a thing should be bound up with the notion of the thing's *nature* or *what it
is to be that thing*, but, Fine thinks, being such that there are
infinitely many primes intuitively has nothing to do with *what it
is to be* Socrates. And although it seems that having the number 2
as its sole member is part of what it is to be the unit set \(\{2\}\), it
does not seem that being this unit set's sole member is part of
what it is to be the number 2. It is Fine's view that these
sorts of properties are *counterexamples* to the modal
characterization.[2][3]
To replace the modal characterization, Fine offers a *definitional
characterization* of essential properties, according to which the
essential properties of an object are those of its properties that are
part of the object's "definition". What exactly is a
"definition" of an object? This is a difficult question.
At first sight, it seems to be a category mistake: it is words and
perhaps concepts--but not objects--that have definitions.
Even so, it must be admitted that some objects--such as the
number 2 and the unit set \(\{2\}\)--do seem to be definable: it is
plausible to think that the number 2 is defined as being the successor
of the number 1; and it is plausible to think that the unit set \(\{2\}\) is
defined as being the set whose sole member is the number 2. But other
objects--such as Socrates--do not seem to admit so readily
of definition. So even if the notion is understood well enough for
some objects (never mind that not everyone would allow that the number
2, for example, is an object), a major challenge for the advocate of
the definitional characterization is to provide a respectable general
understanding of the notion of a definition for an object.
Another issue bears mentioning inasmuch as the present article
concerns the *distinction between essential and accidental
properties* and not merely different ways that one may
characterize what an essential property is. There is a recognized
analytic connection between the terms 'essential property'
and 'accidental property' such that the properties of a
given thing divide exclusively and exhaustively into the categories
*essential* and *accidental*. Although the thought that
a thing's essential properties are those that are a part of its
definition has caught on in the philosophical literature, the thought
that a thing's accidental properties are those of its properties
that are not part of its definition has not. For example, few would
say that it is merely accidental to Socrates to be the sole member of
\(\{\text{Socrates}\}\). In short, the phrase 'accidental
property' tends to be used in the sense of a modally accidental
property.
Several philosophers have defended non-standard versions of the modal
characterization in light of Fine's putative counterexamples.
Edward Zalta (2006) was among the first. He distinguishes between
abstract objects (such as numbers and fictional characters) and
ordinary objects (such as Socrates). According to Zalta, every object
necessarily exists (whether abstract or ordinary), but ordinary
objects are not necessarily concrete. Indeed, an ordinary object such
as Socrates is concrete in some possible worlds but non-concrete in
others. Zalta suggests two separate accounts of essence, one
corresponding to abstract objects and the other corresponding to
ordinary objects. Here is Zalta's account of essence for
ordinary objects, slightly simplified:
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an ordinary object
\(o\) just in case (1) it is necessary that \(o\) has
\(P\) if \(o\) is concrete, and (2) it is not necessary that
\(o\) has \(P\).
In all possible worlds, Socrates is such that there are infinitely
many primes (whether Socrates is concrete or non-concrete). Thus,
condition (2) is not satisfied. Thus, this is not one of
Socrates's essential properties. (In Zalta's terminology,
this is not one of Socrates's *strongly* essential
properties, although Zalta would say that it is one of
Socrates's *weakly* essential properties, since condition
(1) is satisfied.) Here is Zalta's account of essence for
abstract objects:
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an abstract object
\(o\) just in case it is necessary that \(o\) *encodes* \(P\).
Only abstract objects are capable of *encoding* properties,
according to Zalta. To say that an abstract object encodes a property
is to say that the property is included in our conception of the
object. Thus, the fictional character Sherlock Holmes encodes the
property of being a detective, even though Sherlock Holmes does not
have this property. (In Zalta's terminology, Sherlock Holmes
does not *exemplify* this property. Sherlock Holmes exemplifies
properties such as being created by Arthur Conan Doyle and having been
portrayed by Jeremy Brett.) According to Zalta, being a detective is
one of Sherlock Holmes's essential properties. In contrast,
being such that there are infinitely many primes is not one of
Sherlock Holmes's essential properties, since this property is not
included in our conception of Sherlock Holmes.
The asymmetry between the essential properties of Socrates, who is an
ordinary object, and {Socrates}, which is an abstract object, is
explained: given the theory and definitions proposed, it is not
essential to Socrates that he is an element of {Socrates}, but it is
essential to {Socrates} that Socrates is an element of it (see Zalta
2006, SS5, for the details).
Fabrice Correia (2007) suggests a different version of the modal
characterization, based on a non-standard conception of modality:
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an object \(o\)
just in case it is *locally necessary* that \(o\) has
\(P\) if there are facts about \(o\).
In order to understand this characterization, we must first understand
Correia's non-standard conception of modality, inspired by
Arthur Prior (1957). Philosophers typically regard possible worlds as
giving a complete description of a possible state of the universe.
These are what Correia calls *globally* possible worlds.
*Locally* possible worlds form a broader class. They include
*all* the globally possible worlds, but also *strictly
locally* possible worlds, which are incomplete and do not include
facts about certain objects. A strictly locally possible world is
"a globally possible world in miniature" (2007, pp.
72-73). Correia suggests that there are strictly locally possible
worlds in which there are facts about Socrates but no facts about
prime numbers. Thus, it is not *locally necessary* that
Socrates has the property of being such that there are infinitely many
primes. Thus, this is not one of Socrates's essential
properties.
In a series of papers, Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno (2007a, 2007b,
2013) have defended a version of the modal characterization that
relies on their non-standard conception of counterfactuals:
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an object \(o\)
just in case (1) it is necessary that \(o\) has \(P\) if
\(o\) exists, and (2) if nothing had \(P\), then \(o\)
would not exist.
In order to understand this characterization, we must first understand
Brogaard and Salerno's non-standard conception of
counterfactuals. According to Brogaard and Salerno, counterfactuals
with impossible antecedents ("counterpossibles") can be
false (rather than being "vacuously true," as standard
accounts would have it). For example, Brogaard and Salerno would say
that the following counterfactual is false: If nothing had the
property of being such that there are infinitely many primes, then
Socrates would not exist. Since this counterfactual is false,
condition (2) is not satisfied. Thus, Socrates is not essentially such
that there are infinitely many primes.
Another account, defended by Nathan Wildman (2013) and suggested by Sam Cowling (2013), appeals to David Lewis's (1983, 1986) distinction between *sparse*
properties and *abundant* properties:
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an object \(o\)
just in case (1) it is necessary that \(o\) has \(P\) if
\(o\) exists, and (2) \(P\) is a sparse property.
As Wildman and Cowling point out, there are several ways of cashing
out the distinction between sparse properties and abundant properties
(see Schaffer (2004) for a thorough discussion). The basic idea is
that sparse properties are somehow more fundamental than abundant
properties (they somehow "carve nature at the joints").
What is important is that on any plausible account of the distinction,
the properties invoked by Fine will not count as sparse properties.
Thus, condition (2) will not be satisfied.
David Denby (2014) defends a similar version of the modal
characterization, appealing to the more familiar distinction between
*intrinsic* properties and *extrinsic* properties:
\(P\) is an *essential property* of an object \(o\)
just in case (1) it is necessary that \(o\) has \(P\) if
\(o\) exists, and (2) \(P\) is an intrinsic property.
Roughly, an intrinsic property is a property that an object possesses
*in isolation*, while an extrinsic property is a property that
an object possesses *only in relation to other objects*. Again
there are different ways of cashing out this distinction. But again
the important point is that on any plausible account of the
distinction, the properties invoked by Fine will not count as
intrinsic properties. Thus, condition (2) will not be
satisfied.[4]
In connection with the definitional characterization, it should be mentioned that Fine (1994) also argues that modal truths are reducible to truths about essence. Metaphysically necessary truths, for example, are identified with those propositions which are true by virtue of the essence of all objects whatsoever. This reductionist idea has generated a significant amount of literature in recent years. Among others, see Jessica Leech (2018), Carlos Romero (2019), Robert Michels (2019), and Nathan Wildman (forthcoming).
In addition to the modal characterization and the definitional
characterization, there is yet another way of characterizing the
notion of an essential property. It agrees with the definitional
characterization that the modal characterization is too liberal in
what it counts as essential, but it avoids appeal to the notion of a
definition of an object. On the *explanatory characterization*,
the essential properties of an object are the object's deepest
explanatory properties--those properties that figure
fundamentally into explanations of the object's possessing the
other properties it does. (For example, having six protons might count
as an essential property of a carbon atom because this property
figures fundamentally into explanations of its possession of other
properties, like its bonding characteristics.) This sort of account
threatens to make the essential/accidental property distinction
relative, since what counts as explanatorily primary seems to depend
on the interests and abilities of the explainers. Some advocates of the explanatory characterization, such as Meghan Sullivan (2017), are willing to accept that the distinction is relative in some sense. Others, such as
Irving Copi (1954) and Michael Gorman (2005), hold that there is a
more "metaphysical" and less "epistemic"
understanding of the notion of explanation, according to which one
thing explains another thing just in case there is a certain
mind-independent relation that holds between them. Just as the
advocate of the definitional characterization is challenged to provide
a respectable understanding of the relevant notion of definition, the
advocate of the explanatory characterization is challenged to provide
(or to borrow from the philosophy of science) a respectable
understanding of the relevant notion of explanation.
The distinction between accidental and essential properties is, at
least on the most basic version of each account, both exclusive and
exhaustive. (On some more refined versions of these accounts, the
distinction remains exclusive, but not exhaustive. Exhaustiveness is
lost when certain properties--like the property of being such
that there are infinitely many primes--are not counted as
properties to which the essential/accidental distinction applies. See
the discussion of Della Rocca (1996a) in SS3.) In addition, it
seems that the root of each of the characterizations goes back at
least to the work of Aristotle. (For the modal characterization, see
*Topics* 102b5ff; for the definitional, see
*Metaphysics* 1031a12; and for the explanatory, see
*Posterior Analytics* 74b5ff. For more on the notion of essence
in Aristotle's work, see the entry on
Aristotle's Metaphysics.)
It is not clear whether these three characterizations should properly
be thought of as competing characterizations of a single notion or
instead as ways of trying to capture three related, but different, and
equally legitimate, notions. (A similar point has been made by Livingstone-Banks (2017) and Cowling(2013).) Since the modal characterization has been so common, and since *the distinction between essential and accidental properties*, which is the topic of this entry, is almost always understood modally, it will dominate the remainder of this entry.
## 3. Four Ways of Characterizing Essentialism
There are at least four fairly standard ways of characterizing
essentialism, and by considering two extreme views, we can easily see
the differences among these four characterizations. According to the
first extreme view--one that it is natural to call *maximal
essentialism*
all of any given object's properties are essential to it.
According to the other extreme view--one that it is natural to call
*minimal essentialism*
there are virtually no limits to the ways in which any given object
might have been different from the way that it actually is, so that
the only essential properties of an object are what we might think of
as its trivial essential properties--properties like being either
\(F\) or non-\(F\) (for any property \(F\)) and being
self-identical.
Should so-called minimal essentialism really count as a form of
essentialism? And should so-called maximal essentialism really count
as a form of essentialism? There are four positions in logical space
with respect to these questions: yes and yes; yes and no; no and yes;
and no and no. Each of these positions is occupied by some reasonably
prominent characterization of
essentialism.[5]
The first position--according to which both "minimal
essentialism" and "maximal essentialism" count as
genuine forms of essentialism--is occupied by the
characterization of essentialism that was offered at the outset:
the doctrine that (at least some) objects have (at least some)
essential properties.
We are inclined to think that this simple and straightforward
characterization is the most common understanding of essentialism,
although it is rarely explicitly stated. (Mackie (2006, p. 1) provides
an example of someone who does explicitly use this
characterization.)
The second position--according to which "minimal
essentialism" but not "maximal essentialism" counts
as a genuine form of essentialism--is occupied by the
characterization that Quine (1953b/1976, pp. 175-6) very
famously offered:
>
> the doctrine that some of the attributes of a thing (quite
> independently of the language in which the thing is referred to, if at
> all) may be essential to the thing, and others accidental.
>
In more formal terms, essentialism, Quine (1953b/1976, p. 176) says,
is the doctrine that there are true sentences of this form:
\(\exists x(\Box Fx \amp Gx \amp{\sim}\Box Gx)\) (where
'\(\Box\)' may be read as 'it is necessary
that'). According to "maximal essentialism" any
given object has only essential properties. It has no accidental ones.
That means that according to "maximal essentialism", there
will be no properties to "go in for" the
'\(G\)' in Quine's sentence schema; and so,
"maximal essentialism" is no form of essentialism at all
on Quine's characterization.
The third position--according to which "maximal
essentialism" but not "minimal essentialism" counts
as a form of essentialism--is occupied by the characterization of
essentialism as
the view that (at least some) objects have (at least some) non-trivial
necessary properties.
Della Rocca (1996a) thinks of essentialism in this way, and so counts
"maximal essentialism" but not "minimal
essentialism" as a form of essentialism. (It is natural to
suppose that Della Rocca thinks that essential properties are
non-trivial necessary properties, so that he can *say* things
like, "Essentialism is the view that some objects have some
essential properties." If this is what Della Rocca thinks, then
on his view, either the essential/accidental distinction is not exhaustive--since trivial necessary properties, like being such that there are infinitely many primes, are neither accidental nor essential--or the distinction is exhaustive but being such that there are infinitely many primes is counted an accidental property, contrary to intuition.)
The fourth position--according to which neither "minimal
essentialism" nor "maximal essentialism" counts as a
form of essentialism--is occupied by the characterization of
essentialism as
the view that the accidental/essential property distinction is robust
in the sense that (at least some) objects have (at least some)
non-trivial essential properties and (at least some) objects have (at
least some) accidental properties.
Yablo (1998) has this characterization in mind, and so he
characterizes both "minimal essentialism" and
"maximal essentialism" as forms of anti-essentialism.
In the remainder of this entry, essentialism will be understood in the
first of the four ways--so maximal essentialism and minimal
essentialism will both be viewed as forms of essentialism.
## 4. Some Varieties of Essentialism
A variety of particular forms of essentialism have been advocated.
Starting at one extreme, there is maximal essentialism. Although
Leibniz famously held this view, it nearly goes without saying that
this view has had relatively few adherents. According to a less
extreme and correspondingly more popular form of essentialism,
*origin essentialism*, an object could not have had a radically
different origin than it in fact had. The view that a particular table
could not have been originally made from completely different material
than the material from which it was actually originally made and the
view that a person could not have originated from a different sperm
and egg than those from which he or she actually originated are both
forms of origin essentialism. Origin essentialism has been defended by
Kripke (1972/1980) Salmon (1981), and Forbes (1985), among others.
According to another moderate form of essentialism, *sortal
essentialism*, an object could not have been of a radically
different kind--at least for certain kinds--than it in fact
is. Both the view that being human (or being human if existent) is an
essential property of Socrates and the view that Socrates could not
have been a credit card account are forms of sortal essentialism. The
mildest form of essentialism is minimal essentialism. Mackie (2006)
offers a sustained defense of roughly this view.
In addition to these sorts of claims about the essential properties of
ordinary individuals, claims about the essential properties of natural
kinds have figured prominently in the literature, since Kripke
(1972/1980) and Putnam (1975) made essentialist claims concerning, for
example, cats and water. The core intuitions are that in any possible
world anything that is not an animal is not a cat and that in any
possible world anything that is not composed of molecules of
H2O is not water. Since we discovered empirically that cats
are animals (and not, for example, robots) and that water is
H2O (and not some other type of molecule), each of these
claims asserts a necessary *a posteriori* connection between
two properties. In the first case, what is asserted is that it is
necessary that anything that is a cat is an animal. In the second
case, what is asserted is that necessarily anything that is (a sample
of) water is composed of molecules of
H2O.[6]
It is natural to construe these claims on the model of the
essentialist claims we have so far considered: it is essential to a
particular object, namely *the species cat*, to be such that
all of its instances are also instances of the kind animal; it is
essential to a particular object, namely *the kind water*, to
be such that all samples of it are composed of molecules of
H2O. Notice that one may hold that cats are essentially
animals in the sense that there is a necessary *a posteriori*
connection between the property of being a cat and the property of
being an animal, without holding that any particular cat is
essentially an animal. In other words, from the fact that it is
necessary that every individual that is a cat is an animal, it does
not follow that every individual that is in fact a cat is such that
necessarily it is an animal. In still other words, this type of
essentialism about natural kinds does not entail sortal
essentialism.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that similar remarks apply to the case
of a necessary *a priori* connection between properties. It is
a necessary *a priori* truth that all mathematicians are
rational. Following our model, we can say that it is essential to
*the kind mathematician* to be such that all of its instances
are also instances of *the kind rational (thing)*. It does not
follow that Andrew Wiles, who is in fact a mathematician, could not
fail to be rational--in which case he would also fail to be a
mathematician. To give an even more perspicuous example, it is a
necessary *a priori* truth that all bachelors are unmarried. It
does not follow that Michael, who is in fact a bachelor, could not be
married.
Philosophers have thought not only about whether an object has this or
that particular property essentially but also about whether an object
has a special kind of essential property, an *individual
essence*, a property that in addition to being essential to the
object is also unique to it in the sense that having that property is
modally sufficient for being that object (that is, it is not possible
that something distinct from that object has that property). A trivial
example of an individual essence is a *haecceity* or
*thisness* of an object, the property of being (identical to)
that very object. Some have defended the claim that there are
substantive examples of individual essences. Leibniz famously held
that there are, and that they can be given by purely qualitative
(general) properties. Forbes (1985) also holds that there are
substantive individual essences, but he disagrees with Leibniz that
they can be given by purely qualitative properties. Instead, he
thinks, an individual essence involves non-purely qualitative
(singular) properties: for example, Socrates's essence involves
originating from the particular sperm and egg from which he actually
originated. For more on modal sufficiency principles, see the
Supplement on Arguments for Origin Essentialism.
## 5. Suspicions about Essentialism
In SS3, we passed over without comment the parenthetical phrase
from Quine's characterization of essentialism. Adding that
phrase to the first view of essentialism from SS3 yields:
essentialism is the doctrine that (at least some) objects have
*independently of how they are referred to* (at least some)
essential properties.
The added phrase stresses that the essentialist thinks that it at
least makes sense to ask of an object ("in itself")
whether it must have a particular property. Skeptics about
essentialism have doubted the very intelligibility of such a question.
Here is one prominent thought behind such anti-essentialism. (See
Quine 1960, pp. 195-200.) Since it is necessary that seven plus two is
greater than seven, when the number nine is referred to as
'seven plus two' it is essentially greater than seven.
But, since it is not necessary that the number of planets is greater
than seven, when the number nine is referred to as 'the number
of planets' it is not essentially greater than seven. The point
is supposed to be that it makes no sense to say of the number nine,
independently of any way of referring to it, that it is or is not
essentially greater than seven. Similarly, an anti-essentialist might
say that when a person who is both a mathematician and a cyclist is
thought of as a mathematician, being rational is essential to him,
while being two-legged is not; but when the very same person is
thought of as a cyclist, then although being two-legged is essential
to him, being rational is not. Again, the point is supposed to be that
it makes no sense to say of the very person who is the mathematical
cyclist, independently of any way of thinking about him, that he is or
is not essentially rational (or two-legged). According to the
anti-essentialist, asking whether Andrew Wiles (who we may suppose is
a cycling mathematician) could fail to be rational is like asking
whether Andrew Wiles is taller than--both questions demand
another relatum. Could he fail to be rational, *relative to what
way of referring to him*? Is he taller than *whom*?
In response the essentialist will point out that the
anti-essentialist's thought does not square very well with
intuition. Consider the object that is referred to by all these
phrases: 'nine', 'seven plus two', 'the
number of planets'. Could *that very object* have failed
to be greater than seven? Intuitively the question seems intelligible,
and the answer seems to be that it could not have failed to be greater
than seven. According to intuition then, the very object that is
referred to by 'the number of planets' (which is the very
same object that is referred to by 'seven plus two' and
'nine') is essentially greater than seven. Intuition also
has it that the claim that the number of planets is greater than seven
is not itself necessary. To add some jargon: Intuition has it that the
claim that it is necessary that the number of planets is greater than
seven is true read *de re* ("of the thing"), but
false read *de dicto* ("of the dictum" or "of
the statement"). (The *de re* reading is this: the number
of planets has the property of being necessarily greater than seven.
The *de dicto* reading is this: the claim that the number of
planets is greater than seven has the property of being necessary.)
The essentialist is pointing out that the anti-essentialist's argument
asserts that the latter intuition undermines the former, but does not
say why.
## 6. The Epistemology of Essentialist Claims
Assuming that we have knowledge of some essentialist claims, how might
we account for that knowledge? For the purposes of the present
discussion, let us assume that we know that being such that there are
infinitely many primes, being human, and originating from sperm
\(s\) and egg \(e\) are essential properties of Socrates.
The first example is different from the last two in that it seems that
we can know *a priori* that being such that there are
infinitely many primes is essential to Socrates whereas it seems that
we can know only *a posteriori* that being human and
originating from \(s\) and \(e\) are also essential to
him.
While it is a vexed philosophical issue just how to account for *a
priori* knowledge of necessary truths such as logical truths,
mathematical truths, and the homelier necessary truths like the truth
that nothing can be red all over and green all over at the same time,
accounting for our knowledge of the necessary truth that Socrates is
such that there are infinitely many primes, does not seem to be
problematic in some extra special way. If we had a good account of our
*a priori* knowledge of the necessary truth that there are
infinitely many primes, then it would take little more to account for
our knowledge of the necessary truth about Socrates that he is such
that there are infinitely many primes.
Kripke (1972/1980) suggests that our knowledge of some other
essentialist claims is based in part on a bit of *a priori*
knowledge and in part on a bit of empirical knowledge. For example,
our knowledge that originating from \(s\) and \(e\) is
essential to Socrates is based in part on our *a priori*
knowledge that every organism has its origin essentially and in part
on our empirical knowledge that Socrates (is an organism that)
originated from \(s\) and \(e\). (Similarly our knowledge
that Socrates is essentially human appears to be based in part on our
*a priori* knowledge that everything has its kind essentially
and in part on our empirical knowledge that Socrates is (of the kind)
human.) Thus, our knowledge of the claim that originating from
\(s\) and \(e\) is essential to Socrates should be no more
problematic epistemologically than our knowledge of the two claims on
which it is based and our knowledge of the validity of the argument
from those two claims. As we have already mentioned, although there
are difficult philosophical issues concerning our knowledge of logical
truths, our knowledge of the validity of the argument in question does
not seem to add any special problems of its own. Similarly, although
there are philosophical issues concerning empirical knowledge, our
knowledge that Socrates originated from \(s\) and \(e\) does
not appear to add any special problems. However our *a priori*
knowledge that every organism has its origin essentially does seem to
have special problems over and above the problems associated with
accounting for our *a priori* knowledge of logic, mathematics,
and the homelier necessary truths. The latter claims are generally
supported by universally held intuitions or by arguments that are
universally accepted whereas the former, like most philosophical
claims, is supported by a less robust intuition and by a more
controversial argument. To see in some detail how philosophers have
gone about defending origin essentialism, see the
Supplement on Arguments for Origin Essentialism.
For more about arguments for sortal essentialism, see Wiggins (1980)
and Mackie (2006, chapters 7 and 8). The entry on
the epistemology of modality
is useful on general issues in modal epistemology.
## 7. Essentialist Claims in Arguments for Nonidentities
Leibniz's Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals, according
to which, if "two" things are identical, then they share
all their properties, can be used to argue for various claims of
nonidentity. If you know, for example, that Charles is a philosophy
major and that Yoko is not, then you can safely infer that Charles is
not identical to Yoko. Essentialist claims have played a role in some
prominent Leibniz Law arguments for nonidentity theses. A certain
brand of mind-body dualism may be argued for in the following way:
\(X\) is essentially a thinking thing; \(X\)'s body is
not essentially a thinking thing; so \(X\) is not (identical to)
\(X\)'s body. A similar argument can be given for the
conclusion that a statue is not identical with the lump of material
(wax, clay, marble, or what have you) that constitutes it. Consider a
human-shaped statue--call it 'Goliath'--and the
lump of wax that composes it--call it
'Lump\(\_1\)'. Goliath, we may imagine, is throughout
its entire existence composed of Lump\(\_1\) while
Lump\(\_1\) throughout its entire existence composes Goliath. In
this case, Goliath and Lump\(\_1\) are *spatiotemporally
colocated*, which is just to say that they occupy the exact same
spatial region at any given time whenever either of them exists. This
being the case, they share most of their properties: Goliath weighs 17
kilograms and so does Lump\(\_1\); Goliath has a white surface
and so does Lump\(\_1\); and so on. In fact, it may seem curious
that we are writing as though there are *two things* at all.
Why not say simply that Goliath and Lump\(\_1\) are identical?
Well, it at least seems that a pretty straightforward
argument--one that relies on essentialist
claims--establishes their nonidentity:
1. Goliath is essentially human-shaped.
2. Lump\(\_1\) is not essentially human-shaped.
3. So, Goliath is not identical to Lump\(\_1\).
The plausibility of the two premises seems undeniable, given that we
think, for example, that if the room containing
Goliath/Lump\(\_1\) were to get really hot (hot enough to melt
the wax) and then to cool again (so that what was left was a lump of
wax in the shape of something like a mountain), then Goliath would be
destroyed while Lump\(\_1\) would still exist. And the reasoning
looks impeccable: if Goliath were Lump\(\_1\), then each would
have to have all of the same properties as "the other";
since they have different properties, they must not be identical. (Few
things in philosophy are as uncontroversial as Leibniz's Law of
the Indiscernibility of Identicals, though there has been some dispute
about the proper way of formulating it.) Figuring out how to reconcile
our intuitions that (1) and (2) are true with our tendency to think
that Goliath and Lump\(\_1\) are not really two things but just
one is a version of the *problem of material constitution.*
There are a wide variety of ways to deal with this problem. A
"two-thinger"--one who thinks that there really are
two things, a statue *and* a lump of wax, in one
location--may simply eschew the tendency to identify Goliath and
Lump\(\_1\). Other responses suggest that there is something
amiss with Leibniz Law arguments for nonidentities when there is this
kind of an appeal to essential properties: Della Rocca (1996c) holds
that such arguments are question begging; Lewis (1971) and Noonan
(1991) hold that they are invalid; and Burke (1994) and Rea (2000)
hold that in any such argument, at least one of the premises is false.
For those who are interested, Rea (1997) is a good place to start to
delve more deeply into this problem. |
action | ## 1. About the Question: What is an Action?
The central question in philosophy of action is standardly taken to
be: "What makes something an action?" However, we obtain
different versions of the question depending on what we take as the
contrast class from which actions are to be differentiated. The
different questions in turn encode important presuppositions. First,
we may understand the question as asking us to differentiate between
intentional action and the notions of acting and activity considered
above (cf. Hyman 2015). Most commonly, however, the question is taken
in terms of Wittgenstein's classic formulation: "What is
left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact
that I raise my arm?" (1953 [2010], SS621). A common, though
contested, reading of this passage is this: there are certain events
of an arm's going up that are actions, and some that are not
(e.g. if someone tickles me in my sleep). What further factor does the
action have that the event resulting from tickling lacks?
Many historical as well as contemporary thinkers hope to answer just
this question. A simple answer, common in the early modern period
(e.g. Descartes 1641 AT VII 57; Hobbes 1651/1668, i.6; Hume 1739-1740
T II.3.iii; SB 413-18), is that what distinguishes actions from other
events is that they are the causal outcomes of desires, volitions, or
acts of will. A modern version of this view, considered below, appeals
instead to intentions, regarded as distinctive mental states. Despite
the intuitiveness of these "standard" answers, there have
been increasing worries that they are based on disputable assumptions.
First, there is an assumption about the metaphysical category to which
actions belong. Although it is natural to take them as events, some
philosophers have argued that there are good reasons to group them
under a different category. Second, the common reading of
Wittgenstein's question presupposes what has been called
"additive" or "decompositional" conceptions of
action (Ford 2011; Lavin 2015, 2013; cf. Boyle 2016): it is assumed
that an account of action can be given in terms of distinct, and
simpler components. However, a number of authors have argued that this
reductive project is bound to fail (Anscombe 1995; Vogler 2001;
O'Brien 2012; Levy 2013; Horst 2015; Valaris 2015; Della Rocca
2020, ch.4).
It has also been contended that philosophers who offer the standard
answers make important methodological assumptions. These philosophers
approach questions about agency as though they were on par with
scientific questions to this extent: they seek mechanistic, or causal
explanations of agency, explanations that can be grasped from an
objective perspective. However, drawing inspiration from Kant, some
philosophers contend that philosophy of action should be done from the
agential perspective (Nagel 1989; Korsgaard 2009; Bilgrami 2012;
Schapiro 2021); and other philosophers drawing from Aristotle and
Frege have argued for similar views (Thompson 2008; Lavin 2013; Ford
2017). From a different standpoint, the standard methodology has been
criticized as not being scientific enough. It has been argued that
certain empirical results disprove some of the basic assumptions
behind these answers. For example, Libet's experiments have been
taken to suggest that intentions are causally ineffective, and that to
understand the true causes of action we would have to focus on neural
processes ('action potentials') about which we could only
learn through standard scientific methods (Libet 1985; Libet et al.
1993). Although these radical views are now widely held to be based on
faulty conceptual and empirical grounds (e.g. Mele. 2010; Levy 2005;
Brass, Furstenberg, and Mele 2019), surprising scientific results
continue to challenge commonly held views in philosophy of action (see
e.g. Wegner 2002 and Nahmias 2014 for critical discussion of recent
findings).
In this entry we draw from the work of philosophers working through
different methodological paradigms. We will not bring up these
differences again, but they may be worth keeping in mind as we
consider the various debates below.
## 2. Causalism and Causal Theories of Action
Possibly the most widespread and accepted theory of intentional action
(though by no means without its challengers) is the causal theory of
action, a theory according to which something counts as an intentional
action in virtue of its causal connection to certain mental states. In
fact, this view is often dubbed (following Velleman 1992) the
'standard story of action'. Although other philosophers
proposed similar views before, the contemporary causal theory of
action, or "causalism," was pioneered by Donald Davidson,
especially the essays collected in Davidson (2001a). Davidson has
contributed to many topics in the philosophy of action, such as action
individuation, the logical form of action sentences, the relation
between intention and evaluative judgments, among others, but here we
will focus mostly on his arguments for, and his formulation of, the
causal theory of action. In *Action, Reasons, and Causes*
(ARC), Davidson provides an account of the nature of rationalizing
explanations of actions, or what is often called 'intentional
explanations'. Such explanations explain the action by providing
the reason why the agent acted. ARC tries to understand how a reason
can explain an action. The two central theses of ARC, or modified
versions of them, became subsequently widely, though certainly not
universally, accepted. The first thesis is that the explanation of an
action involves a "primary reason": a belief and a desire
pair that rationalizes the action by expressing the end pursued in the
action (desire) and how the agent thought the action would accomplish
this end (instrumental belief). So, for instance, in "Larry went
to Gus the Barber because he wanted a haircut", Larry's
action is explained by a desire (his wanting a haircut) and a belief,
left implicit in this case (his believing that he could get a haircut
by going to Gus the Barber). The second central thesis is that the
primary reason is also the cause of the action.
### 2.1 Davidson's Predecessors and the Central Arguments in the Debate
Davidson's view in ARC is presented against a number of
philosophers (mostly influenced by Wittgenstein), who, on his view,
take action explanations to provide a different kind of understanding
than causal explanations (for a sympathetic overview of this
Wittgenstein-inspired work, see Sandis 2015). Some of the identified
targets of the paper (such as Melden 1961) are clearly arguing for the
views Davidson rejects. Others (such as Anscombe 1957 and Ryle 1949)
do not clearly embrace the theses Davidson objects to, or at least not
all of them. These philosophers took intentional explanations to
display how an action is made intelligible or justified. So Melden
says that "citing a motive [gives] a fuller characterization of
the action; it [provides] a better understanding of what the [agent]
is doing" (Melden 1961, 88). Similarly, Anscombe's special
sense of the question "Why?', discussed below (section
4.1), is supposed to pick out the particular way in which actions are
explained. This claim is not one that Davidson denies; according to
Davidson, in intentional explanations, or
'rationalizations', "the agent is shown in his Role
of Rational Animal ... There is an irreducible ... sense in
which every rationalization justifies: from the agent's point of
view there was, when he acted, something to be said for the
action." (Davidson 1963, 690-1). But Melden, and other
Wittgensteineans, argue that this kind of explanation cannot be a
causal explanation. Melden's central argument is the
"logical connection" argument. According to Melden, since
the supposedly causal antecedents of an action (mental items such as
desires and intentions) are logically related to the intentional
action (I would not count as intentionally signalling a turn if I did
not desire/intend to signal a turn), the explanation of the action in
terms of such mental items cannot be an explanation in terms of
"Humean causes". After all, Humean causation connects
events that are logically independent.
Davidson's ARC exposes a crucial fallacy with Melden's
argument (similar problems had been pointed out by Annette Baier (then
Annette Stoop) in Stoop 1962). Accepting Hume's account of
causal relations does not commit us to the view that any description
of a cause is logically independent of any description of its effect.
An event can only be described as "sunburning" if it is
caused by exposure to the sun, but this does not mean that the cause
of a sunburn is not a "separate entity" from the sunburn.
We can describe an event as "The event that caused X"
without thereby refuting Humeanism about causation. Davidson argues
that, on the contrary, the mental items cited in an action explanation
can only explain the action if they are also the cause of the action
(the second central thesis of ARC). In our example above, Larry might
have had other belief-desire pairs that rationalized his action of
going to the barber. For instance, Larry might also have wanted a
bottle of cream soda and believed that he could procure such an item
at Gus the Barber. However, he did not (we may stipulate) go there
because he wanted cream soda but because he wanted a haircut (and
believed he could get one at Gus the Barber). The only way we can
explain the difference between potentially rationalizing, but
non-explanatory belief-desire pairs, is that the belief-desire pair
that genuinely explains the action, the primary reason, also causes
the action. The question of how non-causal theories can distinguish
between merely potentially explanatory reasons for an action from the
reasons that actually explain it became known as
"Davidson's Challenge" to non-causal theories of
action (Mele 1992; Mele 2013).
### 2.2 Davidson on the Nature of Intentional Actions
Although initially presented as an account of the nature of action
explanation, Davidson's account also contains the basic
structure of an understanding of human action: according to Davidson,
a true action statement (of the form "x ph-ed") denotes
an event, and more specifically, a bodily movement. A bodily movement
is an action if, and only if, the event is an intentional action
(Davidson 1971). Davidson does not say this
explicitly,[2]
but clearly on his view, an event is an intentional action under a
certain description, if and only if, there is a true rationalizing
explanation of the event under this description. Davidson (1971)
(following Anscombe) points out that "x ph-ed
intentionally" creates an intensional context; that is whether
an action is intentional depends on how the action is described. To
use Davidson's example, if I flip a switch, I also turn on the
light, and alert the burglar. On Davidson's view "flipping
the switch", "turning on the light", and
"alerting the burglar" are all descriptions of the same
action. The "accordion effect" (so dubbed by Feinberg
1965), characteristic of human action, makes it the case that the
causal consequences of an intentional action provide further
descriptions of human actions. If my flipping the switch caused the
light to go on and the burglar to be alerted, then I also turned the
light on and alerted the burglar. However, only the first two are
intentional actions. On Davidson's view, all these descriptions
are descriptions of the same action; alerting the burglar is an action
in virtue of the fact that these same bodily movements, under a
different description, are a case of intentional action (flipping the
switch). Thus Davidson concludes that, "we never do more than
move our bodies: the rest is up to nature" (Davidson 1971, 23).
We can see now how the claims developed in these papers provide us
with a theory of action: an action is a bodily movement such that,
under some description, the bodily movement is causally explained by a
primary reason.
This also gives us the barebones of a causal theory of action:
according to "causalists", intentional action is explained
in terms of mental states that are the causal antecedents, or
concomitants, of the agent's behaviour or bodily movement.
Subsequent to Davidson, causalists have aimed to provide reductive
explanations: intentional action is identified with behaviour or
bodily movement (or in less "ambitious" versions of the
view, a more general form of action, see Setiya 2011) whose causal
antecedents (or concomitants) are certain specified mental states.
Although Davidson himself is often portrayed as proposing a reductive
analysis, he never presents any of his views as fulfilling such
ambition and expresses skepticism that such analysis is possible given
the problem of deviance (see below).
### 2.3 Mental states as the causal explanans of actions
The idea that an action is rationalized by its mental states is still
very popular; much less so is the view that the only relevant states
are beliefs and desires (though see Sinhababu 2017 for a modern
defense of this simple "Humean" account). As Bratman
(1987) argues, desires do not have the conduct-controlling and
settling functions characteristic of intentions, and thus intentions
seem to be better placed to be at the center of an account in which
intentional actions are constituted by their causal genesis. My desire
to have my teeth cleaned, when conjoined with my belief that in order
to get my teeth cleaned I need to go to a dentist, will not result in
my moving towards the dentist until I actually *intend* to go
to the dentist. In fact, when Velleman comes to dub this kind of
causal theory of action "the standard story of action", he
explicitly describes the view as one in which intention plays a
central role between the "primary reason" and the action.
In the standard story, the agent's "desire for the end,
and his belief in the action as a means ... *jointly cause an
intention to take it*, which in turn causes the corresponding
movements of the agent's body." (Velleman 1992, 461).
Davidson (1970b) himself came to accept that intentions play an
important role in the causation and constitution of action and that
intentions could not be reduced to beliefs or desires. But common to
all these views is the idea that human actions are events that bear
the right kind of causal relation to certain mental states or events
of the agent that also explain the action.
One alternative to the causal view understands agency as a form of
irreducible agent-causation. Chisholm (1964) presents a classic
version of the view; Alvarez and Hyman (1998) presents a radically
different version which denies that agents cause the actions
themselves; Mayr (2011) develops a version of the view that, unlike
Chisholm's version, tries to show that human agency is not
essentially different from other forms of substance causation that we
find in the natural world. A second alternative sees intentional
explanations as teleological rather than causal explanations (Wilson
1980; Cleveland 1997; Schueler 2003; Sehon 2005); that is, an
intentional explanation cites the goal, the purpose, or the reason for
which the agent acted *rather than* the antecedent causes of
the action. Defenders of this view also try to provide an
understanding of the teleological structure of intentional action that
denies that teleological explanations reduce to causal explanations;
they are instead a *sui generis* form of explanation. One way
this view can meet Davidson's Challenge is to argue that the
truth of certain counterfactuals distinguishes potential reasons from
the actual reasons. For instance, it could be true that even though
the fact that the asparagus was delicious was a potential reason for
Mary to eat asparagus, she would not have eaten them if they were not
healthy and she would have eaten them even if they were not delicious
(Lohrer and Sehon 2016); such counterfactuals, on this view, are
not grounded on causal relations between mental states and the bodily
movements, but on the teleological structures that constitute
intentional action. Finally, the causal account also contrasts with
the neo-Aristotelian view in which human action is constituted,
roughly, by a special form of practical knowledge (Anscombe 1957); on
this view, in intentional action, "knowledge is the [formal]
cause of what it understands" (see section 4 of this entry).
### 2.4 The Problem of Causal Deviance
Let us take the following as the general form of a (reductive) causal
theory of action:
>
> An event (bodily movement) *B* is an intentional action if and
> only if it is an event caused by mental states [S1,
> ... Sn].
>
We can immediately see how to generate counterexamples to any such
formula: find cases in which there is a causal path from
[S1, ..., Sn] to *B*, but not
through the "normal" causal path that would presumably
give rise to the bodily movement in a genuine case of action. This is
the problem of deviance for the causal theory of action; Davidson
himself was among the first who provided classical examples of such
causal deviance for his own account of action (but Frankfurt
1978's presentation of the problem was particularly
influential):
>
> A climber might want to rid himself of the weight and danger of
> holding another man on a rope, and he might know that by loosening his
> hold on the rope he could rid himself of the weight and danger. This
> belief and want might so unnerve him as to cause him to loosen his
> hold, and yet it might be the case that he never chose to loosen his
> hold, nor did he do it intentionally. (Davidson 1973, 153-4)
>
This is a case of what is often called "primary deviance"
(Mele and Moser 1994), in which the bodily movements in question are
not even actions, but the causal theory seems to imply they are. In
contrast, in cases of "secondary deviance'', the
theory misdescribes one of the consequences of the action as
intentional when it clearly is not. The same Davidson paper provides
an example of the latter:
>
> A man may try to kill someone by shooting at him. Suppose the killer
> misses his victim by a mile, but the shot stampedes a herd of wild
> pigs that trample the intended victim to death. Do we want to say the
> man killed his victim intentionally? (Davidson 1973, 152-3)
>
There are very many attempts to solve the problem of causal deviance
for a causal theory of action and we cannot cover in detail any of
them or mention all of them; here we'll just list a few
influential strategies (and, of course, some solutions incorporate
more than one of these strategies). The first appeals to the notion of
a "proximate cause" (Mele 1992) such that an action is
intentional only if, for instance, the formation of an intention to
ph is the proximate cause of your ph-ing. Another family of
solutions appeal to sensitivity and feedback conditions (Peacocke
1979; Bishop 1989; Smith 2012): the climber's bodily movements
would not count as an intentional action because they would not be
sensitive to variations in conditions and information on what needs to
be done (the climber would not release their hands differently if the
rope turned out to be stickier or would not change their behaviour if
they were to realize that the rope had a safety latch fastened to
their hips). A different type of approach (though with some relevant
similarities to the latter) takes the central problem for the
Davidsonian approach, the reason why the problem of deviance is
endemic to Davidson's causalism, to be the attempt to understand
action in terms of its *causal antecedents*, rather than its
*sustaining* causes. For Frankfurt (1978) the relevant causal
mechanisms involved must be guiding the action. Given that action is a
form of purposive behaviour, we cannot hope to understand what
distinguishes action from mere bodily movements by focusing on what
*precedes* the action, rather than by what happens *while
the agent is acting*. As Setiya puts it:
>
> In the case of basic action, the crucial concept is that of
> *guidance*: when an agent intentionally phs, he
> *wants* to ph, and this desire not only causes but continues
> to guide behaviour towards its object. (It is this condition that
> fails in Davidson's example). (Setiya 2007, 32)
>
In the case of secondary deviance, a seemingly promising approach is
to require that a "non-basic" action counts as intentional
only if (roughly) it follows the agent's plan (Mele and Moser
1994). Davidson's killer's plan to kill his enemy did not
involve a stampede, and thus it should not count as intentional
action.
Another strategy has been developed by "empirically
informed" philosophers, who hold that attention to the details
of control mechanisms implemented at the cognitive level yields a
response to the deviance problem. For example, it has been argued that
cases of deviance involve lack of attention (Wu 2016), failures at the
fine-grained level of motor (as opposed to distal and proximal)
intentions (Mylopoulos and Pacherie 2019), or failures in the causal
pathways responsible for flexible agency (Shepherd 2021).
Needless to say, there is no agreed upon solution to the problem of
deviance (for general skepticism about the possibility of a solution
see Anscombe 1995; Vogler 2001; O'Brien 2012; Levy 2013; Horst
2015; Valaris 2015); on the other hand, philosophers have also argued
that competing accounts suffer from problems that parallel the problem
of deviant causation for theories of action (Paul 2011b).
## 3. Extended Action
Davidson's work focuses mostly on "punctual
actions", actions that take place very quickly, and that have
already occurred. A typical example of an action for Davidson will be
described by a sentence like "*a* flicked the
switch" (see Davidson 1971). Flicking a switch happens almost
instantaneously; moreover, when I describe my action as "flicked
the switch", the sentence picks up a completed event in which
the action is already done. And flicking a switch, buttering toast,
etc. are actions typically performed from beginning to end without
interruption. In sum, Davidson's typical examples of actions are
short-lived, continuous, and completed actions. Davidson's
conception of an intention follows a similar pattern, focusing on
intentions that are executed in actions that follow the aforementioned
pattern. At first, Davidson takes intentions in (short-lived) action
to be primary, and later (Davidson 1970b) expands the model to
prospective intention (intentions for a future action), but still
focusing mostly on intentions for a simply executed action that
happens to lie in the future. However our actions often extend through
long stretches of time, and seem to rely on future-directed intentions
that govern very complex plans and activities. Moreover, we only seem
to have a completed action when we are no longer engaged in the
relevant activity (when it is true that I've crossed the street
I am no longer engaged in the activities that constitute or are means
to having crossed the street); agency arguably manifests itself only
in action in progress (I am engaged in these activities while *I am
crossing the street*). By keeping our focus on completed action,
we risk losing sight of another seemingly essential feature of human
action: that it extends through time under the guidance of the agent.
Of course, this kind of initial focus on nearly momentary, completed
actions does not necessarily mean that the theory cannot accommodate
extended action that requires complex planning or action in progress
(or any form of agency that necessarily stretches through time). But a
number of philosophers have tried to either expand, modify, or reject
Davidson's theory to account for extended agency or action in
progress, or to argue that a proper theory of action should focus on
the nature and structure of action in progress (Thompson 2008; Ford
2018). This section will focus on extended agency of the former kind,
and the relevance of action in progress will be discussed in section
4.
Michael Bratman's work (Bratman 1987; 1999a; 2007; 2018, among
others) was seminal in arguing for the importance of intentions,
policies, and plans (all of which he classifies as intentions or
planning states) in our understanding of how limited rational beings
coordinate their actions through time and can pursue ends and projects
through extended periods of time. Bratman's planning theory of
agency starts from rejecting Davidson's account of intention,
and replacing it with a new understanding of the function (and nature)
of intentions and planning states. Davidson had identified intention
with an "all-out" or unconditional judgment, "which,
if we were to express it in words, would have a form like "This
action is desirable'" (Davidson 1970b, 55); that is, an
intention is a distinctive kind of evaluative judgment ("this
action is good" or "this action is desirable"). On
this view, to intend to ph is to have ph-ing as the conclusion
of one's practical reasoning. Bratman finds this view
problematic in many ways, but arguably his most important objection to
Davidson's view is that Davidson's theory of intention
misses out one of the "two faces" of intentions.
Intentions, on Bratman's views, are tied not only to intentional
action but also to coordinating plans (Bratman 1987); Davidson's
identification of intentions with certain evaluative judgments seems
incapable of making room for the latter "face". However,
this role of *future-directed intentions* in planning and
coordinating action through time is essential to agency. Among our
future-directed intentions, there are very specific intentions to,
say, make huevos rancheros for brunch later today, but also more
complex plans and projects (my plan to write a book on tricycles is
also a specific, though not significantly filled out, intention for a
specific action or set of actions), and policies (my policy to
exercise once a week is a "repeatable", general, intention
to perform various futures
actions).[3]
Future-directed intentions have for Bratman at least two important
functions in our deliberation: they have a settling function and a
coordination function. Suppose I am deciding where I am spending my
next vacation, and let us assume that I narrow it down to two
possibilities: Poughkeepsie and Daytona Beach. At some point,
typically much before my first vacation day, I will form an intention
to go on one of these specific vacations (say to Daytona Beach), and
this intention is independent of forming an evaluative judgment in
favour of either option; I might be convinced that they are equally
desirable, but I can only take one vacation a year. Forming the
intention to go to Daytona Beach *settles* the question for me
and ends deliberation on the matter. Since there is intrinsically no
limit on how long I could spend deliberating, this settling function
performs an important role in managing the cognitive resources of
limited beings like us. But future-directed intentions also perform an
important coordinating function in our extended agency. Going on
vacation is a complex endeavour and we cannot successfully engage in
this action without prior planning. If I am going to Daytona Beach, I
need to plan how long I will stay, and what I will do when I am there,
make hotel reservations, etc. These plans will also require more
concrete plans as these actions unfold (if I plan to have snacks with
me for the Indy-500, I need to plan which snacks, and then plan on
where and when I will get them, and then plan on how I will get to the
chosen grocery store, and so forth). Our capacity to form these
different types of future-directed intentions (plans, policies, and
more specific future-directed intentions) allows us to engage in these
complex forms of extended agency (to be "planning agents"
in Bratman's words). In order to perform these functions,
future-directed intentions must resist reconsideration and be stable
through time. If I keep changing my mind after I form the intention to
travel to Daytona Beach, my intention will not have settled the issue
or foreclosed further deliberation. And it will also make both
intrapersonal and interpersonal coordination impossible: if I expect I
will change my mind, there'll be no point in making hotel
reservations at Daytona Beach. Moreover, these functions impose
coherence constraints on my intentions: lack of means-ends coherence,
for instance, will similarly prevent future-directed intention from
functioning properly.
Thus, Bratman, as well as a number of other philosophers afterwards
(for instance, Holton 2004; Holton 2009; Yaffe 2010; Paul 2014),
suggest that an account of planning agency reshapes our understanding
of agency and practical rationality. Bratman (1987) argues, for
instance, that certain dispositions for nonreconsideration are
essential to understanding the rationality of limited agents like
ourselves. Holton (2004; 2009) extends Bratman's account to
another function of a future-directed intention: resisting temptation
when we expect preferences and judgment shifts. We achieve this,
according to Holton, by forming *resolutions*: intentions to
remain firm in our intentions, which are harder to reconsider than
simple desires or (first-order) intentions. (See Paul 2011a for some
skepticism about this extension.)
Bratman also tries to expand his planning theory to explain the
rationality of acting on a future-directed intention even in cases in
which judgment or preference shifts might seem to justify acting
otherwise. In earlier work, Bratman (1999b) appeals to a
"no-regret" condition; roughly, a requirement that we
should not reconsider or revise an intention if we'll regret
having done so at the conclusion of our planned actions. In later
work, Bratman (2018) appeals to the end of self-governance, an end
that is typically shared by human agents, to explain the rationality
of sticking to one's intentions in face of temptation (for
somewhat similar ideas in the context of cooperation, see Velleman
1997). According to Bratman, self-governance is a form of agency in
which the agent acts from a standpoint that is truly his own; a
self-governing agent is guided "by attitudes that constitute
where he stands" (Bratman 2018,
159).[4]
On this view, self-governance has both a synchronic and diachronic
form. Synchronic self-governance requires a coherent practical
standpoint at a time that can constitute where the agent stands in a
coherent manner, while diachronic self-governance requires a coherent
standpoint across different times when the agent's plans stretch
through an extended period. Since typically planning agents also have
self-governance as one of their ends, the need for such a coherent
standpoint generates reasons to conform to a requirement not to revise
intentions not only in cases of temptation, but also in cases in which
an agent forms a future-directed intention to choose one of a number
of alternatives that are either indifferent or incommensurable. Even
though in such cases an agent has sufficient reasons to act
differently than she intends (since other options are just as good or
at least on a par), self-governance requires that she preserves a
coherent standpoint over time (for a different way to justify
normative reasons against "brute shuffling" in terms of
self-governance, see Paul 2014; for skepticism about some of these
requirements against brute shuffling, see Ferrero 2010; Nefsky and
Tenenbaum 2022).
Although these challenges to Davidson's original theory of
action are different from the challenges that focus on the nature of
action in progress, some philosophers argue that they are not
unrelated. Tenenbaum (2018; 2020) argues that understanding better the
nature of intentional action as actions that are *always*
extended through time, and the nature of the instrumental reasoning
involved in intentional action in progress, makes Bratman's
appeal to a *sui generis* state of future-directed intention
superfluous in our understanding of practical rationality. On this
view, there is no difference between the rational requirements
governing the various phases of an action in progress and the
requirements governing the execution of a plan that contains various
steps, or of a general intention that contains various instances (and
thus purported requirements that are specific to future-directed
intentions turn out to be redundant or spurious).
On a somewhat different vein, some philosophers have challenged the
view that there is a significant metaphysical "break"
between a prior intention and an action in progress. From the time I
decide to make an omelet, to the time the finished product is on my
plate, my agency unfolds in various stages and phases in pursuit of
this end: I plan to make an omelet, I check which ingredients I need,
I make sure that I leave myself enough time to go to the store while
engaged in other activities in the morning, I buy the milk, go back
home, melt the butter, break the eggs, drop them on the pan, and so
forth. These are all parts, or phases, of the unfolding of the
activity that, if nothing untoward happens, will result in my having
made an omelet. Although we can impose various breaks and divide the
process into "intending", "preparing",
"making the omelet", these breaks are largely arbitrary
from the point of view of the activity itself (Thompson 2008; Moran
and Stone 2009; Ferrero 2017; Russell 2018); a metaphysics of
intention that emphasizes differences risks losing sight of the
continuity of the phenomena (for criticisms of these deflationary
ideas about the differences between the various phases of the
activity from intending to doing, see Yaffe 2010; Paul 2014).
## 4. Practical Knowledge
Whereas the central notion in Davidson's theory of intentional
action was that of *causation*, the central one in
Anscombe's is that of *practical knowledge*. In a famous
passage, she appears to define intentional action as an event that
manifests practical knowledge:
>
> [W]here (a) the description of an event is of a type to be formally
> the description of an executed intention (b) the event is actually the
> execution of an intention (by our criteria) then the account given by
> Aquinas of the nature of practical knowledge holds: Practical
> knowledge is 'the cause of what it understands', unlike
> 'speculative' knowledge, which 'is derived from the
> objects known'. (Anscombe 1957, SS48)
>
Only recently practical knowledge has received sustained interest in
philosophy of action. Much of the resulting work aims to clarify and
defend Anscombe's view (Moran 2004; Thompson 2008, 2011; Haddock
2011; Rodl 2011; Small 2012; Wolfson 2012; Marcus 2012;
Stathopoulos 2016; Campbell 2018; Marcus 2018; Frey 2019; Valaris
2021); but several critics question her arguments, as well as
application of the notion to the definition of intentional action
(e.g., Houlgate 1966; Grice 1971; Paul 2009b; 2011b). In response, a
number of scholars who still find inspiration in Anscombe have sought
to accommodate the criticisms by giving up on some of her most
ambitious claims. This section concentrates on contemporary debates
about practical knowledge stemming from Anscombe's discussion,
but we start by briefly examining its origins in ancient Greek and
mediaeval philosophy.
### 4.1 The Nature of Practical Knowledge
The idea that there is a distinctively practical form of knowledge
traces back to Aristotle, who distinguished different ways "by
virtue of which the soul possesses truth" (*EE*
5.3/*NE* 6.3). There are three theoretical forms by which a
scientist grasps the truth: knowledge (*episteme*),
wisdom (*sophia*), and comprehension (*nous*). Practical
knowledge comes in two varieties: the knowledge of the skilled person
about what she makes--skill (*techne*), and the
knowledge of the virtuous person about her actions--practical
wisdom (*phronesis*).
Aristotle's account of practical knowledge is complex, and our
focus shall lie on three points of particular significance. First,
Aristotle claimed that skill is the "cause"
(*aitia*) of the things produced by it. For instance, he
claimed that the craft of building is the cause of the house
(*Phys.* 2.5, 196b26). Second, Aristotle imposed epistemic
conditions on voluntary and, a fortiori, intentional action: according
to him, to act voluntarily one must know, among other things, what one
is doing, to whom, and why (*NE* 3.1 1111a3-6; *EE* 2.9
1225a36-b10). Third, Aristotle identified a distinctive kind of
reasoning associated with practical knowledge, a form of reasoning
traditionally rendered "practical syllogism" (though see
Segvic 2011). Such reasoning begins from a certain good and its
conclusion is an action. For instance, on the basis of thinking that
walks are good after lunch, and that he has eaten lunch, a man might
take a walk (*DMA* 7, 701a13-14). (For more on ancient
views on action, see Parry 2021.)
Several mediaeval philosophers built on these Aristotelian ideas,
especially to understand God's knowledge of creation (see
Schwenkler 2015). Anscombe (1957)'s account of practical
knowledge draws on this tradition. She first characterizes intentional
action as that to which a special sense of the question
"Why?" applies, the sense that requests a reason for
action (SS5). Later, Anscombe appeals to Aristotle's notion
of practical reasoning to connect the notion of reason for action and
the deliberative structure by which an agent determines how to attain
a goal by acting (SS33ff.). What the question "Why?"
reveals, then, is the rational "order" of means-to-ends
that define practical reasoning, and the answers reveal the
descriptions under which the action is intentional.
To illustrate with her famous example of a man pumping water
(SS23): A man is moving his arms up and down. Why? Because he is
operating a pump. Why? Because he is pumping water. Why? Because he is
poisoning the inhabitants of the house (you see, the water is
poisoned). Why? Because he wants to kill them to bring world peace.
The question "Why?" has application only inasmuch as the
agent recognizes himself as acting under the corresponding
descriptions expressed by his answers. As Anscombe notes, if the man
were asked "Why are you pumping water?" and he replied,
"I was not aware I was doing that", then he would not be
acting intentionally under that description (SS6; SS42). The
descriptions that manifest the agent's understanding of what she
is doing are therefore intrinsic to the action: an action does not
count as intentional under a description unless the agent grasps the
action as such (under that description). Such grasp, therefore, cannot
be a separate occurrence (SS42).
This reveals at least one important sense in which practical knowledge
is the "cause of what it understands". It is the formal
cause because the agent's grasp determines what the action is
(an intentional action with a determinate content). In turn, this
shows why, in the phrase Anscombe borrows from Aristotle's
*Magna Moralia,* "the mistake is in the
performance" when it doesn't conform to the judgment
(SS32): qua formal cause, the knowledge sets the standard for what
is known. Whether, like Aristotle, Anscombe holds that practical
knowledge is also an efficient cause is a complex, and disputed
question (see Setiya 2016a for skepticism, and Pineros
Glasscock 2020a for endorsement).
One last important aspect of Anscombe's conception of practical
knowledge is the contention that an agent knows what she is doing
"without observation" (1957, SS8). This is because,
intuitively, whereas I need to look at what is being written on the
board to know what someone else is writing, I don't need to look
at what *I* am doing to know what I am writing. Beyond
intuitive examples, however, it has proven difficult to explain what
non-observational knowledge
is.[5]
Nevertheless, there are three points on which there is wide
agreement. First, the class of practical knowledge is a proper
subclass of the class of non-observational knowledge, one that also
includes, for instance, knowledge of our limbs's position
(SSSS9-10). Second, to say that knowledge is non-observational
is minimally to say that it is non-inferential. Third, and finally,
the non-observational character of this knowledge is of the sort
traditionally associated with mental states. Hence, one of the most
remarkable theses of *Intention* is that public
happenings--actions--could be known in the distinctive way
traditionally reserved for internal mental states, so that there would
be "spontaneous knowledge of material reality" (Rodl
2007, 121).
### 4.2 Arguments for a knowledge condition
Anscombe presents several arguments for the claim that to act
intentionally an agent must know what she is doing (call this the
"knowledge condition'), and further arguments have been
presented in the literature. This section surveys four influential
arguments.
One argument has already been mentioned: If a person is asked,
"Why are you ph-ing?" and she (sincerely) replies,
"I didn't realize I was ph-ing" then she
wasn't ph-ing intentionally. It would seem to follow that a
person must know what she is doing if acting intentionally. However,
this argument is unsound. First, the expression "I didn't
realize..." is colloquially used to express complete lack
of awareness, rather than mere ignorance (Schwenkler 2019, 189). At
most, then, the argument would show that the action cannot be
completely beyond the agent's purview. Second, even if the
person's state is in fact knowledge *after* the question
is asked, this may be a conversational effect: By asking "Why
are you ph-ing?", the speaker intimates that the agent is
ph-ing. This puts the agent in a position to know this, but not in
a way that is tied to her agency.
A more promising argument, suggested by Anscombe and endorsed by some
of her followers in some form (Setiya 2007; Marusic and
Schwenkler 2018), appeals to the connection between action and
assertion. It can be stated thus:
Premise 1:
If *S* is ph-ing intentionally, then she is in a position to
correctly assert that she is ph-ing.
Premise 2:
One can correctly assert *p* only if one knows *p*.
Conclusion:
Therefore, if *S* is ph-ing intentionally, she knows that
she is ph-ing.
Premise 2 is the standard claim that knowledge is the norm of
assertion (Unger 1975; Slote 1979; Williamson 2000; DeRose 2002;
Reynolds 2002; Hawthorne 2004). Premise 1 may also look innocuous;
but, as we shall see, there may be cases that speak against it.
There are two more influential arguments inspired by Anscombe that
have been used to defend the connection with knowledge. The first
begins with the observation that a process in progress bears a
non-accidental connection to its completion (Thompson 2011; Small
2012; Wolfson 2012; Valaris 2021). If a house is burning, it would not
be an accident if it is burnt later; and if you are writing a letter,
it won't be an accident if it is written later. What
distinguishes intentional action is that the non-accidental connection
obtains in virtue of the agent's representation--her
intention--to act in some way. That the agent is writing a
letter--even while she takes a break, cooks a snack, and goes to
the bathroom--is true precisely because she represents herself as
writing a letter, and this representation guides her proceedings.
Intentions, in other words ground what Falvey (2000) calls the
"openness of the progressive": the fact that "a
person may be doing something, in a suitably broad sense, when at the
moment she is not doing anything, in a more narrow sense, that is for
the sake of what she is doing in the broad sense" (p.22).
Suppose, then, that an agent is intentionally ph-ing. Then it is
true that she represents herself as doing so, the representation is
true, and non-accidentally so. It is a short step to the conclusion
that she knows that she is ph-ing.
The final argument is based on the claim that intentional action is
action for a reason (Thompson 2013). An agent must therefore be in a
position to give an answer fitting the schema:
(1)
I'm ph-ing because ps.
Now, Thompson (2008) has argued that the most basic way of filling
this schema is one where actions themselves occupy the ps-position
(i.e. where actions are given as reasons). For instance:
(2)
I am moving my hands because *I am pumping water*.
So, in what sort of relation must an agent stand to the fact that she
is pumping water for a sentence like (2) to be true? Hyman (1999;
2015) has argued that the relation must be knowledge (though see Dancy
2000, ch.6). If, then, every intentional action description is one
that the agent could substitute for ps in (1), it follows that
agents must know what they are doing when acting intentionally.
### 4.3 Objections to the knowledge condition
Davidson argued that the knowledge condition, and even a weaker belief
condition, is vulnerable to counterexamples:
>
> [I]n writing heavily on this page I may be intending to produce ten
> legible carbon copies. I do not know, or believe with any confidence,
> that I am succeeding. But if I am producing ten legible carbon copies,
> I am certainly doing it intentionally. (Davidson 1970b, 92)
>
In this case, Davidson argued that the agent is making 10 carbon
copies intentionally despite not believing that he is (never mind
knowing); and some recent empirical results appear to support this
verdict (Vekony 2021). Hence, it seems that agents can ph intentionally without
even believing that they are ph-ing.
For a long time, this and similar examples (e.g. Bratman 1987, 37,
Mele 1992, ch.8) were taken as decisive refutations in the literature,
but their force has been contested recently (Thompson 2011; Small
2012; Wolfson 2012; Stathopoulos 2016; Beddor and Pavese 2021; Pavese
forthcoming). The impetus for many of these responses stems from
Thompson's work on the importance of aspect for action-theory.
In particular, actions in progress display what Falvey (2000) has
called "openness", which corresponds to the inaptly-named
"imperfective paradox" in the linguistic literature (more
below): Someone can be doing something and never get around to have
done it (e.g. I can be crossing the street, but never cross it). It is
thus possible for someone to know that they are ph-ing even if they
don't, in fact, get to have ph-ed. To apply these
considerations to Davidson's argument, we need to distinguish
between two cases. First, the normal case where the agent intends to
make 10 carbon copies, but has the opportunity to correct and continue
on if things go wrong (e.g. if he initially only makes 5, but then
makes 5 more). Second, the one-shot case where the agent must make 10
carbon copies in one go (say, because he is competing in a copy-making
tournament). In the normal case, it appears like the agent may know
that he is making 10 carbon copies (even if he doesn't know that
he will complete the 10 in one go). So it raises no problems for the
knowledge condition. What, then, of the one-shot case? Although here
it may be granted that the agent doesn't know that he is making
10 carbon copies, it is questionable whether he is making 10 carbon
copies intentionally. The reason is that *if* he were to make
10 carbon copies as a result of pressing as hard as he can, this would
be too much an accidental result of his performance. But, as we saw
(see section 2.4), accidentality is incompatible with intentional
action. Hence, in the normal case the agent acts intentionally while
knowing, while in the one-shot case he doesn't even act
intentionally.
It is contentious whether the foregoing response works (see Kirley
forthcoming, for criticism), but it shows that Davidson's
example is far from decisive. However, other examples appear to be
immune from this type of response. For instance, Schwenkler (2019)
presents a case of an agent who is trying to fill a cistern in the
kind of environment where doubts that he is doing so are appropriate
(e.g. where he is filling up one of many cisterns, but he knows
several of them are broken, but not which). Suppose, however, that he
is in fact filling up the cistern (it is not broken). If he does so to
poison the inhabitants of the house, Anscombe's question
"Why?" appears to have application, which means that he is
filling up the cistern intentionally, even though the best he could
say is that "he thinks" he is doing so (Schwenkler 2019,
188-9; cf. Vekony, Mele, and Rose 2021; Shepherd & Carter
forthcoming).
The key difference between this case and the carbon copier is that the
agent remains fully in control of her action: the fact that he is
filling up the cistern by moving his arms so and so is no accident.
So, there is no reason to dispute the action's status as
intentional. Still, whatever belief the person might have is unsafe,
as nearby beliefs (such as those relating to the other faucets) are
false. Hence, it isn't knowledge.
Building on similar considerations, Pineros Glasscock (2020b)
presents a version of Williamson (2000)'s anti-luminosity
argument, aiming to show that the knowledge condition is incompatible
with a safety principle, to the effect that to constitute knowledge, a
representation could not easily be wrong. He argues that since agents
can slowly transition from ph-ing to not-ph-ing through changes
so small as to outstrip the agent's discriminating capacities,
agents must sometimes find themselves in situations where they are
acting intentionally but either lack the confidence to possess
knowledge, or, if they have it, it is misplaced. Either way, they do
not know.
Together, these arguments force defenders of the knowledge condition
into an uncomfortable position: if they wish to uphold the knowledge
condition, they must reject safety for practical knowledge. However,
this threatens to undermine the point of counting this as knowledge,
given how epistemically frail it can be. On the other hand, it has
been argued that a suitable understanding of the knowledge condition
may evade these worries (Beddor and Pavese 2021; Valaris 2021).
### 4.4 Weakening the knowledge condition
The knowledge condition remains a controversial thesis in philosophy
of action; but even those who reject it tend to hold that the
connection between intentional action and knowledge is not accidental.
Thus, there is a growing literature that aims to capture an important
connection between knowledge and intentional action in weaker terms.
These views can be categorized according to the term for which they
recommend modification, whether (i) the practical state, (ii) the
epistemic state, or (iii) the nature of the connection between them.
(Naturally, since these are all compatible, some scholars recommend
more than one revision.)
Though regarded as Anscombe's central opponent, Davidson himself
recommended a version of (i). According to him, although agents need
not know what they are doing under every description under which they
act intentionally, they must know what they are doing under *at
least one* description under which the action is intentional
(Davidson 1971, 51). The carbon copier, for instance, may not know
that he is making 10 carbon copies, but he would have to know that he
is making carbon copies, or that he is moving his hands, etc.
Arguably, the idea that practical knowledge is restricted to knowledge
of actions *in progress* is also a weakening of the thesis,
since Anscombe appears to include also knowledge of future actions
(SSSS51-2) and of completed actions such as the knowledge that
I *wrote* my name on the board (SS48) or even of what is
*written* (SS19). Indeed, it has been argued that
imperfective and perfective knowledge are interdependent (Haase 2018).
Finally, other weakenings include the view that agents must know what
they intend (Fleming 1964), what they are trying to do/that they are
trying (Searle 1985; cf. Grice 1971), or what basic actions they are
performing (Setiya 2008; 2009; 2012). Since Anscombe's thesis is
strictly stronger than these, it follows that they will avoid certain
problems that hers faces. However, it is not clear that such retreats
help avoid the general problem, and restricting the thesis to more
immediate occurrences--basic actions, intentions, or
attempts--risks losing on the aforementioned feature that makes
Anscombe's view so interesting: the idea that we might bear the
same intimate epistemic connection to something external as we bear to
parts of our mental lives (Pineros Glasscock 2020b).
Views that fall under (ii) have been influentially defended by several
authors (Grice 1971; Harman 198;1997; Setiya 2007; 2008; 2009; 2012;
Velleman 2001; Tenenbaum 2007; Ross 2009; Clark 2020). A popular
version of this view rejects a knowledge condition in favor of a
belief condition (Setiya 2007; Velleman 2001; Ross 2009; Clark 2020):
if the agent phs intentionally [intends to ph], she believes
that she is ph-ing [believes that she will ph]. Such a view is
arguably better supported by some of Anscombe's own arguments
(such as the argument in terms of conversation dynamics above); and it
seems to preserve a special place for actions as occurrences that are
public but to which our minds bear a special epistemic relation.
However, it has been argued that such views also suffer from problems,
and fail to avoid counterexamples with the same structure as
Davidson's carbon copier, even though they are explanatorily
weaker (Bratman 1991; Paul 2009a; 2009b; Levy 2018). Since authors
like Setiya see the avoidance of counterexamples as a central payoff
of the weakenings, it is unclear whether they are worth the costs in
explanatory value.
Finally, views that fall under (iii) aim to show that even if there
isn't a relation of *entailment* between action and
practical knowledge, there might yet be an interesting connection
between them. For instance, some authors have argued that agents
*normally* or *generally* know what they are doing
(Peacocke 2003; O'Brien 2007; Gibbons 2010; Schwenkler 2015;
2019; Pineros Glasscock 2020b); or that the kind of knowledge
that agents have of their intentional action has special properties,
such as being first-personal knowledge (Dunn 1998; Moran 2001; 2004;
O'Brien 2007; Marcus 2012; Schwenkler 2019).
### 4.5 The possibility of practical knowledge
Regardless of whether one adheres to the knowledge condition (or some
weakened version of the view), it is generally agreed that agents
*can* have a special kind of knowledge by exercising their
practical capacities in intentional action. However, what makes our
practical capacities suitable source of knowledge? Anscombe devoted
little attention to this question, but an answer to it could be the
key to working out a version of (iii) in the previous section.
Here is a simple answer: A person can know that *p* (e.g. that
she (herself) is walking), on the basis of exercising her will,
because when she does so successfully *p* is true. Two related
problems immediately arise for this simple account. First, truth is
insufficient for knowledge. Minimally, epistemic warrant is also
needed, but the simple account does not give even a hint as to how
such warrant could be acquired through agency (Newstead 2006). Second,
there are notorious cases that seem to meet the conditions provided by
the simple answer, but where there isn't knowledge. One case is
lucky wishful thinking (Langton 2004), e.g., if partly on the basis of
optimistic thinking I luckily pull off a jump I would not normally
make. Another is pessimistic thinking (Harman 1986; 1997), e.g., if I
trip partly on the basis of thinking that I will trip. In neither case
do I possess knowledge on the basis of my thoughts, despite the
thoughts bringing about the truth of their contents. At best,
therefore, the simple answer is incomplete, and must be supplemented
with a story that explains how it is that the characteristic thoughts
of the agent differ from wishful and pessimistic thoughts, such as to
provide epistemic warrant.
An influential account of this sort was provided in foundational work
by Velleman (1989). Simplifying somewhat, Velleman argues that human
beings have a core desire to know themselves. Like any desire, this
one will motivate agents to satisfy it. In addition, they have the
capacities to (a) have thoughts about what they are doing and will do,
and (b) have thoughts that are self-referential, e.g. <this very
thought won't make me famous>. Suppose, then, that someone
has the thought <I will go to the store in virtue of this
thought>. Then, given the desire to know herself, the agent will be
motivated to make this thought true. Hence, thought structures of this
sort ('intentions') will give the agent reasons to believe
that what she intends will be true.
Several worries have been raised against Velleman's view. One is
that it makes dubious empirical claims, theorizing about the mind from
the armchair. In response, Velleman (2000a) has provided empirical
support for his more contentious psychological claim, that humans have
a deep desire for self-knowledge. Another worry is that this epistemic
mechanism still looks too much like wishful thinking, believing that
something is the case just because one wants it to be so (Langton
2004; see Setiya 2008; Velleman 2014 for replies). Finally, it is
unclear why, if an agent realizes that the content of her intention is
not realized, she must make it true that it is, rather than simply
give up the belief (that she will act in a certain way). After all, we
can pursue the aim of knowing ourselves both by ensuring that beliefs
about ourselves are true *and* by giving up beliefs about
ourselves that are false.
Worries of this sort led Velleman to distinguish
"directive" from "receptive" cognition
(Velleman 2000, ch.7); but it has led others to consider the
alternative view that practical knowledge is a standard form of
inferential knowledge (Grice 1971; O'Shaughnessy 1980, 2003;
Paul 2009a). On the most sophisticated inferentialist account, due to
Paul (2009a), agents take advantage of the special knowledge they have
of their intentions to make inferences about what is happening and
will happen. Given that intentions are reliably executed, such
inferences reliably yield knowledge. A more radical inferentialist
alternative, suggested by authors like Carruthers (2011) on the basis
of empirical evidence, is that we know our actions on the basis of the
same processes by which we know others' minds: we essentially
predict what actions are most likely to happen, given what else we
know about others' motives and beliefs--it's just
that we know a lot more about our own minds. (Similar views about
self-knowledge in general are defended by Gopnik 1993, and have their
origin in Ryle 1949. For criticisms, see Boyle 2022; Levy 2022.)
Inferentialist accounts give up on a feature that was central to
Anscombe's understanding of practical knowledge, its immediate
character (see e.g. O'Brien 2007). However, Paul (2009a) argues
that the appearance of immediacy can be explained by the fact that
inferences "can take place rapidly and automatically at a
non-conscious level, without the mindful entertaining of premises or
feeling of drawing a conclusion" (p.10). Yet, several challenges
have been raised against inferentialist accounts, including: (i) that
they can't explain the tight nexus between intentional action
and practical knowledge (Setiya 2007, 2008, 2009); (ii) that they
can't explain the first-personal character of practical
knowledge (Wilson 2000; Schwenkler 2012); and (iii) that they at best
give us alienated, observational knowledge (Pineros Glasscock
2021).
There are, finally, several non-inferentialist stories about how
practical knowledge is possible. Some accounts appeal to knowledge-how
or skill as the state by which an intention ensures that its content
is not only true but also justified, so as to amount to knowledge
(Setiya 2012; Small 2012; Valaris 2021). Another view, due to
O'Brien (2007), explains practical knowledge in terms of the
exercise of deliberative capacities. The agent knows what she is doing
because the selection of an action is done via the exercise of
capacities that narrow options in terms of the practical possibilities
of the agent. Others take practical knowledge to be inferential, but
the inference in question is practical inference. On this view,
practical knowledge is warranted by the practical considerations that
constitute the agent's practical reasoning (Harman 1997;
Tenenbaum 2007; Ross 2009; Marusic and Schwenkler 2018;
Campbell 2018; Frey 2019). Finally, some have tried to show that
accounts of epistemic warrant or entitlement designed to explain how
we can directly believe on the basis of perception might explain how
we can directly believe on the basis of our wills (Peacocke 2003;
Newstead 2006; Pineros Glasscock 2020a). As this brief and
incomplete summary indicates, there is not yet anything close to a
consensus about how best to explain the epistemic standing for
practical knowledge.
## 5. The Ontology of Actions
What are actions? The traditional answer is: they are *events*
of a certain sort (e.g. events with a distinctive causal history).
That, at any rate, is the letter of the views found in Anscombe
(1957), Davidson (1963; 1967a; 1967b; 1985), and much subsequent
literature. However, some scholars have recently argued that
Anscombe's position is better captured by the claim that actions
are *processes*, and that there are philosophical advantages to
this view. Yet, others take actions to be something else altogether.
This section explains what this dispute is about, and explores some of
its implications for other ontological debates such as the
individuation of action. It then considers further important questions
about the metaphysics of action, such as whether there must be basic
actions, and whether *Action* constitutes a unified
category.
### 5.1 Events, processes, and more
There are several reasons to categorize actions as events. A central
one concerns their connection to causation (Davidson 1967a; Goldman
1970). Actions are directly implicated in causal relations: modifying
Davidson's example (pp.4-5), the burglar's entering my
house might cause me to turn on the light, which in turn might cause
him to be startled. On the widespread assumption that events are the
primary causal relata, it would follow that actions, such as my
turning on of the light, are events.
Another argument for the event view is that it explains common
inference patterns. As Davidson (1967b) noted, sentences attributing
actions to agents admit of adjectival drop. Thus, a sentence like (3)
entails (4), which in turn entails (5):
(3)
Donald buttered the toast in the bathroom at 12am.
(4)
Donald buttered the toast in the bathroom.
(5)
Donald buttered the toast.
Davidson suggested that the best way to account for these inferential
relations is to assume that at the level of logical form these
sentences quantify over events. So understood, the logical form of
(3)-(5) would be as
follows:[6]
(3\*)
\(\exists x(\textrm{Buttering}(x) \amp \textrm{By}(x,
\textrm{Donald}) \amp \textrm{Object}(x, \textrm{toast})\ \amp \)
\(\textrm{Location}(x, \textrm{bathroom}) \amp \textrm{Time}(x,
\textrm{12am}))\)
(4\*)
\(\exists x(\textrm{Buttering}(x) \amp \textrm{By}(x,
\textrm{Donald}) \amp \textrm{Object}(x, \textrm{toast})\ \amp\)
\(\textrm{Location}(x, \textrm{bathroom}))\)
(5\*)
\(\exists x(\textrm{Buttering}(x) \amp \textrm{By}(x,
\textrm{Donald}) \amp \textrm{Object}(x, \textrm{toast}))\)
The entailment relations are then easily explained through the
classical rules for conjunction and existential quantification. This
analysis, which has been highly influential in formal semantics,
appears to entail that actions are events, entities with a
spatiotemporal location (since they admit of spatiotemporal
modifiers), that possess the properties denoted by adverbial modifiers
(such as who was engaged in them, or what the object of the action
was).
Finally, perhaps the most straightforward reason to hold that actions
are events, is that this fits naturally with the way we speak about
them. For instance, we say, "The event we observed last night
turned out to be a theft", or "The murder of that woman
was a sad event".
Against this view, a number of scholars have recently argued that
actions (in the sense of concern for philosophy of action) are instead
*processes* (Mourelatos 1978; Stout 1997; Hornsby 2012; Steward
2012; Charles 2018). To understand this claim, we first need to
explain what the distinction amounts to. We can introduce it at an
intuitive level in terms of the aspectual distinction between the
following two sentences:
(6)
Donald is *buttering* the toast.
(7)
Donald *has buttered* the toast.
(6) refers to an ongoing occurrence in the midst of development. As
such, many of its properties are still indeterminate and may change
over time. It may be happening in the bathroom in a matter of seconds
if Donald stays there; but he could take a break, forget about it, and
continue on with it several minutes later in the kitchen. Moreover,
the manner in which it takes place can change as it occurs: it may
speed up (if Donald is suddenly in a hurry) or slow down (if Donald is
distracted by a noise), and he may start doing it more mindfully, or
distractedly. Indeed, however Donald is *doing* the buttering,
it may happen that he never ends up *having buttered* the toast
(a nearby scream might cause him to drop it in the toilet halfway
through). This is sometimes called the "imperfective
paradox": in general, [?]*x* is ph-ing[?] does
not entail [?]*x* has ph'd[?]. By contrast, the event
itself, denoted by (7), cannot speed up or slow down, nor change the
manner in which it is done, since it is already complete. This is why
it has a determinate temporal-spatial location in terms of which some
have sought to individuate it (Lemmon 1967; Quine 1985; Davidson
1985). By contrast, processes do not have an essential
temporal-spatial location: the same process of buttering that is now
taking place at 12:01 could culminate in a minute or in an hour.
The most straightforward reason to think that actions are processes is
that actions appear to have these properties, as is indicated by the
examples used in the previous paragraph (Stout 1997; Steward 2012;
Charles 2015; 2018). Thus, one's action can speed up or slow
down, be done in one way or another at different times in its history,
and may culminate at different times. Indeed, an ongoing action may
never be completed.
The connection between imperfective aspect and processes provides
further impetus for the view that actions are processes (the argument
to follow is based on Michael Thompson's ideas (2008,
122-30), though he rejects the view that actions are processes,
understood as particulars (pp.134-7)). After all, it seems essential
to actions that they can enter into rationalizing explanations
(Anscombe 1957; Thompson 2008; Wiland 2013; Ford 2015; 2017), and such
explanations can easily be given in imperfective language. To see
this, consider again Anscombe's case of a man who operates a
lever to pump poisoned water to a house, with the plan of killing the
inhabitants (Anscombe 1957, SS23). We could represent his thoughts
as follows: "I am moving the lever up and down *because*
I am pumping water to the house *because* I am poisoning its
inhabitants." Indeed, such formulations seem to express
canonical answers to Anscombe's special question
"Why?" (Thompson 2008; Wiland 2013; Ford 2015). However,
we cannot capture the same thoughts without imperfective expressions
(Thompson 2008). The train of thought that goes, "I have moved
the lever up and down *because* I have pumped the water
*because* I have poisoned the inhabitants of the house"
makes it sound like the man is acting on a conditional promise to move
the lever if the men are killed by his hand. This suggests that
whereas processes can directly enter into the kinds of rationalizing
explanations definitive of intentional action, events cannot (except,
perhaps, derivatively), which in turn suggests that actions are
processes.
Finally, it has been suggested that the process view can better
accommodate the type of direct guidance that Frankfurt identified as
essential to intentional action (see above, section 2.4). It seems
attractive to explain the nature of this direct guidance in terms of
how substances in general cause changes by engaging in certain
processes (Hornsby 2012), or in terms of the different ways in which
an agent can manifest her agency in a process (slower, faster, more or
less skillfully) (Charles 2018). And, as Steward (2012) suggests, this
might give a substantial role to the agent in the explanation of
action. By contrast, since events have settled natures and
spatial-temporal properties, it seems that the agent can at best
interact with them in the indirect way in which she interacts with
other objects, such as a car.
It is only recently that an alternative to the event view has been
clearly formulated and defended. As such, much work remains to be done
in this area, and even among defenders of the process view there are
important disagreements. One important disagreement is over whether
processes are particulars (Galton 2006; Steward 2012; Charles 2018) or
not (Stout 1997; Crowther 2011; Hornsby 2012; Crowther 2018; cf.
Thompson 2008). Another disagreement is about whether a unique thing
is a process and an event (at different times) (Steward 2012; Charles
2018), or whether the process and the event are distinct things (Stout
1997; Crowther 2011; Hornsby 2012; Charles 2015; Crowther 2018).
Regardless of how these questions are answered, a remaining challenge
is to explain the *unity* between processes and events, the
fact that there is a non-accidental connection between the process of
buttering, and the event of one's having buttered the toast that
results if the action is successful (Haase 2022). Moreover, it is
worth noting that although the process-view is the most important
alternative available to the events-view, other proposals have been
advanced recently, including the view that actions are thoughts
(Rodl 2007; 2011; Marcus 2012; Valaris 2020). For example, Marcus
holds that to act intentionally just is to judge that the action is to
be done.
### 5.2 The Individuation of Action
The example of the pumper displays another important Anscombean thesis
(endorsed by Davidson, see section 2.2 above): that a single event can
instantiate different properties in terms of which it can be
described. Thus, the same action is at once a *moving of the
hands*, a *pumping of water*, and *a poisoning*.
This was important for Anscombe because she held that actions are
intentional only under some descriptions: for instance, even if the
pumper's energetic moves scare a nearby squirrel, the action
would not be intentional under the description *scaring of a
squirrel*.
The most influential alternative to this "coarse-grained"
account is a "fine-grained" account that individuates
actions (and events, more generally) in terms of their properties (Kim
1966; 1969; 1973; 1976; Goldman 1970). On this view, *A* and
*B* are the same action just in case *A* has all and
only the properties that *B* has; and for each set of such
properties, there is an event. Since moving one's hands, pumping
water, and poisoning are distinct properties, this view entails that
the pumper's moving of his hands, his pumping of the water, and
his poisoning of the inhabitants are distinct actions.
Anscombe complained that treating these as different actions would be
like treating the author of *David Copperfield* and the author
of *Bleak House* as different men, rather than a single author,
Dickens (Anscombe 1979, 222). Indeed, the fine-grained view has
similar counterintuitive implications. Consider: the properties of
pumping water, pumping water while smiling, and pumping water at noon,
are all different properties. So, the man who pumped water at noon
while smiling would have engaged in three different pumpings according
to the fine-grained view.
Moreover, the view threatens to undermine some basic inferences we are
inclined to make about actions (Katz 1978). For instance, it seems
obvious that from:
(8)
The table in the room is brown.
We can infer:
(9)
The table in the room = the brown table.
But, similarly, it seems that from:
(10)
The man's pumping occurred at noon.
We can infer:
(11)
The man's pumping = The man's pumping at noon.
However, on the fine-grained view the inference to (11) is invalid
since the two descriptions in (11) must refer to distinct events.
Hence the defender of the fine-grained view is forced to reject a
seemingly innocuous inference pattern.
These are serious problems, and it is not clear that defenders of the
fine-grained view can do more than bite the bullets. However, it has
been argued that the coarse-grained account has similarly
counterintuitive implications (Goldman 1970; Thomson 1971). To see
why, consider the following two sentences (true of the imagined
pumper):
(12)
The man moved his hands before he poisoned the inhabitants.
(13)
The man caused the poisoning of the inhabitants by moving his
hands.
We can paraphrase them using gerundival expressions as follows:
(12\*)
The man's moving of his hands happened before the poisoning
of the inhabitants.
(13\*)
The man's moving of his hands caused the poisoning of the
inhabitants.
Now, suppose we assume the claim that:
(14)
The man's moving of his hands = the man's poisoning of
the inhabitants.
Then, by substitution, we arrive at the absurd:
(15)
The man's moving of his hands happened before the
man's moving of his hands.
(16)
The man's moving of his hands caused his moving of his
hands.
It is natural to think that (14) is the culprit; but to hold that
claims such as (14) are false seems to amount to rejecting the
coarse-grained view of action individuation.
One possible response would be to hold that the contexts [?]ph
happens\* before ps[?] and [?]ph causes\* ps[?]
(the \* marks tenselessness) are intensional in the ph and ps
positions (Anscombe 1969). If so, substitution of co-referents may
change truth value in these contexts. Alternatively, one could attempt
to explain these results pragmatically: the sentences sound odd in the
same way as it sounds odd to say that "a man married his
widow', even though it is true (the man married her
*before* she was a widow, of course!) (cf. Anscombe 1979).
However, these are controversial semantic theses (for further
intensionalist treatments, see Achinstein 1975; McDermott 1995;
Wasserman 2004; for extensionalist treatments, see e.g., Davidson
1967a; Strawson 1985; Rosenberg and Martin 1979; Schaffer 2005; for an
excellent review of research on causal contexts more generally,
including pragmatic effects, see Swanson 2012).
A different response is suggested by the view that actions are
processes. That view enables us to treat action descriptions as
sometimes characterizing the different stages of the action (cf.
Russell 2018). Then, appealing to Anscombe's insight that we
should treat claims about actions in parallel with claims about
persons, we could say that the moving of one's hands precedes
and causes the poisoning in an analogous way as the acorn precedes and
causes the oak. But just as there is a single organism in the latter
case, there is a single action in the former, even though it seems at
best paradoxical to say that I caused myself to exist, or that the oak
caused the acorn.
Finally, the coarse- and fine-grained views obviously do not exhaust
the conceptual landscape. A number of philosophers have offered
individuation principles stricter than those advanced by
coarse-grained theorists, but laxer than those advanced by
fine-grained theorists (e.g. Ginet 1990). Charles (1984), for example,
argues that Aristotle would individuate actions in terms of
capacities. This allows us to say that the moving of one's hands
is the same action as the moving of one's hands quickly (since a
single capacity is thereby actualized), even though it is a different
action from the poisoning, which actualizes a different set of
capacities. The challenge for this view is to provide an account of
the individuation of capacities independent of the account of the
individuation of actions.
### 5.3 The Debate Over Basic Action
Consideration of cases like that of the pumper naturally raises a
question about their *structure*: what kind of shape could such
a rationalizing explanation take? Could it go on forever? To answer
this, consider the pumper once more, and suppose he poisons the
inhabitants of the house. It is true, then, that he poisoned the
inhabitants of the house by pumping water, and he did this by moving
his hands. Because the poisoning and the pumping are done by doing
something else, they are called "non-basic" actions.
However, it has been argued that there must be at least some actions
that are "basic'", done not by doing anything else.
Otherwise, we appear to be caught in various forms of a vicious
regress.
For example, if to do *A* one must do *B*, and to do
*B* one must do *C*, and so on *ad infinitum,*
doing anything would seem to require doing an infinite number of
things. More worrying, the beginning of action seems to be
"logically out of reach" for the agent, since there is
always something else that she would have to do before she begins to
do anything (Danto 1979, 471). Again, it seems that for an agent to
know what she is currently doing, she needs to know how to do the
things by which she does it; but unless there is something that she
can know how to do just by doing it, it will be impossible for her to
know what she is doing at all (Hornsby 2013).
Arguments of this sort convinced most scholars that there must be
basic actions (though see Baier 1971 and Sneddon 2001 for early
dissent). The debate then centered on *which* actions are
basic. Many scholars held that simple bodily movements, like moving a
finger or raising an eyebrow, were basic, while others held that they
could be more complex (tying one's shoes), or that they must be
simpler: perhaps only mental actions, or tryings were basic. After
all, I move my finger by attempting to move it; and we need to
distinguish between the attempt and the movement, since sometimes the
attempt occurs without the movement (e.g. if my fingers are suddenly
paralized) (Prichard 1945: Hornsby 1980; O'Shaughnessy 1980; see
Cleveland 1997, ch.5 for criticism).
As several scholars have noted, part of what is at issue in this
debate are different notions of basicness, corresponding to different
understandings of the clause "by doing something else"
(Baier 1971; Annas 1978; Hornsby 1980). It is common to draw a
three-fold distinction: (i) know-how basicness; (ii) causal basicness;
and (iii) teleological basicness. An action is know-how basic iff
there is no other (type of) action by which the agent knows how to do
the one in question. An action is causally basic iff there is no other
(token) action that causes it. An action is teleologically basic iff
there is no other (token) action by means of which the agent does it.
To illustrate in a way that highlights the differences, consider
pitching a baseball. Arguably, this action is know-how basic, since
the pitcher may not know a more basic action by which to do it: of
course, the agent may know how to move her hands independently, but
she may be unable to move her hands in the particular way in which she
does when she throws the baseball unless she were actually throwing
the baseball. Whether the action is causally basic depends on whether
we think there is another action that causes it, such as the
pitcher's moving of his hands. Finally, and independently of the
question of causation, the action appears to be teleologically
non-basic, since the moving of his hands is certainly both a means and
an action by which the pitcher pitches. The consensus for many years
was that there must be basic actions in all three senses.
However, this widespread consensus about teleological basicness has
recently been called into question by Michael Thompson and other
defenders of "naive" action theory (Thompson 2008,
107-119). Thompson considers the case of a person, *P,*
who has pushed a stone from point a to o. Let b be
the halfway point between a and o. It seems that if
*P* pushed the stone from a to o intentionally,
then he pushed the stone from a to b intentionally. Now,
let g be the halfway point between a and b. Once
again, it seems that *P* pushed the stone from a to
g intentionally. And so on. It seems, then, that there will
always be a further action by which *P* pushed the stone. In
other words, there is no basic action. Moreover, as a number of
authors have noted (Small 2012; Lavin 2013), the argument can be
generalized for virtually every action, since it can be presented in
terms of a series of time-segments (instead of place-segments), and
virtually every action takes place over time. (For critical
discussion, see Ford 2018.)
Building on this argument, Lavin (2013) presents a further challenge
to the view that there must be (teleological) basic action.
Lavin's argument centers on the relation of the agent to her
actions. Consider first a non-basic action, like poisoning the
inhabitants of the house. The agent's relation to this action is
itself an agential matter, since the agent poisons the inhabitants by
doing something else intentionally (operating the pump). Now consider
an arbitrary basic action, *A*. By definition, the agent
doesn't do *A* by doing anything else. However, this is
an action that occurs through time, so, presumably there are
happenings *h1, h2, ...,
hn* by which *A* takes place. But since
*h1, h2, ..., hn* are
mere happenings, this means that the agent relates to *A*
non-agentially. Now, Lavin grants that it may be possible sometimes
for us to relate to our actions non-agentially; but it would be
alarming if this was necessarily the case, as defenders of basic
action are committed to hold. It would mean that agents are
necessarily alienated from their actions, in the way labourers are
alienated from their labour in Marx's critique of capitalism. In
turn, Lavin argues that this would make it impossible for agents to
have self-knowledge of their own actions, since self-knowledge is
grounded on our agential relation.
There is a growing literature responding to Thompson's and
Lavin's challenges, both refining the arguments, or presenting
objections to it (Setiya 2012; Hornsby 2013; Lynch 2017; Frost 2019;
Small 2019). This is not surprising, since the debate about basic
actions has important repercussions for other questions about the
nature of intentional action. For example, Lavin (2013) holds that
defenders of (teleologically) basic action are committed to a
"decompositional account" of agency (see section 1). After
all, if there are basic actions, we may be able to give an account of
what makes something an action in terms of the non-agential relation
an agent bears to her basic actions. Moreover, Ford (2017; 2018) notes
that Thompson's argument suggests a novel way to pursue action
theory, one that defines action not in terms of *reasons for
action* but, in the first instance, in terms of the means by which
an action is pursued.The latter, Ford holds, better captures the
agential perspective: in the context of deliberation, what the agent
asks is *How* to pursue a particular course of action, rather
than *Why* she is doing something. Finally, the debate may have
repercussions for our understanding of the relation between skill and
intentional action. For example, both Frost and Small suggest that at
the most fundamental level, our agency depends on our exercise of
practical *skills* by which we enter an instrumental order
without consciously representing that order at the level of
propositional thought (Small 2012; 2019; Frost 2019).
### 5.4 Making, Acting, and the Varieties of Agency
Nearly all contemporary philosophers treat *intentional action*
as a unified category. Despite the many differences between moving a
finger, running, hammering a nail, fixing a fridge, eating a sandwich,
acting justly, keeping a promise, and marrying someone, all of these
are treated as equally belonging to a single type: acting. The
assumption is supported by natural language. After all, these are all
legitimate answers to the question "What are you
doing?'.
Aristotle provides us with an alternative view that has had immense
influence in philosophy. Throughout his writings, Aristotle
distinguishes between "making" or "producing"
(*poiesis**)* on the one hand, and
"acting proper" (*praxis*) on the other (an early
version of the distinction appears in Plato's *Charmides*
163a-c). The two are distinguished by their success conditions
(*EE* 5.2/*NE* 6.2 1139b1-4; *EE* 5.5/*NE*
6.5 1140b6-7). The success conditions for makings are external
to them: one succeeds at making insofar as something external to the
making obtains (the product). By contrast, the success conditions for
proper actions are the actions themselves. This is why we pursue them
for their own sake (*ib.*). By this standard, the activities of
hammering a nail, or fixing a fridge count as makings, because the
hammering is successful insofar as something external takes place: a
nail is hammered in a wall, or a fridge is fixed. Precisely because
the success conditions are external, it is possible to succeed at
making something by luck (*EE* 5.4/*NE* 6.4
1140a17-20). By contrast, Aristotle would regard acting justly,
keeping a promise, or marrying someone as proper actions. To succeed
at these actions consists in doing the actions well. A coerced
marriage is not a successful marriage. Hence, these actions cannot be
done by luck. This distinction underlies the aforementioned
distinction between two forms of human excellence in the practical
sphere: skill (*techne*) is excellence at making
(*EE* 5.4; *NE* 6.4 1140a6-23), and practical
wisdom (*phronesis*) is excellence at acting proper
(*EE* 5.5/ *NE* 6.5 1140a25-30 et passim).
Although the distinction is barely mentioned in analytical philosophy,
it has influenced other traditions, such as the Marxist one. From his
earliest writings, Marx accepts an Aristotelian threefold analysis of
labour in terms of the labourer, the process of labouring, and its
product. Marx implicitly rejects the distinction between action proper
and production, in favour of a dichotomy of his own between different
forms of productions. This is because for Marx the characteristic
activity of the human species is conscious free labouring: an activity
that has no end beyond itself (it does not seek anything beyond the
living activity that such labouring consists in) (Marx 1844a; 1844b;
1867). This is what Aristotle took as the distinguishing feature of
proper actions, done for their own sake. One of Marx's central
criticisms of capitalist societies is that it prevents humans from
engaging in such an activity. In capitalist societies, the labourer,
the labour process, and the product all become commodities that serve
as mere means for the enjoyment of the owner of labour and product
("the capitalist"). Members of capitalist societies are,
in this sense, alienated (Marx 1844b; 1867). As such, capitalist
societies make it impossible for humans to engage in their most
fundamental life activity of free production, an activity that the
Marxist tradition came to designate as "praxis" (Petrovic
1983), reappropriating the quite different Aristotelian notion.
Perhaps the most influential modern version of a distinction among
types of practical activity is drawn by Arendt (1998). Arendt
distinguishes between three kinds of practical activities: labour,
work, and action. The most basic of these is *labour*, which
Arendt conceives as simply an extension of our animal lives: a
"metabolism" (Marx's phrase) between the human
animal and the world, characterized by a cycle of consumption and the
production of goods to be consumed, and aiming at meeting our basic
biological needs (p.69). Since this is a cycle, Arendt suggests that
there is no sense of speaking here of means and ends: there is no fact
of the matter as to whether the production of goods is for the sake of
consumption, or the consumption for the sake of production (p.145;
155). Means and ends enter at the next level of practical activity,
*work* (the Aristotelian *poiesis*). Like
Aristotle, Arendt takes the aim of working to be the finished work,
the product, whether it be a work of art, like a painting, a tool,
like a knife, or a way to safeguard living, like a house. The central
importance of work lies in its ability to produce lasting products
that lie beyond the activity of the producer (p.136; 144). Arendt
contends that these products can begin to shape an objective
*world* of objects that stands against the humans who produce
them. However, the world does not emerge in its fullness except by way
of the third level of practical activity, *action* (the
Aristotelian *praxis*). Action is the means by which humans
reveal themselves in the public sphere, a revelation needed to give
reality to a personality that otherwise remains entirely unactualized
in subjectivity. It is thus essentially communicative, and depends on
other humans to whom one might make herself known (pp.38-49; 95;
202-7); and it depends, given its essential ephemeral nature,
for its permanence in the continued existence of a polity that may
preserve words and deeds in more enduring forms, like sculptures and
tales. Ungoverned by either the natural laws of labor, or by the norms
arising from a particular aim, action is for Arendt unproductive,
free, and unpredictable. It is the distinguishing activity of human
beings as such (p.177; 204-6).
The three-fold distinction serves as the basis for Arendt's
criticisms of both ancient writers, including Aristotle, and modern
writers, including Marx. She criticizes Aristotle both for
inconsistently assimilating action too much to work/production in his
analysis of benefaction as producing a work (*ergon*) (p.196),
and for subordinating it to theory (22-23). She criticizes
Marx's subsumption of practical activity in general under labour
for its failure to provide meaning. She notes that Marx ends in the
paradoxical position of concluding that that the aim of labour is
freedom from labour, even though this is the activity he takes as
definitive of humanity. In other words, Marx ends up concluding that
the aim of human life is to do away with human life (p.89; 103; 105).
For Arendt, however, this is not merely a theoretical deficiency, but
a manifestation of a broader social tendency that goes back to Plato:
the tendency to try to make action proper into that which is
not--whether work or labour--to control what is essentially
unpredictable and free.
The problems of subsuming practical activity in general to making find
echoes in some contemporary thinkers. For example, Thompson (2008),
following Baier (1970) and Mueller (1979), criticizes attempts like
Castaneda's (1970) and Chisholm's (1970) of
construing actions in terms of a schemas such as 'bringing it
about that *p*'; such propositional complexes, according
to critics, threaten to undermine the practical form of the thought
they mean to capture (cf. Hornsby 2016, Wilson 1980, pp.111-117 for
further discussion). Arendt herself thought that this tendency
underlay the attraction of utilitarianism, but she argued that, like
Marxism, that view was incapable of ever giving further meaning to our
practical endeavours (p.105). Korsgaard concludes with equal severity
that given a distinction between praxis and poiesis,
"utilitarianism is not a moral theory, for utility is a property
of [productions], not actions" (2009, p.18n26).
Regardless of what one thinks of these arguments, it is evident that
the question whether practical activity comes in varieties, as
Aristotle and Arendt thought, is potentially of enormous
significance.
## 6. Constitutive Aim
The question of what, if anything, is the constitutive (or formal) aim
(or end) of intentional actions is a question about whether there is
anything that all actions necessarily pursue, irrespective of their
particular ends. Some philosophers (Setiya 2016b) deny that there is a
constitutive aim of acting or that there is something that every
action as such aims at. On this view, there is no such thing as an aim
contained in acting as such; each action just aims at its particular
end. On the other hand, many philosophers try to derive important
consequences for ethics from the idea that action or agency has a
constitutive aim. However, we will leave aside the examinations of
these claims and focus only on the question as it pertains to the
characterization of agency. (Cf. Bagnoli 2017; 2022.)
### 6.1 Motivations and Different Versions of the View
What could motivate the idea that actions have a constitutive aim
above and beyond the particular ends they pursue? An important
consideration is that, arguably, only by appealing to a constitutive
aim, can we evaluate actions and have a proper standard of practical
reason. Much in the same way that the aim of belief (generally thought
to be "truth" or "knowledge") might provide a
standard for theoretical reasoning and correct belief, a constitutive
aim of action would provide a standard for practical reasoning and
successful action. More specifically, it seems that some actions are
successful in achieving their particular ends and yet are cases of
practical failures in some deeper way, exhibiting what appears like
practical irrationality or at least some form of practical ignorance.
Suppose I have dreamt all my life to move to Seattle, and I finally
secured a position in the city. However, as I arrive in Seattle and
try to arrange my life, my life in Seattle is a great disappointment;
even though there is nothing important that I found out about Seattle
that I didn't know already, I completely regret having pursued
this end. Although I achieved my aim of moving to Seattle, my actions
seem to have failed in an important way; arguably, I manifested my
agency in a defective way.
Of course, one can explain my disappointment in many ways that do not
seem to presuppose a constitutive aim of action: there were other ends
that I had that conflict with moving to Seattle and I hadn't
fully appreciated this beforehand. Perhaps I no longer care about the
things that made me want to move to Seattle; moving to Seattle was a
means to ends I had abandoned and didn't realize that it made no
longer sense to pursue this end. But it is unclear that these
observations will suffice; it seems that none of this might have
happened and yet my move to Seattle was still a practical failure.
Let us take a concrete example: suppose the constitutive aim of action
is happiness (see Frey 2019 for an argument that this is a view held
by Aquinas). On this view, then, every action (directly or indirectly)
aims at happiness, and the realization of an end that does not result
in happiness is a shortcoming of my agency. Therefore, if my going to
Seattle did not contribute to my happiness, or if, worse, it
contributed to undermining it, then it was a defective case of agency.
This failure is often thought to parallel the kind of internal failure
involved in false beliefs: such beliefs supposedly fail to meet a
standard internal to theoretical cognition.
Another, related, way to motivate the idea that action has a
constitutive aim focuses on the standpoint of deliberation. When
deliberating about what to do, it seems that I need to find an answer
to the question "what to do" or "whether to
ph" (Hieronymi 2005; 2006; Shah 2008); in the good case, my
action expresses an adequate answer to this question. But how could I
go about answering these questions if action did not have a
constitutive aim; if there's nothing that could count as the
correct way of answering this question? Similarly, from the point of
view of action explanation, some answers seem to provide an
intelligible explanation of action while others seem to invite the
question "but why would you aim at (want) *that*?"
If you ask me "Why are we eating the jello?",
"Because it is blue" seems to invite further questions,
while "Because I find the taste pleasant" brings the
inquiry to an end. Anscombe argues that the search for further
explanations ends when we hit a "desirability
characterization", something that is not just conceived as good
but "*really* ... one of the many forms of the
good" (Anscombe 1957, SS40).
There seems to be a parallel structure in the case of belief: in
deliberating about what to believe, it seems that I must be similarly
guided by an ideal of correct belief (Shah and Velleman 2006). In
fact, philosophers who accept that there is a constitutive aim of
action often compare action and belief (Velleman 1992; 1996; Tenenbaum
2007; 2012; 2018b; Schafer 2013). Belief is supposed to have truth as
its constitutive aim, and just as belief is held, at least in the good
case, in accordance with this constitutive aim (as Hume 1748 said,
"a wise man ... proportions his belief to the
evidence"), intentional agency is guided by its constitutive
aim.
There are various proposals of what the constitutive aim of an action
might be. Perhaps the most traditional version of this view is the
idea that the good is the constitutive aim of agency, possibly going
back to Socrates (*Protagoras* 351a-8e; *Gorgias*
467c-8d). The notion of "good" involved here can be
very thin, meaning no more than "considering matters
aright" (Williams 1981) in the realm of practical reason; such
views are versions of the thesis often called "the guise of the
good" (Tenenbaum 2007; Clark 2010; Schafer 2013). According to
the guise of the good, if I ph intentionally, then I must take
ph-ing to be good. Arguably some other versions of the constitutive
aim of agency are specifications of the thin notion of
"good" or "human good" (see Boyle and Lavin
2010). Other constitutive aims that have been defended in literature
are self-understanding or autonomy (Velleman 1989; 1992; 1996; 2009),
self-constitution (Korsgaard 1996; 2008; 2009), and the will to power
(Katsafanas 2013).
### 6.2 Objections
A number of challenges have been raised in the literature to the claim
that there must be a constitutive aim of action. First, suppose we
accept the causal theory of action: an intentional action just is the
effect of a "primary reason". On such a view, it seems
that an intentional action is constituted by its causal antecedents,
rather than by a necessary aim that one has in acting. However, causal
theories are not incompatible with constitutivism. Since on these
views, some of the causal antecedents of the action will be conative
states (like an intention), the question of whether intentional action
has a constitutive aim will depend on whether the conative state has a
constitutive aim or whether a specific conative state must always
figure on the genesis of intentional action. For instance, in
Velleman's early work (for instance, Velleman 1989), intentional
action was an action that was caused by a desire for self-knowledge,
and the content of such a desire was thus the constitutive aim of
agency. Smith (2013; 2015; 2019) also develops a form of
constitutivism that endorses the standard story of action.
Setiya raises a couple of important challenges to the idea that action
has a constitutive aim. According to Setiya (2007), any theory of
action needs to account for the fact that practical knowledge (or a
belief condition in his version; see section 4 of this entry) is
essential to intentional action. However, the belief condition seems
to be conceptually independent of any constitutive aim of action, and
thus accepting that both are constitutive of intentional action
amounts to postulating an unexplained necessary connection.
Secondly, Setiya (2010) relies on the distinction between an
explanatory reason and a normative reason to argue against the
"guise of the good" (see Alvarez 2017 for a detailed
account of the distinction); his argument there could be extended to
other proposals for the constitutive aim of action. An intentional
action is an action done for an *explanatory* reason, namely, a
reason that explains why the agent acted as she did, in
Anscombe's special sense of the question 'Why'.
However, Setiya points out that an explanatory reason need not be a
*normative* reason; in fact, any reason that the agent believes
to be her reason to act can be an explanatory reason, even if the
object of such a reason is not good in any way. But since the reasons
that explain intentional action need not be good in any way, it seems
false that the agent must act only on reasons that she regards to be
good in some way, and thus that she aims at the good in acting.
Philosophers have tried to answer these challenges. One can argue that
a knowledge or belief condition, to the extent that it is valid, is
explained by the constitutive aim of action. Moreover, perhaps the
possibility of a third-person explanation of an action in terms of
explanatory reasons whose objects are not good in any way is
compatible with the fact that from the first-person point of view,
these objects must have been regarded to be good in some way. So even
if the fact that Rugen kills his father explains why Inigo Montoya
killed Rugen without providing a normative reason for it, it still
might be the case that avenging his father must have appeared good
*to Inigo Montoya* in some way if he killed Rugen intentionally
(see Tenenbaum 2012).
Another well-known challenge to the idea that actions have a
constitutive aim is David Enoch's "schmagency"
objection (Enoch 2006; 2011); in this context, the objection raises
the possibility that for any purported constitutive aim, one could
spurn such an aim and merely "schmact" or be a mere
"schmagent"--someone who behaves just like an agent
except for having the constitutive aim of agency. Enoch's
objection, however, is specifically concerned with attempts to derive
normative consequences from the constitutive aim of action (for
further discussion, see Bagnoli 2017; 2022).
## 7. Omission
### 7.1 Different Ways of Not Acting
The scope of our inactivity is vast; at each moment, there are many
things I don't do. Right now, I am not competing in the
Olympics, not writing poetry, not swimming in the English Channel, not
flying over the moon, or taking a journey to the center of the earth.
However, none of the things could be plausibly described as cases of
omissions or refrainings; it would be odd if I were told that I was
refraining from competing in the Olympics or omitting to fly over the
moon. Philosophers often describe cases of omissions as cases of my
failing to do something that I was somehow "supposed to
do" (Bach 2010). Only some of my omissions are intentional or
even voluntary: if my alarm does not go off and I miss my class
because I overslept, I omitted to teach but not intentionally. On the
other hand, if I fail to show up because I am protesting my
university's salary cuts, my omission was intentional.
Intentional omissions and (intentional) refrainings are generally
taken to be the only possible candidates for being instances of agency
among not-doings (see Vermazen 1985 for an expression of this idea).
Thus, we will focus on these cases. The categories of intentional
omissions and refraining are not necessarily identical. If I refrain
from striking my opponent in a fit of anger, it seems wrong to say
that I omitted to strike her as there is no sense in which I was
"supposed to" strike my opponent.
### 7.2 Agency, Omissions, and Refrainings
Suppose all the Faculty at State University are upset about the
recently announced cuts, and each of them express their
dissatisfaction but in different ways: Mary wears a T-shirt that says
"No More Cuts", Terry writes a letter to the local paper,
and Larry simply decides not to go to the department's holiday
party. It seems that in all these cases, the Faculty members are
manifesting their agency--they are all equally expressing their
dissatisfaction with the cuts--even if Larry does so by
(intentionally) *not* doing something. Such cases of
refrainings and intentional omissions seem paradigmatic instances of
agency and yet they do not seem to be cases of action: after all, the
agent did nothing. But how could the absence of an action be a
manifestation of agency? One might be tempted to avoid any puzzling
conclusions by simply denying that omissions are absences; by, for
instance, proposing that Larry's intentional omission consists
in doing whatever acting he did *instead* of engaging in the
omitted action. So if he goes to the bar instead of going to the
holiday party, Larry omits to go to the party *by* going to the
bar and so his going to the bar and his omitting to go to the party
are the same event. However, this view immediately encounters
difficulties as it seems that I can intentionally omit to do things
without engaging in any positive act. I can refrain from laughing at
my enemy's jokes just by staying still and I can intentionally
omit things even while asleep (Clarke 2014): indeed, instead of going
to the bar, Larry could have omitted to go to the party by simply
sleeping through it.
Early attempts to explain how an agent might intentionally
*not* do something, without claiming that intentional omissions
and refraining are actions, go back at least to Ryle (1973); Ryle
argues that negative "actions" are not actions, but what
he calls "lines of actions', a category that also includes
general policies such as "Take only cold baths". More
recently, Alvarez (2013) argues that the fact that omissions and
refrainings can also manifest agency is a consequence of the fact that
the power to act (intentionally) is a two-way power: a power to either
do or *not* do something. Thus, when I refrain from driving my
car, I manifest my agency not by engaging in an action, but rather by
settling on *not* driving it (See Steward 2012; 2020 for
further defense of the idea of agency as a two-way power).
### 7.3 Intentional Omissions and the Causal Theory of Action
If we accept that omissions are absences, or at least that they are
not events, the possibility of intentional omissions seem to present a
challenge to the causal theory of action. After all, if agency can be
manifested without any events being present, it is difficult to see
how agency can be explained in the terms of the standard story of
action (that is, in terms of the causal history of the bodily
movements that manifest our agency). Hornsby (2004) argues that the
failure of the standard causal theory to account for omissions is
symptomatic of its more general failure to locate the agent in an
account of intentional action that reduces agency to causal
connections between non-agential happenings.
There are at least two ways in which causal theorists try to answer
these charges. One possibility is to argue that even though
intentional omissions are absences, what makes them intentional is
that facts about their causal history are analogous to the facts about
causal history that make "positive actions" instances of
agency (Clarke 2010; 2014). On this view, just as positive actions are
caused by an intention, intentional omissions are cases in which the
non-obtaining of a certain event is similarly explained by an
intention. However, Sartorio (2009) argues that intentional omissions
pose a serious challenge even to this broader understanding of the
standard causal theory of action. Sartorio argues that intentional
omissions are often not best explained by other events (such as the
formation of an intention), but by the *non-occurrence* of
certain events (the best explanation of why I omitted to help my
friend move might be that I *omitted* to form the intention to
help them, rather than that I did form the intention not to help
them). Another strategy to make omissions compatible with the standard
causal theory is to try to show that omissions are events, while
avoiding the questionable view that the omission must be identified
with what the agent intentionally did at the time of the omission
(Payton 2021).
## 8. Animal Action
From the start, our focus has been on the intentional actions of fully
developed rational agents. However, this raises the question: what
about other beings, such as (non-human) animals? Can they act? If so,
do they act in the same way as fully developed humans do? (Similar
questions arise for children and robots, but our focus shall be on the
growing literature on animal agency.)
At first sight, the question may seem uninteresting: Of course,
animals can act! This seems to be a core commitment of our linguistic
practices regarding animals, as we can truthfully assert claims like
the following:
(17)
The cat is stealthily approaching the tree in order to hunt the
bird.
(18)
Canela (a dog) wants you to give her a cookie--that's
why she is following you around.
(19)
The squirrel is digging in the yard because it thinks there are
nuts there.
These sentences seem to attribute to animals the capacity to take
means for remote ends, the capacity to desire objects and act in
pursuit of these desires, and the capacity to employ their thoughts
about their surroundings in the service of such pursuits. Unless we
are skeptics about the folk-psychological concepts involved in these
ascriptions, then, we should hold that animals are agents (but see
Godfrey-Smith 2003, who holds that these folk concepts may be
particularly problematic when applied to animals). It is not
surprising, then, that Aristotle defined animal life in terms of the
capacity for a type of action, movement in place (*DA* 432a),
or that Kant attributes a faculty of desire to all animals, through
which they actualize their representations (KpV9).
Despite all this, even Aristotle hedges on the ascription of action to
animals: although he grants that they are capable of voluntary
(*hekusion*) action (*DMA* 11, 703b2 et passim;
*NE* 3.1, 1111a), he also says that only mature human beings
are capable of action proper (*praxis*) (*NE* 3.1,
1111b). This is because action proper requires the capacity for
deliberation, which animals lack. A modern version of this view is
defended by Stoecker (2009), who argues that agency presupposes the
capacity to act on the basis of "arguments" understood as
grounds on which one might (reasonably) act. Similar reasons for
skepticism about animal agency were influentially advanced by Davidson
(1982; 2003). For, as we saw, Davidson takes it that intentional
action is action for a reason; but acting for a reason requires
possession of beliefs. Yet, Davidson held that ascription of belief
makes sense only to beings who possess the concept of belief, which in
turn requires the capacity for higher-order thought. Since Davidson
assumed that animals possess neither concepts nor the capacity for
higher-order thought, he concluded that animals are not capable of
intentional action. (Davidson, to our knowledge, does not address the
question whether animals are capable of acting simpliciter. However,
he seems committed to saying that animals cannot act at all, given
that he defines actions in terms of intentional actions: for him an
action is an event that is intentional under a certain description,
see Davidson 1971).
We can abstract from these considerations a more general form of
argument for skepticism about animal agency, captured by the following
schema:
1. If *A* acts, *A* must possess features \(F\_1, F\_2,
\ldots , F\_n\). [Presuppositions for Agency Requirement]
2. Animals don't possess \(F\_1, F\_2, \ldots ,
F\_n\). [Presuppositions Animals Lack]
3. Therefore, animals do not act.
This schema is useful as a way to categorize sources of skepticism
about animal agency, and different responses offered in the
literature, depending on which premises are called into question.
A prominent way of criticizing the argument is to call premise 1 into
question. For example, Steward (2009) criticizes Davidson's view
that agency requires the capacity to act for reasons (Premise 1 in
Davidson's argument). Her objection is based on empirical
research suggesting that agency ascriptions are developmentally prior
to propositional attitude ascriptions. She argues that implicit in
these earlier ascriptions is a less demanding account of agency that
presupposes more basic object-directed attitudes (as well as other
capacities, such as subjectivity and agential control). Since animals
possess these features, there is an important sense in which they act.
Other arguments in a similar vein include Dretske's (1999)
argument to the effect that agency presupposes only the capacity for
representing the world (understood, roughly, as a learned response
whose operations are shaped by the environment through experience),
and the idea defended by Korsgaard (2018), Sebo (2017), and Schapiro
(2021) that animals act on the basis of simpler, perceptual-like,
representations.
Other scholars grant the basic links between agency and reasons or
means-ends reasoning but question further presuppositions of the
argument. For example, some scholars grant that actions must be done
for a reason, but hold that (some) animals meet this condition, since
they are capable of having non-conceptual thoughts (Hurley 2003); they
can engage in certain forms of inference in virtue of a non-linguistic
sensitivity to inferential relations; and at least some of them (like
chimpanzees) manifest a distinctive kind of sensitivity to reasons
that doesn't presuppose higher-order thought (Glock 2009; Arruda
and Povinelli 2016). Using a similar strategy, Camp and Shupe (2017)
grant that action presupposes the capacity to distinctively represent
means and ends but argue that the features presupposed by such a
capacity are more minimal than skeptics about animal agency assume:
for example, they may include metacognitive resources that keep track
of a state without representing it as such.
Finally, there are scholars who argue--largely based on empirical
findings--against premise 2 on the grounds that animals possess
the very capacities denied by skeptics of animal agency. For example,
Kaufmann (2015) argues that chimpanzees are capable of a fairly
sophisticated form of planning that meets the constraints of
Bratman's account of planning agency. They are thus capable of
acting, even though they lack conceptual representations. The question
whether some animals (and, if so, which) have beliefs has also been
the subject of debate on the basis of empirical research. While both
early and recent studies appeared to support the Davidsonian view that
animals lack beliefs (Heyes and Dickinson 1990; Marticorena et al.
2011, Horschler, MacLean, and Santos 2020;), later research
complicates the question (de Waal 2016; Krupenye et al. 2016).
Thus far, we have examined ways in which defenders of animal agency
can play defense, by criticizing different parts of the argument for
animal skepticism. When playing offense, defenders of animal agency
commonly appeal to our common ways of speaking and thinking about
animals, which, as noted, provide prima facie good grounds to ascribe
them agency. In addition, it has been noted that the heightened
conditions on agency commonly used to exclude animals would have
counterintuitive effects *for human actions.* After all, many
of our human intentional actions (such as habitual actions) do not
seem to involve higher-order thought, or previous deliberation (a key
insight that leads Hyman 2015 to distinguish different senses of
"acting').
Moreover, several authors grant that full-fledged intentional human
action is special, but argue that we must recognize a more basic form
of agency for animals. (This appears to be the view favoured by
Anscombe (1957), who held that animals could act intentionally,
although not in the language-dependent way that humans could, where we
can draw a significant distinction between the action itself and an
expression of intention. See Gustafsson 2016; Marcus 2021). The need
to recognize a more basic form of agency can be motivated by noting
that otherwise the development of full-fledged human agency becomes
developmentally mysterious, both at the inter- and intra-species
level. Thus, unless we can ascribe agency to non-rational animals, it
will be hard to explain how rational capacities might emerge in humans
at the evolutionary level; and unless we ascribe agency to human
infants, it will be hard to explain how conceptual capacities emerge
(Cussins 1992; MacIntyre 1999; Lovibond 2006; Steward 2009; Fridland
2013).
In light of all these considerations, animal agency skepticism is
nowadays a moribund view, with few defenders. However, even granting
that animals are agents, important questions remain about the nature
of this agency, and its connection to intentional or rational agency.
Indeed, as scholars continue to investigate the topic in an
empirically informed way, we may need to draw further distinctions to
capture the richness of the forms of agency that are manifested across
different species and stages of development in the animal kingdom. |
shared-agency | ## 1. The traditional ontological problem and the Intention Thesis
Agency is sometimes exercised in concert, as when we walk together,
several individuals undertake painting a house, or a football team
executes a pass
play.[1]
It is hardly controversial that there really is a phenomenon falling
under labels such as *shared activity*, and *joint* or
*collective action*. What is disputed is how to understand it.
One way to approach the issues here is to ask what distinguishes
actions of individuals that together constitute shared activity from
those that amount to a mere aggregation of individual acts. What is
left over when we subtract what each of us did from what we did
together?[2]
Consider a case discussed by Searle (1990, 402). A number of
individuals are scattered about in a park. Suddenly it starts to rain,
and each runs to a centrally located shelter. Although there may be
some coordination (people tend not to collide into one another),
running to the shelter is not, in the relevant sense, something that
we do together. Now imagine another scenario with the same individuals
executing the same movements but as members of a dance troop
performing a site-specific piece in that park. In both cases, there is
no difference in the collection or "summation" of
individual behavior: A is running to the shelter, and B is running to
the shelter, etc. But the dancers are engaged in collective action,
whereas the storm panicked picnickers are not.
Searle suggests that what distinguishes the two cases is not the
outward behavior, but something "internal". He hints that
in the collective case, the outward behavior--everyone running to
and converging on the shelter--is not a matter of
coincidence.[3]
It is, rather, explained as something *aimed* at by the
participants. This suggests that the internal difference is a matter
of *intention*. And, indeed, Searle sees it this way. In both
cases, a participant has an intention expressed by "I am running
to the shelter". But in the collective case this intention
somehow *derives* from and is dependent upon an intention that
necessarily adverts to the others, one that might be expressed as
"We are running to the shelter" (or perhaps "We are
performing the part of the piece where...."). It is this
"we-intention" that distinguishes shared or collective
activity from a mere summation or heap of individual acts.
Perhaps it's premature to conclude, as Searle does, that there has
to be an "internal" difference here. While most theorists treat
intention as a psychological attitude (e.g. Davidson 1978, Harman
1976, Bratman 1986), some work on intention influenced by Anscombe and
Wittgenstein (such as Wilson 1989 and Thompson 2008) understands
intention fundamentally in terms of intentional action (see the entry
on intention for discussion). It remains to be seen how Anscombian
approaches to shared agency will develop, though some forays into this
territory are to be found in Stoutland 1997 and Laurence 2010.
Another reservation with invoking intention at this point stems from
consideration of unintentional collective action. Appealing to
intention as Searle does would seem to preclude what some see as a
real possibility: that there are ph-ings done jointly in some robust
sense, but which are not intended under any description. One possible
example would be our jointly bringing about some severe environmental
damage. This might come about as a side effect of each of us pursuing
our own projects. No subject intends the severe environmental damage,
under any description: no single individual has enough of an impact to
intend anything that would count as severe environmental damage, and
as a collective the polluters seem not to be sufficiently integrated
to count as a subject of intention. Whether this really amounts to a
counterexample will depend on whether our damaging the environment was
joint, a genuine exercise of shared agency. For discussion see Ludwig
2007; 2016, 182, and Chant 2007.
Setting aside these reservations, we can ask how the attitude of
intention should be understood if it is to serve as a distinctive mark
of joint action. One approach is to think of it as an attitude of a
peculiar, supra-individual
entity.[4]
The intention whose content is expressed by *We are running to the
shelter* is, on this view, an attitude had by whatever entity is
denoted by the 'we'. On this view *whenever* people
act together, they constitute a group that, in a non-figurative sense,
intends. This entails that *groups* can be genuine agents and
subjects of intentional attitudes.
Searle (1990, 406) rules this out of court, understandably and perhaps
dogmatically reluctant to embrace a view that leads to a profusion of
supra-individual intentional subjects, group minds, or corporate
persons whenever individuals act together. Such ontological profligacy
is prompted in part by a straightforward interpretation of the
language we use to describe joint action, with the plural subject term
understood simply as a referring expression. Ludwig 2016 suggests
instead that we think of the subject term as involving implicit
restricted quantification over members of the group. This proposal,
combined with a Davidsonian event analysis of action descriptions,
provides resources for an alternative rendering of the underlying
logical form of action descriptions, one that does not encourage the
supra-individual view. What would be required instead is that there be
some one event for which there is more than one
agent.[5]
There is reason, moreover, to think that a strategy appealing to
supra-individual entities as subjects of intentional states is
misplaced if the social phenomenon in question is shared activity.
It's not at all obvious that an individual who is a constituent of a
supra-individual entity is necessarily committed to what *it*
is up to. For example, consider the U.S., which would on such a view
count as supra-individual entity. The U.S. increases research funding
in physics in order to win the space race with the U.S.S.R. I'm a
graduate student benefitting from the additional funding, and I do
research in rocket and satellite technology, and teach physics and
engineering to undergraduates; indeed, I wouldn't have gone into the
area had it not been for the funding opportunities. I am in the
relevant sense a constituent of the larger entity - in this case the
U.S. - but I have no concern with the space race. I'm just doing my
job, advancing my career, hoping to raise a family and be able to pay
the mortgage, etc.; I frankly couldn't care less about larger
geopolitical issues, which are presumably the concern of the
supra-individual entity that is the U.S. In contrast, a participant in
shared activity arguably is committed to the collective endeavor and
its aims - at least in the sense of commitment to an end implicated in
any instance of intention or intentional action. So, while we
haven't ruled out that there are supra-individual agents (see below
for more discussion), it's not clear that we need to be committed to
them in order to understand shared activity.
If shared activity does indeed involve commitment on the part of the
individual participants, then it seems that some intention-like
element of each individual's psychology must realize or reflect the
we-intention that is the mark of shared
activity.[6]
The *Intention Thesis* attributes to each individual
participant in shared activity an intention pertaining to that
activity. This *participatory intention* accounts for each
individual's participatory commitment to the activity, and it serves
to distinguish one's action when it is done with others from action
done on one's own.
[7]
Some of the discussion of the current literature on shared activity
can be understood as a debate about the nature of this participatory
intention and how instances of it in different individuals must be
related to one another so that the individuals could be said to act
together, and share an intention (presumably the intention expressed
with the aforementioned we-locution).
Participatory intentions might, for example, be understood as an
instance of an ordinary intention, familiar from the study of
individual agency; if we-intentions are identified with, or built out
of these participatory intentions, we would thus be offered the
prospect of a reductive account of this we-intention in terms of
ordinary individual intentions. Tuomela and Miller 1988 defend such a
view. Take an individual who is a member of a group. According to
Tuomela and Miller, this individual has a participatory intention with
respect to X if she intends to do her part in X, believes conditions
for success of X obtain, and believes that there is mutual belief
amongst members of the group that conditions for success
obtain.[8]
(Other work in this general vein include Bratman 1992, MacMahon 2001,
2005, S. Miller 2001. Tuomela's later work is rather different, as
will be noted below.)
As a counterexample to the reductive account, Searle imagines each
member of a business school graduating class, versed in Adam Smith's
theory of the invisible hand, intending to pursue his selfish
interests and thereby intending to do his part in helping humanity.
Such an intention, even supplemented with the sort of beliefs that
Tuomela and Miller require, intuitively doesn't count as the sort of
intention one has when acting with others, and it is implausible to
think that these graduates go on to act collectively. And yet it seems
to satisfy Tuomela and Miller's
analysis.[9]
Searle's diagnosis of the problem is that reductive approaches
don't guarantee the element of cooperation that is essential to
shared activity and necessarily reflected in the attitudes of the
participant (1990, 406). And one cannot respond by inserting the
cooperative element into the content of the intention, so that what
the agent intends is *to do her part in shared activity*. That
would in effect presuppose the notion for which we're seeking an
account (1990,
405).[10]
Searle, in contrast to Tuomela and Miller, insists that the
individual's participatory intention (what he calls a *collective
intention*) is primitive. The aforementioned "we-intention"
turns out, for Searle, just to be an individual's participatory
intention. But though it is an attitude or state of an individual, it
is a fundamentally different kind of intention, and not the sort of
intention that figures in individual action. It should be mentioned
that this is a view with similarities to those held by Sellars and
later
Tuomela.[11]
Searle's version of the intention thesis also involves a rejection
of anti-individualism in the philosophy of mind (see the entry on
externalism about mental content). In particular, whether an
individual has this primitively collective participatory intention is
independent of what may be going on in the minds of others, or whether
there even are any others around her. Thinking to help you with your
stalled car, I might have the collective intention expressed as *we
are pushing the car*. And this is so, even if you're just
stretching your calves before a run and not trying to move the car,
and even if I'm just hallucinating and there is no one
around.[12]
## 2. Interrelatedness of participatory intentions
Be that as it may, whether one is *sharing* an intention and
acting *with* others will depend, of course, on there being
other agents with whom one is appropriately related. Suppose that each
of several individuals has a participatory intention. How must they be
related in order for those individuals to count as sharing an
intention? Recall that for Searle, the participatory intention is
primitively collective and expressed, for example, as *We will do
A*. Given this, one thing Searle presumably would require for the
sharing of intentions is the co-extensiveness of the
*we-*element instanced in the intentions across the several
individuals. But this is not sufficient. No intention is shared if
yours is for us to go to the beach this afternoon, whereas mine has us
doing something incompatible, like working all day in the library.
Even if our intentions coincide on the action and the plural subject
in question, if there is no agreement on how to go about it, or if we
each fail even to accord any significant status to the other's
intentions, there would be no intention or action shared in this
instance. So, more needs to be said about the interrelations of the
participatory intentions if they are to account for the coordination
and cooperativeness we find in shared or joint activity. Searle is
silent on the matter; for what more to say, we need to turn
elsewhere.[13]
In an influential series of papers, Bratman has developed a reductive
account of shared activity and shared
intention.[14]
He understands a shared intention to be an interpersonal structure of
related intentions that serves to coordinate action and planning, as
well as structure bargaining between
participants.[15]
The individually held intentions that constitute this
structure--what we've been calling participatory
intentions--are instances of a familiar sort of individual
intention that figures in the planning and the coordination of
one's activities over time. When these individual intentions
concern something that is done by more than one person, taking the
form *I intend that we J,* they accord with Bratman's
version of the Intention Thesis, and the core of his proposals about
shared intention and action. But Bratman imposes further conditions,
and these serve to relate these participatory intentions in
distinctive ways.
One important condition concerns the meshing of sub-plans (Bratman
1992, 331ff). On Bratman's view, an intention is distinctive in
how it leads to planning about necessary means and facilitative steps
that lead to its satisfaction. Now, suppose each of us has the
intention to paint the house together (or, as Bratman would have it,
the intention that we paint the house), but my plan is to paint it
green all over, whereas yours is to paint it purple all over. It seems
that we don't share the intention to paint the house. So Bratman
introduces the condition that each participant intends that the
subplans that follow upon the participatory intentions of each
individual mesh--that is, are mutually satisfiable and
coherent--in order for the individuals to count as sharing an
intention.[16]
We wouldn't exhibit the right sort of cooperative attitude for
shared activity and intention if the mesh of our sub-plans were
accidental and we were not at all *disposed* to make them
consistent if they were to become incompatible. That's why
Bratman requires the intention to mesh
subplans.[17]
There is, moreover, a normative element to the meshing, as emphasized
by Roth 2003. Participants are subject to some sort of rational
requirement[18]
such that they in a sense *ought* to mesh their plans: the
plans of the other participants serve as a normative constraint on
one's own plans. And there is no reason to restrict this status
to the plans, and not extend it to the intentions that generate them.
Thus, shared activity exhibits what Roth calls *practical
intersubjectivity*. In effect, each participant treats the
other's intentions and plans much in the way that he or she
treats her own: as rational constraints on further intention and
planning.
Bratman (especially in his 2014 book, but see also his 2009c, 2009b,
1992) defends a *reductive* account of this normative
requirement, explaining this interpersonal normative constraint in
terms of the norms of commitment governing individual intention, such
as those of consistency and means-end coherence. Your intentions and
plans pertaining to our J-ing have an authority for me because of what
might be called a bridge intention to mesh my J-related plans and
intentions with yours. Bratman expresses the bridge intention in terms
of the condition requiring each participant to have the intention to
act in accordance with and because of the others' intentions and
plans (as well as his or her own). Bratman's idea is that, given my
bridge intention, the norms of consistency and coherence governing my
individual intentions will be recruited to require that I form my
plans and intentions with an eye toward consistency and coherence with
your plans and intentions. Roth 2003 sympathizes with these
interpersonal normative requirements of consistency and coherence as a
condition for shared intention and action, but resists the reductive
bridge intention account of it.
The demand that subplans must mesh might inspire the view that
super-ordinate intentions, or the reasons each participant in shared
activity A has for taking part, might also be subject to a similar
requirement. This is suggested, for example, in Korsgaard's talk
of the sharing of reasons:
>
> ...if personal interaction is to be possible, we must reason
> together, and this means that I must treat your reasons...*as
> reasons,* that is, as considerations that have normative force for
> *me* as well as you, and therefore as public reasons.
> (Korsgaard 2009, 192)
>
In a similar vein, Tuomela requires that the "we-mode" intention
at the core of his more recent theory necessarily involves group
reasons shared by all participants. See his 2007; 13, 47, 98.
But it seems possible that individuals might engage in shared activity
(and have the corresponding intention) even when they have different
and incompatible reasons for doing so. For example, representatives
from rival parties might engage in the legislative process that leads
to the passage of laws, even when each is motivated by considerations
that the other finds
unacceptable.[19]
Still, it is plausible to think that there must be some constraints
on the sort of individual motive or reason a participant has to engage
in shared activity. If my motive for engaging in shared activity is
overly manipulative or undermining of fellow participants (e.g. doing
something with A in order better to control him/her), the status of
the activity or intention as shared might be
compromised.[20]
A further way in which participatory intentions of different
individuals are related stems from how they might be formed, modified,
or set aside. For example, Gilbert holds that shared activity gets
started only when each individual openly expresses a readiness to be
jointly committed in a certain way with
others.[21]
She adds that rescinding or significantly modifying the resulting
intention, as well as releasing any individual from participation,
would also require concurrence on everyone's part. It's
not clear that Gilbert herself would want to talk of this
"concurrence condition" in terms of relating intention or
intention-like attitudes in different participants. But, given that
whether I concur with how you propose to modify your intentions will
depend in part on my intentions, it is natural to take Gilbert's
conditions as imposing dynamic constraints on how the participatory
intentions of different individual are related to one another. Of
course, Gilbert's conditions might be too strong. For example,
the concurrence criterion does not permit one to withdraw unilaterally
from shared
activity.[22]
Some may find this implausible. But relaxing Gilbert's
conditions would naturally result in another perhaps weaker set of
dynamic constraints, and not in their complete absence. For example,
recall that intentions are defeasible: they can be revised or dropped
if changing circumstances warrant it. Now, we might imagine that each
participant in shared activity might have the authority unilaterally
to revise or defeat the intention in light of those changing
circumstances, whereupon other participants would have to abide by the
change unless, of course, they think that some mistake has been made
(Roth 2004).
Most of the views canvassed here emphasize as a condition for shared
activity fairly robust forms of integration between participants.
Before continuing in this vein, it bears mention that the focus on the
participants and how they are related might lead us to neglect other
important conditions for shared activity. Epstein 2015 argues that the
metaphysical grounds for some forms of shared activity, such as that
involved in some cases of group action, involve a variety of
conditions that are not themselves relations between members of the
group, but often can determine how those members are related. These
might include historical conditions that determine the structure and
membership criteria for the group. Or, the grounds might include
external conditions such as the actions of some designated individual
(such as a sergeant at arms) not a part of the collective body but who
for example must convene a meeting in order that the members of the
body may collectively take some action.
## 3. How is the structure of interrelated intentions established?
So shared activity is distinguished from a mere aggregation of
individual acts by a structure of appropriately related participatory
intentions across different individuals. It is a structure that has a
distinctive normative significance for those individuals, with an
impact most immediately on each individual's intention-based
practical
reasoning.[23]
It is natural to think that this structure of intentions is brought
about by individuals involved in shared activity, presumably when each
forms the participatory intention that is his or her contribution to
the structure. But recall that participatory intentions are meant to
capture the sense in which each individual is committed to what
everyone is doing together, and not merely to what he or she is doing.
Thus, Searle says of an instance of shared activity that
"I'm pushing only as a part of our pushing." This
suggests that what is intended is the *entirety* of the
activity, something reflected in Bratman's intentions of the
form *I intend that we
J*.[24]
But as Velleman has shown, given the standard understanding of
intentions, it's not clear that one can intend the entire
activity; or if one can, it would seem incompatible with the activity
being
shared.[25]
Intending is something I do to settle a deliberative issue: weighing
several options, I decide on A-ing, and thereby intend to A. This
suggests the Settling
Condition[26]
that I can only intend what I take to be up to me to decide or
settle. It is a violation of a rational requirement to intend
something I don't think I can settle, and thus regard my ensuing
plans and actions as likely coming to grief. Applying the point to
collective action, to say that I intend for us to be dining together
presumes that whether we're dining together is something for
*me* to settle. But the idea behind *shared* activity
and intention is precisely that it's *not* entirely up to
me what we do. You have a say in the matter; at the very least what
*you* do should be up to you (see also Schmid 2008). Our
problem, then, is that shared activity would seem both to demand and
to disallow one and the same intention on the part of each
participant.[27]
Several responses have emerged to this problem. Velleman develops a
solution that invokes interdependent conditional
intentions.[28]
Each individual conditionally settles what the group will do, where
the condition is that each of the others has a similar commitment and
intends likewise. Thus*, I intend to J, on condition that you
intend likewise*. Some have worried that when intentions are
interdependent in this way it's not entirely clear that they
settle anything at all, and hence, whether anyone is appropriately
committed to *our J-ing*. If each intention is conditioned on
the other, it's just as reasonable to refrain from acting as it
is to engage in it. For discussion, see Roth 2004, 373-80;
Bacharach 2006, 137ff. Gilbert 2002, while addressing Robins 2002 and
a precursor of Roth 2004 disavows the interdependent conditional view
attributed to her by Velleman, Roth, and Robins. See also Gilbert
2003, 2009. Velleman himself is sensitive to something like this worry
(1997a, 39) and it shapes how he formulates the content of the
conditional
intention.[29]
Bratman (1997) has suggested that what an individual intends can
extend beyond what he can settle himself, so long as he can reasonably
predict that the relevant other parties will act appropriately.
Flagrantly disregarding sound medical advice, I can have the
categorical intention to work on my tan at the beach this afternoon,
so long as I can reasonably predict that it'll be sunny.
Likewise, when I reasonably believe that you have or will have the
appropriate intentions, I can then intend that we J. One might wonder
whether taking this sort of predictive attitude with respect to the
intentions and actions of fellow participants is consistent with
sharing an intention and acting with them. On the other hand,
it's not obvious that the prediction of an action entails that
it is or must be regarded as involuntary or otherwise problematic. If
so, the predictive attitude toward others very well may be compatible
with acting *with* them, and might account for how *our*
J-ing might be the object of *my*
intention.[30]
Another suggestion is that a participant intends not the entirety of
the activity, but only his or her part in it. Such an intention is
more modest in that it does not purport to settle what other people
do. An account of shared activity in terms of such intentions (e.g.
Tuomela & Miller 1998, Kutz 2000) does not entail the authority or
control over others that would be difficult to reconcile with the
activity being shared. But this modest intention involves a commitment
only to one's part in our J-ing and doesn't seem to
account for a participatory commitment to our J-ing as a whole. To see
why not, consider the case of walking together from Gilbert 1990. We
might describe my part as walking at a certain pace. But intending to
do that is entirely compatible with undermining my partner's
contribution, for example by tripping him. Suppose instead that we
avail ourselves of some robust conception of *part*, so that
each participant intends to do his part in shared activity, *as
such.* This would appear to rule out attempts to undermine a
partner's contribution. But what exactly is this intention? It
seems to presuppose an understanding of the concept of shared
activity, which is the notion we're trying to
elucidate.[31]
Maybe this criticism is too quick. Perhaps there remains a way to
characterize the intention to do one's part that doesn't
presuppose the notion of shared activity. One approach appeals to
"team reasoning", a distinctive form of strategic
practical reasoning. This view of reasoning was developed to address
certain difficulties standard game theory has in accounting for the
rationality of selecting more cooperative options in strategic
scenarios such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and Hi-Lo. The idea is
that we get intuitively more rational outcomes with individuals each
approaching the situation asking him- or herself not *what's
best **for me** given what others do?*, but *what
is best **for us*** or the group as a
whole?[32]
The participatory intention is characterized in terms of the
distinctive reasoning that leads to its formation, rather than in
terms of some more intrinsic feature of the intention or its content.
It remains to be seen whether intending one's part, so
understood, can account for the participatory commitment distinctive
of shared
activity.[33]
The issue of how to establish the interpersonal structure of
participatory intention is a central problem for the theory of shared
agency, and remains an area of active research interest. For further
views, see Gilbert 2009 (some discussion of which is below),
Korsgaard's interpretation of Kant in her 2009, 189ff, and Roth
2004, whose conception of intentions allows him to appeal to an
interpersonal mechanism similar in some respects to that of
commands.
## 4. Mutual obligations
Gilbert has long held that participants in shared activity are
obligated to do their part in it. Take her well-known example of
walking together, starring Jack and Sue. When Jack does something
that's not compatible with walking together, e.g. walking so
fast that Sue cannot keep up, Sue is *entitled* to rebuke Jack.
This suggests to Gilbert that it is essential to shared activity (and
intention) that each participant has an obligation to do his or her
part in the activity (or in carrying out the intention). For
example,
>
> The existence of this entitlement [Sue's entitlement to rebuke]
> suggests that Jack has, in effect, an *obligation* to notice
> and to act (an obligation Sue has also). (Gilbert 1990, 180-1
> (1996,
> 184))[34]
>
Gilbert has used this mutual obligation criterion to criticize
reductive accounts of shared activity in terms of "personal
intentions" (1990, 180ff; 2008,499), such as that defended by
Bratman. Bratman 1997 acknowledges that mutual obligations are
typically associated with the sharing of intentions, but insists that
they are not essential. He argues that when present, the obligations
are explained in terms of a moral principle that one should live up to
the expectations about one's actions that one has intentionally
created in others. This principle, articulated by Scanlon in the
context of a discussion about promising, does generally apply to
situations where individuals act together and share intentions.
(Scanlon's Principle F is in his 1998, 304. For recent discussion of
Scanlon and promising that bears on shared activity, see Shiffrin
2008. For another reductivist response to Gilbert see MacMahon 2005,
299ff. For more recent discussion of mutual obligation, see Roth 2004,
Alonso 2009.)
Suppose, however, that we have individuals engaged in an endeavor they
know to be immoral, such as that of a pillager and a lazy plunderer
raiding a village. The inadmissibility of the action undermines the
pillager's entitlement to hold the plunderer accountable for
slacking off in his search for loot. There could not be an obligation
to do one's part in *this* activity (Bratman, 1999,
132-6). For Bratman, this shows that there can be shared
activity without these obligations. Gilbert responds that it only
shows that the obligations in question are special, "of a
different kind" (2009, 178) than the sort of obligation familiar
from discussion of moral philosophy. She goes so far as to say that
the obligations to do one's part are present, even when
one's partners in shared activity have coerced one into joining
them.
Gilbert's later statements become more explicit about the
*directed* nature of these non-moral obligations (Gilbert 1997,
75-6). The obligation relates Jack with Sue in a way in which
Jack and a non-participant are not related (Gilbert 2009; 2008, 497;
this connects with recent discussion of "bipolar normativity"; see
Darwall 2006, Thompson 2004, and Wallace 2013). To mark the
directed nature of the normative relation, and in a way that does not
suggest as strongly that they are moral in nature, we might speak of
*contralateral commitments* (Roth 2004). Thus, Jack has a
contralateral commitment-to-Sue to walk in a way that is compatible
with their walking together.
Gilbert attempts to articulate the sense of directedness in terms of
*ownership*: Jack's contralateral commitment to Sue to
walk at the appropriate pace entails that Sue is owed, and in a sense
owns, the relevant performance on Jack's part (Gilbert 2008,
497). This would presumably explain why Sue and not anyone else can
release Jack from fulfilling the obligation/commitment, by giving up
her claim on Jack's action. One might, in a related vein, try to
articulate the directed nature of the commitment in terms of
promising.[35]
If we understand Jack's obligation as the result of something
like a promise to Sue, we can see not only that Jack has a commitment,
but that Sue is in a special position such that she can, for example,
release him from fulfilling it. One drawback, at least for Gilbert, of
appealing either to ownership or promising to articulate the notion of
directed obligation or contralateral commitment is that it is not
clear that this would allow for these commitments to be as insulated
from moral considerations as Gilbert seems to think they are (e.g. in
the response to Bratman above). A further question is whether
ownership or promising fully captures all that there is to the
contralateral or directed nature of the commitment. These strategies
might explain why Sue is in a special position to *release*
Jack from his commitment. But one might wonder whether there are other
aspects of her special standing with respect to Jack that are left
unaddressed.[36]
Furthermore, it might be that certain aspects of promising - in
particular the directedness of the obligation - might in some way
depend on shared agency or aspects thereof. See Gilbert 2011 and Roth
2016.
While the notion of ownership or claim rights is meant to be
suggestive of the sort of mutual obligations/contralateral commitments
she has in mind, the central explanatory concept deployed by Gilbert
is that of *joint commitment*, which she takes to be
primitive.[37]
A concern here is whether joint commitment provides anything like a
philosophical account or explanation of mutual obligations, or whether
it merely re-describes them. We get some idea of what Gilbert has in
mind by contrasting it with personal commitment associated with
individual intention or decision (2009, 180). Whereas one can on
one's own take on and rescind the sort of commitment associated
with individual intention and decision, joint commitment can only be
formed through a process whereby everyone expresses their readiness,
and it can only be rescinded when all parties concur. This raises the
issue of the previous section, of how exactly the joint commitment
comes into force. Even if everyone expresses a readiness to A
together, it doesn't follow that we all take the plunge and
actually undertake it. A further worry Gilbert herself has voiced is
whether any condition requiring expression might limit the
applicability of her view in giving a more general account of
political obligation, something she aims to do (e.g., in her 2006).
Gilbert's view has also been charged with circularity; it would seem
that the expression of readiness needed to establish joint commitment
would itself be an instance of shared activity and thus presuppose
joint commitment. For discussion, see Tuomela 1992, Tollefsen 2002,
and Schmid 2014.
Understood as a kind of obligation, Gilbert's insight about a
distinctive normative relation holding between participants in shared
agency risks rejection. Many find obligation, and especially the
no-unilateral withdrawal condition, to be too strong. Gilbert's
general idea might find wider acceptance if we talk instead of
commitment that allows for unilateral
withdrawal.[38]
Finally, Stroud (2010) has suggested a normative condition in some
respects even weaker. Stroud holds that participants in shared
activity have a prerogative--a moral permission--that can
override or mitigate moral obligations had to non-participants (such
as that of beneficence). It remains to be seen to what extent this
might address the intuitions that motivated Gilbert's original
and important insight.
## 5. The discursive dilemma and group minds
It was suggested earlier (in Section 1) that thinking of a group as
itself an agent and a subject of intentional states was not a good
model or account of central forms of shared intention and activity.
But that's not to say that it's never appropriate to talk
this way. Indeed, Rovane, Pettit and others have argued that some
groups can be genuine subjects of intentional attitudes, and can have
minds of their own. This would amount to a different way in which
individuals can act together, and raises interesting questions about
how a group's intentions must be related to an individual's in
practical reasoning.
Pettit starts with the assumption that a rational integration of a
collective is a sign of its mentality (2003, 181). He says,
>
> ... it is reasonable, even compulsory, to think of the integrated
> collectivity as an intentional subject...The basis for this claim is
> that the integrated collectivity, as characterized, is going to
> display all the functional marks of an intentional subject...Within
> relevant domains it will generally act in a manner that is
> rationalized by independently discernible representations and goals;
> and within relevant domains it will generally form and unform those
> representations in a manner that is rationalized by the evidence that
> we take to be at its disposal. (Pettit 2003, 182; see also Rovane
> 1998, 131-2 for a related line of thought.)
>
The group mind hypothesis thus seems to explain or account for the
rationality exhibited by the group, both in what it does and what it
represents. This explanatory role, if indispensable, would give us a
reason for admitting into our ontology groups with genuine minds of
their own. The point might be put in traditional Quinean terms: if a
regimentation in first order logic of our best empirical theory
quantifies over such groups, then such groups exist. But this sort of
explanatory commitment needn't be quite as explicitly
quantificational as Quine would have it, and Pettit himself never
mentions Quine. The ontological commitment might be more implied in
the content of our theory than a matter of logical form.
Another question to raise, if only to set aside on this occasion, is
whether the only sort of indispensability that can support the group
mind hypothesis is of the theoretical/explanatory sort. One might, for
example, consider whether the Rovane/Pettit line of thought could be
run with the assumption that the indispensability of such groups is
practical in nature, perhaps a condition for a sort of agency that
individuals can and do exercise (Roth 2014a, 140-141; Pettit
2015, 1642).
But is the group mind hypothesis explanatorily indispensable? If the
rational behavior, representation, speech, etc. can easily be
explained (or explained away) without invoking group minds, then the
presumption of mindedness is defeated. Thus, if we discover of what
appears to be a subject that its behavior was entirely controlled by
or explicable in terms of the attitudes and behavior of some other (or
others), then one would no longer have reason to think the subject in
question as minded. For example, if the rational behavior of a group
is explained wholly in terms of the individual members, then we are
not tempted to think that the group itself is genuinely minded
(Watkins 1957). Or, if there is a very tight fit between judgments and
attitudes of the group on the one hand, and members on the other
- for example if ascriptions of attitudes to a group just is a
summary of ascriptions to its individual members (Quinton
1975-6) - then there is no reason to think of the group as
having a mind of its own.
Pettit's recent arguments address this worry. He has suggested
that some group decision procedures are such that past group judgments
rationally constrain subsequent decisions, judgments, and intentions.
When such "premise-driven" procedures are followed, a
group not only displays a rational unity indicative of mindedness, but
does so in such a way that it might arrive at a judgment that a
minority--perhaps even none--of the individual members
personally hold.
Pettit draws on the literature on judgment aggregation (E.g.
Kornhauser and Sager, 1986; List & Pettit, 2002). Here's a
version of the sort of case Pettit has in mind: several colleagues (A,
B, and C) heading to the APA convention in Chicago have to decide
whether to take the El (train) from the airport. An affirmative
judgment regarding each of the following considerations or
"premises" is necessary for the decision/conclusion to get
on board: whether the train is safe enough, whether it's quick
enough, and whether it's scenic enough (e.g. whether it's
okay that they'll miss out on a view of the lake). Let us also
suppose, given appropriate background assumptions, that the
satisfaction of these conditions amounts to a conclusive reason to
take the train. Finally, suppose the group arrives at judgments
regarding the *premises* by majority vote as follows:
| | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | Safe enough? | Quick enough? | Scenic enough? | Get on board? |
| A | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| B | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| C | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Group | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes\No |
If the group decides on the conclusion by a majority vote on what each
individual personally thinks s/he ought to do, it will decide against
taking the train (this is the "no" in the upper triangle
of the lower right box). But this conclusion would be hard to square
with the group judgments concerning the three premises of the
argument. Whereas, if the group adopts the premise driven procedure,
where the conclusion is determined not by a vote but by group's
views regarding the premises, then the group's conclusion is
rational (this is the "yes" in the lower triangle of the
lower right box).
Such a conclusion, however, is not obviously explicable in terms of
the personal conclusions of the members, each of whom concludes the
opposite. Thus, suppose (as Pettit does) that there are groups that do
in fact adopt the premise-driven procedure. Then, the rationality of
the group's conclusion suggests that the group has a mind.
Moreover, the discontinuity between individual and group level
attitudes concerning the conclusion is such that the presumption of
mindedness is not defeated. This suggests to Pettit that, at least in
some cases, groups can have minds of their own, and be genuine
intentional subjects.
One worry with this argument concerns how the premise-driven decision
procedure is implemented. If it's simply implemented by virtue
of the intentions of each individual to establish and maintain
rationality at the group level, then there appears to be an
alternative to the group mind hypothesis. That the group appears to
have a mind of its own in examples such as this would then be an
artifact of the restricted focus of the example, which said nothing
about how a policy of rationality at the collective level is
maintained. Once we broaden our perspective to recognize that each
individual aims to maintain rationality at the collective level,
it's no longer clear that there is such a gap or discontinuity
between the intentionality at the level of the individuals and of the
group. Thus, there would be no warrant for talk of group
minds.[39]
Of course, this criticism makes strong assumptions about how to
explain any rationality that might be exhibited at the group level,
assumptions that are open to challenge.
For some, taking seriously the idea that a group has a mind of its own
involves more than an empiricist commitment to the explanation of
phenomena. That is, a group mind is not merely a convenient posit
adopted from within the third person perspective of the intentional
stance for the purposes of explanation and prediction (Dennett 1987).
A mind has a point of view, and if sufficiently sophisticated, is a
subject of commitment and obligation. In developing ideas of Searle
and Tuomela in a new direction, Schmid (2014) argues that such a group
mind would require a distinctive form of plural self-awareness on the
part of each of the members of the group. He suggests that such groups
do exist, and explores ways in which plural self-awareness is and is
not analogous to the self-awareness each of us as individuals exhibit. |
logic-action | ## 1. The Logic of Action in Philosophy
### 1.1 Historical overview
Already St. Anselm studied the concept of action in a way that must be classified as logical; had he known symbolic logic, he would certainly have made use of it (Henry 1967; Walton 1976). In modern times the subject was introduced by, among others, Alan Ross Anderson, Frederick B. Fitch, Stig Kanger, and Georg Henrik von Wright; Kanger's work was further developed by his students Ingmar Porn and Lars Lindahl. The first clearly semantic account was given by Brian F. Chellas (1969). (For a more detailed account, see Segerberg 1992 or the mini-history in Belnap 2001.)
Today there are two rather different groups of theories that may be described as falling under the term logic of action. One, the result of the creation of Nuel Belnap and his many collaborators, may be called *stit theory* (a term that will be explained in the next paragraph). The other is *dynamic logic*. Both are connected with modal logic, but in different ways. Stit theory grew out of the philosophical tradition of modal logic. Dynamic logic, on the other hand, was invented by computer scientists in order to analyse computer action; only after the fact was it realized that it could be viewed as modal logic of a very general kind. One important difference between the two is that (for the most part) actions are not directly studied in stit theory: the ontology does not (usually) recognize a category of actions or events. But dynamic logic does. Among philosophers such ontological permissiveness has been unusual. Hector-Neri Castaneda, with his distinction between propositions and practitions, provides one notable exception.
The stit tradition is treated in this section, the dynamic logic one in the next.
### 1.2 The stit saga
The term "stit" is an acronym based on "sees to it that". The idea is to add, to an ordinary classical propositional language, a new propositional operator \(\stit\), interpreting \(\stit\_i\phi\), where \(i\) stands for an agent and \(\phi\) for a proposition, as \(i\) *sees to it that* \(\phi\). (The official notation of the Belnap school is more laborious: [\(i \mathop{\mathsf{stit:}} \phi\)].) Note that \(\phi\) is allowed to contain nestings of the new operator.
In order to develop formal meaning conditions for the stit operator \(\stit\) a semantics is defined. A *stit frame* has four components: a set \(T\), the nodes of which are called moments; an irreflexive tree ordering \(\lt\) of \(T\); a set of agents; and a choice function \(C\). A maximal branch through the tree is called a history.
The tree \((T,\lt)\) seems to correspond to a naive picture familiar to us all: a moment \(m\) is a temporary present; the set \(\left\{n : n \lt m\right\}\) corresponds to the past of \(m\), which is unique; while the set \(\left\{n : m \lt n\right\}\) corresponds to the open future of \(m\), each particular maximal linear subset of which corresponds to a particular possible future.
To formalize the notion of action, begin with two general observations:
1. usually an agent is not able to select one possible future to become the unique actual future, but
2. by his action he can make sure that certain futures, which before his action are possible, are no longer possible after his action.
This is where the choice function \(C\) comes in: for each moment \(m\) and agent \(i, C\) yields a partitioning \(C\_i^m\) of the set \(H\_m\) of all histories through \(m\). An equivalence class in \(C\_i^m\) is called a choice cell. (Note that two histories belonging to the same choice cell agree up to the moment in question but not necessarily later on.) If \(h\) is a history running through \(m\) we write \(C\_i^m(h)\) for the choice cell of which \(h\) is a member. It is natural to associate \(C\_i^m\) with the set of actions open to the agent \(i\) at \(m\), and to think of the choice cell \(C\_i^m(h)\) as representing the action associated with \(h\).
A *stit model* has an additional component: a valuation. A valuation in a frame, it turns out, is a function that assigns to a variable and each index either 1 (truth) or 0 (falsity), where an index is an ordered pair consisting of a history and a moment on that history. The notion of truth or falsity of a formula with respect to an index can now be defined. If \(V\) is the valuation we have the following basic truth-condition for atomic \(\phi\):
\[(h,m) \models \phi \text{ iff } V(\phi, (h,m)) = 1.\]
The truth-conditions for the Boolean connectives are as expected; for example,
\[\begin{align\*}
(h,m) &\models \neg\phi \text{ iff } (h,m) \not\models \phi, \\
(h,m) &\models \phi \wedge \psi \text{ iff } (h,m) \models \phi \text{ and } (h,m) \models \psi.
\end{align\*}\]
Let us write \(\llbracket\phi\rrbracket\_m\) for the set \(\left\{h \in H\_m : (h,m) \models \phi\right\}\), that is, the set of histories agreeing with \(h\) at least up to \(m\) and such that \(\phi\) is true with respect to the index consisting of that history and \(m\). Defining formal truth-conditions for the stit operator there are at least two possibilities to be considered:
1. \((h,m) \models \stit\_i \phi\) iff \(C^{m}\_i(h) \subseteq\llbracket\phi\rrbracket\_m\).
2. \((h,m) \models \stit\_i \phi\) iff \(C^{m}\_i(h) \subseteq\llbracket\phi\rrbracket\_m\) and \(\llbracket\phi\rrbracket\_m \ne H\_m\).
To distinguish the two different operators that those conditions define, the former operator is called the *Chellas stit*, written \(\cstit\), while the latter operator is called the *deliberative stit*, written \(\dstit\).
In words, \(\cstit\_i \phi\) is true at an index \((h,m)\) if \(\phi\) is true with respect to \(h'\) and \(m\), for all histories \(h'\) in the same choice cell at \(m\) as \(h\); this is called the positive condition. The truth-condition for \(\dstit\_i \phi\) is more exacting; not only the positive condition has to be satisfied but also what is called the negative condition: there must be some history through \(m\) such that \(\phi\) fails to be true with respect to that history and \(m\).
Both \(\cstit\) and \(\dstit\) are studied; it is claimed that they capture important aspects of the concept "sees to it that". The two operators become interdefinable if one also introduces the concept "it is historically necessary that". Using \(\Box\) for historical necessity, define
\[
(h,m) \models \Box\phi \text{ iff, for all } h' \in H\_m, (h',m) \models \phi.
\]
Then the formulas
\[\begin{align\*}
\dstit\_i \phi &\leftrightarrow(\cstit\_i \phi \wedge \neg \Box\phi) \text{ and}\\
\cstit\_i \phi &\leftrightarrow(\dstit\_i \phi \vee \Box\phi)
\end{align\*}\]
are true with respect to all indices.
One advantage of stit theory is that the stit analysis of individual action can be extended in natural ways to cover group action.
A number of the initial papers defining the stit tradition are collected in the volume Belnap 2001. One important later work is John F. Horty's book (2001). The logic of stit was axiomatized by Ming Xu (1998).
### 1.3 Intentions
Michael Bratman's philosophical analysis of the notion of intention has had a significant influence on the development of the logic of action within computer science. It will be discussed below.
### 1.4 Logics of special kinds of action
In a series of papers Carlos Alchourron, Peter Gardenfors and David Makinson created what they called a logic of theory change, later known as the AGM paradigm. Two particular kinds of change inspired their work: change due to deontic actions (Alchourron) and change due to doxastic actions (Gardenfors and before him Isaac Levi). Examples of deontic actions are derogation and amendment (laws can be annulled or amended), while contraction and expansion are analogous doxastic actions (beliefs can be given up, new beliefs can be added). Later the modal logic of such actions has been explored under the names *dynamic deontic logic*, *dynamic doxastic logic* and *dynamic epistemic logic*. (For the classic paper on AGM, see AGM 1985. For an introduction to dynamic deontic logic and dynamic doxastic logic, see Lindstrom and Segerberg 2006. We will return to this topic in Section 4, where it is viewed from the perspective of the field of artificial intelligence.
## 2. The Logic of Action in Linguistics
In linguistics, there are two ways in which actions play a role: on the one hand, utterances *are* actions and on the other they can be used to talk *about* actions. The first leads to the study of speech acts, a branch of pragmatics, the second to the study of the semantics of action reports, hence is of a distinctly semantic nature. In addition to this, there is a special type of semantics, dynamic semantics, where meanings are not considered as state descriptions but as changes in the state of a hearer.
### 2.1 Speech acts
The study of speech acts goes back to Austin (1957) and Searle (1969). Both emphasise that using language is to perform certain acts. Moreover, there is not just one act but a whole gamut of them (Austin himself puts the number in the magnitude of \(10^3)\). The classification he himself gives involves acts that are nowadays not considered as part of a separate science: the mere act of uttering a word (the *phatic act*) or sentence is part of phonetics (or phonology) and only of marginal concern here. By contrast, the *illocutionary* and *perlocutionary* acts have been the subject of intense study. An *illocutionary act* is the linguistic act performed by using that sentence; it is inherently communicative in nature. By contrast, the *perlocutionary act* is an act that needs surrounding social contexts to be successful. The act of naming a ship or christening a baby, for example, are perlocutionary. The sentence "I hereby pronounce you husband and wife" has the effect of marrying two people only under certain well-defined circumstances. By definition, perlocutionary acts take us outside the domain of language and communication.
Searle and Vanderveken (1985) develop a logic of speech acts which they call *illocutionary logic*. This was refined in Vanderveken 1990 and Vanderveken 1991. Already, Frege used in his *Begriffsschrift* the notation "\(\vdash \phi\)", where \(\phi\) denotes a proposition and "\(\vdash\)" the judgment sign. So, "\(\vdash \phi\)" says that \(\phi\) is provable, but other interpretations of \(\vdash\) are possible (accompanied by different notation; for example, "\(\models \phi\)" says that \(\phi\) is true (in the model), "\(\dashv \phi\)" says that \(\phi\) is refutable, and so on). An elementary speech act is of the form \(F(\phi)\), where \(F\) denotes an illocutionary point and \(\phi\) a proposition. In turn, an illocutionary force is identified by exactly seven elements:
1. a *point*,
2. the mode of achievement of the illocutionary point,
3. the degree of strength of the illocutionary point,
4. the propositional content conditions,
5. the preparatory conditions,
6. the sincerity conditions,
7. the degree of strength of the sincerity conditions.
There are exactly five points according to Searle and Vanderveken (1985):
* The *assertive* point is to say how things are.
* The *commissive* point is to commit speaker to doing something.
* The *directive* point is to get other people to do things.
* The *declarative* point is to change the world by saying so.
* The *expressive* point is to express feelings and attitudes.
Later treatments of this matter tend to disregard much of the complexity of this earlier approach for the reason that it fails to have any predictive power. Especially difficult to handle are "strengths", for example. Modern models try to use update models instead (see Section 2.3 below). Van der Sandt 1991 uses a discourse model with three different slates (for each speaker, and one common slate). While each speaker is responsible for maintaining his own slate, changes to the common slate can only be made through communication with each other. Merin 1994 seeks to reduce the manipulations to a sequential combination of so-called *elementary social acts*: *claim*, *concession*, *denial*, and *retraction*.
Uttering a sentence is acting. This action can have various consequences, partly intended partly not. The fact that utterances as actions are embedded in a bigger scheme of interaction between humans has been put into focus recently (see, for example, Clark 1996). Another important aspect that has been highlighted recently is the fact that by uttering a sentence we can change the knowledge state of an entire group of agents, see Balbiani *et al.* 2008. After publicly announcing \(\phi\), \(\phi\) becomes common knowledge among the entire group. This idea sheds new light on a problem of Gricean pragmatics, where certain speech acts can only be successful if certain facts are commonly known between speaker and hearer. It is by means of an utterance that a speaker can establish this common knowledge in case it wasn't already there.
### 2.2 Action sentences
Davidson (1967) gave an account of action sentences in terms of what is now widely known as *events*. The basic idea is that an action sentence has the form \((\exists e)(\cdots)\), where \(e\) is a variable over acts. For example, "Brutus violently stabbed Caesar" is translated (ignoring tense) as \((\exists e) (\mathop{\mathrm{stab}}(e,\mathrm{Brutus},\mathrm{Caesar}) \wedge \mathop{\mathrm{violent}}(e))\). This allows to capture the fact that this sentence logically entails that Brutus stabbed Caesar. This idea has been widely adopted in linguistics; moreover, it is now assumed that basically all verbs denote events (Parsons 1990). Thus action sentences are those that speak about special types of events, called *eventualities*.
Vendler (1957) classified verbs into four groups:
1. *states* ("know", "sit"),
2. *activities* ("run", "eat"),
3. *accomplishments* ("write a letter", "build a house"), and
4. *achievements* ("reach", "arrive").
Moens and Steedman (1988) add a fifth category:
5. *points* ("flash", "burst").
The main dividing line is between states and the others. The types (b)-(e) all refer to change. This division has been heavily influential in linguistic theory; mostly, however, research concentrated on its relation to aspect. It is to be noted, for example, that verbs of type (c) can be used with the progressive while verbs of type (d) cannot. In an attempt to explain this, Krifka 1986 and Krifka 1992 have introduced the notion of an *incremental theme*. The idea is that any eventuality has an underlying activity whose progress can be measured using some underlying participant of the event. If, for example, I write a letter then the progress is measured in amounts of words. The letter is therefore the incremental theme in "I write a letter" since it defines the progress. One implementation of the idea is the theory of aspect by Verkuyl (1993). Another way to implement the idea of change is constituted by a translation into propositional dynamic logic (see Naumann 2001). Van Lambalgen and Hamm (2005) have applied the event calculus by Shanahan (1990) to the description of events.
### 2.3 Dynamic semantics
The idea that propositions can not only be viewed as state descriptions but also as updates has been advocated independently by many people. Consider the possible states of an agent to be (in the simplest case) a theory (that is, a deductively closed set of sentences). Then the *update* of a theory \(T\) by a proposition \(\phi\) is the deductive closure of \(T \cup \left\{\phi\right\}\).
Gardenfors 1988 advocates this perspective with particular attention to belief revision. Veltman 1985 develops the update view for the treatment of conditionals. One advantage of the idea is that it is possible to show why the mini discourse "It rains. It may not be raining." is infelicitous in contrast to "It may not be raining. It rains.". Given that an update is felicitous only to a consistent theory, and that "may \(\phi\)" (with epistemic "may") simply means "it is consistent" (written \(\diamond\phi\)), the first is the sequence of updates with \(\phi\) and \(\diamond \neg\phi\). The second step leads to inconsistency, since \(\phi\) has already been added. It is vital in this approach that the context is constantly changing.
Heim 1983 contains an attempt to make this idea fruitful for the treatment of presuppositions. In Heim's proposal, a sentence has the potential to change the context, and this is why, for example, the sentence "If John is married his wife will be happy." does not presuppose that John is married. Namely, the second part of the conditional ("his wife will be happy") is evaluated against the context incremented by the antecedent ("John is married"). This of course is the standard way conditions are evaluated in computer languages. This parallel is exploited in Van Eijck 1994, see also Kracht 1993.
The idea of going dynamic was further developed in Dynamic Predicate Logic (DPL, see Groenendijk and Stokhof 1991), where all expressions are interpreted dynamically. The specific insight in this grammar is that existential quantifiers have a dynamically growing scope. This has first been noted in Kamp 1981, where a semantics was given in terms of intermediate representations, so-called Discourse Representation Structures. Groenendijk and Stokhof replace these structures by introducing a dynamics into the evaluation of a formula, as proposed in Dynamic Logic (DL). An existential quantifier is translated as a random assignment "\(x \leftarrow\ ?\)" of DL, whose interpretation is a relation between assignments: it is the set of pairs \(\langle \beta ,\gamma \rangle\) such that \(\beta(y) = \gamma(y)\) for all \(y \ne x\) (in symbols \(\beta \sim\_x \gamma\)). The translation of the sentence "A man walks." is
* (1)
\(\langle x \leftarrow ?\rangle
\mathop{\mathrm{man}}'(x) \wedge \mathop{\mathrm{walk}}'(x)\)
This is a proposition, hence interpreted as a set. One can however, push the dynamicity even lower, and make all meanings relational. Then "A man walks." is interpreted by the 'program'
* (2)
\(x \leftarrow ?; \mathop{\mathrm{man}}'(x)?; \mathop{\mathrm{walk}}'(x)?\)
Here, \(\mathop{\mathrm{man}}'(x)?\) uses the test constructor
"\(?\)": \(\phi ?\) is the set of all \(\langle \beta ,\beta \rangle\) such that \(\beta\) satisfies \(\phi\). The meaning of the entire program (2) therefore also is a relation between assignments. Namely, it is the set \(R\) of all pairs \(\langle \beta ,\gamma \rangle\) where \(\beta \sim\_x \gamma\), and \(\gamma(x)\) walks and is a man. The meaning of (1) by contrast is the set of all \(\beta\) such that some \(\langle \beta ,\gamma \rangle \in R\). Existential quantifiers thus have 'side effects': the change in assignment is never undone by a quantifier over a different variable. Hence the open-endedness to the right of the existential. This explains the absence of brackets in (1). For an overview of dynamic semantics see Muskens *et al.* 1997.
## 3. The Logic of Action in Computer Science
The logic of action plays an important role in computer science. This becomes evident once one realizes that computers perform actions in the form of executing program statements written down in some programming language, changing computer internals and, by interfaces to the outside world, also that outside world. As such a logic of action provides a means to reason about programs, or more precisely, the execution of programs and their effects. This enables one to prove the correctness of programs. In principle, this is something very desirable: if we could prove all our software correct, we would know that they would function exactly the way we designed them. This was already realized by pioneers of computer programming such as Turing (1949) and Von Neumann (Goldstein and Von Neumann 1963). Of course, this ideal is too hard to establish in daily practice for all software. Verification is a nontrivial and time-consuming occupation, and there are also theoretical limitations to it. However, as the alternative is "just" massive testing of programs experimentally, with no 100% guarantee of correctness, it has remained an active area of research to this day.
### 3.1 Reasoning about programs
Program verification has a long history. Already since the inception of the computer and its programming researchers started to think of ways of analyzing programs to be sure they did what they were supposed to do. In the 60s the development of a true mathematical theory of program correctness began to take serious shape (de Bakker 1980, 466). Remarkably, the work of John McCarthy who we will also encounter later on when we turn to the field of artificial intelligence played an important role here, distinguishing and studying fundamental notions such as 'state', McCarthy 1963a. This led on the one hand to the field of semantics of programming languages, and on the other to major advances in program correctness by Floyd (1967), Naur (1966), Hoare (1969) and Dijkstra (1976) (de Bakker 1980). Floyd and Naur used an elementary stepwise induction principle and predicates attached to program points to express invariant properties of imperative-style programs (Cousot 1990, 859), programs that are built up from basic assignment statements (of arithmetical expressions to program variables) and may be composed by sequencing, conditionals and repetitions. While the Floyd-Naur approach--called the *inductive assertion method*--giving rise to a systematic construction of verification conditions, was a method to prove the correctness of programs by means of logic, it was not a logic itself in the strict sense of the word. The way to a proper logic of programs was paved by Hoare, whose *compositional* proof method led to what is now known as Hoare logic. By exploiting the syntactic structure of (imperative-style) programs, Hoare was able to turn the Floyd-Naur method into a true logic with as assertions so-called Hoare triples of the form \(\left\{P\right\}S\left\{Q\right\}\), where \(P\) and \(Q\) are first-order formulas and \(S\) is a program statement in an imperative-style programming language as mentioned above. The intended reading is if \(P\) holds before execution of the statement \(S\) then \(Q\) holds upon termination of (execution of) \(S\). (The issue whether the execution of \(S\) terminates can be put in the reading of this Hoare triple either conditionally (partial correctness) or nonconditionally (total correctness), giving rise to different logics, see Harel *et al.* 2000). To give an impression of Hoare-style logics, we give here some rules for a simple programming language consisting of variable assignments to arithmetic expressions, and containing sequential (;), conditional \((\lif)\) and repetitive \((\lwhile)\) composition.
\[
\frac{\left\{P\right\}S\_1\left\{Q\right\} , \left\{Q\right\}S\_2\left\{R\right\}}
{\left\{P\right\}S\_1 \ ;\ S\_2\left\{R\right\}}
\]
\[
\frac{\left\{P \wedge B\right\}S\_1\left\{Q\right\} , \left\{P \wedge \neg B\right\}S\_2\left\{Q\right\}}
{\left\{P\right\} \lif B \lthen S\_1 \lelse S\_2 \left\{Q\right\}}
\]
\[
\frac{\left\{P \wedge B\right\}S\left\{P\right\}}
{\left\{P\right\} \lwhile B \ldo S \left\{P \wedge \neg B\right\}}
\]
Later Pratt and Harel generalized Hoare logic to dynamic logic (Pratt 1976, Pratt 1979a, Harel 1979, Harel 1984, Kozen and Tiuryn 1990, Harel *et al.* 2000), of which it was
realized[1]
that it is in fact a form of modal logic, by viewing the input-output relation of a program \(S\) as an accessibility relation in the sense of Kripke-style
semantics.[2]
A Hoare triple \(\left\{P\right\}S\left\{Q\right\}\) becomes in dynamic logic the following formula: \(P \rightarrow[S] Q\), where [\(S\)] is the modal box operator associated with (the accessibility relation associated with) the input-output relation of program \(S\). The propositional version of Dynamic Logic, PDL, was introduced by Fischer and Ladner (1977), and became an important topic of research in itself. The key axiom of PDL is the induction axiom
\[
[S^\* ] (P \rightarrow[S] P) \rightarrow(P \rightarrow[S^\*] P)
\]
where \(^\*\) stands for the iteration operator, \(S^\*\) denoting an arbitrary (finite) number of iterations of program \(S\). The axiom expresses that if after any number of iterations of \(S\) the truth of \(P\) is preserved by the execution of \(S\), then, if \(P\) is true at the current state, it will also be true after any number of iterations of \(S\). A weaker form of PDL, called HML, with only an atomic action box and diamond and propositional connectives, was introduced by Hennessy & Milner to reason about concurrent processes, and in particular analyze process equivalence (Hennessy and Milner 1980).
It is also worth mentioning here that the work of Dijkstra (1976) on weakest precondition calculus is very much related to dynamic logic (and Hoare's logic). In fact, what Dijkstra calls the *weakest liberal precondition*, denoted \(\mathbf{wlp}(S,Q)\), is the same as the box operator in dynamic logic: \(\mathbf{wlp}(S,Q) = [S]Q\), while his *weakest precondition*, denoted \(\mathbf{wp}(S,Q)\), is the total correctness variant of this, meaning that this expression also entails the termination of statement \(S\) (Cousot 1990).
It was later realized that the application of dynamic logic goes beyond program verification or reasoning about programs. In fact, it constitutes a logic of general action. In Meyer 2000 a number of other applications of dynamic logic are given including deontic logic (see also Meyer 1988), reasoning about database updates, the semantics of reasoning systems such as reflective architectures. As an aside we note here that the use of dynamic logic for deontic logic as proposed in Meyer 1988 needed an extension of the action language, in particular the addition of the 'action negation' operator. The rather controversial nature of this operator triggered work on action negation in itself (see *e.g.*, Broersen 2004). Below we will also encounter the use of dynamic logic in artificial intelligence when specifying intelligent agents.
The logics thus far are adequate for reasoning about programs that are supposed to terminate and display a certain input/output behavior. However, in the late seventies one came to realize that there are also programs that are not of this kind. Reactive programs are designed to react to input streams that in theory may be infinite, and thus show ideally nonterminating behavior. Not so much input-output behavior is relevant here but rather the behavior of programs over time. Therefore Pnueli (1977) proposed a different way of reasoning about programs for this style of programming based on the idea of a logic of time, *viz*. (*linear-time*) *temporal logic*. (Since reactivity often involves concurrent or parallel programming, temporal logic is often associated with this style of programming. However, it should be noted that a line of research continued to extend the use of Hoare logic to concurrent programs (Lamport 1977, Cousot 1990, de Roever *et al.* 2001).) Linear-time temporal logic typically has temporal operators such as next-time, always (in the future), sometime (in the future), until and since.
An interesting difference between temporal logic on the one hand, and dynamic logic and Hoare logic on the other, is that the former is what in the literature is called an *endogenous* logic, while the latter are so-called *exogenous* logics. A logic is exogenous if programs are explicit in the logical language, while for endogenous logics this is not the case. In an endogenous logic such as temporal logic the program is assumed to be fixed, and is considered part of the structure over which the logic is interpreted (Harel *et al.* 2000, 157). Exogenous logics are *compositional* and have the advantage of allowing analysis by structural induction. Later Pratt (1979b) tried to blend temporal and dynamic logic into what he called *process logic*, which is an exogenous logic for reasoning about temporal behavior.
At the moment the field of temporal logic as applied in computer science has developed into a complete subfield on its own, including techniques and tools for (semi-)automatic reasoning and model-checking (*cf*. Emerson 1990). Also variants of the basic linear-time models have been proposed for verification, such as *branching-time temporal logic* (and, in particular the logics CTL (computation tree logic) and its extension CTL\* (Emerson 1990), in which one can reason explicitly about (quantification over) alternative paths in nondeterministic computations, and more recently also an extension of CTL, called *alternating-time temporal logic* (ATL), with a modality expressing that a group of agents has a joint strategy to ensure its argument, to reason about so-called open systems. These are systems, the behavior of which depends also on the behavior of their environments, see Alur *et al.* 1998.
Finally we mention still alternative logics to reason about programs, *viz*. fixpoint logics, with as typical example the so-called \(\mu\)-calculus, dating back to Scott and de Bakker (1969), and further developed in Hitchcock and Park 1972, Park 1976, de Bakker 1980, and Meyer 1985. The basic operator is the least fixed point operator \(\mu\), capturing iteration and recursion: if \(\phi(X)\) is a logical expression with a free relation variable \(X\), then the expression \(\mu X\phi(X)\) represents the least \(X\) such that \(\phi(X) = X\), if such an \(X\) exists. A propositional version of the \(\mu\)-calculus, called propositional or modal \(\mu\)-calculus comprising the propositional constructs \(\rightarrow\) and **false**, together with the atomic (action) modality [\(a\)] and \(\mu\) operator is completely axiomatized by propositional modal logic plus the axiom \(\phi[X/\mu X\phi] \rightarrow \mu X\phi\), where \(\phi[X/Y\)] stands for the expression \(\phi\) in which \(X\) is substituted by \(Y\), and rule
\[
\frac{\phi[X/\psi] \rightarrow \psi}
{\left\{\mu X\phi \rightarrow \psi \right\}}
\]
(Kozen 1983, Bradfield and Stirling 2007). This logic is known to subsume PDL (*cf*. Harel *et al.* 2000).
## 4. The Logic of Action in Artificial Intelligence
In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the aim is to devise intelligently behaving computer-based artifacts (with the purpose of understanding human intelligence or just making intelligent computer systems and programs). In order to achieve this, there is a tradition within AI to try and construct these systems based on symbolic representations of all relevant factors involved. This tradition is called symbolic AI or 'good old-fashioned' AI (GOFAI). In this tradition the sub-area of knowledge representation (KR) obviously is of major importance: it played an important role since the inception of AI, and has developed to a substantial field of its own. One of the prominent areas in KR concerns the representation of actions, performed by either the system to be devised itself or the actors in its environment. Of course, besides their pure representation also reasoning about actions is important, since representation and reasoning with these representations are deemed to be closely connected within KR (which is sometime also called KR&R, knowledge representation & reasoning). A related, more recent development within AI is that of basing the construction of intelligent systems on the concept of an (*intelligent*) *agent*, an autonomously acting entity, regarding which, by its very nature, logics of action play a crucial role in obtaining a logical description and specification.
### 4.1 Representing and reasoning about actions
As said above, the representation of actions and formalisms/logics to reason with them are very central to AI and particularly the field of KR. One of the main problems that one encounters in the literature on reasoning about actions in AI, and much more so than in mainstream computer science, is the discovery of the so-called *frame problem* (McCarthy and Hayes 1969). Although this problem has been generalized by philosophers such as Dennett (1984) to a general problem of relevance and salience of properties pertaining to action, the heart of the problem is that in a 'common-sense' setting as one encounters in AI, it is virtually impossible to specify all the effects by the actions of concern, as well as, notably, all *non*-effects. For instance, given an action, think about what changes if the action is performed and what does not--generally the latter is much more difficult to produce than the former, leading to large, complex attempts to specify the non-effects. But there is of course also the problem of *relevance*: what aspects are relevant for the problem at hand; which properties do we need to take into consideration? In particular, this also pertains to the preconditions of an action that would guarantee the successful performance/execution of an action. Again, in a common-sense environment, these are formidable, and one can always think of another (pre)condition that should be incorporated. For instance, for successfully starting the motor of a car, there should be a charged battery, sufficient fuel, ..., but also not too cold weather, or even sufficient power in your fingers to be able to turn the starting key, the presence of a motor in the car, ... etc. etc. In AI one tries to find a solution for the frame problem, having to do with the smallest possible specification. Although this problem gave rise to so-called *defeasible* or *non-monotonic* solutions such as defaults ('normally a car has a motor'), which in itself gave rise to a whole new a realm within AI called *nonmonotonic or commonsense reasoning*, this is beyond the scope of this entry (we refer the interested reader to the article by Thomason (2003) in this encyclopedia). We focus here on a solution that does not appeal to nonmonotonicity (directly).
Reiter (2001) has proposed a (partial) solution within a framework, called the *situation calculus*, that has been very popular in KR especially in North America since it was proposed by John McCarthy, one of the founding fathers of AI (McCarthy 1963b, McCarthy 1986). The situation calculus is a dialect of first-order logic with some mild second-order features, especially designed to reason about actions. (One of its distinctive features is that of the so-called *reification* of semantic notions such as states or possible worlds (as well as truth predicates) into syntactic entities ('situations') in the object language.) For the sake of conformity in this entry and reasons of space, we will try rendering Reiter's idea within (first-order) dynamic logic, or rather, a slight extension of it. (We need action variables to denote action expressions and equalities between action variables and actions (or rather action expressions) as well as (universal) quantification over action variables).
What is known as Reiter's solution to the frame problem assumes a so-called closed system, that is to say, a system in which all (relevant) actions and changeable properties (in this setting often called 'fluents' to emphasize their changeability over time) are known. By this assumption it is possible to express the (non)change as a consequence of performing actions as well as the issue of the check for the preconditions to ensure successful performance in a very succinct and elegant manner, and coin it in a so-called successor state axiom of the form
\[
(\forall A)[\Poss(A) \rightarrow(([A]f(\boldsymbol{x})) \leftrightarrow (\gamma\_{f}^+ (\boldsymbol{x}, A) \vee(f(\boldsymbol{x}) \wedge \neg \gamma\_{f}^- (\boldsymbol{x}, A))))]
\]
where \(A\) is an action variable, and \(\gamma\_{f}^+ (\boldsymbol{x}, A)\) and \(\gamma\_{f}^- (\boldsymbol{x}, A)\) are 'simple' expressions without action modalities expressing the conditions for \(\phi\) becoming true and false, respectively. So the formula is read informally as, under certain preconditions pertaining to the action \(A\) at hand, the fluent (predicate) \(f\) becomes true of arguments \(\boldsymbol{x}\), if and only if either the condition \(\gamma\_{f}^+ (\boldsymbol{x}, A)\) holds or \(f(\boldsymbol{x})\) holds (before the execution of \(A)\) and the condition \(\gamma\_{f}^- (\boldsymbol{x}, A)\) (that would cause it to become false) does not hold. Furthermore, the expression \(\Poss(A)\) is used schematically in such axioms, where the whole action theory should be complemented with so-called precondition axioms of the form \(\phi\_A \rightarrow \Poss(A)\) for concrete expressions \(\phi\_A\) stating the actual preconditions needed for a successful execution of \(A\).
To see how this works out in practice we consider a little example in a domain where we have a vase \(v\) which may be broken or not (so we have "broken" as a fluent), and actions drop and repair. We also assume the (non-changeable) predicates fragile and held-in-hand of an object. Now the successor state axiom becomes
\[\begin{align\*}
(\forall A)[&\Poss(A) \rightarrow \\
&([A]\mathop{\mathrm{broken}}(v) \leftrightarrow \\
&\ ((A = \mathop{\mathrm{drop}}(v) \wedge \mathop{\mathrm{fragile}}(v)) \vee (\mathop{\mathrm{broken}}(v) \wedge A \ne \mathop{\mathrm{repair}}(v))))]
\end{align\*}\]
and as precondition axioms we have \(\textrm{held-in-hand}(x) \rightarrow \Poss(\mathop{\mathrm{drop}}(x))\) and \(\mathop{\mathrm{broken}}(x) \rightarrow \Poss(\mathop{\mathrm{repair}}(x))\). This action theory is very succinct: one needs only one successor state axiom per fluent and one precondition axiom per action.
Finally in this subsection we must mention some other well-known approaches to reasoning about action and change. The *event calculus* (Kowalski and Sergot 1986, Shanahan 1990, Shanahan 1995) and *fluent calculus* (Thielscher 2005) are alternatives to the situation-based representation of actions in the situation calculus. The reader is also referred to Sandewall and Shoham 1994 for historical and methodological issues as well as the relation with non-monotonic reasoning. These ideas have led to very efficient planning systems (*e.g.*, TALplanner, Kvarnstrom and Doherty 2000) and practical ways to program robotic agents (*e.g.*, the GOLOG family (Reiter 2001) of languages based on the situation calculus, and FLUX (Thielscher 2005) based on the fluent calculus).
### 4.2 Description and specification of intelligent agents
In the last two decades the notion of an intelligent agent has emerged as a unifying concept to discuss the theory and practice of artificial intelligence (*cf*. Russell and Norvig 1995, Nilsson 1998). In short, agents are software entities that display forms of intelligence/rationality and autonomy. They are able to take initiative and make decisions to take action on their own without direct control of a human user. In this subsection we will see how logic (of action) is used to describe / specify the (desired) behavior of agents (*cf*. Wooldridge 2002). First we focus on single agents, after which we turn to settings with multiple agents, called multi-agent systems (MAS) or even agent societies.
#### 4.2.1 Single agent approaches
Interestingly, the origin of the intelligent agent concept lies in philosophy.
First of all there is a direct link with *practical reasoning* in the classical philosophical tradition going back to Aristotle. Here one is concerned with reasoning about action in a syllogistic manner, such as the following example taken from Audi 1999, p. 729:
>
> Would that I exercise.
>
>
> Jogging is exercise.
>
>
> Therefore, I shall go jogging.
>
Although this has the form of a deductive syllogism in the familiar Aristotelian tradition of theoretical reasoning, on closer inspection it appears that this syllogism does not express a purely logical deduction. (The conclusion does not follow logically from the premises.) It rather constitutes a representation of a decision of the agent (going to jog), where this decision is based on mental attitudes of the agent, *viz*. his/her beliefs (jogging is exercise) and his/her desires or goals (would that I exercise). So, practical reasoning is reasoning directed toward action, the process of figuring out what to do, as Wooldridge (2000) puts it. The process of reasoning about what to do next on the basis of mental states such as beliefs and desires is called deliberation.
Dennett (1971) has put forward the notion of *the intentional stance*: the strategy of interpreting the behaviour of an entity by treating it as if it were a rational agent that governed its choice of action by a consideration of its beliefs and desires. As such it is an anthropomorphic instance of the so called design (functionality) stance, contra the physical stance, towards systems. This stance has been proved to be extremely influential, not only in cognitive science and biology/ethology (in connection with animal behavior), but also as a starting point of thinking about artificial agents.
Finally, and most importantly, there is the work of the philosopher Michael Bratman (1987), which, although in the first instance aimed at human agents, lays the foundation of the BDI approach to artificial agents. In particular, Bratman makes a case for the incorporation of the notion of *intention* for describing agent behavior. Intentions play the important role of selection of actions that are desired, with a distinct commitment attached to the actions thus selected. Unless there is a rationale for dropping a commitment (such as the belief that an intention has been achieved already or the belief that it is impossible to achieve) the agent should persist / persevere in its commitment, stick to it, so to speak, and try realizing it,
After Bratman's philosophy was published, researchers tried to formalize this theory using logical means. We mention here three well-known approaches. Cohen and Levesque (1991) tried to capture Bratman's theory in a linear-time style temporal logic where they added primitive operators for belief and goal as well as some operators to cater for actions, such as operators for expressing that an action is about to be performed
\((\lhappens \alpha)\), has just been performed \(\ldone \alpha)\) and what agent is the actor of a primitive action (\(\lact i\ \alpha\): agent \(i\) is the actor of \(\alpha\)). From this basic set-up they build a framework in which ultimately the notion of intention is defined in terms of the other notions. In fact they define two notions: an intention\_to\_do and an intention\_to\_be. First they define the notion of an achievement goal (A-Goal): an A-Goal is something that is a goal to hold later, but is believed not to be true now. Then they define a persistent goal (P-Goal): a P-Goal is an A-Goal that is not dropped before it is believed to be achieved or believed to be impossible. Then the intention to do an action is defined as the P-Goal of having done the action, in a way such that the agent was aware of it happening. The intention to achieve a state satisfying \(\phi\) is the P-Goal of having done some action that has \(\phi\) as a result where the agent was aware of something happening leading to \(\phi\), such that what actually happened was not something that the agent explicitly had *not* as a goal.
Next there is Rao & Georgeff's formalization of BDI agents using the branching-time temporal logic CTL (Rao and Georgeff 1991, Rao and Georgeff 1998, Wooldridge 2000). On top of CTL they introduce modal operators for Belief \((\lbel)\), Goal \((\lgoal)\) (sometimes replaced by Desire \((\ldes)\)) and Intention (of the to\_be kind, \(\lintend\)) as well as operators to talk about the success \((\lsucceeded(e))\) and
failure \((\lfailed)\) of elementary actions \(e\). So they do not try to define intention in terms of other notions, but rather introduce intention as a separate operator, of which the meaning is later constrained by 'reasonable' axioms. The formal semantics is based on Kripke models with accessibility relations between worlds for the belief, goal and intention operators. However, possible worlds here are complete time trees (modeling the various behaviors of the agent) on which CTL formulas are interpreted in the usual way. Next they propose a number of postulates/axioms that they find reasonable interactions between the operators, and constrain the models of the logic accordingly so that these axioms become validities. For example, they propose the formulas
\(\lgoal(\alpha) \rightarrow \lbel(\alpha)\)
and
\(\lintend(\alpha) \rightarrow \lgoal(\alpha)\),
for a certain class of formulas \(\alpha\), of which
\(\alpha = \mathop{\mathbf{E}}(\psi)\) is a typical example. Here \(\mathop{\mathbf{E}}\) stands for the existential path quantifier in CTL. Rao and Georgeff also show that one can express commitment strategies in their logic. For example, the following expresses a 'single-minded committed' agent, that keeps committed to its intention until it believes it has achieved it or thinks it is impossible (which is very close to what we saw in the definition of intention in the approach of Cohen and Levesque):
\[
\lintend(\mathop{\mathbf{A}} \mathbin{\diamond} \phi)
\rightarrow
(\lintend(\mathop{\mathbf{A}} \mathbin{\diamond} \phi) \luntil (\lbel(\phi) \vee \neg\lbel(\mathop{\mathrm{E}} \mathbin{\diamond} \phi)))
\]
where \(\mathbf{A}\) stands for the universal path quantifier in CTL.
Finally there is the KARO approach by Van Linder et al. (Van der Hoek *et al.* 1998, Meyer *et al.* 1999), which takes dynamic logic as a basis instead of a temporal logic. First a core is built, consisting of the language of propositional dynamic logic augmented with modal operators for knowledge \((\mathbf{K})\), belief \((\mathbf{B})\) and desire \((\mathbf{D})\) as well as an operator \((\mathbf{A})\) that stands for ability to perform an action. Next the language is extended mostly by abbreviations (definitions in terms of the other operators) to get a fully-fledged BDI-like logic. The most prominent operators are:
* *opportunity* to do an action (meaning that there is a way the action can be executed leading to a next state)
* *practical possibility* to do an action with respect to an assertion (the conjunction of ability and opportunity of doing the action, together with the statement that the execution of the action leads to the truth of the assertion)
* *can* do an action with respect to an assertion (knowing to have the practical possibility to do the action with respect to the assertion at hand)
* *realizability* of an assertion (the existence of a plan, i.e. a sequence of atomic actions, which the agent has the practical possibility to perform with respect to the assertion at hand)
* *goal* with respect to an assertion (the conjunction of the assertion being desirable, not true yet, but realizable)
* *possibly intend* to do an action with respect to an assertion (expressing that the agent can do the action with respect to the assertion of which he knows it to be a goal of his)
The framework furthermore has special actions \(\lcommit\) and \(\luncommit\) to control the agent's commitments. The semantics of these actions is such that the agent obviously can only commit to an action \(\alpha\) if there is good reason for it, *viz*. that there is a possible intention of \(\alpha\) with a known goal \(\phi\) as result. Furthermore the agent cannot uncommit to a certain action \(\alpha\) that is part of the agent's commitments, as long there is a good reason for it to be committed to \(\alpha\), i.e. as long as there is some possible intention where \(\alpha\) is involved. This results in having the following validities in KARO: (Here \(\mathbf{I}(\alpha, \phi)\) denotes the possibly intend operator and \(\mathbf{Com}(\alpha)\) is an operator that expresses that the agent is committed to the action \(\alpha\), which is similar to Cohen & Levesque's intention-to-do operator \(\lintend\_1\) in Cohen and Levesque 1990.)
\[\begin{align\*}
&\vDash \mathbf{I}(\alpha,\phi) \rightarrow \langle \lcommit(\alpha)\rangle \mathbf{Com}(\alpha) \\
&\vDash \mathbf{I}(\alpha,\phi) \rightarrow \neg \mathbf{A} \luncommit(\alpha) \\
&\vDash \mathbf{Com}(\alpha) \rightarrow \langle\luncommit(\alpha)\rangle \neg \mathbf{Com}(\alpha) \\
&\vDash \mathbf{Com}(\alpha\_1 \ ;\ \alpha\_2) \rightarrow \mathbf{KCom}(\alpha\_1) \wedge \mathbf{K}[\alpha\_1]\mathbf{Com}(\alpha\_2)
\end{align\*}\]
Informally these axioms say the following: if the agent possibly intends an action for fulfilling a certain goal then it has the opportunity to commit to this action, after which it is recorded on its agenda; as long as an agent possibly intends an action it is not able to uncommit to it (this reflects a form of persistence of commitments: as long as there is a good reason for a plan on the agenda it will have to stay on!); if the agent is committed to an action it has the *opportunity* to uncommit to it (but it may lack the *ability* to do this, *cf*. the previous axiom); if an agent is committed to a sequence of two actions then it knows that it is committed to the first and it also knows that after performing the first action it will be committed to the second.
Besides this focus on motivational attitudes in the tradition of agent logics in BDI style, the KARO framework also provides an extensive account of epistemic and doxastic attitudes. This is worked out most completely in Van Linder *et al.* 1995. This work hooks into a different strand of research in between artificial intelligence and philosophy, *viz*. *Dynamic Epistemic Logic*, the roots of which lie in philosophy, linguistics, computer science and artificial intelligence! Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) is the logic of knowledge change; it is not about one particular logical system, but about a whole family of logics that allow us to specify static and dynamic aspects of knowledge and beliefs of agents (*cf*. Van Ditmarsch *et al.* 2007). The field combines insights from philosophy (about belief revision, AGM-style (AGM 1985), as we have seen in Section 1), dynamic semantics in linguistics and the philosophy of language (as we have seen in Section 2), reasoning about programs by using dynamic logic (as we have seen in Section 3) with ideas in artificial intelligence about how knowledge and actions influence each other (Moore 1977). More generally we can see the influence of the logical analysis of information change as advocated by van Benthem and colleagues (van Benthem 1989, van Benthem 1994, Faller *et al.* 2000). Also Veltman's update semantics of default reasoning (Veltman 1996), an important reasoning method in artificial intelligence (Reiter 1980, Russell and Norvig 1995), can be viewed as being part of this paradigm.
For the purpose of this entry, it is interesting to note that the general approach taken is to apply a logic of action, *viz*. dynamic logic, to model information change. This amounts to an approach in which the epistemic (or doxastic) updates are reified into the logic as actions that change the epistemic/doxastic state of the agent. So, for example in Van Linder *et al.* 1995 we encounter the actions such as \(\lexpand(\phi)\), \(\lcontract(\phi)\), \(\lrevise(\phi)\), referring to expanding, contracting and revising, respectively, one's belief with the formula \(\phi\). These can be reasoned about by putting them in dynamic logic boxes and diamonds, so that basically extensions of dynamic logic are employed for reasoning about these updates. It is further shown that these actions satisfy the AGM postulates so that this approach can be viewed as a modal counterpart of the AGM framework. Very similar in spirit is the work of Segerberg (1995) on Dynamic Doxastic Logic (DDL), the modal logic of belief change. In DDL modal operators of the form [\(+\phi\)], [\*\(\phi\)] and [\(-\phi\)] are introduced with informal meanings: "after the agent has expanded/revised/contracted his beliefs by \(\phi\)", respectively. Combined with the 'standard' doxastic operator \(B\), where \(B\phi\) is interpreted as "\(\phi\) is in the agent's belief set", one can now express properties like [\(+\phi]B\psi\) expressing that after having expanded its beliefs by \(\phi\) the agent believes \(\psi\) (also *cf*. Hendricks and Symons 2006).
Finally in this subsection we mention recent work where the KARO formalism is used as a basis for describing also other aspects of cognitive behavior of agents, going 'beyond BDI', *viz*. attitudes regarding emotions (Meyer 2006, Steunebrink *et al.* 2007, Steunebrink *et al.* 2012). The upshot of this approach is that an expressive logic of action such as KARO can be fruitfully employed to describe how emotions such as joy, gratification, anger, and remorse, are triggered by certain informational and motivational attitudes such as certain beliefs and goals ('emotion elicitation') and how, once elicited, the emotional state of an agent may influence its behavior, and in particular its decisions about the next action to take.
#### 4.2.2 Multi-agent approaches
Apart from logics to specify attitudes of single agents, also work has been done to describe the attitudes of multi-agent systems as wholes. First we mention the work by Cohen & Levesque in this direction (Levesque *et al.* 1990, Cohen and Levesque 1991). This work was a major influence on a multi-agent version of KARO (Aldewereld *et al.* 2004). An important complication in a notion of joint goal involves that of persistence of the goal: where in the single agent case the agent pursues its goal until it believes it has achieved it or believes it can never be achieved, in the context of multiple agents, the agent that realizes this, has to inform the others of the team about it so that the group/team as a whole will believe that this is the case and may drop the goal. This is captured in the approaches mentioned above. Related work, but not a logic of action in the strict sense, concerns the logical treatment of collective intentions (Keplicz and Verbrugge 2002).
It must also be mentioned here that inspired by several sources among which the work on knowledge and belief updates for individual agents as described by DEL and DDL, combined with work on knowledge in groups of agents such as common knowledge (see, e.g., Meyer and Van der Hoek 1995), a whole new subfield has arisen, which can be seen as the multi-agent (counter)part of Dynamic Epistemic Logic. This deals with matters such as the logic of public announcement, and more generally actions that have effect on the knowledge of groups of agents. This has generated quite some work by different authors such as Plaza (1989), Baltag (1999), Gerbrandy (1998), Van Ditmarsch (2000), and Kooi (2003). For example, public announcement logic (Plaza 1989) contains an operator of the form [\(\phi]\psi\), where both \(\phi\) and \(\psi\) are formulas of the logic, expressing "after announcement of \(\phi\), it holds that \(\psi\)". This logic can be seen as a form of dynamic logic again, where the semantic clause for [\(\phi]\psi\) reads (in informal terms): [\(\phi]\psi\) is true in a model-state pair iff the truth of \(\phi\) in that model-state pair implies the truth of \(\psi\) in a model-state pair, where the state is the same, but the model is transformed to capture the information contained in \(\phi\). Also in the other approaches the transformation of models induced by communicated information plays an important role, notably in the approach by Baltag *et al.* on action models (Baltag 1999, Baltag and Moss 2004). A typical element in this approach is that in action model logic one has both epistemic and action models and that the update of an epistemic model by an epistemic action (an action that affects the epistemic state of a group of agents) is represented by a (restricted) modal product of that epistemic model and an action model associated with that action. (See Van Ditmarsch *et al.* 2007, p. 151; this book is a recent comprehensive reference to the field.)
Finally we mention logics that incorporate notions from game theory to reason about multi-agent systems, such as game logic, coalition logic (Pauly 2001) and alternating temporal logic (ATL, which we also encountered at the end of the section on mainstream computer science!), and its epistemic variant ATEL (Van der Hoek and Wooldridge 2003, Van der Hoek *et al.* 2007). For instance, game logic is an extension of PDL to reason about so-called determined 2-player games. Interestingly there is a connection between these logics and the stit approach we have encountered in philosophy. For instance, Broersen, partially jointly with Herzig and Troquard, has shown several connections such as embeddings of Coalition Logic and ATL in forms of stit logic (Broersen *et al.* 2006a,b) and extensions of stit (and ATL) to cater for reasoning about interesting properties of multi-agent systems (Broersen 2009, 2010). This area currently is growing fast, also aimed at the application of verifying multi-agent systems (*cf*. Van der Hoek *et al.* 2007), viz. Dastani *et al.* 2010. The latter constitutes still somewhat of a holy grail in agent technology. On the one hand there are many logics to reason about both single and multiple agents, while on the other hand multi-agent systems are being built that need to be verified. To this day there is still a gap between theory and practice. Much work is being done to render logical means combining the agent logics discussed and the logical techniques from mainstream computer science for the verification of distributed systems (from section 3), but we are not there yet...!
## Conclusion
In this entry we have briefly reviewed the history of the logic of action, in philosophy, in linguistics, in computer science and in artificial intelligence. Although the ideas and techniques we have considered were developed in these separate communities in a quite independent way, we feel that they are nevertheless very much related, and by putting them together in this entry we hope we have contributed in a modest way to some cross-fertilization between these communities regarding this interesting and important subject. |
action-perception | ## 1. Early Action-Based Theories
Two doctrines dominate philosophical and psychological discussions of
the relationship between action and space perception from the
18th to the early 20th century. The
**first** is that the immediate objects of sight are
two-dimensional manifolds of light and color, lacking perceptible
extension in depth. The **second** is that vision must be
"educated" by the sense of touch--understood as
including both kinaesthesis and proprioceptive position sense--if
the former is to acquire its apparent outward, three-dimensional
spatial significance. The relevant learning process is associationist:
normal vision results when tangible ideas of distance (derived from
experiences of unimpeded movement) and solid shape (derived from
experiences of contact and differential resistance) are elicited by
the visible ideas of light and color with which they have been
habitually associated. The widespread acceptance of both doctrines
owes much to the influence of George Berkeley's *New Theory
of Vision* (1709).
The Berkeleyan approach looks to action in order to explain how depth
is "added" to a phenomenally two-dimensional visual field.
The spatial ordering of the visual field itself, however, is taken to
be immediately given in experience (Hatfield & Epstein 1979;
Falkenstein 1994; but see Grush 2007). Starting in the 19th
century, a number of theorists, including Johann Steinbuch
(1770-1818), Hermann Lotze (1817-1881), Hermann von
Helmholtz (1821-1894), Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), and
Ernst Mach (1838-1916), argued that *all* abilities for
visual spatial localization, including representation of up/down and
left/right direction within the two-dimensional visual field, depend
on motor factors, in particular, gaze-directing movements of the eye
(Hatfield 1990: chaps. 4-5). This idea is the basis of the
"local sign" doctrine, which we examine in
Section 2.3.
### 1.1 Movement and Touch in the *New Theory Of Vision*
There are three principal respects in which motor action is central to
Berkeley's project in the *New Theory of Vision* (1709).
First, Berkeley argues that visual experiences convey information
about three-dimensional space only to the extent that they enable
perceivers to anticipate the tactile consequences of actions directed
at surrounding objects. In SS45 of the *New Theory,*
Berkeley writes:
>
>
> ...I say, neither distance, nor things placed at a distance are
> themselves, or their ideas, truly perceived by sight.... whoever
> will look narrowly into his own thoughts, and examine what he means by
> saying, he sees this or that thing at a distance, will agree with me,
> that what he sees only suggests to his understanding, that after
> having passed a certain distance, to be measured by the motion of his
> body, which is perceivable by touch, he shall come to perceive such
> and such tangible ideas which have been usually connected with such
> and such visible ideas.
>
>
>
And later in the *Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge* (1734: SS44):
>
>
> ...in strict truth the ideas of sight, when we apprehend by them
> distance and things placed at a distance, do not suggest or mark out
> to us things actually existing at a distance, but only admonish us
> what ideas of touch will be imprinted in our minds at such and such
> distances of time, and in consequence of such or such actions.
> ...[V]isible ideas are the language whereby the governing spirit
> ... informs us what tangible ideas he is about to imprint upon
> us, in case we excite this or that motion in our own bodies.
>
>
>
The view Berkeley defends in these passages has recognizable
antecedents in Locke's *Essay Concerning Human
Understanding* (1690: Book II, Chap. 9, SSSS8-10).
There Locke maintained that the immediate objects of sight are
"flat" or lack outward depth; that sight must be
coordinated with touch in order to mediate judgments concerning the
disposition of objects in three-dimensional space; and that visible
ideas "excite" in the mind movement-based ideas of
distance through an associative process akin to that whereby words
suggest their meanings: the process is "performed so constantly,
and so quick, that we take that for the perception of our sensation,
which is an *idea* formed by our judgment."
A long line of philosophers--including Condillac (1754), Reid
(1785), Smith (1811), Mill (1842, 1843), Bain (1855, 1868), and Dewey
(1891)--accepted this view of the relation between sight and
touch.
The second respect in which action plays a prominent role in the
*New Theory* is teleological. Sight not only derives its
three-dimensional spatial significance from bodily movement, its
purpose is to help us engage in such movement *adaptively*:
>
>
> ...the proper objects of vision constitute an universal language
> of the Author of nature, whereby we are instructed how to regulate our
> actions, in order to attain those things, that are necessary to the
> preservation and well-being of our bodies, as also to avoid whatever
> may be hurtful and destructive of them. It is by their information
> that we are principally guided in all the transactions and concerns of
> life. (1709: SS147)
>
>
>
Although Berkeley does not explain *how* vision instructs us in
regulating our actions, the answer is reasonably clear from the
preceding account of depth perception: seeing an object or scene can
elicit tangible ideas that directly motivate self-preserving action.
The tactual ideas associated with a rapidly looming ball in the visual
field, for example, can directly motivate the subject to shift
position defensively or to catch it before being struck. (For recent
versions and critical assessments of the view that perception of the
environment's spatial layout is systematically sensitive to the
subject's abilities and goals for action, see Proffitt 2006,
2008; Bennett 2011; Firestone 2013; and Siegel 2014).
The third respect in which action is central to the *New
Theory* is psychological. Tangible ideas of distance are elicited
not only by (1) visual or "pictorial" depth cues such as
object's degree of blurriness (objects appear increasingly
"confused" as they approach the observer), but also by
kinaesthetic, muscular sensations resulting from (2) changes in the
vergence angle of the eyes (1709: SS16) and (3) accommodation of
the lens (1709: SS27). Like many contemporary theories of spatial
vision, the Berkeleyan account thus acknowledges an important role for
oculomotor factors in our perception of distance.
### 1.2 Objections to Berkeley's Theory
Critics of Berkeley's theory in the 18th and
19th centuries (for reviews, see Bain 1868; Smith 2000;
Atherton 2005) principally targeted three claims:
(a)
that "distance, of it self and immediately, cannot be
seen" (Berkeley 1709: SS1);
(b)
that sight depends on learned connections with experiences of
movement and touch for its outward, spatial significance; and
(c)
that "habitual connexion", i.e., association, would by
itself enable touch to "educate" vision in the manner
required by (b).
Most philosophers and perceptual psychologists now concur with
Armstrong's (1960) assessment that the "single
point" argument for claim (a)--"distance being a line
directed end-wise to the eye, it projects only one point in the fund
of the eye, which point remains invariably the same, whether the
distance be longer or shorter" (Berkeley 1709:
SS2)--conflates spatial properties of the retinal image with
those of the objects of sight (also see Condillac 1746/2001: 102;
Abbott 1864: chap. 1). In contrast with claim (a), we should note,
both contemporary "ecological" and information-processing
approaches in vision science assume that the spatial representational
contents of visual experience are robustly three-dimensional: vision
is no less a distance sense than touch.
Three sorts of objections targeted on claim (b) were prominent. First,
it is not evident to introspection that visual experiences reliably
elicit tactile and kinaesthetic images as Berkeley suggests. As Bain
succinctly formulates this objection:
>
>
> In perceiving distance, we are not conscious of tactual feelings or
> locomotive reminiscences; what we see is a visible quality, and
> nothing more. (1868: 194)
>
>
>
Second, sight is often the refractory party when conflicts with touch
arise. Consider the experience of seeing a three-dimensional scene in
a painting: "I know, without any doubt", writes
Condillac,
>
>
> that it is painted on a flat surface; I have touched it, and yet this
> knowledge, repeated experience, and all the judgments I can make do
> not prevent me from seeing convex figures. Why does this appearance
> persist? (1746/2001: I, SS6, 3)
>
>
>
Last, vision in many animals does not need tutoring by touch before it
is able to guide spatially directed movement and action. Cases in
which non-human neonates respond adaptively to the distal sources of
visual stimulation
>
>
> imply that external objects are seen to be so.... They prove, at
> least, the possibility that the opening of the eye may be at once
> followed by the perception of external objects as such, or, in other
> words, by the perception or sensation of outness. (Bailey 1842: 30;
> for replies, see Smith 1811: 385-390)
>
>
>
Here it would be in principle possible for a proponent of
Berkeley's position to maintain that, at least for such animals,
the connection between visual ideas and ideas of touch is innate and
not learned (see Stewart 1829: 241-243; Mill 1842:
106-110). While this would abandon Berkeley's empiricism
and associationism, it would maintain the claim that vision provides
depth information only because its ideas are connected to tangible
ideas.
Regarding claim (c), many critics denied that the supposed
"habitual connexion" between vision and touch actually
obtains. Suppose that the novice perceiver sees a remote tree at
time1 and walks in its direction until she makes contact
with it at time2. The problem is that the perceiver's
initial visual experience of the tree at time1 is not
temporally contiguous with the locomotion-based experience of the
tree's distance completed at time2. Indeed, at
time2 the former experience no longer exists. "The
association required", Abbott thus writes,
>
>
> cannot take place, for the simple reason that the ideas to be
> associated cannot co-exist. We cannot at one and the same moment be
> looking at an object five, ten, fifty yards off, and be achieving our
> last step towards it. (1864: 24)
>
>
>
Finally, findings from perceptual psychology have more recently been
leveled against the view that vision is educated by touch. Numerous
studies of how subjects respond to lens-, mirror-, and prism-induced
distortions of visual experience (Gibson 1933; Harris 1965, 1980; Hay
*et al.* 1965; Rock & Harris 1967) indicate that not only
is sight resistant to correction from touch, it will often dominate or
"capture" the latter when intermodal conflicts arise. This
point will be discussed in greater depth in
Section 3
below.
### 1.3 Lotze, Helmholtz, and the Local Sign Doctrine
Like Berkeley, Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) and Hermann von
Helmholtz (1821-1894) affirm the role played by active movement
and touch in the genesis of three-dimensional visuospatial
awareness:
>
>
> ...there can be no possible sense in speaking of any other truth
> of our perceptions other than *practical* truth. Our
> perceptions of things cannot be anything other than symbols, naturally
> given signs for things, which we have learned to use in order to
> control our motions and actions. When we have learned to read those
> signs in the proper manner, we are in a condition to use them to
> orient our actions such that they achieve their intended effect; that
> is to say, *that new sensations arise in an expected manner*
> (Helmholtz 2005 [1924]: 19, our emphasis).
>
>
>
Lotze and Helmholtz go further than Berkeley in maintaining that
bodily movement also plays a role in the construction of the
two-dimensional visual field, taken for granted by most previous
accounts of vision (but for exceptions, see Hatfield 1990: ch. 4).
The problem of two-dimensional spatial localization, as Lotze and
Helmholtz understand it, is the problem of assigning a unique,
eye-relative (or "oculocentric") direction to every point
in the visual field. Lotze's commitment to mind-body dualism
precluded looking to any physical or anatomical spatial ordering in
the visual system for a solution to this problem (Lotze 1887 [1879]:
SSSS276-77). Rather, Lotze maintains that every discrete
visual impression is attended by a "special extra
sensation" whose phenomenal character varies as a function of
its origin on the retina. Collectively, these extra sensations or
"local signs" constitute a "system of graduated,
qualitative tokens" (1887 [1879]: SS283) that bridge the gap
between the spatial structure of the nonconscious retinal image and
the spatial structure represented in conscious visual awareness.
What sort of sensation, however, is suited to play the individuating
role attributed to a local sign? Lotze appeals to kinaesthetic
sensations that accompany gaze-directing movements of the eyes (1887
[1879]: SSSS284-86). If *P* is the location on
the retina stimulated by a distal point *d* and *F* is
the fovea, then *PF* is the arc that must be traversed in order
to align the direction of gaze with *d*. As the eye moves
through arc *PF*, its changing position gives rise to a
corresponding series of kinaesthetic sensations
*p*0, *p*1,
*p*2, ...*p**n*, and
it is this consciously experienced series, unique to *P*, that
constitutes *P's* local sign. By contrast, if *Q*
were rather the location on the retina stimulated by *d*, then
the eye's foveating movement through arc *QF* would
elicit a different series of kinaesthetic sensations
*k*0, *k*1,
*k*2, ...*k**n* unique
to *Q*.
Importantly, Lotze allows that retinal stimulation need not trigger an
overt movement of the eye. Rather, even in the absence of the
corresponding saccade, stimulating point *P* will elicit
kinaesthetic sensation *p*0, and this sensation
will, in turn, recall from memory the rest of the series with which it
is associated *p*1,
...*pn*.
>
>
> Accordingly, though there is no movement of the eye, there arises the
> recollection of something, greater or smaller, that must be
> accomplished if the stimuli at *P* and *Q*, which arouse
> only a weak sensation, are to arouse sensations of the highest degree
> of strength and clearness. (1887 [1879]: SS285)
>
>
>
In this way, Lotze accounts for our ability to perceive multiple
locations in the visual field at the same time.
Helmholtz 2005 [1924] fully accepts the need for local signs in
two-dimensional spatial localization, but makes an important
modification to Lotze's theory. In particular, he maintains that
local signs are not feelings that originate in the adjustment of the
ocular musculature, i.e., a form of afferent, sensory
"inflow" from the eyes, but rather feelings of innervation
(*Innervationsgefuhlen*) produced by the effort of the
will (*Willensanstrengung*) to move the eyes, i.e., a form of
efferent, motor "outflow". In general, to each perceptible
location in the visual field there is an associated readiness or
impulse of the will (*Willensimpuls*) to move eyes in the
manner required in order to fixate it. As Ernst Mach later formulates
Helmholtz's view: "The will to perform movements of the
eyes, or the innervation to the act, is itself the space
sensation" (Mach 1897 [1886]: 59).
Helmholtz favored a motor outflow version of the local sign doctrine
for two main reasons. First, he was skeptical that afferent
registrations of eye position are precise enough to play the role
assigned to them by Lotze's theory (2005 [1924]: 47-49).
Recent research has shown that proprioceptive inflow from ocular
muscular stretch receptors does in fact play a quantifiable role in
estimating direction of gaze, but efferent outflow is normally the
more heavily weighted source of information (Bridgeman 2010; see
Section 2.1.1
below).
Second, attempting a saccade when the eyes are paralyzed or otherwise
immobilized results in an apparent shift of the visual scene in the
same direction (Helmholtz 2005 [1924]: 205-06; Mach 1897 [1886]:
59-60). This finding would make sense if efferent signals to the
eye are used to determine the direction of gaze: the visual system
"infers" that perceived objects are moving because they
would have to be in order for retinal stimulation to remain constant
despite the change in eye direction predicted on the basis of motor
outflow.
Although Helmholtz was primarily concerned to show that "our
judgments as to the direction of the visual axis are simply the result
of the effort of will involved in trying to alter the adjustment of
the eyes" (2005 [1924]: 205-06), the evidence he adduces
also implies that efferent signals play a critical role in our
perception of stability in the world across saccadic eye movements. In
the next section, we trace the influence of this idea on theories in
the 20th century.
## 2. Sensorimotor Contingency Theories
Action-based accounts of perception proliferate diversely in
20th century. In this section, we focus on the reafference
theory of Richard Held and the more recent enactive approach of J.
Kevin O'Regan, Alva Noe, and others. Central to both
accounts is the view that perception and perceptually guided action
depend on abilities to anticipate the sensory effects of bodily
movements. To be a perceiver it is necessary to have knowledge of what
O'Regan and Noe call the *laws of sensorimotor
contingency*--"the structure of the rules governing the
sensory changes produced by various motor actions"
(O'Regan & Noe 2001: 941).
We start with two sources of motivation for theories that make
knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies necessary and/or sufficient
for spatially contentful perceptual experience. The first is the idea
that the visual system exploits *efference copy*, i.e., a copy
of the outflowing saccade command signal, in order to distinguish
changes in visual stimulation caused by movement of the eye from those
caused by object movement. The second is a long line of experiments,
first performed by Stratton and Helmholtz in the 19th
century, on how subjects adapt to lens-, mirror-, and prism-induced
modifications of visual experience. We follow up with objections to
these theories and alternatives.
### 2.1 Efference and Visual Direction Constancy
The problem of visual direction constancy (VDC) is the problem of how
we perceive a stable world despite variations in visual stimulation
caused by saccadic eye movements. When we execute a saccade, the image
of the world projected on the retina rapidly displaces in the
direction of rotation, yet the directions of perceived objects appear
constant. Such perceptual stability is crucial for ordinary visuomotor
interaction with surrounding the environment. As Bruce Bridgeman
writes,
>
>
> Perceiving a stable visual world establishes the platform on which all
> other visual function rests, making possible judgments about the
> positions and motions of the self and of other objects. (2010: 94)
>
>
>
The problem of VDC divides into two questions (MacKay 1973): First,
which sources of *information* are used to determine whether
the observer-relative position of an object has changed between
fixations? Second, how are relevant sources of information
*used* by the visual system to achieve this function?
The historically most influential answer to the first question is that
the visual system has access to a copy of the efferent or
"outflowing" saccade command signal. These signals carry
information specifying the direction and magnitude of eye movements
that can be used to compensate for or "cancel out"
corresponding displacements of the retinal image.
In the 19th century, Bell (1823), Purkyne (1825), and
Hering (1861 [1990]), Helmholtz (2005 [1924]), and Mach (1897 [1886])
deployed the efference copy theory to illuminate a variety of
experimental findings, e.g., the tendency in subjects with partially
paralyzed eye muscles to perceive movement of the visual scene when
attempting to execute a saccade (for a review, see Bridgeman 2010.)
The theory's most influential formulation, however, came from
Erich von Holst and Horst Mittelstadt in the early 1950s.
According to what they dubbed the "reafference principle"
(von Holst & Mittelstadt 1950; von Holst 1954), the visual
system exploits a copy of motor directives to the eye in order to
distinguish between *exafferent* visual stimulation, caused by
changes in the world, and *reafferent* visual stimulation,
caused by changes in the direction of gaze:
>
>
> Let us imagine an active CNS sending out orders, or
> "commands" ... to the effectors and receiving signals
> from its sensory organs. Signals that predictably come when nothing
> occurs in the environment are necessarily a result of its own
> activity, i.e., are *reafferences*. All signals that come when
> no commands are given are *exafferences* and signify changes in
> the environment or in the state of the organism caused by external
> forces. ... The difference between that which is to be expected
> as the result of a command and the totality of what is reported by the
> sensory organs is the proportion of exafference.... It is only
> this difference to which there are compensatory reflexes; only this
> difference determines, for example during a moving glance at movable
> objects, the actually perceived direction of visual objects. This,
> then, is the solution that we propose, which we have termed the
> "reafference principle": distinction of reafference and
> exafference by a comparison of the total afference with the
> system's state--the "command".
> (Mittelstadt 1971; translated by Bridgeman *et al.* 1994:
> 251).
>
>
>
It is only when the displacement of the retinal image differs from the
displacement predicted on the basis of the efference copy, i.e., when
the latter fails to "cancel out" the former, that subjects
experience a change of some sort in the perceived scene (see
Figure 1).
The relevant upshot is that VDC has an essential motoric component:
the apparent stability of an object's eye-relative position in
the world depends on the perceiver's ability to integrate
incoming retinal signals with extraretinal information concerning the
magnitude and direction of impending eye movements.
![[Three parts to the image, the first, labeled 'a.', has at the top an apple and at the bottom an eyeball looking straight up with an arrow going from the bottom of the eyeball to the apple; the arrow is labeled EC=0 and the eyeball, A=0. The second, labeled 'b.', is like the first except the eyeball is looking slightly clockwise of straight up and the arrow follows the line of sight; a second arrow goes from the apple to the bottom of the eyeball; the eyeball is labeled A=-10; the first arrow, EC=+10 (there two equations line up horizontally with A=0 and EC=0 respectively from the first part). The third part is not labeled and consists of a circle divided into quarters with a '+' in the top quarter and a '-' in the bottom quarter. The equation 'EC=+10' in part b has an arrow going from it to the '+' quadrant of the circle. The equation 'A=-10' from part b has an arrow going from it to the '-' quadrant of the circle. From the right side of the circle is an arrow that points to an equation 'EA=EC+A=0'; the arrow is labeled 'Comparator'. ]](fig1.png)
Figure 1: (a) When the eye is
stationary, both efference copy (EC) and afference produced by
displacement of the retinal image (A) are absent. (b) Turning the eye
10deg to the right results in a corresponding shift of the retinal
image. Since the magnitude of the eye movement specified by EC and the
magnitude of retinal image displacement cancel out, no movement in the
world or "exafference" (EA) is registered.
#### 2.1.1 Objections to the Efference Copy Theory
The foregoing solution to the problem of VDC faces challenges on
multiple, empirical fronts. **First**, there is evidence
that proprioceptive signals from the extraocular muscles make a
non-trivial contribution to estimates of eye position, although the
gain of efference copy is approximately 2.4 times greater (Bridgeman
& Stark 1991). **Second**, in the *autokinetic
effect*, a fixed luminous dot appears to wander when the field of
view is dark and thus completely unstructured. This finding is
inconsistent with theories according to which retinotopic location and
efference copy are the sole determinants of eye-relative direction.
**Third**, the hypothesized compensation process, if
psychologically real, would be highly inaccurate since subjects fail
to notice displacements of the visual world up to 30% of total saccade
magnitude (Bridgeman *et al.* 1975), and the locations of
flashed stimuli are systematically misperceived when presented near
the time of a saccade (Deubel 2004). **Last**, when image
displacements concurrent with a saccade are large, but just below
threshold for detection, *visually attended* objects appear to
"jump" or "jiggle" against a stable background
(Brune and Lucking 1969; Bridgeman 1981). Efference copy
theories, however, as Bridgeman observes,
>
>
> do not allow the possibility that parts of the image can move relative
> to one another--the visual world is conceived as a monolithic
> object. The observation would seem to eliminate all efference copy and
> related theories in a single stroke. (2010: 102)
>
>
>
#### 2.1.2 Alternatives to the Efference Copy Theory
The *reference object* theory of Deubel and Bridgeman denies
that efference copy is used to "cancel out" displacements
of the retinal image caused by saccadic eye-movements (Deubel *et
al.* 2002; Deubel 2004; Bridgeman 2010). According to this theory,
visual attention shifts to the saccade target and a small number of
other objects in its vicinity (perhaps four or fewer) before eye
movement is initiated. Although little visual scene information is
preserved from one fixation to the next, the features of these objects
as well as precise information about their presaccadic, eye-relative
locations is preserved. After the eye has landed, the visual system
searches for the target or one of its neighbors within a limited
spatial region around the landing site. If the postsaccadic
localization of this "landmark" object succeeds, the world
appears to be stable. If this object is not found, however,
displacement is perceived. On this approach, efference copy does not
directly support VDC. Rather, the role of efference copy is to
maintain an estimate of the direction of gaze, which can be integrated
with incoming retinal stimulation to determine the static,
observer-relative locations of perceived objects. For a recent,
philosophically oriented discussion, see Wu 2014.
A related alternative to the von Holst-Mittelstadt model is the
*spatial remapping* theory of Duhamel and Colby (Duhamel *et
al.* 1992; Colby *et al.* 1995). The role of saccade
efference copy on this theory is to initiate an updating of the
eye-relative locations of a small number of attended or otherwise
salient objects. When post-saccadic object locations are sufficiently
congruent with the updated map, stability is perceived. Single-cell
and fMRI studies show that neurons at various stages in the
visual-processing hierarchy exploit a copy of the saccade command
signal in order to shift their receptive field locations in the
direction of an impending eye movement microseconds before its
initiation (Merriam & Colby 2005; Merriam *et al.* 2007).
Efference copy indicating an impending saccade 20deg to the right,
in effect, tells relevant neurons:
>
>
> If you are now firing in response to an item *x* in your
> receptive field, then stop firing at *x*. If there is currently
> an item *y* in the region of oculocentric visual space that
> would be coincident with your receptive field after a saccade 20deg
> to the right, then start firing at *y*.
>
>
>
Such putative updating responses are strongest in parietal cortex and
at higher levels in visual processing (V3A and hV4) and weakest at
lower levels (V1 and V2).
### 2.2 The Reafference Theory
In 1961, Richard Held proposed that the reafference principle could be
used to construct a general "neural model" of perception
and perceptually guided action (for recent applications, see
Jekely et al. 2021). Held's reafference theory goes
beyond the account of von Holst and Mittelstadt in three main
ways. **First**, information about movement parameters
specified by efference copy is not simply summated with reafferent
stimulation. Rather, subjects are assumed to acquire knowledge of the
*specific sensory consequences* of different bodily movements.
This knowledge is contained in a hypothesized "correlational
storage" area and used to determine whether or not the
reafferent stimulations that result from a given type of action match
those that resulted in the past (Held 1961: 30).
**Second**, the reafference theory is not limited to eye
movements, but extends to "any motor system that can be a source
of reafferent visual stimulation". **Third**,
knowledge of the way reafferent stimulation depends on self-produced
movement is used for purposes of sensorimotor control: planning and
controlling object-directed actions in the present depends on access
to information concerning the visual consequences of performing such
actions in the past.
The reafference theory was also significantly motivated by studies of
how subjects adapt to devices that alter the relationship between the
distal visual world and sensory input by rotating, reversing, or
laterally displacing the retinal image (for helpful guides to the
literature on this topic, see Rock 1966; Howard & Templeton 1966;
Epstein 1967; and Welch 1978). We will refer to these as optical
rearrangement devices (or **ORDs** for short). In what
follows, we review experimental work on ORDs starting with the
American psychologist George Stratton in the late 19th century.
Stratton conducted two dramatic experiments using a lens system that
effected an 180o rotation of the retinal image in his right eye
(his left eye was kept covered). The first experiment involved wearing
the device for 21.5 hours over the course of three days (1896); the
second experiment involved wearing the device for 81.5 hours over the
course of 8 days (1897a,b). In both cases, Stratton kept a detailed
diary of how his visual, imaginative, and proprioceptive experiences
underwent modification as a consequence of inverted vision. In 1899,
he performed a lesser-known but equally dramatic three-day experiment,
using a pair of mirrors that presented his eyes with a view of his own
body from a position in space directly above his head
(Figure 2).
![[a line drawing of a man standing and looking up at about a 45 degree angle. Above him is a horizontal line labeled at the left end 'A' and right end 'B'. A second line goes from the 'B' end at about a -60 degree angle to point approximately horizontal to the man's neck that point is labeled 'D'. To the right of D is the dotted line drawing of a horizontal man, head closest to D; feet labeled 'E'. Fromt the first man's eyes is a short line, labeled 'C', going up at about a 45 degree angle approximately in the direction of the point labeled 'B'.]](fig2.png)
Figure 2: The apparatus designed by
Stratton (1899). Stratton saw a view of his own body from the
perspective of mirror AB, worn above his head.
In both experiments, Stratton reported a brief period of initial
visual confusion and breakdown in visuomotor skill:
>
>
> Almost all movements performed under the direct guidance of sight were
> laborious and embarrassed. Inappropriate movements were constantly
> made; for instance, in order to move my hand from a place in the
> visual field to some other place which I had selected, the muscular
> contraction which would have accomplished this if the normal visual
> arrangement had existed, now carried my hand to an entirely different
> place. (1897a: 344)
>
>
>
Further bewilderment was caused by a "swinging" of the
visual field with head movements as well as jarring discord between
where things were respectively seen and *imagined* to be:
>
>
> Objects lying at the moment outside the visual field (things at the
> side of the observer, for example) were at first mentally represented
> as they would have appeared in normal vision.... The actual
> present perception remained in this way entirely isolated and out of
> harmony with the larger whole made up by [imaginative] representation.
> (1896: 615)
>
>
>
After a seemingly short period of adjustment, Stratton reported a
gradual re-establishment of harmony between the deliverances of sight
and touch. By the end of his experiments on inverted vision, it was
not only possible for Stratton to perform many visuomotor actions
fluently and without error, the visual world often appeared to him to
be "right side up" (1897a: 358) and "in normal
position" (1896: 616). Just what this might *mean* will
be discussed below in
Section 2.2.
Another influential, if less dramatic, experiment was performed by
Helmholtz (2005 [1924]: SS29), who practiced reaching to targets
while wearing prisms that displaced the retinal image 16-18deg
to the left. The initial tendency was to reach too far in the
direction of lateral displacement. After a number of trials, however,
reaching gradually regained its former level of accuracy. Helmholtz
made two additional discoveries. First, there was an *intermanual
transfer effect*: visuomotor adaptation to prisms extended to his
non-exposed hand. Second, immediately after removing the prisms from
his eyes, errors were made in the opposite direction, i.e., when
reaching for a target, Helmholtz now moved his hand too far to the
right. This *negative after-effect* is now standardly used as a
measure of adaptation to lateral displacement.
Stratton and Helmholtz's findings catalyzed a research tradition
on ORD adaptation that experienced its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.
Two questions dominated studies conducted during this period. First,
what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for adaptation to
occur? In particular, which sources of *information* do
subjects use when adapting to the various perceptual and sensorimotor
discrepancies caused by ORDs? Second, just *what* happens when
subjects adapt to perceptual rearrangement? What is the "end
product" of the relevant form of perceptual learning?
#### 2.2.1 Held's Experiments On Prism Adaptation
Held's answer to the first question is that subjects must
receive visual feedback from active movement, i.e., *reafferent
visual stimulation*, in order for significant and stable
adaptation to occur (Held & Hein 1958; Held 1961; Held &
Bossom 1961). Evidence for this conclusion came from experiments in
which participants wore laterally displacing prisms during both active
and passive movement conditions. In the active movement condition, the
subject moved her visible hand back and forth along a fixed arc in
synchrony with a metronome. In the passive movement condition, the
subject's hand was passively moved at the same rate by the
experimenters. Although the overall pattern of visual stimulation was
identical in both conditions, adaptation was reported only when
subjects engaged in self-movement. Reafferent stimulation, Held and
Bossom concluded on the basis of this and other studies,
>
>
> is the source of ordered contact with the environment which is
> responsible for both the stability, under typical conditions, and the
> adaptability, to certain atypical conditions, of visual-spatial
> performance. (1961: 37)
>
>
>
Held's answer to the second question is couched in terms of the
reafference theory: subjects adapt to ORDs only when they have
relearned the sensory consequences of their bodily movements. In the
case of adaptation to lateral displacement, they must relearn the way
retinal stimulations vary as a function of reaching for targets at
different body-relative locations. This relearning is assumed to
involve an updating of the mappings from motor output to reafferent
sensory feedback in the hypothesized "correlational
storage" module mentioned above.
#### 2.2.2 Challenges to the Reafference Theory
The reafference theory faces a number of objections.
**First**, the theory is an extension of von Holst and
Mittelstadt's reafference principle, according to which
efference copy is used to cancel out shifts of the retinal image
caused by saccadic eye movements. The latter was specifically intended
to explain why we do not experience object displacement in the world
whenever we change the direction of gaze. There is nothing, at first
blush, however, that is analogous to the putative need for
"cancellation" or "discounting" of the retinal
image in the case of prism adaptation. As Welch puts it, "There
is no visual position constancy here, so why should a model originally
devised to explain this constancy be appropriate?" (1978:
16).
**Second**, the reafference theory fails to explain just
how stored efference-reafference correlations are supposed to explain
visuomotor control. How does having the ability to anticipate the
retinal stimulations that would caused by a certain type of hand
movement enable one actually to perform the movement in question?
Without elaboration, all that Held's theory seems to explain is
why subjects are surprised when reafferences generated by their
movements are non-standard (Rock 1966: 117).
**Third**, adaptation to ORDs, contrary to the theory, is
not restricted to situations in which subjects receive reafferent
visual feedback, but may also take place when subjects receive
feedback generated by passive effector or whole-body movement (Singer
& Day 1966; Templeton *et al.* 1966; Fishkin 1969).
Adaptation is even possible in the complete absence of motor action
(Howard *et al.* 1965; Kravitz & Wallach 1966).
In general, the extent to which adaptation occurs depends not on the
availability of reafferent stimulation, but rather on the presence of
either of two related kinds of information concerning "the
presence and nature of the optical rearrangement" (Welch 1978:
24). Following Welch, we shall refer to this view as the
"information hypothesis".
One source of information present in a displaced visual array concerns
the veridical directions of objects from the observer (Rock 1966:
chaps. 2-4). Normally, when engaging in forward locomotion, the
perceived radial direction of an object straight ahead of the
observer's body remains constant while the perceived radial
directions of objects to either side undergo constant change. This
pattern also obtains when the observer wears prisms that displace the
retinal image to side. Hence, "an object seen through prisms
which retains the same radial direction as we approach must be seen to
be moving in toward the sagittal plane" (Rock 1966: 105). On
Rock's view, at least some forms of adaptation to ORDs can be
explained by our ability to detect and exploit such invariant sources
of spatial informational in locomotion-generated patterns of optic
flow.
Another related source of information for adaptation derives from the
*conflict* between seen and proprioceptively experienced limb
position (Wallach 1968; Ularik & Canon 1971). When this
discrepancy is made conspicuous, proponents of the information
hypothesis have found that passively moved (Melamed *et al.*
1973), involuntarily moved (Mather & Lackner 1975), and even
immobile subjects (Kravitz & Wallach 1966) exhibit significant
adaption. Although self-produced bodily movement is not necessary for
adaptation to occur, it provides subjects with especially salient
information about the discrepancy between sight and touch (Moulden
1971): subjects are able proprioceptively to determine the location of
a moving limb much more accurately than a stationary or passively
moved limb. It is the enhancement of the visual-proprioceptive
conflict rather than reafferent *visual* stimulation, on this
interpretation, that explains why active movement yields more
adaptation than passive movement in Held's experiments.
A **final objection** to the reafference theory concerns
the *end product* of adaptation to ORDs. According to the
theory, adaptation occurs when subjects learn new rules of
sensorimotor dependence that govern how actions affect sensory inputs.
There is a significant body of evidence, however, that much, if not
all, adaptation rather occurs at the proprioceptive level. Stratton,
summarizing the results of his experiment on mirror-based optical
rearrangement, wrote:
>
>
> ...the principle stated in an earlier paper--*that in the
> end we would feel a thing to be wherever we constantly saw
> it*--can be justified in a wider sense than I then intended
> it to be taken.... We may now, I think, safely include
> differences of distance as well, and assert that the spatial
> coincidence of touch and sight does not require that an object in a
> given tactual position should appear visually in any particular
> direction or at any particular distance. In whatever place the tactual
> impression's visual counterpart regularly appeared, this would
> eventually seem the only appropriate place for it to appear in. If we
> were always to see our bodies a hundred yards away, we would probably
> also feel them there. (1899: 498, our emphasis)
>
>
>
On this interpretation, the plasticity revealed by ORDs is primarily
proprioceptive and kinaesthetic, rather than visual. Stratton's
world came to look "right side up" (1897b: 469) after
adaptation to the inverted retinal image because things were
*felt* where they were visually perceived to be--not
because, his "entire visual field flipped over" (Kuhn 2012
[1962]: 112). This is clear from the absence of a visual *negative
aftereffect* when Stratton finally removed his inverting lenses at
the end of his eight-day experiment:
>
>
> The visual arrangement was immediately recognized as the old one of
> pre-experimental days; yet the reversal of everything from the order
> to which I had grown accustomed during the past week, gave the scene a
> surprising, bewildering air which lasted for several hours. It was
> hardly the feeling, though, that things were upside down. (1897b:
> 470)
>
>
>
Moreover, Stratton reported changes in *kinaesthesis* during
the course of the experiment consistent with the alleged
proprioceptive shift:
>
>
> when one was most at home in the unusual experience *the head
> seemed to be moving in the very opposite direction from that which the
> motor sensations themselves would suggest*. (1907: 156)
>
>
>
On this view, the end product of adaptation to an ORD is a
recalibration of proprioceptive position sense at one or more points
of articulation in the body (see the entry on
bodily awareness).
As you practice reaching for a target while wearing laterally
displacing prisms, for example, the muscle spindles, joint receptors,
and Golgi tendon organs in your shoulder and arm continue to generate
the same patterns of action potentials as before, but the
proprioceptive and kinaesthetic *meaning* assigned to them by
their "consumers" in the brain undergoes change: whereas
before they signified that your arm was moving along one path through
the seven-dimensional space of possible arm configurations (the human
arm has seven degrees of freedom: three at the wrist, one at the
elbow, and three at the shoulder), they gradually come to signify that
it is moving along a different path in that kinematic space, namely,
the one consistent with the prismatically distorted visual feedback
you are receiving. Similar recalibrations are possible with respect to
sources of information for head and eye position. After adapting to
laterally displacing prisms, signals from receptors in your neck that
previously signified the alignment of your head and torso, for
example, may come to signify that your head is turned slightly to the
side. For discussion, see Harris 1965, 1980; Welch 1978: chap. 3; and
Briscoe 2016.
### 2.3 The Enactive Approach
The enactive approach defended by J. Kevin O'Regan and Alva
Noe (O'Regan & Noe 2001; Noe 2004, 2005,
2010; O'Regan 2011) is best viewed as an extension of the
reafference theory. According to the enactive approach, spatially
contentful, world-presenting perceptual experience depends on implicit
knowledge of the way sensory stimulations vary as a function of bodily
movement. "Over the course of life", O'Regan and
Noe write,
>
>
> a person will have encountered myriad visual attributes and visual
> stimuli, and each of these will have particular sets of sensorimotor
> contingencies associated with it. Each such set will have been
> recorded and will be latent, potentially available for recall: the
> brain thus has mastery of all these sensorimotor sets. (2001: 945)
>
>
>
To see an object *o* as having the location and shape
properties it has it is necessary (1) to receive sensory stimulations
from *o* and (2) to use those stimulations in order to retrieve
the set of sensorimotor contingencies associated with *o* on
the basis of past encounters. In this sense, seeing is a
"two-step" process (Noe 2004: 164). It is important
to emphasize, however, that the enactive approach distances itself
from the idea that vision is functionally dedicated, in whole or in
part, to the *guidance* of spatially directed actions:
"Our claim", Noe writes,
>
>
> is that seeing depends on an appreciation of the sensory effects of
> movement (not, as it were, on the practical significance of
> sensation).... Actionism is not committed to the general claim
> that seeing is a matter of knowing how to act in respect of or in
> relation to the things we see. (Noe 2010: 249)
>
>
>
The enactive approach also has strong affinities with the
**sense-data** tradition. According to Noe, an
object's visually apparent shape is the shape of the 2D patch
that would occlude the object on a plane perpendicular to the line of
sight, i.e., the shape of the patch projected by the object on the
frontal plane in accordance with the laws of linear perspective.
Noe calls this the object's "perspectival
shape" (P-shape) (for other accounts of the perspectival nature
of perception, see Hill 2022, chap. 3; Green & Schellenberg 2018;
Lande 2018; and Green 2022). An object's visually apparent size,
in turn, is the size of the patch projected by the object on the
frontal plane. Noe calls this the object's
"perspectival size" (P-size). Appearances are
"perceptually basic" (Noe 2004: 81) because in order
to see an object's actual spatial properties it is necessary
both to see its 2D P-properties and to understand how they would vary
(undergo transformation) with changes in one's point of view.
This conception of what it is to perceive objects as voluminous
space-occupiers is closely to akin to views defended by Russell
(1918), Broad (1923), and Price (1950). It also worth mentioning that
the enactive approach has strong affinities to views in the
phenomenological tradition that are beyond the scope of this entry
(but for discussion, see Thompson 2005; Hickerson 2007; and the entry
on
phenomenology).
#### 2.3.1 Evidence for the Enactive Approach
The enactive approach rests its case on three main sources of
empirical support. The **first** derives from experiments
with optical rearrangement devices (ORDs), discussed in
Section 2.2
above. Hurley and Noe (2003) maintain that adaptation to ORDs
only occurs when subjects relearn the systematic patterns of
interdependence between active movement and reafferent visual
stimulation. Moreover, contrary to the proprioceptive change theory of
Stratton, Harris, and Rock, Hurley and Noe argue that the end
product of adaptation to inversion and reversal of the retinal image
is genuinely visual in nature: during the final stage of adaptation,
visual experience "rights itself".
In
Section 2.2
above, we reviewed empirical evidence against the view that active
movement and corresponding reafferent stimulation are necessary for
adaptation to ORDs. Accordingly, we will focus here on Hurley and
Noe's objections to the proprioceptive-change theory.
According to the latter, "what is actually modified [by the
adaptation process] is the interpretation of nonvisual information
about positions of body parts" (Harris 1980: 113). Once
intermodal harmony is restored, the subject will again be able to
perform visuomotor actions without error or difficulty, and she will
again feel at home in the visually perceived world.
Hurley and Noe do not contest the numerous sources of empirical
and introspective evidence that Stratton, Harris, and Rock adduce for
the proprioceptive-change theory. Rather they reject the theory on the
basis of what they take to be an untoward epistemic implication
concerning adaptation to left-right reversal:
>
>
> while rightward things *really* look and feel leftward to you,
> they come to *seem* to look and feel rightward. So the true
> qualities of your experience are no longer self-evident to you. (2003:
> 155)
>
>
>
The proprioceptive-change theory, however, does not imply such radical
introspective error. According to proponents of the theory, experience
normalizes after adaptation to reversal not because things that really
look leftward "seem to look rightward" (what this might
mean is enigmatic at best), but rather because the subjects eventually
become familiar with the way things look when reversed--much as
ordinary subjects can learn to read mirror-reversed writing fluently
(Harris 1965: 435-36). Things seem "normal" after
adaptation, in other words, because subjects are again able to cope
with the visually perceived world in a fluent and unreflective
manner.
A **second** line of evidence for the enactive approach
comes from well-known experiments on **tactile-visual sensory
substitution (TVSS)** devices that transform outputs from a
low-resolution video camera into a matrix of vibrotactile stimulation
on the skin of one's back (Bach-y-Rita 1972, 2004) or
electrotactile stimulation on the surface of one's tongue
(Sampaio *et al.* 2001).
At first, blind subjects equipped with a TVSS device experience its
outputs as purely tactile. After a short time, however, many subjects
cease to notice the tactile stimulations themselves and instead report
having quasi-visual experiences of the objects arrayed in space in
front of them. Indeed, with a significant amount of supervised
training, blind subjects can learn to discriminate spatial properties
such as shape, size, and location and even to perform simple
"eye"-hand coordination tasks such as catching or batting
a ball. A main finding of relevance in early experiments was that
subjects learn to "see" by means of TVSS only when they
have active control over movement of the video camera. Subjects who
receive visual input passively--and therefore lack any knowledge
of how (or whether) the camera is moving--experience only
meaningless, tactile stimulation.
Hurley and Noe argue that passively stimulated subjects do not
learn to "see" by means of sensory substitution because
they are unable to learn the laws of sensorimotor contingency that
govern the prosthetic modality:
>
>
> active movement is required in order for the subject to acquire
> practical knowledge of the change from sensorimotor contingencies
> characteristic of touch to those characteristic of vision and the
> ability to exploit this change skillfully. (Hurley & Noe
> 2003: 145)
>
>
>
An alternative explanation, however, is that subjects who do not
control camera movement--and who are not otherwise attuned to how
the camera is moving--are simply unable to extract any
*information* about the structure of the distal scene from the
incoming pattern of sensory stimulations. In consequence they do not
engage in "distal attribution" (Epstein *et al.*
1986; Loomis 1992; Siegel & Warren 2010): they do not perceive
*through* the changing pattern of proximal stimulation to a
spatially external scene in the environment. For development of this
alternative explanation in the context of Bayesian perceptual
psychology, see Briscoe 2019.
A **final** source of evidence for the enactive approach
comes from studies of visuomotor development in the absence of normal,
reafferent visual stimulation. Held & Hein 1963 performed an
experiment in which pairs of kittens were harnessed to a carousel in a
small, cylindrical chamber. One of the kittens was able to engage in
free circumambulation while wearing a harness. The other kitten was
suspended in the air in a metal gondola whose motions were driven by
the first harnessed kitten. When the first kitten walked, both kittens
moved and received identical visual stimulation. However, only the
first kitten received reafferent visual feedback as the result of
self-movement. Held and Hein reported that only *mobile*
kittens developed normal depth perception--as evidenced by their
unwillingness to step over the edge of a visual cliff, blinking
reactions to looming objects, and visually guided paw placing
responses. Noe (2004) argues that this experiment supports the
enactive approach: in order to develop normal visual depth perception
it is necessary to learn how motor outputs lead to changes to visual
inputs.
There are two main reasons to be skeptical of this assessment.
**First**, there is evidence that passive transport in
the gondola may have disrupted the development of the kittens'
innate visual paw placing responses (Ganz 1975: 206).
**Second**, the fact that passive kittens were prepared
to walk over the edge of a visual cliff does not show that their
visual experience of *depth* was abnormal. Rather, as Jesse
Prinz (2006) argues, it may only indicate that they "did not
have enough experience walking on edges to anticipate the bodily
affordances of the visual world".
#### 2.3.2 Challenges to the Enactive Approach
The enactive approach confronts objections on multiple fronts. We
focus on just three of them here (but for discussion and potential
replies, see Block 2005; Prinz 2006; Briscoe 2008; Clark 2009: chap.
8; Block 2012; and Hutto & Myin 2017). **First**, the
approach is essentially an elaboration of Held's reafference
theory and, as such, faces many of the same empirical obstacles.
Evidence, for example, that active movement *per se* is not
necessary for perceptual adaptation to optical rearrangement
(Section 2.2)
is at variance with predictions made by the reafference theory and
the enactive approach alike.
A **second** line of criticism targets the alleged
perceptual priority of P-properties. According to the enactive
approach, P-properties are "perceptually basic" (Noe
2004: 81) because in order to see an object's intrinsic, 3D
spatial properties it is necessary to see its 2D P-properties and to
understand how they would undergo transformation with variation in
one's point of view. When we view a tilted coin, critics argue,
however, we do *not* see something that looks--in either
an epistemic or non-epistemic sense of "looks"--like
an upright ellipse. Rather, we see what looks like a disk that is
partly nearer and partly farther away from us. In general, the
apparent shapes of the objects we perceive are not 2D but have
extension in depth (Austin 1962; Gibson 1979; Smith 2000; Schwitzgebel
2006; Briscoe 2008; Hopp 2013).
Support for this objection comes from work in mainstream vision
science. In particular, there is abundant empirical evidence that an
object's 3D shape is specified by sources of spatial information
in the light reflected or emitted from the object's surfaces to
the perceiver's eyes as well as by oculomotor factors (for
reviews, see Cutting & Vishton 1995; Palmer 1999; and Bruce *et
al.* 2003). Examples include binocular disparity, vergence,
accommodation, motion parallax, texture gradients, occlusion, height
in the visual field, relative angular size, reflections, and shading.
That such shape-diagnostic information having once been processed by
the visual system is not lost in conscious visual experience of the
object is shown by standard psychophysical methods in which
experimenters manipulate the availability of different spatial depth
cues and gauge the perceptual effects. Objects, for example, look
somewhat flattened under uniform illumination conditions that
eliminate shadows and highlights, and egocentric distances are
underestimated for objects positioned beyond the operative range of
binocular disparity, accommodation, and vergence. Results of such
experimentation show that observers can literally see the difference
made by the presence or absence of a certain cue in the light
available to the eyes (Smith 2000; Briscoe 2008; for debate on whether
2D perspectival properties should be introduced into scientific
explanations of shape perception, see Bennett 2012; McLaughlin 2016;
Lande 2018; Morales & Firestone 2020; Linton 2021; Burge &
Burge 2022; Cheng et al. 2022; and Morales & Firestone 2023).
According to the influential dual systems model (DSM) of visual
processing (Milner & Goodale 1995/2006; Goodale & Milner
2004), visual consciousess and visuomotor control are supported by
functionally and anatomically distinct visual subsystems (these are
the *ventral* and *dorsal* information processing
streams, respectively). In particular, proponents of the DSM maintain
that the contents of visual experience are not used by motor
programming areas in the primate brain:
>
>
> The visual information used by the dorsal stream for programming and
> on-line control, according to the model, is not *perceptual* in
> nature ...[I]t cannot be accessed consciously, even in principle.
> In other words, although we may be conscious of the actions we
> perform, the visual information used to program and control those
> actions can never be experienced. (Milner & Goodale 2008:
> 775-776)
>
>
>
A **final** criticism of the enactive approach is that it
is empirically falsified by evidence for the DSM (see the commentaries
on O'Regan & Noe 2001; Clark 2009: chap. 8; Briscoe
2014; and the essays collected in Gangopadhyay *et al.* 2010):
the bond it posits between what we see and what we do is much too
tight to comport with what neuroscience has to tells us about their
functional relations.
The enactivist can make two points in reply to this objection. First,
experimental findings indicate that there are a number of contexts in
which information present in conscious vision is utilized for purposes
of motor programming (see Briscoe 2009 and Briscoe & Schwenkler
2015). Action and perception are not as sharply dissociated as
proponents of DSM sometimes claim.
Second, the enactive approach, as emphasized above, rejects the idea
that the function of vision is to *guide* actions. It
>
>
> does not claim that visual awareness depends on visuomotor skill, if
> by "visuomotor skill" one means the ability to make use of
> vision to reach out and manipulate or grasp. Our claim is that seeing
> depends on an appreciation of the sensory effects of movement (not, as
> it were, on the practical significance of sensation). (Noe 2010:
> 249)
>
>
>
Since the enactive approach is not committed to the idea that seeing
depends on knowing how to act in relation to what we see, it is not
threatened by empirical evidence for a functional dissociation between
visual awareness and visually guided action.
## 3. Motor Component and Efferent Readiness Theories
At this point, it should be clear that the claim that perception is
*active* or *action-based* is far from unambiguous.
Perceiving may implicate action in the sense that it is taken
constitutively to involve associations with touch (Berkeley 1709),
kinaesthetic feedback from changes in eye position (Lotze 1887
[1879]), consciously experienced "effort of the will"
(Helmholtz 2005 [1924]), or knowledge of the way reafferent sensory
stimulation varies as a function of movement (Held 1961; O'Regan
& Noe 2001; Hurley & Noe 2003).
In this section, we shall examine two additional conceptions of the
role of action in perception. According to the **motor component
theory**, as we shall call it, efference copies generated in
the oculomotor system and/or proprioceptive feedback from
eye-movements are used in tandem with incoming sensory inputs to
determine the spatial attributes of perceived objects (Helmholtz 2005
[1924]; Mack 1979; Shebilske 1984, 1987; Ebenholtz 2002; Briscoe
2021). **Efferent readiness theories**, by contrast,
appeal to the particular ways in which perceptual states
*prepare* the observer to move and act in relation to the
environment. The **modest readiness theory**, as we shall
call it, claims that the way an object's spatial attributes are
represented in visual experience is sometimes modulated by one or
another form of covert action planning (Festinger *et al.*
1967; Coren 1986; Vishton *et al.* 2007). The **bold
readiness theory** argues for the stronger, constitutive claim
that, as J.G. Taylor puts its, "perception and multiple
simultaneous readiness for action are one and the same thing"
(1968: 432).
### 3.1 The Motor Component Theory (Embodied Visual Perception)
As pointed out in
Section 2.3.2,
there are numerous, independently variable sources of information
about the spatial layout of the environment in the light sampled by
the eye. In many cases, however, processing of stimulus information
requires or is optimized by recruiting sources of auxiliary
information from outside the visual system. These may be directly
integrated with incoming visual information or used to change the
weighting assigned to one or another source of optical stimulus
information (Shams & Kim 2010; Ernst 2012).
An importantly different recruitment strategy involves combining
visual input with non-perceptual information originating in the
body's motor control systems, in particular, efference copy,
and/or proprioceptive feedback from active movement (kinaesthesis).
The **motor component theory,** as we shall call it, is
premised on evidence for such *motor-modal* processing.
The motor component theory can be made more concrete by examining
three situations in which the spatial contents of visual experience
are modulated by information concerning recently initiated or
impending bodily movements:
1. **Apparent direction:** The retinal image produced by
an object is ambiguous with respect to the object's direction in
the absence of extraretinal information concerning the orientation of
the eye relative to the head. While there is evidence that
proprioceptive inflow from muscle spindles in the extraocular muscles
is used to encode eye position, as Sherrington 1918 proposed,
outflowing *efference copy* is generally regarded as the more
heavily weighted source of information (Bridgeman & Stark 1991).
The problem of visual direction constancy was discussed in detail in
Section 2.1
above.
2. **Apparent distance and size:** When an object is at
close range, its distance in depth from the perceiver can be
determined on the basis of three variables: (1) the distance between
the perceiver's eyes, (2) the vergence angle formed by the line
of sight from each eye to the object, and (3) the direction of gaze.
Information about (1) is updated in the course of development as the
perceiver's body grows. Information about (2) and (3), which
vary from one moment to the next, is obtained from efference copy of
the motor command to fixate the object as well as proprioceptive
feedback from the extraocular muscles. Since an object's
apparent size is a function of its perceived distance from the
perceiver and the angle it subtends on the retina (Emmert 1881),
information about (2) and (3) can thus modulate visual size perception
(Mon-Williams *et al.* 1997).
3. **Apparent motion:** In the most familiar case of
motion perception, the subject visually tracks a moving target, e.g.,
a bird in flight, against a stable background using *smooth
pursuit* eye movements. As Bridgeman *et al.* 1994 note,
smooth pursuit "reverses the movement conditions on the retina:
the tracked object sweeps across the retina very little, while the
background undergoes a brisk motion" (p. 255). Nonetheless, it
is the target that appears to be in motion while the environment
appears to be stationary. There is evidence that the visual system is
able to compensate for pursuit induced retinal motion by means of
efference-based information about the changing direction of gaze (for
a review, see Furman & Gur 2012). This has been used to explain
the travelling moon illusion (Post & Leibowitz 1985: 637).
Neuropsychological findings indicate that failure to integrate
efference-based information about eye movement leads to a breakdown in
perceived background stability during smooth pursuit (Haarmeier *et
al.* 1997; Nakamura & Colby 2002; Fischer *et al.*
2012).
The motor component theory is a version of the view that perception is
embodied in the sense of Prinz 2009 (see the entry on
embodied cognition).
Prinz explains that
>
>
> embodied mental capacities, are ones that depend on mental
> representations or processes that relate to the body.... Such
> representations and processes come in two forms: there are
> representations and processes that represent or respond to body, such
> as a perception of bodily movement, and there are representations and
> processes that affect the body, such as motor commands (2009:
> 420).
>
>
>
The three examples presented above provide empirical support for the
thesis that visual perception is embodied in this sense. For
additional examples, see Ebenholtz 2002: chap. 4, and for further
discussion of various senses of embodiment, see Alsmith & de
Vignemount 2012, de Vignemont & Alsmith 2017, Bermudez 2018,
Stoneham 2018, and Berendzen 2023.
### 3.2 The Efferent Readiness Theory
Patients with frontal lobe damage sometimes exhibit pathological
"utilization behaviour" (Lhermitte 1983) in which the
sight of an object automatically elicits behaviors typically
associated with it, such as automatically pouring water into a glass
and drinking it whenever a bottle of water and a glass are present
(Frith *et al.* 2000: 1782). That normal subjects often do not
automatically perform actions afforded by a perceived object, however,
does not mean that they do not plan, or imaginatively rehearse, or
otherwise represent them. (On the contrary, recent neuroscientific
findings suggest that merely perceiving an object often covertly
prepares the motor system to engage with it in a certain manner. For
overviews, see Jeannerod 2006 and Rizzolatti 2008.)
Efferent readiness theories are based on the idea that covert
preparation for action is "an integral part of the perceptual
process" and not "merely a *consequence* of the
perceptual process that has preceded it" (Coren 1986: 394).
According to the **modest readiness theory**, as we shall
call it, covert motor preparation can sometimes influence the way an
object's spatial attributes are represented in perceptual
experience. The **bold readiness theory**, by contrast,
argues for the stronger, constitutive claim that to perceive an
object's spatial properties *just is* to be prepared or
ready to act in relation to the object in certain ways (Sperry 1952;
Taylor 1962, 1965, 1968).
#### 3.2.1 The Modest Readiness Theory
A number of empirical findings motivate the modest readiness theory.
Festinger *et al.* 1967 tested the view that visual contour
perception is
>
>
> determined by the particular sets of preprogrammed efferent
> instructions that are activated by the visual input into a state of
> readiness for immediate use. (p. 34)
>
>
>
Contact lenses that produce curved retinal input were placed on the
right eye of three observers, who were instructed to scan a
horizontally oriented line with their left eye covered for 40 minutes.
The experimenters reported that there was an average of 44% adaptation
when the line was physically straight but retinally curved, and an
average of 18% adaptation when the line was physically curved but
retinally straight (see Miller & Festinger 1977, however, for
conflicting results).
An elegantly designed set of experiments by Coren 1986 examined the
role of efferent readiness in the visual perception of direction and
extent. Coren's experiments support the hypothesis that the
spatial parameter controlling the length of a saccade is not the
angular direction of the target relative to the line of sight, but
rather the direction of the center of gravity (COG) of all the stimuli
in its vicinity (Coren & Hoenig 1972; Findlay 1982).
Importantly,
>
>
> the bias arises from the computation of the saccade that
> *would* be made and, hence, is held in readiness, rather than
> the saccade actually emitted. (Coren 1986: 399)
>
>
>
The COG bias is illustrated in
Figure 3.
In the **first row (top)**, there are no extraneous
stimuli near the saccade target. Hence, the saccade from the point of
fixation to the target is unbiased. In the **second
row**, by contrast, the location of an extraneous stimulus
(x) results in a saccade from the point of fixation that
undershoots its target, while in the **third row** the
saccade overshoots its target. In the **fourth row**,
changing the location of the extraneous stimulus eliminates the COG
bias: because the extraneous stimulus is near the point of fixation
rather than the saccade target, the saccade is accurate.
![[Two columns of 4 dots each, each pair of dots on the same horizontal. The left column has the words 'Fixation Point' at the top and a blue arrow pointing from those words to the top of the column. The right column has the words 'Saccade Target' and a similar blue arrow. The top (or first) pair of dots has an arrow curving from the left dot to the right dot. The second pair as a 'x' to the left of the right dot and an arrow curving from the left dot to a point between the 'x' and the right dot. The third pair has a 'x' to the right of the right dot and an arrow curving from the left dot to a point between the right dot and the 'x'. The fourth pair as a 'x' to the left of the left dot and an arrow curving from the left dot to the right dot.]](fig3.png)
Figure 3: The effect of starting eye
position on saccade programming (after Coren 1986: 405)
The COG bias is evolutionarily adaptive: eye movements will bring both
the saccade target as well as nearby objects into high acuity vision,
thereby maximizing the amount of information obtained with each
saccade. Motor preparation or "efferent readiness" to
execute an undershooting or overshooting saccade, Coren found,
however, can also give rise to a corresponding *illusion of
extent* (1986: 404-406). Observers, e.g., will perceptually
underestimate the length of the distance between the point of fixation
and the saccade target when there is an extraneous stimulus on the
near side of the target (as in the second row of
Figure 3)
and will perceptually overestimate the length of the distance when
there is an extraneous stimulus on the far side of the target (as in
the third row of
Figure 3).
According to Coren, the well-known Muller-Lyer illusion can be
explained within this framework. The outwardly turned wings in
Muller-Lyer display shift the COG outward from each vertex, while
the inwardly turned wings in this figure shift the COG inward. This
influences both saccade length from vertex to vertex as well as the
apparent length of the central line segments. The influence of COG on
efferent readiness to execute eye movements, Coren argues (1986:
400-403), also explains why the line segments in the
Muller-Lyer display can be replaced with small dots while leaving
the illusion intact as well as the effects of varying wing length and
wing angle on the magnitude of the illusion.
#### 3.2.2 The Bold Readiness Theory
The modest readiness theory holds that the way an object's
spatial attributes are represented in visual experience is sometimes
modulated by one or another form of covert action planning. The
**bold readiness theory** argues for a stronger,
constitutive claim: to perceive an object's spatial properties
*just is* to be prepared or ready to act in relation to the
object in certain ways. We begin by examining J.G. Taylor's
"behavioral theory" of perception (Taylor 1962, 1965,
1968).
Taylor's behavioral theory of perception identifies the
conscious experience of seeing an object's spatial properties
with the passive activation of a specific set of learned or
"preprogrammed" motor routines:
>
>
> [P]erception is a state of multiple simultaneous readiness for actions
> directed to the objects in the environment that are acting on the
> receptor organs at any one moment. The actions in question have been
> acquired by the individual in the course of his life and have been
> determined by the reinforcing contingencies in the environment in
> which he grew up. What determines the content of perception is not the
> properties of the sensory transducers that are operated on by stimulus
> energies from the environment, but *the properties of the behaviour
> conditioned to those stimulus energies*.... (1965: 1, our
> emphasis)
>
>
>
According to Taylor's theory, sensory stimulation gives rises to
spatially contentful visual experience as a consequence of
associative, reinforcement learning: we perceive an object as having
the spatial attribute *G* when the types of proximal sensory
stimulation caused by the object have been conditioned to the
performance of actions sensitive to *G* (1962: 42). The
conscious experience of seeing an object's distance, e.g., is
constituted by the subject's learned readiness to perform
specific whole body and limb movements that were reinforced when the
subject previously received stimulation from objects at the same
remove. In general, differences in the spatial content of a visual
experience are identified with differences in the subject's
state of "multiple simultaneous readiness" to interact
with the objects represented in the experience.
The main problem with Taylor's theory is one that besets
behaviorist theories of perception in general: it assumes that for any
visible spatial property *G*, there will be some distinctive
set of behavioral responses that are constitutive of perceiving the
object as having *G*. The problem with this assumption, as
Mohan Matthen (1988) puts it,
>
>
> there is no such thing as *the* proper response, or even a
> range of functionally appropriate responses, to what perception tells
> us. (p. 20, see also Hurley 2001: 17)
>
>
>
## 4. Skill/Disposition Theories
The last approach we shall discuss has roots in, and similarities to,
many of the proposals covered above, but is most closely aligned with
the bold readiness theory. We will follow Grush (2007) in calling this
approach the disposition theory (see Grush 2007: 394, for discussion
of the name). The primary proponent of this position is Gareth Evans,
whose work on spatial representation focused on understanding how we
manage to perceive objects as occupying locations in egocentric space.
Related views have been defended by Peacocke 1992, chap. 3; Simmons
2003; Schellenberg 2007, 2010; Briscoe 2009, 2014; Ward et al. 2011;
Alsmith 2012; Mandrigin 2021; de Vignemont 2021; and Nave et al.
2022.
The starting point of Evans' theory is that the subject's
perceptual systems have isolated a channel of sensory input, an
"information link", through which she receives information
about the object. The information link by itself does not allow the
subject to know the location of this object. Rather, it is when the
information link is able to induce in the subject appropriate kinds of
behavioral dispositions that it becomes imbued with spatial
import:
>
>
> The subject hears the sound as coming from such-and-such a position,
> but how is the position to be specified? Presumably in
> *egocentric* terms (he hears the sound as up, or down, to the
> right or to the left, in front or behind). These terms specify the
> position of the sound in relation to the observer's own body;
> and they derive their meaning in part from their complicated
> connections with the subject's *actions*. (Evans 1982:
> 155)
>
>
>
This is not a version of a motor theory (e.g., Poincare 1907:
71). The behavioral responses in question are *not* to be
understood as raw patterns of motor activations, or even muscular
sensations. Such a reduction would face challenges anyway, since for
any location in egocentric space, there are an infinite number of
kinematic configurations (movements) that would, for example, effect a
grasp to that location; and for any kinematic configuration, there are
an infinite number of dynamic profiles (temporal patterns of muscular
force) that would yield that configuration. The behavioral responses
in question are *overt environmental behavior*:
>
>
> It may well be that the input-output connections can be finitely
> stated only if the output is described in explicitly spatial terms
> (e.g., 'extending the arm', 'walking forward two
> feet', etc.). If this is so, it would rule out the reduction of
> the egocentric spatial vocabulary to a muscular vocabulary. But such a
> reduction is certainly not needed for the point being urged here,
> which is that the spatial information embodied in auditory perception
> is specifiable only in a vocabulary whose terms derive their meaning
> partly from being linked with bodily actions. Even given an
> irreducibility, it would remain the case that possession of such
> information is directly manifestable in behaviour issuing from no
> calculation; it is just that there would be indefinitely many ways in
> which the manifestation can occur. (Evans 1982: 156)
>
>
>
Also, on this proposal, all modalities are in the same boat. As such
the disposition theory is more ambitious than most of the theories
already discussed, which are limited to vision. Not only is there no
reduction of perceptual spatial content to a "muscular
vocabulary", there is also no reduction of the spatial content
of some perceptual modalities to that of one or more others--as
there was for Berkeley, who sought to reduce the spatial content of
vision to that of touch, and whose program forced a distinction
between two spaces, visual space and tangible space:
>
>
> The spatial content of auditory and tactual-kinaesthetic perceptions
> must be specified in the same terms--egocentric terms. ...
> It is a consequence of this that perceptions from both systems will be
> used to build up a unitary picture of the world. There is only one
> egocentric space, because there is only one behavioural space. (Evans
> 1982: 160)
>
>
>
Relatedly, for Evans it is not even the case that spatial perceptual
content, for all modalities, is being *reduced* to behavioral
dispositions. Rather, perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs
*jointly and holistically* yield a single behavioral space:
>
>
> Egocentric spatial terms are the terms in which the content of our
> spatial experiences would be formulated, and those in which our
> immediate behavioural plans would be expressed. This duality is no
> coincidence: an egocentric space can exist only for an animal in which
> a complex network of connections exists between perceptual input and
> behavioural output. A perceptual input--even if, in some loose
> sense, it encapsulates spatial information (because it belongs to a
> range of inputs which vary systematically with some spatial
> facts)--cannot have a spatial significance for an organism except
> in so far as it has a place in such a complex network of input-output
> connections. (Evans 1982: 154)
>
>
>
> Egocentric spatial terms and spatial descriptions of bodily movement
> would, on this view, form a structure familiar to philosophers under
> the title "holistic". (Evans 1982: 156, fn. 26)
>
>
>
This last point and the associated quotes address a common
misconception of the disposition theory. It would be easy to read the
theory as providing a proposal of the following sort: *A creature
gets sensory information from a stimulus, and the problem is to
determine where that stimulus is located in egocentric space; the
solution is that features of that sensory episode induce dispositions
to behavior targeting some egocentric location*. While this sort
of thing is indeed a problem, it is relatively superficial. Any
creature facing *this* problem must already have the capacity
to grasp egocentric spatial location contents, and the problem is
which of these ready-at-hand contents it should assign to the
stimulus. But the disposition theory is addressing a deeper question:
in virtue of what does this creature have a capacity to grasp
egocentric spatial contents to begin with? The answer is that the
creature must have a rich set of interconnections between sensory
inputs (and their attendant information links) and dispositions for
behavioral outputs.
Rick Grush (2000, 2007) has adopted Evans' theory, and attempted
to clarify and expand upon it, particularly in three areas: first, the
distinction between the disposition theory and other approaches;
second, the neural implementation of the disposition theory; and
finally the specific kinds of dispositions that are relevant for the
issue of spatial experience.
The theory depends on behavioral dispositions. Grush (2007) argues
that there are two distinctions that need to be made: first, the
organism might possess i) knowledge of what the consequences (bodily,
environmental, or sensory) of a given action will be; or ii) knowledge
of which motor commands will bring about a given desired end state (of
the body, environment, or sensory channels) (Grush 2007: 408). I might
be able to recognize that a series of moves someone shows me will
force my grandmaster opponent into checkmate (knowledge of the first
sort, the consequences of a given set of actions), and yet not have
been anywhere near the skill level to have come up with that series of
moves on my own (knowledge of the second sort, what actions will
achieve a desired effect). Sensorimotor contingency theorists appeal
to knowledge of the first sort--though Noe (2004: 90) flirts
with appealing to knowledge of the second sort to explain the
perceptual grasp of P-shapes; to the extent he does, he is embracing a
disposition theoretic account of P-shapes. Disposition theorists, and
bold readiness theorists
(Section 3.2.2)
appeal to knowledge of the second sort. These are the dispositions of
the disposition theory: given some goal, the organism is disposed to
execute certain actions.
This leads to the second distinction, between *type-specifying*
and *detail-specifying* dispositions. Grush (2007: 393)
maintains that only the latter are directly relevant for spatial
perception. A type-specifying disposition is a disposition to execute
some *type* of behavior with respect to an object or place. For
example, an organism might be disposed to grasp, bite, flee, or
foveate some object. This sort of disposition is not relevant to the
spatial content of the experience on the disposition theory. Rather,
what are relevant are detail-specifying dispositions: the specifics of
how I am disposed to act to execute any of these behavior types. When
reaching to grab the cup to take a drink (type), do I move my hand
like so (straight ahead, say), or like such (off to the right)? When I
want to foveate or orient towards (behavior type) the ant crawling up
the wall, do a I move my head and eyes like *this*, or like
*that*?
This latter distinction allows the disposition theory to answer one of
the main objections to the bold readiness theory (described at the end
of section
3.2.2)
that there is no single special disposition connected to perceiving
any given object. That is true of type-specifying dispositions, but
not of detail-specifying dispositions. Given the ant's location
there is indeed a very limited range of detail specifying dispositions
that will allow me to foveate it (though this might require
constraints on possible actions, such as *minimum jerk* or
other such constraints).
Grush (2007; 2009) has proposed a detailed implementation of the
disposition theory in terms of neural information processing. The
proposal involves more mathematics than is appropriate here, and so a
quick qualitative description will have to suffice (for more detail,
see Grush 2007; 2009). The basic idea is that relevant cortical areas
learn sets of basis functions which, to put it *very* roughly,
encode equivalence classes of combinations of sensory and postural
signals (for discussion, see Pouget *et al.* 2002). For
example, many combinations of eye orientation and location of
stimulation on the retina correspond to a visual stimulus that is
directly in front of the head. Sorting such bodily postural
information (not just eye orientation, but any postural information
that affects sensation, which is most) and sensory condition pairs
into useful equivalence classes is the first half of the job.
What this does is encode incoming information in a way that renders it
ready to be of use in guiding behavior, since the equivalence classes
are precisely those for which a given kind of motor program is
appropriate. The next part corresponds to how this information, so
represented, can be used to produce the details of such a motor
program. For every *type* of action in a creature's
behavioral repertoire (grasp, approach, avoid, foveate, bite, etc.)
its motor areas have a set of linear coefficients, easily implemented
as a set of neural connection strengths, and when these are applied to
a set of basis function values, a detailed behavior is specified. For
example, when a creature senses an object *O*1, a
set of basis function values *B*1 for that stimulus
is produced. If the creature decides to execute overt action
*A*1, then the *B*1 basis function
values are multiplied by the coefficient corresponding to
*A*1. The result is an instance of behavior type
*A*1 executed with respect to object
*O*1. If the creature had decide instead to execute
action *A*2, with respect to *O*1,
the *B*1 basis function values would have been
multiplied by the *A*2 set of coefficients, and the
result would be a motor behavior executing *A*2 on
object *O*1.
Accordingly, the disposition theory has a very different account of
what is happening with sensory substitution devices than Susan Hurley
and Alva Noe (see
Section 2.3.2
above). On the disposition theory, what allows the user of such a
device to have spatial experience is not the ability to anticipate how
the sensory input will change upon execution of movement as the
sensorimotor contingency theory would have it. Rather, it is that the
subject's brain has learned to take these sensory inputs
together with postural signals to produce sets of basis functions that
poise the subject to act with respect to the object that is causing
the sensory signals (see Grush 2007: 406).
One objection to disposition theories is what Hurley has called
*The Myth of the Giving*:
>
>
> To suppose that ... the content of intentions can be taken as
> unproblematically primitive in explaining how the content of
> experience is possible, is to succumb to the myth of the giving.
> (Hurley 1998: 241)
>
>
>
The idea behind this objection is that one is simply shifting the debt
from one credit card to another when one takes as problematic the
spatial content of perception, and then appeals to motor behavior as
the supplier of this content. For then, of course, the question will
be: Whence the spatial content of motor behavior?
The disposition theory, however, does not posit any such unilateral
reduction (though Taylor's bold readiness theory arguably does,
see
Section 3.2.2
above). As discussed above, Evans explicitly claims that the
behavioral space is holistically determined by both behavior and
perception. And on Grush's account spatial content is
implemented in the construction of basis function values, and these
values coordinate *transitions* from perceptual input to
behavioral output. As such, they are highly analogous to inferences
whose conditions of application are given in sensory-plus-postural
terms and whose consequences of application manifest in behavioral
terms. The import of the states that represent these basis function
values is no more narrowly motor than the meaning of a conditional can
be identified with its consequent (or its antecedent, for that matter)
in isolation.
Another very common objection, one that is often leveled at many forms
of motor theory, has to do with the fact that even paralyzed people,
with very few possibilities for action, seem capable in many cases of
normal spatial perception. Such objections would, at a minimum, place
significant pressure on any views that explain perceptual content by
appeal to actual behavior. It is also easy to see how even
hypothetical behavior would be called into question in such cases,
since in many such cases behavior is not physically possible.
Grush's theory (2007), right or wrong, has something specific to
say about this objection. Since spatial content is taken to be
manifested in the production of basis function values in the cortex,
the prediction is that any impairments manifesting farther down the
chain, the brain stem or spinal cord, for example, need have no direct
effect on spatial content. So long as the relevant brain areas have
the wherewithal to produce sets of basis function values suitable for
constructing a motor sequence (if multiplied by the
action-type-specific coefficients), then the occasioning perceptual
episode will have spatial content. |
qm-action-distance | ## 1. Introduction
The quantum realm involves curious correlations between distant
events. A well-known example is David Bohm's (1951) version of
the famous thought experiment that Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen
proposed in 1935 (henceforth, the EPR/B experiment). Pairs of particles
are emitted from a source in the so-called spin singlet state and rush
in opposite directions (see Fig. 1 below). When the particles are
widely separated from each other, they each encounter a measuring
apparatus that can be set to measure their spin components along
various directions. Although the measurement events are distant from
each other, so that no slower-than-light or light signal can travel
between them, the measurement outcomes are curiously
correlated.[1]
That is, while the outcome of each of the distant spin measurements
seems to be a matter of pure chance, they are correlated with each
other: The joint probability of the distant outcomes is different from
the product of their single probabilities. For example, the
probability that each of the particles will spin clockwise about the
*z*-axis in a *z*-spin measurement (i.e., a measurement
of the spin component along the *z* direction) appears to be
1/2. Yet, the outcomes of such measurements are perfectly
anti-correlated: If the left-hand-side (L-) particle happens to spin
clockwise (anti-clockwise) about the *z*-axis, the
right-hand-side (R-) particle will spin anti-clockwise (clockwise)
about that axis. And this is true even if the measurements are made
simultaneously.
>
> ![figure1 - schematic diagram of EPR/B experiment](figure1.jpg)
>
> **Figure 1**: A schematic illustration of the EPR/B
> experiment. Particle pairs in the spin singlet state are emitted in
> opposite directions and when they are distant from each other
> (i.e., space-like separated), they encounter measurement apparatuses
> that can be set to measure spin components along various
> directions.
>
>
>
The curious EPR/B correlations strongly suggest the existence of
non-local influences between the two measurement events, and indeed
orthodox 'collapse' quantum mechanics supports this
suggestion. According to this theory, before the measurements the
particles do not have any definite spin. The particles come to possess
a definite spin only with the first spin measurement, and the outcome
of this measurement is a matter of chance. If, for example, the first
measurement is a *z*-spin measurement on the L-particle, the
L-particle will spin either clockwise or anti-clockwise about the
*z*-axis with equal chance. And the outcome of the
L-measurement causes an instantaneous change in the spin properties of
the distant R-particle. If the L-particle spins clockwise
(anti-clockwise) about the *z*-axis, the R-particle will
instantly spin anti-clockwise (clockwise) about the same axis. (It is
common to call spins in opposite directions 'spin up' and
'spin down,' where by convention a clockwise spinning may
be called 'spin up' and anti-clockwise spinning may be
called 'spin down.')
It may be argued that orthodox quantum mechanics is false, and that
the non-locality postulated by it does not reflect any non-locality in
the quantum realm. Alternatively, it may be argued that orthodox
quantum mechanics is a good instrument for predictions rather than a
fundamental theory of the physical nature of the universe. On this
instrumental interpretation, the predictions of quantum mechanics are
not an adequate basis for any conclusion about non-locality: This
theory is just an incredible oracle (or a crystal ball), which provides
a very successful algorithm for predicting measurement outcomes and
their probabilities, but it offers little information about ontological
matters, such as the nature of objects, properties and causation in the
quantum realm.
Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (1935) thought that quantum mechanics is
incomplete and that the curious correlations between distant systems
do not amount to action at a distance between them. The apparent
instantaneous change in the R-particle's properties during the
L-measurement is not really a change of properties, but rather a
change of knowledge. (For more about the EPR argument, see the entry
on the EPR argument, Redhead 1987, chapter 3, and Albert 1992, chapter
3. For discussions of the EPR argument in the relativistic context,
see Ghirardi and Grassi 1994 and Redhead and La Riviere 1997.) On this
view, quantum states of systems do not always reflect their complete
state. Quantum states of systems generally provide information about
*some* of the properties that systems possess and information
about the probabilities of outcomes of measurements on them, and this
information does not generally reflect the complete state of the
systems. In particular, the information encoded in the spin singlet
state is about the probabilities of measurement outcomes of spin
properties in various directions, about the conditional probabilities
that the L- (R-) particle has a certain spin property given that the
R- (L-) particle has another spin property, and about the
anti-correlation between the spins that the particles may have in any
given direction (for more details, see section 5.1). Thus, the outcome
of a *z*-spin measurement on the L-particle and the spin
singlet state (interpreted as a state of knowledge) jointly provide
information about the *z*-spin property of the R-particle. For
example, if the outcome of the L-measurement is *z*-spin
'up,' we know that the R-particle has *z*-spin
'down'; and if we assume, as EPR did, that there is no
curious action at a distance between the distant wings (and that the
change of the quantum-mechanical state of the particle pair in the
L-measurement is only a change in state of knowledge), we could also
conclude that the R-particle had *z*-spin 'down'
even before the L-measurement occurs.
How could the L-outcome change our
knowledge/ignorance about the R-outcome if it has no influence on it?
The simplest and most straightforward reply is that the L- and the R-
outcome have a common cause that causes them to be correlated, so that
knowledge of one outcome provides knowledge about the
other.[2]
Yet, the question is whether the predictions of orthodox quantum
mechanics, which have been highly confirmed by various experiments,
are compatible with the quantum realm being local in the sense of
involving no influences between systems between which light and
slower-than-light signals cannot travel (i.e., space-like separated
systems). More particularly, the question is whether it is possible to
construct a local, common-cause model of the EPR/B experiment, i.e., a
model that postulates no influence between systems/events in the
distant wings of the experiment, and that the correlation between them
are due to the state of the particle pair at the source. In 1935,
Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen believed that this is possible. But, as
John Bell demonstrated in 1964, this belief is difficult to
uphold.
## 2. Bell's theorem and non-locality
In a famous theorem, John Bell (1964) demonstrated that granted some
plausible assumptions, any local model of the EPR/B experiment is
committed to certain inequalities about the probabilities of
measurement outcomes, 'the Bell inequalities,' which are
incompatible with the quantum-mechanical predictions. When Bell proved
his theorem, the EPR/B experiment was only a thought experiment. But
due to technological advances, various versions of this experiment have
been conducted since the 1970s, and their results have overwhelmingly
supported the quantum-mechanical predictions (for brief reviews of
these experiments and further references, see the entry on Bell's
theorem and Redhead 1987, chapter 4, section 4.3 and 'Notes and
References'). Thus, a wide consensus has it that the quantum
realm involves some type of non-locality.
The basic idea of Bell's theorem is as follows. A model of the EPR/B
experiment postulates that the state of the particle pair together
with the apparatus settings to measure (or not to measure) certain
spin properties determine the probabilities for single and joint
spin-measurement outcomes. A local Bell model of this experiment also
postulates that probabilities of joint outcomes factorize into the
single probabilities of the L- and the R- outcomes: The probability of
joint outcomes is equal to the product of the probabilities of the
single outcomes. More formally, let l denote the pair's state
before any measurement occurs. Let *l* denote the setting of
the L-measurement apparatus to measure spin along the *l*-axis
(i.e., the *l*-spin of the L-particle), and let *r*
denote the setting of the R-measurement apparatus to measure spin
along the *r*-axis (i.e., the *r*-spin of the
R-particle). Let *xl* be the outcome of a
*l*-spin measurement in the L-wing, and let
*yr* be the outcome of a *r*-spin measurement
in the R-wing; where *xl* is either the L-outcome
*l*-spin 'up' or the L-outcome *l*-spin
'down,' and *yr* is either the R-outcome
*r*-spin 'up' or the R-outcome *r*-spin
'down.' Let *P*l *l
r*(*xl* & *yr*) be
the joint probability of the L- and the R-outcome, and
*P*l
*l*(*xl*) and
*P*l
*r*(*yr*) be the single
probabilities of the L- and the R-outcome, respectively; where the
subscripts l, *l* and *r* denote the factors that
are relevant for the probabilities of the outcomes
*xl* and *yr*. Then, for any
l, *l*, *r*, *xl* and
*yr*:[3]
>
> **Factorizability**
>
> *P*l *l* *r*(*xl*
> & *yr*) =
> *P*l *l*(*xl*)
> *
> *P*l *r*(*yr*).
>
(Here and henceforth, for simplicity's sake we shall denote events and
states, such as the measurement outcomes, and the propositions that
they occur by the same symbols.)
The state l is typically thought of as the pair's state at the
emission time, and it is assumed that this state does not change in
any relevant sense between the emission and the first measurement. It
is (generally) a different state from the quantum-mechanical pair's
state ps. ps is assumed to be an incomplete state of the pair,
whereas l is supposed to be a (more) complete state of the
pair. Accordingly, pairs with the same state ps may have different
states l which give rise to different probabilities of outcomes
for the same type of measurements. Also, the states l may be
unknown, hidden, inaccessible or uncontrollable.
Factorizability is commonly motivated as a locality condition. In
non-local models of the EPR/B experiment, the correlations between the
distant outcomes are accounted for by non-local influences between the
distant measurement events. For example, in orthodox quantum mechanics
the first spin measurement on, say, the L-particle causes an immediate
change in the spin properties of the R-particle and in the
probabilities of future outcomes of spin measurements on this particle.
By contrast, in local models of this experiment the correlations are
supposed to be accounted for by a common cause--the pair's
state l (see Fig. 2 below): The pair's state and the
L-setting determine the probability of the L-outcome; the pair's
state and the R-setting determine the probability of the
R-outcome; and the pair's state and the L- and the
R-setting determine the probability of joint outcomes, which (as
mentioned above) is simply the product of these single probabilities.
The idea is that the probability of each of the outcomes is determined
by 'local events,' i.e., events that are confined to its
backward light-cone, and which can only exert subluminal or luminal
influences on it (see Figure 3 below); and the distant outcomes are
fundamentally independent of each other, and thus their joint
probability factorizes. (For more about this reasoning, see sections 6
and 8-9.)
>
> ![figure2 - common-cause model of the EPR/B experiment](figure2.jpg)
>
> **Figure 2**: A schematic common-cause model of the EPR/B
> experiment. Arrows denote causal connections.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ![figure3 - space-time diagram of a local model of the EPR/B experiment](figure3.jpg)
>
> **Figure 3**: A space-time diagram of a local model of
> the EPR/B experiment. The circles represent the measurement events,
> and the cones represent their backward light cones, i.e., the
> boundaries of all the subluminal and luminal influences on them. The
> dotted lines denote the propagation of the influences of the pair's
> state at the emission and of the settings of the measurement
> apparatuses on the measurement outcomes.
>
>
>
A Bell model of the EPR/B experiment also postulates that for each
quantum-mechanical state ps there is a distribution r over all
the possible pair states l, which is
independent of the settings of the apparatuses. That is, the
distribution of the ('complete') states l depends on
the ('incomplete') state ps, and this distribution
is independent of the particular choice of measurements in the L- and
R-wing (including the choice not to measure any quantity). Or
formally, for any quantum-mechanical state ps, L-settings
*l* and *l*', and R-settings *r* and
*r*':
>
> **l-independence**
>
> rps *l* *r*(l) =
> rps *l*' *r*(l) =
> rps *l* *r*'(l) =
> rps *l*' *r*'(l) =
> rps(l)
>
where the subscripts denote the factors that are potentially
relevant for the distribution of the states l.
Although the model probabilities (i.e., the probabilities of outcomes
prescribed by the states l) are different from the
corresponding quantum-mechanical probabilities of outcomes (i.e., the
probabilities prescribed by the quantum-mechanical states ps),
the quantum mechanical probabilities (which have been systematically
confirmed) are recovered by averaging over the model probabilities.
That is, it is supposed that the quantum-mechanical probabilities
*P*ps *l
r*(*xl* & *yr*),
*P*ps *l*(*xl*)
and
*P*ps *r*(*yr*)
are obtained by averaging over the model probabilities
*P*l *l
r*(*xl* & *yr*),
*P*l *l*
(*xl*) and
*P*l *r*(*yr*),
respectively: For any ps, *l*, *r*, *xl* and *yr*,
>
> **Empirical Adequacy**
>
> *P*ps *l* *r*(*x**l*
> & *yr*) =
> [?]l *P*l *l* *r*(*xl*
> & *yr*) *
> rps *l* *r*(l)
>
> *P*ps *l*(*x**l*)
> =
> [?]l *P*l *l*(*x**l* )
> *
> rps *l*(l)
>
> *P*ps *r*(*y**r*)
> =
> [?]l *P*l *r*(*y**r*)
> *
> rps *r*(l).[4]
>
The assumption of l-independence is very plausible. It
postulates that (complete) pair states at the source are uncorrelated
with the settings of the measurement apparatuses. And independently of
one's philosophical view about free will, this assumption is strongly
suggested by our experience, according to which it seems possible to
prepare the state of particle pairs at the source independently of the
set up of the measurement apparatuses.
There are two ways to try to explain a failure of
l-independence. One possible explanation is that
pairs' states and apparatus settings share a common cause, which
always correlates certain types of pairs' states l with
certain types of L- and R-setting. Such a causal hypothesis will be
difficult to reconcile with the common belief that apparatus settings
are controllable at experimenters' will, and thus could be set
independently of the pair's state at the source. Furthermore,
thinking of all the different ways one can measure spin properties and
the variety of ways in which apparatus settings can be chosen, the
postulation of such common cause explanation for settings and
pairs' states would seem highly *ad hoc* and its existence
conspiratorial.
Another possible explanation for the failure of l-independence
is that the apparatus settings influence the pair's state at the
source, and accordingly the distribution of the possible pairs' states
l is dependent upon the settings. Since the settings can be
made after the emission of the particle pair from the source, this
kind of violation of l-independence would require backward
causation. (For advocates of this way out of non-locality, see Costa
de Beauregard 1977, 1979, 1985, Sutherland 1983, 1998, 2006 and Price
1984, 1994, 1996, chapters 3, 8 and 9.) On some readings of John
Cramer's (1980, 1986) transactional interpretation of quantum
mechanics (see Maudlin 1994, pp. 197-199), such violation of
l-independence is postulated. According to this interpretation,
the source sends 'offer' waves forward to the measurement
apparatuses, and the apparatuses send 'confirmation' waves
(from the space-time regions of the measurement events) backward to
the source, thus affecting the states of emitted pairs according to
the settings of the apparatuses. The question of whether such a
theory can reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics is a
controversial matter (see Maudlin 1994, pp. 197-199, Berkovitz 2002,
section 5, and Kastner 2006). It is noteworthy, however, that while
the violation of l-independence is sufficient for circumventing
Bell's theorem, the failure of this condition *per se* does not
substantiate locality. The challenge of providing a local model of the
EPR/B experiment also applies to models that violate
l-independence. (For more about these issues, see sections 9
and 10.3.)
In any case, as Bell's theorem demonstrates, factorizability,
l-independence and empirical adequacy jointly imply the Bell
inequalities, which are violated by the predictions of orthodox quantum
mechanics (Bell 1964, 1966, 1971, 1975a,b). Granted the systematic
confirmation of the predictions of orthodox quantum mechanics and the
plausibility of l-independence, Bell inferred that
factorizability fails in the EPR/B experiment. Thus, interpreting
factorizability as a locality condition, he concluded that the quantum
realm is non-local. (For further discussions of Bell's theorem,
the Bell inequalities and non-locality, see Bell 1966, 1971, 1975a,b,
1981, Clauser *et al* 1969, Clauser and Horne 1974, Shimony
1993, chapter 8, Fine 1982a,b, Redhead 1987, chapter 4, Butterfield
1989, 1992a, Pitowsky 1989, Greenberger, Horne and Zeilinger 1989,
Greenberger, Horne, Shimony and Zeilinger 1990, Mermin 1990, and the
entry on Bell's theorem.)
## 3. The analysis of factorizability
Following Bell's work, a broad consensus has it that the
quantum realm involves some type of non-locality (for examples, see
Clauser and Horne 1974, Jarrett 1984,1989, Shimony 1984, Redhead 1987,
Butterfield 1989, 1992a,b, 1994, Howard 1989, Healey 1991, 1992, 1994,
Teller 1989, Clifton, Butterfield and Redhead 1990, Clifton 1991,
Maudlin 1994, Berkovitz 1995a,b, 1998a,b, and references
therein).[5]
But there is an ongoing controversy as to its exact nature and its
compatibility with relativity theory. One aspect of this controversy
is over whether the analysis of factorizability and the different ways
it could be violated may shed light on these issues. Factorizability
is equivalent to the conjunction of two conditions (Jarrett 1984,
1989, Shimony
1984):[6]
>
> **Parameter independence**. The probability of a distant
> measurement outcome in the EPR/B experiment is independent of the
> setting of the nearby measurement apparatus. Or formally, for any
> pair's state l, L-setting *l*, R-setting *r*,
> L-outcome *xl* and R-outcome
> *yr*:
>
>
> >
> > **PI**
> >
> >
> > | | | |
> > | --- | --- | --- |
> > | *P*l *l
> > r*(*xl*) =
> > *P*l *l*(*xl*) | and | *P*l *l
> > r*(*yr*) =
> > *P*l *r*(*yr*). |
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> **Outcome independence**. The probability of a distant
> measurement outcome in the EPR/B experiment is independent of the
> nearby measurement outcome. Or formally, for any pair's state
> l, L-setting *l*, R-setting *r*, L-outcome
> *xl* and R-outcome *yr*:
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> > | | | |
> > | --- | --- | --- |
> > | *P*l *l
> > r*(*xl* / *yr*) =
> > *P*l *l
> > r*(*xl*) | and | *P*l *l
> > r*(*yr* / *xl*) =
> > *P*l *l
> > r*(*yr*) |
> > | |
> > | *P*l *l
> > r*(*yr*) > 0 | | *P*l *l
> > r*(*xl*) > 0, |
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> or more generally,
>
>
> >
> > **OI**
> >
> > *P*l *l
> > r*(*xl* & *yr*) =
> > *P*l *l
> > r*(*xl*) *
> > *P*l *l
> > r*(*yr*).
> >
>
>
>
Assuming l-independence (see section 2), any empirically
adequate theory will have to violate OI or PI. A common view has it
that violations of PI involve a different type of non-locality than
violations of OI: Violations of PI involve some type of
action-at-a-distance that is impossible to reconcile with relativity
(Shimony 1984, Redhead 1987, p. 108), whereas violations of OI involve
some type of holism, non-separability and/or passion-at-a-distance that
may be possible to reconcile with relativity (Shimony 1984, Readhead
1987, pp. 107, 168-169, Howard 1989, Teller 1989).
On the other hand, there is the view that the analysis above (as
well as other similar analyses of
factorizability[7])
is immaterial for studying quantum non-locality (Butterfield 1992a,
pp. 63-64, Jones and Clifton 1993, Maudlin 1994, pp. 96 and 149) and
even misleading (Maudlin 1994, pp. 94-95 and 97-98). On this
alternative view, the way to examine the nature of quantum
non-locality is to study the ontology postulated by the various
interpretations of quantum mechanics and alternative quantum
theories.[8]
In sections 4-7, we shall follow this methodology and discuss the
nature of non-locality postulated by several quantum theories. The
discussion in these sections will furnish the ground for evaluating
the above controversy in section 8.
## 4. Action at a distance, holism and non-separability
### 4.1 Action at a distance
In orthodox quantum mechanics as well as in any other current quantum
theory that postulates non-locality (i.e., influences between distant,
space-like separated systems), the influences between the distant
measurement events in the EPR/B experiment do not propagate
continuously in space-time. They seem to involve action at a
distance. Yet, a common view has it that these influences are due to
some type of holism and/or non-separability of states of composite
systems, which are characteristic of systems in entangled states (like
the spin singlet state), and which exclude the very possibility of
action at a distance. The paradigm case of action at a distance is the
Newtonian gravitational force. This force acts between distinct
objects that are separated by some (non-vanishing) spatial distance,
its influence is symmetric (in that any two massive objects influence
each other), instantaneous and does not propagate continuously in
space. And it is frequently claimed or presupposed that such action at
a distance could only exist between systems with separate states in
non-holistic universes (i.e., universes in which the states of
composite systems are determined by, or supervene upon the states of
their subsystems and the spacetime relations between them), which are
commonly taken to characterize the classical
realm.[9]
In sections 4.2 and 4.3, we shall briefly review the relevant
notions of holism and non-separability (for a more comprehensive
review, see the entry on holism and nonseparability in physics and
Healey 1991). In section 5, we shall discuss the nature of holism and
non-separability in the quantum realm as depicted by various quantum
theories. Based on this discussion, we shall consider whether the
non-local influences in the EPR/B experiment constitute action at a
distance.
### 4.2 Holism
In the literature, there are various characterizations of holism.
Discussions of quantum non-locality frequently focus on property
holism, where certain physical properties of objects are not determined
by the physical properties of their parts. The intuitive idea is that
some intrinsic properties of wholes (e.g. physical systems) are not
determined by the intrinsic properties of their parts and the
spatiotemporal relations that obtain between these parts. This idea can
be expressed in terms of supervenience relations.
>
> **Property Holism**. Some objects have intrinsic
> qualitative properties and/or relations that do not supervene upon the
> intrinsic qualitative properties and relations of their parts and the
> spatiotemporal relations between these parts.
It is difficult to give a general precise specification of the terms
'intrinsic qualitative property' and
'supervenience.' Intuitively, a property of an object is
intrinsic just in case that object has this property in and for itself
and independently of the existence or the state of any other object. A
property is qualitative (as opposed to individual) if it does not
depend on the existence of any particular object. And the intrinsic
qualitative properties of an object *O* supervene upon the
intrinsic qualitative properties and relations of its parts and the
spatiotemporal relations between them just in case there is no change
in the properties and relations of *O* without a change in the
properties and relations of its parts and/or the spatiotemporal
relations between them. (For attempts to analyze the term
'intrinsic property,' see for example Langton and Lewis
1998 and the entry on intrinsic vs. extrinsic properties. For a review
of different types of supervenience, see for example Kim 1978,
McLaughlin 1994 and the entry on supervenience.)
Paul Teller (1989, p. 213) proposes a related notion of holism,
'relational holism,' which is characterized as the
violation of the following condition:
>
> **Particularism**. The world is composed of
> individuals. All individuals have non-relational properties and all
> relations supervene on the non-relational properties of the
> relata.
Here, by a non-relational property Teller means an intrinsic property
(1986a, p. 72); and by 'the supervenience of a relational
property on the non-relational properties of the relata,' he
means that 'if two objects, 1 and 2, bear a relation *R*
to each other, then, *necessarily*, if two further objects,
1' and 2' have the same non-relational properties, then
1' and 2' will also bear the same relation *R* to
each other' (1989, p. 213). Teller (1986b, pp. 425-7) believes
that spatiotemporal relations between objects supervene upon the
objects' intrinsic physical properties. Thus, he does not
include the spatiotemporal relations in the supervenience basis. This
view is controversial, however, as many believe that spatiotemporal
relations between objects are neither intrinsic nor supervene upon the
intrinsic qualitative properties of these objects. But, if such
supervenience does not obtain, particularism will also be violated in
classical physics, and accordingly relational holism will fail to mark
the essential distinction between the classical and the quantum
realms. Yet, one may slightly revise Teller's definition of
particularism as follows:
>
> **Particularism\*.** The world is composed of
> individuals. All individuals have non-relational properties and all
> relations supervene upon the non-relational properties of the relata
> and the spatiotemporal relations between them.
In what follows in this entry, by relational holism we shall mean a
violation of particularism\*.
### 4.3 Non-separability
Like holism, there are various notions of non-separability on offer.
The most common notion in the literature is state non-separability,
i.e., the violation of the following condition:
>
> **State separability.** Each system possesses a
> separate state that determines its qualitative intrinsic properties,
> and the state of any composite system is wholly determined by the
> separate states of its subsystems.
The term 'wholly determined' is vague. But, as before, one
may spell it out in terms of supervenience relations: State
separability obtains just in case each system possesses a separate
state that determines its qualitative intrinsic properties and
relations, and the state of any composite system is supervenient upon
the separate states of its subsystems.
Another notion of non-separability is spatiotemporal non-separability.
Inspired by Einstein (1948), Howard (1989, pp. 225-6) characterizes
spatiotemporal non-separability as the violation of the following
separability condition:
>
> **Spatiotemporal separability**. The contents of any
> two regions of space-time separated by a non-vanishing spatiotemporal
> interval constitute two separate physical systems. Each separated
> space-time region possesses its own, distinct state and the joint state
> of any two separated space-time regions is wholly determined by the
> separated states of these regions.
A different notion of spatiotemporal non-separability, proposed by
Healey (see the entry on holism and nonseparability in physics), is
process non-separability. It is the violation of the following
condition:
>
> **Process separability**. Any physical process
> occupying a spacetime region *R* supervenes upon an assignment
> of qualitative intrinsic physical properties at spacetime points in
> *R*.
## 5. Holism, non-separability and action at a distance in quantum mechanics
The quantum realm as depicted by all the quantum theories that
postulate non-locality, i.e., influences between distant (space-like
separated) systems, involves some type of non-separability or
holism. In what follows in this section, we shall consider the nature
of the non-separability and holism manifested by various
interpretations of quantum mechanics. On the basis of this
consideration, we shall address the question of whether these
interpretations predicate the existence of action at a distance. We
start with the so-called 'collapse theories.'
### 5.1 Collapse theories
#### 5.1.1 Orthodox quantum mechanics
In orthodox quantum mechanics, normalized vectors in Hilbert spaces
represent states of physical systems. When the Hilbert space is of
infinite dimension, state vectors can be represented by functions, the
so-called 'wave functions.' In any given basis, there is a
unique wave function that corresponds to the state vector in that
basis. (For an entry level review of the highlights of the
mathematical formalism and the basic principles of quantum mechanics,
see the entry on quantum mechanics, Albert 1992, Hughes 1989, Part I,
and references therein; for more advanced reviews, see Bohm 1951 and
Redhead 1987, chapters 1-2 and the mathematical appendix.)
For example, the state of the L-particle having *z*-spin
'up' (i.e., spinning 'up' about the
*z*-axis) can be represented by the vector |*z*-up>
in the Hilbert space associated with the L-particle, and the state of
the L-particle having *z*-spin 'down' (i.e.,
spinning 'down' about the *z*-axis) can be
represented by the orthogonal vector, |*z*-down>. Particle
pairs may be in a state in which the L-particle and the R-particle
have opposite spins, for instance either a state
|ps1> in which the L-particle has *z*-spin
'up' and the R-particle has *z*-spin
'down,' or a state |ps2> in which the
L-particle has *z*-spin 'down' and the R-particle
has *z*-spin 'up.' Each of these states is
represented by a tensor product of vectors in the Hilbert space of the
particle pair:
|ps1>
= |*z*-up>*L*
|*z*-down>*R* and |ps2> =
|*z*-down>*L*
|*z*-up>*R*; where the subscripts L and R
refer to the Hilbert spaces associated with the L- and the R-particle,
respectively. But particle pairs may also be in a superposition of
these states, i.e., a state that is a linear sum of the states
|ps1> and |ps2>, e.g. the state
represented by
>
>
>
> | | | |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | |ps3> | = | 1/[?]2 (|ps1>
> [?] |ps2>) |
> | | = | 1/[?]2
> (|*z*-up>*L*
> |*z*-down>*R*
> [?] |*z*-down>*L*
> |*z*-up>*R*). |
>
>
>
In fact, this is exactly the case in the spin singlet state. In this
state, the particles are entangled in a non-separable state (i.e., a
state that cannot be decomposed into a product of separate states of
the L- and the R-particle), in which (according to the
property-assignment rules of orthodox quantum mechanics) the particles
do not possess any definite *z*-spin (or definite spin in any
other direction). Thus, the condition of state separability fails: The
state of the particle pair (which determines its intrinsic qualitative
properties) is not wholly determined by the separate states of the
particles (which determine their intrinsic qualitative properties). Or
more precisely, the pair's state is not supervenient upon the
separable states of the particles. In particular, the superposition
state of the particle pair assigns a 'correlational'
property that dictates that the outcomes of (ideal) *z*-spin
measurements on both the L- and the R-particle will be
anti-correlated, and this correlational property is not supervenient
upon properties assigned by any separable states of the particles (for
more details, see Healey 1992, 1994). For similar reasons, the spin
singlet state also involves property and relational holism; for the
above correlational property of the particle pair also fails to
supervene upon the intrinsic qualitative properties of the particles
and the spatiotemporal relations between them. Furthermore, the
process that leads to each of the measurement outcomes is also
non-separable, i.e., process separability fails (see Healey 1994 and
the entry on holism and nonseparability in physics).
This correlational property is also 'responsible' for the
action at a distance that the orthodox theory seems to postulate
between the distant wings in the EPR/B experiment. Recall (section 1)
that Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen thought that this curious action at
a distance reflects the incompleteness of this theory rather than a
state of nature. The EPR argument for the incompleteness of the
orthodox theory is controversial. But the orthodox theory seems to be
incomplete for a different reason. This theory postulates that in
non-measurement interactions, the evolution of states obeys a linear
and unitary equation of motion, the so-called Schrodinger
equation (see the entry on quantum mechanics), according to which the
particle pair in the EPR/B experiment remains in an entangled
state. This equation of motion also dictates that in a spin
measurement, the pointers of the measurement apparatuses get entangled
with the particle pair in a non-separable state in which (according to
the theory's property assignment, see below) the indefiniteness of
particles' spins is 'transmitted' to the pointer's
position: In this entangled state of the particle pair and the
pointer, the pointer lacks any definite position, in contradiction to
our experience of perceiving it pointing to either 'up' or
'down.'
The above problem, commonly called 'the measurement
problem,' arises in orthodox no-collapse quantum mechanics from
two features that account very successfully for the behavior of
microscopic systems: The linear dynamics of quantum states as
described by the Schrodinger equation and the property assignment
rule called 'eigenstate-eigenvalue link.' According to the
eigenstate-eigenvalue link, a physical observable, i.e., a physical
quantity, of a system has definite value (one of its eigenvalues) just
in case the system is in the corresponding eigenstate of that
observable (see the entry on quantum mechanics, section
4). Microscopic systems may be in a superposition state of spin
components, energies, positions, momenta as well as other physical
observables. Accordingly, microscopic systems may be in a state of
indefinite *z*-spin, energy, position, momentum and various
other quantities. The problem is that given the linear and unitary
Schrodinger dynamics, these indefinite quantities are also
endemic in the macroscopic realm. For example, in a *z*-spin
measurement on a particle in a superposition state of *z*-spin
'up' and *z*-spin 'down,' the position
of the apparatus's pointer gets entangled with the indefinite
*z*-spin of the particle, thus transforming the pointer into a
state of indefinite position, i.e., a superposition of pointing
'up' and pointing 'down' (see Albert 1992,
chapter 4, and the entry on collapse theories, section 3). In
particular, in the EPR/B experiment the L-measurement causes the
L-apparatus pointer to get entangled with the particle pair,
transforming it into a state of indefinite position:
>
> |ps4> = 1/[?]2
> (|*z*-up>*L*
> |*z*-down>*R*
> |up>*LA* [?]
> |*z*-down>*L*
> |*z*-up>*R*
> |down>*LA*)
where |up>*LA* and
|down>*LA* are the states of the L-apparatus
pointer displaying the outcomes *z*-spin 'up' and
*z*-spin 'down,' respectively. Since the above type
of indefiniteness is generic in orthodox no-collapse quantum
mechanics, in this theory measurements typically have no definite
outcomes, in contradiction to our experience.
In order to solve this problem, the orthodox theory postulates that in
measurement interactions, entangled states of measured systems and the
corresponding measurement apparatuses do not evolve according to the
Schrodinger equation. Rather, they undergo a
'collapse' into product (non-entangled) states, where the
systems involved have the relevant definite properties. For example,
the entangled state of the particle pair and the L-apparatus in the
EPR/B experiment may collapse into a product state in which the
L-particle comes to possess *z*-spin 'up,' the
R-particle comes to possess *z*-spin 'down' and the
L-apparatus pointer displaying the outcome *z*-spin
'up':
>
> |ps5> =
> |*z*-up>*L*
> |*z*-down>*R*
> |up>*LA*.
The problem is that in the orthodox theory, the notions of
measurement and the time, duration and nature of state collapses remain
completely unspecified. As John Bell (1987b, p. 205) remarks, the
collapse postulate in this theory, i.e., the postulate that dictates
that in measurement interactions the entangled states of the relevant
systems do not follow the Schrodinger equation but rather undergo
a collapse, is no more than 'supplementary, imprecise, verbal,
prescriptions.'
This problem of accounting for our experience of perceiving definite
measurement outcomes in orthodox quantum mechanics, is an aspect of the
more general problem of accounting for the classical-like behavior of
macroscopic systems in this theory.
#### 5.1.2 Dynamical models for state vector reduction
The dynamical models for state-vector reduction were developed to
account for state collapses as real physical processes (for a review
of the collapse models and a detailed reference list, see the entry on
collapse theories). The origin of the collapse models may be dated to
Bohm and Bub's (1966) hidden variable theory and Pearle's (1976)
spontaneous localization approach, but the program has received its
crucial impetus with the more sophisticated models developed by
Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber in 1986 (see also Bell 1987a and Albert
1992) and their consequent development by Pearle (1989) (see also
Ghirardi, Pearle and Rimini 1990, and Butterfield et al. 1993).
Similarly to orthodox collapse quantum mechanics, in the GRW models
the quantum-mechanical state of systems (whether it is expressed by a
vector or a wave function) provides a complete specification of their
intrinsic properties and relations. The state of systems follows the
Schrodinger equation, except that it has a probability for
spontaneous collapse, independently of whether or not the systems are
measured. The chance of collapse depends on the 'size' of
the entangled systems--in the earlier models the 'size'
of systems is predicated on the number of the elementary particles,
whereas in later models it is measured in terms of mass densities. In
any case, in microscopic systems, such as the particle pairs in the
EPR/B experiment, the chance of collapse is very small and
negligible--the chance of spontaneous state collapse in such
systems is cooked up so that it will occur, on average, every hundred
million years or so. This means that the chance that the entangled
state of the particle pair in the EPR/B experiment will collapse to a
product state between the emission from the source and the first
measurement is virtually zero. In an earlier L-measurement, the state
of the particle pair gets entangled with the state of the
L-measurement apparatus. Thus, the state of the pointer of the
L-apparatus evolves from being 'ready' to measure a
certain spin property to an indefinite outcome. For instance, in a
*z*-spin measurement the L-apparatus gets entangled with the
particle pair in a superposition state of pointing to 'up'
and pointing to 'down' (corresponding to the states of the
L-particle having *z*-spin 'up' and having
*z*-spin 'down'), and the R-apparatus remains
un-entangled with these systems in the state of being ready to measure
*z*-spin. Or formally:
>
> |ps6> = 1/[?]2
> (|*z*-up>*L*
> |up>*AL*
> |*z*-down>*R* [?]
> |*z*-down>*L*
> |down>*AL*
> |*z*-up>*R*)
> |ready>*AR*
where, as before, |up>*AL* and
|down>*AL* denote the states of the L-apparatus
displaying the outcomes *z*-spin 'up' and
'down' respectively, and |ready>*AR*
denotes the state of the R-apparatus being ready to measure
*z*-spin. In this state, a gigantic number of particles of the
L-apparatus pointer are entangled together in the superposition state
of being in the position (corresponding to pointing to)
'up' and the position (corresponding to pointing to)
'down.' For assuming, for simplicity of presentation, that
the position of all particles of the L-apparatus pointer in the state
of pointing to 'up' ('down') is the same, the
state |ps6> can be rewritten as:
>
> |ps7> = 1/[?]2
> (|*z*-up>*L*
> |up>*p1*
> |up>*p2*
> |up>*p3 ...*
> |*z*-down>*R* [?]
>
>
>
>
> |*z*-down>*L*
> |down>*p1*
> |down>*p2*
> |down>*p3 ...*
> |*z*-up>*R*) |ready
> >*AR*
where *pi* denotes the *i*-particle of the
L-apparatus pointer, and |up>*pi*
(|down>*pi*) is the state of the
*i*-particle being in the position corresponding to the outcome
*z*-spin 'up'
('down').[10]
The chance that at least one of the vast number of the pointer's
particles will endure a spontaneous localization toward
being in the position corresponding to either the outcome
*z*-spin 'up' or the outcome *z*-spin
'down' within a very short time (a split of a micro
second) is very high. And since all the particles of the pointer and
the particle pair are entangled with each other, such a collapse will
carry with it a collapse of the entangled state of the pointer of the
L-apparatus and the particle pair toward either
>
> |*z*-up>*L* |up>*p1* |up>*p2*|up>*p3 ...*
> |*z*-down>*R*
>
or
>
> |*z*-down>*L* |down>*p1* |down>*p2*|down>*p3 ...*
> |*z*-up>*R*.
Thus, the pointer will very quickly move in the direction of pointing
to either the outcome *z*-spin 'up' or the outcome
*z*-spin 'down.'
If (as portrayed above) the spontaneous localization of particles were
to a precise position, i.e., to the position corresponding to the
outcome 'up' or the outcome 'down,' the GRW
collapse models would successfully resolve the measurement
problem. Technically speaking, a precise localization is achieved by
multiplying |ps7> by a delta function centered on the
position corresponding to either the outcome 'up' or the
outcome 'down' (see the entry on collapse theories,
section 5 and Albert 1992, chapter 5); where the probability of each
of these mutually exhaustive possibilities is 1/2. The problem is
that it follows from the uncertainty principle (see the entry on the
uncertainty principle) that in such localizations the momenta and the
energies of the localized particles would be totally uncertain, so
that gases may spontaneously heat up and electrons may be knocked out
of their orbits, in contradiction to our experience. To avoid this
kind of problems, GRW postulated that spontaneous localizations are
characterized by multiplications by Gaussians that are centered around
certain positions, e.g. the position corresponding to either the
outcome 'up' or the outcome 'down' in the
state |ps7>. This may be problematic, because in
either case the state of the L-apparatus pointer at (what we
characteristically conceive as) the end of the L-measurement would be
a superposition of the positions 'up' and
'down.' For although this superposition
'concentrates' on either the outcome 'up' or
the outcome 'down' (i.e., the peak of the wave function
that corresponds to this state concentrates on one of these
positions), it also has 'tails' that go everywhere: The
state of the L-apparatus is a superposition of an infinite number of
different positions. Thus, it follows from the eigenstate-eigenvalue
link that the position observable of the L-apparatus has no definite
value at the end of the measurement. But if the position observable
having a definite value is indeed required in order for the
L-apparatus to have a definite location, then the pointer will point
to neither 'up' nor 'down,' and the GRW
collapse models will fail to reproduce the classical-like behavior of
such
systems.[11]
In later models, GRW proposed to interpret the quantum state as a
density of mass and they postulated that if almost all the density of
mass of a system is concentrated in a certain region, then the system
is located in that region. Accordingly, pointers of
measurement apparatuses do have definite positions at the end of
measurement interactions. Yet, this solution has also given rise to a
debate (see Albert and Loewer 1995, Lewis 1997, 2003a, 2004, Ghirardi
and Bassi 1999, Bassi and Ghirardi 1999, 2001, Clifton and Monton 1999,
2000, Frigg 2003, and Parker 2003).
The exact details of the collapse mechanism and its characteristics in
the GRW/Pearle models have no significant implications for the type of
non-separability and holism they postulate--all these models
basically postulate the same kinds of non-separability and holism as
orthodox quantum mechanics (see section 5.1.1). And action at a
distance between the L- and the R-wing will occur if the L-measurement
interaction, a supposedly local event in the L-wing, causes some local
events in the R-wing, such as the event of the pointer of the
measurement apparatus coming to possess a definite measurement outcome
during the R-measurement. That is, action at a distance will occur if
the L-measurement causes the R-particle to come to possess a definite
*z*-spin and this in turn causes the pointer of the R-apparatus
to come to possess the corresponding measurement outcome in the
R-measurement. Furthermore, if the L-measurement causes the R-particle
to come to possess (momentarily) a definite position in the R-wing,
then the action at a distance between the L- and the R-wing will occur
independently of whether the R-particle undergoes a spin
measurement.
The above discussion is based on an intuitive notion of action at a
distance and it presupposes that action at a distance is compatible
with non-separability and holism. In the next section we shall provide
more precise characterizations of action at a distance and in light of
these characterizations reconsider the question of the nature of
action at a distance in the GRW/Pearle collapse models.
### 5.2 Can action-at-a-distance co-exist with non-separability and holism?
The action at a distance in the GRW/Pearle models is different from
the Newtonian action at a distance in various respects. First, in
contrast to Newtonian action at a distance, this action is independent
of the distance between the measurement events. Second, while
Newtonian action is symmetric, the action in the GRW/Pearle models is
(generally) asymmetric: Either the L-measurement influences the
properties of the R-particle or the R-measurement influences the
properties of the L-particle, depending on which measurement occurs
first (the action will be symmetric when both measurements occur
simultaneously). Third (and more important to our consideration), in
contrast to Newtonian action at a distance, before the end of the
L-measurement the state of the L-apparatus and the R-particle is not
separable and accordingly it is not clear that the influence is
between separate existences, as the case is supposed to be in
Newtonian gravity.
This non-separability of the states of the particle pair and the
L-measurement apparatus, and more generally the fact that the
non-locality in collapse theories is due to state non-separability, has
led a number of philosophers and physicists to think that wave
collapses do not involve action at a distance. Yet, the question of
whether there is an action at a distance in the GRW/Pearle models (and
various other quantum theories) depends on how we interpret the term
'action at a distance.' And, as I will suggest below, on a
natural reading of Isaac Newton's and Samuel Clarke's
comments concerning action at a distance, there may be a peaceful
coexistence between action at a distance and non-separability and
holism.
Newton famously struggled to find out the cause of
gravity.[12]
In a letter to Bentley, dated January 17 1692/3, he said:
>
>
> You sometimes speak of Gravity as essential and inherent to Matter.
> Pray do not ascribe that Notion to me, for the Cause of Gravity is what
> I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more Time to
> consider it. (Cohen 1978, p. 298)
In a subsequent letter to Bentley, dated February 25, 1692/3, he
added:
>
>
> It is inconceivable that inanimate Matter should, without the
> Mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and
> affect other matter without mutual Contact...That Gravity should
> be innate, inherent and essential to Matter, so that one body may act
> upon another at a distance thro' a Vacuum, without the Mediation
> of any thing else, by and through which their Action and Force may be
> conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an Absurdity that I
> believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of
> thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an Agent
> acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this Agent be
> material or immaterial, I have left to the Consideration of my
> readers. (Cohen 1978, pp. 302-3)
Samuel Clarke, Newton's follower, similarly struggled with the
question of the cause of gravitational phenomenon. In his famous
controversy with Leibniz, he
said:[13]
>
>
> That one body attracts another without any intermediate means, is
> indeed not a miracle but a contradiction; for 'tis supposing
> something to act where it is not. But the means by which two bodies
> attract each other, may be invisible and intangible and of a different
> nature from mechanism ...
And he added:
>
>
> That this phenomenon is not produced *sans moyen*, that is
> without a cause capable of producing such an effect, is undoubtedly
> true. Philosophers therefore can search after and discover that cause,
> if they can; be it mechanical or not. But if they cannot discover the
> cause, is therefore the effect itself, the phenomenon, or the matter of
> fact discovered by experience ... ever the less true?
Newton's and Clarke's comments suggest that for them
gravity was a law-governed phenomenon, i.e., a phenomenon in which
objects influence each other at a distance according to the Newtonian
law of gravity, and that this influence is due to some means which may
be invisible and intangible and of a different nature from mechanism.
On this conception of action at a distance, there seems to be no reason
to exclude the possibility of action at a distance in the quantum realm
even if that realm is holistic or the state of the relevant systems is
non-separable. That is, action at a distance may be characterized as
follows:
>
> **Action at a distance** is a phenomenon in which a
> change in intrinsic properties of one system induces a change in the
> intrinsic properties of a distant system, *independently* of the
> influence of any other systems on the distant system, and without
> there being a process that carries this influence contiguously in space
> and time.
>
We may alternatively characterize action at a distance in a more
liberal way:
>
> **Action\* at a distance** is a phenomenon in which a
> change in intrinsic properties of one system induces a change in the
> intrinsic properties of a distant system without there being a process
> that carries this influence contiguously in space and time.
>
And while Newton and Clarke did not have an explanation for the action
at a distance involved in Newtonian gravity, on the above
characterizations action at a distance in the quantum realm would be
explained by the holistic nature of the quantum realm and/or
non-separability of the states of the systems involved. In particular,
if in the EPR/B experiment the L-apparatus pointer has a definite
position before the L-measurement and the R-particle temporarily comes
to possess definite position during the L-measurement, then the
GRW/Pearle models involve action at a distance and thus also action\*
at a distance. On the other hand, if the R-particle never comes to
possess a definite position during the L-measurement, then the
GRW/Pearle models only involve action\* at a distance.
### 5.3 No-collapse theories
#### 5.3.1 Bohm's theory
In 1952, David Bohm proposed a deterministic, 'hidden
variables' quantum theory that reproduces all the observable
predictions of orthodox quantum mechanics (see Bohm 1952, Bohm,
Schiller and Tiomno 1955, Bell 1982, Dewdney, Holland and Kyprianidis
1987, Durr, Goldstein and Zanghi 1992a, 1997, Albert 1992,
Valentini 1992, Bohm and Hiley 1993, Holland 1993, Cushing 1994, and
Cushing, Fine and Goldstein 1996; for an entry level review, see the
entry on Bohmian mechanics and Albert 1992, chapter 5).
In contrast to orthodox quantum mechanics and the GRW/Pearle
collapse models, in Bohm's theory wave functions always evolve
according to the Schrodinger equation, and thus they never
collapse. Wave functions do not represent the states of systems.
Rather, they are states of a 'quantum field (on configuration
space)' that influences the states of
systems.[14]
Also, particles always have definite positions, and the positions of
the particles and their wave function at a certain time jointly
determine the trajectories of the particles at all future times. Thus,
particles' positions and their wave function determine the
outcomes of any measurements (so long as these outcomes are recorded
in the positions of some physical systems, as in any practical
measurements).
There are various versions of Bohm's theory. In the
'minimal' Bohm theory, formulated by Bell
(1982),[15]
the wave function is interpreted as a 'guiding' field
(which has no source or any dependence on the particles) that
deterministically governs the trajectories of the particles according
to the so-called 'guiding equation' (which expresses the
velocities of the particles in terms of the wave
function).[16]
The states of systems are separable (the state of any composite
system is completely determined by the state of its subsystems), and
they are completely specified by the particles'
positions. Spins, and any other properties which are not directly
derived from positions, are not intrinsic properties of
systems. Rather, they are relational properties that are determined by
the systems' positions and the guiding field. In particular,
each of the particles in the EPR/B experiment has dispositions to
'spin' in various directions, and these dispositions are
relational properties of the particles-- they are
(generally) determined by the guiding field and the positions of the
particles relative to the measurement apparatuses and to each
other.
>
> ![figure4 - EPR/B experiment with Stern-Gerlach measurement devices](figure4.jpg)
>
>
> **Figure 4**. The EPR/B experiment with Stern-Gerlach
> measurement devices. Stern-Gerlach 1 is on, set up to measure the
> *z*-spin of the L-particle, and Stern-Gerlach 2 is off. The
> horizontal lines in the left-hand-side denote the trajectories of six
> L-particles in the spin singlet state after an (impulsive)
> *z*-spin measurement on the L-particle, and the horizontal
> lines in the right-hand-side denote the trajectories of the
> corresponding R-particles. The center plane is aligned orthogonally to
> the *z*-axis, so that particles that emerge above this plane
> correspond to *z*-spin 'up' outcome and particles
> that emerge below this plane correspond to *z*-spin
> 'down' outcome. The little arrows denote the
> *z*-spin components of the particles in the
> 'non-minimal' Bohm theory (where spins are intrinsic
> properties of particles), and are irrelevant for the
> 'minimal' Bohm theory (where spins are not intrinsic
> properties of particles).
>
>
To see the nature of non-locality postulated by the minimal Bohm
theory, consider again the EPR/B experiment and suppose that the
measurement apparatuses are Stern-Gerlach (S-G) magnets which are
prepared to measure *z*-spin. In any run of the experiment, the
measurement outcomes will depend on the initial positions of the
particles and the order of the measurements. Here is why. In the
minimal Bohm theory, the spin singlet state denotes the relevant state
of the guiding field rather than the intrinsic properties of the
particle pair. If the L-measurement occurs before the R-measurement,
the guiding field and the position of the L-particle at the emission
time jointly determine the disposition of the L-particle to emerge
from the S-G device either above or below a plane aligned in the
*z*-direction; where emerging above (below) the plane means
that the L-particle *z*-spins 'up'
('down') about the *z*-axis and the L-apparatus
'pointer' points to 'up' ('down')
(see Fig. 4 above). All the L-particles that are emitted above the
center plane aligned orthogonally to the *z*-direction, like
the L-particles 1-3, will be disposed to spin 'up'; and
all the particles that are emitted below this plane, like the
L-particles 4-6, will be disposed to spin 'down.'
Similarly, if the R-measurement occurs before the L-measurement, the
guiding field and the position of the R-particle at the emission time
jointly determine the disposition of the R-particle to emerge either
above the *z*-axis (i.e., to *z*-spin 'up')
or below the *z*-axis (i.e., to *z*-spin
'down') according to whether it is above or below the
center plane, independently of the position of the L-particle along
the *z*-axis.
But the *z*-spin disposition of the R-particle changes
immediately after an (earlier) *z*-spin measurement on the
L-particle: The R-particles 1-3 (see Fig. 4), which were previously
disposed to *z*-spin 'up,' will now be disposed to
*z*-spin 'down,' i.e., to emerge below the center
plane aligned orthogonally to the *z*-axis; and the R-particles
4-6, which were previously disposed to *z*-spin
'down,' will now be disposed to *z*-spin
'up,' i.e., to emerge above this center plane. Yet, the
L-measurement *per se* does not have any immediate influence on
the state of the R-particle: The L-measurement does not influence the
position of the R-particle or any other property that is directly
derived from this position. It only changes the guiding field, and
thus grounds new spin dispositions for the R-particle. But these
dispositions are not intrinsic properties of the R-particle. Rather,
they are relational properties of the R-particle, which are grounded
in the positions of both particles and the state of the guiding
field.[17]
(Note that in the particular case in which the L-particle is emitted
above the center plane aligned orthogonally to the *z*-axis and
the R-particle is emitted below that plane, an earlier *z*-spin
on the L-particle will have no influence on the outcome of a
*z*-spin on the R-particle.)
While there is no contiguous process to carry the influence of the
L-measurement outcome on events in the R-wing, the question of whether
this influence amounts to action at a distance depends on the exact
characterization of this term. In contrast to the GRW/Pearle collapse
models, the influence of the L-measurement outcome on the intrinsic
properties of the R-particle is dependent on the R-measurement: Before
this measurement occurs, there are no changes in the R-particle's
intrinsic properties. Yet, the influence of the L-measurement on the
R-particle is at a distance. Thus, the EPR/B experiment as depicted by
the minimal Bohm theory involves action\* at a distance but not action
at a distance.
Bohm's theory portrays the quantum realm as deterministic. Thus, the
single-case objective probabilities, i.e., the chances, it assigns to
individual spin-measurement outcomes in the EPR/B experiment are
different from the corresponding quantum-mechanical probabilities. In
particular, while in quantum mechanics the chances of the outcomes
'up' and 'down' in an earlier L- (R-) spin
measurement are both 1/2, in Bohm's theory these chances are
either one or zero. Yet, Bohm's theory postulates a certain
distribution, the so-called 'quantum-equilibrium
distribution,' over all the possible positions of pairs with the
same guiding field. This distribution is computed from the
quantum-mechanical wave function, and it is typically interpreted as
ignorance over the actual position of the pair; an ignorance that may
be motivated by dynamical considerations and statistical patterns
exhibited by ensembles of pairs with the same wave function (for more
details, see the entry on bohmian mechanics, section 9). And the
sum-average (or more generally the integration) over this distribution
reproduces all the quantum-mechanical observable predictions.
What is the status of this probability postulate? Is it a law of
nature or a contingent fact (if it is a fact at all)? The answers to
these questions vary (see Section 7.2.1, Bohm 1953, Valentini 1991a,b,
1992, 1996, 2002, Valentini and Westman 2004, Durr, Goldstein and
Zanghi 1992a,b, 1996, fn. 15, and Callender 2006).
Turning to the question of non-separability, the minimal Bohm theory
does not involve state non-separability. For recall that in this
theory the state of a system does not consist in its wave function,
but rather in the system's position, and the position of a composite
system always factorizes into the positions of its subsystems. Here,
the non-separability of the wave function reflects the state of the
guiding field. This state propagates not in ordinary three-space but
in configuration space, where each point specifies the configuration
of both particles. The guiding field of the particle pair cannot be
factorized into the guiding field that governs the trajectory of the
L-particle and the guiding field that governs the trajectory of the
R-particle. The evolution of the particles' trajectories,
properties and dispositions is non-separable, and accordingly the
particles' trajectories, properties and dispositions are
correlated even when the particles are far away from each other and do
not interact with each other. Thus, process separability fails.
In the non-minimal Bohm
theory[18],
the behavior of an *N*-particle system is determined by its
wave function and the intrinsic properties of the particles. But, in
contrast to the minimal theory, in the non-minimal theory spins are
intrinsic properties of particles. The wave function always evolves
according to the Schrodinger equation, and it is interpreted as a
'quantum field' (which has no sources or any dependence on
the particles). The quantum field guides the particles via the
'quantum potential,' an entity which is determined from
the quantum field, and the evolution of properties is fully
deterministic.[19]
Like in the minimal Bohm theory, the non-separability of the wave
function in the EPR/B experiment dictates that the evolution of the
particles' trajectories, properties and dispositions is
non-separable, but the behavior of the particles is somewhat different.
In the earlier *z*-spin measurement on the L-particle, the
quantum potential continuously changes, and this change induces an
immediate change in the *z*-spin of the R-particle. If the
L-particle starts to spin 'up' ('down') in the
*z*-direction, the R-particle will start to spin
'down' ('up') in the same direction (see the
little arrows in Fig.
4).[20]
Accordingly, the L-measurement induces instantaneous action at a
distance between the L- and the R-wing. Yet, similarly to the minimal
Bohm theory, while the disposition of the R-particle to emerge above
or below the center plane aligned orthogonally to the
*z*-direction in a *z*-spin measurement may change
instantaneously, the actual trajectory of the R-particle along the
*z*-direction does not change before the measurement of the
R-particle's *z*-spin occurs. Only during the R-measurement,
the spin and the position of the R-particle get correlated and the
R-particle's trajectory along the *z*-direction is dictated by
the value of its (intrinsic) *z*-spin.
Various objections have been raised against Bohm's theory (for a
detailed list and replies, see the entry on Bohmian mechanics, section
15). One main objection is that in Bohmian mechanics, the guiding
field influences the particles, but the particles do not influence the
guiding field. Another common objection is that the theory is involved
with a radical type of non-locality, and that this type of
non-locality is incompatible with relativity. While it may be very
difficult, or even impossible, to reconcile Bohm's theory with
relativity, as is not difficult to see from the above discussion, the
type of non-locality that the minimal Bohm theory postulates in the
EPR/B experiment does not seem more radical than the non-locality
postulated by the orthodox interpretation and the GRW/Pearle collapse
models.
#### 5.3.2 Modal interpretations
Modal interpretations of quantum mechanics were designed to solve the
measurement problem and to reconcile quantum mechanics with
relativity. They are no-collapse, (typically) indeterministic
hidden-variables theories. Quantum-mechanical states of systems
(which may be construed as denoting their states or information about
these states) always evolve according to unitary and linear dynamical
equations (the Schrodinger equation in the non-relativistic
case). And the orthodox quantum-mechanical state description of
systems is supplemented by a set of properties, which depends on the
quantum-mechanical state and which is supposed to be rich enough to
account for the occurrence of definite macroscopic events and their
classical-like behavior, but sufficiently restricted to escape all the
known no-hidden-variables theorems. (For modal interpretations, see
van Fraassen 1973, 1981, 1991, chapter 9, Kochen 1985, Krips 1987,
Dieks 1988, 1989, Healey 1989, Bub 1992, 1994, 1997, Vermaas and Dieks
1995, Clifton 1995, Bacciagaluppi 1996, Bacciagaluppi and Hemmo 1996,
Bub and Clifton 1996, Hemmo 1996b, Bacciagaluppi and Dickson 1999,
Clifton 2000, Spekkens and Sipe 2001a,b, Bene and Dieks 2002, and
Berkovitz and Hemmo 2006a,b. For an entry-level review, see the entry
on modal interpretations of quantum theory. For comprehensive reviews
and analyses of modal interpretations, see Bacciagaluppi 1996, Hemmo
1996a, chapters 1-3, Dieks and Vermaas 1998, Vermaas 1999, and the
entry on modal interpretations of quantum theory. For the
no-hidden-variables theorems, see Kochen and Specker 1967,
Greenberger, Horne and Zeilinger 1989, Mermin 1990 and the entry on
the Kochen-Specker
theorem.)[21]
Modal interpretations vary in their property assignment. For
simplicity, we shall focus on modal interpretations in which the
property assignment is based on the so-called Schmidt
biorthogonal-decomposition theorem (see Kochen 1985, Dieks 1989, and
Healey 1989). Let *S*1 and *S*2 be
systems associated with the Hilbert spaces
*HS*1 and
*HS*2, respectively. There exist bases
{|a*i*>} and
{|b*i*>} for
*HS*1 and
*HS*2 respectively such that the state of
*S*1+*S*2 can be expressed as a
linear combination of the following form of vectors from these
bases:
>
> |ps*8*
> >*S*1+*S*2 =
> [?]*i ci*
> |a*i*>*S*1
> |b*i*>*S*2.
When the absolute values of the coefficients *ci*
are all unequal, the bases
{|a*i*>} and
{|b*i*>} and the above
decomposition of |ps8
>*S*1+*S*2 are
unique. In that case, it is postulated that *S*1 has
a determinate value for each observable associated with
*HS*1 with the basis
{|a*i*>} and
*S*2 has a determinate value for each observable
associated with *HS*2 with the basis
{|b*i*>}, and |*ci*|2
provide the (ignorance)
probabilities of the possible values that these observables may
have.[22]
For example, suppose that the state of the L- and the R-particle in
the EPR/B experiment before the measurements is:
>
> |ps9> = (1/[?]2+e)
> |*z*-up>*L*|*z*-down>*R* [?] (1/[?]2-e')
> |*z*-down>*L*|*z*-up>*R*
where 1/[?]2 >> e,e',
(1/[?]2+e)2+(1/[?]2-e')2
= 1, and (as before) |*z*-up>*L*
(|*z*-up>*R*) and |*z*-down>*L* (|*z*-down>*R*) denote the states of the L- (R-)
particle having *z*-spin 'up' and *z*-spin 'down',
respectively.[23]
Then, either the L-particle spins 'up' and the R-particle
spins 'down' in the *z*-direction, or the
L-particle spins 'down' and the R-particle spins
'up' in the *z*-direction. Thus, in contrast to the
orthodox interpretation and the GRW/Pearle collapse models, in modal
interpretations the particles in the EPR/B experiment may have
definite spin properties even before any measurement occurs.
To see how the modal interpretation accounts for the curious
correlations in EPR/B-type experiments, let us suppose that the state
of the particle pair and the measurement apparatuses at the emission
time is:
>
> |ps10> = ((1/[?]2+e)
> |*z*-up>*L*
> |*z*-down>*R* [?]
> (1/[?]2[?]e')
> |*z*-down>*L*
> |*z*-up>*R*)
> |ready>*AL*|ready>*AR*
>
where |ready>*AL*
(|ready>*AR*) denotes the state of the
L-apparatus (R-apparatus) being ready to measure *z*-spin. In
this state, the L- and the R-apparatus are in the definite state of
being ready to measure *z*-spin, and (similarly to the state
|ps9>) the L- and the R-particle have definite
*z*-spin properties: Either the L-particle has *z*-spin
'up' and the R-particle has *z*-spin
'down,' or the L-particle has *z*-spin
'down' and the R-particle has *z*-spin
'up,'[24]
where the probability of the realization of each of these
possibilities is approximately 1/2. In the (earlier) *z*-spin
measurement on the L-particle, the state of the particle pair and the
apparatuses evolves to the state:
>
> |ps11> = ((1/[?]2+e)
> |*z*-up>*L*|up>*AL*|*z*-down>*R* [?] (1/[?]2-e')
> |*z*-down>*L*|down>*AL*|*z*-up>*R*) |ready>*AR*
>
where (as before) |up>*AL* and
|down>*AL* denote the states of the L-apparatus
pointing to the outcomes *z*-spin 'up' and
*z*-spin 'down', respectively. In this state,
either the L-particle has a *z*-spin 'up' and the
L-apparatus points to 'up,' or the L-particle has
*z*-spin 'down' and the L-apparatus points to
'down.' And, again, the probability of each of these
possibilities is approximately 1/2. The evolution of the properties
from the state |ps10> to the state
|ps11> depends on the dynamical laws. In almost all
modal interpretations, if the particles have definite *z*-spin
properties before the measurements, the outcomes of *z*-spin
measurements will reflect these properties. That is, the evolution of
the properties of the particles and the measurement apparatuses will
be deterministic, so that the spin properties of the particles do not
change in the L-measurement and the pointer of the L-apparatus comes
to display the outcome that corresponds to the *z*-spin
property that the L-particle had before the measurement. If, for
example, before the measurements the L- and the R-particle have
respectively the properties *z*-spin 'up' and
*z*-spin 'down', the (earlier) *z*-spin
measurement on the L-particle will yield the outcome 'up'
and the spin properties of the particles will remain
unchanged. Accordingly, a *z*-spin measurement on the
R-particle will yield the outcome 'down'. Thus, in this
case the modal interpretation involves neither action at a distance
nor action\* at a distance.
However, if the measurement apparatuses are set up to measure
*x*-spin rather than *z*-spin, the evolution of the
properties of the L-particle and the L-apparatus will be
indeterministic. As before, the L-measurement will not cause any change
in the actual spin properties of the R-particle. But the L-measurement
outcome will cause an instant change in the spin dispositions of the
R-particle and the R-measurement apparatus. If, for example, the
L-measurement outcome is *x*-spin 'up' and the
L-particle comes to posses *x*-spin 'up,' then the
R-particle and the R-apparatus will have respectively
the dispositions to possess *x*-spin 'down' and to
display the outcome *x*-spin 'down' on a
*x*-spin measurement. Thus, like the minimal Bohm theory, the
modal interpretation may involve action\* at a distance in the EPR/B
experiment. But, unlike the minimal Bohm theory, here spins are
intrinsic properties of particles.
In the above modal interpretation, property composition fails: The
properties of composite systems are not decomposable into the
properties of their subsystems. Consider, again, the state
|ps10>. As 'separated' systems (i.e., in
the decompositions of the composite system of the particle
pair+apparatuses into the L-particle and the R-particle+apparatuses
and into the R-particle and the L-particle+apparatuses) the L- and the
R-particle have definite *z*-spin properties. But, as
subsystems of the composite system of the particle pair (e.g. in the
decomposition of the composite system of the particle pair+apparatuses
into the particle pair and the apparatuses), they have no definite
*z*-spin properties.
A failure of property composition occurs also in the state
|ps11>, where the L- and the R-particle have
definite *z*-spin properties both as 'separated'
systems and as subsystems of the particle pair (though in contrast with
|ps10>, in |ps11> the range
of the possible properties of the particles as separated systems and
as subsystems of the pair is the same). For nothing in the above property
assignment implies that in |ps11> the spin
properties that the L-particle has as a 'separated' system
and the spin properties that it has as a subsystem of the particle pair
be the same: The L-particle may have *z*-spin 'up'
as a separated system and *z*-spin 'down' as a
subsystem of the particle pair.
Furthermore, the dynamics of the properties that the L-particle
(R-particle) has as a separated system and the dynamics of its
properties as a subsystem of the particle pair are generally
different.[25]
Consider, again, the state |ps10>. In the (earlier)
*z*-spin measurement on the L-particle, the spin properties
that the L-particle has as a separated system follow a deterministic
evolution -- the L-particle has either *z*-spin
'up' or *z*-spin 'down' before and
after the L-measurement; whereas as a subsystem of the particle pair,
the spin properties of the L-particle follow an indeterministic
evolution -- the L-particle has no definite spin properties
before the L-measurement and either *z*-spin 'up'
(with approximately chance 1/2) or *z*-spin
'down' (with approximately chance 1/2) after the
L-measurement.
The failure of property composition implies that the quantum realm as
depicted by the above version of the modal interpretation involves
state non-separability and property and relational holism. State
separability fails because the state of the particle pair is not
generally determined by the separate states of the particles. Indeed,
as is easily shown, the actual properties that the L- and the
R-particle each has in the state |ps9> are also
compatible with product states in which the L- and the R-particle are
not entangled. Property and relational holism fail because in the
state |ps9> the properties of the pair do not
supervene upon the properties of its subsystems and the spatiotemporal
relations between them. Furthermore, process separability fails for
similar reasons.
The failure of property composition in the modal interpretation
calls for explanation. It may be tempting to postulate that the
properties that a system (e.g. the L-particle) has, as a separated
system, are the same as the properties that it has as a subsystem of
composite systems. But, as Bacciagaluppi (1995) and Clifton (1996a)
have shown, such property assignment will be inconsistent: It will be
subject to a Kochen and Specker-type contradiction. Furthermore, as
Vermaas (1997) demonstrates, the properties of composite systems and
the properties of their subsystems cannot be correlated (in ways
compatible with the Born rule).
For what follows in the rest of this subsection, the views of
different authors differ widely. Several variants of modal
interpretations were developed in order to fix the problem of the
failure of property composition. The most natural explanation of the
failure of property composition is that quantum states assign
relational rather than intrinsic properties to systems (see Kochen
1985, Bene and Dieks 2002, and Berkovitz and Hemmo 2006a,b). For
example, in the relational modal interpretation proposed by Berkovitz
and Hemmo (2006a,b), the main idea is that quantum states assign
properties to systems only relative to other systems, and properties
of a system that are related to different systems are generally
different. In particular, in the state |ps10> the
L-particle has a definite *z*-spin property relative to the
R-particle, the measurement apparatuses and the rest of the universe,
but (as a subsystem of the particle pair) it has no definite
*z*-spin relative to the measurement apparatuses and the rest
of
universe.[26]
On this interpretation, the properties of systems are highly
non-local by their very nature. Properties like pointing to
'up' and pointing to 'down' are not intrinsic
to the measurement apparatuses. Rather, they are relations between
the apparatuses and other systems. For example, the property of the
L-apparatus pointing to 'up' relative to the particle
pair, the R-apparatus and the rest of the universe is not intrinsic to
the L-apparatus; it is a relation between the L-apparatus and the
particle pair, the R-apparatus and the rest of the universe. As such,
this property is highly non-local: It is located in neither the L-wing
nor any other subregion of the universe. Yet, due to the dynamical
laws, properties like the position of pointers of measurement
apparatuses, which appear to us to be local, behave like local
properties in any experimental circumstances, and accordingly this
radical type of non-locality is unobservable (for more details, see
Berkovitz and Hemmo 2006b, sections 8.1 and 9).
Another way to try to explain the failure of property composition is
to interpret the properties of composite systems as holistic,
non-decomposable properties. On this interpretation, the
*z*-spin 'up' property that the L-particle has as a
subsystem of the particle pair in the state |ps9> is
completely different from the *z*-spin 'up'
property that the L-particle has as a separated system, and the use of
the term '*z*-spin up' in both cases is misleading
(for more details, see Berkovitz and Hemmo
2006a).[27]
The relational and holistic interpretations of properties mark a
radical shift from the standard interpretation of properties in
orthodox quantum mechanics. Other advocates of the modal interpretation
have chosen not to follow this interpretation, and opted for a modal
interpretation that does not violate property composition. While the
property assignment above does not assume any preferred partition of
the universe (the partition of the universe into a particle pair and
the rest of the universe is as good as the partition of the universe
into the L-particle and the rest of the universe), proponents of
property composition postulated that there is a preferred partition of
the universe into 'atomic' systems and accordingly a
preferred factorization of the Hilbert space of the universe. This
preferred factorization is supposed to be the basis for the
'core' property assignment: Properties are prescribed to
atomic systems according to a property assignment that is a
generalization of the bi-orthogonal decomposition property
assignment.[28]
And the properties of complex systems are postulated to be
compositions of the properties of their atomic systems (see the entry
on modal interpretations of quantum theory, section 2, and
Bacciagaluppi and Dickson 1999). The challenge for this atomic modal
interpretation is to justify the assumption that there is a preferred
partition of the universe, and to provide some idea about how such
factorization should look like.
Finally, while the modal interpretation was designed to solve the
measurement problem and reconcile quantum mechanics with special
relativity, it faces challenges on both accounts. First, in certain
imprefect measurements (where there are imprefections in the coupling
between the measured system and the pointer of the measurement
apparatus and/or the pointer and the environment), modal
interpretations that are based on the Schmidt
biorthogonal-decomposition theorem (and more generally the spectral
decomposition theorem) fail to account for definite measurement
outcomes, in contradiction to our experience (see Bacciagaluppi and
Hemmo 1996 and Bacciagaluppi 2000). For versions of the modal
interpretations that seem to escape this problem, see Van Fraassen
(1973, 1991), Bub (1992, 1997), Bene and Dieks (2002) and Berkovitz
and Hemmo (2006a,b). Second, as we shall see in section 10.2, a number
of no-go theorems challenge the view that modal interpretations could
be genuinely relativistic.
#### 5.3.3 Everett-like interpretations
In 1957, Everett proposed a new no-collapse interpretation of orthodox
quantum mechanics (see Everett 1957a,b, 1973, Barrett 1999, the entry
on Everett's relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics, the
entry on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and
references therein). The Everett interpretation is a no-collapse
interpretation of quantum mechanics, where the evolution of quantum
states is always according to unitary and linear dynamical equations
(the Schrodinger equation in the non-relativistic case). In this
interpretation, quantum states are fundamentally relative. Systems have
relative states, which are derivable from the various branches of the
entangled states. For example, consider again |ps11>.
>
> |ps11> = (1/[?]2+e)
> |*z*-up>*L*|up>*AL*|*z*-down>*R* |ready>*AR*
> [?] (1/[?]2-e')
> |*z*-down>*L*|down>*AL*|*z*-up>*R* |ready>*AR*.
>
In this quantum-mechanical state, the L-apparatus is in the state of
pointing to the outcome *z*-spin 'up'
*relative* to the L-particle being in the state *z*-spin
'up,' the R-particle being in the state *z*-spin
'down' and the R-apparatus being ready to measure
*z*-spin; and in the state of pointing to the outcome
*z*-spin 'down' *relative* to the L-particle
being in the state *z*-spin 'down,' the R-particle
being in the state *z*-spin 'up' and the
R-apparatus being ready to measure *z*-spin. Likewise, the
L-particle is in the state *z*-spin 'up' relative
to the L-apparatus being in the state of pointing to the outcome
*z*-spin 'up,' the R-particle being in the state
*z*-spin 'down' and the R-apparatus being ready to
measure *z*-spin; and in the state *z*-spin
'down' relative to the L-apparatus being in the state of
pointing to the outcome *z*-spin 'down,' the
R-particle being in the state *z*-spin 'up' and the
R-apparatus being ready to measure *z*-spin. And similarly,
*mutatis mutandis*, for the relative state of the R-particle
and the R-apparatus.
Everett's original formulation left the exact meaning of these
relative states and their relations to observers' experience and
beliefs open, and there have been different Everett-like
interpretations of these states. Probably the most popular reading of
Everett is the splitting-worlds interpretation (see DeWitt 1971,
Everett's relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics, Barrett
1999, and references therein). In the splitting-worlds interpretation,
each of the branches of the state |ps11> refers to a
different class of worlds (all of which are real) where the states of
the L-apparatus, R-apparatus and the particles are all separable:
Class-1 worlds in which the L-particle is in the state *z*-spin
'up,' the R-particle is in the state *z*-spin
'down,' the L-apparatus is in the state of pointing to the
outcome *z*-spin 'up' and the R-apparatus in the
state of being ready to measure *z*-spin; and class-2 worlds in
which the L-particle is in the state *z*-spin
'down,' the R-particle is in the state *z*-spin
'up,' the L-apparatus is in the state of pointing to the
outcome *z*-spin 'down' and the R-apparatus is in
the state of being ready to measure *z*-spin. More generally,
each term in state of the universe, as represented in a certain
preferred basis, reflects the states of its systems in some class of
worlds; where the range of the different classes of worlds increases
whenever the number of the terms in the quantum state (in the
preferred basis) increases (this process is called
'splitting').
The splitting-worlds reading of Everett faces a number of challenges.
First, supporters of the Everett interpretation frequently motivate
their interpretation by arguing that it postulates the existence of
neither a controversial wave collapse nor hidden variables, and it
leaves the simple and elegant mathematical structure of quantum
mechanics intact. But, the splitting-worlds interpretation adds extra
structure to no-collapse orthodox quantum mechanics. Further, this
interpretation marks a radical shift from orthodox quantum
mechanics. A scientific theory is not constituted only by its
mathematical formalism, but also by the ontology it postulates, the
way it depicts the physical realm and the way it accounts for our
experience. The many parallel worlds ontology of the splitting-worlds
interpretation and its account of our experience are radically
different from the ontology of the intended interpretation of orthodox
quantum mechanics and its account for our experience. Second, relative
states are well defined in any basis, and the question arises as to
which basis should be preferred and the motivation for selecting one
particular basis over others. Third, in the splitting-worlds
interpretation each of the worlds in the universe may split into two
or more worlds, and the problem is that (similarly to the collapse in
orthodox collapse quantum mechanics) there are no clear criteria for
when a splitting occurs and how long it takes. Fourth, there is the
question of how the splitting-worlds interpretation accounts for the
statistical predictions of the orthodox theory. In the Everett-like
interpretations in general, and in the splitting-worlds interpretation
in particular, all the possible measurement outcomes in the EPR/B
experiment are realized and may be observed. Thus, the question
arises as to the meaning of probabilities in this interpretation. For
example, what is the meaning of the statement that in the state
|ps10> (see section 5.3.2) the probability of the
L-measurement apparatus pointing to the outcome 'up' in an
earlier *z*-spin measurement on the L-particle is
(approximately) 1/2? In the splitting-worlds interpretation the
probability of that outcome appears to be 1! Furthermore, setting
aside the problem of interpretation, there is also the question of
whether the splitting-worlds interpretation, and more generally
Everett-like interpretations, can account for the particular values of
the quantum probabilities of measurement outcomes. Everett claimed to
derive the Born probabilities in the context of his
interpretation. But this derivation has been controversial. (For
discussions of the meaning of probabilities, or more precisely the
meaning of the coefficients of the various terms in quantum states, in
Everett-like interpretations, see Butterfield 1996, Lockwood 1996a,b,
Saunders 1998, Vaidman 1998, Barnum et al. 2000, Bacciagaluppi 2002,
Gill 2003, Hemmo and Pitowsky 2003, 2005, Wallace 2002, 2003, 2005a,b,
Greaves 2004 and Saunders 2004, 2005.)
Other readings of Everett include the many-minds interpretation
(Albert and Loewer 1988, Barrett 1999, chapter 7), the
consistent-histories approach (Gell-Mann and Hartle 1990), the
Everett-like relational interpretation (Saunders 1995, Mermin 1998)
and (what may be called) the many-structures interpretation (Wallace
2005c). While these readings address more or less successfully the
problems of the preferred basis and splitting, except for the
many-minds interpretation of Albert and Loewer the question of whether
there could be a satisfactory interpretation of probabilities in the
context of these theories and the adequacy of the derivation of the
Born probabilities are still a controversial issue (see Deutsch 1999,
Wallace 2002, 2003, Lewis 2003, Graves 2004, Saunders 2004, Hemmo and
Pitowsky 2005, and Price 2006).
What kind of non-locality do Everett-like interpretations involve?
Unfortunately, the answer to this question is not straightforward, as
it depends on one's particular reading of the Everett
interpretation. Indeed, all the above readings of Everett seem to treat
the no-collapse wave function of the universe as a real physical entity
that reflects the non-separable state of the universe, and accordingly
they involve state non-separability. But, one may reasonably expect
that different readings depict different pictures of physical reality
and accordingly might postulate different kinds of non-locality. Thus,
any further analysis of the type of non-locality postulated by each of
these readings requires a detailed study of their ontology (which we
plan to conduct in future updates of this entry).
For example, the question of action at a distance in the EPR/B
experiment may arise in the context of the splitting-worlds interpretation,
but not in the context of Albert and Loewer's many-minds
interpretation. Albert and Loewer's interpretation takes the bare
no-collapse orthodox quantum mechanics to be the complete theory of the
physical realm. Accordingly, the L-apparatus in the state
|ps11> does not display any definite outcome. Yet,
in order to account for our experience of a classical-like world, where
at the end of measurements observers are typically in mental states of
perceiving definite outcomes, the many-minds interpretation appeals to
a dualism of mind-body. Each observer is associated with a continuous
infinity of non-physical minds. And while the physical state of the
world evolves in a completely deterministic manner according to the
Schrodinger evolution, and the pointers of the measurement
apparatuses in the EPR/B experiment display no definite outcomes,
states of minds evolve in a genuinely indeterministic fashion so as to
yield an experience of perceiving definite measurement outcomes. For
example, consider again, the state |ps10>. While
in a first *z*-spin L-measurement, this state evolves
deterministically into the state |ps11>, minds of
observers evolve indeterministically into either the state of
perceiving the outcome *z*-spin 'up' or the state of
perceiving the outcome *z*-spin 'down' with the
usual Born-rule probabilities (approximately 50% chance for each of
these outcomes). Since in this state the L-particle has no definite
spin properties and the L-apparatus points to no definite measurement
outcome, and since in the later *z*-spin measurement on the
R-particle the R-particle does not come to possess any definite spin
properties and the R-apparatus points to no definite spin outcome, the
question of whether there is action at a distance between the L-particle and the
L-apparatus on the one hand and the R-particle and the R-apparatus on
the other does not arise.
## 6. Superluminal causation
In all the above interpretations of quantum mechanics, the failure of
factorizability (i.e., the failure of the joint probability of the
measurement outcomes in the EPR/B experiment to factorize into their
single probabilities) involves non-separability, holism and/or some
type of action at a distance. As we shall see below,
non-factorizability also implies superluminal causal dependence
according to certain accounts of causation.
First, as is not difficult to show, the failure of factorizability
implies superluminal causation according to various probabilistic
accounts of causation that satisfy Reichenbach's (1956, section 19)
principle of the common cause (for a review of this principle, see the
entry on Reichenbach's principle of the common cause).
Here is why. Reichenbach's principle may be formulated as follows:
>
>
> **PCC (Principle of the Common Cause).** For any
> correlation between two (distinct) events which do not cause each
> other, there is a common cause that screens them off from each other.
> Or formally: If distinct events *x* and *y* are
> correlated, i.e.,
>
>
>
> >
> > (Correlation)
> >
> > *P*(*x* & *y*)
> > [?] *P*(*x*) * *P*(*y*),
> >
>
>
>
>
> and they do not cause each other, then their common cause,
> *CC*(*x*,*y*), screens them off from each other, i.e.,
>
>
>
> >
> > (Screening Off)
> >
> >
> >
> > | | |
> > | --- | --- |
> > | *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*x*/*y*) =
> > *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*x*) | *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*y*)
> > [?] 0 |
> > | *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*y*/*x*) =
> > *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*y*) | *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*x*) [?]
> > 0.[29] |
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> Accordingly, *CC*(*x*,*y*) renders *x* and
> *y* probabilistically independent, and the joint probability of
> *x* and *y* factorizes upon
> *CC*(*x*,*y*):
>
>
>
> >
> > *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*x* & *y*) =
> > *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*x*) *
> > *P**CC*(*x*,*y*)(*y*).
> >
>
>
>
The above formulation of PCC is mainly intended to cover cases in
which *x* and *y* have no partial, non-common causes. But
PCC can be generalized as follows:
>
>
> **PCC\*.** The joint probability of any distinct,
> correlated events, *x* and *y*, which are not causally
> connected to each other, factorizes upon the union of their partial
> (separate) causes and their common cause. That is, let
> *CC*(*x*,*y*) denote the common causes of
> *x* and *y*, and *PC*(*x*) and
> *PC*(*y*) denote respectively their partial causes. Then,
> the joint probability of *x* and *y* *factorizes*
> *upon the Union of their Causal Pasts* (henceforth, FactorUCP),
> i.e., on the union of *PC*(*x*), *PC*(*y*)
> and *CC*(*x*,*y*):
>
>
>
>
> **FactorUCP**
>
> *P**PC*(*x*) *PC*(*y*)
> *CC*(*x*,*y*)
> (*x* & *y*) =
> *P**PC*(*x*)
> *CC*(*x*,*y*) (*x*) *
> *P**PC*(*y*)
> *CC*(*x*,*y*) (*y*).
>
>
>
>
>
Like PCC, the basic idea of FactorUCP is that the objective
probabilities of events that do not cause each other are determined by
their causal pasts, and given these causal pasts they are
probabilistically independent of each other. As is not difficult to
see, factorizability is a special case of FactorUCP. That is, to obtain
factorizability from FactorUCP, substitute l for
*CC*(*x*,*y*), *l* for
*PC*(*x*) and *r* for
*PC*(*y*). FactorUCP and the assumption that the
probabilities of the measurement-outcomes in the EPR/B experiment are
determined by the pair's state and the settings of the
measurement apparatuses jointly imply factorizability. Thus, given this
later assumption, the failure of factorizability implies superluminal
causation between the distant outcomes in the EPR/B experiment
according to any account of causation that satisfies FactorUCP (for
some examples of such accounts, see Butterfield 1989 and Berkovitz
1995a, 1995b, section 6.7,
1998b).[30]
Superluminal causation between the distant outcomes also exists
according to various counterfactual accounts of causation, including
accounts that do not satisfy FactorUCP. In particular, in Lewis's
(1986) influential account, counterfactual dependence between distinct
events implies causal dependence between them. And as Butterfield
(1992b) and Berkovitz (1998b) demonstrate, the violation of
Factorizability involves a counterfactual dependence between the
distant measurement outcomes in the EPR/B experiment.
But the violation of factorizability does not imply superluminal
causation according to some other accounts of causation. In
particular, in process accounts of causation there is no superluminal
causation in the EPR/B experiment. In such accounts, causal dependence
between events is explicated in terms of continuous processes in space
and time that transmit 'marks' or conserved quantities
from the cause to the effect (see Salmon 1998, chapters 1, 12, 16 and
18, Dowe 2000, the entry on causal processes, and references
therein). Thus, recalling (sections 1, 2, 4 and 5) that none of the
interpretations of quantum mechanics and alternative quantum theories
postulates any (direct) continuous process between the distant
measurement events in the EPR/B experiment, there is no superluminal
causation between them according to process accounts of causation.
## 7. Superluminal signaling
Whether or not the non-locality predicted by quantum theories may be
classified as action at a distance or superluminal causation, the
question arises as to whether this non-locality could be exploited to
allow superluminal (i.e., faster-than-light) signaling of information.
This question is of particular importance for those who interpret
relativity as prohibiting any such superluminal signaling. (We shall
return to discuss this interpretation in section 10.)
Superluminal signaling would require that the state of nearby
controllable physical objects (say, a keyboard in my computer)
superluminally influence distant observable physical phenomena (e.g. a
pattern on a computer screen light years away). The influence may be
deterministic or indeterministic, but in any case it should cause a
detectable change in the statistics of some distant physical
quantities.
It is commonly agreed that in quantum phenomena, superluminal
signaling is impossible in practice. Moreover, many believe that such
signaling is excluded in principle by the so-called 'no-signaling
theorem' (for proofs of this theorem, see Eberhard 1978,
Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber 1980, Jordan 1983, Shimony 1984, Redhead
1987, pp. 113-116 and 118). It is thus frequently claimed with respect
to EPR/B experiments that there is no such thing as a Bell telephone,
namely a telephone that could exploit the violation of the Bell
inequalities for superluminal signaling of
information.[31]
The no-signaling theorem demonstrates that orthodox quantum
mechanics excludes any possibility of superluminal signaling in the
EPR/B experiment. According to this theory, no controllable physical
factor in the L-wing, such as the setting of the L-measurement
apparatus, can take advantage of the entanglement between the systems
in the L- and the R-wing to influence the statistics of the measurement
outcomes (or any other observable) in the R-wing. As we have seen in
section 5.1.1, the orthodox theory is at best incomplete. Thus, the
fact that it excludes superluminal signaling does not imply that other
quantum theories or interpretations of the orthodox theory also exclude
such signaling. Yet, if the orthodox theory is empirically adequate, as
the consensus has it, its statistical predictions obtain, and
accordingly superluminal signaling will be excluded as a matter of
fact; for if this theory is empirically adequate, any quantum theory
will have to reproduce its statistics, including the exclusion of any
actual superluminal signaling.
But the no-signaling theorem does not demonstrate that superluminal
signaling would be impossible if orthodox quantum mechanics were not
empirically adequate. Furthermore, this theorem does not show that
superluminal signaling is in principle impossible in the quantum realm
as depicted by other theories, which *actually* reproduce the
statistics of orthodox quantum mechanics but do not prohibit in theory
the violation of this statistics. In sections 7.2-7.3, we shall
consider the in-principle possibility of superluminal signaling in
certain collapse and no-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics.
But, first, we need to consider the necessary and sufficient conditions
for superluminal signaling.
### 7.1 Necessary and sufficient conditions for superluminal signaling
To simplify things, in our discussion we shall focus on
non-factorizable models of the EPR/B experiment that satisfy
l-independence (i.e., the assumption that the distribution of
the states l is independent of the settings of the measurement
apparatuses). Superluminal signaling in the EPR/B experiment would be
possible in theory just in case the value of some controllable
physical quantity in the nearby wing could influence the statistics of
measurement outcomes in the distant wing. And in non-factorizable
models that satisfy l-independence this could happen just in
case the following conditions obtained:
>
> **Controllable probabilistic dependence.** The
> probabilities of distant measurement outcomes depend on some nearby
> *controllable* physical quantity.
>
>
> **l****-distribution.** There can be in theory an ensemble of particle pairs the states of which deviate from the quantum-equilibrium distribution; where the quantum-equilibrium distribution of pairs' states is the distribution that reproduces the predictions of orthodox quantum mechanics.
Four comments: (i) In controllable probabilistic dependence, the term
'probabilities of measurement outcomes' refers to the model
probabilities, i.e., the probabilities that the states l
prescribe for measurement outcomes.
(ii) Our discussion in this entry focuses on models of the EPR/B
experiment in which probabilities of measurement outcomes depend only
on the pair's state l and the settings of the measurement
apparatuses to measure certain properties. In such models, parameter
dependence (i.e., the dependence of the probability of the distant
measurement outcome on the setting of the nearby measurement
apparatus) is a necessary and sufficient condition for controllable
probabilistic dependence. But, recall (footnote 3) that in some models
of the EPR/B experiment, in addition to the pair's state and the
setting of the L- (R-) measurement apparatus there are other local
physical quantities that may be relevant for the probability of the L-
(R-) measurement outcome. In such models, parameter dependence is not
a necessary condition for controllable probabilistic dependence. Some
other physical quantities in the nearby wing may be relevant for the
probability of the distant measurement outcome. (That is, let a
and b denote all the relevant local physical quantities, other
than the settings of the measurement apparatuses, that may be relevant
for the probability of the L- and the R-outcome, respectively. Then,
controllable probabilistic dependence would obtain if for some pairs'
states l, L-setting *l*, R-setting *r* and local
physical quantities a and b, *P*l
*l r a b*(*yr*) [?]
*P*l *l r
b*(*yr*) obtained.) For the relevance
of such models to the question of the in-principle possibility of
superluminal signalling in some current interpretations of quantum
mechanics, see sections 7.3 and 7.4.
(iii) The quantum-equilibrium distribution will not be the same in all
models of the EPR/B experiment; for in general the states l
will not be the same in different models.
(iv) In models that actually violate both controllable probabilistic
dependence and l-distribution, the occurrence of controllable
probabilistic dependence would render the actual distribution of
l states as non-equilbrium distribution. Thus, if controllable
probabilistic dependence occurred in such models, the actual
distribution of l states would satisfy
l-distribution.
The argument for the necessity of controllable probabilistic
dependence and l-distribution is straightforward. Granted
l-independence, if the probabilistic dependence of the distant
outcome on a nearby physical quantity is not controllable, there can
be no way to manipulate the statistics of the distant outcome so as to
deviate from the statistical predictions of quantum
mechanics. Accordingly, superluminal transmission of information will
be impossible even in theory. And if l-distribution does not
hold, i.e., if the quantum-equilibrium distribution holds, controllable
probabilistic dependence will be of no use for superluminal
transmission of information. For, averaging over the model
probabilities according to the quantum-equilbrium distribution, the
model will reproduce the statistics of orthodox quantum
mechanics. That is, the distribution of the l-states will be
such that the probabilistic dependence of the distant outcome on the
nearby controllable factor will be washed out: In some states the
nearby controllable factor will raise the probability of the distant
outcome and in others it will decrease this probability, so that on
average the overall statistics of the distant outcome will be
independent of the nearby controllable factor (i.e., the same as the
statistics of orthodox quantum mechanics). Accordingly, superluminal
signaling will be impossible.
The argument for the sufficiency of these conditions is also
straightforward. If l-distribution held, it would be possible
in theory to arrange ensembles of particle pairs in which controllable
probabilistic dependence would not be washed out, and accordingly the
statistics of distant outcomes would depend on the nearby controllable
factor. (For a proof that these conditions are sufficient for
superluminal signaling in certain deterministic hidden variables
theories, see Valentini 2002.)
Note that the necessary and sufficient conditions for superluminal
signaling are different in models that do not exclude in theory the
violation of l-independence. In such models controllable
probabilistic dependence is not a necessary condition for superluminal
signaling. The reasoning is as follows. Consider any empirically
adequate model of the EPR/B experiment in which the pair's state and
the settings of the measurement apparatuses are the only relevant
factors for the probabilities of measurement outcomes, and the
quantum-equilibrium distribution is l-independent. In such a
model, parameter independence implies the failure of controllable
probabilistic dependence, yet the violation of l-independence
would imply the possibility of superluminal signaling: If
l-independence failed, a change in the setting of the nearby
measurement apparatus would cause a change in the distribution of the
states l, and a change in this distribution would induce a
change in the statistics of the distant (space-like separated)
measurement outcome.
Leaving aside models that violate l-independence, we now turn
to consider the prospects of controllable probabilistic dependence and
l-distribution, starting with no-collapse interpretations.
### 7.2 No-collapse theories
#### 7.2.1 Bohm's Theory
Bohm's theory involves parameter dependence and thus controllable
probabilistic dependence: The probabilities of distant outcomes depend
on the setting of the nearby apparatus. In some pairs' states
l, i.e., in some configurations of the positions of the particle
pair, a change in the apparatus setting of the (earlier) say
L-measurement will induce an immediate change in the probability of
the *R*-outcome: e.g. the probability of *R*-outcome
*z*-spin 'up' will be 1 if the L-apparatus is set
to measure *z*-spin and 0 if the L-apparatus is switched off
(see section 5.3.1). Thus, the question of superluminal signaling
turns on whether l-distribution obtains.
Now, recall (section 5.3.1) that Bohm's theory reproduces the quantum
statistics by postulating the quantum-equilibrium distribution over
the positions of particles. If this distribution is not an accidental
fact about our universe, but rather obtains as a matter of law,
superluminal signaling will be impossible in principle. Durr,
Goldstein and Zanghi (1992a,b, 1996, fn. 15) argue that, while
the quantum-equilibrium distribution is not a matter a law, other
distributions will be possible but atypical. Thus, they conclude that
although superluminal signaling is not impossible in theory, it may
occur only in atypical worlds. On the other hand, Valentini (1991a,b,
1992, 1996, 2002) and Valentini and Westman 2004) argue that there are
good reasons to think that our universe may well have started off in a
state of quantum non-equilibrium and is now approaching gradually a
state of equilibrium, so that even today some residual non-equilibrium
must be
present.[32]
Yet, even if such residual non-equilbrium existed, the question is
whether it would be possible to access any ensemble of systems in a
non-equilbrium distribution.
#### 7.2.2 Modal interpretations
The presence or absence of parameter independence (and accordingly the
presence or absence of controllable probabilistic dependence) in the
modal interprtation is a matter of controversy, perhaps due in part to
the multiplicity of versions of this interpretation. Whether or not
modal interpretations involve parameter dependence would probably
depend on the dynamics of the possessed properties. At least some of
the current modal interpretations seem to involve no parameter
dependence. But, as the subject editor pointed out to the author, some
think that the no-go theorem for relativistic modal interpretation due
to Dickson and Clifton (1998) implies the existence of parameter
dependence in all the interpretations to which this theorem is
applicable. Do modal interpretations satisfy l-distribution?
The prospects of this condition depend on whether the possessed
properties that the modal interpretation assigns in addition to the
properties prescribed by the orthodox interpretation, are
controllable. If these properties were controllable at least in
theory, l-distribution would be possible. For example, if the
possessed spin properties that the particles have at the emission from
the source in the EPR/B experiment were controllable, then
l-distribution would be possible. The common view seems to be
that these properties are uncontrollable.
### 7.3 Collapse theories
#### 7.3.1 Dynamical models for state-vector reduction
In the GRW/Pearle collapse models, wave functions represent the most
exhaustive, complete specification of states of individual
systems. Thus, pairs prepared with the same wave function have always
the same l state -- a state that represents their
quantum-equilbrium distribution for the EPR/B experiment. Accordingly,
l-distribution fails. Do these models involve controllable
probabilistic dependence?
Recall (section 5.1.2) that there are several models of state
reduction in the literature. One of these models is the so-called
non-linear Continuous Stochastic Localization (CSL) models (see Pearle
1989, Ghirardi, Pearle and Rimini 1990, Butterfield et al. 1993, and
Ghirardi et al. 1993). Butterfield et al. (1993) argue that in these
models there is a probabilistic dependence of the outcome of the
R-measurement on the process that leads to the (earlier) outcome of
the L-measurement. In these models, the process leading to the
L-outcome (either *z*-spin 'up' or *z*-spin
'down') depends on the interaction between the L-particle
and the L-apparatus (which results in an entangled state), and the
specific realization of the stochastic process that strives to
collapse this macroscopic superposition into a product state in which
the L-apparatus displays a definite outcome. And the probability of
the R-outcome depends on this process. For example, if this process is
one that gives rise to a *z*-spin 'up' (or renders
that outcome more likely), the probability of R-outcome
*z*-spin 'up' is 0 (more likely to be 0); and if
this process is one that gives rise to a *z*-spin
'down' (or renders that outcome more likely), the
probability of R-outcome *z*-spin 'down' is 0 (more
likely to be 0). The question is whether there are controllable
factors that influence the probability of realizations of stochastic
processes that lead to a specific L-outcome, so that it would be
possible to increase or decrease the probability of the R-outcome. If
such factors existed, controllable probabilistic dependence would be
possible at least in theory. And if this kind of controllable
probabilistic dependence existed, l-distribution would also
obtain; for if such dependence existed, the actual distribution of
pairs' states (in which the pair always have the same state, the
quantum-mechanical state) would cease to be the quantum-equilbrium
distribution.
### 7.4 The prospects of *controllable probabilistic dependence*
In section 7.3.1, we discussed the question of the in-principle
controllability of local measurement processes and in particular the
probability of their outcome, and the implications of such
controllability for the in-principle possibility of superluminal
signaling in the context of the CSL models. But this question is not
specific to the CSL model and (more generally) the dynamical models
for state-vector reduction. It seems likely to arise also in other
quantum theories that model measurements realistically. Here is
why. Real measurements take time. And during that time, some physical
variable, other than the state of the measured system and the setting
of the measurement apparatus, might influence the chance (i.e., the
single-case objective probability) of the measurement outcome. In
particular, during the L-measurement in the EPR/B experiment, the
chance of the L-outcome *z*-spin 'up'
('down') might depend on the value of some physical
variable in the L-wing, other than the state of the particle pair and
the setting of the L-measurement apparatus. If so, it will follow from
the familiar perfect anti-correlation of the singlet state that the
chance of R-outcome *z*-spin 'up'
('down') will depend on the value of such variable (for
details, see Kronz 1990a,b, Jones and Clifton 1993, pp. 304-305, and
Berkovitz 1998a, section 4.3.4). Thus, if the value of such a variable
were controllable, controllable probabilistic dependence would
obtain.
### 7.5 Superluminal signaling and action-at-a-distance
If superluminal signaling were possible in the EPR/B experiment in any
of the above theories, it would not require any continuous process in
spacetime to mediate the influences between the two distant
wings. Indeed, in all the current quantum theories in which the
probability of the R-outcome depends on some controllable physical
variable in the L-wing, this dependence is not due to a continuous
process. Rather, it is due to some type of 'action' or (to
use Shimony's (1984) terminology) 'passion' at a distance,
which is the 'result' of the holistic nature of the
quantum realm, the non-separability of the state of entangled systems,
or the non-separable nature of the evolution of the properties of
systems.
## 8. The analysis of factorizability: implications for quantum non-locality
In sections 5-7, we considered the nature of quantum non-locality as
depicted by theories that violate factorizability, i.e., the assumption
that the probability of joint measurement outcomes factorizes into the
single probabilities of these outcomes. Recalling section 3,
factorizability can be analyzed into a conjunction of two conditions:
OI (outcome independence)--the probability of a distant
measurement outcome in the EPR/B experiment is independent of the
nearby measurement outcome; and PI (parameter independence)--the
probability of a distant measurement outcome in the EPR/B experiment
is independent of the setting of the nearby measurement
apparatus. Bohm's theory violates PI, whereas other mainstream quantum
theories satisfy this condition but violate OI. The question arises as
to whether violations of PI involve a different kind of non-locality
than violations of OI. So far, our methodology was to study the
nature of quantum non-locality by analyzing the way various quantum
theories account for the curious correlations in the EPR/B
experiment. In this section, we shall focus on the question of whether
quantum non-locality can be studied in a more general way, namely by
analyzing the types of non-locality involved in violations of PI and
in violations of OI, independently of how these violations are
realized.
### 8.1 Non-separability, holism and action at a distance
It is frequently argued or maintained that violations of OI involve
state non-separability and/or some type of holism, whereas violations
of PI involve action at a distance. For notable examples, Howard
(1989) argues that spatiotemporal separability (see section 4.3)
implies OI, and accordingly a violation of it implies spatiotemporal
non-separability; Teller (1989) argues that particularism (see section
4.3) implies OI, and thus a violation of it implies relational holism;
and Jarrett (1984, 1989) argues that a violation of PI involves some
type of action at a distance. These views are controversial,
however.
First, as we have seen in section 5, in quantum theories the
violation of either of these conditions involves some type of
non-separability and/or holism.
Second, the explicit attempts to derive OI from separability or
particularism seem to rely (implicitly) on some locality conditions.
Maudlin (1998, p. 98) and Berkovitz (1998a, section 6.1) argue that
Howard's precise formulation of spatiotemporal separability embodies
both separability and locality conditions, and Berkovitz (1998a,
section 6.2) argues that Teller's derivation of OI from particularism
implicitly relies on locality conditions. Thus, the violation of OI
*per se* does not imply non-separability or holism.
Third, a factorizable model, i.e., model that satisfies OI, may be
non-separable (Berkovitz 1995b, section 6.5). Thus, OI cannot be simply
identified with separability.
Fourth, Howard's spatiotemporal separability condition (see section
4.3) requires that states of composite systems be determined by the
states of their subsystems. In particular, spatiotemporal separability
requires that joint probabilities of outcomes be determined as some
function of the single probabilities of these outcomes. Winsberg and
Fine (2003) object that as a separability condition, OI arbitrarily
restricts this function to be a product function. And they argue that
on a weakened formalization of separability, a violation of OI is
compatible with separability. Fogel (2004) agrees that Winsberg and
Fine's weakened formalization of separability is correct, but argues
that, when supplemented by a certain 'isotropy' condition,
OI implies this weakened separability condition. Fogel believes that
his suggested 'isotropy' condition is very plausible, but,
as he acknowledges, this condition involves a nontrivial measurement
context-independence.[33]
Fifth, as the analysis in section 5 demonstrates, violations of OI
might involve action at a distance. Also, while the minimal Bohm
theory violates PI and arguably some modal interpretations do not, the
type of action at a distance they postulate, namely action\* at a
distance (see section 5.2), is similar: In both cases, an earlier
spin-measurement in (say) the L-wing does not induce any immediate
change in the intrinsic properties of the R-particle. The
L-measurement only causes an immediate change in the dispositions of
the R-particle--a change that may influence the behavior of the
R-particle in future spin-measurements in the R-wing. But, this change
of dispositions does not involve any change of local properties in the
R-wing, as these dispositions are relational (rather than intrinsic)
properties of the R-particle. Furthermore, the action at a distance
predicated by the minimal Bohm theory is weaker than the one
predicated by orthodox collapse quantum mechanics and the GRW/Pearle
collapse models; for in contrast to the minimal Bohm theory, in these
theories the measurement on the L-particle induces a change in the
intrinsic properties of the R-particle, independently of whether or
not the R-particle undergoes a measurement. Thus, if the R-particle
comes to possess (momentarily) a definite position, the EPR/B
experiment as described by these theories involves action at a
distance -- a stronger kind of action than the action\* at a
distance predicated by the minimal Bohm theory.
### 8.2 Superluminal signaling
It was also argued, notably by Jarrett 1984 and 1989 and Shimony 1984,
that in contrast to violations of OI, violations of PI may give rise
(at least in principle) to superluminal signaling. Indeed, as is not
difficult to see from section 7.1, in theories that satisfy
l-independence there is an asymmetry between failures of PI and
failures of OI with respect to superluminal signaling: whereas
l-distribution and the failure of PI are sufficient conditions
for the in-principle possibility of superluminal signaling,
l-distribution and the failure of OI are not. Thus, the
prospects of superluminal signaling look better in parameter-dependent
theories, i.e., theories that violate PI. Yet, as we have seen in
section 7.2.1, if the Bohmian quantum-equilbrium distribution obtains,
then Bohm's theory, the paradigm of parameter dependent theories,
prohibits superluminal signaling. And if this distribution is obtained
as a matter of law, then Bohm's theory prohibits superluminal
signaling even in theory. Furthermore, as we remarked in section 7.1,
if the in-principle possibility of violating l-independence is
not excluded, superluminal signaling may exist in theories that
satisfy PI and violate OI. In fact, as section 7.4 seems to suggest,
the possibility of superluminal signaling in theories that satisfy PI
but violate OI cannot be discounted even when l-independence is
impossible.
### 8.3 Relativity
Jarrett (1984, 1989), Ballentine and Jarrett (1997) and Shimony (1984)
hold that superluminal signaling is incompatible with relativity
theory. Accordingly, they conclude that violations of PI are
incompatible with relativity theory, whereas violations of OI may be
compatible with this theory. Furthermore, Sutherland (1985, 1989)
argues that deterministic, relativistic parameter-dependent theories
(i.e., relativistic, deterministic theories that violate PI) would
plausibly require retro-causal influences, and in certain experimental
circumstances this type of influences would give rise to causal
paradoxes, i.e., inconsistent closed causal loops (where effects
undermine their very causes). And Arntzenius (1994) argues that all
relativistic parameter-dependent theories are impossible on pain of
causal paradoxes. That is, he argues that in certain experimental
circumstances any relativistic, parameter-dependent theory would give
rise to closed causal loops in which violations of PI could not
obtain.
It is noteworthy that the view that relativity *per se* is
incompatible with superluminal signaling is disputable (for more
details, see section 10). Anyway, recalling (section 8.2), if
l-distribution is excluded as a matter of law, it will be
impossible even in theory to exploit the violation of PI to give rise
to superluminal signaling, in which case the possibility of
relativistic parameter-dependent theories could not be discounted on
the basis of superluminal signaling.
Furthermore, as mentioned in section 7.1 and 7.4, the in-principle
possibility of superluminal signaling in theories that satisfy PI and
violate OI cannot be excluded *a priori*. Thus, if relativity
theory excludes superluminal signaling, the argument from superluminal
signaling may also be applied to exclude the possibility of some
relativistic outcome-dependent theories.
Finally, Berkovitz (2002) argues that Arntzenius's argument for the
impossibility of relativistic theories that violate PI is based on
assumptions about probabilities that are common in linear causal
situations but are unwarranted in causal loops, and that the real
challenge for these theories is that in such loops their predictive
power is undermined (for more details, see section 10.3).
### 8.4 Superluminal causation
In various counterfactual and probabilistic accounts of causation
violations of PI entail superluminal causation between the setting of
the nearby measurement apparatus and the distant measurement outcome,
whereas violations of OI entail superluminal causation between the
distant measurement outcomes (see Butterfield 1992b, 1994, Berkovitz
1998b, section 2). Thus, it seems that theories that violate PI
postulate a different type of superluminal causation than theories
that violate OI. Yet, as Berkovitz (1998b, section 2.4) argues, the
violation of PI in Bohm's theory *does* involve some type of
outcome dependence, which may be interpreted as a generalization of
the violation of OI. In this theory, the specific R-measurement
outcome in the EPR/B experiment depends on the specific L-measurement
outcome: For any three different directions *x*, *y*,
*z*, if the probabilities of *x*-spin 'up'
and *y*-spin 'up' are non-zero, the probability of
R-outcome *z*-spin 'up' will generally depend on
whether the L-outcome is *x*-spin 'up' or
*y*-spin 'up'. Yet, due to the determinism that
Bohm's theory postulates, OI trivially obtains. Put it another way, OI
does not reflect all the types of outcome independence that may exist
between distant outcomes. Accordingly, the fact that a theory
satisfies OI does not entail that it does not involve some other type
of outcome dependence. Indeed, in all the current quantum theories
that violate factorizability there are correlations between distant
specific measurement outcomes -- correlations that may well be
interpreted as an indication of counterfactual superluminal causation
between these outcomes.
### 8.5 On the origin and nature of parameter dependence
Parameter dependence (PI) postulates that in the EPR/B experiment the
probability of the later, distant measurement outcome depends on the
setting of the apparatus of the nearby, earlier measurement. It may be
tempting to assume that this dependence is due to a direct influence
of the nearby setting on the (probability of the) distant outcome. But
a little reflection on the failure of PI in Bohm's theory, which is
the paradigm for parameter dependence, demonstrates that the setting
of the nearby apparatus *per se* has no influence on the
distant measurement outcome. Rather, it is because the setting of the
nearby measurmenent apparatus influences the nearby measurement
outcome and the nearby outcome influences the distant outcome that the
setting of the nearby apparatus can have an influence on the distant
outcome. For, as is not difficult to see from the analysis of the
nature of non-locality in the minimal Bohm theory (see section 5.3.1),
the setting of the apparatus of the nearby (earlier) measurement in
the EPR/B experiment influences the outcome the nearby measurement,
and this outcome influences the guiding field of the distant particle
and accordingly the outcome of a measurement on that particle.
While the influence of the nearby setting on the nearby outcome is
necessary for parameter dependence, it is not sufficient for it. In
all the current quantum theories, the probabilities of joint outcomes
in the EPR/B experiment depend on the settings of both measurement
apparatuses: The probability that the L-outcome is *l*-spin
'up' and the R-outcome is *r*-spin 'up'
and the probability that the L-outcome is *l*-spin
'up' and the R-outcome is *r*-spin
'down' both depend on (*l* [?] *r*),
i.e., the distance between the angles *l* and *r*. In
theories in which the sum of these joint probabilities is invariant
with respect to the value of (*l* [?] *r*),
parameter independence obtains: for all pairs' states l,
L-setting *l*, and R-settings *r* and *r*',
L-outcome *xl*, and R-outcomes
*y**r* and *y**r*' :
>
> (PI)
>
> *P*l *l* *r*(*xl* &
> *yr*) +
> *P*l *l* *r*(*xl* &
> !*yr*) =
> *P*l *l* *r*' (*xl*
> & *y**r*' ) +
> *P*l *l* *r*' (*xl*
> & !*y**r*' ).
>
Parameter dependence is a violation of this invariance condition.
## 9. Can there be 'local' quantum theories?
The focus of this entry has been on exploring the nature of the
non-local influences in the quantum realm as depicted by quantum
theories that violate factorizability, i.e., theories in which the
joint probability of the distant outcomes in the EPR/B experiment do
not factorize into the product of the single probabilities of these
outcomes. The motivation for this focus was that, granted plausible
assumptions, factorizability must fail (see section 2), and its
failure implies some type of non-locality (see sections 2-8). But if
any of these plausible assumptions failed, it may be possible to
account for the EPR/B experiment (and more generally for all other
quantum phenomena) without postulating any non-local influences. Let
us then consider the main arguments for the view that quantum
phenomena need not involve non-locality.
In arguments for the failure of factorizability, it is presupposed
that the distant measurement outcomes in the EPR/B experiment are real
physical events. Recall (section 5.3.3) that in Albert and Loewer's
(1988) many-minds interpretation this is not the case. In this
interpretation, definite measurement outcomes are (typically) not
physical events. In particular, the pointers of the measurement
apparatuses in the EPR/B experiment do not display any definite
outcomes. Measurement outcomes in the EPR/B experiment exist only as
(non-physical) mental states in observers' minds (which are
postulated to be non-physical entities). So sacrificing some of our
most fundamental presuppositions about the physical reality and
assuming a controversial mind-body dualism, the many-minds
interpretation of quantum mechanics does not postulate any action at a
distance or superluminal causation between the distant wings of the
EPR/B experiment. Yet, as quantum-mechanical states of systems are
assumed to reflect their physical states, the many-minds theory does
postulate some type of non-locality, namely state non-separability and
property and relational holism.
Another way to get around Bell's argument for non-locality in the
EPR/B experiment is to construct a model of this experiment that
satisfies factorizability but violates l-independence (i.e.,
the assumption that the distribution of all the possible pairs' states
in the EPR/B experiment is independent of the measured quantities). In
section 2, we mentioned two possible causal explanations for the
failure of l-independence. The first is to postulate that
pairs' states and apparatus settings share a common cause, which
correlates certain types of pairs' states with certain types of
settings (e.g. states of type l1 are correlated with
settings of type *l* and *r*, whereas states of type
l2 are correlated with settings of type
*l'* and *r'*, etc.). As we noted, thinking
about all the various ways one can measure properties, this
explanation seems conspiratorial. Furthermore, it runs counter to one
of the most fundamental presuppositions of empirical science, namely
that in experiments preparations of sources and settings of
measurement apparatuses are typically independent of each other. The
second possible explanation is to postulate causation from the
measurement events backward to the source at the emission time. (For
advocates of this way out of non-locality, see Costa de Beauregard
1977, 1979, 1985, Sutherland 1983, 1998, 2006 and Price 1984, 1994,
1996, chapters 3, 8 and 9.) Maudlin (1994, p. 197-201) argues that
theories that postulate such causal mechanism are
inconsistent. Berkovitz (2002, section 5) argues that Maudlin's line
of reasoning is based on unwarranted premises. Yet, as we shall see in
section 10.3, this way out of non-locality faces some
challenges. Furthermore, while a violation of l-independence
provides a way out of Bell's theorem, it does not necessarily imply
locality; for the violation of l-independence is compatible
with the failure of factorizability.
A third way around non-locality is to 'exploit' the
inefficiency of measurement devices or (more generally) measurement
set-ups. In any actual EPR/B experiment, many of the particle pairs
emitted from the source fail to be detected, so that only a sample of
the particle pairs is observed. Assuming that the observed samples are
not biased, it is now generally agreed that the statistical
predictions of orthodox quantum mechanics have been vindicated (for a
review of these experiments, see Redhead 1987, section 4.5). But if
this assumption is abandoned, there are perfectly local causal
explanations for the actual experimental results (Clauser and Horne
1974, Fine 1982b, 1989a). Many believe that this way out of
non-locality is *ad hoc*, at least in light of our current
knowledge. Moreover, this strategy would fail if the efficiency of
measurement devices exceeded a certain threshold (for more details,
see Fine 1989a, Maudlin 1994, chapter 6, Larsson and Semitecolos 2000
and Larsson 2002).
Finally, there are those who question the assumption that
factorizability is a locality condition (Fine 1981, 1986, pp. 59-60,
1989b, Cartwright 1989, chaps. 3 and 6, Chang and Cartwright 1993).
Accordingly, they deny that non-factorizability implies non-locality.
The main thrust of this line of reasoning is that the principle of the
common cause is not generally valid. Some, notably Cartwright (1989)
and Chang and Cartwright (1993), challenge the assumption that common
causes always screen off the correlation between their effects, and
accordingly they question the idea that non-factorizability implies
non-locality. Others, notably Fine, deny that correlations must have
causal explanation.
While these arguments challenge the view that the quantum realm as
depicted by non-factorizable models for the EPR/B experiment
*must* involve non-locality, they do not show that viable
local, non-factorizable models of the EPR/B experiment (i.e., viable
models which do not postulate any non-locality) are possible. Indeed,
so far none of the attempts to construct local, non-factorisable
models for EPR/B experiments has been successful.
## 10. Can quantum non-locality be reconciled with relativity?
The question of the compatibility of quantum mechanics with the
special theory of relativity is very difficult to resolve. (The
question of the compatibility of quantum mechanics with the general
theory of relativity is even more involved.) The answer to this
question depends on the interpretation of special relativity and the
nature of the exact constraints it imposes on influences between
events.
A popular view has it that special relativity prohibits any
superluminal influences, whereas theories that violate factorizability
seem to involve such influences. Accordingly, it is held that quantum
mechanics is incompatible with relativity. Another common view has it
that special relativity prohibits only certain types of superluminal
influence. Many believe that relativity prohibits superluminal
signaling of information. Some also believe that this theory prohibits
superluminal transport of matter-energy and/or
action-at-a-distance. On the other hand, there is the view that
relativity *per se* prohibits only superluminal influences that
are incompatible with the special-relativistic space-time, the
so-called 'Minkowski space-time,' and that this
prohibition is compatible with certain types of superluminal
influences and superluminal signaling (for a comprehensive discussion
of this issue, see Maudlin, 1994, 1996, section
2).[34]
It is commonly agreed that relativity requires that the descriptions
of physical reality (i.e., the states of systems, their properties,
dynamical laws, etc.) in different coordinate systems should be
compatible with each other. In particular, descriptions of the state of
systems in different foliations of spacetime into parallel spacelike
hyperplanes, which correspond to different inertial reference frames,
are to be related to each other by the Lorentz transformations. If this
requirement is to reflect the structure of the Minkowski spacetime,
these transformations must hold at the level of individual processes,
and not only at the level of ensembles of processes (i.e., at the
statistical level) or observed phenomena. Indeed, Bohm's theory,
which is manifestly non-relativistic, satisfies the requirement that
the Lorentz transformations obtain at the level of the observed
phenomena.
However, satisfying the Lorentz transformations at the level of
individual processes is not sufficient for compatibility with
Minkowski spacetime; for the Lorentz transformations may also be
satisfied at the level of individual processes in theories that
postulate a preferred inertial reference frame (Bell 1976). Maudlin
(1996, section 2) suggests that a theory is genuinely relativistic
(both in spirit and letter) if it can be formulated without ascribing
to spacetime any more, or different intrinsic structure than the
relativistic
metrics.[35]
The question of the compatibility of
relativity with quantum mechanics may be presented as follows: Could a
quantum theory that does not encounter the measurement problem be
relativistic in that sense?
### 10.1 Collapse theories
The main problem in reconciling collapse theories with special
relativity is that it seems very difficult to make state collapse
(modeled as a real physical process) compatible with the structure of
the Minkowski spacetime. In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the
earlier L-measurement in the EPR/B experiment induces a collapse of the
entangled state of the particle pair and the L-measurement apparatus.
Assuming (for the sake of simplicity) that measurement events occur
instantaneously, state collapse occurs along a single spacelike
hyperplane that intersects the spacetime region of the L-measurement
event--the hyperplane that represents the (absolute) time of the
collapse. But this type of collapse dynamics would involve a preferred
foliation of spacetime, in violation of the spirit, if not the letter
of the Minkowski spacetime.
The current dynamical collapse models are not genuinely
relativistic, and attempts to generalize them to the special
relativistic domain have encountered difficulties (see, for
example, the entry on collapse theories, Ghirardi 1996, Pearle 1996,
and references therein). A more recent attempt to address these
difficulties due to Tumulka (2004) seems more promising.
In an attempt to reconcile state collapse with special relativity,
Fleming (1989, 1992, 1996) and Fleming and Bennett (1989) suggested
radical hyperplane dependence. In their theory, state collapse occurs
along an infinite number of spacelike hyperplanes that intersect the
spacetime region of the measurements. That is, in the EPR/B experiment
a collapse occurs along all the hyperplanes of simultaneity that
intersect the spacetime region of the L-measurement. Similarly, a
collapse occurs along all the hyperplanes of simultaneity that
intersect the distant (space-like separated) spacetime region of the
R-measurement. Accordingly, the hyperplane-dependent theory does not
pick out any reference frame as preferred, and the dynamics of the
quantum states of systems and their properties can be reconciled with
the Minkowski spacetime. Further, since all the multiple collapses are
supposed to be real (Fleming 1992, p. 109), the predictions of
orthodox quantum mechanics are reproduced in each reference
frame.
The hyperplane-dependent theory is genuinely relativistic. But the
theory does not offer any mechanism for state collapses, and it does
not explain how the multiple collapses are related to each other and
how our experience is accounted for in light of this multiplicity.
Myrvold (2002b) argues that state collapses can be reconciled with
Minkowski spacetime even without postulating multiple different
collapses corresponding to different reference frames. That is, he
argues with respect to the EPR/B experiment that the collapses induced
by the L- and the R-measurement are local events in the L- and the
R-wing respectively, and that the supposedly different collapses
(corresponding to different reference frames) postulated by the
hyperplane-dependent theory are only different descriptions of the
same local collapse events. Focusing on the state of the particle
pair, the main idea is that the collapse event in the L-wing is
modeled by a (one parameter) family of operators (the identity
operator before the L-measurement and a projection to the collapsed
state after the L-measurement), and it is local in the sense that it
is a projection on the Hilbert space of the L-particle; and similarly,
*mutatis mutandis*, for the R-particle. Yet, if the quantum
state of the particle pair represents their complete state (as the
case is in the orthodox theory and the GRW/Pearle collapse models),
these collapse events seem non-local. While the collapse in the L-wing
may be said to be local in the above technical sense, it is by
definition a change of local as well as distant (spacelike)
properties. The operator that models the collapse in the L-wing
transforms the entangled state of the particle pair--a state in
which the particles have no definite spins--into a product of
non-entangled states in which both particles have definite spins, and
accordingly it causes a change of intrinsic properties in both the L-
and the R-wing.
In any case, Myrvold's proposal demonstrates that even if state
collapses are not hyperplane dependent, they need not be incompatible
with relativity theory.
### 10.2 No-collapse theories
Recall (section 5.3) that in no-collapse theories, quantum-mechanical
states always evolve according to a unitary and linear equation of
motion (the Schrodinger equation in the non-relativistic case),
and accordingly they never collapse. Since the wave function has a
covariant dynamics, the question of the compatibility with relativity
turns on the dynamics of the additional properties --the
so-called 'hidden variables'-- that no-collapse
theories typically postulate. In Albert and Loewer's many-minds theory
(see section 5.3.3), the wave function has covariant dynamics, and no
additional physical properties are postulated. Accordingly, the theory
is genuinely relativistic. Yet, as the compatibility with relativity
is achieved at the cost of postulating that outcomes of measurements
(and, typically, any other perceived properties) are mental rather
than physical properties, many find this way of reconciling quantum
mechanics with relativity unsatisfactory.
Other Everett-like interpretations attempt to reconcile quantum
mechanics with the special theory of relativity without postulating
such a controversial mind-body dualism. Similarly to the many-minds
interpretation of Albert and Loewer, and contrary to Bohm's theory and
modal interpretations, on the face of it these interpretations do not
postulate the existence of 'hidden variables.' But
(recalling section 5.3.3) these Everett-like interpretations face the
challenge of making sense of our experience and the probabilities of
outcomes, and critics of these interpretations argue that this
challenge cannot be met without adding some extra structure to the
Everett interpretation (see Albert and Loewer 1988, Albert 1992,
pp. 114-5, Albert and Loewer 1996, Price 1996, pp. 226-227, and
Barrett 1999, pp. 163-173); a structure that may render these
interpretations incompatible with relativity. Supporters of the
Everett interpretation disagree. Recently, Deutsch (1999), Wallace
(2002, 2003, 2005a,b) and Greaves (2004) have suggested that
Everettians can make sense of the quantum-mechanical probabilities by
appealing to decision-theoretical considerations. But this line of
reasoning has been disputed (see Barnum *et al.* 2000, Lewis
2003b, Hemmo and Pitowsky 2005 and Price 2006).
Modal interpretations constitute another class of no-collapse
interpretations of quantum mechanics that were developed to reconcile
quantum mechanics with relativity (and to solve the measurement
problem). Yet, as the no-go theorems by Dickson and Clifton (1998),
Arntzenius (1998) and Myrvold (2002) demonstrate, the earlier versions
of the modal interpretation are not genuinely compatible with
relativity theory. Further, Earman and Ruetsche (2005) argue that a
quantum-field version of the modal interpretation (which is set in the
context of relativistic quantum-field theory), like the one proposed
by Clifton (2000), would be subject to serious challenges. Berkovitz
and Hemmo (2006a,b) develop a relational modal interpretation that
escapes all the above no-go theorems and to that extent seems to
provide better prospects for reconciling quantum mechanics with
special relativity.
### 10.3 Quantum causal loops and relativity
Recall (section 8) that many believe that parameter-dependent theories
(i.e., theories that violate parameter independence) are more difficult
or even impossible to reconcile with relativity. Recall also that one
of the lines of argument for the impossibility of relativistic
parameter-dependent theories is that such theories would give rise to
causal paradoxes. In our discussion, we focused on EPR/B experiments
in which the measurements are distant (spacelike separated). In a
relativistic parameter-dependent theory, the setting of the nearby
measurement apparatus in the EPR/B experiment would influence the
probability of the distant (spacelike separated) measurement
outcome. Sutherland (1985, 1989) argues that it is plausible to
suppose that the realization of parameter dependence would be the same
in EPR/B experiments in which the measurements are not distant from
each other (i.e., when the measurements are timelike separated). If so,
relativistic parameter-dependent theories would involve backward
causal influences. But, he argues, in deterministic, relativistic
parameter-dependent theories these influences would give rise to
causal paradoxes, i.e., inconsistent closed causal loops.
Furthermore, Arntzenius (1994) argues that all relativistic
parameter-dependent theories are impossible on pain of causal
paradoxes. In his argument, he considers the probabilities of
measurement outcomes in a setup in which two EPR/B experiments are
causally connected to each other, so that the L-measurement outcome of
the first EPR/B experiment determines the setting of the L-apparatus
of the second EPR/B experiment and the R-measurement outcome of the
second EPR/B experiment determines the setting of the R-apparatus of
the first EPR/B experiment. And he argues that in this experiment,
relativistic parameter-dependent theories (deterministic or
indeterministic) would give rise to closed causal loops in which
parameter dependence would be impossible. Thus, he concludes that
relativistic, parameter-dependent theories are impossible. (Stairs
(1989) anticipates the argument that the above experimental setup may
give rise to causal paradoxes in relativistic, parameter-dependent
theories, but he stops short of arguing that such theories are
impossible.)
Berkovitz (1998b, section 3.2, 2002, section 4) argues that
Arntzenius's line of reasoning fails because it is based on untenable
assumptions about the nature of probabilities in closed causal
loops--assumptions that are very natural in linear causal
situations (where effects do not cause their causes), but untenable in
causal loops. (For an analysis of the nature of probabilities in
causal loops, see Berkovitz 2001 and 2002, section 2.) Thus, he
concludes that the consistency of relativistic parameter-dependent
theories cannot be excluded on the grounds of causal paradoxes. He
also argues that the real challenge for relativistic
parameter-dependent theories is concerned with their predictive
power. In the causal loops predicted by relativistic
parameter-dependent theories in Arntzenius's suggested experiment,
there is no known way to compute the frequency of events from the
probabilities that the theories prescribe. Accordingly, such theories
would fail to predict any definite statistics of measurement outcomes
for that experiment. This lack of predictability may also present some
new opportunities. Due to this unpredictability, there may be an
empirical way for arbitrating between these theories and quantum
theories that do not predicate the existence such causal loops in
Arntzenius's experiment.
Another attempt to demonstrate the impossibility of certain
relativistic quantum theories on the grounds of causal paradoxes is
advanced by Maudlin (1994, pp. 195-201). (Maudlin does not present his
argument in these terms, but the argument is in effect based on such
grounds.) Recall (sections 2 and 9) that a way to try to reconcile
quantum mechanics with relativity is to account for the curious
correlations between distant systems by local backward influences
rather than non-local influences. In particular, one may postulate
that the correlations between the distant measurement outcomes in the
EPR/B experiment are due to local influences from the measurement
events backward to the state of the particle pair at the source. In
such models of the EPR/B experiment, influences on events are always
confined to events that occur in their past or future light cones, and
no non-locality is postulated. Maudlin argues that theories that
postulate such backward causation will be inconsistent. More
particularly, he argues that a plausible reading of Cramer's (1980,
1986) transactional interpretation, and any other theory that
similarly attempts to account for the EPR/B correlations by
postulating causation from the measurement events backward to the
source, will be inconsistent.
Berkovitz (2002, section 5) argues that Maudlin's argument is, in
effect, that if such retro-causal theories were true, they would
involve closed causal loops in which the probabilities of outcomes
that these theories assign will certainly deviate from the statistics
of these outcomes. And, similarly to Arntzenius's argument, Maudlin's
argument also rests on untenable assumptions about the nature of
probabilities in causal loops (for a further discussion of Maudlin's
and Berkovitz's arguments and, more generally, the prospects of
Cramer's theory, see Kastner 2004). Furthermore, Berkovitz (2002,
sections 2 and 5.4) argues that, similarly to relativistic
parameter-dependent theories, the main challenge for theories that
postulate retro-causality is not causal paradoxes, but rather the fact
that their predictive power may be undermined. That is, the
probabilities assigned by such theories may fail to predict the
frequency of events in the loops they predicate. In particular, the
local retro-causal theories that Maudlin considers fail to assign any
definite predictions for the frequency of measurement outcomes in
certain experiments. Yet, some other theories that predicate the
existence of causal loops, such as Sutherland's (2006) local
time-symmetric Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics, seem not
to suffer from this problem. |
possibilism-actualism | ## 1. The Focus of the Debate
The debate between possibilists and actualists is at root
*ontological*. It is not--fundamentally, at least--a
debate about meaning, or the proper linguistic primitives of our modal
discourse, or the model theory of certain formal languages, or the
permissibility of certain inferences. It is a disagreement over
*what there is*, about the kinds of things that reality
includes. Characterizing the nature of the debate precisely, however,
is challenging. As noted in the preceding introduction, the debate
centers around the question of whether, in addition to such things as
you and me, reality includes *possibilia*, such as
Bergoglio's merely possible children, the children he does not
*actually* have but *could have* had if only things had
gone rather differently. Clearly, if there *are* such things in
some sense, they differ from us rather dramatically: a merely possible
child is not *actually* anyone's child and indeed, we are
inclined to say, does not *actually* exist at all and, hence,
is not actually conscious but only could have been, does not actually
have a body but only could have had one, and so on. As we will see in
more detail in the following section, in many historical and more
contemporary discussions, this alleged difference is characterized in
terms of distinct *ways*, or *modes*, of being, and it
will be useful, for now, to continue to frame the debate in these
terms. Specifically, on this *bi-modal* conception of the
debate, on the one hand, there is the more substantial and robust mode
of *actuality* (or, often, *existence*) that you and I
enjoy. And, on the other hand, there is the more rarefied mode
(sometimes called *subsistence*) exhibited by things that fail
to be
actual.[4]
While (as we will see) there has been some disagreement over the
location of abstract objects like the natural numbers in this scheme,
what uniquely distinguishes *possibilia* on the bi-modal
conception is that, for the possibilist, they are
*contingently* non-actual:
**Poss**:
There are *possibilia*, that is, things that are not actual
but could have been.
It is clarifying to represent matters more formally. Accordingly,
where \(\sfA!\) is the *actuality* predicate, we have:
**Poss**\(\_{\sfA!}\):
\(\exists \sfx(\neg \sfA!\sfx \land \Diamond \sfA!\sfx)\)
As noted in the above introduction, in its simplest form, actualism is
just the denial of possibilism: there are no mere *possibilia*.
However, the actualist's denial is meant to be stronger: that
possibilism is false is not a mere historical accident; rather, for
the actualist, not only are there not in fact any *possibilia*,
there *couldn't* be any:
**Act**:
There could not have been any *possibilia*, that is, any
things that are not actual but could have been
or, again, more formally:
**Act**\(\_{\sfA!}\):
\(\neg\Diamond\exists \sfx(\neg \sfA!\sfx \land \Diamond
\sfA!\sfx)\)
For the actualist, then, the possibilist's purported mode of
contingent non-actuality, or *mere possibility*, is empty:
necessarily, anything that *could have been* actual already
*is* actual. Otherwise put, necessarily, there are no
contingently non-actual
things.[5]
Actualism is quite clearly the preferred common sense position here:
on a first hearing, the idea that the Pope's unborn children
dwell in some shadowy corner of reality is to most ears ludicrous on
its face--and defending against this common sense intuition
remains arguably the central challenge facing the possibilist. But the
motivations for possibilism are surprisingly strong. We have already
noted what is perhaps the strongest of these: possibilism yields a
straightforward, unified semantics for our modal discourse. By
appealing to *possibilia*, the possibilist can provide
satisfying truth conditions for otherwise semantically problematic
modal statements like
(2)
along the lines of those for
(1)
that *ground* their intuitive truth in the modal properties of
individuals. As we might also put it: possibilism provides
*truthmakers*
for such statements as
(2)
that actualism is apparently unable to supply. But a powerful second
motivation is that possibilism falls out as a *consequence* of
the most natural quantified modal logic. In particular, in that logic,
(4)
is an immediate logical consequence of
(2).
(We will spell out these motivations further in the following two
sections.) These motivations in turn present a ***twofold
challenge for the actualist***:
1. to provide a systematic and philosophically satisfying account of
truth conditions for the likes of
(2);
and
2. to develop a robust quantified modal logic that invalidates such
inferences as the one from
(2)
to
(4).
What makes the possibilism-actualism debate so interesting is that,
while actualism is the overwhelming metaphysical choice of most
philosophers, there is no easy or obvious way for the actualist to
meet these challenges. We will explore a number of attempts in this
essay.
## 2. The Origins and Nature of *Possibilia*
### 2.1 Possibilism and the Bi-Modal Conception of Being
To fully appreciate what is at issue in the possibilism-actualism
debate, as well as its framing in those terms, it is important to see
its origins--more generally, the origins of the bi-modal
conception of being--in the ancient, and vexing, philosophical
problem of
non-existent objects.
Inklings of the bi-modal conception arguably trace back to the dawn
of western philosophy in the goddess's enigmatic warning to
Parmenides
not to be deceived by the "unmanageable" idea "that
things that are not
*are*".[6]
It finds clearer expression in Seneca's description of the
Stoics, for whom being included both physical objects and
"incorporeals"
(asomata) that "have a
derivative kind of reality" (de Harven 2015: 406):
>
>
> The Stoics want to place above this [the existent] yet another, more
> primary genus.... Some Stoics consider "something"
> the first genus, and I shall add the reason why they do. In nature,
> they say, some things exist, some do not exist. But nature includes
> even those which do not exist--things which enter the mind, such
> as centaurs, giants, and whatever else falsely formed by thought takes
> on some image despite lacking substance. (Seneca, *Letters*
> 58:13-15, quoted in Long & Sedley 1987: 162; see also Caston
> 1999.)
>
>
>
The Stoics' motivation for their bifurcation of
"nature" was clearly to explain the
*intentionality*
of our thought and discourse, our apparent ability to think and talk
as coherently about the creatures of mythology and fiction as about
ordinary physical existents. Later variations broadened the
Stoics' realm of incorporeal intentional objects to include
*possibilia*. In the early medieval period, the Islamic
Mutazilite theologians distinguished between *thing*
(*shay*') and *existent* (*mawjud*)) to
comport with two passages of the Qu'ran (16:40, 36:82) suggesting
that God *commands* non-existent things into existence
(Wisnovski 2003: 147). Avicenna (1926: 54-56) under the influence of
the Mutazilates, was more explicit still that these non-existent
things are *possibilia*:
>
>
> It is necessary with respect to everything that came into existence
> that before it came into existence, it was in itself possibly
> existent. For if it had not been possibly existent in itself, it never
> would exist at all. Moreover, the possibility of its existence does
> not consist in the fact that an agent could produce it or that an
> agent has power over it. Indeed, an agent would scarcely have power
> over it, if the thing itself were not possible in
> itself.[7]
>
>
>
Similar ideas were espoused by a number of other prominent medieval
philosophers including
Giles of Rome,
Henry of Ghent,
John Duns Scotus,
William of Ockham, and
Francisco Suarez.[8]
Although the grounds of possibility and intentionality were prominent
themes in the modern
period,[9]
the idea of explaining them in terms of any sort of bifurcation of
being largely receded until the early nineteenth century beginning,
notably, with the remarkable work of
Bernard Bolzano.
Specifically, in his work on the ground of possibility, Bolzano
developed a sophisticated bi-modal account of being on which
everything there *is* divides into those things
(*Dinge*) with *Wirklichkeit*, usually rendered
"actuality" by Bolzano's
translators,[10]
and those with *Bestand*, typically rendered
"subsistence". Importantly, for Bolzano as well as for
many of his successors, to be actual (*wirklich*) is to be part
of the causal order and, hence, typically at any rate, to occupy a
position in space and time--in a word (as commonly understood),
to be
*concrete*.[11]
Subsistence, by contrast, is the mode of being shared by non-concrete
objects, which in particular for Bolzano included both
*possibilia* and *abstracta* like numbers and
propositions. Unlike *abstracta*, however, Bolzano's
*possibilia* are only *contingently* subsistent,
*contingently* non-concrete, and, hence, are capable of
*Wirklichkeit*:
>
>
> [I]n addition to those things that have actuality
> (*Wirklichkeit*)...there are others that have mere
> possibility (*blosse Moglichkeit*), as well as those
> that could never make the transition to actuality, e.g., propositions
> and truths as such (*an sich*). (Bolzano 1837: SS483, pp.
> 184-5)
>
>
>
Motivated chiefly to provide a ground for intentionality, several
decades later,
Alexius Meinong
(1904b [1960], 1907) famously postulated a rich class of non-existent
objects to explain our apparent ability to conceive and talk about,
not only creatures of myth and fiction, but impossible objects like
the round square. Roughly, in Meinong's theory, for any class of
"ordinary" properties (*konstitutorische
Bestimmungen*) there is an intentional object
(*Gegenstand*) having *exactly* those
properties.[12]
Presumably, then, although he did not broach the issue of possible
objects
directly,[13]
among these objects would be those having (perhaps among others) the
property *being a possible child of Bergoglio*. However,
importantly, although he broadly accepted Bolzano's bi-modal
division of being into concrete and subsistent
objects,[14]
Meinong ascribed no variety of being whatsoever to his intentional
objects, not even the subsistence (*Bestand*) enjoyed by
*abstracta* like mathematical objects and
propositions.[15]
Although strongly influenced by Meinong, the early Russell (1903)
spurned the idea that intentional objects are being-less but not the
objects themselves, save for *impossibilia* like the round
square. Rather, he simply moved them all into the subsistent realm
alongside the objects of mathematics, reserving the "world of
existence" for "actual objects" in the
spatio-temporal causal order (*ibid*., pp.
449-50):[16]
>
>
> *Being* is that which belongs to...every possible object
> of thought....Numbers, the Homeric gods, relations, chimeras and
> four-dimensional spaces all have being, for if they were not entities
> of a kind, we could make no propositions about them. Thus being is a
> general attribute of everything, and to mention anything is to show
> that it is....*Existence*, on the contrary, is the
> prerogative of some only amongst beings....[T]his distinction
> [between being and existence] is essential, if we are ever to deny the
> existence of anything. For what does not exist must be something, or
> it would be meaningless to deny its existence; and hence we need the
> concept of being, as that which belongs even to the non-existent.
>
>
>
Russell's thoroughgoing modal skepticism led him to exclude
*possibilia* from his non-existent
objects.[17]
Nonetheless, were he to have admitted them into his ontology, the
subsistent realm would be their natural place in his bifurcated
ontology. Quine (1948: 22), in the voice of his fictional possibilist
metaphysician Wyman--and undoubtedly influenced at the time by
recent work of C. I. Lewis (1943) and Rudolf Carnap
(1947)[18]--made
exactly this move in a justly famous and widely-cited paper that
played a pivotal role in both framing the philosophical issues and
fixing modern terminology:
>
>
> Pegasus...has his being as an unactualized possible. When we say
> of Pegasus that there is no such thing, we are saying, more precisely,
> that Pegasus does not have the special attribute of actuality. Saying
> that Pegasus is not actual is on a par, logically, with saying that
> the Parthenon is not red; in either case we are saying something about
> an entity whose being is unquestioned. (1948: 22)
>
>
>
To be a mere *possibile*, then, according to Wyman, is to be
*unactualized*, i.e., it is, unqualifiedly, to *be* but
to fail to exemplify "the special attribute of actuality";
it is to *subsist* rather than to *exist* (Quine 1948:
23).[19]
But perhaps equally important for fixing the nature of the modern
possibilism-actualism debate was Quine's explicit break from his
nineteenth and early twentieth century predecessors on the ontological
status of *abstracta*; speaking now in his own voice, he
says:
>
>
> If Pegasus existed he would indeed be in space and time, but only
> because the word "Pegasus" has spatio-temporal
> connotations, and not because "exists" has spatio-temporal
> connotations. If spatio-temporal reference is lacking when we affirm
> the existence of the cube root of 27, this is simply because a cube
> root is not a spatio-temporal kind of thing, and not because we are
> being ambiguous in our use of "exist". (1948: 23)
>
>
>
For Quine, that is, their necessary non-concreteness notwithstanding,
abstract objects exist no less robustly than we and, hence, in the
context of the possibilism-actualism debate, are fully
*actual*.[20]
A particular advantage of this view of *abstracta* for the
debate is that, assuming that there could be no *necessarily*
non-actual objects, *possibilia* are the only things lacking
actuality in the possibilist's universe and, hence, actualism
can take a particularly common and familiar form:
**Act**\*:
Necessarily, everything is actual.
That is, more formally put once again:
**Act**\(\astAbang\):
\(\Box\forall \sfx\,\sfA!\sfx\)
But the most important consequence of this wholesale shift in the
ontological status of *abstracta* is that it opened the door to
perhaps the most prominent form of contemporary actualism--dubbed
(rather tendentiously) *ersatz modal realism* by David Lewis
(1986: SS3.1)--on which modal phenomena are understood in
terms of *abstracta* of various sorts and, hence, in terms of
actually existing things only, as per
**Act**\*.[21]
(Ersatz modal realism is discussed in more detail in
SS4.2
and
SS4.4
below and in SS2.2 of the *Encyclopedia*'s entry on
possible worlds.)
One final matter requires attention. Quine's choice of Pegasus
as his paradigmatic *possibile* in the above quote highlights
the fact that even relatively modern discussions often conflate the
two motivations for non-existent objects and, consequently, conflate
fictional objects and *possibilia*, and this leads to an
important confusion about the nature of *possibilia* that is
important to avoid. It is particularly evident in another well-known
Quinean passage. Returning to his own voice, in an attempt to show
that possibilism is ultimately incoherent, Quine asks a series of
rhetorical questions, beginning with the following:
>
>
> Take, for instance, the [merely] possible fat man in that doorway;
> and, again, the [merely] possible bald man in that doorway. Are they
> the same possible man, or two possible men? How do we decide? How many
> possible men are there in that doorway? (1948: 23)
>
>
>
That is, on this characterization of possibilism, a merely possible
*F* is something that (contingently) fails to be actual but,
nonetheless, like a Meinongian intentional object, is
*actually* an *F*--a merely possible man in that
doorway has the property of being in the given doorway; hence the
purportedly unanswerable questions about whether or not he is
identical with the indefinitely many other merely possible but
somewhat differently described men who can also be said to occupy the
same space. However, as Linsky and Zalta (1994: 445) emphasize, a
merely possible *F* needn't (and indeed typically
won't) be an *F*. Rather, a merely possible *F* is
(typically) something that is *not in fact* an *F* but
rather only *could be* an
*F*.[22]
In particular, a merely possible bald man in that doorway is neither
bald, nor a man, nor in that doorway--indeed, it has the
complements of all those properties. Rather, it is only something that
*could* have those properties.
With that problem corrected, this Quinean framing has by and large
become the dominant conception of the possibilism-actualism
distinction in the contemporary
literature.[23]
### 2.2 Possibilism Without Bi-Modalism
We have characterized actualism as, first and foremost, the denial of
possibilism, defined as the thesis
(**Poss**)
that there are things that contingently fail to be actual. Following
the historical precedents just detailed, actuality has been depicted
as the more robust of two purported modes of being. However, work by
Linsky and Zalta (1994, 1996) and Williamson (1998, 2013) casts doubt
upon the viability of the possibilism-actualism distinction under this
bi-modal conception. Williamson questions its coherence: what,
exactly, is the nature of the "robustness" that allegedly
distinguishes actuality from the merely possible; as Williamson (2013:
23ff) puts it: "being actual had better be actually doing
something harder than just being.... But what is that harder
thing...?" Convinced there is no cogent answer to the
question, Williamson proposes scotching the possibilism-actualism
distinction entirely in favor of an allegedly much clearer distinction
between *necessitism* and *contingentism*, that is,
between the thesis that, necessarily, all things exist necessarily
(\(\Box\forall \sfx \Box\exists \sfy\,\sfy=\sfx\)) and its denial.
(This distinction will be discussed in greater detail
below.)[24]
Linsky and Zalta (1994: SS4) do not so much question the coherence
of the possibilism-actualism distinction (under the bi-modal
conception) as dissolve
it.[25]
Specifically, they show that, for all that the thesis
(**Act**\*)
that, necessarily, everything is actual tells us, there is nothing to
prevent avowed possibilists like
themselves[26]
from simply rejecting the idea that Bergoglio's merely possible
children "have a [mode] of being that is less than the
full-fledged existence" that we enjoy, and insisting instead
that they too are fully actual and, hence, exist as robustly as we
do.[27]
It's just that we, by sheer happenstance, are *concrete*
and they are not; we, that is, happen to exist in the spatio-temporal
causal order and they do not. But things might just as well have been
the other way 'round: existence-wise, we are all on an
ontological par. There are thus no *possibilia* in the sense of
**Poss**
at all; necessarily, everything is actual, as per
**Act**\*.
On this telling, then, Linsky and Zalta and their ilk all turn out to
be fully-fledged actualists, their ontological commitments
notwithstanding.
Clearly, however, even if one is skeptical of the bi-modal conception,
the core of the intended debate remains: whether or not to countenance
the likes of Bergoglio's possible children. In response to those
who do, actualists define themselves simply as those who do not. The
historical trajectory sketched above explains why the debate has often
come to be framed in terms of distinct modes of
being--*actuality* and *mere possibility*. But this
bi-modal framing is inessential: when the intended debate is kept in
the foreground, "actuality", for the actualist, is best
understood simply as a placeholder for whatever it is that allegedly
distinguishes the likes of us (and abstract objects such as the
numbers) from the likes of Bergoglio's merely possible children.
Linsky and Zalta (1994: SS4) and Williamson (2013: SS1.2)
themselves, in fact, just re-introduce what is essentially
Bolzano's characterization of *possibilia*: they are
*contingently non-concrete*. On this characterization,
possibilism can take a form that clarifies the debate without any
mention of modes of being and, hence, avoids the above critiques:
**PossC**:
There are *possibilia*, that is, things that are not
concrete but could have been
or, more formally, where \(\sfC!\) is *concreteness*:
**Poss**\(\_{\sfC!}\):
\(\exists \sfx(\neg \sfC!\sfx \land \Diamond \sfC!\sfx)\)
Accordingly, actualism becomes:
**ActC**:
There could not have been any *possibilia*, that is, any
things that are not concrete but could have been
or, more formally:
**Act**\(\_{\sfC!}\):
\(\neg\Diamond\exists \sfx(\neg \sfC!\sfx \land \Diamond
\sfC!\sfx)\)
So on this framing, for the possibilist, what allegedly distinguishes
the likes of us (and the likes of the natural numbers) from
*possibilia* in the sense of **PossC**
is: *not* being contingently non-concrete. Taking this, then,
to be what "actuality" signifies, with a bit of
propositional logic, we have:
**A!Def**:
\(\sfA!\tau \eqdf \sfC!\tau \lor \Box \neg \sfC!\tau,\) for any
term \(\tau\)
That is, on this framing, to be actual is to be either concrete or
necessarily non-concrete; or, more simply put, it is to be either
concrete or abstract. It is a straightforward exercise to show that,
under this definition of actuality, **PossC**
is equivalent to the original definition
**Poss**
and that **ActC** is equivalent to the
principle
**Act**\*
that, necessarily, everything is
actual.[28]
Of course, possibilists who are more inclined toward the bi-modal
conception will still prefer the original framing of the debate in
terms of a primitive notion of actuality as per **Poss**
and **Act**. But even the most committed bi-modalist will
agree that contingent non-concreteness is at least necessarily
coextensive with mere possibility and, hence, its complement with
actuality. So, for those skeptical of the original framing, nothing
essential to the debate is lost if it is simply understood in terms of
concreteness as per **PossC** and
**ActC**.
**Note on David Lewis**. The influential and highly
original late twentieth century philosopher
David Lewis
also rejected bi-modalism and famously defended a view that is often
characterized as a variety of possibilism. In fact, Lewis's
possibilism is orthogonal to the classical possibilism-actualism
debate under discussion in this entry. See the supplemental document
Classical Possibilism and Lewisian Possibilism
for details.
## 3. Possibilism and Possible World Semantics
Possibilism would almost surely not be taken as seriously as it is
were it not for the dramatic development of possible world semantics
for modal logic in the second half of the twentieth century. For it
not only enables the possibilist to formulate truth modal conditions
with particular clarity and cogency, it yields a natural and elegant
quantified modal logic, known as SQML, in which possibilism's
fundamental metaphysical principles fall out as logical truths. In
order to appreciate the cogency of possibilism, therefore, it is
important to understand basic possible world semantics.
### 3.1 Basic Possible World Semantics
Possible world semantics is built upon
Tarski's
(1936, 1944) epochal theory of truth in the first half of the
twentieth century. Tarski's theory provided a rigorous account
of the fundamental semantic connections between the languages of
classical logic and non-linguistic reality that determine the truth
conditions for the sentences of those languages. By generalizing
Tarski's theory to modal
languages,[29]
possible world semantics promised an equally rigorous account of the
semantic connections between those languages and *modal*
reality, and thereby an equally rigorous account of modal truth
conditions. It is illuminating therefore to start with an account of
Tarskian semantics.
#### 3.1.1 Tarskian Interpretations
Given a standard first-order language \(\scrL\) with the truth
functional operators \(\neg,\,\to,\) a distinguished identity
predicate \(=,\) and the universal quantifier \(\forall,\) a
*Tarskian interpretation* \(\calI\) *for* \(\scrL\)
specifies a nonempty set \(D\)--the *universe* of
\(\calI\)--for the quantifiers of \(\scrL\) to range over and
assigns appropriate semantic values to the terms (i.e., the
(individual) constants and variables) and predicates of \(\scrL\).
Specifically, to each term \(\tau\) of \(\scrL,\) \(\calI\) assigns a
referent \(\tau^\calI \in D\) and, to each *n*-place predicate
\(\pi\) of \(\scrL,\) \(\calI\) assigns a set \(\pi^\calI \subseteq
D^n\) of *n*-tuples of members of \(D,\) often referred to as
the *extension* of \(\pi\) in
\(\calI\).[30]
The extension \(=^\calI\) assigned to the identity predicate, of
course, is always stipulated to be the "real" identity
relation for \(D,\) i.e., the set \(\lbrace\langle a,a\rangle:a \in
D\rbrace\). Those assignments to the terms and predicates of
\(\scrL,\) in turn, completely determine the truth values of all the
formulas of \(\scrL\) by means of a familiar set of recursive clauses.
To facilitate the quantificational clause, let
\(\calI[\frac{\nu}{a}]\) be the interpretation that assigns the
individual \(a\) to the variable \(\nu\) and is otherwise exactly like
\(\calI\). This apparatus then delivers a
*compositional*
theory of meaning for \(\scrL,\) that is, an account on which the
meaning (in this case, the truth value) of a complex formula is
determined by its grammatical structure and the meanings of its
semantically significant parts and hence, ultimately, in the Tarskian
case, by the semantic values assigned to the terms and predicates of
the language:
* An atomic formula \(\pi\tau\_1\ldots \tau\_n\) is *true
in* \(\calI\)--*true*\(^\calI\),
for short--if and
only if \(\langle \tau\_1^\calI,\ldots,\tau\_n^\calI\rangle \in
\pi^\calI.\)
* A negation \(\neg\psi\) is true\(\calI\) if and only if
\(\psi\) is not true\(\_{\calI}\).
* A conditional \(\psi \to \theta\) is true\(\calI\) iff
\(\theta\) is true\(\calI\) if \(\psi\) is.
* A universally quantified formula \(\forall\nu\psi\) is
true\(^\calI\) if and only if, for all individuals \(a \in D,\)
\(\psi\) is true\(^{\calI[\frac{\nu}{a}]}\).
Clauses for the other standard truth-functional operators and the
existential quantifier under their usual definitions follow
straightaway from these clauses. In particular, where
\(\exists\)**Def**:
\(\exists\nu\psi \eqdf \neg\forall\nu\neg\psi\)
it follows that:
* An existentially quantified sentence
\(\exists\nu\psi\) is true\(^\calI\) if and only if, for some
individual \(a \in D,\) \(\psi\) is
true\(^{\calI[\frac{\nu}{a}]}\).
A set \(\Sigma\) of formulas of \(\scrL\) is said to be
*satisfiable* if there is an interpretation for \(\scrL\) in
which every member of \(\Sigma\) is true. A formula \(\varphi\) is
*valid*, or a *logical truth*--written
\(\vDash\varphi\)--if it is true in every interpretation for
\(\scrL\).
The above definitions yield a *logic*, in one standard sense: a
class of formal languages for which we've provided a model
theoretic semantics that determines a rigorous notion of logical
truth.[31]
And the logic they define is *classical (first-order) predicate
logic*.
#### 3.1.2 Truth *Simpliciter*
Strictly speaking, truth in an interpretation is a purely mathematical
relation between the formulas of a formal language and rigorously
defined mathematical objects of a certain type. However, in practice,
most formal languages are *applied* languages and this will
enable us to define an objective notion of truth *simpliciter*
for classical predicate logic. More specifically, an applied formal
language \(\scrL\) is designed to clearly and unambiguously formalize
a range of discourse about some real world domain (e.g., the stars and
planets, the US electorate on 6 November 2020, the natural numbers,
etc)--call this the *intended domain* of \(\scrL\). Hence,
each constant of \(\scrL\) symbolizes a name in the given discourse
and each predicate of \(\scrL\) symbolizes a predicate of the
discourse.[32]
An interpretation \(\calI\) for \(\scrL\) will be *intended*,
then, just in case its universe \(D\) comprises exactly the
individuals in the intended domain of \(\scrL\) and \(\calI\) assigns
to the constants and predicates of \(\scrL\) the actual semantic
values of the names and natural language predicates they are meant to
symbolize. The compositional truth condition of a sentence \(\varphi\)
in an intended interpretation thus traces \(\varphi\)'s
truth value down to the basic
atomic facts on which it ultimately depends or, as we might put it,
the atomic facts on which its truth value is *grounded*. Thus,
a sentence \(\varphi\) of an applied language \(\scrL\) will be
*true* just in case it is true\(^\calI,\) for some intended
interpretation \(\calI\) for \(\scrL\).
#### 3.1.3 SQML Interpretations
Intuitively, a Tarskian interpretation of an applied non-modal
language represents a possible world, a way in which the properties
and relations expressed by the predicates of the language might be
exemplified by the things in the universe of the interpretation. The
idea underlying possible world semantics is simply to interpret a
modal language \(\scrL\_\Box\) by bringing a collection of Tarskian
interpretations together to represent a modal space of many possible
worlds in a single interpretation of
\(\scrL\_\Box\).[33]
So let \(\scrL\_\Box\) be the result of adding the modal operator
\(\Box\) to some standard first-order language \(\scrL\). As with a
Tarskian interpretation of \(\scrL,\) an *SQML interpretation
\(\calM\) for* \(\scrL\_\Box\) specifies a nonempty set \(D\) to
serve as its universe. Also as in Tarskian semantics, \(\calM\)
assigns each term \(\tau\) of \(\scrL\_\Box\) a semantic value
\(\tau^\calM \in D\). Additionally, however, \(\calM\) specifies a
nonempty set \(W\)--these are typically called the set of
"possible worlds" of \(\calM\) but can be any nonempty
set. One member \(w^\ast\) of \(W\) is designated as the "actual
world" of \(\calM\). To give substance and structure to these
"worlds", \(\calM\) then assigns extensions to the
predicates of \(\scrL\_\Box\) *relative to* each
world--that is, for every *n*-place predicate \(\pi\) of
\(\scrL\) and each world \(w \in W,\) \(\calM\) assigns a set
\(\pi\_w^\calM \subseteq D^n\) of *n*-tuples of members of
\(D,\) the *extension of* \(\pi\) *at*
\(w\);[34]
in particular, the extension \(=\_w^\calM\) of the identity predicate
at all worlds \(w\) is stipulated to be \(\lbrace\langle a,a\rangle:a
\in D\rbrace\). In this way \(\calM\) represents the different ways
that the properties and relations expressed by those predicates can
change (or not) from world to world.
Given an SQML interpretation \(\calM,\) then, the Tarskian truth
conditions above are generalized by relativizing them to worlds as
follows: for any possible world \(w\) of \(\calM\) (the *world of
evaluation*),
* An atomic formula \(\pi\tau\_1\ldots\tau\_n\) is *true
at \(w\) in* \(\calM\)--*true*\(\_w^\calM\),
for short--if and
only if \(\langle \tau\_1^\calM,\ldots,\tau\_n^\calM\rangle \in
\pi\_w^\calM.\)
* A negation \(\neg\psi\) is
true\(\_w^\calM\) if and only if \(\psi\) is
not true\(\_w^\calM\).
* A conditional \(\psi \to \theta\) is true\(\_w^\calM\)
iff \(\theta\) is true\(\_w^\calM\)
if \(\psi\) is.
* A universally quantified formula \(\forall\nu\psi\) is true\(\_w^\calM\)
if and only if, for all
individuals \(a \in D,\) \(\psi\) is true\(\_w^{\calM[\frac{\nu}{a}]}\).
Putting the clause for universally quantified formulas together with
the clause for negated formulas and the definition
**[?]Def**
of the existential quantifier, we have
* An existentially quantified formula
\(\exists\nu\psi\) is true\(\_w^\calM\) if
and only if, for some individual \(a \in D,\) \(\psi\) is true\(\_w^{\calM[\frac{\nu}{a}]}\).
And to these, of course, is added the critical modal case that
explicitly interprets the operator \(\Box\) to be a quantifier over
possible worlds:
* A necessitation \(\Box\psi\) is true\(\_w^\calM\)
if and only if, for all worlds
\(u \in W,\) \(\psi\) is true\(\_u^\calM\).
The possibility operator \(\Diamond\) is defined as usual in terms of
\(\Box\):
\(\Diamond\)**Def**:
\(\Diamond\psi \eqdf \neg\Box\neg\psi\)
That is, intuitively, to say that a statement is possible is just to
say that its negation isn't necessary. The structural similarity
between \(\Diamond\textbf{Def}\) and [?]**Def**
should be unsurprising given that, semantically, the necessity
operator \(\Box\) is literally a universal quantifier over the set of
worlds. Accordingly, it follows from \(\Diamond\textbf{Def}\) and the
semantic clause for necessitations that
* \(\Diamond\psi\) is true\(\_w^\calM\)
if and only if, for some world
\(u \in W,\) \(\psi\) is true\(\_u^{\calM}\).
We say that a formula \(\varphi\) of \(\scrL\_\Box\) is *true
in* an SQML interpretation \(\calM\) for \(\scrL\_\Box\) if it is
true\(\_{w^\ast}^\calM\), i.e., true in
\(\calM\) at the "actual world" \(w^\ast\) of \(\calM\).
Satisfiability and logical truth are defined exactly as they are
above
for classical predicate logic, albeit relative to modal languages
\(\scrL\_\Box\) and the preceding notion of truth in an SQML
interpretation; in particular, a formula \(\varphi\) of \(\scrL\_\Box\)
is logically true if it is true in every SQML interpretation. The
logic so defined is, of course, SQML.
#### 3.1.4 Modal Truth *Simpliciter*
The definition of truth *simpliciter* above for formulas of an
applied non-modal language \(\scrL\) stems from the fact that a
Tarskian interpretation \(\calI\) for \(\scrL\) can take the things in
(some relevant chunk of) the actual world and represent how they
actually exemplify the properties and relations expressed by the
predicates of \(\scrL\). But if we can represent the actual world (or
a relevant chunk of it) by means of an intended Tarskian
interpretation, then there is no reason that we can't represent
a merely *possible* world in which those same things exist but
have different properties and stand in different relations and, hence,
define objective notions of truth at a world and of truth
*simpliciter* for the formulas of a modal language as well,
that is, notions of truth that are not simply relative to formal,
mathematical interpretations but, rather, correspond to objective
modal reality. So let \(\scrL\_\Box\) be an applied modal language
whose individual constants and predicates represent those in some
ordinary range of modal discourse and let \(D\) be its intended
domain. Say that \(\calM\) is an *intended* interpretation of
\(\scrL\_\Box\) if
1. its set \(W\) of "possible worlds" is in fact a
sufficiently comprehensive set of honest-to-goodness possible
worlds,[35]
2. its designated "actual world" is in fact the actual
world,
3. its universe is the intended domain \(D\) of \(\scrL\_\Box,\)
and
4. the referents assigned to the constants of \(\scrL\_\Box\) are the
ones they actually refer to and the extensions assigned to the
predicates of \(\scrL\_\Box\) at each world \(w \in W\) are the ones
they in fact have at \(w\).
Then, where \(\calM\) is an intended interpretation of \(\scrL\_\Box,\)
we can say that a formula \(\varphi\) of \(\scrL\_\Box\) is *true
at* a world \(w\)--*true*\(\_w\)--just
in case \(w \in W\)
and \(\varphi\) is true\(\_w^\calM\), and
that \(\varphi\) is *true* just in case it is true\(\_{w^\ast}\).
### 3.2 *SQML*: A Deductive System for SQML
Ideally, a logic \(\mathfrak L\) has a sound and complete proof
theory, that is, an accompanying deductive system whose
theorems--the formulas provable in the system--are exactly
the logical truths of \(\mathfrak
L\).[36]
There is such a system for SQML--for convenience, we'll
refer to it by setting "SQML" in italics: *SQML*.
(We will follow this convention for logics generally.)
"SQML" is an acronym for "simplest quantified modal
logic", and it is so-called because it is a straightforward
amalgam of the most popular and semantically least complicated
propositional
modal logic
S5 and
classical first-order logic
(with
identity)--FOL,
for
short.[37]
The deductive system *SQML*, accordingly, is an amalgam of the
corresponding deductive systems *S5* and
*FOL*.[38]
S5 builds on the foundation of classical propositional
logic--PL, for short--whose deductive system *PL*
takes every instance of the following schemas as its axioms and Modus
Ponens as its inference rule:
* *Propositional Axiom Schemas*
**P1**:
\(\varphi \to (\psi \to \varphi)\)
**P2**:
\((\varphi \to (\psi \to \theta)) \to ((\varphi \to \psi) \to
(\varphi \to \theta))\)
**P3**:
\((\varphi \to \psi) \to ((\varphi \to \neg \psi) \to \neg
\varphi)\)
* *Rule of Inference*
**MP**:
\(\psi\) follows from \(\varphi\) and \(\varphi \to \psi\)
On top of this foundation the system *S5* adds the rule of
Necessitation and every instance of the following three schemas:
* *Modal Axiom Schemas*
**K**:
\(\Box( \varphi \to \psi) \to (\Box \varphi \to \Box \psi)\)
**T**:
\(\Box \varphi \to \varphi\)
**5**:
\(\Diamond \varphi \to \Box\Diamond \varphi\)
* *Rule of Inference*
**Nec**:
\(\Box\psi\) follows from \(\psi\)
**K** is a fundamental principle common to all the modal
logics we will survey here: if a conditional is necessary, then its
consequent is necessary if its antecedent is. **T**
expresses that necessity implies truth, and **5**
expresses that what is possible is not a mere matter of happenstance;
no possibility could have turned out to be impossible; or again: what
is possible in the actual world is possible in every world. The basic
*normal* deductive system *K* is the result of adding
(every instance of) **K** and the rule of Necessitation
to *PL*; the system *T* is the result of adding all
instances of **T** to *K*; and the system
*S5* is the result of adding all instances of
**5** to
*T*.[39]
Two important principles (that is, every instance of them) can be
proved in
*S5*:[40]
**4**:
\(\Box \varphi \to \Box\Box \varphi \)
**B**:
\(\varphi \to \Box\Diamond\varphi\)
**4** says of necessities what **5** says
about possibilities: necessity is not a matter of happenstance; the
necessary truths of our world are necessary in every world.
**B** says that anything that is in fact the case had to
have been possible; the truths in our world are, at the least,
possibilities in every other world.
Schemas **T**, **5**, **4**,
and **B** all have common equivalent forms it is useful
to note:
**T***:
\(\varphi \to \Diamond\varphi\)
**5***:
\(\Diamond\Box\varphi \to \Box\varphi\)
**4***:
\(\Diamond\Diamond \varphi \to \Diamond\varphi\)
**B***:
\(\Diamond\Box\varphi \to \varphi\)
We obtain the full deductive system *SQML* by adding the
quantificational and identity axioms of *FOL* and the rule of
Generalization to *S5*:
* *Quantificational Axiom Schemas*
**Q1**:
\(\forall \nu ( \varphi \to \psi)\to(\forall \nu \varphi \to
\forall \nu \psi)\)
**Q2**:
\(\forall \nu \varphi \to \varphi^\nu\_\tau,\) where \(\tau\) is a
term that is substitutable for \(\nu\) in \(\varphi\) and
\(\varphi^\nu\_\tau\) is the result of replacing every free occurrence
of \(\nu\) in \(\varphi\) with an occurrence of
\(\tau\)[41]
**Q3**:
\( \varphi \to \forall \nu \varphi ,\) if there are no free
occurrences of \( \nu \) in \( \varphi \).
* *Identity Axiom Schemas*
**Id1**:
\(\nu = \nu\)
**Id2**:
\(\nu = \nu'\to (\varphi \to \varphi'),\) where \(\nu'\) is
substitutable for \(\nu\) in \(\varphi\) and \(\varphi'\) is the
result of replacing some or all free occurrences of \(\nu\) in
\(\varphi\) with occurrences of \(\nu'\)
* *Rule of Inference*
**Gen**:
\(\forall\nu\psi\) follows from \(\psi\)
*Proofs and Theorems*
The notions of proof and theoremhood are defined as usual; we define
them generally as they will apply to each of the deductive systems
discussed in this entry. Specifically, for any deductive system
*S*, a *proof* in *S* is a finite sequence of
formulas of the language \(\scrL\) of *S*--\(\scrL\_\Box,\)
in the case of *SQML*--such that each formula is either an
axiom of *S* or follows from preceding formulas in the sequence
by a rule of inference of *S*. A proof is a proof *of*
the formula occurring last in the sequence. A formula \(\varphi\) of
\(\scrL\) is a *theorem of S*--\(\vdash\_{S}
\varphi\)--if there is a proof of it in *S*. And if
\(\Gamma\) is a set of formulas of \(\scrL,\) then \(\varphi\) is a
*theorem of* \(\Gamma\) (*in S*)--\(\Gamma
\vdash\_{S} \varphi\)--if, for some finite subset
\(\{\psi\_1,\ldots,\psi\_n\}\) of \(\Gamma,\) \(\psi\_1 \to (\ldots \to
(\psi\_n \to \varphi)\ldots)\) is a theorem of *S*.
As the role of an individual constant in a theorem of *SQML* is
essentially indistinguishable from that of a free variable, it is
useful to note the following:
**Metatheorem**: Let \(\psi\) be a formula of
\(\scrL\_\Box\) that contains an individual constant \(\kappa\) of
\(\scrL\_\Box\) and let \(\nu\) be a variable that doesn't occur
in \(\psi\). Then if \(\psi\) is a theorem of *SQML*, so is
\(\forall\nu\psi^\kappa\_\nu.\)[42]
The metatheorem justifies the following derived rule of inference,
where \(\varphi,\) \(\kappa,\) and \(\nu\) are as indicated there:
**Gen**\*:
\(\forall\nu\psi^\kappa\_\nu\) follows from \(\psi.\)
That is, informally put, if a formula containing an individual
constant is a theorem, we can effectively generalize on it as if it
were a free variable.
### 3.3 Possibilism, Necessitism, and Logical Truth
In addition to the degree of clarity it brings to the issues, a
compelling reason for expressing the possibilism-actualism debate in
formal terms is how starkly it illustrates the inextricable link
between logic and metaphysics, in particular, the dramatic impact our
metaphysical choices have on quantified modal logic. Arguably the best
known illustration of this is seen in the validity of the inference
from
(2)
to
(4)
in SQML and, more generally, in the validity of the *Barcan
Formula*:[43]
**BF**:
\(\Diamond\exists \nu \varphi \to \exists \nu
\Diamond\varphi\)
That is, informally, if there *could be* something satisfying
any given description \(\varphi,\) then *there is* something
that *could* satisfy that description, a thing that is
*possibly* \(\varphi.\) The validity of **BF** in
SQML rests on two facts:
first,
that in the model theory of SQML (as in all varieties of possible
world semantics), the possibility operator \(\Diamond\) is literally
an existential quantifier ranging over all possible worlds; and
second,
that, in evaluating an existentially quantified formula
\(\exists\nu\varphi\) at a possible world \(w,\) the initial
occurrence of \(\exists\nu\) in the formula ranges unrestrictedly over
all individuals. Hence, switching the order of adjacent occurrences of
\(\Diamond\) and \(\exists\nu\) in a formula will not alter its truth
value; to say that some world and some object are thus and so is to
say no more and no less than that some object and some world are thus
and
so.[44]
And this is what warrants, in particular, the inference from
(2)
to
(4).
Letting "\(\sfB\)" represent the predicate "is
Bergoglio's child", the logical form of
(2)
is \(\Diamond\exists \sfx\, \sfB\sfx\). Expressed semantically in
SQML: some world and some individual are such that, in that world,
that individual is Bergoglio's child. But that is to say no more
and no less than that some individual and some world are such that, in
that world, that individual is Bergoglio's child, \(\exists
\sfx\,\Diamond \sfB\sfx,\) i.e.,
(4).
In its validation of **BF**, then, SQML underwrites in
general, and as a matter of logic, the possibilist's thesis that
*de dicto* modal truths like
(2)
asserting simply that there *could* be things that are thus
and so are *in fact* grounded in *de re* modal truths
about the modal properties of individuals, i.e., the properties they
have at some or all possible
worlds.[45]
If, as in the case of
(2),
that appears to commit us to things like merely possible human
beings, things that, for actualists anyway, intuitively do not in any
sense exist, things that in no sense *are*, so much the worse
for actualist intuitions; or so says the possibilist.
**BF** is not the only controversial logical truth of
SQML or even, perhaps, the most controversial one. Another is its
converse:
**CBF**:
\(\exists \nu \Diamond \varphi \to \Diamond\exists \nu
\varphi\)
That is, informally, if there is, in fact, something that
*could* satisfy a given description \(\varphi,\) then it is
possible that something satisfy that description. **CBF**
is valid for exactly the same reason that **BF** is: the
order of adjacent occurrences of \(\exists\) and \(\Diamond\) in a
formula does not alter its logical content.
To see why **CBF** is controversial, especially for
typical actualists, note that most all of us believe that there are
contingent beings, things that reality might just as well have lacked
as to have contained, things like you and me that simply might have
failed to be identical to anything:
**CB**:
\(\exists \sfx\, \Diamond \neg \exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\)
However, **CBF** is incompatible with the existence of
contingent beings! For, as an instance of **CBF** we
have
**CBF**\*:
\(\exists \sfx\, \Diamond \neg \exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx \to
\Diamond \exists \sfx\, \neg\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\)
Hence, by **MP**, we can infer
:
\(\Diamond \exists \sfx\, \neg\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\)
which says that there could be something that is distinct from
everything (including, in particular, itself) and that, of course, is
logically impossible. Hence, **CB** is logically false in
SQML and so it is a logical truth of SQML that there are no contingent
beings, i.e., that, rather, everything is necessarily identical with
something:
**N**:
\(\forall \sfx\, \Box\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\)
Indeed, since logical truths in SQML are all necessary,
**N** is itself a necessary truth:
\(\Box\)**N**:
\(\Box\forall \sfx \Box\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\)
So SQML yields not only possibilism (given **BF** and
(2)
and its ilk) but *necessitism*, that is, the thesis that
everything there is and, indeed, everything there ever could be, is a
necessary
being;[46]--you,
me, the Eiffel Tower, Bergoglio's possible children, merely
possible members of exotic species that never in fact evolved, merely
possible suns that never formed, etc. Otherwise put: everything there
could possibly be already *is* and, moreover, could not have
failed to be.
Although it is a logical truth of SQML, necessitism is not
analytically entailed by possibilism. There is, in particular, nothing
in the idea of a mere *possibile* that demands its necessity,
nothing that rules out worlds from which it might be altogether
absent, worlds (in addition to those in which it is either concrete or
non-concrete) in which nothing is identical to it. This might lead one
to wonder whether SQML, by building necessitism into its logical
foundations, has (from a possibilist perspective) gotten the logical
cart before the philosophical horse. On reflection, however, it is
clear that necessitism is, not only a natural complement to
possibilism, but an essential component of it. For, as we've
seen, the central justification for possibilism is that it provides
truthmakers for modal propositions like
(2);
it grounds them in the modal properties of individuals. If the
purported truthmakers for those propositions could fail altogether to
be, if it *could be* that there are no such things, then, for
all we know, it might just as well be that there are *in fact*
no such things and, hence, that there are no truthmakers for
(2)
and its ilk after all; and with that, possibilism's central
philosophical justification collapses. Necessitism closes the door on
this prospect: both *possibilia* and actually existing things
alike are necessary
beings.[47]
At first sight, of course, necessitism is a shocking philosophical
doctrine. For, most compellingly, the urgent intuition of our own
contingency--that at one time in the past we did not exist and
that at another in the not too distant future we will forever cease to
be--is a central element of our lived human experience. But by
necessitism, not only have we always existed and will so continue
forever into the future, we--no less than God and the number
17--could not have failed to be. The possibilist, however, will
respond that the worry here has badly conflated existence in the sense
of *being*, in the sense of mere identity with something, and
existence in the sense of *actuality*. More specifically, the
worry has confused two corresponding notions of contingency, viz.,
contingency as the possibility of absolute non-being, i.e.,
**Cont[?]**:
\(\textsf{Contingent}\_{\boldsymbol{\exists}}(\sfx) \eqdf
\Diamond\neg\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\)
and contingency as the possibility of non-actuality, i.e.,
**Cont**\(\_{\sfA!}\):
\(\textsf{Contingent}\_{\sfA!}(\sfx) \eqdf \Diamond\neg
\sfA!\sfx\)
As per SQML, says the possibilist, contingency[?]
is a logical
impossibility. However, they continue, contingency\(\sfA!\)
comports fully
with our lived experience and, in fact, is all that our experience
warrants: our sense of our own contingency is rooted in our possible,
indeed imminent, non-actuality and, hence, in the fact that, in the
not-too-distant future, we shall forever cease to be *actual*.
We shall thus forever cease to be conscious, to be embodied, to love
and be loved, etc.; nothing distinctive of our human existence will
survive. That something identical to each of us--a mere
*possibile*, a featureless point in logical space--remains
at worlds and times where we are non-actual offers no existential
solace. (See Williamson 2013: Ch. 1, esp section 3, 6, and 8 for
related reflections on necessitism.)
The actualist, of course, in denying possibilism, i.e., in denying
that there could be any contingently non-concrete objects, allows no
daylight between being, existence, and actuality: to be is to exist
and to exist to be actual. Hence, for the actualist,
contingency[?], the possibility of non-being, is the
only concept of contingency on the table. As contingency in this sense
is a logical impossibility according to SQML, the actualist clearly
needs an alternative quantified modal logic tuned to their
metaphysical sensibilities.
SQML thus throws
the twofold challenge
that possibilism presents to actualism into stark relief. The notion
of an intended SQML interpretation of an applied modal language, with
its single domain of actual and merely possible individuals and its
recursive account of truth at a world, vividly traces the semantic
dependence of complex propositions down to the individuals on which
their truth values are grounded. And the corresponding deductive
system *SQML* provides the possibilist with a clean, complete
framework in which to represent their reasoning. In the remaining
sections of this entry we will look at prominent actualist responses
to the two-fold possibilist challenge.
## 4. Actualist Responses to the Possibilist Challenge
There are any number of representatives of, and variations on,
actualism. For brevity, I will focus on several particularly important
accounts. We will begin with a close look at the extraordinarily
influential work of Saul Kripke. Although Kripke himself does not
appear to have been particularly motivated by any great commitment to
actualism, both his version of possible world semantics and its
corresponding deductive system capture important elements of the
actualist perspective.
### 4.1 Kripke Semantics and Its Logic
Given the controversial consequences of SQML, it seems clear that
actualists need an alternative quantified modal logic on which
**BF**, **CBF**, and \(\Box\textbf{N}\) fail
to be logically true; ideally, it will also have a sound and complete
deductive system in which, consequently, those principles are not
derivable as theorems. The system of Kripke 1963b satisfies both of
these desiderata and, hence, meets the second element of the
possibilist's two-fold challenge; as we will see, whether it
meets the first--a satisfying account of the truth conditions for
modal propositions like
(2)--is
a more delicate matter.
#### 4.1.1 Kripke Interpretations
Just as necessitism is not analytically entailed by possibilism, its
denial--i.e., that there at least could be contingent (i.e.,
henceforth, contingent[?]) beings--is not
analytically entailed by actualism. An actualist could consistently
maintain that, necessarily, everything is necessarily identical with
something and hence in particular, given their rejection of contingent
non-*concreta*, that, necessarily, every concrete thing is
necessarily identical to some concrete thing--put another way,
that, necessarily, if something is concrete at any time at all, it is
necessarily and eternally concrete.
(Spinoza
might be ascribed such a view, insofar as
God-or-Nature
is taken to be concrete and is, ultimately, the only concrete thing.)
For typical actualists, however, it is fundamental to their view that
there are in fact many contingent beings, many things that could have
failed to be identical with anything; reality could have altogether
lacked many things that just happen to exist. A natural (if, as
we'll see, not entirely unproblematic) way of expressing this is
to say that there are possible worlds where at least some things in
the actual world are simply absent; more generally, it is to say that
what exists--that is, for the actualist, what there *is*
in the broadest sense--*varies* from world to world. This
fundamental actualist intuition is at the heart of Kripke's
semantics for quantified modal languages.
Recall that an SQML interpretation \(\calM\) for a first-order modal
language \(\scrL\_\Box\) specifies nonempty sets \(D\) and
\(W\)--the "individuals" and "worlds" of
\(\calM\)--along with a distinguished element \(w^\ast\) of
\(W,\) the "actual" world of the interpretation; it then
assigns a denotation \(\tau^\calM \in D\) to each term \(\tau\) and an
extension \(\pi\_w^\calM \subseteq D^n\) to each *n*-place
predicate \(\pi\) at each world \(w\). A *Kripke
interpretation* \(\calK\) of \(\scrL\_\Box\) is exactly like an
SQML interpretation except for one modification that reflects the
fundamental actualist intuition noted above, viz., the addition of a
function \(\textit{dom}\) that assigns to each world \(w\) of
\(\calK\) a *subset* \(D\_w\) of \(D\)--intuitively, of
course, the individuals that *exist in* \(w\). No restrictions
are placed on the domain of any world; any set of individuals,
including the empty set, will do, although it is required that \(D =
\bigcup\{\textit{dom}(w):w \in W\},\) i.e., that \(D\) consists of
exactly the individuals that exist in some
world.[48]
The definition of truth at a world in a Kripke interpretation
\(\calK\) is defined exactly as it is for an SQML interpretation
\(\calM\) except for the quantified clause, where the difference
between Kripke interpretations and SQML interpretations just noted
comes to the fore. Specifically, when a quantified formula
\(\forall\nu\varphi\) is evaluated at a world \(w,\) the quantifier
ranges only over \(\textit{dom}(w),\) the set of objects in the domain
of \(w\). Thus, the modal clause in the definition of truth at a world
is revised as follows:
* A universally quantified formula
\(\forall\nu\psi\) is true\(\_w^\calK\) if
and only if, for all individuals \(a \in \textit{dom}(w),\) \(\psi\)
is true\(\_w^{\calK[\frac{\nu}{a}]}\).
And, accordingly:
* An existentially quantified formula \(\exists\nu\psi\) is true\(\_w^\calK\)
if and only if, for some
individual \(a \in \textit{dom}(w),\) \(\psi\) is true\(\_w^{\calK[\frac{\nu}{a}]}\).
The definitions of truth, satisfiability and logical truth are
unchanged. Call the logic determined by Kripke semantics KQML.
**A Note on "Serious" Actualism**. KQML takes over the
semantics of predicates from SQML without modification: by the above
condition \(\pi\_w^\calK \subseteq D^n,\) the extension \(\pi\_w^\calK\)
that a Kripke interpretation \(\calK\) assigns to a predicate at a
world consists of arbitrary *n*-tuples of individuals in \(D.\)
However, as Kripke himself (1963b, p. 86, fn 1) notes,
>
>
> [i]t is natural to assume that [a predicate] should be *false*
> in a world...of all those individuals not existing in that
> world....
>
>
>
Many actualists strongly agree, for the following reason: predicates
express properties and relations. Hence, if a (1-place) predicate
\(\pi\) is true of an individual \(a\) at a world \(w,\) it means that
\(a\) *exemplifies* the property that \(\pi\) expresses at
\(w\). But (these actualists continue) it is surely an undeniable
metaphysical principle--dubbed *serious actualism* by
Plantinga (1983)--that an object must *exist*, must be
identical with something, in order to exemplify properties; an object
cannot both be utterly absent from a world and yet have properties
there. To rule this prospect out in Kripke's model theory, then,
rather than allowing an *n*-place predicate's extension
at a world to contain arbitrary *n*-tuples of individuals, we
need to *restrict* \(\pi\)'s
extension at \(w\) to *n*-tuples of individuals *in*
\(w\). More formally put, we need to replace the offending condition
\(\pi\_w^\calK \subseteq D^n\) with the more felicitous condition
\(\pi\_w^\calK \subseteq \textit{dom}(w)^n.\)
However, others (notably Pollock (1985) and Fine (1985)) respond that,
while most properties and relations obviously entail
existence--*being a horse*, say, or *being taller
than*--it is far from clear that all do. Notably, if I fail
to exist at a world, then that in some sense clearly seems to
*characterize* me at that world and what else is
*characterization* than property exemplification? Thus (these
philosophers continue), it seems entirely reasonable to say that, at
worlds in which I fail to exist, I have the property
*non-existence*, as well as the complements of all the
distinctly human properties noted
above--*non-consciousness*, *non-embodiment*, etc.,
my nonexistence
notwithstanding.[49]
So for these philosophers, the condition \(\pi\_w^\calK \subseteq
D^n\) on the assignment of extensions to predicates is fine as it
stands.
Serious actualism--also known as *property actualism*
(Fine 1985), *the (modal) existence requirement* (Yagisawa
2005; Caplan 2007) and *the being constraint* (Williamson 2013:
SS4.1)--is a substantive logical and philosophical issue.
However, as it is for the most part a domestic dispute among
actualists, it is largely orthogonal to the possibilism-actualism
debate proper. Consequently, it will not be pursued here in any
greater depth. For further discussion in addition to the references
above see Plantinga 1985 (which contains replies to Pollock and Fine),
Salmon 1987, Menzel 1991 and 1993, Deutsch 1994, Bergmann 1996 and
1999, Hudson 1997, Stephanou 2007, Hanson 2018, and Jacinto
2019.[50]
#### 4.1.2 KQML and the Controversial Logical Truths of SQML
All three of the controversial logical truths of
SQML--**BF**, **CBF**, and
\(\Box\textbf{N}\)--are invalid in KQML, that is, in KQML, they
are not logically true. The key in each case is KQML's
modification of the way that quantified formulas are evaluated at
worlds. As we saw in
SS3.3
above, the validity of **BF** in SQML--its truth in
every interpretation--depends essentially on the fact that, in
evaluating an existentially quantified formula \(\exists\nu\varphi\)
at an arbitrary possible world \(w,\) the initial occurrence of
\(\exists\nu\) in the formula ranges unrestrictedly over all
individuals. In KQML, by contrast, the range of the initial quantifier
\(\exists\nu\) is *restricted* to \(\textit{dom}(w),\) to the
individuals that exist in \(w\). And, because what exists can vary
from world to world, this renders **BF** invalid: from
the fact that some world and some individual *existing in that
world* are thus and so it certainly does not follow that some
individual *existing in the actual world* and some world are
thus and so. Notably, while in some worlds there are children of
Bergoglio, nothing here in the actual world is a child of Bergoglio in
any world, i.e., \(\Diamond\exists \sfx\, \sfB\sfx\) is true and
\(\exists \sfx\Diamond \sfB\sfx\) is false. Hence, the
**BF** instance
**BF**\*:
\(\Diamond\exists \sfx\, \sfB\sfx \to \exists \sfx \Diamond
\sfB\sfx\)
expressing the inference from
(2)
to
(4)
is false as
well.[51]
(See the preceding note for a more formal demonstration of the
invalidity of **BF**.)
As we also saw in
SS3.3,
**CBF** entails the principle **N** that
everything (i.e., everything there *happens* to be) is
necessarily identical to something. And, obviously, so too does the
full necessitism principle \(\Box\)**N**. But
**N** is clearly invalid in KQML: because world domains
can vary, an individual \(a\) in the actual world might not exist in
another world, i.e., it might be that nothing is identical to \(a\) in
some
worlds.[52]
Hence, since **N** is invalid in KQML, so are
**CBF** and
\(\Box\)**N**.[53]
#### 4.1.3 *KQML*: Kripke's Deductive System for KQML
As noted in
SS3.2,
the deductive system *SQML* is sound and complete for
SQML--all and only the logical truths of SQML are provable in
*SQML*, including the three controversial principles
**BF**, **CBF**, and
\(\Box\)**N**. Since, as we just saw in the previous
section, those principles are all invalid in KQML, to formulate a
sound and complete deductive system of his own, Kripke had to modify
*SQML* rather severely to block the derivation of those
principles without also blocking any of KQML's valid
formulas.
Kripke's solution is nicely illustrated by means of a (somewhat
compressed) proof in *SQML* of
**BF**\*
(the structure of which will be shared by the proof of any
non-trivial instance of **BF**):
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Box \neg \sfB\sfx\) | **Q2** |
| 2. | \(\Box(\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Box \neg
\sfB\sfx)\) | 1, **Nec** |
| 3. | \(\Diamond\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Diamond\Box \neg
\sfB\sfx\) | 2,
*K*[54] |
| 4. | \(\Diamond\Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \neg \sfB\sfx\) | **B*** |
| 5. | \(\Diamond\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \neg
\sfB\sfx\) | 3, 4, *PL* |
| 6. | \(\forall \sfx(\Diamond\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \neg
\sfB\sfx)\) | 5, **Gen** |
| 7. | \(\Diamond\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \forall \sfx \neg
\sfB\sfx\) | 6, **Q1**, **Q3**, and
*PL*[55] |
| 8. | \(\Box(\Diamond\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \forall \sfx
\neg \sfB\sfx)\) | 7, **Nec** |
| 9. | \(\Box\Diamond\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Box\forall
\sfx \neg \sfB\sfx\) | 8, **K** and **MP** |
| 10. | \(\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Box\Diamond\forall \sfx
\Box \neg \sfB\sfx\) | **B** |
| 11. | \(\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Box\forall \sfx \neg
\sfB\sfx\) | 9, 10, *PL* |
| 12. | \(\Diamond\exists \sfx \sfB\sfx \to \exists \sfx \Diamond
\sfB\sfx\) | 11, \(\exists\)**Def**,
\(\Diamond\)**Def**, and *PL* |
It is clear where the problem lies: the universal instantiation schema
**Q2** is invalid in KQML! To see this in the particular
case of line 1, suppose that \(\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx\) is
true in (i.e., true at the "actual world" of) a given
Kripke interpretation \(\calK\) with individuals \(D\) and worlds
\(W\). Then, by
the quantificational clause
in the definition of truth at a world in Kripke's semantics,
everything that exists in the "actual world" \(w^\ast\) of
\(\calK\) is not in the extension of \(\sfB\) at any world \(u\) in
\(W,\) i.e., for all \(a \in \textit{dom}(w^\ast)\) and for all \(u
\in W,\) \(a \notin \sfB^\calK\_{u}\). Recall, however, that the value
\(\sfx^\calK\) assigned to \(\sfx\) can be anything in the set \(D\)
of individuals of \(\calK\); in particular, \(\sfx^\calK\) might not
exist in \(w^\ast\) and, hence, might well be in the extension of
\(\sfB\) at some other world of \(\calK,\) in which case \(\Box\neg
\sfB\sfx\) will be false in
\(\calK.\)[56]
Here we begin to see the logical challenge that confronts the
actualist: a logically valid principle of SQML--in this case, a
standard principle of classical logic--is rendered invalid when
we attempt to revise our modal semantics so as to accommodate
actualist intuitions. The challenge is then how (or whether) to revise
the principle in question, and this in turn often requires a choice
between several competing possibilities, each of which may require
further revisions still. Kripke himself avoids several options that
might suggest themselves in light of the invalidity of
**Q2** in KQML. For instance, taking a lead from Prior
(1957: 33-35), an actualist might argue that
terms--individual constants and variables (when they occur
freely)--are directly referring expressions like proper names and
demonstratives and, hence, that an accurate model theoretic
representation of actualism should require that the value
\(\tau^\calK\) that \(\calK\) assigns to an arbitrary term \(\tau\)
should be restricted to the domain of the actual world \(w^\ast\) of
\(\calK\)--one cannot, after all, refer to individuals that
don't actually exist. This modification of KQML would indeed
preserve the validity of **Q2** but at the cost of
invalidating **Nec**--notably, it would render the
inference from line 1 to line 2 in the above proof invalid. For, while
line 1 might now be true at the actual world \(w^\ast\) of an
arbitrary interpretation \(\calK\) because we've stipulated that
\(\sfx^\calK\) exist in \(w^\ast,\) that very fact could well render
line 1 false at some other world \(u\): \(\forall \sfx \Box \neg
\sfB\sfx\) might be true at \(u\) but our actually existing individual
\(\sfx^\calK,\) although not in the extension of \(\sfB\) in the
actual world, might well be in its extension at \(u\). So, under the
proposed modification, the question for the actualist instead becomes
how to modify **Nec**--perhaps by limiting how it
applies to formulas involving individual constants and free variable
occurrences in some
way.[57]
The most common actualist response to the invalidity of
**Q2**, rather than to try to preserve it by modifying
the semantics of KQML, is simply to replace it with its
free logical
counterpart (see, e.g., Fine 1978, Menzel 1991):
**FQ2**:
\(\forall\nu\varphi \to (\exists \nu\,\nu=\tau \to
\varphi^\nu\_\tau),\) where \(\tau\) is any term other than
\(\nu\)
That is, what is true of everything--i.e., everything that
*actually* exists--will be true of anything in particular
*if* it is actual. Unlike **Q2**,
**FQ2** is valid in KQML as it stands and, moreover,
every instance of it is necessary: what is true of everything in a
given world will be true of anything in particular *if* it is
identical with something in that world. Hence, **FQ2**
raises no problems for **Nec**. And, critically,
outfitted with **FQ2** instead of **Q2**, it
is no longer possible to prove
**BF**.[58]
However, Kripke (1963b, p. 89, note 1) is loath to adopt a solution
that, like the ones just suggested, involves "revising
quantification theory or modal logic". So instead Kripke opts
for another that he borrows from Quine. In his account of
quantification, Quine (1951: SS15) points out that any occurrence
of a name in an ordinary logical truth is inessential to its truth:
what is said of the referent of the name could just as well be said of
anything. Thus, it is not in virtue of any distinctive properties of
God or Socrates that the following proposition is true:
(\(\*\))
If God created everything, then God created Socrates
or, more formally:
(\(\*\))
\(\forall \sfx\, \sfK\sfg\sfx \to \sfK\sfg\sfs\)
(\(\*\)), that is, would have been true no matter what
"God" and "Socrates" refer to. If anything,
then, names obscure the grounds of logical truth. Hence, the
discerning logical eye sees name occurrences in the likes of (\(\*\))
as implicitly quantified variables and, hence, sees the completely
general logical form that underlies
it:[59]
(\(\*\*\))
\(\forall \sfz \forall \sfy(\forall \sfx\, \sfK\sfz\sfx \to
\sfK\sfz\sfy)\)
The same goes for free variable occurrences--semantically,
variables are essentially names, so free variable occurrences in
logical truths should also be seen as implicitly universally
quantified. Hence, properly expressed, the axioms of a
*logical* system, a system designed to have all and only
logical truths as its theorems, should be purely general and, hence,
should be purged of individual constants and free variable
occurrences. In particular, universal instantiation, properly
expressed, will replace the instantiated term \(\tau\) in the
consequent of
**Q2**
with a universally quantified variable:
**KQ2**:
\(\forall \nu'(\forall\nu\varphi \to \varphi^\nu\_{\nu'}),\) where
\(\nu'\) is substitutable for \(\nu\) in \(\varphi\)
Accordingly, line 1 of the proof of **BF**\* requires an
initial universal quantifier to bind the free occurrence of
\(\sfx\):
1.\*
\(\forall \sfx(\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Box \neg
\sfB\sfx)\)
Application of **Nec** to line 1\* now yields only
2.\*
\(\Box\forall \sfx(\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Box \neg
\sfB\sfx)\)
and the intended proof to **BF**\* stalls out. To continue
along the lines of the SQML proof above we would need to be able to
swap the initial necessity operator \(\Box\) in line 2\* with the
universal quantifier to infer
\(\forall \sfx\Box(\forall \sfx \Box \neg \sfB\sfx \to \Box \neg
\sfB\sfx)\)
That is, we would need to be able to prove the relevant instance
of
**CBF#**:
\(\Box\forall \nu \varphi \to \forall \nu \Box \varphi\)
But, as the label indicates, this is just an equivalent form of
**CBF** and, as Kripke (1963b, 88-9) notes,
attempting to prove it under the proposed revision
**KQ2** of **Q2** stalls out for the same
reason.[60]
The necessitism principle \(\Box\)**N** meets a similar
fate. A standard proof of \(\Box\)**N** in SQML begins
with an instance of **Q2** and proceeds as follows:
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfx=\sfy \to \neg \sfx=\sfx\) | **Q2** |
| 2. | \(\sfx=\sfx \to \exists \sfy\,\sfx=\sfy\) | 1, \(\exists\)**Def**, *PL* |
| 3. | \(\sfx=\sfx\) | **Id1** |
| 4. | \(\exists \sfy\,\sfx=\sfy\) | 2, 3, **MP** |
| 5. | \(\Box\exists \sfy\,\sfx=\sfy\) | 4, **Nec** |
| 6. | \(\Box\forall \sfx \Box\exists \sfy\, \sfx=\sfy\) | 5, **Gen**, **Nec** |
But with **KQ2** replacing **Q2**,
critically, we are unable to wedge the necessity operator in between
the two quantifiers; we can only get the likes of the following:
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\forall \sfx(\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfx=\sfy \to \neg
\sfx=\sfx)\) | **KQ2** |
| 2. | \(\forall \sfx(\sfx=\sfx \to \exists \sfy\,\sfx=\sfy)\) | 1, \(\exists\)**Def**, *PL* |
| 3. | \(\forall \sfx\,\sfx=\sfx \to \forall \sfx\exists
\sfy\,\sfx=\sfy\) | 2, **Q1**, **MP** |
| 4. | \(\forall \sfx\,\sfx=\sfx\) | **Id1**, **Gen** |
| 5. | \(\forall \sfx\exists \sfy\,\sfx=\sfy\) | 3, 4, **MP** |
| 6. | \(\Box\forall \sfx\exists \sfy\,\sfx=\sfy\) | 5, **Nec** |
and line 6 is unproblematically valid in KQML: it is simply the
innocuous triviality that everything in a given world is identical to
something *in that world*--not, as
\(\Box\)**N** would have it, in *every* world.
Two further important modifications to the framework of SQML follow
from Kripke's Quinean conception of the purely general nature of
logical truth. First, individual constants have no place; since there
are no individual constants in any axioms, there are none in any
theorems. Hence, it is not possible to reason with them in
Kripke's system. Consequently, Kripke restricts his semantics to
languages with no individual
constants.[61]
Second, under the Quinean conception, the manner in which quantifiers
and modal operators are introduced into proofs needs serious revision.
For example, the proposition \(\forall \sfx(\sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)\)
is valid in KQML. In *SQML*, it is proved by deriving the
tautology \(\sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx\) and applying the rule of
Generalization:
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\sfF\sfx \to ((\sfG\sfx \to \sfF\sfx) \to \sfF\sfx)\) | **P1** |
| 2. | \((\sfF\sfx \to (\sfG\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)) \to (\sfF\sfx \to
\sfF\sfx)\) | 1, **P2**, **MP** |
| 3. | \(\sfF\sfx \to (\sfG\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)\) | **P1** |
| 4. | \(\sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx\) | 2, 3, **MP** |
| 5. | \(\forall \sfx(\sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)\) | 4, **Gen** |
But axioms can't have free variables under the Quinean
conception and, hence, that proof is not available. Likewise, the
*de re* validity \(\forall \sfx\,\Box(\Box \sfF\sfx \to
\sfF\sfx)\) is proved in *SQML* by applying the rule of
Necessitation to the **T** instance \(\Box \sfF\sfx \to
\sfF\sfx\) and then generalizing:
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\Box \sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx\) | **T** |
| 2. | \(\Box(\Box \sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)\) | 1, **Nec** |
| 3. | \(\forall \sfx\, \Box(\Box \sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)\) | 2, **Gen** |
But again, for the same reason, this proof is also unavailable.
Kripke's solution here--once again borrowing from Quine
(1951)--jettisons both **Gen** and
**Nec** and cleverly incorporates the desired effects of
both rules directly into his specification of the logical axioms of
his deductive system--which, of course, we will call
*KQML*. To express the solution clearly, say that a formula is
*closed* if it contains no free variable occurrences, and
define a *closure* of a formula \(\varphi\) to be any closed
formula resulting from prefixing a (possibly empty) string of
universal quantifiers and necessity operators, in any order, to
\(\varphi\). Then, given a language \(\scrL\_\Box\) without any
individual constants, any *closure* of any instance of any of
the following schemas is an axiom of *KQML*:
* *Propositional Axiom Schema*
**Taut**: \(\varphi,\) where \(\varphi\) is a
propositional
tautology[62]
* *Modal Axiom Schemas*
**K**,
**T**, and
**5**
* *Quantificational Axiom Schemas*
**Q1**,
**KQ2**, and
**Q3**
* *Identity Schemas*
**Id1**,
**Id2**
Should the serious actualism constraint be enforced, we add:
* *Serious Actualism Schema*
**SA**: \(\pi\nu\_1\ldots\nu\_n \to \exists \nu\,\nu =
\nu\_i,\) for \(1 \leq i \leq n\) and where \(\nu\) is a variable other
than \(\nu\_i\)
As noted, *KQML*'s sole rule of inference is
**MP**, Modus Ponens. Accordingly, a *proof*
*in KQML* is a finite sequence of formulas of \(\scrL\_\Box\)
such that each is either an axiom of *KQML* or follows from
preceding formulas in the sequence by **MP**.
Crucially, then, with regard to such KQML validities as \(\forall
\sfx(\sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)\) and \(\forall \sfx\,\Box(\Box \sfF\sfx
\to \sfF\sfx)\) that are derivable in *SQML* by applications of
**Gen** and **Nec**, *instances* of
the above schemas can contain free variable occurrences. So, in
particular, \(\forall \sfx(\sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)\) is a closure of
the propositional tautology \(\sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx,\) and \(\forall
\sfx\,\Box(\Box \sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx)\) is a closure of the
**T** instance \(\Box \sfF\sfx \to \sfF\sfx\) and, hence,
both validities are axioms (hence theorems) of *KQML*.
With these modifications in place, Kripke is able to demonstrate that
his deductive system *KQML* is sound and complete for closed
formulas relative to his semantics. Soundness, in particular, tells us
that no invalid formula is provable in the system. Hence, since
**BF**, **CBF**, and \(\Box\textbf{N}\) are
all invalid in KQML, soundness guarantees that they are all unprovable
in *KQML*.
#### 4.1.4 Is KQML a Genuinely Actualist Logic?
On the face of it, KQML provides the actualist with a powerful
alternative to SQML. However, one might well question its actualist
credentials. Specifically, despite the invalidity of the
actualistically objectionable principles **BF**,
**CBF**, and \(\Box\)**N**, it is
questionable whether KQML has escaped ontological commitment to
*possibilia*, for the following reason. KQML provides us with a
formal semantics for (constant-free) modal languages \(\scrL\_\Box\)
and, in particular, an account of how the truth value of a given
formula \(\varphi\) of \(\scrL\_\Box\) is determined in an
interpretation by the meanings assigned to its semantically
significant component parts, notably, the meanings of its predicates.
As noted above
in our exposition of SQML, truth-in-a-model is not the same as truth
*simpliciter*. However, given an
applied modal language
\(\scrL\_\Box,\) we were able to define a notion of modal truth
*simpliciter* for formulas of \(\scrL\_\Box\) in terms of truth
in an *intended* interpretation, an interpretation \(\calM\)
for \(\scrL\_\Box\) comprising the very things that the language is
intuitively understood to be "about". Thus, when \(\calM\)
is an intended SQML interpretation, the things it is about are the
honest-to-goodness actual and merely possible individuals in the
domain \(D\) of \(\calM\) and the honest-to-goodness possible worlds
of \(W\). In particular, if our applied language is one in which
\(\Diamond\exists \sfx\, \sfB\sfx\) is meant to express that Bergoglio
might have had children, \(D\) will include at least some of his
merely possible children and \(W\) will contain a world in which some
of them *are*, in fact, his children and hence concrete and,
hence, in which they are actual in the sense of
**A!Def**.
There is thus, more generally, for each world \(w \in W,\) the set
\(D\_w\) of things in \(D\) that are actual in \(w\). Note, however,
that, in light of this, we can transform \(\calM\) into a KQML
interpretation \(\calK\_\calM\) simply by defining a function \(\mathit
dom\) that, for each world \(w \in W,\) returns exactly the set
\(D\_w\). However, that is simply a formal modification that affects
the evaluation of quantified formulas at worlds; it does not alter
\(\calK\_\calM\)'s ontological
commitments, which are still exactly those of \(\calM\). But there
seems no other way to construct a notion of an *intended*
Kripke interpretation that will yield the right truth values for
propositions like
(2).
From this perspective, the invalidity of **BF**,
**CBF**, and \(\Box\)**N** in KQML--in
particular, their falsity in an intended Kripke interpretation
\(\calK\_\calM\)--results from a simple adjustment of the
semantical apparatus with no substantive change in the metaphysics. So
instead of a genuinely actualist alternative to the possibilist
commitments of SQML, KQML appears to remain no less steeped in
them--the denizens of other worlds that are not in the domain of
the actual world simply fail to be actual in the sense of
**A!Def**.
Of course, this metalinguistic fact cannot be *expressed* in
\(\scrL\_\Box\)--even if one adds the actuality predicate to
\(\scrL\_\Box,\) due to the quantifier restrictions in the semantics of
KQML, the assertion that there are things that aren't actual,
\(\exists \sfx\, \neg \sfA!\sfx,\) will be false in \(\calK\_\calM\) at
every world. But that does not make the possibilist commitments of
\(\calK\_\calM\)
disappear.[63]
An option for the actualist here, perhaps, is simply to deny that
Kripke interpretations have any genuine metaphysical bite. Rather, the
role of Kripke's possible world semantics is simply to get the
intuitive validities right; soundness and completeness proofs for
*KQML* then demonstrate that the system preserves those
intuitive validities and, hence, that it is a trustworthy vehicle for
reasoning directly about the modal facts of the matter. The formal
semantics proper is just a useful device toward this end. However, on
the face of it, anyway, this instrumentalist take on Kripke's
semantics is an uncomfortable one for the actualist. Consider ordinary
Tarskian semantics for classical first-order logic FOL. Intuitively,
this semantics is more than just a formal instrument. Rather, an
intended interpretation for a given applied language \(\scrL\) shows
clearly how the semantic values of the relevant parts of a formula of
\(\scrL\)--the objects, properties, relations, etc. in the world
those parts signify--contribute to the actual truth value of the
sentence. The semantics thus provides insight into the
"word-world" connection that explains how it is that
sentences of natural language can express truth and falsity, how they
can carry good and bad information. The possibilist is able to
generalize this understanding of the semantics of first-order
languages directly to modal languages \(\scrL\_\Box\). The embarrassing
question for the actualist who would take the proposed instrumentalist
line on Kripke's semantics is: what distinguishes Kripkean
semantics from Tarskian? Why does the latter yield insight into the
word-world connection and not the former? Actualists owe us either an
explanation of how Kripke's semantics can be understood
non-instrumentally without entailing possibilism or a plausible
instrumentalist answer to the possibilist challenge. The former option
is explored in
SS4.2,
the latter in
SS4.3
and
SS4.4.
### 4.2 Haecceitism
One of the best known responses to the possibilist challenge was
developed by Alvin Plantinga (1974, 1976). Plantinga's response
(more or less as fleshed out formally by Jager (1982)) requires no
significant modifications to KQML beyond explicitly adopting the
serious actualism
condition discussed at the end of
SS4.1.1.[64]
Rather, his response has almost entirely to do with the metaphysics
of intended interpretations, or what he calls *applied
semantics*. More specifically, he claims to provide an
actualistically acceptable ontology for constructing intended
interpretations for applied languages.
#### 4.2.1 Worlds and Essences
To appreciate Plantinga's account, note first that a challenge
to actualism that we have not focused on hitherto is the nature of
possible worlds
themselves. The main reason for this is simply that the basic
semantic argument for *possibilia* laid out in the Introduction
to this entry does not assume or require them. If, however, one takes
possible world semantics of some ilk seriously, so that possibility
and necessity are correlated in some manner with truth at some or all
possible worlds, then, insofar as *possibilia* are said to
*exist in* non-actual possible worlds, such worlds are
themselves reasonably classified as some variety of
*possibilia* themselves, some variety of merely possible,
non-existent object. Hence, because Plantinga takes possible world
semantics seriously, the first task he sets for himself is to define
possible worlds in an actualistically acceptable way.
Plantinga defines a possible world to be a *state of affairs*
of a certain sort. A state of affairs for Plantinga is an abstract,
fine-grained, proposition-like entity characteristically referred to
by sentential gerunds like *the earth's being smaller than
the*
*sun*.[65]
Some states of affairs *obtain* and others do not: *the
earth's being smaller than the sun* obtains;
*seven's being the sum of three and five* does
not.[66]
Importantly, all states of affairs are necessary beings irrespective
of whether or not they obtain. A state of affairs \(s\) is
*possible* if it possibly obtains; \(s\) *includes*
another state of affairs \(s'\) if, necessarily, \(s\) obtains only if
\(s'\) does and \(s\) *excludes* \(s'\) if it is not possible
that both \(s\) and \(s'\) obtain; \(s\) is *maximal* if, for
any state of affairs \(s',\) \(s\) either includes or excludes \(s'\).
A *possible world*, then, is a maximal possible state of
affairs; and *the actual world* is the possible world that, in
fact, obtains. It is easy to show that, under those definitions, a
state of affairs is a possible world just in case it possibly includes
all and only the states of affairs that obtain. Since worlds are
states of affairs and, for Plantinga, states of affairs are all
actually existing abstract entities, their existence is consistent
with actualism, as desired.
The core of Plantinga's answer to the possibilist challenge is
the notion of an *(individual) essence*, an idea that traces
back clearly at least to
Boethius.[67]
Plantinga defines the
*essential* properties
of an object to be those properties that it couldn't possibly
have lacked without simply failing to exist
altogether.[68]
A bit more formally put: \(P\) is essential to \(a\) just in case,
necessarily, if \(a\) exists (i.e., for an actualist like Plantinga,
if something is identical to \(a\)), then \(a\) has \(P\).
Intuitively, the essential properties of an object are the ones that
make the object "what it is". For example, on at least
some conceptions of human persons, *being human* is essential
to Bergoglio while *being Catholic* isn't--there is
(on these conceptions) no possible world containing Bergoglio in which
he fails to be human but many in which he, say, becomes a Buddhist
monk or is a lifelong atheist. A property is an essence of an object
\(a,\) then, just in case (i) it is essential to \(a\) and (ii)
nothing *but* \(a\) could have exemplified it; and a property
is an essence *simpliciter* just in case it is possibly an
essence of something.
A critical, and distinctive, element of Plantinga's account is
that there are many unexemplified essences, i.e., essences that are
not, in fact, the essences *of* anything, specifically, those
he dubs *haecceities*. Haecceities are "purely
nonqualitative" properties like *being Plantinga*, or
perhaps, *being identical with Plantinga*, that do no more than
characterize an object \(a\) as *that very thing*. Pretty
clearly, haecceities are essences: Plantinga, for example, could not
have existed and failed to have the property *being Plantinga*
and it is not possible that anything else have that property. And,
importantly, *qua* abstract property, like all essences,
*being Plantinga* exists necessarily, whether exemplified or
not--although, of course, had it not been exemplified, it
wouldn't have had the name "being Plantinga", or any
name at all, for that matter.
#### 4.2.2 Intended Haecceitist Interpretations
As we saw in
SS4.1.3
above, the problem with KQML for actualists is that an intended
Kripke interpretation for an applied modal language \(\scrL\_\Box\)
appears to involve commitment to *possibilia* no less than
SQML--to get the truth values of propositions like
(2)
right, an intended Kripke interpretation \(\calK\) for \(\scrL\_\Box\)
will still have to include mere *possibilia* like
Bergoglio's merely possible children; indeed, but for the
addition of the domain function \(\textit{dom}\) on worlds tacked on
to invalidate the problematic validities of SQML, \(\calK\) will be
indistinguishable from an intended SQML interpretation of
\(\scrL\_\Box\). Plantinga's diagnosis, roughly put, is that
Kripke's semantics gets the *structure* of the modal
universe right but that it needs his worlds and haecceities to realize
that structure in an actualistically acceptable way. Specifically, an
intended *haecceitist* interpretation \(\calH\) for an applied
modal language \(\scrL\_\Box\) is a Kripke interpretation that
specifies sets \(D\) and \(W\) as usual, but \(W\) is a sufficiently
expansive set of Plantinga's maximal possible states of affairs
and \(D\) a corresponding set of haecceities. The domain function
\(\textit{dom}\) as usual will map each possible world \(w\) to a
subset of \(D,\) i.e., to a set of haecceities that Plantinga refers
to as the *essential domain* of \(w\). This is the set of
haecceities that are *exemplified* in \(w,\) where a haecceity
\(h\) is exemplified in \(w\) just in case \(w\) includes the state of
affairs *\(h\)'s being
exemplified*. Otherwise put, the essential domain
\(\textit{dom}(w)\) of \(w\) consists of those haecceities that would
have been exemplified if \(w\) had obtained. Since, as noted above,
haecceities are necessary beings that exist even if unexemplfied, they
can serve as actually existing "proxies" for the
individuals there *would have been* had \(w\) obtained (Bennett
2006). In this way, Plantinga's haecceitist interpretations can
*represent* the possibilist's non-actual worlds and their
merely possible inhabitants without incurring any possibilist
commitments.
Because an intended haecceitist interpretation \(\calH\) for an
applied language \(\scrL\_\Box\) is a Kripke interpretation (with the
serious actualism constraint enforced), every variable \(\nu\) is, as
usual, assigned a member \(\nu^\calH\) of the set \(D\) of individuals
of \(\calH,\) i.e., a haecceity, and every predicate \(\pi\) is
assigned a set \(\pi\_w^\calH\) of *n*-tuples of haecceities in
the essential domain of \(w,\) for each world \(w \in W\). Monadic
atomic formulas, in particular, are evaluated as usual: \(\pi\nu\) is
true\(\_w^\calH\) just in case \(\nu^\calH
\in \pi\_w^\calH\). However, although the *formal* truth
conditions in \(\calH\) for atomic formulas do not differ from those
defined for atomic formulas in an intended SQML interpretation
\(\calM,\) it is important to understand that, in these different
contexts, those formally identical truth conditions represent starkly
different metaphysical conditions. Specifically, in an intended SQML
interpretation \(\calM,\) that \(\nu^\calM \in \pi\_w^\calM\) indicates
that, at \(w,\) the (perhaps merely possible) object \(\nu^\calM\)
exemplifies the property \(P\_\pi\) expressed by \(\pi\). By contrast,
in an intended haecceitist interpretation \(\calH,\) that \(\nu^\calH
\in \pi\_w^\calH\) indicates, not that \(h\) *exemplifies*
\(P\_\pi\) at \(w,\) but that it is *coexemplified with*
\(P\_\pi\) at \(w\). Thus, for example, the truth condition for
(2)--formalized
as \(\Diamond\exists \sfx\, \sfB\sfx\)--in an intended
haecceitist interpretation \(\calH\) is obviously *not* that
there is a possible world in which some haecceity \(h\) is one of
Bergoglio's children--haecceities are properties and,
hence, necessarily non-concrete--but, rather, that
(5)
There is a possible world in which some haecceity \(h\) is
coexemplified with *being a child of Bergoglio*.
Likewise for *n*-place atomic formulas generally:
\(\rho\nu\_1\ldots\nu\_n\) is true at \(w\) just in case the haecceities
\(\nu\_1^\calH, \ldots, \nu\_n^\calH,\) respectively, are coexemplified
with the relation \(R\_\rho\) that \(\rho\) expresses in \(w\).
Plantinga's haecceitism thus delivers the same sort of
systematic, compositional account of the truth conditions for modal
propositions as possibilism but without the commitment to unactualized
*possibilia*.
It is important to be clear on the fact that coexemplification at a
world is primitive here, and not definable in terms of
exemplification. Of course, if a (monadic) atomic formula \(\pi\nu\)
is *in fact* true in an intended haecceitist interpretation
\(\calH,\) i.e., if it is true at the actual world \(w^\ast,\) then
there is an object that exemplifies both \(\nu^\calH\) and
\(P\_\pi\)--notwithstanding the fact that this implication is not
itself represented in \(\calH,\) since \(\textit{dom}(w^\ast)\) only
contains haecceities, not the objects that exemplify them. However, it
is critical not to generalize this implication and take the
coexemplification of two properties--notably, a haecceity \(h\)
and some property \(P\)--*at a world* \(w\) to imply that
there is something that exemplifies them at \(w\). For if that were
so, then the truth conditions for the likes of
(2)
would once again entail that there are *possibilia*, and
Plantinga could rightly be accused of being committed to them--he
simply *ignores* them in his haecceitist model theory. But the
correct implication is this: if \(\pi\nu\) is true\(\_{w}^\calH\),
so that \(\nu^\calH\) is
coexemplified with \(P\_\pi\) at \(w,\) then, *had* \(w\)
obtained, there *would have been* an individual that *would
have* exemplified both \(\nu^\calH\) and \(P\_\pi\). Importantly,
though, the fact that \(\nu^\calH\) is coexemplified with \(P\_\pi\) at
\(w\) stands on its own; it does not hold in virtue of the
corresponding counterfactual. Indeed, the dependency goes in the other
direction: that there could have been an individual with \(P\_\pi\)
(and would have been had \(w\) obtained) is true in virtue of the fact
that some (actually existing) haecceity is possibly coexemplified with
\(P\_\pi\).
#### 4.2.3 Modalism
Plantinga's haecceitist account illustrates an important point
about most forms of actualism that is sometimes a source of confusion,
namely, that most actualists are also *modalists*. That is,
most actualists take the English modal operators
"necessarily", "possibly", and the like,
collectively, to be primitive and, hence, not to be definable in terms
of non-modal notions. On the face of it, however, insofar as the
formal operators \(\Box\) and \(\Diamond\) are taken to symbolize
their English counterparts, defining the modal operators would appear
to be exactly what possible world semantics purports to do. For,
unlike
the classical connectives and quantifiers,
in basic possible world semantics the modal operators are not
interpreted *homophonically*. That is, they are not interpreted
with the very natural language operators they are intended to
represent--a necessitation \(\Box\psi,\) in particular, is not
defined to be true in an interpretation just in case \(\psi\) is
*necessarily* true in it. Rather, in basic possible world
semantics, the necessity operator is interpreted as a restricted
universal quantifier: a necessitation \(\Box\psi\) is true in an
interpretation \(\calM\) just in case \(\psi\) is true at *every
possible world* of \(\calM\). However, whether or not that proves
to be a *definition* of the necessity operator depends on what
one takes a possible world to be.
David Lewis
famously
defined possible worlds
to be (typically) large, scattered concrete objects similar in kind
but spatio-temporally unconnected to our own physical universe. Under
such an understanding of possible worlds, possible world semantics
arguably provides a genuine definition of the modal operators on which
the truth conditions assigned to modal formulas do not themselves
involve any modal
notions.[69]
As it is sometimes put, such a definition is
"eliminative" or "reductive"--modal
notions are eliminated in the semantics in favor of quantification
over (non-modal) worlds.
Plantinga's haecceitist semantics is decidedly not of this sort.
Recall,
in particular, that Plantinga defines a possible world to be a
maximal possible state of affairs. Spelling this definition out
explicitly in the truth condition for necessitations (under an
intended haecceitist interpretation \(\calH\)) then yields:
>
>
> \(\Box\psi\) is true if and only if \(\psi\) is true at all states of
> affairs \(w\) such that (i) for all states of affairs \(s,\) either,
> *necessarily*, \(w\) obtains only if \(s\) does or,
> *necessarily*, \(w\) obtains only if \(s\) doesn't, and
> (ii) *possibly*, \(w\) obtains.
>
>
>
Clearly, the truth condition here interprets the modal operator
\(\Box\) homophonically and, hence, on pain of circularity, cannot be
taken to provide any kind of eliminative analysis of the modal
operator \(\Box.\) But, as we've detailed at length, such an
analysis is not Plantinga's goal. Rather, his account is meant
to show how the truth conditions for atomic formulas in an intended
interpretation serve to ground propositions like
(2)
in the modal properties of haecceities. (His truth conditions are
thus perhaps better thought of as *grounding conditions*.)
Given such an interpretation, then, the truth conditional clauses of
Plantinga's theory yield non-eliminative but philosophically
illuminating *equivalences* that reveal the connections between
the statements expressible in a basic modal language \(\scrL\_\Box\)
and the deeper metaphysical truths of his
theory.[70]
Haecceities are thus the key to Plantinga's answers to both
prongs of possibilism's
twofold challenge to actualism.
First, Plantinga's haecceitist semantics delivers a
compositional theory of truth conditions that grounds general *de
dicto* modal propositions like
(2)
systematically in the modal properties of individuals of a certain
sort--specifically, coexemplification relations that haecceities
stand in with other properties at possible worlds. Second, his
haecceitist semantics enables him to adopt KQML (with the serious
actualism constraint) without modification and, hence, to have a
robust quantified modal logic that has no possibilist commitments.
### 4.3 Strict Actualism
As robust as the haecceitist solution is, many actualists find that it
grates against some very strong intuitions, especially about the
nature of properties.
But there is a deeper issue dividing
the haecceitists from other actualists. To clarify, consider that many
propositions are *singular* in form. That is, unlike general
propositions like *all whales are mammals*, some propositions
are "directly about" specific individuals--for
example, the proposition *Marie Curie was a German citizen*.
Call the individuals a singular proposition is directly about the
*subjects* of the proposition. Singular propositions are
typically expressed by means of sentences involving names, pronouns,
indexicals, or other devices of direct reference. As we've seen,
possibilists believe that there are singular propositions whose
subjects are not actual, viz., propositions about mere
*possibilia*: for the possibilist, recall,
(2)
is grounded in singular propositions of the form *\(a\) is
Bergoglio's child*, for *possibilia* \(a\).
Similarly, haecceitists like Plantinga, although actualists in the
strict sense, also believe there are singular possibilities that are
in a derivative but clear sense directly about things that don't
exist, viz., those possibilities involving unexemplified haecceities
like *\(h\) is coexemplified with being Bergoglio's
child*. Say that a *strict* actualist is an actualist who
rejects the idea that there are, or even could be, singular
propositions that are directly about things that do not exist in
either the possibilist's or the haecceitist's sense. It
follows that, had some actually existing individual \(a\) failed to
exist, there would have been no singular propositions about \(a\); or,
as Prior puts it, there would have been no *facts* about \(a,\)
not even the fact that \(a\) fails to exist (see, e.g., Prior 1957:
48-49); or again: singular propositions *supervene on*
the individuals they are about. For the strict actualist, then,
necessarily, all propositions are either wholly general or, at most,
are directly about existing individuals only.
So understood, the strict actualist rejects the intuition that drives
both possibilism and haecceitism, viz., that *de dicto* modal
propositions like
(2)
are grounded ultimately in the modal properties of, and relations
among, individuals of some ilk. Rather, our illustrative statement
(2)
is, ultimately, brute; it is true simply because it is possible that
(or there is a world at which) something is Bergoglio's child,
full stop, as there is nothing to instantiate the quantifier; there is
nothing such that, possibly (or, at some world), *it* is
Bergoglio's child.
How then do things stand for the strict actualist with respect to the
first element of the possibilist's two-fold challenge? The
answer of course depends entirely on what one takes to be a
"systematically and philosophically satisfying" account of
the truth conditions for modal assertions like
(2).
Possibilists (and their haecceitist and eliminitivist counterparts)
clearly consider preservation of Tarski-style compositionality
(formalized in an appropriate notion of an *intended*
interpretation) to be essential for meeting this element of the
challenge: one must ultimately be able to ground the truth of complex
modal statements in the modal properties of (perhaps nonactual,
perhaps abstract) individuals. But it is not at all clear that the
strict actualist must agree. They might well rather simply reject this
demand and insist instead that
(2)
and its like stand on their own and do not need the sort of grounding
that possibilists insist upon. Since this is simply a consequence of
the rejection of *possibilia* and their actualist proxies, from
the strict actualist perspective, it is a philosophically satisfying
result. The apparent loss of Tarski-style compositionality is, for the
strict actualist, a price worth
paying.[71]
From this perspective, possible world semantics can with some
justification be seen as nothing more than a useful but ontologically
inert formal instrument, an evocative but ultimately dispensable
philosophical
heuristic.[72]
In that case, the only serious challenge that possibilism raises for
the strict actualist is the formulation of an actualistically kosher
quantified modal *deductive system* whose basic principles
intuitively reflect strict actualist sensibilities. We turn now to two
of the best known accounts. (We will follow common practice and refer
to a deductive system with or without a corresponding formal model
theory as a
logic.[73])
#### 4.3.1 Prior's Quantified Modal Logic \(Q\)
It was Arthur Prior who, in 1956, first proved that
**BF** is a theorem of *SQML* (without identity).
Clearly aware of its possibilist and necessitist implications, Prior
sought to develop a logic consistent with strict actualism and, hence,
a logic in which **BF**, **CBF**, and
\(\Box\)**N** all fail. The result was his deductive
system \(Q\). The first installment--the propositional component
(Prior 1957: chs. IV and
V[74])--arrived
only a year later; quantification theory with identity was added a
decade later (Prior 1968b, 1968c).
Recall that the central intuition driving strict actualism is that,
necessarily, a singular proposition supervenes on the individuals it
is about--call these individuals the *subjects* of the
proposition--and, hence, that, necessarily, there is simply no
information, no singular propositions, about things that fail to
exist; if \(p\) is a singular proposition about \(a,\) then,
necessarily, \(p\) exists only if \(a\) does. Conversely, necessarily,
if all the individuals \(p\) is about exist, then so does \(p\). Prior
expressed this connection between singular propositions and their
subjects in terms of formulas and their constituent singular terms,
i.e., their constituent individual constants and free variables. And,
in formulating \(Q\), instead of the existence or nonexistence of
propositions, Prior typically spoke of the "statability"
or "unstatability" of the formulas that express
them.[75]
Specifically, let \(\varphi\) be a formula and \(p\_\varphi\) the
singular proposition \(\varphi\) expresses. Intuitively, then, for
Prior, \(\varphi\) is *statable*, or *formulable*,
*at* a world \(w\) if and only if \(p\_\varphi\) exists at \(w\)
and, hence, if and only if all of \(p\_\varphi\)'s
subjects exist at \(w\).
Thus, where \(a\_\tau\) is the denotation of a singular term
\(\tau\):
**S**:
A formula \(\varphi\) containing exactly the singular terms
\(\tau\_1,\ldots,\tau\_n\) is *statable* at a world \(w\) if and
only if \(a\_{\tau\_1},\ldots,a\_{\tau\_n}\) all exist at \(w\).
Hence, in particular, if any of the \(a\_{\tau\_i}\) fails to exist at
\(w,\) then \(\varphi\) is *unstatable* there.
So far, there is little for any strict actualist to take issue with in
Prior's framing of the issues here. However, Prior makes a
critical inference about unstatability that distinguishes his logic
starkly from other varieties of strict actualism (call it
Prior's *Gap Principle*):
**Gap**:
If a statement \(\varphi\) is unstatable at a world \(w,\) then
\(\varphi\) is neither true nor false at \(w.\)
The logical implications of **Gap** are dramatic. Note
first that the usual interdefinability of necessity and possibility
fails. To see this for the particular case of *SQML*'s
\(\Diamond\textbf{Def}\),
consider, say, the obvious truth that Bergoglio is not a subatomic
particle--say, a proton, \(\neg \sfP\sfb\). Since Bergoglio is a
contingent being, there are worlds where he doesn't exist.
Hence, there are worlds where \(\neg \sfP\sfb\) fails to be statable
and thus, by **Gap**, where it is neither true nor false
and thus in particular where it is not true. It follows that \(\neg
\sfP\sfb\) is not necessary, \(\neg\Box\neg \sfP\sfb.\) But,
obviously, \(\Diamond \sfP\sfb\) does not follow; assuming that
Bergoglio is essentially human, it is not possible that he is a
proton. So \(\Diamond\textbf{Def}\) will not do. By the same token, if
Bergoglio is essentially human, it is impossible that he fail to be
human, \(\neg\Diamond\neg \sfH\sfb\). For \(\neg \sfH\sfb\) is
obviously not true in worlds where he exists, and in worlds where he
doesn't, it is not statable and hence, by **Gap**
again, neither true nor false and thus again not true. But \(\Box
\sfH\sfb\) does not follow; for \(\sfH\sfb\) is also not statable,
hence not true, in Bergoglio-free worlds. So necessity cannot be
defined as usual in terms of possibility--impossible falsehood
does not imply necessary truth. Rather, necessity is impossible
falsehood *plus* necessary statability. Otherwise put: if a
statement \(\varphi\) couldn't be false, then in order for it to
be necessarily true, the proposition it expresses must necessarily
*exist*.
To capture this implication of **Gap** formally, and to
axiomatize the logic of strict actualism (under **Gap**)
generally, Prior makes basically two changes to the language
\(\scrL\_\Box\)--call this language \(\scrL\_{Q}\). First, for
reasons that will become evident shortly, he takes \(\Diamond\) rather
than \(\Box\) as a primitive operator. Secondly, he adds a new
sentential operator \(\text S\) for necessary statability
("*n*-statability") to \(\scrL\_\Box\). It is also
useful to think of impossible falsehood as a sort of *weak
necessity* signified by its own operator:
\([?]\)**Def**:
\([?]\varphi \eqdf \neg\Diamond\neg\varphi\)
Necessity proper--or *strong* necessity--is then
definable in \(\scrL\_Q\) as indicated in terms of weak necessity and
*n*-statability:
\(\Box\)**Def**\(\_Q\):
\(\Box\varphi \eqdf \rS \varphi \land [?]\varphi\)
*Axiom Schemas for Necessary Statability*
Prior's first axiom for *n*-statability is that it is not
a property a statement \(\varphi\) could lack if it could have it all;
otherwise put: if the proposition that \(\varphi\) expresses
*could* exist necessarily, then it *does* exist
necessarily:
**S1**:
\(\Diamond\rS \varphi \to \rS \varphi\)
Prior's next two axioms for *n*-statability express
principle **S** above. The first captures the
left-to-right direction that, intuitively, expresses the supervenience
of propositions on their subjects: a statement \(\varphi\) is
*n*-statable only if the things referred to in \(\varphi\) are
necessary beings. Prior could in fact express that the object
signified by an individual constant \(\sfa\) is necessary in the usual
fashion as \(\Box\exists \sfx\,\sfx=\sfa\) but, given
\(\Box\)**Def**\(\_Q\), this unpacks rather cumbersomely
to \(\rS \exists \sfx\,\sfx=\sfa \land [?]\exists
\sfx\,\sfx=\sfa\). However, as we will see, in the context of \(Q\)
this is equivalent simply to \(\rS \exists \sfx\,\sfx=\sfa.\) For
convenience, Prior shortens this to \(\rS \sfa\); more
generally:[76]
**SDef**:
\(\rS \tau =\_{\textit df} \rS \exists\nu\,\nu=\tau,\) where
\(\nu\) is a variable distinct from \(\tau.\)
Now say that a term \(\tau\) occurring in a formula \(\varphi\) is
*free in* \(\varphi\) if \(\tau\) is either an individual
constant or a variable with a free occurrence in \(\varphi,\) and say
that \(\varphi\) is *singular* if some term is free in it and
*wholly general* otherwise. Given this, Prior axiomatizes the
left-to-right direction of principle **S** as
follows:
**S2**:
\(\rS \varphi \to \rS \tau,\) for terms \(\tau\) that are in free
in \(\varphi\).
That is, a singular assertion \(\varphi\) is *n*-statable only
if each individual that it names is a necessary being.
Prior's final axiom for *n*-statability is essentially
the converse: if all the individuals that \(\varphi\) names are
necessary, then \(\varphi\) is *n*-statable. A simple
convention enables us clearly to express this axiom (and others below)
schematically. Let \(\theta\) be any formula of \(\scrL\_{Q}\); then,
for any \(n \ge 0,\)
**SDef**\*:
\(\rS \tau\_1\ldots\tau\_n \to \theta =\_{\textit df} \rS \tau\_1 \to
(\ldots \to (\rS \tau\_n \to \theta)\ldots)\)
It is useful to note that, under this convention, when \(n \gt 0,\)
\(\rS \tau\_1\ldots\tau\_n \to \theta\) is equivalent to \((\rS
\tau\_1\,\land\,\ldots\,\land\,\rS \tau\_n) \to \theta,\) and that, when
\(n=0,\) \(\rS \tau\_1\ldots\tau\_n \to \theta\) is just \(\theta.\)[77]
Given this, we can express Prior's final axiom for
*n*-statability as follows:
**S3**:
\(\rS \tau\_1\ldots\tau\_n \to \rS \varphi,\) where \(\tau\_1,
\ldots, \tau\_n\) are all of the terms that are free in
\(\varphi\)
Note in particular that it follows from
**S3**--specifically, from the case
\(n=0\)--that every wholly general formula is
*n*-statable.
By **S2** and **S3** together, then, a
formula \(\varphi\) is *n*-statable if and only if all of its
component free terms are. Or, more informally put: the proposition
that \(\varphi\) expresses exists necessarily if and only if all of
its subjects do.
Given the axioms for \(\text S\) we can lay out the rest of
Prior's system \(Q\). For its non-modal foundations, \(Q\) takes
every propositional tautology (not just its closures, as in
*KQML*) to be an axiom and follows *SQML* in adopting
standard classical axioms for quantification and identity. However,
the non-modal fragment of the system itself is not *quite*
classical. For reasons we will discuss below, it includes a modified
version of *modus ponens* that renders some classical
first-order validities unprovable.
* *Propositional Axiom Schema*
**Taut**
* *Quantificational Axiom Schemas*
**Q1**,
**Q2**, and
**Q3**
* *Identity Axiom Schemas*
**Id1**,
**Id2**
* *Rules of Inference*
**MP**\(\_Q\):
\(\rS \tau\_1\ldots\tau\_n \to \psi\) follows from \(\varphi\) and
\(\varphi \to \psi,\) where \(\tau\_1, \ldots, \tau\_n\) are all of the
terms that are free in \(\varphi\) but not in \(\psi.\)
**Gen**:
\(\forall\nu\psi\) follows from \(\psi\)
\(Q\) also has its own version of
**Gen**\*,
which, recall, allows us to universally generalize on constants as if
they were free variables:
* **Gen**\(\astQ\):
Suppose \(\psi\) is a formula of \(\scrL\_{Q}\) that contains an
individual constant \(\kappa\) of \(\scrL\_{Q}\) and that \(\nu\) is a
variable that is substitutable for \(\kappa\) in \(\psi\). Then if
\(\psi\) is a theorem of \(Q\), so is
\(\forall\nu\psi^\kappa\_\nu.\)
\(Q\) preserves the classical assumption that all names denote
something: for any term \(\tau\) other than the variable \(\nu,\)
\(\exists \nu\,\nu =\tau\) is a theorem; in the special case where
\(\nu\) is \(\sfy\) and \(\tau\) is \(\sfa\):
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfy=\sfa \to \neg \sfa=\sfa\) | **Q2** |
| 2. | \(\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfy=\sfa\ \to \neg \sfa=\sfa) \to (
\sfa=\sfa \to \neg\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfy=\sfa)\) | **Taut** |
| 3. | \(\sfa=\sfa \to \neg\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfy=\sfa\) | 1, 2, **MP**\(\_{Q}\) |
| 4. | \(\sfa=\sfa \to \exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfa\) | 3, [?]**Def** |
| 5. | \(\sfa=\sfa\) | **Id1** |
| 6. | \(\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfa\) | 4, 5, **MP**\(\_{Q}\) |
However, because of the qualification in **MP**\(\_{Q}\),
the intuitively weaker classical theorem that something
exists--more exactly, that something is self-identical, \(\exists
\sfy\, \sfy=\sfy\)--is *not* provable. The usual proof in
classical predicate logic runs along the above lines:
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfy=\sfy\ \to \neg \sfa=\sfa\) | **Q2** |
| 2. | \((\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfy=\sfy\ \to \neg \sfa=\sfa) \to
(\sfa=\sfa \to \neg\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfy=\sfy)\) | **Taut** |
| 3. | \(\sfa=\sfa \to \neg\forall \sfy\,\neg \sfy=\sfy\) | 1, 2, **MP**\(\_{Q}\) |
| 4. | \(\sfa=\sfa \to \exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfy\) | 3, \(\exists\)**Def** |
| 5. | \(\sfa=\sfa\) | **Id1** |
In classical logic, of course, \(\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfy\) is
immediate from lines 4 and 5 by **MP**. However,
**MP**\(\_{Q}\) only yields
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 6. | \(\rS \sfa \to \exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfy\) | 4, 5, **MP**\(\_{Q}\) |
That is, in \(Q\), that something exists only follows from the
self-identity of some particular object *if* that object is a
necessary being, an object that exists in every possible world. We
will be able to appreciate Prior's motivations here (explained
below)
once *Q*'s underlying propositional modal logic is in
place.
\(Q\)'s propositional modal axiom schemas are structurally
identical to those of *SQML*, but with weak necessity in place
of strong
necessity:[78]
* *Modal Axiom Schemas*
**K***Q*:
\([?](\varphi \to \psi ) \to ([?]\varphi \to [?]\psi
)\)
**T***Q*:
\([?]\varphi \to \varphi\)
**5***Q*:
\(\Diamond \varphi \to [?]\Diamond \varphi\)
Likewise its rule of necessitation; because some logical truths are
not *n*-statable and, hence, not true in every
world--notably, singular logical truths like *Prior, if a
logician, is a logician*, \(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp\)--we can
only infer that an arbitrary logical truth is weakly necessary, false
in no world:
* *Rule of Inference*
**Nec**\(\_{Q}\):
\([?]\psi\) follows from \(\psi.\)
#### 4.3.2 \(Q\), Contingency, and the Controversial Logical Truths of *SQML*
Prior touted \(Q\) as a "modal logic for contingent
beings" (1957: 50). It is therefore a rather awkward theorem of
\(Q\) that there are no contingent beings in the strong, actualist
sense of
**Cont**\(\_{\exists}\):
since, for any term \(\tau\) other than \(\sfy,\) \(\exists \sfy\,
\sfy=\tau\) is a theorem of \(Q\), by **Nec**\(\_{Q}\)
(and
\([?]\)**Def**)
it is weakly necessary, \(\neg\Diamond\neg\exists \sfy\,\sfy=\tau,\)
and the problematic theorem
\(\forall \sfx\, \neg\textsf{Contingent}\_{\exists}(\sfx)\)
follows directly by **Gen**\(\astQ\) and
**Cont**\(\_\exists\). However, Prior (1967: 150) argues
that there is still a robust way of expressing the intuitive
contingency of an object \(x,\) viz., that \(x\)'s
existence is not (strongly)
necessary, i.e. (where \(\sfx\) denotes \(x\)), that \(\exists \sfy\,
\sfy=\sfx\) is not true in all worlds: \(\neg\Box\exists \sfy\,
\sfy=\sfx\). But in the context of \(Q\) this is equivalent to saying
simply that \(\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\) is not *n*-statable,
\(\neg\rS \exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\). Accordingly, given
**SDef**,
we have:
**Cont**\(\_Q\):
\(\textsf{Contingent}\_{Q}(\sfx) \eqdf \neg\rS \sfx\)
As noted above, for Prior, the prospect of logical truths that are not
necessarily statable renders the general principle of necessitation
unsound. Rather, strong necessity only follows for those logical
truths that are *n*-statable; this is usefully expressed as a
derived rule of
inference:[79]
**Nec**\(\astQ\):
\(\rS \psi \to \Box\psi\) follows from \(\psi\).
Since wholly general formulas are all *n*-statable, another
important derived rule is immediate:
**Nec**\(^{\*\*}\_{Q}\):
\(\Box\psi\) follows from \(\psi,\) if \(\psi\) is wholly
general.
Of course, if *in fact* there is a (strongly) necessary
being--Allah, say--then, by **S3**, some
singular logical truths--e.g., *something exists if Allah
exists*, \(\exists \sfx\,\sfx=\sfa \to \exists
\sfx\,\sfx=\sfx\)--will be *n*-statable and, hence,
(strongly) necessary. But no such truths are *provably*
*n*-statable in \(Q\), as \(\rS \tau\) is not a theorem of
\(Q\), for any term \(\tau\) and, hence, by **S2**,
neither is \(\rS \varphi\) for any formula \(\varphi\) in which
\(\tau\) is free. Thus, not only are all wholly general theorems
provably necessary as per **Nec**\(^{\*\*}\_{Q},\) they are
the only provably necessary logical truths of \(Q\).
The unprovability of \(\rS \tau\) in \(Q\) and, hence, more generally,
\(Q\)'s inability to prove the existence of any necessary beings
is the key difference between \(Q\) and *SQML* and, more
specifically, it is what justifies the inapplicability of the full
necessitation principle **Nec** to formulas containing
free terms, since some of those terms might refer to contingent
beings. This is, in particular, the key to blocking the controversial
theorems of *SQML*, as their proofs all depend essentially on
such an application of
**Nec**.[80]
Indeed, \(Q\) is essentially just *SQML* shorn of its
necessitism. If, as Prior (1967: 155) observed, we restore it by
ruling out the prospect of contingent beings explicitly,
**N**\(\_Q\):
\(\forall \sfx\, \rS \sfx\)
\(Q\) simply collapses into
*SQML*.[81]
(The reader can quickly verify that **N**\(\_Q\) and the
necessitist principle \(\Box\)**N** are equivalent in
\(Q\).) More exactly put: for any formula \(\varphi\) of
\(\scrL\_\Box,\) \(\varphi\) is a theorem of *SQML* if and only
if it is a theorem of \(Q\) + **N**\(\_{Q}\) and hence if
and only if \(\forall \sfx\rS\sfx \to \varphi\) is a theorem of \(Q\).
In particular, both **BF** and **CBF** fall
out as entirely unproblematic theorems under the assumption of
necessitism:
**BF**\(\_Q\):
\(\vdash\_{Q}\forall \sfx\rS\sfx \to (\Diamond\exists \nu \varphi
\to \exists \nu \Diamond\varphi)\)
**CBF**\(\_Q\):
\(\vdash\_{Q}\forall \sfx\rS\sfx \to (\exists\nu\Diamond \varphi
\to \Diamond\exists\nu\varphi)\)
It is important to emphasize the profound philosophical difference
between Prior's \(Q\) and the necessitist's *SQML*
that is reflected in the preceding observations. As we've seen,
\(Q\) was deeply motivated by Prior's strict actualism; this is
most clearly seen in his introduction of the *n*-statability
operator \(\rS\) and the axioms
**S1**-**S3** expressing the necessary
ontological dependence of propositions on their subjects. But, in
stark contrast to the necessitist's *SQML*, Prior's
metaphysical predilections are not baked into \(Q\)--unlike the
necessitist, he has only made them *consistent* with his logic;
his axioms for \(\rS\) and his distinction between strong and weak
necessity only have purchase if **N**\(\_{Q}\) is
explicitly denied. For Prior, both necessitism and strict actualism
are substantive philosophical theses and, hence, the choice between
them--i.e., whether or not to adopt **N**\(\_{Q}\) as
a proper axiom of a philosophical *theory*--is left as a
matter for pure metaphysics, not logic, to decide.
This sentiment also lies behind Prior's restricted version
**MP**\(\_{Q}\) of **MP**. As noted above,
**MP**\(\_{Q}\) prevents the derivation of \(\exists
\sfy\,\sfy=\sfy\) from the likes of \(\exists \sfy\,\sfy=\sfa\). But
if \(\exists \sfy\,\sfy=\sfy\) *were* provable, then, since it
is wholly general, it would follow by
**Nec**\(^{\*\*}\_{Q}\) that it is strongly necessary,
\(\Box\exists \sfy\,\sfy=\sfy,\) that is, informally put, it would be
a theorem of \(Q\) that, in every possible world, there is at least
one thing. Again, though, that there couldn't be an empty world,
that it couldn't have been the case that nothing exists, is a
substantive metaphysical thesis that logic is better off leaving
undecided. Prior's restriction in **MP**\(\_{Q}\)
ensures that this is in fact the case in \(Q\).
### 4.4 Perspectivalism
Despite the fact that Prior was able to provide a notion of
contingency--contingency\(\_Q\)--for his logic \(Q\), it is
difficult to downplay the awkwardness of the fact that the most
natural expression of
contingency--contingency[?]--is unavailable
to him; it is, recall, a theorem of \(Q\) that, necessarily, there are
no contingent[?] beings--\(\Box\neg\exists \sfx\,
\Diamond\neg \exists \sfy\,\sfx=\sfy\). Thus, although seemingly
well-motivated by his strict actualist metaphysics, the fact that
Prior cannot consistently assert that he himself might not have
existed, that he himself is a contingent[?] being,
arguably throws strict actualism into doubt: as Deutsch (1990:
92-93) observes,
>
>
> ...surely there is a sense in which "Prior exists"
> might have been *false*; [but] there is no way to express this
> in Prior's system.
>
>
>
Robert Adams (1974, 1981) developed an important and influential
strict actualist account of possible worlds that provides an intuitive
notion of modal truth on which Prior *is* a
contingent[?] being and which, more generally, provides
a strong justification for modifications that temper at least some of
the more severe elements of Prior's logic.
Because of the centrality of contingency[?] in
Adams' account, it will be useful to introduce a distinct
predicate \(\sfE!\) to express the property of being identical with
something:
**DefE!**:
\(\sfE!\tau \eqdf \exists \nu\,\nu=\tau,\) where \(\tau\) is any
term other than \(\nu\)
The contingency[?] of an object \(x\) is then simply
expressed as \(\Diamond\neg \sfE!\sfx\).
For actualists like Adams, of course, the property of being identical
with something is necessarily coextensive with the property of
existing and, hence, \(\sfE!\) is often called the *existence*
predicate. It is important to note the stark contrast between the
existence predicate \(\sfE!\) and the actuality predicate \(\sfA!\).
As we have seen, \(\sfA!\) is a non-logical predicate introduced in
the context of the possibilism-actualism debate to (purportedly)
signify a distinguished non-logical property: the property (however
understood) that, according to the possibilist, distinguishes the
likes of us (and *abstracta* like the numbers) from
*possibilia*. \(\sfE!,\) by contrast, is a purely logical
predicate that does not presuppose any particular metaphysical
baggage--actualists and possibilists alike (at least, those that
accept classical logic) will agree that, as a simple matter of logic,
necessarily, everything is identical to something, \(\Box\forall \sfx
\sfE!\sfx.\) However, given
(as argued above)
that possibilists are also committed to necessitism, \(\Box\forall
\sfx\Box \sfE!\sfx,\) they will disagree with the typical actualist
over whether or not there are any contingent[?] beings,
i.e., over whether or not \(\exists \sfx\, \Diamond\neg
\sfE!\sfx.\)
#### 4.4.1 World Stories
The most fundamental notion in Adams' account is that of a
*proposition*, by which he means an abstract entity that is
*expressed* by a declarative sentence and which can be either
true or false, depending on how the world is. (As in the discussion of
Prior, we will continue to use logical formulas ambiguously, sometimes
as names for themselves, sometimes as names for the propositions they
are meant to express, trusting context to disambiguate.) Particularly
important for Adams' account is the notion of a
*singular* proposition
introduced in SS4.3,
i.e., a proposition that "involves or refers to an individual
directly" (1981: 6). Crucially, as a strict actualist, Adams
follows Prior in holding that a singular proposition is ontologically
dependent on the individuals it is about--the
"subjects" of the proposition--and, hence, that,
necessarily, a singular proposition exists if and only if all of its
subjects exist. Beyond this, Adams does not provide a rigorous theory
of propositions but, rather, takes the notion to be sufficiently
well-understood for his purposes.
Adams' account centers around his notion of a *world
story*, his own "actualistic treatment of possible
worlds" (1981: 21). The intuitive idea is that a world story is
a complete description of things as they are or could be. Adams'
(1974) initially spells this idea out as follows. Say that a set \(S\)
of propositions is *maximal* if for any proposition \(p,\)
\(S\) contains either \(p\) or its negation \(\neg
p,\)[82]
and that \(S\) is *consistent* if it is possible that all the
members of \(S\) be (jointly) true; \(S,\) then, is a *world
story* if it is both maximal and consistent, and a proposition
\(p\) is *true in* a world story *w* just in case \(p\)
is a member of \(w\). And a world story is *true*, or
*obtains*, if all the propositions that are true in it are, in
fact, true. (Henceforth in this section we will use
"world" and "possible world" as synonyms for
"world story"; and by "the actual world" we
will mean the true world
story.[83])
However, Adams came to realize that his 1974 definition did not
properly reflect strict actualist principles and subsequently (1981)
offered a more subtle
definition.[84]
According to strict actualism, no singular propositions are in any
sense "about" mere *possibilia* and, hence, there
are no such propositions in the actual world, i.e., the true world
story. For Adams, possible worlds generally ought to reflect this fact
about the actual world. That is, following Prior, a singular
proposition \(p\) about some (actually existing) individuals
\(a\_1,\ldots,a\_n\) should be true in a world \(w\) only if those
individuals--hence, \(p\) itself--would have existed if
\(w\) had obtained. As Prior would put it: a proposition can be true
in a world \(w\) only if is *statable* in \(w\). Thus, just as
there are in the actual world no singular propositions about
individuals that could have existed but do not, likewise, in every
other world \(w\) there should be no singular propositions about
(actual) individuals that would not have existed had \(w\) obtained.
To reflect this in his conception of worlds, Adams alters his
definition so that a set \(S\) of propositions is a world only if it
*could be* be maximal with respect to the *actually
existing* propositions that would exist if it obtained. As Adams
puts it:
>
>
> Intuitively, a world-story should be complete with respect to singular
> propositions about those actual individuals that would still be actual
> if all the propositions in the story were true, and should contain no
> singular propositions at all about those actual individuals that would
> not exist in that case. (1981: 22)
>
>
>
A world, then, is a set of propositions that could be both maximal in
this sense and such that all of its members are true. Equivalently
put: a set of propositions is a world just in case, possibly, its
members are exactly the true propositions that *actually*
exist.[85]
It follows in particular that the proposition \(\neg \sfE!\sfa\) that
Adams doesn't exist is not true in any world story; for, by
strict actualism, since it is a singular proposition about Adams, it
couldn't be true without Adams existing--in which case, of
course, it would be false. Very much unlike Prior, however, it does
*not* follow for Adams that his non-existence is not possible,
\(\neg\Diamond\neg \sfE!\sfa\).
#### 4.4.2 Truth *at* a World
Adams' break with Prior on this point is semantic, not
metaphysical. Specifically, over and above the notion of truth
*in* a world defined above, Adams identifies a second notion of
truth relative to a world that he calls truth *at* a world. The
difference between the two is one of *perspective*, a
difference in what we might call the *evaluative standpoint*.
The propositions that are true *in* a world \(w,\) recall, are
those that are *members* of \(w\); hence, intuitively, they
would all have existed had \(w\) obtained. They are thus the
propositions that can be recognized as true from a standpoint
"within" \(w\)--since they would have existed if
\(w\) had obtained, an agent with sufficient cognitive powers (we can
imagine) that might have existed if \(w\) had obtained could have
grasped and evaluated them. However--and this is Adams'
crucial insight--from her perspective in \(w,\) that same agent
can also evaluate propositions in \(w\) with respect to *other*
worlds \(u\)--notably, for any individual \(x\) in \(w,\) she can
see that the proposition \(\neg \sfE!\sfx\) that \(x\) doesn't
exist rightly characterizes any \(x\)-free world \(u,\) the absence of
the proposition in question *in* \(u\) notwithstanding. The
proposition is thus, from the standpoint of \(w,\) said to be true
*at*, but not *in*, \(u\). As Adams, here in the actual
world, puts it with regard to the proposition \(\neg \sfE!\sfa\) that
he doesn't exist:
>
>
> A world story that includes no singular proposition about me ...
> represents my possible non-existence, not by including the proposition
> that I do not exist but simply by omitting me. That I would not exist
> if all the propositions it includes ... were true is not a fact
> internal to the world that it describes, but an observation that we
> make from our vantage point in the actual world, about the relation of
> that world story to an individual of the actual world. (1981: 22)
>
>
>
If, therefore, we take a proposition to be possible if it is true
*at*, rather than *in*, a world, since the proposition
\(\neg \sfE!\sfa\) that Adams doesn't exist is true at some
worlds, his non-existence is possible after all, \(\Diamond\neg
\sfE!\sfa,\) contrary to Prior. This change in perspective thus paves
the way for a logic that is consistent with the existence of
contingent[?] beings. Recall also that Adams is a
serious actualist:
to have a property is to exist. Hence, at worlds where a given object
fails to exist, it has no properties. Thus, in particular, at a world
\(w\) where Prior fails to exist, he also fails to be a logician, that
is, it is *true at* \(w\) that he is not a logician, \(\neg
\sfL\sfp\). Hence, the conditional proposition that he is, if a
logician, a logician--\(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp\)--is also
true at \(w\) and so true at *all* worlds, not just those in
which he exists. It is therefore not just
weakly necessary,
i.e., unable to be false, \(\neg\Diamond\neg(\sfL\sfp \to
\sfL\sfp),\) but strongly necessary, \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp).\)
By taking truth *at*, rather than *in*, a world to be
our guiding semantic intuition, then, it appears that, without
compromising the metaphysics of strict actualism, we can restore at
least some of the familiar logical connections between (im)possibility
and necessity that were lost in Prior's \(Q\) and, in
particular, restore the modal status of at least some logical truths
to full necessity.
Two things are worth mentioning here. First, it is important to note
that, while most philosophers will welcome these results, there is
still a clear *choice* that is being made here. Adams has
identified two intuitive notions of truth with respect to a world
\(w\) within a strict actualist metaphysics that, as we've just
seen, appear to yield dramatically different logical truths. Both,
however, are coherent. Prior built his logic \(Q\) on the one; Adams
proposes to build one on the other--at least, in part (see
SS4.4.4
below).
Second, it needs to be emphasized that these are *intuitive*
semantic notions only. For not only are there well-known, formidable
challenges to the notion of a world story that he does not
address,[86]
because Adams is a strict actualist, a formal, compositional
semantics is simply unavailable to him, for the reasons noted in the
introduction to SS4.3.
Hence, Adams' talk of propositions being true in or at possible
worlds cannot themselves be considered literally true but, as with
similar talk from Prior, must simply be viewed as an evocative
heuristic whose primary purpose is to motivate the basic logical
principles underlying his variety of strict actualism.
#### 4.4.3 A Quantified Modal Logic for Perspectivalists
Unlike Prior, Adams does not develop a rigorous deductive system.
Rather, in his 1981, he simply identifies a number of informal
semantic principles (labeled C1-C9). However, a clear set of
axioms and rules requiring only a bit of supplementation can in fact
be derived from those
principles.[87]
We will call the resulting system *A*.
Adams assumes classical propositional logic (principle (C3)), which
can be incorporated into *A* via the basic propositional
schemas **P1**-**P3** and the rule
**MP** of *modus ponens*. For the rest, it is
illuminating to start with the axioms of *SQML*--albeit
with both modal operators as primitive--and then focus on
additions and modifications required by Adams' informal
principles.
Adams' first modally significant principle (C2) (1981: 23) is
one expressing
serious actualism,
the principle that an individual cannot have a property or stand in a
relation without existing. For reasons that will become clear below,
we will use a somewhat more general schema than schema
**SA**
introduced in the context of Kripke's system
*KQML*:[88]
**GSA**:
\(\pi\tau\_1\ldots\tau\_n \to \sfE!\tau\_i,\) for terms \(\tau\_1,
\ldots, \tau\_n\) (\(1 \leq i \leq n\))
Thus, in particular, for any property \(F,\) by **GSA**
and **Nec** we have that, necessarily, Adams has \(F\)
only if he exists: \(\Box(\sfF\sfa \to \sfE!\sfa)\). The problem here
is that Adams (reasonably) considers identity to be a relation;
identity statements are thus simply a variety of atomic formula and,
hence, it is also an instance of **GSA** that Adams is
self-identical only if he exists, \(\sfa=\sfa \to \sfE!\sfa\). As
Adams accepts the usual
laws of identity
**Id1** and **Id2**, we appear to have the
following simple argument to Adams' necessary existence:
| | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\sfa=\sfa\) | | **Id1** |
| 2. | \(\sfa=\sfa \to \sfE!\sfa\) | | **GSA** |
| 3. | \(\sfE!\sfa\) | | 1, 2 **MP** |
| 4. | \(\Box \sfE!\sfa\) | | 3 **Nec** |
However, if identity is a relation, then, given serious actualism, one
is not self-identical at worlds in which one fails to exist. This
might suggest restricting necessitation to theorems provable without
any instance of **Id1**, which would block not only the
inference from line 3 to line 4 but also the
proof of the more general necessitist principle
\(\Box\)**N** that, necessarily, everything necessarily
exists, \(\Box\forall \sfx \Box\exists \sfy\, \sfy=\sfx\). However,
that would still not be enough for, as we saw above, necessitism also
follows immediately from the instance
**CBF**\*
of the converse Barcan formula, whose
proof
involves no instance of **Id1**.
Adams (1981: 25) lays the blame for such problems on the classical
quantification schema **Q2**. Following Fine (1978:
SS3), he adopts the solution mentioned above in our discussion of
*KQML*, namely, replacing **Q2** with its free
logical counterpart (which we rewrite here with \(\sfE!\)):
**FQ2**:
\(\forall\nu\varphi \to (\sfE!\tau \to \varphi^\nu\_\tau),\) where
\(\tau\) is any term that is substitutable for \(\nu\) in
\(\varphi\)
It is a simple exercise to show that, with only **FQ2**
at one's disposal instead of **Q2**, one can only
prove that **CBF** holds (innocuously) under the
assumption that everything exists necessarily, which of course the
typical actualist roundly rejects:
**CBF*A***:
\(\vdash\_{A} \forall \sfx \Box \sfE!\sfx \to (\exists\nu\Diamond
\varphi \to \Diamond\exists\nu\varphi)\)
\(\Box \sfE!\sfa\) and \(\Box\)**N** can then be blocked
simply by replacing **Id1** with its generalization:
\(\boldsymbol{\forall}\)**Id1**:
\(\forall\nu\,\nu = \nu\)
which, together with **FQ2**, only allows one to prove
modally innocuous *conditional* identities of the form
\(\sfE!\tau \to \tau=\tau.\)
In general, the strategy of giving up the classical schema
**Q2** in favor of its free counterpart *solely*
to make room for contingent beings in one's quantified modal
logic is a bit fraught for the actualist. For, according to actualism,
there are no *possibilia* and, hence, constants and free
variables cannot but denote actually existing things. Consequently,
instances of both **Q2** and **Id1** are
still logical truths; they are simply logical truths of the actual
world that fail at some possible worlds. Ideally, then, as Adams puts
(1981: 30), in a proper quantified modal logic, they should be
"contingent theorems", that is, provable but not subject
to necessitation. This idea can in fact be preserved in *A*
simply by adding a schema expressing the actualist view that all terms
denote existing things:
**E!**\(\_{A}\):
\(\sfE!\tau,\) for all terms \(\tau\)
and modifying necessitation accordingly:
**Nec**\*:
\(\Box\psi\) follows from \(\psi,\) so long as \(\psi\) is
provable without any instance of **E!**\(\_{A}\).
Given **E!***A* and a bit of
propositional logic, all instances of **Q2** follow
immediately from **FQ2**, and all instances of
**Id1** follow from **FQ2** and
\(\boldsymbol{\forall}\)**Id1**.[89]
But, because of the restriction in **Nec**\*, their
necessitations do not.
##### Perspectivalism and *De Re* Modality
As we've seen, Adams' notion of truth at a world promises
to restore at least some of what was arguably lost in Prior's
\(Q\), notably the logical equivalence between necessary truth and
impossible falsehood:
\(\Box\Diamond\):
\(\Box\varphi \leftrightarrow \neg\Diamond\neg\varphi\)
But the gains are rather marginal, given the profound implications of
Adams' take on perspectivalism for propositional modal logic.
Matters here turn on Adams' understanding of what it is for a
*modal* proposition \(\Diamond\varphi\) or \(\Box\varphi\) to
be true at a possible world \(w\). Just as in the actual world, from a
standpoint within another possible world \(w,\) a proposition
\(\varphi\) that exists in \(w\) can be true *at* worlds where
it doesn't exist. \(\Diamond\varphi\)/\(\Box\varphi\) will thus
be true from a standpoint in \(w\) if, from that perspective,
\(\varphi\) is true at some/all worlds. But if \(\varphi\) does
*not* exist in \(w\)--if, for example, \(\varphi\) is
\(\neg \sfE!\sfa\) and \(w\) is Adams-free--then it is not
available to be evaluated from a standpoint within \(w\) and, hence,
from that standpoint, is neither true nor false at any world and,
hence, neither possible nor necessary. For Adams, this means that,
from *our* standpoint in the actual world, both
\(\neg\Diamond\varphi\) and \(\neg\Box\varphi\) are true at \(w\):
>
>
> [F]rom an actualist point of view...there *are* no
> possibilities or necessities *de re* about non-actual
> individuals. So if I were not an actual individual there would be none
> about me. The singular propositions that I exist and that I do not
> exist would not exist to have the logical properties, or enter into
> the relations with some or all world-stories, by virtue of which my
> existence or non-existence would be possible or necessary. I therefore
> say that "\(\Diamond\)(I exist)," "\(\Diamond\)~(I
> exist)," "\(\Box\)(I exist)," and "\(\Box\)~(I
> exist)" are all false, and their negations true, at worlds in
> which I do not exist. Neither my existence nor my non-existence would
> be possible or necessary if I did not exist. (1981: 29)
>
>
>
Thus, according to Adams, *de re* modal propositions are
existence entailing: an (actually existing) modal proposition
\(\Box\varphi\) or \(\Diamond\varphi\) can be true at a world only if
it exists there and, hence, only if its subjects do as well. This idea
can be axiomatized by a modalized version of the serious actualism
principle **GSA** (see Adams' principles (C6) and
(C7)[90]):
**MSA**:
\(\triangle\varphi \to \sfE!\tau,\) where \(\triangle\) is either
\(\Box\) or \(\Diamond\) and \(\tau\) is free in \(\varphi\).
An immediate consequence of **MSA** is to render many
instances of \(\Box\Diamond\) contingent. For, at an Adams-free world
\(w,\) \(\neg \sfE!\sfa,\) for example, is true so, by
**MSA** both \(\neg\Diamond\neg \sfE!\sfa\) and
\(\neg\Box\neg \sfE!\sfa\) are true at \(w\). So, given
**MSA**, it appears that the equivalence between
necessary truth and impossible falsehood holds at a world only for the
propositions that exist there, i.e., in Prior's terminology, the
propositions that are
*statable*
there. Because, for the strict actualist, necessarily, a proposition
exists if and only if all of its subjects exist, no new sentential
operator is needed to express propositional existence; a simple
counterpart to **SDef**\* will do:
**E!Def**\*:
\(\sfE!\varphi \to \theta =\_{\textit df} \sf\sfE!\tau\_1 \to
(\ldots \to (\sf\sfE!\tau\_n \to \theta)\ldots),\) where
\(\tau\_1,\ldots,\tau\_n\) are all of the terms that occur free in
\(\varphi\)
That is, \(\sfE!\varphi \to \theta\) says that \(\theta\) holds if all
of \(\varphi\)'s subjects
exist--hence, for the strict actualist, if the proposition
(expressed by) \(\varphi\) itself exists. Note that, when \(\varphi\)
is wholly general, \(n=0\) and so \(\sfE!\varphi \to \theta\) is just
\(\theta\).
Given **E!Def**\*, the observation above--that the
equivalence of necessity and impossible falsehood at a world only
holds for the propositions that exist there--can now be expressed
axiomatically in the schema:
\(\Box\Diamond\_A\):
\(\sfE!\varphi \to (\Box\varphi \leftrightarrow
\neg\Diamond\neg\varphi)\)
Much like the instances of **Q2**, then, because
\(\sfE!\tau\) is an axiom of *A* for any term \(\tau,\)
singular instances of \(\Box\Diamond\) fall out as contingent theorems
of *A*. By the observation above, wholly general instances of
\(\Box\Diamond\_A\) are simply instances of \(\Box\Diamond\) and,
hence, their necessitations are provable.
##### Implications for Necessitation, **4**, **B**, and **5**
**MSA**'s impact reverberates throughout the modal
propositional base of Adams' logic. Recall that the
truth-in/truth-at distinction appeared to have restored the necessity
of singular logical truths like *Prior, if a logician, is a
logician*, \(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp\). The addition of
**MSA**, however, leads quickly to necessitism, as it
becomes possible to reason to Prior's existence, \(\sfE!\sfp,\)
without any instances of **E!***A*:
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp\) | *PL* |
| 2. | \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp)\) | 1, **Nec**\* |
| 3. | \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp) \to \sfE!\sfp\) | **MSA** |
| 4. | \(\sfE!\sfp\) | 2,3, **MP** |
| 5. | \(\Box \sfE!\sfp\) | 4, **Nec**\* |
| 6. | \(\Box\forall \sfx\Box \sfE!\sfx\) | 5, **Gen**\*, **Nec**\* |
Clearly, as Adams (1981: 30) notes, a "suitable
restriction" on necessitation (beyond **Nec**\*) is
called for. Adams himself does not specify, but it is clear what it
must be. Singular logical truths like \(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp\) are
indeed true at all worlds and, hence, necessary--but only
contingently so; for, by **MSA**, \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to
\sfL\sfp)\) is false at Prior-free worlds. More generally, just as the
equivalence of necessity and impossible falsehood only holds at a
world for the propositions that exist there, the necessity of a
proposition at a world will only hold for the propositions that exist
there. **Nec**\* thus requires a qualification similar to
\(\Box\Diamond\_A\)'s:
**Nec***A*:
\(\sfE!\psi \to \Box\psi\) follows from \(\psi,\) so long as
\(\psi\) is provable without any instance of
**E!***A*.
\(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp\) is now still provably necessary:
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. | \(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp\) | *PL* |
| 2. | \(\sfE!\sfp \to \Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp)\) | 1, **Nec***A* |
| 3. | \(\sfE!\sfp\) | **E!***A* |
| 4. | \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp)\) | 2, 3, **MP** |
But, because \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp)\) depends essentially on
**E!***A*, *its* necessitation
is not provable. And if one soldiers on in an attempt to replicate the
reasoning in the above proof to derive necessitism:
| | | |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 5. | \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp) \to \sfE!\sfp\) | **MSA** |
| 6. | \(\sfE!\sfp\) | 4,5, **MP** |
one can proceed no further, as the proof of \(\sfE!\sfp\) in line 6
depends on \(\sfE!\sfp\) *qua* instance of
**E!***A* in line 3.
The modal schemas
**K**
and
**T**,
with their simple modalities, are unaffected by **MSA**
but not so for the schemas
**4**,
**B**, and
**5**,
all three of which involve nested modalities. The example of
\(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp)\) above motivating
**Nec***A* has already shown that
singular necessities might not themselves be necessary and, hence,
serves as well to illustrate the invalidity of **4**:
\(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp\) is true at all possible worlds, and hence,
necessary, \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp)\); but \(\Box(\sfL\sfp \to
\sfL\sfp)\) fails to be true at Prior-free worlds and, hence, is not
itself necessary, i.e., \(\neg\Box\Box(\sfL\sfp \to \sfL\sfp)\).
**B**'s invalidity is illustrated by any contingent
singular truth; that Prior is a logician, say, \(\sfL\sfp\). By
**MSA**, \(\sfL\sfp\) is not possible at Prior-free
worlds, and, hence, it is not necessarily possible, \(\neg\Box\Diamond
\sfL\sfp\). And, of course, since it is also in fact possible that
Adams is a philosopher, \(\Diamond \sfL\sfp,\) the same example shows
that **5** is invalid.
The natural fix for Adams, of course, is to qualify the nested
modalities in each case with the condition that the proposition in
question
exists:[91]
**4***A*:
\(\Box \varphi \to \Box(\sfE!\varphi \to \Box \varphi)\)
**B***A*:
\(\varphi \to \Box(\sfE!\varphi \to \Diamond\varphi)\)
**5***A*:
\(\Diamond\varphi \to \Box(\sfE!\varphi \to
\Diamond\varphi)\)
As with *KQML*, only **T** and
**5***A* are needed for *A*;
**4***A* and
**B***A* are derivable from them. And,
similar to what was observed with *Q*, it is easy to show that,
if one extends *A* with the thesis of necessitism by replacing
**E!***A* with its necessitation,
\(\Box\textbf{E!}\_A\):
\(\Box \sfE!\tau,\) for all terms \(\tau\)
the system simply collapses into *SQML*.
Summarizing, then: Adams' distinction between truth *in*
a world and truth *at* a world motivated a number of intuitive
semantic principles that, when formalized, yield a
"perspectivalist" modal logic *A*:
* *Propositional Axiom Schemas*
**P1**, **P2**, **P2**
* *Modal Axiom Schemas*
**K**,
**T**, **5***A*,
\(\Box\Diamond\_A\)
* *Serious Actualist Axiom Schemas*
**GSA**,
**MSA**
* *Quantificational Axiom Schemas*
**Q1**,
**FQ2**,
**Q3**
* *Existence Axiom Schema*
**E!***A*
* *Identity Axiom Schemas*
**[?]Id1**,
**Id2**
* *Rules of Inference*
**MP**, **Gen**,
**Nec***A*
As noted, *A* restores a number of intuitively desirable
logical features that were lost in Prior's \(Q\), in particular,
the logical equivalence of necessity and impossible falsehood, and the
necessity of singular logical truths. Within modal contexts, however,
properties similar to \(Q\) return, albeit in a milder form: where
\(Q\) requires the necessary existence of a proposition in order for
it to be possible or necessary in a modal context, *A* requires
only *de facto* existence. The final approach that will be
examined here argues that the strict actualist needn't even
concede that much.
#### 4.4.4 Perspectivalism without **MSA**
A number of philosophers who are at least sympathetic to strict
actualism have pointed out that, contrary to Adams, strict actualism
does not entail
**MSA**--in
effect, the principle that a singular modal propositions cannot be
true without existing--and, hence, that the still rather severe
restrictions of *A* are unnecessary (Menzel 1990, 1993; Turner
2005; Einheuser 2012; Mitchell-Yellin & Nelson 2016; Masterman
forthcoming). Moreover, they suggest that Adams' own distinction
between truth in a world and truth at a world provides the intuitive
semantic foundation for this claim. Thus Menzel (1993: 132) notes
that, just as we can consider a negated proposition to be true
*at* a world where it doesn't exist by considering it
from our perspective in the actual world where it does, we can do the
same for modal propositions. Turner spells out the idea as follows
regarding an arbitrary *de re* modal proposition \(\Diamond
\sfP\sfa,\) where \(a\) is an actually existing object that, in fact,
has the property \(P\):
>
>
> Return to the "picture thinking" that truth at a world is
> supposed to capture. We are standing outside of a world, looking into
> it, and using the propositions, objects, properties, and relations of
> our own world to describe what we see. It makes sense to think that
> which predications of \(a\) are true at a world is determined solely
> by things going on in that world--how could facts from other
> worlds ever get into the picture? But we tend to think that modal
> truths are not made true solely by what is going on in any one world
> but by what goes on in the entire space of possible worlds.
> Furthermore, on the model of "standing outside" of a world
> looking into it, it is not implausible to think that we should be able
> to "see" the entire space of possible worlds. We can say,
> of a non-\(a\) world \(W,\) that at that world it is possible that
> \(a\) is \(P,\) precisely because, standing outside of \(W,\) we can
> see other worlds - worlds where \(a\) exists and is \(P\).
> (2005: 205)
>
>
>
On this take, then, Adams fails to fully embrace his distinction
between truth in a world and truth at a world. He evaluates negated
propositions at worlds where they fail to exist from our perspective
in the actual world, but does not extend the idea to modal
propositions; instead, to evaluate a modal proposition
\(\Box\varphi\)/\(\Diamond\varphi\) at a world \(w,\) he switches back
to an internal perspective that requires the existence of \(\varphi\)
in \(w,\) i.e., the evaluative perspective that Prior adopted across
the board. It is unsurprising, then, that Adams' logic
*A* restores only some of the logical truths that were lost in
Prior's \(Q\). But, as Turner notes, a broader embrace of
Adams' perspectivalism would have us evaluate *all*
propositions from our standpoint in the actual world. So
"situated", a modal proposition
\(\Box\varphi\)/\(\Diamond\varphi\) can then be considered true at a
world \(w\) simply if \(\varphi\) is (from our standpoint, not
\(w\))'s) true at all/some worlds. As in the shift from Prior to
Adams, then, there is no change to the metaphysics of strict actualism
but only a shift in the underlying (intuitive)
semantics.[92]
The logical implications of maintaining this fixed perspective in the
actual world are quite dramatic. First and foremost, it undermines the
motivation for **MSA** entirely and, with it, the
arguments against the validity of the principles \(\Box\Diamond\),
**4**,
**B**, **5**, and the rule of necessitation
**Nec**\*. All of those can therefore be embraced without
the existence qualifications of \(\Box\Diamond\_A\),
**4**\(\_A\),
**B**\(\_A\),
**5**\(\_A\),
and \(\textbf{Nec}\_A\).
Substituting the unqualified
principles and the rule
**Nec**\*
in their place results in what might be called a *fully*
perspectivalist modal logic *A*\* for the strict actualist that
restores everything that was lost in Prior's *Q*, and
does so without the expressive restrictions of Kripke's
*KQML*.
* *Propositional Axiom Schemas*
**P1**, **P2**, **P2**
* *Modal Axiom Schemas*
**K**,
**T**, **5**, \(\Box\Diamond\)
* *Serious Actualist Axiom Schema*
**GSA**
* *Quantificational Axiom Schemas*
**Q1**,
**FQ2**,
**Q3**
* *Existence Axiom Schema*
**E!***A*
* *Identity Axiom Schemas*
**[?]Id1**,
**Id2**
* *Rules of Inference*
**MP**, **Gen**,
**Nec**\*
*A*\* (under the name "*A*") is proved sound
and complete in Menzel 1991. |
actualism-possibilism-ethics | ## 1. Historical Origins of the Debate
### 1.1 Some Background Assumptions
For contingent historical reasons, this debate has unfolded in such a
way that the following background assumptions are made in the
literature. First, likely for ease of exposition, everyone writes as
if counterfactual determinism is true (Goldman 1976: 469; Greenspan
1978: 77). That is, it is assumed that there are facts about how an
agent *would* (not simply *might*) act in any given
situation. This assumption, however, is not necessary for the purposes
of the debate (Portmore 2011: 56 fn. 1). Second, since everyone writes
as if both counterfactual determinism is true and as if agents can act
in a way in which they do not in fact act, those in the debate seem to
assume compatibilism. Interestingly, the concerns raised by the
actualism/possibilism debate still arise even if libertarianism about
free will is assumed (Portmore 2011: 167 fn. 21). Describing the
debate in libertarian terms, however, does add an extra layer of
complexity to the discussion. Third, some form of maximizing
consequentialism is generally assumed, again, likely for ease of
exposition. The debate actually arises for any normative ethical
theory that holds that there are at least *pro tanto* reasons
to bring about the good, and so the importance of this debate extends
far beyond forms of maximizing consequentialism (Bales 1972; Goldman
1976: 458 fn. 13). Fourth, the various positions in the debate are
understood in terms of *objective*, rather than
*subjective*, obligations, though the same issues arise with
respect to both. Objective obligations are those determined by all of
the normatively relevant facts, which include facts of which the agent
may be unaware. By contrast, subjective obligations are determined by
the agent's epistemic state (such as her beliefs, or beliefs
that would be supported by her evidence) concerning the normatively
relevant facts (cf. Zimmerman 1996: 10-20; Portmore 2011:
12-23). Following the norms of the literature, these assumptions
operate in the background of this encyclopedia entry as well. However,
none actually need to be made in order for the debate to get off the
ground.
### 1.2 An Argument that Utilitarianism is Formally Incoherent
The historical origins of the debate may be traced back to work by
Lars Bergstrom and Hector-Neri Castaneda. In his *A
Problem for Utilitarianism* (1968), Castaneda argues that,
given a few standard assumptions, utilitarianism is formally
incoherent. His argument may be stated rather straightforwardly.
First, Castaneda assumes a principle of deontic logic known as
"ought distributes through conjunction". This principle
holds that if an agent *S* ought to do both *A* and
*B*, then *S* ought to do *A* and *S* ought to do
*B* (1968: 141). The term "ought" is used in a
variety of different ways in the ethics literature. However, when it
is used in the formulation of views in the actualism/possibilism
literature, it should be understood as denoting the ought of moral
obligation. This idea may be represented more formally as
*Ought Distributes Through Conjuction*:
(ODC)\(\rO(A \lamp B) \rightarrow \rO(A) \lamp \rO(B)\)
In other words, if an agent is obligated to perform a set of acts, then
that agent is obligated to perform each of the acts in that set.
Second, Castaneda considers a principle he refers to as (U),
which he takes to be a basic commitment of all existing forms of
utilitarianism.
(U)*S* is morally obligated to do *x*
in circumstances *C* if and only if *S*'s
doing *x* in *C* will bring about a greater balance of good
over bad than her performing any other alternative action open to her
in *C* (1968: 142).
Some who have responded to Castaneda, such as Zellner (1972:
125), took (U) not only to be a commitment of utilitarianism, but a
formulation of act-utilitarianism itself. Now, here's the
supposed problem. According to Castaneda, (ODC) and (U)
generate contradictory prescriptions. To see why he believed this,
suppose that an agent *S*'s performing the conjunctive
act-set \(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\) brings about a greater balance of
good over bad than any alternative act-set (singleton or plural)
that *S* can perform. It is supposed to follow from (U)
that *S* is obligated to perform \(\langle A \lamp
B\rangle\). Now, given (ODC), it follows that *S* is obligated to
perform \(\langle A\rangle\) and that
*S* is obligated to perform \(\langle B\rangle\). But,
Castaneda claims, given (U), performing \(\langle A\rangle\)
would result in more net good than performing any alternative,
including \(\langle B\rangle\). Moreover, given (U), performing
\(\langle B\rangle\) would *also* result in more net good than
performing any alternative, including \(\langle A\rangle\). Hence the
supposed contradiction. Performing \(\langle A\rangle\) cannot result
in both more good and less good than performing \(\langle B\rangle\).
This consequence may be illustrated with an example, drawn from
Westphal (1972: 83-84).
* ***School Fire*:** Tom is a teacher at a
school that burned down. Prior to the disaster, when the weather was
warm at the beginning of the first class, he was told to [?]open
the window & shut the door[?]. The opened window would foster
good ventilation and the closed door would cut down on noise and
distractions in the hallway. Both would significantly help the
students to learn.
Naturally, the act-set of [?]opening the window & shutting
the door[?] is the best that Tom can do in the circumstances he
is in at the start on the warm day in question. Given
Castaneda's argument, Tom is obligated to [?]open
the window[?] and he is obligated to [?]shut the
door[?]. But if he is obligated to do each of them, then
[?]opening the window[?] must produce more net good than any
alternative and [?]shutting the door[?] must produce more
net good than any alternative. But, Castaneda claims, each of
these acts cannot be uniquely optimific.
### 1.3 Replies and the Rise of the Actualism/Possibilism Debate
Castaneda's short article spawned a number of replies
with various proposed solutions. Castaneda himself argued that
the problem stemmed from the "only if" clause in
(U)
and concluded that it should be removed. However, he believed that,
even once this clause has been removed, it remains an open question
whether utilitarianism could identify necessary conditions for
obligatory actions (1968: 142).
The most numerous, and influential, replies were written by Lars
Bergstrom, who argued that the contradiction arises only if it is
assumed that \(\langle A\rangle\) and \(\langle B\rangle\) are
*alternatives* in the relevant sense. He argued that \(\langle
A\rangle\) and \(\langle B\rangle\) are not, in fact, alternatives
since they are compatible (Bergstrom 1968b: 43). Notably, this is
an issue of which Bergstrom was clearly aware of in his (1966:
ch. 2) book in which he argued that "two actions can reasonably
be regarded as alternatives (in the morally relevant sense) only if
they are incompatible or mutually exclusive". If, by hypothesis,
*S* is obligated to perform \(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\), then
\(\langle A\rangle\) and \(\langle B\rangle\) must be compatible and
so are not alternatives (1968b: 44). The subsequent literature
consisted of a back-and-forth between Bergstrom and
Castaneda that primarily revolved around identifying the
morally relevant set of alternatives and Bergstrom's
attempts to formulate a utilitarian principle that avoids
Castaneda's objection (Bergstrom 1968a,b, 1971,
1973, 1976; Castaneda 1968, 1969, 1972). As will be shown in
the subsequent sections, the issue of identifying the morally relevant
set of alternatives forms the crux of the actualism/possibilism
debate.
Dag Prawitz (1970) and Fred Westphal (1972) both suggested revising
(U)
by indexing actions to the time they would need to be performed in
order to bring about the uniquely optimific outcome. So, if performing
the joint act \(\langle A \at t\_1 \lamp B \at t\_2\rangle\) would
result in the greatest net amount of good, then *S* is obligated
to perform \(\langle A \at t\_1\rangle\) and to perform \(\langle B \at
t\_2\rangle\) and, Westphal claims, this avoids the contradiction. At
\(t\_1\), \(\langle A\rangle\) supposedly is *the* act that
would produce the greatest net amount of good in comparison to any
other act performable at \(t\_1\). At \(t\_2\), \(\langle B\rangle\)
supposedly is *the* act that would produce the greatest net
amount of good in comparison to any other act performable at \(t\_2\).
Finally, from among the performable act-sets that might occur from
\(t\_1\)-\(t\_2\), \(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\) is *the*
act-set that would produce the greatest net amount of good. Thus, each
act is the uniquely optimific act at the time it is performed, or so
Westphal claims. Notably, Prawitz (1968, 1970) and Westphal (1972)
each argue that an act is permissible if and only if it is part of an
act-set that, if performed, would bring about the greatest net good of
any of the acts available to the agent. In making this argument,
Prawitz and Westphal were giving what may be considered the earliest
defenses of possibilism. However, they did not yet refer to this view
as possibilism.
While possibilism itself remains a viable view in the literature,
Harold Zellner demonstrated that Prawitz's and Westphal's
responses did not solve the specific problem Castaneda
identified for utilitarianism. This is because, while performing
\(\langle A \at t\_1 \lamp B \at t\_2\rangle\) may be uniquely
optimific, it does not follow that performing either of these
individual acts at their respective times would be uniquely optimific.
For instance, performing \(\langle A \at t\_1\rangle\) may not be
uniquely optimific if the agent would *not* perform \(\langle B
\at t\_2\rangle\)if she first performs \(\langle A \at t\_1\rangle\).
Zellner (1972: 125)
illustrates this with the following case.
* **Teach, Play Cupid, or Skip Class:** Suppose that
the best act-set Tom can perform is \(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\),
where \(\langle A\rangle\) = commute to campus and \(\langle
B\rangle\) = teach his classes. Tom can also \(\langle C\rangle\),
where \(\langle C\rangle\) = play Cupid by loaning his car to two
people so they can go on a date. Finally, suppose that if Tom were to
\(\langle A\rangle\) commute to campus, he would
\(\langle{\sim}B\rangle\) skip teaching class. This is the worst
act-set Tom can perform.
Again, it would be best if Tom [?]commutes to campus &
teaches[?], second best if he [?]plays Cupid[?], and
worst if he [?]commutes to campus & skips class[?].
Thus, the value of the act-sets may be ranked from best to worst as
follows.
1. \(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\)
2. \(\langle C\rangle\)
3. \(\langle A \lamp {\sim}B\rangle\)
Zellner points out that, since Tom would \(\langle{\sim}B\rangle\) if
he were to \(\langle A\rangle\), the value of performing \(\langle
A\rangle\) is not uniquely optimific even though the value of
performing \(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\) is uniquely optimific. Thus,
in such cases,
(U)
combined with
(ODC)
still generates contradictions, even if each act is indexed to their
respective times. Zellner argued that, to solve the problem, (U)
should be rejected because it is inconsistent with a supposedly basic
principle of inference, referred to as (NI), which holds that if an
agent is obligated to perform \(\langle A\rangle\) and her performing
\(\langle A\rangle\) entails her performing \(\langle B\rangle\), then
she is obligated to perform \(\langle B\rangle\) (1972: 125). This
rule is sometimes referred to as *Normative Inheritance* or as
*Permissibility is Closed Under Implication*. It may be
represented more formally in the Standard Deontic Logic system as
(Feldman 1986: 41):
(NI)
If \({\vdash} A \rightarrow B\) then \({\vdash} O(A) \rightarrow O(B)\)
This literature on the coherence of utilitarianism directly gave rise
to the actualism/possibilism literature. Most importantly, (i) it made
salient the importance of determining the relevant act-alternatives
available to the agent and (ii) cases such as *Teach*, *Play
Cupid*, or *Skip Class* raised questions about the
relationship between an agent's free actions and her moral
obligations. As will be illustrated in the next section, actualists
and possibilists are divided over cases with this exact structure.
## 2. Possibilism
### 2.1 The Crux of the Debate
Suppose someone is trying to determine whether she is obligated to
teach a summer school course that students would greatly benefit from,
but only if taught well. Do facts about how an agent would teach the
course (e.g., well or poorly) have any role in determining whether she
is morally obligated to teach the course? Actualists answer in the
affirmative and possibilists in the negative. Possibilists hold that
the deontic status of an act \(\phi\) depends on facts about how an
agent *could* act were she to \(\phi\). So, according to
possibilists, what determines whether she should teach the summer
school course is whether she *could* teach it well,
irrespective of whether she *would* teach it well. Actualists,
by contrast, hold that the deontic status of an act \(\phi\) depends,
in part, on facts about how an agent *would* act (under certain
conditions) were she to \(\phi\). So, according to actualists, roughly
what matters in determining whether one should teach the summer school
course is whether she *would* teach it well, irrespective of
whether she *could* teach it well.
### 2.2 Professor Procrastinate
These views, and their differences, can best be understood by
considering the standard case in the literature, viz. *Professor
Procrastinate*. Holly M. Smith (formerly Holly S. Goldman)
provides the original version of this case in her (1978:
185-186) essay, and variations of it appear throughout the
literature (Jackson & Pargetter 1986: 235; Carlson 1995: 124;
Vorobej 2000: 131-132; Portmore 2011: 180, 2019: ch. 5;
Timmerman 2015: 1512; Timmerman & Cohen 2016: 673-674;
Cariani 2016: 400).
* ***Professor Procrastinate*:** Professor
Procrastinate is asked to review a graduate student's paper,
soon to be given as a job talk. Procrastinate can [?]agree to
review the paper & review the paper[?], which would result in
the student receiving a first-rate job offer. Procrastinate can also
[?]agree to review the paper & not review the paper[?],
which would result in the student receiving no job offer. Finally,
Procrastinate can [?]decline to review the paper & not review
the paper[?], which would result in the student asking someone
else, getting mediocre comments, and receiving a second-rate job
offer. Now, if Procrastinate were to [?]agree to review the
paper[?], she would later freely [?]*not* review
it[?].
The value of the act-sets that Procrastinate can perform are ranked
from best to worst as follows.
*X*. \(\langle
a\rangle\) agree to review the paper and \(\langle b\rangle\) review
the paper
*Y*.
\(\langle{\sim} a\rangle\) decline to review the paper and
\(\langle{\sim}b\rangle\) not review the paper
*Z*.\(\langle
a\rangle\) agree to review the paper and \(\langle{\sim}b\rangle\)
not review the paper
Furthermore, Procrastinate would \(\langle{\sim}b\rangle\) regardless
of whether she would \(\langle a\rangle\). In other words, the
following counterfactuals are true.
(1)
If Procrastinate
were to \(\langle a\rangle\), she would \(\langle
Z\rangle\).
(2)
If Procrastinate
were to \(\langle{\sim} a\rangle\), she would \(\langle
Y\rangle\).
On a rough definition, according to actualism, Procrastinate is
obligated to decline to review the paper because what would
*actually* happen if she were to decline is better than what
would *actually* happen if she were to agree to review the
paper. By contrast, according to possibilism, Procrastinate is
obligated to agree to review the paper because doing so is part of the
best series of *possible* actions that Procrastinate can
perform over her life. Now that we've covered how these views
generally come apart, we will focus on the more precise formulations
of these views in subsequent sections. It should also be noted that
counterfactuals like (1) and (2) are assumed to be true at least
partly in virtue of Procrastinate's imperfect moral character.
However, such counterfactuals can also be true as a result of an
agent's ignorance, as a result of lacking the dexterity to
perform an act, and as a result of an agent's inability to
comprehend some future act (Goldman 1978:198; Bykvist 2002: 50). For
the purposes of this entry, we will focus on an agent's
imperfect moral character since this factor seems to be the driving
force behind many points of disagreement between actualists and
possibilists.
### 2.3 Possibilism (and Actualism) Defined
In its simplest form, possibilism is the view that an agent is
obligated to perform an act just in case it is part of the best series
of acts she can perform over the course of her life. It may be defined
more formally as follows.
* **Possibilism:** At *t* an agent *S* is
obligated to \(\phi\) at \(t'\) iff *S* can \(\phi\) at \(t'\)
and \(\phi\)-ing at \(t'\) is part of the best act-set that *S*
can perform from \(t'\) until the last time she can perform an act.
According to possibilism, the act-sets that have their deontic status
directly (i.e., they do not have their deontic status in virtue of the
deontic status of any other act-set) are the act-sets that agents can
perform over the course of their entire lives, which we will refer to
as maximal act-sets (Aqvist 1969). Moreover, any non-maximal
act-set has its deontic status indirectly (i.e., its deontic status is
determined by the deontic status of a maximal act-set of which it is a
part). In *Professor Procrastinate*, assuming that
Procrastinate cannot perform any acts after doing either \(\langle
X\rangle\), \(\langle Y\rangle\), or \(\langle Z\rangle\),
possibilists hold that Procrastinate is obligated to \(\langle
a\rangle\) because the best maximal act-set she can perform over the
course of her life includes \(\langle X\rangle \), and \(\langle
X\rangle \)-ing requires \(\langle a\rangle\)-ing.
Possibilism has been given slightly different definitions in the
literature. However, unlike the different definitions of actualism
discussed in the next section, typical definitions of possibilism are
essentially synonymous. Patricia Greenspan (1978) does not offer a
formal definition of possibilism, but defends the view by way of
rejecting Holly Goldman's actualist principle, referred to as
(G\*1). Greenspan does so in the process of defending her (1975) view
in a related debate concerning whether ought-statements should be
dated differently from their objects and about whether they hold from
different temporal standpoints. Fred Feldman defines possibilism in
terms of possible worlds. Feldman refers to his theory as (MO). As he
characterizes (MO), what *S* is morally obligated to do,
"as of a time, *t*", is
>
>
> to see to the occurrence of a state of affairs, *p*, iff *p*
> occurs in some world accessible to *S* at *t*, and it is not
> the case that \({\sim}p\) occurs in any accessible world as good as
> (or better than) that one. (Feldman 1986: 38)
>
>
>
Michael Zimmerman defines possibilism in the simpler, standard sense
given above (2006: 153; 2017: 119). However, he also develops and
defends (MO)-inspired formulations of possibilism. In his (1996) book,
he provides a formulation of what he refers to as "world
possibilism" (WP) that invokes the notion of "deontic
value" instead of "intrinsic value", so as to
prevent the formulation of possibilism from assuming impartial
consequentialism. In his (2006: 166) essay, he defends a prospective
version of (WP), where the value in question is the expected value of
all the acts an agent can intentionally perform, which he refers to as
"adjusted core prospective value".
There are other views that deviate from the above standard definitions
of possibilism. Carlson (1995: 99-109; 1999) defends a view that
bears resemblance to possibilism in which the sole obligatory act-set
is a unique minimally specific invariably optimal act-set. At *t*
an act-set is optimal for an agent *S* just in case its outcome
is at least as good as any other act-set that is performable for
*S* at *t*. An invariably optimal act-set is one which is
optimal no matter what *S* does at *t*. An invariably
optimal act-set is minimally specific just in case it is not a proper
part of some other invariably optimal act-set available to *S*. A
minimally specific invariably optimal act-set is unique just in case
there is no other minimally specific invariably optimal act-set
available to *S*. Thus, in contrast to standard formulations of
possibilism, no act-set that is a proper part of a unique minimally
specific invariably optimal act-set has a deontic status. Vorobej
(2000) defends a view he refers to as "prosaic
possibilism", which may be considered an intermediary between
possibilism and actualism. In his (2009) article, which contains an
argument against possibilism, Woodard defines the view in terms of
normative reasons for action rather than moral obligations. As a final
example, in his (2016) article, Vessel proposes what he takes to be a
"possibilist variant" of a view known as moral securitism,
which will be discussed in
section 4.
The first possibilist definition given in this section, however,
captures the standard understanding of possibilism and the commitments
of its proponents, including Greenspan (1978), Thomason (1981),
Humberstone (1983), Feldman (1986: 38), and Zimmerman (1990; 1996:
190; 2006; 2008: ch. 3; 2017). On this definition, Procrastinate is
obligated to agree to review the paper since it is part of the best
series of acts that she can perform over the course of her life.
In contrast to possibilism, standard forms of actualism hold that
Procrastinate is obligated to decline to review the paper because what
would actually happen if Procrastinate were to do this is better than
what would actually happen if she were to agree to review the paper.
For, what would happen if Procrastinate were to decline the invitation
is that the student would receive a second-rate job offer. However, if
she were to agree to review the paper then she would not review it and
the student would receive no job offer. A simple, but not
unproblematic, version of actualism holds the following:
* **Actualism:** At *t* an agent *S* is
obligated to \(\phi\) at \(t'\) iff *S* can \(\phi\) at \(t'\)
and what would happen if *S* were to \(\phi\) at \(t'\) is better
than what would happen if *S* were to perform any alternative act
at \(t'\).
One problem with this definition is that it blurs together the
intrinsic value of the consequences of an act and the deontic value of
that act. An actualist's stance with respect to the relationship
between these different types of value depends upon her preferred
normative ethical theory. We will discuss more precise and informative
definitions of actualism in
section 3.
However, the above definition suffices to illustrate the primary
difference between actualism and possibilism.
### 2.4 Possibilism, Actualism, and the Relevant Sense of "Ability"
It is natural to initially diagnose the disagreement between
actualists and possibilists as a disagreement about which act-sets
agents *can* perform. However, the actualism/possibilism debate
cuts across debates about the relevant sense(s) of "can".
Actualists and possibilists may agree with one another about which
act-sets agents can perform in any given case. At bottom, their
disagreement concerns which acts, from among the acts the agent can
perform, are normatively relevant *options* for the agent. Less
abstractly, actualists and possibilists may agree that Procrastinate
*can* \(\langle X\rangle\), \(\langle Y\rangle\), or \(\langle
Z\rangle\). After all, by stipulation, she can \(\langle a\rangle\)
and if she \(\langle a\textrm{-s}\rangle\), then by stipulation she
can \(\langle b\rangle\) and if she does that, then she will have
performed \(\langle X\rangle \). Procrastinate *can* \(\langle
X\rangle\), though one may still wonder whether she has the relevant
kind of *ability* to \(\langle X\rangle \). That is, one may
wonder whether \(\langle X\textrm{-ing}\rangle\) is a relevant
*option* for the agent. It is this question that divides
actualists and possibilists. Goldman (1976: 453 and 1978: 153)
initially suggested that \(\langle X\textrm{-ing}\rangle\) is a
relevant *option* for the agent, appealing to the following
account of ability.
* ***Ability 1*:** An agent has the ability at
\(t\_1\) to perform an act *A* at \(t\_1 +N\) just in case there is
a sequence of acts such that the agent has the ability at \(t\_1\) to
perform the first of these acts at \(t\_1\), and if he performs the
first act, then at a later time he will have the ability to perform
the second act at that time, and if he performs the first two acts at
their respective times, then at a still later time he will have the
ability to perform the third act at that time, and so forth, until
finally if he performs all the acts in the sequence at their
respective times, then at \(t\_1 +N\) he will have the ability to
perform act *A* at \(t\_1 +N\).
Interestingly, Goldman (1978) later rejects this account of ability
after considering cases where, at \(t\_1\), the agent can \(\langle
a\rangle\), but would not \(\langle b\rangle\) and thus would not
\(\langle X\rangle \), regardless of her intentions at \(t\_1\). Such
cases are ones where it's possible for the agent to \(\langle
X\rangle\), but Goldman argues that it would be "pointless to
use this account of ability when assessing the range of activities
which a moral principle should assess". This is because agents
"could not make practical use of" prescriptions to perform
such alternatives. These types of cases will be discussed in more
detail the next section. For now, the important takeaway is that while
an agent *can* perform such conjunctive act-sets in the sense
picked out by *Ability 1*, there may be times before the agent
acts during which she cannot ensure that she will perform these
act-sets. So, while it's possible for Procrastinate to \(\langle
X\rangle\) by intending to \(\langle a\rangle\) at \(t\_1\) and then
intending to \(\langle b\rangle\) at \(t\_2\), it may also be true
that, at \(t\_1\), Procrastinate would not \(\langle b\rangle\) at
\(t\_2\) no matter what she intends to do at \(t\_1\). In light of such
cases, Goldman proposes the following account of ability.
* ***Ability 2*:** An agent has the ability at
\(t\_1\) to perform an act *A* at a later time \(t\_n\) if and only
if it is true that if the agent wanted at \(t\_1\) to perform *A*
at \(t\_n\), he would do so (Goldman 1978: 195).
So, for any given act-set, actualists and possibilists will agree
about whether an agent has *Ability 1*, *Ability 2*, or
both to perform that act-set and thus will agree about each sense in
which agents can perform these act-sets. Yet, they will disagree about
which sense of ability picks out the morally relevant set of options
for an agent. Possibilists (e.g., Feldman 1986; Zimmerman 1996),
hybridists (Timmerman & Cohen 2016), and some actualists (e.g.,
Jackson & Pargetter 1986; Jackson 2014) take *Ability 1* to
be a morally relevant sense of ability. Most actualists and all
securitists (e.g., Portmore 2011, 2018) will take *Ability 2*,
or something close to it, to be the morally relevant sense of
ability.
### 2.5 Objections to Possibilism
Possibilism has a lot going for it. Most notably, it generates the
intuitively correct moral verdicts in a wide range of cases. It
preserves
(ODC),
(S), and related, similarly attractive, principles in deontic
logic (Goldman 1978: 80; Feldman 1986: 41-44; Zimmerman 1990:
58-60; Zimmerman 2006: 154-155; Vessel 2009; Kiesewetter
2018). It is thought to avoid the main objection leveled against
actualism. That is, since possibilism requires agents to perform the
best act-set they can over the course of their lives, it is
*not* thought to let agents off the hook too easily. It also
avoids the other objections leveled against actualism discussed in the
next section. Also, see Zimmerman (1996: fn. 72 & fn. 122 and
2017: ch. 3) for a nice review of some of possibilism's
additional, lesser appreciated, virtues. While there is much to be
said in favor of possibilism, it also faces certain challenging
objections.
#### 2.5.1 The worst outcome objection
Perhaps the primary objection to possibilism is that it can generate
obligations that, if acted on, would result in the worst possible
outcome. Versions of this objection have been raised throughout the
literature, (Goldman 1976: 469-70; Sobel 1976: 202-203;
Feldman 1986: 52-57; Almeida 1992: 461-462; Woodard 2009:
219-221; Portmore 2011: 211; Ross 2012: 81-82; Gustafsson 2014: 593; Timmerman
& Cohen 2016: 674). Possibilism generates
this consequence because it implies that facts about how agents would
freely act play no role in determining deontic verdicts. So, this
potentially objectionable consequence of possibilism is a product of a
core commitment of the view.
To illustrate the issue, consider *Professor Procrastinate*
again. According to possibilism, Procrastinate is obligated to
[?]agree to review the paper & review the paper[?] and
thus is obligated to [?]agree to review the paper[?].
However, if Procrastinate were to act on her obligation to
[?]agree to review the paper[?], she would [?]not
review the paper[?], thereby bringing about the worst possible
outcome. This may not sound so counterintuitive in *Professor
Procrastinate* where the worst outcome isn't tragic. Yet,
this objection has more intuitive force in high-stakes variants.
Suppose that no matter what Procrastinate were to intend today, she
would freely [?]not review the paper[?] if she
[?]agrees to review the paper[?]. Suppose furthermore that
if Procrastinate were to [?]not review the paper[?], then
the student would not receive any job offers and commit suicide.
Possibilism still renders the verdict that Procrastinate is obligated
to [?]agree to review the paper[?] and it renders this
verdict no matter how terrible the consequences of [?]agreeing to
review the paper[?] happen to be. This objection to possibilism
may be stated more precisely as follows.
* **Worst Outcome Objection:** Possibilism entails
that an agent *S* can have an obligation to \(\phi\) even when
\(\phi\)-ing entails that *S* would perform an act-set that is
deeply morally wrong (perhaps the worst act-set possible) and that is
worse than the act-set that *S* would perform if *S* were to
\({\sim}\phi\).
Possibilists have responded by suggesting that the intuitive force of
this objection stems from failing to appreciate the distinction
between conditional and unconditional obligations. The possibilist
obligation is meant to pick out agents' unconditional
obligations and it supposedly is not problematic for agents to have
unconditional obligations that, if acted upon, would result in the
worst possible outcome (Greenspan 1978: 81; Zimmerman 2017:
126-128). So, while it's true that possibilism entails
that Procrastinate has an unconditional obligation to [?]agree to
review the paper[?] in virtue of her unconditional obligation to
[?]agree to review the paper & review the paper[?], it
may also be true that she has a conditional obligation to
[?]decline to review the paper[?] given that she would
[?]not review the paper[?] if she were to [?]agree to
review the paper[?]. More generally, possibilists can respond by
holding that agents have an unconditional obligation to do the best
they can, but incur conditional obligations to bring about the next
best outcome *if* they won't bring about the best
outcome. The distinction between conditional and unconditional
obligations will be further explored in
section 5.
#### 2.5.2 The advisor objection
A closely related objection appeals to considerations about moral
advice (Goldman 1976: 470; Greenspan 1978: 81; Feldman 1986:
55-57). Suppose that Procrastinate asks her friend whether she
should \(\langle a\rangle\). Knowing that Procrastinate would almost
certainly fail to \(\langle b\rangle\) if she were to \(\langle
a\rangle\), it seems that her advisor ought to advise Procrastinate to
\(\langle{\sim}a\rangle\). The basic idea is that since
Procrastinate's advisor ought to tell Procrastinate to
\(\langle{\sim}a\rangle\), Procrastinate is, contrary to what
possibilists claim, obligated to \(\langle{\sim}a\rangle\).
Possibilists who accept that one ought to advise Procrastinate to
\(\langle{\sim}a\rangle\) will deny that this suggests that
Procrastinate truly has an obligation to \(\langle{\sim}a\rangle\).
Rather, they'll hold that Procrastinate's advisor has an
obligation to advise Procrastinate to do something she is obligated to
refrain from doing. Possibilists will point out that
Procrastinate's advisor, just like Procrastinate, is obligated
to do the best she can. In this case, doing the best she can requires
advising Procrastinate to \(\langle{\sim}a\rangle\) since
Procrastinate won't \(\langle a \lamp b\rangle\) no matter what
Procrastinate's advisor says. Thus, the best
Procrastinate's advisor can do is to get Procrastinate to
\(\langle{\sim}a \lamp{\sim}b\rangle\) and that requires telling
Procrastinate that she ought to \(\langle{\sim}a\rangle\). Erik
Carlson gives this response in his (1995: 127) article. Fred Feldman
gives this response in his (1986: 57) book and puts the point
thusly.
>
>
>
> When we give moral advice, we morally ought to advise in the best way
> we can. That is, we should advise in the way we advise in the best
> world open to us. When things go smoothly, our advice will be
> true...But when things go awry, we may find that to advise in the
> best possible way, we must give false advice. Reflection on a more
> extreme case should make this clear. Suppose an ornery child always
> does the opposite of what we tell him to do. Suppose we know that he
> ought to turn right, and that hundreds of lives depend upon it. Should
> we tell him to turn right? Obviously not.
>
>
>
#### 2.5.3 The asymmetry objection
Both Holly Goldman (1976: 469-470) and Christopher Woodard
(2009) argue that possibilism is committed to an implausible asymmetry
between moral and prudential reasons, whereas actualism treats such
reasons symmetrically. To motivate this objection, Woodard asks one to
consider an intrapersonal case of prudence that is structurally
identical to typical actualist/possibilist cases.
* ***Plane Tickets*:** Suppose that the
prudentially best act-set Smith can perform is \(\langle A \lamp
B\rangle\), where \(\langle A \rangle\) = purchase a plane ticket and
\(\langle B\rangle\) = board the plan. Smith is a bit aviophobic,
however. If she were to \(\langle A\rangle\) purchase the plane
ticket, she would \(\langle{\sim}B\rangle\) not board the plane
(Woodard 2009: 221).
Suppose each option is equally *morally* good. However, the
*prudential* value of the act-sets may be ranked from best to
worst as follows.
1. \(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\)
2. \(\langle{\sim}A \lamp {\sim}B\rangle\)
3. \(\langle A \lamp {\sim}B\rangle\)
Again, the following counterfactuals are true.
4. If Smith were to \(\langle A\rangle\), she would
\(\langle{\sim}B\rangle\).
5. If Smith were to \(\langle{\sim}A\rangle\), she would
\(\langle{\sim}B\rangle\).
Prudentially, what ought Smith to do? Woodard suggests that
intuitively Smith prudentially ought to \(\langle{\sim}A\rangle\),
writing that it's hard
>
>
> to believe that the fact that [Smith] would choose \({\sim}B\) were
> [she] to choose *A* is irrelevant to whether [Smith] should
> choose *A* or not. (2009: 221)
>
>
>
However, if possibilists treat prudential reasons in the same way they
treat moral reasons, they would be committed to holding that Smith
prudentially ought to \(\langle A\rangle\) even though this would
result in her wasting her money on a plane ticket she wouldn't
use. In light of intuitive judgments about prudential cases, Woodard
concludes that unless
>
>
> there is a sharp asymmetry between prudential and moral
> oughts...the parallel [case concerning moral reasons also]
> affects Smith's moral obligation to choose *A* or
> \({\sim}A\).
>
>
>
Woodard's thought is
that prudential cases support actualist judgments and, to avoid
positing an implausible asymmetry between moral and prudential
reasons, we should think actualism is true in moral cases as well.
It's worth noting that this sort of question about prudential
cases arises in the rational choice literature. The analogous question
concerns whether rationality requires one to choose suboptimal courses
of action by predicating one's present behavior on what will
seem most attractive to one at a later time (see McClennen 1990: ch.
8-9; Gauthier 1994). The subsequent literature suggests that
intuitions about prudential cases are at least mixed.
In response to Woodard, possibilists could again appeal to the
distinction between unconditional and conditional (prudential)
obligations. Perhaps what Smith is unconditionally prudentially
obligated to do is [?]purchase the plane ticket & board the
plane[?] and thus has an unconditional obligation to
[?]purchase the plane ticket[?]. However, given that she
wouldn't [?]board the plane[?] if she were to
[?]purchase the plane ticket[?], she may incur a conditional
(prudential) obligation to [?]not purchase the plane
ticket[?]. Given that she won't do what she prudentially
ought to do, she conditionally ought to do the next best thing.
Zimmerman's response is to deny that there is an asymmetry,
arguing that what "matters, according to possibilism, is what
one can control" (2017: 128). In other words, both prudential
cases and moral cases are treated symmetrically in the sense that what
matters for *any* case, according to possibilism, concerns what
is under an agent's control. To illustrate, in contrast to this
purely prudential case, consider a similar case in which Smith's
not boarding the plane will result in result in her friend, Fred,
being deeply disappointed that he and Smith will not get an
opportunity to catch up in person. In both of these cases,
Smith's control with respect to performing \(\langle A \lamp
B\rangle\) is exactly the same. So, according to Zimmerman, it
doesn't matter that, in either case, Smith would in fact
\(\langle{\sim}B\rangle\) if she were to \(\langle A\rangle\); Smith
is still obligated to perform \(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\), and, *a
fortiori*, perform \(\langle A\rangle\). Zimmerman may be right
that possibilists are not committed to treating moral and prudential
reasons differently. However, by treating them symmetrically, it may
still be true (as Goldman and Woodard suggest) that possibilists are
committed to counterintuitive verdicts in certain prudential cases, as
illustrated in *Plane Tickets*.
The objections considered in this section are some of the most
influential or instructive objections that apply to possibilism,
generally construed. However, they do not exhaust the objections that
may be levelled against the view. Even if possibilists are able to
provide adequate responses to these objections, other considerations
may count in favor of an alternative view. In the next section, we
turn to possibilism's main competitor: actualism.
## 3. Actualism
When it comes to cases concerning agents who are disposed to act
wrongly, actualists consider their possibilist counterparts to be
overly idealistic by theorizing about our moral obligations without
considering the moral imperfections that result in our failing to do
the best that we can. According to actualists, the specific way in
which our imperfections need to be considered is by taking into
account the truth-value of certain counterfactuals of freedom, i.e.,
certain facts about what we would freely do if we were in some
circumstances. The only counterfactuals that are relevant to our
objective obligations are ones in which the circumstances in the
antecedent are fully described (Jackson 1985: 178, 186; Jackson &
Pargetter 1986: 240). This is because strengthening the antecedent of
a counterfactual, i.e., adding information to the antecedent, can
alter the counterfactual's truth-value (Stalnaker 1968; Lewis
1973).
Most, if not all participants, in the actualist-possibilist debate
seem to assume that the agents have the ability at one time to perform
an act that they would not in fact perform at a later time if they
were in the relevant circumstances. For example, although Professor
Procrastinate can [?]agree to review the paper & write the
review[?], she would, as a matter of fact, [?]not write the
review[?] if she were to [?]agree to review the
paper[?]. In other words, she would do something (not write)
other than what she can do (write). By holding fixed the fact that
Procrastinate would [?]not write the review[?] even if she
were to [?]agree to review the paper[?], it follows from
actualism that Procrastinate ought to [?]decline to review the
paper[?], even though she can [?]agree to review the paper
& write the review[?]. This is because actualism roughly
states that an agent ought to \(\phi\) just in case \(\phi\)-ing would
result in a better outcome than any other alternative to \(\phi\)-ing.
Recall the generic definition offered in the previous section.
* **Actualism:** At *t* an agent *S* is
obligated to \(\phi\) at \(t'\) iff *S* can \(\phi\) at \(t'\)
and what would happen if *S* were to \(\phi\) at \(t'\) is better
than what would happen if *S* were to perform any alternative act
at \(t'\).
Now, what would happen if Procrastinate were to [?]decline to
review the paper[?] is better than what would happen if
Procrastinate were to [?]agree to review the paper[?]. As
this example illustrates, the value that actualists assign to an
option is determined by what *would* happen if that option were
performed, rather than by being a member of the best act-set that the
agent *can* perform over time. [?]Agreeing to review the
paper[?] is part of the best act-set that is presently available
to Procrastinate. But the value of [?]agreeing to review the
paper[?] is less than the value of [?]declining to review
the paper[?] because of what would happen if these respective
options were to be performed.
Beyond this minimal agreement among all versions of actualism that
Professor Procrastinate ought (given certain descriptions of the case)
to [?]decline to review the paper[?], actualists diverge on
other substantial issues concerning the scope of our obligations.
Holly S. Goldman and Jordan Howard Sobel independently developed and
articulated the first versions of actualism. We will begin by
introducing Goldman's formulation which is motivated in part by
the need to avoid prescribing jointly unfulfillable obligations.
### 3.1 The Problem of Jointly Unfulfillable Obligations for Some Forms of Actualism
The above formulation of actualism is subject to the problem of
jointly unfulfillable obligations. That is, it generates multiple
obligations such that it is impossible for the agent to fulfill all of
them. For example, Procrastinate is obligated to [?]decline to
review the paper[?] because this would result in a better outcome
than the outcome that would follow [?]agreeing to review the
paper[?]. On the other hand, Procrastinate is obligated to
[?]agree to review the paper & write the review[?]
because doing so would have a better outcome than the outcome of
[?]declining to review the paper & not reviewing the
paper[?]. This is a problem for Jackson and Pargetter's
version of actualism, to be discussed below. Goldman's and
Sobel's versions of actualism are formulated precisely to avoid
this problem. To see how Goldman avoids this problem, consider the
following formulation of actualism that Goldman (1976: 471) considers
and rejects:
(G)*S* ought at
\(t\_1\), to perform \(A\_i\) at \(t\_i\) if and only if:
(1)
*S* has the
ability at \(t\_1\) to perform \(A\_i\), at \(t\_i\), and
(2)
the sequence of acts
from \(t\_i\) which would follow \(A\_i\) is better than any sequence
from \(t\_i\) which would follow any act that would be an alternative
to \(A\_i\) relative to \(t\_i\).
The basic idea behind (G) is captured in the aforementioned rough
definition of actualism. Here are the details. "\(A\_i\)"
may apply to a single act or a sequence of acts over time. The main
problem that Goldman finds with (G) is that even if \(A\_i\) satisfies
(1) and (2), (G) does not take into account the following sort of
case: "\(A\_i\)" refers to a sequence of acts over time,
the following counterfactual is true: "if the agent were to
perform the first half of \(A\_i\), then the agent would not perform
the second half of \(A\_i\)", and the sequence of acts that would
follow the performance of the first half of \(A\_i\) would be worse
than the sequence of acts that would follow an alternative to the
first half of \(A\_i\). (G) implies that in this sort of case the agent
has jointly unfulfillable obligations at the same time *t*, viz.
an obligation at *t* to perform \(A\_i\) and an obligation at
*t* to refrain from performing the first half of \(A\_i\). For
example, according to (G) Procrastinate ought to [?]agree to
review the paper & write the review[?] from
\(t\_1\)-\(t\_2\) because the sequence of acts that would follow
this act sequence from \(t\_2\) is better than any sequence from
\(t\_2\) which would follow any alternative act sequence at
\(t\_1\)-\(t\_2\), including the alternative of [?]declining
to review the paper & not writing the review[?] from
\(t\_1\)-\(t\_2\). But, on the other hand, according to (G)
Procrastinate ought to [?]decline to review the paper[?] at
\(t\_1\) because the sequence of acts that would follow this from
\(t\_1\) is better than any sequence from \(t\_1\) which would follow
any alternative act at \(t\_1\), including the alternative of
[?]agreeing to review the paper[?]. Obviously, it cannot be
the case that both obligations are fulfilled.
Goldman (1976: 467) illustrates the possibility of jointly
unfulfillable obligations with the following example.
* ***Jones*:** Jones is deciding whether to go
to the office or to stay home. She can [?]go to the office,
attend the faculty meeting, and then vote for a language requirement
for undergraduates[?]. This is the best outcome available to
Jones over time. The worst outcome available to Jones is [?]going
to the office, talking to a student, and then discouraging the student
from seeking psychiatric aid[?]. The second-best outcome
available to Jones is [?]staying home, doing research for her
lectures, and then writing the lecture notes[?]. The critical
counterfactual that partly shapes the relative values of Jones'
options is this: "if Jones were to [?]go to the
office[?], then she would [?]talk to the student and then
freely discourage the student from seeking psychiatric
aid[?]".
Although [?]going to the office[?] is a prerequisite for the
best outcome (viz. the outcome that follows [?]voting for a
language requirement[?]), [?]going to the office[?]
would, in fact, result in the worst outcome (viz. the outcome that
follows [?]discouraging the student from seeking psychiatric
aid[?]). [?]Staying home[?] rather than [?]going to
the office[?] would result in a better outcome (viz. the outcome
of [?]writing lecture notes[?]). Here is Goldman's
chart, which summarizes Jones's predicament:
![a decision tree: link to extended description below](figure1.svg)
Figure 1: [An
extended description of figure 1
is in the supplement.]
As a matter of stipulation, the act-set which would follow the act-set
that terminates with [?]voting for the language
requirement[?] at \(t\_3\) is better than the act-set which would
follow any other \(t\_1\)-\(t\_3\) act-set available to Jones at
\(t\_1\). So
(G)
implies that, at \(t\_1\), Jones ought to do the best she can.
However, (G) also implies that, at \(t\_1\), Jones ought to
[?]stay home[?] at \(t\_1\) rather than [?]go to the
office[?] at \(t\_1\). This is because both acts are performable
for Jones at \(t\_1\), and the act sequence which would follow
[?]staying home[?] is better than the act sequence which
would follow [?]going to the office[?]. So, according to
(G), Jones has at least two obligations that are jointly
unfulfillable, *A*: [?]going to the office, then going to
the faculty meeting, then voting for the language requirement[?],
and *B*: [?]staying home[?]. Jones cannot perform both
\(\langle A \lamp B\rangle\). There is no possible scenario in which
both obligations are fulfilled.
### 3.2 Preliminary Formulations of Actualism
To avoid the problem of jointly unfulfillable obligations, Goldman
(1976: 473) proposes the following version of actualism:
(G\*1)
(A)
*S* ought at \(t\_1\) to perform \(A\_1\) at \(t\_1\) if and only if:
(1)
*S* has the ability at \(t\_1\), to perform \(A\_1\), and
(2)
the sequence from \(t\_1\) which would follow \(A\_1\) is
better than any sequence from \(t\_1\) which would follow any
alternative to \(A\_1\).
(B)
If *S* ought at \(t\_1\), to perform \(A\_i\) at \(t\_i\),
then *S* ought at \(t\_1\), to perform an immediate successor
\(B\_j\) to \(A\_i\) at \(t\_j\) if the sequence from \(t\_j\) which would
follow \(B\_j\) is better than any sequence from \(t\_j\) which would
follow any other immediate successor to \(A\_i\).
Unlike
(G),
(G\*1) assesses an act's deontic status in a procedural manner,
starting with the options that are immediately available to the agent,
and then proceeding to the next immediately available options. To
illustrate, part (A) of (G\*1) tells us to first evaluate all of the
options that are immediately performable for Jones at \(t\_1\), and
those options are either [?]going to the office[?] or
[?]staying home[?]. The latter option is obligatory because
it *would* result in a better act-set than the act-set that
would result if Jones were to [?]go to the office[?]. Part
(B) of (G\*1) tells us that, as of \(t\_1\), Jones ought to perform an
immediate successor to [?]staying home[?] at \(t\_1\) that
would result in a better sequence of acts than any alternative option
that is an immediate successor to [?]staying home[?] at
\(t\_1\). So, at \(t\_1\), Jones ought to [?]stay home and then do
research for lectures[?] from \(t\_1\)-\(t\_2\). Similarly,
at \(t\_1\), Jones ought to perform an act-set that terminates with
[?]writing lecture notes[?] at \(t\_3\), given the assumption
that the act-set that would follow [?]writing the lecture
notes[?] at \(t\_3\) is better than the act-set that would follow
[?]fixing lunch[?] at \(t\_3\).
The application of
(G\*1)
to the case of Jones explains why (G\*1) does not imply the
possibility of jointly unfulfillable obligations. Although what would
happen if Jones were to [?]go to the faculty meeting[?] at
\(t\_2\) is better than what would happen if she were to do anything
else at \(t\_2\) that, as of \(t\_1\), she can do, Jones is nevertheless
*not* obligated at \(t\_1\) to [?]go to the faculty
meeting[?] at \(t\_2\). This is because if Jones were to perform
one of the acts required for [?]going to the faculty
meeting[?], viz. [?]going to the office[?], then the
worst outcome would occur. As of \(t\_1\), any act that precludes
[?]staying home[?] at \(t\_1\) is impermissible.
Jordan Howard Sobel (1976: 196) similarly defends a version of
actualism that avoids jointly unfulfillable obligations:
(S)
An act *x* ought to take place if and only if (i) *x*
is contained in a life optimum among lives securable by the agent
of *x* at this act's first moment (that is, a life
optimum among those lives each of which would be secured by some
fully specific minimal act open to the agent of *x* at the
first moment of *x*), and (ii) no agent-identical act
incompatible with x satisfies (i).
A life *L* is a sequence of acts over time, or, in the
terminology of this article, an act-set over time, such that this
act-set is not contained in some other act-set that an agent *S*
can perform over time. Hence, a life is identical to the
possibilist's notion of a maximal act-set. A life *L* is
securable for *S* at time *t* if at \(t\) \(S\) can immediately
perform the first moment of *x*, *x* is in *L*, and if
*x* were to occur, then *L* would occur (Sobel 1976: 199).
An obligatory life is determined in part by the set of immediately
performable fully specific minimal acts available to the agent. A
minimal act is one whose completion cannot be stopped by the agent
once it is initiated. As such, all instantaneous acts are minimal acts
(if there are any such acts). Moreover, a minimal act is fully
specific just in case it is not entailed by two or more minimal acts
available to the agent.
Like
(G\*1),
and unlike
(G),
(S) does not imply that Jones ought to do the best she can over time
in the sense affirmed by possibilists. This is because, according to
(S), all lives that contain [?]voting for the language
requirement[?] are not securable for Jones at \(t\_1\). At
\(t\_1\), there is no fully specific minimal act that Jones can
immediately perform such that if Jones were to perform it then Jones
would perform a sequence of acts that includes [?]voting for the
language requirement[?]. Similarly, [?]writing the
review[?] is not securable for Procrastinate at \(t\_1\) because,
at \(t\_1\), there is no fully specific minimal act that Jones can
immediately perform such that, if Jones were to perform it, then Jones
would [?]write the review[?].
### 3.3 A Contextualist Formulation of Actualism
In contrast to the views of Goldman and Sobel, other forms of
actualism embrace the possibility of jointly unfulfillable obligations
while simultaneously resisting the claim that actualism implies the
possibility of obligation dilemmas, i.e., scenarios in which all of
the options available to an agent over time result in a failure to
fulfill at least one obligation. Consider Frank Jackson and Robert
Pargetter's (1986: 233) formulation of actualism.
>
>
> [T]he values that should figure in determining which option is best
> and so ought to be done out of a set of options are the values of what
> *would* be the case were the agent to adopt or carry out the
> option, where what would be the case includes of course what the agent
> would simultaneously or subsequently in fact do: the (relevant) value
> of an option is the value of what would in fact be the case were the
> agent to perform it.
>
>
>
Jackson and Pargetter (1986: 244-245) maintain that there are
different sets of options out of which different obligations arise.
For instance, from the set of all \(t\_1\)-\(t\_3\) act-sets
available to Jones at \(t\_1\), the option with the highest value
consists of the act-set that includes [?]Jones's voting for
the language requirement[?] at \(t\_3\). Therefore, out of the
\(t\_1\)-\(t\_3\) act-set, at \(t\_1\) Jones is obligated to
[?]go to the office, then go to the faculty meeting, and then
vote for the language requirement[?]. This is because what would
happen if this act-set were to occur is better than what would happen
if some other \(t\_1\)-\(t\_3\) act-set were to occur. But on the
other hand, from the set of immediately performable acts available to
Jones at \(t\_1\), the option with the highest value consists of
Jones' [?]staying home[?] because what would happen if
Jones were to [?]stay home[?] is better than what would
happen if Jones were to [?]go to the office[?]. Therefore,
out of the performable \(t\_1\) acts, at \(t\_1\) Jones is obligated to
[?]stay home[?]. Like
(G),
Jackson and Pargetter's view does not assess an act's
deontic status in the procedural manner with which Goldman's
(G\*1)
or Sobel's
(S)
assesses an act's deontic status. Moreover, like (G), Jackson
and Pargetter's view implies the possibility of obligations that
cannot be jointly fulfilled. We will henceforth refer to their view as
contextualist actualism because what an agent is obligated to do
depends on the set of options being considered within a certain
context.
### 3.4 Objections to Contextualist Actualism
#### 3.4.1 Jointly unfulfillable obligations without obligation dilemmas
The possibility of jointly unfulfillable obligations initially seems
to imply the possibility of obligation dilemmas, i.e., scenarios in
which all of the options available to an agent over time result in a
failure to fulfill at least one obligation. But this is not the case
given the assumption taken for granted in the actualist-possibilist
debate: that agents have control over the truth-value of certain
counterfactuals. In other words, agents can perform certain acts, and
if they were to do so, then certain counterfactuals that are in fact
true would instead be false. For example, Procrastinate can
[?]agree to review the paper & then write the review[?].
If she were to do this, then the following counterfactual that is
false would be true instead: "If Procrastinate were to
[?]agree to review the paper[?], then she would
[?]write the review[?]". Moreover, if this
counterfactual were true, then Procrastinate would not be obligated to
[?]decline to review the paper[?]. This is because, in this
counterfactual scenario, what would follow from [?]declining to
review the paper[?] would be worse than what would follow from
[?]agreeing to review the paper[?].
Jackson and Pargetter rightly conclude from this that Procrastinate
can avoid violating *any* obligation because if Procrastinate
were to do something that she can do, viz. [?]agree to review the
paper & then write the review[?], then Procrastinate
wouldn't be obligated to [?]decline to review the
paper[?] in the first place, and thus there would be no
unfulfilled obligations (Jackson 1985: 194; Jackson & Pargetter
1986: 242-243; Louise 2009: 330; Jackson 2014: 636). In this
sense, according to contextualist actualism, the obligation to
[?]agree to review the paper & then write the review[?]
overrides the obligation to [?]decline to review the
paper[?]. More generally, at time *t* an agent can do
something over time such that, if it were done, then their primary
obligation would be fulfilled, and the agent would not have any
unfulfilled obligations from *t* onwards. Jackson and
Pargetter's view is more similar to possibilism in comparison to
standard formulations of actualism insofar as Jackson and Pargetter
agree with possibilists about an agent's obligation to perform
the same maximal act-set. The difference between contextualist
actualism and possibilism is that the former view affirms the
existence of additional obligations that arise from sets of options
that do not include this maximal act-set.
Jackson and Pargetter (1986: 246-249) believe that incompatible
prescriptions are objectionable only when they arise from the same set
of alternatives. But their view never generates incompatible
prescriptions out of the same set of alternatives. Out of the set of
alternatives of [?]agreeing to review the paper[?] at
\(t\_1\) or [?]declining to review the paper[?] at \(t\_1\),
[?]declining to review the paper[?] is obligatory. But out
of the \(t\_1\)-\(t\_2\) alternatives available to Procrastinate
at \(t\_1\), [?]agreeing to review the paper and then writing the
review[?] is the obligatory option. Hence, according to
contextualist actualism, as long as actualism does not prescribe
incompatible obligations from the same set of alternatives,
incompatible prescriptions are unproblematic. Still, one might object
that their view is not action-guiding in the sense that their theory
does not say whether the overriding obligation takes priority over the
other obligations (cf. Jackson 2014: 636).
#### 3.4.2 The lumping problem
By relativizing obligations to different sets of options,
contextualist actualism is subject to the so-called lumping problem.
This is the problem of lumping alternatives to an option *O* into
a single alternative (not-*O*) (Wedgwood 2009
[Other Internet Resources, OIR];
Ross 2012; Cariani 2016). Here is an example. Suppose that the
following increasingly worse options are available to an agent
*A*: [?]go to work[?], [?]gamble at home[?],
[?]kill someone at home[?]. Suppose furthermore that the
following four counterfactuals are true.
1. If *A* were to [?]not go to work[?], then *A*
would [?]kill someone at home[?].
2. If *A* were to [?]not gamble at home[?], then
*A* would [?]kill someone at home[?].
3. If *A* were to [?]gamble at home[?], then *A*
would [?]not kill someone at home[?].
4. If *A* were to [?]go to work[?], then *A*
would [?]not kill someone at home and would get valuable work
done[?].
In that case, what would happen if *A* were to [?]gamble at
home[?] is better than what would happen if *A* were to
[?]not gamble at home[?]. For, if *A* were to
[?]not gamble at home[?], then *A* would [?]kill
someone at home[?]. Now, when we consider *A*'s
options to be [?]gambling at home[?] or [?]not gambling
at home[?], contextualist actualism implies that *A* ought
to [?]gamble at home[?]. This should seem very implausible,
even by actualists' own lights, because what would actually
happen if *A* were to [?]go to work[?] is better than
what would happen if *A* were to make any other choice at the
time in question. Those who find this result counterintuitive have
suggested that an obligatory act *O* must have a higher value
than all of the non-supererogatory options available to the agent,
rather than only having a higher value than not-*O*. In response
to this worry, Jackson and Pargetter can remind us that it is also
true that *A* ought to [?]go to work[?] out of a
different set options, viz. [?]going to work[?],
[?]gambling at home[?], and [?]killing someone at
home[?].
The relativization of obligations to different sets of options has led
Jackson and Pargetter to reject the "ought distributes over
conjunction" (ODC) principle (1986: 247). Recall that ODC holds
that if an agent *S* ought to do both *A* and *B*, then
*S* ought to do *A* and *S* ought to do *B*
(Castaneda 1968: 141). While they accept that Procrastinate
ought to [?]agree to review the paper & then write the
review[?], they deny that Procrastinate ought to [?]agree to
review the paper[?]. Similarly, their view implies that Jones
ought to [?]go to the office, then go to the faculty meeting, and
then vote for the language requirement[?]. However, Jones ought
not to [?]go to the office[?] since Jones ought to
[?]stay home[?].
### 3.5 Objections to All Forms of Actualism
#### 3.5.1 Avoiding obligations merely by having a vicious moral character
Goldman's
(G\*1)
and Sobel's
(S)
enjoy the theoretical and practical virtue of simplicity by
prescribing a single obligatory act sequence at a time rather than
multiple, jointly unfulfillable prescriptions at a time. But this
theoretical virtue comes at the cost of a possibilist objection: their
views allow agents to avoid incurring moral obligations simply in
virtue of having an imperfect moral character, and this allows agents
to, morally speaking, get off the hook too easily (Jackson &
Pargetter 1986: 240; Zimmerman 1996: 193-194, 2006: 156;
Portmore 2011: 207; Baker 2012: 642-43; Timmerman 2015;
Timmerman & Cohen 2016; Cohen & Timmerman 2016). For example,
Procrastinate avoids incurring an obligation to comment on a
student's paper simply because she is disposed to behave badly.
Actualism is committed to this even in cases in which an agent is
disposed to behave badly just because they intend to behave badly.
But, possibilists claim, agents cannot avoid incurring an obligation to \(\phi\)
simply because they intend to \(\phi\) poorly. More generally,
possibilists claim that being disposed to do wrong does not allow one
to avoid incurring obligations to do good.
Proponents of
(G\*1)
or
(S)
may retort by reminding us that this apparently problematic
implication is the result of taking into account the relevant
counterfactuals, and that not taking them into account is too costly.
While Procrastinate's [?]agreeing to review the
paper[?] is part of the best act-set that she can perform over
time, it is also part of the worst act-set that she can perform over
time, and the worst act-set would be performed if Procrastinate were
to [?]agree to review the paper[?] (Jackson & Pargetter
1986: 237). Similarly, Jones' [?]going to the
office[?] is part of the best act-set that she can perform over
time, but it is also part of the worst act-set that she can perform
over time, and the worst act-set would be performed if Jones were to
[?]go to the office[?].
Contextualist actualism can, in a sense, sidestep this possibilist
objection since contextual actualists agree with possibilists that an
agent ought to do the best that she can over time, and, in addition,
they consider this obligation to override all other obligations in the
aforementioned sense (Jackson 1985: 194; Jackson & Pargetter 1986:
242-243; Jackson 2014: 636). Possibilists may not be satisfied
with this response. Since possibilists accept ODC, they infer that
Procrastinate is obligated to [?]agree to review the
paper[?] from the fact that Procrastinate is obligated to
[?]agree to review the paper & then write the review[?].
Contextualist actualism denies that Procrastinate is obligated to
[?]agree to review the paper[?] at the cost of rejecting
ODC.
#### 3.5.2 Sanctioning bad behavior
All of these versions of actualism face a second possibilist
objection: they prescribe bad behavior that the agent can easily avoid
(Wedgwood 2009
[OIR];
Ross 2012: 75-76). For example, Procrastinate can easily avoid
[?]declining to review the paper[?] by [?]agreeing to
review the paper[?] and, once Procrastinate [?]agrees to
review the paper[?], she can easily [?]write the
review[?]. Nevertheless, all of these versions of actualism
maintain that Procrastinate should [?]decline to review the
paper[?] rather than [?]agree to review the paper[?].
Other extreme actualist-possibilist scenarios highlight the force of
this objection. Suppose that the following act-set is the best one
available to a mass murderer *M* at \(t\_1\): [?]kill no
one[?] at \(t\_1\) and [?]kill no one[?] at \(t\_2\).
Suppose, however, that the best immediately available option for
*M* is [?]killing someone at \(t\_1\)[?] because of the
truth of the following two counterfactuals: "if *M* were to
[?]kill someone[?] at \(t\_1\), then *M* would
[?]kill no one[?] at \(t\_2\)", "if *M* were
to [?]kill no one[?] at \(t\_1\), then *M* would
[?]kill ten people[?] at \(t\_2\)". Possibilists claim
that *M* should [?]kill no one[?] from
\(t\_1\)-\(t\_2\) and thus that *M* should [?]kill no
one[?] at \(t\_1\). Actualists, however, claim that *M*
should [?]kill someone[?] at \(t\_1\). Contextualist
actualism at least allows one to say that although [?]killing
someone[?] at \(t\_1\) is obligatory, doing this violates
*M*'s obligation to [?]kill no one[?] from
\(t\_1\)-\(t\_2\). Goldman and Sobel's versions cannot
accommodate this appeasing judgment.
It is worth noting that possibilism is thought to be subject to a
related problem. While it doesn't allow agents to avoid incurring
moral obligations for having a vicious moral character, it does allow
agents to avoid incurring moral obligations to curtail their vicious
moral character (Timmerman and Swenson 2019). To illustrate the
problem, suppose that one of the optimific act-sets Apathetic Andy can
perform over time includes [?]playing video games tonight and
donating his expendable income to charity tomorrow[?]. Andy is,
however, quite apathetic. As such, he won't [?]donate his
expendable income to charity tomorrow[?] unless he first
[?]reads work by Peter Singer tonight[?]. If he
[?]plays video games tonight[?], he will merely reinforce
his selfish nature and [?]use his expendable income to purchase
more video games tomorrow[?]. Here's the catch. The other
optimific act-set Apathetic Andy can perform is to [?]read work
by Peter Singer tonight and donate his expendable income to charity
tomorrow[?]. Moreover, if Andy [?]reads work by Peter Singer
tonight[?], he would [?]donate his expendable income to
charity tomorrow[?]. Performing this optimific act-set won't be
pleasant for Andy, though, since he finds reading philosophy to be
tedious. Here's the problem. Possibilism renders the verdict that Andy
is permitted to [?]play video games tonight[?], which would
not only result in a suboptimal outcome, but also exacerbate (rather
than curtail) his bad moral character. By contrast, actualism entails
that Andy is obligated to improve his moral character by
[?]reading work by Peter Singer tonight[?], and actualism
thus ensures that Andy would [?]donate his expendable income to
charity tomorrow[?]. So, both possibilism and actualism seem to
let agents with vicious moral characters off the hook too easily,
albeit in different circumstances and in different ways.
In the next section we will consider an additional objection to
actualism that has led to the development of views that may be
considered intermediaries of actualism and possibilism. According to
these views, a counterfactual is relevant to an agent's present
obligation only if the agent presently lacks a specific kind of
control over the truth-value of that counterfactual.
## 4. Securitist Views
Recall that the kinds of actualist-possibilist scenarios that we have
been discussing--the cases of *Professor Procrastinate*
and the case of *Jones*--are diachronic cases in the sense
that they concern different acts that are performed across different
moments of time, rather than at the same time. For example, in the
case of *Professor Procrastinate*, one of the relevant
counterfactuals is that if she were to [?]agree to review the
paper[?] at \(t\_1\), then she would [?]not write the
review[?] at \(t\_2\). The act in the antecedent and the act in
the consequent are indexed to different times. On the surface, it may
appear that a diachronic case would yield the same results as a
synchronic case, i.e., a case that involves the performance of
different acts at the same time. But as Goldman (1978) shows, a
synchronic actualist-possibilist scenario yields new difficulties for
actualism, including Goldman's (1976)
(G\*1),
and the way to address these difficulties is by incorporating a
control condition over the truth-value of certain counterfactuals.
### 4.1 A Synchronic Actualist-Possibilist Case
Consider Goldman's (1978: 186) case, which we'll call
*Traffic 1*:
* ***Traffic 1*:** Jones is driving
through a tunnel behind a slow-moving truck. It is illegal to change
lanes in the tunnel, and Jones' doing so would disrupt traffic.
Nevertheless she is going to change lanes [at *t*]--perhaps
she doesn't realize it is illegal, or perhaps she is simply in a
hurry. If she changes lanes without accelerating [at *t*],
traffic will be disrupted more severely than if she accelerates. If
she accelerates without changing lanes [at *t*], her car will
collide with the back of a truck.
According to Goldman, it seems that Jones should
[?]accelerate[?] at *t* since Jones is going to
[?]change lanes[?] at *t*, and [?]accelerating
& changing lanes[?] at *t* would result in a better
outcome than that of [?]not accelerating & changing
lanes[?]. But now consider this case:
* ***Traffic 2***: Everything that is true in
*Traffic 1* is true in this case. Additionally, Jones would
[?]not accelerate[?] at *t* if Jones were to either
[?]change lanes[?] or [?]not change lanes[?] at
*t*.
In *Traffic 2* Jones [?]changes lanes and doesn't
accelerate[?] at *t*. It seems that Jones should [?]not
change lanes[?] at *t* since she is going to [?]not
accelerate[?] at *t*. But it also seems that Jones should
[?]accelerate[?] at *t* since she is going to
[?]change lanes[?]. We have arrived at the verdict that in
*Traffic 2* Jones should [?]not change lanes[?] and
that Jones should [?]accelerate[?]. This verdict is
extremely counterintuitive since this would result in colliding with
the back of the truck, which is the worst possible outcome.
According to Goldman, the lesson to be gleamed from synchronic
actualist-possibilist cases is this: In determining what we are
obligated at *t* to do at *t*, we should not hold fixed
facts about what we are freely doing at t. Moreover, such synchronic
counterfactuals do not determine in any way what an agent is obligated
to do at any time. Consequently, the kind of immediate act-set that is
a candidate for being obligatory is the fully specific simultaneous
act-set that is immediately available to Jones. A performable fully
specific simultaneous act-set is one such that one cannot also perform
any other act-set at the relevant time. Goldman (1978: 190) calls such
act-sets maximal conjunctive acts, but this entry will stick with the
terminology of a *fully specific simultaneous act-set* in order
to avoid ambiguation with other notions of act-sets at issue in this
paper. Let's suppose that the (immediate) fully specific
simultaneous act-sets available to Jones are ranked from best to worst
as follows.
1. [?]Don't change lanes & don't
accelerate[?]
2. [?]Change lanes & accelerate[?]
3. [?]Change lanes & don't accelerate[?]
4. [?]Don't change lanes & accelerate[?]
According to Goldman, given options (1)-(4), Jones should
obviously perform (1). Moreover, notice that *if* Jones were to
perform (1), then the following synchronic counterfactual that is in
fact true in *Traffic 2* would be false instead: "if
Jones were to [?]not accelerate[?] at *t*, then at
*t* Jones would [?]change lanes[?]". So, given
the intuition that Jones is obligated to perform (1) and that doing so
would alter the truth-value of certain synchronic counterfactuals, we
should not hold fixed the truth-value of such synchronic
counterfactuals when theorizing about an agent's obligation to
perform some immediate fully specific simultaneous act-set. To
accommodate this judgment, Goldman's (1978) revised view
incorporates a control condition over the truth-value of such
synchronic counterfactuals.
### 4.2 Fully Specified Immediate Options
Goldman's revised view still adopts the insight behind
(G\*1)
that, in order to avoid the possibility of jointly unfulfillable
obligations, an obligatory act-set (or, as Goldman calls it, a sequence
of acts) must be such that it would occur if the agent were to
immediately perform the first act of the act-set, and the agent can
perform this first act of the act-set. Goldman's revised view
(1978: 202) is referred to as "4", but we will refer to
it as (G+) here:
(G+)
*S* ought at
\(t\_1\) to perform maximal sequence *X* starting at \(t\_1\) if
and only if *S* has the ability at \(t\_1\) to perform *X*,
and *X* is better than any alternative maximal sequence starting
from \(t\_1\) which *S* also has the ability at \(t\_1\) to
perform.
Unlike
(G\*1) ,
Goldman's revised view requires the first act to be a fully
specific simultaneous act-set. Moreover, the kind of act-set that
should be directly assessed is a *maximal* sequence. *S*
has the ability at \(t\_1\) to perform *X* only if *S* has
the ability at \(t\_1\) to immediately (at \(t\_1)\) perform the first
fully specific simultaneous act-set in \(X.\) Goldman's (1978:
201) notion of a maximal sequence is different from the
possibilist's aforementioned notion of a maximal act-set which
extends to the end of one's life. For, according to Goldman
(1978: 193-195), at *t* an agent can perform an act-set
over time if and only if, if at *t* the agent wanted to perform
this act-set, then the agent would do so over time. This implies that
the performable act-set over time must be such that the agent can, at
*t*, form an intention to perform this act-set over time that
would be causally efficacious if the intention were formed.
Goldman's notion of a maximal sequence is thus more restricted.
That is, a maximal sequence *X* is an act-set available to an
agent at *t* is such that, at *t*, the agent can form an
intention to perform *X*, and no other act-set that at *t*
the agent can intend to perform is a proper part of *X*. So,
henceforth, we will refer to Goldman's notion of a maximal
sequence as an *intentionally maximal act-set*, and this is to
be distinguished from a maximal act-set.
Recall that, according to *Ability 2*, an agent *S* has
the ability to immediately perform the first fully specific act-set in
an intentionally maximal act-set if and only if *S* would perform
this fully specific act-set if *S* wanted to do so, and by
extension we may assume Jones can perform each of (1)-(4). Under
this assumption,
(G+)
implies that although Jones would [?]change lanes[?] if she
were to [?]not accelerate[?], Jones nevertheless ought to do
something that requires her to [?]not accelerate[?], viz.
[?]not change lanes & not accelerate[?]. To see how (G+)
differs from the versions of actualism in
section 3,
consider the following version of *Professor
Procrastinate*:
* ***Professor Procrastinate\**:** If
Procrastinate were to [?]accept the request[?] at \(t\_1\),
then Procrastinate would do so by deciding at \(t\_1\) to harm the
student by falsely promising to review at \(t\_2\). So if Procrastinate
were to [?]accept the request[?] at \(t\_1\), then she would
[?]not comment[?] at \(t\_2\). However, Procrastinate can
[?]accept and comment[?] by deciding at \(t\_1\) to do so.
Moreover, if Procrastinate were to do this, then it would be true that
if Procrastinate were to [?]accept the request[?] at
\(t\_1\), then she would [?]comment[?] at \(t\_2\) (cf.
Portmore 2011: 204).
According to
(G+)
Procrastinate is obligated at \(t\_1\) to perform an intentionally
maximal act-set *M* that includes [?]accepting the request
and commenting[?] because there is an immediate fully specific
act-set available to Procrastinate at \(t\_1\) such that if it were
performed then *M* would occur, and *M* is the best
intentionally maximal act-set that is securable for Procrastinate at
\(t\_1\). By contrast, according to
(G\*1)
Procrastinate is obligated at \(t\_1\) to [?]not accept the
request[?] because this would result in the performance of
act-set *M*\* that includes [?]not commenting[?] at
\(t\_2\), and *M*\* is better than the act-set *M*\*\* that
would occur if Procrastinate were to [?]accept the
request[?] at \(t\_1\) because *M*\*\* includes
[?]accepting & not commenting[?].
One might suspect that a modified version of
(G\*1)
that focuses exclusively upon decisions rather than overt bodily acts
can handle synchronic actualist-possibilist cases, such as
*Professor Procrastinate\**. But this isn't so because it
is possible for the following two counterfactuals to be true:
1. If Procrastinate were to [?]decide to accept the
request[?] at \(t\_1\), then she would [?]decide to both
accept the request & not comment[?].
2. If Procrastinate were to [?]decide to both accept the
request & comment[?] at \(t\_1\), then she would
[?]accept the request & comment[?].
Even though (i) is true, the best thing that Procrastinate can do
involves [?]deciding to accept the request[?], viz.
[?]deciding to accept the request & commenting[?] at
\(t\_1\). This shows that whether we assess an agent's
obligations in terms of decisions or overt bodily acts, the acts that
are to be directly assessed are fully specific simultaneous act-sets,
which is precisely what
(G+)
accomplishes.
Contextualist actualism and Goldman's provisional but rejected
principle
(G)
similarly imply that Jones is obligated at \(t\_1\) to perform (1)
rather than any of (2)-(4) since these views *permit* a
candidate obligatory act to be fully specific. But these views do not
*require* a candidate obligatory act to be fully specific, and
thus these views also have the peculiar implication that in
*Traffic II* Jones is obligated to [?]accelerate[?]
and Jones is obligated to [?]not change lanes[?].
### 4.3 Kinds of Control Over Immediate Options
Thus far, we have seen that synchronic actualist-possibilist cases
suggest that, first and foremost, an agent has an obligation to
perform a fully specific immediate act rather than a
less-than-fully-specific immediate act. As a result, synchronic
counterfactuals do not even partly determine an agent's
obligation to perform some fully specific immediate act. This still
leaves open a question about the ability that an agent must possess in
order to be able to perform some immediate (fully specific) act in the
relevant sense. Goldman's (1978: 195, 204-205) *Ability
2*, for instance, is a version of the conditional analysis of
abilities. The conditional analysis of abilities remains suspect by
some on the grounds that an agent does not have direct control over
their desires. Given this, one may infer that facts about what an
agent would do if she had different desires is irrelevant to her
abilities (Lehrer 1968; Curran 1995: 82). Nevertheless, since many
participants in the actualist-possibilist debate take for granted that
the ability to do otherwise is compatible with facts about what an
agent will do or would do under certain circumstances, a number of
people have followed Goldman (1978) by taking the relevant kind of
control to be one that does not hold fixed all facts about the
agent's psychological makeup. See, for instance, the views of
Doug Portmore (2011) and Jacob Ross (2012).
Portmore (2011) understands the relevant kind of control an agent must
have over an option in terms of *scrupulous securability*. A
set of acts (i.e., an act-set) is scrupulously securable by an agent
only if there is some set of intentions and some set of permissible
background attitudes (including beliefs and desires), such that if the
agent had these intentions and attitudes, then the agent would perform
that act-set (2011: 165). The sorts of attitudes Portmore (2011: 167)
has in mind are judgment-sensitive attitudes, i.e., attitudes that are
sensitive to judgments about reasons (Scanlon 1998: 20).
This form of control is similar to the conditional analysis insofar as
the agent does not need to possess the relevant intentions and
attitudes required to perform an act in order to have an ability to
perform that act. It just has to be the case that if the agent were to
have such intentions and attitudes, then the agent would perform the
relevant act. Portmore's (2011: 166-167) exact account of
control is as follows:
>
>
> A set of acts, \(a\_j\), is, as of \(t\_i\), scrupulously
> securable by *S* if and only if there is a time, \(t\_j\), that
> either immediately follows \(t\_i\) or is identical to \(t\_i\), a set
> of acts, \(a\_i\), (where \(a\_i\) may, or may not, be
> identical to \(a\_j\)), and a set of background attitudes,
> *B*, such that the following are all true: (1) *S* would
> perform \(a\_j\) if *S* were to have at \(t\_i\) both
> *B* and the intention to perform \(a\_i\); (2) *S* has
> at \(t\_i\) the capacity to continue, or to come, to have at \(t\_j\)
> both *B* and the intention to perform \(a\_i\); and (3)
> *S* would continue, or come, to have at \(t\_j\) *B* (and,
> where \(a\_i\) is not identical to \(a\_j\), the intention
> to perform \(a\_i\) as well) if *S* both were at \(t\_i\)
> aware of all the relevant reason-constituting facts and were at
> \(t\_j\) to respond to these facts/reasons in all and only the ways
> that they prescribe, thereby coming to have at \(t\_j\) all those
> attitudes that, given those facts, she has decisive reason to have and
> only those attitudes that she has, given those facts, sufficient
> reason to have.
>
>
>
Portmore (2011: 177) understands a set of acts \(a\_j\) to be a
maximal act-set in a similar vein to both a possibilist's notion
of a maximal act-set and Sobel's notion of a life. The set of
acts "\(a\_i\)" is not identical to
"\(a\_j\)" when, e.g., one lacks the ability at
\(t\_j\) to form an intention to perform "\(a\_j\)",
although the agent would in fact perform \(a\_j\) if the agent
were to form at \(t\_j\) the intention to perform \(a\_i\). For
example, earning a PhD may be presently scrupulously securable for an
agent, although she is presently unable to form an intention to do all
of the things that are required to attain a PhD at least because she
cannot presently intend to write about an idea in her dissertation
that she has not yet studied (Portmore 2011: 169). So, whenever
\(a\_j\) and \(a\_i\) are not identical, part (1) says that
*S* would perform some act-set if *S* were to intend to
perform some other act-set (along with certain background
attitudes).
Part (2) of the above definition states that an agent must have a
capacity (or an ability) to have certain attitudes and intentions.
This allows one to sidestep the difficulties that have been posed for
the conditional analysis of abilities (cf. Portmore 2011: 168). Part
(3) states that the agent's attitudes must be permissible. To
illustrate, suppose that the only way in which Doug can ensure at 2 pm
that he will eat a healthy meal rather than pizza at 6 pm is by having
the irrational belief that his life depends upon eating a healthy meal
at 6 pm. Since it seems that he is not obligated to have such a
belief, it follows that, at 2 pm, Doug is not obligated to eat a
healthy meal at 6 pm since there is no combination of intentions and
permissible attitudes (as opposed to impermissible attitudes) that
Doug can have at 2 pm, such that if he were to have them at 2 pm then
he would eat a healthy meal at 6 pm (Portmore 2011:
164-165).
Portmore (2011: 222) pairs this notion of control with the following
account of rational permissibility that applies to moral
permissibility when there are moral reasons to act:
* **Securitism:** It is, as of \(t\_i\), objectively
rationally permissible for *S* to perform a non-maximal set of
acts, \(a\_j\), beginning at \(t\_j (t\_i \lt t\_j)\), if and only
if, and because, at least one of the objectively rationally
permissible maximal sets of acts that are, as of \(t\_i\), scrupulously
securable by *S* involves *S*'s performing
\(a\_j\).
Securitism employs a top-down approach by using normative principles
to directly assess the deontic status of maximal act-sets and then
extending the same deontic status to non-maximal act-sets that are
contained in the relevant maximal act-set (Portmore 2011: 179). This
approach reaps the benefits of Goldman's
(G+)
of avoiding jointly unfulfillable obligations and of denying that any
synchronic counterfactuals even partly determine an agent's
obligations.
Portmore's securitism--and by extension other views that
hold fixed facts that are not presently up to the agent in some
sense--has been criticized on the grounds that it does not
generate an obligation to do the best one can in the sense at issue in
*Ability 1*, and thus securitism sometimes requires agents to
perform terrible and vicious acts, and it allows one to avoid
incurring an obligation in light of vicious or immoral dispositions
(Timmerman 2015; Vessel 2016).
Ross (2012: 84) similarly maintains that an agent can immediately
perform an act that requires some attitude that the agent does not in
fact have, although Portmore's and Ross's views diverge in
certain cases. Here is Ross's view (2012: 91):
* **Momentwise Wide-scope Securitism
(MWSS):** For any *x* and *t*, at *t*, *x*
ought to be such that, for all \(t'\) from *t* forward, *x*
satisfies the following conditional: For all \(\Phi\), if whether
*x* \(\Phi\)s does not causally depend on the intentions *x*
has after \(t'\), and if every maximally preferable option that is
directly securable for *x* at \(t'\) involves \(\Phi\)-ing, then
*x* \(\Phi\)s.
In essence, MWSS is the view that "at any given time, an agent
is obligated, at every future time, to be currently satisfying a
wide-scope version" of Smith's
(G+)
or Portmore's securitism (Ross 2012: 91). Ross believes that
only MWSS can account for each of the four conditions of his core idea
(2012: 89, 91).
* **The Core Idea Broken Down:** What is obligatory
for an agent is that, (i) *at all times*, she does (ii) *the
best she can do* at that time, (iii) *holding fixed what is not
up to her at that time*, but (iv) *not holding fixed what is up
to her* at that time.
To see how these views diverge, consider the following case which is
similar to a case described by Ross (2012: 87-88): at \(t\_1\)
Sally has the ability to immediately form an intention to [?]not
kill anyone five years later at \(t\_5\)[?], although
[?]killing no one at \(t\_5\)[?] is not scrupulously
securable for Sally at \(t\_1\). On the other hand, killing exactly one
person or killing exactly two persons at \(t\_5\) are both scrupulously
securable for Sally at \(t\_1\). According to Portmore's
securitism, one of the objectively morally permissible maximal set of
acts that is scrupulously securable by Sally at \(t\_1\) involves
killing one person at \(t\_5\). However, at \(t\_5\), not killing anyone
is scrupulously securable for Sally, and thus at \(t\_5\) Sally is
obligated to not kill anyone at \(t\_5\). These stipulations in
Ross's case are derived from the fact that at \(t\_1\) Sally has
an impeccable moral character that will be corrupted through no fault
of her own (by being kidnapped by Satanists). But her moral character
is not corrupted to such an extent that she is unable at \(t\_5\) to
refrain from killing anyone. To emphasize, at \(t\_1\) the best
efficacious intention that Sally can form involves killing one person
at \(t\_5\) whereas at \(t\_5\) the best efficacious intention that
Sally can form involves killing no one at \(t\_5\). Portmore's
securitism thus prescribes an act at some future time, but then does
not prescribe that act once that time is present.
Ross (2012: 87-89) wishes to avoid this implication.
MWSS
does not imply that at \(t\_1\) Sally is obligated to kill exactly one
person at \(t\_5\) because whether Sally kills exactly one person at
\(t\_5\) causally depends upon her intentions at \(t\_1\). So, Sally
satisfies the following conditional by not satisfying the first part
of the antecedent: (if whether Sally refrains from killing exactly one
person at \(t\_5\) does not causally depend on the intentions she will
have after \(t\_1\), and if all her maximally preferable, directly
securable options involve killing exactly one person at \(t\_5\), then
she kills exactly one person at \(t\_5)\). Instead, MWSS implies that
at \(t\_1\) (and at \(t\_5)\) Sally is obligated not to kill anyone
because she satisfies the following conditional only by satisfying its
consequent: (if whether Sally kills no one at \(t\_5\) does not
causally depend on the intentions she will have after \(t\_5\), and if
all her maximally preferable, directly securable options involve not
killing anyone at \(t\_5\), then she kills no one at \(t\_5)\).
A proponent of securitism may reply that there's simply nothing
Sally can do at \(t\_1\) that allows her to secure not killing anyone
at \(t\_5\), and thus having an obligation at \(t\_1\) not to kill
anyone at \(t\_5\) concedes too much to possibilism. For, one of the
core intuitions driving securitist views is that we should treat our
non-securable futures in the same way we treat the futures of other
agents; we should hold such futures fixed when determining our present
moral obligations. This thought has led to an expansive discussion of
the way in which actualist-possibilist scenarios raise fundamental
questions about agency and how we are to conceive of our present
selves in relation to our future selves (Louise 2009; Baker 2012).
## 5. Non-Primary Obligations
The discussion up until this point has centered around making sense of
the general notion that an agent ought to do the (non-supererogatory)
best that she is able to do. But some theories hold that an
agent's moral life is more complex than this because an
agent's ability to do less than the (non-supererogatory) best is
also obligatory is some non-primary sense. This approach is motivated
in part by the thought that some wrong actions are better than others.
Michael McKinsey (1979: 391-392) develops this approach,
defending a view with multiple levels of obligation. His view may be
formulated as follows:
* **Levels of Obligation (LO):** \(\phi\_{x,t}\) is a life
sequence from *t* for *x*. Every \(\phi\_{x,t}\) has a rank
\(n (n \ge 1)\) relative to every other life-sequence from *t*
for *x*, where *n* is a positive integer. If \(\phi\_{x,t}\)
is among the optimum life sequences from *t* for *x*, then
the rank of \(\phi\_{x,t} = 1\); if \(\phi\_{x,t}\) is among the second
best such sequences, then the rank of \(\phi\_{x,t} = 2\); and so on.
*x* ought\(\_n\) at *t* to do \(A\_i\) *iff*:
+ \(A\_i\) is contained in every
\(\phi\_{x,t}\) of rank *n*.
+ For every \(\phi\_{x,t}\) which has a
rank *m* higher than *n* (i.e., where \(m \lt n)\), there is
an \(A\_j\) such that \(\phi\_{x,t}\) contains \(A\_j\) and *x* will
not do \(A\_j\).
While McKinsey's formulation of (LO) is rather complicated, the
basic idea is quite simple. According to (LO), an agent
*S*'s primary obligation is identical to the obligation
that possibilists believe *S* has. Additionally, for every
maximal act-set *M* (or a life) that, at *t*, *S* can
perform, if *M* is not identical to the best maximal act-set
that, at *t*, *S* can perform, but is better than the
maximal act-set that *S* will in fact perform, then at *t*
*S* has a moral obligation to perform *M*. To illustrate,
consider this case:
* ***The Buttons*:** At *t* Ben can both
press and refrain from pressing any of the three buttons in front of
him, and doing any of these things comes at little to no cost to Ben.
Pressing no button results in no deaths, pressing the first button
results in one death, pressing the second button results in two
deaths, and pressing the third button results in three deaths. Suppose
that Ben presses the third button, resulting in three deaths.
(LO)
implies that there are three levels of obligations that Ben fails to
fulfill: his primary obligation to refrain from pressing any button,
his secondary obligation to press the first button, and his tertiary
obligation to press the second button. If Ben were to instead press
the second button, then Ben would have failed to fulfill only two
obligations, viz. the primary obligation to refrain from pressing a
button, and the secondary obligation to press the first button.
McKinsey's
(LO)
is, in one sense, in agreement with possibilism because an
agent's primary obligation is identical to a possibilist
obligation. Moreover, even though (LO) can generate jointly
unfulfillable obligations, (LO) agrees with Jackson and
Pargetter's contextualist actualism that if, in the terminology
of (LO), an agent fulfills her primary obligation, then it's not
the case that the agent violates any non-primary obligations because
the agent simply does not have any non-primary obligations. For
example, if Ben refrains from pressing any button, then according to
(LO) it's not the case that Ben had a secondary obligation to
press the first button, and thus no non-primary obligations are
violated. McKinsey's (LO) is, in a sense, also in agreement with
(non-contextualist) versions of actualism. For example,
Procrastinate's obligation according to non-contextualist
versions of actualism is to [?]decline to review the paper &
not review the paper[?], and, according to McKinsey, this is
Procrastinate's secondary obligation because this act-sequence
is the second best maximal act-sequence (or a part of the second best
maximal act-sequence) that Procrastinate can perform over time.
Goldman (1978: 205-208) holds that there are exactly two orders
of obligations, one primary and one secondary, and that it is better
to fulfill one's secondary obligation rather than to violate
both obligations. Primary obligations are governed by Goldman's
(G+),
and secondary obligations are governed by principles such as
Goldman's (1976)
(G\*1)
which, as we have seen in
section 4,
does not take into account an agent's moral character that
determines the truth-value of certain synchronic counterfactuals. For
example, in the case of *Professor Procrastinate\**,
Procrastinate's primary obligation is to [?]agree to review
the paper & review the paper[?] because there is an
immediately performable, fully specific simultaneous act-set such
that, if performed, would result in [?]agreeing & reviewing
the paper[?]. By contrast, Procrastinate's secondary
obligation is to [?]decline to review the paper & not review
the paper[?] because Procrastinate's moral character is
such that if Procrastinate were to [?]agree to review[?] at
\(t\_1\), then Procrastinate would harm the student by falsely
promising to review at \(t\_2\). Procrastinate's moral character
is taken into account by her secondary obligation, but not her primary
obligation. As Goldman (1986: 205) notes, it is sometimes useful to
reason in a way that holds fixed our actual moral character, and
positing secondary obligations allows us to reason in this way.
Zimmerman (1986: 70) also subscribes to non-primary obligations and
motivates this position in part on the basis of considerations about
detachment and conditional obligations.
## 6. The Maximalism/Omnism Debate
The issues raised by the actualist/possibilist debate are relevant for
a number of other debates in philosophy as well. As has already been
discussed, whether actualism, possibilism, or some intermediary view
is correct has direct import for various principles in deontic logic,
the correct formulation of act-consequentialism, and for analogous
questions in the philosophy of action. The actualism/possibilism
debate, however, is perhaps most closely connected to the
maximalism/omnism debate. These debates are deeply interrelated. While
both concern questions about the scope of the agent's options,
the maximalism/omnism debate focuses on certain questions about how to
assess these options. Maximalists and omnists disagree about whether
all options should be assessed in terms of their own goodness, or
whether some options should be assessed in relation to the goodness of
other options. Maximalists and omnists disagree about which facts
ground the reasons to perform the relevant options and, as will be
illustrated shortly, are concerned with a wider range of cases than
those in the actualism/possibilism debate.
The maximalism/omnism debate concerns cases where the performance of
one option entails (or implies) the performance of another. Cases such
as *Professor Procrastinate* are but one example.
Procrastinate's [?]accepting the invitation and writing the
review[?] entails [?]accepting the invitation[?]. Not
all examples share Procrastinate's structure, however. Many
examples concern different ways of performing the same option in
different (e.g., more or less precise, better or worse) ways. For
instance, [?]drinking a Coke[?] entails [?]drinking a
soda[?], [?]visiting Uppsala[?] entails
[?]visiting Sweden[?], and [?]kicking someone very
hard[?] entails [?]kicking someone[?].
Now, the central question in the debate concerns how the moral
properties of an option *O* are related to the moral properties
of the options entailed by performing *O*. This abstract question
can be made clearer by considering an example. Suppose that I have
good reason to [?]drink a soda[?] and good reason to
[?]drink a Coke[?]. Those in the maximalism/omnism debate
are interested in whether the reason I have for performing one these
options grounds the reason I have for performing the other. Is it the
case that I have reason to [?]drink a soda[?] in virtue of
my having reason to [?]drink a Coke[?] or vice versa? Or is
there no grounding relation between my reason(s) to perform these
options?
Omnists hold that all options should be directly assessed in terms of
their own goodness. Omnism may be defined more precisely as
follows.
* **Omnism:** All permissible options are permissible
in virtue of having right-making property *p*. The property
*p* is right-making not only for all maximal options, but also
for all non-maximal options. (Portmore 2017a: 431)
In this debate, a maximal option is simply understood as one that is
not entailed by any other option, aside from itself (Brown 2018: 752).
More precisely, a maximal option may be understood as "an option
that is maximally normatively specific in the sense that it is
entailed only by normatively equivalent options", where two
options are normatively equivalent if and only if they are equivalent
in terms of all of the normatively relevant considerations (Portmore
2017a: 428, 2017b: 2955). Any option that is not a maximal option will
be a non-maximal option.
To illustrate, suppose that hedonistic act-utilitarianism is true. To
keep things simple, suppose that the maximal options available to an
agent *S* are [?]drink a Coke[?], [?]drink nothing
while smiling[?], [?]drink nothing while frowning[?],
and [?]drink a Pepsi[?]. Suppose furthermore that
[?]drinking a Coke[?] would generate 5 hedons,
[?]drinking nothing while smiling[?] would generate 1 hedon,
[?]drinking nothing while frowning[?] would generate 0
hedons, and [?]drinking a Pepsi[?] would generate 10 dolors
(or [?]10 hedons). The non-maximal options available to *S*
include [?]drinking a soda[?] and [?]drinking
nothing[?]. Finally, suppose that the following counterfactuals
are true.
1. If *S* were to [?]drink a soda[?], *S* would
[?]drink a Pepsi[?].
2. If *S* were to [?]drink nothing[?], *S* would
[?]drink nothing while smiling[?].
According to omnism, whether it is permissible for *S* to
[?]drink a soda[?] depends on whether [?]drinking a
soda[?] would result in maximizing hedonic utility. Given the
truth of (1), it wouldn't, so omnism entails that
[?]drinking a soda[?] is wrong. Likewise, according to
omnism, whether it is permissible for *S* to [?]drink a
Coke[?] depends on whether *S*'s [?]drinking a
Coke[?] would result in maximizing hedonic utility. It does, so
omnism entails that [?]drinking a Coke[?] is permissible
(and obligatory).
Unlike omnists, maximalists hold that only maximal options should be
assessed in terms of their own goodness. They believe that all
non-maximal options should only be assessed in terms of the goodness
of the relevant maximal options of which they are a part. Maximalism
may be defined more precisely as follows.
* **Maximalism:** Not all permissible options are
permissible in virtue of having right-making property *p*.
(Max\(\_1\)) *p* is right-making for all and only maximal options,
but (Max\(\_2\)) the property of being entailed by a maximal option
that has *p* is right-making for all and only non-maximal options
(Portmore 2017a: 429).
Assuming hedonistic act-utilitarianism once again, according to
maximalism, the deontic status of the maximal options depends on the
outcome of performing each option. According to maximalism, then,
[?]drinking a Coke[?] would be obligatory and every other
maximal option would be impermissible. So, with respect to maximal
options, maximalism and omnism generate the same deontic verdicts. But
now consider what maximalists say about non-maximal options. This is
the point of contention between maximalists and omnists. By contrast
with the omnist's ascription of wrongness to [?]drinking a
soda[?], the maximalist holds that [?]drinking a
soda[?] is obligatory. This is because the obligatory maximal
option is [?]drink a Coke[?] and *S* cannot perform the
maximal option of [?]drinking a Coke[?] without performing
the non-maximal option of [?]drinking a soda[?]. The
non-maximal act [?]drink nothing[?], on the other hand, is
entailed by an impermissible act, namely [?]drink nothing while
smiling[?]. So, maximalism entails that [?]drinking
nothing[?] is impermissible.
Interestingly, omnism has typically been assumed in the literature. It
may have only operated as an unquestioned background assumption until
the groundbreaking work of Bergstrom (1966) and Castaneda
(1968). Goldman (1978) and Bykvist (2002) defend distinct variants of
maximalism. Since then, there have been a few arguments against
maximalism (cf. Gustafsson 2014). Omnism seems to be considered the
default position, though new arguments against omnism and in favor of
maximalism have started to appear in the literature recently (Portmore
2017a,b, forthcoming; Brown 2018). Much of the debate revolves around
the*Problem of Act Versions*. Following Brown (2018: 754) and
Portmore (forthcoming: ch. 4), this problem may be explained by
considering the following three jointly inconsistent principles.
(1)
An agent *S*
ought to perform an act \(\phi\) if and only if \(\phi\)-ing is her
best option.
(2)
Rule **(NI)** If \({\vdash} A \rightarrow B\) then
\({\vdash} \rO(A) \rightarrow \rO(B)\)
(3)
Optimality is *not* closed under implication.
Each of these principles seems quite plausible when considered in
isolation. Principle (1) simply holds that an agent ought to perform
the best option available to her. Assuming hedonistic
act-utilitarianism, the best option(s) will be whichever one(s)
maximize(s) hedonic utility. Principle (2) holds that if an agent is
obligated to perform \(\langle A \rangle\) and her performing
\(\langle A \rangle\) entails her performing \(\langle B \rangle\),
then she is obligated to perform \(\langle B \rangle\). So, if an
agent is obligated to [?]drink a Coke[?] and
[?]drinking a Coke[?] entails [?]drinking a
soda[?], then that agent is obligated to [?]drink a
soda[?].
Principle (3) holds that there are cases where an agent
*S*'s obligatory option (e.g., a maximal option) entails
another option (e.g., a non-maximal option) that, if performed, would
*not* result in *S* performing the obligatory maximal
option. Performing the best option of [?]drinking a Coke[?]
entails that *S* [?]drink a soda[?]. But what would in
fact happen if *S* were to [?]drink a soda[?] is that
*S* would [?]drink a Pepsi[?] and [?]drinking a
Pepsi[?] is not *S*'s best option. That is, in fact,
the worst option.
Maximalists have objected to omnism on the grounds that it, in
conjunction with (2) and (3), entails a contradiction (Portmore
forthcoming: ch. 4). Given omnism, *S* is obligated to
[?]drink a Coke[?] because performing that act is
*S*'s best option. *S*'s [?]drinking a
Coke[?] entails *S*'s [?]drinking a soda[?].
So, given (2), *S* is also obligated to [?]drink a
soda[?]. However, recall that this case illustrates principle
(3). If *S* were to [?]drink a soda[?], *S* would
[?]drink a Pepsi[?]. Given this, [?]drinking a
soda[?] would not result in *S* performing her best option.
So, omnism also entails that it is impermissible for *S* to
[?]drink a soda[?]. Hence the contradiction. Omnism combined
with (2) and (3) entail both that *S* is obligated to
[?]drink a soda[?] and that it's impermissible for
*S* to [?]drink a soda[?]. To avoid this contradiction,
omnists must give up (2) or (3). Omnists such as Jackson and Pargetter
have given up (2).
Maximalists reject omnism, which allows them to consistently accept
(2) and (3), principles thought to have strong independent motivation.
Maximalists, then, give up (1) to avoid the contradiction. According
to the maximalist, sometimes agents are obligated to perform
non-maximal options (e.g., [?]drink a soda[?]) that are not
their best option in virtue of the fact that they are obligated to
perform their best maximal option (e.g., [?]drink a Coke[?])
and performing their best maximal option entails performing a
suboptimal non-maximal option. In short, the maximalist responds to
the *Problem of Act Versions* by giving up (1), while omnists
respond by giving up (2). As may already be clear, some motivations
for, and against, omnism parallel those of actualism, while some
motivations for, and against, maximalism parallel those of securitism
and possibilism. Whichever considerations settle one of these debates
will likely settle (or at least significantly bear on) the other.
## 7. Conclusion
The actualism/possibilism (and the maximalism/omnism) debate in ethics
grew out of a debate concerning the problem that identifying act
alternatives poses for act-consequentialism. The debate, in its
present form, may be traced back to the work of Holly Goldman's
and Jordan Howard Sobel's independent articulations, and
defenses of, actualism. Early forms of actualism held that whether an
agent is obligated to perform an act roughly depends on whether what
*would* happen if the agent performed that act is better than
what would happen if the agent were to perform any alternative act at
the time in question. Contrast this with possibilism, which holds that
whether an agent is obligated to perform an act depends on whether
that act is part of the best maximal act-set the agent *could*
(not *would*) perform over the course of her life. These are
the "extreme" versions of actualism and possibilism
respectively. To handle cases concerning synchronic acts, and to avoid
having her view prescribe incompatible obligations, Goldman amended
actualism by building a control condition into the definition in her
(1978) essay. This revised actualism,
(G+),
along with Sobel's
(S),
only holds fixed the acts of an agent that are not presently under
the agent's control. This change proved influential and inspired
various versions of this view, which came to be collectively referred
to as securitism. Securitist views occupy a middle ground between
"extreme" forms of actualism and possibilism. A variety of
other views do too, including McKinsey's (1979)
levels-of-obligation view and Carlson's (1995, 1999) view. There
is not yet a consensus about which view, if any, is the most
plausible. Of course, this should not be surprising since the
actualism/possibilism (and the maximalism/omnism) debate is,
relatively speaking, still quite new. |
adaptationism | ## 1. History
The debate over adaptationism is often
traced back to a 1979 paper by Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin,
called "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm:
A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme," or simply the
"Spandrels" paper. This paper is important but, in
fact, this debate traces back to the nineteenth century, with elements
of adaptationism or pluralism as currently understood being present in
the work of Henry Bates, William Bateson, Charles Darwin, Ernst
Haeckel, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Wallace, and August Weissman, among
others (see Mayr 1982 and Ruse 2003 for some of the historical
background).
In the early twentieth century, views that
we now call adaptationism and pluralism were enunciated by biologists.
Among them were two of the then (and now) most influential evolutionary
biologists: Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright. The central idea of
Fisher's important 1930 book "The Genetical Theory of
Natural Selection" is that natural selection is the only
important influence on trait evolution. This is the central text of
adaptationism; indeed, it has an honored place in the minds of most
evolutionary biologists, no matter what their position on adaptationism
(compare Grafen 2003 and Kimura 1983). Issued again in 1958 in a
revised edition and in 1999 in a variorum edition, this book has
garnered over 8,400 journal citations; over 7,600 have occurred
since 1975 (Web of Science, June 2010).
Sewall Wright's pluralist view
of evolution was presented in several places, with his 1931 paper
"Evolution in Mendelian Populations" and the 1977 book
"Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Volume 3 Experimental
Results and Evolutionary Deductions" being the best known. The
paper has received over 3,400 citations; over 3,000 have occurred since
1975, while the book has received over 800 citations since 1977 (Web of
Science, June 2010).
These works by Fisher and Wright are
canonical contributions to the field of evolutionary biology. They were
based partially on prior claims and counterclaims about the influence
of natural selection and of non-selective forces on trait evolution,
especially in species such as land snails that have easily
distinguishable trait variation (see Millstein 2007a). In turn, these
works stimulated continuing claims and counterclaims. The mid-1970s
explosion of citations reflects the fact that the number of biologists
studying ecology and evolution increased markedly as compared to the
early 1960s and that evolutionary biology gained separate departmental
status at many universities; these changes were in part caused by the
increased societal awareness and concern at that time about pollution
and the impact of humans on the environment. There were two central but
mainly disjunct scientific developments that energized the
proliferation and refinement of adaptationist and of pluralist views
during this period. The first was the extensive development of
"strategic" claims in evolutionary ecology, which in the
case of a given trait, say, the allocation of energy to male and to
female offspring (e.g., Hamilton 1967; see also Charnov 1982), provides
an explanation as to why the observed trait is locally optimal. Such a
claim invokes only natural selection as an important causal explanation
of the trait. The second development was the neutral theory in
population genetics, which posits that natural selection plays little
or no role in determining DNA and protein sequence variation in natural
populations (e.g., Kimura 1968, 1983). The former development generated
little initial controversy, while the latter development immediately
generated lasting controversy (see Dietrich 1994).
It is this combination of social,
institutional, and scientific developments that formed the background
to Gould and Lewontin's 1979 paper, which can be best understood
as an important but not singular event in a long-standing debate in
evolutionary biology. It is neither the beginning of the debate over
adaptationism nor something much narrower, e.g., little more than
"the attempted intellectual lynching" of sociobiology, cf.,
Queller (1995); see also Pigliucci and Kaplan (2000). Such claims are
at best historically incorrect.
## 2. Different Flavors of Adaptationism
Recent work in the philosophy of biology
(Orzack and Sober 1994a, Sober 1996, Amundson 1988, 1990, Godfrey-Smith
2001) has helped uncover three "flavors" of adaptationism;
these reflect differences in beliefs among current professional
developers and users of evolutionary arguments. They represent
commitments about the state of nature, about the way to do science, and
about what is important to study.
The first flavor, "empirical"
adaptationism, is the view that natural selection is ubiquitous, free
from constraints, and provides a sufficient explanation for the
evolution of most traits, which are "locally" optimal, that
is, the observed trait is superior to any alternative that does not
require "redefining" the organism (Orzack and Sober 1994a).
This is a claim about the realized influence of natural selection on
the evolution of traits as compared to other evolutionary
influences.
The second flavor,
"explanatory" adaptationism, is the view that explaining
traits as adaptations resulting from natural selection is the central
goal of evolutionary biology. This is a claim about the greater
importance of some kinds of explanations. Opinions differ as to whether
this is a scientific claim or an aesthetic claim (see below).
The third flavor,
"methodological" adaptationism, is the view that looking
first for adaptation via natural selection is the most efficient
approach when trying to understand the evolution of any given
trait. This could be true even if adaptations are rare (although
a substantial majority of biologists believe that adaptations are
common). The belief that adaptations are common is quite
different from the claim that only natural selection need be invoked in
order to explain these adaptations.
The flavors of adaptationism are logically
independent. The truth of one claim does not necessarily imply the
truth of the other claims. For example, it could be true that most
traits are adaptations that can be explained by invoking no more than
natural selection (the first flavor) but still be false that it is most
fruitful to look first for adaptation (the third flavor). In fact,
realized intellectual stances are more circumscribed in that most
adaptationists are advocates of empirical, explanatory, and
methodological adaptationism (e.g., Charnov 1982, Dawkins 1976, Maynard
Smith 1978). In addition, there are many biologists who are advocates
of explanatory and methodological adaptationism, but who explicitly
reject empirical adaptationism (e.g., Mayr 1983). On the other hand,
some biologists reject all three flavors of adaptationism (e.g.,
Carroll 2005, Wagner *et al*. 2000, West-Eberhard 2003). There are many
instances of competing adaptationist and pluralist explanations of the
same biology. For example, Cain and Sheppard (1954) and Lamotte (1959)
famously present competing explanations of morphological traits in land
snails; Ackermann and Cheverud (2004) test adaptationist and
pluralist explanations of the diversification of morphological
evolution of humans and their ancestors; Millstein (2007b)
illustrates the differences between adaptationism and pluralism by
presenting the same biology (of a heat-shock protein) from both
perspectives.
Distinguishing among the flavors of
adaptationism was an important advance in our biological and
philosophical understanding. These flavors of adaptationism differ in
their practical implications for evolutionary biology. We now
discuss each in detail.
### 2.1 Empirical Adaptationism
Godfrey-Smith (2001, page
336) defined empirical adaptationism as follows: "Natural
selection is a powerful and ubiquitous force, and there are few
constraints on the biological variation that fuels it. To a large
degree, it is possible to predict and explain the outcome of
evolutionary processes by attending only to the role played by
selection. No other evolutionary factor has this degree of causal
importance."
This definition captures two
important beliefs of adaptationists. The first is that natural
selection governs all important aspects of trait evolution and that
other evolutionary influences will be of little consequence at least
over the long term. The second is that the order in nature is a
consequence of natural selection. Parker and Maynard Smith (1990) is an
important example of this approach.
Empirical adaptationism is typically regarded as descriptive of the
evolution of directly observable traits such as leg length (e.g.,
Vella 2008). A dizzying variety of traits has been analyzed from the
perspective of empirical adaptationism; many specific examples can be
found in Hardy (2002), Stephens *et al*. (2007), and Westneat
and Fox (2010). Many proponents of empirical adaptationism concede
that important aspects of the evolution of DNA and protein sequences
are little influenced by natural selection.
The important methodological
implication of empirical adaptationism stems from the causal power that
it assigns to natural selection: an apparent discrepancy between data
and the predictions of an optimality model should be resolved by
rejection of that model and development of a new model. This is
justified by an appeal to our "always" imperfect knowledge
of nature (e.g. see Cain 1989). This contrasts with the pluralist
perspective: such a discrepancy might well provide evidence against
natural selection.
Many views counter to empirical
adaptationism have been enunciated. Some dispense with natural
selection entirely (or nearly so), such as in the study of molecular
evolution, where there are neutral evolutionary explanations for many
features of the genome (e.g., Lynch 2007b). Some retain natural
selection within populations as an important evolutionary force but
endorse the importance of other forces (e.g., Crespi 2000, Goodwin
2001, Carroll 2005), while others go further and invoke natural
selection among populations or species along with natural selection
within populations (Gould 2002, Jablonski 2008).
### 2.2 Explanatory Adaptationism
Godfrey-Smith (2001, page 336) defined
explanatory adaptationism in this way: "The apparent design of
organisms, and the relations of adaptedness between organisms and their
environments, are the *big questions*, the amazing facts in
biology. Explaining these phenomena is the core intellectual mission of
evolutionary theory. Natural selection is the key to solving these
problems; selection is the *big answer*. Because it answers the
biggest questions, selection has unique explanatory importance among
evolutionary factors."
Explanatory adaptationism is viewed
by its proponents (e.g., Dawkins 1976, Dennett 1995, and Griffiths
2009) as important because it organizes research to understand how
natural selection underlies the world around us. To this extent, it can
be viewed as an untestable aesthetic claim, instead of as a scientific
claim. At minimum, it is a claim as to the proper goal of science as a
manifestation of human reason and enlightenment. Amundson (1988, 1990)
claims that explanatory adaptationism is a stance about the natural
world and the products of scientific inquiry, instead of being a view
about biology or how best to do science. However, explanatory
adaptationism may have normative implications for evolutionary
biologists, if adopting it is necessary in order to construct sensible
explanations in developmental biology and physiology (Griffiths
2009). Viewed as an aesthetic claim, explanatory adaptationism
has no practical implications for science, but it does have
implications for the public debate about the relevance of biology to
our image of humanity. In particular, Dennett and Dawkins argue
that this perspective counters the natural theological argument from
design and vindicates a secular humanist perspective.
Biologists not advocating explanatory
adaptationism view the central mission of evolutionary biology
differently. For example, many systematists believe that
describing the history of life is the central mission of evolutionary
biology; in doing so, one might be agnostic about the evolutionary
forces influencing this history (see Hull 1988 and Felsenstein 2004 for
further details).
### 2.3 Methodological Adaptationism
Godfrey-Smith (2001, page 337) defined
methodological adaptationism in this way: "The best way for scientists
to approach biological systems is to look for features of adaptation
and good design. Adaptation is a good 'organizing concept'
for evolutionary research."
This is a claim about the efficiency of
tools. No matter how incorrect it may ultimately be to invoke natural
selection as a sufficient explanation for a trait, it is the most
direct way possible to find the true causal explanation of a trait.
Methodological adaptationism differs markedly from empirical
adaptationism in that the former acknowledges the possibility that
natural selection may ultimately prove not to have the most influence
on a given trait's evolution. In addition, a methodological
adaptationist can accept that an apparent discrepancy between data and
the predictions of a model of natural selection may be resolved by
concluding that the trait is little influenced by natural selection,
instead of by concluding that the model is incorrect.
One potential argument against
methodological adaptationism is that a mixture of distinct approaches
is superior at advancing knowledge as compared to a single approach
(Kitcher 1993). Allowing for a division of cognitive labor could be a
good thing; perhaps evolutionary biology benefits from an array of
methodological strategies with differing degrees of risk. This
contrasts with the view that multiple approaches with conflicting
assumptions are a hindrance.
Views counter to methodological
adaptationism range from strong views that deny that adaptation is a
good guiding concept to weaker views that privilege different
explanations. For example, Gould and Lewontin's (1979)
argument for considering constraint-based "Bauplan"
explanations before or along side selective explanations is an example
of methodological anti-adaptationism.
## 3. Testing and Standards of Evidence
An important part of the
adaptationism debate concerns the testing of adaptive and non-adaptive
hypotheses. The belief that scientific practice in evolutionary
biology does not adhere to the proper standards of evidence motivates
many of the critiques of adaptationism. This concern has been taken
seriously by some evolutionary biologists; for example, Rose and Lauder
(1996) claimed that a central task of contemporary evolutionary biology
is to articulate a "post-Spandrels adaptationism," a task
that involves improving testing methods by including comparative and
molecular data, conducting careful long-term studies in both the
laboratory and the wild, and incorporating a more comprehensive
understanding of development and constraint.
We now discuss testing of
adaptationism itself and the associated implications for testing
evolutionary hypotheses generally, and the sort of epistemic
difficulties that must be overcome. We highlight how the debate
has led to increased understanding of the importance of phylogenetic
methods, of the viability of optimality models as tools for testing
adaptive hypotheses, and of whether constraint hypotheses are rivals to
adaptive hypotheses or provide the backdrop against which we test
hypotheses about the evolutionary process.
### 3.1 Testing adaptationism
Orzack and Sober (1994a, 1994b, 1996,
2001) (see also Orzack 2008) proposed an approach for testing
empirical adaptationism. In their view, the truth of empirical
adaptationism is a possible outcome of testing of optimality models, as
opposed to being something that is decided a priori.
Their proposal, the "Adaptationism Project", involves
assembling specific kinds of analyses of traits in order to assess the
relative frequency and importance of natural selection across the
biological realm. In order to contribute to the ensemble test, an
analysis must include an assessment of the quantitative fit of the
optimality model and of the within-population heterogeneity of fit to
the predictions (see below and Orzack and Sober 1994a for why these
assessments are required). At present, there are very few trait
analyses that contain these elements; after an extensive literature
review, Orzack and Sober identified only Brockmann and Dawkins (1979),
Brockmann *et al*. (1979), Orzack and Parker (1990), and
Orzack *et al*. (1991) as analyses that contain the required
assessments.
Of course, to conduct an ensemble test,
important methodological difficulties must be confronted, including how
to choose populations and species to analyze, and how many cases are
necessary to provide an adequate test. The name "Adaptationism
Project" is an acknowledgement of a parallel to the "Human
Genome Project"; both are carried out by a consortium of
investigators and require advance organization of the process by which
knowledge is gathered (instead of just occurring willy-nilly).
This is an ambitious project but one that is achievable, cf., the
"Genome 10K" project, which is also an effort to create an
unprecedented data ensemble (Genome 10K 2009).
Ensemble tests have a long
precedent in biology and evolutionary biology, although none appear to
have been prospectively organized. For example, we have the ensemble
conclusion that "almost all" speciation occurs via
geographical isolation (Mayr 1963) or that the genetic code is
"nearly" universal (Crick 1968). Either or both of these
claims could be true but the present empirical knowledge that generated
either one is not even remotely close to being based on a sample of
organisms that could be taken to be representative of all species.
Empirical adaptationism is both
a claim about the relative frequency of natural selection across
evolutionary histories and about the power of natural selection to
overcome constraints and contingency. Orzack and Sober's
(1994a,b) ensemble test of the truth of empirical adaptationism is
structured in the following way for any given trait, T. In order to
contribute to the ensemble test, the analysis of the trait must allow
the investigator to confirm one of the following hypotheses about the
power of natural selection:
>
> (U) Natural selection played some role in the evolution of T. (U
> denotes ubiquitous since
> this proposition applies to most traits.)
>
>
>
>
> (I) Natural selection was an important cause of the evolution of T.
> (I denotes important.)
>
>
>
>
> (O) Natural selection is a sufficient explanation of the evolution
> of T, and T is locally
> optimal. (O denotes optimal.)
>
>
>
Orzack and Sober claimed that
empirical adaptationism is a generalization of (O), namely that natural
selection is a sufficient explanation for most (nonmolecular) traits
and those traits are locally optimal.
Orzack and Sober provided a specific
protocol to assess whether O is true for a particular trait. It
involves comparing the predictive accuracy of a "censored"
evolutionary model, one that invokes only natural selection, and an
alternative "uncensored" model that invokes additional
evolutionary influences such as genetic drift (random trait change
caused by population number being finite), or constraints caused by the
way the trait is determined genetically or developmentally. If
the censored model is quantitatively accurate and there is no
within-population heterogeneity of fit to predictions and the
uncensored model fails in either regard, then one can infer that
natural selection is a sufficient explanation for trait T.
Optimality models embody proposition (O) in that natural selection is
assumed to be the only important influence on the focal trait's
evolution; the result is assumed to be the evolution of a trait that
maximizes individual fitness. Of course, an optimality model, like any
evolutionary model, must include background assumptions and constraints
that anchor the "local" analysis of the focal trait.
However, given these assumptions, natural selection is assumed to act
without constraint on the trait.
There is some controversy over the
protocol for testing whether natural selection is a sufficient
explanation of a trait. Brandon and Rausher (1996) objected that
local optimality is a distinct claim and so tests for the importance of
natural selection should not use optimality models, whose use they
equate to "theft", which they believe means that such
models are generically incompatible with universal aspects of the
biology of organisms. They also take issue with how the
predictive accuracy of censored and uncensored models should be
assessed. Godfrey-Smith (2001) makes the observation that the
censored and uncensored test models typically have different
complexity. More complex models usually fit the data better, but
risk obscuring the underlying trend or comprising predictive
accuracy--there may be a problem of over-fitting lurking here
(see, e.g., Gauch 2003 for an overview of the curve-fitting
problem).
Extending this framework to molecular
traits, where completely neutral evolution is a plausible explanation,
requires expanding the set of hypotheses about natural selection.
It now should include:
>
>
> (N) Natural selection played no role in evolution of T. (N
> denotes neutral.)
>
>
Some argue that N is rarely, if ever, true (e.g., Gillespie 1991),
whereas others argue otherwise (e.g., Kimura 1983, Lynch 2007a).
An ensemble test involving molecular traits would help resolve this
controversy. In addition, the notion of optimality at the
molecular level must be made precise. A molecular trait needs to have
an identified phenotypic consequence. The endeavor to identify such a
consequence will likely always involve a combination of very detailed
molecular, biochemical, and phenotypic analyses. However, despite the
difficulty of the needed analyses, there are claims as to the
optimality of various molecular traits. A canonical example is the
claim that triosephosphate isomerase, an enzyme involved in glycolysis
in animals, fungi, plants, and some bacteria, is catalytically
"perfect" (Albery and Knowles 1976); this is a claim that
hypothesis O is true. For molecular traits, the assessment of the
influence of natural selection, i.e., distinguishing between hypothesis
N and hypotheses U and I, is facilitated by the degeneracy of the
genetic code and the existence of non-coding regions in the genome. We
expect heterogeneity of the realized influence of natural selection
among sites in the genome, and differences in evolutionary rates
between sites where a DNA base change alters the protein sequence and
those sites that it does not (see examples in Graur and Li 2000,
Kreitman and Akashi 1995, Nielsen 2005, and Yang 2006).
### 3.2 Testing adaptive hypotheses
The debate over
adaptationism contains claims and counterclaims about what hypotheses
should be included in an analysis of the adaptiveness of a trait.
This is crucial because assessments of evidentiary support depend on
what hypotheses we consider (see Sober 1990, Earman 1992). We
must consider all the relevant hypotheses in order to provide good
evidence for a hypothesis (Stanford 2006, Forber 2010). One
common pluralist complaint is that adaptationists neglect this standard
of evidence. Such an inclusive standard is essential because many
different evolutionary trajectories can lead to the same outcome.
As Gould and Lewontin (1979) wrote, "One must not confuse the
fact that a structure is used in some way...with the primary
evolutionary reason for its existence and conformation". In
addition, subtle differences in evolutionary history may lead to
different evolutionary outcomes (Beatty and Desjardins 2009). Thus, we
cannot conclude that natural selection played an important role in the
evolution of some trait just because we have a plausible adaptive
hypothesis in mind. Indeed, finding suitable evidence for an
adaptive (or non-adaptive) hypothesis is difficult because we lack good
epistemic access to evolutionary history. This lack of access is
a premise of Gould and Lewontin's critique, and it motivates
their call to evaluate testing methods in evolutionary biology,
especially those methods that consider only adaptive hypotheses with no
regard for non-adaptive rivals. Biologists have continued to develop
new testing methods that do this (see, e.g., Rose and Lauder 1996,
Hansen *et al*. 2008).
This aspect of the adaptationism debate is
connected with a general epistemological issue in philosophy of
science: underdetermination of theory by evidence. Evolutionary
hypotheses are typically underdetermined by available evidence.
In principle, rival hypotheses make different commitments about the
nature of evolutionary history, but in practice these hypotheses are
empirically indistinguishable given the available evidence.
Philosophers argue about the consequences of this underdetermination
for our understanding of biological science (Turner 2005, Stanford
2006). Yet, there is agreement that the problem of underdetermination
should be addressed by developing and using tests that discriminate
between rival hypotheses.
Evidentiary relations depend on what
hypotheses we compare, and so good testing methods should include all
rival hypotheses. If we fail to include a relevant rival, say,
one that emphasizes developmental constraint, then we may not have
found sufficient evidence for the adaptive hypothesis. Failing to
contrast adaptive and non-adaptive explanations weakens any
adaptationist analysis (Forber 2009).
Evolutionary hypotheses make a
variety of commitments about development, ecology, genetics, and
history. As a result, an adaptive hypothesis makes contact with
evolutionary history only in conjunction with a number of auxiliary
hypotheses. The most convincing case for an adaptive hypothesis will
include a variety of evidence, especially independent data that confirm
the different facets of an evolutionary hypothesis (Lloyd 1988).
Sober's (2008) analysis of a testing protocol for evolutionary
hypotheses makes clear the role of auxiliary hypotheses and assesses
the evidentiary import of different observed outcomes. He provides an
analysis of whether and how fit between an optimality model and the
observed population mean favors natural selection over genetic
drift.
### 3.3 Common ancestry and adaptation
The adaptationism debate has helped clarify the importance of
comparative methods for testing adaptive hypotheses.
The relatedness among species due to common
ancestry can reduce the amount of seemingly independent evidence one
has for or against any evolutionary hypothesis. Species with a recent
common ancestor may have inherited the same trait from the ancestor, as
opposed to evolving it independently of one another. Comparative
methods help one assess the extent to which a set of related species
provide independent evidence for or against a given evolutionary
hypothesis (Harvey and Pagel 1991). The general awareness of the need
to use such methods stems primarily from the initially narrower debate
that took place within systematics in the 1960s and 1970s over how to
create classifications of organisms that are "scientific"
and as such, are transparent recipes that are accessible to others,
instead of being "private" and non-scientific. This debate
generated tremendous controversy (Hull 1988) and it spurred on the
development of methods to statistically correct for dependence among
species' trait values when assessing an adaptive hypothesis
(Felsenstein 1985, Harvey and Pagel 1991). In addition, it became more
widely understood that a claim that one trait evolved in response to
another is enormously strengthened by phylogenetic confirmation; the
history of trait acquisition must be consistent with the hypothesis
(see Maddison 1990 and references therein).
These developments are salutary in
that they show biologists how to better test adaptive hypotheses and
have clarified the phylogenetic assumptions that are necessary to test
adaptive hypotheses (Sober and Orzack 2003). As such, they are a
methodological improvement that has generally gained a positive
reception among philosophers of biology (e.g., Sterelny and Griffiths
1999). Many biologists agree, but controversy continues. Some
acknowledge the potential importance of comparative methods but point
to limitations that may reduce their usefulness (Reeve and Sherman
2001, Leroi *et al*. 1994). As such, these critiques are consistent with
methodological adaptationism. Others view any allusion to potential
non-adaptive influences on trait evolution to be mistaken; in their
view, the importance of phylogenetic methods is that they help reveal
complete history of natural selection on the trait (Grafen 1989). As
such, this is a critique consistent with the espousal of empirical
adaptationism.
## 4. Do optimality models describe evolution?
Claims and counterclaims about the use of
optimality models for understanding evolution are a central part of the
debate over adaptationism, although some believe that there is no
necessary connection between optimality modeling and adaptationism
(Potochnik 2009). While many biologists believe that optimality
models are useful, whether evolution by natural selection tends to
produce optimal traits is controversial (see, e.g., Dupre
1987).
Optimality models put the contingencies of
history and developmental and genetic constraints in to the background
so as to focus on natural selection. Much work in evolutionary
game theory embodies this approach. Most game-theoretic models are used
to describe the evolution by natural selection of strategic behavior to
a local optimum called an evolutionarily stable strategy (Maynard Smith
1982) (but see Orzack and Hines 2005 and Huttegger 2010 among
others). This approach has the assumption that there is direct
selection on the trait under analysis. This is often justified on the
grounds that there exists a "good fit" between the trait
and its current function (Maynard Smith 1978) or that natural selection
is ubiquitous in nature (Mayr 1983). The Spandrels paper targeted
these general arguments for optimality models.
Biologists have discovered many ways in
which the genetic details of trait determination and/or ecological
details of the population can prevent the evolution of optima. For
example, interaction between loci (linkage or pleiotropy) can prevent
the optimal phenotype from being fixed in a population, and thereby
prevent the maximization of mean fitness (Moran 1964). Such a deviation
from the state of highest fitness is called genetic load. The standard
adaptationist response is that genetic and ecological constraints are
eliminated over evolutionary time by the introduction of new genetic
variation via mutation (Parker and Maynard Smith 1990).
While this controversy has been divisive
(Schwartz 2002), there are prospects for a synthesis. First,
Eshel and Feldman (2001) distinguished between "short-term
evolution", the evolutionary dynamics of a fixed set of
genotypes, and "long-term evolution", bouts of short-term
evolution interspersed with introductions of new genetic
variation. They noted (page 162) that "long-term evolution
proceeds by an infinite sequence of transitions from one fixed set of
genotypes to another fixed set of genotypes, with each of these sets
subject to short-term evolution..." Optima are often
not accessible in the short-term due to constraints on available
variation. However, genetic variation may be introduced over the long
term so that the population eventually reaches an optimum. The
substantive point is that we now understand how apparent short-term
impediments to optimality can be resolved over the long term. Mutations
must appear at the right time and the ecology must remain stable over
the long term; whether these conditions are met frequently enough in
nature to justify the optimality approach is an empirical issue (see
also Hammerstein 1996). The second prospect for synthesis is
Wilkins and Godfrey Smith's (2009) proposal that the truth of
empirical adaptationism, and the concomitant application of optimality
models, depends on the intended "grain" of resolution of
the evolutionary analysis. At a fine grain of resolution, when there
are few peaks in the adaptive landscape, most observed populations may
be on or near these peaks. Adaptationism is appropriate at this
resolution. If we "zoom out" and look at a grand landscape
over large regions of morphospace, the situation changes. At a
very coarse grain of resolution, much of morphospace is empty and
constraints often explain why certain regions remain unexplored by
biological evolution. Adaptationism is inappropriate at this
resolution.
Finally, the focus on optimality modeling
in connection to adaptationism has led to a precise statement of how
the nature of fit between data and the predictions of an optimality
model influence the degree of evidentiary support for the adaptive
hypothesis (Orzack and Sober 1994a, b). Qualitative agreement by
itself is not sufficient to accept the hypothesis of local optimality.
Instead, quantitative agreement and an assessment of nature of possible
between-individual heterogeneity of fit to model predictions are
required in order to have evidence for optimality; without both of
these test components, acceptance of the hypothesis of optimality is
not warranted (see above).
## 5. Are constraint hypotheses genuine rivals to adaptive hypotheses?
One issue in the debate over
adaptationism and optimality models concerns whether constraint
hypotheses count as genuine alternatives to adaptive hypotheses.
Gould and Lewontin (1979) view constraint hypotheses as competing with
adaptive hypotheses as explanations of traits. Advocates of optimality
models (e.g., Maynard Smith 1978, Roughgarden 1998) take the set of
evolutionary constraints to be a background commitment of any
optimality model. The constraint set may include developmental
and genetic constraints on variation and transmission, but it is
natural selection that drives evolution and so explains the trait given
those constraints. Advocates of optimality models treat
constraints as presupposed by adaptive hypotheses. A concern of
many critics of adaptationism is that this treatment of constraints
undervalues their role in explaining evolutionary form and novelty.
Developmental processes may limit the spectrum of evolutionary
trajectories available to a lineage. Maynard Smith *et
al*. (1985, page 266) defined a developmental constraint as
"a bias on the production of variant phenotypes or a limitation
on phenotypic variability caused by the structure, character,
composition, or dynamics of the developmental system." More
recently, the definition of constraint has become more nuanced (see,
e.g., Wagner and Altenberg 1996, Winther 2001).
Part of the controversy over
constraints can be resolved by distinguishing between "constraint
on adaptation" and "constraint on form" (Amundson
1994). In the former, certain trajectories are less likely
because they require populations to leave local optima or
"peaks" in the adaptive landscape. In this case,
natural selection limits the potential evolutionary trajectories.
In the latter case, certain trajectories are unavailable due to the
structure of the current developmental system.
Advocates of optimality models often argue
that building and testing such models provides the best way to identify
and discover evolutionary constraints, and that these constraints can
then be used to build better optimality models (Amundson 1994, Seger
and Stubblefield 1996). Many biologists that analyze the
evolution of development or "evo-devo" use a different set
of molecular and morphological investigative techniques to uncover
robust and important developmental constraints (see, e.g., Muller
and Newman 2003, Kirschner and Gerhart 2005). They object that
the concept of optimality is a poor tool for answering their research
questions. The recognition of two kinds of constraints resolves
this dispute. We see then that optimality modeling usually
entails the incorporation of or the discovery of constraints on
adaptation, whereas studies of evolution and development investigates
constraints on form. A full understanding of evolutionary history
requires a synthesis of these approaches.
Developmental and genetic constraint
hypotheses do not invoke causal processes in the same way that adaptive
hypotheses do. Can such different hypotheses compete with one another?
This aspect of the adaptationism debate connects biology to an
important puzzle about the nature of causation and explanation.
If explanation amounts to identifying causes, then constraints must be
causes to explain evolutionary outcomes. But how can impediments
have a causal influence on the evolutionary trajectory of a
lineage? One possible answer is that they don't have any
causal influence--they are merely the background against which
natural selection operates. Such a view treats causes as part of
a process, or involving some kind of energy transfer (Dowe 2008).
This view of causation vindicates the adaptationist view that the
constraint set is presupposed by any respectable adaptive
hypothesis. For adaptationists, new constraints simply mean that
we need to build new models. Testing is then just a matter of
comparing different adaptive hypotheses that have different
constraints. The other possible answer is that constraints
do have a causal influence on evolution because they prevent
evolutionary trajectories from attaining some outcomes. This view
is consistent with counterfactual and interventionist approaches to
causation, such as the comprehensive one defended by Woodward (2003),
and vindicates the approach of treating constraints as genuine
alternatives to adaptive hypotheses.
Linking this debate to
philosophical ideas about causation can help us evaluate whether
evolutionary constraints count as genuine alternatives.
Constraints are defined as *biases or limitations* on the
production of variation. From the perspective of causation, this
is a heterogeneous combination. Constraints that bias a lineage
towards certain evolutionary trajectories look like productive
probabilistic causes, and avoid certain conceptual entanglements that
face boundaries or limitations. Innovations in the developmental makeup
of an organism can make new changes and subsequent evolutionary
trajectories more likely, a hallmark of a causal factor. This helps
clarify the importance of evolutionary innovation. Innovations that
produce biases may be crucial to explaining major evolutionary
transitions, such as the emergence of multicellularity (Sterelny 2008).
When certain changes make new evolutionary outcomes more likely
they are part of the explanation of those new outcomes. Such
biases count as probabilistic causal influences since they change the
probability of a lineage taking certain evolutionary trajectories
(Hitchcock 2008).
Whether boundaries count as causes, and
thereby explain evolutionary outcomes, is more problematic. A
prevailing view within evolutionary biology is that constraints must
count as causal influences, whatever our account of causation (whether
it be by prevention or by omission, see Woodward 2003 for discussion).
Gould and Lewontin (1979) adopted this position. Sansom (2003) argued
that the debate over the evolutionary importance of constraint amounts
to an issue about the relative causal contributions of constraint and
natural selection to evolutionary outcomes. The causal
contribution of constraint can be assessed by using comparative data in
order to compare evolutionary outcomes of lineages with and without the
constraint of interest. If there is a difference, then the
constraint has an identifiable causal influence, all other things being
equal. Pigliucci and Kaplan (2000, 2006) proposed a test protocol
based on transition matrices in which probabilities of evolutionary
change are specified under natural selection and under one or more
competing constraint hypotheses, so as to test natural selection
against constraint. More philosophical analysis is required to assess
the viability of this approach.
Whatever the position on whether
constraints count as causes, the lesson to be taken from this part of
the adaptationism debate is that it is essential to precisely specify
the rival evolutionary hypotheses. There are many examples of such
precise specification in the biological literature. For example, Frank
(1985) and Stubblefield and Seger (1990) analyzed the influence on sex
ratio optima of different constraints on the information available to
parents; Lloyd (2005) described the evidentiary support for
explanations of the evolution of the female orgasm. Lloyd's
analysis supports Symons' (1979) proposal that the female orgasm
exists because of a developmental constraint in combination with strong
selection for the male orgasm. If males fail to achieve orgasm
then no reproduction occurs. The tissue responsible for the male
orgasm appears early in human development, long before sexual
dimorphism occurs, and this tissue is found in both male and female
sexual organs. This example contains competing hypotheses that have
commitments about boundaries and about natural selection. The
Symons constraint explanation invokes a feature of development and
indirect selection on a different trait, whereas the adaptive
hypothesis does not incorporate the developmental constraint and
instead, posits a direct role for selection.
There is room for reconciliation
here. As adaptationists point out, any evolutionary hypothesis
must assume some constraints, so the accusation that optimality models
fail to include constraints is incorrect. But pluralists are
right to argue that in some cases constraints may play a significant
role in the evolution of some trait, and that the correct evolutionary
explanation may not even include natural selection for the trait.
Constraints are often understood as
biases or limitations on potential evolutionary trajectories. How do we
identify potential trajectories? This will depend on how biology
provides counterfactual information. We cannot appeal solely to
realized evolutionary history, since not all potential trajectories
have occurred. Evo-devo research on novelty provides one of the
best strategies for exploring potential evolutionary trajectories
(Wagner 2000, 2001a,2001b, Muller and Wagner 2003, Calcott 2009).
As the causal mechanisms underlying development are better understood,
we will gain a better grasp on the nature of constraints and how they
explain evolutionary outcomes.
## 6. Concluding Remarks
Why should biologists and philosophers care
about the debate over adaptationism? This debate has been and will
continue to be important to biologists because it helps clarify how to
do better evolutionary biology. Despite this, a minority of
currently-active biologists contribute to the debate about
adaptationism, and many ignore it or disparage it. For a variety of
reasons, many of the important points that have arisen from the debate,
such as how to structure empirical tests of adaptive hypotheses and
optimality models, go unheeded. For example, claims for local
optimality continue to appear that lack a specification of even a
single alternative hypothesis to the adaptive hypothesis. This lack
inevitably leaves ambiguous the status of the adaptive hypothesis. In
addition, standards for rejection of the (only) adaptive hypothesis
continue to be rarely delineated if at all.
The debate over adaptationism will continue
to be important to philosophers of biology because much will be gained
by a more informed understanding of the use of hypotheses about natural
selection by biologists. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a general
tendency to misunderstand the conceptual commitments of users of
optimality models. More recently, there has been a growing
understanding of the variety of conceptual commitments held by users of
such models, especially that the use and development of an optimality
model need not bind the user to a blind acceptance of the claim that
natural selection is all powerful. |
addams-jane | ## 1. Life
Compared to the many biographical accounts of Addams' life, relatively
few comprehensively consider her philosophy. However, her
philosophical insights are closely tied to her life experiences which
are briefly recounted below.
Laura Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois, on September 6,
1860. She grew up in the shadow of the Civil War and during a time
when Darwin's *Origin of the Species* achieved widespread
influence. Her childhood reflected the material advantage of being the
daughter of a politician and successful mill owner, John Addams. When
Jane was two years old, her mother, Mary, died giving birth to her
ninth child. Subsequently, the precocious Addams doted upon her father
and benefited emotionally and intellectually from his attention.
Although John Addams was no advocate of feminism, he desired higher
education for his daughter. Therefore, he sent her to the
all-women's institution, Rockford Seminary (renamed later
Rockford College) in Rockford, Illinois. As a result, Addams became
part of a generation of women that were among the first in their
families to attend college. At Rockford, she experienced the
empowerment of living in a women-centered environment, and she
blossomed as an intellectual and a social leader. Her classmates and
teachers acknowledged this leadership. Ultimately, Addams spearheaded
an effort to bring baccalaureate degrees to the school and, after
serving as class valedictorian, received the first one.
Like many women of her time, Addams' prospects after college
were limited. She made a failed attempt at medical school and then,
precipitated by her father's death, slipped into a nearly decade-long
malaise over the direction of her life. At first, the energy and
spirit of her undergraduate college experience did not translate into
any clear career path, given that she had rejected both marriage and
religious life. Moreover, Addams' malady was somewhat analogous
to the unidentified illness that her later acquaintance, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman (as described in *The Yellow Wallpaper*),
suffered. As a member of the privileged class, her soul searching
included a trek to Europe, which Addams made twice during this period.
On the second trip, she visited Toynbee Hall, a pioneering Christian
settlement house in London, which was to inspire her in a direction
that propelled her toward international prominence (TYH 53).
Toynbee Hall was a community of young men committed to helping the
poor of London by living among them. After engaging the leaders of
Toynbee Hall, Addams was rejuvenated by the idea of replicating the
settlement in the United States. She enlisted a college friend, Ellen
Gates Starr, in the plan. However, identifying their vague idea as a
"plan" is a bit of hyperbole. There were very few specific
blueprints for what the settlement would be other than a good neighbor
to oppressed peoples. Nevertheless, Addams found a suitable
location in a devastatingly poor Chicago immigrant neighborhood, and
on September 18, 1889, Hull House opened its doors. Working amidst one
of the most significant influxes of immigrants the United States has
ever known, Hull House got off to a slow start as neighbors did not
know what to make of the residents and their intentions. However,
Addams and Starr built trust, and in a short time, Hull
House became an incubator for new social programs and a magnet
for progressives wanting to make society a better place. Without
formal ideological or political constraints, the settlement workers
responded to the neighborhood's needs by starting project after
project. The list of projects created at Hull House is astounding,
including the first little theatre and juvenile court in the United
States and the first playground, gymnasium, public swimming pool, and
public kitchen in Chicago. In addition, the work of Hull House
residents would result in numerous labor union organizations, a labor
museum, tenement codes, factory laws, child labor laws, adult
education courses, cultural exchange groups, and the collection of
neighborhood demographic data. Hull House was a dynamo of progressive
initiatives, all of which Addams oversaw.
The reputation of the settlement rapidly grew, and women, primarily
college-educated, came from all over the country to live and work
at Hull House. Although Hull House was co-educational, it was a
woman-identified space. There were male residents at Hull House, some
of whom later became prominent leaders. However, the policies,
projects, decision-making, and methodologies of the Hull House
community were gynocentric--foregrounding women's
experience, analysis, and concerns. Furthermore, although a few
residents were married, most were single, and some were in committed
relationships with other women. Given the drastic shifts in sexual
mores in the twentieth century, the contemporary understanding of what
it means to be lesbian cannot straightforwardly be mapped onto the
late and post-Victorian eras. Still, it can be argued that Hull
House was a lesbian-friendly space. Addams set the tone for this
identification with her own long-term intimate relationships with
women, first with Starr and then with Mary Rozet Smith (Brown,
2004).
From the outset of its operation, Addams theorized about the nature
and function of Hull House. The language she used reflected her
philosophical approach. For example, in one published essay, Addams
describes the application and reorganization of knowledge as the
fundamental problem of modern life and then claims that settlements
are like applied universities: "The ideal and developed
settlement would attempt to test the value of human knowledge by
action, and realization, quite as the complete and ideal university
would concern itself with the discovery of knowledge in all
branches" (FSS 187). This kind of reflective analysis and wider
thematization of her work and the social settlement work was a
hallmark of Addams' writing. Because of her insightful
reflections on the Hull House community, Addams became a popular
author and sought-after public speaker. Eventually, she extended her
cosmopolitan analysis to race, education, and world peace issues.
For Addams, local experiences were always a springboard for political
theorizing.
Addams became one of the most respected and recognized individuals in
the nation. She played a crucial role in numerous progressive
campaigns. Addams was a founding figure in the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties
Union, and the Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom. Her popularity was such that when Theodore Roosevelt sought
the presidential nomination of the Progressive Party in 1912, he asked
Jane Addams to second the nomination, the first time a woman had
participated in such an act. There was a gendered dimension to this
popularity, however. Addams had challenged the borders of the public
and private spheres through her work at Hull House. Still, her
forays into masculine domains were masked by the "social
housekeeping" characterization of the settlement activism. After
World War I broke out in Europe, her outspoken pacifism and refusal to
endorse the war or the U.S. entry into it was more gender role
transgression than the public could tolerate from a woman.
Addams' popularity fell, and she became the victim of vicious
gender-specific criticism. Biographer Allen Davis reports that one
writer indicated that what Addams needed to disabuse her of her
pacifism was "a strong, forceful husband who would lift the
burden of fate from her shoulders and get her intensely interested in
fancy work and other things dear to the heart of women who have homes
and plenty of time on their hands" (240). A reporter for the
*Los Angeles Times* quipped,
>
> If Miss Addams and her peace mission are a sample of women in world
> affairs, I want to take it all back. I am sincerely sorry I voted for
> suffrage. (Davis, 253)
>
Her new role as social outcast and critic allowed the public
philosopher in Addams to reflect on the nature of citizenship and
patriotism in her many books and articles--some of which had
difficulty getting into print because she was perceived as
anti-American. Although she had written on peace early in her public
career (NIP), from 1914 through the end of her life, Addams'
publications became decidedly more focused on issues of peace and war,
including two books exclusively dedicated to the topic (WH, PBT) and
several books with sections devoted to the nature and politics of war
(LRW, STY, MFJ). Although initially criticized, Addams' pacifist
tenacity was ultimately lauded with the Nobel Peace Price (1931). In
the last years of her life, she spent less time at Hull House and more
time working for world peace and an end to racism. Addams died of
cancer on May 21, 1935, leaving a tremendous intellectual legacy that
has yet to be fully explored.
## 2. Influences
Addams was well-read and could claim numerous and varied influences.
However, Addams was no one's protege. Addams chose
intellectual resources that resonated with her notion of sympathetic
knowledge in bringing about social progress. A few significant
influences are recounted here. Addams read Thomas Carlyle's
(1795-1881) work while she was attending Rockford Seminary.
Carlyle's social morality held a particular appeal to Addams. He
believed the universe was ultimately good and moral and led by a
divine will that worked through society's heroes and leaders.
Carlyle wrote biographies of social saviors that came in the form of
poets, kings, prophets, and intellectuals, mixing in commentary that
explicated his moral philosophy. However, Carlyle's heroes
reflect the evolution of society, as different contexts require
different leadership. These heroes can recognize the social dynamics
at work and use them for the benefit of others. Carlyle's heroes
evolved. For Carlyle, everyone has a public duty and needs to find
themselves or realize their place in the world and what their work on
behalf of society should be. Because of his emphasis on powerful
individuals, Carlyle was not particularly fond of democracy. Although
Addams shed Carlyle's notion of individualistic heroism and his
disdain for democracy, she retained the valorization of moral action
throughout her career. Furthermore, Carlyle's morality was
grounded in social relations: to be moral is to be in right relation
with God and others. Carlyle's relational ethic is a precursor to
Addams' notion of sympathetic knowledge.
Addams was also influenced by John Ruskin (1819-1900), who
theorized that art and culture reflected the moral health of society.
Although Ruskin maintained a certain elitism in his view that great
people produced great art, he also saw such great cultural works as a
manifestation of the well-being of society as a whole. The plight of
the oppressed was tied to a sense of the aesthetic. Indeed,
Addams' valorization of art and culture, as exhibited in the
appearance and activities of Hull House resonates with Ruskin's
aesthetics. For Addams, "Social Life and art have always seemed
to go best at Hull House" (STY 354). Addams viewed art and
cultural activities as reinforcing essential human bonds (DSE 29).
Ruskin also influenced Arnold Toynbee and other future settlement
workers by identifying the problems in large industrial cities and
calling for reforms foreshadowing the safety nets typical of later
welfare states. Ruskin valued labor as a noble means of
self-actualization. This became a crucial concept for Addams as she
sought meaningful labor for those in the Hull House neighborhood. For
example, Addams expresses sympathy for laborers who skipped work or
came in late for work because "all human interest has been
extracted from it" (SYC 129). Although Addams valued
Ruskin's moral imagination, the concept of labor, and ideas
about transforming the city through infusing culture, she rejected his
romanticization of the preindustrial past. With a strong belief in
social progress, Addams did not desire a return to a previous era. For
Addams, society should grow and adapt to its conditions, even
regarding moral philosophy.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was another type of hero to Addams.
Unlike Carlyle, Tolstoy did not valorize individuals standing out from
the crowd as exemplary moral paragons who wield socially ordained
positions of power. Instead, he valued solidarity with the common
laborer. Addams' vast intellectual curiosity made such extremes
in influences possible. Addams read Tolstoy's works from the
time she graduated from college until the last years of her life, and
she often praised his writing in articles and book reviews.
Tolstoy's emphasis on working for and with the oppressed while
writing novels and essays that influenced a wider audience resonated
with Addams' work and writings. However, Tolstoy was a moral
idealist. He left everything behind to take up the plow and work as a
typical farm laborer. Addams was moved by Tolstoy's account,
and--typical of her self-critical, thoughtful approach--she
questioned her leadership role in the social settlement, but only for
a short time.
Motivated by Tolstoy's troubling moral challenge to work in
solidarity with the common laborer, Addams sought him out while she
was on vacation (and recovering from typhoid) in Europe in 1896. The
meeting made a lasting impression on Addams (TYH 191-195).
Tolstoy came in from working the fields to be introduced to Addams and
her partner Mary Rozet Smith. The meeting began with Tolstoy
questioning Addams' fashion choice because the sleeves of her
arms, consistent with the style of the time, had "enough stuff
on one arm to make a frock for the girl" (TYH 192). Tolstoy was
concerned that the trappings of material wealth alienated Addams from
those she was working with. This criticism continued when Tolstoy
learned that part of Hull House's funding came from
Addams' estate, which included a working farm: "So you are
an absentee landlord? Do you think you will help the people more by
adding yourself to the crowded city than you would by tilling your own
soil?" (TYH 192) The remarks humbled Addams, and, on her return
to Hull House, she was determined to take up more direct labor by
working in the new Hull House bakery. However, reality demonstrated
how Tolstoy's idealism was incompatible with her work in social
settlements: "The half dozen people invariably waiting to see me
after breakfast, the piles of letters to be opened and answered, the
demand of actual and pressing human wants--were these all to be
pushed aside and asked to wait while I saved my soul by two
hours' work at baking bread?" (TYH 197)
Theoretically, the shared experience of common labor would break down
class distinctions. Addams had experienced such camaraderie at Hull
House, and she never stopped appreciating Tolstoy's social
criticism. However, she saw the value of intelligent leadership.
Someone had to organize the clubs, arrange for philanthropic support,
and chair the meetings. Addams found Tolstoy's labor demand to
be self-indulgent to a certain extent. If she engaged in the labor of
the poor exclusively, she might alleviate her upper-class guilt.
Still, she would no longer be working holistically toward changing the
structure of society. Addams' philosophy of civic activism
valued engagement through ongoing presence and listening. Indeed, Hull
House had a very flat and responsive organizational structure.
Nevertheless, Tolstoy's absolutist moral demands failed to
consider context--a hallmark of Addams' approach.
Addams found Tolstoy's pacifism inspiring. She admired how
Tolstoy sympathized with revolutionaries in the 1870s but did not
compromise his moral convictions because of these sympathies. Tolstoy
offered a doctrine of non-resistance that sought to substitute moral
energy for physical force. Addams once again did not accept
Tolstoy's pacifist ideas uncritically. For example, she
questioned the clarity of the categories (moral energy versus physical
force) that Tolstoy created in his doctrine of non-resistance (TYH
195). Addams also asked whether Tolstoy reduced social issues too
simplistically, albeit eloquently. Despite her less than pleasant
meeting with him, Addams cited Tolstoy as a positive moral example
throughout her life. However, like all her influences, she could not
accept Tolstoy's philosophy uncritically. Addams had to adapt
and infuse her insight to make it work for the society she was a part
of.
As previously mentioned, Toynbee Hall was an inspiration for Hull
House, and Canon Barnett (1844-1913), who served as
"warden" of the settlement for over twenty years, was the
inspirational force. Before his service at Toynbee Hall, Barnett
worked as Vicar of St. Judes, Whitechapel. He instituted many
improvements to the slums surrounding the Church, including building
educational and recreational programs. It was St. Judes that students
from Oxford would visit, working to help improve conditions for
residents of the surrounding community, all the while engaging in
discussions about how to institute social reforms. One of those
students was Andrew Toynbee.
Barnett describes a threefold rationale for the development and growth
of settlements: First, a general distrust that government-sponsored
institutions could care for the poor. In particular, government and
private philanthropy appeared to be failing the masses. Second,
Barnett viewed the need for information as spurring the rise of
settlements. Barnett believed there was widespread curiosity regarding
oppression that he could satisfy with documented observations
regarding the circumstances of the poor. Finally, Barnett notes a
groundswell of fellowship not driven by traditional "Charities
and Missions" but by fundamental humanitarianism. Settlements
provided an outlet for these fellow feelings.
Addams was familiar with Barnett's writings and often referred
to them. For example, when Addams wrote "The Function of the
Social Settlement," Barnett's philosophy played a
prominent role. She agrees that settlements should not be
missions because if they become too ideological, they will fail to be
responsive to their neighbors (FSS 344-345). However, despite
acknowledging that the term "settlement" was borrowed from
London, she finds differences between the philosophies of Toynbee Hall
and Hull House: "The American Settlement, perhaps has not so
much a sense of duty of the privileged toward the unprivileged of the
'haves' to the 'have nots,' to borrow Canon
Barnett's phrase, as a desire to equalize through social effort
those results which superior opportunity may have given the
possessor" (FSS 322-323). Addams is very concerned about a
sense of moral superiority attributed to settlement work. She always
eschewed the notion that she was a charitable "lady
bountiful." Instead, she wanted to learn about others to develop
the proper sympathies and strategies for assisting--sympathetic
knowledge. For Addams, Hull House always combined epistemological
concerns with moral ones.
When Addams' philosophy is considered, if at all, it is usually
associated with the work of John Dewey (1859-1952). This
association is appropriate given their friendship and mutual
interests; however, her intellectual deference to Dewey is often
overstated. Dewey is considered one of the greatest American
philosophers. His name, along with William James, Charles Sanders
Peirce, and Josiah Royce, is included in the traditional list of
founding fathers of what is labeled American Pragmatism. His work
appealed to Addams because they shared many of the same commitments,
including the value of a robust democracy as well as the importance of
education that engaged the student's experience. Addams and
Dewey were intellectual soul mates from the moment they met in 1892.
Dewey visited Hull House shortly after it opened and before he moved
to Chicago to teach at the University of Chicago. Following the
meeting, Dewey expressed to Addams an appreciation for Hull
House's work, and he would become a frequent visitor. There was
much intellectual cross-fertilization between Hull House and the
University of Chicago and *vice versa*. Historian Rosalind
Rosenberg describes Addams as a *de facto* adjunct professor at
the University of Chicago. Mary Jo Deegan documents that Addams
taught many college courses through the Extension Division of the
University of Chicago for a decade. In addition, she refused offers to
join the undergraduate and graduate faculty (Deegan, 1988).
Furthermore, Dewey assigned Addams' books in his courses. Addams
and Dewey worked together personally and politically. When Hull House
was incorporated, Dewey became one of the board members. He often
lectured to the Plato Club, Hull House's philosophy group. Dewey
dedicated his book *Liberalism and Social Action* to Addams.
Dewey named one of his daughters in her honor, and Addams wrote the
eulogy for Dewey's son Gordon (EBP).
Although Dewey and Addams gained celebrity status in their lifetime,
their fame and legacies are characterized much differently. Dewey is
framed as the great intellectual--a thinker--and Addams was
the activist--a doer. As contemporaries, they represent classic
archetypes of gender: the male as mind generating theory and the woman
as body experiencing and caring. However, there is much evidence that
such characterizations are inaccurate. Both John Dewey and his
daughter, Jane, credit Jane Addams for developing many of his
important ideas, including his view on education, democracy, and,
ultimately, philosophy (Schlipp, 1951). Despite the lack of
attribution in Dewey's written work, many scholars document
Addams' significant influence (Davis, 1973; Deegan, 1988;
Farrell, 1967; Lasch, 1965; Linn, 2000; Seigfried, 1996)
Overshadowed by Addams' relationship with the celebrity
philosopher, Dewey, was her strong tie to George Herbert Mead
(1863-1931), who is considered the father of "symbolic
interactionism," an approach to social inquiry that emphasizes
how symbols create meaning in society. Mead's work on
development through play and education influenced Addams, but, as with
Dewey, the influence was mutual. Addams maintained a long-term close
personal relationship with Mead and his wife, Helen Castle Mead. They
often dined together and visited one another's families. Like
Addams', Mead's intellectual legacy is not altogether
settled. Sociologists have recognized his works as significant, but
many philosophers have overlooked him.
Mead and Addams worked on several projects together, including
pro-labor speeches, peace advocacy, and the Progressive Party. When
Addams was publicly attacked for not supporting the U.S. entry into
World War I, Mead defended her though he disagreed with her position.
Like Dewey, Mead was a frequent lecturer at Hull House. Also, like
Dewey, Mead could not help but be impressed with Addams'
intellect. In 1916, Mead advocated awarding Addams an honorary
doctorate from the University of Chicago. The faculty supported the
award, but the administration overturned the decision (eventually
making the award in 1931).
Addams also maintained a friendship with William James
(1842-1910), whose work she cites on many occasions. James was a
pragmatist whose vision of urban improvement would have been shared by
Addams. James and Addams both valued experience, and among the
"professional" pragmatists his writing style is
closest to Addams' in terms of its readability and use of
tangible examples.
Addams influenced and was influenced by the "Chicago
School," an active collaboration of cross-disciplinary scholars
at the University of Chicago, including Dewey, Mead, James Hayden
Tufts, Robert E. Park, and others who had a significant impact on
philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Although she was often
frustrated with the abstract trajectory of the university, Addams
embraced reflective analysis. Through her Hull House experience,
Addams took many opportunities to theorize about the interchange
between theory and practice. For a time, American philosophy,
sociology, and social work existed in a symbiotic harmony--each
not differentiated from the other but benefiting from the interchange.
Unfortunately, since the early 20th century when Mead,
Dewey, and Addams were together in Chicago, the intellectual genealogy
of American philosophy, sociology, and social work has more
drastically diverged to a point where the crossover is less likely and
perhaps less welcome. Lost in the compartmentalization of these
disciplines is how Jane Addams played a role in each.
In addition to the Romantics (Carlyle and Ruskin), the social
visionaries (Barnett and Tolstoy), and the pragmatists (Dewey and
Mead), Addams was influenced by the great collection of feminist minds
who came to work at the social settlement. Hull House has been
described in many different ways, reflecting the complexity and
diversity of its functions. Perhaps an overlooked descriptor is as a
pragmatist feminist "think tank." Although the
"Metaphysical Club" has taken on a mythical status among
some in American philosophical circles (Menand, 2001), the
intellectual, social, and political impact of the Hull House residents
dwarfs that of the Cambridge intellectuals. Hull House residents
dined, slept, did domestic chores, and engaged in social activism
together. They also discussed and debated ethics, political theory,
feminism, and culture while immersed in their tasks and stimulated by
the many speakers and visitors to Hull House. The prolonged contact
shared gender oppression and common mission made for a unique
intellectual collective that not only fostered action but also
theory.
Ostensibly, Hull House was the first co-educational settlement. Addams
recognized the need for male residents so that men in the neighborhood
could better relate to Hull House endeavors. However, it was clear to
visitors and residents that Hull House was a woman's space. Hull
House boasted some of the era's great minds and change agents. Alice
Hamilton (1869-1970), a physician who trained in Germany and the
U.S. and is credited with founding the field of industrial medicine,
lived at Hull House for 22 years. She went on to teach at Harvard,
becoming a nationally recognized social reformer and peace activist.
Julia Lathrop (1858-1932) was a Vassar graduate who, in 1912,
after residing at Hull House for 22 years, became the first woman to
head a federal agency, the Children's Bureau, which, in terms of
conduct, she modeled after Hull House. Rachel Yarros
(1869-1946), a twenty-year resident at Hull House, was also a
physician who taught at the University of Illinois. The university
created a position for Yarros to recognize her tremendous contribution
to social hygiene and sex education. Author and feminist theorist
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was a resident for a short
time. Gilman thought highly of Addams but had no stomach for
settlement existence amongst the oppressed. However, Gilman's
groundbreaking work on gender and economics likely influenced Addams.
Sophonisba Breckinridge (1866-1948) graduated from Wellesley and
obtained a Ph.D. in political science and a J.D. from the University
of Chicago. Her most significant contribution was in the area of
social work education. Edith Abbott (1876-1957) and her sister
Grace Abbott (1878-1939) joined Hull-House about the time as
Breckinridge (1907). Edith Abbott would obtain a Ph.D. in Political
Economy from the University of Chicago, while Grace Abbott earned a
Ph.D. from Grand Island College in Nebraska. Edith would have an
academic career at the University of Chicago prior to her appointment
as Chief of the Children's Bureau after Julia Lathrop's
departure. Mary Kenney (1864-1943) became a vital labor
organizer for Samuel Gompers' American Federation of Labor and
influenced Addams' sensitivity to the plight of organized labor,
something that all progressives did not share. Bessie Abramowitz
Hillman, a Russian immigrant who attended classes at Hull House,
founded the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) in 1910 at
the age of 20 and guided it for 60 years. Hillman referred to the
settlement as "a House of Labor", and she worked with and
admired Addams until the latter's passing. Another resident who became
a significant labor leader was Alzina Stevens. She headed the Dorcas
Federal Labor Union and became a member of the Council of Women's
Trade Unions of Chicago. Addams worked with and cultivated numerous
labor leaders during this nascent time of the American labor movement.
These are only a few of the more well-known residents, but numerous
feminists used their Hull House experience as a springboard to careers
in social reform or professions of various sorts. Addams engaged the
residents of Hull House in conversation and deliberation such that
they influenced her thoughts and she theirs.
Although Hull House was replete with extraordinary minds, no one was
likely to be as intellectually challenging to Addams as Florence
Kelley (1859-1932). A Cornell graduate, Kelley translated
Friedrich Engels' *The Condition of the Working Class in
England* and Karl Marx's *Free Trade* into English.
She was an active member of the Socialist Labor Party until the
leadership, threatened by Kelley's aggressive style, expelled
her. A single mother with three children, Kelley found a home at Hull
House, where she opened an employment center and began researching
sweatshops for the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kelley would
later become the general secretary of the new Consumer's League,
an organization dedicated to using consumer pressure to ensure that
safe and high-quality goods were manufactured. Kelley was one of the
most distinguished social reformers of the early 20th
Century.
At Hull House, Kelley altered the dynamics of the resident community.
She brought a sense of class consciousness along with great strength
of conviction. After Kelley's arrival (and Mary Kenny's
coming a year prior) Hull House became more deeply involved in
supporting the labor movement, which men heretofore dominated. Kelley
also learned from Addams, who she admired throughout her life. Perhaps
the legacy of the many accomplishments of the Hull-House residents
suffered because of the fame of their leader. Still, given the
opportunity, each expressed their admiration and gratitude to Addams
for making Hull House the hotbed of ideas and action. Addams was the
most visible leader of a remarkable group of educated activists whose
mutual respect allowed intellectual growth to flourish.
Finally, a few other influences are worthy of mention. Although she
was not personally religious, Addams' Christian roots left their
mark. Addams was exceptionally well versed in the Christian bible and
had attended several religious courses during her time at Rockford
Seminary. Addams occasionally used religious language to help get her
message out to Christian constituencies. Addams was also well
acquainted with Greek philosophy and referenced Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle in her work. Addams was attracted to the ability of Greek
philosophers to move between personal and social concerns rather than
compartmentalizing their philosophical analysis. Some have suggested
that Addams was influenced by Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and the
positivists (Misheva 2019). Comte, who coined the term
"sociology," believed sciences need their own logic drawn
from experience rather than Descartes's *a priori* universal
rationalism. Addams would have been attracted to his ideas about
social progress and his development of a religion of humanity. Addams
also read a great deal of literature, which influenced her ideas
concerning culture and sometimes seeped into her analysis, as it does
when she uses Shakespeare's *King Lear* to understand
labor-management relations. Although she did not believe that reading
was a substitute for direct experience, she did suggest more than once
that reading great works of fiction as a means of developing a
sympathetic understanding.
The scholarship of philosopher Marilyn Fischer has revealed how
significant social evolutionary thinking was for Addams. *The
Origin of the Species* was published in 1859, a year prior to
Addams' birth. By the time Addams became a public intellectual,
evolutionary thinking had not only become influential but was being
applied to social phenomena as an explanatory narrative. Fischer
describes, "Recognizing Addams's use of social
evolutionary discourse, set within imaginative forms, reveals the
logic and sensibility of her layered ethical analysis" (Fischer
2019, 13).
Although Addams had a wide variety of influences, as we have seen, she
was not a derivative thinker, as many commentators suggest. She drew
upon a number of great theorists to develop her ideas about social
morality but never dogmatically followed in anyone's footsteps.
All the while, she influenced many others as she made her unique
contributions to American and feminist philosophy.
## 3. Addams' Standpoint Epistemology
Although writing long before the term "standpoint
epistemology" was named by feminist philosophers, Addams can be
considered a forerunner of standpoint epistemology, given her
commitment to sympathetic knowledge. Feminist philosophers have
attended to the impact of context on theory more than mainstream
philosophers. Although there are lively debates within feminist
philosophical circles regarding the nature of objectivity, many,
including Dorothy Smith, Nancy Hartsock, Hilary Rose, Alison Jaggar,
and Sandra Harding, have developed the notion that knowledge is indeed
situated. In particular, feminist standpoint theorists valorize the
perspectives and theories derived from oppressed societal positions,
such as women's experiences. Harding describes a feminist
standpoint as something to achieve rather than a passive perspective.
All women have lived experience in a woman's body and therefore
have a woman's perspective. Still, a feminist standpoint
requires an effort at stepping back to gain a holistic picture of
power struggles. Through the understanding of the perspectival aspect
of knowledge claims, standpoint epistemology can create libratory
knowledge that can be leveraged to subvert oppressive systems. One of
the challenges of standpoint theory is how to give voice to multiple
positions without falling back on hierarchies that favor certain
standpoints over others.
Jane Addams demonstrates an appreciation for the spirit of standpoint
theory through her work and writing at Hull-House. Despite the
privileged social position she was born into, her settlement avocation
immersed her in disempowered communities. Addams poetically describes
her moral mandate to meet, know, and understand others: "We know
at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and democratic
interest in life, and to give truth complete social expression is the
endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the identification with the
common lot that is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source
and expression of social ethics. It is as though we thirsted at the
great wells of human experience because we know that a daintier or
less potent draught would not carry us to the end of the journey,
going forward as we must in the heat and jostle of the crowd"
(DSE 9). One might object that although these are admirable
sentiments, they are still spoken by an outsider. What constitutes an
outsider? Addams lived the better part of a half-century in the
diverse immigrant neighborhood of Hull House in Chicago. She
didn't return home to the suburbs or return to a university
office with her data. She lived and worked amongst the crime, civic
corruption, prostitution, sweatshops, and other community ills. When
they started Hull House, Addams and Starr were involved
outsiders--an oddity that neighbors looked upon suspiciously.
However, time, proximity, and an earnest desire to learn and help won
the trust and respect of the neighborhood. The outsiders became
insiders. When Addams wrote or spoke about single women laborers,
child laborers, prostitutes, or first and second-generation
immigrants, she employed first-hand knowledge gained from her social
interactions. Addams leveraged her Hull House experiences to give
voice to standpoints marginalized in society. Simultaneously, she
worked to provide the oppressed their own voice through college
extension courses, English language courses, and social clubs that
fostered political and social debate. Addams was self-conscious about
speaking for others: "I never addressed a Chicago audience on
the subject of the Settlement and its vicinity without inviting a
neighbor to go with me, that I might curb my hasty generalization by
the consciousness that I had an auditor who knew the conditions more
intimately than I could hope to do" (TYH 80). Addams did not try
to arrive at universal moral truths but recognized that the standpoint
of Hull House neighbors mattered.
In an 1896 article in *The American Journal of Sociology*,
"A Belated Industry," Addams addresses the plight of women
in domestic labor. These were the most powerless of laborers:
predominantly women, many of them immigrants with limited English
language skills and in a job that afforded little legal protection or
organizing possibilities. Addams begins the article with a footnote
claiming that her knowledge of domestic laborers comes from her
experience with the Woman's Labor Bureau, one of the many Hull
House projects. Addams goes on to address the powerlessness of
domestic work, particularly as it entails isolation and a highly
inequitable power relationship: "The household
employe[sic] has no regular opportunity for meeting other
workers of her trade, and of attaining with them the dignity of
corporate body" (ABI 538). Addams identifies the gendered
dimension of this oppressive work: "men would ... resent
the situation and consider it quite impossible if it implied the
giving up of their family and social ties, and living under the roof
of the household requiring their services" (ABI 540). Addams
extrapolates her experience of these workers to imaginatively inhabit
a standpoint and give them voice. She explicitly claims as much,
"An attempt is made to present this industry [domestic labor]
from the point of view of those women who are working in households
for wages" (ABI 536). Addams repeatedly recognized the
experiences of oppressed peoples that she came to know to have
their concerns acknowledged in the social democracy she was trying to
foster.
Addams believed recognizing alternative standpoints was important in
promoting social progress through sympathetic understanding.
Accordingly, if a voice is given to individuals inhabiting
marginalized positions in society, it fosters the possibility of
better understanding between people and actions that can lead to
improving their lot. Addams engaged in the tricky balance of honoring
standpoints while simultaneously seeking connections and continuities
to build upon. This is exemplified in Addams' books on young
people, *Youth and the City Streets*, and elderly women,
*The Long Road of Woman's Memory*. The latter work is a
treatise on memory based on the memories of first-generation immigrant
women. Rather than grounding her theory upon the experiences of famous
women theorists or writers--and Addams knew most of the prominent
women of her day--Addams based her analysis on the women who were
her neighbors at Hull House. Addams not only grounded her
philosophical work in experience but in the experiences of those on
the margins of society. Addams puts experience before theory. She did
not begin by positing a theory about these women. Instead, she retold
many stories she had heard from them and then drew out conclusions
about the function of memory. For Addams, theory follows experience.
Addams was in the minority among her peers in philosophy or feminism
to believe that working-class immigrant women not only should be given
a voice but also had something important to contribute to the
community of ideas.
An example of Addams' application of feminist standpoint theory
(or at least a forerunner of it) can be seen in the "Devil
Baby," which recounts what transpired after three Italian women
came to Hull House to see a possessed infant. One can form a whimsical
image from Addams' account, "No amount of denial convinced
them that he was not there, for they knew exactly what he was like
with his cloven hoofs, his pointed ears, and diminutive tail; the
Devil Baby had, moreover, been able to speak as soon as he was born
and was shockingly profane" (LRW 7-8). This would be an
amusing anecdote if it stopped there, but Addams described a six-week
period when Hull House was inundated with stories about the alleged
Devil Baby. Visitors even offered Hull House residents money to see
the creature despite adamant responses that there was no such baby.
Multiple versions of how the Devil Baby arose in the neighborhood, and
eventually the hysteria made the newspapers. One version of the story
claimed that the Devil Baby was the offspring of an atheist and a
devoted Italian girl. When the husband tore a holy picture from the
wall claiming that he would rather have a devil in the house, his wish
was granted in the form of his coming child (LRW 8). Although a
fascinating social phenomenon, the Devil Baby story has little
apparent philosophical importance. It would be easy to dismiss those
who perpetuated the story as simpletons caught up in the hysteria. Not
for Jane Addams. She applied a familiar approach by refusing to pass
judgment, listening carefully, and developing a sympathetic
understanding. Addams actively worked to grasp their subject
position.
Although Addams dismissed the "gawkers" who came to see
the Devil Baby as a sensationalist-seeking mob, she wanted to
understand the older women who had perpetuated the myth:
"Whenever I heard the high eager voices of old women, I was
irresistibly interested and left anything I might be doing in order to
listen to them" (LRW 9). She found women who were solemn and
highly animated about the Devil Baby. They used the appearance of the
Devil Baby and the excitement it created as an opportunity to discuss
important and troubling matters of their life. Addams, who never
sought simple answers to complex issues, found a convergence of class,
race, and gender dynamics fueling the Devil Baby phenomenon. These
immigrant women were in unfamiliar surroundings and had to adjust to
foreign ideas and practices. They had been alienated by their
children, who adapted to the new country more quickly, keeping the old
ways at arm's length. Many of these women also had been victims
of domestic abuse long before such acts had a distinct label. One
woman tells Addams, "My face has this queer twist for now nearly
sixty years; I was ten when it got that way, the night after I saw my
father do my mother to death with his knife" (LRW 11). For these
forgotten and beaten women, the Devil Baby represented a connection to
a past that made more sense to them: one that had clear moral
imperatives. Another woman tells Addams, "You might say
it's a disgrace to have your son beat you up for the sake of a
bit of money you've earned by scrubbing--your own man is
different--but I haven't the heart to blame the boy for
doing what he's seen all his life, his father forever went wild
when the drink was in him and struck me to the very day of his death.
The ugliness was born in the boy as the marks of the Devil was born in
the poor child up-stairs" (LRW 11). Addams' recounting of
tale after tale of violence provides a depressing view of immigrant
women's lives at the turn of the century. For women who had
lived such a hard life, the Devil Baby provided a momentary
opportunity for resistance. Husbands and children would listen to them
and temporarily forsake beating them for fear of divine retribution as
evinced by the Devil Baby. Addams describes memory as serving to
"make life palatable and at rare moments even beautiful"
(LRW 28). Although this is a specific explanatory analysis, it
demonstrates how Addams sought connections among the personal stories:
"When these reminiscences, based upon the diverse experiences of
my people unknown to each other, point to one inevitable conclusion,
they accumulate into a social protest ..." (LRW 29). Addams
proceeds to view the Devil Baby in light of the women's movement
and the fight against oppression. Given the position of the old women,
the Devil Baby was the vehicle of resistance and an opportunity for
Addams to interject feminist analysis.
## 4. Radical Meliorism
Meliorism is a hallmark of pragmatist philosophy, which we can see in
Addams' work with a more radical character than among other American
pragmatists. If "radical" is defined as challenging
existing power structures, Jane Addams was the least elitist and
the most radical of the American philosophers of her era. Addams
consistently took and eloquently supported inclusive positions that
sought the benefit of society. While pragmatists typically advocated
for social progress, Addams radicalized the extent of that social
progress. Rather than defining progress by the best and brightest
achievements, Addams advocates the betterment of all in what she calls
"lateral progress." For Addams, lateral progress meant
that social advancement could not be declared through the
breakthroughs or peak performances of a few but could only
authentically be found in social gains held in common. Addams employs
metaphor to explain the concept:
>
>
> The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound
> to consult the feasible right as well as the absolute right. He is
> often obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln's "best
> possible," and often have the sickening sense of compromising
> with his best convictions. He has to move along with those whom he
> rules toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till
> they come to it. He has to discover what people really want, and then
> "provide the channels in which the growing moral force of their
> lives shall flow." What he does attain, however, is not the
> result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain climber
> beyond the sight of the valley multitude, but it is underpinned and
> upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has
> been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because
> lateral.
>
>
>
> He has not taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has
> persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet higher. (AML 175)
>
>
>
Whether one refers to them as "robber barons" or
"captains of industry," the rise of commerce in the United
States was defined by the winners of the game: those who amassed
wealth. The wealthy enjoyed tremendous progress in healthcare,
education, and material well-being. Addams was not satisfied with
narrow social development and redefined progress according to the
common person's experience. This redefinition continues to elude
us today as class disparity in the United States grows. Ironically,
Addams is often chastised for expounding middle-class values, which
was her point of reference as she started Hull House.
Still, Addams' experiences pushed her to understand and
appreciate the immigrant poor in the neighborhood more fully.
Addams applied the idea of lateral progress to numerous issues. When
she discusses the role of labor unions, she argues that in their
attempt to improve conditions for all workers, unions are fulfilling a
vital function that society has abrogated. Addams, who had a track
record of supporting labor, makes it clear that she does not view
collective bargaining as an end in itself. Instead, Addams views
unions as trailblazers who obtain working conditions that eventually
benefit everyone in society: "trade unions are trying to do for
themselves what the government should secure for all its citizens;
has, in fact, secured in many cases" (FSS 456). Addams is not
interested in improving the lot of one group of workers over another.
"Any sense of division and suspicion is fatal in a democratic
form of government, for although each side may seem to secure most for
itself when consulting only its own interests, the final test must be
the good of the community as a whole" (FSS 461). For Addams,
unions are important in as much as they improve working conditions,
raise wages, reduce hours and eliminate child labor for all
Americans--lateral progress.
Although the first chapter of Addams' *Democracy and Social
Ethics* is ostensibly a critique of charity workers and their
preconceived notions of the needs of the destitute, it also reveals
Addams' disposition toward the poor and the oppressed. She
decries the historical position of blaming the victim:
"Formerly, when it was believed that poverty was synonymous with
vice and laziness and that the prosperous man was the righteous man,
charity was administered harshly with a good conscience; for the
charitable agent really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the
very fact of his own superior prosperity gave him a certain
consciousness of superior morality" (DSE 11-12). Such a
judgment serves to separate the wealthy from the poor. Accordingly,
the rich can make progress intellectually, materially,
technologically, etc., while the poor are thought to be left behind
primarily due to their own actions. Addams argues that the poor are
often victims of circumstance and that it is society's responsibility
to first understand marginalized people and then develop means for
their participation in lateral progress.
Charity, although a good, is not lateral progress. While noble, a
temporary transfer in wealth does not constitute real progress in
alleviating economic disparity. Addams never viewed herself as a
charity worker, nor did she characterize the work of Hull House as
charity: "I am always sorry to have Hull House regarded as
philanthropy" (ONS 45). Addams sought lateral progress that
could be brought about by the collective will and manifested through
social institutions. She believes there would be no need for
settlements if "society had been reconstructed to the point of
offering equal opportunity for all" (ONS 27). Addams is not
advocating a *laissez-faire* capitalism version of equal
opportunity that is abstract and rights-based. Free market economics
influences modern understandings of democracy as merely assuring the
adequate opportunity to participate. Addams' approach to equal
opportunity is set in a context of vibrant democracy where citizens
and social organizations look out for one another because they all
have a stake in lateral progress or what today might be termed
democratic socialism.
Addams' radical pragmatism ultimately had a feminist dimension.
She continually gave voice to women's experiences, addressed
women's issues, and saw a vibrant social democracy as only
possible if there was full participation by both men and women. When
it came to issues such as women's suffrage, Addams manifests a
feminist pragmatism. "If women had no votes with which to select
the men upon whom her social reform had become dependent, some
cherished project might be so modified by uninformed legislatures
during the process of legal enactment that the law, as finally passed,
injured the very people it was meant to protect. Women had discovered
that the unrepresented are always liable to be given what they do not
want by legislators who merely wish to placate them" (STY
89-90). Note that Addams does not argue the application of
abstract human rights, but she instead makes a functional claim about
the role of voting in proper democratic representation. It is not that
Addams opposes rights, but she will continually opt for pragmatist
arguments on feminist issues. Her male pragmatist colleagues were
sympathetic to feminist positions but did not make the claims as
forcefully or consistently as Addams (Seigfried, 1996).
Addams' notion of lateral progress exemplifies again how she has
been misrepresented as merely a reformer. Radical discourse, a la
Marx, has been associated with the call for extreme changes in social
institutions and systems. Although such changes may be arguably
desirable, they entail upheaval that will disrupt social relationships
at significant potential personal cost. Addams sought substantial
social progress through mutual agreement and tapping into communal
intelligence. Her radical vision refused to give up on the individuals
in society and their caring relationships. Mixing theoretical notions
of social change with concrete experiences of community organizing,
Addams was a caring radical. Addams was interested in ameliorating
social problems, but that does not preclude a broadly construed
radical edge to her social philosophy.
## 5. Socializing Care
An analysis of Addams' moral philosophy suggests at least three
claims about her relationship to feminist care ethics *avant la
lettre*. One, Addams' approach to the important social
issues of her day reflected the relationality and contextualization
that are important to what is called care ethics today. Two, although
Addams employed caring in response to the needs of others, she
contributes an active, even assertive, dimension to care ethics not
commonly found in feminist theory. Third, Addams advocates what might
be called "socializing care": systemically instantiating
the habits and practices of care in social institutions.
Although care is a simple and widely invoked word, many feminist
theorists have invested it with a particular meaning as it applies to
ethics. The original motivation for developing care ethics was an
acknowledgment that traditional forms of morality, in particular
principle-based and consequence-based ethics, did not adequately
address the richness of the human condition. These approaches bracket
out emotions, relationships, temporal considerations, reciprocity, and
creativity to focus on immediate adjudication of moral conflicts.
Accordingly, the use of rules or consequences can become a
reductionist and formulaic response resulting in shortsighted answers
to complex and systemic issues. For care ethicists, principles can be
useful, but a concern for interpersonal connection tempers them.
Principles and consequences can be important in moral
deliberation, but care theorists seek a more robust and complex sense
of morality that cannot ignore the context and people involved. For
example, the claim that people who spray-paint graffiti on a building
ought to be punished because they have damaged someone else's
property (rule/principle violation) will likely receive widespread
assent. Care ethicists do not necessarily deny such an assertion, but
they want to know more. The person doing the spray-painting is a human
being whose motivations and circumstances may reveal other variables
not sufficiently addressed by the mere recognition of rule violations.
Systemic issues involving social opportunities, discrimination, or
lack of voice may have contributed to this behavior. Care ethicists
shift the moral focus from abstract individuals and their actions to
concrete, situated people with feelings, friends, and
dreams--persons who can be cared about. Care ethics demands
effort, experience, knowledge, imagination, and empathy to effectively
understand the totality of the moral context. The result is not an
exoneration of personal responsibility but a richer understanding of
the human condition where we are all actors and acted upon.
Addams consistently moves beyond formulaic moral accounts of
principles or consequences to apply a kind of care ethics to her
experiences in the Hull House neighborhood. Proximity is once again
crucial as she has direct experience with individuals, providing the
resources for a caring response. However, as a philosopher, Addams
extrapolates her experiences to theorize about others of similar
circumstances. For example, in *The Spirit of Youth and the City
Streets* Addams addresses juvenile delinquency. She recounts
charges against young men who were brought before the Juvenile Court
in Chicago (which Hull House had helped establish). These charges were
categorized by type, such as stealing, which included the pilfering of
pigeons, blankets, and a bicycle. Another category was disorderly
conduct which included picking up coal from railroad tracks, throwing
stones at railroad employees, and breaking down a fence. There was
also vagrancy, which included loafing, sleeping on the streets all
night, and wandering (SYC 56-57). Addams does not deny the
seriousness of some of these infractions, but she does not rush to
judgment, instead choosing to investigate the context further. She
talks to the young men and asks them about their motivations. She
identifies a listlessness, a desire for adventure not quieted by what
the city has to offer: "their very demand for excitement is a
protest against the dullness of life, to which we ourselves
instinctively respond" (SYC 71). Addams views the city as built
around the possibility of factory production but ignores the needs of
future workers. Among "juvenile delinquents," Adams
finds many young people who simply seek adventure and excitement
because their lives have little of it. Had Addams merely abstracted
youth as a category of individuals who seem prone to break the law,
she could have easily found principles to judge them negatively.
However, Addams saw them as humans, many of whom she witnessed growing
up in the neighborhood, and she cared for them beyond the alienating
label of "troubled youth."
More than merely prefiguring care ethics, Addams infuses a high social
responsibility standard into this moral approach. Addams advocates a
duty of social awareness and engagement, thus creating the potential
for care. Many care ethicists are wary of the notion of duty as it has
been traditionally formulated. Moral duties have historically entailed
claims regarding actions that a person is required to offer on behalf
of another. Because the "other" is an abstract other and
the requirements are universalized (I must act in such a way in all
cases), duties toward others have tended toward moral minimums of
obligation. For example, a moral obligation to act is present if
someone's life is in peril and minimal effort is required to
prevent it, such as an infant drowning in 3 inches of bathwater.
Although such cases get widespread agreement, it becomes more
challenging to ascertain what obligation one has to distant others
with unclear expectations of success. For example, many Americans have
disposable income that could save the life of someone in a
poverty-stricken country on a distant continent; do they have a moral
obligation to give them money, and to what extent? Addams constructs
the duty to care differently. Hers is an epistemological demand.
Addams claims that good citizens actively pursue knowledge of
others--not just facts but a more profound
understanding--for the possibility of caring and acting on their
behalf: "if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously
limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have
previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe
our range of life, but limit our scope of ethics" (DSE 8). For
Addams, care ethics must be actively pursued, not passively fostered.
Addams' language is more assertive than much of the current care
ethics discourse.
Finally, Addams extends care ethics to the public realm. She is not
content to compartmentalize personal and social morality. Caring is
what she desires for democracy and its various institutions. Addams
views the residents of social settlements, for example, as having
"an opportunity of seeing institutions from the
recipient's standpoint" because they are not distant
institutions but neighbors. She finds this perspective significant and
believes that it should ultimately "find expression in
institutional management" (OVS 39). Furthermore, she
differentiates the epistemological project of the settlement from the
university in language that acknowledges a caring element: "The
settlement stands for application as opposed to research; for emotion
as opposed to abstraction, for universal interest as opposed to
specialization" (FSS 189). While social settlements epitomize a
democratic endeavor for Addams, she applies the same caring values to
other institutions. The creation of the juvenile courts in Chicago
represented an example of caring because it mandated contextualized
regard for the context of young people. The creation of adult
education that addressed tangible and contemporary issues also
demonstrated a caring regard for the needs of Hull-House neighbors.
Perhaps most of all, the comportment of the Hull-House residents
manifested care ethics in their willingness to listen, learn and
respond. Addams viewed socializing care as participating in a rich
ideal of democracy. |
adorno | ## 1. Biographical Sketch
Born on September 11, 1903 as Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund, Adorno lived
in Frankfurt am Main for the first three decades of his life and the
last two (Muller-Doohm 2005, Claussen 2008). He was the only son
of a wealthy German wine merchant of assimilated Jewish background and
an accomplished musician of Corsican Catholic descent. Adorno studied
philosophy with the neo-Kantian Hans Cornelius and music composition
with Alban Berg. He completed his *Habilitationsschrift* on
Kierkegaard's aesthetics in 1931, under the supervision of the
Christian socialist Paul Tillich. After just two years as a university
instructor (*Privatdozent*), he was expelled by the Nazis,
along with other professors of Jewish heritage or on the political
left. A few years later he turned his father's surname into a middle
initial and adopted "Adorno," the maternal surname by which he is best
known.
Adorno left Germany in the spring of 1934. During the Nazi era he
resided in Oxford, New York City, and southern California. There he
wrote several books for which he later became famous, including
*Dialectic of Enlightenment* (with Max Horkheimer),
*Philosophy of New Music*, *The Authoritarian
Personality* (a collaborative project), and *Minima
Moralia*. From these years come his provocative critiques of mass
culture and the culture industry. Returning to Frankfurt in 1949 to
take up a position in the philosophy department, Adorno quickly
established himself as a leading German intellectual and a central
figure in the Institute of Social Research. Founded as a free-standing
center for Marxist scholarship in 1923, the Institute had been led by
Max Horkheimer since 1930. It provided the hub to what has come to be
known as the Frankfurt School. Adorno became the Institute's director
in 1958. From the 1950s stem *In Search of Wagner*, Adorno's
ideology-critique of the Nazi's favorite composer; *Prisms*, a
collection of social and cultural studies; *Against
Epistemology*, an antifoundationalist critique of Husserlian
phenomenology; and the first volume of *Notes to Literature*, a
collection of essays in literary criticism.
Conflict and consolidation marked the last decade of Adorno's life.
A leading figure in the "positivism dispute" in German sociology,
Adorno was a key player in debates about restructuring German
universities and a lightning rod for both student activists and their
right-wing critics. These controversies did not prevent him from
publishing numerous volumes of music criticism, two more volumes of
*Notes to Literature*, books on Hegel and on existential
philosophy, and collected essays in sociology and in aesthetics.
*Negative Dialectics*, Adorno's magnum opus on epistemology and
metaphysics, appeared in 1966. *Aesthetic Theory*, the other
magnum opus on which he had worked throughout the 1960s, appeared
posthumously in 1970. He died of a heart attack on August
6, 1969, one month shy of his sixty-sixth birthday.
## 2. Dialectic of Enlightenment
Long before "postmodernism" became fashionable, Adorno and Horkheimer
wrote one of the most searching critiques of modernity to have emerged
among progressive European intellectuals. *Dialectic of
Enlightenment* is a product of their wartime exile. It first
appeared as a mimeograph titled *Philosophical Fragments* in
1944. This title became the subtitle when the book was published in
1947. Their book opens with a grim assessment of the modern West:
"Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of
thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and
installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates
under the sign of disaster triumphant" (DE 1, translation
modified). How can this be, the authors ask. How can the progress of
modern science and medicine and industry promise to liberate people
from ignorance, disease, and brutal, mind-numbing work, yet help
create a world where people willingly swallow fascist ideology,
knowingly practice deliberate genocide, and energetically develop
lethal weapons of mass destruction? Reason, they answer, has become
irrational.
Although they cite Francis Bacon as a leading spokesman for an
instrumentalized reason that becomes irrational, Horkheimer and Adorno
do not think that modern science and scientism are the sole culprits.
The tendency of rational progress to become irrational regress arises
much earlier. Indeed, they cite both the Hebrew scriptures and Greek
philosophers as contributing to regressive tendencies. If Horkheimer
and Adorno are right, then a critique of modernity must also be a
critique of premodernity, and a turn toward the postmodern cannot
simply be a return to the premodern. Otherwise the failures of
modernity will continue in a new guise under contemporary conditions.
Society as a whole needs to be transformed.
Horkheimer and Adorno believe that society and culture form a
historical totality, such that the pursuit of freedom in society is
inseparable from the pursuit of enlightenment in culture (DE xvi).
There is a flip side to this: a lack or loss of freedom in
society--in the political, economic, and legal structures within
which we live--signals a concomitant failure in cultural
enlightenment--in philosophy, the arts, religion, and the
like. The Nazi death camps are not an aberration, nor are mindless
studio movies innocent entertainment. Both indicate that something
fundamental has gone wrong in the modern West.
According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the source of today's disaster is
a pattern of blind domination, domination in a triple sense: the
domination of nature by human beings, the domination of nature within
human beings, and, in both of these forms of domination, the
domination of some human beings by others. What motivates such triple
domination is an irrational fear of the unknown: "Humans believe
themselves free of fear when there is no longer anything unknown. This
has determined the path of
demythologization ... . Enlightenment is mythical fear
radicalized" (DE 11). In an unfree society whose culture pursues
so-called progress no matter what the cost, that which is "other,"
whether human or nonhuman, gets shoved aside, exploited, or destroyed.
The means of destruction may be more sophisticated in the modern West,
and the exploitation may be less direct than outright slavery, but
blind, fear-driven domination continues, with ever greater global
consequences. The all-consuming engine driving this process is an
ever-expanding capitalist economy, fed by scientific research and the
latest technologies.
Contrary to some interpretations, Horkheimer and Adorno do not
reject the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Nor do they provide a
negative "metanarrative" of universal historical decline. Rather,
through a highly unusual combination of philosophical argument,
sociological reflection, and literary and cultural commentary, they
construct a "double perspective" on the modern West as a historical
formation (Jarvis 1998, 23). They summarize this double perspective in
two interlinked theses: "Myth is already enlightenment, and
enlightenment reverts to mythology" (DE xviii). The first thesis allows
them to suggest that, despite being declared mythical and outmoded by
the forces of secularization, older rituals,
religions, and philosophies may have contributed to the process of
enlightenment and may still have something worthwhile to contribute.
The second thesis allows them to expose ideological and destructive
tendencies within modern forces of secularization,
but without denying either that these forces are progressive and
enlightening or that the older conceptions they displace were
themselves ideological and destructive.
A fundamental mistake in many interpretations of *Dialectic of
Enlightenment* occurs when readers take such theses to be
theoretical definitions of unchanging categories rather than critical
judgments about historical tendencies. The authors are not saying that
myth is "by nature" a force of enlightenment. Nor are they claiming
that enlightenment "inevitably" reverts to mythology. In fact, what
they find really mythical in both myth and enlightenment is the thought
that fundamental change is impossible. Such resistance to change
characterizes both ancient myths of fate and modern devotion to the
facts.
Accordingly, in constructing a "dialectic of enlightenment" the
authors simultaneously aim to carry out a dialectical enlightenment of
enlightenment not unlike Hegel's *Phenomenology of Spirit*. Two
Hegelian concepts anchor this project, namely, determinate negation
and conceptual self-reflection. "Determinate negation" (*bestimmte
Negation*) indicates that immanent criticism is the way to wrest
truth from ideology. A dialectical enlightenment of enlightenment
"discloses each image as script. It teaches us to read from [the
image's] features the admission of falseness which cancels its power
and hands it over to truth" (DE 18). Beyond and through such
determinate negation, a dialectical enlightenment of enlightenment
also recalls the origin and goal of thought itself. Such recollection
is the work of the concept as the self-reflection of thought (*der
Begriff als Selbstbesinnung des Denkens*, DE 32). Conceptual
self-reflection reveals that thought arises from the very corporeal
needs and desires that get forgotten when thought becomes a mere
instrument of human self-preservation. It also reveals that the goal
of thought is not to continue the blind domination of nature and
humans but to point toward reconciliation. Adorno works out the
details of this conception in his subsequent lectures on Kant (KC),
ethics (PMP), and metaphysics (MCP) and in his books on Husserl (AE),
Hegel (H), and Heidegger (JA). His most comprehensive statement occurs
in *Negative Dialectics*, which is discussed later.
## 3. Critical Social Theory
*Dialectic of Enlightenment* presupposes a critical social
theory indebted to Karl Marx. Adorno reads Marx as a Hegelian
materialist whose critique of capitalism unavoidably includes a
critique of the ideologies that capitalism sustains and requires. The
most important of these is what Marx called "the fetishism of
commodities." Marx aimed his critique of commodity fetishism against
bourgeois social scientists who simply describe the capitalist economy
but, in so doing, simultaneously misdescribe it and prescribe a false
social vision. According to Marx, bourgeois economists necessarily
ignore the exploitation intrinsic to capitalist production. They fail
to understand that capitalist production, for all its surface "freedom"
and "fairness," must extract surplus value from the labor of the
working class. Like ordinary producers and consumers under capitalist
conditions, bourgeois economists treat the commodity as a fetish. They
treat it as if it were a neutral object, with a life of its own, that
directly relates to other commodities, in independence from the human
interactions that actually sustain all commodities. Marx, by contrast,
argues that whatever makes a product a commodity goes back to human
needs, desires, and practices. The commodity would not have "use value"
if it did not satisfy human wants. It would not have "exchange value"
if no one wished to exchange it for something else. And its exchange
value could not be calculated if the commodity did not share with other
commodities a "value" created by the expenditure of human labor power
and measured by the average labor time socially necessary to produce
commodities of various sorts.
Adorno's social theory attempts to make Marx's central insights
applicable to "late capitalism." Although in agreement with Marx's
analysis of the commodity, Adorno thinks his critique of commodity
fetishism does not go far enough. Significant changes have occurred in
the structure of capitalism since Marx's day. This requires revisions
on a number of topics: the dialectic between forces of production and
relations of production; the relationship between state and economy;
the sociology of classes and class consciousness; the nature and
function of ideology; and the role of expert cultures, such as modern
art and social theory, in criticizing capitalism and calling for the
transformation of society as a whole.
The primary clues to these revisions come from a theory of
reification proposed by the Hungarian socialist Georg Lukacs in
the 1920s and from interdisciplinary projects and debates conducted by
members of the Institute of Social Research in the 1930s and 1940s.
Building on Max Weber's theory of rationalization, Lukacs argues
that the capitalist economy is no longer one sector of society
alongside others. Rather, commodity exchange has become the central
organizing principle for all sectors of society. This allows commodity
fetishism to permeate all social institutions (e.g., law,
administration, journalism) as well as all academic disciplines,
including philosophy. "Reification" refers to "the structural process
whereby the commodity form permeates life in capitalist society."
Lukacs was especially concerned with how reification makes human
beings "seem like mere things obeying the inexorable laws of the
marketplace" (Zuidervaart 1991, 76).
Initially Adorno shared this concern, even though he never had
Lukacs's confidence that the revolutionary working class could
overcome reification. Later Adorno called the reification of
consciousness an "epiphenomenon." What a critical social theory really
needs to address is why hunger, poverty, and other forms of human
suffering persist despite the technological and scientific potential to
mitigate them or to eliminate them altogether. The root cause, Adorno says,
lies in how capitalist relations of production have come to dominate
society as a whole, leading to extreme, albeit often invisible,
concentrations of wealth and power (ND 189-92). Society has come to be
organized around the production of exchange values for the sake of
producing exchange values, which, of course, always already requires a
silent appropriation of surplus value. Adorno refers to this nexus of
production and power as the "principle of exchange"
(*Tauschprinzip*). A society where this nexus prevails is an
"exchange society" (*Tauschgesellschaft*).
Adorno's diagnosis of the exchange society has three levels:
politico-economic, social-psychological, and cultural. Politically and
economically he responds to a theory of state capitalism proposed by
Friedrich Pollock during the war years. An economist by training who
was supposed to contribute a chapter to *Dialectic of
Enlightenment* but never did (Wiggershaus 1994, 313-19), Pollock
argued that the state had acquired dominant economic power in Nazi
Germany, the Soviet Union, and New Deal America. He called this new
constellation of politics and economics "state capitalism." While
acknowledging with Pollock that political and economic power have
become more tightly meshed, Adorno does not think this fact changes the
fundamentally economic character of capitalist exploitation. Rather,
such exploitation has become even more abstract than it was in Marx's
day, and therefore all the more effective and pervasive.
The social-psychological level in Adorno's diagnosis serves to
demonstrate the effectiveness and pervasiveness of late capitalist
exploitation. His American studies of anti-Semitism and the
"authoritarian personality" argue that these pathologically extend "the
logic of late capitalism itself, with its associated dialectic of
enlightenment." People who embrace anti-Semitism and fascism tend to
project their fear of abstract domination onto the supposed mediators
of capitalism, while rejecting as elitist "all claims to a qualitative
difference transcending exchange" (Jarvis 1998, 63).
Adorno's cultural studies show that a similar logic prevails in
television, film, and the recording industries. In fact, Adorno first
discovered late capitalism's structural change through his work with
sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld on the Princeton University Radio Research
Project. He articulated this discovery in a widely anthologized essay
"On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening"
(1938) and in "The Culture Industry," a chapter in *Dialectic of
Enlightenment*. There Adorno argues that the culture industry
involves a change in the commodity character of art, such that art's
commodity character is deliberately acknowledged and art "abjures its
autonomy" (DE 127). With its emphasis on marketability, the culture
industry dispenses entirely with the "purposelessness" that was
central to art's autonomy. Once marketability becomes a total demand,
the internal economic structure of cultural commodities
shifts. Instead of promising freedom from societally dictated uses,
and thereby having a genuine use value that people can enjoy, products
mediated by the culture industry have their use value
*replaced* by exchange value: "Everything has value only
in so far as it can be exchanged, not in so far as it is something in
itself. For consumers the use value of art, its essence, is a fetish,
and the fetish--the social valuation [*gesellschaftliche
Schatzung*] which they mistake for the merit [*Rang*]
of works of art-- becomes its only use value, the only quality
they enjoy" (DE 128). Hence the culture industry dissolves the
"genuine commodity character" that artworks once possessed
when exchange value still presupposed use value (DE
129-30). Lacking a background in Marxist theory, and desiring to
secure legitimacy for "mass art" or "popular
culture," too many of Adorno's anglophone critics simply ignore
the main point to his critique of the culture industry. His main point
is that culture-industrial hypercommercialization evidences a fateful
shift in the structure of all commodities and therefore in the
structure of capitalism itself.
## 4. Aesthetic Theory
Philosophical and sociological studies of the arts and literature make
up more than half of Adorno's collected works (*Gesammelte
Schriften*). All of his most important social-theoretical claims
show up in these studies. Yet his "aesthetic writings" are
not simply "applications" or "test cases" for
theses developed in "nonaesthetic" texts. Adorno rejects
any such separation of subject matter from methodology and all neat
divisions of philosophy into specialized subdisciplines. This is one
reason why academic specialists find his texts so challenging, not
only musicologists and literary critics but also epistemologists and
aestheticians. All of his writings contribute to a comprehensive and
interdisciplinary social philosophy (Zuidervaart 2007).
First published the year after Adorno died, *Aesthetic Theory*
marks the unfinished culmination of his remarkably rich body of
aesthetic reflections. It casts retrospective light on the entire
corpus. It also comes closest to the model of "paratactical
presentation" (Hullot-Kentor in AT xi-xxi) that Adorno, inspired
especially by Walter Benjamin, found most appropriate for his own
"atonal philosophy." Relentlessly tracing concentric circles,
*Aesthetic Theory* carries out a dialectical double
reconstruction. It reconstructs the modern art movement from the
perspective of philosophical aesthetics. It simultaneously
reconstructs philosophical aesthetics, especially that of Kant and
Hegel, from the perspective of modern art. From both sides Adorno
tries to elicit the sociohistorical significance of the art and
philosophy discussed.
Adorno's claims about art in general stem from his reconstruction of
the modern art movement. So a summary of his philosophy of art
sometimes needs to signal this by putting "modern" in
parentheses. The book begins and ends with reflections on the social
character of (modern) art. Two themes stand out in these
reflections. One is an updated Hegelian question whether art can
survive in a late capitalist world. The other is an updated Marxian
question whether art can contribute to the transformation of this
world. When addressing both questions, Adorno retains from Kant the
notion that art proper ("fine art" or "beautiful
art"--*schone Kunst*--in Kant's
vocabulary) is characterized by formal autonomy. But Adorno combines
this Kantian emphasis on form with Hegel's emphasis on intellectual
import (*geistiger Gehalt*) and Marx's emphasis on art's
embeddedness in society as a whole. The result is a complex account of
the simultaneous necessity and illusoriness of the artwork's autonomy.
The artwork's necessary and illusory autonomy, in turn, is the key to
(modern) art's social character, namely, to be "the social
antithesis of society" (AT 8).
Adorno regards authentic works of (modern) art as social monads. The
unavoidable tensions within them express unavoidable conflicts within
the larger sociohistorical process from which they arise and to which
they belong. These tensions enter the artwork through the artist's
struggle with sociohistorically laden materials, and they call forth
conflicting interpretations, many of which misread either the
work-internal tensions or their connection to conflicts in society as a
whole. Adorno sees all of these tensions and conflicts as
"contradictions" to be worked through and eventually to be resolved.
Their complete resolution, however, would require a transformation in
society as a whole, which, given his social theory, does not seem
imminent.
As commentary and criticism, Adorno's aesthetic writings are
unparalleled in the subtlety and sophistication with which they trace
work-internal tensions and relate them to unavoidable sociohistorical
conflicts. One gets frequent glimpses of this in *Aesthetic
Theory*. For the most part, however, the book proceeds at the level
of "third reflections"--reflections on categories employed in actual
commentary and criticism, with a view to their suitability for what
artworks express and to their societal implications. Typically he
elaborates these categories as polarities or dialectical pairs.
One such polarity, and a central one in Adorno's theory of artworks
as social monads, occurs between the categories of import
(*Gehalt*) and function (*Funktion*). Adorno's account of
these categories distinguishes his sociology of art from both
hermeneutical and empirical approaches. A hermeneutical approach would
emphasize the artwork's inherent meaning or its cultural significance
and downplay the artwork's political or economic functions. An
empirical approach would investigate causal connections between the
artwork and various social factors without asking hermeneutical
questions about its meaning or significance. Adorno, by contrast,
argues that, both as categories and as phenomena, import and function
need to be understood in terms of each other. On the one hand, an
artwork's import and its functions in society can be diametrically
opposed. On the other hand, one cannot give a proper account of an
artwork's social functions if one does not raise import-related
questions about their significance. So too, an artwork's import
embodies the work's social functions and has potential relevance for
various social contexts. In general, however, and in line with his
critiques of positivism and instrumentalized reason, Adorno gives priority
to import, understood as societally mediated and socially significant
meaning. The social functions emphasized in his own commentaries and
criticisms are primarily intellectual functions rather than
straightforwardly political or economic functions. This is consistent
with a hyperbolic version of the claim that (modern) art is society's
social antithesis: "Insofar as a social function can be predicated for
artworks, it is their functionlessness" (AT 227).
The priority of import also informs Adorno's stance on art and
politics, which derives from debates with Lukacs, Benjamin, and
Bertolt Brecht in the 1930s (Lunn 1982; Zuidervaart 1991,
28-43). Because of the shift in capitalism's structure, and because of
Adorno's own complex emphasis on (modern) art's autonomy, he doubts
both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of tendentious, agitative,
or deliberately consciousness-raising art. Yet he does see politically
engaged art as a partial corrective to the bankrupt aestheticism of
much mainstream art. Under the conditions of late capitalism, the
best art, and politically the most effective, so thoroughly works out
its own internal contradictions that the hidden contradictions in
society can no longer be ignored. The plays of Samuel Beckett, to whom
Adorno had intended to dedicate *Aesthetic Theory*, are
emblematic in that regard. Adorno finds them more true than many
other artworks.
Arguably, the idea of "truth content" (*Wahrheitsgehalt*) is
the pivotal center around which all the concentric circles of Adorno's
aesthetics turn (Zuidervaart 1991; Wellmer 1991, 1-35 ; Jarvis 1998,
90-123). To gain access to this center, one must temporarily suspend
standard theories about the nature of truth (whether as
correspondence, coherence, or pragmatic success) and allow for
artistic truth to be dialectical, disclosive, and
nonpropositional. According to Adorno, each artwork has its own import
(*Gehalt*) by virtue of an internal dialectic between content
(*Inhalt*) and form (*Form*). This import invites
critical judgments about its truth or falsity. To do justice to the
artwork and its import, such critical judgments need to grasp both the
artwork's complex internal dynamics and the dynamics of the
sociohistorical totality to which the artwork belongs. The artwork has
an internal truth content to the extent that the artwork's import can
be found internally and externally either true or false. Such truth
content is not a metaphysical idea or essence hovering outside the
artwork. But neither is it a merely human construct. It is historical
but not arbitrary; nonpropositional, yet calling for propositional
claims to be made about it; utopian in its reach, yet firmly tied to
specific societal conditions. Truth content is the way in which an
artwork simultaneously challenges the way things are and suggests how
things could be better, but leaves things practically unchanged: "Art
has truth as the semblance of the illusionless" (AT 132).
## 5. Negative Dialectics
Adorno's idea of artistic truth content presupposes the
epistemological and metaphysical claims he works out most thoroughly
in *Negative Dialectics*. These claims, in turn, consolidate
and extend the historiographic and social-theoretical arguments
already canvassed. As Simon Jarvis demonstrates, *Negative
Dialectics* tries to formulate a "philosophical materialism" that
is historical and critical but not dogmatic. Alternatively, one can
describe the book as a "metacritique" of idealist philosophy,
especially of the philosophy of Kant and Hegel (Jarvis 1998,
148-74; O'Connor 2004). Adorno says the book aims to complete what he considered his
lifelong task as a philosopher: "to use the strength of the
[epistemic] subject to break through the deception [*Trug*] of
constitutive subjectivity" (ND xx).
This occurs in four stages. First, a long Introduction (ND 1-57)
works out a concept of "philosophical experience" that
both challenges Kant's distinction between "phenomena" and
"noumena" and rejects Hegel's construction of
"absolute spirit." Then Part One (ND 59-131)
distinguishes Adorno's project from the "fundamental
ontology" in Heidegger's *Being and Time*. Part Two (ND
133-207) works out Adorno's alternative with respect to the
categories he reconfigures from German idealism. Part Three (ND
209-408), composing nearly half the book, elaborates
philosophical "models." These present negative dialectics
in action upon key concepts of moral philosophy
("freedom"), philosophy of history ("world
spirit" and "natural history"), and
metaphysics. Adorno says the final model, devoted to metaphysical
questions, "tries by critical self reflection to give the
Copernican revolution an axial turn" (ND xx). Alluding to Kant's
self-proclaimed "second Copernican revolution," this
description echoes Adorno's comment about breaking through the
deception of constitutive subjectivity.
Like Hegel, Adorno criticizes Kant's distinction between phenomena and
noumena by arguing that the transcendental conditions of experience
can be neither so pure nor so separate from each other as Kant seems
to claim. As concepts, for example, the a priori categories of the faculty of
understanding (*Verstand*) would be unintelligible if they were
not already about something that is nonconceptual. Conversely, the
supposedly pure forms of space and time cannot simply be nonconceptual
intuitions. Not even a transcendental philosopher would have access to
them apart from concepts about them. So too, what makes possible any
genuine experience cannot simply be the "application" of a priori
concepts to a priori intuitions via the "schematism" of the
imagination (*Einbildungskraft*). Genuine experience is made
possible by that which exceeds the grasp of thought and
sensibility. Adorno does not call this excess the "thing in itself,"
however, for that would assume the Kantian framework he
criticizes. Rather, he calls it "the nonidentical" (*das
Nichtidentische*).
The concept of the nonidentical, in turn, marks the difference between
Adorno's materialism and Hegel's idealism. Although he shares Hegel's
emphasis on a speculative identity between thought and being, between
subject and object, and between reason and reality, Adorno denies that
this identity has been achieved in a positive fashion. For the most
part this identity has occurred negatively instead. That is to say,
human thought, in achieving identity and unity, has imposed these upon
objects, suppressing or ignoring their differences and diversity.
Such imposition is driven by a societal formation whose exchange
principle demands the equivalence (exchange value) of what is
inherently nonequivalent (use value). Whereas Hegel's speculative
identity amounts to an identity between identity and nonidentity,
Adorno's amounts to a nonidentity between identity and nonidentity.
That is why Adorno calls for a "negative dialectic" and
why he rejects the affirmative character of Hegel's dialectic (ND
143-61).
Adorno does not reject the necessity of conceptual identification,
however, nor does his philosophy claim to have direct access to the
nonidentical. Under current societal conditions, thought can only have
access to the nonidentical via conceptual criticisms of false
identifications. Such criticisms must be "determinate negations,"
pointing up specific contradictions between what thought claims and
what it actually delivers. Through determinate negation, those aspects
of the object which thought misidentifies receive an indirect,
conceptual articulation.
The motivation for Adorno's negative dialectic is not simply
conceptual, however, nor are its intellectual resources. His
epistemology is "materialist" in both regards. It is
motivated, he says, by undeniable human suffering--a fact of
unreason, if you will, to counter Kant's "fact of reason."
Suffering is the corporeal imprint of society and the object upon
human consciousness: "The need to let suffering speak is a
condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon
the subject ... " (ND 17-18). The resources available
to philosophy in this regard include the "expressive" or
"mimetic" dimensions of language, which conflict with
"ordinary" (i.e., societally sanctioned) syntax and
semantics. In philosophy, this requires an emphasis on
"presentation" (*Darstellung*) in which logical
stringency and expressive flexibility interact (ND 18-19,
52-53). Another resource lies in unscripted relationships among
established concepts. By taking such concepts out of their established
patterns and rearranging them in "constellations" around a
specific subject matter, philosophy can unlock some of the historical
dynamic hidden within objects whose identity exceeds the
classifications imposed upon them (ND 52-53, 162-66).
What unifies all of these desiderata, and what most clearly
distinguishes Adorno's materialist epistemology from "idealism,"
whether Kantian or Hegelian, is his insisting on the "priority of the
object" (*Vorrang des Objekts*, ND 183-97). Adorno regards as
"idealist" any philosophy that affirms an identity between subject and
object and thereby assigns constitutive priority to the epistemic
subject. In insisting on the priority of the object, Adorno repeatedly
makes three claims: first, that the epistemic subject is itself
objectively constituted by the society to which it belongs and without
which the subject could not exist; second, that no object can be fully
known according to the rules and procedures of identitarian thinking;
third, that the goal of thought itself, even when thought forgets its
goal under societally induced pressures to impose identity on objects,
is to honor them in their nonidentity, in their difference from what a
restricted rationality declares them to be. Against empiricism,
however, he argues that no object is simply "given" either, both
because it can be an object only in relation to a subject and because
objects are historical and have the potential to change.
Under current conditions the only way for philosophy to give priority
to the object is dialectically, Adorno argues. He describes dialectics
as the attempt to recognize the nonidentity between thought and the
object while carrying out the project of conceptual
identification. Dialectics is "the consistent consciousness of
nonidentity," and contradiction, its central category, is "the
nonidentical under the aspect of identity." Thought itself forces this
emphasis on contradiction upon us, he says. To think is to identify,
and thought can achieve truth only by identifying. So the semblance
(*Schein*) of total identity lives within thought itself,
mingled with thought's truth (*Wahrheit*). The only way to
break through the semblance of total identity is immanently, using the
concept. Accordingly, everything that is qualitatively different and
that resists conceptualization will show up as a contradiction. "The
contradiction is the nonidentical under the aspect of [conceptual]
identity; the primacy of the principle of contradiction in dialectics
tests the heterogeneous according to unitary thought
[*Einheitsdenken*]. By colliding with its own boundary
[*Grenze*], unitary thought surpasses itself. Dialectics is the
consistent consciousness of nonidentity" (ND 5).
But thinking in contradictions is also forced upon philosophy by
society itself. Society is riven with fundamental antagonisms, which,
in accordance with the exchange principle, get covered up by
identitarian thought. The only way to expose these antagonisms, and
thereby to point toward their possible resolution, is to think against
thought--in other words, to think in contradictions. In this way
"contradiction" cannot be ascribed neatly to either thought or
reality. Instead it is a "category of reflection"
(*Reflexionskategorie*) , enabling a thoughtful confrontation
between concept (*Begriff*) and subject matter or object
(*Sache*): "To proceed dialectically means to think in
contradictions, for the sake of the contradiction already experienced
in the object [*Sache*], and against that contradiction. A
contradiction in reality, [dialectics] is a contradiction against
reality" (ND 144-45).
The point of thinking in contradictions is not simply negative,
however. It has a fragile, transformative horizon, namely, a society
that would no longer be riven with fundamental antagonisms, thinking
that would be rid of the compulsion to dominate through conceptual
identification, and the flourishing of particular objects in their
particularity. Because Adorno is convinced that contemporary society
has the resources to alleviate the suffering it nevertheless
perpetuates, his negative dialectics has a utopian reach: "In view of
the concrete possibility of utopia, dialectics is the ontology of the
false condition. A right condition would be freed from dialectics, no
more system than contradiction" (ND 11). Such a "right condition"
would be one of reconciliation between humans and nature, including
the nature within human beings, and among human beings
themselves. This idea of reconciliation sustains Adorno's reflections
on ethics and metaphysics.
## 6. Ethics and Metaphysics after Auschwitz
Like Adorno's epistemology, his moral philosophy derives from a
materialistic metacritique of German idealism. The model on "Freedom"
in *Negative Dialectics* (ND 211-99) conducts a metacritique of
Kant's critique of practical reason. So too, the model on "World
Spirit and Natural History" (ND 300-60) provides a metacritique of
Hegel's philosophy of history. Both models simultaneously carry out a
subterranean debate with the Marxist tradition, and this debate guides
Adorno's appropriation of both Kantian and Hegelian "practical
philosophy."
The first section in the Introduction to *Negative Dialectics*
indicates the direction Adorno's appropriation will take (ND
3-4). There he asks whether and how philosophy is still
possible. Adorno asks this against the backdrop of Karl Marx's
*Theses on Feuerbach*, which famously proclaimed that
philosophy's task is not simply to interpret the world but to change
it. In distinguishing his historical materialism from the sensory
materialism of Ludwig Feuerbach, Marx portrays human beings as
fundamentally productive and political organisms whose interrelations
are not merely interpersonal but societal and historical. Marx's
emphasis on production, politics, society, and history takes his
epistemology in a "pragmatic"
direction. "Truth" does not indicate the abstract
correspondence between thought and reality, between proposition and
fact, he says. Instead, "truth" refers to the economic,
political, societal, and historical fruitfulness of thought in
practice.
Although Adorno shares many of Marx's anthropological intuitions, he
thinks that a twentieth-century equation of truth with practical
fruitfulness had disastrous effects on both sides of the iron curtain.
The Introduction to *Negative Dialectics* begins by making two
claims. First, although apparently obsolete, philosophy remains
necessary because capitalism has not been overthrown. Second, Marx's
interpretation of capitalist society was inadequate and his critique
is outmoded. Hence, praxis no longer serves as an adequate basis for
challenging (philosophical) theory. In fact, praxis serves mostly as a
pretext for shutting down the theoretical critique that transformative
praxis would require. Having missed the moment of its realization (via
the proletarian revolution, according to early Marx), philosophy today
must criticize itself: its societal naivete, its intellectual
antiquation, its inability to grasp the power at work in industrial
late capitalism. While still pretending to grasp the whole, philosophy
fails to recognize how thoroughly it depends upon society as a whole,
all the way into philosophy's "immanent truth" (ND
4). Philosophy must shed such naivete. It must ask, as Kant asked
about metaphysics after Hume's critique of rationalism, How is
philosophy still possible? More specifically, How, after the collapse
of Hegelian thought, is philosophy still possible? How can the
dialectical effort to conceptualize the nonconceptual--which Marx
also pursued--how can this philosophy be continued?
This self-implicating critique of the relation between theory and
practice is one crucial source to Adorno's reflections on ethics and
metaphysics. Another is the catastrophic impact of twentieth-century
history on the prospects for imagining and achieving a more humane
world. Adorno's is an ethics and metaphysics "after Auschwitz"
(Bernstein 2001, 371-414; Zuidervaart 2007, 48-76). Ethically, he
says, Hitler's barbarism imposes a "new categorical imperative" on
human beings in their condition of unfreedom: so to arrange their
thought and action that "Auschwitz would not repeat itself, [that]
nothing similar would happen" (ND 365). Metaphysically, philosophers
must find historically appropriate ways to speak about meaning and
truth and suffering that neither deny nor affirm the existence of a
world transcendent to the one we know. Whereas denying it would
suppress the suffering that calls out for fundamental change,
straightforwardly affirming the existence of utopia would cut off the
critique of contemporary society and the struggle to change it. The
basis for Adorno's double strategy is not a hidden ontology, as some
have suggested, but rather a "speculative" or "metaphysical"
experience. Adorno appeals to the experience that thought which "does
not decapitate itself" flows into the idea of a world where "not only
extant suffering would be abolished but also suffering that is
irrevocably past would be revoked" (403). Neither logical positivist
antimetaphysics nor Heideggerian hypermetaphysics can do justice to
this experience.
Adorno indicates his own alternative to both traditional metaphysics
and more recent antimetaphysics in passages that juxtapose resolute
self-criticism and impassioned hope. His historiographic, social
theoretical, aesthetic, and negative dialectical concerns meet in
passages such as this:
>
> Thought that does not capitulate before
> wretched existence comes to nought before its criteria, truth becomes
> untruth, philosophy becomes folly. And yet philosophy cannot give up,
> lest idiocy triumph in actualized unreason [*Widervernunft*]
> ... Folly is truth in the shape that human beings must accept
> whenever, amid the untrue, they do not give up truth. Even at the
> highest peaks art is semblance; but art receives the semblance
> ... from nonsemblance [*vom
> Scheinlosen*] ... . No light falls on people and
> things in which transcendence would not appear
> [*widerschiene*]. Indelible in resistance to the fungible world
> of exchange is the resistance of the eye that does not want the
> world's colors to vanish. In semblance nonsemblance is promised (ND
> 404-5).
Addressing such passages is crucial in the ongoing assessment of
Adorno's philosophy. |
advance-directives | ## 1. The orthodox legal view
In legal contexts, two general standards or approaches to question
Q2 have been developed:
>
>
> **The Substituted Judgment standard**:
> The surrogate's task is to
> reconstruct what the patient himself would have wanted, in the
> circumstances at hand, if the patient had decision-making capacity.
> Substantive advance directives are here thought of as a helpful
> mechanism for aiding the application of Substituted Judgment. The
> moral principle underlying this legal standard is the principle of
> respect
> for
> autonomy,
> supplemented by the idea that when a patient is not currently capable
> of making a decision for himself, we can nonetheless respect his
> autonomy by following or reconstructing, as best we can, the
> autonomous decision he would have made if he were able. In a subset
> of cases, a substituted judgment can implement an actual earlier
> decision of the patient, made in anticipation of the current
> circumstances; this is known as precedent autonomy.
>
>
>
> **The Best Interests standard**:
> The surrogate is to decide based
> on what, in general, would be good for the
> patient. The moral principle underlying this standard is the principle of
> beneficence.
> This legal standard has traditionally assumed a quite generic view of
> interests, asking what a "reasonable" person would want under the
> circumstances and focusing on general goods such as freedom from pain,
> comfort, restoration and/or development of the patient's physical and
> mental capacities. This is because the Best Interests standard has
> mainly been employed when there is little or no information about the
> patient's specific values and preferences. However, the concept of
> best interests is simply the concept of what is best for the
> person. There is no reason why, in principle, the Best Interests
> judgment could not be as nuanced and individual as the best theory of
> well-being
> dictates.
>
>
>
In practice, the main difference between the two standards is often
thought to be this. Substituted Judgment endeavors to reconstruct the
subjective point of view of the patient -- i.e., the patient's
own view of his interests -- whenever such reconstruction is a
viable possibility. By contrast, the Best Interests standard allows
for a more generic view of interests, without having to rely on the
idiosyncratic values and preferences of the patient in question.
The applicability of these standards depends on the context in which
the lack of decision-making capacity occurs. Let us distinguish two
groups of patients:
>
>
> **Formerly Competent**:
> Patients who used to have the relevant
> decision-making capacity,
> but lost it, for example, due to Alzheimer's disease or
> other medical problems (or procedures such as surgical anesthesia)
> undermining normal brain functioning.
>
>
>
> **Never-been Competent**:
> Patients who have never had the
> relevant decision-making capacity, either because the capacity has not
> yet developed (as in children), or because of a permanent brain
> deficiency such as severe congenital mental retardation.
>
>
>
The Substituted Judgment standard seems well-suited to the
circumstances of the formerly competent patients since, in their case,
there are past values or patterns of decision-making that could
potentially serve as a basis for the reconstructed decision on the
patient's behalf. Furthermore, according to the current orthodoxy,
prevalent especially in the law, Substituted Judgment is the preferred
solution for formerly competent patients because it promises to preserve respect for
autonomy
as an overriding moral consideration trumping concerns with
beneficence.
The picture is this. If, ordinarily, we ought to respect patient
autonomy rather than impose our own judgments on patients, we ought to
respect autonomy even after the patient has lost decision-making
capacity; and we can do so by following or reconstructing, as best we
can, the autonomous decision the patient would have made himself when
faced with the current circumstances. In short, in dealing with
someone who used to be competent, the widely accepted primacy of
respect for autonomy over beneficence calls for Substituted
Judgment. And this means that we should use the Substituted Judgment
standard whenever possible and fall back on the Best Interests
standard only when we lack sufficient information about the patient's
prior wishes and values to make Substituted Judgment practicable.
By contrast, for the "never-been competent" patients, the
Substituted Judgment standard does not seem applicable (e.g., Cantor 2005):
if the patient has never been able to make autonomous decisions in
circumstances such as the current one, it seems impossible to
reconstruct what the patient's decision would have been. For these
patients, the Best Interests standard is the only option.
When combined, these orthodox views generate one unified simple
ordering of priority among the several standards and mechanisms for
surrogate decision-making, an ordering found in answers to Q2 and Q2a
prevailing in the literature (e.g., Brock 1995):
1. Honor a substantive advance directive, as an aid to Substituted
Judgment, whenever such directive is available.
2. Absent
an advance directive, apply the Substituted Judgment standard based on
available information about the patient's past decisions and
values.
3. If you cannot apply the Substituted Judgment standard -- either because
the patient has never been competent or because information about the
patient's former wishes and values is unavailable -- use the Best
Interests standard.
Is this orthodox view correct?
## 2. Challenges to the orthodox view regarding the never competent
Concerning patients who have never been competent, the orthodox view,
as it is typically interpreted, may be misleading in certain cases. By
recommending the Best Interests standard as opposed to the Substituted
Judgment standard, the orthodox view may help create the impression
that, for those who have never had decision-making capacity, only a
one-size-fits-all objective assessment of their interests, based on
generic goals such as prolonging life or avoiding pain, is
available. However, a person may lack decision-making capacity but
nonetheless possess the proper starting points of decision-making, so
that a surrogate could still reconstruct deeply personal and
idiosyncratic choices on the person's behalf. Consider a child or a
mildly retarded patient who lacks the capacity to make a sophisticated
medical decision because she cannot fully grasp the complex
consequences of the available options, or because, if left to her own
devices, she would merely choose impulsively. Yet, very meaningful and
personally distinctive issues may be at stake for this individual: for
instance, alternative treatments may differently impact her
relationships with loved ones or differently affect her ability to
continue participating in deeply valued activities such as painting or
dancing. In such cases, to best serve the interests of the patient,
surrogates arguably need to reconstruct the subjective point of view
of the patient, and not just fall back on generic choices that
"a reasonable person" would make under the
circumstances. In short, sometimes -- especially in dealing with
patients with rich inner lives whose decision-making is nevertheless
impaired -- the application of the Best Interests standard may
look an awful lot like an exercise of Substituted Judgment.
It is only with regards to patients who do not even possess the
starting points of decisions -- for example, infants or more severely
brain damaged individuals -- that the idea of reconstructing the
individual's own point of view as a basis for a decision does not even
coherently apply, and the more generic application of the Best
Interests standard is called for.
Nonetheless, this is only a challenge to the narrow way in which the
Best Interests standard has typically been employed: a more nuanced
interpretation of the orthodox view can handle the cases of the
never-competent appropriately. The application of Best Interests can,
in many instances, procedurally resemble the application of
Substituted Judgment because, on any reasonable theory of
well-being,
a large part of what counts as good for a person is attaining what she
values or succeeding in what she cares about. It is thus not
surprising that reconstructing the individual's viewpoint is an
important part of a nuanced interpretation of Best Interests. Yet,
even though in employing the Best Interests standard one usually must
take very seriously the subject's own viewpoint, one is not thereby
recreating the autonomous choice the person would have made. This is
particularly clear for those who have never been competent: one cannot
be respecting their autonomy (at least not on the usual understanding
of autonomous choice), since they have never had autonomy. Moreover,
even in undertaking to respect their "starting points of
decision-making," one would not treat these starting points as
entirely decisive. An individual who has never been competent may
value something that would be terribly destructive to her other values
(and be incapable of realizing this), and so, to protect her, the Best
Interests standard would have to focus on those other values. So here
again the application of the Best Interests standard diverges from
what would most plausibly count as a reconstruction of the subject's
own autonomous choice. Given that Substituted Judgment is grounded in
respect for autonomy, it is thus clear why, according to the orthodox
view, Substituted Judgment makes no sense for the never-competent, and
why the orthodox view prescribes for them the Best Interests standard,
albeit interpreted in a suitably broad way.
As already noted, different views on how to apply the Best Interests
standard roughly correspond to different theories of
well-being.
However, theories of well-being are normally developed with an
ordinary fully-capacitated human being in mind, so, when applied to
those whose incompetence is due, in part, to substantial deviations
from this paradigm, some theories need to be adjusted to accommodate
human beings who do not at the time, or ever, possess the paradigm
capacities these theories presume (for example, the capacity to
experience the pleasures of the intellect, or the capacity to
desire). The understanding of well-being and the specifics of applying
the Best Interests standard in such cases must be tailored to the
details of each particular real-life condition -- and to the
corresponding levels of mental functioning. Interests of children,
including infants, have received some attention in the literature
(Buchanan and Brock 1990, ch.5, Schapiro 1999); similar tailor-made
analyses are needed for individual mental illnesses and brain
deficits.
## 3. Conflicts across time in the formerly competent
The orthodox view regarding the formerly competent faces deeper
challenges. In giving priority to Advance Directives and Substituted
Judgment, the orthodox view overlooks the possibility that the earlier
competent self and the current incompetent self may have conflicting
interests. Advance Directives and Substituted Judgment are best suited
for the contexts for which they were first developed in the law
-- conditions involving loss of consciousness such as persistent
vegetative state -- where the patient in the current incompetent
state cannot have interests potentially different from the interests
of the person he used to be. However, loss of decision-making capacity
often comes about in less drastic, yet permanent conditions, which can
leave the current incompetent patient with what seem to be powerful
new interests in his new phase of life. Classic cases of this sort
occur in Alzheimer's disease, other forms of dementia, and
stroke. Before the loss of capacity, typically, the patient had
numerous interests associated with his rich mental life and with a
correspondingly complex set of values. Once mental deterioration
progresses, the patient's universe of interests shrinks and new
interests may become dominant. Sometimes the two sets of interests can
come into conflict. Imagine, for example, a fully competent patient
who, in anticipation of developing Alzheimer's disease, espouses a
strong conviction, perhaps documented in an advance directive, that
she does not wish to have her life prolonged in a demented state. She
deeply identifies with her intellect, and thus views life with
dementia as terribly degrading. But once she develops dementia, her
identification with her intellect drops out as a concern, so she loses
the corresponding desire not to prolong her life. In the meantime, she
is still capable of simple enjoyments -- she likes gardening or
listening to music -- and perhaps can even carry on meaningful
human attachments. Her current, truncated set of interests does seem
to favor continued life. Such scenarios raise difficult questions of
how the interests of the earlier and current self ought to be balanced
in surrogate decision-making. Privileging advance directives and
recreating the judgment of the earlier self via substituted judgment
are no longer the obvious solutions, given this conflict.
Much of the philosophical literature on surrogate decision-making has
focused on conflicts of this kind. There are subtle differences,
though, in how this conflict is conceptualized -- more
specifically, in how the interests of the earlier self are viewed
-- sometimes stemming from differences in what is taken as a
paradigm example of the conflict. On one view, the relevant interests
of the earlier self are autonomy interests: what matters is that the
choices of the earlier self be heeded. With this emphasis, the
conflict is between the autonomy of the earlier self and the
well-being of the current self. On an alternative conception, the
interests of the earlier self are well-being interests: what matters
is that the earlier self fares well overall. The conflict, then, is
between the well-being of the earlier self and the well-being of the
current self. One may also consider both aspects of the conflict as
relevant. The arguments below apply to all three interpretations of
the conflict.
### 3.1 Threshold of authority approach
One way to rescue the idea that the former self and its interests
ought to have priority is to appeal to the special *authority*
of the former self over the current self. The grounds of this authority
are cashed out differently in different views, but the basic thought is
that the former self's superior capacities give her standing to govern
the current self. Once the current self falls below a certain threshold
of capacity, her interests in her current state are so marginal as to
no longer be authoritative for how she ought to be cared for, and the
interests of the earlier self trump.
Several lines of argument have been used to establish the authority of
the earlier self over the current self. One is to deny altogether the
independence of the current self's interests. On this interpretation,
the conflict described above is merely apparent. Once the current self
falls below the relevant threshold of capacity, she is incapable of
generating her own independent interests, and, despite superficial
appearances to the contrary, her fundamental interests are really
defined by the earlier self. The interests of the current self are
straightforwardly not authoritative since they are merely apparent
interests. Further, even were we to accept that the current self has
her own independent interests, there are other reasons to see those
interests as lacking authority. If one insists on the priority of
respect for autonomy over beneficence, or if one views the capacity
for autonomy as the essential core of a person, the interests of the
earlier self will be seen as having authority over the current self
because only the earlier self is capable of autonomy. Ronald Dworkin's
analysis combines all of these lines of argument (Dworkin 1993).
Different versions of the threshold approach propose somewhat
different thresholds for when the current interests of a formerly
competent individual cease to be authoritative. It is usually accepted
that the mere loss of decision-making capacity is insufficient
(Dworkin 1993, 222-29). Decision-making capacity is context-specific
and depends on the complexity of the pertinent information that the
decision-maker needs to process. A person may lose the ability to make
very complex medical decisions, while still being able to decide
perfectly well about simpler everyday matters. Lapses of this nature
would not give the surrogate a license to discount the current
well-being of the individual in favor of what mattered to him
earlier. By contrast, transformations that could leave authority with
the past self must involve a more global loss of capacity such that
one can no longer generate, in any context, interests of a special,
morally weighty type. In crossing this threshold, one ceases to be a
being of a certain morally privileged kind: for instance, one ceases
to be an autonomous individual, or one turns from a person into a
nonperson. If an autonomous individual loses his capacity for autonomy
altogether -- the thought then goes -- he may have some
local (possibly merely illusory) interests associated with the
non-autonomous self, but his affairs ought to be conducted in
accordance with his earlier wishes expressive of his autonomy. Or, in
the parallel version, if a person turns into a nonperson, he may have
some local (possibly illusory) interests as a nonperson, but his
affairs ought to be conducted so as to advance the interests of the
person he used to be.
Within this basic framework, several variants are possible, depending
on what one takes to be the essential characteristics of a person, or,
if one accepts the capacity for autonomy as the essence of personhood,
depending on what one takes to be the core aspects of autonomy.
Ronald Dworkin's influential work defends the capacity for autonomy as
the relevant threshold, with autonomy interpreted as "the
ability to act out of genuine preference or character or conviction or
a sense of self" (Dworkin 1993, 225). If an individual has lost
the capacity for autonomy so understood, this view dictates that her
current interests (illusory or not) have no authority over decisions
on her behalf, and surrogates ought to cater to her former interests,
from before the loss.
It is, however, important to notice that the capacity for autonomy, as
interpreted by Dworkin, comprises two distinct abilities: (1) the
ability to espouse a "genuine preference or character or
conviction or a sense of self" -- what may be called, for
short, the ability to value -- and (2) the ability to act out of
one's sense of conviction, that is, the ability to enact one's values
in the complex circumstances of the real world. In many brain
disorders these two abilities come apart. For example, a patient in
the middle stages of Alzheimer's disease may retain genuine values
-- she may hold on to family ties or to the conviction that
helping others is good -- and yet, due to a rapid
deterioration of short-term memory, she may be perpetually confused
and unable to figure out how to enact these values in the concrete
circumstances of her life. The set of values such a patient retains
would typically be a curtailment of the original set, introducing the
potential for conflict between the interests of the earlier and
current self. For example, earlier, the person may have valued
independence above all else, and so was adamantly against having her
life prolonged if she developed Alzheimer's disease. Now, in moderate
stages of Alzheimer's, she has lost her commitment to independence,
but still values emotional connections to family members, and thus has
a strong interest in continuing to live. On Dworkin's approach to
decisions on this individual's behalf, her current interests are not
allowed to override her earlier interests because she has lost her
standing as an autonomous agent: due to her confusion, she is unable
to act on her commitment to the family ties or on any other values
-- she is unable to run her life by her own lights, that is, to
govern herself. However, on an alternative view (Jaworska 1999), what
matters most for autonomy and personhood are the starting points of
autonomous decision-making: the genuine values that the person still
holds. So long as an individual is capable of valuing, she remains a
being of a morally privileged type, and interests stemming from her
values have the authority to dictate how the individual ought to be
treated. The person need not be able to enact her values on her own
-- it is part of the surrogate's role to assist with this
task. In short, on this alternative view, the capacity to value marks
the morally crucial threshold above which the current interests of a
formerly competent individual remain authoritative for the surrogate's
decisions and the conflicting interests of the earlier self can be set
aside.
The two views I have just discussed share the underlying idea of a
threshold of capacity beyond which an individual's current interests
lose authority. This idea has been challenged in several ways.
### 3.2 Challenge I: Appeal to the forward-looking perspective of decision-making
The most straightforward challenge emphasizes that decision-making
inherently involves a present- and future-oriented perspective: the
surrogate must make the best decision for the patient in front of him
about how to manage this patient's life from now on. The patient may
have had different interests in the past, but how can these be
relevant to current decisions, which can only affect the present and
future but not the past? This approach may accept it as unfortunate
that the patient's past interests were left unfulfilled, but insists
that this unfortunate fact cannot be remedied, and that there is no
use in catering to bygone interests in current decision-making
(Dresser 1986).
An advocate of the threshold view, such as Dworkin, would emphasize
two points in response:
First, past interests can often be satisfied in the present. Dworkin
distinguishes between what he calls "experiential" and
"critical" interests (Dworkin 1993, 201-08). Experiential
interests are, roughly, interests in having desirable felt
experiences, such as enjoyment (and in avoiding undesirable
experiences, such as boredom). These interests are indeed tied to the
present: there is no point in trying to satisfy one's past
experiential interest in a specific enjoyment (for instance, in
playing with dolls), if one at present has no hope of still deriving
enjoyment from what one used to enjoy in the past. By contrast,
critical interests are not tied to the experience of their
satisfaction; these are interests in having what one values or cares
about become a reality, such as a parent's interest in the success and
prosperity of his child or a sailor's interest in preserving his
beautiful wooden boat. According to Dworkin, such interests can be
meaningfully satisfied even if they belong in the past: for example,
even after the sailor dies, it makes sense to preserve the boat he
cared about and do so for his sake. Similarly, according to Dworkin,
it makes sense to satisfy a formerly competent person's critical
interests, such as the interest in avoiding the indignity of dementia,
for her sake, even if she has ceased to understand those critical
interests now.
Second, on a view like Dworkin's, the past critical interests of an
individual who formerly possessed the capacity for autonomy are, in a
crucial sense, still her interests in the present, even if she can no
longer take an interest in them. This is an essential element of the
claim that the patient's earlier autonomous self has authority over
her current non-autonomous self. The thought is this. For any person,
the interests she has autonomously defined for herself are her most
important interests. And this is so even for an individual who has
lost her capacity for autonomy or her personhood: so long as the
individual survives the loss as numerically the same entity, her
interests stemming from autonomy (or the subset of them that can still
be satisfied) remain her most important interests, even if she can't
espouse them now, and they are, in this sense, "past."
Thus, Dworkin offers a powerful rationale for why satisfying
"past" interests can still matter, and matter very deeply,
in the present.
### 3.3 Challenge II: Exercise of will as the point of autonomy
The versions of the threshold view that see the capacity for autonomy
as the relevant threshold can be challenged by approaches that cast
the requirements of the capacity for autonomy as being so minimal
that *any* individual capable of generating independent
interests in his deteriorated state counts as autonomous. On such
approaches, conflicts between earlier interests grounded in autonomy
and later interests no longer so grounded become impossible, and the
claim of authority of the earlier autonomous self over the current
non-autonomous self loses its bite: the threshold of autonomy is so
low as to cease to mark any contestable difference in authority. Seana
Shiffrin's response to Dworkin can be interpreted as a view of this
sort (Shiffrin 2004). Shiffrin sees a key point of autonomy in the
ability to exercise one's own will: the ability to control one's
experiences through the enactment of one's own choice. Shiffrin
emphasizes that so long as an individual has this ability, its
exercise calls for protection, and this is a crucial part of what we
protect when we respect autonomy. On this picture, so long as an
individual is able to make choices, have preferences, exhibit a will,
etc., there is a rationale for catering to his current interests, and
so his current interests have authority to override interests espoused
in the past.
The proponent of the threshold view may, in response, acknowledge
the importance of the ability to control one's experience through acts
of will, but still insist that a more robust capacity for autonomy --
for example, a capacity that involves expression of values and not just
mere preferences -- has moral importance of an altogether different
order. This difference can then support the position that, in cases of
conflicts between an earlier self capable of such robust autonomy and a
current self merely capable of exercises of will, the earlier self
retains authority and her interests ought to be heeded.
### 3.4 Challenge III: Loss of personal identity
According to the threshold views, the earlier self has authority to
determine the overall interests of the patient because the current
self has lost crucial abilities that would allow it to ground these
overall interests anew. This picture assumes that the earlier and
current self are stages in the life of one entity, so that, despite
the talk of local interests associated with each life-stage, there is
an underlying continuity of interests between the two. But this is a
very substantial assumption, and it has been contested by appeal to an
influencial account of the metaphysics of
personal identity
over time, the psychological continuity account. Roughly,
the idea is that, in the wake of a drastic transformation of one's
psychology such as Alzheimer's disease, one does not survive as
numerically the same individual, so whatever interests one's
predecessor in one's body may have had are not a suitable basis for
decisions on behalf of the new individual who has emerged after the
transformation (Dresser 1986). The lack of identity between the earlier
and current self undercuts the authority of the former over the
latter.
This approach works best in cases in which we can assume that the
new entity emerging after the psychological transformation is still a
person: the interests of the earlier self cannot dictate how the
current self ought to be treated because it would be a clear violation
of the rights of persons to allow one person to usurp the affairs of
another. (Some may doubt whether loss of numerical identity without
loss of personhood is even possible in any real-life cases of dementia
or brain damage, but the theoretical point still holds.) What, though,
if the psychological deterioration is indeed severe enough to strip the
resulting entity of the capacities of a person?
Some might see the loss of personhood as a particularly clear-cut
sign of a change in numerical identity: if the current self is not even
a person, surely the current self cannot be the same person as the
earlier self. However, as David DeGrazia has emphasized, this line of
reasoning rests on an undefended (and controversial) assumption that we
are essentially persons (DeGrazia 1999). For if we are not essentially
persons -- but, rather, for example, conscious minds of some other,
less complex kind -- an individual may very well lose the properties of
a person without any threat to his numerical survival.
Nonetheless, even if we are not essentially persons, on the
psychological view of our identity, we are essentially defined by our
psychological properties. If these properties change drastically
enough, the old individual ceases to exist and a new individual comes
into existence. And the transformation of a person into a nonperson
does seem to be a drastic psychological transformation. Thus, even if
DeGrazia is right that loss of numerical identity does not
automatically follow from loss of personhood, it is certainly
possible, and perhaps even likely, on the psychological view of our
identity, that a transformation of a person into a nonperson would
involve such a profound psychological alteration as to result in a
numerically new being. How should we adjudicate conflicts between the
earlier and the current individual in such cases?
On one view, if a person turns into a new individual in the later
stages of dementia, this by itself undercuts the authority of the
earlier person over her successor, regardless of whether the successor
is a person or not. After all, why should an altogether different
individual dictate how the current self is to be treated? However, more
nuanced positions can also be found in the literature. Buchanan and
Brock (1990) see the authority of the earlier self in cases of loss of
numerical identity as crucially dependent on whether the current self
is still a person. They accept that if the current self is a person, it
would be a violation of her rights as a person to allow another
individual to commandeer her affairs. However, if the current self is
no longer a person, he lacks the same rights. And, as Buchanan and
Brock see it, the earlier self has "something like a property
right... to determine what happens to [his] nonperson successor"
(166). That is, if one ceases to exist by turning into a nonperson, one
retains a quasi-property right to control the resulting nonperson,
presumably in much the same way that, when one ceases to exist by
turning into a corpse, one has a quasi-property right to control the
resulting corpse. Hence, on this approach, even if the earlier and
current self are distinct individuals, the earlier self has the
authority to determine what happens to the current self, so long as the
current self has been stripped of personhood. In this way, the idea of
a threshold of capacity beyond which the earlier self gains authority
to dictate the current self's affairs is resurrected, despite the
assumption that the earlier and current self are not the same
individual. But, this time, the basis of the authority is different: it
is not grounded in the continuity of overall interests between the two
selves, but rather in the earlier self's quasi-property right. Note,
though, that the claim that quasi-property rights could extend to
rights over successors who are nonetheless conscious beings is
controversial and requires further defense.
### 3.5 Challenge IV: Severance of prudential concern
It is possible to retain the intuitive idea that the weakness of
psychological connections between the two selves undermines the
authority of the earlier self over the current self without accepting
the metaphysical view that the earlier and current self are numerically
distinct entities. Suppose we maintain that even the most drastic
mental deterioration is not equivalent to death -- that the same
individual persists through the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. We can
still question the continuity of interest between the earlier and
current self by examining the concern the earlier and current self
would appropriately have for one another (McMahan 2002).
Ordinarily, each of us has a very unique type of concern for our own
past and future selves: it matters to you, in a very special way, what
happens to *you*, what experiences *you* undergo, how
*you* act, etc., now, in the future, and in the past. Call this
special species of concern *prudential concern*. We normally
assume that prudential concern strictly tracks personal identity: one
has prudential concern only for oneself and one is always concerned
with oneself in this way. By contrast, Jeff McMahan has argued that (at
least within the bounds of numerical identity) prudential concern also
ought to track the degree of psychological ties: prudential concern of
two selves at different stages of life for one another ought to weaken
in proportion to the weakness of the psychological connection between
them (McMahan 2002, 69-82). In the context of the severe psychological
transformations caused by a disease like Alzheimer's, this means that
the appropriate level of prudential concern of the earlier and current
self for one another would be rather slight. The two selves are not
bound by a sufficiently strong common prudential interest, and so the
person's earlier interests, no matter how important, do not transfer as
particularly important interests of her current psychologically
disconnected self. Any potential conflicts between the interests of the
two selves are now akin to conflicts between two entities with
altogether independent interests.
David DeGrazia has tried to counter this picture by suggesting that,
in addition to the factors discussed by McMahan, the earlier self's
appropriate degree of prudential concern for the current self can be
boosted by the earlier self's autonomously formed self-narrative: if
the earlier self identified with the current self, in the sense of
seeing the current self as a true stage in the unfolding complex
narrative of her life, strong prudential concern is warranted (DeGrazia
2005, 196). Oddly, this view makes the rational level of prudential
concern for the future partly a matter of choice of the earlier self.
Yet, unlike our ordinary concerns for specific plans, projects, other
people, etc., which are up to us, prudential concern is a requirement
of rationality and should not be a matter of choice. Just as we cannot
rationally have prudential concern for someone else simply because we
happen to incorporate (perhaps delusionally) their life into our
self-narrative, similarly, if we are not otherwise warranted to have
prudential concern for our own future self, we cannot change this
simply by virtue of how we happen to construct our self-narrative.
Return, then, to McMahan's picture. If the interests of the earlier
and current self are genuinely prudentially estranged and independent,
how should we resolve conflicts between them?
When the current self is still a person, her rights as a person call
for allowing her interests to control her treatment and against letting
the interests of the earlier self interfere; any weakness in the
current self's prudential connection to the earlier self merely
reinforces this stance. But how should we balance the interests of the
two prudentially estranged selves when the current self is not a
person?
McMahan himself suggests that, in a conflict between an earlier person
and a current nonperson, the interests of the earlier person ought to
trump (McMahan 2002, 502-03). He emphasizes that the earlier self is a
"higher self," "rational and autonomous," and
that her interests are associated with the dominant, more substantial
and lengthy part of life, integrated -- through strong prudential
connections among its various stages -- into one unified life-segment.
But part of McMahan's reasoning is also that the interests of the
current nonperson are, as types of interests, not very substantial.
Here McMahan relies on the specifics of the example of conflict he
happens to analyze (a version of the "preference to die"
example we saw earlier), together with a controversial claim that a
severely demented patient would not have a strong interest in
continuing to live.
While McMahan may be right that strong interests of an earlier
person trump comparatively trivial interests of a current nonperson,
his answer covers only a subset of possible conflicts between the
earlier and current self. It is much more difficult to arbitrate
between the two selves when the interests of the current nonperson are
also substantial. I have argued (Jaworska unpublished) that when the
interests of the earlier person are relatively minor, substantial
interests of the current nonperson ought to trump. Thus, for example,
if the earlier self had only a relatively weak preference to die --
let's say she simply didn't want to further complicate relationships
with family members for whom she happened not to care all that much --
the current self's substantial interest in continuing to live ought to
prevail. More controversially, I also argued that highly vital
interests of the current nonperson ought to trump even some
non-trivial, rather serious interests of the earlier person. Thus, in
the standard version of the "preference to die" scenario, what is
at stake for the earlier self is a rather serious interest in
maintaining the integrity of her life narrative. However, this interest
does not reach the level of high vitality, because there is only so
much damage that a period of senility at the end of a life can do to an
otherwise successful life-narrative. By contrast, the current self's
interest in her very survival is more highly vital. It is also, unlike
the earlier self's interest, an active interest -- an ongoing subject
of interests has reason to be strongly prudentially invested in it.
These factors combined lend, in this scenario, priority to the interest
of the current self. |
giles | ## 1. Life
Born in Rome most probably in the fifth decade of the thirteenth
century, Giles was the first outstanding theologian of the relatively
recently founded Order of the Augustinian Hermits. Nothing more is
known about his origins: the statement that he belonged to the famous
Roman family of the Colonna seems to go back to Jordan of Saxony's
*Liber Vitasfratrum* (second half of the 14th century), but is
completely missing from contemporary, 13th-century sources. From Giles'
will we know that he was sent to Paris to study in the convent of his
Order. At the beginning he must have followed the courses either of a
secular master or of a theologian belonging to a different Order, as
the Augustinian friars did not have a regent master at the time.
Probably he was a pupil of Aquinas' in the years 1269-1272. He
commented on the Sentences at the beginning of the 1270s. In following
years he most probably wrote also a large number of his commentaries on
Aristotle.
The year 1277 marked a turning-point in his career: Giles was
involved in the condemnation of the heterodox Aristotelianism issued by
the Parisian bishop Etienne Tempier, although the process against him
must be distinguished from the famous decree of the 7 of March 1277, as
Robert Wielockx has shown. After 1277 Giles must have abandoned Paris,
but his presence is attested in Italy not earlier than 1281. Before
leaving Paris he completed his De regimine principum, which is
dedicated to the young Philip, the future Philip the Fair.
Between 1281 and 1284 Giles played an important role in the
government of his Order, taking part in various chapters held in Italy.
At the provincial chapter of Tuscania (nowadays in Lazio, Italy) in
1285 he acted as vicar of the prior general of his Order, Clement of
Osimo.
In 1285, Giles' doctrine was examined again; after recanting only a
part of what had been previously condemned in 1277, he was allowed to
teach again; by 1287 he is referred to as a master of theology. His
university quodlibeta go back to this period, from the academic year
1285/86 to 1292/93 (Pini 2006, Wielockx 2014). This success enhanced
Giles of Rome's authority even more in his Order, whose general
chapter of Florence decreed that Giles' works (even future ones)
should be considered as the official doctrine of the Order, to be
defended by all Augustinian bachelors and masters. In 1292, at the
General Chapter of Rome he was elected prior general of his Order.
Benedict Caetani's election to the papal see marked a further
radical change in his career, as Boniface VIII appointed him archbishop
of Bourges in 1295. As a matter of fact, Giles was very often absent
from his see, spending extended periods of time at the papal curia. In
his *De renuntiatione*, he defended the legitimacy of
Celestine's abdication, and, consequently, of Boniface' s
election. When the contrast between Boniface VIII and Philip IV reached
its most critical point, he continued to side staunchly with the pope.
An important sermon defending the papal position has been
discovered by Concetta Luna, and Giles' *De ecclesiastica
potestate* undoubtedly ranks among the sources of *Unam
Sanctam*.
Giles' prestige decreased after Boniface' death, and even more
with the rise of Clement V to the papal throne. Before being elected
pope, Betrand de Got, as archbishop of Bourdeaux, had had serious
conflicts with Giles. This unfavorable change, however, did not prevent
Giles from playing a significant role in the debates of his time.
Around 1305-6 he took part in a commission which examined and condemned
the eucharistic doctrine of John of Paris, a former adversary of Giles'
during the conflict between Philip the Fair and Boniface. In the
discussions concerning the Templars which eventually led to the
suppression of the Order, Giles sided with Philip the Fair, attacking
the Templars and devoting a whole tract, *Contra exemptos*, to
the thesis that their exemption from episcopal jurisdiction was the
cause of their abuses (Jordan 2005). During the Council of Vienne Giles was asked to
draw a list of errors extracted from the works of Peter John Olivi:
three of them were officially condemned by the Council. On December 22,
1316 he died at the papal Curia at Avignon (For further details see Del
Punta-Donati-Luna 1993, Briggs 2016).
Relying on manuscript evidence and other sources, Giorgio Pini (2005)
could identify which kind of theological and philosophical works Giles
read, studied and had copied for himself during his long intellectual
career. Pini distinguishes three main periods. In the first one,
before 1277, quite unsurprisingly, he reads Aquinas (not only the
Commentary on the Sentences of the Dominican master, but also his
later works), Aristotle (e. g. in these years Giles owns and annotates
a copy of the *Nicomachean Ethics*), Avicenna and Averroes. He
is also very well acquainted with the works of Ps. Denis the
Aeropagite. In the second period (1277-1285), when forced to leave the
academic milieu, Giles widens his interests. He studies many works of
Anselm's (while most theologians of his time were very selective in
their knowledge of this author), and makes acquaintance with works by
Augustine, such as Confessions and *Soliloquia*, that were
quite unusual readings for an academic theologian. In the this period
(from his return to the Parisian Faculty of Theology [1285] to his
death) Giles studies almost entirely the available works by Augustine
and acquires also rare treatises by Proclus. Giles' increasing
attention for Augustine is mirrored in his mature works and will
influence also the theological orientation of his own Order in the
following decades (Pini 2012).
## 2. Logic and Rhetoric
After Rene Antoine Gauthier identified in the master Guillaume
Arnauld the real author of the *Lectura supra logicam veterem*
attributed to Giles of Rome (Tabarroni 1988), interest in logical
works focused mainly on his Commentaries on the *Sophistici
Elenchi* and on *Posterior Analytics*. In his treatment of
the *fallacia figurae dictionis* Giles proves to be a brilliant
and original representative of "modistic logic", who bases
his solutions mainly on the semantics of *intentiones*
(Tabarroni 1991). This does not imply, however, that he always agrees
with the Modists. One of the most relevant disagreements regards
signification. He doesn't think that signification is the essential
form of the linguistic sign. On the contrary, sharing a a much more
widespread view in his times, to him, the signification of
*e.g.* a name is a concept (or more precisely a definition),
which in turn signifies the thing. This signification is not natural,
but conventional. The linguistic sign signifies in a natural way only
its mental image, which is essential to human acts of speech (Marmo
2016). Alessandro Conti (1992) investigated Giles' Commentary on
*Posterior Analytics* as an example of his theory of truth,
which brings to completion Aquinas' shift from Augustine's influence
to the Aristotelian approach. Bertagna (2002-2004) investigated
the structure of this commentary, while Longeway (2002) and Corbini
(2002) drew scholars' attention to Giles' epistemic logic. Giles of
Rome also authored the most important Commentary on the Rhetoric of
the Latin medieval tradition, which earned him the honorific title of
*expositor* of this book and influenced all later medieval
commentaries. Costantino Marmo studied Giles' approach to the
different translations to which he had access and showed how he
developed Aquinas' theory of passions in commenting on the relevant
portions of Aristotle's text (Marmo 1991), trying to solve some
problems left open by Aquinas. It has been suggested that Giles
considers rhetoric to be a sort of "logic" of ethics and
politics: this brilliant interpretation needs, however, further
development and articulation (Staico 1992). Janet Coleman (2000) also
maintained that Aristotle's rhetorical method determines the substance
of Giles' *De regimine principum*, but one should also take
into account also Lidia Lanza's (2001) remarks. Marmo (2016) pointed
out that if rhetoric is the *modus sciendi* more apt to moral
sciences, this does not imply that it contributes to moral or
political knowledge, since this is derived from the principles proper
of ethics or politics.
## 3. Metaphysics and Theory of Knowledge
Traditionally, Giles was described as a "faithful"
disciple of Aquinas'. Nowadays such a judgment is not accepted
by scholars. After Concetta Luna argued persuasively in favor of the
authenticity of the *Reportatio*, it became clear that Giles,
already in the first stages of his career, develops his positions
taking Aquinas' teaching as a starting point for his own
reflection, but criticizes and corrects the doctrines of the Dominican
master in many aspects. Luna could also establish that Giles reworked
his *Lectura* on the Sentences (handed down to us as a
*reportatio*) into an *ordinatio* only for the first two
books. However, while the first book was completed shortly after the
*Lectura*, that is, during the years 1271-1273, the
second book had to wait for completion until 1309. Luna gathered
impressive evidence suggesting that the *Ordinatio* of the
third book that goes under the name of Giles is, in fact,
spurious. Broadly speaking, Giles' "philosophical
project" tends to discuss critically Aquinas' position in
order to improve the solutions he offered, without, however, trying to
discard them radically. Recently, Katherine Konig-Pralong showed
that this is the case for the debate about the natural desire for
knowledge: although defended in in the context of a discussion with
Henry of Ghent, Giles' position does not coincide with that of
Aquinas. According to him, in fact, human beings possess a natural
desire for knowledge that is satisfied by a limited understanding of
separate substances (Konig-Pralong 2014). The same holds true
also for one of the most famous topics of his discussion with Henry of
Ghent, the distinction between "essence" and
"existence". In this case, Giles radicalizes
Aquinas' doctrine of the real distinction, asserting that
existence must be conceived as a "*res addita*"
[thing added] to essence (Pickave 2016). Although the final
result of his theory was considered closer to Avicenna's
solution than to that of Aquinas, Giles nevertheless develops it
starting from Aquinas' own position (Wippel 1981), as emerges
already from his Questions on the Metaphysics (Conti 2014). The
connection of this issue with the discussion with Henry of Ghent about
the concept of "creation" was investigated in depth by
Giorgio Pini (1992), who could show how Giles, while defending Aquinas
and thereby the possibility of using some Aristotelian principles in
an orthodox account of creation, goes beyond the positions of the
Dominican master, e. g. asserting the identity of
"*esse*" and "*creatio*"(see
also Porro 2014, Cross 2016). Giles advocated the compatibility of
Aristotelian doctrine with Christian faith also in his commentary on
the short treatise *De bona fortuna* attributed to Aristotle,
but in reality consisting in a compilation of passages taken from the
*Ethica eudemia* and the *Magna moralia*. The
interpretation of the concept of "bona fortuna" in those
texts implied problemas connected with contingency, necessity and the
interplay between divine causality and natural events. As
Valerie Cordonnier (2104) showed, Giles' solution was
attacked by Henry of Ghent as leading to necessitarism.
As to the debate about the unicity of substantial form, Giles'
position evolves during time. If we leave aside the *Errores
philosophorum*, since the authenticity of this work has been
contested with serious arguments (Bruni 1935, Koch 1944, Donati 1990b,
Luna 1990), we can notice that Giles changes his position from the
*Contra gradus et pluralitatem formarum* (between the end of
1277 and the beginning of 1278), where he, against Henry of Ghent
denies plurality of forms for every compound (Wilson 2014), to later
works, where he takes a more cautious stance in particular concerning
man. The principle of individuation is identified, as in Aquinas, with
"materia signata quantitate", that is, matter designated
by its dimensions. According to Giles, who criticizes also Richard of
Mediavilla on this point, matter is pure potentiality and therefore
cannot be distinguished into different kinds. For this reason, he
cannot accept Aquinas' doctrine that the incorruptibility of celestial
bodies derives from the peculiar nature of their matter (Donati
1986). In Giles' opinion celestial bodies are not incorruptible
because their matter is different from the matter of sublunar bodies,
but rather because their *quantitas materiae* cannot change its
determinate dimensions. This is but one application of Giles' famous
doctrine of "indeterminate dimensions". Modifying
Averroes' doctrine in this respect, Giles argues that a portion of
matter, in order to be able to receive a form, needs to possess
already a sort of quantity. Such quantity, however, should not be
identified with the determinate dimensions a body possesses, but is
rather a *quantitas* which remains the same during processes
such as rarefaction and condensation. Giles' notion of
*quantitas materiae*, which is not only generically extension
or three-dimensionality, but seems to represent an unchangeable given
"amount" of matter pertaining to a body, has been
considered comparable, some differences notwithstanding, to the modern
notion of mass (Donati 1988, Donati-Trifogli 2016).
After the condemnation of 1277, a significant change can be noticed in
Giles' position also in his solution of the problem of the eternity of
the world. At the beginning of his career he admitted the theoretical
possibility of the eternity of the world, although rejecting
Aristotle's arguments proving the actual eternity of the world. Later
he shifted to a more " Augustinian" stance, rejecting the
hypothesis of a creation "*ab aeterno*" and
admitting that it is possible to prove the temporality of creation,
although he finds that no conclusive argument has been advanced so far
(but see also Cross 2016). Giles was much more steadfast in his
opposition to another major tenet of "Averroistic"
doctrine, that is the unicity of the possible intellect. He maintained
that the possibility of actual knowledge on the part of the individual
depends necessarily on the fact that each body is informed by its own
intellective soul, which is its form. For the same reasons Giles also
rejected the unicity of the agent intellect, a doctrine he attributed
to Avicenna (Del Punta-Donati-Luna 1993, Conolly 2007).
Giles' account of knowledge is indebted to Aquinas, but, again,
reveals many original features. In the first place, he insists on a
strictly causal interpretation -- be it direct or via a medium
-- of the cognitive process, both at the level of sensory and
intellectual acts. Secondly, the Augustinian master doesn't conceive
of the role of "intelligible species" or *formales
expressiones* as he often writes, as essential to the process of
cognition in itself. As Giorgio Pini (2016) has shown, the
intelligible species is necessary only when the object cannot be
present in the intellect directly. Admittedly, this direct presence is
possible only in the beatific vision (after death) and most probably
in the cognition angels have of themselves. For human knowledge in
this life, on the contrary, intelligible species fulfill a necessary
function, as causal proxies, as Pini (2016) writes, mediating between
the object and the cognitive power. Difficulties for Giles' account
emerge especially when it comes to defining the ontological status of
the species. The interpretation of cognition in terms of causation
seems in fact to imply, according to Giles' own presuppositions, that
the species belongs to the same kind of the thing it represents. On
the other hand, the intelligible species is in the intellect, and this
presence is explained in terms of inherence of an accident (the
species) in a substance. Giles himself is aware of this difficulty,
since in one passage he claims that such species are in themselves
neither substances nor accidents. They can, however, be
"reduced" to the kind to which the represented thing
belongs. Pini (2016) is right in pointing out that Giles' answer seems
to raise more problems than it can solve.
## 4. Natural Philosophy
Studies concerning Giles' natural philosophy focused mainly on his
treatment of some pivotal concepts of Aristotle's Physics. Cecilia
Trifogli opened new perspectives in this field, devoting her attention
to the notions of place and motion (especially in the void, see
Trifogli 1992), underlining that "Giles' emphasis on the
role of place in the description of motion seems to lead to a
quantitative and relational notion of place. Giles, however, does not
completely substitute the Aristotelian notion of place for that of
place as distance. Place as distance is only one of the two notions of
place which appear in his commentary. The other, which is related to
material place, assumes an intrinsic connection between place and the
located body that cannot be founded on distance alone" (Trifogli
1990a, 350). Giles' distinction was referred to as an opposition
between material place (the limit of the containing body) and formal
place (distance from the fixed points of the universe)
(Donati-Trifogli 2016). Trifogli also investigated Giles' notions of
time and infinity, emphasizing that his whole approach to natural
philosophy is distinguished by a tendency towards a metaphysical
interpretation of Aristotelian concepts, as opposed to a physical and
quantitative one (Trifogli 1990b, 1991). For example, Giles conceives
of time not as a quantity pertaining to every kind of motion, but
rather as the same thing as motion, seen under a different aspect. His
concept of time rests in fact essentially on a broad notion of
succession, which allows him on one hand to retain the unity of the
concept of time, but, on the other hand, to acknowledge the existence
of different times (Trifogli 1990b, Donati-Trifogli 2016) Giles
distinguishes between two kinds of duration: extrinsic duration is the
time of celestial motion, and is obviously one in number. Intrinsic
duration depends on the different motions taking place in the
sublunary world and is therefore plural (Donati-Trifogli 2016). A
similar attitude emerges also from the analysis of Giles' controversy
on angelic time with Henry of Ghent (Porro 1988, Porro 1991, but see
also Faes de Mottoni 1983). Both authors thought that the time in
which angels exist, unlike sublunar time, is a discrete succession of
instants. Giles and Henry disagreed, however, on the relationship
existing between angelic and sublunar time. In particular, Henry
rejected Giles' thesis that more instants of angelic time can
correspond to one and the same instant of sublunar time. This
difference of opinion rested in part on diverging concepts of angelic
motion, which can be istantaneous according to Henry, but not
according to Giles.
## 5. Between Philosophy and Medicine
In 2008, Romana Martorelli Vico published the first critical edition
of Giles' *De formatione corporis humani in utero*. With this
work, completed between 1285 and 1295, Giles took a stance in the much
debated question of the respective roles of male and female parents in
conception. The Galenist view, going back to Hippocrates, was that
both male and female contributed sperm, so that the offspring could
have characteristics from both parents. On the contrary, Aristotle had
held that only the male alone contributed sperm containing an active
and formal principle to conception, while the female provided only the
matter of the fetus. Giles was well acquainted with these different
positions and with the efforts to reconcile the diverging approaches
of *medici* and *philosophi*, which could be traced back to
Avicenna. Leaning on Averroes' *Colliget*, however, Giles
rejected any attempt to attribute a formal role to the female sperm,
even if it is conceived as subordinate to the male one. On the contrary
he maintained that it can contribute only in a passive way to
conception, while what was called "female sperm", i.e., the
vaginal secretion, has a subservient, helpful but by no means necessary
function. It helps the male sperm to inseminate female matter, but does
not add anything essential to the new being. In this way, Giles
intended to stress the superiority of the philosophical, theoretical
approach to such problems with respect to the traditions of medical
learning, even when the latter seemed to be supported by empirical evidence
(Hewson 1975; Martorelli Vico 1988). Empirical evidence such as the
resemblance of the offspring to the mother was e.g., explained away as
an example of stronger resistance of female matter to the action of
form (Martorelli Vico 2002). After conception the human embryo begins a
development which goes through different stages. Comparing these stages
to the embryos of various animals Giles, like Thomas Aquinas, supported
an interpretation of the fetal development which would be exploited
many centuries later by the so-called "recapitulation
theory" (Hewson 1975, 99). Giles maintained, however, that
"the organic fetal body is not to be called a pig, a bear, or a
monkey, but something immediately disposed to becoming man"
(Hewson 1975, 100). This position apparently implies that human life
does not fully begin at the moment of conception. Although such a
thesis can be brought to bear on the moral judgment concerning
abortion, Giles does not seem interested in tackling from this point of
view an issue which would become central for what nowadays is called
bioethics.
## 6. Ethics and Political Theory
In the debate on the respective roles of intellect and will in the
determination of human action Giles' position underwent an evolution,
while he seems to be in search of an intermediate position, a sort of
compromise between the theory of Henry of Ghent and that of Geoffrey
of Fontaines. Giles maintains, in fact, that will is a passive potency
and can not "move" itself, but always needs an object, a
"bonum apprehensum". This starting point however, does not
rule out its freedom, because will, even if is moved
"moved" by its object, can determine itself and other
potencies with regard to action. This view of Giles' is consistent
with his mature interpretation of the relationship existing between
knowledge and will in the sinner. Committing a sin implies an
ignorance of the real good, but this ignorance is not the primary
cause of the wrong behavior, because it is an effect of the will,
which, affected by *malicia*, corrupts the judgment of the
reason (Macken 1977, Eardley 2003, Pini 2006, Eardley 2016, but see
also Cross 2016).
Giles of Rome exerted considerable influence also in other fields of
ethics, such as the theory of virtues. The most developed expression of
his position is not to be found in a Commentary on Aristotle, but
rather in his *De regimine principum*, the most successful
"mirror of princes" of medieval political thought, which is
still conserved in more than 300 manuscripts in its original Latin
version, to which many translations in European vernaculars must be
added. Written most probably between 1277 and 1280 the *De
regimine* is acknowledged to be one of the most successful attempts
at mediating Aristotle's practical philosophy, and in particular his
"ethical and political language" to the Latin West. Giles
was the first to structure a mirror of princes in three books along the
lines of a scheme -- *ethica-oeconomica-politica* -- which
played an important role in the reception of Aristotle's moral and
political philosophy in the Middle Ages (Lambertini 1988). The author
takes great care to give the impression that he is mainly relying on
Aristotle's text, providing numerous quotations from the
*Nichomachean Ethics*, from the *Politics* and from the
*Rethoric.* Scholars should not overlook, however, that his
reception of Aristotle is not as direct as it can seem and that Giles
is deeply influenced by a tradition in the interpretation of
Aristotle's practical philosophy. In this tradition Aquinas plays a
very important role for Giles, so that, while Aristotle is the
authority who is quoted on almost every occasion, it is the unnamed
Aquinas who, with his *Sententia libri Politicorum*, *De
regno*, *Summa Theologiae*, exerts a really decisive
influence on *De regimine*. While discussing particular topics,
Giles skillfully adapts Aristotle to his own purposes. This emerges
with clarity in the first book, devoted to ethics, where Giles'
classification of virtues is heavily dependent on the *Summa
Theologiae* and, therefore, on Aquinas' reinterpretation of the
Aristotelian heritage. For example, Giles here defines
*prudentia* as a *virtus media*, sharing the nature of
moral as well as of intellectual ones, a doctrine which can by no
means be traced back to the Stagirite (Lambertini 1991, 1992, 1995,
2000). In the second book Giles deals with the ethics of man as head
of the family, covering many topics, from children rearing and
education to the rule over servants. To this purpose, he exploits a
wide range of sources, and also medicine authors (Lambertini 1988,
Martorelli Vico 2008). As Giles wrote his De regimine, the
pseudo-Aristotelian *Oeconomica* were not yet available in
traslation to the Latin West; still, he managed to discuss also
economic topics, as far as they are relevant for the household of a
royal family or for a high-class household in general. Here he condemns
usury, criticizes other economic practices as not suitable for a
prince, and insists on the primary role agricolture should play
(Lambertini 2015)
The most famous example of this selective attitude towards
Aristotle's works, however, belongs rather to the field of political
theory. In the third book of *De regimine* Giles wants to prove
that monarchy is the absolutely best form of government. The first
arguments he puts forward in favor of monarchy are not taken from
Aristotle's *Politics*, but from Aquinas' *De regno*.
Then some arguments against monarchy which could be read in the
*Politics* are presented as objections that Aristotle puts forth
for subsequent refutation. At the end, Giles states squarely that
Aristotle supports monarchy as the absolutely best form of monarchy and
corroborates his assertion with an argument, which, in the
*Politics*, actually goes in the opposite direction (Lambertini
1990). One could provide several other examples to show that
the *De regimine* succeeded in presenting itself as a
simplified exposition and explanation of Aristotle's thought in
practical philosophy, but at the same time transmitted to Giles'
readers a strongly biased interpretation of the Stagirite. The fact
that the *De regimine* was often used as a tool to have easier
access to Aristotle's political theory deeply influenced, therefore,
the way the Latin West read and understood
Aristotle's *Politics* in the Late Middle Ages (e.g. Lambertini
2017). Recent codicological studies on the diffusion of *De
regimine'* manuscripts do in fact show that many possessors
of the manuscripts most probably used them for study (See *Opera
Omnia* I.1/11, *Catalogo dei manoscritti, De regimine*;
Briggs 1999). Giles' *De regimine* was also translated into
different vernaculars (Perret 2011, Papi 2016). Graham McAleer (1999)
pointed to the fact that Giles' Commentary on the Sentences has been
almost neglected as a source for Giles' political philosophy. Studying
distinction 22 and 44 of the II book, he found that in these texts
Giles' account of the origin of political authority among human beings
after the Fall diverges from what one can read in *De regimine
principum* and reveals a profound influence by Augustine, while
Aristotle does not play the important role he had in Giles' mirror for
princes. One should also take into consideration that
Giles' *Ordinatio* of the second book was completed in 1309,
that is at least 25 years after *De regimine* and could witness
to an evolution in Giles' thought. As a matter of fact, the much
earlier *reportatio* does not tackle such issues at all
(Lambertini 2014).
While in the *De regimine* Giles carefully avoids any
reference to the thorny problem of the relationship between secular and
ecclesiastical power, his later writings which are relevant for
political theory deal first and foremost with ecclesiological problems.
This holds true for his treatise *De renuntiatione papae*
(1297-1298) where Giles defends the lawfulness of Celestine's
abdication against the arguments put forward by the Colonna cardinals
in their first appeal against Boniface VIII. From the point of view of
the history of political thought it is relevant that Giles argues that
papal power, although of divine origin, is conferred on a particular
individual by a human act, namely, by the election of the cardinals.
Here Giles is countering the Colonna arguments that papal dignity
cannot cease to reside in a pope until he dies, because the pontificate
depends on God's will, and stresses the fact that divine intention in
this case becomes effective through the mediation of human agents, that
is, through the consent of the electors and of the elected. A
jurisdiction which is given by the consent of men, however, can also be
removed by their consent through a reverse procedure. This does not
amount to saying that the pope can be deposed (except in case of
heresy), because, according to Giles, the pope is above the law and has
no earthly authority above him. He can however, depose himself, that
is, abdicate. Just as for his election the consent of his electors and
of the elected was necessary, so also for the removal of the pope from
office his consent is decisive (Eastman 1989, 1990, 1992). In this way
Giles could dismiss arguments against the validity of Celestine's
abdication without admitting the possibility that the pope can be
deposed, e. g., by the Council, as Boniface's adversaries
maintained.
Much better known than *De renuntiatione* is Giles' *De
ecclesiastica potestate*, a treatise also composed in defense of
Boniface VIII. Most probably in 1302, Giles systematically expounded in
this work the views on the relationship between *regnum* and
*sacerdotium* he had already put forward in a re-discovered
sermon held at the papal curia (Luna 1992, Lambertini 2006). The main
tenet of his fully fledged argumentation is that the pope, supreme
authority of the Church but also of the whole of mankind, is the only
legitimate origin of every power on earth, be it exercised -- as
jurisdiction -- on persons, or -- as property -- on
things. In his plenitude of power, the pope possesses an absolute
supremacy both in the ecclesiastical and in the temporal sphere, and
delegates the exercise of the temporal "sword" to lay
sovereigns only in order to fulfill most properly his higher religious
duties. Any authority that does not recognize its dependence on the
papal power is but usurpation. In Giles' view, there is no space even
for a partially autonomous temporal order. Coherently, Giles maintains
that no property rights are valid if they are not legitimated by papal
authority. Interestingly enough, such a claim is also supported by
his account of the origin of property, according to which property is
not a natural institution, but only the consequence of human
agreements, which lack any legitimacy unless they are recognized by
the supreme religious power (Miethke 2000, Homann 2004, Kruger
2007). Scholarly discussion about *De ecclesiastica potestate*
is still open. Karl Ubl (2004) argues with strong arguments against
previous assumptions, that Giles wrote in reaction to John of
Paris' *De regia potestate et papali*. While previous
scholarship stressed the affinity in form and content between *De
ecclesiastica potestate* and the famous Bull *Unam
sanctam*, Francisco Bertelloni (2004) holds that one should not
overlook profound differences between the concepts of papal power that
inspire the two texts. |
skepticism-ancient | ## 1. The Central Questions
The core concepts of ancient skepticism are belief, suspension of
judgment, criterion of truth, appearances, and investigation.
Important notions of modern skepticism such as knowledge, certainty,
justified belief, and doubt play no or almost no role. This is not to
say that the ancients would not engage with questions that figure in
today's philosophical discussions. Ancient debates address
questions that today we associate with epistemology and philosophy of
language, as well as with theory of action, rather than specifically
with the contemporary topic of skepticism. They focus on the nature of
belief, the relationship of belief to speech and action, and the
mental states of inquiry (on the role of ancient skepticism throughout
the history of Western philosophy up to today, cf. Lagerlund 2020; on
the relation between ancient skepticism and philosophical debates
today, cf. Machuca and Reed 2018, Vlasits and Vogt 2020, and Machuca
2022).
From the point of view of the ancient skeptics, assertions are
expressions of dogmatism. And yet, the best-known ancient skeptic,
Sextus Empiricus, wrote extensively. Can the skeptics say anything
meaningful about their philosophy without asserting anything about how
things are (Bett 2013, 2019)? Skeptical writings have a peculiar
format, one that comes with its own challenges: the skeptics aim to
describe their philosophy *tout court*, as they practice it,
without laying out any particular theories or doctrines. Skeptical
ideas have been charged with a family of objections: they might be
self-refuting, inconsistent, self-contradictory, and so on (Castagnoli
2010). Another line of objection is associated with Hume, namely that
"nature is always too strong for principle." As Hume puts
it, "a Pyrrhonian cannot expect that his philosophy will have
any constant influence on the mind" (part 2 of section 12,
"Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy," *An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, London, 1748). It is one
thing for skepticism to be coherent. It is another thing for it to be
likely that anyone, no matter how much they rehearse skeptical
arguments in their mind, will succeed in adhering to it (Johnson
2001), as ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers claimed to be able to
do.
Like later epistemologists, the ancient skeptics start from questions
about knowledge. But discussion quickly turns to beliefs (Fine 2000).
The Greek term translated here as belief, *doxa*, can also be
translated as opinion. The root of *doxa* is *dokein*,
seeming. In a belief, something seems so-and-so to someone. But there
is also an element of judgment or acceptance. The relevant verb,
*doxazein*, often means 'to judge that something is
so-and-so.' Hellenistic discussions envisage three attitudes
that cognizers take to impressions (how things seem to them): assent,
rejection, and suspension of judgment (*epoche*).
Suspension is a core element of skepticism: the skeptic suspends
judgment. However, if this means that the skeptic forms no beliefs
whatsoever, then skepticism may be a kind of cognitive suicide.
Arguably, belief-formation is a basic feature of human cognitive
activity. It is not clear whether one can lead an ordinary human life
without belief, or indeed, ancient opponents of the skeptics say,
whether one can even survive. Perhaps even the simplest actions, such
as eating or leaving a room without running into a wall, involve
beliefs (Annas-Barnes 1985, 7; Burnyeat 1980). It is also hard to say
whether someone who succeeded in not forming any beliefs could
communicate with others, whether they could engage in philosophical
investigation, or whether they could even think at all.
The ancient skeptics are well aware of these objections. The most
widely discussed charge is that they cannot act without belief
(Apraxia Charge). In response, the skeptics describe their actions
variously as guided by the plausible, the convincing, or by
appearances. The notion of appearances gains great importance in
Pyrrhonian skepticism, and poses difficult interpretive questions
(Barney 1992). When something appears so-and-so to someone, does this
for the skeptics involve some kind of judgment on their part? Or do
they have in mind a purely phenomenal kind of appearing? The skeptical
proposals (that the skeptic adheres to the plausible, the convincing,
or to appearances) have in common their appeal to something less than
full-fledged belief about how things are, while allowing something
sufficient to generate and guide action.
However, the claim that ancient skepticism is about belief, while
modern skepticism is about knowledge, needs to be qualified. Ancient
skepticism is not alone in being concerned with belief. Descartes
speaks repeatedly of demolishing his opinions (for example,
*Med* 2:12, *AT* 7:18; cf. Broughton, 2002,
33-61). Contemporary epistemology often pays equal attention to
the notions of both belief and knowledge. The distinctive focus
of ancient skepticism on belief becomes clearer once we consider a
third concept that figures centrally in ancient discussions: the criterion
of truth. The skeptics and their opponents discuss how one
recognizes a true impression as true. Are there some evident things
(some kind of impressions), which can be used as standards or
criteria, so that nothing is to be accepted as true if it is not in
agreement with these evident things? The Stoics and Epicureans
formulate theories that conceive of such criteria. The skeptics
respond critically to their proposals. Accordingly, the conception of
a criterion of truth assumes as central a role in ancient debates as
does the notion of knowledge in modern discussions. This debate
includes in-depth analysis of sense perception and its relation to
belief. According to Epicurus, all sense perceptions are true, but
judgments based on these perceptions are true or false (Striker 1977,
Vogt 2017). The Stoics explore differences between sense perception,
illusion, and hallucination (Vasiliou 2019). Their account of the
criterion of truth starts from perceptual impressions that qualify, or
fail to qualify, as cognitive (Shogry 2018). The Stoics propose that
we should accept only cognitive impressions, and accordingly we should
only form beliefs based on a subset of true perceptual
impressions.
Discussion of the criterion of truth arguably also covers some of the
ground that is later discussed in terms of certainty. The Stoics say
that a particular kind of impression is the criterion of truth: the
cognitive impression. Cognitive impressions make it clear through
themselves that they reveal things precisely as they are. This notion
is an ancestor to the later conception of clear and distinct
impressions, and thus, to discussions of certainty.
Consider next the notion of doubt. Doubt is often considered the
hallmark of skepticism. So how can it be that ancient skepticism is
not about doubt (Corti 2010, Vogt 2014a)? Insofar as 'to
doubt' means no more than 'to call into question,'
the ancient skeptics might be described as doubting things. However,
skeptical investigation as Sextus Empiricus describes it does not
involve doubt (I shall focus here on Pyrrhonism; on Cicero's use
of *dubitari*, see Section 3.3). Skeptics find themselves
struck by the discrepancies among impressions. This experience is
described as turmoil (Machuca 2019). They aim to resolve this
disturbance by settling what is true and what is false among them. But
investigation leads them to suspension of judgment, which brings its
own peace of mind (*Outlines of Skepticism* [= *PH*]
1.25-30). Where in this account should we locate doubt? Is the
initial turmoil the ancient skeptic experiences a kind of doubt? Are
the ancient skeptic's investigations a kind of doubting? Should
we describe suspension of judgment as a kind of doubt? All three
stages may resemble doubt, at least insofar as the ancient skeptics
have not settled on answers to the questions they investigate. But all
three stages are also different from doubt as it is conceived in later
epistemology. The ancient skeptics do not describe themselves as
making an active effort at doubting what ordinarily they would
believe, as some philosophers in the Cartesian tradition have it.
Instead the ancient skeptics find themselves in turmoil because of
discrepancies in how things strike them. Moreover, the progression
that ancient skeptics describe differs from the doubt-belief model
that later thinkers tend to employ. The ancient skeptics improve their
psychological condition by moving from turmoil to suspension of
judgment, not by removing doubt. It seems best, then, to refrain from
invoking the modern conception of doubt as at all fundamental in the
reconstruction of ancient Greek skepticism.
Some of the distinctness of ancient skepticism lies in the fact that
it is developed by philosophers who genuinely think of themselves as
skeptics. In later epistemology, skepticism is largely construed from
the outside. In particular, early modern skepticism is, for the most
part, conceived by philosophers who aim to refute it. But ancient
skepticism is explored by skeptics, and that is, by philosophers who
intend their lives to be reflective of their philosophy (Cooper 2012
ch. 5.5-7; Bett 2013b). Socrates raises the challenge that it
might be truly bad (for one's life, for the state of one's
soul, and so on) to base one's actions on unexamined beliefs.
For all one knows, these beliefs could be false, and without
investigation, one does not even aim to rid oneself of false belief,
which is admittedly a bad thing for one's soul. Only an examined
life is worth living (Cooper 2007). Once we take this challenge
seriously, as the ancient skeptics do, we embark on a kind of
investigation that is seen as directly relevant to our lives. Our
beliefs are assumed, at this pre-skeptical phase, to be guiding our
actions. Confidence in unexamined views seems misplaced. Others
regularly disagree with us. In favor of each view, some arguments
can be adduced, some practices invoked, some experiences cited. These
conflicting arguments, practices and experiences need to be examined.
But that just raises further views that are in conflict. As a
consequence, suspension of judgment on every such question looks
rationally mandatory. But it is also rational to persist in
investigation. The skeptic is committed to a search for the truth, on
virtually all questions, even if this search repeatedly and
predictably leads to suspension of judgment (Cooper 2012).
## 2. Skeptical Ideas in Early and Classical Greek Philosophy
### 2.1 Early Greek Philosophy
The early Greek philosophers develop distinctions between reality and
appearances, knowledge and belief, and the non-evident and the
evident. These distinctions form the framework in which skepticism can
be conceived. The idea that truth is seen and knowledge gained from
some perspective outside of the ordinary ways of mortal life, and that
mortals rely on something lesser, be it the hear-say of fame, or
signs, or appearances, runs through much of early Greek thought.
However, few early Greek thinkers seem to have had skeptical or
proto-skeptical inclinations. Xenophanes and Democritus are perhaps
the most prominent apparent exceptions.
Xenophanes famously insists that all conceptions of the gods are
anthropomorphic and culturally contingent (DK 21B14, B15). The
Ethiopians pray to gods who look like Ethiopians, the Thracians to
gods who look like Thracians (B16). If horses and cows had hands, the
horses would draw pictures of gods that look like horses, and the cows
would draw gods as cows (B15). Xenophanes puts forward a number of
theological theses of his own. But he says that no man will know the
clear truth about such matters. He makes a point that has lasting
relevance in discussions of skepticism: even if someone succeeded in
saying something that actually is the case, he himself would not know
this. Thus, all is belief (120: B34) (cf. Sassi 2011 on
interpretations of Xenophanes that influence the history of
skepticism).
Atomism--a theory which thrives in Hellenistic times as the
physical theory of Epicureanism, and is thus an interlocutor of
skepticism--leads into difficult epistemological questions. The
atomist can argue that sense perceptions are explicable as complex
events, initiated by objects each one made up of a lot of atoms
floating in the void, from which atoms proceed and traverse the
intervening space, and affect the senses. It is certain objects, made
up by the atoms proceeding from the objects in question (filmy images)
that we actually perceive. We neither perceive 'real
reality' (atoms and void), nor even macroscopic objects and
their properties (for example, a square tower). Democritus seems to
have argued along these lines (SE *M* 7.135-9; cf. fr. 9,
SE *M* 7.136; Theophrastus, *De Sensibus* 2.60-1,
63-4), and accordingly his atomist view of perception can be
seen as grounding a kind of proto-skepticism.
Democritus' student Metrodorus of Chios says at the beginning of
his book *On Nature* "None of us knows anything, not even
this, whether we know or we do not know; nor do we know what 'to
not know' or 'to know' are, nor on the whole,
whether anything is or is not" (Cicero, *Acad*. 2.73;
trans. Lee (2010) = DK 70B1; SE *M* 7.48, 87-8; Eusebius,
*Praep. evang.* 14.19.9). This formulation reflects awareness
of the fact that a simpler statement than the one reported in Cicero,
such as "there is no knowledge," can be turned against
itself. In particular, Metrodorus recognizes the role that
understanding concepts plays in any such statement. Does its proponent
know something, merely by virtue of understanding what the terms she
uses in her philosophizing refer to? Sextus presents Metrodorus'
pronouncement as related to an enigmatic idea that he ascribes to two
other philosophers, the Democritean Anaxarchus of Abdera and the Cynic
Monismus (SE M 7.87-88). Both are said to have likened existing
things to a stage-painting. This comparison, which Burnyeat captures
in the catch-phrase "all the world's a
stage-painting," is open to a range of interpretations (Burnyeat
2017). For Monismus, Burnyeat argues, it is likely to have had a
moralistic upshot, along the lines of "all is vanity." In
Democritean philosophy, and insofar as later skepticism recalls the
saying, it is bound to be a proposal in epistemology (or possibly
epistemology and metaphysics).
The 5th century sophists develop forms of debate which are
ancestors of skeptical argumentation (Bett 2020b). They take pride in
arguing in a persuasive fashion for both sides of an issue and
in developing an agonistic art of refuting any claim put forward.
Further, the sophists are interested in the contrast between nature
and convention. The formative roles of custom and law were discussed
by some of the earliest Greek authors (consider Pindar's
"law is king" and its many interpretations, for example in
Herodotus). The sophists explore the idea that, if things are
different for different cultures, there may be no fact of the matter
of how those things really are. The skeptics engage with both legs of
the distinction between nature and convention. Pyrrhonian skepticism
employs an argument to the effect that, if something is by nature
*F*, it is *F* for everyone (affects everyone as
*F*) (see sections 4.2 and 4.4). Pyrrhonism further associates
convention with appearances, so that the sceptic, by adhering to
appearances, can lead an ordinary life (see section 4). However, the
contrast between nature and convention does not figure importantly in
ancient skepticism, and there is no skeptical school that would
confine itself to 'moral' skepticism, or skepticism about
values.
Sextus Empiricus, whose writings provide the most detailed extant
account of Pyrrhonian skepticism, emphasizes how strongly the skeptics
depart from all other philosophers. As he presents it, the
Pre-Socratics who put forward some of the views cited above are what
he calls dogmatists. They make claims about nature, reality,
knowability, and so on. The second-most detailed extant account of
Pyrrhonian skepticism is offered by Diogenes Laertius, in his
*Lives of Eminent Philosophers* 9.61-116. It contains a
large number of references to early Greek poets and Pre-Socratic
philosophers, suggesting that these early thinkers formulate ideas
that are similar to skeptic ideas (SSSS61-73). It is
controversial whether the skeptics Diogenes has in mind claim this
ancestry. Alternatively, other philosophers may have charged the
skeptics with sharing ideas with non-skeptical thinkers, thereby
departing from their non-dogmatic approach (Warren 2015). Either way,
two observations seem relevant. Contrary to a classic assessment of
Diogenes' report by Jonathan Barnes (1992), the sections of text
in which connections are made between early Greek thought and
skepticism may be worth exploring. Moreover, scholars may have paid
too little attention to skepticism's ancestry in poetry (Clayman
2009). Pyrrho seems to have referred to Homer as a proponent of ideas
he approves of, ideas about change, the status of human rationality
and language, and more.
### 2.2 Plato
The Socrates of Plato's *Apology* tries to solve a
puzzle. The Delphic oracle says that no one is wiser than Socrates.
But Socrates does not think himself wise. He calls into question the
truth of neither the oracle's pronouncements nor his
self-perception. Accordingly, he must figure out how both are
consistent with each other. In order to do so, Socrates talks to
various groups of experts in Athens: politicians, poets, and
craftsmen. As it turns out, all of them think that they know something
about great and important things, but in fact, it seems clear to
Socrates, they do not. When asked they cannot provide reasons for
believing the things they claim to know that are rationally
satisfactory. Socrates knows that he does not know about these most
important matters (*megista*; 22d); his interlocutors, it
appears, do not know that they lack this knowledge. In this respect,
Socrates is wiser than everyone else who has any general reputation
for wisdom. In the course of recounting his conversations with others,
Socrates says something enigmatic: "About myself I knew that I
know nothing" (22d; cf. Fine 2008). Some readers (ancient and
modern) take Socrates to profess that he knows nothing. But the
context of the dialogue allows us to read his pronouncement as
unproblematical. Socrates knows that he does not know about important
things. He advocates the importance of critically examining
one's own and others' views on important matters,
precisely because one does not know about them (Vogt 2012a, ch. 1).
Such examination is the only way to find out.
Socrates' commitment to reason--examination as the way to
find out--inspires the skepticism of the Hellenistic Academy
(Cooper 2004b, Vogt 2013). One is bound to lead one's life based
on one's beliefs, he assumes. Therefore, one ought to examine
one's beliefs, and abandon those that one finds to be false. One
ought to do so because otherwise one might lead a bad life.
Socrates' questioning is rooted in a concern with the good life.
Insofar as it is, one might think that the Socratic roots of ancient
skepticism lead one toward a kind of limited, wholly moral skepticism.
However, Socrates' examinations are not confined to value
questions. While ethical questions may be the starting-point, they
immediately lead to questions about the soul, the gods, knowledge, and
so on. For Socrates and his Hellenistic followers, value questions
cannot be insulated from questions of psychology, physics, and
epistemology.
Another strand of skeptical thought begins with questions about the
nature of philosophical investigation. In the *Meno*, Plato
formulates a famous puzzle. How is investigation possible? We cannot
investigate either what we know or what we do not know. In the former
case, there is no need to investigate, and besides, if we really do
know we already have in mind everything that investigation could
reveal to us about the matter. In the latter case, we would not know
what to look for, and we would not recognize it if we found it
(80d-86c). So there is no room for investigating anything. Socrates
calls this an eristic argument, thus drawing attention to the fact
that this is a puzzle that sophists have put forward (cf.
Plato's *Euthydemus*).
Plato's solutions to this puzzle are difficult to assess (Fine
2014). Learning is recollection, says one proposal (this is the one
that Socrates himself immediately offers). We already know, but only
in some implicit way, what it takes investigation to come to know
explicitly. This is the famous Anamnesis theory (81a-d). If we give up
on investigation, we shall be lazy people, says another argument
(81d-e). A third solution of the puzzle arguably says that one of its
premises is false. It is not the case that, for everything, we either
know it or are entirely ignorant of it. Rather, there is a third
state, namely belief (83a-86a). Investigation can begin from
beliefs.
The *Meno* explores a mix of these solutions. Plato develops
what he calls a hypothetical method (86c-100b). That is, the
interlocutors in some sense begin from their beliefs (for example,
"virtue is good"). But they do not endorse them. They set
them up as hypotheses, and employ these hypotheses in investigation
(on the relationship between Pyrrhonian skepticism and Plato's
and Aristotle's notions of hypothesis, cf. Corti 2011). A
spurious dialogue, the *Sisyphus*, discusses a similar puzzle,
though with respect to deliberation. Deliberation either involves
knowledge or is mere guesswork; either way, deliberation is
impossible. Here, too, we may ask whether the distinction between
knowing and not knowing is exhaustive, or whether attention to belief
changes the picture (Fine 2021, ch. 8).
Plato discusses and re-formulates several of the metaphysical
considerations that back up proto-skeptical and early skeptical
intuitions. The relevant passages are spread out over a number of
dialogues, among which passages in the *Phaedo*,
*Republic*, *Theaetetus* and *Timaeus* are
perhaps most important. In these dialogues, Plato develops some of his
own metaphysical ideas. He also engages critically with metaphysical
theories that he does not ultimately adopt. However, in order to
explore these theories he formulates them in detail, often invoking a
Pre-Socratic ancestor as a proponent of a given idea. These
discussions are a great source of inspiration for Pyrrhonian skeptics,
who are interested in what may be called a metaphysics of
indeterminacy (Bett 2000, Vogt 2021).
In contrasting the Forms with the perceptible realm, Plato discusses
properties. For example, for all sensible items, *A* is tall
relative to some *B* and short relative to some *C*.
There is no such thing as anything's being tall
*simpliciter*. When we call something tall, we measure it
against something else, look at it from a particular perspective, and
so on. As we might say, "tall" and "short"
are relative predicates. But perhaps many more, or indeed all,
predicates work that way, even where this is less obvious.
Plato's arguments lead to the question of whether it is
conceivable that all our predications are, in this particular sense,
relative. If this were the case, it might quite fundamentally upset
our conception of the world as furnished with objects that have
properties. Such considerations lead to another idea about properties
in the perceptual realm. If a fence is low and high, a cloud is bright
and dark, a vase beautiful and ugly, and so on, then it seems that,
perhaps quite generally, perceptual things are *F* and
not-*F*. Only the Form of *F* is *F* (for
example, only the Beautiful is beautiful). While the relevant passages
are difficult to interpret, it is clear enough which line of thought
comes to influence later skeptics. The skeptics engage with the idea
that, if something appears to be *F* and not-*F*, it is
not really (or: by nature) either *F* or not-*F*.
In the *Timaeus*, Plato argues that an account of the natural
world can only be 'likely': it is an *eikos
logos*. Most generally speaking, the idea here is that certain
explananda are such that theorizing about them can do no more than
mirror their, comparatively speaking deficient, nature. This idea has
ancestors in Xenophanes and Parmenides, and it plays a crucial role in
the *Timaeus* (Bryan 2012). Academic skeptics employ various
notions of the plausible and the convincing, thus developing further
this tradition, albeit no longer with the assumption that different
domains require different kinds of theorizing.
In the *Theaetetus*, Plato explores the kind of cultural
relativism that is associated with some sophists. In his examination
relativism is extended to a general theory, not restricted to the
domain of values. Socrates (as main speaker of the dialogue) ascribes
relativism to Protagoras, who is famous for saying that "man is
the measure." Socrates reformulates this claim as follows: what
appears to *A* is true for *A*, and what appears to
*B* is true for *B*. On this premise, Socrates argues,
there is no rational way to prefer our perceptions while awake to our
perceptions while asleep, or similarly, to prefer sober to intoxicated
or deranged perceptions. In each state, our perceptions are true for
us. Socrates analyzes relativism in several steps, pointing to ever
more radical implications. Along the way, he envisages a moderate
metaphysics of flux, where objects do not have stable properties. But
eventually he points out that relativism is committed to an even
starker revisionist metaphysics, radical flux. For it to be possible
that what seems to *A* is true for *A*, and what seems
to *B* is true for *B*, there cannot be a stable world
that *A* and *B* both refer to. Rather,
"everything is motion" (*Tht.* 179c-184b). The
skeptics employ versions of some of the arguments in the
*Theaetetus*, without, however, arriving at relativist
conclusions. Schematically speaking, the relativist says that,
if *X* is *F* for *A* and *F*\*
for *B*, then *X* is *F*-for-*A* and
*F*\*-for-*B*. Pyrrhonian skepticism of the variant found
in Sextus reacts by continued investigation into whether *X* is
*F* or *F*\* (or both or neither).
### 2.3 Aristotle
Aristotle engages, at several points in his works, with the
*Meno* Problem. For example, Aristotle points out that, for
successful investigation to proceed, one first needs a well-formulated
question. One needs to know the knot in order to untie it. In order to
know what to look for and recognize it when one finds it, one needs to
first think one's way through the difficulties involved, and
thereby formulate a question. If one does, then one shall be able to
recognize the solution once one hits upon it (*Met.* 3.1,
995a24-b4). These ideas are highly relevant to Hellenistic
discussions. The skeptic is an investigator, and one anti-skeptical
charge says that, if indeed a skeptic knew nothing, they could not
even formulate the questions they investigate. Interpreters have
emphasized a contrast between Aristotle and the skeptics. For
Aristotle, formulating puzzles and thinking one's way through
them puts one in a better position, such that one gets clear about how
matters are. This may be different for the skeptics: engagement with
different angles of philosophical problems leads them to suspension of
judgment (Long 2006, Code 2010). Other scholars argue that the
skeptics' way of thinking through puzzles improves their
cognitive condition even though they do not settle for an answer to a
given question (Vogt 2012a, ch. 5). Also, scholars point to modes of
thinking in Plato and Aristotle that are not primarily concerned with
results. In contemplation, a cognizer may think again and again
through the same kinds of matters, and yet doing so presumably
improves their cognitive condition (Olfert 2014).
In *Posterior Analytics* I.1, Aristotle says that all teaching
and learning comes about through things we already know. When we
phrase questions, we already have 'That-Knowledge' and
'What-Knowledge.' For example, when we ask questions about
triangles, we need to know that there are triangles (otherwise we
would not have questions about their properties). We also need to have
a notion of what triangles are (we draw a triangle, not a square, when
we phrase a question about its properties). Another way in which
Aristotle addresses the *Meno* Problem conceives of particular
perceptions as the starting-points of investigation. Complex cognitive
activities arise from simpler ones. Many particular perceptions lead
to memory, to experience, and eventually to expert understanding
(*Met.* 1.1, *An. Post.* II.19). With the
generalizations of memory, experience, and expertise comes the ability
to investigate. With respect to skepticism, the important point here
is that the starting-points of investigation are not themselves in
need of justification.
Like Plato, Aristotle engages with the Protagorean claim that, as
Aristotle puts it, all seemings (*dokounta*) and appearances
(*phainomena*) are true (*Met* 4.5). If this were so,
Aristotle says, everything would have to be true and false at the same
time. Aristotle argues that earlier thinkers arrived at such views
because they identified being solely with the perceptual (4.5,
1010a1-3). Caught up in this assumption, they did not see who or
what was going to judge between conflicting sense perceptions. For
example, it seemed unsatisfactory to dismiss the views of sick and mad
people simply on the grounds that they are in the minority, thereby
considering as true what appears to the greater number of people.
Similarly, Aristotle reports that these earlier thinkers looked at the
ways in which things appear differently to different kinds of living
beings, and to one person at different times (4.5,
1099b1-11).
In *Metaphysics* 4.4, Aristotle notes that some people consider
it possible for the same thing to be and not to be, and for someone to
believe so (he refers to a range of positions, all of which in some
way are related to denial of the Principle of Non-Contradiction; see
Castagnoli 2010, I.5.4). Against this, Aristotle says it is the
firmest of principles that things cannot be and not be at the same
time. To deny this shows a lack of training. With adequate training,
one recognizes for which things proof should be sought, and for which
it ought not to be sought (see also *An. Post.* I.3). It is
impossible that there be demonstration for everything. Otherwise
demonstration would go on *ad infinitum*. Scholars often refer
to this point when discussing the skeptical modes of argument. The
skeptics might be guilty of what, from Aristotle's perspective,
would be a mistake of exactly this kind (on this theme in later
Aristotelian logic, cf. Malink 2020).
Aristotle continues in a way that is highly relevant to discussions of
skeptical language and action. A person who wishes to deny that things
cannot be and not be at the same time has two options. Either they say
nothing, or they talk to us. In the first case, there is no need for
us to refute them. This person is like a plant--they do not talk.
In the second case, either their utterance signifies something, or it
signifies nothing. If it signifies something, then they say that
something is so-and-so (which Aristotle takes to be self-defeating for
them). If it signifies nothing, then it does not qualify as speech.
Even though they make an utterance, the person is in effect not
speaking with us (or to themselves). Aristotle also explains the
plant-metaphor in terms of action (1008b10-30). A person who believes
nothing is like a plant because they cannot act. Pursuit and avoidance
testify to the fact that people have beliefs. (On Aristotle and
skepticism, see the papers collected in Irwin 1995.)
## 3. Academic Skepticism
### 3.1 Arcesilaus
With Arcesilaus (316/5-241/0 BCE) and his role as leader of the
Academy (266/268 BCE), Plato's Academy turns skeptical.
Arcesilaus does not refer to himself as a skeptic--this
nomenclature is a later designation. However, Arcesilaus stands at the
beginning of a re-orientation in the history of Platonically inspired
philosophy. He rediscovers Socrates the examiner, arguably based on
his reading of Plato's dialogues (Thorsrud 2018).
Socrates' commitment to investigation, to the testing and
exploring of one's own and others' beliefs, and his
passion for weeding out falsehoods, are the starting-points of his
Academic skepticism (Cicero, *Acad.* 2.74, 1.46). Throughout
the history of this skeptical school, these traits, and the
corresponding commitment to a life guided by reason, remain alive
(Cooper 2004b, Vogt 2013). When, as we shall see below, Arcesilaus
defends a skeptical life without belief, this is because, as he
thinks, reason itself, if properly and faithfully followed, leads us
to live that way. To Arcesilaus, the skeptical life is a life lived
following reason, a life based *on* reason--just as the
competing Stoic and Epicurean lives are alleged by their proponents to
be. Arcesilaus engages with the epistemologies of these contemporaries
of his. In particular, the Academics call into question that there is
a criterion of truth, as both Epicureans and Stoics, beginning in the
generation before Arcesilaus, claim there is. One interpretive
question that concerns Arcesilaus, but also later Academic skeptics,
is especially vexed. According to Seneca (*Letter* 88,
44), the Academics paradoxically claim to know that nothing can be
known. Scholars disagree on how this and similar reports fit together
with the picture of Academic skeptics as open-minded inquirers (Allen
2017). According to Sextus Empiricus, the Academics skeptics say that
everything is inapprehensible (PH 1.226, cf. PH 1.3). Is
"everything is inapprehensible" the single thing that can
be apprehended? Does so-called "non-apprehension"
(*akatalepsia*) amount to the general claim that there is
no knowledge? Alternatively, the Academics may dialectically
appeal to the Stoic notion of *katalepsis*, and argue
merely that the Stoic notion of apprehension is not compelling (Allen
2022).
Like Socrates, Arcesilaus did not write anything. His views must be
unearthed from Sextus' comparisons between Pyrrhonian and
Academic skepticism, from Cicero's discussions in the
*Academica*, and from a range of shorter (and sometimes
hostile) reports. Major themes in Arcesilaus' philosophy are (i)
his dialectical method, (ii) discussion of whether there is a
criterion of truth, and (iii) his defense of the skeptic's
ability to act.
(i) Method. Arcesilaus embraces what scholars call a dialectical
method (Couissin 1929 [1983], Perin 2013, Thorsrud 2018). This method
is inspired by Socrates. It proceeds by asking one's real or
imaginary interlocutor what they think about a given question, then
plunging into an examination of their views, employing their premises.
Can they explain their position without running into inconsistencies,
and without having to accept implications that they want to resist? As
a consequence of this method, it sometimes appears as if a skeptic,
while examining someone's view and its consequences, makes a
positive claim: "so, such-and-such is not so-and-so."
However, within a dialectical exchange, this should be read as
"according to *your* premises, such-and-such
follows." This method remains a key ingredient of Greek
skepticism. While the different skeptical schools develop variants of
the dialectical method, skeptical argument is often characterized by
the fact that skeptics think of themselves as engaging with
"dogmatic" interlocutors. In the skeptical tradition, as
articulated for example by Sextus Empiricus (see section 4.4.),
"dogmatists" are philosophers who put forward, and defend,
positive answers to philosophical questions about reality, knowledge,
ethical values, etc. They need not do so dogmatically or rigidly or
without consideration of alternatives in order to count, in skeptical
terms, as "dogmatists."
(ii) The Criterion of Truth. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, and
roughly 20-30 years Arcesilaus' senior, was for a time a
student at the Academy. He was still in the Academy when he formulated
key Stoic doctrines. Like Arcesilaus, he claims Socratic ancestry.
Zeno is inspired by some of the same ideas that inspire the skeptics.
In particular, he engages with the Socratic idea that knowledge is
integral to virtue. Contrary to Arcesilaus, Zeno aims to give accounts
of knowledge and virtue, and holds them up as ideals that human nature
permits us to achieve. For him, knowledge is very difficult to attain,
but ultimately within the reach of human beings. From the point of
view of Arcesilaus, Zeno's claim to Socratic heritage is almost
offensive: Zeno seems to be too optimistic about our cognitive powers
to be following Socrates (Frede 1983). Scholars have traditionally
envisaged an exchange of arguments between Zeno and Arcesilaus, where
each modified his views in the light of the other's criticism.
However, Zeno most likely formulated his views between 300-275,
and Arcesilaus argued against him c. 275 to 240, when Zeno (who died
c. 263) was probably already retired (Brittain 2006, xiii; Alesse
2000, 115 f.; Long 2006, ch. 5).
The core of the dispute between Arcesilaus and the early Stoics
concerns the question of whether there is a criterion of truth. The
notion of a criterion is introduced into Hellenistic discussions by
Epicurus, who speaks about the *kanon* (literally
measuring stick) and *kriterion*. For Epicurus, a
criterion is that evident thing, viz., the content of a
sense-perception, against which claims about the non-evident are
tested. For example, physics advances claims about non-evident things,
such as atoms and void. These are not accessible to the senses, and
accordingly, do not count as evident. Perception rules out various
physical theories. For example, a physical or metaphysical theory
according to which there is no movement can be dismissed because it is
in disagreement with the evident.
Zeno argues that a certain kind of impression--namely a cognitive
impression (*phantasia*
*kataleptike*)--is the criterion of truth (cf.
Shogry 2018). Zeno's conception of cognition
(*katalepsis*, literally grasping, apprehension), and the
related notion of a cognitive impression, aim to solve an
epistemological problem. Belief-formation aims at the truth; there is
a norm inherent in the practice of believing that one should only
believe truths. It is not transparent to us, however, which of our
beliefs, or claims to the effect that such-and-such is true, are
successful in their aim and hit the truth. Zeno argues that some
impressions are cognitive. A number of Stoic definitions of the
cognitive impression, formulated by Zeno and his successors, are
transmitted. Scholars approach them in at least three ways. First,
some scholars consider one of the Stoic definitions (SE M 7.247-52) as
canonical (Nawar 2014, Shogry 2018). Two, scholars at times examine
specific exchanges between Stoics and skeptics in the assumption that
some clauses in Stoic definitions respond to skeptic objections (for
example, Nawar 2017). Three, scholars have also pointed out that, here
as elsewhere, the Stoics offer a multitude of definitions, without
privileging one of them as "the" definition; different
definitions may speak to different dialectical contexts or theoretical
foci (Vogt 2022).
With some simplification, a cognitive impression reveals its content
and that it is kataleptic (cf. Cicero, *Academica*
2.77-8). For example, when I look at my computer screen
while typing this, I may very well have a cognitive impression that
this is my computer screen. When I look up and out of the window, I
have an impression of a friend walking across campus that is probably
non-cognitive. This impression might be true. But since I see her from
such a distance, it is pretty surely not cognitive. That is, not all
true impressions are cognitive, but all cognitive impressions are
true. We should only assent to cognitive impressions, and so in
forming our beliefs, hold only those certified beliefs (cf. Brittain
2014 on the Stoic view that assent to cognitive impressions is not
compelled).
Arcesilaus calls into question whether there are impressions of this
kind. His main point seems to be that there could be an impression
that is phenomenologically indistinguishable from cognitive
impressions, but nevertheless misrepresents the matters it gives an
impression about. To use an example that may derive from Carneades
(see section 3.2), there is no impression of a given egg such that no
impression of any other egg could be phenomenologically
indistinguishable from it (Shogry 2018 and 2021, Machek and Veres
forthcoming). Assuming that some clauses in Stoic definitions respond
to specific skeptic challenges, the following clause, added to a
shorter definition, appears to speak to these cases: "and
of such a kind as *could* not arise from what is not"
(Long and Sedley (1987) [= LS] 40; DL 7.46, 54; Cicero *Acad*.
1.40-1, 2.77-8; SE *M* 7.247-52). Absent a
criterion of truth, Arcesilaus' skeptic suspends judgment about
everything (*PH* 1.232). Reason itself, Arcesilaus thinks,
demands such suspension.
(iii) Action. If skeptics suspend judgment, argues their dogmatic
opponent, they are not able to act. Stoic philosophy conceives of
three movements of the mind: impression, assent, and impulse
(Plutarch, *Col.* 1122a-d). All three figure in action. The
agent assents to the impression that *A* is to be done; their
assent is an impulse for the action *A*; if there is no
external impediment, the impulse sets off the action (Inwood 1985). It
is a cornerstone of Stoic philosophy that there can be no action
without assent, and so without the belief that the action done is
*to be* done. The Stoics aim to avoid the kind of determinism
according to which actions are not 'up to' the agent
(Bobzien 1998); for them, assent, but not impression, is up to the
agent. In response to the Apraxia Charge, Arcesilaus seems to have
argued that the skeptic can act without having assented (Plutarch,
*Col.* 1122A-d), and so without believing that the action done
is *to be* done. However, this is not his complete response.
From the point of view of the Stoics, skeptical action, if performed
without the relevant kind of assent (that is, assent that it is up to
the agent to give, and that is a rational acceptance of the
impression), is like the action of a non-rational animal, or like the
automatic movement of plants when they grow and flourish. Arcesilaus
is robbing people of their minds (Cicero *Acad.* 2.37-9;
Obdrzalek 2013). But Arcesilaus need not and does not go so far as to
compare human agents with non-rational agents. As human beings,
skeptics have rational impressions. They perceive the world
conceptually, and think about it. Arcesilaus does not suggest that
skeptical action is causally set off by impressions, or in the way,
whatever that is, that animal actions are set off. This would be a
problematic proposal, for it would disregard that the skeptic has a
human mind. Given the complexity of human thought, the skeptic is
likely to have several, and often competing impressions. If all
impressions triggered impulses, the skeptic would be inactive due to a
kind of paralysis. The second component of Arcesilaus' reply,
thus, is that the skeptic, in acting without assenting, adheres to the
reasonable (*eulogon*) (SE *M* 7.158; 7.150; Striker
2010). That is, Arcesilaus aims to explain skeptic action as rational
agency (Cooper 2004b). Arcesilaus disputes the dogmatic claim that
some impressions can be identified as true, and the related claim that
one can only act on the *belief* that some impression is true.
But he does not argue that there are no differences between
impressions which agents could take into account. His agents are
rational: they think about their options, and go with what looks, in
one way or another, more plausible.
Arcesilaus defends skeptical action also against Epicurean critics
(Plutarch, *Col.* 1122A-d), again by showing on the basis of
the Epicureans' own premises that skeptical action is possible.
Can the sceptic explain why, when leaving a room, they go through the
door rather than running into the wall? Arcesilaus seems to have
exploited the Epicurean view that, while all sense-perception is true,
belief can introduce falsehood. Like the Epicurean, the skeptic can
keep apart the perception and a view formed on its basis. By not
assenting to the perception, thus adding belief ("here is the
door"), the skeptic guards against the source of falsehood,
namely belief. But a skeptic has perception of the door available to
them, which is enough for not running into walls.
### 3.2 Carneades
Like Arcesilaus, Carneades (214-129/8 BCE) refrains from writing
and philosophizes in a Socratic spirit. Carneades led an embassy of
three philosophers from Athens to Rome in 156/5 BCE. Aside from his
official role, he is said to have given two speeches, arguing for
justice one day and against justice the next. Whether or not this is
historically correct (Powell 2013), the traditional take on
Carneades' speeches is not that he aims to overthrow justice.
Instead, the upshot is taken to be that he wants to show that the
supporters of justice--including Plato and Aristotle--do not
have the successful arguments they think they have to show what
justice is and what it requires (Lactantius, *Epitome* 55.8, LS
68M). Like Arcesilaus, Carneades (i) engages with Stoic epistemology.
His account of skeptical action includes (ii) a detailed proposal
regarding the criterion. As part of his less radical skepticism,
Carneades seems (iii) to allow for a certain kind of assent, and
perhaps for belief.
(i) The Stoic-Academic Debate. Chrysippus, the third major Stoic
(after Zeno and Cleanthes), and his student Diogenes of Babylon,
revise Zeno's epistemology, defending it against
Arcesilaus' arguments (Brittain 2006, xiii). In response to
their arguments, Carneades continues the exchange with the Stoics that
Arcesilaus began (SE *M* 7.402-10). His first move
addresses the link between mental states and action. People in states
of madness, he argues, act just as easily and naturally on their
impressions as other people, even those who act on cognitive
impressions (if there are any). From the point of view of exhibited
behavior, there does not seem to be a difference: any and all
impressions, even those the Stoics think clearly arise from something
that is not, are in all respects relevant to action completely on a
par. Cognitive impressions, if there are any, have no superiority.
In a second argument, Carneades points to objects that are similar to
one another: can the wise person discern any two eggs, two grains of
sand, and so on? The Stoics have multiple replies. It is conceivable
that, in some contexts of action, the wise person assents to what is
reasonable (*eulogon*) (DL 1.177), without having a cognitive
impression of how things are. Or, if faced with the task to identify
grains of sand while lacking a cognitive impression, the wise person
can suspend judgment. However, the wise will train themselves so as to
be able to perceive minute differences (Cicero, *Acad*. 2.57),
where it might be important to do so. This point is backed up by Stoic
physics: no two items in the universe are identical, and their
differences are in principle perceptible (Sedley 1982, 2002).
Carneades replies that even if no two things were exactly alike
(consistent with his general line of argument, he does not take a
stance on such questions), a very close similarity could appear to
exist for all perceivers (Cicero, *Acad*. 2.83-5); that
is, the impressions of two items, though in fact these items might
differ from each other, could be indistinguishable (Nawar 2017, Shogry
2018 and 2021). Discussion continues with a move on the part of the
Stoics: they add to their definition of the cognitive impression
"one that has no impediment." Sometimes an impression
is--as it were, by itself--cognitive, but is unconvincing
due to external circumstances (SE *M* 7.253). It is a difficult
question whether this addition harms the Stoics more than it helps
them. If the initial conception of a cognitive impression hangs on the
idea that something about its phenomenological nature, or something
internal to the impression, marks it as cognitive, the Stoics give up
on a crucial assumption if they grant that sometimes there are
"impediments." If, however, cognitive impressions are
differentiated by a causal feature (the way they are caused by the
'imprinter' which causes the 'imprint'), the
further addition might help (Frede 1983, Nawar 2014), since the
impediment might need to be removed before the causal connection could
be confirmed (Hankinson 2003).
(ii) Carneades' Criterion. Even though Carneades further pursues
a discussion begun by Arcesilaus, he does not simply continue within
the framework of Arcesilaus' skepticism. The distinctiveness of
his position is best seen in the context of his criterion: the
persuasive (*pithanon*). The notion of the persuasive can be
understood in two distinctively different ways. Persuasiveness might
be a causal feature, so that a persuasive impression sets off a
physiological process of being moved in a certain way. But there may
also be a rational kind of persuasiveness. Carneades construes
persuasiveness in rational terms. For him, the persuasive is the
convincing, or perhaps even the plausible.
Carneades develops a three-stage criterion: (1) In matters of
importance, skeptics adhere to the persuasive. (2) In matters of
greater importance, they adhere to the persuasive and undiverted. A
persuasive impression is undiverted if there is no tension between it
and its surrounding impressions. (3) In matters that contribute to
happiness, skeptics adhere to persuasive, undiverted, and thoroughly
explored impressions. A persuasive impression is undiverted and
thoroughly explored when it and the surrounding impressions are
closely examined without its persuasiveness being diminished (SE
*M* 7.166-84). Consider an example. A skeptic looks in a
dark room for a rope. Before they pick up what appears to them to be a
rope, they look closely and poke it with a stick. Coiled objects can
be ropes, but they can also be snakes. The persuasive impression that
this is a rope must be examined before the skeptic adheres to it
(*M* 7.187).
The three-stage criterion is put forward in the context of action.
However, Sextus describes Carneades' criterion as a criterion of
truth, not a criterion of action (*M* 7.173). Carneades might
take himself to offer more than a practical criterion. His discussions
of the persuasive come close to a general epistemological theory
(Couissin 1929 [1983], Striker 1980, Bett 1989 and 1990, Allen 1994
and 2004 [2006], Brittain 2001). Cicero renders the Greek
*pithanon* as *probabile* (and sometimes as *veri
simile*), which modern editors sometimes translate in terms of
what is probable or likely to be true. Some scholars think that
Carneades is an early thinker about likelihoods, and argue that he
develops a fallibilist epistemology (Obdrzalek 2004).
(iii) Assent and Belief. Does adherence to persuasive impressions
involve belief? Carneades coins a term for the kind of adherence he
has been describing: approval (Cicero, *Acad.* 2.99). He
distinguishes it from assent in the sense of Stoic and other dogmatic
theories, which establishes a belief that something is in actual fact
true; but he nevertheless describes it as a kind of assent (Cicero,
*Acad*. 2.104). Carneades' disciples disagree on whether
approval is any kind of genuine assent. That is, they disagree on
whether, in approval, one forms a belief. Philo and Metrodorus think
that Carneades allows for some kind of belief, close to or identical
with belief as the Stoics understand it. Clitomachus disagrees, and
Cicero follows Clitomachus (*Acad.* 2.78, see also 2.59, 2.67).
Scholars continue to debate these issues (Allen 2022), and the basic
problem remains unchanged. It is not clear whether there is a
plausible notion of belief according to which belief falls short of
'holding to be true' (or according to which, though some
kind of 'holding true' is involved, the relevant
affirmation-as-true is weaker than in beliefs as Stoics and other
dogmatist epistemologists conceive of them). In any event,
affirmations as true, at least of the full and flat-out ("in
actual fact") sort the Stoics think of, are precisely what the
skeptic does not make.
Another approach to Carneades' stance toward belief is to ask
whether he might invoke Platonic considerations. Consider that
Socrates, when asked in the *Republic* what he thinks the good
is, refuses to reply because he thinks beliefs without knowledge are
shameful (*Rp.* 506c). In response to this, his interlocutors
point out that there is a difference between putting forward
one's beliefs as if one knew them to be true, and putting them
forward with the proviso that they are merely beliefs (Vogt 2012a, ch.
2). The shamefulness of mere belief might disappear through this
proviso. A passage in Cicero's *Academica* suggests that
Carneades invokes this thought. According to Carneades, the wise
person can hold beliefs if they fully understand them to be beliefs
(2.148). Along similar lines, it has been suggested that Carneades
might conceive of a hypothetical mode of believing (Striker 1980
[1996, 112]), perhaps engaging with a move in Plato's
*Meno*. Investigation cannot get off the ground if we do not,
in some sense, begin with our beliefs about the matter under
investigation. But how can we do so without endorsing our beliefs, not
knowing whether our views are true? Plato's answer at this point
is: by hypothesizing our beliefs. Today we would insist that
hypotheses are not beliefs. However, it is conceivable that Carneades
argued along these lines, and that the details of his vocabulary got
lost or confused in doxography.
### 3.3 Later Academic Skepticism
Carneades was an enigma to his students and immediate successors.
Clitomachus (head of the Academy from 127 to 110 BCE) seems to have
attempted the impossible: to adhere closely to Carneades'
philosophy, even though he never understood what Carneades truly meant
(Levy 2010). The cornerstone of his adherence lies in the view that
Carneades argues for suspension of judgment and against beliefs
understood as Stoics understand them. Philo of Larissa, another
student of Carneades, interprets his teacher as allowing for tentative
beliefs in the skeptic's life. With Philo, the skeptical era of
Plato's Academy comes to an end. Philo's philosophy seems
to divide into two phases. In Athens, and as head of the Academy, he
stays relatively close to Carneades. Moving to Rome later in his
career, he develops a markedly different position. He argues only
narrowly against the Stoic criterion and their conception of
cognition. One can apprehend things and so come to *know*
them--one just cannot apprehend them in the way in which the
Stoics construe cognition (*PH* 1.235). The fact that there is
no apprehension in the sense of the Stoics does not mean that there is
no knowledge (*Acad*. 2.14). This move shifts the discussion in
several important ways. First, Philo can be interpreted as a kind of
externalist: one can know something without knowing that one knows it.
Absent Stoic cognitive impressions, we are not able to identify which
instances of 'holding-true' qualify as knowledge; but we
nevertheless have some knowledge (Hankinson 2010). Second, this
proposal is a step toward modern skepticism, which is not concerned
with criteria of truth, but with knowledge.
Cicero's skeptical philosophy in his own philosophical writings
is again distinctively different. In line with his notions of what is
probable (*probabile*) or likely to be true (*veri
simile*), Cicero often examines a range of philosophical
positions, aiming to find out which of them is most rationally
defensible. He thinks it is better for us to adopt a view that is
likely to be true, rather than remain unconvinced by either side
(Thorsrud 2009, 84-101). Cicero is of the greatest importance
for the transition between ancient and early modern skepticism. As in
other fields of philosophy, Cicero's influence is partly the
influence of the translator. In transposing philosophical ideas into
the language of a different culture, the ideas change. Cicero
sometimes speaks of doubting, *dubitari* (e.g., *Acad.*
2.27, 106; however, he often sticks with the earlier language of
assent and suspension). But doubt has no place in Greek skepticism
(see section 1).
## 4. Pyrrhonian Skepticism
### 4.1 Early Figures: Pyrrho and Timon
When comparing Pyrrhonian and Academic skepticism, two topics stand
out: Pyrrhonism aims at tranquility; and it assigns pride of place to
appearances. Anecdotes about Pyrrho's life (365/60-275/70
BC) convey how unaffected he was (DL 9.61-69). This kind of
ideal--a tranquil state of mind--is not part of Academic
skepticism, and scholars disagree on its role in Pyrrhonism
(Machuca 2006; Striker 2010; Perin 2020; on Democritean
influences on tranquility in Pyrrho and Timon, cf. Svavarsson 2013).
Insofar as the point of the anecdotes about Pyrrho's life is
that Pyrrho did not avoid or pursue anything with fervor, or that he
did not despair about things that other people find terrible, they
capture ideas that remain central to Pyrrhonism (for a general account
of early Pyrrhonism, cf. Castagnoli 2013; on Sextus' take
on Pyrrhonian tranquility, cf. Svavarsson 2015).
The biographical anecdotes portray Pyrrho as a strikingly
unconventional figure, unaffected not just by emotion and belief, but
also by perception--to the extent that friends had to pull him
off the street when a wagon approached (DL 9.62). At the same time,
Pyrrho seems to have said that the skeptic adheres to appearances
(*phainomena*) (DL 9.106; Bett 2000, 84-93; on earlier
notions of appearances relevant to skepticism, cf. Barney 1992). This
might suggest that he would not cross the street when a wagon is
approaching, and so appears to him. One story makes Pyrrho appear
not only unusual, but arguably a not so sympathetic character. Passing
by a drowning man, he was so unmoved that he simply walked on (DL
9.63). This is in rather stark contrast with Stoic notions of
unaffectedness, where the idea would be that, not being disturbed by
emotions like fear and panic, the passerby is ideally equipped to help
effectively. Some biographical details can seem to mold
Pyrrho's life to fit the schema of the sage: a traveler to the
East (Flintoff 1980), whose insights are conveyed in brief sayings; an
enigmatic figure, exemplary and shocking at the same time. Though it
is difficult to assess the testimony on Pyrrho's travels,
scholars increasingly explore resonances between Pyrrho's
pronouncements, later Pyrrhonian skepticism, and dimensions of
Buddhist philosophy (Hanner 2020). For example, Mill (2018) argues
that a tradition in classical Indian philosophy develops a
"skepticism about philosophy" that resembles dimensions of
Pyrrhonian thought.
Even though he discussed tranquility and adherence to appearances,
Pyrrho was arguably no Pyrrhonian skeptic (Bett 2000, 14-62).
That is, it is likely that he put forward a dogmatic position, in the
sense that he had positive philosophical views about the character of
reality. Pyrrho wrote nothing. Much of what we know about him is
preserved through the writings of Timon, his adherent
(325/20-235/30 BCE) (Burnyeat 1980b; Clayman 2009). The
most important piece of testimony is a passage reporting an account by
Timon:
>
> It is necessary above all to consider our own knowledge; for if it is
> in our nature to know nothing, there is no need to inquire any further
> into other things. [...] Pyrrho of Elis was also a powerful
> advocate of such a position. He himself has left nothing in writing;
> his pupil Timon, however, says that the person who is to be happy must
> look to these three points: first, what are things like by nature?
> second, in what way ought we to be disposed towards them? and finally,
> what will be the result for those who are so disposed? He [Timon] says
> that he [Pyrrho] reveals that things are equally indifferent and
> unstable and indeterminate (*adiaphora kai astathmeta kai
> anepikrita*); for this reason, neither our perceptions nor our
> beliefs tell the truth or lie (*adoxastous kai aklineis kai
> akradantous*). For this reason, then, we should not trust them,
> but should be without opinions and without inclinations and without
> wavering, saying about each single thing that it no more is than is
> not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not (*ou mallon
> estin* *e ouk estin e kai esti kai ouk estin
> e oute estin oute ouk estin*). Timon says that the result
> for those who are so disposed will be first speechlessness
> (*aphasia*), but then freedom from worry (*ataraxia*);
> and Aenesidemus says pleasure. These, then, are the main points of
> what they say (Aristocles in Eusebius *PE* 14.18.1-5 =
> DC53; tr. Bett 2000 with changes)
>
In response to the first question, how things are in their nature,
Pyrrho makes a metaphysical claim: they are indeterminate (Bett 2000,
14-29). There are no stable items, or no items with stable
properties. Scholars sometimes hesitate to ascribe such a position to
Pyrrho, because it is undoubtedly dogmatic. Perhaps the text can be
given an epistemological reading: things are indifferentiable and
unmeasurable and undecidable, because we fail in differentiating,
measuring, and determining how they are (Svavarsson 2010; Thorsrud
2010). But Pyrrho's response to the second question may only
follow if we adopt the metaphysical reading (Bett 2000, 29-37).
Pyrrho infers that our perceptions and beliefs are neither true nor
false. They are not truth-evaluable, presumably because there are no
facts which could be correctly captured. Third, if we understand these
things, speechlessness (*aphasia*) follows, and then
tranquility (*ataraxia*). Pyrrho does not say that we should
cease to speak. He suggests that we adopt a complicated mode of
speech, constructed around the expression *ou mallon*
("no more"), which aims to capture the indeterminate
natures of things, when we attempt to say anything about anything
(Bett 2000, 37-39; Vogt 2021).
### 4.2 Aenesidemus, the Ten Modes, and Appearances
Aenesidemus (first century BCE) was discontented with the views
discussed in the Academy at his time, of which he began as an
adherent. Philo's proto-externalism as well as a counterposition
formulated by Antiochus both appeared to him dogmatic. Aenesidemus
aimed to revive a more radical skepticism, and left the Academy for
this purpose. Arguably, he is the first Pyrrhonian skeptic.
Aenesidemus wrote a treatise, the *Pyrrhonian Discourses*,
probably similar in structure to Sextus' *Outlines of
Pyrrhonism* and partially preserved in a summary by Photius:
a general account of skepticism, followed by books on particular
philosophical questions (Hankinson 2010). The basic elements of
Aenesidemus' skepticism are: the skeptic puts appearances and
thoughts into opposition; this generates equipollence
(*isostheneia*, lit. "of equal weight") between
several appearances and/or thoughts; suspension of judgment follows;
with it comes tranquility; and the skeptic leads a life according to
appearances (DL 9.62, 78, 106-7). However, we do not know much
detail of his views on these matters. Instead, Aenesidemus is famous
for having developed Ten Modes or Tropes--forms of argument by
which the sceptic puts appearances and thoughts into opposition. Key
questions about Aenesidemus' skepticism concern (i) the
interpretation of his Modes, (ii) the relationship of his philosophy
to competing theories, (iii) the scope of the Ten Modes, and (iv) the
skeptic's mode of speech.
(i) Conflicting Appearances or Causal Invariance. The Ten Modes are
preserved in Diogenes Laertius (9.78-88), Philo of Alexandria
(*On Drunkenness* 169-202), and Sextus. Diogenes'
account of the Ten Modes may postdate Sextus' (Sedley
2015). Sextus gives extensive illustrations, and integrates the Ten
Modes into his general account of Pyrrhonism (*PH*
1.36-163; cf. *M* 7.345 for ascription of the Ten Modes
to Aenesidemus; cf. Annas-Barnes 1985 and Hankinson 1995, 268; the
sequence below follows Sextus). Here is the first of the Ten Modes,
interpreted in two ways.
>
>
> **10-1**:
>
>
> Arguments concerning oppositions based on the differences between
> kinds of animals.
>
>
>
> **Conflicting Appearances Interpretation:**
>
>
> *X* appears *F* to animal of kind *A* (e.g.,
> humans) and *F*\* to animal of kind *B* [where *F*
> and *F*\* are opposite or otherwise incompatible properties]. We
> cannot judge how *X* really is, because we are a party to the
> dispute.
>
>
>
> **Causal Invariance Interpretation:**
>
>
> For something to be 'really' *F*, it would have to
> consistently affect different perceivers as *F*. But different
> constitutions of different animals cause different impressions of the
> same thing. For different animals, something is *F* and
> *F*\* (where *F* and *F*\* are opposite or
> otherwise incompatible properties). Therefore, things do not seem to
> really be *F* or *F*\*.
>
>
>
The Conflicting Appearances Interpretation is based on Sextus'
account (Annas-Barnes 1985). The focus here is on the idea that every
kind of animal, perceiver, sensory faculty, thinker, or judger
(depending on which mode we consider) is only one of several animals,
perceivers, sensory faculties, thinkers, or judgers. The object is
perceived or considered from a particular point of view. Everyone is a
party to the dispute, and there is no 'view from nowhere.'
Accordingly, the dispute cannot be decided. The Causal Invariance
Interpretation, on the other hand, suggests that the focus on
decidability is introduced by Sextus. Aenesidemus may (implicitly or
explicitly) have endorsed the following idea: if *X* were
*F* by nature, *X* would affect everyone as *F*.
If *X* affects different people (living beings, sensory
faculties, etc.) as *F* and *F*\*, *X* is by
nature neither *F* nor *F*\*. For example, if *X*
is harmful to *A* and beneficial to *B*, it is neither
harmful nor beneficial in its nature (Woodruff 2010, Bett 2000). The
Ten Modes can generally be construed as engaging either with conflicts
between appearances or with causal invariance:
>
>
> **10-2**:
>
>
> Arguments based on the differences among human beings (differences in
> body and in soul).
>
>
>
> **10-3**:
>
>
> Arguments based on the differences between the senses and on the
> complexity of perceived objects.
>
>
>
> **10-4**:
>
>
> Arguments based on states (dispositions and conditions of a human
> being, such as age, motion versus rest, emotions, etc.).
>
>
>
> **10-5**:
>
>
> Arguments based on positions, distances, and places.
>
>
>
> **10-6**:
>
>
> Arguments based on mixtures (objects in conjunction with external
> things like air and humidity; physical constituents of sense organs;
> physiology of thought).
>
>
>
> **10-7**:
>
>
> Arguments based on the composition of the perceived object.
>
>
>
> **10-8**:
>
>
> Arguments based on relativity (to the judging subject, to
> circumstances, etc.). 10-8 comprises at least 10-1 to 10-7, or all Ten
> Modes.
>
>
>
> **10-9**:
>
>
> Arguments based on constancy or rarity of occurrence.
>
>
>
> **10-10**:
>
>
> Arguments concerned with ways of life, customs, laws, mythical
> beliefs, and dogmatic assumptions, all of which can be put into
> opposition to each other.
>
>
>
(ii) Skepticism, Relativism, Epicureanism. Consider first the
relationship between skepticism and relativism (cf. Bett 2000; Vogt
2012a, ch. 4). Relativism, as envisaged in Plato's
*Theaetetus*, looks at a similar range of phenomena. Things
appear different to different kinds of animals; to different people;
and so on. Relativism embraces the intuition that there is (as we
would say today) faultless disagreement. That is, you and I disagree,
but neither of us is wrong. Accordingly, metaphysical relativism
claims we must give up the intuition that we both refer to the same
thing. In the *Theaetetus*, the world dissolves into radical
flux: there are no stable items with stable properties that we both
refer to.
The Ten Modes, according to Conflicting Appearances, differ from
relativism by turning precisely the other way (Annas-Barnes 1985,
97-8; Pellegrin 1997, 552-3). They implicitly rely on the
intuition that there are stable items with stable properties. Of
course, the skeptic is not committed to the thesis that opposites
cannot hold of the same thing, and that therefore no two conflicting
appearances can be true. However, the modes presuppose a common sense
metaphysics that does not accommodate faultless disagreement. In all
cases of disagreement, at best one of us can be right. If we cannot
figure out which view is right, we should suspend. This does not mean
that Pyrrhonians are committed to a common-sense metaphysics. The Ten
Modes are only one of several tools that skeptics have at their
disposal. They may thus imply a metaphysics that, at other points,
skeptics would call into question (cf. Fine 2003b, 352).
Causal Invariance differs from Conflicting Appearances precisely with
respect to the metaphysics that is, even if only dialectically,
invoked. Aenesidemus seems to have explored the relationship between
skepticism and flux. He remarks that skepticism leads to Heraclitean
philosophy. The idea that one thing appears to have contrary
properties (the ones it appears to different animals/persons/senses to
have) leads to the idea that one thing actually has contrary
properties (*PH* 1.210; cf. Schofield 2007 on the role of
Heraclitus and causal invariance). This remark can be taken as an
expression both of moderate flux and of relativism (Aenesidemus does
not seem to think of radical flux, where it is no longer even possible
to refer to anything). There is no stable reality of how things are
(moderate flux); *X* is *F* and *F*\* insofar as,
if *X* seems *F* to *A*, this is true for
*A*, and *F*\* to *B*, this is true for *B*
(relativism). This proposal differs from the Causal Invariance
interpretation of the Modes presented above. There, Aenesidemus seems
to argue that things do not really have stable properties (they are
neither *F* nor *F*\* by nature); he does not say that
they are *F* and *F*\* (as relativism says).
A third approach, competing with skepticism and relativism, is
Epicurean epistemology. Again, the set of phenomena to be accounted
for is the same. But it is described differently. Epicurus insists
that we should not even speak of conflicting appearances. Rather, we
should speak of different perceptions. Perceptions cannot refute each
other, because they are of the same weight. Epicurus here uses the
term that is central to Pyrrhonism: equal weight,
*isostheneia* (DL 10.31-2). The fact that
perceptions differ has perfectly reasonable explanations: I look from
a distance, you look from nearby; I have a cold, you are healthy; I am
a human being, another cognizer is a dog; and so on. These facts
figure in the explanations of how our perceptions are constituted.
Accordingly, Epicurus argues, all perceptions, even though they
differ, are true. They all have a causal history that physics can
explain. The precise interpretation of this proposal is controversial.
One might object that the notion of truth employed here is deeply
puzzling. It is not clear what it means to describe all perceptions as
true if they cannot be true *or* false.
(iii) Scope. For the greatest part, the Ten Modes seem to be concerned
with perception in a broad sense, so that it includes pleasure and
pain, harm and benefit, as well as pursuit and avoidance. To perceive
something as pleasant or beneficial is to pursue it. Perception and
evaluation are also mixed in another way: depending on the frequency
with which we perceive something, it seems more or less amazing and
precious to us. **10-10** envisages oppositions that can
be construed with the help of dogmatic theses. The Ten Modes thus fit
Sextus' description of what skepticism is: the ability to put
appearances and thoughts (*phainomena* and *nooumena*)
into opposition (*PH* 1.8, 1.31-33; cf. DL 9.78).
Another issue concerning the scope of the Ten Modes is whether they
address general or particular matters. Compare the example of whether
the tower is round or square (T) to the example of whether honey is
sweet or bitter (H). (T) is a particular; the question is whether this
tower is round or square. (H) can be construed as a particular
("is this bit of honey sweet?"), or as a general issue
("is honey sweet?"). The Ten Modes offer strategies for
suspension of judgment on both kinds of questions.
Scholars have asked whether it is a problem for skepticism if the Ten
Modes appear 'systematic' (Sedley 2015). A set of
arguments that aims to be complete, covering domains according to a
standardized pattern, may appear to be out of tune with the
skeptic's presumed mode of investigation. Purportedly, skeptics
think through given questions as they arise, arriving at suspension of
judgment in a piecemeal fashion. If this self-description is to be
taken at face value, then modes of generating suspension of judgment
across the board may appear problematic. In this respect, Diogenes
Laertius' report of the Ten Modes may be superior to
Sextus' account. Diogenes begins with a remark that suggests
that skeptics pick up where other philosophers have already begun to
make an argument (9.78-9). Other philosophers have collected,
presumably, ways in which 'we are persuaded', say, because
things regularly appear the same way. Now the skeptics, as it were in
response to this, add a collection of further cases, where things do
not appear the same way to different cognizers. If this is the
dialectical set-up, the Ten Modes may not be 'systematic'
in ways that harm skepticism. They may co-opt the patterns of dogmatic
reports about cases where appearances are stable (Sedley 2015).
(iv) Language. Aenesidemus contributes an interesting move to the
question of how the skeptic can speak. Consider the relationship
between a skeptic's state of mind and their utterances. One way
to construe this relationship is that an utterance reflects a state of
mind. This is a background assumption to the idea that, if skeptics
use assertoric language, they hold beliefs. Another option is to
assume that language does not have the means to capture the
skeptic's state of mind. On this premise, a skeptic might flag
their utterances as falling short of doing so. This is
Aenesidemus' strategy. He says that the Pyrrhonian determines
nothing, and not even this fact that he determines nothing. The
Pyrrhonian puts matters in such terms, he says, because he has no way
to express the actual thought of the sceptic in determining nothing
(Photius, *Bibl*. 169b40-170a14, = 71C(6)-(8) LS).
### 4.3 Agrippa, and the Five Modes
Almost nothing is known about Agrippa (1st to
2nd century CE; SE *PH* 1.164-177; DL
9.88-89). However, the modes of argument that Sextus calls the
Five Modes are attributed to him. These modes are among the most
famous arguments of ancient skepticism (Barnes 1990, Hankinson
2010).
>
>
> **5-1 *Diaphonia***:
>
>
> The mode that argues from disagreement. With respect to some matter
> that presents itself, there is undecided (*anepikriton*)
> conflict, both among the views of ordinary life and the views held by
> philosophers. Due to this, we are unable to choose or reject one
> thing, and must fall back on suspension.
>
>
>
> **5-2 *Eis apeiron ekballonta***:
>
>
> Arguments that throw one into an infinite *regress*. That which
> is brought forward to make a given matter credible needs yet something
> else to make *it* credible, and so on *ad infinitum*.
> Since we thus have no starting point for our argument, suspension of
> judgment follows.
>
>
>
> **5-3 *Pros ti***:
>
>
> Arguments from *relativity*. *X* only ever appears
> such-and-such in relation to the subject judging and to the things
> observed together with it. Suspension on how *X* really is
> follows.
>
>
>
> **5-4 *Hypothesis***:
>
>
> Someone makes an assumption without providing argument. A dogmatist,
> if thrown back into an infinite regress of arguments, just assumes
> something as a starting-point, without providing an argument
> (*anapodeiktos*). We suspend over mere
> hypotheses--they could be false, opposite hypotheses could be
> formulated, and so on.
>
>
>
> **5-5 *Ton diallelon***:
>
>
> Arguments that disclose a *circularity*. This mode is used when
> that which ought to confirm a given investigated matter requires
> confirmation (*pistis*--credibility) from that matter. We
> are unable to assume either in order to establish the other. We
> suspend judgment on both.
>
>
>
It is a commonplace to say that, while the Ten Modes, as presented in
Sextus, are concerned with conflicting appearances, the Five Modes are
about argument or proof. In these modes, the skeptics develop
strategies by which to attack theories that the dogmatists defend. If
this is how we characterize the Modes, Aristotle's objection
(section 2.3) immediately comes to mind. Do the Five Modes reveal the
skeptic's lack of understanding because they presuppose that
everything is subject to proof? (Barnes 1990; Hankinson 1995,
182-92; Long 2006, ch.3) The three so-called formal
modes--Regress, Hypothesis, and Circularity--can be
construed in this fashion: when employing them, the skeptic can argue
that every premise must be supported by argument; if it is not so
supported, the theory begins from a mere hypothesis (on earlier uses
of the term *hupothesis* in Plato and in medicine, cf. Cooper
2002 [2004a]); or it is ultimately circular.
However, the skeptic might not be vulnerable to this objection. First,
the Five Modes can be construed as dialectical, invoking dogmatic
theories of justification (Striker 2004). Second, they might be
broader in scope. **5-1** and **5-3**
explore disagreement and relativity. Skeptical examination often
begins with the Mode of Disagreement: different answers to a given
question are surveyed, and the conflict between them is observed. The
interpretation of **5-1** hangs, for the most part, on
the question of whether *anepikriton* should be translated as
'undecided' or 'undecidable' (Barnes 1990). It
would be dogmatic to claim that matters are undecidable. The
Pyrrhonist must prefer the idea that, up to now, matters have not been
decided. In applying the Mode of Disagreement, skeptics can
either record a conflicting argument that others have formulated or
come up with an argument that disagrees with a view formulated by a
dogmatist (cf. Sienkiewicz 2019, 47-51). This leads to the question of
whether something can be found that would decide matters, and thus to
the application of further modes. Scholars have observed that
**5-3**, the Mode of Relativity, does not really fit into
the Five Modes. However, the Five Modes could be designed to supersede
and include the Ten Modes, and **5-3** might be viewed as
capturing the common thread of the Ten Modes. With the help of
**5-3**, the skeptic can argue that the premises that
theorists employ are formulated from particular points of view, in
particular contexts, and so on (for a reading that emphasizes the role
of the first mode at the expense of the role of the third, cf.
Sienkiewicz 2019).
Third, even the so-called formal modes (**5-2**,
**5-4**, **5-5**) might not be narrowly
concerned with proof, but rather with everything that can lend
credibility to something else. Consider Regress
(**5-2**), the first of the formal modes. The text does
not actually speak of proof (*apodeixis*) (this is obscured by
Bury's Loeb translation; **5-4** is the only place
in Sextus' report of the Five Modes that uses a cognate of
*apodeixis*). Sextus' language is wider: the mode deals
with everything that can make something else credible. We might read
this in the context of the Hellenistic view that proof is a species of
sign (*PH* 2.122). A sign reveals something non-evident. Smoke
that reveals fire has, from this point of view, a function and
structure that is similar to a proof. The target of the Five Modes
might be sign-inferences in general. If this is so, then their target
might include what we would call inductive reasoning and causal
explanations (when Sextus introduces a further set of modes, the
Causal Modes, he says that they are not really needed, because the
relevant work can be done by the Five Modes; *PH*
1.180-86). Taken together, the Five Modes deny all "proof,
criterion, sign, cause, movement, learning, coming into being, and
that there is anything by nature good or bad." (DL 9.90). This
is notably more than just proof. Indeed, it is an excellent summary of
the key topics in Sextus' discussions of logic, physics, and
ethics.
### 4.4 Sextus Empiricus
Sextus' (ca. 160-210 CE) epithet, Empiricus, indicates
that he belonged to the empiricists, a medical school (cf.
Svavarson 2014 for a brief conspectus of Sextus' philosophy).
The empiricist medical school argued against rationalistic tendencies
in medicine (Frede 1990; Allen 2010). Rationalism in medicine aims to
give causal explanations as a basis for therapies. Empiricism, on the
contrary, confines itself to observation and memory. Somewhat
confusingly (considering his name), Sextus discusses differences
between Pyrrhonism and empiricism, and says that skepticism is closer
to medical methodism than to empiricism (Allen 2010). On the whole, it
may be safest to think of Sextus as rejecting medical rationalism as
well as other trends within medicine that by Sextus' lights are
dogmatic. Methodism follows appearances, and derives from them what
seems beneficial. No explanations are attempted, no underlying
substances postulated, and no regularities assumed--these are
some of the rationalistic methods that both methodism and empiricism
argue against. Methodism also makes no statements to the effect that
such explanations cannot be given, or that underlying substances and
regularities do not exist, as Sextus says empiricism does (SE
*PH* 1.236-241). Beyond the fact that Sextus was a
doctor and wrote on medicine (M 7.202, M 1.61), his philosophical
thinking seems shaped by engagement with medical writers. Scholars
have long been interested in the relationship between medicine and
skeptical arguments that pertain to be therapeutic (Voelke 1990). More
recently, scholars explore ways in which medical writings, in
particular by Galen, inform Sextus' thinking, even on specific
issues such as how to conceive of and solve sophisms (Schmitt,
forthcoming). It has also been argued that the skeptics'
application of the modes should be interpreted in light of the
methodological commitments of non-rationalist medicine (Sienkiewicz
2019, 2021).
Sextus' philosophical writings are traditionally divided into
two groups. The *Outlines of Pyrrhonism* [*PH*] consists
of three books. *PH* 1 is the only general account of
Pyrrhonism that survives. *PH* 2 and 3 discuss questions of
logic, physics, and ethics. The other writings are summarily referred
to, traditionally, as *Against the Mathematicians*
[*M*]. In fact, they oppose not just mathematical, but also
other theorists: the title really means *Against the
Theoreticians*, or *Against the Learned* (Bett 2012). In a
sense, only *M* 1-6 should go by that title. It is a
complete work, and *M* 7 does not seem to be its continuation
(Bett 2012, "Introduction"). *M* 1-6 discuss
grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, and music theory.
They argue against theoretical 'learning' in these fields.
*M* 7-11 discuss core questions of the three
philosophical disciplines, logic, physics, and ethics, and could
plausibly be referred to as *Against the Logicians* (*M*
7-8), *Against the Physicists* (*M* 9-10),
and *Against the Ethicists* (*M* 11). Scholars disagree
on whether *M* is earlier (Bett 1997) or later than *PH*
(Janacek 1948 and 1972). Scholars also disagree on whether we can
evaluate different strands of skepticism within Sextus as more or less
sophisticated. Those who consider *PH* as later often do so
because they think it shows greater philosophical sophistication,
either by avoiding claims that a certain matter cannot be known
(sometimes described as negative dogmatism), as found in *M*
1-6 and *M* 11, or by streamlining discussions from
*M* 7-10 (Bett 1997; Brunschwig 1980).
These questions are complicated further by Sextus' attempt to
incorporate diverse material, such as different sets of Modes, into
his skepticism. According to recent interpretations, the
different sets of modes are part of an integrated philosophical
approach (Powers 2010). Morison (2018) argues that the Ten Modes and
Five Modes both serve the same purpose: to produce equal and opposing
arguments to arguments in support of philosophical or scientific
views. Arguably, two kinds of consistency are at work in Sextus'
writings. On the one hand, Sextus aims at the consistency of one
philosophical outlook. On the other hand, he aims at the consistency
of having a response to every objection. These two aims overlap
greatly, but they can also come apart. A given argument might refute a
particular critic. This argument may go back to various earlier
versions of Pyrrhonism. Similarly, the critical objection that is
refuted may be traced to dogmatic theories formulated over the course
of several centuries. As a result, a given argument in Sextus may be
effective against a given objection he has in mind. It may thus
preserve consistency in the sense of leaving the skeptic unharmed by
dogmatic criticism. But at the same time, this argument may have
implications that are in tension with the way in which Sextus explains
skepticism in other passages. Such tensions are particularly important
with respect to the way in which Sextus uses core concepts. For
example, it is not clear that Sextus uses the notion of appearances
(*phainomena*) in a consistent fashion (*PH*
1.8-9; 1.15; 1.22; for the view that Sextus employs the notion
consistently throughout, see Barney 1992). At times, he draws on the
contrast between appearances and thoughts (*noumena*). But for
the most part, the term refers to all cases where something seems
so-and-so to the skeptic, either perceptually or in thought. In some
contexts, Sextus draws on the idea that appearances are impressions,
invoking the dogmatic assumption that impressions are passive. In
other contexts, he does not envisage appearances as entirely passively
experienced (Vogt 2012b).
It is thus no surprise that the interpretation of Sextus'
Pyrrhonism is quite controversial. This applies in particular to the
question of whether the skeptic has any beliefs, or beliefs of any
kind. In the past 40 years, scholars have paid attention to this
question more than to any other interpretive issue. Insofar as the
texts may contain different strands of Pyrrhonian argument, exegesis
is to some extent shaped by the philosophical interests we bring to
the texts. Two ideas are particularly prominent here. First, some
scholars find in Sextus an account of action that challenges standard
ancient and modern theories of agency. These theories might portray
ordinary agents as all-too-rational, as if every action involved an
actively formed belief that such-and-such is good. Scholars explore
how far we can draw on Sextus, asking whether a life guided by
appearances (as Sextus says the skeptic's life is) might after
all be rather ordinary (Frede 1979 [1997]). Second, one might on the
other hand embrace those aspects of Sextus' texts that make
Pyrrhonism look radically different from ordinary life. From this
perspective, Sextus' writings invite reflection on the question
of whether it would be possible to live without belief (Burnyeat 1980
[1997]; Barnes 1982 [1997]; Burnyeat 1984 [1997]).
*PH* 1, which figures most prominently in scholarly
discussions, is a *tour de force*. Sextus gives a general
account of what skepticism is, including skeptical investigation,
suspension of judgment, the skeptic's end, action, and language;
he gives lists and illustrations of various sets of Modes; he explains
the so-called skeptical formulae (*phonai*), such as
"I determine nothing," "non-assertion,"
"maybe," and so on; and he compares skepticism to
relevantly similar philosophies.
Sextus emphasizes that the skeptic is an investigator. Others either
arrive at theories (dogmatism) or at claims about inapprehensibility
(negative dogmatism--that the matter investigated is beyond
one's capacity to decide, and so is unknowable). But the skeptic
continues to investigate (*PH* 1.1-4). Investigation is
described as setting appearances and thoughts into opposition
(*PH* 1.8) (Morison 2011 offers a reconstruction of skepticism
that takes its starting-point from this description), and as the
application of the various sets of Modes (*PH* 1.36-186).
Skepticism does not have teachings, but it is an approach in
philosophy (Smith 2022). Many of the thoughts the skeptics arrive at
are expressed in the skeptical formulae (*PH* 1.13-15;
187-209). The starting-point (*arche*) of
skepticism is divergency--*anomalia*. The
proto-skeptics are disturbed by the discrepancies they encounter, and
begin to investigate (PH 1.12). They hope to gain quietude by settling
what is true and what is false. But then they have a surprising
experience. Encountering disagreement where several views appear to be
of equal weight (*isostheneia*), they find themselves unable to
decide things, give up, and experience tranquility (*ataraxia*)
(Striker 1990 [1996]; Nussbaum 1994). The skeptic's end
(*telos*) is tranquility in matters of belief (*kata
doxan*) and moderate affection (*metriopatheia*) in matters
that are forced upon us (*PH* 1.25-29). That is, skeptics
can free themselves from those kinds of turmoil that come with holding
beliefs. They cannot free themselves from freezing, thirst, or pain.
But they suffer less than others, for they do not add the belief
(*prosdoxazein*) that, for example, pain is bad. The skeptic
must explain how, without belief (*adoxastos*), they can
be active. Sextus says that skeptics follow appearances, and that is,
that they adhere to the fourfold ways of life (*PH*
1.21-24). Nature supplies them with perception and thought;
necessary affections compel them (for example, thirst guides them to
drink); they go along with traditions and customs; and they can do
technical things by having been instructed in skills. The notion of
appearances is also central to Sextus' account of how the
skeptic can speak. Without making assertions, a skeptic reports
(*apangellein*) like a chronicler (*historikos*)
what appears to them now (*PH* 1.4).
I shall discuss the following aspects of Sextus' skepticism: (i)
investigation and tranquility, (ii) concepts and inference rules,
(iii) belief, (iv) the formulae, (v) appearances, (vi) language, (vii)
action, and (viii) the so-called special arguments (that is, arguments
that do not explain the nature of Pyrrhonism, but engage with specific
dogmatic theories in logic, physics, and ethics).
(i) Investigation and tranquility. Investigation must aim at discovery
of the truth, otherwise it is not genuine investigation. However, a
skeptic seems to mechanically apply the skeptical Modes, in order to
generate suspension of judgment and tranquility. Scholars disagree on
whether the skeptics genuinely aim at the truth (Palmer 2000;
Striker 2001; Perin 2006; Veres 2020b), while they (also) aim at
tranquility. Note that this objection, unlike the other problems
central to contemporary engagement with ancient skepticism, was not
raised in antiquity. If ancient skepticism is approached in the
context of the larger study of ancient philosophy, we might first of
all note that the skeptics in a sense agree with Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics. All these philosophers defend, in
so many formulations, a life of reason, of contemplation, of wisdom,
or of inquiry as the best or at least a very good human life (on
affinities between the skeptics' commitment to inquiry and
Aristotle, cf. Olfert 2015). The objection that skeptical inquiry
seems insincere, then, may not have come up in antiquity in quite the
way in which it is discussed today because a commitment to inquiry
would be common ground among most philosophers. Further, we might
observe that aiming at the truth includes two aims: to accept truths,
and to avoid falsehoods. The Modes are tailored to keep us from
assenting to something that could be false. Insofar as the
skeptic's effort to avoid falsehoods expresses a valuation for
the truth, the skeptic might be a genuine investigator (Vogt 2012a,
ch. 5; Olfert 2014).
A related objection calls into question the actual practice of
skeptical inquiry. Does Sextus rely on the assumption that, in any
given case of putting several arguments into opposition, these
arguments are equally persuasive for the skeptic? This seems
unrealistic: at least in some cases, skeptical inquirers are bound to
be more strongly attracted to one view than to another. How then do
they arrive at suspension of judgment? One skeptical strategy is to
remind oneself that additional arguments will be formulated in the
future (*PH* 1.33-34, 89, 96-97; 2.38-41;
3.233-34). Another strategy is to consider that different
arguments are persuasive to different people (Svararsson 2014).
Relatedly, skeptics may find themselves in a position comparable to a
student who takes a seminar on freedom and determinism: it is possible
to be more attracted to one view rather than another, and at the same
time be aware that as far as the arguments are concerned, there is
unresolved disagreement among several views, to the effect that
neither of the views seems compelling in ways that warrant assent (cf.
Vogt 2012a, ch. 5, on how the skeptical expression "as far as
the argument is concerned" bears on this question; for general
discussion of this expression, cf. Brunschwig 1990).
(ii) Concepts and rules of inference. If skeptics do not assent, then
how can they understand the terms philosophers use (*M*
8.337-332a)? Even more radically, how can they even think
(*PH* 2.1-12)? This objection, which Sextus says is
continually raised against the skeptics, proceeds on the assumption
that possession of concepts involves the acceptance of assumptions.
For example, in order to examine a given theory of proof, the skeptic
must have a notion of what proofs are. This involves assumptions: for
example, the assumption that a proof contains premises and a
conclusion. Sextus' response to this objection invokes the
Epicurean and Stoic theories of preconceptions. Human beings are not
born with reason (Frede 1994, 1996). The acquisition of reason is a
nature-guided process of concept acquisition. At a given age, children
have completed this process. They have become rational, which means
that they can perceive and think in a conceptual way. Only now, they
have rational impressions to which they can assent. The acquisition of
preconceptions did not involve assent, simply because the child was
not yet rational (Brittain 2005).
Sextus invokes dogmatic ideas about the acquisition of reason (or: the
abilities of conceptual thought) in his response to the Apraxia Charge
(*PH* 1.23-4). Skeptics are, first of all, active because
nature has equipped them with perception and thought (Vogt 1998,
2010). More generally, the skeptics' ability to think and
investigate depends on the fact that they have acquired concepts as
part of growing up. This process did not involve assent, and
accordingly, Sextus argues that the skeptic's ability to think
does not violate suspension of judgment (cf. Brunschwig 1988; Vogt
2012a ch. 6; Grgic 2008; Fine 2011). It is conceivable, though, that
the skeptic's ability to understand involves some knowledge,
namely a kind of knowledge that does not entail any belief (Corti
2009, part III; Corti 2015). This option appears counterintuitive
given today's premises in epistemology, according to which
someone who knows that p also believes that p. The relevant notion of
belief in skeptical discussions, *doxa*, as well as the
relevant ancient notions of knowledge, however, may behave quite
differently (cf. Vogt 2012a and Moss and Schwab 2019 on belief;
Burnyeat 1980c, Frede 2008 and Schwab 2016 on knowledge). Insofar as
*doxa* is an inherently deficient activity and attitude, and
insofar as knowledge is conceived in elevated ways, knowledge without
belief is a rather intuitive option within ancient epistemology. If
understanding concepts and arguments involves knowledge that does not
entail beliefs, the skeptics may be taken to have such knowledge.
Modern critics raise the further question of whether the skeptic must
endorse logical laws (such as the Principle of Non-Contradiction) and
rules of inference. In particular, they ask whether a skeptic is
committed to the logical validity of the conditionals they formulate
when arguing against the dogmatists (Sorensen 2004). Sextus records no
ancient version of this complaint, and accordingly no direct
response. Relatedly, one may ask whether Sextus' method, in
particular regarding the Five Modes, is systematic in a way that is in
tension with suspension of judgment (cf. Sienkiewicz 2021, who defends
Sextus against this charge).
(iii) Belief. Bury, in his Loeb translation, translates
*adoxastos* as "undogmatically," for example,
when Sextus speaks (*PH* 1.15) of skeptics as saying that
"nothing is true." This translation suggests that Sextus
bans dogmatism from the skeptic's life, where this still leaves
room for other, non-dogmatic beliefs. But *adoxastos*
means non-doxastically or 'without belief' (cf. Burnyeat
1980 [1997]). As noted above, the skeptic's end is tranquility
in matters relating to belief--*kata doxan*. A skeptic
lives *adoxastos*. And even more confusingly, the
skeptics assent *adoxastos*, when they act.
Contemporary interest in Pyrrhonian skepticism was much spurred by
Michael Frede's paper "The Sceptic's Beliefs"
(1979 [1997]). Frede argues that ancient skepticism was traditionally
dismissed too easily as vulnerable to the Apraxia Charge, the charge
that, without belief, the skeptic cannot act. The skeptics seem to be
confident that they have replies to this objection. Thus, it seems
uncharitable not to look closely at these replies. Further, insofar as
these replies respond to the charge that without belief one cannot
act, we should focus on what the skeptics say about the role of belief
in their lives. Frede cites *PH* 1.13, and claims that in this
passage we find a distinction between two kinds of belief:
>
> When we say that the skeptic does not dogmatize, we are not using
> 'dogma' in the more general sense in which some say it is
> dogma to accept anything (for the skeptic does assent to the
> experiences forced upon him in virtue of this-or-that impression: for
> example, he would not say, when warmed or cooled, 'I seem not to
> be warmed or cooled'). Rather, when we say he does not
> dogmatize, we mean 'dogma' in the sense in which some say
> that dogma is assent to any of the non-evident matters investigated by
> the sciences. For the Pyrrhonist assents to nothing that is
> non-evident. (*PH* 1.13; trans. Burnyeat (1984) [1997] with
> changes)
>
Following Frede, several scholars focus on *PH* 1.13 when
discussing skeptical belief (with the notable exceptions of Barnes
1980 [1997] and Barney 1992). They take it to be obvious that, in this
paragraph, Sextus distinguishes between two kinds of belief, one which
he bans from the skeptic's life, and one which he allows into
the skeptic's life. Barnes (1982 [1997]) employs a distinction
between rustic and urbane skepticism. The rustic skeptic suspends on
all matters. The urbane skeptic suspends on scientific matters, but
holds ordinary beliefs. The clause "non-evident matters
investigated in the sciences" in *PH* 1.13 might be taken
as a point of reference for the urbane interpretation. However, Barnes
points out that this cannot be right. Everything can be considered as
a non-evident matter, even such things as whether honey is sweet.
Against Barnes, Frede argues that the relevant distinction must be
drawn between two kinds of assent, such that "having a view
involves one kind of assent, whereas taking a position, or making a
claim, involves another kind of assent, namely the kind of assent the
sceptic will withhold" (1984 [1997], 128). Sextus characterizes
skeptical assent in three ways. He speaks of forced assent (PH
1.23-24), involuntary assent (PH 1.19), and
*adoxastos* assent (PH 2.102). Frede does not explore the
details of how Sextus uses these notions. The core of his proposal is
that Sextus allows for a kind of assent that does not involve a claim
as to how things are in actual fact.
In (1979 [1997]), Frede is predominantly concerned with the
skeptic's reply to the Apraxia Charge. In (1984 [1997]) his
focus is on skeptical pronouncements such as "nothing can be
known." His distinction between two kinds of assent, and
accordingly two kinds of belief, is explored with respect to such
sentences. Frede writes that "[t]o be left with the impression
or thought that p [...] does not involve the further thought that
it is true that p" (133). This is the sense in which, on his
interpretation, the skeptic might think "nothing is
known." The thought counts as a belief, but not as a claim that,
in actual fact, nothing is known by anybody. Contrary to Frede's
interpretation, one might argue that to believe simply is to hold
true, at least according to the notions of belief that the skeptics
invoke in discussions with their contemporary critics (Vogt 2012b). It
is thus not clear that Frede's distinction is genuinely one
between two kinds of beliefs (Burnyeat 1980 [1997]). Perhaps it is a
distinction between two different propositional attitudes, only one of
which is belief. As Striker (2001) points out, there is a danger that
debates over this issue become merely terminological. We might thus
draw a distinction between two issues. It is one thing to disagree
with Frede on what should or should not be called belief, and another
to dispute whether he identifies and characterizes a phenomenon in the
skeptic's mental life. As Frede argues, skeptics find themselves
with a rather persistent thought, without having accepted it as true
in actual fact. This appears to capture a core element of skepticism:
the way in which the skeptic thinks such thoughts as "everything
is inapprehensible."
(iv) The Skeptical Formulae. *PH* 1.13, the passage in which
scholars find a distinction between two kinds of belief, occurs in a
chapter entitled "Does the Skeptic dogmatize?" One angle
from which we might disagree with Frede is to insist that *PH*
1.13 addresses the status of the core thoughts of skeptical
philosophy, rather than the question of skeptical belief. Consider the
rest of the chapter:
>
> Not even in uttering the skeptical formulae about unclear
> matters--for example, "In no way more," or "I
> determine nothing," or one of the other formulae which we shall
> later discuss--do they dogmatize (*dogmatizein*). For if
> you dogmatize, then you posit as real the things that you are said to
> dogmatize about; but skeptics posit these formulae not as necessarily
> being real. For they suppose that, just as the formula
> "Everything is false" says that it too, along with
> everything else, is false (and similarly for "Nothing is
> true"), so also "In no way more" says that it too,
> along with everything else, is no more so than not so, and hence
> cancels itself along with everything else. And we say the same of the
> other skeptical formulae. Thus, if people who dogmatize posit as real
> the things they dogmatize about, while skeptics utter their own
> phrases in such a way that they are implicitly cancelled by
> themselves, then they cannot be said to dogmatize in uttering them.
> But the main point is this: in uttering these formulae they say what
> appears to themselves and report their own feelings without any belief
> *(adoxastos*), affirming nothing about external objects.
> (*PH* 1.14-15; trans. Annas-Barnes with changes)
>
When explaining in *PH* 1.13 how the skeptic does not
dogmatize, Sextus may have a particular issue in mind: that some
skeptical formulae look like doctrines, and have traditionally been
turned against themselves due to their dogmatic surface-structure. For
example, "all things are indeterminate" looks like a
straightforward dogmatic statement. There is a long history of
skeptical attempts to explain the nature of such pronouncements so
that they no longer undermine themselves. Sextus arguably mentions
several solutions to this problem (*PH* 1.13-15 and
1.187-209; cf. Pellegrin 2010). In *PH* 1.15, Sextus
identifies the following as his main point: the skeptic merely reports
what appears to them. Along these lines, Sextus calls indeterminacy an
affection of thought (*pathos dianoias*; *PH* 1.198), a
state that the utterance "all things are indeterminate"
aims to capture. The other solution mentioned in *PH*
1.14-15 is somewhat more problematic: the skeptical formulae
cancel themselves out. That is, one can say them and convey something
through them. But then, once one has made a point, they as it were
turn back upon themselves and eat themselves up--as fire first
burns combustible materials and then destroys itself. This idea became
famous through another comparison Sextus uses (invoked by Wittgenstein
1922, 6.54): the skeptical pronouncements are like a ladder that
one climbs up; once one is on top, one can throw the ladder away
(*M* 8.481). Scholars disagree on whether Sextus in some sense
admits that these statements are self-refuting (McPherran 1987), or
whether he defuses their self-refutational structure (Castagnoli 2010,
III.14).
(v) Appearances (*phainomena*). While it is difficult to
establish a clear distinction between two kinds of belief in Sextus,
there is a comparatively more explicit distinction between two ways of
engaging with appearances. Sextus says that, while things
appear *X* to the skeptic, the skeptic does not affirm that
they are *X*. Questions that are traditionally discussed in
terms of whether the skeptic has beliefs thus might be addressed in
terms of whether the way things appear to the skeptic has a
judgment-component. Arguably, "*A* appears *X* to
me now" can be construed in different ways. Certain examples
(say, the way in which it makes sense to say both that the moon
appears small and that it appears large) may suggest that appearance
can but need not involve something like a judgment (Barney 1992). Some
formulations in Sextus seem to insist on a significant difference
between the mental activity of something appearing to a cognizer on
the one hand, and on the other hand the mental activity that, on the
level of language, is represented by assertion. This suggests that,
for Sextus, *A* appearing *F* to me now does not entail
that I hold it to be true that *A* is *F* (Vogt
2012b).
(vi) Language. Another approach to the question of whether the skeptic
has beliefs looks at skeptical language. Sextus insists that the
skeptic does not accept or reject any impression, and associates the
absence of these mental acts with the fact that the skeptic does not
affirm or deny anything (e.g., *PH* 1.4, 7, 10). Arguably, we
can infer from Sextus' account of the skeptic's utterances
what Sextus wants to say about the skeptic's mental states and
acts. That is, the question of language immediately bears on the
question of belief. The report on Pyrrhonian skepticism in Diogenes
Laertius is particularly instructive in this respect. Contrary to
scholarly focus on belief in reconstructing skepticism, it barely
mentions belief. Discussion of the skeptics' attitudes is almost
entirely conducted in terms of skeptical language and the skeptical
formulae (for detailed discussion of the relevant paragraphs, DL
9.74-7, cf. Corti 2015). If Sextus is read in light of the
report in DL IX, *PH* 1.13 may appear to be more of an isolated
passage than scholarly debates imply. Sextus too devotes much space to
accounts of skeptical expressions and language. It may thus be asked
whether scholars should reframe discussions, and pay more attention to
skeptical language then they previously have. As of now, there is one
monograph on skeptical language, Corti (2009), and one approach to
belief that focuses on language, Vogt (1998). Both scholars pursue
further ideas put forward by Barnes (1982 [1997]), who compares the
skeptic's utterances to avowals. The skeptic lays open their
state of mind, they announce or record (*apangellein*) it (Fine
2003a). In order to do this, the skeptic must misuse language
(Burnyeat 1984 [1997]). Some strategies to avoid assertion are given
in the context of the skeptical formulae ("non-assertion,"
"I determine nothing," and so on). (i) Skeptical
expressions can be used as signs, which reveal a state of mind
(*PH* 1.187). (ii) Expressions like "*ou
mallon*" (no more) and "*ouden mallon*"
(nowise more) can be used indifferently (in the sense of
interchangeably) (*PH* 1.188). (iii) As is the practice in
ordinary language, the skeptic can use expressions elliptically; for
example "no more" for "no more this-than-that"
(*PH* 1.188). (iv) People often use questions instead of
assertions and the other way around. Similarly, "no more"
can be construed as a question: "Why more this-than-that?"
(v) The skeptic misuses language and uses it in a loose way
(*PH* 1.191).
In *M* 1 and *M* 2, Sextus says that the skeptic goes
along with ordinary ways of using language (M 1.172, 193, 206, 218,
229, 233; M 2.52-3, 58-9). This seems to be a key resource
in construing skeptical ways of speaking: the skeptic exploits the
ways in which ordinary speakers can diverge from grammatically correct
speech, and still be understood. Apart from using their skeptical
formulae, and apart from conducting philosophical investigations,
which they can do in a dialectical mode, referring to theses,
arguments, and inferences, the skeptic also has to talk in everyday
contexts. It is here where we see best how skeptical utterances are
tailored to reveal a state of mind in which nothing is accepted or
rejected. Sextus takes great pains to construe his examples of
skeptical utterances according to the following schema:
"*X* appears *F* to me now." This will
generally be understood as an elliptical version of "*X*
appears *to be* *F* to me now." However, Sextus
consistently avoids "to be" (Vogt 1998; for the view that
"*X* appears F" avoids reference to external
objects, see Everson 1991). The peculiar form of skeptical utterances
suggests that Sextus sees a relevant difference between
"*X* appears to be *F* to me now" and
"*X* appears *F* to me now." The former
might imply reference to a state of affairs, and an epistemic usage of
"to appear" that could be rendered as "It appears to
me, that p," or, "I take it that p." This, however,
would be assertoric: the skeptic would state that it appears to them
that such-and-such is the case. But the skeptic's elliptical
utterances about what appears to them aim to be purely
phenomenological. They aim to report a condition of the
skeptic's mind, without expressing a judgment of any kind
(Burnyeat 1984 [1997]; Annas-Barnes 1985, 23-4; for an
assessment of these strategies in terms of modern philosophy of
language, cf. Pagin 2020). As part of the skeptics' way of life,
language can also be seen as an activity. That is, how the skeptics
can speak can be considered a sub-question of how the skeptics
can act. Skeptical utterances have been compared to Wittgensteinian
confessions, arguably a kind of speech act that is consistent with the
skeptics' avoidance of belief (Corti 2009, Parts I and II).
Moreover, the skeptics not only speak. They presumably also understand
what others say. A persuasive account of skeptical language must
explain both speaking and understanding (Corti 2009, Part III).
(vii) Action. Sextus says that appearances (*phainomena*) are
the practical criterion of the skeptic (*PH* 1.23-24). By
adhering to appearances, the skeptic is prevented from inactivity
(*anenergesia*). Note that Sextus does not describe the
skeptic as performing actions in the sense of dogmatic theory of
action, which involves belief and choice (cf. *M*
11.162-166). Contrary to the Academic skeptic, a Sextan skeptic
does not view themselves as a rational agent, who chooses one course
of action over another. Sextus claims an active life for the skeptic,
but not the life of a rational agent, as conceived by dogmatic
philosophers (Vogt 2010; Schwab 2020). This attitude has been
critically discussed for a long time, for example, with respect to its
ethical (Bett 2019) and political upshots (Marchand 2015) and with
respect to the skeptics' relation to the law (Marchand
2021).
The skeptic's forced assent is situated in the domain of action
(*PH* 1.13, 19, 29-30, 193, 237-8). Thirst, for
example, necessitates assent, and that means, it moves the skeptic to
drink. This kind of assent may be genuinely unrelated to
belief-formation of any kind. Rather, forced assent generates the
movement of action. But what about more complex kinds of activities,
such as applying a medication, or attending a festival? Sextus argues
that the skeptic adheres to custom, convention, and tradition, and to
what they have been trained to do. In explaining how adherence to
appearances in these domains generates activity, Sextus does not
mention assent. However, he might have to concede that, like drinking
when thirsty, more complex actions also involve some kind of assent.
In *PH* 2.102, Sextus says that the sceptic assents
non-doxastically (*adoxastos*) to the things relied on in
ordinary life. In *PH* 1.19, he mentions involuntary assent.
Accordingly, non-doxastic and involuntary assent may figure in those
domains of skeptical action that do not involve necessitation by
bodily affections. Non-doxastic assent is, from the point of view of
the Stoics, a contradiction in terms, just like forced and involuntary
assent. Assent is defined as in our power, and as that by which
beliefs are formed. If Sextus intends skeptical assent to be genuinely
non-doxastic and involuntary, then it does not have the core features
of assent as defined by the dogmatists.
(viii) Logic, Physics, Ethics, and the "disciplines." The
special arguments of the skeptic are directed against particular
theories in the three disciplines of Hellenistic philosophy: logic,
physics, and ethics. In addition, they address the so-called
disciplines, namely grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic,
astrology, and music-theory. Sextus' treatments of logic divide
up into two main topics: sign and criterion (cf. Bett 2005 on signs).
This structure reflects central concerns of Hellenistic epistemology
as well as of ancient skepticism. Skepticism looks for a
'decider' between conflicting appearances and thoughts. A
decider could be something evident. Dogmatic philosophers associate
the evident with the criterion of truth. For something to serve the
role of criterion, it cannot be equally disputed as the matters it
helps to decide. Or something non-evident could take on the role of
decider. For that to be the case, the skeptics argue, it would have to
be conclusively revealed by a sign or proof. If there is no compelling
theory of the criterion and no compelling account of sign and proof,
then there is nothing that can decide between several conflicting
views. Sextus' treatises on logic thus are not simply a
collection of individual arguments against various dogmatic theories.
Their main line of thought sketches a route into
skepticism. Along these lines, Vlasits (2020b) argues that
Sextus' treatment of logic in PH 2 is unified. Sextus'
argument is structured such as to lead to suspension of judgment on
the methodologies of the dogmatists. The final section of M 8 (463-81)
formulates a challenge for the skeptic that scholars interested in
self-refutational arguments have examined (Castagnoli 2010): does the
skeptic aim to prove that proof does not exist (Sienkiewicz
2022)?
Sextus' discussions of ethics also focus on issues that
plausibly lead into skepticism. Again, there are two central
questions: whether there is anything good and bad by nature; and
whether there is an art of life (Bett 2010, 2011 and 2019),
as the Epicureans and Stoics claim there is. If we could settle what
is good and what is bad, some of the most disturbing anomalies would
be resolved. If there were an art of life, there would be a teachable
body of knowledge about the good and the bad. In both cases, questions
that can cause a great deal of puzzlement would be resolved.
Sextus' discussions of ethics are in part famous because Sextus
ascribes outlandish and shocking views to the Stoics. As Sextus
construes his arguments, the contrast between 'ordinary
life' and philosophical views leads to suspension of judgment
(Vogt 2008a, ch. 1). In the modern tradition, a number of philosophers
including Hegel and Nietzsche have engaged with aspects of
Sextus' outlook and in particular with the skeptical adherence
to ordinary life (Berry 2010 and 2020; Bett 2020a). Recently,
scholars have asked how ethical a skeptic can be, to use a phrased
employed by Bett (2019), given that it may seem that suspension of
judgment on grave ethical challenges can seem facile. At the same
time, scholars point out that some dimensions of ethical frameworks
went unquestioned a long time, for example, with respect to gender;
here suspension of judgment may appear innovative (Olfert
forthcoming).
The books on physics discuss god, cause, matter, bodies, mixture,
motion, increase and decrease, subtraction and addition, whole and
part, change, becoming and perishing, rest, place, time, and number.
Notably, god is one of the topics explored in physics. This stands in
stark contrast to medieval and early modern discussions, where the
quest for knowledge of God often frames and motivates engagement with
skepticism. In PH 3, Sextus prefaces his discussion of arguments
for and against the existence of gods by saying that the
skeptics' ordinary life without opinions
(*adoxastos*) includes the following: the skeptics say
that there are gods, are pious toward the gods, and say that the gods
are provident. Scholars discuss how this relates to Sextus'
discussions of theology qua topic in physics on the one hand (PH
3.2-12, M 9.11-194), and to his portrayal of the skeptics'
ordinary life in PH 1 on the other hand (Annas 2011, Veres 2020a). The
skeptics come to suspend judgment on all central questions in ancient
physics (Bett 2012). This means, they come to suspend judgment on
whether, for example, there are causes, time, place, and bodies (cf.
Bobzien 2015 and Warren 2015). Their suspension does not merely mean
that they have not yet found a satisfying theory of, say, body. It
means that they find themselves unable to say whether there is body
(Burnyeat 1997). (On the cumulative force of these arguments, see
section 5.4.)
The six books entitled *Against those in the Disciplines*
(*M* 1-6) have traditionally received less attention.
Only in the last few years have scholars begun to explore them with
the kind of philosophical subtlety that has been brought to bear in
the study of ancient skepticism in recent decades. *M*
1-6 skeptically examine six fields of study, namely grammar,
rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music-theory. Sextus
begins with an astonishing move. Contrary to his usual strategy of
emphasizing the distance between skeptics and dogmatists, he admits
that Pyrrhonians and Epicureans share much in viewing standard
disciplines as useless (*M* 1.1-7; cf. Thorsrud 2019).
Generally speaking, increased attention to *M* 1-6 may
provide additional occasion to modify the long-standing assumption
that the Stoics are Sextus' most important dogmatic
interlocutors. Throughout *M* 1-6, resonances between
Epicurean and Pyrrhonian philosophy are remarkably visible (Bett 2018,
"Introduction"). Engagement with Epicurean philosophy
shapes Sextus' approach deeply, to the extent that both schools,
Stoics and Epicureans, should be considered fundamental points of
reference.
After his remarks on how Pyrrhonians and Epicureans take issue with
the presumed usefulness of the disciplines, Sextus lays out general
arguments, suitable for skeptical examination of any field. He argues
that, for there to be a discipline, there must be the matter being
taught, the teacher, the learner, and the means of learning. If,
however, neither of these things exists, then the discipline
doesn't exist. This is how Sextus proceeds. He argues, or seems
to argue, for the non-existence of the disciplines (*M* 1.9).
Already in the very first sentence of *M* 1, Sextus describes
his own approach as one of putting forward counterarguments, a
strategy that he mentions repeatedly throughout *M*
1-6.
These moves give rise to the most contentious question regarding
*M* 1-6. Are these books negatively dogmatic? Or do they
fit in with Sextus's outlook in *PH* 1-3, where
skeptical arguments are described as leading up to suspension of
judgment? Bett (2018, "Introduction") argues that, with
some qualifications, Sextus' approach is to be explained as
follows. Sextus lays out counterarguments based on the assumption that
the arguments of the dogmatists have already been formulated. For
there to be arguments of equal weight on both sides, only the
anti-dogmatic arguments need to be adduced. The intended effect is
that jointly, these opposing sets of arguments lead us to suspend
judgment. In addition, Bett notes that the remarkable emphasis on
counterarguments, non-existence, and uselessness suggests that some of
the material in *M* 1-6 goes back to an earlier phase of
Pyrrhonism.
In four of the six fields, namely grammar, rhetoric, music, and
astrology, Sextus admits non-technical versions into the
skeptic's life, while subjecting all theoretical claims to
skeptical examination. For example, he distinguishes between the
ordinary ability to read and write on the one hand and grammar as a
technical discipline on the other, or the ability to play a musical
instrument on the one hand and music theory on the other (cf. Corti
2015b on why this kind of contrast does not come up in the books on
arithmetic and geometry, Corti 2015c on Sextus' attack on
the Platonic-Pythagorean notion of the Two, and Corti
forthcoming).
It is remarkable that, qua theoretical field, Sextus examines
astrology rather than astronomy. The latter would make for a more
typical sequence: apart from the fact that in Sextus, logic is
considered part of philosophy rather than a "discipline,"
the six fields otherwise correspond to the so-called trivium of
grammar, logic, and rhetoric and quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and music theory. Sextus' attention to astrology
rather than astronomy highlights a deep feature of his philosophy
(Corti 2015, Bett 2018). Astronomy, from Sextus' point of view,
is concerned with appearances; and hence there is a sense in which the
skeptic does not object to it. Astronomy, then, is the
"version" of astrology that skeptics can admit into their
adherence to ordinary life (*M* 5.1-3). Presumably,
astronomy is concerned with predicting things like droughts, floods,
earthquakes, and plagues based on appearances. Astrology, on the other
hand, is concerned with matters of great obscurity.
## 5. Ancient and Modern Skepticism: Transitions
### 5.1 Augustine: Re-Conceiving Skepticism in a Theological Framework
Historians of philosophy sometimes argue that Henri Etienne's
rediscovery of Sextus in 1562 initiated an era of epistemology. Early
modern engagement with skepticism is here seen as a turn to arguments
found in Sextus (Annas-Barnes 1985, 5-7; Bailey 2002,
1-20). Via Cicero, early modern and modern philosophers seem to
have engaged also with Academic arguments (for a recent analysis of
Academic skepticism in Hume and Kant, cf. Gonzalez Quintero
2022). In particular the beginning of Descartes'
*Meditations* may display a kind of Socratic spirit: a
commitment to calling into question all one's beliefs. However,
early modern philosophers work within a theologically framed tradition
that importantly begins with St. Augustine (354-430) (cf. Menn
1998 and Lagerlund 2009; on the history of medieval skepticism cf.
Lagerlund ed. 2009; cf. Carriero 2009 on Descartes' engagement
with Aquinas; for an analysis of the transformation of skepticism that
turns immediately to Descartes, cf. Williams 2010).
A major part of Augustine's early education consisted in the
study of Cicero's writings. He was thus closely acquainted with
Academic skepticism (Cicero was one kind of Academic skeptic).
Augustine sees the force of ancient skeptical strategies. Even though
he does not become a skeptic, he integrates distinctively skeptical
moves into his thought. This has a long-standing effect on the history
of theology and science. For example, Galileo Galilei is able to cite
Augustine when he defends himself against the charge that his physics
is in opposition to the Bible (*Letter to the Grand Duchess*,
in Drake 1957). Augustine supplies arguments to the effect that we
should keep an open mind. Both our physical theories and our
interpretations of the Bible are likely to evolve. This idea figures
importantly in Pyrrhonism. Past experience tells us that, on every
given issue, someone eventually came up with a new argument.
Accordingly, even if the skeptics cannot find an objection to a given
claim right now, they expect that in the future, a conflicting view
will be formulated.
However, such traces of skepticism are integrated into an ultimately
non-skeptical philosophy. In *Contra Academicos*, Augustine
recognizes a core feature of ancient skepticism, namely that it is a
commitment to ongoing inquiry (cf. Nawar 2019 on Augustine's
defense of knowledge against the skeptics in *Contra
Academicos* 3). The question that Augustine considers vital, then,
is whether a life devoted to inquiry can be compelling, if seemingly
there is no prospect for ever attaining truth (cf. Lagerlund 2009). It
is as a philosophy of inquiry that skepticism makes a lasting
contribution to ethics, continuing, as it were, a Socratic legacy
(Vogt 2017).
Augustine creates the framework that will become characteristic of
early modern discussions. First, in his work skeptical arguments are
explored in order to be refuted. Second, the key issue is whether we
have knowledge, not whether we should hold anything to be true. In
Augustine, the background for caring so much about knowledge is the
pressing question of whether we can know God: whether we can know that
he exists and what his properties are. This might also be the reason
why knowledge of testimony gains importance (*De Trinitate*,
15.12; in Schoedinger 1996). The Bible, or parts of it, might be
considered testimony about God, and accordingly as one possible way of
attaining knowledge of God.
Third, in the process of asking whether we can have knowledge of God
it makes sense to distinguish between kinds of knowledge (sensory,
rational, by testimony, etc.). If we know God, then we do so via one
of the kinds of knowledge. This becomes a standard feature of
discussions of skepticism. Philosophers go through the different kinds
of knowledge that are conceivable, and examine them in turn. In
Augustine as well as later authors, this includes mathematical
knowledge (Nawar 2022). Though Sextus wrote on geometry and
arithmetic, questions about knowledge in mathematics do not shape
Hellenistic debates between skeptics on the one hand and Epicureans
and Stoics on the other hand. Fourth, Augustine conceives of what he
calls 'inner knowledge.' He envisages a skeptical
scenario. Suppose we have no sensory knowledge, no rational knowledge,
and no knowledge of testimony. We still know that we think, love,
judge, live, and are (*De Trinitate* 15.12). In the *City of
God* 11.26, Augustine uses his well-known phrase "*si
enim fallor, sum*" (even if I err, I am). That is, Augustine
suggests that we have knowledge of our mental acts (cf. Nawar 2022 on
Augustine's concern with self-knowledge). However, Augustine
does not consider these pieces of knowledge foundational. While he
points to them when he discusses the challenges of Academic
skepticism, he does not systematically build upon them in refuting
skepticism about sense perception, rational knowledge, and knowledge
of testimony. Rather, he refutes skepticism by stating that God
created us and the things that are known to us; God wanted these
things to be known to us (*De Trinitate* 15.12). In later
epistemology, the idea of the turn into one's mind and an
introspective access to one's mental acts becomes a secular
idea. Augustine is a transitional figure in the philosophy of mind,
and thereby re-conceives skepticism. By focussing on a gap between
'what is in the mind' and the world outside, he as it were
invites external world skepticism (Vogt 2014a). But Augustine is
concerned with the path to God: the mind turns into itself and
from there it moves further, toward God (e.g., *Confessions* 7.
17,23).
Next to Augustine, Al-Ghazali (1085-1111) plays a major role in
re-conceiving the questions relevant to skepticism (Menn 2003,
Kukkonen 2009). In *The Rescuer From Error*, Al-Ghazali
literally describes God as the rescuer from error (in Khalidi 2005).
Like Augustine before and Descartes after him, Al-Ghazali moves
through different cognitive faculties. Do the senses or reason allow
us to gain knowledge? These questions are framed by the quest for
knowledge of God. While Augustine thinks that knowledge of God comes
through a combination of seeking God on the one hand and God's
grace on the other, Al-Ghazali thinks it comes through spiritual
exercises. However, once confidence in God is secured, trust in the
more familiar ways of gaining knowledge--sense perception,
rational reasoning, and so on--is restored (for a detailed
treatment of skepticism in Classical Islam, cf. Heck 2014).
One key difference between ancient skepticism on the one hand, and
medieval as well as Cartesian skepticism on the other, is that ancient
skepticism is not framed by theological concerns. Note that in
Cartesian skepticism, God is not only invoked when it comes to
refuting skepticism. More importantly, the skeptical problems arise in
a way that depends on God as creator. Our cognitive faculties are seen
as created faculties, and the world as a created world. A kind of
'faculty-skepticism' that asks whether our cognitive
faculties are built so as to be erroneous is formulated, and a
potential gap between our minds and the world opens up. Perhaps God
made us in such a way that we are fundamentally wrong about everything
(or, as later secular versions have it, a mad scientist experiments on
a "brain in a vat").
These are important steps away from the non-theological ancient
construal of skepticism. The theological premises of early modern
skepticism are not only foreign to ancient debates; they would be seen
as misguided. From the Hellenistic point of view, theology is part of
physics. An account of god is part of an account of the natural world
(as such, it is unrecognizable as 'theology' from the
point of view of later theologies). Human beings and their cognitive
faculties are natural parts of a natural world. They are organic and
functional parts, interconnected with the other parts of the large
whole which the universe is. A mind-world-gap (of the kind envisaged
in the Cartesian tradition) is inconceivable. Each 'mind,'
and that is, rational soul, is an integrated physical part of the
physical world. Like a part of a complex organism, it would not exist
were it not for the interrelations it has with the other parts. A
physiological account of the mind makes the stark divide between mind
and world that figures in early modern skepticism unimaginable.
### 5.2 Skepticism About Induction
Contemporary discussions inherit long-standing problems from early
modern philosophy. Among them, external world skepticism, skepticism
about other minds, and skepticism about induction are particularly
prominent. In assessing ancient skepticism, we might ask whether the
ancients saw these problems.
Among the skeptical problems of modern philosophy, skepticism about
induction stands out. Its early formulation in Hume does not depend on
the idea that our faculties are created by God, who also created the
world. Hume takes himself to engage with Pyrrhonian skepticism
(Ainslie 2003). Induction proceeds from particular observations to a
general conclusion. Skepticism about induction points out that, no
matter how many particulars were observed, the general claim
pronounces also on what has not been observed. In this respect, the
inference seems unwarranted and so we should suspend judgement on its
effectiveness. Induction can concern the ascription of properties to
some kind of entity as well as causal claims. In the latter, the
skeptic observes that what regularly precedes a type of event may not
be its cause. Perhaps we cannot infer anything from the fact that
certain properties or events regularly occur together (Vlasits 2020a;
for a related argument in Al-Ghazali, cf. Kukkonen 2009).
Relevant ideas can be traced in various aspects of Sextus'
philosophy. First, Sextus sides with anti-rationalist tendencies in
medicine. According to these schools, a doctor remembers that, in
earlier cases, symptom *A* was alleviated by medication
*B*. They do not infer that medication *B* makes symptom
*A* disappear, or that the illness *C* is the cause of
symptom *A*. Second, the Five Modes do not exclusively target
proof. They address everything that lends credibility to something
else. They may thus also call into question signs that are taken as
indicative of their causes. Sextus' skeptic does not accept such
indicative signs. Third, Sextus discusses the role of so-called
commemorative signs in the skeptic's life (*PH*
2.100-102; Allen 2001). For example, a scar is a commemorative
sign of a wound. Both were co-observed in the past. A skeptic will
think of a wound when seeing a scar. But they do not commit to causal
or explanatory claims. Fourth, Sextus records a set of Causal Modes
(*PH* 1.180-86), which are specifically targeted toward
causal explanations (Corti 2014; on the relation between the Causal
Modes and Hume cf. Garrett 2020). He does not ascribe the kind of
relevance to them that the Ten Modes and the Five Modes have. Indeed,
he thinks the Five Modes can do the work of Causal Modes (that is,
call into question causal and explanatory theses and theories).
However, the Causal Modes go into great detail on how the skeptic
investigates any kind of causal thesis or theory.
### 5.3 Subjectivity and Other Minds
The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is central to
modern discussions of skepticism. It is not envisaged in ancient
thought. However, this does not mean that ancient philosophers do not
reflect on questions relevant to this distinction. Arguably,
Pyrrhonism conceives of the affections of the mind in ways that
anticipate later thought about subjectivity (Fine 2003a and 2003b).
Sextus describes the skeptic's states of
'being-appeared-to' as affections of the mind. A skeptic
can report these states in their utterances. Illustrating this point,
Sextus uses expressions associated with the Cyrenaics, a Socratic
school of thought. These expressions literally mean something like
'I am being heated' or 'I am being whitened.'
They aim to record affections without claiming anything about the
world. Fine argues that the skeptic's beliefs are beliefs about
these affections (2000). With this proposal, Fine turns against two
prominent positions in scholarly debate about skeptical belief (see
section 4.4), that skeptics have no beliefs whatsoever, and that they
have beliefs that fall short of holding true. Fine envisages
reflective beliefs: beliefs about one's states of mind (on
related issues in contemporary epistemology, cf. Feeney and
Schellenberg 2020 and Gluer 2020).
Whether or not Sextus' account of the skeptic's mental
life includes reflective beliefs about one's mental states, we
should note an important difference to later proposals of that kind.
Later philosophers focus on the particular kind of certainty attached
to reflective knowledge. Reflective knowledge is sometimes seen as a
stepping-stone towards greater confidence in our cognitive powers, and
our ability to also attain other kinds of knowledge. But it may not be
obvious that reflective knowledge can take on this important role. In
this respect, Augustine is still closer to ancient than to modern
intuitions. He says that such pieces of knowledge as "I know
that I think" are not what we are looking for. Augustine
envisages that reflective knowledge-claims can be iterated, so that we
would have infinitely many pieces of knowledge ("I know that I
know that I think..."). But from his point of view, this
kind of knowledge leads nowhere. When we ask whether we can have
knowledge, we are interested in knowledge of the world and of God
(*De Trinitate* 15.12).
Modern philosophers also pay great attention to the privileged access
cognizers have to their own cognitive activities. Augustine introduces
a distinction that paves the way for this idea. He argues that the
mind cannot know what kind of stuff it is (*De Trinitate* 10.10
and 15.12). The mind does not know its substance, but it knows its
activities. For Augustine, this means that the mind knows itself. The
mind is precisely what it knows itself to be: in knowing that one
thinks, judges, lives, and so on, one knows the mind (Vogt 2014a).
Note that this argument indicates that knowing that one lives and is
are not pieces of knowledge about one's bodily existence, but
about the activities of the mind.
Finally, modern philosophers conceive of the special kind of access to
one's own mind not only in contrast with our access to the
world. They also compare it to our access to what goes on in other
minds. One of their core problems is skepticism about other minds. If
our own minds are accessible to us in the way nothing else is, then we
might not be able to ascribe mental states to others. For example, we
might not know that someone who looks as if she is in pain really is
in pain. The ancient skeptics envisage nothing of this kind (Warren
2011). This suggests that, insofar as they draw a distinction between
affections of the mind and the world, this distinction is construed
differently than in modern skepticism.
### 5.4 External World Skepticism
In its early modern versions, external world skepticism involves the
idea that there is a creator--someone who made the world and our
faculties, and the fit or misfit between them. If this assumption is
crucial to external world skepticism, then the ancients do not
conceive of this skeptical problem. From the point of view of modern
philosophy, ancient skepticism may appear limited by not addressing
some of the most radical skeptical scenarios (Burnyeat 1980 [1997] and
1982; Williams 1988; Fine 2003a and 2003b). From the point of view of
ancient skepticism, early modern skepticism and the long life that its
problems enjoy, however, would seem to originate in a flawed
theology.
Contemporary philosophers sometimes discuss external world skepticism
in terms of a paradox: one thinker finds herself torn between the
strength of skeptical arguments and her ordinary convictions. For
example, she thinks that *this is her hand.* But she concedes
that the skeptical hypothesis that a mad scientist might have set
things up so that she has such perceptions and thoughts (the so-called
brain in a vat scenario) is hard to refute. This way of framing
discussions of skepticism is foreign to antiquity. In antiquity,
skeptics and their opponents are different thinkers, each of them with
one set of intuitions, arguing against each other. It is also foreign
to ancient skepticism insofar as it inherits the early modern idea
that some greatly powerful agent sets things up, and in a sense
creates the thinker's faculties and the world as it appears to
them.
However, the ancient skeptics might conceive of their own kind of
external world skepticism. One way to explore this question is to turn
to the way in which Sextus describes that which is outside of the
skeptic's mind (Fine 2003 and 2003(2)). Throughout his work,
Sextus employs the distinction between appearances and what really is
the case. Consider some of the detail of how he characterizes the
latter. One phrase in the Ten Modes is "*ta ektos*
*hupokeimena*," the externally underlying things
(*PH* 1.61, 127, 128, 134, 144). Other phrases, meant to
demarcate roughly the same contrast with appearances, are how things
are in their nature (*phusei*) (*PH* 1.78, 123, 140),
"the underlying things" (*hupokeimena*)
(*PH* 1.106), as well as a combination: "the nature of
the underlying external things" (*PH* 1.117, 163). The
expressions which contain the word "external" might read
as if Sextus was talking about the external world in a sense familiar
to us from early modern skepticism.
But what are the underlying or external objects, as Sextus conceives
of them? For example, Sextus speaks of the underlying reality of
whether honey really is sweet (*PH* 1.19). In such a case, it
is assumed that there are ordinary objects. But we do not have access
to the properties they really have (Fine calls this Property
Skepticism, 2003b). However, external objects in Sextus' sense
also include objects that later philosophers would not obviously see
as part of the external word. For example, an answer to the question
of what kind of life really is good would count as a claim about
external or underlying reality (cf. Pellegrin 2010).
Another approach to the question of whether Sextus envisages some kind
of external world skepticism is to turn to his discussions of physics.
Ordinarily we take ourselves to live in a world in which there are
bodies, movement, place, time, and so on. But as Sextus argues, we do
not have compelling accounts of any of these core conceptions of
physics. This leads to suspension of judgment on whether there are
bodies, movement, place, time, and so on. Sextus' discussions of
physics might add up to a rather far-reaching skepticism about the
natural world. |
aesthetic-concept | ## 1. The Concept of Taste
The concept of the aesthetic descends from the concept of taste. Why
the concept of taste commanded so much philosophical attention during
the 18th century is a complicated matter, but this much is clear: the
eighteenth-century theory of taste emerged, in part, as a corrective
to the rise of rationalism, particularly as applied to beauty, and to
the rise of egoism, particularly as applied to virtue. Against
rationalism about beauty, the eighteenth-century theory of taste held
the judgment of beauty to be immediate; against egoism about virtue,
it held the pleasure of beauty to be disinterested.
### 1.1 Immediacy
Rationalism about beauty is the view that judgments of beauty are
judgments of reason, i.e., that we judge things to be beautiful by
reasoning it out, where reasoning it out typically involves inferring
from principles or applying concepts. At the beginning of the 18th
century, rationalism about beauty had achieved dominance on the
continent, and was being pushed to new extremes by "les
geometres," a group of literary theorists who
aimed to bring to literary criticism the mathematical rigor that
Descartes had brought to physics. As one such theorist put it:
>
> The way to think about a literary problem is that pointed out by
> Descartes for problems of physical science. A critic who tries any
> other way is not worthy to be living in the present century. There is
> nothing better than mathematics as propaedeutic for literary
> criticism. (Terrasson 1715, Preface, 65; quoted in Wimsatt and Brooks
> 1957, 258)
>
It was against this, and against more moderate forms of rationalism
about beauty, that mainly British philosophers working mainly within
an empiricist framework began to develop theories of taste. The
fundamental idea behind any such theory--which we may call
*the immediacy thesis*--is that judgments of beauty are
not (or at least not canonically) mediated by inferences from
principles or applications of concepts, but rather have all the
immediacy of straightforwardly sensory judgments. It is the idea, in
other words, that we do not reason to the conclusion that things are
beautiful, but rather "sense" that they are. Here is an
early expression of the thesis, from Jean-Baptiste Dubos's
*Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting, and Music*, which
first appeared in 1719:
>
> Do we ever reason, in order to know whether a ragoo be good or bad;
> and has it ever entered into any body's head, after having
> settled the geometrical principles of taste, and defined the qualities
> of each ingredient that enters into the composition of those messes,
> to examine into the proportion observed in their mixture, in order to
> decide whether it be good or bad? No, this is never practiced. We have
> a sense given us by nature to distinguish whether the cook acted
> according to the rules of his art. People taste the ragoo, and
> tho' unacquainted with those rules, they are able to tell
> whether it be good or no. The same may be said in some respect of the
> productions of the mind, and of pictures made to please and move us.
> (Dubos 1748, vol. II, 238-239)
>
And here is a late expression, from Kant's 1790 *Critique of
the Power of Judgment*:
>
> If someone reads me his poem or takes me to a play that in the end
> fails to please my taste, then he can adduce Batteux or Lessing, or
> even older and more famous critics of taste, and adduce all the rules
> they established as proofs that his poem is beautiful... . I will
> stop my ears, listen to no reasons and arguments, and would rather
> believe that those rules of the critics are false ... than allow
> that my judgment should be determined by means of *a priori*
> grounds of proof, since it is supposed to be a judgment of taste and
> not of the understanding of reason. (Kant 1790, 165)
>
But the theory of taste would not have enjoyed its eighteenth-century
run, nor would it continue now to exert its influence, had it been
without resources to counter an obvious rationalist objection. There
is a wide difference--so goes the objection--between judging
the excellence of a ragout and judging the excellence of a poem or a
play. More often than not, poems and plays are objects of great
complication. But taking in all that complication requires a lot of
cognitive work, including the application of concepts and the drawing
of inferences. Judging the beauty of poems and plays, then, is
evidently not immediate and so evidently not a matter of taste.
The chief way of meeting this objection was first to distinguish
between the act of grasping the object preparatory to judging it and
the act of judging the object once grasped, and then to allow the
former, but not the latter, to be as concept- and inference-mediated
as any rationalist might wish. Here is Hume, with characteristic
clarity:
>
> [I]n order to pave the way for [a judgment of taste], and give a
> proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary, we find, that
> much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just
> conclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations
> examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species of
> beauty, especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance
> command our affection and approbation; and where they fail of this
> effect, it is impossible for any reasoning to redress their influence,
> or adapt them better to our taste and sentiment. But in many orders of
> beauty, particularly those of the fine arts, it is requisite to employ
> much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment. (Hume, 1751,
> Section I)
>
Hume--like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson before him, and Reid after
him (Cooper 1711, 17, 231; Hutcheson 1725, 16-24; Reid 1785,
760-761)--regarded the faculty of taste as a kind of
"internal sense." Unlike the five "external"
or "direct" senses, an "internal" (or
"reflex" or "secondary") sense is one that
depends for its objects on the antecedent operation of some other
mental faculty or faculties. Reid characterizes internal sense as
follows:
>
> Beauty or deformity in an object, results from its nature or
> structure. To perceive the beauty therefore, we must perceive the
> nature or structure from which it results. In this the internal sense
> differs from the external. Our external senses may discover qualities
> which do not depend upon any antecedent perception... . But it is
> impossible to perceive the beauty of an object, without perceiving the
> object, or at least conceiving it. (Reid 1785, 760-761)
>
Because of the highly complex natures or structures of many beautiful
objects, there will have to be a role for reason in their perception.
But perceiving the nature or structure of an object is one thing.
Perceiving its beauty is another.
### 1.2 Disinterest
Egoism about virtue is the view that to judge an action or trait
virtuous is to take pleasure in it because you believe it to serve
some interest of yours. Its central instance is the Hobbesian
view--still very much on early eighteenth-century
minds--that to judge an action or trait virtuous is to take
pleasure in it because you believe it to promote your safety. Against
Hobbesian egoism a number of British moralists--preeminently
Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume--argued that, while a judgment
of virtue is a matter of taking pleasure in response to an action or
trait, the pleasure is disinterested, by which they meant that it is
not self-interested (Cooper 1711, 220-223; Hutcheson 1725, 9,
25-26; Hume 1751, 218-232, 295-302). One argument
went roughly as follows. That we judge virtue by means of an immediate
sensation of pleasure means that judgments of virtue are judgments of
taste, no less than judgments of beauty. But pleasure in the beautiful
is not self-interested: we judge objects to be beautiful whether or
not we believe them to serve our interests. But if pleasure in the
beautiful is disinterested, there is no reason to think that pleasure
in the virtuous cannot also be (Hutcheson 1725, 9-10).
The eighteenth-century view that judgments of virtue are judgments of
taste highlights a difference between the eighteenth-century concept
of taste and our concept of the aesthetic, since for us the concepts
*aesthetic* and *moral* tend oppose one another such
that a judgment's falling under one typically precludes its
falling under the other. Kant is chiefly responsible for introducing
this difference. He brought the moral and the aesthetic into
opposition by re-interpreting what we might call *the disinterest
thesis*--the thesis that pleasure in the beautiful is
disinterested (though see Cooper 1711, 222 and Home 2005, 36-38
for anticipations of Kant's re-interpretation).
According to Kant, to say that a pleasure is interested is not to say
that it is self-interested in the Hobbesian sense, but rather that it
stands in a certain relation to the faculty of desire. The pleasure
involved in judging an action to be morally good is interested because
such a judgment issues in a desire to bring the action into existence,
i.e., to perform it. To judge an action to be morally good is to
become aware that one has a duty to perform the action, and to become
so aware is to gain a desire to perform it. By contrast, the pleasure
involved in judging an object to be beautiful is disinterested because
such a judgment issues in no desire to do anything in particular. If
we can be said to have a duty with regard to beautiful things, it
appears to be exhausted in our judging them aesthetically to be
beautiful. That is what Kant means when he says that the judgment of
taste is not practical but rather "merely contemplative"
(Kant 1790, 95).
By thus re-orienting the notion of disinterest, Kant brought the
concept of taste into opposition with the concept of morality, and so
into line, more or less, with the present concept of the aesthetic.
But if the Kantian concept of taste is continuous, more or less, with
the present-day concept of the aesthetic, why the terminological
discontinuity? Why have we come to prefer the term
'aesthetic' to the term 'taste'? The not very
interesting answer appears to be that we have preferred an adjective
to a noun. The term 'aesthetic' derives from the Greek
term for sensory perception, and so preserves the implication of
immediacy carried by the term 'taste.' Kant employed both
terms, though not equivalently: according to his usage,
'aesthetic' is broader, picking out a class of judgments
that includes both the normative judgment of taste and the
non-normative, though equally immediate, judgment of the agreeable.
Though Kant was not the first modern to use 'aesthetic'
(Baumgarten had used it as early as 1735), the term became widespread
only, though quickly, after his employment of it in the third
Critique. Yet the employment that became widespread was not exactly
Kant's, but a narrower one according to which
'aesthetic' simply functions as an adjective corresponding
to the noun "taste." So for example we find Coleridge, in
1821, expressing the wish that he "could find a more familiar
word than aesthetic for works of taste and criticism," before
going on to argue:
>
> As our language ... contains no other *useable* adjective,
> to express coincidence of form, feeling, and intellect, that
> something, which, confirming the inner and the outward senses, becomes
> a new sense in itself ... there is reason to hope, that the term
> *aesthetic*, will be brought into common use. (Coleridge 1821,
> 254)
>
The availability of an adjective corresponding to "taste"
has allowed for the retiring of a series of awkward expressions: the
expressions "judgment of taste," "emotion of
taste" and "quality of taste" have given way to the
arguably less offensive 'aesthetic judgment,'
'aesthetic emotion,' and 'aesthetic quality.'
However, as the noun 'taste' phased out, we became saddled
with other perhaps equally awkward expressions, including the one that
names this entry.
## 2. The Concept of the Aesthetic
Much of the history of more recent thinking about the concept of the
aesthetic can be seen as the history of the development of the
immediacy and disinterest theses.
### 2.1 Aesthetic Objects
Artistic formalism is the view that the artistically relevant
properties of an artwork--the properties in virtue of which it is
an artwork and in virtue of which it is a good or bad one--are
formal merely, where formal properties are typically regarded as
properties graspable by sight or by hearing merely. Artistic formalism
has been taken to follow from both the immediacy and the disinterest
theses (Binkley 1970, 266-267; Carroll 2001, 20-40). If
you take the immediacy thesis to imply the artistic irrelevance of all
properties whose grasping requires the use of reason, and you include
representational properties in that class, then you are apt to think
that the immediacy thesis implies artistic formalism. If you take the
disinterest thesis to imply the artistic irrelevance of all properties
capable of practical import, and you include representational
properties in that class, then you are apt to think that the
disinterest thesis implies artistic formalism.
This is not to suggest that the popularity enjoyed by artistic
formalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries owed mainly to
its inference from the immediacy or disinterest theses. The most
influential advocates of formalism during this period were
professional critics, and their formalism derived, at least in part,
from the artistic developments with which they were concerned. As a
critic Eduard Hanslick advocated for the pure music of Mozart,
Beethoven, Schumann, and later Brahms, and against the dramatically
impure music of Wagner; as a theorist he urged that music has no
content but "tonally moving forms" (Hanslick 1986, 29). As
a critic Clive Bell was an early champion of the post-Impressionists,
especially Cezanne; as a theorist he maintained that the formal
properties of painting--"relations and combinations of
lines and colours"--alone have artistic relevance (Bell
1958, 17-18). As a critic Clement Greenberg was abstract
expressionism's ablest defender; as a theorist he held
painting's "proper area of competence" to be
exhausted by flatness, pigment, and shape (Greenberg 1986,
86-87).
Not every influential defender of formalism has also been a
professional critic. Monroe Beardsley, who arguably gave formalism its
most sophisticated articulation, was not (Beardsley 1958). Nor is Nick
Zangwill, who recently has mounted a spirited and resourceful defense
of a moderate version of formalism (Zangwill 2001). But formalism has
always been sufficiently motivated by art-critical data that once
Arthur Danto made the case that the data no longer supported it, and
perhaps never really had, formalism's heyday came to an end.
Inspired in particular by Warhol's *Brillo Boxes*, which
are (more or less) perceptually indistinguishable from the
brand-printed cartons in which boxes of Brillo were delivered to
supermarkets, Danto observed that for most any artwork it is possible
to imagine both (a) another object that is perceptually indiscernible
from it but which is not an artwork, and (b) another artwork that is
perceptually indiscernible from it but which differs in artistic
value. From these observations he concluded that form alone neither
makes an artwork nor gives it whatever value it has (Danto 1981,
94-95; Danto 1986, 30-31; Danto 1997, 91).
But Danto has taken the possibility of such perceptual indiscernibles
to show the limitations not merely of form but also of aesthetics, and
he has done so on the grounds, apparently, that the formal and the
aesthetic are co-extensive. Regarding a urinal Duchamp once exhibited
and a perceptual indiscernible ordinary urinal, Danto maintains
that
>
> aesthetics could not explain why one was a work of fine art and the
> other not, since for all practical purposes they were aesthetically
> indiscernible: if one was beautiful, the other one had to be
> beautiful, since they looked just alike. (Danto 2003, 7)
>
But the inference from the limits of the artistically formal to the
limits of the artistically aesthetic is presumably only as strong as
the inferences from the immediacy and disinterest theses to artistic
formalism, and these are not beyond question. The inference from the
disinterest thesis appears to go through only if you employ a stronger
notion of disinterest than the one Kant understands himself to be
employing: Kant, it is worth recalling, regards poetry as the highest
of the fine arts precisely because of its capacity to employ
representational content in the expression of what he calls
'aesthetic ideas' (Kant 1790, 191-194; see Costello
2008 and 2013 for extended treatment of the capacity of Kantian
aesthetics to accommodate conceptual art). The inference from the
immediacy thesis appears to go through only if you employ a notion of
immediacy stronger than the one Hume, for example, takes himself to be
defending when he claims (in a passage quoted in section1.1) that
"in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the fine arts,
it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper
sentiment" (Hume 1751, 173). It may be that artistic formalism
results if you push either of the tendencies embodied in the immediacy
and disinterest theses to extremes. It may be that the history of
aesthetics from the 18th century to the mid-Twentieth is largely the
history of pushing those two tendencies to extremes. It does not
follow that those tendencies must be so pushed.
Consider Warhol's *Brillo Boxes*. Danto is right to
maintain that the eighteenth-century theorist of taste would not know
how to regard it as an artwork. But this is because the
eighteenth-century theorist of taste lives in the 18th century, and so
would be unable to situate that work in its twentieth-century
art-historical context, and not because the kind of theory she holds
forbids her from situating a work in its art-historical context. When
Hume, for instance, observes that artists address their works to
particular, historically-situated audiences, and that a critic
therefore "must place herself in the same situation as the
audience" to whom a work is addressed (Hume 1757, 239), he is
allowing that artworks are cultural products, and that the properties
that works have as the cultural products they are are among the
"ingredients of the composition" that a critic must grasp
if she is to feel the proper sentiment. Nor does there seem to be
anything in the celebrated conceptuality of *Brillo Boxes*, nor
of any other conceptual work, that ought to give the
eighteenth-century theorist pause. Francis Hutcheson asserts that
mathematical and scientific theorems are objects of taste (Hutcheson
1725, 36-41). Alexander Gerard asserts that scientific
discoveries and philosophical theories are objects of taste (Gerard
1757, 6). Neither argues for his assertion. Both regard it as
commonplace that objects of intellect may be objects of taste as
readily as objects of sight and hearing may be. Why should the
present-day aesthetic theorist think otherwise? If an object is
conceptual in nature, grasping its nature will require intellectual
work. If grasping an object's conceptual nature requires
situating it art-historically, then the intellectual work required to
grasp its nature will include situating it art-historically.
But--as Hume and Reid held (see section 1.1)--grasping the
nature of an object preparatory to aesthetically judging it is one
thing; aesthetically judging the object once grasped is another.
Though Danto has been the most influential and persistent critic of
formalism, his criticisms are no more decisive than those advanced by
Kendall Walton in his essay "Categories of Art."
Walton's anti-formalist argument hinges on two main theses, one
psychological and one philosophical. According to the psychological
thesis, which aesthetic properties we perceive a work as having
depends on which category we perceive the work as belonging to.
Perceived as belonging to the category of painting, Picasso's
*Guernica* will be perceived as "violent, dynamic, vital,
disturbing" (Walton 1970, 347). But perceived as belonging to
the category of "guernicas"--where guernicas are
works with "surfaces with the colors and shapes of
Picasso's *Guernica*, but the surfaces are molded to
protrude from the wall like relief maps of different kinds of
terrain"--Picasso's *Guernica* will be
perceived not as violent and dynamic, but as "cold, stark,
lifeless, or serene and restful, or perhaps bland, dull, boring"
(Walton 1970, 347). That Picasso's *Guernica* can be
perceived both as violent and dynamic and as not violent and not
dynamic might be thought to imply that there is no fact of the matter
whether it is violent and dynamic. But this implication holds only on
the assumption that there is no fact of the matter which category
Picasso's *Guernica* actually belongs to, and this
assumption appears to be false given that Picasso intended that
*Guernica* be a painting and did not intend that it be a
guernica, and that the category of paintings was well-established in
the society in which Picasso painted it while the category of
guernicas was not. Hence the philosophical thesis, according to which
the aesthetic properties a work actually has are those it is perceived
as having when perceived as belonging to the category (or categories)
it actually belongs to. Since the properties of having been intended
to be a painting and having been created in a society in which
painting is well-established category are artistically relevant though
not graspable merely by seeing (or hearing) the work, it seems that
artistic formalism cannot be true. "I do not deny," Walton
concludes, "that paintings and sonatas are to be judged solely
on what can be seen or heard in them--when they are perceived
correctly. But examining a work with the senses can by itself reveal
neither how it is correct to perceive it, nor how to perceive it that
way" (Walton 1970, 367).
But if we cannot judge which aesthetic properties paintings and
sonatas have without consulting the intentions and the societies of
the artists who created them, what of the aesthetic properties of
natural items? With respect to them it may appear as if there is
nothing to consult except the way they look and sound, so that an
aesthetic formalism about nature must be true. Allen Carlson, a
central figure in the burgeoning field of the aesthetics of nature,
argues against this appearance. Carlson observes that Walton's
psychological thesis readily transfers from works of art to natural
items: that we perceive Shetland ponies as cute and charming and
Clydesdales as lumbering surely owes to our perceiving them as
belonging to the category of horses (Carlson 1981, 19). He also
maintains that the philosophical thesis transfers: whales actually
have the aesthetic properties we perceive them as having when we
perceive them as mammals, and do not actually have any contrasting
aesthetic properties we might perceive them to have when we perceive
them as fish. If we ask what determines which category or categories
natural items actually belong to, the answer, according to Carlson, is
their natural histories as discovered by natural science (Carlson
1981, 21-22). Inasmuch as a natural item's natural history
will tend not to be graspable by merely seeing or hearing it,
formalism is no truer of natural items than it is of works of art.
The claim that Walton's psychological thesis transfers to
natural items has been widely accepted (and was in fact anticipated,
as Carlson acknowledges, by Ronald Hepburn (Hepburn 1966 and 1968)).
The claim that Walton's philosophical thesis transfers to
natural items has proven more controversial. Carlson is surely right
that aesthetic judgments about natural items are prone to be mistaken
insofar as they result from perceptions of those items as belonging to
categories to which they do not belong, and, insofar as determining
which categories natural items actually belong to requires scientific
investigation, this point seems sufficient to undercut the
plausibility of any very strong formalism about nature (see Carlson
1979 for independent objections against such formalism). Carlson,
however, also wishes to establish that aesthetic judgments about
natural items have whatever objectivity aesthetic judgments about
works of art do, and it is controversial whether Walton's
philosophical claim transfers sufficiently to support such a claim.
One difficulty, raised by Malcolm Budd (Budd 2002 and 2003) and Robert
Stecker (Stecker1997c), is that since there are many categories in
which a given natural item may correctly be perceived, it is unclear
which correct category is the one in which the item is perceived as
having the aesthetic properties it actually has. Perceived as
belonging to the category of Shetland ponies, a large Shetland pony
may be perceived as lumbering; perceived as belonging to the category
of horses, the same pony may be perceived as cute and charming but
certainly not lumbering. If the Shetland pony were a work of art, we
might appeal to the intentions (or society) of its creator to
determine which correct category is the one that fixes its aesthetic
character. But as natural items are not human creations they can give
us no basis for deciding between equally correct but aesthetically
contrasting categorizations. It follows, according to Budd, "the
aesthetic appreciation of nature is endowed with a freedom denied to
the appreciation of art" (Budd 2003, 34), though this is perhaps
merely another way of saying that the aesthetic appreciation of art is
endowed with an objectivity denied to the appreciation of nature.
### 2.2 Aesthetic Judgment
The eighteenth-century debate between rationalists and theorists of
taste (or sentimentalists) was primarily a debate over the immediacy
thesis, i.e., over whether we judge objects to be beautiful by
applying principles of beauty to them. It was not primarily a debate
over the existence of principles of beauty, a matter over which
theorists of taste might disagree. Kant denied that there are any such
principles (Kant 1790, 101), but both Hutcheson and Hume affirmed
their existence: they maintained that although judgments of beauty are
judgments of taste and not of reason, taste nevertheless operates
according to general principles, which might be discovered through
empirical investigation (Hutcheson 1725, 28-35; Hume 1757,
231-233).
It is tempting to think of recent debate in aesthetics between
particularists and generalists as a revival of the eighteenth-century
debate between rationalists and theorists of taste. But the accuracy
of this thought is difficult to gauge. One reason is that it is often
unclear whether particularists and generalists take themselves merely
to be debating the existence of aesthetic principles or to be debating
their employment in aesthetic judgment. Another is that, to the degree
particularists and generalists take themselves to be debating the
employment of aesthetic principles in aesthetic judgment, it is hard
to know what they can be meaning by 'aesthetic judgment.'
If 'aesthetic' still carries its eighteenth-century
implication of immediacy, then the question under debate is whether
judgment that is immediate is immediate. If 'aesthetic' no
longer carries that implication, then it is hard to know what question
is under debate because it is hard to know what aesthetic judgment
could be. It may be tempting to think that we can simply re-define
'aesthetic judgment' such that it refers to any judgment
in which an aesthetic property is predicated of an object. But this
requires being able to say what an aesthetic property is without
reference to its being immediately graspable, something no one seems
to have done. It may seem that we can simply re-define
'aesthetic judgment' such that it refers to any judgment
in which any property of the class exemplified by beauty is predicated
of an object. But which class is this? The classes exemplified by
beauty are presumably endless, and the difficulty is to specify the
relevant class without reference to the immediate graspability of its
members, and that is what no one seems to have done.
However we are to sort out the particularist/generalist debate,
important contributions to it include, on the side of particularism,
Arnold Isenberg's "Critical Communication" (1949)
Frank Sibley's "Aesthetic Concepts" (in Sibley 2001)
and Mary Mothersill's *Beauty Restored* (1984) and, on
the side of generalism, Monroe Beardsley's *Aesthetics*
(1958) and "On the Generality of Critical Reasons" (1962),
Sibley's "General Reasons and Criteria in
Aesthetics" (in Sibley 2001), George Dickie's
*Evaluating Art* (1987), Stephen Davies's "Replies
to Arguments Suggesting that Critics' Strong Evaluations Could
not be Soundly Deduced" (1995), and John Bender's
"General but Defeasible Reasons in Aesthetic Evaluation: The
Generalist/Particularist Dispute" (1995). Of these, the papers
by Isenberg and Sibley have arguably enjoyed the greatest
influence.
Isenberg concedes that we often appeal to descriptive features of
works in support of our judgments of their value, and he allows that
this may make it seem as if we must be appealing to principles in
making those judgments. If in support of a favorable judgment of some
painting a critic appeals to the wavelike contour formed by the
figures clustered in its foreground, it may seem as if his judgment
must involve tacit appeal to the principle that any painting having
such a contour is so much the better. But Isenberg argues that this
cannot be, since no one agrees to any such principle:
>
> There is not in all the world's criticism a single purely
> descriptive statement concerning which one is prepared to say
> beforehand, 'If it is true, I shall like that work so much the
> better' (Isenberg 1949, 338).
>
But if in appealing to the descriptive features of a work we are not
acknowledging tacit appeals to principles linking those features to
aesthetic value, what are we doing? Isenberg believes we are offering
"directions for perceiving" the work, i.e., by singling
out certain its features, we are "narrow[ing] down the field of
possible visual orientations" and thereby guiding others in
"the discrimination of details, the organization of parts, the
grouping of discrete objects into patterns" (Isenberg 1949,
336). In this way we get others to see what we have seen, rather than
getting them to infer what we have inferred.
That Sibley advances a variety of particularism in one paper and a
variety of generalism in another will give the appearance of
inconsistency where there is none: Sibley is a particularist of one
sort, and with respect to one distinction, and a generalist of another
sort with respect to another distinction. Isenberg, as noted, is a
particularist with respect to the distinction between descriptions and
verdicts, i.e., he maintains that there are no principles by which we
may infer from value-neutral descriptions of works to judgments of
their overall value. Sibley's particularism and generalism, by
contrast, both have to do with judgments falling in between
descriptions and verdicts. With respect to a distinction between
descriptions and a set of judgments intermediate between descriptions
and verdicts, Sibley is straightforwardly particularist. With respect
to a distinction between a set of judgments intermediate between
descriptions and verdicts and verdicts, Sibley is a kind of generalist
and describes himself as such.
Sibley's generalism, as set forth in "General Reasons and
Criteria in Aesthetics," begins with the observation that the
properties to which we appeal in justification of favorable verdicts
are not all descriptive or value-neutral. We also appeal to properties
that are inherently positive, such as grace, balance, dramatic
intensity, or comicality. To say that a property is inherently
positive is not to say that any work having it is so much the better,
but rather that its *tout court* attribution implies value. So
although a work may be made worse on account of its comical elements,
the simple claim that a work is good because comical is intelligible
in a way that the simple claims that a work is good because yellow, or
because it lasts twelve minutes, or because it contains many puns, are
not. But if the simple claim that a work is good because comical is
thus intelligible, comicality is a general criterion for aesthetic
value, and the principle that articulates that generality is true. But
none of this casts any doubt on the immediacy thesis, as Sibley
himself observes:
>
> I have argued elsewhere that there are no sure-fire rules by which,
> referring to the neutral and non-aesthetic qualities of things, one
> can infer that something is balanced, tragic, comic, joyous, and so
> on. One has to look and see. Here, equally, at a different level, I am
> saying that there are no sure-fire mechanical rules or procedures for
> deciding which qualities are actual defects in the work; one has to
> judge for oneself. (Sibley 2001, 107-108)
>
The "elsewhere" referred to in the first sentence is
Sibley's earlier paper, "Aesthetic Concepts," which
argues that the application of concepts such as
'balanced,' 'tragic,' 'comic,' or
'joyous' is not a matter of determining whether the
descriptive (i.e., non-aesthetic) conditions for their application are
met, but is rather a matter of taste. Hence aesthetic judgments are
immediate in something like the way that judgments of color, or of
flavor, are:
>
> We see that a book is red by looking, just as we tell that the tea is
> sweet by tasting it. So too, it might be said, we just see (or fail to
> see) that things are delicate, balanced, and the like. This kind of
> comparison between the exercise of taste and the use of the five
> senses is indeed familiar; our use of the word 'taste'
> itself shows that the comparison is age-old and very natural (Sibley
> 2001, 13-14).
>
But Sibley recognizes--as his eighteenth-century forebears did
and his formalist contemporaries did not--that important
differences remain between the exercise of taste and the use of the
five senses. Central among these is that we offer reasons, or
something like them, in support of our aesthetic judgments: by
talking--in particular, by appealing to the descriptive
properties on which the aesthetic properties depend--we justify
aesthetic judgments by bringing others to see what we have seen
(Sibley 2001, 14-19).
It is unclear to what degree Sibley, beyond seeking to establish that
the application of aesthetic concepts is not condition-governed, seeks
also to define the term 'aesthetic' in terms of their not
being so. It is clearer, perhaps, that he does not succeed in defining
the term this way, whatever his intentions. Aesthetic concepts are not
alone in being non-condition-governed, as Sibley himself recognizes in
comparing them with color concepts. But there is also no reason to
think them alone in being non-condition-governed while also being
reason-supportable, since moral concepts, to give one example, at
least arguably also have both these features. Isolating the aesthetic
requires something more than immediacy, as Kant saw. It requires
something like the Kantian notion of disinterest, or at least
something to play the role played by that notion in Kant's
theory.
Given the degree to which Kant and Hume continue to influence thinking
about aesthetic judgment (or critical judgment, more broadly), given
the degree to which Sibley and Isenberg continue to abet that
influence, it is not surprising that the immediacy thesis is now very
widely received. The thesis, however, has come under attack, notably
by Davies (1990) and Bender (1995). (See also Carroll (2009), who
follows closely after Davies (1990), and Dorsch (2013) for further
discussion.)
Isenberg, it will be recalled, maintains that if the critic is arguing
for her verdict, her argumentation must go something as follows:
1. Artworks having *p* are better for having *p*.
2. *W* is an artwork having *p*.
3. Therefore, *W* is so much the better for having
*p*.
Since the critical principle expressed in premise 1 is open to
counter-example, no matter what property we substitute for p, Isenberg
concludes that we cannot plausibly interpret the critic as arguing for
her verdict. Rather than defend the principle expressed in premise 1,
Davies and Bender both posit alternative principles, consistent with
the fact that no property is good-making in all artworks, which they
ascribe to the critic. Davies proposes that we interpret the critic as
arguing deductively from principles relativized to artistic type, that
is, from principles holding that artworks of a specific types or
categories--Italian Renaissance paintings, romantic symphonies,
Hollywood Westerns, etc.--having p are better for having it
(Davies 1990, 174). Bender proposes that we interpret the critic as
arguing inductively from principles expressing mere tendencies that
hold between certain properties and artworks--principles, in
other words, holding that artworks having p tend to be better for
having it (Bender 1995, 386).
Each proposal has its own weaknesses and strengths. A problem with
Bender's approach is that critics do not seem to couch their
verdicts in probabilistic terms. Were a critic to say that a work is
likely to be good, or almost certainly good, or even that she has the
highest confidence that it must be good, her language would suggest
that she had not herself experienced the work, perhaps that she had
judged the work on the basis of someone else's testimony, hence
that she is no critic at all. We would therefore have good reason to
prefer Davies's deductive approach if only we had good reason
for thinking that relativizing critical principles to artistic type
removed the original threat of counterexample. Though it is clear that
such relativizing reduces the relative number of counterexamples, we
need good reason for thinking that it reduces that number to zero, and
Davies provides no such reason. Bender's inductive approach, by
contrast, cannot be refuted by counterexample, but only by
counter-tendency.
If the critic argues from the truth of a principle to the truth of a
verdict--as Davies and Bender both contend--it must be
possible for her to establish the truth of the principle before
establishing the truth of the verdict. How might she do this? It seems
unlikely that mere reflection on the nature of art, or on the natures
of types of art, could yield up the relevant lists of good- and
bad-making properties. At least the literature has yet to produce a
promising account as to how this might be done. Observation therefore
seems the most promising answer. To say that the critic establishes
the truth of critical principles on the basis of observation, however,
is to say that she establishes a correlation between certain artworks
she has already established to be good and certain properties she has
already established those works to have. But then any capacity to
establish that works are good by inference from principles evidently
depends on some capacity to establish that works are good without any
such inference, and the question arises why the critic should prefer
to do by inference what she can do perfectly well without. The answer
cannot be that judging by inference from principle yields
epistemically better results, since a principle based on observations
can be no more epistemically sound than the observations on which it
is based.
None of this shows that aesthetic or critical judgment could never be
inferred from principles. It does however suggest that such judgment
is first and foremost non-inferential, which is what the immediacy
thesis holds.
### 2.3 The Aesthetic Attitude
The Kantian notion of disinterest has its most direct recent
descendents in the aesthetic-attitude theories that flourished from
the early to mid 20th century. Though Kant followed the British in
applying the term 'disinterested' strictly to pleasures,
its migration to attitudes is not difficult to explain. For Kant the
pleasure involved in a judgment of taste is disinterested because such
a judgment does not issue in a motive to do anything in particular.
For this reason Kant refers to the judgment of taste as contemplative
rather than practical (Kant 1790, 95). But if the judgment of taste is
not practical, then the attitude we bear toward its object is
presumably also not practical: when we judge an object aesthetically
we are unconcerned with whether and how it may further our practical
aims. Hence it is natural to speak of our attitude toward the object
as disinterested.
To say, however, that the migration of disinterest from pleasures to
attitudes is natural is not to say that it is inconsequential.
Consider the difference between Kant's aesthetic theory, the
last great theory of taste, and Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory,
the first great aesthetic-attitude theory. Whereas for Kant
disinterested pleasure is the means by which we discover things to
bear aesthetic value, for Schopenhauer disinterested attention (or
"will-less contemplation") is itself the locus of
aesthetic value. According to Schopenhauer, we lead our ordinary,
practical lives in a kind of bondage to our own desires (Schopenhauer
1819, 196). This bondage is a source not merely of pain but also of
cognitive distortion in that it restricts our attention to those
aspects of things relevant to the fulfilling or thwarting of our
desires. Aesthetic contemplation, being will-less, is therefore both
epistemically and hedonically valuable, allowing us a desire-free
glimpse into the essences of things as well as a respite from
desire-induced pain:
>
> When, however, an external cause or inward disposition suddenly raises
> us out of the endless stream of willing, and snatches knowledge from
> the thralldom of the will, the attention is now no longer directed to
> the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their
> relation to the will ... Then all at once the peace, always
> sought but always escaping us ... comes to us of its own accord,
> and all is well with us. (Schopenhauer 1819, 196)
>
The two most influential aesthetic-attitude theories of the 20th
century are those of Edward Bullough and Jerome Stolnitz. According to
Stolnitz's theory, which is the more straightforward of the two,
bearing an aesthetic attitude toward an object is a matter of
attending to it disinterestedly and sympathetically, where to attend
to it disinterestedly is to attend to it with no purpose beyond that
of attending to it, and to attend to it sympathetically is to
"accept it on its own terms," allowing it, and not
one's own preconceptions, to guide one's attention of it
(Stolnitz 1960, 32-36). The result of such attention is a
comparatively richer experience of the object, i.e., an experience
taking in comparatively many of the object's features. Whereas a
practical attitude limits and fragments the object of our experience,
allowing us to "see only those of its features which are
relevant to our purposes,.... By contrast, the aesthetic attitude
'isolates' the object and focuses upon it--the
'look' of the rocks, the sound of the ocean, the colors in
the painting." (Stolnitz 1960, 33, 35).
Bullough, who prefers to speak of "psychical distance"
rather than disinterest, characterizes aesthetic appreciation as
something achieved
>
> by putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear with our actual
> practical self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our
> personal needs and ends--in short, by looking at it
> 'objectively' ... by permitting only such reactions
> on our part as emphasise the 'objective features of the
> experience, and by interpreting even our 'subjective'
> affections not as modes of *our* being but rather as
> characteristics of the phenomenon. (Bullough 1995, 298-299;
> emphasis in original).
>
Bullough has been criticized for claiming that aesthetic appreciation
requires dispassionate detachment:
>
> Bullough's characterization of the aesthetic attitude is the
> easiest to attack. When we cry at a tragedy, jump in fear at a horror
> movie, or lose ourselves in the plot of a complex novel, we cannot be
> said to be detached, although we may be appreciating the aesthetic
> qualities of these works to the fullest... . And we can
> appreciate the aesthetic properties of the fog or storm while fearing
> the dangers they present. (Goldman 2005, 264)
>
But such a criticism seems to overlook a subtlety of Bullough's
view. While Bullough does hold that aesthetic appreciation requires
distance "between our own self and its affections"
(Bullough 1995, 298), he does not take this to require that we not
undergo affections but quite the opposite: only if we undergo
affections have we affections from which to be distanced. So, for
example, the properly distanced spectator of a well-constructed
tragedy is not the "over-distanced" spectator who feels no
pity or fear, nor the "under-distanced" spectator who
feels pity and fear as she would to an actual, present catastrophe,
but the spectator who interprets the pity and fear she feels
"not as modes of [her] being but rather as characteristics of
the phenomenon" (Bullough 1995, 299). The properly distanced
spectator of a tragedy, we might say, understands her fear and pity to
be part of what tragedy is about.
The notion of the aesthetic attitude has been attacked from all
corners and has very few remaining sympathizers. George Dickie is
widely regarded as having delivered the decisive blow in his essay
"The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude" (Dickie 1964) by
arguing that all purported examples of interested attention are really
just examples of inattention. So consider the case of the spectator at
a performance of *Othello* who becomes increasingly suspicious
of his own wife as the action proceeds, or the case of the impresario
who sits gauging the size of the audience, or the case of the father
who sits taking pride in his daughter's performance, or the case
of the moralist who sits gauging the moral effects the play is apt to
produce in its audience. These and all such cases will be regarded by
the attitude theorist as cases of interested attention to the
performance, when they are actually nothing but cases of inattention
to the performance: the jealous husband is attending to his wife, the
impresario to the till, the father to his daughter, the moralist to
the effects of the play. But if none of them is attending to the
performance, then none of them is attending to it interestedly (Dickie
1964, 57-59).
The attitude theorist, however, can plausibly resist Dickie's
interpretation of such examples. Clearly the impresario is not
attending to the performance, but there is no reason to regard the
attitude theorist as committed to thinking otherwise. As for the
others, it might be argued that they are all attending. The jealous
husband must be attending to the performance, since it is the action
of the play, as presented by the performance, that is making him
suspicious. The proud father must be attending to the performance,
since he is attending to his daughter's performance, which is an
element of it. The moralist must be attending to the performance,
since he otherwise would have no basis by which to gauge its moral
effects on the audience. It may be that none of these spectators is
giving the performance the attention it demands, but that is precisely
the attitude theorist's point.
But perhaps another of Dickie's criticisms, one lesser known,
ultimately poses a greater threat to the ambitions of the attitude
theorist. Stolnitz, it will be recalled, distinguishes between
disinterested and interested attention according to the purpose
governing the attention: to attend disinterestedly is to attend with
no purpose beyond that of attending; to attend interestedly is to
attend with some purpose beyond that of attending. But Dickie objects
that a difference in purpose does not imply a difference in
attention:
>
> Suppose Jones listens to a piece of music for the purpose of being
> able to analyze and describe it on an examination the next day and
> Smith listens to the same music with no such ulterior purpose. There
> is certainly a difference in the motives and intentions of the two
> men: Jones has an ulterior purpose and Smith does not, but this does
> not mean Jones's *listening* differs from Smith's
> ... . There is only one way to *listen* to (to attend to)
> music, although there may be a variety of motives, intentions, and
> reasons for doing so and a variety of ways of being distracted from
> the music. (Dickie 1964, 58).
>
There is again much here that the attitude theorist can resist. The
idea that listening is a species of attending can be resisted: the
question at hand, strictly speaking, is not whether Jones and Smith
*listen* to the music in the same way, but whether they
*attend* in the same way to the music they are listening to.
The contention that Jones and Smith are attending in the same way
appears to be question-begging, as it evidently depends on a principle
of individuation that the attitude theorist rejects: if Jones's
attention is governed by some ulterior purpose and Smith's is
not, and we individuate attention according to the purpose that
governs it, their attention is not the same. Finally, even if we
reject the attitude theorist's principle of individuation, the
claim that there is but one way to attend to music is doubtful: one
can seemingly attend to music in myriad ways--as historical
document, as cultural artifact, as aural wallpaper, as sonic
disturbance--depending on which of the music's features one
attends to in listening to it. But Dickie is nevertheless onto
something crucial to the degree he urges that a difference in purpose
need not imply a *relevant* difference in attention.
Disinterest plausibly figures in the definition of the aesthetic
attitude only to the degree that it, and it alone, focuses attention
on the features of the object that matter aesthetically. The
possibility that there are interests that focus attention on just
those same features implies that disinterest has no place in such a
definition, which in turn implies that neither it nor the notion of
the aesthetic attitude is likely to be of any use in fixing the
meaning of the term 'aesthetic.' If to take the aesthetic
attitude toward an object simply is to attend to its aesthetically
relevant properties, whether the attention is interested or
disinterested, then determining whether an attitude is aesthetic
apparently requires first determining which properties are the
aesthetically relevant ones. And this task seems always to result
either in claims about the immediate graspability of aesthetic
properties, which are arguably insufficient to the task, or in claims
about the essentially formal nature of aesthetic properties, which are
arguably groundless.
But that the notions of disinterest and psychical distance prove
unhelpful in fixing the meaning of the term 'aesthetic'
does not imply that they are mythic. At times we seem unable to get by
without them. Consider the case of *The Fall of
Miletus*--a tragedy written by the Greek dramatist Phrynicus
and staged in Athens barely two years after the violent Persian
capture of the Greek city of Miletus in 494 BC. Herodotus records
that
>
> [the Athenians] found many ways to express their sorrow at the fall of
> Miletus, and in particular, when Phrynicus composed and produced a
> play called *The Fall of Miletus*, the audience burst into
> tears and fined him a thousand drachmas for reminding them of a
> disaster that was so close to home; future productions of the play
> were also banned. (Herodotus, *The Histories*, 359)
>
How are we to explain the Athenian reaction to this play without
recourse to something like interest or lack of distance? How, in
particular, are we to explain the difference between the sorrow
elicited by a successful tragedy and the sorrow elicited in this case?
The distinction between attention and inattention is of no use here.
The difference is not that the Athenians could not attend to *The
Fall* whereas they could attend to other plays. The difference is
that they could not attend to *The Fall* as they could attend
to other plays, and this because of their too intimate connection to
what attending to *The Fall* required their attending to.
### 2.4 Aesthetic Experience
Theories of aesthetic experience may be divided into two kinds
according to the kind of feature appealed to in explanation of what
makes experience aesthetic: *internalist theories* appeal to
features internal to experience, typically to phenomenological
features, whereas *externalist theories* appeal to features
external to the experience, typically to features of the object
experienced. (The distinction between internalist and externalist
theories of aesthetic experience is similar, though not identical, to
the distinction between phenomenal and epistemic conceptions of
aesthetic experience drawn by Gary Iseminger (Iseminger 2003, 100, and
Iseminger 2004, 27, 36)). Though internalist
theories--particularly John Dewey's (1934) and Monroe
Beardsley's (1958)--predominated during the early and
middle parts of the 20th century, externalist theories--including
Beardsley's (1982) and George Dickie's (1988)--have
been in the ascendance since. Beardsley's views on aesthetic
experience make a strong claim on our attention, given that Beardsley
might be said to have authored the culminating internalist theory as
well as the founding externalist one. Dickie's criticisms of
Beardsley's internalism make an equally strong claim, since they
moved Beardsley--and with him most everyone else--from
internalism toward externalism.
According to the version of internalism Beardsley advances in
his *Aesthetics* (1958), all aesthetic experiences
have in common three or four (depending on how you count) features,
which "some writers have [discovered] through acute
introspection, and which each of us can test in his own
experience" (Beardsley 1958, 527). These are focus ("an
aesthetic experience is one in which attention is firmly fixed upon
[its object]"), intensity, and unity, where unity is a matter of
coherence and of completeness (Beardsley 1958, 527). Coherence, in
turn, is a matter of having elements that are properly connected one
to another such that
>
> [o]ne thing leads to another; continuity of development, without gaps
> or dead spaces, a sense of overall providential pattern of guidance,
> an orderly cumulation of energy toward a climax, are present to an
> unusual degree. (Beardsley 1958, 528)
>
Completeness, by contrast, is a matter having elements that
"counterbalance" or "resolve" one another such
that the whole stands apart from elements without it:
>
> The impulses and expectations aroused by elements within the
> experience are felt to be counterbalanced or resolved by other
> elements within the experience, so that some degree of equilibrium or
> finality is achieved and enjoyed. The experience detaches itself, and
> even insulates itself, from the intrusion of alien elements.
> (Beardsley 1958, 528)
>
Dickie's most consequential criticism of Beardsley's
theory is that Beardsley, in describing the phenomenology of aesthetic
experience, has failed to distinguish between the features we
experience aesthetic objects as having and the features aesthetic
experiences themselves have. So while every feature mentioned in
Beardsley's description of the coherence of aesthetic
experience--continuity of development, the absence of gaps, the
mounting of energy toward a climax--surely is a feature we
experience aesthetic objects as having, there is no reason to think of
aesthetic experience itself as having any such features:
>
> Note that everything referred to [in Beardsley's description of
> coherence] is a perceptual characteristic ... and not an effect
> of perceptual characteristics. Thus, no ground is furnished for
> concluding that experience can be unified in the sense of being
> coherent. What is actually argued for is that aesthetic objects are
> coherent, a conclusion which must be granted, but not the one which is
> relevant. (Dickie 1965, 131)
>
Dickie raises a similar worry about Beardsley's description of
the completeness of aesthetic experience:
>
> One can speak of elements being counterbalanced *in the
> painting* and say that the painting is stable, balanced and
> so on, but what does it mean to say
> the *experience* of the spectator of the painting
> is stable or balanced? ... Looking at a painting in some cases
> might aid some persons in coming to feel stable because it might
> distract them from whatever is unsettling them, but such cases are
> atypical of aesthetic appreciation and not relevant to aesthetic
> theory. Aren't characteristics attributable to the painting
> simply being mistakenly shifted to the spectator? (Dickie 1965, 132)
>
Though these objections turned out to be only the beginning of the
debate between Dickie and Beardsley on the nature of aesthetic
experience (See Beardsley 1969, Dickie 1974, Beardsley 1970, and
Dickie 1987; see also Iseminger 2003 for a helpful overview of the
Beardsley-Dickie debate), they nevertheless went a long way toward
shaping that debate, which taken as whole might be seen as the working
out of an answer to the question "What can a theory of aesthetic
experience be that takes seriously the distinction between the
experience of features and the features of experience?" The
answer turned out to be an externalist theory of the sort that
Beardsley advances in the 1970 essay "The Aesthetic Point of
View" and that many others have advanced since: a theory
according to which an aesthetic experience just is an experience
having aesthetic content, i.e., an experience of an object as having
the aesthetic features that it has.
The shift from internalism to externalism has meant that one central
ambition of internalism--that of tying the meaning of
'aesthetic' to features internal to aesthetic
experience--has had to be given up. But a second, equally
central, ambition--that of accounting for aesthetic value by
grounding it in the value of aesthetic experience--has been
retained. The following section takes up the development and prospects
of such accounts.
### 2.5 Aesthetic Value
To count as *complete* a theory of aesthetic value must answer
two questions:
* What makes aesthetic value
aesthetic?
* What makes aesthetic value
value?
The literature refers to the first question sometimes as *the
aesthetic question* (Lopes 2018, 41-43; Shelley 2019, 1) and
sometimes as *the demarcation question* (van der Berg 2020, 2;
Matherne 2020, 315; Peacocke 2021, 165). It refers to the second as
*the normative question* (Lopes 2018, 41-43; Shelley
2019, 1; Matherne 2020, 315).
#### 2.5.1 The Aesthetic Question
The prevailing answer to the aesthetic question is *aesthetic
formalism*, the view that aesthetic value is aesthetic because
objects bear it in virtue of their perceptual properties, where these
encompass visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile
properties. Aesthetic formalism rose to prominence when and because
artistic formalism did, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries
(see Section 5.1). Because everyone then took artistic value to be a
species of aesthetic value, artistic formalism could gain prominence
only by dragging aesthetic formalism in its train. But whereas
artistic formalism has since fallen from favor, aesthetic formalism
has held its ground. The explanation, arguably, has to do with the way
aesthetic formalism honors the conceptual link between the aesthetic
and the perceptual. Any adequate answer to the aesthetic question must
meet what we may call *the perceptual constraint*, that is, it
must plausibly articulate the sense in which aesthetic value is
perceptual. Aesthetic formalism does this in the clearest possible
terms.
Versions of aesthetic formalism come in varying strengths. Its
strongest versions hold objects to have aesthetic value strictly in
virtue of their perceptual properties (Bell 1958/1914; Danto 2003,
92). Weaker versions either allow objects to have aesthetic value in
virtue of their non-perceptual content so long as that content
expresses itself perpetually (Zangwill 1998, 71-72) or require merely
that objects paradigmatically have aesthetic value in virtue of their
perceptual properties (Levinson 1996, 6). All versions of aesthetic
formalism struggle, one way or another, to accommodate our
long-standing practice of ascribing aesthetic value to objects that do
not address themselves primarily to the five bodily senses. Consider
works of literature. We have been ascribing aesthetic value to them
for as long as we have been ascribing aesthetic value to artworks of
any kind. How might the aesthetic theorist square her theory with this
practice? A first approach is simply to dismiss that practice,
regarding its participants as linguistically confused, as applying
terms of aesthetic praise to objects constitutionally incapable of
meriting it (Danto 2003, 92). But given how extremely revisionist this
approach is, we ought to wait on an argument of proportionately
extreme strength before adopting it. A second approach allows that
literary works bear aesthetic value, but only in virtue of their
sensory properties, such as properties associated with assonance,
consonance, rhythm, and imagery (Urmson 1957, 85-86, 88;
Zangwill 2001, 135-140). But this approach accounts for a mere
fraction of the aesthetic value we routinely ascribe to works of
literature. Suppose you praise a short story for the eloquence of its
prose and the beauty of its plot-structure. It seems arbitrary to
count only the eloquence as a genuine instance of aesthetic value. A
third approach treats literary works as exceptional, allowing them,
alone among works of art, to bear aesthetic value in virtue of their
non-perceptual properties (Binkley 1970, 269;Levinson 1996,6 n.9). The difficulty here
is to explain literature's exceptionality. If literary works
somehow bear aesthetic value in virtue of non-perceptual properties,
what prevents non-literary works from doing the same? Moreover, to
whatever degree we allow things to have aesthetic value in virtue of
their non-perceptual properties, to that degree we sever the
connection the formalist asserts between the aesthetic and the
perceptual and so undermine our reason for adopting aesthetic
formalism in the first place.
We might be forced to choose from among these three formalist
approaches to literature if aesthetic formalism constituted the only
plausible articulation of the sense in which aesthetic value is
perceptual, but it doesn't. Instead of holding that aesthetic
value is perceptual because things have it in virtue of their
perpetual properties, one might hold that aesthetic value is
perceptual because we perceive things as having it. This would be a
corollary of the immediacy thesis as defined in Section 1.1. If, as
that thesis holds, aesthetic judgment is perceptual, having all the
immediacy of any standard perceptual judgment, then aesthetic
properties are perceptual, grasped with all the immediacy of standard
perceptual properties. That aesthetic properties are thus perceptual
is Sibley's point in the following:
>
> It is of importance to note first that, broadly speaking, aesthetics
> deals with a kind of perception. People have to *see* the grace
> or unity of a work, *hear* the plaintiveness or frenzy in the
> music, *notice* the gaudiness of a colour scheme, *feel*
> the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone. (Sibley
> 2001, 34, emphasis in original)
>
Sibley says that people have to see the grace or unity of a work and
they have to feel the power of a novel. He doesn't say that they
have to see the properties in virtue of which a work has grace or
unity or feel the properties in virtue of which a novel has power: the
properties in virtue of which a work has grace or unity need not be
perceptual and the properties in virtue of which a novel has power
presumably will not be. Thus the literature problem, over which
formalism stumbles, does not arise for Sibley, nor for anyone else
committed to the immediacy thesis, includingShaftesbury (Cooper 1711, 17, 231), Hutcheson (1725,
16-24), Hume (1751, Section I), and Reid (1785, 760-761),
among others. For the immediacy theorist, the aesthetic value we
ascribe to literary works is aesthetic because we perceive literary
works as bearing it.
#### 2.5.2 The Normative Question
The prevailing answer to the normative question is *aesthetic
hedonism*, the view that aesthetic value is value because things
having it give pleasure when experienced. Aesthetic hedonism achieved
prominence in the 19th century, roughly when aesthetic formalism did.
Schopenhauer played a pivotal role in bringing it to prominence by
reassigning disinterested pleasure from the role it had been playing
in aesthetic judgment to the role of grounding aesthetic value
(Schopenhauer 1818 [1969], 195-200). Bentham (1789, ch. 4) and
Mill (1863 [2001]; ch. 2) arguably played larger roles by popularizing
value hedonism, that is, the view that pleasure is the ground of all
value. But whereas value hedonism no longer holds much sway in ethics,
and Schopenhauer no longer exerts much influence in aesthetics,
aesthetic hedonism has held its ground. The explanation presumably has
to do with the apparent ease with which aesthetic hedonism explains
why we seek out objects of aesthetic value. Any adequate answer to the
normative question must meet what we may call *the normative
constraint*, that is, it must plausibly identify what a
thing's having aesthetic value gives us reason to do. Aesthetic
hedonism, locating that reason in the pleasure taken in experiencing
aesthetically valuable objects, does this in the clearest possible
terms.
Advocates of aesthetic hedonism include Schopenhauer 1818 [1969], Clive
Bell 1914 [1958], C. I. Lewis 1946, Monroe Beardsley 1982, George Dickie
1988, Alan Goldman 1990, Kendall Walton 1993, Malcolm Budd 1995,
Jerrold Levinson 1996, 2002, Gary Iseminger 2004, Robert Stecker 2006,
2019, Nick Stang 2010 and Mohan Matthen 2017. It is only quite
recently that any sustained opposition to hedonism has arisen, a fact
that may go some way toward explaining why hedonists, as a rule, see
no need to argue for their view, opting instead to develop it in light
of objections an imagined opposition might make.
Beardsley, for instance, leads with this simple formulation of
hedonism:
>
> The aesthetic value of an object is the value it possesses in virtue
> of its capacity to provide aesthetic gratification. (Beardsley 1982,
> 21).
>
But he then anticipates a fatal objection. Sometimes we undervalue
aesthetic objects, finding them to have less value than they actually
have; other times we overvalue aesthetic objects, finding them to have
greater value than they actually have. The simple formulation above is
consistent with undervaluation, since it is possible to take less
aesthetic pleasure from an object than it has the capacity to provide,
but inconsistent with overvaluation, since it is impossible to take
greater aesthetic pleasure from an object than it has the capacity to
provide (Beardsley 1982, 26-27). To remedy this problem,
Beardsley appends a rider:
>
> The aesthetic value of [an object] is the value [it] possesses in
> virtue of its capacity to provide aesthetic gratification *when
> correctly and completely experienced* (Beardsley 1982, 27, italics
> in original).
>
Suppose we refer to the italicized portion of this formulation as
*the epistemic qualification* and the non-italicized portion as
*the hedonic thesis*. The epistemic qualification renders the
hedonic thesis consistent with overvaluation, given that you can
misapprehend an object such that you take greater aesthetic pleasure
from it than it has the capacity to provide when apprehended correctly
and completely.
Beardsley's version of aesthetic hedonism has served as a model
for subsequent versions (Levinson 2002, n. 23); at least all
subsequent versions consist of an epistemically qualified hedonic
thesis in some form. Beardsley's version, however, seems open to
counter-example. Consider Tony Morrison's *Beloved*, for
instance, or Cormac McCarthy's *Blood Meridian.* Taking
pleasure from works designed to cause shock, horror, despair, or moral
revulsion may seem perverse; surely, it may seem, such works do not
have whatever aesthetic value they have in virtue of any pleasure they
give. One way to accommodate such cases is to cast aesthetic pleasure
as a higher-order response, that is, a response that depends on
lower-order responses, which in some cases might include shock,
horror, despair, and moral revulsion (Walton 1993, 508; Levinson 1992,
18). Another way is to broaden the field of experiences that may
ground aesthetic value. Though pleasure as a rule grounds aesthetic
value, in exceptional cases certain non-hedonic yet intrinsically
valuable experiences--which may include horror, shock, despair,
and revulsion--may also do so (Levinson 1992, 12; Stecker 2005,
12). The literature refers to this latter, broadened variety of
hedonism as *aesthetic empiricism*; it hasn't settled on
a name for the former variety, but we may call it *tiered
hedonism*, given the varying levels of response it takes aesthetic
experience to comprise.
Yet another objection, anticipated by hedonists, holds hedonism to
imply *the heresy of the separable experience* (Budd 1985,
125). It is a commonplace that for any object bearing aesthetic value
nothing other than it can have just the particular value it has,
excepting the improbable case in which something other than it has
just its particular aesthetic character. The worry is that hedonism,
given that it regards aesthetic value as instrumental to the value of
experience, implies that for any object bearing aesthetic value
something wholly other from it, such as a drug, might induce the same
experience and so serve up the same value. The hedonist's usual
reply is to assert that aesthetic experience is inseparable from its
object, such that for any aesthetic experience, that experience is
just the particular experience it is because it has just the
particular aesthetic object it has (Levinson 1996, 22-23; Budd
1985, 123-124; S. Davies 1994: 315-16; Stang 2012,
271-272).
Actual opposition to hedonism did not materialize until the present
century (Sharpe 2000, Davies 2004), and most all of that during the
past decade or so (Shelley 2010, 2011, 2019; Wolf 2011; Lopes 2015,
2018; Gorodeisky 2021a, 2021b). Why the opposition took so long to
show up is a good question. It is tempting to think its answer resides
in the obvious truth of the hedonist's central premise, namely,
that aesthetically valuable objects please us, at least in general.
Anti-hedonists, however, have taken no interest in denying this
premise. One useful way to think of the dialectic between hedonists
and their opponents is to regard each as grasping one horn of an
aesthetic version of the Euthyphro dilemma, where hedonists hold
things to have aesthetic value because they please and anti-hedonists
hold things to please because they have aesthetic value (Augustine
2005/389-391, *De vera religione* SS59; Gorodeisky
2012a, 201 and 2021b, 262). Seen this way, the fact that aesthetically
valuable things please tells not at all in favor of the hedonist;
indeed, it is precisely this fact that the anti-hedonist thinks the
hedonist cannot explain.
For instance, Wolf, in the context of an extended, nuanced case
against value welfarism, argues that aesthetic hedonism cannot account
for the fact that *Middlemarch* is a better novel than the*Da Vinci Code*,given that most people apparently like the latter
better, presumably because it gives them greater pleasure (Wolf 2011,
54-55; see also Sharpe 2000, 326). The hedonist has a ready
reply in the claim that all standard versions of hedonism are now
epistemically qualified, that while most people may derive greater
pleasure from the *Da Vinci Code*, a fully informed
reader--that is, a reader who gives both texts a correct and
complete reading--will not, assuming *Middlemarch* to be
the better novel. But it's not clear how much appeal to the
epistemic qualification ultimately helps the hedonist. The
anti-hedonist will want to know what best explains the fact that a
fully informed reader will derive greater pleasure from
*Middlemarch* (Wolf 2011, 55; D. Davies 2004, 258-259;
Sharpe 2000, 325). Suppose we say that it owes to the fully informed
reader's grasping the superiority of
*Middlemarch's* structure, the higher quality of its
prose, the greater subtlety and depth of its character development,
and the greater penetration of the insights it affords (Wolf 2011,
55). Wouldn't we then be saying that it owes to her grasping the
greater aesthetic value of *Middlemarch*? Wouldn't that
be part of what a fully informed reader is fully informed about?
Of course, the hedonist may allow *Middlemarch* to be
aesthetically better because of its superior structure, prose,
character development, and insight; to allow this, from her point of
view, is simply to allow that these are the elements in virtue of
which a fully informed reader will derive greater pleasure. But here
it would be good if the hedonist had an argument. Otherwise, the
anti-hedonist will rightly wonder how it is that a correct and
complete experience of *Middlemarch* will be an experience of
every value-conferring feature of *Middlemarch* yet not an
experience of the value conferred by those features. She will rightly
wonder whether the hedonist fails to honor her own commitment to
externalism about aesthetic value; she will rightly wonder, in other
words, whether the hedonist fails to distinguish between a valuable
experience and an experience of value, just as the internalist about
aesthetic value fails to distinguish between a coherent and complete
experience and an experience of coherence and completeness.
Earlier we attributed the appeal of hedonism to the apparent ease with
which it explains our seeking out objects of aesthetic value.
Anti-hedonists take that ease to be apparent merely. Some
anti-hedonists, for instance, argue that at least some aesthetically
valuable objects offer up pleasure only on condition that we do not
seek it (Lopes 2018, 84-86; Ven der Berg 2020, 5-6; see
also Elster 1983, 77-85). Lopes puts the point this way:
>
> Sometimes an agent has an aesthetic reason to act and yet they could
> not be motivated to act out of a hedonic desire that would be
> satisfied by their so acting. To get any pleasure, they must act out
> of non-hedonic motives. Strolling through the Louvre, they happen upon
> the Chardins, and they look at them. So long as they do not look
> seeking pleasure, they get the pleasure that the paintings afford
> (Lopes 2018, 85-86).
>
Lopes's choice of example is not arbitrary. There are particular
art-critical reasons for thinking that Chardins will frustrate the
hedonically motivated viewer (Fried 1980, 92; cited in Lopes 2018,
85), and Lopes is careful to claim that only "some aesthetic
pleasures are essential by-products of acts motivated by other
considerations" (Lopes 2018, 85). But it's not as if
Lopes's claim is specific to Chardins. Consider again
Wolf's assertation that most readers take greater pleasure from
*The Da Vinci Code* than from *Middlemarch*. If that
assertion is correct, as it plausibly is, perhaps this is because (a)
most readers read for pleasure, and (b) *The Da Vinci Code*
affords pleasure to readers who read for it, whereas (c)
*Middlemarch* withholds pleasure from such readers, affording
pleasure instead on readers who read in pursuit of some non-hedonic
good.
There is an apparent tension, moreover, between the hedonist's
reliance on the epistemic qualification and her claim that pleasure
rationalizes our aesthetic pursuits. Consider the
less-than-fully-informed reader who overvalues *The Da Vinci
Code* and undervalues *Middlemarch*. The epistemic
qualification is designed to allow the hedonist to explain how this
might occur: such a reader takes greater pleasure from *The Da
Vinci Code*, and less (or lesser) pleasure from
*Middlemarch*, than she would were she fully informed. The
epistemic qualification, moreover, allows the hedonist to explain why
the uninformed reader has aesthetic reason not to undervalue
*Middlemarch:* she is missing out on pleasure that would be
hers if only she gave *Middlemarch* a fully informed reading.
But the hedonist struggles to explain why the uninformed reader has
reason not to overvalue the *Da Vinci Code*. If *The Da
Vinci Code* gives the reader greater pleasure when she overvalues
it, not only has she no aesthetic reason to be fully informed, she has
aesthetic reason not to be. It therefore seems that if pleasure
rationalized our hedonic pursuits, we would take ourselves to have
reason to experience aesthetic objects in whatever way maximizes our
pleasure. To the degree that we instead take ourselves to have reason
to experience aesthetic objects completely and correctly--to the
degree that we instead take ourselves to have reason to experience
aesthetic objects as having the aesthetic values they in fact
have--suggests that pleasure is not the aesthetic good
we're after (Shelley 2011).
But if pleasure is not the aesthetic good we're after, what is?
Part of hedonism's perceived inevitability over the past century
or so has owed to our inability even to imagine alternatives to it. If
opposition to hedonism has been slow to materialize, alternatives have
been slower still. To date, the only fully realized alternative to
hedonism is Lopes's network theory of aesthetic normativity,
articulated and defended in his ground-breaking *Being for Beauty:
Aesthetic Agency and Value* (2018).
Earlier we noted how Lopes challenges the hedonist on her own terms,
objecting that she cannot adequately explain why we seek out objects
of aesthetic value, given that aesthetic pleasure is at least
sometimes an essential by-product of our seeking after something else
(2018, 84-86). Lopes's deeper challenge, however, targets
the hedonist's very terms. Aesthetic considerations rationalize
a very great variety of aesthetic acts, according to Lopes:
appreciating objects of aesthetic value is one such act, but so too is
hanging a poster one way rather than another, selecting this book
rather than that one for a book club, building out a garden this way
rather than that, conserving one video game rather than another,
pairing this dish with this wine rather than that one, and so on
*ad infinitum* (2018, 32-36). If a theory of aesthetic
value is to accommodate such a vast range of aesthetic acts, without
singling out any one as more central than the others, it will have to
conceive of aesthetic normativity as a species of some very general
kind of normativity. Lopes, accordingly, conceives of aesthetic
normativity as a species of the most generic form of practical
normativity; that aesthetic acts ought to be performed well follows
from the premise that all acts ought to be performed well for the
simple reason that they are acts (2018, 135-137). As Lopes puts
it: "Aesthetic values inherit their practical normativity from a
basic condition of all agency--agents must use what they have to
perform successfully" (2018, 135). Just which competencies an
aesthetic agent may call upon to perform successfully on any given
occasion depends on the particular role they happen to be playing in
the particular social practice in which they happen to be performing
(2018, 135). It is from the fact that all aesthetic activity
necessarily takes place within the domain of some particular social
practice that the network theory of aesthetic value takes its name
(2018, 119).
In holding aesthetic agents to be performing the greatest variety of
aesthetic acts on the greatest variety of items in coordination with
one another, the network theory departs radically from hedonism. But,
as Lopes himself observes, the network theory follows after hedonism
in one fundamental way: inasmuch as both theories "answer the
normative question but offer nothing in answer to the aesthetic
question," both "are consistent with any stand-alone
answer to the aesthetic question" (2018, 48). The claim that the
normative and aesthetic questions admit of stand-alone answers implies
that *aesthetic value* is a species of the genus *value*
in a standard species-genus relation, such that what makes aesthetic
value value has no bearing on what makes it aesthetic and vice-versa.
It therefore also implies that *aesthetic value* is not a
determinate of the determinable *value*, such that what makes
aesthetic value aesthetic is very thing that makes it value.
Do answers to the normative and aesthetic questions stand alone or
stand together? If we have not yet registered the urgency of this
question, perhaps that is because no one has yet fully articulated,
let alone defended, a theory of aesthetic value according to which
aesthetic value is a determinate form of value. Such a theory appears
to be implicit, however, in Shelley 2011, Watkins and Shelley 2012,
Gorodeisky and Marcus 2018, Gorodeisky 2021a, and Shelley 2022. The
position common to these authors has been dubbed the *Auburn
view* (Van der Berg 2020, 11). It answers the aesthetic question,
and therein the value question, by holding an item's having
aesthetic value to rationalize its appreciation in a distinctively
self-reflexive way, such that part of what you perceive when you
appreciate an aesthetically valuable item is that it ought to be
appreciated as you appreciating it (Shelley 2011, 220-222;
Watkins and Shelley 2012, 348-350; Gorodeisky and Marcus 2018,
117-119; Gorodeisky 2021a, 200, 207; Shelley 2022, 12). The
network theorist may object that the Auburn view privileges acts of
appreciation as surely as hedonism does, but such an objection, from
the Auburn perspective, begs the question. It is in assuming that the
normative and aesthetic questions admit of stand-alone answers that
the network theorist grants herself the freedom of passing on the
aesthetic question, and it is in passing on the aesthetic question
that she grants herself the freedom of treating each of a very great
variety of aesthetic acts as equally central. It is in assuming that
*aesthetic value* is a determinate of the determinable
*value*, meanwhile, that the Auburnite places herself under the
necessity of answering the aesthetic question, and it is in seeking an
answer to the aesthetic question that she places herself under the
necessity of singling out appreciation as aesthetically central. The
network theorist and the Auburnite agree that the aesthetic question
deserves an answer sooner or later (Lopes 2018, 46). They disagree,
crucially, about whether it deserves an answer sooner rather than
later.
The network theory and the Auburn view hardly exhaust the options for
non-hedonic theories of aesthetic normativity: Nguyen 2019, Matherne
2020, Peacocke 2021, Kubala 2021, and Riggle 2022 all represent
promising new directions. Yet every new theory of aesthetic value,
hedonic or not, must follow after the network theory or the Auburn
view in regarding answers to the normative and aesthetic questions as
stand-alone or stand-together. A lot hangs on the decision to follow
one path rather than the other. Perhaps it's time we attend to
it. |
aesthetic-experience | ## 1. Focus of aesthetic experience
Any aesthetic experience has intentionality: it is an experience (as)
*of* some object. Typically, that object will be a work of
art--such as a sculpture, a symphony, a painting, a performance,
or a movie--or some aspect of nature, such as a bird's
plumage, a cliff, or a bright winter morning. An aesthetic experience
of an object with sensible features is commonly thought to be a
perceptual experience of those sensible features. In the case of
poems, novels, and certain pieces of conceptual art, the experience
might be understood as an imagined sensory experience; in the case of
abstract or intelligible objects like theorems, it might be neither
sensory nor imaginative in nature.
It is common to individuate *aesthetic* experience
partly--but typically not only--in terms of the types of
properties on which this experience focuses. In perceiving a
sculpture, for instance, you might experience its shape, its color,
its resemblance to a real person, its placement in a gallery, its
authorship, or its representational style. Most think that aesthetic
experience as such focuses on only some of these properties, and
perhaps even excludes focus on others.
This section analyzes the broad categories of properties of objects on
which aesthetic experience has been said to focus: formal properties
like shape or composition; the powers things have to give us pleasure;
properties of meriting or deserving certain subjective responses;
expressive properties, especially those that express emotions; and
fundamental metaphysical properties like essences or the nature of
humanity. It is consistent to individuate aesthetic experience by its
focus on more than one of these types of properties. The views
presented under each subsection below are not mutually exclusive,
except where explicitly stated.
This discussion largely treats these types of properties without
discriminating between their presence in manufactured artworks vs.
aspects of nature. It will leave aside discussion of the comparative
fundamentality of art and nature (cf. Hegel 1820-29 [1920];
Croce 1938 [2007] p. 277; Adorno 1970 [1997] pp. 61-2; Wollheim
1990 SS42-3; Savile 1982 Ch.8). It will also leave aside
discussions of aesthetic experience that are solely focused on
aesthetic experience of nature (cf. Bullough 1912, Hepburn 1966,
Carlson 1979, 2005, Budd 1996, Rolston 1998) or solely focused on
aesthetic experience of abstracta like theorems or proofs (cf.
Baumgarten 1735 [1954], Hutcheson 1726 [2004], Schellekens 2022).
### 1.1 Form and Function
Long before the 18th-century development of special theories of
aesthetic experience, neo-Platonic medieval philosophers developed a
concept of beauty as rationally intelligible formal structure as it
could be appreciated in experience. In his fourth-century work *De
Musica*, Augustine took beauty in music to be partly a matter of
proportionality of parts, and later argued that visual beauty is
formal harmony combined in the right way with color (Haldane 2013).
Nine centuries later, Thomas Aquinas (*Summa Theologica*)
echoed this hylomorphic conception: the beautiful is material
structured in proper form, the kind "of which apprehension in
itself pleases" ("Pulchrum dicatur id cujus apprehensio
ipsa placet," SS Ia, IIae, q.27, a.1 *ad* 3; as
translated by Mothersill 1988, p. 323). In the Italian Renaissance,
Leon Battista Alberti (1443-1452 [1988]) called beauty
"reasoned harmony of all the parts within a body" (Book 6,
SS2 at p.156).
In the eighteenth century, attention to aesthetic experience per se,
rather than beauty, grew out of a more general inquiry into
perception. Alexander Baumgarten (1735 [1954]) first defined
"aesthetics" much more broadly as we do now--as the
science of cognizing objects by sensory perception (from the Greek
"aisthesis" for sensory perception).
Baumgarten's work on the topic was heavily influenced by that of
Leibniz (1684 [1969]) and Wolff (1719 [2003]). All three took pleasure
more generally to be sensory perception of an object's
perfection; Wolff treated this as the coherence of the aspects of an
object either in themselves or as they work together to accomplish a
purpose.
These early claims that experience of beauty is experience of form
were thoroughly integrated into the general theistic metaphysics and
epistemology of these thinkers. Baumgarten, for instance, claimed that
we take pleasure not only in the perfection of an object, he wrote,
but also in being conscious of our own "perfection of sensible
cognition as such," in how we are suited to sense the world
(1750 [2007] SS14; cf. Meier 1999 and Mendelssohn 1785 [1979]).
The contemporary English philosopher Anthony Ashbury Cooper, the Third
Earl of Shaftesbury (1711 [2007]), took pleasurable admiration of
well-formed objects really to be admiration of the form-imposing
minds, including those of the artist but ultimately that of the
divine. "The beautifying, not the beautified, is the really
beautiful," he wrote (Cahn and Meskin 2007, p. 80).
Immanuel Kant's immensely influential *Critique of
Judgment* (1789 [1987]) peeled aesthetic experience away from
apprehension of the divine, and cleaved the apprehension of form away
from function. He claimed you make a pure judgment of
("free") beauty when you take pleasure just in perceiving
the form of an object without even conceptualizing its function.
Kant clearly contradicts his German predecessors in his claim that
"neither does perfection gain by beauty, nor beauty by
perfection" (SS16 at p. 78). Nonetheless, Kant does make two
kinds of theoretical concessions to this tradition. First, he allows
that his German predecessors like Baumgarten may have confused
perfection for a purpose with a subjective kind of purposiveness
without reference to any specific purpose. This latter
"purposiveness" is difficult to understand, but Kant
suggests that it consists in the harmony of an object's parts,
as presented in experience, that allows you to unite them in your
imagination into a structured unity (SS15, p. 74; see Section
2.3). Secondly, Kant concedes that we sometimes speak of
"beauty," e.g. the beauty of a building, when we highlight
how something is perfect for its function. Kant calls this
"accessory beauty" (or "adherent beauty,"
another translation of "*pulchritude adhaerens*")
(SS16 at p. 76).
Kant is often cited as a "formalist"--someone who
claims that aesthetic experience focuses exclusively on formal
properties of objects--but this is a matter of interpretive
dispute. What is clear is that Kant offered a way into understanding
aesthetic experience's focus on form independently from its
association with the divine or with any function that form might
fulfill.
Most German work on aesthetics in the nineteenth century moved away
from focus on mere form to discuss the special knowledge that
aesthetic experience might afford (see Section 1.5). Interest in form
without function saw resurgence in the final decades of the nineteenth
century.
In *The Birth of Tragedy* (1872 [1992]), Friedrich Nietzsche
argued that the artistic form of a tragedy--its rhythm, its
musical shapes, its overarching structure--could transfigure the
fundamental facts of human suffering that would otherwise overwhelm
and paralyze us. In such transfiguration by form, we come to take
"aesthetic pleasure" (SS24 at pp. 140-1,) in
what would otherwise be horrible (cf. Bullough 1912 [2007]). Formal
structure produces a necessary, salutary illusion in our perception of
terrible and otherwise unmanageable truths.
The influential Austrian music critic Eduard Hanslick argued in 1891
[2007] that only pure form in music could be beautiful, and its lack
of any "subject" was no discredit to it. In a partial
return to Kant, George Santayana (1896) gave form a particularly
important role to play in grounding beauty in all art forms. He said
that you can take self-conscious pleasure in synthesizing various
distinct perceptions of elements of an object to come to perceive it
as a structured whole.
In response to the late 19th- and early
20th-century development of abstract and
non-representational styles in the visual arts, a greater resurgence
in formalism took place (Stolnitz 1960; Carroll 2013). The visual art
critic Clive Bell (1914 [2007]) took aesthetic experience to be a
response to what he called "Significant Form" in a piece
of visual art, i.e. "arrangements and combinations that move us
in a particular way" to "austere and thrilling
raptures" distinct from those feelings we encounter otherwise
(p.264, 268). In contrast, the "representative element" is
always "irrelevant" to such aesthetic experience
(p.27).
A significant twist in the history of formalism came with John
Dewey's landmark 1934 [1980] book *Art as Experience*. In
it, Dewey emphasized primarily that aesthetic experience was an
experience which *itself* had a unified, consummatory form with
meaningful development. Understood in this way, an aesthetic
experience can be an experience of any event or object which offers
such a "single quality that pervades the entire experience in
spite of the variation of its constituent parts" (pp.
305-6 as reprinted in Cahn and Meskin 2007). What it is for some
experience to be "esthetic" is not for it to be an
experience *of* some form, but rather for it to be an
experience that has an internal phenomenological structure that
constitutes its *own* form. You might have this kind of
experience at an exciting baseball game, watching a sunset, or writing
a paper.
Dewey's methodology had an outsized impact on aesthetics in
analytic philosophy. This impact even survived the influence of
Wittgenstein's later work (see 1953 [2009]), which many took to
threaten the possibility of phenomenological inquiry in general.
Dewey's turn towards the primacy of the form *of*
aesthetic experience--rather than the form of an *object*
of aesthetic experience--can be found most notably in the work of
Monroe Beardsley (1958 [1981], 1970 [1982]). Beardsley is known partly
as a hedonist, because he thought that aesthetic experiences were
necessarily pleasurable or "gratifying." But it is not
just any gratification that counts towards an experience's being
aesthetic. Aesthetic experiences tend to gratifying *because*
they are intense, unified, complete experiences focused on single
objects whose features reward curiosity and active attention. It is
true that only a certain kind of object of attention could offer such
a perceptual encounter--but it is the form of the experience so
offered that is explanatorily prior, rather than the form of the
object.
Formalism has now fallen out of favor, and is generally regarded as an
extreme view about aesthetic experience. There are a few common
objections to formalism as the view that aesthetic experience focuses
exclusively on the formal properties of objects.
Some try to undercut a central motivation for formalism: the
motivation to find a "common denominator" in all types of
aesthetic objects, both artefactual and natural (Carroll 2012).
Especially after Wittgenstein (1953 [2009]) challenged the possibility
of providing necessary and sufficient conditions for the application
of certain concepts, many philosophers of aesthetics thought that
trying to define "art" was a lost cause--perhaps a
cause antithetical to the radical "openness" (Weitz 1956)
or "essentially contested" (Gallie 1956) nature of the
concept of art.
Formalism crucially relies on the distinction between form and other
features of artworks, notably the *content* of artworks. But
it's not clear how to draw a clean line between form and
content, especially when it comes to art forms like instrumental music
(Isenberg 1973). According to prolific Victorian critic Walter Pater
(1873 [1986]), in music "the end is not distinct from the means,
the form from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere
in and completely saturate each other," and it is the
"constant effort of art to obliterate" this distinction
(p.86).
A more specific version of this objection targets Bell's (1914
[2007]) version of formalism. His theory relied not only on a
distinction between form and content, but also on an obscure
distinction between significant and insignificant form (Stolnitz 1960,
p.144).
A third powerful line of criticism originated in work on the social
structures of aesthetic appreciation. Arthur Danto (1964) famously
argued, with special reference to Andy Warhol's *Brillo
Boxes* installation, that art can be formally indistinguishable
from things that aren't art, and so whether something
*counts* as art cannot be a matter of its form, but must partly
be a matter of a certain kind of theory we apply. George Dickie (1974,
1984) extended this idea to cover the claim that aesthetic
appreciation per se is only available in the context of certain social
institutions with their own patterns of value (see Guyer 2014c, p.
479, for further criticism). Kendall Walton (1970) likewise argued
that the pleasure we take in an artwork's formal features
depends crucially on the category in which we perceive it.
While a purely formalist approach to aesthetic experience might
effectively mark what is distinctive about aesthetic experience, it
does not readily explain what is valuable about aesthetic experience.
Especially when form is taken independently of function or
apprehension of the divine, it's not clear why it would even be
pleasant, let alone important, to have experiences that focus only on
form. Dewey's (1934 [1980]) turn doesn't help here: is it
all that valuable to have experiences with internal growth and a
feeling of consummation? Is this value great enough to justify all the
time and money we spend pursuing aesthetic experience?
Although formalism has fallen from grace, even its critics accept the
importance of appreciating form among other features in aesthetic
experience (Carroll 2006, p. 78).
### 1.2 Power to Please
Influential medieval philosophers like Augustine (*De Musica*)
and Aquinas (*Summa Theologica*) conceived of beauty as a real
and objective property inhering in objects themselves--the kind
of property whose nature does not depend on our capacity to experience
it. In the eighteenth century, philosophers started to challenge this
conception of beauty. Many posited a deeper metaphysical dependence
between our capacity to have certain feelings and the properties on
which those very experiences are focused: they took these properties
just to be powers to produce certain pleasurable responses in us (cf.
Shelley 2010 on "empiricism" and de Clercq 2013 on
"experiential accounts").
As James Shelley ("18th Century British
Aesthetics") has pointed out, these views treat beauty as a
Lockean (1689) secondary quality ("nothing in the objects
themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their
primary qualities," Book I, Ch.VIII, SS10). Accordingly, the
British empiricists tended to endorse such views of beauty and
sublimity. Addison (1712 [1879]) drew the connection with "Mr.
Lock" directly (letter no.413). Hutcheson (1726 [2004]) said
beauty was a capacity to "excite" a certain type of
pleasure. Edmund Burke (1756 [2007]) called beauty "some quality
in bodies, acting mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention
of the senses" (in Cahn and Meskin 2007, p. 119). In his
*Treatise* (1739-40 [1987]), David Hume called beauty as
"nothing but a form, which produces pleasure"
(II.1.8.2).
The empiricists and those they influenced gave similar treatments of
the sublime, another kind of feature typically introduced as a focus
of aesthetic experience (contrast Kant 1789 [1987]; see following
section). Here the emphasis is less on a power to produce a certain
frisson of feeling, and more on the power to inspire a certain kind of
mental activity, especially of the imagination. Joseph Addison (1712
[1879]) treated "Greatness" as a "rude kind of
Magnificence" that offers our faculty of imagination the
pleasure of grasping at something it cannot capture in full (letter
no.412). Burke (1756 [2007]), often cited as the originator of the
idea of the sublime in Anglophone philosophy, considered the sublime
to be that which would otherwise be painful and terrifying to behold,
but which is so distanced as to modify these feelings "as not to
be actually noxious ... [but] capable of producing delight"
(SSVII). Influenced by reading Burke, Mendelssohn (1758 [1997])
defined the sublime as something that "captures our attention
... [and] arouses a sweet shudder that rushes through every fiber
of our being... giving wings to the imagination to press further
and further without stopping" (pp. 196-7).
Since these philosophers took aesthetic experience to focus on beauty
and sublimity, and took these features to be powers to produce certain
kinds of pleasurable mental responses, they thereby took aesthetic
experience to be experience of such powers to please. There need be
nothing particularly troubling about the idea that you can experience
an object's power to please in perception; this power can be
experienced precisely by being so pleased in such perception.
The view of beauty or sublimity as powers sometimes led the
empiricists to deny that beauty or sublimity was really a feature of
objects themselves (Hutcheson 1726 [2004], Hume 1739-40 [1987]).
This was a substantive confusion, and was effectively called out as
such by Thomas Reid. Reid (1785 [1969]) charged Hutcheson with
"an abuse of words" (p.782): it cannot be right to say
that beauty "property denotes the Perception of some
Mind," since we talk of *objects* as having the property
of beauty (Hutcheson 1726 [2004], p. 27). Contemporary commentators
agree that there isn't anything suspect about an object's
genuinely having a property that is a power to produce certain mental
responses (Moran 2012; Sibley 1968). This worry has fallen away from
contemporary views that take beauty, sublimity, or aesthetic value to
be a matter of having a power to please--and aesthetic experience
to be experience of that power (e.g. Matthen 2017a, 2017b, 2018).
There are two serious issues for those views which take aesthetic
experience to be solely focused in on its object's powers to
produce certain responses in us.
Here's the first issue. If the beauty, sublimity, or other
aesthetic value of an object *O* is just a power to produce
certain responses in us, and aesthetic experience is just a certain
appreciation of such a power--even one that involves actually
having such a response--then anything that has the power to
produce such a response in us should have the same beauty, sublimity,
or other aesthetic value as *O*. But we do not typically take
beauty, sublimity, or aesthetic value to be so cleanly separable from
its bearer. Many think that an aesthetic experience of
*O*'s properties is one that captures something utterly
individual in *O*, undetachable from the object it is (cf.
Sections 1.4.4 and 2.6). But any characterization of the kind of
mental response which *O* has a power to produce, and which
constitutes *O*'s beauty, sublimity, or aesthetic value,
will simply offer an (in principle) way to get the same aesthetic
experience elsewhere--e.g. by appreciating a perfect forgery, or
a hallucinated object. This might seem unacceptable.
There are a couple of possible responses to this issue. Some (Budd
1985; Davies 1994; Levinson 1996) simply deny that you really could
have the relevant type of experience in the absence of the relevant
special object (cf. Shelley 2010). Another response is simply to
accept that the relevant aesthetic experience and aesthetic value can
be had elsewhere, and to explain away intuitions that this should not
be possible (Peacocke 2021).
The second problem is harder to dismiss, and it calls for a more
fundamental reorientation towards the focus of aesthetic experience.
It takes very little for an object to have a mere *power* to
please, even a power to please via perception of its features. If all
it took for an object to be beautiful or sublime was for it to have
some such power, we should take individual experiences of such
powers--individual instances of being so pleased--to be
demonstrative of such aesthetic value in objects. But we typically do
not take reports of such experience to be so demonstrative. Instead,
the pleasure an individual takes in an object is usually taken to be
contestably relevant to its aesthetic value. Whether that pleasure
attests to an object's power to please is beyond dispute, but
whether it attests to an object's beauty, sublimity, or
aesthetic value is often disputed.
This fact troubled Hume in his later writing on aesthetics. In his
seminal essay "Of the standard of taste," Hume (1757
[1987a]) subtly amended his *Treatise*'s (1739-40
[1987]) view of beauty (cf. Nehamas 1981, Cavell 1965 [2007]). What is
"fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings" of
pleasurable liking, and thus is in a sense genuinely beautiful, is
that which draws univocal and lasting approval from "true
judges"--ideally sensitive, practiced, and unprejudiced
critics of the arts. This view of beauty still entangles it
constitutively with experience, but with a crucially idealized
restriction (cf. De Clercq 2013 on "response dependent
properties" at p. 305). This restriction anticipates, but does
not itself yet reach, a more fundamental shift in approach to the
focus of aesthetic value brought about by Kant: an approach that takes
aesthetic experience to involve an attribution of a *merited*
response.
### 1.3 Merit
At the end of the eighteenth century, philosophers turned away from
views that took aesthetic experience to focus only on objects'
powers to produce pleasure. This seems to have taken place largely due
to the influence of Kant's 1789 [1987] *Critique of
Judgment*. There he distinguished the merely
agreeable--things which we simply like, e.g. because they satisfy
our appetites--from the beautiful. In doing so, he took it that
an aesthetic experience of an object's free or pure beauty
involves pleasure felt to be *merited* by the object so
perceived (SS9). To have that response is to feel as though the
object deserves that very response you give it.
This is meant to make better sense of the way we discuss aesthetic
experiences and what we take to be authoritative on the matter of
beauty. To take pleasure in an *aesthetic* way in an object,
Kant thought, is just to engage your mental faculties of imagination
and understanding in a pleasant free play with the form of the object
you perceive, unconstrained by thought of any real purpose that the
object might serve or any appetite it might satisfy (see Sections 2.3
and 2.5). But any perceiver has these mental faculties, and must see
the same form in the object, and so (claimed Kant) aesthetic
experience involves a further thought that *everyone* ought to
take such pleasure in this object.
On this view of aesthetic experience, what you take to be merited is
not (just) a *judgment* about the aesthetic quality of an
object presented in perception. Kant is emphatic that what seems
merited to you, in having an aesthetic experience, is a
*feeling*, a form of pleasure. This is so in the case of beauty
but also in the case of the sublime (contrast the empiricists from the
previous section). The "mathematically sublime" is that
which cannot be captured in full in our imagination, but about which
we can nonetheless reason, like infinitude itself. The
"dynamically sublime" is that which looks to have total
power over us--like a massive storm or other monstrous aspects of
nature--but which we can nonetheless resist with the power of our
own practical reason. In each, we feel pleased that our minds can
overcome limitations.
This is not a return to those thinkers (Augustine *De Musica*,
Aquinas *Summa Theologica*) who thought that aesthetic
experience was a direct apprehension of some inherent property of an
object, like its being well-formed for its function, or symmetrical in
a way that reflects the divine. According to Kant, beauty isn't
strictly speaking a property of objects (even though we speak as
though it is), and we aren't even tempted to attribute sublimity
itself to objects. The focus here is pleasure in the powers of
universal mental capacities themselves. Part of Kant's
innovation in aesthetics consists in the suggestion that objects might
*deserve* certain subjective responses.
This idea is not easy to understand, and many have done significant
interpretive and substantive philosophical work attempting to explain
how an object could deserve a subjective feeling (see e.g. Mothersill
1988; Eaton 2001; Hamawaki 2006; Moran 2012; Cavell 1965 [2007];
Ginsborg 2015; Gorodeisky 2019, 2021). One approach here is to
interpret the pleasure in question as not just a phenomenal tone (see
Labukt 2012, Bramble 2013) but rather as a kind of liking or
pro-attitude which, like other attitudes, could be suited or
'fitted' to its intentional object (Gorodeisky 2019, 2021;
Kriegel forthcoming; compare Hume 1757 [1987a]).
Despite this difficulty, the idea that aesthetic experience involves a
focus on how an object merits a certain response has pervaded recent
discussion. There's an important distinction to be made here
between what it is to take aesthetic experience to involve (what feels
like) merited pleasure or admiration per se (Scruton 1974, Sibley
1974, Walton 1993), and what it is to feel pleasure in or simply to
like some object when you have an otherwise merited kind of
*experience* of it (Beardsley 1970; Matthen 2017a, 2017b,
2018). The challenge of making sense of what it is to merit a certain
subjective feeling of pleasure does not face this latter claim in the
same way, as we can make sense of how an artwork merits a general
experience in terms of that experience's accuracy, its
contextualization, or even how it matches the intentions of the artist
who created an object (Wimsatt and Beardsley 1949; Wollheim 1990).
One line of research pulls the idea of a merited response apart from
Kant's claim that the beautiful and the sublime universally
merit the same feelings across people. In his magnum opus *In
Search of Lost Time* (originally published 1913-1927),
Marcel Proust (1913-1927 [2003]) suggested that an individual
like his narrator Marcel might feel an individualized, personal demand
for a feeling or an emotion from a certain scene or piece of artwork.
Partly in response to Proust, and in resistance to Kant, Richard Moran
(2012) and Nick Riggle (2016) have given substantive characterizations
of the personal demands that artworks and natural scenes can make upon
us (cf. Nussbaum 1990, Ch.13; Landy 2004, Chs. 1 and 3; Nehamas
2007).
There is a challenge facing any theory that takes aesthetic experience
to focus exclusively on objects' meriting certain pleasurable
subjective responses. It is possible to see that Michelangelo's
statue of David merits admiration, or that the view over Waimea Canyon
merits awe, without yourself feeling admiration or wonder in that
moment (cf. Moran 2012 on Proust 1913-1927 [2003]). Assuming
that other substantive restrictions can be met here (e.g. the demand
for disinterested attention; see Section 2.5), would this count as an
aesthetic experience? If so, it's not clear entirely what would
be valuable about it, even if it does involve a positive evaluation of
its object. Some might say that you have gotten something right: you
are correct in thinking that the statue merits admiration and the view
merits awe. It's not clear that this correctness would be enough
to make sense of the great value of aesthetic experience.
It seems best to say here that this would not count as an aesthetic
experience *because* it does not bear the value of actually
involving a subjective response that is itself of value. But this
could lead to trouble with dissociation in the other direction, which
is also clearly possible: you could have a pleasurable experience
*as of* some object's meriting that very kind of
pleasurable experience, while also being incorrect that it merits
that. If the value of aesthetic experience rests exclusively or
primarily on the value of the pleasure itself, then it seems that this
inappropriate experience should share almost all the value that a
merited aesthetic experience would have. That, to some, is
inconceivable (Budd 1985; see Shelley 2010, Peacocke 2021 for further
discussion).
The view that aesthetic experience focuses primarily on object's
*meriting* certain positive responses can also clash with other
intuitions about the nature of aesthetic experience. Some think that
an experience should be counted as aesthetic even if it involves a
negative evaluation of its object: "an abominable performance of
the *London Symphony* is as aesthetic as a superb one ...
The symptoms of the aesthetic are not marks of merit," wrote
Nelson Goodman (1968 [1976], p. 255).
### 1.4 (Emotional) expression
A third view takes aesthetic experience to be focused on expressive
properties of objects. An expressive property of an object is a
property by which it expresses something--usually an emotion or
other affect, but more rarely an attitude, a movement, a personality,
or a way of experiencing the world as a whole.
Consider how this kind of view differs from those discussed in the
last three subsections. Although certain forms can be expressive,
expressive properties in general are not just the same as formal
properties: something might have a deeply expressive coloration with
very simple, unexpressive form, like Rothko's famous color field
paintings. It is a matter of substantive dispute (to be described
below) whether expressive properties are the same as *powers*
to make perceivers feel certain ways, or properties that
*merit* certain mental responses in perceivers.
Regardless of the answers to these questions, two positions need to be
distinguished. One is the position that having an aesthetic experience
essentially or necessarily involves some emotion. The other is the
position that aesthetic experience is essentially, primarily, or
paradigmatically experience *of* expressive properties of its
object. These claims do not necessarily come together. This section
discusses the latter claim (see Section 2.4 for discussion of the
former).
There are roughly four kinds of views of expression endorsed by those
who take the primary focus of aesthetic experience to be expressive
properties of an artwork (or, more rarely, of nature; see Croce 1902
[1992], 1938 [2007]; Wollheim 1968 [1980]). These differ according to
their conceptions of how expression takes place, and what it means for
the experience both of the creator and of the appreciator of an
artwork. These are transfer views, projection views, correspondence
views, and transformation views (for alternative taxonomies, see
Matravers 2013 and Levinson 2006).
Debates about the nature of expression and its importance to aesthetic
experience are still lively (Matravers 1998, Robinson 2005, 2011, Gaut
2007, Kivy 1989, 2002, Boghossian 2002, 2010, 2020, Nussbaum 2007,
Montero 2006a-b, Cochrane 2010, Wiltsher 2016; for overviews see Kania
2013 and Matravers 2007, 2013).
#### 1.4.1 Transfer
The first kind of view is the simplest, but it offers the least
explanation of expression. A simple transfer view of expression takes
it that some inner state or event of the creator is simply shared via
experience of the artwork to the observer--i.e. the spectator,
percipient, or reader. What is expressed on this kind of view is
usually an emotion or feeling, but it is sometimes a whole perceptual
experience or an entire way of seeing the world.
In the 1802 [1984] preface to his *Lyrical Ballads*, the poet
William Wordsworth identified poetry (which, on his view, could
include prose) as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
... emotions recollected in tranquillity" after having been
felt in all their heat previously by the poet (p.611; cf. Dewey 1934
[2007], p. 312). The reader of a poem shares this feeling, learns
about this feeling, and thereby feels a pleasant communal feeling with
the author. Perhaps the greatest champion of this view was the Russian
novelist Leo Tolstoy, who in 1897 [2007] defined art as that
"human activity" by which "one man consciously, by
means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has
lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings
and also experience them" (in Cahn and Meskin 2007 at p. 237).
Someone who undergoes an aesthetic experience of art, then, will feel
a "joy and spiritual union" not only with its creator, but
also with those others who experience it (p.239).
The transfer theory of emotional expression often associates this
transfer with an intermediate clarificatory step, and offers as part
of a theory of the value of aesthetic experience that it offers not
just emotional experience but a certain organized knowledge of what
emotions feel like from the inside. In his lectures on aesthetics in
1819-33 [1984], Friedrich Schleiermacher argued that artists
conceive of works that both communicate their own emotions to the
audience and clarify them in so doing (p.11). The painter and curator
Roger Fry moved away from his friend Clive Bell's formalism as
he endorsed it in his early work ("Art and Life," 1917
[1981]) to claim that art rouses emotion in us in a specifically clear
way, cut off as they are from motivating us to specific action in our
own lives ("Essay in Aesthetics" 1909 [1981],
"Retrospect" 1920 [1981]).
The transfer theory of expression of emotions is not particularly
popular, largely because it seems that an artist need not feel those
emotions she expresses in a work, and that the audience need not
themselves feel those emotions expressed in a work (cf. Langer 1953;
Stolnitz 1960; Matravers 2013). Moreover, different spectators tend to
feel quite different emotions in response to an artwork, so it's
not clear that art should be understood fundamentally in terms of
transferring just those emotions the creator had (Stolnitz 1960 p.
186; Wimsatt and Beardsley 1949). Others take the focus on the emotion
that an artist felt to distract from the artwork itself (Stolnitz
1960, p. 164).
Another kind of transfer theory focuses on transfer not of emotion but
of sensory experience from creator to consumer. The critic John Ruskin
(1843-60 [2004]) claimed that the true artist (e.g. the painter
J.M.W. Turner) could communicate precisely what it is like to have a
certain perceptual experience the artist had, by "producing on
the far-away beholder's mind precisely the impression which the
reality would have produced" (pp. 86-8). The French
novelist Marcel Proust--who was a deep admirer of
Ruskin--added that not only could aesthetic experience involve
the appreciation of one episode of subjective experience, but it could
also involve the appreciation of the artist's total and unique
way of experiencing the world, as a kind of subjective personality
(for discussion, see Landy 2004; compare Veron 1879, Stolnitz
1960 p.161ff.). One's act of writing, then, can be understood as
a "secretion of one's innermost life ... that one
gives to the world" (1895-1900 [1984], p. 79). The
denouement of his great novel *In Search of Lost Time* involves
the recognition on the narrator's part that
>
> art, if it means awareness of our own life, means also awareness of
> the lives of other people ... it is the revelation, which by
> direct and conscious methods would be impossible, of the qualitative
> difference, the uniqueness of the fashion in which the world appears
> to each one of us, a difference which, if there were no art, would
> remain for ever the secret of every individual (*Time Regained*
> in 1913-1927 [2003], p. 299).
>
Arthur Danto (1981) echoes this idea in his claim that
"externalization of the artist's consciousness, as if we
could see his way of seeing and not merely what he saw," is an
essential part of expressiveness in art (p.164). This, too, is a way
of making available to an appreciator a subjective state--but a
more general subjective stance on the world, a way of experiencing it
as a whole, rather than just an individual emotion.
#### 1.4.2 Projection
Projection views derive largely from mid-19th century to
early 20th century psychological thought about
"empathy," which was originally called
"Einfuhlung" in the German (Lipps 1903-6,
translated to "empathy" by Titchener 1909 [1926]). Empathy
theorists took it that aesthetic experience involves mentally (or
perhaps even mystically; Vischer 1873 [1994], p. 104) projecting
ourselves into the physical shape of an item to have an emotional or
dynamic experience of the kind that a human subject would have if she
took on that physical shape. In the 1850s, Hermann Lotze (*1885
[1899]*) claimed that a shape can "transport" us
inside of it "and make us share its life" (quoted by Lee
& Anstruther-Thomson 1912, pp. 17-18). As Robert Vischer (1873
[1994]) wrote, "I can think my way into [an object], mediate its
size with my own, stretch and expand, bend and confine myself to
it" (pp. 104-5). The Swiss art historian Heinrich
Wolfflin (1886) agreed that "we submit all objects to
soulification" in this projective way, and suggested that such
projection involved actual workings of the "motor nerve
system."
This view takes it that aesthetic perceivers attribute feeling to
*objects*, but partly by relating them closely to oneself. The
philosopher Theodor Lipps (1935) insisted that the "inner
imitation" involved in empathy involved feeling that the emotion
in question is felt as belonging to the object perceived--but
since you feel "entirely and wholly identical" with the
object in this context, you feel that emotion as belonging to yourself
too. The English novelist Vernon Lee (real name Violet Paget) co-wrote
a work with her lover and fellow author Clementina Anstruther-Thomson
(1912) in which they claimed that we attribute "to lines and
surfaces, to the spatial forms, those dynamic experiences which we
should have were we to put our bodies into similar conditions"
(pp. 20-1).
Later on, the psychologist Herbert Sidney Langfeld offered an analysis
of *The Aesthetic Attitude* (1920) in terms of empathy, and
made several innovations to the theory as it stood: he noted that the
capacity for empathy varies across people (p.133), and that sometimes
we project motion onto a shape not by feeling as a human in that shape
would feel, but rather by feeling how one who produced that gestural
trace would feel (p.122).
These theorists disagreed on some points, for example: whether such
projection was voluntary (Vischer, Langfeld) or involuntary
(Wolfflin, Lipps 1935); whether the emphasis of one's
experience is on feeling *oneself* as identical to the object
(Lipps 1935 p. 298, Puffer 1905 pp. 12-13) or on the
*object* as it might feel were it human (Vischer p. 92,
Wolfflin p. 4, Lee & Anstruther-Thomson p. 17); whether the
emotions in question literally involved any physical bodily activation
of the perceiver's nervous system (Wolfflin, Puffer 1905,
Langfeld) or not (Lipps 1935); and whether such projection needed to
be based on actual remembered emotion or motion of the body (Lee &
Anstruther-Thomson, Langfeld) or not (Vischer, Wolfflin, Lipps
1935, Puffer 1905). But these disagreements pale in the face of the
broad consistency of these theories.
First: none placed any particular emphasis on the mental, bodily, or
emotional states of the creator of an object--just on the
features of an object that made it amenable to the projective
identification involved in empathy. Beautiful things, they tended to
agree, were those things most amenable to this identification that
would then offer pleasure (in this way, some of these theories also
have ancestors in those who took beauty to be a power to please; see
Section 1.2). The pleasure to be had in these contexts is thought by
these theorists to be universally accessible (Vischer), as a joy taken
in the "liveliness" (Lipps 1903-6 p. 102) of
objects, the lessening of loneliness (Vischer), or in particular in
the naturally harmonious (Puffer 1905) or intrinsically salutary (Lee
& Anstruther-Thomson) condition into which such empathic
identification puts an observer's body. In the psychological
context in which they wrote, they were not all exclusively concerned
with aesthetic experience per se, although they applied it to
architecture and the visual arts (Lipps 1903-6, 1935, Puffer
1905, Lee & Anstruther-Thomson, Langfeld).
Remarkably, these theorists are generally content to make claims about
identification and attribution of emotion that sound paradoxical to
the 21st-century ear (Goodman 1968 [1976], p. 243; Wollheim
1968 [1980]). Partly due to the oddity in literally attributing
emotions to objects or identifying with them, newer descendants of
this view focus instead on engagement from the imagination. Levinson
(2006b) has claimed that you imagine a fictional "persona"
in music who is expressing the emotions she really has, and Walton
(1988, 1994) says you imagine *of* your own actual experience
of a work of art that it's an experiencing of real emotions (see
Matravers 2013, p. 410, for objections).
#### 1.4.3 Correspondence
There is a difference between (i) experiencing certain feelings
suggested by a shape's affinity with a bodily position and (ii)
experiencing that very affinity itself. The former simply exploits a
resemblance in eliciting a feeling experienced as being
'in' the object, whereas the latter kind of experience
takes as its focus that very resemblance relation. Those who endorse
correspondence theories of expression, and take expressive properties
to be the focus of aesthetic experience, understand aesthetic
experience as belonging to the latter kind. These correspondence
theories tend to treat aesthetic experience as fundamentally a matter
of understanding a meaning that certain artworks already have in
virtue of their manifest correspondence with certain aspects of human
subjective experience--which correspondence is *experienced as
such*.
After the resurgence of formalism in the early twentieth century,
several philosophers started to think about form as having
significance not just in itself but in the way it manifestly resembled
or corresponded to emotion (e.g. Fry 1981). The philosopher to develop
this view most significantly was Susanne Langer, whose two influential
books *Philosophy in a New Key* (1942) and *Feeling and
Form* (1953) focused on music, poetry, and dance (for commentary
see Danto 1984). Music itself, she claimed, bears a "close
logical similarity to the forms of human feeling - forms of
growth and attenuation, flowing and stowing, conflict and resolution,
speed, arrest, terrific excitement, calm, or subtle activation and
dreamy lapses" (1953, p. 27). This is a "pattern of
sentience," the form which lived phenomenal subjectivity of
feeling shares with music. Since music itself has this form, it has
"import" or significance as well: it "expresses life
- feeling, growth, movement, emotion and everything that
characterizes vital existence" (1953, p. 82).
According to Langer, this is not just a matter of conventional
symbolization, nor a matter of transmission of the life or feelings of
a creator. What the artist felt in making something, and indeed what
you yourself feel when you see it, is mostly beside the point. To the
extent that there is a phenomenological feeling that pervades
aesthetic experience generally, it should be understood as a
"pervasive feeling of *exhilaration*" (p.395). In
aesthetic experience a feeling is "not
'communicated,' but revealed; the created form
'has' it, so that perception of the virtual
object--say, the famous frieze from the Parthenon--is at
once the perception of its amazingly integrated and intense
feeling" (1953, p. 394). Far from erasing the comparison,
aesthetic experience (or 'intuition') makes plain to us,
in an intellectually satisfying way, how space can mirror sentiment:
"What it does to us is to formulate our conceptions of feeling
and our conceptions of visual, factual, and audible reality together.
It gives us *forms of imagination* and *forms of
feeling*, inseparably" (p.397).
Richard Wollheim is well known for formulating this subtle aspect of
'expressive perception' in several books and essays
(notably 1968 [1980], 1990, 1994). He treated art objects as
meaningful pieces of the physical world to be understood by spectators
as physical objects which artists themselves intended to be perceived
in a certain way. These are, and indeed are intended to be, expressive
of the actual internal life of the artist. But an internal mental
condition can only be expressed by an art object via that
object's correspondence to the relevant condition, i.e. that
property of "seem[ing] to us to match, or correspond with, what
we experience inwardly" (p.21) in that condition. In an
aesthetic experience of such an art object, the object is seen (or
heard, or felt) *as* corresponding in this way to a certain
feeling, in a way that involves a spectator's feeling the
relevant feeling herself (cf. Wollheim 1994; see Budd 2008, Noordhof
2008, Galgut 2010). This is not a matter of "reading off"
the feeling from the artwork as you might decode an unfamiliar diagram
(1980 SS29, p. 39ff), but rather participating in a certain
practice of meaning-making and meaning-interpretation which he labels
a "form of life" (after Wittgenstein 1953 [2009]), and
which allows us to literally experience emotion and inner life
*in* artworks.
Other views exploit correspondence, and our experience of
correspondence as such, in different ways. Roger Scruton (1974)
notably analyzed aesthetic experience in terms of *seeing as*
(cf. Wittgenstein 1953 [2009], 1958 [1965]), and stressed in a way
similar to Wollheim that both a perceptual aspect and an aspect of
'thought' that can attribute emotion to what is seen are
inseparable aspects of one and the same experience (p.117ff.). At
base, such 'seeing as' is only available when we notice a
certain resemblance which we exploit via an act of the imagination to
hear something like a falling melody *as* sad (Chs.8-9).
In contrast with Wollheim, though, Scruton claimed the relevant
resemblance was between the *experience* of an artwork and the
experience of the emotion, not the artwork itself and the experience
of the emotion (p.127; for amendments to his view, see his 1999, pp.
140-170).
By definition, all correspondence views of expression will claim that
an experience of an expressive property (aesthetic or not) involves
experiencing the correspondence relation *itself*. In this
regard correspondence views are distinct from nearby theories.
Christopher Peacocke's (2009) view of expression, for instance,
is a view on which you can hear music *metaphorically* as sad
by exploiting, but not by consciously representing or experiencing, an
isomorphism between music and sadness. This isomorphism might make a
difference to subpersonal representational processes, and thereby come
to causally affect the phenomenology of the experience of sadness in
the music, but the relation itself is not experienced, on this
view.
Despite their differences, the correspondence views of Langer,
Wollheim, and Scruton all agree on one crucial point: the relevant
experience of correspondence is not one that can be decomposed into
strictly separable aspects, one of what is 'strictly'
perceived and another added element of what is expressed via what is
seen. According to all, an experience can be one of correspondence,
but in a particularly integrated and indecomposable way.
Correspondence views of expression--which, by definition, take it
that you understand an expression partly by experiencing or noticing
the correspondence relation *itself*--are still popular
(Budd 1995, Kivy 1989, Davies 1994), and still vigorously debated
(Peacocke 2009, Matravers 2013, Davies 2006, Levinson 2006b).
#### 1.4.4 Transformation
Transfer, projection, and correspondence views of expression all share
(at least) one key commitment--the commitment to the idea that
the kinds of emotions or mental states expressed in art are one and
the same as the kinds of emotions or mental states experienced in
ordinary life. But those philosophers most closely associated with the
view that aesthetic experience is focused on expressive properties did
not make this commitment. Instead, they took expression to transform
the nature of a feeling, and took the art-making process to be
inextricably bound up with the nature of this transformation
(Bosanquet 1892 [1904]; Ducasse 1929, p. 111; Dewey 1934 [1980];
Cassirer 1944, pp. 142-5).
The British philosopher Bernard Bosanquet propounded an early version
of this view in his 1892 [1904] *History of Aesthetic*. He
claimed that expression of content through form--and especially
of emotion--is the ultimate aim of any artwork. That content or
emotion is fundamentally bound up with its "embodiment" in
the artwork, "attached, annexed, to the quality of some object
- to all its detail" (p.4). The process of expression
"creates the feeling in creating its embodiment, and the feeling
so created not merely cannot be otherwise expressed, but cannot
otherwise exist, than in and through the embodiment which imagination
has found for it" (p.34). While John Dewey (1934 [1980]) thought
that aesthetic experience could be enjoyed in various ordinary life
circumstances, he considered art intrinsically expressive as the
"very operation of creating, by means of new objects, new modes
of experience ... It enables us to share vividly and deeply in
meanings to which we had been dumb" (p.248).
The philosopher who most systematically developed the view of
expression as transformation was R.G. Collingwood, whose
*Principles of Art* (1938 [1958]) drew deeply from Benedetto
Croce's work (1902 [1992], 1938 [2007]). Croce considered
expression fundamental to aesthetic experience, and considered
aesthetic experience to be one of the most fundamental modes of
cognitive interaction with the world (compare Baumgarten 1735 [1954]).
Expression, for Croce, was not a matter of communication; it was a
matter of organizing fleeting impressions into a clarified, meaningful
whole, and as such it can happen purely in the mind of an individual
(e.g. a single artist). A work of art, then, is not to be considered
any public manifestation, but rather a mental item, a
"theoretical form" to be "convert[ed] into words,
song, and outward shape" (1938, in Cahn and Meskin 2007,
p.272).
Collingwood (1938 [1958]) left aside Croce's unusual metaphysics
and philosophy of mind, but retained and elaborated much of what he
said about the nature of expression. Real art just is a matter of
expression, and expression is an internal process directed at your own
feelings. It involves clarifying those feelings in a way that releases
you from their dominating influence on your thought and action (pp.
109-10). To express a feeling is to attend wholly to a
particular affect-laden fleeting impression, to "stabilize and
perpetuate it as an idea" in a Humean sense (p.218). In
attending in this way, you come to consciousness of your feeling, but
you thereby also transform it: though "There is emotion there
before we express it ... as we express it, we confer upon it a
different kind of emotional colouring; in one way, therefore,
expression creates what it expresses" (p.152). Collingwood gives
the somewhat unusual label "Imagination" to "the new
form which feeling takes when transformed by the activity of
consciousness" (p.218). Insofar as art simply is expression, it
is the production not of some object in the physical world, nor even
"a 'form', understood as a pattern or a system of
relations between the various noises we hear or the various colours we
see," but an episode of "total imaginative
activity," which asserts the mastery of the self over feeling
(p.142).
Importantly for Collingwood, a consumer-side experience of an
artist's expression is not to be understood as the reception of
a transferred feeling, or as the interpretation of a meaningful symbol
or sign. Instead, it is a repetition of what the artist herself has
already done:
>
> If a poet expresses, for example, a certain kind of fear, the only
> hearers who can understand him are those who are capable of
> experiencing that kind of fear themselves. Hence, when some one reads
> and understands a poem, he is not merely understanding the
> poet's expression of his, the poet's, emotions, he is
> expressing emotions of his own in the poet's words, which have
> thus become his own words. As Coleridge puts it, we know a man for a
> poet by the fact that he makes us poets. We know that he is expressing
> his emotions by the fact that he is enabling us to express ours.
> (p.118)
>
This conception puts certain limitations on what aesthetic production
and spectator-side aesthetic experience can do. Expression cannot be
intended at the level of the individual feeling, as it isn't
clear before expression *what* feeling is affecting you
(p.111). What's more, a feeling when expressed is not purged
from the mind, only recognized for what it is, and controlled
(p.110).
Collingwood's view is complicated and often obscure, but
secondary literature has elucidated it somewhat. Hopkins (2017) claims
that the clarification and freedom that expression offers comes from
placing a raw feeling imaginatively into a modal profile, thereby
projecting how it would shift with changes in objective circumstances.
This can affect the feeling itself in the moment, just as
understanding the square projective shape in front of you as the face
of a cube can affect the phenomenology of your visual experience of
that shape.
There is an elusive quality to the expression views of Croce,
Collingwood, and their contemporaries: it is not easy to understand
the kinds of transformation, embodiments, or objectifications of
feelings that they take expression to involve. But the basic idea that
a feeling expressed in an artwork is thereby transformed in a way
inextricable from the work itself has proven enduringly popular
(Stolnitz 1960, p. 169; Sircello 1972, 1975; compare Budd 1985, Davies
1994, Levinson 1996c, and Shelley 2010; see Wollheim 1980, p. 76ff.,
Matravers 2013, and Tormey 1971 [1987] for criticism).
### 1.5 Fundamental Nature
The idea that aesthetic experience offers acquaintance with aspects of
nature has a deep history. Medieval philosophers treated it as a means
of knowing the divine. Several of those eighteenth-century
philosophers who focused on appreciation of form (see Section 1.1)
thought form was itself a reflection of God's creative
power.
The association between the arts and truth has an even longer history,
tracing at least back to Aristotle's claim in the
*Poetics* that (good) drama represents possibilities for human
life. Many philosophers have argued that the arts offer acquaintance
with emotions by expressing emotions (Section 1.4.), and many have
argued that they offer acquaintance with moral truths (Ruskin
1843-60 [2004]; Cousin 1854 [1873]; Nussbaum 1990; McMahon 2018;
see Landy 2012 for criticism). A significant new trend in
philosophical aesthetics also incorporates more cognitive content
generally into the focus of aesthetic experience (see Carroll 2002,
2006, 2015, Goldman 2013, Peacocke 2021). This section will not cover
all such views, but only those that treat aesthetic experience as a
means to acquaintance with or knowledge of fundamental facts about the
structure of the world and our place in it.
This claim is systematically defended in three historical contexts:
Romanticism, post-Kantian German Idealism, and the
20th-century intersection of existentialism and
phenomenology.
#### 1.5.1 Romanticism
The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his critical and
philosophical essays published together as *Biographia
Literaria* (1817 [1907]), treated imagination as essential to
artistic creation and aesthetic experience--but fundamentally as
a source of knowledge rather than an empiricist faculty of association
or a way of entertaining fantasies. In a proto-Idealist vein, he
claimed that such knowledge was knowledge of the spirit that grounds
reality itself, and to which we ourselves belong as individual loci of
spirit (cf. Guyer 2014b, p. 65). In Germany, the poet-philosopher
Johann Christian Friedrich Holderlin (1795 [1963]) wrote that
aesthetic experience could lead the mind to construct a unity out of a
messy space of intuition, which unity mirrored the unity of spirit
inherent in the metaphysical fabric of the world itself.
A retrospective reverence for the ancient Greek arts was a touchstone
of the Romantics, who thought its pursuit of beauty precisely allowed
it to attain "objectivity." The English poet John Keats
concluded his famous *Ode on a Grecian Urn* (1820) with these
lines (46-50):
>
> When old age shall this generation waste,
>
>
> Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
>
>
> Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
>
>
> "Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all
>
>
> Ye know on earth, and all ye need to
> know."
>
(For criticism of Keats on this point, see Ruskin 1843-60
[2004]). The German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel made this claim
explicitly in his essay "On the Study of Greek Poetry"
(1795). He thought Sophocles composed terrific tragedy effortlessly,
just by letting the harmonious structure of nature flow through him
into his drama.
The Romantics thought that aesthetic experience offered acquaintance
with a concrete individual sometimes called "the
Absolute"--either the infinite itself, or some particular
concrete individual within nature that somehow reflected the whole
unified spirit of the universe. As Schlegel (1798-1800 [1991])
put it, "one might believe [Romantic poetry] exists only to
characterize poetical individuals of all sorts; and yet there is still
no form so fit for expressing the entire spirit of an author ...
It alone can become, like the epic, a mirror of the whole
circumambient world, an image of the age" (SS116, pp.
31-2). This acquaintance with a concrete individual was
contrasted with conceptualized or descriptive understanding.
Although these various Romantic poets and philosophers thought
aesthetic experience was the best way to achieve acquaintance with the
true fundamental nature of the universe, they also took on a certain
pessimism or "irony" about the extent to which this could
really be achieved. The thematization of limitations on our knowledge
in the context of aesthetic attempts to know the harmonious unity of
the world is a common feature of Romantic writing.
#### 1.5.2 German Idealism
The systematic theories of German Idealism and the proposals of
Romanticism permeated one another, especially in the work of Friedrich
Schelling. His *System of Transcendental Idealism* (1800
[1978]) claimed that both the beautiful and the sublime gave us
awareness of a fundamental conflict between unconscious (but
nonetheless mental or spiritual) nature and the conscious
"infinity" of human freedom. The sublime makes us aware of
this terrible conflict directly, and the beautiful offers the
temporary apparent reprieve from or resolution of this conflict. In
his later *Philosophy of Fine Art* (1802-3 [1989]), he
denied that art offered "sensual stimulation, as recreation, as
relaxation for a spirit fatigued by more serious matters" (in
Cahn and Meskin 2007, p. 170). Instead, "truth and beauty are
merely two different ways of viewing the one absolute," where
the beautiful offers acquaintance with "the essential forms of
things" via concrete particulars, and philosophical theorization
offers knowledge of the same via general principles (pp. 178,
173).
Arthur Schopenhauer's metaphysics in *The World as Will and
Representation* (1818 [1958]) picks up a significant piece of
Schelling's system. He expanded on Schelling's claim that
"Will is primal being" by claiming that all of fundamental
reality is a matter of will. What aesthetic experience offers us is
direct, intimate acquaintance with essences: "what is thus known
is no longer the individual thing as such, but the *Idea*, the
eternal form, the immediate objectivity of the will at this
grade" (SS34 at p. 195).
Schopenhauer sometimes speaks as though we can choose to have an
aesthetic experience by a "conscious and violent tearing away
from the relations of the same object to the will" (SS39,
p.202); the 'genius' artist in particular is good at doing
this. When we "devote the whole power of our mind to
perception" of an object, we can come to forget our own
will--which is itself a pleasant thing, for our will is
constantly either bored with its own satisfaction or pained by its
frustration (SS34, pp. 178-9).
At other points, Schopenhauer presented aesthetic experience as a
passive result of experiencing great art, especially the art of tragic
drama. In tragedy, he wrote,
>
> the terrible side of life is presented to us... and so that
> aspect of the world is brought before our eyes which directly opposes
> our will ... we become aware that there is still left in us
> something different that we cannot possibly know positively, but only
> negatively, as that which does *not* will life ... it
> raises us above the will and its interest, and puts us in such a mood
> that we find pleasure in the sight of what directly opposes the will.
> (p.433)
>
Outside of aesthetic experience, we can only know the nature of the
universe by a kind of extrapolation. Schopenhauer thus puts aesthetic
experience in a place of priority with respect to philosophy
itself.
On this last point he was directly opposed by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, whose system of historical development developed in
*The* *Phenomenology of Spirit* (1807 [1979]) and his
lectures on aesthetics and fine art (1820-29 [1920]) published
posthumously. According to him, the point of art is to come to
understand the fundamental, minded nature of the world--the
"spirit" to which we all belong as self-conscious,
rational, self-determining beings. Hegel considered a mode of
understanding fundamental nature to be more advanced the more that it
abstracts from concrete sensuous presentation and the more that it can
turn contemplation back onto itself. There is a scale within types of
art in this respect; visual art is less advanced than music, which is
itself less advanced than poetry (1807 [1979]). While self-conscious
Romantic poetry allows us to see our rational self-determining nature
as minded beings, it nonetheless remains imperfect as a mode of
knowledge of spirit. Philosophy, in its endless capacity for
self-conscious reflection, "is a higher mode of
presentment" (in Cahn and Meskin 2007, p. 181) and can
ultimately supplant art as a mode of knowing the world's
essential structure.
This Hegelian consequence is not a happy one, and it is a serious
drawback of treating art as revelatory of the structure of the
universe: its pits aesthetic endeavors in competition with scientific
and philosophical ones themselves (Poe 1850 [1984], Gotshalk 1947
p.8).
#### 1.5.3 Existentialism and Phenomenology
Schelling's (1800 [1978]) account of the inherent conflict
between "unconscious" nature and the
"conscious" free human subject had a great influence on
phenomenologists and existentialists who wrote about aesthetic
experience in the early to mid-20th century.
In his influential essay "On the Origin of the Work of
Art" (1935 [1971]), the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger
initially objected to the centrality of the "much-vaunted
aesthetic experience" to point out that the "thingly
aspect" of an artwork is essential to what it does for us (in
Cahn and Meskin 2007, p. 345). But it turns out that he is really only
objecting to a certain abstracted, perhaps Hegelian or neo-Hegelian
conception of aesthetic experience, rather than all experience of art
considered as special. He gives his own account of our experience of
art, one on which art offers acquaintance with the basic, essential
nature of our own human subjectivity. Our primary experience of the
physical objects around us foregrounds their utility to us--what
Heidegger had previously called their "readiness-to-hand"
(*Being and Time*, 1927)--rather than their physicality;
things only stand out as the clumps of matter they are when they fail
in serving us in the way we expect them to, as when a tool breaks. It
is art that allows us to step back from this mode of experiencing
objects to contemplate that very phenomenological mode of
readiness-to-hand itself, and how it struggles against blunt physical
constraints. A work of art, then, sets up a
"world"--roughly, a way of experiencing
things--as it emerges from its physical basis (the
"earth"). Through experiences of art, we come to see this
struggle itself. Heidegger uses the example of a Van Gogh painting of
worn, dirty peasant shoes and a Greek temple to exemplify how these
ways of "being" emerge from physical things in their
"thingliness." Heidegger defines art as "the
becoming and happening of truth" as a form of
"unconcealedness:" it brings to the foreground our ways of
experiencing the world and how they clash with physicality.
The French atheist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre studied with
Heidegger and with the founding phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. The
view of aesthetic experience that emerges from his novel
*Nausea* (1938 [1965]) is one that draws from both of their
conceptions of the physical world as fundamentally devoid of meaning.
The world and all of "existence" as it is in itself
independently of human agency is absurd enough to inspire a form of
nausea in the narrator, Antoine Roquentin. This absurdity consists in
the facts that: things happen contingently and for no particular
reason; no life has any narrative unity; and there is no patterned
structure to the unfolding of events one after another.
What the experience of art is needed to do is to bring any order,
structure, and meaning to human life. In a series of scenes in which
Roquentin hears the music of a particular jazz vocalist, he comes to
find in music the necessity, purpose, and internal structure the world
had lacked:
>
> It seems inevitable, the necessity of this music is so strong ...
> If I love that beautiful voice, it is above all because of that: it is
> neither for its fullness nor its sadness, but because it is the event
> which so many notes have prepared so far in advance, dying so that it
> might be born. ... *something has happened*. (38)
>
From Roquentin's ecstatic listening we can extrapolate a theory
of an experience of art and why it is so essential to us. Art
exercises human freedom to structure the world and give it meaning and
a sense of purpose or necessity; it offers to those who appreciate it
a form of aesthetic experience that makes the world feel whole and
necessary. By extrapolating from Sartre's writing of
*Nausea* itself, we can also see that art can give us
acquaintance with the very absurdity of existence itself, and
challenge us to make something meaningful of ourselves. In *What is
Literature?* (1948 [1967]) Sartre called writing a way of
"imposing the unity of mind on the diversity of things"
that serves our "need of feeling that we are essential in
relationship to the world" (p.27). The creation and appreciation
of art, then, not only offers knowledge of the nauseating fundamental
absurdity in existence, but also offers at least a phenomenological
cure for it.
Not all in Sartre's group were so optimistic (nor all so
pessimistic about the meaning in the world; consider Sartre's
Christian contemporary Marcel 1951 [1960]). Albert Camus (1942), for
instance, thought that absurdity was inescapable, and all you could do
was defy it and go on living anyway (cf. Nagel 1971). Later critical
theorists who were deeply influenced by the existentialists took a
more complicated stance. In *Aesthetic Theory* (1970 [1997]),
Theodor Adorno claimed that artworks offer fantasies of escape from
the material world by imposing a new form upon its matter, but only in
a way that involves rejecting their material origin. "Aesthetic
experience," then, "is that of something that spirit may
find neither in the world nor in itself; it is possibility promised by
its impossibility" (pp. 135-6).
This concludes the survey of the various different types of properties
on which philosophers have variously claimed aesthetic experience
focuses. Note that it is consistent to claim that aesthetic experience
is focused on more than one of these types of properties. In an
important turn in mid-20th-century aesthetics, Frank Sibley
(1959) argued that there was a heterogeneous class of aesthetic
properties--including beauty, sublimity, elegance, charm, and
various expressive properties--on which aesthetic experience
focused (for discussion see Matravers 1996, Brady and Levinson 2001).
Some contemporary philosophers draw from multiple traditions to
characterize aesthetic experience (Carroll 2002, 2006, 2015, Levinson
1996a-d, 2016b, Stecker 2005, Goldman 2013, Peacocke 2021). Views of
aesthetic experience that diffuse focus onto several different types
of properties of objects are under correspondingly more pressure to
clarify what is special about aesthetic experience in other terms.
## 2. Mental aspects of aesthetic experience
### 2.1 Pleasure
Almost all agree that pleasure is a typical aspect of aesthetic
experience (for exceptions see Carroll 2006, Adorno 1970 [1997]). But
not all agree that it is an essential or even necessary aspect of
aesthetic experience (those who do not include Levinson 1996c, Stecker
2005, and Peacocke 2021).
Is it possible to explain the source of such pleasure in aesthetic
experience? It's not obvious that it should be possible,
especially on the view that art has no function and aesthetic
experience no further purpose (see Section 2.5). One option is simply
to delineate the particular type of pleasure that makes aesthetic
experience what it is--and thereby count on an
interlocutor's recognition of that type of
pleasure--without explaining its source. In the
"aestheticist" or "art for art's sake"
movement amongst Romantic poets and essayists (Gautier 1835-6
[2005], Poe 1850 [1984], Baudelaire 1857 [1965], Pater 1873 [1986];
for overview see Guyer 2014b, Ch.6), many took this particular stance,
especially to rebel against those (like Ruskin 1843-60 [2004])
who took the point of art to be moral in nature.
It is more common, however, to claim that aesthetic experience
involves pleasure taken in some further aspect of aesthetic
experience. There are a few distinct proposed sources of pleasure in
aesthetic experience. First, we might take pleasure in positive
evaluation of an object or its creator. Second, we might enjoy the
activity of our own minds, including the free play of our faculties.
Third, we might feel joyful relief in being liberated, at least
temporarily, from certain practical pressures or domination. Fourth,
we might take pleasure in coming to know or understand something in
aesthetic experience. Fifth, and finally, we might take pleasure in a
special connection to others made available in aesthetic experience in
particular.
Various theories of aesthetic experience combine these claims in
consistent ways; it is possible to think that there are several
grounds for the total pleasure involved here. Note also that
it's consistent to take pleasure to be a necessary aspect of
aesthetic experience without claiming (i) that pleasure makes
aesthetic experience what it is, (ii) that pleasure is the
*point* or *aim* of aesthetic experience, or (iii) that
an object's power to produce pleasure in us is the focus of
aesthetic experience. (For discussion of this last claim, see Section
1.2 above).
Perhaps most popular is the claim that aesthetic experience involves
pleasure because (and insofar as) it involves a positive evaluation of
an object in some respect (see also Sections 1.1 and 1.3). The idea
here is that we take pleasure in an object's intrinsic value,
its suitedness to function, its power to produce a certain kind of
experience, or even in the goodness and skill of its creator
(including, perhaps, the divine).
To compliate matters, pleasure can be understood in at least two ways:
as a phenomenological feeling with a certain positive "hedonic
tone," or as a kind of pro-attitude with positive content (see
Labukt 2012, Bramble 2013). On the former definition, it's not
clear that any positive *evaluation* of an object should
involve a positive frisson of feeling (Peacocke 2021, pp.
173-4). Given that we can begrudgingly, enviously, or otherwise
grumpily attribute genuine value to things in other contexts, why
should positive evaluation in aesthetics necessarily involve a
positive hedonic tone? On the latter definition, it might trivially
follow that aesthetic experience involves pleasure (as a pro-attitude)
if it involves positive evaluation, but this claim has limited
interest. Recent work in aesthetic normativity has done significant
work to make sense of a combination of the two (Gorodeisky 2019, 2021;
Kriegel forthcoming).
A second common claim is that pleasure in aesthetic experience derives
from a biologically natural joy we take in the activity of our own
mental faculties. This position was especially popular in the
eighteenth century among those philosophers who thought of the mind
fundamentally in terms of a limited number of faculties like
sensation, imagination, understanding, and reason (Baumgarten 1735
[1954], Meier 1999, Schlegel 1795 [2001], 1798-1800 [1991]).
This view also has its own contemporary proponents (Levinson 1996b, p.
13).
The claim that we take pleasure in mental activity can be readily
combined with the thought that aesthetic experience involves an
evaluation, especially as it involves a (positive) evaluation of our
own minds (Baumgarten 1735 [1954], Mendelssohn 1758 [1997], Feagin
1983). But this can seem too much focused on the perceiver or
appreciator rather than the object of aesthetic experience itself.
A famous version of this second claim derives largely from Kant (1789
[1987]), who argued that we take pleasure in the *free play* of
our mental faculties. This pleasure has a substantive aspect, but it
also has a privative aspect. In the absence of a concept we apply to
some object of perceptual representation, our imagination and
understanding are liberated from the strictures of rational,
discursive thought about the things we encounter in experience. This
liberation is itself joyful. Some philosophers, notably Friedrich
Schiller (1795 [1989]), thought this mental liberation was the single
fundamental source of pleasure in aesthetic experience (cf. Matherne
and Riggle 2020).
This relates closely to a third proposed source of pleasure in
aesthetic experience: liberation from certain practical thought and
emotion in aesthetic experience. Schopenhauer (1818 [1958]) took it
that the basic condition of human practical life was a painful one: as
willing creatures, we are constantly vacillating between frustration
of our desires and boredom in the satisfaction of them. What aesthetic
experience offers us is a reprieve from such suffering, a way to
become a "*pure* will-less, painless, timeless
*subject of knowledge*" (SS34, p. 179; cf. Schelling
1800 [1978]).
Influential modern theories focused on liberation from the influence
of unexpressed emotions. R.G.C. Collingwood (1938 [1958]) in
particular thought that all experience of "art proper,"
whether as creator or appreciator involves expression of an emotion,
and that all such expression involves clarification and transformation
of a feeling into something whose murky domination you can now resist
in a way you couldn't before (see Section 1.4.4 above).
Collingwood explicitly distinguishes his view from another kind of
view that takes pleasure in aesthetic experience to be a matter of
release. This other view makes a process of "catharsis"
central to some or all aesthetic experience. Catharsis is an
Aristotelian concept; Aristotle himself used it to explain the
pleasurable release from tension we feel after a tragic drama raises
emotions of pity and fear in us (*Poetics*). But it is not
entirely clear what catharsis is.
A fourth proposed source of pleasure in aesthetic experience is the
pleasure of gaining knowledge or understanding. Those who take
aesthetic experience to involve, essentially, a form of acquaintance
with fundamental aspects of nature tend to attribute pleasure in this
way. But any broadly epistemic approach to aesthetic experience can
attribute pleasure to this source, even if the knowledge or
understanding gained by aesthetic experience is not necessarily of
fundamental metaphysics. Nelson Goodman (1968 [1976]), for instance,
took aesthetic experience to be an encounter with a meaningful
symbolic object. He rejects all attempts "to distinguish the
aesthetic in terms of immediate pleasure ... The claim that
aesthetic pleasure is of a different and superior *quality* is
now too transparent a dodge to be taken seriously"
(p.242-3). But he nonetheless notes that "what delights is
discovery," so there's pleasure involved here (p.258).
Finally, some trace pleasure in aesthetic experience to connection
with other people. This claim is particularly associated with those
who treat aesthetic experience as focused on expressive properties
(see Section 1.4. above). The pleasure we take in communing with
others can be a matter of connecting with an artist and her own inner
life (Wordsworth 1802 [1984], Vischer 1873 [1994], Proust
1913-1927 [2003]), or a matter of connecting with others who
would react to an object in the same distinctively aesthetic ways we
do, or both (Tolstoy 1897 [2007]).
### 2.2 Conceptualization
One traditional line of thought in aesthetic theory takes it that
aesthetic experience of an object excludes conceptual thought about
what kind of thing that object is. This was central to Kant's
(1789 [1987]) view; he thought that the imagination and the
understanding could engage in a "free play" in aesthetic
experience precisely because no conceptual binding restricted the way
an object presented itself to us in this context.
The same idea has been central to vastly different theories of
aesthetic experience too. After Croce (1902, 1938), Collingwood (1938
[1958]) denied that an emotion could be conceptualized in the
expression essential to aesthetic experience because conceptual
"description generalizes ... Expression, on the contrary,
individualizes" (112). The idea that conceptualization is
generalization, and so incompatible with the focus on the
*particular* demanded by aesthetic experience, is an enduring
one (see e.g. Sibley 1974, 1983). Theodor Adorno (1970 [1997]) claimed
that artworks offer the promise of escape from worldly
conceptualization, although he also argued that this promise is
inevitably broken, given that artworks are themselves aspects of the
real world.
Even those who take aesthetic experience to be a mode of cognitive
contact with the world often distinguish it from other cognitive modes
in terms of its incompatibility with conceptualization. The Romantics
(see Section 1.5.1. above) thought that the "absolute," or
the total infinite substratum of reality, could be experienced in a
concrete individual, but not by conceptualization. Nelson Goodman
(1968 [1976]) treated aesthetic experience as a matter of
understanding objects that present their subjects in an analog way
(with what he calls "syntactic density, semantic density, and
syntactic repleteness," p. 252), where this contrasts sharply
with the conceptual mode of representation offered by natural
languages.
On the other hand, various philosophers have argued that
conceptualization is positively *necessary* to aesthetic
experience.
Scruton (1974) took a form of "unasserted" conceptual
imagination to be central to the "seeing-as" and
"hearing-as" (etc.) of aesthetic experience. In this
Scruton was influenced by Wollheim, but Wollheim's (1968 [1980],
1990, 1994) reliance on conceptualization in aesthetic experience
plausibly runs deeper than Scruton's. To have an aesthetic
experience of an artwork in particular is, in part, to
*interpret* it, and to interpret an artwork is in part to
attribute certain intentions concerning that very experience to the
artist who made it (1987, p. 8; for a famous criticism of this claim,
see Wimsatt and Beardsley, 1946). This attribution of intentions
surely involves conceptualization, insofar as intention itself
does.
A similar interpenetration of thought and experience undergirds
Walton's (1970) famous argument that an aesthetic experience of
an artwork necessarily involves assigning that work to a category. The
expressive chaos of Picasso's *Guernica* would not seem
chaotic at all if it belonged to a genre of "Guernicas"
which tended to be much more brashly colored and three-dimensional; in
that context, it would seem flat, muted, even gentle. In a rare entry
into aesthetics, p. F. Strawson (1966) once argued that aesthetic
appraisal--itself plausibly a part of aesthetic
experience--must involve conceptualization of a work of art
*as* such, in order to focus attention on just those features
relevant to such appraisal (for critical discussion, see Sibley 1974
and Wollheim 1980).
### 2.3 Imagination
It's an old idea (Addison 1712 [1879], Burke 1756 [2007]) that
imagination is essentially involved in aesthetic experience. But
different philosophers mean vastly different things by
"imagination" here.
In the eighteenth century, the imagination was conceived by both
empiricists and rationalists as one of the few fundamental mental
faculties (alongside others like sensation and reason). As such, it
played various different roles in the mental system. One of those
roles was to take up and combine the raw material offered by sensation
into more sophisticated representations available in the absence of
individual objects there to be sensed.
As Kant put it, the imagination "synthesiz[es] the manifold of
intuition." In ordinary (non-aesthetic) experience, it does so
according to rules or schema provided by the understanding, which
correspond roughly to what we consider concepts today. In an
experience of a beautiful object or scene, however, the imagination is
given no such rules, and engages in a "harmonious" form of
"free play" with the faculty of understanding without
bringing the object presented in experience under any particular
concept whatsoever (see also Section 2.2. above).
Although it is hard to say exactly what such "free play"
is (cf. Ginsborg 1997, Matherne 2016, Kuplen 2015, Savile 2020),
the idea that aesthetic experience crucially involves such free play
of the imagination has been a vastly influential one (see Guyer 2014
for a comprehensive approach to the history of this thought). It is
closely allied with the idea of beauty as a form of unity in variety
(Hutcheson 1726 [2004]), and the idea that we enjoy the activity of
our own mental faculties in aesthetic experience (see Section 2.1.
above). As Benedetto Croce summarized it, it is the idea that
"aesthetic activity fuses impressions into an organic
whole... the synthesis of variety, or multiplicity, into
unity" (1902 [1992], p. 21). Such play is meant to involve the
subject as an agent, and it is meant to be pleasurable in part due to
the freedom it gives to the imagination. This is disputable: as the
novelist-philosophers Vernon Lee and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson
(1912) put it, "we do not take pleasure in playing because
playing makes us feel free; but, on the contrary, we get greater and
more unmixed pleasure while playing, because we are free to ...
accommodate our activity to our pleasure" (pp. 6-7).
This kind of mental play should be carefully distinguished from other
forms of play associated with aesthetic experience that also
constitutively involve imagination (e.g. Spencer 1855 [1895], Groos
1896-9 [1901]). For example, Walton (1990) has influentially
treated our aesthetic engagement with various fictions as a form of
make-believe game involving imagination as constrained by certain
kinds of prescriptions given by the structure of a story or a picture
(cf. Groos 1898 on a "self-conscious illusion," pp.
302-3). This is structured, game-like play; Walton intends us to
understand what we do with such aesthetic objects on the model of what
kids do with toys. It is also often a purely 'internal'
play, one that doesn't manifest in further bodily action. But it
is a form of play undergirded by the imagination not as a synthetic
capacity to structure a mess of impressions, but rather undergirded by
the imagination as a more general creative capacity, one that allows
us to entertain vividly things which are not currently present to our
senses.
This now more common conception of the imagination also informs those
otherwise various and disparate views which take aesthetic experience
to extend beyond what is immediately given in perception. The English
Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1832 [2003]) defined poetry as the
expression of imagination, where the imagination is just "mind
acting upon ... thoughts so as to color them with its own light,
and composing from them as from elements, other thoughts, each
containing within itself the principle of its own integrity"
(p.674). Arthur Schopenhauer (1818 [1958]) thought that the
imagination of the artist was required to go beyond what is literally
perceived to divine the essences of things:
>
> actual objects are almost always only very imperfect copies of the
> Idea that manifests itself in them. Therefore the man of genius
> requires imagination, in order to see in things not what nature has
> actually formed, but what she endeavoured to form, yet did not bring
> about ... (SS36 p. 198).
>
Dilman Walter Gotshalk wrote in *Art and the Social Order*
(1947) that aesthetic experience involves the amplification of what is
currently presented in experience by "suggestions of the
object" brought to mind by the imagination (p.19).
Roger Scruton built a theory of aesthetic experience on this creative,
expansive power of the imagination in his book *Art and
Imagination* (1974). A proper experience of art is an imaginative
one, one which "goes beyond what is strictly given"
(p.98). The relevant role of imagination here is to make it possible
for you to engage in a voluntary, willed form of aspectual seeing, or
"seeing as," which makes it possible for you to see a
certain shade of blue *as* sad, for instance, even though it
cannot literally *be* sad. Scruton is quick to emphasize that
this kind of imagination is not perfectly free, but rather
constrained; it "involves thinking of these descriptions [e.g.
of blue as sad] as appropriate in some way to the primary
object," and is subject to certain constraints of rationality
and objectivity (pp. 98, 55, 112).
A final role key role for the imagination in aesthetic experience of
art involves recreating something that was originally in the mind of
the artist. This is, quite often, a matter of an emotion that is
expressed in the artwork (Tolstoy 1897 [2007]; Croce 1912, 1938;
Collingwood 1938 [1958]; see Section 1.4 above). But it can also be
more than that. In *The Imaginary* (1940 [2004]) and his later
essay "What is Literature?" (1948 [1967]) the French
existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre spoke of the imagination as needed to
constitute an object for conscious aesthetic contemplation (cf.
Dufrenne 1953). In the case of literature, "the imagination of
the spectator has not only a regulative function but a constitutive
one. It does not play: it is called upon to recompose the beautiful
object beyond the traces left by the artist" (1948, p. 33). John
Dewey (1934 [1980]) also claimed, in his theory of
'esthetic' and thus particularly unified experience, that
a spectator of art "must *create* his own experience. And
his creation must include relations comparable to those which the
original producer underwent. ... there must be an ordering of the
elements of the whole that is in form, although not in details, the
same as the process of organization the creator of the work
consciously experienced" (p.314).
### 2.4 Emotion
Emotion has been taken to be central to aesthetic experience since
early work on aesthetics as such in the eighteenth century. In France,
the influential Abbe Jean-Baptiste Du Bos (1719 [1748])
emphasized the importance of occurrent, bodily emotion in our
appreciation of drama. This emotion is pleasant in comparison to the
languor of everyday life (cf. discussion in Hume, "Of
tragedy," 1757 [1987b]). In Germany, Georg Friedrich Meier
(1999) treated the passions as essential to the pleasure we take in
aesthetic experience, and Mendelssohn (1785 [1979])--after
Dubos--added that part of why this is pleasurable is that we feel
a certain salutary effect on the body in having emotion in aesthetic
experience. Although Baumgarten (1735 [1954]) wrote more generally
about aesthetics as the science of cognition of objects by sensation,
he also specified in the case of poetry in particular that one central
goal is "to arouse affects" (SSXXV, p. 24).
With the rise of Romanticism and then of empathy theory, artists and
philosophers were particularly concerned to clarify the ways in which
aesthetic experience involved feeling an emotion alongside that
expressed in an artwork (see Section 1.4 above). It is possible to
take aesthetic experience to be singularly focused on emotional
expression without claiming that the appreciator of an aesthetic
object actually needs to feel the emotion that object expresses
(Langer 1953). Nonetheless, many views of expression did indeed think
that an appropriate aesthetic experience involved feeling that
expressed emotion (Bosanquet 1915, Collingwood 1938 [1958], Wollheim
1990). On a view that takes aesthetic experience essentially to
involve appreciating expression of emotion, and which also takes such
appreciation essentially to involve *feeling* that emotion,
feeling some emotion or other is essential to aesthetic experience.
But the emotion in question varies from case to case, depending on
what the aesthetic object expresses.
A distinct influential view has it that there is one consistent
distinctive "aesthetic emotion" felt in all aesthetic
experience of any object whatsoever. A version of this thought G.E.
Moore's brief remarks on aesthetic experience in *Principia
Ethica* (1903 [1993]; cf. Guyer 2014c pp. 112-3): "It
is not sufficient that a man should merely see the beautiful qualities
in a picture and know that they are beautiful, in order that we may
give his state of mind the highest praise. We require that he should
also *appreciate* the beauty of that which he sees ... he
should have an appropriate emotion towards the beautiful qualities
which he cognizes" (SS113). But the idea of a distinctive
aesthetic emotion is perhaps most closely associated with
Moore's friend Clive Bell (1914 [2007]), who took the goodness
of art to be a matter of its ability to rouse us to a "state of
ecstasy" by its "significant form" (cf. Dean 1996).
Bell explicitly called this "peculiar emotion provoked by works
of art" an "aesthetic emotion."
Bell presumed so much agreement on this point that he said little
about what this emotion *is*, leading to much criticism (e.g.
Stolnitz 1960, p. 144). Nelson Goodman (1968 [1976]) claimed that this
oversight meant that Bell had little or no available distinction
between non-aesthetic and aesthetic experience: "The theory of
aesthetic phlogiston explains everything and nothing" (p.247).
More recently, Jesse Prinz (2014) has suggested that we understand the
aesthetic emotion in question as a form of wonder (see Carroll 2019
for objections).
After Bell, Dewey (1934 [1980]) and Collingwood (1938 [1958]) took
more moderate positions on the nature of a specific aesthetic emotion.
Both thought that aesthetic experiences were colored distinctively by
their own variable emotions, but also that there is a distinctive
affect in common across all aesthetic experiences. Dewey claimed that
this affect was a matter of "qualitative unity" of an
experience (1938 [1980], pp. 84-5), and Collingwood that it was
"the specific feeling of having successfully expressed
ourselves" (1938 [1958], p. 117).
All the views discussed in this section thus far share the claim that
some emotion or other is essential to aesthetic experience. There are
other views on which emotion is a common concomitant of aesthetic
experience, but that it does not make aesthetic experience what it is
(e.g. Vivas 1937). Goodman (1968 [1976]) insisted that "in
aesthetic experience the *emotions function cognitively*
... Cognitive use involves discriminating and relating them in
order to gauge and grasp the work and integrate it with the rest of
our experience and the world" (p.248). According to Goodman,
such cognitively purposed emotions need not be present in aesthetic
experience, and they are sometimes present in non-aesthetic experience
too (p.251).
It is somewhat surprising that two of the most important historical
theories of aesthetic experience make the now rare claim that emotion
is positively incompatible with aesthetic experience. Kant (1789), for
instance, claimed that "a pure judgment of
taste"--that which you would make in an aesthetic
experience of pure beauty--"is independent of charm and
emotion" (p.68). Schopenhauer (1818 [1958]) thought of emotion
as wrapped up in motive and will, in its striving or frustration, but
also claimed that aesthetic experience offered complete release from
such striving and frustration. As such, aesthetic experience does not
involve emotion as we ordinarily understand it. Nonetheless,
Schopenhauer did indeed notice the importance of emotional expression
to certain arts, and he conceded that some of those general
"Ideas" we can come to understand in the course of
aesthetic experience are ideas of emotions and "their essential
nature, without any accessories, and so also without the motives for
them" (SS52, p. 260).
### 2.5 Disinterest
The idea that aesthetic experience must be in some way
"disinterested"--roughly speaking, unconcerned with
the way its object could serve further practical purposes--is
central in discussion of aesthetic experience. It is used to
distinguish aesthetic experience from close counterpart experiences of
the same object, and is thought to capture something essential about
the nature of the aesthetic. But philosophers can mean quite different
things by "disinterested" (for a brief history, see
Stolnitz 1961).
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, is often cited
(e.g. by Guyer 2004) as the originator of the modern idea of
disinterest. However, John Haldane (2013) persuasively traces the idea
right back to Johannes Scotus Erigena, who wrote in his *De
divisione naturae* that "The sense of sight is abused by
those who approach the beauty of visible forms with appetite or
desire" (Haldane 2013, p. 30; Erigena, *De divisione
naturae*, IV-V). Some find an ancient ancestor of the idea
in Aristotle's ethical writings (see entry on
"Aristotle's Aesthetics").
Nonetheless, Shaftesbury (1711) did write of disinterest, and
illustrated the idea by considering two approaches to a coin: one
aesthetic, which delights just in mere contemplation of its form, and
the other practical, which considers what it might purchase. Hutcheson
(1726 [2004]) followed Shaftesbury in claiming that the pleasure we
take in the beautiful is "distinct from that joy which arises
from self-love upon prospect of advantage," and from any
prospect of gaining knowledge (in Cahn and Meskin 2007). Hume
(1739-40 [1987]) is a rare exception amongst eighteenth century
British philosophers in allowing "that a great part of ...
beauty ... is deriv'd from the idea of convenience and
utility" (2.1.8.2; cf. Santayana 1896, Zemach 1997).
Early eighteenth century German philosophy of pleasure in perception
explicitly classified it as pleasure taken in the perfection of
something perfectly suited to its function (Wolff 1719 [2003]; see
Section 1.1. above). Moses Mendelssohn (1785 [1979]) retained the
centrality of perfection to aesthetic experience, but he also claimed
that
>
> We contemplate the beauty of nature and of art, without the least
> arousal of desire, with gratification and satisfaction. It seems to be
> a particular mark of beauty that ... it pleases, even if we do
> not possess it, and that is remote from the urge to possess it.
> (Lesson VII, p. 70, translated in Guyer 2020, section on Mendelssohn)
>
In an essay dedicated to Mendelssohn ("Attempt at a Unification
of all the Fine Arts and Sciences under the Concept of *that which
is complete in itself*" 1785 [1993]), the later aesthetician
Karl Moritz extended this idea of disinterest to argue that experience
of the beautiful offers you a way of pleasantly forgetting yourself in
"unselfish gratification" by thinking of the beautiful
object "as something that has been brought forth entirely for
its own sake, so that it could be something complete in itself"
(trans. Guyer, p. 545).
It was Kant's conception in the *Critique of Judgment*
(1789) that cemented the place of disinterestedness in aesthetics, and
shaped the discourse for the centuries to come. When Kant claimed that
pleasure taken in a representation of a beautiful object (as such) is
"disinterested," he meant that this pleasure is
"indifferent ... to the real existence of the object of
this representation" (SS1-5). In his system, this is
tantamount to saying that this pleasure is unmediated by any desire
*for* the object (cf. Zangwill 1992). This disinterest
distinguishes the pleasure that grounds a judgment of the beautiful
from the pleasure that grounds a judgment of something as merely
"agreeable." Under a separate heading (not that of
"disinterest" per se), Kant added that pleasure in a
beautiful object is not based in any attribution of a specific purpose
to it. He thus distanced himself from predecessors like Wolff.
One way of interpreting a lack of concern with the "real
existence" of the object of an aesthetic experience is to
understand that experience as focused on appearances instead. Edward
Bullough (1957) espoused a version of this view in 1907 lectures at
Cambridge. The idea had a wave of popularity in the
mid-20th century (Gotshalk 1947, Urmson 1957, Tomas 1959).
The view survives in the influential contemporary work of Martin Seel
(2005, p. 24): "to perceive something in the process of its
appearing for the sake of its appearing is the focal point of
aesthetic perception, the point at which every exercise of this
perception is directed."
A variation of this approach casts aesthetic experience as that which
is valued or enjoyed "for its own sake," as opposed to
valuing or enjoying it as a means to some further end (cf. Gorodeisky
and Marcus 2018 on "self-containment," p. 118). Gary
Iseminger (2006) denies that any aesthetic experience can be
individuated purely in terms of how it feels, since what really makes
a state of valued experience aesthetic is a matter of its being valued
just for its own sake, and valuing is not just a matter of having a
certain feeling. In revision of his earlier (1996a, 1996b) account of
aesthetic experience, Jerrold Levinson (2016b) agrees with
Iseminger's view, except he claims that the evaluative component
of such appreciation must itself be phenomenological (p.39; cf.
Stecker 2005). Both Iseminger and Levinson treat disinterest in this
sense as part of what makes aesthetic experience (or appreciation)
aesthetic at all (for objections, see Goodman 1968 [1976] p. 242,
Meskin 2001, and Carroll 2006).
Some of these views that take aesthetic experience to be valued
"for its own sake" depart significantly from the Kantian
conception of disinterest. For instance, Roger Scruton's (1974)
conception of the imaginatively inflected perception (e.g.
"seeing-as") essential to aesthetic experience can be
based on a desire for an object "*for no other reason*,
where one's desire is, nonetheless, based on a conception of the
thing one wants" (p.147).
Another dominant conception of disinterest in the 20th
century was a conception of a certain "aesthetic attitude"
one can take voluntary with respect to a natural scene or an
artwork--an attitude which consists in detaching one's
practical self from what is perceived in that object. As Zangwill
(1992) notes, this notion of disinterest is "unKantian" in
its modification of a stance, attitude, or type of *attention*,
rather than pleasure, as disinterested.
In discussion of sublime natural phenomena, Edward Bullough (1912)
seems to have been the first to suggest that we can voluntarily put
our experience "out of gear with our practical, actual
self" as long as we have a certain amount of
"distance" from the threatening aspects of these natural
phenomena (in Cahn and Meskin, 2007, pp. 244). What is important in
the form of an object of such aesthetic attention is that it supports
a "marked degree of artificiality" that allows us to take
this stance on the object (p.249). This artificiality keeps us engaged
in a "personal" but "filtered" way with the
emotions of the object of our experience (p.245).
The idea that a certain "distance" can make it possible to
forget the particularities of one's own practical situation and
thereby allow fuller "participation" in an object of
aesthetic experience has been attractive to theorists in various
distinct research paradigms. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1960 [2005])
emphasized how "aesthetic distance in a true sense ...
makes possible a genuine and comprehensive participation in what is
presented before us" via "self-forgetfulness" (pp.
124-5). John Dewey (1934 [2007]) wrote that in
'esthetic' experience
>
> There is no severance of self, no holding of it aloof, but fulness of
> participation ... so thoroughgoing ... that the work of art
> is detached or cut off from the kind of specialized desire that
> operates when we are moved to consume or appropriate a thing
> physically. (p.262; cf. Beardsley 1958 [1981], pp. 288-291)
>
This conception of disinterest takes it to be not just compatible with
but also *supportive* of a specialized activity
("participation"), and even sometimes takes it to be a
product of a personal decision to engage in a certain kind of way with
an object of experience.
In the middle of the 20th century, George Dickie levied a
famous objection to this interpretation of disinterest in his paper
"The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude" (1964). He wrote:
>
> "disinterestedness" cannot properly be used to refer to a
> special kind of attention ... [it] is a term which is used to
> make clear that an action has certain kinds of motives ...
> Attending to an object, of course, has its motives but the attending
> itself is not interested or disinterested ... although the
> attending may be more or less close. (p.60)
>
Proposed cases of wrongly motivated attention, he suggests, are really
just cases of (degrees of) inattention. Levinson (2016b) disagrees,
arguing that attending is indeed something that you can do with a
motive, and that the motive you have in attending affects your
phenomenology. Nanay (2015) picks up this general point and proposes
that specifically *aesthetic* attention is distributed among
all the properties of an object (though see Nanay 2016 for
complexities).
Langer's (1953/2007) distinct objection is that the
"aesthetic attitude" is too demanding to be an essential
part of any aesthetic experience whatsoever: "If the groundwork
of all genuine art experience is really such a sophisticated, rare,
and artificial attitude, it is something of a miracle that the world
recognizes works of art as public treasures at all" (p.324).
These are objections to the interpretation of disinterest in terms of
a special attitude or attentive stance one can take on an object. They
are not, as such, objections more generally to the claim that
disinterest is an essential or even just a necessary aspect of
aesthetic experience. That latter claim is still widely popular. But
there are a few reasonable ways to resist it.
One concerns the deep personal importance of aesthetic experience.
Nick Riggle (2016) argues that our phenomenal appreciation of beauty
must be interested in at least a certain sense in order for it to be
able to effect the types of personal transformation that it does (cf.
Proust 1913-1927 [2003], Nehamas 2007). Another way to resist
the emphasis on disinterest is to note the great variety of aesthetic
experiences available to us, especially with the staggering diversity
of contemporary arts (Adorno 1970 [1997], pp. 10-11).
### 2.6 Normativity
At least since Kant's *Critique of Judgment* (1789) many
have thought that aesthetic experience involves a form of
normativity--either that an aesthetic experience is the type one
*should* have of certain natural scenes or art objects, or that
having some such experience entails thinking that others
*should* have the same experience of that object. Kant
certainly made the latter claim. As he put it, an object seems to you
to *merit* a certain subjective response of disinterested
pleasure insofar as it sets your faculties of imagination and
understanding into a form of free play (see Section 1.3 and Section
2.3 above).
Both Kant and Hume before him (1757 [1987]) took it that aesthetics
demanded a reconciliation between two intuitively clashing facts:
first, that the way to appreciate an object aesthetically is to
*feel* some way towards it; and second, that such appreciation
is merited or deserved. Neither Hume nor Kant thought that beauty was
an objective matter, even though we do speak of beauty as though it is
a property that inheres in objects (contrast Edith Landmann-Kalischer;
see Matherne 2020).
Even though normativity is sometimes tied to objectivity--you
*should* feel or think this about that, because it is an
objective matter--this is not so obviously the case in philosophy
of aesthetic experience. Objectivity and normativity have a tortured
relationship in this discussion.
Consider, for instance, George Santayana's (1896) take. He
presented beauty as "pleasure regarded as the quality of a
thing," i.e. "objectified" (pp. 31-2). To have
an aesthetic experience is to feel a form of pleasure not *as*
belonging to one's mind or body, but rather *as if* it
belonged to the object. This need not involve really thinking that the
pleasure really does belong to the object; on the contrary, he
claimed, "beauty ... cannot be conceived as an independent
existence which affects our senses and we consequently perceive"
(p.29). For this reason, phenomenological objectification does not
make sense of demands that others feel as you do. On his view, such
demands are "unmeaning" (p.27). Nelson Goodman (1968
[1976]) later called this "mumbo-jumbo"--"what
can this mean?" (p.243). The only way we could make sense of the
claim that we feel as though pleasure really belongs to objects
themselves is as a claim that objects *express* pleasure, but
not all aesthetic objects do this.
In a certain respect, Santayana's claims of phenomenological
objectification are less mysterious than claims of *actual*
objectification of subjective feeling in other aesthetic systems. The
early empathy theorist Robert Vischer (1873 [1994]) claimed that the
artist "translate[s] the indefinability and instability of
mental life, as well as the chaotic disorder of nature, *into a
magnificent objectivity*, into a clear reflection of a free
humanity," and thus generates an item whose investment with
emotion has a form of universal validity (pp. 116-17, emphasis
added). Around this time, many of those who take aesthetic experience
to focus on emotional expression spoke of emotion
"objectified" in objects, in a way that was then
inseparable from the embodiment of that emotion in the physical form
(Bosanquet 1892 [1904], p. 34; Ducasse 1929, p. 111; Dewey 1934
[1980], p. 248; Cassirer 1944, pp. 142-4). Insofar as feeling
can literally be manifested in these physical forms, it is simply a
matter of appreciating qualities an object really has that you should
appreciate such expression and feel certain emotions in their presence
(see Section 1.4.4).
Newer descendants of this view treat normativity in aesthetic
experience as derived from the *correctness* of seeing-as (or
otherwise perceiving-as). When Kendall Walton (1970) noted that the
assignment of a category to an artwork affects the expressive
properties you experience it as having, he was careful to note that
only some category assignments are correct (p.356ff.). Roger Scruton
(1974) went out on a limb to claim that even though seeing-as (and
other perceiving-as) is a matter of imagination (see Section 2.3),
there are nonetheless right and wrong ways to apply your imagination
to an object of your attention. Such choices in imagination
"involve a sense of their own 'correctness' or
appropriateness to an object" (pp. 138-9).
Kant (1789 [1987]), Vischer (1873 [1994]), and others took aesthetic
normativity to be universal: it's true that *everyone*
ought to feel a certain way about an object, given that the features
that ground that feeling are themselves universal among people.
Others--including Scruton and the empathy theorist Herbert
Langfeld (1920)--are less sanguine about the prospect of
universal agreement; they variously relativize the normative demands
that objects make upon us to feel certain ways (Kennick 1958, Goldman
1995, Levinson 2006a, Matthen 2018). A few personalize the specific
demands that artworks or natural scenes can make on our emotions and
feelings as individuals (Moran 2004; Nehamas 2007; Riggle 2016; cf.
Nietzsche 1882 [1974] SS290-299 and Landy 2004 on Proust
1913-1927 [2003]).
A demand for someone to have a certain subjective experience of an
object only makes sense if they already can have such an experience,
or at least could cultivate their capacity to have such an experience.
This capacity has long been called "taste" (cf. Korsmeyer
2013). The resonance with a form of sensation is no accident. Various
eighteenth-century British philosophers (notably Hutcheson 1726
[2004], Hume 1739-40 [1987], and Reid 1785 [1969]) made sense of
this capacity as a form of "internal sense," whose inputs
were reliant upon the representations provided by sensation. Lively
contemporary discussion amongst French social elites considered the
extent to which taste was innate or acquired (Bouhours 1671 [1705], Du
Bos 1719 [1748], Marquise de Lambert 1748 [1770]; see also
Montesquieu, Voltaire, and d'Alembert's 1757 and
Diderot's 1751 entries into the *Encyclopedie*,
Diderot and d'Alembert, 1751-1765).
Many contrasted this quasi-sensory faculty with that of reason
(Bouhours 1671 [1705], Du Bos 1719 [1748], Marquise de Lambert 1748
[1770], Montesquieu, Voltaire, and d'Alembert 1757), although
others claimed in a post-Cartesian rationalist vein that an
object's beauty was primarily judged through the faculty of
reason (de Crousaz 1714 [2000]; Andre 1741), and even claimed
that it was possible to codify contributors to beauty in general
principles (De Lambert, Voltaire, Diderot 1751). Kant (1789) notably
denied that any such general principles of taste could possibly be
formulated or used to reason to the conclusion that something is
beautiful.
In the 20th century, the debate over principles of taste
saw a resurgence. Those who deny the existence of any general
principles of taste are "particularists," and those who
accept them "generalists." Notable 20th-century
particularists include Croce 1938 [2007], Collingwood 1938 [1958],
Gallie 1956, Isenberg 1949, Sibley 1974, 1983, Mothersill 1988, and
Goldman 2006 (cf. Kant 1789 [1987] SS34-35). Notable
generalists include Beardsley (1958 [1981], 1970 [1982]) and Dickie
2006. While generalists like Beardsley think that we can dispute
matters of taste in reasoned argument particularists generally work to
make sense of more subtle forms of interpersonal communication about
experience (see Isenberg 1949, Hopkins 2004, Mothersill 1988, Sibley
2001, Cavell 1965 [2007], Wollheim 1968 [1980]).
There is a new efflorescence of philosophical research into aesthetic
normativity, much of which profits significantly from cross-comparison
of various normative domains (Eaton 2001; Cross 2017, forthcoming;
Hanson 2018, Lopes 2018, 2021, Gorodeisky and Marcus 2018; Gorodeisky
2019, 2021, Kubala 2021, Dyck 2021, Whiting 2021, forthcoming, Riggle,
forthcoming; see King 2022 for an overview). |
aesthetics-19th-romantic | ## 1. The Primacy of the Aesthetic
One common concern strikingly unifies otherwise different romantic
contributions. Early and late, German, British and French, the
romantics advocated what may legitimately be called "the primacy
of the aesthetic". In romanticism, the
"aesthetic"--most broadly that which concerns beauty
and art--is not just one aspect of human life or one branch of
the humanistic studies. Rather, if the romantic ideal is to
materialize, aesthetics should permeate and shape human life.
Friedrich Schlegel, one of the leading figures in Early German
Romanticism, put this idea in a few memorable phrases: "The
Romantic imperative demands [that] all nature and science should
become art [and] art should become nature and science" (FLP:
#586); "poetry and philosophy should be united" (CF:
#115), and "life and society [should be made] poetic" (AF:
#16).
Schlegel is not alone on this matter. Similar sentiments and slogans
had been expressed just a little earlier in what is commonly regarded
as the manifesto of German romanticism, *The Oldest Programme*:
>
>
> The idea that unites everyone [is] the idea of
> *beauty*...I am now convinced that the highest act of
> reason, by encompassing all ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that
> *truth and goodness* are siblings only in *beauty*.
> (Holderlin, in Bernstein 2003: 186).[3]
>
>
>
The British romantics have taken up and developed this view that the
aesthetic is the foundation of knowledge and the pursuit of truth.
"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is
all//Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know", Keats famously
declared in the *Ode on a Grecian Urn* ([1820] lines 49-50,
PJK). And in the Preface to Coleridge and Wordsworth's *Lyrical
Ballads* (1800), we read, "Poetry is the first and last of
all knowledge--it is as immortal as the heart of man"
(paragraph 20, in PWWW, I, p. 141).
How is this core feature of romantic aesthetics, the primacy of the
aesthetic, to be explained?
A textually grounded and philosophically viable way to approach the
imperative is as a structural or formal demand. On that reading, the
imperative requires that we *model* our epistemological,
metaphysical, ethical, political, social and scientific pursuits
according to the form of the aesthetic comportment to the world,
exemplified in poetry. On such an approach, rather than aiming to
*replace* "real" life, science and philosophy with
poetry, the romantics urge human beings to fashion their ordinary
lives and to do science and philosophy according to the model provided
by poetry. Philosophy, science and everyday life need not be
poet*ry*, but poet*ic* or poetry*-like*.
*Structurally*, they should become similar. Why so? The main
task of this entry is to offer an answer to this question and to show
that the reasons for "poeticizing" life, science and
philosophy are philosophical.
## 2. Aesthetics and Reason
### 2.1 Enlightenment and *Sturm und Drang*
For over a century, romanticism has standardly been regarded as a
reaction against the Enlightenment (e.g., Haym 1870). The primacy of
aesthetics may seem to speak in favor of this story because, on this
interpretation, the romantics replaced the Enlightenment's faith
in the sovereignty of reason with a belief in the sovereignty of art
and the affective and imaginative capacities that are involved in
aesthetic experience. On this traditional interpretation, romanticism
is antirationalist or irrationalist. But, while the romantic pursuit
of the primacy of aesthetics marks a break with the Enlightenment,
regarding romantic aesthetics as antirational or irrational and as
antagonistic to the core Enlightenment values is unjustified for a
host of reasons (cf. Beiser 2003, Engell 1981, Gregory 2005).
First, the romantics' focus on and praise for rational and
autonomous criticism is continuous with the Enlightenment's
commitment to the value of rational criticism. Admiring Goetthold
Ephraim Lessing's ideal of criticism and his devotion to
independent thinking, Friedrich Schlegel writes, "critique is
the common pillar on which the entire edifice of knowledge and
language rests" (Critique: 271). Rather than discontinuing the
Enlightenment's call to submit every belief and every action to
the authority of rational criticism, the romantics are responsible for
continuing "the age of criticism"--which is usually
taken to characterize the eighteenth century--well into the
nineteenth century. In that sense, they are the "children"
of the Enlightenment.
Second, many of the core features of romantic aesthetics in addition
to criticism--like the relation between beauty, truth and
goodness, the pursuit of unity among variety and the significance of
the imagination and the sublime--would have been impossible
independently of key Enlightenment thinkers.
Third, the romantic elevation of aesthetic feeling and the creative
imagination did not come at the price of their faith in and respect
for reason. Even Friedrich Schlegel, who is often considered to be the
most enthusiastically inclined romantic, opened his *Lectures on
Transcendental Philosophy* by arguing that philosophy is "a
striving towards a knowledge...of the whole person" (ITP:
241). In one of his fragments, he commanded: "Never tire of
cultivating the intellect until you will have finally found what is
original and essential" (*Ideas*: #124). And yet in
another fragment, he claimed that one of the two centers of genuine
philosophy is "the rule of reason" (*Ideas*:
#117).
Such proclamations challenge the alleged break between the
Enlightenment and romanticism as much as they challenge another
standard interpretation of romanticism, one that takes it to be a
direct outgrowth of *Sturm und Drang*, a counter-Enlightenment
movement that flourished in the 1760s and 1770s. Briefly, this
response to the Enlightenment, expressed in works of literature,
theatre, music and the plastic arts, heralded individual subjectivity
and the free expression of unconstrained feelings as the proper
replacements for the values of the Enlightenment.
No doubt, the romantics shared with this movement the belief in a call
"back to feeling". But regarding romanticism as simply a
continuation of *Sturm und Drang* finds no grounding in
romantic texts. In his review of Friedrich Jacobi, one of the main
sources of influence on *Sturm und Drang*, Schlegel declared,
"Only when striving toward *truth* and *knowledge*
can a spirit be called a philosophical spirit" (*Review of
Jacobi's Woldamer*, KA II: 71-2). In the same review,
Schlegel harshly criticized what is known as Jacobi's *salto
mortale* or "leap of faith": this is Jacobi's
view that the only way to salvage our ethical and religious beliefs,
in the face of the limitations of the Enlightenment, is to renounce
reason in favor of *mere* sensation and faith. In contrast to
Jacobi, the German romantics never attempted to *replace*
reason with faith, sensation, unconstrained feeling or intuition.
Instead, they wished to bring out the rationality of the passions and
the passionate nature of reason as part of a unified and balanced
picture of human life. Rather than a straight development of *Sturm
und Drang*, then, romanticism is better understood as an attempt
to synthesize the grain of truth in the movement with the grain of
truth in the philosophy of Enlightenment, or simply put, to synthesize
reason and sensibility.
Similarly, the British and French romantics did not mean to dismiss
reason and replace it with passion and imagination, but strived after
"a conjunction of reason and passion" (Wordsworth,
"Essays on Epitaphs 1810" in PWWW). Accordingly, what
Coleridge, for example, admired in Wordsworth was not imagination and
feeling alone, but
>
>
> the union of deep feeling with profound thought; the fine balance of
> truth in observing with the imaginative faculty in modifying the
> objects observed. (Coleridge, BL: Ch. 4)
>
>
>
The romantics, then, sought to *supplement* but not to supplant
reason with the receptive capacities of the mind, primarily with the
capacities involved in aesthetic apprehension and artistic production.
They extended Kant's renowned view of concepts and intuitions,
suggesting that *reason without feeling is empty and feeling
without reason is blind*. Without the former, human beings would
be reduced to mere animality; without the latter they would lose their
humanity:
>
>
> We cannot deny the drive to free ourselves, to ennoble ourselves, to
> progress into the infinite. That would be animalistic. But we can also
> not deny the drive to be determined, to be receptive; that would not
> be human. (Holderlin, *Hyperion*, HSA 3:194)
>
>
>
For the romantics, our receptive and spontaneous capacities could only
be abstracted in thought, but not separated in reality: "Action
and passion are inseparable as north and south" (Novalis, FS:
#317). Human dignity is grounded in rational and normatively
constrained receptivity just as much as it is grounded in spontaneity.
>
>
> The restless striving after activity, the highest criterion of
> judgment, does not exclude all the virtues of receptivity but *can
> only exist with them*. (F. Schlegel, KA 12: 130)
>
>
>
Rather than dismissing the role and the significance of reason as
such, the romantics challenged merely certain uses of reason--for
example, dogmatic uses of reason, the laying down of absolute
foundations, and system-building. And in a Kantian manner, they were
concerned to expose the limits of reason and constrain its uses to
legitimate boundaries. But even the romantic exposure of limits is, as
it were, "aesthetic". "Aesthetic?" one may
ask. Yes, aesthetic in the sense that some of the romantic central
devices for exposing the limits of reason are (originally)
"aesthetic", "artistic" or
"literary". "Romantic Poetry" is one such
device and "Irony" is another.
### 2.2 Romantic Poetry and Romantic Irony
"Romantic Poetry" is a notion that Friedrich Schlegel
coined and described in most detail in *Athenaeum Fragments*
(AF) number 116. Rather than a particular genre or kind of poetry,
Romantic Poetry is poetry as such insofar as "all poetry is or
should be romantic" (Schlegel, AF: #116). Romantic Poetry brings
out the limits of reason in virtue of being reflective,
"[hovering] on the wings of poetic reflection, and [capable of
raising] that reflection again and again to a higher power" (AF:
#116). Rather than being merely the "portrayed" object
itself--a poetic representation--it "hover[s] at the
midpoint between the portrayed and the portrayer" (AF: #116),
and so, like Kant's transcendental philosophy, reflects on the
conditions of its own possibility and of human mindedness itself. It
is not surprising, then, that Romantic Poetry is called
"transcendental" poetry: "a poetry and a poetry of
poetry" (AF: #238). Goethe's *Wilhelm Meister*, a
romantic favorite, manifests this dual reflective and substantive
nature:
>
>
> It was so much the poet's intentions to set up a comprehensive
> theory of art or rather to represent one in living examples and
> aspects....This might suggest that the novel is as much an
> historical philosophy of art as a true work of art, and that
> everything which the poet so lovingly presents as his true aim and end
> is ultimately only means. But that is not so: it is all poetry, high,
> pure poetry. (F. Schlegel, WM: 274)
>
>
>
The transcendental nature of romantic poetry suggests that it does not
transcend merely the boundaries of a particular genre, but even the
boundaries of the literary as such. Romantic Poetry is poetry as much
as it is a philosophical method and a vital approach to human life. It
is a creative and reflective human power, manifested in the
theoretical, practical and aesthetic aspects of life:
>
>
> transcendental poetry...really embraces all transcendental
> functions.... The transcendental poet is the transcendental
> person altogether. (Novalis, *Logological Fragments*: #41)
>
>
>
Romantic poetry is not alone in exposing the conditions of finite
existence, but accompanied by an ironic way of living. Irony is a mode
of *self-restriction*, whose "value and dignity" as
a crucial dimension of human life, must be recognized (F. Schlegel,
CF: #28). Irony is the balance between "self-creation and
self-destruction" (CF: #28), which means that irony is
creative--it is constructive of its own perspective on the world.
But at the same time, it is also "destructive" of the
pretensions implicit in any perspective--the pretention to be
holistic. Irony thus presents its perspective as restricted--as
only one among many different perspectives on the unconditioned whole.
Accordingly, what romantic irony insists on through its restricting
function is (a) the conceptual inaccessibility of the
"Absolute" (explained in
SS3),
and (b) what is known as "perspectivism"--the view
that human beings are capable only of finite and limited perspective
on the universe as a whole. Being ironic is a way of consciously and
intentionally bringing out the fragmentary nature of the human
situation as lacking a "view from nowhere".
Like Romantic Poetry, irony is not merely a literary or even a
rhetorical device. Nor is it a purely theoretical method. Rather, in a
Socratic spirit, romantic irony is a way of life. For it is,
>
>
> after all, for the artist as well as the man, the first and the last,
> the most necessary and the highest duty...most necessary because
> wherever one does not restrict oneself, one is restricted by the
> world; and that makes one a slave. (CF: #37)
>
>
>
Everyone, then, not only the writer, should be ironic. For, as
exposing our finitude, irony is not only another romantic analogue of
Kant's transcendental method--the antidote to
reason's natural but spurious tendency to transcend its
limits--but also an existential condition of humility (On irony
see also CF: #26, #42, #48, 108; AF: 51, 121; and *On
Incomprehensibility*).
The romantic use of irony was sharply criticized, most famously by
Hegel, as free floating form of subjectivity. But not only does this
criticism fail to do justice to the romantic insistence that irony
itself is a form of self-constraint, but also to the imperative:
"Don't exaggerate self-restriction" (F. Schlegel,
CF: #37). This demand to constrain and regulate self-restriction
itself is of equal importance to the demand to practice irony. Rather
than a free floating form of subjectivity, then, romantic irony is a
constrained, and normatively governed form of life, meant to expose
the limits of reason and facilitate a life of humility (cf. Rush 2006:
187). Romantic irony is a commitment to the form of life that is
governed by the acknowledgement of finitude; a
"transcendentally-Socratic" life of humility.
Accordingly, rather than an irrational or an anti-Enlightenment
stance, romantic aesthetics is marked by a respect for and devotion to
reason and rationality "within their bounds".
## 3. Aesthetics, Epistemology and Metaphysics
Even a cursory glance through the writings of the romantics assures
the reader that their interest in art and aesthetics is closely tied
to their epistemological and metaphysical concerns. The primacy that
the romantics attributed to aesthetics is explained by (but is not
reduced to) the roles that art and beauty may play in the pursuits of
epistemic and metaphysical goals. One such goal concerns what the
German romantics, and following them, Coleridge, called the
"Absolute" [*das Absolute*].
Briefly, this is how this explanation goes: in the aftermath of
Kant's philosophy, the romantics were concerned with the
Absolute, understood as the unconditioned totality of all conditions.
Like Kant, they believed that such an unconditioned totality is
inaccessible to discursive reason and is, *to that extent*,
unknowable to human beings. But reason's natural drive towards
this "Absolute" is nonetheless significant and valuable
(SS3.1).
In aesthetics they found a mode of life that best approximates (even
if never reaches or grasps) the Absolute, insofar as the aesthetic
approach to artworks (a) includes indeterminate affective aspect
(SS3.2),
(b) involves a *sui generis* normativity, constituting its own
norms in attunement with the artwork it faces
(SS3.3),
(c) is particularly suited to approach individual unities
(SS3.4),
and (d) is open-ended
(SS3.5).
### 3.1 The Absolute
Most broadly, by the "Absolute", the romantics refer to
the unconditioned totality of all conditions. While the absolute
itself is conditioned by nothing, it conditions all the finite
physical and mental manifestations of the world. Inspired by
Kant's discussion of *omnitudo
realitatis*--"All of Reality"--and by
Spinoza's all encompassing "substance", the romantic
Absolute is a whole, rather than an aggregate, that encompasses
everything else, physical and mental: "Only the whole is
absolute" (Novalis, AB: #454); "The universe is the
absolute subject, or the totality of all predicates" (AB: #633).
Metaphysically, every finite thing is merely one manifestation of an
unconditional totality: only a single perspective on the whole. It is
thus ultimately finite but also infinite, as part and parcel of the
infinite whole.
This notion of the Absolute is not distinctively romantic. The German
Idealists, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, were also concerned with
related conceptions of the Absolute. But the romantic treatment of the
Absolute is distinctively different from the idealistic one. And it is
the distinctive *romantic* treatment of the Absolute that
explains much in romantic aesthetics: While the idealists took the
Absolute to be transparent to the human mind, conceptually
representable, and inferentially related to other items of knowledge,
the romantics regarded it as (1) ungraspable by concepts (i.e., as
"non-discursive") and (2) as non-foundational.
Following Kant, the romantics believed that all knowledge is
discursive: knowing requires conceptualization. But since concepts
condition everything that might be known by determining it to be one
way or another according to the forms of discursive thought, the
Absolute, by its very definition as unconditioned, cannot be known.
>
>
> Knowledge [*Erkennen*] already denotes conditioned knowledge.
> The unknowability of the absolute is, therefore, an identical
> triviality. (F. Schlegel, KA 18: 511, #64)
>
>
>
The romantics further argued that the attempt to ground the whole
edifice of knowledge in the Absolute--familiar to them from
Fichte's project, which they both admired and harshly
criticized--is futile. Like Kant, they believed that
reason's natural and necessary drive to proceed towards the
unconditioned can never be fully realized. The unconditioned totality
of experience is "a *regulative* idea" (Novalis,
FS: #472): it cannot serve as a systematic grounding of experience. As
Novalis memorably puts it:
>
>
> We seek the unconditioned [*Das Ubedingte*] and always find
> only [conditioned] things [*Dinge*].
> (*Bluthenstaub*, NS 2: 413, #1)
>
>
>
Skeptical as they were about the discursive accessibility of the
Absolute and about its capacity to ground all knowledge, the romantics
never questioned either its existence or the worth of (open-endedly)
striving after it:
>
>
> Neither our knowledge nor our action can ever attain the point at
> which.... All is one; the determinate line can be united with the
> indeterminate only through an infinite approximation [*in
> unendlicher Annaherung*] (Holderlin, "Hyperion", HSA 3:
> 326).
>
>
>
Therefore, philosophy, whose first theorem is "All is One and
One is All" (F. Schlegel, ITP: 244), must be "a
*striving*" (ITP: 244). Even though philosophy cannot
systematically deduce all knowledge from the Absolute, it must
nonetheless pursue its approximation. But if not through concepts, how
can one approximate the Absolute?
This is where aesthetics comes into the picture. Although scholars of
romanticism disagree about the exact nature of the romantic
approximation of the
Absolute,[4]
they widely agree that it includes a variety of feelings associated
with the aesthetic, like aesthetic pleasure, poetic feeling,
"longing for the infinite [*Sehnsucht nach dem
Unendlichen*]" and "love", and that it depends
on the deployment of critical notions like "romantic
poetry", wit, irony, allegory, myth and the creative
imagination:
>
>
> If we abstract from all knowledge and will...we still find
> something more, that is *feeling* and *striving*. We
> want to see if we will perhaps find something here that is analogous
> to the consciousness of the infinite.... (F. Schlegel, ITP:
> 244-45).
>
>
>
> Poetry elevates each single thing through a particular combination
> with the rest of the whole, [by allowing] the individual [to] live in
> the whole and the whole in the individual. (Novalis,
> *Poesie*, NS 2: 533, #31).
>
>
>
The romantics believed that these aesthetic and affective attitudes
make it impossible for us to deny that there is something "which
is not I, nor comes from the I, and which is also not merely a
Non-I" (F. Schlegel, *Thoughts*, KA 18: #83). Baudelaire
summarizes these romantic sentiments, declaring,
>
>
> The one who says romanticism says modern art--which is to say
> intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the
> infinite--expressed by all the resources of art. (*Salon of
> 1846* [1981])
>
>
>
What is it about the aesthetic engagement with art and beauty that is
particularly suitable for approximating the Absolute? The rest of this
section will develop a few possible answers to this question.
### 3.2 Aesthetic Feeling
In the introduction to the *Critique of the Power of Judgment*,
Kant writes that the feeling of pleasure in general, and aesthetic
pleasure in particular, is the only representation that can never
"become an element of cognition at all" (AK 5: 189).
One might think that feelings are thus placed outside of rationality.
But this would be a mistake. On Kant's picture, aesthetic
feeling is rational insofar as it is grounded in a universal mental
state that underlies our capacity to judge in general (the free play
of the imagination and the understanding), and insofar as it is,
through this mental state, responsive to the claims that beautiful
objects make on everyone's satisfaction (AK 5: 282).
Rationality, then, is irreducible to cognition both in the Kantian
framework and in its romantic inheritance. Aesthetic feeling is
rational because of its ground and responsiveness to a claim, but
non-cognitive insofar as it cannot be subsumed under concepts. Feeling
does not determine any concrete property that its object has
independently of subjectivity (as cognition would), but is rather
responsive to a relation between a subject and an object. Aesthetic
pleasure, particularly, is a non-determining mode of reflecting on the
relation, not between a particular subject and a particular object,
but between subjectivity and objectivity as such.
This rational but non-cognitive nature of feeling, in general, and of
aesthetic feeling, in particular, is perhaps the central feature that
renders aesthetic feeling an attractive ingredient in addressing the
epistemic and metaphysical concerns that occupied the romantics. For
while all cognition is determination through concepts, Kant's
aesthetics suggests a mode of reflective awareness that is not
determining, but yet a way of being aware of and responsive to aspects
of the world. This is exactly what the romantics have been looking
for--a non-discursive, but rational and normatively governed mode
of awareness. And they found it in poetry, regarding it as grounded in
feeling:
>
>
> Not art and artworks make the artist, but feeling and inspiration and
> impulse. (F. Schlegel, CF: #63)
>
>
>
> Poetry is passion. (Wordsworth, "Note to the Thorn" in LB:
> 136)
>
>
>
> All good poetry [originates in] the spontaneous overflow of powerful
> feelings. (Wordsworth, Preface to *Lyrical Ballads* (1800), paragraph
> 26, in LB)
>
>
>
If, then, feelings and passions are constitutive of art, and if
aesthetic or poetic feeling is a key ingredient in the pursuit of the
Absolute, then philosophy should become poetic and "poetry and
philosophy should be made unified" (F. Schlegel, CF: #115). We
are now in a position to appreciate that this romantic imperative is
explained partly by the view that philosophy cannot be reduced to
concepts and propositions, but must also include certain kinds of
affective mental states. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, discursive
reasoning comes to an end.
### 3.3 *Sui-Generis* Normativity
The non-determining character of aesthetic feeling is related to the
distinctive kind of normativity that characterizes artistic production
and aesthetic appreciation. An expression borrowed from Kant is
fitting here: on the romantic picture, both artistic production and
aesthetic appreciation are "lawful without a law". Both
are the source of their own normativity, without being subject to any
external law. Given that, they are appropriate for approximating the
Absolute insofar as this approximation must be non-determining
(applying no conditions), but normatively governed rather than
arbitrary.
Following Kant's account of the genius, the romantics developed
an understanding of the artist as, on the one hand, original and
imaginative (rather than submitting to any law of nature or principle
borrowed from the tradition of art), and, on the other hand, receptive
to nature: "Every good poem must be wholly intentional and
wholly instinctive" (F. Schlegel, CF: #23). This combination of
being independent of *given* rules *and* attuned to
something other than yourself is required not only for the genius, but
also for approximating the Absolute. And it is this requirement that
explains "the categorical imperative of genius[:] You should
demand genius from everyone" (F. Schlegel, CF: #16). If everyone
is to approximate the Absolute, then everyone should model herself
after the genius.
Criticism consists of a related combination of features. While it is
based on no prior rules, it is also open and receptive to the work it
concerns. And it is through the engagement with the work that each
critical judgment constitutes its own norms. Although we can and
should legitimize our judgments of beauty and art, we cannot do so by
appeal to any given concepts or norms that are external to the work at
stake. The artwork, on this picture, is *sui generis*--it
provides its own standards of appreciation: "Poetry is a
republican speech: a speech which is its own law and end unto
itself" (F. Schlegel, CF: #65). The critic should seek to
express the work in a way that is faithful to its individual nature
and be responsive to the specific norms that it constitutes:
>
>
> To judge [Goethe's *Wilhelm Meister*] according to an
> idea of genre drawn from custom and belief, accidental experiences and
> arbitrary demands is as if a child tried to clutch the stars and the
> moon in his hand and pack them in his satchel.... Fortunately,
> [the novel] turns out to be one of those books, which carries its own
> judgment within it. (F. Schlegel, WM: 275)
>
>
>
That means that beauty makes demands on us, demands that, according to
the romantics, are analogous to the demands that other persons make on
us. Beautiful objects make a claim on us to respond to them as the
specific individuals that they are, on their own terms: "See
your statues, your paintings, your friends as they are"
(Diderot, *Salon of 1767*). Hence, the romantic declaration,
"one cannot really speak of poetry except in the language of
poetry" (F. Schlegel, DP).
This lawfulness without a law fits the requirements of the Absolute.
For, if we adopt this structure of normativity and expression in our
pursuit of the Absolute, we may approach it in a normatively governed
and committed way, without determining and thus conditioning it
according to any given law, principle, or concept. Here, then, is
another reason why philosophy should become poetic, and the true
philosopher, not merely a "half critic" (as the romantics
alleged against Kant), but a complete critic: philosophy should be
open and attuned to the Absolute without trying to subsume it under
any principle of reason, just as criticism is open and attuned to each
work without subsuming it under any external
law.[5]
### 3.4 Concrete Individuality
Like Spinoza's God and Kant's *omnitudo realitatis*
(All of Reality), the Absolute is an all-encompassing
*individual*: while it comprehends everything else, the
Absolute is also concrete. It is an individual whole--a totality,
the parts of which could be understood only negatively, as its
limitations. To approximate the Absolute, then, we need a mode of
consciousness that is particularly suited to discern a holistic unity
in an *individual*. While
SS5.3
discusses what is required in order to apprehend holistic unities,
and the holistic unities of artworks and natural beauties, this
section focuses on the individual character of artworks and natural
beauties.
On the romantic picture, an artwork that does not present itself as a
"living individual" (Novalis, *Poesie*, NS 2:
534, #35) is not worthy of the title of a work of art, and the one who
does not approach artworks as unique individuals is not a genuine
aesthetic critic: "Whoever conceives of poetry or philosophy as
individuals has a feeling for them" (F. Schlegel, AF: #415). The
aesthetic approach to beauty, then, is an approach to those things
that are irreducibly individuals, those that should not be approached
merely as ones of many--as instances of general kinds--but
as concrete individuals: "Everything that is to be criticized
must be an *individual*" (F. Schlegel, FLP: #634).And
this is the very approach that is required in the pursuit of the
Absolute given its individual nature.
### 3.5 Open-Endedness
Kant attributes to aesthetic pleasure:
>
>
> a causality in itself, namely that of maintaining the state of the
> representation of the mind and the occupation of the cognitive powers
> without a further aim. We linger over the consideration of the
> beautiful because this consideration strengthens and reproduces
> itself. (AK 5: 222)
>
>
>
Aesthetic feeling is open-ended and future-oriented. In contrast to
practical pleasures (the "pleasure in the good") and to
private, sensory pleasures (the "pleasure in the
agreeable") that need to bring forth an action or an object in
order to maintain themselves, aesthetic pleasure is self-maintaining.
This is partly because aesthetically enjoying an object involves a
commitment to remain faithful to the beauty of that object, beauty
that calls for and deserves an open-ended affective pursuit. The
romantics welcomed this structure of aesthetic feeling as particularly
suitable for the pursuit of the Absolute. Since the Absolute can never
be determined, the stance that approximates it must itself be
open-ended. It should involve a commitment to keep striving after the
Absolute open-endedly.
Since the romantics take philosophy to be a tendency "towards
the Absolute" (Schlegel, ITP: 242), philosophy itself should be
reconceived. The systematic search after first principles is not only
hopeless, but also unfortunate. It can only slight the significance of
the Absolute by the effort to determine it through principles.
Instead, philosophy should be aesthetically shaped, as an open-ended
pursuit:
>
>
> If knowledge of the infinite is itself infinite, therefore always only
> incomplete, imperfect, then philosophy as a science can never be
> completed closed and perfect, it can always only strive for these high
> goals, and try all possible ways to come closer and closer to them.
> (Schlegel, *Lectures on Transcendental Philosophy*, KA 12:
> 166)
>
>
>
## 4. Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics
The intersection between romantic aesthetics, ethics and politics
offers a particularly clear challenge to the standard view of the
romantics as anti-Enlightenment (discussed in
SS2).
This is because the romantics turned to aesthetics to a large extent
in order to pursue, rather than to reject, some of the core ethical
and political values of the Enlightenment, such as autonomy or
self-determination and the ideal of *Bildung*. Art and
aesthetics also provided a model for the romantic political ideal: a
democratic, egalitarian community grounded in the republican values of
liberty, equality and fraternity.
In addition to proving the anti-Enlightenment interpretation of the
romantics false, tracing these romantic notions of autonomy,
*Bildung* and political community also offers a challenge to
another well-known interpretation of the movement as apolitical (see
Schmitt 1986). In contrast to this interpretation, we find the
romantics exploring and emphasizing the importance of aesthetics for
ethical and political concerns. Shelley, for example, wrote in a
letter to a friend: "I consider Poetry subordinate to moral
& political science" (Shelley, LS 2: 71). In his famous
*Defence of Poetry* (1821), he proclaimed, "Poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the world" (SPP). Rather than
"aestheticizing" politics, then, the romantics found in
art and aesthetics resources for solving ethical and political
problems.
Yet, a central difficulty facing any interpretation of romantic ethics
and politics lies in the change that this view has undergone during
the later years of many a romantic: the strong democratic and
egalitarian views of the likes of Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich
Schleiermacher gave way to a growing conservatism and religiosity
after 1800. The first generation of British romantics likewise turned
from their conviction that to be young during the revolution was, as
Wordsworth said, "bliss" and "heaven", to an
acknowledgement of the challenges awaiting a genuine political reform.
With this shift in mind, they turned from political optimism to
religion. A unified account of romantic politics is thus untenable.
Instead, the section will focus on the political views of the German
romantics during their "formative years" (from
1797-1800) and of the British romantics mainly during their
early and middle phases This is because the ideals developed during
these phases, though different from some of the later ideals, can shed
light on the romantic path towards conservatism later on (Beiser
1992).
SS4.5
will briefly present the romantics' later political
thought.
### 4.1 Autonomy
"Freedom is the only reality in wishing, willing, sensing and
striving", writes F. Schlegel (TPL II: 155). While the absolute
reality of freedom might not admit of a proof, according to many of
the romantics, human beings should nonetheless approximate freedom by
developing autonomy--self-determination and self-legislation.
Autonomy is the right of the individual to think for herself and act
rationally and freely (TPL II: 155). The work of art and aesthetic
judgment were seen as paradigmatic expressions of autonomy and, as
such, as splendid models for the cultivation of individual human
autonomy. For (as discussed in
SS3.3)
neither the creation of art nor its appreciation is grounded in prior
given laws. And yet, both the production and judgment of art are not
lawless, but normatively governed by the laws generated autonomously
by each individual work and by each individual aesthetic judgment.
Poetry is a "law unto itself".
This characteristic of the production and judgment of art should not
only be incorporated into the way every person is to govern
herself--as the source of her own rational laws rather than as
subject to external laws, and as self-determining rather than
passively determined--but also serve as a model for the way in
which every person should be respected and treated. Aesthetics
provides us with a paradigm for following two central ethical
demands--the demand to govern oneself autonomously and the demand
to respect everyone else as autonomous.
These two duties, then, constitute another explanation of the
"categorical imperative of the genius" previously
mentioned--the demand that every person be a genius. For if every
individual is to be autonomous, she should fashion herself after the
model of the artist.
### 4.2 *Bildung*
*Bildung* is another characteristic romantic value that each
individual should develop in herself. While literally meaning
"formation", *Bildung* is best understood as a mode
of ethical and cultural cultivation, or self-realization that allows
the individual to mature into independence and responsibility.
"Concerning *Bildung*, we speak not of external culture,
but *the development of independence*" (F. Schlegel, TPL
II: 148). *Bildung* is a particularly *modern* value,
formed at least in part as a challenge to what the romantics regarded
as the rift between sensibility and reason in modern life. To achieve
*Bildung*, each individual has to constitute herself as a
unified whole that coordinates a balance between sensibility and
reason: "The end of humanity is...to achieve harmony in
knowing, doing and enjoying" (F. Schlegel, *On the Study of
Greek Poetry*, in KA I, 627).
The artwork is a good model for such an ideal insofar as it is,
according to the romantics, an organic and harmonious whole of diverse
and even conflicting parts:
>
>
> Poetry...must be a harmonious mood of our mind...where
> everything finds its proper aspect.... Everything in a truly
> poetic book seems so *natural*--and yet so marvelous. We
> think it could not be otherwise...and we feel the
> infinite...sensations of a plurality in agreement. (Novalis, *Last
> Fragments*: #3)
>
>
>
This is why "Every human being who is cultivated and who
cultivates himself", namely, the person who achieves
*Bildung*, "contains a novel within himself" (F.
Schlegel, AF: #78).
Aesthetic judgment is also a harmony of reason and sensibility. On
this issue too, the romantics were inspired by Kant's
aesthetics, according to which aesthetic judgment consists in the free
play between the understanding, imagination and pleasure. Approaching
the world, ourselves and one another aesthetically, then, is
approaching it with a harmony of "knowing, doing, and
enjoying". And achieving this harmony constitutes a genuine
moral being: a balanced rational, sensible and affective person. For
that reason, it is not surprising to find Coleridge, the critic,
aiming to establish "the close and reciprocal connections of
Just Taste with pure Morality" (Lecture I, CLL).
Romantic *Bildung* was a political ideal as much as it was an
ethical one. It was needed, not only for the sake of independent
individual responsibility, but also for the possibility of a genuine
non-revolutionary republic:
>
>
> There is no greater need of the age than the need for a spiritual
> counterweight to the Revolution and to the despotism which the
> Revolution exercises over people.... Where can we seek and find
> such a counterweight? The answer isn't hard: unquestionably in
> ourselves...the center of humanity lies there. (F. Schlegel,
> *Ideas*: #41)
>
>
>
The French revolution had shown the romantics both the value of a
republic based on liberty, equality and fraternity, but also the
dangers of anarchism and strife that revolutions carry with them. The
proper path to a republic, they thought, is not through a
revolutionary act, but through proper education. Art does not only
offer a model for a harmonious, cultivated soul, but is also the best
*medium* through which to achieve the moral education that
leads to this harmony and, on its basis, to the best republic.
Attending to art (as well as producing it) is a form of
self-cultivation because the spirit of art allows human beings to
transcend baseness (a particular danger given modern instrumentalism
and materialism), and to develop their humanity.
As we now turn to see, the romantics regarded art also as a
particularly effective medium for uniting people, no matter their
differences, and so took it to be a great spur for united, social and
political action.
### 4.3 Individuality and Sociality
The allegiance to autonomy and to the value of *Bildung* may
seem to indicate individualism. And it does, *to an extent*.
While individuality is indeed a romantic value, anti-communal
individualism is not. The romantics never celebrated uncurbed
individuality, but called for a balance between individuality and
sociality: "A certain regulated interaction between
individuality and universality...constitutes the first condition
for moral well-being" (F. Schlegel, OP: 427).
Without doubt, the romantics criticized Kant's categorical
imperative as proposing a problematically universalistic ethics that
discourages the free expression of unique personalities. They viewed
such a universalist ethics as problematic because they regarded
individual expression and the development of a unique, characteristic
and unified self as intrinsically and morally valuable. Yet, the
romantics were also critical of extreme individualism, such as the one
they found promoted by some Enlightenment thinkers. In other words,
they challenged those individualists who criticized any form of social
and communal participation as potentially a form of passive submission
to external authority.
In response to these two extremes of universalism and radical
individualism, the romantics sought after a golden mean--romantic
ethics strived to preserve and strengthen social bonds and encouraged
a pluralistic communal life *while* supporting rational
criticism, autonomy, individual rights, liberties and freedom of
expression: "Does not the universal gain from the individual,
the individual from universal relations?" (Novalis, *Faith and
Love*: #5). The romantics believed that individualism is not merely
compatible with sociality and communitarianism, but that it actually
depends on genuine forms of the latter: "The vocation of man is
attainable only through human society" (F. Schlegel, TPL II:
144). Autonomy and *Bildung*, in particular, though nothing
other than *individual* freedom and self-realization, can never
be divorced from the social:
>
>
> Autonomy should be universal and not relate to the individual but the
> whole, for otherwise it would destroy itself.... *We cannot
> consider human beings individually*. (TPL II: 156)
>
>
>
On the romantic picture, the achievement of free, fully-formed
individuality is impossible independently of strong sociality and
*vice versa*. An ideal of sociality is deficient if it leaves
no freedom for the distinct expression and liberties of each
individual, and the individual is most herself, as an individual only
insofar as she freely interacts with others: "A person can be a
person only among people" (TPL II: 145).
Rather than contradictory impulses, as they are often regarded today,
sociality and individuality, on the romantic picture, are not only
compatible but also naturally harmonious--grounded in human
nature:[6]
>
>
> No man is merely man, but...at the same time he can and should be
> genuinely and truly all mankind. Therefore, man, in reaching out time
> and again beyond himself to seek and find the complement of his
> innermost being in the depths of another, is certain to return to
> himself. (F. Schlegel, DP: 54)
>
>
>
It is *this* romantic view of natural human
sociability--rather than some exaggerated zeal or
effusiveness--that explains and is explained by the centrality of
love in romanticism. In contrast to many a modern thinker, the
romantics regarded love rather than self-interest as a basic condition
of human nature ("Love is...the core of ourselves"
(F. Schlegel, TPL II: 151)), and as the proper basis for a genuine
sociable but pluralistic community:
>
>
> Yes, love, you power of attraction of the spiritual world! No
> individual life or development is possible without you. Without you
> everything must degenerate into a crude, homogeneous mass....
> There is no individual development without love, and without the
> development of one's individuality there is no perfection in
> love. When one complements the other, both grow together inseparably.
> I feel united within me the two fundamental conditions of ethical
> life! (Schleiermacher, "Monologue II", 180).
>
>
>
But as natural as it may be, the romantics believed that love has
suffered paralysis in modernity. On their view, the rise of capitalism
and instrumentalism had suppressed natural social bonds and encouraged
self-interest. The consequent view of human beings as solely
quantitatively distinct further leveled them and inhibited their
distinctive and unique expressions.
How could people balance individuality and sociality in the face of
modernity? Here too romantic poetry and the creative imagination come
to the rescue. Poetry is not only based in love, but is itself a form
of love insofar as it bonds different individuals:
>
>
> Poetry befriends and binds with unseverable ties the hearts of all
> those who love it. Even though in their own lives they may pursue the
> most diverse ends, may feel contempt for what the other holds most
> sacred, may fail to appreciate or communicate with one another, and
> remain in all other realms strangers forever; in poetry through a
> higher magic power, they are united and at peace. (F. Schlegel, DP:
> 53)
>
>
>
The poet is, quintessentially, "a social being" (F.
Schlegel, DP: 55) insofar as he *both* expresses, "in
lasting works the expression of his unique poetry" (DP: 55)
*and* reaches to others and reciprocally communicates with
them. The poet integrates:
>
>
> his part with the entire body of poetry.... He can do this when
> he has found the center point through communication with those who
> have found theirs from a different side, in a different way. Love
> needs a responding love. Indeed, for the true poet's
> communication...can be beneficial and instructive. (DP: 55)
>
>
>
Following the "categorical imperative of the genius" is
required, then, also for achieving *Bildung* and autonomous
individuality in and through society: it is an ethical and social
demand as well.
### 4.4 Political Community
While sociality and communal spirit are ethically required for the
achievement of autonomy and *Bildung*, community was also a
romantic *political* ideal. Such an ideal required that what
the romantics viewed as modern alienation--estrangement of the
self from others--be challenged in three ways: by promoting love
(as discussed above), developing a sphere of free social interaction
and pursuing a holistic, social unity.
The ideal political community must facilitate a sphere of social life,
which is free and independent of political control because free
sociality and conversation, the ends of this sphere, are both valuable
in themselves and the best alternative for external laws. The
romantics believed that social bonds should not be upheld by laws that
are imposed on individual citizens from outside, but by the love
encouraged by a common culture and free interaction. Romantic poetry
is an exemplary model for achieving such a free domain since it is
"a republican speech...in which all the parts are free
citizens and have the right to vote" (Schlegel, CF: #65).
Aesthetics is at the center of this political vision also because the
political ends of free sociability and conversation are the very same
ones that the romantics practiced in their intellectual-artistic
salons and in their communal, cooperative aesthetic projects. The
political community should allow for creative and artistic endeavors
such as the *Athenaeum* journal, which was the mouthpiece of
the German romantics at the end of the eighteenth century and a
journal that was independent of the control of the publishing
establishment. It was written in collaboration (mainly by the Schlegel
brothers, Novalis, and Schleiermacher), and aimed at rational
criticism and *Bildung*. Such aesthetic projects are a model
for the politician. This is because "sympoetry" and
"symphilosophy", as Schlegel and Novalis called such
cooperative intellectual and aesthetic projects, should be an integral
part of political life:
>
>
> Perhaps a whole new epoch of science and art would be inaugurated were
> symphilosophy and sympoetry to become so common and deeply felt that
> there would be nothing odd were several people of mutually
> complementary natures to create works in communion with each other.
> (F. Schlegel, AF: #125)
>
>
>
The ideal political community must also be characterized by a specific
kind of relation between the political body as a whole and its
members: the state should be an organic or holistic whole, which means
most broadly that the state as a whole must be prior to the parts (see
Beiser 1992).
First, the best state is prior to its parts since, as we saw, it is
necessary for individual identity and self-realization.
Additionally, the romantic community as a whole is prior to the
individual citizens (i.e., its parts), insofar as genuine social bonds
and a well-functioning political entity cannot be
"constructed" out of separate self-sufficient and
self-interested individuals (as the modern social contract theory has
it). To properly function and achieve the ethical aim of sociality,
the links between the political members should be organic: the members
should not be connected to one another by an externally imposed social
contract, but by natural love, affection and attraction.
Unsurprisingly, it is through poetry that the familial-like bonds,
required for the ideal state, should be developed over and above the
unit of the biological family. "Within the family, minds become
organically one, and for this reason, the family is total
poetry" (F. Schlegel, *Ideas*: #152).
While the state as a whole should be prior to its parts *in this
sense*, the law of such a state should not be imposed on its
citizens from outside, but be *self*-determined. Individual
autonomy should be supported by promoting the direct and active
participation of all individuals in the political process. The organic
unity of the state, then, implies *reciprocity:* the parts are
dependent on and are posterior to the whole, while the whole, in
respect of its essential self-determination, also depends on and is
posterior to its parts.
The work of art provides, once again, the structural model for this
political ideal by virtue of its organic unity, where "every
whole can be a part and every part really a whole" (Schlegel,
CF: #14). When genuine, art is characterized exactly by the kind of
holistic, organic, but egalitarian and pluralistic unity that must
characterize the ideal community:
>
>
> Many works that are praised for the beauty of their coherence have
> less unity than a motley heap of ideas simply animated by the ghost of
> a spirit and aiming at a single purpose. What really holds the latter
> together is that free and equal fellowship in which, so the wise man
> assures us, the citizens of the perfect state will live at some future
> date; it's that unqualifiedly social spirit.... (F.
> Schlegel, CF: #103)
>
>
>
An organic state is called for also because the mechanistic structure
of the modern state is responsible for the decline of religion. This
structure caused, according to the romantics, a form of
"enslavement" and a faith in materialism and
instrumentalism, both of which prevent people from cultivating their
spirituality and relation to the divine. Both in their early and late
phases, the romantics believed that poetry was the best way for
inspiring spirituality and religiosity. "Every artist is a
mediator for all other men", writes F. Schlegel (*Ideas*:
#44), regarding this "mediator" as mediating between man
and God. Schleiermacher confirms and develops this connection when
suggesting that poets are:
>
>
> the true priests of the Highest.... They place the heavenly and
> eternal before them as an object of pleasure and unity, as the sole
> inexhaustible source of that toward which their poetry is directed.
> They strive...to ignite a love for the Highest...This is the
> higher priesthood that proclaims the inner meaning of all spiritual
> secrets and speaks from the kingdom of God. (Schleiermacher, *On
> Religion* [translation modified]).
>
>
>
It is for these reasons that "at the time of the republic, the
artists will not be a special class" (F. Schlegel, PF: #749). In
such an ideal republic everyone must be an artist who, by means of the
poetic spirit of love, is related to the other citizens as artists
relate to one another.
### 4.5 Late Romanticism
Statements such as Blake's claim, "Princes...and
Houses of Commons & Houses of Lords [are] something Else besides
Human Life" ("Public Address" (1809) in PPWB) clearly display
the revolutionary nature of the romantics. But the romantic transition
from a more liberal framework to a more conservative one is explained
primarily by their reaction to the terror of the French revolution.
Though many of the romantics kept allegiance to the revolution until
fairly late (1798), the acknowledgement of its failures and the
dangers involved in any revolutionary act led them to modify, though
not to renounce, their republican ideal. Even during this stage of
their development, the romantics believed that the republic offered
the best political structure. But, while still involving democratic
elements, a proper republic, they argued should also involve
aristocratic and monarchical elements because the educated should rule
over the uneducated:
>
>
> A perfect republic would have to be not just democratic but
> aristocratic and monarchic at the same time: to legislate justly and
> freely, the educated would have to outweigh and guide the uneducated,
> and everything would have to be organized into an absolute whole. (F.
> Schlegel, AF: #214)
>
>
>
Rather than opposed to the original romantic ideal, this late view is
a natural outgrowth of the earlier ideal since it does not only
maintain the early republicanism, but also continues, through
modification, the early romantic emphasis on *Bildung* as a
necessary condition for a proper republic.
Since even during this later period, the romantic political ideal
consisted of a republican, holistic community grounded in love, art
and aesthetics still played significant ethical and political roles in
the late romantic phase. Even later on in their careers, the romantics
insisted that art and aesthetics were crucial models and resources for
the pursuit of ethical and political ends.
## 5. Aesthetics and Nature
One of the romantics' central aims was to (re)enchant nature in
the face of what they regarded as a threat from modern science. The
threat was embodied primarily in the worry that modern science
alienated (rational and free) human beings from nature, which, through
the lens of this new science, had been viewed as a domain of brute,
determined, mechanical causality
(SS5.1).
Aesthetics is capable of (re)enchanting nature insofar as it brings
out a different conception of nature as organic rather than mechanic.
On this organic conception, nature is (a) an organic whole, which is
reciprocally interdependent on its parts; (b) a domain of teleological
rather than merely mechanical causality; and (c) a dynamic and living
force, which is self-organizing and self-generating
(SS5.2).
"Science should become poetic" insofar as it should
approach nature in the same way that criticism approaches romantic
poetry. Like romantic poetry, nature should be viewed as an organic
and spontaneous whole. Under this conception of nature, rational,
autonomous human beings are not alienated from, but are rather part
and parcel of, nature
(SS5.3).
### 5.1 The Worry
>
>
> We have fallen out with nature, and what was once (as we believe) One
> is now in conflict with itself, and mastery and servitude alternate on
> both sides. It often seems to us as if the world were everything and
> we nothing, but often too as if we were everything and the world
> nothing. (Holderlin, Preface to *Hyperion*, HSA 3:
> 326).
>
>
>
Holderlin expresses here a ubiquitous romantic sentiment. Not
only has modernity divided man from himself by enforcing the duality
between reason and sensibility and severed the individual from his
natural social relations (section 4), but it also alienated man from
nature. Modern science, "[a] vulture, whose wings are dull
realities", was regarded as the main culprit (Edgar Allen Poe,
"Sonnet--To Science").
Through the lens of modern science, nature was regarded as an
inanimate, mechanistic domain of dead and meaningless matter that is
composed of separate atoms and thoroughly determined by efficient
causality. Modern science "dissected [nature] atomistically like
a dead corpse" (Eichendorff, EW 5: 423). The romantics regarded
this approach to nature as reductive as much as they regarded it as
"dissecting": it reduces nature to *mere* matter,
devoid of the features that the romantics took to be essential to it,
like holistic unity, self-organization and life. The growing sense of
man's alienation from his natural surrounding was seen as a
product of this reduction of nature: human beings seemed alienated
from nature exactly because the rational, soulful and sense-making
character that is usually associated with them is opposed to a
mechanistic and deterministic domain.
The troublesome consequences of this approach to nature are multiple.
First, there is the psychological and existential crisis that is well
encapsulated by Novalis's claim, "Philosophy is actually
homesickness--the *urge to be everywhere at home*"
(*General Draft*: #45), and commemorated by landmark romantic
works, such as Caspar David Friedrich's "The Wanderer
above the Mist" (1818).
In the epistemological and metaphysical domains, varieties of
skeptical doubts loom large behind the modern approach to nature. If
modern science is right then the relation between nature and
normativity is unclear. But if nature cannot provide rational norms,
then how can we account for and justify our empirical claims to
knowledge (human experience)? On the flipside of this epistemological
worry is a metaphysical concern about the nature of the subject. For
the subject, as the source of meaning, is seen as *only*
that--a dematerialized source of meaning, devoid not only of a
body, as Descartes emphasized, but, if Kant is right, of any
substantiality at all (see Bernstein 2003).
Third among the consequences is the threat to any awe-inspiring stance
towards the world. Not only can the divinity once attributed to nature
no longer be found therein, but modern science was also seen as posing
a challenge to any attempt at a secular alternative to religion. Seen
as fully accessible to the calculative part of the human mind, nature
becomes transparent and devoid of any mystery or human-transcending
power. Are we left without a source of wonder, awe or reverence in our
modern world?
According to the romantics, the way out of these worrisome
consequences requires that we recognize that modern science is
reductive not only in terms of its object--nature--but also
in terms of its methodology: modern science employs merely what
Wordsworth called the "independent intellect". The
romantics understood this as calculative reason when it is isolated
from non-calculative reason, sensibility and imagination. Employed
thusly, the independent intellect works as a "knife in
hand" (Wordsworth, *The Prelude* (1805), book X, line
877).
This is crucial because, if the romantics are to retrieve the lost
unity of nature itself and our lost unity with nature, they must
propose a new scientific methodology, or, what comes to the same
thing, a new approach to nature. The romantics aspired to reform and
counterbalance the merely calculative, quantitative and mathematical
use of reason that is characteristic of modern science, and open an
era "When no more numbers and figures feature//As the keys to
unlock every creature" (Novalis, *Henry von Ofterdingen*,
NS 1:344). Human beings should strive to return to "the laws of
things which lie/beyond the reach of human will or power;/The life of
nature" (Wordsworth, "The Tables Turned", 1798, LB)
by adopting a more holistic approach that includes practical reason,
sensibility, feeling, imagination, and above all the aesthetic
capacity of the mind.
It should be no surprise that this holistic approach to
nature--the new romantic science--is, in essence, poetic. It
is romantic poetry, which, as *Athenaeum Fragments* (AF) #116
announces, "fuses and mixes" opposing forces: reason,
feeling, imagination, physics, poetry, philosophy, medicine and
alchemy--when it comes to methodology--and matter, form,
freedom and nature--when it comes to the object of study,
nature:
Anyone who finds in infinite nature nothing but one whole, one
complete poem, in every word, every syllable of which the harmony of
the whole rings out and nothing destroys it, has won the highest prize
of all. (Ritter, *Fragmente* 2: 205)
### 5.2 Romantic Science
While Kant's discussions of nature, organisms and teleological
judgment in the third *Critique*, and Schelling's *On
the World Soul* (1798) and *First Outline of a System of
Philosophy of Nature* (1799) are the primary sources of
inspiration for romantic science, the metaphysical starting point for
the romantic view of nature is what Fredrick Beiser aptly dubbed
"a strange wedding plan" between Fichte's idealism
and Spinoza's realistic monism (2003:
131).[7]
Why synthetize these seemingly opposed philosophical projects--a
form of idealism with realism, indeterminism with determinism, and
dualism with monism? Briefly, in Fichte, the romantics found a
philosopher that took the Kantian insight about the absolute value of
freedom a step further, and in Spinoza, one who recognized the genuine
monistic structure of the universe, where the mental (in the form of
reason and subjectivity, the seats of freedom) is the flipped side of
the physical (in the form of matter and objectivity). If nature itself
is both physical and mental, if it has a soul or reason and a body,
then, it differs from human beings only in degree, not in kind.
Natural phenomena and human beings are simply different manifestations
of an encompassing nature, which is therefore nothing other than
Spirit: "Nature should be visible spirit, and spirit should be
invisible nature" (Schelling, *Ideas for a Philosophy of
Nature*, SW 2: 56).
Thus, the marriage between the philosophical outlooks of Fichte and
Spinoza promises to consummate the valuable nucleus of modernity (the
Enlightenment's emphasis on freedom and individual rational
criticism), while rebutting the modern ills of division and
alienation. It promises to allow human beings to "feel at
home" in a meaningful, free and natural world.
But this is only the metaphysical presupposition behind the romantic
conception of nature. Their understanding of nature, not only as
monistic but also as an organic whole that is self-forming and
self-generating--in their terms, as a creative, living
force--is inspired by what, according to them, Kant only started
to point to, but failed fully to develop in the third
*Critique* since he restricted it to a regulative and heuristic
conception: namely, the conception of organic nature.
Thinking about nature as Spirit, different from the human merely in
degree, already presupposes a holistic conception of nature, where the
whole is prior to the parts. For, if all individuals are, in
Spinoza's words "modes" of nature, namely, merely
different manifestations of the one and same whole, then these parts
are necessarily dependent on the whole. But insofar as nature is also
an (all encompassing) organism, then just as its parts are dependent
on it (for their existence and intelligibility), so it depends on its
parts for its existence as the organism that it is: independently of
its parts, an organism could not sustain its particular organization,
i.e., its life form. In an organism, the parts are the
*reciprocal* cause and effect of one another and of the
organism as a whole.
But an organism is also *self*-organizing and
*self*-forming. While the organization of artifacts is imposed
on them from outside by their producers, the particular organization
and so the life form of any organism is self-produced. Consequently,
to view nature as an organism is to view it dynamically--not as a
dead matter, but as self-forming and self-generating. Indeed, for the
romantics, nature is one living force, whose different parts--not
only self-conscious philosophers, creative artists, animals, plants,
and minerals, but also kinds of matter--are different stages of
its organization.
>
>
> From moss, in which the trace of organization is hardly visible, to
> the noble Form [*Gestalt*] which seems to have shed the chains
> of matter, the one and same drive within rules, a drive that strives
> to work according to one and the same ideal of purposiveness, strives
> to express *ad infinitum* one and the same archetype
> [*Urbild*], the pure form of our Spirit. (Schelling,
> "Review of the Newest in Philosophical Literature,
> 1796")
>
>
>
### 5.3 Art's Nature, Nature's Art
Beauty in nature and art is a key for this organic and dynamic
conception of nature for multiple reasons. First, the holistic and
unifying character of poetry is suitable not only for the reformed
scientific methodology that fuses together reason, imagination and
feeling, but also for unraveling analogies and unities that are
usually hidden from the bare eye, for example, the unity between kinds
of matter and self-conscious human beings as different stages in the
organization of the same life force.
Second, natural beauties and artworks inspire an interest in natural
organization and life by their analogy with organisms, or as the
romantics often put it, by being themselves organic in nature.
>
>
> The transcendental poetry of the future could be called organic. When
> it is invented it will be seen that all true poets up to now made
> poetry organically *without knowing it*. (Novalis,
> *Logological Fragments*: I, #38).
>
>
>
Artworks and natural beauties are analogous to organisms in various
respects.
To begin with, the analogy concerns their structure or unity. Both
have holistic unities, where the parts and the whole are reciprocally
interdependent. Artworks and natural beauties are so structured since
(1) their beauty as a whole depends on the existence and the exact
organization of their parts (for, if, say, any of the specific shapes,
hues, or composition of a painting were to change, the painting as a
whole may not be beautiful any longer), and (2) their parts are
recognized as what they are (as beauty-making parts, or parts of a
*beautiful* object) only in light of the whole (so that, for
example, a mere shade of white may be beautiful only in light of the
beauty of the painting to which it contributes as a whole, but not
necessarily beautiful on its own, or when it figures in any other
object). "In poetry", then, just as in organisms,
"every whole can be a part and every part really a whole"
(F. Schlegel, CF: #14).
Kant claimed that the main difference between the holistic unity of
organisms and the holistic unities of artworks and natural beauties is
the difference between a causal or existential unity and what he
called a formal unity. In organic life, the reciprocal interdependence
between parts and wholes is causal and existential in the sense that
it is life-sustaining. Kant thought that in aesthetics, the reciprocal
interdependence is formal, rather than causal or existential, in the
sense that it does not explain the *existence* of the objects
at stake, but their beauty. While, for example, a painting might
continue to exist as a painting even if some of its parts changed
(say, if its composition, shapes, or hues changed), the beauty of this
painting is unlikely to survive such a change. In this case, it is the
*beauty* of the whole painting that depends on its parts, and
it is the *beauty* of the parts, rather than their existence,
that depends on the beauty of the whole: for were the painting as a
whole not beautiful, its parts would not be recognized as what they
are, namely, *beauty-making* parts.
The romantics seemed to diverge from Kant on that matter. For them,
great poetry is materially and not merely formally organic:
>
>
> The innate impulse of this work [*Wilhelm Meister*], so
> organized and organizing down to its finest detail to form a whole. No
> break is accidental or insignificant;...everything is at the same
> time both means and end. (F. Schlegel, WM: 273-74)
>
>
>
This means that the romantics took the work of art to be analogous to
organisms in yet a stronger sense--not only in terms of its
holistic unity, but also in terms of its life--its
*self-*organization and self-judgment. Recall the *sui
generis* character of artworks (discussed in
SS3.2):
each work constitutes the norms according to which alone it could be
properly judged. In romantic terms, every work has its own
self-judgment. Seen as such, the artwork is not a *mere*
artifact, but a *quasi*-organism in the sense that it organizes
and regulates itself. And like other organic products of nature, the
work too has, as it were, a life of its own, even though it is not
*self-*organizing in the strict sense:
>
>
> Just as a child is only a thing which wants to become a human being,
> so a poem is only a product of nature which wants to become a work of
> art. (F. Schlegel, CF: #21)
>
>
>
It is the holistic unity and life in the aesthetic domain that draws
our attention to organisms and inspires us to seek the organic
structure of nature as a whole.
Third, following Kant, the romantics believed that the beauty of
nature reveals the purposiveness without a purpose of nature as a
whole. It inspires and guides us in seeing nature as purposively
organized--organized as if according to a specific
purpose--even though we cannot attribute this purposive structure
to any will, creator, or any end-governed activity:
>
>
> That which reminds us of nature and thus stimulates a feeling for the
> infinite abundance of life is beautiful. Nature is organic, and
> therefore, the highest beauty is forever vegetative; and the same is
> true for morality and love. (F. Schlegel, *Ideas*: #86)
>
>
>
While this view is to be found in the third *Critique*, the
romantics went a few steps further than Kant: first, they considered
purposiveness, teleological structure and life real features of
nature, rather than regulative principles for approaching nature.
Second, they took these features to indicate that nature is different
from self-conscious, creative human beings only in degree, but not in
kind: like human beings, nature is end-governed. It is beauty, above
all, that inspires this realization. As Novalis puts it,
"Through beauty, nature transforms itself into a human
being" (*Heinrich von Ofterdingen*, NS 1), the same being
that governs itself by creatively and self-consciously setting ends.
The more we properly attend to beauty and art the more capable we
would be of seeing nature and humanity as different aspects of a
single, unified phenomenon:
>
>
> Actually *criticism*...that doctrine which in the study of
> nature directs our attention to ourselves...and in the study of
> ourselves directs it to the outside world, to outer observations and
> experiments--is...the most fruitful of all
> *indications*. It allows us to sense nature, or the *outside
> world*, like a human being. (Novalis, *General Draft*:
> #42).
>
>
>
Aesthetics is central for the romantic "scientific
revolution" for yet another reason that concerns its capacity to
"enchant" nature. "Enchanting" stands here for
the process of rendering nature magical, or mysterious, and thus
inspiring reverence and awe (see Stone 2005). While bringing out
nature's organic structure is decisive for rebutting modern
alienation, enchantment is required primarily for challenging two
other consequences of modern science: the threat of a detached and
unresponsive treatment of nature and what the romantics regarded as a
threat of secularization. Not only did modern science portray nature
as a brute domain of mechanism, and thus devoid of any awe-inspiring
power, but it also rendered it completely transparent to the human
mind, and thus lacking in the kind of mystery and magic that may
inspire awe in a secular world. Changing our attitude towards nature
and inspiring awe for it requires that we recover a sense of mystery
and magic in nature, and, indeed, in everything ordinary, in
everything that we have come to take for granted. This
process--of recovering a sense of mystery and magic in nature and
the ordinary--is so central in romanticism that it takes on the
movement's name:
>
>
> Romanticizing is nothing other than a qualitative raising into higher
> power.... By giving a higher meaning to the ordinary, a
> mysterious appearance to the ordinary, the dignity of the unacquainted
> to that of which we are acquainted, the mere appearance of infinity to
> finite, I romanticize them. (Novalis, *Logological Fragments*:
> #66)
>
>
>
Poetry is most suitable for the business of romanticizing by virtue of
two of its main features: (a) its "defamiliarizing" power,
and, (b) its "ironic" ability to point to the limits of
our knowledge, and thus to what must remain mysterious--beyond
our cognitive capacities.
First, by virtue of its power to subtly describe even the most
concrete of details and to bring to life even what, independently of
it, attracts no attention, poetry has a special capacity for
defamiliarization--a power that was first noticed by the
romantics in their account of "romanticizing", but dubbed
"defamiliarization" only later, by 20th century
literary theorists. By its non-ordinary use of language, attention to
details and evoking power, poetry brings out in vivid colors what we
are usually blind to, even if it is, literally, the closest and most
familiar to us. Poetry has the power to make the most familiar new,
refreshing, and thus, other than familiar--different and even
mysterious.
Like Novalis, Wordsworth is one of the first proponents of
romanticizing in this sense. He instructs: while romantic poetry
should start with the most familiar and contingent--"the
incidents and situations from common life"--it should also
strive to elevate them by
>
>
> throw[ing] over them a certain coloring of the imagination, whereby
> ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way; and
> further and above all [poetry should aim] to make these incidents and
> situations interesting by tracing in them...the primary laws of
> our nature. (Preface to the *Lyrical Ballads*.)
>
>
>
Wordsworth calls on poets to write in the language of "low and
rustic life". But it is exactly the poetic use of this language
that allows the "passions" of those whose language it
is--ordinary people--to be "incorporated with the
beautiful and permanent forms of Nature" (ibid.). And it is
through this process of romanticizing that nature appears again as
great and awe-inspiring, "The great Nature that exists in
words/Of might Poets" (Wordsworth, *The Prelude* (1805),
Book V, lines 618-19).
Second, romantic poetry is essentially ironic insofar as it brings our
finitude, particularly the limits of our knowledge, to consciousness
(see
SS2.2).
While romantic irony is the basis for a way of life that is centered
on humility, it also paves the way for awe and reverence for it
suggests that there is much beyond our comprehension, much that
remains mysterious, incomprehensible, greater than our capacities and
possibly infinite rather than finite like us. There is much around us
that merits awe.
Wordsworth's description of nature is possibly the most powerful
portrayal of the awe-inspiring character of nature as it is revealed
by the poetic imagination:
>
>
> A sense sublime
>
>
> Of something far more deeply interfused,
>
>
> Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
>
>
> And the round ocean, and the living air,
>
>
> And the blue sky, in the mind of man,
>
>
> A motion and a spirit, that impels,
>
>
> All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
>
>
> And rolls through all things.
>
>
> ...
>
>
> I, so long
>
>
> A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
>
>
> Unwearied in that service: rather say
>
>
> With warmer love, oh! With far deeper zeal
>
>
> Of holier love.
>
>
> (Wordsworth, "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern
> Abbey" (1798), lines 96-103 and 154-57, in LB)
>
>
>
Through the romantic lens, then, nature becomes alive and a locus of
Spirit. Rather than an alien force, nature speaks to us as we speak to
it and to each other.
>
>
> Nature is a temple where living columns
>
>
> Sometimes let confused words come out;
>
>
> Man walks through these forests of symbols
>
>
> Which observe him with a familiar gaze.
>
>
> (La Nature est un temple ou de vivants piliers
>
>
> Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles
>
>
> L'homme y passe a travers des forets de symbols
>
>
> Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers)
>
> (Baudelaire,
> *Correspondences*, 1861 [2000])
>
>
>
This is liberating and re-enchanting, but it also puts certain demands
on us, for example, the demands to love nature as we love other human
beings:
>
>
> Oh, most magnificent and noble Nature!
>
>
> Have I not worshipped thee with such a love
>
>
> As never mortal man before displayed?
>
>
> Adored thee in thy majesty of visible creation,
>
>
> And searched into thy hidden and mysterious ways
>
>
> As Poet, as Philosopher, as Sage?
>
>
> (unknown date, Humphry Davy [1778-1829], *Fragmentary
> Remains*, 14)
>
>
>
As eccentric as the romantic call to poeticize nature and science may
initially seem, it is arguably of relevance today. The organic and
re-enchanted conception of nature did not only anticipate some
currents in the modern ecological movement, but it also contains
resources for further developments in contemporary environmental
philosophy and philosophy of science.
## 6. Romantic Legacy
Interestingly, scholars tend to explain romantic aesthetics not only
in terms of its sources (discussed in
SS2.1),
but also in terms of its legacy. While there are very interesting and
well-established connections between romantic aesthetics and modernism
(see Abrams 1971, Frye 1968, Cavell 1979), this section focuses on the
attempt to draw a link between the former and postmodernism, a link
whose ground is significantly weaker.
In recent decades, a large number of romantic scholars have argued
that romanticism, in general, and the romantic primacy of aesthetics,
in particular, is a precursor of the fundamental outlook of
postmodernist and poststructuralist views (see, for example,
Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 1988, Bowie 2003, Bowman 2014, and Gasche
1991). This reading is based on the skepticism the romantics raised
about first principles and about systematicity, the romantic emphasis
on human creation and language, historicism and hermeneutics, their
view of the fragmented nature of modern life and on certain
formulations of the primacy of aesthetics that may seem, initially, to
erase any distinction between what is "real" and what is
"poetic", a product of the creative imagination. Friedrich
Schlegel, for example, proclaims: "No poetry, no
reality.... There is, despite all the senses, no external world
without imagination" (AF: #350), and "Everything that
rests on the opposition between appearance and reality...is not
purely poetic" (FLP: #146).
These proclamations may seem to suggest that "there is no way
out" of creative constructions, or "texts", or that
"art...does not need to point beyond itself" (Bowie
2003: 53), as if romantic aesthetics anticipates central trends in
post-modernism and
post-structuralism.[8]
But there are reasons to worry about such a
"postmodernist" reading. Some lines in
romanticism--skepticism about foundationalist philosophy and
system-building, the emphasis on human creation, language, and the
role of historicism and hermeneutics--are indeed related to
certain strands in postmodernism. But reading romantic aesthetics as
proto-postmodernist is limited for a host of reasons.
First, the romantic faith in the imaginative and emotive capacities
associated with the production and reception of art, and their
skepticism of absolute principles and philosophical systems did not
make them skeptical of reason, as many postmodernist thinkers are (see
SS2.1
and Beiser 2003: 3). Even romantic skepticism of absolute principles
(see
SS3.1).
cannot be equated with the rejection of all principles and rules. For
example, though art and art appreciation cannot be reduced to any
given, prior rules, they are not lawless, but the source of their own
normativity (see
SS3.3).
Second, in spite of the romantic stress on the fragmentary nature of
human experience (embodied in their choice of the aphoristic style,
which is emphasized by their post-modernist readers), the romantics
never gave up the striving after unity and wholeness. Art was not
meant as a replacement for unity, but exactly as the best way to
strive after and approximate unity in our modern and fragmentary
condition.
>
>
> For the philosopher...art is supreme, for it opens to him the
> holiest of holies, where that which is separated in nature and
> history, and which can never be united either in life and action or in
> thought, burns as though in a single flame in eternal and primordial
> unity. (Schelling, *System of Transcendental Philosophy*, 1800,
> in Heath 1978: 231)
>
>
>
Third, the romantics' desire for and search after the Absolute
(discussed in 3) is another reason to reject the post-modernist
interpretation. For such a desire is anathema to most post-modernist
thinkers, who resist and shun the possibility (and desirability) of
*any* absolute reality.
Moreover, if one opposes the idea that there is "no way out of
texts", or that reality is "nothing other than
construction", then the post-modernist reading of the romantics
appears uncharitable. Fortunately, this interpretation does not force
itself on us since there are many other charitable and (historically,
textually and philosophically) well-grounded readings of the
proclamations just mentioned and of the romantic primacy of the
aesthetics. Many of these readings were proposed in this entry under
the umbrella of the formal approach to romantic aesthetics. On this
formal account, rather than claiming that there is no distinction
between "reality" and "fiction", or that there
is "no way out of imaginative constructions", the
romantics urged human beings to fashion their ordinary life and
philosophy aesthetically for epistemological, metaphysical, ethical,
political and scientific reasons.
Arguably, romantic aesthetics is not of merely historical interest.
This entry has pointed to a few facets of the relevance of romantic
aesthetics, thus supporting views like Berlin's, for example,
according to which the revolution brought about by romanticism is
"the deepest and most lasting of all changes in the life of the
West..." (1999: xiii). Its tremendous impact on generations
to come all the way up to the present day is one explanation of the
difficulty of precisely delimiting when the age of romanticism begins
and when it ends. Indeed, rather than a post-romantic age, our age may
be yet another phase in the age of romanticism:
>
>
> Romanticism...is the first major phase in an imaginative
> revolution which has carried on until our own day, and has by no means
> completed itself yet. (Frye 1968: 15; see also, Larmore 1996)
>
>
> |
aesthetic-judgment | ## 1. The Judgment of Taste
What is a judgment of taste? Kant isolated two fundamental necessary
conditions for a judgment to be a judgment of
taste--*subjectivity* and *universality* (Kant
1790/2000). Other conditions may also contribute to what it is to be a
judgment of taste, but they are consequential on, or predicated on,
the two fundamental conditions. In this respect Kant followed the lead
of Hume and other writers in the British sentimentalist tradition
(Hume 1757/1985).
### 1.1 Subjectivity
The first necessary condition of a judgment of taste is that it is
essentially *subjective*. What this means is that the judgment
of taste is based on a feeling of pleasure or displeasure. This
distinguishes judgments of taste from empirical judgments. Central
examples of judgments of taste are judgments of beauty and ugliness.
Judgments of taste can be about art or nature.
This subjectivist thesis would be over-strict if it were interpreted
in an "atomistic" fashion, so that some subjective
response corresponds to every judgment of taste, and vice versa.
Sometimes one makes a judgment of taste on inductive grounds or on the
basis of authority. But these cases indirectly rely on judgements made
on the basis of subjective responses. A more holistic picture of the
relation between response and judgment would preserve the spirit of
the subjectivist doctrine while fitting our actual lives more
accurately. The subjectivist doctrine needs to be refined in order to
deal with the cases of induction and authority. But it must not be
abandoned. The doctrine is basically right.
However, it is not obvious what to make of the subjectivity of the
judgment of taste. We need an account of the nature of the pleasure on
which judgments of beauty are based.
Beyond a certain point, this issue cannot be pursued independently of
metaphysical issues about realism, for the metaphysics we favor is
bound to affect our view of the nature of the pleasure we take in
beauty. In particular, we need to know whether or not pleasure in
beauty represents properties of beauty and ugliness that things
possess. If not, does it involve the cognitive faculties that we
deploy in understanding the world, as Kant thought? Or is it not a
matter of the cognitive faculties, but a matter of sentimental
reactions, which are schooled in various ways, as Hume and others
thought? These are very hard questions. But there are some things we
can say about the pleasure involved in finding something beautiful
without raising the temperature too high.
Kant makes various points about pleasure in the beautiful, which fall
short of what we might call his "deep" account of the
nature of pleasure in beauty, according to which it is the harmonious
free play of the cognitive faculties, of imagination and
understanding. According to Kant's "surface" account
of pleasure in beauty, it is not mere sensuous gratification, as in
the pleasure of sensation, or of eating and drinking. Unlike such
pleasures, pleasure in beauty is occasioned by the perceptual
representation of a thing. (In contemporary terms, we would put this
by saying that pleasure in beauty has an intentional content.)
Moreover, unlike other sorts of intentional pleasures, pleasure in
beauty is "disinterested". This means, roughly, that it is
a pleasure that does not involve desire--pleasure in beauty is
desire-free. That is, the pleasure is neither based on desire nor does
it produce one by itself. In this respect, pleasure in beauty is
unlike pleasure in the agreeable, unlike pleasure in what is good for
me, and unlike pleasure in what is morally good. According to Kant,
all such pleasures are "interested"--they are bound
up with desire. This is discussed in section 3 below. This is all
important as far as it goes, but it is all negative. We need to know
what pleasure in beauty *is*, as well as what it *is
not*. What can be said of a more positive nature?
### 1.2 Normativity
In order to see what is special about pleasure in beauty, we must
shift the focus back to consider what is special about the judgment of
taste. For Kant, the judgment of taste claims "universal
validity", which he describes as follows:
>
>
> ... ... if [someone] pronounces that something is beautiful,
> then he expects the very same satisfaction of others: he judges not
> merely for himself, but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it
> were a property of things. Hence he says that the *thing* is
> beautiful, and does not count on the agreement of others with his
> judgment of satisfaction because he has frequently found them to the
> agreeable with his own, but rather *demands* it from them. He
> rebukes them if they judge otherwise, and denies that they have taste,
> for he nevertheless requires that they ought to have it; and to this
> extent one cannot say, "Everyone has his special taste".
> This would be as much as to say that there is no taste at all, i.e. no
> aesthetic judgment that could make a rightful claim to the assent of
> everyone. (Kant 1790, 5: 212-213 [2000: 98]; see also 2000:
> 164-166-139)
>
>
>
Kant's idea is that in a judgment of taste, we demand or require
agreement from other human beings in a way we do not in our judgments
about the niceness of Canary-wine, which is just a question of
individual preference. In many cases, in matters of taste and beauty,
we think that others *ought* to share our judgment, and we
blame them if they don't. This is because the judgment of taste
has this aspiration to universal validity that it seems "*as
if* [beauty] were a property of things".
Now, if the above quotation were all that Kant had to say by way of
elucidating the judgment of taste, then he would not have said enough.
For the following question is left hanging: *why* do we require
that others share our judgment? We might *want* others to share
our judgment for all sorts of strange reasons. Maybe we will feel more
comfortable. Maybe we will win a bet. And if we say that they
*ought* to judge a certain way, we need to say more. In what
sense is this true? What if someone cannot appreciate some excellent
work of art because they are grief-stricken? What if it would distract
someone from some socially worthy project? Of what nature is this
"ought"?
We can recast the point about how we ought to judge in austere terms
by saying that there is a certain *normative* constraint on our
judgments of taste, which is absent in our judgments about the
niceness of Canary-wine. The most primitive expression of this
normativity is this: some are *correct*, others
*incorrect*. Or perhaps, even more cautiously: *some
judgments are better than others*. We do not think that something
is beautiful merely *to me*, in the way that we might say that
some things just happen to give *me* sensuous pleasure. Of
course, we might well say "I *think* *X* is
beautiful", because we wish to express uncertainty, but where we
judge confidently, we think of our judgment as being *correct*.
And that means that we think that the opposite judgment would be
incorrect. We assume that not all judgments of beauty are equally
appropriate. "Each to their own taste" only applies to
judgments of niceness and nastiness, which Kant calls "judgments
of agreeableness" (see Kant 1790, 5: 212-213,
291-292 [2000: 97-98, 171-172]).
Of course, some people just *know* about food. There are
experts and authorities on making delicious food and in knowing what
will taste good (Kant 1790, 5: 213 [2000: 98]). But what these people
know is what will taste pleasurable to a certain kind of palate. In a
sense, some things just do taste better than others, and some
judgments of excellence in food are better than others. There is even
a sense in which some are correct and others incorrect. Still, this is
only relative to "normal" human beings. There is no idea
of correctness according to which someone with very unusual pleasures
and displeasure is at fault, or according to which the majority of
human beings can be wrong. (Kant says that judgments of agreeableness
have "general" but not "universal" validity;
1790, 5: 213 [2000: 213].) But in the case of judgments of taste or
beauty, correctness is not hostage to what most people like or judge.
We may say that it is a mistake to use much salt or sugar but that is
only because it swamps the flavors that are enjoyed by most
people.
To say that a judgment of taste makes a claim to correctness might
seem merely to shift from the problematic "ought" that is
involved in a judgment of taste to a problematic
"correctness" or "betterness". This may be
inevitable. We are dealing with a normative notion, and while some
normative notions may be explainable in terms of others, we cannot
express normative notions in non-normative terms.
In *some* cases, the correctness of a judgment of taste may be
impossibly difficult to decide. We may even think that there is no
right answer to be had if we are asked to compare two very different
things. But in many *other* cases, we think that there
*is* a right and a wrong answer at which we are aiming, and
that our judgments can be erroneous. If we do not think this, in at
least some cases, then we are not making a judgment of taste--we
are doing something else.
It is true that there is a popular idea that is sometimes expressed by
saying that no judgments of taste are really better than others.
People sometimes say, "There is no right and wrong about matters
of taste". Others express a related thought by saying that
beauty is "relative" to individual judgment or preference,
or that it is "socially relative". Such skeptical views
have some following outside the academy, as well as in certain of the
humanities. Many even express distaste for the idea that judgments of
taste have a normative claim, as if that would be uncouth or
oppressive. However, if we are describing our thought as it is, not
how it ought to be, then there is no getting away from the fact that
normativity is a necessary condition of judgments of taste or beauty.
Two points should embarrass the skeptic: firstly, people who express
anti-normativist skeptical views are *merely theorizing*. In
the case of judgments of beauty, anti-normativist skepticism is out of
step with practice, especially their own practice. As with moral
relativism, one can almost always catch a professed skeptic about
judgments of beauty making and acting on non-skeptical judgments of
beauty--for example, in their judgments about music, nature and
everyday household objects around them. Skeptics do not practice what
they preach. Secondly, one thing that *drives* people to this
implausible skepticism, which is so out of line with their own
practice, is a perceived connection with tolerance or
anti-authoritarianism. This is what they see as attractive in it. But
this is upside-down. For if "it is all relative" and no
judgment is better than any other, then relativists put *their*
own judgments beyond criticism, and they cannot get it wrong. Only
those who think that there is a right and wrong in judgment can
modestly admit that they might be wrong. What looks like an ideology
of tolerance is, in fact, the opposite.
Some so-called "experimental philosophers" have questioned
the thesis that judgments of taste aspire to correctness on the basis
of empirical evidence about those who make judgments of taste (Cova
& Pain 2012). But it is not clear that the empirical evidence
cited supports that skeptical thesis. For the evidence is just that
that the experimental subjects tick boxes that ask directly about
correctness in judgment. But in psychological experiments there is a
requirement of opacity of the point of an experiment to the
experimental subjects (Hughes 2016). Furthermore, people often wax
philosophical in a way that is out of step with their actual
conceptual practice. For example, some beginners in introductory moral
philosophy classes inconsistently claim that all moral views are
equally correct, and that it is very bad to think otherwise. People
who think in a certain way may be defective in self-knowledge, just as
those who take part in social rituals may not be able to describe
those rituals (see Zangwill 2019 for critical discussion). We should
also bear in mind that the skeptical thesis would also be very
surprising given that it departs from not just centuries but millennia
of reflection on our aesthetic lives. The answers to questionnaires
about correctness in judgment do not reveal the deep nature of
people's thoughts.
### 1.3 Recasting Normativity
In the normative claim of judgments of taste, as formulated above,
*other people* do not figure in the account. This is an
*austere* explanation of what Kant meant, or perhaps of what he
ought to have meant, when he said that the judgment of taste claims
"universal validity", by contrast with judgments about the
niceness of Canary-wine. *Given* this account, we can
*explain* the fact that we think that others ought to share our
judgment. They ought to share it on pain of making a judgment which is
incorrect or inappropriate. And this would be *why* we do in
fact look to others to share our judgment; we do not want them to make
incorrect judgments. It seems that Kant's reference to other
people in characterizing the normativity of judgments of taste has
dropped out of the picture as inessential.
However, it is not clear whether Kant would go along with this, for he
characterizes normativity in a way that ties in with his eventual
*explanation* of its possibility. Kant expresses the normative
idea in a very particular way. He writes:
>
>
> [we] demand such assent universally (Kant 1790, 5: 214 [2000: 99])
>
>
>
And Kant says that the judgment of taste involves
>
>
> its validity for everyone. (Kant 1790, 5: 212 [2000: 97])
>
>
>
By contrast, Kant thinks that although we sometimes speak *as
if* our judgments of the *agreeable* are universally valid
("Lamb tastes better with garlic"), in fact they are not:
judgments of the agreeable appeal only to *most* but not to
*all* people (Kant 1790, 5: 213 [2000: 98]).
However, the austere characterization attempts to catch a more basic
idea of normativity--one that might serve as the target of rival
explanations. In order to explain how subjectively universal judgments
are possible, Kant has a complicated story about the harmonious
interplay of the cognitive faculties--imagination and
understanding--which he thinks constitutes pleasure in beauty
(Kant 1790, 5: 219 [2000: 104]). This "deep" account of
pleasure in beauty is highly controversial and not particularly
plausible (see Budd 2001). But we can see why Kant gives it. For Kant,
the normative claim of the judgment of taste has its roots in the more
general workings of our cognitive faculties, which Kant thinks we can
assume others share. Thus, we have the beginnings of an explanation of
how such a pleasure can ground a judgment that makes a universal
claim. However, Kant does not have much to say about the nature of the
"universality" or normativity that is being explained by
such a speculative account of pleasure in beauty. It is no accident
that Kant phrases the obligation in interpersonal terms, considering
where he is going. And it is no great fault on his part that he does
so. But for our purposes, we need to separate what is being explained
from its explanation. For if Kant's explanation does not work,
we want to be left with a characterization of the normativity he was
trying to explain. We need to separate Kant's problem from his
solution, so that the former is left if the latter fails. There may be
alternative solutions to his problem.
### 1.4 Normativity and Pleasure
As described, normativity attaches to *judgments of taste*
themselves. What does this imply for *pleasure* in beauty?
Since judgments of taste are based on responses of pleasure, it would
make little sense if our judgments were more or less appropriate but
our responses were not. The normative claim of our judgments of taste
must derive from the fact that we think that some *responses*
are better or more appropriate to their object than others. Responses
only license judgments which can be more or less appropriate because
responses themselves can be more or less appropriate. If I get
pleasure from drinking Canary-wine and you do not, neither of us will
think of the other as being *mistaken*. But if you don't
get pleasure from Shakespeare's *Sonnets*, I will think
of you as being in error--not just your *judgment*, but
your *liking*. I think that I am *right* to have my
*response*, and that your *response* is
*defective*. Someone who thinks that there is, in Hume's
words, "an equality of genius" between some inferior
composer, on the one hand, and J. S. Bach, on the other, has a
defective *sensibility* (Hume 1757 [1985: 230]). Roger Scruton
puts the point well when he says:
>
>
> When we study [the Einstein Tower and the Giotto campanile] ...
> our attitude is not simply one of curiosity, accompanied by some
> indefinable pleasure or satisfaction. Inwardly, we affirm our
> preference as valid.... (Scruton 1979: 105)
>
>
>
This is the reason *why* we demand the same feeling from
others, even if we do not expect it. We think that our response is
more appropriate to its object than its opposite. And, in turn, this
is *why* we think that our *judgment* about that object
is more correct than its opposite. The normativity of judgment derives
from the normativity of feeling.
But how *can* some feelings be better or worse than others? To
answer this question, we need to ask: how far does the normativity of
judgments of taste inhere in the feeling itself? The realist about
beauty will say that the feeling has normativity built into it in
virtue of its representational content; the feelings themselves can be
more or less veridical. Pleasure in beauty, for example, has as its
object the property of beauty; we *find* the beauty
pleasurable. A Humean sentimentalist will probably say that
normativity is something we somehow construct or foist upon our
pleasures and displeasures, which have no such content. And Kant has
his own account, which appeals to cognitive states that are not
beliefs. The issue is controversial. However, what we can say for sure
is that it is definitive of pleasure in beauty that it licenses
judgments that make claim to correctness. Beyond this, there will be
theoretical divergence.
This normativity is definitive of the judgment of taste, and is its
second defining characteristic, which we should add to the fact that
it is based on subjective grounds of pleasure or displeasure.
### 1.5 Judgments of Taste and the Big Question
We can sum things up like this: judgments of taste occupy a mid-point
between judgments of niceness and nastiness, and empirical judgments
about the external world. Judgments of taste are like empirical
judgments in that they have universal validity, but they are unlike
empirical judgment in that they are made on the basis of an inner
subjective response. Conversely, judgments of taste are like judgments
of niceness or nastiness in that they are made on the basis of an
inner subjective response, but they are unlike judgments of niceness
and nastiness, which make no claim to universal validity. To cut the
distinctions the other way: in respect of normativity, judgments of
taste are like empirical judgments and unlike judgments of niceness or
nastiness, but in respect of subjectivity, judgments of taste are
unlike empirical judgments and like judgments of niceness or
nastiness. So, we have a three-fold division: empirical judgments,
judgments of taste, and judgments of niceness or nastiness. And
judgments of taste have the two points of similarity and dissimilarity
on each side just noted.
As Kant recognized (more or less following Hume), all this is a point
*from* which to theorize. The hard question is
*whether*, and if so *how*, such a subjectively
universal judgment is possible. On the face of it, the two
characteristics are in tension with each other. Our puzzle is this:
what must be the nature of pleasure in beauty if the judgments we base
on it can make claim to correctness? This is the Big Question in
aesthetics. Kant's problem was the right one, even if his
solution was not.
However, our hope thus far has been to get clearer about what it is
that is under scrutiny in this debate. Once we are armed with a modest
account of what a judgment of taste is, we can then proceed to more
ambitious questions about whether or not judgments of taste represent
real properties of beauty and ugliness, and if not, how else the
normativity of aesthetic judgment is to be explained. We can even
consider whether or not our whole practice of making judgments of
taste is defective and should be jettisoned. But first things
first.
## 2. Other Features of Aesthetic Judgments
There is more to aesthetic judgment than just subjectivity and
normativity, and this should be described more fully. The following is
a survey of a number of other candidate features of aesthetic
judgments: truth, mind-independence, nonaesthetic dependence, and
lawlessness.
### 2.1 Aesthetic Truth
The normativity of aesthetic judgments *can* be recast in terms
of a particular conception of aesthetic truth. For some purposes, it
is useful to do this. It might be thought that deploying the idea of
*aesthetic truth* commits us to the existence of an aesthetic
reality. But this springs from the assumption that a strong
correspondence conception of truth is all there ever is to truth in
any area where we might employ the notion. In many
areas--scientific and psychological thought, for example--a
strong correspondence conception of truth is likely to be in question.
However, the conception of truth applicable in aesthetics might be one
according to which truth only implies the sort of normativity
described above, according to which there are correct and incorrect
judgments of taste, or at least that some judgments are better than
others.
If we deploy the notion of truth, we might express the normative idea
by saying if a judgment is true then its opposite is false. Or we
might say that the law of non-contradiction applies to aesthetic
judgments: there are some aesthetic judgments such that they and their
negations cannot both be true. This principle need not hold of all
judgments of taste, so long as it holds of a significant proportion of
them.
Such a normative conception of truth is stronger than a notion of
truth which is merely a device for "semantic assent"; that
is, normative truth is more than thin "disquotational"
truth, according to which the notion of truth is merely a device for
semantic ascent. Thus we can say "x is beautiful' is true
if and only if x is beautiful. Even judgments of the agreeable, about
the niceness of Canary-wine, can have access to an inconsequential
disquotational conception of truth. We can say "Canary-wine is
nice' is true if and only if Canary-wine is nice" without
raising the temperature. However, judgments about the niceness of
Canary-wine do not aspire to a normative conception of truth. There
are no right and wrong answers to the question of whether Canary-wine
really is nice. And so, of neither the judgment that it is nice nor
the judgment that it is not nice can it be said that if it is true
then its opposite is false. But this is what we do say of some
aesthetic judgments.
However, although we *can* cast aesthetic normativity in terms
of truth, we need not do so. Aesthetic "truth", in fact,
adds little to the notion of correctness that we have already
encountered. We can do without the word "true". We can say
that something cannot both be beautiful and ugly (in the same respect
at the same time), and that if something is beautiful then it is not
ugly (in the same respect at the same
time).[1]
### 2.2 Mind-dependence and Nonaesthetic Dependence
Given an understanding of the normativity of judgments of
taste--which we might or might not express in terms of aesthetic
truth--we can and should add some further normative features.
One such feature is *mind-independence*. Mind-independence is
best expressed as a negative thesis: whether something is beautiful
does not depend on my judgment. Thinking it so does not make it so.
This can be re-expressed in conditional terms: it is not the case that
if I think something is beautiful then it is beautiful. This is common
sense. For example, most of us think that our judgments have improved
since we were younger. We think that some of our past judgments were
in error. Thinking it so, at that time, did not make it so. Perhaps
some more complicated, sophisticated mind-dependence thesis holds; but
a simple mind-dependence claim flouts common sense.
We also think that beauty, ugliness and other aesthetic properties
*depend* on nonaesthetic properties. Dependence contrasts with
mind-independence in that it says what aesthetic properties
*do* depend on, as opposed to what they *do not* depend
on: the aesthetic properties of a thing depend on its nonaesthetic
properties. This dependence relation implies (but is not identical
with) the supervenience relation or relations: (a) two aesthetically
unlike things must also be nonaesthetically unlike; (b) something
could not change aesthetically unless it also changed
nonaesthetically; and (c) something could not have been aesthetically
different unless it were also nonaesthetically different. These are,
respectively: cross-object supervenience, cross-time supervenience,
and cross-world supervenience. ("Supervenience" has often
been discussed under the heading of "dependence" but they
are distinct relations, related in a complex way.) Sibley's
papers "Aesthetic Concepts" and
"Aesthetic/Nonaesthetic" were pioneering discussions of
the dependence of the aesthetic on the nonaesthetic (Sibley 1959,
1965). (It is interesting that he never described the dependence in
modal terms.)
This claim is very intuitive, but let us try to say something more in
support of it. It seems to be a deep fact about beauty and other
aesthetic properties that they are inherently "sociable";
beauty cannot be lonely. Something cannot be barely beautiful; if
something is beautiful then it must be in virtue of its nonaesthetic
properties. Furthermore, knowing this is a constraint on our judgments
about beauty and other aesthetic properties. We cannot just judge that
something is beautiful; we must judge that it is beautiful in virtue
of its nonaesthetic properties. We usually do so, and not to do so is
bizarre. (Even in cases of testimony, we think that the aesthetic
properties of a thing hold in virtue of nonaesthetic properties that
the aesthetic expert knows.) Of course, we might not have in mind
every single nonaesthetic property of the thing, nor know exactly how
the nonaesthetic properties produce their aesthetic effects. But we
think that certain nonaesthetic properties are *responsible*
for the aesthetic properties and that without those nonaesthetic
properties, the aesthetic properties would not have been instantiated.
Beauty does not float free, and recognizing this is constitutive of
aesthetic thought. Our aesthetic thought, therefore, is fundamentally
different from our thought about colors, with which it is often
compared. Perhaps colors are tied in some intimate way to intrinsic or
extrinsic physical properties of the surfaces of things, such as
reflectance properties. But color thought does not presuppose this.
Someone might even think that colors are bare properties of things.
But one cannot think that beauty is bare; it is essential to aesthetic
thought to realize that the aesthetic properties of a thing arise from
its nonaesthetic properties.
The principles of correctness, mind-independence and dependence can be
phrased in the property mode or in terms of truth. We can cast them
either way. We can say that whether something is beautiful does not
depend on what we think about it, but it does depend on its
nonaesthetic features. Or we can equally well say that the truth of
aesthetic judgments is independent of our aesthetic judgments but it
is dependent on nonaesthetic truths. Semantic ascent changes
little.
### 2.3 On Which Non-aesthetic Properties Do Aesthetic Properties Depend?
Some have argued that what aesthetic properties depend on (their
"dependence base") extends beyond the intrinsic physical
and sensory features of the object of aesthetic assessment (for
example Walton 1970), who follows Gombrich 1959, especially p. 313).
On this view, the nonaesthetic dependence base always includes
"contextual properties"--matters to do with the
origin of the work of art, or other works of art. Others dispute this
(Zangwill 1999). This is one aspect of debates over formalism in many
domains. These issues are both central theoretical commitments as well
as reflecting substantive aesthetic differences in the approach to
making and appreciating various arts, as well as the aesthetics of
nature. But such debates all presuppose that *some* dependence
thesis holds. The controversial questions are about the
*extent* of the dependence base of aesthetic properties, not
*whether* aesthetic properties have some nonaesthetic
dependence base.
One view is that aesthetic properties depend on the
*appearances* of things--the way things look or sound, for
example (see Mitrovic 2013, 2018). If so, there is *a*
sense in which aesthetic properties are mind-dependent, since
appearances are appearances to some observer. However, some say that
there can be aesthetic properties of abstract objects such as
mathematical or logical proofs or structures. Others say that ideas or
concepts in conceptual art may be the bearers of aesthetic properties.
(Schellekens 2007). *Those* aesthetic properties would be
mind-independent. The question of the aesthetic properties of abstract
objects is a controversial one (Kivy 1991, Barker 2009).
### 2.4 Dependence and Lawlessness
Thus far we have been making positive claims about features of
aesthetic judgments. Let us now consider the claim that there are no
interesting nonaesthetic-to-aesthetic laws or principles, and the
claim that an aesthetic/nonaesthetic dependence relation can obtain,
even though there are no such interesting laws or principles. Here
"interesting" laws or principles means generalizations to
the effect that anything of such and such a nonaesthetic kind is of
such and such aesthetic kind, *and* these generalizations can
be used to predict aesthetic properties on the basis of knowledge of
nonaesthetic properties. In this sense, many find it plausible that
there are no laws of taste and aesthetic properties are anomalous.
The problem of the source of correctness in aesthetic judgment is
independent of the question of whether there are laws, rules or
principles of taste. There is no reason to think that the possibility
of correct or true judgments depends on the existence of laws, rules
or principles from which we can deduce our correct or true
judgments.[2]
Nevertheless, the anomalousness of aesthetics is worth thinking about
in its own right. Many aestheticians agree that the aesthetic is
anomalous in the above sense. But they are not agreed on the
*explanation* of anomalousness.
A notable exception to this consensus is Monroe Beardsley, who
claims--heroically and extraordinarily--that there are
exactly three aesthetic principles: things are aesthetically excellent
either by being unified or intense or complex (Beardsley 1958: chapter
XI). However, Beardsley's "trinitarian" position
faces difficulties similar to those faced by moral philosophers who
appeal to "thick" concepts. If Beardsley insists on a
lawlike connection between his three thick substantive aesthetic
properties (unity, intensity and complexity) and aesthetic value, he
can only do so at the cost of conceding anomalousness between the
three thick substantive aesthetic properties and nonaesthetic
properties. There are three layers and one can hold onto laws between
the top and middle layers only by losing laws between the middle and
bottom layers. Maybe intensity is always aesthetically good, but there
are no laws about what makes things intense.
Granting the anomalousness of aesthetic properties, then, we need to
explain it. There is much plausibility in Hume and Kant's
suggestion that what explains the anomalousness of the aesthetic is
the first feature of judgments of taste--that judgments of taste
are essentially subjective, unlike ordinary empirical judgments about
physical, sensory, or semantic properties (Hume 1757 [1985:
231-232]; Kant 1790, 5: 213-216, 281-286 [2000:
99-101, 136-142, 162-167]). This is why the two
sorts of concepts are not "nomologically made for each
other" (as Donald Davidson [1970] says about mental and physical
concepts). How can we bring an essentially subjective range of
judgments nomologically into line with a range of empirical judgments?
The two kinds of judgments answer to quite different sets of
constraints. Frank Sibley observed that aesthetic concepts are not
positively "condition-governed" (Sibley 1959). And Mary
Mothersill claimed that there are no laws of taste. But neither did
much to explain those facts. The appeal to subjectivity explains what
Sibley and Mothersill notice and describe. Indeed, Mothersill writes
of her "First Thesis" (FT) that there are no genuine
principles or laws of taste: "...FT is central to
aesthetics, and there is nothing more fundamental from which it could
be derived" (Mothersill 1984: 143). But it seems that it
*can* be derived from the subjectivity of judgments of
taste.
This kind of anomalousness is one thing, dependence or supervenience
another. Even though aesthetic properties are anomalous, they depend
and supervene on nonaesthetic properties. Many find such a combination
of relations uncomfortable outside aesthetics, such as in moral
philosophy and the philosophy of mind. Yet there seem to be good
reasons to embrace both principles in aesthetics. Both are firmly
rooted in ordinary aesthetic thought.
### 2.5 The Primacy of Correctness
Aesthetic judgments have certain essential features, and corresponding
to those features are certain principles. We can group correctness,
mind-independence, and nonaesthetic dependence together. However, it
does no harm to focus on the feature of correctness or universal
validity for this is the most basic of the features. If aesthetic
judgments did not claim correctness or universal validity, they could
not claim the other features. If explaining correctness or universal
validity is a problem, then so is explaining mind-independence and
dependence. But clearly there *is* a problem about explaining
all three features. Why does our aesthetic thought have these three
features and thus operate according to these three principles? And
what is the source of the *right* of aesthetic judgments to
them? Hume and Kant spend much mental effort on these questions. These
presuppositions of aesthetic judgments need to be explained and
justified. Given that our aesthetic judgments have these commitments,
we need to know how such judgments are possible, how they are actual,
and how they are legitimate. Having described and analyzed, as we have
done here, we need to explain and justify. But, as noted earlier, we
first need a good description of what we are trying to explain and
justify.
## 3. Disinterestedness
### 3.1 Disinterestedness: More and Less Ambitious
An idea that plays a large role in Kant's discussion of the
subjective universality of the judgment of taste is that of
disinterestedness; and the idea has appealed to many. Kant makes two
claims: (a) that pleasure in the beautiful is
"disinterested"; and (b) that only pleasure in the
beautiful is "disinterested" (Kant 1790, 5: 204-210
[2000: 90-96: 42-50]). These claims are important for
Kant's project, for Kant connects disinterestedness with the
claim to universal validity of the judgment of taste. Before we go any
further, it is important to recognize that the German word
"*interesse*" has a special meaning in eighteenth
century German, and it should not be confused with similar sounding
English words or contemporary German words. For Kant, an
*interesse* means a kind of pleasure that is not connected with
desire; it is neither grounded in desire, nor does it produce it.
We should distinguish Kant's more ambitious thesis that
*only* pleasure in the beautiful is disinterested from his less
ambitious claim simply that pleasure in the beautiful *is*
disinterested--for it seems that there could in principle be
other disinterested pleasures. The less ambitious claim, however, is
controversial enough.
A relatively uncontroversial part of the less ambitious claim is that
pleasure in the beautiful is not *grounded* in the satisfaction
of desire. It is plausible, surely, that when we take pleasure in
something that we find beautiful, this is not pleasure in the thought
that we have got something that we desire. Kant wants pleasure in the
beautiful to be open to all (so there should be no "aesthetic
luck"), and if desires vary from person to person, it seems that
we could not *require* that pleasure from everyone, as the idea
of universal validity requires. The claim to universal validity would
be lost if pleasure in beauty were not disinterested in the sense of
not being based on desire. This part of the idea of disinterestedness
has much plausibility.
### 3.2 Problems with Disinterestedness
However, it is not so clear that pleasure in the beautiful does not
*produce* desire, which Kant also requires for a pleasure to be
disinterested. The issue here is whether the pleasure can produce
desire *from itself*. Kant admits that we have certain general
concerns with beauty that mean that desire may follow from a judgment
of beauty, but according to Kant, such desires do not have their
source solely in pleasure in the beautiful (Kant 1790, sections 41 and
42, on "empirical interest" and "intellectual
interest). It may be that we have desires concerning beautiful things,
as Kant allows in sections 41 and 42 of the *Critique of
Judgment*, but so long as those desires are not intrinsic to the
pleasure in beauty, the doctrine that all pleasure in beauty is
disinterested is undisturbed. (Critics of Kant sometimes miss this
point.)
The less ambitious thesis is controversial because of the second
component. An opponent of Kant might claim, not implausibly, that
pleasure in beauty *can* produce desire by itself. It is not
clear who is right on this point.
Moreover, whether *only* pleasure in beauty is disinterested,
and no other kind of pleasures are disinterested--the ambitious
thesis--is also controversial. These are live issues.
Kant's views have much to be said for them. But we can also
sympathize with those who are doubtful.
Hume would probably deny Kant's separation of pleasure in beauty
from the motivations that lead us to act. Like other British
sentimentalists, Hume thinks that sentiment and passion both fall on
the active side of the human mind. So, sentiments are active in
themselves. However, this aspect of the British sentimentalist views
looks like a general weakness since they have no convincing place for
a faculty of practical reason, and that means, in turn, that they lack
any intelligible conception of human action (Korsgaard 1996, 2009).
Hume's psychology has no plausible understanding of human
agency; we are pushed around by our passions.
In his *Genealogy of Morals*, Friedrich Nietzsche targets
Kant's separation of pleasure in beauty from desire, a
separation that is designed to make beauty *available* to all
human beings (Nietzsche 1887 [1998], book 3, section 6, the first
page, but not what follows, which targets Schopenhauer). This
criticism is distinct from criticism of the idea that judgments of
beauty are *valid* for all human beings. Nietzsche protests
that the idea of pleasure in beauty is cut-off from the
particularities and idiosyncrasies of our passionate lives is
unrealistic and undesirable. It is not clear who is right here. The
nub of the issue is the nature of pleasure in the beautiful. Does it
have its source in what Human beings share, or in what distinguishes
them? Kant might argue, against Nietzsche, that seeing pleasure in
beauty as springing from what varies between people, not only places
people at the mercy of their good or bad aesthetic upbringing, but
also makes untenable the normative claims to correctness or universal
validity that are part of judgments of beauty, as we ordinarily
conceive of them. "Ought", in this case, seems to imply
"can". If we lack what it takes to appreciate a certain
beauty, then it cannot be required of us, and the normativity of the
judgment of taste would be lost. Or so it seems. If judgments of
beauty were based on variable pleasures or displeasures, then it seems
that the claim to correctness is fraudulent.
But this only follows if we follow Kant in locating pleasure in
beauty, and our right to make judgments of beauty, in faculties that
all human beings share. Perhaps there are rarefied beauties that only
Nietzsche's elite special souls can appreciate. For Kant, there
is an aesthetic "ought" that binds all human beings only
because we share the cognitive faculties that it takes to have the
pleasure in question. But this is not the only conceivable source of
the aesthetic "ought". One non-Kantian suggestion would be
to locate the source of normativity of the judgment of taste, in the
world, not in what human beings share. This would be to invoke a kind
of "aesthetic realism", whereby beauty and ugliness are
genuine properties of the world, which make our judgments better or
worse. That view might seem metaphysically extravagant. The trouble,
though, is how to understand the aesthetic "ought" without
that kind of view. Not easy! On a realist view, beauty need not be
universally available. But if so, it seems that the rationale for
Kant's doctrine(s) of disinterestedness falls away. The Kantian
and perhaps Humean view locates the source of normativity in what we
share. But Nietzsche would ask: is there, and should there, be
something that humans share in their responses to beauty? Do we want
aristocratic or democratic
aesthetics?[3]
## 4. The Notion of the Aesthetic
### 4.1 Some Terminological Remarks
Let us now turn to the contemporary notion of the aesthetic. The
predicate "aesthetic" can qualify many different kinds of
things: judgments, experiences, concepts, properties, or words. It is
probably best to take *aesthetic judgments* as central. We can
understand other aesthetic kinds of things in terms of aesthetic
judgments: aesthetic properties are those that are ascribed in
aesthetic judgments; aesthetic experiences are those that ground
aesthetic judgments; aesthetic concepts are those that are deployed in
aesthetic judgments; and aesthetic words are those that have the
function of being used in the linguistic expression of aesthetic
judgments.
The most common contemporary notion of an aesthetic judgment would
take judgments of beauty and ugliness as paradigms--what we
called "judgments of taste" in part 1. And it excludes
judgments about physical properties, such as shape and size, and
judgments about sensory properties, such as colors and sounds.
However, in addition to judgments of beauty and ugliness, the
contemporary notion of an aesthetic judgment is typically used to
characterize a class of judgments that also includes judgments of
daintiness, dumpiness, delicacy and elegance. In this respect, the
contemporary notion seems to be broader than Kant's, since he
focused just on judgments of beauty and ugliness. However, there is
also a respect in which the contemporary notion seems to be narrower
than Kant's notion. For Kant used the notion to include both
judgments of beauty (or of taste) as well as judgments of the
*agreeable*--for instance, the judgment that Canary-wine
is nice (Kant 1790, 5: 203-204, 214 [2000: 89-90 and 99]).
But the modern notion, unlike Kant's, usually *excludes*
judgments of the agreeable. Moreover, the contemporary notion usually
excludes judgments about pictorial and semantic content of a work of
art. For example, the judgment that a painting represents a flower
might be "relevant" to an aesthetic judgment about it, but
it is not itself an aesthetic judgment.
### 4.2 The Problem
There are worries: is the contemporary classification
"aesthetic" arbitrary? What is it that distinguishes
judgments as aesthetic? What do they have in common? How do they
differ from other kinds of judgment? Do these judgments form a
well-behaved kind?
It may be worth mentioning in passing that the notion of an aesthetic
judgment should obviously not be elucidated in terms of the idea of a
work of art; we make aesthetic judgments about nature and we make
nonaesthetic judgments about works of art.
The articulation and defense of the notion of the aesthetic in modern
times is associated with Monroe Beardsley (1958, 1982) and Frank
Sibley (1959, 1965). But their work was attacked by George Dickie, Ted
Cohen and Peter Kivy among others (Dickie 1965, Cohen 1973, Kivy
1975).
As noted in Section 2.4, Beardsley claimed, heroically, that aesthetic
experience is distinguished by its unity, intensity and complexity.
Dickie argued, in reply, that such characteristics were either not
plausibly necessary conditions of aesthetic experience, or else that
Beardsley's description of them was inadequate. Part of
Dickie's attack was beside the point, since he confused
aesthetic experiences with the experiences of works of art; the fact
that some experiences of works of art are not as Beardsley describes
is irrelevant. But it cannot be denied that Dickie was right that even
if the problems with characterizing the three features were resolved,
it would still not be plausible that the three Beardsleyian features
are necessary (or sufficient) conditions of aesthetic experience.
Nevertheless, all that would show would be that
*Beardsley's* account of the aesthetic is inadequate.
That Beardsley's extraordinary and heroic trinitarian doctrine
cannot be maintained does not mean that the notion of the aesthetic
should be abandoned. That would be a flawed induction from a single
instance.
Sibley claimed that the discernment of aesthetic properties requires a
special sensitivity, whereas the discernment of nonaesthetic
properties could be achieved by anyone with normal eyes and ears.
Furthermore, Sibley claimed that it was distinctive of aesthetic terms
or concepts that they were not "condition-governed", in
the sense that they had no nonaesthetic positive criteria for their
application. He thought of the faculty of taste as special mental
faculty, possessed by people with a distinctive sensitivity. This
account of the aesthetic was inadvisable, since it allowed critics
like Cohen and Kivy to argue that ascribing many aesthetic properties
did not in fact require a special faculty, since anyone can
distinguish a graceful line from an ungraceful line. Moreover, some
aesthetic ascriptions, such as elegance, do seem to be
nonaesthetically "condition-governed", in Sibley's
sense. Nevertheless--once again--that
*Sibley's* positive account of the aesthetic is
implausible should not lead us to despair about the aesthetic. On the
other hand, a pessimistic induction, now with two instances under its
belt, is perhaps looking a little less unhealthy--especially
given two such distinguished exponents.
Despite this, Sibley was surely minimally right to think that
ascribing aesthetic properties to a thing requires more than merely
knowing its nonaesthetic properties. Whether or not the extra
something is distinctively difficult, erudite, sophisticated or
non-condition-governed, it is something over and above nonaesthetic
understanding. So perhaps we should keep on trying to articulate the
notion of the aesthetic, or at least a useful notion of the
aesthetic.
### 4.3 A Hierarchical Proposal
One strategy is the following: begin with the account of what it is to
be a judgment of taste, or of beauty and ugliness, that was outlined
in part 1, and then use that to elucidate a broader notion of an
aesthetic judgment. To recall, it was argued that Kant was right, with
qualifications, to think that the crucial thing about the judgment of
taste is that it has what he calls "subjective
universality"; judgments of taste are those that are (a) based
on responses of pleasure or displeasure, and (b) claim universal
validity, where that can be minimally interpreted as a normative
aspiration. The present strategy is to use this Kantian account in
order to ground a wider category of the aesthetic, which includes
judgments of taste along with judgments of daintiness, dumpiness,
delicacy, elegance, and the rest.
Let us call judgments of taste, or judgments of beauty and ugliness,
"verdictive aesthetic judgments", and let us call the
other aesthetic judgments (of daintiness, dumpiness, elegance,
delicacy, etc.) "substantive aesthetic judgments". The
idea is that these substantive judgments are aesthetic in virtue of
some special close relation to verdictive judgments of taste, which
are subjectively universal. We can assume that judgments of beauty and
ugliness coincide with judgments of aesthetic merit and demerit.
However, even if beauty were taken to be a substantive aesthetic
notion, like elegance, delicacy or daintiness, there would remain some
other overarching notion of aesthetic merit or excellence, and we
could take that notion as central.
On this approach, judgments of daintiness, dumpiness, delicacy and
elegance stand in some special and intimate relation to judgments of
beauty and ugliness (or aesthetic merit and demerit), and it is only
in virtue of this intimate relation that we can think of all these
judgments as belonging to the same category. This is a hierarchical
rather than an egalitarian conception of aesthetic notions
Now, what exactly is this special intimate relation between verdictive
and substantive aesthetic judgments? One suggestion is this: first,
substantive judgments describe *ways of being beautiful or
ugly* (Burton 1992, Zangwill 1995). It is part of what it
*is* for a thing to be elegant, delicate or dainty that it is
beautiful in a particular *way*. And second, it is part of the
*meaning* of substantive aesthetic judgments that they imply
verdictive aesthetic judgments. This is the hierarchical proposal.
Remark: this claim need not be one about all *words* like
"dainty" and "delicate", but it is about the
particular substantive *judgments* that we linguistically
express in such words on particular occasions. Both Beardsley and
Sibley seem to have made the mistake of casting these issues at the
linguistic level rather than at the level of thought; they focused not
on aesthetic words instead of aesthetic judgments and responses.
Sibley did say in footnote 1 of Sibley 1959 that he was concerned with
"uses" of aesthetic words, but he and everyone else
ignored that qualification.
Let us now see how this hierarchical proposal works. Consider an
abstract pattern of curving lines, which is elegant. It might be
*necessary* that that pattern is beautiful. This is because the
beauty *depends on* or *is determined by* that specific
pattern. But it is not part of what it is to *be* that pattern
that it is beautiful. That is, the pattern is necessarily beautiful
but it is not essentially beautiful. (On the general distinction
between necessity and essence, see Fine 1994.) Furthermore, we can
think of that pattern without thinking of it as beautiful.
By contrast, it is *both* necessary *and* essential that
something that is elegant is beautiful. And this is reflected in our
concepts and judgments. We can think of the pattern without thereby
thinking of it as beautiful, but to think of the pattern as elegant is
to think of it as beautiful, at least in certain respects. Hence
elegance is an aesthetic concept.
The hierarchical proposal thus seems to characterize a non-arbitrary
and useful notion of the aesthetic. If so, the contemporary broad
notion of the aesthetic can be vindicated.
To see how this works, consider representational properties. Are they
aesthetic properties? Suppose that a painting represents a tree and is
a beautiful representation of a tree. It is not merely beautiful
*and* a tree representation but beautiful *as* a tree
representation (Zangwill 1999). Of course, that the painting
represents a tree is "relevant" to whether it is beautiful
because it is part of what its beauty depends on. But being beautiful
is not part of what it is to be a representation of a tree or even
that representation of a tree. Moreover, to think that the painting
represents a tree is not thereby to think that it is beautiful. Being
beautiful is not an essential property of the representation, and
thinking of the representation does not mean thinking of it as
beautiful, even though it may be necessary that it is beautiful. Hence
representational properties are not aesthetic properties.
The proposal faces a challenge, however. Jerrold Levinson has argued
that not all substantive properties have evaluative valence (Levinson
2001). One of his examples is of "starkly grim". Being
starkly grim seems not always to be a way of being beautiful or ugly.
The defender of hierarchy could reply that it is specific uses of
these words, in context, that pick out features that have evaluative
valences. If so, the particular instance of stark grimness might be a
valuable aspect of a thing however it is with other instances of stark
grimness. But it might be replied that particular instances of stark
grimness may be value-neutral? The issue is a difficult one, and I
leave the issue here.
If the hierarchical suggestion fails, then we lack one way of
vindicating the modern broad notion of the aesthetic. Maybe there are
other ways to give unity to the notion of the aesthetic. However, it
is not clear that there is another feasible way in the literature.
Levinson thinks of aesthetic properties as a certain kind of
appearance properties. We might note that this will immediately rule
out the aesthetic properties of abstract objects by fiat. More
importantly, there remains the question of what kind of appearance
properties aesthetic properties are. Even if we are happy with
indefinite boundaries of the aesthetic, we need some sense of what the
sub-class is, and its relation to pleasure and beauty. (We might
compare the difficulties in characterizing a notion of the aesthetic
with the difficulties characterizing a notion of logic.)
### 4.4 Beauty and Sublimity
One notion that is hard to place among other aesthetic notions is that
of sublimity. There is a long and venerable tradition of thinking that
beauty and sublimity share equal status as fundamental aesthetic
categories. Sublimity comes in different varieties. Kant distinguishes
"mathematically" and "dynamically" sublime,
roughly, corresponding to our sense of the enormity and power of
things. The fundamental question about beauty and sublimity is whether
they exclude each other. According to the long and venerable
tradition, if something is sublime then it is not beautiful and vice
versa. Many have conceived of sublimity such that it excludes beauty.
But this is questionable.
If we conceive of beauty narrowly, where it merely means a certain
elegance and prettiness (as Levinson does in Levinson 2012), then that
narrow concept of beauty would be a substantive aesthetic property.
*That* notion of beauty may exclude sublimity. However, it is
not clear that there is reason to restrict beauty in this way. If, on
the contrary, beauty (or at least *a* concept of beauty) is a
generic over-arching aesthetic value, then one suggestion would be
that sublimity should be understood as a *kind* of beauty. In
that case, it would turn out that it is *sublimity* that is a
substantive aesthetic concept, not beauty. On that view, beauty and
sublimity are not opposed to each other. Instead sublimity is a kind
of magnificent beauty or a spectacular or extraordinary way of being
beautiful.
Edmund Burke links sublimity with pain as well as pleasure, perhaps
drawing on Aristotle's idea of "catharsis" (Burke
1757). The idea seems to be that judgments of sublimity are grounded
on both pleasure and pain, whereas judgments of beauty are grounded
only on pleasure. While this may fit the aesthetic experience of wind
and rain in a storm at sea or up a mountain, it does not fit the
sublimity of the stars in the sky and sublime delicacy of a
spider's web, where there is no exciting terror. So the pain
account is not generally true of the sublime.
Richard Wagner claimed that there was musical sublimity in
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and that was its great innovation,
to take us beyond the merely musically-beautiful to the sublime
(Wagner 1870, contrast Hanslick 1950, 1986). Many musicologists follow
Wagner, (such as Richard Taruskin [1989, 2019]). But on that view, if
sublimity is associated with danger and extremity, it is not clear
that we have a plausible story of why people seek out the sublime in
music. Is it a kind of thrill-seeking, like fairground rides or rock
climbing, where people believe themselves to be in danger or at least
cannot help imagining that they are? Is their experience of
Beethoven's Ninth mixed with pain in this way? This seems
unlikely. Pain and fear have natural expressions on the human face,
but the human faces of audiences listening to Beethoven's Ninth
are not noticeably different from the human faces listening to Mozart,
Chopin or Tchaikovsky. Their faces are unlike those of those on
fairground rides or rock climbers who have to make difficult moves.
Furthermore, the audience of the Ninth are not motivated to flee from
the concert hall. Do they have to be strapped into their seats to
prevent escape as on a fairground ride (contra McClary 1991)? By
contrast, on the substantive view of the sublime as a kind of beauty,
there is a distinctive kind of pleasure that characterizes the
experience of the sublime, on which judgments of the sublime are
based. It is an intense pleasure, to be sure. But intensity does not
entail a mixture with pain.
Sublimity in a representational art, such as painting, is a different
matter. John Martin's wonderful painting *Apocalypse*,
for example, does evoke a kind of terror, at least imagined terror. We
might plausibly say that this sublimity is not a kind of beauty, even
though it is certainly a kind of *artistic* excellence. What
this suggests is that we should avoid a unitary theory of the
sublime. Some sublimity is a way of being beautiful, and some is
not.
The main downside of this view is that it breaks with one major strand
of the intellectual tradition in thinking about the sublime in
opposition to beauty. But it is hard to know much to weigh that
if we are seeking a useful concept for organizing our experiences of
art and nature.
### 4.5 Aesthetic Morals
Substantive aesthetic judgments attracted much attention in the latter
half of the twentieth century. If the hierarchical proposal is right,
they cannot be studied in isolation, for the role of such judgments is
to serve verdictive aesthetic judgments of beauty and ugliness. Beauty
and ugliness are the primary aesthetic notions, which give sense to
the wider class that contemporary aestheticians include as
"aesthetic". The broad notion of the aesthetic can be
fixed by what it is to judge that something is beautiful or ugly, or
that it has aesthetic merit or demerit. By seeing beauty and ugliness
as the preeminent aesthetic notions we can make sense of a unitary
category of the aesthetic, which includes the dainty and the dumpy,
elegance and sublimity, and which excludes physical, sensory and
representational properties of things, as well as their agreeableness.
The hierarchical proposal seems to allow us to make the
aesthetic/nonaesthetic distinction in a useful way and answer
Beardsley and Sibley's critics. Perhaps in this way the notion
of the aesthetic can be defended. However, some may think that
Levinson is right about substantive aesthetic concepts and judgments,
in which case the notion of the aesthetic has a question mark hanging
over it. |
beardsley-aesthetics | ## 1. Background
In *Aesthetics*, Beardsley develops a philosophy of art that is
sensitive to three things:
1. art itself and people's pre-philosophical interest in and
opinions about art,
2. critics' pronouncements about art, and
3. developments in philosophy, especially, though not exclusively,
those in the analytic tradition.
More than anyone else, Beardsley took a love of the arts, independent
of overarching philosophical commitments, seriously, and tried to make
sense of it. Although he didn't automatically defer to
pre-reflective opinion about or interest in art, he, like Aristotle,
thought they deserved respect and balked at any philosophy of art
that didn't make contact with them, or cavalierly dismissed or
overrode them. His was a philosophy of art based on a love of the
arts--that, and not a love of philosophy or any agenda,
psychological, political, religious, philosophical, or otherwise. The
copious examples and discussions of individual works of art in his
writings illustrate as much, as do his philosophical arguments and
conclusions. Much the same can be said of his concern with, and
respect for, but far from automatic deference to, the remarks of art
critics.
The historical backdrop against which Beardsley developed his
philosophy of art in the late 1940s and early 1950s includes the three
elements mentioned at the beginning of the preceding paragraph. There
were developments in the arts--new forms in music, painting, and
literature had appeared and were appearing--but there was also a
well-established and relatively large canon of works almost
universally regarded as aesthetically superior and worthy of
attention. Art criticism had become an industry, with major schools of
all sorts flourishing: Marxist, Formalist, psychoanalytic, semiotic,
historical, biographical. And philosophy had changed in rapid and
unexpected ways. Analytic philosophy, with its emphasis on language
and strong empiricist tendencies, had gained ascendancy in American
universities in little more than 20 years, and dominated the
philosophical scene.
Beardsley responded to each of the three. His position on developments
in the arts is probably best described as open-minded moderation. He
welcomed new developments, and reference to new works and works that
lack the luster of fame, notoriety, or ready recognition appear
frequently in *Aesthetics* and his other work. He didn't
automatically embrace the latest fad, fashion, or movement, however,
but tried, as he said, to get something out of a work. Failing that, a
work could be ignored, though tentatively and perhaps
temporarily--the fault might be his and not the object's,
he always thought. Certainly, though, the well-established works of
the Western tradition--the Bachs, Goyas, and Popes--had to
be respected and accounted for in any philosophy of art worthy of the
name.
As for art criticism, Beardsley thought that a great deal of it read
like the ruminations of a batter who kept his eyes on the scoreboard,
the fans, his contract, his place in history, or his wife in the
stands--instead of on the ball. Much of it, in other words,
ignored what should be the main object of attention, the work itself.
The school of criticism that attracted Beardsley, and that his
philosophy of art ultimately underwrites, is the so-called New
Criticism. Based in literature, the New Criticism made the literary
work the center of critical attention, and denied, or at least greatly
devaluated, the relevance of facts about the origin of literary works,
their effects upon individual readers, and their personal, social, and
political influence. Close reading is what is required of a critic,
not biographical information about the author, a rundown of the state
of society at the time the work was written, data about the psychology
of creation, predictions about the effects of the work on society, and
certainly not a piece of autobiography detailing the critic's
own personal response to the work. New Critics were explicators more
than anything else, and investigated literary works, and especially
poetry, as if they were found objects--worthwhile ores, rare
jewels, and mundane rocks, each with its own unique properties. As an
expert assayer, the critic must thoroughly and sensitively examine the
objects before him in order to discover their exact nature and, in the
best cases, special value. The rallying cry, in Allen Tate's
words, was, "We must return to, we must never leave, the poem
itself" (Tate 1955, 63). Much the same sentiment is expressed in
Beardsley's remark that "[the critic's] task is to
keep [his] eye on... textual meaning" (PC: 34). Though
based in literary criticism, the New Criticism could be, and should
be, extended to the other arts, Beardsley thought: all art criticism
should make a serious effort to recognize its objects as special,
autonomous, and important in their own right, and not subservient to
ulterior aims or values; all art criticism should attempt to
understand how works of art work and what meanings and aesthetic
properties they have; all art criticism should strive for objective
and publicly accessible methods and standards to test its
pronouncements. The New Criticism did just that, and did what other
criticism, and especially Romantic criticism (in a broad sense of the
term), did not: studiously focused on the work of art itself, as an
object existing in its own right, with its own properties. Far too
much criticism was essentially Romantic, the New Critics thought, and
concentrated on the artist, not the art.
Developments in philosophy were a different story. In general, the
philosophy of art has always been regarded as a backwater by
philosophers, as by far the least rigorous and least important of the
major branches of the field (a sentiment that remains widespread
today), but the low regard in which aesthetics was held was even more
pronounced at the time that Beardsley began work on
*Aesthetics*. In its early, palmy days, analytic philosophy
tended toward logical positivism, which dismissed judgments of
aesthetic value--the core of art criticism, in Beardsley's
estimation--as cognitively meaningless, and ordinary language
philosophy, a species of analytic philosophy that flourished briefly
after World War Two, was unsystematic in its treatment of problems and
even anti-systematic in its objectives--strong philosophical
theses were either verboten, a sign of mistake, or an aberration.
Neither brand of analytic philosophy boded well for aesthetics as a
systematic field of study. There was, however, also a general form of
analytic philosophy not connected with either approach, that is,
analytic philosophy without an overarching commitment to the scientism
of logical positivism or the dogged adherence to everyday language of
ordinary language philosophy. Philosophers like Bertrand Russell, G.E.
Moore, and C.D. Broad, among many others, were analysts without an
agenda, and Beardsley was more in their camp--that is, no
definite camp of analytic philosophy at all--than anyone
else's. For him, an analytic approach to the philosophy of art
meant no more than critically examining the fundamental concepts and
beliefs underlying art and art criticism. Doing philosophy of that
sort required clarity, precision, and a good eye for identifying,
exposing, and evaluating arguments, but left aesthetics, as a
systematic study, as a real possibility.
## 2. The Nature of Aesthetics
Not all the arts could be covered in detail in even so long a book as
*Aesthetics*--it's over 600 pages--so Beardsley
had to content himself with concentrating on three relatively
disparate arts: literature, music, and painting. In keeping with
the conception of philosophy mentioned above, aesthetics was thought
of as meta-criticism. "There would be no problems of
aesthetics", Beardsley says, "if no one ever talked about
works of art.... We can't do aesthetics until we have some
critical statements to work on" (*Aesth:* 1, 4]).
Aesthetics is concerned with "the nature and basis of
criticism,... just as criticism itself is concerned with works of
art" (*Aesth:* 6). The then-current and still widespread
view that philosophy is a second-order, meta-level, and essentially
linguistic activity, taking as its object of study the pronouncements
of first-order activities, such as chemistry, religion, or history, is
reflected in Beardsley's view on the nature of aesthetics.
It's a problematic view, however, and one somewhat belied by
Beardsley's own philosophic practice. Questions like, What sort
of being or existence do works of art have?--a question of
ontology, and one of Beardsley's questions--arise from the
statements of art critics only in that critics use the term
'work of art' and, with that concept available, inquiry
into the ontological status of the objects that answer to it is then
possible. But the question isn't itself one that arises out of,
or concerns the nature and basis of, critical practice, at least not
in any significant sense of the term. For one thing, others besides
critics use the term "work of art"--art dealers and
art suppliers, for example--so the case could just as easily be
made that the ontological question arises out of, and concerns the
nature and basis of, art dealership or art supply-manship. A related
point is that the same argument applies outside the arts. Farmers and
grocers speak of apples, and unless we had some such term as
"apple", the question, What sort of being or existence do
apples have?--again, a question of ontology--couldn't
be posed. It isn't a question that arises out of the cultivation
or sale of apples, however--not in any very direct or meaningful
way--nor is it one that concerns the nature and basis of apple
farming or running a supermarket. Critics, like farmers and art
suppliers, do very well without ontological inquiries; ontological
questions don't lurk in the background, waiting to be asked. In
short, Beardsley's meta-philosophical view that aesthetics is
meta-criticism is underdetermined by the reasons that he advances for
it, inaccurate or correct only if the term
"meta-criticism" is stretched beyond its usual bounds, and
belied to some extent by Beardsley's own
philosophic practice. All of that is not to deny, however, that a
great deal of aesthetics can be profitably viewed as meta-critical, as
a critical examination and evaluation of the nature and basis of at
least some of the statements that art critics make, at least if art
critics are conceived broadly enough to include almost everyone who
has ever stood before a painting, listened to a piece of music, or
read a novel, and then ventured a judgment about it.
Critical statements are of three kinds, Beardsley thinks: descriptive,
interpretative, and evaluative. The first concerns non-normative
properties of works of art that are simply in it, in some sense, and
are available, at least in principle, to anyone of normal eyes and
ears if sufficiently sensitive, attentive, and experienced.
"There is a small red patch in the upper right-hand corner of
the painting" is a descriptive statement, but so is
"Haydn's *23rd Symphony* abounds in
dynamic tension". The philosophical problems that descriptive
statements give rise to involve the concept of form, Beardsley thinks.
Interpretive statements are also non-normative but concern the
"meaning" of a work of art, with "meaning"
here referring to a semantic relation, or at least a purported
semantic relation, between the work and (a small number of exceptions
aside) something outside it. "That's a picture of Notary
Sojac" is an interpretive statement, as are "That's
a picture of a unicorn", "The passage refers to
Brutus's betrayal of Caesar", and "The thesis of
*Macbeth* is exceedingly simple: Thou shalt not kill".
Last, critical evaluations are normative judgments that basically say
that a work of art is good or bad, or how good or bad it is.
"Mozart's 'Turkish March' is an excellent
short piano piece" is a critical evaluation, and so is
"'The Face on the Barroom Floor' is wretched
verse". The judgment "This is beautiful"--the
paradigm of a judgment of taste according to Kant--is sometimes
thought of as a critical evaluation (*Aesth:* 9), but more
often (e.g., *Aesth:* 463, 507), and always in
Beardsley's later writing, as a descriptive judgment, and one
that frequently forms at least a partial basis for a critical
evaluation.
## 3. The Ontology of Art: Phenomenalism and Friends
The first chapter of *Aesthetics* is in part devoted to the
ontology of art--or aesthetic objects, as Beardsley was then wont
to say. The term "work of art" was largely avoided by him
at the time, because, as he later admitted, he did
>
>
> not [want] to become enmeshed... in [the question of the
> definition of "work of art", a question] that...
> [had] not convince[d] [him] of its importance or promise[d] any very
> satisfactory and agreeable resolution. (*Aesth:*
> xviii)
>
>
>
That was to change, and Beardsley later did offer a definition of art.
In any case, it's the ontology of "aesthetic
objects" that's first discussed in
*Aesthetics*.
The ontology argued for begins with a distinction between physical
objects and perceptual objects. In speaking of a thing being six feet
by six feet in size and at rest, we're speaking of a physical
object; in speaking of a thing being dynamic and frightening,
we're speaking of a perceptual object. Perceptual objects are
the objects we perceive, objects "some of whose qualities, at
least, are open to direct sensory awareness" (*Aesth:*
31). Aesthetic objects are a subset of perceptual objects. This
doesn't necessarily mean that aesthetic objects aren't
physical objects, however. Aesthetic objects might be other than
physical objects--the conceptual distinction might mark a real
distinction--or they might be physical objects--the
conceptual distinction, though somewhat misleadingly couched in terms
of objects, might simply mark "two aspects of the same"
thing (*Aesth:* 33). At first indifferent as to which
alternative is opted for--Beardsley mentions that he
doesn't "see that it makes much difference which
terminology [that of objects or aspects] is chosen"
(ibid.)--he then proceeds to develop an ontology that stresses
objects more than aspects.
The ontology is phenomenalistic in its leanings, though open to a more
physicalist interpretation. A presentation of an aesthetic object is
defined as the object as experienced by a particular person on a
particular occasion. Essentially, presentations are sense-data of
aesthetic objects. Aesthetic objects aren't presentations,
however, for that would invite not just an uncontrollable population
explosion of aesthetic objects, but chaos in criticism; and neither
are aesthetic objects classes of presentations, for aesthetic objects
must have at least some perceptual properties, but classes, as
abstract entities, have none. However,
>
>
> whenever we want to say anything about an aesthetic object, we can
> talk about its presentations. (*Aesth:* 54)
>
>
>
This, Beardsley says,
>
>
> does not "reduce" the aesthetic object to a presentation;
> it only analyzes *statements about* aesthetic objects into
> statements about presentations (*Aesth:* 54).
>
>
>
In effect, this is a form of linguistic phenomenalism, and commits
Beardsley to adequate translations of statements about aesthetic
objects into statements about the presentations of such
objects--in effect, statements about experiences of such objects.
As linguistic phenomenalism as a general ontology--or surrogate
for ontology--has met with very strong criticism over the years,
Beardsley's ontology would have problems enough if it stopped
here.
But it doesn't. Not satisfied, Beardsley presses on to
distinguish
1. the artifact--the play itself, say, as written
down--from
2. a particular production of it--the Old Vic's
production, as opposed to the Marquette University theater
department's production--from
3. a particular performance of it--last night's
performance in the Helfaer Theater--from
4. a particular presentation of it--the play as it shows up in
Peter Alelyunas's experience of it, upon attending last
night's performance.
The same distinctions hold across the arts, though differently in
different arts, and somewhat more naturally in some than others. There
is Beethoven's *D Minor Symphony* (the artifact), a
production of it (The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra's
recording of it), a particular performance of it (my playing the
recording last night, in my house), and particular presentations of it
(mine and other people's experiences of it last night, in my
house). At least in many arts, a single artifact can have many
productions; a single production can have many performances; and a
single performance can give rise to many presentations. As Beardsley
notes, these distinctions collapse to some extent in some of the arts,
and would have to be stretched a bit to fit them all. In reading a
poem silently, he says, the production is the presentation (and I
would also think the performance); "in architecture, the
architect's plans are the artifact; the completed building is
the production" (*Aesth:* 57-58) (and also
presumably the performance); and in painting and sculpture, "the
distinction between artifact and production almost disappears"
(*Aesth:* 58) (with the performance presumably being identical
with both).
But what is the aesthetic object, the object of critical attention?
It's not a presentation or class of presentations, and
it's not the artifact--Beethoven's *9th
Symphony*, for example. If the aesthetic object were the artifact,
it would have contradictory characteristics, since different
recordings of the *9th* have different, incompatible
characteristics: some are shorter than 60 minutes long, some longer.
What's left, and what the aesthetic object must be, is the
production. Thus the primary object of critical attention is the
production of an artifact, and the basic job of the critic is to
describe, interpret, and evaluate such productions.
While interesting, original, and elegant, this position has its
problems. Difficulties with carrying out the translation program that
Beardsley is committed to aside, linguistic phenomenalism is little
more than an attempt to enjoy the benefits of a reductive, sense-data
ontology without paying the price for it. Reductive translations have
commitments; there would be little point in proposing and defending an
elaborate, difficult, counterintuitive, and otherwise inexplicable
translation program, even in schematic form, unless it had some point
beyond translation for the sake of translation. There's either
an ontology and a philosophical purpose behind such
translations--and there certainly seems to be both (an adequate
reductive translation of '*p*' as
'*q*' entails commitment only to the entities
mentioned in '*q*')--or there is not--in
which case the possibility of such translations may be of interest to
linguists and those who like odd parlor games but no one else. In
short, arguing that one can, in principle, avoid speaking of one sort
of entity in favor of another is indirect ontology if it's
philosophy at all, and avoiding taking an explicit stand on ontology
doesn't change the fact. Beardsley would thus seem to be
committed to phenomenalism, despite his explicit claim that aesthetic
objects aren't presentations.
But presentations are ill-suited objects of critical attention in any
case. They're too numerous and variable to ground objective
criticism, and thus too unwieldy to make criticism of any kind worth
the effort. In addition, taking aesthetic objects to be presentations
conflicts with much of the practice--that is, many of the
remarks--of critics themselves. None of this would be news to
Beardsley--he says as much himself in several places--but it
does mean that he shouldn't have walked down the phenomenalist
road as far as he did.
Phenomenalism, even in linguistic dress, also conflicts with
identifying aesthetic objects with productions, since in a great many
cases the production of an aesthetic object isn't the same thing
as a presentation of it. But even if phenomenalism is put to the side
and Beardsley is simply taken at his word, and aesthetic objects are
identified with productions, there are still anomalies. The first and
most important is that the ontological status of aesthetic objects
would be variable to the point of being of little philosophical
interest. A production of a novel, if read silently, is something
mental, a series of thoughts, perhaps conjoined with images. The
production of a play or symphony, however, isn't mental at all,
but a publicly accessible event or process. It thus has whatever
ontological status events or processes do. In architecture, the
production is a building (or a bridge or a walkway), and thus a
physical object (or a cultural object, with physical properties, some
would say). Such wide variability suggests that there's no real
ontology of art at all, nothing firm, finite, or systematically
related enough among the arts to be worth taking note of. A second
problem with taking aesthetic objects to be productions is that, since
some aesthetic objects are mental objects, the problems with
phenomenalism noted at the end of the last paragraph reemerge in at
least some cases, literature among them. A third problem, one in
effect already noted, is that even within one art aesthetic
objects would have a shifting ontological status. In the case of
poetry, for example, if a poem is read silently, the production, and
thus the aesthetic object, is a mental thing, but if the same poem is
read publicly, to an audience, the production, and thus the aesthetic
object, is an event.
By themselves, these objections don't refute Beardsley's views
on the ontology of art. What they show is the price that has to be
paid for them. Perhaps alternative views offer less insight, or
perhaps they offer more insight but at a higher cost, that is,
generate more or even greater anomalies. Beardsley's views might
still be the best, all things considered. If so, the moral to be drawn
may be that the ontology of art isn't a very fruitful or
important area of philosophical investigation, and that no harm to
philosophy or art criticism is done by ignoring it.
## 4. Art as Essentially Institutional
One view that Beardsley certainly did think unacceptable, even if, as
he later came to realize, his own early position wouldn't do, is
that works of art are "essentially institutional".
Depending on the context, this could be a claim either about the
definition of "art" or about the ontology of art.
Beardsley rejects both claims, but it's important to distinguish
them.
In speaking of money as "essentially institutional", a
person is probably claiming no more than that the definition or truth
conditions of "this is money" include a reference to
social institutions. The claim isn't that quarters, dimes,
nickels, and so on fall under a distinct ontological category other
than physical objects, namely, cultural or institutional objects.
If taken ontologically, on the other hand, the force of the claim is
that a work of art isn't a physical object but a different kind
of object altogether, an object whose nature and existence are in part
constituted by culture, tradition, or social institutions. Arthur
Danto's distinction between artworks and "mere real
things"(1981, 1), with beds and ties being paradigms of mere
real things, suggests just such an ontological distinction. For Danto,
it's (1) theories of art and (2) the "aboutness" of
art, or the fact that art is necessarily subject to interpretation,
that make mere real things transform, so to speak, into artworks, and
gain a new ontological status. The nature of a theory of art is never
spelled out by Danto, but apparently all such theories require an
object to be properly placed in an "artworld" to be a work
of art, and not just anyone, at any time, can do such placing. But
even if the indefinite and unexplained nature of Danto's key
concepts is put aside, and the fact that many works of art (for
example, a typical concerto) don't seem to be about anything at
all, or subject to interpretation in any significant sense (at least
until something for it to be about or interpreted in terms of is
cooked up, such as that it's about the very notes being played,
or that it comments on the history of concertos)--even if
that's also put aside, it's hard to see how (1) and (2)
can effect ontological transformations, how things which are otherwise
physical objects become, ontologically speaking, different objects.
Rather, Beardsley thinks, what (1) and (2) suggest is that if a
physical object is a work of art, it has, or at least can have,
properties it wouldn't otherwise have. If a person's a
policeman, he has properties--being able to arrest people, for
example--that he wouldn't otherwise have, but a policeman
has whatever ontological status a person has, no more and no less.
Receiving a certificate from the police academy and putting on a badge
may "transform" a man, but a new object, an essentially
institutional or cultural object, a policeman, doesn't enter the
world because of such doings. The argument that works of art are
cultural objects, not physical objects, because the former have
properties the latter don't, is thus rejected by Beardsley.
## 5. Physical Objects and Kinds
Although Beardsley's early views on ontology tended to either
linguistic phenomenalism or unsystematic pluralism, there were hints,
even at that time, of a simpler and more commonsensical view. That
ontology can be seen lurking beneath the surface of his postulates of
art criticism:
1. The aesthetic object is a perceptual object; that is, it can have
presentations.
2. Presentations of the same aesthetic object may occur at different
times and to different people.
3. Two presentations of the same aesthetic object may differ from
each other.
4. The characteristics of an aesthetic object may not be exhaustively
revealed in any particular presentation of it.
5. A presentation may be veridical; that is, the characteristics of
the presentation may correspond to the characteristics of the
aesthetic object.
6. A presentation may be illusory; that is, some of the
characteristics of the presentation may fail to correspond to the
characteristics of the aesthetic object.
7. If two presentations of the same aesthetic object have
incompatible characteristics, at least one of them is illusory.
(*Aesth:* 46, 48)
Taking "aesthetic object" to mean "work of
art", the underlying ontology isn't a sense-datum ontology
or a mixed-category ontology at all. Several of the
postulates--2, 4, and 6; possibly 3 and 7--are in fact
*prima facie* incompatible with a sense-datum ontology. Rather,
what 1-7 strongly suggest is that a work of art is a physical
object: it's perceptible, publicly or inter-subjectively
available in both time and space, can appear differently from
different points of view and at different times, may not be
exhaustively understood on any given occasion, has properties that may
be correctly or incorrectly perceived, and is such that attributions
to it obey the law of non-contradiction.
Not surprisingly, after 1958 Beardsley
>
>
> moved steadily in the direction of some form of non-reductive
> materialism, of seeing how far it is possible to go in treating
> artworks as physical objects. (*Aesth:* xxiv)
>
>
>
The materialism is non-reductive in that works of art have
properties that physical objects generally don't. Such
materialism works well with "singular" works of art, such
as paintings, Beardsley thinks, but "multiple
artworks"--musical compositions which have many
performances, poems which exist in multiple printings--present
problems. The musical composition isn't any single score or
performance, the poem any single printed text. For that reason,
Beardsley once again is driven back in the direction of ontological
pluralism: perhaps works of art are either physical objects (the
singular works) or kinds of physical object (the multiple works), with
"physical object" construed broadly here so as to include
events (such as a dance). This position is only slightly more
economical than Beardsley's earlier one--no works of art
are ideas, which is good, since taking works of art to be ideas
doesn't fit in well with a number of his critical
postulates--and only slightly tidier--essentially, the
proliferation of ontological categories is limited by the broad but
abstract concept of a kind.
Most philosophers would be dissatisfied with such a disjoint ontology,
and Beardsley was no exception. There are basically two ways to avoid
it:
1. subsume physical objects under kinds;
2. subsume kinds under physical objects.
(A third possibility is to subsume both under a broader, inclusive
category. Absent a relatively revisionist ontology, however,
it's hard to see what such a third category would be.) Both
strategies involve assigning primacy to one of the categories, but
each requires that that be done in a way that does justice to what we
say and think about art.
The first proposal, to subsume physical objects under kinds, entails
that the *Mona Lisa* isn't a physical object but a kind
of painting. One difficulty with this is that as a kind, the *Mona
Lisa* wouldn't have any perceptual properties, which is both
strange and in violation of Beardsley's critical postulates. A
second difficulty is that it's a necessary truth--or at
least many philosophers think it's a necessary truth--that
there's only one *Mona Lisa*, yet the view in question
entails that there could be many *Mona Lisas*, many instances
of the kind.
Neither objection is definitive, however. Although Beardsley discusses
neither objection, the first can be deflated by noting that although,
strictly speaking, the *Mona Lisa* is a kind, it has perceptual
properties in that all of its instances do. In other words, since all
instances of the kind have perceptual properties, instances-of-a-kind
are near enough to kinds to allow kinds to have perceptual properties
in an extended sense of the term, by a small conceptual courtesy.
That's close enough for government work (as the saying goes).
Even if this response is acceptable, however, the question of what the
perceptual properties of the *Mona Lisa* are, if two of its
instances differ markedly in their perceptual properties (due, say, to
exposure to sunlight), would remain an odd one. Not an unanswerable
one, however. That question and others like it could be answered by
taking the *Mona Lisa* to be, in effect, an etching, with the
first of its instances as a reference point for others.
That reply, in fact, previews a response to the second objection.
Perhaps it's simply a contingent, historical fact that we
can't create extremely accurate duplicates of paintings, and for
that reason attach great importance to first instances of
painting-kinds. That may be why we're very reluctant to
admit--reluctant to the point of thinking it
impossible--that there could be more than one *Mona
Lisa*.
Even if both objections can be rebutted, though, Beardsley is still
inclined to reject the view that works of art are, all of them,
kinds.
He's also inclined to reject the second view, that works of art
are, all of them, physical objects. Though the topic isn't
pursued at length, his reasons center around the fact that many works
of art--woodcuts, for instance--have multiple instances, and
it's impossible to account for that fact if every work of art is
a physical object. Is Pastijn's *The Last Supper* in Rome
or in Paris? If it's a physical object, it can't be in
both places, so which of the two is it? Since both "Paris"
and "Rome" seem wrong, the correct thing to do is to
reject the assumption that the woodcut is a physical object. Rather,
it's a kind, and has instances that are located in Paris and
Rome.
But if that's enough to quell doubts about some works of art
being kinds, it should also be enough, for the reasons mentioned two
and three paragraphs back, to quell doubts about all works of art
being kinds. The remaining barrier to the first reductive view, that
works of art are, all of them, kinds, would then be removed.
On the other hand, the overall argument could just as easily cut the
other way. If it's physical objects that literally have
perceptual properties, then why not take works of art, all of them, to
be physical objects, with kinds being granted the title in an extended
sense of the term, by a small conceptual courtesy? As traditionally
interpreted, Aristotle holds that in the primary sense a substance is
an individual, but in a secondary sense, by extension, a species is
also a substance. Why not say something similar about works of art?
Why not say, that, strictly speaking, works of art are physical
objects, but in a secondary sense, works of art are kinds?
Beardsley doesn't pursue the issue to the lengths that it has
been here, so it's impossible to know how he'd respond to
the above. On the record, though, he embraces the untidy pluralism
he'd rather avoid. Doing so doesn't especially bother him,
however, as he doesn't think ontological questions as important
as many other questions in aesthetics.
## 6. The Definition of Art
As mentioned above, Beardsley "sedulously avoided"
(*Aesth:* 59) the term "work of art" as much as
possible in *Aesthetics*. Even so, he came close to defining
it. "Aesthetic object" is his surrogate term, and he does
offer a schematic definition of it.
The genus of "aesthetic object" is *perceptual
object.* What is its differentia? It's not, Beardsley
argues,
1. a motive or intention, even an aesthetic motive or intention, that
stands behind the creation of the object,
2. an effect, even if an aesthetic effect, that the object produces
in those who experience it, or
3. an attitude, even if, again, an aesthetic attitude, that people
bring to the object.
What's needed is objective differentia, not subjective ones
like (a), (b), and (c). Such differentia could be of either of two
sorts. First, it could express the characteristics of perceptual
objects that all and only aesthetic objects have. This, Beardsley
thinks, can't be done until a great deal of knowledge of
aesthetic objects and the philosophy of art is at hand; and it
isn't. Second, an objective definition could proceed by first
dividing up aesthetic objects into classes according to their sensory
fields--as seen, heard, felt, and so on--and then, within
each field, determining what objective characteristics distinguish
aesthetic objects from other perceptual objects.
The second route is the one Beardsley takes in *Aesthetics*.
Schematically, an aesthetic object is: a visual perceptual object that
isn't in the class of things that plastic forks, crumpled pieces
of paper, and so on are in; or an auditory perceptual object that
isn't in the class of objects that scratches, noises, and so on
are in; etc. This is more the beginnings of an outline of an approach
to a definition than the beginnings of a definition
itself--something Beardsley realizes--and it has problems of
its own. The interesting question, however, isn't what those
problems are or the ultimate success or failure of this "divide
and conquer" approach, but why he adopted it in the first place,
and why he later abandoned it.
He adopted it for two reasons. First, approaches of the (a), (b), and
(c) sort have numerous and serious problems (*Aesth:*
60-63). Second, if art criticism can amount to knowledge, as
Beardsley believes it can, then what's called for is an object
of study that can be examined in its own right, in respect to its own
objective qualities. Both of these factors led him in search of an
objective definition of "aesthetic object". Since,
however, identifying necessary and sufficient conditions seemed out of
the question--there was too much variety among aesthetic objects,
and too much disagreement among philosophers--"divide and
conquer" seemed a better strategy.
The reason why he later abandoned it is that he came to realize not
only that his objections to an (a)-type definition weren't
definitive, but that there's much to be said for an
intentionalistic definition, a definition couched in terms of the
artist's intention.
## 7. Against Institutional Definitions
Before he arrived at that view, though, he spent some time arguing
against a popular definition proposed by George Dickie. According to
Dickie,
>
>
> a work of art in the classificatory sense is (1) an artifact, (2) a
> set of aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of
> candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf
> of a certain social institution (the artworld). (Dickie 1974, 34)
>
>
>
Beardsley has no quarrel with (1), but he finds fault with (2) on
several counts.
First, he wonders whether the "appreciation" spoken of can
be any sort of appreciation at all--historical, moral, personal,
professional, or whatever. If it can, the definition is far too broad.
Perhaps, though, it's distinctly aesthetic appreciation
that's meant. In that case, Dickie would have to square his
second condition with his attack on the idea of aesthetic appreciation
as a distinct sort or kind of appreciation.
Second, the idea of candidacy for appreciation is problematic. A
candidate for appreciation can't be merely something, some
property (or aspect), that's potentially appreciable. Too many
properties of too many things are potentially appreciable. If
"candidacy" is interpreted more narrowly and strictly,
however, the idea that a property needs a status like "candidate
for appreciation" bestowed upon it seems wrongheaded. A
candidate for President of the United States, for example, isn't
just anyone who's eligible but someone who has taken at
least some steps toward attaining that office, or someone who has had
an official endorsement. But what's comparable in the case of
aspects of works of art?
>
>
> What sort of preparation or endorsement is contained in the assignment
> of candidacy for appreciation? The term suggests that something cannot
> be appreciated until it has been declared a candidate for
> appreciation. (APV: 133)
>
>
>
but being appreciated, or even appreciable, stands in need of no
one's imprimatur.
Third, there's the question of who confers the status of
candidate for appreciation. Dickie's explicit answer is
"some person or acting on behalf of a certain social institution
(the artworld)", with the artworld itself being
>
>
> a bundle of systems: theater, painting, sculpture, literature, music,
> and so on, each of which furnishes an institutional background for the
> conferring of the status on objects within its domain (Dickie
> 1974, 33).
>
>
>
In calling the artworld an institution, Dickie says, he's saying
that "it is an established practice" (1974, 31). Music,
painting, literature, and so on are social practices.
Beardsley will have none of this. What it is to act on behalf of an
institution is clear enough when an identifiable social institution,
such as a university, is in question. The president of Marquette
University, for example, declares a tuition hike, or signs a document
granting tenure to David Decker. He acts on behalf of the institution
in doing so, because there are clearly defined rules, roles, rights,
responsibilities, powers, positions, concepts, and acts that
constitute the institution that is the university, and he fits into it
in a way that enables him to raise tuition, or to confer the status of
tenured professor. There's nothing remotely comparable in
"the artworld"--no formal, identifiable set of
interlocking rules, roles, relations, and so on constituting an
institution, and so nothing like an institutional token (comparable to
Marquette University or the Department of the Treasury) with empowered
individuals capable of conferring the status of painting, literature,
or music on objects. What there are are loose collections of people of
various sorts interested in painting, music, and literature. The same
is true of gardening and cooking, however, and roses and veal cutlets
need no social institutions, no "gardenworlds" or
"foodworlds", to be what they are. Neither, Beardsley
thinks, do paintings, poems, or concertos need social institutions,
subdivisions of the "artworld", to be what they are.
Museums, books of poetry, academies of music, and journals of art
criticism exist because of a felt need to accommodate, promote,
explore, and otherwise reap the benefits of pre-existing, logically
prior objects known as works of art. And as for practices,
>
>
> Does it make any sense to speak of acting on behalf of a
> *practice*? Status-awarding authority can center in an
> institutional token, but practices, as such, seem to lack the
> requisite source of authority. Perhaps the artworld, as Dickie
> conceives it, could not confer status. (APV: 134)
>
>
>
Last, and independent of the other objections, there is the problem of
circularity. Works of art are defined in terms of the artworld; the
artworld consists of people who have some sort of special doings with
works of art. Ultimately, art is defined in terms of itself. To the
response to this--basically, Dickie's--that the circle
is large enough to make the definition interesting and informative,
Beardsley shakes his head in dismay: if works of art are
>
>
> ultimately defined in terms of themselves, some important piece of the
> truth must not have been encompassed in the circle. (APV:
> 134)
>
>
>
Although some of these objections apply to Dickie alone, most,
Beardsley thinks, apply in one form or another to every institutional
definition of art.
## 8. A Neo-Romantic Definition
His own preferred view is neo-Romantic and
intentionalistic--perhaps surprisingly, since Beardsley opposes
Romanticism and intentionalism in the philosophy of art on every other
front. A work of art is defined as
>
>
> *either* an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of
> affording an experience with marked aesthetic character *or*
> (incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type of
> arrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity. (APV:
> 299)
>
>
>
The first disjunct is the more important one; it says that
something's a work if it's an artifact, "an
arrangement of conditions", that was intended by its creator to
be capable of providing an experience with non-negligible aesthetic
character. It's important to realize what's not being said
here. First, the definition doesn't say that a work of art is
intended to provide (or be capable of providing) a full-blown
aesthetic experience. Only "an experience with marked aesthetic
character" is required. Second, the definition doesn't say
that a work of art doesn't or can't have a utilitarian
function, in the everyday sense of the term. A work of art could be a
chair that's many times simply sat in, for example. Third, the
definition doesn't say that the primary intention behind the
creation of the artifact is an aesthetic one. The primary intention
behind the creation of a religious icon, for example, could be to
bring worshipers closer to God. What makes such an icon a work of art,
however, is not *that* intention but another one: the
intention that it be capable of affording viewers an experience with
marked aesthetic character. How marked this character must be
isn't specified, but that may be all to the good. As the exact
extension of "work of art" is somewhat indefinite, so is
the extension of "artifact created with the intention of being
capable of affording an experience with marked aesthetic
character". If the extensions of the two are the same or very
nearly so, and the objects in the "gray areas", the areas
not definitely within or without the extension of the two, are also
the same or very nearly so, then so much the better for the
definition.
The second part of the definition picks up those objects that
definitely are works of art but were created in a mechanical,
almost an assembly-line fashion, or as just another instance of its
kind. Some beautiful vases may fall into the first class, and many
medieval icons into the second. To make sure that the extension of the
*definiens* matches that of the *definiendum*, the
second disjunct of the definition is needed.
Why accept the definition? For several reasons, Beardsley thinks.
First, a definition
>
>
> chosen for a role in aesthetic theory should mark a distinction that
> is... significant for aesthetic theory (APV: 299),
>
>
>
and Beardsley's does. Second,
>
>
> in selecting key terms for aesthetic theory we ought to stay as close
> as convenient to ordinary use (APV: 300).
>
>
>
Not everyone's use of a term needs to be captured in fashioning
a definition, which would be impossible in any case with a term as
elastic and tendentiously used as "work of art".
Beardsley's definition has the merit of capturing
>
>
> reasonably well a use that has been prominent for some centuries and
> still persists quite widely today, outside the speech and writing of
> or about the avant-garde. (APV: 300)
>
>
>
In other words, Beardsley's definition captures the ordinary
extension of a term. The fact that it may not capture the extension of
a term as used by the avant-garde--who may claim that Waltina
Weber's arthritis is a work of art--doesn't count
against it to any appreciable extent. Third, a definition of
"work of art"
>
>
> should be of the greatest possible utility to inquirers in other
> fields besides aesthetics--fields to which aesthetics itself
> should (sometimes) be thought of as a support and underpinning. (APV:
> 304)
>
>
>
The fields Beardsley has in mind, more than any other, are art history
and anthropology. Fourth and last, a definition of "work of
art" should "conceptually link... art and the
aesthetic" (APV: 312). That Beardsley's does in spades,
directly defining art in terms of the aesthetic as it does.
What can be said against the definition? Complaints could come from
any number of quarters, but most would focus on its being too narrow.
The definition simply doesn't get the extension of "work
of art" right, it would be argued, because of its antiquated
focus on the aesthetic. Developments in art, art criticism, and the
philosophy of art in the twentieth century have shown the independence
of *art* and *the aesthetic*, with the result being a
marked divergence in their extensions. Pieces of driftwood and stones,
for example, have been displayed in museums and catalogued as works of
art. Artifactuality thus isn't a necessary condition of art. And
many objects obviously have no aesthetic intention behind them, and
yet are works of art. Duchamp's famous *Fountain*, for
example, a urinal turned upside down, is a work of art, but it was
manufactured in a factory. No aesthetic intention stands behind it, it
has no aesthetically interesting properties, and it doesn't
belong to a kind whose members are normally created with an aesthetic
intention. Literally thousands of objects of the same sort can be
found in museums and galleries today. They're listed in museum
catalogues, discussed in art history texts, and analyzed in journals
of art criticism. If they aren't works of art, what are
they?
Beardsley never explicitly responded to this objection, but he
wouldn't be fazed. The objection assumes that if an object is
displayed in a museum--a fine arts museum, not a history museum
or any other sort of museum--or if an art historian or art critic
discusses an object, then it must be a work of art, or at least that
there's very strong reason to think that it's a work of
art. That it's some reason to think so Beardsley wouldn't
deny; but that it's necessarily a strong or definitive reason he
certainly would. Fine arts museums sometimes display the working
clothes or palettes of artists, but they aren't works of art.
This has to do with the fact that even if the primary business of a
museum is to display art, it has other functions as well, and
justifiably extends its mission in various ways. Palettes and working
clothes are an extension in one direction, for one reason, but pieces
of driftwood and stones are a different extension, in a different
direction, and for a different reason. They're
displayed--in small numbers--because they're
aesthetically interesting, just as most works of art are. And
Duchamp's *Fountain* might be displayed not because
it's a work of art--although *presenting* an upside
down urinal to a museum might be regarded as a small joke, and thus a
minor work of art--but because (a) art, as a human endeavor, has
a history, (b) museums, as a social institution, have a duty to
acknowledge and exhibit that history, and (c) *Fountain*, as a
well-chosen memorial to the joke, has a place in that history. Much
the same can be said about the remarks of art critics and art
historians respecting *Fountain* and its many kin. If such
objects are called "works of art" for a long enough period
of time, by a large enough group of people, the term can easily
acquire a secondary sense or a number of derivative senses. Beardsley
is probably alluding to as much in his remarks about the use of the
term by or about the avant-garde. But that the appearance of
coatracks, old shoes, broken sticks, and such like in museums, or that
mention of them in books and journals by art critics and historians
means that "art" in the primary sense is wrongly defined
in terms of artifactuality and aesthetic intention--that
hasn't been shown, he would say. A perfectly good explanation of
such phenomena can be provided in accord with a relatively traditional
definition of art.
## 9. The Intentions of the Artist
Despite his many books and articles, Beardsley is probably best known
for his very first article in aesthetics. In "The Intentional
Fallacy", a paper co-written with William K. Wimsatt and
published in 1946, he argued against the neo-Romantic view that a work
of art means what the artist says it means, or what he intends it to
mean. Since many pens have run dry in writing about--and in the
great majority of cases attacking--The Intentional Fallacy,
another pen will run dry in discussing it below.
The issue can be put in terms of the relation between
(1)
The artist intended *x* to mean *p* in work
*w*
and
(2)
*x* means *p* in work *w*.
According to E.D. Hirsch,
(1)
entails
(2),
at least if *w* is a literary work, because the meaning of
'*x*' simply is what the writer meant or intended
by '*x*'. Knowing the artist's intention is
thus knowing the work's meaning (Hirsch 1967). That's one
end of the spectrum on the relation between
(1)
and
(2).
Beardsley sits at the other end. He holds that the intentions of the
artist aren't relevant to the interpretation of a work of art at
all.
(1)
not only doesn't entail
(2);
in and of itself, it provides no direct evidential support for
(2).
An artist's intentions have nothing to do with what a work
means.
Between Beardsley and Hirsch are any number of intermediate positions,
in general characterizable as holding that the intentions of the
artist provide some direct evidential support for
(2) but
not definitive support. Artists' intentions have some weight,
in other words, but not, as Hirsch in effect has it, infinite weight,
weight that entails that the work means what the artist intends it to
mean. Other factors may well outweigh that of the artist's
intention in a particular case, and the meaning of the work, or part
of the work, not correspond to what the artist intends. Many
philosophers, probably the majority, would subscribe to such an
intermediate position. The question, however, isn't which
position is most popular, but which has the most to say for it.
One steadfast conviction of Beardsley's is that his does. He
returned to the issue of the relation of intention and interpretation
a number of times, and never wavered. In fact, he was more than
consistent on the issue; he also held that
(3)
The artist intended *w* to have descriptive property
*p*
provides no direct evidential support for
(4)
*W* has descriptive property *p*,
and that
(5)
The artist intended *w* to have evaluative property
*e*
provides no direct evidential support for
(6)
*W* has evaluative property *e*.
An artist's intentions are utterly irrelevant to the
descriptive, interpretive, and evaluative properties of his work. If
we want to know what properties a work has, we should examine the
work, not the worker.
And in addition to "The Intentional Fallacy",
there's also the lesser known and lesser discussed "The
Affective Fallacy". In a paper bearing that name (1949), also
co-written with William Wimsatt, Beardsley argued that a
person's affective responses to a work of art are irrelevant to
its descriptive, interpretive, and evaluative properties. If we want
to know what properties a work has, we should look at the work, not
those looking at the work.
Beardsley's claims about the irrelevance of the artist's
intentions to the descriptive and evaluative properties of his work
have elicited little in the way of critical response. That may or may
not mean that philosophers are generally in agreement with him. As far
as the irrelevance of the artist's intentions to interpretation
is concerned, however, there has been a great deal of dissent. Since
there has, what follows will concentrate exclusively upon
interpretation.
Beardsley's arguments against intentionalism are of a variety of
sorts. In "The Intentional Fallacy", he says that the
intentions of the artist are neither "available nor
desirable", with this meaning that such intentions aren't
always available and are never desirable. Since we frequently can and
do correctly interpret a work of art with little or no knowledge about
the artist, the fact that the artist's intentions aren't
always available is enough to show that Hirsch's position is
wrong. But that it's never desirable to consult the
artist's intentions when they're available is what
Beardsley has to prove.
Partial support can be found in his argument that
>
>
> Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands
> that it work. It is only because an artifact works that we infer the
> intention of the artificer.... A poem can *be* only
> through its *meaning*... yet it *is*, simply
> *is*, in the sense that we have no excuse for inquiring what
> part is intended or meant. (IF: 469)
>
>
>
In other words, a poem or other work of art is independent of its
creator, just as any other artifact--a pudding or a washing
machine--is. A pudding consists of milk, eggs, and other
ingredients; a washing machine of a metal drum, rubber gaskets, and
other parts; and a poem of words. In all three cases, the parts exist
and are what they are independently of the artificers, and the
artifacts are to be judged--and interpreted--on the basis of
their properties. There's no need to bring in the artificer, for
he doesn't remain behind in the parts, and critical judgment,
including interpretation, concerns the how, why, what, and how well of
the artifact, not the how, why, what, or how well of the artificer.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the chef's
intentions.
The principal point at which this argument--admittedly, an
extended reconstruction of a few remarks in "The Intentional
Fallacy"--might be questioned is in the assumption that
works of art are like standard, garden-variety artifacts--lawn
chairs and television sets--in leaving their creators behind. For
Beardsley, a work of art isn't fundamentally different from a
pair of fingernail clippers: it's made and then begins its own
autonomous life. It is what it is--who knows or cares who created
it, and with what intentions. This is a plausible position, but not an
unassailable one. The alternative view is that not all artifacts
lead autonomous lives, and that for some, works of art as well as, on
many people's view, linguistic artifacts of all kinds (sentence
tokens, memos, book chapters, and so on), what they are is intimately
linked to their creator, and more particularly to the intention-laden
conditions of their origin. Put more concretely and slightly too
strongly in terms of an imperfect analogy with physical objects: a
rock isn't space, and to understand a rock we can many times can
ignore considerations of space, but if we remove space altogether from
our understanding of a rock, there isn't a rock to understand at
all. On this view, then, a proper understanding of works of
art--which includes correctly interpreting them--requires
the admissibility of considerations of the artist's intentions,
even if those intentions aren't always available or needed.
But why, Beardsley would ask in reply, are works of art so special?
What makes them categorically different from your run-of-the-mill
artifact? The view in question distinguishes kinds of artifact without
providing a principled or well-argued basis for doing so. At the
least, additional support is needed. Absent such support, the view is
nothing but special pleading.
One possible reply is that there is a non-arbitrary difference between
works of art and other artifacts, namely that other artifacts
aren't essentially meaning-laden and works of art are. Still, in
and of itself, this isn't sufficient, Beardsley would say, for
(i) some works of art, such as "pure music", aren't
meaning-laden, (ii) many objects which aren't works of art, such
as newspapers, are meaning-laden, and (iii) even if (i) and (ii)
weren't true, the fact that all and only works of art are
meaning-laden has to be shown to make for the relevance of
artists' intentions, and that hasn't been done.
In *Aesthetics*, the attack is a little different. "We
must distinguish between the aesthetic object and the intention in the
mind of its creator", Beardsley says, and the irrelevance of the
latter to interpretation can be shown if we consider a certain
sculpture, "a large, twisted, cruller-shaped object of polished
teak, mounted at an oblique angle to the floor". The creator of
the sculpture intends it to "symbolize... Human
Destiny". Try as we might, however, we "see in it no such
symbolic meaning". The philosophical question then is:
>
>
> Should we say that we have simply missed the symbolism, but that it
> must be there, since what a statue symbolizes is precisely what its
> maker makes it symbolize? Or should we say, in the spirit of Alice
> confronting the extreme semantic conventionalism [intentionalism] of
> Humpty Dumpty, that the question is whether that object can be made to
> mean Human Destiny?
>
>
>
Obviously, the latter, Beardsley thinks, for the former entails
that
>
>
> anyone can make anything symbolize anything just by saying it does,
> for another sculpture could copy the same object and label it
> "Spirit of Palm Beach, 1938". (*Aesth:*
> 18-19, 21)
>
>
>
The argument here is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go
as far as Beardsley apparently thinks it does. What it shows is that
an artist's say-so or intention isn't absolute as far as
the meaning of his work is concerned. That's a far cry from
showing that
(1)
is utterly irrelevant to
(2).
In addition to sculpture, the irrelevance of the author to the meaning
of his text is also argued for by Beardsley, though only partly by
counterexample. "Suppose someone utters a sentence", he
says.
>
>
> We can [then] ask two questions: (1) What does the *speaker*
> mean? (2) What does the *sentence* mean?
>
>
>
Although answers to the two questions usually coincide, they can
diverge; people can mean one thing and say another. The reason
that's possible is that
>
>
> what a sentence means depends not on the whim of the individual, and
> his mental vagaries, but upon public conventions of usage that are
> tied up with habit patterns in the whole speaking community.
>
>
>
Sentence meaning--that is, textual meaning--is thus one
thing, and is anchored in the "the whole speaking
community", while speaker meaning--what the author
meant--is quite another, and is anchored in his own, quite
possibly idiosyncratic intentions. Thus an author can be wrong about
what his own work means. A.E. Housman, for example, was probably wrong
in claiming that his poem "1887" wasn't ironic
(*Aesth:*, 25-26).
Once again, there's something wrong and something right in what
Beardsley says. He's undoubtedly right that sentence meaning and
speaker meaning needn't coincide, and that that proves that the
two aren't identical. Thus the author's intention
isn't always the final word on what a text means. That, however,
doesn't prove that the author's intention carries no
evidential weight at all. According to the alternative position, it
does, but in some cases, perhaps the majority of them, not enough to
carry the day. In other cases, however, and perhaps Housman's
among them, the author's intention can tip the scales in favor
of one reading rather than another. In any case, the argument here
might conclude, the unease that many people feel in dismissing Housman
from the interpretation of his poem argues that we should accord his
intentions at least some weight.
In *The Possibility of Criticism*, three arguments are advanced
against intentionalism, which is again taken to be the view that the
meaning of a work of art is what the artist intends it to mean. The
first is that
>
>
> some texts that have been formed without the agency of an author, and
> hence without authorial meaning, nevertheless have a meaning and can
> be interpreted. (PC: 18)
>
>
>
What Beardsley has in mind is the kind of verbal mistake made at a
publishing house, or by a computer in scanning a document. He cites
the sentence "Jensen argued like a man filled with righteous
indigestion" as an example of a text that can be read and
interpreted, yet no agency, *a fortiori* no author's
intention, stands behind it. "Indignation" became
"indigestion" at the printer's, by mechanical
error.
True enough, his opponent would say in reply, but what that shows is
that the author's intention isn't identical with the
meaning of a text or needed in all cases to correctly interpret a
text. What it doesn't show is that the author's intention,
if present, is irrelevant to interpretation. Besides, the reply would
continue, printer's errors and similar cases are parasitic on
normal cases in which there is authorial intent. Our conception of a
text is that of an intentionally created artifact of a certain kind,
and cases in which authorial intent is altogether missing are admitted
as texts only by conceptual courtesy, based on the similarity of such
texts to standard, intention-laden texts.
The second argument is that
>
>
> the meaning of a text can change after its author has died. But the
> author cannot change his meaning after he has died. Therefore, textual
> meaning is not identical to the authorial meaning.
>
>
>
Bolstering this argument is the fact that
>
>
> the OED furnishes abundant evidence that individual words and idioms
> acquire new meanings and lose old meanings as time passes; these
> changes can in turn produce changes of the meaning in sentences in
> which the words appear.
>
>
>
As an example, Beardsley cites a line from a poem written in 1744,
"He raised his plastic arm", and notes that "plastic
arm" has "acquired a new meaning in the twentieth
century". Thus the line "in which it occurs has also
acquired a new meaning" (PC: 19).
This argument is highly doubtful. Just as the doings of the homosexual
community in the 1970s, and the terminology that such doings
introduced, don't mean that the line "Now we don our gay
apparel" has acquired a new meaning in the Christmas carol, a
call to dressing in drag, so the doings of the oil industry in
the twentieth century, and the terminology surrounding petrochemical
products that such doings introduced, don't mean that the line
"He raised his plastic arm" has acquired a new meaning in
the poem, a meaning having to do with the movement of a prosthetic
limb. Newer meanings of a term, distant from original meanings and far
removed in time, are utterly irrelevant to the meaning of a line
written long ago. In effect, the principle of interpretation
underlying Beardsley's argument, that new meanings of a term are
relevant to the interpretation of older texts in which it occurs,
1. underwrites unbridled anachronism,
2. entails ever changing but correct interpretation--that is, no
stable textual meaning--and
3. seriously threatens the autonomy of the text and, by extension,
the autonomy of all works of art.
Although Beardsley might regard (a) as an acceptable consequence of
his argument, at least if "unbridled anachronism" were
replaced with a less loaded term, he'd undoubtedly be unhappy
with (b) and (c). (b) challenges the objectivity of criticism,
something that he's at pains to establish, and (c) endangers his
comprehensive outlook on art and art criticism. Perhaps that's
why he later seems to have renounced the argument, even if only
implicitly (cf. *Aesth:* li).
The third argument is the familiar one that
>
>
> a text can have meanings that its author is not aware of. Therefore,
> it can have meanings that its author did not intend. Therefore,
> textual meaning is not identical to authorial meaning. (PC: 20)
>
>
>
While all this can be granted, Beardsley's critic would say, the
last sentence gives the game away: the argument doesn't show the
complete irrelevance of the author's intentions to the meaning
of his work, just that the two aren't identical.
## 10. The Intentionalist Strikes Back
One line of argument to show that
(1)
The artist intended *x* to mean *p* in work w
is logically or epistemically related to
(2)
*x* means *p* in work *w*
begins by noting that the facts expressed by
(1)
and
(2)
may not be "constantly conjoined", but there's at
least a very strong correlation between the two: the great majority of
cases of (1) are cases of (2), and the great majority of cases of (2)
are cases of (1). More than that, given our knowledge of the world,
it's plausible to assume that there's a causal relation
between type-(1) facts and type-(2) facts: in general, type-(1) facts
bring about or cause type-(2) facts. A universal causal law of the
form, All M-type facts bring about or cause N-type facts,
wouldn't be quite correct in this case, but neither would it be
in the case of throwing rocks and breaking windows. The causal
generalization is sound enough in both, however.
That much is common sense and is readily admitted by Beardsley. The
intention of the artist and the aesthetic object "are causally
connected", Beardsley says in *Aesthetics*
(*Aesth:* 19), and if two things, for example, Jones, Sr. and
Jones, Jr., are causally connected, then
>
>
> any evidence about the height of either of them will be
> *indirect* evidence about the height of the other, in virtue of
> certain laws of genetics, according to which the tallness of the
> father affects the probability that the son will be tall, though it
> does not, of course, render it certain (*Aesth:*
> 19-20).
>
>
>
Thus, Beardsley adds,
>
>
> In the case of aesthetic object and intention we have direct evidence
> of each: we discover the nature of the object by looking, listening,
> reading, etc., and we discover the intention by biographical inquiry,
> through letters, diaries, workbooks--or, if the artist is alive,
> by asking him. But also what we learn about the nature of the object
> itself is indirect evidence of what the artist intended it to be, and
> what we learn about the artist's intention is indirect evidence
> of what the object became. (*Aesth:* 20)
>
>
>
There are two important points to note about this passage. First,
although Beardsley wrote that in his early work he was concerned
>
>
> with the logical relevance of information about the intentions of an
> author to the interpretation... of his work,
>
>
>
and he "took the position that there is no such relevance"
(II: 188), in the last sentence he admits that there is a
"logical relation" between
(1)
and
(2):
(1) is indirect, inductive evidence of a causal sort for (2).
Reasoning from type-(1) facts to type-(2) facts is simply reasoning
from causes to effects. Such reasoning doesn't yield certainty,
but it's generally dependable nonetheless. Thus, in at least
many cases, if we knew that the artist intended his work to mean
*p*, we would have good, though not definitive, reason for
believing that his work means *p*.
The second point concerns the distinction between direct and indirect
evidence drawn by Beardsley. A diary entry is direct evidence of what
the artist intended his work to mean; the artist's intention is
indirect evidence of what his work means. But why the difference? In
both cases, the relation between the items is causal, yet in one the
evidence is direct, and in the other indirect. If a diary entry is
direct evidence of an artist's intention (reasoning from an
effect to a cause), then the artist's intention ought to be
direct evidence of what his work means (reasoning from a cause to an
effect). That's a conclusion Beardsley certainly wants to avoid.
If, on the other hand, the artist's intention is indirect
evidence of what his work means (reasoning, as just noted, from a
cause to an effect), then a diary entry ought to be indirect evidence
of what he intended (reasoning, again as just noted, from an effect to
a cause).
This second way of resolving the tension in Beardsley's remarks
would probably be more acceptable to him, but it still carries
problems in its train. What does the distinction between direct and
indirect evidence amount to on it? Something like this: direct
evidence that *S* is *P* is evidence gleaned from an
inspection of *S* itself, no other objects being taken into
consideration or made epistemic use of. Indirect evidence that
*S* is *P* is evidence that takes objects other than
*S* into consideration, or that makes epistemic use of such
objects. Thus evidence respecting the height of Jones, Sr. is indirect
evidence of the height of Jones, Jr., and conversely; diary entries
are indirect evidence of an artist's intentions, and conversely;
and an artist's intentions are indirect evidence of the meaning
of his text, and conversely. Direct evidence of Jones, Jr.'s
height requires scrutinizing him and not looking elsewhere, however,
and by the same token direct evidence of the meaning of a work of art
requires scrutinizing it and not looking elsewhere.
But the problem with drawing the distinction this way is that objects
other than the work of art itself often have to be consulted in order
to know what the work means, and many of these objects have to be
regarded as legitimate sources of information, lest interpretation
become impossible. The OED is consulted by even the best of critics,
and social histories are many times needed to understand cultural and
historical references. Beardsley knows as much and, from "The
Intentional Fallacy" onward, insisted on the legitimacy of such
sources. But as drawn, the distinction between direct and indirect
evidence doesn't distinguish between dictionaries and diaries,
and Beardsley never did define the direct evidence/indirect evidence
distinction with sufficient precision to put one on one side of the
critical fence, and the other on the other, and have them stay put.
Perhaps the distinction can be drawn in some way along the lines
indicated above (which are suggested by Beardsley's own
remarks), but more rigor and a principled argument would be
needed.
## 11. Halfway Between Induction and Deduction
A different way to draw the distinction, not hinted at by Beardsley
but perhaps acceptable to him, would be in terms of the nature of the
inferential relation between (1) and (2). (1) doesn't entail
(2), but, as Beardsley admits, it does provide inductive support for
(2). (1) may or may not be criterial evidence for (2), however. What
this last claim means can be made clearer by an analogy with W.D
Ross's theory of ethical reasoning.
According to Ross,
(L)
Act *A* is a lie
doesn't entail
(W)
Act *A* is wrong,
for *A* might be right even so, when all ethically relevant
factors are taken into account. If *A* helps to save innocent
people's lives, for example, it's right--actually
right, as Ross says--even though it's a lie. Nor is the
relation between (L) and (W) causal or inductive. Lying doesn't
cause wrongness, and although it might be that most (or even all) lies
are all-things-considered wrong--actually wrong--it might be
that most (or even all) lies aren't all-things-considered
wrong--actually wrong. Regardless of which alternative (if
either) is correct, (L) still provides some reason for thinking that
(W) is true. That's to say that the inference from (L) to (W)
isn't based on an empirical generalization of any kind. Rather
than being deductive evidence or empirically based inductive evidence,
(L) is criterial evidence for (W). All by itself, irrespective of any
other considerations, any other premises, it lends some but not
definitive support to (W). The inference is an immediate one, in
other words, in the logician's sense of the term, and since it
is and isn't grounded on empirical facts, it looks like a
deductive inference. It's not a deductive inference, however:
unlike a standard deductive inference, but like a standard inductive
inference, additional premises--such as "Act *A*
saves many people's lives", or "Act *A* leads
to many people's deaths"--can affect the strength of
the inference, weakening it in some cases, strengthening it in others,
and having little to no effect on it in still others. As with a
typical inductive argument, strength of inference isn't an
all-or-nothing affair. The inference is defeasible, in that
countervailing considerations can weigh against the support the
premise provides, even to the point of nullifying it altogether, or at
least very nearly doing so; but it's also buttressable, in that
additional considerations can bolster or further strengthen such
support, even to the point of making the inference well-nigh
deductively sound. Or, of course, the inference can be strengthened by
some considerations and weakened by others.
What this means is that there can be criterial evidence of an
altogether different sort for (or against) (W).
(3)
Act *A* is an act of betraying a friend
is also criterial evidence for (W), and there are many other examples
of such evidence. Whether the wrongness of an act is constituted by
such factors as lying and betrayal, or whether it's a different
property which supervenes on such factors, is of no moment as far as
the matter at hand is concerned. The important point is the
logic--or better, the epistemology--of the inferential
relation.
What all this has to do with the intentional fallacy is this. The
intentionalist shouldn't claim that (1) entails (2), for that
claim is subject to the numerous counterarguments that Beardsley makes
full use of. But the anti-intentionalist, such as Beardsley,
shouldn't claim that there's "no logical
relation" between (1) and (2), for there clearly is, even on his
own showing, a causally grounded, empirically based, standard
inductive relation between the two. The intentionalist shouldn't
rejoice at this admission, however. For two reasons, such a relation
tells us nothing of any significance about the proper way to interpret
art. First, similar causal relations can be found to obtain in
virtually every domain of inquiry, and they tell us nothing
significant about proper methodology in those domains. The fact that
tall parents generally have tall children, and tall children generally
have tall parents, is of no help in establishing proper methodology in
genetics, or even in telling us where to begin our investigation.
Second, and more importantly, being founded on a causal connection
between two distinct things, namely the artist's intention
and the meaning of his work, the empirical generalization that
underlies the inference from (1) to (2) presupposes that there's
a way to identify the meaning of an artist's work independent of
consulting his intentions. That's not something the
intentionalist who relies only on a causal connection between the two
should be very happy about, for it suggests that the artist's
intentions are altogether extrinsic to and independent of the meaning
of the artist's work.
The real debate about the intentional fallacy is, or at least should
be, over whether (1) provides criterial evidence for (2). Beardsley
argues against an entailment relation between the two, admits that
there's an inductive relation but relegates it to the category
of indirect evidence, and thinks the job is done. The intentionalist
typically wonders how the meaning of a work can be utterly divorced
from the voice, the uttering or creating with an intended meaning, of
the artist, and brings up hard cases to support the relevance of the
artist's intentions. But neither has focused the issue properly.
Beardsley apparently takes direct evidence to be deductively adequate
evidence or evidence gleaned from the object itself, and indirect
evidence to be evidence based on empirical generalizations or gleaned
from something other than the object itself. In neither sense is an
artist's intentions direct evidence of what his work means, and
Beardsley is right that there's an intentional fallacy. But if,
as it should be, direct evidence is identified with criterial
evidence, and indirect evidence with non-criterial but inductive
evidence, Beardsley has failed to establish that there's an
intentional fallacy. On the other hand, the mere strong feeling of the
intentionalist that the meaning of a work isn't independent of
the intentions of the artist who created it is no proof of anything,
and the hard cases brought up in support of the relevance of the
artist's intentions--typically, cases that involve
allusion, irony, or obscure passages--can almost always be
explained or explained away, and not implausibly, by the
anti-intentionalist. The mistake of Beardsley is to neglect a
possibility and thus focus the issue wrongly. The mistake of the
intentionalist is typically not to focus the issue with any degree of
precision, and to rely on relatively vague but strongly held
intuitions.
## 12. Meaning and Speech Acts
What's needed to decide whether there's an intentional
fallacy, whether (1) does or doesn't provide criterial evidence
for (2), is, more than anything else, a theory of meaning. A theory of
meaning is a theory of what it is for *w* (some object, in the
broad sense of the term) to mean *p*. Beardsley was always
aware of the need for a theory of meaning, and in *Aesthetics*
he proposed one, a complicated theory which he later rejected. A few
years later, however, in his final paper on the topic, he
embraced a speech-act theory based on the work of William Alston and
used it to defend the intentional fallacy.
Speech act theory in general is derived from the work of J.L. Austin,
a British philosopher who flourished shortly after World War II.
Austin distinguishes three things a person typically does in uttering
a sentence, say, "The door is open". He utters certain
words--"the", "door", "is",
and "open"--with certain meanings; this is a
locutionary act. He states that the door is open; this is an
illocutionary act. And he convinces someone that the door is open;
this is a perlocutionary act. As Austin says, it is *in*
uttering a sentence with a certain meaning (that is, *in*
performing a locutionary act) that we perform an illocutionary act.
Illocutionary acts have come to be called speech acts. Asserting,
requesting, arguing, ordering, promising, and so on are all examples
of speech acts, but there are many, many different speech acts. Last,
as Austin also says, it is *by* uttering a certain sentence
with a certain meaning that we perform certain other acts, acts partly
defined in terms of their effects on listeners: convincing, enraging,
pleasing, deceiving, and so on. These are perlocutionary acts. I utter
the words "The door is open"; *in* doing so, I
state that the door is open; *by* so doing, I convince you that
the door is open.
These suggestive distinctions led Alston to believe that the meaning
of a sentence is the sentence's total speech act potential, its
potential for performing all of the various speech acts it could be
used to perform. In effect, this is to take the slogan "Meaning
is use" very seriously, and to cash in "use" in
terms of the performance of speech acts. Sentence meaning is primary
on this theory, and word meaning secondary and derivative, since
it's defined in terms of a word's contribution to the
speech act potential of the sentences into which it can figure.
Beardsley thought this theory correct and used it to argue that the
intentional fallacy is indeed a fallacy.
In "Intentions and Interpretations" (1982), he claims that
in composing a poem the poet doesn't perform a speech act, but
rather represents the performance of a speech act or acts. When
Wordsworth writes
>
>
> Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour:
>
>
> England hath need of thee--
>
>
>
his words are ostensibly addressed to a long-dead poet, but to perform
an illocutionary, any illocutionary action, a person must believe that
he can "secure uptake", that is, secure understanding of
his sentence and the speech act performed. Wordsworth, however, knew
that Milton was long dead and had no such belief. He thus
didn't perform the illocutionary act of addressing Milton or
stating that England needs him. He does represent the performance of
those illocutionary acts, however. What poets and other authors of
literary works do, Beardsley thinks, is represent the performance of
illocutionary acts, not perform illocutionary acts themselves.
To perform illocutionary acts *A*, *B*, and *C*
is therefore one thing; to represent the performance of illocutionary
acts, *A*, *B*, and *C*, quite another. The
latter doesn't entail the former, as the above example shows. In
addition, even if the performance of an illocutionary act is
necessarily intentional in one respect--and Beardsley says that
"only intentional text production can generate illocutionary
actions" (II: 195)--it doesn't follow that the
performance of illocutionary act *x* requires, as a condition
for its performance, the intention to perform *x*. I can
inadvertently insult or warn someone. Some illocutionary acts are
defined in terms of an intention, of course--lying, for instance,
is defined in terms of the intention to deceive--but that
doesn't mean lying is defined in terms of the intention to lie.
That would be circular. And it also doesn't mean that
representing the act of lying requires the intention to deceive.
Storytellers frequently represent the act of lying without having any
such intention. A person could intend to lie, or intend to represent
the act of lying, of course, but those are different matters.
The upshot of this is that
>
>
> it is... plain that *representing* [an illocutionary act,
> such as] an accusation cannot have as its condition an intention to
> accuse, and indeed these are somewhat at odds, for to take the
> representational stance is to renounce or withhold or suspend the
> illocutionary action. (II: 197)
>
>
>
The complete argument, then, is something like this:
(1)
The meaning of a sentence '*S*' is its total
illocutionary act potential, that is, its capacity to be used to
perform the speech acts, *I*, *J*, *K*.
(2)
The performance of speech acts *I*, *J*, *K*
in using '*S*' does not require the corresponding
intentions to perform speech acts *I*, *J*, *K*
in using '*S*.'
(3)
Thus, the meaning of '*S*' is independent of
the intentions of the speaker to perform the speech acts that
constitute, as potentially performable acts, the meaning of
'*S*.'
(4)
Differently put, the meaning of '*S*' is
logically independent of the speaker's intention to mean what
'*S*' does in fact mean.
(5)
Therefore, a speaker's intention that sentence
'*S*' mean *p* is logically irrelevant to
whether it does mean *p*.
(6)
But even if
(4)
were false, and the meaning, *M*, of a non-literary
sentence--a sentence not in a work of literature--were
partly a function of the speaker's intention that it mean
*M*, the same wouldn't be true of a literary
sentence.
The proof of
(6)
is that
(7)
An author does not perform an illocutionary act, *I*,
*J*, *K* in uttering (writing, dictating, signing, etc.)
'*S*.'
(8)
Rather, he represents the performance of illocutionary acts
*I*, *J*, *K* in uttering
'*S*.'
(9)
Representing an illocutionary action involves renouncing,
withholding, or suspending the performance of that action.
(10)
Thus, representing the performance of *I*, *J*,
*K* doesn't require the intention to perform *I*,
*J*, *K*.
(11)
Consequently, even if
(4)
were false as far as non-literary sentences were concerned, it would
be true as far as literary sentences were concerned, for the meaning
of '*S*' is logically independent of the
speaker's intention to mean what '*S*' in
fact does mean.
This is an interesting and provocative argument, but it can be
questioned at several points. One of its limitations is that, even if
it's successful, it proves only that an author's
intentions are irrelevant to the correct interpretation of his text.
Essentially employing speech act theory as it does, it doesn't
apply to the interpretation of works of art other than
literature--paintings, sculptures, and dances, for example. This
is a minor point, though, as analogous concepts are probably
available, or could be introduced without too much unnaturalness, in
all the arts.
More bothersome is that the key concept here is an unexplained and
seemingly unexplainable one. No one has provided a rigorous definition
of a speech act. Even these many years after Austin first introduced
the concept in the 1950s, little more has been done to clarify and
ground it than to cite some handy examples, place the foils of
locutionary and perlocutionary acts to the left and right of it, and
invoke the "in" versus "by" distinction found
above and in virtually every other exposition of the notion. Most
philosophers are at least somewhat hesitant to make a concept
that's technical yet so little explained or pinned down the
mainstay of a substantial theory, such as a theory of meaning.
That aside, speech act theories of meaning have received their own
share of criticism over the years. One objection to a theory like
Alston's--and the acceptability of his theory can't
be pursued at length here--is that it explicates sentence meaning
in terms of speech act potential, and thus requires that the
illocutionary acts that a sentence can be used to perform be
identifiable independently of and prior to the meaning of the sentence
used to perform those illocutionary acts. But that's impossible,
the objection runs, and in fact gets things backward. To identify the
act of stating that the door is open, rather than, say, the act of
asking for an ice cream cone, as an act that the sentence "The
door is open" can be used to perform--to identify the
former but not the latter as part of the sentence's speech act
potential--requires that the meaning of the sentence first be
understood and identified. Absent an understanding of its meaning,
it's anyone's guess what acts it could be used to perform.
Speech act potential is a function of meaning, not, as the theory has
it, meaning a function of speech act potential.
Independent of these objections is the fact that the argument
doesn't really prove what it's supposed to. If it's
correct, it shows that within and/or without literary discourse,
it's possible for '*S*' to mean *M*
without it being true that the speaker or author intended that
'*S*' mean M. But all that means is that
>
>
> '*S*' means *M*
>
>
>
doesn't entail
>
>
> The speaker or author intended that '*S*' mean
> *M*.
>
>
>
In effect, this is another demonstration that Hirsch is wrong, that
sentence meaning isn't identical with speaker meaning. The
question at issue, however, is whether speaker meaning is criterial
evidence for sentence meaning. For all that the argument shows, it
could well be.
There's also the matter of whether literature is representation,
that is, as Beardsley uses the term, one kind of "imitation of a
compound illocutionary act". "The writing of a
poem", Beardsley writes elsewhere (PC: 58, 59),
>
>
> is not an illocutionary act; it is the creation of a fictional
> character performing a fictional illocutionary act.
>
>
>
But in his *Essay on Man*, does Pope create a fictional
character who details his views, or does he simply speak his mind in
poetic form? The more intuitive answer is the latter, but Beardsley is
committed to the former. What makes the *Essay on Man*
didactic, he says, is not that it contains arguments put forward by
Pope (arguing is an illocutionary act), but that it contains
imitations of arguments put forward by a fictional character (PC:
60-61). We know this because Pope
>
>
> embodies his doctrines in a discourse that flaunts its poetic form (in
> sound and meaning) and directs attention to itself as an object of
> rewarding scrutiny.
>
>
>
The "illocutionary fuse is [therefore] drawn", and the
poem
>
>
> relinquishes its illocutionary force for aesthetic status, and takes
> on the character of being an appearance or a show of living language
> use. (PC: 60)
>
>
>
Although this position can't be definitively refuted, it's
implausible and subject to the rejoinder that what Pope did is
himself speak in the poem, making sure that neither aesthetic interest
nor useful instruction were ever altogether lacking. Independent of
strong theoretical reasons for thinking otherwise, that's a
simpler and better explanation than Beardsley's. The point can
be reinforced if didactic literary works other than poems are
considered. Aldous Huxley's essays are literary works, but
it's even more implausible to posit a fictional speaker for
them, and to think of them as imitations of compound illocutionary
acts, rather than simply as compound speech acts performed by
Huxley.
But even if Beardsley's view that a literary work is a
representation or imitation of a speech act is acceptable, still
another curious feature of the argument concerns his treatment of the
distinction between performing a speech act and representing the
performance of a speech act. Beardsley writes as if the two were
mutually exclusive. They're not. While it's true that
it's one thing to state that *p* and quite another to
represent that someone is stating that *p*, representing (in
language) is itself a speech act just as much as stating is.
Representing that someone is stating that *p* is like stating
that someone is stating that *p*--just a speech act with a
more complicated conceptual content and structure than simply stating
that *p*. Given that that's so, the two halves of
Beardsley argument,
(1)-(5)
and
(6)-(11),
merge.
And it's probably a good thing that representing is a speech
act. If "Milton!" in Wordsworth's poem were being
used in a representation that wasn't the performance of any
speech act at all, that would presumably be because it had no speech
act potential. On the Alston/Beardsley theory of meaning, it would
then have no meaning. Since it evidently does have meaning, it has to
have some speech act potential. And since it seems to share a good
deal of its meaning with "Milton!" as bellowed by a
seventeenth century fish-monger hailing the poet, its speech act
potentials within and without the poem must overlap to a fair
extent--all this on the assumption that the Alston/Beardsley
theory of meaning is correct. The gulf that Beardsley sees between
literary discourse and non-literary discourse, as far as speech acts
are concerned, thus isn't nearly as wide as he seems to think,
even if a literary work is a representation or imitation of a speech
act.
## 13. Criteria and Meaning
The problems with Beardsley's argument are significant enough to
conclude that it needn't be accepted. The question still
remains, however, whether an author's intention that
'*S*' means *M* is criterial evidence for
its meaning M. That question can be asked independently of
Beardsley's argument, but on the assumption that his preferred
theory of meaning is correct (thereby, as in much of the above,
putting to the side general objections to speech act theory and speech
act theories of meaning) or on the assumption that another theory of
meaning is correct. As far as the question at issue is concerned, in
other words, it probably doesn't make much difference whether
the Beardsley/Alston theory is correct, or some other theory is. In
all likelihood, the result would be the same. But regardless of
whether it would or wouldn't, exploring alternative theories of
meaning is impossible in this context, so only the Alston/Beardsley
theory will be considered below.
In addition, though, and as Beardsley's argument in effect
reminds us, there might be important differences between non-literary
and literary discourse, such that what holds (or doesn't hold)
in one doesn't hold (or holds) in the other. The very nature of
literature might itself make a difference. Two determinations are
needed, then, one respecting the relevance or irrelevance of an
authors' intentions in non-literary discourse and one respecting
whether the fact that a discourse is literary makes it importantly
different from non-literary discourse as far as the relevance of
authors' intentions is concerned. In what follows, the issue
concerning non-literary discourse will be discussed first and at
length; the issue concerning literary discourse, second and much more
briefly.
On a speech act theory of meaning, the inference from
(1)
The author intended *x* to mean *p* in work
*w*
to
(2)
*x* means *p* in work *w*
is the inference from
(A)
The author intended *x* to mean *p* in writing work
*w*
to
(B)
*x* means *p* in work *w*.
Further glossed in terms of speech acts (but slurring over
considerations of intensionality), this is the inference from
(C)
The author intended *x* to have illocutionary act potential
*z* in writing *x* in work *w*
to
(D)
*x* has illocutionary act potential *z* in work
*w*,
where the inference is supposedly criterial, and *z* is the
total illocutionary act potential--the potential to perform
illocutionary acts *I*, *J*, *K*--that
constitutes the meaning of *x*. The question at issue here is a
species of a genus, the genus being whether intending that *s*
is *p* is criterial evidence for *s*'s being
*p*, with the differentia being that *s* is a piece of
non-literary discourse and *p* a meaning, a speech act
potential.
Answering this question requires taking a slight detour. In the 1950s
and 1960s premises respecting behavior were frequently said to be
criterial evidence for the existence of mental states of certain kinds
(though the matter wasn't very clearly delineated or explained,
and the term "criterial evidence" didn't exist). The
most discussed example, originating in the work of Wittgenstein,
concerned pain behavior and pain: a person's pain behavior was
said to be criterial evidence for his being in pain. The inference
from (C) to (D) is, near enough, the converse inference, from a mental
state to behavior or, more properly, from a mental state to an effect,
an object (a piece of discourse) having a certain property (a certain
speech act potential).
The central question to ask about any supposed criterial inference is
whether we understand the nature of the phenomena mentioned in the
premise and conclusion to be necessarily caught up with other, but not
in such a way that the presence of either entails the other. If
*A* is a criterion of *B*, then it's a necessary
truth that *A* is evidence for, or counts toward,
*B*--so says Anthony Kenny in speaking of a criterion in
the sense intended here. If a criterion is understood in this
way--and the term is certainly being used in a technical,
non-everyday sense if it is--there's a fair amount of
intuitive appeal to the claim that pain behavior is a criterion for
being in pain. Our understanding of what pain and pain behavior are
seems to connect the two necessarily. That's true even if no one
in pain ever exhibits pain behavior, or everyone exhibits pain
behavior when not in pain. (Admittedly, the scenarios for either state
of affairs would be very strange. Neither is impossible, though.)
Likewise, although every act of lying could turn out to be right, and
every act of non-lying turn out to be wrong, our understanding of what
wrongness and lying are is such that the latter necessarily counts
toward the former. On the other hand, our understanding of drinking
arsenic and dying--of what they are--isn't such that
drinking arsenic is criterial for dying. It's not that our
understanding of dying is somehow necessarily caught up with the idea
of drinking arsenic the way it is in the pain-pain behavior and
lying-wrongness cases. Even if every time a person drank arsenic he
died, and every time a person died he had drunk arsenic, the
connection between the two is purely inductive.
How is it then with the inference from
(C)
The author intended *x* to have illocutionary act potential
*z* in writing *x* in work *w*
to
(D)
*x* has illocutionary act potential *z* in work
*w*?
Consider an example discussed on a number of occasions by Beardsley
and already cited above: Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty says,
"There's glory for you!", and his sentence, he
claims, means there's a nice knockdown argument for you. Alice
doesn't believe him. It means that, Humpty Dumpty explains,
because "when *I* use a word, it means just what I choose
it to mean--neither more nor less". Alice doubts that he
can make the sentence mean that just by choosing that it mean that.
Common sense is certainly on her side. Beardsley's reply is a
little different. He says that because Humpty Dumpty has provided no
stipulative definition of "glory", he knows that Alice
can't be expected to "secure uptake", that is,
understand the novel meaning he attaches to use of the word, and thus
can't intend to perform the speech act of boasting that his
argument for the superiority of unbirthdays to birthdays is a
conclusive one. Since meaning is constituted by speech act potential,
he therefore can't intend to mean "nice knockdown
argument" by "glory" (II: 202-203).
What Beardsley says here is basically correct. To show that the
intentional fallacy is indeed a fallacy, however, to show that (C)
isn't criterial evidence for (D), the premise concerning the
author's intention should be assumed to be true, and the
strength of the inference gauged on that assumption. If a fallacy has
indeed been committed, the premise, considered simply by itself, will
lend no support to the conclusion. But instead of examining the case
of Humpty Dumpty as just indicated, Beardsley questions the truth of
the premise, and correctly finds it wanting. That isn't to the
point.
In fact, several things might be said in favor of a criterial relation
between (C) and (D). First, the cases of moral rightness and pain
suggest that a natural home for criteria is in phenomena that are
undeniable but unobservable. Much, if not all, of what can't be
observed but is obviously real needs a criterion or criteria to gain a
foothold in our thinking and discourse. (It could even be argued that
everything that figures in our thinking and discourse, whether
observable or non-observable, stands in need of a criterion or
criteria. Kenny, for one, holds as much.) Linguistic meaning seems to
be just that sort of thing. Second, rightness, pain, and meaning,
though real, seem to be ontologically slighter than paradigmatically
real things, such as physical objects (stars), forces
(electro-magnetism), or even everyday properties and property
instantiations (weighing five pounds, Philadelphia's being in
Pennsylvania). Their conceptual connections to the well-anchored items
of everyday life--rocks, gravity, shapes--are few in number,
and re-identification of one and the same pain, for example, more
inherently problematic. A pain is not something and not nothing,
Wittgenstein wrote, and though the remark is cryptic, much the same
seems to be true of meaning. Part of its life needs to be breathed
into it by criteria. Third, there's Beardsley's own
concession that "only intentional text production can generate
illocutionary actions", and therefore meaning, on his theory of
meaning. If an author's intention is necessary for a text to
have a meaning at all, that suggests that the intention that
*x* mean *m* is criterial--not logically necessary
but criterial--for x's meaning m. Bolstering this
suggestion is the fact that it's hard to imagine that *x*
means m, but that no one has ever intended that *x* mean
*m* in producing a text that contains *x*.
These considerations, however, are more inconclusive hints at
arguments than arguments themselves. First, the fact that meanings are
unobservable but real suggests that we should be on the lookout for
criteria; it doesn't mean that they have criteria. More is
needed to show that. Numbers, it might be argued, are also
unobservable but real, yet stand in need of no criteria. Second, apart
from the obscurity of the notion of ontological slightness, meanings
are surely no more ontologically slender than numbers, which, again,
seem to require no criteria. Finally, there's the point that
even if the promissory notes that really are the first two
considerations can be made good on, all that would show is that
meaning in general stands in need of a criterion or criteria. It
wouldn't show that a criterion of a text's having meaning
is an author's intention that it have meaning, much less that a
criterion for a text's having the meaning that it has is the
author's intention that it have that meaning.
But the third consideration may come to the rescue here. Beardsley
himself says that intentional text production is necessary for a text
to have a meaning (an admission, incidentally, which goes against a
number of things he wrote earlier in his career), and it's a
natural step from there to an author's intention as criterial
for textual meaning, indeed, as criterial for a conceptual
correspondence between the two (intending to mean m, meaning m). In
addition, even if it's not a necessary truth that if
'*S*' means m, someone at some time intended that
'*S*' mean *m* in producing a token of
'*S*', the former is at least criterial for the
latter.
But why the claim just mentioned isn't a necessary truth is
instructive. It's not because it's possible that
*A*, the first and only user of '*S*',
mistakenly thought there was a linguistic convention according to
which '*S*' means n. Operating on that assumption,
he uttered '*S*', intending it to mean n. However,
because of contextual clues respecting the surroundings in which
'*S*' was used, because of the topic under
discussion when it was used, and because of ignorance and
misunderstanding (of the language and of what A was driving at) on the
part of his listeners, all his listeners took it that there was
already a linguistic convention according to which
'*S*' means m. That's how they understood
'*S*', and they thus believed and acted
accordingly. A, oblivious to the misunderstanding on their part, soon
forgets about '*S*' and the meaning he attached to
it. In these circumstances, '*S*' means *m*
because that's what the language-using community takes it to
mean: in effect, their beliefs and behavior establish a convention
according to which '*S*' means m. The meaning rests
on what might be called "community uptake", not individual
uptake of speech act performance, as Beardsley has it, and not the
speaker's intention, as intentionalists have it.
This strange little scenario is important not so much because
it's a counterexample to the claim that if
'*S*' means m, then at some time someone means
*m* in using '*S*', but as illustrating
something of greater importance: the existence of a linguistic
convention that '*S*' means *m* is a
criterion, in the technical sense explained above, for
'*S*' meaning m. It's not a logically
sufficient condition, not definitive evidence, at least as far as the
meaning of a token sentence is concerned, for in specific
circumstances other factors may override the meaning specified by the
convention. That, in fact, has to be the case if metaphor, synecdoche,
metonymy, and irony are to be possible at all. (Briefly, a token
sentence is a sentence considered as a concrete particular, with a
specifiable spatio-temporal location. Token sentences contrast with
type sentences. A type sentence is an abstract particular, not
locatable in space and time. All token sentences are tokens of a type,
in much the same way that all token 2023 Toyota
Corollas--spatio-temporal objects found on streets and
highways--are tokens of a single type, 2023 Toyota Corolla.
As far as sentences are concerned, what this amounts to is that a
single type sentence, '*S*', can have many tokens.
There's only one type sentence "The door is open",
but there are many tokens of that type, a number of which can be found
in this article.) Linguistic conventions are one factor that has to be
considered in every case of token sentence meaning. They may not be
the last word in determining token sentence meaning--though they
frequently are just that--but they're always the first
word.
Perhaps paradoxically, given what was just said, the counterexample
also illustrates a more important claim, that a speaker's
intention that '*S*' mean *m* is a criterion
for its meaning m, or at least very nearly so. This is because: (1)
linguistic convention is a criterion for token sentence meaning, and a
linguistic convention, as the example shows, is a function of overall
community understanding, treatment, and belief. (2) A speaker's
intention is one component in such understanding, treatment, and
belief, and thus is criterial for linguistic convention. In other
words, since a speaker of a language is a member of the linguistic
community in which he speaks, and since, as Beardsley himself holds,
an intention that '*S*' means *m* involves a
belief that '*S*' means m, the speaker's
intention figures into the overall function that determines the
creation or maintenance of a convention. (3) The relation "is
criterial for" is transitive, or at least very nearly so. If
X's being criterial for Y and Y's being criterial for Z
doesn't entail that *X* is criterial for Z, it still
lends some near criterial support for Z. More briefly but slightly
inaccurately, the argument is that since a speaker's intention
that '*S*' means *m* is criterial for the
existence of a convention that '*S*' means m, and
the existence of a convention that '*S*' means
*m* is criterial for '*S*''s meaning
m, a speaker's intention that '*S*' means
*m* is criterial for '*S*' meaning m. A
speaker's intention must thus be regarded as having some
evidential weight in determining his sentence's meaning. As far
as everyday discourse is concerned, then, the intentional fallacy is
no fallacy at all, strictly speaking.
## 14. The Letter of the Law and The Spirit of the Law
But the letter of the law is one thing, its spirit quite another. Even
if speaker intention counts for something, for two reasons, it
doesn't count for much, at least in the great majority of cases.
One swallow is not a summer, and a single such intention or belief not
a convention or, except in very odd circumstances, sufficient for one.
Cases like those of Humpty Dumpty and the counterexample discussed
above show how slight the weight of a speaker's intention is in
the face of a convention that's already established (the case of
Humpty Dumpty) or even in the process of being established (the case
of A and his community). And the situation we in fact find ourselves
in is just that of Alice. The weight carried by pre-existing
linguistic conventions makes it look as if Humpty Dumpty's
intention has no weight at all. If what was argued above is correct,
it doesn't have no weight, but a microgram is, for practical
purposes, weightless when counterbalanced by a boulder. Thus even if
strictly speaking, there's no intentional fallacy, it would be
much more misleading in practice to say that there isn't one
than that there is one.
The case of Humpty Dumpty shouldn't be misunderstood, however.
The establishment or maintenance of a linguistic convention
isn't simply a matter of majority opinion within a speaking
community. A convention is more than a collection of beliefs,
understandings, and treatments. It carries normative force with it,
and normative force, although undergirded by and impossible without
community support, doesn't simply sway in the direction that the
breeze of majority opinion happens to be blowing at the time. The
normative nature of a convention enables it to be relatively, though
not wholly, resistant to contrary opinion. That's why it's
possible for most people to spell "accommodate"
incorrectly (the conventions of spelling call for it to be spelled
with two '*m*'s, but most people spell it with one)
and why it's possible for most people to have an incorrect
belief about the meaning of the word "fortuitous" (the
conventions of the language call for it to mean *by chance* or
*accidental*, but most people think it means
*lucky*).
The second reason why the conclusion that, strictly speaking,
there's no intentional fallacy is of limited import is in effect
pointed out by Beardsley. The notion of speaker meaning--a
speaker's intention that '*S*' mean
*m* in his utterance of '*S*'--is
parasitic on that of a convention, and thus on sentence meaning. In
intending what he does, that is, in intending that his sentence mean
*m*, and not *n*, *o*, or *p*, a speaker
is perforce trying to conform to what he takes to be a pre-existing
convention. If he doesn't take there to be such a convention, he
needs to stipulate one--which itself involves invoking
pre-existing conventions. If he doesn't do that and
doesn't try to conform to a pre-existing convention,
there's no reason to think that he's trying to
communicate, to utter a sentence with a determinate meaning, or to
perform any speech act at all. In other words, without the assumption
of a pre-existing convention, there's no content to the notion
of an intention to mean anything at all, much less to mean *m*.
Even if a speaker's intention is criterial in determining
conventions and sentence meaning, conventions have to be
conceptualized as relatively independent of the speaker, as logically
prior to speaker meaning, and as a constraint on speaker meaning.
The upshot is that, to put a fine point on it, there's no
intentional fallacy, but that a fine point shouldn't be put on
it. As far as everyday discourse is concerned, proper interpretive
practice directs us to ignore speakers' intentions. For
considered in and of itself, in the context of a living, fully
developed language, a speaker's intention has vanishingly small
weight, noticeable at all, if ever, only in a very small number of
circumstances. An additional merit of this view is that it helps to
explain the facts that (1) in the vast majority of cases, questions of
speaker intention needn't and don't arise in interpreting
a person's remarks; (2) hard cases are
possible--conventions are of necessity open-ended, somewhat
indefinite, and possibly in tension with other conventions; (3)
it's natural, and not entirely unreasonable, to evoke speaker
intention to resolve such hard cases; (4) the gnawing feeling
that the meaning of an utterance isn't altogether divorced from
the meaning intention of its speaker has some basis; (5) despite (3),
proponents of the intentional fallacy can always find ways of
resolving hard cases without invoking the intentions of the
speaker.
## 15. Back to Literary Discourse
So much for non-literary discourse. The second question is: Does what
holds for non-literary discourse also hold for literary discourse?
Beardsley's convinced that it does. He sees no fundamental
difference between the two. There's a lot to be said for that
view. It largely jibes with our interpretive experience and recognizes
the continuity of all forms of discourse. It also doesn't
require us to read by a new set of rules when we put down *The
Racing Forum* and pick up Ruskin, which is certainly appealing.
Those are impressive reasons in its favor, and strongly recommend it
for adoption.
But the key word here is "adoption". The view is a
proposal for how to conceptualize literature (and in the long run art
in general); it isn't dictated by the facts of the case or by
the very concept of literature. An alternative proposal, and a popular
one in many circles, is to conceptualize literature as much more
closely tied to the life of the author, and to attach greater
interpretive weight to his intentions than with non-literary
discourse. This proposal does bifurcate discourse, but, advocates
would claim, there are cultural and aesthetic advantages to doing so.
Three of them are that (1) literature is thereby tied much more
closely to biography, history, and culture in general, (2) the realm
of the aesthetic is not as segregated from, but is much more
integrated into, other valuational realms than it would otherwise be,
and (3) natural, even irrepressible, urges to look beyond art to the
artist aren't automatically frustrated or denigrated, as far as
criticism is concerned. The systematic virtues and vices of both this
position and Beardsley's can't be pursued here, but it is
important to note that the issue is a large and overarching one
concerning how best to conceptualize art and its place in human
life.
## 16. The Internal and the External
Broader than concerns about the artist's intention and
encompassing them is the distinction between external and internal
evidence. The distinction is similar to, but diverges from, that
between direct and indirect evident noted above. "Internal
evidence", Beardsley says, "is evidence from direct
inspection of the object" (*Aesth:* 20). What is internal
is publicly accessible;
>
>
> it is discovered [in the case of poetry] through the semantics and
> syntax of a poem, through our habitual knowledge of the language
> through grammars, dictionaries, and all the literature which is the
> source of dictionaries, in general through all that makes a language
> and culture. (IF: 477)
>
>
>
"External evidence", on the other hand,
>
>
> is evidence from the psychological and social background of the
> object, from which we may infer something about the object itself.
> (*Aesth:* 20)
>
>
>
What is external is not publicly accessible; it is
>
>
> private or idiosyncratic; not [again in the case of poetry] a part of
> the work as a linguistic fact: it consists of revelations (in
> journals, for example, or letters or recorded conversations) about how
> or why the poet wrote the poem--to what lady, while sitting on
> what lawn, or at the death of a friend or brother. (IF:
> 477-478)
>
>
>
In addition to internal and external evidence, there is
>
>
> an intermediate kind of evidence about the character of the author or
> about private or semi-private meanings attached to words or topics by
> the author or by a coterie of which he is a member. (IF: 478)
>
>
>
External evidence is verboten, but at least at the time of "The
Intentional Fallacy", intermediate evidence was admissible, the
reason being that
>
>
> the meaning of words is the history of words, and the biography of an
> author, his use of a word, and the associations the word had for
> *him*, are part of the word's history and meaning. (IF:
> 478)
>
>
>
Caution has to be exercised, though, for the line between intermediate
evidence and external evidence isn't sharp and
>
>
> a critic who is concerned with [internal] evidence... and
> moderately with [intermediate] evidence will in the long run produce a
> different sort of comment from that of the critic who is concerned
> with [external] evidence and with [intermediate] evidence. (IF:
> 478)
>
>
>
The distinction thus drawn is far from clear, though. On the one hand,
information gleaned from a poet's diary, workbook, letters, and
rough drafts, or information about what he was reading or thinking
about as he created his work, isn't internal evidence in that it
can't be had from directly inspecting his poem. On the other
hand, it does seem to be internal, in that such information is
publicly accessible, and might well be part of "all that makes a
language and culture". Resolving that tension is only part of
the issue, however. "The character of the author" or the
"private or semi-private meanings attached to words or topics by
the author or by a coterie of which he is a member" might be
revealed in a diary or workbook, and part of a "word's
history and meaning" might be recorded in a letter. That makes
it sound like intermediate evidence. More than anything else, though,
what a diary or a workbook contains is "evidence [respecting]
the psychological and social background" of a work, and such
information is no different from "revelations... in
journals... or letters". It would thus seem to be external
evidence, as Beardsley talks about it. Is the information found in
diaries, journals, workbooks, rough drafts, letters, and so on
internal, external, or intermediate evidence, then? All three, it
would seem.
Though the distinction between kinds of evidence isn't well
drawn by Beardsley, that may be because when he wrote "The
Intentional Fallacy" his views weren't as clear or
definite as they were later to become, or because he later changed his
mind and became more tough-minded. Intermediate evidence is never
mentioned in *Aesthetics* or in any of his subsequent writings,
and if the distinction between internal and external evidence is
considered only as it's drawn in *Aesthetics*, it's
relatively clean: internal evidence is evidence based on a direct
inspection of the aesthetic object and nothing else; external evidence
is evidence based on sources outside the object. That at least seems
to draw a fairly bright line between the internal and the external.
Unfortunately, drawing the distinction this way re-introduces the
problems about not using external sources noted above in relation to
the intentional fallacy.
All of that said, the feeling remains that there has to be something
to the internal/external distinction, even if it isn't
explicated in a satisfactory way by Beardsley. Intuitively, some
properties are properties of a work, and some properties aren't
properties of a work. Related to this is what's really at issue,
the matter of proper methodology, or the epistemology of
interpretation: some evidence is relevant to what a work
means--and what else but properties of the work itself?--and
some evidence isn't logically relevant to what a work
means--and what else but properties of things other than the
work? Put this way, the distinction seems inevitable, and indeed,
it's hard to see how art criticism can get along without it.
Rejecting it altogether is tantamount to inviting "chaos of
thought and passion, all confused"--in other words, the
potential relevance of anything and everything to interpretation, and
thus no limits on what a work of art can justifiably be said to mean.
Deconstructionists may well welcome such unlimited freedom, but lesser
breeds who like the law--which includes historicist, romantic,
psychoanalytic, and other critics, besides new critics--will
wonder whether the very idea of interpretation has been lost in the
midst of anarchy.
But even if an internal/external distinction of some sort is well-nigh
necessary, it's probably best not to couch it in exactly those
terms. The real issue isn't so much what's in and
what's out as what's relevant and what's not.
Beardsley's terminology not only obscures that fact but
skews the true substantive issue: strongly suggested by the very use
of the terms "internal" and "external" is that
relevant information is internal to a work, that is, propositions
whose subject terms refer to the work or part of the work and whose
predicate terms refer to properties discernible by experiencing the
work; and irrelevant information is external to a work, that is,
propositions whose subject terms refer to something other than the
work or part of the work, or to properties not discernible by
experiencing the work.
In the long run, the distinction will have to be drawn, just as the
issue of the intentional fallacy will have to be decided, on the basis
of a comprehensive theory of meaning in conjunction with a rich and
well-worked-out conception of art. |
aesthetics-18th-british | ## 1. Internal-Sense Theories
### 1.1 Shaftesbury
Shaftesbury takes up aesthetic questions from time to time across his
*Characteristics* *of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times*
(first published in 1711), particularly within its third, fourth, and
fifth Treatises. But it is perhaps only within this last
treatise--the dialogue *The Moralists, a Philosophical
Rhapsody*--that he can be said to develop a theory of taste.
Near the beginning of the dialogue's climactic section (Section
II of Book III) Shaftesbury's spokesman, Theocles, issues a pair
of imperatives: one ought "never to admire the
*Representative*-Beauty, except for the sake of the
*Original*; nor aim at other *Enjoyment* than of the
*rational* kind" (Cooper 1711 [2001, 221]). It is largely
in the subsequent explication of these imperatives that
Shaftesbury's highly influential theory of taste emerges.
Shaftesbury does not intend the force of these imperatives to be
negative merely. He clearly thinks that one ought to admire the
original beauty referred to in the first imperative; indeed he later
identifies it with the beauty of the divine mind. Moreover, the
admiration of beauty referred to in the first imperative just is the
enjoyment of the rational kind referred to in the second. Hence the
two imperatives, reversing their order, might be paraphrased as
follows: one ought to seek the enjoyment of beauty as opposed to the
rival enjoyments that one might mistake for the enjoyment of beauty;
and the enjoyment of beauty that one ought to seek ought always to be
for the sake of the original as opposed to the sake of the
representative merely. To say that the rival enjoyments that one might
take for the enjoyment of beauty are not "of the
*rational* kind" is to say that they are merely sensory
or bodily in nature. Such non-rational enjoyments, moreover, are
"interested" in the sense that they depend on the thought
of, and beget a desire for, the use or possession of their objects.
Theocles illustrates this point with a series of examples culminating
in that of sexual pleasure taken at the sight of a human body.
"I ... was apprehensive," says his interlocutor,
Philocles, that
>
> you wou'd force me at last to think of certain powerful FORMS in
> *human* Kind, which draw after 'em a Set of eager
> *Desires*, *Wishes*, and *Hopes*; no way
> suitable, I must confess, to your rational and refin'd
> Contemplation of *Beauty*. The Proportions of this *living
> Architecture*, as wonderful as they are, inspire nothing of a
> *studious* or *contemplative* kind. The more they are
> view'd , the further they are from satisfying by mere View.
> (Cooper 1711 [2001, 222])
>
An example surfacing a bit later serves both to reinforce the
distinction between such non-rational enjoyments and the rational
enjoyment of beauty and to introduce the distinction between the
admiration of representative beauty for its own sake and that for the
sake of the original. Enjoyment taken in the sight of a coin is
enjoyment taken in its beauty only if it arises not from any thought
of what the coin may buy, but merely from the contemplation of the
design or form of the coin's inscription. Whether in addition
this is admiration of the coin's representative beauty for the
sake of the original depends on whether one recognizes the
representative nature of the coin's beauty. Because the coin is
beautiful in virtue of its design or form, it is beautiful not in
virtue of its material properties but in virtue of the effect that
some mind has had upon it. But if the coin is beautiful in virtue of
the effect of some mind upon it, this can only be because that mind is
itself beautiful, the beauty of the coin being representative merely
of the original beauty of that mind. Hence to admire the beauty of the
coin (or the beauty of any material object) without acknowledging that
its beauty merely shadows the beauty of the mind that designed it is
to fail to admire representative beauty for the sake of the original
(Cooper 1711 [2001, 225-226]).
But there is a complication. If the mind that formed the coin is a
human mind, then, while its beauty is original relative to the coin,
it is representative relative to the beauty of the mind that formed
it. Hence there are "*Three* Degrees or Orders of
Beauty":
>
> first, the *dead Forms* ... which bear a Fashion, and are
> form'd, whether by Man, or Nature; but have no forming Power, no
> Action, or Intelligence ... the second kind, *the Forms which
> form*; that is, which have Intelligence, Action, and Operation
> ... [and] that *third* Order of Beauty, which forms not
> only such as we call mere Forms, but even *the Forms which
> form*. (Cooper 1711 [2001, 227-228])
>
Hence all beauty ultimately "resolves it-self" (Cooper
1711 [2001, 228]) into the beauty of the divine mind:
>
> whatever Beauty appears in our *second* Order of Forms, or
> whatever is deriv'd or produc'd from thence, all this is
> eminently, principally, and originally in this *last* Order of
> *Supreme* and *Sovereign Beauty*. (Cooper 1711 [2001,
> 228])
>
Thus admiring the representative beauty of the coin for the sake of
the original requires tracing its beauty not merely to the mind that
designed it, but also to the mind that designed that mind.
A consequence of the view that the divine mind is the source of all
beauty is that beauty is not relative to human nature merely, but is
absolute and real. Indeed, given Shaftesbury's pantheistic
leanings, things turn out, on his view, to be beautiful quite
literally from the point of view of the universe. A further
consequence is that beauty, inhering only in mind or in its
reflection, cannot be grasped by any bodily sense, but only by the
mind itself:
>
> there is nothing so divine as BEAUTY: which belonging not to
> *Body*, nor having any Principle or Existence except in MIND
> and REASON, is alone discover'd and acquir'd by this
> diviner Part, when it inspects it-self, the only object worthy of
> it-self. (Cooper 1711 [2001, 238])
>
But Shaftesbury does not rest with the claim that it is the mind that
grasps beauty: he adds the claim that it is by a "mental"
or "inward" sense that the mind does so. Though it is
difficult to know just what Shaftesbury takes this claim to come to,
the general idea is that the faculty by which the mind discerns beauty
has enough in common with external sense to warrant the term
"sense" and to be regarded as no less natural (or basic)
than external sense. In *The Moralists* he observes that the
discernment of beauty has the immediacy of external sensation and so
must be regarded as natural as external sensation. No sooner is an
object of the right kind placed before the mind
>
> than straight *an inward* EYE distinguishes, and sees *the
> Fair* and *Shapely*, the *Amiable* and
> *Admirable*, apart from the *Deform'd*, the
> *Foul*, the *Odious*, or the *Despicable*. How is
> it possible therefore not to own "That these
> *Distinctions* have their Foundation *in Nature*, the
> Discernment it-self is *natural*, and from Nature
> *alone*?" (Cooper 1711 [2001, 231])
>
And, in a famous passage from *An Inquiry concerning Virtue and
Merit* (Treatise IV), Shaftesbury observes that the discernment of
beauty has the necessity or will-independence of external sensation
and so again must be regarded as natural on a par with external
sensation. Once an object of the right kind is placed before the mind,
a verdict as to its beauty cannot be withheld:
>
> The Mind, which is Spectator or Auditor of *other Minds*,
> cannot be without its *Eye* and *Ear*; so as to discern
> Proportion, distinguish Sound, and scan each Sentiment or Thought
> which comes before it .... It ... finds a *Foul* and
> *Fair*, a *Harmonious* and a *Dissonant*, as
> really and truly here, as in any musical Numbers, or in the outward
> Forms or Representations of sensible Things. Nor can it with-hold its
> *Admiration* and *Extasy*, its *Aversion* and
> *Scorn*, any more in what relates to one than to the other of
> these Subjects. So that to deny the common and natural Sense of a
> SUBLIME and BEAUTIFUL in Things, will appear an Affectation merely, to
> any-one who considers duly of this Affair. (Cooper 1711 [2001, 17])
>
Shaftesbury, it bears mentioning, did not originate
the idea that it is by an inward sense that we lay hold of
the sublime and the beautiful. That idea is an element
of the neoplatonic tradition which Shaftesbury's work
extends, and can be traced back to St. Augustine
(2005/389-391, *De vera religione* SS59)
and Plotinus (250 [1991, 1.6.7-9]), if not to Plato himself (1989,
210a-211d).
### 1.2 Hutcheson
On the title page of the first edition of his *An Inquiry into the
Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue* (1725), Francis
Hutcheson acknowledges a deep debt to Shaftesbury, announcing that
"The Principles of the late Earl of Shaftsbury" would be
explained and defended therein. But it is open to question whether
Hutcheson overstates his debt. The debt is deepest with regard to the
notion of internal sense, but Hutcheson can fairly be said to make
this notion his own. That is certainly the judgment of history: anyone
undertaking to explain, defend, or refute the notion of internal sense
after 1725 took himself to be explaining, defending, or refuting the
principles of Dr. Hutcheson.
Hutcheson gives one argument for the sensibility, and another for the
internality, of the power by which we discern beauty. His argument for
its sensibility is largely a systematization and amplification of
Shaftesbury's. That the discernment of beauty is sensible
follows from the immediacy, necessity, and disinterestedness of the
arising of the pleasure by which beauty is discerned:
>
> This superior Power of Perception is justly called a Sense, because of
> its Affinity to the other Senses in this, that the Pleasure does not
> arise from any Knowledge of Principles, Proportions, Causes, or the
> Usefulness of the Object; but strikes us at first with the Idea of
> Beauty .... And further, the ideas of Beauty and Harmony, like
> other sensible Ideas, are necessarily pleasant to us, as well as
> immediately so; neither can any Resolution of our own, nor any
> Prospect of Advantage or Disadvantage, vary the Beauty or Deformity of
> an Object. (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 25])
>
It is in arguing for the internality of the power of discerning beauty
that Hutcheson's departure from Shaftesbury begins to show.
Shaftesbury, it will be recalled, argues that the discernment of
beauty is internal (or mental) on the grounds that the objects of
beauty necessarily are: mind alone can discern beauty because mind
alone is beautiful, external objects managing a degree of beauty only
by having a bit of mind imprinted on them. But Hutcheson cannot make
this argument because he does not think that objects of beauty are
necessarily internal. Hutcheson *does* follow Shaftesbury in
maintaining that things are beautiful in virtue of their proportion or
order (Hutcheson's preferred and more precise term is
"uniformity amidst variety") and he *may* follow
Shaftesbury in thinking all proportion or order to be the effect of
mind. But he importantly *does not* follow Shaftesbury in
inferring from the premise that things are beautiful owing to the
effect of mind to the conclusion that mind alone is beautiful.
Hutcheson begins his argument for the internality of the power of
discerning beauty by observing that the five external senses are
insufficient for that discernment--one could have all five in
perfect working order and yet be insensible to beauty (Hutcheson
1726 [2004, 23]). This observation, however, does not seem to show the
discernment of beauty to be internal. It seems to show merely that
such discernment cannot be identified with any known external power.
But Hutcheson continues:
>
> There will appear another Reason perhaps ... for calling this
> Power of perceiving Ideas an Internal Sense, from this, that in some
> other Affairs, where our External Senses are not much concern'd,
> we discern a sort of Beauty, very like, in many respects, to that
> observ'd in sensible Objects, and accompany'd with like
> Pleasure. Such is the Beauty perceiv'd in Theorems, or universal
> Truths, in general Causes .... (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 24])
>
Here the reasoning is that the power of discerning beauty must be
internal because *some* objects of beauty are. But given that
Hutcheson concedes that many objects of beauty are not internal, the
proper conclusion seems to be that the power of discerning beauty is
neither exclusively internal nor exclusively external. In any case,
the power of discerning beauty cannot be internal after
Shaftesbury's manner.
But after what manner is it internal then? Hutcheson simply never says
in *An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and
Virtue*, though he wastes no time supplying this deficiency in the
immediately subsequent *An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the
Passions and Affections* (first published in 1727). An internal
sense, he there clarifies, is one whose ideas arise only if certain
other ideas have already arisen. Sight is not an internal sense since
the arising of the idea of blue, for example, does not depend upon the
previous arising of any other idea. But the sense of beauty is
internal because the arising of the pleasurable idea of beauty depends
"upon the previous Reception and Comparison of various sensible
Perceptions ... or intellectual ideas, when we find Uniformity
... among them" (Hutcheson 1742 [2002, 16]). Another way of
putting the point is to say that internal senses depend for their
objects on the operation of other powers while external senses do not.
Hence in point of internality internal senses are apparently on a par
with the powers of reason and memory, for example: unless some other
power or powers has operated to place an object before the mind, there
is nothing about which to reason, nothing to remember, and nothing
internally to sense. This use of "internal" and
"external" may be thought misleading, given that it allows
both external and internal powers to operate on objects both bodily
and intellectual, both from within and from without. Hutcheson came to
agree with this criticism apparently. In later works, he replaces
"internal" with "reflex" or
"subsequent" to refer to powers that depend on others for
their objects, and "external" with "direct" or
"antecedent" to refer to powers that do not. (Hutcheson
1747, 12-13 and 1744, 48).
This transformation of Shaftesbury's notion of an internal sense
is not the only consequence of Hutcheson's rejection of the view
that mind alone is beautiful. It will be recalled that it is this
view--or, more particularly, the view that all beauty reduces to
the beauty of the divine mind--that undergirds
Shaftesbury's aesthetic realism and hence his absolutism. But
Hutcheson has neither this nor any substitute view by which to prop up
an alternative version of realism, and settles hesitantly on a version
of idealism, and hence relativism, that understands the idea of beauty
on the model of an idea of a Lockean secondary quality:
>
> Beauty, like other Names of sensible Ideas, properly denotes the
> Perception of some Mind; so Cold, Hot, Sweet, Bitter, denote
> Sensations in our Minds, to which perhaps there is no resemblance in
> the Objects, which excite these ideas in us, however we generally
> imagine that there is something in the Object just like our Perception
> .... were there no Mind with a Sense of Beauty to contemplate
> Objects, I see not how they could be call'd beautiful.
> (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 27])
>
Moreover there seems to be no necessity that the idea of beauty should
arise, as it does, in response to objects having uniformity amidst
variety. Had it pleased him to do so, God might have given us a sense
of beauty responsive to irregularity amidst simplicity (Hutcheson
1726 [2004, 80]).
But that God might not have given us a sense of beauty responsive to
uniformity amidst variety raises the question why he did. Though it is
a question that never arises for Shaftesbury, Hutcheson gives it an
answer that narrows the distance between the two. As Shaftesbury had
famously stressed, the universe is highly ordered--at least
"Uniformity, Proportion, and Similitude [are diffused] thro all
the Parts of Nature which we can observe" (Hutcheson 1726 [2004,
81]). In such a universe, "[t]he manner of Knowledge by universal
Theorems ... must be most convenient for Beings of limited
Understanding and Power" (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 79]). But if such
is the manner of knowledge most convenient for beings such as us, a
benevolent God may be expected to provide some immediate
motive--a motive, that is, that does not require that we reflect
on what is most convenient for us--to our pursuit of it. Because
a theorem by nature possesses uniformity amidst variety--a
theorem simply is the unification of various particulars under a
single principle (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 36])--it stands to reason
that
>
> the Author of Nature has determin'd us ... to receive from
> uniform Objects the Pleasures of Beauty and Harmony, to excite us to
> the Pursuit of Knowledge, and to reward us for it. (Hutcheson
> 1726 [2004, 99])
>
So it is in the perception of objects of intellect--theorems,
namely--that the internal sense of beauty has its *raison
d'etre*, and it is by resembling theorems in point of
uniformity that other objects, including material objects, are
beautiful. In this way Hutcheson recovers an element of
Shaftesbury's theory that had apparently been lost in his
transformation of Shaftesbury's notion of internal
sense--he recovers a priority of the intellectual over the
material as object of beauty. This is not to say, however, that
Hutcheson recovers Shaftesbury's priority exactly.
Shaftesbury's priority is reductive, having its ground in the
distinction he draws between representative and original beauty.
Hutcheson draws no corresponding distinction and so allows
material objects to be beautiful in their own right.
That difference is consequential. If material objects can be
beautiful, then the sense by which we find them so must be
capable of training outward. If the notion of internal
sense that Hutcheson took over from Shaftesbury is
essentially the one we find in Augustine, Plotinus, and Plato,
the notion of aesthetic perception that Hutcheson left to us is
essentially the one we find in Frank Sibley (Sibley
2001).
### 1.3 Hume
Hume takes his notion of taste over from Hutcheson. He regards taste
as an "internal sense" which depends on the operation of
other mental faculties to "pave the way" for its
pronouncements by supplying it with an object upon which to pronounce
(Hume 1751 [1986, 173]). Which mental faculties must operate, and which
operations those faculties must perform, varies from object to
object:
>
> ... in order to ... give a proper discernment of [an object
> of taste], it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should
> precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn,
> distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and
> general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species of beauty,
> especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance, command our
> affection and approbation ... . But in many orders of beauty,
> particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much
> reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment. (Hume 1751 [1986,
> 173]).
>
Hume shows less interest than Hutcheson does in determining which
feature or features of objects result in our finding them beautiful.
Hutcheson, it will be recalled, argues that we take the pleasure of
beauty in response to all and only objects in which we find uniformity
amidst variety. Hume resists any such tidy formula, speaking of
multiple principles of taste. The only time he elaborates on any
particular principle is in The Treatise, where he holds, contra
Hutcheson, that the beauty we find in many objects owes, at least in
part, to their usefulness. Hutcheson had denied that the usefulness of
an object could play any role in our finding it beautiful, on the
grounds that judgments of taste are necessarily disinterested whereas
judgments of usefulness are necessarily interested. Against this Hume
observes that judgments of taste are necessarily disinterested only in
the sense that they are necessarily non-self-interested, and that I
might therefore judge a chair to be beautiful on the basis of its
being useful to someone, though not on the basis that it is useful to
me (Hume 1739-40 [1987, 363-365]).
Hume follows Hutcheson in regarding the idea of beauty as analogous to
a Lockean secondary quality, and so follows Hutcheson in holding
beauty to be subjective, having no existence outside of the mind that
contemplates it (Hume 1757 [1987, 230]). But Hume reckons more directly
than Hutcheson does with the price such a subjectivism exacts, namely,
its apparent inconsistency with our practice of counting some
judgments of beauty as correct and others as incorrect. This reckoning
starts with the observation that the subjectivity of colors is no
barrier to our counting some color judgments correct and some
incorrect. Anyone who has the idea of redness can recognize the
conditions under which we count an object as veridically manifesting
redness, namely, "its appearance in day-light to the eye of a
man in health" (Hume 1757 [1987, 233-234]). Similarly, Hume holds
that anyone with the idea of beauty can recognize the conditions under
which we count an object as veridically manifesting beauty (Hume
1757 [1987, 233-234]). These conditions are the appearance of beauty to
those (1) whose taste is delicate (Hume 1757 [1987, 234-237]), (2) who
have practiced (Hume 1757 [1987, 237-238]), (3) who have made certain
comparisons (Hume 1757 [1987, 238]), (4) who lack prejudice (Hume
1757 [1987, 239-240]), and (5) whose understanding is sound (Hume
1757 [1987, 240-241]). Conditions (1), (2), and (5) are evidently
supposed to guarantee that the object is grasped as having all and
only the aesthetically relevant properties it has, whereas conditions
(3) and (4) are evidently supposed to guarantee that a properly
calibrated sentiment arises from the object as grasped. In sum, we
take an object's beauty to appear as it is, according to Hume,
when and only when the right sentiment arises from the object rightly
grasped.
### 1.4 Reid
Thomas Reid's theory of taste, as developed in the final essay
of his *Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man* (first
published in 1785), makes use of a range of theoretical resources that
had become available by the last decades of the Eighteenth Century.
Its account of sublimity owes to Burke; its treatment of novelty owes
to Addison and to Gerard; the use it makes of association may owe to
Gerard as well. But as an internal-sense theory its debt is
principally to Hutcheson and to Shaftesbury.
Reid adheres to Hutcheson's notion of internal sense rather than
to Shaftesbury's. Indeed Reid's account of
Hutcheson's notion is arguably sharper than any Hutcheson ever
gives:
>
> Beauty or deformity in an object, results from its nature or
> structure. To perceive the beauty therefore, we must perceive the
> nature or structure from which it results. In this the internal sense
> differs from the external. Our external senses may discover qualities
> which do not depend upon any antecedent perception .... But it is
> impossible to perceive the beauty of an object, without perceiving the
> object, or at least conceiving it. On this account, Dr. Hutcheson
> called the senses of beauty and harmony reflex or secondary senses;
> because the beauty cannot be perceived unless the object be perceived
> by some other power of the mind. (Reid 1785 [1969, 760-761])
>
But while Reid agrees with Hutcheson about what makes the sense of
beauty internal, he disagrees with Hutcheson about what is
"ingredient" to that sense (Reid 1785 [1969, 782]).
Hutcheson, as Reid understands him, posits but one ingredient: an
agreeable feeling or emotion resembling nothing in the object. But it
is in restricting himself to this single affective ingredient, Reid
thinks, that Hutcheson puts himself on the path to Lockean
anti-realism with respect to beauty, since it may be thought that if
the sensation of beauty consists merely in such a feeling it refers to
nothing in the object, and if it refers to nothing in the object then
it must refer merely to "the perception of some Mind"
(Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 27]).
Reid takes this position to be "not so much an error in
judgment, as an abuse of words" (Reid 1785 [1969, 782]). There are
words by which one may say of Virgil's *Georgics* that it
is the cause of a feeling, but these are not the words *The*
Georgics *is beautiful*; there is no reason to think they say
anything of *The Georgics* other than that it has the property
of beauty (Reid 1785 [1969, 759]). Hence a theory of taste that does not
contradict "the universal sense of mankind, as expressed by
their language" (Reid 1785 [1969, 760]) must allow the internal
sense of beauty to have, in addition to its affective ingredient, a
cognitive one--a judgment ascribing a property to the object.
Reid appears to acknowledge that allowing the sense of beauty this
cognitive dimension does not commit one to realism regarding beauty:
he appears to acknowledge that it is one thing to allow that the
deliverances of internal sense comprise judgments and yet another to
allow that the positive judgments they sometimes comprise are
sometimes true (Reid 1785 [1969, 783]). The case Reid makes for realism
regarding beauty (and sublimity) is complex. He makes a
straightforward appeal to common sense (Reid 1785 [1969, 770]). He
argues, after Descartes, that our possession of an inherently
fallacious sense would make a deceiver of God (Reid 1785 [1969, 783]).
But his deepest and most complicated reason for thinking beauty real
has to do with the nature of the properties that he takes to ground
beauty. Following Burke, Reid identifies the affect properly inspired
by beautiful objects as love (this contrasts with the affect properly
inspired by sublime objects, which he identifies as admiration). Since
we properly love only what is good, the properties that properly
inspire love must be perfections or excellences of some kind. It
follows that the beauty of an object has its ground in whatever
perfections properly inspire our love for it, and so has whatever
reality those perfections have.
Reid concedes that we are only sometimes able to specify the
perfections in virtue of which we judge things beautiful. He refers to
judgments in which the perfection cannot be specified as
"instinctive" and judgments in which it can be as
"rational" (Reid 1785 [1969, 785-787]). Hence it is
necessarily from an incomplete set of data that his enquiry into
beauty-grounding perfections proceeds. That enquiry begins with a
consideration of those perfections in virtue of which we judge minds
beautiful, that is, the perfections that inspire love for the minds
that possess them. Reid finds that these perfections divide into three
classes: first, the amiable moral virtues, which include
"[i]nnocence, gentleness, condescension, humanity, natural
affection, public spirit"; second, the amiable intellectual
talents, which include, "knowledge, good sense, wit, humour,
cheerfulness, good taste, excellence in any of the fine arts";
and, third, certain perfections pertaining to the mind's active
powers--perfections that "render the body a fit instrument
for the mind"--including "health, strength, and
agility" (Reid 1785 [1969, 792]). Reid finds further that these
perfections are not relative to human nature but absolute:
>
> Is not power in its nature more excellent that weakness; knowledge
> than ignorance; wisdom than folly; fortitude than pusillanimity?
> ... Let us suppose, if possible, a being so constituted, as to
> have a high respect for ignorance, weakness, and folly; to venerate
> cowardice, malice, and envy, and to hold the contrary qualities in
> contempt .... Could we believe such a constitution to be anything
> else than madness and delirium? ... We can as easily conceive a
> constitution, by which one should perceive two and three to make
> fifteen, or a part to be greater than a whole. (Reid 1785 [1969, 770])
>
Thus Reid concludes that "[t]here is therefore a real intrinsic
excellence in some qualities of mind, as in power, knowledge, wisdom,
virtue, magnanimity," and that a mind in possession of such
qualities is therein really beautiful (Reid 1785 [1969, 771]).
When Reid enquires next after the perfections in virtue of which we
ascribe beauty to material objects, his account takes a Shaftesburian
turn. Reid revives Shaftesbury's distinction between original
and representative beauty (though he prefers the term
"derived" to "representative") and also
Shaftesbury's claim that the beauty of material objects derives
from the original beauty of minds. This allows him to maintain that
the perfections in virtue of which we attribute beauty to material
objects just are the perfections in virtue of which we attribute
beauty to minds. But whereas Shaftesbury simply infers without further
argument the reduction of material to mental beauty from the premise
that material beauty is the effect of mind, Reid takes up instance
after instance of material beauty, arguing with respect to each that
it is best understood as a "sign" of some instance of
mental beauty. The beauty we attribute to inanimate nature signifies
the wisdom and goodness of the mind that fashioned it for our use
(Reid 1785 [1969, 799-800]); the beauty we attribute to animals,
insofar as we regard them as minded, signifies "their instincts,
their appetites, their affections, their sagacity" (Reid
1785 [1969, 794]); the beauty we attribute to the human form signifies
either "some perfection of the body, as a part of the man, and
an instrument of the mind" or "some amiable quality or
attribute of the mind itself" (Reid 1785 [1969, 806]).
It may be objected that such a reduction of material to mental beauty
cannot serve Reid's case for realism, at least as it applies to
material objects. For it may seem that the beauty we attribute to
material objects can never be real, by Reid's lights, given that
no material object ever can have any of the mental perfections capable
of grounding beauty. But such an objection misses a subtlety of
Reid's position. Strictly speaking, material objects never are
beautiful. But this does not imply that the beauty that we attribute
to them never is real. It is real, at least generally, though strictly
speaking it belongs only to the minds that the material objects in
question signify. If it seems to us that these objects themselves
possess beauty, this is because beauty is prone to be
"transferred" or "communicated" from the minds
that really have it to the material objects that merely signify it
(Reid 1785 [1969, 788]). Reid never uses the term
"association" to refer to the mechanism by which beauty is
thus communicated from mental signified to material sign. But that he
does not distance himself from association--the mechanism by then
at the center of a great deal of theorizing about taste--makes it
hard to deny that it has found a positive role in his own theory.
## 2. Imagination Theories
### 2.1 Addison
Joseph Addison's theory of taste resides principally in the work
Addison refers to as his "essay on the pleasures of the
imagination" (Addison and Steele 1879, nos. 409 and 421). It
comprises eleven papers--nos. 411 through 421--appearing in
the journal *The Spectator* on successive days during the
summer of 1712. The timing of the essay's publication raises
questions about its relation to Shaftesbury's
*Characteristics*, which had appeared one year earlier. But it
is difficult to detect even a hint of Shaftesbury's theory of
taste in Addison's. That the two theories deeply oppose one
another might suggest that Addison's is a reaction against
Shaftesbury's. But Addison does not engage Shaftesbury: rather
he tends simply to assume what Shaftesbury simply denies and
vice-versa. Moreover Addison understood himself to be undertaking
something "entirely new" in advancing a theory of taste
(Addison and Steele 1879, no. 409). It seems best to conclude,
therefore, that there are two original British theories of taste.
While it would be hard to say which was more influential, it is easy
to say that each was greatly so: every subsequent British theory of
taste, at least until the close of the Eighteenth Century, shows the
strong influence of one, the other, or both.
Addison's fundamental idea is that the pleasures of taste are
pleasures of the imagination. This should not be taken to imply that
Addison identifies taste with the imagination. Taste is a faculty of
judgment: it discerns the perfections of an author with pleasure
(Addison and Steele 1879, no. 409). Imagination is a faculty of
representation: it represents things in images; it is the faculty of
visual representation (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 411). Hence
Addison's fundamental idea comes to this, apparently: taste
judges what the imagination represents; the perfections that taste
discerns with pleasure are perfections that things have as objects of
visual representation. But if objects of taste are objects of visual
representation, then objects of taste are first and foremost material
objects: mountain ranges, waterfalls, sexually attractive bodies are
among the paradigms Addison offers (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412).
It is here that the contrast with Shaftesbury becomes plain. It will
be recalled that Shaftesbury holds objects of taste to be first and
foremost objects of intellect, and that the fundamental difficulty
that his theory must overcome is to explain our intuition that
material objects are also capable of beauty. With Addison it is just
the reverse.
Addison distinguishes two classes of pleasures of the imagination:
primary pleasures, which derive from images of objects currently
present to sight; and secondary pleasures, which derive from images of
objects currently absent from sight and so called up before the mind
in some other way. He then divides primary pleasures into three
classes: those proceeding from the sight of what is great (or
sublime); those proceeding from the sight of what is novel; and those
proceeding from the sight of what is beautiful. A great object is one
so large as to strain the imagination's capacity to render it:
its apprehension flings the mind into a "pleasing
astonishment" and a "delightful stillness and
amazement" (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412). A novel object is
one new or strange to their viewer; its apprehension "fills the
soul with an agreeable surprise" and "gratifies its
curiosity" (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412). A beautiful
object is either an object of sexual attraction or one possessing a
"gaiety or variety of colors" or "a symmetry or
proportion of parts" (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412); the
apprehension of beautiful objects strikes the mind with a
"secret [i.e., inexplicable] satisfaction and complacency"
(Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412).
Addison's chief interest in secondary pleasures owes to their
comprising the pleasures of artistic representation: representational
artworks, he maintains, function centrally to call up mental images of
objects that are great, novel, or beautiful. So Homer excels in the
representation of great things, Virgil in the representation of
beautiful things, Ovid in the representation of novel things, and
Milton in the representation of all three (Addison and Steele 1879,
no. 417). But Addison acknowledges that this account of the pleasures
of artistic representation is so far incomplete; indeed he devotes a
good portion the latter part of the essay to its supplementation.
It seems clear, for starters, that our interest in artistic
representations is not exhausted by our interest in what they
represent: we take pleasure in the representations themselves as
representations. To supply this deficiency Addison proposes a "a
new principle of pleasure, which is nothing else but the action of the
mind, which compares the ideas that arise from [the representation],
with the ideas that arise from the objects themselves" (Addison
and Steele 1879, no. 418). The description of a beautiful scene
pleases us, according to this proposal, both for the beauty of the
scene and for "the aptness of the description to excite its
image" (Addison and Steele 1879, no 418). But Addison himself
seems less than fully convinced by this proposal, since there is no
reason to think of a pleasure arising from an act of comparison as a
pleasure of the imagination; such a pleasure, he concedes, "may
be more properly called the pleasure of the understanding"
(Addison and Steele 1879, no. 418).
A second deficiency concerns our interest in the artistic
representations of things positively disagreeable, such as our
interest in the performances of tragedies. The difficulty is that it
seems we ought always to prefer representations of the agreeable,
since they alone are capable of pleasing according to both principles
so far advanced. Hence Addison recruits a third principle of pleasure:
representations of the disagreeable please us by the contrast they
present between the disagreeable scene they represent and the
comparatively agreeable situation in which we find ourselves:
>
> When we look on such hideous objects, we are not a little pleased to
> think that we are in no danger of them. We consider them at the same
> time, as dreadful and harmless; so that the more frightful appearance
> they make, the greater is the pleasure we receive from the sense of
> our own safety. (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 418)
>
A third perceived deficiency derives from the common intuition that
some pleasures of artistic representation derive from the
representation of purely intellectual objects, such as abstract moral,
critical, or scientific truths. Addison concedes the truth of this
intuition, but maintains that pleasures derived from the
representation of such intellectual objects are pleasures of taste
only insofar as the objects are represented metaphorically as having
material form:
>
> a truth in the understanding is as it were reflected by the
> imagination; we are able to see something like color and shape in a
> notion, and to discover a scheme of thoughts traced upon matter.
> (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 421)
>
The materialist basis of Addison's theory disposes it to a
relativism and so to an anti-realism with respect to the perfections
of taste, much as the intellectualist basis of the theories of
Shaftesbury and Reid disposes them to an absolutism and so to a
realism. Because the pleasures of taste are pleasures taken merely in
the visual representation of material objects, there is no reason to
think any creature capable of visual representation incapable of such
pleasures. But there is also no reason to think all creatures capable
of such pleasures capable of all the same pleasures from all the same
objects. Indeed there is every reason to think that
>
> every different species of sensible creatures has its different
> notions of beauty, and ... each of them is most affected with the
> beauties of its own kind. (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412)
>
Hence Addison concludes that "[t]here is not perhaps any real
beauty ... more in one piece of matter than another" and
that beauty--and also greatness and novelty,
presumably--exists in the mind merely merely (Addison and Steele
1879, nos. 412 and 413).
### 2.2 Burke
The conception of imagination at work in Edmund Burke's *A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
the Beautiful* (published in 1757 [1759]) is a successor to
Addison's, though it has undergone expansion along one dimension
and contraction along another.
The expansion presumably responds to a problem arising from the
application Addison's fundamental idea--the idea that the
pleasures of taste are pleasures of visual representation--to
objects that do not present themselves visually, such as literary and
musical works. With respect to such objects Addison is forced to
maintain either that they function mainly to prompt mental images of
objects that do present themselves visually, or that the pleasures
they afford are not mainly pleasures of taste (he takes the former
line with respect to literary works and the latter, apparently, with
respect to music (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 416)). It is presumably
to mitigate this difficulty that Burke adopts a conception of the
imagination that encompasses all five sense modalities. Thus whereas
for Addison one can imagine merely how things look, for Burke one can
also imagine how they sound, taste, smell, and feel. Though this
broadened conception is not unique to Burke, it is unlikely that any
other theorist of taste so fully exploits its breadth: each sense
modality has its moment in *A* *Philosophical Enquiry*,
from a section on the beauty of surfaces as revealed by touch (Burke
1757 [1990, 110-111]) to one on the sublimity of "Bitters and
Stenches" (Burke 1757 [1990, 78-79]).
The contraction also presumably responds to problem in Addison, this
time to an apparent inconsistency in the conception of imagination
itself. Addison opposes the pleasures of the imagination to the
pleasures of sense, on one hand, and to the pleasures of the
understanding, on the other (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 411). But he
also defines the pleasures of the imagination as those arising from
the visual representation of things, and allows that some of those
pleasures--those he calls "the primary pleasures of the
imagination"--arise from things present to vision (Addison
and Steele 1879, no. 411). Thus it becomes hard to say what the
opposition between the pleasures of sense and the pleasures of the
imagination can amount to. It is presumably to relieve this tension
that Burke recasts Addison's distinction between primary and
secondary pleasures of the imagination as a distinction between
"the primary pleasures of sense" and "the secondary
pleasures of the imagination" (Burke 1757 [1990, 22]).
It is a complicated question whether Burke takes the primary pleasures
of sense and the secondary pleasures of the imagination jointly to
exhaust the pleasures of taste. In the 1759 addition to *A
Philosophical Enquiry* (the "Introduction on Taste")
Burke allows that objects of the understanding constitute "a
very considerable part of what are considered objects of Taste"
(Burke 1757 [1990, 22]). But that objects of the understanding cannot be
objects of taste seems a guiding assumption of much of the rest of the
*Enquiry*: consider, for example, Burke's claim that it
is only as an object of the imagination, and specifically not as an
object of the understanding, that God can be found sublime (Burke
1757 [1990, 62]). It is worth noting, moreover, that in other respects
Burke's theory is more thoroughly materialist than
Addison's. Although Addison maintains that the pleasures of
taste are pleasures of the imagination, his explanations as to why
certain objects of imagination please are not particularly
materialist. He traces the pleasure we take in "an unbounded
view," for example, to our regarding it as "an image of
liberty" (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412). Burke's
tendency, by contrast, is to explain the pleasures of sense and
imagination by appeal merely to our physical constitution. He holds
the delight we take in the viewing very large objects, for example, to
be a consequence of the retina's being struck, all at once or in
quick succession, by the relatively many light rays that very large
objects reflect (Burke 1757 [1990, 124-125]).
But Burke's chief innovation consists neither in his conception
of the imagination, nor in the extent of his materialism, but in his
theory of the perfections of taste. It will be recalled that Addison
posits three such perfections--sublimity (or greatness), novelty,
and beauty--though he offers no explanation as to why there
should be just these three. Burke argues, briefly, that novelty is too
superficial and ubiquitous to keep rightful company with sublimity and
beauty (Burke 1757 [1990, 29]). And he argues, at length, that sublimity
keeps rightful and exclusive company with beauty on the grounds that
it stands to one great class of human passions as beauty stands to the
other (Burke 1757 [1990, 30-50]). According to Burke's account of
the passions--which owes much to Hume's--most all
passions answer either to the ends of society or to the ends of
self-preservation (Burke 1757 [1990, 35-36]). Moreover, all societal passions
"turn" on pleasure, that is, each has either pleasure or
its felt absence as a constituent (Burke 1757 [1990, 37]). The societal
passion of love has pleasure as a constituent, for example, while the
societal passion of grief has the felt absence of pleasure as a
constituent (Burke 1757 [1990, 34-35, 39]). All self-preservative
passions, by contrast, "turn" on pain, that is, each has
either pain or its felt absence of pain as a constituent (Burke 1757 [1990,
37]). The self-preservative passion of simple terror has pain as a
constituent, for example, while the self-preservative passion of
astonishment--a passion which arises when pain threatens though
from a relatively safe distance, and which combines feelings of
sobriety, awe, and "tranquility shadowed with
horror"--has the felt absence of pain as a constituent
(Burke 1757 [1990, 32, 36-37, 53]). Thus there are both desirable and
undesirable societal passions and desirable and undesirable
self-preservative passions. The beautiful is that which excites the
desirable societal passion of love, the sublime that which excites the
desirable self-preservative passion of astonishment (Burke 1757 [1990,
36-37, 39, 53]). The objective foundations of beauty and sublimity turn
out to be largely opposing: whereas the beautiful tends to the small,
the smooth, the various, the delicate, the clear, and the bright, the
sublime tends to the great, the uniform, the powerful, the obscure,
and the somber. Hence Burke concludes that:
>
> [t]he ideas of the sublime and the beautiful stand on foundations so
> different, that it is hard ... to think of reconciling them in
> the same subject, without considerably lessening the effect of the one
> or the other upon the passions. (Burke 1757 [1990, 103])
>
The impact of Burke's aesthetic dualism was immediate. Before
its appearance, the sublime could be ignored: there is almost no
mention of it in Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, or Hume. Afterward it could
not be: indeed the major theorists of the second half of the
century--Reid, Alison, and Kant--all advance substantial
theories of the sublime. But toward the century's end
Burke's dualism began to come under pressure, not from those who
thought two perfections too many, but from those who thought it too
few. Uvedale Price, following suggestions in the writings of William
Gilpin, argued that there are objects--landscapes,
paradigmatically--which please the eye, but which can be
considered neither beautiful nor sublime. These objects cannot be
considered sublime because they need not be grand (Price 1796,
106-107); they cannot be considered beautiful because they are
not smooth, their pleasure depending on "sudden protuberance,
and lines that cross each other in a sudden and broken manner"
(Price 1796, 61-62). Because the play of form, color, light, and
shadow afforded by such objects renders them ideal subjects for
painting and drawing, Gilpin referred to them as
"picturesque" (Gilpin 1794, 3-5). By the end of the
century, the picturesque came to be regarded widely as occupying the
position vacated by the novel, i.e., that of a third perfection of
taste.
## 3. Association Theories
### 3.1 Gerard
Alexander Gerard's theory of taste, advanced in his 1759
*Essay on Taste*, is an attempt to mediate, or perhaps to
transcend, the dispute between internal-sense and imagination
theorists.
Gerard accepts as sound Hutcheson's argument for the internal
sensibility of taste: that the perceptions of taste are simple, that
they arise immediately, and that they arise necessarily, show taste to
be a sense; that they are separate from and consequent upon those of
external sense and reflection show taste to be internal (Gerard 1759,
160-161). But Gerard rejects what Hutcheson regards as a
corollary--that taste is an ultimate or irreducible power.
Hutcheson may have taken the irreducibility of taste to follow from
the simplicity of its perceptions. Or he may have taken the
irreducibility of taste to follow, by analogy, from the irreducibility
of the external senses. But whether taste is irreducible depends
merely on whether its perceptions can be traced to some more basic
mental power. Gerard believes that they can be: in fact he believes
that they can all be traced to "certain exertions" of the
more basic power of the imagination (Gerard 1759, 167). Thus while
taste is "itself a species of sensation ... in respect of
its principles, [it is] justly reduced to imagination" (Gerard
1759, 160).
But what Gerard means by "imagination" is not what either
Addison or Burke means, though it is not wholly unrelated either.
Officially at least, Gerard follows Addison and Burke in regarding
imagination as a representational power and in opposing imagination to
sense. But Gerard breaks from Addison and Burke crucially in also
opposing imagination to memory. This allows him to group sense and
memory together as representational powers that purport to present
ideas in correspondence with reality and to isolate imagination as the
representational power that does not. That imagination is thus
untethered from reality does not, however, imply its utter
lawlessness. It is governed by roughly Humean laws of association,
according to which it
>
> associat[es] chiefly ideas which *resemble*, or are
> *contrary*, or those that are conjoined, either merely by
> *custom*, or by the connection of their objects in
> *vicinity*, *coexistence*, or *causation*. (p.
> 168)
>
Hence another way of putting the contrast between sense and memory, on
the one hand, and imagination, on the other, is to say that the former
present ideas according to "real bonds of union" whereas
the latter presents ideas according to laws of association (Gerard
1759, 167). In this way association becomes an essential element of
imagination. Indeed on Gerard's view there seems, unofficially
at least, to be no real difference between association and
imagination--at most imagination is the locus of association.
So when Gerard claims that the perceptions of taste can be traced to
"certain exertions of *imagination*," the exertions
he has in mind are acts of association. The idea, roughly, is this.
The reducibility of taste implies that the perceptions of taste, which
are pleasures, are not natural to their objects in the way Hutcheson,
for example, supposed. Objects of taste must, in other words, acquire
their pleasurability, and association is the mechanism by which they
do so. Just how they do so varies, and the variations are too numerous
for cataloguing here. There is, however, a basic mechanism to which
Gerard recurs often in his explanations. It seems that the mind forges
very strong associations between its own processes and their objects,
such that any pleasure natural to a mental process will transfer to
its object. It also seems that any process that requires the mind
"to exert its activity, and put forth its strength, in order to
surmount any difficulty," is naturally pleasurable, as is the
mind's consciousness of its success in surmounting any
difficulty (Gerard 1759, 3). Hence any object whose processing is
difficult enough to require the relevant exertion, but not so
difficult as to prevent its success, will give pleasure (Gerard 1759,
3-4). Novel objects give pleasure because their unfamiliarity
renders their conception just difficult enough (Gerard 1759,
5-6). Sublime objects give pleasure because their sheer scale
renders their conception just difficult enough (Gerard 1759, 14).
Imitations give pleasure because marking resemblances between them and
their originals is just difficult enough (Gerard 1759, 49-51).
And ridiculous (that is, humorous) objects give pleasure because
marking dissonance or inconsistency amongst their elements is just
difficult enough (Gerard 1759, 66-69).
In these and similar ways Gerard reduces internal sense to
imagination. An important consequence of the reduction is that it
allows Gerard to be neutral on the question of the primacy of the
intellectual or the material with respect to objects of taste, over
which internal-sense theorists and imagination theorists had divided.
Gerard, unique among the major British theorists of his century, shows
no inclination to make one sort of object prior to the other. Indeed,
within the essay's first pages he offers a rural prospect, a
scientific discovery, a philosophical theory, a poem, and a painting,
all as equally uncontroversial examples of objects of taste (Gerard
1759, 6).
### 3.2 Alison
Archibald Alison, whose *Essays on the Nature and Principles of
Taste* first appeared in 1790, follows after Gerard in several
respects. He follows after Gerard in holding that objects of taste are
not naturally pleasurable, as Hutcheson had supposed, and so follows
after Gerard in holding that objects of taste must acquire their
pleasurability from something else that is naturally pleasurable. He
follows after Gerard, moreover, in holding that this acquisition
depends centrally on association, and follows after Gerard, finally,
in holding that the naturally pleasurable something else is--at
least typically and at least in part--a mental operation of some
sort. But he departs from Gerard regarding both the role of
association and the identity of the naturally pleasurable mental
operation. Whereas Gerard holds association merely to be a vehicle by
which pleasurability is transmitted from the naturally pleasurable
mental operation to the object of taste, Alison holds association also
to be the central mental operation from which pleasurability is
transmitted to the object taste.
The process by which Alison takes the object of taste to acquire its
pleasurability is complicated. It begins with the object's
eliciting some simple emotion, such as, cheerfulness, tenderness,
melancholy, solemnity, elevation, terror, delicacy, grace, dignity, or
majesty (Alison 1811, 57-58, 66). This simple emotion then
awakens a train of associated ideas such that each idea is emotionally
charged and each is united to each by a single associative principle,
usually the principle of resemblance (Alison 1811, 53-57). The
awakening of such a train of ideas is commonly known as "the
seizing of the imagination" and is naturally attended with a
simple pleasure (Alison 1811, 8, 103). This pleasure combines with the
pleasure attending the emotion that awakens the train, and with the
pleasures attending the emotions that arise from the ideas
constituting the train, to form the complex pleasures attending the
complex emotions of taste, namely, the emotions of beauty and of
sublimity. The claim that the pleasures of beauty and sublimity are in
this way complex is an important one, in that it obviates any need to
posit a special internal sense by which the pleasures of taste
arise:
>
> The pleasure ... which accompanies the emotions of taste, may be
> considered not as a simple, but as a complex pleasure; and as arising
> not from any separate and peculiar sense, but from the union of the
> pleasure of SIMPLE EMOTION, with that which is annexed, by the
> constitution of the human mind, to the exercise of IMAGINATION.
> (Alison 1811, 103)
>
When the object of taste is a material object the process by which it
becomes pleasurable is more complicated still. The complication is
that material objects are not naturally productive of any emotion;
they are often naturally productive of simple pleasures and pains, but
these are sensations merely. Yet it cannot be doubted that material
objects often do produce the complex emotions of beauty and sublimity,
and so must also produce the simple emotions that initiate unified
trains of ideas of emotion. Hence, material objects, in order to
acquire the capacity to produce the complex pleasures of taste, must
first acquire the capacity to produce simple emotions. They do so,
according to Alison, by coming to signify, through association,
qualities of mind that are naturally productive of emotion (Alison
1811, 105-107). These include both active and passive qualities
of mind,
>
> [both] its powers or capacities, as beneficence, wisdom, fortitude,
> invention, fancy, &c. [and] its feelings and affections, as love,
> joy, hope, gratitude, purity, fidelity, innocence, &c. In the
> observation or belief of these qualities of mind, we are formed, by
> the original and moral constitution of our nature, to experience
> various and powerful emotions. (Alison 1811, 418)
>
Just how material qualities come to be associated, and hence to
signify, such qualities of mind is a topic Alison considers in great
detail, devoting separate and sometimes lengthy chapters to the
sublimity and beauty of sounds (Alison 1811, 113-163), of colors
(Alison 1811, 163-176), of forms (Alison 1811, 176-310),
of motion (Alison 1811, 310-315), and of the human countenance
and form (Alison 1811, 315-417).
Of course the doctrine that the beauty of matter derives from the
beauty of mind is not new to Alison, who acknowledges a particular
debt to Reid:
>
> The opinion I have now stated coincides, in a great degree, with a
> DOCTRINE that appears very early to have been distinguished the
> PLATONIC school; ... which has been maintained in this country,
> by several writers of eminence--by Lord Shaftesbury, Dr.
> Hutcheson, Dr. Akenside, and Dr. Spence, but which has no where so
> firmly and so philosophically been maintained as by Dr. Reid in his
> invaluable work ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF MAN. The doctrine to
> which I allude, is, that matter is not beautiful in itself, but
> derives its beauty from the expression of MIND. (Alison 1811, 418)
>
What is perhaps new, at least to eighteenth-century Britain, is
Alison's thorough uncoupling of this Platonic doctrine from that
of internal sense.
Alison's theory of taste, perhaps more than any other here
considered, is apt to strike the present-day aesthetician as alien to
her concerns. But it is perhaps not so alien. Alison differs from his
present-day counterpart by defining the qualities she now terms
"aesthetic" according to the distinctive emotions he takes
each to produce. Hence many of Alison's claims about the
emotions of beauty and sublimity and about the simple emotions on
which these depend can be translated into claims about aesthetic
qualities. Consider, for example, the claim--central and
distinctive to Alison's theory--that the emotions of beauty
and sublimity depend on simple emotions such as delicacy, grace,
dignity, and majesty. Surely it is a precursor to present-day claims
about the dependence--e.g., the supervenience--of
comparatively evaluative aesthetic qualities on comparatively
descriptive aesthetic qualities. |
aesthetics-cogsci | ## 1. Background
Writers on aesthetics in the empiricist tradition such as Shaftsbury,
Hume, and Reid thought of their contributions as broadly empirical
(see Shelley 2006 [2020]), and among the very first experimental
investigations in psychology were studies of aesthetic preferences and
responses, for example Fechner's attempt to discover whether the
"golden section" is especially preferred to other ratios
(1871). The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were rich in
work of this kind, and there were more speculative studies of
"embodied" responses to architectural structures, a debate
that brought the term "empathy" to the English language
(Vischer 1873; Lipps 1903). But for most of the twentieth century
aesthetics was seen, by its proponents and its detractors, as an
"armchair" project. Wittgenstein, whose conception of
philosophy strongly influenced the field's direction in the
century's latter half, said
>
>
> There doesn't seem to be any connection between what
> psychologists do and any judgement about a work of art. (1967, 19; on
> Wittgenstein's own experimental work on the perception of rhythm
> see Guter 2020)
>
>
>
To the extent that aesthetics in this period was influenced by
thinking about the mind it was more often prompted by ideas from
psychoanalysis (Wollheim 1993). The last thirty years have seen a
shift back towards empirical inquiry, assisted by a resurgence of
interest in the imagination, now often treated as a capacity with an
evolutionary and developmental history (Fuentes 2020; Harris 2000) and
as subject to selective damage (Currie 1996).
It has never been plausible to think of aesthetics as wholly *a
priori*. Even those who think its main business is the analysis of
widely shared folk concepts (Dickie 1962) will agree that a
philosopher of music should have a good deal of knowledge of the
history, art making practices and traditions of criticism of some
musical tradition. In this respect aesthetics is closer to the
philosophy of physics or economics than it is to metaphysics. There is
also a frequently acknowledged connection between aesthetics and the
study of perception. When Baumgarten (1750-58) first introduced
the term "aesthetics" he called it a "science of
perception" and according to Nanay (2014: 101)
>
>
> many, maybe even most traditional problems in aesthetics are in fact
> about philosophy of perception and can, as a result, be fruitfully
> addressed with the help of the conceptual apparatus of the philosophy
> of perception.
>
>
>
This is a stronger claim than many would make (see Margolis 1960;
Sibley 1965; Schellekens 2006; and Robson 2018) but theses in
aesthetics do sometimes depend on claims, including scientifically
tractable claims, about the nature of perception. A notable example is
the debate about whether perception is cognitively penetrable; if it
is, the way a picture looks or a piece of music sounds may depend on
what the observer knows about contextual factors (for the rejection of
cognitive penetrability see Danto 2001; for criticism see Rose &
Nanay 2022).
Philosophical doubts about the relevance of empirical work to
aesthetics are of various kinds. Some authors merely suggest that
philosophers are apt to make hasty generalisations from slender
experimental evidence, give insufficient attention to their details
and limitations, and fail to acknowledge the existence of conflicting
expert opinion (Konecni 2013; Stock 2014). Philosophers,
aestheticians among them, can certainly overestimate their expertise
on occasion and it may well be that they are even more prone to do so
when it comes to empirical matters. None of this points to anything in
principle problematic about their enthusiasm for the empirical. Other
doubters emphasise what they see as more systemic dangers. Roger
Scruton (2014) suggests a tendency to try to assimilate aesthetic
phenomena to available scientific frameworks that turn out to be ill
fitting; he cites the attempt to use Chomskian linguistics to found a
generative theory of music which, he claims, fails to accommodate
either music's structure or purpose. Gordon Graham (2014),
contrasting Hume's aesthetic theory unfavourably with that of
Reid, says that the project of an "aesthetic science" must
ignore or deny the role of reason and judgement. Again, one may be
alive to both kinds of dangers while retaining an openness to
empirical work. In particular, Graham's challenge might be
responded to by noting that studies of the role actually played by
reasons in aesthetic judgement point to a sometimes striking
disconnect between what people think of as their reasons and the
factors that determine their preferences (Lopes 2014 and Irvin 2014;
see also below,
Section 3);
this can hardly be irrelevant to someone investigating the
rationality of aesthetic judgement. Further, work which aestheticians
have thought of as conceptual analysis in a broad sense has often
presumed answers to what are in fact empirical questions. Noel Carroll
says that
>
>
> The supposition that aesthetic properties are objective also explains
> better how we talk about them than does the projection theory.
> ...people involved in disputes about aesthetic properties
> ... speak as if one side of the disagreement is right and the
> other wrong. (Carroll 1999: 117)
>
>
>
Studies in the new field of "experimental philosophy" (for
some overviews of this field, as applied to aesthetics, see Cova &
Rehault 2018 and Torregrossa 2020) challenge this view. One
study (Cova, Olivola, et al. 2019) gathered more than two thousand
responses across 19 countries to an imagined disagreement about
whether an object of aesthetic interest is beautiful. It found that in
all populations the *least* popular view was that
"someone is right and someone is wrong". The study itself
has come in for criticism (Zangwill 2018) but, regardless of its
success, it highlights the general point that we should not assume
without evidence that the philosopher's understanding of folk
concepts (or folk practice) matches that of the folk themselves:
something that should be of concern to those, such as Dickie, who
conceive of the work of aestheticians as largely involving the
elucidation of folk concepts.
The question discussed above and to which Carroll and the members of
the Cova team give such different answers is a higher order question,
concerning whether people think of aesthetic judgements as having
normative force. We can ask similar questions about lower level
judgements. Consider the claim that we shouldn't form aesthetic
judgements on the basis of testimony, a claim said to be supported by
our supposed practice of refraining from forming such judgements (Kant
1790 [2000: 9]; Nguyen 2020: 1127). Contrary to this, Robson (2014)
argues that this descriptive claim about our judgement forming
practice is mistaken--something which would, if true, undermine
one significant motivation for the normative claim.
From an entirely different perspective, there are those who think that
philosophers have very little role to play in answering key aesthetic
questions and that we should seek to replace, rather than merely
supplement, traditional philosophical methods with more scientific
approaches. Exemplifying this tendency, Semir Zeki says
>
>
> no theory of aesthetics that is not substantially based on the
> activity of the brain is ever likely to be complete, let alone
> profound,
>
>
>
going on to say that painting is an inquiry into the laws of the brain
and that what pleases us is what pleases our brains (1999: 1-2).
While attitudes such as this may not constitute a complete dismissal
of philosophical aesthetics they show little awareness of its results,
or understanding of the limitations of neurological studies. Facts
about brain processes do not tell us--at least without some
substantive and controversial bridging premises--what objects are
art works, or what works have value (see Hyman 2010 for wide ranging
criticism of this approach). The relations between empirical work and
normative aesthetics will recur throughout this entry.
## 2. Bottom-up and Top-Down Approaches to Aesthetics
A good deal of empirical work on the aesthetic, while not deriving
from hostility to philosophical ideas, adopts a "bottom
up" approach, focusing on the immediate reactions of untutored
subjects to simple stimuli. We have seen that, by contrast,
philosophical aesthetics is much concerned with normative issues of
judgement and value, and with the claimed dependence of these things
on training, knowledge and what is sometimes called
"taste", But these empirical studies are not
philosophically irrelevant; we should not assume that the aesthetic
responses of experts are discontinuous with those of naive
subjects (though for a discussion of the burden of proof here see
Williamson 2011), nor that expert judgements are sensitive only to the
factors that experts themselves endorse. It is important to ask
whether there are baseline aesthetic responses, perhaps invariant
across cultures, from which the great variety of aesthetic traditions
emerge, and which may impose limits on those traditions and their
products (for a defence of this "bottom up" approach to
experiments in aesthetic see McManus 2011). Wolfflin, a founder
of modern art history, had an interest in questions framed in this
way: he claimed, for example, that there is a general tendency to
prefer a rightward placement of a significant object within an image
(1928). Subsequent research suggests a more complex picture, with
preference dependent on physical and cultural factors: handedness, and
whether one reads/writes left-to-right or right-to-left (see Palmer,
Gardner, & Wickens 2008 for references and discussion; Chahboun et
al. 2017 found some limited support for the idea that placement
preference depends on the subject's direction of
reading/writing). Other studies have shown robust preferences for
certain colours (Palmer & Schloss 2010), shapes, positioning of
objects within a frame (Palmer, Gardner, & Wickens 2008) and size
(Linsen, Leyssen, Sammartino, & Palmer 2011). These preferences
often turn out to be ecologically driven; for example, people tend to
like the colours of liked objects, with strong and culturally
invariant liking of saturated blue and invariant hostility to colours
associated with faeces and vomit. There are cultural variations; for
example Japanese subjects appear to be unusual in their lack of
enthusiasm for dark red (Palmer & Schloss 2010). Some colour
preferences are very culturally specific, as with the preferences of
college students for colours associated with their schools (Schloss,
Poggesi, & Palmer 2011).
Studies such as these may be thought valuable in their capacity to
explain persistent features of aesthetic artefact-making but are
unlikely to provide more than a general background against which
aesthetic preferences and judgements, debates and disagreements
concerning particular artefacts are played out. Saturated blue will be
the right colour in a certain context, while muddy brown will be right
in another. We cannot say that the presence of saturated blue in a
picture is in general a reason, even a *pro tanto* reason, for
admiring it or preferring it to a picture without that colour. When it
comes to aesthetic reasons and judgements rather than unreflective
preferences--when, that is, we consider top-down
effects--cognitive science so far offers little to help us. This
may to some extent be due to the nature of human cognition itself.
Aesthetic reasons, in so far as we have them at all, are highly
resistant to formulation in general terms (Sibley 1959), and once we
abandon the view that aesthetic qualities supervene on an
object's appearance narrowly described (colour, shape and size
in the case of visual art), there is no obvious way to limit the
factors that legitimately impact on such judgements. This suggests a
domain where, roughly speaking, everything is relevant to everything:
the isotropy that is crucial to Fodor's (1983) scepticism about
a cognitive science of thinking. One recent study does attempt a
unification of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Bullot and Reber
(2013) develop a "psycho-historical" process that begins
with a perceptual confrontation with the work, and culminates in
artistic understanding, mediated by the viewer's adoption of the
design stance which involves reconstructing the genealogy of the work.
This approach encounters two difficulties. First is their assumption
that progress between stages is able to be done largely by the
extraction of information from the perceptual signal. In fact the
work's appearance is often ambiguous or misleading as to its
history--as when a work is carefully constructed to look
haphazard in its construction (Levinson 2013; Ross 2013). The model
needs to recognise the importance of art-historical knowledge gained
from such sources as lectures and text books, knowledge which will
often precede and inform the first stage. The second objection
concerns the role of presumed essentialist assumptions in
people's approach to art works. Bullot and Reber argue that the
historical nature of appreciation is explained by our commitment to
psychological essentialism which makes us look beyond a things
appearance to investigate its essence (2013: 132). But an inclination
to look beyond appearances need not depend on essentialism; it might
be that the interest or value of a thing sometimes resides in its
relational and contingent properties (Korsgaard 1983). Valuing a work
on account of its history of making no more implies an essential
connection between the work and its history than valuing an object
because it was a gift from a loved one implies an essential connection
between the object and the giver.
## 3. Preference, Judgement and Reasons
As well as studies designed to elicit preferences, there are
empirically motivated theories that purport to explain them. Among the
earliest is Wundt's (1874) suggestion that we judge a form
pleasing to the extent that the eye finds it easy to follow the
contour. Recent work generalises this thought: there is said to be a
tendency for stimuli to be experienced positively when our perceptual
or cognitive grasp on them comes easily (Reber, Schwarz, &
Winkielman 2004). This idea of *processing fluency* is not
limited to the aesthetic domain; we generally find a proposition more
believable, apparently, if it is expressed in rhyme or in an easy to
read font and this is said to be because these things increase fluency
(Reber & Schwarz 1999; McGlone & Tofighbakhsh 2000). So
aesthetic and fluent phenomena are not coextensive, and no reduction
of the one to the other is possible. The most that can be said (and
this is not insignificant) is that certain kinds of fluency underpin
experiences of aesthetic pleasure and displeasure, symmetry offering a
plausible example; for comments on the significance of such research
into underlying mechanisms see
Section 4
below.
One concern about an approach to the aesthetic by way of fluency is
that fluency apparently encourages a less careful examination of the
stimulus (Song & Schwarz 2008), a suggestion at odds with the
aesthetic ideal of a finely discriminating attitude to art. Another is
that fluency-based likings for stimuli seem to have very limited
application in aesthetics beyond the domain of simple shape
preferences. Pictures which are visually complex are often widely
admired and not merely by the art-world elite (see for example
Frith's busy genre paintings). It is said that the pleasure
derived from fluency is relative to expectation: pleasure taken in a
Bach fugue depends on it being more fluent than one expects (Reber
2012: 228, citing Hansen, Dechene, & Wanke 2008). But
why must lovers of Bach have unrealistic expectations about the
fluency of his music? Finally (a theme we will return to) citing
fluency would not be a reason for admiring the picture or fugue in
question; this approach seems to focus on pleasure and leave notions
of reason and judgement out of account. (For criticism of the fluency
program in aesthetics see Cochrane 2021a, Section 2.3.)
Another aspect of fluency is said to be the mere exposure effect: our
tendency to find a statement more believable if we have heard it
often, repeated hearings leading to progressively more fluent
processing (Begg, Anas, & Farinacci 1992). Cutting (2003)
investigated an aesthetic variant of the idea: liking for a picture is
increased by repeated exposure to it. This, it is suggested, may
explain the stability of the artistic canon: works canonical at
*t* are more available to be seen, and the mere exposure effect
raises the likelihood of their being canonical at *t* + 1.
Cutting does not claim that exposure is the only factor contributing
to aesthetic judgement, so accepting this view does not make one an
error theorist about aesthetic value. It does, however suggest that
the critical robustness of canonical judgements has been
overestimated, since one's exposure to a picture is not a reason
for thinking it good. However, Meskin, Phelan, and colleagues (2013)
compared the effect of mere exposure to (what critics have widely
judged to be) good and bad art, finding that there was increased
liking for good art but decreased liking for bad art, the implication
being that increased exposure makes observers more aware of the
objective qualities of the work (see also Delplanque et al. 2015). In
that case significant exposure to a work, while not a reason why it is
good or bad, is a reason why one's judgement of it is reliable
and so may be said to belong to the space of aesthetic reasons.
Cutting (2017), while offering some methodological reservations,
expresses broad agreement with the Meskin et al. study.
Recently the link between aesthetic effects and pervasive features of
perception and cognition has been highlighted again by the theory of
*predictive processing*: the idea that the fundamental activity
of the brain is to make predictions and test and revise them against
incoming information from the senses, the goal being the reduction in
predictive errors or what is also called reduction in uncertainty (for
a survey of philosophical applications of this idea see Hohwy . It is
suggested that positive affect is the product of such reductions,
while negative affect results when uncertainty is increased. Works of
art are said to provide the brain with exercises, sometimes
challenging ones, in error reduction (van de Cruys & Wagemans
2011). But why should we seek more exercises in prediction error
reduction than the many that the world throws at us continually? What
is to say that the eventual reduction in error outweighs the initial
increase posed by a work of art?
We see, then, that there are a number of suggestions for how empirical
work may shed light on our aesthetic preferences and their aetiology,
while doubts remain about the capacity of this work to illuminate the
normative structure of aesthetic judgement, which is said to be
reason-focused and involve Kantian features such as disinterestedness
(though see Meskin, Phelan, et al. 2013: 140-1). A second and
familiar objection is the Wittgensteinian thought that merely
explaining the origins of a phenomenon doesn't give us the kind
of explanation which philosophers are concerned with (Vrahimis 2020).
However, the idea of reasons in aesthetics itself deserves critical
interrogation, given the evidence that the reasons people give seem
often to be confabulations and that focusing on reasons while making a
judgement can make you a worse judge rather than a better one (see
Irvin 2014 and Lopes 2014, mentioned above,
Section 1).
Nor is the problem here confined to the aesthetic domain: Hugo
Mercier and Dan Sperber (2017) argue that, quite generally, reasoning
works well as an instrument of public debate but poorly as a guide to
personal judgement and decision.
## 4. Art, Empathy and Neuroaesthetics
German aesthetics of the late nineteenth century was particularly
focused on explaining human attraction to form in picturing, sculpture
and building. Not always easy to interpret in detail, the broader
themes of this work include the ways that our bodily and ecological
situation determine the aesthetic preferences we have for such things
as symmetry (Wolfflin 1886), how architectural form is
appreciated in terms of its capacity to facilitate movement through
space (Schmarsow 1894, and how a sense of beauty arises from our
projecting the feelings provoked by an external object into that
object (Lipps 1903, see Currie 2011 for discussion). After a long
period of neglect, these and related topics have reappeared under the
banner "embodied cognition." Freedberg and Gallese (2007)
have drawn attention to the ways our bodies tend to reproduce the
posture of a statue, to produce implicit or simulated movements that
mirror those that seems to have produced a brush stroke or chisel
mark, to resonate sympathetically with the pain of a represented
figure. These, they say, are intrinsic aspects of aesthetic experience
neglected by theorists who emphasise an intellectualist approach to
art. They also claim that evidence for these effects based on
introspective reports can now be supplemented by an empirically
verified theory of brain processing that appeals to mirror and
canonical neurons. Critics have alleged that this approach neglects
the aesthetic impact of top-down factors (Kesner &
Horacek 2017) and that motor responses are absent in many
encounters with art (Casati & Pignocchi 2007: 410). Arguably
though, Freedberg and Gallese seek only to identify an aesthetic
factor of some significance and need not claim either exclusiveness or
universality for it. Formalists in art might object even to this
restricted claim, arguing that what Freedberg and Gallese have
identified are obstructions to the sort of "purely
optical" attention to pictures that Greenberg (1960) advocated
(on which see Steinberg 1965; Currie 2007). But here again aesthetic
prescription cannot afford to ignore empirical work: standards of
aesthetic attention that no one has ever lived up to are not to be
taken seriously.
Attempting to illuminate aesthetic phenomena by appeal to mirror
neurons and other neurological processes is now so common that we have
a substantial genre of *neuroaesthetic* writings (see
Chatterjee 2013 for the field's growth over 30 years). What
remains controversial, though, is the significance (if any) this
research into brain structures and processes has for aesthetics. We
have already seen that--despite the bold claims sometimes made by
neuro-aestheticians--some critics are inclined to dismiss this
kind of work as irrelevant to evaluating the kinds of claim which
aestheticians are concerned with. Gallese and Freedberg, responding to
critics, say that
>
>
> no esthetic judgment is possible without [...] mirroring
> mechanisms in the forms of simulated embodiment and empathetic
> engagement that follow upon visual observation. (2007: 411)
>
>
>
But to understand the aesthetic significance of facts about such
mechanisms we need to distinguish between two claims:
* Evidential claim: facts about mechanisms may provide evidence to
support or undermine a claim about what is involved in aesthetic
experience or judgement.
* Constitutive claim: facts about mechanisms may be constitutive
parts of the story we tell about what is involved in aesthetic
experience or judgement.
The evidential claim is more plausible than the constitutive claim.
Consider first the evidential relevance of cognitive and neurological
mechanisms for aesthetics. We have just now referred to a dispute
about how much of our experience of visual art depends on a
work's tendency to encourage bodily empathy with what is
depicted. While people sometimes report experiences of these kinds it
may be that they vary in accessibility, with some unnoticed without
high levels of attention, though still making a contribution to our
overall liking for/valuing of the work. Studies of brain activity
across a range of artistic stimuli might suggest that these empathic
responses are very common indeed--or that they are relatively
unusual--because (let us suppose) empathy has an identifiable
neurological signature. Such studies would be useful as evidence for
the claim that something needs to be factored in to an account of
aesthetic experience. But the relevant something would be the empathic
response, not the brain process (See Carroll, Moore, & Seeley
2012: 54 where studies of this kind are described as
"data" for aesthetic theories).
The difference between aesthetic effects and the mechanisms that
realise them is an important one. Take the shimmering quality we find
in impressionist art. It is said that this depends on the fact that
the visual system involves two separate processing streams and that
certain colour combinations are processed exclusively by one of them
(Livingstone 2002). Should this fact, if it is one, be regarded as an
aesthetic fact? Arguably no. What matters aesthetically is the
experienced shimmering quality; a world in which just that shimmering
quality was produced by some other mechanism of perceptual processing
would not be aesthetically different from our world, at least in this
respect. The same applies to scientific studies of the stimuli
themselves; chemical analysis of an ancient pigment might show that it
was a hard medium to work in, and that would be relevant to
understanding the works of art produced by its means. But what matters
is the difficulty of the medium; discovering its chemical formula
simply provides evidence for that.
## 5. Authenticity
A Kant-inspired view of long standing is that aesthetics is concerned
not with how things are but with how they appear (e.g., Urmson 1957),
a view sometimes called *aesthetic empiricism* (Currie 1989) On
this view aesthetics takes no cognisance of authenticity, which
depends on history and not on appearance; a fake Vermeer does not
become authentic by being visually indistinguishable from a genuine
one. Is an object's history really aesthetically irrelevant?
Those with an interest in art, craft and the design of artefacts
generally are much concerned with the object's history, and
there are arguments to support the view that the application of at
least some aesthetic properties depends on assumptions about that
history. Consider two such attributions from Sibley's (1959)
extensive list of aesthetic properties: *being delicate* and
*being dynamic*. A line that is seen as delicate when thought
to be drawn by hand may not seem so when revealed as the product of a
machine, and Walton (1970) argued that, of two works which are
visually indistinguishable, one may be fairly described as dynamic and
the other not, depending on differences in their category membership
(for defences of aesthetic empiricism concerning visual art see
Zanwill and, on music, Dodd; for the aesthetic relevance of
genuineness or authenticity see Korsmeyer 2019). The suggestion of at
least the first of these examples (*being delicate*) is that
the aesthetic properties of a thing, and the aesthetic values that
possession of these properties entails, depend on the kind of
achievement that the fashioning of the work represents. What may be a
considerable achievement for one person at one time may be a greater,
lesser or at least a different achievement for someone else, working
with different materials or in a distinct artistic culture (Dutton
1979; Currie 1989; Huddleston 2012; Levinson 2016); James Grant (2020)
suggests that we do better to think in terms of a work's
capacity to exhibit the skills of its maker rathen than in terms of
its constituting an achievement of the maker (see also Currie
2018).
Both formulations imply a close connection between valuing the work
and valuing the maker, helping thereby to explain how an interest in
the authenticity of a work can belong to the space of aesthetic
reasons. It also suggests a connection with our desire to preserve and
possess otherwise unremarkable objects because of their relation to
some person or event that interests us (JFK's sweater). Some
psychologists have thought to bring art works and other valued
artefacts together under the heading of contagion, the idea that
>
>
> a person's immaterial qualities or 'essence' can be
> transferred to an object through physical contact; (Newman,
> Diesendruck, & Bloom 2011)
>
>
>
an idea that goes back to early anthropological work by Frazer (1890
[1994]) and others. As the examples just given indicate, the idea that
a person's essence is transferable to an object does not depend
on the object's aesthetic merits, and this severely limits the
usefulness of this idea in explaining the role of authenticity in the
arts (see, however, Korsmeyer 2019 where it is argued that genuineness
is itself an aesthetic property). Bloom and colleagues stress the role
of physical contact in the contagion process: "An original
Picasso may be valuable because Picasso actually touched it"
(Newman & Bloom 2012: 3). But Picasso may have got no closer than
a brush length from *Guernica*, a picture likely to command
higher art-world respect (and higher prices) than a restaurant napkin
sketch he then wiped his hands on. However, a more general and perhaps
rather vague sense of "closeness" to the artist and their
act of making does seem to be explanatory of some art-world practices,
such as a preference for lower numbered (and hence earlier) prints
even where there is no decline in quality across later ones (Smith,
Newman, & Dhar 2016).
Bloom and colleagues offer another explanation for our interest in
authentic items, this one closer in spirit to the suggestion above
that aesthetic judgements are sensitive to achievement or the
manifestation of ability:
>
>
> [A]n original is different from a forgery because it is the end point
> of a different sort of performance . The original is a creative work
> while the forgery is not. (Newman & Bloom 2012: 559)
>
>
>
Guernica, very likely, is a more creative work than the napkin sketch
and plausibly valued more for that reason. A question which arises is
this: how do people make judgements of the quality of, say, a
painting, if not solely on the basis of how it looks? For a few highly
trained experts the answer may be: through deep immersion in the
cultural and artistic context of the work. The rest of us, where we
make a judgement at all, may be dependent on short cuts such as the
"effort heuristic", which treats evidence of effort as
evidence of quality. In an experiment, people asked to judge the
relative merits of pictures *A* and *B* tended to judge
*A* as better than *B* when told *A* took longer
to paint, while the group who were told that *B* took longer
preferred *B*. This effect was found equally among experts and
among laypersons, though the experts were "self-described"
(Kruger et al. 2004).
## 6. Pictures, Imagination and Perception
Wollheim (1980) said that what is distinctive about pictorial
representation is its capacity to generate a certain kind of
experience: the experience of "seeing the subject in the
picture". For many this has seemed to capture something deeply
important about the nature of depictive representation, though
Wollheim's specific claims about it are disputed. What exactly
is seeing-in? One subsequent suggestion has been that we see
something, *X*, in a picture when we experience a resemblance
between the outline shape visible in the picture and the outline shape
that would be presented from that same perspective by *X*
(Hopkins 1998; for a related proposal see Peacocke 1987). Another
proposal is that we see *X* in a picture when we are prompted
by it to imagine, of our act of seeing the picture, that it is a
seeing of *X* (Walton 1992). Is cognitive science able to help
us adjudicate between rival theories in this area? It does look as if
these ostensibly philosophical theories are committing themselves, if
somewhat vaguely, on empirical issues. Surely, we cannot settle from
the armchair whether the perception of pictures draws on imaginative
capacities. Scientists have gone a long way towards locating areas of
the brain implicated in certain kinds of functions, emotion and the
forms of perception being good examples. But we are not similarly able
to localise imaginative activity and there may be an in-principle
barrier to our doing so; there is some reason to suppose that there
are not dedicated mechanisms of imaginative activity, but that
imagining involves the reuse of systems designed for other purposes.
This issue has been a central contention in the debate over how we
understand the minds of other people, a debate originally drawn in
terms of two opposing outlooks, theory-theory and simulation theory,
though other approaches have come into view (Gallagher & Hutto
2008). Theory-theory attributes to us a (perhaps tacit) theory of the
mental states of others, their connection to action and so forth, from
which we derive predictions and explanations of behaviour (Fodor 1992;
Carruthers 1996). Simulationism, by contrast, argues that we have a
capacity to use our own mental systems of inferring and deciding to
model or simulate the thoughts and decisions of others (Gordon 1986).
While Heal has emphasised what she takes to be the *a priori*
principle that when we examine the thinking of another person we have
to reproduce in our own minds the contents of and the logical
relations between the propositions thought (1986), others have
developed an empirically oriented version, postulating causal
mechanisms by which practical and theoretical reasoning can be taken
"off-line", or disconnected from experiential inputs and
behavioural outputs (A. I. Goldman 1989). It has been suggested that
the simulation approach, understood largely in this empirically
oriented way, enables us to explain a good deal about our interest in
and responses to fiction (Currie & Ravenscroft 2002). Questions
about causally effective mental architecture have played a role in
other aesthetic debates such as the explanation of our capacity to
become immersed in a narrative (Schellenberg 2013) and of the contrary
tendency to "resist" imaginative involvement with stories
we perceive as morally or in other ways problematic (Weinberg &
Meskin 2006; Miyazono & Liao 2016).
While some of these ideas come with a detailed "boxology"
that describes the cognitive implementation of the proposal, they are
generally the product of work at the more philosophical and
speculative end of inquiry into the architecture of mind where
evidence is at best very indirect. An exception is the suggestion that
there is empirical confirmation for Wollheim's (1998) notion of
twofoldness in picture perception, according to which spectators are
simultaneously aware of both the surface qualities of the picture and
the depicted content. In particular, it has been argued that
>
>
> the twofold experience of pictures Wollheim talks about corresponds to
> the dichotomy between our dorsal visual processing of the surface of
> the picture and our ventral visual processing of the depicted scene.
> (Nanay 2011: 464)
>
>
>
Support for this idea comes from evidence that people with damage to
their ventral processing often have difficulty deciphering the content
of a picture without corresponding difficulty in perceiving the
ordinary properties of the surface of the picture (Turnbull, Driver,
& McCarthy 2004). This illustrates another way that the
investigation of mechanisms may further aesthetic inquiry. An
aesthetic phenomenon--in this case twofoldness--is
postulated and the question arises as to whether there is a plausible
story about how this is implemented. If no such story were available,
doubt would be thrown on the claim.
## 7. Emotion
A good deal of aesthetic thinking has been taken up with arguing about
the limits to its capacity to appeal to the emotions. Two issues are
particularly notable, one descriptive and the other, in part,
normative. What, first of all, are the facts about our (apparently)
emotional responses to fictions? Do we really admire, despise or pity
people we know do not exist? This sounds like an empirical question,
perhaps one to be resolved by studies of the brains of people engaged
by fictional work. But the prospects for this approach are poor, and
not only because of practical difficulties in data gathering (see Cova
& Teroni 2016). Those who deny that we pity Anna Karenina do no
deny that readers may display all the physiological signs that go with
that emotion. What they claim is that genuine fear has a cognitive
component lacking in this case: belief in the object of one's
fear. Suppose we could show empirically that readers of Tolstoy do
experience all the pity-relevant physiological states while failing to
believe in the existence of Anna Karenina, having instead cognitive
states such as "imagining that Anna exists". The
philosophical problem would remain: are people with that psychological
profile genuinely in a state of pitying, or is their state merely one
of what Walton (1978) calls "quasi-pity", which involves
the typical physiological and psychological reactions of pity but
which falls short of being full-fledged pity because it does not go
with belief in its objects, or with the typical corresponding
dispositions to action? We might at this point wonder whether what
looked like a substantive question about fear and pity has been shown
to be merely one about labelling. However, there are empirical
considerations that bear indirectly on the issue. Gendler and
Kovackovick suggest that plausible assumptions about the evolutionary
proper function of the emotions tells against the idea that fear
requires belief. It is likely on Darwinian grounds that our emotions
were shaped not merely by their capacity to have us avoid present
dangers, but also to have us avoid merely possible ones. Imagining a
dangerous creature lurking in the forest may be enough to send me by a
safer route, raising my chances of surviving and passing on my genes.
If imagined dangers are part of the reason fear has been selected for
and retained why insist that responses to the imagined creatures and
events of fiction are, as Walton (1978) claims, merely quasi-fears?
For other connections between aesthetics and evolutionary thinking see
below,
Section 9.
A similar problem arises when we consider our responses to music. We
sometimes talk of sad music making us sad, though the music does not
provide us with any reason for thinking that something sad has
happened (sad music sometimes reminds us of a sad event, but this is
not a general feature of cases where sad music affects us). Here
appeal to the imagination seems less helpful; unlike fictional
narratives, emotionally affecting music does not usually provide us
with the materials for imagining some sad event. Kivy has argued that
sadness on the part of those who listen to sad music is, where it
occurs, irrelevant to musical appreciation and will indeed not occur
in episodes of listening which instantiate his preferred model of
musical listening, one which requires exclusive attention to the
structural, phenomenological, and expressive properties of the music
(1990: ch. 8). Kivy does not deny however that musical listening can
and indeed should be a deeply emotional experience; we may be
overwhelmed by the compositional and performance qualities the work
represents. Some attempt has been made to challenge Kivy on empirical
grounds by presenting evidence that music does reliable engender the
emotions or moods it expresses (Sizer 2007). But Kivy denied this
possibility only for the case of canonical music listening, and says
that there is no reason to think that subjects in the relevant
experiments were listening in that canonical way (2007). Certainly it
would not be easy to control experimental conditions so as to rule-out
listening which is non-canonical in Kivy's sense (see also Kivy
2006; Carroll 2003; Carroll & Moore 2007). However, if
experimental tests do consistently provide evidence of
emotion-generation concordant with the emotions expressed by the
music, it will not do simply to say that we have not yet tested the
right listeners. The friend of Kivy will have to find robust instances
of the sort of listening he approves of, and not depend merely on the
personal testimony of those who favour his theory. We take it, after
all, that Kivy's ideal mode of listening is presented as a
practically achievable goal. Zangwill 2004 represents a formalism that
is less willing to accommodate the emotions; for a more limited
defence of the formalist position see Cochrane 2021b.
Another aesthetically important question about the emotions is this:
why are we attracted to representations and other devices that
generate negative emotions such as sorrow and fear? It is not a
satisfactory answer to this question to make the suggestion referred
to above that we do not really fear Dracula and other creatures of
fiction but merely quasi-fear them, because fear and quasi-fear are
supposed to be qualitatively the same, so if fear is unpleasant
quasi-fear is also. The question can be asked about both narrative
works and about music; recall that even Kivy grants that
(non-canonical) musical listening may generate sadness. However,
fiction has been the greater part of this discussion, and will be here
also. On this issue philosophers have tended to take one of three
positions (but see Smuts 2009 for a wider range of options):
* Compensation: audiences tolerate the negative emotions of tragedy,
horror and other genres because they recognise compensatory benefits
(Carroll 1990; Feagin 1983)
* Conversion: emotions which would otherwise be experienced as
unpleasant are experienced as positive in artistic contexts (Hume 1757
[1987]).
* Neutrality: it is wrong to think that the so called
"negative emotions" provoked by tragedy or horror are
intrinsically unpleasant and hence in need of compensation or
conversion. They are not intrinsically valenced and may be experienced
negatively in some situations and positively in others (Gaut 1993;
Walton 1990: 255-8)
Neutrality is a general claim about the emotions and relevant here as
one way to argue in favour of conversion. But a conversion theorists
need not be committed to Neutrality. We focus here on the contrast
between Compensation and Conversion. Compensation, unlike Conversion,
appeals to a type of psychological process that is hardly
controversial; we accept many kinds of unpleasant experiences because
avoiding them will have even less desirable consequences. Conversion
sounds more problematic: how can an emotion "flip" its
hedonic value and still be the same emotion? Psychologists interested
in negative emotions in art have cited research which purports to
reveal hedonic flip for pain: subjects who expected an intense pain
but experienced only a moderately painful stimulus described the
experience as "pleasant", while subjects expecting
nonpainful warmth described the same stimulus as unpleasant (Leknes et
al. 2013). This doesn't by itself show that the same thing can
happen in the case of tragedy or horror, but it suggests that the
conversion claim is less outlandish than it might initially seem.
While compensation may appeal to a familiar kind of trade off, it
needs to tell us what specific compensatory benefits are to be had
from the negative emotions provoked by art. Philosophers have long
cited epistemic benefits: the distressing events of tragedy are a
source of moral and psychological learning, sometimes about ourselves
(Collingwood 1938; Schier 1983). Empirical scientists have added to
the list: painful emotions generate strong pro-social feelings that
help to unite us with both characters and authors (Bastian, Pe, &
Kuppens 2017; Egloff 2017).
While philosophers have long offered theories to resolve this
"paradox of tragedy," only one substantial study of it
claims to be grounded in empirical research. Menninghaus and
colleagues propose what they call the "the Distancing-Embracing
model" (Menninghaus, Wagner, Hanich, et al. 2017) according to
which an aesthetic context, as with watching a play or film, distances
us from the situation represented and allows the positive effects of
tragic emotions, notably their capacity to focus attention, to sustain
them. While a large and relevant body of empirical work is called on
in support of the idea, its theoretical commitments are unclear. In
some of their formulations the function of distancing seems to be the
reduction in unpleasantness of negative emotions to the point where
they are "not inevitably incompatible with art-specific
expectations of hedonic reward" (2017: 6); this leaves them open
to the charge made against compensation theories that the work's
being apt to generate negative emotions seems to be a major factor in
attracting people to the work, rather than something negative we can
be persuaded to live with. In other formulations they speak of the
factors "involved in making negative emotions enjoyable"
(2017: 3), which suggests the conversion theory. Yet they claim that
their theory is a version of neither of these approaches (2017: 15;
see S. Davies 1997). (For more on the relationship between fiction and
emotion see the supplement to Liao & Gendler 2018 [2020]). See
below,
Section 7
for further remarks on fiction and emotion.
To conclude the discussion of fiction, we note another direct appeal
to work at the empirical level. Derek Matravers (2014) argues that it
has been a mistake of recent theorising about fiction to appeal to the
imagination. Matravers claims that work on mental models does a good
job of explaining our processing and comprehension of, and responses
to, both fictional and nonfictional narratives without any need to
distinguish fictional cases by their connection with the
imagination.
## 8. The Aesthetics of Literature and Literary Language
Through the latter part of the twentieth century, theoretical and
interpretive studies of literature have been somewhat hostile to both
cognitive and aesthetic inquiry, often thought of as irrelevant to
serious interpretive work and a distraction from favoured political
agendas. Cognitive studies of literature have developed somewhat in
the last twenty years but remain a minority enterprise (Hartner 2017).
One question of long standing that has concerned scholars in
psychology, literary studies and aesthetics is the idea that we learn
from literature about the world beyond the text, an idea treated with
some suspicion by those influenced by deconstructive or post-modern
theorising, who argue that such ambitions depend on failing to realise
that characters of fiction are not, and are not like, real people
(Cixous 1974). Others argue that such cognitive benefits, if they
exist, are not aesthetically relevant (Lamarque & Olsen 1994: ch.
17; for criticism see Gaut 2007: ch. 7; Currie 2020: SS9.6). There
is, however, a strong tendency to suppose that the artistic merit of,
say, a Shakespearean drama depends in part on our sense that it is
revelatory of deep insights into the human condition. Similar claims
are made for other arts; contemplating van Gogh's lithograph
*Sorrow* Kendall Walton notes responding imaginatively to the
woman in ways that "gain for me an understanding of what a
particular sorrow is like" (2008: 78).
Recently efforts have been made to test the idea that literature does,
on occasion, provide cognitive benefits. It has been claimed that
exposure to fiction--even single episodes of
reading--measurably improves empathy and theory of mind (Kidd
& Castano 2013); the effects, if real, seem to be small and the
claimed results have been hard to replicate (Panero et al. 2016; Kidd
& Castano 2019). Other work in this growing field also does not
point in a single direction. Some studies suggest that fiction has a
capacity to improve aspects of social cognition (Calarco et al. 2017;
Mar 2018a,b) while others find no such effect (e.g., Wimmer et al.
2021a, b; see Currie 2020; chs 9-11 for general discussion).
Humanistic scholars who claim educative effects for fiction may
respond that these effects are slow and cumulative, and unlikely to be
visible in studies of single episodes of reading; testing such claims
will be difficult. But their claims are, nonetheless, empirical.
Among other examples of the cognitive study of literature are
investigations of emotional responses. While aestheticians have tended
to focus on the apparently "paradoxical" aspects of our
emotional responses to fictions (for example why we are emotionally
affected by the non-existent, see above
Section 7),
researchers in the cognitive sciences has begun a broader attempt to
understand the role of emotions of all kinds in generating and
maintaining interest in narrative and poetry (Menninghaus, Wagner,
Wassiliwizky, et al. 2017); Jenefer Robinson's (2005) is an
example of work from within aesthetics that takes up this broader
ambition while being strongly informed by empirical work. More
recently, Kukkonen (2020) attempts an alignment between the
expectations of a reader sometimes surprised by plot development and
the predictive processing approach to perception and cognition (see
above
Section 3).
It is an open question whether the predictive processing account
sheds aesthetically relevant light on the reader's experience
rather than simply providing an account of the mechanisms involved
(see above
Section 4).
A striking example of an area long thought of as resistant to theory
from outside the domain of art and the aesthetic is that of literary
language. Insight into the kind of language we think of as distinctive
of poetry, drama and the novel has traditionally been sought from
those whose expertise is literature itself rather than from those
developing general theories of communication, a view endorsed by Peter
Lamarque, who regards the idea that there is value in seeing literary
works as akin to quotidian genres of utterance such as letter-writing
or political speech making as "utterly misconceived"
(Lamarque 2007: 34). But advocates of *relevance theory*, a
naturalistically inclined development of Gricean pragmatics, reject
the idea that there is anything fundamentally special or autonomous
about literary language, claiming that
>
>
> stylistic and poetic effects traditionally associated with figurative
> utterances arise naturally in the pursuit of relevance, and call for
> no special treatment not required for the interpretation of ordinary
> literal utterances. (D. Wilson 2018: 191)
>
>
>
(for work that seeks empirical confirmation for relevance theory see,
e.g., Happe 1993; Sperber & Wilson 2002; van der Henst, Carles,
& Sperber 2002; Noveck & Posada 2003; and van der Henst &
Sperber 2004).
One ambition of relevance theory is to encourage us to see
"poetic uses" of language, where an idea is very
indirectly suggested by the words used, as less marginal than we would
if we thought of the paradigm of communication as the case where an
agent utters a sentence that means exactly what the speaker wishes to
communicate. Relevance theorists say that such cases of literal
meaning are rare or non-existent and do not constitute any kind of
communicative ideal. They point to the widespread phenomenon of
"weak implicature": audiences draw a range of conclusions
from an utterance, some of them obviously intended but others harder
to identify as intended (Sperber & Wilson 1995: 197-9). On
this view the totality of what is meant, even in mundane cases, is
never more than vaguely specifiable and would, if we bothered to
investigate, be subject to the same unresolvable disputes as we find
in poetic criticism. It need not be concluded that poetic discourse is
entirely of a piece with over-the-garden-wall conversation; the
relevance theorist's point is that the differences are ones of
degree and not of kind.
## 9. Aesthetics and Evolution
Theories of human evolution over the last two million years are
severely limited by the very incomplete fossil record and the fact
that soft tissue disappears quickly. Given these constraints it is
surprising the extent to which cognitive theorising has reached into
the very distant past, though its claims are agreed on all hands to be
highly provisional. A vital resource has been the study of stone
artefacts going back two million years or more, artefacts which
preserve very well and which are available in great quantities. We are
able to reconstruct a good deal about the methods of their
construction and to speculate in a reasonably informed way on the
cognitive capacities they require. Based on these speculations
innovations in stone tool manufacture have been linked to the
development of language (Higuchi et. al. 2009).
Any topic on which aesthetic and evolutionary methods converge is
likely to be approached with two questions in mind.
1. Is the emergence and development of art-making and related
activities explainable wholly or very largely in cultural terms, or is
there a substantial biological component?
2. Is art-making an adaptation or a non-adaptive consequence of
developments which may themselves have adaptive advantages (or
something else)?
It might be thought that the second question arises only if one
answers the first in a way that gives an important explanatory role to
biology. But culturally determined "phenotypes" can also
be adaptive, maladaptive or neutral. Cooking, certainly a cultural
innovation, is highly adaptive and has led to significant change in
gut size and perhaps in brain size as well (Godfrey-Smith 2013; for
scepticism concerning the relation to brain size see Cornelio
et al. 2016). Human biological and cultural evolution are closely
connected.
On the question whether there is a role for biological explanation
when it comes to human aesthetic activity, there is a constituency of
scholars hostile to this idea; they argue that "art" and
"aesthetic" are notions of recent and essentially western
invention, the application of which to other and older cultures is
mistaken (Gell 1998: 97). Opponents of this view readily grant the
huge cultural variability of aesthetic activity. They argue that there
are enough commonalities between the ways very different cultures
invest in the shaping and decoration of objects, in music, dance and
in story-telling to make it plausible that biology provides both the
initial impetus to and a set of constraints on these activities
(Dutton 2009; Currie 2012). If we thought, as we once did, that these
activities could be traced no further back than the cave depictions of
the European Upper Paleolithic it would be likely that the aesthetic
is too late-emerging to have a biological basis. Very recent
discoveries have now suggested a somewhat earlier origin; depictions
in Indonesia have been given dates prior to 45,000 years ago (Brumm et
al. 2021). More dramatically, though, the temporal depth of aesthetic
activity is vastly increased if we turn our attention to the stone
tools mentioned above, many of which show a notable symmetry of
construction. Hand axes from the Acheulean industry which arose about
1.7 million years ago are sometimes too large, small or sharply
pointed to be practical implements and strongly suggest an interest in
the display of skilful making that we commonly recognise in, say, the
art of the European renaissance (see Currie & Zhu 2021 and Gowlett
2021, both of which in different ways emphasise the importance of
seeing aesthetic practices emerging in a social context). Some have
seen these elaborated instruments as products of sexual selection, as
peacock's tails are said to be: reliable indicators of the
maker's qualities as a mate (Kohn & Mithen 1999). Another
view has it that they were indicators of trustworthiness, and hence of
one's value as a co-operator (Spikins 2012); for criticism of
both views see Hiscock 2014.
Hand axes are unlike a peacock's tail in being detached from the
body and so may be passed from one person to another--one reason
to doubt their reliability as signals of any particular agent's
suitability as a mate. Where symmetry of the body itself is at issue
that objection does not apply, and bodily and especially facial
symmetry has been offered as an example of something evolution has
tuned our sensibilities to because it is an indicator of health in a
reproductive partner. However, robust evidence has been hard to find.
One recent study did "not support the idea that facial symmetry
acts as a reliable cue to physiological health" (Pound et al.
2014; see also Kalick et al. 1998), another that there is
"little evidence that female appearance predicted health"
(Foo et al. 2017; this study did support a connection between male
facial appearance and fertility). For ethical arguments, supported by
empirical findings, that we should rethink our standard approach to
the aesthetics of human appearances, see Irvin 2017.
It should be noted that even a very early dating of the emergence of
aesthetic interests does not establish that they have a biological
origin; the Acheulean period seems to have been marked by high levels
of planning and organisation that suggest strong social relations
(Hiscock 2014). In this sense aesthetic activity may be a culturally
derived "technology", as writing is, rather than an
adaptation, as language may be (S. Davies 2012: ch. 10). Could we
account, on that hypothesis, for the seeming ease with which young
children take to forms of aesthetic activity such as drawing and
singing? By contrast, learning to write is effortful and requires
great investment in pedagogy. Recent work (Heyes 2021) seeks to
reshape our assumptions about what is learned, arguing that such an
early and reliably developing ability as interpersonal understanding
is really a socially acquired "gadget" (Heyes & Frith
2014). To add to a complex menu of options we also note that what
begins as a gadget or technology might, under certain circumstances
fall under complete or partial genetic control. This so-called
"Baldwin effect", once despised in evolutionary thinking,
has attracted interest more recently (Weber & Depew 2003). It
proposes a mechanism by which acquired characteristics can become
biologically heritable, without giving any ground to the Lamarkian
idea that changes that accrue in an organism's lifetime can be
passed directly to the next generation. For example, if advantages
flow from learning a skill, there may be selective pressure to ease
the burden and uncertainty of learning by making the skill, or some of
its components, innate (Papineau 2005). Given the multiply crossing
paths between cultural and biological evolution there is little
definite to be said about the origins of aesthetic interests other
than that we see evidence for it in human populations more than half a
million years ago.
We turn now to our second question: Is art-making an adaptation or a
non-adaptive consequence of developments which may themselves have
adaptive advantages? Or something else entirely? Strong and contrary
views have been expressed on this question; some have argued that the
development of depiction, story-telling and music have been crucial
for social bonding (Dissanayake 1992, 2000, 2017) or mate-choice
(Miller 2000; Dutton 2009; for criticism see, e.g., C. Wilson 2016),
others say that the creation of aesthetic artefacts offers no adaptive
advantage but that they gained their hold on us because they provide
rewards to sensory and other mechanisms in the mind that arose for
quite other purposes (Pinker 1997). From a somewhat different
perspective it is suggested that we do best by seeing human aesthetic
activity as simply the continuation of ubiquitous practices of
signalling and manipulation in the world of plants and animals. An
interesting feature of this idea is that it replaces the traditional
distinction between the aesthetics of artefacts and the aesthetics of
nature with a distinction between, on the one hand artefacts
*and* natural entities such as animal calls and flower
colouring, and on the other natural objects such as rocks, sunsets and
the night sky which "do not coevolve with sensory evaluations of
them" (Prum 2013: 821; see also De Tiege, Verpooten,
& Braeckman 2021). It is not clear whether we currently know
enough to decide between the available alternatives (S. Davies 2012:
ch. 12; for the case of fiction, Currie 2020; SS7.4). But would
deciding whether art-making is adaptive advance the cause of aesthetic
inquiry? That is doubtful. The question whether art is an adaptation
concerns whether the reason we have art now is that it contributed to
the fitness of our species. That could be true without it also being
true that art now enriches our lives in any of the ways commonly
claimed--giving pleasure, educating our emotions, instructing us
about morality. And it is possible that art does now have all those
advantages while having been an evolutionary irrelevance. It is also
true that even if art was not originally adaptive, it might have
become adaptive (an "exaptation") at some stage and might
be adaptive now. Different answers may apply to different art forms.
It is said that the novel is a particularly appropriate means by which
to exercise our capacities for empathy and mind reading (Nussbaum
1990, 1995; Mar and Oatley 2008); perhaps these advantages did not
appear until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. While questions
about art posed in evolutionary terms are certainly of scientific
interest, what matters to the aesthetician is more likely to be the
values that art currently and historically exemplifies and the ways
those values are currently and historically responded to by us.
## 10. The Aesthetics of the Environment
We have referred rather briefly to the aesthetics of the natural and
humanly constructed environment and we conclude with a brief selection
of aesthetically and cognitively relevant work in this area. Much of
this discussion continues the evolutionary theme. Note that some of
this work relies for its evidence on people's responses to
pictures of environments rather than to the environments themselves,
leaving it uncertain how much of the response is to the environment
and how much to its representation.
The empirical study of environmental preferences has long been of
interest to planners, and largely represents the bottom-up mode of
inquiry referred to above (see
Section 2),
as the aim is to discover what people in general like rather than to
assess their likings against the normative constraints of connoisseurs
and philosophers. Topics explored include the differences in
preference across age groups, ethnicity, education and income (e.g.,
Kaplan & Talbot 1988). One conclusion often drawn is that there is
a widespread, perhaps universal, human preference for savanna
landscapes, even among communities whose own historically stable
habitat is very different, and that this preference is reflected in
the design of parks and gardens (Falk & Balling 2010). It is
further asserted that this is the product of our evolutionary
development in an East African context (E. O. Wilson 1975 is an early
source of this idea); for detailed discussion, references, and some
reservations see S. Davies 2012: ch. 6.
The non-prescriptive nature of much empirical research into responses
to the environment contrasts with a view influential in philosophical
aesthetics according to which there are quite demanding cognitive
requirements for a correct aesthetic appreciation of nature. The
question mirrors one we have already discussed for the arts: what
factors, other than the sensory appearance of an object, are relevant
to enjoying, appreciating and judging it aesthetically? In the case of
the arts we saw that one answer is to consider the work's
category--the (artistic) kind of thing it is (Walton 1970; see
above
Section 5).
Allen Carlson (2000) extends this idea to the aesthetics of nature,
arguing that a scene or object must be understood as belonging to a
natural kind, and as having the causal history characteristic of that
kind; that is the right way to perceive it and aesthetic judgements
about it are correct only if they are tied to that category. This
implies that much human aesthetic experience of nature has been
radically incorrect, being uninformed by the relevant scientific facts
and often infused with notions of supernatural creation. Some will
find this an acceptable consequence; we are used to thinking that many
long-standing human ethical judgements have been radically mistaken,
and aesthetic judgements might go the same way. Others however,
question whether the aesthetic delight one takes in, say, a bird in
flight depends for its acceptability on understanding the natural
history of the creature (Budd 2001).
A different and perhaps more accommodating approach to identifying
what is distinctive in aesthetic appreciation of the environment
connects an older way of thinking with recent work on cognition. The
eighteenth century focused attention on notions of the sublime
(notably Burke [1757], but in a line of thought from Longinus) and the
picturesque (Gilpin 1782, with roots in the older concept of
*pittoresco*). These, particularly the former, have generated
controversies about their relations to beauty--are they
subspecies of beauty or categories distinct from it?--and about
their extensions--is it only nature that can be sublime? The
question also arises as to whether terms like "the
sublime" pick out a class of objects to which there is actually
a common aesthetic response. This sounds like something on which we
could get help from the cognitive sciences, and work by Keltner and
Haight (2003), drawing on a range of empirical and reflective sources,
has been particularly noticed. Their work was on the concept of awe
rather than the sublime but they note obvious connections, given the
thought that the sublime involves a response to things physically or
conceptually vast. They suggest that awe involves the recognition of
the apparent vastness of the object or scene attended to and the
inability of the subject to assimilate it to their existing mental
schemas. Other research suggests a strongly pan-cultural component in
nonverbal expressions of this emotion (Keltner et al. 2019), and its
association with a diminished sense of self (Piff et al. 2015; Tom
Cochrane (2012) has argued that the sublime is characterised by a
feeling of self-negation). It is suggested therefore that the
experience of the sublime is an aesthetic form of awe wherein the
object is attended to for its own sake (Clewis 2019; Arcangeli et al.
2020), an idea elaborated by Shapsay (2021) who suggests that the
sublime sometimes takes a cognitively elaborated form involving
reflection of the challenge posed to existing schemata by the scene or
object one confronts. |
collingwood-aesthetics | ## 1. Art as Craft, Magic, Representation and Amusement
There are four concepts of human activity which are commonly called
'art', but which according to Collingwood, should be
sharply distinguished from what he calls 'art proper'. The
implication is that those things are improperly so-called, that is,
are commonly but wrongly called art. Since today the tendency in
aesthetics is to insist that all things called 'art' are
rightly so-called, it is important emphasize this fact; the
Institutional Theory of Art, and the Theory of Mass Art, would no
doubt be viewed by Collingwood as pernicious linguistic confusions.
But in fact it is worse than this. Art proper is often found within
the context of those other things; even particular works of art
(proper) may at the same time be instances of those things.
Furthermore, it is not as if 'art' once had the true
meaning appertaining to art proper, and then got extended to these
other things; the word has always been more or less subject to at
least some of these confusions. The task, then, is to distinguish the
concept from those of many other competing related human activities,
and to claim that it alone deserves to be called art.
### 1.1 Art as Craft
The first of these things that is easily confused with art proper has
the recommendation of having been espoused by Plato and Aristotle.
This is the 'technical' theory of art, or the theory that
art is craft (from the Greek word 'techne'), by
which we mean a fully worked out theory of crafts such as watchmaking,
joinery, carpentry and so on. In fact, the theory of craft, along with
the thesis that art is not craft, suffices to show that art proper is
a distinct activity from the other three things, by showing that they
are essentially crafts.
The term 'craft' refers to activities which typically
exemplify the following six characteristics. None is individually
necessary, but the less of them that an activity exemplifies, the less
sense there is in calling it a craft: (1) The applicability of a
distinction amongst actions as means and actions as ends; a baker, for
example, whips the egg whites in course of mixing the batter, for the
eventual end of baking a cake. (2) A distinction between planning and
execution; a carpenter, for example, may draw up a plan for a table,
and then in a separate action or set of actions construct a table. (3)
In planning, ends precede means in that the latter are chosen for the
sake of the former, but in execution the means precede the end. (4) We
can distinguish between raw material and finished product. (5) A
distinction can be drawn been form and matter. (6) Crafts stand in
three sorts of hierarchy: (a) The raw material of one craft is the
finished product of another; for example the sawmill produces plywood,
which is in turn the raw material for builders. (b) One craft has as
its end product the tools which are employed as means in another. (c)
Some trades work in concert to bring about the finished product; for
example, the manufacture of a computer may involve separable
manufacture of the chip, the hard disc, the monitor and so on, so that
the final assembly is 'only the bringing together of these
parts'.
The point is not that works of art never display any of these
features; the point is that some works of art involve none of them,
without its detracting from their status as art. Therefore the essence
of art cannot have to do with any features correctly treated by a
theory of craft. A pure case might be the poet for whom the poem
simply comes to mind, unbidden, without its being written down or even
said aloud. There is no distinction to be drawn between planning and
execution in such a case, and none between actions as means and
actions as ends. (If the poet had in mind something analogous to a
blueprint for the poem, he would already have composed it.)
That takes care of (1)-(3), and (6) (a)-(c). What of (4)?
It might be tempting to think of the words as the raw material, the
poem as the finished product. But T. S. Eliot for example did not
choose the words needed for *The Wasteland* and then proceed to
arrange them into the poem. The poet can, however, be conceived as
'converting emotions into poems'; but this is 'a
very different kind of thing' from, say, the pasta maker's
conversion of flour into spaghetti. Collingwood simply leaves this
point hanging, because it would require his own positive account of
art as expression to explain it; that will come later. (He also
neglects the possibility that the raw material of the poet is simply
the language as a whole.)
Finally, the distinction between form and matter as it applies to art
is not the sort required by (5). That distinction requires that the
self-same matter be capable of having different forms placed upon it;
if we cannot identify the matter in the first place, then the
distinction cannot get a grip.
It bears repeating that the claim is not that no works of art have any
craft-like features; it simply that any definition of art in terms of
those features would exclude some unimpeachable works of art (29). Or
rather, success in being craft is strictly immaterial to its being
art; no craft-features *make* an object into a work of art.
Collingwood is well aware that for example an opera requires a great
deal of planning, technique, raw materials, and so on. And because of
this, he is well aware that the craft-theory is widely if implicitly
held, and devotes a lively excursus to its modern manifestation,
namely 'Art as a Psychological Stimulus'. This is the
account of art whereby it is the craft (or 'technique') of
manipulating certain objects (paint, sound, words and on) so as to
bring about psychological states in the audience, which in turn are
known, or least knowable, in advance. But this is to assimilate works
of art to mere means; Collingwood is quite serious in his denial of
this. The artist is not 'a purveyor of drugs' (34).
### 1.2 Art as Representation
Although as we will see in a moment Collingwood holds that there is
more to it than this, representation is, in the first instance, the
relation that a portrait bears to its sitter. It is plainly a matter
of skill, of technique, since one can envisage a successful outcome
before undertaking it. So art cannot be representation (or
'mimesis', in any straightforward sense). But the theory
that it is is so venerable and influential that it demands separate
attention. (Not, however, because of Plato and Aristotle; Collingwood
holds that despite popular opinion, they did not hold it!).
Collingwood advances a very liberal notion of representation, such
that a great deal more artefacts than one would initially think could
rightly qualify as representative. For the standard for fidelity is
not resemblance, but that the feeling evoked by the artefact resembles
that evoked by the original. Representation comes in three,
overlapping degrees. The first is that of the ordinary photograph, or
paintings and the like which attempt that sort of literalness. The
second is that whereby the painter - he mentions van Gogh
- 'leaves out some things that he sees, modifies others,
and introduces some which he not does see in his sitter at all'
(53-4). At the extreme, he may paint mere patterns, for example,
of a dance, leaving out the dancers. The third is 'emotional
representation', which represents the inner aspect of emotion,
but which is nevertheless distinct from expression. Some types of
music, on this view, represent the mind undergoing its experiences,
such the feeling of 'lying in deep grass on a summer's day
watching clouds drift across the sky' (56). Collingwood does not
say what the exact difference is between representation and
expression, but I assume that it depends first of all on whether or
not the artist has a clear conception of what he is trying to
represent; if he does, then his activity is craft, not art proper. As
we will see below, this is not implausible because the artist, at
least according to Collingwood, does not literally know the expressive
content of his artwork in advance of expressing it. It would be in
keeping with Collingwood's approach to add that the expressed
content is *individual*, whereas represented contents are
always *general*; perceptually quite different works can
represent exactly the same thing.
### 1.3 Art as Magic
Collingwood takes pains to analyze the notion of magic because
properly understood, magic is much more closely intertwined with art
proper than one would have thought; nevertheless, it too falls prey to
the master argument: it is a kind of craft, and art is not craft.
Magic is not, contra the prevailing anthropology of the time, mere bad
science--'superstitious' false beliefs like that of
not walking under ladders because of the evil that will surely follow.
Nor is it explicable as Freudian neurosis, which assumes that every
society employing magical practices is to that extent sick. Magic is
the ritualized representation of useful emotion, not for the sake of
catharsis, but for the practical value of the emotion. The war-dance,
for example, instills courage by dint of drums and spears, and
frightens the enemy should he catch a glimpse. Of course false beliefs
may play a role, which the theory of magic-as-bad-science seizes upon;
the rain dancer may think he increases the probability of rain. But
that is a 'perversion' of magic; the true magical effect
is the reinforcement of hope and hard work that a drought puts to the
test. The Freudian theory regards the representation as omnipotent
wish-fulfilment and therefore fails to account for this latter effect,
which indeed Collingwood supposes to be vital to any healthy society.
Happily, our society, or our societies, are replete with magical
phenomena. Religion, patriotism, sport, social customs such as dinner
parties, weddings, funerals, dances, and so on all involve in one way
or another ritualized actions that are undertaken at least partly for
magical reasons. (Of course magical phenomena are probably on the
wane.)
Art proper is often bound up with magical 'art', and
indeed it is common amongst critics to confuse them. Religious
art--say a twelfth-century crucifix--may be aesthetically
fine as well as induce a pious awe in the mind of the believer. But
the fact that a suitably kitschy product may also serve the latter
purpose shows that the magical effect can be aimed at independently
from the aesthetic (admittedly, Collingwood underestimates the problem
of disentangling these purportedly different responses--for some
people, only an aesthetically fine thing can generate strong pious
emotions; perhaps Collingwood can allow that some art proper may be
instrumentally necessary for the achievement of magical ends).
Frequently, the particular form of this mistake is to think that an
attitude towards the subject-matter embodied in a work is rightly
taken as the object of purely aesthetic criticism. Thus it is common
to hear for example of a play praised for taking a salutary view of
sexual politics and would therefore encourage the sexes to get on
better; to say so is to say that the play is very good at what
Collingwood is calling 'magic', but is neither here nor
there as regards its status as art.
### 1.4 Art as Amusement
The aim of amusement art is to stimulate an emotion by 'make
believe' means, and to discharge it. If the emotion is intended
to remain undischarged--if the aim is that the audience should
leave the theatre indignant at global warming for example--then
the work is one of magic; if the emotions it evokes are intended to be
'earthed', the work is one of amusement. Most of
literature and drama are actually amusement--not only for example
Thackeray but most of Shakespeare are included. But remember that
amusement and art proper can co-exist, i.e., in the same work (in
Shakespeare's case, the same work is often actually a bundle of
works, some magical, some amusement, and some, at least in favourable
cases, of art proper). Collingwood stresses--in 1938--the
rise of decadent amusement works, especially pornography but also for
example the case of literature or film appealing to our love of
imaginatively dwelling amongst the upper classes. And he warns of a
danger they present to our society (or rather of the danger of the
conditions that give rise to an ever growing demand for them); that is
what Plato meant to proscribe in his famous banishment of the
'artist' from his republic, and Collingwood sees Plato as
having foretold the eventual doom of Greco-Roman civilisation. Now all
this is by the way; amusement is craft, not art. But the points he
raises in this connection are important to his main subject, because a
certain tradition wrongly identifies the success-conditions of arts of
amusement as the standard of taste for art proper. Hume, for example,
wrote as if the criterion for success in a work of art is the
excitation of pleasure in suitably refined individuals. But pleasure
has a name; the 'artist' who busies himself with arousing
that particular emotion is merely a craftsman.
## 2. Art as Expression
If art proper is not the stimulation of preconceived emotion, and not
the representation of it either, then what precisely does it mean to
say that, nevertheless, art is the expression of emotion? The key is
to remember that art is not craft--Collingwood assumes that the
reader will accept this, once it is pointed out--and hence the
distinction between means and ends does not, strictly speaking, apply.
Nor does the distinction between planning and execution. Instead,
Collingwood writes in a passage that is often quoted, when a person
expresses an emotion, he is
>
> conscious of ... a perturbation or excitement which he feels
> going on within him, but of whose nature he is ignorant. While in this
> state, all he can say about his emotion is: 'I feel ... I
> don't know what I feel.' From this helpless and oppressed
> condition he extricates himself by doing something which we call
> expressing himself. This is an activity which has something to do with
> the thing we call language: he expresses himself by speaking. It also
> something to do with consciousness: the emotion expressed is an
> emotion of whose nature the person who feels it is no longer
> unconscious. It also has something to do with the way in which he
> feels the emotion. As unexpressed, he feels it in what we called a
> helpless and oppressed way; as expressed, he feels in a way from which
> this sense of oppression has vanished. His mind is somehow lightened
> and eased (109-10).
>
The following three points emerge from this. 1. To express is to
*become conscious* of an emotion: that is why the distinction
between plan and execution cannot be applied. 2. Expression
*individualises*; rather than describing the emotion in words
whose signification is in principle general, the expression is a
intrinsic feature of the utterance, of the 'utterance
itself' (although he does not credit him, this is an evident
example where Collingwood follows Croce). Thus we cannot speak of the
emotion embodied in a work of art as if it were the content which the
art provides the form. 3. The 'lightening' of which
Collingwood speaks is not that of catharsis, which provides an outlet
for the emotion and may take place without its agents being conscious
of it at all. It is the achievement of clarity, of focus of mind,
which may indeed intensify what is felt rather than attenuate it
(though typically it does not).
This last point suggests that there is such a thing as an
'aesthetic emotion', but it 'is not a specific kind
of emotion pre-existing to the expression of it' (117). Instead,
it is an 'emotional colouring which attends the expression of
any emotion whatever' (*ibid.*) Expression, in this
sense, must be sharply distinguished from the betrayal of emotion;
one's tears may be said to 'express' one's
sadness, or stamping one's feet ones anger, but these can occur
without the making lucid and intelligible of the emotion that is
requisite for expression in Collingwood's sense. Betrayal can
even occur that is wholly unconscious; one can blush without noticing
it. The relation between expressive object and emotion is that of
embodiment or realization, not of inference.
## 3. Art as Imaginative Creation
To conceive art as the craft of emotional stimulation or
arousal--whether for the sake of amusement or magic--is to
regard the material work of art as the intended means towards a
preconceived end. The falsity of that conception--assuming that
art is essentially the expression of emotion--shows that the work
of art as not an *artifact* at all (so artworks are not
artifacts; Collingwood was aware that language sometimes suggests
theoretical mistakes). Instead, the artistic process is a specialized
type of making that Collingwood calls *creation*: to create
something is to make it non-technically, but 'consciously and
voluntarily' (128), and hence intentionally. The creator
'need not be acting in order to achieve any ulterior end; he not
be following a preconceived plan; and he is certainly not transforming
anything that can be properly be called a raw material'
(129).
Now take for example a lecture given on a scientific topic. There are,
in Collingwood's view, actually at least two things: The lecture
as a created thing, and the lecture as a particular sound-event. The
former may be complete in advance of, or indeed without ever, being
uttered or written down: the actual speech-event, as a sequence of
noise, enables a suitably equipped listener to reconstruct the created
thing is his own mind, therefore to grasp its scientific content, but
is inessential to it. And so it is with works of art. A tune, for
example, needn't be sung, played or written down in order to
exist. Thus Collingwood:
>
> I have already said that a thing which 'exists in a
> person's head' and nowhere else is alternatively called an
> imaginary thing. The actual making of the tune is therefore
> alternatively called the making of an imaginary tune. This is a case
> of creation ... Hence the making a tune is an instance of
> imaginative creation. The same applies to the making of a poem, or a
> picture, or any other work of art. (134)
>
Collingwood is not supposing that every work of art could in point of
fact exist only people's minds; of music, for example, he writes
'[P]erhaps no one can do that [possess himself of the music]
unless he does hear the noises' (140; of course there are some
*prima facie* counterexamples to this; later Beethoven, for
example). The human imagination is typically too weak; in most cases
we have to depend on the 'bodily' work of art for sensory
helps. But in principle, the 'total imaginative
experience' that constitutes the proper work of art must be
conceived as only contingently related to the bodily work.
What precisely is the motivation for this move, the conception of the
work of art as imagined or ideal object? Leave aside the special cases
of music and poetry, which Richard Wollheim notes have the special
feature that they can be written down (see Wollheim 1972). Why not
conceive painting, for example, as the creation of certain painted
objects? This would be consistent with the thesis that painting is a
not craft. The answer given by Collingwood is clear, but leads to
trouble when we consider the question of interpretation. An experience
of a painting involves a great deal that no one would say is 'in
the painting', which is, after all, a nearly flat canvas with
paint on it. Not only do we see things that are not really present,
but for example we have impressions of space and mass, perhaps by
means of what Berenson called 'ideated
sensations'--those which involve imaginary motor or
kinaesthetic sensations. These phenomena are not literally features of
the canvas, but they are in some sense features of the work. So
Collingwood, in brief, includes within the work of art proper all that
would normally be ascribed to the (correct) interpretation--the
(correct) experience--of the artwork. But there is no reason to
accept this, any more we should include all the relational
facts--sowing, fertilization, watering and so on--that
contribute to a growing plant to the plant itself. On contrary, the
position makes it impossible for two spectators to disagree on the
interpretation of a work. Irrespective of the concern with the privacy
of the experience, if they attribute different properties to the
object--that is, they find different properties in their
respective total imaginative experiences--they are simply
concerned with different objects, and their verdicts are compatible.
We could set the artist's own experience as a criterion of
understanding the work, but that would make his death significant in
way that we do not actually recognize, and would run against the grain
of Collingwood's antipathy to aesthetic individualism and the
'cult of genius', discussed below. As a matter of
speculation, Collingwood perhaps thought that aesthetically relevant
properties--expressive properties--have to be intrinsic
properties of the work of art; in that case, perhaps his conclusion
does follow. But it is much more satisfactory to hold that what we are
arguing over when we disagree over the expressive properties of a work
of art is the same object.
## 4. A Theory of Expressive Imagination
Not a great deal hangs on that thesis, at any rate. A great deal more
hangs on the thesis that art essentially exercises the expressive
imagination. The difference between the imagined lecture and the tune
is that the content of the lecture is verbal and cognitive, and brings
those departments of mind into play; whilst the tune, among other
things, brings the emotional department of the mind much more vividly
into play. The substance of Collingwood's view is largely
dependent on his account of this distinction.
At the most basic level Collingwood distinguishes thinking from
feeling. The objects of each, respectively, are thoughts and
'sensa': 'sensa' is Collingwood's name
for all the data of the senses--of touch, smell, sight, and so
on. Thoughts can be true or false, justified or not, where sensa have
no such duality: they are felt or not felt, but cannot contradict each
other. There is sense in which sensa can be said to be real or unreal,
true or false (for example in hallucination), but this not an
intrinsic feature of sensa themselves; that distinction applies only
to thoughts involving them. A first point that is directly relevant to
the theory of expression is that probably all sensa have an emotional
'charge'. Thus for example every colour carries with it a
certain emotional quality. Not that they are invariably experienced
with their particular emotional charge; the charge is more like a
disposition to be experienced a certain way, under certain
circumstances. Children or artists are more likely to experience them;
educated adult Europeans, Collingwood says, tend to have rather
'sterilized' experience.
Sensa are occurrent phenomena, and therefore fleeting (222): If I hear
the bell striking the hour of four, the experience comprises many
passing sensa, each no sooner generated than gone. But if I am to be
aware of them as a process extended in time with particular
morphology, I must retain the sound of the bell, along with the
silences in between. The objects that I so retain cannot be the sensa
themselves. Instead, the faculty of 'conscious attention'
generates 'ideas' corresponding to the sensa, and which
are retained. Sensa alone--or sense data, or
impressions--are never sufficient for consciousness. Collingwood
cites Kant approvingly in the connection; noting that we have always
to 'fill in' occurrent perception to generate a complete
world of 3-D objects, he writes:
>
> Moreover (this is a point Kant has made), it is only so far as I
> imagine them that I am aware of the matchbook as a solid body at all.
> A person who could really see, but could not imagine, would see not a
> solid world of bodies of bodies, but merely (as Berkeley has it)
> 'various colours variously disposed'. Thus, as Kant says,
> imagination is an 'indispensable function' for our
> knowledge of the world around us. (192)
>
When one is conscious of a feeling of anger, one is aware of it as
one's own. By becoming conscious of it--therefore not of
the sensation of anger but the anger transformed by
consciousness--what we feel 'is correspondingly
changed' (207); the 'effect of this experience ... is
make them less violent' (209). And another word for this is
imagination. 'We become able to perpetuate feeling ... at
will' (209). 'Imagination is thus the new form which
feeling takes when transformed by the activity of consciousness'
(215). With this level of consciousness comes the beginning of
self-consciousness; 'it is assertion of ourselves as the owners
of our feeling' (222; feeling that is 'as modified by
consciousness'). But imagination, since it deals not with sensa
but with their ideated analogues, is a type of thought, and with the
introduction of thought comes the possibility of error. Thus if the
basic action of the consciousness is to think 'This is how I
feel', its denial is 'This is not how I feel' (216).
The possibility of such disowned feeling is the possibility of false,
or corrupt consciousness (217).
Thought is established by the intellect, but there are two, separable
roles of thought called 'primary' and
'secondary'. Its primary role is to 'apprehend or
construct relations' (216) amongst ideas, as just described (in
fact Collingwood thinks in such relations the relata are fused in a
new idea comprising a 'peculiar colouring or modification of the
old' (223)). The secondary role is to apprehend or construct
'relations between acts of primary intellection'; by this
Collingwood means conceptions of the past, future, the possible etc.,
and presumably all that content of human thought which can not be
accounted for in terms of the imagination.
## 5. Language
That Collingwood has a theory of language might seem tangential to his
theory of art, but in fact it is integral to it. For
Collingwood's approach to it comes not from the theory of
reference and truth as in Frege or Russell, but from the point of view
which regards language as fundamentally or in the first instance
expressive behaviour. Concepts of referential semantics--as a
'symbolism' in Collingwood's
terminology--become applicable only later, with a certain degree
of sophistication is attained. 'In its original or native state,
language in imaginative or expressive ... It is imaginative
activity whose function is to express emotion.' (225). Of course
'imaginative' must be understood in the broader sense just
described, denoting all consciousness of ideated analogues of
sensation or feeling. From this angle, we can speak of the
'totality of our motor activities' as a 'parent
organism' (247), from which every type of 'language
(speech, gesture, and so forth)' is an 'offshoot'
(246).
At the most fundamental level, at the 'psychic' level as
Collingwood calls it, various sorts of bodily activity are said to
psychically express an underlying emotional charge on a sensum;
cringing or flinching express fear, for example. At this stage
consciousness of the imagination is not involved--only sensa;
this level is shared with animals, and is 'completely
uncontrollable' (234). With the consciousness of ideas comes
'emotions of consciousness', which require language for
their expression. A cry from a child, for example, may be either
psychic or imaginative, depending whether it is involuntary or
voluntary. If it is voluntary, it is the work of the conscious
imagination, and thus in the most rudimentary sense linguistic.
It is essential to Collingwood's view that there are not,
paradoxical as it sounds, any unexpressed emotions. A psychical
emotion, on one hand, simply has its being in its expression; an
emotion of fear must show up somewhere, whether by cringing, shying or
flinching, an increase in pulse or blood pressure, a tightness of the
chest, or something else bodily or physiological. On the other hand,
if someone tries but fails to express an emotion, the emotion at most
remains 'shut up' in the psychic level; in order to be
conscious of the emotion, 'the same consciousness which
generates these emotions converts them from impressions into ideas
generates also and simultaneously their appropriate linguistic
expression.'(238). There is no other way to be conscious of an
emotion; to express an emotion is to be conscious of it.
Collingwood's remarks about the relation between speaker and
hearer are of special interest not just to aestheticians but to
philosophers of mind interested in knowledge of other minds. A
voluntary cry is underpinned by a self-conscious imaginative act; and
however rudimentary it is, self-consciousness is at once the
consciousness of others. '[A]s persons', writes
Collingwood, 'they construct a new set of relations between
themselves, arising out their consciousness of themselves and one
another; these are linguistic relations.' (248).
The relation of the listener and speaker to an expressive act is
totally symmetric:
>
> The hearer, therefore, conscious that he is being addressed by another
> person like himself ... takes what he hears exactly as if it were
> speech of his own: he speaks to himself with the words that he hears
> addressed to him, and thus constructs in himself the idea which those
> words express. At the same time, being conscious of the speaker as a
> person other than himself, he attributes that idea to this other
> person. Understanding what some one says to you is thus attributing to
> him the idea which his words arouse in yourself; and this implies
> treating them as words of your own. (250).
>
Remember, again, that we are talking of the *expressive*
dimension of language, not the referential dimension (about which more
in a moment). To understand another person's emotions is
precisely to adopt the person's expressive language as
one's own, imaginatively experiencing the ideas as if they were
one's own (that is, as if they expressed one's own
emotion; of course the ideas, as analogues of sensation, are
necessarily one's own). This aspect of Collingwood, of the
necessary publicity of language and meaning, can be stressed as a
potential way out of the threat of the seeming privacy of the work of
art as mentioned above, in connection with p. 134 of the
*Principles*.
There is however one evident mistake in Collingwood's
presentation. Sensa are, as we've seen, fleeting. But no idea
'can be formed as such in consciousness except by a mind whose
sense-emotional experience contains the corresponding impression
... at that very moment.' (251). This cannot be right. To
understand Othello, we don't have to actually have an impression
of jealousy; we only need to have the idea. In fact, by what we said
in section IV, there are no impressions (sensa) of jealousy at all;
jealousy is an emotion of consciousness. The solution, which as far as
I can see is consistent with everything else Collingwood says, is
simply to erase the requirement that the listener must undergo
anything at the psychical level, the level of sensa, *coevally*
with expression (we leave open the question of whether it must have
happened to one in the past).
Earlier, we said that thought involving relations is the domain of
thought in its 'secondary' role, the realm of intellect.
Thoughts delivered by the imagination are 'seamless':
>
> Thus what I imagine, however complex it may be, is imagined as a
> single whole, where relation between the part are present simply as
> qualities of the whole.
>
'Analytical thought'--intellect, thought in its
secondary role--may begin with the same experience, but instead
of being 'an indivisible unity it becomes a manifold, a network
of things with relations between them' (253). Collingwood also
characterises the intellect as the domain of concepts, and of
generalisation (273, 281).
Now one might be tempted to suppose that thoughts as grasped by the
intellect are roughly the same as propositions, in the sense intended
by analytical philosophers. But Collingwood holds that the proposition
is 'a fictitious entity' (266), and devotes a long passage
to excoriating that tendency in philosophy. Every actual episode of
thought is performed with its own particular degree and character of
emotion; there is no such thing as the thought shorn of its emotional
husk. All mental activity has some emotional character, including
intellectual activity. The cry of 'Eureka' said to have
accompanied Archimedes' discovery of a principle of hydrostatics
is but an extreme example. Thus *language* is expressive of
emotion even in its scientific use. This applies even to mathematical
symbols and technical symbols. Insofar as they are *used*, they
automatically acquire the expressive character of the underlying
thoughts. Thus Collingwood says: 'Symbolism is thus intellectual
language; language, because it expresses emotions; intellectualized,
because adapted to the expression of intellectual emotions'
(269). In 'poeticizing' such language, Collingwood does
not intend to demean it; presumably the aim is to do justice to the
rarefied air of pure intellect:
>
> The progressive intellectualization of language, its progressive
> conversion by the word of grammar and logic into a scientific
> symbolism, thus represents not a progressive drying-up of emotions,
> but its progressive articulation and specialization. We are not
> getting away from an emotional atmosphere into a dry, rational
> atmosphere; we are acquiring new emotions and new means of expressing
> them. (269)
>
Nevertheless, Collingwood's account of language, needless to
say, is radical; he is quite serious in his denial of the possibility
of what earlier I called a theory of the purely referential dimension
of language, which generalizes about truth-conditions of sentences in
abstraction from their use:
>
> ... we are concerned with a modification of language, not a
> theory of it. Its assumptions are neither certainly nor probably, nor
> ever possibly, true. They are, in fact, not assumptions, but
> proposals; and what they propose is the conversion of language into
> something which, if it could be realized, would not be language at
> all. (262)
>
## 6. Practical Consequences: Art and Artists
With his theory of language in place, Collingwood takes the theory of
art to be complete. At the end of section III we said that Collingwood
defines Art as imaginative expression, assuming that readers will
agree once they have the mistakes of the technical or craft theory
pointed out for them. He then poses a particular theory of mind in
which imagination and expression are built into the structural fabric
of the mind, so that every intentional mental act is in some sense an
act of an expressive imagination. That includes linguistic acts. In
fact, properly understood, language encompasses all expressive acts
whatsoever, and every linguistic act is one way or another an
expressive act. Language and art become interchangeable (274).
'Every utterance', Collingwood says, 'and every
gesture that each one of us makes is a work of art' (285).
Collingwood next turns to 'practical' questions, of which
we will consider two: the relation of art to artists, and relation
between the artist and the community. In answering them, we will
consider some questions naturally arising from the preceding.
If all activity is in that sense 'artistic', then it is
natural to wonder whether the theory has anything to tell us about
*art*, that is, the peculiar business of the painter, the poet,
the musician and the like. Of course, most activity is undertaken with
a some purpose in mind or other, in which case it is craft, however
hum-drum the theory of it might be. For example, I just ate an orange
which I took from a bowl; the theory of what I did could be written
down in a practical guide to eating oranges. But surely I was
*conscious* of eating the orange; by Collingwood's
theory, then, was I not expressing something? In that case, by the
same theory, just by being conscious, was I not engaged in art? And is
that not absurd?
Collingwood says nothing in direct reply to this worry, but I think it
obvious that the reply would be this. In so far as I was conscious of
the orange, it is true that I was involved in expression. But this
conscious experience was un-sustained, fleeting, and lacking in depth
(307). Furthermore, it took place in a mind that was busy with other
things, and which was dominated by an overarching purpose, namely to
eat the orange, whose sub-tasks include selecting it, peeling it,
putting a section in my mouth, trying not spill too much juice, and so
on; all this would be written down in my practical guide to eating
oranges. Life, then, is full of 'artworks', but they are
mostly shallow, unworthy of comment. However, there are times when
consciousness settles on something, such that the mental activity does
approach the character of art, in the proper sense of the word.
Sitting in a park, for example, we might dwell on the look of an oak
tree, or suddenly think of an original stanza of poetry, or a snatch
of melody. These are instances of imaginative expression, and are
closer to what we should ordinarily call a work of art. But they are
likely to be lost, unless some record of the experience is made. The
'artist', then, is one who has these experiences of
consciousness more deeply than the average person, and who has
mastered the practice of preserving them.
But the act of 'preserving them' has to be understood in a
special sense. 'There is no question', says Collingwood,
"of 'externalizing' an inward experience which is
complete in itself and by itself" (304). Collingwood is denying
that a painter could in point of fact dispense with the medium, even
if in principle he could (in sense of 'could in principle'
in which a man might run a hundred miles per hour). Instead, although
'you see something in your subject, of course, before you begin
to paint it' (303), the 'experience develops itself and
defines itself in your mind as you paint' (*ibid.*). The
work of art develops by means of positive feedback between painting
and experience. What develops is the 'total imaginative
experience' that Collingwood identifies as the work of art,
strictly speaking (304). Again, the work of art proper is not to be
identified with the 'bodily work'--the painted
canvas, the sculpted bust--but with the experience of it. What is
true that in point of fact the imaginative experiences requires the
bodily work; the human imagination is not able to hold within it
anything approaching the richness made available by the plastic arts.
In particular, the 'outward element'--the bodily
work--provides the sensuous content or impressions out of which
the conscious imagination generates ideas, constituting the
'total imaginative experience' (see Davies 2008 for more
on this issue).
## 7. Practical Consequences: The Artist and the Community
'Theoretically', Collingwood says, 'the artist is a
person who comes to know himself, to know his own emotion'
(291). Despite this, however, Collingwood is anxious to show this does
not entail aesthetic solipsism, as if the artist need not ever concern
himself with others. Quite the opposite: necessarily the artistic
achievement is collaborative, involving the audience and other
artists.
Collingwood begins his account of the relation between artist and
spectator by saying that a spectator understands a given work just
insofar as his imaginative experience is identical with that had by
the artist in creating it. This can never be known with certainty, but
so it is with all understanding of language (remember that
'language' in Collingwood's usage means all
expressive behaviour). It is also piecemeal: 'Understanding
... is a complex business, consisting of many phases, each
complete in itself but each leading on to the next' (311).
Collingwood does speak of *identity* of understanding, but
really his real account is more fluid. First, he accepts that any
utterance is endlessly interpretable; there no such thing as
'the' meaning of a work (*ibid.*). Second, the
audience's role is collaborative, in the sense that the artist
is concerned to express emotions that are mutually held; failure in
this may rightly cause the artist to doubt whether he expressed
anything, and suffers instead from a 'corruption of
consciousness' as explained earlier. The audience, then,
actively participates in re-creating the imaginative experience. This
second point flows from his conception of art as a language:
>
> The child learning his mother tongue, as we have seen, learns
> simultaneously to be a speaker and to be a listener; he listens to
> others speaking, and speaks to others listening. It is the same with
> artists. They become poets or painters or musicians not by some
> process of development from within, as they grow beards; but by living
> in a society where these languages are current. Like other speakers,
> they speak to those who understand.
> (317)[1]
>
Collingwood further dilutes the air of aesthetic solipsism by
observing that the artist never works alone; on the one hand the
artist freely borrows from what has already been achieved, and on the
other, at least in the performing arts, the players have their own
essential role. A work of art is collaborative, not simply the
creation of an individual; the 'cult of individual genius'
is totally misplaced and indeed pernicious.
## 8. Problems
Collingwood's theory is generally lumped together with that of
Benedetto Croce as an expressive and idealist theory. There are of
course differences, but the established picture is not inaccurate. And
together with Croce's theory, Collingwood's has a fatal
defect (without questioning the starting-point, that the essence of
art to be expressive): In identifying the artwork with what we would
normally think of as the experience of the artwork, he makes nonsense
of the idea that the spectator *interprets* the artwork, and
can do so more or less accurately; that different people can argue
about the self-same work of art. It has become a truism that the
artist is no better placed than the audience to interpret a work
rightly, a truism that Collingwood, with his fulminations again
aesthetic individualism, would agree. But then the various imaginative
experiences have nothing to conform to, if artwork and experience and
hence artwork and interpretation cannot be separated. That would be
fatal to the theory; however, it is not clear that anything
substantial would be lost, if Collingwood were simply to identify the
work of art with the 'bodily work', thereby
re-establishing room for interpretation to operate. This would seem to
sit better with his idea that art is on a level with language, where
language is a public phenomenon.
An apparent further defect in Collingwood's case in particular
is his account of language. It is full of admirable insights, but it
is probably misconceived from back to front. The insistence that
language is always expressive is dogmatic, and leads Collingwood to
deny that there is any categorical distinction between poetry and
scientific writing, which many may take as a *reductio ad
absurdum* (298). And more seriously so far as his philosophy of
art is concerned, one might wonder about his account of consciousness
as tied to language. According to it--the theory of
imagination--merely to attend to something is thereby to
*express* it, and furthermore is to do something
*linguistic.* Even if we allow Collingwood his generalised
notion of language as appertaining to gesture and so on, surely there
has to be a separation between consciousness or attention and
expression. As C. J. Ducasse pointed out, it seems that when we look
at a vase full of flowers, do we not create a "work of
art" unless we draw or paint it (Ducasse 1929, 52-54).
Finally, it is hard to swallow whole Collingwood's distinction
between art and craft. The consequences are too severe. For example,
Collingwood, rigorously applying the distinction, says that insofar as
his activity is art in the proper sense, an artist, since he has no
idea what he is to express until he expresses it, cannot set out to
write, say, a tragedy
(116).[2]
There is something right in the idea that that the artist cannot
'plan and execute' an inspiration. But the distinction
Collingwood is after is surely not so cut and dried as that. He needs
at any rate a more selective weapon to attack his bugbear of amusement
art. |
croce-aesthetics | ## 1. The Four Domains of Spirit (or Mind)
We are confining ourselves to Croce's aesthetics, but it will
help to have at least the most rudimentary sketch in view of his
rather complex general philosophy.
In Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century, the prevailing
philosophy or 'world-view' was not, as in England,
post-Hegelian Idealism as already mentioned, but the early forms of
empiricist positivism associated with such figures as Comte and Mach.
Partly out of distaste for the mechanism and enshrinement of matter of
such views, and partly out of his reaction, both positive and
negative, to the philosophy of Hegel, Croce espoused what he called
'Absolute Idealism' or 'Absolute Historicism'.
A constant theme in Croce's philosophy is that he sought a path
between the Scylla of 'transcendentalism' and the
Charybdis of 'sensationalism', which for most purposes may
be thought of as co-extensive with rationalism and empiricism. For
Croce, they are bottom the same error, the error of abstracting from
ordinary experience to something not literally experienceable.
Transcendentalism regards the world of sense to be unreal, confused or
second-rate, and it is the philosopher, reflecting on the world in
*a priori* way from his armchair, who sees beyond it, to
reality. What Croce called 'Sensationalism', on the other
hand, regards only instantaneous impressions of colour and the like as
existing, the rest being in some sense a mere logical construction out
of it, of no independent reality. The right path is what Croce calls
*immanentism*: All but only lived human experience, taking
place concretely and without reduction, is real. Therefore all
Philosophy, properly so-called, is Philosophy of Spirit (or Mind), and
is inseparable from history. And thus Croce's favoured
designations, 'Absolute Idealism' or 'Absolute
Historicism'.
Philosophy admits of the following divisions, corresponding to the
different modes of mental or spiritual activity. Mental activity is
either theoretic (it understands or contemplates) or it is practical
(it wills actions). These in turn divide: The theoretic divides into
the aesthetic, which deals in particulars (individuals or intuitions),
and logic or the intellectual domain, which deals in concepts and
relations, or universals. The practical divides into the
economic--by which Croce means all manner of utilitarian
calculation--and the ethical or moral. Each of the four domains
are subject to a characteristic norm or value: aesthetic is subject to
beauty, logic is subject to truth, economic is subject to the useful
(or vitality), and the moral is subject to the good. Croce devoted
three lengthy books written between 1901 and 1909 to this overall
scheme of the 'Philosophy of Spirit': *Aesthetic*
(1901) and (1907) (revised), *Logic* (1909) and the
*Philosophy of the Practical* (1908), the latter containing
both the economic and ethics (in today's use of term you might
call the overall scheme Croce's *metaphysics*, but Croce
himself distanced himself from that appellation; there is also some
sense in calling it *philosophy of mind*).
## 2. The Primacy of the Aesthetic
Philosophers since Kant customarily distinguish intuitions or
representations from concepts or universals. In one sense Croce
follows this tradition, but another sense his view departs radically.
For intuitions are *not* blind without concepts; an intuitive
presentation (an 'intuition') is a complete conscious
manifestation just as it is, in advance of applying concepts (and all
that is true *a priori* of them is that they have a particular
character or individual physiognomy--they are not necessarily
spatial or temporal, *contra* Kant). To account for this, Croce
supposes that the modes of mental activity are in turn arranged at
different levels. The intellect presupposes the intuitive
mode--which just is the aesthetic--but the intuitive mode
does not presuppose the intellect. The intellect--issuing in
particular judgements--in turn is presupposed by the practical,
which issues among other things in empirical laws. And morality tells
the practical sciences what ends in particular they should pursue.
Thus Croce regarded this as one of his key insights: All mental
activity, which means the whole of reality, is founded on the
aesthetic, which has no end or purpose of its own, and of course no
concepts or judgements. This includes the concept of existence or
reality: the intuition plus the judgement of existence is what Croce
calls perception, but itself is innocent of it.
To say the world is essentially history is to say that at the lowest
level it is aesthetic experiences woven into a single fabric, a
world-narrative, with the added judgement that it is real, that it
exists. Croce takes this to be inevitable: the subjective present is
real and has duration; but any attempt to determine its exact size is
surely arbitrary. Therefore the only rigorous view is that the past is
no less real than the present. History then represents, by definition,
the only all-encompassing account of reality. What we call the natural
sciences then are impure, second-rate. Consider for example the
concept of a *space-time point*. Plainly it is not something
anyone has ever met with in experience; it is an abstraction,
postulated as a limit of certain operations for the convenience of a
'theory'. Croce would call it a pseudo-concept, and would
not call the so-called 'empirical laws' in which it
figures to be fit subjects for truth and knowledge. Its significance,
like that of other pseudo-concepts, is pragmatic.
In fact the vast majority of concepts--house, reptile,
tree--are mere adventitious collections of things that are
formulated in response to practical needs, and thus cannot, however
exact the results of the corresponding science, attain to truth or
knowledge. Nor do the concepts of mathematics escape the
'pseudo' tag. What Croce calls pure concepts, in contrast,
are characterised by their possession of expressiveness, universality
and concreteness, and they perform their office by *a priori*
synthesis (this accounts for *character* mentioned above). What
this means it that everything we can perceive or imagine--every
representation or intuition--will necessarily have all three:
there is no possible experience that is not of something concrete,
universal in the sense of being an instance of something absolutely
general, and expressive, that is, admitting of verbal enunciation.
Empirical concepts, then, like *heat*, are concrete but not
universal; mathematical concepts, like *number*, are universal
but not concrete. Examples of pure concepts are rare, but those
recognized by Croce are *finality, quality* and
*beauty*. Such is the domain of Logic, in Croce's
scheme.
A critical difference, for our purposes, between Croce's ideas
and those of his apparent follower Collingwood, emerges when we ask:
what are the constituents of the intuition? For
Collingwood--writing in the mid-1930s--intuitions are built
up out of sense-data, the only significant elaboration of
Russell's doctrine being that sense-data are never simple,
comprising what analysis reveals as sensory and affective
constituents. For Croce the intuition is an organic whole, such that
to analyze it into atoms is always a false abstraction: the intuition
could never be re-built with such elements. (Although a deadly
opponent of formal logic, Croce did share Frege's insight that
the truly meaningful bit of language is the sentence; 'only in
the context of sentence does a word have a meaning', wrote Frege
in 1884).
## 3. Art and Aesthetics
With such an account of 'the aesthetic' in view, one might
think that Croce intends to cover roughly the same ground as
Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic, and like Kant will think of art
as a comparatively narrow if profound region of experience. But Croce
takes the opposite line (and finds Kant's theory of beauty and
art to have failed at precisely this point): art is everywhere, and
the difference between ordinary intuition and that of 'works of
art' is only a *quantitative* difference
(*Aes.*13). This principle has for Croce a profound
significance:
>
> We must hold firmly to our identification, because among the principal
> reasons which have prevented Aesthetic, the science of art, from
> revealing the true nature of art, its real roots in human nature, has
> been its separation from the general spiritual life, the having made
> of it a sort of special function or aristocratic club.... There
> is not ... a special chemical theory of stones as distinct from
> mountains. In the same way, there is not a science of lesser intuition
> as distinct from a science of greater intuition, nor one of ordinary
> intuition as distinct from artistic intuition. (*Aes.* 14)
>
But the point is not that every object is to some degree a work of
art. The point is that every *intuition* has to some degree the
qualities of the intuition of a work of art; it's just that the
intuition of a work of art has them in much greater degree.
## 4. Intuition and Expression
We now reach the most famous and notorious Crocean doctrine concerning
art. 'To intuit', he writes, 'is to express'
(*Aes.* 11); 'intuitive knowledge is expressive
knowledge'. There are several points that have to be in place in
order to understand what Croce means by this, because it obviously
does not strike one as initially plausible.
### 4.1 The Double Ideality of the Work of Art
For our purposes, it is simplest to regard Croce as an idealist, for
whom there is nothing besides the mind. So in that sense, the work of
art is an ideal or mental object along with everything else; no
surprise there, but no interest either. But he still maintains the
ordinary commonplace distinction between mental things--thoughts,
hopes and dreams--and physical things--tables and trees. And
on *this* divide, the work of art, for Croce, is *still*
a mental thing. In other words, the work of art in *doubly*
ideal; to put it another way, *even if Croce were a
dualist*--or a physicalist with some means of reconstructing
the physical-mental distinction--the work of art would remain
mental. In what follows, then, except where otherwise noted, we shall
treat Croce is being agnostic as between idealism, physicalism, or
dualism (see *PPH* 227).
This claim about the ontological status of works of art means that a
spectator 'of' a work of art--a sonata, a poem, a
painting--is actually creating the work of art in his mind.
Croce's main argument for this is the same as, therefore no
better but no worse than, Russell's argument from the relativity
of perception to sense-data. The perceived aesthetic qualities of
anything vary with the states of the perceiver; therefore in speaking
of the former we are really speaking of the latter (*Aes.* 106;
Croce does not, it seems, consider the possibility that certain states
of the perceiver might be privileged, but it is evident that he would
discount this possibility). Now the Crocean formulation--to
intuit is to express--perhaps begins to make sense. For
'intuition' is in some sense a mental *act*, along
with its near-cognates 'representation',
'imagination',
'invention','vision', and
'contemplation.' Being a mental act, something we do, it
is not a mere external object.
### 4.2 The Role of Feeling
Feeling, for Croce, is necessarily part of *any* (mental)
activity, including bare perception--indeed, feeling *is*
a form of mental activity (it is part of his philosophy that there is
never literally present to consciousness anything passive). We are
accustomed to thinking of 'artistic expression' as
concerned with specific emotions that are relatively rare in the
mental life, but again, Croce points out that strictly speaking, we
are thinking of a quantitative distinction as qualitative. In fact
feeling is nothing but the will in mental activity, with all its
varieties of thought, desire and action, its varieties of frustration
and satisfaction (*Aes.* 74-6). The only criterion of
'art' is coherence of expression, of the movement of the
will (for a comparison with Collingwood's similar doctrine, see
Kemp 2003: 173-9).
Because of this, Croce discounts certain aesthetic applications of the
distinction between form and content as confused. The distinction only
applies at a theoretical level, to a posited *a priori*
synthesis (*EA* 39-40). At that level, the irruption of
an intuition just *is* the emergence of a form (we are right to
speak of the *formation* of intuition, that intuitions are
*formed*). At the aesthetic level--one might say at the
phenomenological level--there is no identification of content
independently of the forms in which we meet it, and none of form
independently of content. It makes no sense to speak of a work of
art's being good on form but poor on content, or good on content
but poor on form.
### 4.3 Feeling, Expression and the Commonplace
When Croce says that intuition and expression are the same phenomenon,
we are likely to think: what does this mean for a person who cannot
draw or paint, for example? Even if we allow Croce his widened notion
of feeling, surely the distinction between a man who looks at a bowl
of fruit but cannot draw or paint it, and the man who does draw or
paint it, is precisely that of a man with a Crocean intuition but who
cannot express it, and one who has both. How then can expression
*be* intuition?
Croce comes at this concern from both sides. On one side, there is
'the illusion or prejudice that we possess a more complete
intuition of reality than we really do' (*Aes.* 9). We
have, most of the time, only fleeting, transitory intuitions amidst
the bustle of our practical lives. 'The world which as rule we
intuit is a small thing', he writes; 'It consists of small
expressions ... it is a medley of light and colour'
(*Aes.* 9). On the other side, if our man is seriously focussed
on the bowl of fruit, it is only a prejudice to deny that then he is
to that extent expressing himself--although, according to Croce,
ordinary direct perception of things, as glimpsed in photography, will
generally be lacking the 'lyrical' quality that genuine
artists give to their works (though this particular twist is a later
addition; see section 9 below).
## 5. Natural Expression, Beauty and Hedonic Theory
There is another respect in which Croce's notion of expression
as intuition departs from what we ordinarily think of in connection
with the word 'expression'. For example we think
unreflectively of wailing as a natural expression of pain or grief;
generally, we think of expressive behaviour or gestures as being
caused, at least paradigmatically, by the underlying emotion or
feelings. But Croce joins a long line of aestheticians in attempting a
sharp distinction between this phenomenon and expression in art.
Whereas the latter is the subject of aesthetics, the former is a topic
for the natural sciences--'for instance in Darwin's
enquiries into the expression of feeling in man and in the
animals' (*PPH* 265; cf. *Aes.* 21, 94-7).
In an article he wrote for the *Encyclopaedia Britannica*,
speaking of such 'psychophysical phenomena', he
writes:
>
> ...such 'expression', albeit conscious, can rank as
> expression only by metaphorical licence, when compared with the
> spiritual or aesthetic expression which alone expresses, that is to
> say gives to the feeling a theoretical form and converts into
> language, song, shape. It is in the difference between feeling as
> contemplated (poetry, in fact), and feeling as enacted or undergone,
> that lies the catharsis, the liberation from the affections, the
> calming property which has been attributed to art; and to this
> corresponds the aesthetic condemnation of works of art if, or in so
> far as, immediate feeling breaks into them or uses them as an outlet.
> (*PPH* 219).
>
Croce is no doubt right to want to distinguish these things, but
whether his official position--that expression is identical to
intuition--will let him do so is another matter; he does not
actually analyze the phenomena in such a way as to deduce, with the
help of his account of expression, the result. He simply asserts it.
But we will wait for our final section to articulate criticisms.
Croce's wish to divorce artistic expression from natural
expression is partly driven by his horror at naturalistic theories of
art. The same goes for his refusal to rank *pleasure* as the
aim, or at least an aim, of art (*Aes.* 82-6). He does
not of course deny that aesthetic pleasures (and pains) exist, but
they are 'the practical echo of aesthetic value and
disvalue' (*Aes.* 94). Strictly speaking, they are dealt
with in the Philosophy of the Practical, that is, in the theory of the
will, and do not enter into the theory of art. That is, if the
defining value of the Aesthetic is *beauty*, the defining value
of the Practical is *usefulness*. In the *Essence of
Aesthetic* (*EA* 11-13) Croce points out that the
pleasure is much wider than the domain of art, so a definition of art
as 'what causes pleasure' will not do. Croce does speak of
the 'truly aesthetic pleasure' had in beholding the
'aesthetic fact' (*Aes.* 80). But perhaps he is
being consistent. The pragmatic pleasure had in beholding beauty is
only contingently aroused, but in point of fact it always is aroused
by such beholding, because the having of an intuition is an act of
mind, and therefore the will is brought into play.
## 6. Externalization
The painting of pictures, the scrape of the bow upon strings, the
chanting or inscription of a poem are, for Croce, only contingently
related to the work of art, that is, to the expressed intuition. By
this Croce does not mean to say that for example the painter could get
by without paint in point of fact; the impossibility of say the
existence of Leonardo's *Last Supper* without his having
put paint on the wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie not an impossibility
in principle, but it is a factual impossibility, like that of a man
jumping to the Moon. What he is doing is always driven by the
intuition, and thereby making it possible for others to have the
intuition (or rather, *an* intuition). First, the
memory--though only contingently--often requires the
physical work to sustain or develop the intuition. Second, the
physical work is necessary for the practical business of the
*communication* of the intuition.
For example the process of painting is a closely interwoven operation
of positive feedback between the intuitive faculty and the practical
or technical capacity to manipulate the brush, mix paint and so
on:
>
> Likewise with the painter, who paints upon canvas or upon wood, but
> could not paint at all, did not the intuited image, the line and
> colour as they have taken shape in the fancy, *precede*, at
> every stage of the work, from the first stroke of the brush or sketch
> of the outline to the finishing touches, the manual actions. And when
> it happens that some stroke of the brush runs ahead of the image, the
> artist, in his final revision, erases and corrects it.
>
>
> It is, no doubt, very difficult to perceive the frontier between
> expression and communication in actual fact, for the two processes
> usually *alternate rapidly* and are *almost*
> *intermingled*. But the distinction is ideally clear and must
> be strongly maintained... The technical does not enter into art,
> but pertains to the concept of communication. (*PPH*
> 227-8, emphasis added; cf. *Aes*. 50-1, 96-7,
> 103, 111-17; *EA* 41-7)
>
He also defines technique as 'knowledge at the service of the
practical activity directed to producing stimuli to aesthetic
reproduction' (*Aes.* 111). Again, we defer criticism to
the conclusion.
## 7. Judgement, Criticism and Taste
The first task of the spectator of the work of art--the
critic--is for Croce simple: one is to reproduce the intuition,
or perhaps better, one is to *realize* the intuition, which is
the work of art. One may fail, and Croce is well aware that one may be
*mistaken*; 'haste, vanity, want of reflexion, theoretic
prejudices' may bring it about that one finds beautiful what is
not, or fail to find beautiful what is (*Aes.* 120). But given
the foregoing strict distinction between practical technique and
artistic activity properly so-called, his task *is the same as that
of the artist*:
>
> How could that which is produced by a given activity be judged a
> *different* activity? The critic may be a small genius, the
> artist a great one ... but the nature of both must remain the
> same. To judge Dante, we must raise ourselves to his level: let it be
> well understood that empirically we are not Dante, nor Dante we; but
> in that moment of contemplation and judgement, our spirit is one with
> that of the poet, and in that moment we and he are one thing.
> (*Aes.* 121)
>
Leave aside the remark that we become identical with the poet. If by
taste we mean the capacity for aesthetic judgement--that is, the
capacity to find beauty--and by genius we mean the capacity to
produce beauty, then they are the same: the capacity to realize
intuitions.
In Croce's overall philosophy, the aesthetic stands alone: in
having an intuition, one has succeeded entirely insofar as aesthetic
value is concerned. Therefore there cannot be a real question of a
'standard' of beauty which an object might or might not
satisfy. Thus Croce says:
>
> ...the criterion of taste is absolute, but absolute in a
> different way from that of the intellect, which expresses itself in
> ratiocination. The criterion of taste is absolute, with the intuitive
> absoluteness of the imagination. (*Aes.* 122)
>
Of course there is as a matter of fact a great deal of variability in
critical verdicts. But Croce believes this is largely due to variances
in the 'psychological conditions' and the physical
circumstance of spectators (*Aes.* 124). Much of this can be
offset by 'historical interpretation' (*Aes.* 126);
the rest, one presumes, are due to disturbances already mentioned:
'haste, vanity, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices'
(*Aes.* 120). Also one must realize that for Croce, all that
Sibley famously characterized as aesthetic concepts--not just
gracefulness, delicacy and so on but only aesthetically negative
concepts like ugliness--are really variations on the over-arching
master-concept *beauty*.
## 8. The Identity of Art and Language
The title of the first great book of Croce's career was
'Aesthetic as a Science of expression and *general
linguistic*' (emphasis added). There are several
interconnected aspects to this.
Croce claims that drawing, sculpting, writing of music and so on are
just as much 'language' as poetry, and *all*
language is poetic; therefore '*Philosophy of language and
philosophy of art are the same thing*' (*Aes.* 142;
author's emphasis). The reason for this is that language is to
be understood as expressive; 'an emission of sounds which
expresses nothing is not language' (*Aes.* 143). From our
perspective, we might regard Croce as arguing thus: (1) Referential
semantics--scarcely mentioned by Croce--necessarily involves
*parts* of speech. (2) However:
>
> It is false to say that a verb or noun is expressed in definite words,
> truly distinguishable from others. Expression is an indivisible whole.
> Noun and verb do not exist in it, but are abstractions made by us,
> destroying the sole linguistic reality, which is the
> *sentence*. (*Aes.* 146)
>
If we take this as asserting the primacy of sentence
meaning--glossing over the anti-abstraction remark which is
tantamount to a denial of syntactic compositionality--then
together with (3) a denial of what in modern terms would be
distinction between semantic and expressive meaning, or perhaps in
Fregean terms sense and tone, then it is not obvious that the
resulting picture of language would not apply equally to, for example,
drawing. In that case, just as drawings cannot be translated, so
linguistic translation is impossible (though for certain purposes,
naturally, we can translate 'relatively'; *Aes.*
68).
Interestingly, Croce does *not* think of all signs as natural
signs, as lightning is a sign of thunder; on the contrary, he thinks
of 'pictures, poetry and all works of art' as equally
conventional--as '*historically conditioned*'
(*Aes.* 125; authors emphasis).
There is no doubt that on this point Croce was inspired by his great
precursor, the Neapolitan Giambattista Vico (1668-1744).
According to Croce (*Aes.* 220-34) Vico was the first to
recognise the aesthetic as a self-sufficient and non-conceptual mode
of knowledge, and famously he held that all language is substantially
poetry. The only serious mistake in this that Croce found was
Vico's belief in an actual historical period when all language
was poetry; it was the mistake of substituting a concrete history for
'ideal history' (*Aes.* 232).
## 9. Later Developments
As he became older, there was one aspect of his aesthetics that he was
uneasy with. In the *Aesthetic* of 1901 (*Aes.*
82-7, 114), and again in *Essence of Aesthetic* of 1913
(*EA* 13-16) , he had been happy to deduce from his
theory that art cannot have an ethical purpose. The only value in art
is beauty. But by 1917, in the essay *The Totality of Artistic
Expression* (*PPH* 261-73), his attitude towards the
moral content of art is more nuanced. This may have been only a shift
of emphasis, or, charitably perhaps, drawing out a previously
unnoticed implication: 'If the ethical principle is a cosmic
[universal] force (as it certainly is) and queen of the world, the
world of liberty, she reigns in her own right, while art, in
proportion to the purity with which she re-enacts and expresses the
motions of reality, is herself perfect' (*PPH* 267). In
other words, he still holds that to speak of a moral work of art would
not impinge upon it aesthetically; likewise to speak of an
*immoral* work, for the values of the aesthetic and moral
domains are absolutely incommensurable. It is not merely an
*assertion* that within the domain of pure intuition, the
concepts simply don't apply; that would merely beg the question.
He means that a pure work of art *cannot* be subject to moral
praise or blame because the Aesthetic domain exists independently of
and prior, in the Philosophy of Spirit, to the Ethical.
In the Encyclopaedia article of 1928, Croce asserts positively that
the moral sensibility is a necessary condition of the artist:
>
> The foundation of all poetry is therefore the human personality, and
> since the human personality fulfills itself morally, the foundation of
> all poetry is the moral conscience. (*PPH* 221)
>
Still it's possible to read him as not having changed his view.
For instance, Shakespeare could not have been Shakespeare without
seeing into the moral heart of man, for morality is the highest domain
of spirit. But we have to distinguish between the moral
sensibility--the capacity to perceive and feel moral
emotions--and the capacity to act morally. Croce's position
is that only the first is relevant to art.
The early emphasis on beauty is downplayed in subsequent writing in
favour of the successful work art as expression, as constituting a
'lyrical intuition'. In *Essence of Aesthetic* he
writes:
>
> ...what gives coherence and unity to the intuition is feeling:
> the intuition is really such because it represents a feeling, and can
> only appear from and upon that. Not the idea, but the feeling, is what
> confers upon art the airy lightness of a symbol: an aspiration
> enclosed in the circle of a representation--that is art; and in
> it the aspiration alone stands for the representation, and the
> representation alone for the aspiration. (*EA* 30)
>
Croce still holds that art is intuitive, a-logical or nonconceptual,
and therefore by 'it represents a feeling' he does not
mean that our aesthetic mode of engagement involves that concept, and
he does not mean that art is to be understood as symbolic, implying a
relation which would require an intellectual act of mind to apprehend.
Both would imply that our mode of aesthetic engagement would be
something more, or something other than, the aesthetic, which is as
always the intuitive capacity. The point is simply that our awareness
of the form of the intuition in nothing but our awareness of the
unifying currents of feeling running through it. It is a claim about
what it is that unifies an intuition, distinguishes it from the
surrounding, relatively discontinuous or confused intuition. This is,
in effect, a claim about the nature of beauty:
>
> An appropriate expression, if appropriate, is also beautiful, beauty
> being nothing but the precision of the image, and therefore of the
> expression. ...(*EA* 48).
>
>
> Expression and beauty are not two concepts, but a single concept,
> which it is permissible to designate with either synonymous word
> ... (*EA* 49).
>
Genuinely new in the 1917 essay was Croce's appealing but
enigmatic claim that art is in a sense 'universal', is
concerned with the 'totality':
>
> To give artistic form to a content of feeling means, then, impressing
> upon it the character of totality, breathing into it the breath of the
> cosmos. Thus understood, universality and artistic form are not two
> things but one. (*PPH* 263).
>
And:
>
> In intuition, the single pulsates with the life of the whole, and the
> whole is in the life of the single. Every genuine artistic
> representation is itself and is the universe, the universe in
> *that* individual form, and *that* individual form as
> the universe. In every utterance, every fanciful [imaginative]
> creation, of the poet, there lies the whole of human destiny, all
> human hope, illusions, griefs, joys, human grandeurs and miseries, the
> whole drama of reality perpetually evolving and growing out of itself
> in suffering and joy. (*PPH* 262)
>
Croce--and undoubtedly the political situation in Italy in 1917
played a role in this--was anxious to assert the importance of
art for humanity, and his assertion of it is full of feeling. And the
claim marks a decisive break from earlier doctrine: form is now linked
with universality rather that with particular feelings. But it is
difficult to see beyond such metaphors as 'impressing upon it
the character of totality' (not even with the help of
Croce's *Logic*). One is reminded of the Kantian dictum
that in aesthetics we 'demand universality' in our
judgements, but there are no explicit indications of such. There is
one piece of Crocean philosophy behind it: Since art takes place prior
to the intellect, so the logical distinction between subject and
predicate collapses; therefore perhaps at least one barrier is removed
from speaking of the 'universality of art'. But that does
not indicate what, positively, it means. It obvious that there is
something right about speaking of the 'universal
character' of a Beethoven or a Michelangelo as opposed to the
pitiful, narrow little spectacle of this month's pop band, but
Croce doesn't tell us what justifies or explains such talk
(various others have reached a similar conclusion; see Orsini p. 214).
Still, that doesn't mean that he had no right to proclaim it,
and perhaps not to count his readers as agreeing to it.
## 10. Problems
There is a lot of Croce's aesthetics that we have not discussed,
including his criticisms of the discipline of Rhetoric (Aes.
67-73; *PPH* 233-35), his disparagement of
'genre criticism'--that is, his doctrine that there
are ultimately no aesthetic differences amongst different kinds of art
(Aes. 111-17, *EA* 53-60, *PPH*
229-33)--and his condemnation of psychological and other
naturalistic views of art (*Aes.*87-93; *EA*
41-7). There is also his magnificent if contentious
*precis* of the history of aesthetics (*Aes.*
155-474). But these are points of relative detail; the theory is
whole is sufficiently well before us now to conclude by mentioning
some general lines of criticism.
### 10.1 Acting versus Contemplation
The equation of intuition with expression as at section 4.3 simply is
not, in end, plausible. C. J. Ducasse (1929) put his finger on it.
When we look at a vase full of flowers, it simply does not matter how
closely or in what manner we attend to it; we do not create a
'work of art' unless we draw or paint it. Croce has lost
sight of the ordinary sense of passively contemplating and
*doing* something; between reading and writing, looking and
drawing, listening and playing, dancing and watching. Of course all
the first members of these pairs involve a mental *action* of a
kind, and there are important connections between the first members
and the corresponding seconds--perhaps in terms of what Berenson
calls *ideated sensations*--but that is not to say that
there are not philosophically crucial distinctions between them.
### 10.2 Privacy
The equation also defeats the purpose of art criticism or
interpretation, and indeed of the very notion of an aesthetic
community, of an audience. To say that the work of art is identical
with the intuition is to say that it is necessarily private. It is to
say, for example, that since one man's intuition of
Botticelli's *Venus* is necessarily different from any
one else's, there is no such thing as Botticelli's
*Venus*, understood not as a material painting but as a work of
art; there is only Botticelli's-*Venus*-for-A,
Botticelli's-*Venus*-for-B, and so on. But these
intuitions cannot be compared, and there is no higher standard; thus
they cannot be said to agree or disagree, since any such comparison
would be logically impossible (see Tilghman 1971, Ch. 1, for further
discussion; for at attempt at saving Croce, see Schusterman 1983). The
position is perhaps not contradictory, but it is exceedingly
unattractive; it renders art a diversion away from reality, when as
Freud emphasized--to invoke a figure who is Croce's
opposite in almost every respect--the artist's struggle
with the medium is the attempt to conquer reality. Although Croce
disowned this consequence, it's hard not to conclude that on
this view art is a domain of fancy (in the bad sense), without any
check upon vanity (see *Aes.* 122 for a point at which Croce
almost sees the point). If we bring back the material painted object
into the picture, of course, then there is no such difficulty: ones
'intuition' will be accurate, or one's
interpretation will be correct, just in case it corresponds to the
picture (of course the notion of 'corresponds to the
picture' is only a placeholder for a great deal to be supplied
by theories of representation, perspective, expression and other parts
of aesthetics; but the one thing that plausible theories will share is
a commitment to the object, the material painting).
It's worth emphasizing again that Croce's claim that
intuition is expression, and consequently that works art are mental
objects, is not just an application of his general idealism. It is
independent of it. In the *Encyclopaedia Britannica* article,
for example, he allows himself to speak for convenience of the
'spiritual' and 'physical', in order to make
the point that the physical object is only of practical, and not of
aesthetic significance (*PPH* 227-8).
### 10.3 The View of Language
Undoubtedly Croce was influenced by his lifelong immersion in
literature in his proclamation that all language is poetry. And
perhaps it is true that all language has some poetic qualities, and
perhaps it is true that language 'in its actuality'
consists of sentential utterances. But as Bosanquet pointed out in
1919, this does not mean that language is *only* poetry, or
that the referential dimension of language does not exist. It must
have something that distinguishes a scientific treatise from a
tune--in fact it must be the same thing, which we are calling the
referential dimension, that serves to distinguish *poetry* from
a tune (it has to have sound *and sense*, as we say). So to say
that drawings and tunes are equally good examples of language seems,
at best, strained. Perhaps Croce would have said that the referential
dimension does not exist, or is a false abstraction; but his general
philosophical views may be forcing him down an unprepossessing path.
More promising would be a formalist endeavor to try to isolate the
pure sonic aspect of poetry--comprising metre, alliteration and
so on--and then to search for instantiations or at least
analogies in the other arts.
## 11. Conclusion
Suppose Croce were to give up the idea that art *is* intuition,
and agree that the work of art is identical with the material
work--remember this would not prevent him being an idealist in
his general philosophy--and suppose he allowed that he was wrong
about language. What would remain of his theory would arguably be its
essence: that art is expression, and we engage with it via the
intuitive capacity. It remains individual, and perhaps
pre-conceptual.
In closing, the reader may find it useful if we summarize the major
differences--narrowly on matters of aesthetics--between
Croce and Collingwood, who is often thought of as Croce's
follower. (Indeed the question of whether, how, and to what extent
Croce 'influenced' Collingwood, not only in aesthetics but
in wider matters of metaphysics and history, are vexed questions.
According to a careful study Rik Peters, the influence was perhaps
pervasive insofar as Croce influenced the *questions* that
Collingwood posed for himself, but Peters concludes that the answers
given were of Collingwood's own making; see Peters 2011 for
more; for the matter specifically about art and aesthetics, see also
Hospers 1956, Donagan 1962, and Jones 1972.) First, Collingwood seems
to agree with Croce that art, so to speak, is everywhere--there
no self-conscious perception that lacks expressive and aesthetic
qualities--whereas Croce's theory does not tend to regard
the expressive content of work of art as something 'in the
artist', emphasizing instead its form and later its
'universality', Collingwood tries to explain expressive
content in terms of a detailed theory of the emotions. Second,
although Croce does devote some energy to discrediting the
'technical' theory of art, Collingwood offers a more
organized and detailed analysis of why art is not 'craft',
though arguably the main points are Croce's. Finally,
Collingwood devotes his final sections to a topic left unaddressed by
Croce: the problem of whether or in what way the responses of the
audience can constrain the object presented by the artist. |
ethics-cultural-heritage | ## 1. What is Cultural Heritage?
Cultural heritage is a broad and nebulous concept, and discussions
often assume an understanding meant to capture its heterogeneity. For
instance, a representative definition reads as follows:
>
>
> Heritage encompasses a broad and overarching term: "it" is
> something that someone or a collective considers to be worthy of being
> valued, preserved, catalogued, exhibited, restored, admired. (Kersel
> & Luke 2015: 71)
>
>
>
However, although a commonplace understanding of cultural heritage is
assumed in many discussions, attention to these conceptual assumptions
can also yield criticisms with moral and political implications. The
following subsections cover some of the conceptual questions that are
raised about what precisely cultural heritage is.
### 1.1 What is Culture?
Discussions in the literature generally assume a broad understanding
of culture that is often not explicitly defined (e.g., Thompson 2003;
Young 2007), but those definitions that do appear typically take the
form of open-ended lists: culture is the product of human activity,
particularly those things that are socially transmitted, including
beliefs, practices, objects, etc. (Appiah 1994: 111-112;
Scheffler 2007: 107). Culture is thus generally taken to be a
descriptive term that does not carry with it the evaluative and often
elitist connotations of culture as implying a certain kind of
"civilization" (Appiah 1994: 111-114). This
"anthropological" definition of culture is sometimes
criticized as overly broad, failing to discriminate between those
practices (e.g.) that are worthwhile and those that are not (Logan
2007: 37), but it remains the general touchstone in the literature.
Indeed, culture is often treated as a "good" thing in the
context of the cultural heritage literature, despite the fact that
some cultural practices are subject to serious moral objections (Okin
1997; Brown 2005: 50-51). In any event, though this anodyne
definition of culture in general may be readily accepted, defining any
particular culture tends to be difficult and contentious (Scheffler
2007; Appiah 2006; Narayan 1998). Proponents of cultural preservation
or integrity are often accused of making misguided assumptions about
cultures as static, bounded wholes that are empirically and
normatively flawed (e.g., Benhabib 2002; Mezey 2007). Indeed, these
criticisms surface in many arguments concerning heritage ethics, as
will be discussed in subsequent sections (see in particular
4.2.3).
### 1.2 What is Heritage?
At its core, the concept of 'heritage' is typically taken
to mean the inheritance of something from the past (in the case of
cultural heritage, culture; Harrison 2009: 9; Prott &
O'Keefe 1992: 311). Increasing attention to the range of ways
that heritage is employed and interpreted in contemporary contexts has
led to an emphasis on the use of the past for present purposes as an
integral aspect of the definition of heritage itself (Harrison 2013:
14; Smith 2006: 44; Ashworth, Graham, & Tunbridge 2007: 3).
Recognition of this facet of heritage has opened up avenues for
critique and reinterpretation of the concept of heritage (Lowenthal
1998). By making manifest how heritage is used for present purposes,
we can identify tacit evaluative assumptions that may have gone
unremarked upon in the past. In particular, scholars have come to
distinguish between "official" and
"unofficial" heritage (Harrison 2013: 14-15).
The idea of "official heritage" has been shaped in
particular by Laurajane Smith's analysis of what she calls the
Authorized Heritage Discourse (Smith 2006). This is the presentation
of heritage familiar to us from museums, national monuments, and other
institutionally endorsed understandings of heritage, such as the
UNESCO World Heritage List. "Official heritage" is thus
often used by governments and cultural institutions to cultivate a
sense of national or cosmopolitan identity around some aspect of the
past. As Smith summarizes:
>
>
> This dominant Western discourse stresses materiality, monumentality,
> grandiosity, time depth, aesthetics and all that is 'good'
> in history and culture. (Smith 2010: 63)
>
>
>
Official heritage on the global scale of UNESCO is typically presented
as having a universal value that transcends local attachments (Cleere
1996; Omland 2006; Matthes 2015). According to Smith's critique,
the material focus of official heritage impedes recognition of the
fact that heritage is best understood as a process of interpretation
that is ongoing, in contrast with the pre-digested lists and museum
displays presented by the official line.
>
>
> Heritage... is a cultural process that engages with acts of
> remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the
> present, and the sites themselves are cultural tools that can
> facilitate, but are not necessarily vital for, this process. (Smith
> 2006: 44)
>
>
>
Thus, in contrast with the "top-down" nature of
"official heritage", "unofficial heritage" is
characterized by the "bottom-up" ways in which individuals
sort out their relationship to, and uses of, the past, which may be in
tension with, or at least unrecognized by, official characterizations
of heritage (Harrison 2009: 8).
>
>
> Examples include local festivals that are not recognised as of
> interest to the state, or the heritage of migrant groups or the
> working class. (Harrison 2013: 16)
>
>
>
This critique also draws our attention to "intangible"
forms of heritage, in contrast with the material focus of the
traditional line, discussed further in
section 2.5.
Though the distinction between official and unofficial heritage is
useful both for drawing attention to how heritage is subject to
constant reinterpretation and for challenging dominant historical
narratives, some might be hesitant about the extent to which certain
understandings of heritage that emphasize process do so at the expense
of the traditional material concerns of official heritage. For
instance, one might think there is something significant
(aesthetically, ethically, etc.) about the kinds of old material
values that official heritage tends to endorse (e.g., Korsmeyer 2016;
James 2013; Saito 2007), even if these values should also be
challenged and supplemented from other cultural perspectives.
As noted above, heritage (and official heritage in particular) tends
to be associated with positive evaluations of the past (Harrison 2013;
Weiss 2007), though not universally so (Smith 2017). Indeed,
"the word for 'heritage' in many language has an
overwhelmingly positive public connotation" (Macdonald 2009: 9).
This makes the identification of sites of injustice and atrocity as
heritage a particularly fraught affair (often referred to as negative,
difficult, or dissonant heritage) raising questions about how to
reconcile the positive associations of the heritage concept with sites
that people experience as traumatic (Meskell 2002; Macdonald 2009,
2016; Tunbridge & Ashworth 1996; Sandis 2014a). These tensions can
bring to the fore competing conceptions of national identity or
historical narrative, especially in the context of regime change or
civil war.
### 1.3 Cultural Heritage vs. National Heritage
It is important to note a distinction between cultural heritage and
national heritage. As the discussions of official heritage and
difficult heritage reveal, heritage can play an influential role in
cultivating a sense of national identity around a national culture
(Ireland & Schofield 2015: 2; Weiss 2007). However, it is
important not to conflate the idea of a national culture with the
empirically false claim that nations are culturally homogeneous:
indeed, the intranational diversity of cultures is the fact from which
the political problem of multiculturalism arises (see entry on
multiculturalism).
There is of course significant cultural diversity in cultural
groupings of many kinds, nationalistic or not. This topic is discussed
further in
section 2.2.
### 1.4 Heritage vs. History
Consonant with the idea that heritage is inherently concerned with the
use of the past for present purposes, some commentators are at pains
to point out the difference between a more political understanding of
heritage in contrast with a more scholarly understanding of history
(e.g., Lowenthal 1985). They emphasize in particular heritage's
lax relationship with the truth:
>
>
> History seeks to convince by truth and succumbs to falsehood. Heritage
> exaggerates and omits, candidly inverts and frankly forgets, and
> thrives on ignorance and terror. (Lowenthal 1998: 121)
>
>
>
However, one might worry that this statement contrasts an ideal of
historical scholarship with a caricature of heritage at its worst.
Historians, too, are subject to concerns about how their narratives
portray and map onto the record of past events (Trouillot 1995; entry
on
philosophy of history).
We might think that heritage, too, should be constrained by the
truth, even when it operates in the service of nationalism (Abizadeh
2004).
### 1.5 Cultural Heritage vs. Natural Heritage
Culture has historically been distinguished from nature, but that
dichotomy has come under attack in many disciplines: the study of
heritage is no exception (Harrison 2015). A sharp distinction between
the two seems particularly ill-placed in cultural contexts where
nature figures prominently, as is the case in many indigenous and
aboriginal cultural contexts. For instance, if relationships with the
land (Figueroa & Waitt 2010) or particular plant and animal
species (Whyte 2017) are of particular cultural significance, then a
dichotomy between natural and cultural heritage can fail to accurately
represent the beliefs and practices of these cultures. Moreover, some
endeavor to illuminate theoretical approaches to the value of cultural
heritage via conceptual tools from work on the value of nature,
arguing that we should treat heritage conservation like nature
conservation, importing common thinking about the intrinsic value of
nature into our thinking about cultural heritage (Harding 1999).
However, dissolution of the contrast between natural and cultural
heritage is also subject to objections. For instance, discourse
surrounding nature can bring with it methods and understandings that
reintroduce problems into discussion of cultural heritage, such as the
elevation of cultural heritage to a "universal" value
(discussed further in
section 2.2)
that can disenfranchise or displace local cultural communities
(O'Neill 2002), or as a non-renewable resource on par with
common thinking about the value of nature, leading to state
intervention (Meskell 2011). As a consequence of the collapse between
these two domains, some argue
>
>
> that the legacies of enclosure, eviction and salvage that developed
> around sites of natural value have indelibly informed our
> understanding and management of cultural places. (Meskell 2011:
> 23)
>
>
>
## 2. Cultural Property
### 2.1 What is Cultural Property?
At a basic level, the concept of "cultural property"
captures the idea that something (an artifact, artwork, style, place,
etc.) can be the property of a cultural group (Appiah 2006: 118;
Thompson 2003: 252), and thus entail some set of collective rights
concerning ownership, access, and use, even if title to the property
is held by a particular individual. The concept thus raises a number
of difficult philosophical questions concerning cultural groups, the
nature of property, and the relation between them.
### 2.2 The Scope of Cultural Property Value
One fundamental question about cultural property concerns who has a
reasonable interest in it. Only members of a particular culture?
Members of a nation that many cultural members call home? All of
humanity? Insofar as legal institutions of property are meant to
protect our moral property interests, an answer to this question has
the potential to in turn shape legal norms governing cultural property
(see entry on
property and ownership).
An influential approach in the cultural property literature is to
distinguish between cultural nationalist and cultural internationalist
positions concerning how broadly a reasonable interest in cultural
property should be construed (Merryman 1986).
According to cultural internationalists, each particular culture
contributes to an overarching human culture, and thus everyone has an
interest in cultural property (Merryman 1986; this view is often
labeled "cosmopolitan" as well (Appiah 2006)). Proponents
of cultural internationalism typically uses claims about the universal
value of cultural heritage to argue against nationalist restrictions
on its export and sale, as well as against many repatriation claims
(discussed further in
section 3;
Merryman 1986, 1994; Appiah 2006). This position finds support in
various aspects of international law and policy, including the Hague
Convention of 1954 (Merryman 1986) and the criterion of
"outstanding universal value" in the 1972 UNESCO World
Heritage Convention (Cleere 1996; Omland 2006). These claims about the
universal evaluative scope of cultural property are often predicated
on a metaphysical claim about the constitutive relationship between
particular cultures and Human Culture: that it is precisely because
each culture is a component of Human Culture that each individual
culture therefore has a universal value in which everyone has a
reasonable interest. However, even independently of the strength of
this claim, one might think that individual cultures can secure a
universal value in other ways. For instance, according to one line of
argument, there are a diversity of grounds for valuing a particular
culture (such as ancestry, citizenship, geography, study, etc.) such
that most everyone could have a reasonable interest in a particular
culture (Matthes 2015).
According to the cultural nationalist position, on the other hand,
nations have a "special interest" in their cultural
property that "implies the attribution of national character to
objects" (Merryman 1986: 832). This position also has support in
international law and policy, in particular, the 1970 UNESCO
Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit
Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property
(Merryman 1986). Proponents of cultural nationalism typically use
claims about the special national character of cultural heritage to
argue in favor of nationalist retention policies that restrict or
limit the export or sale of cultural heritage (discussed further in
section 3.1.1;
Moustakas 1989). It is worth noting that the dichotomy between
cultural nationalists and internationalists faces a significant
limitation in that it does not leave an obvious place for the claims
of intra-national cultural groups such as Native American tribes
(Watkins 2005). Although cultural nationalism might in principle
account for the claims of sovereign indigenous nations, it has in
practice focused on the interests of independent nation-states.
Moreover, although indigenous cultural property claims have received
increasing attention in both policy and scholarship (discussed further
in sections
2.3
and
3),
appeals to nationalist and internationalist claims remain common in
practice, and indeed, the interests and claims of intra-national
groups can be in tension with the nationalist identity-building that
nation-states often promote through cultural heritage (Watkins
2005).
One way to read the dispute between cultural nationalists and
internationalists is as a dispute over which kind of value-claim
should be prioritized: a proponent of each position could recognize
the value claims made by both camps, but think that their own should
trump the other (Thompson 2003: 258). Alternatively, one might think
that claims about universal human value call into question the
applicability of some of the traditional bundle of property rights.
For instance, one might argue that the universal value of cultural
heritage entails that it should not be excludable in the manner that
property typically is (Thompson 2004: 545-546). Or, in a similar
vein, one might argue that we should prioritize the preservation of
such objects to the exclusion of any claims to holding them as
property (Warren 1989: 22). This is a move toward a
"stewardship" as opposed to "ownership" model
for thinking about cultural property, which is subject to its own set
of objections, and will be discussed below in
section 2.4.
### 2.3 The Problem of Cultural Continuity
If cultural property belongs to a cultural group, then this seems to
require some grasp on who constitute the members of the group (Young
2007: 112). However, defining cultural group membership is a
notoriously difficult task (Killmister 2011). For one, it confronts
problems concerning cultural essentialism (discussed in
section 4.2.3
below). But moreover (and relatedly), it presents questions
concerning cultural continuity over time (Appiah 2006: 119). On what
basis, for instance, can the contemporary nation of Egypt claim the
art and cultural artifacts of ancient Egypt as their cultural
property, given the profound cultural differences between contemporary
and ancient Egyptians? The same question can be raised for many of the
cultural property claims made by contemporary nations. However,
although there may not be strict cultural identity (in the sense of
sameness) between cultural groups over time, due in part to the
dynamic nature of culture, one might question why this kind of strict
identity should be thought so important. For instance, we might
instead appeal to cultural lineages, analogous to the links of
psychological connectedness that some think can secure a relevant
understanding of personal identity over time (Parfit 1984; entry on
personal identity).
For instance, an overlapping chain of practices, traditions, norms,
and beliefs could be used to justify the claim that a culture at
*t1* is "the same culture" as the culture at
*t0*, even if it has undergone significant changes. Indeed, one
might think that a degree of change is in fact essential for the
preservation of cultural identity over time (Coleman 2006: 167).
Granted, this may lead to a plurality of cultural descendants that
would make cultural property claims difficult to adjudicate in
practice, but it is worth noting that the assumption in favor of a
strong understanding of cultural identity over time as a necessary
condition for cultural property remains largely undefended in the
literature.
That being said, there are additional moral objections to nations in
particular making cultural property claims. Nations need not be
culturally homogeneous, and thus nationalist cultural property claims
might objectionably run roughshod over strong intra-national cultural
property claims, for instance, those made by colonized indigenous
cultural groups (Thompson 2003: 252; Watkins 2005). From the opposite
direction, one might worry about how nationalist cultural property
claims would restrict the exchange of cultural property around the
world, an objectionable consequence if one embraces the influential
idea (mentioned in
2.2
above) that cultural property has value for all of humanity (Merryman
1986, 1994).
Moreover, there is a worry that the competing natures of
"culture" and "property" generate a
paradoxical relationship when they are combined in the purported
concept of cultural property.
>
>
> Property is fixed, possessed, controlled by its owner, and alienable.
> Culture is none of these things. Thus cultural property claims tend to
> fix culture, which if anything is unfixed, dynamic, and unstable.
> (Mezey 2007: 2005)
>
>
>
So, not only does the dynamic nature of culture raise metaphysical and
epistemological questions about the grounds for cultural property
claims, it is moreover inherently at odds with the bonds and
boundaries with which the concept of property attempts to saddle it.
Thus, cultural property tends to offer a version of fixed cultures
attached to bounded groups that is more amenable to the concept of
property, but consequently offers a distorted and "anemic"
picture of culture (Mezey 2007: 2005-6).
One way to resolve the paradox is to challenge the interpretations of
the core concepts that appear to set them at odds. For instance, one
might argue that the paradox is generated by reading property in a
strict "ownership" sense that prioritizes rights of
excludability (the right to prevent others from use and access) and
alienability (the right to transfer property); see entry on
property and ownership).
In contrast, an analysis of property in terms of
"stewardship", which recognizes a broader range of rights
and responsibilities for non-title holders, may relax the perceived
emphasis on property as fixed and bounded, allowing for an
understanding of property that could plausibly avoid the same tensions
with the dynamic nature of culture (Carpenter, Katyal, & Riley
2009: 1022).
### 2.4 Stewardship
As introduced in the previous two sections, one might think that the
concept of cultural property places an emphasis on ownership where
what is really required is stewardship. For instance, one might think
that "cultural property does not really belong to
anyone...that all of us have a duty towards cultural property
because of its relative scarcity and profound significance"
(Harding 1997: 760). This kind of view might be shared by those who
aim to prioritize the preservation of cultural property (Warren 1989;
Merryman 1994) or those who think we have special duties to cultural
heritage grounded either in the virtues (James 2013) or an
inter-generational social contract (Thompson 2000a; though stewardship
should not necessarily be equated with preservation (Harding 1997:
771)).
While the concept of stewardship might solve certain problems
concerning cultural property by uniting contestants over ownership
around a common aim, it is also liable to inherit transposed versions
of some of the same problems. For instance, advocates of stewardship
must contend with what and whose values will guide stewardship
efforts. What exactly should be stewarded, why, and for the sake of
whom? If, for instance, scientific or world heritage values take the
lead, stewardship models can invite the same kinds of objections as
universalist notions of cultural property that leave inadequate room
for the purportedly special relationship between particular cultural
groups and objects, or crowd out alternative value systems or sources
of knowledge (Wylie 2005). These concerns can perhaps be avoided
through a non-monolithic understanding of stewardship that
acknowledges rights and duties for multiple parties with respect to
single objects (Carpenter, Katyal, & Riley 2009), but they remain
concerns that advocates of stewardship models will need to address if
stewardship is to serve as a viable substitute for an ownership model
of cultural property.
### 2.5 Intangible Cultural Property
While the cultural property discourse began with a focus on material
heritage (buildings, artifacts, etc.), it has expanded, particularly
in response to increasing recognition of diverse indigenous cultures,
to include discussion of stories, songs, styles, motifs, practices,
and traditional knowledge (Carpenter, Katyal, & Riley 2009: 1097).
These additional elements, typically referred to as "intangible
heritage", present a further set of puzzles and questions for
the concept of cultural property (Brown 2005).
Centrally, while we have a straightforward grasp on what it means to
own an artwork or artifact, the idea of owning a story or style can
seem relatively obscure, at least in a broadly Western context. Just
as intellectual property law has developed to better account for
ownership of intangibles, the introduction of intangible heritage into
discussion of cultural property has seemed to require appeal to the
category of intellectual property to account for the ownership of
cultural heritage that takes the form of such entities as songs or
styles (Nicholas & Bannister 2004; entry on
intellectual property).
However, the application of an intellectual property framework to
intangible cultural property has also generated objections. First, one
might object that the intellectual property framework functions to
commodify intangible cultural heritage, which can have a
"tendency to freeze social life in time", and thus offer
an artificial and inappropriate approach to traditions and practices
that are constantly changing (Brown 2005: 45). Second, general
objections to the suitability of legal property protections for
cultural heritage, whether tangible or intangible (discussed in
2.3),
will carry over to the use of an intellectual property framework for
dealing with intangible heritage, either based on the idea that
"culture" and "property" are inherently in
tension with one another (Mezey 2007), or because the category of
property (focused primarily on rights) is inadequate to capturing the
breadth of cultural heritage and our duties with respect to it (Prott
& O'Keefe 1992). Third, the pull towards thinking of
cultural heritage as universally valuable (discussed in
2.2)
is arguably stronger in the case of intangible heritage than in the
case of material heritage. For example, if knowledge aspires to be
free to all, then is it acceptable to restrict its flow, even for the
sake of guarding against the exploitation of vulnerable indigenous
communities (Brown 2005)? As discussed in
section 2.3,
one might again counter that indigenous claims are more often for
participation than outright control or rights of excludability, and
thus such tensions are resolved if one adopts an alternative model of
property that does not rely on possession of all the rights that
comprise the "bundle" of classic property rights
(Carpenter, Katyal, & Riley 2009: 1111-1112). Indeed, many
objections to the use of intangible heritage move beyond the discourse
of cultural property altogether, as discussed in
section 4
on cultural appropriation.
A further puzzle is that it can be less clear what counts as a
particular group's intangible cultural property than it is in
the case of material heritage. For instance, when a museum displays
the cultural artifacts of a particular group, the cultural origins of
the artifacts are often not controversial (though they of course can
be): rather, controversy might surround ownership of the artifact
predicated on a clear understanding of the culture of origin. In
contrast, it can be relatively harder to trace the lineages of
practices and stories, and superficial similarities in cultural
traditions may lead to claims of intangible cultural property that are
more difficult to justify (Brown 2005: 51).
## 3. Repatriation
Repatriation concerns the return of material heritage or human remains
from museums, universities, or other institutions to their culture,
nation, or owner of origin. If an object was clearly stolen or
otherwise unjustly acquired from an identifiable group, then
repatriation can seem uncontroversial (at least from a moral
perspective) on the basis of standard norms of reparative justice, as
would apply to any other stolen item. However, claims for repatriation
can become controversial in cases where 1) the justice of acquisition
is unclear, 2) the source cultural group is unclear or not clearly
contiguous with a contemporary group, or 3) the value of institutional
retention of disputed objects is thought to outweigh competing claims,
especially if these are weakened by the aforementioned concerns.
Arguments that aim to overcome these potential objections are
generally couched in terms of either cultural property (3.1) or
reparations for historical injustices
(3.2).
### 3.1 Arguments Based on Cultural Property
The general tenor of this approach is to claim that certain objects
qualify as cultural property, and then to argue based on a particular
feature of cultural property that the relevant object should be
returned to a designated group. Given the basic notion that cultural
property is just the property of a cultural group (Thompson 2003: 252;
Appiah 2006: 118), the concept is not necessarily incompatible with
the alienation of particular items under appropriately authorized
conditions of sale or transfer. However, one might appeal to cultural
property as the basis for a repatriation claim if one thinks that the
very concept of cultural property in fact precludes such transfers
(3.1.1),
or, rather, if the conditions under which such a transfer occurred
are unclear
(3.1.2).
For further discussion of the concept of cultural property, see
section 2.
#### 3.1.1 Collective identity and the inalienability of cultural property
According to some understandings of cultural property, the tight link
between cultural property and cultural identity renders such property
inalienable. Closer to the idea of what is sometimes called
"cultural patrimony" such property might be described as
"not something owned by a people, but something *of*
them, a part of their defining collective identity" (Cuno 2001:
85). This is one of the categories of objects, for instance, subject
to the U.S. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of
1990, a federal law meant to facilitate the return of Native American
remains and artifacts from federally funded institutions to Native
tribes (Coleman 2010; Lackey 2006; Trope & Echo-Hawk 1992; Harjo
1996). If cultural property is inalienable, then holdings in cultural
property by those outside the cultural group are *ipso facto*
illegitimate.
The idea of inalienable property is familiar from the individual
context, and the link between external objects and identity often
arises in discussion of moral limits on the market distribution of
things such as body parts or surrogacy (Harding 1997: 749; Satz 2010;
Anderson 1995; Sandel 2012). Indeed, the distinction between alienable
and inalienable property is recognized in many languages and does not
divide across "Western" and "non-Western"
cultures (Coleman 2010: 83). The claim of inalienable cultural
property simply extends this concept from individuals to groups
(Harding 1997: 751).
As a basis for repatriation, however, the concept of inalienable
cultural property faces a series of objections. For one, we lack
objective standards for assessing claims that a particular item is
fundamental to group identity (Harding 1997: 751). Second, the
relationship between an object and group identity need not obviously
require possession of the object (Harding 1997: 751; Coleman 2010:
89). Third, we might worry about claims concerning the necessity of
possessing objects for group identity if a group has been separated
from the object for a long time, which is especially common in
repatriation cases (Harding 1997: 752). Such circumstances seem to
present us with a dilemma: either the cultural group has persisted
without the object, in which case the claim for the necessity of its
return is undermined; or the object is essential to group identity, in
which case the claim to be the same cultural group in its absence is
weakened (cf. Waldron 1992). Finally, the idea that cultural identity
might truly be linked with an object inalienably and in perpetuity can
suggest a troublingly static notion of cultural group identity,
especially if such relationships are codified into law (Harding 1997:
752; Coleman 2010).
#### 3.1.2 The inheritance of cultural property
One might claim that a cultural group can inherit cultural property,
and thus use this to ground claims for repatriation, even where the
justice of acquisition is uncertain: by being denied ownership of the
objects, the group is being denied their rightful inheritance. The
success of this approach will depend in part on whether the
inheritance of property is morally justifiable in the first place. The
right to inheritance seems incompatible with a number of theories of
domestic justice (e.g., consequentialism, egalitarianism, desert
theory (Thompson 2002: 109)), though is perhaps more easily
justifiable if one thinks that principles of distributive justice do
not apply internationally: this appears to remove distributive justice
based rationales for denying the right to inheritance that might apply
in the domestic context (Butt 2009: 141-145). Given that many
repatriation claims are often international, this leaves more room for
the applicability of inheritance-based repatriation claims than might
be thought to apply in domestic cases.
However, one might insist that a necessary condition for inheritance
is the existence of testamentary wishes concerning that inheritance,
based on the presupposition "that respect for testamentary
wishes lies at the core of the concept of inheritance (Young 2007:
115). Because it is rarely the case that demonstrable testamentary
wishes regarding cultural property can be identified, one might think
that inheritance is therefore unlikely to provide a basis for cultural
property claims (Young 2007: 113-15; 2006: 18-20).
However, an alternative approach starts by noting that it is generally
assumed that children and spouses should inherit holdings even in the
absence of testamentary wishes (Thompson 2002: 125; Butt 2009: 165).
Thus, one might think that a parallel assumption should be made in the
case of cultural property, especially if the alternative is the
continued possession of the property by a community that unjustly
acquired it from one's own (Butt 2009: 166). In cases where an
object is not already regarded as cultural property, inheritance might
therefore also explain how the property of an individual can become
the property of the state (Butt 2009: 166), or perhaps of a non-state
cultural group.
Moreover, it is worth noting that the assumption that inheritance must
be based on testamentary wishes is in tension with the point (noted in
section 1.2)
that inheritance is commonly taken to be the core notion of the
concept of cultural heritage (for further discussion, see Shelby 2007:
172-176). Thus, skepticism about the possibility of inheritance
would seem to undermine the very possibility of cultural heritage, a
conclusion that might seem absurd. Of course, one might counter that
cultural heritage relies on a different notion of inheritance than the
jurisprudential understanding of inheritance most appropriate to
cultural property. However, as with the discussion of the
"paradox of cultural property" above
(2.3),
this claim appears to rest on assuming a particularly strong
understanding of ownership that the concept of cultural property may
not require (Carpenter, Katyal, & Riley 2009).
#### 3.1.3 Cultural property and cultural significance
According to some commentators, the significance of an object for a
cultural group is a necessary condition for it to qualify as cultural
property: an insignificant object would not qualify merely because it
was produced by a group member (Thompson 2003: 253). Moreover, though,
the value of an object for a particular culture might be thought to
constitute the strongest basis for a moral cultural property claim.
For instance, according to the "cultural significance
principle" a cultural group's claim on an object
"will be proportional to the value the property has for members
of the culture" (Young 2007: 122) and mitigated by other
competing considerations, including the range of other values
possessed by such objects (including economic, scholarly, etc.; Young
2013). However, the fact that the ownership of cultural property is
often disputed by multiple cultural groups, seems to present this
approach with a serious practical hurdle: insofar as these disputes
tend to arise precisely when objects are highly valued by multiple
cultural groups, the cultural significance principle will have limited
value in resolving these competing claims (Thompson 2013: 89).
Moreover, it may not be sufficiently sensitive to the legitimacy of
other kinds of moral and legal property claims. If the cultural
significance principle is indeed treated as the strongest basis for a
cultural property claim, this suggests that a cultural group simply
valuing an object highly could override the legal claims of legitimate
acquisitions and holdings (Thompson 2013: 89). Granted, the cultural
significance principle is intended as just one principle that must
also be weighed against "the rights of purchasers, finders and
makers" (Young 2007: 122), and it is acknowledged this will
often be a difficult task. But independently of this difficulty, the
principle might facilitate claims by cultural groups that acquired an
object unjustly and/or are themselves culturally distant from its
original maker and cultural context, provided that they value it
highly enough (Thompson 2013: 89). It is in this way friendly to
arguments about how historical injustices can be superseded based on
the role and value that unjustly acquired objects can come to have in
the lives of their current owners (Waldron 1992; entry on
intergenerational justice).
Whether or not such outcomes are objectionable will no doubt depend
on further consideration, but might at least be criticized for
upholding the status quo of unjust colonial acquisitions.
### 3.2 Arguments Based on Reparations
Instead of resting claims for repatriation on appeals to cultural
property, one might instead argue that repatriation is required as a
component of reparations for historical injustices: in particular, for
the unjust acquisition of cultural property, and for the unjust
campaigns of colonial occupation and genocide in which such
acquisitions were embedded. Because many repatriation claims concern
objects that changed hands during previous generations, reparations
for unjust acquisition or the unjust treatment of the former owners
can seem to provide a suitable framework for justifying repatriation.
Moreover, because humans remains are typically not considered subject
to private ownership (Bjornberg 2014: 464), reparations might be
thought to offer a more fitting framework for repatriation cases
concerning remains than a cultural property framework. Interestingly,
however, many of the objections that can be raised against the
cultural property approach apply to the reparations approach as well.
This section will focus only on reparative issues that are especially
pertinent to repatriation (for further discussion of reparations, see
entries on
reconciliation,
intergenerational justice, and
black reparations).
For a general argumentative framework for repatriation as reparations
to be successful, it needs to demonstrate that some entity has an
obligation to correct an historical injustice, that reparations are an
appropriate form of correction, and that repatriation is an
appropriate means of reparations (Bjornberg 2014: 463).
#### 3.2.1 Unjust acquisition
It appears that the first step in a reparative argument will be to
establish that an object was unjustly acquired. Failure to do so would
seem to undermine the reparative basis for a repatriation claim of
such an object: if an object was not unjustly acquired, then a
repatriation claim based on the reparation of an historical injustice
does not appear to apply (Bjornberg 2014: 464). This might be
thought of as an additional burden faced in reparation-based
repatriation cases in particular: more general arguments for
reparation often involve compensation as opposed to restitution (Perez
2011; though notably not in the case of land claims (Simmons 1995)),
since what is being compensated for is typically pain, suffering, and
loss of economic opportunity. However, one might alternatively think
that repatriation could be justified as part of a reparative
obligation to a cultural group even if there is no justifiable claim
to ownership of a particular object, but simply as a form of
compensation for historical injustices against the group in general,
especially given the inextricable relationship between these broader
injustice and the more specific case of cultural property acquisition
(Harding 1997: 739; Ypi 2013: 187; Thompson 2013: 90-91; Ypi
2017; Matthes 2017: 946-950). If this is correct, then the
reparative approach has an important advantage over appeals to
cultural property: it can avoid the problem of establishing unjust
acquisition of a particular object.
#### 3.2.2 "Legitimate descendants" and cultural continuity
A successful case for repatriation as reparations requires a
justifiable account of to whom an object should be returned. In the
context of reparations, this requires identifying the
"legitimate descendants" of the original victims of the
past injustice of wrongful acquisition (Bjornberg 2014: 465;
drawing on Boxill 2003). Although repatriation cases sometimes involve
individuals or families (as in cases concerning the return of items
seized by the Nazis), most repatriation claims addressed in the
literature concern wrongs against, and return to, nations or cultural
groups. Identifying the legitimate descendants of the original victims
might depend on tracing a causal chain of harms from the original
victims (Boxill's "harm argument") or based on the
inheritance of compensation that was owed but never made
(Boxill's "inheritance argument"). One route to
employing the inheritance argument in this context is to appeal to
bonds of common culture in order to identify the relevant inheritors
(Bjornberg 2014: 466). However, this approach raises the same
cultural group problems of cultural continuity
(2.3)
and cultural essentialism
(4.2.3)
that confront other topics in heritage ethics. Using the harm
argument, on the other hand, or an alternative application of the
inheritance argument, would require appeal to some variety of
continuity, but this would not necessarily be equivalent to cultural
continuity (Matthes 2017: 937). For instance, one might be able to
trace a chain of harms between an original victim group and a later
group, even if the later group has undergone radical cultural
changes.
#### 3.2.3 Value for humanity
Even if the rightful recipients in repatriation claims can be
established, a further objection to reparation-based repatriation may
still be pressed. This is the objection that repatriation is not
justified all things considered because countervailing considerations
(Young 2007: 122), particularly concerning the value of retaining
objects in public and/or academic settings, outweigh the reasons in
favor of it (Thompson 2004). This kind of objection often appeals to
the purportedly universal value of cultural heritage discussed in
section 2.2.
In the case of artifacts, this may be construed as an aesthetic,
cultural, or historical value that renders such objects inherently
public (Lindsay 2012). Assuming, for instance, that encyclopedic
museums have an important value, some worry that repatriation would
lead to the gutting of these collections, though whether or not such a
worry is justified, particularly on the basis of slippery slope
arguments, remains questionable (Joyce 2003). In the case of human
remains, this universal value claim often takes the form of scientific
value, as in the much-discussed dispute over the "The Ancient
One" (or "Kennewick Man"; Thompson 2013: 95;
Whittaker 1997; Brown 2003; TallBear 2013). Disputes over human
remains, particularly of indigenous peoples, are thus often framed in
terms of a conflict between religion and science, where it is often
thought that the former should give way to the latter (Thompson 2013:
95-6). However, an alternative framing of the dispute notes that
burials possess a wide range of legal protections, and so Native
American repatriation claims are not based so much on religious
grounds as on pursuit of equality of treatment (Harding 1997: 765).
One might also argue that precisely because many museums are committed
to serving as trustees of universally valuable collections for all
humankind, they should be more concerned with achieving a just
distribution of such cultural resources, in contrast with the
retentionist position that they often take such commitments to support
(Thompson 2004: 558-559; Matthes 2017).
## 4. Cultural Appropriation
### 4.1 What is Cultural Appropriation?
Cultural appropriation is generally understood as the taking or use of
the cultural products of "cultural insiders" by
"cultural outsiders" (Young 2005: 136). Cultural products
can range widely, including stories, styles, motifs, artifacts,
artworks, traditional knowledge, as well as representations of the
members of a particular culture (Young 2008: 4; 2005: 136; Scafidi
2005). Questions about cultural appropriation thus often arise in a
broad array of artistic contexts (in particular, but not limited to,
music and fashion) as well as other non-artistic contexts, such as
costumes, hairstyles, cuisine, and traditional knowledge (Young &
Brunk 2012).
The concept of cultural appropriation can be used in either a
descriptive or normative sense, and so it is important to be attentive
to how it is being employed in a particular context. By comparison,
consider how "exploitation" can have a descriptive or
normative sense (Valdman 2009: 2): you can exploit an opportunity to
get a snack when the food truck unexpectedly arrives without this
implying wrongfulness. Likewise, some writers invoke cultural
appropriation in a descriptive sense that leaves open whether a
particular act of appropriation is wrongful (Young 2008: 18), whereas
others employ the normative sense in order to pick out a particular
kind of wrongful action (Todd 1990: 24).
Disputes over cultural appropriation often have an important racial
dimension, as in discussions surrounding the blues or hip hop (Rudinow
1994; Taylor 1995; Taylor 2005). However, this need not be the case.
For instance, cultural appropriation (whether wrongful or not) could
be thought to arise with respect to cultural groups that cut across
multiple racialized groups, such as cultures surrounding disability,
sexual orientation, gender identity, and religion, as well as arising
within the diverse cultural groups that are circumscribed by a single
racialized category (Matthes 2016a: 356). In whatever context it
arises, it is generally recognized that an essential ingredient in
wrongful appropriation is a background of social inequality between
cultural insiders and cultural outsiders (Ziff & Rao 1997: 5;
Hurka 1999: 184; Hladki 1994). Indeed, given the way in which dominant
cultural groups tend to assimilate minority cultures, it may even be a
category mistake to speak of members of marginalized cultural groups
"appropriating" from dominant ones (Rogers 2006:
480-1). That being said, some commentators argue in favor of
leaving conceptual space for the appropriation of objects or practices
by marginalized groups, though construed in a beneficial as opposed to
harmful light (Walsh & Lopes 2012).
A substantial catalyst for academic and popular discussion of cultural
appropriation (particularly in Canada) was the recommendation in 1992
of an ad hoc committee of the Canada Council to take cultural
appropriation into account in its decisions about the award of arts
grants (Rowell 1995: 138). Concerns about government funding for work
about culturally marginalized peoples made by non-group members are
theoretically consistent with finding cultural appropriation
unobjectionable if it succeeds in the marketplace of its own merits
(Rowell 1995: 141). However, in more recent years, public and
scholarly discussion has shifted beyond this narrower question about
government funding towards more general discussion of whether cultural
appropriation is wrongful.
### 4.2 What Might be Wrong with Cultural Appropriation?
#### 4.2.1 Offense
One potential source of the wrongfulness of cultural appropriation is
that it can be offensive to cultural group members. If this is the
sole explanation of wrongful cultural appropriation, then the case is
relatively weak: the *prima facie* reason for thinking that
appropriation is wrong could be easily defeated by any number of
morally significant countervailing factors. While there may be a
general presumption against needlessly offending others, the fact that
someone might be offended by most anything makes run-of-the-mill
offense seem relatively easy to justify.
The *prima facie* wrongfulness of cultural appropriation
becomes weightier if we think that beyond causing mere offense, it can
cause what Joel Feinberg terms *profound offense*: "an
offense to one's moral sensibilities...[that] strikes at a
person's core values or sense of self" (Young 2005: 135).
Nevertheless, even if cultural appropriation is profoundly offensive,
and thus there is a *prima facie* reason for thinking it is
wrongful, one might still think that it can be morally permissible all
things considered because of other morally relevant features of the
act, such as its social value, the value of freedom of expression, the
time and place of the act, the extent to which it is tolerated by
group members, and how reasonable the offense is (Young 2005). Given
the diversity of values and sensibilities, the potential for profound
offense is substantial across many domains of social life. While it
will be debatable under what circumstances the aforementioned features
defeat the *prima facie* reasons for thinking that profoundly
offensive appropriation is wrong, the range of cases in which it is
often thought that profound offense is outweighed by other values
suggests that cultural appropriation will often be morally
permissible, all things considered (Young 2005: 138). Indeed, one
might think that cultural appropriation is an essential aspect of
cultural development, and in fact a beneficial aspect of cultural
creativity and exchange (Young 2008; Rogers 2006; Heyd 2003).
#### 4.2.2 Harm
In contrast with (or complementary to) the explanation in terms of
offense, one might also think that cultural appropriation can be
wrongful because it can cause harm. Analogously to debates about
harmful vs. offensive speech, if cultural appropriation is harmful,
this would raise the bar for countervailing considerations that would
be sufficient to render it morally permissible: while harm can be
morally justified, there is a strong presumption against causing harm
(see entry on
freedom of speech).
So what might make cultural appropriation harmful? For one, it might
be thought to be wrongfully exploitative, defined, for instance,
as
>
>
> the appropriation of elements of a subordinated culture by a dominant
> culture without substantive reciprocity, permission, and/or
> compensation. (Rogers 2006: 477)
>
>
>
For instance, one might think that when cultural outsiders profit from
the cultural achievements of insiders who are themselves excluded from
such opportunities due to cultural marginalization and socio-economic
inequality, they do so unfairly (Keeshig-Tobias 1990; Root 1996; Brown
2005). Whether or not cultural appropriation is economically harmful
to cultural group members is a difficult empirical question, and
certain cases may suggest that it could be an economic boon (Young
2008: 114-18; Cowen 2002; Shelby 2007: 194). However, even if we
assume for the sake of argument that cultural appropriation increases
economic opportunity for group members, it might still be thought of
as a form of mutually advantageous exploitation: the features of
exploitation identified above could persist even in the presence of a
net gain in economic opportunity. For instance, one common argument is
that cultural appropriation is an instance and extension of
colonialism, sharing in its exploitative extraction of labor and
resources from those with less relative power, and thus does not treat
cultural group members in a way that recognizes their equality and
autonomy: culture can be appropriated in the same way that land was
appropriated by European colonists (Todd 1992, 1990; Coombe 1993;
Rogers 2006; though against the similarity with land and natural
resources, see Shelby 2007: 193-4; for more on explaining the
wrong of colonialism, see Ypi 2013; see also entry on
colonialism).
Moreover, given the ways in which colonial powers often mandated the
eradication of cultural practices, especially for indigenous people,
through, for example, outlawing ceremonies and languages and forcing
assimilation through residential schools, the prospect of
simultaneously benefiting from these same cultural products can seem
particularly perverse (Coleman, Coombe, & MacArailt 2012: 178;
Child 1998).
Now, one might think that whether cultural appropriation qualifies as
exploitative in these ways will hinge on the viability of a concept of
cultural property, which, as we saw in
section 3,
remains contentious. The thinking is that cultural group members do
not have a right to cultural products (nor to an audience for them,
along with whatever economic boons it might hold) absent a claim to
such products as their cultural property (Young 2008: Ch. 4). It would
thus be no more exploitative to use or profit off of cultural products
than it is to use or profit off of math: no one has an exclusive right
to it. On the other hand, one might think the claim of exploitation is
fitting even in the absence of claims about cultural property.
Building on the colonial narrative, if Urban Outfitters, for instance,
profits off the sale of clothes with Navajo patterns while the people
of the Navajo nation grapple with poverty and its related injustices
(an ongoing case that came to a head in 2012), then we might
characterize this relationship as exploitative even absent a cultural
property claim (though note that, in fact, the Navajo name is
trademarked). This is because the relationship seems to have two
features that are commonly invoked as jointly sufficient for wrongful
exploitation: deriving an unfair or opportunistic gain from a
vulnerable group who cannot reasonably consent (Liberto 2014; Valdman
2009). Granted, questions remain about the application of the
exploitation framework. For instance, we might wonder about the
conditions under which a group could reasonably consent to the use of
cultural products (though see Lackey 2017), or whether the case above
is correctly construed as the kind of transaction to which charges of
exploitation apply (one might claim that Urban Outfitters is not
correctly described as transacting with the Navajo people at all).
A further set of harms often invoked in discussions of cultural
appropriation are the harms of misrepresentation and silencing.
Misrepresentation can take many forms. For instance, it can present a
culture in a false or misleading light. It can traffic in prejudices
and stereotypes. It can also present a small aspect of a culture (even
if accurate) as representative of the whole, creating a caricature, or
present a cultural practice in a context that perverts its meaning
(Coleman, Coombe, & MacArailt 2012). Cultural appropriation can
also silence members of marginalized cultural groups by skewing public
understanding of cultural expertise away from group members and
denying group members opportunities and platforms for cultural
expression (Keeshig-Tobias 1990; Todd 1990; Hladki 1994; Coombe 1993).
These effects can cumulatively lead to the erosion of cultural forms
and cultural assimilation of group members (Coleman 2001). Indeed, in
light of these effects, some argue that cultural group members may
have a political obligation to engage in cultural practices for the
sake of cultural preservation (Jeffers 2015).
The related harms of misrepresentation and silencing can be fruitfully
couched in terms of philosophical work on epistemic injustice and
epistemic violence (Fricker 2007; Dotson 2011; Matthes 2016a; Nicholas
& Wylie 2013). Operating against a broader backdrop of social
marginalization, cultural appropriation can inhibit or deny the
ability of group members to speak for and represent themselves,
offering further support for Loretta Dodd's definition of
cultural appropriation as the opposite of cultural autonomy (Todd
1990). For instance, on this understanding, the disability rights
slogan "nothing about us without us" can be construed as
an objection against appropriation through representation.
However, these accounts of harmful appropriation are subject to
philosophical objections. For instance, we might grant that
misrepresentation can be harmful, but deny that such a harm has
anything to do with appropriation *per se*: misrepresentations
promulgated by cultural insiders can be harmful, too (Young 2008: Ch.
4). Thus the argument that misrepresentation is harmful does not
establish that cultural appropriation itself is harmful. In reply, one
might note that while misrepresenting oneself and being misrepresented
by others could be equally harmful, that does not entail that they
constitute the same kind or degree of wrong. Moreover, we might
question whether it is important to demonstrate that cultural
appropriation is a *sui generis* kind of wrong: indeed, given
that harmful cultural appropriation seems to depend on background
conditions of social inequality, we might think it would be
unsurprising if a fitting explanation of its wrongfulness overlaps
substantially with the explanation of other wrongs that depend on
social inequality (Matthes 2016a).
#### 4.2.3 The problem of cultural essentialism
A further persistent objection to the aforementioned accounts of
wrongful cultural appropriation concerns the problem of cultural
essentialism, the idea that cultural group membership can be defined
in terms of a specific set of necessary and sufficient conditions
(Young 2005). The problem arises because the very concept of cultural
appropriation seems to be predicated on distinguishing cultural group
members from non-members:
>
>
> The need to describe a community of insiders and outsiders is implicit
> in most of what has been said about the practice of
> appropriation...some test of group belonging seems required in
> discussions about cultural appropriation. (Ziff & Rao 1997: 3)
>
>
>
The objection to essentialism can take both an epistemic/metaphysical
form and a moral form in the context of cultural appropriation.
First, one might contend that essentialist definitions of culture are
empirically false: cultures do not have rigid boundaries (Patten 2014:
Ch. 2). Even if we granted for the sake of argument that cultural
groups could be carved at the joint, we might doubt our ability to
know what the correct cultural group boundaries are (Young 2005:
136-7). If either of these objections holds, it seems as if the
idea of cultural appropriation is at best inapplicable in practice,
and at worst, conceptually confused.
On the moral front, one might worry that objections to cultural
appropriation reify cultural group boundaries in a way that can
exclude precarious or marginalized group members, or construct
caricatures or even oppressive conceptions of cultural authenticity
(Killmister 2011; Rogers 2006; Shelby 2002: 249-54). This can
generate the same kind of harmful cultural misrecognition as cultural
appropriation itself (Matthes 2016a: 355-358).
These two sets of objections are aptly encapsulated in Alan
Patten's "dilemma of essentialism" for
multiculturalism:
>
>
> *Either* culture is understood in an 'essentialist'
> way, in which case multiculturalism is empirically and morally flawed;
> *or* culture is understood in a nonessentialist way, but the
> concept no longer supplies multiculturalism with the means of making
> the empirical judgments and normative claims that matter to it.
> (Patten 2014: 39)
>
>
>
Cultural essentialism generates a similar dilemma for cultural
appropriation. How best to solve this dilemma remains an open
question. The answer will depend in part on how best to address more
general questions about cultural essentialism, and essentialism about
conceptual categories more broadly (see entry on
essential vs. accidental properties).
Moreover, given the use of cultural categories in many everyday
contexts, we should be hesitant about inferring from worries about
essentialism that cultural categories do not exist, or should not be
employed, just as objections to racial essentialism should not
necessarily lead us to dismiss all talk of racialized categories,
especially as a tool for accurately characterizing the effects of
racism (see entry on
race).
Indeed, such assumptions can generate their own harms, for instance,
by dismissing claims to cultural identity and autonomy on the basis
that they are "essentializing" (Todd 1992). But it can
seem that some theoretically viable understanding of cultural group
membership that can survive the metaphysical, epistemological, and
moral objections mentioned above is essential to a robust defense of
the concept of cultural appropriation. One possible alternative is to
eschew the problem of cultural group membership by shifting our
attention away from determining who counts as a cultural outsider and
toward the background conditions of social marginalization and
inequality that make cultural appropriation harmful (Matthes 2016a:
362-366). However, this approach may be inadequate in certain
cases where identifying specific acts of cultural appropriation is
itself morally important.
## 5. Heritage and Environmental Preservation
Whether or not one favors a distinction between cultural and natural
heritage (see
section 1.5
above), the idea of heritage plays an important role in recent
thinking about environmental preservation.
Among the many reasons that one might think that nature is valuable
include the idea that natural things have a certain kind of history,
in particular, a history independent of human intervention (Elliot
1982). This belief leads to the conclusion that, at least with respect
to this particular kind of natural value, environmental restoration is
impossible: one cannot restore a history free of human intervention
through human intervention. Thus, if we want to retain this kind of
value, we need to pursue policies of environmental preservation that
will protect the natural spaces that bear it (Elliot 1982).
The sharp distinction between nature and culture represented in this
view has been criticized from many fronts, for reasons ranging from an
overly narrow perspective on environmental value to minimizing the
actual history, and present extent, of human influence on the
environment (Cronon 1995; O'Neill 2002; Scoville 2013; Heyd
2005). That being said, we might grant that Elliot identifies
*an* important environmental value, provided that we do not
make the mistake of thinking it is the only one (Matthes 2016b). This
will of course significantly temper the power of Elliot's
normative conclusions about the promise of environmental restoration.
But a more nuanced understanding of the distinction between nature and
culture, one that recognizes a broader spectrum rather than a strict
dichotomy, can still provide reasons for cultivating a respect for
nature's self-directedness or "spontaneity" as well
as reason to preserve and protect this natural heritage (Heyd 2005:
345). Other approaches to environmental preservation also leverage the
heritage value of the environment, though emphasizing the cultural
dimensions of this heritage as well as the "natural"
ones.
For instance, one might think that recognizing that the environment is
part of our cultural heritage can ground distinctive reasons or
obligations to preserve it (Thompson 2000a). For instance, viewing
aspects of the environment as part of a cultural inheritance from our
ancestors might offer reason to preserve the environment as part of an
intergenerational social contract (Thompson 2000a,b); or, because
"particular places matter to both individuals and communities in
virtue of embodying their history and cultural identities"
(O'Neill, Holland, & Light 2008: 2-3) we might think
our approach to environmental preservation and decision-making should
be guided in part by the question: "What would make the most
appropriate trajectory from what has gone before?"
(O'Neill, Holland, & Light 2008: 156); or, we might
recognize that
>
>
> indigenous peoples have long advocated that the conservation and
> restoration of native species, the cultivation of first foods, and the
> maintenance of spiritual practices require the existence of plants and
> animals of particular genetic parentage whose lives are woven with
> ecologically, economically and culturally significant stories,
> knowledges and memories. (Whyte 2017)
>
>
>
On views like these, despite their differences, to recognize the
heritage-dimension of the environment is to see its value as
consisting, at least in part, in its narrative significance, its role
in stories that connect us to the past and contribute a distinctive
meaning to our lives (Holland 2011; Thompson 2000a; Scoville 2013). To
see environmental preservation as guided by the preservation of
narrative value can thus have significant implications: for instance,
preserving narrative value might in fact entail changes to the
physical landscape required for preserving meaning rather than
material continuity or authenticity (O'Neill, Holland, &
Light 2008: 157; Arntzen 2008).
How best to capture that narrative value in practice is a difficult
question. For instance, in places that have a history of varied use
(what some have called "layered landscapes") how do we
adjudicate among competing narratives (Hourdequin & Havlick 2011,
2016)? Rather than the traditional "baseline problem" for
ecological restoration, according to which any particular historical
benchmark for returning a space to its "natural" state
appears arbitrary (Lee, Hermans, & Hale 2014), we are faced with
the problem of deciding how a plurality of historical values ought to
shape restoration and preservation efforts. Thus, in order to
understand how best to preserve narrative value, it seems we will need
independent standards for adjudicating among the value of competing
narratives (McShane 2012). This is particularly important given the
unequal distribution of power in crafting and promulgating historical
narratives, which is liable to leave many place-narratives untold or
unheard (McShane 2012: 60; Palmer 2011: 355-6).
## 6. Other Topics in Heritage Ethics
The previous sections discussed topics in heritage ethics that have
seen the most engagement to date from philosophers. The following
subsections offer a brief overview of some other topics in heritage
ethics that have been discussed in the literature.
### 6.1 The Ethics of Display
Beyond issues concerning the repatriation of art and artifacts,
further ethical questions arise about how cultural heritage that is
retained in museums should be displayed. These questions play out
against the backdrop of how non-Western artworks have been regarded in
the context of Western art institutions, vacillating between
relegation to anthropological museums that challenged their art-status
to de-contextual display in modern art museums that deprived them of
relevant cultural context (Eaton & Gaskell 2012). Analogous to
debates about cultural appropriation discussed in
section 4,
museums are sometimes challenged for misrepresenting non-Western
cultures, or lacking relevant participation from cultural group
members (Brown 2009). Thus questions arise about the relative value of
different kinds of knowledge, how they are prioritized by institutions
claiming to steward the past, respectful display, and to whom these
institutions are accountable (Wylie 2005; Pantazatos 2016, 2017;
Gaskell 2008).
### 6.2 Further Issues in Archaeological Ethics
Some dimensions of the issues discussed above could be considered part
of the field of archaeological ethics (Scarre & Scarre 2006;
Vitelli & Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006; Scarre & Coningham 2013),
including aspects of the literature concerning cultural property,
repatriation, and cultural appropriation. However, further ethical
issues arise concerning, for instance, the ethics of digging for
recreational, financial, or subsistence purposes (Hollowell 2006;
Wylie 1996), the professional responsibilities of archaeologists
(Scarre 2014), and respect for the dead (Scarre 2003).
### 6.3 The Ethics of Cultural Heritage Protection in War
Some central aspects of the literature on cultural property have
arisen from discussion and policy surrounding the protection of
cultural heritage in war, such as the Hague Convention and the Lieber
Code (Merryman 1986). But further questions concerning the ethics of
cultural heritage protection in war, such as the permissibility of
causing or allowing causalities in order to protect cultural heritage,
or the obligations (or permissibility) of humanitarian intervention to
protect cultural heritage have received only a little philosophical
attention to date (Thompson 2010; Matthes 2018). |
art-definition | ## 1. Constraints on Definitions of Art
Any definition of art has to square with the following
uncontroversial facts: (i) entities (artifacts or performances)
intentionally endowed by their makers with a significant degree of
aesthetic interest, often greatly surpassing that of most everyday
objects, first appeared hundreds of thousands of years ago and exist
in virtually every known human culture (Davies 2012); (ii) such
entities are partially comprehensible to cultural outsiders -
they are neither opaque nor completely transparent; (iii) such
entities sometimes have non-aesthetic - ceremonial or religious or
propagandistic - functions, and sometimes do not; (iv) such
entities might conceivably be produced by non-human species,
terrestrial or otherwise; and it seems at least in principle possible
that they be extraspecifically recognizable as such; (v)
traditionally, artworks are intentionally endowed by their makers with
properties, often sensory, having a significant degree of aesthetic
interest, usually surpassing that of most everyday objects; (vi) art's
normative dimension - the high value placed on making and
consuming art - appears to be essential to it, and artworks can
have considerable moral and political as well as aesthetic power;
(vii) the arts are always changing, just as the rest of culture is: as
artists experiment creatively, new genres, art-forms, and styles
develop; standards of taste and sensibilities evolve; understandings
of aesthetic properties, aesthetic experience, and the nature of art
evolve; (viii) there are institutions in some but not all cultures
which involve a focus on artifacts and performances that have a high
degree of aesthetic interest but lack any practical, ceremonial, or
religious use; (ix) entities seemingly lacking aesthetic interest, and
entities having a high degree of aesthetic interest, are not
infrequently grouped together as artworks by such institutions; (x)
lots of things besides artworks - for example, natural entities
(sunsets, landscapes, flowers, shadows), human beings, and abstract
entities (theories, proofs, mathematical entities) - have
interesting aesthetic properties.
Of these facts, those having to do with art's contingent
cultural and historical features are emphasized by some definitions of
art. Other definitions of art give priority to explaining those facts
that reflect art's universality and continuity with other
aesthetic phenomena. Still other definitions attempt to explain both
art's contingent characteristics and its more abiding ones while
giving priority to neither.
Two general constraints on definitions are particularly relevant to
definitions of art. First, given that accepting that something is
inexplicable is generally a philosophical last resort, and granting
the importance of extensional adequacy, list-like or enumerative
definitions are if possible to be avoided. Enumerative definitions,
lacking principles that explain why what is on the list is on the
list, don't, notoriously, apply to *definienda* that
evolve, and provide no clue to the next or general case
(Tarski's definition of truth, for example, is standardly
criticized as unenlightening because it rests on a list-like
definition of primitive denotation; see Field 1972; Devitt 2001;
Davidson 2005). Corollary: when everything else is equal (and it is
controversial whether and when that condition is satisfied in the case
of definitions of art), non-disjunctive definitions are preferable to
disjunctive ones. Second, given that most classes outside of
mathematics are vague, and that the existence of borderline cases is
characteristic of vague classes, definitions that take the class of
artworks to have borderline cases are preferable to definitions that
don't (Davies 1991 and 2006; Stecker 2005).
Whether any definition of art does account for these facts and satisfy
these constraints, or *could* account for these facts and
satisfy these constraints, are key questions for aesthetics and the
philosophy of art.
## 2. Definitions From the History of Philosophy
Classical definitions, at least as they are portrayed in
contemporary discussions of the definition of art, take artworks to be
characterized by a single type of property. The standard candidates are
representational properties, expressive properties, and formal
properties. So there are representational or mimetic definitions,
expressive definitions, and formalist definitions, which hold that
artworks are characterized by their possession of, respectively,
representational, expressive, and formal properties. It is not
difficult to find fault with these simple definitions. For example,
possessing representational, expressive, and formal properties cannot
be sufficient conditions, since, obviously, instructional manuals are
representations, but not typically artworks, human faces and gestures
have expressive properties without being works of art, and both natural
objects and artifacts produced solely for homely utilitarian purposes
have formal properties but are not artworks.
The ease of these dismissals, though, serves as a reminder of the
fact that classical definitions of art are significantly less
philosophically self-contained or freestanding than are most
contemporary definitions of art. Each classical definition stands in
close and complicated relationships to its system's other
complexly interwoven parts - epistemology, ontology, value theory,
philosophy of mind, etc. Relatedly, great philosophers
characteristically analyze the key theoretical components of their
definitions of art in distinctive and subtle ways. For these reasons,
understanding such definitions in isolation from the systems or
corpuses of which they are parts is difficult, and brief summaries are
invariably somewhat misleading. Nevertheless, some representative
examples of historically influential definitions of art offered by
major figures in the history of philosophy should be mentioned.
### 2.1 Some examples
Plato holds in the *Republic* and elsewhere that the arts are
representational, or *mimetic* (sometimes translated
"imitative"). Artworks are ontologically dependent on,
imitations of, and therefore inferior to, ordinary physical
objects. Physical objects in turn are ontologically dependent on, and
imitations of, and hence inferior to, what is most real, the
non-physical unchanging Forms. Grasped perceptually, artworks present
only an appearance of an appearance of the Forms, which are grasped by
reason alone. Consequently, artistic experience cannot yield
knowledge. Nor do the makers of artworks work from knowledge. Because
artworks engage an unstable, lower part of the soul, art should be
subservient to moral realities, which, along with truth, are more
metaphysically fundamental and, properly understood, more humanly
important than, beauty. The arts are not, for Plato, the primary
sphere in which beauty operates. The Platonic conception of beauty is
extremely wide and metaphysical: there is a Form of Beauty, which can
only be known non-perceptually, but it is more closely related to the
erotic than to the arts. (See Janaway 1998, the entry on
Plato's aesthetics, and the entry on
Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry.)
Kant has a definition of art, and of fine art; the latter, which
Kant calls the art of genius, is "a kind of representation that
is purposive in itself and, though without an end, nevertheless
promotes the cultivation of the mental powers for sociable
communication" (Kant, *Critique of the Power of
Judgment*, Guyer translation, section 44, 46).) When fully
unpacked, the definition has representational, formalist and
expressivist elements, and focuses as much on the creative activity of
the artistic genius (who, according to Kant, possesses an "innate
mental aptitude through which nature gives the rule to art") as on the
artworks produced by that activity. Kant's aesthetic theory is, for
architectonic reasons, not focused on art. Art for Kant falls under
the broader topic of aesthetic judgment, which covers judgments of the
beautiful, judgments of the sublime, and teleological judgments of
natural organisms and of nature itself. So Kant's definition of art is
a relatively small part of his theory of aesthetic judgment. And
Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment is itself situated in a hugely
ambitious theoretical structure that, famously, aims, to account for,
and work out the interconnections between, scientific knowledge,
morality, and religious faith. (See the entry on
Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology
and the general entry on
Immanuel Kant.)
Hegel's account of art incorporates his view of beauty; he
defines beauty as the sensuous/perceptual appearance or expression of
absolute truth. The best artworks convey, by sensory/perceptual means,
the deepest metaphysical truth. The deepest metaphysical truth,
according to Hegel, is that the universe is the concrete realization
of what is conceptual or rational. That is, what is conceptual or
rational is real, and is the imminent force that animates and propels
the self-consciously developing universe. The universe is the concrete
realization of what is conceptual or rational, and the rational or
conceptual is superior to the sensory. So, as the mind and its
products alone are capable of truth, artistic beauty is metaphysically
superior to natural beauty (Hegel, *Lectures*, [1886, 4]). A
central and defining feature of beautiful works of art is that,
through the medium of sensation, each one presents the most
fundamental values of its
civilization.[1]
Art, therefore, as a cultural expression, operates in the same sphere
as religion and philosophy, and expresses the same content as
they. But art "reveals to consciousness the deepest interests of
humanity" in a different manner than do religion and philosophy,
because art alone, of the three, works by sensuous means. So, given
the superiority of the conceptual to the non-conceptual, and the fact
that art's medium for expressing/presenting culture's
deepest values is the sensual or perceptual, art's medium is
limited and inferior in comparison with the medium that religion uses
to express the same content, viz., mental imagery. Art and religion in
turn are, in this respect, inferior to philosophy, which employs a
conceptual medium to present its content. Art initially predominates,
in each civilization, as the supreme mode of cultural expression,
followed, successively, by religion and philosophy. Similarly, because
the broadly "logical" relations between art, religion and
philosophy determine the actual structure of art, religion, and
philosophy, and because cultural ideas about what is intrinsically
valuable develop from sensuous to non-sensuous conceptions, history is
divided into periods that reflect the teleological development from
the sensuous to the conceptual. Art in general, too, develops in
accord with the historical growth of non-sensuous or conceptual
conceptions from sensuous conceptions, and each individual art-form
develops historically in the same way (Hegel, *Lectures*; Wicks
1993, see also the entries on
Hegel and on
Hegel's Aesthetics).
For treatments of other influential definitions
of art, inseparable from the complex philosophical systems or corpuses in which
they occur, see, for example, the entries on
18th Century German Aesthetics,
Arthur Schopenhauer,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
and Dewey's Aesthetics.
## 3. Skepticism about Definitions of Art
Skeptical doubts about the possibility and value of a definition of
art have figured importantly in the discussion in aesthetics since the
1950s, and though their influence has subsided somewhat, uneasiness
about the definitional project persists. (See section 4, below, and
also Kivy 1997, Brand 2000, and Walton 2007).
### 3.1 Skepticisms inspired by views of concepts, history, Marxism, feminism
A common family of arguments, inspired by Wittgenstein's
famous remarks about games (Wittgenstein 1953), has it that the
phenomena of art are, by their nature, too diverse to admit of the
unification that a satisfactory definition strives for, or that a
definition of art, were there to be such a thing, would exert a
stifling influence on artistic creativity. One expression of this
impulse is Weitz's Open Concept Argument: any concept is
open if a case can be imagined which would call for some sort of
decision on our part to extend the use of the concept to cover it, or
to close the concept and invent a new one to deal with the new case;
all open concepts are indefinable; and there are cases calling for a
decision about whether to extend or close the concept of art. Hence art
is indefinable (Weitz 1956). Against this it is claimed that
change does not, in general, rule out the preservation of identity over
time, that decisions about concept-expansion may be principled rather
than capricious, and that nothing bars a definition of art from
incorporating a novelty requirement.
A second sort of argument, less common today than in the
heyday of a certain form of extreme Wittgensteinianism, urges that the
concepts that make up the stuff of most definitions of art
(expressiveness, form) are embedded in general philosophical theories
which incorporate traditional metaphysics and epistemology. But since
traditional metaphysics and epistemology are prime instances of
language gone on conceptually confused holiday, definitions of art
share in the conceptual confusions of traditional
philosophy (Tilghman 1984).
A third sort of argument, more historically inflected than the first,
takes off from an influential study by the historian of philosophy
Paul Kristeller, in which he argued that the modern system of the five
major arts [painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and music]
which underlies all modern aesthetics ... is of comparatively
recent origin and did not assume definite shape before the eighteenth
century, although it had many ingredients which go back to classical,
mediaeval, and Renaissance thought. (Kristeller, 1951) Since that list of five arts is
somewhat arbitrary, and since even those five do not share a single
common nature, but rather are united, at best, only by several
overlapping features, and since the number of art forms has increased
since the eighteenth century, Kristeller's work may be taken to
suggest that our concept of art differs from that of the eighteenth
century. As a matter of historical fact, there simply is no stable
*definiendum* for a definition of art to capture.
A fourth sort of argument suggests that a definition of art stating
individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for a thing to
be an artwork, is likely to be discoverable only if cognitive science
makes it plausible to think that humans categorize things in terms of
necessary and sufficient conditions. But, the argument continues,
cognitive science actually supports the view that the structure of
concepts mirrors the way humans categorize things - which is with
respect to their similarity to prototypes (or exemplars), and not in
terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. So the quest for a
definition of art that states individually necessary and jointly
sufficient conditions is misguided and not likely to succeed (Dean
2003). Against this it has been urged that psychological theories
of concepts like the prototype theory and its relatives can provide at
best an account of how people *in fact* classify things, but not
an account of *correct* classifications of extra-psychological
phenomena, and that, even if relevant, prototype theory and other
psychological theories of concepts are at present too controversial to
draw substantive philosophical morals from (Rey 1983; Adajian 2005).
A fifth argument against defining art, with a normative tinge that is
psychologistic rather than sociopolitical, takes the fact that there
is no philosophical consensus about the definition of art as reason to
hold that no unitary concept of art exists. Concepts of art, like all
concepts, after all, should be used for the purpose(s) they best
serve. But not all concepts of art serve all purposes equally
well. So not all art concepts should be used for the same purposes.
Art should be defined only if there is a unitary concept of art that
serves all of art's various purposes - historical,
conventional, aesthetic, appreciative, communicative, and so on. So,
since there is no purpose-independent use of the concept of art, art
should not be defined (Mag Uidhir and Magnus 2011; cf. Meskin 2008).
In response, it is noted that some account of what makes various
concepts of art concepts of *art* is still required; this
leaves open the possibility of some degree of unity beneath the
apparent multiplicity. The fact (if it is one) that different concepts
of art are used for different purposes does not itself imply that they
are not connected in ordered, to-some-degree systematic ways. The
relation between (say) the historical concept of art and the
appreciative concept of art is not an accidental, unsystematic
relation, like that between river banks and savings banks, but is
something like the relation between Socrates' healthiness and
the healthiness of Socrates' diet. That is, it is not evident
that there exist a mere arbitrary heap or disjunction of art concepts,
constituting an unsystematic patchwork. Perhaps there is a single
concept of art with different facets that interlock in an ordered way,
or else a multiplicity of concepts that constitute a unity because one
is at the core, and the others depend asymmetrically on it. (The last
is an instance of core-dependent homonymy; see the entry on
Aristotle, section on Essentialism and
Homonymy.) Multiplicity alone doesn't entail pluralism.
A sixth, broadly Marxian sort of objection rejects the project of
defining art as an unwitting (and confused) expression of a harmful
ideology. On this view, the search for a definition of art
presupposes, wrongly, that the concept of the aesthetic is a
creditable one. But since the concept of the aesthetic necessarily
involves the equally bankrupt concept of disinterestedness, its use
advances the illusion that what is most real about things can and
should be grasped or contemplated without attending to the social and
economic conditions of their production. Definitions of art,
consequently, spuriously confer ontological dignity and respectability
on social phenomena that probably in fact call more properly for
rigorous social criticism and change. Their real function is
ideological, not philosophical (Eagleton 1990).
Seventh, the members of a complex of skeptically-flavored arguments,
from feminist philosophy of art, begin with premises to the effect
that art and art-related concepts and practices have been
systematically skewed by sex or gender. Such premises are supported
by a variety of considerations. (a) The artworks the Western artistic
canon recognizes as great are dominated by male-centered perspectives
and stereotypes, and almost all the artists the canon recognizes as
great are men - unsurprisingly, given economic, social, and
institutional impediments that prevented women from making art at all.
Moreover, the concept of genius developed historically in such a way
as to exclude women artists (Battersby, 1989, Korsmeyer 2004). (b) The
fine arts' focus on purely aesthetic, non-utilitarian value resulted
in the marginalization as mere "crafts" of items of considerable
aesthetic interest made and used by women for domestic practical
purposes. Moreover, because all aesthetic judgments are situated and
particular, there can be no such thing as disinterested taste. If
there is no such thing as disinterested taste, then it is hard to see
how there could be universal standards of aesthetic excellence. The
non-existence of universal standards of aesthetic excellence
undermines the idea of an artistic canon (and with it the project of
defining art). Art as historically constituted, and art-related
practices and concepts, then, reflect views and practices that
presuppose and perpetuate the subordination of women. The data that
definitions of art are supposed to explain are biased, corrupt and
incomplete. As a consequence, present definitions of art,
incorporating or presupposing as they do a framework that incorporates
a history of systematically biased, hierarchical, fragmentary, and
mistaken understandings of art and art-related phenomena and concepts,
may be so androcentric as to be untenable. Some theorists have
suggested that different genders have systematically unique artistic
styles, methods, or modes of appreciating and valuing art. If so,
then a separate canon and gynocentric definitions of art are indicated
(Battersby 1989, Frueh 1991). In any case, in the face of these
facts, the project of defining art in anything like the traditional
way is to be regarded with suspicion (Brand, 2000).
An eighth argument sort of skeptical argument concludes that, insofar
as almost all contemporary definitions foreground the nature of
art*works*, rather than the individual *arts* to which
(most? all?) artworks belong, they are philosophically unproductive
(Lopes,
2014).[2]
The grounds for this conclusion concern disagreements among standard
definitions as to the artistic status of entities whose status is for
theoretical reasons unclear - e.g., things like ordinary bottleracks
(Duchamp's *Bottlerack*) and silence (John Cage's *4'33''*).
If these hard cases are artworks, what makes them so, given their
apparent lack of any of the traditional properties of artworks? Are,
they, at best, marginal cases? On the other hand, if they are not
artworks, then why have generations of experts - art historians,
critics, and collectors - classified them as such? And to whom else
should one look to determine the true nature of art? (There are, it is
claimed, few or no empirical studies of art full stop, though
empirical studies of the individual arts abound.) Such disputes
inevitably end in stalemate. Stalemate results because (a) standard
artwork-focused definitions of art endorse different criteria of
theory choice, and (b) on the basis of their preferred criteria,
appeal to incompatible intuitions about the status of such
theoretically-vexed cases. In consequence, disagreements between
standard definitions of art that foreground artworks are
unresolvable. To avoid this stalemate, an alternative definitional
strategy that foregrounds the arts rather than individual artworks, is
indicated. (See section 4.5.)
### 3.2 Some descendants of skepticism
Philosophers influenced by the moderate Wittgensteinian strictures
discussed above have offered family resemblance accounts of art, which,
as they purport to be non-definitions, may be usefully considered at
this point. Two species of family resemblance views will be considered:
the resemblance-to-a-paradigm version, and the cluster
version.
On the resemblance-to-a-paradigm version, something is, or is
identifiable as, an artwork if it resembles, in the right way, certain
paradigm artworks, which possess most although not necessarily all of
art's typical features. (The "is identifiable"
qualification is intended to make the family resemblance view something
more epistemological than a definition, although it is unclear that
this really avoids a commitment to constitutive claims about
art's nature.) Against this view: since things do not
resemble each other *simpliciter*, but only in at least one
respect or other, the account is either far too inclusive, since
everything resembles everything else in some respect or other, or, if
the variety of resemblance is specified, tantamount to a definition,
since resemblance in that respect will be either a necessary or
sufficient condition for being an artwork. The family resemblance
view raises questions, moreover, about the membership and unity of the
class of paradigm artworks. If the account lacks an explanation of why
some items and not others go on the list of paradigm works, it seems
explanatorily deficient. But if it includes a principle that governs
membership on the list, or if expertise is required to constitute the
list, then the principle, or whatever properties the experts'
judgments track, seem to be doing the philosophical work.
The cluster version of the family resemblance view has been defended
by a number of philosophers (Bond 1975, Dissanayake 1990, Dutton
2006, Gaut 2000). The view typically provides a list of properties, no one of
which is a necessary condition for being a work of art, but which are
jointly sufficient for being a work of art, and which is such that at
least one proper subset thereof is sufficient for being a work of
art. Lists offered vary, but overlap considerably. Here is one, due to Gaut: (1)
possessing positive aesthetic properties; (2) being expressive of
emotion; (3) being intellectually challenging; (4) being formally
complex and coherent; (5) having the capacity to convey complex
meanings; (6) exhibiting an individual point of view; (7) being
original; (8) being an artifact or performance which is the product of
a high degree of skill; (9) belonging to an established artistic form;
(10) being the product of an intention to make a work of art (Gaut
2000). The cluster account has been criticized on several grounds.
First, given its logical structure, it is in fact equivalent to a
long, complicated, but finite, disjunction, which makes it difficult
to see why it isn't a definition (Davies 2006). Second, if the list
of properties is incomplete, as some cluster theorists hold, then some
justification or principle would be needed for extending it. Third,
the inclusion of the ninth property on the list, *belonging to an
established art form*, seems to regenerate (or duck), rather than answer, the
definitional question. Finally, it is worth noting that, although
cluster theorists stress what they take to be the motley heterogeneity of the
class of artworks, they tend with surprising regularity to tacitly
give the aesthetic a special, perhaps unifying, status among the
properties they put forward as merely disjunctive. One cluster
theorist, for example, gives a list very similar to the one discussed
above (it includes representational properties, expressiveness,
creativity, exhibiting a high degree of skill, belonging to an
established artform), but omits aesthetic properties on the grounds
that it is the combination of the other items on the list which,
combined in the experience of the work of art, are precisely the
aesthetic qualities of the work (Dutton 2006). Gaut, whose list is
cited above, includes aesthetic properties as a separate item on the
list, but construes them very narrowly; the difference between these
ways of formulating the cluster view appears to be mainly nominal. And
an earlier cluster theorist defines artworks as all and only those
things that belong to any instantiation of an artform, offers a list
of seven properties all of which together are intended to capture the
core of what it is to be an artform, though none is either necessary
or sufficient, and then claims that having aesthetic value (of the
same sort as mountains, sunsets, mathematical theorems) is "what
art is *for*" (Bond 1975).
## 4. Contemporary Definitions
Definitions of art attempt to make sense of two different sorts of
facts: art has important historically contingent cultural features, as
well as trans-historical, pan-cultural characteristics that point in
the direction of a relatively stable aesthetic core. (Theorists who
regard art as an invention of eighteenth-century Europe will, of
course, regard this way of putting the matter as tendentious, on the
grounds that entities produced outside that culturally distinctive
institution do not fall under the extension of "art" and
hence are irrelevant to the art-defining project (Shiner
2001). Whether the concept of art is precise enough to justify this
much confidence about what falls under its extension claim is
unclear.) Conventionalist definitions take art's contingent
cultural features to be explanatorily fundamental, and aim to capture
the phenomena - revolutionary modern art, the traditional close
connection of art with the aesthetic, the possibility of autonomous
art traditions, etc. - in social/historical
terms. Classically-flavored or traditional definitions (also sometimes
called "functionalist") definitions reverse this
explanatory order. Such classically-flavored definitions take
traditional concepts like the aesthetic (or allied concepts like the
formal, or the expressive) as basic, and aim to account for the
phenomena by making those concepts harder - for example, by
endorsing a concept of the aesthetic rich enough to include
non-perceptual properties, or by attempting an integration of those
concepts (e.g., Eldridge, section 4.4 below) .
### 4.1 Conventionalist Definitions: Institutional and Historical
Conventionalist definitions deny that art has essential connection to
aesthetic properties, or to formal properties, or to expressive
properties, or to any type of property taken by traditional
definitions to be essential to art. Conventionalist definitions have
been strongly influenced by the emergence, in the twentieth century,
of artworks that seem to differ radically from all previous
artworks. Avant-garde works like Marcel Duchamp's
"ready-mades" - ordinary unaltered objects like
snow-shovels (*In Advance of the Broken Arm*) and
bottle-racks - conceptual works like Robert Barry's *All the things I know
but of which I am not at the moment thinking - 1:36 PM; June 15,
1969*, and John Cage's *4'33''*, have seemed to
many philosophers to lack or even, somehow, repudiate, the traditional
properties of art: intended aesthetic interest, artifactuality, even
perceivability. Conventionalist definitions have also been strongly
influenced by the work of a number of historically-minded
philosophers, who have documented the rise and development of modern
ideas of the fine arts, the individual arts, the work of art, and the
aesthetic (Kristeller, Shiner, Carroll, Goehr, Kivy).
Conventionalist definitions come in two varieties, institutional and
historical. Institutionalist conventionalism, or institutionalism, a
synchronic view, typically hold that to be a work of art is to be an
artifact of a kind created, by an artist, to be presented to an
artworld public (Dickie 1984). Historical conventionalism, a
diachronic view, holds that artworks necessarily stand in an
art-historical relation to some set of earlier artworks.
### 4.2 Institutional Definitions
The groundwork for institutional definitions was laid by Arthur Danto,
better known to non-philosophers as the long-time influential art
critic for the *Nation*. Danto coined the term
"artworld", by which he meant "an atmosphere of art
theory." Danto's definition has been glossed as follows:
something is a work of art if and only if (i) it has a subject (ii)
about which it projects some attitude or point of view (has a style)
(iii) by means of rhetorical ellipsis (usually metaphorical) which
ellipsis engages audience participation in filling in what is missing,
and (iv) where the work in question and the interpretations thereof
require an art historical context (Danto, Carroll). Clause (iv) is
what makes the definition institutionalist. The view has been
criticized for entailing that art criticism written in a highly
rhetorical style is art, lacking but requiring an independent account
of what makes a context *art historical*, and for not applying
to music.
The most prominent and influential institutionalism is that of George
Dickie. Dickie's institutionalism has evolved over
time. According to an early version, a work of art is an artifact upon
which some person(s) acting on behalf of the artworld has conferred
the status of candidate for appreciation (Dickie 1974). Dickie's more
recent version consists of an interlocking set of five definitions:
(1) An artist is a person who participates with understanding in the
making of a work of art. (2) A work of art is an artifact of a kind
created to be presented to an artworld public. (3) A public is a set
of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to
understand an object which is presented to them. (4) The artworld is
the totality of all artworld systems. (5) An artworld system is a
framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an
artworld public (Dickie 1984). Both versions have been widely
criticized. Philosophers have objected that art created outside any
institution seems possible, although the definition rules it out, and
that the artworld, like any institution, seems capable of error. It
has also been urged that the definition's obvious circularity is
vicious, and that, given the inter-definition of the key concepts
(artwork, artworld system, artist, artworld public) it lacks any
informative way of distinguishing *art* institutions systems
from other, structurally similar, social institutions (D. Davies 2004,
pp. 248-249, notes that both the artworld and the
"commerceworld" seem to fall under that definition). Early
on, Dickie claimed that anyone who sees herself as a member of the
artworld *is* a member of the artworld: if this is true, then
unless there are constraints on the kinds of things the artworld can
put forward as artworks or candidate artworks, any entity can be an
artwork (though not all are), which appears overly expansive. Finally,
Matravers has helpfully distinguished *strong* and
*weak* institutionalism. Strong institutionalism holds that
there is some reason that is always the reason the art institution has
for saying that something is a work of art. Weak institutionalism
holds that, for every work of art, there is some reason or other that
the institution has for saying that it is a work of art (Matravers
2000). Weak institutionalism, in particular, raises questions about
art's unity: if absolutely nothing unifies the reasons that the
artworld gives for conferring art-hood on things, then the unity of
the class of artworks is vanishingly small. Conventionalist views,
with their emphasis on art's heterogeneity, swallow this
implication. From the perspective of traditional definitions, doings
so underplays art's substantial if incomplete unity, while leaving it
a puzzle why art would be worth caring about.
Some recent versions of institutionalism depart from Dickie's by
accepting the burden, which Dickie rejected, of providing a
substantive, non-circular account of what it is to be an art
institution or an artworld. One, due to David Davies, does so by
building in Nelson Goodman's account of aesthetic symbolic
functions. Another, due to Abell, combines Searle's account of social
institutions with Gaut's characterization of art-making properties,
and builds an account of artistic value on that coupling.
Davies' neo-institutionalism holds that making an artwork
requires articulating an artistic statement, which requires specifying
artistic properties, which in turn requires the manipulation of an
artistic vehicle. Goodman's "symptoms of the
aesthetic" are utilized to clarify the conditions under which a
practice of making is a practice of *artistic* making: on
Goodman's view, a symbol functions aesthetically when it is
syntactically dense, semantically dense, relatively replete, and
characterized by multiple and complex reference (D. Davies 2004;
Goodman 1968; see the entry on
Goodman's aesthetics).
Manipulating an artistic vehicle is in turn possible only if the
artist consciously operates with reference to shared understandings
embodied in the practices of a community of receivers. So art's
nature is institutional in the broad sense (or, perhaps better,
socio-cultural). By way of criticism, Davies'
neo-institutionalism may be questioned on the grounds that, since all
pictorial symbols are syntactically dense, semantically dense,
relatively replete, and often exemplify the properties they represent,
it seems to entail that every colored picture, including those in any
catalog of industrial products, is an artwork (Abell 2012).
Abell's institutional definition adapts Searle's view of social kinds:
what it is for some social kind, *F*, to be *F* is for it to be
collectively believed to be *F* (Abell 2012; Searle 1995, 2010;
and see the entry on
social institutions).
On Abell's view, more specifically, an institution's type is
determined by the valued function(s) that it was collectively believed
at its inception to promote. The valued functions collective belief in
which make an institution an art institution are those spelled out by
Gaut in his cluster account (see section 3.1, above). That is,
something is an art institution if and only if it is an institution
whose existence is due to its being perceived to perform certain
functions, which functions form a significant subset of the following:
promoting positive aesthetic qualities; promoting the expression of
emotion; facilitating the posing of intellectual challenges, and the
rest of Gaut's list. Plugging in Gaut's list yields the final
definition: something is an artwork if and only if it is the product
of an art institution (as just defined) and it directly effects the effectiveness with which that institution performs the perceived functions to which
its existence is due. One worry is whether Searle's account of
institutions is up to the task required of it. Some institutional
social kinds have this trait: something can fail to be a token of that
kind even if there is collective agreement that it counts as a token
of that kind. Suppose someone gives a big cocktail party, to which
everyone in Paris invited, and things get so out of hand that the
casualty rate is greater than the Battle of Austerlitz. Even if
everyone thinks the event was a cocktail party, it is possible
(contrary to Searle) that they are mistaken: it may have been a war or
battle. It's not clear that art isn't like this. If so, then the fact
that an institution is collectively believed to be an art institution
needn't suffice to make it so (Khalidi 2013; see also the entry on
social
institutions).[3]
A second worry: if its failure to specify which subsets of the ten
cluster properties suffice to make something an artwork significantly
flaws Gaut's cluster account, then failure to specify which subsets of
Gaut's ten properties suffice to make something an art institution
significantly flaws Abellian institutionalism.
### 4.3 Historical Definitions
Historical definitions hold that what characterizes artworks is
standing in some specified art-historical relation to some specified
earlier artworks, and disavow any commitment to a trans-historical
concept of art, or the "artish." Historical definitions
come in several varieties. All of them are, or resemble, inductive
definitions: they claim that certain entities belong unconditionally
to the class of artworks, while others do so because they stand in the
appropriate relations thereto. According to the best known version,
Levinson's intentional-historical definition, an artwork is a thing
that has been seriously intended for regard in any way preexisting or
prior artworks are or were correctly regarded (Levinson 1990). A
second version, historical narrativism, comes in several varieties. On
one, a sufficient but not necessary condition for the identification
of a candidate as a work of art is the construction of a true
historical narrative according to which the candidate was created by
an artist in an artistic context with a recognized and live artistic
motivation, and as a result of being so created, it resembles at least
one acknowledged artwork (Carroll 1993). On another, more ambitious
and overtly nominalistic version of historical narrativism, something
is an artwork if and only if (1) there are internal historical
relations between it and already established artworks; (2) these
relations are correctly identified in a narrative; and (3) that
narrative is accepted by the relevant experts. The experts do
not *detect* that certain entities are artworks; rather, the
fact that the experts assert that certain properties are significant
in particular cases is constitutive of art (Stock 2003).
The similarity of these views to institutionalism is obvious, and
the criticisms offered parallel those urged against institutionalism.
First, historical definitions appear to require, but lack, any
informative characterization of art traditions (art functions, artistic
contexts, etc.) and hence any way of informatively distinguishing them
(and likewise art functions, or artistic predecessors) from
*non*-art traditions (non-art functions, non-artistic
predecessors). Correlatively, non-Western art, or alien, autonomous
art of any kind appears to pose a problem for historical views: any
autonomous art tradition or artworks - terrestrial,
extra-terrestrial, or merely possible - causally isolated from
our art tradition, is either ruled out by the definition, which seems
to be a *reductio*, or included, which concedes the existence
of a supra-historical concept of art. So, too, there could be entities
that for adventitious reasons are not correctly identified in
historical narratives, although in actual fact they stand in relations
to established artworks that make them correctly *describable*
in narratives of the appropriate sort. Historical definitions entail
that such entities aren't artworks, but it seems at least as
plausible to say that they are artworks that are not identified as such. Second,
historical definitions also require, but do not provide a
satisfactory, informative account of the basis case - the first
artworks, or ur-artworks, in the case of the intentional-historical
definitions, or the first or central art-forms, in the case of
historical functionalism. Third, nominalistic historical definitions
seem to face a version of the *Euthyphro* dilemma. For either
such definitions include substantive characterizations of what it is
to be an expert, or they don't. If, on one hand, they include no
characterization of what it is to be an expert, and hence no
explanation as to why the list of experts contains the people it does,
then they imply that what makes things artworks is inexplicable. On
the other hand, suppose such definitions provide a substantive account
of what it is to be an expert, so that to be an expert is to possess
some ability lacked by non-experts (taste, say) in virtue of the
possession of which they are able to discern historical connections
between established artworks and candidate artworks. Then the
definition's claim to be interestingly *historical* is
questionable, because it makes art status a function of whatever
ability it is that permits experts to discern the art-making
properties.
Defenders of historical definitions have replies. First, as regards
autonomous art traditions, it can be held that anything we would
recognize as an *art* tradition or an *artistic*
practice would display aesthetic concerns, because aesthetic concerns
have been central from the start, and persisted centrally for
thousands of years, in the Western art tradition. Hence it is an
historical, not a conceptual truth that anything we recognize as an
art practice will centrally involve the aesthetic; it is just that
aesthetic concerns that have always dominated our art tradition
(Levinson 2002). The idea here is that *if the reason that anything
we'd take to be a Ph-tradition would have Ps-concerns is
that our Ph-tradition has focused on Ps-concerns since its
inception, then it is not essential to Ph-traditions that they have
Ps-concerns, and Ph is a purely historical concept*. But
this principle entails, implausibly, that every concept is purely
historical. Suppose that we discovered a new civilization whose
inhabitants could predict how the physical world works with great
precision, on the basis of a substantial body of empirically acquired
knowledge that they had accumulated over centuries. The reason we
would credit them with having a *scientific* tradition might
well be that our own scientific tradition has since its inception
focused on explaining things. It does not seem to follow that science
is a purely historical concept with no essential connection to
explanatory aims. (Other theorists hold that it is historically
necessary that art begins with the aesthetic, but deny that
art's nature is to be defined in terms of its historical
unfolding (Davies 1997).) Second, as to the first artworks, or the
central art-forms or functions, some theorists hold that an account of
them can only take the form of an enumeration. Stecker takes this
approach: he says that the account of what makes something a central
art form at a given time is, at its core, institutional, and that the
central artforms can only be listed (Stecker 1997 and 2005). Whether
relocating the list at a different, albeit deeper, level in the
definition renders the definition sufficiently informative is an open
question. Third, as to the *Euthyphro*-style dilemma, it might
be held that the categorial distinction between artworks and
"mere real things" (Danto 1981) explains the distinction
between experts and non-experts. Experts are able, it is said, to
create new categories of art. When created, new categories bring with
them new universes of discourse. New universes of discourse in turn
make reasons available that otherwise would not be available. Hence,
on this view, it is both the case that the experts' say-so alone
suffices to make mere real things into artworks, and also true that
experts' conferrals of art-status have reasons (McFee
2011).
### 4.4 Traditional (mainly aesthetic) definitions
Traditional definitions take some function(s) or intended function(s)
to be definitive of artworks. Here only aesthetic definitions, which
connect art essentially with the aesthetic - aesthetic judgments,
experience, or properties - will be considered. Different
aesthetic definitions incorporate different views of aesthetic
properties and judgments. See the entry on
aesthetic judgment.
As noted above, some philosophers lean heavily on a distinction
between aesthetic properties and artistic properties, taking the
former to be perceptually striking qualities that can be directly
perceived in works, without knowledge of their origin and purpose, and
the latter to be relational properties that works possess in virtue of
their relations to art history, art genres, etc. It is also, of
course, possible to hold a less restrictive view of aesthetic
properties, on which aesthetic properties need not be perceptual; on
this broader view, it is unnecessary to deny what it seems pointless
to deny, that abstracta like mathematical entities and scientific laws
possess aesthetic properties.)
Monroe Beardsley's definition holds that an artwork:
"either an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of
affording an experience with marked aesthetic character or
(incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type of
arrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity"
(Beardsley 1982, 299). (For more on Beardsley, see the entry on
Beardsley's aesthetics.)
Beardsley's conception of aesthetic experience is Deweyan:
aesthetic experiences are experiences that are complete, unified,
intense experiences of the way things appear to us, and are, moreover,
experiences which are controlled by the things experienced (see the
entry on
Dewey's aesthetics).
Zangwill's aesthetic definition of art says that something is a
work of art if and only if someone had an insight that certain
aesthetic properties would be determined by certain nonaesthetic
properties, and for this reason the thing was intentionally endowed
with the aesthetic properties in virtue of the nonaesthetic properties
as envisaged in the insight (Zangwill 1995a,b). Aesthetic properties
for Zangwill are those judgments that are the subject of
"verdictive aesthetic judgments" (judgements of beauty and
ugliness) and "substantive aesthetic judgements" (e.g., of
daintiness, elegance, delicacy, etc.). The latter are ways of being
beautiful or ugly; aesthetic in virtue of a special close relation to
verdictive judgments, which are subjectively universal. Other
aesthetic definitions build in different accounts of the
aesthetic. Eldridge's aesthetic definition holds that the satisfying appropriateness to one another of a thing's form and content is the aesthetic quality possession of which is necessary and sufficient for
a thing's being art (Eldridge 1985). Or one might define aesthetic
properties as those having an evaluative component, whose perception
involves the perception of certain formal base properties, such as
shape and color (De Clercq 2002), and construct an aesthetic
definition incorporating that view.
Views which combine features of institutional and aesthetic
definitions also exist. Iseminger, for example, builds a definition on
an account of appreciation, on which to appreciate a thing's
being *F* is to find experiencing its being *F* to be
valuable in itself, and an account of aesthetic communication (which it
is the function of the artworld to promote) (Iseminger 2004).
Aesthetic definitions have been criticized for being both too narrow
and too broad. They are held to be too narrow because they are unable
to cover influential modern works like Duchamp's ready-mades and
conceptual works like Robert Barry's *All the things I know but of
which I am not at the moment thinking - 1:36 PM; June 15, 1969*,
which appear to lack aesthetic properties. (Duchamp famously asserted
that his urinal, *Fountain*, was selected for its lack of
aesthetic features.) Aesthetic definitions are held to be too broad
because beautifully designed automobiles, neatly manicured lawns, and
products of commercial design are often created with the intention of
being objects of aesthetic appreciation, but are not artworks.
Moreover, aesthetic views have been held to have trouble making sense
of bad art (see Dickie 2001; Davies 2006, p. 37). Finally, more
radical doubts about aesthetic definitions center on the
intelligibility and usefulness of the aesthetic. Beardsley's view, for
example, has been criticized by Dickie, who has also offered
influential criticisms of the idea of an aesthetic attitude (Dickie
1965, Cohen 1973, Kivy 1975).
To these criticisms several responses have been offered. First, the
less restrictive conception of aesthetic properties mentioned above,
on which they may be based on non-perceptual formal properties, can be
deployed. On this view, conceptual works would have aesthetic
features, much the same way that mathematical entities are often
claimed to (Shelley 2003, Carroll 2004). Second, a distinction may be
drawn between time-sensitive properties, whose standard observation
conditions include an essential reference to the temporal location of
the observer, and non-time-sensitive properties, which do not.
Higher-order aesthetic properties like drama, humor, and irony, which
account for a significant part of the appeal of Duchamp's and
Cage's works, on this view, would derive from time-sensitive
properties (Zemach 1997). Third, it might be held that it is the
*creative* *act* of presenting something that is in the
relevant sense unfamiliar, into a new context, the artworld, which has
aesthetic properties. Or, fourth, it might be held that
(Zangwill's "second-order" strategy) works like
ready-mades lack aesthetic functions, but are parasitic upon, because
meant to be considered in the context of, works that do have aesthetic
functions, and therefore constitute marginal borderline cases of art
that do not merit the theoretical primacy they are often
given. Finally, it can be flatly denied that the ready-mades were
works of art (Beardsley 1982).
As to the over-inclusiveness of aesthetic definitions, a distinction
might be drawn between primary and secondary functions. Or it may be
maintained that some cars, lawns, and products of industrial design are
on the art/non-art borderline, and so don't constitute clear
and decisive counter-examples. Or, if the claim that aesthetic theories
fail to account for bad art depends on holding that some works have
absolutely *no* aesthetic value whatsoever, as opposed to some
non-zero amount, however infinitesimal, it may be wondered what
justifies that assumption.
### 4.5 Hybrid (Disjunctive) Definitions
Hybrid definitions characteristically disjoin at least one
institutional component with at least one aesthetic component, aiming
thereby to accommodate both more traditional art and avant-garde art
that appears to lack any significant aesthetic dimension. (Such
definitions could also be classified as institutional, on the grounds
that they make provenance sufficient for being a work of art.) Hence
they inherit a feature of conventionalist definitions: in appealing to
art institutions, artworlds, arts, art functions, and so on, they
either include substantive accounts of what it is to be an
*art*institution/world/genre/-form/function, or are
uninformatively circular.
One such disjunctive definition, Longworth and Scarantino's, adapts
Gaut's list of ten clustering properties, where that list (see 3.5
above) includes institutional properties (e.g., belonging to an
established art form) and traditional ones (e.g., possessing positive
aesthetic properties); see also Longworth and Scarantino 2010. The
core idea is that art is defined by a disjunction of minimally
sufficient and disjunctively necessary conditions; to say that a
disjunct is a minimally sufficient constitutive condition for
art-hood, is to say that every proper subset of it is insufficient for
art-hood. An account of what it is for a concept to have disjunctive
defining conditions is also supplied. The definition of art itself is
as follows: [?]*Z*[?]*Y* (Art iff (*Z* [?]
*Y*)), where (a) *Z* and *Y*, formed from properties on
Gaut's cluster list, are either non-empty conjunctions or non-empty
disjunctions of conjunctions or individual properties; (b) there is
some indeterminacy over exactly which disjuncts are sufficient; (c)
*Z* does not entail *Y* and *Y* does not entail
*Z*; (d) *Z* does not entail Art and *Y* does not
entail Art. Instantiation of either *Z* or *Y* suffices for
art-hood; something can be art only if at least one of *Z*,
*Y* is instantiated; and the third condition is included to
prevent the definition from collapsing into a classical one. The
account of what it is for concept *C* to have disjunctive
defining conditions is as follows: *C* iff (*Z* [?]
*Y*), where (i) *Z* and *Y* are non-empty conjunctions
or non-empty disjunctions of conjunctions or individual properties;
(ii) *Z* does not entail *Y* and *Y* does not entail
*Z*; (iii) *Z* does not entail C and *Y* does not
entail C. A worry concerns condition (iii): as written, it seems to
render the account of disjunctive defining conditions
self-contradictory. For if *Z* and *Y* are each minimally
sufficient for *C*, it is impossible that *Z* does not
entail *C* and that *Y* does not entail *C*. If so,
then nothing can satisfy the conditions said to be necessary and
sufficient for a concept to have disjunctive defining conditions.
A second disjunctive hybrid definition, with an historical cast,
Robert Stecker's historical functionalism, holds that an item is an
artwork at time *t*, where *t* is not earlier than the
time at which the item is made, if and only if it is in one of the
central art forms at *t* and is made with the intention of
fulfilling a function art has at *t* or it is an artifact that
achieves excellence in achieving such a function (Stecker 2005). A
question for Stecker's view is whether or not it provides an adequate
account of what it is for a function to be an art function, and
whether, consequently, it can accommodate anti-aesthetic or
non-aesthetic art. The grounds given for thinking that it can are
that, while art's original functions were aesthetic, those functions,
and the intentions with which art is made, can change in unforeseeable
ways. Moreover, aesthetic properties are not always preeminent in
art's predecessor concepts (Stecker 2000). A worry is that if the
operative assumption is that if *x* belongs to a predecessor
tradition of *T* then *x* belongs to *T*, the
possibility is not ruled out that if, for example, the tradition of
magic is a predecessor tradition of the scientific tradition, then
entities that belong to the magic tradition but lacking any of the
standard hallmarks of science are scientific entities.
A third hybrid definition, also disjunctive, is the cladistic
definition defended by Stephen Davies. who holds that something is
art (a) if it shows excellence of skill and achievement in realizing
significant aesthetic goals, and either doing so is its primary,
identifying function or doing so makes a vital contribution to the
realization of its primary, identifying function, or (b) if it falls
under an art genre or art form established and publicly recognized
within an art tradition, or (c) if it is intended by its
maker/presenter to be art and its maker/presenter does what is
necessary and appropriate to realizing that intention (Davies, 2015).
(In biology, a *clade* is a segment in the tree of life: a group
of organisms and the common ancestor they share.) Artworlds are to be
characterized in terms of their origins: they begin with prehistoric
art ancestors, and grow into artworlds. Hence all artworks occupy a
line of descent from their prehistoric art ancestors; that line of
descent comprises an art tradition that grows into an artworld. So
the definition is bottom-up and resolutely anthropocentric. A worry:
the view seems to entail that art traditions can undergo any changes
whatsoever and remain art traditions, since, no matter how distant,
every occupant of the right line of descent is part of the art
tradition. This seems to amount to saying that as long as they remain
traditions at all, art traditions cannot die. Whether art is immortal
in this sense seems open to question. A second worry is that the
requirement that every art tradition and artworld stand in some line
of descent from prehistoric humanoids makes it in principle impossible
for any nonhuman species to make art, as long as that species fails to
occupy the right location in the tree of life. While the
epistemological challenges that identifying artworks made by nonhumans
might pose could be very considerable, this consequence of the
cladistic definition's emphasis on lineage rather than traits raises a
concern about excessively insularity.
A fourth hybrid definition is the "buck-passing" view of Lopes, which
attempts an escape from the stalemate between artwork-focused
definitions over avant-garde anti-aesthetic cases by adopting a
strategy that shifts the focus of the definition of art away from
artworks. The strategy is to recenter philosophical efforts on
different problems, which require attention anyway: (a) the problem of
giving an account of each individual art, and (b) the problem of
defining what it is to be an art, the latter by giving an account of
the larger class of normative/appreciative kinds to which the arts
(and some non-arts) belong. For, given definitions of the individual
arts, and a definition of what it is to be an art, if every artwork
belongs to at least one art (if it belongs to no existing art, then it
pioneers a new art), then a definition of artwork falls out: *x*
is a work of art if and only if *x* is a work of K, where K is an
art (Lopes 2014). When fully spelled out, the definition is
disjunctive: *x* is a work of art if and only if *x* is a
work belonging to art1 or *x* is a work belonging to
art2 or *x* is a work belonging to art3
.... Most of the explanatory work is done by the theories of the
individual arts, since, given the assumption that every artwork
belongs to at least one art, possession of theories of the individual
arts would be necessary and sufficient for settling the artistic or
non-artistic status of any hard case, once it is determined what art a
given work belongs to. As to what makes a practice an art, Lopes'
preferred answer seems to be institutionalism of a Dickiean variety:
an art is an institution in which artists (persons who participate
with understanding in the making of artworks) make artworks to be
presented to an artworld public. (Lopes 2014, Dickie 1984) Thus, on
this view, it is arbitrary which activities are artworld systems:
there is no deeper answer to the question of what makes music an art
than that it has the right institutional
structure.[4]
So it is arbitrary which activities are arts. Two worries. First, the
key claim that every work of art belonging to no extant art pioneers a
new art may be defended on the grounds that any reason to say that a
work belonging to no extant artform is an artwork is a reason to say
that it pioneers a new artform. In response, it is noted that the
question of whether or not a thing belongs to an art arises only when,
and because, there is a prior reason for thinking that the thing is an
artwork. So it seems that what it is to be an artwork is prior, in
some sense, to what it is to be an art. Second, on the buck-passing
theory's institutional theory of the arts, which activities are arts
is arbitrary. This raises a version of the question that was raised
about the cladistic definition's ability to account for the existence
of art outside our (Hominin) tradition. Suppose the connection
between a practice's traits and its status as an art are wholly
contingent. Then the fact that a practice in another culture that
although not part of our tradition had most of the traits of one of
our own arts would be no reason to think that practice was an art, and
no reason to think that the objects belonging to it were artworks. It
is not clear that we are really so in the dark when it comes to
determining whether practices in alien cultures or traditions are
arts.
## 5. Conclusion
Conventionalist definitions account well for modern art, but have
difficulty accounting for art's universality - especially
the fact that there can be art disconnected from "our"
(Western) institutions and traditions, and our species. They also
struggle to account for the fact that the same aesthetic terms are
routinely applied to artworks, natural objects, humans, and abstracta.
Aesthetic definitions do better accounting for art's
traditional, universal features, but less well, at least according to
their critics, with revolutionary modern art; their further defense
requires an account of the aesthetic which can be extended in a
principled way to conceptual and other radical art. (An aesthetic
definition and a conventionalist one could simply be conjoined. But
that would merely raise, without answering, the fundamental question
of the unity or disunity of the class of artworks.) Which defect is
the more serious one depends on which *explananda* are the more
important. Arguments at this level are hard to come by, because
positions are hard to motivate in ways that do not depend on prior
conventionalist and functionalist sympathies. If list-like definitions
are flawed because uninformative, then so are conventionalist
definitions, whether institutional or historical. Of course, if the
class of artworks, or of the arts, is a mere chaotic heap, lacking any
genuine unity, then enumerative definitions cannot be faulted for
being uninformative: they do all the explaining that it is possible to
do, because they capture all the unity that there is to capture. In
that case the worry articulated by one prominent aesthetician, who
wrote earlier of the "bloated, unwieldy" concept of art
which institutional definitions aim to capture, needs to be taken
seriously, even if it turns out to be ungrounded: "It is not at
all clear that these words - 'What is
art?' - express anything like a single question, to which
competing answers are given, or whether philosophers proposing answers
are even engaged in the same debate.... The sheer variety of
proposed definitions should give us pause. One cannot help wondering
whether there is any sense in which they are attempts to ...
clarify the same cultural practices, or address the same issue"
(Walton 2007). |
dewey-aesthetics | ## 1. Early Forays into Aesthetics
Dewey was in his seventies when *Art as Experience* was
published, but also his earlier work contains numerous discussions of
aesthetic related themes, beginning already from his very first book,
*Psychology* (1887), in which Dewey discusses aesthetics and
the arts at various points. Dewey, for example, emphasizes the
importance of rhythm to our psychic lives, both in perception and in
expression. The soul tends to express its most intimate states,
especially emotion, in rhythmic form. Rhythm is defined as the
mind's reduction of variety to unity or its breaking unity into
variety. It happens when certain beats are emphasized at regular
intervals, and it requires that elements be organized temporally,
through the mind being carried back and forth, to form a whole. It is
not confined to the arts but is pervasive in our experience of
time.
*Psychology* comes from Dewey's idealist period, which
for example shows up in the book's treatment of imagination,
aesthetic feeling, and beauty. Dewey distinguishes between different
forms of imagination, which he defines as intellect embodying ideas in
particular images. The highest form of imagination is creative
imagination, which allows us to penetrate into the hidden meaning of
things through finding sensuous forms that are both highly revealing
and pleasurable. It makes its objects anew through non-mechanical
separation and combination. Implicitly following Kant, Dewey holds
that creative imagination's goal is free play of the
self's faculties. Its function is to seize meaning and embody it
in sensuous form to give rise to feeling, thus representing the freely
active subjective self.
Part Two of *Psychology* is devoted to feeling, including, in
Chapter Fifteen, aesthetic feeling. This chapter also deals with fine
art and taste. Aesthetic feelings characteristically accompany
perception of "the ideal value of experience"
(*PS:* 267). The mind responds to certain relations to ideals
through feelings of beauty or ugliness. Every content of experience
has beauty in it to the extent that it contains an ideal element.
Echoing recent views on functional beauty, Dewey argues that a train
engine, for example, is beautiful insofar as it is felt to
successfully embody its ideal, i.e., its ability to overcome distances
and bring humans together. The beautiful object requires a sensuous
material. However, this sensuous material is only important insofar as
it presents the ideal. Art cannot be purely idealistic in the sense of
abandoning sensuous material, but it is idealistic in that it uses
such material to promote the appreciation of ideal values of
experience. The aesthetic feeling of beauty is universal and not a
thing of place and time.
This universality excludes such lower senses as taste and smell from
the beautiful. It also excludes the feeling of ownership and any
reference to external ends. Harmony constitutes beauty. Harmony is
defined as the feeling that accompanies agreement of experience with
the self's ideal nature (*PS:* 273). Art attempts to
satisfy the aesthetic in our nature, and it succeeds when it expresses
the ideal completely. The idea, in turn, is the "completely
developed self". So the goal of art is to create the perfectly
harmonious self. Against this background, Dewey ranks the fine arts
according to their level of ideality. Architecture is the least ideal
art, while poetry is *fully* ideal, having little that is
sensuous in it, concentrating as it does on the vital personality of
man himself (and nature as only a reflection of this).
Especially outside of philosophical circles, Dewey is best known for
his work in education. One of his major works in this area,
*Democracy and Education* (1916), also includes reflections on
aesthetic themes, particularly on the imagination, which Dewey regards
"as the sole way of escape from mechanical methods in
teaching" (*DE:* 245) that he, in general, opposes.
Anticipating the naturalism of *Art as Experience* Dewey argues
that there is no essential gap between aesthetic experience and other
forms of experience. The function of the fine arts is not to provide
an escape from ordinary life. Rather, it is the enhancement of
qualities that make ordinary experiences appealing. The arts are the
main means of achieving "an intensified, enhanced
appreciation" (*DE:* 246). Their purpose, beyond being
enjoyable, is that they fix taste, reveal depth of meaning in
otherwise mediocre experiences, and concentrate and focus elements of
what is considered good. In the end the fine arts are "not
luxuries of education, but emphatic expressions of that which makes
any education worthwhile" (*DE:* 247). Dewey is also
critical of the Aristotelian distinction between useful labor and
leisure, where the second is privileged over the first, and believes
this prejudicial distinction is still dominant. He comes back to this
issue in *Art as Experience*, where he suggests a new
understanding of the relationship between means and ends as a way of
improving the quality of people's daily experience. Means should
not be seen as mere disposable preliminary stages, which can be thrown
away like a ladder once the end is reached, but as integral parts of
the ends that they help to fulfill. This reversal, Dewey believes,
will infuse people's everyday experience with a sense of
direction and meaning.
The essay *Reconstruction in Philosophy*, published in 1920,
concludes with a view of an ideal future in which ideas are deepened
because they are expressed in imaginative vision and fine art.
Religious and scientific values will be reconciled and art will no
longer be a mere luxury or a stranger to everyday life. Making a
living will be making a life worth living, and the hardness of
contemporary life will be bathed in a new light.
Dewey returned briefly to issues of the role of art in society in
*The Public and its Problems* (1927), where art is seen as
something that can resolve the problem of dissemination of ideas
appropriate for social change. Artists are the real purveyors of news
insofar as they cause happenings to kindle emotion and perception. For
Dewey, Walt Whitman was the exemplar of such an artist. He concludes
that for a great community and a real public to come into being an art
of "full and moving communication" must take possession of
our mechanized world (*PP:* 350).
In "Qualitative Thought", which appears in *Philosophy
and Civilization* (1931), Dewey says some things that anticipate
some of the moves he makes in *Art as Experience*. For example,
he argues that there is a "logic of artistic construction"
and that refusal to admit this is a sign of breakdown of traditional
logic. When a work of art does not hold together so that the quality
of one part reinforces and expands the qualities of the other parts it
fails. Works that are genuine intellectual and logical wholes have an
underlying quality that defines them and that controls the
artist's thinking. The logic of such an artist is the logic of
qualitative thinking.
## 2. *Art as Experience*
As much as there is fascinating preliminary material in his earlier
writings, *Art as Experience* raises Dewey's theorizing
about aesthetics and art to a new level. Not only is the density of
thought and insight in the later work greater, but the understanding
of the arts that it is built on is much more sophisticated compared to
the earlier investigations. An important event that significantly
contributed to the development of Dewey's aesthetic thinking was
his collaboration with the industrialist and art collector Albert C.
Barnes to whom *Art as Experience* is dedicated. Dewey was a
member of the staff of the Barnes Foundation of which he was named
director in 1925. Not only does Dewey quote at length from
Barnes' writings on painting, but also many of the art examples
in Dewey's book came from his friend's impressive art
collection. One of the focus points of the Barnes collection is early
modernist painting, and *Art as Experience* includes numerous
examinations of the paintings by the leading figures of early
modernism, particularly Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, August
Renoir, and Paul Cezanne.
*Art as Experience* forms a systematic aesthetic theory in a
similar sense to such classics of twentieth century aesthetics as
Robin George Collingwood's *Principles of Art*, Martin
Heidegger's *The Origins of the Work of Art*, Theodor
Adorno's *Aesthetic Theory*, and Monroe Beardsley's
*Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism*. It is a
far more important source of inspiration and target of criticism
compared to Dewey's earlier texts. The following six sections
take a look at the main themes of *Art as Experience*, all of
which are, in some way or another, connected to aesthetic
experience.
### 2.1 The Naturalistic Roots of Aesthetic Theory
The aesthetic theory that Dewey develops in *Art as Experience*
could be labeled moderately naturalist. While Dewey locates the
"active seeds" of art and other aesthetic phenomena in
natural processes (*AE:* 18), he in no way seeks to reduce them
to natural reality nor does he try to explain their origins and
perseverance by locating a place for them in the development of the
human species, as some contemporary forms of evolutionary aesthetics
do. Rather, Dewey's naturalism is of an emergent sort, in the
sense that he seeks to show how aesthetic experience and culture
emerge from the natural basis of life, as he understands it (Alexander
2013). The key element of this moderate naturalism is the idea of an
organism, or of "the live creature"--a term that
Dewey also often uses--which is in a constant interaction with
its surrounding world. Dewey argues that this interaction is marked by
shifting and reinforcing phases of disarray and stability, of
unsettlement and restoration of harmony, which, in Dewey's view,
give experience its basic structure. As Dewey explains in an
oft-quoted passage,
>
>
> life goes on in an environment; not merely *in* it but because
> of it, through interaction with it. (*AE:* 19, italics in the
> original)
>
>
>
Not surprisingly, Dewey's conception of experience, upon which
his aesthetics is built, has been described as
"ecological" (Hildebrand 2008).
In line with his naturalism, Dewey is highly critical of attempts to
idealize art and the aesthetic away from "the objects of
concrete experience" (*AE:* 17), as well as of the
aspiration to explain art's value by its supposed capacity to
disclose some higher forms of reality from the natural one we share
with other animals. For Dewey, this kind of spiritual take on art is
yet another example of the human ambition to build permanence within
the constantly changing and unpredictable natural world. He traces the
origins of many influential dualisms, for example between "high
and low" and "material and ideal", as well as
"the contempt for the body" and "the fear of the
senses", to this more fundamental dualism between spirit and
nature (*AE:* 26). Already in *Experience and Nature*,
Dewey argues that there are but two alternatives,
>
>
> either art is a continuation... of natural tendencies of natural
> events; or art is a peculiar addition to nature springing from
> something dwelling exclusively in the breast of man, whatever name be
> given to the latter. (*EN:* 291)
>
>
>
He favors the first alternative and takes the movement between
instability and stability, activity and passivity, doing and
undergoing that he thinks are intrinsic qualities of all experience as
the starting points of his aesthetic theorizing. Dewey:
>
>
> These biological commonplaces are something more than that; they reach
> to the roots of the esthetic in experience. (*AE:* 20)
>
>
>
While Dewey promotes a naturalistic starting point for aesthetic
theory, he is equally aware of the negative connotations which have
often been attached to naturalist understandings of art and the
aesthetic, and the scale of the transformation that the rapid
development of the natural sciences had on people's sense of
themselves. For physical science seemed to strip
>
>
> its objects of the qualities that give the objects and scenes of
> ordinary experience all their poignancy and preciousness.
> (*AE:* 341)
>
>
>
However, Dewey finds these worries unfounded. A naturalist aesthetics,
which fully recognizes "the continuity of the organs, needs and
basic impulses of the human creature with his animal forebears",
does not imply a "necessary reduction of man to the level of
brutes". Rather only a naturalist approach can properly account
for the nearly miraculous fact that something as complex and
"marvelous" as art and aesthetic experience can emerge
from the most basic units of life (*AE:* 28).
The goal of aesthetic theory, in Dewey's view, should not,
therefore, be to spiritualize works of art and to set them apart from
the objects of ordinary experience, but to disclose the "way in
which these works idealize qualities found in common
experience". (*AE:* 17) It is in other words wrong to
think of the aesthetic as a luxurious or transcendentally ideal
"intruder in experience from without". Rather, the
aesthetic in experience should be understood as "the clarified
and intensified development of traits that belong to every normally
complete experience". Precisely this kind of naturalist approach
represents for Dewey "the only secure basis upon which esthetic
theory can be built" (*AE:* 52-53).
### 2.2 Against "The Museum Conception of Art"
Dewey's critique of a position that he calls "the museum
conception of art" is one of the most famous parts of his
aesthetic theory. It is for him a textbook example of the kind of
compartmentalizing attitude toward art which his naturalism seeks to
overcome. In Dewey's rendering, the museum conception of art by
and large corresponds to the modern idea of fine art which emerged in
the eighteenth century and which received its most theoretically
developed account in Charles Batteux's *The Fine Arts Reduced
to a Single Principle* (*Les Beaux Arts reduits a
un meme principe*, 1746). Around this time, the different
arts were gradually seen to form a unified group separate from the
sciences, religion, and most importantly from the practical arts. The
idea of the autonomy of art surfaced. Art was considered a
self-regulating field for which the different art institutions, which
were emerging simultaneously, provided a setting. As opposed to the
practical arts, such as embroidery and shoe making, whose value
depended on the external goals they served, the fine arts were
considered to have their own intrinsic measures of value, which could,
moreover, be realized in full only within the spaces of the developing
art institutions.
The museum conception also represents a more general tendency Dewey
sees in philosophical theory, "the philosophical fallacy".
With this term Dewey refers to a set of preconceptions underlying
inquiry which frame research and guide its progress before any
conscious inquiry has even taken place. In aesthetics, the fallacy
has, in Dewey's view, taken the form that art and the aesthetic
must *necessarily* be something separate from ordinary everyday
modes of experience and activity. This is an assumption to which any
aesthetic inquiry must fit itself. As in other fields of philosophy,
the cure to the fallacy in the case of aesthetics is to look at
experience more carefully, in particular at the ways in which
aesthetic experience emerges from the common patterns of all
experience, which Dewey's naturalism examines.
Dewey thinks there are historic reasons why the idea of art as
something essentially autonomous from other areas of life became so
dominant. He traces these back to the rise of nationalism and
capitalism. Both of these developments, in his view, reinforced the
inclination to set art "upon a remote pedestal" apart from
other activities and modes of experience (*AE:* 11). The
conception of art connected to nationalist and imperialist tendencies
rendered museums into "the beauty parlor[s] of
civilization", (*AE:* 346) where each nation exhibited
its greatest artistic achievements and, as in some cases, also its
artistic loot. Artworks received "a holier-than-thou"
aura, which reinforced their esoteric character as something opposed
to everyday life (*AE:* 15). Dewey also refers, in an unusually
spiteful tone, to "the nouveaux riches" of his time, whom
he thinks collected expensive artworks merely for the sake of
buttressing their social statuses with little care for their artistic
value and for engaging with them aesthetically. All this meant for
Dewey that works of art were in danger of becoming mere stale
"art products" instead of art*works* that actually
do something "with and in experience" (*AE:*
9).
Dewey believes that there have been no winners in this development:
art is concealed or "wrapped", to follow the terminology
of contemporary Deweyan, Richard Shusterman (Shusterman 1992), in a
realm of its own separate from people's everyday needs, values,
and attitudes. To achieve a genuine aesthetic experience required
leaving this everyday package behind and entering the confined
settings of the museum and other institutions of art. In Dewey's
view, the resulting discrepancy between aesthetics and more mundane
areas of life is not restricted to theory. It has "deeply"
affected
>
>
> the practice of living, driving away esthetic perceptions that are
> necessary ingredients of happiness, or reducing them to the level of
> compensating transient pleasurable excitations. (*AE:* 16)
>
>
>
The result has been an "esoteric idea of fine art"
(*AE:* 90) and a conception of the everyday as something
inherently unaesthetic.
The many examples of non-Western art Dewey discusses in *Art as
Experience* are especially important parts of his argument for
restoring the continuity between art and life, releasing it from the
yoke of the museum conception of art. For the ways aesthetic practices
and artifacts are incorporated into the very center of daily life and
common rituals in many such cultures show that aesthetically
significant objects do not require any special institutional setting.
According to Dewey, such everyday objects as "domestic utensils,
furnishings of tent and house, rugs, mats, jars, pots, bows,
spears" were essential parts of the life of a community and had
a key role for example in
>
>
> the worship of gods, feasting and fasting, fighting, hunting, and all
> the rhythmic crises that punctuate the stream of living. (*AE:*
> 14)
>
>
>
Art then for Dewey is a far older phenomenon than the modern concept
of fine art; it has its origins already in the world of "archaic
man" and should be seen as
>
>
> an extension of the power of rites and ceremonies to unite men,
> through a shared celebration, to all incidents and scenes of life.
> (*AE:* 275).
>
>
>
### 2.3 Aesthetic Experience
What, then, is an aesthetic experience for Dewey? His account can be
regarded as a form of "internalism", in that it seeks to
separate aesthetic experience from other types of experience by
looking at its internal qualities, that is, at what aesthetic
experience feels like from the inside (Shelley 2009 [2017]).
Aesthetic experience marks for Dewey a unique experience, which shows
what experience at its best can be in all quarters of life, not just
in art; "esthetic experience is experience in its
integrity" (*AE:* 278). It is a distinctive kind of
experiential condensation within the general stream of experience. It
is the most important specimen of a form of experience that Dewey
terms "*an* experience", often italicizing the
indefinite article of this concept to emphasize the standout character
of the referred experience. In "*an* experience"
the material of experience is fulfilled, consummated, and forms an
integral whole, as for example, when a game is played through, a
conversation is rounded out or when we finish "that meal in a
Paris restaurant" (*AE:* 43).
Dewey never puts forth an explicit definition of aesthetic experience
in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. However, certain
features recur in his numerous discussions. Most importantly,
aesthetic experience has a temporal structure. Aesthetic experience is
something that develops and attains specific qualities as the
experience proceeds. It is in this sense "dynamic because it
takes time to complete" (*AE:* 62). To qualify as an
aesthetic experience, there must, moreover, be *accumulation*
between the different phases of the experience: aesthetic experience
includes a sense that the later phases build on earlier ones and carry
them further rather than just mechanically following them. Aesthetic
experiences are also *intensive*; they condense, for example,
emotional and formal features to a single experience. Another key
quality of aesthetic experience is a feeling of *resistance*.
These resistances are not obstacles: they feed the experience's
development and accumulation and are converted into movement toward a
close. In aesthetic experience, the experiencer is also overcome by a
sense of *rhythm*. Aesthetic experience has an internal
*momentum* and, already from the initial phases, the
experiencer can feel a sense of *direction* in it. In other
words, in an aesthetic experience "every successive part flows
freely, without seam and without unfilled blanks, into what
ensues". Moreover, "as one part leads to another and as
one part carries on what went before, each gains distinctness in
itself" (*AE:* 43). Aesthetic experience also does not
terminate at some random point. Rather, its close is a summation of
its earlier phases, either in the sense that the energy that has
gathered up during the experience is released or the experience
reaches a *fulfillment* in some other sense. In short,
aesthetic experience involves "inception, development, and
fulfillment" (*AE:* 62).
From a Deweyan viewpoint, aesthetic experience, then, has roughly the
following structure. The experience is set off by some factors, such
as opening a book, directing a first glance at a painting, beginning
to listen to a piece of music, entering a natural environment or a
building, or beginning a meal or a conversation. As aesthetic
experience is temporal, the material of the experience does not remain
unchanged, but the elements initiating the experience, like reading
the first lines of a book or hearing the first chord of a symphony,
merge into new ones as the experience proceeds and complex
relationships are formed between its past and newer phases. When these
different parts form a distinctive kind of orderly developing unity
that stands out from the general experiential stream of our lives, the
experience in question is aesthetic.
Dewey contrasts aesthetic to "inchoate" and
"anesthetic" experiences. These experiences, too, have a
temporal dimension, but instead of exhibiting the unified development
as an aesthetic experience, they include "holes",
"mechanical junctions", and "dead centres"
(*AE:* 43). The different phases of the experience merely
follow each other, but in no way develop or build on the earlier
phases. There is no sense of the kind of "continuous
merging" that characterizes aesthetic experience. Due to their
punctured and mechanical quality, inchoate and anesthetic experiences
also lack the ordered development that is a condition of an
experience's aesthetic fulfillment. The anesthetic experience is
a function either of loose succession or mechanical connection of
parts. As Dewey explains,
>
>
> Things happen, but they are neither definitely included nor decisively
> excluded; we drift... There are beginnings and cessations, but no
> genuine initiations and concludings. One thing replaces another, but
> does not absorb it, carry it on. There is experience, but so slack and
> discursive that it is not *an* experience. (*AE:*
> 46-47)
>
>
>
Given the general character of aesthetic experience, it is no surprise
that Dewey attributes such high significance to it in his late
naturalist philosophy. Aesthetic experience shows how complex and
meaningful the experiences which emerge from the basic factors of all
interaction--sense of direction, resistance, rhythm,
accumulation--can be. Dewey's aesthetic theory is
naturalist precisely in the sense that even an experience as complex
as aesthetic experience is seen as continuous with the interaction
that he believes characterizes the relationship of even the simplest
biological organisms to their environments. Similarly, art is only one
of the many practices and areas of life which can be sources of
aesthetic experience. Conversation, for example, is one such everyday
activity, for it can exhibit the kind of "continuous interchange
and blending" which Dewey thinks is essential to aesthetic
experience (*AE:* 43).
Dewey also argues that there is no reason to think of such conceptual
categories as "the practical" or "the
intellectual" as some way contradictory to the supposedly pure
and non-utilitarian category of "the aesthetic". It is
possible to have aesthetic experiences while engaging with practical
and intellectual activities. The aesthetic status of the experiences
had in these connections, again, depends solely on the
experiences' internal qualities; even "a mechanic"
and "a surgeon" can be "artistically engaged"
in Dewey's sense (*AE:* 11, 103). The practical and the
intellectual should not, thereby, be considered "the enemies of
the esthetic": the real enemies are
>
>
> the humdrum; slackness of loose ends; submission to convention in
> practice and intellectual procedure. (*AE:* 47)
>
>
>
Aesthetic experience, in fact, is something that precisely ties the
practical, the emotional, and the intellectual into "a single
whole" (*AE:* 61). Upon reflection it is in many cases
possible to disentangle these different strands, but in the moment of
experience they are all active in constituting aesthetic experience
for the whole that it is.
Dewey's description of aesthetic experience as a process of both
doing and undergoing is still worth noting, as it appears widely in
the commentary literature. With this conceptual pair, Dewey draws
attention to the kind of interplay between activity and passivity that
he thinks aesthetic experience involves. The development of an
aesthetic experience often requires effort and imaginative activity
from the experiencer, but these moments of doing are also joined with
phases when the object or the environment is felt to take the lead in
the experience without any real sense of doing from the experiencer.
Undergoing is the receptive phase of the experience, the taking in of
energy, which the experiencer can, then, more consciously work on. A
balance between these experiential phases represents for Dewey an
ideal of all experience and, again, aesthetic experience becomes an
acute expression of the potentialities that Dewey believes are
inherent in the basic interaction between the live creature and its
environment;
>
>
> art, in its form, unites the very same relation of doing and
> undergoing, outgoing and incoming energy, that makes an experience to
> be an experience. (*AE:* 54)
>
>
>
The concepts of doing and undergoing also lead Dewey to emphasize the
similarities between the work of an artist and the undertakings
required from the audience of art. The final artwork is, among other
things, the result of planning, choosing, highlighting, clarifying,
simplifying, and other ways of organizing and reorganizing material.
In Dewey's view, the experiencer does not just take in
"what is there in finished form": he or she should achieve
a sense of the possibilities and challenges that the artist faced in
her work, as well as the decisions she took out of which the work grew
to its finished form. Both the making of art and experiencing of art
are, thereby,
>
>
> process[es] consisting of a series of responsive acts that accumulate
> toward objective fulfillment. (*AE:* 58)
>
>
>
In this sense, aesthetic experience is for Dewey a kind of mirror
image of the artist's activities. It means "[the]
recreation of the object" (*AE:* 60).
### 2.4 Aesthetic Form
As internalist as Dewey's approach to aesthetic experience is,
and as much as he emphasizes the distinction between an art product as
a physical thing and the artwork as an experienced thing, Dewey also
presents a detailed examination of the formal features of aesthetic
objects similar to those carried out by numerous other philosophers of
art. Dewey states that aesthetic experience has "objective
conditions" (*AE:* 68): not all objects and environments
inspire the kind of interaction that he thinks constitutes an
aesthetic experience. His analysis of "aesthetic form" is
an attempt to capture these conditions. Similarly to his understanding
of aesthetic experience as dynamic and developing rather than as a
clear-cut sense perception, Dewey seeks to bring out the livelier
sides of form. Aesthetic form is something that "enhance[s],
prolong[s] and purif[ies] perceptual experience" (*EN:*
292).
On a basic level, by form Dewey means the thing that "organizes
material into the matter of art" (*AE:* 139). Form is
constituted by the different parts of the aesthetic object and by
their relationships to one another. For Dewey, the parts of aesthetic
form are not independent units. Rather, relationship is
"something direct and active... dynamic and
energetic" (*AE:* 139). With his conception of form,
Dewey draws attention to
>
>
> the way things bear upon one another, their clashes and unitings, the
> way they fulfill and frustrate, promote and retard, excite and inhibit
> one another. (*AE:* 139)
>
>
>
In the case of aesthetic form, the different parts of the object must
adjust themselves as parts of the same object. The individual parts
have a functional and active role in the whole of which they are a
part.
This also means that perception of aesthetic form is not a matter of
unrelated singular perceptions, but it is "serial", in
that "each sequential act builds up and reinforces what went
before" (*AE:* 136). According to Dewey, aesthetic form
possess "qualitative unity" which can be immediately felt.
A fuller aesthetic experience, nevertheless, requires engaging with
the form's organization precisely in the sense of serial
perception. (*AE:* 141) Against this background, Dewey calls
into question the traditional distinction between the arts of time
(music, theater, dance) and the arts of space (painting, sculpture,
architecture). Even the spatial arts include important temporal
dimensions and have to be "perceived by accumulative series of
interactions" (*AE:* 223). Through this sort of serial
and cumulating engagement the aesthetic object gradually builds up for
the experiencer. This, according to Dewey, is especially the case with
the supposedly static art of architecture:
>
>
> [Even] a small hut cannot be the matter of esthetic perception save as
> temporal qualities enter in. A cathedral... makes an
> instantaneous impression... But this is only the substratum and
> framework within which a continuous process of interactions introduces
> enriching and defining elements... One must move about, within
> and without, and through repeated visits let the structure gradually
> yield itself... in various lights and in connection with changing
> moods. (*AE:* 224)
>
>
>
If aesthetic experience has objective conditions, aesthetic form, in
turn, has a set of "formal conditions", which are
"continuity, cumulation, conservation, tension and
anticipation" (*AE:* 143). Dewey draws special attention
to the factor of resistance. It is a kind of condition of conditions,
for "without internal tension" experience of form would be
just "a fluid rush to a straightaway mark" in which case
there "could be [nothing] called development and
fulfillment" (*AE:* 143). Dewey further specifies the
relationship between aesthetic form and aesthetic experience:
>
>
> [T]here can be no esthetic experience apart from an object... for
> an *object* to be the content of esthetic appreciation it must
> satisfy those *objective* conditions without which cumulation,
> conservation, reenforcement, transition into something more complete,
> are impossible. (*AE:* 151, italics in the original)
>
>
>
The naturalist underpinnings of Dewey's aesthetics are apparent
also in his analysis of aesthetic form, for its conditions are
objective precisely in the sense that they belong "to the world
of physical materials and energies" (*AE:* 151). His
naturalism, thereby, locates the origins of aesthetic form "deep
in the world itself" (*AE:* 152).
One of these deep conditions of aesthetic form is rhythm. Dewey finds
rhythm "the first characteristic of the environing world that
makes possible the existence of artistic form" (*AE:*
147). The rhythms of art are grounded in the basic patterns of the
relation of the live creature and its environment. Dewey opposes the
theory of rhythm as the steady recurrence of identical elements as in
a ticking clock: "the tick-tock theory" of rhythm
(*AE:* 168). Rather, each rhythmic beat or tick does not merely
repeat the past but drives the rhythmic process forward. Various
natural phenomena exemplify this type of rhythm, including "a
pond moving in ripples, forked lightning [and] the waving of branches
in the wind" (*AE:* 159). These are contrasted to
rhythmless phenomena, such as "a monotonous roar"
(*AE:* 159), which do not involve mutually resisting forces and
thus do not entail a gathering up of energy which would create an
anticipation of release, as in the case of the beating of a
bird's wing. Neither do these wholes possess the kind of
accumulation that Dewey finds essential to aesthetic form.
What this all means is that the recurrence typical to aesthetic form
should not be understood "statistically" or
"anatomically", but functionally. In the case of aesthetic
form, rhythm is something that furthers experience (*AE:* 171).
The beating of a bird's wing is a good example: it marks the
release of energy, but at the same time the beginning of a new
accumulation of energy, which again discharges in a new beating of the
wing and so on. Dewey finds this form of rhythm
>
>
> whenever each step forward is at the same time a summing up and
> fulfillment of what precedes, and every consummation carries
> expectation tensely forward. (*AE:* 177)
>
>
>
While Dewey admits that rhythm can be most easily associated with
music, he thinks it, in the end, cuts across the arts, to embrace even
painting and architecture:
>
>
> denial of rhythm to pictures, edifices, and statues, or the assertion
> that it is found in them only metaphorically, rests upon ignorance of
> the inherent nature of every perception. (*AE:* 180)
>
>
>
Again, the distinction between the spatial and the temporal arts turns
out overly strict. Perception of rhythm in pictures is as essential to
their experience as it is to the experience of music.
### 2.5 Expression
Another central question of aesthetics that Dewey considers at length
in *Art as Experience* is artistic expression. How can an
artwork be expressive and serve as means of communication? The issues
are intertwined, for Dewey believes "objects of art...
communicate" because they are "expressive"
(*AE:* 110). Artistic expression is for Dewey not a simple
matter of the artist transmitting her inner emotions to the work. When
for example Van Gogh tried to express "utter desolation"
in one of his paintings he did not "pour forth" an emotion
to the artwork, but selected and organized material, such as paint and
pigments, in a certain way to capture this emotional tone, turning the
material used into means of expression, or a medium in Dewey's
terminology.
In Dewey's explanation, the expressive act is set off by
"an impulsion", a state of unsettlement in the organism,
which creates a need to restore a state of balance. Impulsion, as
distinguished from "impulse", is a developmental movement
of the "whole organism" in response to a need arising from
interaction with the environment, for example a craving for food
(*AE:* 64). It is the beginning stage of a complete experience,
whereas impulse is momentary, for example a tongue reacting to a sour
taste. Impulsion leads to reflection on the possible means and actions
for restoring a state of harmony and a decision to act accordingly,
like in the case of finding some water to satisfy one's thirst.
The reflective movement caused by the impulsion also makes the
creature more aware of itself. "Blind surge" turns into
"a purpose" and "the resistance" the creature
faces when trying to complete the impulsion "calls out
thought" and "generates curiosity" (*AE:*
65). The act of expression involves similar mental undertakings, which
precisely makes the emotive impetus behind expression closer to an
impulsion than a reflexive type impulse. It is as if something
requires squeezing out or pressing forth, that is expression
(*AE:* 70). Out of this expression the expressive object
gradually takes shape.
Another important distinction is between an expression and a discharge
of emotion. All expression involves discharge, but only a particular
kind of discharge counts as expression. Dewey insists that someone who
simply acts angrily is not expressing anger. Mere "giving
way" to impulsion does not constitute expression. The goal of
expression is not to get rid of the initial emotion, as is the case
with screams that merely discharge emotion, but to achieve a clearer
sense of its content and significance. For Dewey, expression means
"to stay by, to carry forward in development, to work out to
completion" (*AE:* 67-68). For an emotional
discharge to turn into expression in Dewey's sense also requires
an external channel for releasing and working on the emotive energy of
the background impulsion. Dewey writes:
>
>
> where there is no administration of objective conditions, no shaping
> of materials in the interest of embodying the excitement, there is no
> expression. (*AE:* 68)
>
>
>
The expressive object is the embodiment of this expressive act.
What also separates expression from an action caused by a mere impulse
is that expression has a medium. For example, a crying baby does not,
in Dewey's view, use the cry to express her emotions; the cry is
just an ulterior sign of dissatisfaction. However, when the smile and
the outreached hand, for example, are used to express the joy of
seeing a friend, these bodily movements function as media for
expressing joy. Whether something counts as a medium of expression or
not thus "depends upon the way in which material is used"
(*AE:* 69). When the artist works on an expressive object based
on her initial impulsion, the materials of art--pigments, clays,
notes, words--turn into media of expression.
Some of Dewey's formulations on the artistic medium come close
to the so-called medium-specificity claim according to which each of
the arts has its own specific medium that gives a kind of internal
ground mechanism for the art's potencies and development;
"color does something in experience and sound something
else" (*AE:* 230). Different artistic media are,
according to Dewey, suited for different expressive ends in the sense
that
>
>
> every medium has its own power, active and passive, outgoing and
> receptive, and... the basis for distinguishing the different
> traits of the arts is their exploitation of the energy that is
> characteristic of the material used as a medium. (*AE:* 248)
>
>
>
>
Aesthetic effects, thereby, attach to their medium.
For Dewey, expression is also not a matter of finding an outer form to
an already complete emotion. Emotions, in Dewey's sense, do not
come in ready-made form, but are more like processes. Especially the
emotive impulsion behind expression initially lacks a clear-cut
content. We might be overcome by a certain emotion but might also be
unable to immediately grasp its ultimate content and why we feel the
way we do. Dewey compares the position the emotive impulsion has in
artistic expression to a magnet that draws in certain material while
rejecting others. The impulsion constitutes a kind of gathering
principle of the artist's work, for example explaining her
choice of material and ways of using and working on them (*AE:*
75). In Dewey's view, the act of expression is driven by the
effort to find an appropriate fit between the impulsion and the outer
material and involves a constant monitoring of the impact that the
artistic decisions have on the development of the initial impulsion.
Do they, for example, feed it, clarify it, or obscure it? In other
words, "emotional energy" does "real work" in
the build-up of artistic expression leading to the expressive object
as it
>
>
> evokes, assembles, accepts, and rejects memories, images,
> observations, and works them into a whole. (*AE:* 160)
>
>
>
This is why Dewey emphasizes that in artistic expression it is not
just the external materials of marble, pigment, and words that undergo
a change. Similar changes occur "on the side of
'inner' materials", such as "images,
observations, memories and emotions"; in the development of the
expressive act they too receive a new form and structure (*AE:*
81).
From a Deweyan viewpoint, expression then means processing external
material "through the alembic of personal experience".
However, the material itself belongs to "the common world and so
has qualities in common with the material of other experiences".
Expression thereby organically connects "a personal act"
and an "objective result" (*AE:* 88). The fact that
in expression the artist's personal experience is mediated
through objective material opens the possibility for the audience to
share the artist's vision embodied in the work. An effort to
communicate by these sorts of objective means is what turns the
external material into a medium, that is, "an
intermediary" between the artist and audience (*AE:*
201). But as the experience behind expression is "intensely
individualized", the work can also open for the public
>
>
> new fields of experience and disclose new aspects and qualities in
> familiar scenes and objects. (*AE:* 149)
>
>
>
In Dewey's view, communication in the arts, however, takes a
different form than in the sciences for example: "science states
meanings; art expresses them" (*AE:* 90). Like many other
philosophers of art, Dewey emphasizes that artistic communication does
not take place on the level of statements and propositional knowing.
Aesthetic art, by contrast to science, constitutes an experience.
Art's manner of communicating is "evocative": by
rendering objective and physical material into an expressive medium,
the artist seeks to evoke "the experience he or she wants the
audience to have or reflect upon" (Stroud 2011: 105). The
cognitive and the experiential sides of art are thereby seen to be
very much intertwined in Dewey's aesthetics.
### 2.6 Culture and Art's Significance
Dewey's take on culture also shows the moderate character of his
aesthetic naturalism. He does not consider culture an illusory or in
some other way irreal phenomenon, something that should be explained
away by reducing it to natural reality. Dewey even finds it
unfortunate how often the term "naturalism" has been
wrongly thought "to signify a disregard of all values that
cannot be reduced to the physical and animal" (*AE:*
156). In contrast, Dewey believes that humans are both natural and
cultural creatures through and through and that the real challenge is
to investigate how these two ineliminable sides of human life, nature
and culture, are intertwined. Dewey, in fact, became so interested in
this issue that he even had plans of naming his late philosophy
"cultural naturalism" (Alexander 2013).
Dewey explains culture as a form of "emergence", that is,
culture is something that in time emerges from nature. In other words,
>
>
> culture is the product not of efforts of men put forth in a void or
> just upon themselves, but of prolonged and cumulative interaction with
> environment. (*AE:* 34-35)
>
>
>
Nature and culture are two different layers of human life. The two key
concepts in this instance are rhythm and ritual. Rhythm is for Dewey a
fundamental feature of the world, whose existence in nature predates
"poetry, painting, architecture and music" (*AE:*
147). He, again, refers to such rhythmic processes in nature as
"dawn and sunset, day and night, rain and sunshine",
"the circular course of the seasons", "the
ever-recurring cycles of growth", and "the never-ceasing
round of births and deaths", which he believes created a
rhythmic space for human experience already from its very dawn. Dewey
argues further that new layers emerged into human existence once
humans no longer merely observed the rhythmic changes of nature but
started to participate in them in the form of rituals and other
communal gatherings. Humans came to use the rhythms of nature to
celebrate their relationship with nature and to commemorate their most
intense experiences. Dewey writes:
>
>
> Experiences of war, of hunt, of sowing and reaping, of the death and
> resurrection of vegetation, of stars circling over watchful shepherds,
> of constant return of the inconstant moon, were undergone to be
> reproduced in pantomime and generated the sense of life as drama.
> (*AE:* 153)
>
>
>
With these rituals Dewey believes humans' relationship to the
surrounding world rose to a level where they started to reflect on
their place in the order of things more intently. And the rituals
formed in response to the cycles of nature started to embody the
worldviews and values of the human groups that they gathered together.
The rituals created a sense of community with one's immediate
fellows, as well as a sense of continuity of past generations, thereby
widening and enriching "the designs of living"
(*AE:* 29). In Dewey's view, these rituals were
"esthetic", but they were "also more than
esthetic", for
>
>
> each of these communal modes of activity united the practical, the
> social, and the educative in an integrated whole having esthetic form.
> (*AE:* 330-331)
>
>
>
Culture is, then, for Dewey something "situated" as well
as "situating" (Alexander 2013: 13).
An important value that Dewey sees in art is related to these communal
sides of experience. Although Dewey believes each culture is held
together by its own individuality, it is still possible to create
continuity and community between cultures by expanding experience to
absorb the attitudes and values of other cultures. In the end, Dewey
regards works of art as
>
>
> the only media of complete and unhindered communication between man
> and man that can occur in a world full of gulfs and walls that limit
> community of experience. (*AE:* 110)
>
>
>
For example,
>
>
> barriers are dissolved, limiting prejudices melt away, when we enter
> into the spirit of Negro and Polynesian art. (*AE:* 337)
>
>
>
As a result of such engagements we start to "learn to
hear" with someone else's "ears" and
"see" with someone else's "eyes". Works
of art are, then, for Dewey "the most intimate and energetic
means of aiding individuals to share in the arts of living"
(*AE:* 339).
There has been considerable discussion in aesthetics whether art has
intrinsic value or whether its value is dependent on some external
goal it helps to fulfill. Dewey rejects the dichotomy, because he
thinks talk of art's utilitarian aspects tends to involve a too
narrow conception of utility. The utility of an artwork is different
in kind from the utility of an umbrella or a mower. While these and
similar utilitarian objects serve "a particular and limited
end", an artwork "serves life", for example by
carrying us to "a refreshed attitude toward the circumstances
and exigencies of ordinary experience" (*AE:* 140, 144).
Artworks can serve life through their evocative function; they can
raise experiences that educate us. Dewey also emphasizes how the work
of the artwork does not end at the close of the immediate experience,
but "continues to operate in indirect channels"
(*AE:* 144).
Like all important experiences, our engagements with artworks can also
lead to what Philip Jackson calls "experiential growth"
(Jackson 1998: 111). Here Jackson follows Dewey's notion of
growth, which is central to his philosophy of education. The idea of
growth is also related to Dewey's naturalist underpinnings; when
the organism overcomes some problematic situation, there is at least
some minimal degree of growth. The organism learns something and can
use the experience in new circumstances in the future. Growth, in
other words is, for Dewey,
>
>
> essentially the ability to learn from experience; the power to retain
> from one experience something which is of avail in coping with the
> difficulties of a later situation. (*DE:* 49)
>
>
>
Through the different types of experiences artworks can evoke, art too
can be an important source of this sort of growth. This is why Dewey
thinks we should feel a similar type of respect toward "the
creators" of perceptive artworks as we do toward "the
inventors of microscopes and microphones"; in both cases we are
dealing with artefacts, which can train us in new modes of perception
and "open new objects to be observed and enjoyed"
(*EN:* 293).
## 3. Critical Reactions
Criticism of Dewey's aesthetics dates from even before *Art
as Experience*. Curt Ducasse (1929), for example, believed that
Dewey's instrumentalism generates a strange theory which holds
that human life is a matter of tool-making, all tools are essentially
tools for tool-making, and only satisfactions arising from tool-making
should be acknowledged (see Alexander 1998). He also criticized Dewey
for not allowing for meaningless satisfactions and anarchistic
pleasures. Aesthetic perception of colors and tones as such does not
need any presence of meaning; nor does appreciation of rainbows or
sunsets. Meaning also need not be present in things of pure design. He
agreed with Schopenhauer, contra Dewey, that aesthetic contemplation
requires not attending to meanings. Also, because the creation of art
may on occasion occur in one stroke, it too can be without meaning.
Further, it is only by accident that the feeling expressed in the
creation of art is due to the perceived situation. Emotions are not
always responses to concrete situations and many emotions are about
nothing. Artistic expression of emotion should be distinguished from
utilitarian expression. It is only the latter that deals with the
object of emotion.
Another early critic, Edna Shearer (1935a), thought that Dewey buried
art under extraneous ethical and political considerations. She
rejected the idea that all life ought to be like art in combining the
consummatory and the instrumental. Dewey's desire to overcome
the means/ends distinction is also problematic since a work of art
does not seriously contain as ingredients the process that led to its
production. The perfect amalgamation of means and ends is utopian.
Further, toil just cannot be eliminated from society or from the
creative process.
*Art as Experience* early on had the misfortune of receiving
two reviews that negatively impacted its reception. The first, by an
avowed follower, Stephen Pepper, complained that it was not truly
pragmatist and that Dewey had reverted to an earlier Hegelianism
(Pepper 1939). The second, by Benedetto Croce, seemed to confirm this
(Croce 1948). Croce, widely seen as Hegelian himself, saw so many
similarities between Dewey's work and his own that he accused
Dewey of lifting his ideas. Dewey (1948) insisted otherwise, but the
sense that there was something too Hegelian in *Art as
Experience* remained. This did not stop many philosophers,
educators, and other intellectuals from producing works in aesthetic
theory that were strongly influenced by Dewey. Even before *Art as
Experience* Dewey's writings on aesthetics and art
influenced, and were influenced by, such writers as Mary Mullen
(1923), who taught seminars on aesthetics and was Associate Director
of Education for the Barnes Foundation; Lawrence Buermeyer (1924), who
was another Associate Director of Education at the Barnes Foundation;
Albert Barnes himself (1928); and Thomas Munro (1928). After the
book's publication his followers included Irwin Edman (1939),
Stephen Pepper (1939, 1945, 1953), Horace Kallen (1942), Thomas Munro
again (numerous books) and Van Meter Ames (1947, 1953). Art historian
Meyer Schapiro was one of his students.
After the publication of *Art as Experience* there emerged a
long chain of both criticism and defense. Eliseo Vivas (1937) argued
that Dewey holds two theories about the emotions' role in
aesthetic experience, one that the esthetic object arouses emotion in
the spectator, and the other that the content of meaning of art,
objectively speaking, is emotion. But, he argued, experimental
aesthetics has shown that emotion is an accidental consequence of
aesthetic apprehension, and so should not be included in its
definition. The same aesthetic object can arouse different emotional
reactions in different spectators. Some trained persons in music even
deny that adequate aesthetic experience involves emotion. Dewey also
has not given an explanation of the means by which the object
expresses emotion. Vivas himself defined aesthetic experience in terms
of rapt attention involving apprehension of the object's
immanent meanings.
In a second article (Vivas 1938), he asked: Are emotions attached to
the material? How is this consistent with the idea that emotion is not
expressed in the object? And how are these ideas consistent with the
idea that emotion is aroused in the spectator? Vivas insisted that not
all art arouses emotion in everyone who has effective intercourse with
it. Music, for sophisticated listeners, is often not suggestive of
emotions. When we find "sadness" in music we would do
better to call it an objective character of the music than an emotion.
Another problem for Dewey: if the self disappears in experience then
how can the object arouse emotion in the self or have emotion attached
to it? Also, if the self disappears into harmony, how can there be the
kind of disharmony associated with emotion?
We have already mentioned Pepper's objection that Dewey's
theory is not sufficiently pragmatic (Pepper 1939). His specific
objection was that Dewey's views were eclectic, incorporating
elements both of pragmatism and of Hegelian organicism. Pepper
believed that both theories, as well as formalism, can be valuable
when taken separately, but that the mixture in Dewey hurts pragmatism.
Pepper identified organicism with the view that the ultimate reality
is The Absolute. Dewey replied (1939) that he had based his aesthetic
theory on examination of the subject-matter and not on any *a
priori* theory. Words he used, such as "coherence",
"whole", "integration", and
"complete", were intended to have meaning consistent with
his pragmatic empiricism and did not by themselves indicate a
commitment to idealism. Moreover, it was one of his main points that
although these terms *were* applicable to aesthetic matters
they could not, contra the idealists, be extended to the world as a
whole. The terms had a special sense applying only to experiences as
aesthetic. Dewey rejected any theory of a great cosmic harmony
associated with the Hegelian notion of the Absolute.
In a later work, Pepper (1945) agreed with Dewey that each reading of
a poem brings a new experience, but thought that, since there is also
identity of context that can make the differences minor, we can speak
of an identical quality running through the different situations.
Pepper had many positive things to say about Dewey's
"contextualism" (his word for pragmatism in aesthetics),
but he insisted that there is much more permanence of aesthetic values
in the world than Dewey would admit. A great work of art may be
appreciated as long as the physical work exists and someone exists to
perceive it, and insofar as it appeals to common instincts, it may
appeal to people of varied cultures.
Isabel Creed (1945) complained that Dewey leaves no place for works
that celebrate equilibrium achieved, or for works that result from the
artist playing around with the medium. Nor does Dewey explain
accidentally encountered aesthetic experiences of natural objects. She
thought, contra Dewey, that struggle with our environment is not
necessary for aesthetic experience.
Croce, mentioned earlier, rightly pointed out many similarities
between his own and Dewey's thought (Croce 1948). There were,
however, still three points of serious contention: (1) Croce placed
significantly more importance on the universality of art than Dewey,
(2) he still insisted that the material of art consists not of
external things but of internal sentiments of human passions: a
characteristically idealist position that Dewey vehemently rejected,
and (3) whereas he believed that art gives knowledge of a higher
reality, Dewey did not. Croce asserted that Dewey is still arguing
against Hegelians of his youth who held, for example, to a notion of
"the Absolute", which Croce had rejected. Dewey (1948), in
responding to Croce, argued that the list of shared beliefs Croce
mentioned in his review were just ideas widely familiar to
aestheticians. He thought that because of Croce's idealism there
can be no common ground of discussion between them. In return, Croce
(1952) argued that Dewey is too wedded to empiricism and pragmatism
and that it is only because Dewey, contrary to his own claims, is
committed to a kind of dualism, that he cannot understand
Croce's identification of intuition and expression or recognize
how similar Croce's view is to his own. Frederic Simoni (1952)
argued that neither Croce nor Dewey was Hegelian in the sense of
believing in the Absolute. George Douglas (1970) agreed with Simoni,
finding many similarities between Dewey and Croce. However, Douglas
did agree with Pepper (1939) that Dewey never reconciled the
pragmatist and historicist (Hegelian) dimensions of his thought (cf.
Vittorio 2012, Copenhaver 2017).
Patrick Romanell (1949) held that Croce and Dewey at least share the
view that art is about aesthetic experience. However, Dewey's
definition of the subject matter of philosophy of art as aesthetic
experience (which treats it as a special type of experience) is
inconsistent with his definition of it as the aesthetic phase of
experience. Also, when Dewey speaks of aesthetic experience he is not
functionalist and is not consistent with his pragmatism. Dewey should
have held that just as there is no such thing as religious experience,
there is no such thing as aesthetic experience. Dewey (1950) replied
that every normally complete experience is aesthetic in its
consummatory phase, that the arts and their experience are
developments of this primary phase, and that there is nothing
inconsistent in this. Where Romanell saw incompatibility Dewey saw
continuity of development. Van Meter Ames (1953), however, defended
Dewey against critics up to this point in time.
George Boas (1953) argued that Dewey yearns for universality in art
where none can be found. He believed that Dewey wrongly takes the term
"art" to have only one meaning where it has many.
Moreover, while some art communicates, other art conceals: it is wrong
to say that all art, or even that all great art, communicates
universally. Also, not everyone who practices art is interested in
communion and democracy. Some art is intended for communion with God,
not with humanity; some art is intended for communion with no one but
the artist him or herself.
One of the leading aestheticians of the time, Susanne Langer (1953)
saw pragmatism in general, and Dewey in particular, as guilty of
psychologism and therefore unable to deal with the issues that really
challenge aestheticians. Pragmatism's assumption is that all
human interests are manifestations of drives motivated by animal
needs, thus reducing human to animal psychology. Aesthetic values are
thereby interpreted either as direct satisfactions or as instrumental
to fulfilling psychological needs, making artistic experience no
different from ordinary experience. This misses the essence of art,
what makes it as important as science or religion. Whereas Dewey held
that there is no essential difference between art experience and
ordinary experience Langer thought that the appreciative attitude
toward art is not at all like that toward a new car or a beautiful
morning. But Felicia Kruse (2007) argued that Langer misinterpreted
Dewey on several points and was actually much closer to Dewey than she
thought.
In the 1950s there was an analytic revolution in English-speaking
aesthetics. Prior aesthetic theories were considered to be too
speculative and unclear. Dewey's work was caught up in this
condemnation. Arnold Isenberg, for instance, in a founding document of
analytic aesthetics, originally published in 1950, dismissed *Art
as Experience* as a "hodgepodge of conflicting methods and
undisciplined speculations", (1950 [1987: 128]) although he
found it full of profound suggestions. Dewey's theories of
expression and creativity were particular targets of analytic attack.
His was among the views singled out in a general critique of
expression as a defining characteristic of art, although often his own
distinctive theory was ignored in the process. A situation followed,
and continued well into the 1980s, in which, according to one editor
of *The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism*, Dewey's
aesthetics was virtually ignored (Fisher 1989). While Monroe
Beardsley, one of the most important late twentieth century
aestheticians, kept an interest in Dewey alive (1958, 1975, 1982),
particularly in his discussions of aesthetic experience, other major
figures, including Arthur Danto, Mary Mothersill and Richard Wollheim,
completely ignored him. Nelson Goodman may be a partial exception
(Freeland 2001). He certainly shared with Dewey a conviction that art
and science are close in many ways. And, like Dewey, he replaced the
question "what is art?" with "when is art?"
They also both took a naturalist approach to the arts. However,
Goodman, who never refers to Dewey in his *Languages of Art*
(1976), saw art in terms of languages and other symbol systems,
whereas Dewey saw it in terms of experience.
Edward Ballard (1957), in a move characteristic of the rise of
analytic philosophy in aesthetics, asserted that Dewey rejects many
distinctions that are necessary for philosophy, and that this leads to
a kind of irrationalism which results in his depending on problematic
metaphors like "funding" and "energy". He
thought Dewey's avoidance of specific techniques in forming
theories, for example the technique of formal definition, to be
anti-intellectual. Dewey's rejection of universals as illusions
and his enthusiastic acceptance of nominalism must ultimately fail,
for theory requires logically inter-related propositions that refer to
concepts.
Charles Gauss (1960), like Pepper before him, protested that
Dewey's organicism in *Art as Experience* disconnects
from his earlier pragmatism. Pragmatism, unlike organicism, focuses on
interaction with a background that is partially inorganic. Also,
*contra* Dewey, he maintained that aesthetic enjoyment is not a
particular *kind* of enjoyment, but enjoyment of aesthetic
characteristics.
Marshall Cohen (1977, originally 1965) complained, also in the
analytic vein, about the vagueness of Dewey's terms. He
especially wondered whether *unity* can really distinguish
aesthetic from non-aesthetic experience. He reasoned that the
experience of being badly beaten can have as much unity as hearing a
sonata. Moreover, aesthetic experience can often have the
discontinuous character that Dewey ascribes only to practical
experience.
Contemporary American aesthetician Arnold Berleant began his career
(1970) in a way that was much more sympathetic to Dewey. He has, in
his many writings, developed themes similar to Dewey's, for
example, in his concepts of the "aesthetic field" and
"engagement" (1970; 1991). His work on the aesthetics of
the environment had a strong influence on the recently emergent field
of everyday aesthetics which we will discuss below.
By contrast, Roger Scruton (1974) objected mainly to Dewey's
naturalism. He interpreted Dewey as insisting that aesthetic need must
underlie all our interest in art, and believed that Dewey fails to
capture what we mean when we say that we are interested in a picture
"for its own sake". Needs can be satisfied by many objects
but one cannot substitute pictures for one another. Unlike animal
need, interest in a picture involves thought of its object. As a
political conservative, Scruton has been opposed to Dewey's
views on education. However, his work on architecture (Scruton 1979),
with its emphasis on context, unity, functionalism, and the relations
between architecture and everyday aesthetics, is remarkably similar to
Dewey's views about art in general, although Dewey's name
is never mentioned.
John McDermott (1976), one of the leaders of the American Philosophy
tradition in the later part of the twentieth century, followed Dewey
in arguing that all experience is potentially aesthetic, where the
aesthetic sensibility refers to how we feel about our situation. Art
today leads us to life. In order to achieve consummatory experience we
need to cooperate with our environment.
Although Monroe Beardsley (1982) often spoke positively of
Dewey's notion of aesthetic experience, he thought that Dewey
was obsessed with the dangers of dualism and that he talked about
"separation" in a misleading way. Dewey thinks the
practices of hanging paintings in special buildings would deny
continuity between art and life. Yet Beardsley sees no real problem
here, for people who see a painting in a museum bring their culture
with them. Also, against Dewey's stress on continuity, Beardsley
thought that *discontinuity* in nature and in culture is
required for the emergence of genuine novelty in art. As opposed to
Dewey, Beardsley stressed the ways in which art is independent,
relatively self-sufficient, and autonomous to a degree. Alan Goldman
(2005) argued that Beardsley borrows too much from Dewey's
obscure discussion of experience, but articulates better than Dewey
the idea that aesthetic experience is a matter of complete engagement
of our faculties with both instrumental and intrinsic benefits. More
recently, Goldman (2013) has developed what he calls "the broad
view of aesthetic experience", whose similarities to
Dewey's view he readily acknowledges.
Joseph Margolis (1980) is perhaps the most important contemporary
aesthetician coming out of the analytic school to take Dewey
seriously, having a natural affinity to pragmatist ways of thought.
His idea that works of art are culturally emergent but physically
embodied entities is Deweyan in spirit, as is his insistence on a
robust relativist theory of interpretation. However, Margolis seldom
refers to Dewey and, although he believes himself closer to
Dewey's "Hegelianism" than to Peirce's
"Kantianism", he finds Peirce more interesting. He also
faults Dewey for not being an historicist (1999).
The relative lack of interest in Dewey changed for several reasons in
the late 1970s. First, Richard Rorty turned analytic philosophy on its
head by advocating a return to pragmatism (Rorty 1979, 1982). In this,
Dewey was one of his avowed heroes. Unfortunately, Rorty was not a
close reader of Dewey's aesthetics.
Dewey's aesthetics finally received an excellent exposition in
the work of Thomas Alexander (1987). Alexander developed his ideas
further in a book on eco-ontology and the aesthetics of existence
(2013). Mark Johnson, in a project inspired by cognitive science, drew
on Dewey's anti-dualism to develop a theory of the aesthetics of
human understanding (2007, 2018). Meanwhile, there has been a steady
interest in Dewey's aesthetics in the philosophy of education,
with articles appearing on a regular basis in such publications as the
*Journal of Aesthetic Education* and *Studies in the
Philosophy of Education* and several books (Jackson 1998, Garrison
1997, Greene 2001, Maslak 2006, Granger 2006). Ueno (2015) continued
in this tradition, stressing the importance of aesthetics in
Dewey's theory of democracy and education during a period of
urbanization and industrialization.
Dewey's renewed influence was due in part to increased interest
in various continental aestheticians. The similarities between Dewey
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are the most striking (Ames 1953, Kestenbaum
1977), but he also shares certain features with Hans-Georg Gadamer
(Gilmour 1987, who also notes important differences, and Jeannot
2001). Given his critique of capitalism, one can also find connections
between his thinking and that of Marxist aestheticians, particularly
Theodor Adorno (Lysaker 1998), although there are important
differences, especially where Adorno advocates the autonomy of art
while Dewey stresses continuity (Lewis 2005, Eldridge 2010).
There has also been some work on marked similarities between
Dewey's aesthetic thought and that of Taoism (Grange 2001),
Transcendental Meditation (Zigler 1982), Dogen's version of Zen
(Earls 1992), the great Indian aesthetician Abhinavagupta (Mathur
1981), the Bhagavad-Gita (Stroud 2009), and Confucius (Shusterman
2009, Man 2007, Mullis 2005, Grange 2004). Alexander has recently
discussed relations between Dewey and Eastern aesthetics generally
(Alexander 2009).
As mentioned earlier, many attacks on Dewey focused on his views on
expression. Tormey (1986) for example chided Dewey for assuming that
an artist is always expressing something and that the expressive
qualities in the work are the result of that act. He thought that
Dewey wrongly abandons the distinction between voluntary and
involuntary expression, and in doing so, undermines paradigmatic
examples of expressive behavior. A work of art may possess expressive
qualities of sadness but this is not necessarily the intended
consequence of the productive activity of the artist. For Alan Tormey,
the artist is not expressing him or herself: he/she is simply making
an expressive object. Michael Mitias (1992) defended Dewey against
these criticisms.
David Novitz (1992), who approved of Dewey's ideas that art
derives from experiences of everyday life and that the artistic
process infuses our daily lives, questioned the idea that fine art
always embodies consummatory or unified experiences. He thought Dewey
has an idealized view of art that borrows from the very aestheticist
theories he criticizes. Further, Dewey does not sufficiently question
the boundaries of art.
Richard Shusterman (1992, etc., see bibliography) is the most widely
known advocate of Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics. He especially
emphasized the possibilities of treating popular art as fine art with
his well-known example of rap as fine art. He also extended aesthetics
into the realm of everyday life with his concept of
"somaesthetics" (2012). Shusterman strikingly contrasted
Dewey's approach to that of analytic aesthetics. Like Dewey, he
stressed the idea that art and aesthetics are both culturally and
philosophically central. Some of his most trenchant comments involved
similarities between Dewey's thought and that of such
continental thinkers as Foucault and Adorno. However he also had his
criticisms of Dewey. He took Dewey to be redefining art in terms of
aesthetic experience, which he believed to be too slippery a concept
to explain much. Moreover, he asserted that although Dewey has much to
say about aesthetic experience, Dewey also holds that it is
indefinable, and this leads to problems with its being a criterion of
value in art. On the other hand, Shusterman thought that Dewey sees
defining art in terms of experience as a matter of getting us to have
more and better experiences with art, and not of giving a definition
in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. So, although he
doubted that philosophical theory can redefine art, he suspected Dewey
is not trying to do this anyway. Moreover, he thought it not only
possible but valuable to make less dramatic classificatory changes, as
for example in legitimating rock music as fine art. He believed that
whereas Dewey sought a global redefinition of art, he was simply
trying to remedy certain limitations in art practice. Later, he said
that much art fails to generate Dewey's aesthetic experience
(Shusterman 2000). He also observed that art cannot be redefined to be
*equivalent* to aesthetic experience, as we are hardly going to
reclassify an incredible experience of a sunset as art. Shusterman
also insisted on the value of aesthetic experiences that are
fragmented and ruptured, contrary to Dewey's emphasis on unity,
and noted that Dewey neglected the possibility of lingering reflection
after moments of consummation (Shusterman 2004). Paul C. Taylor
addressed Shusterman's criticism of Dewey as trying to find a
definition of art arguing that Dewey provides
>
>
> a very different kind of definition, one offered in full view of its
> sociohistorical contingency and pragmatic fuzziness. (Taylor 2002: 24)
>
>
>
>
This strand of pro-Deweyan thinking was also pursued by Crispin
Sartwell in response to multi-culturalism and everyday aesthetics
(Sartwell 1995, 2003). In the later instance Sartwell connected
everyday aesthetics to Dewey in the ideas that art arises from non-art
activities and that the domain of aesthetics goes well beyond the fine
arts.
Some contemporary feminist aestheticians have noted that Dewey shares
many of their concerns, for example their rejection of mind/body
dualism, their democratic instincts, their contextualism, and their
tendency to break down traditional distinctions (Seigfried 1996, Duran
2001). Charlene Seigfried found several aspects in Dewey's
thought that may enrich feminist exploration of women's
experiences, including his antidualism, his perspectivalism, his
working from concrete experience, his emphasis on the role of feeling
in experience, his stress on doing and making, and his attack on the
division between practice and theory. However, she noted that Dewey
neglected sexism in his analysis, and sometimes made sexist
assumptions.
Noel Carroll (2001) thought that Dewey's theory of art
fails to cover many contemporary works which then act as
counterexamples to his definition of art as experience. For example,
as Rothko's paintings can overwhelm us at one shot, their
experience may not have Dewey's requisite development and
closure. Carroll also thought that the view that experiences of art
must be unified is too narrow. Cage's
*4'33''*, which Carroll takes to obviously be a work
of art, does not consummate or have qualitative unity. Finally, he
thought that if experiences of everyday dispersion can be aesthetic
then Dewey's distinction between "an experience" and
disconnected daily experience dissolves. This might be contrasted to
Philip Jackson's (1998) defense of Dewey against similar
criticisms, especially with respect to Cage's
*4'33''* which he saw as fitting Dewey's
definition nicely. For Jackson, it is the *experience* that
requires unity, not the physical product.
George Dickie (2001) said that Dewey sets forth an expression theory
of art without any supporting argument. Lumping Dewey with
Collingwood, he thought such theorists place art in the same domain
with the growl of a dog with a bone. They made the creation of art
like the bowerbird's production of bowers, i.e., a result of
innate natures without a plan in mind. For Dickie, expression of
emotion is neither sufficient nor necessary for defining art. He
thought these theories wrongly hold that psychological mechanisms in
human nature are sufficient for the production of art, as if the
production of artworks is teleologically determined by such.
In her popular introductory textbook, Cynthia Freeland (2001) observed
that Dewey held that art is the best window to another culture, that
it is a universal language, and that we should try to experience
another culture as from within since barriers and prejudices can melt
away when we enter into the spirit of another culture's art.
Although this universalism seems similar to Clive Bell's
formalism, Freeland noted that for Dewey art is defined not as form
but as expression of the life of a community. She thought, however,
that we must also know many external facts about the community, and
that we must recognize that no culture is homogeneous: there may not
be *one* viewpoint in a culture. She also gave a positive nod
to Dewey's call for a revolution in which the values leading to
intelligent enjoyment of art are incorporated into our social
relations. Finally, she classified Dewey's aesthetics as a
cognitive theory since it focuses on art's role in helping
people to perceive and manipulate reality. Thus she found continuity
between Dewey's and Goodman's approaches to art as a kind
of language.
Dewey's thought in aesthetics has also sometimes been brought to
bear in analysis of other aspects of his philosophy. Noteworthy is the
ethical work of Gregory Pappas (2008), especially his chapter titled
"The Intelligent, Aesthetic, and Democratic Way of Life".
Here he discusses Dewey's aesthetic notion of balance as it
applies to ethics. Mark Johnson (1994) and Steven Fesmire (2003) also
introduce Dewey's aesthetic theories into discussion of ethics.
Scott Stroud (2011), previously mentioned, further develops the
Deweyan idea of moral self-cultivation, while Nathan Crick (2010)
applies Dewey's aesthetic ideas to a conception of rhetoric as
an art which in a democracy promotes freedom.
Recently there have been lively debates over the Deweyan tradition in
the aesthetics of everyday life. Most of the contestants are inspired
by Dewey's valuation of everyday aesthetic experience but depart
from him in various ways. Sherri Irvin (2008a) has argued that the
fragmented character of everyday aesthetic experiences might, contra
Dewey's emphasis on consummation, be what gives them their
distinctive quality. She goes so far as to assert that even scratching
an itch can be aesthetically appreciated (Irvin 2008b). Glenn Parsons
and Allen Carlson (2008) contend that, although Dewey's
aesthetic theory may seem particularly appropriate to appreciating
everyday objects since we interact with them in a more intimate and
multi-sensory way than with art objects, this approach, shared by
Korsmeyer (1999), Brady (2005), Leddy (2005, 2012), Shusterman (2006,
2012), and Saito (2007), fails to honor traditional distinctions
between aesthetic and mere "bodily" pleasures. They might
have also mentioned Glenn Kuehn (2005) who takes an explicitly Deweyan
approach to the aesthetics of food, and Katya Mandoki (2007) who takes
Dewey as one source of her everyday aesthetics. They think it wrong
that the pleasures of taking a bath, for example, could be considered
aesthetic. Rather, the objects of everyday aesthetics should be
appreciated mainly for their functional beauty (pleasures of the
proximal senses are not aesthetic, although they may still add some
value to the overall experience), and knowledge of the function of
everyday objects is required for their appropriate appreciation. Brian
Soucek (2009) and Christopher Dowling (2010) raise criticisms against
everyday aesthetics along similar lines. However, Kalle Puolakka
(2014, 2015, 2017, 2018) defends a Deweyan approach to everyday
aesthetics drawing on Dewey's theory of imagination and on
recent work on Dewey and moral imagination.
Dewey continues to have influence with respect to particular art
forms. For example David Clowney and Robert Rawlins (2014) use Dewey
to argue that risk-taking and showmanship are integral to music as
performed, and Aili Bresnahan (2014) develops a Deweyan theory of
performing arts practice with a special view to dance.
A significant recent development in philosophical aesthetics has been
the placing of more attention on biology. Along these lines, Alva
Noe (2015) has taken a markedly Deweyan stance in discussion of
art as strange tools. He writes that although we can take seeing as
something that happens in the head, it is, in "Dewey's
image, a transaction of doing and undergoing" (Noe 2015:
78). He agrees with Dewey that lives are not made up of a series of
sensations, but are
>
>
> composed of experiences that demand to be named--*that dinner
> in Venice*... [etc.]. (2015: 113)
>
>
>
Most notably, he takes a quote from Dewey about how the existence of
works of art has become an obstruction to a theory about them as an
epigraph to his book. He ends his book by noting that in Dewey's
view we are all artists since we are all engaged in making
experiences. And yet,
>
>
> true artists don't only make experiences. They make
> objects... that afford the opportunity for integral experience.
> (2015: 205)
>
>
>
It is a mark of the endurance and power of Dewey's aesthetic
theory that it has been so frequently criticized and defended from so
many different angles. Although many of these criticisms rest on an
incomplete or distorted understanding of Dewey's thought, there
are also many that should be answered by anyone who seeks to carry on
Dewey's legacy.
## 4. Wider Cultural Relevance
Dewey was ahead of his time in his devotion to multiculturalism. The
selection of illustrations Dewey chose for *Art as Experience*
included Pueblo Indian pottery, Bushmen rock-painting, Scythian
ornament, and African sculpture, as well as works by El Greco, Renoir,
Cezanne and Matisse. He was interested in traditional and folk arts in
Mexico, admiring the designs of the rural schools over those of the
cities (1926). He was also associated, mainly through Barnes, with
African-American culture. Barnes was invited to write a chapter for
*The New Negro* edited by Alain Locke (Locke 1925). *The New
Negro* was one of the founding documents of the Harlem
Renaissance. The students in Dewey's and Barnes' first
experimental classes in art education were mainly from the black
working class. Barnes collected African-American art and also
encouraged African-American students to study at the Barnes
Foundation. African-American painter and illustrator Aaron Douglas,
who came to the foundation in 1927, studied in Paris in 1931 under a
Foundation fellowship (Jubilee 1982). Barnes also had a long
association with Lincoln University, a historically black college,
many students of which studied at the Barnes Foundation (Hollingsworth
1994). Dewey was one of the founding members of the NAACP (National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and one of the
sixty signatories to the 1909 "Call" for a National
Conference to Address Racial Inequality, a founding document for the
NAACP (Library of Congress
[Other Internet Resources]).
Dewey also sought to promote cross-cultural understanding through his
founding of the China Institute in New York City in 1926. The China
Institute, which continues today, advertises itself as the only
institution in that city to focus solely on Chinese civilization, art
and culture. Hu Shih, a student of Dewey's at Columbia and one
of the leading figures in the creation of the Institute, invited him
to Peking in 1919 (Yong Ho 2004
[Other Internet Resources]).
Although Dewey was widely versed in literature, architecture,
painting, sculpture, and the theater, he was relatively uneducated in
music, and he was said to be tone-deaf. Yet he often had insightful
things to say about music, and many musicians and music educators have
drawn inspiration from his theory (e.g., Zeltner 1975). Unfortunately,
he did not discuss photography or film as separate art forms.
Many writers complain that Dewey showed little interest in the
avant-garde art of his time (for example, Eldridge 2010). It is true
that Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism play no role in his writing, and
his theory seems to actually preclude Non-objective painting (Jacobson
1960), although he does speak positively of abstract art. Nor did he
refer much to such innovative poets as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.
Although this may indicate a conservative approach to the arts, he
nonetheless had considerable influence on various innovative art
movements both in his own time and later. Perhaps most significantly,
the director of the Federal Art Project from 1935-1943, Holger
Cahill, was a Dewey follower (Mavigliano 1984). Amongst painters,
Thomas Hart Benton, the regionalist realist, was an early convert to
his philosophy. Dewey was also on the board of the influential Black
Mountain College, which had students such as Merce Cunningham and John
Cage. Josef Albers, an important painting teacher there, was first
influenced by Dewey's educational theory and later by his
aesthetics (Gosse 2012).
In Mexico, Escuelas de Pintura al Aire Libre, or open-air painting
schools, began during the Mexican Revolution and achieved an
established structure under the government of Alvaro Obregon
(1920-24). They were promoted by Alfredo Ramos Martinez, who was
inspired by Dewey.
Turning to late twentieth century artists, Dewey's influence on
Abstract Expressionism was especially strong (Buettner 1975, Berube
1998). For example, Robert Motherwell, who studied *Art as
Experience* when he was a philosophy major at Stanford, considered
it to be one of his bibles (Berube 1998). Donald Judd, the Minimalist
sculptor, read and admired Dewey (Raskin 2010). Earth Art, with its
emphasis on getting art out of the museum, might even be seen as
applied Dewey. There is also reason to believe that Allan Kaprow, one
of the originators of Happenings and Performance Art, read Dewey and
drew on his ideas (Kelley 2003). Although one author has argued that
contemporary Body Art has moved away from the integrated consummated
aesthetic experience Dewey commends (Jay 2002), another argues that
Dewey anticipates this movement (Brodsky 2002). |
environmental-aesthetics | ## 1. History
Although environmental aesthetics has developed as a sub-field of
Western philosophical aesthetics only in the last forty years, it has
historical roots in eighteenth and nineteenth century European and
North American aesthetics. In these centuries, there were important
advances in the aesthetics of nature, including the emergence of the
concept of disinterestedness together with those of the sublime and
the picturesque, as well as the introduction of the idea of positive
aesthetics. These notions continue to play a role in contemporary work
in environmental aesthetics, especially in the context of its
relationship to environmentalism. (See also Section 5.1 below.)
### 1.1 Eighteenth Century Aesthetics of Nature
In the West, the first major philosophical developments in the
aesthetics of nature occurred in the eighteenth century. During that
century, the founders of modern aesthetics not only began to take
nature as a paradigmatic object of aesthetic experience, they also
developed the concept of disinterestedness as the mark of such
experience. Over the course of the century, this concept was
elaborated by various thinkers, who employed it to purge from
aesthetic appreciation an ever-increasing range of interests and
associations. According to one standard account (Stolnitz 1961), the
concept originated with the third Earl of Shaftesbury, who introduced
it as a way of characterizing the notion of the aesthetic, was
embellished by Francis Hutcheson, who expanded it so as to exclude
from aesthetic experience not simply personal and utilitarian
interests, but also associations of a more general nature, and was
further developed by Archibald Alison, who took it to refer to a
particular state of mind. The concept was given its classic
formulation in Immanuel Kant's *Critique of Judgment*, in
which nature was taken as an exemplary object of aesthetic experience.
Kant argued that natural beauty was superior to that of art and that
it complemented the best habits of mind. It is no accident that the
development of the concept of disinterestedness and the acceptance of
nature as an ideal object of aesthetic appreciation went hand in hand.
The clarification of the notion of the aesthetic in terms of the
concept of disinterestedness disassociated the aesthetic appreciation
of nature from the appreciator's particular personal, religious,
economic, or utilitarian interests, any of which could impede
aesthetic experience.
The theory of disinterestedness also provided groundwork for
understanding the aesthetic dimensions of nature in terms of three
distinct conceptualizations. The first involved the idea of the
*beautiful*, which readily applies to tamed and cultivated
gardens and landscapes. The second centered on the idea of the
*sublime*. In the experience of the sublime, the more
threatening and terrifying of nature's manifestations, such as
mountains and wilderness, when viewed with disinterestedness, can be
aesthetically appreciated, rather than simply feared or despised.
These two notions were importantly elaborated by Edmund Burke and
Kant. However, concerning the appreciation of nature, a third concept
was to become more significant than that of either the beautiful or
the sublime: the notion of the *picturesque*. Thus, by the end
of the eighteenth century, there were three clearly distinct ideas
each focusing on different aspects of nature's diverse and often
contrasting moods. One historian of the picturesque tradition (Conron
2000) argues that in "eighteenth-century English theory, the
boundaries between aesthetic categories are relatively clear and
stable". The differences can be summarized as follows: objects
experienced as beautiful tend to be small and smooth, but subtly
varied, delicate, and "fair" in color, while those
experienced as sublime, by contrast, are powerful, vast, intense,
terrifying, and "definitionless". Picturesque items are
typically in the middle ground between those experienced as either
sublime or beautiful, being complex and eccentric, varied and
irregular, rich and forceful, and vibrant with energy.
It is not surprising that of these three notions, the idea of the
picturesque, rather that of the beautiful or the sublime, achieved the
greatest prominence concerning the aesthetic experience of nature. Not
only does it occupy the extensive middle ground of the complex,
irregular, forceful, and vibrant, all of which abound in the natural
world, it also reinforced various long-standing connections between
the aesthetic appreciation of nature and the treatment of nature in
art. The term "picturesque" literally means
"picture-like" and the theory of the picturesque advocates
aesthetic appreciation in which the natural world is experienced as if
divided into art-like scenes, which ideally resemble works of arts,
especially landscape painting, in both subject matter and composition.
Thus, since the concept of disinterestedness mandated appreciation of
nature stripped of the appreciator's own personal interests and
associations, it helped to clear the ground for experience of nature
governed by the theory of the picturesque, by which the appreciator is
encouraged to see nature in terms of a new set of artistic images and
associations. In this way the idea of the picturesque relates to
earlier conceptions of the natural world as comprised of what were
called "works of nature", which, although considered in
themselves to be proper and important objects of aesthetic experience,
were thought to be even more appealing when they resembled works of
art. The idea also resonates with other artistic traditions, such as
that of viewing art as the mirror of nature. The theory of the
picturesque received its fullest treatment in the late eighteenth
century when it was popularized in the writings of William Gilpin,
Uvedale Price, and Richard Payne Knight. At that time, it provided an
aesthetic ideal for English tourists, who pursued picturesque scenery
in the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands, and the Alps.
### 1.2 Nineteenth Century Aesthetics of Nature
Following its articulation in the eighteenth century, the idea of the
picturesque remained a dominant influence on popular aesthetic
experience of nature throughout the entire nineteenth and well into
the twentieth century. Indeed, it is still an important component of
the kind of aesthetic experience commonly associated with ordinary
tourism--that which involves seeing and appreciating the natural
world as it is represented in the depictions found in travel
brochures, calendar photos, and picture postcards. However, while the
idea of the picturesque continued to guide popular aesthetic
appreciation of nature, the philosophical study of the aesthetics of
nature, after flowering in the eighteenth century, went into decline.
Many of the main themes, such as the concept of the sublime, the
notion of disinterestedness, and the theoretical centrality of nature
in philosophical aesthetics, culminated with Kant, who gave some of
these ideas such exhaustive treatment that a kind of philosophical
closure was seemingly achieved. Following Kant, a new world order was
initiated by Hegel. In Hegel's philosophy, art was the highest
expression of "Absolute Spirit", and it, rather than
nature, was destined to become the favored subject of philosophical
aesthetics. Thus, in the nineteenth century, both on the continent and
in the United Kingdom, relatively few philosophers and only a
scattering of thinkers of the Romantic Movement seriously pursued the
theoretical study of the aesthetics of nature. There was no
philosophical work comparable to that of the preceding century.
However, while the philosophical study of the aesthetics of nature
languished in Europe, a new way of understanding the aesthetic
appreciation of the natural world was developing in North America.
This conception of nature appreciation had roots in the American
tradition of nature writing, as exemplified in the essays of Henry
David Thoreau. It was also inspired by the idea of the picturesque
and, to a lesser extent, that of the sublime, especially in its
artistic manifestations, such as the paintings of Thomas Cole and
Frederic Church. However, as nature writing became its more dominant
form of expression, the conception was increasingly shaped by
developments in the natural sciences. In the middle of the nineteenth
century, it was influenced by the geographical work of George Perkins
Marsh (Marsh 1865), who argued that humanity was increasingly causing
the destruction of the beauty of nature. The idea was forcefully
presented toward the end of the century in the work of American
naturalist John Muir, who was steeped in natural history. Muir
explicitly distinguished this kind of understanding of the aesthetic
appreciation of nature from that governed by the idea of the
picturesque. In a well-known essay, "A Near View of the High
Sierra" (Muir 1894), two of Muir's artist companions, who
focus on mountain scenery, exemplify aesthetic experience of nature as
guided by the idea of the picturesque. This differs from Muir's
own aesthetic experience, which involved an interest in and
appreciation of the mountain environment somewhat more akin to that of
a geologist. This way of experiencing nature eventually brought Muir
to see the whole of the natural environment and especially wild nature
as aesthetically beautiful and to find ugliness primarily where nature
was subject to human intrusion. The range of things that he regarded
as aesthetically appreciable seemed to encompass the entire natural
world, from creatures considered hideous in his day, such as snakes
and alligators, to natural disasters thought to ruin the environment,
such as floods and earthquakes. The kind of nature appreciation
practiced by Muir has become associated with the contemporary point of
view called "positive aesthetics" (Carlson 1984). Insofar
as such appreciation eschews humanity's marks on the natural
environment, it is somewhat the converse of aesthetic appreciation
influenced by the idea of the picturesque, which finds interest and
delight in evidence of human presence.
## 2. Twentieth Century Developments
Western philosophical study of the aesthetics of the natural world
reached a low point in the middle of the twentieth century, with the
focus of analytic aesthetics almost exclusively on philosophy of art.
At the same time, both the view that aesthetic appreciation of nature
is parasitic upon that of art and even the idea that it is not in fact
aesthetic appreciation at all were defended by some thinkers. However,
in the last third of the century, there was a reaction to the neglect
of the natural world by the discipline of aesthetics, which initiated
a revival of the aesthetic investigation of nature and led to the
emergence of environmental aesthetics.
### 2.1 The Neglect of the Aesthetics of Nature
In the first half of the twentieth century, Anglo-American philosophy
largely ignored the aesthetics of nature. However, there were some
noteworthy exceptions. For example, in North America, George Santayana
investigated the topic as well as the concept of nature itself.
Somewhat later, John Dewey contributed to the understanding of the
aesthetic experience of both nature and everyday life, and Curt
Ducasse discussed the beauty of nature as well as that of the human
form. In England, R. G. Collingwood worked on both the philosophy of
art and the idea of nature, but the two topics did not importantly
come together in his thought. However, other than a few such
individuals, as far as aesthetics was pursued, there was little
serious consideration of the aesthetics of nature. On the contrary,
the discipline was dominated by an interest in art. By the
mid-twentieth century, within analytic philosophy, the principal
philosophical school in the English-speaking world at that time,
philosophical aesthetics was virtually equated with philosophy of art.
The leading aesthetics textbook of the period was subtitled
*Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism* and opened with the
assertion: "There would be no problems of aesthetics, in the
sense in which I propose to mark out this field of study, if no one
ever talked about works of art" (Beardsley 1958). The comment
was meant to emphasize the importance of the analysis of language, but
it also reveals the art-dominated construal of aesthetics of that
time. Moreover, if and when the aesthetic appreciation of nature was
discussed, it was treated, by comparison with that of art, as a messy,
subjective business of less philosophical interest. Some of the major
aestheticians of the second half of the century argued that aesthetic
judgments beyond what became known as the "artworld" must
remain relative to conditions of observation and unfettered by the
kind of constraints that govern the appreciation of art (Walton 1970,
Dickie 1974).
The domination of analytic aesthetics by an interest in art had two
ramifications. On the one hand, it helped to motivate a controversial
philosophical position that denied the possibility of any aesthetic
experience of nature whatsoever. The position held that aesthetic
appreciation necessarily involves aesthetic judgments, which entail
judging the object of appreciation as the achievement of a designing
intellect. However, since nature is not the product of a designing
intellect, its appreciation is not aesthetic (Mannison 1980). In the
past, nature appreciation was deemed aesthetic because of the
assumption that nature is the work of a designing creator, but this
assumption is simply false or at least inadequate for grounding any
aesthetics of nature. On the other hand, the art-dominated construal
of aesthetics also gave support to approaches that stand within the
many different historical traditions that conceptualize the natural
world as essentially art-like--for example, as a set of the
"works of nature", or as the "handiwork" of a
creator, or as picturesque scenery. For example, what might be called
a landscape model of nature appreciation, which stems directly from
the tradition of the picturesque, proposes that we should
aesthetically experience nature as we appreciate landscape paintings.
This requires seeing it to some extent as if it were a series of
two-dimensional scenes and focusing either on artistic qualities
dependent upon romantic images of the kind associated with the idea of
the picturesque or simply on its formal aesthetic qualities. Such
art-oriented models of the aesthetic appreciation of nature, in
addition to being supported by powerful and long-standing traditions
of thought (Biese 1905, Nicolson 1959), are reconsidered in some
recent work in environmental aesthetics (Stecker 1997, Crawford 2004,
Leddy 2005a, Tafalla 2010, Paden 2015b). Likewise, the defense of
formalist aesthetic appreciation of nature has recently been renewed
(Zangwill 2001 2013, Welchman 2018), along with related discussion and
debate (Parsons 2004, Parsons and Carlson 2004, Moore 2006).
### 2.2 The Emergence of Environmental Aesthetics
In the last third of the twentieth century, a renewed interest in the
aesthetics of nature emerged. This revival was the result of several
different factors. In part, it was a response to the growing public
concern about the apparent degeneration of the environment, aesthetic
and otherwise. It was also the result of the academic world becoming
aware of the significance of the environmental movement--at the
level of both theoretical discussion and practical action. It is
noteworthy that the emergence of the philosophical study of
environmental ethics also dates from this time. Some of the earlier
work in environmental aesthetics focused on empirical research
conducted in response to public apprehension about the aesthetic state
of the environment. Critics of this research argued that the landscape
assessment and planning techniques used in environmental management
were inadequate in stressing mainly formal properties, while
overlooking expressive and other kinds of aesthetic qualities (Sagoff
1974, Carlson 1976). Empirical approaches were also faulted as fixated
on "scenic beauty" and overly influenced by ideas such as
that of the picturesque (Carlson 1977). In general, the area was
thought to be beset by theoretical problems (Sparshott 1972), and the
empirical research in particular was said to lack an adequate
conceptual framework, often being conducted in what one critic called
a "theoretical vacuum" (Appleton 1975b). Attempts to fill
this vacuum prompted the idea of sociobiological underpinnings for the
aesthetic appreciation of nature, such as "prospect-refuge
theory" (Appleton 1975a 1982), as well as other kinds of
evolution-related accounts (Orians and Heerwagen 1986 1992), the idea
of which has recently received more attention from some philosophers
(Davies 2012, Paden *et al* 2012, Paden 2015a 2016, Bartalesi
and Portera 2015). In addition, the concerns of this period motivated
the development of a variety of theoretical models of aesthetic
response grounded in, for example, developmental and environmental
psychology (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989, Bourassa 1991). There are
overviews (Zube 1984, Cats-Baril and Gibson 1986, Daniel 2001) and
collections (Saarinen *et al* 1984, Nasar 1988, Sheppard and
Harshaw 2001) of this and related kinds of research, as well as more
recent studies that, although they are essentially empirical in
orientation, are of considerable theoretical interest (Porteous 1996,
Bell 1999, Parsons and Daniel 2002, Gobster *et al* 2007, Hill
and Daniel 2008, Gobster 2008 2013). One comprehensive review of this
kind of research also includes some discussion of its relationship to
philosophical work in environmental aesthetics (Thompson and Tarvlou
2009).
Within philosophical aesthetics itself, the renewed interest in the
aesthetics of nature was also fueled by another development: the
publication of Ronald Hepburn's seminal article
"Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural
Beauty" (Hepburn 1966). Hepburn's essay is commonly
recognized as setting the agenda for the aesthetics of nature for the
late twentieth century (Brook 2010, Saito 2010, Sepanmaa 2010,
Carlson 2014b). After noting that by essentially reducing all of
aesthetics to philosophy of art, analytic aesthetics had virtually
ignored the natural world, Hepburn argued that aesthetic appreciation
of art frequently provides misleading models for the appreciation of
nature. However, he nonetheless observed that there is in the
aesthetic appreciation of nature, as in the appreciation of art, a
distinction between appreciation that is only trivial and superficial
and that which is serious and deep. He furthermore suggested that for
nature such serious appreciation might require new and different
approaches that can accommodate not only nature's indeterminate
and varying character, but also both our multi-sensory experience and
our diverse understanding of it. By focusing attention on natural
beauty, Hepburn demonstrated that there could be significant
philosophical investigation of the aesthetic experience of the world
beyond the artworld. He thereby not only generated renewed interest in
the aesthetics of nature, he also laid foundations for environmental
aesthetics in general as well as for the aesthetics of everyday
life.
In the wake of Hepburn's article, the next major developments in
the emerging field of environmental aesthetics challenged both the
idea that nature appreciation is not aesthetic and the persistence of
art-oriented approaches to the aesthetic appreciation of nature.
Although these views about the appreciation of nature had found some
grounding in analytic aesthetics' reduction of aesthetics to
philosophy of art, as art's monopoly on philosophical aesthetics
began to weaken, they were increasing recognized to be deeply
counterintuitive. Concerning the former, many of our fundamental
paradigms of aesthetic experience seem to be instances of appreciation
of nature, such as our delight in a sunset or in a bird in flight.
Moreover, the Western tradition in aesthetics, as well as other
traditions, such as the Japanese, has long been committed to doctrines
that explicitly contradict the nonaesthetic conception of nature
appreciation, such as the conviction that, as one philosopher
expressed it, anything that can be viewed can be viewed aesthetically
(Ziff 1979). Concerning the art-oriented models, it was argued by some
that such approaches do not fully realize serious, appropriate
appreciation of nature, but rather distort the true character of
natural environments. For example, the landscape model recommends
framing and flattening environments into scenery. Moreover, in
focusing heavily on artistic qualities, these accounts are thought to
neglect much of our normal experience and understanding of nature
(Hepburn 1966 1993, Carlson 1979 2000, Berleant 1985 1988 1992, Saito
1998a 1998b). The problem, in short, is that they do not acknowledge
the importance of aesthetically appreciating nature, as one
aesthetician puts it, "as nature" (Budd 2002).
## 3. Basic Orientations in Environmental Aesthetics
After the emergence of environmental aesthetics as a significant area
of philosophical research, some initial positions crystallized. In the
last part of the last century, these positions developed distinct
orientations concerning the aesthetic appreciation of natural
environments. At that time, the positions were frequently
distinguished as belonging in one or the other of two groups,
alternatively labeled cognitive and non-cognitive (Godlovitch 1994,
Eaton 1998, Carlson and Berleant 2004), conceptual and non-conceptual
(Moore 1999), or narrative and ambient (Foster 1998). The distinction
marks a division between those points of view that take knowledge and
information to be essential to aesthetic appreciation of environments
and those that take some other feature, such as engagement, emotion
arousal, or imagination, to be paramount. The distinction thereby
gives structure and organization to the diverse points of view
represented in the field. Moreover, it is in line with similar
distinctions used in aesthetic theory concerning the appreciation of
art, music, and literature.
### 3.1 Cognitive Views
What are called cognitive, conceptual, or narrative positions in
environmental aesthetics are united by the thought that knowledge and
information about the nature of the object of appreciation is central
to its aesthetic appreciation. Thus, they champion the idea that
nature must be appreciated, as one author puts it, "on its own
terms" (Saito 1998b). These positions tend to reject aesthetic
approaches to environments, such as that governed by the idea of the
picturesque, that draw heavily on the aesthetic experience of art for
modeling the appreciation of nature. Yet they affirm that art
appreciation can nonetheless show some of what is required in an
adequate account of nature appreciation. For example, in serious,
appropriate aesthetic appreciation of works of art, it is taken to be
essential that we experience works as what they in fact are and in
light of knowledge of their real natures. Thus, for instance,
appropriate appreciation of a work such as Picasso's
*Guernica* (1937) requires that we experience it as a painting
and moreover as a cubist painting, and therefore that we appreciate it
in light of our knowledge of paintings in general and of cubist
paintings in particular (Walton 1970). Adopting this general line of
thought, one cognitive approach to nature appreciation, sometimes
labeled the natural environmental model (Carlson 1979) or scientific
cognitivism (Parsons 2002), holds that just as serious, appropriate
aesthetic appreciation of art requires knowledge of art history and
art criticism, such aesthetic appreciation of nature requires
knowledge of natural history--the knowledge provided by the
natural sciences and especially sciences such as geology, biology, and
ecology. The idea is that scientific knowledge about nature can reveal
the actual aesthetic qualities of natural objects and environments in
the way in which knowledge about art history and art criticism can for
works of art. In short, to appropriately aesthetically appreciate
nature "on its own terms" is to appreciate it as it is
characterized by natural science (Carlson 1981 2000 2007, Rolston
1995, Eaton 1998, Matthews 2002, Parsons 2002 2006b).
Other cognitive or quasi-cognitive accounts of the aesthetic
appreciation of environments differ from scientific cognitivism
concerning either the kind of cognitive resources taken to be relevant
to such appreciation or the degree to which these resources are
considered relevant. On the one hand, several cognitive approaches
emphasize different kinds of information, claiming that appreciating
nature "on its own terms" might well involve experiencing
it in light of various cultural and historical traditions. Thus, in
appropriate aesthetic appreciation, local and regional narratives,
folklore, and even mythological stories about nature are endorsed
either as complementary with or as alternative to scientific knowledge
(Sepanmaa 1993, Saito 1998b, Heyd 2001). On the other hand,
another at least quasi-cognitive approach strongly supports the idea
that nature must be appreciated "as nature", but does not
go beyond that constraint. The justification for accepting the
"as nature" restriction is that the aesthetic experience
of nature should be true to what nature actually is. This, however, is
the extent of the approach's commitment to cognitivism and marks
the limits of the similarity that it finds between art appreciation
and the appreciation of nature. It rejects the idea that scientific
knowledge about nature can reveal the actual aesthetic qualities of
natural objects and environments in the way in which knowledge about
art history and art criticism can for works of art. Moreover, it holds
that, unlike the case with art, many of the most significant aesthetic
dimensions of natural objects and environments are extremely relative
to conditions of observation. The upshot is that aesthetic
appreciation of nature is taken to allow a degree of freedom that is
denied to the aesthetic appreciation of art (Fisher 1998, Budd
2002).
### 3.2 Non-cognitive Views
Standing in contrast to the cognitive positions in environmental
aesthetics are several so-called non-cognitive, non-conceptual, or
ambient approaches. However, "non-cognitive" here should
not be taken in its older philosophical sense, as meaning primarily or
only "emotive". Rather it indicates simply that these
views hold that something other than a cognitive component, such as
scientific knowledge or cultural tradition, is the central feature of
the aesthetic appreciation of environments. The leading non-cognitive
approach, called the aesthetics of engagement, draws on phenomenology
as well as on analytic aesthetics. In doing so, it rejects many of the
traditional ideas about aesthetic appreciation not only for nature but
also for art. It argues that the theory of disinterestedness involves
a mistaken analysis of the concept of the aesthetic and that this is
most evident in the aesthetic experience of natural environments.
According to the engagement approach, disinterested appreciation, with
its isolating, distancing, and objectifying gaze, is out of place in
the aesthetic experience of nature, for it wrongly abstracts both
natural objects and appreciators from the environments in which they
properly belong and in which appropriate appreciation is achieved.
Thus, the aesthetics of engagement stresses the contextual dimensions
of nature and our multi-sensory experiences of it. Viewing the
environment as a seamless unity of places, organisms, and perceptions,
it challenges the importance of traditional dichotomies, such as that
between subject and object. It beckons appreciators to immerse
themselves in the natural environment and to reduce to as small a
degree as possible the distance between themselves and the natural
world. In short, appropriate aesthetic experience is held to involve
the total immersion of the appreciator in the object of appreciation
(Berleant 1985 1988 1992 2013b).
Other non-cognitive positions in environmental aesthetics contend that
dimensions other than engagement are central to aesthetic experience.
What is known as the arousal model holds that we may appreciate nature
simply by opening ourselves to it and being emotionally aroused by it.
On this view, this less intellectual, more visceral experience of
nature constitutes a legitimate way of aesthetically appreciating it
that does not require any knowledge gained from science or elsewhere
(Carroll 1993). Another alternative similarly argues that neither
scientific nor any other kind of knowledge facilitates real,
appropriate appreciation of nature, but not because such appreciation
need involve only emotional arousal, but rather because nature itself
is essentially alien, aloof, distant, and unknowable. This position,
which may be called the mystery model, contends that appropriate
experience of nature incorporates a sense of being separate from
nature and of not belonging to it--a sense of mystery involving a
state of appreciative incomprehension (Godlovitch 1994). A fourth
non-cognitive approach brings together several features thought to be
relevant to nature appreciation. It attempts to balance engagement and
the traditional idea of disinterestedness, while giving center stage
to imagination. This approach distinguishes a number of different
kinds of imagination--associative, metaphorical, exploratory,
projective, ampliative, and revelatory. It also responds to concerns
that imagination introduces subjectivity by appealing to factors such
as guidance by the object of appreciation, the constraining role of
disinterestedness, and the notion of "imagining well"
(Brady 1998 2003). A related point of view, which stresses the
metaphysical dimensions of imagination, might also be placed in the
non-cognitive group, although doing so requires making certain
assumptions about the cognitive content of metaphysical speculation.
According to this account, the imagination interprets nature as
revealing metaphysical insights: insights about things such as the
meaning of life, the human condition, or our place in the cosmos.
Thus, this point of view includes within appropriate aesthetic
experience of nature those abstract meditations and ruminations about
ultimate reality that our encounters with nature sometimes engender
(Hepburn 1996).
## 4. Environmental Aesthetics beyond Natural Environments
Since they first took form in the late twentieth century, the initial
positions in environmental aesthetics expanded from their original
focus on natural environments to consider human and human-influenced
environments. At the same time, the discipline has also come to
include the examination of that which falls within such environments,
giving rise to what is called the aesthetics of everyday life. This
area involves the aesthetics of not only more common objects and
environments, but also a range of everyday activities. Concerning both
the aesthetics of human environments and the aesthetics of everyday
life, approaches that combine the resources of both cognitive and
non-cognitive points of views have become more common and seem
especially fruitful.
### 4.1 The Aesthetics of Human Environments
Both the cognitive and the non-cognitive orientations in environmental
aesthetics have resources that are brought to bear on the aesthetic
investigation of human and human-influenced environments. Of the
initial positions, some non-cognitive approaches have made the most
substantial contributions to this area of research. The aesthetics of
engagement is particularly significant in this regard, constituting a
model for the aesthetic appreciation not simply of both nature and
art, but also of every other aspect of human experience; it studies
the aesthetic dimensions of rural countrysides, small towns, large
cities, theme parks, gardens, museums, and even human relationships.
Moreover, although, as is clear from the early collections of essays
in environmental aesthetics (Kemal and Gaskell 1993, Carlson and
Berleant 2004), the field initially concentrated on natural
environments, the aesthetics of engagement, unlike most other
approaches, from very early on focused not simply on natural
environments, but also on human environments and especially on urban
environments (Berleant 1978 1984 1986). Much of this material is
available in more recently published volumes (Berleant 1997 2004 2005
2010b 2012). It has become a foundation for a substantial body of
research on the aesthetic appreciation of urban and as well as other
kinds of environments (Haapala 1998, von Bonsdorff 2002, Blanc 2013,
Paetzold 2013, Alvarez 2017). Other non-cognitive accounts, such as
that which stresses imagination, likewise illuminate our aesthetic
responses to a range of human environments as well as to our use of
them for purposes such as resource extraction and agricultural
production (Brady 2003 2006).
Cognitive accounts also investigate the aesthetic appreciation of
human environments, arguing that, as with natural environments,
appropriate appreciation depends on knowledge of what something is,
what it is like, and why it is as it is. Scientific cognitivism claims
that for human environments knowledge provided by the social sciences,
especially history, is equally as relevant to aesthetic appreciation
as that given by the natural sciences (Carlson 2009). For appropriate
appreciation of rural and urban environments, as well as specialized
environments such as those of industry and agriculture, what is needed
is information about their histories, their functions, and their roles
in our lives (Carlson 1985 2001, Parsons 2008b, Parsons and Carlson
2008). Other approaches emphasize the aesthetic potential of cultural
traditions, which seem especially relevant to the appreciation of what
might be termed cultural landscapes--environments that constitute
important places in the cultures and histories of particular groups of
people. What is often called a sense of place, together with ideas and
images from folklore, mythology, and religion, frequently plays a
significant role in individuals' aesthetic experience of their
own home landscapes (Saito 1985, Sepanmaa 1993, Carlson 2000,
Sandrisser 2007, Firth 2008, Nomikos 2018).
Fruitful approaches to the aesthetic appreciation of human
environments can also be found in views that draw on both cognitive
and non-cognitive points of view. There have been attempts to
explicitly forge connections between the two orientations (Foster
1998, Moore 1999 2008, Fudge 2001), and there are several collections
and studies that, moving beyond the cognitive/non-cognitive
distinction, inform our understanding of the appreciation of an array
of environments and address issues that arise concerning them
(Berleant and Carlson 2007, Arntzen and Brady 2008, Herrington 2009,
Brady *et al* 2018). There are investigations of both rural
landscapes (Sepanmaa 2005, von Bonsdorff 2005, Andrews 2007,
Benson 2008, Leddy 2008, Brook 2013, Benovsky 2016) and urban
cityscapes (von Bonsdorff 2002, Macauley 2007, Sepanmaa 2007,
Erzen and Milani 2013, Frydryczak 2015) as well as more specialized
environments, such as industrial sites (Saito 2004, Maskit 2007, Kover
2014), shopping centers (Brottman 2007), restored and rewilded
environments (Heyd 2002, Prior and Brady 2017, Brady *et al*
2018), and even environments after the end of nature (Vogel 2015).
Beyond the consideration of these larger, more public environments,
the aesthetics of everyday life becomes especially relevant.
### 4.2 The Aesthetics of Everyday Life
The aesthetics of everyday life tends to focus on the aesthetics of
smaller environments as well as the common objects and the everyday
activities that occupy such environments. Thus it investigates not
only the aesthetic qualities of more personal environments, such as
individual living spaces, for example, yards and houses (Melchionne
1998 2002, Lee 2010), but also the aesthetic dimensions of normal
day-to-day experiences (Leddy 1995 2005b 1012b, Saito 2001 2008 2012
2017b, Haapala 2005, Irvin 2008a 2008b, Mandoki 2010, Maskit 2011).
Moreover, it explores the aesthetic aspects of somewhat more
specialized and perhaps uniquely human interests and activities, such
as the appreciation of the human body (Davies 2014, Irvin 2016b, Saito
2016), of sports (Welsch 2005, Edgar 2013), and of food, cuisine, and
dining (Korsmeyer 1999, Sweeney 2017, Ravasio 2018). There are major
monographs that address the general topic of the aesthetics of
everyday life (Mandoki 2007, Saito 2008 2017a, Leddy 2012b) as well as
several collections (von Bonsdorff and Haapala 1999, Light and Smith
2005, Yuedi and Carter 2014a, Irvin 2016a) that pursue particular
areas of interest and thus yield insight into and encourage the
appreciation of almost every aspect of human life. However, although
these various lines of research are clearly very productive, the
credentials of the aesthetics of everyday life as an investigation of
genuine aesthetic experiences have been challenged, debated, and
defended (Dowling 2010, Melchionne 2011 2013 2014, Leddy 2012a 2014
2015, Naukkarinen 2013 2017, Carlson 2014a, Davies 2015, Puolakka
2018).
Nonetheless, in spite of these challenges and concerns about the
aesthetics of everyday life, when it turns to the investigation of
things such as sports and food, it begins to come full circle,
connecting environmental aesthetics back to more traditional
aesthetics and to the study of clearly genuine aesthetic experiences.
By way of the aesthetics of everyday life, together with the
aesthetics of human environments, environmental aesthetics makes
contact with the artistic activities involved not only in sports and
cuisine, but also in gardening (Miller 1993, Saito 1996, Carlson 1997,
Ross 1998, Cooper 2006, Parsons 2008a, Chung 2018, Brady *et
al* 2018) and in landscaping, architecture, and design (Stecker
1999, Carlson 2000, Parsons 2008b 2011 2016, Forsey, 2013, Svabo and
Ekelund 2015, van Etteger *et al* 2016). In addition, and now
within the context of environmental aesthetics, traditional art forms,
such as poetry and literature (Berleant 1991 2004, Ross 1998,
Sepanmaa 2004) and painting, sculpture, dance, and music
(Berleant 1991 2004, Ross 1998, Mullis 2014) as well as newer forms,
such as environmental art (Crawford 1983, Carlson 1986, Ross 1993,
Brady 2007, Brook 2007, Fisher 2007, Lintott 2007, Parsons 2008a,
Simus 2008b, Brady *et al* 2018, Nannicelli 2018), are explored
and re-explored--both as aesthetically significant dimensions of
our everyday experiences and concerning their roles in shaping our
aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. (For
more detailed consideration of the aesthetics of everyday life, see
the SEP entry on the Aesthetics of the Everyday.)
## 5. Environmental Aesthetics, Environmentalism, and Future Directions
Together with wider scope of environmental aesthetics, including both
the aesthetics of human environments and the aesthetics of everyday
life, the twenty-first century has also given rise to renewed
investigations of the relationship between environmental aesthetics
and environmentalism. This relationship has been increasingly
scrutinized, resulting in criticism of earlier work on the aesthetics
of nature as well as detailed assessments of contemporary positions.
Hand in hand with these developments have come several new interests
and directions.
### 5.1 Environmental Aesthetics and Environmentalism
The relationships between contemporary environmentalism and the
positions and ideas of environmental aesthetics have sources in the
aesthetics of nature developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. As noted, early environmental movements, especially in
North America, were fueled by a mode of aesthetic appreciation shaped
not only by the notion of the picturesque but also by ideas developed
by thinkers such as Muir (Hargrove 1979, Callicott 1994, Wattles 2013,
Brady 2018). However, more recently the relationship between
environmental aesthetics and environmentalism has seemed somewhat more
problematic (Carlson 2010). Some individuals interested in the
conservation and protection of both natural and human heritage
environments have not found in traditional aesthetics of nature the
resources that they believe are needed in order to carry out an
environmentalist agenda (Loftis 2003). Others investigate problems
posed by environments with unique features, such as isolation, for it
is seemingly difficult to justify on aesthetic grounds the
preservation of natural environments that are isolated such as to be
essentially hidden from human aesthetic appreciation (Parsons
2015). The problem is especially acute concerning environments, such
as wetlands, that do not fit conventional conceptions of scenic beauty
(Rolston 2000, Callicott 2003). Moreover, in line with earlier
criticisms that much of the empirical work in landscape assessment and
planning was focused only on scenic, picturesque environments, much of
the historical tradition concerning the aesthetic appreciation of
nature has been called into question. Various themes in the aesthetics
of nature, such as appreciation grounded in the idea of the
picturesque, have been criticized in a number of ways: as
anthropocentric (Godlovitch 1994), scenery-obsessed (Saito 1998a),
trivial (Callicott 1994), subjective (Thompson 1995), and/or morally
vacuous (Andrews 1998). Similarly, in agreement with the aesthetics of
engagement's critique of the theory of disinterestedness, some
find that concept to be questionable from an environmental standpoint
(Rolston 1998).
There are a variety of responses to these kinds of criticisms of
traditional aesthetics of nature and of the notions of
disinterestedness and the picturesque. Some reassess and defend the
idea of the picturesque, arguing that it, as well as some other
aspects of the eighteenth century tradition, has been misunderstood by
some contemporary aestheticians (Brook 2008, Paden *et al*
2013, Paden 2013 2015a 2015b, Earle 2015). Others turn to the
investigation of the long neglected member of the original
eighteenth-century triumvirate of the beautiful, the sublime, and the
picturesque, finding in the sublime new resources for approaching the
aesthetic appreciation of the natural world (Brady 2012 2013, Shapshay
2013, Mahoney 2016). However, whatever the final verdict about the
significance of the picturesque and the sublime, the resources of
non-cognitive approaches, especially the aesthetics of engagement, are
taken to counter the criticisms that, due to the influence of ideas
such as that of the picturesque, aesthetic experience of nature must
be both anthropocentric and scenery-obsessed (Rolston 1998 2002). The
charge of anthropocentricity is also explicitly addressed by the
mystery approach, which attempts to give aesthetic appreciation of
nature an "acentric" basis (Godlovitch 1994). Concerning
the concept of disinterestedness, some philosophers yet hold the view
that some form of the theory of disinterestedness is essential, since
without it the notion of the aesthetic itself lacks conceptual
grounding (Budd 2002), while others claim that an analysis of
aesthetic experience in terms of the concept of disinterestedness
helps to meet the charges that traditional aesthetics is
anthropocentric and subjective, since such an analysis supports the
objectivity of aesthetic judgments (Brady 2003). Similarly, cognitive
accounts also furnish replies to some of these charges. Scientific
cognitivism in particular, with its focus on scientific knowledge such
as that given by geology and ecology, is claimed to help meet the
worry that aesthetic appreciation of environments is of little
significance in environmental conservation and preservation since
aesthetic appreciation is trivial and subjective (Hettinger 2005,
Parsons 2006a 2008a). Nonetheless, the extent to which scientific
cognitivism and related ecology-dependent views can successfully
address such problems and doubts concerning the appropriate aesthetic
appreciation of both natural and human environments is also questioned
on various grounds (Budd 2002, Hettinger 2007, Berleant 2010a 2016,
Bannon 2011, Stecker 2012, Herguedas 2018, Mikkonen 2018).
Like the movement toward more ecologically informed aesthetic
appreciation, the line of thought that connects the aesthetic
appreciation of nature with positive aesthetics has also been debated.
The contention that untouched, pristine nature has only or primarily
positive aesthetic qualities has been related to scientific
cognitivism by suggesting that linking the appreciation of nature to
scientific knowledge explains how positive aesthetic appreciation is
nurtured by a scientific worldview that increasingly interprets the
natural world as having positive aesthetic qualities, such as order,
balance, unity, and harmony (Carlson 1984). Other philosophers either
see the relationship between scientific cognitivism and positive
aesthetics somewhat conversely, arguing that the latter should just be
assumed, in which case it provides support for the former (Parsons
2002), or simply contend that the positive aesthetics tradition
actually has much earlier roots than contemporary scientific
cognitivism (Phemister and Strickland 2015). Nonetheless, however it
is justified, some versions of the positive aesthetics position are
supported by several environmental philosophers (Rolston 1988,
Hargrove 1989, Hettinger 2017, Cheng 2017a), while others find it
problematic, either since it appears to undercut the possibility of
the kind of comparative assessments thought to be necessary for
environmental planning and preservation (Thompson 1995, Godlovitch
1998a) or because the idea itself seems unintuitive, obscure, and/or
inadequately justified (Godlovitch 1998b, Saito 1998a, Budd 2002,
Stecker 2012). Even philosophers who are somewhat open to the idea of
positive aesthetics have some reservations about its original
formulation, arguing that it depends too heavily on a now out-dated
conception of ecology and/or does not adequately stress an
evolutionary understanding of nature as an essential component of
aesthetic appreciation (Simus 2008a, Paden *et al* 2012, Paden
2015a 2016). Such considerations may point to a more plausible version
of positive aesthetics.
### 5.2 Environmental Aesthetics: New Interests and Future Directions
In spite of the above noted reservations about various cognitivist
approaches, in light of the seeming relevance of natural sciences such
as geology, biology, and especially ecology to the aesthetic
appreciation of nature, scientific cognitivim is sometimes interpreted
as "an ecological aesthetic" in the tradition of Aldo
Leopold, who linked the beauty of nature to ecological integrity and
stability (Callicott 1994 2003, Gobster 1995). However, although it
clearly has roots in Leopold's thought, the explicit idea of
ecological aesthetics, or as it is sometimes called, ecoaesthetics,
seems to have later origins (Meeker 1872, Koh 1988). Moreover,
although the idea has had for some time a place within analytic
environmental aesthetics, perhaps best filled by scientific
cognitivism, more recently it has also been adopted by some
philosophers working in the "continental tradition". For
example, it is claimed that although phenomenological work in
"ecological aesthetics" is "still in its
infancy", the work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty is
applicable to its development. Moreover, it is suggested that the
aesthetics of engagement is the first and currently the strongest
"comprehensive phenomenological theory of ecological
aesthetics" and that it in combination with scientific
cognitivism would constitute a stronger ecological aesthetics
(Toadvine 2010). There is also other recent research in environmental
aesthetics that draws, more or less, on both analytic and continental
traditions (Tafalla 2011, Leddy 2012b, Maskit 2014, Paetzold 2014,
Seel 2015, Johannesdottir 2016).
There is, in addition, considerable interest in environmental
aesthetics in the East, which likewise draws on both analytic and
continental traditions as well as on Eastern philosophy (Cheng 2010
2013b 2017b, Yuedi 2014, Chen 2015). Several different topics
concerning both natural and human environments are addressed in the
recent work in this area, which includes research not only by Eastern
but also by Western scholars (Xue 2008 2018, Xue and Carlson 2010,
Saito 2014a, Aota 2016, Berleant 2013a 2016, Carlson 2017, Odin 2017,
Zeng Y. 2017, Brubaker 2018, Chung 2018, Parsons and Zhang 2018).
There are also some collections that contain relevant essays (Cheng
*et al* 2013, Yuedi and Carter 2014a, Callicott and McRae 2017,
Nguyen 2018) as well as some journal issues devoted especially to
recent work in Eastern aesthetics, for example, *Critical
Theory*, 1, 2 (2017) and *Contemporary Aesthetics*, Special
Volume 6 (2018). Within this body of work, perhaps the most dominate
area of interest is ecological aesthetics, which is pursued by several
Chinese aestheticians, who have developed robust versions of
ecoaesthetics (Cheng 2013a 2016, Zeng F. 2017). Other than the sources
cited here, much of this work is available only in Chinese. However,
one prominent version of ecoaesthetics, which is accessible in
English, embraces, as the "four keystones of ecological
aesthetic appreciation", not only the centrality of ecological
knowledge and the rejection of the duality of humanity and the natural
world, but also the over-arching value of ecosystem biodiversity and
health and the continued guidance of ecological ethics (Cheng 2013c).
While the first two of these four "keystones" reflect
scientific cognitivism and the aesthetics of engagement, the last two
go well beyond these Western positions. By placing ecosystem health
and ecological ethics within the framework of ecoaesthetics, Chinese
ecological aesthetics directly and powerfully addresses the question
of the relationship between environmental aesthetics and environmental
ethics (Carlson 2018). This move is comparable to, and perhaps more
successful than, the attempts by Western aestheticians to bring
aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments in line
with moral obligations to maintain environmental and ecological health
(Rolston 1995, Eaton 1997 1998, Lintott 2006, Saito 2007 2008,
Varandas 2015) and to forge strong positive links between aesthetic
appreciation of nature and nature protection and preservation (Rolston
2002, Brady 2003, Carlson and Lintott 2007, Parsons 2008a, Carlson
2010, Lintott and Carlson 2014, Parsons 2018). Nonetheless, the degree
to which aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments
and ethical considerations are related to one another continues to be
a matter of investigation, discussion, and debate (Loftis 2003, Bannon
2011, Stecker 2012, Carlson 2018, Stewart and Johnson 2018).
The current research in environmental aesthetics that draws on the
continental tradition and the extensive work on ecoaesthetics by
Eastern scholars are examples of the globalization of environmental
aesthetics. Recently there have been calls in both the East and the
West for the globalization of aesthetics in general (Li and Cauvel
2006, Higgins 2017) and of environmental aesthetics in particular
(Saito 2010, Yuedi and Carter 2014b). Such calls are vital to the
continuing growth of the field, yet it is also important to note that,
although work on ecoaesthetics within the continental tradition and
its development in the East are relatively recent, environmental
aesthetics itself has long had a global orientation. Since its
inception, there has been interest in the field by a wide range of
scholars exploring different philosophical traditions and/or working
in different countries. For example, drawing on continental philosophy
is not new to environmental aesthetics (Berleant 1985). Likewise,
there was significant research on Japanese aesthetics of nature early
in the development of environmental aesthetics (Saito 1985 1992 1996)
which has continued into the present century (Saito 2002 2014a).
Another example is the research produced in Finland, where a number of
conferences were hosted during the 1990s and 2000s, each followed by a
collection of articles, such as (Sepanmaa and Heikkila-Palo
2005, Sepanmaa *et al* 2007). Similarly, several
conferences have been held in China in recent years, to which Western
scholars have been invited and from which have followed collections of
articles (Cheng *et al* 2013, Yuedi and Carter 2014a). Similar
collections have also published papers presented at conferences in
Europe (Drenthen and Keulartz 2014) and in North America, from which
papers are included in a recent special issue of the *Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism* (Shapshay and Tenen 2018a). Another
indication of the global appeal of environmental aesthetics is that
many articles and books in environmental aesthetics have been
translated from English into a number of other languages, including
several European languages as well as Korean and especially Chinese,
into which several of the basic Western texts in environmental
aesthetics have been translated. Moreover, this global appeal is
further evidenced by the prolific research in the field currently
being published in several different countries and languages.
The continuing globalization of environmental aesthetics as well as
the currently fruitful discussions both within and among the various
points of view represented in contemporary research, such as in
ecoaesthetics, suggests that the work that is most productive for
promoting and supporting the aesthetic appreciation and preservation
of all kinds of environments, both natural and human, is that which
depends not simply on any one particular approach to environmental
aesthetics, but rather on attempts to bring together the resources of
several different orientations and traditions (Nassauer 1997, Lintott
2006, Carlson 2009, Moore 2008, Cheng *et al* 2013, Carlson
2018). For example, in addition to the Chinese research in
ecoaesthetics, there are, as noted, similar efforts by Western
scholars to combine elements of cognitive and non-cognitive points of
view (Rolston 1998 2002, Saito 2007, Toadvine 2010). Moreover, many
thinkers explore other topics that they constructively relate to
environmental aesthetics, for instance, feminist theory (Lee 2006,
Lintott 2010, Lintott and Irvin 2016), political and social issues
(Berleant 2005 2012, Ross 2005, Simus 2008b, McShane 2018, Saito
2018), philosophy of biology (Parsons and Carlson 2008), animal
treatment and protection (Parsons 2007, Hettinger 2010, Semczyszyn
2013, Brady 2014a, Tafalla 2017, Cross 2018), weather and climate
change (Brady 2014b, Diaconu 2015, Nomikos 2018), and, perhaps most
important, the enrichment of the quality of human life (Saito 2017a
2018, Jamieson 2018). This kind of work can also pursue the
application of these and related topics to environmental policy and
practice (Saito 2007, Berleant 2010b 2012, Parsons 2010, Sepanmaa
2010, Robinson and Elliott 2011, Cheng *et al* 2013, Brady
2014b). In this way, these contributions continue to shape the future
directions of environmental aesthetics (Saito 2010 2014b, Blanc 2012,
Drenthen and Keulartz 2014, Shapshay and Tenen 2018b). Such
innovative, eclectic approaches, coupled with the globalization of
environmental aesthetics, will hopefully not only further a wide range
of environmental goals and practices but also foster a deeper
understanding and appreciation of the aesthetic potential of the world
in which we live. |
aesthetics-existentialist | ## 1. Metaphysical foundations of existentialist aesthetics
The term "aesthetics" as it first emerged in modern
philosophy (in A. G. Baumgarten's 1750 *Aesthetica*)
encompassed the theory of perception, the theory of beauty and the
theory of art. This remained true of all classical philosophical
aesthetics in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
In this brand of aesthetics, the aesthetic moment is but one aspect of
the general theory of how humans perceive, know, and act in the world;
the theories of beauty and of artistic practice depend on the theories
of perception, knowledge and judgement, and those in turn are premised
upon more fundamental considerations regarding the nature of reality
and our relationship to it. By contrast with the specialised aesthetic
theories developed in the last few decades, existentialist aesthetics
is a continuation of this grand tradition. Existentialist aesthetics is
intimately connected to certain metaphysical views, and it owes its
richness and consistency to the fact that it is part of a complex and
coherent philosophical system. Therefore we should begin by delineating
the most salient features of this metaphysical outlook.
The key insight that defines and unites existentialism as a
philosophical position, despite all the divergences between the authors
included under that denomination, is the emphasis on the radical nature
of human freedom, and the metaphysical and ontological imports of that
freedom. The metaphysical and ontological significance of freedom
precedes its moral, ethical, and political aspects, since the ways in
which human beings "hook up" to the world should be
considered before issues of duty or justice. For existentialism, human
freedom grounds the very possibility of knowledge in its deepest form,
i.e., the capacity of human beings to reveal something about reality. A
Christian existentialist like Gabriel Marcel interprets the
metaphysical reach of human freedom in terms of the capacity and
responsibility of individuals to make themselves
"available" to the mystery of their participation in
creation, in particular by responding to the appeal of the great
"Thou" (see in particular Marcel 1960b). Atheistic
existentialists (Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty), on the
contrary, do not ground freedom in faith and the hope of accessing the
transcendent; instead they emphasise the difficulty of assuming that
freedom, since nothing can ensure that our attempts at finding meaning
in the world will actually yield something objectively present in it.
But in all cases freedom is the ultimate ground of human beings'
capacity to relate to the world.
## 2. The phenomenological core of existentialist aesthetics
For the 20th century existentialists, a decisive
philosophical inspiration was phenomenology, the philosophical method
devised by the German philosopher, Edmund Husserl, during the late
19th and early 20th centuries, and which his
famous student, Martin Heidegger, developed into a combination of
existential analysis and deep ontology. Even Camus, who does not define
himself as a phenomenologist, and indeed sometimes rejects the tag of
"existentialist" (1945), appropriates the notion of
intentionality, central to Husserl's phenomenology, in his most
famous work, *The Myth of Sisyphus* (Camus 1942b,
44-50). It follows that existentialist aesthetics and the
phenomenological approach to aesthetic perception and judgement
(Ingarden 1962, 1965) are two closely related areas. Mikel Dufrenne
situates his work precisely at this intersection (see especially
Dufrenne 1973). However, the existentialists' approach to
phenomenology is highly original, and has significant and distinctive
implications for aesthetics.
What does intentionality mean, and why is it such a central notion
in existentialist thinking about art? Husserl shows that when any type
of meaning is articulated (in cognitive, moral, affective, aesthetic
attitudes, etc.), a specific act of consciousness occurs. The
specificity of the meaning in question depends on the particular way in
which consciousness "intends" its content in each case,
i.e., the specific way in which it relates to a given (e.g., an object
to know, judge, perceive, enjoy, and so on). In other words, different
types of meaning depend on the specific structure of the acts of
consciousness that carry them; in particular, they depend on the
specific temporality of these mental acts. To give an example that made
its way into some of the most famous existentialist literary works
(e.g., in the famous descriptions in *Nausea*, Sartre's
first novel): there is a specific temporality involved in perceiving an
object in space. The object is not given in an instant, and every
perception points to a potential new perception which will confirm or
revise the previous ones. This temporality of perception implies
recourse to memory and a unification of past moments of perception.
This emphasis on the way human consciousness "intends" the
world in different ways accounts not just for the content of human
knowledge, but also, more radically, for the relationship of the human
being to reality. It is not just an epistemological but a metaphysical
position.
This approach to the basic problem of metaphysics is highly
significant because it circumvents the dualisms of classical
philosophy: subject vs. object, impression vs. *a priori*
principles as the basis of knowledge, freedom vs. determinism, and so
on. The emphasis on intentionality avoids these dualisms because it
entails, on the one hand, that all meanings are constituted through
acts of human consciousness, thus insisting on the active role of the
subject in the formulation of any meaningful aspect of the world. On
the other hand, however, the theory of intentionality also implies that
the world already contains the meanings that consciousness reveals,
either because these meanings are potentialities from the point of view
of human action (this is Sartre's view), or simply because these
meanings are already in the world (Merleau-Ponty's view, but also
that of Marcel, for whom true knowledge arises from the openness to the
fullness of Being).
The existentialists explicitly embraced the philosophical solution
that phenomenology provided. For example, Sartre's *What is
Literature?,* the key text of existentialist aesthetics, starts off
by reformulating the fundamental lesson of Husserlian
phenomenology:
>
>
> Each of our perceptions is accompanied by the consciousness that
> human reality is a "revealer", that is, it is through human
> reality that "there is" being, or, to put it differently,
> that man is the means by which things are manifested. It is our
> presence in the world which multiplies relations. It is we who set up
> this relationship between this tree and a bit of sky. Thanks to us,
> that star which has been dead for millennia, that quarter moon, and
> that dark river are associated in the unity of a landscape. It is the
> speed of our car and our aeroplane which organises the great mass of
> the earth. With each of our acts, the world reveals to us a new face.
> But, if we know that we are directors of being, we also know that we
> are not its producers. If we turn away from this landscape, it will
> sink back into its dark permanence. At least, it will sink back; there
> is no one mad enough to think that it is going to be annihilated
> (Sartre 1948a, 26).
## 3. Art as revelation of the world
Sartre draws a basic aesthetic implication from the thesis that
meaning in the world depends on acts of consciousness: the fundamental
aim of the work of art is to deliberately and consistently exert this
uniquely human quality to introduce meaningful order and regularities
into the world. Whereas in the "natural attitude" this
happens without the agent's awareness (in the form of natural
perception, folk and scientific knowledge), in artistic practice
the order, regularities, perspectives, and meaningful relationships are
formalised, emphasised, systematised, and wilfully arranged. The
simultaneous effect is to "reveal" significant features of
the world and to gain a reflexive sense of being
revealers of the world and 'manifesting' it. Thus, our
sense of freedom is tremendously increased:
>
>
> One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need
> of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world. If I fix
> on canvas or in writing a certain aspect of the fields or the sea or a
> look on someone's face which I have disclosed, I am conscious of
> having produced them by condensing relationships, by introducing order
> where there was none, by imposing the unity of mind on the diversity of
> things (Sartre 1948a, 27).
Thus the first aspect of aesthetic pleasure is this double
"joy" (Sartre 1948a, 41) of "disclosing" the
world and fully appropriating the unique power to do so, becoming aware
and exercising our radical freedom. This first aspect of aesthetic
pleasure can be called "metaphysical", since it arises from
the fundamental relation between humans and the world (Howells 1988).
Indeed, such is the metaphysical reach of human freedom that every
attempt to disclose a portion of the world tends to aim for the
disclosure of the "totality" of beings. This is because (as
Husserl already insisted) the most partial or minute act of
perception entails a reference to a broader horizon of future potential
perceptions. Many existentialist writers have stressed this primordial,
metaphysical function of the work of art as a partial revealing that
aims to uncover the totality of Being. This idea is found, most
notably, in Simone de Beauvoir's defence of the metaphysical
novel (de Beauvoir 1946, 1965, 73; see also, Merleau-Ponty's
reflections in his review of de Beauvoir's first novel,
1945c).
Such an intimate link between metaphysics and art explains why
existentialists often place certain artists on a level equal or
superior to the philosophers: Camus with Dostoievski, Marcel with Bach,
Merleau-Ponty with Cezanne, Sartre and de Beauvoir with Faulkner
and Kafka. It also partly explains why most existentialist philosophers
were equally, or in fact more, active as creative writers. According to
them, metaphysical inquiry and
artistic practice share a fundamental aim: both are ways of revealing to human beings their own
freedom and responsibility.
## 4. Art as expression of human freedom
The metaphysical and ethical dimensions of human freedom are
intimately related. This is the most significant difference between the
existentialists and Husserlian phenomenology: the existentialists link
the power to disclose the world to the necessity of human beings to
decide who they should be, in terms of the fundamental values directing
a person's life. The concept of "existence"
designates precisely this ethical dimension of human life. The
existentialists argue that, of all the beings existing in the world,
the human being is the only one that can decide what it should be;
indeed, it is forced to do so since it has no fixed nature. As the
existentialist motto goes, "man is condemned to be free."
Here, freedom is not just independence in the sense of independence
*from*, but in the sense of being able to decide who and what
one should be. This ethical dimension of freedom as the power of
self-determination (which also entails the duty to use it) explains the
central place of the notion of " *engagement* (commitment)." Before it
designates any necessity to choose in particular situations,
"engagement" refers to the fundamental position of the
human individual, whose very being consists in having to make use of
its freedom. On the existentialists' outlook, the only positive
feature of "human reality," strictly speaking, is
responsibility towards others and towards oneself (and, for the
Christian existentialists, towards God). Many human beings refuse
this burden and flee from their ontological responsibility by accepting
pre-given roles. This is what Sartre's "bad faith"
and Marcel's "functional man" designate.
What is the link between the metaphysical and the ethical dimensions
of human freedom, and how does this latter concern aesthetics?
Let us begin with the first part of the question. We will first
approach it by using a mode of argument typical of phenomenology. Many
existentialists insist that the ways in which a human consciousness
"intends" the world (that is, imposes a certain order and
regularity in external phenomena) is intrinsically dependent on the
values the person has set for herself. A mountain climber views a
mountain in a way radically different from an intellectual who has
devoted his or her life to books. The difference in their perspectives
relates to the deep projects of selves that distinguish these two
persons. In other words, behind every perception there is a value
influencing the perception in advance and thus ultimately determining
its precise content. On a deeper, ontological level, the experience
that there is something at all, the experience of being, cannot be
conceived if there is not a desire for it (an "ontological
exigency" says Marcel). The very capacity of human beings to
conceive something in the world at all is premised on their capacity to
posit values (Sartre 1943a; Marcel 1960a, for the religious
perspective).
If that is true, however, then every "revelation" of the
world in the first, metaphysical sense also entails a revelation of the
fundamental ethical (or, as the existentialists preferred, existential)
project underpinning this perception. This answers, then, the second
part of the question regarding the relation between the work of art and
the ethical aspect of freedom. For the existentialists, as we saw, the
work of art brings to a higher level of reflexivity and consistency the
innate capacity of human beings to disclose the world. However, since
this capacity is itself rooted in the ethical or religious nature of
human beings, the work of art plays a central role in conveying a more
acute sense of ethical responsibility. It follows that there is an
intimate link between art and engagement: every aesthetic ordering of
the world brings with it a conception of human freedom and suggests
ways to use it.
Hence, Sartre's definition of the literary work, which applies
broadly to all works of art: "... an imaginary presentation
of the world inasmuch as it requires human freedom" (1948a, 45).
In other words, the artwork serves the purpose of "making us feel
essential in relation to the world." The work of art presents the
world not just in the sense that it reveals aspects of it, but also in
the sense that it calls for human involvement, notably in collective
action (or, for Marcel, 'communion') (Goldthorpe 1992).
This definition of the artwork remains ambiguous inasmuch as it does
not specify whose freedom is required. A number of features can be
delineated as a result, depending on whose freedom is emphasised in
each case.
The freedom required by the world is first of all that of the
artist. Every artwork reveals a fundamental, existential attitude
towards the world, and is the expression of an existential choice. We
will return to the fundamental notion of expression below, but we can
already note that putting existential weight on every act of disclosure
leads directly to the conclusion that artistic practice is intimately
linked to ethical and political choices.
However, the 'expressive' aspect of the artwork, the
fact that it is the manifestation of a unique subjectivity, is not the
most interesting one for the existentialists; from this perspective,
existentialist aesthetics is quite distant from romanticism. This is
because existence, freedom and self-determination are, for the
existentialists, essentially active and practical notions. The
existential choice is not simply a choice of *who* one should
be, in the sense of a choice of personality or character; the theory of
existence does not translate into a theory of genius. Rather, the
emphasis is on the active relationship within the world, and especially
*with* others. Accordingly, one defines who one is by what one
*does* with one's freedom in the world, through the ways
in which one proposes to change the world, notably in relation to other
human agents. When the artist presents the world, whether he or she
likes it or not this presentation also proposes to others ways to
live in the world and possibly (at least for the most politically
minded authors, such as Sartre, de Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty) ways to
change it. In Sartre's words, every "imaginary presentation
of the world" is an act of "a" freedom speaking to
"other" freedoms about possible ways of engaging freedom in
the world. Extending Sartre's definition of the novel, then, we
could say that every artwork is an "appeal" (Sartre 1948a,
32).
Therefore the artwork involves a freedom that is not just that of
the artist, but also that of the audience. In existentialist language,
it is freedom considered as 'engaged,' that is, irreducibly
caught up in engagement and forced to do something about it. Hence,
Sartre offers another definition of the artwork that identifies the
different poles of the metaphysical power of art: "... the
writer has chosen to reveal the world and particularly to reveal man to
other men so that the latter may assume full responsibility before the
object which has thus been laid bare" (Sartre 1948a, 14).
In their own artistic practice and their work as critics, the
existentialists tended to interpret this conception of art's
mission (as revelation and appeal) as an argument in favour of
representational approaches, and against formalistic and puristic
approaches. They were generally sceptical of 'autotelic'
conceptions of the artwork that view it as a self-contained object
answerable only to its own formal rules. In this respect, again, they
differ from some modernist views. Indeed, this insistence on the
representative dimension of art might appear old-fashioned, inasmuch as
the more modern insistence on the autonomy of the artwork has marked
most late 19th century aesthetic projects and their
20th century descendants. The existentialists'
insistence on the intrinsic ethical and political significance of the
artwork further distances them from these other aesthetic
approaches.
## 5. Art and the absurd
So far we have only considered the subjective side of the link
between human revelation of the world and the world itself.
Existentialism, however, also emphasizes the objective side of the
link; that is, the world itself as object of perception and knowledge,
and as the context in which human action takes place. Here, there are
some notable differences between 'optimistic' and
'tragic' conceptions of the world in terms of our human
endeavours.
The 'optimistic' ontologies, like those of Marcel or
Merleau-Ponty, see the world as being on the whole a welcoming place
for human knowledge and action. Marcel, despite his critical analyses
of what he sees as the ills of modern society, is the most optimistic
of all, mainly due to the theological grounding of his ontology.
Ultimately there is no gap for him between the yearning for full
participation in the world (including in God) and the world itself,
since we owe our very existence and capacity for participation to the
ultimate origin of this world. As he writes in his diary:
"Knowledge is within being, enfolded by it" (1935, 115).
Although Merleau-Ponty does not share this theological conviction, he
agrees with Marcel on a crucial point: our incarnation in the world
through our bodies is the fundamental beginning of our learning to
inhabit the world meaningfully. As a result of our being both in and of
the world through our bodies, Merleau-Ponty believes that on the whole
our presentations of the world reveal objective features of it.
The 'tragic' ontologies of Sartre, de Beauvoir and
Camus, on the other hand, insist on the inhospitality of the world
towards human endeavours insofar as the world is mostly reticent to our
attempts at introducing meaning and unity into it. For Camus, the
'absurd' mainly designates this resistance of the world to our
endeavours. Whilst we crave for sense and harmony, the world has
nothing to offer but chaos and a random play of blind forces. All our
efforts to impose order and sense upon a world that can ultimately
accommodate neither are therefore doomed to fail. The absurd, then,
denominates both the most fundamental state of the world and the
absurdity of human attempts at overcoming this basic fact.
However, whilst Camus' 'absurd' names the
essentially tragic state of humanity, it is counterbalanced by his awe
towards the indifferent majesty of Nature. For Camus, one of the ways
of liberating oneself from the illusion of meaning and unity is to open
up to the beauty of Nature and partake in it, abandoning oneself in
privileged moments of hedonistic communion with wild environments, such
as the rugged Algerian landscape or the Mediterranean, or in eroticism
(1938a; see the moments of happiness in *The Outsider*, for
example, 1942a, 23-24, 116-117).
Sartre, on the other hand, insists on the "disgusting",
"nauseating" aspect of a world reticent to meaning, order
and beauty. His first novel, *Nausea*, painstakingly chronicles
this ontological disgust towards the strangeness of the world. A
proffered hand becomes "a big white worm," a glass of beer
a hostile partner whose "gaze" the hero attempts to avoid
for half an hour; a pebble on the beach reveals the
"nausea" that is communicated from the world "through
the hands." Even here, however, aesthetic experiences trigger
some exceptional moments in which the hero manages to escape
ontological 'nausea'. This occurs, for example, when the
novel's main character suddenly hears a jazz song in a
cafe, which, like a "band of steel," points to a
different time beyond the drudgery of the everyday (Sartre 1938,
21-23).
Many of the existentialists' literary creations attempt to
describe the entanglements of human freedom in these fundamental
ontological features of the world. Admittedly, this applies to some
existentialist authors more than others. For instance, Marcel's
plays explore the difficulties that modern individuals encounter in
responding to the appeal of transcendence, and in giving in to faith
and hope. But these obstacles arise mainly from social institutions
(notably around marriage) and historical events (the tragic
circumstances of the 20th century and what Marcel sees as
the dangerous objectivism of modern society). Similarly, de
Beauvoir's novels tend to portray individuals seeking their true
selves beyond the strictures of social morality. In contrast, a great
part of Camus' and Sartre's literary work is dedicated to
describing the difficulties that people face when trying to find their
place, not just in their social, but also in their natural and material
environments. As we have noted, some of the best-known passages in
their literary writings also describe moments in which the
obtrusiveness of the world is overcome, yielding fleeting yet sublime
experiences of sensuous communion with nature and others.
## 6. Ontology of the artwork
Sartre drew some particularly interesting conclusions from the
definition of the functions of art on the basis of an existentialist
metaphysics. These conclusions relate to what, in contemporary
discussions, is called the 'ontology' of the artwork: the
type of reality of the artwork's different elements and their
internal relations. Mikel Dufrenne has most thoroughly pursued this
ontological approach.
Sartre's early texts on the imagination already provided
significant insights in that regard (in particular, see
Dufrenne's lengthy discussions of them in his *The
Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience,* 1973). The freedom that
characterises human subjectivity is manifested most vividly in a
specific type of intentionality: the imagining of an object.
Imagination exemplifies the power of human consciousness because it is
a type of intentionality that posits in the same act both the existence
of the object and its inexistence, since it "intends" it
precisely as a virtual object. In imagination, the object is indeed
intended by consciousness, but "as absent", as
"containing a certain part of nothingness" inasmuch as it
is posited as not existing here and now (Sartre 1940). This
distinguishes it from the type of intentionality involved in
perception, one of the key aspects of which is precisely the positing
of its object as existent.
This emphasis on the 'derealising' aspect of the
consciousness of an image has important implications for the
ontological status of the artwork. The real, material elements of the
artwork are, properly speaking, not the actual elements on which the
aesthetic judgement is fixed. These are fixed instead on a virtual
object, i.e., the work's ideal qualities, wherein the work's
meaning, power and beauty are manifested (Sartre 1940, 213; see also
Dufrenne 1973, 3). On this account, the material aspects of the artwork
are "occasions" for the manifestation of the ideal aspects.
Sartre insists that one should reject any suspicion of dualism here:
"There is no realisation of the imaginary, nor can we speak of
its objectification," (ibid.) as though a prior mental
representation had been "objectified" and realised in the
actual artwork. Rather, the "real" artwork has two sides: a
real and an "unreal" (*irreel*, virtual, or
ideal) side. These two are, however, indistinguishable. "The
painting should then be conceived as a material thing visited from time
to time by an unreal which is precisely the painted object"
(ibid; see Dufrenne 1973, 3-18). The real, says Sartre, is the
*analogue* of the ideal. Merleau-Ponty puts it in similar terms,
at first in terms of sense and non-sense, and later on in terms of the
visible and the invisible: the ideal content of the artwork is
"in transparency behind the sensible or in the heart of the
sensible." It "doubles up the lights and sounds from
beneath, is their other side or their depth" (Merleau-Ponty
1964a, 150-151, but already in 1945a, 182-183).
This general "negative" dimension of the artwork (the
fact that as an ideal object it is not reducible to the materiality
that carries it) applies also to each of the artwork's elements
and their relations (the colours and shapes in a painting, the words
and sentences in a novel, and so on). Existentialist
aesthetics generally insists on the unity that artistic expression
brings to the world. As a consequence of this emphasis on organic
unity, it seems to propound a rather conventional image of the
aesthetic qualities of the artwork (see, for example, from a
theologically informed perspective, Marcel's discussion of the
symphony and the fugue as examples of self-enclosed
"perfection" [1960b, 53-54]).
However, Sartre's analyses of the relationship between the
artwork's elements shows that the insistence on unity as a
criterion of artistic beauty is perhaps not as banal as it might sound.
Sartre's pre-war texts on the imagination are especially
informative on this topic. In them, Sartre shows the substantial
relationship between the power of human consciousness to
"nihilate" the world (to overlook some of its aspects and
emphasise others on the basis of an existential set of values) and the
internal coherence of the artwork:
>
>
> ... each stroke of the brush (is) not for itself, (...) it
> (is) given together with an unreal (*irreel*) synthetic
> whole and the aim of the artist is to construct a whole of real colours
> which enable this unreal to manifest itself. (...) It is the
> configuration of these unreal objects that I designate as beautiful
> (Sartre 1940, 216).
This implies that the consistency of the existential project, from
which the world is revealed in a special way, also commands the
consistency of the artwork. But the quote above also indicates the
relation between the different elements that make up the overall
composition: in the end, every particular material element that
contributes to the general composition is related to the others through
a relation of negativity.
The theory of meaning that underpins this view of the
artwork's structure thus seems to anticipate a Saussurean
definition of language. Famously, Saussure analysed the functioning of
language as a 'diacritical' system in which each sign owes
its signification not to a substantial, one-to-one relation between
word and referent, but rather to its place within the overall
linguistic system. Basically, a sign means what it means on the basis
of 'not being' any of the other signs. 'Dog'
means what it does because the signifier (the material sound) and the
signified (the intended meaning) differs from all others, and
especially the proximate ones: 'log', 'fog',
'god', and so on; 'wolf', 'cat',
and so on.
In the same manner, the existentialist philosophers who dedicated
the most attention to the articulation of meaning (Sartre and
Merleau-Ponty) insist on the essentially diacritical essence of the
aesthetic element in a given composition: an element has aesthetic
significance on the basis of its relation to the other elements, rather
than owing to any substantial meaning of its own. It follows that, for
example, in a painting the pleasure derived from a particular colour in
isolation from the rest of the work is not 'aesthetic' in
the strong sense but only in a lower sense: as a pleasure for the
senses only. This also implies that often the meaning and aesthetic
power of a composition (a text, a painting and so on) rests just as
much on what is not said or not shown; what lies in-between the
elements of the composition, rather than on the elements explicitly
shown. The existentialists all insist that meaning is largely to be
found in a certain form of *silence*. In the case of a
novel:
>
>
> ... the literary object, though realised *through*
> language, is never realised *in* language. On the contrary, it
> is by nature a silence and a contestation of speech. The hundred
> thousand words aligned in a book can be read one by one without the
> meaning of the work emerging; meaning is not the sum of the words, but
> its organic totality (Sartre 1948a, 30).
This means that the different elements of the artwork should not be
approached separately or in their immediate reality, but in terms of
how they function organically, systematically and negatively. The
colours in a painting, and the choice of words and the rhythm of
sentences in a novel are all but traces, ellipses, elisions, and
caesuras that suggest in the negative, just as much as the elements
positively indicate the contours of a certain perspective onto the
world.
## 7. Theory of expression
The emphasis on the capacity of human consciousness to
'derealise' the world amounts to a defence of the creative
freedom of the artist. The artwork is the most striking example of the
power of human consciousness to turn towards the world in such a way
that it takes in from it certain elements and blanks out others, in
accordance to a fundamental existential project. Artistic practice is
one of the most eminent demonstrations of human freedom because it
shows how human practice can recreate (Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir,
Merleau-Ponty) or recover (Marcel) a new, more ordered world out of the
given world. Camus offers a concise formulation for a central principle
of existentialist aesthetics: "To write is already to
choose" (Camus 1951, 271).
The existentialist philosophers did not refrain from formulating
internal (aesthetic) and external (ethical and political) constraints
to artistic practice, but their aesthetics fundamentally proclaims the
radical freedom of the artist, also seeing in it the privileged
exemplar of human freedom in general. Camus, for example, makes
artistic activity, the choice of becoming an artist, one of the
privileged modes for humans to deal with the absurd (Camus 1942b,
86-88). Many existentialist texts dedicated to aesthetic matters
emphasise the 'mystery' of creativity, the amazing
'solution' that an artwork represents, the 'miracle
of expression' that elicits admiration from the audience and the
philosopher.
But radical freedom is ambiguous, as it must work with a
*facticity* (a term the existentialists adopted from Heidegger),
viz., a set of given factors (physical, social and so on) that it has
not created. In the case of the artist, the ambiguity resides already
in the decision and the passion to become an artist. Although a set of
genetic and social preconditions influences that decision, it is
equally the product of an individual decision in that specific
situation.
The work of art is caught up in the same ambiguity. On the one hand,
it is the free creation of an unconstrained person, a purely
idiosyncratic expression of an individuality. On the other, it is
constrained by various factors that exert influence on its very
structure: the audience, the historical period that will receive the
work, the material elements that make up the artwork, and in
particular, the already signifying elements that the artist reuses and
recomposes to create a new work.
Merleau-Ponty's writings of the 1950s advance an original
existentialist theory of expression that addresses this latter
dimension in particular. It can be argued that this theory of
expression captures and makes explicit thoughts that a number of other
existentialist writers shared on these questions.
In *The Prose of the World* (1964), Merleau-Ponty explored the emergence and logic of meaning and meaning-giving activity, of
signification and expression, using the example of literary works
(particularly the novel). Stendhal provided him with a paradigmatic
case study. Such an attempt to draw deep philosophical conclusions from
artworks is typical of existentialist practice.
Firstly, the literary work can help us understand the phenomenon of
meaning and meaning-giving by seeing the writer as creating new
meanings, indeed a new language (a Joycean version of English, a
Flaubertian French, and so on) by recomposing a language he or she
shares with an entire historical community. This is a truly ambiguous
aspect that can be taken (on one hand) as the proof of the mystery of
expression, evidence of a creative power required to make possible the
emergence of the new out of the old, while (on the other hand) this new
is possible only on the basis of the already-instituted. But this
initial remark points to a much deeper level; here, it is painting that
offers the most precious indications. In discussing Andre
Malraux's seminal essays on the history of painting (Malraux
1953), Merleau-Ponty articulated a detailed existentialist theory of
meaning where the artwork plays the central role. The Husserlian
metaphor of 'perspective' is appropriated and transformed
into a general formula for both the power of perception and the
metaphysical condition of the human being.
Intentionality can be said to coincide with the establishment of a
perspective in a world where there is, prior to human presence, none.
For reality to appear in all its different qualities and structures,
human consciousness is required. What distinguishes the artist from
other language-users is the consistency and coherence of a specific
outlook onto the world. Such coherent perspective introduces an element
of regularity and structure in the chaos of the world. It introduces
directions: a high and a low, a right and a left. That is, it
introduces sense.
This link between artistic expression and meaning leads to a major
re-evaluation of the notion of style. Rather than a superficial way of
formulating meanings that remain unchanged by their expression, style
in this context now indicates a fundamental perspective from which the
world can be approached; it indicates a perspective that would not have
existed prior to the expressive act. It designates an
"irreplaceable deviation" that is possible only from a
specific way of being-in-the-world, and which is subsequently
recaptured in symbolic language, whether the linguistic form of
literature, or the "indirect language" of painting. Style
is a coherent perspective, a "coherent deformation," a way
of being-in-the-world and of approaching the world from a certain
angle. On this model, style does not express pre-existing meaning, but
creates it. Camus, in the pages of *The Rebel* devoted to the
aesthetic dimensions of rebellion, developed a concomitant conception
of artistic expression:
>
>
> ... unity in art appears at the limit of the transformation
> which the artist imposes on reality. This correction, which the artist
> imposes by his language and by a redistribution of the elements
> extracted from reality, is called style and gives the recreated
> universe its unity and its boundaries (Camus 1951, 270).
This in turn gives a more specific meaning to the relation of the
new and the old in expression. True expression (whether the first
genuine self-expression of the learning speaker, a new scientific
meaning, or true artistic achievement) is both totally idiosyncratic,
and a re-composition of shared elements; it transforms the old. For
true expression to occur, two forms of speech are thus required:
"speaking speech" and "spoken speech"
(Merleau-Ponty, 1945a, 197). This explains the puzzling fact that a
true expression must be at once a true creation, something unheard of,
and yet can be understood only if the language it uses (natural,
scientific or artistic) is known. In other words, expression is always
also a form of communication between one "speaker" and the
community of speakers. Assuming that Merleau-Ponty's analyses are
representative of views that were shared by the other existentialist
writers (see Sartre, 1948a, 56, in which the germane concept of
"mediation" is used; "communication" is the
central notion in Marcel's philosophy of theatre), we can note
that once again existentialist aesthetics seems at odds with many
modern artistic currents, which have insisted on drawing a radical
distinction between the functions and uses of artistic and everyday
languages. For example, a major poet and theorist of literature like
Paul Valery was inspired by Mallarme's famous
characterisation of poetry as "giving a purer sense to the words
of the tribe." We can also mention surrealist and expressionist
painters and film directors who sought to break through everyday
imagery in order to transfigure reality.
Artistic communication also has a certain capacity to transcend the
ages and cut across languages. Beyond the historical situatedness of
artistic communication (the fact that an artistic language re-uses the
language of its contemporaries), the task of giving sense on the basis
of being-in-the-world is part of the metaphysical condition of being
human, and so applicable to all humans throughout history. As a result,
considering that art is a 'higher degree' of communication,
the work of art is not just a striking example of genuine expression,
but also exemplifies the fact that every act of meaning is open to the
past and the future of other human acts of expression.
At this point, we can note a tension within the aesthetics of many
existentialist writers (a tension that is quite acute in Sartre's
work) between the relative trans-historical meaningfulness of artworks
and their utter *situatedness*: artworks offer an image of
engaged freedom in particular situations that are truly accessible only
to its contemporaries (Sartre 1948a, 50-52). Merleau-Ponty, for his
part, insists on the underlying unity of the history of painting, which
allows us to find traces and echoes of past painters in modern ones.
The history of painting is a microcosmic image of history, and a
testament to the capacity of present generations to understand the
actions and passions of the past (Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 72).
Merleau-Ponty's vision of the possibility of empathy across the
ages does not deny the historical relativity of sense formations. It
shows how, despite the spatiotemporal distance that separates
historical contexts, humans can still understand each other, historians
can understand previous times, anthropologists other peoples, and we
can somehow access some of the meanings of past artistic practices. The
expressive achievements of other peoples are both radically alien, and
yet the result of expressive gestures that are commensurable to ours,
inasmuch as they are the product of a common human capacity, viz., the
capacity to transcend the natural world and recreate it as a meaningful
and ordered universe.
## 8. The artist
A central, shared assumption of existentialist aesthetics, beyond
the stark religious and political differences of the existentialists,
is the essential ambiguity of the human condition: I am radically free
as consciousness, yet radically determined by my facticity, the
physical, social and other circumstances in which my consciousness
comes to the world. On this particular point Heidegger's
existential analytic is a shared reference that brings
together otherwise diverse (or, indeed, antagonistic) thinkers. An
important implication of the emphasis on human facticity is that it
forges a vital link between philosophy and the arts, which from this
perspective similarly aim to explore the metaphysical ambiguity of the
human
condition.
This grants the artist a special status from at least two
standpoints:
1) Artistic activity as an existential choice is a privileged mode
of assuming and realising the paradoxical nature of being human. In
Camus' words, artistic activity is one of the key attitudes to
face the absurd. Camus' celebration of art in *The Myth of
Sysiphus* (1942b, 127), which crowns artistic expression as the
ultimate form of "joy," would ring true for the other
existentialists despite their noted differences on the question of the
absurd. Indeed, many other existentialist writers made similar
statements reflecting their own life choices, in particular their
decision to pursue a philosophical and literary career. The personal
dimension that can be found in many existentialist writings grants
these texts a special status in the history of philosophy, since it
blurs a boundary that has been essential to the definition of the genre
of philosophical writing, viz., the boundary between the theoretical
and the biographical, the personal and the general. Marcel's
"metaphysical diary" is a good case in point. More than
just an original form of philosophical analysis, the diary illustrates
Marcel's own conception of the true self as a gradual awakening
to the "appeal" of being through the combined practices of
ontological inquiry, artistic creation and personal engagement. Sartre
also wrote an autobiographical account of his discovery of the world of
words, *Les Mots*, without doubt one of his masterpieces. The
same can be said of Camus' last narrative text, *La
Chute*, which mixes autobiography with an ironical account of his
philosophy.
Beyond their own personal practice, the existentialists also find
philosophical significance in the lives of great artists, and are
interested in the moment they chose to become artists and how this
primordial choice unfolded over the course of their lives. Artists
provide paradigmatic case studies for the paradoxes of
"existence" and "expression" (Sartre 1947b,
1971). Indeed, this is true not just of writers and painters but also
of actors. For Camus, in fact, actors are those "who draw the
best conclusion" from the metaphysical truth of human existence
(1942b, 107).
2) The artist's activity is also deeply significant in terms
of its power of articulating a coherent world. Every person has to make
existential choices and has a need for expression, but artists present
particularly pure and powerful exemplars of these facets of human
existence. Their achievements are worthy of admiration because they
involve the creation of virtual worlds. Every consciousness, every
being-in-the-world is expressive, but only rarely is this expression
truly *new*. Most of the time, human expression is only the
repetition of instituted meanings, as in the quasi-automatic use of
spoken language. Only the great artists show the power of expression in
its purity, its newness and coherence. To recreate a virtual world that
can do justice to the complexity of the real world is an almost
"miraculous" fact, as Merleau-Ponty says of Cezanne.
As we can see, the existentialists are no longer that far from the
romantics in what respects their emphasis on genius.
Since the expressive world of a genuine artist is a new perspective
onto the world that is identical with the artist's whole
idiosyncratic mode of being-in-the-world, there will be a deep,
underlying continuity in his or her work. The communication that the
work of art establishes across time and space operates, first and
foremost, within the *oeuvre* itself, with themes and stylistic
traits echoing each other throughout it (Camus 1942b, 102-103;
Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 67). But there is an inherent fatalism in artistic
activity. Expressive activity can only ever be an *attempt* at
expression, and it is structurally doomed to fail because there is too
much to reveal in the world. The means of expression are finite, and
they operate in a twisted manner, just as much through direct
designation as through ellipse and allusion. This leads Camus to
conclude that creative activity, like all free activities, is in the
end only another absurd attempt at dealing with the absurdity of human
life (1942b, 130).
## 9. The audience
An essential ambiguity characterises
also the experience of the audience. On the one hand, the genuine
artist creates a new virtual world that expresses a coherent,
idiosyncratic perspective on the world shared by all. When the audience
meets the artwork successfully, the spectators suddenly change their
own mode of perception and have to adopt a new perspective. To use a
linguistic metaphor, the tired, instituted language of everyday
communication ('spoken' or sedimented language) is
rejuvenated by a 'speaking' language, a true expression
that imposes itself on the audience (be it the reader or the
spectator). Therefore, the artwork, in a sense, creates its own
audience (Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 86, and also 12-13; see also Dufrenne,
1973, 63-71).
Nevertheless there is also an active side to artistic enjoyment, as
in reading, for example. Without the spectator's contemplation,
or the reader's reading, the artwork's expression remains
purely subjective. It becomes objective, manifesting its sense in
actuality, only through the symbolic consumption of the audience. This
act, however, is not passive: it mobilises the audience's own
power of expression and imagination. Reading, watching, or listening
are, as Sartre puts it, "directed creations": "To
write is to make an appeal to the readers that they lead into objective
existence the revelation which I (the artist) have undertaken by means
of language" (Sartre 1948a, 32; Dufrenne 1973, 47-60).
Marcel's conception of the theatre as an experience of
'communion' also implies this active participation of the
audience.
The ambiguity of aesthetic experience is linked directly to the
above mentioned theory of the negativity of the expressive means. The
work of art functions when it is able to define a coherent perspective
onto the world, yet this perspective is mainly defined in the negative,
as the trace of iterable and consistent attitudes in the world.
Therefore, the spectator is required to translate the traces, caesuras
and elisions that negatively defined the new world of expression into
*positive* traits: "... the imagination of the
spectator has not only a regulative function but a constitutive one. It
does not play: it is called upon to recompose the beautiful object
beyond the traces left by the artist" (Sartre 1948a, 33).
A metaphor Sartre and Merleau-Ponty employ frequently is that of the
two sides of the artwork, comparable to the two sides of a mirror. The
artist only sees his or her own work from the inside; he or she
*lives* the artwork in a sense, since the expressive power is
rooted in an idiosyncratic form of being-in-the-world. For the work to
become an objective entity with a manifest meaning, the understanding
and imagination of the audience needs to reconstruct the meaningful
silence in between the traces. And this understanding cannot be
passive, since the truly expressive meaning involves a new form of
being-in-the-world. The spectator or reader is called upon to
effectuate the same original mode of being-in-the-world: "If he
is a writer, that is, if he knows how to find the ellipses, elisions
and caesuras of conduct, the reader will respond to his appeal and meet
him at the centre of the imaginary world he animates and rules"
(Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 89). Once again, a key feature of aesthetic
experience is communication, the 'echo' that a subjective
attitude to the world finds in others.
## 10. The existentialist "system of the arts"
This vision of the artwork as a privileged medium of expression and
communication (in the substantive, metaphysical senses given to these
words in existentialist philosophy) leads to a relatively coherent
approach to the different art forms, something like a loose
existentialist 'system of the arts.' A system of the arts
explains not just what art is in essence, seeking a definition of art
and determining its social, political or philosophical functions. It
also ranks the arts in a hierarchy, giving an account of how each form
uses specific material and expressive means to fulfil those functions.
In the end, one art-form in particular is usually regarded as
privileged, exemplary of the mode of fulfilling the mission of art. All
classical philosophical aesthetics, from Kant and his immediate
followers to Alain, have presented their own, more or less developed
"*systeme des beaux-arts*" (Alain 1920,
Natanson 1968).
### 10.1 Theatre
For most of the existentialists, theatre is the prime art form,
i.e., the one that best allows the artist to use his or her freedom to
create a virtual world that simultaneously appeals to the
audience's own freedom (regardless of how we define that freedom,
theologically or politically). For Camus, de Beauvoir, Marcel and
Sartre, philosophical activity and recognition as playwrights were
intimately linked (Goldthorpe 1986). Marcel defined himself as
"*philosophe-dramaturge*" (philosopher-dramatist,
see Lazaron 1978), to insist on what was, for him, an indissoluble
unity between philosophical meditation and playwriting. Indeed, it is
well worth noting that, apart from de Beauvoir (whose single attempt at
writing for the theatre was not very successful [see de Beauvoir 1945b
and 1962, 672-673]), they were all equally famous as playwrights and as
philosophers in their time.
Arguably, Sartre's theoretical reflections on the theatre of
his time have remained the most widely read today. In describing
what were for him the defining features of existentialist theatre,
Sartre also aimed to identify some of the main aspects of theatre
itself. As these features are grounded in his theory of freedom,
theatre is, for Sartre, the art *par excellence*.
The identification of art in general with the theatre is already
evident in the fact that the same word - 'situation'
- simultaneously encapsulates the metaphysical position of the human
being-in-the-world, and summarises theatre's core aesthetic
element (Sartre 1976, 35). The two 'enemies' in French
existentialism, Sartre and Marcel, agree on the centrality of the
concept of 'situation.' *What is literature?* had
defined the mission of literature as the attempt "to reveal the
world and particularly to reveal man to other men so that the latter
may assume full responsibility before the object which has been thus
laid bare" (Sartre 1948a, 14). Centred as it is on the praxis of
real human beings confronted with the contradictions of concrete
situations, theatre is the best medium to present in purified form the
tragic responsibility of human freedom, the fact that "we are
condemned to be free" in a world inhospitable to our
projects.
This emphasis on action and situation leads to a series of highly
prescriptive rules, as we see in the criteria that Sartre used in
his critical reviews of contemporary theatre writing and production. To rise
to the task of achieving a "theatre of situations," writing
and production must resist the temptation of focusing on the
characters; they need to present archetypical *situations* in
which human freedom is most radically at stake, notably through
different types of universal 'conflicts of rights.' Theatre
needs to avoid psychology and concentrate on action (in clear contrast
to Marcel's theatre, which is mainly concerned with staging
conflicts of inner conscience); it must be wary of a realistic approach
that might take the focus away from the violence of the conflicts. For
the same reason, the duration of the play and the number of the
characters must be reduced. The stage must be empty and the language
must be direct but non-realistic, compressing the acuteness of the
situation as powerfully as possible. In short, existentialist theatre
explicitly intends to return to a Greek conception, attempting to
present contemporary "myths" in a world without gods
(Sartre 1976).
But the situations, precisely, are situated: they always take place
in specific social and political contexts. The myths that the theatre
presents, therefore, have two temporal dimensions: 1) Because they are
about distinguishing features of human 'being,' they have,
like Greek and Corneillian tragedy, a transhistorical appeal; they are
plays about human freedom in general. This explains the classical bent
of many existentialist plays. Thus, it makes perfect sense to stage the
conundrums of modern, absurd freedom through the figure of Caligula, as
Camus does in one of his most famous plays. 2) The situation is always
a specific one, particularly a specific social and political
circumstance, with its specific conflict of rights. In the years
following the Second World War, the conflict of rights is widely
understood as the conflict between liberal rights and the socialist
ideal. All the existentialists agreed on this, with the notable
exception of Marcel. The 'communist question' (of whether
to embrace the proposed communist solution to the problems facing the
world in 1948--the date of publication of *What is
Literature?*) was one of the most urgent political questions for
them. More generally, we can mention the question of the value of
individual engagement as opposed to engagement in a collective movement
(a question at the centre of Malraux's novels, notably his
*Human Condition*, which approaches the existentialist
aesthetic), and the place of individual freedom in an age of conflict
between global forces. These questions were at the forefront of
existentialist concerns when they devised their aesthetics, and wrote
their plays and novels.
We have noted the similarity between Sartre and Marcel regarding
their emphasis on the notion of situation. Although Sartre noted other
features of existentialist theatre that formally apply to
Marcel's plays, there are stark differences in their approach to
playwriting. Whereas for Sartre the ultimate justification of theatre
is political, for Marcel it is metaphysical: it is a question of
finding salvation and hope, and safeguarding the possibility of faith.
Yet, like Sartre's, Marcel's plays staged the specific
problems of the age as he saw them, e.g., how the rise of technology
brings about a reductive attitude to the world and especially to other
human beings, the atrocities of the century, and the moral
disorientation of modern individuals. Despite his metaphysical
optimism, Marcel's theatre shares with other existentialist plays
a patently sombre mood. He wants to depict "the drama of the soul
in exile, of the soul that suffers from its lack of communion with
itself and with others" (Preface to Troisfontaines 1953,
35). Marcel's plays consistently portray a creeping feeling of
absurdity that befalls the main characters. It is a forgotten fact that
Marcel wrote more plays than any of the other existentialists.
### 10.2 The novel
The novel comes very close to theatre as the art-form of choice for
the existentialists. For most existentialists, the ultimate models were
not philosophers, but contemporary novelists; two of whom were
especially paradigmatic, viz., Dostoievsky and Kafka. Sartre, de
Beauvoir and Camus saw themselves in equal measure as writers of
fiction and as philosophers. They engaged with each other's
fictional work at least as much, if not more, than with their
theoretical one (Camus 1938b, 1939, Sartre 1943b). Indeed, as already
noted, fiction and autobiographical writings were direct applications
of their philosophical visions. "To think is to create a
world," writes Camus, showing the deep identity between
philosophical and fictional creation (Camus 1942b, 87-91). The reason
is the same as with theatre: narrative fiction, focused on a series of
'situations' in which the fundamental existential choices
facing human beings can be carefully staged, is a powerful mode of
engaging the free imagination of the reader, and thus of calling him or
her to action: "What in fact is a novel but a universe in which
action is endowed with form?" (Camus 1951, 263). The novel is a
revelation of the world, notably in its social and political urgency,
by a freedom for other freedoms. As Merleau-Ponty writes in
"Metaphysics and the Novel": "Intellectual works had
always been concerned with establishing a certain attitude toward the
world, of which literature and philosophy, like politics, are just
different expressions; but only now [thanks to existentialist
philosophy] has this concern become explicit" (Merleau-Ponty
1945c, 27; see also Camus 1942b, 92 and 1951, 258-267).
In existentialist aesthetics, artistic activity and its products
have external aims: to reveal the world to others, both in a
metaphysical and political sense. As noted, this aesthetic theory
therefore conflicts with the notion that the artwork is an end in
itself, or that style and form are self-justified. Thus, the
existentialists were deeply suspicious of some of the main artistic
movements of the time, particularly Surrealism, even if some of them
admired its rebellious spirit (Camus 1951, 88-100); or, later on, the
*Nouveau Roman* (Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute and
Claude Simon) and the literature that was developed around the
post-structuralist journal *Tel Quel* (de Beauvoir, in Francis
and Gontier, 226, 233-234). Compared with Dadaism, Surrealism, and the
literary avant-gardes that immediately followed the existentialist era,
existentialist aesthetics has an outdated, almost conservative air to
it. It unabashedly calls for a new classicism somewhere between
formalism and realism (either in its naturalist or socialist versions),
and beyond romanticism (Camus 1944 and 1951, 268-271), on the grounds
that the moral and political dimensions of literature consist not just
in a rebellion against everyday language and the social-political order
of the day, but also in the more demanding (yet modest) task of
properly naming the world in order to unveil the immense injustice
reigning in it, while also retrieving its fleeting and inhuman beauty
(Camus 1951, 272-279). In his prolific work as literary critic, Sartre
consistently rejected formalism and "art for art's
sake," even in the case of illustrious French writers such as
Mallarme or Flaubert. However, it can also be argued that, from
the perspective of the relation between politics and arts in the
20th century, the existentialist demand that art retain a
strong connection to everyday reality (so as to fulfil its moral and
political roles) is also completely of its time.
The condemnation of "art for art's sake" applies
to all the arts and has important repercussions for aesthetic critique
and the conception of style. The existentialists take great pains to
note that their rejection of formalism, purism and autotelism in the
arts does not amount to advocating a crude version of realism (Camus
1951, 268-270; Sartre 1948a, 44). As we have noted already in the case
of theatre, the classical aspect of existentialist aesthetics impacts
on the choice of stylistic means: "One is not a writer for having
chosen to say certain things, but for having chosen to say them in a
certain way. And to be sure, the style makes the value of the prose.
But it should pass unnoticed" (Sartre 1948a, 15).
Furthermore, the existentialist definitions of meaning as
negativity, and of expression as 'coherent distortion',
mean that stylistic achievement (the ability to let new sense be
revealed) relies as much on the choice of words and syntax as on the
'silences' and omissions that define an expressive
gesture.
### 10.3 Poetry
With their emphasis on action in situations, the existentialists
have an uneasy relationship to poetry. Only Camus, following the
example of Nietzsche, wrote a number of poems (in his youth writings
and his notebooks, Camus 1933, 1935-1941). In many passages in Camus,
poetry has a positive connotation. This connotation, however, refers to
a specific quality of language, viz., the use of vivid images that
manage to convey some truth about the human condition, rather than to
the merits of poetry as a specific literary form.
For Sartre, the stance of 19th century novelists who
engaged in 'art for art's sake' is not too dissimilar
to the problematic way modern poets approach language. In fact,
Sartre's studies on two of the major French poets of the
19th century, Baudelaire and Mallarme, are tinged
with the same disapprobation as his immense study of Flaubert (Sartre
1947b, 1952b, 1971-72). Modern poetry for Sartre is, in the final
analysis, a misguided use of language. It uses language as an end in
itself, a thing, the same way that a painter uses colour. This ignores
the fact that in language the relationship between materiality and
signification is the inverse to what is the case in other artistic
media. Language is, for the existentialists, the favoured artistic
medium because, as the mode of expression that is most directly a
medium of signification, it is the one that best reveals a situation as
*situation* in the strong sense, viz., as a part of the world
where human freedom is directly engaged metaphysically, ethically and
politically. Poets, on the other hand, "are men who refuse to
utilise language. Now, since the quest for truth takes place in and by
language conceived as a kind of instrument, it is unnecessary to
imagine that they aim to discern or expound the true. Nor do they dream
of naming the world" (Sartre 1948a, 5). In their use of language,
modern poets seem to overlook and act against the main qualities that
the existentialists grant it, namely, its representative and
communicative powers. This explains why poetry remains at the margins
of the existentialist system of the arts, as a literary genre that is
not as eminently philosophical and political as the theatre and the
novel. The existentialists are, once again, squarely at odds with the
surrealists, who condemned the novel and saw in poetry the real
artistic medium.
The existentialists made, however, some notable exceptions. Camus,
for example, wrote a vibrant review of the work of Rene Char
(Camus 1935-1936), and saw in the work of Francis Ponge an eminent
illustration of the task of literature in the absurd situation of
post-war France (Camus 1943). Sartre also dedicated a long and largely
positive review to the work of Francis Ponge, seeing in it a kind of
profane phenomenology (Sartre 1944 in 1947a). This positive assessment
might well have rested on a misunderstanding, since Ponge seemed to
have had the exact opposite view of language as Sartre, and regarded
poetry precisely as the form that would best be able to "name the
world" and make human freedom face its responsibility.
### 10.4 Non-linguistic arts: painting and music
The existentialists' lack of interest in poetry (which, in the
case of Sartre especially, turns into outright dismissal) is based on
their view that poets make a misguided use of language. For the same
reason, the other non-discursive arts attract almost as little interest
as poetry (however, see Camus 1951, 257). Yet, when they are discussed,
they are treated more favourably than poetry, since they do not have
language as their medium, and this means that the accusation against
poetry becomes irrelevant. The emphasis on language as the eminent
medium for the representation of human freedom reproduces a classical
argument that is already at the heart of Hegel's aesthetics (a
fact that the existentialists are fully aware of [Sartre 1948a, 5]).
The implication for the other arts is that they are able to produce and
convey ideal contents, meaning and beauty, but that these are never as
transparently accessed as in linguistic expression. Rather, the ideal
content in non-linguistic art-forms remains trapped, glued, as it were,
in the materiality of the artwork: "... it is one thing to
work with colour and sound, and another to express oneself by means of
words. Notes, colours, and forms are not signs. They refer to nothing
exterior to themselves. (...) As Merleau-Ponty has pointed out in
*The Phenomenology of Perception*, there is no quality of
sensation so bare that it is not penetrated with significance. But the
dim little meaning which dwells within it, a light joy, a timid
sadness, remains immanent or trembles about like a heat mist; it
*is* colour or sound" (Sartre 1948a, 1).
This seems to introduce some important differences amongst the
existentialists, since Merleau-Ponty, for instance, claimed that all
art forms function like language. But Merleau-Ponty agrees with Sartre
on the important differences between art forms. The *Prose of the
World* established that there was a single source behind all acts
of expression, which made them commensurable to language, only to
acknowledge the specificity of language in a manner similar to
Sartre's. For example, the "voices" in painting -- a
metaphor for the ideal content of painting -- are 'voices of
silence' that speak only an 'indirect language' (the
titles of Malraux's famous studies on the history of painting).
That is to say, they remain attached to their specific materiality,
making the work a self-enclosed world. In Merleau-Ponty's
repeated metaphor, every painter starts the history of painting afresh
(1960, 309-311) because the same visible world calls for an infinite
number of expressive variations, each singular in its determinate
coherence. The history of painting, therefore, is indeed made up of
constant echoes and criss-crosses, with each generation revisiting the
visual themes and techniques of the past generations, but the
communication amongst the works are haphazard, indirect, and cannot be
accumulated. There is no progress in the history of painting. In
language, on the other hand, meanings acquired from the past are
sedimented in current meanings and allow for the dialectic of spoken
and speaking speech discussed earlier (Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 97-113).
This means that the material of literature carries with it the
sedimented historical experiences of the lifeworlds it speaks about.
There is no progress in literature either, not in a sense comparable to
scientific progress, but the novel, simply by using the language of the
lifeworld it arises from, is a direct witness of the broader historical
narrative in which it is embedded. As a result, it can portray ethical
and political situations very powerfully.
Precisely, the poet's sin is to treat language as though it
were a sound or a note; it is to treat language as a thing and to
revere its materiality. This ignores the nature of linguistic
expression, in which the signs must be traversed towards their
signification. The reverse error is that of Paul Klee, who, according
to Sartre, uses colour both as sign and as object (1948a, 23). The
existentialist system of the arts is ordered according to the Hegelian
principle where arts that involve language rule over the others,
because they best express human freedom.
In Sartre's *What is Literature?* this apparent disdain
for the materiality of painting seems at odds with another aesthetic
principle of the existentialists, namely, the capacity of art to
witness the obtrusiveness of the world, and, in exceptional moments of
aesthetic communion, its inhuman beauty. Indeed, in a few, smaller
texts of Sartre's (for example, those he wrote for exhibition
openings) he seems to return to this aspect of the artwork, which he
himself had so powerfully demonstrated in his first novel. However, it
is true that the existentialists are more interested in the ways in
which human beings sort out the entanglements of their freedom in the
absurd world, than in the depiction of the materiality of that world.
Merleau-Ponty's texts on the ontological grandeur of
Cezanne's painting are not representative of existential
aesthetics generally, but reflect only that author's unique
perspective on art and ontology.
Music, which in some classical systems of the arts (in Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche, for example) is the highest and most metaphysical, also
receives an ambiguous treatment in existentialist aesthetics. In
*The Myth of Sisyphus,* for example, Camus seems to be saying
that it is the absurd art *par excellence* because it realises
in the purest form what all art conscious of the absurd should be
about, namely, the "triumph of the flesh" in the absence of
any ultimate meaning:
>
>
> ... that game the mind plays with itself according to set and
> measured laws takes place in the sonorous compass that belongs to us
> and beyond which the vibrations nevertheless meet in an inhuman
> universe. There is no purer sensation. (...) The absurd man
> recognises as his own these harmonies and these forms (Camus 1942b,
> 91).
Marcel often emphasised the extent to which music had played a
significant role in his philosophical inspiration. He was famous for
his improvisations on classical 19th century poems, which
his wife noted after the Second World War. We saw earlier that Sartre
in a famous passage of *Nausea* had described an encounter with
jazz music in a cafe as a sublime experience in which the
beautiful inner coherence of the musical flow transcended for a moment
the nauseating meaninglessness of the material world. And note also de
Beauvoir's late enthusiasm for music (in Francis and Gontier
1979, 67).
Despite these descriptions of music as a privileged meaningful
experience in an absurd world, none of the existentialists has
undertaken any sustained analysis on the relationship between music,
philosophy and the existential condition. Camus interprets positively
the formality of music, its lack of discursivity and the abstraction of
its relation to the world of flesh (see also his early essay in Camus
1935-1936), features that the latter Merleau-Ponty interprets
negatively; but, in the end, the existentialist writers do not give
music any detailed consideration.
### 10.5 Cinema
The most puzzling aspect about the existentialists' systems of
the arts is their relative lack of interest, in their most famous
writings at least, in cinema, the privileged art form of the
20th century. Of all the arts, this would have been the one
that would appear to have truly been able to present
'situations.'
In the case of Sartre, this is all the more surprising given the
intimate association of Sartre with cinema at many points in his life.
Several passages in de Beauvoir's and Sartre's
autobiographical writings attest to their shared enthusiasm for the new
art (Sartre 1964). The profound influence of film on the young Sartre
is well documented in his early writings, where he demonstrates great
sensitivity towards the formal and political potentialities of the new
medium, in contrast to most of the French intelligentsia of the time
(Sartre 1924, 1931). Indeed, these early texts credit cinema with
precisely the same capacities of expression that are later granted to
theatre, such as the capacity to present action, the necessary yet
ambiguous necessity of engagement and the capacity of artistic
expression to represent the masses to the masses. Literary criticism
has established to what extent Sartre attempted to reproduce in
literary form the techniques employed by cinema in the representation
of time, space and internal states of consciousness, and specifically
how such an influence was crucial in his first major work,
*Nausea* (Johnson 1984).
During the war, Sartre was employed as a script writer by a
production company for whom he wrote eight scripts. Two of these were
published after the war (Sartre 1947c, 1948b), and two of them were
filmed. Most of these scripts provided the material for Sartre's
plays and novels when their realisation failed. In 1958, he also wrote
two scripts for films on Freud and Joseph Le Bon. Sartre also wrote
twelve articles on film in total, notably a critique of *Citizen
Kane* in 1945, which inspired a response by Andre Bazin that
was to become one of his most famous essays (Bazin 1947). De Beauvoir
also recounts the deep impact that the cinematic experience had on
Sartre's ontological views. According to her, the cinematic
representation of human actions hostage to the world's power of
resistance was a crucial source of inspiration for his mature ontology,
notably for his vision of the absurdity inherent in the world's
contingency (de Beauvoir 1960).
Despite this intimate connection with cinema, the enthusiasm that is
apparent in the early texts receded in the background after his
discovery of phenomenology in 1933, following his study year in Germany
(de Beauvoir 1962, 231). After that date, cinema no longer features as
an important art form in his aesthetic writings. Indeed, in a 1958
conference, Sartre explicitly ranks theatre above cinema because it
"has more freedom," as "a film depicts men who are in
the world and are conditioned by it," whereas "theatre
presents action by a man on the stage to men in the audience, and,
through this action, both the world he lives in and the performer of
the action" (Sartre 1976, 60-61). In other words, theatre is the
true art of freedom in situations. Similarly, in later years, de
Beauvoir explicitly ranked the novel over cinema for its capacity to
"materialise the presence of human beings to human beings"
(de Beauvoir quoted in Francis and Gontier 1979, 200). As with the
*Nouveau Roman*, Sartre and de Beauvoir were quite reserved
towards the *Nouvelle Vague*, the new French cinema of the 1960s
(*ibid*.).
Rather than Sartre, it is Merleau-Ponty who gave the most lucid
exposition of the evident link between cinema and existentialist
philosophy in a conference at the *National School of Cinema* in
Paris (1947b). Despite this insightful text, however, compared with the
eminent philosophical status that is bestowed upon theatre, the novel, and painting for the late Merleau-Ponty, as the truly
"metaphysical" art forms, cinema is remarkably absent from
the most important existentialist writings in aesthetics. |
feminism-aesthetics | ## 1. Art and Artists: Historical Background
Feminist perspectives in aesthetics first arose in the 1970s from a
combination of political activism in the contemporary art world and
critiques of the historical traditions of philosophy and of the arts.
They have developed in conjunction with the postmodern debates about
culture and society that have taken place in many fields in the social
sciences and humanities. These debates often begin with an assessment
of the western philosophical legacy, a legacy that is nowhere more
challenged than in the art world itself. Therefore, the significance
of many contemporary art movements, including feminist and
postfeminist work, is dramatized and clarified by understanding the
traditional values and theories that they address and challenge.
The richest historical target for feminist critiques of philosophies
of art has been the concept of fine art, which refers to art that is
created chiefly for aesthetic enjoyment. It includes at its core
painting, music, literature, and sculpture, and it excludes crafts,
popular art, and entertainment. Closely related to the concept of fine
art are ideas about the creative genius of the artist, who is often
conceived as possessing a unique vision expressed in art works. It was
the fine art tradition of painting that art historian Linda Nochlin
had in mind in 1971 when she asked her famous question, "Why
have there been no great women artists?" (Nochlin 1971 [1988]).
Since the modifier "fine" already contains profound
implications for the gender of artists, some background regarding the
older history of ideas about art and artists is first needed in order
to understand the variety of answers that can be provided to that
question. This inquiry also positions us to understand the media,
subject matter, and styles that contemporary feminist artists and art
theorists have advanced. What is more, examination of the ancient
roots of philosophy of art reveals a gendered value structure that
persists to this day.
The term "art" has not always served as shorthand for the
fine arts. Like most of the terms that refer to major conceptual
anchors of the western intellectual tradition, its origins may be
traced to classical antiquity. The Greek term that we now usually
translate "art" is *techne*, a term that is equally
well translated as "skill," and that in its broadest sense
was used to distinguish products of human endeavor from objects of
nature. The types of *techne* that most resemble our modern
concept of art are those that are "mimetic" or imitative,
that is, that reproduce the look of an object or that express an idea
in narrative or drama. Sculpture imitates the human form, for
instance; music imitates sounds of nature and voices or--more
abstractly--human emotions. Drama and epic poetry imitate lived
events. That art's nature is to be mimetic was widely assumed
for centuries, and most commentators, including Aristotle, extolled
the ability of the mimetic artist to capture with beauty and skill
some truth about life and the world. The Roman historian Pliny the
Elder recorded the acclaim for painters who were able to render their
subjects in line and color so accurately that they were
indistinguishable from their appearance in nature.
Probably the earliest philosophical discussion of art in the Greek
tradition occurs in Plato's *Republic*. Unlike most of
his contemporaries, Plato regarded mimesis as dangerous. The
*Republic* is an extended investigation of the nature of
justice, in the course of which Socrates and his friends envision an
ideal society that strictly censors and controls art forms such as
drama, music, painting, and sculpture. According to Plato's
metaphysics, the abstract world of the Forms possesses a greater
degree of reality than the physical world with its changing, unstable
events and objects. Hence the more direct the apprehension of Forms,
the closer a human mind can approach Truth. Imitations such as
paintings mimic the mere appearance of physical objects, becoming (as
he puts it in *Republic* X) three times removed from reality
and the truth. Mimesis substitutes illusion for truth, and it does so
in seductively pleasurable ways. What is more, arts such as tragic
poetry rivet attention by engaging powerful emotions such as fear,
enervating the virtues of a courageous person but paradoxically
pleasing at the same time. According to Plato's analysis of the
human psyche, the nonrational elements of the soul are powerful forces
that might divert the intellect from the cooler apprehension of
wisdom; thus the pleasures that mimetic art delivers are sufficiently
risky that art should be carefully curbed in a well-governed
society.
Plato's denigration of mimesis does not seem immediately to have
anything to do with gender, although his influential system has
important indirect implications that are rife with gendered
significance. In his preference for the philosophical quest to attain
knowledge of the Forms over indulgence in the pleasures of mimesis,
for example, one can see a hierarchy of values that rank the eternal,
abstract, intellectual world of ideal forms over the transient,
particular, sensuous world of physical objects. This hierarchy
supports the dualism between mind and body that is deeply correlated
with gender asymmetry, and that was a fundamental target of critique
in the early development of feminist perspectives in philosophy.
Feminist philosophers take note of certain concepts that appear in
"binary" combinations: mind-body; universal-particular;
reason-emotion, sense, and appetite; and so forth--including
male-female. These are not merely correlative pairs, they are ranked
pairs in which the first item is taken to be naturally superior to the
second (Gatens 1991: 92). Universality is considered superior to
particularity because it provides more general knowledge, for example;
reason is superior to emotion because it is supposedly a more reliable
faculty. Both preferences represent a partiality for
"objectivity" over "subjectivity," concepts
that have an especially complicated significance in aesthetics. What
is more, the sorts of pleasures that mimesis arouses are emotional and
appetitive, appealing more to the body than to the intellect.
Therefore we can find in Plato's peculiar assessment of mimetic
arts an elevation of intellect and abstraction over emotion and
particularity. While not explicitly invoked, gender is present in
assumptions of this discussion, because "male" and
"female" (sometimes conflated with "masculine"
and "feminine," though the terms are not synonymous) are
root members of the pairs of opposites that have been present in
western philosophy since Pythagoras. While there are no direct
references to women creators in the *Republic*, this philosophy
of art partakes of gendered concepts at its very core. The
implications of such concepts for artists evolve into explicit form
with the genesis of the modern category of fine art and its
creators.
Scholars disagree about how to date the rise of the special category
of arts designated "fine arts" or "beaux
arts." Some claim that the concept begins to emerge in the
Renaissance, while others argue that it is not until the eighteenth
century that fine art really firms up as a distinct classification
(Kristeller 1951-52; Shiner 2001). At this time the idea that art is
essentially mimetic begins to recede, and it gradually gives way to a
romantic concept of art as self-expression. The eighteenth century is
also the period that produces many treatises comparing arts to one
another according to shared principles and, even more importantly,
develops influential theories about a particular kind of pleasure
taken in objects of nature and art that becomes known as
"aesthetic" enjoyment. This type of pleasure was central
to the theories of taste that characterize the formative theories of
aesthetics.
The focus on fine art singles out the purely aesthetic values of works
of art and positions them so centrally that the very concept of art is
narrowed. Art that is appreciated for its beauty or other aesthetic
virtues is distinct from the sorts of arts that produce items for
practical use, such as furniture, cushions, or utensils. The latter
came to be designated "crafts," and while their usefulness
and skill-requirements were recognized, the making of a craft object
was considered decidedly less of an original achievement than the
creation of a work of fine art. Artistic creativity increasingly came
to be regarded as a kind of personal expression that externalizes the
vision of the individual artist in a work of autonomous value; craft,
by contrast, aims at some practical function.
The significance of the fine art-craft distinction for the assessment
of women's creative production is substantial. While there are
many objects that are excluded from the category of fine art whose
makers are male, those objects of domestic use whose creation was
predominantly the occupation of women were all marginalized by this
category and its attendant values (Parker and Pollock 1981). Thereby
the traditional domestic arts were removed from the history of art
proper. This historical change suggests one reason that painting, for
example, has had so few "great" female practitioners:
historically women's creative efforts were likely to be directed
to the production of domestic wares; when these were shunted into the
category of "craft," women's presence in the genre
of visual arts shrank radically.
What is more, the rise of attention to the fine arts gave those arts a
particularly public presence. The modern institution of the museum put
paintings and sculptures on display; the concert hall made
performances available to a larger public (Shiner 2001). This is a
period of history when ideas of social propriety were especially
divergent for men and women of the middle and upper classes, the chief
consumers of the fine arts. While it was considered a domestic benefit
for well-bred young ladies to be able to perform music at home for
family and guests and to decorate the walls of the home with deft
paintings, public exposure of such talents was widely regarded as
improper and unfeminine. Therefore, what talents women exercised in
areas such as music tended to remain in the amateur realm rather than
be exerted in the more public professional world that monitored
important developments of art forms. (There are notable exceptions
such as the musicians Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, but
they are comparatively few.) Thus another reason women artists in many
genres take a back seat to their male colleagues is that they withdrew
from or were denied the kind of education and training that prepared
them for the exacting standards of the public audience. (Nochlin notes
how many women painters were trained by artist-fathers who were able
to provide them with the kind of training that would otherwise be
difficult to obtain; the same may be said of women musicians [Citron
1993; McClary 1991].) These historical explanations illuminate another
pair of opposites marked by gender: public-private. This binary has
been especially investigated by feminist political theorists but also
has considerable significance for philosophy of art (Pollock
1988).
From the above we can see how the concept of "art,"
considered in its aspect of "fine art," is a gendered
concept that selects as its paradigms mostly works that have been made
by male creators. Awareness of fine art's exclusionary criteria
is evident in contemporary feminist art practice. Mindful of the
effects that strict divisions between fine art and craft have exerted
over female creativity, feminist artists who were active in the
women's movement of the 1970s, such as Faith Ringgold and Miriam
Schapiro, incorporated craft materials such as fiber and cloth into
their displays (Lauter 1993). Their work employs materials with
domestic and feminine associations, calling attention to the
long-overlooked labor of women in art traditions that are different
from but no less worthy of attention than the fine arts of painting
and sculpture. Indeed, craft objects themselves such as quilts are now
occasionally the subject of exhibits in fine-art museums, another
recognition that the problematic distinction between fine art and
craft dissolves with changing cultural assessments. These sorts of
work suggest that, from one point of view, women have not been so much
absent from the history of art, as the history of art has screened out
many of the forms to which they have traditionally directed their
energies.
The area known as "Everyday Aesthetics," discussed below,
has taken up some of these insights and widened the attention of
philosophy so that it more readily recognizes the role of creativity
in domestic life. Perspectives on domesticity and the daily lives of
women have dramatically influenced not only the materials of art but
also subjects portrayed. There has been a notable increase of
depictions of pregnancy and motherhood in art that manifests feminist
thinking, for example (Liss 2009; Brand and Granger 2011). Feminist
and postfeminist art has been groundbreaking in the theoretical
exploration of the body in its varieties and meanings, including
sexuality and maternity. (For an example of the tandem work of art and
philosophy, see Dorothea Olkowski's discussion of the art of
Mary Kelly (Olkowski 1999).) The body in art is reviewed in Section 5
below.
In addition to principles of selection, another bias infuses gender
into the idea of fine art: the very concept of the artist. For much of
the modern period, the very best examples of fine art were understood
to be the creative products of artists with special talent amounting
to "genius," and genius is a trait that possesses
especially emphatic gender meaning.
## 2. Creativity and Genius
While genius is a rare gift, according to most theorists the pool of
human beings from which genius emerges includes only men. Rousseau,
Kant, and Schopenhauer all declared that women possess characters and
mentalities too weak to produce genius. This judgment represents a
particular instance of more general theories that attribute to males
the strongest and most important qualities of mind, in comparison to
which females are but paler counterparts. At least since Aristotle,
rationality and strong intellect have been regarded as
"masculine" traits that women possess in lesser degrees
than men. Women are standardly considered less intellectual but more
sensitive and emotional. According to some theories of creativity,
emotionality and sensitivity can be inspirational virtues, and so the
field of aesthetics has been more responsive to the positive uses to
which these traits might be put than are some other areas of
philosophy. When it comes to genius, however, male artists get the
best of both worlds: the great artistic genius is more than
intellectually brilliant; he is also emotionally sensitive and
fine-tuned, thus possessing characteristics that are traditionally
labeled both "masculine" and "feminine."
Christine Battersby has detailed the long and complicated history of
the concept of genius, which has roots in antiquity (Battersby 1989).
By the time it reaches its powerful Romantic form in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, it is especially exclusionary of women
artists. The artistic genius was praised not only for the strong
mentality that has always been attributed more heavily to men than to
women, but also for a sensitivity and creativity that partakes equally
of supposedly feminine attributes. Especially in the nineteenth
century, such "nonrational" sources of inspiration were
extolled for transcending the rules of reason and bringing something
new into being. Womanly metaphors of conception, gestation, labor, and
birth were liberally appropriated in descriptions of artistic
creativity, at the same time that actual women artists were passed
over as representatives of the highest aesthetic production.
>
> As the nineteenth century drew on ... the metaphors of male
> motherhood became commonplace--as did those of male midwifery.
> The artist conceived, was pregnant, laboured (in sweat and pain), was
> delivered, and (in an uncontrolled ecstasy of
> agonized--male--control) brought forth. These were the
> images of 'natural' childbirth that the male creators
> elaborated. (Battersby 1989: 73).
>
The description of genius with feminine images did not serve to bridge
the gulf between male and female artists, partly because of the
different ways that their creativity was conceived. Actual childbirth
was regarded as an outgrowth of women's "natural"
biological role; their own particular emotions and sensitivities were
similarly regarded as manifestations of what nature bestowed upon
them. Their artistic expression was thereby categorized less as
achievement than as natural display; consequently the expression of
feeling in women's art was often seen as a manifestation of
temperament, while strong feelings expressed in the work of men were
interpreted as emotions conveyed with mastery and control. By this way
of thinking, emotions in women's art are a byproduct of nature;
in contrast, the genius of the male artist produces a new creation
that transcends the dictates of nature (Korsmeyer 2004: ch.3).
While by and large disparate evaluations of the capabilities and
social roles of men and women have inhibited women's historical
accomplishments in the fine arts, they have not prevented them
entirely. Art and music historians have reevaluated the record of fine
art and brought a number of women practitioners to the attention of
both scholars and general audiences. While there have been relatively
few women artists recognized as "great," they have not
been altogether absent from the historical record. What is more, there
are certain art forms in which women were the pioneers, such as the
prose novel. The novel is a relatively new art form in the west, and
it began as popular story-writing whose market demand also afforded
opportunities for women writers to earn money. Their works were not
always highly praised, for there was a lot of critical disdain for the
wide appeal of their stories. Some of them, however, such as George
Eliot and Charlotte Bronte, created works of lasting acclaim and
even earned that contested accolade, "genius."
At the same time, a general skepticism about the soundness of the
canon of great arts of the past has informed a good deal of feminist
scholarship in the critical disciplines, which has reassessed the
historical record in painting, music, sculpture, and literature and
revised the canon to include neglected works by women. Rediscovery of
the work of women of the past was one of the major efforts of feminist
scholars during so-called second-wave feminism of the 1970s and 80s, a
period that also saw the founding of women's studies programs at
many colleges and universities in North America and Europe. Especially
in the early years of such studies, an important goal of scholarship
was to give women a fair shot at recognition in order to attain the
goal of sexual equality in the arts. As we shall see shortly, this
proved to be an initial stage in the development of work in feminist
aesthetics.
There has been considerable debate among feminist scholars concerning
how to assess the values associated with genius and artistic
accomplishment. Some have argued that the idea of genius itself is
suspect because of the great disparities in education available to
people, and the concept ought simply to be discarded. In addition,
valorizing the accomplishments of one individual perpetuates the
neglect of joint and communal creativity in favor of a kind of
masculine heroism. (In fact, earlier feminist art was often
collaborative, an explicit rejection of the idea of individual
creativity in favor of joint efforts among women.) Other feminists
disagree and have located alternative criteria at work in
women's achievements, arguing that one can discern traditions of
female genius at work in the body of art produced by women (Battersby
1989).
Critical attention to the values surrounding genius and the
valorization of individual creativity has occasioned some practical
recommendations regarding museum displays and the sorts of objects
considered worthy of public attention. In fact, recent years have seen
increased attention to works produced outside the academic fine art
systems, including the creative products of under-represented social
minorities. Hilde Hein pursues this point by suggesting that museums
might divert traditional interest in "masterworks" and aim
at understanding more commonplace objects and their meanings, thus
inverting the usual hierarchy of values manifest in museum and gallery
displays (Hein 2010). Hein maintains that the nonhierarchical values
promoted by feminist theory might motivate museums to reconsider their
visitors and the objects on display, reducing the distance between
viewer and object that the concept of the masterwork of genius induces
(Hein 2011, 2014). Sue Spaid goes even further, advancing a relational
collaboration among curators, artists, and viewing public (Spaid 2020;
also Reilly 2018).
The debate over creativity is a particular entry into broader
discussions over whether women's art might represent a kind of
"gynocentric" tradition different from the androcentric
traditions of male artists (Ecker 1986; Hein and Korsmeyer 1993, sect.
II). If this is to mean that the works of women artists always
manifest certain feminine aesthetic qualities due to their
makers' gender, then many feminists respond negatively, arguing
that other social positions (historical, national, ethnic, racial,
sexual orientation, and so forth) impose too many differences on women
to yield any feminine common denominator to their work (Felski 1989,
1998). On the other hand, some scholars argue that women artists and
writers often produce a counter-voice within their ambient traditions
which might be considered to claim its own "aesthetic."
Where one stands in this debate depends much on the scope of evidence
considered relevant to the question (Devereaux 1998). Claims for a
tradition of feminine aesthetics have been widely criticized for
essentializing women and ignoring their many social and historical
differences (Meagher 2011). At the same time, as Cornelia Klinger
observes, speculations about a women's art tradition seem, in
retrospect, to be more sophisticated than the label
"essentialism" implies, because they move beyond
egalitarian liberalism and recognize the enduring influences of gender
in aesthetic productions (Klinger 1998, 350; Eaton 2008). As with
virtually all philosophical questions, those concerning commonalities
among women artists are revisited from time to time. (In 2015 a
conference in Cork, Ireland, was devoted to the topic of
"Aesthetics and the Feminine" (Edwards 2016).)
The latter perspective characterizes those scholars who defend the
idea that experiences of female embodiment can be manifest in
distinctive expressive styles that yet accommodate difference. The
most elaborate theoretical framework supporting this approach is
provided by work loosely described as "French feminisms."
Helene Cixous famously proposed the notion of
*ecriture feminine*, positing that the expression
of women's lived experience might be impressed in women's
literary production in linguistic styles that offer alternatives to
standard objective description and linear temporal development (Cixous
1975/1981). Although they proceed from varying theoretical
foundations, including different interpretations of psychoanalytic
theory, Luce Irigaray's notion of writing the body and Julia
Kristeva's positing of modes of semiotic expression that escape
patriarchal symbolic discourse, propose parallel methods to
distinguish creativity distinct from androcentric styles (Irigaray
1974 [1985]). They need not characterize the writing only of women,
however; Kristeva's theory of the semiotic posits that poetic
language taps expressive pre-symbolic resources flowing from infantile
experiences in the mother-child dyad (Kristeva 1984). With or without
the psychoanalytic frameworks employed by their originators, such
ideas have proven fruitful resources for feminist scholars working in
a variety of philosophical traditions. For example, Jane Duran has
examined the fiction of writers as different as the British novelist
Margaret Drabble and the African-American writer Toni Cade Bambara to
disclose how expressing embodied experience shares certain traits that
are manifest quite differently when inflected by race, social
position, and cultural legacy (Duran 2007).
The critique of tradition that fosters "writing the
feminine" proceeds from the discovery of a lack at the heart of
artistic representation, an absence of voices positioned to express
the subjectivities of those who occupy the margins of social power. In
counterpoint, Ewa Plonowska Ziarek notes that worlds of art have also
provided a wealth of resources to uncover realities of gender,
sexuality, social position, and race. However, the project of
developing feminist aesthetics has often been eclipsed by the
political urgencies thereby disclosed, sidelining feminism within
aesthetics and aesthetics within feminism. Ziarek examines the works
of modernist women writers, arguing that the very artistic form of
their works unifies the efforts of feminism and political practice in
"complex relations between political and aesthetic
transformations, their relation to gender and race differences, and
the role of materiality in political contestation and aesthetic
invention" (Ziarek 2012a, 392; Ziarek 2012b).
## 3. Aesthetic Categories and Feminist Critiques
The foregoing has reviewed feminist reflections on theories of art,
noting how the histories of women in the arts inform contemporary
feminist debates and practices. Equally important are assessments of
the values that comprise the conceptual frameworks of aesthetics, from
which some of the most influential tools of feminist critical analysis
emerge.
A good deal of feminist criticism has been focused on
eighteenth-century philosophy because of the many influential works on
beauty, pleasure, and taste that were written at that time and that
became foundational texts for contemporary theories.
"Taste" refers to a capacity that permits good judgments
about art and the beauties of nature. While the metaphor for
perception is taken from the gustatory sense, these theories are
actually about visual, auditory, and imaginative pleasure, since it is
widely assumed that literal taste experience is too bodily and
subjective to yield interesting philosophical problems. Judgments of
taste take the form of a particular kind of pleasure--one that
eventually became known as "aesthetic" pleasure (a term
that entered English only in the early nineteenth century).
The major theoretical concepts of this period are riddled with
gendered significance, although tracing gender in the maze of writings
of this time is a task complicated by the unstable role of sexuality
in theories of aesthetic pleasure. According to its most austere
analysis--which came to dominate aesthetics and philosophy of art
for a time--aesthetic enjoyment has nothing to do with sexuality
at all: Aesthetic pleasure is not a sensuous, bodily gratification; it
is free from practical considerations and purged of desire. The two
kinds of desire that most interrupt aesthetic contemplation are hunger
and sexual appetite, which are the "interested" pleasures
par excellence. Aesthetic pleasures are contemplative and
"disinterested" (to use Kant's term from the
*Critique of Judgment*, 1790). It is disinterestedness that rids
the perceiver of the individual proclivities that divide people in
their judgments and that clears the mind for common, even universal
agreement about objects of beauty. Ideally, taste is potentially a
universal phenomenon, even though its "delicacy," as Hume
put it, requires exercise and training. To some degree, the
requirements of taste may be seen as bridging the differences among
people. But there is an element of leisure embedded in the values of
fine art, and critics have argued that taste also ensconces and
systematizes class divisions (Shusterman 1993; Mattick 1993).
Even as theorists extolled the possibilities for universal taste,
however, they often drew gender distinctions regarding its exercise.
Many theorists argued that women and men possess systematically
different tastes or capabilities for appreciating art and other
cultural products. The most noticeable gender distinctions occur with
the two central aesthetic categories of the eighteenth century, beauty
and sublimity. Objects of beauty were described as bounded, small, and
delicate--"feminized" traits. Objects that are
sublime, whose exemplars are drawn chiefly from uncontrolled nature,
are unbounded, rough and jagged,
terrifying--"masculinized" traits. These gender
labels are unstable, however, for the terrors of nature have an
equally strong history of description as "feminine" forces
of chaos (Battersby 1998). What is more, gendered meanings in the
sublime are intensified by surrounding discourse about the strange,
exotic, and foreign. Meg Armstrong argues that "exotic"
bodies become subjected to aesthetic discourse in theories of the
sublime, noting that Burke singles out the black female body as a
special object of terror (Armstrong 1996). In short, aesthetic
*objects* take on both gendered and racialized meanings with
the concepts of beauty and sublimity (Bindman 2002). Moreover, so do
aesthetic *appreciators*. As Kant put it in his earlier
*Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime*
(1763), a woman's mind is a "beautiful" mind. But a
woman is incapable of the tougher appreciation and insight that
sublimity discloses (Wiseman 1993, Kneller 1993). The preclusion of
women from the experience of the sublime limits their competence to
apprehend the moral and existential weight of the might and magnitude
of both nature and art. Women's supposed weaker constitutions
and moral limitations, as well as their social restrictions,
contributed to a concept of sublimity that marks it as masculine.
Debates over the nature and concept of sublimity gave rise to feminist
debates over whether one can discern in the history of literature an
alternate tradition of sublimity that counts as a "female
sublime" (Freeman 1995, 1998; Battersby 1998, 2007; Mann
2006).
The careful purging of sensual pleasure from aesthetic enjoyment
mingles with the paradoxical employment of female bodies as examples
of aesthetic objects. Among the things that are naturally agreeable to
human nature, Hume lists music, good cheer, and "the fair
sex." And Kant states, "The man develops his own taste
while the woman makes herself an object of everybody's
taste." (Kant 1798 [1978: 222]) Edmund Burke frankly eroticizes
beauty when he speculates that the grace and delicacy of line that
mark beautiful objects are reminiscent of the curves of the female
body (Burke 1757/1968). If women are the objects of aesthetic
pleasure, then the actual desire of the perceiver must be distanced
and overcome in order for enjoyment to be purely aesthetic. This
outcome is one implication of the notion of disinterested pleasure.
This requirement, it would seem, assumes a standard point of view that
is masculine and heterosexual. But of course women are also subjects
who exercise taste. This implies that women are unstably both
aesthetic subject and object at the same time. As a rule, the
connoisseur, the so-called man of taste, was indeed male, and female
bodies--in reality or represented in art--figured among the objects of
aesthetic pleasure. However, women were also participants in the
development of aesthetic ideals, and Terry Robinson argues that they
actively shaped the concept of the beautiful female body (T. Robinson
2018).
Disinterestedness has a long history; it characterizes the popular
aesthetic attitude theories of the twentieth century, which argued
that a prerequisite for any kind of full appreciation of art is a
distanced, relatively contemplative stance towards a work of art.
Similar assumptions about the most suitable way to view art lie behind
the formalist criticism that dominated visual art interpretation for
decades, and that also characterize interpretive norms in other art
forms such as literature and music (McClary 1991, 4; Devereaux 1998;
Brand 2000). The value of disinterested aesthetic enjoyment has come
under heavy critical scrutiny on the part of feminists. Some have
deconstructed this idea and argued that a supposedly disinterested
stance is at least sometimes actually a covert and controlling
voyeurism and as such ought to be abandoned as an aesthetic ideal.
Others caution against discarding standards of disinterested,
impartial judgment altogether, arguing that such a move relinquishes
the important normativity of aesthetic evaluations (Eaton 2008, 2012).
Nonetheless, even if disinterestedness and related standards of
objectivity are retained, feminists continue to draw attention to the
ways in which the mere act of looking can manifest relations of social
power. Anne Eaton proposes an alternative notion of
"situatedness," importing into aesthetics a version of
feminist standpoint theory to draw attention both to audience
positions of appreciation and to the perspectives evoked in works of
art (Eaton 2009).
Criticisms of theories that mandate disinterested or distanced
aesthetic enjoyment have given rise to influential feminist theories
of the perception and interpretation of art. The type of art that has
come in for particular scrutiny in terms of the implications of
disinterested enjoyment is visual art, and a good deal of argument
about what has become known as "the male gaze" has been
produced by film theorists and art historians, and subsequently
investigated by philosophers. The phrase "male gaze"
refers to the frequent framing of objects of visual art so that the
viewer is situated in a "masculine" position of
appreciation. By interpreting objects of art as diverse as paintings
of the nude and Hollywood films, these theorists have concluded that
women depicted in art are standardly placed as objects of attraction
(much as Burke had lined up women as the original aesthetic object);
and that the more active role of looking assumes a counterpart
masculine position. As Laura Mulvey puts it, women are assigned the
passive status of being looked-at, whereas men are the active subjects
who look (Mulvey 1989). Art works themselves prescribe ideal viewing
positions. While many women obviously also appreciate art, the stance
they assume in order to appreciate works in the ways disposed by
tradition requires the donning of a masculine perceptual attitude.
Theories of the male gaze come in several varieties: Psychoanalytic
theories dominate film interpretation, (Mulvey 1989, 2019; Doane 1991;
Chanter 2008); but their presumptions and methodology are contested by
philosophers more attuned to cognitive science and analytic philosophy
(Freeland 1998a; Carroll 1995; Cunliffe 2019). Versions of the male
gaze can be found in the existentialist feminism of Simone de Beauvoir
(Beauvoir 1949/2011); and there are empirically-minded observations
that confirm the dominance of male points of view in cultural
artifacts without adopting any particular philosophical scaffolding.
These theories differ in their diagnosis of what generates the
"maleness" of the ideal observer for art. For
psychoanalytic theorists, one must understand the operation of the
unconscious over visual imagination to account for the presence of
desire in objects of visual art. For others, historical and cultural
conditioning is sufficient to direct appreciation of art in ways that
privilege masculine points of view. Despite many significant
theoretical differences, analyses of the gaze converge in their
conclusion that much of the art produced in the Euro-American
traditions situates the ideal appreciator in a masculine
subject-position. There is debate over the dominance of the male
position in all art, for appreciative subjects cannot be understood
simply as "masculine" but require further attention to
sexuality, race, and nationality (Silverman 1992; hooks 1992, 1995;
Yancy 2016). Sometimes a facile reading of the gaze tempts one to
exaggerate the sharpness of gender distinctions into *the* male
viewer and *the* female object of the gaze, though most
feminists avoid such over-simplification. Despite their differences,
theories of the gaze reject the idea that perception is ever merely
passive reception. All of these approaches assume that vision
possesses power: power to objectify--to subject the object of
vision to scrutiny and possession. (For example, seeing oneself as the
exotic Other in orientalist paintings heightens the political aura of
art produced in dominant western cultures (Al-Saji 2019).) Since
social norms frame and amplify the operation of perception, there may
be inflections of gender in the very act of seeing (Tullman 2017).
Examinations of aesthetic perception have provided theoretical tools
of inestimable value in calling attention to the fact that looking is
rarely a neutral operation of the visual sense. As Naomi Scheman
states:
>
> Vision is the sense best adapted to express this dehumanization: it
> works at a distance and need not be reciprocal, it provides a great
> deal of easily categorized information, it enables the perceiver
> accurately to locate (pin down) the object, and it provides the gaze,
> a way of making the visual object aware that she is a visual object.
> Vision is political, as is visual art, whatever (else) it may be about
> (Scheman 1993: 159).
>
Not only what is seen but what is rendered invisible or shadowy
demands additional examination, as with M.G. Davidson's analysis of
the way that photographs of black women subtly train the white male
gaze and with Paul Taylor's study of the complexities of the phrase
"Black is beautiful" (Davidson 2016; Taylor
2016). Occluding persons from nondominant cultures and social groups
in visual production can exert powerful political force (Ortega 2019b;
Ortega, Pitts, and Medina 2019).
Theories of the gaze stress the activity of vision, its mastery and
control of the aesthetic object. These theories reject the separation
of desire from pleasure, reinstating into the core of beauty the sort
of erotic, covetous gaze that was eliminated from aesthetic
disinterestedness. While not all art invites understanding in terms of
the gaze, much does; perhaps nowhere is the ideology of extreme
disinterested contemplation more questionable than when applied to
paintings of female nudes, which one feminist scholar argues virtually
define the modern fine art of painting (Nead 1992). Aesthetic
ideologies that would remove art from its relations with the world
disguise its ability to inscribe and to reinforce power relations. The
erotic in art is one of those relations, and denying its presence
disguises both its persuasive sway and its aesthetic force (Eaton
2012). With visual art, those relations are manifest in vision itself:
the way it is depicted in a work and the way it is directed in the
observer outside the work. Becoming attuned to the prescribed
viewing-position of a work of visual art brings desire and suppressed
heteroeroticism into focus and illuminates other presumptions about
the ideal audience for art, such as sexual identity and race (Roelofs
2009, 2014). Depictions of the body in art are continuous with
pornographic and erotic representations, other areas of feminist
investigations (Maes and Levinson 2012; Eaton 2007, 2012, 2017, 2018;
Kania 2012; Shusterman 2021).
Many of these critical investigations can be ordered into a sustained
critique of aesthetic practices, in particular, of what is presented
in the name of *beauty*. Of all the concepts within aesthetics,
for feminist consideration there is none so central, so contested, so
rejected, and so embraced as beauty. Beauty is an enormous category of
value, for so many disparate things are beautiful that generalizing
about its nature is a formidable challenge. Beauty is among the oldest
of philosophical value concepts, with Plato numbering among its
formative theorists. Plato focused on beauty as an abstract form whose
essence is bestowed on the particular items that instantiate it, and
in keeping with this foundational model, philosophers have usually
treated beauty in the most general of terms. Combined with the modern
notion of disinterested attention, this approach to aesthetic value
seems to aim at the highest level of universality of appreciation. Yet
at the same time, as noted above, one of the central exemplars of
beauty has been the (young, pretty, pale-skinned) female body, which
exerts erotic attraction and promises satisfaction of physical desire.
Critiques of the gender-inflection in supposedly neutral theories, as
well as its racialized implications, numbered among the early feminist
revisions in aesthetics. These theoretical efforts merged with social
critiques of beauty norms that circulated in the late twentieth
century. What is more, for some time, beauty was rather sidelined in
the art world as well (Danto 2003). As a result, beauty fell out of
favor, and for quite a while one could find little original work
published on the subject.
All that began to change around 1990, and since the turn of the last
millennium there has been a veritable explosion of interest in beauty
among philosophers, artists, critics, and cultural
theorists--feminists among them (Brand 2000, 2013; Higgins, Maira, and
Sikka 2017). While some of this work continues to consider the general
traits of beauty in art and nature, quite a lot of it focuses on the
norms of appearance of the human body, and the "violation"
of "standard" norms according to race, disability, age,
history, and variant sexual morphologies. Such standards govern not
only artistic depictions, but also the way that real people shape and
reshape their own bodies to conform to reigning standards of
attractiveness (Devereaux 2013; Wegenstein 2012). Feminists and
critical race theorists have been especially mindful of diversity and
suspicious of general norms and the harms that they can occasion. Yet
at the same time feminists have recognized the pull of pleasure and
the importance of beauty in life as well as art. Seeking to avoid the
dogma of universalism, Janet Wolff proposes an aesthetics of
"uncertainty" that recognizes that norms of beauty are
grounded in communities and are thus ineluctably political, and yet
does not relinquish the value of beauty (Wolff 2006).
Similar recognition of the potentials for both danger and pleasure in
beauty is found in investigations that seek to decenter notions of
beauty with reference to race, indigenous people, and subaltern
cultures (e.g. Brand 2000, 2013, and Felski 2006). Nor is this a
theoretical effort alone; artists are major participants in the
reclamation of beauty that takes as many forms as humanity offers. The
upshot of this work is not to reinstate beauty back on its abstract
pedestal, but to retain its pleasures while being alert to its
dangers. As Monique Roelofs observes, "the menace and promise of
the beautiful as a bearer of aesthetic value, a dimension of
experience, and a category of cultural criticism turn on the ways in
which we may dislocate its relational functioning" (Roelofs
2013: 73). The functions of beauty include the seductions of
advertising, a pervasive social phenomenon that reinforces and
manipulates ideals of femininity and thus represents another important
target for feminist examinations (Michna 2016; Widdows 2019). In
addition, the growing field of somaesthetics has increasingly focused
on the body, the care of the self, and gendered ideals of beauty that
affect men as well as women (Hyvonen 2020), as well as the
performative body in dance (Banes 1998; Bresnahan, Katan-Schmid and
Houston 2020) and competitive sports (Morgan and Edgars 2021).
## 4. Feminist Practice and the Concept of Art
Feminist analyses of aesthetic practices of the past have influenced
the production of feminist art of our own times, and the latter in
turn has contributed to a dramatic alteration of the climate of the
art world. The changes that have beset the worlds of art in the
twentieth century, perhaps most dramatically in the fields of the
visual arts, are frequently the subject of philosophical discussions
in the analytic tradition regarding the possibility of defining art
(Danto 1981; Davies 1991; Carroll 2000). One challenge to defining art
stems from the fact that contemporary artists frequently create with
the intention of questioning, undermining, or rejecting values that
defined art of the past. The early and mid-twentieth century
extravagances of Dada and Pop Art are most often the target of
philosophical inquiries, which seek to discover commonalities among
artworks that have few to no perceptible defining similarities.
As we have seen, the category of fine art has been a focus of feminist
scholarly scrutiny because its attendant values screened out much of
women's creative efforts or actively dissuaded their attempts to
practice certain genres. However, the dissolution of the values of
fine art long preceded the art scene that feminists entered in the
1970s. In spite of sweeping changes in the concepts of art and its
purposes that characterize much art of the last century, the numbers
of women practitioners in arts such as painting, sculpture, and music
remained small. Therefore, while fine art may have historical
importance for women's artistic influence, it clearly was not
the perpetuating cause of their exclusion from the worlds of art. The
anti-art and avant garde movements so frequently discussed by
contemporary analytic philosophers were just as male-dominated as
classical music or Renaissance sculpture. Moreover, values surrounding
the artistic "genius" were just as vigorous as ever.
Therefore, feminist art practices began as activist movements (such as
the Guerrilla Girls of New York City) to secure women more visibility
and recognition in the artworld (Guerrilla Girls 2020). Feminist
artists not only demanded that their work be taken seriously, they
mounted a critique of the traditional thinking that lay behind their
exclusions from the powerful centers of culture.
For these reasons, feminist art itself also furnishes numerous
examples that subvert older models of fine art, but with added layers
of meaning that distinguish it from earlier iconoclastic movements.
Because of the gendered significance of the major concepts of the
aesthetic tradition, feminist challenges often systematically
deconstruct the concepts of art and aesthetic value reviewed above.
Feminist art has joined--and sometimes has led--movements
within the artworld that perplex, astound, offend, and exasperate,
reversing virtually all the aesthetic values of earlier times. As art
critic Lucy Lippard put it, "feminism questions all the percepts
of art as we know it" (Lippard 1995: 172). Feminist artists have
challenged the ideas that art's main value is aesthetic, that it
is for contemplation rather than use, that it is ideally the vision of
a single creator, that it should be interpreted as an object of
autonomous value (Devereaux 1998). Feminism itself came under internal
criticism for its original focus on white, western women's
social situations, a familiar critique in feminist circles that has a
presence in aesthetic debates. By the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries, the energies of feminist and postfeminist
artists of diverse racial and national backgrounds have made the
presence of women in the contemporary artworld today powerful and
dramatic (Deepwell 2020). Self-referential explorations of identity
and agency--often through performance art--have been led by women of
color such as Adrian Piper, who is also a philosopher (Piper 1996), as
well as by lesbian and trans artists whose work gives rise to queer
feminist art histories (Jones and Silver 2015).
In many discussions of contemporary art, "feminist" is a
label for work produced during the active phase of second-wave
feminism from the later 1960s to about 1980. The term
"postfeminist" is now in use for a subsequent generation
of artists who pursue some of the ideas and interests of the earlier
period. These terms are far from precise, and there are many artists
practicing today who continue to identify themselves with the term
"feminist." Perhaps an even larger group does not attend
particularly to labels, but their work is so provocative about the
subjects of gender and sexuality that it has become a focus for
feminist interpretation. (The photographic art of Cindy Sherman is a
case in point.)
In brief, feminist artists share a political sense of the historic
social subordination of women and an awareness of how art practices
have perpetuated that subordination--which is why the history of
aesthetics illuminates their work. The more politically-minded
artists, especially those who participated in the feminist movement of
the 1970s, often turned their art to the goals of freeing women from
the oppressions of male-dominated culture. (Examples of such work
include the Los Angeles anti-rape performance project of Suzanne Lacy
and Leslie Leibowitz, *In Mourning and in Rage* (1977), and
*Womanhouse* (1972), a collaboration of twenty-four artists.)
Feminist artists opened up previously taboo subjects such as
menstruation and childbirth for artistic presentation, and they began
to employ female body images widely in their work. All of these moves
were controversial, including within the feminist community. For
example, when Judy Chicago made her large collaborative installation
"The Dinner Party" in the early 1970s, she was both
praised and criticized for the thematic use of vaginal imagery in the
table settings that represented each of thirty-nine famous women from
history and legend (Chicago and Lucie-Smith 1999). Critics objected
that she was both essentializing women and reducing them to their
reproductive parts; admirers praised her transgressive boldness. Since
that time, the increasing numbers of artistic portrayals of the female
body and its cycles has rendered these subjects less taboo and
transgressive, although they remain provocative and sometimes
disturbing. Early in his writing of feminist criticism for *The
Nation*, Arthur Danto characterized such work by feminist artists
as 'disturbatory' (Arguello 2017; Brand Weiser
2021).
Postfeminist artists, such as Kiki Smith and Jenny Saville, build upon
the efforts of their predecessors in exploring the body, gender, and
sexual identity. Postfeminist art, often highly theoretical and deeply
serious, also tends to be playful and parodic in style, such as the
work of Vanessa Beecroft. It tends to be less overtly political than
the art of earlier feminists. Influenced by postmodern speculations
that gender, sexuality, and the body itself are creations of culture
that are malleable and performative, postfeminist art confounds and
disrupts notions of stable identity (Grosz 1994; Butler 1990, 1993).
Such art can be seen as individualistic compared to the social agendas
of earlier feminism, but perhaps for this reason this sort of art is
also more attuned to differences among women. These presentations of
the female body tend to draw attention to the position it has in
culture: not only the sexed body, but also bodies marked by racial and
cultural differences (James 2010). In the 1970s and 80s,
Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta produced a series of works making
use of her own body to form silhouettes and shapes. All of this
activity is theoretically charged and often philosophically motivated
(Reckitt 2001, Heartney 2013). At the same time, it should be stressed
that the kinds of art that qualify to be labeled
"feminist" are hugely varied and heterogeneous. And as
time passes and political climates shift, the interventions of artists
and their visionary critiques alter accordingly. Twenty-first century
theorizing about feminist art now includes acknowledgement of the many
forms of global feminisms and increased frequency of feminist content
that deals with war and politics. Robinson and Buszek offer a
refreshed definition of "feminist art" that is not a simple
classification of a type of art, but rather indicates the space where
feminist politics and the domain of art-making intersect (Robinson and
Buszek 2019; also Armstrong and de Zegher 2006).
## 5. The Body in Art and Philosophy
Possibly there is no topic more discussed in feminist art and
philosophy today than "the body." This interest represents
continued explorations and critiques of traditional mind-body dualism,
the role of sexual morphology in the development of gender and the
self, and the venerable association of women with matter and
physicality. All these subjects link gender analysis to the history of
philosophical concepts, both in the west (which most of this entry has
emphasized) and in eastern traditions (Man 2000, 2015, 2016). Both the
artistic and the theoretical modes of exploration of the body can be
viewed as complementary elements of feminist aesthetics. This topic
covers very broad territory and includes the mutual involvement of
aesthetic norms with ethical judgments; aesthetic standards and
implications about bodies that appear deviant from standard concepts
of "normal"; and the participation of the bodily senses in
aesthetic appreciation (Irvin 2016).
To begin with the last topic mentioned above: Both artists and
philosophers have reevaluated the senses and the orthodox materials
that are fashioned into objects of art. As we saw when considering
philosophies of taste and the formation of the idea of the aesthetic,
the literal sense of taste has customarily never been considered a
truly "aesthetic" sense, its pleasures and mode of
apprehension being too bodily and sensuous to qualify. Vision and
hearing are the aesthetic senses proper, according to traditional
theory. This judgment is under question now, as the senses themselves
are under reevaluation (Howes 1991). Early speculation about the
possible gendering of sense experience was ventured by theorists such
as Irigaray and Cixous, and a number of artists indirectly probe the
issue by employing foodstuffs as the medium for their works (Korsmeyer
2004, chs. 4-5). The presence of actual food--as opposed to
the depictions of still life painting--in art installations
confounds traditional aesthetic ideals on a number of fronts. It
challenges the idea that art has lasting value, because it literally
decays. And while such art is to be viewed, it synaesthetically teases
the senses of taste and smell as well. But it often does so without
the benefits that actual eating provides, for art made from food is
not necessarily itself a meal. In fact, rather than pleasing to the
sense of taste, this art frequently trades on the arousal of disgust
in the sensuous imagination. (Janine Antoni, for example, has
fashioned large sculptures from lard and from chocolate, employing her
mouth, teeth, and tongue as the carving tools. Hardly appealing to the
gustatory sense, this work nonetheless arouses a somatic response at
the same time that it invites rumination on the venerable hierarchy of
the senses that puts the distance senses of sight and hearing above
the bodily senses of touch, smell, and taste.)
A number of artists today are using food that can be eaten, inviting
the public into a participatory relationship with their works (Smith
2013). The uses of food on the part of female artists are particularly
significant, given the traditional association of women with the body,
with feeding and nurturance, and with transience and mortality. Not
only these venerable concepts but also the versions they manifest in
the contemporary social order are present in today's art scene,
such as Kara Walker's 2014 work *A Subtlety*, a giant
sculpture of sugar and molasses that explores eroticism, race, and the
legacies of American slavery (Davidson 2016). The very presence of
such creations in the artworld today has contributed to consternation
on the part of professionals and public alike about just how art is to
be defined and conceived. There is no particular feminist
"definition" of art, but there are many uses to which
feminists and postfeminists turn their creative efforts: exploring
gender and sexuality as well as criticizing the traditions of art and
of beauty imposed by aesthetic standards of the past.
The sense of taste is but one zone where the aesthetic dimensions of
bodily sensation are recognized and explored, in dramatic contrast to
the traditional idea that aesthetic "distance" is required
for the true apprehension of art. Erotic desires, sexuality, and
bodily sensation in general are increasingly central elements both of
art and of aesthetic discourse, and feminist investigators have been
among the important contributors to this movement (Lintott 2003; Lorde
2007; Grosz 2008; Lintott and Irvin 2016).
Critical consideration of norms of female beauty and the artistic
depiction of women influences the ways that feminist artists employ
their own bodies in creating art (Brand 2000, 2013; Steiner 2001;
Banes 1998). The work of artists across the globe utilizes bodies in
different cultural and political contexts, dramatizing the recognition
prevalent in contemporary feminist theory that there is no such thing
as *the* female body, only bodies marked by the differences of
their historical situation, their geographical location, their social
position, their race (Hobson 2005; Tate 2009; Roelofs et al 2009;
Taylor 2016). A wide spectrum of identities and desires are explored
in text, image, and performance, including sexual
morphology--transgender, female, male, intersex. Revaluation of bodies
with abilities and disabilities represents yet another way in which
aesthetic investigations have political impact (Silvers 2000;
Millett-Gallant 2010; Siebers 2010). The most dramatic uses of
artists' bodies occur with the relatively new genre of
performance art, in which feminists have been pioneers.
A good deal of performance art has been highly controversial, partly
because of the exposure of the bodies of the artists in ways that not
only challenge norms of female beauty but are deliberately gross or
even borderline pornographic. The art tradition was long accustomed to
pictures of nude females arranged in alluring poses. A performance
artist who manipulates her body in ways that reverse the values of
that tradition confronts the audience with a direct and emotionally
difficult challenge to those values. Karen Finley, to mention a
well-known case, called attention to the sexual exploitation of women
by smearing her body with foodstuffs resembling blood and excrement.
This is an especially political use of disgust--an emotion that
in earlier times was explicitly precluded from aesthetic arousal but
that has become a major feature of the comprehension and appreciation
of contemporary art (Korsmeyer 2011). What at first disgusts, however,
may come to lose its stigma, and displays of the body are also
deployed to induce acceptance. Regarding what at first appear as
disfigurements with aesthetic openness can broaden both our
sensibilities and our social horizons (Irvin 2017; Protasi 2017).
Artists have contributed to changes in the social imagination about
gender fluidity. While the concept of the sexed body has seemed in the
past to be dictated by nature, transgender and non-binary artists are
among those who challenge the idea that morphology at birth must
determine the course of one's life (Mostovoy in Brand Weiser
2018; Vaid-Menon 2020).
Feminist explorations of embodiment and the deliberate arousal of
disgust as an aesthetic response have at least two kinds of political
and philosophical import. First of all, they invert feminine ideals
that frame restrictive norms for personal appearance. This can be done
humorously, boldly, sadly, aggressively, casually; much depends on the
individual work. There are numerous ways to challenge the traditional
aesthetic values expected in the female body, with disturbing
emotional effects that make the audience question those values and
their comprehensiveness. In addition, the arousal of disgust often
occurs when artists move from consideration of the exterior of the
body to its warm, dark, sticky interior where unmentionable substances
are kept hidden away. The deliberate cultivation of that which is not
pretty but is grossly material is the occasion for presenting formerly
taboo aspects of bodies: menstrual blood, excrement, internal organs.
Female artists are not the only ones who explore interiority and
materiality in art, of course. However, because of the traditional
linkage of gross matter with the "feminine" (now the
terrible feminine, not the highly socialized feminine of Burke's
beauty principle), when female artists explore such themes they cannot
but allude to venerable conceptual frameworks. This is a complex and
delicate territory for feminist investigation: the ancient category of
the feminine that includes the element of untamed nature and the gross
matter of existence. Feminist uses of these types of objects play upon
myths of nature and culture, of horror and sublimity, and of death and
life. Rather than keeping these themes in the uncanny but clean realms
of myth, however, the presentation of entrails, blood,
and--sometimes literally--flesh confronts the audience with
a particular and disturbing presence of the artist herself. Indeed,
such theorizing extends beyond art into lived reality with
philosophical attention to such intrinsically female events as
childbirth, a transformative experience in which some theorists find
elements of the sublime (Lintott 2011).
The provocative ideas of French philosopher and psychoanalyst Luce
Irigaray have provided inspiration for a number of feminist artists
who seek to bring forth a "sexuate" perspective in their
work that does not borrow from the patriarchal tradition, for the
latter, according to Irigaray, has always eclipsed the expression of
the "feminine." The body and its morphology are central to
Irigaray's philosophical method, as she insists that sexuate
being pervades one's existence, and that the pretense of
shedding one's sex when writing or speaking in standard,
familiar idioms and syntax causes the feminine to disappear into the
masculine/neutral discourse that dominates the patriarchal order. As
she puts it in the title of one of her widely-read essays, "Any
theory of the subject has always been appropriated by the
masculine" (Irigaray 1974 [1985: 133]). One of Irigaray's
projects is to evoke feminine subjectivity that can be represented in
its own terms, not just as an absence in the symbolic order. While the
intricacies of her philosophy are opaque and sometimes difficult to
pin down, her suggestive ideas have furnished inspiration for many
feminist artists. The psychoanalytic work of Bracha Ettinger
concerning subjectivity and gendered consciousness is equally
developed in her writings and in her visual art and indeed can be
considered as much theory as aesthetic production (Ettinger 2006;
Pollock 2008).
Feminist interpretive theories include approaches that are both
competing and complementary, and they represent some of the same
rivalries that are present in contemporary philosophy, broadly
construed. Adaptations of psychoanalytic theory have an especially
large presence in the interpretation of performance, literature, film
and visual arts. Some feminists employ the discourse of Jacques Lacan,
whose concept of the symbolic order has been widely applied to
understand the power of patriarchy embedded in cultural forms of every
kind (Copjec 2002). Julia Kristeva, who analyzes the artistic
experience of "abjection" as a threat to self arising from
both the allure and the horror of self-disintegration and reabsorption
into the body of the mother, has been especially provocative for
understanding the aesthetic arousal of disgust and the strong sexual
and gendered elements of horror (Kristeva 1982; Creed 1993, Ortega
2019a). Far from a mere application of a theory to aesthetics, the
feminist uses of abjection have explored and enlarged the concept in
order to understand not only the psychological development of
individuals but also the construction of social and political
relations (Chanter 2008).
The uses of psychoanalytic theory in aesthetics mark an area of
controversy that is importantly discipline-based. Many philosophers,
especially those of the analytic and postanalytic traditions, reject
the assumptions required by these approaches as empirically baseless
and theoretically otiose. They argue that empirical, particularist
analyses of individual works have more explanatory power to illuminate
the positions that gender manifests in art (Freeland 1998a, 1998b;
Carroll 1995). Thus differences over interpretive theory represent
divisions both within philosophy itself and in transdisciplinary
scholarship. Debates over appropriate tools to understand the meaning
of art and the power of culture should lay to rest once and for all
any idea that "feminist aesthetics" describes a unitary
set of ideas.
## 6. Aesthetics and Everyday Life
As is evident from the foregoing discussion, one can find in feminist
philosophy avenues of thought that direct inquiry away from the worlds
of art and to the presence of aesthetic features in lived experience.
Art and aesthetic qualities are obviously not merely theoretical
objects; they are cultural products with considerable authority to
frame and to perpetuate social relations and values. Therefore
feminist aesthetics contains a component where theories of
interpretation are directed to particular works of culture. Such
perspectives are poised to illuminate the changes in social
institutions that are depicted in popular art forms such as literature
and film, revealing the large-scale influence that aspects of the
political feminist movement have had over marriage and family
relations (S.T. Ross 2016). Aesthetic norms are not limited to art but
extend into virtually all aspects of life, including dress, personal
adornment, and comportment. With dress, for example, perceived
aesthetic incongruity has political resonance, as with Muslim women
who choose to wear the hijab in countries where such garb has not been
a historical norm (Sheth 2009, 2019). Feminist perspectives extend to
the aesthetic frames of lived experience and the subtle forces they
exert (Archer and Ware 2018).
The turn of attention to the body and its appearance, as well as to
domestic environments, has contributed to an area of interest loosely
labeled "everyday aesthetics." Scholarship on everyday
aesthetics includes examination of craft practices, which are often
pursued in the home where many women continue to work, and to artistic
traditions that do not feature a distinction between "fine
art" and "craft," such as the cultural traditions of
Asia (Saito 2007, 2017; Mandoki 2007; Leddy 2012; Light and Smith
2004). Cooking, eating, arranging furniture and shelves,
gardening--all these quotidian activities have aesthetic features (for
gardening see S. Ross 1998; Miller 1993). Such activities are not
always uplifting or even pleasant, but attention to their sensuous
character, the rhythm they impose on the day, week, or year, and their
place in the patterns of life, disperses aesthetic attention to
regions that are relatively new to theory, if widely familiar in
experience.
Feminist analyses both contribute to the development of this field of
interest and occupy a place within it. For example, there is a growing
body of philosophy that explores issues about food and eating, which
are topics that hitherto had little to no position in the field at all
(Korsmeyer 1999). This new subject has several sources of development,
including feminism, for it can be considered an area of scholarship
that has been nurtured by the overall critical questioning of dominant
conceptual frameworks in philosophy, including those that overlooked
matters relevant to the practical and physical realities of
living.
Of special pertinence for topics concerning women and gender in
everyday aesthetics is the rise of attention to a subject absent in
previous philosophies: pregnancy and motherhood--topics also explored
in contemporary feminist and postfeminist art, as noted above (Lintott
and Sander-Staudt 2011). The aesthetics of the body here explores the
maternal body, its changes during pregnancy, birth, and nursing, and
the everyday demands of parenthood, within and among which feminists
have explored the beautiful, the sublime, the novel and unsettling,
the comforting and tranquil--as manifest in the events and activities
one encounters every day. The area of inquiry here is not the
depiction of these subjects in art or literature, or their
dramatization in theater or film, but the aesthetics of the lived
experience itself. Raising children has an inevitable sensuousness
that provides its own aesthetic dimensions, and sometimes what is
off-putting or disgusting to others becomes part of the relationship
of mother to child (Irvin 2011). Attending to the intimacy of
sensation and to the presentation of one's own body serves to
detach theorizing in aesthetics away from art worlds and to everyday
practice, and theory has expanded accordingly. In such ways are
traditional philosophical categories modified and adapted as feminist
perspectives continue to probe the dimensions of the aesthetic.
## 7. Conclusion
The topics included under the designation "feminist
aesthetics" extend through philosophy, history, critical
disciplines, and art practices. Theories of perception, appreciation,
and interpretation have been developed in all of these areas. While
much of this thinking began with examination of philosophical
tradition and the conceptual frameworks it affords, feminist
perspectives have also opened the field in many directions, such that
theorizing in the twenty-first century has taken different directions
from the critical perspectives that began to probe gender analysis in
the 1970s. Of special note is the diffusion of interests from overtly
political and strategic analyses of women in society and culture, to
exploration of the variant forms that gender can assume, a shift that
also distinguishes aspects of the transition from feminism to
postfeminism. A wider attention to issues of diverse identity,
particularly attentive to racially inflected differences,
characterizes both feminist theory in general and aesthetics today.
Thus feminist work is more and more likely not to focus on women as an
exclusive topic but to consider other modes of identity as well. And
feminists have employed philosophies of divergent stripes in their own
quests, elaborating and refining them, and--most
importantly--formulating ideas that are independent of any particular
theoretical allegiances. The changing emphases of feminist
perspectives in aesthetics and philosophy of art over the last five
decades are evident in philosophy, art theory, criticism and
commentary on the arts, and in the practice of artists themselves,
testimony to the degree to which philosophy and cultural production
travel hand in hand, which is an abiding characteristic of the field
of aesthetics itself. |
aesthetics-18th-french | ## 1. The Classical Legacy
French thinkers considered their country as the heir to the Greek and
Roman empires. Whether they strictly followed ancient models or not,
they saw their work as a continuation of the classical tradition.
Aristotle, Horace, and Plutarch, to name just a few writers, were
major influences on the literature of seventeenth and eighteenth
century France. This self-image of the French explains not only their
discomfort with artistic innovation, but also their disparagement of
other European countries, their anxieties about what to include in
their national literary canon, and their efforts to impose a
masculine, patriotic aesthetic on the painting of the era.
This loyalty to the Greco-Roman tradition came into conflict with some
new ideas in the mid-seventeenth century during the Quarrel of the
Ancients and the Moderns. The quarrel had several phases that focused
on different problems and it spanned approximately seven decades. The
earliest phase began in the 1650s when a handful of authors attempted
to renew the genre of epic poetry, since everyone acknowledged that
the French had never created their own equivalent to the
*Aeneid*, as the Italians had done (Tasso's *Jerusalem
Delivered*, 1581) and as the English would soon do (Milton's
*Paradise Lost*, 1667). To name just two examples, Desmarets de
Saint-Sorlin and Jean Chapelain wrote poems following epic conventions
but with Christian subjects: the conversion of the first French king
Clovis and the story of Joan of Arc, respectively. These poems were
publicly mocked by partisans of the Ancient camp, most notably by
Nicolas Boileau, a poet with powerful support at court. Whether these
Christian epics failed because of their literary qualities or because
Boileau's satires were so successful in swaying public opinion,
they have now been largely forgotten.
After these attempts at modernizing the epic, the next phase of the
Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns focused on other aspects of
modern life. This time, Boileau faced a new opponent, Charles
Perrault, now best known as a compiler of fairy tales. In fact, fairy
tales were significant because they celebrated the European oral
tradition that did not have Greco-Roman roots, in contrast to the
fables of La Fontaine, who was a partisan of the Ancients. Perrault
took a stand for the Modern side by writing *Parallel of the
Ancients and the Moderns* (1688-97), a series of dialogues
between three interlocutors: an abbot who represents the Modern camp,
a *president* or high-level administrator who represents
the Ancient camp, and a cavalier who tries to reconcile the two points
of view. At stake was the view of human history as one of degeneration
or of progress: the Ancients beheld Antiquity as the Golden Age, so
subsequent history could only represent a deterioration--in the
arts, in morals, and in other aspects of life. The Moderns saw new
inventions and scientific discoveries as signs of an upward trend.
Even in terms of manners, the Moderns claimed that the newly developed
French courtly politeness was an improvement on the rough, though
heroic, behavior of the Ancient Romans and Greeks. For example, in
Perrault's dialogue, the Modern partisan objects to the mention
in the *Iliad* that Zeus could beat his wife Hera, whereas that
behavior was considered taboo among the upper classes of Ancien
Regime France. The abbot even compares Zeus' behavior to
that of a French peasant. This contrast between ancient Greek and
Early Modern French codes of conduct would reappear in the next phase
of the Quarrel.
The final phase of the Quarrel, in the 1710s, mainly centered on how
Homer's *Iliad* should be translated. The two most
prominent players were Anne Dacier and the abbe Houdar de la
Motte. Dacier, a distinguished Hellenic scholar, produced her prose
translation of the *Iliad* in 1711; based on this work, Houdar,
who knew little Greek, published a radically shortened poetic version
in 1714. In his preface, Houdar represented the Modern camp by daring
to criticize Homer, and in the main text, he not only cut out parts of
the *Iliad* that he considered too repetitive or long-winded,
such as the description of Achilles's shield, but he also
removed the sections in which the manners of the Ancients appeared too
uncouth for his taste. In contrast, Anne Dacier advocated for a more
faithful translation and showed less regard for the French sense of
politeness. She struck against the Moderns in her polemic *On the
Corruption of Taste* (1714), deploring the effeminate morals and
literature of her contemporaries, in contrast to the heroic ones of
Antiquity.
In all phases of the quarrel, all parties agreed that Antiquity should
be admired and at no time was the Greco-Roman canon put into question.
Ancient literature was the core of boys' education in Ancien
Regime France and it remained the standard for French
intellectuals until the end of the eighteenth century, in spite of
popular new developments in the novel and theater. After the Quarrel
of the Ancients and the Moderns, Enlightenment writers reconciled both
sides by recognizing scientific innovations and improvements in
lifestyle without losing their desire to imitate ancient literary
forms or admire the grandeur of ancient heroes.
This long quarrel had largely concerned whether writers had properly
applied literary rules. This ancient method for evaluating literature,
which we can observe as early as in Aristotle's
*Poetics*, aimed to determine whether literary works correctly
followed the conventions of, say, genre, diction, or the decorum that
was based on characters' social category. While some French
thinkers were still approaching literature this way, others were
developing new ways of judging beauty--artistic and
otherwise--at the cognitive level. The sides they took in debates
not only reflected the way they reasoned, but their social milieu and
their institutional status.
## 2. Salon Culture and Sensibility
Early in the Ancien Regime, in 1635, the government of Louis
XIII, controlled by Cardinal de Richelieu, established the
Academie Francaise, with the mission of standardizing
the French language. Before this institution came into being, there
had been literary circles, which later scholars called
*salons*, run by upper-class women and men for their select
guests, that had fostered the production of new writings and held
debates about how to refine the French language. The Academie
Francaise brought some of this activity under national
authority, granted it royal patronage, and controlled the membership,
limiting it to exactly 40 men. Nevertheless, salons continued their
work for the next centuries; they continued to patronize emerging
talents and exerted a great influence on public reception of the
arts.
Seventeenth-century salon culture developed concepts of taste that
were closely aligned with an aristocratic view of politeness and
sensibility. Cassirer calls this approach "empiricist"
and, indeed, these ideas were dependent on the senses and the stimuli
they received, more than on reason or on conventions of genre.
An early influential thinker was Dominique Bouhours, a Jesuit and
frequent guest at salons who wrote *Entretiens d'Ariste et
d'Eugene*, a series of dialogues about good taste. In
this work, he deals with the arts, particularly eloquence, but also
manners. Bouhours is best known for coining the term *je ne sais
quoi* or "I don't know what"--a special,
undefinable quality that transcends any rules. His interlocutors evoke
the possibility that a work of art could follow all the rules yet fail
to please, if it lacks that special something. They compare the *je
ne sais quoi* in the arts to the ineffable in the contemplation of
nature or in Catholic theology. In another part of his
*Entretiens*, Bouhours denounces exaggeration or excessive
ornamentation in language: a common trope in works about rhetoric
since Antiquity. His interlocutors apply this idea to
seventeenth-century Europe when they agree that, with its simplicity
and modesty, the French language is superior to bombastic Spanish and
effeminate Italian. These linguistic prejudices indicate to us that
Bouhours was trying to establish the status of France as the cultural
heir to the Roman empire, in opposition to the two most dominant
cultures in Europe in his era.
In Bouhours' text, politeness and artistic taste are closely
tied, since it takes a special sense of discernment to perceive
literary beauty as well as the right thing to say in a social setting.
Both supposedly emanate from the acute sensibility of a refined person
who is accustomed to being surrounded by beauty and good manners. The
class implications of his ideas about taste are clear to see: only
those members of an elite had the instinct for both exquisite
politeness and exquisite artistic taste. It denies the possibility
that just anyone could receive enough training to reach this level of
refinement, an idea that would be shared by later theorists that
emerged from this salon culture.
The abbe Dubos, the marquise de Lambert, and Montesquieu, among
others, continued this line of thought in the early eighteenth
century. They belonged to a group of acquaintances that frequented the
same social circles, including Lambert's own salon. Because
their reflections on taste were closely tied to their sense of worldly
politeness, they shared a disdain for professional critics and any
semblance of pedantry. They were less concerned with defining beauty
and more intent on examining what happens in the mind and body of the
viewer when she contemplates a pleasing object. Their emphasis on
pleasure and sentiment was sensualist, based on input from the senses;
in Montesquieu's case, sensualism becomes frankly
hedonistic.
Jean-Baptiste Dubos, in his *Critical Reflections on Poetry,
Painting, and Music* (1719), presents the faculty of taste as a
sentiment that he calls a sixth sense, disregarding the role of reason
or of morality, which his contemporary Jean-Pierre Crousaz had
considered important aspects of taste. His work precedes Scottish
philosopher Francis Hutcheson's aesthetic treatise of 1725, in
which he also discusses a sixth sense that perceives beauty. According
to Dubos, the reception of artistic works happens in the body: we
tremble, cry, or feel a jolt of surprise when we see a play, for
example. He describes how the arts affect our emotions positively,
while admitting that the effect of seeing death depicted in painting
or theater, for example, is different than if we were to witness a
death in real life. He also goes into great detail to describe how
climate affects nations and consequently how it fosters or impedes the
proliferation of good artists in certain parts of the world. This type
of thinking began as far back as Hippocrates's reflections on
the effects of climate on national character and extends to Juan
Huarte's thoughts on the influence of body temperature on
eloquence and later to Montesquieu's claims about the way
climate determines human behavior and consequently each nation's
political system. This climate theory is part of Dubos's idea
that artistic perception happens in the body, both for the viewer and
for the creator. For him, art is ultimately a means of communication
from body to body.
One misunderstanding that has arisen about Dubos is the assumption
that he democratizes taste, because in some passages of the
*Reflections*, he states that the "public" and
"*tout le monde*" can be susceptible to the proper
reception of artworks. However, in other passages he explains what he
means by these terms: "*tout le monde*" does not
mean "everyone", as it is usually translated: he in fact
uses "*le monde*" to mean high society, also called
"*le beau monde*" in the eighteenth century. As for
the general public, he explicitly excludes "the lower class of
people" from "the public capable of passing judgment on
poems or pictures" (Dubos, *Critical Reflections*,
II:245).
Like Dubos, the marquise de Lambert writes about good taste as a
sentiment of pleasure, or *agrement*, in her
*Reflections on Taste*. A person's correct judgment
depends on her degree of sensibility, and Lambert claims it cannot be
learned; instead,
>
>
> Nature gives us what we have of it, we never can acquire it, and the
> more refined Part of the World alone are acquainted with it in any
> Degree of Perfection. (Lambert 1748: 217 [1790: 183])
>
>
>
She disregards definitions of beauty that are based on rules, perhaps
because these can be learned. In fact, she dismisses the concept of
beauty from her thoughts on taste and privileges the
"*agreable*", which can be translated as
"agreeable" or "pleasant":
>
>
> though Beauty has Rules, Agreeableness has none. The [beautiful]
> without the Agreeable can never give us a delicate Pleasure; the
> Agreeable is the native Subject of Taste, and 'tis thence that
> it pleases us infinitely beyond the [beautiful]; and it is as
> arbitrary and variable, even as the Taste itself. (Lambert 1748: 217
> [1790: 184])
>
>
>
The impossibility of establishing definitive parameters for taste is a
continuation of Bouhours' "je ne sais quoi", which
relies on a sensitive person's instinctive ability to recognize
an appropriately pleasing object.
The marquise de Lambert's views were echoed in the works of
other writers of her circle, such as the abbe Trublet and
Cartaud de la Vilate (she also hosted both Anne Dacier and Houdar de
la Motte). Cartaud de la Vilate places particular emphasis on
delicacy, which is
>
>
> an exquisite discernment that nature has placed in certain organs for
> sorting out the different virtues of the objects that pertain to
> sentiment. (Cartaud de la Vilate 1726: 235 [translation by J.
> Tsien])
>
>
>
These ideas of inborn sensibility to pleasing artistic objects refute
the possibility that taste can be learned.
Montesquieu also examines taste as a function of the viewer's
mind, through the filter of the same milieu of worldly refinement. The
examples to which he applies his aesthetic ideas are not exclusively
artistic: he includes activities like flirting, gambling, and social
dancing, alongside more conventional topics such as architecture, to
describe how the mind perceives pleasure. He explains these ideas in
his *Essay on Taste*, which appears in Diderot and
d'Alembert's *Encyclopedie* under the entry
"Gout" (1757), an entry which also includes
treatises on the same subject by Voltaire and d'Alembert. To
describe what objects please our minds, Montesquieu lists six
qualities: order, variety, symmetry, contrasts, the ability to provoke
curiosity, and the ability to provoke surprise. Each of these
qualities in excess has a bad effect, he claims, such as a Gothic
cathedral that offers too much variety and confuses us. On the other
hand, too much order and symmetry, for example in a long colonnade or
in a beautiful woman's face, can bore the onlooker. Like
Lambert, Montesquieu states that he is more interested in pleasure
than beauty; as an example, he claims to prefer a woman with irregular
features who can surprise him to a perfectly beautiful woman. To the
six qualities of pleasing objects above, he adds three ways in which
our minds experience these objects: sensibility, delicacy, and the
*je ne sais quoi*. These terms remind us of his allegiance to
the Bouhours-Dubos-salon line of thought about taste as a quality
inherent in certain refined, worldly people.
## 3. Cartesian Beauty
Although this turn towards subjectivism and sensualism represented a
major innovation in aesthetics, Descartes was still a dominant
influence on French thought of the eighteenth century, and his
philosophy was applied to theories of beauty, even though he wrote
little on the topic. Scholars such as Crousaz and Andre
proposed objective measures of beauty, as Descartes did with truth,
that could be applied to any object. This standard would ideally
transcend the vicissitudes of fashion, personal biases, or cultural
differences.
Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, a professor of logic and mathematics in
Lausanne, Switzerland, published his *Treatise on Beauty* in
1715. He does not offer original ideas on the nature of the beautiful;
he takes up the old dictum that it is a mix of unity and diversity, so
as to preserve order and proportion from both caprice and monotony.
But he approaches it with a new awareness of the constraints and
prejudices that obstruct the way:
>
>
> Everyone possesses [an idea of the beautiful], but since it hardly
> ever appears alone we do not reflect upon it and fail to distinguish
> it from the tangle of other ideas which appear alongside it. (1715
> [AT: 390])
>
>
>
The root of this difficulty lies in the duality of human
faculties:
>
>
> Sometimes ideas and feelings are in agreement with each other and an
> object merits the qualification "beautiful" on both
> counts. Sometimes, however, reason and feelings are at war with each
> other and then an object pleases and at the same time does not: from
> one perspective it is beautiful, while from another it lacks beauty.
> (1715 [AT: 392])
>
>
>
Crousaz is not satisfied with this duality; on the contrary, he
believes we have a responsibility to discover
>
>
> which principles regulate our approbation when we judge something from
> ideas only [or, as he likes to say, "coolly"] and find it
> beautiful independently of feeling. (1715 [AT: 393])
>
>
>
Taste is a forerunner of what reason would have approved, had it time
enough to weigh everything relevant to a judgment. Crousaz finally
reconciles knowledge with sensations, a fact that appears to testify
in favor of God's wisdom. Similar ideas are also to be found in
minor authors such as Frain du Tremblay, Brumoy, or Trublet.
Yves-Marie Andre's *Essay on Beauty* (1741) covers
the same territory, but with a strong influence from Malebranche. In
accordance with the Cartesian distinction between ideas (innate,
adventitious, and fictitious), Andre suggests several notions
of beauty. *Essential* beauty is "independent of any
institution, even divine" and so is identified with what is
universal, immutable, and recognizable by divine Reason.
*Natural* beauty concerns the whole range of created things; it
is "independent of any human opinion" but follows from
God's will; it is present in the harmony and finality of nature.
The lowest degree of beauty is the product of human activity and is
partly arbitrary, because it combines intellectual as well as sensual
ingredients. This *arbitrary* beauty that speaks to the eye and
ear is itself organized into three levels: genius, taste, and caprice
(in descending order). Only genius is recognizable by our reason, when
the latter is adequately supported by other faculties. Andre
summarizes:
>
>
> I call beautiful not what pleases to imagination's first
> sight--but what has a right to please reason and reflection by
> its own excellence. (*Essay on Beauty* quoted in Becq 1994: 419
> [translation by J. Morizot])
>
>
>
For him, there is no distinction between *beauty* and
*truth*, and this is the very definition of the aesthetics of
perfection. But aesthetic feeling is a normal affective accompaniment
of any act of creation or reception, and the distinguishing feature of
humankind as a species.
Charles Batteux had somewhat different goals. When he published
*The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle* in 1746, he took
up a challenge: to establish Aristotelian ideas firmly as the general
basis for a unified system of the arts. The main concept on which he
focuses is *mimesis*, but generalized to any kind of art (thus
going beyond Aristotle or Horace). To achieve this generalization, he
distinguishes the liberal arts, of which the object is pleasure (i.e.,
music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and dance), from the mechanical
ones, and he proposes an interpretation of what amounts to the
"imitation of the beautiful nature" (Batteux 1746). He
insists that imitation is not a matter of slavishly copying the given,
but a sensible and enlightened process that struggles its way forward
to the best result. Recalling the famous anecdote of Zeuxis who
composed his *Helen* out of parts taken from Crotone's
most perfect women, he concludes that the artist has the
responsibility to imitate what reason decides is nature's
essence. That is why Batteux praises artifice so much: "art is
made for fooling" (Batteux 1746), not because it is inherently
duplicitous but because truth is a complex construction that hides its
structure and development. Of course, the problem of taste remains
unresolved when we ask how the artist selects the parts that he will
assemble in his imitation of "beautiful nature": by what
standard does he determine that a certain part of nature is
beautiful?
It is also important to mention composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, who
passionately adhered to Cartesian thought. In his *Treatise on
Harmony* (1722), he attempted to lay the scientific foundations of
music, and codifies many of the ideas that are the basis of our
analysis of music to this day (e.g., tonality, major vs. minor keys,
principles of composition and accompaniment). For Rameau, harmony is
more fundamental to music than melody. Nonetheless, from the
*Demonstration of the principle of harmony* (1750) on, and
after the so-called *Querelle des bouffons* or "Quarrel
of Buffoons", where Rousseau took him to task (in his *Letter
about French Music* 1753, a libel in favor of the Italian opera),
Rameau retreated to the certainty that music is the universal
"key" to any subject whatsoever, including geometry.
## 4. The Enlightenment *Philosophes*
After Montesquieu, the other philosophers of the Enlightenment
borrowed from the theories mentioned above to come up with their
descriptions of taste as a combination of three elements: sentiment,
reason, and a knowledge of rules. Simultaneously, they distanced
themselves from both the refined world of salons that had promoted
their careers and the academics who had developed theories of beauty.
Even Montesquieu criticized salons as having a feminizing influence
that discouraged serious scholarship. Meanwhile, Voltaire describes
scholars as myopic and dust-covered in his poem *The Temple of
Taste* (1733). The majority of Enlightenment philosophers saw
themselves as erudite, serious thinkers who also lived in society. In
terms of taste, they set themselves off as a caste of professional
critics who claimed the right to make artistic judgments that were
more authoritative than the potentially wayward preferences of the
general public.
Voltaire describes good taste as a combination of sentiment and
erudition. In his article "Taste" in the
*Encyclopedie*, he gives the example of a young man who
cries at a theatrical performance. Voltaire demands that this
spontaneous reaction eventually be backed up by an understanding of
the reasons why the play had this effect on him--namely, rules
such as the Aristotelean unities. The experience is similar to that
described by Crousaz, except that the latter describes the ideal
artistic reception as an immediate sentiment that is later confirmed
by reason rather than rules. As for more extensive thoughts on beauty,
however, Voltaire scholars affirm in their works devoted to his role
as critic that he did not have an all-encompassing aesthetic theory.
Instead, he made pronouncements on taste in the arts on a case-by-case
basis, with a clear preference for Greco-Roman conventions, but still
willing to make exceptions for certain passages by great writers who
broke these rules, such as Shakespeare.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote little about taste and beauty, only
diatribes about the corrupting influence of the arts in general and a
few pieces about musical composition. It was Marmontel, his fellow
*philosophe*, who attempted to create a theory of taste
extrapolated from Rousseau's philosophy. In his *Essai sur le
gout*, which prefaces his *Elements de
litterature* (1787), Marmontel determines, like Batteux and
many others, that good taste is based on nature. He then recounts a
series of stages in which man passes from good taste to bad taste and
then back to good. First there are the "savage men" who
express themselves with eloquence but no "excessive
hyperbole" or "superfluous epithet". In
Marmontel's system, the second stage is that of the
"uncultured" or "barbaric" man, who prefers
artificial and convoluted language. Alienated from nature, he has been
corrupted by luxury, vanity, and the whims of fashion. This bad taste
can be compared to Andre's lowest type of taste, which he
calls arbitrary, because it is capricious and constantly changing.
Finally, in Marmontel's model, the "civilized man"
emerges in the third stage, when he returns to a modified nature. This
trajectory is clearly based on Rousseau's schema, as he recounts
it in his political works, of the noble savage who becomes corrupted
by society, and who finally, in some unspecified future, will see
society self-destruct and, in a way, come full circle to the beginning
again. Aside from these ideas, Marmontel's poetics were a return
to a conventional system of classification of figures of style,
compatible with his contemporary Dumarsais' listing of
tropes.
Diderot's monumental article "Beau" of the
*Encyclopedie* contains one of the best summaries of
French aesthetic thought in the eighteenth century, as well as some
new ideas for artistic judgment. Early in the article, he exposes the
circular reasoning inherent to theories of beauty: according to Saint
Augustine, unity is the defining characteristic of beauty--a
symmetrical building would be an example. "But why is symmetry
necessary?" asks Diderot, who answers himself, "Because it
pleases". "Why does it please?" he continues,
"Because it is beautiful". "Why is it beautiful?
Because it is unified". Unable to resolve this problem, he then
goes on to summarize the theories of beauty by Andre and
Crousaz, as well as by Hutcheson and German philosopher Christian
Wolff. While Diderot claims to consider Andre's treatise
the most profound and coherent, he still objects to the necessity of
innate ideas about what is beautiful. Instead, Diderot argues that all
conceptions of symmetry, proportion, and beauty come from our
observations.
His own definition of taste depends on what he calls
"rapports", or connections between various aspects of a
work. An artist creates these rapports and the most refined, the most
erudite, and the most sensitive viewer is the one who can discern the
largest number of them. His prime example is a line from
*Horace*, a 1640 tragedy by Corneille: "*qu'il
mourut*" or "that he had died". Diderot
explains that these words in isolation are neither beautiful nor ugly.
But if one knows the context within the plot of the play, that this is
the answer that a father gives when asked what he would have his son
do in battle, the listener finds more interest in the line. Diderot
adds several other circumstances from the play, for instance, that
this is the only surviving son, that he is alone against three
enemies, and that he is fighting for the honor of his country, that
create more rapports in the mind of the listener, until this
ultra-concise line becomes an object of great beauty. The rapports
described here involve understanding more and more of the plot and of
the human relationships depicted, which add layers of meaning to
certain lines. In his *Lettre sur les sourds et muets*,
translated as *Letter on the Deaf and Dumb* (1751b), Diderot
explains something similar, using the term "hieroglyphics"
rather than "rapports". He gives the example of a poem in
which men of taste can see a much larger number of
"hieroglyphs" or elements of prosody, than ordinary
people; in other words, they can do what literary scholars call a
close reading. What is not clear, however, is how people can reach the
stage of refinement where they are able to discern more rapports or
"hieroglyphs".
## 5. Painting: of Amateurs and Professionals
As debates about taste in literature and music were taking place,
other debates arose in the world of visual arts. Artists felt a new
authority to theorize publicly about their work, even though in 1719
Dubos still referred to them as "artisans", harking back
to an era in which artists had no more prestige than other skilled
manual laborers. However, Louis XIV had established the Royal Academy
of Painting and Sculpture in 1648 and thus gave these former artisans
a special status. He named Charles Le Brun, who occupied the role of
First Painter to the King, as the founding director of this Academy.
Its leaders created a set of apprenticeships and tests that the
aspirants had to pass in order to be formally accepted. Painters,
depending on how they wished to be received, could present a master
work in the "grand genre": that is, a historic,
mythological, or religious scene. Otherwise, they could undertake some
of the minor genres, which were, in descending hierarchical order,
portraits, landscapes, "genre" scenes that represented
daily life, and lastly, still lifes.
One major *querelle* occurred in the seventeenth century
between proponents of line and those of color, or between the
Poussinists and Rubenists. For a long time, color had been
disregarded, for at least three reasons: it is, in Charles Le
Brun's words, "but an accident produced by the reflection
of light and that varies according to circumstances" (1672 [AT:
183]); it appeals to sensuality whereas "we must not judge by
our senses alone but by reason" as Poussin puts it in a letter
to Chantelou dated 24 November 1647 (AT: 69); and it proves unable to
serve as a foundation for painting, unlike drawing, which is related
to the mind (the original sense of *disegno* = drawing or
design).
The painter Gabriel Blanchard cautiously started to endorse the use of
color in the Academy in 1671. He did not want to "diminish the
importance of design" but to
>
>
> establish three things in defense of color: first, that color is just
> as necessary to the art of painting as design; secondly, that if we
> diminish the worth of color, we thereby also diminish the worth of
> painters; and thirdly, that color merited the praise of the Ancients,
> and that it merits it again in our own age. (1671 [AT:
> 178-179])
>
>
>
Design is a necessary foundation, certainly, but if the aim of the
painter is "both to deceive the eyes and to imitate
nature", it is reasonable to conclude that color serves that
goal best, because "herein lies the difference that
distinguishes painting from all the other arts and which gives
painting its own specific end" (AT: 180). This was clearly an
attempt to turn to his advantage Poussin's phrase that the aim
of painting is delectation--but insufficient indeed to convince
Le Brun.
Two men were going to play a special role in the color crusade. It may
seem odd to mention royal historiographer Andre Felibien
first because he is generally and rightly considered as a supporter of
Poussin. But he was also liberal-minded, respectful of differing
opinions (it was to cost him his position!) and anxious to find a fair
balance between the gifts of the mind and the talents of the hand. For
him, "beauty is a result of the proportion and symmetry between
corporeal and material parts" (1725 [AT: 220]), so that color
cannot be discarded since
>
>
> everything should appear so artfully connected that the whole painting
> seems to have been painted at one and the same time, and, as it were,
> from the same palette. (1725 [AT: 568], quoted by Louis-Guillaume
> Baillet de Saint-Julien, 1748, *Lettre sur la peinture, sculpture
> et architecture, Avec un examen des principaux Ouvrages exposes
> au Louvre au mois d'Aout*, Paris: [n.p.])
>
>
>
When he translates Du Fresnoy's *De Arte Graphica* (1668)
and publishes his *Dialogue upon Coloring* (1673), art critic
Roger de Piles may appear to hold stronger views; however, by
transferring emphasis from color to coloring, he too stresses the
importance of harmony and the way it presupposes mastery of local
color and *chiaroscuro*. When de Piles entered the Academy
three decades later, he would produce a synthesis under the title
*Principles of Painting* (1708), in which he insists that
>
>
> true painting is such as not only surprises, but as it were, calls to
> us; and has so powerful an effect, that we cannot help coming near it,
> as if it had something to tell us. (1708 [AT: 309])
>
>
>
In a word,
>
>
> the spectator is not obliged to seek for *truth* in a painting;
> but *truth*, by its effect, must *call to the
> spectator*, and force his attention. (1708 [AT: 310])
>
>
>
That points to what he called "the whole together", that
is "a general subordination of objects one to another, as makes
them all concur to constitute but one", for the utmost
satisfaction of the eye (1708 [AT: 312]). The same lesson can be drawn
from Antoine Coypel's writings, where "the excellence of
painting" is no longer separate from "the aesthetic of the
painter". His nomination as Academy's Director in 1714 was
the sign that a page had been turned.
After Louis XIV, patronage of the arts was heavily influenced by the
stylistic preferences of Louis XV's official mistress the
Marquise de Pompadour, who selected the artists and architects who
would receive royal pensions, commissioned works that defined the
legacy of this era, and sponsored the porcelain works of
Sevres. She also introduced her brother, later ennobled as the
Marquis de Marigny, to the court; she arranged for the painter Antoine
Coypel and the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot (later responsible
for the Pantheon in Paris) to undertake his education. Wielding her
political influence, she then had Marigny named Director General of
the King's Buildings, which made him an important decision-maker
in giving royal commissions to artists.
Aside from royal patronage, there were also roles for the
"amateurs" or "connoisseurs", individuals who
played an increasingly important role in shaping the arts during the
Ancien Regime. In the words of art historian Charlotte
Guichard,
>
>
> The *amateur* constituted an intermediate figure between the
> patron, characteristic of court society in early modern times, and the
> collector, who emerged as the art market developed. (Guichard 2012:
> 521)
>
>
>
Among the most famous of these connoisseurs were the financier Pierre
Crozat and the Comte de Caylus. It was not enough for them to collect
thousands of works; they were also involved with indexing and
reproducing them through printmaking. The *Recueil Crozat*
(1729 and 1742) is the true ancestor of art books and dictionaries
devoted to fine arts, which began to multiply (see, e.g.,
Pernety's *Dictionnaire portatif* [1757], Watelet
and Levesque's *Dictionnaire des arts* [1792], and
especially Mariette's *Abecedario*, posthumously
published from 1851-1860). Catalogs began to proliferate and the
first monographs appeared, among the most important being *Recueil
Julienne*, Jean de Julienne's collection of 271 engravings
after Watteau's paintings. Caylus and Dezallier
d'Argenville also wrote about artists, sketched biographies and
established rules for discerning the delicacy of style or the
lightness of execution. All this took place in the larger context in
which the cosmopolitan amateurs of different countries were able to
easily travel abroad. (Such travels evolved into the ritual of the
Grand Tour.)
In an era before formal museums existed, the public had little access
to art, until the Royal Academy began displaying paintings in what is
known as the Salon in 1737. The Salon began as a political and social
event that was inaugurated in the Louvre's Salon Carre on
25 August--St. Louis' day--to pay homage to the king
and it was to last one month. Over the years, it became a valuable
guide for tracing the major trends in style and aesthetic ideas, for
lists of works as well as evolutionary trends in pictorial genres were
taken into account. But the most significant consequence of the rise
of the Salon was the birth of a new literary genre, namely, the salon
review, which flourished until the twentieth century and has been an
incomparable mirror of aesthetic thought. Originally, such reviews
were just a blend of descriptive reports and theoretical asides, often
controversial. The "salon" is for the benefit of a larger
public--that is, those not necessarily affiliated with some
artistic institution. As La Font de Saint-Yenne wrote in 1747:
>
>
> an exhibited picture is the same as a book on the day of publication,
> and as a play performed in the theater: everyone has the right to make
> his own judgment. We have gathered together the judgments of the
> public which showed the greatest amount of agreement and fairness, and
> we now present *them*, and not at all our own judgment, to the
> artists, in the belief that this same public [whose] judgments are so
> often bizarre and unjustly damning or hasty rarely errs when all its
> voices unite on the merit or weakness of any particular work. (1747
> [AT: 555])
>
>
>
With Caylus, Baillet de Saint-Julien, and then above all Diderot, the
aesthetic importance of painting is increasingly emphasized, opening
the way to a long tradition of writers keen on painting.
Diderot's efforts as an art writer were based on two
complementary beliefs, namely, that the techniques used by a painter
to produce various effects are difficult for the ordinary viewer to
understand and articulate, and that it is a difficult but vital
challenge to capture, through literary language, the significant
aspects of a painting. That the painter's alchemy eludes the
viewer's understanding is something often repeated by Diderot,
notably with respect to Jean-Baptiste Chardin:
>
>
> It's magic, one can't understand how it's done:
> thick layers of colour, applied one on top of the other, each one
> filtering through from underneath to create the effect. At times, it
> looks as though the canvas has misted over from someone breathing on
> it; at others, as though a thin film of water has landed on
> it.... Close up, everything blurs, goes flat and disappears. From
> a distance, everything comes back to life and reappears. (1763 [AT:
> 604])
>
>
>
At the same time, Diderot is aware that the painter's power
makes it extremely hard for the writer to give his reader a deep grasp
of a painting. Despite the difficulty, the writer must somehow express
the essence of a masterpiece, thereby achieving a kind of
*ekphrasis*, in which the art of writing attempts to capture in
words the essence and form of the visual art of painting. The critic
must not only provide the reader with a short description of the work
in question, but must attempt to make his words somehow equivalent to
the sentiment expressed by the painting in question.
Aside from the exceptional painters that Diderot admired, such as
Greuze and Chardin, the eighteenth century saw a rivalry between two
predominant styles, rococo and neoclassicism. Rococo artists such as
Francois Boucher tended to depict scenes of flirtation in rich
interiors or pastoral settings, which detractors scorned as
effeminate. Rococo artists sometimes chose mythological subjects and
neoclassical painters did as well, but the latter inserted overtly
didactic messages. Philosophers such as Diderot praised this latter
style because they claimed it would instill more of a virile sense of
patriotism among the populace. One could see the works of
Jacques-Louis David, during the Revolution, as the ultimate conflation
of classical subjects, images of traditionally manly virtue, and
messages of national pride. French interest in Antiquity had been
constant throughout the Ancien Regime, but it was further
enriched by the dissemination of printed images of archaeological
sites in Athens, Pompeii, and other cities in which new discoveries
had been made.
The end of the eighteenth century saw the birth of the museum.
Previously, people could see works of art only in private homes or in
religious institutions, even though during this period, certain
collectors began making their "cabinets of curiosities"
available to the public. The British Museum had opened in 1759 and the
Uffizi in 1765, but France was behind its neighbors, even if royal
collections were more accessible than before. The first suggestion for
creating a gallery in the unoccupied Louvre goes back to 1747 and was
reiterated in 1765 in the eponymous entry in the
*Encyclopedie* (Jaucourt 1765). The Louvre museum
finally opened in 1793.
The new accessibility of art to the masses, as well as the increasing
literacy and proliferation of printed works, transformed society in
the eighteenth century. The worldly judges of taste in the seventeenth
century gave way to the professional critics, i.e. the Enlightenment
*philosophes*. The new world created by the French Revolution
would soon expand--and further complicate--the connection
between the production of art and its reception by both critics and
the public. |
gadamer-aesthetics | ## 1. Art as Interlocutor
Gadamer's aesthetics fosters an attentiveness towards the
mystery of the given and its unexpected folds of meaningfulness.
Gadamer's arguments are varied, ushering the reader towards an
aesthetic attentiveness rather than making iconoclastic declarations
about what the aesthetic is. They embrace close readings of the poets
Rilke and Celan as well as broad strategic manoeuvres which defend the
cognitive status of aesthetic and hermeneutical judgements.
Hermeneutics (the art and discipline of interpretation), of which
Gadamer is one of the twentieth century's most formidable
exponents, is deeply involved in philosophical disputes over the
legitimacy of claims to understanding in the visual and literary arts.
It does not oppose "scientific" modes of knowledge but
resists their cultural privileging. For Gadamer aesthetics stands on
experientially accumulative modes of learning (*Bildung*) which
orientate and ground sound judgement in the arts. Conversation and its
unpredictable turns is, appropriately, a central thread within
hermeneutical aesthetics. A late exchange between Carsten Dutt and
Gadamer (Dutt 1993, 61-67) offers a gentle point of entry into
how philosophical hermeneutics approaches art and aesthetic
experience.
Gadamer insists that a picture or image that is worthy of being called
a work of art, has the power to affect us immediately. (GW 8, 374).
Art addresses us. The claim that a work of art "says something
to someone" (Palmer 2001, 70) alludes to the surprise, shock
and, sometimes, dismay at being directly affected by what is in a work
and of being forced to reflect on its claim so that it becomes more
understandable to both oneself and others. Gadamer argues that
"the experience of art is an experience of meaning, and as such
this experience is something that is brought about by
understanding" (Palmer 2001, 70). To this extent, then,
"aesthetics is absorbed into hermeneutics" (Palmer 2001,
76). This distances Gadamer from more conventional justifications of
the aesthetic as offering a special kind of pleasure. The essay
"The Play of Art" suggests that "the mere
onlooker who indulges in aesthetic or cultural enjoyment from a safe
distance, whether in the theatre, the concert hall, or the seclusion
of solitary reading, simply does not exist" (RB 129-130).
A person who takes himself to be such an onlooker, misunderstands
himself. "Aesthetic self-understanding is indulging in escapism
if it regards the encounter with the work of art as nothing but
enchantment in the sense of liberation from the pressures of reality
through the enjoyment of a spurious freedom" (RB 130). These
remarks divorce Gadamer's thinking from Dilthey's
*Erlebnis-Asthetik* in which artworks are proclaimed the
site of intense but momentary experience enjoyed for their own sake
independent of their cognitive content. The hedonistic personalisation
of aesthetic response has two alienating consequences. On the one
hand, the judgement that aesthetic experience is purely subjective
severs the individual from communal networks of meaning capable of
illuminating personal experience from the perspective of what is
socially shared. On the other, attempts to render subjective
experience academically legitimate by presenting it as a social
product further estrange the individual from his experience, by
translating it into third-person terms he or she may not endorse or
recognise: individual experiences of beauty can suddenly become
embodiments of class prejudice. In contrast to Dilthey
(1833-1911), Gadamer defends an
*Erfahrung-Asthetik,* which claims that like significant
life-experiences, our relationships with artworks are deep and
ongoing: we revisit them, and, in doing so, understanding is
continually renegotiated. Gadamer speaks of the
"interminability" of such experience (*die
Unabschliessbarkeit aller Erfahrung*, Palmer 2001, 66). It is
forever open because of its cognitive movement. The cumulative nature
of such experience is an instance of *Bildung* (formation and
learning through experience) and is, as such, a living process of
becoming (*Werden*).
Gadamer's aesthetics is, in many respects, strictly anti-Kantian
and yet is influenced by Kant's insights. Regarding its
anti-Kantian aspects, it abjures phenomenalist disinterestedness for
the sake of phenomenological involvement. It is also anti-idealist. It
refuses the idea that in aesthetic experience we perceive "a
pure integration of meaning." His aesthetics is consequently
anti-representationalist. There is in the artwork something which
Gadamer describes as its resistance to integration, to being reduced
to a concept (Palmer 2001, 25). He contends that Hegel's
definition of the beautiful as the "sensuous appearing of the
Idea" presumes that aesthetic experience is able to reach beyond
the specific type of appearance to its underlying idea. In this model,
aesthetic experience becomes the expectation of a semantic fulfilment.
Once the idea behind the appearance is grasped, "the whole of
its meaning would have been understood once and for all and thus
'brought in to our possession so to speak'" (Palmer
2001, 71). The work of art becomes a carrier of meaning to be
abandoned once the lead story has been grasped. But, Gadamer argues,
"our understanding of artworks is manifestly not of this type.
Everyone knows this from his or her own encounters with art, from
concerts, visits to museums, and from his or her reading"
(Palmer 2001, 71). This denial of idealist aesthetics is at the basis
of his claim that an artwork is essentially enigmatic.
Gadamer's opposition to aesthetic idealism is supported by the
claim that art "cannot be satisfactorily translated in terms of
conceptual knowledge" (RB 69). A work does not simply refer to a
meaning which is independent of itself. Its meaning is not to be
grasped in such a way that that it can be simply transferred to
another idiom. Indeed, because it invites many interpretations, an
artwork acquires an ideality of possible meanings which cannot be
obviated by any possible realisation (RB 146). The work has,
therefore, an autonomy which cannot be substituted by anything else
or, to put it another way, the work is always in excess of its
readings, its meanings are always more than its interpretations. This
is congruent with Gadamer's theses that Being exceeds knowing
and, similarly, that linguistic Being transcends linguistic
consciousness.
An important consequence arises from this, namely, Gadamer conceives
art as presentational (*darstellen*) rather than
representational (*vorstellen*). In the essay "Word and
Picture" (1992), he claims that he tries "to undermine the
idea that the picture is a mere copy" (GW 8, 374). As a work
does not represent anything other than itself, the meanings it carries
can only come to the fore in its self-presentation. Yet the emergent
meaning is never given in its entirety nor obviated by any
realization. This is consistent with the *eventual* nature of
art. "When a work of art truly takes hold of us, it is not an
object that stands opposite us which we look at in hope of seeing
through it to an intended conceptual meaning ... The work is an
*Ereigniss*--an event that 'appropriates us'
to itself. It jolts us, it knocks us over and sets up a world of its
own, into which we are drawn" (Palmer 2001, 71). What is
revealed, however, remains but an aspect of the work, which when it
appears, drives others into the background. Disclosure and hiddenness
are not contraries in Gadamer's aesthetics, but mutually
dependent: the disclosed reveals the presence of the undisclosed in
the disclosed. "It is in the sheer being there
(*Da-sein*) of the work of art that our understanding
experiences the depths and the unfathomability of its meaning"
(Palmer 2001, 72). The claim that a work's meaning can never be
completely fulfilled is supported by a linguistic analogy concerning
the speculative. Art has a language in that its signs and symbols
function like semantic units. Gadamer comments on the living
virtuality of meaning contained in each word, as an inner dimension of
multiplication. Accordingly, language is not the representation
(*mimesis*) of a set of pre-given meanings but a "coming
to language" of a constant reserve of meanings (Palmer 2001,
67). The finitude of linguistic expression is such that no utterance
can be complete. Nothing comes forth in one meaning that is simply
offered us (PH 103). "The only thing that constitutes language
... is that one word leads to another, each word is, so to speak,
summoned, and on its side holds open the further progress of
speaking" (Palmer 2001, 67). No meaning can be completely
revealed. Because we can re-visit artworks repeatedly, the meaning
disclosed initially can be expanded or changed. The partial nature of
any given meaning-disclosure *enhances* rather than diminishes
the possibility of meaning within a work. "The work of art
consists in its being open in a limitless way to ever new integrations
of meaning" (PH 98) and furthermore, "the inexhaustibility
that distinguishes the language of art from all translation into
concepts rests on an excess of meaning" (PH 102).
Gadamer's conversation on aesthetics paints its bolder themes:
art is interrogative by nature, artworks *work* through a
disclosure of meaning, disclosures of meaning establish art's
cognitive status, the cognitive content of art is partly intelligible
and partly enigmatic, and artworks are always open to
re-interpretation. These are, however, not free-standing arguments.
Gadamer's position is hermeneutical not because of an underlying
thesis which goes unremarked but because it is informed by a
constellation of various arguments which shape the central position.
To the broader arguments we now turn.
## 2. The "Substance" of Aesthetic Subjectivity
Gadamer's determination to reveal the cognitive content of
aesthetic experience requires him to expose the ontological grounding
of subjectivity. To approach artworks solely on the basis of
subjective responses to them or, to read them only in terms of an
artist's intentionality, is, for Gadamer, always to miss the
point. Hermeneutically speaking, the philosophical focus should be on
what shapes subjectivity and guides its expectations. This initiates a
speculative refiguring of aesthetic subjectivity. In *Truth and
Method* he writes,
>
> All self-knowledge arises from what is historically pre-given, what
> with Hegel we call "substance," because it underlies all
> subjective intentions and actions, and hence both prescribes and
> limits every possibility for understanding any tradition whatsoever in
> its historical alterity. This almost defines the aim of philosophical
> hermeneutics: its task is to retrace the path of Hegel's
> phenomenology of mind until we discover in all that is subjective the
> substantiality that determines it. (TM 302)
>
In his essay "Image and Gesture" Gadamer elucidates
substance as follows:
>
> "Substance" is understood as something that supports us,
> although it does not emerge into the light of reflective
> consciousness, it is something that can never be fully articulated,
> although it is absolutely necessary for the existence of all clarity,
> consciousness, expression and communication. (RB 78)
>
Uncovering the ontological foundations of aesthetic experience does
not undermine the primacy Gadamer gives to art's immediate
address. The aim is to demonstrate the cognitive legitimacy of
subjective experience by revealing how aesthetic experience is both
involved in something larger than itself and, indeed, reflects
(*speculum*) that larger actuality within itself. The ability
of aesthetic experience to express trans-individual phenomenological
structures explains what is meant by substance and his speculative
attitude towards it. Gadamer's aesthetics is properly concerned
with *experiencing* what underlies its more abstract concepts.
This is not a matter of naming or describing the reality which
manifests itself in aesthetic experience but of trying to say
something about the experience an individual has of it.
Gadamer's reflections commence with the immediacy of art's
claim, its contemporaneous nature, and then explore what influences
the experience of that claim. The aim is seemingly paradoxical: to
understand that which shapes, lies beyond, but only
"shows" itself in aesthetic experience.
## 3. The Contemporaneous and Art Experience
Of all things that speak to us, it is the artwork that does so most
directly (PH 95). The phenomenological immediacy of art which
initiates Gadamer's hermeneutic inquiry into aesthetic
experience may not seem a promising starting point from a hermeneutic
perspective. It declares an unconventional hermeneutical approach to
art: "if we define the task of hermeneutics as the bridging of
personal or historical distance between minds, then the experience of
art would seem to fall entirely outside its [hermeneutics']
provenance" (PH 95/97). However, Gadamer does not define
hermeneutics this way. It is not the reconstruction of artistic
intention which forms the object of his inquiry but the question of
what informs the immediacy of an artwork's claim. The artwork is
an object of hermeneutical investigation not because of any provenance
in psychological events but because of the fact that it *says*
something to us (PH 98). Hermeneutic involvement is required because
the meaning transmitted can never be fully complete and unambiguous.
It demands interpretive involvement. Hermeneutics is required wherever
there is a restricted transposition of thought. The historical
finitude of meaning and the fact that no meaning can be given
completely necessitates hermeneutical involvement in our experience of
an artwork. The task of interpretation is to probe the possible
meanings held within the experience of a work, and by drawing on them,
to bring that experience to greater completeness.
It should be noted that Gadamer's talk of integrating the alien
into what is understood as meaningful is not to be grasped as
subsumption within the same. Assimilation is not the equivalent of
translating the alien into a stable set of meanings which do not
change as a consequence of that subsumption. Integration implies a
*reciprocity*: the integrated changes its character as well as
the character of the whole within which integration occurs.
Furthermore, whatever is given in subjective consciousness as
contemporaneous has dimensions of meaning that transcend what that
consciousness initially grasps. Gadamer is concerned to probe the
ontic dimensions of aesthetic experience. The thesis that experience
of the contemporaneousness of art involves us in more than what we are
presently aware of (i.e., the "substance" of underlying
and on-going trans-individual linguistic and cultural practices) is
supported by the three arguments from analogy concerning the character
of play, the festival, and the symbol.
## 4. Play
Gadamer's discussion of the relation between art and play should
not be equated with any argument that art is a trivial game or
pastime. He follows the precedent of Schiller's *Letters on
Aesthetic Education*, which contend that artworks are dramatic in
that *they put something into play*. The underlying motif is
that aesthetic consciousness is far from self-contained but is rather
drawn into the play of something much larger than what is evident to
subjective consciousness. The analogy with drama and, indeed, sporting
events, implies that art is eventual, an occasion that consciousness
surrenders to and participates in. Spectatorial participation (like
much art research) demands immersion in that which cannot be fully
anticipated or controlled by individual consciousness. The game and
the artwork are both forms of self-movement which require that the
spectator play along with what they bring into being (RB 23). Gadamer
asserts the "primacy of the play" over consciousness:
"the players are merely the way the play comes into
presentation" (TM 92, 98). Participation takes the individual
players out of themselves. The individual subject is that upon which
success, satisfaction, or loss is imposed from within the game.
By analogy, the work of art is also "the playing of it."
An autonomous event comes into being, something comes to stand in its
own right which "changes all that stand before it" (RB
25). Like the ancient *theoros*, the spectator not only
participates in the event which is the artwork but is potentially
transformed by it (RB 24).
The game analogy also serves to undermine approaches to art which are
exclusively intentional, material, and conventional. First: the
subjectivity of an artist cannot be an appropriate interpretive
starting point. Grasping what transpires in a player's
consciousness does not reveal the nature of the game being played.
Reconstructing the conscious life of an artist, *pace*
Dilthey's hermeneutics of *nacherleben* (re-living), may
reveal interesting aspects of an artist's intentions, but it
does not uncover what informs that subjectivity. Second: as with the
game, art is not to be understood by reference to its tools and
equipment alone. Art, no doubt, requires materials and an
appreciation of how a specific tool might be used. Yet neither game
nor art is constituted by its equipment. Third: comprehending a game
or an artwork requires an appreciation of the appropriate rules or
conventions. What constitutes fair or foul play depends upon a set of
pre-understood principles just as what is esteemed excellent in art
requires normative expectancies of appraisal. Yet art's vitality
clearly does not reside merely in the following of conventions.
The overall argument is not that a game or an artwork cannot be
reduced to intention, material, or convention but rather that each of
these elements comes into their own when taken up within the
*playing* of the game or in the *practice* which is art.
It is the playing that draws spectator, player, intention, equipment,
and convention into the one event. This promotes an interactive view
of art as a communicative event. It lends a dialogical dimension to
art. An artwork involves more than one voice as, indeed, the word
*inter-*pretation implies. Furthermore, the conception of art
as an event requires a different ontological structure to those
standard accounts of aesthetic experience grounded in subjectivity
alone. An artwork is not an object completely independent of the
spectator yet somehow given over to the spectator for his or her
personal enjoyment. To the contrary, the game analogy suggests that
the act of spectatorship contributes to enhancing the being of the
artwork by bringing what is at play within it to fuller realization.
The spectator just as much as the artist plays a crucial role in
developing the subject-matters that art activates. The aesthetic
spectator is swept up by her experience of art, absorbed in its play,
and potentially transformed by that which spectatorship helps
constitute. Though Gadamer's argument distances itself from
traditional subject-object paradigms, it does retain certain features
of Kant's aesthetics. In other words, Gadamer's engagement
with Kantian aesthetics is a complicated matter. In *Truth and
Method*, Gadamer's tone vis-a-vis Kant's claims in the
*Critique of Judgment* is at times polemical; however, his
reading of Kant is not simply dismissive and critical but also
involves creatively reworking many of Kant's insights. For
example, whereas Kant attributes a non-purposive rationality to the
aesthetic attitude, Gadamer attributes it to the playful process of
art practice itself. Both art and the game share a to-and-fro movement
not tied to any specific goal other than to fulfil themselves for
their own sake (TM 103): no one knows how a game will end and no one
knows to what end an artwork works (Lawn 2006, 91). However, what is
clear is that it is what occurs when the artwork or the game is
in-play that matters. Often contrary to their own willing and doing,
the spectator is taken over by a substantial and consequential event
that transcends the boundaries of everyday consciousness and which has
no purpose other than to bring something forth.
Perhaps the most important difference between Kant's aesthetics
and Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics is the latter's
claim that art communicates truth. In the *Critique of
Judgment*, Kant argues that aesthetic ideas elude conceptual
determination and linguistic capture. Such claims resonate with
Gadamer's view of art, as he contends that an artwork's
meaning cannot be conceptually exhaused. In other words, the artwork
always has an excess of meaning. However, unlike Kant, Gadamer affirms
that in our expeience of art, we are confronted with truths that have
the potential to foster greater self- and world-understanding. In
short, Gadamer maintains precisely what Kant denies - namely,
Gadamer claims that art is *not separated* from truth and
knowledge but rather our experience of art as event discloses truth.
As Daniel L. Tate observes, Gadamer parts ways with Kant by insisting
that "the experience of art attests to a *truth* that
cannot be exhaustively presented in terms of definitive
knowledge" (Tate 2009, 292). Another key difference between
Gadamer's and Kant's accounts is Gadamer's
thematization of the spectator's *active* role. Gadamer
stresses the active role of the spectator in his 1980 essay
"Intuition and Vividness" (in RB, GW8) which can be
understood as a further development of his reflections on spectatorial
engagement in *Truth and Method*. In "Intuition and
Vividness," written twenty years after the publication of
*Truth and Method*, Gadamer reworks Kantian insights regarding
the formative or productive role of the imagination into his own
account of the spectator's *creative* and *active*
participation in the artwork's coming to presence. For instance,
he claims that when the spectator lingers with an artwork, her
imagination synthesizes the intuitions in which the presentation of a
meaningful whole emerges as a formed image. While this formed image is
brought into relation with the understanding and incites thought,
neither it nor the entire formative process is determined by given
concepts; rather, as Tate points out, the formed image that comes to
stand is *originally* constructed by the imagination (Tate
2009, 292). The formed image enables engaged spectators to make
connections and draw conclusions that exceed their present experience.
As a result, art has the ability to present us with future, unrealized
possibilities. Gadamer's creative reworking of Kantian
imagination and aesthetic ideas underscores both the creative and
formative abilities of the imagination vis-a-vis our experience of art
and, importantly, the power of art's truths -
"truths that disclose the finitude of our being and our need for
others. In the dynamic, participatory event that art is, we are
invited - even provoked - to imagine ourselves, others,
and our present world otherwise, which is to imagine (and perhaps
even hope for) a different (and better) future" (Nielsen 2023,
38).
## 5. The Festival
Conventional accounts of aesthetic experience stress its intense and
individuating nature (*Erlebnis*). Yet despite its intimacy,
Gadamer emphasizes that within experience (*Erfahrung*) one is
always participating, perhaps unwittingly, in something beyond
oneself. Aesthetic involvement is in some respects, therefore, a
communal activity. The analogy between aesthetic experience and the
festival or festive celebration is telling.
>
> Work is something that separates and divides us. For all the
> cooperation necessitated by joint enterprise and the division of labor
> in our productive activity, we are still divided as individuals as far
> as our day to day purposes are concerned. Festive celebration, on the
> other hand, is clearly distinguished by the fact that here we are not
> primarily separated but rather gathered together. (RB 40)
>
Gadamer's thinking here betrays a further Kantian inflection.
The Kantian conception of aesthetic pleasure, as a variety of
experience which arises only where the egotistical interests that
constitute the commerce of everyday life are not in play, suggests the
possibility of a community forming around shared non-hostile
pleasures. Gadamer's account of aesthetic experience is not
concerned with a putative kingdom-to-come but with rediscovering and
forging the communality that we are. Despite this difference,
aesthetic experience establishes for both thinkers a meditative space
in and through which something can be occasioned. The underlying point
remains. Whereas for Kant it is a change in the disposition of
*subjective* consciousness (i.e., its adoption of an aesthetic
attitude) that initiates a better disposition towards the community,
for Gadamer it is the participation in a *trans-subjective
event* that effects a change in subjective dispositions towards
the community.
When Gadamer argues that "the mystery of festive celebration
lies in this suspension of time," he refers to how festivity
suspends work-time (RB 59). This initiates that festival or
"fullfilled" time in which another order of events emerges (RB 42). It
is in such time that an artwork "comes to stand"
irrespective of whether it is a painting, drama, or symphony. The
festive "represents a genuine creation: something drawn from
within ourselves takes shape before our eyes in a form that we
recognise and experience as a more profound presentation of our own
reality" (RB 60). This distances Gadamer from the view that
aesthetic experience is a solitary subject's personal response
to an artwork. In the festive--an analogy for the communal
dimensions of aesthetic experience--the individual subject comes
to stand differently in its relationship to others. Just as the
artwork comes to stand in the festival, so too does the artwork bring
its spectators to stand as a community: "in the festive the
communal spirit that supports us all and transcends each of us
individually" discloses the real power of both the festive
and the work of art (RB 63). The festival occasions individuals
surpassing their everyday view of themselves as potentially hostile
competitors and coming to see themselves as a community formed around
a shared interest in what the artwork brings forth. This is an analogy
for something more fundamental.
Instrumentalist conceptions of language persuade us that the spoken
and written word are but communicative tools, but for Gadamer
participation in language acknowledges that an individual is located
within a substantive horizon of meanings which transcends subjective
consciousness. Pragmatic concerns encourage the forgetting of such
interconnectedness but when such individualism is suspended by the
festival or, indeed, by the adoption of a hermeneutically-attuned
aesthetic attitude, the re-discovery of oneself as belonging to an
extensive community of shared meanings and involvements becomes
possible. The artwork's communicative capacity awakens the
realization that in as much as I understand myself as being addressed,
I must acknowledge that I already belong to something larger than
myself. The artwork *festivises*: it reveals our personal
indebtedness to past and future communities of meaning. The thesis
that we belong to a hermeneutic collective which is the effective
underpinning of art's ability to communicate is further
elaborated in Gadamer's discussion of the symbol.
## 6. The Symbol
A discussion of the symbol forms the third aspect of Gadamer's
case that aesthetic experience involves an *ex-stasis* of the
aesthetic subject. It provides a further analogue for the speculative
dimension of aesthetic experience. The word "symbol" is a
Greek term for a token of remembrance (*tessera hospitalis*)
that could be broken in two so that should a descendent of a former
guest enter his house, the co-joined pieces would kindle into an act
of recognition. (RB 31). The symbol connotes (explicitly) what we
recognise implicitly (RB 31). It is associated with the fragmentary
and a promise of completeness which "in turn alludes to beauty
and the potentially whole and holy order of things" (RB 32). The
symbol is associated, then, with notions of repetition and the hope
for an abundance of meaning. Its connection with the speculative is
best appreciated by reference to the sign.
If the sign's proper function is to refer to its referent, it is
self-cancelling. The road sign that is so attractive that it distracts
from the danger it refers to and causes a new one by prompting drivers
to pull up and admire it, does not function properly. The symbol,
however, does not refer to something outside itself. It presents its
own meaning. The material symbol is, indeed, the place where that
meaning becomes present. Yet the symbolically delivered meaning is
never given completely. Its meaning is indeterminate. References to
the symbol as fragmentary nevertheless anticipate the possibility of
wholeness. The speculative dimension of such reasoning resides in the
premise that every stated meaning involves bringing forth
*more* than is actually spoken. Resonance and depth depends
upon animating the statement's hermeneutic *Hintergrund*,
lighting up unstated meanings or revealing anticipated ones. The
"speculative" capacity of an image or word concerns its
ability to sound out or insinuate the unstated nexus of meanings which
sustain a given expression but which are not directly given in it. The
speculative power of an image or phrase has something in common with
the sublime: it illuminates in the spoken or visual image a penumbra
of unstated meanings whose presence can be sensed but never fully
grasped or conceptualised. Hence, an artwork can always mean more
- that is, insinuate a transcendent dimension of meaning, which
though never exhausted by the symbols that carry it, do not exist
apart from the symbols that sustain it. The symbol is resonant with
the suggestion of meaning because it constantly invokes what is not
immediately given. This not-given does not exist apart from the given
but is inherent within it. Hence, the hermeneutical sublime, the
excess of meaning, the promise of meaning more and meaning something
different which is made apparent by the symbol, is held within, is
immanent in the given.
## 7. Presentation, Representation and Appearance
Gadamer's account of the symbol establishes that artworks are
presentational rather than representational. Presentations occasion
the meanings they invoke and do not represent a meaning independent of
themselves. The argument effects a profound and significant change in
the meaning of aesthetic appearance. The representational view of art
relegates art to a secondary status: the artwork brings to mind
something other than the artwork, an original state of affairs, a
specific meaning or reality. Art's objective co-relative is,
accordingly, positioned outside the work so that the work becomes the
mere appearance of something else. The presentational account of art
is consistent with Gadamer's phenomenological orientation. If
the meaning invoked by a work is not independent of the work that
summons it, the work is the occasion of the coming-into-appearance of
that meaning. Appearing becomes synonymous with original creation.
Aesthetic appearance is not secondary to reality or truth but is the
medium through which the work's truth shows/presents itself.
Even as presentation, appearance does retain a certain negativity,
though in Gadamer's hands it has a positive quality. Appearance
always hints at a semblance of something incomplete or not yet fully
realized. Gadamer's ontology openly reinforces if not requires
such negativity. The claim that each artwork has its own temporality
implies that each will never reveal itself completely. The claim that
the reception of all art is contemporaneous dictates that what appears
to us as meaningful is not necessarily what appeared to a previous
generation as meaningful. Like the symbol, appearance is always
partial. However, appearance, when considered aesthetically, has the
cadence of the symbolic: it alludes to something beyond itself but
which nevertheless inheres within it as the yet-to-be-revealed.
Such arguments support Gadamer's conception of the artwork as
that which stands-in-itself. That which comes to stand is intelligible
as the presentation of a certain meaning, but because of the
indeterminacy of that meaning it retains something of the enigmatic.
This eminent quality--a genuine work can never be measured
against the original way it was shown (RB 146)--Gadamer also
refers to as its hermeneutic identity. The truth of an artwork is not
its simple manifestation of meaning but rather the unfathomableness
and depth of its meaning (PH 226). Its truth embraces a tension
between revelation (what appears) and what is concealed (what has yet
to be shown). The artwork does not simply offer "a recognizable
surface contour" but has an inner depth of self-sufficiency
which Gadamer calls after Heidegger a
"standing-in-itself." In short, the mark of a substantial
work is that it veils possibilities of meaning. Such resistance is a
stimulus to further interpretation. Substantive works, like
significant symbols, have an opaque aspect.
The symbol and its reticence about revealing the withheld aspects of
its meaning do not connote something utterly alien to us. The
yet-to-be revealed is a dimension of meaning overlooked, forgotten, or
not perceived within what has already been shown or grasped. In other
words, the power of the symbol resides in its ability to reveal that,
unbeknown to ourselves, we are in communion with something much larger
than ourselves - that is, horizons of meaning which implicitly
sustain reflection and which can, when made explicit, bring us to
think quite differently of ourselves. The mystery of the symbol is its
promise of transcendence: an effective and affecting symbol reveals
that we belong to a hermeneutic community always larger than we
envisage. The analogy of the festival, once again, is telling. In the
festival, individuated work roles are renounced as we rediscover
communal ties. Gadamer's arguments about play, festival, and
symbol serve, then, as the basis for his claim that aesthetic
experience, our experience of art, is a demonstrable instance of how
subjectivity is informed by a substantiality that transcends an
individual consciousness.
## 8. The Issue in Question
Gadamer's aesthetics involve a variety of interlocking
arguments, one of the most significant of which concerns
*die* *Sache selbst*. The term is difficult to
translate, but it refers, loosely speaking, to a work's
subject-matter, to what it addresses or to what issue has been placed
in question. Philosophical usage of the word evokes phenomenological
notions of intentionality: what a work is directed at or points
toward. The *Sache* is not a determinate concept but an area of
significant meaningfulness, a constellation of concerns which orbit
the affective, conative, and cognitive complexities of subject-matters
such as grief or love. The *Sache* underpins Gadamer's
claim that aesthetic experience has a significant cognitive content.
Subject-matters may transcend an individual work in that no one work
can exhaust their significance, but as ideas, *Sachen* are not
independent of the body of works that exemplify them. If they were
ontologically distinct, the idealism Gadamer rejects would be forced
on him, and he would be compelled to argue that art is
representational, refers to a concept beyond itself and, indeed,
disappears into that concept once evoked. Hence, art, in this way of
understanding, becomes philosophy once more. If, however, art is
presentation, as Gadamer insists, a work's meaning is not
independent of it. Art does not, therefore, copy and thereby represent
a subject-matter, but configures a visual or literary space in which a
subject-matter can be summoned. Gadamer counters an ancient line of
argument that regards art as secondary to, inferior to, and a
corrupter of, the real. Contrary to the Platonic tradition, his
argument implies that art *adds* to the reality of its
subject-matters. Gadamer's evaluation of the aesthetic contrasts
vividly with Kant's in this respect. Kant considers aesthetic
experience to be indifferent to whether or not its object is real (cf.
TM 89). A work's credibility does not depend on its relationship
to an original object or co-relative. Whether what is represented
exists or not is inconsequential. What matters is the aesthetic merit
of the work, not the strength of its likeness. Should the artwork be
harmed, the being of the correlative is unaffected. Gadamer's
presentational aesthetics is, by contrast, in this regard profoundly
anti-Platonic and anti-Kantian: for Gadamer a work's
disappearance diminishes the reality of that which presents itself
through it.
Although subject-matters transcend the individual works which embody
them, they do not exist apart from their historical embodiments.
Moreover, unlike Platonic forms, subject-matters do not transcend
history but mutate and develop ever new permutations. Any diminishment
of art diminishes the historical effectiveness of a given
subject-matter. Were John Donne's love poems all lost, our
understanding of the exquisite joys and pains of human love would be
irreparably diminished. A semi-Platonic argument about
*mimesis* reinforces a discernibly non-Platonic argument
concerning the historically fluid character of subject-matters. The
argument that artworks direct us to a subject-matter irrespective of
whether they be realist or abstract constructions, suggests a moment
of return and repetition. An issue, question, or subject-matter is
*recognized*.
>
> Where something is recognized it has liberated itself from the
> uniqueness and contingency of the circumstances in which it was
> encountered. It is a matter neither of there and then, nor of
> here and now but it is encountered as the very self-same. Thereby it
> begins to rise to its permanent essence and is detached from anything
> like a chance encounter. (RB 120)
>
This passage strengthens the presentational approach to art, but its
reference to essences requires clarification.
>
> It is part of the process of recognition that we see things in terms
> of what is permanent and essential unencumbered by the contingent
> circumstances in which they were seen before and are seen again. What
> imitation reveals is the real essence of the thing. (RB 99)
>
It is not suggested that we see repeatedly the *same essence*
in a work of art. Were this to be suggested, works would become dull
and uninformative and make no new contribution to a genre.
Gadamer's insistence is that works should speak directly to and,
indeed, transform our self-understanding. Such transformative power
implies recognising in a work what was previously understood of a
subject-matter, but transformed, as if seen for the first time. The
life of a subject-matter is one of change and development.
Gadamer's *mimesis* argument claims that through repeated
re-working and re-interpretation a subject-matter not only accrues
more aspects, but also, in so doing, they allow that subject-matter to
become more fully what it is. "A work of art belongs so closely
to what it is related to that it enriches the being of that as if
through a new event of being" (TM 147). The "joy of
recognition is rather the joy of knowing more than is already
familiar." Artworks allow subject-matters to become more what
they are. In conclusion, Gadamer's phenomenological aesthetics
effectively destroys the Platonic separation of art and reality.
Artworks are the sites in which the trans-individual both present and
transform themselves. Whereas, as we have seen, for Kant the
destruction of an artwork has absolutely no bearing upon the
objectivities it represents, we can now understand why Gadamer is
committed to the opposing view that the destruction of an artwork
diminishes the reality of the subject-matters that come forth through
it.
## 9. Art and Language
The strategic centrality of language in Gadamer's aesthetics is
beyond doubt. The ability of artworks to bring things to mind and to
hint at unseen meanings is reason to claim that in its speculative
capacities, art functions essentially like a language. Yet he
acknowledges that linguistic means of expression are inadequate to the
task of conveying what occurs within an experience of art.
>
> Language often seems ill-suited to express what we feel. In the face
> of the overwhelming presence of works of art, the task of expressing
> in words what they say to us seems like an infinite and hopeless
> undertaking ... One says this, and then one hesitates (TM 401).
>
Two claims underwrite this skepticism: words do not readily capture
the sheer complexity of aesthetic experience, and the finitude of
language itself prevents it from capturing the totality of such
experience. In other words, the experience of art always just eludes
theoretical containment. These are not difficulties with language
*per se*, but rather reflect the limited capacity of the human
mind to grasp the totality of its involvements. Yet in Gadamer's
thought these negative aspects incentivize further hermeneutic
involvement in aesthetic experience. The incompleteness of any
interpretation of an artwork opens us to the possibility that there is
always something more or something else that can be said. The temporal
nature of experience and its interpretation prevent closure or, in
other words, both are by nature always open to further ways of
thinking and speaking about art. The argument reinforces the claim
that art and its interpretation extend the being of the
subject-matters addressed and, furthermore, that aesthetic experience
itself has a temporal continuity which is linked to its cumulative
character as a mode of *Bildung*.
The issue about the relationship between art and language is not one
of linguistic capture but of finding the appropriate words to open the
content of aesthetic experience. What is meant by the notion that an
artwork addresses us with a meaning? Although an agent of the
linguistic turn of the twentieth century, Gadamer's reflections
on language run counter to many semiotic theories. According to
Weinsheimer, "the dualism of signifier and signified has no
phenomenological basis" for Gadamer "since in speaking we
have no awareness of the world as being distinct from the word"
(Weinsheimer 1993, 162). Gadamer speaks of the perfection of the word
as being the disappearance of any gap between sense and utterance.
Poetry would be the "paradigm case" of an artwork with a
clear and immediate presentation of meaning. Yet this is seemingly
inconsistent with the notion of a work that
"stands-in-itself." If aspects of its meaning are
withheld, sense and utterance are once again separated. The word, it
would appear, signifies something beyond itself after all. There is,
in other words, a tension between Gadamer wanting to hold that the
work of art and the world that comes forth within it are indivisible
and saying that the world which a work invokes is larger than the work
itself. The poetic word, insofar as it is poetic, stands-in-itself;
and yet as word it invokes something beyond itself. Gadamer's
speculative account of meaning collapses, it would seem, into a
referential account of signs. Speculatively charged words refer to
other signs or patterns of meaning beyond themselves. This suggests
that words are self-negating signs: when they function as they should,
they disappear into what it is referred to. To conclude that words
operate as representational signs seems quite contrary to the account
of art functioning in the manner of a symbol. Closer inspection
suggests that Gadamer's account of the speculative account of
meaning is presentational after all. Let us restate the question.
If the artwork is an autonomous entity that stands-in-itself and does
not refer to anything outside itself, what of art's speculative
capacity to refer to other complexes beyond its immediate horizon? The
theological notion of a host can dissolve the inconsistency. On the
one hand, for an artwork to have a speculative capacity, it must
invoke perimeters of meaning which transcend its own immediate
circumstance. Without this, an artwork cannot connect us with
frameworks of otherness. Yet this argument threatens to turn
Gadamer's aesthetics into an idealism referring specifically to
the *idea* which the artwork was invoking. Art would once again
be subordinated to a vehicle of philosophy. On the other hand, there
is something within the constitution of an artwork that makes it
resist theoretical reduction. Its invocation of an excess of meaning
resists conceptual capture. This brings us to the crux of the matter.
Does the excess of meaning which a work can speculatively invoke exist
apart from the work that summons them? The speculative dimensions of
art suggest that an artwork is indeed a host for that which lies
beyond it and yet, at the same time, the transcendent dimensions of
meaning (its excess of meaning), remain immanent within the work that
invokes them. The presence of that which transcends the work only
manifests itself *through the work that hosts* *it*. To
put it another way, it is in the work that the transcendent set
of meanings achieves its presence. The full resonance of a
subject-matter, which of course extends well beyond any one work, is
nevertheless only discernible in the works that host them. Indeed,
subject-matters do not exist apart from the works that manifest their
presence. Ontologically speaking they inhere within the work. The work
is the occasion in which these dimensions of meaning appear, and they
command the attention of the viewer so long as the work holds them in
play. In other words, with regard to the tension between
representation and presentation in Gadamer's position, the
speculative charge of artworks does indeed suggest that they function
as representational signs always referring beyond the given meaning.
Yet this is another way of saying that, ontologically speaking,
artworks function as symbols. Considered as a referential sign, what
the artwork refers to is not a world independent of the sign but
another set of signs. However, such other configurations of meaning
may mean more than the signs that invoke them, but they are inherent
within those very signs. In other words, the very signs which refer
speculatively to other dimensions of meaning also function
symbolically in that the other horizons of meaning invoked are
immanent within the work's autonomy. As a symbolic host, the
artwork holds that which refers beyond itself within itself.
## 10. Tradition
>
> Art seems to solve the riddle of the temporal core of truth (Adorno).
> A work that proves itself a "classic" through the ages and
> remains constant in its effect remains binding, no matter how the
> interpretations and the criteria of evaluation change in the course of
> time. (Habermas quoted by Krajewski 2004, 20)
>
What binds us to a tradition, according to Gadamer, is not a misplaced
conservatism but the questions a canon or body of work asks of us.
However, the question of tradition is one of the most controversial
within Gadamer's philosophy. It arises because of the way
Gadamer establishes individual and collective learning on the
acquisition of accrued experiences (*Bildung*) and practices,
rather than upon any methodological norm. His argument exposes the
Enlightenment prejudice against prejudice. The liberating and
universalizing aspects of reason tend to marginalize and chastise both
the culturally different and the historically particular as divisive
and irrational. Gadamer contends, however, that such an unqualified
hypostasization of reason and its methods has the unfortunate
consequence of condemning as methodologically groundless the very
valuations that ordinary linguistic and experiential practices are
based on. Gadamer is not unsympathetic to Nietzsche, who rejects the
claim that humanity is shaped by external necessity. Our existence
within the world and our place within it is, metaphysically speaking,
utterly contingent. If there is no metaphysical necessity that governs
human practices, why should we even ask for a methodological
grounding, when language has neither required nor functioned with such
a license? Like Wilhelm Dilthey before him, Gadamer insists that
nothing justifies and gives meaning to life other than life itself.
This is not the invocation of nihilism, for life does not occur in a
vacuum. Creatures such as humans, which have no pre-determined
essence, only survive by both remembering what has worked well within
a practice and by constantly testing it against contemporary needs and
circumstances. There is a constant tension between acquired experience
and the need to stabilize its lessons and the need to question and
thereby destabilize the tried and the tested. All expressive practices
depend upon an inheritance of insight and valuation. They are
dependent upon accrued learning and experience. Such observations
agitate Gadamer's critics, who see in the unreflective
acceptance of the given an irresponsibly conservative privileging of
the received, and a wilful blindness to possible repressive or
exclusionary practices within inherited modes of operation. In
response to such scepticism, it must be acknowledged that inherited
practices can, logically speaking, have negative entailments. However,
a commitment to tradition, is neither a commitment to remaining the
same, nor is it indicative of a willful refusal to confront the
negative entailments within what is transmitted historically.
Traditions which are incapable of changing risk becoming outmoded.
Traditions are not founded upon core and fixed identities. As vibrant
religious and artistic traditions demonstrate, those which are in
constant debate over aim and direction often prove engaging and
influential. Traditions capable of subjecting their self-understanding
to critique constitute continuities of conflict. The importance of
received understanding for Gadamer is not its historical provenance
but how it opens us towards and engages us with issues in a community
of debate. The Cartesian project of subjecting all beliefs to
sceptical examination until they can be methodologically affirmed is,
in Gadamer's view, nihilistic. The project is implausible since
the range and depth of pre-understanding is so extensive as to be
untheorisable. To condemn pre-understanding as unjustifiable because
it cannot be methodologically grounded is highly dangerous as it
devalues those very insights upon which our initial world-orientation
depends. It is not that these insights are instrinsically valuable but
that they are essential staging posts in the journeys of understanding
they enable. It is the continuous debate and dialogue over practice
that enables participants to move on, widen, and transform acquired
experience. Movement and development is intrinsic to the German word
for tradition: *Uberlieferung* has the active connotation
of both transmitting and handing something on. What a tradition
transmits from age to age are questions, problems, and issues. The
importance of canonic works is not that they are peerless exemplars of
an idiom or style but rather that they raise issues and difficulties
in an exemplary way. Traditions can check their self-understanding
against their own historical projections. A commitment to tradition is
not a commitment to an academic antiquarianism. It is, essentially, a
commitment to a field of debate. Tradition is presented as a resource
and a provocation for thinking and creativity: whereas sameness is the
currency of a conservative conception of tradition, instability,
questions, and the challenge of otherness are the drivers of
Gadamer's more dialogical concept of tradition.
It has been argued against Gadamer that his revaluation of tradition
does not really bring its content to a point of critical reflection.
He acknowledges that like any other temporal phenomenon, not all of
its vistas can be adequately thematized or articulated. This does not
mean, however, that tradition is beyond critical appraisal. Traditions
can, as Pannenberg argues, check their normative assumptions against
their self-projections. Other critics suggest that Gadamer's
approach to tradition and aesthetics is overtly Classical in its
preoccupation with forms that maintain a continuity through time
rather than radically alter themselves. It does not allow for those
radical intrusions or revolutionary interjections which alter the
perceptual paradigm of an age. The counter-objection is not only that
the charge overlooks Gadamer's embrace of Heidegger's
quite radical phenomenological reworking of the Classical
tradition but also the fact that for one paradigm to replace
another, there must be a certain relation between them. One must
address an absence, fullfil an unseen possibility or a lack within the
other. Cubism, for example, implies a visual orientation quite
different from realism, but both idioms belong to a common tradition
in that they strive to show us something of the real. Without a degree
of continuity with tradition, any radical emergence would have no
bearing upon the received and thereby lack the ability to call into
question received notions and understanding. It is, however, precisely
the challenge of the different and the other which is the driver of
Gadamer's dialogical conception of tradition. It is a conception
which is in part modernistic: tradition is presented as being in
constant debate with itself. Its renewal demands change and
transformation. Furthermore, a virtue of this dialogical conception of
tradition is that it is not culturally specific. Because its main
focus is on the subject-matters which different cultural practices
address, it offers a model of cognitive engagement that can operate
between distinct traditions rather than in just any one.
## 11. Paradox of the In-between
There is a creative tension at play within Gadamer's aesthetic
thinking. On the one hand, Gadamer stalwartly defends the autonomy of
the artwork and, on the other, despite his resistance to any
subsumption of art within philosophy, he insists that aesthetics
should be absorbed within hermeneutics, which has for the most
part been understood as a theoretical enterprise. This tension
replicates aspects of the so-called hermeneutic circle.
Schleiermacher, for example, argues that it is only possible to grasp
an individual's personal utterances if one can understand the
general structure of the language which that individual operates
within. Conversely, general structures are only intelligible in terms
of particular exemplifying utterances. Wilhelm Dilthey operates within
a similar part-whole structure--namely, an
individual's personal experiences will mean little to the reader
unless they can be contextualised within a historical context. A
movement between part and whole also takes place in Gadamer's
thinking. The artwork is initially presented in its singularity. But
then, the particular is illuminated by being brought under a
subject-matter. To engage with artworks discursively is to bring
generalizations about a work to bear, placing it in a wider context of
associations. The movement to the wider level of generalization also
returns the spectator to the particular, since generalization enables
an understanding of what is singular about a work by locating it
within a broader background. This double hermeneutic movement is
highly characteristic of Gadamer's aesthetic. It recognises that
the cognitive dimension of aesthetic experience is, like all
linguistic experience, both centrifugal and centripetal in nature.
When a work addresses us its impact is centrifugal: it upsets and
transforms what we customarily recognise. It awakens us to the
hermeneutical sublime, to what lies beyond but nevertheless shapes our
normal range of understanding. Thus, Gadamer can argue
that "something is a poetic structure when everything
pre-structured is taken up into a new, unique form ... as if it
were being said for the first time to us in particular" (GW 8,
62). Yet this estranging moment initiates a centripetal return, a
homecoming. "The poem and the art of language generally as a
heard or written text is always ... something like a recognition
in every single word" (GW 8, 62). Yet the question remains: is
the passage from the immediacy of the given artwork to theoretical
contemplations about its subject matter not an instance of moving from
the particular givenness of a work to a more abstract level of
reflection about its subject-matter? Does not the contemplative
movement away from the work betray its particularity and suggest that
the sense of a work lies beyond it in its concept? Were Gadamer to
have fallen into this *impasse*, an idealist and
representationalist account of art would be forced upon him. The
vehemence of his resistance to these stances suggests that something
other than a simple shift from the particular immediacy of a work to a
theoretical contemplation of its content must be at play.
The accusation of inconsistency requires the assumption that the
aesthetic experience of a work, on the one hand, and its
contemplation, on the other, are separable. However, it is in
Gadamer's mind part of an intense experience that it impels us
towards seeking to bring it into words. Experience endeavours to bring
itself into words. These words will by virtue of their semantic
associations place the experience in a wider context (the centrifugal)
and at the same time these words will, because of their poetic
capacity for singularity, make the experience clearer and more
distinct.
>
> Experience is not wordless to begin with, subsequently becoming an
> object of reflection by being named, by being subsumed under the
> universality of the word. Rather experience itself seeks and finds
> words that express it. We seek the right word--i.e., the word
> that really belongs to the thing (or experience) so that in it the
> thing comes into language. (TM 417)
>
This suggests that Gadamer is not applying a hermeneutic method to
aesthetic experience but seeking to expose the hermeneutical movement
from part to whole *within* aesthetic experience. In other
words, the claim that aesthetics should be taken up within
hermeneutics is not an attempt to reduce aesthetics to another idiom.
It announces an endeavor to articulate the hermeneutic dynamic of
aesthetic experience itself. Let us briefly recapitulate the
argument.
The tension in Gadamer's position arises from (1) asserting
art's autonomy and (2) demanding that aesthetics be subsumed
within hermeneutics. Undoubtedly, the weight of argument is on the
latter. He systematically criticizes Kantian aesthetics for its
narrow-minded concentration on the subjectivity of momentary pleasures
and offers in its place a substantial reconstruction of the cognitive
content of art's address. In other words, Gadamer switches the
status of autonomy from the sensible irreducibility of a work to its
hermeneutic autonomy. This entails the argument that a work which
challenges our outlook does so because it is enigmatic by nature: it
gives rise to difficulties of meaning and interpretation which cannot
be explained away by a more fundamental level of understanding. The
autonomous work that stands in itself is a work that both
*presents* *a meaning* and at the same time *holds
something back*. It is in other words always pointing beyond
itself but *within* itself. This substantiates Gadamer's
claim that the hermeneutical constitution of an autonomous work
resists theoretical reduction. In the essay "Word and
Picture," he expresses sympathy with Schleiermacher's
remark, "I hate all theory that does not grow out of
practice" (GW 8, 374). However, as has been argued, the
transcendent dimensions of meaning which a work speculatively invokes
are not outside the work but immanent within it. In other words, we do
not need a special hermeneutic method to access the withheld but just
a deeper, more attentive contemplative acquaintance. When Gadamer
speaks of being attentive to what an artwork says, of discerning its
enigmatic quality, and of becoming aware of its speculative
resonances, he is indeed speaking in a hermeneutical idiom, but this
is most clearly not a case of Gadamer submitting aesthetic experience
to an externally derived theory. To the contrary, Gadamer is trying to
draw out the hermeneutical dynamics of aesthetic experience itself.
Thus the tension between the immediacy of experience and reflection
upon the content of that experience is not a tension between
experience, on the one hand, and theory on the other. It is a tension
within aesthetic experience between what an artwork invokes of its
subject-matter and how what is invoked changes the character of that
which invokes it. What hermeneutical reflection reveals of aesthetic
experience is nothing extraneous to such experience but a further
disclosure of what is held within it. To conclude, if aesthetic
experience is hermeneutical in that artworks speculatively illuminate
meanings beyond what is immediately disclosed, hermeneutical
experience should equally be taken up by aesthetics in that
subject-matters only manifest their presence in the singular and
particular. |
aesthetics-18th-german | ## 1. Leibniz and Wolff: Perfection and Truth
The traditional idea that art is a special vehicle for the expression
of important truths is the basis for the work of the philosopher who
established the framework for German thought for much of the
18th century, namely, Christian Wolff
(1679-1754). Wolff never devoted a whole work to aesthetics, but
many of the ideas that would influence subsequent aesthetic theory are
contained in his *Rational Thoughts on God, the World, and the Soul
of Man*, his "German Metaphysics," first published in
1719.
Originally appointed to teach mathematics at the Pietist-dominated
university of Halle, Wolff was inspired by both the mathematical and
philosophical genius of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716),
but published a vast systematic statement of a philosophy that was
constructed partly although by no means wholly on Leibnizian lines in
a way that Leibniz himself never did. Wolff's collected works (over
thirty volumes in German and forty in Latin) include German versions
of his logic, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and teleology
as well as a four-volume encyclopedia of mathematical subjects. In
addition, there are expanded Latin versions of the logic, the
components of metaphysics including ontology, rational cosmology,
empirical psychology, rational psychology, and natural psychology, as
well as another four-volume mathematical compendium, seven volumes on
ethics, and no fewer than twelve volumes on political philosophy and
economics. In all of this vast output, the only thing that might look
like a work specifically in aesthetics is a treatise on architecture
included in his encyclopedia of mathematics. That very placement
indicates that Wolff regarded the discussion of architecture as part
of the theory of science; and in the *Preliminary Discourse on
Philosophy in General* that prefaces his Latin restatement of his
system, Wolff states more generally that a "philosophy of the
arts" is possible, but as part of "technics or
technology," "the science of the arts and of the works of
art" (Wolff, *Preliminary Discourse*, SS71,
p. 38). Here Wolff uses the term "art" (*ars*) in
the ancient sense of *techne*, which means any form of craft
requiring both aptitude and training, rather than in the specifically
modern sense of "fine art." In his German works, Wolff
uses the word *Kunst* in the same broad way. Even with regard
to something closer to the fine arts, however, he says that
"There could also be a philosophy of the liberal arts, if they
were reduced to the form of a science....one might talk about
rhetorical philosophy, poetical philosophy, etc." (ibid.,
SS72, p. 39). Wolff certainly does not have the idea of the fine
arts as a domain of human production and response that differs in some
essential way from all other forms of human production and response,
thus he does not have the idea of aesthetics as a discipline that will
focus on what distinguishes the fine arts and our response to them
from everything else. Nevertheless, in the course of his works he
introduces some ideas about both the fine arts and our response to
them that will be seminal for the next half-century of German
thought.
### 1.1 Leibniz
The two key ideas that Wolff takes from Leibniz are, first, the
characterization of sensory perception as a clear but confused rather
than distinct perception of things that could, at least in principle,
be known both clearly and distinctly by the intellect; and, second,
the characterization of pleasure as the sensory, and thus clear but
confused, perception of the perfection of things. Leibniz's conception
of sensory perception was presented in a 1684 paper entitled
"Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas." Here Leibniz
stated that "Knowledge is *clear*...when it makes it
possible for me to recognize the thing represented," but that it
is "*confused* when I cannot enumerate one by one the
marks which are sufficient to distinguish the thing from others, even
though the thing may in truth have such marks and constituents into
which its concept can be resolved." Conversely, knowledge is
both clear and distinct when one can not only clearly distinguish its
object from other objects but can also enumerate the
"marks" or properties of the object on which that
distinction is based. Leibniz then says that sensory perception is
clear but indistinct or confused knowledge, and illustrates his
general thesis about sense perception with a remark about the
perception and judgment of art: "Likewise we sometimes see
painters and other artists correctly judge what has been done well or
badly; yet they are often unable to give a reason for their judgment
but tell the inquirer that the work which displeases them lacks
'something, I know not what'" (Leibniz,
"Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas,"
p. 291). This illustration would be decisive for Wolff and all of
those whom he in turn influenced.
The second idea that Wolff took over from Leibniz is the idea that
pleasure is itself the sensory perception of the perfection existing
in an object. For Leibniz and all his followers, *all* of the properties of actually existing objects can
be regarded as perfections, since they held that the actual world is
the one selected to exist by God from among all possible worlds
precisely because it is the most perfect; thus each object and all of
its properties must in some way contribute to the maximal perfection
of the actual world. But they also used the concept of perfection in a
more ordinary way, in which some actual objects have specific
perfections that others do not, and it is this sense of perfection
that Leibniz employed when he stated that
>
> *Pleasure* is the feeling of a perfection or an excellence,
> whether in ourselves or in something else. For the perfection of other
> beings is also agreeable, such as understanding, courage, and
> especially beauty in another human being, or in an animal or even in a
> lifeless creation, a painting or a work of craftsmanship, as
> well.
Leibniz also holds that the perfection that we perceive in other
objects is communicated to ourselves, although he does
not say that our pleasure in the perception of perfection is actually
directed at the self-perfection that is thereby caused. But there is
certainly a nascent view here that the perception of beauty in art,
although not only in art, is both intrinsically pleasurable and also
instrumentally valuable because it leads to self-improvement.
### 1.2 Wolff
This is the background from which Wolff's own hints toward aesthetics
emerged. Wolff introduces the central concepts and principles of his
ontology in the second chapter of his German metaphysics, which deals
with "The first grounds of our cognition and all things in
general" (*German Metaphysics*, p. 66). After expounding
the formal principles that are the basis of all truth, the principles
of non-contradiction and sufficient reason, Wolff introduces the
concept that is the substantive basis of his ontology, namely the
concept of perfection. He defines perfection as the
"harmony" or "concordance"
(*Zusammenstimmung*) of a manifold or multiplicity of objects
or parts of objects--or as he says in Latin, *perfectio est
consensus in varietate* (Wolff, *Ontologia*, SS503,
p. 390)--and illustrates this abstract definition with the
example of a work of technology:
>
>
> E.g., one judges the perfection of a clock from its correctly
> displaying the hours and their parts. It is however composed of many
> parts, and these and their composition are aimed at the hands
> displaying correctly the hours and their parts. Thus in a clock one
> finds manifold things, that are all in concordance with one another.
> (Wolff, *German Metaphysics*, SS152, p. 152)
>
>
>
>
Here Wolff defines perfection in both formal and substantive terms:
formally, simply as the order or harmony of the parts in a whole; but
substantively, as the suitability of that order or harmony of parts
for achieving the aim that is intended for the whole, such as
accurately telling time in the case of a clock.
When we turn to Wolff's conceptions of the perfections of the
particular forms of art that he mentions, we see that he always
has in mind both formal and substantive perfections for any particular
art. Wolff also identifies *order* in
things with *truth*. He says that
> Since everything has its sufficient ground why it
> is, there must also always be a sufficient ground for why in simple
> things the alterations succeed one another just so and not otherwise,
> and why in composite things their parts are juxtaposed just thus and
> not otherwise, and also their alterations succeed one another just so
> and not otherwise.
>
>
>
>
He contrasts this order with the disorder that reigns in dreams,
and then says that
> Accordingly *truth* is nothing other than
> order in the alternations of things while the *dream* is
> disorder in the alteration of things. (*German Metaphysics*,
> SS142, pp. 146-8)
>
>
>
>
In a 1729 lecture on "The enjoyment that
one can derive from the cognition of truth," Wolff does not in
the first instance treat truth as a semantic correspondence between a
linguistic representation and the object represented, or an epistemic
relation between a mental representation and an external reality, but
as an objective property consisting in coherence within things
themselves, which is precisely what perfection consists in as
well. But there is nevertheless a strongly cognitivist cast to
Wolff's aesthetics.
Wolff next defines clarity and distinctness and indistinctness in
cognition. Thoughts are clear "when we know well what we think,
and can distinguish that from other things"; they are obscure if
we cannot even distinguish the objects of our thoughts from other
objects (*German Metaphysics*, SSSS198-9, p.
188). Clear thoughts are also distinct if we not only know what
objects we are thinking of but if "our thoughts are also clear
with respect to their parts or the manifold that is to be found in
them" (*German Metaphysics*, SS207, p. 194), and are
otherwise indistinct or confused. Wolff then defines sensations
(*Empfindungen*) as those thoughts "which have their
ground in the alterations of the members of our body and which are
occasioned by corporeal things outside us," and the
"capacity for having sensations as *the senses*"
(*German Metaphysics*, SS220, p. 202). He then adopts
Leibniz's view that sensations or sensory perceptions are typically
clear but indistinct or confused (*German Metaphyics*,
SS214, p. 198). Unlike Leibniz, the systematic Wolff observes that
sensations come in differing degrees of clarity (*German
Metaphysics*, SS224, p. 206), but they are nevertheless all
indistinct to some degree. This means that at least in principle a
purely intellectual or conceptual representation is always a better
source of knowledge of its object than is a sensory representation of
it.
This in turn means that an aesthetic perception of a perfection is
always a less than optimal cognition of that perfection, for having
described sense perception or sensory cognition as clear but
indistinct or confused, Wolff next defines pleasure as the sensory or
"intuitive" cognition of perfection. In his German
metaphysics, he writes that "Insofar as we intuit perfection,
pleasure arises in us, thus pleasure is nothing other than an
intuition of perfection, as Descartes already remarked"
(*German Metaphysics*, SS404, p. 344). Wolff's successors
will struggle to avoid the limitations on the cognitive significance
of aesthetic response that follow from his definition of pleasure as a
kind of sense perception and the limits he places on the cognitive
significance of sense perception.
While Wolff's basic account of pleasure is problematic, he does
provide a straightforward account of beauty. Wolff defines beauty as
the perfection of an object insofar it can be perceived by us with and
through the feeling of pleasure: "Beauty consists in the
perfection of a thing, insofar as it is suitable for producing
pleasure in us" (*Psychologia Empirica*, SS544,
p. 420). This definition enunciates a clear position on the
ontological status of beauty, which will often be vexed in the
eighteenth century. Beauty is an objective property, founded in the
perfection of things, but it is also a relational rather than
intrinsic property, for it is attributed to perfection only insofar as
there are subjects like us who can perceive it sensorily. Given
perceivers like us, beauty is coextensive with or emergent from
perfection, but in a universe without such perceivers perfection would
not be equivalent to beauty.
Thus far we have considered only Wolff's most abstract definition of
perfection and therefore of beauty, namely that it is the coherence of
a manifold insofar as we can perceive that through the sensation of
pleasure. When he mentions or discusses specific arts, Wolff invokes
more specific conceptions of perfection and thus of the beauties of
those arts. In the case of the visual arts of painting and sculpture,
Wolff locates their perfection in imitation or veridical
representation, while other arts find their perfections in the
fulfillment of intended uses. He uses the examples of painting and
architecture in the German metaphysics to illustrate his claim that
pleasure arises from the intuition of perfection. Thus,
> the perfection of a painting consists in its
> similarity. For since a painting is nothing other than a
> representation of a given object on a tablet or flat surface,
> everything in it is harmonious if nothing can be discerned in it that
> one does not also perceive in the thing itself,
>
>
>
>
and
> if a connoisseur of architecture contemplates a
> building that has been constructed in accordance with the rules of
> architecture, he thereby cognizes its perfection. (*German
> Metaphysics*, SS404, p. 344)
>
>
>
>
Wolff frequently reiterates that the perfection of painting or
sculpture consists in accurate representation without further
amplification ("On the enjoyment that can be derived from the
cognition of truth," SS7, p. 257, and *Psychologia
Empirica*, SS512, pp. 389-90, and SS544,
pp. 420-1); he is simply using what he takes to be a
non-controversial fact about painting to confirm his connection of
pleasure with the intuition of perfection. In his extended discussion
of architecture, however, he reveals a more subtle conception of the
perfections and thus the "rules" of architecture. In order for us to
perceive it as beautiful, a building must display both the formal
perfection of coherence as well as the substantive perfection of being
suitable, indeed comfortable for its intended use.
Wolff begins his treatise on the *Foundations of Architecture*
with the claim that "architecture is a science for constructing
a building so that it is in complete correspondence with the
intentions of the architect" (Wolff, *Principles of
Architecture*, SS1, p. 305). This locates the harmony or
agreement in which perfection always consists in the relation between
the intentions of the architect and the building that results from his
plans and supervision. However, as he proceeds Wolff makes it clear
that the intention of an architect is always to produce a structure
that is both formally beautiful as well as useful and comfortable, so
the perfection that subsists in the relation between intention and
outcome in fact consists in the perfection of both form and utility in
the building itself. On the one hand "A
building is space that is enclosed by art in order that certain
functions can proceed there securely and unhindered"
(*Architecture*, SS4, p. 306), and "A building
is comfortable if all necessary functions can proceed within it
without hindrance and vexation" (*Architecture*, SS7,
p. 307). These definitions form the basis for a requirement of
perfection in the utility of a building. On the other hand, however,
"Beauty is perfection or the necessary appearance thereof,
insofar as the former or the latter is perceived, and causes a
pleasure in us" (*Architecture*, SS8, p. 307), and "A building must be constructed beautifully
and decoratively" (*Architecture*, SS18, p. 309).
This is the basis for the requirement of formal rather than
utilitarian perfection in a building. Throughout the remainder of the
treatise, both conceptions of perfection are at work. Wolff does not
explicitly extend this complex analysis of perfection to other arts,
although it is not difficult to imagine how that extension might go:
in painting we might respond to formal features of composition as well
as to the accuracy of depiction, in sculpture we might respond to the
intrinsic beauty of the marble or bronze as well as to the accuracy of
depiction, and so on.
Finally, we must ask about the moral and religious implications of
Wolff's contributions to aesthetics. As we have seen, Wolff equates
perfection, which is the object of pleasure in all contexts including
those subsequently labeled aesthetic, with an objective sense of
truth. However, and in this regard most unlike the German
aestheticians of the next several generations who are so strongly
influenced by him in other regards, he has nothing to say about the
arts that are typically paradigmatic for those who ground their
aesthetics on the notion of truth rather than that of play, namely
literature, especially poetry and drama. Thus he does not consider the
paradox of tragedy, formulated by Du Bos and then discussed by
virtually every other eighteenth-century writer on literature, nor
does he emphasize the moral benefits of uplifting literature, as so
many others do. Indeed, he has nothing explicit to say about the moral
benefits of aesthetic experience, nor does he directly consider the
religious significance of such experience in any of his discussions of
it. Nevertheless, it is clear that aesthetic experience does have
religious significance for Wolff, because his philosophy culminates in
a religious teleology. For Wolff, the most perfect and therefore most
orderly of all possible worlds exists for a reason, namely to mirror
the perfection of God, and sentient and cognizant beings such as
ourselves exist for a reason, namely to recognize and admire the
perfection of God that is mirrored in the perfection of things in the
world and of the world as a whole. The perfection that is added to the
natural world through human artistry is also part of the perfection of
the world that emanates from and mirrors the perfection of God. Thus,
in admiring the perfection of art we are performing part of our larger
function in the world, namely admiring the perfection of God. Wolff
states the premise of his teleology quite clearly in a work devoted
entirely to that subject, the *Rational Thoughts on the Aims of
Natural Things*, or "German teleology." There he
declares that
> The chief aim of the world is this, that we should
> cognize the perfection of God from it. Now if God would attain this
> aim, he also had to arrange the world in such a way that a rational
> being could extract from the contemplation of it grounds that would
> allow him to infer with certainty the properties of God and what can
> be known about him. (*Rational Thoughts on the Aims of Natural
> Things*, SS8, p. 6)
>
>
>
>
Several sections later, he uses the metaphor of
the mirror to describe the relation between God, the world, and we who
look at the mirror:
> Now if the world is to be a mirror of the wisdom
> of God, then we must encounter divine aims in it and perceive the
> means by which he attains these aims.... And accordingly the
> connection of things in the world with one another makes it into a
> mirror of [God's] wisdom.... (ibid., SS14, pp. 18-19;
> see also *German Metaphysics*, SS1045, p.
> 802)
>
>
>
Wolff writes as a spokesman for the Enlightenment, and he is emphatic
that God reveals his wisdom and power not by intervening in the course
of the world by means of miracles, but rather by designing everything
in the world as if it were all smoothly-running machines that can
achieve his goals without further intervention (see *German
Metaphysics*, SS1037, p. 796). This might seem to leave no
room at all for the human creation of art, which all
eighteenth-century writers will conceive of as a production of genius
that is the complete opposite of anything mechanical. But for Wolff
our ability to produce works of art is another manifestation of the
perfection of the world--of which we are a part--and in turn
of God. Wolff draws no distinction between the works of human art that
are the subject of the "science of art" and the works of
nature, nor for that matter any distinction between the works of human
art that are the subject of the "science of art" and those
human creations that are the subjects of the "doctrine of morals
and statecraft": they are all forms of perfection which, in a
teleological natural theology, all ultimately mirror the perfection of
God. And no doubt Wolff hardly thought it necessary to spell out the
moral benefits of such a recognition.
## 2. Gottsched and His Critics: Truth and Imagination
In Wolff's description of the experience of beauty as the
"sensitive cognition of perfection," cognition is
naturally understood as knowledge of truth, so in the first instance
Wolff's formula meant that the experience of beauty is knowledge of
truth by means of the senses. Yet Wolff's conception of perfection was
broad enough to include successful adaptation to an intended purpose,
and thus in his analysis of our experience of architecture he
emphasized our sense of the utility of structures as well as a sensory
response to the kind of abstract form that could be considered an
object of cognition. But it was the idea that aesthetic experience is
a sensory apprehension of truth that dominated in Wolff's most general
statements. After 1720, Wolff's philosophy enjoyed an influence in
most parts of Germany similar to that which the philosophy of Locke
exercised in most quarters in Britain by then and in France beginning
a decade or two later. So the history of German aesthetics after Wolff
is a history of the attempt to find room for a fuller account of
aesthetic experience within a framework that privileges the idea of
cognition, and only gradually was room found for the idea that the
free play of our mental powers, including not only imagination but at
least for some authors also emotion, could be equally important. The
first round of this struggle was a debate extending from the late
1720s until the 1740s between the Leipzig literary figure Johann
Christoph Gottsched and the Zurich critics Johann Jacob Bodmer and
Johann Jacob Breitinger, in which the issue was really just how much
room there could be for the freedom of imagination within a theory of
poetry based on the idea that poetry is a truthful imitation of
nature. This might be understood as an early form of debate over how
much room there is for the free play of imagination in aesthetic
experience.
From a distance of almost three hundred years, the differences between
the "critical poetics" (*critische Dichtkunst*) of
Johann Christoph Gottsched and his critics may seem small, because to
us they are all so clearly working within the paradigm established by
Wolff. Yet in the 1730s and 1740s their debate was intense, not just
because Gottsched was a self-important controversialist who clearly
enjoyed being on center stage, but also because their debate about the
proper scope and power of the imagination was both theoretically
interesting and reflected a tectonic shift in German taste. This shift
is away from the French classicism represented by Racine and Corneille
to the freer forms of Milton and Shakespeare, which in turn lead to
the pan-European romanticism of the later eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.
### 2.1 Gottsched
Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700-66) was born in Konigsberg
and studied philosophy there. He began teaching philosophy there in
1723, but fled the Prussian draft the next year and settled in the
Saxon city of Leipzig, where Leibniz had earlier studied. Leipzig is
only thirty kilometers away from Halle, the Prussian city where Wolff
had been teaching for two decades; but Wolff had been driven from
Halle in 1722 by the reaction to his argument that the
"atheistic" Chinese could arrive at the same moral truths
as Christian Europeans by the use of human reason alone. So Gottsched
may never have met Wolff. Nevertheless, he had already been exposed to
Wolffian philosophy in Konigsberg, and his two-volume *Erste
Grunde der gesamten Weltweisheit* ("First Principles of
all Philosophy," 1733-34), which includes an extensive
review of natural science as well as logic, metaphysics, and ethics,
became the most widely adopted textbook of Wolffian
philosophy. However, although he eventually held the professorship in
logic and metaphysics in Leipzig, Gottsched was also the professor of
poetry, and by far the greatest part of his boundless energy was
devoted to literature and philology. In the history of aesthetics, his
reputation rests on his *Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst vor
die Deutschen* ("Essay toward a Critical Poetics for the
Germans," 1730, with further editions in 1737, 1742, and
1751).
The practical aim of the *Critical Poetics* was to elevate the
tone of German popular theater and moderate the Baroque excesses of
the upper-class theater by recommending the model of the classical
French theater of Racine and Corneille. The theoretical basis of the
work was the Wolffian principle that the theater and other forms of
poetry (Gottsched had little to say about the emerging medium of the
novel) should be used to convey important moral truths through images
that would make them accessible and engaging for a wide audience.
Gottsched stated his position a year before the *Critical
Poetics* in a speech with the anti-Platonic title "Plays and
especially tragedies are not to be banished from a well-ordered
republic" where he defined a tragedy as
> an instructive moral poem, in which an important
> action of preeminent persons is imitated and presented on the
> stage. (Gottsched, *Schriften*, p. 5)
>
>
>
>
He revealed the underlying premise of his
argument when he observed that
> The improvement of the human heart is not a work
> which can happen in an hour. It requires a thousand preparations, a
> thousand circumstances, much knowledge, conviction, experiences,
> examples and encouragement.... (*Schriften*, p. 9)
>
>
>
>
It would become a central theme of German
Enlightenment aesthetics that even if people know the general truths
of morality in some abstract way, the arts can make those truths
concrete, alive, and effective for them in a way that nothing else
can. The *Critical Poetics* opens with a brief history of
poetry rather than with a statement of theoretical principles, but its
first chapter concludes with a similar suggestion that the point of
poetry is to make moral truths alive through their presentation in a
form accessible to our senses: "The arousal of affects
is...much livelier" in tragedy and comedy than anywhere
else,
> because the visible representation of persons is
> far more sensibly touching than the best description. The manner of
> writing is, especially in tragedy, noble and sublime, and it has
> rather a superfluity than a lack of instructive sayings. Even comedy
> teaches and instructs the observer, although it arouses
> laughter. (*Schriften*, p. 33)
>
>
>
>
The details of Gottsched's view emerge in the
succeeding chapters on "The character of a poet" and
"On the good taste of a poet."
In the first of these chapters, Gottsched defines a poet as one who
produces imitations of nature:
>
>
> A poet is a skilled imitator of all natural things; and this he has in
> common with painters, connoisseurs of music, etc. He is however
> distinguished from these by the manner of his imitation and the means
> through which he achieves it. The painter imitates nature with brush
> and colors; the musician through beat and harmony; the poet, however,
> through a discourse that is rhythmic or otherwise well arranged; or,
> which is much the same, through a harmonious and good-sounding text,
> which we call a poem. (*Schriften*, p. 39)
>
>
>
Gottsched goes on to argue that a poet must have a sharp wit or
acumen, a "power of mind which readily perceives the similarity
of things and thus can make a comparison among them," but also
that such a "natural gift" is "in itself still raw
and imperfect if it is not awaked and cleansed of the incorrectness
that clings to it" (*Schriften*, p. 44).
For the wit of a poet to lead to good results, it must therefore be
accompanied with "art and learning," "extensive
scholarship," and a strong "power of judgment,"
including sound moral judgment, because his task is to make moral
truths accessible to his audience through his imitations. All of
these capacities require cultivation; once they have been cultivated,
the artist can better fulfill his double task of imitation: through
the imitation of worthy deeds in the medium of his art, he is to
encourage his audience to the performance of similarly worthy deeds
themselves.
Thus far, Gottsched has not made special use of Wolffian terms. His
ensuing discussion of the "good taste of a poet" is more
explicitly Wolffian. Gottsched begins by characterizing taste in its
literal sense--the taste of food or drink--as a form of
representation "that for all of its clarity has nothing distinct
in it." He then states that in its "metaphorical"
sense taste is always associated with the "liberal arts and
other sensible things," such as "poetry, oratory, music,
painting, and architecture, likewise in dress, gardens, household
furnishings, etc.," not with subjects "where it is a
matter of reason alone" and "where it is possible to make
the strictest demonstrations from distinctly cognized fundamental
truths," such as "arithmetic and geometry or other
sciences" (*Schriften*, pp. 60-1). Thus
"metaphorical as well as ordinary taste has to do only with
clear but not entirely distinct concepts of things, and distinguishes
from one another the sort of things that one judges in accordance with
mere sensation." However, although it follows from the fact that
judgments of taste are made on the basis of "clear but not
entirely distinct concepts" that "people who judge merely
on the basis of taste" can arrive at opposite conclusions,
Gottsched holds that such opposed judgments cannot both be true, and
that there must be a true fact of the matter to which one but not the
other of them corresponds. In other words, although judgments of taste
are made on the basis of clear but indistinct concepts, which is to
say sensory perceptions and feelings rather than clear and distinct
concepts, they nevertheless
> have their ground in the unalterable nature of
> things themselves; in the concordance of the manifold; in order and
> harmony. These laws, which are investigated, discovered, and confirmed
> through lengthy experience and much reflection, are unbreakable and
> firm, even if someone who judges in accordance with his taste
> sometimes gives preference to those works which more or less violate
> them. (*Schriften*, pp. 62-3)
>
>
>
>
In Gottsched's view, judgments of taste, even if
they are not made on the basis of explicit knowledge of objective
rules about the perfection of things, track those objective rules
when they are in fact correct. Experts in the relevant art can make
those rules explicit. The "touchstone" for judgments of
taste
> is thus found in the rules for perfection that are
> suitable for every particular kind of beautiful things, whether
> buildings, paintings, music, etc., and which can be distinctly
> conceived and demonstrated by genuine masters
> thereof. (*Schriften*, pp. 64-5)
>
>
>
>
Thus judgments of taste are not to be attributed
to "wit, nor to imagination, nor to memory," nor to any
"sixth sense," but to "understanding,"
although not to "reason" (*Schriften*,
pp. 63-4)), since these judgments track the rules that the
experts know but are not explicitly derived from those rules.
And what are the rules in accordance with which judgments of taste are
tacitly made? The most general rule is simply that art should imitate
nature, so that in order to be beautiful art must imitate what is
beautiful in nature. Poets in particular must give truthful but lively
descriptions of "natural things," and in the case of
poetry destined for the theater they must give their characters
"such words, gestures, and actions" as are
"appropriate to their circumstances" (*Schriften*,
p. 81). Gottsched does not interpret this rule to mean that poets can
describe only the actual actions and feelings of actual people; of
course poetry can present fables as well as history. But for Gottsched
a fable is
> an occurrence that is possible in certain
> circumstances although it has not actually taken place, in which a
> useful moral truth lies hidden. Philosophically one could say that it
> is a piece of another possible world (*Schriften*, p. 86)
>
>
>
>
Insofar as it does not recount an actual event a
fable is "probable" rather than "true." But
for Gottsched probability depends upon the consistency of the
fictional event with the actual laws of nature, in particular the
laws of human nature, even though the circumstances of the fictional
world differ in some regard from those of the actual world. In this
regard even the fable must still be an imitation of nature with all
its perfections. Of course Gottsched's rider that the fable must
contain a hidden moral truth means that it must also be consistent
with the real rules of moral perfection, and indeed that the point of
poetic indulgence in fable or fiction is precisely to make a moral
truth alive and forceful to us by showing that it holds even in a
possible world that differs from the actual world in certain of its
facts but not in its principles.
### 2.2 Bodmer and Breitinger
Gottsched's work became the subject of a "war of the
poets" with the Swiss writers Johann Jacob Bodmer and Johann
Jacob Breitinger. Bodmer (1698-1783) taught Swiss history in
Zurich for forty years, advocated the works of Dante and
Shakespeare, and translated Milton's *Paradise Lost* into
German prose. Breitinger (1701-76) taught Greek, Hebrew, logic,
and rhetoric, and edited the works of the German Baroque poet Martin
Opitz. Together, they edited *Die Discourse der Mahlern*
("The Discourse of the Painters"), Switzerland's first
"moral weekly" based on the model of *The
Spectator*, from 1721-23. These essays did not concern
painting at all or even general issues about the arts very
much--the name merely reflects their use of the names of famous
painters as pseudonymous signatures for their articles--although
one of Bodmer's articles on Opitz celebrated the imagination as the
key to poetic success: "A writer such as our Opitz who has
enriched and filled the imagination with images of things can write
poetry that is lively and natural" and by "the strength of
his imagination bring back all the ideas that he had when he was
really in love, empathetic, depressed, or enraged" (*Die
Discourse der Mahlern*, Erster Theil, XIX Discourse, cited
from *Dichtungstheorien der Aufklarung*, p. 13).
The emphasis on the imagination seems to have been the central issue
in Bodmer and Breitinger's dispute with Gottsched, which came to a
head in Breitinger's own *Critische Dichtkunst*, published in
1740 with a forward by Bodmer. Because they shared with Gottsched the
general assumption that art is based on the imitation of nature and
has the goal of making important moral truths come alive for us, it is
hard to see exactly what divided the two sides in this dispute, but
the key seems to lie in their conception of poetic fables. As we saw,
Gottsched believed that a poetic fable describes events in a possible
rather than in the actual world, but he insists that the laws of
nature and human nature must remain constant: thus a poetic fable can
depict a hero who never existed, and make some moral truth alive to us
through its depiction of this possible rather than actual hero, but
everything about this hero and his world should still be
natural. Bodmer and Breitinger, however, as advocates of Shakespeare
and Milton, believed that important moral truths could be made alive
to us through works of the poetic imagination that depart more
drastically from actual nature and history. They held that novelty is
an especially powerful source of aesthetic pleasure and thus an
especially powerful means of making moral truths come alive, and for
this reason they concluded that "since the most ancient
times" the fable has been the means "for bringing the most
useful but at the same time best known moral truths home to us in a
pleasing way" (Breitinger, *Critische Dichtkunst*, cited
from *Dichtungstheorien der Aufklarung*, p. 42). Their idea is
that the more imaginative inventions of the poets--the Satan of
Milton or the Caliban of Shakespeare rather than the more human heroes
of Racine and Corneille admired by Gottsched--make moral truths
appear more alive precisely by their attention-grabbing departure from
the familiar creatures of the real world. Thus Bodmer and Breitinger
thought that the moralistic aim of poetry that they accepted in common
with Gottsched could be better achieved by a freer use of the
imagination in poetry than Gottsched was prepared to allow. They
agreed in their philosophical analysis of the ends of art but
disagreed in their empirical assessment of its most effective
means.
By their advocacy of Milton and Shakespeare, the most imaginative
poets of the preceding century, Bodmer and Breitinger prepared the way
for subsequent artistic movements that emphasized the freedom of the
imagination, even while they continued to work within the conceptual
framework of Wolffian perfectionism. The same is true for two
professional philosophers of the time who also worked within the
Wolffian framework but took at least one step towards an aesthetic
theory that could subsequently give the play of the mental powers
equal importance with the sensible representation of truth by treating
the aesthetic qualities of representations as parallel to rather than
identical with their purely cognitive qualities. So let us now turn to
the innovations of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten and his disciple and
ally, Georg Friedrich Meier. Meier actually responded directly to
Gottsched in a number of polemics, but since his views were based
largely--although not entirely--on Baumgarten's, it will be
better to treat them together than to treat Meier now.
## 3. Baumgarten and Meier: Aesthetics as the Analogue of Rational Cognition
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762), as previously
mentioned, introduced the term "aesthetics" in his 1735
thesis *Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema
pertinentibus* ("Philosophical meditations pertaining to
some matters concerning poetry"). Baumgarten's new name for the
discipline did not, however, signify a complete break with earlier
philosophical views, that is, with the perfectionist aesthetics of
Leibniz and Wolff. By introducing the concept of "analogue of
reason" Baumgarten did however make one key departure from the
Wolffian model that would eventually open the way for much more
radical reconceptions of aesthetic experience in Germany; Baumgarten
would also introduce an emphasis on the emotional impact of art that
is lacking in Wolff. But Baumgarten nevertheless remained more a Moses
who glimpsed the new theory from the shores of Wolffianism than a
Joshua who conquered the new aesthetic territory.
### 3.1 Baumgarten
Baumgarten was the son of a Pietist minister from Berlin, but was
orphaned by the time he was eight. He followed his older brother Jacob
Sigismund (who would become a prominent theologian and historian of
religion) to Halle when he was thirteen. The Baumgartens thus arrived
in Halle just after Wolff had been expelled and the study of his
philosophy banned, although the ban was less strictly enforced at the
famous Pietist orphanage and school in Halle (the Franckesche Stift)
where they went first than at the university. The younger Baumgarten
started at the university at sixteen (in 1730), and studied theology,
philology, poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy, especially Leibniz, whose
philosophy unlike that of Wolff had not been banned. He began teaching
there himself in 1735, upon the acceptance of his thesis on poetry,
and published his *Metaphysics* in 1739. In 1740, the same year
as he published his *Ethics*, he was called to a
professorship--or more precisely, ordered to accept it--at
another Prussian university, in Frankfurt an der Oder. Georg Friedrich
Meier (1718-1777), who had been studying with Baumgarten, took
over his classes and was himself appointed professor at Halle in
1746.
Having published the textbooks for his metaphysics and ethics classes
(which Kant would still use decades later), Baumgarten then returned
to aesthetics, and began working on a major treatise in 1742. The
first volume of his *Aesthetica* appeared in 1750. It was
written in Latin, like Baumgarten's other works, and was the first
work ever to use the name of the new discipline as a title. The next
year, however, Baumgarten's health began to decline, and a second
volume of the *Aesthetica* came out only in 1758, under
pressure from the publisher. The two volumes cover just under a third
of Baumgarten's original plan, although they may have included the
most original part of the plan. Meanwhile, Meier had been publishing
profusely in Halle since the early 1740s, with works in or relevant to
aesthetics including a *Theoretical Doctrine of the Emotions*
in 1744, a twenty-five part *Evaluation of Gottsched's Poetics*
collected in book form in 1747, a three-volume *Foundations of the
Beautiful Sciences* from 1748-1750, and a condensation of
the latter, the *Extract from the Foundations of the Beautiful Arts
and Sciences* in 1757. (Meier also published massive textbooks in
logic, metaphysics, and ethics, as well as a memoir of Baumgarten and
a German translation of Baumgarten's
Latin *Metaphysics*). Although Meier thus published his main
treatise in aesthetics before Baumgarten did, he claimed it was based
on Baumgarten's lectures, and always presented himself as a disciple
of Baumgarten.
Baumgarten's *Meditations on Poetry* conclude with his famous
introduction of the term "aesthetics": "The Greek
philosophers and the Church fathers have always carefully
distinguished between the aistheta and the noeta," that is,
between objects of sense and objects of thought, and while the latter,
that is, "what can be cognized through the higher faculty"
of mind, are "the object of logic, the aistheta are the subject
of the episteme aisthetike or AESTHETICS," the science of
perception (*Meditationes*, SSCXVI, p. 86). But this work
says nothing about in what way the new discipline might be a general
science of perception, and analyzes only the nature of poetry and our
experience of it. We will first see what is novel in Baumgarten's
theory of poetry, and then turn to his larger work to see what it
suggests about the general character of the new discipline. Baumgarten
begins the work with a series of definitions, defining
"discourse" as a "series of words that bring to mind
[*intelligimus*] connected representations,"
"sensible representations" as ones "received through
the lower part of the cognitive faculty," "sensible
discourse" as a "discourse of sensible
representations," and finally a "poem" as a
"perfect sensible discourse." The parts of sensible
discourse are "(1) sensible representations, (2) their
interconnections, and (3) the words, or the articulate sounds which
are represented by the letters and which symbolize the words,"
and sensible discourse is "directed toward the apprehension of
sensible discourse" (*Meditationes*,
SSSSI-IX, pp. 6-10). The key thoughts in this
series of definitions is that poetry is aimed not just at conveying
truth, but at conveying it by means of "sensible
representations," or imagery drawn from the senses, and that the
"perfection" of a poem may lie in both its medium, that
is, the words its uses, and the imagery it arouses, and indeed in the
relationship between these two dimensions. Thus Baumgarten introduces
the idea that the sensible imagery a work of art arouses is not just a
medium, more or less perfect, for conveying truth, but a locus of
perfection in its own right. This is a view that was barely hinted at
by Wolff, and not at all in his discussion of imitation as the
perfection of mimetic arts, but only in his discussion of mixed arts
like architecture, where he took into account the appearance as well
as the function of structural elements.
As he continues Baumgarten remains within the Wolffian framework by
defining sensible representations as clear rather than
obscure--thus he rejects poetry that aims at obscurity for its
own sake (*Meditationes*, SSXIII, p. 14)--but confused
rather than distinct, and thus as conveying more representations
packed together rather than fewer that are neatly separated. Or as he
puts it, poems aim for *extensive* rather
than *intensive* clarity, conveying more rather than less
information but without separating the images from each other, as
would be aimed for in scientific or "logical" discourse
(*Meditationes*, SSSSXVI-XVII, p. 16). And since
individuals are more fully determined, or more fully characterized,
than any abstraction, "particular representations are in the
highest degree poetic" (*Meditationes*, SSXIX,
p. 18): poetry achieves its goal of arousing a density of images by
portraying individuals in particular circumstances rather than by
trafficking in generalities and abstractions. Thus Baumgarten turns
what is a vice in scientific knowledge--connoting too many ideas
without clearly distinguishing among them--into the paradigm
virtue of poetry.
What is particularly striking is that he then uses what we might call
this quantitative conception of the aim of poetry, that it arouse more
and denser rather than fewer and more clearly separated images, as the
basis for an argument that poetry should be emotionally
affecting. First he argues that poetry aims to arouse our affects or
engage our emotions simply because they are sensible:
> Since affects are more notable degrees of pain and
> pleasure, their sensible representations are given in representing
> something to oneself confusedly as good or bad, and thus they
> determine poetic representations, and *to arouse affects is
> poetic*. (*Meditationes*, SSXXV, p. 24)
>
>
>
>
But then he goes on to give an explicitly
quantitative argument for this conclusion:
>
>
> The same can be demonstrated by this reasoning also: we represent more
> in those things which we represent as good and bad for us than if we
> do not so represent them; therefore representations of things which
> are confusedly exhibited as good or bad for us are extensively clearer
> than if they were not so displayed, hence they are more poetic. Now
> such representations are motions of the affects, hence *to arouse
> affects is poetic*. (*Meditationes*, SSXXVI, pp.
> 24-6)
>
>
>
Baumgarten thus innovates within the formal structure of Wolffian
philosophy in order to accommodate a non-cognitivist aspect of the
aims of art. Indeed, his emphasis on the poetic arousal of emotion has
recently been argued to be a subtle Pietist response to Wolffian
intellectualism. This aspect of Baumgarten's early poetics clearly
impressed his student Meier, who devoted one of his earliest books to
a *Theoretical Doctrine of the Emotions*, or
"*Gemuthsbewegungen*," literally,
"movements of the mind." Meier states that
> Aesthetics is in general the science of sensible
> cognition. This science concerns itself with everything that can be
> assigned in more detail to sensible cognition and to its
> presentation. Now since the passions have a strong influence on
> sensible cognition and its presentation, aesthetics for its part can
> rightly demand a theory of the emotions. (Meier, *Theoretische
> Lehre der Gemuthsbewegungen*, SS7, p. 7)
>
>
>
>
However, since Baumgarten himself does not give
as much emphasis to the emotional aspect of the experience of art in
his *Aesthetica* as his earlier *Meditations* might lead
us to expect, perhaps because it remained incomplete, we will return
to Meier's development of this theme only after we have considered
Baumgarten's mature work.
Before we can turn to the *Aesthetica*, however, we must look
at some of the key definitions Baumgarten lays down in the chapter on
"Empirical Psychology" in his *Metaphysics*.
Baumgarten begins by defining the "inferior" or
"lower faculty of cognition" as that which works with
sensible representations, which are in turn "indistinct, that
is, obscure or confused" (*Metaphysik*,
SSSS382-3, pp. 115-16). Sensible representations
can be developed in either of two ways, however: either with
increasing clarity of their component "marks," in which
case they acquire "greater clarity" (*claritas
intensive maior*), or with increasing "multitude of
marks," in which case they acquire "liveliness"
(*vividitas, claritas extensive maior, cogitationum nitor*)
(*Nitor* means brightness or splendor). The former development
of cognition leads to proofs, while what makes a perception lively is
a "painterly" form of clarity (*eine malende*),
thus one that consists in richness of imagery rather than analytical
clarity (*Metaphysik*, SS393, p. 119). It is this
liveliness rather than probative clarity which is the basis of
aesthetic experience.
Baumgarten then defines judgment as the representation of the
perfection or imperfection of things. Judgment is initially divided
into "practical" judgment, the object of which is
"things foreseen," and "theoretical judgment,"
which concerns everything else (*Metaphysik*, SS451, p.
139). Theoretical judgment is in turn divided into that which is
distinct and that which is rather sensible, and the "ability to
judge sensibly is *taste in the broad*," that is,
aesthetic sense. So taste is the ability to judge perfections and
imperfections sensibly rather than intellectually. Perfections and
imperfections, it should be noted, are defined entirely formally as
the "agreement or disagreement" of the "manifold of
a thing" (*Metaphysik*, SS452, p. 139). Next,
Baumgarten divides the sensible representation or judgment of
perfections and imperfections into the "intuitive" and the
"symbolic," that is, those which consist in sensible
properties directly and those which consist in sensible properties
taken as symbols of something else, and then adds that the sensible
cognition of a perfection is pleasing and that of its imperfection
displeasing. If I have sensible cognition neither of an object's
perfection nor its imperfection, then it is indifferent to me
(*Metaphysik*, SS478, p. 150). Finally, Baumgarten states
that beauty is perfection perceived by means of the senses rather than
by the pure intellect (*Metaphysik*, SS488,
pp. 154-5).
Thus far, then, Baumgarten has remained within the conceptual
framework of Wolff. One key addition to Wolff that he makes in
the *Metaphysics*, however, is the concept of the *analogon
rationis*, the "analogue of reason." He writes:
>
>
> I cognize the interconnection of some things distinctly, and of others
> indistinctly, consequently I have the faculty for both. Consequently
> I have an understanding, for insight into the connections of things,
> that is, *reason* (*ratio*); and a faculty for
> indistinct insight into the connections of things, which consists of
> the following: 1) the sensible faculty for insight into the
> concordances among things, thus sensible wit; 2) the sensible faculty
> for cognizing the differences among things, thus sensible acumen; 3)
> sensible memory; 4) the faculty of invention; 5) the faculty of
> sensible judgment and taste together with the judgment of the senses;
> 6) the expectation of similar cases; and 7) the faculty of sensible
> designation. All of these lower faculties of cognition, in so far as
> they represent the connections among things, and in this respect are
> similar to reason, comprise *that which is similar to reason*
> (*analogon rationis*), or the sum of all the cognitive
> faculties that represent the connections among things
> indistinctly. (*Metaphysik*, SS468,
> p. 146)
>
>
>
Baumgarten's departure from Wolff here may be subtle, but his idea is
that the use of a broad range of our mental capacities for dealing
with sensory representations and imagery is not an inferior and
provisional *substitute* for reason and its logical and
scientific analysis, but something *parallel* to reason.
Moreover, this complex of human mental powers is productive of
pleasure, through the sensible representation of perfection, in its
own right. Baumgarten has not yet introduced the idea that aesthetic
pleasure comes from the free play of our mental powers, but he has
relaxed the grip of the assumption that aesthetic response is a
straightforward case of cognition.
The potential of this idea finally begins to emerge in
the *Aesthetica*. Taking up where the *Meditations* had
left off, Baumgarten begins the "Prolegomena" of this work
with his famous definition of aesthetics:
> Aesthetics (the theory of the liberal arts, the
> logic of the lower capacities of cognition [*gnoseologia
> inferior*], the art of thinking beautifully, the art of
> the *analogon rationis*) is the science of sensible
> cognition. (*Aesthetica*, SS1)
>
>
>
>
Baumgarten's list of synonyms may be confusing,
for it includes both traditional and novel designations of his
subject matter. He explains in the preface to the second edition of
the *Metaphysics* that he
> adds synonymous designations from other authors in
> parentheses alongside [his own] defining expressions so that the
> latter might more easily be understood. (*Vorreden zur
> Metaphysik*, p. 43)
>
>
>
>
Yet it is clear that he means his own new science
to be broader in scope than some of the more traditional definitions
he brackets: he intends to provide a *general* science of
sensible cognition rather than *just* a theory of the fine arts
or our taste for them. Although Baumgarten makes some broad claims
for the new science, this is not where the novelty of
the *Aesthetica* lies, for at least in the extant part of the
work Baumgarten never actually develops this theme. Instead, the
innovation comes at the beginning of the first chapter of the work,
when Baumgarten writes that
> The aim of aesthetics is the perfection of
> sensible cognition as such, that is, beauty, while its imperfection as
> such, that is, ugliness, is to be avoided. (*Aesthetica*,
> SS14)
>
>
>
Baumgarten's departure from Wolff's formula that beauty is the
sensitive cognition of perfection may easily be overlooked, but in his
transformation of that into his own formula that beauty is the
perfection of sensitive cognition he is saying that beauty lies
not--or as his subsequent practice suggests, not just--in
the representation of some objective perfection in a form accessible
to our senses, but rather--or also--in the exploitation of
the specific possibilities of sensible representation for their own
sake. In other words, there is potential for beauty in the form of a
work as well as in its content because its form can be pleasing to our
complex capacity for sensible representation--the *analogon
rationis*--just as its content can be pleasing to our
theoretical or practical reason itself. The satisfaction of those
mental powers summed up in the *analogon rationis* is a source
of pleasure in its own right.
What does this mean in practice? Baumgarten's recognition of the
perfection of sensible cognition as well as the perfection of what is
represented as a distinct source of pleasure in beauty leads him to
recognize not just one but in fact three different potential sources
of beauty in a work of art: "the harmony of the thoughts insofar
as we abstract from their order and their signs," or means of
expression; "the harmony of the order in which we meditate upon
the beautifully thought content," and "the harmony of the
signs" or means of expression "among themselves and with
the content and the order of the content" (*Aesthetica*,
SSSS18-20). Here Baumgarten is importing the traditional
rhetorical concepts of *inventio*, *dispositio*
and *elocutio* into his system, and conceiving of the latter
two, the harmony of the thoughts and the harmony of the expression
with the thoughts, as the dimensions in which the potentials for
pleasure within our distinctively sensible manner of representing and
thinking are realized. He thus recognizes those aspects of works of
art, which were touched upon only in passing by Wolff and Gottsched,
as sources of pleasure internal to works of art that are equally
significant with the pleasure that arises from the content of works,
considered as representations of perfections outside of the works
themselves. The three main sections of Baumgarten's planned project,
the "heuristic," "methodology," and
"semiotics" were intended to cover these three sources of
pleasure in works of art. (see *Aesthetica*, SS13).
As it happened, Baumgarten did not live to complete even the first of
these three parts. Further, the material he did complete suggests that
he may have been more successful in making conceptual space for the
appreciation of the particularly sensible aspects of art than in
substantively changing how art is actually experienced. What
Baumgarten does is to take a list of the categories of the perfections
of the content of logical or scientific cognition and construct a
parallel list by adding the adjective "sensible" to them
to arrive at a list of sensible or aesthetic perfections (and Meier
makes a similar addition to lists of the perfections of the
organization and expression of scientific knowledge). Nevertheless,
some of Baumgarten's categories of aesthetic qualities are
important. The list of the perfections of every kind of cognition that
Baumgarten gives in the first chapter of the *Aesthetica* is
"wealth, magnitude, truth, clarity, and liveliness"
(*ubertas*, *magnitudo*, *veritas*, *claritas*,
*certitudo
et vita cognitionis*), and thus beauty consists in the aesthetic
versions of these perfections (*Aesthetica*,
SSSS22-25).
However, in his classroom lectures on the *Aesthetica*,
Baumgarten particularly emphasized the *moral* magnitude of the
subject matter of works of art as a major source of our pleasure in
them, and there mentions that works of art will therefore be touching,
that is to say, emotionally moving. Baumgarten stressed that the moral
content of a work of art is only one source of beauty, and that a work
of art can be beautiful without any moral grandeur.
"[A]esthetic dignity," he claimed, "belongs to
aesthetic magnitude as a part to the whole," but if a work of
art represents moral agents then it cannot be maximally beautiful
without representing moral dignity, and it certainly cannot be
beautiful if it conveys an attitude contrary to morality. What is
important here, finally, is the moral standing of what is contained in
the work of art, not the actual morality of the artist himself.
### 3.2 Meier
Baumgarten did not extensively develop his comment that art must be
touching, but this became central to Meier's aesthetics. In his early
work on the emotions, Meier emphasized that aesthetics should deal
with the passions because they have a "strong influence on
sensible cognition." His position is not just that the passions
have influence on sensible cognition, but that they are themselves a
great source of sensible pleasure, and that it is therefore part of
the aim of art to arouse them. Meier analyzes the passions, in spite
of their name (the German term *Leidenschaft*, like the
Latin *passio*, etymologically means something that happens to
someone rather than something that one does, an *actio*), as a
form of mental activity: they are "efforts or strivings of the
soul" that result in a desire or an aversion, more precisely
particularly strong and firm desires or aversions
(Meier, *Gemuthsbewegungen*, SS27, p. 30). This might
lead one to expect that desires and aversions can be sources of great
pleasure or displeasure, depending upon whether they are realized or
not, but Meier goes on to argue that "all emotions, the
disagreeable ones not excluded, produce a gratification,"
because they are active states or perfections of the soul, and
"whenever the soul feels a perfection in itself, it is sensitive
of a gratification." And because they are so strong, the
passions, whether desires or aversions, are those among our mental
states that make us most aware of our own mental activity, and
therefore are actually the strongest source of pleasure for us:
> in the passions almost the entire lower power of
> cognition and desire is engaged, that is, almost the entire lower part
> of our soul. Thus in the emotions the soul is sensitive of the
> strength of its powers, that is, of its perfection. It must therefore
> necessarily be gratified with its own strength. It must be joyous when
> it feels as much as it can. (*Gemuthsbewegungen*, SS89,
> p. 124)
>
>
>
>
In another essay Meier identifies this feeling of
joy at the activity of our own soul with the category of the
"life of cognition," and thus makes it a central source
of our pleasure in art.
> Living cognition becomes alive through the
> sensible representations. The lower powers of the soul, the desires
> and aversions, constitute the life of a cognition. Everything that
> leaves our powers in peace when we cognize it is a dead
> cognition. (Meier, "Dass das Wesen der Dichtkunst in unserer
> Natur gegrundet ist" ("That the essence of poetry is
> grounded in our nature"), in Meier, *Fruhe Schriften*,
> Part 3, pp. 160-4, at p. 162)
>
>
>
>
Art aims for the opposite. Indeed, Meier
continues that it is by arousing our passions that art achieves its
goal of a clear but confused, that is, manifold but densely packed,
cognition. For Meier, moving our emotions is not just some small part
of the beauty of art, as Baumgarten seems to suggest. Instead, the
arousal of our emotions, even ones that considered by themselves
should be disagreeable, is the strongest source of the pleasure at
which art aims because it is the most intense form of mental
activity.
Meier thus departed from the strictly cognitivist aesthetics of Wolff
and connected what he had learned from Baumgarten with the passionate
aesthetics of the French Abbe Du Bos. With his connection of the
pleasure in experiencing emotions to the pleasure of experiencing
mental activity as such he brought Wolffian aesthetics a step closer
to contemporary British aesthetics. Meier thereby prepared the way for
the tremendous influence that British aesthetics would have in Germany
by the end of the 1750s. But while Meier stressed
the *activity* of the mind and Baumgarten argued that aesthetic
experience is based in an analogue of reason, not reason itself,
neither was quite ready to introduce the idea of the *free
play* of our mental powers as the fundamental source of our
pleasure in aesthetic experience. Baumgarten mentions play once, but
only to recommend that children be allowed to play in order to develop
their cognitive powers, not as the fundamental source of mature
aesthetic pleasure (Poppe, SS55, p. 102). Baumgarten also at least
once characterizes the mental state of aesthetic experience as a form
of harmony: he says that the "aestheticodogmatic" thinker
(by which he means a thinker aiming to express a true doctrine
aesthetically )
> should in his striving for truth put that before
> the eyes of his audience the truth of which he has known with
> certitude and which can be represented in its aesthetic truth on the
> basis of the harmony between the upper and lower faculties of
> cognition. ( *Aesthetica*, SS573; Schweizer, pp.
> 254-5)
>
>
>
>
But the occurrence of this comment in the context
of Baumgarten's discussion of aesthetic truth (or of how truths can
be presented in ways agreeable to the senses) makes clear that with
this reference to "harmony" between the lower and upper
faculties of cognition he is not quite introducing the idea of
a *free* play between them. That idea would be decisively
introduced into German aesthetics only with Kant's unique synthesis
of the preceding German tradition with the British tradition. Before
that was to happen, however, the ideas, emphasized more by Meier
although already suggested by Baumgarten, that art aims at arousing
our emotions and at the pleasurable activity of the mind, and at the
former as an instance of the latter, would be further developed by an
intervening generation of German thinkers. Let us now turn to some of
those.
## 4. Mendelssohn, Winckelmann, and Lessing: Mixed Emotions
### 4.1 Mendelssohn
In a review of Meier's 1757 *Extract from the Foundations of all
fine Arts and Sciences*, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86)
rejected what he took to be the excessively abstract and *a
priori* method of Baumgarten and Meier, writing that:
>
>
> Just as little as the philosopher can discover the appearances of
> nature, without examples from experience, merely through *a
> priori* inferences, so little can he establish appearances in the
> beautiful world, if one can thus express oneself, without diligent
> observations. The securest path of all, just as in the theory of
> nature, is this: One must assume certain experiences, explain their
> ground through an hypothesis, then test this hypothesis against
> experiences from a quite different species, and only assume those
> hypotheses to be general principles which have thus held their ground;
> one must finally seek to explain these principles in the *theory of
> nature* through the nature of bodies and motion, but
> in *aesthetics* through the nature of the lower powers of our
> soul. (Review of Meier, pp. 197-8)
>
>
>
Yet the reference to the "lower powers of the soul" in the
final line of the quotation suggests that Mendelssohn will continue to
work within the general paradigm of Wolffian philosophy himself. He
certainly does, but what he aims to do is to show that the perfections
that can be realized in aesthetic experience are both more positive
and more complicated than those recognized by
Baumgarten. Mendelssohn's method allows him to recognize that all of
our aesthetic experiences draw on a range of mental and even physical
resources, and that because of this many aesthetic experiences can be
understood only as "mixed" rather than simple
feelings. Mendelssohn's analysis of the complexity of aesthetic
experience places more emphasis on the powers of mind and body
involved in such experience than on the objective perfections that art
may represent or nature contain. His account further prepares the
ground for the full-blown theory of aesthetic experience as based in a
play of our powers that will subsequently be achieved by Kant and
Schiller. But in his emphasis on the role of the body as well as the
mind in aesthetic experience, Mendelssohn goes beyond his
successors.
Mendelssohn followed his rabbi from Dessau to Berlin at the age of
fourteen. At twenty-one, he became a tutor in the home of a Jewish
silk manufacturer, at twenty-five his accountant, subsequently his
manager, and finally a partner in the business, in which he would work
full-time for the rest of his life. But by twenty-five Mendelssohn had
also mastered not only literary German but Greek, Latin, French, and
English as well as a vast range of literature and philosophy in all
those languages. He had also become friends with the critic and
playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and the writer and publisher
Friedrich Nicolai, and begun an active publishing career. In 1755,
before he turned twenty-six, Mendelssohn published *Philosophical
Dialogues* on the model of Shaftesbury, the epistolary *On Sentiments*,
and, with Lessing, *Pope, a Metaphysician!* The next year he
published *Thoughts on Probability* and a translation of
Rousseau's second discourse *On the Origins of
Inequality*. From 1756 to 1759 he collaborated with Lessing and
Nicolai on the *Library of Fine Sciences and Liberal Arts*, for
which he wrote two dozen reviews of new works in aesthetics and
literature, and from 1759 to 1765 he contributed nearly one hundred
reviews to Nicolai's *Letters concerning the newest
Literature*, discussing works not only in aesthetics and
literature but also metaphysics, mathematics, natural science, and
politics (*Gesammelte Schriften*, vol. 5.1 (1991),
pp. 5-676). In 1761 he published the first edition of
his *Philosophical Writings*, mostly on aesthetics, and in 1763
he took first place in a Prussian Academy of Sciences essay
competition for an essay on *Evidence in Metaphysical
Sciences*, beating out the entry by Kant. But as a Jew, he was
denied entrance to the Academy by the "enlightened"
Frederick the Great, even though he had the strong support of its
members. In 1767, Mendelssohn published *Phaedo: or on the
Immortality of the Soul*, loosely based on Plato's dialogue of the
same name, an immensely popular work. In the 1770s, after the onset of
a "nervous debility" that he would henceforth claim
prevented him from serious philosophical work, Mendelssohn began a
translation of the Pentatuech and Psalms into modern German (but
printed in Hebrew characters) that he hoped would preserve the Jewish
religion while simultaneously facilitating the assimilation of Jews
into German culture and society. His masterpiece *Jerusalem, or on
Religious Power and Judaism*, in which he argued for the civil
rights of the Jews by arguing that the state had no right to recognize
any religion at all and therefore must allow all religions freedom
from interference, was published in 1783. In 1785, he returned to
philosophy one last time with *Morning Lessons*, a magisterial
summary of his own version of Wolffianism. By this time, however, he
was caught up in a strenuous controversy with the fideist philosopher
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi over whether his lifelong friend Lessing had
been a Spinozist. In the midst of this controversy he died of
in January, 1786, at the age of fifty-six.
Mendelssohn worked within the framework of Wolffian metaphysics and
psychology, and thus he accepted the definition of sensible perception
as clear but confused cognition. He accepted Wolff's explanation that
pleasure arises in the sensible perception of perfection, but also
Baumgarten's transformation of that formula into the explanation of
beauty as the perfection of sensible cognition: in Mendelssohn's
terms, "the essence of the fine arts and sciences consists in an
artful, sensibly perfect representation or in a sensible perfection
represented by art" ("On the Main Principles of the Fine
Arts and Sciences" (1757), *Philosophical Writings*,
pp. 172-3). But Mendelssohn vigorously rejected any
interpretation of the Wolffian premise according to which the
confusion of sensible perception itself could be the source of our
pleasure in it. For Mendelssohn, any "pure gratification of the
soul must be grounded in the positive powers of our soul and not in
its incapacity, not in the limitation of those original powers"
(*On Sentiments*, Fourth Letter; *Philosophical
Writings*, p. 19). Further, "neither fully distinct nor
fully obscure concepts are compatible with the feeling of
beauty": beauty requires that an object offer enough
"extensive clarity," that is, richness and variety, to
stimulate us, but enough unity so that we can easily take it in as a
whole (*On Sentiments*, Third Letter, *Philosophical
Writings*, pp. 14-15). Mendelssohn's explicit thesis is that
while the parts of an object must be distinct enough to allow one to
have a sense of their variety but dense enough to allow one to grasp
them together with equilibrium and proportion, it is the latter that
is the source of our pleasure. It might seem a stretch to read him as
also suggesting that it is the play of the mind back and forth between
its perception of the parts and its grasp of the whole that is
pleasant. But he will argue that the exercise of various of our
powers, indeed as we are about to see bodily as well as mental powers,
is itself a perfection that we enjoy, so this might at least point
toward the idea that the source of pleasure in beauty is the free play
of the those powers.
While rejecting any interpretation of obscurity or confusion as itself
the source of our pleasure in beauty (*On Sentiments*, note
h; *Philosophical Writings*, p. 79), Mendelssohn also rejects
the idea of the Abbe Du Bos (and of Meier's theory of the emotions)
that the mere arousal of feelings as such is the aim of art
(*On Sentiments*, Conclusion; *Philosophical Writings*,
p. 71), as well as the idea of Charles Batteux that "the
imitation of nature is the general means by which the fine arts please
us, and [that] it is possible to derive all particular rules of the
fine arts and sciences from this single principle" ("On
the Main Principles of the Fine Arts and
Sciences", *Philosophical Writings*, p. 170). Yet
Mendelssohn no more rejects the idea that works of art do arouse our
emotions and that they are, at least in many cases, imitations of
nature than he rejects the idea that the perception of perfection and
the perfection of perception is central to our experience of beauty
and other aesthetic properties. So how does he fit all of these ideas
together into his own distinctive theory?
Mendelssohn never presented his aesthetic theory in a full-length
treatise. His most systematic presentation, the 1757 essay "On
the Main Principles of the Fine Arts and Sciences," discusses
only three out of the four axes of potential perfection that he finds
in the complete aesthetic experience. We therefore need to supplement
what we can glean from this essay with suggestions from *On
Sentiments* and the *Rhapsody, or addition to the Letters on
Sentiments* that he added to his 1761 collection. The four axes
that Mendelssohn identifies are the perfection in the object of the
aesthetic experience, typically the perfection of what is depicted by
a work of art but not always, since some arts, such as music and
architecture, and all of nature are not mimetic at all; the perfection
of our own perceptual capacities in the experience of an object, the
"perfection of sensible cognition" that he adopted from
Baumgarten; the perfection of our *bodily* condition that can
be produced through the effect of our mental condition on our body, a
dimension lacking from all previous accounts in the German rationalist
tradition but perhaps inspired by Mendelssohn's acquaintance with
Edmund Burke's account of the physiology of our feelings of the
beautiful and the sublime (itself perhaps building upon the common
property of David Hartley's 1749 *Observations on Man*); and
finally, the perfection of the artistry that has gone into the
production of an object, whether human artistry in the case of a work
of art or divine artistry in the case of the beauties of
nature. Perfection along any of these axes is a potential source of
pleasure in the experience of an object, and the effect of these
sources of pleasure can be additive, each increasing our pleasure in
the same object. But these multiple dimensions to our pleasure in
objects also create the possibility of the "mixed
emotions" that we experience in the artistic representation of
unpleasant or tragic objects, because in those cases our pleasure in
the mental activity stimulated by the work of art, the pleasant effect
of that on the body, and our admiration of the artistry that has gone
into the object can outweigh any pain associated with the depicted
content of the work.
Mendelssohn's characterization of the intrinsic perfection of objects
in nature and thus of the objects depicted in representational art
follows in the path already marked out by Wolff: the perfection of an
object lies in the order, symmetry, and rational coherence of its
parts, and its beauty lies in that perfection insofar as it can be
grasped in sensible cognition. Thus in *On Sentiments*
Mendelssohn writes that we
> call the structure of
> the world *beautiful* in the proper sense of the term when the
> imagination orders its chief parts in as splendid a symmetry as that
> of the order that reason and perception teach us that they possess
> outside us. (*On Sentiments*, Third Letter; *Philosophical
> Writings*, p. 15)
>
>
>
>
In the case of natural objects, this order is
comprised by both the internal organization of an object to suit its
overall goal and the part that the particular object plays in nature
as a whole. In the "Main Principles," Mendelssohn goes
beyond this formalistic characterization of perfection and offers a
more concrete list of the kinds of things that count as perfections
in objects, whether objects in nature enjoyed in their own right or
objects in nature enjoyed through the artistic depiction of them,
which provide "the first level of satisfaction and
dissatisfaction which alternately accompany all our
representations." Here he says that
>
>
> Everything capable of being represented to the senses as a perfection
> could also present an object of beauty. Belonging here are all the
> perfections of external forms, that is, the lines, surfaces, and
> bodies and their movements and changes; the harmony of the multiple
> sounds and colors; the order in the parts of a whole, their
> similarity, variety, and harmony; their transposition and
> transformation into other forms; all the capabilities of our soul, all
> the skills of our body. Even the perfections of our external state
> (under which honor, comfort, and riches are to be understood) cannot
> be excepted from this if they are fit to be represented in a way that
> is apparent to the senses. ("Main
> Principles": *Philosophical Writings*,
> p. 172)
>
>
>
When Mendelssohn refers to the capabilities of our soul and the skills
of our body here, he is referring to them as objects for depiction or
description in a work of art, thus as part of the content of works of
art. This is how he fits into his model the representation of human
intentions, actions, and responses to them, which are the subject
matter of most mimetic art.
The next axis of perfection that Mendelssohn considers is the state of
our mind in response to perfection or imperfection in a real or
represented object. His clearest treatment of this may come in
the *Rhapsody*, which begins by taking up the question of how
we can be "powerfully attracted to the representation" of
something unpleasant. Mendelssohn answers this question this by saying
that
>
>
> Each individual representation stands in a twofold relation. It is
> related, at once, to the matter before it as its object (of which it
> is a picture or copy) and then to the soul or the thinking subject (of
> which it constitutes a determination). As a determination of the soul,
> many a representation can have something pleasant about it although,
> as a picture of the object, it is accompanied by disapproval and a
> feeling of repugnance. (*Rhapsody*; *Philosophical
> Writings*, p. 132)
>
>
>
Several points about this passage need comment. First, while by
"representation" (*Vorstellung*) here Mendelssohn
means a mental state that represents something other than itself and
not an external object such as a painting or a poem that depicts or
describes something, a mental representation can of course indirectly
represent an external object that is not directly present to it but is
indirectly presented to it by an external representation such as a
painting or a poem which is its direct external object, and that is
indeed how artistic representation typically works. Second, while
Mendelssohn here refers to a mental representation as a
"determination" (*Bestimmung*) or property of the
mind, his further discussion suggests that he is actually thinking of
representation as a kind of mental *activity*, an activity
involving our capacities for both knowing and desiring, and that we
enjoy representation because we enjoy mental activity. Thus he
continues that while "elements of perfection" in a thing
are "satisfying and comfortable to us" while
"elements of imperfection...are perceived with
dissatisfaction,"
>
>
> In relation to the thinking subject, the soul, on the other hand,
> perceiving and cognizing the features as well as testifying to
> enjoying them or not constitutes *something actual*
> [*Sachliches*] that is posited in the soul, an affirmative
> determination of the soul. Hence every representation, at least in
> relation to the subject, as an affirmative predicate of the thinking
> entity, must have something about it that we like. For even the
> picture of the deficiency of the object, just like the expression of
> discontent with it, are not deficiencies on the part of the thinking
> entity, but rather affirmative and actual determinations of
> it....considered as a representation, a picture within us that
> engages the soul's capacities of knowing and desiring, the
> representation of what is evil is itself an element of the soul's
> perfection and brings with it something quite pleasant that we by no
> means would prefer not to feel than to
> feel. (*Rhapsody*; *Philosophical Writings*, pp.
> 133-4)
>
>
>
It is striking how Mendelssohn writes here in gerundives and
infinitives rather than in substantives in order to convey a sense of
mental activity: *recognizing* and *approving* or
even *disapproving* are *actions* of the mind
in *knowing* and *desiring*. We enjoy that mental
activity, even when it is stimulated by the representation of
something of which we disapprove, and we enjoy the representation even
of something evil as long as our pleasure in the activity of
representing is not overwhelmed by disapproval of the object of the
representation.
The contrast between perfection or imperfection in the content of a
representation and the enjoyable activity of the mind in representing
that content is the heart of Mendelssohn's theory, so we can interrupt
our catalogue of all four of the axes of perfection that he recognizes
for some comments on this contrast. The first thing to be noticed is
that Mendelssohn here emphasizes the engagement of our powers of both
knowing and desiring in aesthetic experience, not merely the power of
knowing. This gives him room to add an emphasis on our enjoyment of
the arousal of our emotions to Baumgarten's emphasis on our enjoyment
of the perfection of sensible cognition. Now, as we saw, Baumgarten in
fact made room for this dimension of aesthetic experience in his
early *Meditations on Poetry*, even though he did not take it
up again in the *Aesthetica*, and Meier emphasized it in
several of his works. But Mendelssohn adds a crucial point here,
leading to a fundamental revision in the significance of artistic
imitation: in order for us to enjoy the mixed emotions in a pleasing
representation of something that is objectively displeasing, our sense
of the *difference* between the represented content and our act
of representing it cannot be allowed to collapse, and the role of
artistic imitation is precisely to create enough *distance*
between our representation and its object to allow us to enjoy the
representation rather than to collapse that space by creating
the *illusion* that we are in the actual presence of the
depicted object. Mendelssohn writes,
> If the objects gets too close to us, if we regard
> it as a part of us or even as ourselves, the pleasant character of the
> representation completely disappears, and the relation to the subject
> immediately becomes an unpleasant relation to us since here subject
> and object collapse, as it were, into one
> another. (*Rhapsody*; *Philosophical Writings*, p. 134)
>
>
>
>
He then says that a
> means of rendering the most terrifying events
> pleasant to gentle minds is the imitation by art, on the stage, on the
> canvas, and in marble, since an inner consciousness that we have an
> imitation and nothing genuine before our eyes moderates the strength
> of the objective disgust and, as it were, elevates the subjective side
> of the representation. (*Rhapsody*; *Philosophical
> Writings*, p. 138)
>
>
>
>
Thus, contrary to Wolff, Mendelssohn does not
suppose that what we enjoy in imitation is accuracy of representation
taken to the point of illusion, but rather the room for the experience
of our own mental activity that the knowledge that the depicted object
is *only* being imitated allows.
In fact, Mendelssohn's analysis of our mixed emotions in the
experience of tragedy is even more subtle than this, for a further
aspect of it is that our knowledge that we are experiencing
represented rather than real people allows us to enjoy sympathy with
the perfections of the noble characters who are depicted rather than
pity at their weaknesses or at the fate that overcomes them. But
rather than pursuing this, I want to make to make one further point
about Mendelssohn's general account of our enjoyment of the engagement
of our powers of knowing and desiring. This explanation of a
fundamental source of aesthetic pleasure as arising from the
engagement of those two powers might seem to conflict with
Mendelssohn's influential ascription of aesthetic pleasure to
a *third* faculty, the "faculty of approval,"
distinguished from both the "faculty of cognition" and the
"faculty of desire." Mendelssohn introduces this third
faculty in the *Morning Lessons*, a quarter-century after his
early writings on aesthetics. There he says that
>
>
> One usually divides the faculties of the soul into the faculty of
> cognition and the faculty of desire, and assigns the sentiment of
> pleasure and displeasure to the faculty of desire. But it seems to me
> that between knowing and desiring lies the approving, the assent, the
> satisfaction of the soul, which is actually quite remote from
> desire. We contemplate the beauty of nature and of art, without the
> least arousal of desire, with gratification and satisfaction. It
> seems to be a particular mark of beauty that we contemplate it with
> quiet satisfaction; that it pleases, even if we do not possess it, and
> that is remote from the urge to possess it. (*Morgenstunden*,
> Lesson VII, p. 70)
>
>
>
Mendelssohn's introduction of a faculty of approval in 1785 may have
been influential for Kant's elevation of judgment to a faculty on a
par with understanding and reason, signaled in his letter of December
25, 1787, to Karl Leonhard Reinhold, a decisive step in the genesis of
the third critique. But as far as Mendelssohn is concerned, his
explanation of the faculty of approval shows that his basic theory has
not changed. By introducing this faculty, he wants to emphasize that
the experience of beauty or other aesthetic qualities is not actual
knowledge, nor does it lead to specific desires and actions (except
perhaps the desire to be able to continue contemplating an object
already found to have been beautiful). But what satisfies the faculty
of approval is still the activity of the other mental powers. Thus
Mendelssohn writes, first with reference to the power of cognition but
then with reference to desire as well, that
> We can consider the cognition of the soul in
> different respects; either in so far as it is true or false, which I
> call the material aspect in cognition; or in so far as arouses
> pleasure or displeasure, has as its consequence the approval or
> disapproval of the soul, and this can be called the formal aspect in
> cognition.
>
>
>
>
And he explains the latter aspect precisely in
terms of mental activity:
>
>
> Every concept, in so far as it is merely thinkable, has something that
> pleases the soul, that occupies its activity, and is thus cognized by
> it with satisfaction and approval....where the soul finds more
> satisfaction in one concept than in another, more agreeable
> occupation, then can it prefer the former to the latter. In this
> comparison and in the preference that we give to an object consists
> the essence of the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the
> perfect and the imperfect. What we cognize as the best in this
> comparison works on our faculty of desire and stimulates it, where it
> finds no resistance, to activity. This is the side on which the
> faculty of approval touches demand or desire. (*Morgenstunden*,
> Lesson VII, pp. 72-3)
>
>
>
Ordinarily, the faculty of cognition aims at truth, and the faculty of
desire aims at action. The faculty of approval, however, aims just for
the pleasing activity of the other two faculties without their usual
results. The faculty of approval should be distinguished from the
faculties of cognition and desire, since it does not aim at the same
results they do. But it is itself satisfied by creations that set
those faculties into an "agreeable play." This is not a
breach with Mendelssohn's earlier doctrine, but an explanation of
it. Mendelssohn's explicit introduction of the concept of play here,
finally, may be just as influential for the development of Kant's
aesthetics as is his insistence that the faculty of approval does not
lead to actual knowledge or actual desire.
In the *Morning Lessons* Mendelssohn does not emphasize that
the free play of the mind has a pleasing effect on the body, but he
does in his earlier writings, so let us now return to this third item
in Mendelssohn's catalogue of the axes of perfection in aesthetic
experience. This is the effect of the activity of the mind in
aesthetic experience on the state of the body, a point that
Mendelssohn emphasizes in *On Sentiments* and
the *Rhapsody* although not in the essay on the "Main
Principles." Mendelssohn says that if
> each sensible rapture, each improved condition of
> the state of our body, fills the soul with the sensible representation
> of a perfection, then every sensible representation must also, in
> turn, bring with it some well-being of the body...And in this way
> a pleasant *emotion* [*Affekt*] arises.
>
>
>
>
He distinguishes between a "sensible
rapture" (*sinnliche Wollust*) and an emotion because the
former begins in a part of a body, that is, with an actual external
perception, while the latter "arises in the brain itself,"
but in either case the feeling of the pleasure "arrange[s] the
fibers of the brain into an appropriate tone, employing them without
fatiguing them," and then "The brain communicates this
harmonious tension to nerves of the other parts of the body and the
body becomes comfortable" (*On Sentiments*, Twelfth
Letter; *Philosophical Writings*, p. 53). In other words,
although as a rationalist metaphysician Mendelssohn maintains the
formal distinction between the mind and the body (the mind is simple
and indivisible, while body is essentially divisible), as a
psychologist and aesthetician he nevertheless sees them as in the most
intimate interaction, with the perception of harmony by the body
infusing the mind with a pleasant sense of harmony that then further
stimulates the harmonious condition of the body.
Finally, the "Main Principles" introduce a fourth source
of perfection and therefore pleasure in the aesthetic experience,
namely our appreciation of the artistry that is manifested in the
production of a beautiful object. In explaining this source of
pleasure, Mendelssohn also makes another revision to the traditional
theory that it is resemblance alone that is the source of our pleasure
in imitation, because resemblance is easily produced by means far less
complex and admirable than all of the faculties that go into
artistry--a point that Plato had already made when he had
Socrates argue that if it is mere imitation that the painter were
after, he could just go around with a mirror
(Plato, *Republic*, Book X, 596d-e):
>
>
> All works of art are visible imprints of the artist's abilities which,
> so to speak, put his entire soul on display and make it known to
> us. This perfection of spirit arouses an uncommonly greater pleasure
> than mere similarity, because it is more worthy and far more complex
> than similarity. It is all the more worthy the more that the
> perfection of rational beings is elevated above the perfection of
> lifeless things, and also more complex because many abilities of the
> soul and often diverse skills of the external limbs as well are
> required for a beautiful imitation. We find more to admire in a rose
> by *Huysum* than in the image that every river can reflect of
> this queen of the flowers; and the most enchanting landscape in
> a *camera obscura* does not charm us as much as it can through
> the brush of a great landscape painter. ("Main
> Principles"; *Philosophical Writings*,
> p. 174)
>
>
>
Mendelssohn explicitly recognizes the physical skills as well as the
mental powers of the artist as among the perfections that we
indirectly admire in admiring the work of art; this is another example
of his recognition of the close connection between mind and body in
spite of their metaphysical distinction. He also stresses the
superiority of artistic representation over the mere imitation of
nature by observing that the artist can create "ideal
beauty" by gathering
> together in a single viewpoint what nature has
> diffusely strewn among various objects, forming for himself a whole from this
> and taking the trouble to represent it just as nature would have
> represented it if the beauty of this limited object had been its sole
> purpose. ("Main Principles"; *Philosophical
> Writings*, p. 176)
>
>
>
However, although human artistry may concentrate beauty more than
nature does, that hardly means that artistic beauty is in all regards
superior to natural beauty. Mendelssohn concludes the paragraph just
cited by saying that "the most perfect, ideal beauty...is
to be encountered nowhere in nature other than in the whole and is
perhaps never fully to be attained in the works of art." The beauty of nature as a whole exceeds the beauty of any work of
art, and accordingly our admiration for the skill and genius of any
human artist must be exceeded by our admiration for and pleasure in
the artistry that lies behind nature as a whole.
Mendelssohn concludes the essay on the "Main Principles of the
Fine Arts and Sciences" with a brief but pregnant division of
the arts. The basis of his division is a distinction between
"natural" and "arbitrary" signs, which has
precedents in Du Bos, in Leibniz and Wolff, and beyond all of them in
St. Augustine. Signs are natural "if the combination of the
subject matter signified is grounded in the very properties of what is
designated," as smoke is a natural product of fire or "The
passions are, by their very nature, connected with certain movements
in our limbs as well as with certain sounds and gestures"
("Main Principles"; *Philosophical Writings*, p.
177). Signs are arbitrary that "by their very nature have
nothing in common with the designated subject matter, but have
nevertheless been arbitrarily assumed as signs for it," such as
the "articulated sounds of all languages, the letters, the
hieroglyphic signs of the ancients, and some allegorical images"
("Main Principles"; *Philosophical Writings*, pp.
177-8). The arbitrary signs could also be called
conventional. Mendelssohn's chief distinction is then between those
arts that convey their content by artificial signs, namely poetry and
rhetoric, and those arts that employ natural signs, which convey both
reference to content and the expression of feeling through natural
signs and do "not presuppose anything arbitrary in order to be
understood," namely painting, sculpture, music, dance, and even
architecture insofar as it conveys any meaning and expression. In
fact, Mendelssohn distinguishes between the fine arts and the
beautiful sciences, or between *beaux arts* and *belles
lettres*, on this basis: the fine arts employ natural signs, and
the beautiful sciences or *belles lettres* employ arbitrary or
conventional signs ("Main Principles"; *Philosophical
Writings*, pp. 178-9). Among the *belles lettres*,
poetry and rhetoric are distinguished by the fact that "The
main, ultimate purpose of poetry is to please by means of a sensibly
perfect discourse, while that of rhetoric is to persuade by means of a
sensibly perfect discourse." Mendelssohn does not explain why
the fact that poetry and rhetoric employ artificial rather than
natural signs entitles them to be called sciences rather than arts;
perhaps what he has in mind is that since the meanings of arbitrary
signs can be codified, there is more room for precision in the
interpretation of poetry and rhetoric than there is in the various
fine arts (with the exception of their allegorical or iconographical
aspects, which as Mendelssohn has suggested are more like arbitrary
than natural signs). In the case of rhetoric, moreover, there was a
long tradition going back to antiquity of formulating rules for how
persuasion can be achieved, and perhaps this made it seem like more of
a science than an art to Mendelssohn.
Be this as it may, the main point of Mendelssohn's distinction is that
because its signs are arbitrary and can therefore be associated with
any conceivable content, "the poet can express everything of
which our soul can have a clear concept," while the arts that
employ natural signs are limited to the expression of those ideas and
emotions the natural signs for which can be replicated in their
specific media; each of these arts "must content itself with
that portion of natural signs that it can express by means of the
senses," or more precisely by means of its particular way of
engaging the senses. For example, "Music, the expression of
which takes place by means of inarticulate sounds," although it
can express both the general ideas of harmony and all of the
particular "inclinations and passions of the human soul which
tend to make themselves known by means of sounds," cannot
possibly indicate particular concepts of objects such as "the
concept of a rose, a poplar tree, and so on, just as it is impossible
for painting to represent a musical chord to us" ("Main
Principles"; *Philosophical Writings*, pp. 178-9).
A similar point would be made a century later by the music critic
Eduard Hanslick.
Mendelssohn next assumes that only hearing and sight can convey
natural signs, and then observes that
> the natural signs that affect the sense of sight
> can be represented either successively or alongside one another, that
> is to say, they can express beauty either through movement or through
> forms. ("Main Principles"; *Philosophical
> Writings*, p. 179)
>
>
>
>
The art of dance employs movements that naturally
express human feelings and emotions, while the arts of painting and
sculpture must "express beauties that are alongside one
another" through line, color, and shape. This leads Mendelssohn
to the point that although works of music, dance, and for that matter
poetry themselves take place through a succession of moments and can
thereby convey a succession of movements, painting and sculpture can
represent only a single moment in the history of their objects. The
painter and sculptor must therefore
>
>
> choose the instant that is most favorable to their purpose. They must
> assemble the entire action into a single perspective and divide it up
> with a great deal of understanding. In this instant everything must be
> rich in thoughts and so full of meaning that every accompanying
> concept makes its own contribution to the required meaning. When we
> view such a painting [or sculpture] with due attention, our senses are
> all at once inspired, all the abilities of our soul suddenly
> enlivened, and the imagination can from the present infer the past and
> reliably anticipate the future. ("Main
> Principles"; *Philosophical Writings*,
> pp. 180-1)
>
>
>
Mendelssohn's thesis that the visual arts must convey all of their
content through their representation of an object at a single moment
while other arts can represent movements and actions in, as we would
say, real time, would be used as a premise in a famous controversy
between his friend Lessing and the renowned historian of ancient art
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, to which we will turn in a moment. But
before doing so, we must complete our survey of Mendelssohn's
aesthetics with a comment on his discussion of the sublime.
Mendelssohn was instrumental in introducing the topic of the sublime
into German aesthetics, publishing a lengthy review of Burke's book on
the beautiful and the sublime in 1758, just a year after it appeared
in England (reprinted in Mendelssohn, *Gesammelte Schriften*,
volume 4, pp. 216-36), as well as an essay "On the Sublime
and Naive in the Fine Sciences" in the same year. In the latter
essay, Mendelssohn makes a number of points that will become central
to the subsequent German discussion of the sublime, especially in
Kant. His premise, not surprisingly, is that "The sentiment
produced by the sublime is a composite one" ("On the
Sublime and the Naive in the Fine Sciences"; *Philosophical
Writings*, p. 195). For one thing, it may be produced by the
perception or thought of an "immensity of extended
magnitude" or of an "immensity of strength or unextended
magnitude" ("The Sublime and
Naive"; *Philosophical Writings*, p. 194)--by the
sight, image, or thought of something vastly big or of something
vastly powerful.
This distinction anticipates Kant's subsequent
distinction between the "mathematical" and the
"dynamical" sublime, and while it was not uncommon in
British discussions of the sublime, Mendelssohn may have been Kant's
source for it. Mendelssohn then says that either immensity of size or
immensity of strength first "captures our attention" and
"arouses a sweet shudder that rushes through every fiber of our
being...giving wings to the imagination to press further and
further without stopping." "All these sentiments blend
together in the soul," becoming "a single phenomenon which
we call *awe*" (loc. cit.). But the feeling of awe at
immensity does not yet complete the complex experience of the sublime;
for that, there must also be an element of admiration at a
perfection--for remember that Mendelssohn's project is still to
ground all aesthetic experience on the underlying principle of
pleasure in perfection. So the immensity which inspires us with awe
must also be interpreted as a manifestation of perfection. Mendelssohn
then invokes the same distinction he employed in his discussion of
artistry. The immensity which fills us with awe may be either a
product of divine artistry, in which case
> the properties of the Supreme Being which we
> recognize in his works inspire the most ecstatic awe and admiration
> because they surpass everything that we can conceive as enormous,
> perfect, or sublime,
>
>
>
>
or it can be due to human artistry. In that case
we may not find the represented object so extraordinary but feel with
pleasure how "the artist possesses the skill of elevating its
properties and showing them in an uncommon light," or
alternatively we may be awed by both the represented object and the
divine artistry that lies behind it and by the "great wit,
genius, imagination, and capacities of the soul" of the human
artist who produces the image of the work of divine artistry.
> What especially pleases us in the case of art,
> considered as art, is the reference to the spiritual gifts of the
> artist which make themselves visibly known. If they bear the
> characteristics of an uncommon genius...then they inspire awe on
> our part. ("The Sublime and Naive"; *Philosophical
> Writings*, pp. 196-7)
>
>
>
We may now turn to the famous controversy between Lessing and
Winckelmann, built upon Mendelssohn's distinction between the arts of
form and the arts of movement.
### 4.2 Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), the son of a cobbler
from Prussia, studied at Halle and Jena, and became a school
teacher. But at thirty-one he got a position as a librarian for a
nobleman in Dresden, and gained access to the court of the Elector
of Saxony, home of one of the great art collections of Europe, and
also a Catholic court that ultimately gave him access to Rome. He
established his reputation in 1755 with an essay "On the
Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture." He moved
to Rome later that year, in the service of the Papal Nuncio to the
Saxon court, and in 1758 entered the service of Cardinal Allessandro
Albani, the nephew of Pope Clement XI and owner of a great
collection of antiquities. In 1764 Winckelmann published *The
History of Ancient Art* to great acclaim. He was working on a
revision of it when he was murdered in Trieste in June of 1768,
while returning to Rome from Vienna, where the Empress Maria Theresa
had awarded him a collection of gold and silver medallions.
Winckelmann spent his two years in Halle (1738-40) while
Baumgarten was still teaching there and Meier was also a student. But
his writing offers no evidence that he knew their
works. His *History of Ancient Art* does cite Du Bos, Batteux,
and the essays of Hume, however, and he had clearly absorbed some of
the most general ideas of eighteenth-century aesthetics. A 1763 essay
"On the Capacity for the Sentiment for the Beautiful in Art, and
on Instruction in it" suggests several of the premises assumed
throughout his work on ancient art history. He shares with Wolff and
Batteux the assumption that art derives its beauty from the imitation
of nature, and derives the most beauty from the imitation of beauty in
nature. Thus he writes that
> Art, as an imitator of nature, should always seek
> out what is natural for the form of beauty, and should avoid, as much
> as is possible, all that is violent, because even the beauty in life
> can become displeasing through forced gestures. ("On the
> Capacity for the Sentiment for the Beautiful in Art," *Essays
> on the Philosophy and History of Art*, volume I, p. xlvi)
>
>
>
>
However, Winckelmann believes that natural beauty
itself lies not merely in the superficial appearance of bodies but,
at least in the case of human beauty, is an expression of the thought
and character of persons:
> Above all things, one
> is to be attentive to the particular, characteristic thoughts in
> works of art, which sometimes stand like expensive pearls in a string
> of inferior ones, and can get lost among them. Our contemplation
> should begin with the effects of the understanding as the most worthy
> part of beauty, and from there should descend to the execution
>
>
>
>
a point that he illustrates with examples from
the paintings of Poussin, Corregio, and Domenichino rather than from
ancient art ("The Sentiment for the Beautiful," p. xlv).
Winckelmann clearly belongs to the tradition that finds beauty in the
truthful representation of the objective perfections of body and mind,
rather than in the stimulation of the play of the mental powers of the
audience for beauty.
Winckelmann's premises underlie his history of ancient art, the main
claims of which are already evident in his 1755 essay "On the
Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks." This
essay begins with the claim that "There is but one way for the
moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled; I mean, by imitating
the ancients" (*Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of
the Greeks*, p. 2; in *Essays on the Philosophy and History of
Art*, volume I). His topic is thus in the first instance the
imitation *of* ancient art, not imitation *in* ancient
art. Winckelmann then attributes the excellent of ancient, that is to
say Greek, art to three factors: first, nature in ancient Greece was
particularly favorable to the development of beautiful bodies; second,
the "natural" way of life in Greece was particularly
favorable to the observation of beautiful bodies and thus to their
imitation *in* art; and finally, Greek thought and character
were particularly noble, and thus the external beauty of Greek bodies
was an expression of the beauty of the Greek mind as the "most
worthy part of beauty." The first of these claims is in the
tradition of the emphasis of the influence of climate on human
character and society initiated by Du Bos and continued by many
eighteenth-century thinkers, including Montesquieu in *The Spirit
of the Laws* (1748).
Winckelmann's second point is that the Greek climate and way of life
were conducive to the development of art. He makes the general claim
that freedom is conducive to the development of art:
> Art claims liberty: in vain would nature produce
> her noblest offsprings, in a country where rigid laws would choke her
> progressive growth, as in Egypt, that pretended parent of sciences and
> arts: but in Greece, where, from their earliest youth, the happy
> inhabitants were devoted to mirth and pleasure, where narrow-spirited
> formality never restrained the liberty of manners, the artist enjoyed
> nature without a veil.
>
>
>
>
Winckelmann then makes the specific point that
freedom from excessive clothing among the Greeks, particularly in
their gymnastic and athletic exercises, gave their artists
unparalleled opportunity to observe and to learn to represent the
beauty of their bodies:
> The Gymnasies, where, sheltered by public modesty,
> the youths exercised themselves naked, were the schools of
> art.... Here beautiful nakedness appeared with such a liveliness
> of expression, such truth and variety of situations, such a noble air
> of the body, as it would be ridiculous to look for in any hired model
> of our academies. ("Imitation," pp. 9-10)
>
>
>
>
Winckelmann's reference to expression and
nobility here points the way to his last claim, that above all the
bodily beauty of the Greeks is an expression of their mental and moral
beauty:
> The last and most eminent characteristic of the
> Greek works is a noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Gesture and
> Expression. As the bottom of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming
> surface, a great soul lies sedate beneath the strife of passions in
> Greek figures. ("Imitation," p. 30)
>
>
>
Winckelmann illustrates the last claim with a discussion of the famous
statue of the Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons being strangled by
the serpents Neptune sent to stifle his warnings against accepting the
"gift" of the Trojan horse. The version of this statue
that was unearthed near Naples in 1506 and quickly acquired by Pope
Julius II for the Vatican, where it has been displayed ever since, is
now thought to be a Roman copy of a Pergamese bronze from the second
century BCE, and may or may not be the same one described by Pliny
(*Natural History*, XXXV). Winckelmann took it to be a
classical Greek work. He also must have known it only from
illustration when he first wrote about it in "On the Imitation
of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks," since he moved to
Rome only after that essay was published. Be that as it may,
Winckelmann writes:
>
>
> 'Tis in the face of Laocoon this soul shines with full lustre, not
> confined however to the face, amidst the most violent
> sufferings. Pangs piercing every muscle, every labouring nerve; pangs
> which we almost feel ourselves, while we consider--not the face,
> nor the most expressive parts--only the belly contracted by
> excruciating pains: these however, I say, exert not themselves with
> violence, either in the face or gesture. He pierces not heaven, like
> the Laocoon of *Virgil*; his mouth is rather opened to
> discharge an anxious overloaded groan, as *Sadolet* says; the
> struggling body and the supporting mind exert themselves with equal
> strength, nay balance all the frame.
>
>
>
>
> Laocoon suffers, but suffers like the Philoctetes
> of *Sophocles*: we weeping feel his pains, but wish for the
> hero's strength to support his misery.
>
>
>
>
> The Expression of so great a soul is beyond the force of mere
> nature. It was in his own mind the artist was to search for the
> strength of spirit with which he marked his marble. Greece enjoyed
> artists and philosophers in the same persons; and the wisdom of more
> than one Metrodorus directed art, and inspired its figures with more
> than common souls.
>
>
>
The last paragraph of this is somewhat contorted: since Laocoon was
not himself a classical Greek, but a pre-classical Trojan, Winckelmann
does not quite attribute the "noble simplicity and quiet
grandeur" that shines through his face even in the midst of his
suffering to him and to nature as it might have been at work in Troy,
but rather to the classical Greek artist whom he supposes did make the
statue. But his basic point remains: since in his view the statue
itself was Greek, the noble simplicity and quiet grandeur of the Greek
soul inevitably manifests itself and elevates these figures caught in
a moment of supreme suffering to the highest level of beauty.
Winckelmann's *History of Ancient Art*, published nine years
after the essay on imitation, reaffirms his general commitment to
contemporary aesthetics as well as his particular emphasis on a
certain kind of mental condition as the ultimate source of physical
beauty. It nevertheless gives a slightly different and perhaps more
plausible account of the Laocoon statue, which by then he had seen
first-hand. To general statements on beauty as unity and simplicity
(*History*, p. 196) and the beauty of youthfulness (p. 197)
Winckelmann adds a passage on the expression of inward attitude that
is reminiscent of his description of the "noble simplicity and
quiet grandeur" of the Greeks in the earlier
essay:
>
> *Expression* is an imitation of the active and suffering states
> of our minds and our bodies and of passions as well as
> deeds...Stillness is the state most proper to beauty, as it is to
> the sea, and experience shows that the most beautiful beings are of a
> still and well-mannered nature. (*History*, p. 204)
>
>
>
>
But, as noted, in the *History*
Winckelmann gives a slightly different account of the Laocoon, in
which he suggests that the beauty of the central figure of the work
lies not so much in the nobility of character that is
expressed *in spite of* Laocoon's agony, but rather in a kind
of harmony *between* his agony and his nobility:
> Laocoon is a being in the greatest pain, fashioned
> in the likeness of a man seeking to gather the conscious strength of
> his mind and spirit against it.... Beneath the brow, the battle
> between pain and resistance, as if concentrated in this one place, is
> composed with great wisdom...Thus, where the greatest pain is
> expressed, the greatest beauty is also to be
> found. (*History*, pp. 313-14)
>
>
>
### 4.3 Lessing
This description of the Laocoon has been of great interest to
recent interpreters, but it was Winckelmann's earlier account that
inspired the criticism of Lessing, whose *Laocoon: An Essay on
the Limits of Painting and Poetry*, although not published until
1766, was clearly begun and largely written before the appearance of
Winckelmann's *History* in 1764. Lessing's work was thus a
response to the earlier essay (only in chapter 26, almost at the end
of the book, does Lessing say that Winckelmann's *History*
"has appeared, and I shall not venture another step until I have
read it"). Lessing's book, although part of the larger
eighteenth-century debate about the comparative merits of literature
and the visual arts that builds upon the division of the arts by his
friend Mendelssohn, first argues against Winckelmann that the beauty
of the Laocoon statue comes not from the special nobility of the
Greek soul but from the particular demands of its visual rather than
literary medium.
Lessing published his *Laocoon* at the midpoint of his varied
literary and intellectual career. Lessing, like Mendelssohn born in
1729, was the oldest of thirteen children of a Saxon pastor, and at
twelve he entered the monastic school at Meissen; at seventeen he went
to Leipzig to study theology, then changed to medicine, and then to
the university at Wittenberg. But at twenty, he left the university
and went to Berlin to make a career as a writer. There he quickly met
among others Voltaire, at that time employed by Frederick the Great,
as well as Mendelssohn. In 1755, Lessing had his great success with
the bourgeois tragedy *Miss Sara Sampson*, which initiated a
new direction in the German theater. In 1758, he started collaborating
with Mendelssohn and Friedrich Nicolai on the *Letters concerning
the newest literature*. From 1760 to 1765 Lessing worked as
secretary to the governor of Silesia in Breslau, during which time he
wrote *Laocoon* as well as the comedy *Minna von
Barnhelm*. He returned to Berlin again in 1765, but, disappointed
in his hopes for the position of Royal Librarian, went to Hamburg in
1767 as director of the National Theater. The program notes he wrote
in that capacity became his *Hamburg Dramaturgy*, his most
extended critical work. In 1770 Lessing finally found a secure post as
librarian for the great collection of the Dukes of Brunswick in
Wolffenbuttel, where he remained until his death in 1781. There he
wrote the tragedy *Emilia Galotti* and his famous plea for
religious tolerance in the form of *Nathan the Wise*, a play
inspired by Mendelssohn. In addition to various theological polemics,
he also published his *Education of the Human Race* the year
before his death.
The thesis of *Laocoon*, as already suggested, is that the
character of the famous statue is due not to the nobility of the Greek
mind but to the imperatives of its visual medium. Lessing begins his
work by quoting the passage from Winckelmann's essay "On
the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks" quoted above (*Laocoon*, chapter 1, p. 7). He then argues
that the Greek, like anyone else, "felt and feared, and he
expressed his pain and grief," and that this was not thought to
be incompatible with nobility of soul; he appeals to examples from
Homer's *Iliad* to prove this point. So he concludes that
> if, according to the ancient Greek, crying aloud
> when in physical pain is compatible with nobility of soul, then the
> desire to express such nobility could not have prevented the artist
> from representing the scream in his marble, There must be another
> reason why he differs on this point from his rival the
> poet. (*Laocoon*, chapter 1, pp. 9-11)
>
>
>
>
The reason, Lessing claims, is
> that among the ancients beauty was the supreme law
> of the visual arts. Once this has been established, it necessarily
> follows that whatever else these arts may include must give way
> completely if not compatible with beauty, and, if compatible, must at
> least be subordinate to it.
>
>
>
>
In the case of the story of Laocoon, since
> The demands of beauty could not be reconciled with
> [his] pain in all its disfiguring violence, so it had to be
> reduced. The scream had to be softened to a sigh, not because
> screaming betrays an ignoble soul, but because it distorts the
> features in a disgusting manner. (*Laocoon*, chapter 1, pp. 15,
> 17)
>
>
>
>
Indeed, in a later discussion of the demands of
religion on visual art, Lessing adds that
>
> I should prefer that only those be called works of art in which the
> artist had occasion to show himself as such and in which beauty was
> his first and ultimate aim. None of the others, which betray too
> obvious traces of religious conventions, deserves this name because in
> their case the artist did not create for art's sake [*weil die
> Kunst hier nicht um ihren selbst willen gearbeitet*, literally
> "because here art did not work for its own sake"], but his
> art was merely a handmaid of religion, which stressed meaning more
> than beauty in the material subjects it allotted to art for execution.
> (*Laocoon*, chapter 1, pp. 15, 17)
>
>
>
The phrase "art for art's sake" is often thought to be a
nineteenth-century invention, but here Lessing clearly anticipates it,
meaning that at least in the visual arts all other considerations must
be subordinated to the creation of beauty.
Lessing does not appeal to any philosophical theory to back up this
insistence. But his next step is to buttress his argument by borrowing
Mendelssohn's idea that since the visual arts present objects in a
single moment, they must choose that moment carefully, and in
particular they must choose a moment that gives "free
rein" to the imagination. Even if it were to be conceded that
"Truth and expression are art's first law," which Lessing
is not actually willing to concede, this would still hold. Thus
paintings and sculptures must not represent the moment of the
culmination of an action, which leaves nothing further to the
imagination, but a moment of anticipation which leaves the imagination
free to play with further possibilities (*Laocoon*, chapter 3,
p. 19). The artist of the Laocoon did not represent his subject at the
moment of his greatest pain and full scream because that would have
foreclosed the free play of the imagination of the audience for the
work. Here Lessing at least tacitly invokes the new theory that the
play of our mental powers rather than the representation of some form
of truth is the fundamental aim of art, or at least visual art.
Lessing continues his argument by turning to the other half of
Mendelssohn's theory, the claim that poetry is an art that
can represent a succession of events over time rather than one moment
in time. "Accordingly, bodies with their visible properties are
the true subjects of painting," while, since actions take place
over time, "actions are the true subjects of poetry."
Thus, "painting too can imitate actions, but only by suggestion
through bodies," and again "can use only a single moment
of an action in its coexisting compositions and must therefore choose
the one that is most suggestive." Conversely, in order to
represent a body poetry can only describe an action in which the body
is made, used, or otherwise involved (*Laocoon*, chapter 16,
pp. 78-9). This leads Lessing to a memorable analysis of some
examples from Homer: "If Homer wants to show us Juno's chariot,
he shows Hebe putting it together piece by piece"; when he
"wants to show us how Agamemnon was dressed, he has the king put
on his garments, one by one," and, most famously, when he wants
to show us Achilles's shield, he does not describe it "as
finished and complete, but as a shield that is being made"
(*Laocoon*, chapter 16, p. 80; chapter 18, p. 95).
So far, Lessing has merely rejected Winckelmann's analysis of the
Laocoon statue on the basis of his own insistence that beauty is the
primary aim of visual art as well as on Mendelssohn's distinction
between arts that can represent one moment and arts that can represent
a succession of moments. But he broadens his target when he says, in a
passing discussion of the fact that both Homer and Milton were blind,
that "if the range of my physical sight must be the measure of
my inner vision, I should value the loss of the former in order to
gain freedom from the limitations on the latter"
(*Laocoon*, chapter 14, p. 74). Here his implication is that
sight actually constrains the imagination, while non-visual
media--in other words, poetry--free the imagination for a
wider play with both ideas and emotions. This point could also be
thought to depend on one of Mendelssohn's ideas, namely his contrast
between natural and arbitrary or conventional signs. Lessing touches
upon this in passing, arguing that although "the symbols of
speech are arbitrary," the poet actually wants to overcome our
awareness of that fact:
> He wants rather to make the ideas he awakens in us
> so vivid that at the moment we believe that we feel the real
> impressions which the objects of these ideas would produce in us. In
> this moment of illusion we should cease to be conscious of the means
> which the poet uses for this purpose, that is, his
> words. (*Laocoon*, chapter 17, p. 85)
>
>
>
But while emphasizing that the poet aims to create a vivid response in
us, in particular a vivid emotional response, Lessing fails to mention
Mendelssohn's point that we also need to retain some awareness of the
artificiality rather than reality of the artistic depiction of persons
and actions in order to maintain the distance necessary to allow us to
enjoy the emotions evoked by art rather than being overwhelmed by them
into actual suffering. He does not need to mention this, perhaps, in
the case of the visual arts, since he holds that the visual artist
leaves the audience some freedom of imagination by not depicting the
moment of the greatest suffering of his subject, and this freedom may
afford the necessary distance, but he might have done well to mention
it in the case of poetry.
Lessing thus touches upon the new idea that aesthetic response is
based on the free play of our mental powers stimulated by an object,
in his case always by a work of art, and he exploits several of
Mendelssohn's theoretical tools. He should nevertheless be seen as a
practicing critic using theoretical developments for his own purposes
rather than as a theorist in his own right. However, his criticism
immediately triggered more philosophical aesthetics in response. In
the next section, we shall see how Johann Gottfried Herder reasserted
yet refined an aesthetics of truth beginning with a response to
Lessing, while Johann Georg Sulzer attempted to combine an aesthetics
of truth with an aesthetics of play. Sulzer's combination of the
aesthetics of truth and play would in turn prepare the way for Kant,
while Herder's final work, more than twenty years after he completed
his main work in aesthetics, would be a critique of Kant's
aesthetics. This section will also include a discussion of the
aesthetic theory of Marcus Herz, who was first a student of Kant and
then a friend of Mendelssohn, but who developed an aesthetic theory
that is in interesting ways independent of both.
## 5. Herder, Sulzer and Herz: Energy, Activity and Truth
### 5.1 Herder
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) is most often remembered
for his philosophy of history, expounded with relative brevity in his
1774 work *This Too a Philosophy of History for the Education of
Humanity* and at great length in his *Ideas for the Philosophy
of History of Humanity*, published from 1784 to 1791. He is
typically read as having advocated cultural relativism and
historicism against the universalist pretensions of the
Enlightenment--manifested in aesthetics in the search for a
universally valid "standard of taste"--and thus as
having been a forerunner of Romanticism. Our focus here will be on
Herder's work in aesthetics, which fully occupied him for the first
fifteen years of his career, as well as at the very end of his
career, when he wrote a vigorous polemic against the aesthetic theory
of Kant. In this section we will consider Herder's early work in
aesthetics, while discussion of his later work will be reserved for
section 9.
Herder came from East Prussia, and from 1762 to 1764 was a student in
Konigsberg, where he studied with Kant. He later turned away from
Kant, whom he saw as having himself turned away from an empirical
approach to philosophy to one that is excessively abstract and *a
priori*. From 1762 to 1769, he taught school in Riga, and then
left for a tour of France and Western Germany, during which he met the
young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, shortly to become famous for *The
Sorrows of Young Werther*. Indeed, after Herder served as preacher
in the small court of Buckeburg from 1771 to 1776, Goethe had him
appointed as the General Superintendent of Lutheran clergy in the
Duchy of Weimar, where Goethe himself was the chief minister. This
position, which Herder occupied for the rest of his life, gave him
ample time to write and put him into contact with the many other
leading figures of late eighteenth-century German literary and
intellectual life whom Goethe brought to Weimar.
Herder's first major work in aesthetics, *Fragments on Recent
German Literature*, appeared in 1767, when he was only
twenty-three. The first three volumes of his next work, the *Groves
of Criticism* (*Kritische Waelder*) were published in
1769. The first volume of the *Groves* is a spirited but
friendly critique of Lessing's *Laocoon*, the next two a
detailed polemic against the now forgotten Halle rhetorician Christian
Klotz (whom Lessing also attacked in a 1769 essay on "How the
Ancients Depicted Death"). The fourth volume, a polemic against
the now equally forgotten Friedrich Justus Riedel, who had published a
hodgepodge *Theory of the Fine Arts and Sciences: Extracts from
various Authors* in 1767, remained unpublished during Herder's
lifetime. Herder did, however, restate its most important ideas
in *Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalion's
Creative Dream*, begun in 1770 although itself not completed and
published until 1778. Herder's work on *Sculpture* was
interrupted by several of what are now his best-known works,
the *Treatise on the Origin of Language* (1772) and *This
Too a Philosophy of History for the Education of Humanity*
(1774). After finishing *Sculpture*, Herder published a
collection of folk poetry from around the world, *Popular
Songs* (1778-79), a work on the Old Testament, *On the
Spirit of Hebrew Poetry* (1782-83), the large work on
philosophy of history already mentioned, an influential defense of
Spinoza under the name of *God: Some Conversations* (1787), a
work on political philosophy, the *Letters for the Advancement of
Humanity* (1793-97), and finally his critiques of Kant's
theoretical philosophy and aesthetics, *A Metacritique on the
Critique of Pure Reason* (1799) and the *Kalligone* or
"Birth of Beauty" (1800). In these works Kant's harsh
criticisms of his quondam student's *Ideas for a Philosophy of
History of Humanity* were repaid with interest.
Lessing, as we saw, had argued that visual art presents an object as
it is at a single moment and thus can only intimate an action, while
poetry describes a succession of states comprising an action and thus
can represent an object only by describing the act of producing it; he
also argued that beauty is the first law of the visual arts and thus
that a work of art must not only depict an object at a pregnant moment
in an action or event but must also depict it at a beautiful
moment. In his critique in the first of his *Groves of
Criticism*, Herder argues that Lessing's division of the arts was
too schematic and incomplete, offering three particular points of
criticism against Lessing. He first claims that Lessing fails to
explain why beauty must be the first law of the visual arts. He
further insists that there is an essential difference *within*
the so-called visual arts that Lessing fails to capture, namely that
painting is concerned strictly with with the sense of sight whereas
the aesthetics of sculpture in fact derive primarily from the sense of
touch. Herder's third critical thesis is that Lessing's emphasis on
time and succession in poetry better fits the art of music, which
Lessing ignored, while the essence of poetry lies not in such an
accidental feature of the kind of signs that it uses but in the way in
which it captures and communicates the *energy* of real life,
something no other art does equally well. Herder's contrast between
painting and sculpture becomes central in the argument of the fourth
of the *Groves of Criticism* and in the essay
on *Sculpture*, so let us consider the other two themes first
and then return to that one.
Herder's first charge is that Lessing fails to explain why beauty must
be the first law of the visual arts. In Herder's view, visual art must
aim at beauty because only in that way can it overcome the essential
conflict between its own spatial, static character and the incessantly
changing, transitory character of everything in nature.
> In nature everything is transitory, the passion of
> the soul and the sensation of the body: the activity of the soul and
> the motion of the body: every state of changeable finite nature. Now
> if art has only one instant in which everything is to be contained:
> then every alterable state of nature is unnaturally immortalized
> through it, and thus with this principle all imitation of nature
> through art cease. ("First Grove," p. 133)
>
>
>
>
Furthermore, all ordinary sensuous pleasures are
also momentary: "All sensible joys are only for *the first
glance*" ("First Grove," p. 134). The only way
for an essentially static art to overcome the transitory nature of
both what it depicts and of ordinary pleasures is by picking a
beautiful moment which is as it were exempt from the actual
transitoriness of an object's history in real nature and our pleasure
in which also does not fade like other pleasures do ("First
Grove," p. 137). In other words, our pleasure in beauty in a
sense lifts us out of the ordinary passage of time. However, Herder
quickly adds that not any kind of beauty can do this: bodily beauty
is too closely connected with time, so a truly beautiful work must
somehow instead intimate the beauty of soul rather than body:
"Corporeal beauty is not satisfying: through our eye there
looks a soul, and through the beauty that is represented to us a soul
thus also peers" ("First Grove,"
pp. 137-8).
However, this opening sally against Lessing is misleading in two
regards, first for its suggestion that the task for aesthetics is to
give a better explanation of beauty than Lessing did and second for
its suggestion that aesthetics must be grounded on a metaphysical
distinction between mind and body. The latter suggestion is misleading
because Herder does more than almost anyone else in eighteenth-century
Germany to minimize any separation between mind and body. This is a
result of his emphasis on the connection between thought and speech,
bodily sensation and expression, and the natural and man-made
environment of the linguistic community. The former suggestion is also
misleading because, while Herder will go on to argue that painting in
particular strives after beauty, he also links beauty to mere
appearance Indeed, he connects beauty with illusion. Herder also
argues that both sculpture, which he emphatically distinguishes from
painting, and poetry ultimately aim much more at *truth* than
at beauty. Herder's path to this conclusion is not direct, however,
and just what sense or senses of truth he has in mind is difficult to
pin down, so we will have to look at his classification of the arts in
some detail to see how to construe his theory.
In fact, Herder suggests two different classifications of the arts,
and a central challenge in the interpretation of his aesthetics is to
see how they are connected. In the first of the *Groves of
Criticism*, Herder argues that Lessing's distinction between the
visual arts as the representation of objects in space at a single
moment in time and poetry as the representation of a succession of
events in time confuses poetry with music. Lessing thereby misses what
is essential to poetry altogether, namely that it communicates to us
the real *force* of objects, including but not limited to
actions, and thus most deeply engages our own force in response. The
first part of this argument is that the contrast between the
coexistence of the properties of an object in space and the succession
of events in time properly grounds the contrast between painting and
music, not between painting and poetry, and that both painting and
music depend upon *natural signs* of coexistence and succession
("First Grove," p. 193). Both painting--which Herder
is thus far, like Lessing, using as a generic term for the visual arts
comprising both painting proper and sculpture--and music use
natural signs, that is, signs that communicate the thought of their
objects to us by means of resemblance between their own fundamental
properties and the fundamental properties of their objects. Painting
and music are thus best suited to represent objects in space and
successions of events in time, respectively. Poetry, however, uses primarily
artificial rather than natural signs, and is thus, unlike music, not
restricted to the depiction of events as Lessing thought it was
("First Grove," pp. 193-4). Herder turns Lessing's
distinction between natural and artificial signs against him, arguing
that precisely because poetry uses artificial rather than natural
signs its content is in no fundamental way constrained by the natural
properties of its signs themselves. Thus, in the proper hands poetry
can effectively represent *anything*, and in this way it
certainly has a *wider* sphere of truth accessible to it than
painting or music do.
But this is only the first step of Herder's argument. The second step
argues that just as Lessing's division of the arts into painting and
poetry is incomplete, the distinction between space and time on which
the former division is based is also incomplete. This is because
Lessing's distinction leaves out the essential category
of *force* (*Kraft*), and precisely this last category
is essential to the effect of poetry ("First Grove,"
p. 194). Herder is not particularly clear about the difference between
the energy (*Energie*) that is displayed in music and the force that is at work in poetry, but his idea seems to be
that energy is the outward manifestation, in change or motion,
of *underlying* forces. Poetry, precisely because it employs
artificial rather than natural signs, can therefore bring us closer to
the reality that underlies the superficial features of objects
captured by artificial signs. Thus poetry may reach not only wider but
also deeper than these other arts.
In continuing his discussion of poetry in the first *Grove*,
Herder initially emphasizes the broader reach of poetry: precisely
because in taking in poetry we do not focus on the physical or
acoustical properties of the signs themselves, but on their meanings,
poetry can represent anything. In poetry,
> it is
> not the sign itself but the sense [*Sinn*] of the sign that
> must be felt; the soul must not feel the vehicle of the force, the
> words, but the force itself, the *sense*...But thereby it
> also brings every object as it were visibly before the
> soul. ("First Grove," p. 195)
>
>
>
>
Herder then develops his view by invoking
Baumgarten's characterization of poetry as "the sensibly perfect
in discourse." What he now argues is that poetry actually gets
its force by exploiting both the depiction of objects as in painting
and their energy as represented by music. Once painting and music have
been properly distinguished from each other and poetry from both, it
becomes clear that poetry, because it uses artificial rather than
natural signs, can present both objects and actions to us. It is in
this sense that poetry can present more truth to us than either
painting or music alone.
What remains unclear, however, is just what Herder means by
"force" here. He only hints at what he might mean a few
pages later when he says that "the essence of poetry" is
"the force, which adheres to the inner in words, the magical
force, which works on my soul through fantasy and recollection"
("First Grove," p. 197). The force unique to poetry seems
to be precisely its power to make us feel as if the objects and events
it describes are real and thereby to engage our own emotions and
passions more fully than the other arts can. But he may make clearer
what he has in mind in his praise for the poetry of primitive peoples
in a famous 1773 essay on what were later to be revealed to be the
fraudulent poems of the fictional Scottish bard "Ossian."
This essay was included in a collection *On German Style and
Art* that also included Herder's equally famous essay on
Shakespeare (to which we will return below) and a seminal essay by
Goethe that revived interest in Gothic architecture. Here Herder declaims:
>
>
> Know then, that the more barbarous a people is--that is, the more
> alive, the more freely acting (for that is what the word
> means)--the more barbarous, that is, the more alive, the more
> free, the closer to the senses, the more lyrically dynamic its songs
> will be, if songs it has. The more remote a people is from an
> artificial, scientific manner of thinking, speaking, and writing, the
> less its songs are made for paper and print, the less its verses are
> written for the dead letter. The purpose, the nature, the miraculous
> power of these songs as the delight, the driving-force, the
> traditional chant and everlasting joy of the people--all this
> depends on the lyrical, living, dance-like quality of the song, on the
> living presence of the images, and the coherence and, as it were
> compulsion of the content, the feelings; on the symmetry of the words
> and syllables, and sometimes even of the letters, on the flow of the
> melody, and on a hundred other things which belong to the living
> world, to the gnomic song of the nation, and vanish with
> it. ("Ossian," pp. 155-6)
Leave aside the fact that the poems of the supposed Ossian were
concocted in eighteenth-century Edinburgh by James MacPherson, and
were thus very much made for paper and print. Leave aside as well
Herder's supposition that the most dynamic poetry can only be composed
by a "barbarous people," Mycenaen Greeks or Scottish
highlanders. The point remains that he connects the "living
presence of the images" achieved by the most effective poetry
with a corresponding feeling of freedom and of being
alive. Paradoxically, poetry's use of artificial rather than natural
signs, which allows it to achieve the effects of painting and music
combined, also allows it to engage our deepest emotions more
thoroughly than those other arts, including ultimately the joyous
feeling of being alive itself, even though the other arts use natural
signs and might therefore have been thought to be more effective.
We may now turn to Herder's second main criticism of Lessing, hinted
at in the first of the *Groves of Criticism* but more fully
developed in the unpublished fourth *Grove* and the essay on *Sculpture*. The fourth *Grove*
is cast as a critique of Riedel's *Theory of the Fine Sciences and
Arts*, as earlier noted, but also continues the debate with
Lessing. Herder begins with several methodological objections to
Riedel. First, although he otherwise admires Baumgarten, Herder
criticizes Riedel's acceptance of Baumgarten's characterization of
aesthetics as both a theory of beauty and "the art of thinking
beautifully," that is, a prescription of concrete rules and
methods for artists to follow in order to produce beautiful or
otherwise successful works ("Fourth Grove,"
p. 267). Herder is clear that there are no such rules, thus that
aesthetics must confine itself to understanding the work of artists
and our experience of their work without telling them how to do that
work. Second, Herder objects to a tripartite classification of the
methods of aesthetics, as such a theory, that Riedel
proposes. According to Riedel, aesthetic theories can be divided into
those employing the methods of Aristotle, Baumgarten, or Kames: the
Aristotelian method aims to reach general principles from the analysis
of particular masterpieces of art, the method of Kames tries to reach
the same goal from the analysis of our sensations in response to
aesthetic objects, and what Riedel characterizes as the
"miserable dry" method of Baumgarten simply begins from
definitions ("Fourth Grove," p. 262). In Herder's view,
these distinctions are artificial and the characterization of
Baumgarten's method in particular is unfair. Although the charge that
Baumgarten simply began with definitions may seem a fair critique of
his early *Meditations on Poetry*, Herder must have felt that
in his larger and more mature *Aesthetica* Baumgarten did
support his definitions by his extensive examples. In any case,
Herder's own method is certainly to reach general conclusions only
from close examination of examples of art and of our response to
them. This is why he engages Lessing in such detail, for example, and
why some of his most important claims in aesthetics are contained in
the essays on Ossian and Shakespeare. Further, Herder's approach ends
rather than begins with definitions.
The main thrust of the fourth *Grove*, building upon Herder's
insistence that aesthetics must employ the methods of both Aristotle
and Kames in order to reach Baumgartian conclusions, is that
recognition of the distinctions among our senses will explain the
variety of both forms of art and forms of aesthetic response. The
premise of Herder's argument is that aesthetic response is not the
disinterested reaction of a special internal sense to purely formal
properties of objects, but is really the heightened response of
various of our senses to their appropriate objects. Aesthetic
responses naturally emerge from our senses. Herder rejects the
traditional distinction between mind and body, arguing that mind is
essentially connected to the bodily organs of sense, as well as any
suggestion that aesthetic pleasures are essentially distinct from the
other sources of our happiness and unhappiness. In this connection,
Herder scorns Riedel's thesis that the beautiful is that "which
can please without an interested aim and thus also please if we do not
possess it" ("Fourth Grove," p. 291n.), thereby
prefiguring his later critique of Kant's aesthetics. Instead, Herder
argues that the phenomenon of distance that Riedel mistakenly
characterizes as general quality of disinterestedness in all aesthetic
response is a specific feature of the visual perception of beauty,
indeed that beauty is properly speaking a property only of the
visual. This in turn leads Herder to distinguish between sight as a
sense for mere appearance and touch as the sense for reality, and thus
to the essential distinction between painting and sculpture which, he
charges, Lessing fails to make. Herder insists that visible beauty
arises only from the most superficial features of objects, not from
their full reality, and that only feeling--by which he here means
the sense of touch--can put us into direct contact with reality,
or with the deeper truth about physical reality. He expands upon this
contrast in the essay on *Sculpture*:
>
>
> The term *Schonheit* [beauty] derives from the
> words *Schauen* [to behold] and *Schein*
> [appearance]. Beauty can most easily be understood and appreciated in
> terms of *Schauen*, that is, through *schoner Schein*
> [beautiful appearance]. Nothing is faster, more dazzlingly brilliant
> than the light of the sun and our eyes carried upon its wing. A world
> of external things ranged alongside one another is revealed in an
> instant. Since this world does not disappear as do sounds, but endures
> and invites *contemplation*, is it any wonder that our doctrine
> of psychology chooses to borrow many of its terms from this sense?
> For psychology, to know is to *see*, and its greatest pleasure
> is *beauty*.... If we succeeded in "deriving"
> from this sense alone a true *phenomenology* of
> the *beautiful* and the *true*, we should already have
> achieved a great deal.
>
>
>
> Nonetheless, we would not thereby have achieved everything and
> certainly not what is most fundamental, simple, and
> primary.... The living, embodied truth of the three-dimensional
> space of angles, of form and volume, is not something we can learn
> through *sight*. This is all the more true of the essence of
> sculpture, *beautiful* form and *beautiful* shape, for
> this is not a matter of color, or of the play of proportion and
> symmetry, or of light and shadow, but of *physically present,
> tangible truth*.... Consider the lover of art sunk deep in
> contemplation who circles restlessly around a sculpture. What would he
> not do to transform his sight into touch, to make his *seeing*
> into a form of *touching* that feels in the dark.... With
> his soul he seeks to *grasp* the image that arose from the arm
> and the soul of the artist. Now he has it! The illusion has worked;
> the sculpture lives and his soul *feels* that it lives. His
> soul speaks to it, not as if his soul sees, but as if it touches, as
> if it feels. (*Sculpture*, pp. 39-41)
>
>
>
Herder's emphasis on the sense of touch and its centrality to the
experience of sculpture builds upon his interpretation of the debate about the relation between sight and touch
in which Locke, Berkeley, and Diderot had all argued that we do not
correlate the deliverances of the two senses innately, but have to
learn from experience that an object that looks a certain way also
feels a certain way, or vice versa (see *Sculpture*, pp.
33-8). But he takes this thesis a step further by arguing that
it is touch that reveals the true form of objects, while sight merely
reveals or plays with their superficial appearance. Thus, although
sight initially seemed to be the paradigmatic vehicle of knowledge,
Herder ultimately concludes that "in painting there is merely
beautiful deception" while in sculpture there is "primary
truth" ("Fourth Grove," p. 314). The passages
from *Sculpture* also display what Herder thinks is the
significance of the perception of the true form of objects through the
tactile medium of sculpture: it communicates to us the feeling of life
in the sculpture and in turn arouses our own feeling of being truly
alive. In the case of sculpture, both the artist and the audience can
fully feel the emotions and passions of life that made Pygmalion wish
that his beautiful creation could come alive. This view of the power
of art is what Herder finds missing in Riedel and perhaps even in
Lessing himself.
In the fourth *Grove*, Herder also has interesting things to
say about arts we have not mentioned, namely, dance, architecture, and
horticulture, and an important passage about music, which he analyzes
as the "imitation of human passions," arousing "a
series of inner feelings, true, although not distinct, not intuitive,
only extremely obscure" ("Fourth Grove," pp.
406-7). But we will have to leave these arts aside and conclude
our discussion of Herder with a comment on his supposed historical and
cultural relativism, which, as was earlier noted, has often been
thought to be his central contribution to modern thought. Herder's
writings are certainly replete with observations connecting the
different circumstances and mores of different cultures and times with
differences in their arts and tastes. For example: "The Greek,
the Gothic, the Moorish taste in architecture and sculpture, in
mythology and in poetry, is it the same? And is [the difference] not
to be explained from times, mores, and peoples?" ("Fourth
Grove," p. 286). And in his essay on Shakespeare, he attacks the
rigid insistence on unity of time, place, and action in classical
French theater by arguing that these ideals grew naturally out of the
circumstances of both Greek theater and Greek life, but that it is
absurd to make them into rigid rules in the very different
circumstances of both modern theater and modern life
("Shakespeare," pp. 162-3).
However, it would be a mistake to infer from such comments that Herder
does not think that there are underlying commonalities in the arts and
tastes of different times and places, or that people living in one
time and culture cannot learn to appreciate deeply the art of another
time and culture. On the contrary, the argument of the essay on
Shakespeare is that the best art of different times and
places--for example, the theater of Sophocles and that of
Shakespeare--must differ *superficially* precisely because
at the deepest level they are committed to the *same*
principle--the truthful imitation of nature--but
have *different* natures to imitate. Thus he writes that the
unities of time, place, and action were not artificial for the Greeks
at all, although it would be for moderns ("Shakespeare,"
p. 163). Further, it is precisely because the Greek "view of the
world, their customs, the state of the republics, the tradition of the
heroic age, religion, even music, expression, and the degrees of
illusion changed" ("Shakespeare," p. 164), that the drama of
Shakespeare was bound to be different than that of Sophocles. It was
bound to be different because while all these things changed,
Shakespeare was committed to the *same* underlying principle of
truthfully representing his own world that his drama, unlike that of
the misguided French classicists, *had* to look and sound
different. If Shakespeare's "world did not offer such simplicity
of history, traditions, domestic, political, and religious conditions,
then of course it will not display it" in his work either.
Instead, he will create his "drama out of [his world's] own
history, the spirit of its age, customs, views, language, national
attitudes, traditions, and pastimes" ("Shakespeare,"
p. 167). But in doing so, Shakespeare was in fact doing the same thing
as Sophocles:
> For Shakespeare is Sophocles's brother, precisely
> where he seems to be so dissimilar, and inwardly he is wholly like
> him. His whole dramatic illusion is attained by means of this
> authenticity, truth, and historical
> creativity. ("Shakespeare," p. 172)
>
>
>
>
Precisely because the art of Sophocles and that of Shakespeare rest on the same underlying principle it is
possible for people at any time to come to appreciate them both,
although no doubt with the considerable effort it would take to
appreciate fully their language, their customs, in short, their
worlds.
### 5.2 Sulzer
Herder is thus no straightforward historicist or cultural
relativist. Rather, his convictions that the best art reveals the
truth about its world and that there are deep commonalities in human
emotional responses to such truths allow him to defend the ideal of a
standard of or paradigm for taste after all. It will be noted,
however, that throughout Herder's aesthetics the notion of play has
hardly figured at all; it has been mentioned only in connection with
the superficial art of painting rather than with the deeper arts of
sculpture, poetry, and even music. For an attempt to combine an
aesthetics of truth with an aesthetics of play that is in some ways
shallower than Herder's thought but in other ways an important
innovation in German aesthetics, let us now take a look at the work
of Johann Georg Sulzer (1720-1779). He was born a
quarter-century before Herder but his encyclopedic *General Theory
of the Fine Arts*, first published from 1771 to 1774, was
contemporaneous with such central works of Herder as the essays on
Ossian and Shakespeare. Sulzer advocates a conventional view of the
relation between aesthetic experience and truth: the experience of
art--although not solely of beautiful art--can make moral
truths vivid and efficacious for us, even though we can know those
truths independently of art, and indeed must know the most
fundamental principles of morality independently of art. But he also
emphasized that aesthetic experience is an intrinsically enjoyable
and therefore valuable experience of the unhindered *activity*
of the mind. His conception of the mind has Leibnizian origins, but
his emphasis on the pleasure of its unhindered activity points the
way toward Kant's conception of aesthetic experience as the free play
of the cognitive powers. While Sulzer was generally a more
conventional thinker than Herder, he here introduces a theme that is
almost entirely absent from Herder's thought and prepares the way for
Kant's synthesis of two although not all three of the main approaches
of eighteenth-century aesthetics.
Sulzer was born in Winthertur, Switzerland, in 1720. Destined for the
clergy, at sixteen he was boarded with a pastor in Zurich and attended
the gymnasium there. But at eighteen, he became more interested in the
study of mathematics, botany, and philosophy, and came under the
influence of Bodmer and Breitinger. Sulzer was ordained on the
completion of his studies in 1739, and in 1740 became a tutor in a
wealthy Zurich household. The next year he became a village vicar and
was able to devote himself to natural history and archaeology. In 1744
he took up a teaching position in Magdeburg, Germany, and in 1747 he
became professor of mathematics at a gymnasium in Berlin. Sulzer was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1750. From that
time on he regularly published essays on reason, consciousness, language,
materialism, the immortality of the soul, and the nature and existence
of God, as well as a lengthy "Investigation of the original of
agreeable and disagreeable sentiments" (1751), which first
stated central themes of his aesthetics. He also published shorter
treatments of such topics as genius (1757), the utility of drama, a
reply to Rousseau's attack upon the theater (1760), and "Energy
in works of fine art" (1765). In 1755 Sulzer published a
translation of Hume's first *Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding*, and Hume's theories of the imagination and the
moral sentiments, although not his skepticism, would considerably
influence the further development of Sulzer's own philosophy.
Although Sulzer himself remained at bottom a loyal Leibnizo-Wolffian,
his introduction of Hume into German philosophical discourse prepared
the way for Kant's critique of that philosophy. In 1761, Sulzer began
work on his *General Theory of the Fine Arts*, which was
originally planned as a revision of Jacques Lacombe's *Dictionnaire
portraitif des beaux-arts* (1752) but became a vehicle for the
statement of Sulzer's own general views about aesthetics and the moral
significance of art as well an outlet for his vast learning and
energy. Sulzer finally published the *General Theory* in two
volumes from 1771 to 1774; especially in the expanded posthumous
editions by Friedrich von Blankenburg in 1786-87 and
1792-94 (Sulzer having died in 1779), this remains a
valuable source for the aesthetics of the German Enlightenment and especially for its
bibliography.
Sulzer's earliest works in aesthetics concerned nature rather than
art, but already demonstrated his lifelong concern for the moral
significance of aesthetic experience. In his *Conversations on the
Beauties of Nature* (*Unterredungen uber die Schonheiten der
Natur*, 1750), which was republished in 1770 together with his
earlier *Moral Thoughts on the Works of Nature* (*Versuch
einiger moralischen Gedanken uber die Werke der Natur*, 1745),
Sulzer analyzed the benefits of the enjoyment of natural beauty in a
way that prefigured his subsequent complex analysis of the value of
art. In the first conversation he argued that the contemplation of
natural beauty has a calming and moderating influence on our
passions. The remaining conversations argue that the contemplation of
the order of nature proves to us that its existence cannot have been a
matter of chance, and that its beauty gives us palpable evidence of
the wisdom and benevolence of its creator. This analysis foreshadows
Sulzer's later position that the enjoyment of art is of immediate
moral value because it directly contributes to our happiness, which is
the ultimate object of morality, and is also of indirect moral value
because it can enliven and thereby make more effective our knowledge
of the general precepts of morality, and is indeed the best instrument
for that end.
Sulzer's mature aesthetics is firmly grounded in his generally
Leibnizo-Wolffian metaphysics and psychology as well as in his
Wolffian moral philosophy. The central tenets of his metaphysics and
psychology are that the human mind is essentially representational, so
that desire and will as well as cognition are forms of representation,
and that the ultimate source of all of our pleasurable sentiments is
the unhindered activity of our capacity for representation.
Conversely, the fundamental source of disagreeable sentiments is the
restriction of our representational activity. Sulzer's morality is a
Wolffian form of utilitarianism, according to which the goal of the
moral life is happiness. Thus, whatever contributes to happiness is at
least *prima facie* good. Aesthetic experience is a variety of
free and unhindered activity of our representational capacity, and
therefore produces pleasurable sentiments which are a primary
constituent of happiness. In that way, aesthetic experience is of
direct moral value. But works of art also enliven our abstract
knowledge of moral precepts and make them effective on our action, so
aesthetic experience is also of indirect moral value. Sulzer's
morality might seem egocentric, but he forestalls such an objection by
an argument that normal human beings naturally desire for others what
they desire for themselves, and naturally recognize the right of
others to that for which they claim a right for themselves
("Psychological Considerations," p. 287). Thus those who
desire happiness for themselves naturally desire it for others as
well, and those who desire happiness in the form of the pleasure of
aesthetic experience for themselves will naturally desire it for
others as well. However, Sulzer also recognizes that art can be put to
perverse and immoral use as well as healthy and good use, thus while
art can contribute to morality both directly and indirectly we must
also have an independent grasp of and commitment to the fundamental
principles of morality in order to make sure that aesthetic
experience's natural tendency to morally good outcomes is not
perverted.
Working within the tradition of Wolff and Baumgarten, Sulzer bases his
aesthetics on the premise that the experience of beauty is founded on
the sensuous perception of perfection. Perfection consists in the rich
variety of a manifold on the one hand and its unity on the other but
also in a third element, namely the "complete agreement"
of what a thing is "with what it ought to be, or of the real
with the ideal" ("Vollkommenheit"
("Perfection") in *Allgemeine Theorie der schonen
Kunste*, volume IV, pp. 688-9, at p. 688). He thus allows
for no conception of perfection without a concept of purpose. Kant
will subsequently reject the assumption that we must have a conception
of the purpose of an object in order to make a (pure) judgment of
beauty about it. But Sulzer himself already departs from the purely
Wolffian conception that the experience of beauty consists simply in a
clear but obscure recognition of the perfection of an object relative
to a conception of its purpose because he holds that the experience of
the beauty of an object is an awareness of its *effect* on our
representational faculty rather than an awareness of
the *cause* of that effect in the object. Thus the experience
of beauty becomes the sensation or sentiment (*Empfindung*)
caused by the perfection of the object, rather than a clear but
indistinct cognition of that perfection. The real object of pleasure
then becomes the activity of one's own representational state,
manifested in the form of sentiment, that is caused by the perfection
of the beautiful object. This is Sulzer's decisive modification of the
Leibnizo-Wolffian approach to aesthetics, not to be found in
Baumgarten nor in Herder. However, from this
innovation Sulzer does not draw the conclusion that Kant subsequently
will, namely, that there can be no general rules for beauty. On the
contrary, in his view the causal relation between perfection in the
object and the pleasurable sentiments of activity in the subject is
precisely the sort of relation that gives rise to rules, although such
rules will be fairly general rather than very specific.
In holding that the real source of our pleasure in beautiful objects
is our sensation of our own representational activity Sulzer is led
to identify aesthetically valuable forms of sentiment that are not
caused by beauty at all. In fact, he argues that the fine arts must
arouse the full range of human sentiments, even sentiments of
ugliness (although, unlike Lessing, he does not distinguish among the
fine arts in this regard) ("Hasslich"
("Ugly"), *Allgemeine Theorie*, volume II,
pp. 457-9). But even before he reaches that conclusion, his
theory of beauty makes the nature and aims of art more complex than
they might initially seem. Sulzer employs a trifold division of
things that please us that is not dissimilar to Kant's subsequent
distinction between the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful. He
distinguishes between things that please us "even if we do not
have the least conception of the constitution" or means by
which they do that, things that please us only if we have "a
distinct representation of their constitution," and things that
please us because "the constitution of the objects charms our
attention," but where we "sense a satisfaction in them
before we cognize them distinctly, before we know what they ought to
be." The last of these is what comprise the "class of the
beautiful properly speaking," while the former
correspond to Kant's classes of the agreeable and the good
respectively ("Schon"
("Beautiful"), *Allgemeine Theorie*, volume IV,
pp. 305-19, at p. 306). Then Sulzer makes a further
distinction. Because of his inclusion of purposiveness in his
conception of perfection, he argues that the perfect can please us
"either because of its material, or because of its external
form, or through its inner constitution, by means of which it is an
instrument or means for the achievement of some final end"
(ibid., p. 307). Correspondingly, there is a distinction between the
pleasure that we may take in superficial beauty of the form and
matter of an object, and the deeper pleasure that we take when an
object also has "inner worth." "A higher species of
beauty arises from the close unification of the perfect, the
beautiful, and the good. This arouses not merely satisfaction, but
true inner pleasure, which often empowers the entire soul, and the
enjoyment of which is happiness" (ibid., pp. 309-10). On
Sulzer's account, a beauty that appeals to the full range of our
cognitive and emotional capacities through its purposiveness as well
as its form is a "higher species" of beauty than one that
appeals to our sense of form alone.
Sulzer's conception of the two levels of beauty also leads him to an
account of the "ideal of beauty" that may have been a
source for Kant's later discussion of that concept, which will in turn
be criticized by Friedrich Schiller (see section 8). According to
Sulzer,
> that the human form [*Gestalt*] is the most
> beautiful of all visible objects does not need to be proved...The
> strongest, the most noble, and the most blessed sentiments of which
> the human mind is capable are effects of this
> beauty. ("Schonheit"
> ("Beauty"), *Allgemeine Theorie*, volume IV,
> pp. 319-27, at pp. 319-20)
>
>
>
>
The "external form of the inner character
of a human being" (ibid., p. 322) is the ideal of beauty, when
the beauty of that external form expresses the goodness of the
internal character; correspondingly, the external expression of inner
evil is the most hateful form of appearance. Like Herder, Sulzer
recognizes that the variety of human tastes in both form and more
substantial matters of morality means that different individuals and
peoples will find both different external forms beautiful and
different characters good, thus leading to differences in their ideals
of beauty. But he is confident of the general principle that
"every human being holds that to be most beautiful whose form
announces to the eye of the judge the most perfect and best human
being" (ibid., p. 320). This illustrates his general conception
of the force of rules of taste: they express underlying commonalities
in the etiology of human preferences without entailing complete
agreement about particulars.
Sulzer also develops a complex theory of the value of fine art. Fine
art aims to produce pleasure both by setting our cognitive powers into
activity through the formal and material beauties of its products and
by arousing our deepest feelings. Since the aim of morality is human
happiness, art has immediate moral value just because it sets our
mental powers into enjoyable activity. But its ability to arouse our
emotions also gives art indirect moral value through its capacity to
enliven and make effective our otherwise abstract and not always
efficacious acknowledgement of the general precepts of morality. Thus,
in such a statement as that "the essence" of art
> consists in the fact that it impresses the objects
> of our representation with sensible force, its end is the lively
> affection [*Ruhrung*] of our minds, and in its application it
> aims at the elevation of the spirit and the heart, ("Kunste;
> Schone Kunste" ("Arts; Fine Arts") *Allgemeine
> Theorie,* volume III, pp. 72-95, at p. 75),
>
>
>
>
Sulzer clearly indicates that art has immediate
value in its vivification of our sensory and cognitive powers as well
as the value of its power to elevate our spirit and heart and thereby
make morality efficacious for us. To be sure, he often emphasizes the
latter aspect of the value of art more than the former; for example,
he writes
> The fine arts also use their charms in order to
> draw our attention to the good and to affect us with love for it. Only
> through this application does it become important to the human race
> and deserve the attention of the wise and the support of
> regents. (ibid., p. 76)
>
>
>
>
In a time and place where Calvinism and Pietism
still questioned the value of the fine arts, it may have been
necessary for him to emphasize the value of art for enlivening our
moral precepts over his theory that morality itself aims at a kind of
happiness in which the pleasures of the fine arts play a direct and
major role. But the latter is as much a part of his thought as the
former.
Sulzer's more conventional view that the fine arts serve morality by
enlivening our moral feelings explains his recognition of the value of
the ugly as well as the beautiful in art: our sentiments of ugliness
need to be aroused in order to strengthen our aversion to the evil
just as our sentiments of beauty need to be aroused in order to
strengthen our attraction to the good. But Sulzer also recognizes that
the emotional power of art means that it can be made into a tool for
evil as well as for good, especially in the political arena. For
example, a leader
> who does not have sufficiently secure power in his
> hands turns to the efforts of his artists in order to clothe his
> tyranny with agreeableness; and by this means the attention of that
> part of the populace which is merely passive is turned away from
> freedom and directed toward mere entertainment. ("Kunste; Schone
> Kunste," *Allgemeine Theorie*, volume III, p. 83)
>
>
>
>
For this reason, the moral potential of art must
be governed by a firm recognition of the fundamental principles of
morality itself (ibid., p. 78). Sulzer does not make the mistake of
thinking that the experience of fine art, valuable as it can be for
sound morality and politics, can substitute for a direct grasp of
sound principles of morality and politics. Although his emphasis on
the moral potential of the heightened sensitivity
(*Empfindlichkeit*) that can be developed through aesthetic
education may have been an important source for Schiller, he would
not have gone as far as the latter does in his *Letters on
Aesthetic Education* in suggesting that aesthetic education is
both a necessary and sufficient condition for moral regeneration.
### 5.3 Herz
Sulzer was clearly significant for successors such as Kant and
Schiller, both for his emphasis on the free activity of the mind in
aesthetic experience and for his complex rather than simplistic
position on the relation between art and morality. One other
important aesthetician of the 1770s was also, like Herder, actually a
student of Kant, but his theory would become an unstated target of
Kant's criticism rather than a source for him. This is Marcus Herz
(1747-1803), Herder's junior by three years. Remembered by
philosophers primarily as the respondent at the defense of Kant's
inaugural dissertation *On the Form and Principles of the Sensible
and Intelligible World* in 1770 and as the recipient of Kant's
letters describing his progress on the *Critique of Pure
Reason* in the following decade, Herz had a significant career of
his own, as a physician and medical writer, as a lecturer on
philosophy, and as the author not only of the earliest exposition of
Kant's philosophy, but also of an independent and important work in
aesthetics.
Herz was born to a Jewish scribe and his wife in Berlin in 1747, and
received a traditional talmudic education. At the age of fifteen he
was sent to apprentice with a Jewish merchant in Konigsberg, but at
nineteen he matriculated at the university in Konigsberg (two years
after Herder had left) as a medical student--the only university
course open to Jews in Prussia. Medical students were required to
study modern languages, philosophy, and mathematics, and Herz became a
loyal student of Kant's, attending his lectures on logic, metaphysics,
moral philosophy, natural law, physics, and physical geography. Kant's
selection of the Jewish student for the defense of his inaugural
dissertation in 1770 was not accepted happily by some members of the
faculty, but Kant supported Herz then and always remained loyal to
him, even as the student's views diverged from his own. Shortly after
the defense of Kant's dissertation, Herz left Konigsberg without a
degree but with an introduction from Kant to Moses Mendelssohn. He
immediately became a member of Mendelssohn's circle, and also resumed
his medical studies in Berlin, and then from 1772 to 1774 in Halle,
where he received his doctorate. He then returned to Berlin, where he
was appointed to the Jewish hospital. He attended Mendelssohn in his
final illness in 1786. Most of Herz's publications arose from his
medical and scientific practice, and included his *Letters to
Doctors* in 1777 and 1784; *Outline of All Medical
Sciences* in 1782, which was adopted as a textbook in Halle; a
companion to his Berlin lectures on *Experimental Physics*;
an *Essay on Dizziness* in 1786; and a controversial
essay *On Early Burial among the Jews* in 1787, in which he
argued against the current practice among Jews of burial on the day of
death on medical grounds, holding that death could not always be
conclusively determined within such a short period. In 1782, Herz also
provided the German translation of Manasseh ben
Israel's *Vindication of the Jews*, to which Mendelssohn
provided the preface that would in turn lead the way to
his *Jerusalem* of the next year; Herz thus played a role in
the genesis of that central text. In 1777 he began offering private
lectures on philosophy in addition to his medical practice, which were
well attended. Herz died on January 19, 1803, a year before his teacher Kant.
Herz's two important philosophical works were his *Considerations
from Speculative Philosophy* (*Betrachtungen aus der
spekulativen Weltweisheit*) of 1771 and his *Essay on Taste and
the Causes of its Variety* (*Versuch uber den Geschmack und die
Ursachen seiner Verschiedenheit*), first published in 1776 and
then in an expanded edition in 1790--the same year as
Kant's *Critique of the Power of Judgment*. The contrast
between the two works in aesthetics is interesting, because while some
arguments in Kant's work can be construed as subtle criticisms of some
of Herz's positions, Herz finished even the second edition of his book
without any knowledge of Kant's criticisms. In general, he remained
closer to the Wolffian and Baumgartian theory of beauty and taste that
had been transmitted to him through Mendelssohn than to the position
of his erstwhile teacher Kant, but he also shared Sulzer's emphasis on
mental activity and Herder's emphasis on the social dimension of art
while introducing some novel positions of his own.
Herz's *Considerations from Speculative Philosophy*, published
at the age of twenty-four, does not purport to be more than a German
paraphrase of Kant's Latin dissertation, but it goes beyond Kant's
published work on a number of points in the treatment of space, time,
and things in themselves. It also adds a Mendelssohnian argument about
the simplicity of the soul, and, most surprisingly, includes a
digression on aesthetic judgment that anticipates a central argument
of his subsequent *Essay on Taste*. The central arguments of
this digression, which comes in Herz's exposition of Kant's new theory
of space and time as the forms of sensibility, are first, that beauty
is an objective property especially connected to the form of an
object, and not a mere sensation or sentiment (*Empfindung*) in
the subject, and second, that there are general principles of
beautiful form. However, form must always be realized in matter, and
individuals differ more in their response to matter than to form, so
these general principles are objective but not completely determinate,
thus allowing for differences of taste even though beauty is
objective. Kant would subsequently agree that individuals differ in
their response to matter but not to form, but then restrict pure
judgments of taste to form alone, thus attempting to guarantee
unanimity of judgments of taste instead of accepting variation as Herz
did. Kant's analysis of pure judgments of taste might thus be seen as
a criticism of Herz's theory.
Five years after the *Considerations*, Herz developed this
conception of beauty as objective but yielding only indeterminate
rules for taste into the far more extensive *Essay on Taste*.
Herz begins with what he considers to be a Baumgartian definition of
beauty as the appearance of perfection in an object, where perfection
in turn consists in the unity of a manifold. However, he adds that a
work of art also has a *Haltung*, or expresses an attitude, and
that its beauty also depends upon the harmony between the attitude
expressed in the work and the goal or purpose of the work. We do not
attribute purposes to natural objects, he argues, so in their case
beauty lies in manifoldness and unity alone, but in human productions
and therefore in art we always expect and respond to a purpose. Here
Herz's analysis anticipates Kant's differentiation between natural and
artistic beauty. He next argues that as natural beauty consists only
in manifoldness and unity, we respond to it with the play of our
imagination, which apprehends manifoldness, and reason, which
recognizes unity. But as artistic beauty consists in the objective
factors of manifoldness, unity, and attitude, the response to artistic
beauty depends upon imagination, reason, and the further element of
feeling, for response to the attitude of the work. In this analysis,
Herz stresses that the perception of beauty is not passive, but rather
active, because of the role of both imagination and reason. He also
argues that our pleasure in beauty is ultimately due to the activity
of our mental powers in its perception, activity being the greatest
source of our pleasure. Here Herz clearly aligns himself with
Sulzer. Herz then argues that human beings share their basic
capacities of imagination, reason, and feeling, but that there are
numerous factors that affect how these general faculties function
concretely in different individuals and populations. This explains
differences of taste without undermining the metaphysical objectivity
of beauty: these differences include variations in freedom of thought,
religion, morality, material wealth, climate and regime. Here Herz's
thought parallels the contemporary thought of Herder.
Some of Herz's most interesting points and his greatest differences
with Kant's theory of taste emerge in the discussion of the influence
of morality on taste. Herz argues that the enjoyment of beauty
contributes to morality in two ways, directly and indirectly. The
enjoyment of beauty contributes to morality directly because as a
source of mental activity it is a source of happiness, and happiness
is nothing less than the aim of morality. Here again Herz adopts the
same positions as Sulzer. Herz takes a different position than Sulzer
on the indirect moral benefits of art, however, arguing not that the
experience of art enlivens moral sentiments that we already have from
our more abstract recognition of general moral precepts, but rather
that the cultivation of taste, which happens only in society,
contributes to morality indirectly because it generates feelings of
sociability that can then support our attempts to be moral. Although
Kant will not mention Herz's name in the *Critique of the Power of
Judgment*, this seems to be the kind of vindication of aesthetic
experience that Kant criticizes under the name of an "empirical
interest in the beautiful," holding that morality requires
an *a priori* principle rather than mere feelings of
sociability and can therefore be supported only by an
"intellectual interest in the beautiful."
Finally, in the appendix to the *Essay* Herz also argues
against the position of Du Bos that critics have no better rules for
arguing about the merits of works of art than cooks do for arguing
about ragouts, a position adopted from Du Bos by Hume and subsequently
endorsed by Kant. In spite of his recognition of the many factors that
create variability in judgments of taste, Herz thus insisted to the
end that we can have not just an *a priori* ideal of agreement
in taste but rational means for arguing about judgments of taste,
consisting in discussion of unity amidst variety on the one hand and
the identification of factors leading to disagreement on the other
hand. In this regard, Herz remained within the ambit of Wolff,
Baumgarten, and Meier rather than approaching the view of his
contemporary Herder. One might nevertheless have expected his emphasis
on the role of individual mental activity in aesthetic experience,
rather than Herder's emphasis on truth as the basis of aesthetic
experience, to have led to the more radical position on the
possibility of determinate rules for art criticism.
## 6. Moritz: Art as that which is Perfect in itself
Karl Philipp Moritz (1756-1793) is the last of the pre-Kantian
German aestheticians who will be considered here. Moritz was another
of the many German intellectuals of the eighteenth century who rose to
renown from unpromising beginnings. He was the son of an army musician
who sought refuge from his own circumstances in Quietism, an extreme
sect of Pietism, and inflicted its religiosity upon his son. After
several years as an apprentice to a hatmaker, Moritz was able to
attend grammar school. He spent a few years at the
universities in Erfurt and Wittenberg, interspersed with attempts to
become an actor and a stay at the seminary of the Moravian Brothers,
another Pietist sect. At twenty-two, he became a schoolteacher in
Berlin. In 1782 he made a trip to England and published a travelogue
which won him some recognition, after which he returned to his school
until 1786, when his publisher financed a trip to Italy in the hope of
getting another popular travelogue out of him. In Italy Moritz became
a friend of Goethe, who would write a much more famous account of his
Italian journey, and learned enough about classical art to become
professor of aesthetics at the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1789, the
position he held until his death just four years later. Moritz's
publications during his brief but intense literary career included, in
addition to his Italian travelogue, eventually published in
1792-3, the novels *Anton Reiser* (1786-90), a
barely fictionalized autobiography, and *Andreas Hartknopf: An
Allegory*; philological works including an *Essay on German
Prosody* in 1786 and *Lectures on Style* in 1793; textbooks
on grammar and logic for children, a *German Grammar for the
Ladies*, English and Italian grammars for Germans, and an
eventually very successful account of Greek mythology aimed at both
children and adults; a *Theory of Ornament*; and a journal of
"empirical psychology" (*erfahrende Seelenkunde*)
that he edited for ten years. But what concern us here are the essays
in aesthetics that Moritz published between 1785 and 1791.
These essays commence with the ambitiously entitled "Attempt at
a Unification of all the Fine Arts and Sciences under the Concept
of *that which is complete in itself*," dedicated to
Moses Mendelssohn and published in 1785 in an issue of
the *Berlinische Monatsschrift* that also contained an article
(on astronomy) by Kant. In these essays Moritz argues that works of
art please us because they have an "internal
purposiveness" independent of any purpose external to them, a
conception that might seem to anticipate Kant's own account of
beauty as "purposiveness without a purpose" and the
nineteenth-century conception of "art for art's sake." It
is certainly possible that Kant read Moritz's essay,
appearing as it did alongside one of his own, but Kant's notion of
"subjective" or "formal" purposiveness is
more a repudiation of Moritz's conception of "internal
purposiveness" than a successor to it. Moritz's view is
also distinct from later conceptions of "art for art's
sake." In fact, as the brief "Outlines of a Complete
Theory of the Fine Arts" that he published in the journal of the
Academy of Arts in 1789 makes clear, Moritz rejected the
"subjectivist" view that our pleasure in artistic or
natural beauty is due primarily to the way in which it freely engages
our own mental powers on which the theory of Kant and later advocates
of "art for art's sake" is based in favor of an
"objectivist" view:
> The genuinely beautiful is not merely in us and in
> our manner of representation, but is to be found *outside us*
> in the objects themselves. ("Grundlinien zu einer vollstandigen
> Theorie der schonen Kunste," in *Werke*, volume II, pp.
> 591-2, at p. 591)
>
>
>
>
What Moritz actually held is that the
"internal purposiveness" of a work of art is an
intimation of the perfection of the world as a whole, and that we
enjoy it precisely as such an intimation. Thus Moritz attempted to
stem the growth of the theory of aesthetic experience as free play by
reverting to a theory of beauty as an intimation of the true order of
the cosmos that has its roots in the views of Wolff and
Shaftesbury.
Both the essay on art as "that which is complete in
itself" and a longer pamphlet "On the formative Imitation
of the Beautiful" (*Uber die bildende Nachahmung des
Schonen*) that Moritz published in 1788 start off with a contrast
between the beautiful on the one side and the useful and the good on
the other in a way that does anticipate the opening stratagem of
Kant's "Analytic of the Beautiful" in his *Critique of
the Power of Judgment* in 1790. Moritz analyses the useful in
particular as a means to a perfection that lies outside of the useful
object itself, namely,
> the convenience or comfortableness that accrues to
> myself or another through the use of it...i.e., I consider it
> merely as a means, for which I myself, in so far as my perfection is
> thereby promoted, am the end. The merely useful object is thus in
> itself nothing whole or complete.
>
>
>
>
Then he immediately assumes, as if this were the
only alternative, that
> In the contemplation of the beautiful I roll the
> end from myself back into the object itself: I consider it, as
> something that is *complete* not in me but rather *in
> itself*, that thus comprises a whole in itself, and that affords
> me pleasure *on its own account*. ("Uber den Begriff
> des *in sich selbst Vollendeten*," *Werke*, volume
> II, pp. 543-8, at p. 543)
>
>
>
>
Moritz continues that a beautiful object does not
please us, like a clock or a knife, because it satisfies some need of
our own, not even the need to be pleased, but, remarkably, that
> the beautiful needs us, in order to be
> cognized. We could subsist very well without the contemplations of
> beautiful works of art, but these, as such, cannot well subsist
> without our contemplation.
>
>
>
>
He then goes on to say that when we see a play
put on before an empty theater, we are displeased, not for the sake of
the author or actors, but for the sake of the play itself, as work of
art whose need to be contemplated is going unfulfilled (ibid.,
p. 544)!
In a passage that points more toward Arthur Schopenhauer than to Kant,
Moritz next writes:
>
>
> The sweet astonishment, the *agreeable forgetting of ourself*
> in the contemplation of a beautiful work of art, is also a proof that
> our gratification here is something subordinate, that we voluntarily
> allow ourself to be determined through the beautiful, to which we for
> a while concede a sort of sovereignty over all our own feelings.
> While the beautiful draws our consideration entirely to itself, it
> draws us for a while away from our self, it is the highest degree of
> pure and unselfish gratification that the beautiful affords us. In
> the moment we sacrifice our individual, limited existence to a sort of
> higher existence. The gratification in the beautiful must thereby ever
> more approach that of unselfish *love* if it is to be
> genuine.... The beautiful in the work of art is not for me pure
> and unmixed until I completely think away its special relation to me
> and consider it is as something that has been brought forth entirely
> for its own sake, so that it could be something complete in itself.
> (Ibid., p. 545)
>
>
>
As the popularity of Schopenhauer's subsequent presentation of this
view demonstrates, Moritz has surely here captured an aspect of the
experience of artistic--or for that matter natural--beauty
that many people have felt. But so far his conception of and argument
for the idea of the beautiful as that which is perfect and complete in
itself has been entirely negative; what is it in a beautiful object
that can so please us and yet distract us completely from our ordinary
concern with ourselves and our own pleasures?
The answer to this question can be found in Moritz's longer
essay *On the formative Imitation of the Beautiful*. Here,
after a more extended contrast between the beautiful, the useful, and
the good, Moritz adds to his previous account that a beautiful object
is something that seems to us to be "a whole subsisting for
itself" insofar as it "*strikes our senses* or can
be *grasped by our imagination*," and that "to that
extent our *instruments of sensation* prescribe
its *measure* to the beautiful" (*Uber die bildende
Nachahmung des Schonen*, *Werke*, volume II, pp.
551-78, at pp. 558-9). Here he aligns himself with the
tradition of Wolff and Baumgarten by asserting that the perception of
beauty is a perception of perfection by means of the senses or their
extension through imagination. But he still owes us an explanation of
what the internal and objective perfection of the beautiful object is.
This comes next, when he states that it is actually the
"interconnection of the whole of nature" insofar as we
grasp it by means of the senses and imagination that we contemplate
and admire in a beautiful work of art, or that it is intimated to us
by such a work. "Every beautiful whole from the hand of the
formative artist is thus a little impression of the highest beauty in
the great whole of nature" (ibid., p. 560; see also
"Grundlinien," p. 592). The beautiful intimates the true
order of the world-whole to us in a way that the use of our ordinary
powers of thought, imagination, and sense on particular pieces of the
world-whole cannot do. *Only* in the experience of the
beautiful can we actually get a sense of the order of the
world-whole.
From the premise that "The nature of the beautiful consists
precisely in the fact that its inner essence lies outside of the
limits of the power of thought, in its origination, in its own
coming-to-be," Moritz infers that "in the case of the
beautiful, the power of thought can no longer ask, why is it
beautiful?" (ibid., p. 564). The essence of beauty thus escapes
ordinary conceptual thought. This is the basis for Moritz's argument,
in another essay entitled "The Signature of the
Beautiful," that the beautiful cannot be described, that is,
that although words themselves may *be* beautiful, they cannot
provide a *description* of beauty--even such a brilliant
description as Winckelmann's description of the Apollo Belvedere
"rips apart the wholeness of this work of art," and
"is more damaging than useful to the contemplation of this
sublime work of art" ("Die Signatur des
Schonen," *Werke*, volume II, pp. 579-88, at p.
588). And for this reason, the artistic genius cannot be fully
conscious of what he does when he creates a beautiful work of art, for
its beauty cannot be reduced to any concept that he can state (ibid.,
p. 585). Here Moritz arrives at results that are superficially similar
to those Kant will arrive at a few years later--that aesthetic
judgments cannot be grounded in determinate concept and that the
process of creation by artistic genius cannot be guided and explained
by determinate concepts. But he reaches these conclusions for very
different reasons: Kant will draw these conclusions from his
subjectivist account of the origin of aesthetic pleasure in a play of
the cognitive powers that is free rather than determined by concepts,
while Moritz draws these conclusions from his conception that a
beautiful object always intimates the order of the world-whole that is
beyond our grasp through any of the ordinary powers of mind. In other
words, Moritz draws his conclusions from his version of an aesthetics
of truth, while Kant will draw similar conclusions from an aesthetics
based on the idea of the free play of mental powers.
In 1791, Moritz dedicated a review of the *Essay on Taste* by
"our mutual friend" Herz to Salomon Maimon, another
Jewish intellectual who had arisen to prominence in
Berlin from beginnings even more unpromising than those of Mendelssohn
and Herz. Here he manifests his own allegiance to Wolff and
Baumgarten, arguing that his conception of beauty as the internal
perfection of a work of art as it strikes the senses and imagination
is essentially the same as their conception of beauty as
"sensible perfection" (he draws no distinction between
Wolff and Baumgarten) ("Uber des Herrn Professor Herz Versuch
uber den Geschmack: An Herrn Salomon Maimon," *Werke*,
volume II, pp. 923-7, at p. 925). In this work he also tries to
paper over any difference between himself and Kant, whose *Critique
of the Power of Judgment* had also appeared the year before, by
claiming that Kant's concept of "purposiveness without purpose
is nothing other than an ideal purpose," and thus that Kant's
concept of beauty is essentially the same as Wolff's and his own
(ibid., p. 926). This is not true, because Moritz's conception of the
beauty of an individual work of art is that it is an intimation of the
true and objective order of nature as a whole, while Kant's notion of
purposiveness without purpose is that of a subjective state of mind in
which our mental powers of imagination and understanding are in a free
harmony that does not by itself represent anything at all. At least in
what Kant calls the "pure" judgment of taste, the
experience of beauty is pleasurable without meaning anything or
conveying any truth. As we will see, that is in fact only the
starting-point of Kant's aesthetics, although as he moves past his initial
analysis of "pure" or "free" beauty he does
add back into his view the beauties of truth that figured so
prominently for so many of his German predecessors up through Herder
and Moritz, as well as the beauty of utility that we saw to play a
large role in the British tradition, for example in Hume. But we
cannot appreciate the complexity of Kant's aesthetics unless we have
seen the separate approaches that he ultimately combines.
## 7. Kant: Playing with Truth
Immanuel Kant's only significant work in aesthetics, the *Critique
of the Power of Judgment*, came late in his life, at the end of
the extraordinary decade in which he had published the *Critique of
Pure Reason* (1781, revised 1787), the *Prolegomena to any
future Metaphysics* (1783), the *Groundwork for the Metaphysics
of Morals* (1785), the *Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science* (1786), the *Critique of Practical Reason* (1788),
and a host of important essays on history, science, and theology as
well as philosophy. Although we take its existence for granted now,
Kant's third *Critique* could only have struck its original
audience as a surprising and puzzling work. It was surprising, because
the second critique had not announced a forthcoming third anymore than
the first had announced that there would be a second; and it was
puzzling, because the book not only gives an extended treatment to one
topic, namely aesthetic experience and judgment, which Kant had
previously denied could be the subject of a science (*Critique of
Pure Reason*, A 21/B 35-6), but also links that topic with
another, namely the teleological judgment of both organisms within
nature and of nature as a whole, to which Kant had never before linked
it. Clearly there must have been some revolution in Kant's conception
of the tasks of philosophy as well in his assessment of the prospects
of both aesthetics and teleology. This change in view both made it
imperative for him and enabled him to write this book, linking two
subjects that were not only disparate but that had also previously
been problematic for him, so soon after having completed his
exhausting labors on the first two critiques.
Kant does not immediately reveal a profound motivation for the new
book in either the first draft of its Introduction, the so-called
"first introduction" of 1789, or in the Preface or first
section of the published Introduction as well as several of its
subsequent sections. These are focused on the distinctions among the
several faculties of the mind and the divisions of philosophy. As a
result, the introductions make it seem as if Kant has been moved
primarily by a pedantic desire for completeness to find a place in his
system for two disciplines, aesthetics and teleology, that had been
discussed by many of his German, British, and French predecessors, but
that had apparently not played a large role in his own thought
heretofore. It seems that the main task of the third *Critique*
will be to introduce the conception of a new class of judgments or new
use of the power of judgment, "reflecting"
(*reflektierend*) judgment, which will subsume the aesthetic
and teleological judgment and demonstrate both their affinities with
and differences from the theoretical judgments analyzed and grounded
in the first *Critique* and the moral judgments treated in the
second *Critique*. However, Kant was driven to connect
aesthetic and teleological judgment by a much more profound and
powerful motivation than that of mere systematic housekeeping. This
deeper motivation is first revealed in the second section of the
published Introduction. Here Kant claims that there is a substantive
and important problem that calls for a third critique, namely that
>
>
> Although there is an incalculable gulf fixed between the domain of the
> concept of nature, as the sensible, and the domain of the concept of
> freedom, as the supersensible, so that from the former to the latter
> (thus by means of the theoretical use of reason) no transition is
> possible, just as if there were so many different worlds, the first of
> which can have no influence on the second: yet the
> latter *should* have an influence on the former, namely the
> concept of freedom should make the end that is imposed by its laws
> real in the sensible world, and nature must consequently also be able
> to be conceived in such a way that the lawfulness of its form is at
> least in agreement with the possibility of the ends that are to be
> realized in it in accordance with the laws of freedom. (*CPJ*,
> Introduction, section II, 5:174-5; see also section IX,
> 5:195-6)
>
>
>
The problem that has apparently not been solved by the earlier two
critiques is that of showing that our choice to act in accordance with
the moral law, as the fundamental principle of all laws of freedom, a
choice that can be free only if it is conceived of as taking place in
a "supersensible" or noumenal realm that is not governed
by the deterministic laws of "sensible" or phenomenal
nature, where every event is fully determined by chains of causality
extending far back beyond any particular choice of any particular
individual, must nevertheless be efficacious within that phenomenal
world, able to transform the natural world into a "moral
world" where people really do act in accordance with the moral
law and the ends that are imposed upon us by that law really can be
realized. And the reason for linking aesthetic and teleological
judgment together in a third critique apparently must be that these
two forms of human experience and judgment together somehow offer a
solution to this problem.
But what problem about the efficacy of the laws of freedom in the
realm of nature could remain to be solved after the first two
critiques? The *Critique of Pure Reason* had argued that
although we can disprove the possibility of any breach in the
determinism of the natural world and cannot have theoretical knowledge
of the freedom of our will in the noumenal world, nevertheless we can
coherently conceive of the latter. And the *Critique of Practical
Reason* had argued that we can confidently infer the reality of
our noumenal freedom to choose to do whatever morality requires of us
from our immediate awareness of our obligation under the moral law
combined with the principle that if we ought to do something then we
must be able to do it (see *Critique of Practical Reason*,
SS6, 5:30, and *Religion within the Boundaries of Mere
Reason*, 6:62, 66-7). The second *Critique* had also
argued that since morality imposes an end upon us, namely that of
realizing the highest good, the greatest happiness consistent with the
greatest virtue, we must believe this to be possible, and thus must
postulate "a supreme cause of nature having a causality in
keeping with the moral disposition" (*Critique of Practical
Reason*, Dialectic, 5:125; translation from Gregor, p. 240). If
Kant has already established that on the basis of our awareness of our
obligations under the moral law we can be confident that we have free
will and that all of the laws of nature are at least consistent with
our realization of the ends commanded by the moral law, what more
needs to be done in order to throw a bridge between the theoretical
cognition of nature and the laws of freedom?
As both the second critique and the preceding *Groundwork for the
Metaphysics of Morals* make clear, Kant clearly recognizes that in
order to act morally, we need to (i) understand the moral law and what
it requires of us; (ii) believe that we are in fact free to choose to
do what it requires of us rather than to do what all our other
motives, which can be subsumed under the rubric of self-love, might
suggest to us; (iii) believe that the objectives that morality imposes
upon us can actually be achieved, and (iv) have an adequate motivation
for our attempt to do what morality requires of us in lieu of the mere
desirability of particular goals it might happen to license or even
impose in particular circumstances. All of these together constitute
the conditions of the possibility of morality. Kant also thinks that
at one level all these conditions are satisfied by pure practical
reason itself: (i) the very form of pure practical reason gives us the
moral law; (ii) the first "fact" of pure practical reason,
namely our consciousness of our obligation under this law, implies the
reality of our freedom to be moral by means of the principle that we
must be able to do what we know we ought to do; (iii) we can postulate
by pure practical reason alone that the laws of nature are compatible
with the demands of morality because both laws ultimately have a
common author; and finally (iv) pure respect for the moral law itself
can be a sufficient motivation for us to attempt to carry it out (and
attempts to do so have "moral worth" only when that is our
motivation). But Kant also recognizes that we are sensuous as well as
rational creatures, and need sensuous as well as rational presentation
and confirmation of the conditions of the possibility of morality. The
task of the third *Critique* will then be to show how both
aesthetic and teleological experience and judgment provide sensuous
confirmation of what we do already know in an abstract way, but also
need to feel or make palpable to ourselves, namely the efficacy of our
free choice of the fundamental principle of morality in the natural
world and the realizability of the objectives which that choice
imposes upon us, summed up in the concept of the highest
good. Specifically, Kant will argue that although in its purest form,
the free play of our understanding and imagination that constitutes
the experience of natural beauty does not *presuppose* any
judgment of moral value, the very fact of the existence of natural
beauty appears to confirm that the world is hospitable to our goals,
especially our moral goals, while our experiences of natural sublimity
and artistic beauty both involve the free play of our cognitive
powers *with* morally significant ideas, and thus are
distinctively aesthetic yet morally significant.
### 7.1 Kant's Theory of Free Play
Following the canonical model introduced into eighteenth-century
aesthetics by Burke and transmitted into Germany by Mendelssohn, Kant
divides the first half of the *Critique of the Power of
Judgment*, the "Critique of the Aesthetic Power of
Judgment," into two main parts, the "Analytic of the
Beautiful" and the "Analytic of the Sublime." But
Kant actually analyzes three main forms of aesthetic
experience--the experience of beauty, paradigmatically natural
beauty; the experience of the sublime, again paradigmatically of
sublimity in nature; and the experience of fine art--and each of
these forms of aesthetic experience ultimately reveals distinctive
connections to morality.
Starting from the claim that Francis Hutcheson had made in 1725 and
Mendelssohn reintroduced in 1785, Kant begins his analysis of the
judgment of taste, that is, our claim that a particular object is
beautiful, from the premise that our pleasure in a beautiful object
occurs independently of any interest in the existence of the object as
physiologically agreeable (*CPJ*, SS3, 5:205-7) or as
good for some purpose expressed by a determinate concept of utility or
morality (*CPJ*, SS4, 5:207-9). But neither does a
judgment of taste does not express a merely idiosyncratic association
of pleasure with an object. Rather, to call an object beautiful is to
speak with a "universal voice," to assert that the
pleasure one takes in the object is one that should be felt by anyone
who responds to the object, at least under ideal or optimal
circumstances, even though "there can also be no rule in
accordance with which someone could be compelled to acknowledge
something as beautiful" (*CPJ*, SS8, 5:216). How can
one's pleasure in an object be independent of its subsumption under
any determinate concept and its satisfaction of any determinate
interest and yet be valid for all who properly respond to the object?
Kant's answer is that although our pleasure in a beautiful object is
not a response to its subsumption under a determinate concept, it is
an expression of the free play of the cognitive faculties of
imagination and understanding that such an object induces, and those
cognitive faculties must in fact work the same way in everyone. His
underlying idea is that we experience a beautiful object as having the
kind of unity that we ordinarily find in objects by subsuming them
under a determinate concept, but independently of any such
subsumption. Because finding such unity is our ultimate cognitive aim,
we take pleasure in this discovery, especially since the unity we find
must appear contingent, as it were unexpected, if it is not linked to
any determinate concept (see *CPJ*, Introduction VI,
5:186-7). (This is not to say that we do not subsume an object
we find beautiful under any determinate concepts at all; we must if we
are even to identify the object of our pleasure and judgment of taste
in any determinate way. Kant's theory must rather be that when we find
an object beautiful we experience it as having a degree of unity that
cannot be explained by any of the determinate concepts under which we
do subsume it). Kant thus appeals to the concept of free play, hinted
at by Mendelssohn and developed further by Sulzer, to solve the
problem of taste that was emphasized by British aestheticians such as
Hutcheson and Hume, with whose works Kant was intimately familiar.
In this account, Kant makes two striking assumptions. First, he
asserts that in "pure" judgments of taste our pleasure in
beauty is a response only to the perceptible *form* of an
object, not to any matter or content it may have--for example, in
pictorial arts, "the *drawing* is what is
essential," while the "colors that illuminate the
outline...can...enliven the object in itself for sensation,
but cannot make it...beautiful" (*CPJ*, SS14,
5:225). Second, he assumes that the cognitive faculties of all human
beings work the same way, that is, respond to particular objects in
the same way, even when they are in "free play" rather
than at serious work. The second of these claims seems indefensible,
but Kant never backs off from it. The first of these claims also seems
unjustifiable, but this time Kant modifies his claim almost as soon as
he makes it. While he continues to maintain that in pure judgments of
taste our pleasure is in the unity of the form of the object alone, he
quickly recognizes that there are a variety of *impure* forms
of beauty where what we respond to with the free play of our
imagination and understanding is harmony *between* an object's
perceptible form and its matter, its content, or even its
purpose. Thus, just two sections after his assertion of formalism,
Kant introduces the category of "adherent beauty," which
is the kind of harmony between an object's form and its intended
function that pleases us in a beautiful summer-house or racehorse; and
he will subsequently assume that successful works of fine art normally
have intellectual content and please us in virtue of the harmony among
their content, form, and material.
However, Kant interposes his analysis of the experience of the sublime
between his initial analysis of pure beauty and his later analysis of
fine art. Again following a hint that we have already found in
Mendelssohn, Kant recognizes two forms of the sublime: the
"mathematical" and the "dynamical." Our
experience of both is a mixture of pain and pleasure, a moment of pain
due to an initial sense of the limits of imagination followed by
pleasure at the recognition that it is our own power of reason that
reveals the limits of our imagination. The mathematical sublime
involves the relationship between imagination and theoretical reason,
which is the source of our idea of the infinite; our experience of
this form of the sublime is triggered by the observation of natural
vistas so vast that our effort to grasp them in a
single *image* is bound to fail, but which then pleases us
because this very effort of the imagination reminds us that we have a
power of reason capable of formulating the *idea* of the
infinite (*CPJ*, SS26, 5:254-5).
Kant holds that in this experience we do not just *infer* that
we have such a faculty, but actually *experience* "a
feeling that we have pure self-sufficient reason" (*CPJ*,
SS27, 5:258). In the case of the dynamical sublime, what we
experience is a harmony between our imagination and practical
reason. This experience is induced by natural objects that seem not
just vast, but overwhelmingly powerful and
threatening--volcanoes, raging seas, and the like (*CPJ*,
SS28, 5:261. Kant's examples were all commonplaces in the
eighteenth century, going back to Joseph Addison's illustrations of
"grandeur" in *Spectator* 412, June 1712). Here we
experience fear at the thought of our own physical injury or
destruction followed by the satisfying feeling that we have
> within ourselves a capacity for resistance of
> quite another kind, which gives us the courage to measure ourselves
> against the apparent all-powerfulness of nature,
>
>
>
>
namely,
> our power (which is not part of nature) to regard
> those things about which we are concerned (goods, health and life) as
> trivial, and hence to regard its power (to which, to be sure, we are
> subjected in regard to these things) as not the sort of dominion over
> ourselves and our authority to which we would have to bow if it came
> down to our highest principles and their affirmation or
> abandonment. (*CPJ*, SS28, 5:262)
>
>
>
Now we can turn to Kant's analysis of fine art and our experience of
it. For Kant, all art is intentional human production that requires
skill or talent, yet fine or "beautiful" (*schone*)
art is produced with the intention of doing what anything beautiful
does, namely, promoting the free play of the cognitive powers. That a
work of fine art must be the product of *intention* and yet
produce the *free* play of the mental powers seems like the
paradox that "beautiful art, although it is certainly
intentional, must nevertheless not seem intentional"
(*CPJ*, SS45, 5:306-7). Further, Kant also assumes
that although our pleasure in beauty should be a response to
the *form* of an object alone, fine art is paradigmatically
mimetic, that is, has representational or semantic *content*
(*CPJ*, SS48, 5:311). This too seems like a paradox. Kant
aims to resolve both of these apparent paradoxes through his theory
that successful works of fine art are products of genius, a natural
gift that gives the rule to art (*CPJ*, SS46, 5:307). A
work of genius must have "spirit," which it gets through
its content, typically--as Kant assumes without argument,
although perhaps in his time, long before the invention of
non-objective art, without any real need for argument--a rational
idea, indeed an idea relevant specifically to morality. But in order
to be beautiful, a work of art must still leave room for the freedom
of the imagination, and therefore cannot present such ideas to us
directly and didactically (indeed, such ideas *cannot* be
directly and adequately presented in sensible form). Instead, a work
of art succeeds when it presents an "aesthetic idea," a
representation of the imagination that "at least strive[s]
toward something lying beyond the bounds of experience, and thus
seek[s] to approximate a presentation of the concepts of
reason." A successful work of art also "stimulates so much
thinking," such a wealth of particular "attributes"
or images and incidents, "that it can never be grasped in a
determinate concept" (*CPJ*, SS49,
5:314-15)--thereby stimulating a pleasurable feeling of
free play among the imagination, understanding, and reason while at
the same time satisfying the demand that a work of art have both a
purpose and a content.
### 7.2 The Moral Significance of the Aesthetic
We can now see how Kant thinks that our aesthetic experiences and
judgments can bridge the gulf between our abstract, intellectual
understanding of the requirements and conditions of morality and a
palpable, sensuous representation of those requirements and
conditions. Kant suggests six links between the aesthetic and moral,
which together make palpable the satisfaction of the four conditions
of the possibility of morality that were noted in the introduction to
the present section.
First, Kant evidently holds that objects of aesthetic experience can
present morally significant ideas to us without sacrificing what is
essential to them as objects of aesthetic response and judgment. This
is obvious in the theory of aesthetic ideas, where Kant indeed assumes
that works of art always have some morally relevant content. But this
view takes other forms as well. In fact, Kant maintains that all forms
of beauty, natural as well as artistic, can be regarded as expressions
of aesthetic ideas: even natural objects can suggest moral ideas to us
although such suggestion is not the product of any intentional human
activity (*CPJ*, SS51, 5:319). In "The Ideal of
Beauty," Kant also maintains that beauty in the human figure can
be taken as "the visible expression of moral ideas, which
inwardly govern human beings"; here he argues that only human
beauty can be taken as a unique standard for beauty, because it is the
only form of beauty that can express something absolutely and
unconditionally valuable, namely the moral autonomy of which humans
alone are capable. At the same time he holds there is no determinate
way in which this unique value can be expressed in the human form,
thus there is always something free in the outward expression in the
human figure of the inner moral value of the human character
(*CPJ*, SS17, 5:235-6).
The second link is Kant's claim that the aesthetic experience of the
dynamical sublime is nothing other than a feeling of the power of our
own practical reason to accept the pure principle of morality and to
act in accordance with it in spite of all the threats or inducements
to do otherwise that nature might place in our way. Because the
experience of the dynamical sublime so centrally involves an
intimation of our own capacity to be moral, Kant actually insists that
"the sublime in nature is only improperly so called, and should
properly be ascribed only to the manner of thinking, or rather its
foundation in human nature" (*CPJ*, SS30, 5:280). And
while he does not want to claim that this experience is identical to
explicit moral reasoning, but only a "disposition of the mind
that is similar to the moral disposition" (*CPJ*, General
Remark following SS29, 5:268), he does in at least one place argue
that the complex character of the experience of the sublime makes it
the best representation in our experience of our moral situation
itself (*CPJ*, General Remark following SS29, 5:271).
However, Kant elsewhere argues, third, that there are crucial aspects
of our moral condition that are symbolized by the beautiful rather
than the sublime. He claims that the beautiful is the symbol of the
morally good because there are significant parallels between our
experience of beauty and the structure of morality. Indeed, he
insists that it is only insofar as the beautiful is the symbol of the
morally good that we have any right not merely to predict that under
ideal circumstances others should agree with our appraisals of beauty
but actually to demand that they do so (*CPJ*, SS59,
5:353). Kant adduces "several aspects of this analogy,"
the most important of which is that
> The *freedom* of the imagination (thus of
> the sensibility of our faculty) is represented in the judging of the
> beautiful as in accord with the lawfulness of the understanding (in
> the moral judgment the freedom of the will is conceived as the
> agreement of the latter with itself in accordance with universal laws
> of reason). (*CPJ*, SS59, 5:354)
>
>
>
>
Because the experience of beauty is an experience
of the freedom of the imagination in its play with the understanding,
it can be taken as a palpable symbol of the freedom of the will to
determine itself by moral laws that is necessary for morality but not
itself something that can be directly experienced. In other words, it
is the very independence of aesthetic response from direct
determination by concepts, including moral concepts, that makes the
experience of beauty an experience of freedom that can in turn
symbolize moral freedom. Presumably this can be reconciled with
Kant's earlier claim that the sublime is the most appropriate symbol
of morality by observing that while the experience of beauty makes
the freedom of the will palpable to us, it is only the mixed
experience of the sublime that brings home to feeling that this
freedom must often be exercised in the face of resistance offered by
our own inclinations.
Kant's fourth connection between the aesthetic and the ethical lies in
his theory of the "intellectual interest" in the
beautiful. Here Kant argues that although our basic pleasure in a
beautiful object must be independent of any antecedent interest in its
existence, we may add a further layer of pleasure to that basic
experience if the existence of beautiful objects suggests some more
generally pleasing fact about our situation in the world. Kant's
claim is that since it is of interest to practical reason that nature
be hospitable to its objectives, we take pleasure in *any*
evidence that nature is amenable to our objectives, even when those
are not specifically moral; and the natural existence of beauty is
such evidence, because the experience of beauty is itself an
unexpected fulfillment of our most basic *cognitive*
objective.
Kant's fifth claim is that aesthetic experience is conducive to proper
moral conduct itself. In his concluding comment on his analyses of
both the beautiful and the sublime he states that "The beautiful
prepares us to love something, even nature, without interest; the
sublime, to esteem it, even contrary to our (sensible) interest"
(*CPJ*, General Remark following SS29, 5:267), where being
able to love without any personal interest and to esteem even contrary
to our own interest are necessary preconditions of proper moral
conduct. Kant makes a similar point in his later *Metaphysics of
Morals* (1797) when he argues that "a propensity to wanton
destruction of what is *beautiful* in inanimate nature,"
even though we do not owe any moral duties directly to anything other
than ourselves and other human beings, nevertheless
> weakens or uproots that feeling in [us] which,
> though not of itself moral, is still a disposition of sensibility that
> greatly promotes morality or at least prepares the way for it: the
> disposition, namely, to love something (e.g., beautiful crystal
> formations, the indescribable beauty of plants) even apart from any
> intention to use it. (*Metaphysics of Morals*, Doctrine of
> Virtue SS17, 6:643; Gregor, p. 564)
>
>
>
Sixth and finally, in the brief "Appendix on the methodology of
taste," Kant suggests that the cultivation or realization of
common standards of taste in a society can be conducive to the
discovery of the more general "art of the reciprocal
communication of the ideas of the most educated part" of a
society "with the cruder, the coordination of the breadth and
refinement of the former with the natural simplicity and originality
of the latter" (*CPJ*, SS60, 5:356), where this art
is apparently necessary to the realization of the goal of
"*lawful* sociability," or the establishment of a
stable polity on the basis of principles of justice rather than sheer
force. Thus, aesthetic experience can be conducive to the development
of sound politics as well as personal ethics, although the two are of
course not unconnected, since Kant is a political moralist who
believes that we have a moral duty to establish a just state, not
merely a prudential interest in doing so.
These six links between aesthetics and morality satisfy the four
conditions that need to be met in order to bridge the gulf between
nature and freedom by making our abstract grasp of the contents and
conditions of morality palpable to our sensuous nature. In particular,
(i) the presentation of moral ideas in objects of natural and artistic
beauty and especially in beautiful human form itself provides sensuous
illustration of moral ideas, above all the foundational idea of the
unconditional value of human freedom itself; (ii) the experiences of
the dynamical sublime and of the beautiful in their different ways
both confirm our abstract recognition of our own freedom always to
choose to do as morality requires; (iii) the intellectual interest in
the beautiful provides sensuous confirmation of nature's amenability
to our objectives, which is otherwise only a postulate of pure
practical reason; and (iv) the claims that the experiences of the
beautiful and the sublime and the sharing of these feelings among
different strata of highly diversified societies are conducive to the
realization of morality reveal ways in which our natural sensuous
dispositions can be used as means to the realization of the goal set
by our purely rational disposition to be moral.
## 8. Schiller's Response to Kant's Aesthetics: Grace, Dignity, and Aesthetic Education
In the history of ethics as well as aesthetics, mention of Kant is
often quickly followed by mention of Friedrich Schiller
(1759-1805), who criticized and developed Kant's views in both
areas. Perhaps best known to the general public as the author of the
"Ode to Joy" (*An die Freude*) that provides the
text for the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony, as well as the source of materials for operas by Rossini
and Verdi, in his lifetime Schiller was famous not only as a poet but
also as a dramatist, historian, and (at least during the first half
of the 1790s ) as an aesthetician and philosopher. As a student in
the military college of the Duke of Wurttemberg he trained as a
physician, and his earliest writings were on the mind-body
relationship. But he achieved instant fame with his play *The
Robbers* (*Die Rauber*) in 1782, and then had to flee
Wurttemberg in order to continue writing plays. Between 1783 and
1787, he wrote *Fiesko*, *Intrigue and Love*
(*Kabale und Liebe*), and *Don Carlos*. He met Goethe
in 1787, and was professor of history in nearby Jena from 1789 to
1799. During this period he wrote histories of the Thirty
Years' War and the Dutch revolt against Spain. But he also
devoted several years in the early 1790s to an intensive study of
Kant, which then led to a series of essays including "On Grace
and Dignity" (*Uber Anmut und Wurde*, 1793), *Letters
on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind* (1795), and "On
Naive and Sentimental Poetry" (1795-6), as well as the
unpublished "Kallias" letters on aesthetics (1793). After
this period, Schiller returned to his original calling, writing the
historical dramas *Wallenstein* (1798-9), *Maria
Stuart* (1800), *The Maiden of Orleans* (*Die Jungfrau
von Orleans*, 1801), *The Bride of Messina* (1803),
and *Wilhelm Tell* (1804). Like so many of the others who have
been discussed here (Baumgarten, Sulzer, Herz, Moritz) his life was
cut short by lung disease, presumably tuberculosis, and he died at
forty-five in 1805.
Schiller's "Kallias" letters, written to his friend
Gottfried Korner in January and February of 1793, were not
historically influential, since they were not published for another
half-century, but are fascinating reading today. In them Schiller
argues that Kant's "subjectivist" conception of free play
in aesthetic *response* has to be complemented with an
"objectivist" conception of beauty as the appearance of
freedom or self-determination in the *object*: a beautiful form
is one that appears to us to be determined not by any forces outside
of it but only by itself. For that reason "A form is beautiful,
one might say, if it *demands no explanation*, or if
it *explains itself without a concept*"
("Kallias" letter of 18 February 1793, p. 155). Although
Schiller does not mention his name, his theory could also be
interpreted as an attempt to refine Moritz's conception of beauty as
that which is complete within itself. Had Kant known these letters,
however, he could have replied that Schiller's notions
of *appearing* to be self- rather than other-determined
and *demanding* no explanation are still subjective, that is,
they characterize how we *respond* to beautiful objects rather
than designating any properties that could be attributed to objects
independently of our response to them.
Unlike the "Kallias" letters, Schiller's essay "On
Naive and Sentimental Poetry" was immediately influential. Here
Schiller describes the difference between "naive" and
"sentimental" art. The former is an expression of an
immediate emotional response to nature, where nature is thought of as
"the subsistence of things on their own, being there according
to their own immutable laws" (a conception of nature that
derives from the conception of beauty in the "Kallias"
letters). The latter self-consciously expresses a sense of our own
separation from nature and a feeling that the self-subsistent things
in nature "*are* what we *were*" and
"what we *should become* once more" ("Naive
and Sentimental Poetry," pp. 180-1), or a longing for a
wholeness with nature that we think humans once had but that we have
lost. Schiller identifies naive poetry with antiquity and sentimental
poetry (and the sense of alienation from nature it expresses) with
modernity. This essay can be seen as the source for the genre of
philosophical histories of aesthetics that then flourished for several
decades, beginning with Friedrich Schlegel's "On the Study of
Greek Poetry" of 1797, continuing with Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
Schelling's lectures on *The Philosophy of Art* of
1802-3, and culminating in the lectures on "Philosophy of
Art or Aesthetics" that Hegel gave in Berlin during the
1820s--lectures that decisively changed the sense of the name
"aesthetics" itself from its original meaning of a general
science of sensibility that included responses to nature as well as
art to its modern meaning as the philosophy of art.
However, the two theoretical works by Schiller with which philosophers
have most concerned themselves have been the 1793 essay "On
Grace and Dignity" and the epistolary series *On the
Aesthetic Education of Man*, first written as an actual series of
letters to Schiller's patron the Danish Duke of Augustenberg in 1793
and then rewritten for publication in 1795. These have typically been
read as responses to Kant's moral philosophy, inspired by Kant in
their general concern for autonomy as the essence of morality but
criticizing Kant for giving inadequate consideration to the role of
sensibility in morality. "On Grace and Dignity" has been
held to argue, in supposed opposition to Kant, for the necessity of
developing feelings as part of what it takes to comply fully with the
demands of morality, while *Aesthetic Education* has been read
to argue that only the cultivation of aesthetic experience can
transform individuals and their society as morality demands; the first
of these can be considered a constitutive claim, and the second a
causal claim. It will be argued here, on the contrary, that Kant
actually makes greater claims for the significance and contribution of
both moral sentiments and aesthetic responses to the individual
achievement of morality than Schiller does. Specifically, while
"On Grace and Dignity" argues that the moral determination
of the will should be accompanied with certain moral sentiments on
what are essentially *aesthetic* grounds, Kant argues that the
virtuous determination of the will should be accompanied by certain
moral sentiments on *moral* grounds. And while *Aesthetic
Education* asserts that the development of taste is a necessary
condition for the development of individual morality and social
justice, which Kant never does, the variety of links that Kant
recognizes between aesthetics and morality, described in section
7.2. above, show that the cultivation of taste can make a broader
contribution to the realization of morality than Schiller
realizes.
### 8.1 Kant and Schiller on Beauty, Grace, and Dignity
We may begin with a different point about "On Grace and
Dignity," however, namely that it is not primarily an essay in
moral theory at all, but an essay in aesthetics, that is, an essay
about the *expression* of moral qualities in the appearance of
actual human beings. In this regard it is not a critique of
Kantian *moral theory* but a critique of an aspect of
Kantian *aesthetics*, namely Kant's theory of the "ideal
of beauty" in the "Analytic of the Beautiful" in
the *Critique of the Power of Judgment*. Schiller's use of the
expression "ideal of beauty" very early in his essay
signals that this is his primary target ("On Grace and
Dignity," NA 253; Curran 126).
Kant introduces the concept of the "ideal of beauty" in
the third moment of the "Analytic of the Beautiful," which
discusses the various relations that obtain between beauty and
purposiveness. Kant begins the third moment by arguing that in its
purest form the judgment of taste is a response to the mere appearance
of the form of purposiveness in an object, as opposed to any actual
purposiveness, in either of the senses of that concept, namely,
actually serving some specific purpose or having been designed to
serve some purpose. Correspondingly, Kant equates pure beauty with the
mere form or appearance of purposiveness rather than with actual
purposiveness. However, as we saw in section 7.1, Kant complicates his
analysis by recognizing forms of beauty that are not pure but are
connected with (although not reducible to) the recognition of actual
purposiveness. The first of these forms is "adherent
beauty," a beauty of form that is consistent with or appropriate
for the actual purpose of an object that clearly has a purpose that
constrains its possible form in various ways, such as an arsenal or a
race horse. Then Kant comes to the "ideal of beauty," or
"the highest model, the archetype of taste...in accordance
with which [anyone] must judge everything that is an object of
taste," a representation of an individual object or particular
type of object that is maximally beautiful (*CPJ*, SS17,
5:232).
Kant signals that the search for an ideal of beauty is not something
initiated by the logic of taste as such but by something external to
taste, namely, the faculty of reason: the "archetype of
taste...rests on reason's indeterminate idea of a maximum."
Kant argues that
> the beauty for which an idea [or ideal] is to be
> sought cannot be a *vague* beauty, but there must be a
> beauty *fixed* by a concept of objective purposiveness,
> consequently it must not belong to the object of an entirely pure
> judgment of taste, but rather to one of a partly intellectualized
> judgment of taste. (*CPJ*, SS17, 5:232-3)
>
>
>
>
This means that the ideal of beauty is a species
of adherent rather than free beauty. Kant then argues that there are
two elements in such an ideal, namely a uniquely valuable purpose or
end and a uniquely appropriate aesthetic expression of this purpose
or end. "The *human being* alone is capable of an ideal
of *beauty*," Kant then argues, because "the
humanity in his person, as intelligence, is alone among all the
objects in the world capable of the ideal
of *perfection*" (ibid., 5:233). That is, according to
(practical) reason the human being is the only thing of unconditional
value. But for this ideal to be an ideal of beauty, the unique moral
value of humanity must find an outward expression which is somehow
appropriate for it although it is not connected to it in accordance
with any rule. This expression is found in the beauty of the
"*human figure*," which is associated "with
the morally good in the idea of the highest
purposiveness--goodness of soul, or purity, or strength, or
repose, etc."--not in accordance with any rule but simply
by "great force of the imagination" (ibid., 5:235).
Imagination is in fact doubly involved: first, because there is no
way to derive what counts as beauty in the human figure from mere
concepts or by any mechanical process (that could yield only
"correctness in the presentation of the species"), so the
ideal of maximum beauty can only be created by an act of the
aesthetic imagination; and second, because there is no rule that says
that moral value must be expressed in outward appearance or that
outward appearance can be interpreted as an expression of moral
value, but that association too must be created by the
imagination.
Schiller's first goal in "On Grace and Dignity" is to show
that Kant's account of the ideal of beauty is not sufficiently precise
in its account of what aspects of human beauty can be taken as an
expression of the moral condition of a human being. He also contends
that Kant's account does not offer an adequate explanation of why any
features of the outward appearance should be taken as an expression of
moral condition. More specifically, Schiller argues that there are two
different moral conditions of human beings, grace and dignity, and
these naturally find different external expressions in the appearance
of human beings, and by implication in the artistic representation or
mimesis of them. As a result, the ideal of beauty is more complicated
than Kant recognizes. Moreover, there are good reasons why these moral
conditions should find external expression, so the connection between
moral condition and aesthetic result is much less arbitrary than Kant
makes it seem.
On Schiller's account, Kant's first mistake is to locate the ideal of
beauty vaguely in the human *figure* rather than specifically
in the bodily accompaniments of intentional *actions* that are
the products of the human *will*, which, according to Kant
himself, is the primary locus of moral value. This also means that it
is a mistake for Kant to suggest, if that is what he means, that the
ideal of beauty can be found in a general type of human being rather
than in particular human beings, for actions are always done by
particular human beings. Kant is of course committed to the general
thesis that beauty is always a property of a particular, but it might
be argued that he has lost sight of that commitment when he locates
the ideal of beauty in something as general as "the human
figure" as the expression of human morality. Schiller argues
that the "architectonic beauty of the human form," that
is, the fixed configuration of the features of a person's appearance,
"comes directly from nature and is formed by the rule of
necessity" ("On Grace and Dignity," NA 255; Curran
127), and thus cannot plausibly be taken as an expression of the moral
character or condition of a person, which is determined by the
person's will or free choice. Any aspect of beauty that can be
interpreted as an expression of moral condition must thus be found in
the *voluntary* actions of particular persons rather than in
their fixed features. More specifically, grace, as a condition in
which a person is not merely committed to doing what morality requires
as a matter of principle but is also so committed to doing this that
it has become part of his character and thus seems as much natural as
voluntary, is revealed in the motions that *accompany* a
person's directly willed actions but are not themselves consciously
willed ("On Grace and Dignity," NA 167; Curran 136). For
example,
> one can deduce from a person's words how he
> would *like to be viewed*, but what he *really* is must
> be guessed from the gestures accompanying the speech, in other words,
> from the *uncontained* movements. ("On Grace and
> Dignity," NA 268; Curran 137)
>
>
>
>
It is in the unintentional accompaniments of
intentional actions that we can discern people's real commitment to
what they are doing and the ease with which they make that
commitment; the latter is grace, and thus the movements that express
that are the expression of grace. Grace can be expressed in the
"rigid and restful features" of an individual's
physiognomy only insofar as those features themselves "were
originally nothing other than movements that through frequent
repetition became habitual and left lasting traces" ("On
Grace and Dignity," NA 264; Curran 134).
The next part of Schiller's aesthetic argument against Kant is that
dignity is a different moral condition than grace, and that it
therefore naturally finds a different outward expression. While grace
is the expression of a condition in which there is no tension between
a person's moral commitments and his desires, and where there is thus
harmony between the explicitly willed aspects of his intentional
motions and the instinctive aspects of them, dignity is the sensible
expression of successfully willing to act in accordance with moral
principles even at the cost of the suppression of conflicting desires
and feelings, and is therefore manifest in quite different aspects of
appearance than grace is. In a person expressing dignity rather than
grace,
> while his veins swell, his muscles become cramped
> and taut, his voice cracks, his chest is thrust out, and his lower
> body pressed in, his intentional movements are gentle, the facial
> features relaxed, and the eyes and brow serene....this
> contradiction of signs demonstrates the existence and influence of a
> power independent of suffering and above the impressions to which we
> see the sensuous succumb. And in this way, *peace in
> suffering*, in which dignity actually consists, becomes the
> representation of intelligence in human beings and the expression
> their moral freedom. ("On Grace and Dignity,"; NA
> 295-6; Curran 159-60)
>
>
>
>
As Schiller sums up, "Grace, then, lies in
the *freedom of intentional movements*, dignity in
the *mastery of instinctive ones*" ("On Grace and
Dignity," NA 297; Curran 160). Grace expresses a tendency to
act as morality requires that has become instinctive, while dignity
expresses mastery grounded on moral principles over instincts that
are not harmonious with morality. These are two different moral
conditions, and thus find two different forms of visible
expression.
Although Schiller's illustration of both grace and dignity refer to
our perceptions of actual human beings rather than to artistic
representations of them, that is not an objection to reading his
account as a critique of Kant's conception of the ideal of beauty. In
the "Analytic of the Beautiful" Kant himself is talking
primarily about the beauty of nature rather than art, and in the
section on the ideal of beauty he is clearly talking about a special
feature of human beauty itself rather than of the artistic
representation of human beauty. Any implications of either Kant's
account or of Schiller's critique of it for the case of artistic
representation would have to be inferred. But of course many of the
features in which Schiller locates both grace and dignity could be
represented in artistic depictions of human beings, and that is why it
is not implausible to suggest that his account may be directed against
Lessing as well as Kant. Schiller's contrast between swelling veins,
cramped muscles, and outhrust chest on the one hand and serenity of
eye and brow on the other could be taken as a plausible description of
the famous statue of Laocoon, and thus Schiller could be read as
suggesting, in the spirit of Winckelmann, that the statue should be
understood as an expression of dignity in the face of suffering rather
than as a symbol for the differences between pictorial and verbal
depiction. On Schiller's account, however, the dignity of the
unnamed Laocoon would be explained by the moral character of the
individual, not by the circumstances of a whole people.
As earlier mentioned, "On Grace and Dignity" has
traditionally been read as a critique of Kant's moral theory rather
than of his aesthetics, arguing for greater moral significance for
feelings in line with our principled commitment to morality than Kant
acknowledges. It looks as if Schiller holds that the ideal for moral
conduct is that complete attunement between the determination of the
will by moral principles and our natural and instinctive desires and
inclinations that is expressed in grace. Further, it seems that this
is only because he recognizes that such attunement will not always be
possible for human beings that he admits that there is sometimes a
need for that mastery over refractory feelings that expresses itself
in dignity--but only as a fall-back or second-best state of
character, rather than, as Kant seems to suppose, the norm for the
human moral condition.
This is a misreading of the positions of both Schiller and Kant,
however. For Schiller, that complete attunement of principle and
feeling that expresses itself in grace is indeed an imperative, but
an *aesthetic* demand rather than a strictly *moral*
demand. Thus Schiller writes,
> Human beings, as
> appearance, are also an object of the senses. Where the *moral*
> feeling finds satisfaction, the *aesthetic* feeling does not
> wish to be reduced, and the correspondence with an idea may not
> sacrifice any of the appearance. Thus, however rigorously reason
> demands an ethical expression, the eye demands beauty just as
> persistently....both these demands are made of the same object,
> although they come from different courts of judgment. ("On Grace
> and Dignity," NA 277; Curran 144-5)
>
>
>
>
But as far as morality alone is concerned, the
mastery of will over inclination that is expressed in dignity is all
that is required. For Kant, however, *morality itself* demands
a complete harmony between principle and inclination, because any
tension between them is a sign that one's commitment to the principle
of morality is not yet complete, one's good will or virtue not yet
perfected. The self-mastery that is expressed in dignity may often be
all that human beings can achieve under natural circumstances, and it
certainly satisfies the demand for *legality* in our actions;
but as Kant sees it *morality* requires that perfection of
virtue or of the good will that he calls holiness (see Kant's
response to Schiller in a note added to the second edition of
Kant's *Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason*,
6:23-4n.). Thus Kant's conception of morality actually demands
a greater attunement of principles and feelings than does
Schiller's--although Schiller's might be the more plausible
account of morality, that is, one that better accommodates the
reality of the human condition, precisely for that reason. Indeed,
Kant may have been carried away by the polemic with Schiller, because
elsewhere his position is not that human beings must aim at holiness,
but only at virtue, not at the elimination of all inclinations
contrary to morality but at the strength of will to overcome
them.
### 8.2 Aesthetic Education and the Achievement of Morality
In Schiller's other main philosophical work, the
letters *On the Aesthetic Education of Mankind*, he certainly makes a much bolder claim than Kant would ever have countenanced,
namely that "it is only through Beauty that man makes his way
to Freedom" and thus to the achievement of morality and its
external realization in political justice (*Aesthetic
Education*, Second letter, p. 9). Here Schiller implies that the
cultivation of taste through aesthetic education is a necessary as
well as sufficient condition for the achievement of compliance with
the ethical and political demands of morality, rather than, as Kant
held, merely something that may contribute to moral development. But
when we turn from Schiller's rhetoric to the details of his argument,
we will see that he actually grants aesthetic education a narrower
role in the realization of morality than Kant does.
Schiller presents the problem to be solved by aesthetic education in
several ways, but primarily as a political rather than a moral
problem. In his Sixth Letter, he offers an influential diagnosis of
alienation or fragmentation as the characteristic problem of
modernity: "we see not merely individuals, but whole classes of
people, developing but one part of their potentialities, while of the
rest, as in stunted growths, only vestigial traces remain."
(*Aesthetic Education*, p. 33). Although this is a problem for
human flourishing generally, and might therefore be considered a moral
rather than specifically political problem, Schiller's diagnosis of
the source of this problem gives a prominent role to a specifically
political cause. Schiller claims that the complex machinery of the
state necessitates the separation of ranks and occupations, rather
than claiming, as a Marxist diagnosis of alienation would, that a
separation of ranks and occupations that has its source in the
conditions of production necessitates the complex machinery of the
state. In another famous passage, Schiller presents the problem as
that of effecting the transition from a less just to a more just state
without killing the patient in the operation:
> The state should not only respect the objective
> and generic character in its individual subjects; it should also honor
> their subjective and specific character, and in extending the
> invisible realm of morals take care not to depopulate the sensible
> realm of appearance. (*Aesthetic Education*, Fourth Letter, p.
> 19)
>
>
>
>
The latter passage leads more directly to
Schiller's most general characterization of the problem: striking the
right balance between the universal and the particular, that is, not
realizing the ideal at the cost of individuals nor so focusing on
individuals as they currently are that all concern for the ideal is
lost. Schiller characterizes the tension with which he is concerned through
a number of contrasts: person and condition, the atemporal and the
temporal, noumenon and phenomena, form and matter, and so on
(Eleventh Letter). He posits that we are driven in one direction by
the "form drive" and in the other by the "sensuous
drive" (Twelfth Letter). He then claims that we need to
cultivate a new drive, the "play drive" (Fourteenth
Letter), to bring these two drives, and thus person and condition,
universal and particular, and so on, into proper balance with each
other, "to preserve the life of sense against the encroachments
of freedom; and second, to secure the personality against the forces
of sensation" (Thirteenth Letter). Schiller's claim is then
that it is the experience of beauty which will induce this balance in
us, and thus what we need is to be educated to experience beauty. In
practice, since individuals tend to err in one direction or the
other, that is, to be driven by principles at the cost of ignoring
particulars or to be absorbed in particulars and thus inadequately
attentive to principles, there will be two types of beauty,
"energizing" beauty and "relaxing" or
"melting" beauty, which will either strengthen an
individual's commitment to principle or relax the grip of principle
on an individual, whichever is needed (Seventeenth Letter).
These claims are grandiose and abstract. In a crucial footnote to the
Thirteenth Letter, however, Schiller comes down to earth, and reveals
that what he expects from aesthetic education is something quite
specific, although for that reason all the more plausible. What he
worried about is "the pernicious effect, upon both thought and
action, of an undue surrender to our sensual nature" on the one
hand and "the nefarious influence exerted upon our knowledge and
upon our conduct by a preponderance of rationality" on the
other. In the realm of scientific inquiry, what we need to learn and
what we can learn from aesthetic experience is not to "thrust
ourselves out upon [nature], with all the impatient anticipations of
our reason," without having collected adequate data to support
our theorizing. In the realm of conduct, thus of the moral generally
and not just the realm of politics, what we need to learn is to be
specifically attentive to the particular circumstances, needs, and
feelings of others, and not just to impose our own views upon them. Schiller's argument comes down
to the claim that through the cultivation of our aesthetic sensibility
we can learn to be attentive to detail and particularity as well as to
principle and generality, and that being so attentive is a necessary
condition for both theoretical and practical success. And it seems
plausible to suppose that this claim is true, and therefore that
aesthetic education may play a valuable role in the theoretical and
practical development of human beings, in modern society as much as in
any other. But this is a far cry from any claim that aesthetic
education is *sufficient* for either theoretical or moral
development, or even that it is *necessary* for such
development, as the *only* way to cultivate the necessary
combination of sensitivities. In the case of the natural sciences,
surely both their general principles and their particular techniques
of observation must be taught directly, and presumably a well-managed
scientific education could also teach the student not to project the
principles unchecked by the data. In the case of morals and politics,
surely the general principles must be clearly fixed in the mind of
those being initiated into the relevant community, as well as a proper
empathy for the actual circumstances of others; but while perhaps the
latter could be cultivated by aesthetic education, presumably it could
also be cultivated directly by suitably edifying moral discourses, and
certainly the general principles of morality will still have to be
directly taught or elicited.
As we saw in section 7.2, Kant recognizes these limits on the
significance of the cultivation of taste for moral development, but
also described a wider variety of ways in which the former could be
beneficial for the latter. The contribution to moral development that
Schiller hopes to derive from aesthetic education is
essentially *cognitive*: through the sensitivity to
particularity that we acquire from aesthetic education we learn
to *recognize* the circumstances, needs, and feelings of others
and thereby to apply our principles to them appropriately. Kant,
however, holds that aesthetic experience could give us sensible
confirmation of the moral truths we already know through pure reason,
but it also give us emotional support in our attempt to act as we know
we should, although in no case does he argue that the support that
morality can get from aesthetic experience is indispensable. Thus,
although Schiller's essay "On Grace and Dignity" appears
to argue for a greater role for feelings in fulfillment of the demands
of morality than Kant allows, it is only Kant who insists
upon *moral* grounds for striving to realize grace and not just
dignity. And while Schiller's letters *On Aesthetic Education*
insist that aesthetic education is a necessary condition for social
justice, Kant has a broader conception of the contributions
that aesthetic experience may make to moral and political development,
although he certainly does not make the cultivation of taste a
necessary (let alone sufficient) condition for the realization of
morality.
## 9. Herder's Critique of Kant: A Rapprochement between the Two Approaches?
In the five years after the publication of Schiller's *Letters on
Aesthetic Education* in 1795, both Romanticism and Absolute
Idealism emerged, the former in works by Friedrich von Hardenburg
("Novalis") and Friedrich Schlegel, the latter in works by
Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. But
since both of these movements blossomed more fully in the early
decades of the nineteenth century, they will not be included in this
survey. Instead, it will conclude with a second look at the work of
Johann Herder, in this case with his late critique of Kant's aesthetic
theory. Herder, who as we saw had done the bulk of his work in
aesthetics long before the publications of Kant and Schiller, indeed
even before the publication of Sulzer's encyclopedia, reacted
violently to the new aesthetics of play in his late
work *Kalligone* (1800), i.e., "The Birth of
Beauty." This work, published only three years before Herder's
death and after his renown had been eclipsed by such new stars as
Schelling and Fichte, has never received much attention, but beneath
its bursts of ill-temper it contains interesting and important
criticisms of Kant. The theme of *Kalligone* may be summed up
with this statement from its table of contents: "Nothing harms
immature taste more than if one makes everything into play"
(*Kalligone*, p. 660). Herder's critique came too late in his
Kant's life for him to respond to it. If he had been able to respond,
he would have had no good reply to some of Herder's criticisms; but if
Herder had had more sympathy for Kant's expository method in the
third *Critique*, he might have realized that on some of the
central substantive points of his criticism the distance between
himself and Kant is not as great as it initially seems. In particular,
Herder's representation of Kant's aesthetics as a pure theory of
mental play mistakes Kant's initial analysis of the simplest form of
natural beauty for his whole theory of natural and artistic beauty. If
Herder had recognized the importance for Kant of the more complicated
cases of adherent and artistic beauty, he would have seen that there
is considerable common ground between Kant's aesthetics of free play
and his own aesthetics of the sensory apprehension of truth.
Herder's criticisms of Lessing and Riedel (section 5.1) prefigure
several of his objections to Kant. He objects to Kant's abstract
method in aesthetics, to his failure to emphasize adequately the role
of the senses and the differences among them both in his account of
aesthetic experience and in his classification of the arts, to an
inadequate recognition of the importance of truth (indeed truth in
several senses ) in our experience of art, and to what he sees as
Kant's inadequate emphasis on the way in which aesthetic experience
gives us a feeling of being alive. But what is missing from Herder's
early critical aesthetics is an objection to the aesthetics of play,
for the simple reason that Kant had not yet made that prominent in
German aesthetics. In turning now to Herder's criticisms of Kant
in *Kalligone*, we will have to add that objection to his list
of charges.
*Kalligone* is a polemic against Kant's *Critique of the
Power of Judgment*, more precisely against its first half, the
"Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment," loosely
structured in parallel with Kant's work, although with numerous
digressions, sometimes even in dialogue form, and statements of
Herder's own positions. Like Herder's polemic with Lessing in
the *Groves of Criticism*, his response to Kant's work is
longer than its target, and not all of its themes can be discussed
here. In ways anticipated in Herder's earlier work, *Kalligone*
attacks Kant's methodology and his neglect of the concrete role of the
senses in a discipline that is, as defined by Baumgarten, supposed to
focus precisely on them. In an expression of the naturalism that
pervades his work, Herder also attacks Kant's appeals to the
"supersensible" in his interpretation of aesthetic
experiences, especially the experience of sublimity. But Herder's most
vehement objections are to Kant's insistence upon the
disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment and to his exclusion of a role
for determinate concepts in the free play of the mental powers in
aesthetic experience, which Herder sees as excluding any role for the
knowledge of truth in aesthetic experience. We will focus here on
Herder's criticisms of the disinterestedness and non-conceptuality of
aesthetic judgment.
Herder's general theory of aesthetic experience is that it is an
experience of *well-being* arising from a perception of the
true order of nature, which he opposes to Kant's theory of
the *disinterestedness* of aesthetic experience and
attachment. Before we turn to that central issue, however, we may note
Herder's objection that Kant's aesthetics does not pay sufficient
attention to the concrete role of the senses in aesthetic
experience. The charge of insensitivity to the specificity of the
senses, as we saw, was at the heart of Herder's early aesthetics,
beginning with his critique of Lessing, and it manifests itself in
various ways in his critique of Kant. One point at which it is
particularly clear is in his objection to Kant's scheme for the
classification of the fine arts, a scheme based on the differing
capacities of different media for meaning, tone, and gesture that
Herder claims "throws us back into the old chaos." Kant's
basic division is between the verbal (*redende*) and the
formative or visual (*bildende*) arts, and Herder says that
Kant's account of the
> so-called *verbal* arts [is] built upon
> a *word-play*, which makes them...into play, and not in
> the technical sense of this word; and about the *formative*
> arts as well as about the arts that effect sentiments nothing is said
> that serves for the essence of each and the essence of
> all. (*Kalligone*, p. 939)
>
>
>
>
By contrast, Herder argues that any division of the arts, as well
as any account of the way in which different arts need to be
cultivated and contribute to our overall cultivation and development,
must attend to the specificity of our senses. For Herder, any
classification of the arts, and indeed any theory of aesthetic
education and the contribution of aesthetic education to general
education, must be based upon a firm grasp of the differences as well
as the similarities among sight, hearing, touch, speech, and song (for
that too is among the arts of the tongue). In his view Kant does not
have that grasp. Nor does it seem too much of a stretch to think that
Schiller's theory of aesthetic education is deficient in this regard,
too. Although Herder does not mention Schiller by name anywhere
in *Kalligone*, he does begin the work by bemoaning the
influence of Kant's third *Critique* upon his followers, and
Schiller might be supposed to be the foremost among these, albeit one
with whom Herder had to maintain cordial relations in Weimar and
perhaps spared for this reason.
We may now turn to the two main topics of Herder's criticism, namely
Kant's theory of the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment and of
his doctrine of the purposeless play of imagination and understanding
as the basis of such judgment. Herder had already expressed doubt
about disinterestedness as a fundamental aesthetic category in his
polemic with Riedel in the fourth *Grove*, where he had
rejected Riedel's definition of the beautiful as "that which can
please without an interested aim [*interessierte Absicht*] and
which also can please if we do not possess it" ("Fourth
Grove," p. 291). At that time, however, Herder's objection
seemed to be only that the concept of disinterestedness is not
"original," that is, that disinterestedness by itself
cannot *explain* our pleasure in the beautiful and thus could
at best be a consequence of some more fundamental explanation of
beauty. In *Kalligone*, however, he argues much more broadly
that our pleasure in beauty *is not* disinterested, but rather
that it is intimately connected with our most fundamental interest,
our interest in life itself. He does this by rejecting Kant's rigid
distinction between the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good,
arguing that all of these notions are intimately connected and that
they all reflect our fundamental interest in enjoying a harmonious,
well-adapted life.
The first step in Herder's argument is to reject Kant's identification
of agreeableness with sensory gratification narrowly understood. For
Herder, the agreeable (*angenehm*) is what actually liberates
and strengthens me and gives me a feeling of liberation and strength,
of not merely being alive but of living freely and strongly. This
feeling can come through the engagement of any or all of my senses:
> whatever preserves, promotes, expands, in short
> is *harmonious* with the feeling of my *existence*, each
> of my senses gladly accepts that, appropriates that to itself, and
> finds it agreeable.
>
>
>
>
What gives us such feelings is moreover
universally pleasing, because "*well-being, welfare,
health*" (*Wohlsein, Heil, Gesundheit*) are the
"ground and end of the existence of every living thing...We
all desire well-being, and whatever promotes this well-being in any
way is agreeable" (*Kalligone*, p. 668).
With the agreeable so broadly conceived, it is then easy for Herder to
suggest that the beautiful cannot be rigidly separated from it, but
must rather be more like a species of it, namely that which gives us
such agreeable feelings of well-being through the "noble
senses," through figures, colors, tones, and the re-creation of
all of these through the artificial signs of literary language. To be
sure, there are specific contexts in which we might call something
that is disagreeable good, or something that is beautiful
disagreeable, but these are the exceptions, not the rule--a
medicine that is good for one, for example, may nevertheless be
disagreeable (*Kalligone*, pp. 672-3n.). But although the
agreeable, the beautiful, and the good, which Kant construed as three
fundamentally "different relations of representations to the
feeling of pleasure and displeasure" (*CPJ*, SS5,
5:209), do have to be distinguished in certain contexts, they
nevertheless are all expressions of our pleasure in a free and healthy
life. Given this assumption, it is then not hard for Herder to argue
that so far from being disinterested, our pleasure in beauty is
necessarily of the greatest interest to us. But while he argues that
the beautiful necessarily interests us, Herder also insists that the
beautiful does not appeal to *self-interest*
or *self-love*: the pleasure and interest in the genuinely
beautiful as well as the agreeable and good is universal, not personal
or idiosyncratic.
It could well be argued that this is all that Shaftesbury originally
meant when he introduced the concept of disinterestedness into modern
moral and aesthetic discourse. For him, the opposite of disinterested
is *mercenary*, that which one wants or does just for a
personal reward (Shaftesbury, *Sensus Communis*, Part II,
Section III, in *Characteristicks*, vol. I, p. 55). And this
is arguably all that Riedel meant when he said that the beautiful is
that which can please us "without possession." It would
not be reasonable, however, to claim that all that Kant meant by
saying that the pleasure in beauty is disinterested is that it must be
able to please anyone apart from personal possession and use or
consumption of the beautiful object. He certainly seems to insist that
the source of our pleasure in the beautiful has nothing to do with the
sources of our pleasure in the agreeable and the good. Kant is
apparently open to Herder's criticism, if indeed Herder's claim is
that our pleasures in the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good all
ultimately rest on our pleasure in the feeling of free and healthy
life. However, before we consider whether the distance here between
Kant and Herder is as great as Herder thinks, let us consider one last
charge on Herder's indictment of Kant, namely his objection to Kant's
theory that the experience of beauty is an experience of a free and
conceptless play of the mental powers of imagination and
understanding.
As noted earlier, Herder's antipathy to Kant's central notion of the
free play of our cognitive powers is evident from the outset
of *Kalligone*. In his Preface, Herder writes bitterly that
"the self-named *only possible* philosophy" has
transformed the arts "into a *short* or *long, boring
apelike play*" (*Kalligone*, p. 648). In the body of
the text, Herder argues both generally that all response to objects,
feeling and sentiment as well as judgment, is accompanied with a
concept of the object. He also argues that, more specifically, our
pleasure in beautiful objects is always a pleasure in a sensed or felt
recognition of their adaptation to their environment, whether natural
or artificial, that is impossible without the application of a concept
to the object. Herder launches his general attack immediately
following his critique of Kant's first moment. Kant's second moment,
Herder says, asserts that the "beautiful is what
pleases *without a concept*," and the third speaks of a
"Form of purposiveness *without representation* of an
end." In Herder's view, however, " [t]hat something could
please without a concept, and indeed please universally, is contrary
to nature and experience" (*Kalligone*,
p. 675). Depending on how we take this claim, of course, Herder may
not be saying anything with which Kant would disagree: Kant more than
anyone else argues that all *experience* of an object requires
consciousness of a concept as well as of empirical intuitions of that
object, the matter of which is sensation. But he also holds that we
could have a feeling of pleasure in an object
without *considering* what concepts apply to it, and on the
basis of such a feeling make the judgment that it is beautiful. Herder
is specifically rejecting that claim. On what basis does he do so?
He does so by means of the more particular argument that our pleasure
in beauty is in fact a pleasure in our sensed or felt recognition of
an object's adaptation to its environment, together with the premise
that such a pleasure cannot be felt without a recognition of the
application of a relevant concept to the object. Herder argues for
this premise by going through a series of cases, precisely the kinds
of particular examples that he accuses Kant of neglecting. First he
considers figures (*Gestalten*), then colors and tones, and
then a series of kinds of natural things, from stones and crystals to
a series of living things ranging from flowers to human beings. In all
of these cases, he argues, we respond to a recognition of the
character of a thing and its relation to its environment that is
necessarily mediated by our application of a concept to it. Before we
consider whether this is a fair objection to Kant, more generally
whether there is as much distance between Kant's views and Herder's as
Herder himself believes, let us ask why Herder thinks such perception
of an object's essence and its well-being in its environment is so
pleasing to us and so important for our own sense of well-being.
The answer to this question is what we might call a harmonic or
sympathetic theory of the connection between pleasure in well-being
and truth: Herder thinks that the perception of true harmony and
well-being in the things around us generates a parallel harmony and
feeling of it in ourselves:
> May we not rejoice that we live in a *world of
> good order and good form* [*Wohlordnung und Wohlgestalt*],
> where all results of the laws of nature in gentle forms reveal to us
> as it were a band of rest and motion, an elastic-effective constancy
> of things, in short *beauty as the bodily expression of a corporeal
> perfection that is harmonious both within itself and to our
> feeling*? (*Kalligone*, p. 687)
>
>
>
>
The key idea here is not that we take pleasure in the direct
consumption of the fruits of a harmonious nature, but rather that
there is a kind of resonance between harmony and well-being in nature
and our own sense of well-being: the perception of harmony in nature
makes our own being feel well-ordered, just as the perception of
disharmony in nature inevitably although painfully attracts our
attention. This is the underlying vision of Herder's mature
aesthetics: our feeling of beauty does not arise from a free play with
forms that might be triggered by something in the objective world but
is not constrained by it. Rather, the feeling of beauty is a
subjective response to the perception of objective harmony, a
subjective feeling of well-being triggered by empathy with the
well-being of other things in the world.
However, on several central points the differences between Kant and
Herder are not quite as great as the latter supposed. First, Kant
himself interpreted the feeling of the free play of the cognitive
powers in aesthetic experience as a feeling of life, and thus at the
deepest level his conception of the source of aesthetic pleasure is
not that different from Herder's. Second, although Kant began his
analysis with the simplest case of the free judgment of natural
beauty, which is supposedly not dependent upon our conceptualization
of its object, it does not end there. As he complicated his analysis
of aesthetic experiences to include the cases of the adherent beauty
of works of nature as well as of human art in the general sense and of
fine art in particular, Kant clearly recognized the role of
conceptualization in our response to the work, and in the case of art
in the production as the well the reception of the work, and
transformed his conception of free play with the mere form of an
object into a conception of felt harmony between the form and the
concept of the object which is not so different from Herder's
conception of the harmony in a beautiful object. Finally, when Kant
complicated his initial conception of the disinterestedness of
aesthetic judgment to take account of our intellectual interest in the
existence of natural beauty, he recognized that our experience of
beauty is an experience of well-being and being at home in the world
that is not unrelated to Herder's conception of our experience of
beauty. Nevertheless, as Kant's terminology suggests, his conception
of this interest may have remained more intellectual and moralistic
than Herder himself would prefer.
Indeed, in his lectures on anthropology--which he began offering
only in 1772-73, thus a decade after Herder had studied with
him--Kant had made the connection between the free play of the
faculties and the feeling of life clear and central to his aesthetic
theory. There Kant argued that "Gratification or pleasure is
the feeling of the promotion of life," indeed that life itself
"is the consciousness of a free and regular play of all the
powers and faculties of human beings." He equated the free play
of our powers and faculties with their unhindered activity, and thus
found the ultimate source of all pleasure in the unhindered activity
of our powers:
> The play of the powers of the mind
> [*Gemuths Krafte*] must be strongly alive and free if
> it is to animate. Intellectual pleasure consists in the consciousness
> of the use of freedom in accordance with rules. Freedom is the
> greatest life of the human being, through which he exercises his
> activity without hindrance. (*Vorlesungen uber
> Anthropologie*, 27:559-60)
>
>
>
>
In fact, Kant completes this discussion, which
opens his lectures on the second part of psychology, on the faculties
of approval and disapproval, with the remark that "All
gratifications are related to life. Life, however, is a unity, and in
so far as all gratifications aim at this, they are all homogeneous,
let the sources from which they spring be what they are" (ibid.,
p. 561). Herder could have included these sentences in the footnote
from *Kalligone* (pp. 672-3) in which he objects to
Kant's supposedly complete separation of the beautiful from the
agreeable and the good.
Finally, perhaps the deepest of Herder's criticisms of Kant is his
attack upon the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment, his
insistence that there is a continuum rather than discontinuity between
our responses to the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good. But on
the matter of disinterestedness, too, Kant begins with a simple
statement of a position that then turned out to be more complicated
than it initially appeared. There can be no question that Kant wants
to distinguish genuinely aesthetic experience from merely
physiological gratification of the senses, from the approval of
utility, or from moral approval, and that he does this by saying that
aesthetic judgment neither presupposes nor gives rise to any interest
in the existence of its object. But numerous factors complicate this
picture.
First, Kant always defines pleasure as a state of mind connected with
a disposition toward its own continuation, and in the first draft of
the Introduction to the third *Critique* he adds that pleasure
is a ground "for producing its object" (First Introduction
to *CPJ*, section VIII, 20:230-1). There are technical
reasons why Kant does not want to speak here of an *interest*
in the continuation of pleasure and/or the production of its object,
but it is certainly reasonable to say that on Kant's own account any
pleasure, including even the purest pleasure in beauty, is accompanied
with some form of *attachment* to the possibility of its own
continued and future experience, and therefore ordinarily to the
availability of the objects that trigger that pleasure.
Further, Kant explicitly argues that the properly aesthetic pleasure
in beautiful objects enters into combination with interests, also
properly so called, in the existence of those objects. Under the
rubric of the "empirical interest" in the beautiful, he
argued that there are societal reasons for taking interest in the
availability and possession of beautiful objects. Although he denies
that there is any *a priori* relation of these reasons to the
experience of beauty (*CPJ*, SS41, 5:297), this is not to
deny the existence of such attachments. Under the rubric of the
"intellectual interest in the beautiful," Kant then
describes a reason for attachment to the beautiful that is apparently
supposed to be *a priori*, namely, that the existence of beauty
is a "trace" or "sign" that nature is amenable
to the satisfaction of our *moral* interests (*CPJ*,
SS42, 5:300).
Kant's conception of an intellectual interest in the beautiful does
not seem entirely remote from Herder's view that our sense of
well-being in an object is accompanied with a corresponding sense of
our own well-being, although there are two key differences. For one,
Herder insists upon a recognition of an *objective* well-being
to which our subjective feeling of well-being is a response, while for
Kant well-being is always subjective, that is, *our own*, and
the satisfaction of our aesthetic aims and of our moral aims may be
parallel, but are both subjective. Our aesthetic pleasure in natural
beauty is a sign of the possibility of our moral well-being in nature,
not a response to a harmony in nature that has nothing to do with
us. Second, Kant clearly wants to keep the connection between the
satisfaction of our aesthetic aims and the satisfaction of our moral
interests separate although connected, thus not collapsing aesthetic
pleasure into moral satisfaction. Further, Kant seems to suggest that
a sound moral interest in nature's amenability to our objectives is
a *condition* of the intellectual but aesthetic interest in the
existence of (natural) beauty. From Herder's point of view, that might
seem to be an excessive moralization of an interest in the beautiful
that should be entirely natural, although from Kant's point of view
Herder's insistence on the continuity of the beautiful and the good
might actually run the risk of an excessive moralization of aesthetic
experience. So no doubt there are differences between them, but it is
misleading of Herder to suggest that Kant simply fails to recognize
that we have a real attachment to the interest in the beautiful. Kant
did recognize that, but wanted to keep that attachment somewhat
complicated and indirect in order to avoid the risk of an excessive
moralization of the aesthetic but at the same time
also avoid the risk of an excessive aestheticization of the moral.
In conclusion, Kant occupied a central place in
eighteenth-century German aesthetics, although he is hardly the only
important figure in the period. Rather, he synthesized the aesthetics
of truth, especially moral truth, represented by the Wolffians with
the aesthetics of play represented in Germany by Mendelssohn and
Sulzer, but did so in a subtle and complicated way that resisted the
simplifications that Schiller and Herder, for all their other
insights, attempted to press upon him. At the same time, Kant
refused to allow the importance of the arousal of emotions for its own
sake in tasteful aesthetic experience, and thus rejected this
aspect of aesthetic experience that had been recognized by Baumgarten
and Meier and analyzed in considerable detail by Mendelssohn. So
Kant's synthesis of approaches to aesthetic experience was by no means
complete. It might then be expected that the history of aesthetics in
the period immediately following Kant would have turned to the task of
integrating emotional impact into a complex theory of aesthetic
experience. That is not what happened, however, as both Hegel and
Schopenhauer developed different versions of purely cognitivist
aesthetics, rejecting Kant's theory of play, and downplayed the
emotional impact of aesthetic experience even more than Kant had done.
It would take the rest of the nineteenth century to integrate the
three approaches to aesthetics that had been developed in the
eighteenth century. |
goodman-aesthetics | ## 1. Biographical Sketch
Goodman's personal life (August 7, 1906-November 25, 1998)
was linked to art in many and important ways. From 1929 to 1941, he
directed an art gallery in Boston: the Walker-Goodman Art Gallery. It
is through this commitment that he met his wife, Katharine Sturgis, a
skilled painter whose work is reproduced in Goodman's *Ways
of Worldmaking* (1978a). In 1941, he received a Ph.D. in
Philosophy at Harvard University, with a dissertation, *A Study of
Qualities* (1941), that laid out the nominalist view that would
later be presented in his first book, *The Structure of
Appearance* (1951). He taught at Tufts University (1945-46),
The University of Pennsylvania (1946-64), Brandeis University
(1964-67), and, from 1967, at Harvard University, where he
became Emeritus Professor in 1977.
Throughout his life, he remained a passionate collector of ancient and
contemporary art pieces, as well as a generous lender and donor to a
number of museums. He was a rigorous philosopher who, however, never
lacked the capacity to talk to artists and researchers in other
fields. In 1967, at the School of Education of Harvard, he established
an interdisciplinary program for the study of education and the arts,
"Project Zero," which he directed until 1971. Still at
Harvard, he founded and directed the Summer Dance program. It is,
then, not at all surprising that, amongst Goodman's works, we
find, next to philosophical production, multimedia projects that
combine--indeed very much in Goodmanian fashion--painting
(including Sturgis's work), music, and dance: *Hockey
Seen* (1972), *Rabbit Run* (1973), and *Variations*(1985d).
## 2. Classifying and Constructing Worlds
One way of approaching Goodman's aesthetics, and of seeing both
its unity and continuity with his work in other areas of philosophy,
is by recalling some of the ideas presented in one of his early works,
*Fact, Fiction, and Forecast* (originally published in 1954
[Goodman 1983]). There Goodman formulates what he calls "the
general problem of projection" (of which the famous "new
riddle of induction" is an instance). The problem is grounded in
the general idea that we project predicates onto reality (a reality
that is itself "constructed" by those projections,
according to the constructivist approach Goodman defended from the
time of *A Study of Qualities* [1941], hence in *The
Structure of Appearance* [1951] and, later, in *Ways of
Worldmaking* [1978a]). Hume famously claimed that inductions are
based on regularities found in experience, and concluded that the
inductive predictions may very well turn out being false. In *Fact,
Fiction, and Forecast*, Goodman points out how
"regularities" are themselves in a sense problematic. Take
such objects as emeralds, which we classify by using the predicate
"green." They can also be said to be "grue,"
i.e., observed up to a certain time *t* and found green, blue
otherwise. Hence, our observations seem to equally grant two different
inductions--that emeralds will remain green after *t* or
that they will be blue. The problem is a general one, involving not
just hypotheses but the projection of any predicate onto the world.
Indeed, as we divide the world into *green* and *blue*
things, so could we divide it into *grue* and *bleen*
things (things that are observed up to *t* and found blue, and
green otherwise). Notice that, under a description of the world using
the "green/blue" predicate pair, there may be no change at
time *t* (no change in the color of emeralds and sapphires for
example), whereas there would be change under the alternative
"grue/bleen" pair. Likewise, whereas there may be change,
at time *t*, under "green/blue" (in case that, say,
an emerald is painted over at *t*), there may be no change
under the alternative pair, "grue/bleen." The new riddle
of induction--and, in general, the problem of
projection--is, then, to explain what are the bases for
projecting certain predicates--"green,"
"blue," "red," etc.--onto the world, and
not others--"grue," "bleen,"
"gred," etc. For, as Goodman states it,
"[r]egularities are where you find them, and you can find them
anywhere" (1983, 83). There is no difference in principle
between the predicates we use and those we could use, but rather a
pragmatic difference in *habit*, or of
"entrenchment" of certain predicates and not others.
When one combines the idea of predicate entrenchment to that for which
our successfully projecting certain predicates (and more generally
*symbols*) rather than others modifies our observation and very
perception of reality (indeed it amounts to *constructing*
different realities), one has the basis for Goodman's general
approach to our cognitive relationship to the world, of which art is a
fundamental component. Artworks, too, are symbols, referring to the
world (or the *worlds* they contribute to construct) in a
variety of different ways. Understanding the worlds of art is no
different, in kind, from understanding the worlds of science or of
ordinary perception: it requires *interpretation* of the
various symbols involved in those areas. Which symbols are
successfully projected over time--and, for instance, which
artistic styles are perceived as familiar and which ones as
revolutionary, or which linguistic formulas are categorized as literal
and which ones as metaphorical--largely depends on what is
customary, "entrenched," within a certain cultural,
artistic, or linguistic community.
## 3. The Theory of Symbol Systems in *Languages of Art*
Most of Goodman's aesthetics is contained in his *Languages
of Art* (which he republished, with slight variations, in a second
edition in 1976), although what is there presented is clarified,
expanded, and sometimes corrected in later essays. As its subtitle,
*An Approach to a General Theory of Symbols*, indicates, this
is a book with bearings not only on art issues, but on a general
understanding of symbols, linguistic and non-linguistic, in the
sciences as well as in ordinary life. Indeed, *Languages of
Art* has, amongst its merits, that of having broken, in a
non-superficial and fruitful way, the divide between art and science.
Goodman's general view is that we use symbols in our perceiving,
understanding, and constructing the worlds of our experience: the
different sciences and the different arts equally contribute to the
enterprise of understanding the world. As in his works in
epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language, Goodman's
approach is often unorthodox and groundbreaking, and yet never in ways
that fail to be refreshing and suggestive of future developments (some
of those developments were pursued by Goodman himself in later essays
and, most notably, in his last book, co-authored with Catherine Elgin,
*Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences*
[1988]).
With respect to art in particular and to symbolic activities in
general, Goodman advocates a form of *cognitivism*: by using
symbols we discover (indeed we build) the worlds we live in, and the
interest we have in symbols--artworks amongst them--is
distinctively cognitive. Indeed, to Goodman, aesthetics is but a
branch of epistemology. Paintings, sculptures, musical sonatas, dance
pieces, etc. are all made of symbols, which possess different
functions and bear different relations with the worlds they refer to.
Hence, artworks require interpretation, and interpreting them amounts
to understanding what they refer to, in which way, and within which
systems of rules.
Symbolizing is for Goodman the same as referring. Hence, it is
important here to emphasize, first, that reference has, in his view,
different *modes*, and, second, that something is a symbol, and
is a symbol of a given kind, only within a *symbol system* of
that kind, a system governed by the syntactical and semantic rules
that are distinctive of symbols of that kind. Of course, natural
languages are examples of symbol systems, but there are many other,
non-linguistic systems: pictorial, gestural, diagrammatic, etc.
### 3.1 Modes of Reference
The fundamental notion which is at the core of Goodman's theory
of symbols is that of *reference*--the primitive relation
of "standing for"--seen as articulated in different
modes, of which denotation is one, and as obtaining not just directly
but indirectly as well, sometimes across long chains of reference.
Indeed, one of the great contributions of Goodman to philosophy is his
investigation of kinds of reference or symbolization. Denotation and
exemplification are the two fundamental forms of reference out of
which Goodman develops most of his analysis. *Denotation* is
the relationship between a "label," such as "John F.
Kennedy," or "The 34th President of the United
States," and what it labels (Goodman 1976, Chap. 1). In fact,
according to Goodman's nominalist approach, *possessing*
a feature (or what ordinarily would also be called a property, such as
being blue) just amounts to *being denoted* by a certain
predicate or, more precisely, by a "label" (such as
"blue"). Hence possession is the *converse of
denotation*. (Of course, labels can be particular or general, as
reference can be to an individual, as in the "JFK" example
above, or, severally, to all the members of a set, as with
"blue" with respect to all blue items.) Furthermore,
labels are not limited to linguistic ones, i.e., to predicates:
pictures, musical symbols, and all other labels classify world items;
and what something is depends as much on the nonverbal labels applying
to it as on the predicates it falls under.
*Exemplification*--the sort of reference typical, for
instance, of tailors' swatches--requires possession. In
addition to possession, however, which of course by itself is not a
form of symbolization, exemplification requires that the exemplifying
symbol *refers back* to the label or predicate that denotes it.
Hence, exemplification is "possession plus reference"
(Goodman 1976, 53). When a feature is referred to in this way, it is
"exhibited, typified, shown forth" (Goodman 1976, 86).
While any blue object is denoted by the label "blue," only
those things--e.g., blue color swatches--that also refer to
"blue" and analogous labels exemplify such color, are
"samples" of it. An important characteristic of samples is
that they are selective in the way they function symbolically (see
also Goodman 1978a, 63-70). A tailor's swatch does not
exemplify all of the features it possesses--or all the predicates
that denote it--but rather only those for which it is a symbol
(hence, e.g., predicates denoting color and texture, and not
predicates denoting size or shape). Which of its properties does a
sample exemplify depends on the system within which the sample is
being used: color and texture are relevant to the systems used in
tailoring, not size and shape. Exemplification is for Goodman a common
and yet, philosophically, unrecognized form of reference. Indeed,
throughout his own philosophical oeuvre, we find Goodman using
exemplification to explain a number of issues: most notably,
expression in art, but also, for instance, the notion of artistic
style (1975), how works of architecture can be attributed meaning
(1985), or the notion of a "variation upon a theme" in
such arts as music and painting (Goodman, Elgin 1988, Chap. 4).
Yet the paths or "routes" of reference can be of many
different sorts, and indeed symbols may combine in "chains of
reference" to give rise to instances of *complex
reference* (Goodman 1981a). There is, first of all, the sort of
symbolization employed by *metaphors* (as when human beings are
referred to as "wolves"), a mode of reference that becomes
crucial to Goodman's analysis of expression in art. In analyzing
metaphor, Goodman (1976, Chap. 2; 1979) follows suggestions included
in Max Black's famous article on the topic (Black 1954) but
expands and adapts them to his own view that denotational
symbols--labels--don't work alone but rather as
members of "schemata" ("a label functions not in
isolation but as belonging to a family" [Goodman 1976, 71]),
normally correlated to some referential "realm."
"Blue," "green," "red," etc., for
instance, typically belong to the same "schema"--a
set of labels established by context and habit--and the realm of
reference of such a schema is made of all the ranges of things that
each label in the schema denotes (all blue objects, all green objects,
etc.). We have an instance of metaphorical reference when a symbol,
linguistic or not, is made to refer to something *not*
belonging to the realm normally correlated to the symbol's
schema, i.e., not belonging to the sorts of things that the symbols in
the schema normally refer to. Hence, calling a painting
"sad" is metaphorical because a predicate that is normally
projected upon bearers of mental, emotional states is projected upon
an inanimate object made of canvas and wood and paint. Using the
notions of schema and realm allows Goodman's analysis to include
the claim that typically metaphors bring about rearrangements in a
field of reference, which affect several labels at once. It is
important to emphasize that, for Goodman, metaphorical usage is no
less real or connected to knowledge than literal usage, and
metaphorical truth no less a form of truth than literal truth. Indeed,
the literal and the metaphorical in a sense lie on the same continuum.
Whether the application of a label (and the corresponding possession
of a feature) should be considered literal or metaphorical is just a
matter of habit--specifically, a matter of the *age of the
metaphor*, for old metaphors lose their metaphorical status and
become just literal applications. Using a metaphor himself, Goodman
claims that "a metaphor is an affair between a predicate with a
past and an object that yields while protesting" (1976, 69).
Notice that such a formula includes two elements: that there is
*resistance* to a metaphor (deriving from its literal
falseness) but also *attraction* (deriving from the insightful
reorganization of a schema of labels vis-a-vis a referential
realm, which the metaphor may bring about). A metaphor is a voluntary
misassignment of a label, but it is also more than that:
"Whereas falsity depends upon *misassignment* of a label,
metaphorical truth depends upon *reassignment*" (1976, 70
emphasis added).
Other rhetorical figures (although not all of them) can, in
Goodman's view be explained in terms of metaphorical
"transfers" of this kind, indeed as "modes of
metaphor": personification, synecdoche, antonomasia, hyperbole,
litotes, irony... (1976, 81-85).
Of course, the same item may perform several referential functions at
the same time, denoting certain things while exemplifying certain
features, and do so literally or metaphorically. Furthermore,
sometimes reference is *indirect* or *mediate* (Goodman,
Elgin 1988, 42), brought about by the combination of different forms
of reference into instances of *complex reference*. Reference
may, so to speak, *travel* along "chains of
reference" made of symbols that refer to, or are referred by,
other symbols. An obvious case is that in which a country like the
United States is referred to by a picture of a bald eagle, thanks to
the picture of the bald eagle being a label for a bird that in turn
exemplifies a label like "bold and free," which in turn
denotes the United States and indeed is, furthermore, exemplified by
it (Goodman 1984, 62).
### 3.2 Symbol Schemes and Symbol Systems
In general, how a symbol refers--whether it denotes or
exemplifies, what it denotes or which of its features it exemplifies,
whether it does so directly or indirectly, literally or
metaphorically--depends on the *system of symbolization*
within which the symbol is found. Furthermore, a symbol is the sort of
symbol it is--linguistic, musical, pictorial, diagrammatic,
etc.--in virtue of its belonging to a symbol system of a certain
kind. And symbols differ from each other according to their different
syntactic and semantic rules.
Indeed, a symbol *system*, say, the English language, actually
consists of a symbol *scheme* (not to be confused with the
above-mentioned notion of a label "schema")--i.e., of
a collection of symbols, or "characters," with rules to
combine them into new, compound characters--associated to a field
of reference. In the English language, for instance, the symbol scheme
is made of characters as the letters of the Roman
alphabet--"a," "b," "c,"
etc.--as well as compound characters such as "ape" or
"house." Each character comprises all the verbal
utterances and ink inscriptions, i.e., all the "marks"
that correspond to it. The mode of reference fundamental to symbol
systems is denotation: characters denote, stand for items in the field
of reference. The *scheme* is governed by *syntactical*
rules--determining how to form and combine characters--the
*system* by *semantic* rules--determining how the
range of symbols in the scheme refer to their field of reference.
The fundamental notion with reference to which the different
syntactical and semantic rules of systems can be explained is that of
a *notation*--in brief, a symbol system where to each
symbol corresponds one item in the realm, and to each item in the
realm only one symbol in the system. Hence, for instance, a musical
score is a character in a notational system only if it determines
which performances belong to the work and, at the same time, is
determined by each of those performances (Goodman 1976,
128-130). In a notational symbol scheme all the members of a
character are interchangeable (that is, there is
"character-indifference" between the marks that make a
character) (Goodman 1976, 132-134). Hence, for instance, the
Roman alphabet is made of characters in a notational scheme because
any inscription of, say, the letter "a" (*A* or
*a* or **a**...) expresses the same character
and hence can be chosen at will, and because each of such marks cannot
be used for any other letter of the alphabet. The same is true, for
instance, of the set of the basic musical symbols used in standard
musical notation. Accordingly, the two syntactic requirements of a
notation are *disjointness* (each mark belongs to no more than
one character) and *finite differentiation*, or
*articulation* (in principle, it is always possible to
determine to which character a mark belongs). Symbol schemes that are
notational can be compared in their workings to the way
*digital* instruments of measurement work: for any measurement
indicated by the instrument there is always a definite answer to the
question, What is the measurement? By contrast, schemes that are
non-notational are well exemplified by *analog* systems of
measurement. For their complete lack of articulation, those systems
can also be said to be *dense throughout*: given any mark
(e.g., a mark in a scale) it could stand for virtually an infinite
number of characters, hence of measurements; or, equivalently, given
any two marks, there is a virtually infinite number of possible
characters between them.
For the symbol *system* also to be notational, more than
syntactic disjointness and finite differentiation is required. Symbol
systems are notational when 1) the characters are correlated to the
field of reference unambiguously (with no character being correlated
to more than one class of reference, or "compliance
class"), 2) what a character refers to--the compliance
class--must not intersect the compliance class of another
character (i.e., the characters must be *semantically
disjoint*), and 3) it is always possible to determine to which
symbol an item in the field of reference complies (i.e., the system
must be, semantically, *finitely differentiated*).With
exceptions that will have to be spelled out below, a musical score in
standard Western notation is a character in a notational system.
Natural languages like the English language have a notational scheme
but fail to be notational systems, because of ambiguities (in English,
"cape" refers to a piece of land as well as to a piece of
clothing) and lack of semantic disjointness ("man" and
"doctor" have some referents in common). Finally,
pictorial systems fail on both syntactic and semantic grounds.
## 4. From *Languages of Art* to *Reconceptions*: New Looks at Aesthetic Issues
The rich and systematic general analysis of modes of reference and of
types of symbol systems presented in *Languages of Art* allows
Goodman to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of art: on
the nature of the different art forms and the symbolic functions that
are central to them; on questions of ontology and the importance of
authenticity; on the distinction between artistic and non-artistic
forms of symbolization; and on the role of artistic value.
### 4.1 Pictorial Representation
*Languages of Art* prompted a lively debate especially
concerning Goodman's claims about the nature of pictorial
representation, or depiction. According to Goodman, the symbolic
function that is distinctive of pictures is denotation (1976, Chap.
1)--hence pictures are labels and in that respect are analogous
to linguistic predicates. The characteristics that distinguish
pictorial systems from other denotational systems (e.g., from natural
languages) make them the very opposite of a notation: pictorial
systems are dense throughout and in that respect are similar to other
analog systems, such as those of diagrams and maps (1976,
194-198; Goodman, Elgin 1988, Chap. 7).
At a first approximation, Goodman's claim that "denotation
is the core of representation" (1976, 5) means that pictures are
pictorial labels for their subjects, individuals or sets of
individuals, analogously to how names, or predicates, or verbal
descriptions are linguistic labels for their denotata. Yet, of course,
not all pictures that have a subject--i.e., all pictures that are
representational, versus images that are non-representational or
abstract--have an actual individual as their subject. Some
pictures have just a generic subject (say, a picture of a man, in the
sense of a picture of no man in particular), others have a fictional
subject (a picture of a unicorn, for example). Goodman's account
of such cases is in terms of *multiple* denotation for the
former and *null* denotation for the latter. Some
pictures--exemplary is an illustration of an eagle placed, in a
dictionary, next to the definition of the word
"eagle"--refer, severally, to all the members of a
given set, such as the set of eagles. Other pictures, such as pictures
of unicorns, refer to nothing, since there are no unicorns in reality:
they have null denotation. Goodman insists that the existence of
pictures with null denotation does not represent a problem for the
view that claims that "denotation is the core of
representation." Such pictures are, of course, to be
distinguished from other pictures with null denotation, such as
pictures of Pegasus or of Pickwick. Yet, they are so distinguished in
being pictures of a certain
kind--unicorn-pictures--classified differently from pictures
of other kinds, such as Pegasus-pictures or Pickwick-pictures.
Hence, Goodman appears to analyze pictorial representation as an
ambiguous concept, ambiguous, that is, between a denotational sense
("is a picture of a so-and-so") and a non-denotational
sense ("is a so-and-so-picture"). This may be seen as a
disadvantage vis-a-vis "perceptual" theories of
depiction such as those proposed, for instance, by Richard Wollheim
(1987) and Kendall Walton (1990) (cf. Robinson 2000). Yet concerns on
Goodman's treating the concept of depiction as ambiguous are
misplaced, for the phrase "picture of" and its cognates
can be easily shown to admit two different interpretations. What can
be called the phrase's *relational* sense has to do with
what, if anything, a picture refers to; the *non-relational*
sense, instead, has to do with, as Goodman would say, the sort of
picture it is, or better with the picture's depictive content
(see, e.g., Budd 1993). Indeed, Goodman is right in claiming that,
with any picture, there are always two questions: one, what the
picture represents, if anything; two, what kind of picture it is
(1976, 31). Rather, a much more real problem with Goodman's
theory derives from his not addressing some of the most fundamental
questions regarding depiction. Goodman articulates his account of
relational depiction in some detail: pictures are symbols in symbol
systems that are devoted to denotation (although their members may
have individual, multiple, or null denotation) and that have certain
(primarily) syntactic characteristics. Yet, Goodman has nothing to say
on why certain pictures denote what they do. Lacking a theory of
pictorial reference is no oversight on the part of the philosopher
however. The fact is that Goodman is interested in investigating the
"routes" of reference (1981a)--how symbols can denote
or exemplify or refer in more complex and indirect ways. He is not
interested in the origins, or "roots," of
reference--hence, with regard to pictures, in how certain marks
and not others have become commonly correlated with certain kinds of
items in the world. This is as much true of what pictures are labels
for as of which labels apply to pictures, that is, of how they are
classified. Hence, it turns out, Goodman also has not much to say on
the non-relational sense of depiction, i.e., with what makes a picture
the sort of picture it is (e.g., a man-picture or a unicorn-picture or
a so-and-so-picture). Why pictures are classified in certain
ways--as unicorn-pictures, man-pictures, and so
on--ultimately, is a matter of entrenchment of certain predicates
out of the many predicates available. Given the actual history of the
use of our symbols, certain pictorial labels (i.e., pictures) are
projected rather than others, and certain verbal labels are projected
over those pictorial labels. Accordingly, for the most part,
Goodman's theory of depiction is better seen for what it has to
tell us on its own terms--in general, on what distinguishes
pictorial symbols from symbols of other sorts.
Pictures are distinguished from symbols of other sorts in virtue of
the distinguishing characteristics of pictorial symbol systems. In
particular, pictorial symbol systems are *syntactically* and
*semantically* *dense*. That is, given any two marks, no
matter how small the difference between them, they could be
instantiating two different characters, and given any two characters,
no matter how small the difference between them, they may have
different referents (Goodman 1976, 226-227; Goodman, Elgin 1988,
Chap. 7). Hence, pictures are grouped together with such things as
diagrams, ungraduated instruments of measurement, and maps--with
those symbols, that is, for which, in simpler words, any difference
may make a difference: any difference in a mark may correspond to a
different character, and any difference in the character may stand for
a different correlation to the field of reference. Even a simple
picture, for Goodman, is dense, in the sense that any, however small,
mark on the canvas may turn out being relevant to pictorial meaning.
Whatever the merits of, or problems with, Goodman's technical
analysis, the notion of density is certainly one way to account for
what other thinkers--most notably Kendall Walton
(1990)--have referred to as an "openendedness" in the
investigation of pictures.
Of course, as pictures are likened to such things as diagrams, they
also need to be distinguished from them. Goodman's claim is that
the difference between pictures and diagrams is syntactic, i.e., has
to do with the composition of the characters or symbols. Pictorial
symbol systems, when compared to diagrammatic systems, tend to be
*relatively replete*. That is, to the interpretation of a
picture typically a larger number of features is relevant than to the
interpretation of a non-pictorial dense system. A drawing by Hokusai
may be made of the same marks as an electrocardiogram. Yet, while in a
linear diagram as the electrocardiogram only relative distances from
the originating point of the line matter, in the drawing a higher
number of features--color, thickness, intensity, contrast,
etc.--are relevant (Goodman 1976, 229-230). Diagrams
typically are relatively "attenuated." Accordingly, the
difference between diagrams and pictures is only a matter of
*degree*: typically, with a picture a smaller number of
features can be dismissed as contingent or irrelevant.
There is indeed more that can be found in *Languages of Art*
regarding depiction, and indirectly regarding the notion of being a
so-and-so-picture or a such-and-such-picture. An important part of
Goodman's view on depiction is his critique of the idea that
resemblance is the distinguishing feature of this sort of
symbolization. While Goodman may appear to be, and is usually
discussed as, criticizing the resemblance theory of pictorial
representation--the "most naive view of
representation" (1976, 3)--his real target is indeed much
broader than that. After all, of the resemblance view he also claims
that "vestiges" of it, "with assorted refinements,
persist in most writing on representation" (1976, 3). What
mainly concerns Goodman in *Languages of Art* is to establish
the symbolic, and hence ultimately *conventional*, nature of
pictorial representation--is to draw similarities between
pictorial and nonpictorial forms of symbolization. With regard to
resemblance, *Languages of Art* echoes the claim in *Fact,
Fiction, and Forecast* with regard to regularities: resemblances
can be found anywhere, for anything resembles anything else in some
respect or other. Hence, Goodman does not deny the existence of
resemblances between a picture and its subject, rather he claims that
which resemblances are going to be noticed depends on what the system
of correlation employed makes relevant. To Goodman, pictorial
representation is always relative to the conceptual framework (that
is, to the system of classification) within which a picture should be
interpreted, in the same way in which vision is relative to the
conceptual frameworks with which one approaches the visual world. On
perception, *Languages of Art* echoes what Goodman had already
claimed in his 1960 review of Ernst Gombrich's *Art and
Illusion*: "That we know what we see is no truer than we see
what we know. Perception depends heavily on conceptual schemata"
(Goodman 1972, 142). Thinking that vision may ever take place
independently of all conceptualization is to rely on the "myth
of the innocent eye": "there is no innocent eye
[...]. Not only how but what [the eye] sees is regulated by need
and prejudice. [The eye] selects, rejects, organizes, associates,
classifies, analyzes, constructs" (Goodman 1976, 7-8).
Accordingly, *realism* in pictorial representations is reduced
to a matter of *habit* or *familiarity*, in contrast not
only to a resemblance account of realism but to accounts in terms of
amount or accuracy of conveyed information as well. Realistic pictures
can include inaccuracies--indeed, those used in games of the type
"find the *n* mistakes in the picture" include
inaccuracies by definition (Goodman 1984, 127). And the amount of
information is not altered, for instance, by switching from the
realistic mode of representation of conventional perspective to the
non-realistic mode of, say, reverse perspective (Goodman 1976, 35).
Goodman's conventionalism is pervasive and uncompromising: even
the rules of perspective in the representation of space, he claims,
are conventionally established, and provide only a
relative--i.e., relative to culturally established conceptual
schemata--standard of fidelity (1976, 10-19). Realistic
paintings, drawings, etc. are those that are painted or drawn in a
familiar style, i.e., according to a familiar system of correlation.
To put it metaphorically, for Goodman, you always need a key to read a
picture--sometimes the key is more ready at hand, part of
one's cultural background, other times one must find it and
learn how to use it.
There are claims, in Goodman's account of depiction, that are
left unexplained, especially with respect to pictures with
indeterminate or fictional reference, that is, with pictures that
Goodman would classify by predicates like "man-picture,"
"unicorn-pictures," etc. Of them, Goodman claims that they
have "purported" denotation (1976, 67), yet without saying
anything on how that should contribute to pictorial meaning.
Furthermore, as the analysis progresses, and keeps facing the
necessity to account for pictures with indeterminate or fictional
reference, as well as with the notion of *representation-as*
(as in a picture that represents Winston Churchill as a bulldog), a
somewhat puzzling claim makes its way into Goodman's account:
that depiction in such cases is really a matter of
exemplification--exemplification of labels such as
"unicorn-picture," "man-picture," or
"bulldog-picture" (1976, 66). The motivation for such a
claim may be that of finding, after all, a mode of reference capable
of explaining the way in which such pictures have meaning, i.e., of
addressing the above-mentioned non-relational sense of depiction. Yet,
Goodman provides no argument to support the claim that a picture
representing, say, a unicorn is not just *denoted* by labels
such as "unicorn-picture" but also *refers back* to
those labels. Lack of actual or determinate reference cannot be
sufficient to establish that an item denoted by a label refers back to
that label. Furthermore, precisely because samples refer to the labels
denoting them selectively, an argument would be needed to the effect
that pictures of unicorns exemplify such labels as
"of-a-unicorn," rather than labels as, say,
"picture" or even "painted by someone" or
"painted canvas," which after all are labels applying to
such pictures.
In fact, in light of the above-mentioned ambiguity in the concept of
depiction, hence of the fundamental distinction between a relational
and a non-relational sense of "picture of," we should
emphasize *how much* is left out of Goodman's attempted
account of the concept. Notice how pictures may or may not represent
something, i.e., relationally; yet, insofar as they have depicted
content, they all are, *non-relationally*, O-pictures, or
P-pictures, etc., that is, pictures with an O, or P, etc. content.
Such non-relational sense of depiction is indeed the one a theory of
depiction ought to investigate (cf. Budd 1993), and Goodman's
general claims on the syntactic and semantic characteristics of
pictorial (vs. verbal, or musical, or diagrammatic, etc.) symbol
systems do not seem able to encompass the fundamental question about
such a notion, hence in a sense the fundamental question for any
theory of pictorial representation (cf. Giovannelli 1997). To
illustrate, Goodman's account offers suggestions on what makes a
symbol a picture of a dog rather than a verbal description of a dog;
at a very general level, the account has also something to say on what
makes a symbol a dog-picture rather than a dog-description. Yet, the
fundamental question for a theory of depiction is what it means that a
picture is a dog-picture, i.e., a picture with a dog as its depictive
content, a picture in which competent viewers see a dog, instead of,
say, a cat-picture, i.e., a picture in which competent viewer see a
cat. For better or worse, perceptual theories of depiction offer an
answer to *that* question; yet, no real competing answer is to
be found in Goodman. As mentioned, why some type of marks have become
correlated with a certain kind of depictive content (hence presumably
prompting a visual perception of such content when looking at the
picture) is a matter of entrenchment; and that, in turn, is a question
for the anthropologist and the historian, not the philosopher,
according to Goodman.
### 4.2 Expression and Exemplification in Art
The notion of exemplification allows Goodman to offer his theory of
*expression*. More generally, it allows him to indicate an
important source of meaning in addition to denotation. Most works of
music, dance, and architecture, as well as abstract paintings, do not
represent anything at all. Yet, Goodman can show how, next to
artworks' representational powers we must recognize, as a
central and pervasive form of symbolization in art, the capacity for
artworks to call attention to some of their features, that is, to
exemplify them.
As for the features that an artwork appears to exemplify despite its
not, literally, possessing them (as when, for instance, a painting is
claimed to express sadness in spite of the fact that paintings cannot
literally be sad) Goodman claims that such features are
*metaphorically exemplified*, or *expressed*. In brief,
a work of art expresses something when it metaphorically exemplifies
it. Accordingly, expression is not limited to feelings and emotions
but comprises any feature that can be metaphorically attributed to an
artwork: in architecture, for instance, a building may express
movement, dynamism, or being "jazzy" although, literally,
it can't have any of those properties (Goodman, Elgin 1988,
40).
To expression and exemplification, too, the general rule for which the
relationship between a symbol and what it symbolizes is never
"absolute, universal, or immutable" (1976, 50) applies.
Hence, like representation, exemplification and expression are
relative, in particular they are relative to established use (Goodman
1976, 48).
Goodman's suggestions on the role of exemplification in art are
in many ways enlightening. Applied to art, the notion seems to provide
semantic theories, like Goodman's, with a way to justify the
attention we pay, not just to what an artwork symbolizes, by to the
artwork itself: we do so because we are made privy of, and are
interested in, those of a work's features that are shown forth,
i.e., exemplified (cf. van der Berg 2012, 603). The notion allows to
expand the number of features that are deemed significant in a work,
while still explaining such significance in referential terms. A poem,
for instance, is not just a representational symbol; typically, what a
poetic work exemplifies is as important to its meaning and artistic
value as what the work represents. Accordingly, the goal of the
translator must be "maximal preservation of what the original
exemplifies as well as of what it says" (1976, 60). As for
expression, expanding the scope of the properties that can be
metaphorically exemplified, beyond the strictly emotional ones, adds
explanatory power to the theory, making it possible to say, e.g., that
a sculpture expresses fluidity (cf. Robinson 2000, 216).
As is the case for Goodman's analysis of depiction, with regard
to exemplification and expression in art, too, one wonders whether
Goodman's claims are meant to provide an exhaustive account of
such notions, and not rather just a very general, structural, analysis
of them. Whichever the case, Goodman's proposal is much more
acceptable at that general level. More specific claims, such as that
expression and exemplification are relative to the conventionally
established symbol systems at work, like the analogous claim regarding
representation, prompt questions on the necessity, for Goodman, to
recognize naturalistic constraints on what can be exemplified, or
expressed, or represented by what. More importantly, when we examine
specific cases, it becomes unclear whether the distinction between
exemplification in general and expression in particular has been well
drawn. Since, for Goodman, not only feelings and emotions can be
expressed but also such properties as color or sound pitch, one
wonders what notion "expressing red," said of a non-red
symbol, amounts to: how different is it from the notion referred to by
"expressing sadness" said of something (a musical sonata)
that literally is not sad? Furthermore, as a more general concern on
Goodman's project of accounting for the nature, interpretation,
and values of artworks fully extensionalistically (i.e., just in terms
only of what they refer to), one wonders whether the role of property
*possession* is not undermined by Goodman's insistence on
what a work exemplifies. Certainly, works of art have significant
features that they simply possess, without also exemplifying them. A
work of art may have to be recognized as, e.g., calm just in the sense
of having such feature (if needed, having it metaphorically), and such
feature be recognized as relevant to the work's nature and
value--as something that the beholder ought to
perceive--without it being the case that the work
*exemplifies* or *expresses* calmness.
Be as it may, it is certainly worth considering whether expression,
hence exemplification, by requiring possession, requires possession
that precedes the item's acquiring exemplifying function. It
could be the case that endowing a work with an exemplification
function could, at once, endow the work with the feature it
exemplifies, a suggestion that seems especially apt to works of art
(cf. van der Berg 2012). Whether something like that could be
explained, as Goodman would want it, with no reference to either the
intentions of artists or, more generally, the context of artistic
production remains to be seen. Certainly--and the concern, here,
is not just about expression, but about metaphorical reference and
exemplification more generally--the suspicion arises that
Goodman's approach, in relying solely on the notion of symbol
system to explain reference (i.e., to explain what a symbol refers to
and how it does refer to it), ends up underanalyzing the key notions
at play: exemplification, metaphorical reference, and, hence,
expression. Goodman's own understanding of symbol systems is
that they emerge when certain rules are codified. Yet, of course,
artists may succeed, it seems, at securing reference and endowing
their works with artistically relevant features within, and thanks to,
a specific context of production. Appeal to the rules of a system may
not be sufficient to explain how reference is indeed secured. That is,
and going back to an issue mentioned above, the rules of a system may
never be granular enough to offer a full explanation of how a work of
art exemplifies some of its features but not others, or is
successfully made to possess, metaphorically, features it
expresses.
### 4.3 Conditions of Identity for Works of Art
Goodman's theory of symbol systems, as composed of schemes of
characters that are governed, depending on the sort of system, by
different syntactical rules, and correlated to their extensions
according to differing semantic rules, is at the basis of his claims
on the identity conditions of works of art of different kinds. Given
the syntactic and semantic characteristics of notational systems, the
different art forms can be arranged on a spectrum made of the sorts of
systems that stand between a pure notation--where there is
perfect preservation of identity between replicas (or performances) of
the work--and fully dense pictorial systems--where every
work is an original.
Goodman relates the issue of identity of works to whether a
work's *history of production* is integral to the work or
not. In brief, it appears that in painting and related art forms, such
as drawing, watercolor, and the like (where there is only one instance
of a work), but also in etching, woodcut, and the like (where there
can be multiple instances of the same work), aspects of the
work's history of production are indeed essential to the
identity of the work. Only the actual canvas that was painted by
Raphael in 1505 counts as the *Madonna del Granduca*, and only
those prints that come from the original plate used by Rembrandt for
his *Self-Portrait with a Velvet Cap with Plume* (1638) count
as the originals of that work--anything else is a copy, however
apparently indistinguishable from the original. Art forms like
painting and etching are for this reason named by Goodman
"autographic" arts: "a work of art is autographic if
and only if the distinction between original and forgery of it is
significant; or better, if and only if even the most exact duplication
of it does not thereby count as genuine" (1976, 113). You are
looking at Raphael's *Madonna* or at Rembrandt's
*Self-Portrait* only if you are looking at specific items
properly connected, historically, to the artist who produced them. By
contrast, music, dance, theater, literature, architecture seem to
allow, although in different ways, for instantiations of the work that
are independent of the work's history of production. You can
listen to a performance of Beethoven's *Fifth Symphony*
even if it is performed (as it would normally be) from a contemporary
print of the score. Art forms like music, dance, etc., accordingly,
can be called "allographic."
As the examples above already illustrate, the distinction between
autographic and allographic arts is not the same as that between arts
that are singular and those that are multiple. Etching, for instance,
is still autographic although multiple. Incidentally, this could allow
Goodman to account for the interesting hypothesis, advanced by Gregory
Currie (1989), of superxerox machines capable of reproducing paintings
in a molecule-by-molecule faithful way. Such a cloning technique,
Goodman could say, would transform the art of painting from singular
to multiple, and yet without changing it from autographic to
allographic.
Nor is the autographic/allographic distinction to be confused with
that between one- and two-stage art forms, so distinguished according
to whether the realization of the work requires some form of
execution. A painting (which is autographic) is accessible once
completed, while a theatrical play (allographic) requires a
performance. Yet, allographic arts, too, can be one-stage, e.g., in
the case of a novel, and autographic arts be two-stage--woodcut
for example.
More relevantly, Goodman articulates his theory of work identity by
addressing whether a given art form allows for a notational system,
i.e., for a "score" that would "specify the
essential properties a performance must have to belong to the
work" (1976, 212). Accordingly, Goodman's can also be seen
as a novel way to account for the fact that some art
forms--painting and sculpture for instance--do not allow for
*performances*, while other art forms--such as music and
dance--do. Advanced at first as a tentative approach, and indeed,
throughout presented as open to revisions, the proposal is developed
somewhat systematically, with the clear intent of showing its
potential for becoming a general and comprehensive theory. Music,
painting, literature, theater, dance, and architecture are all
addressed with respect to the question of their relationships with the
syntactic and semantic requirements of a notation. Goodman's
framework ends up being quite technical, given the need to refer to
and explain the syntactic and semantic characteristics of notational
systems. Also, such terms as "score,"
"script," and "sketch," which all acquire
specialized meanings. By the same token, the questions are not asked
hypothetically or just as a mental exercise--in that sense,
trivial notations could be devised for *any* art form (Goodman,
Elgin 1988, Chap. 7). Rather, the questions are addressed with
reference to the systems of notations already existing, when they do,
and, more generally, with awareness of the actual history of the
various art forms.
Naturally, music and painting (and with the latter, of course,
sculpture) end up standing on opposite sides of the spectrum, the
first being allographic and allowing for a notation, the second
autographic and not admitting of any notation compatible with
practice. A work of *music* is, for Goodman, "the class
of performances compliant with a character" (1976, 210), where
the character is the musical work's score. Consider that music
written in standard musical notation is, for the most part--or,
more precisely, for the "main corpus of peculiarly musical
characters" (Goodman 1976, 183), i.e., for the flags arranged on
the pentagram--in a notational language. All and only those
performances that fully correspond to, or "comply with,"
the score count as performances of the work. Even one small mistake on
the part of the performer, say, in replacing one note for another, is
sufficient to declare that, technically, a different work has been
performed. On the other hand, other, important aspects of standard
musical notation are *not* in a notational system: indications
of tempo, for instance, as well as the convention of letting the
performer choose the cadenza, give great latitude to the performer.
Hence, in Goodman's view, while two performances that sound
almost exactly alike may not be performances of the same work,
radically differently sounding performances may be. Notice, however,
how the question of identity is here sharply distinct from the
question of value: "the most miserable performance without
actual mistakes does count as [a genuine instance of a work], while
the most brilliant performance with a single wrong note does
not" (Goodman 1976, 186).
One might be tempted to dismiss Goodman's proposals for their
conflicting with ordinary language and musical practice. Yet, it is
most important to remember that Goodman is aware of ordinary practice
and does not expect it to comply with the philosopher's
technical requirements (as "one hardly expects chemical purity
outside the laboratory" [1976, 186]). Nor is he interested in
reforming ordinary language: "I am no more recommending that in
ordinary discourse we refuse to say that a pianist who misses a note
has performed a Chopin Polonaise than that we refuse to call a whale a
fish, the earth spherical, or a grayish-pink human white"
(Goodman 1976, 187). Indeed, Goodman's approach to the question
of notation is, in an important sense, grounded in previous practice,
for a notational system is an acceptable one *only when projected
from a previous classification of works*. Furthermore, the history
of an art form may include (as music did) an autographic stage, which
only at a later time made room for the establishment of a notation, on
the grounds of previous practice. Nor is Goodman's approach
lacking in application to real musical cases, as his discussion of
alternative musical notations proves. Without, again, evaluating the
different systems of musical notation, Goodman shows how an
alternative system, such as the one proposed by John Cage, is not
notational, and is indeed in important ways closer to a
"sketch," hence to a drawing, than to a score (Goodman
1976, 187-190).
What was just said about music also applies largely, in
Goodman's view, to the art of *dance*. While dance does
not yet have a standard notation, Goodman finds the tentative notation
proposed by Rudolf Laban (which indeed Laban proposed for movement in
general) to be a good candidate for a notational system, indeed one
with fewer departures from notationality than standard musical
notation. And here is one of the many areas where the results of an
aesthetic investigation, however tentative, may be relevant to other
areas of human knowledge and activity. Goodman points out how a
successful notation for human movement could be of great assistance in
studies ranging from psychology to industrial engineering, in which it
is of utmost importance to find criteria for determining whether, say,
a subject or an experimenter has repeated the same behavior: and
"the problem of formulating such criteria is the problem of
developing a notational system" (1976, 218).
The conclusion that Goodman reaches about *architecture* is
also a good indicator of the importance placed, in his analysis, on
the actual history of an art form. Goodman claims that architecture
does have, in the architect's plans, something quite close to a
notational system, and hence is, because of that, an allographic art:
different buildings, built in different locations and even with
certain differences in materials, would be instances *of the same
work*, provided that they correspond to the same plan. Yet, aware
of the history of the art form, namely, of its origins as an
autographic art and of a certain dependence, even today, on the
particular history of production of the particular building, Goodman
concludes that in fact "architecture is a mixed and transitional
case" (1976, 221).
As said, *painting* stands at the opposite extreme from a
notational system, since works in this art form are
"analogs," characters in syntactically and semantically
dense systems. It is important to emphasize how that does not mean
that a classification of paintings according to a notational system
could not be found, or even found easily: a library-type
classification for paintings for instance. What it does mean, however,
is that, given the history of the medium and of the ways of
classifying works of painting, a library-type notation would be
incompatible with established artistic practice. The painting itself
(or, in the case of etching, only the prints using the original plate)
counts (or count) as *the* work. And what is true of painting
is true of the sketches that precede the painting. The sketch itself
is a work of art, and one that is autographic, in spite of its being
used as a guide to the production of the final work (Goodman 1976,
192-194).
Since the question of whether a notational system can be devised for a
given art form is ultimately a question on the possibility of a
"language" for that art form, i.e., at least of a
notational scheme, art forms that use natural language bear
interesting and sometimes surprising results. With a novel, poem, or
the script used for a play or movie, the text is a character in a
notational scheme. However, what counts as a work in such art forms is
different. In *theater* or *drama*, a work is a set of
performances compliant with what established in the script. As in the
case of music, Goodman's analyses involve a departure from the
ordinary use of language: the dialogue of a play really works as a
"score," while stage directions and the like are a
"script"--the former is fully notational,
syntactically and semantically, the latter does not uniquely determine
the performance, nor is it uniquely determined by the performance
(1976, 210-11). It is the "score" part of the text
that allows, in theater, for the work to be located in the set of
performances. By contrast, with a *novel* or a *poem*,
where no "score" is part of the text, and hence the text
is a "script," the work, Goodman claims, is the text
itself (understood as a set of inscriptions fully corresponding, in
spelling and punctuation, with each other). Even in the later work,
*Reconceptions*, Goodman reemphasizes this claim (1988a,
49-65). While endorsing pluralism with regard to the number of correct
interpretations (i.e., "applications") a text may
yield--indeed considering it often a positive feature of the
artistic use of language--Goodman insists that the work, in
literary art, *is* the text. Hence, in Jorge Luis
Borges's famous *Pierre Menard* case (that of a fictional
French author trying to write a novel word-for-word identical to
Cervantes's *Don Quixote* [Borges 1962]), Goodman claims
that what Menard produced was another inscription of *Don
Quixote*'s text, hence an instance of the same work, albeit
with his actions Menard may have suggested a possible, new
interpretation of that work. Incidentally, the contrast between
theater and the literature more narrowly conceived (i.e., as not
including drama) may raise a question regarding poetry. Qua text with
meaning (or "applications", a poetic work is the text
itself; yet, qua text to be performed, e.g., recited out loud for an
audience, the poem would seem to be considered a character in a
notational system, a "score" with as its field of
reference the sounds to be uttered. On the other hand, in
*cinema*, an art form Goodman does not address, again, one
could identify, within the screenplay, a "score" in the
parts that indicate dialogue, a "script" in the scene and
instructions, with the ontology of the film itself, however, being
that of a multiple art form made of the concrete reproductions of the
visual and audio recordings that are displayed in the movie theater or
on the TV screen.
Goodman's theory of notation, and the analysis of the differing
ways in which different art forms relate to that notion, establish
almost a system for the arts, one that perhaps has not yet received
sufficient credit from theorists working in aesthetics. Instead, for
the most part contemporary discussion has concentrated on individual
art forms and problematic examples.
Within the ontology of music, the claim for which the score fully, and
solely, individuates the work has received the most attention.
Separating ontological from evaluative claims, as seen above, Goodman
could not state his stance on the matter more clearly: "the most
miserable performance without actual mistakes" counts as an
instance of a work, "while the most brilliant performance with
one wrong note does not" (1976, 186). Of the two claims, that
compliance with a score is necessary for a performance to be
considered a bona fide instance of a musical work has been received
with way more controversy than the one for which full compliance is
sufficient to declare a performance a legitimate work instance. The
former claim may seem naturally problematic. First of all, it clearly
conflicts with actual practice. Of course, as mentioned, Goodman does
not aim at reforming ordinary usage. Hence, his view is a form of what
in art ontological discussions has become known as
"revisionism" (versus "descriptivism"; cf.
Dodd 2012) only in the sense that it separates ontological claims from
actual artistic and art critical practices, thus allowing for even
radical departures from such practices--yet, again, without
advocating their modification. Even if all that is granted, to many,
including thinkers who are sympathetic to the approach, Goodman's
leaving no wiggle-room, so as to allow the inclusion of performances
that defer from the score for just minor mistakes (when not welcome
changes), is problematic. Indeed, and further, there seems to be a
conceptual problem in making sense of the claim on brilliant and yet
wrong performances. For, of course, if a performance is wrong, hence
fails to be an instance of a work, how can it then be referred to as
"brilliant," i.e., a brilliant performance, ultimately,
*of* such work (Ridley 2013)? The more general and interesting
question, here, may be whether Goodman's theory has the resources to
account for the kinship an incorrect performance of Beethoven's
*Fifth Symphony* has to the *Fifth*, which other musical
pieces (performances of *Three Blind Mice* to use
Goodman's example) lack. Again, on Goodman's behalf, dividing,
here, might be the only way to conquer. The ontological claim on what
individuates an artwork--hence, on what counts as a bona fide
instance or performance of a work--is in itself independent of
claims, in themselves not even philosophical, on what makes a musical
piece recognizably similar (or virtually identical) to another. None
of Goodman's ontological claims need to deny such empirical facts.
Further, recognizability, here, may interestingly intersect with
symbolization. After all, Goodman is keenly interested in the symbolic
relations between works of art (including, e.g., works that count as
variations on the same theme; see 1976, 260-261, and Goodman,
Elgin 1988, Chap. 4). A performance that aims, say, at an especially
intense and driven rendering of a piece and, as a consequence of that,
includes, perhaps unavoidably, departures from the prescribed notes,
may be considered a (brilliant) rendering *of* such a piece by
virtue of reference to, including exemplication of, the piece as
individuated by the original score, although, ontologically, be
considered--as it should be, Goodman would insist--an
instance of a distinct work.
Especially when concentrating on just one art form and, hence,
possibly losing sight of Goodman's more general and systematic
project, it might pass unnoticed that the separation between
evaluative and ontological claims, in Goodman, is borne by an approach
for which whatever individuates an artwork in the different art forms
does not necessarily individuate all of the artwork's
properties, in which, aesthetically, we are interested. What Goodman
says, e.g., about literature applies to all art forms: "defining
literary works no more calls for setting forth all their significant
aesthetic properties than defining metals calls for setting forth all
their significant chemical properties" (1976, 210). After all,
in art forms like music written according to traditional Western
notation, which have developed a notation, we are legitimately
interested in the different performances of a work of art--and in
the best ones among them--precisely because what defines them as
performances of a work is not the same as the set of aesthetic
properties the work has to offer. On the other hand, one might be
suspicious of the degree of inclusiveness of aesthetic properties
(i.e., of non-work-defining properties that may nonetheless be the
object of aesthetic attention) Goodman allows. That is, one might
wonder whether the *sufficiency* claim, for which mere
compliance with a "score" (in Goodman's technical sense
of the term) is all that is needed to identify, within art forms that
have notations, bona fide work instances. With respect to the
allographic arts, Goodman is opposed to making any concession to the
relevance of historical properties to the individuation of
artworks--it's all left to the rules of the notation, at the
syntactic or, if applicable, the semantic level. Hence, a work of
music is whatever the "score," semantically, individuates;
and a work of literature is the text itself, the
"script,"identified by the syntactic requirements of
notations. Yet, in either case, there would be room for a modified
notion of the allographic (investigated, for music, by Levinson 1980),
according to which a "score" or a "script" are
best understood, not just as structures, but as ones projected within
given contexts. Such a move would allow restricting the range of
aesthetic properties a given artwork can comprise. A performance of
Beethoven's *Fifth* executed so as to last a year, within
such a notion of the allographic, could be considered the performance
of a derivative (and bizarre) work, not of the *Fifth*.
Similarly, interpretations of a novel that were to run against what is
compatible with a given historically located projection (say, because
anachronistic, or because incompatible with the genre a work is in)
could, then, be declared inadmissible, or admissible as
interpretations of an identical text, yet one projected within a
different context and effectively amounting to a different work.
It is worth emphasizing how Goodman, although he begins his
investigation with the autographic/allographic distinction (indeed
introduced as a rough approximation), aims at developing an account of
the role notation, at the syntactic or semantic level, plays within
certain arts but not others. The result is not just an explanation of
the autographic nature of some arts and the allographic nature of
others. It is a way more articulated account of the variety of ways in
which notationality, when present, has authority in identifying
artworks in the various arts, hence in differently determining the
localization of what counts as the artwork. To sum up, where a
"score" is present, hence syntactic and semantic
notationality, usually, the work is a compliance class of
performances. Where a "script" is present, hence a
notation only at the syntactic level, usually, the work is a class of
inscriptions compliant with such script. Where notation is not
established at either the semantic or the syntactic level, there is a
"sketch," which is usually the work itself, as a concrete
individual or series of concrete individuals.
The complexity of the approach invites caution towards dismissing
Goodman's reasoning on the grounds of alleged counterexamples.
It is quite clear how Goodman, throughout his work, takes himself as
mostly offering "suggestions" towards a theory, not yet a
complete one. Further, what he says about architecture, and the art
form's being a "mixed and transitional" case, or
about drama, and its comprising, in the text of the play,
"score" and "script," suggests looking at
ways, which Goodman seems to foresee, of combining parts of his
account, and achieving more fine-grained results than the mere verdict
on whether an art form is allographic or autographic, notational or
not. Hence, in addition to what mentioned above about poetry and
cinema, it is worth wondering what Goodman could say of certain forms
of installation and conceptual art. For example, when Sol LeWitt gave
instructions to create his*Wall Drawings* (works that were,
then, realized by other individuals), was he producing works that
represent an insurmountable challenge to Goodman's distinctions
(cf. Pillow 2003)? One possibility would be to consider LeWitt's
instructions as a "script," which could in itself be
counted as an artwork (much as a literary work), but, also, as
instructions for the production of distinct works, constituted by the
drawings actually realized. Such drawings, in turn, could be
considered variations on the "theme" indicated by those
instructions, while each an individual work, a concrete
"sketch"; or, perhaps, each of LeWitt's *Wall
Drawings* is best considered a work with unusual mereology, a
compound made of the "sketches"--one by one or all
together --and those instructions. Whatever the answer to the
questions arising in individual cases, the Goodmanian framework, with
all its limits and underdeveloped areas, can clearly offer a range of
possibilities and conceptual intersections. Somewhat relatedly,
Goodman's willingness to claim that there are cases, as with the
class of performances of a John Cage's composition embodied in a
non-conventional score that qualifies as a "sketch," in
which work identity fails to be established (Goodman 1972b, 83-84),
may be worthy of further consideration, as the various developments
within art may have to make room for cases in which the identity of a
work is uncertain.
### 4.4 Authenticity
An issue closely related to the ontological question of the identity
of the work of art in the various art forms--indeed the very
issue that Goodman uses, in *Languages of Art*, to introduce
his theory of notation--is that of the importance of
*authenticity* in art and of the aesthetic relevance of being a
forgery. (Goodman's comments on the question of forgery prompted
a small debate on that issue, mostly represented in a collection
edited by Denis Dutton [1983].) The brief answer is that authenticity
matters only where there is no notationality. Hence, for instance, it
makes no difference whether a musical piece is performed from the
original score or from a copy congruent with that, since the score is
in a notational scheme. Yet it does matter whether one is presented
with an original Rembrandt or with a copy of it, since paintings are
analogs, symbols in syntactically dense systems.
With regard to two visually indiscernible paintings, an original and a
copy, Goodman addresses the question whether there is any aesthetic
difference between the two pictures (1976, 99-102). Notice that,
if there is a difference, it must not depend on what one can visually
discern at the present time, for *ex hypothesis*, there is no
such visual difference that can currently be detected. Goodman's
answer is that there is an aesthetic difference between the two
paintings even now, when we are unable to tell one painting from the
other, for an awareness that one is the original and the other a copy
informs us that a difference may be perceived, and indeed modifies our
*present* perception of the two paintings: now, for instance,
we *look for* differences between the two paintings, we train
our eyes and minds to discriminate differences that are currently
indiscernible (1976, 103-105). Goodman's takes his claims
to be general and as granting the conclusion that "the aesthetic
properties of a picture include not only those found by looking at it
but also those the determine how it is to be looked at" (1976,
111-112). Hence, even with pictures that are not
"perfect" copies of other pictures, indeed with
*any* picture, knowing how it should be
classified--including its classification by authorship, as a
Rembrandt, a Vermeer, or a Van Meegeren--makes a difference to
how the picture may be perceived. For perceiving is, after all,
determined by the labels that one projects over what is presented in
front of one's eyes. It must be noticed, then, that this claim
is all within a theory of perception and, while claiming that
non-perceptible features are relevant to perception, hence are
relevant to aesthetic experience, it does not claim that
non-perceptible features *as such* are relevant to aesthetic
experience.
### 4.5 Artistic Style
Goodman's account of style is a good example of a Goodmanian
"reconception": the philosophical approach to the issue
must not only abandon the characterization of style as related to form
and hence contrasted to content (for, after all, that an author
writes, say, of social issues rather than battles should count as an
aspect of the author's style), but must, most importantly,
recognize the role that classifications in terms of style have in
understanding and appreciating a work.
Goodman invites us to recognize elements of style in a work's
*content*, in its *form*, and in the *feelings*
it expresses. His proposal is that the stylistic features of a work
make up a subset of the features "of what is said, of what is
exemplified, or of what is expressed" (Goodman 1978a, 32). In
particular, stylistic features are those symbolic properties of a work
that allow us to place the work in a certain place, time period, and
artist's oeuvre. That is, style properties help in answering
questions as "where?", "when?",
"who?" with respect to a work--they function,
metaphorically, as a *signature* for a work: "style
consists of those features of the symbolic functioning of a work that
are characteristic of author, period, place, or school" (1978a,
35). Given what Goodman has said, when discussing the issue of
authenticity, regarding the aesthetic importance of historical
properties of a painting, knowing the style of an artwork is
aesthetically relevant, since "knowledge of the origin of a work
[...] informs the way the work is to be looked at or listened to
or read, providing a basis for the discovery of nonobvious ways the
work differs from and resembles other works" (1978a, 38). It is
in virtue of stylistic properties' link to the symbolic
functions of a work of art that identifying a work's style,
especially when complex and challenging and even difficult to
identify, is integral to "the understanding of works of art and
the worlds they present" (1978a, 40).
### 4.6 The Question of the Aesthetic and the Question of Merit
Goodman's conclusions, on what roughly could be considered the
question of what is art as well as on the question of artistic value,
follow from his view that aesthetics is really a branch of
epistemology and that there is ultimately no sharp division between
art and other forms of human knowledge.
The aims of art are the aims of symbolic activity in general, and they
have to do with understanding. (*Understanding* is, for
Goodman, a broader concept than knowledge, one that is not bound by
literal truth, and that is thus applicable also to the literally false
and to what admits of no truth value: metaphors and paintings for
example.) Artistic symbols, as symbols in general, are to be judged
for the classifications they bring about, for how novel and insightful
those categorizations are, for how they change our perception of the
world and relations to it. The cognitive value of art counts as
*artistic merit* only because the symbols involved and the
experiences they bring about belong in some sense to what Goodman
refers to as "the aesthetic." Hence, the question of when
such symbolic activities and experiences are aesthetic or artistic is
important, although, for Goodman, more in order to recognize the
commonalities between art and other human activities, including
science, than to isolate the artistic or aesthetic realm from other
areas of knowledge and experience.
Goodman proposes no definition of art nor of what makes an experience
aesthetic. Since to be a work of art is, for Goodman, to perform
certain referential functions, the question "What is art?"
should be replaced with the question "When is art?". That
is, the real issue is to know when, typically at least, the symbolic
activity in question has features that bring us to call it
"artistic." Hence, he suggests the existence of
*symptoms of the aesthetic*, i.e., symbol systems'
characteristics that tend to occur in art. In *Languages of
Art*, they were tentatively presented as conjunctively sufficient
and disjunctively necessary for an experience to be aesthetic. There
Goodman indicated four of such symptoms: *syntactic density*,
*semantic density*, *syntactic repleteness*, and
*exemplificationality* (1976, 252-255). In *Ways of
Worldmaking*, the list is enriched by a fifth element:
*multiple and complex reference* (Goodman 1978a, 67-68).
In his later contribution that those are only symptoms seems to be
taken even more literally: they are clues that indicate but do not
guarantee the presence of a work of art; and artistic status is
possible even without them. In other words, Goodman's tentative
claims on this issue point to symbolic activities and features of
symbolic activity that artworks *tend* to instantiate. On these
grounds, Goodman can once again claim that "[a]rt and science
are not altogether alien" (1976, 255). The same features that
are characteristic, for instance, of numerical calculation--e.g.,
articulateness--can be found in musical scores, and the same
features that could be called aesthetic--such as
exemplification--can be found in scientific hypotheses as well.
In a more complete statement: "The difference between art and
science is not that between feeling and fact, intuition and inference,
delight and deliberation, synthesis and analysis, sensation and
cerebration, concreteness and abstraction, passion and action, mediacy
and immediacy, or truth and beauty, but rather a difference in
domination of certain specific characteristics of symbols"
(Goodman 1976, 264).
Goodman links artistic status to the performance of certain symbolic
functions in certain ways. Yet, his emphasis on the importance of
asking *when* art is rather than *what* art is should be
seen as anti-essentialist claim with respect to art: there is no one
property or set of properties, not even a function or set of
functions, that are distinctive of art objects. On the other hand,
that emphasis should not be taken to suggest that artworks can slip in
and out of artistic status just on the grounds of use. Certainly,
Goodman is committed to claiming that something can be a work of art
at one time and not another (1978a, 67). Yet, he also emphasizes how
artistic status is somewhat permanent: "The Rembrandt painting
remains a work of art, as it remains a painting, while functioning
only as a blanket" (1978a, 69).
Goodman's positive claims with respect to the experience of art
are certainly to be taken seriously, in spite of the fact that the
negative claims preceding them, once read in light of the later
developments and applications of cognitive science to art, may sound
too quickly dismissive. Goodman emphasizes the *cognitive* role
of emotions in the apprehension of a work of art (1976, 248). In art,
he emphasizes, feeling emotions, whether positive or negative,
pleasant or unpleasant, is a way to perceive the work and the world
through the work. Feeling melancholy when listening to a piece of
music, for instance, may be a way to perceive musical features of the
work, as well as to perceive the world in terms of them. Hence, the
emotions serve the understanding. On the other hand, such claims as,
for instance, that the view according to which "art is concerned
with simulated emotions suggests, as does the copy theory of
representation, that art is a poor substitute for reality"
(1976, 246) are, in light of more recent developments, in tension with
other claims by Goodman, such as that the "actor or
dancer--or the spectator--sometimes notes and remembers the
feeling of a movement rather than its pattern, insofar as the two can
be distinguished at all" (1976, 248). For the sort of phenomena
mentioned in the latter claim may very well be best explained by
cognitive theories that consider mental simulation and other forms of
mimicry central to certain imaginative activities as well as to
memory.
Art has a general importance to the knowledge enterprise, which is
addressed with special clarity in *Ways of Worldmaking*. A
primary thesis in that work "is that the arts must be taken no
less seriously than the sciences as modes of discovery, creation, and
enlargement of knowledge in the broad sense of advancement of the
understanding, and thus that the philosophy of art should be conceived
as an integral part of metaphysics and epistemology" (1978a,
102). A more general thesis of the book is that the multiple and
competing "versions" of the world that humankind
makes--through scientific theories (claiming, e.g., that the Sun
is the center of the universe, or claiming that the Earth is) but also
through mythology, art, philosophy, and so on and so
forth--literally *make* worlds; they
"fabricate" what we call "facts." And there
isn't just *one*, all-embracing version of the world:
multiple and incompatible versions are possible. That is, Goodman is a
constructivist and a relativist. His relativism, however, is not one
of laissez-faire: versions can be distinguished between right and
wrong, and indeed attempts to construct a world may fail. For the
worlds that Goodman posits are not possible worlds brought about by
possible descriptions of the world. Rather, when the versions are
right, they are all part of the actual world.
For such metaphysical and epistemological approach to include the arts
amongst the means to construct worlds, one needs only to add that
versions of the world include non-verbal versions and non-literal
versions as well. Art forms that do not use language, such as painting
or music or architecture, can offer ways of perceiving and
understanding the world--indeed ways to construct a
world--allowing us, for instance, to see and hear and perceive
things in new and refreshing ways. Works of art can participate in
worldmaking precisely because they have symbolic functions (1978a,
102). As linguistic labels categorize the world (and new, unusual
labels as "grue" and "bleen" categorize it
differently), so do pictorial labels, for instance, categorize it in a
number of ways (and some of them indeed in new ways). Visiting a
museum can change our perception of the world, making us notice new
aspects of reality and allowing us to encounter a different reality.
Literal denotation, metaphorical denotation, as well as
exemplification and expression, can all contribute to the construction
of a world. Cervantes's *Don Quixote* literally denotes
no one, yet metaphorically it denotes many of us. And artworks, by
exemplifying shapes, colors, emotional patterns, etc., as well as by
expressing what they literally do not possess, can bring about a
reorganization of the world of ordinary experience. This is not just
true in the sense that seeing a painting may change our way of seeing
the world. Works of art may have effects that go beyond their medium,
and hence music may affect seeing, painting affect hearing, and so on.
Especially in "these days of experimentation with the
combination of media in the performing arts" [...] music,
pictures, and dance "all interpenetrate in making a world"
(1978a, 106). |
hegel-aesthetics | ## 1. Hegel's Knowledge of Art
Hegel's *Phenomenology of Spirit* (1807) contains
chapters on the ancient Greek "religion of art"
(*Kunstreligion*) and on the world-view presented in
Sophocles' *Antigone* and *Oedipus the King*. His
philosophy of art proper, however, forms part of his
*philosophy* (rather than phenomenology) of spirit. The
*Phenomenology* can be regarded as the introduction to
Hegel's philosophical system. The system itself comprises three
parts: logic, philosophy of nature, and philosophy of spirit, and is
set out (in numbered paragraphs) in Hegel's *Encyclopaedia of
the philosophical Sciences* (1817, 1827, 1830). The philosophy of
spirit is in turn divided into three sections: on subjective, objective
and absolute spirit. Hegel's philosophy of art or
"aesthetics" constitutes the first sub-section of his
philosophy of absolute spirit, and is followed by his philosophy of
religion and his account of the history of philosophy.
Hegel's philosophy of art provides an a priori derivation--from
the very concept of beauty itself--of various forms of beauty and
various individual arts. In marked contrast to Kant, however, Hegel
weaves into his philosophical study of beauty numerous references to
and analyses of individual works of art--to such an extent,
indeed, that his aesthetics constitutes, in Kai Hammermeister's words,
"a veritable world history of art" (Hammermeister,
24).
Hegel read both Greek and Latin (indeed, he wrote his diary partly in
Latin from the age of fourteen); he also read English and French. He
was thus able to study the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, Virgil, Shakespeare and Moliere in the original
languages. He never travelled to Greece or Italy, but he did undertake
several long journeys from Berlin (where he was appointed Professor in
1818) to Dresden (1820, 1821, 1824), the Low Countries (1822, 1827),
Vienna (1824) and Paris (1827). On these journeys he saw
Raphael's *Sistine Madonna* and several paintings by
Correggio (in Dresden), Rembrandt's *Night Watch* (in
Amsterdam), the central section of the van Eyck brothers'
*Adoration of the Lamb* (in Ghent)--the wing panels were
at that time in Berlin--and "famous items by the noblest
masters one has seen a hundred times in copper engravings: Raphael,
Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian" (in Paris) (*Hegel: The
Letters*, 654). He liked to visit the theatre and opera, both
on his travels and in Berlin, and he was acquainted with leading
singers, such as Anna Milder-Hauptmann (who sang in the first
production of Beethoven's *Fidelio* in 1814), as well as the
composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (whose revival of
J.S. Bach's *St Matthew Passion* Hegel attended in March
1829). Hegel was also on close personal terms with Goethe and knew his
drama and poetry especially well (as he did those of Friedrich
Schiller).
Adorno complains that "Hegel and Kant [ ... ] were able to
write major aesthetics without understanding anything about art"
(Adorno, 334). This may or may not be true of Kant, but it is clearly
quite untrue of Hegel: he had an extensive knowledge and a good
understanding of many of the great works of art in the Western
tradition. Nor was Hegel's knowledge and interest restricted to
Western art: he read (in translation) works of Indian and Persian
poetry, and he saw at first hand works of Egyptian art in Berlin
(Poggeler 1981, 206-8). Hegel's philosophy of art is
thus an a priori derivation of the various forms of beauty that,
*pace* Adorno, is informed and mediated by a thorough knowledge
and understanding of individual works of art from around the world.
## 2. Hegel's Texts and Lectures on Aesthetics
Hegel's published thoughts on aesthetics are to be found in
pars. 556-63 of the 1830 *Encyclopaedia*. Hegel also held
lectures on aesthetics in Heidelberg in 1818 and in Berlin in 1820/21
(winter semester), 1823 and 1826 (summer semesters), and 1828/29
(winter semester). Transcripts of Hegel's lectures made by his
students in 1820/21, 1823, 1826 and 1828/29 have now been published (though so
far only the 1823 lectures have been translated into English) (see
Bibliography). In 1835 (and then again in 1842) one of Hegel's
students, Heinrich Gustav Hotho, published an edition of Hegel's
lectures on aesthetics based on a manuscript of Hegel's (now lost) and
a series of lecture transcripts. This is available in English as:
G.W.F. Hegel,
*Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art*, trans. T.M. Knox, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Most of the secondary literature on
Hegel's aesthetics (in English and German) makes reference to
Hotho's edition. Yet according to one of the leading specialists
on Hegel's aesthetics, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Hotho
distorted Hegel's thought in various ways: he gave Hegel's
account of art a much stricter systematic structure than Hegel himself
had given it, and he supplemented Hegel's account with material
of his own (*PKA*, xiii-xv). Gethmann-Siefert argues,
therefore, that we should not rely on Hotho's edition for our
understanding of Hegel's aesthetics, but should instead base our
interpretation on the available lecture transcripts.
Since Hegel's manuscript, on which Hotho based much of his
edition, has been lost, it is no longer possible to determine with
certainty to what extent (if at all) Hotho did in fact distort
Hegel's account of art. It should also be noted that
Gethmann-Siefert's own interpretation of Hegel's aesthetics
has been called into question (see Houlgate 1986a).
Nevertheless Gethmann-Siefert is right to encourage readers with a
knowledge of German to consult the published transcripts, since they
contain a wealth of important material, and in some cases material that
is missing from the Hotho edition (such as the brief reference to
Caspar David Friedrich in the 1820/21 lectures [*VA*,
192]).
Hegel's philosophy of art has provoked considerable debate since his
death in 1831. Does he believe that only Greek art is beautiful? Does
he hold that art comes to an end in the modern age? The answers one
gives to such questions should, however, be offered with a degree of
caution, for, sadly, there is no fully worked out philosophy of art by
Hegel that was officially endorsed by Hegel himself. The paragraphs in
the *Encyclopaedia* are written by Hegel, but they are very
brief and condensed and were intended to be supplemented by his
lectures; the transcripts of the lectures are written by students of
Hegel (some taken down in class, some compiled afterwards from notes
taken in class); and the "standard" edition of Hegel's
lectures is a work put together by his student, Hotho (albeit using a
manuscript by Hegel himself). There is, therefore, no definitive
edition of Hegel's fully developed aesthetic theory that would trump
all others and settle all debate.
## 3. Art, Religion and Philosophy in Hegel's System
Hegel's philosophy of art forms part of his overall philosophical
system. In order to understand his philosophy of art, therefore, one
must understand the main claims of his philosophy as a whole. Hegel
argues in his speculative logic that *being* is to be
understood as self-determining reason or "Idea"
(*Idee*). In the philosophy of nature, however, he goes on to
show that logic tells only half the story: for such reason is not
something abstract--is not a disembodied *logos*--but
takes the form of rationally organized *matter*. What there is,
according to Hegel, is thus not just pure reason but physical,
chemical and living matter that obeys rational principles.
Life is more explicitly rational than mere physical matter because it
is more explicitly self-determining. Life itself becomes more
explicitly rational and self-determining when it becomes conscious and
self-conscious--that is, life that can imagine, use language,
think and exercise freedom. Such self-conscious life Hegel calls
"spirit" (*Geist*). Reason, or the Idea, comes to
be fully self-determining and rational, therefore, when it takes the
form of self-conscious spirit. This occurs, in Hegel's view, with the
emergence of *human* existence. Human beings, for Hegel, are
thus not just accidents of nature; they are reason itself--the
reason inherent in nature--that has come to life and come to
consciousness of itself. Beyond human beings (or other finite rational
beings that might exist on other planets), there is no self-conscious
reason in Hegel's universe.
In his philosophy of objective spirit Hegel analyses the institutional
structures that are required if spirit--that is,
humanity--is to be properly free and self-determining. These
include the institutions of right, the family, civil society and the
state. In the philosophy of absolute spirit Hegel then analyses the
different ways in which spirit articulates its ultimate,
"absolute" understanding of itself. The highest, most
developed and most adequate understanding of spirit is attained by
philosophy (the bare bones of whose understanding of the world have
just been sketched). Philosophy provides an explicitly
rational, *conceptual* understanding of the nature of reason or
the Idea. It explains precisely *why* reason must take the form
of space, time, matter, life and self-conscious spirit.
In religion--above all in Christianity--spirit gives
expression to the same understanding of reason and of itself as
philosophy. In religion, however, the process whereby the Idea becomes
self-conscious spirit is *represented*--in images and
metaphors--as the process whereby "God" becomes the
"Holy Spirit" dwelling in humanity. Furthermore, this
process is one in which we put our *faith* and *trust*:
it is the object of feeling and belief, rather than conceptual
understanding.
In Hegel's view, philosophy and religion--which is to say,
Hegel's own speculative philosophy and Christianity--both
understand the *same* truth. Religion, however, believes in a
representation of the truth, whereas philosophy understands that truth
with complete conceptual clarity. It may seem strange that we would
need religion, if we have philosophy: surely the latter makes the
former redundant. For Hegel, however, humanity cannot live by concepts
alone, but also needs to picture, imagine, and have faith in the
truth. Indeed, Hegel claims that it is in *religion* above all
that "a nation defines what it considers to be true"
(*Lectures on the Philosophy of World History*, 105).
Art, for Hegel, also gives expression to spirit's understanding of
itself. It differs from philosophy and religion, however, by
expressing spirit's self-understanding not in pure concepts, or in the
images of faith, but in and through objects that have been
specifically *made* for this purpose by human beings. Such
objects--conjured out of stone, wood, color, sound or
words--render the freedom of spirit visible or audible to an
audience. In Hegel's view, this *sensuous* expression of free
spirit constitutes *beauty*. The purpose of art, for Hegel, is
thus the creation of beautiful objects in which the true character of
freedom is given sensuous expression.
The principal aim of art is not, therefore, to imitate nature, to
decorate our surroundings, to prompt us to engage in moral or
political action, or to shock us out of our complacency. It is to
allow us to contemplate and enjoy created images of our own spiritual
freedom--images that are beautiful precisely *because*
they give expression to our freedom. Art's purpose, in other words, is
to enable us to bring to mind the truth about ourselves, and so to
become aware of who we truly are. Art is there not just for art's
sake, but for beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a distinctively
sensuous form of human self-expression and self-understanding.
## 4. Kant, Schiller and Hegel on Beauty and Freedom
Hegel's close association of art with beauty and freedom shows
his clear indebtedness to Kant and Schiller. Kant also maintained that
our experience of beauty is an experience of freedom. He argued,
however, that beauty is not itself an objective property of things.
When we judge that a natural object or a work of art is beautiful, on
Kant's view, we are indeed making a judgment about an object, but
we are asserting that the object has a certain *effect* on us
(and that it should have the same effect on all who view it). The
effect produced by the "beautiful" object is to set our
understanding and imagination in "free play" with one
another, and it is the pleasure generated by this free play that leads
us to judge the object to be beautiful (Kant, 98, 102-3).
In contrast to Kant, Schiller understands beauty to be a property of
the object itself. It is the property, possessed by both living beings
and works of art, of appearing to be free when in fact they are not. As
Schiller puts it in the "Kallias" letters, beauty is
"freedom in appearance, autonomy in appearance" (Schiller,
151). Schiller insists that freedom itself is something
"noumenal" (to use Kant's terminology) and so can
never actually manifest itself in the realm of the senses. We can never
see freedom at work in, or embodied in, the world of space and time. In
the case of beautiful objects, therefore--whether they are the
products of nature or human imagination--"it is all that
matters [ ... ] that the object *appears* as free, not that
it really is so" (Schiller, 151).
Hegel agrees with Schiller (against Kant) that beauty is an objective
property of things. In his view, however, beauty is the direct sensuous
*manifestation* of freedom, not merely the appearance or
imitation of freedom. It shows us what freedom actually looks like and
sounds like when it gives itself sensuous expression (albeit with
varying degrees of idealization). Since true beauty is the direct
sensuous expression of the *freedom* of spirit, it must be
produced *by* free spirit *for* free spirit, and so
cannot be a mere product of nature. Nature is capable of a formal
beauty, and life is capable of what Hegel calls "sensuous"
beauty (*PK*, 197), but true beauty is found only in works of
*art* that are freely created by human beings to bring before
our minds what it is to be free spirit.
Beauty, for Hegel, has certain formal qualities: it is the unity or
harmony of different elements in which these elements are not just
arranged in a regular, symmetrical pattern but are unified
*organically*. Hegel gives an example of genuinely beautiful
form in his discussion of Greek sculpture: the famous Greek profile is
beautiful, we are told, because the forehead and the nose flow
seamlessly into one another, in contrast to the Roman profile in which
there is a much sharper angle between the forehead and nose
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 727-30).
Beauty, however, is not just a matter of form; it is also a matter of
*content*. This is one of Hegel's most controversial
ideas, and is one that sets him at odds with those modern artists and
art-theorists who insist that art can embrace any content we like and,
indeed, can dispense with content altogether. As we have seen, the
content that Hegel claims is central and indispensable to genuine
beauty (and therefore genuine art) is the freedom and richness of
spirit. To put it another way, that content is the Idea, or absolute
reason, *as* self-knowing spirit. Since the Idea is pictured in
religion as "God," the content of truly beautiful art is in
one respect the *divine*. Yet, as we have seen above, Hegel
argues that the Idea (or "God") comes to consciousness of
itself only in and through finite human beings. The content of
beautiful art must thus be the divine in human form or the divine
within *humanity* itself (as well as purely human freedom).
Hegel recognizes that art can portray animals, plants and inorganic
nature, but he sees it as art's principal task to present divine and
human freedom. In both cases, the focus of attention is on
the *human* *figure* in particular. This is because, in
Hegel's view, the most appropriate sensuous incarnation of reason and
the clearest visible expression of spirit is the human form. Colors
and sounds by themselves can certainly communicate a mood, but only
the human form actually embodies spirit and reason. Truly beautiful
art thus shows us sculpted, painted or poetic images of Greek gods or
of Jesus Christ--that is, the divine in human form--or it
shows us images of free human life itself.
## 5. Art and Idealization
Art, for Hegel, is essentially figurative. This is not because it
seeks to imitate nature, but because its purpose is to express and
embody *free spirit* and this is achieved most adequately
through images of human beings. (We will consider the exceptions to
this--architecture and music--below.) More specifically,
art's role is to bring to mind truths about ourselves and our
freedom that we often lose sight of in our everyday activity. Its role
is to show us (or remind us of) the *true* character of freedom.
Art fulfills this role by showing us the freedom of spirit in its
purest form *without* the contingencies of everyday life. That
is to say, art at its best presents us not with the all too familiar
dependencies and drudgery of daily existence, but with the
*ideal* of freedom (see *Aesthetics*, 1: 155-6). This
ideal of human (and divine) freedom constitutes true beauty and is
found above all, Hegel claims, in ancient Greek sculptures of gods and
heroes.
Note that the work of idealization is undertaken not (like modern
fashion photography) to provide an escape from life into a world of
fantasy, but to enable us to see our freedom more
clearly. Idealization is undertaken, therefore, in the interests of a
clearer revelation of the true character of humanity (and of the
divine). The paradox is that art communicates *truth*
through *idealized* images of human beings (and indeed--in
painting--through the
*illusion* of external reality).
It is worth noting at this stage that Hegel's account of art is
meant to be both descriptive and normative. Hegel thinks that the
account he gives describes the principal features of the greatest works
of art in the Western tradition, such as the sculptures of Phidias or
Praxiteles or the dramas of Aeschylus or Sophocles. At the same time,
his account is normative in so far as it tells us what *true*
art is. There are many things that we call "art": cave
paintings, a child's drawing, Greek sculpture,
Shakespeare's plays, adolescent love poetry, and (in the
twentieth century) Carl Andre's bricks. Not everything
called "art" deserves the name, however, because not
everything so called does what *true* art is meant to do:
namely, give sensuous expression to free spirit and thereby create
works of beauty. Hegel does not prescribe strict rules for the
production of beauty; but he does set out broad criteria that
*truly* beautiful art must meet, and he is critical of work
that claims to be "art" but that fails to meet these
criteria. Hegel's critique of certain developments in
post-Reformation art--such as the aspiration to do no more than
imitate nature--is thus based, not on contingent personal
preferences, but on his philosophical understanding of the true nature
and purpose of art.
## 6. Hegel's Systematic Aesthetics or Philosophy of Art
Hegel's philosophical account of art and beauty has three
parts: 1) ideal beauty as such, or beauty proper, 2) the different
forms that beauty takes in history, and 3) the different arts in which
beauty is encountered. We will look first at Hegel's account of
ideal beauty as such.
### 6.1 Ideal Beauty as such
Hegel is well aware that art can perform various functions: it can
teach, edify, provoke, adorn, and so on. His concern, however, is to
identify art's proper and most distinctive function. This, he claims,
is to give intuitive, sensuous expression to the freedom of
spirit. The point of art, therefore, is not to be
"realistic"--to imitate or mirror the contingencies
of everyday life--but to show us what divine and
human *freedom* look like. Such sensuous expression of
spiritual freedom is what Hegel calls the "Ideal," or true
beauty.
The realm of the sensuous is the realm of individual things in space
and time. Freedom is given sensuous expression, therefore, when it is
embodied in an *individual* who stands alone in his or her
"self-enjoyment, repose, and bliss [*Seligkeit*]"
(*Aesthetics*, 1: 179). Such an individual must not be abstract
and formal (as, for example, in the early Greek Geometric style), nor
should he be static and rigid (as in much ancient Egyptian sculpture),
but his body and posture should be visibly animated by freedom and
life, without, however, sacrificing the stillness and serenity that
belongs to ideal self-containment. Such ideal beauty, Hegel claims, is
found above all in fifth- and fourth-century Greek sculptures of the
gods, such as the *Dresden Zeus* (a cast of which Hegel saw in the early
1820s) or Praxiteles' *Cnidian Aphrodite* (see
*PKA*, 143 and Houlgate 2007, 58).
Ancient Greek sculpture, which Hegel would have known almost
exclusively from Roman copies or from plaster casts, presents what he
calls pure or "absolute" beauty (*PKA*,
124). It does not, however, exhaust the idea of beauty, for it does not
give us beauty in its most *concrete* and developed form. This
we find in ancient Greek drama--especially tragedy--in
which free individuals proceed to action that leads to conflict and,
finally, to resolution (sometimes violently, as in Sophocles'
*Antigone*, sometimes peacefully, as in Aeschylus'
*Oresteian* trilogy). The gods represented in Greek sculpture
are beautiful because their physical shape perfectly embodies their
spiritual freedom and is not marred by marks of physical frailty or
dependence. The principal heroes and heroines of Greek tragedy are
beautiful because their free activity is informed and animated by an
ethical interest or "pathos" (such as care for the family,
as in the case of Antigone, or concern for the welfare of the state,
as in the case of Creon), rather than by petty human foibles or
passions. These heroes are not allegorical representations of
abstract virtues, but are living human beings with imagination,
character and free will; but what moves them is a passion for an
aspect of our *ethical life*, an aspect that is supported and
promoted by a god.
This distinction between *pure* beauty, found in Greek
sculpture, and the more *concrete* beauty found in Greek drama
means that ideal beauty actually takes two subtly different forms.
Beauty takes these different forms because pure sculptural
beauty--though it is the pinnacle of art's achievement--has
a certain *abstractness* about it. Beauty is the sensuous
expression of freedom and so must exhibit the concreteness, animation
and humanity that are missing, for example, in Egyptian sculpture. Yet
since pure beauty, as exemplified by Greek sculpture, is spiritual
freedom immersed in *spatial*, bodily shape, it lacks the more
concrete dynamism of action *in time*, action that is animated
by imagination and language. This is what lends a certain
"abstractness" (and, indeed, coldness) to pure beauty
(*PKA*, 57, 125). If art's role is to give sensuous
expression to true *freedom*, however, it must move beyond
abstraction towards concreteness. This means that it must move beyond
pure beauty to the more concrete and genuinely *human* beauty
of drama. These two kinds of ideal beauty thus constitute the most
appropriate objects of art and, taken together, form what Hegel calls
the "centre" (*Mittelpunkt*) of art itself
(*PKA*, 126).
### 6.2 The Particular Forms of Art
Hegel also acknowledges that art can, indeed must, both fall short of
and go beyond such ideal beauty. It falls short of ideal beauty when
it takes the form of *symbolic* art, and it goes beyond such
beauty when it takes the form of *romantic* art. The form of
art that is characterized by works of ideal beauty itself is
*classical* art. These are the three forms of art
(*Kunstformen*), or "forms of the beautiful"
(*PKA*, 68), that Hegel believes are made necessary by
the very idea of art itself. The development of art from one form to
another generates what Hegel regards as the distinctive
*history* of art.
What produces these three art-forms is the changing relation between
the *content* of art--the Idea as spirit--and its
mode of presentation. The changes in this relation are in turn
determined by the way in which the content of art is itself conceived.
In symbolic art the content is conceived abstractly, such that it is
not able to manifest itself adequately in a sensuous, visible form. In
classical art, by contrast, the content is conceived in such a way
that it is able to find perfect expression in sensuous, visible
form. In romantic art, the content is conceived in such a way that it
is able to find adequate expression in sensuous, visible form and yet
also ultimately transcends the realm of the sensuous and visible.
Classical art is the home of ideal beauty proper, whereas romantic art
is the home of what Hegel calls the "beauty of inwardness"
(*Schonheit der Innigkeit*) or, as Knox translates it,
"beauty of deep feeling" (*Aesthetics*, 1: 531).
Symbolic art, by contrast, falls short of genuine beauty altogether.
This does not mean that it is simply bad art: Hegel recognizes that
symbolic art is often the product of the highest level of artistry.
Symbolic art falls short of beauty because it does not yet have a rich
enough understanding of the nature of divine and human spirit. The
artistic shapes it produces are deficient, therefore, because the
conceptions of spirit that underlie it--conceptions that are
contained above all in religion--are deficient
(*PKA*, 68).
#### 6.2.1 Symbolic Art
Hegel's account of symbolic art encompasses the art of many
different civilizations and shows his considerable understanding of,
and appreciation for, non-Western art. Not all of the types of symbolic
art Hegel discusses, however, are fully and properly *symbolic*.
So what connects them all? The fact that they all belong to the sphere
of what Hegel calls "pre-art" (*Vorkunst*)
(*PKA*, 73). Art proper, for Hegel, is the sensuous
expression or manifestation of free spirit in a medium (such as metal,
stone or color) that has been deliberately *shaped* or
*worked* by human beings into the expression of freedom. The
sphere of "pre-art" comprises art that falls short of art
proper in some way. This is either because it is the product of a
spirit that does not yet understand itself to be truly *free*,
or because it is the product of a spirit that does have a sense of its
own freedom but does not yet understand such freedom to involve the
manifestation of itself in a sensuous medium that has been specifically
shaped to that end. In either case, compared to genuine art,
"pre-art" rests on a relatively *abstract*
conception of spirit.
Hegel's intention in his account of symbolic art is not to
comment exhaustively on every kind of "pre-art" there is.
He says nothing, for example, about prehistoric art (such as cave
painting), nor does he discuss Chinese art or Buddhist art (even though
he discusses both Chinese religion and Buddhism in his lectures on the
philosophy of religion). Hegel's aim in his account of symbolic
art is to examine the various kinds of art that are made necessary by
the very concept of art itself, the stages through which art has to
pass on its journey from pre-art to art proper.
The first stage is that in which spirit is conceived as being in an
immediate *unity* with nature. This stage is encountered in the
ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrians, Hegel
claims, believe in a *divine* power--the Good--but
they identify this divinity with an aspect of nature itself, namely
with light. Light does not symbolize or point to a separate God or
Good; rather, in Zoroastrianism (as Hegel understands it) light
*is* the Good, *is* God (*Aesthetics*, 1: 325).
Light is thus the substance in all things and that which gives life to
all plants and animals. This light, Hegel tells us, is personified as
Ormuzd (or Ahura Mazda). Unlike the God of the Jews, however, Ormuzd is
not a free, self-conscious subject. He (or it) is the Good in the form
of light itself, and so is present in all sources of light, such as the
sun, stars and fire.
The question we have to ask, Hegel remarks, is whether seeing the Good
as light (or giving utterance to such an intuition) counts as art
(*PKA*, 76). In Hegel's view, it does not do so for two
reasons: on the one hand, the Good is not understood to be free spirit
that is distinct from, but manifests itself in, the light; on the
other hand, the sensuous element in which the Good is
present--the light itself--is understood not to be something
shaped or produced by free spirit for the purpose of its
self-expression, but simply to be a given feature of nature with which
the Good is immediately identical.
In the Zoroastrian vision of the Good as light, we encounter the
"sensuous presentation [*Darstellung*] of the
divine" (*PKA*, 76). This vision, however, does
not constitute a *work of art*, even though it finds expression
in well-crafted prayers and utterances.
The second stage in the development of pre-art is that in which there
is an immediate *difference* between spirit and nature. This is
found, in Hegel's view, in Hindu art. The difference between the
spiritual and the natural means that the spiritual--i.e., the
divine--cannot be understood (as in Persia) to be simply
identical with some immediately given aspect of nature. On the other
hand, Hegel claims, the divine in Hinduism is conceived in such an
abstract and *indeterminate* way that it acquires determinate
form only in and through something immediately sensuous, external and
natural. The divine is thus understood to be present *in* the
very form of something sensuous and natural. As Hegel puts it in his
1826 lectures on aesthetics: "natural objects--the human
being, animals--are revered as divine" (*PKA*,
79).
Hindu art marks the difference between the spiritual (or divine) and
the merely natural by extending, exaggerating and distorting the
natural forms in which the divine is imagined to be present. The divine
is portrayed not in the purely natural form of an animal or human
being, therefore, but in the *unnaturally* *distorted*
form of an animal or human being. (Shiva is portrayed with many arms,
for example, and Brahma with four faces.)
Hegel notes that such portrayal involves the work of
"shaping" or "forming" the medium of
expression (*PKA*, 78). In that sense, one can speak of
Hindu "art." He claims, however, that Hindu art does not
fulfill the true purpose of art because it does not give appropriate
and adequate shape to free spirit and thereby create images of beauty.
Rather, it simply distorts the natural shape of animals and human
beings--to the point at which they become "ugly"
(*unschon*), "monstrous,"
"grotesque" or "bizarre" (*PKA*,
78, 84)--in order to show that the divine or spiritual, which
cannot be understood except in terms of the natural and sensuous, is
at the same time different from, and finds no adequate expression in,
the realm of the natural and sensuous. Hindu divinity is inseparable
from natural forms, but it indicates its distinctive presence by the
unnaturalness of the natural forms it adopts.
Hegel's judgment on Hindu art does not mean, by the way, that he
finds no merit at all in such art. He remarks on the splendor of Hindu
art and on the "most tender feeling" and the
"wealth of the finest sensuous naturalness" that such art
can display. He insists, however, that Hindu art fails to reach the
height of art, in which spirit is shown to be free in itself and is
given appropriate natural, visible shape (*PKA*,
84).
The third stage in the development of "pre-art" is that of
genuinely *symbolic* art in which shapes and images are
deliberately designed and created to point to a determinate and quite
*separate* sphere of "interiority"
(*Innerlichkeit*) (*PKA*, 86). This is the
province of ancient Egyptian art. The Egyptians, Hegel tells us, were
the first people to "fix" (*fixieren*) the idea of
spirit as something inward that is separate and independent in itself
(*PKA*, 85). (In this context he refers to Herodotus,
who maintained that the Egyptians were "the first people to put
forward the doctrine of the immortality of the soul" [Herodotus,
145 [2: 123]].) Spirit, as Hegel understands it (in his philosophy of
subjective and objective spirit), is the activity of externalizing and
expressing itself in images, words, actions and institutions. With the
idea of spirit as "interiority," therefore, there
necessarily comes the drive to give an external shape to this inner
spirit, that is, to *produce* a shape for spirit from out of
spirit itself. The drive to create shapes and images--works of
art--through which the inner realm can make itself known is thus
an "instinct" in the Egyptians that is deeply rooted in the
way they understand spirit. In this sense, in Hegel's view,
Egyptian civilization is a more profoundly artistic civilization than
that of the Hindus (*Aesthetics*, 1: 354; *PKA*,
86).
Egyptian art, however, is only symbolic art, not art in its full sense.
This is because the created shapes and images of Egyptian art do not
give direct, adequate expression to spirit, but merely *point
to*, or symbolize, an interiority that remains hidden from view.
Furthermore, the inner spirit, though fixed in the Egyptian
understanding as a "separate, independent inwardness"
(*PKA*, 86), is not itself understood as fully
*free* spirit. Indeed, the realm of spirit is understood by the
Egyptians to a large degree as the simple *negation* of the
realm of nature and life. That is to say, it is understood above all as the realm
of the *dead*.
The fact that death is the principal realm in which the independence of the soul
is preserved explains why the doctrine of the immortality of the soul
is so important to the Egyptians. It also explains why Hegel sees the
*pyramid* as the image that epitomizes Egyptian symbolic art.
The pyramid is a created shape that hides within it something separate
from it, namely a dead body. It thus serves as the perfect image of
Egyptian *symbols* which point to, but do not themselves reveal
and express, a realm of interiority that is independent but still lacks
the freedom and life of genuine spirit (*Aesthetics*, 1:
356).
For Hegel, Greek art contains symbolic elements (such as the eagle to
symbolize the power of Zeus), but the core of Greek art is not the
symbol. Egyptian art, by contrast, is symbolic through and through.
Indeed, Egyptian consciousness as a whole, in Hegel's view, is
essentially symbolic. Animals, for example, are regarded as symbols or
masks of something deeper, and so animal faces are often used as masks
(by amongst others, embalmers). Symbolism can also be multi-layered:
the image of the phoenix, Hegel claims, symbolizes natural (especially,
celestial) processes of disappearance and reemergence, but those
processes are themselves viewed as symbols of spiritual rebirth
(*PKA*, 87).
As noted above, the pyramid epitomizes the symbolic art of the
Egyptians. Such art, however, does not just point symbolically to the
realm of the dead; it also bears witness to an incipient but still
undeveloped awareness that true inwardness is found in the living human
spirit. It does so, Hegel maintains, by showing the human spirit
struggling to emerge from the animal. The image that best depicts this
emergence is, of course, that of the sphinx (which has the body of a
lion and the head of a human being). The human form is also mixed with
that of animals in images of gods, such as Horus (who has a human body
and a falcon's head). Such images, however, do not constitute art
in the full sense because they fail to give adequate expression to free
spirit in the form of the fully *human* being. They are mere
symbols that partially disclose an interiority whose true character
remains hidden from view (and mysterious even to the Egyptians
themselves).
Even when the human form is depicted in Egyptian art without
adulteration, it is still not animated by a genuinely free and living
spirit and so does not become the shape of freedom itself. Figures,
such as the Memnon Colossi of Amenhotep III in Western Thebes, display
no "freedom of movement" (*PKA*, 89), in
Hegel's view, and other smaller figures, which stand with their arms
pressed to their sides and their feet firmly planted on the ground,
lack "grace [*Grazie*] of movement." Egyptian
sculpture is praised by Hegel as "worthy of admiration";
indeed, he claims that under the Ptolemies (305-30 B.C.)
Egyptian sculpture exhibited great "delicacy" (or
"elegance") (*Zierlichkeit*). Nonetheless, for all
its merits, Egyptian art does not give shape to real freedom and life
and so fails to fulfill the true purpose of art.
The fourth stage of pre-art is that in which spirit gains such a degree
of freedom and independence that spirit and nature "fall
apart" (*PKA*, 89). This stage is in turn
sub-divided into three. The first sub-division comprises
*sublime* art: the poetic art of the Jewish people.
In Judaism, Hegel maintains, spirit is understood to be fully free and
independent. This freedom and independence is, however, attributed to
the divine rather than the human spirit. God is thus conceived as a
"free spiritual subject" (*PKA*, 75), who is
the creator of the world and the power over everything natural and
finite. That which is natural and finite is, by contrast, regarded as
something "negative" in relation to God, that is, as
something that does not exist for its own sake but that has been
created to *serve* God (*PKA*, 90).
Judaic spirituality, in Hegel's view, is not capable of producing
works of true beauty because the Jewish God transcends the world of
nature and finitude and cannot *manifest itself* in that world
and be given visible shape in it. Jewish poetry (the Psalms) gives
expression, rather, to the sublimity of God by praising and exalting
Him as the source of all things. At the same time, such poetry gives
"brilliant" (*glanzend*) expression to the pain
and fear felt by the sinful in relation to their Lord
(*PKA*, 91).
The second sub-division of this fourth stage of pre-art comprises what
Hegel calls "oriental pantheism" and is found in the poetry
of Islamic "Arabs, Persians, and Turks" (*PKA*,
93), such as the Persian lyric poet Hafez (German: Hafis) (c.
1310-1389). In such pantheism, God is also understood to stand
sublimely above and apart from the realm of the finite and natural, but
his relation to that realm is held to be *affirmative*, rather
than negative. The divine raises things to their own magnificence,
fills them with spirit, gives them life and in this sense is actually
*immanent* in things (*Aesthetics*, 1: 368;
*PKA*, 93).
This in turn determines the relation that the poet has to objects. For
the poet, too, is free and independent of things, but also has an
affirmative relation to them. That is to say, he feels an identity
with things and sees his own untroubled freedom reflected in
them. Such pantheism thus comes close to genuine art, for it uses
natural objects, such as a rose, as poetic "images"
(*Bilder*) of its own feeling of "cheerful, blessed
inwardness" (*PKA*, 94-5). The pantheistic spirit remains, however, free within itself in distinction from and in
relation to natural objects; it does not create shapes of its
own--such as the idealized figures of the Greek gods--in
which its freedom comes directly into view. (Note, by the way, that in the Hotho edition of Hegel's lectures on aesthetics pantheistic Islamic poetry is placed before, rather than after, the poetry of Judaism; see *Aesthetics*, 1: 364-77.)
The third sub-division of the fourth stage of pre-art is that in which
there is the clearest break between spirit and the realm of the
natural or sensuous. At this stage, the spiritual aspect--that
which is inner and, as it were, invisible--takes the form of
something quite separate and distinct. It is also something finite and
limited: an idea or *meaning* entertained by human beings. The
sensuous element is in turn something separate and distinct from the
meaning. It has no intrinsic connection to the meaning, but is, as
Hegel puts it, "external" to that meaning. The sensuous
element--the pictorial or poetic image--is thus connected
with the meaning by nothing but the subjective "wit" or
imagination of the poet (*PKA*, 95). This occurs, Hegel
maintains, in fables, parables, allegories, metaphors and similes.
This third sub-division is not associated with any particular
civilization, but is a form of expression that is found in many
different ones. Hegel contends, however, that allegory, metaphor and
simile do not constitute the core of truly beautiful art, because they
do not present us with the very freedom of spirit itself, but *point
to* (and so symbolize) a meaning that is separate and independent.
A metaphor, such as "Achilles is a lion," does not embody
the spirit of the individual hero in the way that a Greek sculpture
does, but is a metaphor *for* something that is distinct from
the metaphor itself (see *Aesthetics*, 1: 402-8;
*PKA*, 104).
Hegel's account of symbolic art (or "pre-art") draws
widely on the work of other writers, such as his former colleague at
Heidelberg, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, the author of *Symbolism and
Mythology of Ancient Peoples, especially the Greeks* (1810-12).
Hegel's account is not meant to be strictly historical, but
rather to place the various forms of pre-art discussed in a
*logical* relation to one another. This relation is determined
by the degree to which, in each form of pre-art, spirit and nature (or
the sensuous) are *differentiated* from one another.
To recapitulate: in Zoroastrianism, spirit and nature are in immediate
*identity* with one another (as the Light). In Hindu art, there
is an immediate *difference* between the spiritual (the divine)
and nature, but the spiritual remains abstract and indeterminate in
itself and so can be brought to mind only through images of natural
things (unnaturally distorted). In Egyptian art, the spiritual is again
*different* from the realm of the merely natural and sensuous.
In contrast to the indeterminate divinity of the Hindus, however,
Egyptian spirituality (in the form of the gods and of the human soul)
is fixed, separate and determinate in itself. The images of Egyptian
art thus point *symbolically* to a realm of spirit that remains
hidden from direct view. The spirit to which such symbolic images
point, however, lacks genuine freedom and life and is often identified
with the realm of the dead.
In the sublime poetry of the Jews, God is represented as transcendent
and as a "*free* spiritual subject." Finite human
beings, however, are portrayed in a *negative* relation to God
in that they are created to serve and praise God and are pained by
their own sinfulness. In the sublime poetry of "oriental
pantheism" God is once again portrayed as transcendent, but, in
contrast to Judaism, God and finite things are shown to stand in an
*affirmative* relation to one another: things are infused with
spirit and life by God. The poet's relation to things is,
accordingly, one in which his own *free spirit* finds itself
reflected in the natural things around him.
In the last stage of pre-art, the difference between the spiritual and
the natural (or sensuous) is taken to its limit: the spiritual element
(the "meaning") and the sensuous element (the
"shape" or "image") are now completely
independent of, and *external* to, one another. Furthermore,
each is finite and limited. This is the realm of allegory and metaphor.
#### 6.2.2 Classical Art
Hegel does not deny the magnificence or elegance of pre-art, but he
maintains that it falls short of art proper. The latter is found in
*classical* art, or the art of the ancient Greeks.
Classical art, Hegel contends, fulfills the concept of art in that it
is the perfect sensuous expression of the freedom of spirit. It is in
classical art, therefore--above all in ancient Greek sculpture
(and drama)--that true beauty is to be found. Indeed, Hegel
maintains, the gods of ancient Greece exhibit "absolute beauty
as such": "there can be nothing more beautiful than the
classical; there is the ideal" (*PKA*, 124, 135;
see also *Aesthetics*, 1: 427).
Such beauty consists in the perfect fusion of the spiritual and the
sensuous (or natural). In true beauty the visible shape before us does
not merely intimate the presence of the divine through the unnatural
distortion of its form, nor does it point beyond itself to a hidden
spirituality or to divine transcendence. Rather, the shape manifests
and embodies free spirituality in its very contours. In true beauty,
therefore, the visible shape is not a symbol of, or metaphor for, a
meaning that lies beyond the shape, but is the *expression* of
spirit's freedom that brings that freedom directly into view.
Beauty is sensuous, visible shape so transformed that it stands as the
visible embodiment of freedom itself.
Hegel does not deny that Greek art and mythology contain many symbolic
elements: the story, for example, that Cronus, the father of Zeus,
consumed his own children symbolizes the destructive power of time
(*Aesthetics*, 1: 492; *PKA*, 120). In
Hegel's view, however, the distinctive core of Greek art consists
in works of ideal beauty in which the freedom of spirit is made visible
for the first time in history. Three conditions had to be met for such
beautiful art to be produced.
First, the divine had to be understood to be freely self-determining
spirit, to be divine *subjectivity* (not just an abstract power
such as the Light). Second, the divine had to be understood to take the
form of *individuals* who could be portrayed in sculpture and
drama. The divine had to be conceived, in other words, not as sublimely
transcendent, but as spirituality that is *embodied* in many
different ways. The beauty of Greek art thus presupposed Greek
polytheism. Third, the proper shape of free spirit had to be recognized
to be the human body, not that of an animal. Hindu and Egyptian gods
were often portrayed as a fusion of human and animal forms; by
contrast, the principal Greek gods were depicted in ideal human form.
Hegel notes that Zeus would sometimes take on animal form, for example
when he was engaged in seduction; but he sees Zeus'
transformation of himself into a bull for the purpose of seduction as a
lingering echo of Egyptian mythology in the Greek world (see
*PKA*, 119-20, in which Hegel confuses Io, who in another story was
herself changed into a white cow by Zeus to protect her from the jealous Hera, with Europa,
who was the object of Zeus' love in the story Hegel has in
mind).
Not only do Greek art and beauty presuppose Greek religion and
mythology, but Greek religion itself *requires* art in order to
give a determinate identity to the gods. As Hegel notes (following
Herodotus), it was the poets Homer and Hesiod who gave the Greeks their
gods, and Greek understanding of the gods was developed and expressed
above all in their sculpture and drama (rather than in distinctively
theological writings) (*PKA*, 123-4). Greek religion
thus took the form of what Hegel in the *Phenomenology* called a
"religion of art." Moreover, Greek art achieved the highest
degree of beauty, in Hegel's view, precisely *because* it
was the highest expression of the freedom of spirit enshrined in Greek
religion.
Although Greek sculpture and drama achieved unsurpassed heights of
beauty, such art did not give expression to the *deepest*
freedom of the spirit. This is because of a deficiency in the Greek
conception of divine and human freedom. Greek religion was so well
suited to aesthetic expression because the gods were conceived as free
individuals who were wholly at one with their bodies and their sensuous
life. In other words, they were free spirits still immersed in nature
(*PKA*, 132-3). In Hegel's view, however, a
deeper freedom is attained when the spirit withdraws into itself out of
nature and becomes pure self-knowing interiority. Such an understanding
of spirit is expressed, according to Hegel, in Christianity. The
Christian God is thus pure self-knowing spirit and love who created
human beings so that they, too, may become such pure spirit and love.
With the emergence of Christianity comes a new form of art:
*romantic* art. Hegel uses the term "romantic" to
refer not to the art of the late 18th- and early 19th-century German
Romantics (many of whom he knew personally), but to the whole tradition
of art that emerged in Western Christendom.
#### 6.2.3 Romantic Art
Romantic art, like classical art, is the sensuous expression or
manifestation of the freedom of spirit. It is thus capable of genuine
beauty. The freedom it manifests, however, is a profoundly
*inward* freedom that finds its highest expression and
articulation not in art itself but in religious faith and philosophy.
Unlike classical art, therefore, romantic art gives expression to a
freedom of the spirit whose true home lies *beyond* art. If
classical art can be compared to the human body which is thoroughly
suffused with spirit and life, romantic art can be compared to the
human face which discloses the spirit and personality *within*.
Since romantic art actually *discloses* the inner spirit,
however, rather than merely pointing to it, it differs from symbolic
art which it otherwise resembles.
Romantic art, for Hegel, takes three basic forms. The first is that of
explicitly *religious* art. It is in Christianity, Hegel
contends, that the true nature of spirit is revealed. What is
represented in the story of Christ's life, death and resurrection
is the idea that a truly *divine* life of freedom and love is at
the same time a fully *human* life in which we are willing to
"die" to ourselves and let go of what is most precious to
us. Much religious romantic art, therefore, focuses on the suffering
and death of Christ.
Hegel notes that it is not appropriate in romantic art to depict Christ
with the idealized body of a Greek god or hero, because what is central
to Christ is his irreducible humanity and mortality. Romantic art,
therefore, breaks with the classical ideal of beauty and incorporates
real human frailty, pain and suffering into its images of Christ (and
also of religious martyrs). Indeed, such art can even go to the point
of being "ugly" (*unschon*) in its depiction of
suffering (*PKA*, 136).
If, however, romantic art is to fulfill the purpose of art and present
true freedom of spirit in the form of beauty, it must show the
suffering Christ or suffering martyrs to be imbued with a profound
*inwardness* (*Innigkeit*) of feeling and a genuine sense
of *reconciliation* (*Versohnung*)
(*PKA*, 136-7): for such an inward sense of
reconciliation, in Hegel's view, is the deepest spiritual
freedom. The sensuous expression (in color or words) of this inner
sense of reconciliation constitutes what Hegel calls the "beauty
of inwardness" or "spiritual beauty" (*geistige
Schonheit*) (*PKA*, 137). Strictly speaking,
such spiritual beauty is not as consummately *beautiful* as
classical beauty, in which the spirit and the body are perfectly fused
with one another. Spiritual beauty, however, is the product of, and
reveals, a much more profound *inner* freedom of spirit than
classical beauty and so moves and engages us much more readily than do
the relatively cold statues of Greek gods.
The most profound spiritual beauty in the visual arts is found, in
Hegel's view, in painted images of the Madonna and Child, for in these
what is expressed is the feeling of boundless *love*. Hegel
had a special affection for the paintings of the Flemish Primitives,
Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling, whose work he saw on his visits to
Ghent and Bruges in 1827 (*Hegel: The Letters*, 661-2),
but he also held Raphael in high regard and was particularly moved by
the expression of "pious, modest mother-love" in
Raphael's *Sistine Madonna* which he saw in Dresden in 1820
(*PKA*, 39; Poggeler *et al* 1981, 142). Greek
sculptors portrayed Niobe as simply "petrified in her
pain" at the loss of her children. By contrast, the painted
images of the Virgin Mary are imbued by van Eyck and Raphael with an
"eternal love" and a "soulfulness" that Greek
statues can never match (*PKA*, 142, 184).
The second fundamental form of romantic art identified by Hegel depicts
what he calls the secular "virtues" of the free spirit
(*Aesthetics*, 1: 553; *PKA*, 135). These are not
the *ethical* virtues displayed by the heroes and heroines of
Greek tragedy: they do not involve a commitment to the necessary
institutions of freedom, such as the family or the state. Rather, they
are the *formal* virtues of the romantic hero: that is to say,
they involve a commitment by the free individual, often grounded in contingent choice or passion, to an object or another person.
Such virtues include that of romantic love (which concentrates on a
particular, contingent person), loyalty towards an individual (that can
change if it is to one's advantage), and courage (which
is often displayed in the pursuit of personal ends, such as rescuing a
damsel in distress, but can also be displayed in the pursuit of
quasi-religious ends, such as the hunt for the Holy Grail)
(*PKA*, 143-4).
Such virtues are found primarily in the world of mediaeval chivalry
(and are subjected to ridicule, Hegel points out, in Cervantes'
*Don Quixote*) (*Aesthetics*, 1: 591-2;
*PKA*, 150). They can, however, also crop up in more
modern works and, indeed, are precisely the virtues displayed in an
art-form of which Hegel could know nothing, namely the American
Western.
The third fundamental form of romantic art depicts the formal freedom
and independence of character. Such freedom is not associated with any
ethical principles or (at least not principally) with the formal virtues just
mentioned, but consists simply in the "firmness"
(*Festigkeit*) of character (*Aesthetics*, 1: 577;
*PKA*, 145-6). This is freedom in its modern, secular
form. It is displayed most magnificently, Hegel believes, by
characters, such as Richard III, Othello and Macbeth, in the plays of
Shakespeare. Note that what interests us about such individuals is not
any moral purpose (which they invariably lack anyway), but simply the energy and
self-determination (and often ruthlessness) that they exhibit. Such
characters must have an internal richness (revealed through imagination
and language) and not just be one-dimensional, but their main appeal is
their formal freedom to commit themselves to a course of action, even
at the cost of their own lives. These characters do not constitute
moral or political ideals, but they are the appropriate objects of
modern, romantic art whose task is to depict freedom even in its most
secular and amoral forms.
Hegel also sees romantic beauty in more inwardly sensitive characters,
such as Shakespeare's Juliet. After meeting Romeo, Hegel remarks,
Juliet suddenly opens up with love like a rosebud, full of childlike
naivety. Her beauty thus lies in being the embodiment of love. Hamlet
is a somewhat similar character: far from being simply weak (as Goethe
thought), Hamlet, in Hegel's view, displays the inner beauty of a
profoundly noble soul (*Aesthetics*, 1: 583; *PKA*,
147-8).
#### 6.2.4 The "End" of Art
One should note that the development of romantic art, as Hegel
describes it, involves the increasing secularization and humanization
of art. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (as in ancient Greece)
art was closely tied to religion: art's function was to a large
degree to make the divine visible. With the Reformation, however,
religion turned inward and found God to be present in *faith
alone*, not in the icons and images of art. As a result, Hegel
points out, we who live after the Reformation "no longer venerate
works of art" (*VPK*, 6). Furthermore, art itself was
released from its close ties to religion and allowed to become fully
secular. "To Protestantism alone," Hegel states, "the
important thing is to get a sure footing in the prose of life, to make
it absolutely valid in itself independently of religious associations,
and to let it develop in unrestricted freedom"
(*Aesthetics*, 1: 598).
It is for this reason, in Hegel's view, that art in the modern
age no longer meets our highest needs and no longer affords us the
satisfaction that it gave to earlier cultures and civilizations. Art
satisfied our *highest* needs when it formed an integral part of
our *religious* life and revealed to us the nature of the divine
(and, as in Greece, the true character of our fundamental ethical
obligations). In the modern, post-Reformation world, however, art has
been released (or has emancipated itself) from subservience to
religion. As a result, "art, considered in its highest vocation,
is and remains for us a thing of the past" (*Aesthetics*,
1: 11).
This does not mean that art now has no role to play and that it
provides no satisfaction at all. Art is no longer the highest and most
adequate way of expressing the truth (as it was, according to Hegel, in
fifth-century Athens); we moderns now seek ultimate or
"absolute" truth in religious faith or in philosophy,
rather than in art. (Indeed, the considerable importance we assign to
philosophy is evident, in Hegel's view, in the prominence of the
philosophical study of art itself in modernity [*Aesthetics*, 1:
11; *VPK*, 6].) Yet art in modernity continues to perform the
significant function of giving visible and audible expression to our
distinctively human freedom and to our understanding of ourselves in
all our finite humanity.
Hegel does not claim, therefore, that art as a whole simply comes to an
end or "dies" in the modern age. His view is, rather, that
art plays (or at least should play) a more *limited* role now
than it did in ancient Greece or in the Middle Ages. Yet Hegel does
think that art in modernity comes to an end *in a certain
respect*. To understand why he thinks this, we need to consider his
claim that art in modernity "falls apart"
(*zerfallt*) into the exploration of everyday
contingencies, on the one hand, and the celebration of witty,
"humorous" subjectivity, on the other (*PKA*,
151).
In Hegel's view, much painting and poetry after the Reformation
focuses its attention on the prosaic details of ordinary daily life,
rather than on the intimacy of religious love or the magnificent
resolve and energy of tragic heroes. To the extent that such works of
art no longer aim to give expression to divine or human freedom but
seek (apparently at least) to do no more than "imitate
nature," they prompt Hegel to consider whether they still count
as "art works" in the strictly philosophical (as opposed to
the more generally accepted) sense of the term. In the twentieth
century it is the abstract creations of, for example, Jackson Pollock
or Carl Andre that usually provoke the question: "is this
art?". In Hegel's mind, however, it is works that appear to
be purely naturalistic and "representational" that raise
this question. His view is that such works count as genuine works of
art only when they do more than merely *imitate* nature. The
naturalistic and prosaic works that best meet this criterion, he
maintains, are the paintings of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Dutch masters.
In such works, Hegel claims, the painter does not aim simply to show us
what grapes, flowers or trees look like: we know *that* already
from nature. The painter aims, rather, to capture the--often
fleeting--"life" (*Lebendigkeit*) of things:
"the lustre of metal, the shimmer of a bunch of grapes by
candlelight, a vanishing glimpse of the moon or the sun, a smile, the
expression of a swiftly passing emotion" (*Aesthetics*, 1:
599). Often, indeed, the painter seeks to delight us specifically with
the animated play of the colors of gold, silver, velvet or fur. In such
works, Hegel notes, we encounter not just the depiction of things, but
"as it were, an objective music, a peal in colour [*ein
Tonen in Farben*]" (*Aesthetics*, 1:
598-600).
A
genuine work of art is the sensuous expression of divine or human
freedom and life. Paintings that are no more than prosaic, naturalistic
depictions of everyday objects or human activity would thus appear to
fall short of genuine art. Dutch artists, however, turn such depictions
into true works of art precisely by imbuing objects with "the
fullness of life." In so doing, Hegel claims, they give expression
to their own sense of freedom, "comfort" and
"contentment" and their own exuberant subjective skill
(*Aesthetics*, 1: 599; *PKA*, 152). The paintings
of such artists may lack the classical beauty of Greek art, but they
exhibit magnificently the subtle beauties and delights of everyday
modern life.
A much more overt expression of subjectivity is found by Hegel in
works of modern *humor*. Such witty, ironic, humorous
subjectivity--one we might now describe as
"anarchic"--manifests itself in playing or
"sporting" with objects, "deranging" and
"perverting" material and "rambling to and
fro," and in the "criss-cross movement of subjective
expressions, views, and attitudes whereby the author sacrifices
himself and his topics alike" (*Aesthetics*, 1:
601). Hegel claims that works of "*true* humour,"
such as Laurence Sterne's
*Tristram Shandy* (1759), succeed in making "what is
substantial emerge out of contingency." Their "triviality
[thus] affords precisely the supreme idea of depth"
(*Aesthetics*, 1: 602). In other works, by contrast--such
as those of Hegel's contemporary, Jean Paul Richter--all
we encounter is the "baroque mustering of things objectively
furthest removed from one another" and "the most confused
disorderly jumbling of topics related only in his own subjective
imagination" (*Aesthetics*, 1: 601). In such works, we do
not see human freedom giving itself objective expression, but rather
witness subjectivity "destroying and dissolving everything that
proposes to make itself objective and win a firm shape for itself in
reality" (*Aesthetics*, 1: 601).
To the extent that works of humor do *not* give body to true
self-determining freedom and life--or afford "the supreme
idea of depth"--but merely manifest the power of
arbitrary, subjective wit to subvert the settled order, such works, in
Hegel's view, *no longer count as genuine works of art*.
Consequently, "when the subject lets itself go in this way, art
thereby comes to an end [*so hort damit die Kunst
auf*]" (*PKA*, 153). In this respect, Hegel
does after all proclaim that art comes to an end in modernity. This is
not because art no longer performs a religious function and so no
longer fulfills the highest vocation of art; it is because there emerge
in modernity certain "art works" that are no longer the
expressions of true human freedom and life and so no longer genuine
*art works* at all.
As was noted above, however, this does not mean that art *as a
whole* comes to an end in the early nineteenth century. Art, in
Hegel's view, still has a future: "we may well hope," he
says, "that art will always rise higher and come to
perfection" (*Aesthetics*, 1: 103). For Hegel, the
distinctive character of *genuine* *art* in contemporary
(and future) modernity--and thus of genuinely modern art--is
twofold. On the one hand, it remains bound to give expression to
concrete human life and freedom; on the other hand, it is no longer
restricted to any of the three art-forms. That is to say, it does not
have to observe the proprieties of classical art or explore the
intense emotional inwardness or heroic freedom or comfortable
ordinariness that we find in romantic art. Modern art, for Hegel, can
draw on features of any of the art-forms (including symbolic art) in
its presentation of human life. Indeed, it can also present human life
and freedom indirectly through the depiction of nature.
The focus of modern art, therefore, does not have to be on one
particular conception of human freedom rather than another. The new
"holy of holies" in art is *humanity* itself--
"*Humanus*"--that is, "the depths and
heights of the human heart as such, mankind in its joys and sorrows,
its strivings, deeds, and fates" (*Aesthetics*, 1: 607).
Modern art, in Hegel's view, thus enjoys an unprecedented freedom to
explore "the infinity of the human heart" in manifold ways
(*VA*, 181). For this reason, there is little that Hegel
can say about the path that art should take in the future; that is for
artists to decide.
Hegel's judgment that modern artists are--and are quite
rightly--free to adopt whatever style they please has surely
been confirmed by the history of art since Hegel's death in 1831.
There is reason to suspect, however, that Hegel might not have welcomed
many of the developments in post-Hegelian art. This is due to the fact
that, although he does not lay down any rules that are to govern modern
art, he does identify certain conditions that should be met if modern
art is to be genuine art. Hegel notes, for example, that such art
should "not contradict the formal law of being simply beautiful
and capable of artistic treatment" (*Aesthetics*, 1: 605;
*VPK*, 204). He insists that modern artists should draw their
content from their own human spirit and that "nothing that can be
*living* [*lebendig*] in the human breast is alien to
that spirit." He also remarks that modern art may represent
"everything in which the human being as such is capable of being
*at home* [*heimisch*]" (*Aesthetics*, 1:
607). These may appear to be fairly innocuous conditions, but they
suggest that certain post-Hegelian art works would not count in
Hegel's eyes as genuine works of art. These might include works
that by no stretch of the imagination can be called
"beautiful" (such as some of the paintings of Willem De
Kooning or Francis Bacon), or works in which it is evidently hard to
feel very much "at home" (such as the writings of Franz
Kafka). Hegel's account of the different arts (such as sculpture
and painting) also suggests that he would not have regarded the move
from figurative to abstract visual art as appropriate: Netherlandish
and Dutch painters excelled in the creating of "objective
music" through the play of colors, yet they did so not in the
abstract but in the very depiction of concrete, identifiable objects.
(Robert Pippin takes a different view on this last point; see Pippin
2007.)
From a twentieth- or twenty-first-century point of view, Hegel's
stance may well look conservative. From his point of view, however, he
was trying to understand what conditions would have to be met for works
of art to be genuine works of art *and* genuinely modern. The
conditions that Hegel identified--namely that art should present
the richness of human freedom and life and should allow us to feel at
home in its depictions--are ones that many modern artists (for
example, Impressionists such as Monet, Sisley and Pissarro) have felt
no trouble in meeting. For others, these conditions are simply too
restrictive. They have thus taken modern art in a direction in which,
from a Hegelian perspective, it has ceased to be *art* in the
true sense any longer.
### 6.3 The System of the Individual Arts
Art, in Hegel's account, not only undergoes a historical
development (from symbolic art through classical art to romantic and
then modern art), but also differentiates itself into different arts.
Each art has a distinctive character and exhibits a certain affinity
with one or more of the art-forms. Hegel does not provide an exhaustive
account of all recognized arts (he says little, for example, about
dance and nothing, obviously, about cinema), but he examines the five
arts that he thinks are made necessary by the very concept of art
itself.
#### 6.3.1 Architecture
Art, we recall, is the sensuous expression of divine and human
freedom. If it is to demonstrate that spirit is indeed free, it must
show that spirit is free in relation to that which is itself unfree,
spiritless and lifeless--that is, three-dimensional, inorganic
matter, weighed down by gravity. Art must, therefore, be the
transformation of such brute, heavy matter into the expression of
spiritual freedom, or what Hegel calls "the forming of the
inorganic" (*VPK*, 209). The art that gives heavy
matter the explicit form of spiritual freedom--and so works
stone and metal into the shape of a human being or a god--is
sculpture. Architecture, by contrast, gives matter an abstract,
*inorganic* form created by human understanding. It does not
animate matter in the manner of sculpture but invests matter with
strict regularity, symmetry and harmony (*PKA*, 155,
166). In so doing architecture turns matter not into the direct
sensuous expression of spiritual freedom, but into an artificially and
artfully shaped *surrounding* for the direct expression of
spiritual freedom in sculpture. The art of architecture fulfills its
purpose, therefore, when it creates classical temples to house statues
of the gods (*VPK*, 221).
Hegel points out, however, that prior to the emergence of classical
architecture in ancient Greece, architecture took the more primitive
form of "independent" (*selbstandig*) or
"symbolic" architecture (*Aesthetics*, 2: 635;
*PKA*, 159). The constructions that fall into this
category do not house or surround individual sculptures, like classical
Greek temples, but are themselves partly sculptural and partly
architectural. They are works of architectural sculpture or sculptural
architecture. Such constructions are sculptural in so far as they are
built for their own sake and do not serve to shelter or enclose
something else. They are works of architecture, however, in so far as
they are overtly heavy and massive and lack the animation of sculpture.
They are also sometimes arranged in rows, like columns, with no
distinctive individuality.
Some of these works of independent architecture have regular inorganic,
geometrical shapes (such as the temple of Bel described by Herodotus)
(see Herodotus, 79-80 [1: 181]); some are clearly embodiments of
the organic "force of life in nature" (such as the phallus
and the lingam) (*Aesthetics*, 2: 641); and some even have a
human form, albeit one that is abstract and colossal (such as the
Egyptian Memnons of Amenhotep III). In Hegel's view, however, all
such constructions have a symbolic significance for those who built
them. They were not built simply to provide shelter or security for
people (like a house or a castle), but are works of symbolic art.
These "independent" constructions are meaningful in
themselves: their meaning lies, for example, in their shape or in the
number of their parts. By contrast, the Egyptian pyramids contain a
"meaning" that is *separate* from the construction
itself. That "meaning," of course, is the body of the dead
pharaoh. Since they house within themselves something other than
themselves, pyramids, in Hegel's view, are, as it were, on the
way to being properly architectural. They fall short of proper
classical architecture, however, because what they shelter within
themselves is death, not the embodiment of the living god: they are, as
Hegel puts it, "crystals that shelter within them a departed
spirit" (*VPK*, 218). Furthermore, the
"meaning" that they contain is completely hidden within
them, invisible to all. Pyramids thus remain works of *symbolic*
art that point to a hidden meaning buried within them. Indeed, as was
noted above, Hegel claims that the pyramid is the image or symbol of
symbolic art itself (*Aesthetics*, 1: 356).
The epitome of symbolic art is symbolic architecture (specifically, the
pyramids). Architecture itself, however, comes into its own only with
the emergence of classical art: for it is only in the classical period
that architecture provides the surrounding for, and so becomes the
servant of, a sculpture that is itself the embodiment of free
spirit.
Hegel has much to say about the proper form of such a surrounding. The
main point is this: spiritual freedom is embodied in the sculpture of
the god; the house of the god--the temple--is something
quite distinct from, and subordinate to, the sculpture it surrounds;
the form of that temple should thus also be quite distinct from that of
the sculpture. The temple, therefore, should not mimic the flowing
contours of the human body, but should be governed by the abstract
principles of regularity, symmetry and harmony.
Hegel also insists that the form of the temple should be determined by
the *purpose* it serves: namely to provide an enclosure and
protection for the god (*VPK*, 221). This means that the
basic shape of the temple should contain only those features that are
needed to fulfill its purpose. Furthermore, it means (in Hegel's
view) that each part of the temple should perform a *specific*
function within the economy of the whole building and that different
functions should not be confused with one another. It is this latter
requirement that makes *columns* necessary. There is a
difference, for Hegel, between the task of bearing the roof and that of
enclosing the statue within a given space. The second task--that
of enclosure--is performed by a wall. If the first task is to be
clearly distinguished from the second, therefore, it must be performed
not by a wall but by a separate feature of the temple. Columns are
necessary in a classical temple, according to Hegel, because they
perform the distinct task of bearing the roof *without* forming
a wall. The classical temple is thus the most *intelligible* of
buildings because different functions are carried out in this way by
different architectural features and yet are harmonized with one
another. Herein, indeed, lies the beauty of such a temple
(*VPK*, 221, 224).
In contrast to classical architecture, romantic or "Gothic"
architecture is based on the idea of a closed house in which Christian
inwardness can find refuge from the outside world. In the Gothic
cathedral columns are located within, rather than around the outside
of, the enclosed space, and their overt function is no longer merely to
bear weight but to draw the soul up into the heavens. Consequently, the
columns or pillars do not come to a definite end (in a capital on which
rests the architrave of the classical temple), but continue up until
they meet to form a pointed arch or a vaulted roof. In this way, the
Gothic cathedral not only shelters the spirit of the religious
community, but also symbolizes the upward movement of that spirit in
its very structure (*PKA*, 170-1).
Hegel considers a relatively small range of buildings: he says almost
nothing, for example, about secular buildings. One should bear in mind,
however, that he is interested in architecture only in so far as it is
an art, not in so far as it provides us with protection and security in
our everyday lives. Yet it should also be noted that architecture, as
Hegel describes it, falls short of genuine art, as he defines it, since
it is never the direct sensuous expression of spiritual freedom itself
(in the manner of sculpture) (see *Aesthetics*, 2: 888). This is
a fundamental limitation of architecture: the structures of
"independent architecture" symbolize meanings that are more
or less indeterminate; the pyramids indicate the presence of a hidden
meaning, namely death; and even in its classical and romantic forms
architecture remains a "symbolic" art, in so far as the
structures it creates remain separate from the spirit they house
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 888). In no case is architecture the explicit
manifestation or embodiment of free spirituality itself. This does not,
however, make architecture any less necessary as a part of our
aesthetic and religious life. Nor does it prevent Hegel from seeking to
understand what distinguishes the "art" of architecture (as
opposed to the more everyday practice or business of architecture) in
both the classical and romantic eras.
#### 6.3.2 Sculpture
In contrast to architecture, sculpture works heavy matter into the
concrete expression of spiritual freedom by giving it the shape of the
*human being*. The high point of sculpture, for Hegel, was
achieved in classical Greece. In Egyptian sculpture the figures often
stand firm with one foot placed before the other and the arms held
tightly by the side of the body, giving the figures a rather rigid,
lifeless appearance. By contrast, the idealized statues of the gods
created by Greek sculptors, such as Phidias and Praxiteles, are clearly
alive and animated, even when the gods are depicted at rest. This
animation is apparent in the posture of the figure, in the nuanced
contours of the body and also in the free fall of the figure's
garments. Hegel greatly admired the sculpture of Michelangelo--a
cast of whose *Pieta* he saw in Berlin
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 790)--but it was the Greeks, in his
view, who set the standard for "ideal" sculptural beauty.
Indeed, Greek sculpture, according to Hegel, embodies the *purest
beauty* of which art itself is capable. (For a more detailed study
of Hegel's account of sculpture, see Houlgate 2007,
56-89).
#### 6.3.3 Painting
Hegel was well aware that Greek statues were often painted in quite
a gaudy manner. He claims, however, that sculpture expresses spiritual
freedom and vitality in the three-dimensional *shape* of the
figure, rather than in the color that has been applied to it. In
painting, by contrast, it is color above all that is the medium of
expression. The point of painting, for Hegel, is not to show us what it
is for free spirit to be fully *embodied*. It is to show us only
what free spirit *looks like*, how it *manifests itself*
to the eye. The images of painting thus lack the three-dimensionality
of sculpture, but they add the detail and specificity provided by
color.
Hegel acknowledges that painting reached a degree of perfection in the
classical world, but he maintains that it is best suited to the
expression of romantic, Christian spirituality (and the secular freedom
of post-Reformation modernity) (*PKA*, 181). This is
because the absence of bodily solidity and the presence of color allow
the more *inward* spirituality of the Christian world to
manifest itself as such. If sculpture is the material embodiment of
spirit, painting gives us, as it were, the face of spirit in which the
soul within manifests itself *as* the soul *within*
(*PKA*, 183).
Painting, however, is also able--unlike sculpture--to set
divine and human spirit in relation to its external environment: it is
able to include within the painted image itself the natural landscape
and the architecture by which Christ, the Virgin Mary, the saints or
secular figures are surrounded (*Aesthetics*, 2: 854). Indeed,
Hegel argues that painting--in contrast to sculpture, which
excels in presenting independent, free-standing individuals--is
altogether more suited to showing human beings in their
*relations* both to their environment and to one another: hence
the prominence in painting of, for example, depictions of the love
between the Virgin Mary and the Christ child.
Hegel's account of painting is extraordinarily rich and
wide-ranging. He has particular praise for Raphael, Titian and the
Dutch masters and, as noted earlier, is especially interested in the
ways in which painters can combine colors to create what he calls
"objective music" (*Aesthetics*, 1: 599-600). It
should be noted, however, that Hegel sees the abstract play of colors
as an integral part of the depiction of free human beings and does not
suggest that painting should ever become purely abstract and
"musical" (as it did in the twentieth century).
#### 6.3.4 Music
The next art in Hegel's "system of the individual
arts" is music itself. It, too, comes into its own in the period
of romantic art. Like sculpture and painting, but unlike architecture,
music gives direct expression to free subjectivity. Yet music goes even
further in the direction of expressing the *inwardness* of
subjectivity by dropping the dimensions of space altogether. It thus
gives no enduring *visual* expression to such subjectivity, but
expresses the latter in the organized succession of vanishing sounds.
Music, for Hegel, originates in the immediate uttering of feeling or
what he calls "interjection"--"the Ah
and Oh of the heart" (*Aesthetics*, 2: 903). Yet music is
more than just a cry of pain or a sigh; it is an organized, developed,
"cadenced" interjection. Music is thus not just a sequence
of sounds for its own sake, but is the structured expression in sounds
of inner subjectivity. Through rhythm, harmony and melody music allows
the soul to hear its own inner movement and to be moved in turn by what
it hears. It is "spirit, soul which resounds immediately for
itself and feels satisfied in hearing itself [*in ihrem
Sichvernehmen*]" (*Aesthetics*, 2: 939, translation
altered).
Music expresses, and allows us to hear and enjoy, the movement of the
soul in time through difference and dissonance back into its unity with
itself. It also expresses, and moves us to, various different
*feelings*, such as love, longing and joy (*Aesthetics*,
2: 940). In Hegel's view, however, the purpose of music is not
only to arouse feelings in us, but--as in all genuine art
--to enable us to enjoy a sense of reconciliation and
satisfaction in what we encounter. This, Hegel contends, is the secret
of truly "ideal" music, the music of Palestrina, Gluck,
Haydn and Mozart: even in the deepest grief "tranquillity of soul
is never missing [ ... ]; grief is expressed there, too, but it is
assuaged at once; [ ...] everything is kept firmly together in a
restrained form so that jubilation does not degenerate into a repulsive
uproar, and even a lament gives us the most blissful
tranquillity" (*Aesthetics*, 2: 939).
Hegel notes that music is able to express feelings with especial
clarity when it is accompanied by a poetic text, and he had a
particular love of both church music and opera. Interestingly, however,
he argues that in such cases it is really the text that serves the
music, rather than the other way around, for it is the music above all
that expresses the profound movements of the soul (*Aesthetics*,
2: 934). Yet music does not have to be accompanied by a text; it can
also be "independent" instrumental music. Such music also
fulfills the aim of art by expressing the movements of the soul and
moving the soul in turn to "emotions in sympathy with it"
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 894). Over and above this expression, however,
independent music pursues the purely formal development of themes and
harmonies for its own sake. This, in Hegel's view, is a perfectly
appropriate, indeed necessary, thing for music to do. The danger he
sees, however, is that such formal development can become completely
*detached* from the musical expression of inward feeling and subjectivity, and
that, as a result, music can cease being a genuine art and become mere
artistry. Music, as it were, loses its soul and becomes nothing but
"skill and virtuosity in compilation" (*Aesthetics*,
2: 906). At this point, music no longer moves us to *feel*
anything, but simply engages our abstract understanding. It thereby
becomes the province of the "connoisseur" and leaves the
layman--who "likes most in music [ ... ] the
intelligible expression of feelings and ideas"
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 953)--behind.
Hegel admits that he is not as well versed in music as he is in the
other arts he discusses. He has a deep appreciation, however, for the
music of J.S. Bach, Handel and Mozart and his analyses of musical
rhythm, harmony and melody are highly illuminating. He was familiar
with, though critical of, the music of his contemporary Carl Maria von
Weber, and he had a particular affection for Rossini
(*Aesthetics*, 1: 159, 2: 949). Surprisingly, he never makes any
mention of Beethoven.
#### 6.3.5 Poetry
The last art that Hegel considers is also an art of sound, but sound
understood as the sign of ideas and inner representations--sound
as *speech*. This is the art of poetry (*Poesie*) in the
broad sense of the term. Hegel regards poetry as the "most
perfect art" (*PKA*, 197), because it provides the
richest and most *concrete* expression of spiritual freedom (in
contrast to sculpture which, in its classical form, gives us the
*purest* ideal beauty). Poetry is capable of showing spiritual
freedom both as concentrated inwardness *and* as action in space
and time. It is equally at home in symbolic, classical and romantic art
and, in this sense, is the "most unrestricted of the arts"
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 626).
Poetry, for Hegel, is not simply the structured presentation of ideas,
but the articulation of ideas in language, indeed in *spoken*
(rather than just written) language. An important aspect of the art of
poetry--and what clearly marks it off from prose--is thus
the musical ordering of *words* themselves or
"versification." In this respect, Hegel claims, there are
important differences between classical and romantic art: the ancients
place more emphasis on rhythmic structure in their verse, whereas in
Christendom (especially in France and Italy) greater use is made of
rhyme (*PKA*, 201-4).
The three basic forms of poetry identified by Hegel are epic, lyric and
dramatic poetry.
##### 6.3.5.1 Epic and Lyric poetry
Epic poetry presents spiritual freedom--that is, free human
beings--in the context of a world of circumstances and events.
"In the epic," Hegel states, "individuals act and
feel; but their actions are not independent, events [also] have their
right." What is described in such poetry, therefore, is "a
play between actions and events" (*PKA*, 208).
Epic individuals are situated individuals, caught up in a larger
enterprise (such as the Trojan War in Homer's *Iliad*).
What they do is thus determined as much by the situation in which they
find themselves as by their own will, and the consequences of their
actions are to a large degree at the mercy of circumstances. Epic
poetry thus shows us the *worldly* character--and
attendant limitations--of human freedom. (In this respect, Hegel
notes, Alexander the Great would not have made a good subject for epic
poetry, because "his world was his army"--
*his* creation under *his* control--and so was not
truly independent of his will [*PKA*, 213].)
Among the great epic poems Hegel discusses are Homer's
*Odyssey*, Dante's *Divine Comedy* and the
mediaeval Spanish poem *El Cid*. Much of what he has to say
about the epic, however, is based on his reading of Homer's
*Iliad*. In the modern period, Hegel maintains, the epic gives
way to the novel (*PKA*, 207, 217).
In contrast to the epic hero, the subject of lyric poetry does not
undertake tasks, journeys or adventures in the world but simply gives
expression--in hymns, odes or songs--to the self's
ideas and inner feelings. This can be done directly or via the poetic
description of something else, such as a rose, wine, or another person.
As always, Hegel's remarks about lyric poetry bear witness to his
extraordinary erudition and to his critical acumen. He lavishes
particular praise on Goethe's *West-Eastern Divan* (1819)
but criticizes the eighteenth-century poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
for wanting to create a new "poetic mythology"
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 1154-7; *PKA*, 218).
##### 6.3.5.2 Dramatic Poetry
Dramatic poetry combines the principles of epic and lyric poetry. It
shows characters acting in the world--in a given situation
--but their actions issue directly from their *own* inner
will (rather than being co-determined by events beyond the
agent's control). Drama thus presents the--all too often
self-destructive--consequences of free human action
*itself*.
Drama, for Hegel, is the "highest" and most concrete art
(*PKA*, 205)--the art in which human beings
themselves are the medium of aesthetic expression. (Seeing a play
performed by actors, as opposed to hearing it read aloud or reading it
for oneself, is thus central, in Hegel's view, to the experience of
drama [*Aesthetics*, 2: 1182-5; *PKA*,
223-4].) Drama, indeed, is the art in which all the other arts
are contained (virtually or actually): "the human being is the
living statue, architecture is represented by painting or there is
real architecture," and--in particular in Greek
drama--there is "music, dance and pantomime"
(*PKA*, 223). At this point, it is tempting to say that,
for Hegel, drama--to use Richard Wagner's expression--is the
"total work of art" (*Gesamtkunstwerk*). It is
doubtful, however, whether Hegel would have been sympathetic to
Wagner's project. Hegel remarks that drama takes the explicit form of
a "totality" in *opera*, which belongs more to the
sphere of music than to drama proper (*PKA*, 223). (He has
in mind in particular the operas of Gluck and Mozart.) In drama *as
such*, by contrast, language is what predominates and music plays
a subordinate role and may even be present only in the virtual form of
versification. The Wagnerian idea of a "music drama" that
is neither a straightforward opera nor a simple drama would thus
appear, from Hegel's point of view, to confuse two distinct arts.
Drama, for Hegel, does not depict the richness of the epic world or
explore the inner world of lyric feeling. It shows characters acting in
pursuit of their own will and interest and thereby coming into
conflict with other individuals (even if, as in the case of Hamlet,
after some initial hesitation). Hegel distinguishes between tragic and
comic drama and between classical and romantic versions of each. (He
also notes that in some plays, such as Goethe's *Iphigenie auf
Tauris*, tragedy threatens but is averted by acts of trust or
forgiveness [*Aesthetics*, 2: 1204].)
In classical Greek tragedy individuals are moved to act by an
*ethical* interest or "pathos," such as concern for
the family or for the state. The conflict between Antigone and Creon in
Sophocles' *Antigone* is of this kind, as is the conflict
acted out in Aeschylus' *Oresteia*. In Sophocles'
*Oedipus the King* the conflict is not a straightforwardly
ethical one, but it is nonetheless a conflict between two
"rights": the right of consciousness to accept
responsibility only for what it knows it has done, and the right of the
"unconscious"--of what we do not know--to be
accorded respect. The tragedy of Oedipus is that he pursues his right
to uncover the truth about the murder of Laius without ever considering
that he himself might be responsible for the murder or, indeed, that
there might be anything about him of which he is unaware
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 1213-14).
Greek tragic heroes and heroines are moved to act by the ethical (or
otherwise justified) interest with which they identify, but they act
*freely* in pursuit of that interest. Tragedy shows how such
free action leads to conflict and then to the violent (or sometimes
peaceful) resolution of that conflict. At the close of the drama, Hegel
maintains, we are shattered by the fate of the characters (at least
when the resolution is violent). We are also satisfied by the outcome,
because we see that *justice* has been done. Individuals, whose
interests--such as the family and the state--should be in
harmony with one another, set those interests in opposition to one
another; in so doing, however, they destroy themselves and thereby undo
the very opposition they set up. In the self-destruction of such
"one-sidedly" ethical characters, Hegel believes, we, the
audience, see the work of "eternal justice"
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 1198, 1215). This *reconciles* us to
the fate of the characters and so provides the sense of
"reconciliation which art should never lack"
(*Aesthetics*, 2: 1173).
In modern tragedy--by which Hegel means above all Shakespearean
tragedy--characters are moved not by an ethical interest, but by
a subjective passion, such as ambition or jealousy. These characters,
however, still act freely and destroy themselves through the free
pursuit of their passion. Tragic individuals, therefore--whether
ancient or modern--are not brought down by fate but are
ultimately responsible for their own demise. Indeed, Hegel maintains,
"innocent suffering is not the object of high art"
(*PKA*, 231-2). Drama that sees people primarily as
victims of circumstance or oppression (such as Georg
Buchner's *Woyzeck* [1836]) is thus, from a Hegelian point
of view, drama without genuine *tragedy*.
In comedy individuals also undermine their own endeavors in some way,
but the purposes that animate them are either inherently trivial ones
or grand ones which they pursue in a laughably inappropriate way. In
contrast to tragic characters, truly comic figures do not identify
themselves seriously with their laughable ends or means. They can thus
survive the frustration of their purposes, and often come to laugh at
themselves, in a way that tragic figures cannot. In this respect, Hegel
claims, characters in many modern comedies, such as those by
Moliere, are frequently ridiculous, but not genuinely
*comic*, characters: we laugh *at* Moliere's
miser or Shakespeare's Malvolio, but they do not laugh
*with* us at their own foibles. Truly comic figures are found
by Hegel in the plays of the ancient Greek dramatist
Aristophanes. What we encounter in such plays, Hegel maintains, is
"an infinite light-heartedness and confidence felt by someone
raised altogether above his own inner contradiction and not bitter or
miserable in it at all: this is the bliss and ease of a man who, being
sure of himself, can bear the frustration of his aims and
achievements" (*Aesthetics*, 2: 1200). Modern equivalents
of such Aristophanic light-heartedness may be found in
Verdi's *Falstaff* (1893) and in the unrivalled comic genius of
Homer Simpson, both of which, of course, were unknown to Hegel.
Comedy, in Hegel's view, marks the "dissolution of
art" (*Aesthetics*, 2: 1236). Yet the way in which comedy
"dissolves" art differs from the way in which modern ironic
humor does so. Ironic humor--at least of the kind found in the
work of Jean Paul Richter--is the expression of the "power
of subjective notions, flashes of thought" to "destroy and
dissolve everything that proposes to make itself objective"
(*Aesthetics*, 1: 601). It is the expression of the unchallenged
mastery of wit. Since Hegel does not regard such arbitrary mastery as
genuine freedom, he argues that works of ironic humor in which this
mastery is exhibited no longer count as genuine works of art. True
comedy, by contrast, is the expression of a sense of wholeness,
self-confidence and well-being--of subjective freedom and life
--that survives the *loss* of mastery and control over
one's life. Plays that express such freedom count as genuine
works of art. Yet they are works that show freedom to reside precisely
not in the *works* we undertake but within *subjectivity*
itself, within subjectivity that happily endures the frustration of its
laughable aims.
According to Hegel, the idea that true freedom is to be found in inner
spirituality that is prepared to let go of, or to "die to,"
its own selfish purposes lies at the heart of *religion*,
specifically of Christianity. True comedy, therefore, implicitly points
*beyond* art to religion. It is in this way--and not by
ceasing to be art--that comedy "dissolves" art.
Comedy thus takes art to its limit: beyond comedy there is no further
*aesthetic* manifestation of freedom, there is only religion
(and philosophy). Religion, in Hegel's view, does not make the
aesthetic expression of freedom redundant; indeed, it is often the
source of the greatest art. Yet religion provides a more profound
understanding of freedom than art, just as philosophy provides a
clearer and more profound understanding of freedom than religion.
## 7. Conclusion
Hegel's aesthetics has been the focus of--often highly
critical--attention since his death from philosophers such as
Heidegger, Adorno and Gadamer. Much of this attention has been devoted
to his supposed theory of the "end" of art. Perhaps
Hegel's most important legacy, however, lies in the claims that
art's task is the presentation of beauty and that beauty is a
matter of content as well as form. Beauty, for Hegel, is not just a
matter of formal harmony or elegance; it is the sensuous manifestation
in stone, color, sound or words of *spiritual freedom and life*.
Such beauty takes a subtly different form in the classical and romantic
periods and also in the different individual arts. In one form or
another, however, it remains the purpose of art, even in
modernity.
These claims by Hegel are normative, not just descriptive, and impose
certain restrictions on what can count as genuine art in the modern
age. They are not, however, claims made out of simple conservatism.
Hegel is well aware that art can be decorative, can promote moral and
political goals, can explore the depths of human alienation or simply
record the prosaic details of everyday life, and that it can do so with
considerable artistry. His concern, however, is that art that does
these things without giving us beauty fails to afford us the
*aesthetic* experience of freedom. In so doing, it deprives us
of a central dimension of a truly human life. |
heidegger-aesthetics | ## 1. Introduction to "Heidegger's Aesthetics": Beyond the Oxymoron
Perhaps the first thing to be said about "Heidegger's
aesthetics" is that Heidegger himself would consider the very
topic oxymoronic, a contradiction in terms like the idea of a
"square circle," "wooden iron," or a
"Christian philosopher" (Heidegger's own three
favorite examples of
oxymorons).[1]
Treating Heidegger's
thinking about art as "aesthetics" would strike him as
incongruous and inappropriate because he consistently insisted that the
"aesthetic" approach has led Western humanity to understand
and experience the work of art in a way that occludes its true
historical significance. Nor can Heidegger's thinking be
sympathetically classified as "anti-aesthetic," because he
suggests that any such anti-aesthetics would remain blindly entangled
in aesthetics (in the same way that, for example, atheism remains
implicated in the logic of theism--both claiming to know the
unknowable); in his view, any merely oppositional movement remains
trapped in the logic of what it opposes (QCT 61/GA5 217). For
Heidegger, as we will see, the only way to get beyond aesthetics is
first to understand how it shapes us and then seek to pass through and
beyond that influence, thereby getting over it as one might
"recover" from a serious illness (ID 37/101). Because
the aesthetic approach continues to eclipse our access to the role
artworks can quietly play in forming and informing our historical
worlds, Heidegger thinks that only such a post-aesthetic thinking about
art can allow us to recognize and restore art's true
significance, helping us recognize the inconspicuous way in which art
works to shape our basic sense of what is and what
matters.[2]
From a strictly Heideggerian perspective, then, any attempt to
explain "Heidegger's aesthetics" (or his
"anti-aesthetics") will look either malicious or
misconceived, like a deliberate flaunting or else an unwitting
display of ignorance about the basic tenets of Heidegger's views
on art. Fortunately, our starting point is not really so
misconceived. Once we understand why exactly Heidegger
criticizes (what we could call) the *aestheticization* of
art, we will thereby have put ourselves on the right track to
understanding his own post-aesthetic thinking about the work of
art. (We should not confuse the aestheticization Heidegger
critiques with "aestheticism," a term standardly taken to
refer to the "art for art's sake"
movement.[3]
For
Heidegger, any such attempt to disconnect art from politics,
philosophy, and other history-shaping movements would not even be
thinkable without the prior reduction of art to aesthetics that he
criticizes.) So, what exactly is supposed to be wrong with the
aestheticization of art? What leads Heidegger to critique the
dominant modern tradition that understands art in an
"aesthetic" way, and why does he believe this aesthetic
approach eclipses the true significance of the work of art?
### 1.1 Heidegger's Understanding of the True Work of Art
To understand Heidegger's critique of aesthetics, it will help
first to sketch his positive view of art's true historical
role. Heidegger's own understanding of the work of art is
resolutely populist but with revolutionary aspirations. He
believes that, at its greatest, art "grounds history" by
"allowing truth to spring forth" (PLT 77/GA5
65).[4]
Building on
Heraclitus's view of the pervasive tension of normative
conceptual oppositions (good/bad, worthy/worthless, noble/base, and the
like) that undergird and implicitly structure our sense of ourselves
and our worlds, Heidegger imagines the way
an ancient Greek temple at Paestum
once worked to help unify its historical world by tacitly
reinforcing a particular sense of what is and what matters:
>
>
> It is the temple-work that first joins together and simultaneously
> gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which
> birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance
> and decline obtain the form of destiny for human being. ...The
> temple first gives to things their look and to humanity their outlook
> on themselves. (PLT 42-3/GA5 27-9)
Great art works *work* in the background of our historical
worlds, in other words, by partially embodying and so selectively
reinforcing an historical community's implicit sense of what is
and what matters. In this way, great artworks both (1)
"first give to things their look," that is, they help
establish an historical community's implicit sense of what things
*are*, and they give (2) "to humanity their outlook on
themselves," that is, they also help shape an historical
community's implicit sense of *what truly matters* in life
(and so also what does not), which kinds of lives are most worth living, which
actions are "noble" (or "base"), what in the
community's traditions most deserves to be preserved, and so
on.
As this suggests, Heidegger subscribes to a doctrine of
*ontological historicity* (refining a view first developed by
Hegel). Put simply, Heidegger thinks that humanity's
fundamental experience of reality changes over time (sometimes
dramatically), and he suggests that the *work* of art helps
explain the basic mechanism of this historical transformation
of
intelligibility.[5]
Because great art *works*
inconspicuously to establish, maintain, and transform humanity's
historically-variable sense of what is and what matters, Heidegger
emphasizes that "*art is the becoming and happening of
truth*" (PLT 71/GA5 59). Put simply, great artworks
help establish the implicit ontology and ethics through which an
historical community understands itself and its
world.[6]
In keeping with this
(initially strange) doctrine of ontological historicity, Heidegger
understands "truth" ontologically as the
historically-dynamic disclosure of intelligibility in time. As we
will see in section 3, this historical unfolding of truth takes
place--to use Heidegger's preferred philosophical terms of
art--as an "*a-letheiac*" struggle to
"dis-close" or "un-conceal"
(*a-letheia*) that which conceals (*lethe*)
itself, an "essential strife" between two interconnected
dimensions of intelligibility (revealing and concealing) which
Heidegger calls "world" and "earth" in his most
famous work on art.
In sum, great art *works* by selectively focusing an
historical community's tacit sense of what is and what matters
and reflecting it back to that community, which thereby comes
implicitly to understand itself in the light of this artwork.
Artworks thus function as ontological *paradigms*, serving their
communities both as "models of" and "models
for" reality, which means (as Dreyfus nicely puts it) that
artworks can variously "manifest,"
"articulate," or even "reconfigure" the
historical ontologies undergirding their cultural
worlds.[7]
Heidegger
suggests, in other words, that art can accomplish its world-disclosing
work on at least three different orders of magnitude: (1)
micro-paradigms he will later calls "things thinging,"
which help us become aware of what matters most deeply to us; (2)
paradigmatic artworks like Van Gogh's painting and
Holderlin's poetry, which disclose how art itself works; and
(3) macro-paradigmatic "great" works of art like the Greek
temple and tragic drama (works Heidegger also sometimes calls
"gods"), which succeed in fundamentally transforming an
historical community's "understanding of being," its
most basic and ultimate understanding of what is and what
matters.[8]
It is with this ontologically revolutionary potential of great art
in mind that Heidegger writes:
>
>
> Whenever [great] art happens--that is, when there is a
> beginning--a push enters history, and history either starts up or
> starts again. (PLT 77/GA5 65)
That is, great art is capable of overcoming the inertia of existing
traditions and moving the interconnected ontological and ethical wheels
of history, either giving us a new sense of what is and what matters or
else fundamentally transforming the established ontology and ethics
through which we make sense of the world and
ourselves.[9]
Given Heidegger's
view of the literally revolutionary role art can thus play in
inconspicuously shaping and transforming our basic sense of what is and
what matters, his occasionally ill-tempered critiques of the reduction
of art to aesthetics become much easier to understand. For, in
his view, the stakes of our understanding of and approach to art could
not be higher.
## 2. Heidegger's Philosophical Critique of Aesthetics: Introduction
Heidegger believes that the aestheticization of art has gotten us
late moderns stuck in the rarefied and abstract view according to which
"the enjoyment of art serves [primarily] to satisfy the refined
taste of connoisseurs and aesthetes." Hence his amusing but
harsh judgment that: "For us today, ...art belongs in
the domain of the pastry chef" (IM 140/GA40 140). That our
culture blithely celebrates cafe baristas who compete over the
"art" of pouring foamed milk into our cappuccinos suggests
that we have lost sight of the role art can play in shaping history at
the deepest level, an ontologically revolutionary role compared to
which Heidegger finds the "artful" gestures of culinary
expertise rather empty.
For the same reason, Heidegger is no more impressed by Kant's highbrow
view that the disinterested contemplation of art should "serve
the moral elevation of the mind" (IM 140/GA40
140).[10]
Instead, Heidegger is clearly sympathetic to the
"complaint" that, as he puts it:
>
>
> innumerable aesthetic considerations of and investigations into art
> and the beautiful have achieved nothing, they have not helped anyone
> gain access to art, and they have contributed virtually nothing to
> artistic creativity or to a sound appreciation of art. (N1
> 79/GA43 92)
Heidegger would thus agree with the sentiment behind Barnet
Newman's famous quip: "Aesthetics is for the artist
as ornithology is for the
birds."[11]
Still, for Heidegger such complaints,
while "certainly right," are really only symptomatic of a
much deeper philosophical problem, a problem which stems from the way
modern aesthetics is rooted in the subject/object divide lying at the
very heart of the modern worldview. In order to get to the heart
of the problem, then, we need to take a step back and ask: How
exactly does Heidegger understand
*aesthetics*?[12]
### 2.1 How Heidegger Understands Aesthetics
As Heidegger points out, the term "aesthetics" is a
modern creation. It was coined by Alexander Baumgarten in the
1750s and then critically appropriated by Kant in his *Critique of
Judgment* (published in
1790).[13]
Baumgarten formed the term
"aesthetics" from the Greek word for
"sensation" or "feeling,"
*aisthesis* (N1 83/GA43 98). As this indicates,
modern "aesthetics" was originally conceived as the science
of *aistheta*, matters perceptible by the senses, as
opposed to *noema*, matters accessible to thought alone,
like the truths dealt with in mathematical logic. In fact, modern
aesthetics is born of the aspiration to be "in the field of
sensuousness what logic is in the domain of thinking" (N1 83/GA43
98). That is, just as logic (conceived as the science of thought)
seeks to understand our relation to the true, so aesthetics (conceived
as the science of sensation or feeling) seeks to understand our
relation to the
beautiful.[14]
To recognize that the central focus of modern aesthetics is beauty
is not to deny its traditional interest in the sublime or its
late-modern preoccupations with the abject, the obscene, kitsch, and so
on. Heidegger's point, rather, is that
>
>
> aesthetics is that kind of meditation on art in which
> humanity's state of feeling in relation to the beautiful
> represented in art is the point of departure and the goal that sets the
> standard for all its definitions and explanations. (N1 78/GA43
> 91)
In its paradigmatic form (the form "that sets the
standard" for all its other "definitions and
explanations"), modern "aesthetics is the consideration of
humanity's state of feeling in relation to the beautiful"
(N1 78/GA43 90).
Heidegger is not denying that there are numerous disagreements
within the modern aesthetic tradition (between Kant and Baumgarten,
just to begin with). Instead, his thesis is that even the
disagreements in the modern aesthetic tradition take place within the
framework of a common approach. It is this shared framework that
Heidegger designates when he refers to the "aesthetic"
approach to art. As we would expect, this basic framework
undergirds the paradigmatic inquiry of modern aesthetics, the study of
beauty through a "consideration of humanity's state of
feeling in relation to the beautiful." In all the aesthetic
investigations which take their cues from this one, Heidegger
observes:
>
>
> The artwork is posited as the "object" for a
> "subject," and this subject-object relation, specifically
> as a relation of feeling, is definitive for aesthetic
> consideration. (N1 78/GA43 91)
In other words, modern aesthetics frames its understanding of art by
presupposing the subject/object dichotomy: Aesthetics presupposes
a fundamental divide between the art "object" and the
experiencing "subject," a divide which is subsequently
crossed by the commerce of sensation or feeling. Of course, the
subject/object dichotomy forms the very basis of the modern worldview,
so we would be surprised if modern aesthetics did not presuppose
it. So, what specifically does Heidegger object to about the way
the aesthetic approach to art presupposes a viewing subject, standing
before some art object, enjoying (or not enjoying) his or her sensory
experience of this artwork? What is supposed to be the problem
with this aesthetic picture of art?
### 2.2 Heidegger's Critique of the Aesthetic Approach
In a provocatively-titled essay delivered in 1938, "The Age of
the World Picture," Heidegger provides a succinct formulation of
what it means to approach art aesthetically that helps us reach the
core of his objection to aesthetics. When "art gets pushed
into the horizon of aesthetics," he writes, this
>
>
> means [1] that the artwork becomes an object of lived experience
> [*Gegenstand des Erlebens*], and [2] in this way art comes to
> count as an expression of human life [*Lebens*]. (QCT
> 116/GA5 75)
Heidegger is making two connected points here (which are numbered
accordingly). The first is that when art is understood and
approached "aesthetically," artworks become
*objects* for human subjects to experience in an especially
intense, vital, or meaningful way. We can see this if we unpack
his typically dense language: As Heidegger frequently points out,
in the modern, post-Cartesian world, an "object,"
*Gegenstand*, is something that "stands opposite" a
human subject, something *external* to subjectivity. In
order to experience an object, the modern subject supposedly must first
get outside the immanent sphere of its own subjectivity so as to
encounter this "external" object, and then return back to
its subjective sphere bearing the fruits of this encounter. Given
the modern subject/object dichotomy, such an adventure beyond
subjectivity and back again is required for the experience of any
object. But in the case of the art object, Heidegger is pointing
out, the adventure beyond subjectivity and back again is a particularly
intense, meaningful, or enlivening one: A "lived
experience" is an experience that makes us feel "more
alive," as Heidegger suggests by emphasizing the etymological
connection between *Erleben* and *Lebens*, "lived
experience" and "life."
The second point Heidegger is trying to make is that when artworks
become objects for subjects to have particularly meaningful experiences
of, these artworks themselves also get understood thereby as meaningful
expressions of an artistic subject's own life experiences.
Heidegger does not ever develop any argument for this point; the
thought simply seems to be that once aesthetics understands artworks as
objects of which we can have meaningful experiences, it is only logical
to conceive of these art objects themselves in an isomorphic way, as
meaningful expressions of the lives of the artists who created
them. Still, this alleged isomorphism of aesthetic
"expression and impression" is not immediately
obvious.[15]
Think,
for example, about the seriously playful "found art"
tradition in Surrealism, dada, Fluxus, and their heirs, a tradition in
which ordinary objects get seditiously appropriated as
"art." (The continuing influence of Marcel
Duchamp's "readymade" remains visible in everything
from Andy Warhol's meticulously reconstructed
"Brillo Boxes"
(1964) to Ruben Ochoa's
large-scale installations of industrial detritus such as broken
concrete, rebar, and chain-link fencing, such as
"Ideal Disjuncture"
(2008). Vattimo thus suggests that
Duchamp's "Fountain" illustrates the way an artwork
can disclose a new world, a world in which high art comes to celebrate
not only the trivial and ordinary but also the vulgar and even
the
obscene.)[16]
This tradition initially seems like a
series of deliberate counter-examples to the aesthetic assumption that
artworks are meaningful expressions of an artist's own
subjectivity.
Even in this tradition, however, the artists' appropriations
are never truly random but invariably require some selection,
presentation, and the like, and thus inevitably reopen interpretive
questions about the significance these art objects have for the
artistic subject who chose them. (Why this particular object?
Why present it in just this way?) It is thus not surprising
that the founding work of found "anti-art,"
Duchamp's
"Fountain"
(1917)--his deliciously seditious
installation of a deliberately inverted, humorously signed (by
"R. Mutt"), and brilliantly re-titled urinal in an art
gallery--is typically treated in contemporary aesthetics as an
extreme expression of Duchamp's own artistic subjectivity, not as
its
absence.[17]
Here one could also point to the
failure of Robert Rauschenberg's attempt to deconstruct the found
art ideal of unique and spontaneous invention in his incredible
"combines,"
"Factum I and Factum II,"
works which, despite
Rauschenberg's painstaking efforts to make them identical, instead
work to suggest the stubborn uniqueness of any given artwork. So, even
the found art tradition of the readymade and its heirs reinforces
Heidegger's point that, *in the basic aesthetic approach to art,
art objects are implicitly understood as meaningful expressions of
artists' lives that are capable of eliciting particularly intense or
meaningful experiences in viewing subjects*.
In this aesthetic approach, to put it simply, *art objects
express and intensify human subjects' experiences of
life*. What Heidegger thus characterizes as the aesthetic
approach to art will probably seem so obvious to most people that it
can be hard to see what he could possibly find objectionable about
it. Art objects express and intensify human subjects'
experiences of life; to many people, it might not even be clear what it
could mean to understand art in any other way. How should we
understand and approach art, if not in terms of the meaningful
experiences that a subject might have of some art object, an art object
which is itself a meaningful expression of the life of the artist (or
artists) who created it? What exactly does Heidegger think is
wrong with this "picture" of art?
Despite what one might expect from a phenomenologist like Heidegger,
his objection is not that the aesthetic view mischaracterizes the way
we late moderns ordinarily experience "art." On the
contrary, Heidegger clearly thinks that what he characterizes as
"the increasingly aesthetic fundamental position taken toward art
as a whole" (N1 88/GA43 103) does accurately describe the
experiences of art that take place--when they do take
place--in museums, art galleries, and installations; in
performance spaces, theaters, and movie houses; in cathedrals,
coliseums, and other ruins; in cityscapes as well as landscapes; in
concert halls, music clubs, and comic books; even when we listen to
our speakers, headphones, ear-buds; and, sometimes (who could credibly deny
it?), when we sit in front of our television screens, computer
monitors, iPhones, and so on. The experiences we have of what
rises to the level of "art" in all such settings are indeed
"aesthetic" experiences, that is, particularly intense or
meaningful experiences that make us feel more alive; and, if we think
about it, we do tend to approach these art objects as expressions of
the life of the artists who created them. The aesthetic view
correctly characterizes our typical experience of "art" in
the contemporary world--and for Heidegger that is part of
the
problem.[18]
### 2.3 Symptoms of Subjectivism
This returns us to the bigger question we have been pursuing, and
which we are now prepared to answer: Why exactly does Heidegger
object to our contemporary tendency to understand and approach art in
this aesthetic way? In the revealingly titled essay we have been
drawing on, "The Age of the World Picture," Heidegger
explains that "the process by which art gets pushed into the
horizon of aesthetics" is neither conceptually neutral nor
historically unimportant. On the contrary, the historical process
by which Western humanity came to understand art as
"aesthetics" is so freighted with significance that it
needs to be recognized as "one of the essential phenomena of the
contemporary age" (QCT 116/GA5 75). Strikingly, Heidegger
goes so far as to assert that our tendency to treat art as aesthetics
is just as significant for and revealing of our current historical
self-understanding as are the increasing dominance of science and
technology, the tendency to conceive of all meaningful human activity
in terms of culture, and the growing absence of any god or gods in our
Western world (QCT 116-7/GA5 75-6). This is a surprising and
deliberately provocative claim, one apparently meant to provoke us into
noticing and thinking through something we ordinarily overlook.
For, how can our understanding of art as aesthetics be just as
essential to our current historical self-understanding as are the
dominance of science, the growing influence of technology, the
ubiquitous discussions of "culture," and the withdrawal of
gods from our history--four seemingly much larger and more
momentous historical developments?
These five "essential phenomena"--the historical
ascendance of science, technology, aesthetics, and culture, on the one
hand, and, on the other, that historical decline of the divine which
Heidegger (echoing Schiller) calls the "ungodding" or
"degodification" (*Entgotterung*) of the
world--these all are "equally essential"
(*gleichwesentliche*), Heidegger explains, because these five
interlocking phenomena express and so reveal the underlying direction
in which the contemporary world is moving historically. Science,
technology, aesthetics, culture, and degodification are "equally
essential" as five major historical developments that feed into
and disclose (what we could think of
as) *the* *current*, that is, the underlying historical
direction or *Zeitgeist* of our contemporary
world.[19]
In the late 1930s, Heidegger's name for the underlying direction in which
the age is moving is "subjectivism," a movement he defines
as humanity's ongoing attempt to establish "mastery over the
totality of what-is" (QCT 132/GA5 92). *Subjectivism*, in
other words, designates humanity's increasingly global quest to
achieve complete control over every aspect of our objective reality,
to establish ourselves as the being "who gives the measure and
provides the guidelines for everything that is" (QCT 134/GA5
94). Heidegger's fundamental objection to the aesthetic approach to
art, then, is that such an approach follows from and feeds back
into *subjectivism*, contemporary humanity's ongoing effort to
establish "our unlimited power for calculating, planning, and
molding [or 'breeding,' *Zuchtung*] all
things" (QCT 135/GA5 94).
### 2.4 How Aesthetics Reflects and Reinforces Subjectivism
In order to understand why Heidegger thinks the aesthetic approach
to art reflects and reinforces subjectivism, we need to know why
Heidegger characterizes humanity's ongoing attempt to master
every aspect of our objective reality as "subjectivism" in
the first
place.[20]
We saw earlier that in the modern,
post-Cartesian world, an "object" (*Gegen-stand*),
is something that "stands opposite" a human
*subject*, something which is "external" to the
subjective sphere. This subject/object dichotomy seems obvious
when one is theorizing from within the modern tradition, in which it
has functioned as an axiom since Descartes famously argued that the
subject's access to its own thinking possesses an indubitable
immediacy not shared by our access to objects, which must thus be conceived of as
external to subjectivity.
Yet, as Heidegger argues in *Being and Time* (1927), taking
this modern subject/object dichotomy as our point of departure leads us
to fundamentally mischaracterize the way we experience the everyday
world in which we are usually unreflectively immersed, the world of our
practical engagements. By failing to recognize and do justice to
the integral entwinement of self and world that is basic to our
experiential navigation of our lived environments, modern philosophy
effectively splits the subject off from objects and from other
subjects. In this way, modern philosophy lays the conceptual
groundwork for *subjectivism*, the "worldview" in
which an intrinsically-meaningless objective realm
("nature") is separated epistemically from isolated,
value-bestowing, self-certain subjects, and so needs to be mastered
through the relentless epistemological, normative, and practical
activities of these subjects. Heidegger suggests that this
problem is not merely theoretical, because the subjectivism of the
modern worldview functions historically like a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Its progressive historical realization generates not
only the political freedoms and scientific advances we cherish, but
also unwanted downstream consequences such as our escalating
environmental crisis and less predictable side-effects like the
aestheticization of
art.[21]
### 2.5 Undermining the Subject/Object Dichotomy Phenomenologically
So, how does the aestheticization of art follow from
subjectivism? (This is easier to see than Heidegger's
converse claim--that the aestheticization of art feeds back into
and reinforces subjectivism--so we will address it first.)
*Being and Time* does not undermine the subject/object dichotomy by
trying to advance the incredible thesis that the self really exists in
a continuous and unbroken unity with its world. Instead,
Heidegger seeks to account for the fact that our fundamental, practical
engagement with our worlds can easily break down in ways that generate
the perspective the subject/object dichotomy describes. Most of
the time, we encounter ourselves as immediately and unreflectively
immersed in the world of our concerns rather than as standing over
against an "external" world of objects. Just think,
for example, of the way you ordinarily encounter a hammer when you are
hammering with it, or a pen while you are writing with it, a bike while
riding it, a car while driving it, or even, say, a freeway interchange
as you drive over it for the umpteenth time. This all changes,
however, when our practical engagement with the world of our concerns
breaks down. When the head flies off the hammer and will not go
back on (and no other hammering implement is available to complete the
task at hand); when the pen we are writing with runs out of ink (and we
have no other); when our bike tire goes flat or our car breaks down in
the middle of a trip; when we find ourselves standing before an artwork
that we cannot make sense of; or, in general, when we are still
learning how to do something and encounter some unexpected difficulty
which stops us in our tracks--in all such cases what Heidegger
calls our ordinary, immediate "hands-on"
(*zuhanden*) way of coping with the world of our practical
concerns undergoes a "transformation" (*Umschlag*)
in which we come to experience ourselves as isolated subjects standing
reflectively before a world of external objects, which we thereby come
to experience as standing over against us in the mode of something
objectively "on hand" (*vorhanden*) (BT 408-9/SZ 357-8).
In other words, Heidegger does not deny the reality of the
subject/object relation but, rather, points out that our experience of
this subject/object relation *derives* *from* and so
*presupposes* a more fundamental level of experience, a
primordial modality of engaged existence in which self and world are
united rather than divided. Heidegger believes that modern
philosophy's failure to solve the problem of skepticism about the
external world shows that those who begin with the subject/object
divide will never be able to bridge it subsequently (BT 249-50/SZ
205-6). He thus insists that this more primordial level of
practically engaged, "hands-on" existence--in which
self and world are unified--must be the starting point of any
description of ordinary human experience that seeks to do justice to
what such experience is really like, a phenomenological dictum
Heidegger insists should also govern our attempts to describe our
meaningful encounters with works of art.
### 2.6 Phenomenology Against Aesthetic Subjectivism
Following the phenomenological dictum that we should describe our
experience of art in a way that is not distorted by the presuppositions
we have inherited from the metaphysical tradition is easier said than
done, however, for at least two reasons. First, the
subject/object dichotomy is so deeply entrenched in our
self-understanding that it has come to implicitly structure the
fundamental aesthetic approach (as we have seen). Second, it is
not immediately clear where (let alone how) we should look to discover
art in a non-aesthetic way. Indeed, it now seems natural for us
to think that what makes our experience of art objects significant is
that such experiences allow us human subjects temporarily to transcend
the sphere of our own subjectivity by getting in touch with art objects
outside ourselves, because these transcendent experiences can
profoundly enrich our subjective experience.
In Heidegger's view, however, this aesthetic perspective gets
the story backward. We do not begin confined to our subjective
spheres, temporarily leave those spheres behind in order to experience
art objects, only to return back to subjectivity once again, enriched
by the "booty" we have captured during our adventure in the
external world of art objects (BT 89/SZ 62). The reverse is
true: Human *existence* originally "stands
outside" (*ek-sistere*) itself, integrally involved with
the world in terms of which we ordinarily make sense of
ourselves.[22]
We do
occasionally experience ourselves as subjects confronting objects (for
example, when we try to learn to draw or paint realistically, or when
we find ourselves standing befuddled before an art object), but the
experience of ourselves as subjects confronting objects is
comparatively infrequent and takes place on the background of a more
basic experience of ourselves as integrally involved with the world of
our practical concerns, an experience of fundamental self/world
intertwinement to which we always return.
"Proximally and for the most part [or 'initially and
usually,' *zunachst und zumeist*]," as Heidegger
likes to say, we do not stand apart from the entities that populate our
world, observing them dispassionately--or even passionately,
hoping to transcend an isolated subjective sphere which in fact we are
usually already beyond. Why, then, should we privilege the
detached, subject/object framework that results from the breakdown of
our engaged experience when we try to approach art
philosophically? We should not; trying to approach art while
staying within the aesthetic approach is like trying to learn what it
is like to ride a bike by staring at a broken bicycle: It is so
to privilege the detached perspective of the observer that the
participatory perspective gets eclipsed and forgotten. In
Heidegger's view, the phenomenologically faulty presuppositions
of modern philosophy have misled aesthetics into looking for the work
of art in the wrong place, at a derived rather than the basic level of
human interaction with the world, and thus into mistaking an intense
subjective experience of an external object for an encounter with the
true work of art.
Modern aesthetics presupposes the subject/object dichotomy and then
problematically tries to describe the subsequent interaction between
two allegedly heterogeneous domains, instead of recognizing and seeking
to describe the prior role works of art play in the background of our
everyday worldly engagement, in which no such dichotomy can yet be
found. Heidegger's post-aesthetic thinking about the work
of art will thus instead seek to describe the usually unnoticed way in
which artworks can form and inform our basic historical sense of what
is and what matters (as we saw in section 1.1). Heidegger's
thinking about the formative role art can play in the background of our
self-understanding is "post-aesthetic" in that it seeks to
get past the constitutive mistakes of aesthetics, but it might also be
characterized as "pre-aesthetic" insofar as the way he
tries to go beyond aesthetics is by getting back behind aesthetics in
order to do justice to that more primordial level of existence
aesthetics overlooks. Indeed, although this initially sounds
paradoxical, Heidegger suggests that *the best way to get beyond
aesthetic experience is to transcend it from within* (that is, to
experience the way a subject's experience of an aesthetic object
can lead beyond or beneath itself), as we will see when we turn to his
phenomenological analysis of Van Gogh's painting.
To sum up, then, because aesthetics tries to describe artworks from
the perspective of a subject confronting an external art object, the
aesthetic approach begins always-already "too late" (BT
249/SZ 207). Aesthetics looks for art in the wrong place (at a
derivative rather than primordial level of human interaction with the
world), and what it finds there is not the true work of art.
Misled by the presuppositions of modern philosophy, aesthetics
overlooks that more primordial level of human existence where,
Heidegger will argue, true art inconspicuously accomplishes its
ontologically-revolutionary work.
### 2.7 From Modern Subjectivism to Late-Modern Enframing in Aesthetics
Before turning our attention to Heidegger's post-aesthetic
thinking, the last thing we need to do is to clarify his more difficult
claim that aesthetics not only follows from but also *feeds back
into* subjectivism. What makes this claim difficult to grasp
is the specific twist Heidegger gives to it: Put simply,
aesthetics feeds back into subjectivism in a way that leads
subjectivism beyond itself--and into something even worse than
subjectivism. In aesthetics, Heidegger suggests, subjectivism
"somersaults beyond itself [*selbst
uberschlagt*]" into enframing (N1 77/GA43
90). We can see how subjectivism somersaults beyond itself into
enframing if we return to Heidegger's definition of subjectivism
in "The Age of the World Picture," according to which
modern *subjectivism* names our modern attempt to secure
"our unlimited power for calculating, planning, and molding [or
'breeding,' *Zuchtung*] all things" (QCT
135/GA5 94). It is not difficult to detect a subtle resistance to
the National Socialist worldview and (what Heidegger understood as) its
Nietzschean roots in Heidegger's 1938 critique of Western
humanity's drive toward the total mastery of the world through
"calculating, planning, and breeding." But more
importantly for our purposes, such descriptions of humanity's
drive to master the world completely through the coldly rational
application of *calculative* reasoning also show that what
Heidegger calls "subjectivism" is a conceptual and
historical precursor to what he will soon call "enframing"
(or *Gestell*).
"Enframing" is Heidegger's famous name for the
technological understanding of being that underlies and shapes our
contemporary age. Just as Descartes inaugurates modern
*subjectivism* (as we have seen), so Nietzsche inaugurates
late-modern *enframing* by understanding being--the
"totality of entities as such"--as "eternally
recurring will to power." Heidegger thinks that
Nietzsche's "ontotheology" (that means, to put it
briefly, Nietzsche's way of grasping the totality of what-is from
both the inside-out and the outside-in at the same time) worked to
inaugurate our own late-modern view that reality is nothing but forces
coming-together and breaking-apart with no end other than the
self-perpetuating growth of force itself. By tacitly approaching
reality through the lenses of this Nietzschean ontotheology, we
increasingly come to understand and so to treat all entities as
intrinsically-meaningless "resources" (*Bestand*)
standing by for efficient and flexible optimization. It is (to
cut a long story short) this nihilistic *technologization* of
reality that Heidegger's later thinking is dedicated to finding a
path
beyond.[23]
For Heidegger, true art opens just such
a path, one that can guide us beyond enframing's ontological
"commandeering of everything into assured availability"
(PLT 84/GA5 72), as we will see in section 3.
First, however, we need to understand how subjectivism leads beyond
itself into enframing. Put simply, subjectivism becomes enframing
when the subject objectifies *itself*--that is, when the
human subject, seeking to master and control all aspects of its
objective reality, turns that impulse to control the world of objects
back onto itself. If we remember that modern
*subjectivism* designates the human subject's quest to
achieve total control over all objective aspects of reality, then we
can see that late-modern *enframing* emerges historically out of
subjectivism as subjectivism increasingly transforms the human subject
itself into just another object to be controlled.
*Enframing*, we could say, *is subjectivism squared* (or
subjectivism applied back to the subject). For, the subjectivist
impulse to master reality redoubles itself in enframing, even though
enframing's objectification of the subject dissolves the very
subject/object division that initially drove the subject's
relentless efforts to master the objective world standing over against
it (Thomson 2005). Subjectivism "somersaults beyond
itself" in our late-modern age of "enframing" because
the impulse to control everything intensifies and accelerates even as
it breaks free of its modern moorings and circles back on the subject
itself, turning the human subject into just one more object to be
mastered and controlled--until the modern subject becomes just
another late-modern entity to be efficiently optimized along with
everything else. We are thus moving from modern subjectivism to
the late-modern enframing of reality insofar as we understand and
relate to all things, *ourselves included*, as nothing but
intrinsically-meaningless "resources" standing by for
endless optimization. Interestingly, Heidegger saw this
technological understanding of being embodied in contemporary works of
art like the
modern butterfly interchange on a freeway,
which, like a
late-modern temple, quietly reinforces our technological understanding
of all reality as
"a network of long-distance traffic, spaced in a way calculated for maximum speed"
(PLT 152/GA7 155), an optimizing function now
served even more efficiently and pervasively by the internet (to which
we are now connected by millions of little shrines, made ever faster,
more efficient and portable, and which we find ourselves increasingly
unable to live
without).[24]
In the late 1930s, Heidegger understood such technological
optimization as an all-encompassing attempt to derive the maximal
output from the minimal input, a quantification of quality that
threatens to dissolve quality in the same way that the objectification
of the subject threatens to dissolve subjectivity. Heidegger
seems first to have recognized this objectification of the subject in
the Nazis' coldly calculating eugenics programs for
"breeding" a master race, but (as he predicted) that
underlying impulse to objectively master the human subject continues
unabated in more scientifically plausible and less overtly horrifying
forms of contemporary genetic
engineering.[25]
Most importantly for us
here, Heidegger also recognized this ongoing objectification of the
subject in the seemingly innocuous way that aesthetics
"somersaults beyond itself" into neuroscientific attempts
to understand and control the material substrate of the mind.
For, once aesthetics reduces art to intense subjective experience, such
experiences can be studied objectively through the use of EEGs,
*f*MRIs, MEG and PET scans (and the like), and in fact aesthetic
experiences are increasingly being studied in this way. At the
University of New Mexico's MIND Institute, to mention just one
telling example, subjects were given "beautiful" images to
look at and the resulting neuronal activity in their brains was studied
empirically using one of the world's most powerful functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines. In this way, as Heidegger
predicted in 1937:
>
>
> Aesthetics becomes a psychology that proceeds in the manner of the
> natural sciences; that is, states of feeling become self-evident facts
> to be subjected to experiments, observation, and measurement. (N1
> 89/GA43 106)
"Here," Heidegger writes, "the final consequences
of the aesthetic inquiry into art are thought through to the end"
(N1 91/GA43 108). Aesthetics reaches its logical
conclusion--the "fulfillment or consummation"
(*Vollendung*) which completes it and so brings it to its
end--when it thus "somersaults beyond itself" into
enframing.
Heidegger's objection to aesthetic enframing, then, is not just that
the work of art is increasingly falling under the influence of
enframing--that artworks too are becoming mere resources for the
art industry, standing reserves piled in storerooms "like
potatoes in a cellar" to be quickly and efficiently
"shipped like coal...or logs...from one exhibition to
another" (PLT 19/GA5 3). He is even more troubled by the way
art, reduced to aesthetics, does not just get enframed but
participates in the enframing--for example, when the feeling of
beauty is reduced to a purportedly objective brain state to be
precisely measured and controlled through cognitive
neuroscience.[26]
As the human subject turns its subjectivist impulse to control the
objective world back onto itself in such neuroscientific
experimentation, aesthetics increasingly becomes just one more
approach reinforcing the technological "enframing" of all
reality. Heidegger thus reaches a harsh verdict: Aesthetic
"experience is the element in which art dies. This dying goes on
for so long that it takes several centuries" (PLT 79/GA5
67).[27]
Fortunately, Heidegger's prognosis is not as bleak as this
apparent death sentence suggests. That art is slowly dying as
aesthetics, he clarifies in a later addition,
>
>
> does not mean that art is utterly at an end. That will be the
> case only if [aesthetic] experience remains the sole element for
> art. Everything depends on getting out of [aesthetic] experience
> and into being-here [*Da-sein*], which means reaching an
> entirely different "element" for the "becoming"
> of art. (P 50 note b/GA5 67 note b)
In other words, art is dying only as aesthetics, and the death of art
as aesthetics makes possible the transformative rebirth of art as
something other than a subject's experience of an object. Indeed,
just as modern subjectivism led beyond itself historically into
late-modern enframing, so Heidegger believes enframing, in turn, can
lead beyond itself into a genuine post-modernity, an age that
transcends our late-modern age's ongoing technologization of reality
and its nihilistic erosion of all intrinsic meaning (the void which we
try to fill with all our superficial talk about "values")
(see Thomson 2011, 60-2). This hope for an historical turning
toward a genuinely meaningful post-modernity is what motivates
Heidegger's phenomenological attempt to describe and so convey a
post-aesthetic encounter with art, to which we now turn.
### 2.8 Conclusion and Transition: From Hegel's End of Art to Heidegger's Other Beginning
Because of the predicament in which modern aesthetics has left us,
Heidegger provisionally accepts the truth of Hegel's famous
judgment that:
>
>
> Art no longer counts for us as the highest manner in which truth
> obtains existence for itself. ...[I]n its highest
> determination, vocation, and purpose [*Bestimmung*], art is and
> remains for us...a thing of the past. (PLT 80/GA5
> 68)
Still, Heidegger nurtures the hope that (*pace* Hegel) the
distinctive truth manifest in art could once again attain the kind of
history-transforming importance that Hegel and Heidegger agree it had
for the ancient Greeks but has lost in the modern world.
This "highest" truth of art for which Heidegger still
hopes, however, is not Hegel's "certainty of the
absolute" (GA5 68 note a). That is, Heidegger does not hold
out hope for some perfect correspondence between (1) the
historically-unfolding "concept" Hegel believed was
implicit in the development of humanity's intersubjective
self-understanding and (2) an objective manifestation of that
intersubjective self-understanding in art. Thus, in Hegel's
most famous example, the tragic conflict between Antigone and Creon in
Sophocles' *Antigone* perfectly embodied the fundamental
but as of yet unresolved ethical conflicts--between conscience and
law, the family and the state, and so on--which had arisen
implicitly in the intersubjective self-understanding of fifth-century
Athens. Hegel thinks it is no longer possible for an artwork to
perfectly express the tensions implicit in the self-understanding of
the age and thereby call for an historical people to envision a future
age in which those tensions would be resolved (because this role was
taken over by religion and then by philosophy as our historical
self-understanding grew increasingly complex). Heidegger,
however, continues to hope for even more, namely, an artwork that
*already* embodies the transition between this age and the next
and which is thus capable of helping to inaugurate that future age,
here and now.
In tacit opposition to Hegel, Heidegger thus suggests that
art's highest "[t]ruth is [not 'the certainty of the
absolute' but] the unconcealedness of entities as entities.
Truth is the truth of being" (PLT 81/GA5 69).
Heidegger's defining hope for art, in other words, is that works
of art could manifest and thereby help usher in a new understanding of
the being of entities, a literally "post-modern"
understanding of what it means for an entity to be, a postmodern
ontology which would no longer understand entities either as modern
objects to be controlled or as late-modern resources to be
optimized.[28]
Heidegger
expresses this hope that separates him from Hegel in the form of a
question: "The truth of Hegel's judgment has not yet
been decided," he writes, because
>
>
> the question remains: Is art still an essential and a
> necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our
> historical existence, or is art this no longer? (PLT 80/GA5
> 68)
Heidegger's point is that Hegel will no longer be
right--the time of great art will no longer be at an end--if
contemporary humanity still needs an encounter with art in order to learn how
to understand the being of entities in a genuinely post-modern
way, and if we still remain capable of such an
encounter.[29]
As this suggests, the ultimate goal of Heidegger's thinking
about art is to show what it would mean to move from a modern aesthetic
experience of an art object to a genuinely post-modern encounter with a
work of art, so that we can thereby learn from art how to transcend
modernity from within. As Heidegger will later claim, when we
encounter a true work of art,
>
>
> the presencing [*Anwesen*] of that which appears to our
> look...is different than the standing of what stands-opposite [us]
> in the sense of an object. (PLT 82/GA5 71)
But what exactly is the difference between an aesthetic experience
of an art object and an encounter with the true
"presencing" of a work of art? And how is the
traversing of that difference in our engagement with a particular work
of art supposed to teach us to understand being in a post-modern
way? Part III explains Heidegger's fairly complex answers to
these difficult but momentous questions.
## 3. Heidegger for Art, Introduction: The Three Pillars of Heidegger's Understanding of Art
"The Origin of the Work of Art"--an essay Heidegger
delivered repeatedly between 1935 and 1936, rewriting and expanding it
into three lectures (which became the three main sections of the
published essay, to which Heidegger then added a brief
"Afterword" near the end of the 1930s and a slightly longer
"Addendum" in 1957)--is far and away the most
important source for understanding his attempt to articulate an
alternative to the aesthetic understanding of art, although several
other works (contemporaneous as well as later) also provide important
clues to his
view.[30]
In the final version of this famous
essay, Heidegger meditates on three different works of art in
succession: A painting of "A Pair of Shoes" by
Vincent van Gogh; a poem entitled "The Roman Fountain" by
C. F. Meyer, and an unspecified Greek temple at Paestum (most likely
the temple to Hera). Leading Heidegger scholars such as Hubert
Dreyfus and Julian Young rely almost entirely on Heidegger's
interpretation of the ancient Greek temple in order to explicate his
"promethean" view of art's historically revolutionary
potential, its ability to focus and transform our sense of what is and
what matters (as we saw in section 1.1). Young (2001, p. 22) and
Dreyfus (2005, p. 409) suggest that Heidegger's interpretation of
Van Gogh is "anomalous" and "largely
irrelevant" to this view, despite the fame generated by the
longstanding controversy surrounding it (a controversy to which we will
return at the
end).[31]
Like almost all other scholars,
moreover, Dreyfus and Young simply overlook Heidegger's
introduction of Meyer's poem--even as they recognize that
for Heidegger, like Plato, "poetry" names the very essence
of art (namely, *poiesis* or "bringing into
being"), hence Heidegger's claim that: "*All
art* [that is, all bringing-into-being] ... *is essentially
poetry*" (PLT 73/GA5 59). We thus have to wonder:
Is the only complete poem Heidegger included in the essay that advances
this view of poetry as the essence of art really of no
significance?[32]
In my view, Heidegger's analysis of each of these three works
contributes something important to his overarching attempt to guide
readers into a phenomenological encounter with art that is capable of
helping us transcend modern aesthetics from within. To put it
simply, the temple motivates and helps develop the details of
Heidegger's larger project; the poem implicitly contextualizes
and explains it; and the painting (and only the painting) directly
exemplifies it. In order to see how, let us take these points in
order. Heidegger's imaginative reconstruction of the lost
temple helps motivate his quest for a non-aesthetic encounter with art,
but not (as is often said) because he seeks some nostalgic return to
the Greek world. Heidegger dismisses such a revival as an
impossibility because the ancient temple--just like the medieval
cathedral--no longer gathers its historical world around it and
thus no longer works as great art, and such "world-withdrawal and
world-decay can never be reversed" (PLT 41/GA5 26).
Instead, the Greek temple shows that art was once encountered in a way
other than as a subject's intense aesthetic experience of an
object, and thus suggests that, while those ancient and medieval worlds
have been lost irretrievably, other works of art might yet be
encountered non-aesthetically in our late-modern world. Heidegger
thus elaborates his philosophical vision of how the temple worked for a
time to unify a coherent and meaningful historical world around itself
(by inconspicuously focusing and illuminating its people's sense
of what is and what matters) in order to suggest that a non-aesthetic
encounter with art might yet do the same thing once again: A work
of art might yet help to gather a new historical world around itself by
focusing and illuminating an understanding of being that does not
reduce entities either to modern objects to be controlled or to
late-modern resources to be optimized.
While Heidegger's project is thus undeniably inspired by the
past, this inspiration serves his goal of helping us move historically
into the future. His guiding hope, we have seen, is that a
non-aesthetic encounter with a contemporary artwork will help us learn
to understand the being of entities not as modern objects
("subjectivism") or as late-modern resources
("enframing") but in a genuinely post-modern way, thereby
making another historical beginning. So, which work of art does
Heidegger think can help us late moderns learn to transcend modern
aesthetics from within and thereby discover a path leading beyond
modernity? There are only two viable candidates to fill this
crucial role in "The Origin of the Work of Art":
Meyer's poem and Van Gogh's
painting.[33]
So, why does Heidegger give such pride of place to Meyer's
poem? The answer to this puzzle (which too few readers even
notice) is that the poem introduces the broader philosophical context
of Heidegger's project by conveying his emerging understanding of
*historicity*, the doctrine according to which our fundamental
sense of reality changes over
time.[34]
The ontological "truth"
that Meyer's poem embodies--and "sets to work,"
in Heidegger's creative appropriation of the poem--is that
truth itself is essentially historical and, moreover, that this
essential history of truth forms three successive "epochs,"
in the same way that the "jet" of water fills the three
consecutive "basins" in Meyer's eponymous
fountain.[35]
For
Heidegger, to put it more precisely, the relations Meyer's poem
describes between the fountain's original "jet" and
its three successive water basins illuminate the relations between
"being" itself (that is, as we will see, the inexhaustible
ontological source of historical intelligibility) and the three main
historical "epochs" or ages in Western humanity's
understanding of being (as Heidegger conceived of this "history
of being" in 1936), namely, ancient "Greece,"
"the middle ages," and "the modern age" (PLT
76-7/GA5
64-5).[36]
Thus, for example, just as the original "jet" of water
"falls" into the fountain's successive basins, so the
"overflowing" ontological riches concealed in the ancient
world were first diminished in the medieval world. "The
Origin of the Work of Art" make the contentious case that this
ontological diminution "begins" when concepts central to
the ancient Greek understanding of being get translated into Latin
without a full experience of what those concepts originally revealed
(PLT 23/GA5 8). Hence the obvious appeal for Heidegger of
Meyer's suggestive line: "Veiling itself, this [first
basin] overflows / Into a second basin's ground" (PLT
37/GA5 23). What remained of these ontological
"riches" in the medieval world was then transposed into and
reduced further in the modern epoch which, like the fountain's
third basin, stands at the furthest remove from its original source.
It thus seems clear that Heidegger included Meyer's poem
because he believed it suggestively illuminated the way the history of
being unfolds as an epochal history of decline, a "fall" which
results from this history's increasing forgetting of the source
from which it ultimately springs--the *Ur-sprung* or
"origin" of Heidegger's essay's title--in
a word: "Being" (*Sein*), Heidegger's
famous name for the source from which all historical intelligibility
originates (by way of the disclosive "naming-into-being" which
Heidegger understands as the "poetic" essence of art, as we
will see in the next section). In other words, Heidegger uses
Meyer's poem to allude to the broader philosophical context that
helps explain and motivate the new historical beginning he hopes art
will help us inaugurate. Heidegger's use of this particular
poem suggests, moreover, that in order to accomplish this "other
beginning," Western humanity needs to learn to tap back into that
original, ontological source (the overflowing "jet" of
being), and that such a reconnection with the source of historical
intelligibility is something art can still teach us. (Although
interpreters also overlook this, the quiet presence of a homophonous
"third reich" in Meyer's poem reminds us of the
deeply-troubling dimension of Heidegger's thinking in the
mid-1930s, the fact that his philosophical hopes for the future were
for a brief time deeply entwined with his idiosyncratic understanding
of the direction that the burgeoning National Socialist
"revolution" might yet
take.)[37]
While both the temple and the poem thus remain quite important, only
Van Gogh's painting directly exemplifies what Heidegger thinks it
means to encounter art in a way that allows us to transcend modern
aesthetics from within. This means that Heidegger's
interpretation of Van Gogh's painting, far from being irrelevant,
is actually the most important part of his essay. For, it is only
from Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation of Van
Gogh's artwork that we late moderns can learn how to transcend
modern aesthetics from within, and thereby learn from art what it means
to encounter being in a post-modern way. Since we have already
summarized Heidegger's "promethean" view of the
historically-revolutionary work accomplished by the ancient Greek
temple (in section 1.1), we will expand on the point of his return to
Greece only briefly (in section 3.1), saying more about how this return
to the past is supposed to help lead us into the future. The rest
of what follows will be dedicated primarily to explaining
Heidegger's pivotal understanding of Van Gogh's
painting.[38]
Our
ultimate objective will be to show how Heidegger's interpretation
of Van Gogh allows him to move phenomenologically from the analysis of
a particular, individual ("ontic") work of art to the
ontological structure of artwork in general. Along the way, we will
present the main details of the postmodern understanding of being that
Heidegger thinks we can learn from a non-aesthetic encounter with the
work of art (section 3.7). Once we understand the ordered
sequence of steps in the phenomenological interpretation whereby
Heidegger thinks we can transcend modern aesthetics from within,
moreover, we will finally be able to resolve the long-standing
controversy surrounding Heidegger's interpretation of Van Gogh
(as we will see in section 4).
### 3.1 Back to the Future: Heidegger on the Essence of Art
Heidegger's introduction of "a well-known painting by
Van Gogh, who painted such shoes several times" (PLT 33/GA5 18),
is notoriously abrupt and puzzling to many readers. The path that
leads Heidegger to Van Gogh's painting should not be too
surprising, however, because it is the same path we have been following
here. Looking back at "The Origin of the Work of Art"
two years later (in 1938), Heidegger will write that:
>
>
> The question of the origin of the work of art does not aim to set
> out a timelessly valid determination of the essence of artwork which
> could also serve as the guiding thread for an historically
> retrospective clarification of the history of art. The question
> is most intimately connected with the task of overcoming aesthetics,
> which also means overcoming a certain conception of entities as what
> are objectively representable. (CP 354/GA65
> 503)[39]
We have seen that because aesthetics tries to describe artworks as
objects that express and intensify human subjects' experiences of
life, the aesthetic approach begins "always already" too
late. Modern aesthetics presupposes the perspective of a subject
confronting an external object and thereby misses the way art works
inconspicuously in the background of human existence to shape and
transform our sense of what is and what matters.
Heidegger expands this critique to include
"representation" here because representations are what
modern philosophy typically uses to try to bridge the divide Descartes
opened between subjects and objects. (The objective world
allegedly "external" to subjectivity gets duplicated in
miniature, as it were, and "re-presented" to the
mind--as in the famous Cartesian picture of consciousness as an
internal "theater of representations.") Of course,
Heidegger does not deny that representations sometimes mediate our
experience of the world. What he denies is that representations
go "all the way down," that they plumb the depths of
existence. Instead, representations presuppose a level of
existence they cannot explain. Heidegger's fundamental
phenomenological critique of the modern theoretical picture is that it
overlooks and then cannot recapture the more basic level of engaged
existence, a practical coping with equipment in which no subject/object
dichotomy has yet opened up because self and world remain integrally
entwined and mutually
determining.[40]
This primordial level of engaged
existence, we will see, is what Heidegger thinks Van Gogh's
painting allows us to encounter and understand in a way that no mere
aesthetic representation ever could. In so doing, Heidegger
thinks, Van Gogh's painting allows us to encounter the very
essence of art.
On the basis of passages like the one above, however, some
interpreters claim that "The Origin of the Work of Art"
does not seek to "uncover the essence of art," but that
is
misleading.[41]
As Heidegger says, his essay does not
seek to set out one "timelessly valid determination" of the
essence of art which would apply retrospectively to the entire history
of art, but that is only because he does not understand essences the
way they have been understood from Plato to Kripke, namely, as
"timelessly valid determinations" of what something
is.[42]
In fact,
"The Origin of the Work of Art" does attempt to uncover and
communicate art's historical "essence," by which
Heidegger means that structure which allows art to reveal itself in
different ways as it unfolds in the human understanding across
time. What is confusing for many readers is that this historical
essence of art is not some substance underlying the different forms of
art or even a fixed property that would enable us to distinguish art
from non-art but, instead, an insubstantial and ever-changing
"essential strife" that is built into the structure of all
intelligibility (the structure whereby entities become intelligible as
entities), as we will
see.[43]
Rather than forcing Heidegger to develop an entire art history, the
normative demands of his critical project only require him to focus on
two crucial historical moments in Western humanity's changing
historical understanding of art--a kind of before and after, as it
were, which contrasts the fullness of what has been possible with the
narrowness of what is currently actual. Heidegger is thus
primarily concerned to show, first, how the ancient Greeks encountered
art in a non-aesthetic way (and so enshrined it in their temples), and
second, how art is typically understood and experienced by us late
moderns, who remain caught in the grip of modern aesthetics and so
under the influence of "modern subjectivism" (PLT 76/GA5
63). As subjectivism's unlimited ambition to establish
"mastery over the totality of what-is" (QCT 132/GA5 92)
works to objectify even modernity's vaunted subject, moreover, it
increasingly transforms modern subjectivism into late-modern
"enframing" (as we saw in 2.7).
In "The Origin of the Work of Art," Heidegger suggests
that modern subjectivism and late-modern enframing can be understood as
symptoms of Western humanity's continuing inability to accept our
defining existential finitude. The limitless ambition of our
subjectivist quest to master all reality conceptually results from our
refusal to own up to, make peace with, and find non-nihilistic ways to
affirm the tragic truth Heidegger gleans from the ancients:
>
>
> Much of what is cannot be brought under the rule of humanity.
> Only a little becomes known. What is known remains approximate;
> what is mastered remains unstable. What-is is never something
> [entirely] man-made or even only a representation, as it can all too
> easily appear. (PLT 53/GA5 39)
Heidegger takes off here from the second choral ode in Sophocles'
*Antigone* (which he discussed at length in 1935's
*Introduction to Metaphysics*). For Sophocles'
Theban elders, the one thing humanity cannot master is death. For
Heidegger, thinking about death opens us up to the terrifyingly
"awesome" insight that the known rests on the unknown, the
mastered on the unmastered, like a small ship floating on a deep and
stormy "sea" (IM 159, 164/GA40 159,
162).[44]
We like to believe that
humanity is well on its way to mastering the universe, but art teaches
us that we are far from having exhausted the possibilities inherent in
intelligibility.
Yet, rather than leading us into despair over our essential human
finitude (the fact that we will never master the totality of what-is),
art helps us learn to embrace this finitude by reminding us of its
other side, namely, the fact that intelligibility will never exhaust
its source. For, it remains possible for being to continue to
become newly intelligible only if it cannot ever become fully
intelligible. Art thus teaches us to embrace the insight that
meanings will never be exhausted as precisely what makes it possible
for us to continue to discover new meanings, and in this way art helps
us see that human finitude is not something we should despair over or
seek to deny though compensatory subjectivistic fantasies (of complete control or finally complete systems). Of
course, the claim that we should give up thinking we could ever know
everything does not entail that we should give up trying to know new
things--quite the contrary. If the heroic is what helps us
affirm and thereby transform the tragic (as the famous speech by
Sarpedon in Homer's *Iliad* suggests), then
Heidegger's thinking about art is heroic: Art teaches us to
embrace the initially tragic insight that being will never be
completely revealed in time as the very thing that makes it possible
for human beings to continue to understand what-is in new and
potentially more meaningful ways.
In sum, the point of Heidegger's juxtaposition of modern
spleen and ancient ideal is not to call for the impossible revival of
the lost Greek past but, rather, to help motivate a new, post-aesthetic
understanding of what art could still mean for us, now and in the
future. If, instead of trying to obtain a kind of cognitive
mastery over art through aesthetics--or using aesthetics to extend
our late-modern understanding of all that is as
intrinsically-meaningless resources standing by to be
optimized--we simply allow ourselves to experience what is
happening within a great work of art, then Heidegger thinks we will be
able to encounter the "essential strife" in which the true
work of art paradoxically "rests" and finds its
"repose." When we encounter the
"movement" that paradoxically rests in the masterful
"composure" of a great artwork, moreover, what we discover
therein is an "instability" that underlies the entire
intelligible order, an ontological tension (between revealing and
concealing, emerging and withdrawing) which can never be permanently
stabilized and thus remains even in what is
"mastered."[45]
Indeed,
what is truly mastered artistically, Heidegger suggests, is what
somehow captures, preserves, and communicates this tension in the
structure of intelligibility, allowing us to encounter and understand
this essential tension in a way that helps us learn to transcend the
limits of our modern and late-modern ways of understanding what beings
are.
### 3.2 The Phenomenological Approach to Art
To encounter the paradoxical movement at rest within a great artwork
(the mysterious movement that, Hammermeister nicely suggests, enables
art to move us in turn), Heidegger believes we need only follow the
phenomenological dictum that we should "simply describe"
our experience of the work of art "without any philosophical
theory" (PLT 32/GA5
18).[46]
The phenomenological approach to art
obliges us to
>
>
> restrain from all usual doing and prizing, knowing and looking, in
> order to linger within the truth that is happening in the work.
> Only the restraint of this lingering allows what is created to first be
> the work that it is. (PLT 66/GA5
> 54)[47]
Yet, simply "to let a being be the way it is [*wie es
ist*]" turns out to be "the most difficult of
tasks" (PLT 31/GA5 16). For, insofar as the concepts we use
to make sense of our experience remain uninterrogated as to their own
built-in interpretive biases, we tend not even to notice when
inappropriate conceptual categories lead us to a distorted or
inadequate apprehension of the phenomenon at issue.
Phenomenology's ideal of pure description thus requires us to
struggle vigilantly against our usual tendency to force the square peg
of recalcitrant experience into the round hole of ready-made conceptual
categories. (For example, since metaphysics tells us that things
at rest cannot move, we are inclined to dismiss any inkling of movement
in an artwork as some sort of idiosyncratic, subjective projection on
our parts.) In order truly to be open to the way things show
themselves to us, then, we have "to keep at a distance all
preconceptions and interfering misconceptions" [*Vor- und
Ubergriffe*] of what things *are*. Rather
than giving us license simply to do what comes "naturally,"
following Husserl's famed phenomenological
dictum--"Back to the things
themselves!"--requires us to struggle to discern and
neutralize the usually unnoticed metaphysical presuppositions (such as
the modern assumption of a fundamental subject/object dichotomy) which,
although they remain "derivative" of more basic experiences
that they cannot explain, nevertheless continue to pass themselves off
as "self-evident" and so lead modern aesthetics off track
(PLT 31/GA5 16).
It is not a coincidence that Van Gogh's painting is the first
example of an actual work of art that Heidegger mentions in "The
Origin of the Work of Art," and the context is revealing.
Heidegger is introducing the concept of a "thing," a
seemingly obvious idea the complex history of which he then goes on to
explicate and deconstruct in detail (PLT 20-30/GA5 5-16), thereby
undermining its initial appearance of
obviousness.[48]
By showing that none of the three
standard metaphysical conceptions of a thing (which conceive of a thing
variously as "the bearer of traits, as the unity of a sensory
manifold, and as formed matter" [PLT 30/GA5 15]) manages to
capture fully our sense of what things are, Heidegger is able to make
the crucial suggestion that there is something about a thing which
eludes all our attempts to capture and express it conceptually:
>
>
> The inconspicuous thing withdraws itself from thought most
> stubbornly. Or can it be that this self-refusal of the mere
> thing, this self-contained refusal to be pushed around, belongs
> precisely to the essential nature of things? (PLT 31-2/GA5
> 17)
By suggesting that an ineliminable elusiveness--an independence
from human designs--is in fact essential to what things are,
Heidegger is motivating his own concept of the "earth" as
what both informs and resists conceptualization. (Indeed, this
crucial insight that there is something essential to things that
resists human control seems to be what motivates Heidegger to make the
transition from talking about the "nothing" to discussing
the "earth," as we will see.) At the same time,
Heidegger is also illustrating the phenomenological dictum that our
common-sense view of things--although it appears
"natural" and "self-evident"--is often
freighted with unnoticed metaphysical presuppositions that can eclipse
and so prevent a full encounter with the phenomena we face. By
revealing the limitations of Western philosophy's metaphysical
conceptions of what "things" are, Heidegger gives a
concrete demonstration of his critical-phenomenological (and obviously
Nietzsche-influenced) view that: "What seems natural to us
is presumably just the familiarity of a long-established custom which
has forgotten the unfamiliarity from which it arose" (PLT 24/GA5
9).
The fact that Heidegger's first mention of Van Gogh is framed
by these two ways of undermining our usual sense of the obviousness of
things should lead us to suspect that he is introducing an ordinary
idea that he will subsequently use phenomenology to try to excavate
beneath and so go beyond. Once we recognize the context, it is not difficult to detect
the irony in Heidegger's initial suggestion that "artworks
are familiar to everyone" already since they populate our world
just like all the other objects "on hand":
>
>
> One [*Man*] finds works of architecture and sculpture erected
> in public places, in churches, and in private dwellings.
> ...Works are of course on hand [*vorhanden*, i.e.,
> objectively present] like any other thing. The picture hangs on
> the wall like a rifle or a hat. A painting, for example the one
> by Van Gogh that represents a pair of farmer's shoes, travels
> from one exhibit to another. Works are shipped like coal from the
> Ruhr and logs from the Black Forest. (PLT 19/GA5 3)
In fact, it is clear that for Heidegger the very obviousness of the
public knowledge that artworks are *objects* and that they
*represent* things conceals the more "original"
truths about art which he seeks to uncover in "The Origin of the
Work of
Art."[49]
That the initial familiarity of the anonymous "everyone"
(*jedermann*) with art objects and representational paintings
turns out to be a superficial acquaintance that covers over the true
depths of the matter at issue should not be surprising. Almost a
decade earlier, when *Being and Time* famously sought to
disclose the ubiquitous and thus usually unnoticed ways in which the
anonymous "one [*das Man*] unfolds its true
dictatorship," Heidegger had already observed that "we
read, see, and judge literature and art the way *one* sees and
judges." So, for example, "everyone knows" that Da
Vinci's
"Mona Lisa"
is a great work of art; we think we
"know" this even if the painting has never spoken to us at
all, or if we have only heard that "they say" the enigmatic
hint of a smile on her face is supposed to suggest the numinous
presence of God, or the wry smirk of a secret lover, or, more recently,
that the sublime elusiveness of her smile finally can be
"explained" by neuroscientific findings about the way our
brains process different spatial
frequencies.[50]
Through this kind of
"leveling down" to a publicly-accessible, take-home
message,
>
>
> everything primordial gets glossed over as something long
> familiar. Everything gained by a struggle becomes just something
> to be manipulated. Every mystery loses its power. (BT
> 164-5/SZ 126-7)
"The Origin [*Ursprung*] of the Work of Art"
suggests, conversely, that by struggling personally with the mysteries
at work in Van Gogh's painting of a "A Pair of
Shoes," we can gain an insight into art's most
"primordial" (or "original,"
*Ursprungliche*) level of truth.
Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to present the deepest truths
that emerge from the kind of personal struggle that existential
phenomenology demands without thereby inadvertently supplying the
public with another leveled-down formula to bandy about, a familiar
catchphrase (like "language is the house of being") that
quickly becomes a superficial substitute for the insight it
bespeaks. The problem, expressed metaphorically, is that
receiving a souvenir from someone else's journey makes a poor
substitute for taking that voyage for oneself. Heidegger's
recognition of this difficulty helps explain why he seeks to
*show* at least as much as to *say* what he takes to be
art's deepest truths in "The Origin of the Work of
Art." Indeed, the distinguishing mark of the later
Heidegger's "poetic" style comes from the fact that,
after *Being and Time*, he is no longer content simply to
construct arguments in relatively straightforward philosophical prose,
but also begins to try to lead his audience performatively to see the
phenomenon ultimately at issue for themselves. This is a large
part of what makes Heidegger's later works even more elusive and
challenging for contemporary philosophical readers than *Being and
Time*.[51]
Nonetheless, by drawing on
Heidegger's early as well as his later works, we can clearly
understand the enduring philosophical challenge that his
phenomenological approach to art seeks to surmount.
### 3.3 The Phenomenological Difficulty Heidegger Introduces Van Gogh to Address
The basic problem, we have seen, is that the way works of art
function in the background of our everyday experience cannot be
adequately described in aesthetic terms (as a subject's
experience of an art object) because: (1) aesthetics presupposes
the subject/object dichotomy; (2) this subject/object dichotomy emerges
only at a secondary level of experience, when our primary, integral
engagement with the world of practical equipment breaks down; and (3)
secondary structures of experience like the subject/object dichotomy
cannot recapture the primordial level of our engagement with the world
(the level from which it originally derives), because any such
description of an external object "on hand" for a subject misses
precisely *what it is like* to encounter "equipment"
in a hands-on way. Objective descriptions of equipment bypass the
very "equipmentality of equipment [*Zeughaften des
Zeuges*]" (PLT 32/GA5 17)--as Heidegger still phrases
the point in "The Origin of the Work of Art"--because
such descriptions fail to notice, let alone capture, what it is like to
be integrally involved with equipment in engaged use. The
fundamental problem, then, is: How can such engaged use ever be
adequately described and communicated?
It is this difficult attempt to describe phenomenologically
"what equipment in truth is" (PLT 32/GA5 17)--that is,
to convey the way we encounter something when we are not aware of it as
an object at all but, instead, are completely immersed in our practical
engagement with it--that motivates Heidegger not just to mention
but genuinely to introduce Van Gogh's painting, which Heidegger
thus presents simply "as an example of a common sort of
equipment--a pair of farmer's shoes" (PLT 32/GA5
18). In Van Gogh's most famous painting of
"A Pair of Shoes"
(1886), Heidegger believes we can
"discover what the equipmental being of equipment is in
truth" (PLT 33/GA5 18). In other words, Heidegger thinks
Van Gogh's painting reveals what it is like genuinely to
encounter a shoe in its use as a shoe. As he puts it:
>
>
> The farming woman wears her shoes in the field. Only here are
> they what they are. They are all the more genuinely so, the less
> the farming woman at work thinks about the shoes, or senses them at
> all, or is even aware of them. (PLT 33/GA5 18)
Heidegger thus introduces Van Gogh's painting of (what he
takes to be) a farmer's shoes in order "to facilitate the
visual realization" of "equipmentality," that
primordial modality of existence in which we are integrally involved
with our world and so encountering equipment in a non-thematic,
hands-on
way.[52]
Yet, this is a deeply paradoxical move, as Heidegger himself
realizes, because Van Gogh's painting does not picture shoes
being used as equipment; it pictures shoes merely standing there like
objects in a still-life painting! We will thus remain caught in
an aesthetic experience, Heidegger acknowledges, "as long as we
simply look at the empty, unused shoes as they stand there in the
picture" (PLT 33/GA5 19). The deep puzzle here, then,
is: How is Van Gogh's picture of "empty, unused
shoes" standing there like objects supposed to help us uproot and
transcend the subject/object dichotomy lying at the heart of modern
aesthetics? How, to put the puzzle in Heidegger's terms, is
a picture supposed to help us find a way out of the age of the world
picture? How is our experience of a painting of a pair of shoes
standing there like objects supposed to lead us back to a pre-objective
encounter with "equipmentality"? How, in other words,
can aesthetics transcend itself from within?
Here Heidegger has set up a genuine aporia--or better, an
*Holzweg*, a "forest path" or, more colloquially,
"a path to nowhere." It is not a coincidence that
*Holzwege* is the title Heidegger gave to the book of essays
that opens with "The Origin of the Work of Art." As
Heidegger hints (in the otherwise empty page he had inserted into the
book, before its first page), an *Holzweg* is a path through the
woods made by foresters (and known to backwoods hikers as well as
locals who follow these paths to gather their own firewood, as
Heidegger himself did). Such a path eventually comes to an
apparent dead-end, but this dead-end--seen differently--turns
out to be a "clearing" (or *Lichtung*), that is, a
place from which the trees have been removed which thus offers an
unexpected vista, an epiphany that, although it results only from
walking a particular path for oneself, nevertheless seems to come from
out of the middle of nowhere. For Heidegger, moreover, the
encounter with a "clearing" in a forest from which all the
trees have been removed--that is, an encounter with
*nothing*, initially--makes it possible for us to notice
the light through which we ordinarily see the forest. In his
terms, a clearing redirects our attention from entities to being, that
usually unnoticed ontological light through which things
ordinarily appear. Seeing differently, Heidegger thus suggests,
can turn an apparent dead-end into the occasion for an ontological
epiphany.
### 3.4 Seeing Differently: From the Noth-ing of the Nothing to the Essential Strife of Earth and World
With this crucial idea of seeing differently in mind, notice a
related aporia that appears a bit earlier in Heidegger's
text. While developing his phenomenological critique of the way
the modern conception of what "things" *are*
implicitly structures and so distorts the aesthetic understanding of
art, Heidegger observes that once this "subject-object relation
is coupled with the conceptual pair form-matter," and this
conceptual matrix is combined with the
"rational/irrational" and "logical/illogical"
dichotomies,
>
>
> then representation has at its command a conceptual machinery which
> nothing can stand against [*eine Begriffsmechanik, der nichts
> widerstehen kann*]. (PLT 27/GA5 12)
Heidegger seems to mean us to take his words seriously:
Aesthetic representation now possesses "a conceptual machinery
which nothing can stand against." Taken seriously, however,
these words leave no room for Heidegger's hope of transcending
aesthetics. We reach a dead-end, that is, until we hear these
words differently, as suggesting instead that (the) nothing can indeed
stand against the otherwise irresistible conceptual machinery of
aesthetics.
That might sound bizarre at first, but remember that, for Heidegger,
the nothing is not nothing at all but, rather, does something;
"the nothing itself noths or nihilates [*das Nichts selbst
nichtet*]" [P 90/GA9 114], as he notoriously put it
in
1929.[53]
This active "noth-ing" of the nothing was the first name
Heidegger came up with to describe the phenomenological manifestation
of that which both elicits and eludes complete conceptualization, an
initially inchoate phenomenon we encounter when we go beyond our
guiding conception of what-is. To experience this
"noth-ing" is to become attuned to something which is not a
thing (hence "nothing") but which conditions all our
experiences of things, something which fundamentally informs our worlds
but which we experience primarily as what escapes and so defies our
"subjectivistic" impulse to extend our conceptual mastery
over everything. With the help of Heidegger's strange
thought that only this "nothing" can stand against the
conceptual machinery of aesthetics, we are now poised to understand his
phenomenological interpretation of Van Gogh's painting.
To turn a dead-end into a clearing one has to see it
differently. Notice how Heidegger looks at Van Gogh's
still-life painting of a seemingly ordinary pair of well-worn
shoes. The pivotal point in Heidegger's meditation takes
place when he attends to the fact that "[t]here is nothing
surrounding this pair of farmer's shoes" (PLT
33/GA5
18-9).[54]
Although all the English translations obscure this (and no other
interpreters seem to notice it), it is clear that for Heidegger this
nothing is not nothing at all. Heidegger literally
says:
>
>
> Surrounding this pair of farmer's shoes there is nothing, in
> which and to which they can belong... [*Um dieses Paar
> Bauernschuhe herum ist nichts, wozu und wohin sie gehoren
> konnten...*] (PLT 33/GA5 18-9)
Heidegger thrice introduces Van Gogh's painting of "A
Pair of Shoes" by employing the word "nothing" in
precisely this ambiguous way; as we will see, this is how he begins
every extended discussion of Van Gogh's painting. The
crucial phenomenological question, then, is: What would it mean
to really see this "nothing," to encounter it not as
nothing at all but, quite differently, as that "in which and to
which" the shoes can indeed
belong?[55]
If, following Heidegger, one attends long enough to the
"nothing surrounding this pair of farmer's shoes,"
meditating (with sufficient patience and
care)[56]
on "the undefined
space" (PLT 33/GA5 19) in Van Gogh's
painting--the strange space which surrounds these shoes like an underlying and yet also enveloping atmosphere--one
can notice that inchoate
forms begin to emerge from the background but never quite take a firm
shape; in fact, these shapes tend to disappear when one tries to pin
them
down.[57]
The background of the painting not only
inconspicuously supports the foreground image of the shoes but, when we
turn our attention to this ordinarily inconspicuous background, we can
notice that it continues to offer up other inchoate shapes which resist
being firmly gestalted themselves. This intriguing phenomenon is
more obvious in some of Van Gogh's other paintings; that Van Gogh
seems to have embedded his own hat-wearing visage into the sole light
that illuminates his famous
"Cafe Terrace at Night"
is perhaps easiest to see. It is clear that
"Vincent recognized that something important happened in the old
shoes painting, for he went on to experiment several times with the
theme" (Edwards 2004, p. 51), and if one studies another of Van
Gogh's paintings of
"A Pair of Shoes"
(this one from the following year, 1887), it
seems hard to miss the faces half-emerging from the background in the
upper-right corner of the painting, or the Christ-like figure in the
upper-left.[58]
Heidegger later described this phenomenon as "the tension of
emerging and not emerging," and it is central to his remarks on
the painting of Cezanne and
Klee.[59]
As Young nicely shows,
Heidegger especially admired Klee's later works, such as
"Saint from a Window" (1940), in which the eponymous image
in the foreground barely manages to emerge from the muted cacophony of
other images half-suggesting themselves from the
background.[60]
Here the
tension between emerging and withdrawing is almost as palpable as the
central figure, which seems to be disappearing back into the subtly
dynamic background from which other figures continue to suggest
themselves. In a note he made beneath a sketch of Klee's
"Saint from a Window," Heidegger asks: "If one
erases the 'image'-character [from a picture], what [is
left] to 'see'?" He answers in another note by
quoting Klee himself: "The inner structure organizing the
picture itself thus begins to come to the fore--and come toward
truth, *coute que coute* [whatever
the
cost]."[61]
For Heidegger, to put it simply,
Klee's late paintings preserve the phenomenological struggle of
emerging and withdrawing, and so bring the usually inconspicuous
tension between foreground and background itself to the fore, thereby
offering us a glimpse of the underlying structure hidden within all
art. This phenomenological "tension of emerging and not
emerging" that Heidegger finds in Klee and Cezanne,
however, he first discovered in Van Gogh's painting of "A
Pair of Shoes," specifically, in the way Van Gogh's
painting manifests what "The Origin of the Work of Art"
famously calls "the essential strife" between "earth
and world" (PLT 49/GA5 35).
We can encounter this phenomenological "strife" for
ourselves if we can recognize the way in which what initially seems
like "nothing" in the background of Van Gogh's
painting continues to tantalizingly offer itself to our understanding
while also receding from our attempts to order what it offers us into
any firm, settled meaning. Thus, when Heidegger defines the
phenomenon of "earth" as "the essentially
self-secluding" (PLT 47/GA5 33), he quickly qualifies this
definition by specifying that:
>
>
> The self-seclusion of earth is not a uniform, inflexible staying
> under cover; rather, it unfolds itself in an inexhaustible abundance of
> simple modes and shapes [*eine unerschopfliche*
> *Fulle einfacher Weisen und Gestalten*]. (PLT 47/GA5
> 34)
"Earth," in other words, is an inherently dynamic
dimension of intelligibility that simultaneously offers itself to and
resists being fully brought into the light of our "worlds"
of meaning and permanently stabilized therein, despite our best
efforts. These very efforts to bring the earth's
"inexhaustible abundance of simple modes and shapes"
completely into the light of our worlds generates what Heidegger calls
the "essential strife" between "earth" and
"world":
>
>
> The world grounds itself on the earth and the earth juts through the
> world. ...The world, in resting upon the earth, strives to
> raise the earth completely [into the light]. As self-opening, the
> world cannot endure anything closed. The earth, however, as
> sheltering and concealing, tends always to draw the world into itself
> and keep it there. (PLT 49/GA5 35)
In Heidegger's view, then, for a great artwork to
*work*--that is, for it to help focus and preserve a
meaningful "world" for an
audience[62]--this
artwork must
maintain an essential tension between the *world* of meanings it
pulls together and the more mysterious phenomenon of the
"earth." *Earth*, in his analysis, both
informs and sustains this meaningful world and also resists being
interpretively exhausted by it, thereby allowing a great artwork
quietly to maintain the sanctity of the inexhaustible within the very
world of meanings it conveys.
Like that notorious "nothing" which (Heidegger wrote in
1929) "makes possible the manifestation of entities as such for
human existence [or 'being-here,' *Dasein*]"
(P 91/GA9 115), the "earth" is thus Heidegger's name
in 1935-36 for what he most frequently calls "being as
such," a dynamic phenomenological "presencing"
(*Anwesen*) which gives rise to our worlds of meaning without
ever being exhausted by them, a dimension of intelligibility we
experience both as it informs and as it escapes our attempts to pin
it
down.[63]
What this suggests, then, is that by 1935 Heidegger had become
dissatisfied with his broadly misunderstood "nothing noths"
terminology, and so seeks here to redescribe and more carefully elaborate
the mysterious phenomenon he had called the "noth-ing" six
years earlier as the "essentially self-secluding earth,"
the self-seclusion of which becomes palpable in its resistance to our
best efforts to bring the phenomenon fully into the light of our
worlds. We can even observe this refining redescription taking
place in Heidegger's interpretation of Van Gogh.
### 3.5 From the Phenomenology of Van Gogh's Painting to the Ontology of Art
Heidegger's most famous presentation of Van Gogh's
painting pivots again on an ambiguous use of "nothing," to
which Heidegger now adds an elliptical, intimating locution ("And
yet...") in order to encourage his audience to hear a subtle
shift and so notice the meaning suggested by his otherwise superfluous
addition, "and nothing more." Heidegger's use
of this ambiguous locution ("and nothing more") was a
well-established rhetorical trope for him by 1935; it was his preferred
method for introducing the idea of that "nothing" we
encounter when we move beyond the totality of entities toward that
which makes it possible to encounter these entities the way we
do. Heidegger had established the pattern in 1929's
"What Is Metaphysics?" by deliberately employing just such
ambiguous locutions seven times in a row, referring to "the
entity itself--and nothing besides [*und sonst
nichts*]," "the entity itself--and nothing further
[*und weiter nichts*]," "the entity itself--and
beyond that, nothing," etc., and then driving the point home with
the rhetorical question: "Is this only a manner of
speaking--and nothing besides?" (P 84/GA9 105)
Seen in this light, the fact that Heidegger repeats the same
rhetorical strategy when he introduces Van Gogh's painting
becomes unmistakable:
>
>
> A pair of farmer's shoes and nothing more. And yet.
> [*Ein Paar Bauernschuhe und nichts weiter. Und dennoch.*]
>
>
>
>
> From out of the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the
> toilsome tread of the worker stares forth... The shoes
> vibrate with the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the
> ripening grain [i.e., "earth" makes "world"
> possible by inconspicuously *giving* itself to the world] and
> the earth's unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of
> the wintry field [i.e., it is also constitutive of earth that it
> *resists* this world by receding back into itself]. (PLT
> 33-4/GA5 19)
>
>
>
As the editorial insertions suggest, the point of Heidegger's
phenomenological interpretation of Van Gogh's painting of the
shoes is not to engage in an armchair anthropology of farming but,
rather, to suggest that attending to the "nothing" in Van
Gogh's painting reveals the deepest level of "truth"
at work in art, namely, the essential tension in which the
phenomenologically abundant "earth" simultaneously makes
possible and also resists being finally mastered or fully expressed
within the "world."
When attending to the mysterious nothing allows us to recognize the
dynamic tension between "earth" and "world"
preserved in Van Gogh's painting, then we have thereby
encountered what is for Heidegger the inner tension at the heart of
art, a tension which not only drives art and keeps it alive but also
allows humanity's understanding of being to unfold
historically. "Art" in this essential
sense--which Heidegger also calls "poetry" or
*poiesis*, that is, *bringing into being*--can be
understood as an unending creative struggle to express that which
conditions and informs our worlds of meaning and yet resists being
exhaustively articulated in the terms of these
worlds.[64]
The conflict preserved
in Van Gogh's painting--between emerging into the light and
receding into the darkness, revealing and withdrawing, "emerging
and not emerging"--is thus for Heidegger the basic structure
of intelligibility as it takes place in time.
Heidegger's description of this essential conflict between
earth and world should be understood as his attempt to elaborate
phenomenologically his enduring ontological understanding of truth as
the inherently agonistic manifestation of *a-letheia*,
that is, "truth" conceived ontologically as
historically-variable "un-concealment" or
"dis-closure." It is, we could say, the
*hyphen* in *a-letheia*--the joining together,
literally "under one" (*hypo* + *hen*), of
revealing and concealing--that Heidegger develops as the essential
strife between world and
earth.[65]
With world and earth, in other words,
Heidegger seeks to name and so render visible the quietly conflictual
structure at the heart of intelligibility, the unified opposition that
allows "being" to be "dis-closed" in
time. Since *Being and Time* at least, Heidegger had
insisted on the "equiprimordiality" or
"co-originality" (*Gleichursprunglichkeit*) of
"truth" and "untruth" (BT 265/SZ 222), building
on Husserl's phenomenological axiom that the emergence of one
thing or aspect of a thing into intelligibility requires the concealing
of another. (Taken to its extreme, this axiom allows Heidegger to
suggest that the totality of what-is stands in the place of and so
conceals the "nothing" from which it
emerges.)[66]
For
Heidegger, the fact that there can be no revealing without concealing
(and vice versa) is a necessary feature not just of perception or
cognition but of intelligibility in
general.[67]
The truth disclosed by Van Gogh's particular
("ontic") work of art is thus *ontological*.
That is, the tension between emerging and withdrawing that is visible
in Van Gogh's painting implicitly conditions all artistic
creation, which (we have seen) means all bringing-into-being, that is,
all historical intelligibility. Heidegger thus goes so far as to
claim that:
>
>
> The world is the self-disclosing openness of the broad paths of the
> simple and essential decisions in the destiny of an historical
> people. The earth is the spontaneous forthcoming of that which is
> continually self-secluding and to that extent sheltering and
> concealing. World and earth are essentially different from one
> another and yet are never separated... The work-being of the
> work consists in the fighting of the battle [*der Bestreitung des
> Streites*] between world and earth. (PLT 49/GA5 35-6)
As "earth," in other words, intelligibility
tantalizingly offers previously unglimpsed aspects of itself to our
understanding and yet also withdraws from our attempts to order those
aspects into a single fixed meaning. As "world," we
struggle nevertheless to force a stable ordering onto this
inexhaustible phenomenological abundance, however temporarily. In
this way, "earth" both supports and resists
"world," tantalizingly eliciting, always informing,
and yet also partly escaping all our attempts to finally stabilize our
intelligible worlds, to assign a firm shape to things once and for
all.
The "essential strife" of this *a-letheiac*
struggle between concealing and revealing, earth and world, is
precisely what Heidegger thinks Van Gogh renders visible in his
painting of "A Pair of
Shoes."[68]
What we can thus learn
from a work of art like Van Gogh's painting--in which this
usually inconspicuous tension is masterfully preserved and
conveyed--is that our intelligible worlds are shaped by what we
take from and make of a dynamic phenomenological abundance that we can
never fully grasp or finally
master.[69]
By partly informing and yet always also
partly eluding our attempts to order those aspects the earth offers to
our understanding into a single, final historical "world,"
the abundant earth preserves itself for future orderings, for worlds
still yet to be
disclosed.[70]
### 3.6 Representing Nothing: Transcending Aesthetic Subjectivism from Within
For Heidegger, then, the essential tension between
"world" and "earth"--the dynamic
back-and-forth whereby some things (or aspects of things) cannot emerge
into the light of our intelligible worlds without others withdrawing
into the background (which means that it is impossible for everything to take place
in intelligibility all at once)--names the basic conflict in the
structure of intelligibility, a conflict which is ultimately
responsible for the historical unfolding of what
*is*.[71]
Once we
realize this, we can see that Heidegger's only other major
reference to Van Gogh's painting (in 1935's *The
Introduction to Metaphysics*) again follows the same basic sequence
of phenomenological steps. This important passage turns once more
on the double meaning of (the) "nothing" (which Heidegger
again seeks to suggest with the subtly ambiguous locution,
"nothing else"):
>
>
> A painting by Van Gogh: a pair of tough farmer's shoes,
> nothing else [*sonst nichts*]. The picture really
> represents nothing [*Das Bild stellt eigentlich nichts
> dar*]. Yet, what *is* there, with that you are
> immediately alone, as if on a late autumn evening, when the last potato
> fires have burned out, you yourself were heading wearily home from the
> field with your hoe. (IM 37-8/GA40 38)
Readers often take Heidegger's deliberately provocative claim
that "[t]he picture really represents nothing" as a
flat-footed assertion that Van Gogh's painting does not
represent
shoes.[72]
But that obscures Heidegger's deeper point and, in fact, would
make no more sense than if, beneath
"The Treason of Images"
(1929)--Magritte's realistic
representation of a pipe against a blank background-- Magritte had painted not the famous words, "This is not a pipe [*Ceci
n'est pas une pipe*]" but
instead: "This is not
a *representation* of a pipe." For, Magritte's
most obvious point is that a representation of a pipe (be it pictorial
or linguistic) is not itself a pipe. The surreal effect of
"The Treason of Images" comes from the way it encourages
viewers to confront the usually unnoticed distance between
representations and the things they represent. "This is not
a pipe" calls the very obviousness of representation into
question, and so points toward the mysteries concealed beneath the
system of representation we usually take for
granted.[73]
The effect of Heidegger's provocative claim about Van
Gogh's painting of "A Pair of Shoes" is
similar. When Heidegger states that "[t]he picture really
represents nothing," he is not advancing the bizarre claim that
Van Gogh's painting of a pair of shoes does not represent
shoes. The fact that Van Gogh's painting represents shoes
is the first thing anyone notices about it and it is also (as we have
seen) the first thing Heidegger himself mentioned about it: Van
Gogh's picture "represents [*darstellt*] a pair of
farmer's shoes" (PLT 19/GA5 3). Heidegger is not
retracting that claim but, instead, building upon it, suggesting that
Van Gogh's painting does more than just represent a pair of
shoes: Van Gogh's painting "really, properly, or
authentically" (*eigentlich*) represents (the)
nothing. Indeed, it represents (the) nothing in a way that
ultimately allows us to transcend aesthetic representation from
within--by getting us back in touch with a more basic level of
human existence which the order of objective representations
presupposes but cannot fully
recapture.[74]
The suggestively ambiguous phrase, "nothing out of the
ordinary," might make a good title for Heidegger's attempt
to show how the mysterious "nothing" emerges from Van
Gogh's painting of a seemingly ordinary pair of shoes. For
Heidegger, it is not that the person who broke in these empty shoes,
although absent from the painting, nevertheless remains present there
in his or her very absence. It is true, as Edwards (2004, p. 54)
suggests, that the palpable presence of the missing person whose feet
shaped the shoes that Van Gogh painted quite naturally leads those who
study the painting carefully to wonder, *Whose* *shoes*
were these originally? And that question, in turn, helps fuel the
controversy that still surrounds Heidegger's interpretation of
the painting (see section 4). For Heidegger, however, the
"nothing" that is visible in Van Gogh's painting is
not the haunting presence of these shoes' absent owner but,
instead, the equally paradoxical (and no less phenomenologically
discernible) appearance of that which is neither an entity nor merely
nothing at all and yet conditions our experience of all
entities. We can encounter this active nothing phenomenologically as we learn to be receptive to the textural hints of that which is not yet a thing and yet offers itself, in the suggestive hints of a "outline" or "rift-structure", beckoning to be gestated and so brought into being by our disclosive capacities.
What Heidegger finally wants to suggest, then, is not just that
the nothing emerges from the ordinary (that the nothing makes itself
visible in Van Gogh's painting of an ordinary pair of shoes) but
also the reverse, that what we now think of as "ordinary"
first originated out of the "nothing," through the
essential struggle between earth and world. For, in
Heidegger's view, initially extraordinary creations, once brought
into being, eventually become stabilized in intelligibility and so
perceived as merely "ordinary" (in much the same way that
what begins as a revealing poetic insight is eventually routinized into
a worn-out
cliche).[75]
As he thus puts it:
>
>
> Does truth, then, originate out of nothing? In fact it does,
> if by "nothing" we mean no more than that which is not a
> being, and if "a being" represents that which is
> objectively on hand [*Vorhandene*] in the normal way--a
> [way of conceiving] "being," the merely putative truth of
> which comes to light and thereby becomes shattered by the
> standing-there of the work. (PLT 71/GA5 59)
In other words, the encounter with the nothing in the work of art
"shatters" the taken-for-granted obviousness of the modern
theoretical framework in which subjects seek to master external
objects, a framework implicit in the basic aesthetic view according to
which subjects undergo intensive experiences of art objects. The
phenomenological encounter with Van Gogh's painting undermines
the obviousness of the modern worldview by returning us directly to the
primordial level of engaged existence in which subject and object have
not yet been differentiated. Indeed, Heidegger thinks that
aesthetics transcends itself from within in the encounter with Van
Gogh's painting because this encounter with the work of art
brings us back to this engaged level of existence in a particularly
lucid and revealing way. This lucid encounter, moreover, is
supposed to help us transform our guiding sense of what beings are,
leading us beyond both the modern and late-modern understandings of
being as objects to be mastered and resources to be optimized.
But how exactly?
Heidegger thinks we can transcend modern aesthetics from within if,
in what begins as an ordinary aesthetic experience of an
object--Van Gogh's painting of a pair of shoes--that
stands opposite us (as if external to our own subjectivity), we notice
and carefully attend to the way these shoes take shape on and against
an inconspicuously dynamic background (the "noth-ing"
rethought as "earth"), a background which is not nothing at
all but, rather, both supports and exceeds the intelligible world that
emerges from
it.[76]
Our experience of an aesthetic object
transcends itself here because, in order to encounter Van Gogh's
artwork in its full phenomenological richness (by recognizing the
struggle between "earth and world" that is preserved in the
painting), we can no longer approach the meaning of this work as if
this meaning were entirely contained within an external object standing
apart from us. Our phenomenological encounter with Van
Gogh's painting shows us that its meaning is neither located
entirely in the object standing over against us nor is it simply
projected by our subjectivity onto an inherently meaningless work; the
work's meaning must instead be inconspicuously accomplished in
our own engagement with the work. Through our engagement with Van
Gogh's painting, Heidegger suggests, we lucidly encounter the
negotiation by which we are always-already making sense of the
world.
It is crucial for Heidegger that we not reinterpret this encounter
as a subject's selective cognitive and perceptual uptake of an
objective world. What we encounter in art is something more
deeply rooted in existence which the modern subject/object dichotomy
skates right over. Our encounter with the work teaches us that
that meaning does not happen solely in the art object or the viewing
subject but instead takes place, we could say, *between* us and
the work. This, again, is an *ontological* truth; it holds
true of (human) existence in general. To be *Dasein* is to
be "the being of the '*between'*" (HCT
251/GA20 346-7), as Heidegger first put it in 1925.
This means that our encounter with Van Gogh's painting helps us
to realize and so *become what we are*. For, what we
lucidly encounter in art is our making-sense of the place in which we
find ourselves, a fundamental "world-disclosing" that is
always already at work in human "existence," our
standing-out into intelligibility. For Heidegger, Van
Gogh's painting allows us to lucidly encounter what we already
are, most fundamentally, but without realizing it--namely,
*Dasein*, "being-here," the active making
intelligible of the place in which we find ourselves. Art teaches
us to become what we already are by allowing us lucidly to undergo the
transition from understanding and experiencing ourselves as
meaning-bestowing subjects standing over against an objective world to
recognizing that, at a deeper level, we are always implicitly
participating in the making-intelligible of our
worlds.[77]
### 3.7 Heidegger's Post-Modern Understanding of Art
This implicit struggle whereby being becomes intelligible in time,
we have seen, is the very essence of art, the "poetic"
heart of creation responsible for both providing and renewing our sense
of what-is. As Heidegger puts it:
>
>
> everything with which humanity is endowed must, in the [poetic]
> projection [that "brings-into-being" or makes things newly
> intelligible], be drawn up from out of the closed ground [i.e., from
> the "earth" understood as the untapped possibilities still
> concealed within the tradition] and set upon this ground.
> (PLT 75-6/GA5 63)
Humanity's ontological "endowment" (our sense of
what entities are) comes from the poetic
"naming-into-being" (or making intelligible) at the heart
of art. Moreover, Heidegger adds (showing that he was indeed a
conservative revolutionary, in 1936 at least), Western humanity's
sense of being can only be changed historically through the creative
discovery of possibilities hidden within the tradition that has come
down to us. Only by discovering the tradition's hidden
heritage can we hope to reshape our communal sense of what is and what
matters, thereby redrawing the basic contours of this tradition and so
creating new possibilities for human understanding and action. In
this way, for Heidegger, art remains capable of redrawing the lines
that establish our basic sense of what-is and what matters.
For art to accomplish this revolutionary task, however, the artist
must be able to see something beginning to take shape where others see
nothing at all. All great creators must be able to discern the
inchoate contours of something previously unseen and, as if thus
playing midwife to being, help draw it into the light of the
world.
>
>
> Because it is such a drawing, all creation is a drawing-up (like
> drawing water from a well). Modern subjectivism, of course,
> misinterprets creation as the product of the genius of the
> self-sovereign subject [and so imagines that a genius creates *ex
> nihilo*, by simply projecting his or her subjectivity onto an
> otherwise meaningless world]. ...The poeticizing projection comes
> out of nothing in the sense that it never derives its gift from what is
> familiar and already there. But in another sense it does not come
> out of nothing; for what it projects is only the withheld determination
> of historical existence [*Dasein*] itself. (PLT 76/GA5
> 63-4)
As this suggests, at the very core of Heidegger's
understanding of art is an encounter with a "nothing" that
is not simply nothing at all but, rather, designates possible meanings
still concealed within the tradition, which preserves historical
intelligibility as it has come down to us. The inchoate contours
of that which is not yet a thing need to be drawn out in an original
way in order to release the possibilities inherent in the tradition and
so create or renew humanity's ontological inheritance for the
future. In other words, artistic creation requires the exercise
of an active receptivity we might call *ontological*
*response-ability*, that is, an ability to respond to the
inchoate ways in which being offers itself to intelligibility.
For, only such an ability will prove capable (in Heidegger's
terms) of bringing that which was hidden in the "noth-ing"
(or still slumbering in the "earth") into the light of our
historical worlds.
To participate in such creation, the artist needs to be receptive to
what "The Origin of the Work of Art" calls the
"rift-design" or "fissure" (*Riss*)
that joins the world to the earth. By "creatively"
and selectively responding to the abundance of ways in which being
genuinely offers itself to us, the artist establishes one of these
possibilities, bringing it into the light of day for the first time,
just as Michelangelo legendarily spent weeks carefully studying the
subtle network of veins and fissures running through that famous piece
of marble before he could set his "David" free from the
stone. This is not to say that David was the only possible form
slumbering in that particular piece of marble; the rifts and fissures
running through it might have been taken up by the artist and
creatively gestalted in other ways, thereby giving birth to other, more
or less different
sculptures.[78]
In any such case, however, "the
establishing of truth in the work is the bringing forth of a being such
as never was before and will never come to be again" (PLT 62/GA5
50). In artistic creation, the artist responds to what offers itself,
creatively discerning and helping to realize the outlines of a new
world in the manifold possibilities offered up by the
earth.[79]
As Heidegger puts it:
>
>
> There certainly lies hidden in nature a rift-design, a measure and
> border, and, tied to it, a capacity for bringing-forth--that is,
> art. But it is equally certain that this art hidden in nature
> becomes manifest only through the work, because it is lodged
> originarily in the work. (PLT 70/GA5 58)
In Heidegger's view, then, all great artists learn to
recognize and respond to the complex texture of edges, lines, and
breaks which together constitute an open-ended "basic
design" or "outline sketch" (PLT 63/GA5 51), which
the artist then creatively gestalts in order to bring at least one of
the "inexhaustible" shapes still hidden in the earth into
the light of the world.
To gestalt the hints nature offers us in one way is necessarily not
to gestalt them in another, but Heidegger thinks that Van Gogh's
painting of the shoes preserves the hints of other possible gestalts in
its quietly dynamic tension between what clearly takes shape in the
foreground and what recedes into the background. For, in Van
Gogh's painting, what recedes into the phenomenological
background does so in such a way that, rather than completely
disappearing behind the foreground image, it continues to manifest a
complex texture of rifts and fissures that suggest the possibility of
other gestalts, new ways of drawing out what simultaneously offers
itself to and withdraws from our grasp, even ones that challenge the
habitual ways in which we have come to see things (as an ordinary pair
of shoes, for example). As Heidegger thus puts it, a truly great
artistic "beginning...always contains the undisclosed
abundance of the unfamiliar and extraordinary, which means that it
also contains the strife with the familiar and the ordinary" (PLT
76/GA5 64).
Heidegger's view that the hints intelligibility offers us can
be gestalted in more than one way makes him an *ontological*
*pluralist* (or *plural realist*), but he does not
believe that just anything goes. As his thoughts on the
"rift-structure" permeating intelligibility suggest,
Heidegger firmly believes that there is a coming into being in nature
itself which the bringing into being through art should serve.
This means that there must be limits on what the artist can creatively
impose that arise from the matter itself. The
"abundant" dimension of intelligibility Heidegger calls
"earth" has to genuinely resist the artist's creative
efforts to bring it into the light of the world at some point (or
points), or else art would just be a frictionless subjective projection
or hallucination (or even a deeper ontological destructiveness
masquerading as creativity), rather than an ontologically-maieutic
gestalting that finds a genuinely creative way to be grounded in and
truly responsive to the ways things show themselves. The
importance of acknowledging that there is always something in
intelligibility that resists our merely subjective designs (and not
Carnap's famous critique) seems to be the main reason Heidegger
stopped talking about the "nothing" and began referring to
the "earth." All genuine creativity, all
bringing-into-being, must learn to recognize and respect (what we could
think of as) the texture of the text with which it works. This
mean that all artists--indeed, all those who would
bring-into-being in a meaningful way, whatever media they work
with--must learn to draw creatively upon an elusive and excessive dimension of being
that cannot be entirely appropriated, finally mastered, or
definitively manipulated.[80]
Heidegger thus implicitly contrasts two drastically different ways
of comporting ourselves toward that which shows itself to
us--namely, the active receptivity of a genuinely
"post-modern" responsiveness to the phenomenological
"abundance" of being, on the one hand, and, on the other,
the endless domination of modern subjectivism (which treats everything
as an object to be mastered) or, even worse, the obtuse reductiveness
of late-modern enframing (which understands and so relates to
everything as an intrinsically-meaningless resource to be
optimized). Perhaps the easiest way to understand the difference
between the poetic and technological modes of revealing Heidegger
contrasts is to think in terms of the ancient Greek distinction between
*poiesis* and *techne*. Simply think, first,
of a poetic midwifery that respects and seeks to draw out the natural
potentialities of the matters with which it works, as Michelangelo
legendarily *freed* his "David" from the
marble or, less hyperbolically put, as a skillful woodworker notices
the inherent qualities of particular pieces of wood (attending to
subtleties of shape and grain, shades of color, weight, and hardness),
while deciding what (or even whether) to build from that wood. In
the same way, Heidegger contends, "[t]he authentic interpretation
must show what does not stand there in the words and yet is said
nevertheless" (IM 173/GA40 171). For Heidegger, as this
suggests, an "authentic" hermeneutics must work creatively
to bring forth the hidden riches of a text in the same way that a true
woodworker learns to "answer and respond above all to the
different kinds of wood and to the shapes slumbering within
wood--to wood as it enters into human dwelling with all the hidden
riches of its nature" (WCT 14/GA8 17). Our creative yet responsive disclosure of such hermeneutic possibilities is what Heidegger calls "preservation," because it works to keep the world opened by the work alive historically as a way of seeing and understanding.
The distinctive character of this post-modern responsiveness to the
abundance of being stands out most clearly when we contrast it with our
defining late-modern tendency toward the kind of technological making
which imposes form on matter without paying any heed to its intrinsic
potentialities, in the way that, for example, an industrial factory
indiscriminately grinds wood into woodchips in order to paste them back
together into straight particle board which can then be used flexibly
to efficiently construct a maximal variety of useful
objects.[81]
To
emphasize the difference, Heidegger pointedly asks: "But where in
the manipulations of the industrial worker is there any relatedness to
such things as the shapes slumbering within wood?" (WCT 23/GA8
26) Insofar as such a relatedness cannot be found, something
crucial has gone
missing.[82]
For, without such an ontological
responsiveness, human beings lose touch with what Heidegger understands
as the source of meaning. Although our late-modern metaphysics
leads us to assume that all meaning comes from us, as the result of our
subjective "value positings," Heidegger is committed to the
less subjectivistic and more phenomenologically accurate view that, at
least with respect to that which most matters to us (the paradigm case
being love), what we care about most is not entirely up to us,
not simply within our power to control, and that this is a crucial part
of what makes it so
important.[83]
To learn from art how to understand the being of entities in a
post-modern way means learning to cultivate and develop the ontological
responsiveness that allows us to understand and experience entities as
being richer in meaning than we are capable of doing justice to
conceptually, rather than taking them as intrinsically meaningless
resources awaiting optimization. In this way, we can learn to
approach the humble things that make up our worlds with care, humility,
patience, gratitude, even
awe.[84]
This subjectivism-humbling lesson in
ontological responsiveness is precisely what Heidegger thinks great art
like Van Gogh's painting of "A Pair of Shoes" can
help teach
us.[85]
In the contemporaneous "Holderlin and the
Essence of Poetry" (1936), Heidegger argues that the German
Romantic poet Friedrich Holderlin is the "poet of
poetry" because Holderlin's poetry expresses
poetically what poetry *is*: Holderlin's poetry
names-into-being the fact that poetry itself is essentially
a
naming-into-being.[86]
In the same way, "The Origin of
the Work of Art" presents Van Gogh as the painter of
painting. For Heidegger, Van Gogh is the painter who paints what
painting really *is*, because his painting captures and
preserves that essential tension between revealing and concealing,
"earth" and "world," which is at work in all
*art*, indeed, in all creation, all bringing into and
maintaining in intelligibility.
What drew Heidegger to Van Gogh, then, was not just their mutual
affinity for rural life, their shared awareness of the way its pastoral
rhythms are rooted in nature's cycles and bespeak a fundamental
faith that hard work can bring forth the earth's hidden
bounty. Heidegger seems to have been deeply moved by the way
half-formed figures seem to struggle to take shape in the background of
Van Gogh's paintings, less in clear lines than in the thick
texture of the paint, brush strokes, and deep fields of color.
(This is something that, unfortunately, even the most realistic
representations of his paintings fail fully to convey, which is why
there is no substitute for encountering Van Gogh's paintings in
person.) For Heidegger, these two sources of attraction work
together; it is the mysterious bounty of the strife between world and
earth that comes through in the tension between what shows itself in
the foreground and what recedes into the background of Van Gogh's
paintings. In Heidegger's interpretation, Van Gogh's
painting preserves the essential strife whereby the "nothing
noths," both calling for and partly eluding conceptualization,
and his painting thereby allows us to encounter the way the earth both
yields to and resists our worlds and so, out "of the calm of
great riches, ripens and dispenses what is inexhaustible" (IM
164/GA40 118).
## 4. Conclusion: Resolving the Controversy Surrounding Heidegger's Interpretation of Van Gogh
Heidegger's subtle but ambitious effort to show phenomenologically how
aesthetics can transcend itself from within in an encounter with Van
Gogh's painting has not been well understood, and Heidegger's attempt,
as part of that effort, to link Van Gogh's painting with the deep
spiritual wisdom of rural life proved highly controversial (to say the
least). Unfortunately, this controversy has subsequently distracted
readers from understanding what Heidegger was really trying to do. By
working through this controversy here, however, we can finally resolve
it, draw its important lessons, and so put it behind us.
As we have seen, Heidegger assumes that the shoes Van Gogh painted
belong to a farming woman. The standard but unfortunate
translation of *die Bauerin*--literally "the
female farmer"--as "the peasant woman" is not
just classist but misleading. That the shoes disclose the world
of a *farmer* is important for Heidegger precisely because the
farmer's world is deeply attuned to the struggle with the earth;
the farming woman works the earth daily, caring for, struggling with,
and ultimately depending on the earth to nurture and bring forth
her
harvest.[87]
Heidegger suggests that no one is more
immediately attuned to the struggle between earth and world than the
experienced farmer, long intimate with "the uncomplaining fear as
to the certainty of bread" as well as "the wordless joy of
having once more withstood want" (PLT 34/GA5 19). Of
course, farmers forced to abandon their farms in the dust bowl might
find Heidegger's vision of the earth as that which, from out
"of the calm of great riches, ripens and dispenses what is
inexhaustible" (IM 164/GA40 118) to be a romantic
exaggeration. Nevertheless, during the great depression era of
the 1930s, "the earth" really was Heidegger's chosen
name for that "inexhaustible" dimension of intelligibility
experienced not only by farmers while farming but also by poets while
poetizing, painters while painting, thinkers while thinking, and,
indeed, by all those who create by patiently and carefully seeking to
bring something long nurtured and concealed in a protective darkness
into the light of day. That such metaphors also suggest pregnancy
might help explain why Heidegger imagines the farmer as a woman,
despite the fact that the shoes in Van Gogh's painting appear
rather masculine to our contemporary aesthetic sensibilities. Or
Heidegger might simply have assumed that the shoes belonged to a female
farmer because the exhibition in which he originally saw
Van Gogh's 1886 painting of "A pair of shoes"
was
probably populated with some of Van Gogh's many paintings from
1885 of women
engaged in farm work
(women
digging in the fields,
planting,
harvesting
and
peeling potatoes,
and so on).
In fact, however, we have no way of knowing exactly which paintings
Heidegger saw at the 1930 exhibit of Van Gogh's works in
Amsterdam he later recalled having
visited.[88]
The debate surrounding
Heidegger's interpretation of Van Gogh's painting can be
traced back to the fact that initially it is not even clear which
painting Heidegger is referring to when he invokes an allegedly
"well known painting by Van Gogh, who painted such shoes several
times." (Here are links to three of them, dated
Spring 1887,
early 1887,
and June 1886.)
If Heidegger was aware that Van Gogh painted no fewer than five works
titled "A Pair of Shoes"
between 1886 and 1888, plus several other pairs of wooden farmer's
clogs,
leather clogs,
and paintings of
more than one pair of shoes,
then he does not seem to have thought
this fact significant. The art historian who was closest to
Heidegger, Heinrich Petzet, proposes that the "various versions
[of Van Gogh's 'A Pair of Shoes'] each show the same
thing," and this might well be what Heidegger himself thought (if
he ever even thought about it): Each of these paintings manifests
the struggle between earth and
world.[89]
Yet, there are lots of other
differences between these paintings; anyone who studies them will
quickly see that they are not even all paintings of the same pair of
shoes. Given the subsequent fame of Heidegger's essay, it
is quite understandable that both art historians and phenomenologists
would want to determine precisely which painting Heidegger was
referring to in "The Origin of the Work of Art" so as to be
able to evaluate his interpretation for ourselves. When the
eminent art historian Meyer Schapiro took up the task of identifying the
painting in the 1960s, however, the mystery over which shoes Heidegger
was actually referring to exploded into a whole new controversy.
Schapiro wrote to Heidegger to find out where and when he had
actually seen Van Gogh's painting; Heidegger, then nearing
eighty, recalled having seen an exhibition in Amsterdam in 1930, so
Schapiro cross-referenced all the works that could possibly have been
exhibited there with Heidegger's own descriptions of the painting
in his essay. In the end, Schapiro concluded not just that
Heidegger had melded several paintings together in his memory but that,
in so doing, Heidegger had mistaken as the shoes of a female farmer
shoes that in fact belonged to Van Gogh
himself.[90]
The significance of
Schapiro's famous criticism has been hotly debated ever
since. Art historians have typically taken Schapiro's claim
that Heidegger mistakenly attributed Van Gogh's own shoes to a
farming woman as a devastating objection that pulls the rug right out
from under Heidegger's interpretation of the painting, whereas
philosophers sympathetic to Heidegger often conclude that
Schapiro's objection simply misses Heidegger's
point.[91]
(These
philosophers thus treat Heidegger's apparent error of attribution
as if it were of no more philosophical importance than the remarkably
similar fact that the work Heidegger attributed to Don Scotus in his
Habilitation thesis was shown subsequently to have been written instead
by Thomas of
Erfurt.)[92]
To wit, Dreyfus dismisses the question of who the shoes originally
belonged to as "irrelevant to how the picture works" (2005,
p. 409). Although Dreyfus is ultimately right, his dismissal is
much too quick to convince the many who disagree. For,
Schapiro's criticism does indeed constitute a devastating
objection to Heidegger's interpretation of Van Gogh, if that
interpretation is understood in the standard way. According to
what most readers take to be the sequence of phenomenological steps in
Heidegger's interpretation of Van Gogh, Heidegger begins (1) with
the assumption that the shoes belong to a farmer, an assumption which
then allows him (2) to invoke that struggle with the earth with which
the farmer's world is so closely attuned, so that he can finally
(3) postulate this earth/world tension as the ontological truth of
art. On this reconstruction of his argument, however, if
Heidegger is wrong that the shoes belonged to a farmer then the
phenomenological bridge he is trying to build between a particular
("ontic") work of art and the ontological truth of art in
general would collapse before it even gets off the ground, severed at
its very first step.
Indeed, Heidegger's entire interpretation of Van Gogh as the
painter of the ontological truth of painting implodes if its first step
is merely an idiosyncratic and arbitrary projection on
Heidegger's part--or something worse. And this is
precisely what Schapiro alleges. As Schapiro delivers his
verdict:
>
>
> Alas for him, the philosopher has deceived himself. He has
> retained from his encounter with Van Gogh's canvas a moving set
> of associations with peasants and the soil, which are not sustained by
> the picture itself. They are grounded rather in his own social
> outlook with its heavy pathos of the primordial and earthy. He
> has indeed "imagined everything and projected it into the
> painting." (Schapiro 1968, p. 138)
As this attempt to link Heidegger's thinking of earth with
"the soil" and his "social outlook" suggests,
Schapiro's famous criticism has an obvious political
subtext. To put it bluntly, Schapiro is insinuating that Heidegger
projected his own National Socialist-tainted associations onto Van
Gogh's work, then mistook these "blood and soil"
projections for the truth of the
painting.[93]
Even stripped of the
political subtext that motivates it, this allegation that
Heidegger's interpretation of Van Gogh's painting is really
nothing more than a projection of Heidegger's own subjective
biases represents a potentially formidable objection to
Heidegger's attempt to move beyond the subject/object dichotomy
at the heart of aesthetics. For, if Heidegger's
interpretation really just covertly reinstalls his own subjective
perspective, then this attempt to transcend aesthetic subjectivism from
within looks dubious at best.
Heidegger's response to this particular objection (which he
anticipates in "The Origin of the Work of Art") is simply
to turn it around. Heidegger maintains, in effect, that any
objection that he is merely projecting is merely a projection on the
part of the objector. As he puts it (in the line Schapiro throws
back at him in the quotation above):
>
>
> It would be the worst self-deception to believe that our description
> had first pictured [or imagined, *ausgemalt*] everything thus as
> a subjective act and then projected it onto the painting. (PLT
> 35-6/GA5 21)
Here, however, we seem to reach a deadlock. To Schapiro,
Heidegger's anticipatory denial of projection looks like an
unconscious confession, what Freud called a *denegation*, that
is, a disavowal that really confirms the truth of what it denies (the
classic example of which is: "I have no idea what my dream
meant, Dr. Freud, I only know it was *not* about
my
mother!").[94]
To Heidegger, Schapiro would seem to
have deceived himself in the "worst" way; by projecting
projection onto Heidegger's essay, Schapiro's interpretation
will have been led astray by its own maliciousness. Is there no
way to avoid leaving the debate in such an unfriendly state, where the
explicit avowal of "not A" is taken as an unconscious
confession of "A," no one's motives remain above the
hermeneutics of suspicion, and art interpretation threatens to collapse
into the relativism of competing subjective
projections?[95]
The way out of this impasse is to take Heidegger's
phenomenology much more seriously, as we have done here. What we
have seen is that, rather than just asserting his interpretation of Van
Gogh, Heidegger provides *a phenomenological argument* for it,
that is, a series of steps meant to take his audience from an
experience of an "ontic" work of art to an encounter with
the ontological truth of art in general. Insofar as we can personally
experience the phenomenological sequence of steps to which Heidegger
refers, we ourselves can attest to the truth of his
interpretation. (And if we cannot experience that sequence, or we
experience something else instead, then we can seek to redescribe,
refine, or contest his interpretation for ourselves). Let us thus
seek to finally resolve this longstanding controversy by summarizing
and then clarifying the basic sequence of steps in Heidegger's
phenomenological interpretation of
Van Gogh's 1886 painting
of "A pair of shoes."
When Heidegger discusses Van Gogh's painting of "A Pair
of Shoes," we have seen, his analysis takes us from: (1)
experiencing Van Gogh's painting as an aesthetic object (a
painting of a pair of shoes apparently on hand for our viewing); to (2)
attending to the nothing (that is, the way the painting's
background continues to suggest other possibilities which nevertheless
resist being fully gestalted and so brought into the foreground); to
thereby (3) encountering the essential tension between earth and world
(the inconspicuous struggle between revealing and concealing implicit
in "what *is* there"), and so finally (4) coming to
see for oneself what it is like to walk in a farmer's shoes (by
encountering for oneself, in the artwork, the struggle to bring the
bounty of the earth forth into the light of the world). We can
see this quite clearly by looking at one of the crucial passages again,
this time with the four steps in Heidegger's phenomenological
transition explicitly labeled:
>
>
> [1] A painting by Van Gogh: a pair of tough farmer's
> shoes, [2] nothing else. The picture really represents
> nothing. [3] Yet, what *is* there, with that you are
> immediately alone, [4] as if on a late autumn evening, when the last
> potato fires have burned out, you yourself were heading wearily home
> from the field with your hoe. (IM 37-8/GA40 38)
These four steps, taken together, form the phenomenological bridge
that allows us to move from an interpretation of a particular work of
art to the ontological truth inherent in all art (indeed, in all
coming-into-being). In other words, these are the four steps in
the phenomenological argument whereby Heidegger discovers what he calls
the *a-letheiac* "essential strife" between
"earth" and "world"--that is, the tension
of emerging and withdrawing implicit in all intelligibility--in
Van Gogh's 1886 painting
of "A pair of shoes".
We can unpack that third step--and better understand its
connection to the fourth--by further examining Heidegger's
curiously specific assertion:
>
>
> Yet, what *is* there, with that you are immediately alone, as
> if on a late autumn evening, when the last potato fires have burned
> out, you yourself were heading wearily home from the field with your
> hoe. (IM 37-8/GA40 38)
Initially this certainly sounds, as Schapiro alleges, like a highly
idiosyncratic projection of Heidegger's own subjective prejudices
onto Van Gogh's work. Of course, art historians like
Schapiro commonly observe that in late works like "A Pair of
Shoes," Van Gogh seems to devote as much care and attention to
his use of color and brush strokes as he does to representing the
fairly simple subject at the center of the
painting.[96]
What is so interesting
for us about this, however, is that if one attends carefully to what
emerges from "[o]ut of the dark opening of the well-worn insides
of shoes" (PLT 33/GA5 19)--attending specifically to the
lighter patches of color that emerge from the dark opening of the shoe
on the right--one can in fact discern the head (hair bonnet and
face in profile), torso, and arms of what could easily be a woman,
carrying a hoe (a small shovel), with what could even be a small
orange-brown "fire" smoldering behind her.
Insofar as we too can discern this "little old woman who lived
in the shoe" (as we could call this figure Heidegger seems to
have seen), then we can be certain (*pace*
Derrida) that Schapiro did in fact correctly identify the precise
painting Heidegger was discussing: "A Pair of Shoes"
(1886). But this also means that Heidegger is not using Van
Gogh's painting as a jumping off point for his own
free-associations (as Schapiro assumes); instead, Heidegger is drawing
directly on his own phenomenological encounter with the painting when
he describes "what *is* there" (IM 37-8/GA40 38) in
the work's inconspicuous earth/world
struggle.[97]
This would also explain
what Heidegger means when he says (immediately following the quotation
Schapiro throws back at him):
>
>
> If anything is questionable here, it is rather that we experienced
> too little in the vicinity of the work and that we expressed the
> experience too crudely and *too literally*. (PLT 36,
> emphasis added/GA5 21)
If Heidegger was *literally* describing the figure he saw
emerging from "[o]ut of the dark opening of the well-worn
insides of shoes" (PLT 33/GA5 19) in Van Gogh's painting of
"A Pair of Shoes" (1886), however, then what Heidegger
offers us is not merely the projection of his own subjective
associations onto a blank canvas but, instead, a meaningful gestalting
of something from what is really there, something we too can
phenomenologically confirm for ourselves. (It may help to examine this
detail from the shoe on the right-hand side of Van Gogh's "A
Pair of Shoes" (1886); here the figure of the farming woman
that, I argue, Heidegger creatively disclosed "[s]taring forth
from out of the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes"
(PLT 33/GA5 19) has been outlined by Mark Wrathall in order to make it
easier for others to see.)
![Detail from the shoe on the right side of Van Gogh's painting entitled A Pair of Shoes](VanGoghShoeDetail.jpg)
Detail from the shoe on the right side of Van Gogh's "A Pair of Shoes"
This is important, because to make something from what is really
there--something which is neither obviously determined by what
offers itself to us nor simply ignores what offers itself to us in
order to impose its own subjective idea--this is what all true
artistic creation does, according to Heidegger's view (presented
in section
3.7).[98]
As we saw, every
"authentic" hermeneutics must do this; to interpret any
great work of art, "you yourself" have to struggle to bring
forth its hidden riches, just as the farmer must struggle with the
earth to bring forth the bounty nurtured within it. To engage in
such phenomenological hermeneutics, we might thus say, is to encounter
oneself as *a farmer of meaning*. For, such an encounter
allows us to understand for ourselves what it is like when the earth
comes to inform our worlds with a genuine, partly independent meaning
which we ourselves brought forth creatively and yet did not simply
make-up or project onto the work. When we catch ourselves in the
act of making-sense of an artwork in this way, then we experience for
ourselves that fundamental making-sense from which, for Heidegger, all
genuine meaning ultimately derives.
Here, then, we reach the important fourth and final step in
Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation, which still needs to
be explicitly unpacked and explained. As we saw in sections
3.5-6, Heidegger claims that by experiencing the implicitly dynamic
tension between earth and world in Van Gogh's painting, we can
thereby come to encounter the same primordial level of practical
meaning that is unknowingly known by the farmer who uses her shoes
"without noticing or reflecting" on them (PLT 34/GA5
19). From what has been said, we should now be able to understand
just how that is supposed to be possible. In our phenomenological
encounter with Van Gogh's painting, we catch ourselves in the act
of struggling to impose a stable world of meanings upon an inherently
dynamic intelligible domain that both informs and resists this
world. To thus find ourselves "worlding the earth" in
our encounter with art, we have just seen, is to experience for
ourselves essentially the same struggle as the farmer who must struggle
with the earth in order to bring forth and maintain her world. In
our encounter with Van Gogh's painting, we thus learn for
ourselves what it is like to walk in a farmer's shoes (where
earth and world meet, both literally and figuratively), because we too
have experienced the way the earth both informs and exceeds the world
of meanings we take from it, enduring the same struggle to world the
earth (albeit on a smaller scale) in our own hermeneutic and
phenomenological engagement with Van Gogh's painting (and
Heidegger's
texts, which seek to "preserve," that is, creatively disclose, the inexhaustible world of meanings at work in the work, thereby helping to hold open this ontologically-pluralistic and so nascently postmodern world).[99]
The most important point to grasp here, then, is that Heidegger does
not maintain (as it is easy but nonetheless a mistake to assume) that
Van Gogh's painting allows us somehow first to directly intuit
the world of a farmer as she might experience it so that, by getting in
touch with her farming world, we can thereby come to experience the
"essential tension" between earth and world with which a
farmer is intimately familiar. That cannot be right because it
begs the question, assuming the aporetic step that Heidegger realizes
needs to be explained (as we saw in 3.3), namely, how can we move from
an aesthetic experience of a painting on hand like an object to an
encounter with the "equipmentality" of equipment? It
is crucial to see that Heidegger does not first assume that the shoes
in the painting belong to a farmer, and then, by alluding to the
farmer's world, introduce the essential struggle between earth
and world as the truth of the painting. If that were the sequence of
steps in Heidegger's argument, then not only would he be
knowingly begging his own question but, worse, Schapiro's telling
criticism that the shoes in Van Gogh's painting could not in fact
have been used by a farmer would constitute a completely devastating
objection to Heidegger's interpretation. For, *Schapiro
is certainly right that the shoes in the painting could not have been
used by a woman while farming*, for the simple reason that the
Dutch farmers Van Gogh painted wore wooden clogs in the damp potato
fields, not leather shoes like those worn by farmers in Southern
Germany, which would have quickly rotted from the damp soil in
the
Netherlands.[100]
Thus, if Heidegger had sought simply
to move from what he assumed were a pair of *farmer's*
shoes to an intimation of the earth/world struggle familiar to farmers,
and then from there to the essence of art, Schapiro's objection
would destroy the bridge Heidegger was seeking to build from an ontic
work of art to the ontological truth of art in general.
This longstanding controversy can finally be resolved, however, once
we realize that Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation of
Van Gogh actually follows a different sequence of steps. As we
have seen, Heidegger moves from: (1) experiencing an objective
painting of unused shoes (in the standard aesthetic way); to (2)
noticing and attending to the dynamic "nothing" in the
background of the painting and thereby (3) encountering the earth/world
struggle implicit in the work; to finally (4) intimating, from this
earth/world struggle, what a farmer's inconspicuous use of shoes
as equipment is like. The trick Schapiro misses (along with most
other readers of Heidegger's famous essay) is that attending to
the "nothing" that makes itself visible in the background
of Van Gogh's painting allows us to encounter the essential
tension between world and earth for ourselves, and it is this
encounter--with the tension between that which comes forth into
the light ("world") and that which nurtures this coming
forth and yet also shelters itself in the darkness
("earth")--that allows us to understand, as though
from the inside, *what it is like* to walk in the shoes of a
farmer.
In the end, then, Schapiro's objection that the shoes belonged not to
a farmer but to Van Gogh himself does indeed miss Heidegger's
philosophical point. Once we understand the actual sequence of steps
in Heidegger's phenomenological argument, we can see that Schapiro's
criticism really only temporarily complicates the inference from step
3 to step 4 (that is, the move from encountering the conflict between
earth and world to understanding what it is like to walk in a farmer's
shoes). This is an inference, however, that Heidegger could have
reached just as easily by discussing the world of Van Gogh himself
(whom Schapiro takes to be rightful owner of the shoes in the
painting). In Heidegger's view of him, Van Gogh clearly understood the
earth/world struggle at least as lucidly as the farmers he painted (so
Heidegger could just as easily have moved from encountering the
earth/world struggle to understanding what it is like to walk in the
shoes of a painter like Van Gogh). Indeed, Heidegger's final point
(the point conveyed by his references to "you" and
"you yourself") is that Van Gogh and these farmers lived
the same struggle in different ways, and so do all of us meaning
farmers, that is, all of us who genuinely create by discerning
inchoate contours and struggling to give shape to something that
previously was only partly glimpsed at best and so remained hidden
in darkness. Art thus teaches us not to try to banish the darkness
that surrounds the light of intelligibility, but to learn to see into
that ubiquitous "noth-ing" so as to discern therein the
enigmatic "earth" which nurtures all the genuine meanings
that have yet to see the light of day. Insofar as we can learn from
Van Gogh (or other similarly great artists) to see in this poetic way
ourselves, Heidegger suggests, we will find ourselves dwelling in a
postmodern world permeated by genuinely meaningful possibilities. |
hume-aesthetics | ## 1. Context
Hume's aesthetic theory received limited attention until the
second half of the Twentieth Century, when interest in the full range
of Hume's thought was enlivened by the gradual recognition of
his importance among philosophers writing in English. Unfortunately,
many discussions of Hume's aesthetics concentrate on a single
late essay, "Of the Standard of Taste" (1757). This
emphasis misrepresents the degree to which Hume's aesthetic
theory is integrated into his philosophical system. This
misrepresentation has been countered by recent monographs on
Hume's general aesthetic theory by Dabney Townsend (2001) and
Timothy Costelloe (2007).
The "Advertisement" to his first publication, *A
Treatise of Human Nature*, promises that if the first two volumes
find suitable "approbation," the project will conclude
with "the examination of morals, politics, and criticism; which
will compleat this Treatise of human nature" (T, Adv, xii).
Sadly, the *Treatise* was not a success and Hume limited the
third and final volume to the topic "Of Morals." He never
produced his systematic treatment of politics and criticism and so
never completed his new "science" of human nature. Those
topics would be handled piecemeal in several collections of short
essays, the "polite" writing that brought him the
publishing success he desired.
Hume's concept of criticism is not interchangeable with either
aesthetics or philosophy of art. These now-familiar labels were not
available to Hume when he published his *Treatise* in 1739 and
1740. The Abbe Charles Batteux did not defend the idea of
grouping the arts together in an investigation of fine art until 1746.
However, Hume knew and drew from the French tradition leading to
Batteux's work. Under this general influence, his essays
occasionally refer to the "the finer arts" of painting,
music, sculpture, and poetry (CL, 158; SOT 278; OT, 264; C, 289).
There is no direct evidence that Hume read Batteux, but they agree in
identifying the fine arts as mimetic "arts of luxury" that
exist primarily for the sake of our enjoyment (C, 289). Although
contemporaries such as Alexander Gerard and Lord Kames (Henry Home)
both use the phrase "fine art," Hume's books and
letters never use that expression. Hume was probably not aware of
Alexander Baumgarten's *Reflections on Poetry* of 1735,
the work that introduced the term "aesthetics." The thesis
that aesthetic judgments are completely distinct from moral judgments
would not receive its modern formulation until Immanuel Kant's
*Critique of Judgment* (1790), after Hume's death in
1776. So Hume's reflections on aesthetics occupy a pivotal niche
between the appearance of fine art theory and Kant's defense of
an independent aesthetic judgment in the *Critique of Judgment*
- a defense clearly influenced by Kant's reading of
Hume's essays and *An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals*.
Hume's theory is most firmly rooted in the work of Joseph
Addison, Francis Hutcheson, and, to a lesser extent, Shaftesbury
(Anthony Ashley Cooper). The specific connections are detailed in Kivy
(2003), Townsend (2001), and Costelloe (2007). From the older
tradition, elegantly expounded by Addison in numerous essays written
between 1709 and 1715, Hume retains the idea that the values within
the scope of criticism are essentially pleasures of the human
imagination. Although Hume acknowledges cases where beauty seems a
merely sensory pleasure, he emphasizes beauty's status as a
cognitive pleasure. Taking beauty as his paradigm case of such a
value, Hume combines Addison's theory of taste as an operation
of imagination with Hutcheson's proposal that emotions are the
foundation of moral judgment. Elaborating on the "inner
sense" theory, Hume endorses Hutcheson's stance on the
general question of the nature of both moral and aesthetic value.
Value judgments are expressions of taste rather than reasoned
analysis. Values cannot be addressed except in the context of a
general theory about our shared human nature. Although recognition of
aesthetic and moral beauty is a manifestation of taste (and perhaps
they cannot ultimately be distinguished from one another), taste must
not be dismissed as subjective, idiosyncratic preference.
Granted, Hume has many other influences. He drew on classical sources,
including Cicero. His celebrated essay on taste draws heavily on
French thought, particularly on that of the Abbe Jean-Baptiste
Dubos(1748). (See
Section 4
below.) So does the essay on tragedy. (See
Section 5
below.) Detailed accounts of Hume's debt to Dubos are provided
in Jones (2009) and Townsend (2011, pp. 76-85).
Within this framework of concerns and influences, Hume is neither
interested in working out a theory of art (in contributing to
philosophy of art) nor in analyzing aesthetic properties (in doing
aesthetics). Although he is aware of debates about the nature of the
sublime and recognizes it as a category of artistic achievement (SOT,
281), he offers no theory of the sublime. An attempt to pull together
a Humean account is made by Hipple (1967, pp. 42-44). Due to the
seamless connection Hume posits between moral and aesthetic value,
much of his technical discussion of aesthetics appears only as an
illustration of his moral theory. Other details of Hume's
aesthetics emerge in contexts where he expounds his theory of
imaginative association (EHUa, 102-7), elaborates on the value
of delicacy of taste (DOT), and denies that his appeal to sentiment
leads to skepticism about value distinctions (S, 217-19).
Consequently, a reading that emphasizes "Of the Standard of
Taste" at the expense of the *Treatise* and
*Enquiries* shortchanges the theory's complexity.
Thus, the two essays that appear to summarize Hume's aesthetics
are best understood as applications of a larger philosophical account
of human nature, including our social nature. The construction of each
essay suggests a purpose of working out details of the larger project
in the face of an obvious counterexample. Those counterexamples are
the relativity of taste (SOT) and the pleasure we take in tragic
fiction (OT). Yet their limited purpose does not detract from their
continuing importance. They provide insight into perennial problems
and so serve as the historical foundation for subsequent attempts to
defend a subjectivist aesthetic theory.
Unfortunately, numerous interpretative challenges arise from
Hume's scattered presentation, his range of references, and his
eighteenth-century assumptions about art. Like many of his
contemporaries, Hume regards "poetry and the polite
authors" as the most important arts (PW 3, 19). Timothy
Costelloe (2018, chap. 4) consequently constructs an excellent survey
of Humean aesthetics by canvassing the full range of Hume's
comments on poets and poetry. However, poetry differs from the more
practical arts in being designed for the primary purpose of giving
pleasure (SOT, 277). When using the terms "art" and
"artist," Hume sometimes means any human artifice and any
skilled designer (in one context, an "artist" is someone
who repairs a clock (EHU, 87)). In contexts where he can only be taken
to be interested in the narrower category of fine art, Hume variously
mentions painting, statuary, architecture, dance, poetry, and music.
But he places poetry among the arts of eloquent public discourse.
Eloquence includes sermons, essays, argumentative discourse, and other
categories that we today would regard as too overtly didactic to be
fine art (E).
Hume assumes that every product of human labor has some definite
purpose, with only a limited subset of art being produced for the sake
of pleasure alone. (He is skeptical about appeals to teleological or
final causes in nature.) Houses will be designed and built apart from
any need to satisfy our taste for beauty, and representational art
will be produced in order to provide visual information. The
interesting questions are why houses and visual representations also
appeal to taste, and what this appeal tells us about the relative
contributions of human nature and education as conditions for
appropriate responses to our surroundings.
So what label best summarizes Hume's theory of moral and
aesthetic taste? It may be easier to specify which labels do not fit
his theory than to attach one to it. He rejects normative realism.
(There is considerable controversy on the question of whether Hume is
a realist regarding matters of fact. Putting that issue to one side,
he clearly denies that normative judgments have the same degree of
objectivity that holds for matters of fact.) Hume is equally at pains
to deny that reason provides an adequate foundation for judgments of
taste. Is he therefore a subjectivist? Not if subjectivism implies
that such judgments are arbitrary. He is not a relativist, for the
main point of the essay on taste is that some judgments of taste are
superior to others. Nor, in his own terms, is he a skeptic regarding
aesthetic properties and value judgments. Despite his philosophical
view that beauty is not a real property of things, Hume never
questions the meaningfulness of general practice of making aesthetic
judgments. Because the verdicts of taste are sentiments, devoid of
truth-value, there is no opportunity for the conflicts and failures of
reason that give rise to philosophical skepticism.
Hume is an inner sense theorist who treats aesthetic pleasure as an
instinctive and natural human response. Successful art exploits our
natural sentiments by employing appropriate composition and design.
Only empirical inquiry can establish reliable ways to elicit the
approval of taste.
## 2. Hume's Terminology
Hume regards the natural capacity of taste as fundamental to the human
ability to make moral and aesthetic judgments. Like his predecessors,
Hume sees an analogy between an "inner sense" for beauty
and the sense of taste for food and drink. Natural, general laws guide
both. Both permit of education and refinement and thus better and
worse responses. Both produce sentiments or feelings of approval and
disapproval. But only the "mental" taste, the exercise of
which is involved in moral and aesthetic judgment, admits of
refinement through "the interposition" of ideas (T, 275).
Hume's eighteenth-century terminology includes a pair of terms
no longer in general use. In his basic nomenclature, "taste in
morals, eloquence, or beauty" assigns either
"approbation" or "disapprobation" (or some
combination of both) to objects of taste (T, 547n). Approbation is
"a peculiar delight" (T, 298) and a
"*particular* kind of pleasure" (T, 472). It feels
different from other pleasures. He variously characterizes approbation
as a feeling of approval, liking, or affection. A beautiful object or
action strikes us as amiable, agreeable, and desirable. Yet moral and
aesthetic responses are not identical, for "the satisfaction is
different, [which] keeps our sentiments concerning them from being
confounded" (T, 472). Hume describes the feeling of
disapprobation as one of disapproving, disliking, and contempt. An
ugly object or vicious action feels odious, disagreeable, and
undesirable.
In the eighteenth-century context of moral theory,
"sentiment" is a generic label for emotions. (Hume's
theory is sometimes identified as "sentimentalism," but
that term has unfortunate modern connotations--though see the
entry on
moral sentimentalism.)
In Hume's technical vocabulary, all emotions are impressions,
not ideas. The sentiments associated with beauty and ugliness are
reflective impressions. They are not "impressions of the
senses." Instead, they are responses to sensory impressions (T,
276).
Beauty is a feeling of approbation, and an original, simple impression
of the mind. Impressions are contrasted with ideas, which he
alternatively calls "thoughts." Ideas are
"copies" of impressions, and seldom have the force or
clarity of the experiences they copy. For Hume, experiencing a
particular kind of approbation is a necessary condition for thinking
about the idea of beauty. An individual cannot construct the idea of
beauty out of other ideas, which is equivalent to saying that the idea
derives from the proper sentiment of approbation (T, 469). In the
complete absence of the operations of taste, thoughts about beauty
would not occur.
Taste is the capacity to respond with approbation and disapprobation.
But how does taste relate to Hume's various remarks about
"perceptions" and "discernments" of beauty, of
our "judging" a work, and of critics who "give
judgment" and who "give" or "pronounce"
a "verdict" or "recommendation" (SOT, passim)?
Hume seems to equate perception of beauty with the experience of the
sentiment. (This equation underlies the problem of whether all tastes
are equal). Does he distinguish between the critic's experience
of the sentiment and the judgment or verdict? If a verbal
pronouncement that an object is beautiful is nothing more than an
expression or report of the speaker's sentiment, then Hume faces
the difficulty that a critic's verdict is not really a
recommendation of the object. If your pronouncement that a piece of
music is beautiful means no more than that you have felt a certain
pleasure upon hearing it, then your verdict expresses your pleasure
without saying anything about the music's capacity to please
others. So although critics issue judgments of taste based on their
own sentiments, a judgment of taste must involve something more than a
pleasing or displeasing sentiment.
Hume observes that there is a difference between expressing
one's own sentiments and making a moral distinction. When
someone speaks of another's behavior as "*vicious*
or *odious* or *depraved*, he then speaks another
language, and expresses sentiments, in which he expects all his
audience to concur with him" (EPM, 272). Moral and aesthetic
judgment requires "*steady* and *general* points
of view" (T, 581-82; see also SOT, 276), common to others
(EPM, 272). Hume's various descriptions of this point of view
invite conflicting interpretations. However, it clearly requires the
critic to reflect upon the relationship between the sentiment and its
object.
Whether we call them "aesthetic judgments" or
"judgments of taste," aesthetic verdicts are unlike
ordinary judgments about matters of fact. Matters of fact are relevant
states of affairs, which render complex ideas either true or false.
The same cannot be said about verdicts arising from the operations of
taste. Sentiment, and sentiment alone, determines that a particular
object is or is not beautiful.
>
> Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is
> the standard of our judgement; what each man feels within himself is
> the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved,
> systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the
> tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate
> pleasure (EPM, 171).
>
We do not infer that a sunset is beautiful and so deserving of
approbation. We see the sunset, and the visual impressions please us.
If we have the proper point of view, we are justified in saying that
the sunset is beautiful. This verdict is more than a report or
expression of the sentiment, yet the sentiment is an irreplaceable
element of the judgment. A parallel claim is made of moral
discrimination. "Pleasure and pain," he insists, are the
"essence" of beauty and deformity (T, 299). But how does a
literary work "give immediate pleasure"?
One of Hume's most puzzling claims is that taste is an
"immediate" response. In his extended treatment of the
passions and emotions in the *Treatise*, Hume says that
"immediate" feelings are ones that do not involve the
"interposition" of ideas (T, 275). Some pleasures and
pains are "immediate" in the sense that they are
impressions that immediately accompany other impressions (e.g., the
experience of a very hot flame is accompanied by an experience of
pain). How does a literary work "give immediate pleasure"?
Taken literally, the *Treatise* appears to commit Hume to the
view that literary works are beautiful independent of the
audience's ability to assign ideas or meanings to the words. As
noted by James Grant (2014, p. 368), the *Treatise* sometimes
posits a distinction between beauty, which is the quality of the
object that acts upon us, and the pleasure it arouses. But these
proposals are not repeated in Hume's later writings and a
commitment to observer-independent beauty is certainly not
Hume's mature position. His official theory is that there is
"mental, as well as bodily taste" (SOT, 274), and both
moral and aesthetic discrimination depend on mental taste. The
requisite sentiments are spontaneous products of the mind, but they
are not uninformed responses.
Mental taste normally requires some intervening thought process. So
the pleasures and pains of aesthetic judgment are not immediate in
being direct responses to other impressions.
>
> Some species of beauty, especially the natural kinds, on their first
> appearance, command our affection and approbation; and where they fail
> of this effect, it is impossible for any reasoning to redress their
> influence, or adapt them better to our taste and sentiment. But in
> many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is
> requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper
> sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument
> and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty
> partakes much of this latter species, and demands the assistance of
> our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence
> on the human mind (EPM, 173).
>
Mental taste arises in response to ideas that arise in response to
impressions (e.g., viewing a photograph occasions thoughts about the
place pictured, leading to thoughts about experiences one had or might
have there, and the thoughts arising in this imaginative process are
pleasurable or painful). Hume regards this "immediacy" of
taste as entirely compatible with the influence of intellectual and
imaginative faculties.
Taste is immediate and spontaneous, yet the application of "good
sense" and "reason" improves it (SOT, 277). Taste is
not improved by reasoning from a priori normative principles. Moral
and aesthetic discriminations "are not conclusions of
reason" (T, 457). Neither results from a mere "comparing
of ideas" (T, 463). However, taste can be influenced by
consultation of "general rules of art" or
"rules" that "are founded only on experience and
observation" (SOT, 270). For different views on the content of
these rules or principles, see Hester (1979), Dickie (1996, pp.
126-131), Shelley (2002), Dickie (2003), and Shelley (2004).
Mental taste involves reason in the sense of "sound
understanding," which ultimately depends on imaginative
associations of ideas. So taste involves imaginative pleasure, as
Addison proposed. This doctrine of imaginative pleasure has no special
connection with creativity or with the capacity to produce art.
To summarize Hume on taste, aesthetic and moral response is
"immediate" in the sense that the feeling occurs
spontaneously in anyone who makes customary imaginative associations.
Hume wants to emphasize that a critic does not infer the presence of
beauty. Yet he also acknowledges the relevance of sound understanding
to taste. This combination of doctrines has implications for the
practice of justifying judgments of taste, and becomes the focus of
the essay "Of the Standard of Taste." Knowing that a
sonnet has the same form as a second, beautiful sonnet will not offer
any reason to think that they are equally fine poems. Only a reading
of the sonnet can support claims about its beauty. However,
Hume's theory should be interpreted with caution, against the
backdrop of his other claims about moral and aesthetic distinctions.
The general, natural principles of taste are supplemented by learned
rules, so that knowledge of other sonnets contributes to a more
accurate or refined evaluation of the merits and flaws of a particular
sonnet. His subjectivism does not lead to relativism. Not every
sentiment is equally good.
## 3. Beauty and Taste in Hume's Moral Theory
### 3.1 Subjectivism
Hume proposes that feeling, not thought, informs us that an object is
beautiful or ugly, or that an action exhibits virtue or vice:
"The very *feeling* constitutes our praise or
admiration" (T, 471). The feeling or sentiment is itself an
aesthetic or moral discrimination. It is prior to, and the basis of,
any subsequent expression of praise or admiration. The sentiment
*is* the beauty of the object and it *is* the virtue of
desirable human action. Sentiment is the sole source of values
governing human activity. Taste is a "productive faculty, and
gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed
from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation."
That new creation is "beauty and deformity, virtue and
vice" (EPM, 294). However, the sentiment is calm rather than
violent, so an unphilosophical perspective treats it as a property
"of the object" (S, 218).
This moral and aesthetic subjectivism attracts Hume for the same
reason that it attracts Hutcheson. The appeal to sentiment offers a
middle position between the two prevailing theories within English
letters, Hobbesian egoism and ethical rationalism. Hutcheson holds
that virtue and beauty are not qualities of the people and things to
which they are attributed. We may speak as if objects and people have
moral and aesthetic properties, but the relevant property is merely an
"idea raised in us." Hume alters Hutcheson's theory
by imposing his own philosophical vocabulary, making beauty an
impression rather than an idea. But they agree that to describe a
person as virtuous or an object as beautiful is to make a claim about
their tendency to cause a certain response. Is it imprudent and
"too strong," Hume asks Hutcheson, to summarize the thesis
in the following terms (HL, I, 39-40)? "[W]hen you
pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but
that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or
sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue,
therefore, may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which,
according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but
perceptions in the mind" (T, 469). Emphasizing Hume's debt
to Hutcheson, Kivy (2003, pp. 307-310), argues that Hume
understands beauty very much on the model of colors. Although they are
secondary qualities and so do not directly reveal the properties of
the occasioning object, some color perception is "true and
real" (SOT, 272), and so it is for Hume likewise with beauty.
However, virtue and beauty are not strictly analogous to secondary
qualities, such as heat and cold, because a critic's claim that
a work is beautiful involves an element of endorsement that does not
arise in the observation that ice is cold. The case against reading
Humean beauty on the model of ideas of secondary qualities is provided
by Shiner (1996) and Taylor (2011).
Hume defends the centrality of sentiment with the following reasoning.
Recognitions of virtue and beauty require particular sentiments in
human observers. If the discriminations of taste took place without
these sentiments, we would lack any motivation to do what we regard as
moral. Moral and aesthetic judgments have practical consequences that
mere reason lacks. So taste differs from the assent that characterizes
understanding or reason (T, 458; EPM, 172; S, 219). Although taste
responds to real qualities of objects, we cannot replace the exercise
of taste with the assent of reason. In many cases, beauty and
gracefulness (both aesthetic and moral) are inexplicable; they resist
our efforts at explication, and we must trust the "sure
testimony of taste and sentiment" (EPM, 267).
Epistemically, taste is nonetheless a fallible indicator of beauty and
deformity. The underlying sentiments never "refer" to
anything in their cause (SOT, 268). Feelings do not represent any
aspect of their occasioning objects, and they are easily attached to
objects other than their cause (T, 280). (As with any causal
relationship, such as the causal link between smoke and fire, an
isolated effect does not refer back to its cause, nor does it provide
us with information about the nature of the object or event that
causes it. If we experience smoke but have never experienced fire, the
smoke will tell us nothing about the nature of fire.) As effects of
our interaction with the world, sentiments cannot reliably inform us
about the nature of their causes. It will not always be clear, prior
to careful attention and reflection, which features of a work of art
are responsible for our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation.
On Hume's analysis, the chain running from cause to effect turns
out to be extremely complex, for the relationship is indirect and
"the human body is a mighty complicated machine" with many
"secret powers" (EHU, 87; see also SOT, 270). Knowing
this, good critics pronounce their verdicts only after they clarify
how their own sentiments relate to the object that is being evaluated
(SOT, 270-71).
However, some of Hume's critics see a fundamental contradiction
between his subjectivism and his distinction between better and worse
critics or the possession of better and worse taste. The criticism is
most often formulated against Hume's parallel discussion of
ethical evaluation. A particularly forceful statement of the objection
is provided by Philippa Foot (1966). Hume was acutely aware of the
general problem and it is the starting point of the essay "Of
the Standard of Taste." (See
Section 4
below.)
### 3.2 The Dispositional Analysis
Our sentiments obey general principles governing our species. Yet we
must be able to make judgments of taste immediately, without having to
be aware of the laws governing them.
Hume's acknowledgment of regular, predictable causes of the
moral and aesthetic sentiment is sometimes taken as an indication that
Hume is not a genuine subjectivist. On this reading, he equates beauty
and virtue with dispositional properties of external objects.
Attributions of moral and aesthetic properties to objects indicate a
speaker's acknowledgment of the object's tendency to
produce the sentiment. There are passages that suggest such a reading:
"beauty is such an order and constitution of parts, as ...
is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul" (T,
299; see SOT, 273). The dispositional analysis of beauty is attributed
to Hume by Savile (1982, p. 161), Mothersill (1984, pp.
205-206), and Levinson (2002). Reasons to think it is mistaken
are provided by Baxter (1990). The dispositional analysis should not
be confused with the position that features of objects cause the
requisite sentiment. The case for attributing a causal theory of taste
to Hume is provided by Shiner (1996)
Despite such passages, it is questionable whether Hume really offers a
dispositional analysis. A dispositional analysis tells us which
properties would exist if certain conditions were satisfied. A
simplified dispositional analysis treats "Cork is buoyant"
as equivalent in meaning to "If a piece of cork is placed in
water, it floats." A simplified dispositional analysis of beauty
treats "This object is beautiful" as equivalent in meaning
to "If anyone perceives this object under ideal conditions, a
sentiment of approbation accompanies the perception." On
this account, beauty is distinct from the sentiment of approbation.
The sentiment is incorporated into the analysis, but the sentiment is
not itself a dispositional property.
Suppose that Hume regards beauty as a dispositional property. Like the
dispositional terms "buoyant" and "brittle,"
"beauty" could be predicated of objects, generating
judgments that are true or false for different objects. Statements
attributing dispositional properties to objects are true even if the
appropriate conditions are never satisfied (e.g., "This vase is
brittle" can be true despite the fact that the vase never gets
broken). Yet Hume clearly denies that judgments of taste are
truth-valued, and he denies that it makes sense to make inferences
about an object's beauty in advance of the requisite sentiment
(S, 219).
Hume famously argues that, in order to clarify any idea, "we
need but enquire, *from what impression is that supposed idea
derived*" (EHU, 22). If beauty is a dispositional property,
then one arrives at the idea of beauty by associating particular
causes with particular effects under specific conditions. In
Hume's terminology, a dispositional idea of beauty would be the
idea of a complex relation of cause and effect. It would be a causal
principle, and we could not employ the idea prior to formulating such
a principle. Yet, once again, Hume denies an implication of the
dispositional analysis. The sentiment of approbation is our only
source for our idea of beauty, and there are cases where we recognize
beauty in advance of any reasoning about the beautiful object (EPM,
173).
Furthermore, if Hume regards beauty as a dispositional property, he
has a model close at hand in Hutcheson's analysis. But Hume
avoids offering any such account. Aside from a willingness to identify
several ways that works of art must fail to please refined taste, Hume
does very little to advance the traditional and familiar project of
criticism, the stipulation of rules for successful art. Granted, he
endorses the existence of such rules (SOT, 269-273) and
provisionally suggests (SOT, 273) that they serve as our standard of
taste, a point explored by Brown (1938), Jones (1976, 2009), Shelley
(1994), and Costelloe (2007, pp. 3-17). However, he does not
provide an organized or dedicated presentation of the properties of
objects that regularly cause the sentiment of approbation. Costelloe
(2018, pp. 161-170) has nonetheless extracted three such
principles from Hume's discussions of poetry. First, artistic
depictions must be grounded in what is familiar or, at the very least,
plausible. Second, artworks must be constrained by coherence in their
imaginative associations. Third, simplicity is preferable to
"excessive ornamentation and artifice" (Costelloe 2018,
167). At the same time, Hume recognizes that any established
correlation between sentiment and objective properties might be
defeated by the next example that we encounter (SOT, 270). Despite the
existence of "general principles of approbation or blame,"
taste depends on too many variables ("incidents and
situations") to offer a detailed dispositional analysis (SOT,
271).
Passages endorsing a dispositional account might be slips of the pen.
Or, more likely, Hume does not believe that it is possible to define
evaluative terms. They are indefinable, primitive terms. Hume
emphasizes that "certain qualities in objects" are the
occasions for our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation (SOT,
273). Formal design is one such quality (SOT 271; T, 299, 364). The
existence of occasioning qualities provides theoretical support for
the possibility of a convergence of refined taste. So our primitive
evaluative terms are not arbitrarily applied. Nonetheless, it is
irresponsible to endorse any particular thing or action in advance of
the verdict of unprejudiced taste.
### 3.3 Imagination and Point of View
Informed understanding makes a vital contribution to most aesthetic
and moral judgment (EPM, 173; SOT, 277). For Hume, taste is improved
by practice in making "comparisons" among objects (SOT,
275) and by the employment of "good sense" (SOT, 277).
Hume blurs traditional distinctions between thinking and imagining.
Thoughts would not extend beyond our actual experiences were it not
for the imaginative associations established by the force of
repetition or "custom" (T, 170; EHU, 43). Learned
associations encourage us to rearrange our ideas in intelligible
patterns, permitting us to create ideas of things never actually
experienced (e.g., fictitious creatures or distant places).
Imagination also creates chains of associated ideas, encouraging
thoughts to move rapidly from one idea to another.
Good taste therefore presupposes an active imagination. Suppose one
wakes in the morning and smells the distinctive aroma of coffee, and
the experience is pleasurable. This appreciation depends on a learned,
imaginative association: the smell brings to mind its cause, the
brewing coffee, and its purpose, the consumption of the coffee. The
agreeable sentiment is a response to this complex association of
impressions and ideas, not to the smell alone. Critical evaluation is
therefore highly contextual: "The passion, in pronouncing its
verdict, considers not the object simply, as it is in itself, but
surveys it with all the circumstances, which attend it" (S,
224).
It is important to recognize that Humean imagination is not a free and
unrestrained activity. It is constrained by a relatively small set of
permanent principles of imaginative association (T, 10, 225; EHU, 24).
Although poets may "profess to follow implicitly the suggestions
of their fancy" (T, 225), their poetry has little chance of
pleasing others if their "fancy" or imagination employs
irregular associations. The universal principles of imaginative
association allow artists to predict how their representational and
narrative designs will move audiences. With artworks, the intentions
of the artist must be considered, a point emphasized by Jones (1976,
pp. 55-56), and Jones (2009).
Hume recognizes a very small class of cases for which imaginative
association is not needed to recognize beauty. In these cases, initial
impressions of the mere "form" of a material object
generate approbation (T, 364). Such cases are more typical of natural
beauty than art (EPM, 173). So imagination is not always necessary for
discovering beauty. Pleasing form is sometimes sufficient. However,
"'tis seldom we rest there" (T, 363).
So Hume does not advocate a simple causal relationship between form
and sentiment. In most cases, our beliefs about the object alter our
sentiments. Forms are generally most pleasing when "the order
and construction of parts" (T, 299) suggests a corresponding
utility for humans or expresses agreeable emotions. These suggestions
need not be accurate in order to trigger approbation and
disapprobation. A particular object might appear balanced, graceful,
and beautiful despite our knowledge of its limited utility (T, 584).
Objects may displease taste despite their genuine utility.
>
> A house may displease me by being ill-contrived for the convenience of
> the owner; and yet I may refuse to give a shilling towards the
> rebuilding of it. Sentiments must touch the heart, to make them
> controul our passions: But they need not extend beyond the
> imagination, to make them influence our taste. When a building seems
> clumsy and tottering to the eye, it is ugly and disagreeable; though
> we be fully assured of the solidity of the workmanship. 'Tis a
> kind of fear, which causes this sentiment of disapprobation; but the
> passion is not the same with that which we feel, when obliged to stand
> under a wall, that we really think tottering and insecure. The
> *seeming tendencies* of objects affect the mind: And the
> emotions they excite are of a like species with those, which proceed
> from the *real consequences* of objects, but their feeling is
> different. Nay, these emotions are so different in their feeling, that
> they may often be contrary, without destroying each other; as when the
> fortifications of a city belonging to an enemy are esteemed beautiful
> upon account of their strength, though we could wish that they were
> entirely destroyed. The imagination adheres to the *general*
> views of things, and distinguishes the feelings they produce, from
> those which arise from our particular and momentary situation (T,
> 586-87).
>
Hume's views on the aesthetic relevance of form and utility are
explored by Carolyn Korsmeyer (1976), while utility is emphasized by
Taylor (2011). Given Hume's debt to Hutcheson, Korsmeyer notes
that it is tempting to read such passages as foreshadowing the
subsequent theory of aesthetic response as "disinterested"
pleasure. However, we should be careful here. Hume uses the term
"disinterest" as the contrary of "self-love"
(EPM, 296), but he does not use the term in relation to aesthetic
sentiment. Hume's "common," "universal,"
or "general view of things" is a simpler proposal. He
wants to remind us that we cannot expect the agreement of others if we
judge things from a limited and prejudiced perspective (EPM, 272).
Relations of form and function can operate at an extremely abstract
level: "A building, whose doors and windows were exact squares,
would hurt the eye by that very proportion: as ill adapted to the
figure of a human creature, for whose service the fabric was
intended" (EPM, 212-13). Those who respond with sentiment
are moved by "imaginary" and general consequences, not
simply utility for the person passing judgment (EPM, 217-18).
Furthermore, formal design itself can convey emotions which influence
aesthetic response: "There is no rule in painting or statuary
more indispensable than that of balancing the figures, and placing
them with the greatest exactness on their proper centre of gravity. A
figure, which is not justly balanced, is ugly; because it conveys the
disagreeable ideas of fall, harm, and pain" (EPM, 245).
Thus, Hume blocks the conclusion that all taste is equal by
distinguishing between two points of view that we can adopt toward any
person, object, or action. We can respond from the point of view of
our own self-interest. But this response is prejudiced and often
produces "a false relish" (EPM, 173). Or we can respond
from the general point of view, a reflective evaluation that is not
motivated by self-interest. The general point of view is influenced by
myriad beliefs about the object and its context. For example,
believing that something is rare greatly magnifies our pleasure (S,
224). Where self-interest might make me jealous of your new home and
will interfere with the sentiment of beauty, a reflective response
will allow me to appreciate its construction and design.
For Hume, normative conflicts can only be resolved by moving to a
properly informed general perspective, with "just conclusions
drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and
general facts fixed and ascertained" (EPM, 173). The essay on
taste defends this position and outlines a theory of how critics can
place themselves in such a position:
>
> when any work is addressed to the public, though I should have a
> friendship or enmity with the author, I must depart from this
> situation; and considering myself as a man in general, forget, if
> possible, my individual being and my peculiar circumstances. A person
> influenced by prejudice, complies not with this condition; but
> obstinately maintains his natural position, without placing himself in
> that point of view, which the performance supposes (SOT,
> 276-77).
>
Hume also invokes the operation of a sympathetic sentiment. Since
sympathy plays an important role in his moral theory (T, 577; EPM,
225), he must include it in his aesthetic theory if he is to sustain
the close ties he posits between morals and aesthetics. The general
point of view takes notice of pleasure that the object is fitted to
bring to other people. The idea of their benefit generates sympathetic
pleasure, increasing the sentiment of approbation (T,
364-65).
However, Hume's claim that most judgments of beauty require some
element of sympathy (T, 363) becomes harder to maintain in cases of
fine art. It is not clear how the appreciation of a sonnet or melody
involves an idea of the value it has for others. Hume occasionally
talks as if artistic beauty is entirely a question of formal design.
And he seems to think that the utility and therefore value of some art
is the pleasure it affords (e.g., with poetry), as if he advocates an
early art-for-art's-sake position. This interpretation is an
obvious consequence of any interpretation that takes Hume to say that
an object's capacity to provide pleasure exhausts its aesthetic
value. (This reading is endorsed by Levinson (2002) and challenged by
Shelley (2011, 2013.) But the fact that a poem pleases someone else,
or even large numbers of people, does not encourage sympathetic
approbation for the poem.
A careful reading suggests that Hume neither separates the fine arts
from the other arts nor places sympathy at the center of aesthetic
response. From the start, he recognizes multiple reasons for
approbation. He hypothesizes a general but not universal connection
between artificial and natural forms and the appearance of utility (T,
195). He offers examples of basic design in painting (T, 364-65)
and of "unharmonious" literature (EPM, 224). Poetry has an
obvious formal element. Reading begins with impressions of dark shapes
arranged in lines on white pages. Readers silently associate the
printed text with aural ideas (the voice of a human speaker). Through
imaginative association, literary forms have expressive human
characters that elicit sympathetic pleasure and pain. Yet a reader who
is not engaged by the subject matter may still find value in the
"style and ingenuity of the composition" (T, 98). Because
Hume does not operate with assumptions about the uniqueness of fine
art, his theory cuts across the distinction between fine art and
rhetoric. Good design and eloquence are beautiful and desirable in all
artifacts and speech, not merely in fine art (E).
Where appropriate, the refined taste of a good critic will weigh the
relative contributions of all aspects of the object of taste. Formal
design is a contributing excellence and not the sole focus of
aesthetic discrimination. To arrive at a proper moral judgment,
"all the circumstances and relations must be previously known;
and the mind, from the contemplation of the whole, feels some new
impression of affection or disgust, esteem or contempt, approbation or
blame" (EPM, 290). Aesthetic discrimination works in the same
way (EPM, 291). In some situations, a single inharmonious element can
upset the beauty of the whole. Hume discusses such cases in "Of
the Standard of Taste." But then what of tragic literature, in
which sympathy produces ongoing unease? How can there be an impression
of approbation for a tragic play? Hume addresses this problem in
"Of Tragedy."
In the wake of reader-response criticism, Hume is frequently
challenged for not making enough allowances for the legitimate
differences that readers bring to the same piece of writing. No two
readers will respond with the same associations of ideas. So how can
Hume hypothesize a convergence of critical response? As a criticism of
Hume, this reply backfires. Hume concedes, "each mind perceives
a different beauty" (SOT, 268). But he recognizes an even more
radical problem. He admits that every stable object is really a
"fiction" posited by the operations of imagination and
sentiment. We always "bestow on the objects a greater regularity
than what is observed in our mere perceptions" (T, 197).
However, this philosophical grasp of the situation has no practical
effect in making anyone skeptical of the existence of houses, trees,
and books. It does not detract from the truth and falsity of what we
ordinarily say about them. Novels and plays and paintings are not
special cases. Admitting that they call for complex operations of
imagination does not differentiate them from other objects and should
not count against the possibility of critical judgment.
The crux of the problem is the difference between saying that
*Hamlet* is a play by William Shakespeare and saying that
*Hamlet* is a flawed play. The former claim expresses a matter
of fact; the latter expresses a normative judgment. Both judgements
stem from complex imaginative associations. The presence of
imaginative thought poses no special problem for the convergence of
evaluative discrimination. Hume's primary problem is to explain
how sentiment, as the essential source of value judgments, is subject
to principled dispute. Hume directly confronts this problem in
"Of the Standard of Taste."
## 4. Hume's Essay on Taste
Hume tells us that "Of the Standard of Taste" was written
in some haste and exists only to permit publication of other essays
(HL 2, 253). On the advice of Philip Stanhope, Hume removed "Of
the Immortality of the Soul" and "Of Suicide" from a
planned volume of new essays. His publisher informed him that the
resulting volume was too slim to print, bind, and sell. Hume then
brought the book to an acceptable length by penning a new essay,
"Of the Standard of Taste." Hume made nearly two hundred
editorial corrections over the subsequent twenty years and multiple
editions, the majority of which involve punctuation. He never altered
his argument. The essay is his last word on any topic in
"criticism." In addition to its importance as an
elaboration of Hume's views, Kant read the essay in translation
and it stands to Kant's mature aesthetic theory in much the way
that Hume's account of cause and effect stands to the
*Critique of Pure Reason*. Succinct analyses of their
contrasting positions are provided by Kulenkampff (1990), Savile
(1993, pp. 81-84), and Costelloe (2007, pp. 45-52).
Hume reminds us of the radical difference in kind between matters of
fact and the pronouncements of sentiment. Verdicts of sentiment lack a
truth-value. So it is surprising to find him endorsing the position
that many judgments of taste are "absurd and ridiculous"
(SOT, 269). Small differences affect taste, yet most people notice
only "the grosser and more palpable qualities of the
object" (SOT, 278). Only judges with a more refined taste will
respond to the "universal" appeal of superior art. Because
refinement demands considerable practice, such critics are few in
numbers.
It is tempting to read Hume's argument as a move away from his
signature subjectivism and toward some brand of normative realism. But
a careful reading of the text reveals that nothing is said to deny his
earlier support for subjectivism and there are no direct endorsements
of realism. The standard of taste should provide rules for
"confirming one sentiment, and condemning another" (SOT,
268). On this topic, see Brown (1938), Jones (1976, 1984), Shelley
(1994), and Costelloe (2007, pp. 3-17). However, the standard is
normative: it must explain why the sentiments of some critics are
better and worse. It does not follow that sentiments are true and
false in any absolute sense. These reflections lead Hume to postulate
five criteria for identifying good or "true" critics:
"Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by
practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can
alone entitle critics to this valuable character" (SOT,
278).
After several stabs at identifying the standard of taste, Hume
identifies it as the consensus or "joint verdict" of
"true critics" (SOT, 278-79). However, such critics
are "rare" (SOT, 280) and "few are qualified to give
judgment on any work of art" (SOT, 278). Consequently, it is not
the verdict of contemporary critics that constitutes the standard, but
rather the consensus of qualified judges over time and from multiple
cultures (SOT, 271; SOT, 280). The importance of the so-called
"test of time" is emphasized by Savile (1982) and Levinson
(2002). Either way, the proposal has been criticized on the grounds
that it posits a viciously circular analysis of aesthetic value:
aesthetically superior artworks are those endorsed by true critics,
but true critics are identified by their endorsement of the best art.
Where earlier commentators tend to see circularity, as with Brown
(1938) and Noxon (1961), more recent interpretations follow Kivy
(1967) and see a regress problem. Circularity is avoided by
identifying good critics who satisfy the five criteria, but this
generates new evaluative questions, for we must determine if their
responses are **sufficiently** delicate, grounded in the
**right** comparisons, and so on. For further discussion, see
Carroll (1984, pp. 189-191), Gracyk (1994, pp. 175-177),
and Baceski (2013). Based on these problems, some readings of the
essay reject the joint verdict of critics as Hume's standard.
For example, Costelloe (2007, pp. 2-14) argues that the
"general rules of art" are his actual standard.
Furthermore, there is disagreement on the question of whether Hume
holds that these true critics will be uniform in their verdicts.
Interpretation of Hume's position is complicated by the way that
he consistently affirms his motivating insight, borrowed from
Hutcheson, that sentiment is the essence of evaluation. Even the worst
critic says nothing false in foolishly saying that one work is better
than another, however misguided their sentiment. Passages where even
the best critics will diverge in their evaluations are emphasized by
Wieand (1984), Savile (1993, pp. 70-71), and Mothersill (1997).
Most notably, all critics have "innocent and unavoidable"
preferences (SOT, 281) and so they are better or worse at evaluating
different categories of art. Furthermore, these preferences change
during the lifetime of each critic. Consequently, the critical
judgments of some critics will diverge from those of other highly
qualified critics. But when critics' differences arise from
unavoidable and "blameless," preferences, there is no
interference of prejudice (SOT, 280). In short, the problem of finding
a standard of taste leads Hume to the problem of deciding which
disagreements are blameless, in order to distinguish them from
prejudices that disqualify a sentiment as a public recommendation.
This reading of Hume is challenged by an interpretation that
identifies the standard of taste with ideal critics. (The phrase does
not appear in Hume.) That is, instead of real people who can guide us
despite their unavoidable and intransigent biases, Hume's true
critics are ideal or perfect evaluators. The case that Hume's
critics are ideal critics who never disagree is made by Shelley (1994,
2003) and Costelloe (2007, pp. 17-18), and disputed in various
ways by Guyer (2005), Ross (2008), Galgut (2012), and
Dura-Vila (2015).
Hume highlights only two sources that contribute to
"blameless," differences of sentiment among qualified
critics: basic dispositions of character, and moral differences
arising from cultural differences (SOT, 280). Today, we are more
likely to notice a third source of disagreement, Hume's
recognition that different objects reflect distinct species of beauty.
Becoming a qualified judge of epic poetry does not contribute to being
a qualified judge of architecture. Addison is a better writer than
John Locke, but the comparison assumes that they are both writing
philosophy (EHU, 7). We can compare John Milton and John Ogilby, and
only a false critic would rank Ogilby above Milton (SOT, 269). But it
makes no sense to compare Milton and Addison, for Milton is a poet,
not a philosopher.
Furthermore, different cultures employ different customs when handling
the same artistic medium. "You will never convince a man, who is
not accustomed to Italian music, and has not an ear to follow its
intricacies, that a Scotch tune is not preferable" (S, 217). So
the good critic must overcome the challenge of cultural prejudice.
"A critic of a different age or nation, who should peruse this
discourse, must have all these circumstances in his eye, and must
place himself in the same situation as the audience, in order to form
a true judgment of the oration" (SOT, 276). Hume emphasizes the
great difficulties involved in overcoming the prejudices of
one's time and place (SOT, 281-82).
In the wake of a post-Kantian tradition that endorses art's
autonomy, many readers balk at Hume's strong endorsement of the
relevance moral judgment upon aesthetic evaluation (SOT,
283-84). Hume discusses the moral failing of several plays (SOT,
284) and of the Koran, considered as a literary
"performance" (SOT, 267). How can Hume reconcile this
position with his endorsement of Batteux's influential thesis,
in which the mechanical arts are distinguished from fine art by the
fact that the latter exists only to provide pleasure? ("Of
Tragedy" proceeds as if literature exists solely to provide the
pleasure of the experience.) But there is also a side of Hume that
refuses to distinguish between literature and other,
"practical" writing. Every work of art is evaluated
according to its distinctive purpose, with poetry alone singled out as
having the purpose of "pleasing" the imagination (SOT,
277). Ultimately, there is very little art that Hume might treat as
art-for-art's-sake.
There should be no great surprise that Hume insists that moral
judgments must sometimes enter into our aesthetic evaluations. (Good
introductions to Hume's view are provided by Mason (2001),
Dadlez (2002), and Winegar (2011).) Hume does not offer a sharp
distinction between moral and aesthetic taste. Evaluations that
subsequent aesthetic theories regard as a purely aesthetic are, for
Hume, concluding sentiments following numerous observations of
contributing strengths and weaknesses. When a work of art represents
human activity, then Hume's account of moral evaluation requires
that moral sentiment accompany apprehension of the action. The
fictional status of the work weakens our sympathetic response, but the
mere sequence of ideas will be sufficient to produce weaker versions
of the sentiments that one would have if one were faced with the
actual events. Given Hume's moral theory, there is no
possibility of suspending our moral response. Moral sentiments are
natural and immediate. At best, one can gain a better understanding of
the cultural context responsible for the work, so that one's
moral sentiments will not be negative through mere prejudice.
Hume's theory of sentiments requires that if we are going to
have an aesthetic evaluation of a play's plotting and language,
then we are also going to have a moral response to its display of
virtue and vice. Both must enter into our final sentiment of
approbation or disapprobation.
Although Hume emphasizes the variety of responses that different
groups and individuals have with the same works, some sources of
preference are "blameless" (SOT, 280) and
"innocent" (SOT, 281). Despite myriad differences, there
are two basic types of taste: vulgar taste and refined taste. Given
his thorough anti-realism about values, Hume cannot dismiss vulgar
taste as subjective and mistaken. Hume has a different strategy for
recommending refined taste as the more objective of the pair. Vulgar
taste is more idiosyncratic and capricious. Refined taste is more
properly rule-governed and stable. The two are equally subject to
"rules," but the person of refined taste is better
informed about the material.
Hume's contrast of vulgar and refined taste parallels his
general treatment of the doxastic positions of the vulgar and the wise
(T, 150; EHU, 110). Vulgar thinking is dominated by "the first
influence of general rules" upon the mind. Such rules are
instinctively but "rashly formed" to regulate the
imagination. If these rules are allowed to govern thought in the
absence of further reflection and refinement, the result is prejudice
instead of wisdom. (T, 146,150) The wise, in contrast, take care to
survey the broadest possible range of experience, allowing a
"second influence of general rules" to supplant the first.
In this manner, the "capricious and uncertain" ideas of
the vulgar give way to "the more general and authentic
operations of the understanding" and the superior judgments of
the wise (T, 150). As for the normative question of why the refined
judgments of the wise are preferable to the rash prejudices of the
vulgar, Hume is content that moral sense assigns approbation to the
"original instincts" underlying moral and aesthetic taste
(T, 619).
Having argued that we can overcome prejudice and make superior
assessments of ordinary matters of fact, Hume imports his contrast of
vulgarity and wisdom into his aesthetic theory. Sound understanding
makes inferences and arrives at a belief. Beliefs influence taste.
Although a judgment of taste terminates in a reflective passion,
rather than in a belief with a truth-value, taste employs operations
of the imagination subject to rules internalized by the judging
subject. Consequently, the contrast between first and second
influences of general rules applies as much to taste as to
"wisdom." Vulgar taste should betray the same degree of
capriciousness and prejudice as vulgar reasoning. Good taste, in
contrast, should be more stable, for it will display "a certain
point of view" appropriate to its object (SOT, 276). Refined
taste reflects what Hume elsewhere calls the "more
general" view. As with moral response, good taste meets with
approbation while a prejudiced taste "loses all credit and
authority" (SOT, 277). However, as a matter of interpretation,
Hume's references to a requisite "*delicacy* of
imagination" (SOT, 272) complicate and obscure the account, for
it is not clear what this delicacy is, nor how it contributes to a
more settled, general view. Recent explorations of this problem
include Townsend (2001, pp. 204-206), and Gracyk (2011).
So what are the rules of taste, over and above any rules or principles
involved in sound judgment about the object of taste? Surprisingly,
Hume never offers a clear case of one. At least two proposals about
such rules can be extracted from Hume's example of
Sancho's kin and the hogshead of wine, Hume's
"evidence" that there are general rules of taste (SOT,
272-73). On the one hand, it is tempting to read the rules as
strictly parallel with the empirical laws discussed in the
*Treatise* and first *Enquiry*. If so, they are causal
laws specifying which properties and combinations of properties cause
what kind and degree of pleasure. An example might be, "An
aftertaste of iron or leather reduces the pleasure taken in an
otherwise good wine." Unfortunately, such rules seem suitable
only for arriving at some probability about the likely effect of
drinking such wine. Applying such a rule may result in a belief about
the wine, but knowing the rule would not encourage the requisite
sentiment. Where we can find them, rules of this sort are useful for
separating true from pretend critics, if only in allowing us to point
out inconsistencies in critical response (SOT 273-74).
But general rules of taste have a second function. Even if rules
"had never been methodized" (SOT, 273), their existence
supports the view that practice and comparison improves taste (SOT,
275). Those with adequate experience of a particular art form will
perceive cases with greater accuracy. The existence of rules gives
reason to agree that practice heightens the subject's awareness
of disruptive impressions (the taste of iron) and missing impressions
(no fruity bouquet), resulting in a more reflective adjudication of
the whole experience. They will also direct the imagination to expect
various combinations of properties in light of one's recognition
that it is a thing of a specific kind. Properly amended to reflect
mental rather than bodily taste, the story of Sancho's kinsmen
underlies the whole argument of "The Standard of Taste."
Even if the rule has not been formalized, the wine taster will operate
as if reasoning from a rule (e.g., "since this is red wine, it
will have a fruity bouquet but no hint of leather or iron"). The
experienced reader or viewer will approach art with "the same
excellence of faculties which contributes to the improvement of
reason" (SOT, 278), discovering the true character of the object
within "the disorder, in which they are presented" (SOT,
273).
## 5. Hume's Essay on Tragedy
"Of Tragedy" grapples with a very different set of
problems than "Of the Standard of Taste." The motivating
issue in "Of Tragedy" is that of unpleasant emotion as a
positive feature of a work. Hume proposes to explain how "a
well-written tragedy" is pleasing when that pleasure appears to
depend on "sorrow, terror, anxiety," and other naturally
disagreeable emotions (OT, 258). Hume had visited this topic before,
in the *Treatise*, where his account of the pleasure of tragedy
invokes pity and sympathy (T, 369). "Of Tragedy" replaces
this earlier account with a complex proposal about the mental workings
of imagination in relation to our negative passions.
Originally published beside "Of the Standard of Taste" in
*Four Dissertations*, "Of Tragedy" is a peculiar
essay. Its direct engagement with Bernard de Fontenelle and the
Abbe Jean-Baptiste Dubos confirms Hume's acquaintance
with French aesthetics. Hume makes passing reference to catharsis in
his mention of spectator cries and sobs that "give vent to their
sorrow" (OT, 258), but there is no evidence of familiarity with
Aristotle's *Poetics*. On the whole, the essay says
surprisingly little about the nature of tragedy, and what it says is
combined with discussions of melodramas and historical writing. Its
real topic is the experience of conflicting emotions directed
simultaneously at a single object, a topic treated in the
*Treatise*. Because the pleasure offered by tragedy and
melodrama depends on and is proportionate with their capacity to
arouse grief, fear, and other unpleasant passions, Hume uses
literature and theater as an occasion to elaborate on his theory of
mixed emotions. As Hume formulates it, the problem is to explain the
nature of the relationship between our approbation, which is
pleasurable, and the presence of "sorrow, terror,
anxiety," and other naturally disagreeable emotions (OT, 258).
The solution, Hume claims, is that any emotion "which attends a
passion, is easily converted into it, though in their natures they be
originally different from, and even contrary to each other" (T,
419).
Although published side by side, "Of Tragedy" and
"Of the Standard of Taste" may offer conflicting
doctrines. In the essay on taste, the unchallenged appearance of vice
is treated as a flaw, and unpleasant emotion is a defect. But when
"Of Tragedy" identifies a flaw in Nicholas Rowe's
*The Ambitious Stepmother*, the play's defect is not the
endorsement of vice. Instead, its flaw is the staging of action that
is "too bloody and atrocious" (OT, 264). But why is
"shocking" spectacle a flaw that leads to general
disapprobation? Is it simply a question of the degree of shock? But
why should that prevent the audiences from "converting"
the shock into a "contrary" and pleasurable experience, as
Hume claims happens with terror and anxiety? The obstacle does not
seem to be moral in nature, of the sort explored in "Of the
Standard of Taste" where Hume discusses a work's failure
to direct proper disapprobation at vicious manners. The essay on taste
suggests that the same content would not be a flaw if proper
adjustments were made. But "Of Tragedy" does not call
attention to the moral dimension of Rowe's play. So "Of
Tragedy" is a discourse on an interesting puzzle about human
psychology, namely the fact that unpleasant elements can be either
strengths or ruinous defects. "Of Tragedy" says nothing
about moralism and art.
Hume's account of tragic pleasure has two components. First,
different features of the work must generate the viewer's
agreeable and disagreeable responses. Disagreeable aspects contribute
to our general approbation because those properties are balanced by
naturally agreeable properties. Second, a general psychological
principle explains how it is possible for competing emotions to
produce a complex, pleasing sentiment. Borrowed from the
*Treatise* (T, 419), that principle holds that when the same
object produces different passions, even those "of a contrary
nature," then the subordinate passion can be
"converted" into the predominant (OT, 262). "Of
Tragedy" combines these two ideas. Our natural delight in
"imitation" provides a strong and predominant passion. The
naturally disagreeable emotions aroused by the plot provide a
subordinate and contrary emotion, the "movement" of which
"fortifies" the predominant passion. Unless the negative
emotion becomes predominant, the overall effect of a well-written
tragedy will be an audience "pleased in proportion as they are
afflicted" (OT 258). The details of Hume's theory are
explored by Cohen (1962), Budd (1991), Neill (1992, 1999), and Dadlez
(2004, 2016).
Although Hume illustrates his general principle with numerous
examples, few of his contemporaries or modern interpreters endorse his
theory. A rare exception is Galgut (2001). Famously, the theory faces
multiple objections. It offers no working definition of tragedy and
its examples are not, for the most part, genuine tragedies, points
noted by Neill (1999). The details of Hume's examples raise
further issues. For example, Hume thinks it is obvious that
Rowe's play fails due to its gory and shocking spectacle, which
tips the balance in the wrong direction. But the obvious reply is that
many viewers enjoy the spectacle of violence. Hume basically says so:
"The English theatre abounds too much with such shocking
images" (OT, 265). How can Hume contend that the play is ruined
when so many viewers enjoy it? For there is no appeal except to
sentiment.
Perhaps Hume thinks that shocking spectacle satisfies vulgar taste but
not refined taste. "Of the Standard of Taste" posits
differences in audience members to account for different responses.
Hume's sketchy theory in "Of Tragedy" is compatible
with most people enjoying aesthetically uninteresting works, for
routine design readily delights most people (SOT, 276). But a refined
taste is equally sensitive to all facets of the work, including formal
design. Just as the wine tasted funny to Sancho's kinsmen (SOT,
272-73), a run-of-the-mill work "gives pain" to true
critics (SOT, 276). Only the best critics worry about the absence of
genius.
The rules of taste endorsed in "Of the Standard of Taste"
facilitate habituated expectations based on previous experiences with
similar art. Aesthetic pleasure frequently depends on
"custom" (T, 299) and on associations and expectations
developed by the life experiences of the intended audience. If
audience expectations are violated by excessive violence, and if there
is no compensating reward for its inclusion, then the work has been
improperly staged for its intended audience. But works that merely
satisfy expectations will please the less discerning critics. Hence
"shocking images" that are routine in English theater will
please the audience. The same gory spectacle and "dismal"
stories, insufficiently "softened" by genius and
eloquence, will displease a refined taste (OT, 265).
Unfortunately, this interpretation merely heightens the problem. What
is it that rewards vulgar taste? Why does violent spectacle attract
anyone to routine, predictable potboilers? Natural sympathy should
arouse uneasiness at the gory spectacle, yet the vulgar have no
compensating reward. Brilliant language is surely an attraction of
Shakespeare's *Othello*, but no such achievement is to be
found in most of the popular fiction that reliably delights its
audience. Hume even implies that the vulgar do not attend to
"eloquence" and similar formal achievement. However, the
mere fact of "imitation" seems insufficient to explain the
predominant pleasure in the face of this material. Is it the
spectacle's "exactness of imitation" (SOT, 276)? But
that would seem to be a compensating pleasure in all but the most
inept production, and would lead us to expect that vulgar audiences
would respond with equal pleasure to almost any inferior work that
meets their expectations. But this is simply not the case. "Of
Tragedy" does not meet the standards of argument and insight set
by Hume's other contributions to aesthetics. |
japanese-aesthetics | ## 1. Introduction
Two preliminary observations about the Japanese cultural tradition are
relevant to the arts. First, classical Japanese philosophy understands
reality as constant *change*, or (to use a Buddhist expression)
*impermanence*. The world of flux that presents itself to our
senses is the only reality: there is no conception of some stable
"Platonic" realm above or behind it. The arts in Japan
have traditionally reflected this fundamental
impermanence--sometimes lamenting but more often celebrating it.
The idea of *mujo* (impermanence) is perhaps most
forcefully expressed in the writings and sayings of the
thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen, who is arguably
Japan's profoundest philosopher, but there is a fine expression
of it by a later Buddhist priest, Yoshida Kenko, whose *Essays
in Idleness* (*Tsurezuregusa*, 1332) sparkles with
aesthetic insights:
>
> It does not matter how young or strong you may be, the hour of death
> comes sooner than you expect. It is an extraordinary miracle that you
> should have escaped to this day; do you suppose you have even the
> briefest respite in which to relax? (Keene, 120)
>
In the Japanese Buddhist tradition, awareness of the fundamental
condition of existence is no cause for nihilistic despair, but rather
a call to vital activity in the present moment and to gratitude for
another moment's being granted to us.
The second observation is that the arts in Japan have tended to be
closely connected with Confucian practices of self-cultivation, as
evidenced in the fact that they are often referred to as "ways
[of living]": *chado*, the way of tea (tea
ceremony), *shodo*, the way of writing (calligraphy), and
so forth. And since the scholar official in China was expected to be
skilled in the "Six Arts"--ceremonial ritual, music,
calligraphy, mathematics, archery, and charioteering--culture and
the arts tend to be more closely connected with intellect and the life
of the mind than in the western traditions.
To this day it is not unusual in Japan for the scholar to be a fine
calligrapher and an accomplished poet in addition to possessing the
pertinent intellectual abilities.
## 2. *Mono no aware*: the Pathos of Things
The meaning of the phrase *mono no aware* is complex and has
changed over time, but it basically refers to a "pathos"
(*aware*) of "things" (*mono*), deriving
from their transience. In the classic anthology of Japanese poetry
from the eighth century, *Manyoshu*, the feeling of
*aware* is typically triggered by the plaintive calls of birds
or other animals. It also plays a major role in the world's
first novel, Murasaki Shikibu's *Genji monogatari* (The
Tale of Genji), from the early eleventh century. The somewhat later
*Heike monogatari* (The Tale of the Heike Clan) begins with
these famous lines, which clearly show impermanence as the basis for
the feeling of *mono no aware*:
>
> The sound of the Gion *shoja* bells echoes the
> impermanence of all things; the color of the *sola*
> flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud
> do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty
> fall at last, they are as dust before the wind. (McCullough 1988)
>
And here is Kenko on the link between impermanence and beauty:
"If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never
to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, how things would lose their
power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its
uncertainty" (Keene, 7). The acceptance and celebration of
impermanence goes beyond all morbidity, and enables full enjoyment of
life:
>
> How is it possible for men not to rejoice each day over the pleasure
> of being alive? Foolish men, forgetting this pleasure, laboriously
> seek others; forgetting the wealth they possess, they risk their lives
> in their greed for new wealth. But their desires are never satisfied.
> While they live they do not rejoice in life, but, when faced with
> death, they fear it--what could be more illogical? (Keene, 79)
>
Insofar as we don't rejoice in life we fail to appreciate the
pathos of the things with which we share our lives. For most of us,
some of these things, impermanent as they are, will outlast
us--and especially if they have been loved they will become sad
things: "It is sad to think that a man's familiar
possessions, indifferent to his death, should remain long after he is
gone" (Keene, 30).
The well known literary theorist Motoori Norinaga brought the idea of
*mono no aware* to the forefront of literary theory with a
study of *The Tale of Genji* that showed this phenomenon to be
its central theme. He argues for a broader understanding of it as
concerning a profound sensitivity to the emotional and affective
dimensions of existence in general. The greatness of Lady
Murasaki's achievement consists in her ability to portray
characters with a profound sense of *mono no aware* in her
writing, such that the reader is able to empathize with them in this
feeling.
The films of Ozu Yasujiro, who is often thought to be the most
"Japanese" of Japanese film directors, are a series of
exercises in conveying *mono no aware*. Stanley Cavell's
observation that "film returns to us and extends our first
fascination with objects, with their inner and fixed lives"
applies consummately to Ozu, who often expresses feelings through
presenting the faces of things rather than of actors. A vase standing
in the corner of a tatami-matted room where a father and daughter are
asleep; two fathers contemplating the rocks in a "dry
landscape" garden, their postures echoing the shapes of the
stone; a mirror reflecting the absence of the daughter who has just
left home after getting married--all images that express the
pathos of things as powerfully as the expression on the greatest
actor's face.
The most frequently cited example of *mono no aware* in
contemporary Japan is the traditional love of cherry blossoms, as
manifested by the huge crowds of people that go out every year to view
(and picnic under) the cherry trees. The blossoms of the Japanese
cherry trees are intrinsically no more beautiful than those of, say,
the pear or the apple tree: they are more highly valued because of
their transience, since they usually begin to fall within a week of
their first appearing. It is precisely the evanescence of their beauty
that evokes the wistful feeling of *mono no aware* in the
viewer.
## 3. *Wabi*: Simple, Austere Beauty
In aforementioned *Essays in Idleness* Kenko asks,
"Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, at the
moon only when it is cloudless?" (Keene, 115). If for the
Buddhists the basic condition is impermanence, to privilege as
consummate only certain moments in the eternal flux may signify a
refusal to accept that basic condition. Kenko continues:
"To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the
blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring--these are
even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn
with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration." This is an
example of the idea of *wabi*, understated beauty, which was
first distinguished and praised when expressed in poetry. But it is in
the art of tea, and the context of Zen, that the notion of
*wabi* is most fully developed.
In the *Namporoku* (1690), a record of sayings by the tea
master Sen no Rikyu, we read: "In the small [tea] room, it
is desirable for every utensil to be less than adequate. There are
those who dislike a piece when it is even slightly damaged; such an
attitude shows a complete lack of comprehension" (Hirota, 226).
Implements with minor imperfections are often valued more highly, on
the *wabi* aesthetic, than ones that are ostensibly perfect;
and broken or cracked utensils, as long as they have been well
repaired, more highly than the intact. The *wabi* aesthetic
does not imply asceticism but rather moderation, as this passage from
the *Namporoku* demonstrates: "The meal for a
gathering in a small room should be but a single soup and two or three
dishes; sake should also be served in moderation. Elaborate
preparation of food for the *wabi* gathering is
inappropriate" (Hirota, 227).
The *Zencharoku* (Zen Tea Record, 1828) contains a well known
section on the topic of *wabi*, which begins by saying that it
is simply a matter of "upholding the [Buddhist] precepts"
(Hirota, 274). The author continues:
>
> *Wabi* means that even in straitened circumstances no thought
> of hardship arises. Even amid insufficiency, one is moved by no
> feeling of want. Even when faced with failure, one does not brood over
> injustice. If you find being in straitened circumstances to be
> confining, if you lament insufficiency as privation, if you complain
> that things have been ill-disposed--this is not *wabi*.
> (Hirota, 275)
>
The way of tea exemplifies this attitude toward life in the elegant
simplicity of the tea house and the utensils, which contradicts any
notion that beauty must entail magnificence and opulence.
*Wabi* reaches its peak of austerity in emptiness--which
is a central and pervasive idea in Buddhism. In an essay "In
Praise of Shadows" (1933) the great novelist Tanizaki
Jun'ichiro (1886-1965) has this to say about the
beauty of the alcove (*tokonoma*) in the traditional Japanese
teahouse:
>
> An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that
> the light drawn into it forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is
> nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers
> behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves,
> though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with
> the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns
> complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable
> tranquility holds sway. (Tanizaki, 20)
>
A simple structure, but a special and evocative one, a place of deeply
philosophical depths. A space cut out of the room, which cuts off
direct light and thereby opens up a new world: these techniques
developed distinctively in the Japanese tradition of architecture.
(See section 7, below, on cutting.)
>
> This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light
> from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that
> formed there a quality of mystery or depth superior to that of any
> wall painting or ornament. The technique seems simple, but was by no
> means so simply achieved.
>
Instead of adding something artistic to the wall one subtracts the
wall itself and sets it back into an alcove. Then let the emptiness
that's opened up fill with a play of light and shades.
One place with a claim to be where the Japanese tea ceremony
originated is Ginkakuji, The Temple of the Silver Pavilion, in Kyoto.
Whereas the pavilion (late 15th century) is a modest monument to the
joys of *sabi*, the Moon-Viewing Platform and Sea of Silver
Sand beside it (from some 200 years later) are paradigms of
*Wabi*. These latter two constitute an unusual version of the
distinctively Japanese "dry landscape" style of garden
(see section 7, below). These strikingly abstract formations (for the
17th century!) are optimally viewed from the second floor of the
pavilion on a night of the full moon, when the sand glistens silver in
the moonlight and the stripes appear as waves on the surface of a
motionless ocean.
![thumbnail photo of Ginkakuji](ginkakuji1-thumb.jpg)
![thumbnail photo of Ginkakuji](ginkakuji2-thumb.jpg)
![thumbnail photo of Ginkakuji](ginkakuji3-thumb.jpg)
Larger Photographs of the Sea of Silver Sand and Moon-Viewing Platform at Ginkakuji
## 4. Rikyu's Tea and the Equalizing Aesthetic of *Wabi*
Few figures in Japanese history emerge as more formidable artists than
Sen no Rikyu (Qian Li Xiu , 1522-1591), and few
aesthetic movements are more transformative than his rendition of the
tea ceremony, *Wabicha* (Cha Cha ). While Rikyu is
recognized as the preeminent Japanese tea master, his role as an
aesthete extends much farther. A consummate painter and poet, a
practitioner of *ikebana*, an accomplished calligrapher and
landscape artist, Rikyu in time became an influential government
dignitary advising the Shogunate on cultural and artistic matters.
Through countless inventions and innovations, the impact of the
aesthetic world he created, and some say perfected, stretches far
beyond the boundaries of the tea ceremony itself, unearthing novel
prospects for Japanese identity and citizenship, pioneering new social
virtues, original visions of human existence and religious salvation,
and ultimately, opening new possibilities for equality (Suzuki
278-9), all rooted in the *wabi* aesthetic.
While Rikyu's reputation has come to eclipse that of his
predecessors, his aesthetic innovations were part of a lineage born in
the port city of Sakai, comprising the tea master Murata Shuko
(Cun Tian Zhu Guang , 1423-1502) and his student
Takeno Joo (Wu Ye Shao Ou ,
1502-1555), both Zen adherents, the latter of whom would later
mentor Rikyu. Both of his forerunners began pioneering tea
aesthetics, which laid the groundwork for Rikyu's eventual
refinement, and both harnessed fresh aesthetic stratagems aimed at
incorporating the *wabi* aesthetic into the tea ceremony
(Ludwig, 387-390. Sen Soshitsu, 123-157).
What distinguished Rikyu's *Wabicha* from his
mentors' ceremonies was its resolution of the tensions between
competing aesthetic undercurrents coursing through the 16th-century
practice of tea and broader Japanese cultural worlds (Slusser
55-57). Before the advent of *Wabicha*, medieval tea was
becoming increasingly polarized in two directions. The *Shoin*
(Shu Yuan ) style orchestrated ostentatious displays of wealth
carried out in opulent domiciles of the powerful aristocracy. Within
this milieu, the most cherished tea utensils (*meibutsu*
Ming Wu ) were rare and precious wares imported from China,
their aesthetic value predominantly gauged by how well they displayed
the host's affluence and power, rendering *Shoin* tea an
intentionally non-egalitarian ceremony.
The ostentation of the *Shoin* style found further
reinforcement in what was called the "*basara*"
attitude (Po Suo Luo ), characterized by tasting contests
(*tocha* Dou Cha ) and lavish
tea parties (*chayoriai* Cha Ji He ) orchestrated
for grandiose demonstrations of wealth. As the *Shoin* style
was in ascendency, the tea world was simultaneously evolving in the
opposite direction, in a version of the ceremony known as the
*Soan* (Cao An ) style, an
aesthetic that extolled austerity and poverty rather than opulence and
affluence. In place of grand halls of the aristocracy and gatherings
with dozens or even hundreds of guests, the so called
"grass-hut" *Soan* style
aestheticized the world of the farmer and hermit, and sought the
intimacy of a gathering in a tiny unadorned hut, typically attended by
a mere handful of guests. Shuko and Joo were some of
the progenitors of this style and it was tea as the "grass
hut" ideal that Rikyu inherited and eventually honed to
perfection.
A second polarizing cultural tendency in 16th century
Japan, which cut across the *Shoin* and
*Soan* divide, was a tension between
warrior and religious aesthetic sensitivities. Rikyu's
*Wabicha* dissolved this tension by melding elements of Samurai
gatherings with those cultivated in Zen monasteries. His ceremony
avoided exclusive alignment with religiosity or militarism, and
employed the *wabi* aesthetic to infuse an egalitarianism
counterbalancing hierarchical divisions entrenched within both
spheres, re-casting *wabi* as a "non-hierarchical
awareness of the real" (Hirota 95).
Beyond the realm of the martial and the monastic, the populace of
16th-century Japan was deeply stratified, from Samurai at the top all
the way down to farmers, peasants, and merchants at the bottommost
social rung. These divisions were absolute, and upward mobility to
higher social strata was virtually inconceivable. Nevertheless,
Rikyu deployed the *wabi* aesthetic to challenge social
stratification ( Sen Soshitsu 182-183). In his
*Wabicha*, all patrons of tea were considered equal, and his
aesthetic innovations concretized this principle, ensuring this was
not simply a lofty ideal. In the text attributed to him, the
*Namporoku* (1690), he claims that "worldly rank is
ignored" in the tea room.
Rikyu's aesthetic decisions were guided by a veneration of
the meagre existence of the agrarian lifestyle, the strict economy of
the mountain hermit, and the austere lack of adornment of the poor
farmer. He thus had a predilection for rough un-hewn materials, which
meant walls and timber within the tea hut were left raw and
unfinished, with straw and cob visibly protruding. Costly Chinese
porcelain, ivory flower vases and tea scoops were replaced by locally
produced bamboo versions. Colorful flowers were almost entirely
excluded, while an "aniconic" ceremony emerged,
characterized by the absence of imagery within the hut and surrounding
garden.
Among the numerous architectural innovations Rikyu deployed, the
most egalitarian were several features of the tearoom, which rendered
it physically impossible for tea guests to express their social
position or power. The *nijiriguchi* (Lin Kou ),
roughly translated as "crawl in space" was the only entry
way for guests (previous instances of the *sukiya* had another
larger entryway for nobility and aristocracy). The tiny aperture
measuring only around 60cm x 60cm (2ft x 2ft) achieved two equalizing
aims of *Wabicha* (Soshitsu Sen 182-183). Firstly,
samurai were prevented from entering with their two *Katana*
swords, which normally were the most visible signs of their position
atop the social hierarchy. (Rikyu introduced a sword rack
(*katanakake* Dao Gua ke) next to the
*nijiriguchi* under the tea hut's eaves.) Further, the
size of the opening meant that wealthy aristocrats and courtiers could
not make it through the small opening with their oversized top hats.
Thus, once inside Rikyu's tiny *sukiya*, no
appearance endured of the markings normally employed to exhibit and
maintain the rigid social hierarchy. Even conversation or figures of
speech invoking social status, references to employment, objects
exhibiting one's wealth, or associations legitimating
one's power were all strictly prohibited.
An additional dimension of the *Wabicha* aesthetic, which
reinforces egalitarian ideals is Rikyu's embrace of the
local. He opposed the trend of importing expensive Chinese tea ware
and instead championed locally crafted articles reflecting the
agrarian lifestyle outside the bustling urban city centre. Amidst
Rikyu's manifold innovations, the most
famous--renowned for epitomizing the very quintessence of
*wabi*--was the inception of an entirely novel pottery
style known as *Raku* (Le Shao , *raku-yaki*).
Rikyu enlisted a local potter Sasaki "Raku"
Chojiro (Chang Ci Lang ) to give form to tea ware
embodying the *wabi* aesthetic. As opposed to highly
sophisticated Chinese porcelain, *Raku* was rustic earthenware,
utilitarian, un-adorned, often asymmetrical and imperfect in form and
finish; celebrating the grace of a humble existence, an ode to local
hermit and farmer. Firing and drying techniques were developed to
grant leeway to the atmosphere, nature, and gravity to express
themselves in the clay body as it heated then cooled. The aesthetic
evoked the monk or farmer in the vicinity working with what was at
hand rather than the worldly aristocrat importing treasures from
foreign shores. Aligned with the ethos of *wabi*, *Raku*
ware was valued for its exposition of the simple beauty of meagre
existence, accentuating the aesthetics of paucity over opulence. Thus,
*Raku* played a levelling role that made a previously exclusive
material culture surrounding the tea ceremony more egalitarian.
Another important innovation that curtailed signs of wealth involved
transformations in design and emphasis of the hanging scroll
(*Kakemono* Gua Wu ). Once a peripheral piece,
Rikyu elevates the scroll, recalibrates its aesthetics toward
egalitarian ideals, and installs it as the centrepiece of the tea hut
and the ceremony as a whole (Hirota, 217-218). Rikyu not
only elevated the scroll to the aesthetic forefront of the ceremony,
(a role previously occupied by the tea caddy in the *Shoin*
style) but also shifted scroll aesthetics away from costly and
exclusive Chinese versions. Under Rikyu's patronage,
scrolls were for the first time commissioned from local Zen Buddhist
calligraphers and painters.
While his interventions may have succeeded in challenging the rigid
societal stratification beyond the confines of the tea world, they
might have also set the stage for his own tragic downfall. The markers
of social hierarchy he sought to dismantle were crucial for justifying
and maintaining the Shogunate's power. As a governmental
official, Rikyu had little latitude to deny Hideyoshi's
wishes, which often diverged drastically from the austerities of
*Wabicha* (for instance, building the golden Tai-an
(Dai An ) tearoom). His egalitarianism was undermining a
vital symbol the Shogun relied on to showcase his supremacy, and
threatened to subvert power structures that maintained his position
atop the social-political hierarchy (Slusser, 56-57).
Rikyu's *Wabicha* and the hierarchy-nullifying
symbols and structures he shaped countered the power politics embraced
by the Shogunate and challenged the militaristic interests of the
elite he served. Rikyu would be ordered to commit ritual suicide
(*seppuku* Qie Fu ), and following his last tea
ceremony in 1591, he wrote his death poem before taking his own
life.
While Rikyu's impact on the subsequent history of Japanese
tea and culture at large is irrefutable, his legacy is complicated.
His ritual suicide was appropriated for a subsequent aestheticization
of hyper-nationalistic tendencies, thereby setting an early standard
for an "aesthetic" death as sacrifice to one's
nation at time of war (Cross, 163-166). Thus, his tragic moment
was promoted as a means to rationalize some of the empire's most
egregious brutalities. A memory that should have remained untarnished
became attached to Japan's calamitous aestheticization of
imperialism, warfare, and self-sacrifice--values fundamentally at
odds to those that Rikyu introduced to Japanese culture through
the *wabi* aesthetic in the tea ceremony.
## 5. *Sabi:* Rustic Patina
The term *sabi* occurs often in the
*Manyoshu*, where it has a connotation of
desolateness (*sabireru* means "to become
desolate"), and later on it seems to acquire the meaning of
something that has aged well, grown rusty (another word pronounced
*sabi* means "rust"), or has acquired a patina that
makes it beautiful.
The importance of *sabi* for the way of tea was affirmed by the
great fifteenth-century tea master Shuko, founder of one of the
first schools of tea ceremony. As a distinguished commentator puts it:
"The concept *sabi* carries not only the meaning
'aged'--in the sense of 'ripe with experience
and insight' as well as 'infused with the patina that
lends old things their beauty'--but also that of
tranquility, aloneness, deep solitude" (Hammitzsch, 46).
The feeling of *sabi* is also evoked in the haiku of the famous
seventeenth-century poet Matsuo Basho, where its connection with
the word *sabishii* (solitary, lonely) is emphasized. The
following haiku typifies *sabi(shii)* in conveying an
atmosphere of solitude or loneliness that undercuts, as Japanese
poetry usually does, the distinction between subjective and
objective:
>
> Solitary now --
>
>
> Standing amidst the blossoms
>
>
> Is a cypress tree.
>
Contrasting with the colorful beauty of the blossoms, the more subdued
gracefulness of the cypress--no doubt older than the person
seeing it but no less solitary--typifies the poetic mood of
*sabi*.
Tanizaki's "In Praise of Shadows" frequently
celebrates *sabi*. By contrast with Western taste, he writes of
the Japanese sensibility:
>
> We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive
> lustre to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone
> or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity. . . . We love things
> that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the
> colors and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them.
> (Tanizaki, 11-12)
>
This is a significant existential consideration: the sheen of older
things connects us with the past in ways that shiny products of modern
technology simply cannot. And since older things tend to be made from
natural materials, to deal with them helps us to realize our closest
connections with the natural environment.
*Sabi* figures prominently, for Tanizaki, in the aesthetics of
the traditional Japanese toilet, which "stands apart from the
main building at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with
leaves and moss." He wrestles with the vexations that modern
technology imposes on the question of fixtures, as the traditional
ones are superseded by "white porcelain and handles of sparkling
metal" (Tanizaki, 3, 6).
>
> Wood finished in glistening black lacquer is the very best, but even
> unfinished wood, as it darkens and the grain grows more subtle with
> the years, acquires an inexplicable power to calm and soothe. The
> ultimate, of course, is a wooden "morning glory" urinal
> filled with boughs of cedar: this is a delight to look at and allows
> not the slightest sound. (Tanizaki, 6)
>
But the primary delights of the traditional Japanese
toilet are its closeness to nature: in that special place,
"surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks
out upon blue skies and green leaves" (Tanizaki, 4). Among the
achievements of traditional Japanese architecture Tanizaki praises the
toilet as "the most aesthetic."
>
> Our forbears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed
> what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a
> place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond association with the
> beauties of nature.
>
It is surely fitting that one should perform those most natural
functions of urinating and defecating, returning to the earth the
remains of its bounties, in natural rather than high-tech
surroundings.
A more exalted exemplification of *sabi* is the exquisite
Silver Pavilion at Ginkakuji in Kyoto. Even though the tea ceremony is
said to have originated here, in a small *sabi*-saturated
teahouse, the exterior of the pavilion was originally going to be
covered in silver foil, in emulation of the Golden Pavilion (14th
century) at Kinkakuji. Without ever having enjoyed a coating of
silver, the Silver Pavilion is the epitome of *sabi* and one of
the most graceful structures ever built. The contrast with the larger,
and flashier Golden Pavilion, whose coating of gold leaf lends it a
quite different (and distinctly un-*sabi*) kind of beauty, is
instructive.
![thumbnail photo of Ginkakuji](ginkakuji4-thumb.jpg)
![thumbnail photo of Ginkakuji](ginkakuji5-thumb.jpg)
![thumbnail photo of Kinkakuji](kinkakuji1-thumb.jpg)
![thumbnail photo of Kinkakuji](kinkakuji2-thumb.jpg)
Larger Photographs of the Silver Pavilion at Ginkakuji and the Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji
In 1950 a deranged Buddhist acolyte, deeply disturbed by the beauty of
the Golden Pavilion, set fire to it and burned it to the ground. An
exact replica was built on the original site in 1955. The aesthetic
qualities of the original structure are celebrated in Mishima
Yukio's fine novel *The Temple of the Golden Pavilion*
(1956), as well as in Ichikawa Kon's classic film *Enjo*
(Conflagration, 1958). In 1987, the burgeoning Japanese economy made
it possible for the first time in the building's history to
cover the structure with gold leaf, according to the creator's
original intention. The result is breathtakingly spectacular--but
totally un-Japanese. Old-time residents of Kyoto famously complained
that it would take a long time for the building to acquire sufficient
*sabi* to be worth looking at again. At the rate the patina
seems to be progressing, probably several centuries.
In 2011, after the tsunami in Tohoku and the explosions and
nuclear meltdown in Fukushima caused an acute energy shortage in
Japan, one of many responses was a dramatic reduction of lighting in
public places, and especially in subway stations with extensive
underground restaurant and shopping precincts. Tanizaki cites a
prescient remark from the late 1920s to the effect that "perhaps
no two countries waste more electricity than America and Japan"
(Tanizaki, 35). He would be delighted now to see Japanese cities
reducing the ubiquitous glare of neon lighting and all-night electric
illumination, in a dimming of unnecessary lights which thereby
reintroduces some of the shadows he so eloquently praises.
## 6. *Yugen*: Mysterious Grace
*Yugen* may be, among generally recondite Japanese
aesthetic ideas, the most ineffable. The term is first found in
Chinese philosophical texts, where it has the meaning of
"dark," or "mysterious."
Kamo no Chomei, the author of the well-known
*Hojoki* (An Account of my Hut, 1212), also wrote
about poetry and considered *yugen* to be a primary
concern of the poetry of his time. He offers the following as a
characerization of *yugen*: "It is like an autumn
evening under a colorless expanse of silent sky. Somehow, as if for
some reason that we should be able to recall, tears well
uncontrollably." Another characterization helpfully mentions the
importance of the imagination: "When looking at autumn mountains
through mist, the view may be indistinct yet have great depth.
Although few autumn leaves may be visible through the mist, the view
is alluring. The limitless vista created in imagination far surpasses
anything one can see more clearly" (Hume, 253-54).
This passage instantiates a general feature of East-Asian culture,
which favors allusiveness over explicitness and completeness.
*Yugen* does not, as has sometimes been supposed, have to
do with some other world beyond this one, but rather with the depth of
the world we live in, as experienced with the aid of a cultivated
imagination.
The art in which the notion of *yugen* has played the most
important role is the No drama, one of the world's great
theater traditions, which attained its highest flourishing through the
artistry of Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443). Zeami wrote a number of
treatises on No drama, in which *yugen*
("Grace") figures as "the highest principle"
(Rimer, 92). He associates it with the highly refined culture of the
Japanese nobility, and with their speech in particular, though there
is also in No a "Grace of music," a "Grace of
performance [of different roles]," and a "Grace of the
dance" (Rimer, 93). It is something rare, that is attained only
by the greatest actors in the tradition, and only after decades of
dedicated practice of the art. It is impossible to conceptualize, so
that Zeami often resorts to imagery in trying to explain it:
"Cannot the beauty of Grace be compared to the image of a swan
holding a flower in its bill, I wonder?" (Rimer, 73).
The most famous formulation comes at the beginning of Zeami's
"Notes on the Nine Levels [of artistic attainment in
No]," where the highest level is referred to as "the
art of the flower[ing] of peerless charm":
>
> The meaning of the phrase Peerless Charm surpasses any explanation in
> words and lies beyond the workings of consciousness. It can surely be
> said that the phrase "in the dead of night, the sun shines
> brightly" exists in a realm beyond logical explanation. Indeed,
> concerning the Grace of the greatest performers in our art [it gives
> rise to] the moment of Feeling that Transcends Cognition, and to an
> art that lies beyond any level that the artist may consciously have
> attained. (Rimer, 120)
>
This passage alludes to the results of a pattern of rigorous
discipline that informs many "performing arts" (which
would include the tea ceremony and calligraphy as well as theater) in
Japan, as well as East-Asian martial arts. No is exemplary in
this respect, since its forms of diction, gestures, gaits, and dance
movements are all highly stylized and extremely unnatural. The idea is
that one practices for years a "form" (*kata*) that
goes counter to the movements of the body and thus requires tremendous
discipline--to the point of a breakthrough to a "higher
naturalness" that is exhibited when the form has been
consummately incorporated. This kind of spontaneity gives the
impression, as in the case of Grace, of something
"supernatural."
## 7. *Yugen* and Landscape Painting
Intriguing features of Japanese aesthetics are revealed through the
artistic practices of Sesshu Toyo and his most
celebrated work, the so-called "Splashed ink landscape" of
1495 (*Haboku* *Sansui*, literally, "Broken Ink
Landscape"). Taking the first steps towards reading his art
calls on us to recognize a distinctive feature of Japanese landscape
paintings, that is, as art objects they have a considerably expanded
aesthetic status relative to similar works as interpreted within
Western philosophical and art historical traditions. Of course, the
painting object itself is important, but key aesthetic value also lies
in the bodily performance the work attests to. Properly estimating the
beauty of Sesshu's "Splashed ink
landscape"--similar to how one should appreciate Japanese
calligraphy--involves more than simply making judgments regarding
the marks on paper, but also calls for an appreciation of the bodily
movements that created the work. Because Sesshu's
spontaneous movements were cultivated according to highly disciplined
Zen Buddhist practices, interpreting his landscape art demands an
aesthetics expanded to embrace the philosophic and religious.
Sesshu Toyo (Xue Zhou Deng Yang ,
1420-1506) was a towering figure of the Japanese art world who
helped initiate an indigenous artistic tradition at a time when
philosophic-religious practices were going beyond their Chinese
influence, as Chan Buddhism gave rise to Zen Buddhism in Japan.
Sesshu was part of a trajectory of many centuries to establish
Japanese forms of Buddhism as an enduring feature of the
country's religious, philosophic, and aesthetic identity. During
his life, Zen was reaching prominence as a religious discipline, as
were the related arts under Ashikaga patronage. The Muromachi Period
was the time of Zen aesthetics: not only monochrome ink painting, but
all Japanese aesthetic practices (*geido*) including
calligraphy, tea ceremony, No drama, and dry landscape gardening
flourished as expressions of the Zen, especially Rinzai Zen, spirit of
the time. During this period, a shift was underway in the painting
world from *kara-e* (Tang Hui "Chinese
painting") to *yamato-e*
(Da He Hui "Japanese painting").
Representations of deities for devotional purposes, and paintings of
Daoist and Buddhist themes (*doshakuga*) were being
supplanted as the heart of art practice as Japan saw its first
movements towards initiating an art tradition seeking purely aesthetic
ideals. Landscape painting was central to that movement.
Sesshu was a celebrated painter, poet, calligrapher, and
gardener, who mastered all of the major Chinese styles and genres,
from bird and flower paintings, to portraiture, hanging scrolls,
screens, and fans. It was his landscapes, however, particularly his
famed "Splashed Ink Landscape" for which he has been
immortalized. This painting offers insight into a central concept of
Japanese aesthetics discussed above, that is, *yugen*.
![reproduction of Splashed Ink Landscape](splashed-ink-landscape-thumb.jpg)
Splashed Ink Landscape by Sesshu
The mysterious grace of his most celebrated landscape painting derives
as much from the space that is left un-touched, the invisible and
absent (often referred to as the "dragon's veins" of
a painting) as from what is painted and visible. The work appears
incomplete, still in the act of formation, and the dramatic negative
spaces created by the mists allow the various forms to dissolve and
blend into one another, but more decisively, according to the
yugen dynamic, this negativity invites the viewer into the
painting to actively complete it. As artists employing yugen
principles in other genres have shown, the incompleteness and
allusiveness of the artwork summons the viewer into the scene. In
Ghilardi's words, "the onlooker must merge in the image,
completing the empty spaces, making it a lively element of nature
itself, 'between' visible and invisible" (Ghilardi,
2015, 99).
Sesshu does not seek to render every detail of the landscape to
achieve representational verisimilitude, to depict an object that
would be discernible for a subject. The aim is to give only a
suggestion or a trace of trees, mountains, or waters, which appear to
negate themselves as objects. Accordingly, Sesshu does not
circumscribe forms but offers the impression of poetic immediacy by
breaking them down. Extreme abbreviation and abstraction are employed
such that any form, if even discernible, is pushed as far as possible
from objectivity without disappearing completely into formlessness. As
Jullien writes regarding Chinese painters who influenced Sesshu,
they paint the "landscape in the tonality of *as if*, in
the mode of appearing-disappearing, at once 'as if there
were' and 'as if there were not.'"(Jullien,
2009. 8) The central grouping of trees, the inn blending into their
trunks, and the tiny oarsman all appear but feel as though they are
about to be lost, maybe already transitioning into a vague memory,
only a brushstroke away from dissolving completely. A sensitive viewer
does not simply perceive a representation of this event, but can sense
the sweeping and spontaneous gestures that gave rise to the
ephemerality of the scene. To appreciate this aesthetic feature of the
painting invokes Buddhist principles Sesshu would have cultivated
as a Zen monk.
Sesshu's life and work are exemplary for Japanese
aesthetics given that his practice was not aesthetic in a restricted
sense, but also encompassed the religious and philosophical principles
of Daoist-inspired Zen Buddhism. "Splashed ink landscape"
was composed in Sesshu's 76th year, a time when
he claimed that his eyes "were growing misty" and Daoism
was increasingly influential for his painting. As a painter-priest,
both his meditative as well as his artistic practice would have aimed
at self-negation, at achieving "non-self" as per the goal
of Zen training. As Yukio Lippit writes, "Splashed Ink Landscape
thus showcases a mode of ink painting that projects both cultivated
artistic agency and a state of subjectlessness. This condition of the
permeable subject would prove pitch-perfect for the Japanese monk
painter of the late medieval period" (Lippit 2012, 71). To
disclose how this aesthetic-religious goal was approached in painting
practice reveals the Daoist roots of Zen Buddhism.
Painting was among the Japanese aesthetic practices referred to as
*geido* Yun Dao . One of the sinographs shared
among the compounds for archery (*kyudo*
Gong Dao ), martial arts (*judo*
Rou Dao ), calligraphy (*shodo* Shu Dao ),
flower arranging (*kado* Hua Dao ), tea ceremony
(*sado* Cha Dao ) is the sinograph *dao*
(Dao ), (*do* or *michi* in Japanese)
indicating the philosophic-religious orientation of the practices. To
move according to the *dao* is to move with a natural
spontaneity as an embodiment of the well-known concept
"non-action" (*wuwei* Wu Wei ). Acting
spontaneously involves moving beyond the binary of activity or
passivity; that is, the world moves the body as much as the body moves
in the world. Accordingly, as Nishida comments, we can say that
"Sesshu painted nature or that nature painted itself
through Sesshu" (Nishida 1990, 135). The graceful
naturalness of the swordsman, the calligrapher, or the No actor
is also characteristic of the painter's gestures. All are bodily
practices that seek to harmonize with the spontaneous motions of the
*dao* through non-action. Thus, to estimate the aesthetic value
of Sesshu's brushwork is to appreciate its religious source
in Daoist-informed Buddhist practice. Because observers can harmonize
their own bodies with the movements animating the painting, the work
elicits more than aesthetic judgments, it is itself a site for
cultivating religious-philosophic discipline.
The "splashed ink" technique Sesshu employed is
particularly exemplary of the expanded frame of Japanese aesthetics.
"Splashed Ink" (*hatsuboku*) was one of several
"broken ink" (*haboku*) spontaneous techniques
originating in China, which Sesshu learned while travelling to
study with painters and conduct religious practice at its monasteries.
The techniques ranged from spontaneous washes and splashes to actual
ink-flinging and dripping. While these methods sound reckless and were
associated with an "aesthetics of inebriation" and
"aesthetics of accident," the splashed ink idiom is in
fact the most demanding style, regarded as the highest form of
expression and the supreme test of the artist's skill. Likewise,
it was thought to test the observer's sensitivity like no other
genre. The style originated with the "literati" artists of
the Southern Song School of Chinese landscape painting who favored
*yugen*-style abbreviated poetic suggestion, rather than
the detailed and descriptive "academic" approach of the
Northern School. Thus, following this tradition, painters such as
Sesshu did not aim to develop virtuoso skill to create a fully
formed art image, but in negating the self and becoming continuous
with the motions of nature, they follow the Daoist precept that
"the great image has no form."
## 8. *Iki*: Refined Style
*The Structure of "Iki"* ("Iki" no
kozo) by Kuki Shuzo (1888-1941) is arguably
the most significant work in Japanese aesthetics from the twentieth
century--and certainly one of the shortest. Kuki wrote the first
draft in 1926 while living in Paris, toward the end of a seven-year
stay in Europe, and published the book shortly after returning to
Japan in 1929. It's a phenomenological and hermeneutic study of
a phenomenon, *iki*, that was central to Japanese aesthetic
life during the previous two or three hundred years and derived from
forms of erotic relations between men and geisha in the pleasure
quarters of the big cities. Kuki remarks that although the French
terms *chic*, *coquet*, and *raffine*
share connotations with the term *iki*, no European word is
capable of translating the richness of its
meanings--unsurprisingly, since it emerged from a particular
cultural context and Kuki is concerned to grasp the "living
form" of the phenomenon as experienced. Kuki mentions the French
*esprit* and the German *Sehnsucht* as terms that are
similarly untranslatable, for similar reasons of cultural embeddedness
(Nara, 15-16).
Kuki distinguishes two further "moments" of *iki*
in addition to its basis in seductiveness or coquetry
(*bitai*): "brave composure" (*ikiji*) and
"resignation" (*akirame*). Insofar as *iki*
as seductiveness is concerned "to maintain a dualistic
relationship, protecting the possibility as
possibility"--an allusion to Heidegger's existential
conception of death as ultimate possibility--it already embraces
impermanence and mortality. The first sense in which iki preserves the
possibility as possibility, and thus maintains a dualistic
relationship, is that the act of sexual union is not consummated (or
at least postponed). This preservation of possibility is further
enhanced by brave composure, which for Kuki is exemplified in the
attitude toward death (his own and others') on the part of the
samurai warrior and his way of living (*bushido*). It is
enhanced too by the moment of resignation, which Kuki understands as
the Buddhist attitude of non-attachment to a world of impermanence.
All together they enable a kind of aesthetic "play",
thanks to a (phenomenological) "bracketing" of the
concerns of everyday life (Nara, 18-23).
After positioning the phenomenon of *iki* among a variety of
other aesthetic feelings such as sweet (*amami*) versus
astringent (*shibumi*), flashy (*hade*) versus quiet
(*jimi*), and crude (*gehin*) versus refined
(*johin*), Kuki goes on to examine the objective
expressions of the phenomenon, which are either "natural"
or "artistic" (Nara, 24-34). In nature, willow trees
and slow, steady rain exemplify *iki*; in the human body a
slight relaxation, a voice of medium rather than high pitch, a face
that is long rather than round, a certain tension and relaxation
together of the eyes, mouth, and cheeks, the hand curved or slightly
bent back. Also *iki* is the wearing of thin fabric, makeup
thinly applied, hair styled not too formally, with the aid of water
rather than oil, and a *decolletage* designed to call
attention to the nape of the neck laid bare (Nara, 35-39).
In the "free art" of design, parallel lines, and
especially vertical stripes, are expressive of *iki*: almost
all the other beautiful patterns developed by Japanese fabric arts,
since they often involve curved lines, are un-*iki*. The only
colors that embody *iki* are certain grays, browns, and blues.
In architecture the small (four-and-a-half mat) Zen teahouse is a
paradigm of *iki*, especially insofar as it initiates an
interplay between wood and bamboo. Lighting must be subdued: indirect
daylight or else the kind of illumination provided by a paper lantern.
The scales, melodies, and rhythms of various kinds of music are
correspondingly *iki*, insofar as (alluding to Goethe,
Schelling, and Schopenhauer)"Architecture is frozen music, and
music is flowing architecture" (Nara, 41-51).
In his conclusion, Kuki asks whether various nineteenth-century and
contemporary European arts might exemplify *iki* and decides
probably not exactly, though he allows that various aspects of
Baudelaire's poetry and aesthetics come very close (with the
difference that dandyism is a male prerogative whereas *iki* is
associated with both sexes). During his seven years in Germany and
France he listened to lectures and seminars by, and conversed with,
such figures as Heinrich Rickert, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger,
Henri Bergson, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Kuki thereby developed a
sophisticated understanding of European philosophy and aesthetics, and
was concerned after his return to Japan to apply methods he had
learned to a Japanese aesthetic phenomenon. He didn't therefore
aspire to any kind of universal aesthetics--since *iki* is
rooted in the culture of a particular ethnic group. Yet because the
Japanese at that time, under geopolitical pressure to modernise more
efficiently, were losing touch with their own traditions, Kuki took it
as one of his tasks to celebrate the aesthetic values of the past
(Nara, 58-60).
He has unfortunately been excoriated on these grounds as an
ultranationalist and even a fascist, notably by Leslie Pincus in her
book *Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki
Shuzo and the Rise of National Aesthetics*, and this
deters some people from reading him. But while Pincus's book
provides a good deal of helpful historical background of the milieu in
which Kuki was working in Japan, her claims that he was a fascist are
groundless (see Parkes 1997, 2007). An unprejudiced reading of *The
Structure of Iki* reveals no fascist tendencies whatsoever, and
the nationalist themes are innocuous, simply calling for a remembering
of what is valuable in the Japanese tradition and likely to be lost
beneath the waves of modernization--in a world where connections
with the past were withering and Japan was warding off the
colonization of East and South Asia by the Western powers.
Kuki is a fascinating thinker, and *The Structure of Iki*,
while occasionally tortuous because of its commitment to a strictly
European methodology, illuminates some fascinating aspects of the
Japanese aesthetic tradition while at the same time engaging the
deepest levels of experience anywhere.
## 9. *Kire*: Cutting
A distinctive notion in Japanese aesthetic discourse is that of the
"cut" (*kire*) or, "cut-continuity"
(*kire-tsuzuki*). The "cut" is a basic trope in the
Rinzai School of Zen Buddhism, especially as exemplified in the
teachings of the Zen master Hakuin (1686-1769). For Hakuin the
aim of "seeing into one's own nature" can only be
realized if one has "cut off the root of life": "You
must be prepared to let go your hold when hanging from a sheer
precipice, to die and return again to life" (Hakuin,
133-35). The cut appears as a fundamental feature in the
distinctively Japanese art of flower arrangement called
*ikebana*. The term means literally "making flowers
live"--a strange name, on first impression at least, for an
art that begins by initiating their death. There is an exquisite essay
by Nishitani Keiji on this marvelous art, in which organic life is cut
off precisely in order to let the true nature of the flower to come to
the fore (Nishitani, 23-7). There is something curiously
deceptive, from the Buddhist viewpoint of the impermanence of all
things, about plants, which, lacking locomotion and by sinking roots
into the earth, assume an appearance of being especially "at
home" wherever they are. In severing the flowers from their
roots, Nishitani suggests, and placing them in an alcove (itself cut
off from direct light, as Tanizaki remarks), one is letting them show
themselves as they truly are: as absolutely rootless as every other
being in this world of radical impermanence.
The notion of cut-continuation is exemplified in the highly stylized
gait of the actors in the No drama. The actor slides the foot
along the floor with the toes raised, and then "cuts" off
the movement by quickly lowering the toes to the floor--and
beginning at that precise moment the sliding movement along the floor
with the other foot. This stylization of the natural human walk draws
attention to the episodic nature of life, which is also reflected in
the pause between every exhalation of air from the lungs and the next
inhalation. Through attending to the breath in zen meditation one
becomes aware that the pause between exhalation and inhalation is
different--more of a cut--from that between inhalation and
exhalation. This reflects the possibility of life's being cut
off at any moment: the one exhalation that isn't followed by an
inhalation, known as "breathing one's last."
Cutting also appears in the "cut-syllable"
(*kireji*) in the art of *haiku* poetry, which cuts off
one image from--at the same time as it links it to--the
next. There is a famous cut-syllable, *ya*, at the end of the
first line of the best known haiku by Basho, the most famous
haiku poet:
>
>
>
> | | |
> | --- | --- |
> | *Furuike ya*
>
> *Kawazu tobikomu*
>
> *Mizu no oto*. | Ah, an ancient pond--
>
> Suddenly a frog jumps in!
>
> The sound of water. |
>
>
>
The most distinctively Japanese style of garden, the "dry
landscape" (*karesansui*) garden, owes its existence to
the landscape's being "cut off" from the natural
world beyond its borders. The epitome of this style is the rock garden
at Ryoanji in Kyoto, where fifteen "mountain"-shaped
rocks are set in beds of moss in a rectangular "sea" of
white gravel.
![thumbnail photo of Ryoanji](ryoanji0-thumb.jpg)
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Larger Photographs of the Dry Landscape Garden at Ryoanji
(The Japanese word for landscape, *sansui*, means literally
"mountains waters": see Berthier 2000.) At Ryoanji
the rock garden is cut off from the outside by a splendid wall that is
nevertheless low enough to permit a view of the natural surroundings.
This cut, which is in a way doubled by the angled roof that runs along
the top of the wall and seems to cut it off, is most evident in the
contrast between movement and stillness. Above and beyond the wall
there is nature in movement: branches wave and sway, clouds float by,
and the occasional bird flies past. But unless rain or snow is
falling, or a stray leaf is blown across, the only movement visible
within the garden is shadowed or illusory, as the sun or moon casts
slow-moving shadows of tree branches on the motionless gravel.
The garden is cut off on the near side too, by a border of pebbles
(larger, darker, and more rounded than the pieces of gravel) that runs
along the east and north edges. There is a striking contrast between
the severe rectangularity of the garden's borders and the
irregular natural forms of the rocks within them. The expanse of
gravel is also cut through by the upthrust of the rocks from below:
earth energies mounting and peaking in irruptions of stone. Each group
of rocks is cut off from the others by the expanse of gravel, and the
separation is enhanced by the "ripple" patterns in the
raking that surrounds each group (and some individual rocks). And yet
the overall effect of these cuttings is actually to intensify the
invisible lines of connection among the rocks, whose interrelations
exemplify the fundamental Buddhist insight of "dependent
co-arising" (*engi*).
The rock garden also embodies the central Buddhist insight of
impermanence. Insofar as its being cut off from the surrounding nature
has the effect of drying up its organic life, which then no longer
decays in the usual manner. Being dried up (the *kare* of
*karesansui* means "withered"), the mountains and
waters of the garden at Ryoanji at first appear less temporary
than their counterparts outside, which manifest the cyclical changes
that organic life is heir to. But just as plants look deceptively
permanent thanks to their being rooted in the earth, so the rocks of
the dry landscape garden give a misleading impression of permanence,
especially when one revisits them over a period of years. As
participants in (what Thoreau called) "the great central
life" of the earth, rocks have a life that unfolds in time
sequences that are quite different from ours--and yet also
subject to the impermanence that conditions all things.
## 10. Ozu Yasujiro: Cinematic Cuts
The garden at Ryoanji makes a brief but significant appearance in
one of the classics of Japanese cinema, Ozu Yasujiro's
*Late Spring* (1949). It comes right after one of the
film's most famous images: a vase standing on a tatami mat in
front of a window on which silhouettes of bamboo are projected. The
scene in question consists of eight shots, seven of which show the
Ryoanji rocks (of which there are fifteen in total), and which
are separated and joined by seven cuts. (Ozu hardly ever uses any
other transition than the cut, such as the wipe.) After two shots of
rocks in the garden, the camera angle reverses and we see the main
protagonist with his friend--they are both fathers of
daughters--sitting on the wooden platform with the tops of two
rocks occupying the lower part of the frame. Two rocks and two
fathers. Cut to a close-up of the fathers from their left side, with
no rocks in view. In their dark suits, and seated in the classic Ozu
"overlapping triangles" configuration, leaning forward
toward the garden with their arms around knees drawn up toward their
chins, they resemble two rocks. They talk about how they raise
children who then go off to live their own lives. As they invoke such
manifestations of impermanence, they remain motionless except for the
occasional nod or turn of the head.
![](LSwindow-thumb.jpg)
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Enlarged Sequence of Stills from *Late Spring*
In their brief conversation by the edge of the garden, the two fathers
do little more than exchange platitudes about family life--and
yet the scene is a profoundly moving expression of the human
condition. It gains this effect from the assimilation of the figures
of the two men to rocks, which seems to affirm the persistence of
cycles of impermanence. These images of assimilation capture one of
the central ideas behind the dry landscape garden: that of the
continuum between human consciousness and stone, which is also
understandable as the kinship of awareness with its original
basis.
The opening shots of *Tokyo Story* (1953), which some consider
Ozu's greatest film, are also exemplary with respect to the
cutting. The first shot shows a shrine sculpture to the left of center
and behind it an estuary with a boat chugging along to the right, in
the direction of a gradual rise of hills on the horizon. After ten
seconds, just as the boat is about to disappear beyond the
frame--there is a cut to the pavement on the side of a street. A
cart now occupies the left foreground of the frame, and beside it
stand two large bottles (Ozu's signature shapes). Eight small
children in school uniform walk away from the camera to the right.
Continuity is provided by a parallel between the river and horizon of
the first scene and the horizontal lines of the pavement and houses in
the second, as well as by the movement toward the right. Also aurally
by the continuing sound of the boat's putt-putting. A ninth
child appears and as he passes the bottles and reaches the center of
the frame--there is a cut to a shot over the roofs of houses of a
train traveling to the right, with behind it the buildings of a shrine
or temple, and then hills behind those. The putting sound of the boat
continues before being drowned out by the sound of the train, and the
almost horizontal line of the train's passage continue to be
congruent with those of the street, descending gradually to the right.
Smoke issues from two chimneys at left and center, the scene lasting
fifteen seconds.
As the end of the train reaches the center of the frame--the
sound continues but there is a cut to a closer shot of the train from
the hill side, so that it is now moving up along a diagonal to the
left. Behind the houses on the other side of the train is the estuary
again. As the train's whistle blows--there is a cut to a
shrine surrounded by pine trees and statuary standing on an embankment
with the estuary in the background on the far left. Continuity is
provided by a chimney in the foreground that spouts smoke as the
train's steam whistle continues. The main line has reverted to a
horizontal line rising toward the right. After six seconds, the
shortest scene so far--there is a cut to a grandfather and
grandmother sitting on the tatami matting of their home in the
village, facing toward the right. The grandfather, consulting a
timetable, says, "We'll pass Osaka at around 6:00 this
evening," referring to a train trip they are just about to take
to Tokyo, which will initiate the film's main action.
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Enlarged Sequence of Stills from *Tokyo Story*
For each cut Ozu has arranged for at least one formal element to
provide continuity (*kire-tsuzuki*) between the adjacent
scenes. There are of course other directors capable of consummate
cuts, but a study of Ozu's show them to constitute what may be
"the kindest cut of all" in world cinema. |
plato-aesthetics | ## 1. Beauty
The study of Plato on beauty must begin with one warning. The Greek
adjective *kalon* only approximates to the English
"beautiful." Not everything Plato says about a
*kalos*, *kale*, or *kalon* thing will
belong in a summary of his aesthetic theories.
Readers can take this distinction between the Greek and English terms
too far. It always feels more scrupulous to argue against equating
words from different languages than to treat them interchangeably. And
the discussion bears more on assessments of Platonic ethical theory
than on whatever subject may be called Plato's aesthetics.
But even given these qualifications the reader should know how to tell
what is beautiful from what is *kalon*. To begin with the terms
have overlapping but distinct ranges of application. A passage in
Plato may speak of a face or body that someone finds *kalon*,
or for that matter a statue, a spoon, a tree, a grassy place to rest
(*Phaedrus* 230b). Then "beautiful" makes a natural
equivalent, certainly less stilted than the alternatives. And yet even
here it is telling that Plato far more often uses *kalon* for a
face or body than for works of art and natural scenery. As far as
unambiguous beauties are concerned, he has a smaller set in mind than
we do (Kosman 2010).
More typically *kalon* appears in contexts to which
"beautiful" would fit awkwardly if at all. For both Plato
and Aristotle--and in many respects for Greek popular
morality--*kalon* has a particular role to play as ethical
approbation, not by meaning the same thing that *agathon*
"good" means, but as a special complement to goodness. At
times *kalon* narrowly means "noble," often and
more loosely "admirable." The compound *kalos
k'agathos*, the aristocratic ideal, is all-round praise, not
"beautiful and good" as its components would translate
separately, but closer to "splendid and upright." Here
*kalon* is entirely an ethical term. Calling virtue beautiful
feels misplaced in modern terms, or even perverse; calling wisdom
beautiful, as the *Symposium* does (204b), will sound like a
mistake (Kosman 2010, 348-350).
Some commentators try to keep *kalon* and
"beautiful" close to synonymous despite these differences
in their semantic ranges (Hyland 2008). David Konstan has rejuvenated
the question by emphasizing the beauty not in uses of the adjective
*kalon* but in the related noun *kallos* (Konstan 2014,
Konstan 2015). As welcome as this shift of focus is regarding Greek
writing as a whole, it runs into difficulties when we read Plato; for
*kallos* carries overtones of physical, visual attractiveness,
and Plato is cautious about the desire that such attractiveness
arouses.
Rather than seek a Greek equivalent for "beautiful,"
translators often choose another English word for *kalon*. One
rightly popular choice is "fine," which applies to most
things labeled *kalon* and is also appropriate to ethical and
aesthetic contexts (so Woodruff 1983). There are fine suits and string
quartets but also fine displays of courage. Of course modern
English-speakers have fine sunsets and fine dining as well, this word
being even broader than *kalon*. That is not to mention fine
points or fine print. And whereas people frequently ask what beauty
really consists in, so that a conversation on the topic might actually
have taken place, it is hard to imagine worrying over "what the
fine is" or "what is really fine."
The telling criterion will be not philological but philosophical.
Studying the *Hippias Major* each reader should ask whether
Plato's treatment of *to kalon* sounds relevant to questions
one asks about beauty today.
### 1.1 *Hippias Major*
For a long time scholars treated the *Hippias Major* as a
spurious dialogue. Today most agree that Plato wrote it, and its
sustained inquiry into beauty is seen as central to Platonic
aesthetics.
The *Hippias Major* follows Socrates and the Sophist Hippias
through a sequence of attempts to define *to kalon*. Socrates
badgers Hippias, in classic Socratic ways, to identify beauty's
general nature; Hippias offers three definitions. Quite preposterously
for instance "a beautiful young woman is beautiful"
(287e). Hippias had a reputation for the breadth of his factual
knowledge. He compiled the first list of Olympic victors, and he might
have written the first history of philosophy. But his over-ingestion
of specifics has evidently left him unable to digest his experience
and generalize to a philosophical definition.
After Hippias fails, Socrates tries three definitions. These are
general but they fail too, and--again in classic Socratic
mode--the dialogue ends unresolved. In one excursus Socrates says
beauty "is appropriate [*prepei*]" and proposes
defining it as "what is appropriate [*to prepon*]"
(290d). Although ending in refutation this discussion (to 294e) is
worth a look as the anticipation of a modern debate. Philosophers of
the eighteenth century argue over whether an object is beautiful by
satisfying the definition of the object, or independently of that
definition (Guyer 1993). Kant calls the beauty that is appropriateness
"dependent beauty" (*Critique of Judgment*, section
16). Such beauty threatens to become a species of the good. Within the
accepted corpus of genuine Platonic works beauty is never subsumed
within the good, the appropriate, or the beneficial; Plato seems to
belong in the same camp as Kant in this respect. (On Platonic beauty
and the good see Barney 2010.) Nevertheless, and of course, he is no
simple sensualist about beauty either. The very temptation in Plato to
link the beautiful with the good and to assess it intellectually is
part of why Porter calls him and Aristotle "formalists,"
who diverted ancient theorizing about art from its sensualist origins
(Porter 2010).
Despite its inconclusiveness the *Hippias Major* reflects the
view of beauty found in other dialogues:
1. Beauty behaves as canonical Platonic Forms do. It possesses the
reality that Forms have and is discovered through the same dialectic
that brings other Forms to light. Socrates wants Hippias to explain
the property that is known when any examples of beauty are known
(*essence* of beauty), the *cause* of all occurrences of
beauty, and more precisely the cause not of the appearance of beauty
but of its *real being* (286d, 287c, 289d, 292c, 294e,
297b).
2. Nevertheless beauty is not just any Form. It bears some close
relationship to the good (296d), even though Socrates argues that the
two are distinct (296e ff., 303e ff.). It is therefore a Form of some
status above that of other Forms.
3. Socrates and Hippias appeal to artworks as examples of beautiful
things but do not treat those as central cases (290a-b,
297e-298a). So too generally Plato conducts his inquiry into
beauty at a distance from his discussion of art. (But the
*Republic* and the *Laws* both contain exceptions to
this generalization: Lear 2010, 361.)
These three aspects of Platonic beauty work together and reflect
beauty's unique place in Plato's metaphysics, something almost both
visible and intelligible.
### 1.2 Beauty and art
The three features of beauty in the *Hippias Major* also apply
in the *Symposium*, Plato's other major analysis of beauty. In
the *Symposium* Socrates claims to be quoting his teacher
Diotima on the subject of love, and in the lesson attributed to her
she calls beauty the object of every love's yearning. She spells out
the soul's progress toward ever-purer beauty, from one body to all,
then through all beautiful souls to laws and kinds of knowledge,
finally reaching beauty itself (210a-211d).
Diotima describes the poet's task as the begetting of wisdom and other
virtues (209a). Ultimately desiring what is beautiful the poet
produces works of verse. And who would not envy Homer or Hesiod
(209d)? But aside from these passages the *Symposium* seems
prepared to treat anything *but* a poem as an exemplar of
beauty. In a similar spirit the *Philebus*'s examples of pure
sensory beauty exclude pictures (51b-d).
The *Republic* contains tokens of Plato's reluctance to
associate poetry with beauty. The dialogue's first discussion of
poetry, whose context is education, censors poems that corrupt the
young (377b-398b). Then almost immediately Socrates speaks of
cultivating a fondness for beauty among the young guardians. Let them
see gracefulness (*euschemosune*) in paintings and
illustrative weaving, a sibling to virtue (401a). Their taste for
beauty will help them prefer noble deeds over ugly vulgar ones
(401b-d, 403c). How can Plato have seen the value of beauty to
education and not mentioned the subject in his earlier criticisms? Why
couldn't this part of the *Republic* concede that false and
pernicious poems affect the young through their beauty?
But the *Republic* takes pains to deny that beauty appears in
poetry. *Republic* 10 calls the beauty of poetic lines
deceptive. Take away the decorative language that makes a poetic
sentiment sound right and put it into ordinary words, and it becomes
unremarkable, as young people's faces beautified by youth later show
themselves as the plain looks they are (601b).
### 1.3 The Form of beauty
The fundamental datum in understanding Platonic beauty as part of
Plato's aesthetics is that Plato sees no opposition between the
pleasures that beauty brings and the goals of philosophy. Plato
mentions no other Form in the *Symposium*; the Form of beauty
is Form enough. Philosophers meet this beauty in an experience in
which they consummate their deepest love while also attaining the
loftiest knowledge.
Many passages in Plato associate a Form with beauty: *Cratylus*
439c; *Euthydemus* 301a; *Laws* 655c; *Phaedo*
65d, 75d, 100b; *Phaedrus* 254b; *Parmenides* 130b;
*Philebus* 15a; *Republic* 476b, 493e, 507b. Plato
mentions beauty as often as he speaks of any property that admits of
philosophical conceptualization, and for which a Form therefore
exists. Thanks to the features of Forms as such, we know that this
entity being referred to must be something properly called beauty,
whose nature can be articulated without recourse to the natures of
particular beautiful things. (See especially *Phaedo* 79a and
*Phaedrus* 247c on properties of this Form.)
Beauty is Plato's example of a Form so frequently for a pair of
reasons. On one hand it bears every mark of the Forms. It is an
evaluative concept as much as justice and courage are, and suffers
from disputes over its meaning as much as they do. The Theory of Forms
seeks to guarantee stable referents for disputed evaluative terms; so
if anything needs a Form, beauty does, and it will have a Form if any
property does.
In general, a Form *F* differs from an individual *F*
thing in that *F* may be predicated univocally of the Form: The
Form *F* *is* *F*. An individual *F* thing
both is and is not *F*. In this sense the same property
*F* can only be predicated equivocally of the individual (e.g.
*Republic* 479a-c). Plato's analysis of equivocally
*F* individuals (*Cratylus* 439d-e,
*Symposium* 211a) recalls observations that everyone makes
about beautiful objects. They fade with time; require an offsetting
ugly detail; elicit disagreements among observers; lose their beauty
outside their context (adult shoes on children's feet). Here beauty
does better than most other properties at meeting the criteria for
Forms and non-Forms. Odd numbers may fail to be odd in some
hard-to-explain way, but the ways in which beautiful things fall short
of their perfection are obvious even to the unphilosophical.
But physical beauty is atypical being a Form that humans *want*
to know. This is the second reason Plato makes beauty such a frequent
example of a Form. The process known as *anamnesis* or
recollection is more plausible for beauty than it is for most other
properties. The philosophical merit of equivocally *F* things
is that they come bearing signs of their incompleteness, so that the
inquisitive mind wants to know more (*Republic*
523c-524d). But not everyone can read those signs of
incompleteness. Soft or large items inspire questions in minds of an
abstract bent. The perception of examples of justice or self-control
presupposes moral development before someone can recognize a law's
double nature as just and unjust. By contrast, beautiful things strike
everyone, and arouse everyone's curiosity. Therefore, beauty promises
more effective reflection than any other property of things. Beauty
alone is both a Form and a sensory experience (*Phaedrus*
250d).
So the *Phaedrus* (250d-256b) and *Symposium*
ignore people's experiences of other properties when they describe the
first movement into philosophizing. Beautiful things remind souls of
their mystery as no other visible objects do, and in his optimistic
moments Plato welcomes people's attention to them.
Those optimistic moments are not easy to sustain. To make beauty
effective for learning Plato needs to rely on its desirability (as
foregrounded in Konstan 2015) while also counting on the soul's
ability to transfer its desiring from the visible to the intelligible
(see *Philebus* 65e). Plato is ambivalent about visual
experience. Sight may be metaphorically like knowledge, but
metonymically it calls to mind the ignorant senses (Pappas 2015,
49).
Beauty's unmatched pedagogical effects, when the transfer of desire
succeeds, show why Plato talks about its goodness and good
consequences, sometimes even its identity with "the good"
(*Laws* 841c; *Philebus* 66a-b; *Republic*
401c; *Symposium* 201c, 205e; but the relationship between
beautiful and good, especially in *Symposium*, is
controversial: White 1989). These desirable effects also explain why
Plato speaks grudgingly of beauty in art and poetry. Another question
matters more than either poetry or beauty does: What leads a mind
toward knowledge and the Forms? Things of beauty do so excellently
well. Poems mostly don't. When poems (or paintings) set the mind
running along unphilosophical tracks away from what is abstract and
intelligible, the attractions they possess will be seen as
meretricious. The corrupting cognitive effect exercised by poems
demonstrates their inability to function as Plato knows the beautiful
object to function.
The corrupting effect needs to be spelled out. What prevents poems
from behaving as beautiful objects do? The answer will have to address
the orienting question in Plato's aesthetics, namely: What fosters
philosophical enlightenment, and what obstructs it?
## 2. Imitation
"Imitation" is the commonest English translation of
*mimesis*. Alternatives include
"representation" and "emulation." To make
things confusing, the transliterated Greek word sans diacritical mark
has come to be accepted as English ("mimesis"). All the
translations capture something of the word's meaning. As long as
"imitation" is used with awareness that it will not mean
everything that *mimesis* does, it makes a serviceable
translation. "Imitate" functions well enough as the verb
*mimeisthai*; so does "mimic." (See Sorbom
1966; also see Marusič 2011.)
Of course one can use the Greek *mimesis*, as this
discussion will frequently do. For simplicity's sake some prefer the
now-English "mimesis." But this last choice brings a risk.
The English word "mimesis" has begun picking up its own
contexts and connotations, becoming English proportionately as it
ceases to substitute for the Greek word.
Besides *mimesis* Plato sometimes speaks of a
*mimema*. "Imitation" like
*mimesis* can refer either to a process or to its
outcome. You engage in the act of imitation in order to produce an
imitation. A *mimema* however is only ever a copy, not
also the copying act that produced it.
(Mateo Duque was of much help in thinking through issues in the coming
sections.)
### 2.1 *Mimesis* in Aristophanes
Authors before Plato used *mimesis* more vaguely than he
did, neither specially applying the word to a poetic process nor
necessarily implying its fraudulence --with one important
exception. The comedies of Aristophanes, obsessed with Euripides and
with tragedy in general (*Birds* 787, 1444; *Clouds*
1091; *Plutus* 423-4), introduce comments about tragic
stagecraft that say *mimeisthai* and *mimesis* in
consistently pejorative ways.
Although comedy is sometimes identified as antagonist to philosophy in
the "ancient quarrel" Plato speaks of between philosophy
and poetry (Most 2011), Aristophanes has also long been seen as
Plato's precursor in the moralistic critique of poetry. They share
conservative sensibilities that outweigh Aristophanes' slander of
Socrates in *Clouds* (Nussbaum 1980). But Aristophanes'
influence on Plato extends, as commentators do not always recognize,
to the nature of *mimesis*. He uses that word in a
technical sense that describes what actors do in a play, and with
suggestions of fraud or concealment.
In addition to *Frogs* with its face-off between Aeschylus and
Euripides there is *Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria*, which
calls *mimesis* a disruption of life and opposes it to
nature. It can also be argued that *Women Celebrating the
Thesmophoria* finds an ambiguity in dramatic imitation that
anticipates Plato; for in that play, as in the *Republic*,
*mimesis* combines composition and performance, the
invention of characters and the portrayal of them (Pappas 1999).
### 2.2 *Republic* 3: impersonation
Plato cites *mimesis* as a characteristic of poetry alone
in *Republic* Book 3 and *Laws* Book 4.
Books 2 and 3 of the *Republic* assess poetry's role in the
curriculum for the city's guardian class. The first part of this
passage, mainly in Book 2, condemns the images of gods and demigods
that Homer and the tragedians have produced, both blaspheming and
setting bad examples to the young (377e-392c). After this
criticism of content Socrates turns to what he labels the "style
[*lexis*]" of narration. Poetic narration can take place
through narration alone, through *mimesis* alone, or with
a mix of the two (392d).
Already this way of differentiating storytelling styles is irregular,
as if one analyzed walking into pure walking, running, and a
combination of the two, as a method for understanding
*running*. Such an analysis would mark the act of running as
failed or deviant walking. Likewise the taxonomy of narrations
presumes that *mimesis* is deviant.
The subsequent pages continue treating *mimesis* as
anomalous, or rather as comprehensible only under the sign of anomaly
and failure. Socrates defines imitation, develops two arguments
against it, and finally proclaims that no mimetic poetry will be
admitted into the city that the *Republic* is founding.
The defining example establishes *mimesis* as
impersonation. Homer's poems alternate between third-person accounts
of events (in which Homer narrates in his own voice) and speeches of
the characters involved in those events. When Homer relates
Agamemnon's rebuke to the priest Chryses he uses the abusive language
that a warriors' king would use when such a king refused to show mercy
(393a-c). The presentation of character is, notably, ambiguous
between the act of *writing* or composing the words of a
character like Agamemnon, and the act of *reciting*
(performing, acting out) the words. The ambiguity (seen also in
Aristophanes) lets Socrates deploy more than one argument against the
presentation of characters.
The main argument is blunt but clear, and plausible enough. What the
new city really does not want is the presentation of base types,
because acting such parts fosters the behaviors that are found in the
persons being mimicked (395c-397e). Attempts to read this
impersonation as attention to appearance alone (Lear 2011) have the
advantage of unifying Book 3 with Book 10, but sacrifice the
psychological simplicity behind the argument.
If acting a part does lead to taking on the characteristics of the
part, then in one respect Plato has a powerful point and in another
respect is generating a misleading argument. The point is powerful
inasmuch as it lets Plato ban all portrayals of vicious and ignoble
characters but not the portrayals of brave soldiers, philosophers, and
other wholesome types. Moreover the factual premise is believable.
Taking on someone else's traits and tics can have a more lasting
effect than the *Republic's* critics sometimes acknowledge.
Actors even today comment on how a role changed them.
Even this most plausible part of the argument runs into trouble.
Plato's list of things unworthy of imitation proves surprisingly
commodious. Alongside villains one finds women, slaves, animals,
musical instruments, gears and pulleys, and sounds of water. And these
last examples beg the question. Sounding like machinery does not make
the imitator more like a gear or pulley; it must be a deranged
practice only insofar as all impersonation is deranged. And that is
what the argument was aiming to prove.
But the significantly misleading nature of the argument goes beyond a
moment of overstatement. The case against *mimesis*
misleads in that it exploits the ambiguity between impersonation as
something a writer does and impersonation as the performer's task. In
1963 Eric Havelock stressed the importance of this ambiguity to Book
3; but Havelock understated the degree to which Plato exploited the
ambiguity. The most convincing part of Book 3 has to assume that
*mimesis* is performance, both because such effects as
thunder are mimicked in performance, not on the page; and because the
bad effects of impersonation on character make more sense when
describing young actors' playing a vicious role than grown playwrights
in the act of writing that role.
On the other hand performance does not involve a whole population.
Many young male Athenians did participate in choruses for comedy and
tragedy. Each year a few dozen future farmers and doctors, generals
and gentlemen, spent a season preparing for their time on stage. Even
so, the extensiveness of the practice among young people does not
justify barring all drama from the city and from the sight of each
citizen, and that is what Plato's concluding ban comes to:
>
> If a man were to arrive in the city whose wisdom [*sophia*]
> empowered him to become everything and to mimic all
> things--together with the poems he wanted to perform
> [*epideixasthai*]-- we would worship him as someone holy
> [*hieron*] and wonderful and pleasant, but tell him there is no
> man like him in our city, nor by our traditional law [*themis*]
> can come to be here; and we would send him off to another city after
> pouring myrrh on his head and crowning him with wool. (398a)
>
The religious language is lavish, and significant. No ordinary deeds
are being excluded but ones that smell of sacred power. And Plato's
censorship will be complete. The city fathers running mimetic poetry
out of town have broadened their scope from the young guardians'
education to the cultural life of a community. The literary
representation of characters will receive no hearing anywhere. It is
even doubtful whether the city will permit dramatic poems to circulate
in written form. The poet has had to bring his writings with him, and
he cannot get his foot in the door.
The poet is a visitor because mimetic poetry has no natural home in
the philosophers' town. Moreover he arrives offering to recite his
poems. That they are his makes him a *poet*, that he comes to
recite them makes him a *performer*. Thus he embodies the
ambiguity built into Book 3's definition of *mimesis*. If
the fate of imitative composition stands or falls with the fate of
imitative performance, a reasonable worry about behaviors that young
people experiment with balloons into an argument against a mammoth
body of literature. In short, the ambiguity in Plato's definition of
imitation does not merely remind us (as Havelock argued) that he is
witnessing the transition from oral to written culture. It makes
Plato's grand conclusion possible.
Imitation is a formal concept in Book 3. This is to say 1) that one
can distinguish poetic *mimesis* from poetic narration by
looking for a formal element in the poetry; and 2) that
*mimesis* may make poetry more deleterious than it would
otherwise be, but does not work these bad effects by itself, only when
the characters represented are bad to begin with. The definition of
imitation in Book 3 entails no general ideas of similarity or
likeness. *Mimesis* functions as a technical term with a
narrowly literary meaning, no more inherently philosophical than is
the distinction one would draw in English today between direct and
indirect discourse.
Book 10 will look at imitation from a different perspective. Space
does not permit a review of all existing proposals about how to square
the two passages. *Whether* Books 3 and 10 offer compatible
accounts of *mimesis*, and *how* one might make
them compatible, remains the most controversial question about Plato's
aesthetics. (See Belfiore 1984, Halliwell 1988, Nehamas 1982; and for
a superb summary of the main proposals, Naddaff 2002, 136n8. Lear 2011
is a recent argument in favor of the two passages' agreement with one
another.) Still one may trust a few summative statements.
*Republic* 10 revises the formal aspects of
*mimesis* with a picturing or portrayal that involves
more than direct quotation. The enhanced concept cannot be understood
without reference to the *Republic*'s psychological theory. And
in its expanded form the term refers to something bad in itself.
### 2.3 *Republic* 10: copy-making
As the *Sophist* does, Book 10 of the *Republic* treats
*mimesis* as a property broader than drama. The topic in
this passage (595a-608b) is a *mimesis* common to
painting and poetry and much like picturing or copying. It is a
relationship between a visible original and its visible likeness.
As Book 10 begins, Socrates links the coming treatment with what Book
3 had said about imitation. He also establishes the difference between
the passages. What follows will defend Book 3's banishment of
"imitative poetry" in terms that the *Republic*
developed after Book 3. "Now that we have differentiated the
soul's *eide*," the danger of imitation becomes
more evident (595a-b). An *eidos* is a kind, and this
phrase "kinds of soul" is most often taken to mean the
parts of the soul that Book 4 distinguished (435b-441c). The
*Republic*'s theory of reason, spirit, and desire can enlarge
what had been in Book 3 no more than suspicion about the impersonation
of ignoble people. The new argument will charge poetry with upsetting
the balance among the soul's parts. (Daniel Mailick contributed to
this discussion of the *Republic*'s psychological theory.)
In all Plato develops three theses during this first half of Book
10:
1. Poetic *mimesis*, like the kind found in painting, is
the imitation of appearance alone, and its products rank far below
truth. (596e-602c)
2. Therefore poetic *mimesis* corrupts the soul,
weakening the rational impulse's control over the person's other
drives and desires. (602c-608b)
3. It should therefore be banned from the good city.
The argument supporting (1) seeks to spell out how badly poetry and
painting fare at grasping and communicating knowledge. Partly because
they do so badly, but also for other reasons, mimetic arts bring moral
and psychological ill effects (2).
The words "imitation of appearance" in thesis (1) follow
from Plato's three-way differentiation:
1. *Form* (of couch, of table) made by a god.
2. *Individual things* (couches, tables) made by humans.
3. *Paintings* (of couch or table) made by imitators.
The carpenter works with eyes aiming "toward
[*pros*]" the Form (596b)--not with eyes *on*
the Form--so the individual couch the carpenter makes is
something less than the Form: an honest failing after a decent try. If
the Form is an object of knowledge, human creators at least possess
true opinion (601e).
Thus category II is not a domain of imitation, and the table in a
painting is not the "imitation of an imitation."
Nevertheless Plato's phrase "imitation of appearance" does
characterize artistic *mimesis* as a compounded problem.
Imitation intensifies a weakness present in existing objects; it not
only fails but fails twice, or doubly.
Skipping ahead for a moment, the *Republic*'s reader finds a
second three-way distinction (601c-602a) that criticizes imitation
from another perspective:
1. *User* (of a flute or bridle) who knows.
2. *Maker* (of flute or bridle) who has correct belief.
3. *Imitator* (of flute or bridle) who is ignorant.
This new list is intriguing and hard to make sense of. The three items
clearly belong alongside the previous three-part ranking. The
carpenter who makes a table resembles the leatherworker making the
bridle; both tripartitions put the visual imitator lowest. But why do
flautists and jockeys suddenly appear in the top spot, in place of a
god so supreme as to create even Forms?
The answer might appear among the particular manufactured objects that
these passages refer to, because for the reader familiar with Greek
religion both rankings evoke Athena. The couch- and table-making
carpenter practices a trade whose patron is Athena, while myths known
to Plato depict her as the original user of both flute (Pindar 12th
*Pythian Ode*) and bridle (Pindar 13th *Olympian Ode*).
If these associations stand up under scrutiny, they put the imitator
at the opposite pole from a god, rendering the products of imitation
not only lowly nothings but malevolently profane, even blasphemous
(Pappas 2013).
The argument thus far posits painting as the default case of
*mimesis* (Golden 1975, Nehamas 1982, Belfiore 1984, Moss
2007). But Socrates springboards beyond pictorial art to condemn
tragedy and its "father" Homer. Homer was ignorant, never
taught a useful thing to anyone (599b-600e). This apparent
*ad hominem* attack is designed to show that poetry too
imitates appearance. For that purpose it suffices to show that one
esteemed poet writes without knowledge. If great poetry can come out
of someone ignorant, then poetry must not require knowledge. Even if
ignorance is not necessary for the composition of poetry Homer's
example demonstrates that the two are compatible.
Modern readers protest: "Someone can be ignorant and still write
great poetry!" Plato nods in glum agreement, for this is exactly
the problem. What good will come of an activity that can not only be
attempted ignorantly but even succeeded at in ignorance? Poetry too
therefore imitates no more than appearance.
It remains for Plato to argue that poetry harms the soul. He says that
poetry's illusions fortify the worst part of the soul and turn it
against the best. The first stretch of this argument (602c-603b)
uses theoretical language taken from the *Republic*'s
psychological theory, while the second (603b-608b) appeals to
observable phenomena surrounding performances of tragedies.
Socrates returns to his analogy between poetry and painting. If you
are partly taken in by a painting's tricked-up table apparition but
you partly spot the falseness, which part of you does which? The
soul's rational impulse must be the part that knows the painting is
not a real table. But Book 4 established a fundamental principle: When
the soul inclines in more than one direction, this conflict represents
the work of more than one faculty or part of the soul (436b; recalled
in Book 10's argument at 602e). So being taken in by an optical or
artistic illusion must be the activity of some part of the soul
distinct from reason.
Invoking Book 4's psychological theory integrates the critique of
poetry of Book 10 into the *Republic*'s overarching argument.
The dialogue as a whole identifies justice with a balance among
reason, spirit or anger, and the desires. This controlled balance is
the happiest state available for human souls, and the most virtuous.
Imitation undoes the soul's justice, it brings both vice and
misery.
Plato does not specify the irrational part in question. Thinking the
sun is the size of your hand does not feel like either anger
overwhelming you or desires tempting. What do illusions have to do
with irrationality of motive?
Again commentaries differ. A complex and fertile debate continues to
worry over how perceptual error may undermine mental health or moral
integrity (Nehamas 1982, Moss 2007). Part of the answer comes from
Books 8-9, which sketch four character types graded from best to
worst. These are *eide* "kinds" of soul in a
different sense, not the species of motives within a soul but the
species that souls may be sorted into. This sorting deserves to play a
larger role than it has in the discussion of imitation.
The pleasures of the lowest soul are distinguished by their illusory
quality. Desire delights not in true beings but in "idols
[*eidolois*] of true pleasure" and painted images,
*eskiagraphemenais* (586b). *Skiagraphia* was an
impressionistic manner of painting that juxtaposed contrasting hues to
create illusionistic shadow and intensify color (Keuls 1974, Demand
1975, Petraki 2018), and Plato disapproved of it (*Parmenides*
165c-d, *Phaedo* 69b). (In fact the *Republic*'s
attacks on painting are sometimes interpreted narrowly as applying
only to *skiagraphia*.) Thus where Book 9 examines the desirous
part of the soul and finds its objects to be mere idols, Book 10
determines *mimesis* to be a show of mere idols and
concludes that it keeps company with the soul's desirous part.
Notice especially the terminology in Book 9. The tyrant is "at
the third remove" from the oligarch, his pleasure "a
third-place idol [*tritoi eidoloi*]"
compared to the truth (*aletheia*) of the oligarchic
soul's pleasure (587c). Meanwhile the oligarch's soul stands third
below the "kingly man [*tou basilikou*]" (587d).
Only ten pages later Book 10 echoes this terminology when it calls the
imitator "third from the king [*basileos*] and from
the truth [*aletheias*]" (597e; cf. 602c). The
language in Book 10 brings Book 9's equation of base pleasures with
illusory ones into its attack on art. If Book 10 can show that an art
form fosters interest in illusions it will have gone a long way toward
showing that the art form keeps company with irrational desires.
Another essential step in the argument is the recognition that what
Book 3 acknowledged as an exception to its critique, namely the
imitation of virtuous thoughtful characters, is not apt to exist.
Socrates has tragedy in mind (comedy secondarily) and observes that
playwrights neither know the quiet philosophical type nor profit from
putting that type on stage before spectators who came to the theater
to see something showily agitated (604e-605a). At one stroke
Plato intensifies his condemnation of *mimesis*, no
longer a dangerous technique when it presents the wrong kinds of
people but a technique that seldom presents any other kind.
Tragedy's hero, inherently impulsive and impassioned, acts contrary to
the dictates of reason. An illusion of virtue guides him. His son dies
and he doesn't save his tears for a private moment but lets them flow
publicly and at length (603e-604a). The spectators' reason is
appalled; their other impulses rejoice (605c-e). They reckon
that there is no harm in weeping along with the hero, enjoying an
emotional release without the responsibility one feels in real-life
situations. Thus does dramatic illusion induce bad habits of indulging
the passions; the soul that had spent its life learning self-control
sets about unlearning it.
Incidentally this argument turns on an assumption that Plato asserts
without discussion, that *mimesis* is the presentation or
representation of characters (e.g. 603c; 605a, c). Although Book 10
sometimes speaks of *mimesis* in other terms
(*mimesis* of virtues: 600e), the argument about
fostering passions requires that objects of poetic representation be
humans. When what we call *literary works* practice what we
call *representation*, Plato claims that they represent human
beings. For him as for Aristotle drama presents *prattontas*
"people doing things," but where Aristotle emphasizes the
things done, for Plato it is the people. Character is the essence of
epic and drama. (Halliwell 1988 argues otherwise.)
Plato's emphasis on character already predisposes him not to find
philosophical worth in literature. A character speaks from a single
point of view. Bring several characters together representing several
idiosyncratic perspectives on the world and the very idea of deriving
a general statement from the work becomes impossible (*Laws*
719c-d). This situation is as it were the dramatic corollary to
a general principle in *mimesis*, that it represents
plurality or multiplicity and so is forever indeterminate,
undeterminable.
### 2.4 *Sophist* and other passages
Plato's interpreters sometimes play up the passages in which he seems
to counter the *Republic*'s anti-poetic comments with hopeful
assessments of imitation. According to the standard chronology of the
dialogues, the relevant passages occur in dialogues written after the
*Republic*. If Plato changed his views over time, these
conciliatory remarks could indicate that he ultimately disavowed the
censorship of *Republic* 10.
The *Statesman* for instance calls existing constitutions
*mimemata* of moral truths as the philosophical
legislators know those truths (297c). Such likeness-making is not
fraud, for its outcome remains something worthy of respect. One can
say the same for scientific theories in Plato's *Timaeus*,
whose main speaker Timaeus argues that discourse about the natural
world mimics the intelligible world (47c). The *Laws* sees
imitation in music as a potentially accurate process (668b); the
hard-to-date *Menexenus* urges the young to imitate their
elders' virtues (236e, 248e). All these passages suggest, from
different angles, a rehabilitation for the process that Plato
elsewhere demeans as counterfeiting (Robinson 2016).
Nevertheless these passages do scarcely more than touch on
*mimesis*. What Plato says about imitation when he has
set out to define and evaluate it ought to weigh more heavily than a
use of the word he makes briefly. Anyway the later dialogues do not
speak as one. Plato's *Sophist*, a companion to the
*Statesman*, devotes much of its length to understanding
*mimesis*, and the context is derogatory.
The *Sophist* looks into imitation in order to define what a
sophist is. But the sophist--whom the main speaker calls an
imitator (*mimetes*) and sorcerer
(*goetes*) (235a)--is not far removed from the
deceiving poet (Notomi 2011). And although the *Sophist*'s
theory of imitation diverges somewhat from the one in
*Republic* 10, similarities between them preponderate. Like the
*Republic* the *Sophist* characterizes imitation
mockingly as the creation of a whole world, and accuses imitation of
misleading the unwary (234b-c), even if it also predicts more
optimistically that people grow up to see through false likenesses
(234d). Again as in *Republic* 10 imitation is contrasted with
a god's work--except that in the *Sophist* gods make all
living things (265c-d) and also images, *eidola*
(266a): dreams, shadows, reflections.
Most importantly, the representation that Plato charges the sophist
with is fraudulent. It is the kind that makes not an honest likeness
(*eikasia*) but an illusory image, a *phantasma*
(235d-236b). Makers of realistic statues are attending not to
what a human figure really looks like but to what looking at it is
like. In drawing the distinction between these kinds of
representations the *Sophist* does strike a conciliatory tone
not found in *Republic* 10, for it seems that a branch of the
mimetic profession retains the power to produce a reliable likeness of
an object. But the consolation proves fleeting. Reliable imitation
plays no role in a definition of sophists, would presumably play no
role in talk of poets either, and seems to make an appearance here
only for the purpose of being shuffled offstage as the excluded
*mimesis*, that which the imitation being talked about
*is not*.
The *Sophist* decisively marginalizes positive imitation when
it takes up *mimesis* a second time, subdividing the
production of illusions to identify a species in which imitators use
their own voice and bodies: "This part is called imitation
[*mimesis*]" (267a). The Eleatic Stranger who is
speaking recognizes that he has appropriated the general word for the
specific act of enacting false images. "Let's designate this to
be what we call the imitative profession
[*mimetikon*]"; everything else in the large genus
can go by some other name (267a).
Narrowing the process down to impersonation should make clear that
Plato finds a sophist's imitativeness to be much like a poet's.
Moreover this development neutralizes the suggestions that
*mimesis* has its good side. The imitative
*techne* will have many manifestations, including those
legitimate practices that the *Statesman* and other dialogues
refer to; but the real work of *mimesis*, the one that is
worth defining and applies to dominant art forms, is mendacious
impersonation. Where *Republic* 3's taxonomy made imitation
look like a freakish variety of narration, this use of a word both
generically and specially excludes good imitation as the exception and
the problem case. Essentially speaking the art of
*mimesis* is a bad and lying art.
After all, as the Stranger says, there is a shortage of names for
types of *mimesis*. The ancients did not work hard enough
making all relevant philosophical distinctions (267d). It is as if
Plato were saying: "Colloquial language being loose, I will
sometimes use *mimesis* in the broader sense that
contains epistemically sound practices, even though the core sense of
the word is pejorative."
Whether Plato should be *permitted* to juggle words' meanings
is another question. His quest to condemn imitation leaves him open to
criticism. But he does not consciously change his theory in the
direction of imitation understood positively.
### 2.5 Closing assessment
The *Sophist*'s references to divine copy-making invite another
worry. The images that gods produce in their kind of imitation are
shadows and reflections, and the products of truly bad
*mimesis* are to be something worse than that. But what
could be metaphysically lower than a shadow? Coming back to the
*Republic* one finds shadows and reflections occupying the
bottom-most domain of the Divided Line (510a). Where does poetic
imitation belong on that ranking?
One can articulate the same worry even remaining with the
*Republic*'s terms. Shadows and reflections belong in the
category of near-ignorance. Imitation works an effect worse than
ignorance, not merely teaching nothing but engendering a perverted
preference for ignorance over knowledge. Plato often observes that the
ignorant prefer to remain as they are (*Symposium* 204a), but
this turn toward ignorance is different. Why would anyone choose to
know less? The theoretical question is also a practical one. If
*mimesis* poisons the soul, why do so many people swallow
it? Plato's attack on poetry saddles him with an aesthetic problem of
evil.
*Republic* 10 shows signs of addressing the problem with
language of magic. Socrates begins by promising that insight into
*mimesis* operates as a countercharm (595b). People need
countercharms because the imitator is a "sorcerer
[*goetes*]" and thereby a deceiver (598d; cf.
602d). The *Republic* already said that sorcery robs people of
knowledge (413b-c). Finally the catalog of Homer's kinds of
ignorance ends by saying his poetry casts a spell (601b). As the
English "charm" does, this noun
*kelesis* can mean "appeal" but also
something fully magical, a spell or conjuration. Poetry works
magically to draw in the audience that it then degrades.
References to magic serve poorly as explanations but they bespeak the
need for explanation. Plato sees that some power must be drawing
people to give up both knowledge and the taste for knowledge. But what
is striking about this *deus ex machina* that explains poetry's
attractiveness is what it does *not* say. In other dialogues
the magic of poetry is attributed to one version or another of divine
inspiration. Odd that the *Republic* makes no reference to
inspiration when dialogues as different as the *Apology* and
the *Laws* mention it and the *Ion* and the
*Phaedrus* spell out how it works. Odder still, Plato almost
never cites imitation and divine inspiration together (the lone
exception *Laws* 719c), as if to say that the two are
incompatible accounts of poetry. Will inspiration play a role
ancillary to imitation, or do the two approaches to poetry have
nothing to do with one another?
## 3. Divine Inspiration
In simplest form "inspiration" names the claim that poets
are aided in producing their own poetry. At lucky moments a god takes
them over and brings value to the poem that it could not have had
otherwise.
Inspiration of that kind is a common idea. Either a divine source
provides the poet with information needed for writing the poem
(information about past events or the gods' lives, for example); or
more generally the source gives the poet the talent needed for writing
anything. The idea is far from original with Plato. Within Greek
culture alone there are Homer and Hesiod, who begin their great works
asking a Muse to "speak into" them. In this case, by
contrast with that of imitation, Plato finds a new use for an idea
that has a cultural and religious meaning before him (Ledbetter 2003,
Murray 1981, Tigerstedt 1970).
Plato's version of the idea has proved to be durable and influential.
The old chestnut about a fine line between genius and insanity is only
the best-known legacy of Platonic inspiration, as popularized in one
way by Cesare Lombroso's work on "psychiatric art"
(Lombroso 1891, 2); in another way by Shelley, who translated the
*Ion* in 1821 believing its account of poetic madness supported
his own defense of poetry (Shelley 1840).
The topic occurs throughout Plato's corpus. Platonic characters
mention inspiration in dialogues as far apart--in date of
composition; in style, length, content--as the *Apology*
and the *Laws*, though for different purposes. Socrates on
trial tells of his frustrated effort to learn from poets. Their verses
seemed excellent but the authors themselves had nothing to say about
them (*Apology* 22b). Socrates concludes that poets work
instinctively and while inspired, *enthousiazontes*, as
prophets and soothsayers also do (*theomanteis*,
*chresmoidoi*), as opposed to writing on the basis
of *sophia* (22c). The opposition between wisdom and
inspiration does not condemn poets. They write by some nature
(*phusei tini*), as if inspiration were a normally occurring
human instinct.
For its part *Laws* 719c links the effects of inspiration to
the nature of drama and its multiple perspectives:
>
> When the poet sits on the Muse's tripod [*en toi tripodi
> tes Mouses*] he is not in his right mind
> [*emphron*] but ready to flow like a fountain; and
> because his profession [*techne*] is that of imitation
> [*mimeseos*], then in creating people
> [*anthropous*] who are set against one another he is
> compelled to contradict himself frequently, and he does not know
> [*oiden*] whether these or the other thing of what he says are
> true [*alethe*]. But it is not for a lawmaker to
> make two statements about a single topic in a law. (719c-d)
>
As in the *Republic*, *mimesis* leaves the
spectator with no truths to evaluate or wish to assess them. And, as
in the *Apology*, inspiration means the poet has no truths to
transmit. When the god's power comes the poet's
goes. Lawmakers work differently from that. And this contrast between
inspiration and the origin of laws--occurring in a dialogue
devoted to discovering the best laws for cities--hardly suggests
an endorsement for inspiration.
But it is also true that the passage puts the poet on a tripod, symbol
of Apollo's priestesses. Whatever brings a poet to write verse brings
divine wisdom out of priestesses; and Plato regularly defers to the
authority of oracles. Even supposing that talk of inspiration denies
individual control and credit to the poet, the priestess shows that
credit and control are not all that matters. She is at her best when
her mind intrudes least on what she is saying. Her pronouncements have
the prestige they do, not despite her loss of control, but because of
it (Pappas 2012a).
Another passage in the *Laws* says as much when it attributes
even reliable *historical* information to poets writing under
the influence of the Muses and Graces (682a). The *Meno* makes
inspiration its defining example of ignorant truth-speaking.
Politicians are just like "prophets and soothsayers
[*chresmoidoi, theomanteis*]." All three,
"when inspired [*enthousiontes*], speak truly
[*alethe*] about many things, but do not know what
they are talking about" (99c). Removing all doubt about the
origin of that truth, Socrates calls prophets, soothsayers, and all
poets *theioi* "divine" because of how well they
speak without possessing knowledge (99c-d).
In these more tangential remarks in the *Apology*,
*Laws*, and *Meno*, Plato seems to be affirming 1) that
inspiration is really divine in origin, and 2) that this divine action
that gives rise to poetry guarantees value in the result. It may
remain the case that the poet knows nothing. But something good must
come of an inspiration shared by poets and priestesses, and often
enough that good is truth.
### 3.1 *Ion*
Plato's shortest dialogue, the *Ion* is the only one that most
readers would clearly situate within aesthetics. It does not address
poetry alone. The character Ion is a performer and interpreter of
Homer's poems, not a poet. Meanwhile, most of what are classed as arts
today--painting, sculpture, music--appear as activities for
which the problems of irrationality and knowledge signally
*fail* to arise (532e-533c; for painting as
*techne* cf. *Gorgias* 448c, *Protagoras*
312d). Nevertheless the *Ion* belongs in aesthetics by virtue
of its focus on artistic inspiration, and the question it provokes of
what inspiration implies about poetry's merits.
As a rhapsode Ion travels among Greek cities reciting and explicating
episodes from Homer. Between the dramatic recitation and the
interpretation, these performances offered much latitude for displays
of talent, and Ion's talent has won him first prize at a contest in
Epidaurus. (For some discussion of the rhapsode's work see Gonzalez
2011, Gonzalez 2013.)
His conversation with Socrates falls into three parts, covering
*idiosyncrasy* (530a-533c), *inspiration*
(533c-536d), and *ignorance* (536d-542b). Both the
first and the third sections support the claims made in the second,
which should be seen as the conclusion to the dialogue, supported in
different ways by the discussions that come before and after it. The
idiosyncrasy in Ion's attachment to Homer shows that Homer, and Ion
because of him, function thanks to a divine visitation. But because
Ion resists accepting a claim according to which he is deranged in his
performances, Socrates presents a fall-back argument. Ion is
unqualified to assess any of the factual claims that appear in Homer,
about medicine, chariot racing, or anything else. When Socrates
compels him to choose between divine inspiration and a very drab brand
of knowing nothing, Ion agrees to be called inspired.
This is to say that although poets' and their readers' ignorance is
indeed a fact for Plato, it is a fact in need of interpretation.
Whether it means as in the *Ion* that gods inspire poetry, or
as in *Republic* 10 that imitative poetry imitates appearance
alone, ignorance matters less than the implications drawn from it.
Moreover, ignorance alone will not demonstrate that poets are
possessed by the gods. The proof of Ion's ignorance supports
inspiration but does not suffice to generate that doctrine. Even if
Ion's ignorance takes up the last part of the dialogue, it is not
Plato's last word about poetry.
The idiosyncrasy treated in this dialogue's opening section, by
comparison, is (for Plato) irrational on its face. The idiosyncrasy
appears as soon as Socrates asks Ion about his *techne*
(530b). That essential Platonic word has been mistranslated
"art" or "craft." "Skill" is not
bad; but perhaps a *techne* most resembles a
*profession*. The word denotes both a paying occupation and the
possession of expertise. In Ion's case Socrates specifies that the
expertise for a rhapsode includes the ability to interpret poetry
(530c). Ion rates himself superior at that task to all his competitors
but concedes that he can only interpret Homer (531a). Even though
Homer and other poets sometimes address the same subjects, Ion has
nothing to say about those other poets. He confesses this fact without
shame or apology, as if his different responses reflected on the poets
instead of on his talents. Something in Homer makes him eloquent, and
other poets lack that quality.
Socrates argues that one who knows a field knows it whole
(531e-532a). This denial of the knowledge of particulars in
their particularity also appears at *Charmides* 166e;
*Phaedo* 97d; *Republic* 334a, 409d. It is not that what
is known about an individual thing *cannot* transfer to other
things of the same kind; rather that the act of treating an object as
unique means attending to and knowing those qualities of it that
*do not* transfer, knowing them as nontransferable qualities.
This attitude toward particulars *qua* particulars is an
obstacle to every theoretical expertise. It is the epistemic analogue
to the irrational one-on-one erotic bond that Aristophanes describes
in Plato's *Symposium* (191c-d).
It may well be that what Ion understands about Homer happens to hold
true of Hesiod. But if this is the case, Ion will not know it. He does
not generalize from one to many poets, and generalizing is the mark of
a professional. Diotima's speech in the *Symposium* supplies a
useful comparison. She differentiates between love that clings to
particular objects and a philosophical *eros* that
escapes its attachment to particulars to pursue general knowledge
(210b). Ion's investment in Homer, like the lover's lowest grade of
attachment, reveals (and also causes) an unwillingness to move toward
understanding.
And so Ion presents Socrates with a conundrum. Although the man's love
for Homer prohibits him from possessing expertise, Socrates recognizes
how well Ion performs at his job. How to account for success minus
skill? Socrates needs to diagnose Ion by means of some positive trait
he possesses, not merely by the absence of knowledge.
Socrates therefore speaks of poets and those they move as
*entheous*. He elaborates an analogy. Picture an iron ring
hanging from a magnet, magnetized so that a second ring hangs from the
first and a third from that second one. Magnets are Muses, the rings
attached to them poets, the second rings the poets' interpreters,
third the rhapsodes' audiences. (For a recent treatment of this image
see Wang 2016.)
Plato's image captures the transferability of charisma. By being made
of iron each ring has the capacity to take on the charge that holds
it. But the magnetism resides in the magnet, not in the temporarily
magnetized rings. No ring is itself the source of the next ring's
attachment to it. Homer analogously draws poetic power from his Muse
and attracts a rhapsode by means of borrowed power. Ion charged with
Music energy collects enthusiastic fans, *as if* to his own
person and *as if* by *techne*--but only as
if. The analogy lets poets and rhapsodes appear charismatic without
giving them credit for their appeal.
Socrates takes a further step to pit inspiration against reason.
"Epic poets who are good at all are never masters of their
subject. They are inspired and possessed [*entheoi ontes kai
katechomenoi*]" (533a). Inspiration now additionally means
that poets are irrational, as it never meant before Plato. This
superadded irrationality explains why Ion rejects Socrates' proposal,
in a passage that is frequently overlooked. He is not unhinged during
his performances, Ion says; not *katechomenos kai mainomenos*,
possessed and maddened (536d). Inspiration has come to imply madness
and the madness in it is what Ion tries to reject.
What went wrong? The image of rings and magnets is slyer than it
appeared. While the analogy rests transparently on one feature of
magnetism, the transfer of attraction, it also smuggles in a second
feature. Socrates describes iron rings hanging in straight lines or
branching: Although each ring may have more than a single ring
dependent upon it, no ring is said to hang from more than one. But
real rings hang in other ways, all the rings clumped against the
magnet, or one ring clinging to two or three above it. Why does
Socrates keep the strings of rings so orderly?
Here is one suggestion. Keeping Homer clung only to his Muse,and Ion
clung only to Homer, preserves the idiosyncrasy that let Socrates deny
expertise to Ion. For otherwise a magnet and rings would show how
genuine knowledge is transmitted. Suppose you say that a Muse leads
the doctor Hippocrates to diagnostic insights that he tells his
students and they tell theirs. That much divine help is all that the
image of magnet and rings strictly implies, and it is no threat to a
profession's understanding of itself. But no one would claim that a
doctor can learn only from a single other doctor, or that a doctor
treats a unique group of adulatory patients. That constraint on
medical practice would threaten its status as *techne*;
and that is exactly the constraint added by the array of rings as
Socrates describes it. (For a contrasting and compelling reading of
this passage see Chapter 3 of Capra 2015.)
Analogies always introduce new traits into the thing being described.
That is in the nature of analogical thinking and no grounds for
suspicion. Plato's readers should become suspicious because the
feature that slips into this figure, the orderly hanging of the rings,
is neither called for by the way iron actually transmits magnetic
force, nor neutral in effect. Plato has distorted magnetism to make it
mean not inspiration *simpliciter* but something crazy.
The combination of possession and madness in the *Ion*'s
version of inspiration makes it hard to decide whether the dialogue
implies some approval for inspired poetry or condemns it entirely.
Readers have drawn opposite morals from this short work. (On the
debate see Stern-Gillet 2004.) As Socrates characterizes
*enthousiasmos*, it denies Ion's professional credibility, not
to mention his sanity. But there is religion to think of. If not
traditionally pious, Plato is also not the irreverent type who would
ascribe an action to divinities in order to mock it. And consider the
example of inspired verse mentioned here. Socrates cites Tynnichus,
author of only one passable poem, which was a tribute to the Muses
(534d). It's as if the Muses wanted to display their power, Socrates
says, by proving that their intervention could elicit a good poem even
from an unskilled author. If this is Socrates' paradigm of inspired
poetry, then whatever else inspiration also explains, it appears
particularly well suited to producing praise of the gods. And praise
of the gods is the lone poetic form that Plato respects and accepts
(*Republic* 607a).
Finally there is a version of the same problem that arose regarding
the *Apology*, *Laws*, and *Meno*, that the
*Ion* calls soothsayers and diviners possessed
(*chresmoidos, mantis*: 534d). That already seems
to justify inspiration. Add in that Socrates calls the diviner's
practice a *techne* (538e; cf. 531b) and this dialogue
seems to be saying that an activity can be both professional and the
result of divine possession. So what does the charge of madness mean?
The word makes Ion recoil--but what does he know about higher
states of understanding? Maybe madness itself needs to be reconceived.
The *Ion* says far from enough to settle the question. But
Plato's other sustained discussion of inspiration returns to the
language of madness and finds some forms of it permissible, even
philosophical.
### 3.2 *Phaedrus*
When introducing the *Phaedrus*'s major speech on
*eros* (244a-250d), Socrates defines desirous love
as a species of *mania*, madness, in a context that comments on
philosophy and poetry with an aside about *mimesis* a few
pages later. Although other sections of the *Phaedrus* are
relevant to Platonic aesthetics, this is the only part directly about
inspiration.
Socrates' speech begins by sorting out *mania*. Madness comes
in two general forms: the diseased state of mental dysfunction, and a
divergence from ordinary rationality that a god sometimes brings (see
265a-b). Divine madness subdivides into love, Dionysian frenzy,
oracular prophecy, and poetic composition (244b-245a). In all
four cases the possessed or inspired person
(*enthousiazon*: 241e, 249e, 253a, 263d) can accomplish
what is impossible for someone in a sane state. All four cases are
associated with particular deities and traditionally honored.
On reconciling the possession described in the *Ion* with that
in the *Phaedrus*, see Gonzalez 2011 for extended discussion.
In abbreviated terms we can say that the madness of the
*Phaedrus* is separated from ordinary madness as the
*Ion*'s version is not, and is classified pointedly as
*good* derangement. Being a god, Eros can't do anything bad
(242d-e). The greatest blessings flow from divine *mania*
(244a).
Nor is this possessed condition associated with idiosyncrasy in the
*Phaedrus*. On the contrary. To account for the madness of love
Socrates describes an otherworldly existence in which souls ride
across the top of heaven enjoying direct visions of the Forms
(247c-d). After falling into bodily existence a soul responds to
beauty more avidly than it does to any other qualities for which there
are Forms.
Associating beauty with inspiration suggests that poetry born of
(another kind of) inspiration might also have philosophical worth. But
before welcoming the lost sheep Plato back to the poetry-loving fold,
recognize the *Phaedrus*'s qualifying remarks about which
poetry one may now prize. It cannot be imitative. When Socrates ranks
human souls depending on how much otherworldly being they saw before
falling into bodily form--philosophers come in first on this
ranking--the poet or other *mimetikos* occupies
sixth place out of nine (248e).
Indeed the argument of the *Phaedrus* only identifies a single
type of poem that the Muses call forth: the poem that
"embellishes thousands of deeds of the ancients to educate
[*paideuei*] later generations" (245a). But Plato exempts
hymns to gods and encomia of heroes from even his harshest
condemnation of poetry (*Republic* 607a). Quite compatibly with
the *Republic*'s exemption the *Ion* specifies a hymn to
the Muses as its example of inspiration and the *Phaedrus*
describes the praise of heroes. Whenever possible Plato reserves the
benefits of inspiration for the poems he does not have reason to
condemn. And this restriction on which poems derive a true merit from
being inspired leaves inspiration a long way from guaranteeing
poetry's value.
## 4. Imitation, Inspiration, Beauty
*Mimesis* fails in two ways. 1) It originates in
appearance rather than in reality, so that judged on its own terms the
product of imitation has an ignoble pedigree (*Republic* 603b).
2) The imitative arts positively direct a soul toward appearances,
away from proper objects of inquiry. A mirror reflection might prompt
you to turn around and look at the thing being reflected; an imitation
keeps your eyes on the copy alone. Imitation has a base cause and
baser effects.
Although the dialogues offer few arguments for the second claim, the
perverseness with which *mimesis* leads one to prefer
appearance partly follows from a contrast between traditional visual
art and its later developments. Aeschylus had, they say, already
praised the religiosity of the rougher old visual forms, by comparison
with later visually exciting statues that inspired less of a sense of
divinity (Porphyry *On Abstinence from Animal Food* 2.18).
Early votive objects, sometimes no more representative than a plank or
oblong stone, were treated as markers of the gods' presence and points
of contact with unseen powers (Faraone 1992, Collins 2003). Stone and
wooden figures could serve as surrogates for absent humans, as when
mourners buried an effigy in place of an irrecoverable body (Herodotus
*Histories* 6.58; Vernant 2006, 322; Bremmer 2013), or treated
a grave marker as if it were the buried person (Euripides
*Alcestis* 348-356; see Burkert 1985, 193-194).
Whereas the mimetic relationship connects a visible likeness with its
visible original, such objects though visible link to invisible
referents.
Plato seems to distinguish between the pious old art and its
modernized forms, as he distinguishes analogously among poems. Statues
suggest communication with divinities (*Laws* 931a,
*Phaedrus*230b). Wax likenesses participate in the magic of
effigies (*Laws* 933b). Metaphorically the dialogues imagine a
body as a statue that invites comparison with its invisible referent
the soul (*Charmides* 154c, 157d-158c; *Symposium* 215b,
216d-e), or as a *sema* "tomb" but also
"sign" of the soul within (*Cratylus* 400b-c,
*Gorgias* 493a). Compared to such referential relations, the
mimetic art object's reference to what is visible can feel like a
forcible misdirection of attention to appearances and to delight with
visibility as such.
Beauty by comparison begins in the domain of intelligible objects,
since there is a Form of beauty. And more than any other property for
which a Form exists, beauty engages the soul and draws it toward
philosophical deliberation, toward thoughts of absolute beauty and
subsequently (as we imagine) toward thoughts of other concepts.
Plato therefore hates to acknowledge that poems contain any beauty. He
does not go so far as to call *mimesis* beauty's
contrary, accusing poems or paintings of ugliness. He hardly could. It
is bad enough for his view that he does not account for an imitative
poem's appeal; to deny the appeal would rob his account of all
plausibility.
Nor can a good (philosophical) version of imitation work as opposite
to the poetic kind. Plato recognizes a salutary function that
imitations sometimes have, even the function of drawing the mind
toward knowledge. But he offers no more than hints about positive
*mimesis*. There is no account of sound imitation that
would counterweigh the attacks in the *Republic*. In any case
this is a constructive turn that never seems to be made available to
poems or paintings. If good imitation does exist, its home is not
among the arts. Still the idea invites a worthwhile question: Is there
*anything* human beings can produce that would function
oppositely to mimetic poetry? Inspiration is the most promising
possibility.
The cause behind inspiration is unimpeachable, for it begins in the
divine realm. Is that a realm of Forms? The *Phaedrus* comes
closest to saying so, both by associating the gods with Forms
(247c-e), and by rooting inspired love in recollection (251a).
But this falls short of showing that the poets' divine madness
likewise originates among objects of greater reality. It might, but
does not have to.
The *Ion* says less about poetry's divine origins than the
*Phaedrus*, certainly nothing that requires an interpreter to
discover Forms within the Muse's magnetism. *Laws* 682a and
*Meno* 99c-d credit the inspired condition with the
production of truths, even in poetry. Neither passage describes the
truths about Forms that philosophical dialectic would lead to, but
that might be asking too much. Let it suffice that inspiration
originates in some truth.
What about the *effects* of inspired poetry? Could such poetry
turn a soul toward knowledge as beautiful faces do? Would it always do
so? Poetry's defenders will find scant support for that proposal in
the dialogues. Inspired poetry has its merits but Plato rarely credits
it with promoting philosophical knowledge. In fact the *Ion*
conceives inspiration as the cause of the worst cognitive state, for
the poet's possession by the Muses is what attaches the audience
(irrationally, particularly-minded) to that one poet. The
*Phaedrus* does say that Muse-made poems teach future
generations about the exploits of heroes. Inspired poetry at least
might set a good example. But one can find good examples in verse
without waiting for inspiration. Even *Republic* 3 allows for
instances in which the young guardians imitate virtuous characters.
The educational consequences of inspired poetry do not set it apart
from imitative poetry, and they never include philosophical
education.
A clear opposition between imitation and inspiration, or any clear
relationship between them, would suggest a coherent whole that can be
titled "Plato's aesthetics." In the absence of such a
relationship it is hard to attribute an aesthetic theory to Plato as
one can straightforwardly do with Aristotle.
If unification is possible for the elements of Plato's aesthetics,
that may arrive from another direction. Religion has not been explored
as much as it should in connection with Plato's aesthetics, even
though a religious orientation informs what he has to say about
beauty, inspiration, and imitation. The quasi-divine status that
beauty has in the *Symposium*; the *Republic*'s
characterization of the imitator as enemy to Athena and other gods;
and of course inspiration, which cannot be defined without appeal to
divine action: All three subjects suggest that Plato's aesthetics
might come together more satisfactorily within Plato's theology. The
question is worth pursuing now, for scholarship of recent decades has
advanced the study of Greek religion, providing unprecedented
resources for a fresh inquiry into the fundamental terms out of which
Plato constructs his aesthetics. |
schopenhauer-aesthetics | ## 1. Brief Background
By the 1870s, Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy had gained, in
Nietzsche's words "*ascendency* in Europe" (GM
III, SS5). Indeed, late-19th and
early-20th century philosophers, writers, composers and
artists such as Nietzsche, Wagner, Brahms, Freud, Wittgenstein,
Horkheimer, Hardy, Mann, Rilke, Proust, Tolstoy, Borges, Mahler, Langer
and Schonberg were influenced by Schopenhauer's
thought. Recognition came late in his life, however,
starting only in 1853 with the publication of a review article by J.
Oxenford. Until then, Schopenhauer labored in relative obscurity,
despite the publication of numerous works such as: *On the Fourfold
Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason* (his doctoral
dissertation published in 1813, revised 1847), *On Vision and
Colors* (1816), his magnum opus *The World as Will and
Representation* (1818/9; second, revised edition with a second
volume of essays 1844), *On the Will in Nature* (1836), *On
the Freedom of the Will* (which won a prize from the Royal
Norwegian Society of Sciences in 1839), *On the Basis of Morals*
(which did *not* win the prize from the Danish Royal Society of
Sciences despite its being the only entry for the competition), and two
volumes of *Parerga and Paralipomena* (1851).
What many luminaries of European culture found gripping in
Schopenhauer's thought was his doctrine of the world as having
two aspects related to each other as two sides of the same coin: (1) an
ultimate foundation as "will"--a blind, purposeless urge or
striving akin to energy--which he identified with the Kantian thing in
itself (for competing interpretations of the argument for this
identification see: Atwell 1995; Janaway 1989, 1999a; Young,
1987; DeCian & Segala 2002; Cartwright 2001; Jacquette 2007;
Shapshay 2008; and Wicks 2008); and (2) a world of
representation, i.e., the will *qua* thing in itself as it
"objectifies" itself and appears to human beings through
their shared mode of cognitive conditioning.
Schopenhauer held that the character of the will *qua* thing in
itself--blind urge--expresses itself in the perpetual strivings
of living creatures and in the forces of inorganic matter.
Grounding his proto-Darwinian philosophy of nature in his metaphysics
and the empirical sciences of his day, Schopenhauer viewed nature as an
arena where living beings compete to survive and procreate, where
species adapt to environmental conditions, and, most emphasized by
Schopenhauer, where sentient beings *suffer* as virtual
slaves to their will to life [*Wille zum
Leben*].
Schopenhauer's metaphysics and philosophy of nature led him to
the doctrine of pessimism: the view that sentient beings, with
few exceptions, are bound to strive and suffer greatly, all without any
ultimate purpose or justification and thus life is not really worth
living. This is a view that has seldom been defended in the history of
Western thought and became a potent philosophical *problem* for
Nietzsche and atheist existentialists.
Mitigating his pessimism somewhat, Schopenhauer does see a salutary
role for the intellect in human life. He identifies three main
ways in which the intellect breaks free to some degree from the
servitude to the will and its attendant egoism: (1) in aesthetic
experience and artistic production, (2) in compassionate attitudes and
actions, and (3) in ascetic resignation from embodied existence.
In each of these three ways of being in the world, a subject exercises
varying degrees of freedom from the will to life, a freedom which is
inextricably bound up with a degree of "intuitive
knowledge" of the world, or, as Wittgenstein would later put it,
of "seeing the world aright." Thus, the mode of being of
the aesthetic perceiver, the artist, the compassionate agent, and the
ascetic saint each has moral value in virtue of their possessing a
degree of true understanding of the world, which enables the attainment
of a degree of freedom from ordinary egoism, and which leads them to
not add to--or possibly to diminish--the amount of suffering in the
world.
## 2. Schopenhauer's Methodology in Aesthetics
As with his philosophy as a whole, Schopenhauer takes his point of
departure in aesthetics from Kant, praising him for deepening the
subjective turn in philosophical aesthetics and thereby putting it on
the right path (WWR I, Appendix, 560-61. Note: page references
to vol. I refer to the Cambridge edition translation; references to
vol. II to the Payne transl.). Like Kant, he held that the phenomenon
of beauty would only be illuminated through a careful scrutiny of its
effects on the subject, rather than by proceeding in the pre-Kantian
objectivist fashion, searching out the properties of
objects--such as smoothness, delicacy and smallness--which
putatively give rise to the feeling of the beautiful. But the
subjective turn is as far as Kant's aesthetic-methodological
merit extends, according to Schopenhauer: it is too indirect, due to
Kant's primary method in philosophy, the transcendental
argument.
Applied to the phenomenon of beauty in the *Critique of the Power
of Judgment*, Kant starts from an analysis of the judgments that
the subject makes about the objects of experience, e.g., "this
rose is beautiful." After offering an analysis of the logic of
such aesthetic judgments--that they are based on feeling, more
particularly on a feeling of disinterested pleasure, but that they also
claim universal subjective validity--Kant then searches for the
*a priori* conditions for the possibility of making judgments
that have this logical form.
By contrast, Schopenhauer does not believe that the aesthetician
should start from the aesthetic *judgment*, but rather from
immediate *aesthetic experience,* before the subject attempts
to formulate judgments about that experience (WWR I,
530-531). The advocacy of this focus, rather than Kant's
focus on judgments, has to do with the ways in which Schopenhauer
departs from Kant's epistemology. Very briefly, the key issue
has to do with the status of non-conceptual knowledge. As Kant
famously held, "[t]houghts without content are empty, intuitions
without concepts are blind"
(A50-51/B74-75). Schopenhauer adheres to the first clause,
but holds that there is indeed what today philosophers might call
"non-conceptual content," and what he referred to
variously as "intuitive cognition" [intuitive
Erkenntniss], "knowledge of perception" [anschauliche
Erkenntniss] or "feeling" [das Gefuhl]. This
cognition allows us--and many non-human animals--to navigate
and operate in the world to a great extent without
concepts. Furthermore, for Schopenhauer, this is the kind of knowledge
we gain, *par excellence*, through aesthetic experiences of
nature and art; but this knowledge is not or at least not-yet
conceptual, though it is a knowledge of the "Platonic
Ideas" or essential features of the phenomenal world (more on
the Ideas at section 3.2).
In order to preserve for ourselves or to communicate
"intuitive knowledge" to others, we may try to
*show* it or *say* it. If one is an artist, one might
show such knowledge by attempting to embody it in a work of art. But
for non-artists, trying to 'say' this knowledge means
attempting to capture it propositionally, and in so doing, for
Schopenhauer, we *translate* intuitive into conceptual knowledge
by a process of abstraction. Unfortunately, something is inevitably lost in the
translation. Thus, Schopenhauer concludes, Kant's starting
point--the aesthetic judgment--is already at one remove from true
aesthetic experience. And since this remove is not innocuous, insofar
as the judgment does not faithfully transmit the richness of the
experience, the aesthetic judgment constitutes the wrong focus for
aesthetic theorizing.
Fundamentally, however, the gap between aesthetic experience and
aesthetic judgments yields an essential difficulty for aesthetic
*theories* since these are necessarily formulated
propositionally, and therefore cannot entirely capture the richness of
immediate, first-personal aesthetic experience. To his credit,
Schopenhauer is quite frank about the methodological limits of
aesthetic theorizing, especially in the case of music (WWR I, section
52; see also Goehr 1998; and
section 5.2.5 below). Nonetheless, he ventures
forth to offer just such a theory
in the hopes that through it he may convince the reader of the
"importance and high value of art (which are seldom sufficiently
recognized)" (WWR I, 294) and to help the reader enter a
psychological space where she herself can gain the deep insights
afforded by nature and the fine arts.
## 3. Aesthetic Experience
Aesthetic experience comes in two main varieties for Schopenhauer,
the beautiful and the sublime, and can be had through perception of
both nature and art. Although 18th century aesthetics
also included the "picturesque," this drops out as a
separate category in both Kant and Schopenhauer's aesthetic
theories.
Nearly all human beings, he holds, are capable of aesthetic
experience, otherwise they would be "absolutely insensitive to
beauty and sublimity--in fact these words would be meaningless for
them" (WWR I, 218). Notwithstanding this nearly universally
shared capacity for aesthetic experience, Schopenhauer remarks that it
is enjoyed only occasionally by the majority of people and is enjoyed
in a very sustained manner and to a high degree only by the genius.
There are two jointly necessary and sufficient conditions for any
properly aesthetic experience, one subjective and one objective.
### 3.1 Subjective side
Ordinary cognition, according to Schopenhauer, is bound up with the
individual's will, that is to say, with one's generally
egoistic strivings, and is subordinate to the four forms of the
"principle of sufficient reason" (PSR), the principle which
holds that nothing is without a reason for why it is (FR, SS5). The
PSR is Schopenhauer's formulation of the ways in which human
beings cognitively condition the world of representation. It includes
space, time and causality, as well as psychological, logical and
mathematical forms of explanation.
By contrast, aesthetic experience consists in the subject's
achieving *will-less* [*willenlos*] perception of the
world. In order for the subject to attain such perception, her
intellect must cease viewing things in the ordinary
way--relationally and ultimately in relation to one's
will--she must "stop considering the Where, When, Why and
Wherefore of things but simply and exclusively consider the
*What*" (WWR I, 201). In other words, will-less
perception is perception of objects simply for the understanding of
what they are essentially, in and for themselves, and without regard to
the actual or possible relationships those phenomenal objects have to
the striving self.
Schopenhauer characterizes the subject who has aesthetic experience as
the "pure subject of cognition." It is "pure"
in the sense that the subject's intellect is not operating in
the service of the will to life during aesthetic experience, though
this subject is still *embodied*--for without embodiment,
without the senses, a subject would not perceive at all (WWR I,
198). Thus, while the pure subject of cognition is free temporarily
from the service of the individual will, it is nonetheless still
identical with the embodied subject of willing. The freedom of the
intellect from the service to the individual will constitutes a sort
of acting 'out of character'. Exactly how the intellect
can cease to serve the individual will remains murky, however. (More on
this at 4.5; for a detailed account of role
of freedom in Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory, see Neill and
Shapshay 2012.)
Similar to the notion of disinterested pleasure in Kant, in
Schopenhauer's aesthetics the subjective side of aesthetic
experience involves the will-less pleasure of tranquility. The
experience of aesthetic tranquility stands in stark contrast with
ordinary willing. All willing, according to Schopenhauer, involves
suffering, insofar as it originates from need and
deficiency. Satisfaction, when it is achieved affords a
fleeting joy and yields fairly quickly to painful boredom, which is
tantamount to a deficiency, and which starts the entire process anew.
Given this grim account of willing, it is not surprising that
Schopenhauer describes aesthetic experience in truly rapturous terms as
"the painless state that Epicurus prized as the highest good and
the state of the gods," and as "the Sabbath of the penal
servitude of willing" when the "wheel of Ixion stands
still" (WWR I, 220).
### 3.2 Objective side
The objective side of aesthetic experience is necessarily correlated
and occurs simultaneously with aesthetic will-lessness: It is the
perception of what Schopenhauer terms the "Platonic
Ideas." The will *qua* thing in itself, on
Schopenhauer's metaphysics, objectifies itself at particular
grades; the Ideas correspond to these grades of objectification. The
Idea in each particular thing is that which is enduring and essential
in it (WWR I, 206) and can only be intuited in aesthetic experience of
nature and art (WWR I, 182).
The ontological status and the coherence of the Ideas within
Schopenhauer's metaphysics has been a bone of contention for
commentators (see Hamlyn 1980, Chapter 6; Young 1987, 2005;
Atwell 1995). The problem is this: On Schopenhauer's account
there are only two aspects of the world, first, the world as will (the
thing in itself or "will"); and, second, the world as
representation. The Ideas, however, fit neatly into
*neither* aspect. On the one hand, the Ideas seem to
belong to the world as will: In virtue of their being the
"immediate and therefore adequate objecthood of the thing in
itself" (WWR I, 197) the Ideas are independent of the cognitive
conditions of time, space and causality (WWR I, 204). Yet, unlike the
will *qua* thing in itself, the Ideas may be directly perceived
by a subject, and thus are more akin to representations. In
contrast to ordinary representations, however, the Ideas revealed in
the phenomenal object have not yet entered into the particularlizing
forms of the PSR (most notably, space, time and causality), they are
rather universals.
A further difficulty for the tenability of the Ideas in
Schopenhauer's system is the fact that he often refers to Ideas
in the plural. For Schopenhauer, space and time are the
*principium individuationis;* but since the Ideas are
independent of space and time, it is not clear how they can be
individuated at all. One option for understanding the place of the
Ideas in his system would be to see them as playing the role of an
epistemic rather than metaphysical bridge between the one will and the
many phenomena. This helps to explain their individuated status
as follows: In a suggestive metaphor, Schopenhauer likens the Ideas to
"steps on the ladder of the objectivation of that one will, of
the true thing in itself" (WWR I, 198); if one understands the
"ladder"--the ensemble of Ideas--as part of the
world as representation, then each Idea--each "step" on the
ladder--is a universal perceived in various particular
spatiotemporal objects. The Ideas then are the essential features of
objects or states of affairs that human beings may perceive when their
attention is focussed squarely on the 'what' rather than on
the 'why' or 'wherefore' of phenomena. It
should be noted, however, that the Ideas are not abstracted by the
subject as are concepts on Schopenhauer's view, but are, rather,
perceived directly *in them*. In sum, the Ideas seem to
make the most sense within his system as "abstract
objects"--objects that are not spatiotemporal, which do not
stand in causal relationship with anything, and which have not been
abstracted like a concept, but rather, are the real, objective, essential aspects
of the world as representation as perceived by a will-less subject (WWR
I, 234, 236). The crucial role that they play in
Schopenhauer's system is that they are the objects of all
aesthetic experience--both of the artist and spectator--and their
perception constitutes insight into the essential nature of the
phenomenal world.
## 4. The Beautiful and the Sublime
### 4.1 The Beautiful
When the subject's transition to the tranquil, will-less state
of aesthetic contemplation occurs easily, that is, when the objects
"meet that state halfway," becoming "representatives
of their Ideas by virtue of their intricate and at the same time clear
and determinate form" (WWR I, 225), then the subject experiences
the beautiful. Natural objects, especially flora, accommodate
themselves most easily to the experience of the beautiful.
However, objects can be resistant to aesthetic contemplation in two
main ways: either they may be stimulating to the bodily appetites or
they may be hostile in some way to the human will to life.
### 4.2 The Stimulating
The first category of contemplation-resistant objects, Schopenhauer
terms, "the stimulating" or the "charming".
These may be positively or negatively stimulating. On the positive
side, he gives as examples, "prepared and table-ready dishes,
oysters, herring, lobster, bread and butter, beer, wine, etc."
(WWR I, 232). Since he holds that these *necessarily* stir
the appetite, they inevitably resist aesthetic contemplation and are
therefore unsuitable to be presented in works of art such as still-life
paintings.
Along the same lines, a calculatedly-arousing treatment of
nudes--what we might today put on a spectrum of pornography--for
Schopenhauer, prevents aesthetic contemplation because it inevitably
excites lust and thus runs counter to the proper goals of art.
Schopenhauer may have room in his aesthetic theory for erotic
art, but this is not a topic which he explicitly addresses.
On the negatively stimulating side fall objects which are
disgusting. For reasons parallel to those offered with respect to the
positively stimulating, disgusting objects should also be banished from
art, because they necessarily arouse intense negative willing or
"repugnance". Ugliness, however, is not identical to the
disgusting, need not lead to repugnance and has, for Schopenhauer, a
legitimate place in art. Curiously, it seems that for both the
positively and negatively stimulating Schopenhauer does not believe
that we may intellectually detach ourselves from our attraction, lust
or repugnance in order to contemplate these aesthetically. But
the grounds on which he holds this view remain somewhat obscure (for
more on this topic see Neill 2015).
### 4.3 The Sublime
The other class of contemplation-resistant "objects" or
phenomena are those that bear a *hostile* relationship to the
human will insofar as they are so vast or powerful that they threaten
to overwhelm the human individual or reduce his existence on this
planet to a mere speck. Schopenhauer gives as examples desert
landscapes, cascades, and the starry night sky, among many others.
Unlike the case of the stimulating, however, Schopenhauer does believe
that aesthetic contemplation of these phenomena is possible, and when
it transpires the experience is that of the sublime.
Following Kant's distinction, Schopenhauer identifies
two varieties of the sublime, the dynamical and the mathematical. They
are distinguished by the nature of the threat posed to human willing in
general: if physical, then, for Schopenhauer, it is a case of the
dynamical sublime; if psychological, then it is a case of the
mathematical sublime. Although the sublime may be experienced with
works of art--notably with tragedy--most of Schopenhauer's
examples come from nature and include a variety of landscapes and
natural phenomena ranging from a frozen winter landscape which affords
very little warmth and light to a violent storm at sea. He arrays them
in terms of degrees of the sublime feeling they are likely to afford.
The higher the magnitude of the threat posed, the higher the degree of
sublime feeling.
Schopenhauer offers a phenomenologically-complex account of how we
may take aesthetic pleasure in such fearsome or overwhelming scenes. In
order to contemplate the Ideas in hostile objects aesthetically, the
subject must first acknowledge the fearsomeness or the sheer vastness
of the object, but then "consciously turn away" from the
threat, "violently wrenching himself free from his will"
(WWR I, 226). If the subject can do this, and achieves will-less
contemplation of the Ideas which express themselves in these
threatening things, then the subject experiences a "state of
elevation"--this is the feeling of the sublime.
Although Schopenhauer is not terribly explicit on the
phenomenological differences between the beautiful and the sublime, two
emerge from his account: (1) the beautiful is characterized by a
*loss* of self-consciousness whereas the sublime is
characterized by *two moments of self-consciousness*; (2) the
beautiful is wholly pleasurable, but the sublime is mixed with
pain.
While Schopenhauer refers to a kind of self-consciousness that
remains in the experience of the beautiful, *the fact*
*that* (1) one is somehow *freeing* one's intellect from
the service of the will, and (2) one's perception is no longer in the
service of the individual's will are *not themselves present to
mind* in his account of the beautiful. However, in experience of
the sublime, these two additional elements of
self-consciousness--consciousness of liberating oneself and
consciousness of having been liberated from the will and its
cares--are present, and these instances of second-order
consciousness are accompanied by the feeling of
"exaltation" [*Erhebung*] above the will
[*uber den Willen*] (WWR I, 233). The pleasure of
exaltation is thus tied to the felt recognition of the subject's power
to detach from the pressures of his or her individual will, and is
resonant of the Kantian account of the sublime, with its felt
recognition of one's rational-moral vocation and freedom (for a fuller
account of this interpretation see Shapshay 2012; for competing
accounts of the Schopenhauerian sublime see Neill, 2003 & 2011;
Vandenabeele 2003 & 2015; Janaway 1996; Young 1987; Wicks 2008;
Vasalou 2013).
The sublime plays a significant role in Schopenhauer's theory
of tragedy and his solution to the 'rationality problem' of
tragedy, namely, how can we rationally take pleasure in witnessing
terrible scenes and feeling the painful emotions of fear and pity that
are integral to an experience of tragic drama? In addition to the high
cognitive value of this genre, Schopenhauer regards the pleasure of
tragedy as the highest degree of the feeling of the dynamically sublime
(WWR II: 433). These two facets of Schopenhauer's account of
tragedy help explain the rationality of engaging with tragic drama as
well as the often-noted ethical significance of the genre (see
section 5.2.4 for more on tragedy).
### 4.4 Varieties of aesthetic pleasure
Pleasure in aesthetic experience comes from three main sources in
Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory. First, there is the tranquility
of will-lessness (this is the predominant pleasure of the beautiful);
second, is the pleasure of self-conscious exaltation over the will to
life, a pleasure akin to Kantian pride or respect for one's
rational-moral vocation (though Schopenhauer repudiates Kant's
view of pure practical reason); and a third kind of pleasure derives
from the perception of Ideas, but is distinct from tranquility.
Schopenhauer holds that the pleasure will come sometimes more from
the subjective and other times more from the objective side of
aesthetic experience. When the Ideas perceived objectify lower
grades of the will *qua* thing in itself, the pleasure will
derive more from the experience of will-less tranquility, as the Ideas
are not too significant. However, when the Ideas objectify higher
grades of the will--meaning more complex and complete
objectifications of the will--then the pleasure will derive more
from the cognitive significance of these Ideas. The hierarchy in
the gradations of the will's objectification has far-reaching
implications for Schopenhauer's philosophy of art and for the
hierarchy he posits among art forms and genres.
### 4.5 Aesthetic freedom
A thorny interpretive issue arises from Schopenhauer's account
of aesthetic experience thus far, namely, how is it even possible in
his system (see Hamlyn 1980, Neymeyr 1995, and Neill 2008)? The
problem is that aesthetic experience seems to require the breaking
free of the intellect from its service to the will to life. But
according to Schopenhauer, the intellect comes into being originally
as a tool for and, as a rule, serves the needs of the will to life. He
holds further that nature does nothing in vain. So it would seem that
the intellect
*cannot* actually break from the will, but if this is so, then
aesthetic experience would not be possible. Ultimately, this issue is
bound up with the possibility of human freedom more generally in
Schopenhauer's thought.
In his prize-winning essay "On the Freedom of the Will,"
Schopenhauer follows Kant in espousing a kind of compatibilism.
Nature is deterministic but the *possibility* of freedom is
guaranteed by the "in itself" of the world which is
independent of the PSR and is in that way undetermined (see Shapshay,
2011 for an account of Schopenhauer's fuller argument for this
claim). In all of his works after the 1813 dissertation, however,
Schopenhauer parts ways with Kant's view of "causality
through freedom" through a noumenal self. The possibility of
aesthetic freedom is nonetheless vouchsafed by the
transcendental-idealist doctrine of the distinction between the
empirical and intelligible character. By virtue of the
'two-sidedness' of the individual's character, the
individual can have transcendental/moral freedom, for Schopenhauer
views the intelligible character as the act of the free
will *qua* thing in itself [*Willensakt*]
>
>
> whose appearance,
> when developed and drawn out in time, space and all of the forms of the
> principle of sufficient reason, is the empirical
> character.... (WWR I, section 55, 316)
>
>
>
Exactly how the intellect may detach from the interests of the
individual will--the empirical character-- by virtue of the
intelligible character is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say,
though Schopenhauer is clear that the operation of transcendental
freedom should not be understood as causal since causality applies
only within the empirical realm.
Nonetheless, in cases of aesthetic experience (especially the
sublime) the intellect *does* manage to free itself from the
servitude of the will. Further, in cases of ascetic
"salvation" from embodied existence, a person may even will
to resign herself from willing altogether. Clearly there are actual
moments of human freedom in his view, the possibility of which is
vouchsafed through the intelligible character and its near identity to
the will *qua* thing in itself; but *exactly how* freedom
'enters into' the empirical realm in these cases remains,
in Schopenhauer's terms, quoting Malebranche, "a
mystery" (WWR I, section 70, 431; see also FW epigraph).
## 5. The Fine Arts
### 5.1 Genius
As in Kant's aesthetics, genuine art on
Schopenhauer's view is the product of a genius or someone who has
been "momentarily inspired to the point of genius" (WWR I,
261). But he construes the creative process of the genius rather
differently from Kant. For all of the fine arts save for
music--which constitutes an important exception treated
below--the genius produces art first by contemplating an Idea in
nature or from human affairs. Sometimes the genius is aided by her
imagination which allows her to perceive Ideas in possible as well as
in actual experience. Then, with technical skill she embodies the
Ideas she has perceived into a form (be it in marble, paint or words on
the printed page) that enables the Ideas to be perceived by others.
In this way, the genius lends her superlative ability to perceive
Ideas in actual or imagined things to the ordinary person, who can less
readily perceive Ideas from the phenomenal world.
Schopenhauer sees a relationship between genius and madness.
He believes that "every increase in intellect beyond the
ordinary measure is an abnormality that disposes one to madness"
(WWR I, 215); since the genius is distinctive for her superfluity of
intellect (WWR I, 211), which allows her to withdraw from mundane
concerns more often and more sustainedly in order to perceive the Ideas
in things and in the patterns of human life, she is thus disposed to
madness. Also, geniuses resemble madmen insofar as they are often
so engrossed in perceiving the essential in life that they pay little
attention to particulars, and are generally terrible in practical
affairs. But the real distinguishing factor between the
"madman" and the genius has to do with memory. From
his "frequent visits to madhouses" and his reflections on
the symptoms of these real inmates as well as on those of characters in
literature who have gone insane (e.g., Ophelia, King Lear, Ajax),
Schopenhauer hypothesizes that the mad lack reliable interconnections
between past and present events, and in many cases this is due to some
traumatic event they have suffered in their past. By contrast,
the genius has a memory that functions normally.
### 5.2 Hierarchy among the fine arts
The differences among the fine arts (again, apart from music) have
to do with the medium in which Ideas are copied and through which they
may be perceived by other subjects and thus transmitted. But the fine
arts also differ and admit of a hierarchy based on the hierarchical
"ladder" of the Ideas that those art forms (and within art
forms, genres) are suited to express. Climbing the ladder of the
will's objectification in Ideas from lowest to highest is a
matter of the increasing complexity and completeness in the
will's phenomenal expression. And so, the same holds for the fine
arts--again, with the exception of music--whose sole aim, for
Schopenhauer, is to copy the Ideas and thus for the genius to make them
intuitively perceptible to others.
#### 5.2.1 Architecture and Artistic Fountainry
On the lowest rung of the fine-arts ladder, Schopenhauer places
architecture which
>
> make[s] the objectivation of the will clear
> at the lowest level of its visibility, where it shows itself as the
> dull striving of mass, conforming to law but with no cognition.
> (WWR I, 283)
>
>
>
The Ideas embodied in architecture are mass, gravity,
rigidity, light, and the Ideas of the materials utilized such as stone
or wood. On the same rung Schopenhauer places artistic fountainry, the
aim of which is to reveal the objectivation of the will in fluid
substances; this art form embodies the Ideas of fluidity, formlessness,
transparency, and the like.
#### 5.2.2 Landscape gardening
Moving up the ladder, Schopenhauer treats landscape gardening which
"performs the same service for the higher levels of vegetable
nature" that architecture and fountainry perform for non-living
nature (WWR I, 243). The aim of this fine art is to promote the
scenic beauty of an area by cultivating a variety of species in a
juxtaposition and combination that allows the essential in each type of
plant to emerge distinctly. Schopenhauer remarks, however, that
the landscape gardener exerts less control over her materials than does
the architect, and thus, the real beauty of this art form is due more
to nature herself than to the artist.
#### 5.2.3 Sculpture and Painting
Arriving at the art forms which portray sentient, living nature,
Schopenhauer places paintings and sculptures of non-human animals on
equal footing. These fine arts also treat the human form and enable
the perception of the Idea of humanity including the individuality of
the sitter or subject, in the case of portraiture and
sculpture. Capturing the individuality of human beings is important
for the expression of the Idea of humanity "because to a certain
extent, the human individual as such has the dignity of an Idea of his
own" (WWR I, 251).
Within painting, Schopenhauer follows for the most part the
hierarchy of genres set out by Academic painting at the time, classing
still-life and landscape painting below historical and genre
painting. This ranking is due to the lower grades of the
will's objectification in the usual subjects of still-life and
landscape painting: fruits, flowers, animal carcasses, natural
vistas and the like. But he departs from the traditional hierarchy of
Academic painting in his claim that the commoners and mundane scenes of
genre paintings are in no way inferior to grand historical figures and
events as subjects of painting,
>
> because what is genuinely
> significant in historical subjects is not in fact what is individual,
> not the particular event as such, but rather what is universal in it,
> the aspect of the Idea of humanity that expresses itself through
> it. (WWR I, 257)
>
>
>
Thus, portrayals of peasants in a tavern
arguing over cards and dice is apt to be just as significant as
portrayals of ministers in a palace arguing over maps and countries
(WWR I, 256). In fact, he believes an artist would do very well
solely to concentrate on the scenes, events, struggles and joys of the
masses in order to unfold the multifarious Idea of humanity in
painting, sculpture or poetry.
#### 5.2.4 Poetry
The aim of poetry, in which Schopenhauer includes all forms of
literature and drama, is to reveal and communicate the Ideas through
the medium of abstract concepts communicated by means of words.
Schopenhauer uses an analogy from chemistry to describe the aim of the
true poet. Just as the chemist combines various liquids in order to
distill out precisely the solid precipitates she wants, the aim of the
poet is to use abstract concepts but to restrict the generality of
these concepts (by the use of epithets and other vivid descriptors) to
"precipitate" out precise images in the minds of her
readers, listeners, or spectators (WWR I, 269). The generality of its
material--the concept--allows poetry to express a vast
number of Ideas. It can range over all of nature, but is especially
apt to express the Idea of humanity in their actions, thoughts, and
feelings. And in expressing this Idea in its multiplicity, poetry has
a distinct advantage over history, according to Schopenhauer (here
following Aristotle), for poetry is not beholden to actual events and
people, but rather to what is possible or probable and thus may better
capture what is truly significant in human existence. (For a
comparison between Schopenhauer and Early German Romantic thinkers on
poetry, see Millan 2017).
The various genres of poetry express different facets of the Idea of
humanity: lyric poetry (including song) expresses the interior thoughts
and feelings of humanity as a whole; the novel, epic and drama
are more "objective" types of literature which express the
Idea of humanity through the portrayal of significant characters in
significant situations. On the top rung of poetic art, for
Schopenhauer, lies tragedy, whose goal is the "portrayal of the
terrible aspect of life" where "the unspeakable pain, the
misery of humanity, the triumph of wickedness, the scornful domination
of chance, and the hopeless fall of the righteous and the innocent are
brought before us" (WWR I, 280).
Schopenhauer sees great cognitive as well as ethical significance in
the Ideas expressed in tragedy, for this genre offers
"significant intimation as to the nature of the world and of
existence" and shakes a person's natural tendency toward
optimism. The one constant in tragedy is the "portrayal of
a great misfortune" (WWR I, 281), but this may be brought about,
on his account, in three main ways: (1) through the exceptional
wickedness of certain characters (he gives as examples of this type
Shakespeare's *Richard III*, *Othello*, and *The
Merchant of Venice,* as well as Sophocles' *Antigone*
among others); (2) through blind fate (e.g., Sophocles'
*Oedipus Tyrannus,* "most of the tragedies of the
ancients," Shakespeare's *Romeo and Juliet,*
Voltaire's *Tancred* and Schiller's *The Bride of
Messina*); (3) through morally ordinary characters in their typical
relationships with each other. This last type of tragedy is the most
valuable, for Schopenhauer,
> because it shows us the greatest
> misfortune not as an exception, not as something brought about by rare
> circumstances or monstrous characters, but rather as something that
> develops effortlessly and spontaneously out of people's deeds and
> characters, almost as if it were essential, thereby bringing it
> terribly close to us. (WWR I, 282)
>
>
>
Tragedies of this type
are more rare and more difficult to execute. Good specimens of
this type include Goethe's *Clavigo* and *Faust,
Shakespeare's Hamlet* in Hamlet's relationship
with Laertes and Ophelia. Although Schopenhauer obviously did not live
to see them, it is probable that he would have approved of Arthur
Miller's modern tragedies such as *All My Sons* and
*Death of a Salesman* which seem to fall entirely into this type
(for more on Schopenhauer's theory of tragedy and his solution to
the problems of tragedy see Tanner 1998; Neill 2003; Young 1987
& 1992; and Shapshay 2012b).
#### 5.2.5 Music
No wonder that Schopenhauer was the darling of composers in the
19th and 20th centuries, for he argued that music
has a truly exceptional status among the arts and uniquely reveals the
essence of the "in itself" of the world. Music that
affords such insight--the only music he deems worthy of the
name--is Classical/Romantic, non-programmatic music without a
text, or what was termed late in the 19th century,
"absolute music." Unlike all of the other arts, which
express or copy the Ideas (the essential features of the phenomenal
world), Schopenhauer affirmed that music expresses or copies the will
*qua* thing in itself, bypassing the Ideas altogether.
This puts music and the Ideas on a par in terms of the directness
of their expression of the thing in itself (WWR I, 285). In order to
understand Schopenhauer's reasoning for this rather stunning view
of the cognitive significance of music, one needs to pay attention to
the role of feeling in Schopenhauer's epistemology, and
especially to the feeling of embodiment that a subject can experience
by attending to ordinary acts of volition.
It is the feeling of embodiment--the intuitive, immediate
knowledge *that one wills* when, for instance, one wills to
raise one's arm--that is monumentally significant for
Schopenhauer in his identification of the Kantian thing in itself with
will. First-personal knowledge *that* one wills is
immediate, rather than inferred from observation, according to
Schopenhauer, and is shorn of all of the forms of the PSR (including
space, causality, and even being-an-object-for-a-subject) with one
exception, the form of *time.*
Similarly, Schopenhauer holds that the experience of
"absolute" music (music that does not seek to imitate the
phenomenal world and is unaccompanied by narrative or text), occurs in
time, but does not involve any of the other cognitive conditions on
experience. Thus, like the feeling of embodiment, Schopenhauer believes
the experience of music brings us epistemically closer to the essence
of the world as will--it is as direct an experience of the will
*qua* thing in itself as is possible for a human being to have.
Absolutely direct experience of the will is impossible, because it will
always be mediated by time, but in first-personal experience of
volition and the experience of music the thing in itself is no longer
veiled by our other forms of cognitive conditioning. Thus, these
experiences are epistemically distinctive and metaphysically
significant.
Since the will expresses itself in Ideas as well as in music,
Schopenhauer reasons that there must be analogies between them.
Indeed, he draws out many such structural analogies: between the bass
notes of harmony and the lower grades of objectification of the will in
inorganic nature; between melody and the human being's
"most secret story," that is, "every emotion, every
striving, every movement of the will, everything that reason collects
under the broad and negative concept of feeling" (WWR I, 287);
rhythms such as those of dance music are analogous to easy, common
happiness, while the *allegro maestoso* corresponds to grand,
noble strivings after distant goals; the "inexhaustibility"
of possible melodies is analogous to the "inexhaustibility of
nature in the variety of individuals, physiognomies and life
histories." (WWR I, 288).
Notwithstanding these and many other analogies Schopenhauer draws
between music and the Ideas, he underscores the notion that music does
not imitate appearances, but rather expresses the will as directly as
possible. It does this predominantly by expressing universal
feelings:
> it does not express this or that
> individual or particular joy, this or that sorrow or pain or horror or
> exaltation or cheerfulness or peace of mind, but rather joy, sorrow,
> pain, horror, exaltation, cheerfulness and peace of mind as such in
> *themselves*, abstractly..., (WWR I, 289)
>
>
He supports this account of music first as an inference to the best
explanation. By the third book of his main work, Schopenhauer
takes for granted that the reader has been at least somewhat convinced
by the metaphysics for which he has argued. In addition,
Schopenhauer holds that people often feel that music is the most
powerful of all the arts, affording a "profound pleasure with
which we see the deepest recesses of our nature find
expression." And he draws our attention to what today we
might call, 'the soundtrack effect,' i.e.,
>
> p
> the fact
> that, when music suitable to any scene, action, event, or environment
> is played, it seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and
> appears to be the most accurate and distinct commentary on it.
> (WWR I, 262)
>
>
>
Finally, for Schopenhauer, "to the man who gives himself up
entirely to the impression of a symphony, it is as if he saw all the
possible events of life and of the world passing by within
himself" yet without being able to pinpoint any likeness of
events in life to the music he has experienced. Given all of this,
Schopenhauer believes his explanation--music is a copy of the
will *qua* thing in itself--is justified as an inference
to the best explanation of the experience, power and significance of
music in the lives of serious listeners. He believes that his
metaphysics of music finally does justice to the profound pleasure and
significance that the *musically sensitive* experience when
listening to *truly great* music. (On tensions between this
rather joyful description of the experience of music and
Schopenhauer's pessimism, see Norman 2017.)
In addition to this inference to the best explanation, Schopenhauer
also appeals to readers of his theory to check it against their own
experiences of music. And it is with respect to this second way
of supporting his account of music that, with admirable frankness, he
confronts the limits of his theorizing:
>
>
> I recognize, however, that it is essentially impossible to
> demonstrate this explanation [*Aufschluss*], for it assumes and
> establishes a relation of music as a representation to that which of
> its essence can never be representation, and claims to regard music as
> the copy of an original that can itself never be directly represented.
> Therefore, I can do no more than state here at the end of this third
> book, devoted mainly to a consideration of the arts, this explanation
> of the wonderful art of tones which is sufficient for me. I must leave
> the acceptance or denial of my view to the effect that both music and
> the whole thought communicated in this work have on each reader.
> Moreover, I regard it as necessary, in order that a man may assent with
> genuine conviction to the explanation of the significance of music here
> to be given, that he should often listen to music with constant
> reflection on this; and this again requires that he should be already
> very familiar with the whole thought I expound. (WWR I, 257)
>
>
>
If a serious and sensitive listener heeds Schopenhauer's
advice and listens often to music with Schopenhauer's philosophy
firmly in mind, and this listener is *still* not convinced by
his theory, what then? Schopenhauer concedes that in this case
there is *nothing* more he can say.
Apparently, however, many serious and sensitive listeners and
composers have been somewhat swayed by his account of music (for his
influence on music theorist Heinrich Schenker, see Cubero 2017). Of
all of the facets of Schopenhauer's aesthetics, none has exerted
a greater influence. The theory had a deep influence on Brahms,
Wagner, Mahler and Schonberg (see Goehr 1998, and Magee 1997,
chapter 17), and is echoed in Susanne Langer's theory of musical
symbolism (Langer 1953; see also Alperson 1981). Analogizing
Schopenhauer's influence on musical aesthetics to
Beethoven's influence in classical music itself, Goehr avers
that Schopenhauer became "a central reference point" in
the most important debates in the history of musical aesthetics
(Goehr, 1996: 200).
## 6. Connections between aesthetic experience and ethics
### 6.1 Ethics and understanding
There are a number of connections that Schopenhauer explicitly (but
more often inexplicitly) drew between aesthetic experience and both his
ethics of compassion and salvation. In a strange but revelatory
passage at the end of section 35 of Book III, Schopenhauer puts these
words into the mouth of the 'spirit of the earth' [*der
Erdgeist*]:
>
>
> True loss is just as impossible as true gain in this world of
> appearance. Only the will exists: it, the thing in itself, is the
> source of all those appearances. Its self-knowledge and its consequent
> decision to affirm or to negate is the only event in itself. (WWR I,
> 207)
>
>
If one interprets this passage as espousing the view that the only
really free choice an individual has is to affirm or negate the will
to live after one has gained self-knowledge, then one can see a great
ethical significance for art and aesthetic experience in its
*cognitive* dimension in this thought, for it is only by way of
aesthetic experience that one gains intuitive knowledge of the Ideas,
or, in the case of music, of the nature of the will itself. Music
especially involves feeling universal emotions, emotions shorn of
particular context, motive or individual. In so far as we feel
connected to all others on the level of feeling, then music has a
direct connection with Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion, for
the feeling that we are indeed not ultimately separate individuals but
are rather unified in the in-itself of the world constitutes the basic
intuitive knowledge at the root of the ethical attitude of
compassion.
Since aesthetic experience is the only way to gain true
understanding of the world and existence in all its multiplicity, this
means that aesthetic experience is a necessary pre-condition for making
*the ethical choice* as outlined in the quote above, to
affirm or deny the will, the "only event in itself". Thus
the unique cognitive significance of art and aesthetic experience in
general turns out to have crucial ethical importance.
### 6.2 The experience of negative and positive freedom
A second way in which aesthetic experience has ethical importance
for Schopenhauer is as an experience of negative freedom--freedom
from the servitude to the will to life. In the case of the
beautiful, one gains an experiential insight into a will-less state,
one in which the subject perceives the world in a non-egoistic manner.
Schopenhauer's ethics is based on taking a compassionate
stance on and acting for the benefit of others. So the experience
of aesthetic will-lessness affords some felt recognition of a necessary
first step on that path to compassion, namely, a non-egoistic
attitude.
Arguably, the experience of the sublime affords a felt recognition not
only of a subject's negative but also of her positive freedom,
that is, a freedom to release herself from the service of the will to
life. Thus, the self-consciousness involved in sublime experience
affords a felt recognition of one's ability to *change*
one's attitudes and behavior--actively to turn one's
attention away from one's egoistic strivings for a time.
The ethical relevance of the sublime is most apparent in
Schopenhauer's treatment of tragedy. In tragedy--the
highest degree of dynamically sublime feeling--one is both
confronted by terrible truths about the world and existence and
elevated by the sense that one is not utterly powerless in the face of
it. One comes to the felt recognition that one has the power to *do
something* in the face of the tragic nature of the world.
Schopenhauer recommends resignation (extreme denial of the will
to life) but his ethical theory admits of degrees of negation--by
acting in a less egoistic fashion or further in a truly compassionate
manner.
There is, of course, the other option: Affirmation of the will
to life in light of self-knowledge. This must be a genuine
option, for Schopenhauer, otherwise the choice to affirm or negate
would not constitute a true *choice*. Interestingly,
Schopenhauer spends little time exploring this option. Perhaps he
thought that anyone with *true* self-knowledge would experience
an *anagnorisis* or moment of tragic recognition, and, ashamed
and horrified at the will to life within him, would generally choose
negation over affirmation. It was left to Nietzsche and his
grappling with tragedy and pessimism, to question whether affirmation
might yet be a defensible option. |
wittgenstein-aesthetics | ## 1. The Critique of Traditional Aesthetics
Wittgenstein's opening remark is double-barreled: he states that
the field of aesthetics is both very big and entirely misunderstood. By
"very big", I believe he means both that the aesthetic
dimension weaves itself through all of philosophy in the manner
suggested above, and that the reach of the *aesthetic* in human
affairs is very much greater than the far more restricted reach of the
*artistic*; the world is densely packed with manifestations of
the aesthetic sense or aesthetic interest, while the number of works of
art is very much smaller. There is good reason, in his discussions that
follow, to believe that he intends that any comprehensive account of
the aesthetic would acknowledge the former, and not just - as a
good number of philosophical accounts have so restricted themselves
- the latter. By "entirely misunderstood", it
emerges that he means both (1) that aesthetic questions are of a
conceptual type *very* distinct from empirical questions and the
kind of answer, or conceptual satisfaction, we want is very unlike what
we might get from an experiment in empirical psychology, and (2) that
the philosophically traditional method of essentialistic definition
- determining the essence that all members of the class
"works of art" exhibit and by virtue of which they are so
classified - will conceal from our view more than it
reveals.
### 1.1 Properties and Essence
It is also vividly apparent from the outset of these lectures that
Wittgenstein is urging a heightened vigilance to the myriad ways in
which words can, on their grammatical surface, mislead. If, right at
the beginning of the inquiry, we see that we use the word
"beautiful" as an adjective, we may well very shortly find
ourselves asking what is the essence of the *property* beauty
that this particular example exhibits. Imagining a book of philosophy
investigating parts of speech (but very many more parts than we find
in an ordinary grammar book) where we would give very detailed and
nuanced attention to "seeing", "feeling",
along with other verbs of personal experience, and equally lengthy
studies of "all", "any", "some",
numerals, first person pronoun usages, and so forth, he suggests that
such a book would, with sufficient attention paid to the contextual
intricacies of the grammar of each usage, lay bare the confusion into
which language can lead us. Later, in his *Philosophical
Investigations* (Wittgenstein 1958), he will go on to famously
develop the analogy between tools and language as a way of breaking
the hold of the conceptual picture that words work in one way (by
naming things--including the naming of properties, as in the way
we too-quickly think of the problem of beauty above), showing the
diversity of *kind* and of *use* among the various
things we find in the tool box (e.g. hammer, glue, chisel,
matches). If we redirect our attention, away from the *idee
fixe* of the puzzle concerning the common property named by the
word "beauty" or the description "beautiful",
and look to the actual use to which our aesthetic-critical vocabulary
is put, we will see that it is not some intrinsic meaning carried
internally by the linguistic sign (Wittgenstein 1958a) that makes the
word in question function as an aesthetic or critical interjection or
expression of approval. We will, rather, be able to focus our
redirected attention on what actually does make the word in question
function aesthetically, i.e. "on the enormously complicated
situation in which the aesthetic expression has a place", and he
adds that, with such an enlarged vision, we see that "the
expression itself has almost a negligible place" (p. 2). He here
mentions (seeing aesthetic issues as interwoven with the rest of
philosophy) that if he had to identify the main mistake made in
philosophical work of his generation, it would be precisely that of,
when looking at language, focusing on the form of words, and not the
use made of the form of words. He will go on to imply, if not quite to
directly assert, that the parallel holds to the work of art: to see it
within a larger frame of reference, to see it in comparison to other
works of the artist in question and to see it juxtaposed with still
other works from its cultural context, is to see what role itplayed in
the dialogically unfolding artistic
"language-game"[1]
of its time and place. In using language, he says next in the
lectures, in understanding each other--and in mastering a
language initially--we do not start with a small set of words or
a single word, but rather from specific occasions and activities. Our
aesthetic engagements are occasions and activities of just this kind;
thus aesthetics, as a field of conceptual inquiry, should start not
from a presumption that the central task is to analyze the determinant
properties that are named by aesthetic predicates, but rather with a
full-blooded consideration of the *activities* of aesthetic
life.
### 1.2 Predicates and Rules
But the adjectival form of many--not all--critical
predicates quickly reinforces the "property-with-name"
model, and against this Wittgenstein places examples from musical and
poetical criticism, where we simply call attention to the rightness of
a transition or to the precision or aptness of an image. And it is
here that Wittgenstein reminds us that descriptions such as
"stately", "pompous", or
"melancholy" (where the latter is said of a Schubert
piece) are like giving the work a face (Shiner 1978), or we could
instead (or in further specification of such descriptions) use
gestures.[2]
In cases of re-construing a work (e.g. the meter of a poem) so that
we understand its rhythm and structure anew, we make gestures, facial
expressions, and non-descriptive-predicate based remarks, where
aesthetic adjectives play a diminished role or no role at all. And we
show our approval of a tailor's work not by describing the suit, but
by wearing it. Occasions and activities are fundamental, descriptive
language secondary.
Wittgenstein here turns to the subject of rules, and rule-following,
in aesthetic decision-making. This stems from his reflection on the
word "correct" in aesthetic discourse, and he mentions the
case of being drilled in harmony and counterpoint. Such rule-learning,
he claims, allows what he calls an interpretation of the rules in
particular cases, where an increasingly refined judgment comes from an
increasingly refined mastery of the rules in question. It is of
particular interest that a qualification is entered here, that such
rules in contexts of artistic creativity and aesthetic judgment,
"may be extremely explicit and taught, or not formulated at
all" (Wittgenstein 1966). This itself strongly suggests that,
in this way too, *actions* come first, where these actions may
(to invoke Kant's famous distinction) either explicitly follow from
the rule, or stand in accordance with them but (for Wittgenstein) in
an inexplicit way. The mastery of a practice can be, but need not be,
characterized as a cognitive matter of rule-following. Here we thus
find one of the points of intersection between Wittgenstein's
work in aesthetics and his work in the philosophy of language: the
rule-following considerations (Holtzman and Leich 1981 and McDowell
1998) and the debate concerning non-cognitivism (McDowell 2000) link
directly to this discussion.
Regrettably, Wittgenstein closes this matter prematurely (claiming
that this issue should not come in at this point); the linkage between
rule-following in language and in aesthetics is still to this day too
little investigated. Yet there is a sense in which Wittgenstein
extends the discussion, if only implicitly. In investigating the kinds
of things meant by aesthetic "appreciation", he does say
that "an appreciator is not shown by the interjections he
uses" but rather by his choices, selections, his actions on
specific occasions. To describe what appreciation consists in, he
claims, would prove an impossibility, for "to describe what it
consists in we would have to describe the whole environment"
(Wittgenstein 1966, 7), and he returns to the case of the
tailor--and thus implicitly to rule-following. Such rules, as we
discern them in action ranging on a continuum from the
cognitively-explicit and linguistically encapsulated to the
non-cognitively implicit and only behaviorally manifested, have a life
- have an identity as rules--within, and *only*
within, those larger contexts of engagement, those "whole
environment[s]". And those environments, those contexts, those
language-games, are not reducible to a unitary kind which we then
might analyze for essential properties: "correctness", for
example, plays a central role in some cases of aesthetic appreciation
and understanding, and it is irrelevant in others, e.g. in
garment-cutting versus Beethoven symphonies, or in domestic
architecture versus the Gothic cathedral. And he explicitly draws, if
too briefly, the analogy that emerges here between ethics and
aesthetics: he notes the difference between saying of a person that he
behaves well versus saying that a person made a great or profound
impression. Indeed, "the entire
*game* is different" (Wittgenstein 1966, 8).
### 1.3 Culture and Complexity
The central virtue of these lectures is that Wittgenstein never loses
a sense of the *complexity* of our aesthetic engagements, our
language attending and in cases manifesting those engagements, and the
contextually embedded nature of the aesthetic actions he is working to
elucidate. Nor does he lose a sense of the relation--a relation
necessary to the meaning of the aesthetic language we use -
between the aesthetically-descriptive expressions we employ within
particular contexts and "what we call the culture of the
period" (Wittgenstein 1966, 8). Of those aesthetic words, he
says, "To describe their use or to describe what you mean by a
cultured taste, you have to describe a culture" (Wittgenstein
1966, 8). And again making the relation between his work in the
philosophy of language and his work in the philosophy of art explicit
(if again too briefly), he adds, "What belongs to a language
game is a whole culture" (Wittgenstein 1966, 8). There the link
to the irreducible character of rule-following is made again as well:
"To describe a set of aesthetic rules fully means really to
describe the culture of a period" (Wittgenstein 1966, 8, n. 3).
If our aesthetic engagements and the interrelated uses of our
aesthetic terms are widely divergent and context-sensitive, so are our
aesthetic actions and vocabularies context-sensitive in a larger sense
as well: comparing a cultured taste of *fin-de-siecle* Vienna
or early-twentieth-century Cambridge with the Middle Ages, he
says--implicitly referring to the radically divergent
constellations of meaning-associations from one age to the other,
"An entirely different game is played in different ages"
(Wittgenstein 1966, p. 8). Of a generic claim made about a person
that he or she appreciates a given style or genre of art, Wittgenstein
makes it clear that he would not yet know--stated in that
generic, case-transcending way--not merely whether it was true or
not, but more interestingly and more deeply, what it *meant* to
say this. The word "appreciates" is, like the rest of our
aesthetic vocabulary, not detachable from the
particular context within which it has its
life.[3]
If, against this diversity or context-sensitivity, we seek to find
and then analyze what all such cases of aesthetic engagement have in
common, we might well focus on the *word*
"appreciation". But that word will not have meaning with a
bounded determinacy fixed prior to its contextualized use, which means
that we would find ourselves, because of this philosophical strategy
(the entire field "is very big and entirely
misunderstood"), in a double bind: first, we would not know the
meaning of the term upon which we were focusing; and second, we would,
in trying to locate what all cases of aesthetic engagement have in
common, leave out of view what he calls in this connection "an
immensely complicated family of cases" (Wittgenstein 1966),
blinding ourselves to nuance and complexity in the name of a
falsifying neatness and overarching generality. "In order to get
clear about aesthetic words you have to describe ways of living. We
think we have to talk about aesthetic judgments like 'This is
beautiful', but we find that if we have to talk about aesthetic
judgments we don't find these words at all, but a word used
something like a gesture, accompanying a complicated
activity" (Wittgenstein 1966, 11).
## 2. The Critique of Scientism
Wittgenstein turns to the idea of a science of aesthetics, an idea for
which he has precious little sympathy ("almost too ridiculous
for words" [Wittgenstein 1966, 11]). But as is often the case
in Wittgenstein's philosophical work, it does not follow from
this scornful or dismissive attitude that he has no interest in the
etiology of the idea, or in excavating the hidden steps or components
of thought that have led some to this idea. In the ensuing discussion
he unearths a picture of causation that under-girds the very idea of a
scientific explanation of aesthetic judgment or preference. And in
working underground in this way, he reveals the analogies to cases of
genuine scientific explanation, where the "tracing of a
mechanism" just is the process of giving a causal account, i.e.
where the observed effect is described as the inevitable result of
prior links in the causal chain leading to it. If, to take his
example, an architect designs a door and we find ourselves in a state
of discontentment because the door, within the larger design of the
facade (within its stylistic "language-game", we
might say), is too low, we are liable to describe this on the model of
scientific explanation. Then, we make a substantive of the discontent,
see it as the causal result of the lowness of the door, and in
identifying the lowness as the cause, think ourselves able to dislodge
the inner entity, the discontent, by raising the door. But this
mischaracterizes our aesthetic reactions, or what we might call, by
analogy to moral psychology, our aesthetic psychology.
### 2.1 Aesthetic Reactions
The true aesthetic reaction--itself rarely described *in
situ* in terms of a proximate cause ("In these cases the
word 'cause' is hardly ever used at all"
[Wittgenstein 1966, 14]) is far more immediate, and far more
intertwined with, and related to, what we see
in[4]
the work of art in question. "It is a reaction analogous to my
taking my hand away from a hot plate" (Wittgenstein 1966). He
thus says:
>
>
> To say: "I feel discomfort and know the cause", is
> entirely misleading because "know the cause" normally
> means something quite different. How misleading it is depends on
> whether when you said: "I know the cause", you meant it to
> be an explanation or not. "I feel discomfort and know the
> cause" makes it sound as if there were two things going on in my
> soul--discomfort and knowing the cause (Wittgenstein 1966,
> 14).
>
>
But there is, as he next says, a "Why?" to such a case of
aesthetic discomfort, if not a cause (on the conventional scientific
model). But both the question and its multiform answers will take,
indeed, very different forms in different cases. Again, if what he
suggested before concerning the significance of context for meaning is
right, the very *meaning* of the "Why?"-question
will vary case to case. This is not a weaker thesis concerning
variation on the level of inflection, where the underlying structure
of the "Why?"-question is causal. No, here again that
unifying, model-imposing manner of proceeding would leave out a
consideration of the nuances that give the "Why?"-question
its determinate sense in the first place.
But again, Wittgenstein's fundamental concern here is to point out
the great conceptual gulf that separates aesthetic perplexities from
the methodology of empirical psychology. To run studies of quantified
responses to controlled and isolated aesthetic stimuli, where emergent
patterns of preference, response, and judgment are recorded within a
given population's sample, is to pass by the true character of the
aesthetic issue--the actual puzzlement, such as we feel it, will
be conceptual, not empirical. And here again we see a direct link to
his work in the philosophy of psychology: the penultimate passage of
Part II of *Philosophical Investigations* (1958, sec. xiv), was
"The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have
the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and
method pass one another by" (Wittgenstein 1958, II, iv, 232).
He says, near the close of this part of his lectures on aesthetics,
"Aesthetic questions have nothing to do with psychological
experiments, but are answered in an entirely different way"
(Wittgenstein 1966, 17). A stimulus-response model adapted from
scientific psychology--what we might now call the naturalizing of
aesthetics--falsifies the genuine complexities of aesthetic
psychology through a methodologically enforced reduction to one narrow
and unitary conception of aesthetic engagement. For Wittgenstein
complexity, and not reduction to unitary essence, is the route to
conceptual clarification. Reduction to a simplified model, by
contrast, yields only the illusion of clarification in the form of
conceptual incarceration ("a picture held us
captive").[5]
### 2.2 The "Click" of Coherence
Aesthetic satisfaction, for Wittgenstein, is an experience that is
only possible within a culture and where the reaction that constitutes
aesthetic satisfaction or justification is both more immediate, and
vastly larger and more expansive, than any simple mechanistic account
could accommodate. It is more immediate in that it is not usually
possible to specify in advance the exact conditions required to
produce the satisfaction, or, as he discusses it, the
"click" when everything falls into place. Such exacting
pre-specifications for satisfaction are possible in narrowly
restricted empirical cases where, for example, we wait for two
pointers in a vision examination to come into a position directly
opposite each other. And this, Wittgenstein says, is the kind of
simile we repeatedly use, but misleadingly, for in truth "really
there is nothing that clicks or that fits anything"
(Wittgenstein 1966, 19). The satisfaction is more immediate, then,
than the causal-mechanistic model would imply. And it is much broader
than the causal-mechanistic model implies as well: there is no direct
aesthetic analogue to the matched pointers in the case of a larger and
deeper form of aesthetic gratification. Wittgenstein does, of course,
allow that there are very narrow, isolated circumstances within a work
where we do indeed have such empirical pre-specifiable conditions for
satisfaction (e.g. where in a piece we see that we wanted to hear a
minor ninth, and not a minor seventh, chord). But, contrary to the
empirical-causal account, these will not add up, exhaustively or
without remainder, to the experience of aesthetic satisfaction. The
problem, to which Wittgenstein repeatedly returns in these lectures,
is with the *kind* of answer we want to aesthetic puzzlement as
expressed in a question like "Why do these bars give me such a
peculiar impression?" (Wittgenstein 1966, 20) In such cases,
statistical results regarding percentages of subjects who report this
peculiar impression rather than another one in precisely these
harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic circumstances are not so much
impossible as just beside the point; the *kind* of question we
have here is not met by such methods. "The sort of explanation
one is looking for when one is puzzled by an aesthetic impression is
not a causal explanation, not one corroborated by experience or by
statistics as to how people react.... This is not what one means
or what one is driving at by an investigation into aesthetics"
(Wittgenstein 1966, 21). It is all too easy to falsify, under the
influence of explanatory models misappropriated from science, the many
and varied kinds of things that happen when, aesthetically speaking,
everything seems to click or fall into place.
### 2.3 The Charm of Reduction
In the next passages of Wittgenstein's lectures he turns to a fairly
detailed examination of the distinct charm, for some, of
psycho-analytic explanation, and he interweaves this with the
distinction between scientific-causal explanation of an action versus
motive-based (or personally-generated) explanations of that action. It
is easy, but mistaken, to read these passages as simply
subject-switching anticipations of his lectures on Freud to
follow. His fundamental interest here lies with the powerful charm, a
kind of conceptual magnetism, of reductive explanations that promise a
brief, compact, and propositionally-encapsulated account of what some
much larger field of thought or action "really" is. (He
cites the example of boiling Redpath, one of his auditors, down to
ashes, etc., and then saying "This is all Redpath really
is", adding the remark "Saying this might have a certain
charm, but would be misleading to say the least" (Wittgenstein
1966, 24). "To say the least" indeed: the example is
striking precisely because one can feel the attraction of an
encapsulating and simplifying reduction of the bewildering and
monumental complexity of a human being, while at the same time
feeling, as a human being, that any such reduction to a few physical
elements would hardly capture the essence of a person. This, he
observes, is an explanation of the "This is only really
this" form. Reductive causal explanations function in just the
same way in aesthetics, and this links directly to the problems in
philosophical methodology that he adumbrated in the *Blue and Brown
Books* (1958a, 17-19), particularly where he discusses what
he there calls "craving for generality" and the attendant
"contemptuous attitude toward the particular case". If the
paradigm of the sciences (which themselves, as he observes in passing,
carry an imprimatur of epistemic prestige and the image of
incontrovertibility) is Newtonian mechanics, and we then implant that
model under our subsequent thinking about psychology, we will almost
immediately arrive at an idea of a science of the mind, where that
science would progress through the gradual accumulation of
psychological laws. (This would constitute, as he memorably puts it, a
"mechanics of the soul" [Wittgenstein 1966, 29]). We then
dream of a psychological science of aesthetics, where--although
"we'd not thereby have solved what we feel to be aesthetic
puzzlement" (Wittgenstein 1966, 29)--we may find ourselves
able to predict (borrowing the criterion of predictive power from
science) what effect a given line of poetry, or a given musical
phrase, may have on a certain person whose reaction patterns we have
studied. But aesthetic puzzlement, again, is of a different
*kind*, and--here he takes a major step forward, from the
critical, to the constructive, phase of his lectures. He writes,
"What we really want, to solve aesthetic puzzlements, is certain
comparisons--grouping together of certain cases"
(Wittgenstein 1966, 29). Such a method, such an approach, would never
so much as occur to us were we to remain both dazzled by the
misappropriated model of mechanics and contemptuous of the particular
case.
## 3. The Comparative Approach
Comparison, and the intricate process of grouping together certain
cases--where such comparative juxtaposition usually casts certain
significant features of the work or works in question in higher
relief, where it leads to the emergence of an organizational
gestalt,[6]
where it shows the evolution of a style, or where it shows what is
strikingly original about a work, among many other things--also
focuses our attention on the particular case in another way. In
leading our scrutiny to critically and interpretatively relevant
particularities, it leads us away from the aesthetically blinding
presumption that it is the *effect*, brought about by the
"cause" of that particular work, that matters (so that any
minuet that gives a certain feeling or awakens certain images would do
as well as any other).
### 3.1 Critical Reasoning
These foregoing matters together lead to what is to my mind central to
Wittgenstein's thoughts on aesthetics. In observing that on one
hearing of a minuet we may get a lot out of it and on the next hearing
nothing, he is showing how easy it can be to take conceptual missteps
in our aesthetic thought from which it can prove difficult to
recover. From such a difference, against how we can all too easily
model the matter, it does not follow that what we get out of the
minuet is *independent* of the minuet. That would constitute an
imposition of a Cartesian dualism between the two ontologies of mind
and matter, but in its aesthetic guise. And that would lead in turn to
theories of aesthetic content of a mental kind, where the materials of
the art form (materials we would then call "external"
materials) only serve to carry the real, internal or non-physical
content. Criticism would thus be a process of arguing inferentially
from outward evidence back to inward content; creation would be a
process of finding outward correlates or carriers for that prior
inward content; and artistic intention would be articulated as a full
mental pre-conception of the contingently finished (or
"externalized", as we would then call it) work. It is no
accident that Wittgenstein immediately moves to the analogy to
language and our all-too-easy misconception of linguistic meaning,
where we make "the mistake of thinking that the meaning or
thought is just an accompaniment of the word, and the word doesn't
matter" (Wittgenstein 1966, 25). This indeed would prove
sufficient to motivate contempt for the particular case in aesthetic
considerations, by misleadingly modeling a dualistic vision of art
upon an equally misleading dualistic model of language (Hagberg
1995). "The sense of a proposition", he says, "is
very similar to the business of an appreciation of art"
(Wittgenstein 1966, 29). This might also be called a subtractive
model, and Wittgenstein captures this perfectly with a question:
"A man may sing a song with expression and without
expression. Then why not leave out the song--could you have the
expression then?" (Wittgenstein 1966, 32 editorial note and
footnote) Such a model corresponds, again, to mind-matter Cartesian
dualism, which is a conceptual template that also, as we have just
seen above, manifests itself in the philosophy of language where we
would picture the thought as an inner event and the external word or
sign to which it is arbitrarily attached as that inner event's
outward corresponding physicalization. It is no surprise that, in this
lecture, he turns directly to false and imprisoning pictures of this
dualism in linguistic meaning, and then back to the aesthetic
case. When we contemplate the expression of a drawn face, it is deeply
misleading--or deeply misled, if the dualistic picture of
language stands behind this template-conforming thought--to ask
for the expression to be given without the face. "The
expression"--now linking this discussion back to the
previous causal considerations--"is not an *effect*
of the face". The template of cause-and-effect, and of a dualism
of material and expressive content (on the subtractive model), and the
construal of the material work of art as a *means* to the
production of a separately-identifiable intangible, experiential
*end,* are all out of place here. All of the examples
Wittgenstein gives throughout these lectures combat these pictures,
each in their own way.
But then Wittgenstein's examples also work in concert: they
together argue against a form of aesthetic reductionism that would
pretend that our reactions to aesthetic objects are isolable, that they
can be isolated as variables within a controlled experiment, that they
can be hermetically sealed as the experienced effects of isolatable
causes. He discusses our aesthetic reactions to subtle
differences between differently drawn faces, and our equally subtle
reactions to the height or design of a door (he is known to have had
the ceiling in an entire room of the house in Vienna he designed for
his sister moved only a few inches when the builders failed to realize
his plan with sufficient exactitude). The enormous subtlety, and the
enormous complexity, of these reactions, are a part of--and as
complicated as--our natural history. He gives as an example the
error, or the crudeness, of someone responding to a complaint
concerning the depiction of a human smile (specifically, that the smile
did not seem genuine), with the reply that, after all, the lips are
only parted one one-thousandths of an inch too much: such differences,
however small in *measure*, in truth matter enormously.
### 3.2 Seeing Connections
Beneath Wittgenstein's examples, as developed throughout these
lectures, lies another interest (which presses its way to the surface
and becomes explicit on occasion): he is eager to show the
significance of making connections in our perception and understanding
of art works--connections between the style of a poet and that of
a composer (e.g. Keller and Brahms), between one musical theme and
another, between one expressive facial depiction and another, between
one period of an artist's work and another. Such connections--we
might, reviving a term from first-generation Wittgensteinians, refer
to the kind of work undertaken to identify and articulate such
connections as "connective analysis"--are, for
Wittgenstein, at the heart of aesthetic experience and aesthetic
contemplation. And they again are of the kind that reductive causal
explanation would systematically miss. In attempting to describe
someone's feelings, could we do better than to imitate the way the
person actually said the phrase we found emotionally revelatory,
Wittgenstein pointedly asks? The disorientation we would feel in
trying to describe the person's feeling with subtlety and precision
*without* any possibility of imitating his precise expressive
utterance--"the way he said it" - shows how
very far the dualistic or subtractive conceptual template is from our
human experience, our natural history.
Connections, of the kind alluded to here--a web of
variously-activated relations between the particular aspect of the
work to which we are presently attending and other aspects, other
parts of the work, or other works, groups of works, or other artists,
genres, styles, or other human experiences in all their
particularity--may include what we call associations awakened by
the work, but connections are not reducible to them only (and
certainly not to undisciplined, random, highly subjective, or free
associations).[7]
The impossibility of the simplifying subtractive template emerges
here as well: "Suppose [someone says]: 'Associations are
what matter--change it slightly and it no longer has the same
associations'. But can you separate the associations from the
picture, and have the same thing?" The answer is clearly, again
like the case of the singing with and then without expression above,
negative: "You can't say: 'That's just as good as the
other: it gives me the same associations'" (Wittgenstein
1966, 34). Here again, Wittgenstein shows the great gulf that
separates what we actually do with, what we actually say about, works
of art, and how we would speak of them *if* the conceptual
pictures and templates with which he has been doing battle were
correct. To extend one of Wittgenstein's examples, we would very
much doubt the aesthetic discernment, and indeed the sympathetic
imagination and the human connectedness, of a person who said of two
poems (each of which reminded him of death) that either will do as
well as the other to a bereaved friend, that they would do the same
thing (where this is uttered in a manner dismissive of nuance, or as
though it is being said of two detergents). Poetry, Wittgenstein is
showing, does not play that kind of role in our lives, as the nature
and character of our critical verbal interactions about it
indicate. And he ascends, momentarily, to a remark that characterizes
his underlying philosophical methodology (or one dimension of it) in
the philosophy of language that is being put to use here within the
context of his lectures on aesthetics: "If someone talks bosh,
imagine the case in which it is not bosh. The moment you imagine it,
you see at once it is not like that in our case" (Wittgenstein
1966, 34). The gulf that separates what we should say if the
generalizing templates were accurate from what we in actual
particularized cases do say could further call into question not only
the applicability or accuracy, but indeed the very intelligibility, of
the language used to express those templates, those explanatory
pictures. Wittgenstein leaves that more aggressive, and ultimately
more clarifying and conceptually liberating, critique for his work on
language and mind in *Philosophical Investigations* (1958) and
other writings, but one can see from these lectures alone how such an
aggressive critique might be undertaken.
### 3.3 The Attitude Toward the Work of Art
Near the end of his lectures Wittgenstein turns to the question of the
attitude we take toward the work of art. He employs the case of seeing
the very slight change (of the kind mentioned above) in the depiction
of a smile within a picture of a monk looking at a vision of the
Virgin Mary. Where the slight and subtle change of line yields a
transformation of the smile of the monk from a kindly to an ironic
one, our attitude in viewing might similarly change from one in which
for some we are almost in prayer to one that would for some be
blasphemous, where we are almost leering. He then gives voice to his
imagined reductive interlocutor, who says, "Well there you
are. It is all in the attitude" (Wittgenstein 1966, 35), where
we would then focus, to the exclusion of all of the rest of the
intricate, layered, and complex human dimensions of our reactions to
works, solely on an analysis of the attitude of the spectator and the
isolable causal elements in the work that determine it. But that,
again, is only to give voice to a reductive impulse, and in the brief
ensuing discussion he shows, once again, that in some cases, an
attitude of this kind may emerge as particularly salient. But in other
cases, not. And he shows, here intertwining a number of his themes
from these lectures, that the very idea of "a description of an
attitude" is itself no simple thing. Full-blooded human beings,
and not stimulus-response-governed automata, have aesthetic
experience, and that experience is as complex a part of our natural
history as any other.
Wittgenstein ends the lectures discussing a simple heading: "the
craving for simplicity" (Wittgenstein 1966, 36). To such a mind,
he says, if an explanation is complicated, it is disagreeable for that
very reason. A certain kind of mind will insist on seeking out the
single, unitary essence of the matter, where--much like Russell's
atomistic search for the essence of the logic of language beneath what
he regarded as its misleadingly and distractingly variegated
surface--the reductive impulse would be given free
reign. Wittgenstein's early work in the *Tractatus* (1961)
followed in that vein. But in these lectures, given in 1938, we see a
mind well into a transition away from those simplifying templates,
those conceptual pictures. Here, examples *themselves* do a
good deal of philosophical work, and their significance is that they
*give*, rather than merely illustrate, the philosophical point
at hand. He said, earlier in the lectures, that he is trying to teach
a new way of thinking about aesthetics (and indeed about philosophy
itself).
## 4. Conclusion
The subject, as he said in his opening line, is very big and entirely
misunderstood. It is very big in its scope--in the reach of the
aesthetic dimension throughout human life.
But we can now, at the end of his lectures, see that it is a big
subject in other senses too: aesthetics is conceptually expansive in
its important linkages to the philosophy of language, to the
philosophy of mind, to ethics, and to other areas of philosophy, and
it resists encapsulation into a single, unifying problem. It is a
multi-faceted, multi-aspected human cultural phenomenon where
connections, of diverging kinds, are more in play than causal
relations. The form of explanation we find truly satisfying will thus
strikingly diverge from the form of explanation in science - the
models of explanation in *Naturwissenschaften* are misapplied
in *Geisteswissenschaften,* and the viewing of the latter
through the lens of the former will yield reduction, exclusion, and
ultimately distortion. The humanities are thus, for Wittgenstein, in
this sense autonomous.
All of this, along with the impoverishing and blinding superimposition
of conceptual models, templates, and pictures onto the extraordinarily
rich world of aesthetic engagement, also now, at the end of his
lectures, gives content to what Wittgenstein meant at the beginning
with the words "entirely misunderstood". For now, at this
stage of Wittgenstein's development, where the complexity-accepting
stance of the later *Philosophical Investigations* (1958) and
other work is unearthing and uprooting the philosophical
presuppositions of the simplification-seeking earlier work, examples
themselves have priority as indispensable instruments in the struggle
to free ourselves of misconception in the aesthetic realm. And these
examples, given due and detailed attention, will exhibit a
context-sensitive particularity that makes generalized pronouncements
hovering high above the ground of that detail look otiose,
inattentive, or, more bluntly, just a plain falsification of
experience. What remains is not, then--and this is an idea
Wittgenstein's auditors must themselves have struggled with in those
rooms in Cambridge, as many still do today--another theory built
upon now stronger foundations, but rather a clear view of our
multiform aesthetic practices. Wittgenstein, in his mature, later
work, did not generate a theory of language, of mind, or of
mathematics. He generated, rather, a vast body of work perhaps united
only in its therapeutic and intricately labored search for conceptual
clarification. One sees the same philosophical aspiration driving his
foray into aesthetics. |
aesthetics-of-everyday | ## 1. Recent History
With the establishment of environmental aesthetics, efforts to open
the field of aesthetics beyond the fine arts started during the latter
half of twentieth century. Almost all writers on everyday aesthetics
derive inspiration from John Dewey's *Art as Experience*,
first published in 1934. In particular, his discussion of
"having *an* experience" demonstrates that
aesthetic experience is possible in every aspect of people's
daily life, ranging from eating a meal or solving a math problem to
having a job interview. By locating 'the aesthetic' in the
character of an experience rather than in a specific kind of object or
situation, Dewey paves the way for everyday aesthetics advocates to
explore diverse aspects of people's aesthetic lives without a
pre-configured boundary.
If Dewey's aesthetics can be considered as the classic for
everyday aesthetics discourse, Arnold Berleant's early works on
aesthetic field and engagement continue the trajectory. Despite
focusing on the experience of art and without specifically referring
to the term 'everyday aesthetics,' Berleant's early
works provide a phenomenological account of aesthetic experience by
emphasizing the interactive process between the experiencing agent and
the object of experience. This notion of 'engagement' as a
model for aesthetics is applicable to one's experience beyond
art. Indeed, his subsequent works on environmental aesthetics, both
natural and built, and more recently on social aesthetics and negative
aesthetics, have been consistently opening the scope of aesthetic
inquiry.
Besides works on environmental aesthetics that addresses built
environments (see the entry on
environmental aesthetics),
other notable
early works specifically addressing issues of everyday aesthetics
include Melvin Rader and Bertram Jessup's *Art and Human
Values* (1976), Joseph Kupfer's *Experience as Art:
Aesthetics in Everyday Life* (1983), David Novitz's *The
Boundaries of Art: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Place of Art in
Everyday Life* (1992), Thomas Leddy's "Everyday
Surface Aesthetic Qualities: 'Neat,' 'Messy,'
'Clean,' 'Dirty'" (1995) and
"Sparkle and Shine" (1997), Wolfgang Welsch's
*Undoing Aesthetics* (1997), Ossi Naukkarinen's
*Aesthetics of the Unavoidable: Aesthetic Variations in Human
Appearance* (1999), and Marcia Eaton's *Aesthetics and
the Good Life* (1989) and *Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical*
(2001).
The first anthology on this topic, *The Aesthetics of Everyday
Life*, edited by Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith, published in
2005, includes many articles that together lay the groundwork for more
recent literature on everyday aesthetics. Often cited among them are
Arto Haapala's "On the Aesthetics of the Everyday:
Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place" and Tom
Leddy's "The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics."
The first monograph with the specific title *Everyday
Aesthetics*, accompanied by the subtitle *Prosaics, the Play of
Culture and Social Identities,* was written by Katya Mandoki and
published in 2007. She offers an extensive critique of the prevailing
Western aesthetics discourse burdened by what she characterizes as
"fetishes" regarding art and beauty, as well as a detailed
semiotic analysis of aesthetics involved in areas ranging from
religion and education to family and medicine. Almost immediately
after the publication of Mandoki's book, Yuriko Saito's
*Everyday Aesthetics* was published. These works were followed
by Thomas Leddy's *The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The
Aesthetics of Everyday Life* (2012). They together secured the
initial foothold for the subsequent development of everyday
aesthetics.
Paralleling these early works are monographs and anthologies dedicated
to specific aspects of daily life, such as gustatory aesthetics
(Korsmeyer 1999, 2005; Perullo 2016; van der Meulen and Wiese 2017),
domestic aesthetics (McCracken 2001), body aesthetics (Shusterman
1999, 2013; Bhatt 2013; Irvin 2016), functional beauty (Parsons and
Carlson 2008), the aesthetics of design (Forsey 2013), and olfactory
aesthetics (Drobnick 2005; Shiner forthcoming), as well as a
collection of essays dealing with the notion of
"artification" in practices ranging from business and
education to science and sports (Naukkarinen and Saito, 2012).
All of these works together have given rise to an increasingly lively
debate on the subject in journals such as *Aisthesis*, *The
British Journal of Aesthetics* , *Contemporary Aesthetics*,
*Espes*, *The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism*,
*The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics*, *Proceedings of the
European Society for Aesthetics*, and *Studi di Estetica
(Italian Journal of Aethetics)*, to name only a few that feature
or include articles in English. In addition, more anthologies on
everyday aesthetics have been published recently, namely the *Aisthesis* volume dedicated to the subject of Everyday Objects
(2014), *Experiencing the Everyday* (Friberg and Vasquez 2017),
and *Paths from the Philosophy of Art to Everyday Aesthetics*
(Kuisma, et al. 2019). These anthologies and journals are particularly
helpful to those Anglophone readers who lack the language facility to
access many European aestheticians' works, some monographs, that
are written in their own languages. Among them are Gioia Iannilli,
Giovanni Matteucci, Dan Eugen Ratiu, and Elisabetta di Stefano. Their
English language articles included in these anthologies and journals
are valuable in making their important works available to Anglophone
readers.
As was the case with her *Everyday Aesthetics*, Saito's
recent monograph, *Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and
World-Making* (2017a) includes extensive discussion of Japanese
aesthetics. However, the first explicitly and specifically
multi-cultural exploration of everyday aesthetics appeared in the form
of an anthology, *Aesthetics of Everyday Life: East and West*
(2014), edited by Liu Yuedi and Curtis Carter, with a number of pieces
on Chinese aesthetics. Similar to the case of European languages, most
Anglophone readers lack the language ability to access many works on
Chinese aesthetics written in Chinese. English language papers
included in this anthology and other journal articles by scholars
provide a good entry into a rich legacy of living aesthetics in the
Chinese tradition that is garnering a renewed attention today.
Finally, although not specifically dedicated to everyday aesthetics,
many essays collected in the Special Volume 3 of *Contemporary
Aesthetics* (2011) on Aesthetics and the Arts of Southeast Asia,
the same journal's Special Volume 6 (2018) on Aesthetic
Consciousness in East Asia, and *Artistic Visions and the Promise
of Beauty: Cross Cultural Perspectives* (Higgins, et al 2017)
provide valuable resources for non-Western aesthetics.
## 2. 'Everyday' and 'Aesthetics' in Everyday Aesthetics
Because everyday aesthetics was initially proposed as a way of
overcoming modern Western aesthetics' limitation on what
comprises people's aesthetic life as its subject matter, its
scope has not been clearly defined except as including what has not
been covered by art-centered aesthetics. With the development of this
discourse, however, questions emerged as to what constitutes
'everyday' and 'aesthetics' in everyday
aesthetics. Inclusion of not only daily activities like eating,
grooming, dressing, and cleaning but also occasional and even rare
events such as parties, sporting events, holidays, weddings, and
travelling calls into question whether 'everyday' should
be understood literally.
Furthermore, what may count as an everyday activity for one person may
be a special occasion for other people. Working on a farm constitutes
a farmer's everyday life, while it is a rare experience sought
by a city dweller who participates in a tour that incorporates work
experience, such as a day working in a vineyard. Besides
people's occupation and lifestyle, diverse living environments
determine what is included in their everyday life. For those residents
in a densely populated urban area with a developed network of public
transportation, as well as for those living in different parts of the
world, riding in a car may be a rare occasion, while it is a daily
routine for many living in typical American suburbs. Finally, some
people's daily lives consist of constant travels, as in the case
of a famed conductor, Valery Gergiev (Puolakka 2019).
The notion of 'everyday' thus becomes hopelessly unwieldy,
and it is impossible to come up with a list of objects and activities
that belong to it. However, one could point to some core activities
and objects that transcend individual and cultural differences, such
as eating, dressing, grooming, shelter, and basic utilitarian objects,
such as clothing, furniture, and eating implements (Melchionne 2013).
The most important factor for the purpose of everyday aesthetics,
however, is not so much an inventory of objects and activities but
rather the typical attitude we take toward them. We tend to experience
these objects and activities mostly with practical considerations that
eclipse their aesthetic potentials (Bullough 1912-13; Stolnitz
1969; Ziff 1997). These experiences are generally regarded as
ordinary, commonplace, and routine. Such characterization may be the
best way to capture 'everyday,' allowing diverse
occupations, lifestyles, and living environments that give rise to
different ingredients of everyday life.
Many advocates of everyday aesthetics, however, also include rare,
standout, and more artistically-charged occasions in its scope. For
example, a holiday celebration is laden with all kinds of aesthetic
considerations, ranging from interior and exterior decorations to
special dishes, a carefully-arranged table setting and festive music.
Many of us specifically attend to these aesthetic aspects both as
providers and as receivers, giving aesthetics a predominant role in
these experiences. In light of these different kinds of experiences,
some suggest allowing gradation among various objects and activities,
with one end designating the most quotidian objects and activities
that are experienced primarily with a practical mindset, and the other
end those occasions standing out from daily life and marked by much
more conscious attention to the aesthetic dimension, rendering the
experience more like art appreciation (Naukkarinen 2013; Leddy
2015).
Thus, recent discussion of the notion of everyday emphasizes
relationality and lability, a temporary framework that responds to
specific time and place, whether it regards the course of an
individual's life (such as a painting becoming a part of
one's everyday life after being purchased and hung on the living
room wall), or a general societal change, such as the increasing
presence of the digital world today. Accordingly, the distinction
between ordinary/extraordinary, familiar/unfamiliar, and
event-like/routine-like that dominate the discussion of everyday
should not be understood as something stationary, static, and fixed
(Haapala 2017; Potgieter 2017).
Debates surrounding what constitutes 'aesthetics' in
everyday aesthetics are not unique to this discourse. The nature of
aesthetics has been a perennial point of contention in aesthetics at
large, whether regarding fine arts, nature, popular culture or
everyday objects and activities (see in particular the entries on the
Concept of the Aesthetic and Dewey's Aesthetics). However, there
are at least two points of particular interest and significance
regarding the notion of 'aesthetics' in everyday
aesthetics. First is the status of bodily sensations. They can be felt
by us as we receive sensory stimulation such as the wafting smell of
baked goods, the sensation of silk against our skin, the taste of
sushi, or the feeling of massage. They can also result from bodily
activities, such as running, chopping vegetables, using tools, or
mowing the lawn. The debate regarding whether or not these bodily
sensations belong to the realm of aesthetics proper is not new. The
best-known classical treatment of this issue is Immanuel Kant's
distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable or the pleasant.
Many contemporary art projects also give rise to this discussion
through the creation of olfactory art, art happenings that include
cooking and eating, and participatory art that requires the
audience's bodily engagement. However, the issue becomes more
acute with everyday aesthetics because our daily experience is
permeated by sensory experiences and bodily activities (see Sections 7
and 8 for further discussion).
Another important issue regarding the term 'aesthetics' in
everyday aesthetics is the distinction between its honorific and
classificatory use. In both aesthetics discourse and common
vernacular, the term 'aesthetic' is generally used in the
honorific sense. Hence, something having an aesthetic property is
generally regarded positively and gaining an aesthetic experience is
understood to mean that it is a meaningful and satisfying experience.
However, increasing number of everyday aestheticians return to the
root meaning of 'aesthetic' as sensory perception gained
with sensibility and imagination, whatever its evaluative valence may
be. Some things strike us with powerful positive aesthetic values, as
in a great work of art or a spectacular landscape, while other things
do not affect us much because they are boring, non-descript, or plain.
Then there are those objects and phenomena that offend or disturb us
profoundly because their sensuous appearance is hideous, monstrous, or
appalling, without any overall redeeming value such as an artistic
message. Everyday aesthetics casts a wide net for capturing these
diverse dimensions of our aesthetic life. It is noteworthy that in
academic discourses outside of philosophical aesthetics,
'aesthetics' is often regarded in the classificatory
sense, such as the aesthetics of manners, which includes both polite
and rude behaviors, and the aesthetics of politics which, among other
things, refers to the social and political construction of what counts
as the sensible (Mandoki 2007; Ranciere 2009; Vihalem
2018).
Some recent writers propose that everyday aesthetics will be better
served by characterizing the aesthetic as a specific mode of
perception. Everyday aestheticians who emphasize the difference of
everyday aesthetic experience from a typical experience of art tend to
characterize the former's passivity and minimize the mediation
of various conceptual considerations, emotional involvement, and
imaginative engagement typically required in experiencing art. While
it is agreed that the aesthetic is based upon our sensory perception,
without a more active, creative, and imaginative involvement, those
critics point out, there is nothing distinctly aesthetic about mere
sensations. One suggested solution is to characterize an aesthetic
experience as a dynamic and dialectic process of sensory perception
and reflectivity that form *aisthesis* which leads to a
dialogical relationship with the object we are perceiving (Matteucci
2017). This more general theory of aesthetic perception will help
overcome the aforementioned two issues everyday aestheticians were
grappling with, namely inclusion of all sensory modes and rendering
the term valence-neutral. As will be discussed later in Section 8, one
of the issues everyday aesthetics needs to determine is whether it
carves out an independent arena of aesthetics or it is rather a
continuation of aesthetics that had been established with art as the
primary model. Those who advocate the continuity model argue that the
dialogical mode of perception that integrates reflectivity provides
the specifically aesthetic character to everyday experience (Nielsen
2005; Mateucci 2017; Potgieter 2017).
## 3. Defamiliarization of the Familiar
If 'everyday' is characterized as the familiar, ordinary,
commonplace, and routine, regardless of the specific content that
varies from people to people depending upon their lifestyle,
occupation, living environment, and other factors, what makes its
aesthetic appreciation possible? The following response dominates
everyday aesthetics discourse: the aesthetic appreciation of everyday
life requires defamiliarization, making strange, or casting an aura.
Because we are most of the time preoccupied by the task at hand in our
daily life, practical considerations mask the aesthetic potential of
commonplace objects and ordinary activities. Furthermore, such
experiences lack any coherent structure consisting of unity, pervasive
character, and a clear beginning and an end. In short, according to
Dewey, our everyday humdrum proceeds mechanically without any internal
organic evolution, hence "anesthetic." Only when we have
*an* experience with all the structural requirements fulfilled
does our everyday life gain aesthetic merit. Once we have *an*
experience with a different attitude and perceptual gear and/or a
cohesive internal structure, we can unearth latent aesthetic values in
the most ordinary and routine. This view can be interpreted as a
faithful application of the claim made by the aesthetic attitude
theory that theoretically anything can be an object of aesthetic
experience. Mundane objects can acquire a kind of 'aura'
that heightens their aesthetic value (Leonhardt 1985; Tuan 1993;
Visser 1997; Gumbrecht 2006; Leddy 2008, 2012a; Al Qudowa 2017).
According to this interpretation, what is new about everyday
aesthetics is its illumination of those aspects of our lives that are
normally neglected or ignored because they are eclipsed by standout
aesthetic experiences we often have with works of art and nature. More
careful attention and a different mindset can reveal a surprisingly
rich aesthetic dimension of the otherwise mundane, non-memorable,
ordinary parts of our daily life. Many works of art are helpful in
guiding us through the morasses of everyday life toward a rewarding
aesthetic experience (Dillard 1974; Prose 1999; Stabb 2002; Martin
2004, Leddy 2012a; Nanay 2016, 2018). This trajectory of everyday
aesthetics is welcomed by a number of thinkers for its contribution to
enriching life experiences, encouraging mindful living, and
facilitating happiness without problematic consequences that often
accompany a hedonistic lifestyle (Irvin 2008b; Shusterman 2013;
Melchionne 2014; Leddy 2014b).
At the same time, some point out the danger of over-emphasizing
defamiliarization as a precondition for everyday aesthetics. That is,
this way of accounting for everyday aesthetics risks losing the very
everyday-ness of everyday experience, thereby becoming unable to
capture the aesthetic texture of everyday life characterized by its
familiar, ordinary, and mundane quality (Felski 2002, 2009; Highmore
2004, 2011a; Haapala 2005; Saito 2017a). The challenge then becomes
how to capture the very ordinary everyday-ness of everyday life while
engaging aesthetically. That is, experiencing and appreciating the
ordinary as extraordinary follows a rather well-trodden path in
aesthetics discourse, while experiencing and appreciating the ordinary
as ordinary poses a specific challenge to everyday aesthetics
discourse.
Several responses have been given to account for the aesthetics of the
ordinary as ordinary. One proposed response is to regard qualities
such as the familiar and the ordinary as positively appreciable as a
counterpart to those qualities that make some experiences stand out
for being intense and extraordinary. Though not stunning or intense,
those qualities characterizing ordinary life provide a quiet calm,
comfort, stability, and security to our life experience (Haapala
2005). It is difficult to imagine how we can handle, let alone enjoy,
a constant series of extraordinary, intense experiences with no
restful period. Many aspects of domestic life instead offer comfort,
stability, and respite, in short hominess, because of the very
ordinary and repetitive nature, and such qualities are indispensable
for good life and appreciable in their own right (Highmore 2004,
2011a; Irvin 2008b; Melchionne 2014).
However, this response is challenged for failing to explain what is
distinctly aesthetic about the sense of comfort and stability. The
value of these feelings, according to the critics, is rather
existentially-oriented and possibly relies on the instrumental role
they play in assuring a secure foundation for life. An alternative
solution to the dilemma proposed is to focus on the functional use of
objects of daily life that is not separate from our management and
flow of daily life or the cultural context and knowledge required for
its use. When an object functions particularly well, the pleasure we
gain is still embedded in our daily life and does not render the
experience out of gear from the flow of everyday (Forsey 2014).
This move can also be characterized as a variation of
cognitively-oriented aesthetics widely discussed in environmental
aesthetics regarding nature. Instead of natural sciences that inform
the aesthetic appreciation of nature, the suggestion is that everyday
aesthetic experience be informed by common sense knowledge about the
object's function, significance, and place in our lives that
provides the familiarity sought for in aesthetically experiencing the
familiar as familiar (Carlson 2014).
These solutions address familiarity experienced as familiar as a
positive value whether regarding hominess or excellent functionality.
However, those who are concerned with developing the classificatory
sense of aesthetics point out that the the lack of coherent structure,
slackness, monotony, and humdrum that, according to Dewey, generate
experiences that are "anesthetic" actually also
characterize the aesthetic texture of everyday life (Highmore 2011a;
Mollar 2014; Saito 2017a). Deficiency in positive aesthetic qualities,
such as exciting intensity, coherent narrative structure, or pervasive
unifying theme, does not necessarily mean lack of aesthetic qualities.
Those aspects of our lives can still be regarded as permeated by
aesthetic qualities, though negative, such as dreariness and painful
monotony. Such negative characterization of everyday life has often
been the subject of Marxist interpretations of workers' daily
lives, whether at work or at home, providing a platform for rebellious
movements, such as the Situationist International (Highmore 2010).
## 4. Negative Aesthetics
This account of everyday life as pervaded by negative aesthetic
qualities rather than lacking any aesthetic qualities gives rise to
'negative aesthetics.' This notion may at first appear to
be an oxymoron, if 'aesthetics' is understood in the usual
honorific sense. Katya Mandoki and Arnold Berleant stress the
importance of attending to this aesthetically negative aspect of
people's lives that is unfortunately all too common (Mandoki
2007; Berleant 2010, 2012). Negative aesthetic qualities such as
ugliness, grotesqueness, repulsiveness, and disgust have not been
absent in the prevailing aesthetics discourse, but they don't
occupy a prominent place (notable exceptions being Korsmeyer 2011,
Forsey 2016). Furthermore, more often than not, these negative
qualities become justified as a necessary means to facilitating an
ultimately positive aesthetic experience. For example, a disgusting
content of art may be necessary for conveying an overall message, such
as an expose and critique of social ills, or a repulsive sight
in nature, such as a predator devouring its prey, can be appreciated
as an integral part of nature's process.
Negative aesthetic qualities experienced as negative, in comparison,
are unfortunately quite pervasive in everyday life and they directly
affect the quality of life. They range from less noteworthy qualities
such as the boring, the monotonous, the uninspiring, the banal, and
the dull to "aesthetic violence," "aesthetic
pain," "aesthetic poisoning," or "aesthetic
assault," such as the hideous, the offensive, the repulsive, and
the vulgar (Mandoki 2007). These more dramatically negative qualities
can be experienced in a squalid urban space, deafening noise,
cluttered billboard with gaudy signage and sordid visual images,
stench from a nearby factory, and the like. In light of the fact that
aesthetics has tended to confine its scope to positive qualities and
experiences, everyday aesthetics challenges us to pay serious
attention to the aesthetically negative aspects of our lives because
of their immediate impact on the quality of life.
The focus on negative aesthetics is particularly important in everyday
aesthetics discourse because it leads to what may be regarded as its
activist dimension. When confronted with negative aesthetic qualities,
we generally don't remain a mere spectator but rather spring
into action to eliminate, reduce, or transform them. Even if we
don't or can't act, we wish we could do so and we think we
should. According to the prevailing mode of aesthetic analysis
regarding art, and to a certain extent nature, our aesthetic life is
primarily characterized from a spectator's point of view. We are
not literally engaged in an activity with the object other than
aesthetic engagement. Even if we are inspired to act by art or nature,
the resultant action is generally indirect, such as joining a
political movement or making a contribution to an organization.
In comparison, the action we undertake motivated by negative
aesthetics in daily life has a direct impact on life. On a personal
level, we launder a stained shirt and iron it, clean the carpet soiled
by spilled wine, repaint the living room wall, open a window to get
fresh air after cooking fish indoors, tidy up the guest room, reformat
a document for a clearer look, and the list goes on (Forsey 2016;
Saito 2017a). These actions are taken primarily in response to our
negative aesthetic reaction against stain, wrinkle, unpleasant color
of the wall, fishy smell, mess and clutter, and disorganized look. On
a community level, eyesore-like abandoned structures get torn down or
given a make-over, a squalid neighborhood gets cleaned up, and
ordinances are created to eliminate factory stench and cluttered
billboards. At least we often work, or believe we should work, toward
improving the aesthetics of everyday environment and life. Negative
aesthetic experiences are thus useful and necessary in detecting what
is harmful to the quality of life and environment and provide an
impetus for improvement (Berleant 2012).
## 5. Everyday Aesthetic Qualities
However, questions can be raised as to whether qualities such as
messiness and clutter belong to aesthetics discourse. Appreciation of
more typical aesthetic qualities, such as beauty, sublimity, elegance,
grace, artistic excellence, powerful expression, and the like, is
thought to require a certain degree of aesthetic sensibility or
'taste' that needs to be cultivated. Moreover, their
appreciation often demands a certain conceptual understanding of
things, such as the object's historical and cultural context,
the artist's oeuvre, and some basic information regarding
nature, among others. Aesthetic experience, after all, is expected to
promote a dialogical process between the experiencing agent and the
object, thereby widening and deepening one's sensuous,
emotional, imaginative, and intellectual capacity. Sometimes
characterized as *Bildung*, it should be an educational and
empowering experience.
In comparison, the detection of the everyday aesthetic qualities in
question, such as messiness, shabbiness, cuteness, and prettiness,
seems to result from an almost knee-jerk reaction without any
background knowledge, aesthetic sophistication or reflective process,
and, as such, does not make a worthy subject matter for
aesthetics.
Two responses have been given to this challenge. First, even if some
qualities can be experienced without the same kind and degree of
aesthetic sensibility or sophistication required for art appreciation,
this alone does not render them outside the realm of aesthetics. Even
a seemingly unreflective response to qualities - such as dirty,
messy, and disorganized - is not free of a cultural and
contextual framework (Douglas 2002; Saito 2007). Second, it is
possible to provide a kind of sliding scale with one end requiring
utmost sensibility often obtained after extensive education and
practice, such as the ability to appreciate twelve-tone music,
Joyce's novels, Japanese Noh theater, and bogs, and the other
end requiring very little education and practice, such as Norman
Rockwell paintings, a military march, a sparkling jewelry piece, and a
colorful flower garden. Some aesthetic qualities can be considered
'major league' or heavy-weight while other aesthetic
qualities are 'minor league' or light-weight, without
disqualifying the latter from the realm of the aesthetic altogether.
After all, they refer to our qualitative response to the sensory
experience of the objects and phenomena and some experiences are more
intense and profound than others without thereby denying the aesthetic
dimension of more simple and easy experiences (Leddy 1995, 1997,
2012a, 2012b; Harris 2000; Ngai 2012; Postrel 2013; Mollar 2014).
If minor league aesthetic qualities lack sophistication and profundity
compared to major league aesthetic qualities, a case can be made that
they make up for this lack by their pervasiveness in daily life with
serious consequences. While we do experience beauty and sublimity in
our daily life, such occasions are rather rare. More often than not,
in our everyday life, we judge things for being pretty, nice,
interesting, cute, sweet, adorable, boring, plain, drab, dowdy,
shabby, gaudy, ostentatious, and the like. It is particularly
important to attend to these qualities because, due to their
prevalence and relatively easy recognition, they exert a powerful
influence on our decisions and actions regarding mundane matters.
Indeed, strategies in advertising, political campaigning, and
propaganda often make use of these qualities to direct people's
behavior (Postrel 2003; Mandoki 2007; Saito 2007, 2017a, 2018b;
Sartwell 2010). Those who are concerned with both the prevalence and
uncritical acceptance of aestheticization of life argue for a more
active, engaged, reflective mode of perception instead of passively
experiencing and being affected by aestheticization ploys, thereby
cultivating aesthetic literacy and vigilance (Vihalem 2016; Matteucci
2017; Potgieter 2017).
Another worry has been raised about the aesthetic worthiness, or
"aesthetic credentials," of some experiences (Dowling
2010). It concerns the purely bodily-oriented responses such as the
sensation of scratching an itch, receiving a massage, drinking tea, or
smelling fishy odor (Irvin 2008a,b). There is a concern that they are
too private and subjective to allow any inter-subjective discussion
and critical discourse, resulting in subjective relativism and
compromising the possibility of *sensus communis*.
Kant's distinction between the beautiful and the merely
agreeable is often invoked to support this criticism (Parsons and
Carlson 2008; Soucek 2009; Dowling 2010).
In response, some thinkers point out that it is a mistake to treat
these bodily sensations as an isolated, singular sensory experience.
According to them, in ordinary life, we almost never have an
experience of smell, taste, or touch by itself. Instead, our
experiences are usually multi-sensory or synaesthetic and take place
in a specific context (Howes 2005; Howes and Classen 2014). Scratching
an itch can be a part of experiencing a mosquito-infested bog, or
experienced as an annoyance caused by the stiff fabric label sewn on
the inside of a new shirt collar. The taste of tea cannot be separated
from its aroma, visual appearance, and the tactile sensations of
texture and warmth as one holds the mug and presses the lip against
its rim. All of these sensory experiences take place in a certain
surrounding and situation with its own ambiance, as well as within the
specific flow of one's daily life. One may grab a cup of tea on
the run and gulp it down to get the caffeine kick as one rushes to a
meeting, or savor each sip as one sits in front of a fireplace
relaxing, or participate in the Japanese tea ceremony. Even if the tea
itself were to remain the same, the experience surrounding its
ingestion changes, sometimes even affecting our experience of the
taste of tea itself (Irvin 2009a; Melchionne 2011, 2014; Perullo 2016;
Saito 2017a). Thus, purely bodily sensation can be folded into the
atmosphere or ambiance constituted by many ingredients. Then what we
appreciate is not merely a singular bodily sensation in isolation such
as the tactile sensation or smell but the fittingness or, one may even
say, Kantian 'purposiveness,' or lack thereof, created by
the relationship between and among factors making up the
atmosphere.
Presumed subjective relativism regarding a purely bodily sensation,
therefore, can be mitigated at least to a certain extent if it is
regarded as one of the many ingredients that make up a larger whole
permeated by a unified atmosphere, such as a sense of well-being,
contentment, comfort, or negatively, a sense of isolation, discomfort,
uneasiness, or anxiety. Such an appreciation (or depreciation) allows
some degree of inter-subjective communication and sharing; indeed many
literary narratives provide a rich reservoir of such experiences.
## 6. Ambient Aesthetics and Social Aesthetics
This attention to atmosphere or ambiance of a certain situation
constituted by various ingredients has a long tradition in Japanese
aesthetics (Saito 2005). It was also the main point of the
associationist aesthetics advocated by Archibald Alison
(1757-1839). Today ambient aesthetics is garnering a renewed
attention primarily due to works by Gernot Bohme who suggests
that atmosphere should be the central focus of new aesthetics. In our
daily life, we often experience the atmospheric character of a
situation: tense or relaxed, cheerful or melancholic, exuberant or
subdued, inviting or alienating, electrifying or dull. Sometimes a
distinct character of a situation is intentionally orchestrated,
oftentimes in a special occasion like a wedding or a funeral, with
specifically selected music, decorations, attire, and choreographed
movements, to name a few. Some other times, a unified atmosphere
arises spontaneously when various elements making up the physical
environment and human interactions and movements within it happen to
congeal (Bohme 1993, 1998; Miyahara 2014; di Stefano 2017).
Although in our daily life we experience and appreciate (or
depreciate) a certain atmosphere or ambiance quite frequently, it has
not received adequate attention in the aesthetics discourse primarily
because of the lack of clearly defined and delineated
'object' of the experience. Without a clear
'frame' around the object of experience, critics suggest,
inter-subjective discussion of its aesthetics is not possible. Nor are
there clear criteria, such as art historical conventions, that are
helpful in determining what is and is not a part of the aesthetic
experience (Parsons and Carlson 2008). Ambiance, air, or atmosphere is
indeed subjectively-oriented in the sense that one's experience
becomes colored accordingly. However, it should also be noted that it
is not purely subjective or private, as claimed by critics, insofar as
it refers to objectively identifiable features of the environment and
situation. Furthermore, some contemporary works of art specifically
aim at creating a certain atmosphere that envelops the audience (Z.
Wang 2018).
Ambient aesthetics also highlights the important role played by
non-visual sensory experiences that permeate our lived life. The
relevance of the so-called lower senses in everyday aesthetics has
already been mentioned (Section 5). However, possibly with an
exception of the gustatory, non-visual sensory experiences, namely the
auditory, the olfactory, and the haptic, tend to be eclipsed by the
visual, although their contribution to our everyday aesthetic
experience is undeniable (Ackerman 1991; Tuan 1993; Brady 2005; Howes
2014; Korsmeyer 2017; Interference Journal (Issue 7, 2019); Shiner
forthcoming). Sometimes they enrich an overall ambiance, such as a
calming ambient sound and a weather-beaten smooth surface of a
building, while other times they constitute negative aesthetics, such
as a blaring car stereo sound and a stench from a nearby factory.
Furthermore, the lack of sounds and smell may be a welcome relief
while at other times it may render the experience deficient (Drobnick
2005; Anderson forthcoming). Everyday aesthetics encourages attention
to these non-visual experiences, which helps sharpen our sensibility.
Attention to these sensory experiences is also critical in
architectural practice and urban planning which tend to be dominated
by the visual orientation (Pearson 1991; Pallasmaa 1999).
Part of what determines the ambiance or atmosphere is human
interactions. The character of such interactions is constituted by the
participants' personality and relationships with others that are
subject to aesthetic considerations. In addition to what one does and
says, one can be considered warm, cold, formal, aloof, friendly,
intimidating, gentle, and so forth, largely due to aesthetic factors
such as tone of voice, way of speaking, facial expression, bodily
gesture and posture, and outward presentation such as clothing, hair
style, ornamentation, and the like. Sometimes the moral character of
one's action is assessed by aesthetic dimensions over and beyond
what the action accomplishes. For example, one may gobble up a
lovingly prepared and meticulously arranged meal carelessly and
indifferently, or one may take time and savor every bite respectfully
and mindfully to show one's appreciation for the cook. One can
close a door roughly, making a loud noise and startling others, or one
can close it gently and carefully so as not to disturb others.
Finally, one can help a person in need grudgingly and spitefully or do
so with care and good cheer (Buss 1999; Sherman 2005; Naukkarinen
2014; Shusterman 2016; Saito 2016, 2017a).
In these examples, important desiderata in aesthetic experiences can
also be regarded as desirable in human relationships: open-mindedness
to accept and appreciate diversity, respect and reciprocity, full and
sincere engagement, among others. Established as a sub-category of
everyday aesthetics by Arnold Berleant, social aesthetics calls
attention to the fact that the aesthetics plays a surprisingly and
often unrecognized role in determining the moral character of actions,
persons, and human interactions (Berleant 2005b, 2010, 2012,
2017).
Furthermore, social aesthetics promotes cultivating virtues through
everyday practice. One's kindness, compassion, thoughtfulness,
and respect require appropriate expressions guided by aesthetic
sensibility and skills, in addition to accomplishing a certain deed.
Harmonious and cooperative interaction with others also requires not
only appropriate cultural knowledge but also aesthetic sensibility to
decipher group dynamics and determine how best to help create a
certain atmosphere (Naukkarinen 2014). A mere conceptual understanding
of the importance of aesthetics in these interactions is not
sufficient. Embodied practice is required to contribute to
aesthetically-minded social interactions.
## 7. Action-Oriented Aesthetics
Social aesthetics also sheds light on another new avenue of inquiry
ushered in by everyday aesthetics: the aesthetic dimension of
*doing* things instead of, or in addition to, the experience
gained as a spectator or beholder. The traditional mode of aesthetic
inquiry is primarily concerned with analyzing the aesthetic experience
of a spectator who derives aesthetic pleasure from contemplating an
object (or a phenomenon or an event). Even in such an experience, as
Dewey's characterization of 'undergoing' and
'doing' and Berleant's engagement model indicate,
the person is never passive; she is actively engaged with the object
through exercising imagination and interacts with it perceptually,
intellectually, and emotionally. However, in the most literal sense,
she is still an onlooker of the object: a painting, a symphony, a tea
bowl, a figure skating performance, a flower garden, a piece of
furniture, an automobile, a house, and a freshly laundered shirt.
While everyday aesthetics includes such spectator-oriented aesthetics,
a major part constituting the flow of everyday life is our active
engagement with doing things by handling an object, executing an act,
and producing certain results, all motivated by aesthetic
considerations. Until recently, very little had been explored of the
aesthetic dimensions of active involvement in painting a canvas,
playing a violin, skating, gardening, repairing a garment, hanging
laundry outdoors, and giving birth (Rautio 2009; Brook 2012; Lintott
2012). Perhaps food aesthetics illustrates this contrast most clearly.
Food aesthetics generally focuses on the taste of the food rather than
the experience of eating itself or the activity of cooking (except for
Curtin and Heldke 1992; Visser 1997; Giard 1998; Korsmeyer 1999;
Shusterman 2013; Perullo 2016).
The difficulty of accounting for the aesthetics involved in these
activities from the participants' perspective is the same
difficulty facing ambient aesthetics: the lack of clear delineation of
object-hood of aesthetic experience. The constituents of an aesthetic
object are more or less clear in the case of a painting or a flower
garden appreciated from the spectator's point of view.
Furthermore, there is an object one can point to for
intersubjectivity. However, there is no equivalent
'object' of aesthetic experience when it comes to an
activity one undertakes. This lack, according to some thinkers,
signals the demise of any reasonable discussion as the subject matter
becomes hopelessly private with little possibility of intersubjective
discourse. While we can meaningfully debate the aesthetic merit of a
painting or a flower garden by giving reasons to justify our judgment,
it is difficult to imagine an equivalent discussion of my experience
of bodily engagement when executing brush ink painting or digging the
ground and planting flowers for the flower garden.
If one accepts John Dewey's notion of having "an
experience" which gives an aesthetic character to whatever
experience one is undergoing, it becomes a challenge to facilitate a
critical discourse to determine whether or not one is truly having
"an experience." The act of planting flowers involves a
multi-sensory experience and bodily engagement, as well as designing
the garden's layout. These ingredients may come together in a
unified manner to give rise to a sense of joy felt by the gardener at
the arrival of spring and the anticipation of fully-blossomed flowers.
It is difficult to imagine how this gardener's experience can be
subjected to a critical discourse in the same way the flower bed gets
evaluated aesthetically for its design. Can we have a debate about
whether the gardener's experience was truly aesthetic or whether
it provided a rich or only mediocre aesthetic experience? If not, is
this aspect of our life forever closed to any mode of aesthetic
inquiry?
The difficulty felt here regarding the aesthetics of ambiance and
actions could be attributed to the mode of contemporary Western
aesthetic inquiry which is predominantly judgment-oriented (Bohme
1993). Much of mainstream aesthetic debate surrounds the objectivity
and justifiability of aesthetic judgment. A judgment presupposes the
determinability of an object and its intersubjectively sharable
experience. Anything falling outside of it is considered hopelessly
subjective and relativistic. However, phenomenological accounts of
bodily engagement in cooking, sports, and other mundane activities are
plentiful not only in some aestheticians' writings but also,
perhaps more commonly, in writings by practitioners and literary
authors (Curtin and Heldke 1992; Giard 1998; Rautio 2009; Tainio
2015). Body aesthetics is also garnering more attention in recent
philosophy and a large part of its concern is the bodily engagement in
aesthetic experience (Bhatt 2013; Irvin 2016).
Furthermore, some agree that the practice of mundane activities,
domestic chores in particular, provides an opportunity for one to
exercise imagination and creativity to inspire an aesthetic experience
(McCracken 2001; Lee 2010; Highmore 2011a). For example, the activity
of outdoor laundry hanging can be a chance for the person to arrange
and hang the items in an aesthetically pleasing way to express her
respect and thoughtfulness toward her neighbors and passersby who are
inevitably exposed to the visual parade of laundered items. At the
same time, this activity will occasion her appreciation of the arrival
of spring after a long winter, as well as anticipation of the sweet
smell and crisp texture of dried items thanks to the sunshine and
fresh air carried by the breeze (Rautio 2009; Saito 2017a). Dismissing
these experiences from aesthetic discourse because they do not fit the
expected format of analysis and cannot be subjected to a
verdict-oriented discourse unduly impoverishes the rich content of our
aesthetic life. In addition, these experiences are not hopelessly
private and it is possible that they are generated and shared
communally. Gardening, cooking, and participation in sporting
activities can be a group activity and the participants can share and
help with each other to mutually enrich and enhance aesthetic
experiences by pointing out the aesthetic contribution of some aspects
that others may have missed.
Indeed, it is crucial for everyday aesthetics that these private
experiences to be intersubjectively communicable. If the aesthetic
dimensions of our everyday life are important (and this conviction is
what gave rise to everyday aesthetics in the fist place), then one of
its tasks is to justify the value of seemingly monadistic experiences
by facilitating what aesthetic experience in general does best:
encouraging openness by sharing others' experiences, viewing the
world from perspectives different from one's own, and enlarging
one's horizon and vision (Ratiu 2017a). Aesthetic experience
understood in this way supports its educability, educational value,
and contribution to enhancing life (Potgieter 2017).
## 8. Blurring the Line between Art and Life
The emergence of everyday aesthetics discourse parallels the
increasing attempt at blurring the distinction between art and life in
today's artworld. Although there have been many examples
throughout art history of *depicting* slices of everyday life,
such as Dutch still life paintings, twentieth-century art introduced
and experimented with different modes of appropriating everyday life,
most famously with the use of ready-mades. Since then, artists have
been trying to overcome the presumed separation between art and real
life in a number of ways: rejecting the art institutional setting as a
location for their art; denying the necessity of authorial authority;
embracing various changes made to their works both by nature and human
agency; blurring the creator/spectator dichotomy by collaborating with
the general public to create art as a joint venture; changing the role
of the artist from the creator/choreographer to a facilitator who
provides an occasion or an event for things to happen; literally
improving the environment and society by planting trees, cleaning a
river, and playing the role of a social worker to promote a dialogue
among people in conflict; and engaging in mundane activities like
cooking and farming with tangible products for consumption. These
attempts have given rise to a number of genres, including situationist
art, conceptual art, environmental art, happening, performance,
activist art, socially engaged art, and art projects characterized as
embodying "relational aesthetics" or "dialogical
aesthetics" (Kaprow 1993; Spaid 2002, 2012; Bourriaud 2002;
Kester 2004, 2011; Dezeuze 2006; Johnstone 2008; Bishop 2012).
Paralleling the movement of art to embrace everyday life, there is a
movement in the opposite direction: for everyday life to embrace art.
While aestheticization of life is not a new phenomenon, what is
noteworthy in the so-called organizational aesthetics and artification
strategy is that they deploy art and art-like ways of thinking and
acting in those areas of life which have not been traditionally
associated with art or aesthetics: medicine, business, education,
sports, and science, among others, as well as organizational life in
general (Darso 2004; Naukkarinen and Saito 2012; Ratiu 2017b).
These professional practices typically privilege rational discourse
comprised of logic and rules, but they cannot ignore their aesthetic
dimensions. Art and aesthetics in this context are not regarded as
decorative amenities or prettifying touches. Rather, organizational
aesthetics and artification strategy are based upon the premise that
humans negotiate life, whatever the context may be, through sensory
knowledge and affective experiences by interacting with others and the
environment. As such, working with the aesthetic dimensions of these
professional activities and environments cannot but help achieve the
respective goals and, perhaps more importantly, contribute to the
wellbeing of the members and participants. Art and aesthetics can be a
powerful ally in directing human endeavors and actions and determining
the quality of activities and environments. Such effects range from
facilitating creativity and imagination in educational and business
ventures and providing humane and healing environments for vulnerable
populations, such as hospital patients and nursing home residents, to
rendering scientific data easily graspable (Pine and Gilmore 1998;
Linstead 2000; Postrel 2003; Howes 2005, 2013; Duncum 2007; Tavin
2007; Dee 2010, 2012; Schulze 2013; Moss and O'Neill 2013, 2014;
Ratiu 2017b; Krawczyk forthcoming).
As stated at the beginning of this entry, everyday aesthetics was
first proposed as a way of accounting for those aesthetically charged
dimensions of our lives that had not been adequately addressed by
art-centered aesthetics. However, early works of everyday aesthetics,
such as given by Saito (2007), are criticized for a rather outdated
and overly restrictive characterization of so-called art-centered
aesthetics. The presumed distinguishing conditions of art-aesthetics,
such as a relatively clear frame, privileging higher sense, authorial
identity, stable identity of the object, and the spectator mode of
experience, are no longer applicable to many examples of art today.
Consequently, the critics urge everyday aesthetics to go beyond simply
providing a venue to enumerate those aesthetic dimensions of everyday
life that had previously been overlooked and to provide a conceptual
foundation. In particular, they advocate conceiving everyday
aesthetics as a continuation of aesthetics discourse that had
previously been focused on art (the view variously characterized as a
weak formulation, continuistic pole, extraordinarist stance, or
monolithist model), rather than as something distinct and separate
from art aesthetics (a strong formulation, discontinuistic pole,
familiarity stance, or pluralist model) (see Dowling 2010; Ratiu 2013;
Iannilli 2016; Matteucci 2016 for a clear and helpful
"mapping" and "nomenclature" of these strands
of everyday aesthetics).
Those who support the continuity model are specifically concerned to
provide a basis for intersubjectivity and normativity for everyday
aesthetics by referencing these features that support aesthetics
discourse in general. Without such a framework, the worry is that
everyday aesthetics may degenerate into a totally subjective, laissez
faire affair which would render the entire project trivial. Unless we
presuppose the possibility of a *sensus communis*, that is,
communicability though not necessarily commonality, which makes
sharing and understanding the other's experience possible, we
are locked into a subjective, solipsistic silo. Furthermore, they
point out that the monadic characterization of everyday aesthetics
within the general aesthetics discourse is not conducive to fruitfully
accounting for the ways in which everyday life and art interact and
form a continuous, ongoing flux of a person's embodied
experience of the lived world. Popular and socially engaged forms of
art permeate people's everyday life more than ever and there is
no reason not to consider experiencing them as a pervasive dimension
of their lived world. Ultimately, the nature of art is open and
dynamic and is very much an integral part of people's life, and
everyday aesthetics is better served by considering the continuity
between art and everyday. In other words, the initial reactionary mode
of everyday aesthetics needs to be recast as a proactive mode that
addresses the totality of our aesthetic engagement with the world,
which includes art, nature, and everyday (Ratiu 2013; Potgieter 2017).
Although approaching the issue from a different angle, another
possibility is to develop Ranciere's distribution of the
sensible and explore what is deemed aesthetically relevant within a
specific cultural/historical/social context. For the consideration of
the regime of the sensible, the presumed distinction between art and
life becomes irrelevant (Vihalem 2018).
## 9. Significance of Everyday Aesthetics
As the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of aestheticization of life
indicates, the aesthetic has a significant power to influence,
sometimes determine, the quality of life and society. While the power
of everyday aesthetics can be harnessed to improve the quality of
life, it can also be used to serve a political agenda or a business
goal. As stated in the sections on the Everyday Aesthetic Qualities
and Action-Oriented Aesthetics above, everyday aesthetic responses
often guide people's actions in the most direct way. If
something attracts us with its aesthetic appeal, we tend to protect
it, purchase it, or try to maintain its aesthetic value; on the other
hand, if we don't find an object or an environment aesthetically
appealing, we tend to be indifferent to its fate, discard it, or try
to make it more attractive (Nassauer 1995; Orr 2002). In particular,
today's global capitalist economy is fueled by 'perceived
obsolescence' regarding products' fashionableness and
stylishness with little to no improvement in their functional values.
Additional aesthetic 'hidden persuaders' include branding,
advertising campaigns, and environments aesthetically orchestrated for
stores (Pine and Gilmore 1998, 2013; Postrel 2003; Schulze 2013;
Bohme 2017). These positive aesthetic values of and surrounding a
product often hide various instances of 'ugliness'
involved in its manufacturing process and afterlife. The negative
aesthetics associated with manufacturing includes environmental
devastation caused by resource extraction and pollution, and dismal
working conditions of the factory workers, often in developing
nations, who are forced to endure aesthetic deprivation, not to
mention health and safety hazards. The negative aesthetics of the
product's afterlife can be seen in the ever-increasing volume of
discarded items, no longer considered trendy and fashionable, not only
in municipal landfills but in the ocean. Such 'trash' is
also shipped to developing nations where re-usable, and often toxic,
parts are harvested by local people with no protective gear (Saito
2018b).
Negative consequences of people's aesthetic preference can also
be found in the uniformly perfect appearance of fruits and vegetables
on the store shelf. The deformed and misshapen items are sometimes
discarded, causing not only literal waste but also creation of methane
gas from rotting produce. Some other times, a niche market emerges to
divert such imperfect items earmarked for free giveaway to the needy
and to commodify them for cheap sale to the general public, thereby
exacerbating the food insecurity of the vulnerable population. The
American attraction to the weed-free, velvety-smooth, uniformly green
lawn has serious environmental ramifications, such as excessive water
use and chemical fertilizer, herbicide, and insecticide. When outdoor
laundry hanging and wind turbines are judged to be an eyesore,
communities create an ordinance to prohibit them, preventing the
opportunity to create a more sustainable way of living (Duerksen and
Goebel 1999; Gipe 2002; Saito 2004, 2017a; Gray 2012).
Contrariwise, the success of sustainable design and goods produced
under humane conditions often depends upon the acceptance of new
aesthetic paradigms, such as gardens consisting of wildflowers or
edible plants, garments and furniture made with recycled or reused
materials, and green buildings that reduce literal footprints on the
land as well as carbon footprints (Walker 2006, 2017; Salwa 2019).
Some work has also been done to explore the ways in which moral
virtues such as respect, thoughtfulness, and humility can be expressed
not only by persons but also by the aesthetic features of objects and
built structures and environments (Norman 1990; Whiteley 1993, 1999;
Sepanmaa 1995a, 1995b; Pallasmaa 1999; Taylor 2000; Orr 2002;
Berleant 2005, 2010, 2012; Berleant and Carlson 2007; Saito 2007,
2017a). In addition, as indicated by social aesthetics, cultivation of
aesthetic sensibility and practice of aesthetic skills can contribute
to facilitating respectful, thoughtful, and humane social
interactions
The relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical has been one of
the contested issues in the aesthetics discourse regarding art.
Debates ensue regarding the aesthetic relevance of the moral content
of art, the artist's or performer's character, and the
process involved in creating a work of art. The positions range from
their complete separation supported by aestheticism to their
integration advocated by moralists. However, the ethical implications
of art (at least in its more conventional form) do not have a
*direct* bearing on changing the world. They may affect the
audience's perception, attitude, and worldview, which may lead
them toward a certain action, but the impact is indirect. In
comparison, the aesthetic impact of everyday affairs often leads to
direct consequences that change the state of the world. Just as in
art-centered aesthetics, however, there are differing views on whether
or not and to what degree the ethical implications should affect the
aesthetic value of the object. Some prefer to separate them and
protect the autonomous realm of the aesthetic (Forsey 2013). Others
advocate integration by calling for an aesthetic paradigm shift (Orr
2002; Saito 2007, 2017a, 2018b; Maskit 2011) not only by explicitly
including the moral dimensions of objects and environments in their
aesthetics but also by rethinking the fundamental ways in which we
humans interact with the material world. At least according to the
Western tradition, the material world lacks any agency in a morally
relevant sense and its value is exhausted by its instrumental utility
to humans. However, just as the long-held Western anthropocentric
attitude toward nature has come under scrutiny, some thinkers propose
a more respectful attitude toward and interaction with the material
world (Ingold 2000; Nielsen 2005; Brook 2012; Perullo 2016; Saito
2018b).
The moral, social, and political significance of everyday aesthetics
is perhaps most acute in body aesthetics. Culturally- and
socially-constructed, and often impossible to achieve, aesthetic
standards of the human body lead people to engage in various beauty
practices, ranging from cosmetic surgery and extreme dieting to
ingestion of dangerous substances and bleaching of the skins, which
often compromise health (Brand 2000, 2012; Lintott 2003; Rhode 2010;
Archer and Ware 2018; Widdows 2018). Aesthetics is also implicated as
a primary instrument of justifying the societal oppression of
disabled, sexed, gendered, or racialized bodies. Those individuals
whose bodies do not meet the aesthetic standard suffer from an
unfounded perception that their physical appearance correlates with
their competence, intelligence, and moral character, and are subjected
to many forms of injustice and discrimination in employment, social
standing, personal relationships, and economic status. Aesthetic
qualifications for an ideal body can be explicitly institutionalized
as in Nazism or policies requiring a certain appearance of employees,
or implicitly referenced to reinforce the existing stereotype of the
oppressed groups (Garland-Thomson 2009; Siebers 2010; Irvin 2016; P.
Taylor 2016; also see the entries on
feminist perspectives on the body,
feminist perspectives on disability, and
feminist perspectives on objectification).
The utilization of aesthetics as a strategy for consumerism and
political agenda has thus been a concern for everyday aesthetics.
Aesthetic appeal can entice people to embrace, support, and promote
problematic causes that may be ultimately contrary to their wellbeing
and quality of life, as well as to the ideal of justice and democracy.
Instead of nurturing citizens and civil society engaged in a
thoughtful and informed exchange, discussion, and critical reflections
of ideas, aestheticization of everyday life is often used to cultivate
consumers for the market, audience for political spectacles, and
accomplices in perpetuating oppression and injustice. However, this
danger of aestheticization of everyday life is not necessarily
inevitable. Some argue that it is possible and indeed critical that we
encourage an aestheticization strategy in the service of promoting
justice, democracy, citizenry, and civil discourse (Nielsen 2005;
Matteucci 2017; Saito 2017a, 2018b).
## 10. New and Future Developments
While everyday aesthetics has matured significantly since its
relatively recent emergence in the Western aesthetics discourse, there
still remain many tasks to be tackled. In light of the new
developments described below, possibilities and opportunities abound
to guide the future of everyday aesthetics.
First, many critics, as well as supporters, of everyday aesthetics
point out that it needs to be anchored in a firm theoretical
foundation (Forsey 2013a; Ratiu 2013; Iannilli 2016). Among the
possibilities suggested are finding roots in phenomenology,
structuralism and poststructuralism, in addition to pragmatism that is
often cited as the primary root (Potgieter 2017). Also suggested is to
frame everyday aesthetics as a practical philosophy with its emphasis
on practical knowledge that is contingent and relational as well as
providing agency for acting for common good (Vihalem 2016; Ratiu
2017a). Another suggestion is to provide a theory of aesthetic
perception based upon a specific mode of attention (Nanay 2016, 2018).
These suggestions are made specifically to address and possibly
resolve the perceived conflicts and tensions debated by everyday
aestheticians between everyday and non-everyday, life and art, theory
and practice, ordinary and extraordinary, routine and non-routine,
familiar and unfamiliar, and bodily-oriented (lower) senses and
cognitively-oriented (higher) senses. A firm theoretical footing
should also support intersubjectivity of aesthetic experience so as
not to render everyday aesthetics hopelessly subjective and trivial,
one of the common criticisms lodged against it. In addition, a
theoretical foundation is thought to help illuminate the political
dimensions of everyday aesthetics, specifically the politically
charged regime of the sensible and the increasing aestheticization of
commerce and politics that treats people more as consumers than as
citizens.
Second, as was discussed in Section 2, what counts as everyday is a
complicated matter, and one of the complications is the fact that our
lived world is changing rapidly due to technology as well as climate
change. We cannot imagine our everyday life today without the use of
internet, social media, Googling, big data, virtual reality, and the
like. The future with self-driving vehicles, wearable technology, and
AI is already here. Although it is safe to assume that in the
foreseeable future we humans will still negotiate our lives surrounded
by and interacting with various objects in the way that has always
been familiar to us, our everyday life will increasingly include and
be affected by technological advancements. Furthermore, many
people's physical environments consisting of nature and built
structures are bound to be transformed by climate change, drastically
changing their everyday affairs and cultural practices (Nomikos
2018).
If everyday aesthetics has been focused on what has been characterized
as a relatively stable environment consisting of familiar surroundings
and material objects, the challenge is to explore whether and how
rapid changes to the familiar everyday affects the nature of everyday
aesthetics as a discourse. Some works have already begun, indicated by
the research on the effects of self-driving vehicles (Mladenovic,
et al 2019), cartographical tools (Iannilli 2014; Lehtinen 2019), and
the prevalence of all kinds of machine in general (Naukkarinen 2019).
These researches explore whether and how these machines facilitate an
engaged experience of the users, how they move aesthetics discourse
from the emphasis on contemplative experiences to immediate,
bodily-engaged experiences guided by the functionality of the object,
and how they impact privacy as well as the nature of aesthetics as an
academic discipline. It may be the case that the new normal for our
everyday world becomes a rapid and constant change rather than
stability and familiarity that have been considered a hallmark of
everyday life to date. This future projection may require everyday
aestheticians to review some of the presuppositions that have
supported their discussion.
Third, everyday aesthetics has become influential in various
disciplines and practices outside of philosophical discourse. As
indicated by many works included in the bibliography, everyday
aesthetics has been embraced as providing both principles and
strategies by fields ranging from business, consumerism, healthcare,
sports, law, science, and education to urban studies, sustainability,
fashion, and design. This wide acceptance and utilization of everyday
aesthetics is due to its insight regarding the prevalence of
aesthetics in everyone's lived world, as well as its aspiration
that cultivation of aesthetic literacy and sensibility will contribute
to improving one's wellbeing, social interactions, and the state
of the society and the world. But the challenge, as well as
opportunity, posed by these heterogeneous discipline-specific
practices is to inquire whether there is an overarching unifying
notion of aesthetic experience and aesthetic practice. Even if there
is a unifying notion, a further question is whether we should arrive
at such a notion by building on case studies from these various
disciplines (Vihalem 2016).
Finally, in light of an increasing attention to the culture-specific
nature of various discourses, everyday aesthetics faces both the
opportunity and challenge for situating its place in a global context.
Globalization of aesthetics is actively sought particularly regarding
art, as indicated by decolonizing the discourses of art, art history,
and museum practice. It was explained at the beginning of this entry
that everyday aesthetics' emergence was historically and
culturally situated to challenge what was considered to be
art-centered aesthetics that dominated the Western aesthetics of the
last century. In many cultural traditions, including those that do not
have a concept equivalent to the Western notion of art, there is a
long legacy of aesthetic interests and concerns permeating, informing,
and guiding people's lives, whether regarding the management of
daily life, social relationships, spiritual rites, cultural
activities, or creation of objects (see Higgins 1996 and Higgins, et
al. 2017 for a collection of essays representing diverse non-Western
aesthetic traditions). For example, the long-held Chinese tradition of
"aesthetics of living" that has been practiced as a way of
enhancing the quality of lived experience and contributing to
people's happiness and wellbeing, rather than conceived as an
abstract theory, is receiving a renewed attention by Chinese scholars
who are working on a cross-cultural dialogue (Liu 2014, 2017, 2018;
Pan 2014; Q. Wang 2014). Similarly, Japanese cultural tradition is
garnering an increasing interest by those who are exploring how its
aesthetics goes beyond the established arts to inform people's
everyday lives (Ikegami 2005; Sasaki 2013; Otabe 2018). Researching
how different cultural traditions promote their respective everyday
aesthetic practices helps to highlight the cultural situatedness of
some of the assumptions of Western philosophy and aesthetics, such as
the relationships between art and life, the theoretical and the
practical, the subject and the object, as well as between and among
the aesthetic, the moral, the social, the practical, the existential,
and the spiritual.
Everyday aesthetics began its task in the spirit of inclusivity by
expanding the materials for deliberation. The discourse continues its
task with the same spirit of inclusivity by encouraging
culture-specific, discipline-specific, and future-speculative
explorations, while at the same time searching for a theoretical
foundation that allows for intersubjective, intercultural, and
interdisciplinary exchanges. |
aesthetic-concept | ## 1. The Concept of Taste
The concept of the aesthetic descends from the concept of taste. Why
the concept of taste commanded so much philosophical attention during
the 18th century is a complicated matter, but this much is clear: the
eighteenth-century theory of taste emerged, in part, as a corrective
to the rise of rationalism, particularly as applied to beauty, and to
the rise of egoism, particularly as applied to virtue. Against
rationalism about beauty, the eighteenth-century theory of taste held
the judgment of beauty to be immediate; against egoism about virtue,
it held the pleasure of beauty to be disinterested.
### 1.1 Immediacy
Rationalism about beauty is the view that judgments of beauty are
judgments of reason, i.e., that we judge things to be beautiful by
reasoning it out, where reasoning it out typically involves inferring
from principles or applying concepts. At the beginning of the 18th
century, rationalism about beauty had achieved dominance on the
continent, and was being pushed to new extremes by "les
geometres," a group of literary theorists who
aimed to bring to literary criticism the mathematical rigor that
Descartes had brought to physics. As one such theorist put it:
>
> The way to think about a literary problem is that pointed out by
> Descartes for problems of physical science. A critic who tries any
> other way is not worthy to be living in the present century. There is
> nothing better than mathematics as propaedeutic for literary
> criticism. (Terrasson 1715, Preface, 65; quoted in Wimsatt and Brooks
> 1957, 258)
>
It was against this, and against more moderate forms of rationalism
about beauty, that mainly British philosophers working mainly within
an empiricist framework began to develop theories of taste. The
fundamental idea behind any such theory--which we may call
*the immediacy thesis*--is that judgments of beauty are
not (or at least not canonically) mediated by inferences from
principles or applications of concepts, but rather have all the
immediacy of straightforwardly sensory judgments. It is the idea, in
other words, that we do not reason to the conclusion that things are
beautiful, but rather "sense" that they are. Here is an
early expression of the thesis, from Jean-Baptiste Dubos's
*Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting, and Music*, which
first appeared in 1719:
>
> Do we ever reason, in order to know whether a ragoo be good or bad;
> and has it ever entered into any body's head, after having
> settled the geometrical principles of taste, and defined the qualities
> of each ingredient that enters into the composition of those messes,
> to examine into the proportion observed in their mixture, in order to
> decide whether it be good or bad? No, this is never practiced. We have
> a sense given us by nature to distinguish whether the cook acted
> according to the rules of his art. People taste the ragoo, and
> tho' unacquainted with those rules, they are able to tell
> whether it be good or no. The same may be said in some respect of the
> productions of the mind, and of pictures made to please and move us.
> (Dubos 1748, vol. II, 238-239)
>
And here is a late expression, from Kant's 1790 *Critique of
the Power of Judgment*:
>
> If someone reads me his poem or takes me to a play that in the end
> fails to please my taste, then he can adduce Batteux or Lessing, or
> even older and more famous critics of taste, and adduce all the rules
> they established as proofs that his poem is beautiful... . I will
> stop my ears, listen to no reasons and arguments, and would rather
> believe that those rules of the critics are false ... than allow
> that my judgment should be determined by means of *a priori*
> grounds of proof, since it is supposed to be a judgment of taste and
> not of the understanding of reason. (Kant 1790, 165)
>
But the theory of taste would not have enjoyed its eighteenth-century
run, nor would it continue now to exert its influence, had it been
without resources to counter an obvious rationalist objection. There
is a wide difference--so goes the objection--between judging
the excellence of a ragout and judging the excellence of a poem or a
play. More often than not, poems and plays are objects of great
complication. But taking in all that complication requires a lot of
cognitive work, including the application of concepts and the drawing
of inferences. Judging the beauty of poems and plays, then, is
evidently not immediate and so evidently not a matter of taste.
The chief way of meeting this objection was first to distinguish
between the act of grasping the object preparatory to judging it and
the act of judging the object once grasped, and then to allow the
former, but not the latter, to be as concept- and inference-mediated
as any rationalist might wish. Here is Hume, with characteristic
clarity:
>
> [I]n order to pave the way for [a judgment of taste], and give a
> proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary, we find, that
> much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just
> conclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations
> examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species of
> beauty, especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance
> command our affection and approbation; and where they fail of this
> effect, it is impossible for any reasoning to redress their influence,
> or adapt them better to our taste and sentiment. But in many orders of
> beauty, particularly those of the fine arts, it is requisite to employ
> much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment. (Hume, 1751,
> Section I)
>
Hume--like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson before him, and Reid after
him (Cooper 1711, 17, 231; Hutcheson 1725, 16-24; Reid 1785,
760-761)--regarded the faculty of taste as a kind of
"internal sense." Unlike the five "external"
or "direct" senses, an "internal" (or
"reflex" or "secondary") sense is one that
depends for its objects on the antecedent operation of some other
mental faculty or faculties. Reid characterizes internal sense as
follows:
>
> Beauty or deformity in an object, results from its nature or
> structure. To perceive the beauty therefore, we must perceive the
> nature or structure from which it results. In this the internal sense
> differs from the external. Our external senses may discover qualities
> which do not depend upon any antecedent perception... . But it is
> impossible to perceive the beauty of an object, without perceiving the
> object, or at least conceiving it. (Reid 1785, 760-761)
>
Because of the highly complex natures or structures of many beautiful
objects, there will have to be a role for reason in their perception.
But perceiving the nature or structure of an object is one thing.
Perceiving its beauty is another.
### 1.2 Disinterest
Egoism about virtue is the view that to judge an action or trait
virtuous is to take pleasure in it because you believe it to serve
some interest of yours. Its central instance is the Hobbesian
view--still very much on early eighteenth-century
minds--that to judge an action or trait virtuous is to take
pleasure in it because you believe it to promote your safety. Against
Hobbesian egoism a number of British moralists--preeminently
Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume--argued that, while a judgment
of virtue is a matter of taking pleasure in response to an action or
trait, the pleasure is disinterested, by which they meant that it is
not self-interested (Cooper 1711, 220-223; Hutcheson 1725, 9,
25-26; Hume 1751, 218-232, 295-302). One argument
went roughly as follows. That we judge virtue by means of an immediate
sensation of pleasure means that judgments of virtue are judgments of
taste, no less than judgments of beauty. But pleasure in the beautiful
is not self-interested: we judge objects to be beautiful whether or
not we believe them to serve our interests. But if pleasure in the
beautiful is disinterested, there is no reason to think that pleasure
in the virtuous cannot also be (Hutcheson 1725, 9-10).
The eighteenth-century view that judgments of virtue are judgments of
taste highlights a difference between the eighteenth-century concept
of taste and our concept of the aesthetic, since for us the concepts
*aesthetic* and *moral* tend oppose one another such
that a judgment's falling under one typically precludes its
falling under the other. Kant is chiefly responsible for introducing
this difference. He brought the moral and the aesthetic into
opposition by re-interpreting what we might call *the disinterest
thesis*--the thesis that pleasure in the beautiful is
disinterested (though see Cooper 1711, 222 and Home 2005, 36-38
for anticipations of Kant's re-interpretation).
According to Kant, to say that a pleasure is interested is not to say
that it is self-interested in the Hobbesian sense, but rather that it
stands in a certain relation to the faculty of desire. The pleasure
involved in judging an action to be morally good is interested because
such a judgment issues in a desire to bring the action into existence,
i.e., to perform it. To judge an action to be morally good is to
become aware that one has a duty to perform the action, and to become
so aware is to gain a desire to perform it. By contrast, the pleasure
involved in judging an object to be beautiful is disinterested because
such a judgment issues in no desire to do anything in particular. If
we can be said to have a duty with regard to beautiful things, it
appears to be exhausted in our judging them aesthetically to be
beautiful. That is what Kant means when he says that the judgment of
taste is not practical but rather "merely contemplative"
(Kant 1790, 95).
By thus re-orienting the notion of disinterest, Kant brought the
concept of taste into opposition with the concept of morality, and so
into line, more or less, with the present concept of the aesthetic.
But if the Kantian concept of taste is continuous, more or less, with
the present-day concept of the aesthetic, why the terminological
discontinuity? Why have we come to prefer the term
'aesthetic' to the term 'taste'? The not very
interesting answer appears to be that we have preferred an adjective
to a noun. The term 'aesthetic' derives from the Greek
term for sensory perception, and so preserves the implication of
immediacy carried by the term 'taste.' Kant employed both
terms, though not equivalently: according to his usage,
'aesthetic' is broader, picking out a class of judgments
that includes both the normative judgment of taste and the
non-normative, though equally immediate, judgment of the agreeable.
Though Kant was not the first modern to use 'aesthetic'
(Baumgarten had used it as early as 1735), the term became widespread
only, though quickly, after his employment of it in the third
Critique. Yet the employment that became widespread was not exactly
Kant's, but a narrower one according to which
'aesthetic' simply functions as an adjective corresponding
to the noun "taste." So for example we find Coleridge, in
1821, expressing the wish that he "could find a more familiar
word than aesthetic for works of taste and criticism," before
going on to argue:
>
> As our language ... contains no other *useable* adjective,
> to express coincidence of form, feeling, and intellect, that
> something, which, confirming the inner and the outward senses, becomes
> a new sense in itself ... there is reason to hope, that the term
> *aesthetic*, will be brought into common use. (Coleridge 1821,
> 254)
>
The availability of an adjective corresponding to "taste"
has allowed for the retiring of a series of awkward expressions: the
expressions "judgment of taste," "emotion of
taste" and "quality of taste" have given way to the
arguably less offensive 'aesthetic judgment,'
'aesthetic emotion,' and 'aesthetic quality.'
However, as the noun 'taste' phased out, we became saddled
with other perhaps equally awkward expressions, including the one that
names this entry.
## 2. The Concept of the Aesthetic
Much of the history of more recent thinking about the concept of the
aesthetic can be seen as the history of the development of the
immediacy and disinterest theses.
### 2.1 Aesthetic Objects
Artistic formalism is the view that the artistically relevant
properties of an artwork--the properties in virtue of which it is
an artwork and in virtue of which it is a good or bad one--are
formal merely, where formal properties are typically regarded as
properties graspable by sight or by hearing merely. Artistic formalism
has been taken to follow from both the immediacy and the disinterest
theses (Binkley 1970, 266-267; Carroll 2001, 20-40). If
you take the immediacy thesis to imply the artistic irrelevance of all
properties whose grasping requires the use of reason, and you include
representational properties in that class, then you are apt to think
that the immediacy thesis implies artistic formalism. If you take the
disinterest thesis to imply the artistic irrelevance of all properties
capable of practical import, and you include representational
properties in that class, then you are apt to think that the
disinterest thesis implies artistic formalism.
This is not to suggest that the popularity enjoyed by artistic
formalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries owed mainly to
its inference from the immediacy or disinterest theses. The most
influential advocates of formalism during this period were
professional critics, and their formalism derived, at least in part,
from the artistic developments with which they were concerned. As a
critic Eduard Hanslick advocated for the pure music of Mozart,
Beethoven, Schumann, and later Brahms, and against the dramatically
impure music of Wagner; as a theorist he urged that music has no
content but "tonally moving forms" (Hanslick 1986, 29). As
a critic Clive Bell was an early champion of the post-Impressionists,
especially Cezanne; as a theorist he maintained that the formal
properties of painting--"relations and combinations of
lines and colours"--alone have artistic relevance (Bell
1958, 17-18). As a critic Clement Greenberg was abstract
expressionism's ablest defender; as a theorist he held
painting's "proper area of competence" to be
exhausted by flatness, pigment, and shape (Greenberg 1986,
86-87).
Not every influential defender of formalism has also been a
professional critic. Monroe Beardsley, who arguably gave formalism its
most sophisticated articulation, was not (Beardsley 1958). Nor is Nick
Zangwill, who recently has mounted a spirited and resourceful defense
of a moderate version of formalism (Zangwill 2001). But formalism has
always been sufficiently motivated by art-critical data that once
Arthur Danto made the case that the data no longer supported it, and
perhaps never really had, formalism's heyday came to an end.
Inspired in particular by Warhol's *Brillo Boxes*, which
are (more or less) perceptually indistinguishable from the
brand-printed cartons in which boxes of Brillo were delivered to
supermarkets, Danto observed that for most any artwork it is possible
to imagine both (a) another object that is perceptually indiscernible
from it but which is not an artwork, and (b) another artwork that is
perceptually indiscernible from it but which differs in artistic
value. From these observations he concluded that form alone neither
makes an artwork nor gives it whatever value it has (Danto 1981,
94-95; Danto 1986, 30-31; Danto 1997, 91).
But Danto has taken the possibility of such perceptual indiscernibles
to show the limitations not merely of form but also of aesthetics, and
he has done so on the grounds, apparently, that the formal and the
aesthetic are co-extensive. Regarding a urinal Duchamp once exhibited
and a perceptual indiscernible ordinary urinal, Danto maintains
that
>
> aesthetics could not explain why one was a work of fine art and the
> other not, since for all practical purposes they were aesthetically
> indiscernible: if one was beautiful, the other one had to be
> beautiful, since they looked just alike. (Danto 2003, 7)
>
But the inference from the limits of the artistically formal to the
limits of the artistically aesthetic is presumably only as strong as
the inferences from the immediacy and disinterest theses to artistic
formalism, and these are not beyond question. The inference from the
disinterest thesis appears to go through only if you employ a stronger
notion of disinterest than the one Kant understands himself to be
employing: Kant, it is worth recalling, regards poetry as the highest
of the fine arts precisely because of its capacity to employ
representational content in the expression of what he calls
'aesthetic ideas' (Kant 1790, 191-194; see Costello
2008 and 2013 for extended treatment of the capacity of Kantian
aesthetics to accommodate conceptual art). The inference from the
immediacy thesis appears to go through only if you employ a notion of
immediacy stronger than the one Hume, for example, takes himself to be
defending when he claims (in a passage quoted in section1.1) that
"in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the fine arts,
it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper
sentiment" (Hume 1751, 173). It may be that artistic formalism
results if you push either of the tendencies embodied in the immediacy
and disinterest theses to extremes. It may be that the history of
aesthetics from the 18th century to the mid-Twentieth is largely the
history of pushing those two tendencies to extremes. It does not
follow that those tendencies must be so pushed.
Consider Warhol's *Brillo Boxes*. Danto is right to
maintain that the eighteenth-century theorist of taste would not know
how to regard it as an artwork. But this is because the
eighteenth-century theorist of taste lives in the 18th century, and so
would be unable to situate that work in its twentieth-century
art-historical context, and not because the kind of theory she holds
forbids her from situating a work in its art-historical context. When
Hume, for instance, observes that artists address their works to
particular, historically-situated audiences, and that a critic
therefore "must place herself in the same situation as the
audience" to whom a work is addressed (Hume 1757, 239), he is
allowing that artworks are cultural products, and that the properties
that works have as the cultural products they are are among the
"ingredients of the composition" that a critic must grasp
if she is to feel the proper sentiment. Nor does there seem to be
anything in the celebrated conceptuality of *Brillo Boxes*, nor
of any other conceptual work, that ought to give the
eighteenth-century theorist pause. Francis Hutcheson asserts that
mathematical and scientific theorems are objects of taste (Hutcheson
1725, 36-41). Alexander Gerard asserts that scientific
discoveries and philosophical theories are objects of taste (Gerard
1757, 6). Neither argues for his assertion. Both regard it as
commonplace that objects of intellect may be objects of taste as
readily as objects of sight and hearing may be. Why should the
present-day aesthetic theorist think otherwise? If an object is
conceptual in nature, grasping its nature will require intellectual
work. If grasping an object's conceptual nature requires
situating it art-historically, then the intellectual work required to
grasp its nature will include situating it art-historically.
But--as Hume and Reid held (see section 1.1)--grasping the
nature of an object preparatory to aesthetically judging it is one
thing; aesthetically judging the object once grasped is another.
Though Danto has been the most influential and persistent critic of
formalism, his criticisms are no more decisive than those advanced by
Kendall Walton in his essay "Categories of Art."
Walton's anti-formalist argument hinges on two main theses, one
psychological and one philosophical. According to the psychological
thesis, which aesthetic properties we perceive a work as having
depends on which category we perceive the work as belonging to.
Perceived as belonging to the category of painting, Picasso's
*Guernica* will be perceived as "violent, dynamic, vital,
disturbing" (Walton 1970, 347). But perceived as belonging to
the category of "guernicas"--where guernicas are
works with "surfaces with the colors and shapes of
Picasso's *Guernica*, but the surfaces are molded to
protrude from the wall like relief maps of different kinds of
terrain"--Picasso's *Guernica* will be
perceived not as violent and dynamic, but as "cold, stark,
lifeless, or serene and restful, or perhaps bland, dull, boring"
(Walton 1970, 347). That Picasso's *Guernica* can be
perceived both as violent and dynamic and as not violent and not
dynamic might be thought to imply that there is no fact of the matter
whether it is violent and dynamic. But this implication holds only on
the assumption that there is no fact of the matter which category
Picasso's *Guernica* actually belongs to, and this
assumption appears to be false given that Picasso intended that
*Guernica* be a painting and did not intend that it be a
guernica, and that the category of paintings was well-established in
the society in which Picasso painted it while the category of
guernicas was not. Hence the philosophical thesis, according to which
the aesthetic properties a work actually has are those it is perceived
as having when perceived as belonging to the category (or categories)
it actually belongs to. Since the properties of having been intended
to be a painting and having been created in a society in which
painting is well-established category are artistically relevant though
not graspable merely by seeing (or hearing) the work, it seems that
artistic formalism cannot be true. "I do not deny," Walton
concludes, "that paintings and sonatas are to be judged solely
on what can be seen or heard in them--when they are perceived
correctly. But examining a work with the senses can by itself reveal
neither how it is correct to perceive it, nor how to perceive it that
way" (Walton 1970, 367).
But if we cannot judge which aesthetic properties paintings and
sonatas have without consulting the intentions and the societies of
the artists who created them, what of the aesthetic properties of
natural items? With respect to them it may appear as if there is
nothing to consult except the way they look and sound, so that an
aesthetic formalism about nature must be true. Allen Carlson, a
central figure in the burgeoning field of the aesthetics of nature,
argues against this appearance. Carlson observes that Walton's
psychological thesis readily transfers from works of art to natural
items: that we perceive Shetland ponies as cute and charming and
Clydesdales as lumbering surely owes to our perceiving them as
belonging to the category of horses (Carlson 1981, 19). He also
maintains that the philosophical thesis transfers: whales actually
have the aesthetic properties we perceive them as having when we
perceive them as mammals, and do not actually have any contrasting
aesthetic properties we might perceive them to have when we perceive
them as fish. If we ask what determines which category or categories
natural items actually belong to, the answer, according to Carlson, is
their natural histories as discovered by natural science (Carlson
1981, 21-22). Inasmuch as a natural item's natural history
will tend not to be graspable by merely seeing or hearing it,
formalism is no truer of natural items than it is of works of art.
The claim that Walton's psychological thesis transfers to
natural items has been widely accepted (and was in fact anticipated,
as Carlson acknowledges, by Ronald Hepburn (Hepburn 1966 and 1968)).
The claim that Walton's philosophical thesis transfers to
natural items has proven more controversial. Carlson is surely right
that aesthetic judgments about natural items are prone to be mistaken
insofar as they result from perceptions of those items as belonging to
categories to which they do not belong, and, insofar as determining
which categories natural items actually belong to requires scientific
investigation, this point seems sufficient to undercut the
plausibility of any very strong formalism about nature (see Carlson
1979 for independent objections against such formalism). Carlson,
however, also wishes to establish that aesthetic judgments about
natural items have whatever objectivity aesthetic judgments about
works of art do, and it is controversial whether Walton's
philosophical claim transfers sufficiently to support such a claim.
One difficulty, raised by Malcolm Budd (Budd 2002 and 2003) and Robert
Stecker (Stecker1997c), is that since there are many categories in
which a given natural item may correctly be perceived, it is unclear
which correct category is the one in which the item is perceived as
having the aesthetic properties it actually has. Perceived as
belonging to the category of Shetland ponies, a large Shetland pony
may be perceived as lumbering; perceived as belonging to the category
of horses, the same pony may be perceived as cute and charming but
certainly not lumbering. If the Shetland pony were a work of art, we
might appeal to the intentions (or society) of its creator to
determine which correct category is the one that fixes its aesthetic
character. But as natural items are not human creations they can give
us no basis for deciding between equally correct but aesthetically
contrasting categorizations. It follows, according to Budd, "the
aesthetic appreciation of nature is endowed with a freedom denied to
the appreciation of art" (Budd 2003, 34), though this is perhaps
merely another way of saying that the aesthetic appreciation of art is
endowed with an objectivity denied to the appreciation of nature.
### 2.2 Aesthetic Judgment
The eighteenth-century debate between rationalists and theorists of
taste (or sentimentalists) was primarily a debate over the immediacy
thesis, i.e., over whether we judge objects to be beautiful by
applying principles of beauty to them. It was not primarily a debate
over the existence of principles of beauty, a matter over which
theorists of taste might disagree. Kant denied that there are any such
principles (Kant 1790, 101), but both Hutcheson and Hume affirmed
their existence: they maintained that although judgments of beauty are
judgments of taste and not of reason, taste nevertheless operates
according to general principles, which might be discovered through
empirical investigation (Hutcheson 1725, 28-35; Hume 1757,
231-233).
It is tempting to think of recent debate in aesthetics between
particularists and generalists as a revival of the eighteenth-century
debate between rationalists and theorists of taste. But the accuracy
of this thought is difficult to gauge. One reason is that it is often
unclear whether particularists and generalists take themselves merely
to be debating the existence of aesthetic principles or to be debating
their employment in aesthetic judgment. Another is that, to the degree
particularists and generalists take themselves to be debating the
employment of aesthetic principles in aesthetic judgment, it is hard
to know what they can be meaning by 'aesthetic judgment.'
If 'aesthetic' still carries its eighteenth-century
implication of immediacy, then the question under debate is whether
judgment that is immediate is immediate. If 'aesthetic' no
longer carries that implication, then it is hard to know what question
is under debate because it is hard to know what aesthetic judgment
could be. It may be tempting to think that we can simply re-define
'aesthetic judgment' such that it refers to any judgment
in which an aesthetic property is predicated of an object. But this
requires being able to say what an aesthetic property is without
reference to its being immediately graspable, something no one seems
to have done. It may seem that we can simply re-define
'aesthetic judgment' such that it refers to any judgment
in which any property of the class exemplified by beauty is predicated
of an object. But which class is this? The classes exemplified by
beauty are presumably endless, and the difficulty is to specify the
relevant class without reference to the immediate graspability of its
members, and that is what no one seems to have done.
However we are to sort out the particularist/generalist debate,
important contributions to it include, on the side of particularism,
Arnold Isenberg's "Critical Communication" (1949)
Frank Sibley's "Aesthetic Concepts" (in Sibley 2001)
and Mary Mothersill's *Beauty Restored* (1984) and, on
the side of generalism, Monroe Beardsley's *Aesthetics*
(1958) and "On the Generality of Critical Reasons" (1962),
Sibley's "General Reasons and Criteria in
Aesthetics" (in Sibley 2001), George Dickie's
*Evaluating Art* (1987), Stephen Davies's "Replies
to Arguments Suggesting that Critics' Strong Evaluations Could
not be Soundly Deduced" (1995), and John Bender's
"General but Defeasible Reasons in Aesthetic Evaluation: The
Generalist/Particularist Dispute" (1995). Of these, the papers
by Isenberg and Sibley have arguably enjoyed the greatest
influence.
Isenberg concedes that we often appeal to descriptive features of
works in support of our judgments of their value, and he allows that
this may make it seem as if we must be appealing to principles in
making those judgments. If in support of a favorable judgment of some
painting a critic appeals to the wavelike contour formed by the
figures clustered in its foreground, it may seem as if his judgment
must involve tacit appeal to the principle that any painting having
such a contour is so much the better. But Isenberg argues that this
cannot be, since no one agrees to any such principle:
>
> There is not in all the world's criticism a single purely
> descriptive statement concerning which one is prepared to say
> beforehand, 'If it is true, I shall like that work so much the
> better' (Isenberg 1949, 338).
>
But if in appealing to the descriptive features of a work we are not
acknowledging tacit appeals to principles linking those features to
aesthetic value, what are we doing? Isenberg believes we are offering
"directions for perceiving" the work, i.e., by singling
out certain its features, we are "narrow[ing] down the field of
possible visual orientations" and thereby guiding others in
"the discrimination of details, the organization of parts, the
grouping of discrete objects into patterns" (Isenberg 1949,
336). In this way we get others to see what we have seen, rather than
getting them to infer what we have inferred.
That Sibley advances a variety of particularism in one paper and a
variety of generalism in another will give the appearance of
inconsistency where there is none: Sibley is a particularist of one
sort, and with respect to one distinction, and a generalist of another
sort with respect to another distinction. Isenberg, as noted, is a
particularist with respect to the distinction between descriptions and
verdicts, i.e., he maintains that there are no principles by which we
may infer from value-neutral descriptions of works to judgments of
their overall value. Sibley's particularism and generalism, by
contrast, both have to do with judgments falling in between
descriptions and verdicts. With respect to a distinction between
descriptions and a set of judgments intermediate between descriptions
and verdicts, Sibley is straightforwardly particularist. With respect
to a distinction between a set of judgments intermediate between
descriptions and verdicts and verdicts, Sibley is a kind of generalist
and describes himself as such.
Sibley's generalism, as set forth in "General Reasons and
Criteria in Aesthetics," begins with the observation that the
properties to which we appeal in justification of favorable verdicts
are not all descriptive or value-neutral. We also appeal to properties
that are inherently positive, such as grace, balance, dramatic
intensity, or comicality. To say that a property is inherently
positive is not to say that any work having it is so much the better,
but rather that its *tout court* attribution implies value. So
although a work may be made worse on account of its comical elements,
the simple claim that a work is good because comical is intelligible
in a way that the simple claims that a work is good because yellow, or
because it lasts twelve minutes, or because it contains many puns, are
not. But if the simple claim that a work is good because comical is
thus intelligible, comicality is a general criterion for aesthetic
value, and the principle that articulates that generality is true. But
none of this casts any doubt on the immediacy thesis, as Sibley
himself observes:
>
> I have argued elsewhere that there are no sure-fire rules by which,
> referring to the neutral and non-aesthetic qualities of things, one
> can infer that something is balanced, tragic, comic, joyous, and so
> on. One has to look and see. Here, equally, at a different level, I am
> saying that there are no sure-fire mechanical rules or procedures for
> deciding which qualities are actual defects in the work; one has to
> judge for oneself. (Sibley 2001, 107-108)
>
The "elsewhere" referred to in the first sentence is
Sibley's earlier paper, "Aesthetic Concepts," which
argues that the application of concepts such as
'balanced,' 'tragic,' 'comic,' or
'joyous' is not a matter of determining whether the
descriptive (i.e., non-aesthetic) conditions for their application are
met, but is rather a matter of taste. Hence aesthetic judgments are
immediate in something like the way that judgments of color, or of
flavor, are:
>
> We see that a book is red by looking, just as we tell that the tea is
> sweet by tasting it. So too, it might be said, we just see (or fail to
> see) that things are delicate, balanced, and the like. This kind of
> comparison between the exercise of taste and the use of the five
> senses is indeed familiar; our use of the word 'taste'
> itself shows that the comparison is age-old and very natural (Sibley
> 2001, 13-14).
>
But Sibley recognizes--as his eighteenth-century forebears did
and his formalist contemporaries did not--that important
differences remain between the exercise of taste and the use of the
five senses. Central among these is that we offer reasons, or
something like them, in support of our aesthetic judgments: by
talking--in particular, by appealing to the descriptive
properties on which the aesthetic properties depend--we justify
aesthetic judgments by bringing others to see what we have seen
(Sibley 2001, 14-19).
It is unclear to what degree Sibley, beyond seeking to establish that
the application of aesthetic concepts is not condition-governed, seeks
also to define the term 'aesthetic' in terms of their not
being so. It is clearer, perhaps, that he does not succeed in defining
the term this way, whatever his intentions. Aesthetic concepts are not
alone in being non-condition-governed, as Sibley himself recognizes in
comparing them with color concepts. But there is also no reason to
think them alone in being non-condition-governed while also being
reason-supportable, since moral concepts, to give one example, at
least arguably also have both these features. Isolating the aesthetic
requires something more than immediacy, as Kant saw. It requires
something like the Kantian notion of disinterest, or at least
something to play the role played by that notion in Kant's
theory.
Given the degree to which Kant and Hume continue to influence thinking
about aesthetic judgment (or critical judgment, more broadly), given
the degree to which Sibley and Isenberg continue to abet that
influence, it is not surprising that the immediacy thesis is now very
widely received. The thesis, however, has come under attack, notably
by Davies (1990) and Bender (1995). (See also Carroll (2009), who
follows closely after Davies (1990), and Dorsch (2013) for further
discussion.)
Isenberg, it will be recalled, maintains that if the critic is arguing
for her verdict, her argumentation must go something as follows:
1. Artworks having *p* are better for having *p*.
2. *W* is an artwork having *p*.
3. Therefore, *W* is so much the better for having
*p*.
Since the critical principle expressed in premise 1 is open to
counter-example, no matter what property we substitute for p, Isenberg
concludes that we cannot plausibly interpret the critic as arguing for
her verdict. Rather than defend the principle expressed in premise 1,
Davies and Bender both posit alternative principles, consistent with
the fact that no property is good-making in all artworks, which they
ascribe to the critic. Davies proposes that we interpret the critic as
arguing deductively from principles relativized to artistic type, that
is, from principles holding that artworks of a specific types or
categories--Italian Renaissance paintings, romantic symphonies,
Hollywood Westerns, etc.--having p are better for having it
(Davies 1990, 174). Bender proposes that we interpret the critic as
arguing inductively from principles expressing mere tendencies that
hold between certain properties and artworks--principles, in
other words, holding that artworks having p tend to be better for
having it (Bender 1995, 386).
Each proposal has its own weaknesses and strengths. A problem with
Bender's approach is that critics do not seem to couch their
verdicts in probabilistic terms. Were a critic to say that a work is
likely to be good, or almost certainly good, or even that she has the
highest confidence that it must be good, her language would suggest
that she had not herself experienced the work, perhaps that she had
judged the work on the basis of someone else's testimony, hence
that she is no critic at all. We would therefore have good reason to
prefer Davies's deductive approach if only we had good reason
for thinking that relativizing critical principles to artistic type
removed the original threat of counterexample. Though it is clear that
such relativizing reduces the relative number of counterexamples, we
need good reason for thinking that it reduces that number to zero, and
Davies provides no such reason. Bender's inductive approach, by
contrast, cannot be refuted by counterexample, but only by
counter-tendency.
If the critic argues from the truth of a principle to the truth of a
verdict--as Davies and Bender both contend--it must be
possible for her to establish the truth of the principle before
establishing the truth of the verdict. How might she do this? It seems
unlikely that mere reflection on the nature of art, or on the natures
of types of art, could yield up the relevant lists of good- and
bad-making properties. At least the literature has yet to produce a
promising account as to how this might be done. Observation therefore
seems the most promising answer. To say that the critic establishes
the truth of critical principles on the basis of observation, however,
is to say that she establishes a correlation between certain artworks
she has already established to be good and certain properties she has
already established those works to have. But then any capacity to
establish that works are good by inference from principles evidently
depends on some capacity to establish that works are good without any
such inference, and the question arises why the critic should prefer
to do by inference what she can do perfectly well without. The answer
cannot be that judging by inference from principle yields
epistemically better results, since a principle based on observations
can be no more epistemically sound than the observations on which it
is based.
None of this shows that aesthetic or critical judgment could never be
inferred from principles. It does however suggest that such judgment
is first and foremost non-inferential, which is what the immediacy
thesis holds.
### 2.3 The Aesthetic Attitude
The Kantian notion of disinterest has its most direct recent
descendents in the aesthetic-attitude theories that flourished from
the early to mid 20th century. Though Kant followed the British in
applying the term 'disinterested' strictly to pleasures,
its migration to attitudes is not difficult to explain. For Kant the
pleasure involved in a judgment of taste is disinterested because such
a judgment does not issue in a motive to do anything in particular.
For this reason Kant refers to the judgment of taste as contemplative
rather than practical (Kant 1790, 95). But if the judgment of taste is
not practical, then the attitude we bear toward its object is
presumably also not practical: when we judge an object aesthetically
we are unconcerned with whether and how it may further our practical
aims. Hence it is natural to speak of our attitude toward the object
as disinterested.
To say, however, that the migration of disinterest from pleasures to
attitudes is natural is not to say that it is inconsequential.
Consider the difference between Kant's aesthetic theory, the
last great theory of taste, and Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory,
the first great aesthetic-attitude theory. Whereas for Kant
disinterested pleasure is the means by which we discover things to
bear aesthetic value, for Schopenhauer disinterested attention (or
"will-less contemplation") is itself the locus of
aesthetic value. According to Schopenhauer, we lead our ordinary,
practical lives in a kind of bondage to our own desires (Schopenhauer
1819, 196). This bondage is a source not merely of pain but also of
cognitive distortion in that it restricts our attention to those
aspects of things relevant to the fulfilling or thwarting of our
desires. Aesthetic contemplation, being will-less, is therefore both
epistemically and hedonically valuable, allowing us a desire-free
glimpse into the essences of things as well as a respite from
desire-induced pain:
>
> When, however, an external cause or inward disposition suddenly raises
> us out of the endless stream of willing, and snatches knowledge from
> the thralldom of the will, the attention is now no longer directed to
> the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their
> relation to the will ... Then all at once the peace, always
> sought but always escaping us ... comes to us of its own accord,
> and all is well with us. (Schopenhauer 1819, 196)
>
The two most influential aesthetic-attitude theories of the 20th
century are those of Edward Bullough and Jerome Stolnitz. According to
Stolnitz's theory, which is the more straightforward of the two,
bearing an aesthetic attitude toward an object is a matter of
attending to it disinterestedly and sympathetically, where to attend
to it disinterestedly is to attend to it with no purpose beyond that
of attending to it, and to attend to it sympathetically is to
"accept it on its own terms," allowing it, and not
one's own preconceptions, to guide one's attention of it
(Stolnitz 1960, 32-36). The result of such attention is a
comparatively richer experience of the object, i.e., an experience
taking in comparatively many of the object's features. Whereas a
practical attitude limits and fragments the object of our experience,
allowing us to "see only those of its features which are
relevant to our purposes,.... By contrast, the aesthetic attitude
'isolates' the object and focuses upon it--the
'look' of the rocks, the sound of the ocean, the colors in
the painting." (Stolnitz 1960, 33, 35).
Bullough, who prefers to speak of "psychical distance"
rather than disinterest, characterizes aesthetic appreciation as
something achieved
>
> by putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear with our actual
> practical self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our
> personal needs and ends--in short, by looking at it
> 'objectively' ... by permitting only such reactions
> on our part as emphasise the 'objective features of the
> experience, and by interpreting even our 'subjective'
> affections not as modes of *our* being but rather as
> characteristics of the phenomenon. (Bullough 1995, 298-299;
> emphasis in original).
>
Bullough has been criticized for claiming that aesthetic appreciation
requires dispassionate detachment:
>
> Bullough's characterization of the aesthetic attitude is the
> easiest to attack. When we cry at a tragedy, jump in fear at a horror
> movie, or lose ourselves in the plot of a complex novel, we cannot be
> said to be detached, although we may be appreciating the aesthetic
> qualities of these works to the fullest... . And we can
> appreciate the aesthetic properties of the fog or storm while fearing
> the dangers they present. (Goldman 2005, 264)
>
But such a criticism seems to overlook a subtlety of Bullough's
view. While Bullough does hold that aesthetic appreciation requires
distance "between our own self and its affections"
(Bullough 1995, 298), he does not take this to require that we not
undergo affections but quite the opposite: only if we undergo
affections have we affections from which to be distanced. So, for
example, the properly distanced spectator of a well-constructed
tragedy is not the "over-distanced" spectator who feels no
pity or fear, nor the "under-distanced" spectator who
feels pity and fear as she would to an actual, present catastrophe,
but the spectator who interprets the pity and fear she feels
"not as modes of [her] being but rather as characteristics of
the phenomenon" (Bullough 1995, 299). The properly distanced
spectator of a tragedy, we might say, understands her fear and pity to
be part of what tragedy is about.
The notion of the aesthetic attitude has been attacked from all
corners and has very few remaining sympathizers. George Dickie is
widely regarded as having delivered the decisive blow in his essay
"The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude" (Dickie 1964) by
arguing that all purported examples of interested attention are really
just examples of inattention. So consider the case of the spectator at
a performance of *Othello* who becomes increasingly suspicious
of his own wife as the action proceeds, or the case of the impresario
who sits gauging the size of the audience, or the case of the father
who sits taking pride in his daughter's performance, or the case
of the moralist who sits gauging the moral effects the play is apt to
produce in its audience. These and all such cases will be regarded by
the attitude theorist as cases of interested attention to the
performance, when they are actually nothing but cases of inattention
to the performance: the jealous husband is attending to his wife, the
impresario to the till, the father to his daughter, the moralist to
the effects of the play. But if none of them is attending to the
performance, then none of them is attending to it interestedly (Dickie
1964, 57-59).
The attitude theorist, however, can plausibly resist Dickie's
interpretation of such examples. Clearly the impresario is not
attending to the performance, but there is no reason to regard the
attitude theorist as committed to thinking otherwise. As for the
others, it might be argued that they are all attending. The jealous
husband must be attending to the performance, since it is the action
of the play, as presented by the performance, that is making him
suspicious. The proud father must be attending to the performance,
since he is attending to his daughter's performance, which is an
element of it. The moralist must be attending to the performance,
since he otherwise would have no basis by which to gauge its moral
effects on the audience. It may be that none of these spectators is
giving the performance the attention it demands, but that is precisely
the attitude theorist's point.
But perhaps another of Dickie's criticisms, one lesser known,
ultimately poses a greater threat to the ambitions of the attitude
theorist. Stolnitz, it will be recalled, distinguishes between
disinterested and interested attention according to the purpose
governing the attention: to attend disinterestedly is to attend with
no purpose beyond that of attending; to attend interestedly is to
attend with some purpose beyond that of attending. But Dickie objects
that a difference in purpose does not imply a difference in
attention:
>
> Suppose Jones listens to a piece of music for the purpose of being
> able to analyze and describe it on an examination the next day and
> Smith listens to the same music with no such ulterior purpose. There
> is certainly a difference in the motives and intentions of the two
> men: Jones has an ulterior purpose and Smith does not, but this does
> not mean Jones's *listening* differs from Smith's
> ... . There is only one way to *listen* to (to attend to)
> music, although there may be a variety of motives, intentions, and
> reasons for doing so and a variety of ways of being distracted from
> the music. (Dickie 1964, 58).
>
There is again much here that the attitude theorist can resist. The
idea that listening is a species of attending can be resisted: the
question at hand, strictly speaking, is not whether Jones and Smith
*listen* to the music in the same way, but whether they
*attend* in the same way to the music they are listening to.
The contention that Jones and Smith are attending in the same way
appears to be question-begging, as it evidently depends on a principle
of individuation that the attitude theorist rejects: if Jones's
attention is governed by some ulterior purpose and Smith's is
not, and we individuate attention according to the purpose that
governs it, their attention is not the same. Finally, even if we
reject the attitude theorist's principle of individuation, the
claim that there is but one way to attend to music is doubtful: one
can seemingly attend to music in myriad ways--as historical
document, as cultural artifact, as aural wallpaper, as sonic
disturbance--depending on which of the music's features one
attends to in listening to it. But Dickie is nevertheless onto
something crucial to the degree he urges that a difference in purpose
need not imply a *relevant* difference in attention.
Disinterest plausibly figures in the definition of the aesthetic
attitude only to the degree that it, and it alone, focuses attention
on the features of the object that matter aesthetically. The
possibility that there are interests that focus attention on just
those same features implies that disinterest has no place in such a
definition, which in turn implies that neither it nor the notion of
the aesthetic attitude is likely to be of any use in fixing the
meaning of the term 'aesthetic.' If to take the aesthetic
attitude toward an object simply is to attend to its aesthetically
relevant properties, whether the attention is interested or
disinterested, then determining whether an attitude is aesthetic
apparently requires first determining which properties are the
aesthetically relevant ones. And this task seems always to result
either in claims about the immediate graspability of aesthetic
properties, which are arguably insufficient to the task, or in claims
about the essentially formal nature of aesthetic properties, which are
arguably groundless.
But that the notions of disinterest and psychical distance prove
unhelpful in fixing the meaning of the term 'aesthetic'
does not imply that they are mythic. At times we seem unable to get by
without them. Consider the case of *The Fall of
Miletus*--a tragedy written by the Greek dramatist Phrynicus
and staged in Athens barely two years after the violent Persian
capture of the Greek city of Miletus in 494 BC. Herodotus records
that
>
> [the Athenians] found many ways to express their sorrow at the fall of
> Miletus, and in particular, when Phrynicus composed and produced a
> play called *The Fall of Miletus*, the audience burst into
> tears and fined him a thousand drachmas for reminding them of a
> disaster that was so close to home; future productions of the play
> were also banned. (Herodotus, *The Histories*, 359)
>
How are we to explain the Athenian reaction to this play without
recourse to something like interest or lack of distance? How, in
particular, are we to explain the difference between the sorrow
elicited by a successful tragedy and the sorrow elicited in this case?
The distinction between attention and inattention is of no use here.
The difference is not that the Athenians could not attend to *The
Fall* whereas they could attend to other plays. The difference is
that they could not attend to *The Fall* as they could attend
to other plays, and this because of their too intimate connection to
what attending to *The Fall* required their attending to.
### 2.4 Aesthetic Experience
Theories of aesthetic experience may be divided into two kinds
according to the kind of feature appealed to in explanation of what
makes experience aesthetic: *internalist theories* appeal to
features internal to experience, typically to phenomenological
features, whereas *externalist theories* appeal to features
external to the experience, typically to features of the object
experienced. (The distinction between internalist and externalist
theories of aesthetic experience is similar, though not identical, to
the distinction between phenomenal and epistemic conceptions of
aesthetic experience drawn by Gary Iseminger (Iseminger 2003, 100, and
Iseminger 2004, 27, 36)). Though internalist
theories--particularly John Dewey's (1934) and Monroe
Beardsley's (1958)--predominated during the early and
middle parts of the 20th century, externalist theories--including
Beardsley's (1982) and George Dickie's (1988)--have
been in the ascendance since. Beardsley's views on aesthetic
experience make a strong claim on our attention, given that Beardsley
might be said to have authored the culminating internalist theory as
well as the founding externalist one. Dickie's criticisms of
Beardsley's internalism make an equally strong claim, since they
moved Beardsley--and with him most everyone else--from
internalism toward externalism.
According to the version of internalism Beardsley advances in
his *Aesthetics* (1958), all aesthetic experiences
have in common three or four (depending on how you count) features,
which "some writers have [discovered] through acute
introspection, and which each of us can test in his own
experience" (Beardsley 1958, 527). These are focus ("an
aesthetic experience is one in which attention is firmly fixed upon
[its object]"), intensity, and unity, where unity is a matter of
coherence and of completeness (Beardsley 1958, 527). Coherence, in
turn, is a matter of having elements that are properly connected one
to another such that
>
> [o]ne thing leads to another; continuity of development, without gaps
> or dead spaces, a sense of overall providential pattern of guidance,
> an orderly cumulation of energy toward a climax, are present to an
> unusual degree. (Beardsley 1958, 528)
>
Completeness, by contrast, is a matter having elements that
"counterbalance" or "resolve" one another such
that the whole stands apart from elements without it:
>
> The impulses and expectations aroused by elements within the
> experience are felt to be counterbalanced or resolved by other
> elements within the experience, so that some degree of equilibrium or
> finality is achieved and enjoyed. The experience detaches itself, and
> even insulates itself, from the intrusion of alien elements.
> (Beardsley 1958, 528)
>
Dickie's most consequential criticism of Beardsley's
theory is that Beardsley, in describing the phenomenology of aesthetic
experience, has failed to distinguish between the features we
experience aesthetic objects as having and the features aesthetic
experiences themselves have. So while every feature mentioned in
Beardsley's description of the coherence of aesthetic
experience--continuity of development, the absence of gaps, the
mounting of energy toward a climax--surely is a feature we
experience aesthetic objects as having, there is no reason to think of
aesthetic experience itself as having any such features:
>
> Note that everything referred to [in Beardsley's description of
> coherence] is a perceptual characteristic ... and not an effect
> of perceptual characteristics. Thus, no ground is furnished for
> concluding that experience can be unified in the sense of being
> coherent. What is actually argued for is that aesthetic objects are
> coherent, a conclusion which must be granted, but not the one which is
> relevant. (Dickie 1965, 131)
>
Dickie raises a similar worry about Beardsley's description of
the completeness of aesthetic experience:
>
> One can speak of elements being counterbalanced *in the
> painting* and say that the painting is stable, balanced and
> so on, but what does it mean to say
> the *experience* of the spectator of the painting
> is stable or balanced? ... Looking at a painting in some cases
> might aid some persons in coming to feel stable because it might
> distract them from whatever is unsettling them, but such cases are
> atypical of aesthetic appreciation and not relevant to aesthetic
> theory. Aren't characteristics attributable to the painting
> simply being mistakenly shifted to the spectator? (Dickie 1965, 132)
>
Though these objections turned out to be only the beginning of the
debate between Dickie and Beardsley on the nature of aesthetic
experience (See Beardsley 1969, Dickie 1974, Beardsley 1970, and
Dickie 1987; see also Iseminger 2003 for a helpful overview of the
Beardsley-Dickie debate), they nevertheless went a long way toward
shaping that debate, which taken as whole might be seen as the working
out of an answer to the question "What can a theory of aesthetic
experience be that takes seriously the distinction between the
experience of features and the features of experience?" The
answer turned out to be an externalist theory of the sort that
Beardsley advances in the 1970 essay "The Aesthetic Point of
View" and that many others have advanced since: a theory
according to which an aesthetic experience just is an experience
having aesthetic content, i.e., an experience of an object as having
the aesthetic features that it has.
The shift from internalism to externalism has meant that one central
ambition of internalism--that of tying the meaning of
'aesthetic' to features internal to aesthetic
experience--has had to be given up. But a second, equally
central, ambition--that of accounting for aesthetic value by
grounding it in the value of aesthetic experience--has been
retained. The following section takes up the development and prospects
of such accounts.
### 2.5 Aesthetic Value
To count as *complete* a theory of aesthetic value must answer
two questions:
* What makes aesthetic value
aesthetic?
* What makes aesthetic value
value?
The literature refers to the first question sometimes as *the
aesthetic question* (Lopes 2018, 41-43; Shelley 2019, 1) and
sometimes as *the demarcation question* (van der Berg 2020, 2;
Matherne 2020, 315; Peacocke 2021, 165). It refers to the second as
*the normative question* (Lopes 2018, 41-43; Shelley
2019, 1; Matherne 2020, 315).
#### 2.5.1 The Aesthetic Question
The prevailing answer to the aesthetic question is *aesthetic
formalism*, the view that aesthetic value is aesthetic because
objects bear it in virtue of their perceptual properties, where these
encompass visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile
properties. Aesthetic formalism rose to prominence when and because
artistic formalism did, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries
(see Section 5.1). Because everyone then took artistic value to be a
species of aesthetic value, artistic formalism could gain prominence
only by dragging aesthetic formalism in its train. But whereas
artistic formalism has since fallen from favor, aesthetic formalism
has held its ground. The explanation, arguably, has to do with the way
aesthetic formalism honors the conceptual link between the aesthetic
and the perceptual. Any adequate answer to the aesthetic question must
meet what we may call *the perceptual constraint*, that is, it
must plausibly articulate the sense in which aesthetic value is
perceptual. Aesthetic formalism does this in the clearest possible
terms.
Versions of aesthetic formalism come in varying strengths. Its
strongest versions hold objects to have aesthetic value strictly in
virtue of their perceptual properties (Bell 1958/1914; Danto 2003,
92). Weaker versions either allow objects to have aesthetic value in
virtue of their non-perceptual content so long as that content
expresses itself perpetually (Zangwill 1998, 71-72) or require merely
that objects paradigmatically have aesthetic value in virtue of their
perceptual properties (Levinson 1996, 6). All versions of aesthetic
formalism struggle, one way or another, to accommodate our
long-standing practice of ascribing aesthetic value to objects that do
not address themselves primarily to the five bodily senses. Consider
works of literature. We have been ascribing aesthetic value to them
for as long as we have been ascribing aesthetic value to artworks of
any kind. How might the aesthetic theorist square her theory with this
practice? A first approach is simply to dismiss that practice,
regarding its participants as linguistically confused, as applying
terms of aesthetic praise to objects constitutionally incapable of
meriting it (Danto 2003, 92). But given how extremely revisionist this
approach is, we ought to wait on an argument of proportionately
extreme strength before adopting it. A second approach allows that
literary works bear aesthetic value, but only in virtue of their
sensory properties, such as properties associated with assonance,
consonance, rhythm, and imagery (Urmson 1957, 85-86, 88;
Zangwill 2001, 135-140). But this approach accounts for a mere
fraction of the aesthetic value we routinely ascribe to works of
literature. Suppose you praise a short story for the eloquence of its
prose and the beauty of its plot-structure. It seems arbitrary to
count only the eloquence as a genuine instance of aesthetic value. A
third approach treats literary works as exceptional, allowing them,
alone among works of art, to bear aesthetic value in virtue of their
non-perceptual properties (Binkley 1970, 269;Levinson 1996,6 n.9). The difficulty here
is to explain literature's exceptionality. If literary works
somehow bear aesthetic value in virtue of non-perceptual properties,
what prevents non-literary works from doing the same? Moreover, to
whatever degree we allow things to have aesthetic value in virtue of
their non-perceptual properties, to that degree we sever the
connection the formalist asserts between the aesthetic and the
perceptual and so undermine our reason for adopting aesthetic
formalism in the first place.
We might be forced to choose from among these three formalist
approaches to literature if aesthetic formalism constituted the only
plausible articulation of the sense in which aesthetic value is
perceptual, but it doesn't. Instead of holding that aesthetic
value is perceptual because things have it in virtue of their
perpetual properties, one might hold that aesthetic value is
perceptual because we perceive things as having it. This would be a
corollary of the immediacy thesis as defined in Section 1.1. If, as
that thesis holds, aesthetic judgment is perceptual, having all the
immediacy of any standard perceptual judgment, then aesthetic
properties are perceptual, grasped with all the immediacy of standard
perceptual properties. That aesthetic properties are thus perceptual
is Sibley's point in the following:
>
> It is of importance to note first that, broadly speaking, aesthetics
> deals with a kind of perception. People have to *see* the grace
> or unity of a work, *hear* the plaintiveness or frenzy in the
> music, *notice* the gaudiness of a colour scheme, *feel*
> the power of a novel, its mood, or its uncertainty of tone. (Sibley
> 2001, 34, emphasis in original)
>
Sibley says that people have to see the grace or unity of a work and
they have to feel the power of a novel. He doesn't say that they
have to see the properties in virtue of which a work has grace or
unity or feel the properties in virtue of which a novel has power: the
properties in virtue of which a work has grace or unity need not be
perceptual and the properties in virtue of which a novel has power
presumably will not be. Thus the literature problem, over which
formalism stumbles, does not arise for Sibley, nor for anyone else
committed to the immediacy thesis, includingShaftesbury (Cooper 1711, 17, 231), Hutcheson (1725,
16-24), Hume (1751, Section I), and Reid (1785, 760-761),
among others. For the immediacy theorist, the aesthetic value we
ascribe to literary works is aesthetic because we perceive literary
works as bearing it.
#### 2.5.2 The Normative Question
The prevailing answer to the normative question is *aesthetic
hedonism*, the view that aesthetic value is value because things
having it give pleasure when experienced. Aesthetic hedonism achieved
prominence in the 19th century, roughly when aesthetic formalism did.
Schopenhauer played a pivotal role in bringing it to prominence by
reassigning disinterested pleasure from the role it had been playing
in aesthetic judgment to the role of grounding aesthetic value
(Schopenhauer 1818 [1969], 195-200). Bentham (1789, ch. 4) and
Mill (1863 [2001]; ch. 2) arguably played larger roles by popularizing
value hedonism, that is, the view that pleasure is the ground of all
value. But whereas value hedonism no longer holds much sway in ethics,
and Schopenhauer no longer exerts much influence in aesthetics,
aesthetic hedonism has held its ground. The explanation presumably has
to do with the apparent ease with which aesthetic hedonism explains
why we seek out objects of aesthetic value. Any adequate answer to the
normative question must meet what we may call *the normative
constraint*, that is, it must plausibly identify what a
thing's having aesthetic value gives us reason to do. Aesthetic
hedonism, locating that reason in the pleasure taken in experiencing
aesthetically valuable objects, does this in the clearest possible
terms.
Advocates of aesthetic hedonism include Schopenhauer 1818 [1969], Clive
Bell 1914 [1958], C. I. Lewis 1946, Monroe Beardsley 1982, George Dickie
1988, Alan Goldman 1990, Kendall Walton 1993, Malcolm Budd 1995,
Jerrold Levinson 1996, 2002, Gary Iseminger 2004, Robert Stecker 2006,
2019, Nick Stang 2010 and Mohan Matthen 2017. It is only quite
recently that any sustained opposition to hedonism has arisen, a fact
that may go some way toward explaining why hedonists, as a rule, see
no need to argue for their view, opting instead to develop it in light
of objections an imagined opposition might make.
Beardsley, for instance, leads with this simple formulation of
hedonism:
>
> The aesthetic value of an object is the value it possesses in virtue
> of its capacity to provide aesthetic gratification. (Beardsley 1982,
> 21).
>
But he then anticipates a fatal objection. Sometimes we undervalue
aesthetic objects, finding them to have less value than they actually
have; other times we overvalue aesthetic objects, finding them to have
greater value than they actually have. The simple formulation above is
consistent with undervaluation, since it is possible to take less
aesthetic pleasure from an object than it has the capacity to provide,
but inconsistent with overvaluation, since it is impossible to take
greater aesthetic pleasure from an object than it has the capacity to
provide (Beardsley 1982, 26-27). To remedy this problem,
Beardsley appends a rider:
>
> The aesthetic value of [an object] is the value [it] possesses in
> virtue of its capacity to provide aesthetic gratification *when
> correctly and completely experienced* (Beardsley 1982, 27, italics
> in original).
>
Suppose we refer to the italicized portion of this formulation as
*the epistemic qualification* and the non-italicized portion as
*the hedonic thesis*. The epistemic qualification renders the
hedonic thesis consistent with overvaluation, given that you can
misapprehend an object such that you take greater aesthetic pleasure
from it than it has the capacity to provide when apprehended correctly
and completely.
Beardsley's version of aesthetic hedonism has served as a model
for subsequent versions (Levinson 2002, n. 23); at least all
subsequent versions consist of an epistemically qualified hedonic
thesis in some form. Beardsley's version, however, seems open to
counter-example. Consider Tony Morrison's *Beloved*, for
instance, or Cormac McCarthy's *Blood Meridian.* Taking
pleasure from works designed to cause shock, horror, despair, or moral
revulsion may seem perverse; surely, it may seem, such works do not
have whatever aesthetic value they have in virtue of any pleasure they
give. One way to accommodate such cases is to cast aesthetic pleasure
as a higher-order response, that is, a response that depends on
lower-order responses, which in some cases might include shock,
horror, despair, and moral revulsion (Walton 1993, 508; Levinson 1992,
18). Another way is to broaden the field of experiences that may
ground aesthetic value. Though pleasure as a rule grounds aesthetic
value, in exceptional cases certain non-hedonic yet intrinsically
valuable experiences--which may include horror, shock, despair,
and revulsion--may also do so (Levinson 1992, 12; Stecker 2005,
12). The literature refers to this latter, broadened variety of
hedonism as *aesthetic empiricism*; it hasn't settled on
a name for the former variety, but we may call it *tiered
hedonism*, given the varying levels of response it takes aesthetic
experience to comprise.
Yet another objection, anticipated by hedonists, holds hedonism to
imply *the heresy of the separable experience* (Budd 1985,
125). It is a commonplace that for any object bearing aesthetic value
nothing other than it can have just the particular value it has,
excepting the improbable case in which something other than it has
just its particular aesthetic character. The worry is that hedonism,
given that it regards aesthetic value as instrumental to the value of
experience, implies that for any object bearing aesthetic value
something wholly other from it, such as a drug, might induce the same
experience and so serve up the same value. The hedonist's usual
reply is to assert that aesthetic experience is inseparable from its
object, such that for any aesthetic experience, that experience is
just the particular experience it is because it has just the
particular aesthetic object it has (Levinson 1996, 22-23; Budd
1985, 123-124; S. Davies 1994: 315-16; Stang 2012,
271-272).
Actual opposition to hedonism did not materialize until the present
century (Sharpe 2000, Davies 2004), and most all of that during the
past decade or so (Shelley 2010, 2011, 2019; Wolf 2011; Lopes 2015,
2018; Gorodeisky 2021a, 2021b). Why the opposition took so long to
show up is a good question. It is tempting to think its answer resides
in the obvious truth of the hedonist's central premise, namely,
that aesthetically valuable objects please us, at least in general.
Anti-hedonists, however, have taken no interest in denying this
premise. One useful way to think of the dialectic between hedonists
and their opponents is to regard each as grasping one horn of an
aesthetic version of the Euthyphro dilemma, where hedonists hold
things to have aesthetic value because they please and anti-hedonists
hold things to please because they have aesthetic value (Augustine
2005/389-391, *De vera religione* SS59; Gorodeisky
2012a, 201 and 2021b, 262). Seen this way, the fact that aesthetically
valuable things please tells not at all in favor of the hedonist;
indeed, it is precisely this fact that the anti-hedonist thinks the
hedonist cannot explain.
For instance, Wolf, in the context of an extended, nuanced case
against value welfarism, argues that aesthetic hedonism cannot account
for the fact that *Middlemarch* is a better novel than the*Da Vinci Code*,given that most people apparently like the latter
better, presumably because it gives them greater pleasure (Wolf 2011,
54-55; see also Sharpe 2000, 326). The hedonist has a ready
reply in the claim that all standard versions of hedonism are now
epistemically qualified, that while most people may derive greater
pleasure from the *Da Vinci Code*, a fully informed
reader--that is, a reader who gives both texts a correct and
complete reading--will not, assuming *Middlemarch* to be
the better novel. But it's not clear how much appeal to the
epistemic qualification ultimately helps the hedonist. The
anti-hedonist will want to know what best explains the fact that a
fully informed reader will derive greater pleasure from
*Middlemarch* (Wolf 2011, 55; D. Davies 2004, 258-259;
Sharpe 2000, 325). Suppose we say that it owes to the fully informed
reader's grasping the superiority of
*Middlemarch's* structure, the higher quality of its
prose, the greater subtlety and depth of its character development,
and the greater penetration of the insights it affords (Wolf 2011,
55). Wouldn't we then be saying that it owes to her grasping the
greater aesthetic value of *Middlemarch*? Wouldn't that
be part of what a fully informed reader is fully informed about?
Of course, the hedonist may allow *Middlemarch* to be
aesthetically better because of its superior structure, prose,
character development, and insight; to allow this, from her point of
view, is simply to allow that these are the elements in virtue of
which a fully informed reader will derive greater pleasure. But here
it would be good if the hedonist had an argument. Otherwise, the
anti-hedonist will rightly wonder how it is that a correct and
complete experience of *Middlemarch* will be an experience of
every value-conferring feature of *Middlemarch* yet not an
experience of the value conferred by those features. She will rightly
wonder whether the hedonist fails to honor her own commitment to
externalism about aesthetic value; she will rightly wonder, in other
words, whether the hedonist fails to distinguish between a valuable
experience and an experience of value, just as the internalist about
aesthetic value fails to distinguish between a coherent and complete
experience and an experience of coherence and completeness.
Earlier we attributed the appeal of hedonism to the apparent ease with
which it explains our seeking out objects of aesthetic value.
Anti-hedonists take that ease to be apparent merely. Some
anti-hedonists, for instance, argue that at least some aesthetically
valuable objects offer up pleasure only on condition that we do not
seek it (Lopes 2018, 84-86; Ven der Berg 2020, 5-6; see
also Elster 1983, 77-85). Lopes puts the point this way:
>
> Sometimes an agent has an aesthetic reason to act and yet they could
> not be motivated to act out of a hedonic desire that would be
> satisfied by their so acting. To get any pleasure, they must act out
> of non-hedonic motives. Strolling through the Louvre, they happen upon
> the Chardins, and they look at them. So long as they do not look
> seeking pleasure, they get the pleasure that the paintings afford
> (Lopes 2018, 85-86).
>
Lopes's choice of example is not arbitrary. There are particular
art-critical reasons for thinking that Chardins will frustrate the
hedonically motivated viewer (Fried 1980, 92; cited in Lopes 2018,
85), and Lopes is careful to claim that only "some aesthetic
pleasures are essential by-products of acts motivated by other
considerations" (Lopes 2018, 85). But it's not as if
Lopes's claim is specific to Chardins. Consider again
Wolf's assertation that most readers take greater pleasure from
*The Da Vinci Code* than from *Middlemarch*. If that
assertion is correct, as it plausibly is, perhaps this is because (a)
most readers read for pleasure, and (b) *The Da Vinci Code*
affords pleasure to readers who read for it, whereas (c)
*Middlemarch* withholds pleasure from such readers, affording
pleasure instead on readers who read in pursuit of some non-hedonic
good.
There is an apparent tension, moreover, between the hedonist's
reliance on the epistemic qualification and her claim that pleasure
rationalizes our aesthetic pursuits. Consider the
less-than-fully-informed reader who overvalues *The Da Vinci
Code* and undervalues *Middlemarch*. The epistemic
qualification is designed to allow the hedonist to explain how this
might occur: such a reader takes greater pleasure from *The Da
Vinci Code*, and less (or lesser) pleasure from
*Middlemarch*, than she would were she fully informed. The
epistemic qualification, moreover, allows the hedonist to explain why
the uninformed reader has aesthetic reason not to undervalue
*Middlemarch:* she is missing out on pleasure that would be
hers if only she gave *Middlemarch* a fully informed reading.
But the hedonist struggles to explain why the uninformed reader has
reason not to overvalue the *Da Vinci Code*. If *The Da
Vinci Code* gives the reader greater pleasure when she overvalues
it, not only has she no aesthetic reason to be fully informed, she has
aesthetic reason not to be. It therefore seems that if pleasure
rationalized our hedonic pursuits, we would take ourselves to have
reason to experience aesthetic objects in whatever way maximizes our
pleasure. To the degree that we instead take ourselves to have reason
to experience aesthetic objects completely and correctly--to the
degree that we instead take ourselves to have reason to experience
aesthetic objects as having the aesthetic values they in fact
have--suggests that pleasure is not the aesthetic good
we're after (Shelley 2011).
But if pleasure is not the aesthetic good we're after, what is?
Part of hedonism's perceived inevitability over the past century
or so has owed to our inability even to imagine alternatives to it. If
opposition to hedonism has been slow to materialize, alternatives have
been slower still. To date, the only fully realized alternative to
hedonism is Lopes's network theory of aesthetic normativity,
articulated and defended in his ground-breaking *Being for Beauty:
Aesthetic Agency and Value* (2018).
Earlier we noted how Lopes challenges the hedonist on her own terms,
objecting that she cannot adequately explain why we seek out objects
of aesthetic value, given that aesthetic pleasure is at least
sometimes an essential by-product of our seeking after something else
(2018, 84-86). Lopes's deeper challenge, however, targets
the hedonist's very terms. Aesthetic considerations rationalize
a very great variety of aesthetic acts, according to Lopes:
appreciating objects of aesthetic value is one such act, but so too is
hanging a poster one way rather than another, selecting this book
rather than that one for a book club, building out a garden this way
rather than that, conserving one video game rather than another,
pairing this dish with this wine rather than that one, and so on
*ad infinitum* (2018, 32-36). If a theory of aesthetic
value is to accommodate such a vast range of aesthetic acts, without
singling out any one as more central than the others, it will have to
conceive of aesthetic normativity as a species of some very general
kind of normativity. Lopes, accordingly, conceives of aesthetic
normativity as a species of the most generic form of practical
normativity; that aesthetic acts ought to be performed well follows
from the premise that all acts ought to be performed well for the
simple reason that they are acts (2018, 135-137). As Lopes puts
it: "Aesthetic values inherit their practical normativity from a
basic condition of all agency--agents must use what they have to
perform successfully" (2018, 135). Just which competencies an
aesthetic agent may call upon to perform successfully on any given
occasion depends on the particular role they happen to be playing in
the particular social practice in which they happen to be performing
(2018, 135). It is from the fact that all aesthetic activity
necessarily takes place within the domain of some particular social
practice that the network theory of aesthetic value takes its name
(2018, 119).
In holding aesthetic agents to be performing the greatest variety of
aesthetic acts on the greatest variety of items in coordination with
one another, the network theory departs radically from hedonism. But,
as Lopes himself observes, the network theory follows after hedonism
in one fundamental way: inasmuch as both theories "answer the
normative question but offer nothing in answer to the aesthetic
question," both "are consistent with any stand-alone
answer to the aesthetic question" (2018, 48). The claim that the
normative and aesthetic questions admit of stand-alone answers implies
that *aesthetic value* is a species of the genus *value*
in a standard species-genus relation, such that what makes aesthetic
value value has no bearing on what makes it aesthetic and vice-versa.
It therefore also implies that *aesthetic value* is not a
determinate of the determinable *value*, such that what makes
aesthetic value aesthetic is very thing that makes it value.
Do answers to the normative and aesthetic questions stand alone or
stand together? If we have not yet registered the urgency of this
question, perhaps that is because no one has yet fully articulated,
let alone defended, a theory of aesthetic value according to which
aesthetic value is a determinate form of value. Such a theory appears
to be implicit, however, in Shelley 2011, Watkins and Shelley 2012,
Gorodeisky and Marcus 2018, Gorodeisky 2021a, and Shelley 2022. The
position common to these authors has been dubbed the *Auburn
view* (Van der Berg 2020, 11). It answers the aesthetic question,
and therein the value question, by holding an item's having
aesthetic value to rationalize its appreciation in a distinctively
self-reflexive way, such that part of what you perceive when you
appreciate an aesthetically valuable item is that it ought to be
appreciated as you appreciating it (Shelley 2011, 220-222;
Watkins and Shelley 2012, 348-350; Gorodeisky and Marcus 2018,
117-119; Gorodeisky 2021a, 200, 207; Shelley 2022, 12). The
network theorist may object that the Auburn view privileges acts of
appreciation as surely as hedonism does, but such an objection, from
the Auburn perspective, begs the question. It is in assuming that the
normative and aesthetic questions admit of stand-alone answers that
the network theorist grants herself the freedom of passing on the
aesthetic question, and it is in passing on the aesthetic question
that she grants herself the freedom of treating each of a very great
variety of aesthetic acts as equally central. It is in assuming that
*aesthetic value* is a determinate of the determinable
*value*, meanwhile, that the Auburnite places herself under the
necessity of answering the aesthetic question, and it is in seeking an
answer to the aesthetic question that she places herself under the
necessity of singling out appreciation as aesthetically central. The
network theorist and the Auburnite agree that the aesthetic question
deserves an answer sooner or later (Lopes 2018, 46). They disagree,
crucially, about whether it deserves an answer sooner rather than
later.
The network theory and the Auburn view hardly exhaust the options for
non-hedonic theories of aesthetic normativity: Nguyen 2019, Matherne
2020, Peacocke 2021, Kubala 2021, and Riggle 2022 all represent
promising new directions. Yet every new theory of aesthetic value,
hedonic or not, must follow after the network theory or the Auburn
view in regarding answers to the normative and aesthetic questions as
stand-alone or stand-together. A lot hangs on the decision to follow
one path rather than the other. Perhaps it's time we attend to
it. |
affirmative-action | ## 1. In the Beginning
In 1972, affirmative action became an inflammatory public issue.
True enough, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already had made something
called "affirmative action" a remedy federal courts could
impose on violators of the Act. Likewise, after 1965 federal
contractors had been subject to President Lyndon Johnson's Executive
Order 11246, requiring them to take "affirmative action" to
make sure they were not discriminating. But what did this 1965 mandate
amount to? The Executive Order assigned to the Secretary of Labor the
job of specifying rules of implementation. In the meantime, as the
federal courts were enforcing the Civil Rights Act against
discriminating companies, unions, and other institutions, the
Department of Labor mounted an ad hoc attack on the construction
industry by cajoling, threatening, negotiating, and generally
strong-arming reluctant construction firms into a series of region-wide
"plans" in which they committed themselves to numerical
hiring goals. Through these contractor commitments, the Department
could indirectly pressure recalcitrant labor unions, who supplied the
employees at job sites.
While the occasional court case and government initiative made the
news and stirred some controversy, affirmative action was pretty far
down the list of public excitements until the autumn of 1972, when the
Secretary of Labor's Revised Order No. 4, fully implementing the
Executive Order, landed on campus by way of directives from the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Its predecessor, Order
No. 4, first promulgated in 1970, cast a wide net over American
institutions, both public and private. By extending to all contractors
the basic apparatus of the construction industry "plans,"
the Order imposed a one-size-fits-all system of
"underutilization analyses," "goals," and
"timetables" on hospitals, banks, trucking companies,
steel mills, printers, airlines--indeed, on all the scores of
thousands of institutions, large and small, that did business with the
government, including a special set of institutions with a
particularly voluble and articulate constituency, namely, American
universities.
At first, university administrators and faculty found the rules of
Order No. 4 murky but hardly a threat to the established order. The
number of racial and ethnic minorities receiving PhDs each year and
thus eligible for faculty jobs was tiny. Any mandate to increase their
representation on campus would require more diligent searches by
universities, to be sure, but searches fated nevertheless largely to
mirror past results. The 1972 Revised Order, on the other hand, effected a
change that punctured any campus complacency: it included women among
the "protected classes" whose
"underutilization" demanded the setting of
"goals" and "timetables" for "full
utilization" (Graham 1990, 413). Unlike African-Americans and
Hispanics, women were getting PhDs in substantial and growing
numbers. If the affirmative action required of federal contractors was
a recipe for "proportional representation," then Revised
Order No. 4 was bound to leave a large footprint on campus. Some among
the professoriate exploded in a fury of opposition to the new rules,
while others responded with an equally vehement defense of
them.[2]
As it happened, these events coincided with another development,
namely the "public turn" in philosophy. For several
decades Anglo-American philosophy had treated moral and political
questions obliquely. On the prevailing view, philosophers were suited
only to do "conceptual analysis"--they could lay
bare, for example, the conceptual architecture of the idea of justice,
but they were not competent to suggest political principles,
constitutional arrangements, or social policies that actually did
justice. Philosophers might do "meta-ethics" but not
"normative ethics." This viewed collapsed in the 1970s
under the weight of two counter-blows. First, John Rawls published in
1971 *A Theory of Justice*, an elaborate, elegant, and inspiring
defense of a *normative* theory of justice (Rawls 1971).
Second, in the same year *Philosophy & Public Affairs*,
with Princeton University's impeccable pedigree, began life, a few
months after Florida State's *Social Theory and
Practice*. These journals, along with a re-tooled older
periodical, *Ethics*, became self-conscious platforms for
socially and politically engaged philosophical writing, born out of
the feeling that in time of war (the Vietnam War) and social tumult
(the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Liberation), philosophers ought to
do, not simply talk about, ethics. In 1973, *Philosophy &
Public Affairs* published Thomas Nagel's "Equal Treatment
and Compensatory Justice" (Nagel 1973) and Judith Jarvis
Thomson's "Preferential Hiring" (Thomson 1973), and the
philosophical literature on affirmative action burgeoned
forth.[3]
In contention was the nature of those "goals" and
"timetables" imposed on every contractor by Revised Order
No. 4. Weren't the "goals" tantamount to
"quotas," requiring institutions to use racial or gender
preferences in their selection processes? Some answered
"no" (Ezorsky 1977, 86). Properly understood, affirmative
action did not require (or even permit) the use of gender or racial
preferences. Others said "yes" (Goldman 1976, 182-3).
Affirmative action, if it did not impose preferences outright, at
least countenanced them. Among the yea-sayers, opinion divided
between those who said preferences were morally permissible and those
who said they were not. Within the "morally permissible"
set, different writers put forward different justifications.
## 2. The Controversy Engaged
The essays by Thomson and Nagel defended the use of preferences but on
different grounds. Thomson endorsed job preferences for women and
African-Americans as a form of redress for their past exclusion
from the academy and the workplace. Preferential policies, in her
view, worked a kind of justice. Nagel, by contrast, argued that
preferences might work a kind of social good, and without doing
violence to justice. Institutions could for one or another good
reason properly depart from standard meritocratic selection criteria
because the whole system of tying economic reward to earned
credentials was itself indefensible.
Justice and desert lay at the heart of subsequent arguments. Several
writers took to task Thomson's argument that preferential hiring
justifiably makes up for past wrongs. Preferential hiring seen as
redress looks perverse, they contended, since it benefits
individuals (African-Americans and women possessing good educational
credentials) least likely harmed by past wrongs while it burdens
individuals (younger white male applicants) least likely to be
responsible for past wrongs (Simon 1974, 315-19; Sher 1975, 162;
Sher 1979, 81-82; and Goldman 1976,
190-1).[4]
Instead of doing justice, contended the critics, preferential
treatment violated rights. What rights were at issue? The right of an
applicant "to equal consideration" (Thomson 1973, 377;
Simon 1974, 312), the right of the maximally competent to an open
position (Goldman 1976, 191; Goldman 1979, 24-8), or the right
of everyone to equal opportunity (Gross 1977a, 382; Gross 1978,
97). Moreover, according to the critics, preferential treatment
confounded desert by severing reward from a "person's character,
talents, choices and abilities" (Simon 1979, 96), by
"subordinating merit, conduct, and character to race"
(Eastland and Bennett 1979, 144), and by disconnecting outcomes from
actual liability and damage (Gross 1978, 125-42).
Defenders of preferences were no less quick to enlist justice and
desert in their cause. Mary Anne Warren, for example, argued that in a
context of entrenched gender discrimination, gender preferences might
improve the "overall fairness" of job selections. Justice
and individual desert need not be violated.
>
>
> If individual men's careers are temporarily set back because
> of...[job preferences given to women], the odds are good that
> these same men will have benefited in the past and/or will benefit in
> the future--not necessarily in the job competition, but in some
> ways--from sexist discrimination against women. Conversely, if
> individual women receive apparently unearned bonuses [through
> preferential selection], it is highly likely that these same women will
> have suffered in the past and/or will suffer in the future
> from...sexist attitudes. (Warren 1977, 256)
>
>
Likewise, James Rachels defended racial preferences as devices to
neutralize unearned advantages by whites. Given the pervasiveness of
racial discrimination, it is likely, he argued, that the superior
credentials offered by white applicants do not reflect their greater
effort, desert, or even ability. Rather, the credentials reflect their
mere luck at being born white. "Some white...[applicants]
have better qualifications...only because they have not had to
contend with the obstacles faced by their African-American
competitors" (Rachels 1978, 162). Rachels was less confident
than Warren that preferences worked uniformly accurate
offsets. Reverse discrimination might do injustice to some whites; yet
its absence would result in injustices to African-Americans who have
been unfairly handicapped by their lesser advantages.
Rachels' diffidence was warranted in light of the counter-responses.
If racial and gender preferences for jobs (or college admissions) were
supposed to neutralize unfair competitive advantages, they needed to
be calibrated to fit the variety of backgrounds aspirants brought to
any competition for these goods. Simply giving blanket preferences to
African-Americans or women seemed much too ham-handed an approach if
the point was to micro-distribute opportunities fairly (Sher 1975,
165ff).
## 3. Rights and Consistency
To many of its critics, reverse discrimination was simply
incoherent. When "the employers and the schools *favor*
women and blacks," objected Lisa Newton, they commit the same
injustice perpetrated by Jim Crow discrimination. "Just as the
previous discrimination did, this reverse discrimination violates the
public equality which defines citizenship" (Newton 1973,
310).[5]
William Bennett and Terry Eastland likewise saw racial preferences
as in some sense illogical:
>
>
> To count by race, to use the means of numerical equality to achieve
> the end of moral equality, is counterproductive, for to count by race
> is to deny the end by virtue of the means. The means of race counting
> will not, cannot, issue in an end where race does not
> matter (Eastland and Bennett 1979,
> 149).[6]
>
When Eastland and Bennett alluded to those who favored using race to
get to a point where race doesn't count, they had in mind specifically
the Supreme Court's Justice Blackmun who, in the famous 1978
*Bakke* case (discussed below), put his own view in just those
simple terms. For Blackmun, the legitimacy of racial preferences was
to be measured by how fast using them moves us toward a society where
race doesn't matter (a view developed in subtle detail by the
philosopher Richard Wasserstrom in Wasserstrom 1976). While the
critics of preferences claimed to find the very idea of using race to
end racism illogical and incoherent, they also fell back on principle
to block Blackmun's instrumental defense should it actually prove both
reasonable and plausible. "The moral issue comes in classic
form," wrote Carl Cohen. "Terribly important
objectives...appear to require impermissible means." Cohen asked,
"might we not wink at the Constitution this once" and allow
preferences to do their good work (Cohen 1995, 20)? Neither he nor
other critics thought so. Principle must hold firm. "[I]n the
distribution of benefits under the laws *all* racial
classifications are invidious" (Cohen 1995, 52).
But what, exactly, *is* the principle--constitutional or
moral--that always bars the use of race as a means to
"terribly important objectives"? Alan Goldman did more
than anyone in the early debate to formulate and ground a relevant
principle. Using a contractualist framework, he surmised that rational
contractors would choose a rule of justice requiring positions to be
awarded by competence. On its face, this rule would seem to preclude
filling positions by reference to factors like race and gender that
are unrelated to competence. However, Goldman's
"rule" blocked preferences only under certain empirical
conditions. Goldman explained the derivation of the rule and its
consequent limit this way:
>
>
> The rule for hiring the most competent was justified as part of a
> right to equal opportunity to succeed through socially productive
> effort, and on grounds of increased welfare for all members of society.
> Since it is justified in relation to a right to equal opportunity, and
> since the application of the rule may simply compound injustices when
> opportunities are unequal elsewhere in the system, the creation of more
> equal opportunities takes precedence when in conflict with the rule for
> awarding positions. Thus short-run violations of the rule are justified
> to create a more just distribution of benefits by applying the rule
> itself in future years. (Goldman 1979, 164-165).
>
>
In other words, if "terribly important
objectives" having to do with
equalizing opportunities in a system rife with unjust inequalities could in
fact be furthered by measured and targeted reverse
discrimination, justice wouldn't stand in the way. Goldman's principle
did not have the adamantine character Cohen and other critics sought
in a bar to preferences. Where can such an unyielding principle be
found? I postpone further examination of this question until I discuss
the *Bakke* case, below, whose split opinions constitute an
extended debate on the meaning of constitutional equality.
## 4. Real-World Affirmative Action: The Workplace
The terms of the popular debate over racial and gender preferences
often mirrored the arguments philosophers and other academics were
making to each other. Preference's defenders offered many reasons to
justify them, reasons having to do with compensatory or distributive
justice, as well as reasons having to do with social utility (more
African-Americans in the police department would enable it better to
serve the community, more female professors in the classroom would
inspire young women to greater achievements). Critics of preferences
retorted by pointing to the law. And well they should, since the text
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemed a solid anchor even if general
principle proved elusive. Title VI of the Act promised that
"[n]o person...shall, on the ground of race, color, or
national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the
benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or
activity receiving Federal financial
assistance."[7]
Title VII similarly prohibited
all employment practices that discriminated on the basis of race,
gender, religion, or national
origin.[8]
In face of the plain language of Titles VI and VII, how did
preferential hiring and promotion ever arise in the first place? How
could they be justified legally? Part of the answer lies in the meaning
of "discrimination." The Civil Rights Act did not define
the term. The federal courts had to do that job themselves, and the
cases before them drove the definition in a particular direction. Many
factories and businesses prior to 1964, especially in the South, had
in place overtly discriminatory policies and rules. For example, a
company's policy might have openly relegated African-Americans to the
maintenance department and channeled whites into operations, sales,
and management departments, where the pay and opportunities for
advancement were far better. If, after passage of the Civil Rights
Act, the company willingly abandoned its openly segregative policy,
it could still carry forward the effects of its past segregation
through other already-existing *facially neutral* rules. For example, a
company policy that required workers to give up their seniority
in one department if they transferred to another would have locked in
place older African-American maintenance workers as effectively as the
company's own prior segregative rule that made them ineligible to transfer
at all. Consequently, courts began striking down facially neutral
rules that carried through the effects of an employer's past
discrimination, regardless of the original intent or provenance of the
rules. "Intent" was effectively decoupled from
"discrimination." In 1971, the Supreme Court ratified this
process, giving the following
construction of Title VII:
>
>
> The objective of Congress in the enactment of Title VII...was
> to achieve equality of employment opportunities and remove barriers
> that have operated in the past to favor an identifiable group of white
> employees over other employees. Under the Act, practices, procedures,
> or tests neutral on their face, and even neutral in terms of intent,
> cannot be maintained if they operate to "freeze" the status
> quo of prior discriminatory employment practices.
>
>
>
>
> What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial,
> arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers
> operate invidiously to exclude on the basis of racial or other
> impermissible
> classification.[9]
>
>
>
>
In a few short paragraphs the Court advanced from proscribing
practices that froze in place the effects of a firm's own past
discrimination to proscribing practices that carried through the
effects of past discrimination generally. The Court characterized
statutory discrimination as *any exclusionary practice not necessary
to an institution's activities*. Since many practices in most
institutions were likely to be exclusionary, rejecting minorities and
women in greater proportion than white men, all institutions needed to
reassess the full range of their practices to look for, and correct,
discriminatory effect. Against this backdrop, the generic idea of
affirmative action took form:
>
>
> Each institution should effectively monitor its practices for
> exclusionary effect and revise those that cannot be defended as
> "necessary" to doing business. In order to make its
> monitoring and revising effective, an institution ought to predict, as
> best it can, how many minorities and women it would select over time,
> were it successfully nondiscriminating. These predictions constitute
> the institution's affirmative action "goals," and failure
> to meet the goals signals to the institution (and to the government)
> that it needs to revisit its efforts at eliminating exclusionary
> practices. There may still remain practices that ought to be modified or
> eliminated.[10]
>
The point of such affirmative action: to induce change in institutions
so that they could comply with the nondiscrimination mandate of the
Civil Rights Act.
However, suppose this self-monitoring and revising fell short? In
early litigation under the Civil Rights Act, courts concluded that some
institutions, because of their histories of exclusion and
their continuing failure to find qualified women or minorities, needed
stronger medicine. Courts ordered these institutions to adopt
"quotas," to take in specific numbers of formerly excluded
groups on the assumption that once these new workers were securely
lodged in place, the institutions would adapt to this new
reality.[11]
Throughout the 1970s, courts and government enforcement agencies
extended this idea across the board, requiring a wide range of firms
and organizations--from AT&T to the Alabama Highway
Patrol--temporarily to select by the numbers. In all these cases,
the use of preferences was tied to a single purpose: to prevent
ongoing and future discrimination. Courts carved out this
justification for preferences not through caprice but through
necessity. They found themselves confronted with a practical dilemma
that Congress had never envisaged and thus never addressed when it
wrote the Civil Rights Act. The dilemma was this: courts could impose
racial preferences to change foot-dragging or inept defendants (and by
doing so apparently transgress the plain prohibition in Title VII) or
they could order less onerous steps they knew would be ineffective,
thus letting discrimination continue (and by doing so violate their
duty under Title VII). Reasonably enough, the federal courts resolved
this dilemma by appeal to the broad purposes of the Civil Rights Act
and justified racial preferences where needed to prevent ongoing and
future
discrimination.[12]
Thus, preferential affirmative action in the workplace served the
same rationale as the non-preferential sort. Its purpose was
*not* to compensate for past wrongs, offset unfair advantage,
appropriately reward the deserving, or yield a variety
of social goods; its purpose was to change institutions so they could
comply with the nondiscrimination mandate of the Civil Rights Act.
## 5. Real-World Affirmative Action: The University
In the 1970s, while campuses were embroiled in debate about how to
increase African-Americans and women on the faculty, universities were
also putting into effect schemes to increase minority presence within
the student body. Very selective universities, in particular, needed
new initiatives because only a handful of African-American and
Hispanic high school students possessed test scores and grades good
enough to make them eligible for admission. These institutions faced a
choice: retain their admissions criteria unchanged and live with the
upshot--hardly any African-Americans and Hispanics on
campus--or fiddle with their criteria to get a more substantial
representation. Most elected the second path.
The Medical School of the University of California at Davis
exemplified a particularly aggressive approach. It reserved sixteen of
the one hundred slots in its entering classes for minorities. In 1973
and again in 1974, Allan Bakke, a white applicant, was denied
admission although his test scores and grades were better than most or
all of those admitted through the special program. He sued. In 1977,
his case, *Regents of the University of California v. Bakke*,
reached the Supreme Court. The Court rendered its decision a year
later (438 U.S. 265 [1978]).[13]
An attentive reader of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act might have
thought this case was an easy call. So, too, thought four justices on
the Supreme Court, who voted to order Bakke admitted to the Medical
School. Led by Justice Stevens, they saw the racially segregated,
two-track scheme at the Medical School (a recipient of federal funds)
as a clear violation of the plain language of the Title.
Four other members of the Court, led by Justice Brennan, wanted very
keenly to save the Medical School program. To find a more attractive
terrain for doing battle, they made an end-run around Title VI, arguing
that, whatever its language, it had no independent meaning itself. It
meant in regard to race only what the Constitution
meant.[14]
Thus,
instead of having to parse the stingy and unyielding language of Title
VI ("no person shall be subjected to...on the ground of
race"), the Brennan group could turn their creative energies to
interpreting the broad and vague language of the Fourteenth Amendment
("no person shall be denied the equal protection of the
laws"), which provided much more wiggle-room for justifying
racial preferences. The Brennan justices persuaded one other member,
Justice Powell, to join them in their view of Title VI. But Powell
didn't agree with their view of the Constitution. He argued that the
Medical School's policy was unconstitutional and voted that Bakke must
be admitted. His vote, added to the four votes of the Stevens group,
meant that Allan Bakke won his case and that Powell got to write the
opinion of the Court. The Brennan strategy didn't reap the fruit it
intended.
Against the leanings of the Brennan group, who would distinguish
between "benign" and "malign" uses of race and
deal more leniently with the former, Powell insisted that the
Fourteenth Amendment's promise of "equal protection of the
law" must mean the same thing for all, black and white alike. To
paraphrase Powell:
>
>
> The Constitution can tolerate no "two-class" theory of
> equal protection. There is no principled basis for deciding between
> classes that deserve special judicial attention and those that don't.
> To think otherwise would involve the Court in making all kinds of
> "political" decisions it is not competent to make. In
> expounding the Constitution, the Court's role is to discern
> "principles sufficiently absolute to give them roots throughout
> the community and continuity over significant periods of time, and to
> lift them above the pragmatic political judgments of a particular time
> and place" (*Bakke*, at 295-300 [Powell quoting Cox 1976,
> 114]).
>
>
What, then, was the practical meaning of a "sufficiently
absolute" rendering of the principle of equal protection? It was
this: when the decisions of state agents 'touch upon an
individual's race or ethnic background, he is entitled to a judicial
determination that the burden he is asked to bear on that basis is
precisely tailored to serve a compelling governmental
interest (*Bakke*, at 300).
Powell, with this standard in hand, then turned to look at the four
reasons the Medical School offered for its special program: (i) to
reduce "the historic deficit of traditionally disfavored
minorities in medical schools and the medical profession;" (ii)
to counter "the effects of societal discrimination;" (iii)
to increase "the number of physicians who will practice in
communities currently underserved;" and (iv) to obtain "the
educational benefits that flow from an ethnically diverse student
body" (*Bakke*, at 307). Did any or all of them specify a
compelling governmental interest? Did they necessitate use of racial
preferences?
As to the first reason, Powell dismissed it out of hand.
>
>
> If [the School's] purpose is to assure within its student body some
> specified percentage of a particular group merely because of its race
> or ethnic origin, such a preferential purpose must be rejected not as
> insubstantial but as facially invalid. Preferring members of any one
> group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination
> for its own sake.
As to the second reason, Powell allowed it more force. A state has a
legitimate interest in ameliorating the effects of past discrimination.
Even so, contended Powell, the Court,
>
>
> has never approved a classification that aids persons perceived as
> members of relatively victimized groups at the expense of other
> innocent individuals in the absence of judicial, legislative, or
> administrative findings of constitutional or statutory
> violations (*Bakke*, at 308).
>
>
>
> And the Medical School does not purport to have made, and is in no
> position to make, such findings. Its broad mission is education, not
> the formulation of any legislative policy or the adjudication of
> particular claims of illegality....[I]solated segments of our vast
> governmental structures are not competent to make those decisions, at
> least in the absence of legislative mandates and legislatively
> determined criteria (*Bakke*, at 309).
>
>
>
As to the third reason, Powell found it, too, insufficient. The
Medical School provided no evidence that the best way it could
contribute to increased medical services to underserved communities was
to employ a racially preferential admissions scheme. Indeed, the
Medical School provided no evidence that its scheme would result in any
benefits at all to such
communities (*Bakke*, at 311).
This left the fourth reason. Here Powell found merit. A university's
interest in a diverse student body is legitimated by the First
Amendment's implied protection of academic freedom. This constitutional
halo makes the interest "compelling." However, the Medical
School's use of a racial and ethnic classification scheme was not
"precisely tailored" to effect the School's interest in
diversity, argued Powell.
>
>
> The diversity that furthers a compelling state interest encompasses
> a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics of which
> racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element. [The
> Medical School's] special admissions program, focused solely on ethnic
> diversity, would hinder rather than further attainment of genuine
> diversity (*Bakke*, at 316).
>
>
The diversity which provides an educational atmosphere
"conducive to speculation, experiment and creation"
includes a nearly endless range of experiences, talents, and attributes
that students might bring to campus. In reducing diversity to racial
and ethnic quotas, the Medical School wholly misconceived this
important educational interest.
In sum, although the last of the Medical School's four reasons
encompassed a "compelling governmental interest," the
School's special admissions program was not necessary to effect the
interest. The special admissions program was unconstitutional. So
concluded Justice Powell.
## 6. Equality's Rule
This was a conclusion Justice Brennan tried vigorously to forestall.
Brennan agreed with Powell that "equal protection" must
mean the same thing--that is, remain one rule--whether
applied to blacks or whites. But the same rule applied to different
circumstances need not yield the same results. Racial preferences
created for different reasons and producing different outcomes need not
all be judged in the same harsh, virtually fatal, manner. This point
was the crux of Brennan's defense of the Medical School's policy.
Powell thought there was no principled way to distinguish
"benign" from "malign" discrimination, but
Brennan insisted there was. He argued that if the Court looked
carefully at its past cases striking down Jim Crow laws, it would see
the principle at work. What the Court found wrong in Jim Crow was that
it served no purpose except to mark out and stigmatize one group of
people as inferior. The "cardinal principle" operating in
the Court's decisions condemned racial classifications "drawn on
the presumption that one race is inferior to another" or that
"put the weight of government behind racial hatred and
separation" (*Bakke*, at 358 [Brennan, dissenting]).
Brennan agreed with Powell that no public
racial classification motivated by racial animus, no classification
whose purpose is to stigmatize people with the "badge of
inferiority," could withstand judicial scrutiny. However, the
Medical School's policy, even if ill-advised or mistaken, reflected a
public purpose far different from that found in Jim Crow. The policy
ought not be treated as though it were cut from the same cloth.
Brennan granted that if a state adopted a racial classification for
the purpose of humiliating whites, or stigmatizing Allan Bakke as
inferior and confining him to second-class citizenship, that
classification would be as odious as Jim Crow. But the Medical School's
policy had neither this purpose nor this effect. Allan Bakke may have
been upset and resentful at losing out under the special plan, but he
wasn't "in any sense stamped as an inferior by the Medical
School's rejection of him." Nor did his loss constitute a
"pervasive injury," in the sense that wherever he went he
would be treated as a "second-class citizen" because of his
color (*Bakke*, at 376 [Brennan, dissenting]).
In short, argued Brennan, the principle expressed in the Equal
Protection Clause should be viewed as an *anti-caste principle*,
a principle that uniformly and consistently rejects *all* public
law whose purpose is to subject people to an inferior and degraded
station in life, whether they are black or
white.[15]
Of course, given
the asymmetrical position of whites and blacks in our country, we are
not likely to encounter laws that try to stigmatize whites as an
inferior caste (much less succeed at it). But this merely shows that a
principle applied to different circumstances produces different
results. Because the Medical School's program sought to undo the
effects of a racial caste system long-enduring in America, it
represented a purpose of great social importance and should not be
found Constitutionally infirm: so maintained
Brennan (*Bakke*, at 363 [Brennan, dissenting]).
Justice Powell never successfully engaged this way of reading
"constitutional equality." His insistence on clear, plain,
unitary, absolute principle did not cut against the Brennan view. The
issue between Powell and Brennan was not the consistency and stringency
of the principle but its content. If the Constitution says, "The
state cannot deliberately burden someone by race *if its purpose is
to create or maintain caste*," then constitutional law
doesn't block any of the Medical School's
justifications.[16]
If we turn away from exegesis of the Constitution, are we likely to
find in political theory itself any principle of equality implying that
*every* use of racial preferences in *every* circumstance
works an intolerable injustice?
The prospects seem dim. Won't very general notions of equality
lend themselves to defending affirmative action (and the social
inclusion it effects) as well as condemning it (and the racial
non-neutrality it
involves)?[17]
The challenge here is well-illustrated by
Carl Cohen's most recent effort, in a debate with James Sterba,
to extract a strict prohibition on racial preferences from the
Aristotelian principle that "equals should be treated
equally" (Cohen and Sterba 2003, 23). This principle, urges
Cohen, "certainly entails at least this: It is wrong, always and
everywhere, to give special advantage to any group simply on the basis
of physical characteristics that have no relevance to the award given
or the burden imposed" (Cohen and Sterba 2003, 25). Whether
anything interesting follows from this proposition depends on how we
construe "relevance." Cohen admits that public policy may
rightly treat some people differently because of their physical
characteristics. For example, the state might offer special assistance
to the old or disabled. Now, this example suggests that the relevance
of physical differences is something independent of social policy. Age
and disability, it seems, are real features of persons and public
policy simply tracks them. However, the difference that differences
make is not something itself given by nature; it is determined by
public purposes. Age and disability are *made* relevant in this
manner--in the one case, by the social purpose of assuring that
people do not have to live in poverty when they can no longer work; in
the other case, by the social purpose of assuring that people are not
foreclosed from developing and marketing their talents by impediments
in the (largely constructed) physical environment.
Purpose determines relevancy, and this is true whether or not the
relevant differences are physical. If the nation thinks it desirable to change white
institutions so that they are less uniformly white, that purpose links
skin color to recruitment.
Because the Aristotelian principle by itself doesn't rule out
racial preferences (since blacks and whites may be relevantly
different with respect to certain legitimate public purposes), it is
not surprising that Cohen also invokes a substantive conception of
equality: "All members of humankind are equally ends in themselves,
all have equal dignity--and therefore all are entitled to equal
respect from the community and its laws" (Cohen and Sterba 2003,
24). This principle, however, brings us back to the interpretive
questions about "equal protection of the laws" played out in the
Powell-Brennan exchange in Bakke. By Justice Brennan's lights,
Allen Bakke's basic dignity was not violated. The Medical
School's two-track policy that resulted in Bakke's
rejection did not, by intent or effect, stigmatize him as inferior, or
mark him off as a member of a despised caste, or turn him into a
second-class citizen. Bakke arguably had to bear a particular burden
because of his race but the burden was not significantly different
objectively from others that public policy might have thrown his
way. If the Medical School had reserved sixteen of its seats for
applicants from economically deprived backgrounds, no one would have
suggested that it had violated the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Yet under this hypothetical policy Allan Bakke
could have lost out as well--lost out to low-income applicants
whose college grades and MCAT scores were inferior to his own. Allen
Bakke may have felt aggrieved at losing out under the Medical
School's policy of racial preferences, but it is not enough to
show that those who lose out under some public scheme feel offended or
disgruntled. Cohen needs to specify a conception of dignity in which
bearing unequal burdens on behalf of urgent social ends invariably
amounts to an assault on dignity if the burdens happen to be assigned
by race. This specification remains unfinished in his work so far.
## 7. Diversity's Dominion
How, if it held the Medical School's policy unconstitutional, did
Justice Powell's *Bakke* opinion become the basis upon which
universities across the land enacted--or
maintained--racially preferential admissions policies?
If Powell had concluded with his assessment of the Medical School's
four justifications, *Bakke* would have left university
affirmative action in a precarious situation. However, he didn't stop
there. In an earlier ruling on Bakke's lawsuit, the California Supreme
Court had forbidden the Medical School to make any use of race or
ethnicity in its admissions decisions. Powell thought this went too
far. Given higher education's protected interest in
"diversity," and given that a student's race or ethnicity
*might* add to diversity just in the same way that her age, work
experience, family background, special talents, foreign language
fluency, athletic prowess, military service, and unusual
accomplishments might, Powell vacated that portion of the California
Supreme Court's order.
Then he added some dicta for guidance. If universities want to
understand diversity and the role that race and ethnicity might play in
achieving it, they should look to Harvard, proposed Powell, and he
appended to his opinion a long statement of Harvard's affirmative action program.
In such a program, Powell contended, racial or ethnic background
might
>
>
> be deemed a "plus" in a particular applicant's file, yet
> it does not insulate the individual from comparison with all other
> candidates for the available seats....This kind of program treats
> each applicant as an individual in the admissions process. The
> applicant who loses out on the last available seat to another candidate
> receiving a "plus" on the basis of ethnic background will
> not have been foreclosed from all consideration for that seat simply
> because he was not the right color or had the wrong surname. It would
> mean only that his combined qualifications...did not outweigh
> those of the other applicant. His qualifications would have been
> weighed fairly and competitively, and he would have had no basis to
> complain of unequal treatment under the Fourteenth
> Amendment (*Bakke*, at 318, 319).
>
In these off-hand comments, universities saw a green light for pushing
ahead aggressively with their affirmative action programs. Justice
Powell's basic holding could not have been plainer: any system like
the Medical School's that assessed applications along two different
tracks defined by race or that used numerical racial quotas must fail
constitutional muster. Yet by the mid-1980s universities across the
land had in place systems of admissions and scholarships that
exhibited one or both of these features. When the University of
Maryland's Banneker scholarships--awarded only to
African-American students--were held in violation of the
Constitution in 1994, the house of cards forming university
affirmative action began to
fall.[18]
In 1996, the Court of Appeals for
the Fifth Circuit struck down the University of Texas Law School's two-track
admissions program.
In 1998, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit struck down a Boston plan
assigning students to selective high schools by
race.[19]
In 2001, two more schools saw their admissions programs invalidated
by federal courts: the University of
Georgia[20]
and the University of Michigan Law
School.[21]
In many of these cases, educational
institutions were using schemes that made race something very much more than
Justice Powell's "plus"
factor.[22]
The Fifth Circuit Court's ruling in the University of Texas case (*Hopwood
v. Texas*, 78 F 3d 932 [Fifth Circuit, 1996]) threw a cloud
even over this small window for affirmative action, boldly asserting
that the *Bakke* holding was now dead as law and that race
could not be used at all in admissions.
Given Justice Powell's singular opinion, supported by no one else on
the Court, and given the drift of Supreme Court decisions on racial
preferences since
1978,[23]
the *Hopwood* court was not
outlandish, if a bit presumptuous, in declaring Powell's holding in
*Bakke* dead. As it happened, Powell's opinion was far from dead.
In the University of Michigan Law School case, *Grutter v.
Bollinger*, eventually decided by the Supreme Court in June 2003,
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's lead opinion declared: "today we
endorse Justice Powell's view that student body diversity is a
compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in
university admissions" (*Grutter v. Bollinger*, 539
U.S. 306 [2003], at 330). Diversity was alive after all. But how it
worked its affirmative action elixir remained as unclear in 2003 as it
had been in 1978.
To see why, consider how in *Grutter* Justice
O'Connor posed the issue:
>
>
> The [Law School's] policy aspires to "achieve that
> diversity which has the potential to enrich everyone's education
> and thus make a law class stronger than the sum of its
> parts."...The policy does not restrict the types of
> diversity contributions eligible for substantial weight in the
> admissions process, but instead recognizes "many possible bases
> for diversity admissions."...The policy does, however,
> reaffirm the Law School's longstanding commitment to "one
> particular type of diversity," that is, "racial and ethnic
> diversity with special reference to the inclusion of students from
> groups which have been historically discriminated against"
> (*Grutter*, at 325).
>
>
Now, posing the issue this way and allowing the Law School to assert a
special interest in "one particular type of diversity"
invites the conflation of *general* diversity--a diversity
of opinions, experiences, backgrounds, talents, aspirations, and
perspectives--with *ethnic* and *racial* diversity
that Justice Powell appeared strongly to resist. After all, the
Medical School too had asserted in its defense a similar special
interest.
Recall Justice Powell's principal objection to the Medical School's
set-asides. In making the race or ethnicity of an applicant a
"plus," a scheme like Harvard's does
>
>
> not insulate the individual from comparison with all other candidates
> for the available seats. The file of a particular African-American
> applicant may be examined for his potential contribution to diversity
> without the factor of race being decisive when compared, for example,
> with that of an applicant identified as an Italian-American if the
> latter is thought to exhibit qualities more likely to promote
> beneficial educational pluralism....In short, an admissions
> program operated in this way is flexible enough to consider all
> pertinent elements of diversity in light of the particular
> qualifications of each applicant.... This kind of program treats
> each applicant as an individual in the admissions
> process (*Bakke*, at 318-19).
>
>
By contrast, Allan Bakke was not able to compete for all one hundred
seats at the Medical School; sixteen were reserved for candidates not
like him.
It is Powell's resistance to this reservation that underpins Justice
O'Connor's opinion in *Grutter*, where she observed:
>
>
> We find that the Law School's admissions program bears the hallmark
> of a narrowly tailored plan. As Justice Powell made clear in
> *Bakke*, truly individualized consideration demands that race be
> used in a flexible, non-mechanical way. It follows from this mandate
> that universities cannot establish quotas for members of certain racial
> groups (*Grutter*, at 337).
>
>
What vindicated the Law School in O'Connor's eyes was its
"highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant's file,
giving serious consideration to all the ways an applicant might
contribute to a diverse educational
environment" (*Grutter*, at
339).[24]
This "individualized consideration" is crucial; in
*Gratz v. Bollinger*, decided the same day as
*Grutter*, Justice O'Connor switched sides to hold
unconstitutional the undergraduate admissions process at the
University of Michigan. The undergraduate admissions office operated
differently than the Law School. It computed an index score for each
applicant by assigning numerical points for academic factors such as
high school grades, admissions test scores, quality of high school,
strength of curriculum; and for nonacademic factors such as being a
resident of Michigan, a child of an alumnus, a recruited athlete, or a
member of "an underrepresented minority group." An
applicant falling in this last category automatically received 20
points (*Gratz v. Bollinger*,
539 U. S. 244 [2003], at 287).
In O'Connor's view, this "mechanical" procedure meant
that the undergraduate admissions office did not fully take account in
each application "of all factors that may contribute to student
body
diversity" (*Gratz*, at 288).
But O'Connor's conclusion here simply draws us back to the lacuna in
Justice Powell's *Bakke* opinion. Why should the undergraduate
admissions office take account of *all* the factors that may
contribute to student body diversity if it especially wants to select
from certain parts of the diversity spectrum? Why can't it, like the
Law School, claim a special interest in "one particular type of
diversity"? Why bar the undergraduate admissions office from
using an effective tool to promote its interest even if the tool is
"mechanical"? In fact, the Law School's
"non-mechanical" procedure differed from the undergraduate
admissions policy only on its face, not in its results. During
admissions season, the Law School's director of admissions frequently
consulted the "daily reports" that "kept track of
the racial and ethnic composition" of the incoming class. He did
so to make sure a "critical mass" of minority students was
included (*Grutter*, at 326).
In short, the Law School
"managed" its admissions process so that roughly 6 to 7
percent of each entering class was African-American. The undergraduate
admissions procedure, with its index scores, yielded a similar
outcome (*Grutter*, at 367-69 [Rehnquist, dissenting] and 374 [Kennedy,
dissenting]).
Only surface appearance distinguished the
two procedures. Justice Scalia called
the Law School's "holistic" admissions process "a
sham," and not without
reason (*Grutter*, at 375 [Scalia, dissenting]).
As it turned out, *Grutter* failed to close the book on
university affirmative action. A new legal challenge soon arose, this
time against the University of Texas, which had revised its own
admission program in 2004 to emulate the scheme validated
in *Grutter*. The case, *Fisher v. Texas*, wound its way
through the courts for a decade, twice landing on the steps of the
Supreme Court before final disposition in 2016.
Justice Kennedy, writing for the Court, left the *Grutter*
defense of racial preferences intact, essentially retracing Justice
O'Connor's opinion. Universities bent upon pursuing the
"educational benefits that flow from student body
diversity," he wrote, are due a degree of judicial deference
(*Fisher v. University of Texas*, 133 S. Ct. 2411, 2419
[2013]).
>
>
> The University explains that it strives to provide an 'academic
> environment' that offers a 'robust exchange of ideas,
> exposure to differing cultures, preparation for the challenges of an
> increasingly diverse workforce, and acquisition of competencies
> required of future leaders.' ... All of these
> objectives ... mirror the 'compelling interest' this
> Court has approved in its prior cases (*Fisher v. University of
> Texas*, 136 S. Ct. 2198, 2211 [2016]).
>
>
Persuaded that race-neutral policies didn't allow the
University fully to succeed in deriving the "educational
benefits" of diversity, the Court majority found the
University's modest use of race permissible.
But despite these legal victories, have universities actually made a
case for diversity as the justifying basis for race-conscious
admissions? Caught napping in the mid-1990s when the legal
challenges began, higher education rushed to put meat on
the *Bakke* bones and turn Justice Powell's
off-hand remarks into a full-fledged defense. As the
University of Michigan cases approached a final test in 2003, the
Supreme Court was bombarded with scores of
friend-of-the-court briefs from business groups,
military officers, higher education associations, coteries of
scholars, and other interested parties lauding the benefits of
diversity. A similar outpouring preceded the two decisions
in *Fisher v. University of
Texas*.[25]
Consider some of the claims in these briefs. "[S]tudent body
diversity is *essential*" if universities are to provide
students with "skills necessary for...success in an
increasingly globalized world" (Leading Public Research
Universities 2015, 11-12; emphasis added). Racial and ethnic
diversity on campus are *vital* to securing a capable
workforce; it is *essential* that [students] be educated in an
environment where they are exposed to diverse people, ideas,
perspectives, and interactions (65 Leading American Businesses 2003,
1, 2; emphasis added). Otherwise, the education of students is
"*degraded*" (823 Social Scientists 2015, 5;
emphasis added). "[S]tudents today *must* receive direct
experience with people of different backgrounds" (American
Council on Education 2015, 6; emphasis added). The
"*only* means of obtaining properly qualified employees
is through diversity at institutions of higher
education...[Appropriate] skills can *only* be developed
through exposure to widely diverse people, culture, ideas, and
viewpoints" (Fortune 100 and Other Leading Businesses 2013, 3,
5; emphasis added). "Diversity is an *indispensable*
prerequisite to establishing the most productive problem-solving
groups" (Social and Organizational Psychologists 2015, 47;
emphasis added).
According to the briefs the positive effects of diversity are
bountiful. They include "improvements in cognitive abilities,
analytical problem solving skills and complex thinking
skills...[C]ross racial interactions are more strongly linked
with cognitive growth than are interactions with non-racial
diversity" (American Educational Research Association 2012,
12). "[R]esearch shows that by increasing diversity, universities can
help their graduates enter society with better problem-solving
capabilities than students who are not exposed to diversity" (Social
and Organizational Psychologists 2015, 37).
Now consider four points. First, the promiscuous use of "diversity" in
the argument for affirmative action opens the door to waffling and
equivocation. Students learn through "exposure to widely diverse
people, culture, ideas, and viewpoints" announces the Fortune 100
brief. Of course. But the issue at hand is *racial*
diversity. Wrapping the latter into the former is not an aid to
precision.[26]
Second, can we imagine that the University of Michigan or the
University of Texas would abandon its affirmative action program if
studies showed no particular educational benefit to diversity? Suppose
it turns out that students in general don't show additional "cognitive
growth" from increased racial diversity. Suppose it turns out students
would best prepare for our "increasingly globalized world" by learning
Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.
Third, the straining by academics to show that cross-racial
interaction
is *essential*, *indispensable*, *vital*, *necessary*,
or *imperative* to a good education, if taken at face value,
leads to an unpleasant conclusion, namely that a lot of black college
students suffer a deficient education. The young woman who excels at
Dunbar High School in Washington, DC (enrollment 95 % black, 1 %
white) and then gets her Bachelor of Science degree in
statistics *magna cum laude* at Spelman College (enrolling, in
2017, one white among its 2097 students) is, according to Fortune 100
companies, not the sort of employee they want. Graduates of Fisk
University (0.7% white) or Tougaloo (0.6% white) or Florida A & M
(3.5% white) haven't achieved enough cognitive growth,
haven't sufficiently honed their problem-solving
skills--is that what we are supposed to conclude? The University
of Texas (enrolling 25% Hispanics and 5% blacks) contends that without
a "critical mass" of minority students it can't reap
"the educational benefits of diversity." Does this mean
that Prairie View University, two hours down the road from Austin and
enrolling 7% Hispanics and 1.8% whites, has to do without those
benefits? Are its students poorly prepared for "our increasingly
diverse workforce and society" (*Fisher* 2016, at 2210,
2211)? Defenders of affirmative action should think twice about
claiming an education in a "non-diverse" setting
must be *degraded*.
Fourth, there is a noticeable lack of "fit" between university
affirmative action practices and the diversity rationale (see, for
example, Anderson 2002, 27; Anderson 2004, 1217, 1221; Anderson 2010,
142-143). Race is not treated just like any other special factor
that might warrant an admission "plus." Universities work diligently
to maintain a relatively constant percentage of black and Hispanic
enrollees but give variable attention to other of the myriad qualities
students can bring to campus. As one proponent of affirmative action
notes, "affirmative action programs...do not look or operate as
if they were testing for 'diversity'." He suggests that many
supporters of affirmative action nevertheless disregard this fact,
believing "that there is no harm in [a] miscast reliance on diversity
because, with a wink and a nod, everyone understands that diversity is
really a proxy for *integration*" (Issacharoff 2002, 30, 34;
emphasis added).
## 8. The Integration Argument
Although the University couched its legal defense in terms of the
"educational benefits of diversity," another rationale lay ready at
hand. The main reason the University of Michigan strives for a
reasonable representation of minorities on campus is because of the
way it conceives of its mission: to prepare Michigan's future
leaders.
The argument is straightforward:
1. The leadership of the state ought roughly to represent the state's
population, ethnically and racially.
2. As the state's premier training ground for leadership, the
University ought to graduate rising generations of future leaders that
conform to this representational goal.
3. To graduate such rising generations, it needs to admit racially and
ethnically representative classes.
This is the "Michigan Mandate" (*Gratz
v. Bollinger*, 135 F. Supp. 2d 790 [2001], at 796-797).
Racial and ethnic diversity aren't incidental contributors to a
distinct academic mission; they are *part of* the mission of
the University, just as educating young people from Michigan is part
of it (see Fullinwider and Lichtenberg 2004, 165-188). And
something like a national version of the mandate underlies the
Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy, since its
graduates move into elite law firms or government service outside
Michigan (see Lempert et al. 2000, 399; Wilkins 2000,
530-534).
This "integration" rationale seems better aligned with the
actual practice of university affirmative action than the diversity
rationale. Indeed, in the midst of her nominally Powell-like defense
of the Law School, Justice O'Connor in *Grutter* for a
moment veered away from the "educational benefits of
diversity" to go down a quite different path. Institutions like
the University of Michigan and its Law School, she noted,
"represent the training ground for...our Nation's
leaders." She went on:
>
>
> In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes
> of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be
> visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and
> ethnicity. All members of our heterogeneous society must have
> confidence in the openness and integrity of the educational
> institutions that provide this training....Access...must be
> inclusive...of every race and ethnicity, so that all members of
> our heterogeneous society may participate in the educational
> institutions that provide the training and education necessary to
> succeed in
> America (*Grutter*, at 336).
>
>
This "legitimacy" argument--not in any way about
enriching the climate of opinion on campus or improving
students' complex thinking skills--parallels the simple
syllogism set out just above. Justice O'Connor inserted this new
rationale into the middle of her *Grutter*
opinion--inserted it unexpectedly and then abandoned it just as
quickly to resume tracing the byways of diversity. Justice Kennedy did
the same in *Fisher* (2016, 2211).
Certainly, something in the spirit of the "Michigan
Mandate" has animated elite universities, including those
studied by William Bowen and Derek Bok in *The Shape of the River:
Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University
Admissions*. The primary aim of these institutions is not through
vigorous affirmative action to enhance the liberal learning of their
students (although they welcome this gain for all students). Their
main motive for assuring that the percentage of African-Americans and
Hispanics on their campuses is more than token derives from their
self-conceptions as institutions training individuals who will some
day take up national and international leadership roles in the
professions, arts, sciences, education, politics, and government
(Bowen and Bok 1998, 7). Society, they believe, will be stronger and
more just if the ranks of its leading citizens include a racially and
ethnically broader range of people than it does now. Nor are they
wrong in thinking that the pipeline to local and national elites runs
through top-notch universities.
Elizabeth Anderson, in two long essays (2002, 2004), bookending
the *Grutter* decision, makes a thorough and cogent case for
putting racial integration at the center of conceptions of affirmative
action. The diversity argument is insufficient, she
writes. "Considered as a purely cognitive end, divorced from the
values of democracy and social justice, the 'robust exchange of
ideas' cannot support the scope of racial preferences in college
admissions" (Anderson 2002, 1221). She goes on:
>
>
> The integrative model of affirmative action offers an alternative
> rationale for race-sensitive admissions that unites educational
> with democratic and social justice concerns. It begins with a
> recognition that Americans live in a profoundly segregated society, a
> condition inconsistent with a fully democratic society and with equal
> opportunity. To achieve the latter goals, we need to
> desegregate--to integrate, that is--to live together as one
> body of equal citizens (Anderson 2002, 1222).
>
>
>
>
>
> The integrative model has several legal advantages over the diversity
> and compensation models of affirmative action. It makes sense of the
> scope and weight that educational institutions actually give to race
> in the admissions process. It thus closes the gap between theory and
> practice that makes affirmative action programs so vulnerable under
> strict scrutiny. It also shows how race can be directly relevant to a
> compelling state interest, rather than merely a proxy for something
> else, such as diversity of opinions (Anderson 2002, 1226).
>
>
>
>
>
> Given the realities of race in the U.S., people of different races
> occupy different walks of life. So in the U.S., democracy requires
> racial integration of the main institutions of civil society, the
> places where discussion of public import among citizens take place:
> public accommodations, workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. The
> same point applies to society's elites, those who play a pivotal
> role in formulating and adopting policies of public import. Elites, to
> be legitimate, must serve a representative function: they must be
> capable of and dedicated to representing the concerns of people from
> all walks of life, so that the policies they forge are responsive to
> these concerns. An elite drawn only from segments of society that live
> in isolation from other segments will be ignorant of the circumstances
> and concerns of those who occupy other walks of life (Anderson 2004,
> 22).
>
>
>
>
Anderson sees integration as an end courts can accept, one that
informs many past judicial opinions and acts of legislation, and one
given endorsement in *Grutter*:
>
> The "diversity" defense of affirmative action, articulated
> in Justice Powell's *Bakke* opinion, limits integration
> to those cases in which it can be shown to yield educational
> benefits. *Grutter* advances a more robust integrationist
> perspective, which affirms racial integration as a compelling interest
> apart rom its educational benefits (Anderson 2004, 23).
>
(It is hard to see how *Grutter* represents a
"robust" defense of integrative affirmative
action. Justice O'Connor introduced the "legitimacy"
argument without prior preparation and left it hanging without further
development. Justice Kennedy in *Fisher* likewise seemed not to
notice that the "legitimacy" argument departs considerably
from the diversity rationale he was rehearsing. Nevertheless, there it
is in the majority opinions, to be seized on and developed by a future
court if it is so disposed.)[27]
Other writers, too, have talked about affirmative action in terms
of integration (Warnke 1998; Estlund 2002; Jacobs 2004; Boddie
2016).
The integration argument, like the diversity argument, is
straightforwardly instrumental. It points to hoped-for outcomes of
affirmative action. If those outcomes don't materialize, then
affirmative action's cause is weakened. Moreover, the little
integration syllogism isn't complete as it stands. It needs to include
another premise: that the gains from achieving racially and ethnically
integrated classes don't come at a disproportionate cost.
Perhaps the cost is high, or even too high. Stephan and Abigail
Thernstrom certainly think so. They contend that most of the cost
falls on the very persons affirmative action is supposed to benefit.
Under-prepared African-Americans are thrown into academic environments
where they cannot succeed (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997, 395-411).
In the Thernstroms' view, race-blind admissions policies will result
in a desirable "cascading," with African-American and
Hispanic students ending up at colleges and universities where the
academic credentials of their fellow students match their
own. However, the Bowen and Bok study provides some evidence that
cascading isn't necessarily a valuable phenomenon. In fact, at the
schools they studied, the better the institution a student entered,
whatever his academic credentials, the more likely he was to graduate,
go on to further education, and earn a good
income (Bowen and Bok 1998, 63, 114,
144).
Even so, the select schools Bowen and Bok studied may be quite
unrepresentative of the full range of schools that
resort to racial preferences and the cost-benefit picture that holds
for these schools may not hold for the rest. Indeed, the picture drawn
by Richard Sander in a lengthy review of affirmative action in law
schools, published in the November 2004 *Stanford Law Review*,
lends credence to the Thernstrom's academic mismatch thesis. Ranking
law schools from best to worst, Sander found that affirmative action
boosts African-American students 20 or more steps up the ladder,
putting them in schools with white classmates who possess considerably
better LSAT scores and undergraduate college grades. The upshot:
"close to half of black students end up in the bottom tenth of
their classes." This bad performance yields three bad
consequences. First, African-American students suffer high attrition
rates. Second, they fail the bar exam at a high rate (the principal
predictor of a student's passing or failing is her grades, not the
quality of her school). Third, they suffer a significant employment
penalty for low grades "in all schools outside the top
ten." Sander estimates that under a race-blind admissions
system, American law schools would actually create more
African-American lawyers than they do under affirmative action (Sander
2004, 449, 460, 478, 479).
Sander's article inspired a flurry of responses disputing his
methodology and conclusions (e.g., Ayers and Brooks 2005, Chambers,
*et al*. 2005, Wilkins 2005, Ho 2005, Barnes 2007, and
Rothstein and Yoon 2008). Sander replied to his critics (Sander
2005); other writers found evidence of mismatch effects in educational
domains outside law schools (Elliott *et al*. 1996, Smith and
McArdle, 2004, Arcidiacono *et al*. 2012); yet other scholars
presented independent confirmation of Sander's hypothesis
(Arcidiacono *et al*. 2011b, Williams 2013), One critic, upon
re-analysis, had to withdraw her refutation of Sander (Barnes 2007,
Barnes 2011); and in 2012 Sander joined with co-author Stuart Taylor
to publish *Mismatch*, a book-length treatment setting out old
and new research supporting Sander's hypothesis. Others continue
to find the law school mismatch hypothesis dubious and unsupported
(Camilli and Welner 2011; Camilli and Jackson 2011; Kidder and Lempert
2015)
Other researchers, following the lead of Bowen and Bok, have focused
on undergraduate performance. Fischer and Massey, for example,
concluded that though affirmative action has "both positive and
negative implications for minority students, [such policies] operate,
on balance, to enhance the academic achievement of minority
students" (Fischer and Massey 2007, 546). In another study,
Massey and Mooney found "little support for the mismatch
hypothesis" (Massey and Mooney 2007, 114). Dale and Krueger
determined that "the effect of attending a school with a higher
average SAT score is positive for black and Hispanic students"
(Dale and Krueger 2014, 350). Similarly, Melguizo held:
>
> that for minority students who were admitted to...selective
> institutions under affirmative action (i.e., with slightly
> below-average SAT scores but with other personal characteristics
> and experiences correlated with persistence), their probability of
> graduation was not lower as was predicted by critics of affirmative
> action. On the contrary, their probability of graduation was higher at
> the most and very selective institutions compared to the
> non-selective ones (Melguizo 2008, 233).
>
>
One reason disputes persist about cause and effect is imperfect
data. Although often operating with large sets of information,
researchers must decide which statistical models most appropriately
tease out significance, decisions that involve debatable assumptions
about filling in missing pieces. Two researchers note that
"[b]etter data would undoubtedly permit more relevant and
convincing analyses of the effects of mismatch and and would
especially help to identify any threshold below which potential
mismatch effects become more probable" (Camilli and Welner 2011,
500). Much of the back-and-forth about the effects of
affirmative action could be resolved if educational institutions
disclosed information about their admissions processes, student
grades, graduation rates, and the like. But institutional resistance
makes this unlikely.[28]
## 9. Desert Confounded, Desert Misapplied
The affirmative action debate throws up many ironies but one in
particular should be noted. From the time in 1973 when Judith Jarvis
Thomson conjectured that it was "not entirely
inappropriate" that white males bear the costs of the
community's "making amends" to African-Americans and women
through preferential affirmative action, the affirmative action debate
has been distracted by intense quarrels over *who deserves
what*. Do the beneficiaries of affirmative action *deserve*
their benefits (Allen 2011)? Do the losers *deserve* their loss?
Christopher Edley, the White House assistant put in charge of
President Clinton's review of affirmative action policy in 1994-95,
speaks of how, during the long sessions he and his co-workers put in
around the conference table, the discussion of affirmative action kept
circling back to the "coal miner's son"
question (I've changed the gender for expository purposes).
>
>
> Imagine a college admissions committee trying to decide between the
> white [son] of an Appalachian coal miner's family and the African
> American son of a successful Pittsburgh neurosurgeon. Why should the
> black applicant get preference over the white
> applicant? (Edley 1996, 132ff)
>
>
Why, indeed? This is a hard question if one defends affirmative action
in terms of compensatory or distributive justice. If directly doing
justice is what affirmative action is about, then its mechanisms must
be adjusted as best they can to reward individual desert and true
merit. The "coal miner's son" example is meant to throw
desert in the defender's face: *here* is affirmative action at
work *thwarting* desert, for surely the coal miner's son--from the
hard scrabble of Harlan County, say--has lived with far less
advantage than the neurosurgeon's son who, we may suppose, has reaped
all the advantages of his father's (or mother's) standing. Why should
the latter get a preference?
A defender might answer in the way that Charles Lawrence and Mari
Matsuda do in their 1997 book, *We Won't Go Back*:
"All the talk about class, the endless citings of the
'poor white male from Appalachia,' cannot avoid the
reality of race and gender privilege" (Lawrence and Matsuda
1997, 190-191). As they see it, because white privilege persists
racial preferences really do balance the scales. Because male
privilege persists, gender preferences really do make selections
fairer. Lawrence and Matsuda brook no concession: in every case the
loser in affirmative action is *not* the more deserving.
Even Justice Brennan tried his hand at this argument, writing in
*Bakke*:
>
>
> If it was reasonable to conclude--as we hold that it
> was--that the failure of minorities to qualify for admission at
> [the University of California at] Davis [Medical School] under regular
> procedures was due principally to the effects of past discrimination,
> then there is a reasonable likelihood that, but for pervasive racial
> discrimination...[Bakke] would have failed to qualify for
> admission even in the absence of Davis' special admissions
> program (Bakke, at 365-6 [Brennen, dissenting]).
>
>
Bakke was not denied anything to which he had moral claim in the
first place.
Just as Mary Anne Warren and James Rachels in the 1970s thought that
the losers under affirmative action were losing only illicit
privileges, and the gainers merely gaining what should have been theirs
to start with, so Michel Rosenfeld in the 1990s, in his extended
"dialogic" defense of affirmative action, echoes the same
thought:
>
>
> Although affirmative action treats innocent white males unequally, it
> need not deprive them of any genuine equal opportunity rights.
> *Provided an affirmative action plan is precisely tailored to
> redress the losses in prospects of success [by African-Americans and
> women] attributable to racism and sexism, it only deprives innocent
> white males of the corresponding undeserved increases in their
> prospects of success*.... [R]emedial affirmative action does
> not take away from innocent white males anything that they have
> rightfully earned or that they should be entitled to
> keep (Rosenfeld 1991, 307-8, emphasis added).
>
>
However, programs that give blanket preferences by race or gender are
hardly "precisely tailored" to match desert and reward
since, as Lawrence and Matsuda themselves acknowledge at one place,
the white male "privilege" is "statistical"
(Lawrence and Matsuda 1997, 252). Yet it is individuals, not
statistical averages, who gain or lose in admissions determinations
and employment selections.[29]
The persistence of this strategy of defense reflects a residual
feeling that the fruits of affirmative action are somehow spoiled if they are
not deserved (Harris 2003). Nevertheless, it is the wrong strategy for defending
real world affirmative action. The programs legitimated under the
Civil Rights Act, in both their nonpreferential and preferential
forms, had--and have--a clear aim: to change institutions so
that they can meet the nondiscrimination mandate of the Act. Selection
by race or gender was--and is--a means to such change. To
the extent that such selection also compensates individuals for past
wrongs or puts people in places they really deserve, these are
incidental by-products of a process aimed at something else.
The same is true with university admissions policy. When the Medical
School of the University of California at Davis offered four reasons
in defense of the special admissions program that left Bakke on the
outside, none of these reasons said anything about matching admissions
and desert. The criteria of the special admissions program--race
and ethnicity--were instruments to further ends: integrating the
classroom, the profession, and the delivery of medical services, and
breaking the chain of self-reproducing societal discrimination.
Likewise, when the University of Michigan and the University of Texas
defended their programs they pointed not to desert rewarded but
educational value generated.
Now, if the neurosurgeon's son *because of his race* can
advance each of these goals and the coal miner's son, *because of
his race*, cannot, then isn't the selection decision easy? Pick
the *African-American* neurosurgeon's son (however advantaged
he may be) over the
*white* coal miner's son (even if he is the
most deserving creature imaginable). The aims of real world
affirmative action make race and ethnicity (and sometimes gender)
salient, not personal desert or merit. The test of real world
affirmative action lies in the urgency of its ends (preventing
discrimination, promoting diversity or integration) and the aptness
(moral and causal) of its means (racial, ethnic, and gender
preferences). Both remain much in dispute. |
africana | ## 1. The Concept of Africana Philosophy
There are significant challenges to the viability of the concept
*Africana philosophy* as well as to an effort to map out an
encyclopedic overview of the extended and still expanding range of
endeavors covered by the term. Foremost are the challenges to ordering
through a single concept the geographical, historical, socio-political,
and cultural differences and complexities that have defined and
continue to define the realities of life of the many persons and
peoples identified as "African" and "of African
descent" in many locales throughout the world. Yet, the viability
of the concept is grounded on several centuries of continuous, linked,
complicated histories during which Black peoples of Africa, and their
descendants, have been regarded as and engaged with, and more or less
have come to regard themselves, as "African" peoples, as
persons and peoples "of African descent." The long
histories of this regarding, by others and by themselves, have thus
conditioned substantively the history-makings, the socio-political
lives, the culture-makings and culture-mediations, intellectual
productions and philosophizings included, of persons and peoples
African and of African descent.
On these socially constructive historical groundings rest several key
heuristic presumptions that are central to *Africana
philosophy* as a metaphilosophical concept for organizing
intellectual praxes. First, the presumption that there are sufficient
distinguishing anthropological, historical, and other commonalities
and similarities that are shared, more or less, by the many
bio-cultural groupings of human beings who have been identified, and
who subsequently generally have come to identify themselves, as, in
part, "African" or "of African descent" to
warrant ordering under a general heading particular instances of
philosophically articulate thought expressed by persons in these
groupings and shared with and debated by others within and beyond the
groupings. These identifications are consequences of the imposition on
the peoples of the continent named "Africa" of an
attempted homogenizing racializing ontology by peoples of
nation-states on another continent that was named "Europe"
in an aspiration for geo-political and anthropological
unification. Many "Europeans" came to believe that beneath
their many formidable differences there was a foundational commonality
through shared raciality and other constitutive virtues that was
definitive of their anthropological and historical superiority as
harbingers of a theologically and philosophically sanctioned destiny
to achieve global predominance. It was out of this toxic mix of
convictions and aspirations that particular Europeans set about
constructing racialized, rank-ordered philosophical anthropologies
through which they construed a continent of diverse peoples as a
single "race" of "Africans" or
"Negroes." The outcomes of the histories of these
inventive forgings through complex, centuries-long struggles against
European imperialist impositions and the adaptive endurances of
colonization and dispersing enslavements by persons and peoples
African and African-descendant provide the warrant for the presumption
of commonalities embraced by the concept *Africana philosophy*
when considering the philosophizings of people African and
African-descended subsequent to their encounters with impositions of
imperialism by people(s) of Europe and European Diasporas.
This first presumption is tempered by a second: namely, that the
bio-cultural groupings of peoples African and of African descent are
not homogeneous, racially or otherwise, neither individually nor
collectively, but are constituted by differences and dissimilarities
as well as by similarities and commonalities. All the more so as
consequences of the various groups having created differing
life-worlds in differing geographical, political, and historical
locations prior to and as a consequence of impositions and disruptions
of their lives fostered by Europeans and others on one hand; and, on
the other, while living interactions and cultural exchanges with other
peoples, European and European-descended peoples included, which have
given rise to differences in individual and group genomes, histories,
cultures, interests, and aspirations. Furthermore, identified shared
similarities and commonalities are understood to be
*contingent*, thus neither necessary nor inherent and fixed and
thus the same for all persons African or of African descent. This
presumption rules out any ahistorical, a priori claims regarding
supposedly definitive "natural" characteristics of
"the" thought of African and African-descended
peoples assumed as non-contingently widely and generally shared across
extended historical times and geo-cultural spaces. *Africana
philosophy* as an ordering concept, then, is neither the promise
of, nor an aspiration for, a unifying philosophy already shared, or to
be shared, by all properly thoughtful persons African and/or of African
descent. Judgments regarding the always-contingent distinguishing
features of philosophizing thought and expression by persons African
and of African descent, and of the extent to which such features are
shared--to what degree, under what circumstances, to what
ends--are to be achieved by way of combined efforts of
philosophical anthropology, sociology of knowledge, and intellectual
histories: that is, by way of *historically and socio-culturally
situated comparative studies* of instances of philosophizing.
A third presumption: *Africana philosophy* should not be
regarded as normatively prescriptive for philosophers identified as
African or of African descent, as setting requirements for what their
philosophizing must have been, or must be, about and to what ends
because of their racial/ethnic identities. Such identities neither
confer nor require particular philosophical commitments or obligations.
Substantive differences among African and African-descended thinkers
have been, and must continue to be, acknowledged and taken into account
in the ordering of the field and setting agendas for Africana
philosophy. There have been, are, and will likely continue to be
persons African and of African descent for whom their identities as
such are of no import for their philosophizing.
Of particular importance, work in Africana philosophy is also
conditioned by the presumption that contributors need not be persons
African or of African descent. This presumption rests on the
understanding that the conditioning circumstances, motivations, modes,
agendas, and importance of the philosophically articulate thought and
aesthetic expressions of persons African and of African descent can be
identified, understood, researched, taught, commented on, and taken up
with respectful competence by persons neither African nor of African
descent. By virtue of their competencies such persons may be identified
appropriately as, for example, "Africanists" or
"Afro-Caribbeanists" or "African
Americanists."
Finally, the extent to which these heuristic presumptions are cogent
and effective in guiding work in Africana philosophy is a matter that
is to be continuously explored and tested in the agora of disciplined,
ethical scholarship and thus confirmed or disconfirmed, to whatever
extent appropriate, in accord with proper methods of critical review
properly deployed.
## 2. Philosophizings Born of Struggles: Conditions of Emergence of Africana Philosophy
The metaphilosophical efforts to map out and order a complex
discursive field of articulations and practices as *Africana
philosophy* are, indeed, *emergent* disciplinary ventures of
the late twentieth century. However, many of the instances of
thoughtful articulation and aesthetic expressiveness that are being
identified and explored as instances of philosophizing were neither
produced nor guided by norms and agendas of the discipline of academic
philosophy as institutionalized for centuries in various countries of
Western European and North America. The same is true for the needs,
motivations, objectives, and many of the principal intellectual
resources that motivated and oriented those instances of articulation
and creative expression and the formation of the networks of
idea-spaces and discursive communities that nurtured them. For African
and African-descended peoples were of little or no philosophical or
anthropological significance to those who have been the designators,
historians, practitioners, and mediators of the discipline's
institutionalized canons of issues, figures, agendas, conceptual and
methodological traditions, problem-sets, texts or text-analogs,
organizations, and institutions. The pre-Modern histories of African
and African-descended peoples; the centuries-long colonized, enslaved,
and otherwise utterly dehumanizing unfreedom of Black peoples
throughout the continents of Africa, Europe, the Americas, and the
Caribbean; the rapacious unjust exploitation of their bodies, lands,
resources, and life-opportunities--all of these went mostly
without explicit comment in the discipline of Philosophy, not even as a
focus of protest, notwithstanding all of the vaunted concern within the
discipline for conceptions of *freedom*, *justice*,
*equality*, *human nature*, and *human well-being*
generally. Even as European and European-descended *philosophes*
of the eighteen, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries fashion decidedly
new philosophical anthropologies, socio-political philosophies, and
philosophies of histories into complex Enlightenments to ground and
guide quests to realize the global instantiations of Modernities in
which reason-guided freedom and justice would be foundational to the
spread of the racialized, capitalist civilizational projects of
Eurocentrism (Amin 1989), there was almost total silence about the intended and
unintended consequences for peoples African and of African
descent--except for claims that colonization and enslavement would
bring them much needed "civilizing."
Evolving academic, and subsequently professionalized, Philosophy
thus aided and abetted, and was a substantial institutionalized
beneficiary of, these projects well into the twentieth century when the
various forms and movements of resistance of African and
African-descended peoples to dehumanization were made more challenging
while animated by motivating declarations of their claims to their
humanity and their rights to freedom, justice, and full citizenship. By
the middle of the twentieth century, throughout Africa, the Caribbean,
and the Americas these movements had won major victories of liberation
from the oppressive regimes of Eurocentric racial apartheid and
exploitation. The movements were also contributing to progressive
transformations of these regimes that helped to open them to
substantive measures of real freedom and justice not only for persons
and peoples African and of African descent, but for other persons and
peoples of color and, even, for women of European descent.
These historic movements and developments provided contemporary
pioneers of Africana philosophy rich, exemplary ideas, idea-spaces,
agendas, and social networks on which to draw for motivations,
missions, and other resources to forge intellectual agendas and
strategies and social networks needed for philosophizing in the
interests of people African and of African descent. Hence, the
twentieth-century emergence of Africana philosophy as an international
field of and for discursive intellectual and expressive aesthetic work
with a distinctive mission: to gather up and explore critically
thoughtful articulations and aesthetic expressions by and about persons
and peoples African and of African descent as instances of
philosophizing; and to fashion revised or new articulations and artful
expressions in keeping with, and as aids to, quests for freedom,
justice, and human dignity by and for these persons and peoples.
Examples of such mission-driven creative intellectual and expressive
work in service to the liberation and redemption of Black peoples were
already at hand in several other disciplines: in history and sociology,
music and literature, art and dance, religion and theology. Moreover,
outside of academic disciplines, many among several generations of
fiercely independent, extraordinarily formally and informally educated
(and in some instances self-taught) socially, politically, and
aesthetically engaged female and male black intellectuals and artists,
who devoted much of their lives to service as uplifters of Black
peoples, had pursued their often very highly productive, and certainly
very influential, intellectual and expressive work without ongoing
affiliations with institutions of higher education, and without the
assistance of sources of support for articulation and expression, that
were dominated and controlled by Europeans and people of European
descent. This independence was crucial to the production of their
seminal reflections, articulations, and artistic creations and
expressions. Many of them helped to found and were affiliated with and
supported by religious and educational institutions, character-building
women's and men's clubs and literary societies;
international missionary ventures; benevolent and political
organizations; publishing and commercial enterprises; and with local,
regional, and international anti-colonial and liberatory organizations
founded and operated by and devoted to the uplift, freedom, and
well-being of African and African-descended peoples. As inspiring role
models, much of their work became resource-reservoirs for new
generations of women and men determined to continue the quests for
liberation and justice for Black peoples. A matter of significant
influence was that many of these important figures had become
internationalists in understanding the similarities and commonalities of
the plights suffered by African and African-descended peoples due to
the shared agendas for racialized oppression and exploitation forged
and fostered by White peoples of various nation-states. Consequently,
more than a few of the new generations of twentieth-century African and
African-descended fighters for freedom and justice cultivated
internationalist, "Pan African" (Geiss 1974) understandings of and
aspirations for what would be needed in the way of intellectual
resources and strategies to assist with claiming and realizing the full
humanity of and just freedom for African and African-descended
peoples.
Many of the contemporary disciplinary pioneers of the
philosophizings that are now being gathered under the umbrella of
Africana philosophy, though participants in institutionalized,
professional philosophy, have also been intellectual and spiritual
members of the new generations of freedom fighters or otherwise
substantially influenced by them. Thus, many have drawn their
motivations, aspirations, and resources for philosophical work from
beyond the canonized motivations and traditions of thought
institutionalized in the discipline. Energized and emboldened by the
legacies of the role models and liberatory movements, they have taken
on the work of challenging the discipline in order to create room
within its intellectual and organizational structures and processes
wherein they could pursue agendas of giving consideration to matters of
philosophical import to persons and peoples African and of African
descent, and of particular import to themselves as persons African and
of African descent engaged in philosophizing formally and
professionally.
Among the challenges was the need, first, to reconsider
long-prevailing defining assumptions regarding the nature of properly
"philosophical" thought: namely, that such thought is
characterized by a loving quest for wisdom pursued by persons who have
the most highly cultivated forms of disciplined thought, and whose
lives are materially conditioned such that they have the leisure to
devote substantial amounts of their time and energy to *reflective
thought* and to working out their thinking for articulate,
systematic expression in *writing*.
It became apparent to many--though by no means to all--of
the contemporary pioneers of Africana philosophy within academic
philosophy that this image of the ideal philosopher was not appropriate
for respectfully identifying or characterizing many of the
philosophically thoughtful and expressive persons African and of
African descent, those, especially, who lived several centuries ago.
Certainly, throughout the centuries of radically disruptive and
dehumanizing encounters between peoples African and of African descent
and peoples of Europe and of the Euro-Americas, and others, the
philosophizing efforts of Black people have, indeed, been "born
of struggle," as the philosopher Leonard Harris has so aptly
noted. The experiences, thus the philosophizing, of many of these
persons--and of generations of millions who were their
contemporaries, millions more who came before them, and millions more
who came after them--were conditioned profoundly by racialized and
gendered exploitative settler-colonialism in their homelands; for
others by racialized and gendered capture, relocation, enslavement, and
oppression in *The New World* thousands of miles from their or
their ancestors' homelands; and in all such cases by racialized
and gendered imperialist encroachments on the very core of their
*being* by which they were forced to become and to be colonized
"natives" and slaves, *ontologically* as well as
socio-economically. Survival and endurance of such conditions by those
who managed to do so required coordinated efforts of recovery and
retention, or the recreation, of the integrity of personhood and
peoplehood, even of basic humaneness, thus required thoughtful
ontological and political work of the most fundamental significance.
So, too, crucial intellectual efforts of the kinds designated moral,
ethical, epistemological, social, religious, theological, and
aesthetic.
Thus, survival and endurance of conditions of racialized and
gendered colonization, enslavement, and oppression--not conditions
of leisured freedom--*compelled* more than a few African
and African-descended persons to philosophize. Almost daily, even on
what seemed the most mundane of occasions, oppressed Black people were
*compelled* to consider the most fundamental existential
questions: Continue life during what would turn out to be
centuries-long colonization and enslavement, of brutal, brutalizing and
humiliating gendered and racialized oppression? Or, seek
"freedom" in death? Suffer despair until mad? Or, find
resources for continued living through surreptitiously nurtured
appreciations of the sacred and beautiful, of irony and tragic comedy,
while cultivating hope and patience aided by discoveries and creations
of beauty and humaneness in the midst of the physical and
soul-distorting psychological brutalities of enforced impoverishments
of conditions that were not in any way "mundane" living?
Die at one's own initiation? Or, capitulate to dehumanization?
Or, struggle to find and sustain faith and hope for a better life, on
earth as well as in the afterlife, through creativity and beauty in
speech, dance, and song while at work and rest; in thought and
artistry; in finding and making truth and right; in seeking and doing
justice; in forging and sustaining relations of family and community
when such relations were largely prohibited; in rendering life
sacred?
For centuries, persons African and of African descent, for
themselves as well as for their associates and successors, have
*had* to ponder the most fundamental questions of existence as a
direct consequence of their life-constraining, life-distorting
encounters with various self-racializing and other-racializing peoples
of Europe, the Euro-Americas, and elsewhere. And in choosing to live
and endure, peoples African and of African descent have *had* to
forge, test out with their lives, and then refine and further live out
explicit strategies by which to avoid being broken by brutality and
humiliation and succumbing to fear, despair, or the soul-devouring
obsession with vengeance. They have *had* to share with their
associates, and those succeeding them, their creative and sustaining
legacies for infusing life with spirit-lifting artfulness and their
articulated ponderings and strategies for surviving, living, and
enduring with hope *despite* the circumstances. They have
*had* to philosophize, and to share their philosophizings, in
order to forge the cross-generational bonds of respectful,
extended-family, community-sustaining love and mutuality without which
neither survival nor endurance would have been possible.
Indeed, endurance of gendered and racialized colonization,
enslavement, and oppression that would be continued for centuries
required very compelling, sustaining, persuasive beliefs and nurtured
investments in finding and creating soul-nurturing art and
experience-verified praxis-guiding thoughtfulness. These beliefs and
aesthetic considerations had to be articulated and communicated for
sharing, sometimes surreptitiously, in order that persons and peoples
endure. And enduring required that the brutalities and humiliations had
to be countered that were directed, first and foremost, at the defining
core of their very *being*--that is, at their foundational
notions of themselves as persons and as distinctive, racialized
peoples--so as to bring about their cross-generational living of
*social death* (Patterson 1982). This particular persons did, throughout Africa
and African Diasporas, and without either the guidance or sanction of
academic Philosophy and the discipline's most canonical
practitioners even as some among the latter subjected African and
African-descended peoples to their ontological racism.
It has been instances of such compelled, articulated thoughtfulness
that contemporary proponents of Africana philosophy have brought into
the discipline of academic Philosophy as the initial historic instances
of philosophizing constituting the new field. The identification and
careful exploration of and commentary on the forms and efficacies of
this growing collection of works of thoughtful articulation and
aesthetic expression are now principal forms of endeavor in Africana
philosophy. The creation and expression of new articulations and
expressions of thoughtfulness by persons African and of African
descent, and by other philosophers not African or of African descent,
on these works as well as on old, continuing, or emergent issues
pertinent to Africans and people of African descent make for other
forms of endeavor in Africana philosophy.
These efforts of recovery, exploration, commentary, and critique
constitute an ongoing project-of-projects with several agendas. A first
agenda involves, as just noted, the identification and recovery of
instances and legacies of the 'philosophizings born of
struggles'. Another very important agenda is the identification
and recovery of philosophizings that were engaged in long before the
centuries-long struggles with peoples of Europe began. A third agenda
is to learn from the philosophizings the lessons of the considerations
that governed or substantially conditioned the organization and living
of life in the various circumstances in which peoples of Africa forged
their evolutionary adaptations. Another agenda: to understand and
appreciate fully those philosophizings that nurtured endurance in the
face of brutalizing assaults on peoples' *being* in order
to learn from the life-affirming, very passionate intellectual and
emotional endeavors of those among severely abused peoples who have
been, and continue to be, those who work at gathering themselves, their
peoples, and even those who have abused them into humane integrity,
individually and collectively. It is to learn how and why it was and is
that from among peoples abused and degraded for centuries in conditions
of continuous terrorism there have been steady successions of persons
who have spared substantial portions of the emotional and intellectual
energies they managed to preserve and cultivate, along with nurtured
senses of their sacred humanity, to devote to quests for freedom and
justice, hardly ever to quests for vengeance.
Yet another agenda is to compare the philosophizings of persons
African and of African descent intra-racially and inter-racially, as it
were--that is, to seek out the similarities and differences in the
various instances and modes of thought and expression of persons
situated in similar and different times and places in order to learn
more about the forms and agendas of human species-being as manifested
in philosophizing. An important consequence of pursuing this agenda
should be significant contributions to inventories of thoughtfulness
and aesthetic expression in the storehouses of human civilizations,
contributions to the enlargement and enrichment of canons of Philosophy,
and contributions to revisions of histories and of historiography in the
discipline.
Still another agenda is to make of Africana philosophy a collection
of resources that inspire philosophizing, now and in the future, and
that guide such philosophizings by the best lessons found in the
collection, among them lessons in how to gain and sustain integrity of
body and soul, of person, of womanhood and manhood, of childhood and
young-adulthood, of family and community, of "racial" and
cultural being, of belief in the sacred sanctity of truth, of justice,
and of *freedom* through the exercise of faith and
hope-sustaining, pragmatically focused *reasoning* and creative
aesthetic *expression* in cross-generational conditions of
dehumanizing brutality. Among the lessons to be relearned: how
*not* to abuse persons and peoples; how *not* to
rationalize abuse; how *not* to live massive lies and
contradictions and lives of hypocrisy.
What follows are brief surveys of several historically contextualized
developments of philosophizing now being explored as instances of the
philosophizing constitutive of the field of "Africana
philosophy." The survey is not meant to be exhaustive, but one
that provides examples and solicits additional contributions in order
to make the account more comprehensive and accurate.
## 3. Africana Philosophy: Continental Africa
The various peoples on the continent that came to be called
"Africa" had constructed a variety of more or less complex
societies of varying scale and scope many generations before fifteenth
century encounters with acquisitive explorers and adventurers from the
varying configurations of polities, regions, cities, and states that
have been identified as Europe and from elsewhere. Several of these
ancient societies--the kingdoms of Mali and Ghana and the royal
dynasties of Kemet (Ancient Egypt), for example--had evolved
complex social strata that included persons of accomplished learning.
Some of these persons were stationed in institutions devoted to the
production and distribution of knowledge and creative expression and to
the preservation of that knowledge and expression in written and
artistic works stored in libraries and other repositories and, in the
case of works of art, incorporated into the ontologically-structured
routines of daily life. Others, in social orders in which advanced
knowledge was produced and mediated via oral literatures and
traditions, were selected and trained to be *griots*: that is,
persons with rigorously structured memories who thus became the living
repositories, guardians, and mediators of a people's and/or a
political community's genealogies and intellectual legacies,
their keepers of wisdom. And in order to preserve shared, adaptive life
across generations in all of the various social orders, it was socially
necessary to construct and maintain interpretive orderings of natural
and social realities, as well of creatively imagined origins and
genealogies and constructed histories, by which to meaningfully order
individual and shared life.
The production of these interpretive and expressive orderings, the
working out of the norms by which to structure, justify, and legitimate
the interpretations so as to order personal and social life, were,
indeed, "philosophical" endeavors: labors devoted
to the production of successful, time-tested, enduring thought-praxis
and aesthetic strategies by which to resolve emergent and recurrent
challenges to transgenerational survival and flourishing. These were
experience-conditioned thoughtful means by which to provide knowledge
to guide the ordering of meaningful individual and shared life
transmitted across generations past, present, and future. Such efforts
are as old as the peoples now routinely referred to as
"Africans." And the efforts were not destroyed by the
holocausts of imperialist colonization and domination, nor by
racialized enslavement and apartheid-oppression, fostered by Europeans
and others. Still, the philosophizing efforts were disrupted and
distorted to various degrees in many instances, were creatively
adaptive in many others.
For example, during twentieth century anti-colonial and decolonizing
struggles to regain freedom from the domination and authoritative
jurisdiction of white racial supremacy over the lives, lands, and
resources of African peoples, the disruptions and distortions would
compel reinvigorated and determined adaptive creativity on the part of
African peoples who endeavored to recover and repair old, and/or to
invent new, agendas and strategies for living in keeping with their will
to endure. There is a long history of efforts by scholars African and
of African descent to reclaim Egypt from the intellectual annexation to
Europe that was urged by Hegel in his *The Philosophy of
History*. It is still the case that many people throughout Europe
and the United States regard Egypt as being in "the Middle
East" rather than as constituting the northern portion of the
African continent. This costly mis-education of popular imaginations
persists, as well, in historical accounts of various areas of thought
(though increasingly less so in historiography related to Africa). The
systematic production of ignorance and distorted, unethical
"knowledge" about the peoples of Continental Africa persists
in academic Philosophy, especially in the training of new
professionals; in the writing of canonical histories of the discipline;
and in the construction of disciplinary curricula though progressive
change has begun. Few in academic Philosophy not engaged in the work of
Africana philosophy are likely to know of a long tradition of
scholarship contesting the claims of the Greco-Roman
"origins" of Philosophy, an example of which is the
controversial work by George G.M. James, *Stolen Legacy* (James 1954), in
which he argues, as the title declares, that Greek thinkers
"stole" Egyptian intellectual legacies that have since been
attributed erroneously to Greek thinkers as their creations.
A provocative and controversial argument, indeed. Still, widespread
disciplinary ignorance regarding the histories of ancient peoples and
civilizations other than those stipulated as being ancestors of
European White peoples is a direct and continuing consequence of racism
in the formation, organization, and practices of communities of
discourse and scholarship and the development of racially segregated
idea-spaces, intellectual traditions and networks, and scholarly
organizations throughout Europe and North America. For example, few
academic philosophers and workers in other disciplines who are neither
African nor of African descent are likely to know of the Association
for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, an international
organization of scholars and intellectuals African and of African
descent who are determined to "rescue and rehabilitate" the
histories, intellectual traditions, and wisdom philosophies of Ancient
Africa. Thus, few academic philosophers are likely to know of the
scholarship of various persons in the Association such as Maulana
Karenga (1986) and Jacob H. Carruthers (1984). Both scholars have contributed
additional research and scholarship to studies devoted to reclaiming
Egyptian thought-traditions as *African* traditions of thought.
These scholars' efforts and works are paradigmatic examples of
the determined production and mediation of new knowledge of African and
African-descended peoples by African and African-descended, and other,
scholars who have deliberately worked independently of the mainstream
organizations of academic professionals in Philosophy and other
disciplines.
With little to no evidence in much of the canonical literature and
curricula of academic Philosophy that Western philosophers have focused
attention on questions of historical relations between Egyptian and
Greco-Roman thinkers, or on African thinkers and traditions of thought,
a number of the pioneers of Africana philosophy have turned to
independent, often controversial figures and scholarly projects outside
of academic, professional Philosophy for their inspiration and for
intellectual resources and strategies in taking on the challenges of
creating intellectual spaces in academic Philosophy for "matters
African." A major resource and intellectual mentor continue to be
works by and the person of Cheikh Anta Diop, the intellectually daring
and pioneering Senegalese scholar who, in *The African Origin of
Civilization: Myth or Reality*, published in the early 1970s,
argued for the reality of the African origin of human civilization. Diop had begun the
challenging work of reclaiming African heritages decades earlier by
arguing in a dissertation submitted for the Ph.D. at the University of
Paris that ancient Egyptian civilization was a black African
civilization. His explorations in support of his claims have enormous
implications for revisions to histories of the origins of Western
Philosophy. Similarly, Martin Bernal's loudly and heatedly
contested multi-volume *Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of
Classical Civilization* is by far the most widely read, and
intensely debated, work in this vein to which many have turned.
However, Bernal's work, which acknowledges a long line of African
and African-descended scholars who are his precursors, Diop included,
has raised hardly a ripple in academic Philosophy. The discipline has
thus long been overdue for a spirited and disciplined critical
reconsideration of the possibilities and realities of informing
Greco-Roman *and* African Egyptian contributions to the
histories of emergence and development of philosophical thought that
has been canonized as foundational to the genealogy of Western
Philosophy. Africana philosophy has been forged as a novel context of
provocations for such critical reconsiderations.
Meanwhile, for several decades academic philosophers in Africa, and
elsewhere, have been involved in intense debates and discussions that
have prompted reconstructions of disciplinary enterprises of Philosophy
(departments in educational institutions as well as national and
international organizations of professional philosophers). The initial
focal question at the center of the debates and discussions was whether
or not there were proper instances of Philosophy in traditional (i.e.,
pre-Modern) Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular. The publication in 1945
of Placide Tempels' *La Philosophie Bantoue* triggered
much of the debate.
The historical context in which the debates and discussions emerged
and in which they were waged was conditioned thoroughly by European
colonial domination and exploitation of African peoples rationalized
through rank-ordering racial characterizations. This rationalizing work
was aided significantly by the intellectual efforts of canonical
European philosophers. David Hume, in a footnote in his "Of
National Characters," philosophized about the "natural
inferiority" of Negroes to White people (Hume 1742) and was supported by
Immanuel Kant (1764), who elaborated his own theory of inferior and superior
racial types in his writings on anthropology (Kant 1798). Since successive
generations of European and Euro-American White people had been
educated into widely-shared common senses of their racial superiority
to inferior Africans by such supposedly philosophically well-reasoned,
science-verified, and theologically sanctioned teachings, the claim
that there were Africans capable of producing thought of the caliber of
Philosophy was regarded by most of them as utterly preposterous.
At the core of the controversy was the pressing question
whether African persons were fully and sufficiently human and capable
intellectually in comparison to the model human par excellence: the
*man* of Europe, the White Man, the avatar for all White people
and for humanity proper, whose defining characteristics were capacities
for reasoning and articulate speech (*logos*). Consequently, the
claim of *Bantu Philosophy* made by Placide Tempels, a Belgium
priest engaged in missionary work in the then-called Belgian Congo,
that Bantu Africans (related ethnic groups identified by the dominant
language group, Bantu, spoken by the related groups) had an indigenous
philosophy was a serious challenge to the racialized philosophical
ontology-cum-anthropology that undergirded colonial domination and
exploitation. However, Tempels tempered the unsettling implications of
his claim by also claiming that Bantu Africans did not have conscious
knowledge of their philosophy. Rather, he claimed, it was he who was
able, using the tools at his disposal by virtue of his training in
Philosophy, to engage in a hermeneutic of the practices and language of
the Bantu and extract the constitutive epistemology and axiology
structuring the operative, behavior-guiding philosophy at work in their
linguistic practices and normative actions.
Nonetheless, the impact of *Bantu Philosophy* was
substantial. Of particular consequence, the debates it prompted helped
to direct the attention of researchers and scholars in several
disciplines (anthropology, ethnology, history, religion, philosophy) to
the identification and exploration of the articulate systems of thought
of various groups of "traditional" Africans. A number of
European scholars and researchers who had spent years studying and
living among various African peoples were pleased to find confirmed in
Tempels' book their own positive assessments of Africans'
thought-systems, social organization, and artistic creativity. Others,
however, disagreed and challenged Tempels' claims, in a
particular case criticizing him for mistaking an "impetus
for" philosophy in the language and behavior of Bantu-speaking
Africans as evidence of a developed capacity for articulating a proper
Philosophy. This critic concluded that Bantu-Africans had not yet
fulfilled the conceptual conditions for "taking off" into
philosophizing properly (Crahay 1965). Other scholars engaged in comparative
explorations of thought-systems of various African peoples countered
the criticism by providing accounts of a number of such systems that
gave clear evidence of their very capable and developed
rationality (Forde 1954; Fortes 1965).
The subsequent decades of debates (mid 1940 through the 1980s)
regarding the possibility of African philosophy and disclosures of the
long-developed rationality and humanity of African peoples were
significant consequences for intellectual agendas and practices of
revolutionary developments in political arenas manifested in
anti-colonial struggles throughout the African continent, and in
efforts to construct new political, economic, social, and cultural
orders after the successes of those struggles. A significant number
among new generations of African intellectuals--many of them
educated in institutions in Africa, many of which were administered by
persons of European descent; and more than a few of them educated
further in the most elite institutions of the colonizing "Mother
Country"--became radicalized in their opposition to
racialized colonial domination and exploitation of African peoples and
resources. A number of these engaged intellectuals regarded Tempels and
similarly oriented European and Euro-American thinkers as allies in
their struggles against the dehumanizing rationalizations that
supported European colonialism. Some regarded *Bantu Philosophy*
as a defense, even a vindication, of Africans as rational human beings
quite capable of managing their own lives and therefore capable of
independence from colonial rule. Others, however, thought
Tempels' claims, and similar offerings by others, were misguided
and misleading candidates for proper instances of philosophical thought
by Africans. For these dissenters such candidates were really more
ethnological studies *of* African peoples than philosophical
articulations *by* them, and that their proponents were more
misguided in seeming to attribute unconscious, unwritten, and widely
shared putative philosophical systems to all of the persons in the
particular groups under discussion. These dissenters disparaged such
accounts as "ethno-philosophy."
African and African-descended intellectuals involved in and
otherwise supporting anti-colonial liberation struggles and
post-colonial efforts to rehabilitate and further development new
African nation-states found in these raging debates intellectual
weapons with which to reclaim, reconstruct, and redefine the histories,
personhood, peoplehood, needs, and future possibilities of African
peoples. Life under exploitative, dehumanizing colonialism compelled
intellectual and artistic engagements with prevailing conditions and
spurred the nurturing of imaginative visions of possibilities of
liberation and of how liberation might be achieved; whether and how
modes and agendas of life before the holocausts might be recovered,
restored, or adapted to new circumstances as thinkers and practitioners
of the religious and theological, creative and expressive artists of
literature, music, sculpture, dance, and painting all grappled with the
profound existential challenges of the loss of personal and communal
integrity through the violent imposition of the conflicts of Tradition
and Modernity and the need for liberation and freedom.
Twentieth-century struggles on the African continent have thus had
significant consequences for, and impacts on, creative intellectual and
expressive work in and with regard to continental Africa, and the
African Diaspora generally, in giving rise to widespread, prolific, and
in many cases especially important articulations of social, political,
ethical, and expressive aesthetic thought and feeling. These
articulations and expressions have become important object-lessons as
well as inspiring resources of agendas and critiques drawn on to forge
distinctive disciplinary enterprises of academic Philosophy. They have
become, as well, the focus of informative critical thought for a number
of philosophers focusing on "matters African."
For example, the Tempels-inspired debates over the possibilities for
and nature of philosophizing by persons African became focused, for a
time, on discussions of the nature and anthropological distributions of
modes of rationality unique to philosophizing, discussions that quickly
prompted intense debates about the universality or relativity of
"reason," whether there were cultural (or racial or ethnic)
differences in the nature or the exercise of reasoning, by persons
African in particular historical and cultural contexts in particular.
Positions taken in these and other focal debates were developed from
the resources of a variety of traditions and schools of academic
Philosophy and other disciplines, including analytic philosophy,
phenomenology, hermeneutical, and existential philosophizings, various
modes of social and political philosophy, and Afrocentrism.
Today there are a significant and still growing number of formally
trained African philosophers throughout the world who draw on and
contribute to the discipline and profession of Philosophy. Explicit
developments of discursive formations, within and beyond the
discipline, that are distinguished as being "African" have
been unfolding through efforts by persons African, African-descended,
and not of African descent to identify, reconstruct, and create
traditions and repositories of literate African thought and artistic
expression--oral, written, and in iconic forms of art--as
forms of philosophizing. An important development has been the taking
on for serious consideration the expressed articulate thought of
particular persons past and present who were and are without formal
training or degrees, in academic Philosophy especially, but who have
engaged in and articulated more or less systematic reflections on
various aspects of life, and the inclusion of instances and traditions
of such expressed articulate thought in revised and new canons of
African philosophical thought. An important leading example of efforts
along these lines has been the groundbreaking work of deceased Kenyan
philosopher H. Odera Oruka on the philosophical thought of traditional
African sages. Engaging in actual field work in Kenya, Oruka
interviewed and conversed with several locally recognized and respected
sages and amassed a substantial body of transcribed, critically edited,
and now published texts that are the focus of critical studies as well
as motivations for more refined work of the same kind in numerous
places on the African continent. Other philosophers, a number of them
from other countries and not of African descent, have taken up
Oruka's lead and continue to explore the articulate thought of
indigenous sages while incorporating the sages' articulations
into their research, scholarship, and course-offerings. "Sage
philosophy" has thus become a subfield of energetic work in
Africana philosophy in continental Africa (Oruka 1990b).
The Tempels-inspired debates over whether African or
African-descended peoples have philosophies or can philosophize have
been resolved--or are no longer taken seriously--and given
way to explorations of other concerns. Both the anti-colonial struggles
and the challenges of sustaining post-colonial successes and resolving
setbacks and failures have prompted much academic philosophizing. The
evidence is the development of programs of study leading to advanced
and terminal degrees in Philosophy with strong emphasis, in a number of
instances, on African philosophy in a significant number of
institutions of higher education in several countries (Kenya, Nigeria,
Peoples Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Republic of Benin, Senegal,
South Africa); the appearance of a variety of journals and other
published (and unpublished) philosophical writings and other modes of
articulate expression (literary works, especially); the development of
national organizations (in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and elsewhere)
and international organizations (the Inter-African Council of
Philosophy and the Afro-Asian Philosophy Association, the latter with
headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, with members from throughout North
Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey, Europe, and elsewhere) of
professional philosophers and other knowledge-workers; and the
organization of national, regional, and international conferences
devoted to explorations of topics and issues explicitly characterized
as philosophical.
The continuing maturation of these developments is evident in the
emergence of different philosophical orientations, agendas, and foci
that have, in turn, prompted several thinkers to endeavor to develop
critical, metaphilosophical overviews of developing schools or trends
that account for their emergence and implications, their similarities
and differences. H. Odera Oruka (1990a) provided one such overview and
distinguished what he termed four "currents" in African
philosophy. One of these, already mentioned, he joined others in
labeling and characterizing as *ethno-philosophy*: that is,
second-order works that purport to identify and engage in an exegesis
of the philosophical schemes and significances of articulated thoughts
and expressions, acts, and modes of behavior shared by and thus
characteristic of particular African ethnic groups. Another current,
previously mentioned as having been initiated by Oruka, he termed
*philosophic sagacity* to distinguish what he regarded as the
rigorous and critically reflective thought of independent-minded
indigenous thinkers who were not formally educated in modern schools.
*Nationalist-ideological* philosophy for Oruka was constituted
by the articulations of persons actively engaged in political life,
especially those who led or otherwise contributed substantially to
struggles for African independence and sought to articulate conceptions
by which to create new, liberatory social and political orders. His
designation for a fourth current, *professional*
*philosophy*, was reserved for work by academically trained
professional teachers and scholars of academic Philosophy and their
students.
Other nuanced characterizations and examinations of trends in
philosophizing on the African continent have been developed. O. Nkombe
and Alphonse J. Smet (1978) identified an *ideological* trend, quite
similar in characterization to Oruka's
"nationalist-ideological current," that includes several
very rich lines of articulate socio-political thought devoted to
reconstructing the political and cultural situations of African peoples
that were consequences of European imperialism, enslavement, and
colonization: African personality; Pan-Africanism; Negritude;
African humanism; African socialism; scientific socialism;
Consciencism; and African "authenticity." A second trend,
the *traditionalist*, includes efforts that are quite similar to
Oruka's sage philosophy in that the efforts are focused on
identifying philosophizing practices by traditional Africa thinkers,
exploring the philosophical aspects of manifestations of these
practices, and examining just how these practices resulted in the
development of repositories of wisdom and esoteric knowledge. Nkombe
and Smet identified a third trend: the intellectual orientations and
practices of *critical* thinkers characterized by these
thinkers' critiques of the projects of persons grouped in the
*ideological* and *traditionalist* trends structuring
their critiques by norms and strategies drawn from familiar
Left-critical (Marxist), Liberal Democratic, and creative
appropriations of other traditions of European thought. Thinkers in the
*critical* group applied the label
"ethno-philosophy" to a number of the instances of thought
in the *traditionalist* trend to set apart the latter modes of
thought, as previously noted, as more akin to ethnology than proper
philosophizing. Finally, Nkombe and Smet labeled a fourth grouping the
*synthetic* trend, one characterized by the use of philosophical
hermeneutics to explore issues and to examine new problems emerging in
African contexts.
Still other scholars have attributed somewhat different
characterizations to these and other traditions or modes of
philosophizing in Africa and, importantly, identified newer
developments. An example of the latter is the pathsetting
metaphilosophical and anthologizing work of Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, the
deceased philosopher from Nigeria who pioneered bringing into several
idea-spaces and discursive communities of academic Philosophy in the
United States and Africa the interdisciplinary writings of contemporary
scholars and artists from across Africa, African Diasporas, and other
countries all of whom are significant contributors to
*postcolonial* philosophizings. These are critical explorations
of the challenges and opportunities facing Africans and people of
African descent in various national and transnational situations
defined by configurations of conditions *after* colonialism in
which political liberation has not ended the suffering of African
peoples, resolved long-running problems of individual and social
identity, or settled questions regarding the most appropriate relations
of individuals to communities; of appropriate roles and
responsibilities of women and men and their relations to one another;
of justice and equity after centuries of injustice and dehumanization;
or of the most appropriate terms on which to order social and political
life (Eze 1997).
The heuristic value of the concept of *postcolonial* is not to
be underappreciated, for the various instances in which the successes
of defeating the classical, directly administered colonial ventures in
Africa of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been compromised
by situations of indirect rule, or neocolonialism, effected through
economic control of the new African nation-states by Western European
and U.S. American transnational capitalist enterprises and
multinational organizations and agencies supposedly providing advice
and aid. These compromises must be fully appreciated in order to
understand the prospects for full national independence and
self-determination in the areas of economic, political, social, and
cultural life generally. Of decisive issue is on what terms, via which
strategies, African countries will contend with emergent challenges,
some of which are of magnitudes and character neither encountered nor
imaginable by "traditional" African thinkers, or, even, by
contemporary thinkers. Foremost are the challenges from the scourge of
HIV AIDS, which is proving to have as much impact demographically,
thus in other areas of life, as were depletions of populations during
the centuries of export enslavement though with consequential
differential impacts on age groups. Likewise challenging are questions
of the priority and efficacy of armed struggle and the terms of
engagement in light of recent and ongoing histories of such ventures
on the African continent, too many of which involve conscripting
children into armies as armed warriors. Still other challenges: the
terms and practices of political governance, at the level of the state
especially, as many African nations struggle against collapse or
debilitating dysfunction due to corruption, crippling economic
exploitation, massive underdevelopment of human capital--of
females especially--scarcities of food and other vital resources,
and due to campaigns of genocide as ethnic affirmations coupled with
ethnic denunciations 'go imperial'.
Scholarly efforts to develop informative and critical
metaphilosophical overviews of African philosophical trends, currents,
and schools of thought, in part to forge new conceptions through which
to take up these and other pressing challenges, are confirmation of
the rich diversity of formal philosophizing by academic philosophers
and other intellectuals and artists that emerged on the African
continent during recent decades, and of the continuing maturation of
their efforts. A significant number of these intellectual workers,
philosophers among them, have cultivated international relationships
with other scholars and artists and their organizations; and some of
them have spent several years in, or even relocated to, the United
States, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, and other countries
for both formal education and to work in institutions of higher
education. In the process of doing so many have also developed the
professional relations, practices, and levels of accomplishment and
recognition that have led to the publication of works that are
continuing to attract wider critical attention in various discursive
communities and are being added to course and seminar readings. These
movements, relocations, cultivations of transnational relationships,
and expansion of the literature of published works have enriched the
development of new idea-spaces, the circulation of ideas, the
formation of new discursive communities, and thereby contributed
substantially to the development of Africana philosophy. There are now
histories of African philosophy and major collections of writings in
the subfield by professional African, African-descended, and other
philosophers published by major, transnational publishing firms
covering a still-expanding list of subject-matters organized, in many
instances, by themes long established in academic Philosophy:
historical studies; issues of methodology, logic, epistemology,
metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics; philosophy of religion; political
and social philosophy (Hallen 2009; Kwame 1995; Mosley 1995; Wiredu
2004). In several noteworthy instances, these philosophizings are
conducted by way of deliberate explorations of articulations of the
settled thought structuring the life-worlds of particular ethnic
groups. Such explorations are being conducted in increasing numbers
and, in the process, are rehabilitating and giving new meaning and
heuristic direction to the once disparaged notion of
"ethno-philosophy" by establishing the legitimacy and
resourcefulness of culturally and ethnologically contextualized
studies of articulated thought. As well, such studies will prove
important for comparative studies of philosophizing (Bell
2002). Hopefully, these efforts will motivate similar studies in other
parts of the world, contribute to comparative studies that will
enhance our understandings of philosophizing globally, and curtail
practices of making false generalizations in some modes of
philosophical discourse, as, for example, characterizing the
thought-endeavors of canonical Greek and European thinkers as being
"universal" in their defining features or salience while
being silent about the racial/ethnic, cultural, and gendered
characteristics of the endeavors on the pretext that such matters are
of no consequence for the thinkers'
"philosophy."
## 4. African Philosophy: Contributions
As an ongoing project-of-projects, it would be unwise to attempt a
comprehensive and definitive catalog and assessment of the thematic
foci across the full range of articulations and discussions still being
gathered and explored under the heading of "African
philosophy" even as new discussions are emerging. Still, a number
of developments are worth noting.
Several canonical subfields of academic philosophical discourses
stand to be enriched by the inclusion of explorations of
subject-matters within African contexts. As already noted, historical
accounts of "Philosophy," in the so-called
"West" especially, are being reconsidered in light of
critical explorations of more recently disclosed relations between and
among peoples and places in Africa and "the West" or
Europe--among Greece, Rome, and Egypt definitely--and in light of
further explorations of the impact of such relations on even canonical
thinkers in Europe. In general, the discussion of "*the*
origin of philosophy" in Ancient Greece must be replaced by
comparative explorations of the emergence of philosophizing in various
settings around planet earth, including pre-colonial North Africa,
Ethiopia (home of Zera Yacob and Walda Heyat, two seventeenth century
philosophers (Sumner 1976-78)), and places on the continent in which Arabic was a
principal language.
As well, new questions should be posed and explored, among these the
following: How are canonical figures and subject-matters of the
European Enlightenments to be understood in light of the extensive
involvements of European nation-states--and of canonical
figures--in colonial imperialism and the enslavement of African
peoples? How did the centuries-long institutionalization of enslavement
affect the philosophizing of various European thinkers with regard to
notions of *freedom*, the *person*, the *citizen*,
*justice*, of manhood and womanhood? What was the impact on
canonical European thinkers of the presence among them of the
articulated thought and the persons of such figures as Anton Wilhelm
Amo (*c*. 1703-1758), a native of Ghana who, at age three, was
transported to the Netherlands to be educated and baptized in keeping
with colonial Dutch efforts to Christianize Africans? Amo settled in
Germany and became a highly educated and influential
teacher-philosopher. As more research and scholarship on such figures
are completed, understandings of eighteenth century intellectual
communities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe will have to be revised;
so, too, notions of the meanings and influences of notions of
*race* and their impacts on intellectual productions as well as
on social life.
Work in Africana philosophy in general, and African philosophy in
particular, compels comparative studies. No longer can it be presumed,
certainly not taken for granted, that many canonical notions, even
so-called "perennial" or "universal" issues,
have the salience or global significance these issues have long been
assumed to have. Conceptions of personhood in several indigenous
African schemes of thought (of Akan and Yoruba peoples, for example)
invite comparisons and rethinking of notions of personhood long
sanctioned in some legacies of Western European and North American
philosophizing. For example, Kwasi Wiredu (1987) of Ghana has argued
persuasively that in the indigenous conceptual-ontological schemes of
the Akan it would not be possible, in the normal course of matters, to
generate the "mind-body problem" so central to the
philosophizing of Rene Descartes. Explorations of matters of
logic, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics in Akan and
other schemes of thought will illuminate the extent to which Western
European and North American inventories of philosophical
"problems" will have to be revised. Likewise for
explorations in the areas of religion, aesthetics, politics, and the
meaning of social life.
While there are near daunting challenges being faced by African
peoples and other citizens of the continent's nation-states that
compel problem-solving philosophizing for enhanced living, there are,
too, example-lessons of such engaged philosophizing that warrant close
and appreciative study. One such example is the transformation under
way in South Africa from the White Racial Supremacy of racial
apartheid to a multiracial, multiethnic democracy. A crucial factor
conditioning the transformation has been the soul-wrenching work of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which sponsored public
hearings during which victims of the evils of apartheid, and
perpetrators of the evils, disclosed the truths of their suffering and
of their dehumanizing aggression, respectively. Grounding premises of
the TRC project were that disclosures of the *truths* of
suffering and of abuse were necessary in order to
achieve *restorative* justice, not just compensatory or
retributive justice; and that restorative justice is in keeping with
philosophical notions such as *ubuntu*--love, generosity,
forgiveness--that are foundational to communal life at its best,
thus are essential to the rehabilitative healing that must be lived
through in forging new persons for a new and democratic South Africa
(Bell 2002, Chapter 5, "African Moral Philosophy II: Truth and
Reconciliation," pp. 85-107). Here, then, a case-study in
the articulation and testing out of a new conception of justice, of
ethics more generally, in an African context, a case-study that should
already be substantively instructive. Such comparative work in
academic Philosophy that engages seriously and respectfully
philosophical articulations of African and African-descendant thinking
has only just begun...
## 5. Africana Philosophy: The African Diaspora
The centuries of enslaving-relocations of millions of African
peoples to the New Worlds of colonies-*cum*-nation-states
created by European and Euro-American settler-colonists beginning in
the sixteenth century, and the subsequent centuries-long continuations
of descendants of these African peoples in, and migrations of others
to, these locales, occasioned the formation of *new peoples* of
African descent in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and elsewhere.
Individuals and groupings of these peoples developed and perpetuated
shared creative responses to the impositions of various forms of
systematized racialized oppression and class exploitation motivated and
rationalized by notions of White Racial Supremacy, and further complicated by
considerations of sexuality and gender. In the New Worlds, as had
become the case in Africa after the colonizing and enslaving incursions
of acquisitive peoples from Europe and the Arabian peninsula, the
recurrent and decisive foci of life in the racialized crucibles were
the struggles to endure while resolving mind- and soul-rending tensions
that threatened and otherwise conditioned self- and community-formation
and living.
There were several major sources of these tensions. One, the traumas
of the *radical* dislocations experienced by the
*millions* of persons kidnapped and purchased into relocation to
enslavement through terrifying transport across thousands of miles of
ocean during which many thousands died. Another, the soul and
psyche-taxing ambiguities and ambivalences of being compelled to become
and be, in important senses, both New World "African"
*and* "American," "Canadian,"
"Brazilian," "Puerto Rican,"
"Trinidadian," "Haitian,"
"Jamaican," "French," "British,"
etc., while, as slaves, being denied full access to the resources of
the prevailing meanings and practical realizations of the defining
identities of the most highly valued anthropological categorizations
and social positions in the socio-political orders of the new states
and locales as well as to the material resources crucial for realizing
lives of well-being *and* denied full retention of and access to
the self-and community-defining resources of their natal cultures.
How the various African-descendant persons and communities resolved
these tensions conditioned the formation of new identities,
life-agendas, and praxes for living. Fundamental were the recurrent and
varied quests to *survive* and *endure*. With whatever
success there followed other fundamental recurrent and varied
endeavors. Among the *most* compelling were quests to define and
secure *freedom*, quests that were profoundly affected by the
absence of any recourse to protections of law and by severe limitations
imposed on Black peoples' participation in what has come to be
called "the public sphere." Participation in this sphere
with protection of laws--for example, to articulate one's
case for impartial and fair recognition and respect as a human being,
particularly as a woman or man of a despised race--was hardly ever
allowed in slave-holding polities, and very infrequently even in
locales where slavery had been abolished as invidious discrimination
against persons of African descent continued. When speaking out or
otherwise expressing oneself on one's or one's
people's behalf was prohibited or strenuously circumscribed and
could be punished by beatings, imprisonment, or death with no legal
protection, the tensions were indeed wretched.
The variety of reasons for and means of coping in such
circumstances, and the variety of conceptions of life to be lived and
of freedom to be achieved in the various New World locales, were
approached differently by activist thinkers of African descent,
conditioned by adaptive continuations--more or less--of some
Old World African cultural agendas and practices. The efforts gave rise to
developments of different traditions of thought guiding the formation
and pursuit of what would become, over time, a variety of agendas,
foci, objectives, and strategies of intellectual and practical
engagement. It is these variegated, historically conditioned, socially
grounded, imperatives-driven thought and praxis complexes, immersed in
and growing out of concerns and struggles for survival, endurance, and
human dignity in freedom, that are being recovered and studied as the
earliest instances of philosophizing by diasporic persons of African
descent and form the bases of the unfolding of several subfields of
Africana philosophy.
## 6. African American Philosophizings Born of Struggles
The United States of America is one of several New World diasporic
contexts of focus for these recovery and study efforts that are being
conducted under the heading of "African American
philosophy." What follows is a historically contextualized
discussion of several instances of the emergence of *philosophizings
born of struggles*. However, it would be an ethical travesty and a
case of epistemological presentist imperialism to require that
thoughtful, critically reflective articulations by African Americans
considered as instances of philosophizing worthy of the critical
attention of professional philosophers first meet rigorous, formal
standards for "right reasoning" settled on by professionals
in the discipline during the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries. For the contexts in which folks of African descent were
compelled to reflect on and reason about their first-order lived
experiences were substantially conditioned by the agendas and social
logics of projects of White Racial Supremacy and constitutive invidious
anthropologies of raciality, ethnicity, and gender, not agendas
governed by the academic logics of abstract formal reasoning. The
pressing exigencies of daily, cross-generation life under racialized
enslavement and oppression were what compelled reflective
thoughtfulness, not leisured, abstractive speculation. Again, what has
to be witnessed and appreciated across the historical and hermeneutical
distances of centuries of history and life-world experiences structured
by contemporary personal and social freedoms are the natures of the
lived experiences and situations of those whose articulations, whose
philosophizings, are considered as having been *born of
struggles*.
Much psychic energy had to be expended by New World African and
African-descended peoples contending with the institutionalization of
their enslavement and oppression otherwise that was racialized,
thereby naturalized, and thoroughly sanctioned and justified by every
enterprise of deliberate, normative thought and aesthetic
expression--law, science, theology, religion, philosophy,
aesthetics, and secular "common sense." (For a historical
account of African-American life in the United States see Franklin and
Moss, Jr. 2000.) In each case a primary resource was the foundational
metaphysical and ontological "unit idea" of a hierarchical
Great Chain of Being (Lovejoy 1964) on which each race was believed to
have a fixed and determining place. Accordingly, as
living *property* it was encumbered on enslaved Africans and
their descendants to live so as to make good on the investments in
their purchase and maintenance by engaging in productive labor,
without compensation, and to endure and reproduce
as *ontological* slaves in order to sustain and justify the
institution of their imprisonment. According to this supposedly
divinely sanctioned philosophical anthropology, African and
African-descended children, women, and men were defined as
constituting a category of being to which none of the normative moral
and ethical notions and principles governing civilized life
applied. Pressed into an ethically null category, they were compelled
to live lives of
*social death* stripped of defining webs of ennobling meaning
constituted by narratives of previous histories, renewing presents, and
imagined and anticipated futures of flourishing, cross-generational
continuation.
On the whole, they did not succumb to the requirement to become
socially dead, certainly not completely, though many thousands did.
*Always* there were those who cultivated strengths of body,
mind, soul, and spirit and exerted these in defense of the preservation
of senses of themselves and of their peoples, of their
"race," as having worth beyond the definitions and
valuations set on them by rationalizations of institutionalized
enslavement and oppression. *Always* there were those who, in
the cracks, crevices, and severely limited spaces of slave life and
constricted freedom, preserved and shared fading memories of lives of
beauty and integrity before the holocaust; who found, created, and
renewed nurturings of imaginings of better life to come through
music-making, dancing, and creative expression in the artful fashioning
and use of items of material culture, and in the communal and personal
relations, secular and spiritual, that the slaves formed, sustained,
and passed on.
Nurtured by these efforts, they resisted the imposition of
ontological death and nurtured others in resisting. They reflected on
their existence and the conditions thereof; conceived of and put into
practice ways to endure without succumbing, ways to struggle against
enslavement and the curtailment otherwise of their lives and
aspirations; and conceived and acted on ways to escape. They studied
carefully their enslavers and oppressors and assessed the moral
significance of all aspects of the lives enslavers and oppressors led
and determined how they, though enslaved and despised, must live
differently so as not to follow their oppressors and enslavers on paths
to moral depravity. They conceived of other matters, including the
terms and conditions of freedom and justice; of better terms and
conditions of existence and of personal and social identities; of how
to resist and endure while creating things of beauty; how to love in
spite of their situations; conceived of their very nature as living
beings ...
## 7. 1600-1860
These considerations took various forms within and across the
centuries. More than a few African and African-descendant persons
would engage in concerted intellectual and practical actions directed against
the enterprise of enslavement in all of its forms. Their considerations
and articulations can be found in various repositories of
philosophizings: in the lyrics and rhythmic structures and timings of
various genres of music-making; in newspaper writings and pamphlets;
in poetry and other modes of creative writing; in letters; in slave
narratives and autobiographies; in the legacies and documentary
histories of institutions, those of Black churches and church
denominations especially; in those of women's and men's
service organizations; in the documentary histories of conventions and
convention movements; etc. For from the earliest instances of the
enslavement of Africans in the colonies in the 1600s and continuing
through the 1800-1865 Civil War between forces of the Union of
North and East and forces of the Confederacy of the South, militant
agitation for the abolition of slavery was a prominent endeavor among
persons of color both "free" and enslaved, as were efforts
to achieve greater respect and freedom for Black women from male
domination and oppression and from sexual exploitation as well as from
racism. Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784), a young, lettered house-slave
in Boston, Massachusetts, wrote poems "on various subjects,
religious and moral," in one of which she expounded on the
significance of "Being Brought from Africa to America" and
extolled Christians to remember that though Negroes be "black as
Cain," they, too, can be "refin'd and join th'
angelic train" (Wheatley [1773] 1997). Aside from
Wheatley's highly polished and thoughtfully probing poetry,
the *fact* that she had penned the verses prompted such
disbelief that her master, and a prominent group of White men of the
city, including the governor and lieutenant governor of the state,
felt compelled to write letters to the publisher and the reading
public to attest that Wheatley had mastered the English language and
was, indeed, the author of the verses. Lettered articulation, in high
verse no less, was a significant counter to claims of Negro
inferiority, hence the need for legitimation of Wheatley's
writings by White persons of significant standing in order for those
writings to enter a race- and gender-constricted literary public
sphere.
Wheatley was the first in what would become a long and continuing
line of enslaved persons of African descent in the United States who
took up creative and other genres of writing as a means for engaging in
resisting oppression and for reclaiming and exercising their humanity
through thoughtful articulation. Slaves' narrations of the
stories of their lives and of the conditions of enslavement and of their
aspirations and quests for freedom, constitute an extraordinarily rich
body of literature to be studied for *philosophizings born of
struggles*. Olaudah Equiano's *The Interesting Narrative
of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written
by Himself* (1789) is but one example of such narratives. Consider
carefully Equiano's recounting having to wrestle with and reclaim
his sense of self, even his name, after having been stolen into slavery
as a child, transported to the New World, and being renamed
"Gustavus Vassa." A profound and consequential instance of
existential philosophizing, Equiano's *Narrative*, one that discloses the significance of a
compelled struggle to reclaim and exercise a person's right, and
power, of identification of self and social being...
For a Negro, slave or free, to indulge in the articulation of
critical reflections on the nature of their being and the conditions of
their life was a bold contradiction of prevailing characterizations of
African peoples and their descendants in the racialized ontologies of
White Racial Supremacy, and a dangerous threat to the enterprise. David
Walker (1785-1830) exemplified the threat. He sent shockwaves of fear
across the slaveholding South, especially, with the publication and
wide distribution of his *Appeal in Four Articles; Together with a
Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular and
Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America* (1829) in
which he advocated forcefully that Coloured people rise up in armed
struggle against their oppressors. Moreover, in articulating his
provocative appeal in a written document, Walker employed with great
skill and impact a strategic use of rhetoric to gain leverage in the
public sphere: while ostensibly directing the *Appeal* to an
audience of "Coloured Citizens" almost none of whom were
regarded as citizens and very few of whom, among those enslaved
certainly, could read and, if they could, would have been prohibited
from getting their hands and minds on such an appeal, in truth was also
directed at White slaveowners and oppressors. This strategy would
become a staple in the arsenal of discursive strategies Black folks would
use to engage in the work of articulating their considerations and
advocating for life-enhancing changes.
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), a passionate and indefatigable
opponent of enslavement, the institution of slavery, and of the
subordination of women ("What Are the Colored People Doing for
Themselves?" 1848; "Prejudice Not Natural," 1849;
"The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,"
1854), would use the strategy with superbly nuanced skill. An
especially brilliant thinker and prolific writer, he was also
brilliant in his oppositional eristic engagements over the
constitutional, biblical, and ethnological justifications of Negro
inferiority and enslavement and over a wide range of other subjects,
including the compelling need for appropriate education (directed at
preparing the formerly enslaved for productive, economically
self-sustaining labor), good character, and political equality.
Douglass was an astute critical thinker and speech-maker, and was a
foremost thinker with regard to such matters as the constitutionality
of slavery, of the meanings of *freedom* and *justice*,
and of the implications of both for enslaved, free, and freed Negroes
(Douglass 1845). Maria Stewart (1803-1879), likewise committed
to freedom and justice for Black people, was a pioneering feminist in
speaking out publicly ("Religion and the Pure Principles of
Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build," 1831) and
thus took advantage of cracks in the public sphere to advance the
cause for abolition and the liberation of women (Stewart
1831). Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree, 1797-1883) was a
legendary unlettered but unnervingly bodacious itinerant intellectual
provocateur who agitated for ending enslavement and the subordination
of women ("Woman's Rights," 1851). On one celebrated
occasion, Truth walked uninvited into a Women's Rights
Convention of assembled White people, sat down on the edge of the
speakers' stage until she simply had to be recognized, and then
delivered her now famous "Ar'n't I a Woman?"
speech (Truth 1851).
If slavery were abolished, what did the vocal Negro advocates think
would be the most appropriate modes and ends of life for Negro men and
women?
For some it would or should involve *assimilation*, that is,
processes by which one racial and/or ethnic group is absorbed by
another, for some physically as well as socio-culturally, with one
group relinquishing its own racial and/or ethnic cultural
distinctiveness to take on the defining life-world character and
practices of another. For early African American assimilationists this
would have meant accepting as appropriate and sufficient goals for
African American life the country's pronounced cultural, social,
political, and economic ideals--though generally without
endorsements of the superiority of the White race--as proof of
their humaneness and of their having "risen" from a
condition of "savagery" to having become
"civilized," particularly by having become
Christianized.
However, particular care must be taken in characterizing an engaged
thinker's commitments and aspirations as
"assimilationist." While appropriate and useful in some
instances, in others the label is often misused or misplaced, for
various thinkers were quite nuanced in articulating their positions on
various matters: for example, in advocating assimilation of prevailing
economic ideas, principles, and practices while advocating social,
cultural, and political independence for Black people. Douglass, one
of the most well-known of African American cultural and political
assimilationists, is an instructive example. He was not an advocate of
the assimilation of the Negro race into the White race; rather, he
preferred, at the extreme, the assimilation of all distinct races into
a single, blended race, so to speak, so that there would no longer be
distinct races in which aspirations for super-ordination and
subordination could be invested. Similar views on cultural and
economic assimilation were articulated by T. Thomas Fortune
(1856-1928), the journalist and advocate of Black unionizing and
political independence ("Political Independence of the
Negro," 1884), and by the radical abolitionist Henry Highland
Garnet (1815-1881), who at one point was convinced that
"*This western world is destined to be filled with a mixed
race*" ("The Past and the Present Condition and the
Destiny of the Colored Race," (1848; 1996, p. 200), emphasis in
the original).
On the other hand, there were Negro women and men of the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries of enslavement for
whom the prospect of assimilating with White people in any fashion or
on any terms was to be firmly rejected. Such sentiments were especially
prominent during the decades leading up to the Civil War as conditions
became even more constraining for supposedly free-born and freedpersons
with the passage in 1850 of the Fugitive Slave Law that stripped away
any legal protection for escaped and former slaves who made it to free
states by declaring it legal for any White person to apprehend any
Negro who could not document their free status and return the person to
enslavement. Garnet, responding to the circumstances the law created,
is representative of those Black folks who became advocates of the
emigration of Negro people to Africa. He was the founder of the African
Civilization Society, an organization that promoted emigration of
American Negroes to Africa in keeping with a more positive agenda than
was the case with the American Colonization Society, which was
organized by White people to foster the relocation of troublesome
abolitionist free Negro people to Liberia, the colony founded with
federal support by White Americans intent on preserving the institution
of slavery and White Racial Supremacy.
*Emigrationist* considerations and projects thus became
prominent ventures during this period, advocated with persuasive force
by other very able activist thinkers, among them Edward Blyden
(1832-1912), James T. Holly (1829-1911), and Martin Delany
(1812-1883). Delany's *The Condition, Elevation,
Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United
States* (1852) was an especially well-reasoned critique of notions
of *citizen* prevailing in the United States and a detailing of
conditions affecting Colored people, including, in his estimation,
their overreliance on "moral theorizing" and not enough on
pragmatic political reasoning informed by comparative studies of the
histories of oppression of other "nations" within
nation-states dominated by an antagonistic national (i.e., racial)
group (Delany 1852; 2004). Based on his analysis, Delany was convinced
that people of color could not enjoy lives as full citizens with full
respect and rights in the United States. Hence, he reasoned, people of
color should leave the country for South America--though later he
would advocate emigrating to Africa--to establish their own
independent nation-state. (However, when the Civil War erupted, Delany
was persuaded by Frederick Douglass, his former colleague in
publishing *The North Star* newspaper, to join other Black men
in forming a regiment to aid the Union forces in defeating the
Confederate Army and the South's agenda for the continuation of
the enslavement and oppression of Black people.)
It is important to note, however, that emigrationists were often
motivated not only by desires to escape the various modes and
intensities of disrespect for their racial being and humanity by
relocating to Africa, in particular, but also in order to fulfill
aspirations to engage in missionary work among native peoples on that
continent in order to "raise" them from
"savagery" to "civilization" through education
and Christianization. Edward Blyden, for example, spent a large portion
of his life engaged in educational and missionary work in Liberia.
James T. Holly, who advocated emigration to, and himself subsequently
settled in, Haiti and authored a lengthy work devoted to
"defending the inherent capabilities of the Negro race, for
self-government and civilized progress" (*A Vindication of the
Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government and Civilized
Progress*, 1857), was a clergyman. So, too, was the indomitable
Queen's College of Cambridge University-educated Alexander
Crummell (1819-1898), who devoted twenty years of his life to
educational and missionary work in Liberia and Sierra Leone followed by
years of pastoral work in the United States. Crummell ("The
Relations and Duties of Free Colored Men in America to Africa,"
1860; "The Race Problem in America," 1888) was a formidable
and very articulate thinker, author, speechmaker, and organizer with
commanding presence. He was a principal founder of the American Negro
Academy (1897-1924), a gathering of astute minds and engaged Negro men
devoted to analyzing the conditions of life of Negroes in the United
States, to determining how best to protect them from the continuing
ravages of centuries of enslavement, and to determining how best to
develop the race to achieve political and social equality and economic
justice.
Worthy of critical exploration in the case of these figures: the
extent to which, and on what terms, each of them embraced (assimilated)
prevailing European and Euro-American conceptions of
*civilization* and the processes and conditions, states of
character in particular, by which a person or people could be said to
be "civilized." It is apparent in their writings and the
logic of their missionary work, in other lands as well as within the
United States, that neither figure accepted the long-prevailing
arguments that the Negro race was *inherently* and ineradicably
inferior. To the contrary, close scrutiny of their articulations will
reveal that each was convinced that the civilizational inferiority of
continental Africans, and of the ignorant, brutally constrained Negroes
of deficient character in the United States, was due to conditions of
deprivation fostered by the enslavement and racism perpetrated by White
people. At the core of the missionary work of these men, and of many of
their female and male contemporaries and successors, including persons
who worked at "uplifting" enslaved and freedpersons in the
United States, was a principled and dedicated commitment to
well-reasoned and forcefully articulated belief in the God-given
humanity and inherent worth of persons of the Negro race, and fervent
and equally dedicated belief in the ameliorative and progressive
benefits of education and racial independence. And each of these
seminal figures took himself or herself as a living example of the
actualization of the potentiality for substantial, qualitative
development and advancement by Negroes, contrary to the
characterizations of the race by those who rationalized and otherwise
sought to justify enslavement and constrictions of the range of
possibilities for Negro development. The articulations of a significant
number of such persons have been preserved in the vast body of writings
contending with enslavement, with aspirations and quests for freedom
and justice, with what a constitutionally democratic and multiracial
United States of America *ought* to be in order to include
Coloured people as full citizens and fully respected human beings.
Theirs are, indeed, *philosophizings born of struggles*.
## 8. 1860-1915
Beyond question, one of the particularly acute axial periods of
history for people of African descent in the United States of America
was that of the half-decade of civil war (1860-1865) continued through
ensuing years of Reconstruction-struggles between White proponents of a
culture of aspiring aristocratic genteel racial supremacy and a
political economy devoted to developing industrial and finance
capitalism in the North and East of the country who also wanted to preserve
the federated union of states, and White proponents of a regional
civilization devoted to a decidedly pronounced and violently
aristocratic Southern hegemonic White Racial Supremacy based on a
political economy of agrarian capitalism supported by enslaved Negro
labor, proponents who forged a Confederacy out of states that seceded
from the Union in order to preserve their distinctive civilizational
project. For a great many Black people, the hope was that the Union
forces would prevail in the war, the institution of slavery would be
abolished, and they would be freed and free to enjoy lives of full
citizenship. More than a few devoted themselves, in various ways, to
aiding the Union efforts, some even as fighting soldiers. Frederick
Douglass played a major role in persuading President Abraham Lincoln to
allow Negro men to join the Union army as fighting soldiers and in
persuading many men to join. With President Lincoln's
issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freeing the slaves in
the Confederate states and Union victory in the Civil War two years
later, the day of *Jubilation!* for Black people and other
opponents of the institution of slavery appeared to be at hand.
And so it seemed. There followed a brief, euphoric period of statutory
freedom during which Black people held elective and appointive offices
in many states that had been part of the Confederacy and otherwise
made initial significant gains in other areas of life. However, a
post-war (1877) so-called compromise between Republican economic and
political forces in the North and East and those of Democrats in the
South settled a disputed presidential election (a contest Republican
Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden) and allowed a South
not completely vanquished by the lost war to regain power in its
region in exchange for Republican hegemony in the federal
government.
Violent terrorism and brutal repression of Negroes followed
immediately, in the South especially, which spawned two decades (mid
1860s-1880s) of post-Reconstruction struggles by newly-emancipated
Black people to survive conditions in which they had been set adrift by
many former allies in the North and East and were being pressed back
into near-slavery by forces in the South. A Great Migration ensued as
hundreds of thousands of Negroes left the South for hoped-for better
opportunities without racial violence in the East, North, Southwest,
and West of the United States, in some cases in response to persuasive
articulations by various spokespersons (Edward W. Blyden, James T.
Holly, and Alexander Crummell, among others) who renewed calls for
various programs of emigration or what some scholars have termed
*separatist Black Nationalism*: migrations within and out of the
country to sites on which all-Black communities and towns would be
formed (away from the United States in Africa; within the country in
Kansas and Oklahoma, for example).
Migrations within the United States were by far the most significant
of the relocations. And the movements greatly accelerated over the
decades as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth and the
U.S. American economy was undergoing transformation into an industrial
giant and international power as a consequence of meeting the needs of
production to support the country's participation in the First
World War and other developments. In the North, Northeast, and West of
the country this industrialization created historic demands for workers
and, subsequently, historic opportunities for work. Meanwhile, in the
South rapidly increasing mechanization in agriculture and subsequent
decreasing reliance on the labor of nearly-enslaved, hyper-exploited
Negro tenant farmers and workers, and increasing industrialization in
the region, left the greater majority of Black people in dire straits.
These developments, combined with hopes for life unrestricted by racial
segregation enforced by brutal violence, by lynchings especially,
exerted additional pull-and-push forces that prompted hundreds of
thousands to join in the migrations to the country's industrial
centers.
In settling in the new locales, the migrants and their subsequent
generations began to undergo what, with hindsight, became a historic
and wrenching transformation of what had been, for the most part, a
brutally oppressed, illiterate, yet resolute agrarian peasantry into an
ethno-racial urban working class, and the transformation of a
significant few of them into a modern middle class. With the
transformations came vexing challenges and opportunities. Among the
most compelling needs were for forms of life appropriate to the new
urban circumstances--as well as for those who remained in the
rebuilding South--that would sustain the person and a people and
promote flourishing life in conditions of intense competition with
other ethno-racial class groups, and high risks of social
disintegration and failure as invidious racism, unchecked by federal
restraints, became ever more intense and widespread. There were, then,
compelling needs for social and cultural as well as economic support as
nuclear and extended family units were disrupted in being stretched
across long miles of migration and crucial forms of communal and
organizational support that helped to sustain life in the South were in
very short supply in the new urban centers. Once again, in the context
of demanding needs to be met in the struggle to survive and endure,
particularly thoughtful and articulate Black persons took up the
challenges of conceiving what was best to be done for the well-being of
the race, and how best to achieve well-being.
African American women were especially prominent in endeavoring to
attend thoughtfully and pragmatically to the well-being of the race,
but also in endeavoring to make good for Black women on the promises
of Emancipation for social, political, and economic freedom. An
exemplary figure in this regard is Anna Julia Cooper (1859?-1964), who
graduated from Oberlin College in 1884 and, at age sixty-five,
completed a doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne on *Slavery and
the French Revolutionists, 1788-1805* (Cooper 1925). A
career educator before earning her doctorate, Cooper was a pioneering
feminist who set out a provocative view of what she regarded as the
superior capacity of women to lead the reformation of the human race
in her book *A Voice from South* (1892). Poet, journalist,
novelist, and essayist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)
weighed in with a forceful argument that the "spiritual
aid" that women can provide is crucial for moral development and
the social advancement of the human race ("Woman's
Political Future," 1893). Memphis, Tennessee-born and Oberlin
College-educated Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) lived a stellar
life of articulate leadership in uplift and advocacy organizations
devoted to the development and well-being of Colored women (Colored
Women's League, the National Association of Colored Women),
commitments articulated in "The Progress of Colored Women"
(1898, published 1904) and other writings. Fluent in several
languages, Terrell forged relations with Negro and other women in
several countries who worked for reforms on behalf of women. And
particular note must be taken of the audacious, pistol-totting Ida
B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), an investigative journalist and
newspaperwoman who took it upon herself, as an anti-lynching crusader,
to investigate cases of lynching across the country to document the
facts of each case, which she published in 1895 as *The Red Record:
Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United
States* with an introductory letter from Frederick Douglass, with
whom she collaborated in many endeavors. During an especially violent
and trying period, courageous, thoughtful, and articulate activist
Black women such as Wells-Barnett, Cooper, Terrell, and others
initiated what would become a long and varied tradition of feminist
philosophizing and work by women of African descent devoted to the
enhancing development of Negro persons, families, organizations, and
communities.
Few of these thoughtful feminists, it should be noted, were energetic
advocates of Nationalist emigration during this turbulent
period. Perhaps because many Nationalist agendas and articulations
were soon eclipsed (though by no means completely silenced) during the
years of 1880-1915 that came to be largely dominated by the
persuasive ameliorative leadership of Booker T. Washington
(1856-1915), an educator and strategic power-broker who focused
his considerable efforts on uplifting a Black southern peasantry into
educated literacy for economic self-reliance and on the nation-wide
organization of Negro businesses for the pursuit of predominance in
certain sectors of the economy. After delivering a poignant and crafty
invited "Atlanta Exposition Address" to resounding praise
during an 1895 international industrial exposition, Washington,
already well on his way as a leader recognized as such by Negro
people, was elevated by certain powerful and influential White people
to the vaunted position as *their* leader and spokesman for
"the Negro" to whom they would turn to broker matters in
race relations. The key to this positioning was the reaction of many
White people, concerned about post-war transformations under way in
race relations, to the following declaration in Washington's
Exposition address: "In all things that are purely social we can
be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things
essential to mutual progress" (Washington 1895; 1992, p. 358).
Concentrating on the first part of his statement, anxious White people
interpreted his public endorsement of the "purely social"
separation of the races as an endorsement by Washington of the
hegemony of White people in all areas.
It was not. In fact, Washington was explicit in the address in
declaring that it was "important and right that all privileges
of the law be ours..." He went further in articulating a
vision of "that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come in
a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and
suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a
willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law"
(Washington 1895; 1992, p. 359). Hearing, apparently,
what *they* wanted to hear, not the fullness of
what *Washington* wanted them to hear, anxious White people of
power and influence certified him a 'good and safe' Negro
and promptly made him their go-to Negro designated by them as
"*the* Leader of the Negro people." Washington
accommodated them, in service to his own ego as well as in service to
the benefit of the Negro race (by his own reasoning, of course). He
was brilliantly skillful in executing a nuanced, pragmatic strategy of
wearing a mask of *seeming* accommodation to White hegemony as
he promoted Negro empowerment and self-sufficiency through education
that stressed disciplined comportment, thrift, industrial and
agricultural work, and ownership of property (and while clandestinely
supporting securing political equality for Negroes). As an enlarged
figure who brokered the largesse and influence of White people flowing
to Negroes throughout the nation, and as the founding administrative
and educational leader of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama that continues
to provide education to persons of African descent, Booker T.
Washington's philosophizings, political engagements, and
practical endeavors would have widespread, profound, and lasting
impact.
Washington was challenged, publicly and on several fronts, by, among
other thinker-activist Black persons, the astute and irrepressible
thinker-scholar (and more) William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963)
whose philosophical stances and strategies for transforming the
conditions of existence for Black people were *substantially*
different from Washington's *seeming* public accommodation
to White social hegemony. In the view of some, Washington might be
better described as a social separatist and economic and political
conservative committed to Black economic independence made even
stronger by the predominance of Negroes in some sectors of the national
economy resulting in the dependence of White folks on the productivity
of Black folks. To this end, for Washington and similar conservative
accommodationists, the economic and political hegemony of White people
was to be finessed by strategies of *seeming* acceptance by
Black people that masked surreptitious opposition as Colored people
pursued economic self-reliance, full political citizenship, and
eventual social acceptance that was to be "earned" by
forming and exercising good character and responsibility through
education for, and the practice of, honest, socially productive, and
economically rewarding work.
Du Bois, however, argued for *immediate* recognition of and
respect for Negro people with full civil and political rights (though
he supported qualifications for exercising the franchise for
*all* voters), social equality, and economic justice. He became
an outspoken critic of Washington's leadership ("Of Mr.
Booker T. Washington and Others," 1903) having become impatient
with the latter's accommodating gradualism and the
spirit-sapping impact he (Du Bois) thought this was having on those
Black folks who were ready, even overdue, for full equality and
respect (Du Bois 1903; 1992). In contrast to Washington, Du Bois might
best be described as a *cultural nationalist*
advocating *pluralist integration*: pursuit of a racially
integrated socially and politically democratic socio-political
order--and, later in his long life, a democratic socialist
economic order--in which diverse racial and ethnic groups
cultivate and share, and benefit mutually from sharing, the products
of their cultural distinctiveness to the extent that doing so does not
threaten the integration and justness of the social whole.
The two men were from profoundly different backgrounds. Washington had
been born into slavery, but with the aid of education and character
development at Hampton Institute he was able to advance to national
and international prominence as an educator and figure of
unprecedented influence, which he recounted in his widely read and
inspiring autobiography *Up From Slavery* (Washington 1901;
1963). Du Bois, on the other hand, never had living experience with
slavery, nor, even, with much in the way of invidious racial
discrimination before entering college in the South. With
undergraduate degrees from Fisk University and Harvard University,
studies at the University of Berlin, and a Ph.D. in History from
Harvard, Du Bois was one of a very few exceptionally highly educated
persons in the United States. Drawing on his learning and with
arrogant confidence in his education-enhanced, penetrating, creative,
and critical intellect, varied, frequent, and penetrating scholarly
and creative explorations of the history, conditions, and future
prospects of the Negro and other oppressed races, as well as of
Western Civilization, became his passionate and committed life's
work.
Du Bois far outstripped Washington in the range of his (Du Bois's) concerns, the
depths of his explorations, and the extent of his seminal involvements
in and contributions to international organizations and movements
pressing for independence for colonized African and other peoples, his
contributions to a number of the international Pan-African Conferences
(1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945) and Movement being but one example.
And of particular note, Du Bois studied philosophy with William James
and others while a student at Harvard, and, for a moment, considered
pursuing a career in the discipline. Though he chose otherwise, his
vast and rich articulations are frequently philosophically novel and
astute and thus all the more engaging for researchers, scholars,
teachers, artists, and millions of readers in various educated publics.
His *The Souls of Black Folk* (1903), for example, has been a
seminal text for generations of African Americans, and others, who were
coming of age intellectually. Many were aided, especially, by his
poignant characterization and exploration of the vexing tensions of the
experience of "double consciousness"--of the
"twoness" of being both Negro and American--and by his
promising exploration of how best to work at resolving the tension by
'merging' the two selves into one 'truer'
self.
From Du Bois, then, a philosophy of the soul, if you will, motivated
by the compelling needs of a racialized people subjected to
ontological as well as social, political, economic, and cultural
degradation. In particular, during the turbulent decades of the
orchestrated failure of post-Civil War Reconstruction, when real
possibilities for racial and economic democracy were being killed at
birth by the proponents and guardians of capitalism and White Racial
Supremacy, Du Bois initially worked out his affirmative *cultural
nationalist* position on the raciality of the Negro, and of other
races, in "The Conservation of Races" (1897; 1992). This
was an effort at conceptionalization to which Du Bois would return and
rework several times, even near the end of his extraordinarily long
and productive life, as in "Whither Now and Why" (1960;
1973). Throughout his life Du Bois remained convinced that people of
African descent should articulate and appropriate a racial identity
based on shared history and culture and continue to invest in their
historical legacies and cultural creativity while holding open to all,
"on the principle of universal brotherhood," the
organizations, institutions, and cultural riches in and through which
the life-worlds of Negro peoples are forged, sustained, and
shared.
Booker T. Washington died in 1915, W.E.B. Du Bois nearly half a
century later (...on the evening before the historic 1963 March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom as hundred of thousands of Negroes and
other supporters converged on the nation's capital to press for
full civil and economic rights). The deaths of both brought to a close
their long reigns of Black male leadership prominence, and
predominance, in various arenas. Still, they were far from being the
only leaders of their people. For as the nineteenth century gave way to
the twentieth, Black women were again substantial contributors to the
intellectual explorations, organizational work, and local, national,
and international movements seeking freedom and enhanced existence for
African and African-descendant peoples. They were, as well, influential
on Black male leadership. In 1897, for example, Du Bois accepted an
invitation from Alexander Crummell to become a member of the American
Negro Academy to share in the critical work of developing
understandings of the deteriorating situation of Black people in the
nation, made worse by widespread racially-motivated violence, in order
to develop and implement strategies to protect and advance the race.
(Du Bois offered his proposal in "The Conservation of
Races," the second Occasional Paper delivered to the group.) Due
largely to Crummell's objections, Black women were not initially
allowed to become members of the Academy. However, while Crummell was a
substantial influence on Du Bois, he (Du Bois) was also influenced by
Ana Julia Cooper who advised his thinking on a number of matters
regarding which he conversed with his male colleagues in the Academy.
Other women--Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Jane
Adams--also exerted critical influence on Du Bois through their
ideas, their organizational work, and their personal relations with
him.
These and other thoughtful, articulate, and engaged Black women did
not allow themselves to be limited to subordinate roles of influence on
male leaders. Rather, as was true for many of their foresisters, they
had important matters of concern about which they thought seriously,
discussed in their women's clubs and other organizations, wrote
and spoke, and worked with determination to effect progressive
transformations in the lives of women and their families as well as for
the racial group and the society as a whole. From the especially
violent and trying decades of Reconstruction on into the early decades
of the twentieth century, women such as Wells-Barnett, Cooper, Terrell,
and others contributed substantially to what has become a long and
varied tradition of woman-focused philosophizing and artistic
expression by women of African descent in the United States.
Continuing the tradition, Elise Johnson McDougald, for example, wrote
of "The Struggle of Negro Women for Sex and Race
Emancipation" (1924-25; 1995); Alice Dunbar-Nelson
(1875-1935) of "The Negro Woman and the Ballot"
(1927; 1995); Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander of "Negro Women in
Our Economic Life" (1930; 1995); and Florence "Flo"
Kennedy produced "A Comparative Study: Accentuating the
Similarities of the Societal Position of Women and Negroes"
(1946; 1995). Working through, and often leading, local, regional,
national, and international secular and church-related women's
clubs and organizations, these and other Negro women gave defining
shape to legacies of feminist and womanist engagement and leadership
that are now being reclaimed and studied for inspiration and
guidance. And the efforts and contributions of several of these women
would be joined to those of later generations who would become major
contributors, in thought and in other ways, to developments that would
unfold as history-making movements devoted to cultural expressiveness,
gaining more in the way of civil and economic rights, to gaining
power, *Black Power*!, and to gaining more freedom, rights, and
respect for women of all ethno-racial groups and socio-economic
classes.
## 9. 1915-2000
The historical context for the subsequent and more recent
developments and movements was set by transformative dislocations and
reconfigurations that intensified competitions within and among
ethno-racial groups and socio-economic classes that affected
significantly relations between White and Black races, in particular,
as the country went through unprecedented industrial and economic
growth and increasing predominance in the Western hemisphere as a
consequence of the Great Depression (1929 through the late 1930s and
into the early 1940s) and attendant disruptions, recovery from which
was spurred significantly by involvements in the Second World War
(1939-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953). There followed several
decades of economic expansion and rising prosperity for urban,
industrial workers among whom were large numbers of Black workers,
descendants of earlier migrants to the urban centers, who benefitted
from the industrial intensifications and thus expanded significantly
the growing modern, educated, increasingly economically viable,
church-going, community-sustaining, psychologically secure and
increasingly self-confident aspiring Black working and middle classes
that were determined to provide successive generations with greater
freedom, respect, and economic security bolstered by high expectations
for even greater successes and achievements. Spread across both classes
were the tens of thousands of Black men who returned to civilian life
from the country's recently racially integrated Armed Forces
after serving at home and overseas to help "make the world save
for democracy." A great many of these veterans, supported by
Negro women and men who kept the home-front while enduring the
difficulties of wartime sacrifices as they worked the nation's
fields and factories though still denied the fullness of citizenship,
were unwilling to acquiesce to the subordination to racial apartheid
and invidious racial discrimination required by the doctrines and
programs of White Racial Supremacy that still held sway.
This context became the nurturing soil in which various forms of Black
Nationalism flowered once again as the influence of Washington's
philosophy and strategies declined. Caribbean-born immigrant Marcus
Garvey ("Race Assimilation," 1922; 1992; "The True
Solution of the Negro Problem," 1922; 1992; "An Appeal to the
Conscience of the Black Race to See Itself," 1923; 1992), proponent of
a militant Black Nationalist philosophy of independence and
self-reliance for Black peoples world-wide, and of the emigration of
people of African descent from the U.S. and elsewhere "back to
Africa," rose to prominence from his base in New York City as
the most successful mass organizer of Black people in the history of
the U.S. with the founding and internationalization of his United
Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) (Garvey 1925; 1986; Martin
1986). Garvey's organizational and socio-political movement,
fueled by his "Philosophy and Opinions" carried by his
organization's newspapers and other publications with
international reach, along with the eruption of the Harlem
Renaissance, likewise in New York, an eruption of literary and
artistic productions motivated by very thoughtful and passionate
affirmations of African ancestry and of the positive, creative
importance of the cultural and aesthetic significance of African
American life, were two of the most significant emigrationist and
cultural nationalist developments of the period. Both were articulated
through and otherwise spawned new, profoundly influential modes of
creative, reflective thought and expression.
The Harlem Renaissance was an extraordinary eruption of heightened,
critical, and creative self-conscious affirmative racial identification
by thoughtful Negroes bent on expressing their affirmations of their
raciality through all of the creative arts and modalities of
articulation, a development unprecedented in the history of the
presence of peoples of African descent in the United States (Huggins 2007). The
cultural significance of the productions and articulations; of the
engagements, practices, and creations of the bold and talented
participant-contributors; of the organizations, institutions, and
publications they created and endeavored to sustain (some successfully,
many others not) devoted to culture creation, refinement, preservation,
and mediation-- all continue to have substantial influences even
today, most especially in terms of the novel ideas and idea-spaces and
discursive communities that were created and articulated through the
bodies of literature and works of art, music, and dance that are still
being mined productively by contemporary artists and scholars. The
producers and carriers of the Renaissance were natives of the whole of
the African Diaspora, across the Atlantic World especially, as well as
from across the African continent, and they drew on the cultural and
historical legacies of both (and on those from other parts of the world)
for inspiration and content for their philosophizing artistic
creativity in defining and giving expression to The *New*
Negro.
Alain Leroy Locke (1886-1954), the first African American to
earn a Ph.D. in Philosophy, from Harvard (having already earned a
degree from Oxford and having studied philosophy at the University of
Berlin), and the first to be named a Rhodes Scholar, was one of the
significant intellectual and facilitating midwives to the production
and publication of much creative work during the Renaissance (as was
Du Bois). As the guest editor for a special March 1925 issue
of *Survey Graphic* devoted to explorations of *race*
and the New York of people of African descent, Locke, titling the
issue *Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro*, brought together for
the issue writings of fiction and poetry; articles on music, drama,
the Negro's past, "Negro Pioneers," "The New
Scene," "The Negro and the American Tradition"; and
much else by a racially mixed large group of authors with expertise in
a wide variety of fields. Among these: Du Bois ("The Negro Mind
Reaches Out"); Elise Johnson McDougald ("The Task of Negro
Womanhood"); pioneering Africanist anthropologist Melville J.
Herskovits ("The Negro's Americanism"); sociologist
E. Franklin Frazier ("Durham: Capital of the Black Middle
Class"); the young poet and creative writer Countee
Cullen ("Heritage"); Howard University-based educator and
scholar Kelly Miller ("Howard: The National Negro
University"); poetess Gwendolyn B. Bennett and creative writer
Langston Hughes writing on music; poems by Angelina Grimke; and a
large number of others. After the great success of the special issue,
Locke edited and published an anthology, *The New Negro*, that
included revised versions of most of the material from the *Survey
Graphic* special issue, but with much new material and artwork by
Winold Reiss, a very accomplished artist from Bavaria (Locke
1925).
In the judgment of many scholars of the Renaissance, *The New
Negro* became, in the words of one, "virtually the central
text of the Harlem Renaissance." The title was taken from the
collection's lead essay, "The New Negro," which was
written by Locke. In the essay Locke endeavored to characterize the
"New" Negro, the circumstances of the emergence of this
character-type, the nature of its shared pride-of-race character, its
psychology and mission and relation to the Negro masses, and the
consequences of the emergence of the New Negro for race relations in
the United States and for developments in Africa and the African
Diaspora for which this new group-figure would serve as the *avant
garde*. The anthology, then, is a gateway to an important
selection of articulations by figures who were seminal contributors to,
as well as beneficiaries of, the Harlem Renaissance, and to the vast
and still growing multidisciplinary body of works that explore various
aspects, figures, contributions, and consequences of the
Renaissance. And Locke's lead essay is a poignant gateway into
his career of philosophizing as well as an adept example of an attempt
to simultaneously characterize and give agenda-setting character and
guidance to an extraordinary praxis-guiding artistic and intellectual
revolution the focal points of which were determined efforts of
racial-group self-affirmation and self-determination, beginning with
the radical ontological work of redefining and revaluing on
progressive terms the meaning of *the Negro*, then setting the
tasks by which the *New* Negro--the "thinking
Negro," as Locke characterized the group in his
essay--would lead through decidedly Negro Africanist-inspired,
philosophically-minded cultural creativity and articulate expressions
of *philosophizings born of struggles...*
And lead they did, as a number of the persons, organizations, and
institutions participating in and contributing to the Renaissance, the
Garvey and other movements, and others in the social classes that were
inspired by and fed them all became prominent figures in the Civil
Rights/Freedom Movement of the 1950s-mid 1960s during which
"civil rights" and "integration" were major
objectives of struggle. The National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP), the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense
Fund (which became formally independent from the NAACP in 1957), and
the National Urban League were but three of several organizations that
would lead the continuing, but substantially reenergized,
organizationally strengthened, and philosophically prepared and focused
struggles to secure legally sanctioned and guaranteed democratic
freedom, social and political equality, economic justice, and human
dignity for Negroes in the United States of America. Publications and
statements from these and other organizations; member correspondences;
legal briefs and papers from court cases; the creative and scholarly
works from members and descendants of the Renaissance, Garvey, and
other movements; Black newspapers of the period--all are rich
repositories of the philosophizings fueling and guiding the new phase
of struggle.
Studies of these philosophizings are likely to reveal that while
there definitely were persons and organizations advocating radical,
even revolutionary, transformations of the political economy and social
orders of the United States, overwhelmingly the pursuit of
desegregation and racial integration as important manifestations of the
achievement of democratic freedom, social and political equality,
economic justice, and human dignity for Negroes using moderate but
progressive strategies of legal and civil-disobedience struggles were
dominant means and agendas of social and political effort exerted by
people of African descent in the United States over the last
half-century and more. These commitments were manifested most
profoundly in the Civil Rights/Freedom Movement.
"The Movement," as it was experienced and known by many
of those intimately involved, proved to be a *phenomenally*
historic, personally and socially transformative, national movement with
profound international ramifications in Africa--South Africa
especially--and other countries. Initially, the attack on racial
apartheid in the quest for racial integration was pursued through legal
challenges to *de jure* racial segregation. A major victory was
achieved with the unanimous 1954 rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in
*Brown v. Board of Education I* and *II* that declared
racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, thereby
overturning the Court's 1896 *Plessey v. Ferguson*
decision that declared that government-sanctioned racial segregation
was constitutional as long as "separate but equal"
resources and facilities were provided. The team of engaged and
creative Black (and White) legal warriors from the NAACP Legal Defense
and Education Fund and other thinker-scholars (historians,
sociologists, social psychologists) were successful in persuading the
Justices on the Court that the invidious discrimination suffered by
Black folks within the schemes of White-dominated racial segregation
was manifested not only in decidedly unequal resources and facilities,
but, through "inferior" education in Negro schools, in
debilitating damage to the psychic souls and self-concepts of Negroes,
the children especially, which severely impaired their capacity to
develop into and be the kind of persons who could meet the full
responsibilities and enjoy the full benefits of citizenship. In short,
the legal team forged a legal strategy that rested on the construction
and successful articulation of a sophisticated philosophical
anthropology, aided by empirical psychological, sociological, and
historical studies, in support of an argument regarding the vital
linkage between the integrity of personhood and democratic citizenship,
thus between the enabling of democratic citizenry and the education of
the person free of resource-impoverishment and the distortions of the
soul that were consequences of hierarchic, invidious racial
discrimination that was being imposed on Negro children in racially
segregated schools. The Court was persuaded...
However, this historic victory through persuasive philosophizing was
initially stymied by recalcitrant, segregationist local governments and
an overwhelming majority of White citizens in the Confederate South and
by much foot-dragging by local governments and White citizens in other
regions of the country. White opponents of racial integration who were
determined to preserve segregation and White Supremacy unleashed yet
another wave of violent terrorism. Nonetheless, the advocates of
desegregation and integration were determined to secure full rights and
human dignity for Negro Americans. A new philosophy and strategy of
struggle was adopted that, through the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi,
had proven successful in defeating Great Britain as the colonial power
dominating India: non-violent direct action in the pursuit of justice
grounded in an explicit *philosophical* commitment to the
sanctity of human life, including *love* for opponents, and to
the redeeming and restorative powers, personally and socially, of
principled commitment to engagement in nonviolent struggle.
Gandhi's philosophy, the history and intricacies of the
movement he led in India, and his leadership were studied closely by a
young Negro missionary to India from the United States, James Morris
Lawson, Jr., who, due to his commitments to nonviolence, had already
been imprisoned for refusing induction into the military during the
Korean War. Noting from news accounts that reached him in India that
the Civil Rights/Freedom Movement in the United States was gathering force,
Lawson returned to the country determined to find ways to become
involved and contribute. While studying theology at Oberlin College in
preparation for a career as a minister in service to the Movement for
social justice, he was introduced to Martin Luther King, Jr., who came
to Oberlin to deliver a speech. Lawson was persuaded by King that he (Lawson)
should "not wait, come now" to the South to aid the
Movement by, among other things, providing instruction in the
philosophy of nonviolence. Lawson transferred to the Divinity School of
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and was soon deeply
engaged in providing intellectual and spiritual guidance and inspiration
to the educational, psychological, philosophical, and practical
preparation of legions of mostly young college students in the city who
were committed to engaging in nonviolent struggle to end the
indignities suffered by Black people as a consequence of *de
jure* White Supremacy and racial segregation. The campaign they
waged, led by Fisk University co-ed Diane Nash and with the support of
increasing numbers of Nashville's Black citizens, White college
students, and that of more than a few very principled and dedicated
anti-segregation White citizens, was eventually successful in bringing
about the formal desegregation of the city's public facilities
and commercial establishments. Many of the Nashville Movement's
leaders and stalwart participants, Lawson included, would become major
contributors to the national Movement while other student-participants
helped to bring about further historic transformations in the city and
elsewhere in the South, through their courageous participation in the
Freedom Rides, especially. (A critical, full-length biography and
philosophical study of James M. Lawson, Jr. and his philosophical
commitments and engagements have yet to be undertaken and completed...)
A philosophy of nonviolence grounded in Christian love motivated and
guided determined Black people, and allied White and other people, in
achieving *unprecedented* progressive transformations of
centuries-hardened, intellectually well-supported social, political,
and, to notable extents, economic life in a United States of America
ordered since its founding by philosophies of White Racial Supremacy
and Black racial inferiority and subordination. Martin Luther King,
Jr. ("Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience," 1961;
"The Ethical Demands for Integration," 1963) has become
the signature figure among several of the leaders of this Movement,
marked distinctively by his profoundly thoughtful Christian
theological and philosophical commitments to nonviolence as the
grounding for personal and shared social life as well as for engaging
in struggles for freedom and justice (Washington, J.M. 1986). However,
the groundwork for the Movement he would be called to lead had been
laid and further developed by many other organizationally-supported
Negro women and men of articulate thought and disciplined action from
labor and other constituencies: among these A. Philip Randolph (who
served as a founding organizer and president of the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council,
and vice president of the AFL-CIO) and Bayard Rustin (a veteran of
struggles for civil and other rights for Negroes and workers of all
colors), who were the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom during which King delivered the speech ("I Have
a Dream...") in which he invoked a vision for America that became
his hallmark and a guiding theme of the Movement.
Certainly, Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of the most prolific and
profoundly influential, even historic, figures of African descent whose
articulations continue to compel widespread, intensive study as
especially rich instances of religious, moral, theological, and
socio-political philosophizing. Still, King's articulations, as
well as the sacrificial life he lived and gave in leadership service,
firmly and uncompromisingly grounded in *especially* thoughtful
commitments to Gandhi-inspired nonviolence ("Nonviolence and
Racial Justice," 1957; "The Power of Nonviolence,"
1958) and Jesus-inspired *agape* love ("Love, Law, and
Civil Disobediance," 1961; "A Gift of Love," 1966)
await full and widespread appreciation as the truly phenomenal gifts of
inspiration, commitment, and guidance to a social movement that they
were. They were gifts that, infused in and channeled by the Movement,
changed the legal and social structures, the culture of race relations,
and thereby the history of the United States. These gifts also inspired
others in their struggles for similar changes elsewhere in the world.
The consequences of the Movement that embodied these gifts confirmed,
once again, that the combination of love and nonviolent struggle could,
indeed, succeed. And, as has been the case throughout the history of
the presence of persons of African descent in this country, these
particular philosophical gifts were neither forged and developed in,
nor mediated to others from, the contexts of academic Philosophy, but
were, indeed, *philosophizings born of struggles*, gifts that
changed a country for the better that, it is feared, has yet to
recognize and embrace fully the confirmed lessons the gifts
embody...
Overwhelmingly, the pursuit of desegregation and racial integration
as goals of movements for democratic freedom, social and political
equality, economic justice, and human dignity for Negroes has been
a dominant item on the agendas of social and political philosophies
motivating and guiding struggles exerted by people of African descent
in the United States over the last half-century and more, manifested
most profoundly in the Civil Rights/Freedom Movement. However, the
Movement's integrationist agenda, moral-persuasionist strategies,
commitment to nonviolence, and explicit commitment to a theologically and
religiously grounded notion of love for the Movement's opponents
was strongly challenged by other organizational forces (mid-1960s to
the early 1970s), especially by "Young Turks" in the
Movement's Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an
influential number of whom were inspired by the revolutionary
philosophies conveyed in the speeches, writings, and organizational
activities of Malcolm X and the anti-colonial engagements and writings
of Frantz Fanon as well as by major figures in decolonizing liberation
movements in Africa and elsewhere that were being waged through armed
struggle. These Young Turks, and others in a variety of decidedly
Left-Nationalist organizations and proto-movements who were inspired by
various notions of revolutionary transformation, initiated yet another
resurgence of Black Nationalist aspirations and movements that came to
be referred to collectively as the Black Power Movement. The period was
also complicated by competitive conflicts with a cacophony of persons
and organizations espousing commitments to anti-Nationalist
multi-racial, multi-ethnic socialist and communist agendas.
This was a period of unprecedented tumult, complicated by violent
rebellions by Black people in urban centers across the country, and by the
nation's involvement in a gone-badly-wrong and increasingly
unpopular war in Vietnam that was highlighted all the more by national and
international movements against the War led principally by young,
college-age people, many of whom had come of age politically through
their involvements in or educative witnessing of the Civil Rights and
Black Power Movements. Of particular note, a significant number of
young White women who had been intimately involved in the Civil Rights,
Black Power, and Anti-War Movements had become increasingly poignantly
aware of the disrespect for, misuse, and underutilization of women by
many men in the Movements and became radicalized into forging a
movement to address their concerns, which was subsequently
characterized as the Second Wave Feminist Movement.
All of these developments were fueled by and fostered intense
intellectual adventures, some of which were also fertilized by
practical engagements of various kinds. The Black Power Movement, in
particular, overlapped with and both fueled and was fueled by
philosophizings and engagements that were definitive of more expansive
and consequential Black Consciousness and Black Arts Movements that, as
had the Harlem Renaissance of several decades earlier, spurred an
intensive and extensive renaissance of aggressively radical and
expressive creativity in the arts that was centered, once again, on
reclaiming for self-definition and self-determination the ontological
being of persons and peoples of African descent, with influences, in
many instances, from various Leftist ventures, nationalist and
internationalist as well as socialist and communist. This was an
unstable and volatile mixture that cried out for a clarifying
philosophy to provide guidance through the thicket of ideological
possibilities and the agendas for personal and communal
identity-formation and life-praxes that each proffered with greater or
less coherence and veracity.
More than a few spokesmen and spokeswomen came forward to
philosophize on behalf of their group's or organization's
(or their own) vision for 'what was to be done' to insure
*liberation* for *Black* people, people of
*African* descent. ("Liberation" was the watchword
for the new agenda; "Negro" and "Colored" were
denigrated and cast aside, no longer acceptable as terms of racial
identification). Politics--and all aspects and dimensions of
individual and social life were explicitly politicized--became
defined by and focused through the lenses of the substantive symbolics
of racialized and enculturated *Blackness*, even as the
intellectual warriors waging the conceptual and other battles on behalf
of *Blackness* struggled to find adequate terms and strategies
with which to forge satisfactory and effective articulations of the
passionately sought and urgently needed new identities as articulations
of long standing identities and life-agendas were discredited and thus
rendered inadequate for a significant and influential few. For still a
great many other "Negro?", "Black?",
"Colored?", "African- American?",
"African-descended?", and "American?" persons there
was more than a bit of psychic turmoil and tension, no less of
consternation and confusion. And hardly any of these persons, nor even
many of the most ardent warriors calling for and/or purveying new
notions and definitions of "Black consciousness" and
"Black" agendas for individual and shared lives, knew of
and had recourse to Alain Locke's sober and sobering
well-reasoned "The New Negro," nor the rich resources that
had been created by the producers and carriers of the Harlem
Renaissance. And so the intensified ontologizing philosophizing
proceeded at near breakneck speed driven largely by a generation of
young adults few of whom had, nor would accept, much in the way of
intellectual or practical guidance from the experienced and wise of
previous generations for whom many of the young and arrogant had too little
respect...
The reason, Harold Cruse, a wise and very experienced elder of Left
and Nationalist organizations and struggles and a formidable thinker in
his own right, was careful to point out, was due to a severe and
consequential disruption of the passing-on of experience-tested and
verified knowledge from one generation to another by the ravages of the
witch-hunting and persecuting of any and all accused of being a
Communist or Communist sympathizer during the crusading campaign led by
Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s. Many lives and careers were
destroyed as a result of McCarthy's campaign, and many persons
and organizations with Leftist commitments were either destroyed or
driven underground, or otherwise left severely tainted and thus made an
"untouchable" bereft of employment, even for one-time
friends and close associates. (W.E.B. Du Bois was one who suffered this
fate, which is largely why he made the momentous decision to renounce
his citizenship and leave the United States for residence in Ghana, where
he died...) The radical Young Turks, then, not short of courage or
passion, set out on a mission all but impoverished, in many cases, of
much needed historical and intellectual capital, thus were sometimes poorly
armed for the battles they sought to wage. Still, the
trans-generational disruption that Cruse pointed out was not complete.
There were those who filled the gap between the Harlem Renaissance and
the rise of the new *Black* renaissance who would be of
significant influence and guidance, and would serve some in the new movements as personal as well as
intellectual mentors and role models: Richard Wright, Robert Hayden, Ralph Ellison,
Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, and James
Baldwin, among several others.
There would be much *philosophizing born of struggles* by the
new generation. Much credit has to be given to those who had the
wherewithal of discipline and fortitude, and good fortune, to survive
and leave legacies of accomplishment that continue to enrich Black
folks, and others. The Black Arts Movement, for example, had profound
impacts through the productions and articulations that gave new
directions and meanings to artistic creativity, to the agendas guiding
creativity and expression and the mission of service to various
audiences. A manifesto, "Towards a Black Aesthetic," by
Hoyt Fuller (1923-1981; Fuller 1994) and his work as editor of
the journal *Negro Digest*, which later was renamed *Black
World* and was followed by *First World* when the publisher
of the latter was pressured to discontinue publication of a journal
serving Black radicals, were path-setting ventures during a period
much in need of clear paths. Likewise "The Black
Aesthetic" by the essayist and theorist Addison Gayle,
Jr. (1932-1991), his introduction to an anthology that he edited
and published bearing the same title (Gayle, Jr. 1972). A collection
of writings on theory, drama, music, and fiction by many of the
leading artistic minds in the new Black generation, *The Black
Aesthetic* has come to be regarded by scholars as "the
theoretical bible of the Black Arts Movement" and thus did for
the makers of this Movement what Locke's *The New Negro*
had done for the makers of the Harlem Renaissance. Both Fuller and
Gayle would play roles similar to Locke's in serving as midwives
to the creative and critically-minded development of a sizable portion
of a generation of seriously radicalized *Black*
thinkers-artists.
The new activist thinkers-artists of the 1960s--Nikki Giovanni,
Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, A.B. Spellman, Larry Neal, Mari Evans,
Haki R. Madhubuti, and Maulana Karenga, for example--were as
productive, formidable, and widely influential as were the *New*
Negroes of the 1920s and 1930s, even more so as they exploited the
advantages of access to the enabling resources of the media of radio,
television, and recordings in addition to print media, and to the human
resources that became available through lecture-circuits on college and
university campuses. Many of these Black warriors of the intellect and
arts took up positions, some settling into them for the long term, on
the faculties of colleges and universities and helped to development
the guiding philosophies and wage the political battles that ushered in
new programs in Black and African Studies. In so doing they magnified
the forcefulness and range of their intellectual and artistic powers
and contributions, and helped to alter cultural and intellectual scenes
in the United States and the African Disapora...
## 10. 1950-Present: Professional Philosophers of African Descent
Until quite recently, there were very few person of African descent
who were professionals in the discipline of Philosophy. As already noted, W.E.B. Du
Bois was one of a very few to study Philosophy formally while a student
at Harvard but decided against pursuing it professionally. Alain Leroy
Locke was one of the first persons of African descent in America to
earn a doctoral degree in Philosophy (Harvard University, 1918). A few
more followed decades later (1950s), among them Broadus N. Butler, Max
Wilson, Berkeley Eddins, and, still later, Joyce Mitchell Cook, the
first African American female to earn a Ph. D. in Philosophy. These
were some of the pioneering persons of African descent in the United
States who entered the profession of academic Philosophy with the
certification of a terminal degree in the discipline.
More recently (late 1960s through the 1970s) successive generations of
persons of African descent have entered the profession as cohorts of
new generations of young Black women and men entered the academy with
the expansion of opportunities for higher education that came as a
result of the successes of the desegregation-integration and Civil
Rights Movements. More than a few of these persons were influenced by
the Black Power, Black Consciousness, and Black Arts Movements, as
well, and in some cases by independence and decolonization movements
on the African continent and in the African Diaspora in the
Caribbean. The emergence of and pursuit of distinctive agendas within
academic Philosophy to articulate and study philosophizings by persons
African and of African descent were initiated by several of the new
entrants, agendas that grew out of and were motivated by these
movements. Thus, the new entrants were determined to contribute as
educators, sometimes as engaged intellectuals involved in movement
organizations, by identifying and contributing to, or by helping to
forge anew, philosophical traditions, literatures, and practices
intended, in many instances, to be distinctive of the thought- and
life-agendas of Black peoples. Here, then, the wellspring of concerns
and aspirations that gave rise to calls for, and efforts to set out,
"Black" philosophy, then "Afro-American," and
later "African American" philosophy, precursive efforts
leading to what is now the more or less settled *name*, but
still developing *concept*, of
*Africana* philosophy.
Formal, professional recognition and sanctioning of these efforts,
which had been pursued, with significant impact, through presentations
of papers on and discussions of various topics in sessions during
annual meetings of divisions of the American Philosophical Association
(APA) and other organizations of professional philosophers and other organizations of
teacher-scholars such as the Radical Philosophers Association (RPA) and
the Society for Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy (SPEP),
were achieved when, in 1987, the APA recognized the efforts as
having established a legitimate sub-field of Philosophy and made
"Africana philosophy" an officially listed specialty in the
discipline. Across the years, the APA's Committee on
Blacks in Philosophy has been instrumental in organizing a number of
these important sessions, though, of no less importance, many such
sessions were hosted by other sympathetic and supportive committees of
the APA as well as by other organizations of professional
philosophers that held meetings concurrent with those of divisions of
the Association. Thus, the recognition and sanction have come, to
significant degrees, as results of long efforts led by philosophers
Robert C. Williams (deceased), William Jones, Howard McGary, Jr., and
La Verne Shelton, among others, each of whom gave years of service as
chairpersons of the APA's Committee on Blacks in
Philosophy. Each also contributed early articulations that initiated
the work of forging the sub-field.
Also of special importance to this long development towards
recognition and legitimation, and to the production of much of the
early writings, presentations, and critical networking collegiality
that have been foundational to the development of Africana philosophy,
were a series of conferences devoted to explorations of "Black
Philosophy" or of "Philosophy and the Black
Experience" that were held during the 1970s, most of them
organized and hosted at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
(HCBUs: notably, Tuskegee University, Morgan State University, and
Howard University) though important gatherings were also held at the
University of Illinois-Chicago Circle (*ca* 1970, another thirty
years later), Haverford College (an international gathering in the
summer of 1982 of African and African American philosophers and
teacher-scholars from other disciplines), and, more recently, at the
University of Memphis. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is the
Philosophy Born of Struggle Conference, which has been hosted annually
for fifteen years primarily through the indefatigable efforts of J.
Everet Green and Leonard Harris, and the Alain Locke Conference
organized and hosted biannually by the Department of Philosophy of
Howard University (Washington, DC).
The development and institutionalization of African American
philosophy, of Africana philosophy more generally, with recognition by
the American Philosophical Association--though not by all, or
even most, departments of Philosophy in academic
institutions--have also been facilitated by the noteworthy
success of many of the pioneers in securing and retaining positions in
academic departments (of Philosophy, of Philosophy and Religion, of
Philosophy and other disciplines) in various institutions of higher
education across the country. A substantial few of these persons have
earned tenure and promotions, several to the rank of Professor, while
several have even been appointed to endowed
professorships. Consequently, a slowly increasing number of
philosophers who are African or of African descent now hold positions
in departments and programs that serve graduate and professional
students. Of importance, then, have been the growing number of
lectures and seminars in colleges and universities across the country
given and directed by philosophers of African descent in response to
invitations, and as part of regular curricular offerings,
respectively, of departments of Philosophy, often with the cooperation
and co-sponsorship of other departments and programs. These invited
presentations and regularized curricular offerings reconfirm and
strengthen the intellectual legitimacy of much work in Africana
philosophy while doing much the same for the invited and teaching
philosophers.
One especially significant consequence of these important developments
is that several of these persons now have built legacies of teaching
and scholarship that span decades with significant influences on
generations of students. Practitioners of Africana philosophy are even
producing new generations of practitioners. And practitioners of all
generations are contributing to the literature of articulate
expression of what is now a substantial and growing body of works
supporting teaching, research, and scholarship in Africana philosophy
while, in the process of doing so, also initiating, and otherwise
contributing to, substantial changes to discursive agendas. Certainly,
the example beyond debate continues to be critical explorations
of *race* and of "racism," matters that have
distorted the basic institutions, virtually all considerations and
practices, and all lives across the entirety of the history of the
United States of America, and that of much of the world. However, it
was not until philosophers of African descent focused their
philosophizing on critical engagements with the racial conditionings
of the profession and of life generally that discussions, teaching,
and scholarship within professional Philosophy were opened to and
conditioned by new critical discursive agendas affecting numerous
subfields within the discipline and the organization of the
profession, evident in the surge of writings by philosophers African
and of African descent published in mainstream journals and by
mainstream publishers.
*Race Matters* by Cornel West (1994) became the national and
international best-seller that propelled West into prominence as an
academic philosopher and preacher-become-public intellectual who
contributed to reinvigorated public critiques of racism with
professionally attuned philosophical acumen. Yet, his earlier
publication *Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary
Christianity* (1982) had even greater impacts on discourses within
the academic disciplines of Philosophy, Theology, and
Religion/Religious Studies, in particular. Of especially notable
influence were his genealogy of racism and his sketching out of four
distinctive traditions of responsive thought generated by Black
thinkers. West's genealogical critique drew on several canonical
figures (Nietzsche, Michel Foucault) and was thus emblematic of his
expansive learnedness and creative ingenuity in drawing on canonical
figures to redirect critical thought back upon the social orders and
history-making practices of those subjecting folks of African descent,
and others, to dehumanization.
Others contributing to and shaping such critiques include Howard
McGary, whose *Race and Social Justice* (1999) brought together
a number of seminal essays in which he explored moral and political
questions regarding race and racism in a new and distinctive (and
distinctively embodied) voice among practitioners of Analytic
Philosophy, a voice concerned with social justice, with issues of
equity and inclusion especially, while drawing on and highlighting
lived experiences of African Americans conditioned unjustly and
immorally. For McGary, philosophical work was no longer to be confined
to analysis restricted to 'getting the terms
right'. Rather, having lived experiences of invidious racial
discrimination and impediments to accessing and exploiting conditions
of possibility by which Black persons might forge individual and
group-shared flourishing lives, across generations, McGary has
remained committed to disciplined, well-argued clarifications and
revisions of key notions by which to pursue and secure social justice,
most especially for those "least well off": the
Black *underclass*.
Continuing such efforts, in a different register, with substantial and
innovative contributions is Paul Taylor (who studied with McGary at
Rutgers University). His *Race: A Philosophical Introduction*
stands out as an especially clearly-articulated, nuanced, clarifying
navigation of many of the complexities of conceptualizations
of *race* firmly situated in reconstructions of historical
practices guided by political and other agendas. Yet, it is
Taylor's *Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black
Aesthetics* that is especially noteworthy. It is, perhaps, the
first-in-decades book-length "assembling" (Taylor's
own characterization of his effort) of a
deliberately *philosophical* theory of Black aesthetics: that
is, a critical theoretical exploration of the roles expressive
practices and objects play when taken up by Black folks in the
creation and maintenance of their lifeworlds. (The philosopher Alain
Leroy Locke, midwife to the New Negroes of the Harlem Renaissance,
preceded Taylor by half-a-century in taking seriously Black expressive
life, as did W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, James
Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and numerous others.) Taylor's efforts
are doubly innovative in his endeavor to bridge two discursive
communities heretofore not in communication: professional
philosophers, and others, concerned with aesthetics who have had
little to no concern with aesthetics in Black life; Black artists and
critics fully immersed in the productions of and engagements with
expressive practices and objects in Black life with little to no
engagements with resources drawn from academic, professional
Philosophy. As did Alain Locke, Taylor aims to contribute to a new
generation of articulate thinkers who are focusing their critical
acumen on the expressivity and performativity in productions of self,
and of self in relations with others, of those who have been
racialized as *Black*.
But, how have folks African and of African descent been figured in the
expressive practices and products, and in the theorizings of such
aesthetic ventures, produced, in both cases, by folks not Black?
Robert Gooding-Williams is but one of several philosophers of African
descent who probes these questions in his *Look, A Negro!
Philosophical Essays on Race, Culture and Politics* (2006), a
collection of essays connected, he notes, by his persistent effort to
explore whether it is possible to interpret *race* in ways that
would be in keeping with what is required in political and cultural
life if the United States as a polity were to become actually
structured by democratic principles and practices while adult citizens
fully acknowledge the history and continuing legacies of White racial
supremacy that have structured the polity from its inception. In the
chapter on "Aesthetics and Receptivity: Kant, Nietzsche, Cavell,
and Astaire," for example, Gooding-Williams rehearses accounts
of aesthetic experiences by the canonic figures Kant (re:
"aesthetic judgment") and Nietzsche (re: embodied
sensibilities) in preparation for a critical reading and assessment of
the philosopher Stanley Cavell's aesthetic reading of how the
dancer Fred Astaire is rendered in a particular movie in which he
stars (*The Band Wagon*) as the focal character who is
able/enabled to reclaim himself (i.e., make a "comeback")
as a star dancer. What Gooding-Williams lifts up is Cavell's
failure to *see* that the Astaire-character is enabled by a
Black male character who, in shining Astaire's shoes, transfers
to Astaire and his feet a restoration of rhythmic capabilities by way
of the rhythms the Black shoeshine-man articulates while brushing the
Astaire-character's shoes and polishing them with his
shine-rag. All of which presumes something (on the part of the
film-maker; so, too, Cavell, though differently...) about the
embodiment of enabling aesthetic capabilities of particular kinds in
the being of the Black character representative of the
culturally-inflected raciality of Black people.
There are centuries-long, quite rich traditions of thought
articulated, and political praxis engaged in, by Black folks for whom
it is the case that the constitutive racially of Black folks is such
that it sets the terms not only of identity, but, as well, of the
ethical imperatives of intra- and interracial mutualities, that is, of
various modes and instances of solidarity. And, as well, for
compelling pragmatic reasons: to contend with, ultimately to overcome,
invidious racial discrimination and oppression. No small matters for
persons and peoples suffering racialized dehumanization and
exploitation thus in need of shared motivating and guiding notions of
how to gain and sustain freedom and justice. Many concerned to forge
freedom in just conditions have sought morally compelling guiding
understandings in shared raciality, in being, by particular
understandings of raciality, a distinctive *people,* a
distinctive *nation* of Black people. Hence, traditions of
"Black Nationalism," waxing and waning across the
centuries, resurgent more recently in various forms (music and art;
"Afrocentric" thought) and locales in the United States,
in particular. Tommie Shelby, who became a certified professional
philosopher after the resurgent Black nationalisms of the Black Power
and Black Arts movements, while deeply committed to philosophical
engagements with and out of contexts of lived experiences of Black
folks in which much of his life has been conditioned, has, in
his *We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black
Solidarity*, endeavored to work out a philosophically clarified
and justified account of the terms and agenda of solidarity as a basis
for organized and coordinated struggles for justice. The account is
intended to be both motivating and welcoming of the solidaristic
cooperation of persons Black and non-Black without needing to resort
to what he reasons to be the philosophically indefensible racial
essentialism of various construals of Black nationalism. Yet, the
account is intended to be in keeping with important conceptual and
normative groundings of Black political cultural life that are, as
well, compatible with a notion of political liberalism worked out by
John Rawls. With Shelby's efforts, too, there is the hard work
of extending decidedly prominent mainstream philosophical thought
(that of of Rawls in this particular case) to a creatively critical
engagement with unjust limiting conditions on the lives of Black folks
in conjunction with efforts of philosophical reconstruction and
defense of principles of Black solidarity that embrace a notion
of *Blackness* suitable for emancipatory work.
## 11. Publishing and Professional Africana Philosophy
Leonard Harris has been a pioneer of published works on African
American philosophy and continues to be a major contributor in many
ways, not least as an editor of collections that have made widely
available important texts that otherwise would not have gotten the
attention of researchers and scholars concerned with the
philosophizings of Black folks. Of particular note, his edited
collection *The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and
Beyond* (Harris 1989) provides ready access to philosophical
essays from among Locke's more than three hundred published and
unpublished essays and book reviews. And his
*Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy
from 1917* (Harris 1983) was for many years the only widely
available, somewhat historically organized collection of writings by
African American professional philosophers and other philosophizing
Black scholars. (An important earlier collection is Percy
E. Johnston's *Afro-American Philosophers*. (Johnston
1970)) More recently new collections devoted to African American
Philosophy have been organized and published by Tommy L. Lott (Lott
2002); by Lott and John P. Pittman (Lott and Pittman 2003); and by
James A. Montmarquet and William H. Hardy (Montmarquet and Hardy
2000).
This publishing is an important part of the story of Africana
philosophy, and helps to make and legitimate the case that persons
African and of African-descent, on the African continent and in the
African Diaspora in the Americas and elsewhere, are creators and
custodians of Africana philosophy. A number of publishers have
recognized and accepted these developments and, after substantial,
long-standing resistance and outright refusal by many to recognize
historic writings by persons of African descent and contemporary
scholarship by philosophers African and of African descent as proper
instances of philosophical work, have made a priority of adding works
of Africana philosophy to their lists of published works.
Of particular publishing significance is the continuing, regular
appearance of issues of *Philosophia Africana: Analysis of
Philosophy and Issues in Africa and the Black Diaspora*, a journal
for which Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze of DePaul University was founding
editor until his unexpected death in 2007. *Philosophia
Africana* remains the only scholarly journal in the United States
that is devoted to Africana philosophy, though increasingly other
philosophy journals are accepting and publishing writings that fall
within the subfield. None, however, have been as generous as
*Philosophical Forum*, which, under the editorial directorship
of Max Wartofsky (deceased), devoted two entire special issues to
explorations of philosophical matters of particular concern to Black
philosophers. Noteworthy, too, has been the continuing midwifing of New
York-based publisher and scholar Alfred Prettyman, who has devoted
time, energy, and other resources to nurturing The Society for the
Study of Africana philosophy (originally the New York Society for the
Study of Black Philosophy), an organization of philosophers and other
engaged thinkers of African descent, and persons not of African
descent, who come together in his home to present and discuss ideas and
works on the way to publication or recently published. For a brief
period Prettyman was editor and publisher of the now dormant *The
Journal* of the New York Society for the Study of Black
Philosophy.
The professional recognition and legitimation of Africana philosophy
generally, of African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy
as sub-foci of the field; the notable success enjoyed by a slowly
increasing number of persons African and of African descent in being
hired, retained, and promoted by departments and programs in
institutions of higher education; more publishing opportunities; a
continuing vigorous schedule of regular conferences and conference
sessions devoted to explorations of matters pertinent to the
field--all of these continue to be crucial to building and
enhancing the literature-base of the field and to facilitating
teaching, research, scholarship, and other collegial engagements and
practices that are essential to forming and sustaining nurturing
discursive communities devoted to engaging philosophizing productive of
Africana philosophy. And the enterprise is being enriched by the
participation and contributions of an increasing number of persons,
students and professionals, who are neither African nor of African
descent.
## 12. Africana Philosophy: Contributions
Substantial progress has thus been made in mitigating some of the
impediments that had long hampered recognition of and attending to the
philosophizing efforts of persons African and of African descent.
Nonetheless, still more mitigating work remains. There is the need, for
example, to bring to consideration for better appreciation the writings
of several generations of especially thoughtful and insightful Black
essayists and novelists, poets and musicians, artists and dancers,
preachers and theologians, and other public-speaking Black
intellectuals who, through their means of expression, have
philosophized about the conditions and prospects of Black folks and, in
many cases, have helped to sustain the will and determination to
*endure* the assaults on the humanity, on the *being*, of
persons and peoples African and of African descent. In this regard, too
little attention has been given, for example, to the philosophical
writer-novelist Charles Johnson who, before he became a distinguished
novelist, was a graduate student in Philosophy. The articulated thought
of many other Black writers, some of them novelists, also compel close,
appreciative readings by philosophers for what these articulations
disclose of the writers coming to terms thoughtfully and creatively
with the exigencies of existence for Black folks as the writers
imagined or re-imagined them in the locales and historical moments of
their writerly creations. Likewise in many sermons, speeches, letters,
songs, and dances created and expressed, creatively very often, by
thoughtful Black persons. *Of necessity*, then, Africana
philosophy must be an even more intensive and extensive
interdisciplinary enterprise.
A principal impediment to the recognition and appreciation of the
philosophizings of Black folks have been the thorough investments in
Eurocentrism and White Racial Supremacy that have grounded and
structured so much of the historiography within the discipline of
Philosophy for so very many decades. Resolving these misconstruals of
the discipline's history will require substantial revisions,
ones inclusive of the philosophizings of persons of many excluded
groupings. In so doing, careful work must be done to reclaim for
wider distribution and careful study as many as possible of the
earliest articulations--many of which were never
published--that helped pave the way to the development of African
American philosophy, of Africana philosophy more generally, as fields
of discourse (Kuklick 2001; Kuklick 2008).
With hindsight, an especially crippling factor in the development of
Africana philosophy within academic Philosophy in the United States
(throughout the African continent and the African Diaspora, in fact)
has been that far too little of the attention of the pioneers, and of
present practitioners, has been devoted to issues that are of
significance to women African and of African descent even though, as
has been indicated through the narration of the history of
*philosophizing born of struggles*, the contributions of Black
women have been significant though seldom with the prominence of
attention they should have had outside of women's circles. As
was shown, in the New Worlds in which African peoples were being
re-made/were remaking themselves into new persons and peoples of
African descent, numerous Black women across the generations were
challenged to think hard and long about the assaults on their
communities, their families, their very bodies and souls. Here, then,
a *compelling* need to foster and support the philosophizing
efforts of Black women who direct our attention to the lives and
philosophizing of Black women, historically and
contemporarily. Noteworthy in this regard are the groundbreaking,
inspiring efforts of philosopher Kathryn Gines in founding the
Collegium of Black Women Philosophers. The Collegium is bringing
together women from across the country in conferences devoted to
recovering and recognizing the contributions of pioneering women
philosophers of African descent while exploring present issues and
forging agendas of further work to be done.
## 13. Future Developments
The possible futures of developments in Africana philosophy in
African and the African Diaspora are open. The initial work of making
the case for and legitimacy of African American, African, and Africana
philosophy and its subfields has been accomplished with significant
success even without universal acceptance and respect. That is to be
expected, for no intellectual movement or disciplinary sub-field ever
wins acceptance by all. Still, there is more to be done by way of
consolidating the gains while forging new developments as minds are
turned to challenging issues, many of them novel. To note, for two
decades much of the effort of practitioners of Africana philosophy has
been devoted to explorations of *race*, a foundational and
pervasive complex of forceful factors shaping virtually all aspects and
dimensions of life in the formation of Modernity in Europe and the
Americas, and in every instance in which Europeans encroached on the
lands and lives of peoples around the globe. Achieving justice without
racism in polities bequeathed by Modernity is hardly finished business.
So, the need to rethink *race* will be with us for a while
yet.
However, the need will be generated by resolutions of old
difficulties and challenges. Success will bring new challenges. Among
these, settling such questions as whether there can and should be
norms, practices, and agendas that are definitive of philosophizing
identified as instances of "Africana" philosophy. If so,
then on what terms, and to what ends, are the requisite agendas, norms,
and practices to be set to serve the best interests of African and
African-descended peoples, without injustice to non-Black peoples, and
thereby provide those philosophizing with normative guidance while
conforming to norms that ensure propriety and truthfulness in
discursive practices on conditions of warrant that are open to and can
be confirmed by persons who are neither African nor African-descended?
Should such concerns continue to be appropriate conditioners of
philosophical effort? The praxes and supportive discursive communities
constitutive of Africana philosophy will have to meet certain
institutionalized rules governing scholarly practices even as those of
us committed to the development of the enterprise contribute to
critiques and refinements of these institutionalized rules while
devising and proposing others.
The work constituting Africana philosophy, on the African continent
and throughout the African Diaspora, has helped to change the agendas
and rules of discourse and praxis in Philosophy and other disciplines
and discursive communities in contemporary academic institutions and
organizations. The enterprise has been a significant contributor to the
emergent recognition of the need to give greater respectful attention
to raciality and ethnicity (as well as to gender, sexual orientation,
and other constitutive aspects of our personal and social identities)
as conditioners of philosophical praxis without thereby invalidating
reconstructed notions of proper reasoning. As well, practitioners of
Africana philosophy have aided the development of much wider and deeper
recognition and acknowledgment of inadequacies in basic notions and
agendas in the legacies of Western Philosophy thereby helping to open
us all to challenging new needs and possibilities for further revising
philosophical traditions and practices. The expansion of academic
Philosophy to include Africana philosophy is indicative of efforts to
achieve greater intellectual democracy in multi-ethnic, multi-racial
societies. These developments should be continued, aided by
philosophizing persons who are neither African nor of African descent,
nor, even, professional academic philosophers, and continued as part of
a larger, ongoing effort to appreciate and learn from the many
life-enriching creations of *all* peoples as contributions to
the treasure-houses of human civilization. |
africana-contemporary | ## 1. Framing themes: circumscribing the topic
Early in his masterful *Introduction to Africana Philosophy*,
Lewis R. Gordon defines his subject in a deceptively simple way that
both anticipates important complexities and sets some basic
boundaries. Africana philosophy, he says, is "as an area of
philosophical research that addresses the problems faced and raised by
the African diaspora" (Gordon 2008, 13). The references to
problems and to the diaspora immediately point to two vital framing
themes for the field.
### 1.1 Africanaity
The first theme has to do with the threshold metaphysical and
socio-anthropological assumptions that underwrite the use of
"Africana" as a modifier. Things that earn this
modifier--people and practices most clearly, institutions and
material objects somewhat less so--are supposed to be
interestingly connected to the continent of Africa and, therefore, to
each other. This raises obvious questions. What kind of connections
count for this purpose? How strong do they have to be?
Arguments about how to account for the unity of the Africana condition
comprise one of the recurring subjects of Africana philosophy. This
has often taken the form of debates about "Africanity,"
the key contours of which have been helpfully chronicled by Souleymane
Bachir Diagne
(2001).[1]
Unfortunately, that concept is ambiguous between studies of African
commonalities--of what, say, Ghanaians and Eritreans share that
Britons of African descent may not--and studies of African
diasporic continuities. In deference to the distinctiveness of the
concerns animating these studies and of the conclusions they often
reach, I will reserve the notion of Africanity for studies focused on
the continent and introduce the notion of *Africanaity* to
indicate an interest in wider diasporic connections.
This is not the place to consider in detail the threshold questions of
Africanaity. Luckily it is a fairly intuitive concept, rooted in
widely--if often dimly--understood facts about the social
and political history of Africa and its peoples over the last several
centuries. One can debate the precise meaning of these facts or the
limits of the intuition underwriting the Africana idea. But the basic
intuition, even for critics of its extended application in, say, a
Pan-African politics, is provisionally useful as what Lucius T. Outlaw
Jr. calls a "gathering notion," used to capture the same
insight that underwrites locutions like "of African
descent," and to prepare that insight for extension, critique,
and elaboration (Outlaw 2004, 90).
### 1.2 Problematicity
The notion of Africanaity draws out the part of Gordon's quick
definition of Africana philosophy that focuses on the diaspora. But
what about the rest? What does it mean to refer to the problems that
the diaspora faces and raises? And why dwell on these problems as a
way of framing this study?
Additional language from Gordon may be helpful. He explains:
>
>
> Since there was no reason for the people of the African continent to
> have considered themselves African until that identity was imposed
> upon them through conquest and colonization in the modern era ...
> this area of thought also refers to the unique set of questions raised
> by the emergence of "Africans" and their diaspora...
> . Such concerns include the convergence of most Africans with the
> racial term "black" and its many connotations. (Gordon
> 2008, 1)
>
>
>
Gordon's point is that taking Africanaity seriously means asking
about the conditions under which the concept came to have something to
refer to. And to ask about these conditions is to explore a handful of
social, methodological, and broadly philosophical problems, and to
consider certain oddly robust links between these problems and the
Africana condition.
I'll refer to this constellation of problems and their
connection to the Africana condition as problematicity. This second
framing theme sets three vital tasks for the field.
First, it is important to grapple responsibly with the very real
problems that face Africa and its diaspora. There are many obvious
examples, from imperial incursions and forced migrations to asymmetric
integration into the world economy and authoritarian post-independence
governance. Philosophical inquirers may take these conditions as their
subject matter, but they will also have to grapple with the way these
conditions shape and constrain the prospects for intellectual
work.
Second, it is equally important, if not more so, to call out and
correct for the tendency to assume that Africana communities
don't just face problems but are also somehow inherently prone
to them. The thought here is that the condition of Africanaity is not
simply about facing problems, but also, in a way, about *being*
a problem. I've borrowed this way of putting it from a germinal
formulation by one of the canonical figures of Africana thought. Early
in his career, W.E.B. Du Bois famously invited his readers to consider
a puzzling question on behalf of people racialized as Black: *how
does it feel to be a problem*? (Du Bois "Of Our Spiritual
Strivings" [1903] 1986, 363). That is (in part) to say: how does
it feel to move through life as a living representative of a
society's ethical lapses and epistemic incapacities, and to
contend with the social pressure to think of oneself as the source of
these problems? In light of the substantial overlap between
Africanaity and Blackness, the tendency "to view Black people as
a problem people" is very much at issue for Africa and its
diaspora (West 1999, 104).
The phenomenological depth of this second mode of problematicity
points to a third mode, which involves not simply facing or being a
problem, but also *raising* problems. We've already seen
this at work to some degree, in the way the Africana idea prompts
questions in metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology. But Africanaity
also raises deeper problems of method and world-view and, in some
senses of the word, ontology. The discursive event that V. Y. Mudimbe
(1988) dubs "the invention of Africa" complicates or, one
might say, short-circuits certain standard modern modes of
philosophical comportment--or, better put, forces philosophical
Euro-modernity to misrepresent and perhaps misunderstand its actual
animating imperatives. This complication leads Hegel to extrude Africa
from his staging of world history while doing considerable violence to
actual history and to geography. It leads figures like Thomas
Jefferson and John Locke to mirror the contradictions of modern
political thought in their works and their lives. It leads Fanon (in
another germinal contribution to Africana thought) to note that reason
walks out of the room when he walks in. Thoughts like these have
inspired Gordon (2000) and others to organize a great deal of fruitful
philosophical work around the epistemological challenges of
"shifting the geography of reason" and of bringing the
human sciences to bear on populations whose members are often only
tenuously regarded as
human.[2]
(To be clear: the claim here is not that African-descended people and
cultures *are* somehow problematic by nature. Sober reflection
on the empirical evidence and on plausible meanings of "by
nature" cannot sustain that thought. The claim is that a)
Euro-modernity was in some ways built on the conviction that
African-descended people are inherently problematic, and that b)
philosophical interventions that resist this conviction become
problems, render themselves problematic, for hegemonic approaches to
philosophy.)
The point of starting with these framing themes is to mark certain
vital contexts for Africana philosophical reflection. To study
Africana philosophy is, first of all, to do the things one does in
other areas of philosophy: consider a range of characteristic
questions and problems, study a cohort of canonical figures and texts,
participate in living debates organized around familiar tropes and
moves, and so on. But it is also to do these things in contexts
defined by foundational questions--about, for example, the nature
of philosophical inquiry, the structure and impact of concrete
mechanisms for knowledge production, and even the humanity of the
inquirers--to a degree that is fairly unusual. As an emblem of
this, consider that the establishment of African philosophy as a
respectable subject of study--in a sense of
"respectable" to be fleshed out below--began with
debates over a single, simple, now-obsolete question: can Africans
even do philosophy?
Having worked through the themes that emerged from Gordon's
deceptively simple definition of Africana philosophy, we are now in a
better position to receive a similar but more elaborate definition.
Outlaw describes "Africana philosophy" as "a
third-order, metaphilosophical, umbrella-concept... . [T]he name
does not refer to a particular philosophy, philosophical system,
method, or tradition" (Outlaw 2017, SS1, par. 1). It refers
instead to a field of study that emerges from the distinctive
conditions that produce and implicate Africa and its diaspora, that
takes seriously the experiences and reflections of the peoples who are
most directly affected and implicated by those conditions, and that,
as a result of the first two factors, tends to feature certain
recurring preoccupations or themes. Some of those preoccupations and
themes appear above, and will receive more attention, alongside
several additional themes, in the sections to come.
(Outlaw also identifies a number of "key heuristic
presumptions" that can help to ward off easy misconceptions
[Outlaw 2017, SS1, par. 2]. The most important of these
presumptions are that a) there are responsible ways to account for the
unity and distinctiveness of the phenomena that bear the predicate
"Africana"; b) these accounts do not presuppose uniformity
and homogeneity among Africana peoples and cultures, and they need not
aspire to or prescribe such uniformity; and c) "contributors [to
Africana philosophy] need not be persons African or of African
descent" (Outlaw 2017, SS1, par. 5). As noted above, this
entry will not delve any further into these presumptions. Readers
seeking reassurance about these issues may consult the foundational
texts that Outlaw (2017) and Gordon (2008) explore in their overviews
of the field.)
## 2. Framing conditions: coloniality, heterodoxy, and historicity
Studies of Africana philosophy and its subfields routinely begin by
acknowledging that these became recognized areas of professional
scholarly study only recently. These acknowledgments implicate three
framing conditions that are crucial for understanding the field.
The first condition has to do with a version of what Elena Ruiz
calls "epistemic imperialism." This is her name for states
of affairs in which hegemonic modes of epistemic practice
"reproduce interpretive conditions favorable to the dominant
assumptions." Philosophical activity under these conditions
"creates and maintains interpretive spaces in philosophy that
are self-confirming rather than culturally open and plural," and
also "clears the way for the devaluation of non-dominant
intellectual traditions through tacit methodological
assumptions" (Ruiz 2018, 52-53). What this means is
that oppressive conditions exclude their victims from knowledge
production not simply by preventing people with certain bodies,
backgrounds, beliefs, or other distinguishing features from entering
the institutions charged with knowledge work, but also by engineering
the conceptual and theoretical tools to promote epistemic numbness and
turn exclusion into erasure.
Issues of epistemic imperialism bear on Africana philosophy because
hegemonic institutions have historically recognized, and to a
considerable degree still recognize, philosophic interventions as
achieving scholarly respectability by appeal to standards calibrated
to colonial and apartheid imperatives. One very short version of this
story is that the most influential university systems in the
contemporary world--including in Africa and the
Caribbean--started as the creations and tools of European
colonial powers or settler colonial authorities. (This is only one
version of the story because it is not, of course, a story simply
about university systems. It is also a story about, among other
things, publishing houses, dictionaries, the word
"philosophy," and the baggage that European elite cultures
attached to all of these things. Outlaw and Gordon also tell this
story well.) Consequently, and not surprisingly, it was only in the
years after colonized peoples won formal independence and apartheid
regimes formally embraced democracy that these institutions began in
any thoroughgoing way to credit research programs and curricular
initiatives not animated by assumptions about African backwardness,
savagery, or barbarism.
The fact that it took many, many years for hegemonic Euro-modern
inquirers to begin to disentangle epistemic norms from colonial and
apartheid imperatives highlights the second contextual consideration,
call this "the condition of heterodoxy." Much of the work
that sets the agenda for Africana philosophy was produced largely
outside of the forums that elite European-influenced intellectual
cultures considered respectable. In some cases, this meant that
African-descended scholars worked in alternative, often racially
segregated, institutions and shared their research in alternative
spaces. In other cases, it meant that these scholars worked on the
margins of mainstream institutions, enjoying or enduring highly
constrained interactions with the people who under different
circumstances would have been their colleagues and interlocutors. In
the vast majority of cases, it meant that people in African and
African-descended communities refined and employed their own
mechanisms for producing knowledge. In all of these cases, it meant
that Africana intellectual work was importantly heretical or
heterodox.
Africana philosophy's relatively recent arrival on the scene of
"respectable" knowledge production points to the third
framing condition for the field, its manifest historicity. The
field's unavoidable status as an artifact of evolving
sociopolitical conditions puts historical dynamics at issue here in a
way that other fields (outside of the history of philosophy) can
usually evade. Because of this, a study of contemporary activity must
begin by attending to the development of the field over time, on at
least three levels. It is important to attend to the development of
certain ideas and to the canonization of certain texts and figures, to
consider the evolving social and institutional conditions under which
Africana philosophers did their work, and to credit the degree to
which reconsiderations of the history constitute a thriving area of
contemporary study.
## 3. History in contemporary perspective: guiding principles
Intellectual and institutional histories are unusually central to
Africana philosophy, and are intertwined to an unusual degree, but
this is not the place to explore the institutional histories in
detail. The next section will provide a contemporary intellectual
history, in order to establish the structural elements and thematic
preoccupations that organize a great deal of the contemporary work
we'll soon consider. Still, it is important to organize the
discussion in a way that makes room for responsible institutional
histories and accommodates their insights.
Accordingly, three principles will guide the discussion to come.
First, this study will focus on Africana philosophy as a
*field*. This means that the contributions of individual
thinkers, however provocative or insightful, will be relevant here
largely insofar as they bear on the networks of intellectual exchange
and institutional credentialing that invite description with terms
like "discipline" and "tradition." It also
means observing a distinction between the history of Africana
philosophy as an enterprise and the history of African-descended
philosophers as a cohort. Many members of this cohort have of course
made valuable, germinal contributions to the field, beginning with
towering figures like Alexander Crummell, whose establishment of the
American Negro Academy was an early exercise in building these
networks. But many others, as Stephen C. Ferguson II points out,
"need not (and have not) exclusively engaged the Africana
experience as an area of inquiry" (Ferguson 2009, 23). The
former will be part of the story told here; the latter will not.
Second, this study will focus, to some degree, on
*professional* academic work. Philosophical activity outside of
the academy--in other institutional spaces or prior to the
emergence of contemporary universities and their professional
scholars--will not be peremptorily excluded here, but will be
relevant insofar as it bears on the work that happens or might happen
in or near the academy. The academy is of course not the only site for
responsible attempts at knowledge production, but it is a mechanism
for systematically enshrining certain of these attempts as resources
for more work. That is the aspect of Africana philosophy that I mean
to take up here.
Third, the discussion will approach the field as a
*paradisciplinary formation*, which is to say that it will
focus on work that happens or might happen in and near philosophy
departments. In speaking here of proximity to philosophy departments,
I mean principally to capture two overlapping categories of thinkers:
scholars who take up recognizably philosophical themes or resources
in, say, departments of English or political science; and historical
figures without the sort of departmental affiliation that registers
for scholars now, but who make the kinds of moves and noises that
encourage philosophers to invite them into their narratives of the
field. Which is to say: if philosophy of social science can have
Clifford Geertz and philosophy writ large can have Hume, Kierkegaard,
Emerson, and Jane Addams, then Africana philosophy can have Patricia
Hill Collins and Alexander Crummell (both of whom will return
below).
It is important to remain in the orbit of the academic discipline of
philosophy for at least three reasons: to preserve space for
reflection on the distinctly philosophical questions that Africanaity
puts in play, to cultivate distinctly philosophical resources for
treating those questions, and to credit the contributions and career
trajectories of the few African-descended philosophers who did their
work before the field established itself as a going concern. At the
same time, though, focusing just on work by card-carrying philosophers
would be unduly restrictive. For one thing, the discipline and the
profession have long been hostile both to sustained reflection on the
issues that define the field and, in quite concrete ways, to the
humans who attempted to undertake this reflection. As a result, much
of this reflection has happened and continues to happen in other
places--in political theory, sociology, literary theory, artistic
practice, and more. In addition, and as a related matter, Africana
philosophy has in practice long been remarkably ecumenical, as the
contributor lists for key reference works makes clear. Excluding the
political theorists, sociologists, Black studies scholars, and others
who have worked, often in conversation with professional philosophers,
to advance the field would not only needlessly limit the available
resources but would also run counter to ongoing practice.
With these guiding principles in place, and in deference to the
framing conditions of historicity, coloniality, and heterodoxy, the
next section will present a swift history of Africana philosophy.
Constructing historical narratives is always, to some degree, a
presentist exercise: it is an attempt to read the past while guided by
contemporary concerns and informed by contemporary resources. This
reading will lean into that aspect of the exercise--it is, in
effect, a reading of the history as seen in contemporary perspective,
and is therefore also a way of wading a bit further into the
contemporary preoccupations that are the subject of this entry.
This presentist orientation recommends sorting the history into two
broad stages. The first is a long *pre-*history of the
paradisciplinary formation under scrutiny here, a period, prior to the
establishment of the field in hegemonic epistemic communities, during
which many key themes, issues, texts, and figures emerged. The second
is a shorter, more recent stage, itself composed of three shorter
periods, during which the field established itself, achieved
consolidation, and moved into the contemporary moment.
## 4. Stage one: emergence
Like other areas of philosophical study, Africana philosophy emerged
and matured as its practitioners identified and continued to explore a
set of core elements. Of the texts, figures, debates, movements,
schools, and themes that have come to organize conversations in and
contributions to the field, many came into focus during the first
stage of Africana philosophy's history. Some had long careers
outside the academy as resources for political mobilization,
existential sustenance, aesthetic experience, and critical
edification, while others were the product of explicitly scholarly
reflection. (And some were both.) Whatever their origin, many of these
early heterodox elements have made or are making their way into an
academic world that long wanted little to do with them, and they
continue to set the agenda for contemporary work.
Precisely locating the start of this early period once more raises
potentially knotty metaphysical and empirical puzzles. Before the idea
of Africa as a unitary entity gained sufficient traction (precisely
when this happened is the empirical puzzle), nothing interestingly
identifiable as African or Africana philosophy existed. There was a
great deal of philosophizing in the place that would come to be called
Africa, and there may be reasons to link those early activities to the
self-consciously African-oriented reflections that would emerge later.
But Gordon is surely right to say that reading ancient Egypt or Kush
as what some scholars call a classical African civilization
"must ... be a modern imposition onto the past"
(Gordon 2008, 15). He is also right to point out that we typically
allow this imposition, often without comment, in other
contexts--in studies of Asian philosophy, for example, or in
assuming the organic coherence of western philosophy from Greece to,
say Germany.
Origin puzzles aside, the long run-up to Africana philosophy's
arrival as a professional paradisciplinary formation yielded a number
of themes that figure prominently in accounts of the field. Section
4.1 will introduce some of these characteristic themes, while Section
4.2 will consider the question of thematic unity across regions,
introducing some of the core thinkers along the way.
### 4.1 Characteristic themes
After noting the framing themes of (1) Africanaity and (2)
problematicity, as discussed above, we might follow Gordon (2008) and
Outlaw (2017) in noting additional preoccupations like the
following:
3. Philosophical anthropology (because the question of the human of
course looms large for people whose assumed status as subhuman is one
of the foundation stones of European modernity)
4. Liberation (for obvious reasons, beginning with the ethical and
existential burdens of living in oppressive circumstances and of
finding the balance between justifiable resistance and unethical
overreach)
5. Meta-reflections on reason (because the meaning of reason looms
large for people typically assumed to be emotive, sensual,
non-rational brutes, people whose life chances were constrained by,
among other things, powerful forms of what we now call epistemic
injustice)
6. Identity and self-consciousness (because epistemic injustice often
hampers the pursuit of self-knowledge, and raises the ethical and
existential stakes of responsibly constructing the self)
7. Theoretical archaeology (this is Dotson's (2017) term for,
as Outlaw puts it (2004), the recovery of underappreciated
contributions by African-descended individuals and cultures)
These themes are not at all the exclusive preserve of Africana
thinkers. The key to Africana thought is the way these themes converge
on and grow out of the condition of Africanaity, which is bound up
with distinctive modes of racialization and rooted in a particular
universe of overlapping but distinct histories, geographies, and
cultural practices.
Africana philosophy of course puts many more themes in play than these
few. But extending the list and reducing the space available for
explaining what the list means is at this point less useful than
considering what it means for this enterprise to be rooted in
overlapping sociohistorical contexts. This requires shifting from a
study of unifying themes to a reflection on the centrifugal forces
that pull Africana philosophers in the direction of distinctive
regional and methodological preoccupations.
Before moving on to these narrower considerations of region and
method, though, a final overarching theme requires mention. Adeshina
Afolayan and Toyin Falola conclude their introduction to the excellent
*Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy* by identifying a
newly pressing need that informs their editorial approach. African
philosophers have, they say, long focused on consolidating their
professional standing and navigating intramural scholarly debates.
However understandable that was, it is time, Afolayan and Falola
suggest, for "African philosophy to get on the street and get
their theories dirtied by the predicament on the continent"
(Afolayan and Falola 2017, 12). In other words, African philosophy
should embrace its status as what Outlaw (2017), following Leonard
Harris (following Frederick Douglass), calls a "philosophy born
of struggle." This is clearly one of the overriding themes for
Africana philosophy as a whole, and should be added to the list.
8. Philosophy born of struggle (because philosophical reflection is
not a leisure exercise devoted to unwinding abstract puzzles, or it is
not just or always or most crucially that. It is (among other things)
a practice of bringing philosophical impulses and resources to bear on
certain pressing problems of life, and of exercising philosophical
impulses unrelated to those problems--impulses related instead,
say, to beauty, or to the theory of knowledge--despite the
burdens of frequently problematic situations)
### 4.2 Regional continuities and discontinuities
Scholars routinely distinguish three broad regional approaches to
Africana philosophy, one for the continent of Africa and two for the
regions where the vast majority of participants in the diaspora
reside: the Caribbean and the Americas. These regions are not just
geographically distinct but also have importantly different histories
and constellations of cultures, not least because of the internal
complexities that complicate region-wide generalizations. In addition,
these different regions occupy different places in global networks for
mainstream knowledge production, which gives them different, and
differently weighted, opportunities for publishing and scholarly
exchange. In light of these conditions, it is not surprising that the
occupants of each region often find themselves taking up distinctive
questions and problems, and pursuing them using modes of philosophical
reflection and generic touchstones--specific texts and
figures--that are to some degree regionally specific.
Regional specificity notwithstanding, the condition of Africanaity
means in part that important thematic continuities stretch across the
regions. Some concern the role of violence in anti-racist struggle,
the meaning of African roots for people in the diaspora, and the
tensions between race-based, class-based, and gender-based approaches
to social justice that call forth talk of intersectionality and
related concepts. Others are importantly rooted in the overarching
themes noted above, with special emphasis on decolonization,
anti-slavery agitation, and anti-imperial struggle.
Despite these continuities, concerns that distinguish the regions are
not far to seek. For example, Gordon (2008) reasonably suggests that
the question of the modern might be one of Africana philosophy's
unifying themes. But each region tends to adopt its own approach.
African thinkers often explore the relationship between modernity and
tradition, sometimes linking the prospects for liberation to the
prospects for modernizing Africa, while at other times complicating
the easy distinction between the traditional and the modern and the
easy conflation of modernization with civilization and of both with
Europe. Afro-Caribbean thinkers, by contrast, tend to be less
interested in a distant "traditional" world than in the
world that resulted from the collision of forced migrants, indigenous
peoples, and settler colonists. This approach eventuates in, among
much else, Edouard Glissant's (1989) studies of
*creolite*. In the Americas, finally, different
demographic conditions and historical trajectories led many (but of
course not all) prominent figures to turn the question of tradition
into debates about racial uplift and racial integration.
### 4.3 Complications
The period of emergence set the stage for contemporary work in
Africana philosophy by establishing many of the key elements that
would come to define the field. Careful study of the period, however,
reveals some important challenges that continue to confront
contemporary work.
One important complication is the overlay of bias that constrains
standard notions of what counts as an intellectual contribution and of
who counts as a contributor. The standard notions tend to focus on the
written output of elite men, even in studies of populations, cultures,
and societies that are not at the top of the relevant social
hierarchies. Considering the reasons for these biases is beyond the
scope of this piece, though we can say that some reasons are better
than others. (To be sure, writerly output--literature--is
easier to track and preserve than orature. But even the
*written* contributions of women are routinely ignored or
excluded from the economies of writerly production.)
Suffice it to say for now that one of the recurring challenges of
Africana thought in its philosophical modes has to do with crediting
the philosophical labor that goes into assembling a responsible life
under absurd conditions, when the laborers don't look or act
like standard-issue philosophers. For recent thinkers like Fred Moten
(2017) in his study of artist Thornton Dial, this is sometimes a
question about the philosophical significance of aesthetic
productions. For others, as we'll soon consider further, it is a
question about the philosophical content of political activism or of
vernacular cultures. It is almost always, of course, a question about
crediting the work of women and people without wealth, high incomes,
homes, and other markers of high socioeconomic status.
A second important complication is rooted in a simple question: what
happens to local or national traditions if one focuses on broadly
regional approaches to Africana philosophy? One way to ask this
question is to focus on the differences between, say, Haiti and
Jamaica, and on the differences between Antenor Firmin and Marcus
Garvey. Another way is to insist on the integrity and importance of
distinct national traditions of recognized and recognizably
philosophical activity, as Teodros Kiros (2004) and a number of
scholars do in relation to figures like the 17th century
Ethiopian philosopher Zera Yacob.
There are two things to say about this possible tension between the
regional or transnational and the local or national. First, it is
eminently possible for analyses at different scales to co-exist. The
question is just whether there is sufficient warrant to sustain an
analysis at each level. One of the main aims of the early stages of
professional Africana philosophy, as we'll soon see, was
precisely to show that there was a transnational enterprise related to
Africanaity that required--and had long
provoked--philosophical reflection. This in no way precludes more
local studies. Second, one of the central claims of Africana
philosophy is that local contexts are often profoundly informed by
broader dynamics. Whether those dynamics matter in specific cases is a
matter to be settled by appeal to the details of the cases. One
undeniable feature of the modern world is the way globe-spanning ideas
about things like race, reason, and civilization have shaped the life
chances of large swathes of humanity for generations. This would seem
to have some bearing on philosophical activity in African communities
and communities in its diaspora.
## 5. Stage two: establishment and consolidation
The first phase of Africana philosophy's emergence eventually
gives way to a period of establishment and consolidation for the field
as a field. During this time the themes and concerns from the earlier
philosophies born of struggle, inflected by regional concerns, make
their way into the orbit of professional philosophy. Along the way,
they get translated into the distinctive vocabularies of the
discipline's subfields and methodological schools, creatively
expanding those vocabularies in the process. (Or they acknowledge the
possibility of this translation and resist or complicate it.)
We can say that the first phase ends and emergence gives way to
establishment when the field begins to get traction among teachers and
researchers in academic philosophy. Kwasi Wiredu explains in his
classic *Companion to African Philosophy* that this
didn't begin to happen in African universities until the middle
to late sixties, as independence ushered in "significant numbers
of post-independence African academics" (Wiredu 2004, 2).
Similarly, Outlaw points out that the field has become more
established as "successive generations of persons of African
descent have entered the profession" in the wake of anti-racist
liberation struggles, and as these persons organized conferences and
other mechanisms for networking and scholarly exchange, often across
national and regional boundaries (Outlaw 2017, SS10, par. 2).
If establishment begins with the arrival of Wiredu's and
Outlaw's academics, it reaches its apex in the 1980s. This is
the point at which a number of germinal contributions make their way
into print. Think here of Richard A. Wright's *African
Philosophy: An Introduction* (1984), Cornel West's
*Prophesy Deliverance!* (1982), Angela Davis's *Women,
Race, and Class* (1983), the first edition of Leonard
Harris's *Philosophy Born of Struggle* (1983), V. Y.
Mudimbe's *The Invention of Africa* (1988), and Edouard
Glissant's *Caribbean Discourses* (1989).
The 1990s and early 2000s were the years of consolidation. This is the
point at which a wave of more securely positioned scholarly
professionals produced work destined for wider influence than the work
of the previous era. Think here of Kwame Anthony Appiah's *In
My Father's House* (1993), Charles W. Mills's *The
Racial Contract* (1997), Lucius T. Outlaw Jr.'s *On Race
and Philosophy* (1996), Lewis R. Gordon's *Bad Faith and
Antiblack Racism* (1995), Paget Henry's *Caliban's
Reason* (2000), Kwame Gyekye's *Tradition and
Modernity* (1997), the first edition of Patricia Hill
Collins's *Black Feminist Thought* (1990), and the
revised edition of Bernard R. Boxill's *Blacks and Social
Justice* (1992).
As Africana philosophy becomes a professionally recognized field (as
opposed to a vibrant but heterodox enterprise or tradition,
overlapping only slightly with mainstream knowledge production), the
work begins, one might say, to riff on the discipline's accepted
movements and schools. Africana professional philosophers put
mainstream professional resources into conversation with many of the
concerns and innovations that animated the earlier philosophies born
of struggle. Far from simply applying sophisticated resources to
pre-philosophical raw material, this exercise at its best blends two
modes of philosophical reflection. One enjoys mainstream recognition,
while the other benefits from testing and refinement by application in
areas that its counterpart ignores; and each can, in principle,
compensate for shortcomings in the other. What results is work that
often--as Moten, following Robinson, says of Black radical
Marxism--involves both "retention and disruption,
originality and response" (Moten 2017,
9-10).[3]
(It is also what one might say of the difference that Afro-diasporic
musical practices made in and to European traditions, producing new
forms like samba and jazz along the way. Hence the appeal to
"riffing.")
Understanding this transformative, improvisational relationship is a
precondition to properly locating the contributions to the periods of
emergence and consolidation. With this in mind one can acknowledge
that Davis and Outlaw both contribute to and draw from the tradition
of critical theory, without diminishing either their originality or
their traditional fluency. In similar ways, West and Harris riff on
the pragmatist tradition, Mudimbe and Glissant creatively appropriate
and employ post-structuralist resources, Gordon and Henry, following
William R. Jones and
others,[4]
develop an Africana form of existential phenomenology, and Appiah and
Boxill represent Africana thought in an analytic key.
I'll somewhat arbitrarily nominate 2003-2004 as the cutoff
between the period of consolidation and the contemporary moment. These
years saw the publication of Tommy L. Lott and John P. Pittman's
*Companion to African-American Philosophy* and Wiredu's
*Companion to African Philosophy*. I would say of both volumes
something like what Afolayan and Falola say of the Wiredu volume: that
they constitute "a significant nod to the appearance of
African[a] philosophy in ... global academe" (Afolayan and
Falola 2017, 1).
## 6. Reading the contemporary--structure
Contemporary Africana philosophy builds on the periods of emergence,
establishment, and consolidation in four broad ways. Some thinkers
work to fortify and expand the field's store of germinal texts
and figures. Others continue to improvise on the defining traits of
the mainstream schools and movements. Still others complicate and
broaden the map of regional preoccupations. And interventions of all
three types push new themes and debates, or new takes on older themes
and debates, toward the center of the field. The first three will be
the subject of this section, while the fourth will be the subject of
Section 7.
### 6.1 Fortifying and expanding, tentpoles and theoretical archeology
One benefit of the long run-up to the contemporary moment in Africana
philosophy is that a tradition of thought has emerged with core
figures, texts, and questions. The tradition itself then becomes grist
for the mill of philosophical activity. Some of this activity goes to
identifying and shoring up (what some people think of as) the
historical foundations of the field, while some goes to expanding the
edifice that has been built atop those foundations.
One version of what I'm referring to as fortification or shoring
up is the outcome of a heightened focus on a few high-profile
icons--call this the "tentpole approach." These are
notables like Cooper, Du Bois, and Fanon, the touchstone
figures--Gordon refers to them as the pillars of African American
philosophy--with the clearest prima facie cases for canonical
status. As more philosophers examine the work of these figures and
produce more commentary on them and each other, subfields start to
grow up around them. This gives Africana philosophy that familiar
subdisciplinary shape, whereby anyone who knows anything about the
area must have something to say about a handful of towering figures.
One clear and influential example of this sort of intervention is
Robert Gooding-Williams's (2009) magisterial *In the Shadow
of Du Bois*.
The tentpole approach is useful not just for fortification but also
for expansion. The expansionist version focuses on iconic figures that
have yet to receive the sort of attention from philosophers that
they've received elsewhere. The aim here--sometimes
explicitly undertaken as an exercise in Africana thought, sometimes
simply as an exercise in responsible scholarship--is to give
figures like James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Lorraine
Hansberry, and Audre Lorde the kind of attention that Gordon's
pillars have received. Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry's
(2018) volume on King and Imani Perry's (2018) study of
Hansberry exemplify this tendency.
An alternative to the tentpole approach, also with expansionist and
fortificationist varieties, focuses less on iconic figures than on the
broader sweep of the tradition that has grown up around the icons. The
fortificationist approach here involves recovering the figures and
ideas with which the icons were in conversation, thereby recovering
not just the work of individual thinkers but also their environing
epistemic communities and discursive contexts. This is the spirit in
which Brittney Cooper's (2017) *Beyond Respectability*
recovers the work of Fannie Barrier Williams with the National
Association of Colored Women at the turn of the twentieth century. The
expansionist version of this approach studies neglected texts or
figures, either to mine them for philosophical insight or to fill in
otherwise piecemeal histories. In this spirit, John H. McClendon III
and Stephen C. Ferguson II (2019) offer their remarkable new volume
*African American Philosophers and Philosophy* to press for the
recovery of card-carrying academic philosophers of African
descent.
### 6.2 Transforming schools and movements
A second broad category of activity in contemporary Africana
philosophy involves something like the improvisational approach
discussed above. Here we find scholars creatively reinventing
mainstream philosophical traditions, schools, and methods using
resources from Africana thought. For reasons of space, I can only
mention a few examples here, and must do so swiftly, on the way to
covering this category with nowhere near the depth or breadth it
deserves.
The clearest examples of this transformative tendency often carry the
same misleadingly simple adjectival labels as Cedric Robinson's
Black Marxism. Consider Gordon's pioneering efforts, in
*Existentia Africana* (2000) and elsewhere, to define an
Africana and decolonial mode of existential phenomenology, and to
build what has become a globe-spanning intellectual community around
it. Or consider what Gordon calls "African-American
pragmatism," which has continued to grow and develop in the wake
of the germinal interventions by West and Harris (Gordon 2008,
93-99). Eddie Glaude (2007) in particular makes clear that this
work is not simply about Black people appropriating canonical
philosophic resources (or, less kindly, about canonical theory
"in blackface," as it were). Very much in the spirit of
Robinson's intervention, it is about the way Africana
intellectual traditions sometimes anticipate and improve upon the
moves that define our artificially circumscribed mainstream
traditions, and about contemporary scholars putting these traditions
into mutually enriching conversation.
What Gordon calls "African American analytical philosophy"
(2008, 110) deserves special mention here, as it brings tools from the
dominant philosophical paradigm in the Anglophone world to bear on
Africana thought's distinctive themes, issues, and figures.
Mills and Shelby, who join Gordon in the top tier of Africana
philosophy's most visible and influential figures, work squarely
and creatively in the ethico-political wing of this tradition,
building on the work of founders like Boxill and Appiah with results
that will receive further consideration below. Similar inroads are
becoming apparent in aesthetics (Taylor 2016), epistemology (Dotson
2017), philosophy of language (Anderson 2015), and other fields.
### 6.3 Shifting geographies
A third broad focus in contemporary Africana philosophy reimagines the
regional mapping discussed above. The common tripartite division
between the continent, the Caribbean, and the Americas is reasonable,
as far as it goes. But some newer work emphasizes the areas that this
scheme leaves out.
One area of focus refuses to reduce the diaspora to the Caribbean and
the United States, and explores relatively underappreciated Africana
communities. One approach here, championed by Chike Jeffers (2012),
Peter James Hudson and Aaron Kamugisha (2014), and others, considers
the prospects for specifically Canadian forms of Africana thought.
Another approach focuses on the diaspora in Europe. Alanna
Lockward's (2013) BEBoP (Black Europe Body Politics) curatorial
project is one striking example of this work, as are the contributions
by Barnor Hesse (2009) and others to the volume *Black Europe and
the African Diaspora*.
A second area focuses on certain internal complexities of the standard
racialized geography. This is the spirit in which a growing cohort of
thinkers is taking up the question of Africa's white
inhabitants. These descendants of the settler colonial populations
have come of age at some remove from the colonial incursion, were born
on the continent, and, especially in South Africa, have their fortunes
and senses of themselves bound up in complicated ways with
Africa's prospects. It is unsurprising, then, that their place
on the continent and, as we'll see below, in the discipline, has
become a subject of philosophical reflection. Samantha Vice's
(2010) germinal essay, "How Do I Live in This Strange
Place?", anchored a version of this discussion in South
Africa.[5]
## 7. Reading the contemporary--evolving themes
While the three broad categories of activity discussed so far explore
themes that bear on the structure of Africana philosophy as a field,
the fourth category reflects more directly on the field's
evolving thematic emphases. A number of contemporary interventions
update these defining themes in light of evolving conditions, debates,
and conceptual resources. Several suggestive examples follow.
### 7.1 Gender and sexuality
One of the key areas of contemporary interest in Africana
philosophy--the study of gender and sexuality--is both
promising and difficult to summarize. In fact, describing it as a
single area would be unforgivably misleading were it not for the
expository constraints of this exercise and for all of the
qualifications that will soon follow. It is less an area than an array
of topics and issues that have yet to come into focus as a subfield in
Africana philosophy in the way they have elsewhere. A detailed study
of the reasons for the field's elusiveness are beyond the scope
of this entry, but it is worth noting that the most obvious
factors--the existence of structures that have historically
discouraged or openly excluded the study of these issues or the
participation of the people most likely to take an interest in
them--are among the subjects that researchers in this area take
up.
These difficulties notwithstanding, studies of gender and sexuality
are becoming increasingly prominent in Africana philosophy, thanks in
part to a thaw in the historically constraining structures mentioned
above. The issues driving these studies are not new, however, so one
way to choose a path through this sprawling territory involves simply
tracking the impact of some germinal texts and influential authors
from earlier periods. Proceeding in this way will require speeding
past a version of the important question posed by Saba Fatima and her
colleagues (2017): how do the various fields that might implicate or
transect Africana studies of gender and sexuality--fields like
decolonial feminism, Black queer theory, women of color feminism,
third world feminism, Black feminism, and so on--relate to each
other? Treating this difficulty with the care it deserves is beyond
the scope of this project. I will simply stipulate to two assumptions:
that the categories "Black" and "Africana"
overlap sufficiently to justify treating studies of Black gender and
Black sexuality as relevant for Africana thought; and that expanding
the zone of overlap to include thinkers who might self-identify with
one of the other categories (decolonial, third world, etc.) will
reveal some useful continuities in the various projects.
One influential text to consider is Collins's *Black Feminist
Thought*. The editors of the journal *Ethnic and Racial
Studies* introduce an anniversary symposium on the book by noting
that its publication "can be seen as a turning point in the
study of the intersections between race, class and gender... .
Indeed, in terms of books on race and ethnicity that have been
published over recent decades, few, if any, have surpassed it in terms
of its reach as well as its influence" (Bulmer and Solomos 2015,
2314). This influence extends well into philosophy, as indicated by
the two philosophers, both black feminists, who participated in a 2015
symposium otherwise made up of (theory-oriented) social scientists.
Focusing briefly on their work will provide useful windows onto
emerging developments in the field.
Kristie Dotson and Kathryn Belle testify eloquently in word and deed
to Collins's impact on their work, and thereby to Collins'
impact on the field. Dotson describes *Black Feminist Thought*
as "one of the most comprehensive treatments of knowledge
problems and the oppression of black women in the USA to date,"
and praises the way it "highlights epistemological failures as
an important layer of oppression" (Dotson 2015, 2323).
Dotson's research (2012, 2017) draws this (and many other
influences) out in the direction of (among much else) a political
epistemology that engages vigorously with the conditions that have
both excluded Black feminism from philosophy and obscured the
coherence and relevance of Black feminist intellectual traditions.
This scholarly production is continuous with Dotson's efforts in
other spheres, like her work with Kimberle Crenshaw's
African American Policy Forum and the trainings she offers on feminist
pedagogy.
While Dotson focuses on the epistemological dimensions of
Collins's exercises in "critical social theory"
(Collins 1989, xiv), Belle focuses on its existential and
phenomenological dimensions. She explains that Collins's work
"underscores the importance of safe spaces for Black women to
speak freely as a necessary condition of resistance and
empowerment" (Belle 2015, 2345). This orientation to agency,
voice, and discursive community clearly informs Belle's work as
a scholar (Davidson, Gines, and Marcano 2010). But it also shapes her
work as an institution-builder, most clearly as the driving force
behind the Collegium for Black Women Philosophers, which since 2007
has aimed, as she puts it, "to create a safe space for Black
women philosophers ... to support, encourage and learn from one
another" (Belle 2015, 2345).
If the opportunity to "inherit" the work of Patricia Hill
Collins (as Dotson [2015] puts it in the title to her piece on
Collins) has inspired two influential figures in contemporary U.S.
Black feminist philosophy, the issues at the heart of another
author's germinal text help drive another strain in Africana
philosophical studies of gender and sexuality. Nigerian sociologist
Oyeronke Oyewumi's *The Invention of Women* (1997) helped
make her, as Azille Coetzee and Annemie Halsema put it, "one of
the most famous and at the same time contested scholars in African
feminist thought" (Coetzee and Halsema 2018, 179). Douglas Ficek
explains that her "central claim is that gender is not an
indigenous organizing principle in Yorubaland, that the
'body-reasoning' and 'bio-logic' of the West
are present neither in the language nor in the epistemology of the
Yoruba" (Ficek 2006, 543). This view immediately
inspired considerable pushback, including sustained scrutiny from
multiple contributors to the special African feminisms issue of
*Quest: A Journal of African Philosophy* that appeared in
2006.[6]
Oyewumi's arguments still help frame contemporary efforts to
rethink the role of gender in African life, as evidenced by her
prominent role in the articles on gender and feminism in the recent
*Palgrave Companion* (e.g., du Toit and Coetzee 2017).
Legal theorist Kimberle Crenshaw has provided another
cornerstone for ongoing contemporary reflection on gender and
sexuality, but has important (and underappreciated) implications well
beyond these areas. In two germinal articles from 1989 and 1991, she
introduced an account of intersectionality that inspired "the
kind of interdisciplinary and global engagement" that
"[v]ery few theories have generated" (Carbado et al. 2013,
303). She says in the second of these articles that she began using
the notion of intersectionality "to denote the various ways in
which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of
Black women's employment experiences" (Crenshaw 1991,
1244).[7]
A cottage industry of commentary and analysis has grown up from this
simple beginning, with scholars, artists, critics, and activists
debating the meanings and proper uses of
"intersectionality" nearly as much as they employ it.
Intersectionality remains a hotly contested notion in part because it
raises a variety of deeply philosophical questions. Scholars have
asked, for example, what intersectionality means for theories of
personal identity, whether it adequately captures the complexity of
human experience, how it bears on the prospects for coalition
politics, why this notion stands out from a family of related, older
notions in social theory that do similar work, whether standard
approaches to intersectionality take Black masculinity seriously
enough, and much more besides.
The best way to close this section would be to discuss queer
theory's growing impact on Africana philosophy, but there is
frustratingly little to say. Many studies outside of philosophy
exhibit considerable philosophical depth, starting with the pioneering
work of Cathy Cohen in political science and continuing with the work
of figures like C. Riley
Snorton.[8]
I have to this point been willing, on the principled grounds noted
above, to put card-carrying philosophers into conversation with
thinkers outside the discipline; but the size of the gap between work
inside and outside the field is so stark in this case that it deserves
special comment.
Africana philosophy has yet to take up in earnest the challenge that
has roiled Black studies and related fields over the last decade and a
half. Dwight McBride stated this challenge clearly in 2007:
>
>
> Telling the truths of Black life in the United States requires a
> multiplicity of voices. It takes voices invested in the stories and
> experiences of Black men and women; Black heterosexuals and Black
> gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender folk ... Black single
> parents ... and so very much more. When we allow ourselves to be
> summed up by sanitized versions of Black life in adherence to a form
> of Black respectability, we tell only part of our story. (McBride
> 2007, 438-439)
>
>
>
McBride offers these remarks on the way to calling for a "new
Black Studies" that attends more carefully to issues of
intra-racial diversity. Some version of this call is surely relevant
for Africana philosophy. For this reason, forthcoming work by V.
Denise James and Anika Simpson is particularly welcome in the U.S.
context. (I'll leave it to commentators with more intimate
knowledge of other contexts to comment on the promising developments
elsewhere.) James is working on a philosophical treatment of Audre
Lorde, and Simpson is preparing a study of the way a responsible
engagement with single black motherhood requires a queering of
standard philosophical approaches to family, sexuality, gender, and
political
life.[9]
### 7.2 Critical ethnophilosophy
The notion of ethnophilosophy arose in the context of debates about
African philosophy's proper content and methods, and was most
commonly deployed, most prominently by Paulin Hountondji, "as a
kind of negative characterization of ... the traditionalist
approach to African philosophy" (Wiredu 2004, 3). Hallen
describes the worrisome version of this approach:
>
>
> Ethnophilosophy presents itself as a philosophy of peoples rather than
> of individuals; in African societies one is therefore given the
> impression that there can be no equivalent to a Socrates or to a Zeno.
> Ethnophilosophy speaks only of Bantu philosophy, Dogon philosophy,
> Yoruba philosophy... . Ethnophilosophy's sources are in the
> past, in what is described as authentic, traditional African ...
> prior to ''modernity.'' These are to be found
> primarily in products of language: parables, proverbs, poetry, songs,
> myths... . [E]thnophilosophy therefore tends to portray African
> beliefs as things ... that are somehow timeless ... placing
> minimal emphasis upon the rigorous argumentation and criticism that
> are prerequisites to the ... search for truth. (Hallen 2004,
> 122)
>
>
>
I refer to this as the worrisome version of traditionalism because
Hountondji and others have made room for the possibility of a less
worrisome, more critical form of traditionalism. Paget Henry, for
example, has reclaimed the notion of ethnophilosophy to denote an
historically and culturally rooted corrective to overly abstract
accounts of the unity of Africana philosophy. He puts it this way:
"In spite of the controversy that has raged over the practice of
ethnophilosophy, I think it is a necessary component ... of all
Africana-oriented philosophies" (Henry 2000, 154).
Henry here joins Appiah (1993) in calling for a kind of
*critical* ethnophilosophy, which excavates the insights of
Africana cultures and makes them philosophically cognizable without
insulating them from critical scrutiny or freezing them in the
precolonial
amber.[10]
The prospect of this sort of work continues to draw attention and
inspire researchers. One of the clearest examples of this, apart from
Henry's approach to Afro-Caribbean philosophy, is in the growing
literature seeking to bring specifically African philosophical
concepts into contemporary debates in ethics and political philosophy.
The notion of ubuntu is probably the most frequent and prominent
recipient of this treatment, in ways that have generated considerable
controversy (to which we will return). But there are many other
examples. Consider, for example, Mbih Jerome Tosam's (2014)
study of the philosophical underpinnings of Kom proverbs or Adebola B.
Ekanola's (2017) examination of the Yoruba
conception of peace. Outside of the continent, and alongside
Henry's redeployment of traditionalism, one finds a growing
number of pieces like Lindsey Stewart's (2017) study of Hoodoo
love rituals as models for the practice of freedom.
An important set of debates in critical ethnophilosophy grew up around
the study of ubuntu in South Africa, and around the role of white
philosophers in this work. Thaddeus Metz (2007) and Mogobe Ramose
(2015) have been perhaps the clearest spokespersons for the positions
that, for current purposes, are the keys to the
debate.[11]
On one side are scholars who aim to treat the concept of ubuntu as
another resource for the work of ethics and political philosophy, and
who regard this approach as an expression of respect for indigenous
African resources. On the other side are scholars for whom the sudden
"mainstreaming" of African concepts is extremely
suspicious, often for reasons very much like the ones that motivate
worries about the misappropriation of cultural practices related to
aesthetic experience. A short, gentle version of the worry might go
like this: In a majority black country with a majority white
philosophy professoriate, a country in which the professoriate assumed
its shape over time not by dint of natural forces or by accident but
thanks to the careful hoarding of resources and opportunities along
racial lines, it is unseemly and perhaps blameworthy for white
philosophers to start mining resources from African cultures without
first transforming its institutional structures to grant substantive
access to people from those cultures (and, Ramose [2015] points out,
often without learning the relevant languages the way they would learn
Greek to study the Stoics in earnest). There are of course ways to
develop this worry and ways to respond to it; the point right now is
simply to mark debates around it as an example of an area of recent
interest in and around Africana philosophy.
### 7.3 Political thought in context
A third theme in contemporary work also has obvious roots in older
trends. As an enterprise "born of struggle," Africana
philosophy attends with unusual frequency and consistency to the
ethical and political issues facing its inquirers. The ethical
implications of studies in nearly every area, including metaphysics
(related, say, to the concept of the person) and epistemology
(related, say, to issues of testimonial injustice), are rarely far
from view. But straightforward political philosophy remains as lively
an area of investigation as it was when Odera Oruka famously
identified "nationalist-ideological" theorizing as one of
the four major areas of African philosophical activity (Oruka 1981,
n.p.).
Africana philosophies of politics constitute much too massive an area
to cover responsibly in anything like the space available here. In
addition, this is an area in which regional and local differences loom
particularly large, thereby complicating any broad generalizations.
Nevertheless, three trends are worth noting.
First, commentary on iconic figures remains a common undertaking,
though the range of figures available for this treatment has of course
changed over time. The iconic figures in each region remain live
options for study, as evidenced by recent special issues of the
*Journal on African Philosophy* on Nkrumah and Azikiwe,
persistent interest in a variety of venues in Du Bois and Cooper, and
recent attempts to rethink the legacies of Senghor and
Cesaire.[12]
The contemporary difference is that this work now more often shares
space with studies of people like C.L.R. James, Huey Newton, Lorraine
Hansberry, and bell
hooks.[13]
Second, and similarly, while scholars continue to undertake
context-sensitive investigations of particular, local issues, those
issues have changed in the wake of certain epochal, geopolitical
shifts. The sheer range of issues in play here is particularly
daunting, but Ivan Karp and D. A. Masolo provide a helpfully capacious
frame. They suggest three roughly ten-year stages in the development
of post-independence African philosophy. The 1970s, they say, were
about the ethnophilosophy debates, while the 1980s were about
criticizing African modes of cultural production, from traditional
practices to elite intellectual work. The 1990s, meanwhile, took up a
new challenge:
>
>
> This new phase ... is both a response to and an attempt to
> theorize the crisis of the postcolonial African state, and it
> coincides with the emergence of economic, social, and environmental
> problems that were not imagined to be possible in the utopian worlds
> of newly independent nations. (Karp and Masolo 2000, 2, as quoted in
> Afayolan and Falola 2017, 9)
>
>
>
Karp and Masolo's (2000) description of this new, post-utopian
phase tracks important dynamics unfolding in Africana communities
across the world. In some places it often took the form of reflections
on the disappointments of post-racialism, in many places focused
intently on the exaggerated optimism and subsequent disappointments of
the Obama era. Elsewhere it took the form of reflections on
neoliberalism or on the imperatives not of anti-colonial struggle or
post-colonial critique but of decolonial transformation. Central to
all these cases, though, was the challenge of adapting Africana
philosophical resources to evolving political conditions in the wake
of the Cold War, in the throes of a global war on terror and a
multipolar scramble for post-imperial influence.
A third trend shaping Africana philosophies of politics is simply that
a variety of new theories and concepts have come into play. Some of
these come, as we have seen, from exercises in critical
ethnophilosophy, like the ubuntu debates in South Africa. Others
result from creative conceptual engineering by attentive scholars
grappling with their social worlds. Consider here the notion of
Afropolitanism, first authoritatively theorized in the early 2000s by
Achille Mbembe, who used it to argue that "the meaning of
'being African' had to be dislodged from race ... and
be opened to the flows of global networks and worldly
hybridities" (Balakrishnan 2017, SS4, par. 5). Or consider
Tommie Shelby's introduction and refusal of the "medical
model" of social theorizing in relation to urban
"ghettos" (Shelby 2016). Or, finally, consider the
continuing reverberations from Mills's enormously influential
racial contract argument (1997).
Mills and Shelby are particularly noteworthy in this connection. Until
their early work earned the attention it now enjoys around the world
and across academic disciplines, it was easier to worry that analytic
approaches to Africana thought did relatively little with the
transformative potential that Africanaity brings to professional
philosophy (see Taylor 2009, Gordon 2006). But both have
recently called explicitly for "black radical" approaches
to standard political-theoretic positions like egalitarianism and
liberalism (Mills 2017, Shelby 2016). And both have backed up this
call by reinventing core theoretical resources from one tradition in
light of the other. For example, Mills (1997) reworks the social
contract tradition by examining it from the perspective of (a kind of)
decolonial or black radicalism, while Shelby (2005) uses elements of
Rawlsian contract theory to rework the black nationalism of figures
like Crummell, Du Bois, and Karenga.
### 7.4 Black life and social death
A final theme in contemporary Africana philosophy brings us full
circle, in a way. It reflects the imperatives of a philosophy born of
struggle, it draws out and builds on the core idea of problematicity,
and it reflects the ongoing effort, just discussed, to find ever more
adequate conceptual tools for engaging deep problems. This
theme--call it a focus on Black life and social
death--unites several different currents of thought and activism,
all radically distinct but all interested in the ethical and
existential stakes of Black life in a world that remains anti-Black
not just at the level of individual prejudices but also at the level
of sociopolitical, epistemic, axiological, and ontological
structures.
One approach to this work eventuates in the Afro-pessimism of Frank
Wilderson, Saidiya Hartman, and others, or in the debates about the
view between its advocates and those who decline to claim it, like
Moten. This is a notoriously difficult approach to pin down, in small
part because a very different view, much more prominent in
international relations than in political theory and philosophy, goes
by the same
name.[14]
With respect to the philosophical view that is our concern here,
Jared Sexton, quoting Bryan Wagner, describes it as "among other
things, an attempt to formulate an account of [Black] suffering
... 'without recourse to the consolation of
transcendence'" (Wagner 2009, 2, as quoted in Sexton 2016,
par. 8). Elsewhere in this remarkable essay, aimed at clearing away
the misconceptions and misguided criticisms that swirl around the
view, Sexton explains:
>
>
> Afro-pessimism is not an intervention so much as it is a reading or
> meta-commentary... . It is a reading of what is gained and lost
> in the attempt--the impulse--to ... delimit the
> "bad news" of black life, to fix its precise scope and
> scale, to find an edge beyond or before which true living unfolds.
> (Sexton 2016, par. 16)
>
>
>
The content of and motivation for this reading involves "both an
epistemological and an ethical project" (Sexton 2016, par. 15).
The ethical project involves resisting a lazy, bad faith optimism that
bases struggle and activism on hope rather than on a clear-eyed
confrontation with the challenges of Black life in an anti-Black
world. The epistemological project involves finding the tools for
achieving this clear-eyed confrontation. In the hands of figures like
Hartman and Christina Sharpe, this means enacting certain vital
conceptual reorientations, like insisting on the afterlife of the
transatlantic slave trade in contemporary modes of social
organization.
A second way of engaging black life and social death philosophically
crystallizes in the various organizational forms and
anti-organizational tendencies that constitute the Black Lives Matter
movement. This is of course not an academic enterprise, but it grows
from many of the same roots, intellectually and ethically, as much of
the work under consideration here. The driving forces behind the
movement--people like Alicia Garza, Patrice Cullors-Khan, and
Opal Tometi, the authors of the phrase-cum-social media archiving tool
that gives the movement its name--take up expressly philosophical
questions about, for example, the requirements of justice, the role of
the state (and the legitimacy of state violence), the workings of
power, and the meaning of the human. What's more, they often do
so in ways informed by figures like Fanon, Audre Lorde, Steve Biko,
and Cedric Robinson. This is philosophy in action: it is "about
finding, articulating, and promoting answers to philosophical
questions" as well as about "modeling a kind of
philosophical responsiveness to the conditions of human
striving"--call this a robustly engaged version of the art
of living well (Taylor 2019,
297).[15]
A third approach to the questions of black life and social death
actually runs through both of the approaches mentioned so far. The
study of Black aesthetics and of African-derived cultural practices
have become scholarly growth areas thanks in part--but only in
part--to the central role that aesthetic practices play in the
work of antiracist resistance. I say "only in part"
because some of the most interesting work in this area prominently
resists the temptation to reduce aesthesis to anti-racism. Life in
communities of African-descended persons and others racialized as
Black, like life everywhere, has its irremediably aesthetic dimensions
and resources. These resources are sometimes invested in defensive
efforts, warding off assaults on Black or African humanity. But they
are much more often invested in celebrations of life, reflections on
community, parables of love, provocations for the mind and senses, and
so on. In fact, a plausible reading of the transnational,
transhistorical tradition of Black aesthetics suggests that this work
routinely circles around the tension between responsibly facing
life's problems and celebrating and enjoying life's
possibilities (Taylor 2016). This tension motivates Albert
Murray's charges against Toni Morrison (and others), it inspires
West's critique of Du Bois, and it runs through, without quite
defining, Moten's refusal of Afro-pessimism.
The contemporary concern with aesthetics in and near Africana thought
extends a long tradition. Frederick Douglass, for example,
complemented his achievements as a writer and orator with vigorous
efforts to construct his public image through photography, thereby
making a germinal contribution to modern transatlantic visual culture
(Gates 2016). The U.S. "New Negro" movement (usually
associated with the Harlem Renaissance), the Negritude movement, and
the various Black arts movements around the world were all animated by
philosophical commitments, and in the first two cases prominently
featured philosophers (Alain Locke and Leopold Senghor, to start).
Moving closer to the present, the companion volumes that marked
Africana philosophy's establishment feature contributions on art
and aesthetics by Nzegwu (2004) and others. Contemporary thinkers
follow in their footsteps with special issues on race and aesthetics,
symposia on Black aesthetics, and studies of the philosophical import
of memorials and monuments in racialized
spaces.[16]
## 8. Conclusion
To discuss studies of black life and social death in the context of
this entry is to return to one of the recurring tensions in the field
of Africana philosophy. It is a field not just born of struggle but
also emerging from the crucible of racialization. Africana philosophy
is importantly related but not reducible to a responsible
philosophical race theory: it is a constellation of views, approaches,
traditions, problems, debates, and figures that owes its existence as
a somewhat unitary enterprise at least in part to the practices of
race-making, but that reaches deeper into the lives of particular
communities than race theory can, with results--like studies of
the Yoruba conception of peace--that in no way depend on
race-theoretic analysis for their import.
This study of course leaves out much more than it includes. There is,
for example, nothing here about Nkiru Nzegwu's innovative
institution-building efforts with the International Society for
African Philosophy and Studies
(ISAPS)[17]
and the Africa Knowledge Project, or about Sylvia Wynter's
impactful interventions in decolonial and Afro-Caribbean
philosophy.[18]
Nor will there be space to explore Achille Mbembe's studies of
necropolitics, George Yancy's remarkable reinvention of critical
phenomenology, the long shadow of Molefi Asante's Africology,
the innovations of Tommy Curry's Black male studies, Anita
Allen-Castellitto's insightful studies of privacy and her
eloquent commentaries on the profession, or the dynamic Afro-futurism
of figures from Sun-Ra to Janelle Monae.
Silences and oversights are inevitable in a short study of a sprawling
constellation of related areas of inquiry. For that reason it is
fitting to end with language from Outlaw's version of a similar
study. One might say of this entry what Outlaw says of his: that it
"is not meant to be exhaustive," but instead
"provides examples and solicits additional contributions in
order to make the account more comprehensive and accurate"
(Outlaw 2017, SS2, par. 23). |
african-ethics | ## 1. On the terms 'Ethics' and 'Morality'
The term 'ethics' is technically used by philosophers to
mean a philosophical study of morality--morality understood as a
set of social rules, principles, norms that guide or are intended to
guide the conduct of people in a society, and as beliefs about right
and wrong conduct as well as good or bad character. Even though
morality is the subject matter of ethics, it is most often used
interchangeably with 'ethics'. In spite of the
philosophical inquiries or analyses undertaken by individual
*moral* philosophers regarding morality (i.e., the morality of a
society or people)--analyses which often result in diverse positions or
conclusions--nevertheless, the basic features, the core elements
of the morality of a society, those moral principles and values that
actually guide and influence the lives of a people, remain pretty much
what they are or have been. What individual moral philosophers, through
their critical analyses and arguments, try to do is to explain,
clarify, refine, sharpen, or enlarge the understanding of the concepts
and issues of morality. Even though the moral beliefs and circumstances
of their own societies constitute the immediate focus of their
philosophical activities--for human experience is most directly
felt within some specific social or cultural
context--nevertheless, moral philosophers do not think or imply at
all that the results of their reflective activities are to be tethered
to their own societies as such. They believe, to the contrary, that, in the
light of our common humanity, which speaks to the common sentiments,
purposes, responses, hopes, and aspirations of all human beings in
respect of certain situations, the conclusions of their reflections
would, surely, have implications for the capacious community of humankind, for
the universal human family.
Thus, moral principles and rules may emerge from or evolved by a
particular human society; even so, they are principles that
can--and do--apply to all human societies inasmuch as they
respond to basic human needs, interests, and purposes. When the Akan
moralist maintains, for instance, that 'To possess virtue is
better than gold', or 'When virtue founds a town, the town
thrives and abides', he strongly believes that he is making a
moral statement--he is enunciating a moral principle--that
transcends his own community and applies not only to other towns in his
nation but, indeed, to all *human* societies, just as Socrates
surely intended his celebrated moral statement 'Virtue is
knowledge' (whether true or not) to apply to peoples and cultures
beyond Athens and Greece, even beyond fifth century Greece. Thus, the
moral intent of the morally-freighted proverbs (or maxims) discussed in this entry
is considered relevant to the moral life of the human being and, as
such, is purported to have universal application or reference.
After the reflective activities of the individual moral thinkers, the
beliefs and presuppositions of a people about right and wrong conduct,
good and bad character--all of which featured in the moral life
of the people prior to the activities of moral thinkers--remain
substantially or generally unscathed; they continue to constitute the
moral framework within which the members of the society
function. Thus, even though a theoretical (or, academic) distinction
can be made between morality as constituted by the moral beliefs and
principles that a group of people abides by in their daily lives (let
us refer to this kind of morality as morality1) and
morality or ethics as comprising the reflections of moral thinkers on
human conduct, on morality1 (let us refer to the reflective
enterprise regarding morality as morality2), nevertheless,
to the extent that morality2 provides a clarification and
better explanation and understanding of morality1, it can
be said that the two terms, morality and ethics, refer essentially to
the same moral phenomenon--human conduct--and, thus, can be
used interchangeably. Thus, in this entry, the term 'African
ethics' is used to refer both to the moral beliefs and
presuppositions of the sub-Saharan African people and the
philosophical clarification and interpretation of those beliefs and
presuppositions.
I take note of a view expressed by some philosophers on
Aristotle's ethics: Bertrand Russell observed that
"Aristotle's opinions on moral questions are always such as
were conventional in his day" (1945: 174). This view is re-echoed
by Hardie: "[Aristotle's] moral ideas and moral ideals are,
in some degree, the product of his time" (1968: 120); he also
asserts that "Aristotle in the *Nicomachean Ethics* is at
least in part an interpreter of Greek experience" (W. F. R
Hardie, 1968: 123). In the same way, this entry present an
*interpretretation* of the moral ideas and values as found in the
African moral language, conceptions of society, conceptions of a
person, and so on.
Also, in this entry, 'African' refers to the salient
features or ideas of the African moral life and thought generally as
reflected in, or generated by, African moral language and social
structure and life. Many writers have made the observation that
despite the indisputable cultural diversity that arises from Africa's
ethnic pluralism, there are underlying affinities in many areas of the
African life; this is surely true in the African religious and moral
outlook. There are some features of the moral life and thought of
various African societies that, according to the cited sources, are
common or shared features. There are other features that can be seen
as common on conceptual or logical grounds. For instance, the claim
that the values and principles of African morality are not founded on
religion simply derives from the characterization of traditional
African religion as a *non-revealed* religion. (In the history
of the indigenous religion in African, it does not seem that anyone in
any African community, has ever claimed to have received a revelation
from the Supreme Being intended either for the people of the community
or for all humanity). This characterization makes African ethics
independent of religion and, thus, underlines the notion of the
autonomy of ethics in regard to African ethics. If a religion is a
non-revealed religion, then it is independent of religious
prescriptions and commands. The characterization of traditional
African religion would, thus, lead me to assert--to generalize on
logical grounds--that the moral system of each African
society--in the traditional setting--does not derive from
religion: thus, it is an autonomous moral system. Similarly, the claim
about the social (non-individualistic) morality of the African society
is closely related to the community and shared life of the African
people. And so on.
Thus, while Akan ethics is not a microcosm of African ethics, there is
nevertheless evidence, both empirical and conceptual, that indicates
that the values, beliefs, and principles of Akan ethics
reverberate *mutatis mutandis* on the moral terrains of other
African societies. Based on the qualifying expression *mutatis
mutandis* ('allowing for necessary variations and
adjustments'), it would be correct to say that the term
'African ethics' is appropriate. With all this said,
however, neither Akan nor African ethics would be unique among the
ethical systems evolved by the various non-African cultures of the
world.
## 2. African Words for Ethics (or Morality)
We would begin with an inquiry into African moral language, in
search specifically of the word for 'ethics' in a few
African languages. Such an inquiry will give some insight into the
basic conception and understanding of ethics or morality. It must be
noted right from the outset that a substantial number of Sub-Saharan
African languages do not have words that can be said to be
*direct* equivalents of the word 'ethics' or
'morality'. Here are some interesting results of inquiries
made from native speakers of a few African languages and how
statements about a person's ethical or moral conduct are expressed in
those languages, including two of the prominent languages in Ghana,
Akan (the author's native language) and Ewe.
1. When a speaker of the Akan language wants to say, "He has
no morals", or, "He is immoral", or "He is
unethical", "His conduct is unethical", he would
almost invariably say, "He has no *character*"
(*Onni suban*).
2. The statement, "He has no morals", or "He is
unethical", is expressed by a speaker of the Ewe language as,
*nonomo mele si o* (which means "He has no
character").
3. In Yoruba language and thought the word *iwa* means both
character and morality (it also means 'being' or
'nature').
4. In Igbo language of Eastern Nigeria, the word *agwa*,
meaning character, is used in such a statement as "he has no
morals" (*onwe ghi ezi agwa)*.
5. In Shona, the language spoken by a substantial majority of the
people of Zimbabwe, the word *tsika* means 'ethics'
or 'morality'. But when they want to say of a person that
"He has no morals", or "He is unethical", they
would often use the word *hunhu* which directly means
'character'. Thus, *Haana hunhu* means "He has
no character", "He is not moral", "He is
unethical".
6. In South Sotho, a language spoken widely in Lesotho and southern
Zimbabwe (Matebeleland), there are no words that are the direct
equivalents of 'ethics' or 'morality'.
References to the moral or ethical life or behavior are made using
words that mean behavior or character. Thus, moral statements such as
"he has no morals" or "his action is unethical"
will be expressed by words such as *maemo*--which means
character or behavior: thus, *maemo a mabe* means "he has
a bad character", "his behavior (action) is
unethical." When a person behaves (or acts) in ways that are
morally right, they would say "he has a good character",
using the words *lokileng* or *boitswaro*, both of which
mean good character or good behavior.
Thus, the inquiries into the moral language of several African
peoples or cultures indicate that in these languages the word or
expression that means 'character' is used to refer to what
others call 'ethics' or 'morality'. Discourses
or statements about morality turn to be discourses or statements
essentially about character. In Islamic moral philosophy the word used
for 'ethics', namely, *akhlaq,* means character. The
implication here is that ethics or morality is conceived in terms
essentially of character. It is noteworthy that the Greek word
*ethike,* from which the English word 'ethics'
derives means 'character.' (*ethos)* What we call
'ethics' Aristotle calls 'the study (or, science) of
character', *he ethike*. For the Greek, as for the
African and the Arab, the character of the individual matters most in our moral
life and thought.
## 3. The Notion of Character as Central to African Ethics
There are of course other moral concepts in the African moral
language and thought. The concepts of good, bad (or, evil), right and
wrong feature prominently in African moral thought, as they do in the
moral systems of other peoples and cultures. In Akan, for instance,
*pa* or *papa* means good and *bone* means bad or
evil (see below). Thus, the expression *onipa bone* means a bad
person. A bad person is said to be a person with a bad character,
*suban bone*. When a person is known to be honest or generous or
compassionate, he would be judged by the Akan as a good person, by
which they mean that he has a good *character* (suban). A person would
be judged as having a bad *character* if he is considered
dishonest, wicked, or cruel. In most moral evaluations reference is
made to the character of a person; thus, character is basic--the
crucial element--in Akan, as it is in African, ethics generally.
*Iwa* (character) is, for the Yoruba, "perhaps the most
important moral concept. A person is morally evaluated according to
his/her *iwa*--whether good or bad" (Gbadegesin, 1991:
79). African ethics is, thus, a character-based ethics that maintains
that the quality of the individual's character is most
fundamental in our moral life.
Good character is the essence of the African moral system, the
linchpin of the moral wheel. The justification for a character-based
ethics is not far to seek. For, all that a society can do, regarding
moral conduct, is to impart moral knowledge to its members, making
them aware of the moral values and principles of that society. In
general, society satisfactorily fulfills this duty of imparting moral
knowledge to its members through moral education of various forms,
including, as in African societies, telling morally-freighted proverbs
and folktales to its younger members. But, having moral
knowledge--being made aware of the moral principles and rules of
the society--is one thing; being able to lead a life consonant
with the moral principles is quite another. An individual may know and
may even accept a moral rule, such as, say, it is wrong to cheat the
customs. But he may fail to apply this rule to a particular situation;
he is, thus, not able to effect the transition from knowledge to
action, to carry out the implications of his moral belief.
In the Akan and other African moral systems such a moral failure
would be put down to the lack of a good character (*suban pa)*.
In other words, the ability to act in accord with the moral principles
and rules of the society requires the possession of a good character.
Thus, in the context of the activities of the moral life--in our
decisions to obey moral rules, in the struggle to do the right thing
and to avoid the wrong conduct, in one's intention to carry out a
moral duty, the quality of a person's character is of ultimate
consequence. It is from a person's character that all his or her
actions--good or bad--radiate: the performance of good or bad acts
depends on the state of one's character. Wrong-doing is put down
to a person's bad character. Thus, the Yoruba maxim (proverb):
'Good character is a person's guard.'
African maxims are explicit about the formation of character:
character is acquired. A person is therefore responsible for the state
of his or her character, for character results from the habitual
actions of a person. An Akan maxim has it that "one is not born
with a bad 'head', but one takes it on from the
earth." The maxim means, among other things, that a bad habit is
not an inborn characteristic; it is one that is acquired. It would be
worthless to embark on moral instruction through moral proverbs and
folktales, as it is done in African societies, if our character or
habits were inborn. But the belief is that the moral narratives would
help the young people to acquire and internalize the moral values of
the society, including specific moral virtues, embedded in those
ethical narratives. The appropriate responses to moral instruction are
expected to lead to the acquisition of appropriate habits and their
corresponding characters. And, because character is acquired through
our actions, habits, and expected responses to moral instructions, it
can, according to African moral systems, be changed or
reformed.
Character is defined by the Akan thinkers in terms of habits, which
result from a person's deeds or actions: 'character comes
from your actions' (or deeds: *nneyee*), says an Akan
traditional thinker. Persistent performance of a particular action will
produce a certain habit and, thus, a corresponding character. To
acquire virtue, a person must perform good actions, that is, morally
acceptable actions so that they become habitual. The action or deed
that led to the acquisition of a newly good habit must be persistently
performed in order to strengthen that habit; in this way,virtue (or,
good character) is acquired. Over time such an acquired virtue becomes
a habit. This is the position of Akan ethics on the development and
acquisition of a good (or, bad) character, for this is what the Akan
people mean when they say *aka ne ho*, "it has remained
with him," "it has become part of him," "it has
become his habit." Character is, thus, a behavior pattern formed
as a result of past persistent actions. Thus, moral virtues
(excellences of character) or vices arise through habituation.
The logic of the acquisition of our character or habits is that the
original nature of the human being was morally neutral, neither good
nor bad. A person's original moral neutrality will in the course
of his life come to be affected, in one direction (the good) or the
other direction (the bad) by his actions and responses to moral
instruction, advice and persuasion. The original moral neutrality of a
human being constitutes the foundation of our conception of the moral
person, for it makes for--allows room for--choice, that is, moral
choice. Consequently, what a person does or does not do is most crucial
to the formation and development of his or her character, and, thus, to
becoming moral or immoral.
## 4. Moral Personhood
Let me start the analysis of moral personhood in African moral
philosophy with a statement made by Ifeanyi Menkiti, an African
philosopher from Nigeria:
>
> The various societies found in traditional Africa routinely accept
> this fact that personhood is the sort of thing which has to be
> attained, and is attained in direct proportion as one participates in
> communal life through the discharge of the various obligations defined
> by one's stations. It is the carrying out of these obligations
> that transforms one from the it-status of early child-hood, marked by
> an absence of moral function, *into the person-status of later
> years, marked by a widened maturity of ethical sense--an ethical
> maturity without which personhood is conceived as eluding
> one*. (Ifeanyi Menkiti, 1984: 176)
Menkiti's statement adumbrates a conception of moral personhood, which
will now be discussed in some detail. The concept of a person in
African thought embodies ethical presuppositions. The word used for
"person" in the Akan language (undoubtedly the most widely
spoken language in Ghana) is *onipa*. But the word
*onipa* also means "human being" and the plural form
of it means "people". Thus, the word *onipa* is an
ambiguous word. In the Akan society, when an individual's conduct
very often appears cruel, wicked, selfish, ungenerous or unsympathetic,
it would be said of that individual that "he is *not* a
person" (*onnye onipa*).
In Yoruba language the word *eniyan* means a person. Even
though the word is used in a normative as well as non-normative (or,
ordinary) sense, "greater emphasis is placed on the normative
dimension of *eniyan*" (Gbadagesin, 1991: 27). It can be
said of some human individual that 'he or she is not a person'
(*Ki i se eniyan*). Such a comment is a "judgment of the
moral standing of the human being who is thus determined to fall short
of what it takes to be recognized as such" (Gbadagesin, 1991:
27).
The Akan statement *onnye onipa* and the Yoruba statement
*Ki i se eniyan* both underline a conception of moral
personhood. The two statements are significant in two ways. The first
is that, even though that individual is said *not* to be a
person, he is nonetheless acknowledged as a *human being*, not a
beast or fish. It is pretty clear that the statement implies a
distinction between the concept of a human being and the concept of a
person: *an individual can be a human being without being a
person.*
The second significant thing the statements imply is the assumption
that there are certain fundamental norms and ideals to which the
conduct of a human being, *if he is a person,* ought to conform,
that there are moral virtues that an individual has the capacity to
display in his conduct and ought to display them, if he is a person.
The reason for the judgment that an individual is not a person if he
behaves or does not behave in a certain way is that that
individual's actions and behavior are considered as falling short
of the ideals and standards of personhood. But it does not imply at all
that an individual considered "not a person" loses his
rights as a human being or as a citizen or that people in the community
should cease to demonstrate a moral concern for him or display the
appropriate moral virtues in their treatment of him; only that he is
not considered a morally worthy individual.
Now, the judgment that a human being is "not a person",
made in the wake of that individual's persistent unethical
behavior, implies that the practice of moral virtue is considered
intrinsic to the conception of a person held in Akan or Yoruba moral
thought. The position here is this: for any *p*, if *p*
is person, then *p* ought to display in his behavior the moral
norms and ideals of personhood. When the behavior of a human being
fails to conform to the acceptable moral principles or standards, or
when a human being fails to display the expected moral virtues in his
conduct, he is considered to be "*not* a
person."
The evaluative judgment opposite to the one we have been considering
is "he is a person" (*oye onipa*). This judgment is
not a descriptive judgment at all, even though it can be used
descriptively, as when in a forest one hunter made that judgment to his
colleague hunter who thought he saw a beast and was about to shoot it:
the judgment "he is a person" (*oye onipa*) would in
that context be used descriptively by the other hunter to distinguish a
human being from a beast. Thus, a descriptive use of that judgment
would be obvious and easily understood.
What I am concerned to point up in the present circumstance is the
*normative* form of the judgment. Used normatively, the
judgment, "he is a person," means 'he has a good
character', 'he is generous', 'he is
peaceful', 'he is humble,' 'he has respect for
others.' A profound appreciation of the high standards of the
morality of an individual's behavior would elicit the judgment,
"he is truly a person," (*oye onipa paa!)*. A rider
would be in place here: while children are actual human beings and are
members of the human community, they are not actual persons yet; they
are persons only potentially and will attain the status of personhood
in the fullness of time when they are able to exercise their moral
capacity and make moral judgments.
Now, the denial of personhood to a human being on the grounds that
his actions are not in accord with certain fundamental norms and ideals
of personhood or that that individual fails to display certain
virtues in his behavior is morally significant and worth noting. It
means that human nature is considered in Akan metaphysical and moral
thought to be essentially good, not depraved or warped by some original
sin; that the human being is capable of doing good. It does not mean,
however, that personhood, in this model of humanity, is innate but is
earned in the ethical arena: it is the individual's moral
achievement that earns him the status of a person. Every individual is
capable of becoming a person inasmuch as he has capacity for
virtue--for performing morally right actions--and should be treated (at
least potentially) as a morally responsible agent.
In this connection, let us pay some attention to the Akan belief
embedded in a maxim that says, "God created every human being
(to be) good" (*Onyame boo obiara yie*). The view
expressed in this proverb seems to be at variance with the notion of
the moral-neutrality of the human being discussed earlier in
connection with character (section 3). The meaning of the maxim
"God created every human (to be) good" is not too clear;
it may be interpreted in two ways. First, it may be taken as implying
that God created the human being actually to do good, that is, to
actually behave virtuously and to always make the appropriate moral
choices. Second, it may be interpreted as meaning that God made the
human being capable of moral choice, that is, that the human being was
merely endowed by his creator with the moral sense to distinguish
between good and evil, right and wrong. The first interpretation
implies that the human being has been determined to be
good--to actually pursue virtue: thus, the human being's
moral status is a settled matter. If the human being were created or
determined actually and always to do good, there would never have been
a concept of evil or vice (*bone*) in Akan moral language,
since no human being would, in that kind of moral context, commit a
vicious or evil act. In light of the evil and unethical actions of
individual human beings, the first interpretation which implies that
the human being is resiliently good cannot be accepted as the correct
meaning of the maxim, for it is plainly contradicted by our putative
moral experience. The first interpretation also subverts
moral-neutrality, a consequence that eliminates moral choice--basic to
the notion of a moral person.
The second interpretation of the view that the human being was created
good (or, to be good), implies that the human being merely has the
capacity for virtue: that is, could pursue good, but could also pursue
evil. This means that the human being is endowed with moral sense
and, so, has the capacity for both virtue and vice; his judgment on
some moral issue could go either direction: direction of the good or
direction of the evil. Thus, the notion of moral neutrality is
preserved. The human being can then be held as a moral agent: not that
his virtuous character is a settled matter, but that he is capable of
virtue, and hence, of moral achievement, and can, thus, achieve
personhood.
The correctness of the second interpretation of the view that the
human being was created good, as argued in the foregoing paragraphs,
can have an anchor also in the Akan notion of *tiboa*:
conscience, moral sense--a sense of right or wrong. This is a
conception of an inner urge relevant to moral practice. *Tiboa*
is held, among other things, as creating a sense of guilt in the
individual, convicting him or her of wrong deeds. Since response to a
moral rule is ultimately an individual or private affair, the notion of
*tiboa* (conscience) is of great importance to our moral life.
It is by virtue of *tiboa* that the notion of self-sanctioning
in moral conduct becomes intelligible. Because of its power to induce a
sense of guilt, *tiboa* is held to influence the
individual's moral choice, decision, response, and attitude. The
reality or phenomenon of moral choice is a rejection of the notion of a
fixed or settled moral character of an individual that derives from the
presupposition--albeit false--that the human being is born
*virtuous*. The activity of *tiboa* is in line with the
moral neutrality of the human being at birth. The activity of
*tiboa* assists moral achievement and, thus, moral
personhood.
Like the Akan people and others, the Rwanda (or, Ruanda) people also
have the concept of conscience. "The Rwanda word for conscience,
*kamera,* means something that is internally felt. It is
situated in the heart" (J. J. Maquet in Forde, 1954: 183). There
indeed are external social sanctions which are useful as deterrents
from prohibited behavior; but in moral motivation feelings of moral
guilt and shame are traceable also to *kamera* or
*tiboa*.
## 5. The Humanistic Foundations of African Morality
Observations have been made by a number of scholars that Africans
are a very--even a notoriously--religious people, that religion so
deeply permeates all spheres of their lives that it cannot be
distinguished from nonreligious aspects of life, that in the African
traditional life there are no atheists, and that the African cultural
heritage is intensely and pervasively religious. Historical evidence
indicates that many colonial administrators in their dispatches to
their colonial metropolis used to refer to Africans as 'this
incurably religious people.' Assertions about the religiosity of
the African people have led some scholars to maintain that there is a
connection between religion and morality in African ethics. That some
connection may exist between religion and morality is conceivable in an
environment that is widely alleged to be pervasively religious. But the
nature of the connection needs to be fully clarified.
The connection has been taken by most scholars to mean that African
moral values and principles derive from religion, implying that
African morality is, thus, a religious morality (Opoku, 1978: 152),
Danquah (1944: 3), Sarpong (1972: 41), Busia (1967: 16), Parrinder
(1969: 28-9), Idowu (1962: 146). The claim implies in turn that
the moral beliefs and principles of the African people derive from
those of religion, that religion provides the necessary justification
for moral values and beliefs, and that moral concepts, such as good,
bad, right and wrong, are defined (or, must be defined) in terms of
religious prescriptions or commands. However, there are other
scholars, such as Godfrey Wilson, Monica Wilson, Maquet, Wiredu, who
deny the religious basis of the moral systems of the societies they
studied. Kwasi Wiredu observed that "the Akan moral outlook is
thus logically independent of religion" (Kwasi Wiredu in
H. Odera Oruka and D. A. Masolo, 1983: 13). Godfrey Wilson wrote that
"Among the Nyakyusa the ideas of social behaviour are not
connected with religion, nonetheless they exist" and, after
mentioning the moral virtues of the Nyakyusa, he added that "But
the positive, ideal statement of these virtues is not made in
religious terms" (Godfrey Wilson in Ottenberg and Ottenberg
eds., 1960: 348). On the morality of the Rwanda, Maquet wrote that
'Thus the ethics of the Banyarwanda are not integrated on a
religious basis such as the will of God' (J. J. Maquet in Forde,
1954:184). In Mende ethics, "Wrongbehavior is regarded as a
breaking of some specific rule of conduct, not as the flouting of some
divine or absolute law of the universe" (Kenneth Little, in
Forde, 1954:134). These are unambiguous statements of the nonreligious
foundation of the morality of at least some African societies.
The claim, made by many scholars, that African morality is founded
on, or derives from, religion cannot, in my opinion, be upheld, if by
morality we are referring to social principles and norms that guide the
conduct of people in a society. One reason is that, unlike Islam or
Christianity, the traditional, that is, indigenous, African religion is
not a revealed religion whereby divine truth is revealed to a single
individual who becomes the founder. It is true that African religious
experience certainly features mystical or highly spiritual encounters
between human beings (that is, priests, priestesses, diviners, etc.)
and spiritual beings. Such encounters occur in divinations, spirit
mediums, communication with the dead, and other forms of the mystical
experience. But, it may be noted, such mystical or spiritual encounters
or contacts take place in an atmosphere that was *already*
religious; they are some of the manifestations of African religion, of
African spirituality.
I define spirituality as a *heightened* form of religiosity
reached by certain individuals in the community who have, or claim to
have, mystical contacts with the supernatural, the divine. It would be
correct to assert, however, that the encounters are the
*results*, rather than the sources, of religion in Africa in the
traditional setting. And, even though 'spiritual messages'
may be received by the practitioners of traditional African religion
through those mystical encounters part of which
('messages') may relate to moral conduct, nevertheless such
messages appear to be too few and far between to constitute an adequate
basis for a coherent ethical system. Moreover, the .moral character of
such 'messages' would, in a non-revealed religious context,
have to be judged by the people themselves on the basis of their own
moral insights. This is a telling point that implies the independence
(autonomy) of the moral attitudes of the people with regard to the
conduct of the spiritual beings. This is the reason why an eminent
Ghanaian sociologist observed that "The gods are treated with
respect if they deliver the goods, and with contempt if they
fail....Attitudes to [the gods] depend on their success [i.e., the
success of the gods], and vary from healthy respect to sneering
contempt" (K. A. Busia in Forde, 1954: 205). The moral
disapprobation of the people with regard to the actions--particularly
the unsuccessful actions--of the deities constitutes the ground for the
extinction of some of the deities from the Akan, possibly the African,
pantheon. The fact that the behavior of a supernatural being is thus
subject to *human* censure implies that it is possible for a
deity to issue commands that can be considered unethical by the
practitioners of traditional religion. All this implies, surely, that
it would be correct to assert that, rather than regarding African ethics
as religious (or, religious-based), it would be more correct to regard
African religion as *ethical.*
In a revealed religion, what is revealed is generally
elaborate and can be conceived to include moral principles and ideals
as part of the will of God thus revealed. A morality that is founded on
religion is thus a necessary concomitant of a revealed religion. Since
the indigenous African religion is not a revealed religion, there is no
way by which the people would have access to the will of God that
contains elaborate moral principles upon which a coherent moral system
can be erected. In the context of a non-revealed religion, then, to
make divine or supernatural commands the source of moral values and
principles would be conceptually impossible.
Now, how are the moral concepts of good, evil, right and wrong
understood or defined in African ethics? When put to traditional
sages (thinkers) of some Akan communities in Ghana the question, how do
we come to know that 'this action' is good and 'that
action' is evil? no one responded that an action is good or evil
because God (*Onyame*) had said so or that *Onyame* had
told us so. Thus, what is morally good or right is not that which is
commanded by God or pleasing to God or any spiritual being, or that
which is in accordance with the will of a spiritual being. The
responses revealed, on the contrary, an undoubted conviction of a
humanistic--a non-supernatural--origin of moral values and
principles, a conviction that provided insight into the Akan conception
of the criterion of moral value. According to the ethics of the
Banyarwanda, "That is good (or evil) which tradition has defined
as good (or evil)" (J. J. Maquet, *loc. cit*). In light of
the non-revealed nature of traditional African religion, it can be said
that the view regarding the non-religious (non-supernatural) origin of
moral principles and values would resonate on the moral terrains of
most other African communities. The sources of African morality in the
traditional setting, then, must be held as independent of religious
prescriptions or supernatural powers.
The views of the traditional thinkers indicate that what is
good is constituted by the deeds, habits, and behavior patterns
considered by the society as worthwhile because of their consequences
for human welfare. The goods would include such things as generosity,
honesty, faithfulness, truthfulness, compassion, hospitality,
happiness, that which brings peace, justice, respect, and so on. Each
of these actions or patterns of behavior is supposed or known to bring
about social well-being. In Akan moral system (or African moral system
generally), good or moral value is determined in terms of its
consequences for humankind and human society. All this can be
interpreted to mean that African morality originates from
considerations of human welfare and interests, not from divine
pronouncements. Actions that promote human welfare or interest are
good, while those that detract from human welfare are bad. It is, thus,
pretty clear that African ethics is a humanistic ethics, a moral system
that is preoccupied with human welfare. Referring to African morality
generally, Monica Wilson observed that "The basis of morality was
fulfillment of obligation to kinsmen and neighbors, and living in amity
with them" (1971: 98).
In African conceptions moral values originate from the
basic existential conditions in which human beings organize and conduct
their lives. McVeigh made the following observation:
>
> Therefore, it is important to inquire concerning the African standard
> of judgment, what makes some things good and others bad. [Edwin] Smith
> replies that the norm of right and wrong is custom; that is, the good
> is that which receives the community's approval; the bad is that
> which is disapproved. The right builds up society; the wrong tears it
> down. One is social; the other anti-social (Malcolm J. McVeigh, 1974:
> 84).
In the ethics of the Lovedu, a South Bantu ethnic group of the
Transvaal:
>
> Right conduct is relative always to the *human* situation and
> morality is oriented not from any absolute standards of honesty or
> truth but from the *social good* in each situation. Conduct
> that promotes smooth relationships, that upholds the social structure,
> is good; conduct that runs counter to smooth social relationships is
> bad (J. D. and E. J. Krige in Forde, 1954: 78).
And, regarding the basis of Bantu morality, Molema remarked:
>
> The greatest happiness and good of the tribe was the end and aim of
> each member of the tribe. Now, utility forms part of the basis of
> perhaps all moral codes. With the Bantu, it formed the basis of
> morality...it was utilitarian. This was the standard of
> goodness, and in harmony with, and conformity to, this end must the
> moral conduct be moulded. The effect of this, of course, was
> altruism (S. M. Molema, 1920: 116).
Statements and references made in the immediately foregoing
paragraphs indicate the nonreligious foundation of African ethics. Now,
having removed African ethics from its alleged religious moorings,
where do we moor it? The answer, based on the foregoing references, is
that we moor it to the preoccupations of the African society with human
welfare and social harmony, to reflections on the existential
conditions in which human beings function.
Not being a revealed religion, traditional African religion can be
characterized as a natural religion, a religion that derives from the
peoples' *own* reflections on this complex world and their
experiences in it. The African metaphysic, to be sure, is a theistic
metaphysic; yet it does not nurture a theistic or supernatural ethic.
Just as it was their own reflections that led to the creation of a
natural religion, so it was their own reflections on living a
harmonious and cooperative life in a human society that led to the
creation of a 'natural' (a humanistic) ethic. Thus, side by
side with Africa's natural religion (or, theology) is a
'natural' ethic grounded in human experiences in living
together, a society-oriented morality that, thus, arises from the
existential conditions in which people conduct their lives. And so it
is, that the moral values of the African people have a social and
humanistic, rather than a religious, basis and are fashioned according
to the people's own understanding of the nature of human society,
human relations, human goals, and the meaning of human life with its
emotional features.
With all this said, however, it cannot be denied that religion plays
some role in the moral lives of people, such as African people, who
are said to be "incurably religious". Because God is held
by the African people not only to be the overlord of the human society
but also to have a superbly moral character, and because the ancestors
(ancestral spirits) are also supposed to be interested in the welfare
of the society (they left behind), including the moral life of the
individual, religion constitutes part of the sanctions that are in
play in matters of moral *practice.* Thus, religion cannot be
totally banished from the domain of moral practice, notwithstanding
the fact that the moral values and principles of the African society
do not derive from religion.
Humanism--the doctrine that takes human welfare, interests, and
needs as fundamental--constitutes the foundation of African ethics. It
is the warp and woof the African moral life and thought. Indeed,
African prayers and other acts of worship are brimful of, or
characterized by, requests to the supernatural beings for material
comforts, such as prosperity, health, and riches. And, even though the
African people do not consider God and other supernatural beings as the
sources of their moral values and principles, nevertheless, they are
ever aware of the powers of the supernatural beings and are ever ready
to exploit their munificence for the promotion of human welfare,
prosperity, and happiness.
## 6. Humanity and Brotherhood
These two concepts, humanity and brotherhood, feature prominently in
African social and moral thought and practice. They are among the moral
or human values that constitute the basic--perhaps the
ultimate--criteria that not only motivate but also justify human
actions that affect other human beings. In African terms, humanity is
not just an anthropological term; it is also a moral term when it comes
to considering the relations between members of the human species. The
term 'brotherhood' has come to refer to an association of
men and/or women with common aims and interests. But the notion of
brotherhood is essentially a moral notion, for it is about the
relations between individual human beings that make for their own
interest and well-being. There is some affiliation between humanity and
brotherhood in African ethical conceptions: if we are human, we are
(must be) brothers, in a capacious, comprehensive sense of the word
'brother' (to be discussed shortly).
We start our discussion with the Akan maxim:
>
> Humanity has no boundary.
>
> (*Honam mu nni nhanoa*)
>
The Akan maxim literally means: 'In human flesh there is no
edge of cultivation--no boundary' (*nhanoa).* The
maxim can be interpreted as meaning that 'all humankind is one
species', thus, that 'Humanity has no boundary.' When
the farmer cultivates his land, he does it up to a limit, an edge (in
Akan: *nhanoa*, edge, boundary) where he has to stop, otherwise
he would trespass on another farmer's land. There is, thus, a
limit to the area of cultivation of land. But this, the maxim invites
us to realize, is not so in the cultivation of the friendship and
fellowship of human beings; the boundaries of *that* form of
cultivation are limitless. For, humanity is of one kind; all humankind
is one species, with shared basic values, feelings, hopes, and
desires.
This is most probably the reason why in almost all the autochthonous
African languages (here I exclude African languages, like Hausa and
Swahili, that have borrowed a substantial number of Arabic words) there
is really no word for 'race.' There are, instead, the words
'person', 'human being', and
'people.' So that, where others would speak in terms of
'the black race' or 'the white race', Africans
would say, 'black people', 'white people', and
so on. And, instead of 'people of mixed race', they
would say, 'people of mixed blood.' The latter expression,
however, is somewhat vague, since it also describes people of dual
ethnic parentage in African societies. But, in terms of the African
perception of humanity, the important point is that the offspring of
any 'blood mixing' is a human being and therefore belongs
to the one human 'race' of which we are all a part. Thus,
even though the African people traditionally live in small communities
and are divided into different ethnic or cultural groups and into clans
and lineages with complex networks of relationships, nevertheless, they
perceive humanity to embrace all other peoples beyond their narrow
geographic or spatial confines, to constitute all human beings into one
universal family of humankind. Even though this family is fragmented
into a multiplicity of peoples and cultures, nevertheless, it is a
shared family--a shared humanity--the relationships among
whose members ought to feature a certain kind of morality: the morality
of a shared humanity
The common membership of one universal human family constitutes
(should constitute) a legitimate basis for the idea of universal human
brotherhood (or unity). This idea is depicted in, for instance, the
Akan maxim:
>
> A human being's brother is a (or another) human being.
>
> (Or, 'Man's brother is man.')
>
> (*Onipa nua ne onipa*)
The maxim asserts unmistakably that a human being can be related
*only* to another human being, *not* to a
beast. Implicit in the African perception of humanity is the
recognition of all persons, irrespective of their racial or ethnic
backgrounds, as brothers. This is the reason why in African cultures
the word 'brother' is used to cover various and complex
family relationships linked by blood ties. But the word is also used,
significantly, by persons between whom there are no blood ties; thus,
the word is used comprehensively. The comprehensive meaning given to
the word 'brother' in African cultures is intended,
indeed, to lift people up from the purely biologically determined
blood relation level onto the human level, the level where the essence
of humanity is held as transcending the contingencies of human
biology, race, ethnicity, or culture.
A practical translation of the idea of brotherhood leads to such
social and moral virtues as hospitality, generosity, concern for
others, and communal feeling. Several writers, including European
travelers to Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
have remarked upon these virtues as practiced in African social and
moral life. A Briton who spent about three decades in Central Africa
from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the early part of the
twentieth century made the following observation:
>
> Hospitality is one of the most sacred and ancient customs of
> Bantuland, and is found *everywhere*. A native will give his
> best house and his evening meal to a guest, without the slightest
> thought that he is doing anything *extraordinary* (Dugald
> Campbell, 1922: 45, emphasis added).
And a contemporary African writer also notes:
>
> One of the achievements of our [African] society was the universal
> hospitality on which they [i.e., members of the community and others]
> could rely (Julius Nyerere, 1968: 5).
Most people, including foreign visitors to Africa, often testify, in amazement, to
the ethic of hospitality and generosity of the
African people. That ethic is an expression of the perception of our
common humanity and universal human brotherhood.
As regards the African conception of the worth and dignity of the
human being, there is time to refer only to a couple of Akan maxims.
One such maxim is:
>
> The human being is more beautiful than gold.
>
> (*onipa ye fe sen sika*)
In this maxim a human being is depicted as beautiful. That which is
beautiful is enjoyed for its own sake, not for the sake of anything
else. What the maxim is saying, therefore, is that a human being is to
be enjoyed for his or her own sake. To enjoy a human being for his/her
own sake means you should appreciate his value as a human being and
demonstrate that appreciation by showing compassion, generosity, and
hospitality. It means you should be open to the interests and welfare
of others and feel it a moral duty to offer help where it is needed. To
enjoy a human being also means you should recognize the other person as a
fellow individual whose worth as a human being is equal to yours and
with whom you undoubtedly share basic values, ideals, and sentiments.
Thus, the main intent of the maxim is to point out the worth of a human
being and the respect that ought to be given to her by virtue of her
humanity. Recognition of the worth of a human being is, according to
the maxim, more important than caring for wealth.
Kenneth Kaunda describes in some detail how the enjoyment of people
is expressed in practical terms:
>
> Our conversation is a good example of this [enjoyment of people]. We
> will talk for hours with any stranger who crosses our path and by the
> time we part there will be little we do not know about each other. We
> do not regard it as impertinence or an invasion of our privacy for
> someone to ask 'personal' questions, nor have we
> compunction about questioning others in like manner. We are open to
> the interests of other people. Our curiosity does not stem from a
> desire to interfere in someone else's business but is an
> expression of our belief that *we are wrapped up together in this
> bundle of life* and therefore a bond already exists between myself
> and a stranger before we open our mouths to talk (Kaunda, 1966:
> 32).
The value of the human being is expressed also in the following
maxim:
>
> It is the human being that counts: I call upon gold, it answers
> not; I call upon cloth, it answers not; it is the human being that
> counts.
>
>
> (*Onipa ne asem*: *mefre sika a, sika nnye so, mefre ntama
> a*, *ntama nnye so*; *onipa ne asem*.)
>
>
>
The maxim says that it is *only* the human being that is of
real value, for in times of need or distress, if you appeal to gold and
other material possessions they will not respond; only a human being
will. For these reasons, the worth of the human being is of the
ultimate consequence and ought therefore to be given the ultimate
consideration. From such maxims one can appreciate why human welfare
and concern constitute the preoccupation of African ethics.
## 7. The Notion of the Common Good
The notion of the common good features manifestly in African ethics.
In Akan moral thought, the notion is expressed most vividly in an art
motif that shows a 'siamese' crocodile with two heads but a
single (i.e., common) stomach. The part of the motif
relevant to moral thought is the single stomach, and it is to the
significance of this that I wish to pay some attention. The common
stomach of the two crocodiles indicates that at least the basic
interests of all the members of the community are identical. It
can therefore be interpreted as symbolizing the *common good*,
the good of all the individuals within a society.
The common good is not a surrogate for the sum of the various
individual goods. It does not consist of, or derive from, the goods and
preferences of particular individuals. It is that which is essentially
good for human beings as such, embracing the needs that are
*basic* to the enjoyment and fulfillment of the life of each
individual. If the common good were the aggregate of individual goods,
it would only be contingently, not essentially, common and, on that
score, it would not be achieved in a way that will benefit all the
individuals in a society. If the common good is achieved, then the
individual good is also achieved. Thus, there should be no conceptual
tension or opposition between the common good and the good of the
individual member of the community, for the common good embraces the
goods--the basic goods--of all the members of the community. If
the common good were understood as the basic good--as human good--as
such, there would be no need to think of it as a threat to individual
liberty as touted by Western liberal (individualist) thinkers, for,
after all, individual liberty is held as one of the basic goods of the
members of the society. The contents of the common stomach, in the
symbolic art of the 'siamese crocodile', would not conflict
with the interests and needs of either of the crocodiles.
The good, as discussed in an earlier section, is defined by
the traditional thinkers of the Akan society in terms of peace,
happiness or satisfaction (human flourishing), justice, dignity,
respect, and so on. The common good embraces these goods and more.
There is no human being who does not desire peace, security,
freedom, dignity, respect, justice, equality, and satisfaction. It is
such a moral, not a weird, notion embracive of fundamental
goods--goods that are intrinsic to human fulfillment and to which
all individuals desire to have access--that is referred to as the
common good. The unrelenting support by people in a community for such
moral values as social justice and equality on the one hand, and the
spontaneous, universal denunciation of acts such as murder and cruelty
on the other hand, are certainly inspired by beliefs in the common
good.
Similarly, the institutions of various kinds--legal, political,
economic, moral and others--are set up in pursuit of certain
commonly shared values and goals, that is, a common good which a human
society desires to achieve for all of its members. The
institution of government or legal system is surely based on a common
understanding of the need for societal values of social order and
social peace. It is, thus, pretty clear that the common good is that
which inspires the creation of a moral, social, political, or legal
system for enhancing the well-being of people in a community.
The common good is a notion that is conceptually affiliated to the
notion of community and, thus, to the notion of human society as such.
The common good is an essential feature of the ethics espoused by the
communitarian African society. The pursuit of the good of all is the
goal of the communitarian society, which the African society is. A
sense of the common good--which is a core of shared values--is the
underlying presupposition of African social morality.
## 8. Social, Not Individualistic, Ethics
A humanistic morality, whose central focus is the concern for the
welfare and interest of each member of community, would expectably be a
*social* morality which is enjoined by social life itself. Such
is the nature of African morality. Social life or sociality is natural
to the human being because every human being is born into an existing
human society. A traditional Akan thinker asserted in a previously
quoted proverb that says that 'When a human being descends from
the heavens, he [or she] descends into a human town [or, a human
society].' The point of the maxim is that the human being is
social *by nature*. This view finds a variant in Aristotle's
celebrated dictum that 'The human being is *by nature* a
social animal', that is, that a human being is by nature a
member of a
*polis*, a human community. [The word *politikon* used in
Aristotle's dictum means 'social' rather than
'political'.] Being a member of the human community by
nature, the individual is naturally related or oriented toward other
persons and must have relationships with them. The natural sociality or
relationality of human beings would--and should--prescribe a
social ethic, rather than the ethic of individualism. Individualistic
ethics that focuses on the welfare and interests of the individual is
hardly regarded in African moral thought.
African social ethic is expressed in many maxims (or, proverbs) that
emphasize the importance of the values of mutual helpfulness,
collective responsibility, cooperation, interdependence, and reciprocal
obligations. Let me refer to a few of these, from the Akan
repertoire:
>
> The well-being of man depends on his fellow man.
>
> (*onipa yieye firi onipa*)
The point of this proverb is, not that a person should always look
to another (or others) for his well-being and the attainment of his
goals, but that there are occasions when the demonstration by another
person (or other persons) of goodwill, sympathy, compassion, and the
willingness to help can be a great boost to a person's attempts
to achieve his goals, to fulfill his life. The dependency noted in the
foregoing proverb is to be put down to the limited nature of the
possibilities of the human individual. Human limitations are in fact
expressed in the following Akan proverb:
>
> Man is not a palm-tree that he should be complete
> (or, self sufficient).
>
> (*onipa nye abe na ne ho ahyia ne ho*)
>
The proverb points up the inadequacies of the human being that make
it impossible for him to fulfill his life, socially, economically,
emotionally, psychologically, and so on. It is evidently true that in
the context of the society, in terms of functioning or flourishing in a
human society, the human individual is not sufficient, for her
capacities, talents, and dispositions are not adequate for the
realization of her potential and basic needs. It is only through
cooperation with other human beings that the needs and goals of the
individual can be fulfilled. With his self-sufficiency whittled away by
man's natural condition, the individual requires the succor and
relationships of others in order to satisfy his basic needs. A social
ethic that recognizes the importance of the values of mutual help,
goodwill, and reciprocity is the kind of ethic that will counter the
lack of human self-sufficiency in respect of talents and capacities and
in many ways help realize his basic needs.
Reciprocity and interdependence are forthrightly expressed in the
following Akan maxims:
>
> The right arm washes the left arm and the left arm
> washes the right arm.
>
> (*wo nsa nifa hohorow benkum, na benkum nso hohorow nifa*)
>
That the left arm cannot wash itself is of course a matter of
everyday experience. It is when the two arms wash each other that both
become clean: thus, the need for interdependence.
>
> Life is mutual aid.
>
> (*Obra ye nnoboa*)
>
The Akan word *nnoboa* means 'helping each other to
work on the farm'. In the farming communities of rural Ghana,
when a farmer realizes that work on the farm cannot be completed within
a certain time if he did it single-handedly, he would request the
assistance and support of other farmers in the community. The other
farmers would readily lend a helping hand to that farmer, who would, in
this way, achieve his productivity goals and do so on time. The same
request would, when necessary, be made by the other farmers on
different occasions. It is this kind of experience that led an Akan
traditional thinker to create this proverb which, because of the word
'life' (*obra*), has been made to cover other
spheres of the human life than the purely economic (or agricultural).
Refusing to offer help to others and consistently seeking one's
own good and disregarding the good of others will result in one's
being denied the help and goodwill that may be necessary to achieve
certain ends. Since you refused to help someone who needed your help or
someone who was in distress, you are likely to meet the same refusal or
denial when you need some help--perhaps more help at that. The
morality of a shared life, as in any community, thus demands mutuality
or reciprocity as a moral mandate in a world in which human beings,
weak and limited in many ways, are subject to vulnerable
situations. Mutual aid, then, becomes a moral obligation.
That a human being, due to her limitations, deserved to be helped is
expressed in the following maxim:
>
> A human being needs help.
>
> (*onipa hia moa*)
The Akan word translated 'needs' is *hia*, which,
as used in this maxim, has a normative connotation; thus, it
does more than simply expressing a fact about human life or the human
condition. The real meaning of the maxim, then, is that a human being
deserves, and therefore ought, to be helped. It also means that a human
being must be regarded as an object of moral concern and should
therefore be entitled to help by others in the appropriate
circumstances. The reason why you should help someone in need is also
given in the following maxim, among others:
>
>
> Your neighbor's situation is [potentially] your situation.
>
> (*Wo yonko da ne wo da*)
Two important things about this maxim need to be pointed out. One is
that the maxim is uttered in references only to the pitiable, miserable
or unfortunate situation of another person (referred to in the maxim as
"your neighbor"--*wo yonko*) or other people
(your "neighbors"). These unfortunate situations or
circumstances insistently call for the demonstration of sympathy,
compassion, and willingness to offer some help. The other important
thing about this maxim is that the word 'neighbor' in the
maxim does not necessarily refer to the person next door or in
one's community but to *any* other person in your
community and beyond: even in far-off places.
The basic or ultimate thrust of the maxim is that you should not
show insensitivity to people who are in pitiable situations, for one
day you might be in that situation *too* and would need the help
of others: thus, your neighbor's situation is potentially your
situation; every other person is basically you. Social morality thus
demands mutual reciprocity as a moral mandate in a world in which human
beings can easily be overcome--even overwhelmed--by the
contingencies of the human condition and existence. Altruism is, thus,
a fundamental moral value.
Insensitivity to the needs and hardships or suffering situations of
others is repudiated in Akan morality, as it is, indeed, repudiated in
the moralities of all human cultures. In Akan moral thought and
practice, a maxim that rebukes the lack of feeling for others is put
thus:
>
> When it sticks into your neighbor's flesh,
> it is as if it stuck into a piece of wood.
>
> (*etua wo yonko ho a, etua dua mu*)
>
"Sticking into your neighbor's flesh (or, body)" is
another way of referring to the suffering, misfortune, hardship, or
pain of another person. When something, such as a needle, sticks into
your own flesh or body, you feel the pain. If it stuck into another
person's--your neighbor's--flesh, you would not directly
feel the pain. Even so, you should not feel insensitive to the pain or
suffering of that person and shrug off your moral shoulders, for the
other person's body is certainly *not* a piece of wood that
cannot feel pain.
The foregoing maxims and many others similar to them in content and
purpose all underline a social morality. There are many African
folktales whose conclusions are intended to affirm the values of social
morality--the kind of morality that is centered on human
relations. The social character of morality requires that the
individual member of the society, ever mindful of his interests, adjust
those interests to the interests and needs of others. This requires him
to give due consideration to the interests and welfare of others.
Necessarily embedded in a human community, the individual person has a
*dual* moral responsibility: for him or herself as an individual
and for others as co-members of the community with whom she shares
certain basic needs and interests.
## 9. The Ethics of Duty, Not of Rights
African ethics, is a humanitarian ethics, the kind of ethics that
places a great deal of emphasis on human welfare. The concern for
human welfare may be said to constitute the hub of the African
axiological wheel. This orientation of African ethics takes its
impulse, undoubtedly, from the humanistic outlook that characterizes
traditional African life and thought. Humanism--the doctrine that
sees human needs and interests as fundamental--thus constitutes
the foundation of African ethics (see section 5 above).
Now, the natural sociality or relationality of the human being that
would prescribe social ethic (see preceding section) would also
prescribe the ethic of duty (or, responsibility). The natural
relationality of the individual immediately involves one in some social
and moral roles in the form of obligations, commitments, and duties
(or, responsibilities) to other members of his or her community which
the individual must fulfill. Social or community life itself, a robust
feature of the African communitarian society, mandates a morality that
clearly is weighted on duty to others and to the community; it
constitutes the foundation for moral responsibilities and
obligations.
There appears to be a conceptual tie--perhaps also a practical
tie--between the *social ethic* prescribed by the communitarian
ethos and the *ethic of duty* mandated by the same ethos.
A morality of duty is one that requires each individual to
demonstrate concern for the interests of others. The ethical values of
compassion, solidarity, reciprocity, cooperation, interdependence, and
social well-being, which are counted among the principles of the
communitarian morality, primarily impose duties on the individual with
respect to the community and its members. All these considerations
elevate the notion of duties to a status similar to that given to the
notion of rights in Western ethics. African ethics does not give
short-shrift to rights as such; nevertheless, it does not give
obsessional or blinkered emphasis on rights. In this morality duties
trump rights, not the other way around, as it is in the moral systems
of Western societies. The attitude to, or performance of, duties is
induced by a consciousness of needs rather than of rights. In other
words, people fulfill--and ought to fulfill--duties to others not
because of the rights of these others, but because of their needs and
welfare
It would be clear from the foregoing discussion that African ethics
takes a stand that would be against what are referred to as acts of
supererogation. A supererogatory act is defined as an act that is said
to be 'beyond the call of duty'; it is an act that is said
to be over and above what a person is required to do as a moral agent.
In much of the literature on Western moral philosophy, an act of
supererogation is held *not* as a strictly moral duty. Thus, it
is neither morally obligatory nor forbidden; therefore, it is not
wrong, so the argument concludes, to omit or neglect performing it,
even though it is good and commendable by virtue of its value and
consequences on others if it is performed. It is supposed to be a
meritorious act and yet optional, one that may be performed if the
spirit moves you, but need not be performed. Thus, a distinction is
made in Western literature between moral duty and a supererogatory act,
the former considered obligatory and moral duty 'proper'
and the latter nonobligatory and optional, not being a
'proper' moral duty.
Supererogationism is clearly an oxymoron: for, why should an act
that is good and morally commendable and will conduce to the well-being
of another person (or, other persons) fail to exact obligation or
compel performance? We would normally think that there is a moral
connection between 'good' and 'ought', and that
therefore a morally good act ought to be performed: if an act is
morally good, then it ought to be performed.
African morality, which is humanitarian, social, and duty-oriented
rather than rights-oriented morality, does not make a distinction
between a moral duty and a supererogatory duty--one that is beyond
the call of duty and so does not have to be performed. In the light of
our common humanity, it would not be appropriate--in fact it would
demean our humanity--to place limits to our moral duties or
responsibilities. Even though it is true that, as human beings, we are
limited in many ways and so are not capable of fulfilling our moral
duties to all human beings at all times as such, nevertheless, the
scope of our moral duties should not be circumscribed. African
humanitarian ethics would seek to collapse moral duty and moral
ideals--the latter being the basis of the so-called supererogatory
duty--into one capacious moral universe inhabited *both* by the
morality of duty 'proper', obligation, and justice
*and* the morality of love, virtue, compassion, benevolence, and
other "moral ideals". Such a capacious morality would make
no distinction between a morally obligatory act and a morally optional
act. It would insist that no act that is morally good in itself or that
will conduce to the well-being of some individual or group of
individuals should be considered morally optional, to be morally
shrugged off or unconscionably set aside, if we understand morality to
be something that serves (or, should) serve human needs. Thus, as the
second part of a previous quotation says,
>
>
> A native will give his best house and his evening meal to a
> guest, without the slightest thought that he is doing anything
> *extraordinary* (Dugald Campbell, section 6 above).
>
>
Thus, African ethics--an ethics that is weighted on duty, not on
rights--would, in principle, not consider moral duty of any kind
as extraordinary, optional, or supererogatory. The African humanitarian
ethic makes all people objects of moral concern, implying that our
moral sensitivities should be extended to all people, irrespective of
their cultures or societies.
## 10. Conclusion
African morality is founded on humanism, the doctrine that considers
human interests and welfare as basic to the thought and action of the
people. It is this doctrine as understood in African moral thought
that has given rise to the communitarian ethos of the African
society. For, ensuring the welfare and interests of each member of
society can hardly be accomplished outside the communitarian society.
The communitarian ethos is also borne of beliefs about the natural
sociality of the human being, expressed, for instance, in the Akan
maxim, previously referred to, that says that "when a human
being descends from the heavens, he descends into a human
town"(*onipa firi soro besi a, obesi onipa
kurom*). Social or community life is, thus, not optional to the
human being. Social life, which follows upon our natural sociality,
implicates the individual in a web of moral obligations, commitments,
and duties to be fulfilled in pursuit of the common good or the
general welfare.
Thus, African humanitarian ethics spawns social morality, the
morality of the common good, and the morality of duty that is so
comprehensive as to bring within its compass what are referred to as
moral ideals (such as love, virtue, compassion), which are considered
supererogatory in Western ethics. But central or basic
to the African morality is character, for the success of the moral life
is held to be a function of the quality of an individual's
personal life. A moral conception of personhood is held in African
ethics, the conception that there are certain basic moral norms and
ideals to which the conduct of the individual human being, if he is a
person, ought to conform. The recognition in the African ethical
traditions of all human beings as brothers by reason of our common
humanity is indeed a lofty moral ideal that must be cherished and made
a vital or robust feature of global ethics in our contemporary world.
It is a bulwark against developing bigoted attitudes toward peoples of
different cultures or skin colors who are, also, members of the
universal human family called race. |
african-sage | ## 1. Oruka's Project
The following two examples from this text illustrate the method and
purpose of Oruka's questioning. When asked what he thought of his own
(Luo) community's idea of communalism, Paul Mbuya Akoko responded as
follows:
>
> Now the sense in which we may justly say that the Luo in the
> traditional setting practiced communalism is not one in which people
> generously shared property or wealth. Their idea of communalism is, I
> think, of a co-operative nature. For example, where one person had
> cattle, everybody 'ipso facto' had cattle. For the owner
> of the cattle would distribute his cattle among people who did not
> have cattle [of their own] so that the less well-off people may take
> care of them...[but] never completely given away...The
> result is that everybody had cows to look after and so milk to drink.
> (Oruka, 1990: 141)
>
Another sage, Okemba Simiyu Chaungo from the Bukusu community,
responded to the question, "What is truth?" as follows:
>
> When something is true, it is just as you see it ... it is just
> what it is ... just like this bottle ... it is true that it
> is just a bottle... just what it is. Truth is good. Falsehood is
> bad. It is evil. He who says the truth is accepted by good people. A
> liar may have many followers ... but he is bad.
> [*Obwatieri* ... *bwatoto*. *Bwatoto nokhulola
> sindu ne siene sa tu ... nga inchpa yino olola ichupa ni yene sa
> tu*.] (*Sage Philosophy*, p. 111)
>
And in response to an Interlocutor, who asks "Why would people tell
lies?", he responded:
>
> So that they may eat... so that they may get empty prestige. They
> want to profit fraudulently. (*Sage Philosophy*, p. 111)
>
From these examples some of the distinguishing characteristics of Sage
Philosophy can be gleaned. First, they display the deeply personal
nature of the ideas, or opinions, that the sages expressed in response
to the questions. Akoko's insight derives from his individual
reflections on the practice of communalism to consider its
justification. Second, they provide evidence of abstract thought about
philosophic topics. Chaungo considers what it means for a proposition
to be true and expresses what turns out to be a correspondence theory
of truth -- according to which the proposition "This is a
bottle" is true if the object it refers to, this thing, is
indeed a bottle. By pointing out that some people choose deliberately
to be untruthful for unjust gain he also addresses the moral aspects
of truth.
Oruka's survey of sages aimed to counter three negative claims
regarding the philosophical status of indigenous African thought:
1. Unlike Greek sages who used reason, African sages do not engage in
philosophic thought.
2. African sages are part of an oral tradition, whereas philosophic
thought requires literacy.
3. African traditions encourage unanimity regarding beliefs and
values and discourage individual critical thought.
His reply to these claims has significantly shaped the discourse on
Sage Philosophy. In what follows the criteria he proposed to determine
what counts as Sage Philosophy will be considered in the light of his
critique of the Eurocentric bias against African philosophic thought
and the question of whether literacy is required.
## 2. The African Sage Tradition and Eurocentric Bias
First, Oruka was concerned about the picture created under colonialism
that, while the sayings of numerous Greek sages such as Thales,
Anaximander, Heraclitus, and other pre-Socratics, were regarded as
"philosophical," those of traditional African sages were
not. This bias arises out of the implicit belief that philosophy is
the privileged activity of certain races. He believed that this
unjustified belief had further led to the image of philosophy as the
restricted property of Greeks, or Europeans, and, even more
exclusively, the property of white males. Partly concerned with
exposing the falsehood of this Eurocentric attitude, he recognized
that what had raised the apparently simple sayings of the
pre-Socratics to the status of philosophy was the subsequent sustained
commentaries by later philosophers. He maintained that the ideas
expressed by indigenous African sages were no different from those by
the earlier Greeks. When recorded later in books, the sayings of Greek
sages came to be widely regarded as "philosophical," and
the people who produced them as "philosophers." Given such
a scenario, Oruka was led to wonder, why would the sayings of Akoko,
or those of Chaungo, for example, not be similarly regarded after they
are committed to writing by a professional philosopher?
Oruka supports his comparison of indigenous African sages with the
pre-Socratics by citing two methods that have contributed to the
growth of philosophy in the West, beginning with its Greek roots. One
direct method of using dialogues is exemplified in the early Platonic
works. Socrates asks primary questions upon which the exposition of
ideas by his interlocutor is based. Oruka viewed his own dialogues
with the sages as an example of this practice in the African context.
Socrates regarded himself as a "mid-wife" of sorts,
because he merely helped those with the knowledge to bring it out. He
brought out what was in each case really the property of his
interlocutors, not his own. Oruka meant his dialogues, in similar
fashion, to capture both this method and its outcome. He maintained
that the sages he and his disciples interviewed were the owners of
their own ideas. The Western-trained philosopher, he says,
"plays the role of philosophical provocation" (*Sage
Philosophy*, p. 47). The other method, exemplified in the later
Platonic works, involves indirect engagement with the sayings of the
sages through a commentary on their ideas -- derived from these
dialogues, or from general acquaintance with the sages' views. Oruka
believed that, by these two methods, the growth of African philosophy
can take place in a manner similar to the growth of Western
philosophy. Underlying Oruka's position was his hope that trained
philosophers, regardless of their origins, could take on the sages on
their claims in their commentaries and critiques as this is how
advancement and growth of knowledge partly takes place. This is to
say, in hindsight, that even in Oruka's own view the sayings of the
sages were not free of critique.
## 3. Literacy and The Oral Tradition in Sage Philosophy
The influence of colonial bias against unwritten thought was also
challenged by Oruka's project. By publishing his interviews with the
sages he aimed to counter the second negative claim regarding the
denigration of African thought, namely that "philosophy is and
can only be a 'written' enterprise; and so a tradition
without writing is incapabale of philosophy [and that any claim to the
contrary] ...is a non-scientific, mythological claim"
(*Sage Philosophy*, p.xv). He insisted that there are African
thinkers, not yet absorbed into the tradition of the written word,
whose memories are, in terms of consistency and organization, as good
as the information recorded in books (*Sage Philosophy*, pp.
49-50). Responding to adversaries, he cautioned that:
>
> to argue like the critics, not just of Sage philosophy but of African
> philosophy generally have done that Africa is having a late start in
> philosophy just because we have no written records of her past
> philosophical activities is, wrongfully, to limit the sources from
> which we could detect traces of such activities (*Sage
> Philosophy*, p. 50).
>
Peter Bodunrin was particularly critical of Oruka's method of
extracting Sage Philosophy. He argued that to show that there were
people, like the indigenous sages, who were capable of philosophical
thinking was one thing, but it was a completely different thing to
show that there were African philosophers who have engaged in
organized systematic reflections on the traditions of their people.
Regarding Bodunrin's first objection, Oruka's response, as already
indicated above, was that philosophers often work in response to other
ideas, whether they are the ideas of other philosophers, or popular
ideas in the philosopher's own setting. Oruka had a relatively longer
response to Bodunrin's second objection. In another essay popularly
associated with his name, Oruka identified four main trends to be
constitutive of African philosophy, namely (i) African
ethnophilosophy, (ii) African nationalist-ideological philosophy,
(iii) professional African philosophy, and of course, (iv) the African
Sage philosophy under consideration here. Not only do these trends
show different approaches that African philosophers have adopted to
unravel and systematically to expose the underlying principles on
which different departments of African life are based, they also
demonstrate that African philosophy is not limited or confined to the
academic institutions.
Indeed, many African philosophers look far beyond the traditional
philosophical texts for sources and subject matter of philosophical
reflection. For example, while engaging in subtle analytic
philosophical reflections, African philosophers incorporate with great
ease narratives from everyday lives and from literature into their
reflections of the philosophical implications of their cultural
events. Oruka was especially wary of the sub-group among professional
African philosophers whose position regarding African traditional
modes of thought was analogous to European bias in denying reason to
Africans in their traditional settings. It was this attitude,
according to Oruka, that amounted to a claim that Africans lacked a
tradition of organized systematic philosophical reflections on the
thoughts, beliefs, and practices of their own people. He thought that
this view was exemplified in its most eloquent and strongest form by
Peter Bodunrin. In his (Oruka's) own estimation, Bodunrin had
seriously underestimated the central point in the long tradition of
Western scholarship, popularized by the works of Levy-Bruhl,
that denied Africans not only the existence of organized systematic
philosophical reflection, but reason itself. Oruka thought that this
view was rather absurd, for no society of humans can live for any
reasonable amount of time, let alone making any advances in their own
ways of seeing and doing things, if they do not have reason, or if the
ideas and concepts upon which their cultures are built do not make
sense. If, on the other hand, critics of African Sage philosophy based
their refutation of the possibility of sage philosophy on the lack of
written philosophical treatises, Oruka countered such a position by
arguing that to exist as a philosopher it is not necessary that one's
thoughts must be written, or that they must progress -- meaning
that they must be commented on or even be available to future
generations. While systematicity is important to the structure and
consistency of good thinking, neither it nor preservation of thought
necessarily requires literacy. Preservation in particular, he thought,
was done selectively by generations for divers emerging reasons and
circumstances, and so was not, in and of itself, the measure of the
philosophical quality of someone's thoughts. For just as thoughts can
be expressed either in writing, or as unwritten oral reflections,
e.g., sayings and argumentations of sages, so they may be preserved
for a long time by sages, or quickly forgotten and cast into
historically insignificant bits of a community's past, only to be
remembered by the few whom they touched in some special way.
Oruka's position, as is also argued forcefully by Kwasi Wiredu,
another African philosopher and Oruka's contemporary, is that there is
no harm in African philosophers' creative fusion of influences from
other traditions into their critical evaluations of African beliefs
and practices in different fields ("The Ghanaian Tradition of
Philosophy" in *Person and Community*, p. 2). Such a fusion is
part of bringing into focus the interplay between philosophy and
practice. Oruka believed, as he explains in *Trends in Contemporary
African Philosophy* (pp. 17-18), that this is precisely what Kwame
Nkrumah (1964), Leopold S. Senghor (1962), and Julius K.
Nyerere (1968, 1968a), for example, had done in forming their
political-philosophical positions (what Oruka calls "ideological
trends"), all with different results.
## 4. Ethnophilosophy, Unanimity and African Critical Thought
Although it had been used previously by other writers, the term
"ethnophilosophy" acquired its notoriety in the work of
the Beninois philosopher Paulin Hountondji (1970, 1983). Perhaps
unaware that the term had been used earlier, Hountondji criticized the
Belgian missionary, Placide Tempels' book, *Bantu Philosophy*
(first French ed. 1945, and Eng. tr. 1959), as well as his disciples,
among them the French philosopher and ethnographer Marcel Griaule, the
Rwandais philosopher Alexis Kagame, and the Kenyan theologian John
Mbiti, for casting African philosophy as an anonymous system of
thought, without individual thinkers to claim or account for it. By
the end of the 1960s, the positive reception in Anglophone Africa, not
only of Tempels' Bantu Philosophy, but also John Mbiti's *African
Religions and Philosophy* (1969) and Marcel Griaule's
*Conversations with Ogotemmeli* that had recently been
translated into English (1965), coincided with the rising tides of
political and cultural nationalism throughout the continent.
The third negative claim Oruka aimed to challenge pertains to the
philosophical status of indigenous African thought. Ethnophilosophy
had falsely popularized the view that traditional Africa was a place
of philosophical unanimity and that African traditions encouraged
unanimity regarding beliefs and values. If this were true it would
allow no room for individual thinkers like, say, Socrates or
Descartes, with their own independent views on such matters. Oruka was
concerned that African intellectuals were drawn into this false
assumption regarding the intellectual inclination of African people,
maintaining the belief that critique is absent from indigenous African
thought. This situation was worsened by the new political movements of
postindependence African nations where one-party political systems
sprang up. By outlawing opposition politics as being both unAfrican
and antinationalist, political leaders often appealed to this view of
unanimity. The Sage Philosophy project objected to this claim
regarding unanimity in Africa, which Oruka regarded as absurd, by
presenting empirical evidence of the diversity of thought among
indigenous thinkers. Oruka insisted that, while rulers everywhere will
always crave unanimity, thinkers thrive in dialogue and diversity of
opinion. He pointed out that Sage philosophy was about thinkers, not
rulers.
Oruka's desire to distinguish Sage philosophy from ethnophilosophy was
also in response to another false view, partly created by
ethnophilosophy, that indigenous African thought is anonymous. An
important charge against ethnophilosophy has been that, by simply
presenting the teachings of African beliefs in the allegorical modes,
the impression is created that indigenous African modes of thought are
deeply grounded in their mythical representations of reality, thus
leaving the philosophic ideas largely unexplained. With this in mind,
Oruka's project aimed to counter two types of false perception of
indigenous African thought. First, he separated the myths from the
clearly thought out and logically valid philosophical ideas of
indigenous individual thinkers to make clear what he frequently
referred to as the "anthropological fogs" (*Sage
Philosophy*, pp. xxi-xxix). Secondly, he contested the idea that a
qualitative mental leap from myth is required for Africans to embrace
philosophical thought. Such a view had been expressed by the Belgian
philosopher Franz Crahay in a widely read article, "Le
decollage conceptuel: conditions d'une philosophie
bantoue" (1965). Although he was critical of ethnophilosophy,
Hountondji was the first philosopher to distance himself from Crahay's
position, arguing that local knowledge systems were already separate
from myths, as no humans can live on myths. Moral principles, for
example, would have to be abstract in character to be applicable in
general terms beyond one person (Hountondji 1970). According to Wiredu
(1996: 182ff), such independent and critical thinking was available in
varying forms in Akan communities and was the basis of frequently
protracted disputations among elders in search of a consensus
regarding matters that required negotiations. Thus, contrary to the
view that knowledge at the communal level was anonymous, Wiredu argues
that it is precisely in regard to the importance of consensus on
matters of common good that disputation and careful navigation through
different opinions was not just considered to be crucial, but was put
on transparent display until some form of consensus was attained. In
other words, consensus was not imposed, but relentlessly pursued. Such
important matters like just claims to different kinds of rights were
not adjudicated without the input of those members of community who
were well regarded for their independent opinions.
Another point that Oruka makes against the perception of unanimity in
African traditional thought can be found in the expressions of
thinkers whose ideas are grounded in critical analysis and evaluation
of everyday experiences in their communities. Another example of this,
besides such figures as Paulo Mbuya Akoko and others who Oruka
mentions and discusses in the book *Sage Philosophy* is the
famous Swahili poet, critic, and philosopher Shabaan bin Robert from
then Tanganyika, now Tanzania. Shabaan, famed as a pioneer in the
interface between the oral and the written traditions, has established
a unique legacy as an indigenous independent thinker, whose focus in
his written work was to theorize about metaphysical and social ideals.
About the former, Shabaan theorizes in his work entitled *Utubora
Mkulima* the attributes of ideal personhood by arguing strongly,
in a dialogical setting, that an ideal person is one whose moral
righteousness is aimed at being a perfect member of community, and
therefore his concerns for common good supersede individual interests
(pp. 26-28). Regarding social ideals, Shabaan argues in
*Kusadikika* that a good society is defined as one in which all
members are accorded their basic rights and treated with equality
regardless of gender, age, or social status (pp. 29-43). This makes
Shabaan Robert an example of a liberal thinker whose ideas bridge
between indigenous or pre-colonial social structures and values, and
the so-called modern society whose values were significantly
influenced by colonial occupations and interests, as well as new
economic, political, and moral values. In these senses, Shabaan Robert
thought and works complement those of other indigenous thinkers in
critiquing both indigenous and new modes of existence. To Oruka, these
are signs that indigeneity is not, as is widely but falsely thought,
synonymous with anonymity and stagnation in thought.
## 5. What counts as Sage Philosophy?
According to Oruka, Sage Philosophy is "the expressed thoughts
of wise men and women in any given community and is a way of thinking
and explaining the world that fluctuates between popular wisdom (well
known communal maxims, aphorisms and general common sense truths) and
didactic wisdom, an expounded wisdom and a rational thought of some
given individuals within a community" (*Sage Philosophy*,
p. 28). Oruka, however, had very definite ideas about who qualifies as
a philosophic sage and how such persons are to be distinguished from
other sages. When asked whether or not philosophy advances knowledge,
Barasa is quoted as saying: "Yes. Being a rational method of
inquiry into the real nature of things, philosophy is a means to
re-examine knowledge and belief" (*Sage Philosophy*, p.
150). The tendency to express dissatisfaction with the status quo
belief system of their communities is an important critical component
and a criterion Oruka used to identify sages as philosophical.
Dissatisfaction sometimes motivates the philosophic sage to advance
the knowledge that everyone has by subjecting it to scrutiny in order
to determine its validity and worth. While philosophic sages may still
share with others some customary practices and beliefs, or aspects of
them, unlike other members of their community, they emphasize rational
explanations and justifications of courses of action. They owe greater
loyalty to reason than to custom for its own sake. As a result, not
only are sages often a source of new knowledge, but they are also a
catalyst to change within their communities.
In the example cited above, Mbuya defines communalism in terms of a
morality that appeals to the welfare of others as a guide to action.
He indicates its goals, and limitations as a principle that aims at
minimizing socio-economic disparity between the haves and the
have-nots. On Oruka's view, not every member of society carries out
these kind of elaborations and conceptual clarifications of the
principles that underlie what the majority live at the pragmatic level
only as custom. While he recognizes that there are other indigenous
sages in African communities, he distinguishes these from philosophic
sages such as Mbuya and Chaungo, who are committed to critical inquiry
and to the rational grounding of values and beliefs. Other indigenous
sages, who may be wise in some sense, but not critically oriented, act
as repositories of the statements of the beliefs of their communities,
which they have learned and can repeat, or teach, to others exactly as
they are supposed to be remembered.
This lattter group is exemplified by Ogotemmeli, a sage from the
Dogon community in present-day Mali. His teachings were transcribed
and commented on by the French philosopher and ethnographer Marcel
Griaule in the now classic text, *Conversations with
Ogotemmeli: Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas* (Eng. tr.
1965), one of the outstanding texts of indigenous African thought.
Ogotemmeli presents the commonly shared knowledge of the Dogon
community, including not only their very complex theories about the
origin of the universe and the subsequent development of material and
non-material entities in it, but also a startling astronomical system
that points to the Dogon's pre-telescopic knowledge of the Sirius (A
and B) and their paths across the skies. Yet, despite this pioneer
scientific and mathematical genius, at no time throughout the entire
presentation does one encounter Ogotemmeli as a thinker, only as
the representative and narrator of the collective memory of his
community. His own voice is submerged into a communal mode of
expression. According to Oruka, the absence of any personal direct
reflections on the issues at hand qualifies Ogotemmeli only as a
folk sage. A folk sage is a highly intelligent and good narrator of
traditionally imposed beliefs and myths. He, or she, may explain such
beliefs and values with great detail and may even expound on the
relation between the mythical representations and the lessons in and
for society that they are intended to illustrate. But while the folk
sage hardly veers off the narrative, by contrast, a philosophic sage
is a person "of traditional African culture, capable of the
critical, second-order type of thinking about the various problems of
human life and nature; persons, that is, who subject beliefs that are
traditionally taken for granted to independent rational reexamination
and who are inclined to accept or reject such beliefs on the authority
of reason rather than on the basis of a communal or religious
consensus" (*Sage Philosophy*, pp. 5-6).
The onisegun, deliberately kept anonymous by Hallen and Sodipo for
reasons of privacy, and who expound and elucidate the traditional
thought of the Yoruba, are certainly wise and very knowledgeable
people. On Oruka's criteria for philosophic sagacity, however, they
too are only folk sages. They are like Ogotemmeli, whose
presentation, however complex and amazing in details, is exactly what
every wise Dogon person is expected to know (*Sage Philosophy*,
pp. 9-10). Oruka distinguishes between folk and philosophic
sages, in terms of those who pursue the rational grounding of beliefs
and values, as opposed to those who merely narrate them as they appear
in their commuity's belief systems.
W. V. O. Quine's indeterminacy thesis of radical translation presents
a major difficulty for the explanations of the conceptual content and
meaning of terms in Yoruba language provided by the onisegun to Hallen
and Sodipo. Quine attacked the concept of universal propositions and
meanings that are frequently assumed by translators to exist across
all languages. This draws in question the practice of anthropologists
studying African belief systems. Following Quine, Hallen argues that
"Given the cumulative effects of the indeterminacy of
translation between radically different languagaes, an alternative
explanation for such inconsistencies could be that translators have
recourse to contradiction because they, perhaps unwittingly, have not
been able to arrive at a determinate or precise translation"
(*A Short History of African Philosophy*, pp. 37-8).
Failing to find in non-Western modes of thought precise translations
of comparable rational expressions in their own languages,
anthropologists hastened to conclude that the problem must lie with
the non-Western modes of thought which appear to lack ways of
accommodating rational expressions. Yet, Hallen and Sodipo's own
conversations with the Yoruba sages illustrate what happens when one
tries to translate, among others, the English term "know"
into Yoruba. The outcome of their comparative analyses shows that our
conceptual assumptions about reality are often tied to the natural
languages we speak. To be fair, Hallen's and Sodipo's work is not a
simple description of what the onisegun said. Rather, they attempt to
tease out what was intended conceptually in a language translated as
faithfully as possible into propositions which they contrast with
comparable ones in English. Nonetheless, Oruka maintained that any
such use of Western philosophical language to analyze indigenous
African thought leads to the separation "between an insider in
traditional African philosophy and the outsider analyzing or
describing this philosophy in a language of Western thought. Given
this, the two cannot really meaningfully express their thought to each
other and it would be absurd to find that one can be an expert in the
thought of the other" (*Sage Philosophy*, p. 15).
## Conclusion
It is not entirely clear what Oruka believed ought to be the
relationship between the indigenous philosophic sage and his or her
Western-trained counterpart. What is clear from his remarks is that
the use of Western philosophers, like Quine or Wittgenstein, for
example, as tools for analyzing the conceptual content of African
modes of thought has allowed some scholars to champion "what
they term 'African philosophy' by using terminology given
in 'Western philosophy'. None, so far, has given an
account of what is to be treated as the language of African
philosophy" (*Sage Philosophy*, p. 15). On this point at
least, Oruka seems to position himself away from philosophers such as
Appiah, Wiredu, and Gyekye. He understood the work of professional
philosophers to be distinct from that of the philosophic sages and
expressed the wish that they could remain so, as a way of preserving
traditions. This idea appears to be implied by his regret that
"The tragedy for man is that the Western intellectual elite has,
over the years, successfully imposed its own culture and philosophy
over the masses. So, British philosophy, for example, is taken to be
the texts of Lockes, Humes, Bacons, Russels, etc." (*Sage
Philosophy*, p. 16). Oruka's concern with the preservation of
indigenous thought suggests that he desired to keep the professional
school of philosophers separate from that of the philosophic sages to
ensure the preservation of the intellectual integrity, not only of the
sages, but of the African heritage as a whole. He was concerned that
the language of African professional philosophers was too dependent on
the Western conceptual lexicon and that its unchecked imposition on
indigenous conceptual schemes might finally contribute to the demise
of the latter.
Among African philosophers, Kwasi Wiredu is particularly sympathetic
to Oruka's concerns. Writing on the need for conceptual decolonization
in African philosophy, Wiredu claims that such a need would mean both
"avoiding or reversing through a critical conceptual
self-awareness the unexamined assimilation in our thought (that is, in
the thought of contemporary African philosophers) of the conceptual
frameworks embedded in the foreign philosophical traditions that have
had impact on African life and thought...[and] exploiting as much
as is judicious the resources of our own indigenous conceptual schemes
in our philosophical meditations on even the most technical problems
of contemporary philosophy" (*Cultural Universals and
Particulars*, p. 136). At the same time, Wiredu agrees with other
philosophers like Appiah and Gyekye in insisting that while the
beliefs, proverbs, and customs of African cultures should be included
in the philosophical reflections of the professional, such cultural
elements of folk knowledge also must be subjected to critical analysis
and evaluation because, "There is no pretense...that
recourse to the African vernacular must result in instantaneous
philosophic revelation" (*Cultural Universals and
Particulars*, p. 138).
Oruka believed that professional African philosophers could interact
with their sagacious counterparts, provided there was sufficient room
for each to flourish separately. This idea suggests that he desired to
expand the location of legitimate philosophical activity beyond the
institutional confines of the academy, which he considered to be
intricately connected to the colonial legacy. It is in this regard
that the idea of African Sage philosophy has provided an important
intervention in the development of contemporary African philosophy,
addressing many crucial issues African philosophers continue to face
in the wider context of postcolonial cultural inquiry, of which
philosophy is only a part. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in *A
Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of a Vanishing
Present* (1999) has suggested that the self-awareness stage in
postcolonial theory is largely over and that the formerly colonized
cultures are settling down to utilizing their respective cultural
reservoirs without significant attention to the need to reclaim their
indigenous voices, and without minimizing the need for a continued and
sustained awareness of the ever-present Eurocentric impositions. This
orientation is displayed, for example, in Wiredu's independent, but
comparative, analyses of Western and African concepts, whose
widely-debated epistemological position that "truth is nothing
but opinion," hinges on the contrast between the objectivist
implications of the claim "I know that" in English and the
non-objectivist implications in the Akan language.
Along with Wiredu, Hallen and Sodipo also hold that very complex
philosophical views are already signaled by many sayings in African
languages, and wait to be teased out through careful analysis and
interpretation. Although Oruka's idea of the sages as philosophically
savvy in their own languages raises methodical questions as to whether
sage philosophy is the property of the professional philosopher, or of
the indigenous wise person, and only teased out through the prompting
of a professional philosopher, Hallen, Sodipo and Wiredu agree with
his insistence that the distinguishing marks of African philosophy
emerge precisely out of analytical involvement by Western-trained
philosophers, who raise questions regarding the conceptual
underpinnings of indigenous beliefs, values, and languages, and
critically examine their meaning and implications. They propose, on
this basis, to accommodate both indigenous sages, and Western-trained
professionals, as philosophers. |
afterlife | ## 1. Survival and its Alternatives
In ancient Western philosophy, Plato affirmed both a pre-natal life of
the soul and the soul's continued life after the death of the
body. In Plato's *Phaedo*, Socrates presents reasons why
a philosopher should even welcome death (albeit not permitting or
encouraging suicide), because of its emancipation of the souls of
those who are good in this life to a great afterlife. In the work of
Epictetus, on the other hand, death is conceived of as a
person's ceasing to be. Epictetus does not argue that we should
welcome death but he holds that we should not fear death because we
will not exist after death. The philosophical assessment of the truth
of such matters continues on to the present, as does debate on the
implications of whether we may survive death. Why?
There are many reasons why there should be ongoing attention as to
whether Plato or Epictetus--or any other philosopher who offers a
different account about the reality or illusion of an
afterlife--is right. One reason is that the values we have in the
here and now have a bearing on what we may or should hope for in terms
of the future. While some philosophers believe that what happens in
the future has enormous consequences for life's meaning now,
other philosophers have so focused on the importance of the present
that questions about the future of humanity in this life, and the
possible good or ill of an afterlife for individuals, is of little
importance. Consider two philosophers who take the latter position,
Peter Singer and Erik Wielenberg.
Singer asks us to consider a case when some good act is done and its
goodness does not depend upon the future. Imagine a village where
there is great need and that need is met with aid. Singer claims that
the goodness of such an act should not depend on the long term; one
can place to one side speculation about what might happen a thousand
years later.
>
>
> Suppose that we become involved in a project to help a small community
> in a developing country to become free of debt and self-sufficient in
> food. The project is an outstanding success, and the villagers are
> healthier, happier, better educated, and economically secure and have
> fewer children. Now someone might say "what good have you done?
> In a thousand years people will all be dead, and their children and
> grandchildren as well, and nothing that you have done will make any
> difference". (Singer 1993: 274)
>
>
>
Singer responds:
>
>
> We should not, however, think of our efforts as wasted unless they
> endure forever, or even for a very long time. (1993: 274)
>
>
>
His solution is to think of the universe in four-dimensional terms;
according to this philosophy of time, all times are equally real. On
this view, it is always the case that in the year 2020, the lives of
the villagers are made better; they are happy, healthy, and well
educated in 2020.
Erik Wielenberg does not adopt Singer's recourse to the
philosophy of time but, like Singer, his counsel is that we should not
think (or need not think) in terms of the big picture or the future in
assessing the meaning and urgency of our current projects
>
>
> Isn't it better that the Nazi Holocaust ended when it did rather
> than in, say, 1970--regardless of what the world will be like a
> million years from now? I can remember occasions in junior high gym
> class when a basketball or volleyball game became particularly heated
> and adolescent tempers flared. Our gym teacher sometimes attempted to
> calm us down with such rhetorical questions as, "Ten years from
> now, will any of you care who won this game?" It always struck
> me that a reasonable response to such a query would be, "Does it
> really matter now whether any of us will care in ten years?" In
> much the same vein, Thomas Nagel suggests, "it does not matter
> now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter".
> (2013: 345)
>
>
>
A possible response is that while there is some wisdom in
Singer's and Wielenberg's positions, they should not
dissuade us from appreciating that the natural trajectory of the love
of people and wisdom (or philosophy) includes concern for "the
big picture". If Singer truly cares about the villagers,
shouldn't he hope that they survive to enjoy the fruits of the
investments that have been made? Or, putting this in four-dimensional
time terms; shouldn't he wish that they are happy in 2030 and
2040...? Surely those providing aid are not (and should not be)
indifferent about the future. Granted, if the investment was made and
then a meteor struck the village, destroying all life (or if in 2030
the meteor is destroying the village), we might well think the
investment was still wise, good and noble (especially if there were no
predictions of a meteor strike). However, there would be something
deeply disturbing if one of the aid-givers announced upon leaving the
village:
>
>
> No matter what happens, no matter whether you all are struck by a
> massive plague in an hour and all die a horrible death or whether a
> thousand years from now your society will be condemned as deserving of
> nothing but contempt, what we have done today is our only concern and
> the value of our act is not diminished regardless of what awaits you!
>
>
>
>
We suggest that this attitude would be bizarre. Returning to the
question of the afterlife, if you think that some good afterlife is
possible, one should hope for the long-term flourishing of the
villagers in both this life and the next rather than focusing only on
the value of their present position. And if you do have such a hope,
why hope that the lives of everyone will come to an end at a specific
time, say in a thousand years? Similarly, if you believe that it is
likely or even possible that there is an afterlife where there is
great ongoing harm, should we not hope that this not be the case for
the villagers?
Wielenberg's comments on the Holocaust are puzzling. Of course,
no one except a murderous, psychopathic Nazi would hope the Holocaust
lasted longer or that it involved the death of even one more
individual. But what one hopes will take place a million years from
now is not irrelevant ethically or in terms of values. Consider two
futures: in one, the Jews survive a million years from now and are
thriving. In another, imagine that a million years from now there is a
revival of the Nazi party. The Jews have colonized Mars and Nazi
genocidal units are dispatched to treat Jewish settlements the way the
Nazis treated the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. This time, the Nazis succeed
in annihilating every last Jew. Surely, it would be deeply perverse to
hope for the second future. It would also be perverse to be
indifferent now about whether the second will occur. We cannot imagine
that a person of integrity would say they are utterly indifferent
about whether all Jews will be annihilated by Nazis in the future, be
it a million years, ten million, twenty, or....
Nagel's comment (cited by Wielenberg) is worthy of note. His
comment suggests that what we do now will (or may) not matter a
million years from now, but there is an important distinction between
whether some event matters (in the sense that it is valuable; it is
good that the event occurred) and whether persons who live in the
future are aware of the event and care about it. Arguably, it will
always be the case that the Holocaust should not have happened,
regardless of whether any human being remembers it a hundred (or a
thousand or a million) years from now. Moreover, those of us who are
horrified about this genocide should hope that remembering it and
passing on a record of it has no statute of limitation. In keeping
with our earlier thought experiment, imagine two futures: a million
years from now, persons recall the Holocaust and continue to lament
this mass genocide; in a different future imagine persons are all
Nazis and they only recall the Holocaust as a failure to succeed in
killing all Jews, something they were only able to achieve in the year
1,002,014.
So, one reason why the topic of an afterlife is of historical and
contemporary interest is because our values about present persons,
things, and events have a bearing on the future, including the
possibility of a future for individuals after their death. If we know
that it is impossible for individual persons to survive biological
death, speculation on an afterlife we might expect or hope for would
be pointless (unless it serves some purpose in terms of fiction), but
it would not be pointless to reflect on whether the impossibility of
an afterlife should dominate our values in this life. What are the
implications for our lives now if we take seriously the idea that at
death we will pass into oblivion? Some philosophers adopt a strategy
like Singer's and Wielenberg's about our individual lives.
In *Religion Without God* Ronald Dworkin is candid about
"what we desperately dread", namely "the total,
obliterating, itself unimaginable, snuffing out of everything"
(2013: 150). While he thinks some kind of individual afterlife may be
possible (even given atheistic naturalism) he does propose a
"kind of immortality" which is "the only kind we
have any business wanting" (Dworkin 2013: 159).
>
>
> When you do something smaller well--play a tune or a part or a
> hand, throw a curve or a compliment, make a chair or a sonnet or
> love--your satisfaction is complete in itself. Those are
> achievements within life. Why can't a life also be an
> achievement complete in itself, with its own value in the art in
> living it displays? (Dworkin 2013: 158)
>
>
>
Who would deny that such acts can be great achievements? If
individual survival of death is impossible, then Dworkin is right to
cast aside (as he does) the comedian Woody Allen's aspiration to
live on forever, not in his work, but in his apartment. But do we know
that an individual afterlife is impossible? Later in this entry, we
suggest that ruling out an afterlife as impossible is philosophically
tenuous. Moreover, we suggest that the goods within the life that
Dworkin describes invite us to consider whether human lives may be
richer still if they do not end in oblivion and instead death marks a
transition to a form of afterlife that some of the world religions
envision. For an interesting secular case that many of our values in
the present moment are tied to expectations of the future, see
Scheffler 2016 (N.B. Scheffler is concerned with future events in this
life rather than an individual's life after their death.) For
more recent reflection on the relevance of an afterlife for the
meaning of life now, see Mawson 2019 and 2020.
So, we suggest that the topic of an afterlife is warranted for at
least three reasons: it is important if you love persons in this life
and hope for their enduring flourishing (or hope they are not
annihilated or meet a worse fate); it is important to think about the
implications of there not being an afterlife (or there being one) in
terms of how to understand what is important to you now; and it is
important to consider for historical reasons: speculation and beliefs
about life after death have existed through much of human history.
In most cultures, there is evidence of a belief in some sort of
personal afterlife, in which the same individual that lived and died
nevertheless persists and continues to have new experiences. There are
alternatives, however. The ancient Greeks are noted for having placed
a high premium on "survival" in the memory and honor of
the community--a practice reflected in our reference to deceased
celebrities as (for example) "the immortal Babe Ruth".
(Strictly speaking, this for the Greeks was not a replacement for a
personal afterlife, but rather a supplement to what was conceived as a
rather colorless and unrewarding existence in Hades.) Such a hope, it
would seem, provides a major consolation only if one is optimistic
concerning the persistence and continued memory of the community, as
well as the accuracy and justice of their judgments. An interesting
variant of this form of immorality is found in process theology, with
its promise of "objective immortality" in the mind of God,
who neither forgets nor misjudges the lives he remembers (Hartshorne
1962: 262). Hindu and Buddhist traditions include a belief in
reincarnation. Hindu philosophical tradition gives more credence to
the enduring of individuals through successive rebirths and deaths
than does Buddhist philosophical tradition see Knine 2010). In
Buddhist philosophy, the ongoing task is to produce a sufficient
consciousness of the self for there to be reincarnation, while
simultaneously securing the understanding that the individual self is
not (in the end) a substantial, concrete thing, but a delusion that
will dissolve or become liberated into Nirvana (see Nattier 2010).
Other entries in this encyclopedia address themes in Hindu and
Buddhist philosophy (see, e.g., the entry on
mind in Indian Buddhist philosophy),
so we will forego a comparative study here of
competing religious portraits of an afterlife. For two immensely
valuable resources for reflection on the afterlife from diverse
religious and philosophical perspectives, see *The Palgrave Handbook of
the Afterlife* (Nagasawa & Matheson eds. 2017) and *The
Oxford Handbook to the Eschaton* (Walls ed. 2010). A fascinating
synthesis of different religious portraits of an afterlife is
developed in Hick 1976. We also note, but do
not comment on, an important topic in Christian philosophical theology
concerning universalism, the belief that, eventually, all persons will
be saved (see Parry and Partridge 2003).
Our focus for much of the rest of this
entry is on the possibility and the reasonability of believing there
is an afterlife for individual persons, though we will offer some
observations along the way about the kinds of afterlife that are
possible, given different metaphysical assumptions. As for the
philosophers like Kierkegaard and Becker, cited earlier, who castigate
those of us who ignore our mortality, we suggest that sometimes the
contemplation of mortality can be disabling and distract us from
seeking immediate goods (such as those Dworkin highlights) or
relieving suffering. It would not be admirable for the aid workers in
Singer's example to pause in their work in order to hold
death-and-dying seminars. However, while there might be nothing wrong
in living without wrestling with mortality, there are sufficient good
reasons why the topics of the nature of death and the existence (or
non-existence) of an afterlife are philosophically interesting and
deserving of attention.
As we turn to the question of whether it is possible for persons to
survive death, it is natural to pursue an answer in light of the
philosophy of human persons. The next section considers survival from
the standpoint of mind-body dualism.
## 2. The Possibility of Survival--Dualism
At first, it seems obvious that dualism is a
"survival-friendly" perspective. If we are nothing more
than our bodies, it seems that if death destroys our bodies, we are
destroyed and there is nothing left of us as persons--though
parts of our bodies and the particles that make it up will be
scattered and perhaps (temporarily) come to be part of the bodies of
other living organisms. If, however, we are nonphysical (or
immaterial) minds or souls or persons who are embodied, then even the
complete annihilation of our physical bodies does not entail our
annihilation as persons. In fact, one of several arguments for dualism
is based on the conceivability of our existing without our bodies. If
dualism is true, however, it does not necessarily follow that persons
will survive the death of their bodies. It may be that the functional
dependence of ourselves on our bodies is so essential that we only
come into existence as embodied persons when our bodies reach a
certain formation and constitution and then we cease to be when that
formation and constitution is destroyed. But dualism at least opens
the door for claiming that our dependence on our bodies is contingent
(not necessary) or is essential only given the present laws of nature
(laws that may be violated by God). Dualist accounts of survival have
been seriously questioned, however.
Some philosophers argue that dualist accounts of survival fail because
we have no "criteria of identity" for disembodied persons.
When we make judgments about the identity of persons we are not making
judgments about the identity of souls. It has been argued that we
cannot make judgments about the identity of souls, because souls are
said to be imperceptible and non-spatial. And because of this, the
identity of a person over time cannot consist of the identity of the
person's soul over time. What we are able to identify--and
re-identify--is a person's body. But once the person has
died that body decomposes in a grave, and can't be the basis for
our identification of the person who is supposed to have survived
disembodied (Perry 1978: 6-18).
Hasker claims that this objection is confused, conflating two quite
distinct questions (Hasker 1989:208-09). One is a metaphysical
question: *What does it mean* to say of a person at one time
that she is numerically the same person at a later time? (Or, if you
like, it is a metaphysical question to ask: Is *x* at
*t*1 the same ph as *y* at
*t*2?) The second is an epistemological question:
*How can we tell* that a person at one time is numerically the
same person at a later time? (Or how can we tell that *x* at
*t*1 is the same ph as *y* at
*t*2?) The failure to distinguish these questions (a
failure which may be due in part to Wittgenstein) is the source of
serious philosophical confusions. The short answer to the first
question is that normally, when we know what a ph is, we know also
what it is for a ph at *t*1 to be the same
individual ph as a ph at *t*2. The abnormal
cases are those in which the ph at *t*1 has
undergone changes, and we are unsure whether those changes amount to
the destruction of the ph, or its replacement by another object, so
that the very same ph cannot possibly have persisted until
*t*2. The classic example is the ship of
Theseus,[1]
but there are many others. In such cases, our first recourse is to
seek to understand more accurately the concept of a ph--does
our concept of a ship, for example, allow for the progressive
replacement of *all* of the ship's parts, or not? But
sometimes there may be no determinate answer to this question. Our
concepts, after all, have been developed to deal with the sorts of
contingencies that normally arise, and it may sometimes be possible to
invent scenarios (or even to discover them empirically) that are not
provided for in our ordinary usage of a concept. In that case, we must
either provide for ourselves criteria to cover the novel situation
(thus modifying our previous concept of a ph), or else admit that
the question we were asking has no answer.
When we pose this question with regard to the persistence of
immaterial souls, what we find is that there is no problem that needs
a solution. We know what it is to be a subject of experience--to
be a being that thinks, and believes, and desires various things, for
example--and *prima facie* at least this does not entail
being embodied, let alone being embodied in the very same body over
time. If we think of the immaterial soul in Cartesian terms, there
simply isn't anything that can happen to such a soul (barring
its being no longer sustained in existence by God) that could bring it
about that the soul ceases to be; Cartesian souls are "naturally
immortal". Some other dualist views may not opt for natural
immortality of the soul, and if so they will need to say something
about the sorts of changes that a soul can and cannot sustain if it is
to remain in existence as the individual it was. But there is no
problem here for the general hypothesis of survival as an immaterial
soul (Hasker 1999: 206-11).
The metaphysical question having been disposed of, it becomes apparent
that the epistemological question is less significant than it may
appear to be at first. How do we re-identify immaterial souls over
time? Under normal circumstances, we do this by re-identifying the
embodiment of the soul, but this is not always possible: prior at
least to the advent of DNA testing, cases of disputed identity could
not always be settled by re-identifying bodies. Sometimes the
subject's memory of events is an important clue, though not of
course an infallible one. But can any tests establish the identity of
a completely non-embodied subject? Evidently, the question of the
identity of a non-embodied subject makes sense to some: those who
consult spiritualist mediums certainly understand the question,
whether they're conversing with dear departed Aunt Susie, or
merely with a manipulative practitioner. But again, once it is seen
that there is no metaphysical problem here, the epistemological
question becomes purely a practical one, requiring to be answered if
and when we have the need in practice to make such
identifications.
It is also worth noting that an objection against individual
continuity in dualism can be deployed against individual continuity in
materialism. One objection (that can be traced back to Kant) against
dualism is that the dualist is unable to account for the possibility
that the soul or immaterial self is constantly being replaced by
different individual selves, (with complete updated
"memories" and psychological qualities) thus creating the
*illusion* of personal continuity of the self-same subject. If
the self is immaterial, how would we notice the successive changes?
This may be called the problem of undetected (and perhaps
undetectable) soul-switching. This objection faces many obstacles, one
being that we would be unable to properly account for our experience
of successive states (we hear Big Ben ring three times by first
hearing it ring twice) if we are not the self-same individuals over
time. But more to the point, in terms of continuity, it is logically
possible that material bodies are switched every nanosecond. If the
switch (or annihilation and creation) were done in an instant (as
opposed to an interval) there would be no duration, no event that
could be measured by us that would reveal the switch. If undetectable
material object-switching is not a problem, then undetectable
soul-switching should not be a problem.
There may still be an objection to a dualist account of an afterlife
which holds that the idea of disembodied survival, even if not
logically incoherent, is one we don't have a sufficient grasp of
to allow it to count as a real possibility. What would such survival
amount to, anyway? Of course, if the souls of the departed are assumed
to be fitted out immediately with resurrection bodies, this difficulty
is greatly alleviated. But if the notion of an immaterial soul is to
do any philosophical work, we need to be able to think what it might
be like for such a soul to exist on its own, disembodied.
This challenge has been met in an interesting article by H.H. Price
(1953). Price spells out, in considerable detail, a notion of
disembodied souls existing in a "world" of something like
dream-images--images, however, that would be shared between a
number of more or less like-minded, and telepathically interacting,
souls. Included among these images would be images of one's own
body and of other people's bodies, so that one might, at first,
find it difficult to distinguish the image-world from the ordinary
physical world we presently inhabit. The conception is similar to
Berkeley's, except that Price does not invoke God directly as
the sustainer of regularities in the image-world. He does say,
however, that
>
>
> if we are theists, we shall hold that the laws of nature, in other
> worlds as in this one, are in the end dependent on the will of a
> Divine Creator. (1953: 390)
>
>
>
Someone who seriously considers Price's development of this idea
will be forced to admit that a sufficiently clear account of what
disembodied existence might be like has been proposed. (And for a more
recent work that argues that our actual world is idealist in the
tradition of Berkeley, see Foster 2007.) We need not follow Price (or
Foster) in (what appears to be) his supposition that this is a
plausible account of the actual state of persons who have died. It is
enough if he has provided an account that makes plain the
intelligibility of the notion of disembodied survival; the believer in
an afterlife can then say, "If not in just this way, then in
some other".
If there is reason to think that mind-body dualism is true, then there
is reason to think that a person's survival of death is
logically possible. But dualism has come upon hard times lately, and
is widely regarded as being discredited. Whether or not this is
warranted, dualism is undoubtedly subject to a number of objections,
though these are not necessarily more severe than the difficulties
that attend materialism (see the entry on
dualism,
also Koons and Bealer (eds.) 2010). For a positive case for dualism,
see Loose, Menuge, & Moreland 2018 (*The Blackwell Companion to
Substance Dualism*). In view of this let us consider also the
possibility of survival given some form of
materialism.[2]
## 3. Objections to the Possibility of Survival--Materialism
What are the prospects for survival on a materialistic view of
persons? One possible reason for thinking that materialism is not
hostile to the prospects of an afterlife is that, historically, the
standard view of the afterlife in the major theistic traditions is
that it involves the resurrection of bodies. While there is a
longstanding theological tradition that links belief in bodily
resurrection with dualism, many theologians and some philosophers
argue that dualism is a Platonic import into theistic traditions
(Cullman 1955), and that it is more in keeping with the Hebrew,
Christian, and Islamic stress on bodily life to understand the
afterlife in materialist rather than dualist terms.
The central logical problem for materialist versions of the
resurrection is personal identity. On dualist assumptions, personal
identity is preserved by the persistence of the soul between death and
resurrection. But for materialism, *nothing* bridges the
spatio-temporal gap between the body that perishes and that body
resurrected. Without such a bridge, how can the
"resurrected" person be identical with the person who
died? Considerable ingenuity has been expended in the search for an
answer to this question.
Without doubt, the most popular materialist option here is the
"re-creation" theory, according to which, at some time
after a person's death, God re-creates the person by creating a
body with the identical characteristics of the body that perished
(Hick 1983: 125-26). While this may seem rather ghastly in cases
of violent death, there is no reason why God could not correct any
injury and renew the body's youthfulness, and so on. But can
this re-creation preserve the necessity of the identity relation (the
fact that your persistence over time as you is strict and not
contingent)? If you are re-created, the "you" that comes
into existence in the re-creation cannot just contingently happen to
be you (as if someone else could do the job of being you). One reason
to suspect that the identity relationship is not preserved (and this
is not merely an epistemological matter) is that if God could create
one body that is exactly similar to the body that died, why not two or
more? It is not a satisfactory answer to this to say that God, being
good, would not (and perhaps could not) do such a thing. On the view
in question, what is necessary for resurrection is merely that
material particles be arranged in the correct fashion, and it is
hardly a necessary truth that only God could do this. (Perhaps a
really smart rogue angel could pull it off!) Nor is it feasible to
guarantee uniqueness by requiring that the identical particles present
in the dead body make up the resurrected body. On the one hand, the
body has no doubt shed, during its life, enough particles to make
several bodies, and it is hardly credible that the replacement of one
of the atoms present at the time of death with an atom shed by the
body a few seconds before death would mean we have a different body
(assuming other requirements to be satisfied). If, on the other hand,
only particles from the body at the time of death may be used, there
are the long-recognized problems about the availability of some of
these particles, which within a few years may have made their ways
into a large number of other human bodies. In any case there is a
hard-to-quell intuition that reassembly, no matter how expertly
completed, would at best produce a replica rather than the identical
body that perished. Peter van Inwagen offers a compelling example:
>
>
> Suppose a certain monastery claims to have in its possession a
> manuscript written in St. Augustine's own hand. And suppose the
> monks of this monastery further claim that this manuscript was burned
> by Arians in the year 457. It would immediately occur to us to ask how
> *this* manuscript, the one we can touch, could be the very
> manuscript that was burned in 457. Suppose their answer to this
> question is that God miraculously recreated Augustine's
> manuscript in 458. We should respond to this answer as follows: the
> deed it describes seems quite impossible, even as an accomplishment of
> omnipotence. God certainly might have created a perfect duplicate of
> the original manuscript, but it would not be *that* one; its
> earliest moment of existence would have been after Augustine's
> death; it would never have known the impress of his hand; it would not
> have been a part of the furniture of the world when he was alive; and
> so on. Now suppose our monks were to reply by simply asserting that
> the manuscript now in their possession *did* know the impress
> of Augustine's hand; that it *was* a part of the
> furniture of the world when the Saint was alive; that when God
> recreated or restored it, God (as an indispensable component of
> accomplishing this task) saw to it that the object God produced had
> all these properties. [para. break in 1978]
>
>
>
> We confess we should not know what to make of this. We should have to
> tell the monks that we did not see how what they believed could
> *possibly* be true. (van Inwagen 1992: 242-43)
>
>
>
Given these difficulties with the re-creation view, attempts have been
made to find other ways of accounting for resurrection in materialist
terms. One of the more interesting of these is Lynne Rudder
Baker's invocation of a constitution view of persons (Baker
2000, 2001, 2005). On this view persons are not identical with, but
are constituted by, their bodies. (She discusses the constitution
relation at considerable length; the details of this are not relevant
here.) What is distinctive of persons is a "first-person
perspective", roughly, the capacity to think of oneself *as
oneself*. This ability, which humans possess but other animals
seem to lack, is an essential component of moral responsibility as
well as of our ability to plan for the future and to perform many
other distinctively personal activities and functions. According to
Baker, the constitution view opens the way for a doctrine of
resurrection that avoids the difficulties of the re-creation theory.
Since persons are not identical with their bodies, it need not be
maintained that the resurrected body is the same identical body as the
body that died. What is required, however, is that the first-person
perspective of the resurrected body be the same: "if a
person's first-person perspective were extinguished, the person
would go out of existence" (2005: 385). So the first-person
perspective must somehow be transferred from the original body to the
resurrection body:
>
>
> person *P*1 at *t*1 is the same person as person *P*2
> at *t*2 if and only if *P*1 and *P*2 have the same
> first-person perspective. (2000: 132)
>
>
>
Baker holds that there is indeed a fact of the matter as to whether a
given future person has the same first-person perspective as I now
have, though there is no "informative" way of specifying
criteria of identity between the two.
Although Baker's account is intriguing, it seems problematic
when one takes a closer look at the idea of a first-person
perspective. Arguably, to have a first-person perspective, one has to
be a person. To have a first-person perspective is to have the
capacity to experience things; to act, think, speak, and so on with
intention. Such acts can in principle be qualitatively identical in
different thinkers and speakers; what individuates them is the
*person* who's doing the thinking or speaking. In other
words, intentional acts derive their identity from the person
performing them. But if this is true of the acts themselves it is also
true of the first-person perspectives, which are nothing but the
capacities of various persons to perform such acts. So to say that
*P*1 and *P*2 have the same first-person perspective is just
to say that *P*1 and *P*2 are the same person, and the
criterion reduces to a tautology. Regrettably, we have not yet been
given any help in understanding how a person, *with* her
first-person perspective, can occupy first one body and then
another.
Another proposal is offered by Kevin Corcoran (2005). Corcoran, like
Baker, is a constitution theorist, but, unlike Baker, he does not
believe persons can be transferred from one body to another. Corcoran
proposes that the body of a resurrected person does need to be
identical with the body of the person when he died. Corcoran advances
several proposals about how this might be possible. The one to be
noted here is what might be termed a "brute force"
solution:
>
>
> If God causes that body to exist once, why could God not cause it to
> exist a second time? ... But what makes the first stage of the
> post-gap body a different stage of the same body that perished is just
> that God makes it so. (2005: 172)
>
>
>
This comes extremely close to making identity over time a matter
of convention--divine convention, to be sure, but convention all
the same. (It is reminiscent of Jonathan Edwards' view that we
are justly punished for Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden because
God has decreed that the segment of Adam's life including the
sin is a segment of our own lives also.) It is difficult to measure
when an appeal to divine fiat is philosophically licit or illicit. The
challenge facing Corcoran's position may be similar to the one
Hick faces: how would God distinguish between re-creating the same
body that was destroyed earlier and creating an exact duplicate? For a
recent treatment of survival from a materialist perspective, see
Merrick 2022.
We have left until last van Inwagen's own proposal for a
materialist resurrection. For in spite of his criticisms of the common
view, van Inwagen is himself a Christian and a believer in the
resurrection. Here is his proposal:
>
>
> Perhaps at the moment of each man's death, God removes his
> corpse and replaces it with a simulacrum which is what is burned or
> rots. Or perhaps God is not quite so wholesale as this: perhaps He
> removes for "safekeeping" only the "core
> person"--the brain and central nervous system--or even
> some special part of it. These are details. (van Inwagen 1992:
> 245-46)
>
>
>
Continuity is maintained, then, through the preservation of the body
(or crucial body-part, such as the brain), and when the time comes for
resurrection to occur, God restores life to the body in question and
one's resurrected life can begin. In fairness, it should be
pointed out that van Inwagen originally advanced this proposal only in
order to demonstrate *the logical possibility* of a materialist
resurrection. In this he may well have succeeded. But as a proposal
that is supposed to represent the actual way in which God enables
humans to live again, the account has very little to recommend it. In
this view, God assumes the role of contemporary practitioners of
cryonics, preserving the dead body until such time as it is revived
and restored to health. But this is bad news for the actual
practitioners, since the "bodies" they are preserving are
mere simulacra and presumably incapable of being revived, even if all
the technology functions flawlessly. Furthermore, the feature of the
account that makes it unacceptable--that God "spirits
away" the crucial part of the person's body, leaving
behind a simulacrum--is essential to the view's success in
depicting a possible way of resurrection. In the Author's Note
appended in 1992, van Inwagen writes:
>
>
> If I were writing a paper on this topic today, I should not make the
> definite statement "I think this is the *only* way such a
> being could accomplish it". I am now inclined to think that
> there may well be other ways, ways that I am unable even to form an
> idea of because I lack the conceptual resources to do so. (1992:
> 246)
>
>
>
A more recent, and extremely ingenious, account of an afterlife from a
materialist point of view has been proposed by Dean Zimmerman. The
proposal goes roughly like this: at the instant of death, each
elementary particle in a person's body undergoes
"budding" in which it produces another particle of the
same kind. The newly produced particle takes its place in a
resurrection body, existing in a resurrection "space"; at
the same time the original particle remains in place as part of the
corpse. Since it is the resurrection body, and not the corpse, which
continues the life of the subject, the resurrection body rather than
the corpse is the "closest continuer" of the pre-death
body. It is, then, the resurrection body and not the corpse that is
the same body as the one that previously lived, and personal identity
is preserved. This proposal abandons strict (Leibnizian) identity in
favor of a "closest continuer" theory. It also shares an
interesting feature with van Inwagen's account: the remaining
corpse is *not the same body* as the one that previously lived.
(Zimmerman 1999 and 2010; Hasker 2011). For a critical analysis of
Zimmerman and van Inwagen thought experiments, see Taliaferro &
Knuths 2017 and Knuths 2018.
It has not been shown conclusively that an identity-preserving
materialist resurrection is impossible, but the difficulties, as
outlined above, are formidable (Hasker 1999: 211-31). Proponents
of an afterlife, it seems, would be better served if they were able to
espouse some variety of mind-body dualism. This entry cannot undertake
an assessment of the comparative merits of dualism and materialism. It
is worth noting, however, that recent philosophy has seen an increased
recognition in some quarters of the difficulties resulting from
materialist views, and a corresponding interest in different (not
necessarily Cartesian) varieties of dualism. (See Koons & Bealer
(eds.) 2010; Batthyany & Elitzur (eds.) 2009; Loose, Menuge, &
Moreland 2018; and Lofton 2017.) Given even the apparent coherence of
dualism in which the person and her body are contingently related
(metaphysically, it becomes more difficult to argue that it is known
that the annihilation of the body entails the annihilation of the
person).
## 4. Parapsychology and Near-Death Experiences
During the heyday of logical positivism in the twentieth century, it
is interesting that while Moritz Schlick proposed that its demands for
empirical verification would render propositions about God as
meaningless, it would not rule out as meaningless propositions about
life after death so long as they involved subjects having experiences.
Interestingly, some of the most rigid materialists in the last
century, such as Willard Van Orman Quine and Paul Churchland, allowed
for the possibility of there being compelling empirical evidence of
parapsychological powers and even ghosts. In this section, let us
consider whether there is empirical support for belief in an
afterlife.
Parapsychology investigates phenomena that are alleged to lie outside
the boundaries of ordinary naturalistic explanation. These phenomena
include telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, mediumistic messages,
possession-type cases, reincarnation-type cases, apparitions, and
others. Not all of these phenomena are directly relevant to survival
and the afterlife, but some of them, if accepted as veridical, do
provide such evidence: for instance, messages received through a
medium, allegedly from a deceased person, that contain information to
which the medium has no other access.
The evaluation of this body of evidence is highly contentious. Clearly
there exists both motive and opportunity for fraud and fabrication in
many cases. It is questionable, though, whether a responsible inquirer
can afford to dismiss out of hand all cases that seem to defy ordinary
naturalistic explanation. It counts against a sweeping dismissive
approach that the phenomena have been attested as probably veridical
by some highly reputable investigators, including such philosophers as
William James, Henry Sidgwick, C.D. Broad, H.H. Price and John Beloff.
These men had little to gain personally by their investigations;
indeed in undertaking them they endangered already well-established
reputations. Investigating the subject with finely-honed critical
instincts, they have applied stringent tests in selecting instances
they consider to be credible, and have rejected many cases they held
to be fraudulent or inadequately attested.
If we are willing to give an initial hearing to this evidence, what
conclusions can reasonably be reached? A conclusion that many (but not
all) of these investigators would accept is that the evidence provides
some, but not conclusive, evidence for personal survival after death
(Steinkamp 2002). However, the reason why the evidence is deemed
inconclusive will give little comfort to many afterlife skeptics. The
reason it is not conclusive is that the experiences are susceptible of
a different explanation *if we accept the existence of some rather
spectacular forms of extra-sensory perception*, also known as
"super psi" (see Braude 2002). An example is a case in
which a medium received information that apparently was known in its
entirety to no living person. In order to avoid the conclusion that
the information was communicated from the deceased person, the medium
must be credited with clairvoyance as well as the ability to integrate
information received telepathically from several different persons.
C.D. Broad (1953: 114) summarized the situation well: the possibility
of extra-sensory perception weakens the direct force of the evidence
for survival by making possible alternative explanations of that
evidence. But ESP strengthens the overall case by raising the
antecedent probability of survival, insofar as it renders problematic
the naturalistic view of the human person, which for most
contemporaries constitutes the greatest obstacle to belief in
survival.
More recently, it has been claimed that a superior source of evidence
lies in so-called "near-death experiences" (Bailey and
Yates (eds.) 1996). These are experiences of persons who were, or
perceived themselves to be, close to death; indeed many such persons
met the criteria for clinical death. While in this state, they undergo
remarkable experiences, often taken to be experiences of the world
that awaits them after death. Returning to life, they testify to their
experiences, claiming in many cases to have had their subsequent lives
transformed as a result of the near-death experience. This testimony
may seem especially compelling in that (a) large numbers of persons
report having had such experiences; (b) the experiences come
spontaneously to those near death, they are not sought out or
deliberately induced; and (c) normally no one stands to benefit
financially from either the experiences or the reports.
These experiences, furthermore, are not random in their contents.
There are recurring elements that show up in many of these accounts,
forming a general (but far from invariable) pattern. Typical elements
include a sense of being dead, peacefulness and absence of pain;
"out-of-body experiences" in which the subject views his
or her own body "from outside" and witnesses various
events, sometimes at a considerable distance from the location of the
person's body; passing through a dark tunnel towards intense
light; meeting "beings of light" (sometimes including
friends and relatives who have died previously); and a "life
review" in which the events of one's life pass before one
and are subjected to evaluation. The subject may be initially
disappointed or reluctant to return to the body, and (as already
noted) many testify that the experience has been life-changing,
leading to a lessened--or even a complete absence of--fear
of death and other beneficial results.
These experiences are surprisingly common. A Gallup poll taken in 1982
found that eight million Americans (about five percent of the adult
population at that time) had survived a near-death experience (NDE).
The experiences occur regardless of age, social class, race, or
marital status. Probably the improvements in medical technology, which
enable many to return from a state of "clinical death",
have increased the numbers in recent times. But NDEs have been
reported throughout recorded history and from all corners of the
earth. Since the publication in 1975 of Raymond Moody's book,
*Life After Life* (1975), there have been numerous studies of
the phenomenon, some of them carried out with careful attention to
scientific objectivity (e.g., Ring 1980; Sabom 1982; van Lommel *et
al.* 2001).
As one might expect, there is a wide variety of interpretations of
NDEs, from those that interpret the experiences as literally revealing
a state that lies beyond death to interpretations that attempt to
debunk the experiences by classifying them as mere reflections of
abnormal brain states. Clearly, there is no one medical or
physiological cause; the experiences occur for persons in a great
variety of medical conditions. An interesting counterexample to
explanations in terms of the "dying brain" is found in the
NDEs experienced by mountain climbers in the midst of what they
expected to be fatal falls (Heim 1892); it is hardly credible that
these experiences can be reduced to either drugs or oxygen
deprivation.
On the other hand, interpretations of NDEs as literally revelatory of
the life to come, though common in the popular literature, are
extremely questionable. Carol Zaleski has shown, through her
comparative studies of medieval and modern NDEs, that many features of
these experiences vary in ways that correspond to cultural
expectations (Zaleski 1987). A striking instance of this is the
minimal role played by judgment and damnation in modern NDEs; unlike
the medieval cases, the modern life-review tends to be therapeutic
rather than judgmental in emphasis. In view of this, Zaleski ascribes
the experiences to the religious imagination, insisting that to do so
enhances rather than diminishes their significance. Claims of
cross-cultural invariance in modern NDEs are also questionable. The
majority of the research has been done in cultures where Christianity
is the predominant religious influence, but research done in other
cultures reveals significantly different patterns. One amusing
difference occurs in the episodes in which it is decided that the
experiencer will return to embodied life rather than remaining in the
afterworld. In Western NDEs there is often a "spirit
guide" who counsels the experiencer that it is better that he or
she should return to life. In India, on the other hand, the person is
often turned back with the information that there has been a clerical
error in the paperwork, so that it was by mistake that he or she came
to this point! (K. Augustine 2008,
Other Internet Resources,
see the section on "Cultural Differences").
The causation of these experiences is problematic. Some aspects of the
experience have been deliberately induced by the administration of
drugs (see Jansen 1997); this demonstrates that such phenomena can be
produced by chemical alterations to the brain, but in most NDE cases
no such chemical causes can be identified. Several researchers have
concluded that the triggering cause of the NDE is simply the perceived
nearness of death. (NDEs have also been experienced by persons who
believed they were close to death but were not in fact in any
life-threatening situation (K. Augustine 2008,
Other Internet Resources,
see the section on Pam Reynolds).) The specific content of NDEs can
be divided into *mundane* content, in which what is experienced
is or resembles typical features of the ordinary world, and
*transcendental* content, portraying "another
realm" quite unlike the world of ordinary experience. The source
of the transcendental content is problematic, though the cultural
variations suggest that a significant role must be assigned to
cultural expectations concerning the afterlife.
Finally, there is what Gary Habermas has termed the
*evidential* aspect of NDEs. These are phenomena that, provided
they can be verified, would indicate strongly that something is
occurring that is not susceptible of an ordinary naturalistic
explanation. This might seem to be the most helpful direction to look
if the aim is to arrive at an objectively compelling assessment of
NDEs. If it should turn out to be possible to verify objectively
certain paranormal aspects of NDEs, fully naturalistic explanations
could be ruled out and the way would be open for further exploration
concerning the meaning of the experiences. On the other hand, if all
such evidential aspects could be fully explained in terms of ordinary
natural processes, the claim of NDEs to be revelatory of anything
metaphysically significant would be greatly weakened.
Evidential aspects of NDEs fall into several categories. First, there
are out-of-body sensory experiences, in which patients, often while
comatose, observe accurately features to which they have no access
through normal sensory channels. In one case, an eight-year-old girl
who nearly drowned required 45 minutes of CPR to restore her
heartbeat:
>
>
> In the meantime, she said that she floated out of her body and visited
> heaven. Additionally ... she was able to totally and correctly
> recount the details from the time the paramedics arrived in her yard
> through the work performed later in the hospital emergency room.
> (Moreland and Habermas 1998: 159)
>
>
>
Second, there are accounts of sensory experiences which accurately
report events that occurred during periods in which the
subject's heart had stopped, and even during "flat
EEG" periods in which there was no detectable brain activity.
Finally, there are "surprise encounters" during the NDE
with friends and relatives who had in fact recently died, but where
the subject had no knowledge of this prior to the time of the
experience. Here the crucial question would be, Where did the subject
obtain knowledge of the other person's death? If ordinary
channels of communication can be ruled out, the most natural
conclusion would seem to be that this knowledge was obtained from the
deceased person, who is somehow still alive.
All of these claims concerning the evidential value of NDEs have been
called into question. One of the most thorough discussions is by Keith
Augustine
(Other Internet Resources,
2008), who draws on work by a large number of other researchers. As
noted already, there is overwhelming evidence that NDEs do not provide
a literal experience of conditions in the afterlife; this is attested,
among other things, by the considerable variations in these
experiences in different times and different cultures. Also relevant
here is the fact that similar experiences sometimes happen to persons
who mistakenly believe themselves to be in life-threatening
circumstances. Apparently it is the *perceived* nearness to
death, rather than the actual proximity of the afterworld, that
triggers the experiences. The encounters with persons recently
deceased, but whose deaths were previously unknown to the experiencer,
become somewhat less impressive once it is recognized that
still-living persons may also be encountered in NDEs ("Living
Persons"). These still-living persons were otherwise occupied at
the time of the NDEs; they cannot have been literally present in the
other-worldly realm in which they were encountered. And given that
still-living persons can appear in NDEs, it becomes statistically
probable that on occasion there will also be encounters with persons
who have recently died but whose death was unknown to the
experiencer.
Claims that NDEs occurred during periods with no brain activity are
countered by the rejoinder that an EEG may not reveal all activity
within the brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, for example,
can reveal activity that is missed by an EEG. In cases where brain
activity has indeed ceased for a given patient, the NDE may have
occurred either before the cessation or after normal brain activity
has resumed; it is not necessary to assume that the NDE and the
brain's non-activity were simultaneous ("Living
Persons"). With respect to the claim of information that was
learned during the NDE that was not otherwise available, various
answers are possible. It is noted, first of all, that
*inaccurate* "information" is often reported
("Out-of-Body Discrepancies"). In some cases where the
information is confirmed, we may be dealing with subsequent
enhancement as a result of the repeated recital of the story. (This
need not involve deliberate deception; it is a common experience that
stories often repeated tend to gain new features of interest in the
telling.) In other cases, it is argued that the information was in
fact available through ordinary sensory channels, often through the
experiencer's hearing of things said during a medical procedure
when they were apparently unconscious and unresponsive. (There is
considerable evidence that "unconscious" persons do hear
and register things said when they are apparently oblivious to their
surroundings.) ("Veridical Paranormal Perception During
OBEs?") However, it is worth noting that Augustine makes little
effort to establish that the factors cited in his naturalistic
explanations were actually operative in the various NDE cases. It
would appear to be his view that the burden of proof lies almost
entirely on the shoulders of those who make claims on behalf of the
evidential value of NDEs.
With regard to this entire body of evidence, both from parapsychology
and from NDEs, we may be close to an impasse. Those who support the
evidential value of the experiences will argue that the naturalistic
explanations that have been offered are not adequate, that they
display excessive skepticism towards well-confirmed accounts, and are
in many instances highly speculative. Those who reject the evidential
value of these phenomena (including some believers in the afterlife)
will argue that the evidence is insufficient to warrant the
extraordinary claims that are made, that the naturalistic explanations
work well overall, and that a full explanation of the most puzzling
cases would require a detailed knowledge of the events and surrounding
circumstances that in many cases is not available to us. Further
careful research on individual cases may offer some hope of progress,
but it seems unlikely that the fundamental disagreements can be
resolved, especially when the different viewpoints are supported by
diverse worldviews. For a thoughtful treatment of NDEs and the
paranormal as evidence for an afterlife, see Lund 2009 (Part II).
## 5. Metaphysical Considerations Concerning Survival
Leaving aside such empirical evidence, what general metaphysical
considerations are relevant to belief in survival? While some
philosophers have sought to marginalize metaphysics (see, for example,
Hadot 1995), such deflationary accounts have been found wanting by
many philosophers (see, for example, Wynn 2020). We have already seen
that a materialist account of persons creates some serious
obstacles. As van Inwagen and others have argued, God could bring
about an afterlife for persons in a way consistent with a materialist
philosophy of mind. But in the absence of God, a materialist,
naturalist worldview seems not at all promising for survival. As noted
earlier, mind-body dualism would offer some support for the
possibility of survival but dualism by no means guarantees survival;
the old arguments from the simplicity and alleged indestructibility of
souls are out of favor. As Kant observed, a "simple" soul,
which cannot be dissolved into its constituent parts, might still fade
away gradually until it has completely disappeared. What often is not
sufficiently appreciated, however, is the close tie between theism and
belief in an afterlife. The point is not merely that theistic
religions incorporate belief in an afterlife which many persons accept
because of this religious context. The tie is closer than that, and it
has considerable force in both directions.
Suppose, on the one hand, that the God of theism does in fact exist.
According to theism, God is both all-powerful and perfectly good, and
this goodness is supposed to be of a sort that is relevant to the
welfare of human beings (and other rational creatures, if there are
any). Indeed, this is not merely a speculative assumption; there are
Biblical texts proclaiming that God is a God of love. If there is
reason to believe that God loves created persons, then it is highly
plausible to believe that God desires to provide creatures with the
opportunity for a greater, and longer-lasting, fulfillment than is
possible within the brief scope of earthly existence. This is
especially true, one would think, for those who, through no fault of
their own, find their lives blighted by disease, or accident, or war,
or any of the other natural or anthropogenic disasters to which we are
vulnerable. And yet even those of us who enjoy relatively good and
satisfying lives are conscious of far, far more that could be
accomplished and enjoyed, given more time and the vigor and energy to
use it well.
This argument can also be reversed to telling effect. If there is no
afterlife, no realm in which the sorrows of this life can be assuaged
and its injustices remedied, then it may be argued that the problem of
evil becomes impossible to solve in any rationally intelligible way.
Arguably, a perfectly good and all-powerful God would not make a
cosmos in which all or most created persons have lives that are full
of misery and then are annihilated; nor would an all-loving good God
create a cosmos in which there is no opportunity for transformation
beyond this life. That is not to say, of course, that allowing for an
afterlife makes the problem of evil easy for theists--that is far
from being the case. But it does provide a way in which this
life's injustices can be seen as not having had the last
word--victims in this life do not have to be eternally victims
and those who've done evil won't get away with it. For
these reasons, one would be hard pressed to find very many theists (as
opposed to deists) who do not also affirm belief in an afterlife.
The close connection between theism and an afterlife is affirmed in
Kant's arguments for the "postulates of practical
reason". To be sure, Kant gives different reasons for
postulating God and for postulating an afterlife, and the ends to be
served by these postulations are ostensibly different. In actuality,
however, it is highly plausible that the two postulates are
inseparable. We ought to postulate God, because only in this way is it
possible that in the end happiness should be enjoyed by persons in
proportion to their moral worthiness. Given the actual conditions of
the present life, it is evident that this end can be secured, if at
all, only in a future existence. We are told to postulate immortality,
because only an endless life makes possible continued progress towards
the goal of a coincidence of one's will with the requirements of
the moral law. But for such continued progress to be at all likely to
occur would seem to require some kind of morally benign conditions in
the afterlife, and Kant implicitly assumes that such conditions will
obtain.
What about an argument in the opposite direction: if it is reasonable
to believe in an afterlife, is it more reasonable to believe in
theism? Given the reasonability of believing in an afterlife, it would
be more reasonable to believe that theism is true rather than
materialistic naturalism, but the reasonability of theism would have
to be weighed in the context of non-theistic philosophies and
religions that include belief in an afterlife. Nontheistic Hinduism
and Buddhism include beliefs about an afterlife; in these religious
traditions, belief in an afterlife is part of their understanding of
cosmic justice, a system in which one's reincarnation (and,
ultimately, one's enlightenment and liberation) depends on
one's Karma. These, and other traditions such as Jainism,
involve matters that are addressed in other entries in the SEP, but we
offer here a modest observation on how the evidence for a good
afterlife (an afterlife that is in accord with some morally sound
order) might lend more support for one religion or philosophy than
another.
Imagine that we have good reason to believe (or we possess Kantian
justification for faith) that the cosmos is ultimately ordered in a
just and moral manner (felicity and virtue will be in concord, and the
wicked will not flourish indefinitely and so on). Imagine further that
we can limit the most plausible accounts of such a moral order on the
basis of either traditional theistic accounts of the afterlife or a
system of reincarnation in which Karma is at work determining
successive re-births until enlightenment--liberation. Robin
Collins has argued that the second alternative faces what he calls the
"karma management problem". He writes,
>
>
> Traditionally Buddhists have believed that by and large the
> circumstances of one's rebirth are determined by one's
> karma--that is, one's deeds, whether good or bad in this
> and previous lives. This, however, seems to require that there exist
> something like a "program" that arranges your genes, the
> family conditions you are born into, and the like to correspond to the
> moral worth of your past deeds (Collins 1999: 206).
>
>
>
For theists, such as many (but not all) Hindus, this minute
arrangement of one's life circumstances to match one's
karma can be viewed as the work of God. So long as we recognize the
intelligibility of divine agency, the "management" of
reincarnation should in principle be no more difficult to accept than
any other theistic explanations. But in the absence of theistic,
intentional explanations, how would a "karma program"
work, and how was it initiated? We know today, by means that were not
available to the ancient Hindus and Buddhists, that
"nature"--the nature that is known and studied in the
natural sciences--simply doesn't work this way. The laws of
nature are subtle and marvelously complex (though also, in their own
way, "simple"), but it is abundantly clear that they do
not work in such a way as to determine physical situations in
accordance with the moral worth of persons, or in accordance with any
moral considerations whatsoever. The laws of nature, we might say, are
no respecters of persons--or of morality. Rather, they are
impersonal in character, and in many cases are expressible in
mathematical formulae that are far removed from the teleology that
permeates human existence. So if there is a "karmic moral
order" of the sort postulated by the Indian traditions, it must
be something radically different from the order of nature that (so far
as science can discern) governs the physical processes of the world.
And yet the two orders must be intimately related, for it is precisely
these physical processes which, in the end, are said to be disposed in
accordance with one's karma. It is wholly implausible that two
diverse systems of cosmic order such as this should arise from
unrelated sources and come together accidentally; they must, then,
have a common source. If the common source of the natural order and
the karmic order is impersonal, we are still in need of some account
of how and why it would be such as to produce these two quite
different sorts of order in the cosmos. These questions, it would
seem, are much more readily answered if we postulate a
*personal* source of both the natural and the moral
order--that is to say, a God who desired that there be created
persons, and who wished to provide a stable natural order within which
they could live and exercise their varied powers.
This is of course a mere sketch of an argument that would require much
more space for its full development. We offer the above line of
reasoning as an example of how one might compare the merits of
alternative accounts of an afterlife. It is also offered to make the
point that the case for or against an afterlife is best understood in
light of one's overall metaphysics. To see further how
philosophical reflection on an afterlife might be guided by
metaphysical considerations, consider briefly what has been called the
argument from desire. Without question, many persons strongly desire
that there should be an afterlife and believe in one largely if not
entirely for that reason. It is also beyond question that most
philosophers would regard this as a classic case of wishful thinking.
But this conclusion is too hasty; indeed, it commits the fallacy of
begging the question. To be sure, if the universe is naturalistic,
then the desire that many persons have for an afterlife does not
constitute any kind of evidence that an afterlife exists. One might
inquire about the causes of such a desire and, given its widespread
occurrence, might wonder about its possible Darwinian survival value.
But no evidential weight would attach to the desire on the assumption
of naturalism.
Suppose, on the other hand, that theism (or some view close to theism)
is true. On this supposition, human life is not the accidental product
of mindless forces that have operated with no thought to it or to
anything else. On the contrary, human life (and the life of other
rational creatures, if there are any) is the product of an
evolutionary process, which was itself designed to produce such
beings, by a God who loves them and cares for them. If this is so,
then there is a strong case to be made that desires which are
universal, or near-universal, among human beings are desires for which
satisfaction is possible. The inference does not amount to a
certainty; it is possible that humans have distorted God's
purpose for them, and certainly human conceptions of the way in which
certain desires could be satisfied may be wide of the mark. But the
presumption must be that desires that are widespread or universal are
aimed at some genuine and attainable good, however inadequate the
conceptions of that good held by many individuals may be. And if this
is so, persons who take the desire for an afterlife as a reason to
believe in one are on the side of right reason in doing so. Only if
one assumes from the outset that the universe is not human-friendly
can the charge of wishful thinking be sustained. In a recent
contribution, Johan Eddebo (2017) argues that because we do not know
that we are not in a human-friendly universe we cannot rationally rule
out the possibility of an afterlife for human persons.
A great many persons who believe in life after death do so because of
reasons that are internal to their own religious traditions. Hindus
and Buddhists have their accounts of persons who remember in detail
events of their previous lives. Jews will rely on the visions of
Ezekiel and the traditions of the rabbis; Muslims on the prophecies of
the Koran. Christians will think of the resurrection of Jesus. Whether
any of these appeals has serious evidentiary force is a question that
cannot be pursued within the scope of this article; they must all the
same be included in any overall assessment of the rationality of
belief in an afterlife.
Some recent philosophical work on the
afterlife takes up issues that go beyond this entry. For example, if
there is a heaven would persons (souls) have free will? Would they
have lives that are dynamic (subject to change) or static or
changeless? What might individual cognition be like in paradise? Would
there be suffering in paradise? Given the basic teachings of the
Abrahamic faiths, is there reason to believe that some nonhuman
animals enjoy an afterlife? For engaging work on such questions, see
Byerly & Silverman (eds.) 2017. |
agency | ## 1. Introduction
In a very broad sense, agency is virtually everywhere. Whenever
entities enter into causal relationships, they can be said to act on
each other and interact with each other, bringing about changes in
each other. In this very broad sense, it is possible to identify
agents and agency, and patients and patiency, virtually
everywhere.[1]
Usually, though, the term 'agency' is used in a much narrower sense to denote the performance of intentional actions. This
way of thinking about agency has a long history in philosophy and it
can be traced back to Hume and Aristotle, among other historical
figures. In contemporary analytic philosophy, it is most commonly
associated with the influential work of Anscombe (1957) and Davidson
(1963). Anscombe's and Davidson's views differ
significantly in many respects, but they share the central doctrine
that action is to be explained in terms of the intentionality of intentional action. In the debates that followed, the philosophy of
action revolved largely around the notion of intentional action. For
some time, the term 'agency' was rarely used, and if it was, it was usually taken to refer to the exercise of the capacity to perform intentional actions.[2] This has changed in the more recent
debate, where talk about agency has become more and more common in
many areas of philosophy (and in other areas of
research).[3] To
some extent, this focus on the notion of agency has been fuelled by a
resistance to the assimilation of agency to intentional action. As we
will see in the following section, this resistance amounts in some
cases to the rejection of the standard *conception* of action,
in some cases it amounts to the rejection of the
standard *theory* of action, and in some it amounts to the
more modest claim that there are different *kinds* of
agency.
## 2. Conceptions, theories, and kinds of agency
The contributions of Anscombe and Davidson have established a
standard conception of action, and Davidson's work has provided
the groundwork for a standard theory of action. At the core of the
standard conception are the following two claims. First, the notion of
intentional action is more fundamental than the notion of action. In
particular, action is to be explained in terms of the intentionality
of intentional action. Second, there is a close connection between
intentional action and acting for a reason.
There are two ways of spelling out the first claim (which
correspond to two different views on the individuation of actions; see
section 3.4). According to the first, one
and the same event can be more than one action *under different
descriptions*, and an event is an action just in case it is an
intentional action under *some* description. An action, that
is, may be intentional under some description and unintentional under
others (Anscombe 1957; Davidson 1963). Suppose that you alert the
burglar by turning on the light, and suppose that this is one event
that is intentional under the description 'turning on the
light', but not under 'alerting the burglar'. On this view, alerting the burglar is nevertheless something that you do,
given that the event is an intentional action under some description.
According to a second way of spelling out the first claim, something
is an action either if it is identical with or "generated
by" an intentional action (Goldman 1970; see also Ginet
1990).[4] On this view, alerting the burglar is an action of yours either if it
is an intentional action or if it is generated by an intentional
action (your turning on the light, in this case). If it is merely
generated by an intentional action, it is an unintentional action of
yours. On both views, intentional action is more fundamental than
action itself: action derives from and is dependent on intentional
action.[5]
According to the second claim of the standard conception, there is
a close connection between acting intentionally and acting for a
reason. According to Anscombe and Davidson's early view, this
close connection is identity. Following Aristotle, they both held the
view that to act intentionally is to act for a reason, and that to
act for a reason is to act in a way that can be rationalized by the
premises of a sound practical syllogism, which consists, typically,
of a major premise that corresponds to the agent's goal and a
minor premise that corresponds to the agent's take on how to
attain the goal. Furthermore, Davidson held the view that having an
intention consists in having a desire and a belief that correspond to
the major and the minor premise of the relevant syllogism (Davidson
1963, 1970; see also Goldman 1970; Audi
1986).[6]
One can still find a fairly widespread commitment to this
desire-belief version of the standard conception (in the philosophy of
mind, the philosophy of psychology, ethics, meta-ethics, and in other
areas of research). In the philosophy of action, however, it is now
widely thought that intentions cannot be reduced to desires and
beliefs (and combinations thereof). On this view, intentions play a
crucial and irreducible role in practical reasoning, long-term
planning, and in the initiation and guidance of action (see,
especially, Bratman 1987; see also Harman 1976; Brand 1984; Bishop
1989; Mele 1992, 2003; Enc 2003). It is nevertheless still
widely accepted that there is a close connection between intentional
action and acting for reasons and that intentional actions are
typically performed for reasons (Mele and Moser 1994; Mele 2003;
Enc 2003; Clarke 2010b, for instance).
The standard *conception* is not committed to a particular
account of what it is to act intentionally and for reasons, and it is
not committed to a particular account of the nature of reason
explanations. It is important to distinguish the standard conception
from the standard *theory*, which provides a causal account of
intentional action and reason explanation. This theory says, very
roughly, that something is an intentional action and done for reasons
just in case it is caused by the right mental states and events in the
right way. The right mental states and events are states and events
that rationalize the action from the agent's point of view (such
as desires, beliefs, and intentions). The right way of causation is
non-deviant causation (see
section 3.2). On this view, a reason explanation is an explanation in terms of
mental states and events that cause the action and that rationalize it
from the agent's point of view (typically by providing a
means-end rationale). This theory is often called "the causal
theory of action". Strictly speaking, it is an event-causal
theory and it consists of an event-causal theory of reason explanation
and an event-causal theory of intentional action. In conjunction with
the standard conception, this causal theory provides us with a theory
of action, which has been the standard theory in the contemporary
philosophy of mind and action (see also the entry on
action).
As indicated, the standard conception is compatible with non-causal
theories of intentional action and reason explanation. It is generally
agreed that a reason explanation of an action usually renders the
action intelligible by revealing the agent's goal or intention.
According to non-causal theories, having the relevant goals or
intentions does *not* consist in the possession of causally
efficacious mental states or events (Melden 1961; Ginet 1990;
O'Connor 2000; Sehon 2005). Non-causal theories are, however,
widely rejected (the most influential critique is due to Davidson
1963; see also Goldman 1970: 76-85; Mele 2003: 38-51;
Clarke 2003: 21-24). The standard conception is compatible,
furthermore, with dual standpoint theories. We will turn to this view
in
section 3.3.
### 2.1 Agency as intentional action
The standard conception of action provides us with a conception of
agency. According to this view, a being has the capacity to exercise agency just
in case it has the capacity to act intentionally, and the exercise of
agency consists in the performance of intentional actions and, in many
cases, in the performance of unintentional actions (that derive from
the performance of intentional actions; see
section 2). Call this the standard conception of agency. The standard theory of action provides us with a theory of agency, according to which a being
has the capacity to act intentionally just in case it has the right
functional organization: just in case the instantiation of certain
mental states and events (such as desires, beliefs, and intentions)
would cause the right events (such as certain movements) in the right
way. According to this standard theory of agency, the exercise of
agency consists in the instantiation of the right causal relations
between agent-involving states and events. (Proponents include
Davidson 1963, 1971; Goldman 1970; Brand 1984; Bratman 1987; Dretske
1988; Bishop 1989; Mele 1992, 2003; Enc 2003.)
The most serious problem for this standard theory has been the
problem of deviant causal chains. Further, some have argued that this
view altogether fails to capture agency, because it reduces actions to
mere happenings. We will turn to those issues in
section 3. Recently, it has been argued that reasons for actions cannot be the
causes of actions, because reasons are facts or states of affairs, not
mental states or events (Dancy 2000; Alvarez 2010). But the standard
theory is not committed to the claim that reasons are identical with
mental entities. It is, in particular, compatible with the view that
reasons are the things that are represented by the contents of the
relevant mental states and events (see Scanlon 1998: 56-64; Mele
2003: 82-84; Setiya 2007: 28-31).
### 2.2 Agency as initiation by the agent
It has often been claimed, and it is widely agreed, that agency
involves the initiation of action by the
agent.[7] But it
has been controversial what this consists in. The standard conception
is compatible with the claim that intentional actions are initiated
by the agent, and proponents of the standard theory have argued that
initiation can be explained in terms of causation by the
agent's mental states and events. According to desire-belief
versions of the view, initiation by the agent consists in causation
by the relevant desire-belief pairs (Goldman 1970; Davidson 1971;
Dretske 1988). According to more recent versions, initiation consists
in causation by the relevant intentions (Brand 1984; Bratman 1987;
Bishop 1989; Mele 1992, 2003; Enc 2003). Opponents of the
standard conception argue, however, that an agent's power to
initiate action cannot be reduced to the capacity to act
intentionally and for reasons. They argue that the exercise of agency
may be entirely spontaneous, in the sense that an agent may initiate
an action for no reason and without prior intent. On this view,
reasons and intentions may have a strong and even a decisive
influence on how an agent acts. But agency has its source in the
power to initiate, and the exercise of this power cannot be reduced
to the agent's being moved by reasons or intentions. This is an
alternative *conception* of agency (Ginet 1990; O'Connor
2000; Lowe 2008; see also McCann 1998; for critical discussion see
Mele 2003: 38-51, 71-76; Clarke 2003:
17-24). Proponents of this alternative conception reject the
standard theory and they reject, more generally, any account of
agency in terms of causal relations between agent-involving states
and events. According to some, the initiation of action consists in
irreducible agent-causation, others appeal to uncaused mental acts of
the will. The main positions on this issue correspond to the main
positions in the metaphysics of agency, to which we turn in
section 3.1.
### 2.3 Agency and distinctively human action
In an influential article, Frankfurt (1971) argued that the
difference between persons and other agents consists in the structure
of their will. Only persons reflect on and care about their
motivations. According to Frankfurt, this reflective evaluation of our
motives usually results in the formation of second-order desires:
desires that are directed at first-order desires (which are directed
at goals and actions). When a person wants to have a certain desire
and wants to be moved by it, then he or she is said to
"identify" with the desire and its motivational efficacy.
On this hierarchical account of agency, the role of higher-order
attitudes is essential to the kind of agency that distinguishes
persons from other agents. Taylor (1977) took this as a starting point
for an account of distinctively *human* agency, under the
assumption that the distinction between persons and non-persons is,
essentially, the distinction between human and non-human agents. It is
not entirely clear whether Frankfurt and Taylor meant to provide an
alternative to the standard theory of agency or an *extension*
of it.[8] On one
reading, they accepted the account of intentional agency provided by
the standard theory, and they proposed a hierarchical extension of the
standard theory that captures the kind of agency that is distinctive
of persons or human agents. (For an influential critique of such
hierarchical accounts see Watson 1975.)
According to Velleman (1992), Frankfurt's observation that an
agent may fail to identify with a particular motive points to a
fundamental flaw in the standard theory. As it seems always possible
that an agent "disowns" the mental attitudes that cause an
action, those attitudes do not "add up to the agent's
being involved" (1992: 463). This shows, according to Velleman,
that the standard theory captures, at best, actions that are
defective. It fails, in particular, to capture "human
action *par excellence*", because it fails to account for
the agent's participation. Velleman rejects the appeal to
irreducible agent-causation (see
section 3.1), and he argues that this leaves only one strategy for solving the
problem: we must find a mental attitude that the agent cannot disown
and that is, therefore, fit to play the role of the agent. We must,
that is, find a mental attitude that *is* the agent,
functionally speaking. According to Velleman, the desire to act in
accordance with reasons is fit to play this role.
Bratman (2000, 2001) agrees with Velleman that the standard theory
does not explain genuine self-governance. On his view, though, an
account of "full-blown agency", as he calls it, does not
require reference to a mental attitude that the agent cannot disown.
Building on his work on temporally extended planning agency (Bratman
1987), he argues that an agent's "self-governing
policies" have the "authority to speak for the
agent", because they help to establish and support the
agent's identity across time, and because they specify which
desires are to be treated as providing justifying reasons in practical
deliberation. According to Bratman, these self-governing policies
explain what it is for an agent "to take a stand in favor of or
against certain motivations, a stand that can itself be subject to
reexamination and revision" (2000: 50-51). (For a critical
discussion of Bratman's account see Hornsby 2004 and Franklin 2017.)
In defense of the standard theory, Mele (2003: Ch. 10) has argued
that the search for a mental attitude that plays the role of the agent
is misguided and that Velleman's critique of the view is off
target. As Mele points out, it seems clear that a desire cannot
possibly be the agent, because agents deliberate, decide, and act.
Desires do none of these things. He suggests that any talk of a mental
attitude as playing the role of the agent can at best be metaphorical.
Further, there is no obvious reason why an agent's failure to
identify with a motive should be diagnosed in terms of the
agent's failure to participate. It seems more plausible to
suggest that the agent does participate in such cases, but in a
defective manner. Once defective participation is distinguished from a
failure to participate, it is easy to avoid Velleman's
conclusion that the standard theory "leaves out the
agent". Moreover, one can then separate the question of whether
the standard theory accounts for the agent's participation from
the question of whether it captures human action *par
excellence*. According to Mele, the human agent is simply a human
being who acts. On this view, the agent does play some role in all
instances of agency, no matter how deficient. The standard theory
provides, first and foremost, an account of what it is for an agent to
perform intentional actions. It does not claim that the capacity to
perform intentional actions is the capacity that separates human from
non-human agency, and it does not claim to give an account of more
refined or excellent kinds of human agency, such as self-controlled,
autonomous, wholehearted, or free agency. It is an interesting and
important task to investigate whether or not the standard theory can
be extended so as to account for the more refined or excellent kinds
of human agency (Mele 1995; Bratman 2007, for instance). But to reject
the view because it fails to do so is to misconstrue its aim and scope
(see also
section 3.3).
### 2.4 Agency without mental representations
Arguments for the claim that the standard theory does not account
for important aspects of agency are usually driven by a focus on
distinctively human agency. Once we shift our focus to non-human
agents, and simpler organisms, a very different challenge
emerges. When we turn to such agents, it seems that the standard
theory is clearly too demanding. The view explains agency in terms of
the agent's desires, beliefs, and intentions. Usually, it is
assumed that this is an explanation in terms of mental
representations: in terms of intentional mental states and events that
have representational contents (typically, propositional contents). It
seems, however, that there are beings that are capable of genuine
agency and that do not possess representational mental states. We can
distinguish here between three claims (and three
challenges). According to the first, there are non-human beings that
are capable of agency and that do not possess representational mental
states. Second, there are many instances of human agency that can and
should be explained without the ascription of representational mental
states. Third, all instances of agency can and should be explained
without the ascription of representational mental states. We turn to
each claim in turn.
We have a pervasive tendency to interpret and explain behavior in
terms of intentional mental states. We tend, even, to interpret the
interaction between animated objects in terms of desires, beliefs, and
intentions (Heider and Simmel 1944). This raises the question of when
it is appropriate to attribute mental states in the explanation of
behavior. According to an instrumentalist stance (Dennett 1987:
Ch. 2), the question of when it is appropriate to ascribe mental
states cannot be separated from the question of when it is appropriate
to ascribe agency, and both questions are to be answered in terms of
predictive success: it is appropriate to attribute mental states in
the explanation of agency when doing so supports successful
predictions of behavior. However, most proponents of the standard
theory presume some form of realism, according to which the ascription
of mental states is appropriate only if the agent in question
possesses the right internal states with the right representational
contents. The question of what the possession of representational
mental states consists in is one of the most controversial questions
in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and it is clearly
beyond the scope of this entry (see the entries on
mental representation
and
cognitive science). Consider, though, the following remarks. Davidson (1982) held the view
that only human agents have the relevant mental attitudes, because he
thought that having such attitudes requires linguistic
competence. Others have argued that we are justified in ascribing
representational mental states to non-human agents if doing so
provides the best explanation of their behavior (Allen and Bekoff
1997, for instance). Sometimes it is rather difficult to decide
whether or not the best explanation of an agent's behavior
requires the ascription of representational mental states. Sterelny
(2001: Ch. 11, 12), for instance, has argued that plausible
explanations in terms of desires can sometimes be replaced by equally
good explanations in terms of drives. The ascription of a desire is
usually construed as the ascription of a representational mental
state, whereas a drive can be construed in terms of more basic
mechanisms (and without the ascription of representational
content). What is important to bear in mind, here, is that the issue
concerns not only the possession of the relevant mental states and
events. It concerns, moreover, the capacity to combine or process the
contents of such attitudes in rational inferences: the capacity to
treat the relevant contents as premises in practical reasoning (as
emphasized by Anscombe 1957 and Davidson 1970).
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is appropriate to
ascribe representational mental states to non-human beings of various
kinds. It may still be the case that there are other kinds of
non-human beings that are capable of agency and that do not possess
representational mental states. Would this show that the standard
theory is too demanding? Only if the standard theory is construed as
providing an account of agency *as such*. According to a less
demanding view, the standard theory provides an account of one
particularly interesting and central *kind* of agency:
intentional agency (and the kind of unintentional agency that derives
from it; see
section 2).[9] On this construal, the standard theory is perfectly compatible with
the claim that there are more basic kinds of agency, including kinds
of agency that do not require the possession of representational
mental states. It is, for instance, compatible with what Barandiaran
et al. (2009) call "minimal agency". On their view, an
agent is a unified entity that is distinguishable from its environment
and that is doing something by itself in accord with a certain goal
(or norm). This view departs from the standard conception and theory
in its characterization of action ("doing something") in
terms of the "adaptive regulation" of the agent's
"coupling with the environment" and in terms of metabolic
self-maintenance (inspired by Varela et al. 1974). They suggest that
organisms as simple as bacteria exhibit this minimal kind of
agency. The crucial point is that this provides an account of
goal-directed behavior that does not appeal to the mental
representation of goals. Barandiaran et al. suggest, rather, that
even very simple organisms can be said to have the intrinsic
goal *to be*: to bring about the continuation of their
existence.
We turn now to the second claim, which says that many instances of
human agency can and should be explained without the ascription of
representational mental states. This view is usually based on and
motivated by embodied and enactive approaches in the philosophy of
mind and cognitive science. Some versions of this approach are
inspired by the works Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (Dreyfus
1991, 2002), others are based on more recent developments in robotics
and dynamical systems theory (Brooks 1991; Beer 1995). Common to such
views is the focus on skillful and "online" engagement with the world:
the ability to engage with others and with one's circumstances
by responding to the demands of the situation in a skillful and often
effortless manner, without conscious deliberation, reasoning, or
planning (often called "skilled coping"). Examples of
human agency include instances of habitual action, such as the actions
that one performs while driving a car, and cases where the agent is
engaged in a responsive flow of interaction, such as in jazz
improvisation or in verbal exchanges. Examples from robotics include
skills like the coordination of limb movements and the ability to
navigate through novel environments. The challenge to the standard
theory often involves the following three points. First, it is argued
that the explanation of such skills and abilities in terms of mental
representations is both costly and clumsy: it imposes very high
demands on the agent's information-processing resources and it
leads to an inelegant and implausible overpopulation of highly
specific mental representations. Second, it is pointed out that
current accounts of mental representation are untenable or, at least,
controversial and that there is no obvious reason to think that there
will ever be a generally accepted account of mental
representation. Third, it is argued that the explanation of skilled
coping does not require the ascription of representational mental
states, because it can be explained in terms of behavioral
dispositions and direct guidance by the relevant features of the
situation. The proposed conclusion is that we should, therefore,
explain instances of skilled coping without reference to
representational mental states and events.
In response, proponents of the standard theory (and of
representational theories of mind) usually argue as follows. First, it
is pointed out that the standard theory does not require that the
agent considers the relevant mental contents in conscious deliberation
or reasoning. This reduces the information-processing demands to a
significant degree. Second, it is argued that the standard theory is
compatible with explanations of habitual actions in terms of motor
schemata (or motor intentions). Motor schemata are not represented in
the contents of personal-level mental states, and they are usually
recruited automatically in the service of personal-level goals and
intentions. The utilization of motor schemata further reduces the
required processing load. Third, it is pointed out that most instances
of skilled coping do not occur in an intentional vacuum, as it were.
They are, rather, usually constrained by and often integrated with the
agent's long-term goals and intentions. Given this, it seems
that a full explanation of skilled coping must, at some point or
level, make reference to representational mental states after
all. (For more on this see Clark and Toribio 1994; Antony 2002; Rey
2002; Adams 2010; Clarke 2010b; Schlosser 2018.)
According to the third claim, all instances of agency, including
all instances of human agency, can and should be explained without the
ascription of representational mental states. This position is usually
motivated by radical versions of the embodied and enactive approach to
the mind (Chemero 2009; Silberstein and Chemero 2011; Hutto and Myin
2014). The main strategy here is usually to generalize the argument
outlined above: explanations in terms of representational mental
states are costly and clumsy; there is no generally accepted account
of mental representation; and there is reason to think that we will,
eventually, be able to explain all kinds of agency without the
ascription of representational mental states. This radical view raises
some obvious and difficult questions. How can one explain our ability
to deliberate about the future without assuming mental
representations? How can one explain reasoning about abstract
concepts, counterfactuals, and theoretical generalizations? And how
can one explain that our agency is to a significant extent motivated,
guided, and constrained by our long-terms plans and commitments?
Temporally extended planning agency (Bratman 1987, 2000) is clearly a
"representation-hungry" phenomenon: it is difficult to see
how it can be explained without the ascription of representational
mental states (Clark and Toribio 1994; Schlosser 2018; see also the entry on
embodied cognition).
### 2.5 Other kinds of agency: mental, epistemic, shared, collective, relational, artificial
There is, as we have seen, good reason to distinguish between
different kinds of agency. The standard theory offers an account of
what is, arguably, the most central kind of agency: intentional agency
(and the kind of unintentional agency that derives from it; see
section 2). This can be distinguished from higher or more refined kinds of agency,
such as self-controlled, autonomous, and free agency, and it can be
distinguished from more basic kinds of agency that do not require the
ascription of representational mental states. Apart from that, there are
several candidates for further kinds of agency. They include mental
agency, shared agency, collective agency, relational agency, and
artificial agency. In each case, we can ask whether the agency in
question can be explained in terms of the standard conception and
theory, or whether it is indeed a different kind of agency. The main
focus in this section will be on mental agency, and we will address the
other candidates only very briefly.
It may seem obvious that our mental lives are filled with mental
action. We attend, consider, judge, reason, deliberate, accept,
endorse, decide, try, and so on. It may seem that these are all things
that we do. If we consider such cases through the standard theory of
agency, we encounter immediately two difficulties. First, it seems
that such mental occurrences are hardly ever, if ever, intentional
actions. According to the standard theory, an event is an intentional
action of the type *A* only if the agent has an intention that
includes *A* in its content. In the basic case, this would be
an intention to *A*. In an instrumental case, this would be an
intention to perform some other action *B* in order
to *A*. Now, thoughts are individuated in part by their
contents. Take the thought that *p*. According to the standard
theory, thinking that *p* is an intentional action only if the
agent has an intention that includes "think
that *p*" in its content. This is rather odd and
problematic, because we would have to have the intention to think a
certain thought before we think it. Second, there are problems with
the central case of decision-making. According to the standard
theory, deciding to *A* would be an intentional action only if
one already had the intention to make a decision that includes
"deciding to *A*" in its content. This seems,
again, rather odd and problematic. Further, our reasons for making a
decision to *A* are usually our reasons
to *A*--they are reasons for performing
the *action*. According to the standard theory, something is
an action only if it has a reason explanation (in terms of the
agent's desires, beliefs, and intentions). As reasons are
usually reasons for action, it is again difficult to see how making a
decision can ever be an action. Considerations of this kind may lead
one to conclude that thoughts are hardly ever, if ever, mental actions
(see Strawson 2003).
It is not difficult to avoid this conclusion, as Mele
(1997, 2003: Ch. 9, 2009b) has shown. Consider again the central case
of decision-making, and assume that making a decision consists in the
formation of an intention. According to the standard theory, the
formation of an intention is an action if it is an intentional action
under some description (or if it is either identical with or generated
by an intentional action; see
section 2). What could plausibly be the
agent's intention in making a decision? Mele suggests that
processes of decision-making are usually motivated by the intention to
settle the practical question at hand. This proposal avoids the
problem outlined above. Suppose the agent decides to *A*. For
this to be an action, it is not required that the agent has the
intention to decide to *A*. For if the agent has the intention
to settle the question by making a decision, making the decision is
intentional under a description. In particular, making *a*
decision is then an intentional action and making *the*
decision *to A* is then an unintentional action (that is either
identical with or generated by the intentional action of
making *a*
decision).[10]
Similar considerations apply to the mentioned issue concerning reason
explanation and to other cases, such as remembering. Mele (2009b)
argues that remembering something is never an intentional action,
because no one has ever the intention to remember the particular
content in question. But there is nevertheless a closely associated
intentional mental action that one might perform: intentionally trying
to bring it about that one remembers the particular content in
question. See Shepherd (2015) for a defense of the view that decisions are *intentional* actions by construing them as extensions and conclusions of deliberative activity.
Hieronymi (2009) takes a very different line. She thinks that we
engage in mental agency whenever we settle the question of whether to
do or whether to believe something, and she argues that this kind of
mental agency differs from ordinary intentional agency, primarily due
to a difference in control. According to Hieronymi, we have
"evaluative control" over our mental attitudes. This
consists in the ability to form and revise "our take on
things", and it is to be distinguished from the kind of
voluntary control that we have over our overt bodily
actions. According to volitionist theories of agency, mental acts of
willing (choosing or trying) are also different in kind from overt
bodily actions. On such views, mental acts of willing are furthermore
fundamental, in the sense that they are the *source* of overt
agency (Ginet 1990; McCann 1998; Lowe 2008; more on this in
section 3.1).
*Epistemic* agency concerns the control that agents may
exercise over their beliefs (and other doxastic states). It is common
to distinguish between two main positions: indirect doxastic
voluntarism and direct doxastic voluntarism. The former concerns the
ways in which we may acquire or revise beliefs by doing research,
evaluating the evidence, considering opposing opinions, and so on. It
is fairly uncontroversial that we can exercise control over our
beliefs in such indirect ways. In contrast, direct doxastic
voluntarism is very controversial. It says that we have direct
voluntary control over some of our beliefs, where voluntary control is
usually understood as the kind of control that agents exercise in the
performance of intentional actions. A main issue here is that direct
doxastic voluntarism appears to be incompatible with the nature of
beliefs. Beliefs are supposed to represent the world (or "aim at
truth"). One may argue that there is no fundamental difference in the
control over action and belief-formation, because in both cases the
control consists basically in reason-responsiveness. But this proposal
overlooks the central role of intentions. According to the standard
theory, actions must be initiated and guided by intentions, in
addition to being responsive to reasons. The challenge is to find
beliefs-formations that are initiated and guided by intentions in the
same or similar way as intentional actions. (For a more extensive
overview and references see Vitz 2019.)
*Shared* agency occurs when two or more individuals do
something together (such as carry a piece of furniture or sing a
song). *Collective* agency occurs when two or more individuals
act as a group (in accordance with certain principles or procedures
that constitute and organize the group). Research on shared and
collective agency has flourished over the past two decades or so. One
central question has been whether shared and collective agency can be
reduced to the agency of the individuals involved, or whether they are
constitutive of different kinds of agency--whether they are, in
some sense, something over and above individual agency. An account of
collective agency in terms of the standard theory raises the question
of whether it makes sense to attribute mental states and events (such
as desires, beliefs, and intentions) to groups of individuals. (For
references and discussion see the entries on
shared agency
and
collective intentionality.)
The notion of *relational* agency derives from relational
accounts of autonomy. According to feminist critiques, traditional
accounts of autonomy are overly individualistic, insofar as they
overlook or neglect the importance of interpersonal relationships in
the development and sustenance of an autonomous individual. As
Westlund (2009) points out, however, most traditional accounts are
compatible with the feminist emphasis on interpersonal relationships
as long as relationships and dependence on others are construed as
being *causally* necessary for the development and sustenance
of an individual agent. Autonomy is genuinely relational only if
interpersonal relationships and dependence are *constitutive*
of autonomy. On Westlund's own view, autonomous agency requires
an "irreducibly dialogical form of reflectiveness and
responsiveness to others" (2009: 28). On this account, autonomy
is an irreducibly relational kind of agency. (For more on this see the
entry on
feminist perspectives on autonomy.)
Finally, we turn briefly to the question of whether robots and
other systems of artificial intelligence are capable of agency. If one
presumes the standard theory, one faces the question of whether it is
appropriate to attribute mental states to artificial
systems (see
section 2.4). If one takes an instrumentalist stance (Dennett 1987: Ch. 2), there is
no obvious obstacle to the attribution of mental states
and intentional agency to artificial systems. According to realist
positions, however, it is far from obvious whether or not this is
justified, because it is far from obvious whether or not artificial
systems have internal states that ground the ascription of
representational mental states. If artificial systems are not capable
of intentional agency, as construed by the standard theory, they may
still be capable of some more basic kind of agency. According to
Barandiaran et al. (2009), minimal agency does not require the
possession of mental states. It requires, rather, the adaptive
regulation of the agent's coupling with the environment and
metabolic self-maintenance. This means, though, that on this view
artificial systems are not even capable of minimal agency: "being specific about the requirements for agency
has told us a lot about how much is still needed for the development
of artificial forms of agency" (Barandiaran et al. 2009:
382).
## 3. The metaphysics of agency
What is the nature of agency? How should we construe the relation
between agents and actions? How can agency be part of the event-causal
order? In this section, we will first turn to the three main
approaches in the metaphysics of agency that provide three different
frameworks for how to think about such metaphysical questions (the
event-causal, the agent-causal, and the volitionist framework). After
considering some problems and objections, we turn to an alternative
approach that rejects the project of providing a metaphysics of agency
(dual standpoint theory). Finally, we briefly consider the
individuation of actions and some further issues in the metaphysics of
agency.
### 3.1 Three metaphysical frameworks
According to an *event-causal* approach, agency is to be
explained in terms of event-causal relations between agent-involving
states and events.[11]
On this view, actions are events, and an
event is an action just in case it has the right event-causal
history.[12] We
may call this a *reductive* approach to agency, as it reduces
the agent's role in the exercise of agency to the causal roles
of agent-involving states and events. Obviously, the standard theory
belongs to this reductive event-causal framework, because it explains
agency in terms of causation by the agent's mental states and
events.[13]
(Proponents include Davidson 1963, 1971; Goldman 1970; Brand 1984;
Bratman 1987; Dretske 1988; Bishop 1989; Mele 1992, 2003; Enc
2003.)
According to an *agent-causal* approach, agency is to be
explained in terms of a kind of substance-causation: causation by the
agent, construed as a persisting substance. On this view, actions are
events, and an event is an action just in case it has the right
agent-causal history.[14]
This framework provides
a *non-reductive* account of agency insofar as it holds that an
agent's role in the exercise of agency is to be construed in
terms of the exercise of an irreducible agent-causal power (Chisholm
1964; Taylor 1966; O'Connor 2000; see also Clarke 2003; Lowe
2008).
According to a *volitionist* approach, agency is to be
explained in terms of acts of the will, usually called
"volitions". On this view, volitions are the source of
agency: an overt movement is an action just in case it is caused, in
the right way, by a volition. Volitions themselves are entirely
uncaused and they are *sui generis* acts: they are acts in
virtue of their intrinsic properties, not in virtue of some extrinsic
or relational property (such as having the right causal
history). This is also a non-reductive approach to agency, but it
differs sharply from both the event-causal and the agent-causal
framework in the important respect that it rejects the suggestion
that all actions are events with a certain causal history (Ginet
1990; McCann 1998; see also Lowe 2008).[15]
The event-causal framework is by far the most widely accepted view
in the contemporary philosophy of mind and action. One reason for this
is that the commitment to the event-causal framework is tantamount to
a commitment to a very minimal and widely endorsed kind of naturalism,
according to which any appeal to irreducible substance-causation or
teleology is to be avoided. Further, this commitment to the
event-causal framework is sustained by a widespread dissatisfaction
with alternative agent-causal and volitionist theories of agency. Some
objections to agent-causal theories derive from more general
objections to the notion of substance-causation, others address more
directly the agent-causal account of agency. It has been argued, for
instance, that appeal to substances leaves both the timing and the
manner of causation mysterious (Broad 1952). Further, it has been
argued that substance-causation collapses into event-causation, once
it is acknowledged that a substance has its causal powers in virtue of
its properties (Clarke 2003: Ch. 10). Others have argued that an
appeal to the agent as a cause is vacuous, because it has no
explanatory import (Davidson 1971), and because it cannot explain what
an agent's exercise of control consists in (Schlosser 2010). A
common objection to volitionist accounts is that they generate a
regress of mental acts (Ryle 1949). Arguably, though, this objection
begs the question. The view holds that overt actions are to be
explained in terms of volitions. There is no need to appeal to further
mental acts of the will in order to explain why volitions are actions,
because volitions are actions *sui generis* (see Enc
2003 for discussion). This, however, points also to the reason why
the view is widely rejected. Volitionist theories stipulate as
primitive what appears to be in need of explanation. In particular,
they do not explain what an agent's exercise of control consists
in, as the agent is merely the subject or the bearer of volitions
(O'Connor 2000: 25-26; Clarke 2003:
17-24). Moreover, if, as most contemporary philosophers would
assume, volitions are realized by events in the brain, the view
appears to be in tension with the fact that there are no events in the
brain that are entirely uncaused.
### 3.2 Deviant causal chains
In the 1950s and 60s, several philosophers argued that the
event-causal framework is incoherent. Their main argument was the so
called "logical connection argument", which says, very
roughly, that the relation between mental attitudes and actions
cannot be causal, because the connection between them is logical,
conceptual, or in some sense non-contingent (Hampshire 1959; Melden
1961; Kenny 1963, for instance). It is widely agreed now that this
attack was unsuccessful (the most influential reply is due to
Davidson 1963; see also Goldman 1970:
109-116).[16]
Shortly after that another challenge
emerged, which turned out to be the most serious and most persistent
problem for the standard theory and the event-causal framework: the
problem of deviant causal chains.
In general, the problem is that it seems always possible that the
relevant mental states and events cause the relevant event (a certain
movement, for instance) in a deviant way: so that this event is
clearly not an intentional action or not an action at all. It is
common to distinguish between cases of *basic* deviance
and *consequential* deviance (also called primary and
secondary deviance). A murderous nephew intends to kill his uncle in
order to inherit his fortune. He drives to his uncle's house
and on the way he kills a pedestrian by accident. As it turns out,
this pedestrian is his uncle. This is a case of consequential
deviance (Chisholm 1966). In a standard case of basic deviance
(Davidson 1973), a climber intends to rid himself of the weight and
danger of holding another man on a rope by loosening his grip. This
intention unnerves him so that it causes him to loosen his hold on
the rope. The difference between the cases is best explained in terms
of the distinction between *basic* and *non-basic*
actions. Very roughly, basic actions are the things that one can do
without doing something else (such as raising one's hand),
whereas the performance of non-basic actions requires that one does
something else (such as giving someone a signal by raising
one's hand).[17] In the consequential case, the nephew
has an intention to perform a non-basic action (to kill his
uncle). He successfully performs several basic actions, but it is a
sheer coincidence that he brings about the intended end. The climber,
in contrast, does not perform any action at all. The mental
antecedent causes a movement that *would* have been a basic
action, had the causal chain not been deviant.
Any event-causal theory of agency must require that the relevant
mental attitudes cause the action in the right way. The right way of
causation is non-deviant causation. The challenge is to spell out
what non-deviant causation consists in within the event-causal
framework; without, in particular, any appeal to some unanalyzed
notion of agent-causation or control. Davidson (1974) was pessimistic
about the prospects for finding an event-causal account of
non-deviant causation, and he suggested that the standard theory is
best understood as providing only necessary conditions for
agency. Goldman (1970) suggested that giving an account of
non-deviant causation is an empirical rather than a philosophical
task. Since then, however, most proponents of the event-causal
approach have acknowledged that the problem of deviant causal chains
is a serious philosophical problem, and various solutions have been
proposed (see Peacocke 1979; Brand 1984; Bishop 1989; Mele 2003;
Schlosser 2007, 2011; Wu 2016).[18]
### 3.3 Disappearing agents, naturalism, and dual standpoint theory
Sometimes it is suggested that the problem of deviant causal chains
is merely a symptom of the deeper problem that event-causal theories
altogether fail to capture agency, because they reduce actions to
things that merely happen to us (Lowe 2008: 9, for instance). Put
differently, this challenge says that the event-causal framework is
deficient because it leaves out agents: all there is, on this view, is
a nexus of causal pushes and pulls in which *no one does
anything* (Melden 1961; Nagel 1986; see also Velleman 1992). This
has been called the problem of the "disappearing agent"
(Mele 2003: Ch. 10; Lowe 2008: 159-161; Steward 2013).
According to Mele (2003: Ch. 10), some formulations of this
disappearing agent objection are easily dismissed. Some proponents of
this challenge use the terms 'event-causal order' and
'natural order' interchangeably. This would seem to
suggest that, on their view, agency is a supernatural
phenomenon--a view that most contemporary philosophers find
hard to take seriously. However, sometimes the challenge is raised in
order to motivate alternative agent-causal or volitionist theories of
agency, and the main proponents of agent-causal and volitionist
theories maintain that their views are compatible with
naturalism. They would argue that it is a mistake to presume that the
event-causal order exhausts the natural order of things.
Further, the disappearing agent objection is not always put forward
as a general objection to the event-causal framework. As we have seen
(section 2.3), Velleman (1992) argued
that the standard theory leaves out the agent, or the agent's
participation, and he proposed a solution to this
problem *within* the event-causal framework. In his reply,
Mele (2003: Ch. 10) suggested that it would be more appropriate to
call this the problem of the "shrinking agent". According to
Velleman, the standard theory captures only deficient instances of
agency, in which the agent's participation is
"unwitting" or "halfhearted". Instances of
deficient agency can be explained in terms of various capacities or
properties that the agent does not possess, exercise, or instantiate;
capacities and properties such as conscious awareness, reflective
awareness, reason-responsiveness, self-control, self-governance, and
so on. Given this, there is no need to conceptualize instances of
deficient agency in terms of the agent's absence. Further,
doing so creates a rather implausible dichotomy between a kind of
agency in which the agent does participate and a kind of agency in
which the agent does not participate (Schlosser 2010).
Others, yet, press the disappearing agent objection in order to
motivate a dual standpoint theory. According to dual standpoint
theories, agency cannot be explained from any theoretical standpoint
or metaphysical framework. Agency can only be understood from a
practical and normative standpoint (Nagel 1986; Korsgaard 1996;
Bilgrami 2006, for instance). Arguably, this view has its roots in
Kant's account of practical reason (see the entry on
Kant and Hume on morality). Usually, dual standpoint theories do not reject metaphysics as such,
and they often provide a metaphysical framework of their own. But they
reject both reductive and non-reductive theories of agency, and they
reject, in general, the notion that we can have a metaphysical account
of what the exercise of agency consists in. They align themselves
naturally with non-causal theories of reason explanation (see
section 2).
Both views tend to emphasize the normative and irreducibly
teleological nature of reason explanation and, hence, agency. Dual
standpoint theories have received relatively little attention in the
philosophy of action. To many, it seems that such views are deeply
unsatisfactory precisely because they refuse to face a central
question in the metaphysics of agency: how can agents exercise control
over their actions in a world in which all movements can be explained
in terms of event-causation? It seems that this is in need of
explanation, and it seems that this requires a metaphysics of agency
(see Bishop 1989; Schlosser 2010). Nelkin (2000) has questioned the
coherence of dual standpoint theories on the basis of an argument for
the claim that they entail commitments to contradictory beliefs about
free will.
### 3.4 Actions, events, processes, and omissions
We now turn, in brief, to some further issues in the metaphysics of
agency. The first concerns the individuation of actions. You flick the
switch, turn on the light, illuminate the room, and you thereby also
alert the burglar. How many actions do you perform? According
to *coarse-grained* (or minimizing) views on the individuation
of actions, you perform one action under different descriptions
(Anscombe 1957; Davidson 1963). According to *fine-grained* (or
maximizing) views, how many actions you perform depends on how many
act-properties are instantiated. If you instantiate four
act-properties, then you perform four distinct actions (Goldman 1970;
see also Ginet 1990). According to a third alternative, actions can
have other actions as their components or parts (Thalberg 1977; Ginet
1990). According to all three views, actions are events, and the
individuation of actions derives from different views on the
individuation of events (see the entry on
events). Not much work has been done on this recently (see, however, Enc
2003: Ch. 3). This is partly because it is now widely agreed that the
individuation of actions has little or no bearing on other issues. To
illustrate, the question of whether agency is to be explained within
an event-causal or an agent-causal framework bears directly on various
issues in the debate on free will and moral responsibility (see the
entry on
free will). But event-causal and agent-causal theories are both compatible with
coarse-grained and fine-grained views on the individuation of actions.
Similarly, it seems that the views on the individuation of actions
have no substantial bearing on the question of whether or not reason
explanations are causal explanations.
A related issue is whether actions are to be identified with
the *outcomes* of causal processes or with
the *processes* themselves. According to most versions of
event-causal and agent-causal theories, an action is an event that is
caused in the right way: the action is identical with or constituted
by the outcome of that process.[19] According to process views, the action
is either identical with or constituted by that process (Searle 1983;
Dretske 1988; Wu 2011; see also Thompson 2008). This issue has also not
received much attention. Again, this is mainly because it is widely
assumed that this issue has little or no substantial bearing on more
fundamental issues in the metaphysics of agency and on debates
outside the philosophy of
action.[20]
Another issue in the metaphysics of agency that has received more
attention in the recent debate is the nature of omissions (in
particular, intentional omissions). According to Sartorio (2009), an
intentional omission is the absence of an action that is caused by the
absence of an intention. She argues, on the basis of this account,
that intentional omissions cannot be accommodated easily by the
standard theory. In reply, Clarke (2010a) has argued that in cases of
intentional omission the agent usually does have an intention not to
act that plays an important causal role, and he has identified various
parallels between intentional actions and intentional omissions. On
his view, there are no major obstacles to an account of intentional
omissions that is compatible and continuous with the standard theory
of intentional action. Further, he argues that a failure to account
for intentional omissions would not obviously be a shortcoming of a
theory of intentional action. There are, after all, significant
differences between actions and omissions, and so we should not expect
that a theory of action provides all the resources that are required
for an account of omissions. (For more on this see Clarke 2014.)
## 4. Empirical challenges and the role of consciousness
### 4.1 Reasons and causes
According to our commonsense conception of agency, our reasons and
conscious intentions tend to make a real difference to how we act
(D'Andrade 1987; Malle 2004, for instance). This assumption is
part and parcel of the standard theory and of numerous psychological
theories of intentional action and motivation (Fishbein and Ajzen
1975; Locke and Latham 1990; Heckhausen 1991; Gollwitzer 1993; Austin
and Vancouver 1996, for instance). There are, however, various
empirical findings from psychology and cognitive neuroscience that
have been taken to show that this commonsense assumption is
unwarranted, and that have raised interesting and challenging
questions concerning the role of consciousness in the initiation and
guidance of agency. This section provides an overview of the most
relevant research.
An early and highly influential source of the skepticism concerning
the causal relevance of our reasons is a theoretical review by Nisbett
and Wilson (1977). This article reports numerous experiments and
studies in which participants appear to construct or confabulate
rationalizing explanations by giving reasons that could not possibly
have been the reasons they acted for. Despite some rather serious
methodological problems (White 1988), this research has achieved and
retained the status of textbook knowledge within psychology and
cognitive science. Moreover, it has been taken to show that ordinary
reason explanations are not causal explanations, even though the
authors themselves rejected this conclusion. On their view, the
evidence shows, first and foremost, that verbal reports of mental
states are based on self-interpretation (theorizing or
rationalization), rather than on direct or introspective access. They
noted that this epistemic view is perfectly compatible with the
assumption that we can and often do give the actual causes of our
actions when we give an ordinary reason explanation. The upshot is
that, even if the proposed epistemic view is correct, there is nothing
in the evidence which shows that reason explanations cannot be causal
explanations, and there is nothing in the evidence which shows that
reason explanations are usually not causal explanations.
### 4.2 Situationism
It seems that the empirical evidence in support of
situationism raises a challenge for our commonsense conception of
agency. According to situationism, empirical research shows that
commonsense explanations of actions in terms of character traits (such
as honesty, kindness, or courage) are systematically mistaken or
inaccurate, because this research shows that the actions in question
are better explained in terms of situational features (Ross and
Nisbett 1991; Harman 1999; Doris 2002). But none of the common
philosophical theories of agency say that actions are to be explained
in terms of the agent's character traits, and so it seems that
situationism does not raise a problem for the standard theory and
other philosophical accounts of agency. Moreover, the interpretation
of the empirical evidence in question and the argument for
situationism have been controversial (Sreenivasan 2002, for
instance). It has been argued, however, that this evidence raises the
further question of whether we are genuinely reason-responsive. The
evidence suggests that our actions are, under certain conditions,
driven by situational and morally irrelevant factors even when there
are salient moral reasons to act otherwise. This suggests that we (or
most of us) are not as reason-responsive as we would like to
think. But it is controversial whether or not the evidence supports
any stronger claims than that (for more on this see Nelkin 2005;
Schlosser 2013; Vargas 2013).
### 4.3 The Libet experiment and Wegner's challenge
The most influential empirical challenge concerning the role of
conscious intentions stems from Libet's seminal neuroscientific
work on the initiation of movements. In the Libet experiment (Libet
1985), participants were instructed to initiate a simple and
predefined movement when the wish or urge to do so arises. During
this, EEG measurements were taken to record the readiness potential, a
brain potential that was known to precede intentional movements. The
main finding was that the readiness potential precedes the occurrence
of the conscious wish or urge to move by about 350ms. According to
Libet, this shows that movements are not consciously initiated and
that we do not have free will in the sense we commonly think we do
(Libet 1999). The methodology of this experiment has been scrutinized
extensively and criticized on a number of points. Some of those
methodological issues have been addressed in follow-up experiments
(Soon et al. 2008; Fried et al. 2011).
Most philosophers who have addressed Libet's work have argued
that the conclusions about the role of conscious intentions and about
free will do not follow, even if it is granted that the experimental
methods and results are sound. They have argued that there are
alternative interpretations of the evidence that preserve a causal
role for conscious intentions and that are as plausible and probable
as Libet's own interpretation of the evidence (Flanagan 1992:
136-138; Zhu 2003; Mele 2009a; Schlosser 2012b). Further, it has
been argued that the experiment creates a very unusual and artificial
context in which participants are *instructed* to
decide *spontaneously*. Due to this, it is questionable that
the results of the experiment can be generalized (Keller and
Heckhausen 1990; Roskies 2011; Waller 2012; Schlosser 2014). Schurger
et al. (2012) have proposed and tested a model that addresses this
issue. According to this model, the timing of the movement in the
Libet experiment is determined by random threshold crossings in
spontaneous fluctuations in neural activity. In particular, the model
says that a decision when to move is determined by random threshold
crossings *only* when it is not constrained by any evidence or
reasons for action. The fact that this model has been tested
successfully supports the claim that the results from the Libet
experiment and from similar follow-up studies do not generalize,
because most of our everyday decisions clearly are constrained by
evidence and by reasons for action.
A related challenge concerning the role of conscious intentions
stems from Wegner's model of apparent mental
causation. According to this view, conscious intentions provide mere
"previews" of our actions: they precede our actions, but
they do not cause them (Wegner and Wheatley 1999; Wegner
2002). Wegner provided evidence of dissociations between the sense of
agency and the actual exercise of agency, and he argued that the
model of apparent mental causation provides the best explanation of
the data. This view has been strongly criticized for conceptual ambiguities and
argumentative flaws (see also section 4.5). One common objection is that the fact that the sense of agency can come apart from the exercise of agency is
perfectly compatible with the assumption that conscious intentions
tend to cause the intended actions. (See Bayne 2006; Mele 2009a; for
a reply to Wegner's inference to the best explanation see
Schlosser 2012a.)
The work of Libet and Wegner has nevertheless raised interesting
and challenging questions concerning the role of consciousness in
agency. Proponents of the standard theory often qualify the view
with the claim that the relevant mental attitudes need not be
consciously accessed in order to play the right role in the exercise
of agency. When, for instance, Davidson (1978: 85-86)
considered the example of an agent who adds some spice to a stew with
the intention of improving the taste, he claimed that intentional
agency requires only that the agent *would* have reasoned on
the basis of the relevant attitudes that the action is to be
performed, *had he been aware* of those attitudes at the
time. Few, though, would be prepared to accept the view that *all* of
our actions might be like this: initiated and guided by attitudes
that are not consciously accessed at the time. This raises various
questions that are rarely addressed. How often, or in what kinds of
cases, should actions be preceded by conscious intentions or
conscious reasoning? What kind of consciousness is required? In cases
where the relevant attitudes are not consciously accessed, must they
be accessible? And so forth.[21]
### 4.4 Automaticity and dual-system theory
One strand of empirical research that is relevant to questions
concerning the role of consciousness in agency is the work on
automaticity; in particular, the research on automatic goal
pursuit. It has been shown, for instance, that the goal to perform a
certain task accurately can be primed, so that the agent pursues the
goal without any awareness of doing so (Bargh et al. 2001). There is
a large body of research on this, and it has been suggested that this
research shows that *most* of our actions are executed
automatically and without conscious control (Bargh and Chartrand
1999, Custers and Aarts 2010).[22] This claim is less radical than the
claims put forward by Libet (1999) and Wegner (2002), as it concerns
only the extent or scope of conscious control. Further, this appears
to be much less challenging once it is noted that the great majority
of automatic actions are sub-routines that are in the service of
higher goals and long-term intentions. Consider, for instance, all
the sub-routines that one performs while driving a car. The claim
that such actions are performed automatically and without conscious
control can be reconciled with our commonsense conception of agency
and it can be accommodated by the standard theory, provided that
conscious intentions and plans can recruit the relevant routines
automatically, either by generating the relevant motor intentions, or
by activating the relevant motor schemata. (For more on this see
Pacherie 2008; Adams 2010; Clarke 2010b.)
Another relevant strand of research is the work on dual-process (or
dual-system) theories of decision-making. According to such models,
there are two distinct types of mental processes (or systems) that
underlie decision-making and agency: one is typically characterized as
automatic, effortless, and heuristics-based, and the other as
conscious, deliberate, and rule-based. Dual-process models have been
deployed widely and successfully in many areas of research (for
overviews see Sloman 1996; Evans 2008; for critical reviews see Osman
2004; Keren and Schul 2009). In philosophy, it is commonly assumed,
explicitly or implicitly, that there is *one* mechanism (or
faculty) of practical reason that underlies practical reasoning and
reason-based agency. This appears to be incompatible with the
dual-process framework. What complicates this issue, though, is that
there is no consensus on the details of the dual-process model. There
is, for instance, no commonly accepted view on how the two processes
(or systems) interact. Conscious and deliberate processes may have a
top-down influence on automatic processes; the two processes may
interact with each other; they may interfere with each other in some
cases; there may be cases in which processing switches from one to the
other; and so on. Not all of those possibilities are obviously
incompatible with the assumption that there is one mechanism (or
faculty) of practical reason. Further research is needed in order to
investigate whether the two types of processes are in the relevant
respects independent or whether they can be construed as interacting
parts of one mechanism of decision-making. For a discussion of whether
the dual-system framework is compatible with the philosophical
standard theory of action see Schlosser
2019.[23]
### 4.5 The sense of agency
There has been some debate concerning the kind of knowledge we have
of our own actions. Most prominently, Anscombe (1957) argued that the
knowledge of our actions is direct, in the sense that it is not based
on observation or inference (see the entry on
action).
This section provides an overview of the closely related debate on the
so called "sense of agency". It seems that when we act, we
have a sense of doing something: a sense of control and of being the
agent or owner of the action. The debate about this has been driven
largely by empirical findings from psychology and cognitive science,
and it has become common to distinguish between the following three
main positions.
The first is largely due to Wegner's work on the "model of
apparent mental causation" (Wegner and Wheatley 1999; Wegner
2002). According to this view, the sense of agency (or the
"experience of conscious will", as Wegner called it)
arises when we *interpret* a conscious intention to perform a
certain action as its cause. It says, in particular, that an agent
interprets an intention as the cause of an action when the following
conditions obtain: the intention proximately precedes the action, the
action is consistent with the intention, and the agent is not aware of
any factors that could provide an alternative
explanation. Wegner's argument for the model of apparent mental
causation is based on various experiments, studies, and observations
concerning illusions of control and failures in the ascription of
agency. This work initiated the empirical study of the sense of
agency, but Wegner's model is now widely rejected. Philosophers
have criticized the view for various conceptual ambiguities and flaws
in the interpretation and use of the evidence (Nahmias 2002; Bayne
2006; Dennett 2008; and Mele 2009a, for instance). Moreover, there is
now plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that the sense of agency
is not merely a matter of self-interpretation (Haggard 2005; Bayne and
Pacherie 2007; Gallagher 2007; and Synofzik et al. 2008).
The second account of the sense of agency is based on a
feedback-comparator model of motor control. According to this model,
the motor control system uses copies of motor commands in order to
generate predictions of the ensuing bodily movements. Those
predictions (so called "forward models") are then used for
comparisons between the predicted and the intended trajectories of
movements, and for comparisons between the predicted and actual
trajectories (based on information from sensory feedback). The model
holds that a sub-personal system of motor control uses those
predictions and comparisons in order to adjust and fine-tune the
execution of bodily movements (Wolpert and Kawato 1998; Frith et
al. 2000; Haggard 2005). It has been suggested that this system may
also play a crucial role in the generation of the sense of agency. On
this view, positive matches in the comparator system generate a sense
of agency, whereas mismatches generate error signals that disrupt the
sense of agency. This model can explain a wide range of phenomena
concerning the sense and control of agency (Frith et al. 2000;
Blakemore et al. 2002). More recently it has been argued, however,
that this comparator model provides at best a partial explanation of
the sense of agency (Haggard 2005; Bayne and Pacherie 2007; Gallagher
2007; Synofzik et al. 2008).
The third account of the sense of agency is a hybrid of the first
two. Proponents of this approach usually distinguish between a basic
sense of agency and post-act judgments concerning one's agency.
The basic sense of agency is construed as an online and
phenomenologically rather thin experience that accompanies the
performance of actions, and that does not necessarily require the
presence of a conscious intention. Judgments about one's agency,
in contrast, are offline and usually post-act, and they are, thereby,
subject to various biases that may distort the interpretation of
one's own agency. The feedback-comparator model is well suited
to explain the basic sense of agency, whereas a self-interpretation
theory, akin to Wegner's, can explain why judgments about
one's own agency tend to be distorted or illusory under certain
conditions (Bayne and Pacherie 2007; Gallagher 2007; Synofzik et
al. 2008).
Pacherie (2008) develops the feedback-comparator model into an account
of the phenomenology of agency that postulates three integrated
feedback loops at three different levels of intention: the level of
distal (or future-directed) intention, proximal (or present-directed)
intention, and motor intention. These are levels of action
specification in which progressively more detailed representations of
the action are generated, at the later stages in response to
perceptual and proprioceptive feedback. Pacherie's main thesis
is that the component representations of the stages in the process of
action specification are strongly interconnected with the components
and contents of the phenomenology of agency. At the level of proximal
intentions, for instance, the model explains how the conceptual
information that is inherited from the distal intention is integrated
with perceptual input and situational constraints. Concerning the
sense of agency, the model distinguishes between the awareness of what
(the goal), awareness of how (the means), the sense of intentionality,
the sense of initiation, the sense of situational control, and the
sense of motor control. Shepherd (2017) argues that the components in
the phenomenology of agency are so richly integrated that they can be
regarded as fused in the total experience.
### 4.6 Perception and attention
The analytical philosophy of action neglected the role of perception
and attention in the guidance of agency for a long time. Concerning
perception it was common to assume, often without any elaboration,
that the reference to the guiding role of beliefs takes care of the
role of perception. The standard theory does not limit the causal role
of beliefs to those that the agent considers or possesses prior to the
execution of the action, and so we may assume that the beliefs that
are supposed to play a causal guidance role include perceptual beliefs
that the agent acquires during the performance of the action. More
recent work (Mele 2003; Pacherie 2008; Schlosser 2012a) has shown that
the standard theory is compatible with the feedback-comparator model
of movement control outlined above (see section
4.5). This model accounts not only for the role of perceptual and
proprioceptive input, but also for the guidance provided by internal
predictions in the fine-tuning and execution of motor control.
The role of attention, however, was almost entirely unacknowledged, as
pointed out by Wu (2011, 2016). Whenever we pursue a goal, we must not
only select appropriate means. We must also select which features of
the situation to attend to in the guidance of action. Wu
conceptualizes this in terms of a "many-many problem": in the pursuit
of a goal we face typically too many perceptual inputs and too many
possible behavioral outputs. The formation of an intention provides
only a partial solution. The content of an intention usually includes
the selection of the appropriate means. One intends, for instance, to
open the window in order to let in some fresh air. This constrains the
range of behavioral outputs and the range of perceptual inputs that
one needs to attend to. But it does not determine a specific enough
input-output mapping. Generally, the content of intentions is not
fine-grained enough in order to properly guide the execution of
movements and the direction of attention. Wu suggests that the
many-many problems at those finer-grained levels are solved by
attention. Following William James, Wu proposes that
attention *is* the missing selection for action: the selection
of perceptual inputs for the implementation of motor control. On this
view, intention-mediated attention is an essential *component*
of embodied agency. This raises the question of whether the selection
of attention can itself be a genuine exercise of agency, and whether
the proposed account can be extended so as to account for the
intentional direction and control of attention. |
shared-agency | ## 1. The traditional ontological problem and the Intention Thesis
Agency is sometimes exercised in concert, as when we walk together,
several individuals undertake painting a house, or a football team
executes a pass
play.[1]
It is hardly controversial that there really is a phenomenon falling
under labels such as *shared activity*, and *joint* or
*collective action*. What is disputed is how to understand it.
One way to approach the issues here is to ask what distinguishes
actions of individuals that together constitute shared activity from
those that amount to a mere aggregation of individual acts. What is
left over when we subtract what each of us did from what we did
together?[2]
Consider a case discussed by Searle (1990, 402). A number of
individuals are scattered about in a park. Suddenly it starts to rain,
and each runs to a centrally located shelter. Although there may be
some coordination (people tend not to collide into one another),
running to the shelter is not, in the relevant sense, something that
we do together. Now imagine another scenario with the same individuals
executing the same movements but as members of a dance troop
performing a site-specific piece in that park. In both cases, there is
no difference in the collection or "summation" of
individual behavior: A is running to the shelter, and B is running to
the shelter, etc. But the dancers are engaged in collective action,
whereas the storm panicked picnickers are not.
Searle suggests that what distinguishes the two cases is not the
outward behavior, but something "internal". He hints that
in the collective case, the outward behavior--everyone running to
and converging on the shelter--is not a matter of
coincidence.[3]
It is, rather, explained as something *aimed* at by the
participants. This suggests that the internal difference is a matter
of *intention*. And, indeed, Searle sees it this way. In both
cases, a participant has an intention expressed by "I am running
to the shelter". But in the collective case this intention
somehow *derives* from and is dependent upon an intention that
necessarily adverts to the others, one that might be expressed as
"We are running to the shelter" (or perhaps "We are
performing the part of the piece where...."). It is this
"we-intention" that distinguishes shared or collective
activity from a mere summation or heap of individual acts.
Perhaps it's premature to conclude, as Searle does, that there has
to be an "internal" difference here. While most theorists treat
intention as a psychological attitude (e.g. Davidson 1978, Harman
1976, Bratman 1986), some work on intention influenced by Anscombe and
Wittgenstein (such as Wilson 1989 and Thompson 2008) understands
intention fundamentally in terms of intentional action (see the entry
on intention for discussion). It remains to be seen how Anscombian
approaches to shared agency will develop, though some forays into this
territory are to be found in Stoutland 1997 and Laurence 2010.
Another reservation with invoking intention at this point stems from
consideration of unintentional collective action. Appealing to
intention as Searle does would seem to preclude what some see as a
real possibility: that there are ph-ings done jointly in some robust
sense, but which are not intended under any description. One possible
example would be our jointly bringing about some severe environmental
damage. This might come about as a side effect of each of us pursuing
our own projects. No subject intends the severe environmental damage,
under any description: no single individual has enough of an impact to
intend anything that would count as severe environmental damage, and
as a collective the polluters seem not to be sufficiently integrated
to count as a subject of intention. Whether this really amounts to a
counterexample will depend on whether our damaging the environment was
joint, a genuine exercise of shared agency. For discussion see Ludwig
2007; 2016, 182, and Chant 2007.
Setting aside these reservations, we can ask how the attitude of
intention should be understood if it is to serve as a distinctive mark
of joint action. One approach is to think of it as an attitude of a
peculiar, supra-individual
entity.[4]
The intention whose content is expressed by *We are running to the
shelter* is, on this view, an attitude had by whatever entity is
denoted by the 'we'. On this view *whenever* people
act together, they constitute a group that, in a non-figurative sense,
intends. This entails that *groups* can be genuine agents and
subjects of intentional attitudes.
Searle (1990, 406) rules this out of court, understandably and perhaps
dogmatically reluctant to embrace a view that leads to a profusion of
supra-individual intentional subjects, group minds, or corporate
persons whenever individuals act together. Such ontological profligacy
is prompted in part by a straightforward interpretation of the
language we use to describe joint action, with the plural subject term
understood simply as a referring expression. Ludwig 2016 suggests
instead that we think of the subject term as involving implicit
restricted quantification over members of the group. This proposal,
combined with a Davidsonian event analysis of action descriptions,
provides resources for an alternative rendering of the underlying
logical form of action descriptions, one that does not encourage the
supra-individual view. What would be required instead is that there be
some one event for which there is more than one
agent.[5]
There is reason, moreover, to think that a strategy appealing to
supra-individual entities as subjects of intentional states is
misplaced if the social phenomenon in question is shared activity.
It's not at all obvious that an individual who is a constituent of a
supra-individual entity is necessarily committed to what *it*
is up to. For example, consider the U.S., which would on such a view
count as supra-individual entity. The U.S. increases research funding
in physics in order to win the space race with the U.S.S.R. I'm a
graduate student benefitting from the additional funding, and I do
research in rocket and satellite technology, and teach physics and
engineering to undergraduates; indeed, I wouldn't have gone into the
area had it not been for the funding opportunities. I am in the
relevant sense a constituent of the larger entity - in this case the
U.S. - but I have no concern with the space race. I'm just doing my
job, advancing my career, hoping to raise a family and be able to pay
the mortgage, etc.; I frankly couldn't care less about larger
geopolitical issues, which are presumably the concern of the
supra-individual entity that is the U.S. In contrast, a participant in
shared activity arguably is committed to the collective endeavor and
its aims - at least in the sense of commitment to an end implicated in
any instance of intention or intentional action. So, while we
haven't ruled out that there are supra-individual agents (see below
for more discussion), it's not clear that we need to be committed to
them in order to understand shared activity.
If shared activity does indeed involve commitment on the part of the
individual participants, then it seems that some intention-like
element of each individual's psychology must realize or reflect the
we-intention that is the mark of shared
activity.[6]
The *Intention Thesis* attributes to each individual
participant in shared activity an intention pertaining to that
activity. This *participatory intention* accounts for each
individual's participatory commitment to the activity, and it serves
to distinguish one's action when it is done with others from action
done on one's own.
[7]
Some of the discussion of the current literature on shared activity
can be understood as a debate about the nature of this participatory
intention and how instances of it in different individuals must be
related to one another so that the individuals could be said to act
together, and share an intention (presumably the intention expressed
with the aforementioned we-locution).
Participatory intentions might, for example, be understood as an
instance of an ordinary intention, familiar from the study of
individual agency; if we-intentions are identified with, or built out
of these participatory intentions, we would thus be offered the
prospect of a reductive account of this we-intention in terms of
ordinary individual intentions. Tuomela and Miller 1988 defend such a
view. Take an individual who is a member of a group. According to
Tuomela and Miller, this individual has a participatory intention with
respect to X if she intends to do her part in X, believes conditions
for success of X obtain, and believes that there is mutual belief
amongst members of the group that conditions for success
obtain.[8]
(Other work in this general vein include Bratman 1992, MacMahon 2001,
2005, S. Miller 2001. Tuomela's later work is rather different, as
will be noted below.)
As a counterexample to the reductive account, Searle imagines each
member of a business school graduating class, versed in Adam Smith's
theory of the invisible hand, intending to pursue his selfish
interests and thereby intending to do his part in helping humanity.
Such an intention, even supplemented with the sort of beliefs that
Tuomela and Miller require, intuitively doesn't count as the sort of
intention one has when acting with others, and it is implausible to
think that these graduates go on to act collectively. And yet it seems
to satisfy Tuomela and Miller's
analysis.[9]
Searle's diagnosis of the problem is that reductive approaches
don't guarantee the element of cooperation that is essential to
shared activity and necessarily reflected in the attitudes of the
participant (1990, 406). And one cannot respond by inserting the
cooperative element into the content of the intention, so that what
the agent intends is *to do her part in shared activity*. That
would in effect presuppose the notion for which we're seeking an
account (1990,
405).[10]
Searle, in contrast to Tuomela and Miller, insists that the
individual's participatory intention (what he calls a *collective
intention*) is primitive. The aforementioned "we-intention"
turns out, for Searle, just to be an individual's participatory
intention. But though it is an attitude or state of an individual, it
is a fundamentally different kind of intention, and not the sort of
intention that figures in individual action. It should be mentioned
that this is a view with similarities to those held by Sellars and
later
Tuomela.[11]
Searle's version of the intention thesis also involves a rejection
of anti-individualism in the philosophy of mind (see the entry on
externalism about mental content). In particular, whether an
individual has this primitively collective participatory intention is
independent of what may be going on in the minds of others, or whether
there even are any others around her. Thinking to help you with your
stalled car, I might have the collective intention expressed as *we
are pushing the car*. And this is so, even if you're just
stretching your calves before a run and not trying to move the car,
and even if I'm just hallucinating and there is no one
around.[12]
## 2. Interrelatedness of participatory intentions
Be that as it may, whether one is *sharing* an intention and
acting *with* others will depend, of course, on there being
other agents with whom one is appropriately related. Suppose that each
of several individuals has a participatory intention. How must they be
related in order for those individuals to count as sharing an
intention? Recall that for Searle, the participatory intention is
primitively collective and expressed, for example, as *We will do
A*. Given this, one thing Searle presumably would require for the
sharing of intentions is the co-extensiveness of the
*we-*element instanced in the intentions across the several
individuals. But this is not sufficient. No intention is shared if
yours is for us to go to the beach this afternoon, whereas mine has us
doing something incompatible, like working all day in the library.
Even if our intentions coincide on the action and the plural subject
in question, if there is no agreement on how to go about it, or if we
each fail even to accord any significant status to the other's
intentions, there would be no intention or action shared in this
instance. So, more needs to be said about the interrelations of the
participatory intentions if they are to account for the coordination
and cooperativeness we find in shared or joint activity. Searle is
silent on the matter; for what more to say, we need to turn
elsewhere.[13]
In an influential series of papers, Bratman has developed a reductive
account of shared activity and shared
intention.[14]
He understands a shared intention to be an interpersonal structure of
related intentions that serves to coordinate action and planning, as
well as structure bargaining between
participants.[15]
The individually held intentions that constitute this
structure--what we've been calling participatory
intentions--are instances of a familiar sort of individual
intention that figures in the planning and the coordination of
one's activities over time. When these individual intentions
concern something that is done by more than one person, taking the
form *I intend that we J,* they accord with Bratman's
version of the Intention Thesis, and the core of his proposals about
shared intention and action. But Bratman imposes further conditions,
and these serve to relate these participatory intentions in
distinctive ways.
One important condition concerns the meshing of sub-plans (Bratman
1992, 331ff). On Bratman's view, an intention is distinctive in
how it leads to planning about necessary means and facilitative steps
that lead to its satisfaction. Now, suppose each of us has the
intention to paint the house together (or, as Bratman would have it,
the intention that we paint the house), but my plan is to paint it
green all over, whereas yours is to paint it purple all over. It seems
that we don't share the intention to paint the house. So Bratman
introduces the condition that each participant intends that the
subplans that follow upon the participatory intentions of each
individual mesh--that is, are mutually satisfiable and
coherent--in order for the individuals to count as sharing an
intention.[16]
We wouldn't exhibit the right sort of cooperative attitude for
shared activity and intention if the mesh of our sub-plans were
accidental and we were not at all *disposed* to make them
consistent if they were to become incompatible. That's why
Bratman requires the intention to mesh
subplans.[17]
There is, moreover, a normative element to the meshing, as emphasized
by Roth 2003. Participants are subject to some sort of rational
requirement[18]
such that they in a sense *ought* to mesh their plans: the
plans of the other participants serve as a normative constraint on
one's own plans. And there is no reason to restrict this status
to the plans, and not extend it to the intentions that generate them.
Thus, shared activity exhibits what Roth calls *practical
intersubjectivity*. In effect, each participant treats the
other's intentions and plans much in the way that he or she
treats her own: as rational constraints on further intention and
planning.
Bratman (especially in his 2014 book, but see also his 2009c, 2009b,
1992) defends a *reductive* account of this normative
requirement, explaining this interpersonal normative constraint in
terms of the norms of commitment governing individual intention, such
as those of consistency and means-end coherence. Your intentions and
plans pertaining to our J-ing have an authority for me because of what
might be called a bridge intention to mesh my J-related plans and
intentions with yours. Bratman expresses the bridge intention in terms
of the condition requiring each participant to have the intention to
act in accordance with and because of the others' intentions and
plans (as well as his or her own). Bratman's idea is that, given my
bridge intention, the norms of consistency and coherence governing my
individual intentions will be recruited to require that I form my
plans and intentions with an eye toward consistency and coherence with
your plans and intentions. Roth 2003 sympathizes with these
interpersonal normative requirements of consistency and coherence as a
condition for shared intention and action, but resists the reductive
bridge intention account of it.
The demand that subplans must mesh might inspire the view that
super-ordinate intentions, or the reasons each participant in shared
activity A has for taking part, might also be subject to a similar
requirement. This is suggested, for example, in Korsgaard's talk
of the sharing of reasons:
>
> ...if personal interaction is to be possible, we must reason
> together, and this means that I must treat your reasons...*as
> reasons,* that is, as considerations that have normative force for
> *me* as well as you, and therefore as public reasons.
> (Korsgaard 2009, 192)
>
In a similar vein, Tuomela requires that the "we-mode" intention
at the core of his more recent theory necessarily involves group
reasons shared by all participants. See his 2007; 13, 47, 98.
But it seems possible that individuals might engage in shared activity
(and have the corresponding intention) even when they have different
and incompatible reasons for doing so. For example, representatives
from rival parties might engage in the legislative process that leads
to the passage of laws, even when each is motivated by considerations
that the other finds
unacceptable.[19]
Still, it is plausible to think that there must be some constraints
on the sort of individual motive or reason a participant has to engage
in shared activity. If my motive for engaging in shared activity is
overly manipulative or undermining of fellow participants (e.g. doing
something with A in order better to control him/her), the status of
the activity or intention as shared might be
compromised.[20]
A further way in which participatory intentions of different
individuals are related stems from how they might be formed, modified,
or set aside. For example, Gilbert holds that shared activity gets
started only when each individual openly expresses a readiness to be
jointly committed in a certain way with
others.[21]
She adds that rescinding or significantly modifying the resulting
intention, as well as releasing any individual from participation,
would also require concurrence on everyone's part. It's
not clear that Gilbert herself would want to talk of this
"concurrence condition" in terms of relating intention or
intention-like attitudes in different participants. But, given that
whether I concur with how you propose to modify your intentions will
depend in part on my intentions, it is natural to take Gilbert's
conditions as imposing dynamic constraints on how the participatory
intentions of different individual are related to one another. Of
course, Gilbert's conditions might be too strong. For example,
the concurrence criterion does not permit one to withdraw unilaterally
from shared
activity.[22]
Some may find this implausible. But relaxing Gilbert's
conditions would naturally result in another perhaps weaker set of
dynamic constraints, and not in their complete absence. For example,
recall that intentions are defeasible: they can be revised or dropped
if changing circumstances warrant it. Now, we might imagine that each
participant in shared activity might have the authority unilaterally
to revise or defeat the intention in light of those changing
circumstances, whereupon other participants would have to abide by the
change unless, of course, they think that some mistake has been made
(Roth 2004).
Most of the views canvassed here emphasize as a condition for shared
activity fairly robust forms of integration between participants.
Before continuing in this vein, it bears mention that the focus on the
participants and how they are related might lead us to neglect other
important conditions for shared activity. Epstein 2015 argues that the
metaphysical grounds for some forms of shared activity, such as that
involved in some cases of group action, involve a variety of
conditions that are not themselves relations between members of the
group, but often can determine how those members are related. These
might include historical conditions that determine the structure and
membership criteria for the group. Or, the grounds might include
external conditions such as the actions of some designated individual
(such as a sergeant at arms) not a part of the collective body but who
for example must convene a meeting in order that the members of the
body may collectively take some action.
## 3. How is the structure of interrelated intentions established?
So shared activity is distinguished from a mere aggregation of
individual acts by a structure of appropriately related participatory
intentions across different individuals. It is a structure that has a
distinctive normative significance for those individuals, with an
impact most immediately on each individual's intention-based
practical
reasoning.[23]
It is natural to think that this structure of intentions is brought
about by individuals involved in shared activity, presumably when each
forms the participatory intention that is his or her contribution to
the structure. But recall that participatory intentions are meant to
capture the sense in which each individual is committed to what
everyone is doing together, and not merely to what he or she is doing.
Thus, Searle says of an instance of shared activity that
"I'm pushing only as a part of our pushing." This
suggests that what is intended is the *entirety* of the
activity, something reflected in Bratman's intentions of the
form *I intend that we
J*.[24]
But as Velleman has shown, given the standard understanding of
intentions, it's not clear that one can intend the entire
activity; or if one can, it would seem incompatible with the activity
being
shared.[25]
Intending is something I do to settle a deliberative issue: weighing
several options, I decide on A-ing, and thereby intend to A. This
suggests the Settling
Condition[26]
that I can only intend what I take to be up to me to decide or
settle. It is a violation of a rational requirement to intend
something I don't think I can settle, and thus regard my ensuing
plans and actions as likely coming to grief. Applying the point to
collective action, to say that I intend for us to be dining together
presumes that whether we're dining together is something for
*me* to settle. But the idea behind *shared* activity
and intention is precisely that it's *not* entirely up to
me what we do. You have a say in the matter; at the very least what
*you* do should be up to you (see also Schmid 2008). Our
problem, then, is that shared activity would seem both to demand and
to disallow one and the same intention on the part of each
participant.[27]
Several responses have emerged to this problem. Velleman develops a
solution that invokes interdependent conditional
intentions.[28]
Each individual conditionally settles what the group will do, where
the condition is that each of the others has a similar commitment and
intends likewise. Thus*, I intend to J, on condition that you
intend likewise*. Some have worried that when intentions are
interdependent in this way it's not entirely clear that they
settle anything at all, and hence, whether anyone is appropriately
committed to *our J-ing*. If each intention is conditioned on
the other, it's just as reasonable to refrain from acting as it
is to engage in it. For discussion, see Roth 2004, 373-80;
Bacharach 2006, 137ff. Gilbert 2002, while addressing Robins 2002 and
a precursor of Roth 2004 disavows the interdependent conditional view
attributed to her by Velleman, Roth, and Robins. See also Gilbert
2003, 2009. Velleman himself is sensitive to something like this worry
(1997a, 39) and it shapes how he formulates the content of the
conditional
intention.[29]
Bratman (1997) has suggested that what an individual intends can
extend beyond what he can settle himself, so long as he can reasonably
predict that the relevant other parties will act appropriately.
Flagrantly disregarding sound medical advice, I can have the
categorical intention to work on my tan at the beach this afternoon,
so long as I can reasonably predict that it'll be sunny.
Likewise, when I reasonably believe that you have or will have the
appropriate intentions, I can then intend that we J. One might wonder
whether taking this sort of predictive attitude with respect to the
intentions and actions of fellow participants is consistent with
sharing an intention and acting with them. On the other hand,
it's not obvious that the prediction of an action entails that
it is or must be regarded as involuntary or otherwise problematic. If
so, the predictive attitude toward others very well may be compatible
with acting *with* them, and might account for how *our*
J-ing might be the object of *my*
intention.[30]
Another suggestion is that a participant intends not the entirety of
the activity, but only his or her part in it. Such an intention is
more modest in that it does not purport to settle what other people
do. An account of shared activity in terms of such intentions (e.g.
Tuomela & Miller 1998, Kutz 2000) does not entail the authority or
control over others that would be difficult to reconcile with the
activity being shared. But this modest intention involves a commitment
only to one's part in our J-ing and doesn't seem to
account for a participatory commitment to our J-ing as a whole. To see
why not, consider the case of walking together from Gilbert 1990. We
might describe my part as walking at a certain pace. But intending to
do that is entirely compatible with undermining my partner's
contribution, for example by tripping him. Suppose instead that we
avail ourselves of some robust conception of *part*, so that
each participant intends to do his part in shared activity, *as
such.* This would appear to rule out attempts to undermine a
partner's contribution. But what exactly is this intention? It
seems to presuppose an understanding of the concept of shared
activity, which is the notion we're trying to
elucidate.[31]
Maybe this criticism is too quick. Perhaps there remains a way to
characterize the intention to do one's part that doesn't
presuppose the notion of shared activity. One approach appeals to
"team reasoning", a distinctive form of strategic
practical reasoning. This view of reasoning was developed to address
certain difficulties standard game theory has in accounting for the
rationality of selecting more cooperative options in strategic
scenarios such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and Hi-Lo. The idea is
that we get intuitively more rational outcomes with individuals each
approaching the situation asking him- or herself not *what's
best **for me** given what others do?*, but *what
is best **for us*** or the group as a
whole?[32]
The participatory intention is characterized in terms of the
distinctive reasoning that leads to its formation, rather than in
terms of some more intrinsic feature of the intention or its content.
It remains to be seen whether intending one's part, so
understood, can account for the participatory commitment distinctive
of shared
activity.[33]
The issue of how to establish the interpersonal structure of
participatory intention is a central problem for the theory of shared
agency, and remains an area of active research interest. For further
views, see Gilbert 2009 (some discussion of which is below),
Korsgaard's interpretation of Kant in her 2009, 189ff, and Roth
2004, whose conception of intentions allows him to appeal to an
interpersonal mechanism similar in some respects to that of
commands.
## 4. Mutual obligations
Gilbert has long held that participants in shared activity are
obligated to do their part in it. Take her well-known example of
walking together, starring Jack and Sue. When Jack does something
that's not compatible with walking together, e.g. walking so
fast that Sue cannot keep up, Sue is *entitled* to rebuke Jack.
This suggests to Gilbert that it is essential to shared activity (and
intention) that each participant has an obligation to do his or her
part in the activity (or in carrying out the intention). For
example,
>
> The existence of this entitlement [Sue's entitlement to rebuke]
> suggests that Jack has, in effect, an *obligation* to notice
> and to act (an obligation Sue has also). (Gilbert 1990, 180-1
> (1996,
> 184))[34]
>
Gilbert has used this mutual obligation criterion to criticize
reductive accounts of shared activity in terms of "personal
intentions" (1990, 180ff; 2008,499), such as that defended by
Bratman. Bratman 1997 acknowledges that mutual obligations are
typically associated with the sharing of intentions, but insists that
they are not essential. He argues that when present, the obligations
are explained in terms of a moral principle that one should live up to
the expectations about one's actions that one has intentionally
created in others. This principle, articulated by Scanlon in the
context of a discussion about promising, does generally apply to
situations where individuals act together and share intentions.
(Scanlon's Principle F is in his 1998, 304. For recent discussion of
Scanlon and promising that bears on shared activity, see Shiffrin
2008. For another reductivist response to Gilbert see MacMahon 2005,
299ff. For more recent discussion of mutual obligation, see Roth 2004,
Alonso 2009.)
Suppose, however, that we have individuals engaged in an endeavor they
know to be immoral, such as that of a pillager and a lazy plunderer
raiding a village. The inadmissibility of the action undermines the
pillager's entitlement to hold the plunderer accountable for
slacking off in his search for loot. There could not be an obligation
to do one's part in *this* activity (Bratman, 1999,
132-6). For Bratman, this shows that there can be shared
activity without these obligations. Gilbert responds that it only
shows that the obligations in question are special, "of a
different kind" (2009, 178) than the sort of obligation familiar
from discussion of moral philosophy. She goes so far as to say that
the obligations to do one's part are present, even when
one's partners in shared activity have coerced one into joining
them.
Gilbert's later statements become more explicit about the
*directed* nature of these non-moral obligations (Gilbert 1997,
75-6). The obligation relates Jack with Sue in a way in which
Jack and a non-participant are not related (Gilbert 2009; 2008, 497;
this connects with recent discussion of "bipolar normativity"; see
Darwall 2006, Thompson 2004, and Wallace 2013). To mark the
directed nature of the normative relation, and in a way that does not
suggest as strongly that they are moral in nature, we might speak of
*contralateral commitments* (Roth 2004). Thus, Jack has a
contralateral commitment-to-Sue to walk in a way that is compatible
with their walking together.
Gilbert attempts to articulate the sense of directedness in terms of
*ownership*: Jack's contralateral commitment to Sue to
walk at the appropriate pace entails that Sue is owed, and in a sense
owns, the relevant performance on Jack's part (Gilbert 2008,
497). This would presumably explain why Sue and not anyone else can
release Jack from fulfilling the obligation/commitment, by giving up
her claim on Jack's action. One might, in a related vein, try to
articulate the directed nature of the commitment in terms of
promising.[35]
If we understand Jack's obligation as the result of something
like a promise to Sue, we can see not only that Jack has a commitment,
but that Sue is in a special position such that she can, for example,
release him from fulfilling it. One drawback, at least for Gilbert, of
appealing either to ownership or promising to articulate the notion of
directed obligation or contralateral commitment is that it is not
clear that this would allow for these commitments to be as insulated
from moral considerations as Gilbert seems to think they are (e.g. in
the response to Bratman above). A further question is whether
ownership or promising fully captures all that there is to the
contralateral or directed nature of the commitment. These strategies
might explain why Sue is in a special position to *release*
Jack from his commitment. But one might wonder whether there are other
aspects of her special standing with respect to Jack that are left
unaddressed.[36]
Furthermore, it might be that certain aspects of promising - in
particular the directedness of the obligation - might in some way
depend on shared agency or aspects thereof. See Gilbert 2011 and Roth
2016.
While the notion of ownership or claim rights is meant to be
suggestive of the sort of mutual obligations/contralateral commitments
she has in mind, the central explanatory concept deployed by Gilbert
is that of *joint commitment*, which she takes to be
primitive.[37]
A concern here is whether joint commitment provides anything like a
philosophical account or explanation of mutual obligations, or whether
it merely re-describes them. We get some idea of what Gilbert has in
mind by contrasting it with personal commitment associated with
individual intention or decision (2009, 180). Whereas one can on
one's own take on and rescind the sort of commitment associated
with individual intention and decision, joint commitment can only be
formed through a process whereby everyone expresses their readiness,
and it can only be rescinded when all parties concur. This raises the
issue of the previous section, of how exactly the joint commitment
comes into force. Even if everyone expresses a readiness to A
together, it doesn't follow that we all take the plunge and
actually undertake it. A further worry Gilbert herself has voiced is
whether any condition requiring expression might limit the
applicability of her view in giving a more general account of
political obligation, something she aims to do (e.g., in her 2006).
Gilbert's view has also been charged with circularity; it would seem
that the expression of readiness needed to establish joint commitment
would itself be an instance of shared activity and thus presuppose
joint commitment. For discussion, see Tuomela 1992, Tollefsen 2002,
and Schmid 2014.
Understood as a kind of obligation, Gilbert's insight about a
distinctive normative relation holding between participants in shared
agency risks rejection. Many find obligation, and especially the
no-unilateral withdrawal condition, to be too strong. Gilbert's
general idea might find wider acceptance if we talk instead of
commitment that allows for unilateral
withdrawal.[38]
Finally, Stroud (2010) has suggested a normative condition in some
respects even weaker. Stroud holds that participants in shared
activity have a prerogative--a moral permission--that can
override or mitigate moral obligations had to non-participants (such
as that of beneficence). It remains to be seen to what extent this
might address the intuitions that motivated Gilbert's original
and important insight.
## 5. The discursive dilemma and group minds
It was suggested earlier (in Section 1) that thinking of a group as
itself an agent and a subject of intentional states was not a good
model or account of central forms of shared intention and activity.
But that's not to say that it's never appropriate to talk
this way. Indeed, Rovane, Pettit and others have argued that some
groups can be genuine subjects of intentional attitudes, and can have
minds of their own. This would amount to a different way in which
individuals can act together, and raises interesting questions about
how a group's intentions must be related to an individual's in
practical reasoning.
Pettit starts with the assumption that a rational integration of a
collective is a sign of its mentality (2003, 181). He says,
>
> ... it is reasonable, even compulsory, to think of the integrated
> collectivity as an intentional subject...The basis for this claim is
> that the integrated collectivity, as characterized, is going to
> display all the functional marks of an intentional subject...Within
> relevant domains it will generally act in a manner that is
> rationalized by independently discernible representations and goals;
> and within relevant domains it will generally form and unform those
> representations in a manner that is rationalized by the evidence that
> we take to be at its disposal. (Pettit 2003, 182; see also Rovane
> 1998, 131-2 for a related line of thought.)
>
The group mind hypothesis thus seems to explain or account for the
rationality exhibited by the group, both in what it does and what it
represents. This explanatory role, if indispensable, would give us a
reason for admitting into our ontology groups with genuine minds of
their own. The point might be put in traditional Quinean terms: if a
regimentation in first order logic of our best empirical theory
quantifies over such groups, then such groups exist. But this sort of
explanatory commitment needn't be quite as explicitly
quantificational as Quine would have it, and Pettit himself never
mentions Quine. The ontological commitment might be more implied in
the content of our theory than a matter of logical form.
Another question to raise, if only to set aside on this occasion, is
whether the only sort of indispensability that can support the group
mind hypothesis is of the theoretical/explanatory sort. One might, for
example, consider whether the Rovane/Pettit line of thought could be
run with the assumption that the indispensability of such groups is
practical in nature, perhaps a condition for a sort of agency that
individuals can and do exercise (Roth 2014a, 140-141; Pettit
2015, 1642).
But is the group mind hypothesis explanatorily indispensable? If the
rational behavior, representation, speech, etc. can easily be
explained (or explained away) without invoking group minds, then the
presumption of mindedness is defeated. Thus, if we discover of what
appears to be a subject that its behavior was entirely controlled by
or explicable in terms of the attitudes and behavior of some other (or
others), then one would no longer have reason to think the subject in
question as minded. For example, if the rational behavior of a group
is explained wholly in terms of the individual members, then we are
not tempted to think that the group itself is genuinely minded
(Watkins 1957). Or, if there is a very tight fit between judgments and
attitudes of the group on the one hand, and members on the other
- for example if ascriptions of attitudes to a group just is a
summary of ascriptions to its individual members (Quinton
1975-6) - then there is no reason to think of the group as
having a mind of its own.
Pettit's recent arguments address this worry. He has suggested
that some group decision procedures are such that past group judgments
rationally constrain subsequent decisions, judgments, and intentions.
When such "premise-driven" procedures are followed, a
group not only displays a rational unity indicative of mindedness, but
does so in such a way that it might arrive at a judgment that a
minority--perhaps even none--of the individual members
personally hold.
Pettit draws on the literature on judgment aggregation (E.g.
Kornhauser and Sager, 1986; List & Pettit, 2002). Here's a
version of the sort of case Pettit has in mind: several colleagues (A,
B, and C) heading to the APA convention in Chicago have to decide
whether to take the El (train) from the airport. An affirmative
judgment regarding each of the following considerations or
"premises" is necessary for the decision/conclusion to get
on board: whether the train is safe enough, whether it's quick
enough, and whether it's scenic enough (e.g. whether it's
okay that they'll miss out on a view of the lake). Let us also
suppose, given appropriate background assumptions, that the
satisfaction of these conditions amounts to a conclusive reason to
take the train. Finally, suppose the group arrives at judgments
regarding the *premises* by majority vote as follows:
| | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | Safe enough? | Quick enough? | Scenic enough? | Get on board? |
| A | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| B | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| C | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Group | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes\No |
If the group decides on the conclusion by a majority vote on what each
individual personally thinks s/he ought to do, it will decide against
taking the train (this is the "no" in the upper triangle
of the lower right box). But this conclusion would be hard to square
with the group judgments concerning the three premises of the
argument. Whereas, if the group adopts the premise driven procedure,
where the conclusion is determined not by a vote but by group's
views regarding the premises, then the group's conclusion is
rational (this is the "yes" in the lower triangle of the
lower right box).
Such a conclusion, however, is not obviously explicable in terms of
the personal conclusions of the members, each of whom concludes the
opposite. Thus, suppose (as Pettit does) that there are groups that do
in fact adopt the premise-driven procedure. Then, the rationality of
the group's conclusion suggests that the group has a mind.
Moreover, the discontinuity between individual and group level
attitudes concerning the conclusion is such that the presumption of
mindedness is not defeated. This suggests to Pettit that, at least in
some cases, groups can have minds of their own, and be genuine
intentional subjects.
One worry with this argument concerns how the premise-driven decision
procedure is implemented. If it's simply implemented by virtue
of the intentions of each individual to establish and maintain
rationality at the group level, then there appears to be an
alternative to the group mind hypothesis. That the group appears to
have a mind of its own in examples such as this would then be an
artifact of the restricted focus of the example, which said nothing
about how a policy of rationality at the collective level is
maintained. Once we broaden our perspective to recognize that each
individual aims to maintain rationality at the collective level,
it's no longer clear that there is such a gap or discontinuity
between the intentionality at the level of the individuals and of the
group. Thus, there would be no warrant for talk of group
minds.[39]
Of course, this criticism makes strong assumptions about how to
explain any rationality that might be exhibited at the group level,
assumptions that are open to challenge.
For some, taking seriously the idea that a group has a mind of its own
involves more than an empiricist commitment to the explanation of
phenomena. That is, a group mind is not merely a convenient posit
adopted from within the third person perspective of the intentional
stance for the purposes of explanation and prediction (Dennett 1987).
A mind has a point of view, and if sufficiently sophisticated, is a
subject of commitment and obligation. In developing ideas of Searle
and Tuomela in a new direction, Schmid (2014) argues that such a group
mind would require a distinctive form of plural self-awareness on the
part of each of the members of the group. He suggests that such groups
do exist, and explores ways in which plural self-awareness is and is
not analogous to the self-awareness each of us as individuals exhibit. |
agent-modeling-philscience | ## 1. Origins
The method of agent-based modeling was originally developed in the
1970s and '80s with models of social segregation (Schelling
1971; Sakoda 1971; see also Hegselmann 2017) and cooperation (Axelrod
& Hamilton 1981) in social sciences, and under the name of
"individual-based modeling" in ecology (for an overview
see Grimm & Railsback 2005). Following this tradition, ABMs drew
the interest of scholars studying social aspects of scientific
inquiry. By representing scientists as agents equipped with rules for
reasoning and decision-making, agent-based modeling could be used to
study the social dynamics of scientific research. As a result, ABMs of
science have been developed across various disciplines that include
science in their subject domain: from sociology of science,
organizational sciences, cultural evolution theory, the
interdisciplinary field of meta-science (or "science of
science"), to social epistemology and philosophy of science.
While ABMs developed in philosophy of science often tackle themes that
are similar or related to those examined by ABMs of science in other
domains, they are motivated by philosophical questions--issues
embedded in the broader literature in philosophy of science. Their
introduction was influenced by several parallel research lines:
analytical modeling in philosophy of science, computational modeling
in related philosophical domains, and agent-based modeling in social
sciences. In the following, we take a brief look at each of these
precursors.
One of the central ideas behind the development of formal social
epistemology of science is succinctly expressed by Philip Kitcher in
his *The Advancement of Science*:
>
>
> The general problem of social epistemology, as I conceive it, is to
> identify the properties of epistemically well-designed social systems,
> that is, to specify the conditions under which a group of individuals,
> operating according to various rules for modifying their individual
> practices, succeed, through their interactions, in generating a
> progressive sequence of consensus practices. (Kitcher 1993: 303)
>
>
>
Such a perspective on social epistemology of science highlighted the
need for a better understanding of the relationship between individual
and group inquiry. Following the tradition of formal modeling in
economics, philosophers introduced analytical models to study tensions
inherent to this relationship, such as the tension between individual
and group rationality. In this way, they sought to answer the
question: how can individual scientists, who may be driven by
non-epistemic incentives, jointly form a community that achieves
epistemic goals? Most prominently, Goldman and Shaked (1991) developed
a model that examines the relationship between the goal of promoting
one's professional success and the promotion of
truth-acquisition, whereas Kitcher (1990, 1993) proposed a model of
the division of cognitive labor, showing that a community consisting
of scientists driven by non-epistemic interests may achieve an optimal
distribution of research efforts. This work was followed by a number
of other contributions (e.g., Zamora Bonilla 1999; Strevens 2003).
Analytic models developed in this tradition endorsed economic
approaches to the study of science, rooted in the idea of a
"generous invisible hand", according to which individuals
interacting in a given community can bring about consequences that are
beneficial for the goals of the community without necessarily aiming
at those consequences (Maki 2005).
Around the same time, computational methods entered the philosophical
study of rational deliberation and cooperation in the context of game
theory (Skyrms 1990, 1996; Grim, Mar, & St. Denis 1998), theory
evaluation in philosophy of science (Thagard 1988) and the study of
opinion dynamics in social epistemology (Hegselmann & Krause 2002,
2005; Deffuant, Amblard, Weisbuch, & Faure 2002). Computational
models introduced in this literature included ABMs: for instance, a
cellular automata model of the Prisoner's Dilemma, or models
examining how opinions change within a group of agents.
Agent-based modeling was first applied to the study of science in
sociology of science, with the model developed by Nigel Gilbert (1997)
(cf. Payette 2011). Gilbert's ABM aimed at reproducing
regularities that had previously been identified in quantitative
sociological research on indicators of scientific growth (such as the
growth rate of publications and the distribution of citations per
paper). The model followed an already established tradition of
simulations of artificial societies in social sciences (cf. Epstein
& Axtell 1996). In contrast to abstract and highly-idealized
models developed in other social sciences (such as economics and
archaeology), ABMs in sociology of science tended towards an
integration of simulations and empirical studies used for their
validation (cf. Gilbert & Troitzsch 2005).
Soon after, ABMs were introduced to the philosophy of science through
pioneering works by Zollman (2007), Weisberg and Muldoon (2009), Grim
(2009), Douven (2010)--to mention some of the most prominent
examples. In contrast to ABMs developed in sociology of science, these
ABMs followed the tradition of abstract and highly-idealized modeling.
Similar to analytical models, they were introduced to study how
various properties of individual scientists--such as their
reasoning, decision-making, actions and relations--bring about
phenomena characterizing the scientific community--such as a
success or a failure to acquire knowledge. By representing inquiry in
an abstract and idealized way, they facilitated insights into the
relationship between some aspects of individual inquiry and its impact
on the community while abstracting away from numerous factors that
occur in actual scientific practice. But in contrast to analytical
models, ABMs proved to be suitable for scenarios often too complex for
analytical approaches. These scenarios include heterogeneous
scientific communities, with individual scientists differing in their
beliefs, research heuristics, social networks, goals of inquiry, and
so forth. Each of these properties can change over time, depending on
the agents' local interactions. In this way ABMs can show how
certain features characterizing individual inquiry suffice to generate
population-level phenomena under a variety of initial conditions.
Indeed, the introduction of ABMs to philosophy of science largely
followed the central idea of generative social science: to explain the
emergence of a macroscopic regularity we need to show how
decentralized local interactions of heterogeneous autonomous agents
can generate it. As Joshua Epstein summed it up: "If you
didn't grow it, you didn't explain its emergence"
(2006).
## 2. Central Research Questions
ABMs of science typically model the impact of certain aspects of
individual inquiry on some measure of epistemic performance of the
scientific community. This section surveys some of the central
research questions investigated in this way. Its aim is to explain why
ABMs were introduced to study philosophical questions, and how their
introduction relates to the broader literature in philosophy of
science.
### 2.1 Theoretical diversity and the incentive structure of science
How does a community of scientists make sure to hedge its bets on
fruitful lines of inquiry, instead of only pursuing suboptimal ones?
Answering this question is a matter of coordination and organization
of cognitive labor which can generate an optimal diversity of pursued
theories. The importance of a synchronous pursuit of a plurality of
theories in a given domain has long been recognized in the
philosophical literature (Mill 1859; Kuhn 1977; Feyerabend 1975;
Kitcher 1993; Longino 2002; Chang 2012). But how does a scientific
community achieve an optimal distribution of research efforts? Which
factors influence scientists to divide and coordinate their labor in a
way that stimulates theoretical diversity? In short, how is
theoretical diversity achieved and maintained?
One way to address this question is by examining how different
incentives of scientists impact their division of labor. To see the
relevance of this question, consider a community of scientists all of
whom are driven by the same epistemic incentives. As Kitcher (1990)
argued, in such a community everyone might end up pursuing the same,
initially most promising line of inquiry, resulting in little to no
diversity. Traditionally, philosophers of science tried to address
this worry by arguing that a diversity in theory choice may result
from diverse methodological approaches (Feyerabend 1975), diverse
applications of epistemic values (Kuhn 1977), or from different
cognitive attitudes towards theories, such as acceptance and
pursuit-worthiness (Laudan 1977). Kitcher, however, wondered whether
non-epistemic incentives, such as fame and fortune--usually
thought of as interfering with the epistemic goals of
science--might actually be beneficial for the community by
encouraging scientists to deviate from dominant lines of inquiry.
The idea that scientists are rewarded for their achievements through
credit, which impacts their research choices, had previously been
recognized by Merton (1973) and Hull (1978, 1988). For example, a
scientist may receive recognition for being the first to make a
discovery (known as the "priority rule"), which may
incentivize a specific approach to research. Yet, such non-epistemic
incentives could also fail to promote an optimal kind of diversity.
For instance, they may result in too much research being spent on
futile hypotheses and/or in too few scientists investigating the best
theories. Moreover, an incentive structure will have undesirable
effects if rewards are misallocated to scientists that are
well-networked rather than assigned to those who are actually first to
make discoveries, or if credit-driven science lowers the quality of
scientific output. This raises the question: which incentive
structures promote an optimal division of labor, without having
epistemically or morally harmful effects?
ABMs provide an apt ground for studying these issues: by modeling
individual scientists as driven by specific incentives, we can examine
their division of labor and the resulting communal inquiry. We will
look at the models studying these issues in
Section 4.1.
### 2.2 Theoretical diversity and the communication structure of science
Another way to study theoretical diversity is by focusing on the
communication structure of scientific communities. In this case we are
interested in how the information flow among scientists impacts their
distribution of research across different rival hypotheses. The
importance of scientific interaction for the production of scientific
knowledge has traditionally been emphasized in social epistemology
(Goldman 1999). But how exactly does the structure of communication
impact scientists' generation of knowledge? Are scientists
better off communicating within strongly connected social networks, or
rather within less connected ones, and under which conditions of
inquiry? These and related questions belong to the field of
*network epistemology*, which studies the impact of
communication networks on the process of knowledge acquisition.
Network epistemology has its origin in economics, sociology and
organizational sciences (e.g., Granovetter 1973; Burt 1992; Jackson
& Wolinsky 1996; Bala & Goyal 1998) and it was first combined
with agent-based modeling in the philosophical literature by Zollman
(2007) (see also Zollman 2013).
Simulations of scientific interaction originated in the idea that
different communication networks among scientists, characterized by
varying degrees of connectedness (see
Figure 1),
may have a different impact on the balance between
"exploration" and "exploitation" of scientific
ideas. Suppose a scientist is trying to find an optimal treatment for
a certain disease, since the existing one is insufficiently effective.
On the one hand, she could pursue the currently dominant hypothesis
concerning the causes of the disease, hoping that it will eventually
lead to better results. On the other hand, she could explore novel
ideas hoping to have a breakthrough leading to a more successful cure
for the disease. The scientist thus faces a trade-off between
exploitation as the use of existing ideas and exploration as the
search of new possibilities, long studied in theories of formal
learning and in organizational sciences (March 1991). The information
flow among scientists could impact this trade-off in the following
way: if an initially misleading idea is shared too quickly throughout
the community, scientists may lock-in on researching it, prematurely
abandoning the search for better solutions. Alternatively, if the
information flow is slow and sparse, important insights gained by some
scientists, which could lead to an optimal solution, may remain
undetected by the rest of the community for a lengthy period of time.
ABMs were introduced to investigate whether and in which circumstances
the information flow could have either of these effects. For instance,
if scientists are assumed to be rational agents, could a tightly
connected community end up exploring too little and miss out on
significant lines of inquiry?
Besides studying communities consisting of "epistemically
uncompromised" scientists--that is, agents whose inquiry
and actions are directed at discovering and promoting the
truth--similar questions can be posed about communities in which
epistemic interests have been overridden. For instance, the impact of
industrial interest groups on science may lead to biased or deceptive
practices, which may sway the scientific community away from its
epistemic goals (Holman & Elliott 2018). While recent
philosophical discussions on this problem have largely focused on the
role of non-epistemic values in science (Douglas 2009; Holman &
Wilholt 2022; Bueter 2022; Peters 2021), ABMs were introduced to
examine how epistemically pernicious strategies can impact the process
of inquiry, as well as to identify interventions that can be used to
mitigate their harmful effects.
In addition to the problem of theoretical diversity, network
epistemology has been applied to a number of other themes, such as
optimal forms of collaboration, factors leading to scientific
polarization, effects of conformity on the collective inquiry, effects
of demographic diversity, the position of minorities, optimal
regulations of dual-use research, argumentation dynamics, and so
forth. We will look at the models studying theoretical diversity and
the communication structure of science in
Section 4.2
and
Section 4.6.
![10 nodes distributed evenly in a circle; each node is connected by a line, aka edge, to each of its two neighbors.](figure-communication-a.svg)
(a)
![similar to (a) except there is also a node in the center and each node on the circle is also connected by a line, aka edge, to the center node as well as its neighbors.](figure-communication-b.svg)
(b)
![similar to (a) except each node on the circle is connected to all the other nodes by a line, aka edge.](figure-communication-c.svg)
(c)
Figure 1: Three types of idealized
communication networks, representing an increasing degree of
connectedness: (a) a cycle, (b) a wheel, and (c) a complete graph. The
nodes in each graph stand for scientists, while edges between the
nodes stand for information channels between two scientists.
### 2.3 Cognitive diversity
A diversity of cognitive features of individuals can be beneficial in
various problem-solving situations, including business and
policy-making (Page 2017). But how does the diversity of cognitive
features of scientists, including their background beliefs, reasoning
styles, research preferences, heuristics and strategies impact the
inquiry of the scientific community? In philosophy of science, this
issue gained traction with Kuhn's distinction between normal and
revolutionary science (Kuhn 1962), suggesting that different
propensities may push scientists towards one type of research rather
than another (see also Hull 1988). This raises the question: how does
the distribution of risk-seeking, maverick scientists and risk-averse
ones impact the inquiry of the community? Put more generally: do some
ways of dividing labor across different research heuristics result in
a more successful collective inquiry than others?
By equipping agents with different cognitive features we can use ABMs
to represent different cognitively diverse (or uniform) populations,
and to study their impact on some measure of success of the communal
inquiry. We will look at the models studying these issues in
Section 4.3.
### 2.4 Social diversity
A scientific community is socially diverse when its members endorse
different non-epistemic values, such as moral and political ones, or
when they have different social locations, such as gender, race and
other aspects of demography (Rolin 2019). The importance of social
diversity has long been emphasized in feminist epistemology, both for
ethical and epistemic reasons. For instance, many have pointed out
that social diversity is an important catalyst for cognitive
diversity, which in turn is vital for the diversity of perspectives,
and therefore for scientific objectivity (Longino 1990, 2002; Haraway
1989; Wylie 1992, 2002; Grasswick 2011; Anderson 1995; for a
discussion on different notions of diversity in the context of
scientific inquiry see Steel et al. 2018).
Moreover, in the field of social psychology and organizational
sciences, it has been argued that social diversity is epistemically
beneficial even if it doesn't promote cognitive diversity.
Instead, it may counteract epistemically pernicious tendencies of
homogeneous groups, such as unwarranted trust in each other's
testimony or unwillingness to share dissenting opinions (for an
overview of the literature see Page 2017; Fazelpour & Steel 2022).
While these hypotheses have received support in virtue of empirical
studies, ABMs have proved a complementary testing ground, allowing for
an investigation of minimal sets of conditions which need to hold for
social diversity to be epistemically beneficial.
Another problem tackled by means of ABMs concerns factors that can
undermine social diversity or disadvantage members of minorities in
science. For instance, how does one's minority status impact
one's position in a collaborative environment, given the norms
of collaboration that can emerge in scientific communities? Or how
does one's social identity impact the uptake of their ideas? We
will look at the models studying these issues in
Section 4.4
and
Section 4.7.
### 2.5 Peer-disagreement in science
Scientific disagreements are commonly considered vital for scientific
progress (Kuhn 1977; Longino 2002; Solomon 2006). They typically go
hand in hand with theoretical diversity (see
Section 2.1
and
2.2)
and stimulate critical interaction among scientists, important for
the achievement of scientific objectivity. Nevertheless, an inadequate
response to disagreements may lead to premature rejections of fruitful
inquiries, to fragmentation of scientific domains and hence to
consequences that are counterproductive for the progress of science.
This raises the question: how should scientists respond to
disagreements with their peers, to lower the chance of a hindered
inquiry? Which epistemic and methodological norms should they follow
in such situations?
This issue has been discussed in the context of the more general
debate on peer-disagreement in social epistemology. The problem of
peer disagreement concerns the question: what is an adequate doxastic
attitude towards *p*, upon recognizing that one's peer
disagrees on *p*? Should one follow a "Conciliatory
Norm", demanding, for instance, to lower the confidence in
*p*, split the difference by taking the middle ground between the
opponent's belief and one's own on the issue, or to
suspend one's judgment on *p*? Or should one rather follow
a "Steadfast Norm" demanding to stick to one's guns
and keep the same belief with the same confidence as before
encountering a disagreeing peer? (For initial arguments in favor of
the Conciliatory Norm see, e.g., Elga 2007, Christensen 2010, Feldman
2006; for arguments in favor of the Steadfast Norm see, e.g., De Cruz
& De Smedt 2013, Kelp & Douven 2012; for reasons why norms are
context-dependent see, e.g., Kelly 2010 [2011], Konigsberg 2013,
Christensen 2010, Douven 2010; for a recent critical review of the
debate as applied to scientific practice see Longino 2022.)
Similarly, in case of scientific disagreements and controversies we
can ask: should a scientist who is involved in a peer disagreement
strive towards weakening her stance by means of a conciliatory norm,
or should she remain steadfast? What makes this issue particularly
challenging in the context of scientific inquiry is that we are not
only interested in the epistemic question of an adequate doxastic
response to a disagreement, but also in the methodological (or
inquisitive) question of how the norms impact the success of
collective inquiry as a process. In particular, if scientists
encounter multiple disagreements throughout their research on a
certain topic, will their collective inquiry benefit more from
individuals adopting conciliatory attitudes or steadfast ones? ABMs
naturally lend themselves as a method for investigating these issues:
by modeling scientists as guided by different normative responses to a
disagreement, we can study the impact of the norms on the communal
inquiry. We will look at the models studying these issues in
Section 4.5.
### 2.6 Scientific polarization
Closely related to the issue of scientific disagreements is the
problem of scientific polarization. While scientific controversies
typically resolve over time, they may include periods of polarization,
with different parts of the community maintaining mutually conflicting
attitudes even after an extensive debate. But how and why does
polarization emerge? Do scientific communities polarize only if
scientists are too dogmatic or biased towards their viewpoints, or can
polarization emerge even among rational agents?
Following a range of formal models in social and political sciences
addressing a similar issue in society at large (for a review see
Bramson et al. 2017), ABMs have been used to examine the emergence of
polarization in the context of science. What makes agent-based
modeling particularly apt for this task is not only that we can model
different aspects of individual inquiry that may contribute to the
emergence of polarization (such as different background beliefs,
different communication networks, different trust relationships, and
so on), but we can also observe the formation of polarized states,
their duration (as stable or temporary states throughout the inquiry)
and their features (such as the distribution of scientists across the
opposing views). We will look at the models studying these issues in
Section 4.6.
### 2.7 Scientific collaboration
As acquiring and analyzing scientific evidence can be highly
resource-demanding for any individual scientist, scientific
collaboration is a widespread form of group inquiry. Of course, this
is not the only reason why scientists collaborate: incentives leading
to collaborations range from epistemic ones (such as increasing the
quality of research) to non-epistemic ones (such as striving for
recognition). This raises the question: when is collaborating
beneficial, and which challenges may occur in collaborative research?
Inspired by these questions, philosophers of science have investigated
why collaborations are beneficial (Wray 2002), which challenges they
pose on epistemic trust and accountability (Kukla 2012; Wagenknecht
2015), what kind of knowledge emerges through collaborative research
(such as collective beliefs or acceptances, (M. Gilbert 2000; Wray
2007; Andersen 2010), which values are at stake in collaborations
(Rolin 2015), what an optimal structure of collaborations is
(Perovic, Radovanovic, Sikimic, & Berber 2016), and
so on.
ABMs of collaboration were introduced to study the above and related
questions, focusing on how collaborating can impact inquiry. While
collaborations can indeed be beneficial, determining conditions under
which they are such is not straightforward. For instance, depending on
how scientists engage in collaborations, minorities in the community
may end up disadvantaged. We will look at the models studying these
issues in
Section 4.7.
### 2.8 Summing up
Beside the above themes, ABMs have been applied to the study of
numerous other topics in philosophy of science: from the allocation of
research funding, testimonial norms, strategic behavior of scientists,
all the way to different procedures for theory-choice (see
Section 4.8
where we list models studying additional themes). Moreover, one ABM
can simultaneously address multiple questions (for example, social
diversity and scientific collaboration are often inquired
together).
To study the questions presented in this section, philosophers have
utilized different representational frameworks. Even if models are
aimed at the same research question, they are often based on different
modeling approaches. For instance, individual scientists may be
represented as Bayesian reasoners, as agents with limited memory, as
agents searching for peaks on an epistemic landscape, as agents that
form their opinions by averaging information they receive from other
scientists and from their own inquiry, or as agents that are equipped
with argumentative reasoning. Similarly, the process of evidence
gathering may be represented in terms of pulls from probability
distributions, as foraging on an epistemic or an argumentation
landscape, or as receiving signals from others and from the world. We
now look into some of the common modeling frameworks employed in the
study of the above questions.
## 3. Common Modeling Frameworks
When developing a model examining certain aspects of scientific
inquiry, one first has to decide on a number of relevant
representational assumptions, such as:
1. How to represent the process of *inquiry* and *evidence
gathering*?
2. What do *agents* in the simulation stand for (e.g.,
individual scientists, research groups, scientific labs, etc.)?
3. What are the *units of appraisal* in scientific inquiry
(e.g., hypotheses, theories, research programs, methods, etc.)?
4. How do scientists *reason* and evaluate their units of
appraisal?
5. How do scientists *exchange information*?
Similarly, if we wish to model a scenario in which scientists bargain
about the division of tasks or resources, we will have to decide how
to represent their *interactions* and *rewards* they get
out of them. These modeling choices are guided by the research
question the model aims to tackle, as well as the epistemic aim of the
model.
The majority of ABMs developed in philosophy of science are built as
simple and highly idealized models. The simpler a model is, the easier
it is to understand and analyze mechanisms behind the results of
simulations (we return to this issue in
Section 5).
In this section, we delve into several common modeling frameworks
that have been used in this way. Each framework offers a different
take on the above representational choices and has served as the basis
for a variety of ABMs. Particular models will not be discussed just
yet--we leave this for
Section 4.
### 3.1 Epistemic landscape models
Modeling the process of inquiry as an exploration of an epistemic
landscape draws its roots from models of fitness landscapes in
evolutionary biology, first introduced by Sewall Wright (1932). By
representing a genotype as a point on a multidimensional landscape,
where the "height" of the landscape corresponds to its
fitness, the model has been used to study evolutionary paths of
populations.
The idea of *epistemic* landscapes entered philosophy of
science with the work of Weisberg and Muldoon (2009) and Grim (2009).
In this reinterpretation of the model, the landscape represents a
research topic, consisting of multiple projects or multiple
hypotheses. A research topic can be understood either in a narrow
sense (e.g., the study of treatments for a certain disease) or in a
broader sense (e.g., the field of astrophysics). A point on the
landscape stands for a certain hypothesis or a specific approach to
investigating the topic. Approaches can vary in terms of different
background assumptions, methods of inquiry, research questions, etc.
Accordingly, the landscape can be modeled in terms of \(n\)
dimensions, where \(n-1\) dimensions represent different aspects of
scientific approaches, while the \(n^{th}\) dimension (visualized as
the "height" of the landscape) stands for some measure of
epistemic value an agent gets by pursuing the corresponding approach.
For instance, in case of a three-dimensional landscape, the *x*
and *y* coordinates form a two-dimensional disciplinary matrix in
which approaches are situated, while *z* coordinate measures
their "epistemic significance" (see
Figure 2).
The latter can be understood in line with Kitcher's idea that
significant approaches are those that enable the conceptual and
explanatory progress of science (Kitcher 1993: 95).
ABMs of science have utilized two-dimensional and three-dimensional
landscapes, as well as the generalized framework of NK-landscapes, in
which the number of dimensions and the ruggedness of the landscape are
parameters of the
model.[1]
Scientists are modeled as agents who explore the landscape, trying to
find its peak(s), that is, the epistemically most significant points.
The framework allows for different ways of measuring the success and
efficiency of inquiry: in terms of the success of the community in
discovering the peak(s) of the landscape (rather than getting stuck in
local maxima), the success in discovering any of the areas of non-zero
vicinity, the time required for such discoveries, and so forth.
![two pictures mostly described in the caption. The three-dimensional one has two cones rising from the plain with the upper right one seemingly a bit higher while the two-dimensional one has two circular regions on a black surface gradually getting lighter gray towards their respective centers with the upper right region having a whiter center.](ep_landscape-wm.png)
Figure 2: Two representations of
Weisberg and Muldoon's epistemic landscape: a three-dimensional
representation on the left and a two-dimensional representation of the
same landscape on the right, where the height of the landscape is
represented by different shades of gray: the lighter the shade, the
more significant the point on the landscape (adapted from Weisberg
& Muldoon 2009).
#### 3.1.1 Application to the problem of cognitive diversity
The framework of epistemic landscapes has been applied to a variety of
research questions in philosophy of science. Weisberg and Muldoon
(2009) introduced it to examine the impact of cognitive diversity on
the performance of scientific communities. What makes the epistemic
landscape framework particularly attractive for the study of cognitive
diversity and the division of labor is its capacity to represent
various research strategies (as different heuristics of exploring the
landscape), as well as a coordinated distribution of research efforts
(cf. Poyhonen 2017).
Weisberg and Muldoon's ABM employs a three-dimensional landscape
(see
Figure 2),
built on a discrete toroidal grid, with two peaks representing the
highest points of epistemic significance. To study cognitive
diversity, the model examines three research strategies, implemented
as three types of agents:
* The "controls" who aim to find a higher point on the
landscape than their current location, while ignoring the exploration
of other agents.
* The "followers" who aim to find already explored
approaches in their direct neighborhood, which have a higher
significance than their current location.
* The "mavericks" who also aim to find points of higher
significance given previously explored points, but rather than
following in the footsteps of other scientists, they prioritize the
discovery of new, so far unvisited, points.
The control strategy represents individual learning that disregards
social information, while the follower and the maverick strategies
represent different ways of taking the latter into account. The model
examines how homogeneous populations of each type of explorers, or
heterogeneous populations consisting of diverse groups of explorers,
impact the efficiency of the community in discovering the highest
points on the landscape, and in covering all points of non-zero
significance.
Following Weisberg and Muldoon's contribution, the framework of
epistemic landscapes became highly influential, resulting in various
refinements and extensions of the model. For instance, Alexander,
Himmelreich, and Thompson (2015) introduced the "swarm"
strategy, which describes scientists who can with certain probability
identify points of higher significance in their surrounding and adjust
their approach so that it is similar, but different from approaches
pursued by others who are close to them. Thoma (2015) introduced
"explorer" and "extractor" strategies, the
former of which describes a scientist seeking approaches very
different from those pursued by others, while the latter (similar to
Alexander and colleagues' swarm researcher) seeks approaches
that are similar to, yet distinct from those pursued by others.
Moreover, Fernandez Pinto and Fernandez Pinto (2018)
examined alternative rules for the follower strategy. Finally,
Poyhonen (2017) introduced a "dynamic"
landscape, such that the exploration of patches "depletes"
their significance.
#### 3.1.2 Applications to network epistemology
Another application domain of the epistemic landscape framework is the
communication structure of science and its impact on communal inquiry.
To study these issues Grim and Singer (Grim 2009; Grim, Singer,
Fisher, et al. 2013) developed ABMs employing a two-dimensional
landscape, where points on the *x*-axis represent alternative
hypotheses for a given domain of phenomena, while the *y*-axis
indicates the "epistemic goodness" of each hypothesis or
the epistemic payoff an agents gets by pursuing it. Depending on how
well the best hypothesis is hidden, the shape of the epistemic terrain
will represent a more or less "fiendish" research problem
(see
Figure 3).
For instance, if the best hypothesis is a narrow peak in the
landscape (as in
Figure 3c)
finding it will resemble a search for a needle in a haystack and
therefore a fiendish research
problem.[2]
An inquiry is considered successful if any scientist (eventually
followed by the rest of the community) discovers the highest peak on
the landscape, while it is unsuccessful if the community converges on
a local maximum. The model is used to study how different social
networks with varying degrees of connectedness (such as those in
Figure 1),
and different epistemic landscapes with different degrees of
fiendishness impact the success of inquiry.
![Graph, titled: the epistemic landscape, with the y-axis, epistemic payoff, ranging from 0 to 100 and the x-axis, hypothesis, ranging also from 0 to 100. A sine-like curve goes from a point approximate (0,50) up to (25,75) down to (80,25) and up to (100,30). ](grim1.png)
(a)
![Similar to the previous graph except the y-axis ranges from -23 to 100. The curve is more complex starting at about (0,20) down to (20,-15) up to (40,20) ambles along more or less horizontally to (60,20) then up to (85,75) then down to (100,50).](grim2.png)
(b)
![Similar to the previous graph except the y-axis ranges from -11 to 100. The curve is no longer smooth. Starts at about (0,20) down to a point (15,-9) straight line up to a point at (17,100) straight line down to a point at (20,-11) then curve up to (40,20) ambles along more or less horizontally to (60,20) then up to (85,75) then down to (100,50). ](grim3.png)
(c)
Figure 3: Epistemic landscapes with an
increasing degree of fiendishness (adapted from Grim, Singer, Fisher,
et al. 2013: 443)
#### 3.1.3 Other applications
Beside the above themes, the framework of epistemic landscapes has
appeared in many other variants. For instance, De Langhe (2014a)
proposed an ABM aimed at studying different notions of scientific
progress, which makes use of a "moving epistemic
landscape": a landscape in which the significance of approaches
can change as a result of exploration of other approaches. Balietti,
Mas, and Helbing (2015) developed an epistemic landscape model to
study the relationship between fragmentation in scientific communities
and scientific progress, in which agents explore a two-dimensional
landscape, representing a space of possible answers to a certain
research question, with the correct answer located at the center of
the landscape. Currie and Avin (2019) proposed a reinterpretation of
the three-dimensional landscape aimed at studying the diversity of
scientific methods, in which the *x* and *y* axis stand for
different investigative techniques or methods of acquiring evidence,
and the *z* axis for the "sharpness" of the obtained
evidence. Sharpness here refers to the relationship between research
results and a hypothesis, where the more the evidence increases
one's credence in the hypothesis, the sharper it is. The model
also represents the "independence" of evidence as the
distance between two points on the landscape according to the *x*
and *y* coordinates: the further apart two methods are, the less
overlapping their background theories are, and the more independent
the evidence obtained by them is.
Finally, epistemic landscape modeling has inspired related landscape
models. The argumentation-based model of scientific inquiry by Borg,
Frey, Seselja, and Strasser (2018, 2019) is one
such example. The model, inspired by abstract argumentation frameworks
(Dung 1995), employs an "argumentation landscape". The
landscape is composed of "argumentation trees" that
represent rival research programs (see
Figure 4).
Each program is a rooted tree, with nodes as arguments and edges as a
"discovery relation", representing a path agents take to
move from one argument to another. Arguments in one theory may attack
arguments in another theory. In contrast to epistemic landscapes,
argumentation landscapes aim to capture the dialectic dimension of
inquiry where some points on the landscape, assumed to be acceptable
arguments, may subsequently be rejected as undefendable. This allows
for an explicit representation of false positives (accepting a false
hypothesis) as an argument on the landscape an agent accepts without
knowing there exists an attack on it, and false negatives (rejecting a
true hypothesis) as an argument an agent rejects, without knowing that
it can be defended. The model has been used to study how argumentative
dynamics among scientists, pursuing rival research programs, impacts
their efficiency in acquiring knowledge under various conditions of
inquiry (such as different social networks, different degrees of
cautiousness in decision making, and so on).
![two collections of nodes with one collection colored orange (bright and dark nodes) and the other blue (bright and dark). The largest node in each collection is titled 'Research Program 1' and 'Research Program 2' respectively. 2 arrows point from dark orange nodes to dark blue nodes; 1 arrow points from a dark blue node to a dark orange node. ](arg-abm.png)
Figure 4: Argumentation-based ABM by
Borg, Frey, Seselja, and Strasser (2019) employing
an argumentative landscape. The landscape represents two rival
research programs (RP), with darker shaded nodes standing for
arguments that have been explored by agents and are thus visible to
them; brighter shaded nodes stand for arguments that are not visible
to agents. The biggest node in each RP is the root argument, from
which agents start their exploration via the discovery relation,
connecting arguments within one RP. Arrows stand for attacks from an
argument in one RP to an argument in another RP.
### 3.2 Bandit models
In the previous section we saw how epistemic landscape models have
been used to represent inquiries involving mutually compatible
research projects (as in Weisberg and Muldoon's model) as well
as inquiries involving rival hypotheses (as in Grim and Singer's
model). Another framework used to study the latter scenario is based
on "bandit problems".
The name of bandit models comes from the term "one-armed
bandit"--a colloquial name for a slot machine. Multi-armed
bandit problems, introduced in statistics (Robbins 1952; Berry &
Fristedt 1985) and studied in economics (Bala & Goyal 1998; Bolton
& Harris 1999), are decision-making problems that concern the
following kind of scenario: suppose a gambler is about to play several
slot machines. Each machine gives a random payoff according to a
probability distribution unknown to the gambler. To determine which
machine will give a higher reward in the long run, the gambler has to
experiment by pulling arms of the machines. This will allow her to
learn from the obtained results. But which strategy should she use?
For instance, should she alternate between the machines for the first
couple of pulls, and then play only the machine that has given the
highest reward during the initial test run? Or should she rather have
a lengthy test phase before deciding which machine is better? While in
the first case she might start *exploiting* her current
knowledge before she has sufficiently *explored*, in the second
case she might explore for too long. In this way the gambler faces a
trade-off between exploitation (playing the machine that has so far
given the best payoff) and exploration (continued testing of different
machines). The challenge is thus to come up with the strategy that
provides an optimal balance between exploration and exploitation, so
as to maximize one's total winnings.
As we have seen above (see
Section 2.2),
the exploration/exploitation trade-off may also occur in the context
of scientific research. Whether scientists are attempting to determine
if a novel treatment for a disease is superior to an existing one, or
selecting between two novel methods of evidence gathering with varying
success rates, they may encounter the exploration/exploitation
trade-off. In other words, they may have to decide when to cease
exploring alternatives and begin exploiting the one that appears most
suitable for the task.
ABMs based on bandit problems were first introduced to philosophy of
science by Zollman (2007, 2010). A bandit ABM usually looks as
follows. In analogy to slot machines, each scientific theory (or
hypothesis, or method) is represented as having a designated
probability of success. Scientists are typically modeled as
"myopic" agents in the sense that they always pursue a
theory they believe to give a higher payoff. They gather evidence for
a theory by making a random draw from a probability distribution.
Subsequently, they update their beliefs in a Bayesian way, on the
basis of results of their own research (the gathered evidence) as well
as results of neighboring scientists in their social network (such as
those in
Figure 1).
Scientists are thus not modeled as passive observers of evidence for
all the available theories, but rather as agents who actively
determine the type of evidence they gather by choosing which theory to
pursue. The inquiry of the community is considered successful if, for
example, scientists reach a consensus on the better of the two
theories.
Bandit models of this kind build on the analytical framework developed
by economists (Bala & Goyal 1998) who examined the relationship
between different communication networks in infinite populations and
the process of social learning. Applied to the context of science,
this variation of bandit problems concerns the puzzle mentioned above
in
Section 2.2:
assuming a scientific community is trying to determine which of the
two available hypotheses offers a better treatment for a given
disease, could the structure of the information flow among the
scientists impact their chances of converging on the better
hypothesis? By applying Bala and Goyal's framework to the
context of science and scenarios involving finite populations, Zollman
initiated the field of network epistemology (see Zollman 2013), which
studies the impact of social networks on the process of knowledge
acquisition.
Beside the aim of examining network effects on the formation of
scientific consensus, bandit models of scientific interaction have
been applied to a number of other topics, such as the impact of
preferential attachment on social learning (Alexander 2013), bias and
deception in science (Holman & Bruner 2015, 2017; Weatherall,
O'Connor, & Bruner 2020), optimal forms of collaboration
(Zollman 2017), factors leading to scientific polarization
(O'Connor & Weatherall 2018; Weatherall & O'Connor
2021b), effects of conformity (Weatherall & O'Connor 2021a),
effects of demographic diversity (Fazelpour & Steel 2022),
regulations of dual-use research (Wagner & Herington 2021), social
learning in which a dominant group ignores or devalues testimony from
a marginalized group (Wu 2023), or disagreements on the diagnosticity
of evidence for a certain hypothesis (Michelini & Osorio et al.
forthcoming).
### 3.3 Bounded confidence models of opinion dynamics
As we have seen above, the performance of a scientific community is
sometimes assessed in terms of its success in achieving consensus on
the true hypothesis. The question how consensus is formed and which
factors benefit or hinder its emergence is also studied within the
theme of *opinion dynamics* in epistemic communities. Models of
opinion dynamics aim at investigating how opinions form and change in
a group of agents who adjust their views (or beliefs) over a number of
rounds or time-steps, resulting in the formation of
*consensus*, *polarization*, or a *plurality* of
views. A modeling framework that has been particularly influential in
this context originates from the work of Hegselmann and Krause (2002,
2005, 2006), drawing its roots from analytical models of consensus
formation (French 1956; DeGroot 1974; Lehrer & Wagner
1981).[3]
The basic model functions as follows. At the start of the simulation
(that is, at time \(t=0\)) each agent \(x\_i\) is assigned an opinion
on a certain issue, expressed by a real number \(x\_i(0) \in {(0,1]}\).
Agents then exchange their opinions (or beliefs) with others and
adjust them by taking the average of those beliefs that are "not
too far away" from their own. These are opinions that fall
within a "confidence interval" of size \(\epsilon\), which
is a parameter of the model. In this way, agents have bounded
confidence in opinions of others. By iterating this process, the model
simulates the social dynamics of the opinion formation (see
Figure 5a).
Applied to the context of scientific inquiry, scientists are usually
represented as truth seeking agents who are trying to determine the
value of a certain parameter \(\tau\) for which they only know that it
lies in the interval \((0,1]\) (Hegselmann & Krause 2006). At the
start of the simulation each agent is assigned a random initial
belief. As the model runs, agents adjust their beliefs by receiving a
(noisy) signal about \(\tau\) and by learning opinions of others who
fall within their confidence interval. For instance, an agent's
belief can be updated in terms of the weighted average of
others' opinions and the signal from the
world.[4]
Such dynamics represent scientists as agents who are able to generate
evidence that points in the direction of \(\tau\), though their
updates are also influenced by their prior beliefs and the beliefs of
their peers (see
Figure 5b
&
Figure 5c).
![No truth-seekers: The 100 agents' opinions spread along the y axis quickly collapse to 8 opinions which don't change over time and are only incidentally near the truth. ](HK06_1.png)
(a)
![All truth-seekers: The 100 agents' opinions quickly collapse to 6 and then 2 then 1 which over time becomes nearer to the truth.](HK06_2.png)
(b)
![Half truth seekers: The 100 agents' opinions also collapses but takes a bit longer to reach 1; however, that 1 is also near the truth.](HK06_3.png)
(c)
Figure 5: Examples of runs of Hegselmann
and Krause's model, with the *x*-axis representing time
steps in the simulation and the *y*-axis opinions of 100 agents.
The change of each agent's opinion is represented with a colored
line. The value of \(\tau\) (the assumed position of the truth) is
represented as a black dotted line. Figure (a) shows opinion dynamics
in a community without any truth-seeking agents, resulting in a
plurality of diverging views. Figure (b) shows the opinion dynamics in
a community in which all agents are truth-seekers, which achieves a
consensus close to the truth. Figure (c) shows the opinion dynamics in
a community in which only half of the population are truth-seekers,
which also achieves a consensus close to the truth (adapted from
Hegselmann & Krause 2006; for other parameters used in the
simulations see the original article).
An early application of the bounded confidence model was the problem
of the division of cognitive labor (Hegselmann & Krause 2006).
Since agents can be modeled as updating their beliefs only on the
basis of social information (that is, by averaging over opinions of
others who fall in one's confidence interval) or on the basis of
both social information and the signal from the world, the model can
be used to study the opinion dynamics in a community in which not
everyone is a "truth-seeker". The model then examines what
kind of division of labor between truth-seekers and agents who only
receive social information allows the community to converge to the
truth.
Subsequent applications of the framework in social epistemology and
philosophy of science focused on the study of scientific disagreements
and the question: what is the impact of different norms guiding
disagreeing scientists on the efficiency of collective inquiry (Douven
2010; De Langhe 2013)? If agents update their beliefs both in view of
their own research and in view of other agents' opinions they
represent scientists that follow a Conciliatory Norm by
"splitting the difference" between their own view and the
views of their peers (see above
Section 2.5).
In contrast, if they update their beliefs only in view of their own
research they represent scientists that follow a Steadfast Norm. Other
application themes of this framework include the impact of noisy data
on opinion dynamics (Douven & Riegler 2010), opinion dynamics
concerning complex belief states, such as beliefs about scientific
theories (Riegler & Douven 2009), updating via an inference to the
best explanation in a social setting (Douven & Wenmackers 2017),
deceit and spread of disinformation (Douven & Hegselmann 2021),
network effects and theoretical diversity in scientific communities
(Douven & Hegselmann 2022), and so forth.
### 3.4 Evolutionary game-theoretic models of bargaining
Game theory studies situations in which the outcome of one's
action depends not only on one's choice of an action, but also
on actions of others. A "game" in this sense is a model of
a strategic interaction between agents ("players"), each
of whom has a set of available actions or strategies. Each combination
of the players' strategic responses has a designated outcome or
a "payoff". In contrast to traditional game theory, which
focuses on agents' rational decision-making aimed at maximizing
their payoff in one-off interactions, the evolutionary approach
focuses on repeated interactions in a population. A game is assumed to
be played over and over again by players who are randomly drawn from a
large population. While agents start with a certain strategic
behavior, they learn and gradually adjust their responses according to
specific rules called "dynamics" (for example, by
imitating other players or by considering their own past
interactions). As a result, successful strategies will diffuse across
the community. In this way, evolutionary game-theoretic models can be
used to explain how a distribution of strategies across the population
changes over time as an outcome of long-term population-level
processes. While the standard approach to game theory has primarily
focused on combinations of players' strategies that lead to a
"stable" state, such as the Nash equilibrium--a state
in which no player can improve their payoff by unilaterally changing
their strategy--the evolutionary approach has been used to study
how equilibria emerge in a community (see the entries on
game theory
and on
evolutionary game theory).
Evolutionary game theory was originally introduced in biology
(Lewontin 1961; Maynard Smith 1982). It subsequently gained interest
of social scientists and philosophers as a tool for studying cultural
evolution, that is, for investigations into how beliefs and norms
change over time (Axelrod 1984; Skyrms 1996). The models can be
implemented using a mathematical treatment based on differential
equations, or using agent-based modeling. While the former approach
employs certain idealizations, such as an infinite population size or
perfect mixing of populations, ABMs were introduced to study scenarios
in which such assumptions are relaxed (see, e.g., Adami, Schossau,
& Hintze 2016).
Applications of evolutionary game theory to social epistemology of
science were especially inspired by models of bargaining, studying how
different bargaining norms emerge from local interactions of
individuals (Skyrms 1996; Axtell, Epstein, & Young 2001). The
framework was introduced to the study of epistemic communities by
O'Connor and Bruner (2019), building up on Bruner's (2019)
model of cultural
interactions.[5]
The basic idea of bargaining models is as follows: agents bargain over
shares of available resources, where their demands and expectations
about others' demands evolve endogenously in view of their
previous interactions. Applied to the context of science, bargaining
concerns not only explicit negotiations over financial resources, but
also situations in which scientists need to agree how to divide their
workload in joint projects (O'Connor & Bruner 2019). For
example, if two scientists are working on a joint paper or if they are
organizing a conference together they will have to agree on how much
time and effort each of them will devote to it. The norms determining
such a division of labor may not be fair. For example, if scientist
*A* puts much less effort into the project than scientist
*B*, but they both get the same recognition for its success,
*B* will be disadvantaged. Similarly, if they agree on *A*
being the first author in a collaborative paper, while *B* ends
up working much more on it, the outcome will again be unfair. Such
norms may become entrenched in the scientific community, especially in
the context of interactions between members of majority and minority
groups in academia. But how do such norms emerge? Are biases favoring
members of certain groups over others necessary for the emergence of
such discriminatory patterns, or can they become entrenched due to
other, perhaps more surprising factors?
Evolutionary game-theoretic models have been used to study these and
related questions. Bargaining is represented as a strategic
interaction between two agents, each of whom makes a demand concerning
the issue at hand (for instance, a certain amount of workload, the
order of authors' names in a joint publication, and so on).
Depending on each agent's demand, each gets a certain payoff.
For instance, suppose *A* and *B* wish to organize a
conference and they start by negotiating who will cover which tasks.
If they both make a high demand in the sense that each is willing to
put only a minimal effort into the project while expecting the other
to cover the rest of the tasks, they will fail to organize the event.
If *B*, on the other hand, makes a low demand (by taking on a
larger portion of the work) while *A* makes a high demand, they
will be able to organize the conference, though the division of labor
will be unfair (assuming they both get equal credit for successfully
realizing the project).
The game, originating in the work of John Nash (1950), is called the
"Nash demand game" (or the "mini-Nash demand
game"). Each player in the game makes their demand (Low, Med or
High). If the demands do not jointly exceed a given resource, each
player gets what they asked for. If they do exceed the available
resource, no-one gets anything. In the example above, High can be
interpreted as demanding to work less than the other on the
organization of the conference, or demanding the first authorship in a
joint paper while putting relatively lower effort into it. Similarly,
Low corresponds to the willingness to take on a larger portion of the
work (relative to the order of authors in case of the joint paper),
while Med corresponds to demanding a fair distribution of labor.
Table 1
displays the payoffs in such a game. Any combination of demands that
gives a joint payoff of 10 is a Nash equilibrium, which means that
either player's strategy is the best response to the other
player's one. While a Nash equilibrium may correspond to a fair
distribution of resources (if both players demand Med), it may also
correspond to an unfair one (if one player demands Low and the other
one High). This raises the question: which equilibrium will the
community achieve if agents learn from their previous interactions? In
particular, if the individuals are divided into sub-groups (which may
be of different sizes), where their membership can be identified by
means of markers visible to other agents, they can develop strategies
conditional on the group membership of their co-players. Which
equilibrium state will such a community evolve to? To study such
questions, evolutionary models employ rules or dynamics that determine
how players update their strategies and how the distribution of
strategies across the community changes over
time.[6]
| | Low | Med | High |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Low | L,L | L,5 | L,H |
| Med | 5,L | 5,5 | 0,0 |
| High | H,L | 0,0 | 0,0 |
Table 1: A payoff table in the Nash
demand game. The rows show the strategic options of Player1 and the
columns the options of Player2. Each cell shows the payoff Player1
gets for the given combination of options, followed by the payoff for
Player2. Players can make three demands: Low, Med and High for the
total resource of 10. The payoffs are represented as L, M and H, where
\(\mathrm{M}= 5\), \(\mathrm{L} < 5 < \mathrm{H}\), and
\(\mathrm{L} + \mathrm{H} = 10\). (cf. O'Connor & Bruner
2019; Rubin & O'Connor 2018)
The modeling framework based on bargaining has been used to study
norms in scientific collaborations and inequalities that may emerge
through them. For example, O'Connor and Bruner (2019)
investigate the emergence of discriminatory norms in academic
interactions between minority and majority members. Rubin and
O'Connor (2018) study the emergence of discriminatory patterns
and their effects on diversity in collaboration networks, while
Ventura (2023) examines the impact of the structure of collaborative
networks on the emergence of discriminatory norms even if there are no
visible markers of an agent's membership to a sub-group.
Moreover, Klein, Marx, and Scheller (2020) use a similar framework to
study the relationship between rationality and inequality, that is,
the success of different strategies for bargaining (such as maximizing
expected utility) and their impact on the emergence of inequality.
### 3.5 Summing up
Besides the above frameworks, numerous additional approaches have been
used to build simulations in social epistemology and philosophy of
science. Some prominent frameworks not mentioned above include the
Bayesian framework "Laputa" developed by Angere
(2010--in Other Internet Resources) and Olsson (2011), aimed at
studying social networks of information and trust, the model of
argumentation dynamics by Betz (2013), or the influential framework by
Hong and Page (2004) utilized in the study of cognitive diversity (for
more on these frameworks see the entry on
computational philosophy).
Another evolutionary framework used in philosophy of science was
proposed by Smaldino and McElreath (2016). The model represents a
scientific community as a population consisting of scientific labs
that employ culturally transmitted methodological practices, where the
practices undergo natural selection from one generation of scientists
to the next, and it has been employed, for example, to study the
selection of conservative and risk-taking science (O'Connor
2019). In the next section we take a look at some of the central
results obtained by ABMs in philosophy of science, based on the above
and some other frameworks.
## 4. Central Results
To provide an overview of the main findings obtained by means of ABMs
in philosophy of science, we will revisit the research questions
discussed in
Section 2
and look at how they have been answered through specific models.
### 4.1 Theoretical diversity and the incentive structure of science
Before we survey ABMs that study the incentive structure of science,
we first look into the results of some analytical models which
inspired the development of simulations. To get a more precise grip on
how individual incentives shape epistemic coordination and theoretical
diversity, philosophers introduced formal analytical models, inspired
by research in economics. One of the central results from this body of
literature is that the optimal distribution of labor can be achieved
when scientists act according to their self-interest rather than
following epistemic ends (e.g., Kitcher 1990; Brock & Durlauf
1999; Strevens 2003). More precisely, the models show that if we
assume scientists aim at maximizing rewards from making discoveries,
they will succeed to optimally distribute their research efforts if
they take into account the probability of success of each research
line and how many other scientists currently pursue it. Assuming that
all scientists evaluate theories in the same way, their interest in
fame and fortune, rather than epistemic goals alone, will lead some of
them to select avenues that initially appear less
promising.[7]
ABMs were introduced to address similar questions, but assuming more
complex scenarios. For example, Muldoon and Weisberg (2011) developed
an epistemic landscape model (see
Section 3.1)
to examine the robustness of Kitcher's and Strevens'
results under the assumption that scientists have varying access to
information about the pursued research projects in their community and
the future success of those projects. Their results indicate that once
scientists have limited information about what others are working on,
or about the degree to which projects are likely to succeed, their
self-organized division of labor fails to be optimal. Another example
is the model by De Langhe & Greiff (2010) who generalize
Kitcher's model to a situation with multiple epistemic standards
determining the background assumptions of scientists, acceptable
methods, acceptable puzzles, and so on. The simulations show that once
scientific practice is modeled as based on multiple standards, the
incentive to compete fails to provide an optimal division of labor.
A closely related question concerns the "priority
rule"--a norm that allocates credit for a scientific
discovery to the first one to make it (Strevens 2003, 2011)--and
its impact on the division of labor. While Kitcher's and
Strevens's models suggested that the priority rule incentivizes
the optimal distribution of scientists across rival research programs,
a range of formal models, including ABMs, were developed to reexamine
these results and shed additional light on this norm. For instance,
Rubin and Schneider (2021) examine what happens if credit is assigned
by individuals, rather than by the scientific community as a whole, as
in Strevens' model. They further suppose that news about
simultaneous discoveries by two scientists spreads through a networked
community. The simulations show that more connected scientists are
more likely to gain credit than the less connected ones, which may, on
the one hand, disadvantage minority members in the community, and on
the other hand, undermine the role of the priority rule as an
incentive resulting in the optimal division of labor. Besides the
question of how the priority rule impacts the division of labor, ABMs
have also been used to study other effects of the priority rule. For
example, Tiokhin, Yan, and Morgan (2021) develop an evolutionary ABM
showing that the priority rule leads the scientific community to
evolve towards research based on smaller sample sizes, which in turn
reduces the reliability of published findings.
The impact of incentives on the division of labor in science has also
been analyzed in terms of incentives to "exploit" existing
projects in contrast to incentives to "explore" novel
ideas. For instance, De Langhe (2014b) developed a generalized version
of Kitcher and Strevens' model in which agents achieve the
optimal division of labor by weighing up relative costs and benefits
of exploiting available theories and exploring new ones. Within the
framework of bandit models and network epistemology (see
Section 3.2),
Kummerfeld and Zollman (2016) proposed an ABM that examines a
scenario in which scientists face two rival hypotheses, one of which
is better though the agents don't know which one. While agents
always choose to pursue (or exploit) a hypothesis that seems more
promising, they may also occasionally research (and thereby explore)
the alternative one. The simulations show that if the community is
left to be self-organized in the sense that each scientist explores to
the extent that they consider individually optimal, agents will be
incentivized to leave exploration to others. As a result, scientists
will fail to develop a sufficiently high incentive for exploring novel
ideas, that is, an incentive which would be optimal from the
perspective of their community at large.
### 4.2 Theoretical diversity and the communication structure of science
#### 4.2.1 The "Zollman effect"
The study of theoretical diversity in terms of network epistemology
led to a novel hypothesis: that the communication structure of a
scientific community can promote or hinder the emergence of
theoretical diversity and thereby impact the division of cognitive
labor. The idea was first demonstrated by bandit models developed by
Zollman (2007, 2010; see
Section 3.2)
and came to be known as the "Zollman effect" (Rosenstock,
Bruner, & O'Connor 2017). ABMs by Grim (2009) Grim, Singer,
Fisher, and colleagues (2013), and Angere & Olsson (2017) produced
similar findings based on different modeling
frameworks.[8]
These models show that in highly connected communities early
erroneous results may spread quickly among scientists, leading them to
investigate a sub-optimal line of inquiry. As a result, scientists may
prematurely abandon the exploration of different hypotheses, and
instead exploit the inferior ones. In light of these findings, Zollman
(2010) emphasized that for an inquiry to be successful it needs a
property of "transient diversity": a process in which a
community engages in a parallel exploration of different theories,
which lasts sufficiently long to prevent a premature abandonment of
the best theory, but which eventually gets replaced by a consensus on
it. Besides the result that connectivity can be harmful, it has also
been shown that learning in less connected networks is slower, which
indicates a trade-off between accuracy and speed in the context of
social learning (Zollman 2007; Grim, Singer, Fisher, et al. 2013).
Subsequent studies showed, however, that the Zollman effect is not
very robust within the parameter space of the original model
(Rosenstock et al. 2017). In particular, the result holds for those
parameters that can be considered characteristic of difficult inquiry:
scenarios in which there is a relatively small number of scientists,
the evidence is gathered in relatively small batches, and the
difference between the objective success of the rival hypotheses is
relatively small. Moreover, additional models showed that if the
diversity (and hence, exploration) of pursued hypotheses is generated
in some other way, more connected communities may outperform less
connected ones. For instance, Kummerfeld and Zollman (2016) showed
that relaxing the trade-off between exploration and exploitation by
allowing agents to occasionally gain information about the hypothesis
they are not currently pursuing is a way to generate diversity,
leading a fully connected community to perform better than less
connected ones. Another way of generating diversity was examined by
Frey and Seselja (2020): they show that if scientists
have a dose of caution or "rational inertia" when deciding
whether to abandon their current theory and start pursuing the rival,
a fully connected community gets a sufficient degree of exploration to
outperform less connected groups. Similar points have been made with
ABMs based on other modeling frameworks, such as the bounded
confidence model by Douven and Hegselmann (2022), or an
argumentation-based ABM by Borg, Frey, Seselja, and
Strasser (2018), each of which shows a different way of
preserving transient diversity in spite of a high degree of
connectivity.
#### 4.2.2 The spread of disinformation
ABMs studying epistemically pernicious strategies in scientific
communities have largely employed network epistemology bandit models
(see
Section 3.2).
For instance, a model by Holman and Bruner (2015) examines how an
interference of industry-sponsored agents may impact the information
flow in the medical community, and which strategies scientists could
employ to protect themselves from such a pernicious influence. For
this purpose, they consider a scenario in which medical doctors
regularly communicate with industry-sponsored agents about the
efficacy of a certain pharmaceutical product as a treatment for a
given disease. Since the industry-sponsored agents are motivated by
financial rather than epistemic interests and they are unlikely to
change their minds no matter how much opposing evidence they receive,
they are not merely biased, but "intransigently biased".
Their simulations indicate two ways in which a scientific community
can protect itself from the pernicious influence of the intransigently
biased agent: first, by increasing their connectivity, and second, by
learning how to reorganize their social network on the basis of
trustworthiness, which leads them to eventually ignore the biased
agent. In a follow-up model, Holman and Bruner (2017) also show how
the industry can bias a scientific community without corrupting any of
the individual scientists that compose it, but by simply helping
industry-friendly scientists to have successful careers.
Using a similar network-epistemology approach, Weatherall,
O'Connor and Bruner (2020) developed a bandit model to study the
"Tobacco strategy", employed by the tobacco industry in
the second half of the twentieth century to mislead the public about
the negative health effects of smoking (analyzed in detail by Oreskes
& Conway 2010). In particular, the model examines how certain
deceptive practices can mislead public opinion without even
interfering with (epistemically driven) scientific research. The
authors look into two such propagandist strategies: a "selective
sharing" of research results that fit the industry's
preferred position, and a "biased production" of research
results where additional research gets funded, but only suitable
findings get published. The results show that both strategies are
effective in misleading policymakers about the scientific output under
various examined parameters since in both cases the policymakers
update their beliefs on the basis of a biased sample of results,
skewed towards the worse theory. The authors also look into strategies
employed by journalists reporting on scientific findings and show that
incautiously aiming to be "fair" by reporting an equal
number of results from both sides of the controversy may result in the
spread of misleading information.
Another example of ABMs developed to examine deception in science is
an argumentation-based model by Borg, Frey, Seselja, and
Strasser (2017, 2018; see
Section 3.1.3).
Assuming the context of rival research programs where scientists have
to identify the best out of three available ones, deceptive
communication is represented in terms of agents sharing only positive
findings about their theory, while withholding news about potential
anomalies. The underlying idea is that deception consists in providing
some (true) information while at the same time withholding other
information, which leads the receiver to make a wrong inference
(Caminada 2009). Unlike the previous two models discussed in this
section, where not all agents display biased or deceptive behavior,
Borg et al. study network effects in a population consisting entirely
of deceptive scientists. Such a scenario represents a community that
is driven, for instance, by confirmation bias and an incentive to
shield one's research line from critical scrutiny. The
simulations show that, first, reliable communities (consisting of no
deceivers) are significantly more successful than the deceptive ones,
and second, increasing the connectivity makes it more likely that
deceptive populations converge on the best theory.
### 4.3 Cognitive diversity
As we have seen in
Section 2.1,
the problem of cognitive diversity concerns the relation between the
diversity of cognitive features of scientists (including their
background beliefs, reasoning styles, research preferences, heuristics
and strategies) and the inquiry of the scientific community.
Philosophers of science have especially been interested in how the
division of labor across different research heuristics impacts the
performance of the community.
A particularly influential ABM tackling this issue is the epistemic
landscape model by Weisberg and Muldoon (2009). The model examines the
division of labor catalyzed by different research strategies, where
scientists can act as the "controls",
"followers" or "mavericks" (see above
Section 3.1).
In view of the simulations, Weisberg and Muldoon argue that, first,
mavericks outperform other research strategies. Second, if we consider
the maverick strategy to be costly in terms of the necessary
resources, then introducing mavericks to populations of followers can
lead to an optimal division of labor. While Weisberg and
Muldoon's ABM eventually turned out to include a coding error
(Alexander et al. 2015), their claim that cognitive diversity improves
the productivity of scientists received support from adjusted versions
of the model, albeit with some qualifications.
First, Thoma's (2015) model showed that cognitively diverse
groups outperform homogeneous ones if scientists are sufficiently
flexible to change their current approach and sufficiently informed
about the research conducted by others in the community. Second,
Poyhonen (2017) confirmed that if we consider the maverick
strategy to be slightly more time-consuming, mixed populations of
mavericks and followers may outperform communities consisting only of
mavericks in terms of the average epistemic significance of the
obtained results. According to Poyhonen, another condition
that needs to be satisfied if cognitive diversity is to be beneficial
concerns the topology of the landscape: diverse populations outperform
homogeneous ones only in case of more challenging inquiries
(represented in terms of rugged epistemic landscapes), but not in case
of easy research problems (represented by landscapes such as Weisberg
and Muldoon's one,
Figure 2).
The importance of the topology of the landscape was also emphasized
by Alexander and colleagues (2015) who use NK-landscapes to show that
whether social learning is beneficial or not crucially depends on the
landscape's topology. Finally, there are other research
strategies (such as Alexander and colleagues'
"swarm" one, see
Section 3.1.1)
that outperform Weisberg and Muldoon's mavericks, while small
changes in the follower strategy may significantly improve its
performance (Fernandez Pinto & Fernandez Pinto
2018).
Another aspect of cognitive diversity that received attention in the
modeling literature concerns the relationship between diversity and
expertise. This issue was first studied in economics by Hong and Page
(2004). The model examined how heuristically diverse groups,
consisting of agents with diverse problem-solving approaches, compare
with groups consisting solely of experts with respect to finding a
solution to a particular problem. Hong and Page's original
result suggested that "diversity trumps ability" in the
sense that groups consisting of individuals employing diverse
heuristic approaches outperfom groups consisting solely of experts,
that is, agents who are the best "problem-solvers". While
this finding became quite influential, subsequent studies showed that
it does not hold robustly once more realistic assumptions about
expertise are added to the model (Grim, Singer, Bramson, et al. 2019;
Reijula & Kuorikoski 2021; see also Singer 2019).
The problem of cognitive diversity and the division of labor in
scientific communities was also studied by Hegselmann and
Krause's bounded-confidence model (Hegselmann & Krause 2006;
see above
Section 3.3).
The ABM examines opinion dynamics in a community that is diverse in
the sense that only some individuals are active truth seekers, while
others adjust their beliefs by exchanging opinions with those agents
who have sufficiently similar beliefs to their own. Hegselmann and
Krause investigate conditions under which such a community can reach
consensus on the truth, combining agent-based modeling and analytical
methods. They show that, on the one hand, if all agents in the model
are truth seekers, they achieve a consensus on the truth. On the other
hand, if the community divides labor, its ability to reach a consensus
on the truth will depend on the number of truth seeking agents, the
position of the truth relative to the agents' opinions, the
degree of confidence determining the scope of opinion exchange and the
relative weight of the truth signal (in contrast to the weight of
social information). For instance, under certain parameter settings
even a single truth-seeking agent will lead the rest of the community
to the truth.
### 4.4 Social diversity
As we have seen in
Section 2.4,
ABMs were introduced to study two issues that concern social
diversity in the context of science: first, epistemic effects of
socially diverse scientific groups, and second, factors that can
undermine social diversity or disadvantage members of minorities in
science.
Concerning the former question, Fazelpour and Steel (2022) developed a
network epistemology bandit model (see
Section 3.2)
to study effects of social (or demographic) diversity on collective
inquiry. The model examines how different degrees of trust between
socially distinct sub-groups impact the performance of the scientific
community. The simulations show that social diversity can improve
group inquiry by reducing the excessive trust scientists may place in
each other's findings. This is particularly relevant in cases of
difficult inquiry in tightly connected communities, where a high
degree of trust may lead to a premature endorsement of an objectively
false hypothesis. The authors also demonstrate how social diversity
can counteract negative effects of conformity in the choice of
research paths, under the condition that the tendency to conform
isn't too high. Using a similar bandit framework, Wu (2023)
examines how a marginalized group learns in environments in which
members of the dominant group ignore or devalue results coming from
the former. She shows that in such situations, members of the
marginalized group can achieve an epistemic advantage in the sense of
forming more accurate beliefs than the members of the dominant group.
In this way, the model aims to explain the "inversion
thesis" from standpoint epistemology, according to which
marginalized groups may have an epistemically privileged status (Wylie
2003).
With regard to the latter question, we previously mentioned the model
by Rubin and Schneider (2021), which shows how minority members can
become disadvantaged due to the priority rule in science and the
structure of the scientific community
(Section 4.1).
In a follow-up model, Rubin (2022) demonstrates how the
organizational structure of the scientific community can also
influence the emergence of "citation gaps", where
publications by members of underrepresented and minority groups are
cited less than those by members of the majority. The impact of one's
minority status on one's position in scientific collaborations was
mainly studied by means of evolutionary game-theoretic models of
bargaining (see
Section 3.4).
The models show different ways in which minorities can become
discriminated against merely due to their minority status and the
impact of such a status on the bargaining and collaborative practices
(Rubin & O'Connor 2018; O'Connor & Bruner 2019;
Ventura 2023). Moreover, the results show that such an outcome may
have a negative impact on scientific progress, and it may help to
explain why gender and racial minorities tend to cluster in academic
subdisciplines (O'Connor & Bruner 2019; Rubin &
O'Connor 2018). We will revisit these models below in
Section 4.7,
devoted to the issue of scientific collaboration.
### 4.5 Peer-disagreement in science
As we have seen in
Section 2.5,
peer disagreement debate highlighted different norms that can guide
scientists. ABMs were introduced to examine the impact of these norms
on the communal inquiry. To this end, Douven (2010) and De Langhe
(2013) enhanced the bounded confidence model by Hegselmann and Krause
(2006; see
Section 3.3)
to study the impact of the Conciliatory and Steadfast Norms on the
goals of
inquiry.[9]
Both models suggest that the impact of these norms is context
dependent. In Douven's model, when data received through inquiry
is not very noisy--in the sense that it is indicative of the
truth rather than resulting from measurement errors--conciliating
populations will be faster in discovering the truth than the steadfast
ones. Nevertheless, if the data becomes noisy, the simulations show a
trade-off between accuracy and speed. While steadfast populations get
within a moderate distance of the truth relatively quickly, they
don't improve their accuracy in the subsequent rounds of the
simulation. In contrast, conciliating populations end up closer to the
truth but it takes them relatively longer to do so. This indicates
that whether a norm is optimal for the communal goals may largely
depend on contextual issues of inquiry, such as obtaining noise-free
evidence. De Langhe comes to a similar conclusion, using a model that
represents longstanding scientific disagreements and an inquiry
involving multiple rivaling epistemic systems. The model is inspired
by Goldman's (2010) idea that even though disagreeing peers may
share the evidence concerning the issue in question, they may not
share the evidence for the epistemic system within which they evaluate
the former kind of evidence. His simulations suggest that while
conciliating within one's epistemic system is beneficial, that
is not the case when it comes to disagreements between different
epistemic
systems.[10]
### 4.6 Scientific polarization
The initial work on ABMs of polarization in scientific communities is
based on Hegselmann and Krause's bounded confidence model
(Hegselmann & Krause 2006; see
Section 3.3).[11]
The model shows that a community can polarize when some agents form
their opinions by disregarding the evidence coming from the world and
by instead taking into account only what they learn from others, who
have sufficiently similar views. Subsequent models, based on different
frameworks, sought to examine whether polarization can emerge even if
all agents are truth-seekers, that is, rational agents who form their
opinions only in view of epistemic considerations.
For example, a model by Singer et al. (2019) shows the emergence of
polarization in groups of deliberating agents who share reasons for
their beliefs, and who merely use a coherence-based approach to manage
their limited memory (by forgetting those reasons that conflict with
the view supported by most of their previous considerations). Using
the Bayesian modeling framework Laputa, Olsson (2013) shows how
polarization can emerge over the course of deliberation if agents
assign different degrees of trust to the testimony of others,
depending on how similar views they hold. In another Bayesian
framework based on bandit models, O'Connor and Weatherall (2018)
show how a community of scientists who share not only their testimony,
but unbiased evidence, can end up in a polarized state if they treat
evidence obtained by other scientists, whose beliefs are too far off
from their own, as uncertain. Moreover, Michelini, Osorio and
colleagues (forthcoming) combine bandit models with the
bounded-confidence framework to study polarization in communities that
disagree on the diagnostic value of evidence for a certain hypothesis
(modeled by the Bayes factor). Their results indicate that an initial
disagreement on the diagnosticity of evidence can lead to
polarization, depending on the sample size of the performed studies
and the confidence interval within which scientists share their
opinions.
Polarization in epistemic communities has also been studied by ABMs
simulating argumentative dynamics. For example, using the framework by
Betz (2013), Kopecky (2022) proposes a model that shows how certain
ways in which rational agents engage in argumentative exchange in an
open debate forum can result in polarized communities, even if agents
don't have a preference for whom they argue with.
### 4.7 Scientific collaboration
As discussed in
Section 2.7,
ABMs have been used to study when collaborating is beneficial and how
it impacts inquiry. To examine why collaborations emerge and when they
are beneficial, Boyer-Kassem and Imbert (2015) developed a
computational model in which scientists collaborate by sharing
intermediate results. They study collaborative groups in a larger
competitive community, driven by the priority rule, where
collaborators have to equally share the reward for making a discovery.
Their simulations suggest that collaborating is beneficial both for
communal and individual inquiry. When scientists collaborate, they
proceed faster with their inquiry, making it more likely that they
will belong to a team that is first to make a discovery. Moreover,
while the scientific community may profit from all scientists fully
collaborating (since solutions found by some scientists will be shared
with everyone), for individual scientists other collaborative
constellations may be better (see also Boyer-Kassem & Imbert
forthcoming).
To examine conditions for optimal collaboration Zollman (2017)
proposed a network-epistemology model. The model starts from the
assumption that by collaborating scientists teach each other different
conceptual schemes aimed at solving scientific problems, and that
collaboration comes at a cost. His findings suggest that reducing the
costs of collaborations and enlarging the size of the collaborative
group benefits those involved, though encouraging scientists to engage
with different collaborative groups may not lead to efficient
inquiry.
While the above models studies socially uniform communities, ABMs have
also been employed to study socially diverse collaborative
environments and discriminatory patterns that can endogenously emerge
in them. These models are typically based on evolutionary
game-theoretic frameworks examining bargaining norms that accompany
academic collaborations (see
Section 3.4).
Bruner (2019) initially used this framework to show that in cultural
interactions involving a division of resources, minority members can
become disadvantaged merely due to the smaller size of their
group.[12]
O'Connor and Bruner (2019) use this approach to study the
emergence of similar patterns in epistemic communities. The
simulations show that minorities can become disadvantaged in
scientific collaborations due to the size of their group, where the
effect is increased the smaller their group is. Rubin and
O'Connor (2018) use a similar framework to examine diversity and
discrimination in epistemic collaboration networks, with a special
focus on the role of homophily--the tendency to preferentially
establish links with members of one's own social group in
contrast to members of the outgroup. Their results suggest that
discriminatory norms, likely to emerge in academic interaction, may
promote homophily and decrease social diversity in collaborative
networks. Furthermore, Ventura (2023) shows how inequality can emerge
in collaboration networks even in the absence of demographic
categories since scientists can become disadvantaged merely due to the
structure of the collaboration network and their specific position in
it.
### 4.8 Additional themes
As mentioned in
Section 2.8,
ABMs have been applied to the study of many additional themes in
philosophy of science: the problem of allocating funding to research
grants (Harnagel 2019; Avin 2019a,b), examining Popperian and Kuhnian
models of scientific progress (De Langhe 2014a), the dynamics of
normal and revolutionary science (De Langhe 2017), pluralism of
scientific methods (Currie & Avin 2019), the impact of methods
guiding research design and data analysis on the quality of scientific
findings (Smaldino & McElreath 2016), strategic behavior of
scientists as a motivated exchange of beliefs (Merdes 2021),
journals' publishing strategies (Zollman 2009), meta-inductive
learning (Schurz 2009, 2012), the impact of evidential strength on the
accuracy of scientific consensus (Santana 2018), the management and
structure of scientific groups (Sikimic & Herud-Sikimic
2022), the reliability of testimonial norms, which guide how one
should change beliefs in light of others' claims (Mayo-Wilson
2014), the assessment of source reliability (Merdes, Von Sydow, &
Hahn 2021), the impact of "epistemic stubbornness" as an
unwillingness to change one's scientific stance in face of
countervailing evidence (Santana 2021), the impact of different
theory-choice evaluations on the efficiency of inquiry (Borg et al.
2019), and so forth.
## 5. Epistemology of Agent-Based Modeling
In the previous section we delved into various results obtained by
means of agent-based modeling. But how seriously should we take each
of these findings? What exactly do they tell us about science? Given
that one of the main cognitive functions of models in science is to
help us to learn about the world (cf. the entry on
models in science),
this raises the question: what exactly can we learn with ABMs, and
which methodological steps do we have to follow to acquire such
knowledge? These issues are a matter of the epistemology of
agent-based
modeling.[13]
### 5.1 The challenge of abstract modeling
In an early discussion on simulations in social sciences, Boero and
Squazzoni (2005) proposed a classification of ABMs into case-based
models, typifications, and theoretical abstractions--based on the
properties of the represented target. While a case-based model
represents an empirical scenario that is delineated in time and space,
typifications represent classes of empirical phenomena. Finally,
theoretical abstractions, as their name suggests, abstract away from
various features of empirical targets and aim at simplified and
general representation of social phenomena.
Following the tradition of abstract ABMs in social sciences, the
majority of simulations in philosophy of science have been developed
within the so-called "KISS" (*Keep it Simple,
Stupid*)
approach.[14]
As such, they belong to the third type of ABMs listed above. The main
advantage of constructing simple models is that they allow for an
easier understanding of the represented causal mechanisms than complex
models do. However, this also raises the question: what can we learn
from these models about real science, given their highly idealized
character? For instance, do results of such simulations increase our
understanding of scientific communities? Can we use them to provide
potential explanations of certain episodes from the history of
science, or to formulate normative recommendations for how scientific
inquiry should be organized? These questions have been a matter of
philosophical debate, closely related to the discussion on the
epistemic function of highly idealized or toy-models across empirical
sciences.[15]
In particular, critics have argued that if abstract ABMs are to be
informative of empirical targets, they first need to be verified and
empirically validated.
### 5.2 Verification and validation: from exploratory to explanatory functions of ABMs
In the context of agent-based modeling, verification is a method of
evaluating the accuracy of the computer program underlying an ABM
relative to its conceptual design. Validation, on the other hand,
concerns the evaluation of the link between the model and its
purported target. Irrespective of the purpose for which the model was
built, it always requires some degree of verification to ensure that
its simulation code does not suffer from bugs and other unintended
issues. The type of required validation depends on the purpose of the
model and its intended target. As Mayo-Wilson and Zollman (2021) have
argued, validation isn't always necessary for some modeling
purposes, such as illustrating that certain events or situations are
theoretically possible. Models can instead be justified by
"plausibility arguments" and in view of stylized
historical case studies. According to Mayo-Wilson and Zollman, ABMs
play a role analogous to thought experiments in that they can be used
to evoke normative intuitions, to justify counterfactual claims, to
illustrate possibilities and impossibilities, and so on. Moreover,
when it comes to questions concerning the dynamics of social systems,
they are more apt for the task than mere thought experiments due to
the complexity of such target phenomena.
Empirical validation is also not required if the function of an ABM is
to provide a proof-of-concept or a how-possibly explanation. A model
provides a *proof-of-concept* (sometimes also called a
"proof-of-possibility" or
"proof-of-principle") if it merely demonstrates a
theoretical possibility of a certain phenomenon (cf. Arnold 2008). The
target phenomenon may be represented in an abstract, idealized way,
disregarding the empirical adequacy of the modeling assumptions.
Gelfert (2016: 85-86) distinguishes two specific functions of
the proof-of-concept modeling. First, a model may exemplify how an
approach or methodology can generate a potential representation of a
given target phenomenon. For instance, if an ABM shows how the
framework of epistemic landscapes can be used to represent cognitive
diversity, it provides a proof-of-concept in this sense of the term.
Second, a model may provide results showing that a certain causal
mechanism can be found within the model-world. For instance, if a
highly idealized simulation shows that a certain kind of cognitive
diversity results in efficient inquiry of the modeled community, it
provides a proof-of-concept in the latter sense. While
proof-of-concept modeling is sometimes taken to be just a preliminary
step in the development of more realistic models (see for instance
Grabner 2018), it has also been considered as providing valuable
philosophical insights already on its own (see for example
Seselja 2021a).
Similarly, simulations provide *how-possibly explanations*
(HPEs) if they show how a certain target phenomenon can possibly
result from certain preconditions (Rosenstock et al. 2017;
Grabner 2018; Frey & Seselja 2018;
Seselja 2022b). In contrast to how-actually
explanations, or explanations simpliciter, which are accounts of how
phenomena actually occur, HPEs (sometimes also called "potential
explanations") cover accounts of possible ways in which
phenomena can
occur.[16]
According to a broad reading of the notion proposed by
Verreault-Julien (2019), HPEs are propositions that have the form
"It is possible that 'p because q'.", where
*p* is the explanandum, *q* the explanans, and the
possibility may refer to various types of modalities such as
epistemic, logical, causal, and so forth.
The above epistemic functions--providing a proof-of-concept or an
HPE--are often considered a kind of exploratory modeling, where
the represented target can be an abstract, theoretical phenomenon
(Ylikoski & Aydinonat 2014; Seselja 2021a). In
contrast, to provide explanations of empirical phenomena, many have
argued that ABMs need to be empirically validated. This has been
emphasized as important in case models are supposed to explain certain
patterns from actual scientific practice, to provide evidence
supporting existing empirical (including historical) hypotheses, or to
provide suggestions for interventions through science policy (Arnold
2014; Martini & Fernandez Pinto 2017; Thicke 2020;
Seselja 2021a).
Validation of ABMs consists in examining whether the model is a
reasonable representation of the target, where
"reasonable" may refer to different aspects of the model
(Grabner 2018). For instance, we may test how well mechanisms
represented in the model conform to our empirical knowledge about
them, whether the exogenous inputs for the model are empirically
plausible, to what extent the output of the model replicates existing
knowledge about the target, or whether it can predict its future
states. Different authors have suggested different elaborations of
these points with respect to ABMs in philosophy of science (see Thicke
2020; Seselja 2022b; Bedessem 2019; Politi 2021; Pesonen
2022).
While some of these steps may be challenging, others may be more
feasible. For instance Martini and Fernandez Pinto (2017) argue
that ABMs of science can be calibrated on empirical data. Harnagel
(2019) exemplifies how this could be done by calibrating an epistemic
landscape model with bibliometric data.
Others have argued that results of simulations should at least be
analyzed in terms of their *robustness*. Robustness analysis
(RA) includes:
1. parameter RA, examining the stability of results with respect to
changes in parameter values of the model, usually studied by means of
sensitivity
analysis;[17]
2. structural RA, which focuses on the stability of results under
changes in structural features of the model and its underlying
assumptions;
3. representational RA, which studies the stability of the results
with respect to changes in the representational framework, modelling
technique, or modelling medium (Weisberg 2013: Chapter 9; Houkes,
Seselja, & Vaesen forthcoming).
The main purpose of RA in the context of ABMs is to help with
understanding conditions (in the model world) under which results of
the model hold: whether they depend on specific parameter values or on
specific assumptions about the causal factors involved in the
represented target, or whether the result is just an artifact of
certain idealizing assumptions in the model. This can benefit our
understanding of the model and its results in at least two ways. On
the one hand, if an RA shows that the result holds under various
changes in parameter values, structural and representational
assumptions, this may increase our confidence that the result is not a
mere artifact of idealizations in the model (see, e.g., Kuorikoski,
Lehtinen, & Marchionni
2012).[18]
On the other hand, if the result holds only for specific parameter
values or under specific structural or representational assumptions,
this can help to delineate the context of application of the model
(for example, the context of difficult inquiry, the context of inquiry
involving a small scientific community, and so on).
### 5.3 The "family of models perspective"
The importance of robustness analysis suggests that determining the
epistemic function of a single ABM in isolation may be difficult. In
order to assess whether the results of an ABM are explanatory of a
certain empirical target, it is useful to check whether they are
robust under changes in the idealizing modeling assumptions. One way
to do so is to construct a new model by replacing some assumptions in
the previous one. Moreover, using a model based on an entirely
different representational framework may additionally help in such
robustness studies. This is why the value of using multiple models to
study the same research question has been increasingly emphasized in
the modeling literature.
For instance, Aydinonat, Reijula, and Ylikoski (2021) have argued for
the importance of the "family-of-models perspective". The
authors consider models as argumentative devices, where an argument
supported by a given model can be strengthened by means of analyses
based on subsequent models. The approach according to which phenomena
should be studied by means of multiple models has also been endorsed
in the broader context of modeling in social sciences (cf. Page 2018;
Kuhlmann 2021).
In sum, even though ABMs in philosophy of science tend to be highly
idealized, they can have exploratory roles, such as identifying
possible causal mechanisms underlying scientific inquiry, offering
how-possibly explanations, or providing conjectures and novel
perspectives on historical case-studies (cf. Seselja
2022a). In addition, they can play more challenging epistemic roles
(such as providing explanations of empirical phenomena or evidence for
empirical hypotheses) if accompanied by validation procedures, which
may benefit from looking into classes of models aimed at the same
target phenomenon.
## 6. Conclusion and Outlook
This entry has provided an overview of applications of agent-based
modeling to issues studied by philosophers of science. Since such
applications are primarily concerned with social aspects of scientific
inquiry, ABMs in philosophy of science are mainly developed within the
subfield of formal social epistemology of science. While agent-based
modeling has experienced rapid growth in this domain, it remains to
stand the test of time. In particular, foundational issues concerning
the epistemic status of abstract models and their methodological
underpinnings (for instance, the KISS vs. the KIDS approach, see
footnote 14)
remain open. Having said that, theoretical achievements made with the
existing models have been remarkable and they provide a firm ground
for further growth of agent-based modeling as a philosophical
method.
One avenue that has received relatively little attention is the
combination of agent-based modeling and empirical methods. Although
early philosophical discussions on ABMs emphasized the fruitful
combination of experimental and computational methods (see, e.g.,
Hartmann, Lisciandra, & Machery 2013), this area has not been
explored extensively, leaving ample opportunities for future research.
For instance, highly idealized ABMs can benefit from validation in
terms of experimental studies (as exemplified by Mohseni et al. 2021).
Moreover, qualitative research, such as ethnographic studies of
scientific communities, can help to empirically inform assumptions
used to build models (see, e.g., Ghorbani, Dijkema, & Schrauwen
2015).
Another emerging line of inquiry comes from the recent developments in
artificial intelligence. In particular, big data and machine-learning
models can be a fruitful way of generating input for ABMs, such as the
behavior of agents (see, e.g., Kavak, Padilla, Lynch, & Diallo
2018; Zhang, Valencia, & Chang 2023). For instance, natural
language processing technology has been used to represent agents who
express their arguments in terms of natural language (Betz 2022). Such
enhancements provide novel opportunities for highly idealized models:
from their robustness analyses in which certain assumptions are
de-idealized to the exploration of novel questions and phenomena. |
reasons-agent | ## 1. The Principle-Based Conception
The principle-based version of the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction actually predates the terminology
'agent-relative' and 'agent-neutral'. Thomas
Nagel instead uses the terms 'subjective' and
'objective' to mark a version of the principle-based
distinction in his classic *The Possibility of Altruism* (Nagel
1970). The terms 'agent-relative' and
'agent-neutral' were later introduced by Derek Parfit
(Parfit 1984) and Nagel himself then adopted Parfit's
terminology (Nagel 1986). As background to Nagel's version of
the distinction, we must first note that for Nagel, reasons are
universal, in the sense that for every token reason there corresponds
a predicate *R* which figures in a universally quantified
proposition of the following form:
>
> Every reason is a predicate *R* such that for all persons
> *p* and events *A*, if *R* is true of *A*,
> then *p* has prima facie reason to promote *A*. (Nagel
> 1970: 47)
>
With this conception of the universality of reasons in hand, Nagel
articulates the distinction as follows:
>
> Formally, a subjective reason is one whose defining predicate
> *R* contains a free occurrence of the variable *p*. (The
> free-agent variable will, of course, be free only *within*
> *R*; it will be bound by the universal quantification over
> persons which governs the entire formula.) All universal reasons and
> principles expressible in terms of the basic formula either contain a
> free-agent variable or they do not. The former are subjective; the
> later will be called objective. (Nagel 1970: 91)
>
Drawn in such formal terms, the distinction can seem alien and
difficult to grasp but the basic idea is actually not that complex. A
few examples should help illustrate Nagel's idea. Suppose that
there is reason for me to phone a friend because doing so would make
the friend happy. Now suppose that my reason is best expressed as
follows--that phoning her would make someone happy. In that case,
the fact that the person who is made happy is *my* friend is
incidental. If phoning a stranger would have generated just as much
happiness then I would have had just as much reason to call the
stranger. This in turn suggests that the principle corresponding to
this reason is of the form,
>
> (*p*, *A*) (If *A* will make someone happy then
> *p* has reason to promote *A*)
>
The use of 'promote' in Nagel's canonical
formulation raises some interesting issues. Nagel holds that
performing an action *A* is a trivial way of promoting
*A*, so I can promote the calling of my friend by calling her.
In one sense, Nagel builds teleology into his conception of a reason
for action. For Nagel glosses 'promotion' in such a way
that the fact that an action will produce the relevant sort of outcome
is sufficient for there being a reason to perform that action (see
Nagel 1970: 52). So every reason entails that if someone can promote
the relevant outcome (which outcomes are relevant may depend on the
agents involved if the reason is agent-relative) then it logically
follows from Nagel's gloss of reasons in terms of promotion (in
his sense) that there is reason to perform that action. In another
sense, though, Nagel does not build teleology into his conception of a
reason for action. For Nagel does not hold that causally producing (or
even instantiating) are *necessary* for there to be a reason
for the action. In his somewhat capacious sense of
'promote', it is sufficient for an action to count as
promoting an outcome if the action is such that not performing it
would bring about the non-occurrence of the relevant state of affairs
(again, see Nagel 1970: 52). So actions which are necessary but not
sufficient for a given outcome thereby count as promoting that
outcome. So all reasons are not teleological in the sense of being
reasons in virtue of their causally bringing about the relevant sort
of outcome; simply preserving the possibility of that outcome is
enough. However, all reasons are teleological in the sense that any
reason for an agent *A* to *X* does entail that if a
suitable agent (who counts as suitable depends on whether the reason
is agent-relative; if it is agent-neutral then any agent will do) can
promote *A*'s *X*-ing then there is reason for
them to do so. Reasons are for Nagel teleological in the sense that
they all entail reasons for people to perform actions in the right
circumstances in virtue of what states of affairs they would causally
bring about. This is not trivial. Some conceptions of reasons do not
have this consequence, as in the case of those conceptions which gloss
reasons for action in a way that does not advert to promotion at
all.[1]
In any event, for Nagel, the preceding principle (and hence the
corresponding reason) is agent-neutral because the antecedent contains
no use of the free-agent variable '*p*'. The reason
is in this sense not relativized to the agent for whom it is a reason.
However, we could instead hold that the fact that it is my friend who
would be made happy is relevant to whether I have reason to call. In
that case, the principle corresponding to the reason would be of the
form,
>
> (*p*, *A*) (If *A* will make *p*'s
> friend happy then *p* has reason to promote *A*)
>
This principle is agent-relative because the free-agent variable
'*p*' does appear in its antecedent. Basically, if
the sufficient condition for the application of the reason predicate
(the condition given by the antecedent of the principle corresponding
to the reason) includes such a free-agent variable then the reason is
agent-relative; otherwise it is agent-neutral. It is easy enough to
see that on this conception, *ethical egoism* is an
agent-relative theory (and hence concerns agent-relative reasons)
while objective utilitarianism is an agent-neutral theory (and hence
concerns agent-neutral reasons). For egoism holds that there is reason
for a given agent to do something just in case his doing it would
promote *his* welfare. Whereas objective
*utilitarianism*, see the entry on
consequentialism,
(on at least one version) holds that someone ought to do something
just insofar as it promotes welfare, period (no matter whose it is).
It is also important to be clear that the principles Nagel has in mind
must be understood as the basic normative principles of a theory
rather than the theory's account of what gives those principles
their status as basic normative
principles.[2]
Otherwise various meta-ethical (see entry on
metaethics)
theories of what it is to be a reason (e.g., informed desire
accounts) might be taken to imply agent-relativity when in fact they
should be understood as neutral on this issue.
Nagel's version of the distinction is
'principle-based' in the fairly straightforward sense that
one must first look to the principle corresponding to a given reason
to determine whether it is agent-relative or agent-neutral. Nagel also
makes this clear in his later work. In *The View From Nowhere*
he holds that,
>
> If a reason can be given a general form which does not include an
> essential reference to the person who has it, it is an
> *agent-neutral* reason...If on the other hand, the general
> form of a reason does include an essential reference to the person who
> has it then it is an *agent-relative* reason. (Nagel 1986:
> 152-153)
>
The context makes it relatively clear Nagel's reference to the
'general form' of a reason is a universally quantified
principle corresponding to the reason of the sort he discussed in
*The Possibility of Altruism*. Derek Parfit, who is the first
one to introduce the terminology 'agent-relative' and
'agent-neutral' makes it even more clear that the
distinction is in the first instance applied to normative theories.
Having described a moral theory he calls *C*, he remarks
that,
>
> Since *C* gives to all agents common moral aims, I shall call
> *C* *agent-neutral*. Many moral theories do not take
> this form. These theories are *agent-relative*, giving to
> different agents, different aims (Parfit 1984: 27).
>
Parfit's conception of moral principles as giving agents (common
or separate) moral aims is itself controversial. Some moral theories
instead understand moral principles as (at least in some cases)
providing constraints on how to pursue one's ends. Parfit later
explains how his terminology, when applied to reasons, maps onto
Nagel's:
>
> Nagel's *subjective* reasons are reasons only for the
> agent. I call these agent-relative...When I call some reason
> agent-relative, I am not claiming that this reason *cannot* be
> a reason for other agents. All that I am claiming is that it may not
> be. (Parfit 1984: 143)
>
This is slightly confusing. First, how does Parfit's distinction
between agent-relative and agent-neutral theories map onto his
distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons? The
former is cast in terms of common aims while the second is cast in
terms of whether a reason for one agent must also be a reason for
anyone else. Second, how exactly does Parfit's distinction
between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons correspond to
Nagel's version of the distinction? The former is cast in terms
of whether a reason for one agent must also be a reason for anyone
else while the latter is cast in terms of the occurrence of free agent
variables in the sufficient condition for the application of the
reason predicate corresponding to the reason. These are not obviously
equivalent, yet Parfit takes his distinction to be the same as
Nagel's.
The first of these two questions is slightly easier to answer than the
second. A moral theory is agent-neutral if it gives us common aims,
but if we have common aims then whenever there is a reason for you to
promote an aim there will also be reason for me to promote that aim
(if I can). So Parfit's agent-neutral moral theories provide
agent-neutral reasons in his sense--in the sense of being such
that a reason for one agent is guaranteed to be a reason for any agent
situated to promote the end which figures in that reason. By contrast,
a moral theory is agent-relative if it does not give every agent a
common aim. However, if we do not have common aims then what is a
reason for you may be no reason whatsoever for me *even if* I
am in a position to promote the end which figures in that reason. So
Parfit's agent-relative moral theories provide agent-relative
reasons in his sense--reasons which are not such that a reason
for one agent entails a reason for any agent in a position to promote
the end which figures in that reason. So Parfit's agent-relative
moral theories concern agent-relative reasons in his sense and his
agent-neutral moral theories concern agent-neutral reasons in his
sense. So the use of the same terminology is no coincidence, and
presumably Parfit would agree that the agent-relativity of a reason is
well understood in terms of the agent-relativity of the principle
associated with that reason. Indeed, the primary reason we have
included Parfit's version of the distinction in this discussion
of the principle-based version of the distinction is the suspicion
that his distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons
is really just a corollary of his distinction between agent-relative
and agent-neutral theories. The fact that Parfit clearly thinks that
his distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons is
just the same as Nagel's distinction also suggests that
Parfit's distinction is well understood as principle-based,
since Nagel's version of the distinction is a paradigmatic
instance of a principle-based version of the distinction. The other
(closely related) reason for including Parfit's version of the
distinction here is that it also shares the chief vice of
Nagel's version. As explained below, neither Nagel's nor
Parfit's version of the distinction sits well with radical forms
of moral particularism.
What about our second question about Parfit's distinctions,
though? Why should Parfit assume his version of the distinction
between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons is the same as
Nagel's even though they are not drawn in the same way? Here it
is relevant that (in at least one sense; see above) Nagel builds
teleology into the logical form of the reason predicate, so that a
reason is always understood as a reason *to promote* something.
Given this conception of reasons, it does seem that Parfit's
conception maps fairly neatly onto Nagel's. For if a reason is
agent-relative in Nagel's sense, then whether there is a reason
for me to promote the state of affairs for which it is a reason will
depend on whether I am the agent who figures in the token reason under
consideration. An agent-relative reason to promote *A*'s
happiness will give me a reason only if I am *A* or suitably
related to *A* (e.g., there can be agent-relative reasons to
promote the welfare of *my* nearest and dearest). So reasons
which are agent-relative in Nagel's sense are agent-relative in
Parfit's sense. By contrast, if a reason is agent-neutral in
Nagel's sense then it gives any agent who can promote the state
of affairs it favors a reason to promote that state of affairs. In
Nagel's colorful phrase, agent-neutral reasons in his sense
transfer "across the gap between persons" (Nagel 1970:
79). So reasons that are agent-neutral in Nagel's sense are
agent-neutral in Parfit's sense as well. Moreover, so long as we
assume that all reasons are teleological, any reason which is
agent-relative in Parfit's sense is agent-relative in
Nagel's sense and any reason that is agent-neutral in
Parfit's sense is agent-neutral in Nagel's sense. For
plausibly the only way a reason for one person to promote *X*
could fail to also provide someone else who could promote *X* a
reason to do so would be if the reason was indexed to me in the way
Nagel's agent-relative reasons are. So long as we hold onto the
assumption that all reasons for action are teleological,
Parfit's version of the distinction and Nagel's version of
the distinction are at least extensionally equivalent in all possible
worlds in spite of their rather different formulations of the
distinction.
In different ways, both Nagel and Parfit formulate the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction in terms of general
principles and the distinctions they draw do indeed seem useful and
important (more on why they are useful and important below). For a
more explicit defense of drawing the distinction in terms of general
principles (or 'rules' in their terminology), see also
McNaughton and Rawling
1991.[3]
However, one unfortunate consequence of these classical
principle-based ways of drawing the distinction is that they are
incompatible with radical forms of *particularism* of the sort
recently defended by Jonathan Dancy and others. There are actually
many forms of moral particularism (see Jonathan Dancy's entry on
particularism in this Encyclopedia; see also McKeever and Ridge 2005a,
2016), but particularists are united in their embrace of holism in the
theory of reasons. On a holistic conception of reasons, a
consideration which functions as a reason in one context need not
function as a reason at all in another context. For example, that my
calling my friend would give him pleasure may be a reason here, but
not a reason in another context (perhaps his pleasure would be purely
sadistic in the second case, taking pleasure in some misfortune of
mine). The atomist impulse is to build whatever is necessary for the
consideration's status as a reason into the reason itself, so
that whatever is a reason in one context is thereby guaranteed to be a
reason in any other context as well. So in the preceding example, the
atomist would insist that the second example just shows that we
mischaracterized the reason in the first case. The real reason to call
my friend in the first case is not merely that it will give him
pleasure but rather that it will give him innocent pleasure, and that
consideration is not present in the second case. Particularists argue
at some length that we should resist this atomistic impulse and stick
with the more natural characterization of the reason in the first case
and accept a holistic conception of reasons. Particularists then argue
that holism in the theory of reasons in turn supports the conclusion
that morality is not well understood in terms of principles (for
critical discussion of this move, see McKeever and Ridge 2005b).
Particularism is an interesting position and it would be a shame if
some plausible version of the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction
were not compatible with the leading ideas behind particularism.
However, it seems that both Nagel's and Parfit's versions
of the distinction do not sit well with particularism. This is most
clear in the case of Nagel. His doctrine of the universality of
reasons directly contradicts holism about reasons yet plays an
essential role in his account of what he calls the 'general
form' of a reason which in turn plays an essential role in his
version of the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction.
Parfit's distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral
theories of course presupposes that we should think about morality in
terms of normative theories, which also contradicts many forms of
particularism. Finally, Parfit's distinction between
agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons holds that a reason is
agent-neutral only if it is guaranteed to provide a reason for any
agent who can promote the end which figures in the reason (again, we
are assuming all reasons are teleological and hence always involve an
end). Particularists will reject the idea that just because something
is a reason for one agent it thereby must be a reason for any other
agent who can promote the end which figures in the reason. For on a
holistic conception of how reasons function, there may be some further
aspect of another agent's situation which cancels the force of
this consideration as a reason even though he could promote the
relevant end. If this is right then for this sort of particularism it
will follow trivially that all reasons are agent-relative and this
makes the distinction useless for their purposes. So perhaps
unsurprisingly, the principle-based version of the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction does not seem like a
promising one if we want to make sure that the distinction is useful
to particularists as well as their generalist opponents. We should
therefore consider whether either the reason-statement-based version
of the distinction or the perspective-based version of the distinction
are more likely to be available to particularists as well while still
doing roughly the same sort of important philosophical work that Nagel
and Parfit had in mind.
## 2. The Reason-Statement-Based Conception
The second version of the distinction foregoes Nagel's appeal to
the 'general form' of the reason, but instead is
formulated in terms of the reason itself. We call this the
'reason-statement-based version' of the distinction
because it holds that whether a reason is agent-relative depends on
whether a full statement of the reason itself (forget about its
"general form") involves pronominal back-reference to the
agent for whom it is a reason. Philip Pettit puts forward a
reason-statement-based version of the distinction:
>
> An agent-relative reason is one that cannot be fully specified without
> pronominal back-reference to the person for whom it is a reason. It is
> the sort of reason provided for an agent by the observation that
> *he* promised to perform the action in prospect, or that the
> action is in *his* interest, or that it is to the advantage of
> *his* children. In each case, the motivating consideration
> involves essential reference to him or his....An agent-neutral
> reason is one that can be fully specified without such an indexical
> device. (Pettit 1987: 75)
>
On Pettit's account, whether a reason is agent-relative depends
on whether it (the reason) can be fully stated without pronominal
back-reference to the agent for whom it is a reason. The use of
anaphoric pronouns in Pettit's version of the distinction does
not really mark much of a departure from Nagel's formulation.
For Nagel's 'free agent variables' are really
technical devices which function just like anaphoric pronouns by
referring back to the agent for whom the consideration is a reason.
The real difference between Nagel's formulation and
Pettit's is that Nagel's formulation is cast in terms of
the general form of a reason whereas Pettit's formulation is
cast in terms of a full statement of the reason itself, which need not
involve any mention of the general form of the reason. For Pettit, the
full statement of a reason need not involve a universal quantifier at
all. One of Pettit's illustrative examples of a full statement
of a reason is "that the action is in *his*
interest" and this statement involves no universal
quantification whatsoever. So Pettit's version of the
distinction, and more generally the reason-statement-based version of
the distinction, seems unlikely to offend against particularist
sensibilities.
Moreover, Pettit's distinction seems to do much the same
philosophical work as Nagel's version of the distinction. For in
both cases agent-relativity is characterized in terms of a certain
sort of back-reference to the person for whom the consideration is a
reason while agent-neutrality is in both cases characterized in terms
of the absence of such back-reference. The only difference is that for
Nagel the relevant back-reference is to be found in the general form
of the reason (which turns out to be a universally quantified
principle giving a sufficient condition for the application of the
reason predicate) whereas for Pettit the relevant back-reference is to
be found in a full statement of the reason itself. So far, it looks
like we have a kind of dominance argument for the
reason-statement-based version of the distinction. It seems likely to
do much the same work as Nagel's distinction and mirrors the
logical form of Nagel's distinction, but does so without making
the distinction unavailable to particularists.
However, the reason-statement-based version of the distinction has
problems of its own. Most significantly, this version of the
distinction seems to presuppose a particular ontology of reasons, in
which case we end up inviting particularists to the
agent-relative/agent-neutral party only by rescinding the invitations
of those who hold opposing ontological views about reasons. For
suppose I think that reasons just are facts and also hold that there
are no distinctively indexical facts. Rather, there are ordinary facts
which can be characterized in indexical terms or characterized in
non-indexical terms. So the fact that having a beer at 6:13 p.m. on
January 17, 2005 would make MR happy is identical to the fact that
having a beer now would make me happy. Here we have one fact which can
be expressed in two different ways. Given this package of ontological
views, the reason-statement-based version of the distinction looks
unhelpful. For let us suppose that the fact that having a beer now
would give me pleasure provides an agent-relative reason for me to
have the beer--a sort of egoistic reason. On the
reason-statement-based version of the distinction, the reason is
agent-relative only if a full statement of the reason *must*
involve pronominal reference to the agent for whom it is a reason.
However, if reasons just are facts (this is my ontology of reasons)
then it is simply not true that a full statement of this reason (read:
this fact) *must* involve pronominal back-reference to me. For
instead of saying that having a beer would make him happy, you could
say that my reason is that having a beer would make MR happy. On the
ontology under consideration, this seems like a full statement (what
is left out?) of the fact which is my reason to have the beer just as
much as the anaphoric pronominal statement of my reason. Indeed, given
these ontological views it is hard to see how any reason could be
agent-relative since any fact can be given a full statement without
the use of indexicals of any kind. Moreover, the problem here is not
limited to this particular ontology. Someone who holds that reasons
are true propositions or states of affairs and who also holds that
there are no irreducibly indexical propositions or states of affairs
(only indexical 'modes of presentation' of such
propositions or states of affairs) will have trouble making use of the
reason-statement version of the distinction for just this reason.
This is not to say that there are not ontologies which would provide a
framework in which the reason-statement version of the distinction
could be useful. Two ontologies spring to mind. First, those who hold
that a reason is not just a fact but a fact plus a particular mode of
presentation (a particular way of grasping the fact, as it were) might
well be able to make good use of the reason-statement-based version of
the distinction. Second, those who hold that reasons are just facts
but also hold that there really are irreducibly indexical facts can
also make sense of the reason-statement-based version of the
distinction. Still, it seems like a considerable cost that this
version of the distinction seems to exclude so many reasonable
ontological views. So whereas Nagel's principle-based version of
the distinction excludes particularists, Pettit's
reason-statement-based version of the distinction excludes those who
hold any of a wide range of ontological views about reasons. We should
see if we can do better.
## 3. The Perspective-Based Conception
The third way in which the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction
has historically been drawn is in terms of the perspectives from which
the reasons in question can be recognized as reasons. The basic idea
is to specify a suitably objective perspective and hold that
agent-neutral reasons can be appreciated as such from that perspective
while agent-relative reasons cannot. Jonathan Dancy seems to read
Nagel in this way:
>
> Nagel holds that there are three kinds of reason. The first are
> stubbornly subjective reasons, such as those which are in play when we
> are choosing from a menu in a restaurant...But there are two
> classes of objective reasons. The first are agent-relative
> reasons...the second are agent-neutral reasons. Both are
> recognizable at some distance from here, as we shave peculiarities
> from our perspective in the move towards objectivity. The
> agent-relative ones are less objective, of course, though they can be
> recognized, and in some sense endorsed, from more objective points of
> view. However, what is recognized and endorsed is not the importance
> which the agent finds in (e.g.) his own life-time projects; this
> itself cannot be recognized from much further out. As we move away
> from the agent's own perspective, all that can be recognized is
> that he finds importance in them, which is quite a different matter.
> (Dancy 1993: 146)
>
This reading of Nagel is to some extent invited by Nagel's use
of the metaphor of a 'view from nowhere'. Moreover, it is
true that in *The Possibility of Altruism* Nagel does argue
that agent-relative reasons (which he then called
'subjective') cannot be recognized from a certain sort of
impersonal perspective. However, this was precisely supposed to be the
conclusion of a substantive and highly controversial argument which
Nagel has since rejected (on the strength of an argument from Nicholas
Sturgeon; see Sturgeon 1974). If agent-relative reasons cannot be
appreciated from a suitably objective perspective then Nagel quite
clearly thinks that this will need to be established by argument. It
is *not* part of his definition of agent-relativity; otherwise
he could have skipped most of the argument of *The Possibility of
Altruism* as his main conclusion would have been established by
linguistic fiat. As we have seen, he instead defines agent-relativity
in terms of the general form of the reason.
Still, even if this is not what Nagel had in mind might this approach
not be philosophically useful and important? It would, after all, have
the virtue of being a distinction which is available to
particularists. For the idea of more and less objective perspectives
is not obviously incompatible with even very radical forms of
particularism. Nor does it seem to exclude a variety of ontological
views about reasons as the reason-statement-based version of the
distinction did.
On an interesting novel version of the perspective-based approach
defended by Loschke, it can enable us to understand
agent-relative reasons as valid even if all value is agent-neutral.
This is because the perspective of the agent on the relevant
agent-neutral value matters to their reasons in a way that makes the
reason count as indexed to that agent in an important sense
(Loschke 2020). The core idea is that the strength of a reason
can be relative to an agent in virtue of that agent's
perspective, even if its status as a reason (with whatever strength it
may have) is not. Loschke calls his approach the "normative
force interpretation," it is relatively clear that it is a
version of the perspective-based approach in my sense. Loschke
puts his view in terms of the agent's perspective here, for
example: "NFI is in line with the idea that agent-relative
reasons stem from the first-person perspective of agents and that
moral theory must make room for the importance of what an agent
considers to be important and valuable in life" (Loschke
2021: 369).
However useful the distinction is, though, it is not
one which is well-suited to doing the work traditionally associated
with the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction. For a start, a
plausible litmus test for any proposed version of the distinction is
that it uncontroversially classifies egoistic reasons as
agent-relative and utilitarian reasons (to maximize happiness,
simpliciter) as agent-neutral. These are perhaps the most commonly
cited paradigms of each sort of reason, after all. Also, the
distinction is often thought to capture in a more abstract sense what
Henry Sidgwick was discussing when he spoke of a 'dualism of
practical reason' between reasons of self-interest and reasons
of general benevolence (see Sidgwick 1907).
The crucial point is that it is far from obvious that the
perspective-based distinction satisfies this litmus test.
Nagel's attempt to prove that agent-relative reasons in his
sense (including egoistic reasons) cannot be appreciated from a
suitably objective perspective is widely regarded as a failure, as are
many other attempts to refute egoism (and agent-relativism more
generally) by showing it is incompatible with some suitable objective
perspective. So perhaps egoistic reasons can, after all, be
appreciated even from an ideally objective perspective on any of a
wide range of conceptions of objectivity. Perhaps not, though; perhaps
some clever argument will still show that agent-relativity is
incompatible with some important and independent notion of
objectivity. In any event, this remains at best a very controversial
hunch rather than something which has been uncontroversially
demonstrated. This alone should give us great pause about adopting the
perspective-based approach to the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction. Egoistic reasons are paradigmatic agent-relative reasons,
and it should be trivial that they come out as such rather than a
matter of great controversy. Moreover, the same point applies not only
to egoistic reasons but to all of the typically invoked paradigms of
agent-relativity. Reasons arising out of special relations to
one's nearest and dearest are also paradigmatically
agent-relative, but it is also far from clear that they will come out
as such on the perspective-based approach. So even if we keep a single
conception of objectivity as fixed there will be great controversy
over whether seemingly paradigmatic instances of agent-relativity
really are such. This is unfortunate. The agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction should be one which is useful for *framing* these
debates at the outset (for more on this, see Dreier 1993) and not one
which we can deploy with confidence only after the debates have been
settled. However, there will also be great controversy over just what
the right conception of objectivity is as well as controversy over the
implications of any given conception thereof. This threatens to mire
the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction in such controversy from
the outset as to make it virtually useless. Much better instead to
define agent-relativity and agent-neutrality in terms of the logical
form of the principle corresponding to the reason and then let it be a
matter of substantive debate whether agent-relative reasons so
understood can be appreciated from various objective perspectives.
## 4. The Principle-Based Conception Revisited
We seemed to have reached a dialectical cul de sac. The
principle-based approach draws the distinction nicely but is
inaccessible to particularists. The reason-statement-based approach to
the distinction is tenable on certain ontological views about reasons
but seems useless on a wide variety of other plausible ontological
views about reasons. Finally, the perspective-based approach threatens
to just change the subject or at least to mire the application of the
distinction down in so much controversy as to make it useless as a
tool for framing the debates which it seems so naturally suited to
frame.
Fortunately, though, the principle-based approach can actually be
understood in a way that is compatible with particularism after all,
and this is how we propose to understand the distinction (this goes
beyond the existing literature, but does so in the spirit of a
'friendly amendment' to Nagel's account). The key
move is to not build Nagel's conception of universality into the
articulation of the distinction. So one might allow that a given
consideration (or state of affairs, or feature of a situation; insert
your favored ontology of reasons here) is a reason in one case but
that very same consideration might be no reason at all (or even a
reason with the opposite valence) in another situation due to some
difference between the two situations. At least, drawing of the
distinction should not rule this out. In this way, the distinction is
compatible with the particularist's favored holistic conception
of reasons.
This very quickly leads to an awkward question, though. Nagel drew his
distinction in terms of principles which incorporated his conception
of universality. For Nagel's principles were universally
quantified generalizations which held that *whenever* an agent
can promote a certain sort of state of affairs there is reason to do
so. So a different way of understanding 'the general form of a
reason' or as one might prefer to put it, the principle
corresponding to the reason, is needed. Fortunately, there is an
alternative conception ready to hand. As Sean McKeever and Ridge argue
elsewhere (see McKeever and Ridge 2006) there is a species of hedged
moral principle which is compatible with the particularist's
holistic conception of reasons. McKeever and Ridge call these
'default principles', and they are well situated to make
Nagel's principle-based distinction available even to as hardy a
particularist as Jonathan Dancy. As background, recall that on the
holistic conception of how reasons work, what is a reason here may be
no reason at all or even a reason with the opposite valence elsewhere.
So for example, the fact that it would give a father pleasure is a
reason for his son to give him a kiss on the cheek but that very same
consideration (that it would give him pleasure) may be no reason at
all for him to watch a snuff film. Intuitively, the status of the fact
that it would give him pleasure as a reason is 'defeated'
in the latter case by the fact that the pleasure would be sadistic (or
an expression of depravity, or whatever). Holists therefore call such
facts 'defeaters'. This is also compatible with what
holists call 'enablers'--facts which are necessary
for some other fact to function as a reason. In fact, distinguishing
enablers from reasons also arguably helps block another challenge to
the distinction between agent-relative reasons and agent-neutral
reasons, namely that all reasons must make some reference to the agent
because there being a reason implies that the agent is able to perform
the action. This objection could be blocked by characterizing this
back-reference as trivial, but one might instead insist that the
agent's ability to perform the action is an enabling condition
rather than part of the reason itself; see Ronnow-Rasmussen 2009 for
an argument along these lines. In any event, with this machinery in
hand, default principles can help craft a version of the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction that everyone (or just about
everyone) can live with.
Given holism, a true and non-trivial principle about reasons must
accommodate the possibility of defeaters. This can be done in one of
two ways. First, one could try to list all of the different possible
defeaters in the antecedent and claim that none is present. However, a
hardy particularist may insist that this is a fool's game, on
the grounds that there is no saying in advance of considering all of
the indefinitely many possible contexts in which the putative reason
occurs whether we have a complete list of all possible defeaters.
After all, part of the particularist idea is that morality is far too
complex for any such principles ever to be within our ken.
Particularists allow that there may in principle be some infinitely
long generalization which lists all the defeaters, but deny that this
counts as a principle because it is not explanatory. However, there is
a second approach, and this is the approach which inspires the
proposed conception of default principles. Instead of trying to list
all of the possible defeaters and countervailing reasons one could
instead quantify over them. The proposal is most easily understood
through illustrative examples. Returning to our example of pleasure
and sadism, consider the following default principle:
(P)
For all possible agents (*p*), and all possible actions
(*x*) and all facts (*F*) If *F* is a fact to the
effect that *p*'s *x*-ing would promote pleasure
and no other feature of the situation explains why *F* is not a
reason to *x* then *F* is a reason for *p* to
*x*.
(P) is compatible with the particularist's holistic conception
of reasons. For in those cases in which the status of a fact about
pleasure as a reason is defeated by sadism (e.g.) the 'no other
feature of the situation explains why *F* is not a
reason...' clause is not satisfied. Moreover, it is hard to
see how particularists could really object to principles as modest as
(P). After all, (P) is compatible with the thesis that there are
indefinitely many possible types of reasons and indefinitely many
possible defeaters corresponding to each of those reasons. So the mere
availability of default principles does not entail that the normative
landscape could be finitely (much less manageably) codified in some
short set of axioms like Ross's list of *prima facie*
duties, for instance. Furthermore, the availability of such principles
in logical space does not in itself entail that they are presupposed
by the very possibility of moral thought and judgment. So the
availability of such principles is compatible with Dancy's
canonical formulation of particularism, according to which, "the
possibility of moral thought and judgement does not depend on the
provision of a suitable supply of moral principles" (Dancy 2004:
7).
What is the payoff of such principles in terms of the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction? Default principles allow one
to draw the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction in much the same
way that Nagel drew it but *without* thereby excluding
particularists. An initial gloss of the distinction might go as
follows. A given default principle will either include a free-agent
variable in the statement of the consideration which is the reason or
not. If it does then the reason is agent-relative; if not then the
reason is agent-neutral. However, this is not quite right. For every
statement of a reason will be a statement about an action which is a
possible action for the agent for whom it is a reason. I cannot have
reason to perform an action that only someone else could perform,
after all. Since this sort of back-reference to the agent is entirely
trivial, we must explicitly add to our definition that it is not
sufficient to make a reason agent-relative. Otherwise, all reasons
will implausibly come out as agent-relative for this trivial reason.
Indeed, Derek Parfit already noticed this in his discussion,
explaining that,
>
> Even if you and I are trying to achieve some common aim, we may be in
> different causal situations. I may have reason to act in a way that
> promotes our common aim, but you may have no such reason since you may
> be unable to act in this way. Since even agent-neutral reasons are, in
> this sense, agent-relative, this sense is irrelevant to our
> discussion. (Parfit 1984: 143)
>
This suggests that the statement of the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction should be slightly revised. The default principle
corresponding to a given reason will either include a
*non-trivial* free-agent-variable in the statement of the
reason or not. If it does then the reason is agent-relative; otherwise
it is agent-neutral. The idea is that the use of a free-agent variable
to indicate that the action is one available to the agent for whom the
fact is a reason is trivial in the sense that it must be included in
the statement of any reason whatsoever. So the reasons associated with
the default principle (P) [see above] are agent-neutral, as the only
use of the free-agent variable 'p' is the trivial one that
indicates that *x* is a possible action of *p*'s.
By contrast, the reasons associated with the following principle would
be agent-relative:
(P\*)
For all possible agents (*p*), and all possible actions
(*x*) and all facts (*F*) If *F* is a fact to the
effect that *p*'s *x*-ing would promote
*p*'s pleasure and no other feature of the situation
explains why *F* is not a reason to *x* then *F*
is a reason for p to *x*.
Unlike (P), the statement of the reason given in (P\*) includes a
non-trivial use of a free-agent variable in its insistence that the
pleasure promoted must be *p*'s. So the reasons
associated with (P\*) come out as agent-relative. It is not hard to see
that the proposed reading of the distinction should easily pass the
litmus test given above, classifying objective utilitarian reasons as
agent-neutral (as with (P)) and egoistic reasons as agent-relative.
Moreover, it is easy to see that the proposed reading of the
distinction would sort other paradigmatic instances of
agent-relativity and agent-neutrality in an intuitively satisfying
way. Abandoning Nagel's assumption of universality in favor of
our more modest default principles seems to allow us to make good
sense of his distinction without excluding even fairly radical forms
of particularism.
However, before we rest too easily with this conclusion, we must first
address an important objection to default
principles.[4]
The challenge insists that they are all vacuously true simply in
virtue of their logical form. Since default principles are universally
quantified conditionals, they can be false only if they have an
instantiation in which the antecedent is true and the consequent is
false. The worry behind the vacuity objection is that the logical form
of a default principle in conjunction with some very plausible
assumptions about moral explanation entails that whenever the
consequent of a default principle is false, its antecedent will be
false as well, in which case the principle itself is vacuously true.
Consider the following inane default principle:
LY:
For all actions, (*x*) (If (a) *x* would be done in
a leap year and (b) no other feature of the situation explains why the
fact that *x* would be done in a leap year is not a moral
reason not to *x* and (c) the reasons in favor of *x* do
not explain why *x* is not wrong in virtue of the fact that
*x* would be done in a leap year then *x* is wrong in
virtue of the fact that *x* would be done in a leap year).
LY is clearly absurd. For an action is wrong in virtue of a given fact
or set of facts in the intended sense of 'in virtue of'
only if the fact(s) in question is (or are) moral reason(s) not to
perform the action which carry the day. Plausibly, that the fact that
an action would be done in a leap year could never itself be a moral
reason to perform the
action.[5]
So LY had better come out as false. The vacuity objection, however,
insists that LY turns out to be trivially true. Moreover, the
objection continues, the reason LY is true carries over to any default
principle.
LY is a universally quantified conditional ranging over possible
actions and hence is false only if it has a possible instantiation in
which its antecedent is true and its consequent is false. Presumably
its consequent is necessarily always false--no action could be
made wrong in the relevant sense by being done in a leap
year--the fact that an action is done in a leap year could never
in itself be a moral reason not to perform an action. So the crucial
issue is whether any of its instantiations also has a true antecedent.
The antecedent is itself a conjunction and hence will be true only if
both conjuncts are true. However, the objection runs, the second of
the three conjuncts [(b) above] is necessarily false or is false for
all possible actions. I am taking it as given that the leap year fact
is not a moral reason, but the objection insists on general grounds
that it is implausible to suppose that there is no explanation of its
failure to be a moral reason. Moral facts are not arbitrary, at least
in the extremely minimal sense that whenever something is or is not a
moral reason there will be *some* explanation of why this is
so. Even someone who thought that morality was a direct function of
the arbitrary will of God should admit this much, since we will on
such an account always be able to explain moral differences in terms
of differences in God's will even if we cannot go on to explain
why God willed one way rather than another. So moral differences can
always be explained. Hence clause (b) in any default principle will
always be false, which is enough to make the antecedent false and so
enough to make the conditional trivially true.
An adequate understanding of why the vacuity objection is unsound
requires careful attention to a further detail. The vacuity objection
goes from the premise that every time a fact is not a moral reason
there is some explanation for its failure to be a moral reason to the
conclusion that the 'no further feature of the situation
explains...' clause of the corresponding default principle
will always be false whenever the fact in question is not a reason.
However, this inference is valid only if it is valid to go from
'there is some explanation of *p*' to 'some
feature of the situation explains *p*' and this inference
is invalid. The inference would be valid only if we were to interpret
'feature of the situation' so broadly that any possible
explanatory fact can count as a feature of the situation. This is not
at all an intuitive reading of 'feature of the situation',
nor is it the intended reading. Hence the vacuity objection is
unsound.
For present purposes, the main point is just that a feature of a
situation must be a contingent fact. Necessary facts apply equally to
all possible situations and hence are never features of any particular
situation in our sense. This is already enough to accommodate the
plausible idea that every moral fact has an explanation of some kind
while blocking the vacuity objection. For quite plausibly, the moral
facts in question will be explained by some necessary fact. For
example, the explanation of why the fact that a given action would be
done in a leap year is not a moral reason not to perform that action
might simply be that the fact that an action would be done in a leap
year could never be any kind of reason for action. That explanation is
perhaps not the most illuminating one, but it is a kind of explanation
and it is an explanation given in terms of a necessary fact. An
alternative (and more controversial) explanation might appeal to the
putative fact that a given fact is a moral reason only if it is a fact
about how the action bears in some way on welfare or treating people
with respect. This is a very controversial explanation, but the point
is simply that if the main premise of this explanation (a kind of
pluralism involving utilitarian reasons and deontological reasons) is
true then it very plausibly is a necessary truth. Once again, the fact
in question does indeed have an explanation but it is not explained by
a feature of the situation. So there is no need to reject the
plausible suggestion that every moral fact has some explanation to
refute the vacuity objection.
More importantly, no contingent feature of the situation could
plausibly figure in an explanation of why the leap year fact is not a
moral reason in a given case. Indeed, because the leap year fact could
*never* be a reason its failure to be a reason here will in no
way depend on any of the contingent features of this case. So none of
those contingent features of the case at hand will figure in an
explanation of why that fact is not a moral reason here. If the leap
year fact were sometimes a reason then things would be very different.
For in that case the contingent features that distinguish the
situation in which it is a reason from those in which it is not a
moral reason could intelligibly figure in an explanation of why the
fact is not a moral reason here. Moreover, if asked to cite some
particular contingent feature of the situation that explains why that
fact is not a moral reason here any sane moral agent would simply be
perplexed. Hence for any default principle citing a patently absurd
candidate reason (and whose consequent is not necessarily true) there
will be possible instantiations of that principle in which the
antecedent is true and the consequent is false. This line of argument
is perfectly general, so any principle citing a putative reason in its
antecedent which could never actually be a moral reason (and whose
consequent can be false; principles with tautologous consequents will
of course be trivially true on anybody's account) will turn out
to be false. The only reason to doubt that the antecedent would
sometimes be true was the thought that the 'no feature of the
situation explains...' clause is always trivially false.
Since this rests on a failure to distinguish explanations in general
from explanations cast in terms of contingent features, it is
reasonable to conclude that default principles are not all vacuously
true simply in virtue of their logical form. So default principles can
safely be invoked to articulate the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction and thereby capture Nagel's basic idea without
making the distinction useless to radical moral particularists like
Dancy.
## 5. Related Distinctions
As will be explained in section 6, the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction is a very useful and philosophically important one.
However, as with all distinctions, its usefulness evaporates when it
is confused with other related but different distinctions. This sort
of confusion is depressingly commonplace, perhaps in virtue of an
unfortunate tendency for philosophers to use terms like
'neutral', 'objective', and
'relative' without always being completely explicit about
what those terms are supposed to mean. To guard against such
conflations, this section canvasses a number of distinctions with
which one might easily confuse the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction and explains how each differs from it. These distinctions
are divided into six groups, where the distinctions are put into the
same group insofar as they all have the same feature(s) in common with
the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction.
The first of these families of distinctions consists of those that are
like the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction in that they are
drawn in terms of a relativization of the reason to the agent who has
the reason, but in a different way from the way in which the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction is. Only one widely employed
distinction clearly falls into this family: Bernard Williams'
distinction between internal and external reasons. On Williams'
account, a reason for acting is internal just in case it counts as a
reason in virtue of its connection to the agent's
"motivational set" (desires, intentions, pro-attitudes,
etc.); otherwise it is external (see Williams 1981b). It is not hard
to see how this distinction might easily be confused with the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction, for one might easily suppose
that internal reasons just are agent-relative ones, while external
reasons just are agent-neutral ones. However, the distinctions are not
the same, for a reason may be external and still be agent-relative.
Suppose, for example, that we accept a default principle according to
which the fact that an agent's culture demands something is
sometimes a reason to do it. Such a reason will be agent-relative in
virtue of the use of a free-agent variable to indicate that it is the
agent's own culture which determines what reasons she has. Or
consider a default principle according to which the fact that an
action would satisfy the agent's biological needs is sometimes a
reason. Again, the relativization to the agent (here to the
agent's needs) entails that such a reason is agent-relative.
Each of the reasons grounded by either of these latter two principles
will be both agent-relative *and* external, for an agent simply
may not care about her culture's standards or her biological
needs. Hence, reasons for acting also can be both external and
agent-relative.
In a second family of distinctions, we find distinctions that are like
the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction in that they are also
drawn in terms of the principles underwriting an agent's reasons
for acting, but are unlike it in that they are not drawn in terms of
their relativity to the agent who has the reasons. Two main
distinctions fall into this family: universality/non-universality and
generality/non-generality. Agent-neutrality is often confused with
universality. A reason is universal insofar as any person, *A*,
who judges that one agent, *B*, has a reason is thereby
committed to making the same judgment of anyone else, *C*, whom
they take to be in relevantly similar circumstances. So long as we
assume reasons are associated with principles, this will mean that the
principle associated with the reason will be universal in scope; that
is to say, it will be of the form, "For all *x*, if
*x* is an agent, then..." Note that this is much
weaker than Nagel's conception of universality; even default
principles employ universal quantifiers and are universal in this
sense. Universality in this thin sense is rightly taken to be a highly
uncontroversial, perhaps even trivial, feature of reasons. However, it
would of course be a mistake to infer from this that agent-neutrality
should be uncontroversial, for the concepts are quite different.
Agent-relative reasons, as well as agent-neutral reasons, can satisfy
universality in this sense. An egoist principle, for example, would
typically be understood as a universally quantified thesis according
to which for all agents *A*, if a given action maximizes
*A*'s welfare then *A* ought to perform that action.
Nor, of course, is agent-neutrality the same as universality in
Nagel's somewhat stronger sense according to which whatever is a
reason in one case must be a reason anywhere. This is obvious once it
is made explicit, but historical attempts to derive agent-neutrality
from such forms of universality encourage the conflation (see, e.g.,
Hare 1963: 112-136).
Agent-neutrality is also easily confused with generality, where a
reason is general just in case the principle that underwrites it
contains no proper nouns or "rigidly designating"
descriptions (see Kripke 1972). Like universality, generality is a
function of the principles underwriting the agent's reasons.
Upon reflection, though, it should be clear that the
general/non-general distinction simply cuts across the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction; agent-relative reasons could
be either general or non-general, as could agent-neutral ones. For
example, "The fact that God commands *X*-ing is a reason
to *X* unless some other feature of the situation explains why
it is not," would be non-general (assuming that
'God' is a rigid designator) yet agent-neutral, whereas,
"The fact that God commands each person to do as her conscience
dictates is a reason for each person to do as her conscience dictates
unless some other feature of the situation explains why it is not a
reason" would be both non-general and agent-relative.
A third family of distinctions is like the
agent-relative/agent-neutral one in that it is drawn in terms of a
relativization to the agent for whom the consideration is a reason,
but is *not* drawn in terms of the principle underwriting the
reason. Here there are two very similar distinctions that merit
discussion. In fact these two distinctions are so similar that they
might easily be confused with one another as well as with the
agent-relative/agent-neutral one. The first of these two distinctions
is the distinction between "deliberator relative" (DR)
principles and "deliberator neutral" (DN) principles (see
Postema 1998). Unlike the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction,
the DR/DN distinction is not one that is drawn in terms of the form of
those principles themselves. Unlike agent-relativity or
agent-neutrality, deliberator relativity and deliberator neutrality
cannot simply be "read off" from an accurate statement of
the principles themselves. For the DR/DN distinction concerns not the
question of the form of the principles, but the question of the source
of their authority, or if one prefers, their "force." A
principle's having force for a given agent is then glossed as
being such that the agent must recognize the principle's
validity *to avoid counting as irrational*. With this
conception of force in play, the distinction is usefully characterized
in the following way:
>
> A principle is DN iff it has force for every possible agent, which is
> to say all rational agents must recognize the principle's
> validity to avoid counting as irrational.
>
>
> A principle is DR iff (a) its force varies from one possible agent to
> the next, which is to say at least some possible rational agents might
> reject the principle's validity without thereby being
> irrational, or (b) it has force for no possible agents. This is just
> the denial of DN.
>
>
>
Once the DR/DN distinction is explicitly articulated and compared with
the AR/AN distinction, it is clear that they are different
distinctions, doing different theoretical work. The distinctions
simply cut across one another. A principle might have an
agent-relative logical form, and so be agent-relative, yet have be
deliberator neutral given the source of its authority. Egoism, for
example, is an agent-relative principle, but a defender of egoism
might argue that a failure to recognize egoism's validity is
sufficient for someone to count as irrational, in which case egoism is
also deliberator neutral.
The other distinction falling into this third family is very similar
to the DR/DN distinction. It also concerns the force, rather than the
form, of a practical principle. The DR/DN distinction is in terms of
which principles an agent must recognize as binding on her *to
avoid counting as irrational*. A slightly different distinction is
the between principles that really are binding on everyone
(BN-"binding neutral"), *even if one might not
accept their authority without thereby counting as irrational*,
and those that are not (BR-"binding relative").
Drawing the distinction may commit us to the thesis that there is a
fairly fundamental appearance/reality distinction to be drawn even
with respect to principles of practical reason, so that even an
ideally rational agent could, in principle, be mistaken at a given
point in time about which principle(s) bind her *without thereby
counting as irrational*. At any rate, it should be clear that this
distinction, like the closely aligned DR/DN distinction is quite
different from the AR/AN distinction.
A fourth family of distinctions with which the AR/AN distinction might
easily be confused is of those distinctions that are like the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction in that it is drawn in terms
of relativization, but unlike it in that it is *not* in terms
of a relativization to the agent who has the reason. There is perhaps
only one important distinction that clearly falls into this category:
what Nicholas Sturgeon has helpfully referred to as
"appraiser-relativism" (Sturgeon 1994). Though this may
not be essential to appraiser-relativism, it is worth noting that,
unlike agent-relativism, appraiser-relativism is typically presented
as a semantic thesis about terms of ordinary language (as opposed to
technical terms like 'agent-neutral'), to the effect that
the truth value of one and the same ethical or practical judgment can
vary from one appraiser to the next. On such views, my judgment that
what Hitler did was wrong could in principle be true while another
person making the very same judgment in a rather different context
(but one in which Hitler's actions, their context and
consequences are kept constant) could be false. By contrast, the
judgment that there was agent-relative reason for Hitler to perform a
given action will have a truth-value that is invariant across
different appraisers. Agent-relativism is a substantive view about
what kinds of reasons people have, and is distinct from the semantic
thesis of appraiser-relativism. Appraiser-relativism involves a
relativization to the person appraising an action, rather than a
relativization to the agent who might perform the action.
A fifth family is of distinctions that in some sense divide reasons
into categories that might usefully be thought of as the
"private" and the "non-private." In this
respect, they are intuitively similar to the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction, in that there is a
recognizable sense in which agent-relative reasons are
private--their status as reasons for an agent is irreducibly a
function of the features of *that* agent as such.
Correspondingly, agent-neutral reasons are public in the sense that
this is, by definition, not true of them. At least two other
distinctions are usefully thought of as dividing reasons into the
categories of private and non-private. However, each of these two
distinctions mark the private/non-private division in an importantly
different sense from the one in which the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction does.
The first of these two distinctions is one between reasons that are
"essentially shared," in a somewhat technical sense, and
those that are not. This distinction is perhaps the one that is most
frequently confused with the agent-relative/agent-neutral one, and the
philosophical consequences are significant. As the distinction is
typically drawn, a reason is supposed to be "essentially
shared" just in case whenever the reason is a reason for one
agent to perform an action it is equally a reason for *anyone*
to promote his performance of that action; otherwise it is not. So,
for example, if my reason to take a walk is essentially shared, it
follows that it is equally a reason for anyone to promote my taking a
walk. Put more quaintly, the question of whether reasons for acting
are essentially shared is the question of whether a reason for me must
provide everyone else with a corresponding reason to help me do as
that reason recommends, insofar as they can. It is not hard to see how
there is a sense in which this distinction divides reasons into the
public and the non-public, as essentially shared reasons, unlike those
that are not essentially shared, provide reasons for everyone who can
promote the state of affairs in which people act in accordance with
those reasons. That being "shared" has become a rather
technical notion should be apparent, since in more ordinary terms you
and I may both share a reason, that doing *X* would be pleasant
say, where each of our reasons provides no corresponding reasons for
the other.
It is also quite easy to see how this distinction might be confused
with the agent-relative/agent-neutral one. Suppose one embraces the
tempting view that all reasons for acting must be
*teleological* in form, which is to say that any principle
underwriting a reason for acting must individuate actions in terms of
the states of affairs that they promote. However, the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction itself should not be
understood as incorporating such a highly controversial assumption,
and the version of the distinction proposed in section IV as an
improvement on Nagel and Parfit therefore does not incorporate it.
Given the assumption of teleology, though, and given the rejection of
holism in the theory of reasons (which Nagel's universality
implicitly does reject) it would indeed follow that agent-neutrality
and being essentially shared are necessarily co-extensive, since any
universal (in Nagel's sense) agent-neutral principle will then
have the following form:
(A)
The fact that *p*'s *X*ing would promote
*N* [where *N* is some state of affairs which is
specified with no non-trivial use of '*p*'] is a
reason for *p* to *X*.
It follows trivially from the supposition that all practical
principles have this form that whenever one agent has reason to
promote a state of affairs that *any* agent who can promote
*N* will have reason to do so.
However, the view that all reasons for acting are teleological, while
tempting, is a substantive doctrine that one might reasonably reject.
Teleology is certainly not a trivial feature of our understanding of
practical reasons. To take just one example, T.M. Scanlon has recently
argued at some length that not all reasons are teleological and that
the assumption that they are badly distorts our conception of
practical reason (Scanlon 1998: 79-107). So it would be a
mistake to allow one's attraction to that substantive view to
lead one to conflate the distinction between the
agent-neutral/agent-relative distinction and the essentially
shared/not essentially shared distinction. For insofar as one rejects
that assumption, one can very well allow that there are reasons which
are both agent-neutral and *not* essentially shared. Consider,
for example, the following principle:
(4)
The fact that an action would be an instance of violently
assaulting someone is a reason not to perform it unless some other
feature of the situation explains why it is not.
The reasons generated by this principle are clearly agent-neutral, but
they are *not* essentially shared, for it simply does not
follow from this principle that I have any reason to perform actions
that would reduce the total number of violent incidents (either by
others or myself in the future). I may very well have such further
reasons, but they would be associated with a different principle, and
therefore might not be *as weighty* as the reasons associated
with the above agent-neutral principle.
On a historical note, it is perhaps no surprise that these two
distinctions are so often conflated. For we have seen that Nagel, the
original and most influential proponent of the
agent-neutral/agent-relative distinction, explicitly commits himself
to the view that all reasons are teleological in form, and is driven
by this view to conflate the two distinctions. Recall that Nagel
embraces the following teleological conception of practical
principles:
>
> [E]very reason is a predicate *R* such that for all persons and
> events *A*, if *R* is true of *A*, then
> *p* has *prima facie* reason to promote *A*.
> (Nagel 1970: 47)
>
Nagel thinks this position is just an unproblematic simplification on
the grounds that he treats the performance "of act *B* as
a degenerate case of promoting the occurrence of act *B*"
(Nagel 1970: 47). The reason it is *not* merely an
unproblematic simplification is that putting all practical principles
into this form robs us of the ability to say that there is
agent-neutral reason for an agent to but no reason for her to promote
*B*ing, except in the admittedly degenerate sense in which
*B*ing is a way of promoting *B*ing.
Of Nagel's critics, Christine Korsgaard has been most sensitive
to the way in which he builds teleology into his view without argument
from the very beginning. She notes, for example, that, "Nagel
treats all reasons as reasons to *promote*
something...Nagel is in danger of ending up with consequentialism
because that is where he started" (Korsgaard 1996a: 300). In
spite of this perceptive diagnosis of Nagel's error on this
front, though, Korsgaard occasionally blurs the two distinctions,
claiming that the criterion that the reason predicate not contain a
"free agent variable" is simply a more formal way of
saying that these reasons are "common property" and not
"personal property," which on her view amounts to the
thesis that they are essentially shared, as we have explicated that
thesis (see Korsgaard 1996b: 276). That a philosopher perceptive
enough to note and so accurately diagnose Nagel's mistake could
still blur the two distinctions is a testament to the depth of the
confusion about these distinctions embedded throughout the current
philosophical literature. For another instance of this mistake, see
McNaughton and Rawling 1995a as well as Dreier 1993.
A second distinction falling into this larger family of distinctions
is the distinction between reasons that are intersubjective, and those
that are not, where intersubjectivity is cashed out in terms of the
possibility of an agent's successfully communicating the force
of the reason to other agents. Korsgaard has emphasized this
distinction in a number of places and argued that all reasons for
acting must be intersubjective (e.g., Korsgaard 1996b: 131-166).
It is not hard to see how non-intersubjective reasons might plausibly
be thought of as private and intersubjective reasons might be thought
of as public; hence it is not too hard to see how that distinction
might be confused with the agent-relative/agent-neutral one given the
tendency to confuse that distinction with the private/public
distinction. Still, once intersubjectivity/non-intersubjectivity is
explicitly defined, it is relatively clear that it is different from
the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction. For the former
distinction is drawn in terms of communicability and the latter
distinction makes no reference whatsoever to communicability. Indeed,
for all that has been said so far, a reason might be intersubjective
and be either agent-relative or agent-neutral. Still, it is
surprisingly easy to run together these two distinctions. One way this
confusion might arise would happen in two stages. First, one might
confuse the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction with the
distinction between reasons that are essentially *shared* and
those that are not. Since intersubjective reasons are often
characterized as reasons "we can *share*," the
stage is set for confusing both of those two distinctions with the
further distinction between intersubjective and non-intersubjective
reasons. For it would not be that difficult to confuse shareability
with being essentially shared.
Finally, in the sixth family of distinctions, we find a distinction
that might easily be confused with the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction as a kind of historical artifact. Here we have in mind the
distinction between "reasons for an agent to do something"
and "reasons for something to happen." Without actually
confusing them himself, Nagel may have unintentionally encouraged this
conflation in remarking, for example, that, "Ethics is concerned
not only with what should happen, but also independently with what
people should or may *do*. Neutral reasons underlie the former;
but relative reasons can affect the latter" (Nagel 1986: 165).
In fact, however, it should be clear that these two distinctions are
different. The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction concerns the
form of a practical principle, whereas the other distinction concerns
whether a reason is a reason for an agent to do something or a reason
for something to happen. One way of making the separateness of these
two distinctions especially vivid is to note that someone might
embrace the former distinction and admit that there are both kinds of
reasons, but reject the very notion of a "reason for something
to happen" as resting on an obscure, confused notion of a reason
that can float free of all possible agents. This is not to say that we
should in fact reject that notion; Wilfrid Sellars argues that a
distinction of this sort is an important one (see Sellars 1968:
175-229. See also Castaneda 1975, with a discussion of
Sellars's distinction). Rather, it is simply to note that it is
not obviously misguided to reject the very concept of a reason for
something to happen, and we should leave room for someone to do this
without supposing all reasons for acting are agent-relative, for that
is simply another question. Even if I grant that all reasons must be
reasons for someone, in that a reason presupposes a possible agent, I
can still hold that the principle underlying those reasons need not
make any non-trivial, ineliminable pronominal back-reference to that
agent. Hence the two distinctions are different.
In sum, then, the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction shares a
number of features with several other distinctions, and therefore is
easily confused with those other distinctions. These other
distinctions have been broken down into six families, where those
families are divided in terms of what the distinctions in question
have in common with the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction.
Having discussed all six of these families at some length, it may be
useful to provide a concise review of the defining features of each
family:
1. Distinctions that are like the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction in that they are drawn in terms of a relativization to the
agent who has the reason, but in a different way:
*internal/external*.
2. Distinctions that are like the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction in that they are drawn in terms of the form of principles
underwriting reasons, but unlike the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction are not drawn in terms of relativization at all:
*universal/non-universal* and
*general/non-general*.
3. Distinctions that, like the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction involve relativization to the agent who has the reason,
but unlike the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction, are not drawn
in terms of the form of the principles underwriting practical reasons
but instead are drawn in terms of the source of the authority of those
principles: *deliberator-relative/deliberator-neutral* and
*bindingness-relative/
bindingness-neutral*.
4. Distinctions that are like the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction in that they involve relativization, but that are unlike
it in that the relativization is to the appraiser of the reason,
rather than to the agent who has the reason:
*appraiser-relative/appraiser-neutral*.
5. Distinctions that are like the agent-relative/agent-neutral one in
that there is a sense in which they divide reasons into private and
non-private categories, but that do so in a different sense from the
one in which the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction does so:
*intersubjective/non-intersubjective* and
*essentially-shared/not-essentially-shared*.
6. Distinctions with which the agent-relative agent-neutral
distinction might be confused primarily as a kind of historical
artifact: *reasons-for-something-to-happen/reasons-to-do*.
## 6. Why the Distinction Matters
Having formulated the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction and
seen how it differs from other important distinctions, we are now in a
position to consider why the distinction is an important one. The
distinction has played a very useful role in framing certain
interesting and important debates in normative philosophy.
For a start, the distinction helps frame a challenge to the
traditional assumption that what separates so-called consequentialists
and deontologists is that the former but not the latter are committed
to the idea that all reasons for action are teleological. A
deontological restriction forbids a certain sort of action (e.g.,
stealing) even when stealing here is the only way to prevent even more
stealing in the long run. Consequentialists charge that such a
restriction must be irrational, on the grounds that if stealing is
forbidden then it must be bad but if it is bad then surely less
stealing is better than more. The deontologist can respond in one of
two ways. First, they could hold that deontological restrictions
correspond to non-teleological reasons. The reason not to steal, on
this account, is not that stealing is bad in the sense that it should
be minimized but rather simply that stealing is forbidden no matter
what the consequences (this is admittedly a stark form of deontology,
but there are less stern versions as well). This is indeed one way of
understanding the divide between consequentialists and deontologists,
but the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction, and in particular
the idea of agent-relative reasons, brings to the fore an alternative
conception. For arguably, we could instead understand deontological
restrictions as corresponding to a species of reasons which are
teleological after all so long as those reasons are agent-relative. If
my reason not to steal is that I should minimize my stealing then the
fact that my stealing here would prevent five other people from
committing similar acts of theft does nothing to suggest that I ought
to steal. To really have any chance of working, the reasons will
probably need to be temporally relative as well as agent-relative. For
otherwise the reason corresponding to a deontological restriction will
give me reason to steal now if this is the only way to prevent me from
stealing even more
later.[6]
If the reasons in play are agent-relative then perhaps the
deontologist can do more to defuse the consequentialist's charge
of paradox, though other problems now arise. The deontologist now can
look overly self-indulgent, so obsessed with the purity of her own
soul that she will not sacrifice her integrity for the greater good
(see Ridge 2001a). Another worry is that reasons which are both
agent-relative and temporally relative are not really teleological
after all in any interesting sense. For the only way to promote an
action *right now* is simply by performing it. The broader and
more standard conception of promoting an action by causing it simply
has no foothold here, and if it did then the proposal would not
correspond exactly with deontological intuitions. In spite of these
worries, many philosophers have characterized the reasons
corresponding to deontological restrictions as agent-relative. Indeed,
the characterization of deontological restrictions as agent-relative
(or agent-centered) is close to being an
orthodoxy.[7]
If we can properly understand the reasons corresponding to
deontological restrictions as agent-relative (and temporally relative)
teleological reasons but teleological reasons all the same then in
effect we can, as James Dreier puts it, 'consequentialize'
deontology, surprisingly enough. The apparent success of deploying
agent-relativity to 'consequentialize' deontology leads
Dreier to defend the more bold hypothesis that *any* moral
theory can be represented as a form of consequentialism so long as we
are willing to allow that consequentialism comes in agent-relative as
well as agent-neutral versions. The central idea behind
consequentialism, on this way of thinking, is its teleology and
commitment to maximizing, both of which seem compatible with
agent-relativity about that which is
maximized.[8]
If Dreier is right about this then the agent-relative/agent-neutral
distinction may be more important than the distinction between
consequentialist theories and non-consequentialist theories.
Another advantage of the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction is
that it can bring to our attention important structural differences
between what might otherwise seem like very similar normative
theories. For example, a theory which holds that our overriding reason
is always to maximize actual utility seems very similar in spirit to a
theory which instead holds that our overriding reason is always to
maximize *expected* utility. One would naturally have thought
that both of these theories are agent-neutral so long as we assume
that utility is understood in agent-neutrally (in terms of general
happiness, e.g.). However, the reference to 'expected'
utility in the second theory actually seems to entail that the reasons
corresponding to that theory are agent-relative. For presumably the
relevant expectations are the agent's, in which case we will
need to mark this with a free agent variable and that free agent
variable hardly seems
trivial.[9]
This is a surprising result, but there is no obvious way to block it
on the conception of agent-relativity proposed here (or on the
classical principle-based conceptions defended by Nagel, Parfit or
even on the reason-statement-based version of the distinction defended
by Pettit). This could itself be illuminating. Perhaps it suggests
that we need to draw a fundamental distinction between value and
reasons, contra T.M. Scanlon and others who see value claims as really
just indicating the presence of reasons; see Scanlon's
discussion of the 'buck-passing account in Scanlon (1998). For
such a distinction would allow us to say that while happiness is an
agent-neutral good (thereby accommodating the intuition that there is
something agent-neutral about the second theory) our reasons to
promote that good are best understood in terms of the agent's
expectations and hence agent-relative.
Nor should we forget that the first real use of the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction was Nagel's in *The
Possibility of Altruism*. There Nagel tried to prove that all
reasons must be agent-neutral on pain of a kind of practical
solipsism. Nagel eventually abandoned this argument in light of
objections from Nicholas Sturgeon (see Sturgeon 1974), but the
argument is ingenious and Nagel may have abandoned it prematurely. If
any such argument could ever be made to work then we might be able to
settle a wide range of difficult issues in normative philosophy
without simply appealing to first-order intuitions about cases which
so often seems to lead to philosophical stalemate. Moreover, if an
argument like Nagel's could be made to work then its
implications would be dramatic. Not only egoistic reasons but arguably
deontological reasons and reasons arising out of special relations to
one's nearest and dearest would stand refuted, as would what
Nagel later referred to as 'reasons of autonomy' (see
Nagel 1986: 165). Furthermore, Nagel is not the only one to have
offered abstract considerations in favor of the thesis that all
reasons are agent-neutral. For example, some of Derek Parfit's
work on personal identity is supposed to undermine the importance of
personal identity as such, and that in turn might undermine the
tenability of agent-relativity (see Parfit 1984).
The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction was also invaluable in
James Dreier's exploration of the often neglected issue of how
an expressivist might make sense of agent-relative norms (see Dreier
1996). Dreier's argument is subtle and complex, and we shall not
try to reproduce it here. The point for present purposes is that his
discussion highlights an important challenge for expressivists.
Admittedly, a more narrow version of this challenge was previously
seen by Brian Medlin (see Medlin 1957), whose work heavily influenced
Dreier. However, Medlin cast the challenge specifically in terms of
egoistic reasons and that has important dialectical implications. As
Dreier points out, Medlin's challenge applies to agent-centered
norms more generally and this wider scope matters. For we might well
be willing to abandon egoistic reasons, but if we also had to give up
on the intelligibility of deontology then the costs of expressivism
might well begin to seem too steep. Until Nagel and others drew the
agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction, it was easy enough for
philosophers like Medlin to not fully appreciate the scope and power
of their own arguments.
Finally, the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction can also provide
a useful lens through which to examine some of the arguments of
historical figures. Sidgwick's famous discussion of the
'dualism of practical reason' can now be seen as an
instance of the more general tension between agent-relative and
agent-neutral reasons. G.E. Moore's argument against ethical
egoism would, if sound, refute agent-relative conceptions more
generally (see Moore 1903: 96-105), since Moore's main
objection is not to egoism in particular but (in effect) to
agent-relative conceptions of the good more generally.
Also, there is an interesting debate about whether Kantian moral
prohibitions must be understood as agent-relative even if we allow
that all reasons are teleological (see Ridge 2009; compare Huckfeldt
2007 and Dougherty 2013). The strategy is to understand the end to be
promoted in agent-neutral terms, but also in such a way that the agent
at any given point in time can best promote that agent-neutral aim
only by acting in accord with suitable deontological rules. One key
idea behind this strategy is that the relevant end is "good
willing" understood in a broadly Kantian way, combined with a
robust theory of free will according to which one agent cannot ever
fully control the will of another. The other key idea is that the
agent-neutral teleological reasons in play are compatible with a
non-maximizing theory of right action. In particular, the idea will be
that the agent must always minimize the risk of the very worst of the
available outcomes. If the very worst of the available outcomes is
that everyone has a bad will, then one can ensure that the risk of
that outcome is zero by preserving one's own good will. Given
that one cannot in this way fully control the will of another, the
needed self/other asymmetry is preserved without agent-relativity in
the theory of reasons or value. A suitable theory of right action and
free will can do the work that would otherwise require an
agent-relative theory of reasons or value.
## 7. Conclusion.
The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction is extremely important to
a wide range of debates in normative philosophy. Yet the distinction
is often drawn in very different ways, with the risk that philosophers
are simply talking past one another. In this entry, different ways of
drawing the distinction have been distinguished, and the virtues of a
modified version of the principle-based approach has been defended.
The distinction so drawn is different from a wide range of other
distinctions with which it might easily be confused; these
distinctions are laid out here to help guard against such confusions.
Finally, the distinction so drawn is an important one in structuring
central debates in normative theory, such as how to understand the
divide between consequentialists and deontologists. |
atheism-agnosticism | ## 1. Definitions of "Atheism"
The word "atheism" is polysemous--it has multiple related
meanings. In the psychological sense of the word, atheism is a
psychological state, specifically the state of being an atheist, where
an atheist is defined as someone who is not a theist and a theist is
defined as someone who believes that God exists (or that there are
gods). This generates the following definition: atheism is the
psychological state of lacking the belief that God exists. In
philosophy, however, and more specifically in the philosophy of
religion, the term "atheism" is standardly used to refer to
the proposition that God does not exist (or, more broadly, to the
proposition that there are no gods). Thus, to be an atheist on
this definition, it does not suffice to suspend judgment on whether
there is a God, even though that implies a lack of theistic belief.
Instead, one must deny that God exists. This metaphysical sense of the
word is preferred over other senses, including the psychological
sense, not just by theistic philosophers, but by many (though not all)
atheists in philosophy as well. For example, Robin Le Poidevin writes,
"An *atheist* is one who denies the existence of a
personal, transcendent creator of the universe, rather than one who
simply lives his life without reference to such a being" (1996:
xvii). J. L. Schellenberg says that "in philosophy, the atheist
is not just someone who doesn't accept theism, but more strongly
someone who opposes it." In other words, it is "the denial
of theism, the claim that there is no God" (2019: 5).
This definition is also found in multiple encyclopedias and
dictionaries of philosophy. For example, in the *Concise Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy*, William L. Rowe (also an atheist)
writes, "Atheism is the position that affirms the nonexistence of
God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of
belief" (2000: 62). The *Cambridge Dictionary of
Philosophy* recognizes multiple senses of the word
"atheism", but is clear about which is standard in
philosophy:
>
>
> [Atheism is] the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense
> denotes merely not believing in god and is consistent with agnosticism
> [in the psychological sense]. A stricter sense denotes a belief that
> there is no god; this use has become *standard*. (Pojman 2015,
> emphasis added)
>
>
>
Interestingly, the *Encyclopedia of Philosophy* recommends a
slight broadening of the standard definition of "atheist".
It still requires rejection of belief in God as opposed to merely
lacking that belief, but the basis for the rejection need not be that
theism is false. For example, it might instead be that it is
meaningless.
>
>
> According to the most usual definition, an *atheist* is a
> person who maintains that there is no God, that is, that the sentence
> "God exists" expresses a false proposition. In contrast, an
> agnostic [in the epistemological sense] maintains that it is not known
> or cannot be known whether there is a God, that is, whether the
> sentence "God exists" expresses a true proposition. On our
> definition, an *atheist* is a person who rejects belief in God,
> regardless of whether or not the reason for the rejection is the claim
> that "God exists" expresses a false proposition. People
> frequently adopt an attitude of rejection toward a position for
> reasons other than that it is a false proposition. It is common among
> contemporary philosophers, and indeed it was not uncommon in earlier
> centuries, to reject positions on the ground that they are
> meaningless. (Edwards 2006: 358)
>
>
>
At least until recently, the standard metaphysical understanding of
the meaning of "atheism" was so ingrained in philosophy that
philosophers could safely use the word "atheism" in that
sense without worrying that they might be misunderstood and without
feeling any need to defend it. For example, in his book, *Arguing
About Gods*, Graham Oppy (another atheist) repeatedly treats
"agnostic" (in the psychological sense of someone who
suspends judgment about God's existence) and "atheist"
as mutually exclusive categories (2006, 1, 15, and 34) without
offering any justification for doing so. The only plausible
explanation for his failure to provide justification is that he
expects his readers to construe the term "atheism" in its
metaphysical sense and thus to exclude from the class of atheists
anyone who suspends judgment about whether gods exist. Another
sign of how dominant the standard definition is within the field of
philosophy is the frequent use of the term "non-theist" to
refer to the broader class of people who lack the belief that God
exists.
Of course, from the fact that "atheism" is standardly
defined in philosophy as the proposition that God does not exist, it
does not follow that it *ought* to be defined that way. And the
standard definition is not without its philosophical opponents. For
example, some writers at least implicitly identify atheism with a
positive metaphysical theory like naturalism or even materialism.
Given this sense of the word, the meaning of "atheism" is
not straightforwardly derived from the meaning of
"theism". While this might seem etymologically bizarre,
perhaps a case can be made for the claim that something like
(metaphysical) naturalism was originally labeled "atheism"
only because of the cultural dominance of non-naturalist forms of
theism, not because the view being labeled was nothing more than the
denial of theism. On this view, there would have been atheists even if
no theists ever existed--they just wouldn't have been
called "atheists". Baggini [2003, 3-10] suggests this line
of thought, although his "official" definition is the
standard metaphysical one. While this definition of
"atheism" is a legitimate one, it is often accompanied by
fallacious inferences from the (alleged) falsity or probable falsity
of atheism (= naturalism) to the truth or probable truth of
theism.
Departing even more radically from the norm in philosophy, a few
philosophers (e.g., Michael Martin 1990: 463-464) join many
non-philosophers in defining "atheist" as someone who
lacks the belief that God exists. This commits them to adopting the
psychological sense of "atheism" discussed above,
according to which "atheism" should not be defined as a
proposition at all, even if theism is a proposition. Instead,
"atheism", according to these philosophers, should be
defined as a psychological state: the state of not believing in the
existence of God (or gods). This view was famously proposed by the
philosopher Antony Flew and arguably played a role in his (1972)
defense of an alleged presumption of "atheism". The
editors of the *Oxford Handbook of Atheism* (Bullivant &
Ruse 2013) also favor this definition and one of them, Stephen
Bullivant (2013), defends it on grounds of scholarly utility. His
argument is that this definition can best serve as an umbrella term
for a wide variety of positions that have been identified with
atheism. Scholars can then use adjectives like "strong"
and "weak" (or "positive" and
"negative") to develop a taxonomy that differentiates
various specific atheisms. Unfortunately, this argument overlooks the
fact that, if atheism is defined as a psychological state, then no
proposition can count as a form of atheism because a proposition is
not a psychological state. This undermines Bullivant's argument
in defense of Flew's definition; for it implies that what he
calls "strong atheism"--the proposition (or belief in
the sense of "something believed") that there is no
God--is not really a variety of atheism at all. In short, his
proposed "umbrella" term leaves so-called strong atheism
(or what some call positive atheism) out in the rain.
Although Flew's definition of "atheism" fails as an
umbrella term, it is certainly a legitimate definition in the sense
that it reports how a significant number of people use the term.
Again, the term "atheism" has more than one legitimate
meaning, and nothing said in this entry should be interpreted as an
attempt to proscribe how people label themselves or what meanings they
attach to those labels. The issue for philosophy and thus for this
entry is which definition is the most useful for scholarly or, more
narrowly, philosophical purposes. In other contexts, of course, the
issue of how best to define "atheism" or
"atheist" may look very different. For example, in some
contexts the crucial question may be which definition of
"atheist" (as opposed to "atheism") is the
most useful politically, especially in light of the bigotry that those
who identify as atheists face. The fact that there is strength in
numbers may recommend a very inclusive definition of
"atheist" that brings anyone who is not a theist into the
fold. Having said that, one would think that it would further no good
cause, political or otherwise, to attack fellow non-theists who do not
identify as atheists simply because they choose to use the term
"atheist" in some other, equally legitimate sense.
The next question, then, is why the standard metaphysical definition
of "atheism" is especially useful for doing philosophy. One
obvious reason is that it has the virtue of making atheism a direct
answer to one of the most important metaphysical questions in
philosophy of religion, namely, "Does God exist?" There are
only two possible direct answers to this question: "yes",
which is theism, and "no", which is atheism in the
metaphysical sense. Answers like "I don't know",
"no one knows", "I don't care", "an
affirmative answer has never been established", and "the
question is meaningless" are not direct answers to this question
(cf. Le Poidevin 2010: 8). It is useful for philosophers to have a
good name for this important metaphysical position, and
"atheism" works beautifully for that purpose. Of course, it
may also be useful on occasion to have a term to refer to all people
who lack theistic belief, but as noted above philosophers already have
such a term, namely, "nontheist", so the term
"atheist" is not needed for that purpose.
A second reason for preferring the metaphysical definition is that the
two main alternatives to it have undesirable implications. Defining
"atheism" as naturalism has the awkward implication that
some philosophers are both theists and atheists. This is because some
philosophers (e.g., Ellis 2014) deny that God is supernatural and
affirm both naturalism and theism. Defining "atheism" as the
state of lacking belief in God faces similar problems. First,
while this definition seems short and simple, which is virtuous, it
needs to be expanded to avoid the issue of babies, cats, and rocks
counting as atheists by virtue of lacking belief in God. While
this problem is relatively easy to solve, another is more challenging.
This additional problem arises because one can lack belief in God
while at the same time having other pro-attitudes towards theism. For
example, some people who lack the belief that God exists may
nevertheless feel some inclination to believe that God exists. They
may even believe that the truth of theism is more probable than its
falsity. While such people should not be labeled theists, it is
counterintuitive in the extreme to call them atheists. The
psychological definition also makes atheists out of some people who
are devoted members (at least in terms of practice) of theistic
religious communities. This is because, as is well-known, some
devoted members of such communities have only a vague middling level
of confidence that God exists and no belief that God exists or even
that God probably exists. It would seem misguided for
philosophers to classify such people as atheists.
A third reason to prefer the standard definition in philosophy is that
it makes the definitions of "atheism" and "theism"
symmetrical. One problem with defining "atheism" as a
psychological state is that philosophers do not define
"theism" as a psychological state, nor should they.
"Theism," like most other philosophical "-isms",
is understood in philosophy to be a proposition. This is crucial
because philosophers want to say that theism is true or false and,
most importantly, to construct or evaluate arguments for theism.
Psychological states cannot be true or false, nor can they be the
conclusions of arguments. Granted, philosophers sometimes define
"theism" as "the *belief* that God exists"
and it makes sense to argue for a belief and to say that a belief is
true or false, but here "belief" means "something
believed". It refers to the propositional content of belief, not
to the attitude or psychological state of believing. If, however,
"theism" is defined as the proposition that God exists and
"theist" as someone who believes that proposition, then it
makes sense to define "atheism" and "atheist" in
an analogous way. This means, first, defining "atheism" as a
proposition or position so that it can be true or false and can be the
conclusion of an argument and, second, defining "atheist" as
someone who believes that proposition. Since it is also natural to
define "atheism" in terms of theism, it follows that, in the
absence of good reasons to do otherwise, it is best for philosophers
to understand the "a-" in "atheism" as negation
instead of absence, as "not" instead of
"without"--in other words, to take atheism to be the
contradictory of theism.
Therefore, for all three of these reasons, philosophers ought to
construe atheism as the proposition that God does not exist (or, more
broadly, as the proposition that there are no divine realities of any
sort).
If, as has been argued here, atheism is both *usually* and
*best* understood in philosophy as the metaphysical claim that
God does not exist, then what, one might wonder, should philosophers
do with the popular term, "New Atheism"? Philosophers
write articles on and have devoted journal issues (French &
Wettstein 2013) to the New Atheism, but there is nothing close to a
consensus on how that term should be defined. Fortunately, there is no
real need for one, because the term "New Atheism" does not
pick out some distinctive philosophical position or phenomenon.
Instead, it is a popular label for a movement prominently represented
by four authors--Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and
Christopher Hitchens--whose work is uniformly critical of
religion, but beyond that appears to be unified only by timing and
popularity. Further, one might question what is new about the New
Atheism. The specific criticisms of religion and of arguments used to
defend religion are not new. For example, an arguably more
sophisticated and convincing version of Dawkins' central
atheistic argument can be found in Hume's *Dialogues*
(Wielenberg 2009). Also, while Dennett (2006) makes a passionate call
for the scientific study of religion as a natural phenomenon, such
study existed long before this call. Indeed, even the cognitive
science of religion was well established by the 1990s, and the
anthropology of religion can be traced back at least to the nineteenth
century. Shifting from content to style, many are surprised by the
militancy of some New Atheists, but there were plenty of aggressive
atheists who were quite disrespectful to religion long before Harris,
Dawkins, and Hitchens. (Dennett is not especially militant.) Finally,
the stereotype that New Atheism is religious or quasi-religious or
ideological in some unprecedented way is clearly a false one and one
that New Atheists reject. (For elaboration of these points, see Zenk
2013.)
Another subcategory of atheism is "friendly atheism",
which William Rowe (1979) defines as the position that, although God
does not exist, some (intellectually sophisticated) people are
justified in believing that God exists. Rowe, a friendly atheist
himself, contrasts friendly atheism with unfriendly atheism and
indifferent atheism. Unfriendly atheism is the view that atheism is
true and that no (sophisticated) theistic belief is justified. Despite
its highly misleading name, this view might be held by the
friendliest, most open-minded and religiously tolerant person
imaginable. Finally, although Rowe refers to "indifferent
atheism" as a "position", it is not a proposition
but instead a psychological state, specifically, the state of being an
atheist who is neither friendly nor unfriendly--that is, who
neither believes that friendly atheism is true nor believes that
unfriendly atheism is true.
Perhaps an even more interesting distinction is between pro-God
atheism and anti-God atheism. A pro-God atheist like John Schellenberg
(who coined the term in unpublished work) is someone who in some real
sense loves God or at least the idea of God, who tries very hard to
imagine what sorts of wonderful worlds such a being might create
(instead of just assuming that such a being would create a world
*something like* the world we observe), and who (at least
partly) for that very reason believes that God does not exist. Such an
atheist might be sympathetic to the following sentiments:
>
>
> It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to
> suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the
> other hand, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human
> creatures an instrument--their intellect--which must
> inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny
> his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the
> atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any
> pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him
> most seriously. (Strawson 1990)
>
>
>
By contrast, anti-God atheists like Thomas Nagel (1997: 130-131)
find the whole idea of a God offensive and hence not only believe but
also *hope* very much that no such being exists. Nagel is often
called an "antitheist" (e.g., Kahane 2011), but that term
is purposely avoided here, as it has many different senses (Kahane
2011: note 9). Also, in none of those senses is one required to be an
atheist in order to be an antitheist, so antitheism is not a variety
of atheism.
## 2. Definitions of "Agnosticism"
The terms "agnostic" and "agnosticism" were
famously coined in the late nineteenth century by the English
biologist, T.H. Huxley. He said that he originally
>
>
> invented the word "Agnostic" to denote people who, like
> [himself], confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a
> variety of matters [including of course the matter of God's
> existence], about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox
> and heterodox, dogmatise with the utmost confidence. (1884)
>
>
>
He did not, however, define "agnosticism" simply as the
state of being an agnostic. Instead, he often used that term to refer
to a normative epistemological principle, something similar to (though
weaker than) what we now call "evidentialism". Roughly,
Huxley's principle says that it is wrong to say that one knows
or believes that a proposition is true without logically satisfactory
evidence (Huxley 1884 and 1889). But it was Huxley's application
of this principle to theistic and atheistic belief that ultimately had
the greatest influence on the meaning of the term. He argued that,
since neither of those beliefs is adequately supported by evidence, we
ought to suspend judgment on the issue of whether or not there is a
God.
Nowadays, the term "agnostic" is often used (when the
issue is God's existence) to refer to those who follow the
recommendation expressed in the conclusion of Huxley's argument:
an agnostic is a person who has entertained the proposition that there
is a God but believes neither that it is true nor that it is false.
Not surprisingly, then, the term "agnostic*ism*" is
often defined, both in and outside of philosophy, not as a principle
or any other sort of proposition but instead as the psychological
state of being an agnostic. Call this the "psychological"
sense of the term. It is certainly useful to have a term to refer to
people who are neither theists nor atheists, but philosophers might
wish that some other term besides "agnostic"
("theological skeptic", perhaps?) were used. The problem
is that it is also very useful for philosophical purposes to have a
name for the epistemological position that follows from the premise of
Huxley's argument, the position that neither theism nor atheism
is known, or most ambitiously, that neither the belief that God exists
nor the belief that God does not exist has positive epistemic status
of any sort. Just as the metaphysical question of God's
existence is central to philosophy of religion, so too is the
epistemological question of whether or not theism or atheism is known
or has some other sort of positive epistemic status like being
justified, rational, reasonable, or probable. And given the etymology
of "agnostic", what better term could there be for a
negative answer to that epistemological question than
"agnosticism"? Further, as suggested earlier, it is, for
very good reason, typical in philosophy to use the suffix
"-ism" to refer to a proposition instead of to a state or
condition, since only the former can sensibly be tested by
argument.
If, however, "agnosticism" is defined as a proposition,
then "agnostic" must be defined in terms of
"agnosticism" instead of the other way around.
Specifically, "agnostic" must be defined as a person who
believes that the proposition "agnosticism" is true
instead of "agnosticism" being defined as the state of
being an agnostic. And if the proposition in question is that neither
theism nor atheism is known to be true, then the term
"agnostic" can no longer serve as a label for those who
are neither theists nor atheists since one can consistently believe
that atheism (or theism) is true while denying that atheism (or
theism) is known to be true.
When used in this epistemological sense, the term
"agnosticism" can very naturally be extended beyond the
issue of what is or can be known to cover a large family of positions,
depending on what sort of "positive epistemic status" is
at issue. For example, it might be identified with any of the
following positions: that neither theistic belief nor atheistic belief
is justified, that neither theistic belief nor atheistic belief is
rationally required, that neither belief is rationally permissible,
that neither has warrant, that neither is reasonable, or that neither
is probable. Also, in order to avoid the vexed issue of the nature of
knowledge, one can simply distinguish as distinct members of the
"agnosticism family" each of the following claims about
intellectually sophisticated people: (i) neither theism nor atheism is
adequately supported by the internal states of such people, (ii)
neither theistic belief nor atheistic belief coheres with the rest of
their beliefs, (iii) neither theistic nor atheistic belief results
from reliable belief-producing processes, (iv) neither theistic belief
nor atheistic belief results from faculties aimed at truth that are
functioning properly in an appropriate environment, and so on.
Notice too that, even if agnosticism were defined as the rather
extreme position that neither theistic belief nor atheistic belief
ever has positive epistemic status *of any sort*, it
wouldn't follow *by definition* that no agnostic is
either a theist or an atheist. Some fideists, for example, believe
that neither atheistic belief nor theistic belief is supported or
sanctioned in any way at all by reason because reason leaves the
matter of God's existence completely unresolved. Yet they have
faith that God exists and such faith (at least in some cases) involves
belief. Thus, some fideists are extreme agnostics in the
epistemological sense even though they are not agnostics in the
psychological sense.
It is also worth mentioning that, even in Huxley's time, some
apophatic theists embraced the term "agnostic", claiming
that all good Christians worshipped an "unknown God". More
recently, some atheists proudly call themselves "agnostic
atheists", although with further reflection the symmetry between
this position and fideism might give them pause. More likely, though,
what is being claimed by these self-identified agnostic atheists is
that, while their belief that God does not exist has positive
epistemic status of some sort (minimally, it is not irrational), it
does not have the sort of positive epistemic status that can turn true
belief into knowledge.
No doubt both senses of "agnosticism", the psychological
and the epistemological, will continue to be used both inside and
outside of philosophy. Hopefully, context will help to disambiguate.
In the remainder of this entry, however, the term
"agnosticism" will be used in its epistemological sense.
This makes a huge difference to the issue of justification. Consider,
for example, this passage written by the agnostic, Anthony Kenny
(1983: 84-85):
>
>
> I do not myself know of any argument for the existence of God which I
> find convincing; in all of them I think I can find flaws. Equally, I
> do not know of any argument against the existence of God which is
> totally convincing; in the arguments I know against the existence of
> God I can equally find flaws. So that my own position on the existence
> of God is agnostic.
>
>
>
It is one thing to ask whether Kenny's inability to find
arguments that convince him of God's existence or non-existence
justifies him personally in suspending judgment about the existence of
God. It is quite another to ask whether this inability (or anything
else) would justify his believing that no one (or at least no one who
is sufficiently intelligent and well-informed) has a justified belief
about God's existence.
If agnosticism (in one sense of the word) is the position that neither
theism nor atheism is known, then it might be useful to use the term
"gnosticism" to refer to the contradictory of that
position, that is, to the position that either theism or atheism is
known. That view would, of course, come in two flavors: theistic
gnosticism--the view that theism is known (and hence atheism is
not)--and atheistic gnosticism--the view that atheism is
known (and hence theism is not).
## 3. Global Atheism Versus Local Atheisms
Jeanine Diller (2016) points out that, just as most theists have a
particular concept of God in mind when they assert that God exists,
most atheists have a particular concept of God in mind when they
assert that God does not exist. Indeed, many atheists are only vaguely
aware of the variety of concepts of God that there are. For example,
there are the Gods of classical and neo-classical theism: the
Anselmian God, for instance, or, more modestly, the all-powerful,
all-knowing, and perfectly good creator-God that receives so much
attention in contemporary philosophy of religion. There are also the
Gods of specific Western theistic religions like Christianity, Islam,
Judaism, and Sikhism, which may or may not be best understood as
classical or neo-classical Gods. There are also panentheistic and
process theistic Gods, as well as a variety of other God-concepts,
both of Western and non-Western origin, that are largely ignored by
even the most well-informed atheists. (Philosophically sophisticated
theists, for their part, often act as if refuting naturalism
establishes the existence of the particular sort of God in which they
believe.) Diller distinguishes local atheism, which denies the
existence of one sort of God, from global atheism, which is the
proposition that there are no Gods of any sort--that all
legitimate concepts of God lack instances.
Global atheism is a very difficult position to justify (Diller 2016:
11-16). Indeed, very few atheists have any good reason to
believe that it is true since the vast majority of atheists have made
no attempt to reflect on more than one or two of the many legitimate
concepts of God that exist both inside and outside of various
religious communities. Nor have they reflected on what criteria must
be satisfied in order for a concept of God to count as
"legitimate", let alone on the possibility of legitimate
God concepts that have not yet been conceived and on the implications
of that possibility for the issue of whether or not global atheism is
justified. Furthermore, the most ambitious atheistic arguments popular
with philosophers, which attempt to show that the concept of God is
incoherent or that God's existence is logically incompatible
either with the existence of certain sorts of evil or with the
existence of certain sorts of non-belief [Schellenberg 2007]),
certainly won't suffice to justify global atheism; for even if
they are sound, they assume that to be God a being must be omnipotent,
omniscient, and perfectly good, and as the character Cleanthes points
out at the beginning of Part XI of Hume's *Dialogues*
(see also Nagasawa 2008), there are religiously adequate God-concepts
that don't require God to have those attributes.
Global atheists might object that, even if atheism and (metaphysical)
naturalism are not identical, a belief in the former can be based on a
belief in the latter; in other words, if one has good arguments for
the view that nature is a closed system, then that removes any burden
to consider each God-concept separately, so long as all legitimate
concepts of God imply that God is a supernatural entity--that is,
an entity that is not natural, yet affects nature. Whether or not this
strategy for justifying global atheism works depends on whether it is
possible to define "naturalism" narrowly enough to imply
the non-existence of all Gods but not so narrowly that no convincing
arguments can be given for its truth. This is no easy task, especially
given recent work on naturalist forms of theism (e.g., Bishop 2008;
Buckareff & Nagasawa 2016: Part V; Diller & Kasher 2013: Part
X; and Ellis 2014). Nor is it obvious that evidential arguments from
evil can be extended to cover all legitimate God concepts, though if
all genuine theisms entail that ultimate reality is both aligned with
the good and salvific (in some religiously adequate sense of
"ultimate" and "salvific"), then perhaps they
can. The crucial point, however, is that no one has yet made that
case.
Concerning the issue of what exactly counts as a legitimate or
religiously adequate concept of God, various approaches might be
taken. One general strategy is to identify the religious role or roles
that anything deserving of the name or title "God" must
play and then distinguish legitimate or illegitimate concepts of God
depending on whether anything falling under the concept in question
could or would successfully play that role. (See, for example, Le
Poidevin 2010: 52; and Leftow 2016: 66-71.)
A second approach (compatible with the first) assumes plausibly that
the word "God" is a title instead of a proper name and
then asks what qualifications are required to bear that title (Pike
1970). The fact that most titles indicate either rank or function
suggests that the meaning of "God" has something to do
either with occupying a position in a hierarchy or performing some
function. For example, the common dictionary definition of
"God" as the Supreme Being and the Anselmian idea of God
as the greatest possible being suggest that the title
"God" is rank-indicating, while the definition of
"God" as "ruler of the universe" fits well
with the view that "God" is function-indicating and
explains why the ordinary class noun, "god", might be
defined as "ruler of some part of the universe or of some sphere
of human activity" (e.g., Neptune, god of the sea, and Mars, god
of war).
A third approach (compatible with the first two) is to start from the
close connection in meaning between "God" and
"worship". Worship appears to be essential to theistic
religions and thus an essential role that any being must play to
qualify for the title "God" is to be an appropriate object
of worship. Indeed, although there is risk of circularity here if
"worship" is defined in terms of the actions or attitudes
appropriately directed towards "God", it would not be
obviously mistaken to claim that being worthy of some form of
religious worship is not just necessary for divinity but sufficient as
well, especially if worthiness of worship entails worthiness of
allegiance. Of course, forms of worship vary widely from one religion
to another, so even if worthiness of worship is the sole defining
feature of a God, that doesn't mean that beliefs about what
these Gods are like won't vary widely from one religion to
another. In some religions, especially (but not only) certain Western
monotheistic ones, worship involves total devotion and unconditional
commitment. To be worthy of that sort of worship (if that is even
possible when the pool of potential worshipers are *autonomous*
agents like most adult humans) requires an especially impressive God,
though it is controversial whether or not it requires a perfect
one.
If the ambiguity that results from defining "God" in terms
of worthiness of worship is virtuous, then one might be tempted to
adopt the following account of global atheism and its opposite,
"versatile theism":
global atheism: there are no beings worthy of religious worship.
versatile theism: there exists at least one being that is worthy of
some form of religious worship.
Notice that on this account of "global atheism", the
atheist only denies the existence of beings that are *worthy*
of worship. Thus, not even a global atheist is committed to denying
the existence of everything that someone has called a god or
"God". For example, even if the ancient Egyptians
worshipped the Sun and regarded it as worthy of such worship, the
global atheist need not deny the existence of the Sun. Instead, the
global atheist can claim that the ancient Egyptians were mistaken in
thinking that the Sun is worthy of religious worship.
Similarly, consider this passage at the beginning of Section XI of
David Hume's *Natural History of Religion*:
>
>
> If we examine, without prejudice, the ancient heathen mythology, as
> contained in the poets, we shall not discover in it any such monstrous
> absurdity, as we may at first be apt to apprehend. Where is the
> difficulty in conceiving, that the same powers or principles, whatever
> they were, which formed this visible world, men and animals, produced
> also a species of intelligent creatures, of more refined substance and
> greater authority than the rest? That these creatures may be
> capricious, revengeful, passionate, voluptuous, is easily conceived;
> nor is any circumstance more apt, among ourselves, to engender such
> vices, than the license of absolute authority. And in short, the whole
> mythological system is so natural, that, in the vast variety of
> planets and world[s], contained in this universe, *it seems more
> than probable, that, somewhere or other, it is really carried into
> execution*. (Hume [1757] 1956: 53, emphasis added)
>
>
>
There is much debate about whether Hume was an atheist or a deist or
neither, but no one uses this passage to support the view that he was
actually a polytheist. Perhaps this is because, even if there are
natural alien beings that, much like the ancient Greek and Roman gods,
are far superior in power to humans but quite similar in their moral
and other psychological qualities, presumably no one, at least
nowadays, would be tempted to regard them as worthy of religious
worship.
One possible flaw in the proposed account of global atheism is that it
seems to imply overlap between deism and atheism. Of course, it
wasn't that long ago when all deists were widely regarded as
atheists. These days, however, the term "deistic atheist"
or "atheistic deist" has an oxymoronic ring to it. Of
course, not all deists would count as atheists on the proposed
account, but some would. For example, consider a deist who believes
that, while a supernatural person intentionally designed the universe,
that deity did not specifically intend for intelligent life to evolve
and has no interest whatsoever in the condition or fate of such life.
Such a deity would not be worthy of anyone's worship, especially
if worthiness of worship entails worthiness of allegiance, and so
would arguably not be a (theistic) god, which implies that an atheist
could on the proposed definition consistently believe in the existence
of such a deity. Perhaps, then, "global atheism" should be
defined as the position that both versatile theism and (versatile)
deism are false--that there are no beings worthy of religious
worship and also no cosmic creators or intelligent designers whether
worthy of worship (and allegiance) or not. Even this account of
"global atheism", however, may not be sufficiently
inclusive since there are religious roles closely associated with the
title "God" (and thus arguably legitimate notions of God)
that could be played by something that is neither an appropriate
object of worship nor a cosmic designer or creator.
## 4. An Argument for Agnosticism
According to one relatively modest form of agnosticism, neither
versatile theism nor its denial, global atheism, is known to be true.
Robin Le Poidevin (2010: 76) argues for this position as follows:
* (1)There is
no firm basis upon which to judge that theism or atheism is
intrinsically more probable than the other.
* (2)There is
no firm basis upon which to judge that the total evidence favors
theism or atheism over the other.
It follows from (1) and (2) that
* (3)There is
no firm basis upon which to judge that theism or atheism is more
probable than the other.
It follows from (3) that
* (4)Agnosticism
is true: neither theism nor atheism is known
to be true.
Le Poidevin takes "theism" in its broadest sense to refer
to the proposition that there exists a being that is the ultimate and
intentional cause of the universe's existence and the ultimate
source of love and moral knowledge (2010: 52). (He doesn't use
the term "versatile theism", but this would be his account
of its meaning.) By the "intrinsic probability" of a
proposition, he means, roughly, the probability that a proposition has
"before the evidence starts to come in" (2010: 49). This
probability depends solely on *a priori* considerations like
the intrinsic features of the content of the proposition in question
(e.g., the size of that content).
Le Poidevin defends the first premise of this argument by stating
that, while intrinsic probability plausibly depends inversely on the
specificity of a claim (the less specific the claim, the more ways
there are for it to be true and so the more probable it is that it is
true), it is impossible to show that versatile theism is more specific
or less specific than its denial. This defense appears to be
incomplete, for Le Poidevin never shows that the intrinsic probability
of a proposition depends *only* on its specificity, and there
are good reasons to believe that this is not the case (see, for
example, Swinburne 2001: 80-102). Le Poidevin could respond,
however, that specificity is the only uncontroversial criterion of
intrinsic probability, and this lack of consensus on other criteria is
all that is needed to adequately defend premise
(1).
One way to defend the second premise is to review the relevant
evidence and argue that it is ambiguous (Le Poidevin 2010: chapter 4;
and Draper 2002). Another way is to point out that atheism, which is
just the proposition that theism is false, is compatible with a
variety of very different hypotheses, and these hypotheses vary widely
in how well they account for the total evidence. Thus, to assess how
well atheism accounts for the total evidence, one would have to
calculate a weighted average of how well these different atheistic
hypotheses account for the total evidence, where the weights would be
the different intrinsic probabilities of each of these atheistic
hypotheses. This task seems prohibitively difficult (Draper 2016) and
in any case has not been attempted, which supports the claim that
there is no firm basis upon which to judge whether the total evidence
supports theism or atheism.
So-called "Reformed epistemologists" (e.g., Plantinga
2000) might challenge the second premise of the argument on the
grounds that many beliefs about God, like many beliefs about the past,
are "properly basic"--a result of the functioning of
a basic cognitive faculty called the "*sensus
divinitatis*"--and so are, in effect, a part of the
total evidence with respect to which the probability of any statement
depends. The agnostic, however, might reply that this sense of the
divine, unlike memory, operates at most sporadically and far from
universally. Also, unlike other basic cognitive faculties, it can
easily be resisted, and the existence of the beliefs it is supposed to
produce can easily be explained without supposing that the faculty
exists at all. Thus, the analogy to memory is weak. Therefore, in the
absence of some firmer basis upon which to judge that beliefs about
God are properly a part of the foundation of some theists'
belief systems, premise
(2)
stands.
Of course, even if the two premises of Le Poidevin's argument
are true, it doesn't follow that the argument is a good one. For
the argument also contains two inferences (from steps
1
and
2
to
step 3
and from step 3 to
step 4),
neither of which is obviously correct. Concerning the first
inference, suppose, for example, that even though there is no firm
basis upon which to judge which of theism and atheism is intrinsically
more probable (that is, Le Poidevin's first premise is true),
there is firm basis upon which to judge that theism is not many times
more probable intrinsically than some specific version of atheism,
say, reductive physicalism. And suppose that, even though there is no
firm basis upon which to judge which of theism and atheism is favored
by the total evidence (that is, Le Poidevin's second premise is
true), there is firm basis upon which to judge that the total evidence
very strongly favors reductive physicalism over theism (in the sense
that it is antecedently very many times more probable given reductive
physicalism than it is given theism). Then it follows that both of Le
Poidevin's premises are true and yet (3) is false: there is a
firm basis (that includes the odds version of Bayes' theorem
applied to theism and reductive physicalism instead of to theism and
atheism) to judge that reductive physicalism is more probable or even
many times more probable than theism and hence that theism is probably
or even very probably false. Arguably, no similar strategy could be
used to show that theism is probably true in spite of Le
Poidevin's premises both being true. So it may be that Le
Poidevin's premises, if adequately supported, establish that
theistic gnosticism is false (that is, that either agnosticism or
atheistic gnosticism is true) even if they don't establish that
agnosticism is true.
## 5. An Argument for Global Atheism?
Almost all well-known arguments for atheism are arguments for a
particular version of local atheism. One possible exception to this
rule is an argument recently made popular by some New Atheists,
although it was not invented by them. Gary Gutting (2013) calls this
argument the "no arguments argument" for atheism:
* (1)The
absence of good reasons to believe that God exists is itself a good
reason to believe that God does not exist.
* (2)There is
no good reason to believe that God exists.
It follows from (1) and (2) that
* (3)There is
good reason to believe that God does not exist.
Notice the obvious relevance of this argument to agnosticism.
According to one prominent member of the agnosticism family, we have
no good reason to believe that God exists and no good reason to
believe that God does not exist. Clearly, if the first premise of this
argument is true, then this version of agnosticism must be false.
Can the no arguments argument be construed as an argument for global
atheism? One might object that it is not, strictly speaking, an
argument for any sort of atheism since its conclusion is not that
atheism is true but instead that there is good reason to believe that
atheism is true. But that is just a quibble. Ultimately, whether this
argument can be used to defend global atheism depends on how its first
premise is defended.
The usual way of defending it is to derive it from some general
principle according to which lacking grounds for claims of a certain
sort is good reason to reject those claims. The restriction of this
principle to claims "of a certain sort" is crucial, since
the principle that the absence of grounds for a claim is in all cases
a good reason to believe that the claim is false is rather obviously
false. One might, for example, lack grounds for believing that the
next time one flips a coin it will come up heads, but that is not a
good reason to believe that it won't come up heads.
A more promising approach restricts the principle to existence claims,
thereby turning it into a version of Ockham's razor. According
to this version of the principle, the absence of grounds supporting a
positive existential statement (like "God
exists"--however "God" is understood) is a good
reason to believe that the statement is false (McLaughlin 1984). One
objection to this principle is that not every sort of thing is such
that, if it existed, then we would likely have good reason to believe
that it exists. Consider, for example, intelligent life in distant
galaxies (cf. Morris 1985).
Perhaps, however, an even more narrowly restricted principle would do
the trick: whenever the assumption that a positive existential claim
is true would lead one to expect to have grounds for its truth, the
absence of such grounds is a good reason to believe that the claim is
false. It might then be argued that (i) a God would be likely to
provide us with convincing evidence of Her existence and so (ii) the
absence of such evidence is a good reason to believe that God does not
exist. This transforms the no arguments argument into an argument from
divine hiddenness. It also transforms it into at best an argument for
local atheism, since even if the God of, say, classical theism would
not hide, not all legitimate God-concepts are such that a being
instantiating that concept would be likely to provide us with
convincing evidence of its existence.
## 6. Two Arguments for Local Atheism
### 6.1 How to Argue for Local Atheism
The sort of God in whose non-existence philosophers seem most
interested is the eternal, non-physical, omnipotent, omniscient, and
omnibenevolent (i.e., morally perfect) creator-God worshipped by many
theologically orthodox Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Let's call
the proposition that a God of this sort exists
"omni-theism". One interesting question, then, is how best
to argue for atheism understood locally as the proposition that
omni-theism is false.
It is often claimed that a good argument for atheism is impossible
because, while it is at least possible to prove that something of a
certain sort exists, it is impossible to prove that nothing of that
sort exists. One reason to reject this claim is that the descriptions
of some kinds of objects are self-contradictory. For example, we can
prove that no circular square exists because such an object would have
to be both circular and non-circular, which is impossible. Thus, one
way to argue for the nonexistence of the God of omni-theism (or
"omni-God" for short) is to argue that such a God is an
impossible object like a circular square.
Many attempts have been made to construct such arguments. For example,
it has been claimed that an omnibenevolent being would be impeccable
and so incapable of wrongdoing, while an omnipotent being would be
quite capable of doing things that would be wrong to do. There are,
however, sophisticated and plausible replies to arguments like these.
More importantly, even if such an argument succeeded, omni-theists
could plausibly claim that, by "omnipotent", they mean,
not maximally powerful, but optimally powerful, where the optimal
degree of power may not be maximal if maximal power rules out
possessing the optimal degree of some other perfection like moral
goodness.
Similar problems face attempts to show that omni-theism must be false
because it is incompatible with certain known facts about the world.
Such arguments typically depend on detailed and contested
interpretations of divine attributes like omnibenevolence.
A very different approach is based on the idea that disproof need not
be demonstrative. The goal of this approach is to show that the
existence of an omni-God is so improbable that confident belief in the
non-existence of such a God is justified. Two such arguments are
discussed in detail below: the "low priors argument" and
the "decisive evidence argument". Each of these arguments
employs the same specific strategy, which is to argue that some
alternative hypothesis to omni-theism is many times more probable than
omni-theism. This doesn't imply that the alternative hypothesis
is probably true, but it does imply that omni-theism is very probably
false. In the case of the second argument, the alternative hypothesis
(aesthetic deism) is arguably a form of theism, and even in the case
of the first argument it is arguable that the alternative hypothesis
(source physicalism) is compatible with some forms of theism (in
particular ones in which God is an emergent entity). This is not a
problem for either argument, however, precisely because both are
arguments for local atheism instead of global atheism.
### 6.2 The Low Priors Argument
The basic idea behind the low priors argument is that, even if the
agnostic is right that, when it comes to God's existence, the
evidence is ambiguous or absent altogether, what follows is not that
theism has a middling probability all things considered, but instead
that theism is very probably false. This is said to follow because
theism starts out with a very low probability before taking into
account any evidence. ("Evidence" in this context refers
to factors extrinsic to a hypothesis that raise or lower its
probability.) Since ambiguous or absent evidence has no effect on that
prior or intrinsic probability, the posterior or all-things-considered
probability of theism is also very low. If, however, theism is very
probably false, then atheism must be very probably true and this
implies (according to the defender of the argument) that atheistic
belief is justified. (This last alleged implication is examined in
section 7.)
This sort of argument is very relevant to the issue of which of
atheism and theism is the appropriate "default" position.
If theism has a sufficiently low intrinsic probability, then atheism
is arguably the correct default position in the sense that ambiguous
or absent evidence will justify, not suspending judgment on the issue
of God's existence, but instead believing that God does not
exist. This is why Le Poidevin's argument for agnosticism
includes, not just a premise asserting that the relevant evidence is
ambiguous, but also one asserting that, at least in the case of
versatile theism, we are in the dark when it comes to the issue of
which of theism and atheism has a higher intrinsic probability.
Unfortunately, much discussion of the issue of which position is the
correct "default position" or of who has the "burden
of proof" gets sidetracked by bad analogies to Santa Claus,
flying spaghetti monsters, and Bertrand Russell's ([1952] 1997)
famous china teapot in elliptical orbit around the sun (see Garvey
2010 and van Inwagen 2012 for criticism of some of these analogies).
The low priors argument implicitly addresses this important issue in a
much more sophisticated and promising way.
In the version of the low priors argument formulated below, the basic
approach described above is improved by comparing omni-theism, not
simply to its denial, but instead to a more specific atheistic
hypothesis called "source physicalism". Unlike ontological
physicalism, source physicalism is a claim about the source of mental
entities, not about their nature. Source physicalists, whether they
are ontological physicalists or ontological dualists, believe that the
physical world existed before the mental world and caused the mental
world to come into existence, which implies that all mental entities
are causally dependent on physical entities. Further, even if they are
ontological dualists, source physicalists need not claim that mental
entities never cause physical entities or other mental entities, but
they must claim that there would be no mental entities were it not for
the prior existence (and causal powers) of one or more physical
entities. The argument proceeds as follows:
* (1)The
total evidence does not favor omni-theism over source
physicalism.
* (2)Source
physicalism is many times more probable intrinsically than
omni-theism.
It follows from (1) and (2) that
* (3)Source
physicalism is many times more probable than omni-theism.
It follows from (3) that
* (4)Omni-theism
is very probably false.
It follows from (4) that
* (5)Atheism
(understood here as the denial of omni-theism) is very probably
true.
Only the argument's two premises--steps (1) and
(2)--are controversial. The other steps in the argument all
clearly follow from previous steps.
A thorough examination of the arguments for and against premise (1) is
obviously impossible here, but it is worth mentioning that a defense
of this premise need not claim that the known facts typically thought
by natural theologians to favor omni-theism over competing hypotheses
like source physicalism have no force. Instead, it could be claimed
that whatever force they have is offset at least to some significant
degree by more specific facts favoring source physicalism over
omni-theism. Natural theologians routinely ignore these more specific
facts and thus appear to commit what might be called "the
fallacy of understated evidence". More precisely, the point is
this. Even when natural theologians successfully identify some general
fact about a topic that is more probable given omni-theism than given
source physicalism, they ignore other more specific facts about that
same topic, facts that, *given the general fact*, appear to be
significantly more probable given source physicalism than given
omni-theism.
For example, even if omni-theism is supported by the general fact that
the universe is complex, one should not ignore the more specific fact,
discovered by scientists, that underlying this complexity at the level
at which we experience the universe, is a much simpler early universe
from which this complexity arose, and also a much simpler contemporary
universe at the micro-level, one consisting of a relatively small
number of different kinds of particles all of which exist in one of a
relatively small number of different states. In short, it is important
to take into account, not just the general fact that the universe that
we directly experience with our senses is extremely complex, but also
the more specific fact that two sorts of hidden simplicity within the
universe can explain that complexity. Given that a complex universe
exists, this more specific fact is exactly what one would expect on
source physicalism, because, as the best natural theologians (e.g.,
Swinburne 2004) say, the complexity of the universe cries out for
explanation in terms of something simpler. There is, however, no
reason at all to expect this more specific fact on omni-theism since,
if those same natural theologians are correct, then a simple God
provides a simple explanation for the observed complexity of the
universe whether or not that complexity is also explained by any
simpler mediate physical causes.
Another example concerns consciousness. Its existence really does seem
to be more likely given omni-theism than given source physicalism (and
thus to raise the ratio of the probability of omni-theism to the
probability of source physicalism). But we know a lot more about
consciousness than just that it exists. We also know, thanks in part
to the relatively new discipline of neuroscience, that conscious
states in general and even the very integrity of our personalities,
not to mention the apparent unity of the self, are dependent to a very
high degree on physical events occurring in the brain. Given the
general fact that consciousness exists, we have reason on source
physicalism that we do not have on theism to expect these more
specific facts. Given theism, it would not be surprising at all if our
minds were more independent of the brain than they in fact are. After
all, if omni-theism is true, then at least one mind, God's, does
not depend at all on anything physical. Thus, when the available
evidence about consciousness is fully stated, it is far from clear
that it significantly favors omni-theism.
Similar problems threaten to undermine appeals to
fine-tuning--that is, appeals to the fact that a number of
apparently independent physical parameters have values that, while not
fixed by current physical theory, nevertheless happen to fall within a
relatively narrow "life-permitting" range assuming no
changes to other parameters. Arguably, given that fine-tuning is
required for intelligent life and that an omni-God has reason to
create intelligent life, we have more reason to expect fine-tuning on
omni-theism than on source physicalism. Given such fine-tuning,
however, it is far more surprising on omni-theism than on source
physicalism that our universe is not teeming with intelligent life and
that the most impressive intelligent organisms we know to exist are
merely human: self-centered and aggressive primates who far too often
kill, rape, and torture each other.
In fairness to omni-theism, however, most of those humans are moral
agents and many have religious experiences apparently of God. The
problem is that, while the existence of moral agents is
"predicted" by omni-theism better than by source
physicalism, it is also true that, given their existence, the variety
and frequency of easily avoidable conditions that promote morally bad
behavior and that severely limit the freedom, agency, and autonomy of
countless human beings are much more likely on source physicalism. And
while religious experiences apparently of God are no doubt more to be
expected if an omni-God exists than if human beings are the product of
blind physical forces, it is also true that, given that such
experiences do occur, various facts about their distribution that
should be surprising to theists are exactly what one would expect on
source physicalism, such as the fact that many people never have them
and the fact that those who do have them almost always have either a
prior belief in God or extensive exposure to a theistic religion.
It seems, then, that when it comes to evidence favoring omni-theism
over source physicalism, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
Further, when combined with the fact that what we know about the level
of well-being of sentient beings and the extent of their suffering is
arguably vastly more probable on source physicalism than on theism, a
very strong though admittedly controversial case for premise
(1)
can be made.
What about premise
(2)?
Again, a serious case can be made for its truth. Such a case first
compares source physicalism, not to omni-theism, but to its opposite,
source idealism. Source idealists believe that the mental world
existed before the physical world and caused the physical world to
come into existence. This view is consistent with both ontological
idealism and ontological dualism, and also with physical entities
having both physical and mental effects. It entails, however, that all
physical entities are, ultimately, causally dependent on one or more
mental entities, and so is not consistent with ontological
physicalism. The symmetry of source physicalism and source idealism is
a good *pro tanto* reason to believe they are equally probable
intrinsically. They are equally specific, they have the same
ontological commitments, neither can be formulated more elegantly than
the other, and each appears to be equally coherent and equally
intelligible. They differ on the issue of what is causally dependent
on what, but if Hume is right and causal dependence relations can only
be discovered by observation and not *a priori*, then that
won't affect the *intrinsic* probabilities of the two
hypotheses.
Omni-theism, however, is a very specific version of source idealism;
it entails that source idealism is true but goes far beyond source
idealism by making a number of very specific claims about the sort of
"mental world" that produced the physical world. For
example, it adds the claim that a single mind created the physical
universe and that this mind is not just powerful but specifically
omnipotent and not just knowledgeable but specifically omniscient. In
addition, it presupposes a number of controversial metaphysical and
meta-ethical claims by asserting in addition that this being is both
eternal and objectively morally perfect. If any of these specific
claims and presuppositions is false, then omni-theism is false. Thus,
omni-theism is a very specific and thus intrinsically very risky form
of source idealism, and thus is many times less probable intrinsically
than source idealism. Therefore, if, as argued above, source
physicalism and source idealism are equally probable intrinsically,
then it follows that premise
(2)
is true: source physicalism is many times more probable intrinsically
than omni-theism.
### 6.3 The Decisive Evidence Argument
Notice that the general strategy of the particular version of the low
priors argument discussed above is to find an alternative to
omni-theism that is much less specific than omni-theism (and
*partly* for that reason much more probable intrinsically),
while at the same time having enough content of the right sort to fit
the totality of the relevant data at least as well as theism does. In
other words, the goal is to find a runner like source physicalism that
begins the race with a large head start and thus wins by a large
margin because it runs the race for supporting evidence and thus for
probability at roughly the same speed as omni-theism does. This
doesn't show that source physicalism is probable (a "large
margin" in this context means a large ratio of one probability
to another, not a large difference between the probabilities), because
there may be even better runners in the race; it does, however, show
that omni-theism loses the race by a large margin and thus is very
probably false.
An alternative strategy is to find a runner that begins the race tied
with omni-theism, but runs the race for evidential support much faster
than omni-theism does, thus once again winning the race by a margin
that is sufficiently large for the rest of the argument to go through.
A good name for an argument pursuing this second strategy is the
"decisive evidence argument". The choice of alternative
hypothesis is crucial here just as it was in the low priors argument.
One promising choice is "aesthetic deism". (Another would
be a more detailed version of source physicalism that, unlike source
physicalism in general, makes the relevant data antecedently much more
probable than theism does.) In order to help ensure that omni-theism
and aesthetic deism begin the race at the same starting
line--that is, have the same intrinsic
probability--"aesthetic deism" is best defined in
such a way that it is almost identical to omni-theism. Thus, it may be
stipulated that, like omni-theism, aesthetic deism implies that an
eternal, non-physical, omnipotent, and omniscient being created the
physical world. The only difference, then, between the God of
omni-theism and the deity of aesthetic deism is what motivates them.
An omni-theistic God would be morally perfect and so strongly
motivated by considerations of the well-being of sentient creatures.
An aesthetic deistic God, on the other hand, would prioritize
aesthetic goods over moral ones. While such a being would want a
beautiful universe, perhaps the best metaphor here is not that of a
cosmic artist, but instead that of a cosmic playwright: an
*author* of nature who wants above all to write an interesting
story.
As everyone knows, good stories never begin with the line "and
they lived happily ever after", and that line is the last line
of any story that contains it. Further, containing such a line is
hardly necessary for a story to be good. If aesthetic deism is true,
then it may very well be true that, "all the world's a
stage, and all the men and women *merely* players"
(emphasis added). In any case, the hypothesis of aesthetic deism makes
"predictions" about the condition of sentient beings in
the world that are very different from the ones that the hypothesis of
omni-theism makes. After all, what makes a good story good is often
some intense struggle between good and evil, and all good stories
contain some mixture of benefit and harm. This suggests that the
observed mixture of good and evil in our world decisively favors
aesthetic deism over omni-theism. And if that's right, then
aesthetic deism pulls far ahead of omni-theism in the race for
probability, thereby proving that omni-theism is very improbable.
Here is one possible formulation of this argument:
* (1)Aesthetic
deism is at least as probable intrinsically as
omni-theism.
* (2)The
total evidence excluding "the data of good and evil" does
not favor omni-theism over aesthetic deism.
* (3)Given
the total evidence excluding the data of good and evil, the data of
good and evil strongly favor aesthetic deism over
omni-theism.
It follows from (1), (2), and (3) that
* (4)Aesthetic
deism is many times more probable than
omni-theism.
It follows from (4) that
* (5)Omni-theism
is very probably false.
It follows from (5) that
* (6)Atheism
(understood here as the denial of omni-theism) is very probably
true.
Steps (4)-(6) of this argument are the same as steps
(3)-(5) of the low priors argument except that "source
physicalism" in step (3) of the low priors argument is replaced
by "aesthetic deism" in step (4) of the decisive evidence
argument. This makes no difference as far as the inference from step
(4) to step (5) is concerned. That inference, like the inferences from
steps (1)-(3) to step (4) and from step (5) to step (6), is
clearly correct. The key question, then, is whether premises (1), (2),
and (3) are all true.
In spite of the nearly complete overlap between omni-theism and
aesthetic deism, Richard Swinburne (2004: 96-109) would
challenge premise
(1)
on the grounds that aesthetic deism, unlike omni-theism, must posit a
bad desire to account for why the deity does not do what is morally
best. Omni-theism need not do this, according to Swinburne, because
what is morally best just is what is overall best, and thus an
omniscient being will of necessity do what is morally best so long as
it has no desires other than the desires it has simply by virtue of
knowing what the best thing to do is in any given situation. This
challenge depends, however, on a highly questionable motivational
intellectualism: it succeeds only if merely believing that an action
is good entails a desire to do it. On most theories of motivation,
there is a logical gap between the intellect and desire. If such a gap
exists, then it would seem that omni-theism is no more probable
intrinsically than aesthetic deism.
It's hard to think of a plausible challenge to premise
(2)
because, at least when it comes to the usual evidence taken to favor
theism over competing hypotheses like naturalism, aesthetic deism
accounts for that evidence at least as well as omni-theism does. For
example, a deity interested in good narrative would want a world that
is complex and yet ordered, that contains beauty, consciousness,
intelligence, and moral agency. Perhaps there is more reason to expect
the existence of libertarian free will on omni-theism than on
aesthetic deism; but unless one starts from the truth of omni-theism,
there seems to be little reason to believe that we have such freedom.
And even if one takes seriously introspective or other non-theological
evidence for libertarian free will, it is not difficult to construct a
"de-odicy" here: a good explanation in terms of aesthetic
deism either of the existence of libertarian free will or of why there
is apparently strong but ultimately misleading evidence for its
existence. For example, if open theists are right that not even an
omniscient being can know with certainty what (libertarian) free
choices will be made in the future, then aesthetic deism could account
for libertarian free will and other sorts of indeterminacy by claiming
that a story with genuine surprises is better than one that is
completely predictable. Alternatively, what might be important for the
story is only that the characters think they have free will, not that
they really have it.
Finally, there is premise
(3),
which asserts that the data of good and evil decisively favors
aesthetic deism over theism. In this context, the "data of good
and evil" include everything we know about how sentient beings,
including humans, are benefitted or harmed. A full discussion of this
premise is not possible here, but recognition of its plausibility
appears to be as old as the problem of evil itself. Consider, for
example, the Book of Job, whose protagonist, a righteous man who
suffers horrifically, accuses God of lacking sufficient commitment to
the moral value of justice. The vast majority of commentators agree
that God does not directly respond to Job's charge. Instead,
speaking out of the whirlwind, He describes His design of the cosmos
and of the animal kingdom in a way clearly intended to emphasize His
power and the grandeur of His creation. Were it not for theological
worries about God's moral perfection, the most natural
interpretation of this part of the story would be either that God
agrees with Job's charge that He is unjust or that God denies
that Job can sensibly apply terms like "just" and
"unjust" to Him because He and Job are not members of any
shared moral community (Morriston forthcoming; for an opposing view,
see Stump 2010: chapter 9). This is why Job's first response to
God's speech (before capitulating in his second response) is
just to refuse to repeat his (unanswered) accusation. On this
interpretation, the creator that confronts Job is not the God he
expected and definitely not the God of omni-theism, but rather a being
much more like the deity of aesthetic deism.
Those who claim that a God might allow evil because it is the
inevitable result of the universe being governed by laws of nature
also lend support, though unintentionally, to the idea that, if there
is an author of nature, then that being is more likely motivated by
aesthetic concerns than moral ones. For example, it may be that
producing a universe governed by a few laws expressible as elegant
mathematical equations is an impressive accomplishment, not just
because of the wisdom and power required for such a task, but also
because of the aesthetic value of such a universe. That value may very
well depend, however, on the creator's choosing not to intervene
regularly in nature to protect His creatures from harm.
Much of the aesthetic value of the animal kingdom may also depend on
its being the result of a long evolutionary process driven by
mechanisms like natural selection. As Darwin (1859) famously said in
the last lines of *On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection*,
>
>
> There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
> having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and
> that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
> law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most
> beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
>
>
>
Unfortunately, such a process, if it is to produce sentient life, may
also entail much suffering and countless early deaths. One
questionable assumption of some natural order theodicists is to think
that such connections between aesthetic goods and suffering provide a
*moral* justification for God's allowing horrific
suffering. It is arguably far more plausible that in such a scenario
the value of preventing horrendous suffering would, from a moral point
of view, far outweigh the value of regularity, sublimity, and
narrative. If so, then a *morally* perfect God would not trade
the former for the latter though a deity motivated primarily by
aesthetic reasons no doubt would.
To summarize, nearly everyone agrees that the world contains both
goods and evils. Pleasure and pain, love and hate, achievement and
failure, flourishing and languishing, and virtue and vice all exist in
great abundance. In spite of that, some see signs of cosmic teleology.
Those who defend the version of the decisive evidence argument stated
above need not deny the teleology. They do need to show that it is far
easier to make sense of the "strange mixture of good and ill,
which appears in life" (Hume *Dialogues*, XI, 14) when
that teleology is interpreted as amoral instead of as moral (cf.
Mulgan 2015 and Murphy 2017) and in particular when it is interpreted
as directed towards aesthetic ends instead of towards moral ends.
## 7. An Argument against Agnosticism
The topic in
section 4
was Le Poidevin's argument for the truth of a modest form of
agnosticism. In this section, an argument for the falsity of a more
ambitious form of agnosticism will be examined. Because the sort of
agnosticism addressed in this section is more ambitious than the sort
defended by Le Poidevin, it is conceivable that both arguments succeed
in establishing their conclusions.
In Le Poidevin's argument, the term "agnosticism"
refers to the position that neither versatile theism nor global
atheism is known to be true. In this section,
"agnosticism" refers to the position that neither the
belief that omni-theism is true nor the belief that it is false is
rationally permissible. This form of agnosticism is more ambitious
because knowledge is stronger (in the logical sense) than rational
permissibility: it can be rationally permissible to believe
propositions that are not known to be true, but a proposition cannot
be known to be true by someone who is not rationally permitted to
believe it. Thus, an appropriate name for this form of agnosticism is
"strong agnosticism".
Another difference concerns the object of the two forms of
agnosticism. The agnosticism in Le Poidevin's argument concerned
versatile theism versus global atheism. In this section, the target is
omni-theism versus the local atheistic position that omni-theism is
false. The previous section focused on two arguments for the
conclusion that this form of local atheism is very probably true. In
this section, the question is whether or not that conclusion, if
established, could ground a successful argument against strong
agnosticism.
Such an argument can be formulated as follows:
* (1)Atheism
(understood here as the denial of omni-theism) is very probably
true.
* (2)If atheism
is very probably true, then atheistic belief is rationally
permissible.
It follows from (1) and (2) that
* (3)Atheistic
belief is rationally permissible.
* (4)If strong
agnosticism (about omni-theism) is true (that is, if withholding
judgment about the truth or falsity of omni-theism is rationally
required), then atheistic belief is not rationally
permissible.
It follows from (3) and (4) that
* (5)Strong
agnosticism (about omni-theism) is false.
Premise (1)
was defended in
section 6,
premise (4) is true by the definition of "strong
agnosticism", and steps
(3)
and
(5)
follow from earlier steps by *modus ponens* and *modus
tollens*, respectively. This leaves premise
(2),
the premise that, if atheism is very probably true, then atheistic
belief is rationally permissible.
One might attempt to defend this premise by claiming that the
probabilities in
premise (2)
are rational credences and hence the truth of the so-called Lockean
thesis (Foley 1992) justifies (2):
>
>
> It is rational for a person *S* to believe a proposition
> *P* if and only if it is rational for *S*'s
> credence in *P* to be sufficiently high to make
> *S*'s attitude towards *P* one of belief.
>
>
>
The Lockean thesis, however, is itself in need of justification.
Fortunately, though, nothing so strong as the Lockean thesis is needed
to defend
premise (2).
For one thing, all the defender of (2) needs is an "if",
not an "if and only if". Also, the defender of (2) need
not equate, as the Lockean thesis does, the attitude of belief with
having a high credence. Thus, all that is required is the following
more modest thesis (call it "*T*"):
* (T) If it is rationally
permissible for *S*'s credence in a proposition
*P* to be (very) high, then it is rationally permissible for
*S* to believe *P*.
Even this more modest thesis, however, is controversial, because
adopting it commits one to the position that rational (i.e.,
rationally permissible) belief is not closed under conjunction. In
other words, it commits one to the position that it is possible for
each of a number of beliefs to be rational even though the additional
belief that those beliefs are all true is not rational.
To see why this is so, imagine that a million lottery tickets have
been sold. Each player purchased only a single ticket, and exactly one
of the players is certain to win. Now imagine further that an informed
observer has a distinct belief about each of the million individual
players that that particular player will lose. According to thesis
*T*, each of those million beliefs is rational. For example, if
Sue is one of the players, then according to *T* the
observer's belief that Sue will lose is rational because it is
rational for the observer to have a (very) high credence in the
proposition that Sue will lose. Since, however, it is certain that
someone will win, it is also rational for the observer to believe that
some player will win. It is not rational, however, to have
contradictory beliefs, so it is not rational for the observer to
believe that no player will win. This implies, however, that rational
belief is not closed under conjunction, for the proposition that no
player will win just is the conjunction of all of the propositions
that say of some individual player that they will lose.
Defenders of
premise (2)
will claim, very plausibly, that the implication of *T* that
rational belief is not closed under conjunction is completely
innocuous. Isn't it obvious, for example, that it would not be
rational for a fallible human being to believe that all of their many
beliefs are true, even if each of those beliefs were rational? Others
(e.g., Oppy 1994: 151), however, regard the conclusion that rational
belief is not closed under conjunction as unacceptable and will for
that reason reject premise (2). So even if it can be shown that
omni-theism is very probably false, it still won't be obvious to
everyone that it is rationally permissible to be a local atheist about
omni-theism and thus it still won't be obvious to everyone that
strong agnosticism about omni-theism is false. |
skepticism-ancient | ## 1. The Central Questions
The core concepts of ancient skepticism are belief, suspension of
judgment, criterion of truth, appearances, and investigation.
Important notions of modern skepticism such as knowledge, certainty,
justified belief, and doubt play no or almost no role. This is not to
say that the ancients would not engage with questions that figure in
today's philosophical discussions. Ancient debates address
questions that today we associate with epistemology and philosophy of
language, as well as with theory of action, rather than specifically
with the contemporary topic of skepticism. They focus on the nature of
belief, the relationship of belief to speech and action, and the
mental states of inquiry (on the role of ancient skepticism throughout
the history of Western philosophy up to today, cf. Lagerlund 2020; on
the relation between ancient skepticism and philosophical debates
today, cf. Machuca and Reed 2018, Vlasits and Vogt 2020, and Machuca
2022).
From the point of view of the ancient skeptics, assertions are
expressions of dogmatism. And yet, the best-known ancient skeptic,
Sextus Empiricus, wrote extensively. Can the skeptics say anything
meaningful about their philosophy without asserting anything about how
things are (Bett 2013, 2019)? Skeptical writings have a peculiar
format, one that comes with its own challenges: the skeptics aim to
describe their philosophy *tout court*, as they practice it,
without laying out any particular theories or doctrines. Skeptical
ideas have been charged with a family of objections: they might be
self-refuting, inconsistent, self-contradictory, and so on (Castagnoli
2010). Another line of objection is associated with Hume, namely that
"nature is always too strong for principle." As Hume puts
it, "a Pyrrhonian cannot expect that his philosophy will have
any constant influence on the mind" (part 2 of section 12,
"Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy," *An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, London, 1748). It is one
thing for skepticism to be coherent. It is another thing for it to be
likely that anyone, no matter how much they rehearse skeptical
arguments in their mind, will succeed in adhering to it (Johnson
2001), as ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers claimed to be able to
do.
Like later epistemologists, the ancient skeptics start from questions
about knowledge. But discussion quickly turns to beliefs (Fine 2000).
The Greek term translated here as belief, *doxa*, can also be
translated as opinion. The root of *doxa* is *dokein*,
seeming. In a belief, something seems so-and-so to someone. But there
is also an element of judgment or acceptance. The relevant verb,
*doxazein*, often means 'to judge that something is
so-and-so.' Hellenistic discussions envisage three attitudes
that cognizers take to impressions (how things seem to them): assent,
rejection, and suspension of judgment (*epoche*).
Suspension is a core element of skepticism: the skeptic suspends
judgment. However, if this means that the skeptic forms no beliefs
whatsoever, then skepticism may be a kind of cognitive suicide.
Arguably, belief-formation is a basic feature of human cognitive
activity. It is not clear whether one can lead an ordinary human life
without belief, or indeed, ancient opponents of the skeptics say,
whether one can even survive. Perhaps even the simplest actions, such
as eating or leaving a room without running into a wall, involve
beliefs (Annas-Barnes 1985, 7; Burnyeat 1980). It is also hard to say
whether someone who succeeded in not forming any beliefs could
communicate with others, whether they could engage in philosophical
investigation, or whether they could even think at all.
The ancient skeptics are well aware of these objections. The most
widely discussed charge is that they cannot act without belief
(Apraxia Charge). In response, the skeptics describe their actions
variously as guided by the plausible, the convincing, or by
appearances. The notion of appearances gains great importance in
Pyrrhonian skepticism, and poses difficult interpretive questions
(Barney 1992). When something appears so-and-so to someone, does this
for the skeptics involve some kind of judgment on their part? Or do
they have in mind a purely phenomenal kind of appearing? The skeptical
proposals (that the skeptic adheres to the plausible, the convincing,
or to appearances) have in common their appeal to something less than
full-fledged belief about how things are, while allowing something
sufficient to generate and guide action.
However, the claim that ancient skepticism is about belief, while
modern skepticism is about knowledge, needs to be qualified. Ancient
skepticism is not alone in being concerned with belief. Descartes
speaks repeatedly of demolishing his opinions (for example,
*Med* 2:12, *AT* 7:18; cf. Broughton, 2002,
33-61). Contemporary epistemology often pays equal attention to
the notions of both belief and knowledge. The distinctive focus
of ancient skepticism on belief becomes clearer once we consider a
third concept that figures centrally in ancient discussions: the criterion
of truth. The skeptics and their opponents discuss how one
recognizes a true impression as true. Are there some evident things
(some kind of impressions), which can be used as standards or
criteria, so that nothing is to be accepted as true if it is not in
agreement with these evident things? The Stoics and Epicureans
formulate theories that conceive of such criteria. The skeptics
respond critically to their proposals. Accordingly, the conception of
a criterion of truth assumes as central a role in ancient debates as
does the notion of knowledge in modern discussions. This debate
includes in-depth analysis of sense perception and its relation to
belief. According to Epicurus, all sense perceptions are true, but
judgments based on these perceptions are true or false (Striker 1977,
Vogt 2017). The Stoics explore differences between sense perception,
illusion, and hallucination (Vasiliou 2019). Their account of the
criterion of truth starts from perceptual impressions that qualify, or
fail to qualify, as cognitive (Shogry 2018). The Stoics propose that
we should accept only cognitive impressions, and accordingly we should
only form beliefs based on a subset of true perceptual
impressions.
Discussion of the criterion of truth arguably also covers some of the
ground that is later discussed in terms of certainty. The Stoics say
that a particular kind of impression is the criterion of truth: the
cognitive impression. Cognitive impressions make it clear through
themselves that they reveal things precisely as they are. This notion
is an ancestor to the later conception of clear and distinct
impressions, and thus, to discussions of certainty.
Consider next the notion of doubt. Doubt is often considered the
hallmark of skepticism. So how can it be that ancient skepticism is
not about doubt (Corti 2010, Vogt 2014a)? Insofar as 'to
doubt' means no more than 'to call into question,'
the ancient skeptics might be described as doubting things. However,
skeptical investigation as Sextus Empiricus describes it does not
involve doubt (I shall focus here on Pyrrhonism; on Cicero's use
of *dubitari*, see Section 3.3). Skeptics find themselves
struck by the discrepancies among impressions. This experience is
described as turmoil (Machuca 2019). They aim to resolve this
disturbance by settling what is true and what is false among them. But
investigation leads them to suspension of judgment, which brings its
own peace of mind (*Outlines of Skepticism* [= *PH*]
1.25-30). Where in this account should we locate doubt? Is the
initial turmoil the ancient skeptic experiences a kind of doubt? Are
the ancient skeptic's investigations a kind of doubting? Should
we describe suspension of judgment as a kind of doubt? All three
stages may resemble doubt, at least insofar as the ancient skeptics
have not settled on answers to the questions they investigate. But all
three stages are also different from doubt as it is conceived in later
epistemology. The ancient skeptics do not describe themselves as
making an active effort at doubting what ordinarily they would
believe, as some philosophers in the Cartesian tradition have it.
Instead the ancient skeptics find themselves in turmoil because of
discrepancies in how things strike them. Moreover, the progression
that ancient skeptics describe differs from the doubt-belief model
that later thinkers tend to employ. The ancient skeptics improve their
psychological condition by moving from turmoil to suspension of
judgment, not by removing doubt. It seems best, then, to refrain from
invoking the modern conception of doubt as at all fundamental in the
reconstruction of ancient Greek skepticism.
Some of the distinctness of ancient skepticism lies in the fact that
it is developed by philosophers who genuinely think of themselves as
skeptics. In later epistemology, skepticism is largely construed from
the outside. In particular, early modern skepticism is, for the most
part, conceived by philosophers who aim to refute it. But ancient
skepticism is explored by skeptics, and that is, by philosophers who
intend their lives to be reflective of their philosophy (Cooper 2012
ch. 5.5-7; Bett 2013b). Socrates raises the challenge that it
might be truly bad (for one's life, for the state of one's
soul, and so on) to base one's actions on unexamined beliefs.
For all one knows, these beliefs could be false, and without
investigation, one does not even aim to rid oneself of false belief,
which is admittedly a bad thing for one's soul. Only an examined
life is worth living (Cooper 2007). Once we take this challenge
seriously, as the ancient skeptics do, we embark on a kind of
investigation that is seen as directly relevant to our lives. Our
beliefs are assumed, at this pre-skeptical phase, to be guiding our
actions. Confidence in unexamined views seems misplaced. Others
regularly disagree with us. In favor of each view, some arguments
can be adduced, some practices invoked, some experiences cited. These
conflicting arguments, practices and experiences need to be examined.
But that just raises further views that are in conflict. As a
consequence, suspension of judgment on every such question looks
rationally mandatory. But it is also rational to persist in
investigation. The skeptic is committed to a search for the truth, on
virtually all questions, even if this search repeatedly and
predictably leads to suspension of judgment (Cooper 2012).
## 2. Skeptical Ideas in Early and Classical Greek Philosophy
### 2.1 Early Greek Philosophy
The early Greek philosophers develop distinctions between reality and
appearances, knowledge and belief, and the non-evident and the
evident. These distinctions form the framework in which skepticism can
be conceived. The idea that truth is seen and knowledge gained from
some perspective outside of the ordinary ways of mortal life, and that
mortals rely on something lesser, be it the hear-say of fame, or
signs, or appearances, runs through much of early Greek thought.
However, few early Greek thinkers seem to have had skeptical or
proto-skeptical inclinations. Xenophanes and Democritus are perhaps
the most prominent apparent exceptions.
Xenophanes famously insists that all conceptions of the gods are
anthropomorphic and culturally contingent (DK 21B14, B15). The
Ethiopians pray to gods who look like Ethiopians, the Thracians to
gods who look like Thracians (B16). If horses and cows had hands, the
horses would draw pictures of gods that look like horses, and the cows
would draw gods as cows (B15). Xenophanes puts forward a number of
theological theses of his own. But he says that no man will know the
clear truth about such matters. He makes a point that has lasting
relevance in discussions of skepticism: even if someone succeeded in
saying something that actually is the case, he himself would not know
this. Thus, all is belief (120: B34) (cf. Sassi 2011 on
interpretations of Xenophanes that influence the history of
skepticism).
Atomism--a theory which thrives in Hellenistic times as the
physical theory of Epicureanism, and is thus an interlocutor of
skepticism--leads into difficult epistemological questions. The
atomist can argue that sense perceptions are explicable as complex
events, initiated by objects each one made up of a lot of atoms
floating in the void, from which atoms proceed and traverse the
intervening space, and affect the senses. It is certain objects, made
up by the atoms proceeding from the objects in question (filmy images)
that we actually perceive. We neither perceive 'real
reality' (atoms and void), nor even macroscopic objects and
their properties (for example, a square tower). Democritus seems to
have argued along these lines (SE *M* 7.135-9; cf. fr. 9,
SE *M* 7.136; Theophrastus, *De Sensibus* 2.60-1,
63-4), and accordingly his atomist view of perception can be
seen as grounding a kind of proto-skepticism.
Democritus' student Metrodorus of Chios says at the beginning of
his book *On Nature* "None of us knows anything, not even
this, whether we know or we do not know; nor do we know what 'to
not know' or 'to know' are, nor on the whole,
whether anything is or is not" (Cicero, *Acad*. 2.73;
trans. Lee (2010) = DK 70B1; SE *M* 7.48, 87-8; Eusebius,
*Praep. evang.* 14.19.9). This formulation reflects awareness
of the fact that a simpler statement than the one reported in Cicero,
such as "there is no knowledge," can be turned against
itself. In particular, Metrodorus recognizes the role that
understanding concepts plays in any such statement. Does its proponent
know something, merely by virtue of understanding what the terms she
uses in her philosophizing refer to? Sextus presents Metrodorus'
pronouncement as related to an enigmatic idea that he ascribes to two
other philosophers, the Democritean Anaxarchus of Abdera and the Cynic
Monismus (SE M 7.87-88). Both are said to have likened existing
things to a stage-painting. This comparison, which Burnyeat captures
in the catch-phrase "all the world's a
stage-painting," is open to a range of interpretations (Burnyeat
2017). For Monismus, Burnyeat argues, it is likely to have had a
moralistic upshot, along the lines of "all is vanity." In
Democritean philosophy, and insofar as later skepticism recalls the
saying, it is bound to be a proposal in epistemology (or possibly
epistemology and metaphysics).
The 5th century sophists develop forms of debate which are
ancestors of skeptical argumentation (Bett 2020b). They take pride in
arguing in a persuasive fashion for both sides of an issue and
in developing an agonistic art of refuting any claim put forward.
Further, the sophists are interested in the contrast between nature
and convention. The formative roles of custom and law were discussed
by some of the earliest Greek authors (consider Pindar's
"law is king" and its many interpretations, for example in
Herodotus). The sophists explore the idea that, if things are
different for different cultures, there may be no fact of the matter
of how those things really are. The skeptics engage with both legs of
the distinction between nature and convention. Pyrrhonian skepticism
employs an argument to the effect that, if something is by nature
*F*, it is *F* for everyone (affects everyone as
*F*) (see sections 4.2 and 4.4). Pyrrhonism further associates
convention with appearances, so that the sceptic, by adhering to
appearances, can lead an ordinary life (see section 4). However, the
contrast between nature and convention does not figure importantly in
ancient skepticism, and there is no skeptical school that would
confine itself to 'moral' skepticism, or skepticism about
values.
Sextus Empiricus, whose writings provide the most detailed extant
account of Pyrrhonian skepticism, emphasizes how strongly the skeptics
depart from all other philosophers. As he presents it, the
Pre-Socratics who put forward some of the views cited above are what
he calls dogmatists. They make claims about nature, reality,
knowability, and so on. The second-most detailed extant account of
Pyrrhonian skepticism is offered by Diogenes Laertius, in his
*Lives of Eminent Philosophers* 9.61-116. It contains a
large number of references to early Greek poets and Pre-Socratic
philosophers, suggesting that these early thinkers formulate ideas
that are similar to skeptic ideas (SSSS61-73). It is
controversial whether the skeptics Diogenes has in mind claim this
ancestry. Alternatively, other philosophers may have charged the
skeptics with sharing ideas with non-skeptical thinkers, thereby
departing from their non-dogmatic approach (Warren 2015). Either way,
two observations seem relevant. Contrary to a classic assessment of
Diogenes' report by Jonathan Barnes (1992), the sections of text
in which connections are made between early Greek thought and
skepticism may be worth exploring. Moreover, scholars may have paid
too little attention to skepticism's ancestry in poetry (Clayman
2009). Pyrrho seems to have referred to Homer as a proponent of ideas
he approves of, ideas about change, the status of human rationality
and language, and more.
### 2.2 Plato
The Socrates of Plato's *Apology* tries to solve a
puzzle. The Delphic oracle says that no one is wiser than Socrates.
But Socrates does not think himself wise. He calls into question the
truth of neither the oracle's pronouncements nor his
self-perception. Accordingly, he must figure out how both are
consistent with each other. In order to do so, Socrates talks to
various groups of experts in Athens: politicians, poets, and
craftsmen. As it turns out, all of them think that they know something
about great and important things, but in fact, it seems clear to
Socrates, they do not. When asked they cannot provide reasons for
believing the things they claim to know that are rationally
satisfactory. Socrates knows that he does not know about these most
important matters (*megista*; 22d); his interlocutors, it
appears, do not know that they lack this knowledge. In this respect,
Socrates is wiser than everyone else who has any general reputation
for wisdom. In the course of recounting his conversations with others,
Socrates says something enigmatic: "About myself I knew that I
know nothing" (22d; cf. Fine 2008). Some readers (ancient and
modern) take Socrates to profess that he knows nothing. But the
context of the dialogue allows us to read his pronouncement as
unproblematical. Socrates knows that he does not know about important
things. He advocates the importance of critically examining
one's own and others' views on important matters,
precisely because one does not know about them (Vogt 2012a, ch. 1).
Such examination is the only way to find out.
Socrates' commitment to reason--examination as the way to
find out--inspires the skepticism of the Hellenistic Academy
(Cooper 2004b, Vogt 2013). One is bound to lead one's life based
on one's beliefs, he assumes. Therefore, one ought to examine
one's beliefs, and abandon those that one finds to be false. One
ought to do so because otherwise one might lead a bad life.
Socrates' questioning is rooted in a concern with the good life.
Insofar as it is, one might think that the Socratic roots of ancient
skepticism lead one toward a kind of limited, wholly moral skepticism.
However, Socrates' examinations are not confined to value
questions. While ethical questions may be the starting-point, they
immediately lead to questions about the soul, the gods, knowledge, and
so on. For Socrates and his Hellenistic followers, value questions
cannot be insulated from questions of psychology, physics, and
epistemology.
Another strand of skeptical thought begins with questions about the
nature of philosophical investigation. In the *Meno*, Plato
formulates a famous puzzle. How is investigation possible? We cannot
investigate either what we know or what we do not know. In the former
case, there is no need to investigate, and besides, if we really do
know we already have in mind everything that investigation could
reveal to us about the matter. In the latter case, we would not know
what to look for, and we would not recognize it if we found it
(80d-86c). So there is no room for investigating anything. Socrates
calls this an eristic argument, thus drawing attention to the fact
that this is a puzzle that sophists have put forward (cf.
Plato's *Euthydemus*).
Plato's solutions to this puzzle are difficult to assess (Fine
2014). Learning is recollection, says one proposal (this is the one
that Socrates himself immediately offers). We already know, but only
in some implicit way, what it takes investigation to come to know
explicitly. This is the famous Anamnesis theory (81a-d). If we give up
on investigation, we shall be lazy people, says another argument
(81d-e). A third solution of the puzzle arguably says that one of its
premises is false. It is not the case that, for everything, we either
know it or are entirely ignorant of it. Rather, there is a third
state, namely belief (83a-86a). Investigation can begin from
beliefs.
The *Meno* explores a mix of these solutions. Plato develops
what he calls a hypothetical method (86c-100b). That is, the
interlocutors in some sense begin from their beliefs (for example,
"virtue is good"). But they do not endorse them. They set
them up as hypotheses, and employ these hypotheses in investigation
(on the relationship between Pyrrhonian skepticism and Plato's
and Aristotle's notions of hypothesis, cf. Corti 2011). A
spurious dialogue, the *Sisyphus*, discusses a similar puzzle,
though with respect to deliberation. Deliberation either involves
knowledge or is mere guesswork; either way, deliberation is
impossible. Here, too, we may ask whether the distinction between
knowing and not knowing is exhaustive, or whether attention to belief
changes the picture (Fine 2021, ch. 8).
Plato discusses and re-formulates several of the metaphysical
considerations that back up proto-skeptical and early skeptical
intuitions. The relevant passages are spread out over a number of
dialogues, among which passages in the *Phaedo*,
*Republic*, *Theaetetus* and *Timaeus* are
perhaps most important. In these dialogues, Plato develops some of his
own metaphysical ideas. He also engages critically with metaphysical
theories that he does not ultimately adopt. However, in order to
explore these theories he formulates them in detail, often invoking a
Pre-Socratic ancestor as a proponent of a given idea. These
discussions are a great source of inspiration for Pyrrhonian skeptics,
who are interested in what may be called a metaphysics of
indeterminacy (Bett 2000, Vogt 2021).
In contrasting the Forms with the perceptible realm, Plato discusses
properties. For example, for all sensible items, *A* is tall
relative to some *B* and short relative to some *C*.
There is no such thing as anything's being tall
*simpliciter*. When we call something tall, we measure it
against something else, look at it from a particular perspective, and
so on. As we might say, "tall" and "short"
are relative predicates. But perhaps many more, or indeed all,
predicates work that way, even where this is less obvious.
Plato's arguments lead to the question of whether it is
conceivable that all our predications are, in this particular sense,
relative. If this were the case, it might quite fundamentally upset
our conception of the world as furnished with objects that have
properties. Such considerations lead to another idea about properties
in the perceptual realm. If a fence is low and high, a cloud is bright
and dark, a vase beautiful and ugly, and so on, then it seems that,
perhaps quite generally, perceptual things are *F* and
not-*F*. Only the Form of *F* is *F* (for
example, only the Beautiful is beautiful). While the relevant passages
are difficult to interpret, it is clear enough which line of thought
comes to influence later skeptics. The skeptics engage with the idea
that, if something appears to be *F* and not-*F*, it is
not really (or: by nature) either *F* or not-*F*.
In the *Timaeus*, Plato argues that an account of the natural
world can only be 'likely': it is an *eikos
logos*. Most generally speaking, the idea here is that certain
explananda are such that theorizing about them can do no more than
mirror their, comparatively speaking deficient, nature. This idea has
ancestors in Xenophanes and Parmenides, and it plays a crucial role in
the *Timaeus* (Bryan 2012). Academic skeptics employ various
notions of the plausible and the convincing, thus developing further
this tradition, albeit no longer with the assumption that different
domains require different kinds of theorizing.
In the *Theaetetus*, Plato explores the kind of cultural
relativism that is associated with some sophists. In his examination
relativism is extended to a general theory, not restricted to the
domain of values. Socrates (as main speaker of the dialogue) ascribes
relativism to Protagoras, who is famous for saying that "man is
the measure." Socrates reformulates this claim as follows: what
appears to *A* is true for *A*, and what appears to
*B* is true for *B*. On this premise, Socrates argues,
there is no rational way to prefer our perceptions while awake to our
perceptions while asleep, or similarly, to prefer sober to intoxicated
or deranged perceptions. In each state, our perceptions are true for
us. Socrates analyzes relativism in several steps, pointing to ever
more radical implications. Along the way, he envisages a moderate
metaphysics of flux, where objects do not have stable properties. But
eventually he points out that relativism is committed to an even
starker revisionist metaphysics, radical flux. For it to be possible
that what seems to *A* is true for *A*, and what seems
to *B* is true for *B*, there cannot be a stable world
that *A* and *B* both refer to. Rather,
"everything is motion" (*Tht.* 179c-184b). The
skeptics employ versions of some of the arguments in the
*Theaetetus*, without, however, arriving at relativist
conclusions. Schematically speaking, the relativist says that,
if *X* is *F* for *A* and *F*\*
for *B*, then *X* is *F*-for-*A* and
*F*\*-for-*B*. Pyrrhonian skepticism of the variant found
in Sextus reacts by continued investigation into whether *X* is
*F* or *F*\* (or both or neither).
### 2.3 Aristotle
Aristotle engages, at several points in his works, with the
*Meno* Problem. For example, Aristotle points out that, for
successful investigation to proceed, one first needs a well-formulated
question. One needs to know the knot in order to untie it. In order to
know what to look for and recognize it when one finds it, one needs to
first think one's way through the difficulties involved, and
thereby formulate a question. If one does, then one shall be able to
recognize the solution once one hits upon it (*Met.* 3.1,
995a24-b4). These ideas are highly relevant to Hellenistic
discussions. The skeptic is an investigator, and one anti-skeptical
charge says that, if indeed a skeptic knew nothing, they could not
even formulate the questions they investigate. Interpreters have
emphasized a contrast between Aristotle and the skeptics. For
Aristotle, formulating puzzles and thinking one's way through
them puts one in a better position, such that one gets clear about how
matters are. This may be different for the skeptics: engagement with
different angles of philosophical problems leads them to suspension of
judgment (Long 2006, Code 2010). Other scholars argue that the
skeptics' way of thinking through puzzles improves their
cognitive condition even though they do not settle for an answer to a
given question (Vogt 2012a, ch. 5). Also, scholars point to modes of
thinking in Plato and Aristotle that are not primarily concerned with
results. In contemplation, a cognizer may think again and again
through the same kinds of matters, and yet doing so presumably
improves their cognitive condition (Olfert 2014).
In *Posterior Analytics* I.1, Aristotle says that all teaching
and learning comes about through things we already know. When we
phrase questions, we already have 'That-Knowledge' and
'What-Knowledge.' For example, when we ask questions about
triangles, we need to know that there are triangles (otherwise we
would not have questions about their properties). We also need to have
a notion of what triangles are (we draw a triangle, not a square, when
we phrase a question about its properties). Another way in which
Aristotle addresses the *Meno* Problem conceives of particular
perceptions as the starting-points of investigation. Complex cognitive
activities arise from simpler ones. Many particular perceptions lead
to memory, to experience, and eventually to expert understanding
(*Met.* 1.1, *An. Post.* II.19). With the
generalizations of memory, experience, and expertise comes the ability
to investigate. With respect to skepticism, the important point here
is that the starting-points of investigation are not themselves in
need of justification.
Like Plato, Aristotle engages with the Protagorean claim that, as
Aristotle puts it, all seemings (*dokounta*) and appearances
(*phainomena*) are true (*Met* 4.5). If this were so,
Aristotle says, everything would have to be true and false at the same
time. Aristotle argues that earlier thinkers arrived at such views
because they identified being solely with the perceptual (4.5,
1010a1-3). Caught up in this assumption, they did not see who or
what was going to judge between conflicting sense perceptions. For
example, it seemed unsatisfactory to dismiss the views of sick and mad
people simply on the grounds that they are in the minority, thereby
considering as true what appears to the greater number of people.
Similarly, Aristotle reports that these earlier thinkers looked at the
ways in which things appear differently to different kinds of living
beings, and to one person at different times (4.5,
1099b1-11).
In *Metaphysics* 4.4, Aristotle notes that some people consider
it possible for the same thing to be and not to be, and for someone to
believe so (he refers to a range of positions, all of which in some
way are related to denial of the Principle of Non-Contradiction; see
Castagnoli 2010, I.5.4). Against this, Aristotle says it is the
firmest of principles that things cannot be and not be at the same
time. To deny this shows a lack of training. With adequate training,
one recognizes for which things proof should be sought, and for which
it ought not to be sought (see also *An. Post.* I.3). It is
impossible that there be demonstration for everything. Otherwise
demonstration would go on *ad infinitum*. Scholars often refer
to this point when discussing the skeptical modes of argument. The
skeptics might be guilty of what, from Aristotle's perspective,
would be a mistake of exactly this kind (on this theme in later
Aristotelian logic, cf. Malink 2020).
Aristotle continues in a way that is highly relevant to discussions of
skeptical language and action. A person who wishes to deny that things
cannot be and not be at the same time has two options. Either they say
nothing, or they talk to us. In the first case, there is no need for
us to refute them. This person is like a plant--they do not talk.
In the second case, either their utterance signifies something, or it
signifies nothing. If it signifies something, then they say that
something is so-and-so (which Aristotle takes to be self-defeating for
them). If it signifies nothing, then it does not qualify as speech.
Even though they make an utterance, the person is in effect not
speaking with us (or to themselves). Aristotle also explains the
plant-metaphor in terms of action (1008b10-30). A person who believes
nothing is like a plant because they cannot act. Pursuit and avoidance
testify to the fact that people have beliefs. (On Aristotle and
skepticism, see the papers collected in Irwin 1995.)
## 3. Academic Skepticism
### 3.1 Arcesilaus
With Arcesilaus (316/5-241/0 BCE) and his role as leader of the
Academy (266/268 BCE), Plato's Academy turns skeptical.
Arcesilaus does not refer to himself as a skeptic--this
nomenclature is a later designation. However, Arcesilaus stands at the
beginning of a re-orientation in the history of Platonically inspired
philosophy. He rediscovers Socrates the examiner, arguably based on
his reading of Plato's dialogues (Thorsrud 2018).
Socrates' commitment to investigation, to the testing and
exploring of one's own and others' beliefs, and his
passion for weeding out falsehoods, are the starting-points of his
Academic skepticism (Cicero, *Acad.* 2.74, 1.46). Throughout
the history of this skeptical school, these traits, and the
corresponding commitment to a life guided by reason, remain alive
(Cooper 2004b, Vogt 2013). When, as we shall see below, Arcesilaus
defends a skeptical life without belief, this is because, as he
thinks, reason itself, if properly and faithfully followed, leads us
to live that way. To Arcesilaus, the skeptical life is a life lived
following reason, a life based *on* reason--just as the
competing Stoic and Epicurean lives are alleged by their proponents to
be. Arcesilaus engages with the epistemologies of these contemporaries
of his. In particular, the Academics call into question that there is
a criterion of truth, as both Epicureans and Stoics, beginning in the
generation before Arcesilaus, claim there is. One interpretive
question that concerns Arcesilaus, but also later Academic skeptics,
is especially vexed. According to Seneca (*Letter* 88,
44), the Academics paradoxically claim to know that nothing can be
known. Scholars disagree on how this and similar reports fit together
with the picture of Academic skeptics as open-minded inquirers (Allen
2017). According to Sextus Empiricus, the Academics skeptics say that
everything is inapprehensible (PH 1.226, cf. PH 1.3). Is
"everything is inapprehensible" the single thing that can
be apprehended? Does so-called "non-apprehension"
(*akatalepsia*) amount to the general claim that there is
no knowledge? Alternatively, the Academics may dialectically
appeal to the Stoic notion of *katalepsis*, and argue
merely that the Stoic notion of apprehension is not compelling (Allen
2022).
Like Socrates, Arcesilaus did not write anything. His views must be
unearthed from Sextus' comparisons between Pyrrhonian and
Academic skepticism, from Cicero's discussions in the
*Academica*, and from a range of shorter (and sometimes
hostile) reports. Major themes in Arcesilaus' philosophy are (i)
his dialectical method, (ii) discussion of whether there is a
criterion of truth, and (iii) his defense of the skeptic's
ability to act.
(i) Method. Arcesilaus embraces what scholars call a dialectical
method (Couissin 1929 [1983], Perin 2013, Thorsrud 2018). This method
is inspired by Socrates. It proceeds by asking one's real or
imaginary interlocutor what they think about a given question, then
plunging into an examination of their views, employing their premises.
Can they explain their position without running into inconsistencies,
and without having to accept implications that they want to resist? As
a consequence of this method, it sometimes appears as if a skeptic,
while examining someone's view and its consequences, makes a
positive claim: "so, such-and-such is not so-and-so."
However, within a dialectical exchange, this should be read as
"according to *your* premises, such-and-such
follows." This method remains a key ingredient of Greek
skepticism. While the different skeptical schools develop variants of
the dialectical method, skeptical argument is often characterized by
the fact that skeptics think of themselves as engaging with
"dogmatic" interlocutors. In the skeptical tradition, as
articulated for example by Sextus Empiricus (see section 4.4.),
"dogmatists" are philosophers who put forward, and defend,
positive answers to philosophical questions about reality, knowledge,
ethical values, etc. They need not do so dogmatically or rigidly or
without consideration of alternatives in order to count, in skeptical
terms, as "dogmatists."
(ii) The Criterion of Truth. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, and
roughly 20-30 years Arcesilaus' senior, was for a time a
student at the Academy. He was still in the Academy when he formulated
key Stoic doctrines. Like Arcesilaus, he claims Socratic ancestry.
Zeno is inspired by some of the same ideas that inspire the skeptics.
In particular, he engages with the Socratic idea that knowledge is
integral to virtue. Contrary to Arcesilaus, Zeno aims to give accounts
of knowledge and virtue, and holds them up as ideals that human nature
permits us to achieve. For him, knowledge is very difficult to attain,
but ultimately within the reach of human beings. From the point of
view of Arcesilaus, Zeno's claim to Socratic heritage is almost
offensive: Zeno seems to be too optimistic about our cognitive powers
to be following Socrates (Frede 1983). Scholars have traditionally
envisaged an exchange of arguments between Zeno and Arcesilaus, where
each modified his views in the light of the other's criticism.
However, Zeno most likely formulated his views between 300-275,
and Arcesilaus argued against him c. 275 to 240, when Zeno (who died
c. 263) was probably already retired (Brittain 2006, xiii; Alesse
2000, 115 f.; Long 2006, ch. 5).
The core of the dispute between Arcesilaus and the early Stoics
concerns the question of whether there is a criterion of truth. The
notion of a criterion is introduced into Hellenistic discussions by
Epicurus, who speaks about the *kanon* (literally
measuring stick) and *kriterion*. For Epicurus, a
criterion is that evident thing, viz., the content of a
sense-perception, against which claims about the non-evident are
tested. For example, physics advances claims about non-evident things,
such as atoms and void. These are not accessible to the senses, and
accordingly, do not count as evident. Perception rules out various
physical theories. For example, a physical or metaphysical theory
according to which there is no movement can be dismissed because it is
in disagreement with the evident.
Zeno argues that a certain kind of impression--namely a cognitive
impression (*phantasia*
*kataleptike*)--is the criterion of truth (cf.
Shogry 2018). Zeno's conception of cognition
(*katalepsis*, literally grasping, apprehension), and the
related notion of a cognitive impression, aim to solve an
epistemological problem. Belief-formation aims at the truth; there is
a norm inherent in the practice of believing that one should only
believe truths. It is not transparent to us, however, which of our
beliefs, or claims to the effect that such-and-such is true, are
successful in their aim and hit the truth. Zeno argues that some
impressions are cognitive. A number of Stoic definitions of the
cognitive impression, formulated by Zeno and his successors, are
transmitted. Scholars approach them in at least three ways. First,
some scholars consider one of the Stoic definitions (SE M 7.247-52) as
canonical (Nawar 2014, Shogry 2018). Two, scholars at times examine
specific exchanges between Stoics and skeptics in the assumption that
some clauses in Stoic definitions respond to skeptic objections (for
example, Nawar 2017). Three, scholars have also pointed out that, here
as elsewhere, the Stoics offer a multitude of definitions, without
privileging one of them as "the" definition; different
definitions may speak to different dialectical contexts or theoretical
foci (Vogt 2022).
With some simplification, a cognitive impression reveals its content
and that it is kataleptic (cf. Cicero, *Academica*
2.77-8). For example, when I look at my computer screen
while typing this, I may very well have a cognitive impression that
this is my computer screen. When I look up and out of the window, I
have an impression of a friend walking across campus that is probably
non-cognitive. This impression might be true. But since I see her from
such a distance, it is pretty surely not cognitive. That is, not all
true impressions are cognitive, but all cognitive impressions are
true. We should only assent to cognitive impressions, and so in
forming our beliefs, hold only those certified beliefs (cf. Brittain
2014 on the Stoic view that assent to cognitive impressions is not
compelled).
Arcesilaus calls into question whether there are impressions of this
kind. His main point seems to be that there could be an impression
that is phenomenologically indistinguishable from cognitive
impressions, but nevertheless misrepresents the matters it gives an
impression about. To use an example that may derive from Carneades
(see section 3.2), there is no impression of a given egg such that no
impression of any other egg could be phenomenologically
indistinguishable from it (Shogry 2018 and 2021, Machek and Veres
forthcoming). Assuming that some clauses in Stoic definitions respond
to specific skeptic challenges, the following clause, added to a
shorter definition, appears to speak to these cases: "and
of such a kind as *could* not arise from what is not"
(Long and Sedley (1987) [= LS] 40; DL 7.46, 54; Cicero *Acad*.
1.40-1, 2.77-8; SE *M* 7.247-52). Absent a
criterion of truth, Arcesilaus' skeptic suspends judgment about
everything (*PH* 1.232). Reason itself, Arcesilaus thinks,
demands such suspension.
(iii) Action. If skeptics suspend judgment, argues their dogmatic
opponent, they are not able to act. Stoic philosophy conceives of
three movements of the mind: impression, assent, and impulse
(Plutarch, *Col.* 1122a-d). All three figure in action. The
agent assents to the impression that *A* is to be done; their
assent is an impulse for the action *A*; if there is no
external impediment, the impulse sets off the action (Inwood 1985). It
is a cornerstone of Stoic philosophy that there can be no action
without assent, and so without the belief that the action done is
*to be* done. The Stoics aim to avoid the kind of determinism
according to which actions are not 'up to' the agent
(Bobzien 1998); for them, assent, but not impression, is up to the
agent. In response to the Apraxia Charge, Arcesilaus seems to have
argued that the skeptic can act without having assented (Plutarch,
*Col.* 1122A-d), and so without believing that the action done
is *to be* done. However, this is not his complete response.
From the point of view of the Stoics, skeptical action, if performed
without the relevant kind of assent (that is, assent that it is up to
the agent to give, and that is a rational acceptance of the
impression), is like the action of a non-rational animal, or like the
automatic movement of plants when they grow and flourish. Arcesilaus
is robbing people of their minds (Cicero *Acad.* 2.37-9;
Obdrzalek 2013). But Arcesilaus need not and does not go so far as to
compare human agents with non-rational agents. As human beings,
skeptics have rational impressions. They perceive the world
conceptually, and think about it. Arcesilaus does not suggest that
skeptical action is causally set off by impressions, or in the way,
whatever that is, that animal actions are set off. This would be a
problematic proposal, for it would disregard that the skeptic has a
human mind. Given the complexity of human thought, the skeptic is
likely to have several, and often competing impressions. If all
impressions triggered impulses, the skeptic would be inactive due to a
kind of paralysis. The second component of Arcesilaus' reply,
thus, is that the skeptic, in acting without assenting, adheres to the
reasonable (*eulogon*) (SE *M* 7.158; 7.150; Striker
2010). That is, Arcesilaus aims to explain skeptic action as rational
agency (Cooper 2004b). Arcesilaus disputes the dogmatic claim that
some impressions can be identified as true, and the related claim that
one can only act on the *belief* that some impression is true.
But he does not argue that there are no differences between
impressions which agents could take into account. His agents are
rational: they think about their options, and go with what looks, in
one way or another, more plausible.
Arcesilaus defends skeptical action also against Epicurean critics
(Plutarch, *Col.* 1122A-d), again by showing on the basis of
the Epicureans' own premises that skeptical action is possible.
Can the sceptic explain why, when leaving a room, they go through the
door rather than running into the wall? Arcesilaus seems to have
exploited the Epicurean view that, while all sense-perception is true,
belief can introduce falsehood. Like the Epicurean, the skeptic can
keep apart the perception and a view formed on its basis. By not
assenting to the perception, thus adding belief ("here is the
door"), the skeptic guards against the source of falsehood,
namely belief. But a skeptic has perception of the door available to
them, which is enough for not running into walls.
### 3.2 Carneades
Like Arcesilaus, Carneades (214-129/8 BCE) refrains from writing
and philosophizes in a Socratic spirit. Carneades led an embassy of
three philosophers from Athens to Rome in 156/5 BCE. Aside from his
official role, he is said to have given two speeches, arguing for
justice one day and against justice the next. Whether or not this is
historically correct (Powell 2013), the traditional take on
Carneades' speeches is not that he aims to overthrow justice.
Instead, the upshot is taken to be that he wants to show that the
supporters of justice--including Plato and Aristotle--do not
have the successful arguments they think they have to show what
justice is and what it requires (Lactantius, *Epitome* 55.8, LS
68M). Like Arcesilaus, Carneades (i) engages with Stoic epistemology.
His account of skeptical action includes (ii) a detailed proposal
regarding the criterion. As part of his less radical skepticism,
Carneades seems (iii) to allow for a certain kind of assent, and
perhaps for belief.
(i) The Stoic-Academic Debate. Chrysippus, the third major Stoic
(after Zeno and Cleanthes), and his student Diogenes of Babylon,
revise Zeno's epistemology, defending it against
Arcesilaus' arguments (Brittain 2006, xiii). In response to
their arguments, Carneades continues the exchange with the Stoics that
Arcesilaus began (SE *M* 7.402-10). His first move
addresses the link between mental states and action. People in states
of madness, he argues, act just as easily and naturally on their
impressions as other people, even those who act on cognitive
impressions (if there are any). From the point of view of exhibited
behavior, there does not seem to be a difference: any and all
impressions, even those the Stoics think clearly arise from something
that is not, are in all respects relevant to action completely on a
par. Cognitive impressions, if there are any, have no superiority.
In a second argument, Carneades points to objects that are similar to
one another: can the wise person discern any two eggs, two grains of
sand, and so on? The Stoics have multiple replies. It is conceivable
that, in some contexts of action, the wise person assents to what is
reasonable (*eulogon*) (DL 1.177), without having a cognitive
impression of how things are. Or, if faced with the task to identify
grains of sand while lacking a cognitive impression, the wise person
can suspend judgment. However, the wise will train themselves so as to
be able to perceive minute differences (Cicero, *Acad*. 2.57),
where it might be important to do so. This point is backed up by Stoic
physics: no two items in the universe are identical, and their
differences are in principle perceptible (Sedley 1982, 2002).
Carneades replies that even if no two things were exactly alike
(consistent with his general line of argument, he does not take a
stance on such questions), a very close similarity could appear to
exist for all perceivers (Cicero, *Acad*. 2.83-5); that
is, the impressions of two items, though in fact these items might
differ from each other, could be indistinguishable (Nawar 2017, Shogry
2018 and 2021). Discussion continues with a move on the part of the
Stoics: they add to their definition of the cognitive impression
"one that has no impediment." Sometimes an impression
is--as it were, by itself--cognitive, but is unconvincing
due to external circumstances (SE *M* 7.253). It is a difficult
question whether this addition harms the Stoics more than it helps
them. If the initial conception of a cognitive impression hangs on the
idea that something about its phenomenological nature, or something
internal to the impression, marks it as cognitive, the Stoics give up
on a crucial assumption if they grant that sometimes there are
"impediments." If, however, cognitive impressions are
differentiated by a causal feature (the way they are caused by the
'imprinter' which causes the 'imprint'), the
further addition might help (Frede 1983, Nawar 2014), since the
impediment might need to be removed before the causal connection could
be confirmed (Hankinson 2003).
(ii) Carneades' Criterion. Even though Carneades further pursues
a discussion begun by Arcesilaus, he does not simply continue within
the framework of Arcesilaus' skepticism. The distinctiveness of
his position is best seen in the context of his criterion: the
persuasive (*pithanon*). The notion of the persuasive can be
understood in two distinctively different ways. Persuasiveness might
be a causal feature, so that a persuasive impression sets off a
physiological process of being moved in a certain way. But there may
also be a rational kind of persuasiveness. Carneades construes
persuasiveness in rational terms. For him, the persuasive is the
convincing, or perhaps even the plausible.
Carneades develops a three-stage criterion: (1) In matters of
importance, skeptics adhere to the persuasive. (2) In matters of
greater importance, they adhere to the persuasive and undiverted. A
persuasive impression is undiverted if there is no tension between it
and its surrounding impressions. (3) In matters that contribute to
happiness, skeptics adhere to persuasive, undiverted, and thoroughly
explored impressions. A persuasive impression is undiverted and
thoroughly explored when it and the surrounding impressions are
closely examined without its persuasiveness being diminished (SE
*M* 7.166-84). Consider an example. A skeptic looks in a
dark room for a rope. Before they pick up what appears to them to be a
rope, they look closely and poke it with a stick. Coiled objects can
be ropes, but they can also be snakes. The persuasive impression that
this is a rope must be examined before the skeptic adheres to it
(*M* 7.187).
The three-stage criterion is put forward in the context of action.
However, Sextus describes Carneades' criterion as a criterion of
truth, not a criterion of action (*M* 7.173). Carneades might
take himself to offer more than a practical criterion. His discussions
of the persuasive come close to a general epistemological theory
(Couissin 1929 [1983], Striker 1980, Bett 1989 and 1990, Allen 1994
and 2004 [2006], Brittain 2001). Cicero renders the Greek
*pithanon* as *probabile* (and sometimes as *veri
simile*), which modern editors sometimes translate in terms of
what is probable or likely to be true. Some scholars think that
Carneades is an early thinker about likelihoods, and argue that he
develops a fallibilist epistemology (Obdrzalek 2004).
(iii) Assent and Belief. Does adherence to persuasive impressions
involve belief? Carneades coins a term for the kind of adherence he
has been describing: approval (Cicero, *Acad.* 2.99). He
distinguishes it from assent in the sense of Stoic and other dogmatic
theories, which establishes a belief that something is in actual fact
true; but he nevertheless describes it as a kind of assent (Cicero,
*Acad*. 2.104). Carneades' disciples disagree on whether
approval is any kind of genuine assent. That is, they disagree on
whether, in approval, one forms a belief. Philo and Metrodorus think
that Carneades allows for some kind of belief, close to or identical
with belief as the Stoics understand it. Clitomachus disagrees, and
Cicero follows Clitomachus (*Acad.* 2.78, see also 2.59, 2.67).
Scholars continue to debate these issues (Allen 2022), and the basic
problem remains unchanged. It is not clear whether there is a
plausible notion of belief according to which belief falls short of
'holding to be true' (or according to which, though some
kind of 'holding true' is involved, the relevant
affirmation-as-true is weaker than in beliefs as Stoics and other
dogmatist epistemologists conceive of them). In any event,
affirmations as true, at least of the full and flat-out ("in
actual fact") sort the Stoics think of, are precisely what the
skeptic does not make.
Another approach to Carneades' stance toward belief is to ask
whether he might invoke Platonic considerations. Consider that
Socrates, when asked in the *Republic* what he thinks the good
is, refuses to reply because he thinks beliefs without knowledge are
shameful (*Rp.* 506c). In response to this, his interlocutors
point out that there is a difference between putting forward
one's beliefs as if one knew them to be true, and putting them
forward with the proviso that they are merely beliefs (Vogt 2012a, ch.
2). The shamefulness of mere belief might disappear through this
proviso. A passage in Cicero's *Academica* suggests that
Carneades invokes this thought. According to Carneades, the wise
person can hold beliefs if they fully understand them to be beliefs
(2.148). Along similar lines, it has been suggested that Carneades
might conceive of a hypothetical mode of believing (Striker 1980
[1996, 112]), perhaps engaging with a move in Plato's
*Meno*. Investigation cannot get off the ground if we do not,
in some sense, begin with our beliefs about the matter under
investigation. But how can we do so without endorsing our beliefs, not
knowing whether our views are true? Plato's answer at this point
is: by hypothesizing our beliefs. Today we would insist that
hypotheses are not beliefs. However, it is conceivable that Carneades
argued along these lines, and that the details of his vocabulary got
lost or confused in doxography.
### 3.3 Later Academic Skepticism
Carneades was an enigma to his students and immediate successors.
Clitomachus (head of the Academy from 127 to 110 BCE) seems to have
attempted the impossible: to adhere closely to Carneades'
philosophy, even though he never understood what Carneades truly meant
(Levy 2010). The cornerstone of his adherence lies in the view that
Carneades argues for suspension of judgment and against beliefs
understood as Stoics understand them. Philo of Larissa, another
student of Carneades, interprets his teacher as allowing for tentative
beliefs in the skeptic's life. With Philo, the skeptical era of
Plato's Academy comes to an end. Philo's philosophy seems
to divide into two phases. In Athens, and as head of the Academy, he
stays relatively close to Carneades. Moving to Rome later in his
career, he develops a markedly different position. He argues only
narrowly against the Stoic criterion and their conception of
cognition. One can apprehend things and so come to *know*
them--one just cannot apprehend them in the way in which the
Stoics construe cognition (*PH* 1.235). The fact that there is
no apprehension in the sense of the Stoics does not mean that there is
no knowledge (*Acad*. 2.14). This move shifts the discussion in
several important ways. First, Philo can be interpreted as a kind of
externalist: one can know something without knowing that one knows it.
Absent Stoic cognitive impressions, we are not able to identify which
instances of 'holding-true' qualify as knowledge; but we
nevertheless have some knowledge (Hankinson 2010). Second, this
proposal is a step toward modern skepticism, which is not concerned
with criteria of truth, but with knowledge.
Cicero's skeptical philosophy in his own philosophical writings
is again distinctively different. In line with his notions of what is
probable (*probabile*) or likely to be true (*veri
simile*), Cicero often examines a range of philosophical
positions, aiming to find out which of them is most rationally
defensible. He thinks it is better for us to adopt a view that is
likely to be true, rather than remain unconvinced by either side
(Thorsrud 2009, 84-101). Cicero is of the greatest importance
for the transition between ancient and early modern skepticism. As in
other fields of philosophy, Cicero's influence is partly the
influence of the translator. In transposing philosophical ideas into
the language of a different culture, the ideas change. Cicero
sometimes speaks of doubting, *dubitari* (e.g., *Acad.*
2.27, 106; however, he often sticks with the earlier language of
assent and suspension). But doubt has no place in Greek skepticism
(see section 1).
## 4. Pyrrhonian Skepticism
### 4.1 Early Figures: Pyrrho and Timon
When comparing Pyrrhonian and Academic skepticism, two topics stand
out: Pyrrhonism aims at tranquility; and it assigns pride of place to
appearances. Anecdotes about Pyrrho's life (365/60-275/70
BC) convey how unaffected he was (DL 9.61-69). This kind of
ideal--a tranquil state of mind--is not part of Academic
skepticism, and scholars disagree on its role in Pyrrhonism
(Machuca 2006; Striker 2010; Perin 2020; on Democritean
influences on tranquility in Pyrrho and Timon, cf. Svavarsson 2013).
Insofar as the point of the anecdotes about Pyrrho's life is
that Pyrrho did not avoid or pursue anything with fervor, or that he
did not despair about things that other people find terrible, they
capture ideas that remain central to Pyrrhonism (for a general account
of early Pyrrhonism, cf. Castagnoli 2013; on Sextus' take
on Pyrrhonian tranquility, cf. Svavarsson 2015).
The biographical anecdotes portray Pyrrho as a strikingly
unconventional figure, unaffected not just by emotion and belief, but
also by perception--to the extent that friends had to pull him
off the street when a wagon approached (DL 9.62). At the same time,
Pyrrho seems to have said that the skeptic adheres to appearances
(*phainomena*) (DL 9.106; Bett 2000, 84-93; on earlier
notions of appearances relevant to skepticism, cf. Barney 1992). This
might suggest that he would not cross the street when a wagon is
approaching, and so appears to him. One story makes Pyrrho appear
not only unusual, but arguably a not so sympathetic character. Passing
by a drowning man, he was so unmoved that he simply walked on (DL
9.63). This is in rather stark contrast with Stoic notions of
unaffectedness, where the idea would be that, not being disturbed by
emotions like fear and panic, the passerby is ideally equipped to help
effectively. Some biographical details can seem to mold
Pyrrho's life to fit the schema of the sage: a traveler to the
East (Flintoff 1980), whose insights are conveyed in brief sayings; an
enigmatic figure, exemplary and shocking at the same time. Though it
is difficult to assess the testimony on Pyrrho's travels,
scholars increasingly explore resonances between Pyrrho's
pronouncements, later Pyrrhonian skepticism, and dimensions of
Buddhist philosophy (Hanner 2020). For example, Mill (2018) argues
that a tradition in classical Indian philosophy develops a
"skepticism about philosophy" that resembles dimensions of
Pyrrhonian thought.
Even though he discussed tranquility and adherence to appearances,
Pyrrho was arguably no Pyrrhonian skeptic (Bett 2000, 14-62).
That is, it is likely that he put forward a dogmatic position, in the
sense that he had positive philosophical views about the character of
reality. Pyrrho wrote nothing. Much of what we know about him is
preserved through the writings of Timon, his adherent
(325/20-235/30 BCE) (Burnyeat 1980b; Clayman 2009). The
most important piece of testimony is a passage reporting an account by
Timon:
>
> It is necessary above all to consider our own knowledge; for if it is
> in our nature to know nothing, there is no need to inquire any further
> into other things. [...] Pyrrho of Elis was also a powerful
> advocate of such a position. He himself has left nothing in writing;
> his pupil Timon, however, says that the person who is to be happy must
> look to these three points: first, what are things like by nature?
> second, in what way ought we to be disposed towards them? and finally,
> what will be the result for those who are so disposed? He [Timon] says
> that he [Pyrrho] reveals that things are equally indifferent and
> unstable and indeterminate (*adiaphora kai astathmeta kai
> anepikrita*); for this reason, neither our perceptions nor our
> beliefs tell the truth or lie (*adoxastous kai aklineis kai
> akradantous*). For this reason, then, we should not trust them,
> but should be without opinions and without inclinations and without
> wavering, saying about each single thing that it no more is than is
> not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not (*ou mallon
> estin* *e ouk estin e kai esti kai ouk estin
> e oute estin oute ouk estin*). Timon says that the result
> for those who are so disposed will be first speechlessness
> (*aphasia*), but then freedom from worry (*ataraxia*);
> and Aenesidemus says pleasure. These, then, are the main points of
> what they say (Aristocles in Eusebius *PE* 14.18.1-5 =
> DC53; tr. Bett 2000 with changes)
>
In response to the first question, how things are in their nature,
Pyrrho makes a metaphysical claim: they are indeterminate (Bett 2000,
14-29). There are no stable items, or no items with stable
properties. Scholars sometimes hesitate to ascribe such a position to
Pyrrho, because it is undoubtedly dogmatic. Perhaps the text can be
given an epistemological reading: things are indifferentiable and
unmeasurable and undecidable, because we fail in differentiating,
measuring, and determining how they are (Svavarsson 2010; Thorsrud
2010). But Pyrrho's response to the second question may only
follow if we adopt the metaphysical reading (Bett 2000, 29-37).
Pyrrho infers that our perceptions and beliefs are neither true nor
false. They are not truth-evaluable, presumably because there are no
facts which could be correctly captured. Third, if we understand these
things, speechlessness (*aphasia*) follows, and then
tranquility (*ataraxia*). Pyrrho does not say that we should
cease to speak. He suggests that we adopt a complicated mode of
speech, constructed around the expression *ou mallon*
("no more"), which aims to capture the indeterminate
natures of things, when we attempt to say anything about anything
(Bett 2000, 37-39; Vogt 2021).
### 4.2 Aenesidemus, the Ten Modes, and Appearances
Aenesidemus (first century BCE) was discontented with the views
discussed in the Academy at his time, of which he began as an
adherent. Philo's proto-externalism as well as a counterposition
formulated by Antiochus both appeared to him dogmatic. Aenesidemus
aimed to revive a more radical skepticism, and left the Academy for
this purpose. Arguably, he is the first Pyrrhonian skeptic.
Aenesidemus wrote a treatise, the *Pyrrhonian Discourses*,
probably similar in structure to Sextus' *Outlines of
Pyrrhonism* and partially preserved in a summary by Photius:
a general account of skepticism, followed by books on particular
philosophical questions (Hankinson 2010). The basic elements of
Aenesidemus' skepticism are: the skeptic puts appearances and
thoughts into opposition; this generates equipollence
(*isostheneia*, lit. "of equal weight") between
several appearances and/or thoughts; suspension of judgment follows;
with it comes tranquility; and the skeptic leads a life according to
appearances (DL 9.62, 78, 106-7). However, we do not know much
detail of his views on these matters. Instead, Aenesidemus is famous
for having developed Ten Modes or Tropes--forms of argument by
which the sceptic puts appearances and thoughts into opposition. Key
questions about Aenesidemus' skepticism concern (i) the
interpretation of his Modes, (ii) the relationship of his philosophy
to competing theories, (iii) the scope of the Ten Modes, and (iv) the
skeptic's mode of speech.
(i) Conflicting Appearances or Causal Invariance. The Ten Modes are
preserved in Diogenes Laertius (9.78-88), Philo of Alexandria
(*On Drunkenness* 169-202), and Sextus. Diogenes'
account of the Ten Modes may postdate Sextus' (Sedley
2015). Sextus gives extensive illustrations, and integrates the Ten
Modes into his general account of Pyrrhonism (*PH*
1.36-163; cf. *M* 7.345 for ascription of the Ten Modes
to Aenesidemus; cf. Annas-Barnes 1985 and Hankinson 1995, 268; the
sequence below follows Sextus). Here is the first of the Ten Modes,
interpreted in two ways.
>
>
> **10-1**:
>
>
> Arguments concerning oppositions based on the differences between
> kinds of animals.
>
>
>
> **Conflicting Appearances Interpretation:**
>
>
> *X* appears *F* to animal of kind *A* (e.g.,
> humans) and *F*\* to animal of kind *B* [where *F*
> and *F*\* are opposite or otherwise incompatible properties]. We
> cannot judge how *X* really is, because we are a party to the
> dispute.
>
>
>
> **Causal Invariance Interpretation:**
>
>
> For something to be 'really' *F*, it would have to
> consistently affect different perceivers as *F*. But different
> constitutions of different animals cause different impressions of the
> same thing. For different animals, something is *F* and
> *F*\* (where *F* and *F*\* are opposite or
> otherwise incompatible properties). Therefore, things do not seem to
> really be *F* or *F*\*.
>
>
>
The Conflicting Appearances Interpretation is based on Sextus'
account (Annas-Barnes 1985). The focus here is on the idea that every
kind of animal, perceiver, sensory faculty, thinker, or judger
(depending on which mode we consider) is only one of several animals,
perceivers, sensory faculties, thinkers, or judgers. The object is
perceived or considered from a particular point of view. Everyone is a
party to the dispute, and there is no 'view from nowhere.'
Accordingly, the dispute cannot be decided. The Causal Invariance
Interpretation, on the other hand, suggests that the focus on
decidability is introduced by Sextus. Aenesidemus may (implicitly or
explicitly) have endorsed the following idea: if *X* were
*F* by nature, *X* would affect everyone as *F*.
If *X* affects different people (living beings, sensory
faculties, etc.) as *F* and *F*\*, *X* is by
nature neither *F* nor *F*\*. For example, if *X*
is harmful to *A* and beneficial to *B*, it is neither
harmful nor beneficial in its nature (Woodruff 2010, Bett 2000). The
Ten Modes can generally be construed as engaging either with conflicts
between appearances or with causal invariance:
>
>
> **10-2**:
>
>
> Arguments based on the differences among human beings (differences in
> body and in soul).
>
>
>
> **10-3**:
>
>
> Arguments based on the differences between the senses and on the
> complexity of perceived objects.
>
>
>
> **10-4**:
>
>
> Arguments based on states (dispositions and conditions of a human
> being, such as age, motion versus rest, emotions, etc.).
>
>
>
> **10-5**:
>
>
> Arguments based on positions, distances, and places.
>
>
>
> **10-6**:
>
>
> Arguments based on mixtures (objects in conjunction with external
> things like air and humidity; physical constituents of sense organs;
> physiology of thought).
>
>
>
> **10-7**:
>
>
> Arguments based on the composition of the perceived object.
>
>
>
> **10-8**:
>
>
> Arguments based on relativity (to the judging subject, to
> circumstances, etc.). 10-8 comprises at least 10-1 to 10-7, or all Ten
> Modes.
>
>
>
> **10-9**:
>
>
> Arguments based on constancy or rarity of occurrence.
>
>
>
> **10-10**:
>
>
> Arguments concerned with ways of life, customs, laws, mythical
> beliefs, and dogmatic assumptions, all of which can be put into
> opposition to each other.
>
>
>
(ii) Skepticism, Relativism, Epicureanism. Consider first the
relationship between skepticism and relativism (cf. Bett 2000; Vogt
2012a, ch. 4). Relativism, as envisaged in Plato's
*Theaetetus*, looks at a similar range of phenomena. Things
appear different to different kinds of animals; to different people;
and so on. Relativism embraces the intuition that there is (as we
would say today) faultless disagreement. That is, you and I disagree,
but neither of us is wrong. Accordingly, metaphysical relativism
claims we must give up the intuition that we both refer to the same
thing. In the *Theaetetus*, the world dissolves into radical
flux: there are no stable items with stable properties that we both
refer to.
The Ten Modes, according to Conflicting Appearances, differ from
relativism by turning precisely the other way (Annas-Barnes 1985,
97-8; Pellegrin 1997, 552-3). They implicitly rely on the
intuition that there are stable items with stable properties. Of
course, the skeptic is not committed to the thesis that opposites
cannot hold of the same thing, and that therefore no two conflicting
appearances can be true. However, the modes presuppose a common sense
metaphysics that does not accommodate faultless disagreement. In all
cases of disagreement, at best one of us can be right. If we cannot
figure out which view is right, we should suspend. This does not mean
that Pyrrhonians are committed to a common-sense metaphysics. The Ten
Modes are only one of several tools that skeptics have at their
disposal. They may thus imply a metaphysics that, at other points,
skeptics would call into question (cf. Fine 2003b, 352).
Causal Invariance differs from Conflicting Appearances precisely with
respect to the metaphysics that is, even if only dialectically,
invoked. Aenesidemus seems to have explored the relationship between
skepticism and flux. He remarks that skepticism leads to Heraclitean
philosophy. The idea that one thing appears to have contrary
properties (the ones it appears to different animals/persons/senses to
have) leads to the idea that one thing actually has contrary
properties (*PH* 1.210; cf. Schofield 2007 on the role of
Heraclitus and causal invariance). This remark can be taken as an
expression both of moderate flux and of relativism (Aenesidemus does
not seem to think of radical flux, where it is no longer even possible
to refer to anything). There is no stable reality of how things are
(moderate flux); *X* is *F* and *F*\* insofar as,
if *X* seems *F* to *A*, this is true for
*A*, and *F*\* to *B*, this is true for *B*
(relativism). This proposal differs from the Causal Invariance
interpretation of the Modes presented above. There, Aenesidemus seems
to argue that things do not really have stable properties (they are
neither *F* nor *F*\* by nature); he does not say that
they are *F* and *F*\* (as relativism says).
A third approach, competing with skepticism and relativism, is
Epicurean epistemology. Again, the set of phenomena to be accounted
for is the same. But it is described differently. Epicurus insists
that we should not even speak of conflicting appearances. Rather, we
should speak of different perceptions. Perceptions cannot refute each
other, because they are of the same weight. Epicurus here uses the
term that is central to Pyrrhonism: equal weight,
*isostheneia* (DL 10.31-2). The fact that
perceptions differ has perfectly reasonable explanations: I look from
a distance, you look from nearby; I have a cold, you are healthy; I am
a human being, another cognizer is a dog; and so on. These facts
figure in the explanations of how our perceptions are constituted.
Accordingly, Epicurus argues, all perceptions, even though they
differ, are true. They all have a causal history that physics can
explain. The precise interpretation of this proposal is controversial.
One might object that the notion of truth employed here is deeply
puzzling. It is not clear what it means to describe all perceptions as
true if they cannot be true *or* false.
(iii) Scope. For the greatest part, the Ten Modes seem to be concerned
with perception in a broad sense, so that it includes pleasure and
pain, harm and benefit, as well as pursuit and avoidance. To perceive
something as pleasant or beneficial is to pursue it. Perception and
evaluation are also mixed in another way: depending on the frequency
with which we perceive something, it seems more or less amazing and
precious to us. **10-10** envisages oppositions that can
be construed with the help of dogmatic theses. The Ten Modes thus fit
Sextus' description of what skepticism is: the ability to put
appearances and thoughts (*phainomena* and *nooumena*)
into opposition (*PH* 1.8, 1.31-33; cf. DL 9.78).
Another issue concerning the scope of the Ten Modes is whether they
address general or particular matters. Compare the example of whether
the tower is round or square (T) to the example of whether honey is
sweet or bitter (H). (T) is a particular; the question is whether this
tower is round or square. (H) can be construed as a particular
("is this bit of honey sweet?"), or as a general issue
("is honey sweet?"). The Ten Modes offer strategies for
suspension of judgment on both kinds of questions.
Scholars have asked whether it is a problem for skepticism if the Ten
Modes appear 'systematic' (Sedley 2015). A set of
arguments that aims to be complete, covering domains according to a
standardized pattern, may appear to be out of tune with the
skeptic's presumed mode of investigation. Purportedly, skeptics
think through given questions as they arise, arriving at suspension of
judgment in a piecemeal fashion. If this self-description is to be
taken at face value, then modes of generating suspension of judgment
across the board may appear problematic. In this respect, Diogenes
Laertius' report of the Ten Modes may be superior to
Sextus' account. Diogenes begins with a remark that suggests
that skeptics pick up where other philosophers have already begun to
make an argument (9.78-9). Other philosophers have collected,
presumably, ways in which 'we are persuaded', say, because
things regularly appear the same way. Now the skeptics, as it were in
response to this, add a collection of further cases, where things do
not appear the same way to different cognizers. If this is the
dialectical set-up, the Ten Modes may not be 'systematic'
in ways that harm skepticism. They may co-opt the patterns of dogmatic
reports about cases where appearances are stable (Sedley 2015).
(iv) Language. Aenesidemus contributes an interesting move to the
question of how the skeptic can speak. Consider the relationship
between a skeptic's state of mind and their utterances. One way
to construe this relationship is that an utterance reflects a state of
mind. This is a background assumption to the idea that, if skeptics
use assertoric language, they hold beliefs. Another option is to
assume that language does not have the means to capture the
skeptic's state of mind. On this premise, a skeptic might flag
their utterances as falling short of doing so. This is
Aenesidemus' strategy. He says that the Pyrrhonian determines
nothing, and not even this fact that he determines nothing. The
Pyrrhonian puts matters in such terms, he says, because he has no way
to express the actual thought of the sceptic in determining nothing
(Photius, *Bibl*. 169b40-170a14, = 71C(6)-(8) LS).
### 4.3 Agrippa, and the Five Modes
Almost nothing is known about Agrippa (1st to
2nd century CE; SE *PH* 1.164-177; DL
9.88-89). However, the modes of argument that Sextus calls the
Five Modes are attributed to him. These modes are among the most
famous arguments of ancient skepticism (Barnes 1990, Hankinson
2010).
>
>
> **5-1 *Diaphonia***:
>
>
> The mode that argues from disagreement. With respect to some matter
> that presents itself, there is undecided (*anepikriton*)
> conflict, both among the views of ordinary life and the views held by
> philosophers. Due to this, we are unable to choose or reject one
> thing, and must fall back on suspension.
>
>
>
> **5-2 *Eis apeiron ekballonta***:
>
>
> Arguments that throw one into an infinite *regress*. That which
> is brought forward to make a given matter credible needs yet something
> else to make *it* credible, and so on *ad infinitum*.
> Since we thus have no starting point for our argument, suspension of
> judgment follows.
>
>
>
> **5-3 *Pros ti***:
>
>
> Arguments from *relativity*. *X* only ever appears
> such-and-such in relation to the subject judging and to the things
> observed together with it. Suspension on how *X* really is
> follows.
>
>
>
> **5-4 *Hypothesis***:
>
>
> Someone makes an assumption without providing argument. A dogmatist,
> if thrown back into an infinite regress of arguments, just assumes
> something as a starting-point, without providing an argument
> (*anapodeiktos*). We suspend over mere
> hypotheses--they could be false, opposite hypotheses could be
> formulated, and so on.
>
>
>
> **5-5 *Ton diallelon***:
>
>
> Arguments that disclose a *circularity*. This mode is used when
> that which ought to confirm a given investigated matter requires
> confirmation (*pistis*--credibility) from that matter. We
> are unable to assume either in order to establish the other. We
> suspend judgment on both.
>
>
>
It is a commonplace to say that, while the Ten Modes, as presented in
Sextus, are concerned with conflicting appearances, the Five Modes are
about argument or proof. In these modes, the skeptics develop
strategies by which to attack theories that the dogmatists defend. If
this is how we characterize the Modes, Aristotle's objection
(section 2.3) immediately comes to mind. Do the Five Modes reveal the
skeptic's lack of understanding because they presuppose that
everything is subject to proof? (Barnes 1990; Hankinson 1995,
182-92; Long 2006, ch.3) The three so-called formal
modes--Regress, Hypothesis, and Circularity--can be
construed in this fashion: when employing them, the skeptic can argue
that every premise must be supported by argument; if it is not so
supported, the theory begins from a mere hypothesis (on earlier uses
of the term *hupothesis* in Plato and in medicine, cf. Cooper
2002 [2004a]); or it is ultimately circular.
However, the skeptic might not be vulnerable to this objection. First,
the Five Modes can be construed as dialectical, invoking dogmatic
theories of justification (Striker 2004). Second, they might be
broader in scope. **5-1** and **5-3**
explore disagreement and relativity. Skeptical examination often
begins with the Mode of Disagreement: different answers to a given
question are surveyed, and the conflict between them is observed. The
interpretation of **5-1** hangs, for the most part, on
the question of whether *anepikriton* should be translated as
'undecided' or 'undecidable' (Barnes 1990). It
would be dogmatic to claim that matters are undecidable. The
Pyrrhonist must prefer the idea that, up to now, matters have not been
decided. In applying the Mode of Disagreement, skeptics can
either record a conflicting argument that others have formulated or
come up with an argument that disagrees with a view formulated by a
dogmatist (cf. Sienkiewicz 2019, 47-51). This leads to the question of
whether something can be found that would decide matters, and thus to
the application of further modes. Scholars have observed that
**5-3**, the Mode of Relativity, does not really fit into
the Five Modes. However, the Five Modes could be designed to supersede
and include the Ten Modes, and **5-3** might be viewed as
capturing the common thread of the Ten Modes. With the help of
**5-3**, the skeptic can argue that the premises that
theorists employ are formulated from particular points of view, in
particular contexts, and so on (for a reading that emphasizes the role
of the first mode at the expense of the role of the third, cf.
Sienkiewicz 2019).
Third, even the so-called formal modes (**5-2**,
**5-4**, **5-5**) might not be narrowly
concerned with proof, but rather with everything that can lend
credibility to something else. Consider Regress
(**5-2**), the first of the formal modes. The text does
not actually speak of proof (*apodeixis*) (this is obscured by
Bury's Loeb translation; **5-4** is the only place
in Sextus' report of the Five Modes that uses a cognate of
*apodeixis*). Sextus' language is wider: the mode deals
with everything that can make something else credible. We might read
this in the context of the Hellenistic view that proof is a species of
sign (*PH* 2.122). A sign reveals something non-evident. Smoke
that reveals fire has, from this point of view, a function and
structure that is similar to a proof. The target of the Five Modes
might be sign-inferences in general. If this is so, then their target
might include what we would call inductive reasoning and causal
explanations (when Sextus introduces a further set of modes, the
Causal Modes, he says that they are not really needed, because the
relevant work can be done by the Five Modes; *PH*
1.180-86). Taken together, the Five Modes deny all "proof,
criterion, sign, cause, movement, learning, coming into being, and
that there is anything by nature good or bad." (DL 9.90). This
is notably more than just proof. Indeed, it is an excellent summary of
the key topics in Sextus' discussions of logic, physics, and
ethics.
### 4.4 Sextus Empiricus
Sextus' (ca. 160-210 CE) epithet, Empiricus, indicates
that he belonged to the empiricists, a medical school (cf.
Svavarson 2014 for a brief conspectus of Sextus' philosophy).
The empiricist medical school argued against rationalistic tendencies
in medicine (Frede 1990; Allen 2010). Rationalism in medicine aims to
give causal explanations as a basis for therapies. Empiricism, on the
contrary, confines itself to observation and memory. Somewhat
confusingly (considering his name), Sextus discusses differences
between Pyrrhonism and empiricism, and says that skepticism is closer
to medical methodism than to empiricism (Allen 2010). On the whole, it
may be safest to think of Sextus as rejecting medical rationalism as
well as other trends within medicine that by Sextus' lights are
dogmatic. Methodism follows appearances, and derives from them what
seems beneficial. No explanations are attempted, no underlying
substances postulated, and no regularities assumed--these are
some of the rationalistic methods that both methodism and empiricism
argue against. Methodism also makes no statements to the effect that
such explanations cannot be given, or that underlying substances and
regularities do not exist, as Sextus says empiricism does (SE
*PH* 1.236-241). Beyond the fact that Sextus was a
doctor and wrote on medicine (M 7.202, M 1.61), his philosophical
thinking seems shaped by engagement with medical writers. Scholars
have long been interested in the relationship between medicine and
skeptical arguments that pertain to be therapeutic (Voelke 1990). More
recently, scholars explore ways in which medical writings, in
particular by Galen, inform Sextus' thinking, even on specific
issues such as how to conceive of and solve sophisms (Schmitt,
forthcoming). It has also been argued that the skeptics'
application of the modes should be interpreted in light of the
methodological commitments of non-rationalist medicine (Sienkiewicz
2019, 2021).
Sextus' philosophical writings are traditionally divided into
two groups. The *Outlines of Pyrrhonism* [*PH*] consists
of three books. *PH* 1 is the only general account of
Pyrrhonism that survives. *PH* 2 and 3 discuss questions of
logic, physics, and ethics. The other writings are summarily referred
to, traditionally, as *Against the Mathematicians*
[*M*]. In fact, they oppose not just mathematical, but also
other theorists: the title really means *Against the
Theoreticians*, or *Against the Learned* (Bett 2012). In a
sense, only *M* 1-6 should go by that title. It is a
complete work, and *M* 7 does not seem to be its continuation
(Bett 2012, "Introduction"). *M* 1-6 discuss
grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, and music theory.
They argue against theoretical 'learning' in these fields.
*M* 7-11 discuss core questions of the three
philosophical disciplines, logic, physics, and ethics, and could
plausibly be referred to as *Against the Logicians* (*M*
7-8), *Against the Physicists* (*M* 9-10),
and *Against the Ethicists* (*M* 11). Scholars disagree
on whether *M* is earlier (Bett 1997) or later than *PH*
(Janacek 1948 and 1972). Scholars also disagree on whether we can
evaluate different strands of skepticism within Sextus as more or less
sophisticated. Those who consider *PH* as later often do so
because they think it shows greater philosophical sophistication,
either by avoiding claims that a certain matter cannot be known
(sometimes described as negative dogmatism), as found in *M*
1-6 and *M* 11, or by streamlining discussions from
*M* 7-10 (Bett 1997; Brunschwig 1980).
These questions are complicated further by Sextus' attempt to
incorporate diverse material, such as different sets of Modes, into
his skepticism. According to recent interpretations, the
different sets of modes are part of an integrated philosophical
approach (Powers 2010). Morison (2018) argues that the Ten Modes and
Five Modes both serve the same purpose: to produce equal and opposing
arguments to arguments in support of philosophical or scientific
views. Arguably, two kinds of consistency are at work in Sextus'
writings. On the one hand, Sextus aims at the consistency of one
philosophical outlook. On the other hand, he aims at the consistency
of having a response to every objection. These two aims overlap
greatly, but they can also come apart. A given argument might refute a
particular critic. This argument may go back to various earlier
versions of Pyrrhonism. Similarly, the critical objection that is
refuted may be traced to dogmatic theories formulated over the course
of several centuries. As a result, a given argument in Sextus may be
effective against a given objection he has in mind. It may thus
preserve consistency in the sense of leaving the skeptic unharmed by
dogmatic criticism. But at the same time, this argument may have
implications that are in tension with the way in which Sextus explains
skepticism in other passages. Such tensions are particularly important
with respect to the way in which Sextus uses core concepts. For
example, it is not clear that Sextus uses the notion of appearances
(*phainomena*) in a consistent fashion (*PH*
1.8-9; 1.15; 1.22; for the view that Sextus employs the notion
consistently throughout, see Barney 1992). At times, he draws on the
contrast between appearances and thoughts (*noumena*). But for
the most part, the term refers to all cases where something seems
so-and-so to the skeptic, either perceptually or in thought. In some
contexts, Sextus draws on the idea that appearances are impressions,
invoking the dogmatic assumption that impressions are passive. In
other contexts, he does not envisage appearances as entirely passively
experienced (Vogt 2012b).
It is thus no surprise that the interpretation of Sextus'
Pyrrhonism is quite controversial. This applies in particular to the
question of whether the skeptic has any beliefs, or beliefs of any
kind. In the past 40 years, scholars have paid attention to this
question more than to any other interpretive issue. Insofar as the
texts may contain different strands of Pyrrhonian argument, exegesis
is to some extent shaped by the philosophical interests we bring to
the texts. Two ideas are particularly prominent here. First, some
scholars find in Sextus an account of action that challenges standard
ancient and modern theories of agency. These theories might portray
ordinary agents as all-too-rational, as if every action involved an
actively formed belief that such-and-such is good. Scholars explore
how far we can draw on Sextus, asking whether a life guided by
appearances (as Sextus says the skeptic's life is) might after
all be rather ordinary (Frede 1979 [1997]). Second, one might on the
other hand embrace those aspects of Sextus' texts that make
Pyrrhonism look radically different from ordinary life. From this
perspective, Sextus' writings invite reflection on the question
of whether it would be possible to live without belief (Burnyeat 1980
[1997]; Barnes 1982 [1997]; Burnyeat 1984 [1997]).
*PH* 1, which figures most prominently in scholarly
discussions, is a *tour de force*. Sextus gives a general
account of what skepticism is, including skeptical investigation,
suspension of judgment, the skeptic's end, action, and language;
he gives lists and illustrations of various sets of Modes; he explains
the so-called skeptical formulae (*phonai*), such as
"I determine nothing," "non-assertion,"
"maybe," and so on; and he compares skepticism to
relevantly similar philosophies.
Sextus emphasizes that the skeptic is an investigator. Others either
arrive at theories (dogmatism) or at claims about inapprehensibility
(negative dogmatism--that the matter investigated is beyond
one's capacity to decide, and so is unknowable). But the skeptic
continues to investigate (*PH* 1.1-4). Investigation is
described as setting appearances and thoughts into opposition
(*PH* 1.8) (Morison 2011 offers a reconstruction of skepticism
that takes its starting-point from this description), and as the
application of the various sets of Modes (*PH* 1.36-186).
Skepticism does not have teachings, but it is an approach in
philosophy (Smith 2022). Many of the thoughts the skeptics arrive at
are expressed in the skeptical formulae (*PH* 1.13-15;
187-209). The starting-point (*arche*) of
skepticism is divergency--*anomalia*. The
proto-skeptics are disturbed by the discrepancies they encounter, and
begin to investigate (PH 1.12). They hope to gain quietude by settling
what is true and what is false. But then they have a surprising
experience. Encountering disagreement where several views appear to be
of equal weight (*isostheneia*), they find themselves unable to
decide things, give up, and experience tranquility (*ataraxia*)
(Striker 1990 [1996]; Nussbaum 1994). The skeptic's end
(*telos*) is tranquility in matters of belief (*kata
doxan*) and moderate affection (*metriopatheia*) in matters
that are forced upon us (*PH* 1.25-29). That is, skeptics
can free themselves from those kinds of turmoil that come with holding
beliefs. They cannot free themselves from freezing, thirst, or pain.
But they suffer less than others, for they do not add the belief
(*prosdoxazein*) that, for example, pain is bad. The skeptic
must explain how, without belief (*adoxastos*), they can
be active. Sextus says that skeptics follow appearances, and that is,
that they adhere to the fourfold ways of life (*PH*
1.21-24). Nature supplies them with perception and thought;
necessary affections compel them (for example, thirst guides them to
drink); they go along with traditions and customs; and they can do
technical things by having been instructed in skills. The notion of
appearances is also central to Sextus' account of how the
skeptic can speak. Without making assertions, a skeptic reports
(*apangellein*) like a chronicler (*historikos*)
what appears to them now (*PH* 1.4).
I shall discuss the following aspects of Sextus' skepticism: (i)
investigation and tranquility, (ii) concepts and inference rules,
(iii) belief, (iv) the formulae, (v) appearances, (vi) language, (vii)
action, and (viii) the so-called special arguments (that is, arguments
that do not explain the nature of Pyrrhonism, but engage with specific
dogmatic theories in logic, physics, and ethics).
(i) Investigation and tranquility. Investigation must aim at discovery
of the truth, otherwise it is not genuine investigation. However, a
skeptic seems to mechanically apply the skeptical Modes, in order to
generate suspension of judgment and tranquility. Scholars disagree on
whether the skeptics genuinely aim at the truth (Palmer 2000;
Striker 2001; Perin 2006; Veres 2020b), while they (also) aim at
tranquility. Note that this objection, unlike the other problems
central to contemporary engagement with ancient skepticism, was not
raised in antiquity. If ancient skepticism is approached in the
context of the larger study of ancient philosophy, we might first of
all note that the skeptics in a sense agree with Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics. All these philosophers defend, in
so many formulations, a life of reason, of contemplation, of wisdom,
or of inquiry as the best or at least a very good human life (on
affinities between the skeptics' commitment to inquiry and
Aristotle, cf. Olfert 2015). The objection that skeptical inquiry
seems insincere, then, may not have come up in antiquity in quite the
way in which it is discussed today because a commitment to inquiry
would be common ground among most philosophers. Further, we might
observe that aiming at the truth includes two aims: to accept truths,
and to avoid falsehoods. The Modes are tailored to keep us from
assenting to something that could be false. Insofar as the
skeptic's effort to avoid falsehoods expresses a valuation for
the truth, the skeptic might be a genuine investigator (Vogt 2012a,
ch. 5; Olfert 2014).
A related objection calls into question the actual practice of
skeptical inquiry. Does Sextus rely on the assumption that, in any
given case of putting several arguments into opposition, these
arguments are equally persuasive for the skeptic? This seems
unrealistic: at least in some cases, skeptical inquirers are bound to
be more strongly attracted to one view than to another. How then do
they arrive at suspension of judgment? One skeptical strategy is to
remind oneself that additional arguments will be formulated in the
future (*PH* 1.33-34, 89, 96-97; 2.38-41;
3.233-34). Another strategy is to consider that different
arguments are persuasive to different people (Svararsson 2014).
Relatedly, skeptics may find themselves in a position comparable to a
student who takes a seminar on freedom and determinism: it is possible
to be more attracted to one view rather than another, and at the same
time be aware that as far as the arguments are concerned, there is
unresolved disagreement among several views, to the effect that
neither of the views seems compelling in ways that warrant assent (cf.
Vogt 2012a, ch. 5, on how the skeptical expression "as far as
the argument is concerned" bears on this question; for general
discussion of this expression, cf. Brunschwig 1990).
(ii) Concepts and rules of inference. If skeptics do not assent, then
how can they understand the terms philosophers use (*M*
8.337-332a)? Even more radically, how can they even think
(*PH* 2.1-12)? This objection, which Sextus says is
continually raised against the skeptics, proceeds on the assumption
that possession of concepts involves the acceptance of assumptions.
For example, in order to examine a given theory of proof, the skeptic
must have a notion of what proofs are. This involves assumptions: for
example, the assumption that a proof contains premises and a
conclusion. Sextus' response to this objection invokes the
Epicurean and Stoic theories of preconceptions. Human beings are not
born with reason (Frede 1994, 1996). The acquisition of reason is a
nature-guided process of concept acquisition. At a given age, children
have completed this process. They have become rational, which means
that they can perceive and think in a conceptual way. Only now, they
have rational impressions to which they can assent. The acquisition of
preconceptions did not involve assent, simply because the child was
not yet rational (Brittain 2005).
Sextus invokes dogmatic ideas about the acquisition of reason (or: the
abilities of conceptual thought) in his response to the Apraxia Charge
(*PH* 1.23-4). Skeptics are, first of all, active because
nature has equipped them with perception and thought (Vogt 1998,
2010). More generally, the skeptics' ability to think and
investigate depends on the fact that they have acquired concepts as
part of growing up. This process did not involve assent, and
accordingly, Sextus argues that the skeptic's ability to think
does not violate suspension of judgment (cf. Brunschwig 1988; Vogt
2012a ch. 6; Grgic 2008; Fine 2011). It is conceivable, though, that
the skeptic's ability to understand involves some knowledge,
namely a kind of knowledge that does not entail any belief (Corti
2009, part III; Corti 2015). This option appears counterintuitive
given today's premises in epistemology, according to which
someone who knows that p also believes that p. The relevant notion of
belief in skeptical discussions, *doxa*, as well as the
relevant ancient notions of knowledge, however, may behave quite
differently (cf. Vogt 2012a and Moss and Schwab 2019 on belief;
Burnyeat 1980c, Frede 2008 and Schwab 2016 on knowledge). Insofar as
*doxa* is an inherently deficient activity and attitude, and
insofar as knowledge is conceived in elevated ways, knowledge without
belief is a rather intuitive option within ancient epistemology. If
understanding concepts and arguments involves knowledge that does not
entail beliefs, the skeptics may be taken to have such knowledge.
Modern critics raise the further question of whether the skeptic must
endorse logical laws (such as the Principle of Non-Contradiction) and
rules of inference. In particular, they ask whether a skeptic is
committed to the logical validity of the conditionals they formulate
when arguing against the dogmatists (Sorensen 2004). Sextus records no
ancient version of this complaint, and accordingly no direct
response. Relatedly, one may ask whether Sextus' method, in
particular regarding the Five Modes, is systematic in a way that is in
tension with suspension of judgment (cf. Sienkiewicz 2021, who defends
Sextus against this charge).
(iii) Belief. Bury, in his Loeb translation, translates
*adoxastos* as "undogmatically," for example,
when Sextus speaks (*PH* 1.15) of skeptics as saying that
"nothing is true." This translation suggests that Sextus
bans dogmatism from the skeptic's life, where this still leaves
room for other, non-dogmatic beliefs. But *adoxastos*
means non-doxastically or 'without belief' (cf. Burnyeat
1980 [1997]). As noted above, the skeptic's end is tranquility
in matters relating to belief--*kata doxan*. A skeptic
lives *adoxastos*. And even more confusingly, the
skeptics assent *adoxastos*, when they act.
Contemporary interest in Pyrrhonian skepticism was much spurred by
Michael Frede's paper "The Sceptic's Beliefs"
(1979 [1997]). Frede argues that ancient skepticism was traditionally
dismissed too easily as vulnerable to the Apraxia Charge, the charge
that, without belief, the skeptic cannot act. The skeptics seem to be
confident that they have replies to this objection. Thus, it seems
uncharitable not to look closely at these replies. Further, insofar as
these replies respond to the charge that without belief one cannot
act, we should focus on what the skeptics say about the role of belief
in their lives. Frede cites *PH* 1.13, and claims that in this
passage we find a distinction between two kinds of belief:
>
> When we say that the skeptic does not dogmatize, we are not using
> 'dogma' in the more general sense in which some say it is
> dogma to accept anything (for the skeptic does assent to the
> experiences forced upon him in virtue of this-or-that impression: for
> example, he would not say, when warmed or cooled, 'I seem not to
> be warmed or cooled'). Rather, when we say he does not
> dogmatize, we mean 'dogma' in the sense in which some say
> that dogma is assent to any of the non-evident matters investigated by
> the sciences. For the Pyrrhonist assents to nothing that is
> non-evident. (*PH* 1.13; trans. Burnyeat (1984) [1997] with
> changes)
>
Following Frede, several scholars focus on *PH* 1.13 when
discussing skeptical belief (with the notable exceptions of Barnes
1980 [1997] and Barney 1992). They take it to be obvious that, in this
paragraph, Sextus distinguishes between two kinds of belief, one which
he bans from the skeptic's life, and one which he allows into
the skeptic's life. Barnes (1982 [1997]) employs a distinction
between rustic and urbane skepticism. The rustic skeptic suspends on
all matters. The urbane skeptic suspends on scientific matters, but
holds ordinary beliefs. The clause "non-evident matters
investigated in the sciences" in *PH* 1.13 might be taken
as a point of reference for the urbane interpretation. However, Barnes
points out that this cannot be right. Everything can be considered as
a non-evident matter, even such things as whether honey is sweet.
Against Barnes, Frede argues that the relevant distinction must be
drawn between two kinds of assent, such that "having a view
involves one kind of assent, whereas taking a position, or making a
claim, involves another kind of assent, namely the kind of assent the
sceptic will withhold" (1984 [1997], 128). Sextus characterizes
skeptical assent in three ways. He speaks of forced assent (PH
1.23-24), involuntary assent (PH 1.19), and
*adoxastos* assent (PH 2.102). Frede does not explore the
details of how Sextus uses these notions. The core of his proposal is
that Sextus allows for a kind of assent that does not involve a claim
as to how things are in actual fact.
In (1979 [1997]), Frede is predominantly concerned with the
skeptic's reply to the Apraxia Charge. In (1984 [1997]) his
focus is on skeptical pronouncements such as "nothing can be
known." His distinction between two kinds of assent, and
accordingly two kinds of belief, is explored with respect to such
sentences. Frede writes that "[t]o be left with the impression
or thought that p [...] does not involve the further thought that
it is true that p" (133). This is the sense in which, on his
interpretation, the skeptic might think "nothing is
known." The thought counts as a belief, but not as a claim that,
in actual fact, nothing is known by anybody. Contrary to Frede's
interpretation, one might argue that to believe simply is to hold
true, at least according to the notions of belief that the skeptics
invoke in discussions with their contemporary critics (Vogt 2012b). It
is thus not clear that Frede's distinction is genuinely one
between two kinds of beliefs (Burnyeat 1980 [1997]). Perhaps it is a
distinction between two different propositional attitudes, only one of
which is belief. As Striker (2001) points out, there is a danger that
debates over this issue become merely terminological. We might thus
draw a distinction between two issues. It is one thing to disagree
with Frede on what should or should not be called belief, and another
to dispute whether he identifies and characterizes a phenomenon in the
skeptic's mental life. As Frede argues, skeptics find themselves
with a rather persistent thought, without having accepted it as true
in actual fact. This appears to capture a core element of skepticism:
the way in which the skeptic thinks such thoughts as "everything
is inapprehensible."
(iv) The Skeptical Formulae. *PH* 1.13, the passage in which
scholars find a distinction between two kinds of belief, occurs in a
chapter entitled "Does the Skeptic dogmatize?" One angle
from which we might disagree with Frede is to insist that *PH*
1.13 addresses the status of the core thoughts of skeptical
philosophy, rather than the question of skeptical belief. Consider the
rest of the chapter:
>
> Not even in uttering the skeptical formulae about unclear
> matters--for example, "In no way more," or "I
> determine nothing," or one of the other formulae which we shall
> later discuss--do they dogmatize (*dogmatizein*). For if
> you dogmatize, then you posit as real the things that you are said to
> dogmatize about; but skeptics posit these formulae not as necessarily
> being real. For they suppose that, just as the formula
> "Everything is false" says that it too, along with
> everything else, is false (and similarly for "Nothing is
> true"), so also "In no way more" says that it too,
> along with everything else, is no more so than not so, and hence
> cancels itself along with everything else. And we say the same of the
> other skeptical formulae. Thus, if people who dogmatize posit as real
> the things they dogmatize about, while skeptics utter their own
> phrases in such a way that they are implicitly cancelled by
> themselves, then they cannot be said to dogmatize in uttering them.
> But the main point is this: in uttering these formulae they say what
> appears to themselves and report their own feelings without any belief
> *(adoxastos*), affirming nothing about external objects.
> (*PH* 1.14-15; trans. Annas-Barnes with changes)
>
When explaining in *PH* 1.13 how the skeptic does not
dogmatize, Sextus may have a particular issue in mind: that some
skeptical formulae look like doctrines, and have traditionally been
turned against themselves due to their dogmatic surface-structure. For
example, "all things are indeterminate" looks like a
straightforward dogmatic statement. There is a long history of
skeptical attempts to explain the nature of such pronouncements so
that they no longer undermine themselves. Sextus arguably mentions
several solutions to this problem (*PH* 1.13-15 and
1.187-209; cf. Pellegrin 2010). In *PH* 1.15, Sextus
identifies the following as his main point: the skeptic merely reports
what appears to them. Along these lines, Sextus calls indeterminacy an
affection of thought (*pathos dianoias*; *PH* 1.198), a
state that the utterance "all things are indeterminate"
aims to capture. The other solution mentioned in *PH*
1.14-15 is somewhat more problematic: the skeptical formulae
cancel themselves out. That is, one can say them and convey something
through them. But then, once one has made a point, they as it were
turn back upon themselves and eat themselves up--as fire first
burns combustible materials and then destroys itself. This idea became
famous through another comparison Sextus uses (invoked by Wittgenstein
1922, 6.54): the skeptical pronouncements are like a ladder that
one climbs up; once one is on top, one can throw the ladder away
(*M* 8.481). Scholars disagree on whether Sextus in some sense
admits that these statements are self-refuting (McPherran 1987), or
whether he defuses their self-refutational structure (Castagnoli 2010,
III.14).
(v) Appearances (*phainomena*). While it is difficult to
establish a clear distinction between two kinds of belief in Sextus,
there is a comparatively more explicit distinction between two ways of
engaging with appearances. Sextus says that, while things
appear *X* to the skeptic, the skeptic does not affirm that
they are *X*. Questions that are traditionally discussed in
terms of whether the skeptic has beliefs thus might be addressed in
terms of whether the way things appear to the skeptic has a
judgment-component. Arguably, "*A* appears *X* to
me now" can be construed in different ways. Certain examples
(say, the way in which it makes sense to say both that the moon
appears small and that it appears large) may suggest that appearance
can but need not involve something like a judgment (Barney 1992). Some
formulations in Sextus seem to insist on a significant difference
between the mental activity of something appearing to a cognizer on
the one hand, and on the other hand the mental activity that, on the
level of language, is represented by assertion. This suggests that,
for Sextus, *A* appearing *F* to me now does not entail
that I hold it to be true that *A* is *F* (Vogt
2012b).
(vi) Language. Another approach to the question of whether the skeptic
has beliefs looks at skeptical language. Sextus insists that the
skeptic does not accept or reject any impression, and associates the
absence of these mental acts with the fact that the skeptic does not
affirm or deny anything (e.g., *PH* 1.4, 7, 10). Arguably, we
can infer from Sextus' account of the skeptic's utterances
what Sextus wants to say about the skeptic's mental states and
acts. That is, the question of language immediately bears on the
question of belief. The report on Pyrrhonian skepticism in Diogenes
Laertius is particularly instructive in this respect. Contrary to
scholarly focus on belief in reconstructing skepticism, it barely
mentions belief. Discussion of the skeptics' attitudes is almost
entirely conducted in terms of skeptical language and the skeptical
formulae (for detailed discussion of the relevant paragraphs, DL
9.74-7, cf. Corti 2015). If Sextus is read in light of the
report in DL IX, *PH* 1.13 may appear to be more of an isolated
passage than scholarly debates imply. Sextus too devotes much space to
accounts of skeptical expressions and language. It may thus be asked
whether scholars should reframe discussions, and pay more attention to
skeptical language then they previously have. As of now, there is one
monograph on skeptical language, Corti (2009), and one approach to
belief that focuses on language, Vogt (1998). Both scholars pursue
further ideas put forward by Barnes (1982 [1997]), who compares the
skeptic's utterances to avowals. The skeptic lays open their
state of mind, they announce or record (*apangellein*) it (Fine
2003a). In order to do this, the skeptic must misuse language
(Burnyeat 1984 [1997]). Some strategies to avoid assertion are given
in the context of the skeptical formulae ("non-assertion,"
"I determine nothing," and so on). (i) Skeptical
expressions can be used as signs, which reveal a state of mind
(*PH* 1.187). (ii) Expressions like "*ou
mallon*" (no more) and "*ouden mallon*"
(nowise more) can be used indifferently (in the sense of
interchangeably) (*PH* 1.188). (iii) As is the practice in
ordinary language, the skeptic can use expressions elliptically; for
example "no more" for "no more this-than-that"
(*PH* 1.188). (iv) People often use questions instead of
assertions and the other way around. Similarly, "no more"
can be construed as a question: "Why more this-than-that?"
(v) The skeptic misuses language and uses it in a loose way
(*PH* 1.191).
In *M* 1 and *M* 2, Sextus says that the skeptic goes
along with ordinary ways of using language (M 1.172, 193, 206, 218,
229, 233; M 2.52-3, 58-9). This seems to be a key resource
in construing skeptical ways of speaking: the skeptic exploits the
ways in which ordinary speakers can diverge from grammatically correct
speech, and still be understood. Apart from using their skeptical
formulae, and apart from conducting philosophical investigations,
which they can do in a dialectical mode, referring to theses,
arguments, and inferences, the skeptic also has to talk in everyday
contexts. It is here where we see best how skeptical utterances are
tailored to reveal a state of mind in which nothing is accepted or
rejected. Sextus takes great pains to construe his examples of
skeptical utterances according to the following schema:
"*X* appears *F* to me now." This will
generally be understood as an elliptical version of "*X*
appears *to be* *F* to me now." However, Sextus
consistently avoids "to be" (Vogt 1998; for the view that
"*X* appears F" avoids reference to external
objects, see Everson 1991). The peculiar form of skeptical utterances
suggests that Sextus sees a relevant difference between
"*X* appears to be *F* to me now" and
"*X* appears *F* to me now." The former
might imply reference to a state of affairs, and an epistemic usage of
"to appear" that could be rendered as "It appears to
me, that p," or, "I take it that p." This, however,
would be assertoric: the skeptic would state that it appears to them
that such-and-such is the case. But the skeptic's elliptical
utterances about what appears to them aim to be purely
phenomenological. They aim to report a condition of the
skeptic's mind, without expressing a judgment of any kind
(Burnyeat 1984 [1997]; Annas-Barnes 1985, 23-4; for an
assessment of these strategies in terms of modern philosophy of
language, cf. Pagin 2020). As part of the skeptics' way of life,
language can also be seen as an activity. That is, how the skeptics
can speak can be considered a sub-question of how the skeptics
can act. Skeptical utterances have been compared to Wittgensteinian
confessions, arguably a kind of speech act that is consistent with the
skeptics' avoidance of belief (Corti 2009, Parts I and II).
Moreover, the skeptics not only speak. They presumably also understand
what others say. A persuasive account of skeptical language must
explain both speaking and understanding (Corti 2009, Part III).
(vii) Action. Sextus says that appearances (*phainomena*) are
the practical criterion of the skeptic (*PH* 1.23-24). By
adhering to appearances, the skeptic is prevented from inactivity
(*anenergesia*). Note that Sextus does not describe the
skeptic as performing actions in the sense of dogmatic theory of
action, which involves belief and choice (cf. *M*
11.162-166). Contrary to the Academic skeptic, a Sextan skeptic
does not view themselves as a rational agent, who chooses one course
of action over another. Sextus claims an active life for the skeptic,
but not the life of a rational agent, as conceived by dogmatic
philosophers (Vogt 2010; Schwab 2020). This attitude has been
critically discussed for a long time, for example, with respect to its
ethical (Bett 2019) and political upshots (Marchand 2015) and with
respect to the skeptics' relation to the law (Marchand
2021).
The skeptic's forced assent is situated in the domain of action
(*PH* 1.13, 19, 29-30, 193, 237-8). Thirst, for
example, necessitates assent, and that means, it moves the skeptic to
drink. This kind of assent may be genuinely unrelated to
belief-formation of any kind. Rather, forced assent generates the
movement of action. But what about more complex kinds of activities,
such as applying a medication, or attending a festival? Sextus argues
that the skeptic adheres to custom, convention, and tradition, and to
what they have been trained to do. In explaining how adherence to
appearances in these domains generates activity, Sextus does not
mention assent. However, he might have to concede that, like drinking
when thirsty, more complex actions also involve some kind of assent.
In *PH* 2.102, Sextus says that the sceptic assents
non-doxastically (*adoxastos*) to the things relied on in
ordinary life. In *PH* 1.19, he mentions involuntary assent.
Accordingly, non-doxastic and involuntary assent may figure in those
domains of skeptical action that do not involve necessitation by
bodily affections. Non-doxastic assent is, from the point of view of
the Stoics, a contradiction in terms, just like forced and involuntary
assent. Assent is defined as in our power, and as that by which
beliefs are formed. If Sextus intends skeptical assent to be genuinely
non-doxastic and involuntary, then it does not have the core features
of assent as defined by the dogmatists.
(viii) Logic, Physics, Ethics, and the "disciplines." The
special arguments of the skeptic are directed against particular
theories in the three disciplines of Hellenistic philosophy: logic,
physics, and ethics. In addition, they address the so-called
disciplines, namely grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic,
astrology, and music-theory. Sextus' treatments of logic divide
up into two main topics: sign and criterion (cf. Bett 2005 on signs).
This structure reflects central concerns of Hellenistic epistemology
as well as of ancient skepticism. Skepticism looks for a
'decider' between conflicting appearances and thoughts. A
decider could be something evident. Dogmatic philosophers associate
the evident with the criterion of truth. For something to serve the
role of criterion, it cannot be equally disputed as the matters it
helps to decide. Or something non-evident could take on the role of
decider. For that to be the case, the skeptics argue, it would have to
be conclusively revealed by a sign or proof. If there is no compelling
theory of the criterion and no compelling account of sign and proof,
then there is nothing that can decide between several conflicting
views. Sextus' treatises on logic thus are not simply a
collection of individual arguments against various dogmatic theories.
Their main line of thought sketches a route into
skepticism. Along these lines, Vlasits (2020b) argues that
Sextus' treatment of logic in PH 2 is unified. Sextus'
argument is structured such as to lead to suspension of judgment on
the methodologies of the dogmatists. The final section of M 8 (463-81)
formulates a challenge for the skeptic that scholars interested in
self-refutational arguments have examined (Castagnoli 2010): does the
skeptic aim to prove that proof does not exist (Sienkiewicz
2022)?
Sextus' discussions of ethics also focus on issues that
plausibly lead into skepticism. Again, there are two central
questions: whether there is anything good and bad by nature; and
whether there is an art of life (Bett 2010, 2011 and 2019),
as the Epicureans and Stoics claim there is. If we could settle what
is good and what is bad, some of the most disturbing anomalies would
be resolved. If there were an art of life, there would be a teachable
body of knowledge about the good and the bad. In both cases, questions
that can cause a great deal of puzzlement would be resolved.
Sextus' discussions of ethics are in part famous because Sextus
ascribes outlandish and shocking views to the Stoics. As Sextus
construes his arguments, the contrast between 'ordinary
life' and philosophical views leads to suspension of judgment
(Vogt 2008a, ch. 1). In the modern tradition, a number of philosophers
including Hegel and Nietzsche have engaged with aspects of
Sextus' outlook and in particular with the skeptical adherence
to ordinary life (Berry 2010 and 2020; Bett 2020a). Recently,
scholars have asked how ethical a skeptic can be, to use a phrased
employed by Bett (2019), given that it may seem that suspension of
judgment on grave ethical challenges can seem facile. At the same
time, scholars point out that some dimensions of ethical frameworks
went unquestioned a long time, for example, with respect to gender;
here suspension of judgment may appear innovative (Olfert
forthcoming).
The books on physics discuss god, cause, matter, bodies, mixture,
motion, increase and decrease, subtraction and addition, whole and
part, change, becoming and perishing, rest, place, time, and number.
Notably, god is one of the topics explored in physics. This stands in
stark contrast to medieval and early modern discussions, where the
quest for knowledge of God often frames and motivates engagement with
skepticism. In PH 3, Sextus prefaces his discussion of arguments
for and against the existence of gods by saying that the
skeptics' ordinary life without opinions
(*adoxastos*) includes the following: the skeptics say
that there are gods, are pious toward the gods, and say that the gods
are provident. Scholars discuss how this relates to Sextus'
discussions of theology qua topic in physics on the one hand (PH
3.2-12, M 9.11-194), and to his portrayal of the skeptics'
ordinary life in PH 1 on the other hand (Annas 2011, Veres 2020a). The
skeptics come to suspend judgment on all central questions in ancient
physics (Bett 2012). This means, they come to suspend judgment on
whether, for example, there are causes, time, place, and bodies (cf.
Bobzien 2015 and Warren 2015). Their suspension does not merely mean
that they have not yet found a satisfying theory of, say, body. It
means that they find themselves unable to say whether there is body
(Burnyeat 1997). (On the cumulative force of these arguments, see
section 5.4.)
The six books entitled *Against those in the Disciplines*
(*M* 1-6) have traditionally received less attention.
Only in the last few years have scholars begun to explore them with
the kind of philosophical subtlety that has been brought to bear in
the study of ancient skepticism in recent decades. *M*
1-6 skeptically examine six fields of study, namely grammar,
rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music-theory. Sextus
begins with an astonishing move. Contrary to his usual strategy of
emphasizing the distance between skeptics and dogmatists, he admits
that Pyrrhonians and Epicureans share much in viewing standard
disciplines as useless (*M* 1.1-7; cf. Thorsrud 2019).
Generally speaking, increased attention to *M* 1-6 may
provide additional occasion to modify the long-standing assumption
that the Stoics are Sextus' most important dogmatic
interlocutors. Throughout *M* 1-6, resonances between
Epicurean and Pyrrhonian philosophy are remarkably visible (Bett 2018,
"Introduction"). Engagement with Epicurean philosophy
shapes Sextus' approach deeply, to the extent that both schools,
Stoics and Epicureans, should be considered fundamental points of
reference.
After his remarks on how Pyrrhonians and Epicureans take issue with
the presumed usefulness of the disciplines, Sextus lays out general
arguments, suitable for skeptical examination of any field. He argues
that, for there to be a discipline, there must be the matter being
taught, the teacher, the learner, and the means of learning. If,
however, neither of these things exists, then the discipline
doesn't exist. This is how Sextus proceeds. He argues, or seems
to argue, for the non-existence of the disciplines (*M* 1.9).
Already in the very first sentence of *M* 1, Sextus describes
his own approach as one of putting forward counterarguments, a
strategy that he mentions repeatedly throughout *M*
1-6.
These moves give rise to the most contentious question regarding
*M* 1-6. Are these books negatively dogmatic? Or do they
fit in with Sextus's outlook in *PH* 1-3, where
skeptical arguments are described as leading up to suspension of
judgment? Bett (2018, "Introduction") argues that, with
some qualifications, Sextus' approach is to be explained as
follows. Sextus lays out counterarguments based on the assumption that
the arguments of the dogmatists have already been formulated. For
there to be arguments of equal weight on both sides, only the
anti-dogmatic arguments need to be adduced. The intended effect is
that jointly, these opposing sets of arguments lead us to suspend
judgment. In addition, Bett notes that the remarkable emphasis on
counterarguments, non-existence, and uselessness suggests that some of
the material in *M* 1-6 goes back to an earlier phase of
Pyrrhonism.
In four of the six fields, namely grammar, rhetoric, music, and
astrology, Sextus admits non-technical versions into the
skeptic's life, while subjecting all theoretical claims to
skeptical examination. For example, he distinguishes between the
ordinary ability to read and write on the one hand and grammar as a
technical discipline on the other, or the ability to play a musical
instrument on the one hand and music theory on the other (cf. Corti
2015b on why this kind of contrast does not come up in the books on
arithmetic and geometry, Corti 2015c on Sextus' attack on
the Platonic-Pythagorean notion of the Two, and Corti
forthcoming).
It is remarkable that, qua theoretical field, Sextus examines
astrology rather than astronomy. The latter would make for a more
typical sequence: apart from the fact that in Sextus, logic is
considered part of philosophy rather than a "discipline,"
the six fields otherwise correspond to the so-called trivium of
grammar, logic, and rhetoric and quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and music theory. Sextus' attention to astrology
rather than astronomy highlights a deep feature of his philosophy
(Corti 2015, Bett 2018). Astronomy, from Sextus' point of view,
is concerned with appearances; and hence there is a sense in which the
skeptic does not object to it. Astronomy, then, is the
"version" of astrology that skeptics can admit into their
adherence to ordinary life (*M* 5.1-3). Presumably,
astronomy is concerned with predicting things like droughts, floods,
earthquakes, and plagues based on appearances. Astrology, on the other
hand, is concerned with matters of great obscurity.
## 5. Ancient and Modern Skepticism: Transitions
### 5.1 Augustine: Re-Conceiving Skepticism in a Theological Framework
Historians of philosophy sometimes argue that Henri Etienne's
rediscovery of Sextus in 1562 initiated an era of epistemology. Early
modern engagement with skepticism is here seen as a turn to arguments
found in Sextus (Annas-Barnes 1985, 5-7; Bailey 2002,
1-20). Via Cicero, early modern and modern philosophers seem to
have engaged also with Academic arguments (for a recent analysis of
Academic skepticism in Hume and Kant, cf. Gonzalez Quintero
2022). In particular the beginning of Descartes'
*Meditations* may display a kind of Socratic spirit: a
commitment to calling into question all one's beliefs. However,
early modern philosophers work within a theologically framed tradition
that importantly begins with St. Augustine (354-430) (cf. Menn
1998 and Lagerlund 2009; on the history of medieval skepticism cf.
Lagerlund ed. 2009; cf. Carriero 2009 on Descartes' engagement
with Aquinas; for an analysis of the transformation of skepticism that
turns immediately to Descartes, cf. Williams 2010).
A major part of Augustine's early education consisted in the
study of Cicero's writings. He was thus closely acquainted with
Academic skepticism (Cicero was one kind of Academic skeptic).
Augustine sees the force of ancient skeptical strategies. Even though
he does not become a skeptic, he integrates distinctively skeptical
moves into his thought. This has a long-standing effect on the history
of theology and science. For example, Galileo Galilei is able to cite
Augustine when he defends himself against the charge that his physics
is in opposition to the Bible (*Letter to the Grand Duchess*,
in Drake 1957). Augustine supplies arguments to the effect that we
should keep an open mind. Both our physical theories and our
interpretations of the Bible are likely to evolve. This idea figures
importantly in Pyrrhonism. Past experience tells us that, on every
given issue, someone eventually came up with a new argument.
Accordingly, even if the skeptics cannot find an objection to a given
claim right now, they expect that in the future, a conflicting view
will be formulated.
However, such traces of skepticism are integrated into an ultimately
non-skeptical philosophy. In *Contra Academicos*, Augustine
recognizes a core feature of ancient skepticism, namely that it is a
commitment to ongoing inquiry (cf. Nawar 2019 on Augustine's
defense of knowledge against the skeptics in *Contra
Academicos* 3). The question that Augustine considers vital, then,
is whether a life devoted to inquiry can be compelling, if seemingly
there is no prospect for ever attaining truth (cf. Lagerlund 2009). It
is as a philosophy of inquiry that skepticism makes a lasting
contribution to ethics, continuing, as it were, a Socratic legacy
(Vogt 2017).
Augustine creates the framework that will become characteristic of
early modern discussions. First, in his work skeptical arguments are
explored in order to be refuted. Second, the key issue is whether we
have knowledge, not whether we should hold anything to be true. In
Augustine, the background for caring so much about knowledge is the
pressing question of whether we can know God: whether we can know that
he exists and what his properties are. This might also be the reason
why knowledge of testimony gains importance (*De Trinitate*,
15.12; in Schoedinger 1996). The Bible, or parts of it, might be
considered testimony about God, and accordingly as one possible way of
attaining knowledge of God.
Third, in the process of asking whether we can have knowledge of God
it makes sense to distinguish between kinds of knowledge (sensory,
rational, by testimony, etc.). If we know God, then we do so via one
of the kinds of knowledge. This becomes a standard feature of
discussions of skepticism. Philosophers go through the different kinds
of knowledge that are conceivable, and examine them in turn. In
Augustine as well as later authors, this includes mathematical
knowledge (Nawar 2022). Though Sextus wrote on geometry and
arithmetic, questions about knowledge in mathematics do not shape
Hellenistic debates between skeptics on the one hand and Epicureans
and Stoics on the other hand. Fourth, Augustine conceives of what he
calls 'inner knowledge.' He envisages a skeptical
scenario. Suppose we have no sensory knowledge, no rational knowledge,
and no knowledge of testimony. We still know that we think, love,
judge, live, and are (*De Trinitate* 15.12). In the *City of
God* 11.26, Augustine uses his well-known phrase "*si
enim fallor, sum*" (even if I err, I am). That is, Augustine
suggests that we have knowledge of our mental acts (cf. Nawar 2022 on
Augustine's concern with self-knowledge). However, Augustine
does not consider these pieces of knowledge foundational. While he
points to them when he discusses the challenges of Academic
skepticism, he does not systematically build upon them in refuting
skepticism about sense perception, rational knowledge, and knowledge
of testimony. Rather, he refutes skepticism by stating that God
created us and the things that are known to us; God wanted these
things to be known to us (*De Trinitate* 15.12). In later
epistemology, the idea of the turn into one's mind and an
introspective access to one's mental acts becomes a secular
idea. Augustine is a transitional figure in the philosophy of mind,
and thereby re-conceives skepticism. By focussing on a gap between
'what is in the mind' and the world outside, he as it were
invites external world skepticism (Vogt 2014a). But Augustine is
concerned with the path to God: the mind turns into itself and
from there it moves further, toward God (e.g., *Confessions* 7.
17,23).
Next to Augustine, Al-Ghazali (1085-1111) plays a major role in
re-conceiving the questions relevant to skepticism (Menn 2003,
Kukkonen 2009). In *The Rescuer From Error*, Al-Ghazali
literally describes God as the rescuer from error (in Khalidi 2005).
Like Augustine before and Descartes after him, Al-Ghazali moves
through different cognitive faculties. Do the senses or reason allow
us to gain knowledge? These questions are framed by the quest for
knowledge of God. While Augustine thinks that knowledge of God comes
through a combination of seeking God on the one hand and God's
grace on the other, Al-Ghazali thinks it comes through spiritual
exercises. However, once confidence in God is secured, trust in the
more familiar ways of gaining knowledge--sense perception,
rational reasoning, and so on--is restored (for a detailed
treatment of skepticism in Classical Islam, cf. Heck 2014).
One key difference between ancient skepticism on the one hand, and
medieval as well as Cartesian skepticism on the other, is that ancient
skepticism is not framed by theological concerns. Note that in
Cartesian skepticism, God is not only invoked when it comes to
refuting skepticism. More importantly, the skeptical problems arise in
a way that depends on God as creator. Our cognitive faculties are seen
as created faculties, and the world as a created world. A kind of
'faculty-skepticism' that asks whether our cognitive
faculties are built so as to be erroneous is formulated, and a
potential gap between our minds and the world opens up. Perhaps God
made us in such a way that we are fundamentally wrong about everything
(or, as later secular versions have it, a mad scientist experiments on
a "brain in a vat").
These are important steps away from the non-theological ancient
construal of skepticism. The theological premises of early modern
skepticism are not only foreign to ancient debates; they would be seen
as misguided. From the Hellenistic point of view, theology is part of
physics. An account of god is part of an account of the natural world
(as such, it is unrecognizable as 'theology' from the
point of view of later theologies). Human beings and their cognitive
faculties are natural parts of a natural world. They are organic and
functional parts, interconnected with the other parts of the large
whole which the universe is. A mind-world-gap (of the kind envisaged
in the Cartesian tradition) is inconceivable. Each 'mind,'
and that is, rational soul, is an integrated physical part of the
physical world. Like a part of a complex organism, it would not exist
were it not for the interrelations it has with the other parts. A
physiological account of the mind makes the stark divide between mind
and world that figures in early modern skepticism unimaginable.
### 5.2 Skepticism About Induction
Contemporary discussions inherit long-standing problems from early
modern philosophy. Among them, external world skepticism, skepticism
about other minds, and skepticism about induction are particularly
prominent. In assessing ancient skepticism, we might ask whether the
ancients saw these problems.
Among the skeptical problems of modern philosophy, skepticism about
induction stands out. Its early formulation in Hume does not depend on
the idea that our faculties are created by God, who also created the
world. Hume takes himself to engage with Pyrrhonian skepticism
(Ainslie 2003). Induction proceeds from particular observations to a
general conclusion. Skepticism about induction points out that, no
matter how many particulars were observed, the general claim
pronounces also on what has not been observed. In this respect, the
inference seems unwarranted and so we should suspend judgement on its
effectiveness. Induction can concern the ascription of properties to
some kind of entity as well as causal claims. In the latter, the
skeptic observes that what regularly precedes a type of event may not
be its cause. Perhaps we cannot infer anything from the fact that
certain properties or events regularly occur together (Vlasits 2020a;
for a related argument in Al-Ghazali, cf. Kukkonen 2009).
Relevant ideas can be traced in various aspects of Sextus'
philosophy. First, Sextus sides with anti-rationalist tendencies in
medicine. According to these schools, a doctor remembers that, in
earlier cases, symptom *A* was alleviated by medication
*B*. They do not infer that medication *B* makes symptom
*A* disappear, or that the illness *C* is the cause of
symptom *A*. Second, the Five Modes do not exclusively target
proof. They address everything that lends credibility to something
else. They may thus also call into question signs that are taken as
indicative of their causes. Sextus' skeptic does not accept such
indicative signs. Third, Sextus discusses the role of so-called
commemorative signs in the skeptic's life (*PH*
2.100-102; Allen 2001). For example, a scar is a commemorative
sign of a wound. Both were co-observed in the past. A skeptic will
think of a wound when seeing a scar. But they do not commit to causal
or explanatory claims. Fourth, Sextus records a set of Causal Modes
(*PH* 1.180-86), which are specifically targeted toward
causal explanations (Corti 2014; on the relation between the Causal
Modes and Hume cf. Garrett 2020). He does not ascribe the kind of
relevance to them that the Ten Modes and the Five Modes have. Indeed,
he thinks the Five Modes can do the work of Causal Modes (that is,
call into question causal and explanatory theses and theories).
However, the Causal Modes go into great detail on how the skeptic
investigates any kind of causal thesis or theory.
### 5.3 Subjectivity and Other Minds
The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is central to
modern discussions of skepticism. It is not envisaged in ancient
thought. However, this does not mean that ancient philosophers do not
reflect on questions relevant to this distinction. Arguably,
Pyrrhonism conceives of the affections of the mind in ways that
anticipate later thought about subjectivity (Fine 2003a and 2003b).
Sextus describes the skeptic's states of
'being-appeared-to' as affections of the mind. A skeptic
can report these states in their utterances. Illustrating this point,
Sextus uses expressions associated with the Cyrenaics, a Socratic
school of thought. These expressions literally mean something like
'I am being heated' or 'I am being whitened.'
They aim to record affections without claiming anything about the
world. Fine argues that the skeptic's beliefs are beliefs about
these affections (2000). With this proposal, Fine turns against two
prominent positions in scholarly debate about skeptical belief (see
section 4.4), that skeptics have no beliefs whatsoever, and that they
have beliefs that fall short of holding true. Fine envisages
reflective beliefs: beliefs about one's states of mind (on
related issues in contemporary epistemology, cf. Feeney and
Schellenberg 2020 and Gluer 2020).
Whether or not Sextus' account of the skeptic's mental
life includes reflective beliefs about one's mental states, we
should note an important difference to later proposals of that kind.
Later philosophers focus on the particular kind of certainty attached
to reflective knowledge. Reflective knowledge is sometimes seen as a
stepping-stone towards greater confidence in our cognitive powers, and
our ability to also attain other kinds of knowledge. But it may not be
obvious that reflective knowledge can take on this important role. In
this respect, Augustine is still closer to ancient than to modern
intuitions. He says that such pieces of knowledge as "I know
that I think" are not what we are looking for. Augustine
envisages that reflective knowledge-claims can be iterated, so that we
would have infinitely many pieces of knowledge ("I know that I
know that I think..."). But from his point of view, this
kind of knowledge leads nowhere. When we ask whether we can have
knowledge, we are interested in knowledge of the world and of God
(*De Trinitate* 15.12).
Modern philosophers also pay great attention to the privileged access
cognizers have to their own cognitive activities. Augustine introduces
a distinction that paves the way for this idea. He argues that the
mind cannot know what kind of stuff it is (*De Trinitate* 10.10
and 15.12). The mind does not know its substance, but it knows its
activities. For Augustine, this means that the mind knows itself. The
mind is precisely what it knows itself to be: in knowing that one
thinks, judges, lives, and so on, one knows the mind (Vogt 2014a).
Note that this argument indicates that knowing that one lives and is
are not pieces of knowledge about one's bodily existence, but
about the activities of the mind.
Finally, modern philosophers conceive of the special kind of access to
one's own mind not only in contrast with our access to the
world. They also compare it to our access to what goes on in other
minds. One of their core problems is skepticism about other minds. If
our own minds are accessible to us in the way nothing else is, then we
might not be able to ascribe mental states to others. For example, we
might not know that someone who looks as if she is in pain really is
in pain. The ancient skeptics envisage nothing of this kind (Warren
2011). This suggests that, insofar as they draw a distinction between
affections of the mind and the world, this distinction is construed
differently than in modern skepticism.
### 5.4 External World Skepticism
In its early modern versions, external world skepticism involves the
idea that there is a creator--someone who made the world and our
faculties, and the fit or misfit between them. If this assumption is
crucial to external world skepticism, then the ancients do not
conceive of this skeptical problem. From the point of view of modern
philosophy, ancient skepticism may appear limited by not addressing
some of the most radical skeptical scenarios (Burnyeat 1980 [1997] and
1982; Williams 1988; Fine 2003a and 2003b). From the point of view of
ancient skepticism, early modern skepticism and the long life that its
problems enjoy, however, would seem to originate in a flawed
theology.
Contemporary philosophers sometimes discuss external world skepticism
in terms of a paradox: one thinker finds herself torn between the
strength of skeptical arguments and her ordinary convictions. For
example, she thinks that *this is her hand.* But she concedes
that the skeptical hypothesis that a mad scientist might have set
things up so that she has such perceptions and thoughts (the so-called
brain in a vat scenario) is hard to refute. This way of framing
discussions of skepticism is foreign to antiquity. In antiquity,
skeptics and their opponents are different thinkers, each of them with
one set of intuitions, arguing against each other. It is also foreign
to ancient skepticism insofar as it inherits the early modern idea
that some greatly powerful agent sets things up, and in a sense
creates the thinker's faculties and the world as it appears to
them.
However, the ancient skeptics might conceive of their own kind of
external world skepticism. One way to explore this question is to turn
to the way in which Sextus describes that which is outside of the
skeptic's mind (Fine 2003 and 2003(2)). Throughout his work,
Sextus employs the distinction between appearances and what really is
the case. Consider some of the detail of how he characterizes the
latter. One phrase in the Ten Modes is "*ta ektos*
*hupokeimena*," the externally underlying things
(*PH* 1.61, 127, 128, 134, 144). Other phrases, meant to
demarcate roughly the same contrast with appearances, are how things
are in their nature (*phusei*) (*PH* 1.78, 123, 140),
"the underlying things" (*hupokeimena*)
(*PH* 1.106), as well as a combination: "the nature of
the underlying external things" (*PH* 1.117, 163). The
expressions which contain the word "external" might read
as if Sextus was talking about the external world in a sense familiar
to us from early modern skepticism.
But what are the underlying or external objects, as Sextus conceives
of them? For example, Sextus speaks of the underlying reality of
whether honey really is sweet (*PH* 1.19). In such a case, it
is assumed that there are ordinary objects. But we do not have access
to the properties they really have (Fine calls this Property
Skepticism, 2003b). However, external objects in Sextus' sense
also include objects that later philosophers would not obviously see
as part of the external word. For example, an answer to the question
of what kind of life really is good would count as a claim about
external or underlying reality (cf. Pellegrin 2010).
Another approach to the question of whether Sextus envisages some kind
of external world skepticism is to turn to his discussions of physics.
Ordinarily we take ourselves to live in a world in which there are
bodies, movement, place, time, and so on. But as Sextus argues, we do
not have compelling accounts of any of these core conceptions of
physics. This leads to suspension of judgment on whether there are
bodies, movement, place, time, and so on. Sextus' discussions of
physics might add up to a rather far-reaching skepticism about the
natural world. |
agrippa-nettesheim | ## 1. Biography
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa was born on 14 September 1486 in Cologne.
He matriculated at the University of Cologne in 1499 and graduated in
1502. The degree in medicine which he claimed to have earned was ruled
out by Prost (1882: 67-74), who also raised serious doubts about
his doctorates in Canon and Civil Law (*in utroque iure*).
Nauert (1965: 10-11), however, suggested that they might have
been obtained during the two periods of his life about which we have
very little information: 1502-1507 and 1511-1518. Agrippa
came into contact with the school of Albertus Magnus at Cologne, where
it was still a living tradition and where he pursed his interest in
natural philosophy, encountering the *Historia naturalis*
(*Natural History*) of Pliny the Elder for the first time.
Andreas Canter, the city poet of Cologne, probably introduced him to
Lullism--later, Agrippa wrote a long commentary, printed at
Cologne in 1531, on Lull's *Ars magna* (*Great
Art*). During his youthful studies, Agrippa also established
personal relationships with those German humanists who shared his
interest in ancient wisdom. He spent a short period in Paris, where he
might have been a student. With some French friends, he formed a
*sodalitium*, a sort of secret circle or initiatory
brotherhood, which, according the collection of letters from and to
Agrippa, included Charles de Bovelles (c. 1479-1533), Symphorien
Champier (c. 1471-1539), Germain de Brie (c. 1489-1538),
Germain de Ganay (d. 1520), the portraitist at the French court Jean
Perreal (c. 1455-1530), and an unknown Italian friend,
Landulfus. Between 1508 and 1509, Agrippa undertook a mysterious
journey to Spain, seemingly engaged in a military mission. In 1509 he
was charged with a course of lectures on Johannes Reuchlin's
*De verbo mirifico* (*On the Wonder-Working Word*) at
the University of Dole in Burgundy. This academic appointment
had been supported by the chancellor of the university, Archbishop
Antoine de Vergy. In the inaugural lecture, Agrippa pronounced a
prolusion in honor of the daughter of Emperor Maximilian, Margaret of
Austria, Princess of Austria and Burgundy. He planned to develop the
speech into a more comprehensive treatise in praise of womankind,
dedicating it to Margaret. Therefore, he began to draft, but perhaps
did not finish, his celebrated *De nobilitate et praecellentia
foeminei sexus declamatio* (*Declamation on the Nobility and
Pre-Eminence of the Female Sex*), which was published only in
1529. Agrippa's teaching on Christian kabbalah attracted
considerable interest among the members of the university and of the
local *Parlement*, and he joined the *collegium* of
theologians. Unfortunately, not everyone had a benevolent attitude to
what sounded like an attempt to spread the "most criminal,
condemned and prohibited art of kabbalah"
(*Expostulatio*, p. 494) in Christian schools. The Franciscan
Jean Catilinet, the provincial superior for Burgundy, preaching in the
presence of Margaret at the court of Low Countries in Ghent, denounced
Agrippa as a "judaizing heretic" (*ibidem*). This
charge put an end to Agrippa's teaching career in Dole and
dashed his hopes of obtaining Margaret's favor. Returning to
Germany, in the winter of 1509-1510 Agrippa went to the
monastery of St. Jacob at Wurzburg to meet Johannes Trithemius,
Abbot of Sponheim. Over the course of a few intense days, the famous
abbot and his young visitor discussed a topic of mutual interest:
natural magic and its role in contemporary culture. The meeting had a
crucial impact on Agrippa. He quickly finished a *compendium*
on magic, which he had been working on for some time. The first draft
of *De occulta philosophia* was dedicated to Trithemius, who
received the manuscript shortly before 8 April 1510 and generously
praised Agrippa's commitment. The book circulated in manuscript,
as evidence from Agrippa's correspondence shows; but he
continued to assemble materials in order to revise this first draft.
This aim was achieved only twenty years later.
In London, where he had gone in 1510 to carry out a political and
"very secret assignment" (*occultissimum negotium*,
*Defensio*, F. B6), probably on the orders of Emperor
Maximilian, he became familiar with John Colet, who introduced him to
the study of St. Paul's epistles. Agrippa wrote
*Commentariola* (*Little Commentaries*) on the Epistle
to the Romans, which he then lost in Italy and recovered only in 1523,
but which remain totally unknown to us. During his stay in London,
Agrippa replied to Catilinet's accusations with a polemical
*Expostulatio super Expositione sua in librum De verbo mirifico cum
Joanne Catilineti* (*Expostulation with Jean Catilinet over His
Exposition of the Book* On the Wonder-Working Word)--just the
first in a series of countless epic battles between him and
contemporary scholastic theologians. From 1511 to 1518, Agrippa was in
Italy, serving Maximilian, but his military duties did not prevent him
from pursuing his philosophical interests. He lectured on
Plato's *Symposium* (*Convivium*) and on the
Hermetic *Pimander* (that is, the *Corpus Hermeticum*)
at the University of Pavia, in 1512 and 1515 respectively. He probably
believed that he might be able to achieve his academic ambitions
there, but his fervent expectations were soon disappointed. After the
defeat of the Swiss and Imperial troops at Marignano (13-14
September 1515), he was forced to quit teaching and to abandon Pavia.
He then sought patronage at the court of William IX Paleologus,
Marquis of Monferrato, to whom he promptly dedicated two little works,
*De homine* (*On Humankind*) and *De triplici ratione
cognoscendi Deum* (*On the Threefold Way of Knowing God*),
gathering together some notes and materials he had already organized
or perhaps even prepared for press, in Pavia. Both works attest to the
importance of Agrippa's contact with early sixteenth-century
Italian culture. During his stay in Italy, he joined a network of
friends and correspondents, who allowed him to deepen his knowledge of
Neoplatonic and Hermetic literature, to sharpen his acquaintance with
kabbalistic texts, and to broaden and update his bibliographical
information. For a time he was in Turin, where he lectured on
theological topics.
In the following years, Agrippa was in Metz (1518-1520), as the
city orator and advocate (*advocatus*), in Geneva
(1521-1523), where he practiced medicine, and, finally in
Freiburg (until 1524), as the city physician. Throughout this period,
he came into contact with a number of humanists who were engaging with
the new religious ideas circulating at the time. Therefore, his
reputation as an "occult philosopher" assumed more complex
aspects. His *De originali peccato declamatio* (*Declamation
on Original Sin*), written in 1518 but not printed until 1529,
puzzled the dedicatee, Dietrich Wichwael, Bishop of Cyrene, and
Agrippa's friend Claude Dieudonne with regard to his
interpretation of Adam's sin as consisting in the sexual act. In
Metz, he was involved in the debate on St. Anne's triple
marriage, expressing his passionate support for Jacques Lefevre
d'Etaples' criticism of the popular legend that
attributed three husbands and three daughters to her. In *De
Beatissimae Annae monogamia ac unico puerperio* (*On St.
Anne's Monogamy and Sole Childbirth*, printed in Cologne,
1534), he gave a fierce reply to the accusations of heresy leveled at
Lefevre (and at himself) by three conservative monks. The
defense was vehement and strongly sarcastic: no wonder Lefevre
d'Etaples reacted anxiously to Agrippa's promise to
become his ally. Meanwhile, Agrippa had successfully defended a woman
of Woippy who was accused of being a witch, saving her from the stake.
Thanks to these courageous positions and his intense relationships
with pre-Reform circles, Agrippa was gradually assuming a by no means
secondary role in the general movement against the scholastic
tradition. He won the esteem of many scholars (some of them would
later on join the Reformation), but, at the same time, attracted the
particular attention of the religious authorities.
In spring of 1524 Agrippa moved to Lyon to take up the office of
physician to the French king's mother, Louise of Savoy. He tried
to win the favor of the king's sister, Marguerite
d'Alencon, by dedicating to her his declamation *De
sacramento matrimonii* (*On the Sacrament of Marriage*,
1526) in parallel Latin and French versions. Unfortunately, it was a
blunder and a terrible failure. The princess (who had recently been
widowed) was already hostile to the Erasmian 'spirit',
which Agrippa referred to in order to claim the lawfulness and benefit
of second marriages. Furthermore, ecclesiastical authorities were able
to recognize the influence of some Erasmus' condemned works on
Agrippa's positive attitude towards marriage, as well as the
link which connected it to the treatise *De sacro coniugio*
(*On Holy Wedlock*) of the Franciscan Francois Lambert,
who had fled to Strasbourg after joining the Reformation.
Agrippa's position at court was becoming worse. His friendships,
his sympathies for the work of humanist Reformers, his more and more
aggressive theses--in 1526 he reworked an earlier oration or
letter, *Dehortatio gentilis theologiae* (*Dissuasion from
Pagan Theology*), in which he criticized contemporaries for their
excessive curiosity about Hermetic theology and their disregard for
Christian education--were raising doubts his religious orthodoxy.
His correspondence with the Duke of Bourbon, who had betrayed the
French Crown in order to side with the Emperor, called into question
his political loyalties, and he was suspected of involvement in a
plot. His refusal to furnish an astrological prognostication for
Francois I and his incautious remarks about Louise's
superstition, which a friend passed on to her, sparked off her open
hostility. Agrippa was stripped of his pension and forbidden to leave
France. In the midst of such dramatic misadventures, he wrote his
*De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum*. It was a biting
commentary on all human sciences and arts and a fierce attack on the
moral and social assumptions of his day. Agrippa subjected the work to
later revisions and enlargements, right up to the moment of
publication, in 1530.
When, at last, he was allowed to leave France, Agrippa accepted the
office of archivist and imperial historiographer at the court of
Margaret of Austria, governor of the Low Countries, in Antwerp. He
finally dedicated himself to publishing his writings. In 1529 a
collection of his short treatises was printed in Antwerp by Michael
Hillenius, and in 1530 another Antwerp printer, Johannes Graphaeus,
brought out *De vanitate*. In 1531, Graphaeus also printed the
enlarged version of Book I of *De occulta philosophia*,
dedicated to Hermann von Wied, Archbishop Elector of Cologne
(1477-1552), and the table of contents for Book II and III. Both
*De vanitate* and *De occulta philosophia* circulated
widely, thanks to further editions (in Antwerp, Cologne, and Paris),
and once more Agrippa found himself in trouble with the religious
authorities. The Louvain theologians, questioned by Margaret of
Austria herself, condemned *De vanitate* as scandalous, impious
and heretical, and so did the Sorbonne with respect to the Paris
edition. The *Parlement* at Mechelin was informed of the
Louvain professors' judgment, and required Agrippa to answer
their accusations. He replied with two fearless writings, refuting,
point by point, the criticisms in his *Apologia*
(*Defense*) and accusing, in turn, his opponents of ignorance
and bad faith in his *Querela* (*Complaint*). These
events obviously put an end to Agrippa's career at
Margaret's court, and he was once again seeking a new protector.
Hermann von Wied, who was both interested in occult sciences and
sympathized with moderate religious reform, offered him protection
and, in June 1532, brought him into his own household. Eventually,
Agrippa was able to deliver the complete, final version of *De
occulta philosophia* to the Cologne printer Johannes Soter, who in
November was already typesetting it. Shortly before Christmas,
however, the Dominican inquisitor Conrad Kollin denounced the
book as heretical and blasphemous, getting the city's Senate to
suspend the printing. Agrippa's impassioned and controversial
appeal to the Cologne Senate (Zika 2003: 99-124) did not succeed
in resolving the impasse. It was, instead, the forceful intervention
of Hermann which enabled *De occulta philosophia* to appear,
even though accompanied by an appendix including the chapters of
*De vanitate* which criticized magic.
We are not informed about the last years of Agrippa's life,
because his correspondence stops in July 1533. He was perhaps the
author of a self-defense, *Dialogus de vanitate scientiarum et
ruina Christianae religionis* (*Dialogue on the Vanity of the
Sciences and the Ruin of Christian Religion*), fictitiously
attributed to Godoschalcus Moncordius, an otherwise unknown Cistercian
monk, and printed, in all probability, by Johannes Soter in 1534
(Zambelli 1965: 220-23). On 22 February 1534, from Bonn, Agrippa
addressed a legal memorandum to the Parliament of the Low Countries
(Zambelli 1965: 305-12). According to his pupil Johannes Wier
(1515-1565), Agrippa was in Bonn until 1535. He then returned to
France, where he was arrested on the order of Francois I.
Shortly after his release, he died in Grenoble in 1535 or, at the
latest, in 1536.
## 2. *De occulta philosophia* (early draft)
Dedicating to Trithemius his first attempt as a reformer of magic,
Agrippa claimed to share the common desire for the renewal of a
"sublime and sacred science", perverted by having been
detached from its theoretical context and by being practiced with
anti-natural means and intentions. Corrupted texts and inadequate
critical and philosophical awareness had made magic a convoluted
jumble of errors and obscurities, despised by the learned, mistrusted
by the Church, and used with feckless irresponsibility by
superstitious old witches. Instead, in its original and pure form,
magic was a sacred body of knowledge, providing the possibility of
human dominion over all of created nature (elemental, celestial, and
intellectual).
Basically, the first draft of *De occulta philosophia* was
structured as a survey, which owed much to Marsilio Ficino's
*De vita* (*On Life*), Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola's *Oratio* (*de dignitate hominis*,
*Oration* [*on the Dignity of Humankind*]), and Johannes
Reuchlin's *De verbo mirifico*. These authors had already
endeavored to restore magic, distinguishing (from different
perspectives and with different aims) between true and false magic,
between philosophy and pseudo-philosophy, between the sacred and the
sacrilegious. Agrippa's program followed a slightly different
path. For Giovanni Pico, magic was "the most perfect
accomplishment of natural philosophy" (*Oration*, p.
226). Instead, for Agrippa, it was "the most perfect
accomplishment of the noblest philosophy" (*totius
nobilissimae philosophiae absoluta consummatio*, I, 2, p. 86).
This definition had significant implications. Unlike his predecessors,
Agrippa conceived of magic as a comprehensive knowledge, gathering
together all the cognitive data collected in the various fields of
human learning, and making explicit their potentials for acting on
reality. Therefore, according to the three different levels of being,
there were three different operative areas to which magic applied,
making it possible to distinguish three 'forms' of magic:
natural magic, astrological (and numerological) magic, and
'religious' or 'ceremonial' magic, that is,
the kabbalistic and theurgic magic. All three forms are true and good,
if properly practiced in the context of the reformed magic. This
assessment highlighted that Agrippa had moved away from another of his
sources. In *De verbo mirifico*, Johannes Reuchlin had proposed
a similar tripartite division in the "wonder-working art"
(*ars miraculorum*), but he had also recognized the intrinsic
risks of each "form". Magic based on physics (natural
magic) cannot be checked and is therefore limited in its powers. Magic
based on astrology is often false and confused. As far as ceremonial
magic is concerned, *goetia*, which relies on malign demons, is
clearly superstitious; theurgy, which attempts to establish contact
with benign demons, is practicable in theory, but complicated and
dangerous in practice. Therefore, Reuchlin favored a more reliable and
efficacious alternative, a fourth way, called the "art of
soliloquy" (*ars soliloquia*), based on the use of the
holy name of Christ. While sharing Reuchlin's enthusiasm for
this thaumaturgic philosophy, Agrippa's view was broader, also
embracing Ficino's astrological magic, Pico's natural
magic, and Neoplatonic and Hermetic theurgic magic. The
all-inclusiveness of his "restored" magic also allowed him
to recover the legacy of the medieval tradition (of Albertus Magnus,
above all) and even to pay some attention to popular
beliefs--justifying them within a Neoplatonic conceptual
framework.
In Book I Agrippa explores the elemental world, reviewing the manifest
and occult virtues of stones, plants, animals, and human individuals.
Occult virtues, on which natural magic mainly focuses, are explained
by the relationship of causal correspondence, connecting the eternal
exemplars, the ideas, to the sublunary forms through the stars. In his
Neoplatonic animated cosmos, all things are harmoniously related to
each other. Magical activity consists chiefly in attracting the
"spirit of the world" (*spiritus mundi*). It is
diffused everywhere and distributes life to everything, acting as the
mediator between heavenly souls and earthly bodies, and allowing a
sympathetic exchange between the different levels of the ontological
hierarchy.
Book II, dedicated to astrology, opens with the celebrated image of
the magus as the go-between who subjects sublunary world to the stars.
The knowledge of the laws, governing how the celestial influences flow
down to the earth, enables the magus to collaborate actively with
nature, modifying the phenomenal processes. To describe astrological
images, attracting astral virtues, Agrippa pillaged the technical
details described by Ficino in *De vita coelitus comparanda*
(*On Obtaining Life from the Heavens*), but he also went back
to the medieval tradition.
In Book III, Agrippa commits the physical and celestial worlds to the
protection of religion, which has the task of guaranteeing a
rigorously non-superstitious magic, immune to demonic deceptions.
Religion provides the magus with a model of moral improvement,
allowing him to realize the Hermetic ideal of the perfect philosopher,
perfect magus, and perfect "priest" (*sacerdos*).
In describing the human path to Hermetic deification, the first draft
of Book III makes a clear distinction between faith and science.
Agrippa draws on Reuchlin to define the link between illumination,
offered by God to the human mind through faith, and reason, which can
gain true knowledge only by receiving it from the mind. Reason, after
attaining the innate contents of the mind, produces a science which is
legitimized by its divine origins and is therefore not susceptible to
the assault of doubts and errors. This was only an initial (and
somewhat vague) approach to a topic which would play an increasingly
crucial role in Agrippa's thought. At this time, the primacy of
faith, as expressed by Reuchlin, functioned chiefly as the basis for a
powerful and reliable operative practice. As far as kabbalistic magic
was concerned, Agrippa seemingly played down Reuchlin's raptures
about the Hebrew language, assimilating the sacred Hebrew names,
instituted by God as the vehicles of his power, to the so-called
"strange" or "foreign words" (*barbara
verba*) of ancient theology and Neoplatonic theurgy.
The early version of *De occulta philosophia* was, in many
respects, an original attempt. Nevertheless, it did not perfectly
succeed in organizing Agrippa's different and varying sources
into a coherent structure--especially as regards Book III, which
played a pivotal role in connecting magic to the religious foundation
of learning. Not without reason, the dedicatee Trithemius noticed
these limitations, urging his pupil "not to imitate bullocks,
but to emulate birds" (*Epistolae*, pp.
503-04)--that is, to turn his mind to the metaphysical
Unity as a prior requirement for all magic activity.
## 3. *De triplici ratione cognoscendi Deum*
The key to understanding the internal coherence of Agrippa's
thought is to be found in his deepening interest in Neoplatonic and
Hermetic writings, which allowed him to define the relationship
between faith and reason in a more comprehensive perspective. In the
Plotinian (and Ficinian) theory of the tripartite division of
psychological faculties (*mens*, *ratio*,
*idolum*), mind (*mens*) represents the highest
function, the head (*caput*) of the soul, the divine spark
present in every human being; when God creates each soul, it is into
this supreme portion that he infuses the innate ideas, which mind
directly intuits in God. Reason (*ratio*) is an intermediate
function between the mind, which continually communicates with God,
and the lower powers (*idolum*, that is, the sensory
faculties), which are connected to the material world. Reason, the
seat of the will, is free to conform to either of the contrasting
directions indicated to it by the other parts of the soul.
This more structured view was already capitalized in the short
treatise *De triplici ratione cognoscendi Deum* (*On the
Threefold Way of Knowing God*), dedicated to William Paleologus in
1516, but published only in 1529, in a version somewhat expanded by
Agrippa before printing. The term *ratio* had many meanings for
Agrippa. Firstly, it recounted the 'way' of divine
revelation. To manifest himself to mankind, God wrote three books, by
which the three different religious cultures were able to know him.
Ancient philosophers, reading the book of nature, knew God through the
created world; Hebrew theologians, reading the book of the law, knew
God through the angels and the prophets; Christians, reading the book
of the Gospel, gained perfect knowledge of God through his son, made
man. Secondly, *ratio* referred to the three
"steps" (*gradus*) in the spiritual ascent of every
human soul to God: sense perception, rational knowledge, and spiritual
knowledge. Finally, like the scholastics, Agrippa intended
*ratio* as the epistemological criterion by which philosophical
schools performed their theological investigations and reached their
understanding of God's essence.
Agrippa projected the history of the individual soul and of philosophy
back into the time preceding human history: Adam's sin is the
archetypal figure of the moral choices and intellectual options of his
descendants. Adam willingly renounced true knowledge when he, trusting
more in Eve than in God, presumed that he could achieve a knowledge
capable of making him equal to God. Similarly, each of us renews the
original sin committed by Adam when our reason denies that it is
created and proudly proclaims an autonomy of its own, shattering its
harmonious relationship with God. Once the hierarchy of cognition has
been destabilized, reason strives to find its contents in the senses,
which are fallacious and deceptive, and builds up a science which is
both dubious and vain: devoid of foundation, inert, and morally
pernicious. Original sin is also repeated in the schools of
contemporary theologians, who try to know God by the wretched means of
their rebellious reason. This is the science of those, who live
"in the realm of the flesh" (Romans 8:9)--the science
of the "sophists of God" (*theosophistae*):
fatuous, arrogant, quarrelsome and immoral, unable of transforming
their notions into actions, that is, of solving the crisis of which
they are both authors and victims. Contemporary culture, as the fruit
of this rebellious reason (which is, after all, Aristotelian and
scholastic reason), is fated only to describe, to lightly touch on the
structure of reality, without being able to penetrate it.
Agrippa was not professing any form of anti-intellectualism, but he
was applying the Platonic (broadly speaking) model of the tripartite
soul to the Christian way of knowledge. In accordance with this
pattern, if reason respects its subordination to the mind, that is, to
the message, which God has implanted directly in the soul, it fulfils
the role which has been assigned to it in the project of creation,
which is to know God by means of the book of nature. On the other
hand, since the book of nature is written by the hand of God, the
fundamental goodness of the world is implied; and it is also implied
that human beings have the ability to read these pages and are,
indeed, obliged to do so. Reason is therefore perfectly literate and
legitimate when it comes to deciphering this bundle of communicative
signs. Nonetheless, the book of nature is a means through which God
helps us to return to our origin. Therefore, the reading should be
done with our eyes fixed more on the author of the book than on its
contents: the knowledge of physical reality is merely a way of
retracing through sensible objects the cosmic process of love, which
is centered on the eternal Good, "beginning, middle and
end" of everything which exists. Humanity's greatness
resides purely and simply in its capacity to grasp God by
contemplating his works, the created symbols which bear witness to
their creator. Moreover, when reason "silences" the
sensory part of the soul and turns itself inwards to its highest
function, it becomes conscious of the constant illumination of the
mind by God. At that moment, reason grasps essences by an intuitive
act which is superior to the purely rational one, insofar as it is a
"contact of the essence with God". This is not a mystical
experience. It is an intellectual experience, founded on some
intuitive philosophical certainties, which revelation proves true.
Faith (*fides*) does not provide new contents, but unveils the
deep sense of the existing contents of the reason, which is operating
in harmony with the mind. A truly Christian philosopher, however,
cannot be satisfied with having achieved individual knowledge. The
commandment to love our neighbor requires us to become "leaders
of the blind" (Matthew 15:14), "a corrector of the
foolish" and "a teacher of the immature" (Romans
2:20). Contemporary "bad shepherds" (pupils of "the
school of Satan", as the only preserved manuscript of *De
triplici ratione* called them) neglect their spiritual
responsibilities. Therefore, the "new" Christian
philosopher has to turn into theologian, teaching the path to general
redemption to his brothers in Christ. In addition, he has to take care
of the social benefits deriving from his knowledge. Agrippa slightly,
but significantly, modified the most celebrated sentence of the
Hermetic *Asclepius*: "A human, Asclepius, is a great
miracle!") by stating: "A Christian human is a great
miracle!" (*Magnum miraculum est homo Christianus!*, p.
146).
The allegorical interpretation of the original sin which Agrippa
borrowed from Paulus Ricius' *Isagoge*
(*Introduction*) was repeated two years later in his *De
originali peccato* (*On Original Sin*), written in 1518,
but published in 1529. Adam is faith, the foundation of reason. The
Tree of Life, that is, the privilege of knowing and contemplating God,
was reserved to him. Eve is reason, which was allowed to have a
relationship with the snake, that is, with material things and the
senses. Unlike Adam, she was not forbidden to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge, that is, to know the physical world. Our ancestors were
equally responsible for original sin, but in different ways:
Eve/reason, because she placed trust and hope in the senses and
weakened faith's firmness with her arguments; Adam/faith,
because he, wishing to indulge his woman, turned away from God to the
sensory world, relying entirely on the conclusions which reason drew
from senses. Agrippa did not generally censure the potential of
reason, but emphasized the hierarchical link between faith and reason.
We are not allowed to debate *de divinis* ("about divine
matters"), in which we must only have faith and hope. Instead,
we can speculate about created beings, but not have faith and hope in
them.
The allegory was also invoked in his famous eulogy of women, *De
nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus* (*On the Nobility
and Superiority of the Feminine Sex*), by which Agrippa hoped to
ingratiate himself with Margaret of Austria. Among all the topics
which he meticulously collected from the rich repository of this
literary genre, he also proposed a more philosophical argument in
favor of women, analyzing Eve's role in original sin. It was
Adam, who introduced spiritual death into the world, since Eve was not
prohibited from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: thus, she
was not guilty of disobeying God. Agrippa did not claim that Eve was
completely without sin. More modestly, he maintained that her sin did
not entail transgressing God's commandment; she sinned
nevertheless because she allowed the snake to tempt her and became the
occasion of Adam's sin. She was deceived and went
astray--not "involuntarily" (Van der Poel 1997: 210),
but "ignorantly". What should we understand by
"ignorantly"? Agrippa could not seriously regard
Eve's ignorance as a defect in her spiritual progress (as
Augustine did in his *The Literal Meaning of Genesis*) or as a
weakness of her spiritual faculties (as Isotta Nogarola did in her
*Dialogue on Adam and Eve*). In the opening of the treatise,
Agrippa, recalling humankind's creation (Genesis 1:26-7),
underlined that both Adam and Eve had been created in God's
image and likeness: as rational souls, both shared the same
psychological faculties, the same teleology, and the same moral
freedom. The seeming inconsistency can be resolved by interpreting the
biblical progenitors as "figures" of Neoplatonic
psychology. Reason's *ignorantia Dei* ("ignorance
of God") is not a passive "not-knowing" (which is,
in any case, unthinkable, because God is not concealed in unfathomable
transcendence, but "shines everywhere" in nature, and,
above all, inside humans). On the contrary, reason's
*ignorantia Dei* is an active "neglecting", a will
to turn away from God and a pride in being an end in itself.
## 4. *De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum*
It is not possible to establish the extent to which the *declamatio
invectiva* which Agrippa announced to his friend Jean Chapelain in
September 1526 was really finished at that time. We do know, however,
that when Johannes Grapheus published it in 1530, some parts at least
had been expanded and reworked, according to Agrippa's custom
(Nauert 1965: 108, n. 11; Zambelli 1992: 81, n. 40). The work was
reprinted many times and was also translated into German (1534),
Italian (1543), English (1569), French (1582), and Dutch (1651).
Richard Popkin underlined that Agrippa's declamation does not
contain the "serious epistemological analysis" one would
expect from a skeptical debate and suggested that it should be
considered as an expression of anti-intellectualism and biblical
fundamentalism (Popkin 2003: 29). This reading, however, leaves the
key question unresolved: such an anti-intellectualism or biblical
fundamentalism is difficult to reconcile with Agrippa's
long-standing interest in precisely those sciences which by then
should have been swept away by the appeal to *verbum Dei*
("word of God"). It is undeniably true that in *De
vanitate* the moral angle prevails over the epistemological
critique. This is because Agrippa also looked at trades, professions,
pastimes, and social types, none of which were susceptible to
epistemological analysis. Moreover, when discussing a science, he was
primarily interested in focusing on how it was used and on its
concrete effects on society, rather than in investigating its methods
and subjects. Some scholars have identified *De vanitate* as
the result of a profound personal crisis (psychological, religious, or
cultural), which led Agrippa to a radical criticism of the system of
occult doctrines and of his own intellectual choices. No doubt, the
circumstances of his life between 1526 and 1530 influenced the tone of
the work which he was preparing, accentuating its harshness and
inspiring some of its more polemical and audacious pages. Nonetheless,
it is unlikely that, all of the sudden, Agrippa abandoned his
philosophical convictions, solely because of indignation at the
treatment he suffered at the court of Louise of Savoy (Weeks 1993:
120-24). Likewise, the hypothesis of an intellectual upheaval
(Keefer 1988: 614-53; Zambelli 2000: 41) remains merely
conjectural. Agrippa's supposed disbelief in science (and, above
all, in astrology and magic) contrasts with his continuing work on
*De occulta philosophia* and with his project for a reform of
the magical tradition, based on a new vision of science. It is
important to recognize that there were serious motivations behind his
fierce attack on the foundations of knowledge. Bowen (1972:
249-56) and Korkowski (1976: 594-607), reducing *De
vanitate* to a simple exercise of rhetoric in the fashionable
literary genre of the paradox, correctly outlined the work's
formal characteristics; however, they did not sufficiently take into
account its philosophical intentions and turned its subversive
implications into something quite inoffensive. *De vanitate*
proposed a reform project, one which was broader, more complex, and
more radical than that of its model, Erasmus' *Praise of
Folly* (*Laus stultitiae*).
Agrippa's aim was to pass judgment on the condition, methods,
and practitioners of the philosophical and theological schools which
dominated his time. His verdict is undoubtedly very severe. He
believed that contemporary culture, lost in useless sophisms, was no
longer able to fulfill its task of educating Christian people and
promoting their spiritual well-being. The social fabric had become
torn by corruption, by political and religious struggles, and by
heresies and superstitions. He did not, however, intend *De
vanitate* to be merely destructive. His aim was also to propose a
cultural alternative, delineating a different philosophical approach,
capable of forming a new intellectual elite, who would be
seriously interested in the moral and religious progress of human
community.
Certainly, the most striking aspect of the *declamatio* is its
critical stance. The all-encompassing polemical parade emphasizes that
human "inventions" (*inventiones*)--grammar as
well as dance, theology as well as hunting, ethics as well as dice
games--are nothing more than opinions, devoid of coherence and
stability, and irreparably harmful to support the spiritual health of
believers. The discord which divides practitioners of each branch of
science attests to the intrinsic weakness of the findings of natural
reason, which proceeds by conjectures, subject to refutation.
Everything reason devises and carries out, relying on its own strength
alone, is fallacious, useless, and damaging: "the structure of
the sciences is so risky and unstable that it is much safer not to
know anything than to have knowledge" (1, p. 5). The happiest
life is the life of the ignorant.
The usual compilation of discordant opinions of philosophers was
partly shaped by texts of the ancient skeptics; but for the most part
Agrippa made use of more recent sources: Ficino, Reuchlin, and
Francesco Giorgio Veneto. There are no quotations from Gianfrancesco
Pico's *Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium*, the first
detailed reading of the work of Sextus Empiricus (Schmitt 1967:
237-42). This significant omission suggests that Agrippa did not
agree with the skeptical fideism expressed by Gianfrancesco. *De
vanitate* did not, in fact, question the human ability to know
causes. Rather, it questioned the capacity of Aristotelian
epistemology to account for the nature of things. In chapter 7,
Agrippa states that knowledge based on sense perception is not able to
guarantee a sure and truthful experience, since the senses are
fallible; nor does it succeed in revealing the causes and properties
of phenomena or in knowing what is only intelligible, since this
escapes the grasp of the senses. Not all human knowledge was open to
question, however. Instead, Agrippa, by proving that a sense-based
theory of knowledge cannot produce science, intended to introduce
another epistemology, one which he regarded as the foundation for true
knowledge. So, in chapter 52, "On the Soul", he did not
uphold even the facade of skepticism. "Demonic
Aristotle" (*daemoniacus Aristoteles*) made the soul
dependent on the nature of the body, defining it as "the first
perfection of a natural body possessing organs, which potentially has
life" (Aristotle, *De anima* II.1). "Divine
Plato" (*divinus ille Plato*) aligned himself with those
philosophers (Zoroaster, Hermes, and Orpheus) who had defined the soul
as a divine substance: the "product of an incorporeal
maker" and dependent "solely on the power of its efficient
cause, not on the bowels of matter" (52, pp. 109-10). Agrippa
noted the disagreement between Aristotle and Plato on this subject,
not in order to lead his readers to a skeptical "suspension of
judgment" (*epoche*). Rather, he intentionally
contrasted two different models of rationality, explicitly weighing up
their value. At least on this matter, the "ancient
theology" (*prisca theologia*) and the Platonic school
were found to be consistent with the criterion of truth, the Holy
Scriptures.
The real intentions of *De vanitate* have to be extracted from
deep inside the text, hidden beneath more polemical and provocative
statements. The sciences of their own accord "do not procure for
us any divine felicity which transcends the capacity of man, except
perhaps that felicity which the serpent promised to our
ancestors"; but in itself "every science is both bad and
good" and deserves whatever praise "it can derive from the
probity of its possessor" (1, p. 21). Agrippa appropriated here
the Aristotelian principle of the ethical neutrality of science: it is
the spiritual attitude of the knower, his "integrity"
(*probitas*), which constitutes the moral criterion of the
discipline and ensures good or bad usage. From the cultural point of
view, the destructive action of skepticism puts an end to the
discussion between the schools by eliminating one of the two
contenders, that is, all philosophers whose doctrines are built on the
foundation of sensory experience. From the pedagogical point of view,
however, skepticism is no more than a preliminary training. Systematic
debate about sensory representations and the suspension of judgment
concerning the appearances of the material world free the soul from
false opinions, demonstrating the inadequacy of empiricism and
directing the search for truth towards the intelligible.
Purification leads to a new spiritual attitude, which makes the
philosopher capable of undertaking the route to true knowledge. Truth,
in fact, is grasped only by turning inwards, to the mind, where God
implanted the innate ideas when he created the soul. Agrippa's
acceptance of the Neoplatonic theory of knowledge is positively
expressed in the final peroration of *De vanitate*, when he
invites his readers to abandon the schools of the sophists in order to
regain awareness of the cognitive inheritance to which every soul has
an original entitlement. Agrippa refers to the Academics alongside
Holy Scripture to support the idea that human beings have an innate
realm of knowledge, which needs to be recovered by means of a suitable
*paideia*, or program of education. The return to original
perfection is an 'illumination'--not a mystical
illumination, but an intellectual one: the reminiscence and
re-appropriation of self-knowledge. Ultimately, illumination is the
knowledge of the self as "mind" (*mens*) or
"intellect" (*intellectus*).
In this sense, Agrippa defines faith as the "foundation of
reason" (*fundamentum rationis*), that is, the criterion,
guarantee, and firm basis of human knowledge. Revelation is without
doubt the absolute and complete expression of truth; but it originates
from the same source as the contents of the mind, on which the
activity of reason is dependent. Since God is the sole source of
truth, the tradition of faith is homogeneous with philosophical
contemplation, which finds its justification in revelation. Through
divine will, rationality and its higher level of "spiritual
intelligence" are able to establish a relationship of
continuity. For this reason, rational science and all its practical
applications gain authenticity and legitimacy if they develop within a
theological framework. This does not mean that reason has to draw its
contents directly from Scripture. Rather, it means that the contents
of science, procured by the exercise of reason, are "true"
when they do not contradict divine design, do not hinder the spiritual
progress of the Christian, and contribute to the good of humanity and
the world. Certainly, the architect will not seek technical
instructions for how to put up his building in the Bible. Instead, he
and those who commission him need to seek in it an indication of the
"manner" (*modus*) and "end"
(*finis*) of this discipline. Architecture would be an art and
science "extraordinarily necessary and beautiful" in
itself and capable of making a large contribution to the well-being of
the civil community, if humankind had not rendered it vain and noxious
by their excessive use of it "for the simple exhibition of the
riches" and by heedlessly destroying the natural
surroundings.
In *De vanitate*, Agrippa does not put faith in opposition to
science or the Holy Scriptures in opposition to human books. He
instead puts Aristotelian philosophy, worldly science and the source
of unbelief in opposition to "Platonic" philosophy, the
model of a Christian "science in the word of God"
(*scientia in verbo Dei*). With this expression, Agrippa refers
to a religiously orientated science: a science which can move freely
in the sphere of the "visible manifestations of God"
(*visibilia Dei*) in order to know his "invisible
essentials" (*invisibilia*) and to trace the beginning
and origin of everything. He does this in the awareness of the harmony
between faith and reason, which scholastic Aristotelian philosophy had
disowned, infecting the world with a plague of "petty
syllogisms" (*ratiunculae*), sophisms, and impertinent
questions about God. There is, in sum, a 'divine' path to
knowledge, which Plato and the ancient theologians founded on God and
which deals with God. And there is a "demonic" path, which
Aristotle constituted merely on human abilities and which deals with
lower things: it is demonic, because it renews and perpetuates the sin
of Adam, inspired by Satan and his proud ambition to make himself
equal to the creator in the knowledge of good and evil.
Agrippa's distinction between different forms of
rationality--valued differently according to their basis and
their final point of view--allows us to regard his *declamatio
invectiva* as not belonging to a true and proper profession of
skepticism, of general anti-intellectualism, or of rigorous fideism.
Instead, it can be realigned with the anti-Aristotelian and
anti-scholastic critiques of Ficino, Reuchlin, and Giorgio. Agrippa
did not propose abandonment in God in the undifferentiated
indifference of "neither this one nor that one" advocated
by Sextus Empiricus. In his view, skepticism constituted an exercise
in education, necessary for pointing the way towards the apprehension
of truth. In the final digression, "In Praise of the Ass",
Agrippa seemingly invites his readers to put down the baggage of the
human sciences and return to being "naked and simple
asses", and thus newly capable of carrying on their own backs
the mysteries of divine wisdom, like the ass which carried Jesus into
Jerusalem. This ironic exhortation is polemical: those who must be
subjected to metamorphosis into an ass are the "noble doctors in
sciences", professing a purely human (or rather, demonic)
science. For scholastic theologians, the motto "To know nothing
is the happiest life" (*nihil scire foelicissima vita*)
is valid, since "there is nothing more fatal than a science
stuffed with impiety" (1, p. 4). Philosophy should be a
religious progress--or, rather, a *regressus*, a return to
the source of being.
## 5. *De occulta philosophia* (final draft)
In *De vanitate*, Agrippa did not make any explicit recantation
of his passion for occult sciences (Keefer 1988: 618); he simply
admitted that there might have been something wrong in his juvenile
work on magic, because of his adolescent curiosity. In fact, the
renewal of magic continued to be a central feature of his intellectual
journey. Between 1530 and 1533, right in the middle of his violent
battle against theologians and conservatives, he was preparing *De
occulta philosophia* for publication, entrusting his last hope of
a secure financial support to the same work to which he had committed
his desire for fame and fortune twenty years earlier. Although in the
meantime his religious concerns had deepened, he did not perceive any
conflict between his involvement in theological debates and his
persistent interest in the task of rebuilding magic. In his mind, they
were two coherent aspects of a single project, as he had already
pointed out in *De triplici ratione cognoscendi Deum*. There
Agrippa had made clear that reforming culture on the basis of the
solid certainty of God's illumination also implied regaining
humankind's original perfection and thaumaturgic ability, which
Adam owned by right before he sinned.
Comparison of the 1510 dedication copy, sent by Agrippa to Trithemius
(MS Wurzburg, M.ch.q.50), with the printed final edition (Cologne
1533), reveals the careful and thorough revision and enlargement to
which the first draft was subjected. The book doubled in length, and
fresh ideas and references were included. In updating the text,
Agrippa mostly drew on works consistent with the sources he had
already used in drafting the initial version. Between 1510 and 1533,
he had studied a number of texts which he had previously been unaware
of or neglected (Ficino's commentaries on Plato and on Plotinus;
Giovanni Pico's *Conclusiones*, *Heptaplus*, and
*Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem*; Lodovico
Lazzarelli's *Crater Hermetis*; and Gianfrancesco
Pico's *De rerum praenotione*) or which had been
published in the meantime (some of Erasmus' writings; Paulus
Ricius' commentaries on Hebrew writings; Reuchlin's *De
arte cabalistica*; and Francesco Giorgio's *De harmonia
mundi*). Agrippa's vast exploration of books allowed him to
re-orient his youthful project, providing a definitive justification
of his aim to restore in full the religious, cognitive, and practical
scope of ancient magic. This "reformed magic" (*magia
reformata*) would not only guarantee to the magus mastery over
nature and the ability to attract astral and angelic virtues, but
would also assure his ascent to the First Principle.
The revised version of *De occulta philosophia* offers
extensive proof of this significant qualitative shift. The original
tripartite structure was given a new metaphysical structure, which
powerfully underlined the idea of the cosmos as an epiphany of the
divine. Thanks to the influence of Giorgio's *De harmonia
mundi*, Agrippa was able to adopt a radically new approach to
natural magic. Now, Book I explicitly contemplates the material world
as the receptacle of divine and presents the occult virtues as an
example of the living links connecting the terrestrial forms to the
First Cause through the chain of the higher intermediaries (stars and
spiritual essences). The "perfection of both science and
practice" is guaranteed by the ability to change the impure back
to the pure, and plurality back to simplicity. In significant
additions "on the properties of elements" (chapters
3-6), William Newman (1982) recognized the description of the
alchemical reduction of elemental earth to the purity of first matter.
There are three orders of elements, corresponding to the three levels
of being: pure elements, unmixed and incorruptible; compound elements,
multiplex, varied and impure, but which can be reduced to "pure
simplicity" (*pura simplicitas*); lastly, decomposed
elements, convertible into one another. Earth, which confers solidity
on other elements, mixing with them but without changing into them, is
the receptacle of every celestial influence, because it is
continuously animated by the virtues conveyed by the
*spiritus*: so, earth is "the foundation and mother of
everything", because it encloses the seminal virtues of all
creation. Therefore, having undergone the process of purification and
simplification, it becomes "the purest remedy for restoring and
preserving us". The process of universal simplification of the
elements can be carried out by reducing earth to the original purity
of the first matter. Newman explained the nature of this process,
referring to chapter 4 of Book II, on the power of the number one.
Here, Agrippa traces the presence of unity in all levels of existence:
God in the archetypal world, the *anima mundi* in the
intellectual one, the Sun in the heavenly world, the heart in man, and
Lucifer in hell. In the elemental world, the one is the
philosopher's stone, "embodying all wonders",
without which "neither alchemy, nor natural magic may attain
their perfect end". Agrippa's source, as Newman has
pointed out, was a letter in which Trithemius gave a cosmological
interpretation of the Hermetic text "Emerald Tablet"
(*Tabula Smaragdina*), identifying the alchemical *opus*
as the universal "path to the highest unity"
(*Epistolae*, pp. 471-73).
Book II introduces a massive quantity of "technical"
references, in some part influenced by the corpus of magical
manuscripts which had belonged to Trithemius and which came into
Agrippa's possession in 1520. This updating, however, depended
for the most part on epistolary exchanges of texts and ideas with his
correspondents. Despite his violent attack on the divinatory arts in
*De vanitate*, he presented here a more comprehensive treatment
of astrology. After all, magic (although "reformed") could
not dispense with astrology. Occult virtues can be explained only in
terms of the heavenly qualities conveyed by the rays which emanate
from stars. It is each individual's horoscope which determines
his or her specific powers. Even the relationships of
"attraction or repulsion" (*amicitia vel lis*)
between sublunary bodies correspond to the relationships between
celestial bodies. Agrippa insistently emphasizes the link connecting
magic to astrology, defining the latter as "the much-needed key
for all secrets". In recognizing the pivotal role played by
astrology, Agrippa seems to contradict his harsh judgment of this
science in *De vanitate*: fallacious conjecture, practiced by
superstitious, ignorant, and mendacious followers. The contradiction
is only apparent, however. Like any other human science, astrology is
both bad and good. It is bad in the hands of those who pass off a
conjecture as an infallible fact, thus denying man's freedom and
the divine providential design. It is good in the hands of the
Christian magus, who uses it to reveal that God shines everywhere and
to benefit his own kind. In the context of Agrippa's purpose in
*De occulta philosophia*, good (that is, non-deterministic)
astrology remains the key to rebuilding true Christian magic.
Book III was most affected by Agrippa's meticulous recasting of
the treatise. Through his contact with Latin kabbalistic texts (both,
translations from Hebrew literature as well as works by Christian
followers), Agrippa was able to insert many new chapters: on the
*Sephiroth*, that is, the ten attributes or emanations
surrounding the infinite; on the ten names of God; and on angels and
demons. His (second-hand) openness to the Hebrew tradition inspired a
more mature approach to a number of essential issues. In particular,
the topic that humanity is created "in the image of God"
became a more developed account of the human being as a "small
world" (*microcosmus*). Juxtaposing the original nucleus,
drawn from his own unfinished *Dialogus de homine*
(*Dialogue on Humankind*), with selected passages from the
doctrine of the *Zohar*, the most important kabbalistic work
(via Giorgio's *De harmonia mundi*), Agrippa was able to
elaborate further his cherished doctrine of three parts of human soul.
Since soul's three parts (*neshama*, *ruah*, and
*nephesch* in Hebrew) have different origins and natures, they
also have different destinies. After the body's death, the
sensitive soul (*nephesch*, *idolum*) immediately
dissolves. Mind (*neshama*), as the breath of God, is immune
from sin and returns immediately to its abode, reuniting with its
origin. Reason (*ruah*), by contrast, must undergo judgment
with regard to the choices it has made in life: it will participate in
the beatific vision if it has followed the way of the mind; it will be
damned and reduced to the status of an evil demon if it has made
itself a slave of the sensitive soul. In this way, the topic of
humankind as created in the image of God assumed a more defined
eschatological meaning. In Agrippa's view, the Pauline
"You are the temple of God" (I Corinthians 3:16) meant
recognizing the presence of God in each human being--the mind,
which characterizes the peculiar dignity of the *microcosmus*
in conformity with humankind's privilege of being made in the
image of God. Interiority became the foundation of the intellectual
and religious life. The cultural background of the magus must be
wide-ranging, but his claim to perfection is to be founded on his
self-consciousness.
The path to attaining wisdom requires moral and intellectual training
(*dignificatio*). Firstly, "natural" perfection
(*dignitas*) is needed, that is, the perfect physical and
mental disposition granted by a favorable horoscope (the same which
Jesus Christ had). Avicenna's doctrine of the "perfect
human being" (*homo perfectus*), the prophet, is
recognizable here. According to Agrippa, however, those who were not
born under this favorable constellation can replace the natural
*dignitas* which they lack with an "artificial"
one, using selected foodstuffs, natural remedies, and a proper
lifestyle. The second requirement is the "merit"
(*dignitas meritoria*), that is, the overcoming of corporeal
passions and sensitive impressions, the recovery of knowledge, and the
mastery of everything: when reason subjects itself to mind,
man's soul becomes a "soul standing and not falling"
(*anima stans et non cadens*) and is able to perform miracles
"by God's virtue" (*in virtute Dei*). The
third requirement is "godliness" (*ars religiosa*),
that is, the constant and pious practicing of sacred ceremonies, which
are metaphors and perceptible signs of the transformation worked by
God in us. This does not mean the requirement to carry out initiatory
rituals in order to gain access to esoteric and supra-rational
mysteries. Agrippa's appeal to spiritual purification was
essential precisely because his book made known to everyone the
'secrets' of magic. Only a person who is "perfectly
pious and truly religious", however, can legitimately perform
'true' and 'pure' magic. This is why spiritual
rebirth (and, hence, magic) is not available to everyone: the divine
spark which is naturally present in each individual is completely
inactive in the majority of humankind, whose reason is overwhelmed by
the impulses of their senses.
Agrippa's overall *oeuvre* may be regarded as an
uninterrupted meditation on humanity: the meaning of its existence,
its possibility of gaining not only eternal bliss, but also happiness
on earth. From this point of view, Agrippa may be considered as a
"humanist theologian" (Van der Poel 1997). Nonetheless, he
proposed a radical revision of the very idea of theology. It should
not be a "subalternating" or higher "science",
placed at the end of a long and complex training, as medieval
scholastics had done. Instead, theology must be an isagogic, or
introductory, knowledge, since its task was to guide Christian people
in their moral improvement, as well as in their earthly well-being.
Agrippa's theology, more than a philosophical treatment of God,
was, above all, a serious reflection on humankind, with the goal of
leading it to self-consciousness and, then, making it fully aware of
its origin and its final end. Ultimately, Agrippa may be better
defined as a "civic theologian". The specific intentions
of his works, their literary genres, and the personal background to
their composition are all very different, which to some extent may
explain certain inconsistencies between them. Nevertheless, despite
every apparent contradiction and ambiguity presented by an impetuous,
polemical, and very often foolhardy personality such as Agrippa, he
always assessed human knowledge (including magic) with respect to its
awareness of the relationship which binds man to God. The way to truth
lies not in the rifts between different schools of thought or in
philosophical distinctions, but in self-knowledge and
self-awareness. |
akan-person | ## 1. Degrees of Personhood
In an attempt to express the essence of the Akan concept of persons,
Kwasi Wiredu refers to former Zambian President Kaunda's praise
of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as "truly a
person." The concept of person to which Kaunda referred has a
particular significance within the African cultural context. As Kaunda
explains, "personhood is not an automatic quality of the human
individual; it is something to be achieved, the higher the
achievement, the higher the credit" (Wiredu 1992, 104). The
view of personhood as a matter of degrees, as exemplified in
Kaunda's remark, is also a defining characteristic of the Akan
notion of personhood.
The Akan word *onipa* is an ambiguous term, sometimes referring
to a member of a biological species and sometimes referring instead to
a human who has attained a special kind of social status (Wiredu
1992). According to Wiredu, this dual meaning reflects an important
conceptual distinction between a *human*--a biological
entity--and a *person*--an entity with special moral
and metaphysical qualities. Status as a human is not susceptible to
degrees, nor is such status conferred on an individual as a
'reward' for her efforts. One is either a human or one is
not--there is no such thing as *becoming* a human. In
contrast, personhood is something for a human to become to different
degrees through individual achievement. An individual's human
status, then, is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for
personhood.[1]
Under this interpretation, the 'payoff' for attaining
higher degrees of personhood is directly related to rights and
privileges that can make a significant difference between success
and
failure.[2]
The more
rights and privileges an individual enjoys, the more social capital
that individual acquires (in the form of access to lineal networks and
the resources they control). A person--taken in its fullest
sense--is therefore an individual who, through mature reflection
and action, has both flourished economically and succeeded in meeting
her (often weighty) responsibilities to her family and community.
The distinctive qualities of this concept of persons (as interpreted by
Wiredu) are brought out when contrasted to the analysis of another
leading African philosopher, Kwame Gyekye, who takes issue with this
graduated conception of person. Gyekye specifically objects to the role
that social status plays in Wiredu's view of personhood, arguing
that that is inconsistent with the natural or innate moral equality of
persons derived from their common humanity. That is, we are human
persons before we are anything else and it is the human person that
matters from the moral point of view. Not surprisingly, Gyekye quotes
Kant's categorical imperative approvingly when arguing that human
persons are, as members of the 'kingdom of ends,' equal
independent of their empirical or accidental characteristics (be they
social or even genetic qualities.
According to Gyekye, it is our essentially human capacity for
reason--not other fortuitous or accidental predicates--that
serves as the basis for moral worth. In this respect, one cannot point
to such accidental characteristics as height, gender, age, marital
status, or social class as basis for personhood:
>
>
> [W]hat a person acquires are status, habits, and personality or
> character traits: he, *qua* person acquires and thus becomes
> the *subject* of acquisition, and being thus prior to
> acquisition process, he cannot be defined by what he acquires. One is
> a person because of what he is, not because of what he acquires
> (Wiredu & Gyekye 1992, 108).
Gyekye is quick to note that there are some Akan expressions and
judgments about the life and conduct of people that appear to give the
impression that personhood is something that is acquired or bestowed
upon one in virtue of taken responsibility in the community. For
example, *Onnye 'nipa* is a moral judgmental expression
used among the Akan to describe someone who appears in his conduct to
be wicked, bad, and ungenerous to others. In fact, a person of high
moral standards or conduct would be described approvingly as *oye
onipa paa*--literally, she is a real (human) person. In
contrast, an individual who fails in his striving in the Akan community
may be judged as *onipa hun*, which literally means
"useless person," an opprobrious expression.
According to Gyekye, however, these locutions should not be taken
literally, but instead merely to reflect "status, habits, and
personality or character traits" that one acquires over the
course of the one's life, not personhood (Wiredu & Gyekye
1992, 108). For Gyekye, personhood is prior to and independent of
such acquisitions. To conceive of personhood as a continuous property
capable of degrees is to confuse conventional notions of
status--a highly variable quantity--with the notion of
personhood, a constant for all human persons.
The relationship between Wiredu's and Gyekye's analyses of
personhood is brought out more clearly by considering the status of
infants, vis-a-vis personhood. Akan linguistic conventions distinguish
infants from full persons on the basis of their lacking intellectual
and moral maturity. This aspect reflects the continuous character of
personhood stressed by Wiredu. Yet the infant (or *onipa*) is
also accorded a baseline level of respect by virtue of her possessing
the *okra*. In that respect, an infant is entitled to the
respect due to any other human, regardless of age, or
capability. (Wiredu & Gyekye 1992)
As interpreted by Wiredu, these conventions clearly indicate that
certain kinds of achievements--be they moral, intellectual, or
social--are, for the Akan, *constitutive* of personhood,
not merely indicators of such status. But at the same time, Wiredu
takes those conventions to indicate the importance of the
infant's status as a human, since it entitles the
infant--and, for that matter, all other humans--to a minimum
level of respect. The significance of humanity, he argues, is that it
is a necessary (albeit not a sufficient) condition for personhood. From
Wiredu's perspective, possession of the *okra* confers one
*condition* of self-respect, not self-respect itself. To acquire
self-respect itself, one must build upon that basis to achieve greater
degrees of moral agency, and in so doing, achieving greater degrees of
personhood.
The difference in status between those possessing merely the
*okra* and those who have achieved a higher degree of personhood
can be thought of in terms of the difference between the quality of
moral *agency* and degrees of moral *responsibility*.
Among the Akan, phrases like *onye' nipa* ("he is
not a person") or *onipa hun* ("useless
person") indicate that an individual is a moral agent, one that
is equal to all others with respect to having the potential for full
personhood--albeit a potential that the individual has not
realized. In fact, to pass a judgment that someone is an
*onye' nipa* is a way of respecting the person as a moral
agent; not holding an adult responsible in this way would be tantamount
to failing to respect their moral agency.
The two levels of personhood (one discrete, the other continuous)
posited by Wiredu allows him to account for much of the social and
linguistic data while also satisfying many of the moral intuitions
underlying Gyekye's own purely discrete interpretation. Think
again, for example, about the concept of a human being. As explicated
by Wiredu, what makes an entity a human being is simply his or her
possession of the *okra*. This can be translated into
Gyekye's Kantian parlance as the claim that one's status as
not just a human being but as a moral agent rests solely on one's
capacity for reason. The normative implication of possession of the
*okra* or the capacity for rationality is that the entity is
entitled to an irreducible respect matched by irreducible
rights--like the negative right not to be killed unjustly, or the
positive right to be given what is needed to sustain life. The social
bases of personhood supplement this minimum level of inherent
respect. In this wise one can say that all persons are human
beings but not all human beings are persons. At bottom, all human
beings are potential moral agents. This is a status (capacity for
rationality and morality) that a colt cannot be accorded because even a
horse cannot become a moral agent. An infant can.
The implications of the two-tiered view of personhood presented by
Wiredu are nicely illustrated by Akan practices following the death of
an infant. Despite the obviously tragic circumstances of such a death,
no funeral ceremonies are permitted in Akan society for infants.
According to Wiredu, the reason for this naturally follows from the
minimal level of personhood achieved by infants: It isn't that
infants are not valued or cherished by the Akan; rather, it is that
they are just not the kind of individual for whom such a ceremony is
appropriate. The Akan funeral is a form of send-off for the departing
soul on the journey to the ancestral world--a journey for which a
child does not qualify because she hasn't attained personhood.
Thus, the death of a child is not a time for mourning. Instead, parents
are expected to behave normally and cheerfully.
The different treatment accorded to deceased adults and children is a
manifestation of what we can refer to as the Akan theory of selective
reincarnation, a view that postulates that otherwise deserving humans
who have failed to fulfill their potential for achieving a higher
degree of personhood a second chance in the
world.[3]
For the Akan, those who die in
infancy are obvious candidates for this form of reincarnation, since
they have failed to make good on their potential but not through any
lack of effort on their part. In that respect they are what Wiredu
calls 'limbo people,' humans with an untapped potential for
full personhood and the opportunity to return to life to make good on
that potential.
On its face, the theory of selective reincarnation may appear to be
nothing more than a curious feature of Akan cosmology. As presented by
Wiredu, however, it is part of a general process of making moral
agents. Appreciating the role of selective reincarnation among the Akan
thus requires acknowledging the whole process by which morally
responsible agents come to be, as well as how individuals become
motivated to be moral. Critical to this appreciation is the
understanding that the entity underlying this process exists beyond the
life of a physical human being. The *okra* that forms the
'core' of the human being (and the returns through the
process of selective reincarnation) precedes one's life as a
human and constitutes one end of this process. At the other end
is the Akan ancestor, the culmination of the process of becoming a
person whose memory serves as a moral exemplar to the living that
guides the moral journey of the Akan. Those who become ancestors are
those who, through their imagination, intelligence, and empathetic
identification with their fellow human beings, excel not in spite of
but because of all the challenges that are put before them. After
having lived a full life, they obtain their 'ticket' (to
use Wiredu's imagery) to the ancestral world and are reincarnated
into service-ancestors.
Gyekye rejects this explanation, along with Wiredu's analysis of
Akan personhood. He argues instead that any such explanation of Akan
social and linguistic conventions must presume the personhood of even
the youngest human:
>
>
> [A] human person is a person whatever his age or social
> status. Personhood may reach its full realization in community, but it
> is not acquired or yet to be achieved as one goes along in society.
> What a person acquires are status, habits, and personality or
> character traits: he, *qua* person, thus becomes the
> *subject* of acquisition, and being thus prior to the
> acquisition, he cannot be defined by what he acquires. One is a person
> because of what he is not because of what he has acquired (Wiredu
> & Gyekye 1992, 108 note 22).
For Gyekye, then, differences with respect to personhood cannot
account for the difference in how the Akan deal with the death of
infants and adults. He prefers instead to account for these differences
in terms of the utilitarian value of cultural practices such as the
different treatment of the deaths of infants and adults. The most
obvious reason for the difference, according to Gyekye, is that the
size and magnitude of death celebration depends on the social status of
the deceased
individual.[4]
The death of a wealthy and well-connected
person will naturally call for a more elaborate ceremony than the death
of a newborn, quite independently of their status as persons.
This is not to say that Gyekye denies the role that the *idea*
of reincarnation plays for the Akan in the formation of persons. For
him, however, the idea of reincarnation (and of the graduated concept
of personhood) is less a factual account of personhood than a moral
narrative, such as the ones postulated by Aquinas, Kant, Bentham, and
John Stuart Mill to explain and justify moral precepts. The central
narratives of Western moral philosophy (such as the social contract)
provide vivid images that motivate individuals to act in certain ways.
In the same way, the Akan narratives of reincarnation and personhood
serve to reinforce socially valuable traits and practices such as
cooperation and industriousness.
From this perspective, the sage Akan elders who insure death
celebrations for full persons grasp what a casual onlooker might often
overlook--namely, that the most important effects of a death
celebration are on the onlookers, rather than the deceased. What might
be called the expressive content of public action--the message to
the Akan community conveyed by the ritual and symbolic performance, the
public utterances of the Akan leaders--is the most important
effect of such ceremonies. These ceremonies are a powerful symbolic
mechanism for both expressing and shaping the values and beliefs of the
Akan people. Thus, the Akan may abstain from mourning a rapist or a
murderer to express their collective abhorrence of the offending
act.
## 2. Achieving Personhood
The criteria for achieving personhood in Akan society are based on two
kinds of considerations. The first is the natural fact that we tend to
care for our kin and feel responsible for those with whom we are in
close reciprocal relationships. The second is that societies need some
way to encourage and support members' feelings of empathy for
those beyond their families.
According to Wiredu, in Akan society marriage and procreation are a
necessary, but not a sufficient condition of personhood. It is
important that an individual's household be administered by a
joint equal partnership of spouses and that the children are healthy
and well nourished. If an individual were to take responsibility for
the upbringing of distant relatives or were to shoulder the burden of
rearing non-relatives and allow his household to become a magnet for
relatives and extended family, then such an individual will score very
high in personhood, as indicated by references to him as *oye
'nipa*, meaning, he is "a real person" indeed.
According to Wiredu,
>
>
> More than this one is required to make concrete material contributions
> to the well-being of one's lineage, which is quite a sizeable
> group of people. A series of events in the lineage, such as marriage,
> births, illnesses and deaths, gives rise to urgent obligations. The
> individual who is able to meet these in a timely and adequate manner
> is the true person (Wiredu & Gyekye 1992, 107 note 2).
Individuals failing to meet these standards attract opprobrium.
Other members of Akan society will point to them and say
*onnye' nipa* ("he is not a real person"). As
a literal rendition from the Akan language, this expression could
simply mean that the person is not doing her part.
Criteria pertaining to one's relationship to those in the
community beyond one's immediate family include being an active
and unstinted participant in community projects (such as building
bridges, constructing roads, and cleaning public spaces, as well as
attending to the death, burial and mourning of a deceased member of the
community). Along with activity in community projects is involvement in
civic rituals (such as fellowship associations, rotating credit groups,
extended family gatherings, secret societies, hunting groups, village
watch groups, and civil militia groups) that have face-to-face
meetings. Requiring participation in these practices, in effect, solves
what economists refer to as "free rider" problems by
allowing information about each person's efforts and
contributions to spread quickly through the community. Everyone takes
mental note of those missing from such events and repeated
foot-dragging during community work is rebuked. Although the emphasis
is on negative scoring, when individuals score very high they receive
community titles that, on their death, bestows upon them special honors
from other members. These departed individuals are treated as living on
in a social sense, reincarnated in the ancestral world where they
continue to guard the living. While there is no limit to how high one
can rise on the scale that indicates degrees of personhood achieved,
there is a limit to how far one can fall.
An adult 'do little' might descend to the level of simply a
human with only the basic dignity and the unconditional rights inherent
in that status. The fall ends there, because all individuals possess an
*okra* which sets a lower bounds on how far they may descend on
the scale of personhood. In this sense all humans have moral value that
entitles them to basic dignity and unconditional rights whether they
have attained personhood or not.
## 3. Individual and Community
Wiredu's critics have argued that he fails to recognize that
individuals have their own wills and can, at least to some degree,
choose their own goals. His position seems to endorse a form of
'tyranny' of the community over the individual. Gyekye
insists that this is wrong--both descriptively and normatively
(Wiredu & Gyekye 1992, 105 note 20). He agrees that "the
whole gamut of values and practices in which the individual is
necessarily embedded is a creation of cultural community and is part
of his history" and that this indicates a close relationship
between the communal structure and individual's goals (Wiredu
& Gyekye 1992, 112 note 20). Yet this close relationship hardly
implies that the communal structure is the only factor the individual
is required to consider in analyzing these goals. According to
Gyekye,
>
>
> [I]ndividual persons as participants in the shared values and
> practices, and enmeshed in the web of communal relationships, may find
> that aspects of those cultural givens are inelegant, undignifying or
> unenlightening and can thoughtfully be questioned and evaluated. The
> evaluation may result in individual's affirming or amending or
> refining existing communal goals, values and practices; but it may or
> could also result in the individual's total rejection of them.
> The possibility of reevaluation means, surely that the person cannot
> be absorbed by the communal or cultural apparatuses (Wiredu &
> Gyekye 1992, 112 note 20).
By reserving for individuals at least the potential for responding to
or rejecting the communal consensus, Gyekye locates a source of
identity that is in some meaningful way independent of any particular
society. This is a self that can "participate in the
determination or definition of its own
identity."[5]
(Wiredu & Gyekye 1992, 112).
Gyekye correctly recognizes that the possibility of self-criticism
requires that one be able to distance oneself from one's own community
or circumstances: However, it is not clear that this is a particularly
serious problem for Wiredu's account, for even Wiredu allows that
individuals can critically assess their communal values. It is, after
all, this ability to look at one's culture with new (and critical)
eyes that makes moral reformers (of which there have been many among
the Akan) possible. These moral reformers may stand against the
communal values but the ones that may make an impact and be selected
for reincarnation as an ancestor is one that give *reasons* to
reject or revise values that persuade the community. Understood in
this way, moral reformers not only have a place in Akan society, but
qualify as persons with secured 'tickets' to the ancestral
world.
## 4. Responsibility and Free Will
An important condition for achieving personhood is that the agent has
the ability to act on the basis of rational reflection. Wiredu
indicates what is meant by "damaged personhood" by
pointing out that an Akan adult of unpredictable behavior will bring
the judgment that "so-and-so is not a person (*onye
'onipa*)," (Wiredu 1992, 108) a comment that leaves
open for further investigation whether the damage was done by
psychological or environmental factors, or by brute bad
luck. "The problem in Akan is 'when is an individual
responsible?' And the answer in this brief account of the Akan
approach to deviant conduct is that an individual is responsible to
the extent that his conduct can be modified through rational
persuasion or moral correction" (Wiredu 1992, 108-09).
Wiredu concludes that once the cause of the unpredictable behavior is
determined, irresponsibility may change into nonresponsibility, for in
the Akan philosophy of person, where there is free will there is
responsibility.
Since there is a merit component to personhood, it is relevant to talk
of the distribution of the *opportunity* of achieving personhood
so as to secure respect over and above the threshold respect that is
due to human beings in virtue of their status as human beings. Goods
like positions of prestige that are conferred to individuals who have
achieved personhood are limited by their very nature, but given
equality of opportunity, no person should be denied from the outset the
chance to secure those goods. Here, then, is a tension, for what does
the society do to those who are born handicapped or crippled in such a
way that they are not in the position to achieve personhood in ways
that able bodied people can? What happened to Shijuruh born in a family
of thieves and in a neighborhood full of burglers? Surely, Shijuruh did
not choose to be born in that family much less in the neighborhood and
this may affect his performance in an attempt to achieve personhood. In
other words how does one account for equality in unequal
circumstances?
The answer provided by the Akan, according to Wiredu's
interpretation, is to conceive of the status required for personhood as
defined relative to an adult individual's starting position or
initial capacity. Wiredu explains that, for example, an adult who
behaves erratically or in an immature manner would be presumed to have
failed to be a full
person.[6]
Such a presumption, however, is
*merely* a presumption, an inference drawn from the superficial
qualities of the individual's action relative to what could be
expected of the average individual. If the individual changes his or
her behavior, that inference may be revised. If, however, the behavior
persists, the individual's family members may summon an
expert--a geomancer--capable of determining if he or she is
acting out of free will.
Provided that the behavior is found not to be deliberate or that she is
not acting from her free will, the community will gather and it will be
said of her a message of this tenure: "It is not her eyes, it is
not her head, it is not her mind," i.e., she is not responsible
for her erratic actions. In making this judgment, the community will be
changing irresponsibility to non-responsibility. This is the way the Akan
has for equalizing background conditions of individuals in their
attempt at dealing with the difficulties of equality in unequal
circumstances. It is against this background that we can begin to make
sense of Wiredu's claim that freewill and responsibility are two
sides of the same coin among the Akan.
## 5. Personhood and Social Status
Many commentators agree with Gyekye that the essential ingredient of a
human is what the Akan refers to as *okra*. There is, however,
some disagreement over the nature of *okra*. According to
Gyekye,
>
>
> the *okra* is that which constitute the innermost self, the
> essence, of the individual person. *Okra* is individual's
> life, for which reason it is usually referred to as
> *okrateasefo*, that is, the living soul, a seeming tautology
> that yet is significant. The expression is intended to emphasize that
> *okra* is identical with life. The *okra* is the
> transmitter of the individual's destiny (fate:
> *nkrabea*). It is explained as a spark of the Supreme
> Being. The presence of this divine essence in a human being may have
> been the basis of the Akan proverb, "All men are the children of
> God; no one is the child of the earth (Gyekye 1987,
> 85).
While Gyekye maintains that *okra* can be accurately rendered
into English as 'soul,' Wiredu insists upon drawing a
somewhat more subtle distinction between these concepts. For Wiredu
*okra* is "that whose presence in the body means life and
whose absence means death and which also received the
individual's destiny from God" (Wiredu 1983, 119). Of
pivotal importance to their disagreement is the normative implication
of the presence of *okra*. The normative implication is that
*okra* bestows on its possessors basic irreducible respect
matched by basic irreducible human rights.
Like Wiredu, Gyekye recognizes that there are standards for which
individual persons aim that have an important role in how people think
of themselves and their place in society. Unlike Wiredu, however,
Gyekye denies that facts about a person's ambitions or goals add
or subtract from that individual's status as a person,
>
>
> The individual may fail in his strivings and, in the Akan community,
> for example, may consequently be judged as a "useless
> person" (*onipa hun*), an opprobrium term. But it must be
> noted that what the individual would be striving for in all these
> exertions is some social status not personhood. The striving are in
> fact part of the individual's self-expression, an exercise of a
> capacity he has a *person*. Even if at the end of the day he
> failed to attain the expected status, his personhood would not for
> that reason diminish, even though he may lose social respect in the
> eyes of the community. So that it is social status not personhood at
> which individuals could fail (Wiredu & Gyekye 1992, 111 note
> 20).
Instead, then, of treating persons as a kind of individual that
admits of degrees, Gyekye employs criteria of personhood that are quite
independent of individual aims and actions. He maintains that, while
persons may differ with respect to how they are treated in a community,
this difference is a matter of the social status accorded each, not
facts about their status as persons.
## 6. Conclusion
Personhood defined in terms of social achievement and personal
relationships aptly serve to establish those networks conducive to
creating the flow of information and obligation necessary for the
promotion of communal trust. So conceived, the Akan notion of
personhood helps to support social cooperation and provides a
framework superbly suited to resolving collective action problems. The
Akan have fashioned a means of motivating individuals to contribute to
the social good while still insuring that the moral value of even the
most unproductive individual is retained. For the Akan, personhood is
the reward for contributing to the community and the basis of the
individual's moral worth is located in an independent source--a
common humanity. |
weakness-will | ## 1. Hare on the Impossibility of Weakness of Will
Let us commence our examination of contemporary discussions of this
issue in appropriately Socratic vein, with an account that gives
expression to and builds on many of the intuitions that lead us to be
sceptical about reports like (3) above. For the moral philosopher
R. M. Hare--as for Socrates--it is impossible for
a person to do one thing if he genuinely and in the fullest sense
holds that he ought instead to do something else. (If, that
is--to echo the earlier quote from Socrates--he
"believes that there is another possible course of action,
better than the one he is following.") This certainly seems to
constitute a denial of the possibility of akratic or weak-willed
action. In Hare's case it is a consequence of the general account of
the nature of evaluative judgments which he defends (Hare 1952;
see also Hare 1963).
Hare is much impressed by what we vaguely referred to above as the
"special character" of evaluative judgments: judgments,
that is, such as that one course of action is *better* than
another, or that one *ought* to do a certain thing. Such
evaluative judgments seem to have properties that differentiate them
from merely "descriptive" judgments such as that one
thing is more expensive than another, or rounder than another
(Hare 1952, p. 111). Evaluative judgments seem, in
particular, to bear a special connection to *action* which no
purely descriptive judgment possesses. Hare's analysis, then, takes
off from something like the data we rehearsed earlier. Hare goes on
to develop these data in the following way. He begins by identifying,
as the fundamental distinctive feature of evaluative
judgments--that which lends them a special character--that
evaluative judgments are intended to *guide conduct*. (See,
e.g., Hare 1952, p. 1; p. 29; p. 46; p. 125;
p. 127; p. 142, pp. 171-2; Hare 1963,
p. 67; p. 70.) The special function of evaluative judgments
is to be action-guiding: that is, if you will, what evaluative
judgments are *for*. Hare then puts a more precise gloss on
what it is for a judgment to "guide conduct": an
action-guiding judgment is one which entails an answer to the
practical question "What shall I do?" (Hare 1952,
p. 29; see Hare 1963, p. 54 for the terminology "practical
question").[3]
What is it that an action-guiding judgment must entail? That is, what
constitutes an answer to the question "What shall I do?"
Hare holds that no (descriptive) statement can constitute an answer
to such a question (Hare 1952, p. 46). Rather, such a
question is answered by a first-person *command* or
*imperative* (Hare 1952, p. 79), which could be
verbally expressed as "Let me do *a*"
(Hare 1963, p. 55).
To recap the argument thus far: it is the function of evaluative
judgments like "I ought to do *a*" to guide
conduct. Guiding conduct means entailing an answer to the question
"What shall I do?" An answer to that question will take
the form "Let me do *a*," where this is a
first-person command or imperative. Therefore evaluative judgments
entail such first-person imperatives (Hare 1952, p. 192).
Now in general, if judgment *J*1 entails judgment
*J*2, then assenting to *J*1 must
involve assenting to *J*2: someone who professed to
assent to *J*1 but who disclaimed
*J*2 would be held not to have spoken correctly
when he claimed to assent to *J*1 (Hare 1952,
p. 172). So assenting to an evaluative judgment like "I
ought to do *a*" involves assenting to the first-person
command "Let me do *a*" (Hare 1952,
pp. 168-9). We should inquire, then, what exactly is
involved in sincerely assenting to a first-person command or
imperative of this type. Just as sincere assent to a statement
involves *believing* that statement, sincere assent to an
imperative addressed to ourselves involves *doing* the thing
in question:
>
> It is a tautology to say that we cannot sincerely assent to a
> ... command addressed to ourselves, and *at the same
> time* not perform it, if now is the occasion for performing it
> and it is in our (physical and psychological) power to do so.
> (Hare 1952, p. 20)
>
So: provided it is within my power to do *a* now, if I do not
do *a* now it follows that I do not genuinely judge that I
ought to do *a* now. Thus, as Hare states at the very opening
of his book, a person's evaluative judgments are infallibly revealed
by his actions and choices:
>
> If we were to ask of a person 'What are his moral
> principles?' the way in which we could be most sure of a true
> answer would be by studying what he *did*.... It would
> be when ... he was faced with choices or decisions between
> alternative courses of action, between alternative answers to the
> question 'What shall I do?', that he would reveal in
> what principles of conduct he really believed. (Hare 1952,
> p. 1)
>
Note that Hare is not simply saying that a person's actions are the
most reliable source of evidence as to his evaluative judgments, or
that if a person did *b* the most likely hypothesis is that he
judged *b* to be the best thing to do. Hare is saying, rather,
that it *follows* from a person's having done *b* that
he judged *b* best from among the options open to him at the
time. On this view, then, akratic or weak-willed actions as we have
understood them are impossible. There could not be a case in which
someone genuinely and in the fullest sense held that he ought to do
*a* now (where *a* was within his power) and yet did
*b*. On Hare's view, "it becomes analytic to say that
everyone always does what he thinks he ought to [if physically and
psychologically able]" (Hare 1952, p. 169).
But *does* everyone always do what he thinks he ought to, when
he is physically and psychologically able? It may seem that this is
simply not always the case (even if it is *usually* the case).
Have you, dear reader, *never* failed to get up off the couch
and turn off the TV when you judged it was really time to start
grading those papers? Have you *never* had one or two more
drinks than you thought best on balance? Have you *never*
deliberately pursued a sexual liaison which you viewed as an overall
bad idea? In short, have you *never* acted in a way which
departed from your overall evaluation of your options? If so, let me
be the first to congratulate you on your fortitude. While weak-willed
action does seem somehow puzzling, or defective in some important
way, *it does nonetheless seem to happen*.
For Hare, however, any apparent case of *akrasia* must in fact
be one in which the agent is actually *unable* to do
*a*, or one in which the agent does not genuinely evaluate
*a* as better--even if he says he
does.[4]
As an example of the first kind of case Hare cites Medea
(Hare 1963, pp. 78-9), who (he contends) is powerless,
literally helpless, in the face of the strong emotions and desires
roiling her: she is truly *unable* (psychologically) to resist
the temptations besieging her. A typical example of the second kind
of case, on the other hand, would be one in which the agent is
actually using the evaluative term "good" or
"ought" only in what Hare calls an
"inverted-commas" sense (Hare 1952, p. 120;
pp. 124-6; pp. 164-5; pp. 167-171).
In such cases, when the agent says (while doing *b*) "I
know I really ought to do *a*," he means only that most
people--or, at any rate, the people whose opinions on such
matters are generally regarded as authoritative--would say he
ought to do *a*. As Hare notes (Hare 1952, p. 124),
to believe this is not to make an evaluative judgment oneself;
rather, it is to allude to the value-judgments of other people. Such
an agent does not himself assess the course of action he fails to
follow as better than the one he selects, even if other people
would.
No doubt there are cases of the two types Hare describes; but they do
not seem to exhaust the field. We can grant that there is the odd
murderer, overcome by irresistible homicidal urges but horrified at
what she is doing. But surely not every case that we might be tempted
to describe as one of acting contrary to one's better judgment
involves irresistible psychic forces. Consider, for example, the
following case memorably put by J. L. Austin:
>
> I am very partial to ice cream, and a bombe is served divided into
> segments corresponding one to one with the persons at High Table: I
> am tempted to help myself to two segments and do so, thus succumbing
> to temptation and even conceivably (but why necessarily?) going
> against my principles. But do I lose control of myself? Do I raven,
> do I snatch the morsels from the dish and wolf them down, impervious
> to the consternation of my colleagues? Not a bit of it. We often
> succumb to temptation with calm and even with finesse.
> (Austin 1956/7, p. 198)
>
(I might add that it also seems doubtful that irresistible psychic
forces kept you on the couch watching TV while those papers were
waiting.) As for the "inverted-commas" case, this too
surely happens: people do sometimes pay lip service to conventional
standards which they themselves do not really accept. But again, it
seems highly doubtful that this is true of all seeming cases of
weak-willed action. It seems depressingly possible to select and
implement one course of action while *genuinely believing*
that it is an overall worse choice than some other option open to
you.
Has something gone wrong? We started with the
unexceptionable-sounding thought that moral and evaluative judgments
are intended to guide conduct; we arrived at a blanket denial of the
possibility of akratic action which fits ill with observed facts. But
if we are disinclined to follow Hare this far we should ask what the
alternative is, for it may be even worse. For Hare, the answer is
clear: our only other option is to repudiate the idea that moral and
other evaluative judgments have a special character or nature, namely
that of being action-guiding. For we should recall that Hare presents
all his subsequent conclusions as simply following, through a series
of steps, from that initial thought. "The reason why actions
are in a peculiar way revelatory of moral principles is that the
function of moral principles is to guide conduct," Hare
continues in the passage quoted earlier (Hare 1952, p. 1). For
Hare, then, the only way to escape his "Socratic"
conclusion about weakness of will would be to give up the idea that
evaluative judgments are intended to guide conduct, or to "have
[a] bearing upon our actions" (Hare 1963, p. 169; see
also Hare 1952, p. 46; p. 143; p. 163;
pp. 171-2; and Hare 1963, p. 70; p. 99).
The choices before us, then, as presented by Hare, are Hare's own
view, or one which assigns no distinctive role in action or practical
thought to evaluative judgments, treating them as just like any other
judgment. We might call the first of these an extreme version of
(judgment) *internalism.* (I use this polysemous label to
refer, here, to the idea that certain judgments have an internal or
necessary connection to motivation and to action.) By extension, we
might usefully follow Michael Bratman in calling the second type of
view "extreme externalism" (Bratman 1979,
pp. 158-9).
Extreme externalism also seems unsatisfactory, however. First, it
seems unable to explain why there should be anything perplexing or
problematical about action contrary to one's better judgment, why
there should be any philosophical problem about its possibility or
its analysis. On this kind of view, it seems, Joseph's choice ((3)
above) should strike us as no more puzzling than Julie's or Jimmy's
((1) or (2)). As Hare puts it:
>
> On the view that we are considering, there is nothing odder about
> thinking something the best thing to do in the circumstances, but
> not doing it, than there is about thinking a stone the roundest
> stone in the vicinity and not picking it up, but picking up some
> other stone instead.... There will be nothing that requires
> explanation if I choose to do what I think to be, say, the worst
> possible thing to do and leave undone what I think the best thing to
> do. (Hare 1963, pp. 68-9)
>
But our reactions to (1), (2), and (3) show that we *do* think
there is something peculiar about action contrary to one's better
judgment which renders such action hard to understand, or perhaps
even impossible. An extreme externalist view thus seems to
mischaracterize the status of akratic actions.
Perhaps even more importantly, however, extreme externalism has
dramatic implications for our understanding of intentional action in
general--not just weak-willed action. For such a view implies
that
>
> deliberation about what it would be best to do has no closer
> relation to practical reasoning than, say, deliberation about what
> it would be chic to do. If one happens to care about what it would
> be chic to do, then a consideration of this matter may play an
> important role in one's practical reasoning. If one does not care,
> it will be irrelevant. The case is the same with reasoning about
> what it would be best to do. (Bratman 1979, p. 158)
>
To adopt a general doctrine of this sort seems an awfully precipitous
response to the possibility of *akrasia*. For it seems
extremely plausible to assign to our overall evaluations of our
options an important role in our choices. Man is a rational animal,
the saying goes; that is--to offer one gloss on this
idea--we act on reasons, and in the light of our assessments of
the overall balance of reasons. When we engage in deliberation or
reasoning about what to do, we often proceed by thinking about the
reasons which favor our various options, and then bringing these
together into an overall assessment which is, precisely, intended to
guide our choice.
Or, as Bratman puts it, we very often reason about what it is
*best* to do as a way of settling the question of what
*to* do. (He calls this "evaluative practical
reasoning": Bratman 1979, p. 156.) "One's
evaluations [thus] play a crucial role in the reasoning underlying
full-blown action," Bratman holds (p. 170), and to be
forced to deny this would be in his view "too high a price to
pay" (p. 159). As Alfred Mele similarly puts it,
"there is a real danger that in attempting to make causal and
conceptual space for full-fledged akratic action one might commit
oneself to the rejection of genuine ties between evaluative judgment
and action" (1991, p. 34). But that would be to throw the
baby out with the bathwater. If we want to resist Hare's conclusions,
we must do so in a way which steers clear of the danger to which Mele
alerts us. We must navigate between the Scylla of extreme internalism
and the Charybdis of extreme externalism.
## 2. Davidson on the Possibility of Weakness of Will
This is just what Donald Davidson set out to do in a rich, elegant,
and incisive paper published in 1970 which has had a towering
influence on the subsequent literature. Davidson's treatment aims to
vindicate the possibility of weakness of will; to offer a novel
analysis of its nature; to clarify its status as a marginal, somehow
defective instance of agency which we rightly find dubiously
intelligible; and to do all this within the contours of a general
view of practical reasoning and intentional action which assigns a
central and special role to our evaluative judgments. Let us see how
he proposes to do these things.
First, Davidson offers the following general characterization of
weak-willed or incontinent
action:[5]
>
> In doing *b* an agent acts incontinently if and only
> if: (a) the agent does *b* intentionally;
> (b) the agent believes there is an alternative action
> *a* open to him; and (c) the agent judges that, all things
> considered, it would be better to do *a* than to do
> *b*.
>
We initially described weak-willed action as free, intentional action
contrary to the agent's better judgment; it may be useful to see how
Davidson's more precise definition matches up with that initial
characterization. Davidson's condition (a) requires that the action in
question be intentional.[6] Condition (b) seems intended to ensure that
the action in question is
free.[7]
Part (c) of Davidson's definition represents what we have called the
agent's "better judgment," that is, the overall
evaluation of his options contrary to which the incontinent agent
acts.
Davidson notes that "there is no proving such actions exist;
but it seems to me absolutely certain that they do"
(p. 29). Why, then, is there a persistent tendency, both in
philosophy and in ordinary thought, to deny that such actions are
possible? Davidson's diagnosis is that two plausible principles which
"derive their force from a very persuasive view of the nature
of intentional action and practical reasoning" (p. 31)
appear to entail that incontinence is impossible. He articulates
those two principles as follows (p. 23):
>
> **P1**. If an agent wants to do *a* more than he wants to
> do *b* and he believes himself free to do either *a*
> or *b*, then he will intentionally do *a* if he does
> either *a* or *b* intentionally.
>
>
>
> **P2**. If an agent judges that it would be better to do
> *a* than to do *b*, then he wants to do *a*
> more than he wants to do *b*.
>
>
>
P2, Davidson observes, "connects judgements of what it is
better to do with motivation or wanting" (p. 23); he adds
later that it "states a mild form of internalism"
(p. 26). Davidson is proposing, *contra* the extreme
externalist position, that our evaluative judgments about the merits
of the options we deem open to us are not motivationally inert. While
he admits that one could quibble or tinker with the formulation of P1
and P2 (pp. 23-4; p. 27; p. 31), he is confident
that they or something like them give expression to a powerfully
attractive picture of practical reasoning and intentional action, one
which assigns an important motivational role to the agent's
evaluative
judgments.[8]
The difficulty is, though, that P1 and P2--however
attractive--together imply that an agent never intentionally
does *b* when he judges that it would be better to do
*a* (if he takes himself to be free to do either). And this
certainly looks like a denial of the possibility of incontinent
action. No wonder, then, that so many have been tempted to say that
akratic action is impossible! Looking carefully, however, we can see
that P1 and P2 do *not* imply the impossibility of incontinent
actions *as Davidson has defined them*. For Davidson
characterizes the agent who incontinently does *b* as holding,
not that it would be better to do *a* than to do *b*,
but that it would be better, *all things considered*, to do
*a* than to do *b*. Is the "all things
considered" just a rhetorical flourish? Or does it mark a
genuine difference between these two judgments? If these are two
different judgments, and one can hold the latter without holding the
former, then incontinent action is possible *even if P1 and P2 are
true*.
In the rest of his paper Davidson sets out to vindicate that very
possibility. The phrase "all things considered" is not,
as it might seem, merely a minor difference in wording that allows
weakness of will to get off on a technicality. Rather, that phrase
marks an important contrast in logical form to which we would need to
attend in any case in order properly to understand the structure of
practical reasoning. For that phrase indicates a judgment that is
*conditional* or *relational* rather than
*all-out* or *unconditional* in form; and that
difference is
crucial.[9]
We can better see the relational character of an
all-things-considered judgment if we first look at evaluative
judgments that play an important role in an earlier phase of
practical reasoning, the phase where we consider what reasons or
considerations favor doing *a* and what reasons or
considerations favor doing *b*. (For simplicity, imagine a
case in which an agent is choosing between only two mutually
incompatible options, *a* and *b*.) These *prima
facie* judgments, as Davidson terms them, take the form:
>
> **PF**: In light of *r*, *a* is *prima
> facie* better than *b*.
>
In this schema *r* refers to a consideration, say that
*a* would be relaxing, while *b* would be stressful. A
PF judgment of this kind thus identifies one respect in which
*a* is deemed superior to *b*, one perspective from
which *a* comes out on top.
We should pause to note three things about PF judgments. (a) A PF
judgment is not itself a conclusion in favor of the overall
superiority of *a*. Such "all-out" evaluative
judgments have a simpler logical form, namely:
>
> **AO**: *a* is better than *b*.
>
(b) Indeed, no conclusion of the form AO follows logically from any
PF judgment. (c) More strongly: the fact, taken by itself, that
someone has made a certain PF judgment does not even supply her with
sufficient grounds to draw the corresponding AO conclusion. For even
if she makes one PF judgment which favors *a* over *b*,
as in the case we imagined, she may *also* make *other*
PF judgments which favor *b* over *a* (say, when
*r* is the consideration that *b* would be lucrative,
while *a* would be expensive). We do not want to say in that
case that she has sufficient grounds to draw each of two incompatible
conclusions (that *a* is better than *b*, and that
*b* is better than *a*; these are incompatible provided
the better-than relation is asymmetric, assumed here).
We have contrasted PF judgments with AO or "all-out"
evaluative judgments. PF judgments are relational in character: they
point out a *relation* which holds between the consideration
*r* and doing *a*. (We could call that relation the
"favoring" relation.) That relation is not such as to
permit us to "detach" (as Davidson puts it, p. 37)
an unconditional evaluative conclusion in favor of doing *a*
from PF and the supposition that *r* obtains. That is, we are
not to understand PF judgments as having the form of a material
conditional.
Davidson's innovative suggestion is that judgments with this PF
logical form are an appropriate way to model what happens in the
early stages of practical reasoning, where we rehearse reasons for
and against the options we are considering. And his stressing that no
such PF judgment commits the agent to an overall evaluative
conclusion in favor of *a* or *b* is useful in thinking
about a case like Julie's ((1) above). We described Julie as knowing
(and therefore believing) that *b* was more expensive than
*a*, but opting for *b* nonetheless. We can imagine,
then, that among the ingredients of Julie's practical reasoning was a
PF judgment like this:
>
> In light of the fact that *b* is more expensive than *a*,
> *a* is *prima facie* better than *b*.
>
But this PF judgment alone, as we have seen, does not commit her to
the overall judgment that *a* is better than *b*. For
she may also have made other PF judgments, such as
>
> In light of the fact that *b* would be much more
> gastronomically exciting than *a*, *b* is *prima
> facie* better than *a*.
>
But we would not then want to say Julie has sufficient grounds to
conclude that *a* is better than *b* and to conclude
that *b* is better than *a*. She does not have
sufficient grounds to embrace a contradiction; her premises all seem
consistent. So her various PF judgments, when considered separately,
must *not* each commit her to a corresponding overall
conclusion in favor of *a* or *b*.
Practical reasoning, Davidson suggests, starts from judgments like
these, each identifying one respect in which one of the options is
superior. But in order to make progress in our practical reasoning we
shall eventually need to consider how *a* compares to
*b* not just with respect to *one* consideration, but
in the light of several considerations taken together. That is, Julie
will eventually need to consider how to fill in the blanks in a PF
judgment like this:
>
> In light of the fact that *b* is more expensive
> than *a* *and* the fact that *b* would be much
> more gastronomically exciting than *a*, ... is *prima
> facie* better than ....
>
This PF judgment is more *comprehensive* than the ones we
attributed to Julie a moment ago, as it takes into account a broader
range of considerations. (I take the label
"comprehensive" from Lazar 1999.) Now in Julie's case we
can surmise how she filled in those blanks: with "*b* is
*prima facie* better than *a*." Julie's filling
in the blanks in that way can naturally be taken as expressing the
view that the much greater gastronomic excitement promised by
*b* *outweighs* or *overrides* *b*'s
inferiority to *a* from a strictly financial standpoint.
We can generalize our schema for PF judgments to account for the
possibility of relativizing our comparative assessment of *a*
and *b* not just to a single consideration, but to multiple
considerations taken together or as a body:
>
> **PFN**: In light of *<r*1, ...,
> *rn*> , *a* is *prima facie*
> better than *b*.
>
Notice that PFN judgments are still relational in form: they assert
that a relation (the "favoring" relation) holds between
the *set* of considerations *<r*1,
..., *rn*> and doing *a*. Indeed,
the relational character of a PFN judgment remains even if we make it
as comprehensive as we can: if we expand the set
*<r*1, ..., *rn*>
to incorporate *all* the considerations the agent deems
relevant to her decision. Following Davidson (p. 38), let us
give the label *e* to that set. So even the following
judgment:
>
> **ATC**: In light of *e*, *a* is *prima
> facie* better than *b*.
>
is a relational or conditional judgment and not an all-out conclusion
in favor of doing *a*. To make a judgment of the form ATC is
*not* to draw an overall conclusion in favor of doing
*a.*
We may be better able to see this by considering an analogy from
theoretical reason. Suppose Hercule Poirot has been called in to
investigate a murder. We can imagine him assessing bits of evidence
as he encounters them:
>
> In light of the fact that the murder weapon belongs to Colonel
> Mustard, Mustard looks guilty;
>
>
> In light of his having an alibi for the time of the murder, Mustard
> looks not guilty;
>
>
>
and so on. These are theoretical analogues of the PF judgments
relativized to single considerations which we looked at earlier.
However, Poirot will eventually need to consider how these various
bits of evidence add up; that is, he will eventually need to fill in
the blanks in a more comprehensive PFN judgment like this:
>
> In light of
> <*e*1, ..., *en*> ,
> ... looks to be the guilty party,
>
where
<*e*1, ..., *en*>
is a set of bits of pertinent evidence. Notice, though, that no such
PFN judgment actually constitutes settling on a particular person as
the culprit. For even if we put in a maximally large
<*e*1, ..., *en*>
consisting of *all* the evidence Poirot has seen, and imagine
him thinking
>
> All the evidence I have seen points toward Colonel Mustard as the
> guilty party,
>
to make this observation is manifestly *not* to conclude that
Mustard is guilty.
In the same way, an ATC or all-things-considered judgment, although
comprehensive, is still relational in nature, and therefore distinct
from an AO judgment in favor of *a*. That is, it is possible to
make an ATC judgment in favor of *a* without making the
corresponding AO judgment in favor of *a.* (This is the
analogue of Poirot's position.) And this is the key to Davidson's
solution to the problem of how weakness of will is possible. For ATC
is, precisely, *the agent's better judgment* as Davidson
construes it in his definition of incontinent action. P1 and P2
together imply that an agent who reaches an AO conclusion in favor
of *a* will not intentionally do *b*. But the
incontinent agent never reaches such an AO conclusion. With respect
to *a*, he remains stuck at the Hercule Poirot stage: he sees
that the considerations he has rehearsed, taken as a body,
favor *a*, but he is unwilling or unable to make a commitment
to *a* as the thing to do.[10] He makes only a relational ATC judgment
in favor of *a*, contrary to which he then acts.
What should we say about an agent who does this? Returning to the
three features of *prima facie* or PF judgments which we noted
earlier, features (a) and (b) hold even of the special
subclass of PF judgments which are ATC judgments. Such judgments
neither are equivalent to, nor logically imply, any AO judgment. So
the incontinent agent who fails to draw the AO conclusion which
corresponds to his ATC conclusion, and to perform the corresponding
action, is not committing "a simple logical blunder"
(p. 40). Notably, he does not contradict himself. He does,
however, exhibit a defect in rationality, on Davidson's account. For
feature (c) of PF judgments in general does *not* hold of the
special subclass of such judgments which are ATC judgments. Drawing
an *ATC* conclusion in favor of *a* *does* give
one sufficient grounds to conclude that *a* is better *sans
phrase* and, indeed, to do
*a*. For Davidson proposes that the transition from an ATC
judgment in favor of *a* to the corresponding AO judgment, and
to doing *a*, is enjoined by a substantive principle of
rationality which he dubs "the principle of continence."
That principle tells us to "perform the action judged best on
the basis of all available relevant reasons" (p. 41); and
the incontinent agent violates this injunction. The principle of
continence thus substantiates the idea that "what is wrong is
that the incontinent man acts, and judges, irrationally, for this is
surely what we must say of a man who goes against his own best
judgement" (p. 41). He acts irrationally in virtue of
violating this substantive principle, obedience to which is a
necessary condition for rationality.
We must put this point about the irrationality of incontinence with
some care, however. For recall that an incontinent action must itself
be intentional, that is, done for a reason. The weak-willed agent,
then, has a reason for doing *b*, and does *b* for that
reason. What he lacks--and lacks by his own lights--is a
*sufficient* reason to do *b*, given all the
considerations that he takes to favor *a*. As Davidson puts
it, if we ask "what is the agent's reason for doing
[*b*] when he believes it would be better, all things
considered, to do another thing, then the answer must be: for this,
the agent has no reason" (p. 42). And this is so even
though he does have a reason for doing *b* (p. 42,
n. 25). Because the agent has, by his own lights, no adequate
reason for doing *b*, he cannot make sense of his own action:
"he recognizes, in his own intentional behaviour, something
essentially surd" (p. 42). So akratic action, while
*possible* on Davidson's account, is nonetheless necessarily
*irrational*; this is the sense in which it is a defective and
not fully intelligible instance of agency, despite being a very real
phenomenon.
## 3. The Debate After Davidson
### 3.1 Internalist and Externalist Strands
Davidson has certainly presented an arresting theory of practical
reasoning. But has he shown how weakness of the will is possible?
Most philosophers writing after him, while acknowledging his
pathbreaking work on the issue, think he has not. One principal
difficulty which subsequent theorists have seized on is that
Davidson's view can account for the possibility of action contrary to
one's better judgment *only if* one's better judgment is
construed merely as a conditional or *prima facie* judgment.
Davidson's P1 and P2 in fact rule out the possibility of free
intentional action contrary to an all-out or unconditional evaluative
judgment.[11]
But it seems that such cases exist. Michael Bratman, for instance,
introduces us to Sam, who, in a depressed state, is deep into a
bottle of wine, despite his acknowledged need for an early wake-up
and a clear head tomorrow (1979, p. 156). Sam's friend, stopping
by, says:
>
> Look here. Your reasons for abstaining seem clearly stronger than
> your reasons for drinking. So how can you have thought that it would
> be best to drink?
>
To which Sam replies:
>
> I don't think it would be best to drink. Do you think
> I'm stupid enough to think that, given how strong my reasons
> for abstaining are? I think it would be best to abstain. Still,
> I'm drinking.
>
Sam's case certainly seems possible as described. Davidson's view,
though, must reject it as impossible. Given his conduct, Sam can't
think it best to abstain; at most, he thinks it all-things-considered
best to abstain, a very different kettle of fish. But this seems
false of Sam: there is no evidence that he has remained stuck at the
Hercule Poirot stage with respect to the superiority of abstaining.
He seems to have gone all the way to a judgment *sans phrase*
that abstaining would be better; and yet he drinks.
Ironically, this complaint makes Davidson out to be a bit like Hare.
Like Hare, Davidson subscribes to an internalist principle (P2) which
connects evaluative judgments with motivation and hence with action.
(Indeed, in light of the difficulty raised here, one might wonder if
Davidson is entitled to consider P2 a "mild" form of
internalism (p. 26).) As with Hare, this internalist commitment
rules out as impossible certain kinds of action contrary to one's
evaluative judgment. Now Davidson, like Hare, does accept the
possibility of certain phenomena in this neighborhood; but--as
with Hare--critics think the cases permitted by his analysis
simply do not exhaust the range of actual cases of weakness of will.
The phenomenon seems to run one step ahead of our attempts to make
room for it.
Those writing after Davidson have tended to focus, then, on the
question of the possibility and rational status of action contrary to
one's *unconditional* better
judgment.[12]
Naturally, different theorists have plotted different courses through
these shoals. Some tack more to the internalist side, wishing to
preserve a strong internal connection between evaluation and action
even at the risk of denying or seeming to deny the possibility of
akratic action (or at least some understandings of it). Examples of
some post-Davidson treatments which share a broadly internalist
emphasis, even if they feature different flavors of internalism, are
those of Bratman (1979), Buss (1997), Tenenbaum (1999; see also 2007,
ch. 7), and Stroud (2003). The main danger for such approaches is that
in seeking to preserve and defend a certain picture of the primordial
role of evaluative thought in rational action--a picture critics
are likely to dismiss as too rationalistic--such theorists may be
led to reject common phenomena which ought properly to have
constrained their more abstract theories. (See the opening of Wiggins
1979 for a forceful articulation of this criticism.)
Other theorists, by contrast, are more drawn toward the externalist
shoreline. They emphasize the motivational importance of factors
other than the agent's evaluative judgment and the divergences that
can result between an agent's evaluation of her options and her
motivation to act. They are thus disinclined to posit any strong,
necessary link between evaluative judgment and action. Michael
Stocker, for instance, argues that the philosophical tradition has
been led astray in assuming that evaluation dictates motivation.
"Motivation and evaluation do not stand in a simple and direct
relation to each other, as so often supposed," he writes.
Rather, "their interrelations are mediated by large arrays of
complex psychic structures, such as mood, energy, and interest"
(1979, pp. 738-9). Similarly, Alfred Mele proposes as a
fundamental and general truth--and one that underlies the
possibility of *akrasia*--that "the motivational
force of a want may be out of line with the agent's evaluation of the
object of that want" (1987, p. 37). Mele goes on to offer
several different reasons why the two can come apart: for example,
rewards perceived as *proximate* can exert a motivational
influence disproportionate to the value the agent reflectively
attaches to them (1987, ch. 6). Such wants may function as
strong *causes* even if the agent takes them to constitute
weak *reasons*.
With respect to these questions, the challenge sketched at the end of
Section 1 above remains in full force. What is required is a view
which successfully navigates between the Scylla of an extreme
internalism about evaluative judgment which would preclude the
possibility of weakness of will, and the Charybdis of an extreme
externalism which would deny any privileged role to evaluative
judgment in practical reasoning or rational action. For one's
verdict about *akrasia* will in general be closely connected to
one's more general views of action, practical reasoning,
rationality, and evaluative judgment--as was certainly true of
Davidson.
Views that downplay the role of evaluative judgment in action and
hence tack more toward the externalist side of the channel may more
easily be able to accept the possibility and indeed the actuality of
weakness of will. But they are subject to their own challenges. For
example, suppose we follow Mele's image of *akrasia* and posit
that a certain agent is caused to do *x* by motivation to do
*x* which is dramatically out of kilter with her assessment of
the merits of doing *x*. In what sense, then, is her doing
*x* free, intentional, and uncompelled? Such an agent might
seem rather to be at the mercy of a motivational force which is, from
her point of view, utterly alien. Thus, worries about distinguishing
*akrasia* from compulsion come back in full force in
connection with proposals like these. (See
fn. 7
above for relevant references; Buss and Tenenbaum press these worries
against accounts like Mele's in particular.) Moreover, there is the
danger, for accounts of this more externalist stripe, of taking too
much of the mystery out of weakness of will. Even if akratic action
is possible and indeed actual, it remains a puzzling, marginal,
somehow defective instance of agency, one that we rightly find not
fully intelligible. Views that do not assign a privileged place in
rational deliberation and action to the agent's overall assessment of
her options risk making akratic action seem no more problematic than
Julie's or Jimmy's decisions, or Hare's agent who fails to pick up
the roundest stone in the vicinity.
### 3.2 Weakness of Will as Potentially Rational
The "externalist turn" toward downplaying the role of an
agent's better judgment and emphasizing other psychic factors instead
is connected to a second way in which some theorists writing after
Davidson have dissented from his analysis. Davidson, as we saw,
viewed akratic action as possible, but irrational. The weak-willed
agent acts contrary to what she herself takes to be the balance of
reasons; her choice is thus unreasonable by her own lights. On this
picture, incontinent action is a paradigm case of practical
irrationality. Many other theorists have agreed with Davidson on this
score and have taken *akrasia* to be perhaps the clearest
example of practical irrationality. But some writers (notably Audi
1990, McIntyre 1990, and Arpaly 2000) have questioned whether akratic
action *is* necessarily irrational. Perhaps we ought to leave
room, not just for the *possibility* of akratic action, but
for the potential *rationality* of akratic action.
The irrationality which is held necessarily to attach to akratic
action derives from the discrepancy between what the agent judges to
be the best (or better) thing to do, and what she does. That is, her
action is faulted as irrational in virtue of not conforming to her
better judgment. But--ask these critics--what if her better
judgment is itself faulty? There is nothing magical about an agent's
better judgment that ensures that it is correct, or even warranted;
like any other judgment, it can be in error, or even unjustified.
(Recall that by "better judgment" we meant, all along,
only "a judgment as to which course of action is better,"
not "a *superior* judgment.") Where the agent's
better judgment is itself defective, in doing what she deems herself
to have insufficient reason to do, the agent may actually be doing
what she has most reason to do. "Even though the akratic agent
does not believe that she is doing what she has most reason to do, it
may nevertheless be the case that the course of action that she is
pursuing is the one that she has ... most reason to
pursue" (McIntyre 1990, p. 385). In that sense the
akratic agent may be wiser than her own better judgment.
How, concretely, could an agent's better judgment go astray in
this way? Perhaps her survey of what she took to be the relevant
considerations did not include, or did not attach sufficient weight
to, what were in fact significant reasons in favor of one of the
possible courses of action. She may have overlooked these, or
(wrongly) deemed them not to be reasons, or failed to appreciate
their full force; and in that case her judgment of what it is best to
do will be incorrect. Consider, for example, Jonathan Bennett's
Huckleberry Finn (Bennett 1974, discussed in
McIntyre 1990), who akratically fails to turn in his slave
friend Jim to the authorities. Huck's judgment that he ought to do
so, however, was based primarily on what he took to be the force of
Miss Watson's property rights; it ignored his powerful feelings of
friendship and affection for Jim, as well as other highly relevant
factors. His "better judgment" was thus not in fact a
very comprehensive judgment; it did not take into account the full
range of relevant considerations.
Or consider Emily, who has always thought it best that she pursue a
Ph.D. in chemistry (Arpaly 2000, p. 504). When she revisits
the issue, as she does periodically, she discounts her increasing
feelings of restlessness, sadness, and lack of motivation as she
proceeds in the program, and concludes that she ought to persevere.
But in fact she has very good reasons to quit the program--her
talents are not well suited to a career in chemistry, and the people
who are thriving in the program are very different from her. If she
impulsively, akratically quits the program, purely on the basis of
her feelings, Emily is in fact doing just what she ought to
do.[13]
That her action conflicts with her better judgment does not
significantly impugn its rationality, given all the considerations
that *do* support her quitting the program. "A theory of
rationality should not assume that there is something special about
an agent's best judgment. An agent's best judgment is just another
belief" (Arpaly 2000, p. 512). Emily's action
conflicts, then, with one belief she has; but it coheres with many
more of her beliefs and desires overall. So even though she may find
her own action inexplicable or "surd," she is in fact
acting rationally, although she does not know it. *Contra*
Davidson, "we can ... act rationally just when we cannot
make any sense of our actions" (Arpaly 2000, p. 513).
It is unclear, however, whether these arguments and examples are
likely to sway those who take *akrasia* to be a paradigm of
practical irrationality. These dissenters stress the *substantive
merits* of the course of action the akratic agent follows. But
traditionalists may say that is beside the point: however well things
turn out, the practical thinking of the akratic agent still exhibits
a *procedural defect*. Someone who flouts her own conclusion
about where the balance of reasons lies is *ipso facto* not
reasoning well. Even if the action she performs is in fact supported
by the balance of reasons, she does not think it is, and that is
enough to show her practical reasoning to be faulty. The defenders of
the traditional conception of *akrasia* as irrational thus
wish to grant special rational authority (in this procedural sense)
to the agent's better judgment, even if they admit that such a
judgment can be substantively incorrect. By contrast, the dissenters
"[do] not believe best judgments have any privileged
role" (Arpaly 2000, p. 513). We see again the
contrast between "internalist" and
"externalist" tendencies in the debates over weakness of
will.
### 3.3 Changing the Subject
A final revisionist strand now emerging in the literature takes the
agent's better judgment even farther out of the picture. In an
outstandingly lucid and stimulating essay published in 1999 (see also
his 2009, ch. 4), Richard Holton argued that weakness of will is not
action contrary to one's better judgment at all. The literature has
gone astray in understanding weakness of will in this way; weakness of
will is actually quite a different phenomenon, in which the agent's
better judgment plays no
role.[14]
For Holton, when ordinary people speak of weakness of will they have
in mind a certain kind of failure to act on one's
*intentions*. What matters for weakness of will, then, is not whether
you deem another course of action superior at the time of action. It
is whether you are abandoning an intention you previously formed.
Weakness of will as the untutored understand it is not
*akrasia* (if we reserve that term for action contrary to
one's better judgment), but rather a certain kind of failure to stick to
one's plans.[15]
This understanding of weakness of will changes the
subject in two ways. First, the state of the agent with which the
weak-willed action is in conflict is not an evaluative judgment (as
in *akrasia*) but a different kind of state, namely an
intention. Second, it is not essential that there be
*synchronic* conflict, as *akrasia* demands. You must
act contrary to your *present* better judgment in order to
exhibit *akrasia*; conflict with a *previous* better
judgment does not indicate *akrasia*, but merely a change of
mind. However, you can exhibit weakness of will as Holton understands
it simply by abandoning a previously formed intention.
Of course not all cases of abandoning or failing to act on a
previously formed intention count as weakness of will. I intend
to run five miles tomorrow evening. If I break my leg tomorrow
morning and fail to run five miles tomorrow evening, I will not have
exhibited weakness of will. How can we characterize
*which* failures to act on a previously formed intention count
as weakness of will? Holton's answer has two parts. First, he says,
there is an irreducible normative dimension to the question whether
someone's abandoning of an intention constituted weakness of will
(Holton 1999,
p. 259).[16]
That is, there is no purely
descriptive criterion (such as whether her action conflicted with her
better judgment) which is sufficient for weakness of will; in order
to decide whether a given case was an instance of weakness of will we
must consider normative questions, such as whether it was
*reasonable* for the agent to have abandoned or revised that
intention, or whether she *should* have done so. In the case
of my broken leg, for instance, it was clearly reasonable for me to
abandon my intention; that is why I could not be charged with
weakness of will in that case.
Second, says Holton, we need to attend to an important subclass of
our intentions to do something at a future time, namely
*contrary-inclination-defeating* *intentions*, or, as he
later terms them (Holton 2003), *resolutions*.
Resolutions are intentions that are formed precisely in order to
insulate one against contrary inclinations one expects to feel when
the time comes. Thus one reason I might form an intention on Monday
to run five miles on Tuesday--as opposed to leaving the issue
open until Tuesday, for decision then--is to reduce the effect
of feelings of lassitude to which I fear I may be subject when
Tuesday rolls around. Then suppose Tuesday rolls around; I am indeed
prey to feelings of lassitude; and I decide as a result not to run.
*Now* I can be charged with weakness of will. Weakness of will
involves, specifically, a failure to act on a *resolution*;
this is sufficient to differentiate weakness of will from mere change
of mind and even from caprice (which is a *different* species
of unreasonable intention revision, according to Holton).
As a later paper by Alison McIntyre shows (McIntyre 2006),
understanding weakness of will in this way casts a fresh light on the
issue of its rational status. The weak-willed agent abandons a
resolution because of a contrary inclination of exactly the type
which the resolution was expressly designed to defeat. Therefore, as
McIntyre underlines, weak-willed action always involves a procedural
rational
defect:[17]
a technique of self-management has been deployed but has failed
(McIntyre 2006, p. 296). To that extent we have grounds to
criticize weak-willed action simply in virtue of the second of the
ways in which Holton wishes to distinguish weakness of will from a
mere change of mind, without even resolving the potentially murky
issue of whether the agent was *reasonable* in abandoning her
intention.
McIntyre holds, however, that it would be overstating the case to say
that because weakness of will involves this procedural defect, it is
always irrational (McIntyre 2006, p. 290;
pp. 298-9; p. 302). She proposes rather that
practical rationality has multiple facets and aims, and that failure
in one respect or along one dimension does not automatically justify
the especially severe form of rational criticism which we intend by
the term "irrational." For example, consider an agent who
succumbs to contrary inclination of exactly the type expected when
the time comes to act on a truly *stupid* resolution. (Holton
gives the example of resolving to go without water for two days just
to see what it feels like: Holton 2003, p. 42.) There will
indeed be a blemish on this agent's rational scorecard if he
eventually gives in and drinks: he will have failed in his attempt at
self-management. But wouldn't it be rationally far *worse* for
him to stick to his silly resolution no matter what the cost?
We can also re-examine the issue of the rationality of
*akrasia* in light of this analysis of weakness of will; for
we can distinguish between akratic and non-akratic cases of the
latter. As McIntyre points out, resolutions typically rest on
judgments about what it is best that one do at a (future) time
*t*. If an agent fails to act on a previously formed
resolution to do *a* at *t*, thus exhibiting weakness
of will, we can distinguish the case in which he still endorses at
*t* the judgment that it is best that he do *a* at
*t* (even though he does not do it) from the case in which he
abandons that judgment as well as his resolution. In the latter,
non-akratic type of case, the agent in effect rationalizes his
failure to live up to his resolution by deciding that it is not after
all best that he do *a* at *t*. McIntyre points out
that the traditional view that *akrasia* is always irrational
seems to give us a perverse incentive to rationalize, since in that
case we escape the grave charge of practical irrationality, being
left only with the procedural practical defect present in all cases
of weakness of will (McIntyre 2006, p. 291). But this seems
implausible: are the two sub-cases so radically different in their
rational status? Indeed, she argues, if anything, akratic weakness of
will is typically rationally *preferable* to rationalizing
weakness of will (McIntyre 2006, p. 287; pp. 309ff.).
"In the presence of powerful contrary inclinations that bring
about a failure to be resolute," she writes, "resisting
rationalization and remaining clearheaded about one's reasons to act
can constitute a modest accomplishment" (McIntyre 2006,
p. 311). Have we witnessed the transformation of
*akrasia* from impossible, to irrational, to downright
admirable?
### 3.4 Recent Developments
#### 3.4.1 Epistemic Akrasia
One focus of renewed attention in recent years has been (so-called)
epistemic akrasia. An epistemically akratic agent holds beliefs of the
form "P, but my evidence doesn't support P." In an
influential discussion, Sophie Horowitz posits an analogy between
epistemic akrasia and practical akrasia: "Just as an akratic
agent acts in a way she believes she ought not act, an epistemically
akratic agent believes something that she believes is unsupported by
her evidence" (Horowitz 2014, p. 718).
Is epistemic akrasia possible? Some philosophers who are happy to
countenance practical akrasia have answered in the negative with
respect to its putative doxastic analogue (these include Hurley 1989,
Adler 2002, and Owens 2002). One argument for this denial focuses on
the notion of doxastic control. David Owens argues that we lack the
requisite sort of doxastic control required for our beliefs to be
formed freely and deliberately, "either in accordance with our
judgement about what we should believe or against those
judgements" (Owens 2002, p. 395). But such control, Owens
argues, would be necessary in order for epistemic akrasia to be
possible.
A second argument for the impossibility of epistemic akrasia
(discussed in Adler 2002) turns on what is seen as an important
disanalogy between epistemic and practical reasoning. Conflict between
two incompatible beliefs weakens one or both beliefs (since both
can't be true), whereas conflict between two desires that
can't both be satisfied need not weaken either desire. A
practically akratic agent who has formed an all things considered
judgment about what to do may thus still be in the grip of a desire to
do something else. But this, Adler says, has no analogue in the
epistemic realm: one can't remain in the grip of a belief if one
views the evidence for an opposing belief as decisive. Thus, practical
akrasia is "motivationally intelligible" in a way that
epistemic akrasia is not (Adler 2002, p. 8). Neil Levy responds to
this concern by arguing that while beliefs in some domains fit this
model, the disanalogy Adler points to does not hold in domains where
there is room for "ongoing, rational controversy,"
including philosophy (Levy 2004, p. 156). One may form a belief in
favor of a philosophical view while nonetheless feeling the pull of
incompatible views, just as one may retain a desire that one judges
all things considered one shouldn't satisfy. Though Levy only
claims that Adler's impossibility argument fails, Ribeiro (2011)
uses similar considerations to motivate the claim that epistemic
akrasia is not only possible, but actual.
Some philosophers who think there could be an epistemic version of
akrasia have raised questions about how closely it would parallel
practical akrasia. Daniel Greco (2014), for instance, argues that
while a divergence between one's moral emotions and one's
urges might play an important role in understanding some cases of
practical akrasia, there are no corresponding epistemic emotions that
would help to illuminate epistemic akrasia (Greco 2014,
p. 207). Practical and epistemic varieties of akrasia nonetheless have
in common that they involve a kind of fragmentation or inner conflict;
Greco uses this characterization to support the idea that both
epistemic and practical akrasia are always irrational. (Feldman 2005
also sees epistemic akrasia as a paradigm of irrationality.)
Just as the rational status of practical akrasia has become contested
(see section 3.2 above), however, some theorists have now argued that
epistemic akrasia could in fact be rational. For example, Coates
(2012), Weatherson (2019), Wedgwood (2011), and Lasonen-Aarnio (2014)
have argued for the rational permissibility of some beliefs of the
characteristic akratic form "*P*, but my evidence doesn't
support *P*." This discussion has been shaped by a growing
interest in higher-order evidence--that is, evidence about what
one's evidence supports. The notion of higher-order evidence
complicates the picture of belief at work in arguments like
Adler's (2002) above. Defenders of the rationality of epistemic
akrasia have argued that beliefs of the form "*P*, but my evidence
doesn't support *P*" can be rationally permissible when one
has misleading higher-order evidence. In such cases, they contend, a
person could have good grounds both for believing that *P* and for
believing that her evidence doesn't support the conclusion that
*P*.
For instance, Horowitz describes a case of epistemic akrasia involving
a detective, Sam, who stays up all night trying to identify a
thief. He knows the evidence he is working with is good, and concludes
on the basis of this evidence that the thief was Lucy. He calls his
partner and tells her that he's cracked the case, only to have
her remind him that his reasoning while sleepy is often poor. Sam
hadn't thought about his previous track record, but he believes
his partner that he's often wrong about what his evidence
supports when he's tired. (Horowitz 2014, p. 719).
Defenders would say that Sam could be rational in believing both that
Lucy was the thief, and in believing that his evidence doesn't
support that claim. Against this view, Horowitz (2014) maintains that
higher-order evidence should affect our first-order attitudes whenever
we expect our evidence to be truth-guiding (which rationally we almost
always should); the conjunction involved in an akratic belief is thus
rationally unstable (Horowitz 2014, p. 740). (See also Lasonen-Aarnio
2020 for the argument that epistemically akratic subjects, while
sometimes rational, nonetheless manifest bad dispositions).
#### 3.4.2 Addiction as Akrasia?
There has also been growing interest in the question of whether
addiction is perhaps best understood as a form of *akrasia*.
Building on the arguments of Mele (2002), Nick Heather (2016) contends
that addiction shares the core features of akratic action and should be
understood as a special kind of *akrasia*, one in which agents
consistently act against both their present judgments and their prior
resolutions (Heather 2016 p. 133-4). Heather thus accepts
Holton's (1999) distinction between *akrasia* and weakness
of will, but argues that addiction paradigmatically involves both
halves of this distinction.
In contrast, Edmund Henden (2016) argues against classifying
addiction as a form of weakness of will. He thinks that the
phenomenology of addiction tells against such an assimilation.
Addiction often involves habitual behavior, and relapses are often
triggered by environmental cues that the addict is not conscious of at
the time of action. Addicts may continue to take drugs even when they
don't find it pleasurable to do so, and while retaining a strong
sense of the disvalue of this course of action (Henden 2016, p. 122).
In these respects, Henden contends that addiction is unlike giving into
temptation, as paradigm examples of *akrasia* are often
described.
Henden also notes that weakness of will seems rationally
criticizable in a way that addiction does not, which suggests they
can't be the same phenomenon. Many addicts sincerely try very
hard to abstain from using drugs. Though their effort may be
insufficient for them to succeed in abstaining, it may nonetheless be
sufficient relative to ordinary standards. That is, if someone who was
not an addict made the same effort with respect to similar endeavors,
it would be reasonable to expect her to succeed. The challenges that
face addicts thus seem much more demanding than the challenges that
face the average practical agent, including those prone to
*akrasia* (Henden 2016, p. 123-4). |
al-baghdadi | ## Life and Works
### 1.1 Life
'Abd al-Latif's intellectual position comes across in his
autobiography (*sira*). It seems to have formed part of a
larger work no longer extant which he wrote for his son Sharaf al-Din
Yusuf. The *sira* is contained in the *Sources of
Information on the Classes of Physicians* by Ibn Abi
Usaybi'a (Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, c. 1242 [1882-84],
*Kitab 'Uyun al-anba' fi tabaqat al-atibba'*,
A. Muller (ed.), al-Qahira: al-Matba'at al-wahbiyya,
1882-1884: II. 201-213; Martini Bonadeo 2013). At the
beginning of 19th century it was edited and translated into
Latin by Mousley (Mousley 1808) and re-edited and translated into
French by de Sacy (de Sacy 1810). A second autobiography is included
in the *Book of the Two Pieces of Advice* composed in Erzincan
in 1225 and preserved in the ms. Bursa, Il Halk Kutuphanesi,
Huseyin Celebi 823 (see Stern 1962; Dietrich 1964; Gutas 2011;
Martini Bonadeo 2013; Joosse 2014; Jad 2017; Fedouache - Ajoun - Ben
Ahmed 2018). A third autobiography, lost for us, is probably quoted by
his pupil Ibn Khallikan (Ibn Khallikan, Shams al-Din Ahmad ibn
Muhammad, d. 1282 [1968-1977], *Wafayat al-a'yan
wa-anba' abna' al-zaman*, I. Abbas (ed.), Beirut: Dar
Sadir, 1968-1977: IV.76-77). Other passages from 'Abd
al-Latif's autobiography have been preserved by
al-Dhahabi's *History of Islam* (Von Somogyi 1937; Cahen
1970). Finally, further information on 'Abd al-Latif can be
found in the report of his journey in Egypt entitled *Book of the
Report and Account of the Things which I Witnessed and the Events Seen
in the Land of Egypt*, a compendium extracted from his own history
of Egypt, *The Long Book about Egypt*, lost to us (Wahl 1790;
de Sacy 1810; Zand, Videan, & Videan 1965; Malallah 1987;
Martini Bonadeo 2017; Kzzo-Bellucci 2020).
He was born in Baghdad between February and April in 1162 from an
upper class family originating from Mosul and spent his formative
years in Baghdad until 1189. His contemporary Yaqut writes that
'by his descent (*qadiman*) he was known as
Ibn al-Labbad, a sort of family name (Yaqut al-Hamawi al-Rumi, d. 1229
[1993], *Mu'jam al-udaba'.* *Irshad al-arib ila
ma'rifat al-adib*, I. Abbas (ed.), Beirut: Dar al-Gharb
al-Islami, 1993: IV.1571). In the years of his youth in Baghdad,
under the guidance of his father - Abu l-'Izz ibn Muhammad
al-Mawsili who had been a student of Abu l-Barakat al-Baghdadi's
(d. 1165) (Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, c. 1242 [1882-84], *Kitab
'Uyun al-anba' fi tabaqat al-atibba'*, A.
Muller (ed.), al-Qahira: al-Matba'at al-wahbiyya,
1882-1884: I. 280; Toorawa 2004), 'Abd al-Latif
studied Islamic sciences and medicine with many renowned scholars,
including Kamal ad-Din 'Abd al-Rahman al-Anbari (d.1181), a
professor of *fiqh* (law), *adab*-literature,
*hadith* (traditions) and Arabic grammar at the Nizamiyya
madrasa, Wagih al-Wasiti (d.1215), a professor at the Zafariyya
Mosque, Ibn Fadlan (d.1199), an outstanding legal scholar versed in
the *khilaf* (divergence of the law) and dialectic, and leader
of the Shafi'is in Iraq, 'Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn
al-Khashshab (d.1171), master of *hadith*, grammarian,
mathematician, expert in *fara'id* (hereditary law) and
*nasab* (genealogy), Radi al-Dawla Abu Nasr (d.ca.1182), son of
the well-known physician Amin al-Dawla Ibn al-Tilmidh, professor of
medical subjects.
In his hometown 'Abd al-Latif made his first steps in philosophy
studying al-Ghazali's *Intentions of the Philosophers*,
the *Measure of Science in the Art of Logic*, the *Criterion
of Action on Ethics* and the *Touchstone of Reasoning in
Logic*. Then he turned to Avicenna's books including the
*Salvation*, the *Cure*, the *Canon*, and the
*Validation* by Bahmanyar, a pupil of Avicenna. Finally still
in Baghdad he studied Indian mathematics, Euclid's geometry, and
many books on alchemy by Jabir ibn Hayyan, but then he abandoned this
discipline which he considered an irrational practice.
At the age of twenty-eight, in 1189, he left Baghdad and began a long
period of travel in search for knowledge. First he was in Mosul for a
year. There he heard people saying great things about al-Suhrawardi.
He came across al-Suhrawardi's treatises the
*Intimations*, the *Glimmer*, and the *Ascending
Steps*; but he did not find in them the knowledge that he was
looking for. He left Mosul for Damascus where he joined the grammarian
al-Kindi al-Baghdadi (d.1216) and he worked on a certain number of
grammatical treatises. In Damascus he took more and more distance from
the study and practice of alchemy. Then 'Abd al-Latif went to
Jerusalem and then to the Saladin near Acre. Here he came into contact
with Saladin's entourage: Baha' al-Din ibn Shaddad
(1145-1234), his biographer and the chief of the army and the
city of Jerusalem, and 'Imad al-Din al-Katib al-Isfahani
(d.1201), the chronicler of Saladin's deeds. With a safe-conduct
document written by this latter 'Abd al-Latif arrived in
Cairo.
His aim in Egypt was to meet Yasin al-Simiya'i, a not well known
alchemist, and Moses Maimonides, the famous Jewish philosopher,
theologian, and doctor, born in Cordoba in 1135. 'Abd al-Latif
refused to work with the first for the senselessness of his teaching
and found the latter excellent, but dominated by the desire to excel
and by his political ambitions. 'Abd al-Latif read Maimonides
*Guide for the Perplexed* and found it a bad book which
corrupted the tenets of faith and religion.
'Abd al-Latif's encounter with the Peripatetic tradition
took place in the vibrant cultural environment of Cairo where he met
Abu al-Qasim al-Shari'i, who had expert knowledge of the works
of the "Ancients" and of those of Abu Nasr al-Farabi.
Perhaps he was the renowned and famous master in the science of
*hadith* Abu al-Qasim al-Busiri (or al-Busayri d.1202), as
suggested with caution by de Sacy (de Sacy 1810). But this
identification remains problematic, given the fact that nine
contemporary of 'Abd al-Latif's bear the *nisba*
al-Shari'i, most of them members of scholarly families in Cairo,
and two of them also bear the *kunya* Abu l-Qasim. In
addition neither al-Busiri and nor the nine bearers of the
*nisba* al-Shari'i were known for their
expert philosophical knowledge (Griffel 2023). In Cairo, for the first
time 'Abd al-Latif studied the books of the
"Ancients", namely Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias,
and Themistius, and on the basis of these he began to test the cogency
of Avicenna's doctrines. From this he came to hold the
inferiority of the work of Avicenna. Nevertheless, 'Abd al-Latif
was intimately loath to renounce he who had been his master and the
inspiration behind his research from his youth.
After 13 September 1192, the date of the armistice of the Ayyubids
with the Franks, 'Abd al-Latif moved to Jerusalem where he met
the Saladin in person who awarded him a generous stipend to teach in
the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. After the death of the Saladin
(d.1193), the last years of 'Abd al-Latif's life took the
form of a long series of journeys, no longer in search of knowledge,
instruction, teachers and books, but all motivated by, or at the
behest of, patrons: in Damascus al-Malik al-Afdal, Saladin's
eldest son; in Cairo al-Malik al-Aziz, in Jerusalem al-Malik al-Adil
Sayf al-Din Abu Bakr ibn Ayyub, in Erzinjan al-Malik 'Ala'
al-Din Da'ud ibn Bahram, in many other places in Anatolia
(Erzerum, Kamah, Dvriji, Malatya) Seljuks patrons, in Aleppo Shihab
al-Din Tughril. He taught in many different Madrasas and mosques
including the al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, al-Azhar in Cairo, the
'aziziyya madrasa in Damasco. His contemporary al-Qifti
reports that towards the end of his life he tried to practice
medicine, but was not successful because he was not enough a good
practical physician (Ibn al-Qifti, d.1248 [1950-1955], *Inbah
al-ruwat 'ala anbah al-nuhat*, M. Abu l-Fadl Ibrahim (ed.),
al-Qahira: Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, 1950-55: II.196; Griffel
2023). While he was in Aleppo, in autumn 1231, he wanted to go on
pilgrimage to Mecca, and he started his journey towards Baghdad to
leave some of his works to the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mustansir ibn
al-Zahir (r. 1226-1242). Once he arrived in Baghdad 'Abd
al-Latif fell ill and died at the age of 69 on 9 November, 1231. He
was buried next to his father in the Wardiyya cemetery.
'Abd al-Latif's students were: the *hadith*
scholar Zaki al-Din al-Birzali (d.1239), the botanist Ibn al-Suri
(d.1242), the judge al-Tifashi (d.1253), Ibn al-'Adim (d. 1262),
and the biographer Ibn Khallikan (d.1282).'Abd al-Latif's
harshest critic was al-Qifti who accused him of having been a
theoretician incapable of practicing medicine and a plagiarist.
Al-Qifti's hostility against him was probably caused by
'Abd al-Latif's accusation of quackery and murder against
Joseph ben Judah ben Simeon (Josse 2007; Griffel 2023).
### 1.2 Works
The oldest lists of 'Abd al-Latif's works are those given
by Yaqut (Yaqut al-Hamawi al-Rumi, d. 1229 [1993], *Mu'jam
al-udaba'. Irshad al-arib ila ma'rifat al-adib*, I.
Abbas (ed.), Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1993: IV.1572-1573)
and Ibn Abi Usaybi'a at the end of the entry devoted to him in
the *Sources of Information on the Classes of Physicians* (Ibn
Abi Usaybi'a, c. 1242 [1882-84]: II. 211-213). Later
lists are found in Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi's *What was omitted
in the Obituaries* (Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi, before 1363 [1974],
*Fawat al-wafayat*, I. 'Abbas (ed.), Bayrut: Dar
al-Sadir, 1974: II. 385-388) and in al-Safadi (al-Safadi, Salah
al-Din khalil ibn Aybak, d. 1363 [1929-2013], *Al-Wafi
bi-l-wafayat*, H. Ritter et alii (eds.), Beirut: XIX.109-111).
The list presented by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a numbers one hundred and
seventy-three works, including brief essays and treatises. The
subjects reflect the variety of 'Abd al-Latif's interests.
Thirteen writings are listed which deal with the Arabic language,
lexicography, and grammar, two with *fiqh*, nine with literary
criticism, fifty-three with medicine, ten with zoology, three on the
science of *tawhid* (unity of God), three on history, three on
mathematics and related disciplines, two on magic and mineralogy, and
twenty-seven on other themes. There are forty-eight works concerning
philosophy: nineteen on logic--two of which are against Avicenna
and the theory of conditional syllogisms--ten on physics, eight
on metaphysics, and nine on politics. Two general works are also
mentioned, divided into three sections: logic, physics, and
metaphysics; one of these was in ten volumes and was completed by the
author over a span of twenty years.
Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi's list is shorter. It numbers fifteen
discourses by 'Abd al-Latif which are not mentioned by Ibn Abi
Usaybi'a and eighty-one works, all mentioned in the previous
list, with the exception of one about antidotes.
The works which have come down to us, or at least those contained in
manuscripts so far identified (Martini Bonadeo 2013, Fedouache - Ajoun
- Ben Ahmed 2018), concerning *hadith*, lexicography, and
grammar are
* the *Compendium for the Language of Hadith* (al-Radi 1977,
1979);
* the *Extract from the Book of the Essay on the Diadem in the
Swords of the Prophet*;
* 'Abd al-Latif's commentary on the caliph
al-Nasir's collection of traditions entitled *Rawh
al-'arifin*;
* the *Extract from the Expressions of the Prophet and the
Companions of the Prophet and his Followers*.
About *fiqh* (law) there are
* the *Brief Study of the Laws in the Codes of Egypt*;
* the *Commentary on the Collection by Abu Yahya 'Abd
al-Rahim ibn Nubata al-Fariqi*.
About mathematics there is
* the *Book of That Which is Evident in Indian
Mathematics*.
On medicine some works survived:
* the *Commentary on the Prognostics according to
Hippocrates* (Joosse & Pormann 2012);
* the *Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates* (Joosse
& Pormann 2012);
* the *Commentary on Hunayn's Medical Questions*;
* the *Commentary on the Anatomy of Lutfallah al-Misri*;
* the *Note on the Anatomy of the Commentary on the
Revision*;
* the treatise *On the Principles of Simple Medical Substances
and their Natural Qualities*.
Concerning philosophy, there are:
* the *Essay on the Senses and Two Questions on their
Function* (Ghalioungui & Abdou 1972; reprint Ghalioungui
1985);
* the *Questions on Natural Science* (Ghalioungui & Abdou
1972; reprint Ghalioungui 1985);
* the *Book on the Science of Metaphysics* (Badawi 1955a,b;
Neuwirth 1976, 1977-78, 1978; Ajoun 2017; Martini Bonadeo
2017).
Besides these works further eleven treatises have been
preserved--among which is the already mentioned *Book of the
Two Pieces of Advice*--in the miscellaneous manuscript Bursa,
*Huseyin Celebi* 823 (Stern 1962; Jad 2017;
Fedouache - Ajoun - Ben Ahmed 2018, 3-236):
* 'Abd al-Latif's criticism of the notes written by
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi on several passages from the *Kulliyyat*
section of Avicenna's *Canon* (fols 1v-19v and
28r-34r);
* 'Abd al-Latif's criticism of the treatise on the
*Sura of Pure Intention* by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (fols
34r-38v and 20r-23r);
* the treatise *On the Quiddity of Space According to Ibn
al-Haytham* (fols 23v-27v and 39r-52r; see Rashed
2002, 4, 908-53) in which 'Abd al-Latif's attempt to
refute Ibn al-Haytham's geometrization of place and to restore
Aristotle's definition is a sort of defense of the primacy of
philosophy compared to mathematics (El-Bizri 2007);
* the treatise *On Mixing* (fols 52v-62r) concerning
the combination of various elements in compound substances;
* the *Dispute Between an Alchemist and a Theoretical
Philosopher* (fols 100v-123v; Josse 2008, 2014; Jad
2019);
* the treatise *On Minerals and the Confutation of Alchemy*
(fols 124r-132r);
* the *Excerpta from the works of the philosophers* chosen by
'Abd al-Latif (fols 132v-135v; Rashed 2004) which are
related to Alexander of Aphrodisias' *Quaestiones* (I
11a, II 28, III 9) and an Arabic *Quaestio*, work number 39
ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias in Ibn Abi Usaybi'a's
list of Alexander's works;
* the *Excerpta from medical works* chosen by 'Abd
al-Latif (fols 138r-140v) in the form of a little handbook of
pharmacology, which presents the therapeutic effects of thirty-one
different plants;
* the treatise *On Diabetes* (fols 140v-149r; Thies
1971; Degen 1977).
## 2. What Philosophical Research is
In the *Book of the Two Pieces of Advice*, a diatribe against
false knowledge, composed between 1217 and 1225 in Aleppo or in
Anatolia, 'Abd al-Latif presents "two pieces of
advice" for would-be physicians and would-be philosophers, an
impassioned polemic against false physicians, and an equally harsh
invective against false philosophers (see Gutas 2011; Martini Bonadeo
2013; Joosse 2014; Jad 2017; Fedouache - Ajoun - Ben Ahmed 2018).
Those who, in his age, devote themselves to philosophy are bad
philosophers for many different reasons: their lack of interest, the
obscurity of philosophy and their lack of training and good teachers.
But the main reason for the decline of the philosophical production of
his age lies in the neglect into which the works of the Ancients have
fallen. The pages of these works are by now being used by bookbinders
and pharmacists as paper for packaging. No one--says 'Abd
al-Latif--wants to deny the contributions made by Avicenna to
philosophical research. He has, in fact, provided new energy to
philosophy, and he has been able in part to understand the books of
the Ancients and to offer an introduction to them. Nevertheless, if
one examines his works in more detail and compares them with those on
similar themes by ancient authors and, in particular, with Aristotle
or al-Farabi, their inferiority emerges. For this reason 'Abd
al-Latif proposes presenting the method followed by Plato and
Aristotle in their respective philosophies. In doing that, he follows
al-Farabi, summarizes and literally quotes al-Farabi's
*Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle* (Rosenthal & Walzer
1943; Mahdi 1961, 2001), where both Platonic dialogues and
Aristotelian treatises are set out in such an order as to constitute a
systematic and progressive investigation of all the areas of
philosophical research.
For 'Abd al-Latif, as for al-Farabi's Plato, philosophical
research begins with an investigation of what constitutes the
perfection of man as man, which does not consist of a healthy
physique, a pleasant face, noble descent, a large group of friends and
lovers; nor does it consist in riches, glory, or power, since none of
these is able to make man fully and truly happy. For man the
attainment of happiness consists in a particular type of knowledge,
the knowledge of the substances of all the beings and a certain
lifestyle, the virtuous life. Knowledge of things according to their
essence is not an end in itself, but is that which must characterize
the virtuous lifestyle of the philosopher: in him, in fact,
theoretical knowledge is the prolegomenon to action, ethics, and
politics. For this reason 'Abd al-Latif stresses that there is
no difference between a man who lives in ignorance and the life of
beasts because in ignorance man acts like a beast. A life in ignorance
is a life without the search for truth and, hence, inhuman in
itself.
In this perspective 'Abd al-Latif introduces Plato's
political philosophy. Since the perfection of the soul is possible
only in a city where justice reigns, Plato starts from analysis of
what justice is and how it ought to be. Then Plato examines the cities
which deviate from the good ways of life and from the philosophical
virtues. In the virtuous city, man must be educated in the knowledge
of the divine and natural beings and in following a virtuous way of
life. Human perfection is achieved by the man who combines the
theoretical, the political and the practical sciences. He will rule
and will possess the ability to conduct a scientific investigation of
justice and the other virtues and to form the character of the youth
and the multitude. He will be able to correct wrong opinions and to
cure every rank of his society with knowledge. The ruler will be the
one who has achieved human perfection at its utmost.
Then 'Abd al-Latif passes to present al-Farabi's Aristotle
who holds that the perfection of man sought by Plato is not
self-evident or easy to explain by way of a demonstration which leads
to certainty. He believes, therefore, that it is necessary to start
with a prior consideration. There are four things which by nature are
desired by man in so far as they are good: the soundness of the body,
of the senses, of the ability to discern that which leads to the
health of the body and the senses, and of the ability to obtain that
which leads to their soundness. In the second place man desires to
know the causes of the sensible things and also the causes of what he
sees in his soul, and he discovers that the more he knows the more he
feels pleasure. Thus according to Aristotle, the knowledge sought by
man can be said to be of two types: the first is a useful knowledge
sought for the soundness of the body, of the senses, and of the other
two abilities, the second is desired and desirable in itself for the
pleasure that a man experiences in apprehending it: for instance, the
myths or the stories of nations.
'Abd al-Latif goes on by explaining that in human knowledge
there are three sorts of cognitions: those acquired by senses,
frequently insufficient, those first necessary cognitions that
originate with man, and those acquired by investigation and
consideration. 'Abd al-Latif asks himself what type of knowledge
is most appropriate for man. Animals, too, in fact, have a body,
senses, and the ability to discern how and with what to safeguard
their health. They do not, however, possess the desire, provoked by
wonder, to know the causes of what can be seen in the heavens and on
earth.
This problem involves the following question: why should man ever
desire to know the causes if the type of knowledge that they involve
is not made for him? It is because man can grow in perfection by
knowing the causes; indeed, knowing the causes is an act of the
essence of man. Yet this statement opens up a series of problems. What
is the essence of man, what is his ultimate perfection, what is the
act whose realization leads to the final perfection of his essence?
Nevertheless, given that man is part of the world, if one wishes to
know the end of man and his activity he must first know the world in
its totality. The four causes of the world in its totality and in each
of its individual parts which must be sought are the what it is, the
how it is, the what it is from, and the what is it for.
The investigation which deals with the world, in its totality and in
each of its individual parts, is called natural investigation, while
that which regards what man possesses by virtue and will is called the
science of the things that depend on the will. Since that which is
natural and innate in man precedes in time that which is in man by
will and choice, the first type of investigation will precede the
second even if both must arrive at a certain science. Besides these
two types of research is the art of logic which forms the rational
part of the soul, leads it to certainty, to study and to research;
logic, moreover, guides and tests the validity of the other two fields
of research.
'Abd al-Latif reminds that in Aristotle's science of
nature the fundamental epistemological criterion holds that man must
start from what is attested to by the senses, to then proceed to what
is hidden, until he knows everything which he desires to know. For
this reason, he goes on in the study of plants and then of animals. He
catalogues their species, and explains the apparatus of organs which
each animal species is provided with. Since organs alone are not
sufficient to explain animal life, man feels the need to introduce a
further principle, which is the soul. Nevertheless, the soul is not a
principle sufficient to explain man, since the actions of man reveal
themselves to be more powerful than the acts of the soul. The soul is
not enough to explain the highest degree of substantiality reached by
man: Aristotle found man with speech and speech proceeds from
intellect or the intellectual principles and powers.
The human intellect is in potency and moves to act. All that which
passes from potency to act necessitates an agent of the same species
as the thing that must pass on to the act. The intellect as well,
therefore, in order to pass from potency to act, needs an active
intellect which is always in act and never in potency. When
man's intellect reaches its extreme perfection, it comes close
in its substance to the substance of this active intellect. In its
search for perfection, man's intellect tends to imitate the
model of this intellect, since it is that which makes man substantial
in so far as he is man. This intellect is also man's end because
it is that which provides him with a principle and an example to
follow in tending to perfection, which consists in approximating
himself as far as it is possible to it. It is therefore his agent, his
end, and his perfection. It is a principle in three different ways: as
an agent, as an end, and as the perfection to which man tends. It is,
however, a separate form with respect to man, a separate agent, and a
separate end.
The result of the enquiry undertaken leads to the conclusion that
human nature, the human soul, and the capabilities and the acts of
these two, just like the capabilities of the practical intellect, are
all finalized with respect to the perfection of the human intellect.
Nature, the soul, and the human intellect are, however, insufficient
to attain perfection and it is not possible to leave out of
consideration the acts generated by volition and choice which depend
on the practical intellect. For this reason, therefore, these acts
must also become the object of investigation like all that which
constitutes human will. Desire and the things, which depend on sense
and discernment--which the other animals also possess--on
the other hand, are neither human, nor useful for attaining
theoretical perfection. According to this criterion it is necessary to
re-examine completely all the scientific fields already established in
the search for that which contributes to the attainment of perfection
by man and that which, on the other hand, impedes this search.
Finally 'Abd al-Latif mentions the *Metaphysics* saying
that in Aristotle's *Metaphysics* beings are investigated
according to a different method from that used in the science of
nature. Unlike his Farabian source, al-Farabi's *Philosophy
of Plato and Aristotle*, ' as we know it, Abd al-Latif
begins to analyze the metaphysical science which has as its objects of
inquiry the divine and noble things. He seems to mention the
pseudo-*Theology of Aristotle*, the paraphrastic selection from
Plotinus' *Enneads* (IV to VI) translated by 'Abd
al-Masih ibn Nai'ma al-Himsi and corrected by al-Kindi. He
states that Aristotle in the *Theology* (*Kitab
bi-utulugiyya*) said that God created the terrestrial world for
man and also created in man the intellect and dispersed it in his soul
so that it might be a weapon which strengthens man to make him able to
live in the earth (i.e., practical intellect) and to investigate the
creation of the heavens and the earth and the wonders which are found
in the heavens and on the earth (i.e., theoretical intellect). And he
says that God is provident and takes care of qualitatively better men
and inspires them as a result of the mediation of the active intellect
either through the way of meditation, or through the way of the
effulgence of soul or through the way of revelation.
Of course since men are different there are different forms of assent
to the truth: the absolute certainty of the man who follows the
demonstrative way as indicated by Aristotle in the *Posterior
Analytics* and the persuasion produced by examples and images as
indicated by Aristotle in the *Rhetoric* and the
*Poetics*. Hence, philosophy comes into being in every man in
the way that is possible for him.
For 'Abd al-Latif, Plato and his disciple Aristotle pursue the
same purpose and the same end in their philosophical speculation, that
is to say, the perfection of man as man, which both identify in
knowledge of the truth of things. Moreover, they describe a system so
perfect in its organic constitution and completeness that the
generations following them are left with nothing but the task of
studying it in an attempt to understand their thought correctly. The
exceptional nature of Plato and Aristotle's philosophy, says
'Abd al-Latif, has three causes: first, their philosophy is
useful in motivating one to study, second, for a long time they had
influence in this field, and third, the absolute primacy of their
philosophy lies in their research into the causes from the more
distant to the closest to the object. This method of inquiry does not
need anything else and it is impossible to confute. It is therefore a
great mistake to believe that the works of the Moderns are clearer,
more useful, or qualitatively superior with respect to those of the
Ancients.
## 3. Criticisms against the Moderns
Abd al-Latif constantly held authors defined by him as Moderns
distinct from the Ancients and he unleashed a harsh polemic attack
against the works of the former. His privileged targets were Avicenna
and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi whom he considered, as far as it was
possible, even worse than Avicenna. The writings of these authors in
fact, if compared with those of the Ancients, reveal their low
scientific level, are confused, and lack detailed analysis.
### 3.1 Against Avicenna
'Abd al-Latif makes a series of criticisms on Avicenna's
philosophy (Martini Bonadeo 2013; Ben Ahmed 2019). In the first place,
he explains that Avicenna did not manage to present an exhaustive
philosophical system in which every field of philosophical research
could receive adequate treatment. 'Abd al-Latif criticizes
Avicenna's lack of reflection on the practical field. Even in
his most famous summa, the *Kitab al-Shifa'*, Avicenna
neglected the contents of Plato's *Republic*,
Aristotle's *Ethics*, and his *Politics*.
'Abd al-Latif explains this omission as a total lack of
familiarity by Avicenna not only of practical philosophy, but also of
philosophy in general.
In the second place, according to 'Abd al-Latif, Avicenna seems
to have distorted or not to have had any knowledge of the fundamental
Aristotelian epistemological criterion according to which research
must begin with that which is more easily knowable to us (cf.
Aristotle, *Physics* I.1, 184a16-21; *Nicomachean
Ethics* I.4, 1095b3-4). This is why, for example Avicenna
mistakenly placed zoology after his treatment of the soul.
Next, 'Abd al-Latif points out that Avicenna has produced
numerous works, which have been copied from one another, as in the
case of the *Kitab al-Shifa'* and the *Kitab
al-Najat*. He observes that Avicenna decided to introduce all his
treatises with the discourse presented by Aristotle at the beginning
of the *Posterior Analytics* (ll, 71a1-3) on every form
of knowledge. But this is all that Avicenna knows of the *Posterior
Analytics*. In fact, he has not dealt with what constitutes the
end of logic, that is to say, the five logical arts which are the
object of the *Posterior Analytics*, the *Topics*, the
*Sophistical Refutations*, the *Rhetoric*, and the
*Poetics*, and he has dwelt on an analysis of the contents of
the *Isagoge*, *Categories*, *De Interpretatione*
and *Prior Analytics* which, according to 'Abd al-Latif,
constitute a preparatory introduction to true logic. Even the
*Kitab al-Shifa'*, which deals with logic at greater
length, presents a confused discourse. 'Abd al-Latif provides
examples which strengthen his strong criticism. In the first place it
is surprising to him that Avicenna has not clarified the category of
"having" (*ekhein*; for
its Arabic translations see Afnan 1964: 89-90). But, in fact, in
the section on the categories (*al-Maqulat*) of the *Kitab
al-Shifa'*, Avicenna devotes few words to his explanation of
the meaning and the value of this category. He maintains that it is
not a clear category and recognizes that he has not managed to
understand it because he does not see how it can contain species.
Moreover, 'Abd al-Latif is amazed by the fact that Avicenna
places the movement of the sky in the category of
"Being-in-a-position"
(*keisthai*), even
though he himself has written a book on the *De Caelo et mundo*
and on the *Physics*. The category of
*keisthai* is
explained by Avicenna both in the *Kitab al-Shifa'* and
the *Kitab al-Najat* as the manner of being of the body in as
far as the fact that its parts constitute, one with another, a
relation of inclination and parallelism in relation to the directions
and the parts of the place, if the body is in a place, such as, for
example standing up and sitting down. 'Abd al-Latif's
third criticism is of Avicenna's claim that he can define one of
two relative terms without having recourse to the other. 'Abd
al-Latif stresses that in the *Isagoge* Avicenna defines genus
separately and species separately and father separately and son
separately. Then in his definition of father as a "living thing
which creates from his sperm another living thing similar to
him" Avicenna finds himself obliged to seek recourse to four
distinct relations.
'Abd al-Latif proceeds to criticize Avicenna's theory of
the syllogism and in particular his admission of the hypothetical
syllogisms. Finally, 'Abd al-Latif makes a series of further
criticisms of Avicenna without, however, going into each of them in
detail. Avicenna has enlarged the book of the *Poetics* with an
amount of material which actually derives from the *Rhetoric*.
Since Avicenna's *Kitab al-Shifa'*, despite its
numerous errors, has become the philosophical encyclopedia of
reference among 'Abd al-Latif's contemporaries, he
believes that Avicenna is the indirect cause of the vast spread of
philosophical errors, such as the confusing, for example, the object
proper to the *Physics*, that is, nature, with that of the
*Metaphysics*.
### 3.2 Against Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
'Abd al-Latif presents two sets of reasons why al-Razi's
works, full of errors, should not be the object of people's
admiration. In the first place this writer does not possess a specific
technical knowledge of the various sciences which he has decided to
consider: his use of the medical terminology is inaccurate, for
example, in his notes on Avicenna's *Canon*. In the
second place, since he lacks any didactic method, he simply raises
continual sophisms. For these reasons, 'Abd al-Latif maintains
that he should not even try to take on the holy text of the
*Koran* as he did in his commentary on sura 112 or on sura 95
and sura 87 (Gannage 2011: 227-256; Stern 1962:
57-59).
## 4. Metaphysics
### 4.1 Metaphysics as Research into the Causes and First Philosophy
'Abd al-Latif's main work, the *Book on the Science of
Metaphysics*, is survived in two manuscripts: the first, the ms.
Cairo, Dar al-kutub, *Ahmad Taymur Pasha Hikma* 117, 16-178,
which was probably produced in Egypt in 1529; the second ms Instanbul,
Suleymaniye Kutuphanesi, Carullah 1279, fols 140v-187v,
which was produce around 1477 in Sa'da in Yemen by a bookseller
and copyst Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Nihmi (d. after 1480) who collected
in it 40 different texts of philosophy for his personal use (Rosenthal
1955; Griffel 2023).
In the twenty-four chapters of his *Book on the Science of
Metaphysics* 'Abd al-Latif paraphrases and summarizes a sort
of "library" of treatises on metaphysics (Zimmermann 1986)
which were assimilated in the formative period of *falsafa* and
imposed themselves to the point of becoming canonical. The editorial
plan of the *Book on the Science of Metaphysics* follows the
ordering of the metaphysical and divine science according to
al-Farabi's *Enumeration of the Sciences*. It consists in
fact of three distinct parts which reflect al-Farabi's
tripartite division: in the first part, which includes the first four
chapters, there is the study of beings and their accidents; the second
part, which goes from chapter five to chapter twelve, deals with the
principles of definition and demonstration; the third and last part,
comprising chapters thirteen to twenty-four, is devoted to a
description of the hierarchy of the immaterial and intelligible
realities until it reaches the First Mover, the First Principle, the
First Cause, the One, which is nothing but the one God of the
*Koran*, the provident Creator, in a synthesis of Aristotelian
metaphysics, Neoplatonic metaphysics, and Islamic monotheism (Neuwirth
1976).
'Abd al-Latif devotes a full sixteen out of twenty-four chapters
to a discussion of Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, which he
probably knew in more than one translation. The books of the
*Metaphysics* he freely paraphrases are, in order, *Alpha
Elatton/Alpha Meizon*, *Beta*, *Delta*,
*Gamma*, *Epsilon*, *Zeta*, *Eta*,
*Theta*, *Iota*, and *Lambda* (Neuwirth 1976,
1977-78; Martini Bonadeo 2001, 2010, 2013, 2018; Ajoun 2017).
Three whole chapters (13-15) are devoted to the latter one.
'Abd al-Latif is strongly influenced by Themistius'
paraphrase (Brague 1999) in his reading of *Lambda*. The
presentation of *Lambda* ends with an entire chapter (16)
containing an epitome of Alexander Arabus's treatise *On the
principles of the Universe* (Badawi 1947; Genequand 2001; Endress
2002; Ajoun 2017). 'Abd al-Latif's use of the
*Metaphysics* reflects that of its first Arabic interpreters,
in particular al-Kindi, who centered on the contents of books
*Alpha Elatton*, *Epsilon*, and *Lambda* and was
tied to the criterion of the doctrinal unity of Greek metaphysics: the
natural theology of *Lambda* is only a premise for a
characterization of the First Principle, which is of clear Neoplatonic
origin (D'Ancona 1996).
This is particularly clear from the very beginning of the *Book on
the Science of Metaphysics*. For 'Abd al-Latif, in fact,
there are different causes for different kinds of being and different
sciences for different causes, but there is one first science leading
all the others, for two different reasons. First, as al-Farabi taught,
it is able to demonstrate the principles of the other sciences,
because it is only this science, which investigates absolute beings
and from them it provides an explanation of the principles of the
particular sciences, comprised in it and below it. Second, this
science includes speculation about the First Principle, which every
other thing needs in its own existence. 'Abd al-Latif claims
that this First Principle is the absolute final cause and that the
science of this cause is the wisdom (*hikma*) which precedes
all other knowledge (Martini Bonadeo 2010; 2017a).
The First Principle is described by 'Abd al-Latif in a typical
Avicennian phrase as the Pure Being (*al-wujud al-mujarrad*),
the aim of everything, and the First mover immobile, pure act, eternal
and everlasting, i.e., the First Principle whose knowledge is the end
of our inquiry. The First mover not only produces the movement of the
things, but it is their perfection, namely the paradigmatic cause, and
their final cause. Abd al-Latif introduces the example of the law,
which he derives from Themistius' paraphrase (on Abd al-Latif's use of
Themistius' Paraphrase of Book *Lambda* of
Aristotle's *Metaphysics*: Meyrav 2019). The law
moves politics in so far as it is chosen for itself. The First
Principle, as God, is the cause for being of the worlds and their
ordering according to their beauty and their duration and it is a
substance which equals his science. The First Principle is also
described as the True One (*al-wahid al-haqq*), one by essence,
without any kind of multiplicity. The way to know this True One is to
ascend from the things which have some degree of unity. So we say one
army, one city, that Zayd is one, that the celestial sphere is one,
and that the world is one. Then we proceed through souls and
intellects, and through the things which in this ascent loose
multiplicity and acquire unity until we reach the Absolute One
(*al-wahid al-mutlaq*), the architectural principle of
everything and the supreme intelligible which makes the world be,
preserves its existence, and orders it. The First Cause is for
'Abd al-Latif that cause which has within it all things in
purely Neoplatonic vein. It is not surprising therefore that in
paraphrasing chapter 10 of *Lambda* he speaks of emanation from
the First Principle.
The characteristics of the Neoplatonic One are thus grafted onto the
Aristotelian characterization of the First Principle. The point of
fusion lies in the doctrine of the self-reflection of divine thought,
which for 'Abd al-Latif, who is influenced by the exegesis of
Themistius, is not a reason for composition and multiplicity within
the First Principle, as it was for Plotinus. If the thinking
principle, the act of thinking and the object of thought coincide in
the First Principle, which by now is called God, there is in It no
multiplicity.
### 4.2 Providence
The exposition of *Lambda* is followed by three chapters which
discuss the theme of Providence
(pronoia) of the First Principle.
'Abd al-Latif's main source is Alexander of
Aphrodisias' *De Providentia* (Ruland 1976, 1979;
Zimmermann 1986; Thillet 2003; Martini Bonadeo 2017a). 'Abd
al-Latif therefore mutually harmonizes two solutions which are in
reality quite different from one another, not to say alternative: that
put forward by Alexander regarding the problem of divine
providence--the First Principle thinks and knows primarily only
itself, but it eternally knows the events of the world too, subject to
becoming, in so far as it exercises its own direction over them
through the celestial order--and that of Themistius, which
'Abd al-Latif had already made his own in the course of his
paraphrase of *Lambda*, whereby God knows that which is
different from him without for this reason coming out of himself,
since he contains in him all the ideas of all things, and is the norm
and the condition of the intelligibility of the world.
'Abd al-Latif maintains that the action of God's
providence expresses itself both in the superior and in the inferior
world; but if in the first case the relationship between divine
providence and the superior world is immediate, in the second case it
is mediated by the superior world. The relationship between divine
providence and those who receive it, however, cannot be thought of as
a causal relationship, since in this case "the noble would come
into being because of the ignoble and the earlier because of the
later" (Rosenthal 1975: 156), which is shameful, nor can this
relationship be thought as purely accidental. Both situations are
unsuitable for the First Principle, which cannot therefore exercise
providence as its primary action, but cannot either be considered as
that from which providence derives accidentally. 'Abd al-Latif
then affirms that the existence and the order of things derive from
the existence of God, who is absolute good and returns to the image of
fire which warms everything: God concedes to all existing things as
much good as they, for their proximity to him, are able to receive.
The bodies of the sublunary world are able to enjoy the potency which
emanates from God and so they tend to move towards him. Among the
existing things of the sublunary world, man has been given the
capacity for reason, due to which he can carry out those actions that
lead him to acquire the happiness appropriate to him. The same
rational capacity allows him to know divine things and, in virtue of
this knowledge, man is superior to all other things that come to being
and pass away. At times, however, he uses this rational capacity to
obtain, not the good and virtues, but vices. This can happen because
providence allows man the capacity to be able to acquire virtues, but
the success of this enterprise lies in the will and in the choice made
by man himself.
Following the lead of Alexander's treatise *On
Providence*, 'Abd al-Latif introduces the problem of evil
and places his examination of those aspects of the doctrine of
providence that regard man and his actions within the framework of a
discussion more of a cosmological nature. For this reason, though he
favours Themistius' solution whereby God knows all things in
that he contains within him the ideas of all things, which he holds to
be closest to the dogma of the Koran, 'Abd al-Latif has recourse
to Alexander concerning the problems of evil, man's free will,
and divine justice.
### 4.3 Intellect and First Cause
'Abd al-Latif then proceeds in his treatise by epitomizing the
*Book of the Exposition of the Pure Good*, that is to say, the
*Liber de causis* of the Latin Middle Ages, proposition 54, on
the difference between eternity and time (Endress 1973; Jolivet 1979:
55-75; Zimmermann 1994: 9-51) from Proclus'
*Elements of Theology*, *Metaphysics Lambda*, and the
pseudo-*Theology* (Martini Bonadeo 2017b, Ajoun 2017).
'Abd al-Latif reproduces all the propositions of the *Liber
de causis*, except numbers 4, 10, 18, and 20, and follows the same
order in which they are set out (Badawi 1955b; Anawati 1956:
73-110; Taylor 1984: 236-248). Abd al-Latif's aim is to
establish, on a Farabian model, an identification between the First
Cause, One and Pure Good, as presented in the *Liber de causis*
and the Aristotelian First Principle, Unmoved Mover and Intellect in
actuality, described in his paraphrase of *Metaphysics
Lambda*.
Abd al-Latif stresses the primacy of the most universal cause, which
is, therefore, further from its effect with respect to the causes
nearer to the effect and hence apparently more important. The First
Cause transcends any possibility of our knowledge. If knowing the true
nature of things in fact means knowing their causes, since by
definition the First Cause has no causes that precede it, it is
unknowable in its true nature. It can only be known by approximation,
through a description of the secondary causes. A long section, which
describes intellect, follows this theory of the transcendent
ineffability of the First Cause which precludes any proper
predication. The intellect is with eternity, above time, and is not
subject to division, because everything which is divisible is
divisible in magnitude, in number, or in motion, but all these kinds
of division are under time. It is one, in so far as it is the first
thing which originated from the First Cause, but it is multiple with
respect to the multiplicity of the gifts that come to it from the
First Cause. The intellect knows what is above it--the gifts that
come to it from the First Cause--and what is below it--the
things of which it is the cause. But intellect knows its cause and its
effect through its substance, that is to say that it perceives things
intellectually. It grasps intellectually either the intellectual
things or the sensible ones. The First Cause, which is the Pure Good,
pours all that is good into the intellect and into all that which
exists through the mediation of the intellect. There is, however, a
certain fluctuation in 'Abd al-Latif's attempt to
establish a perfect conformity between the First Cause as presented in
the *Liber de causis* and the First Principle presented in his
chapters devoted to the paraphrase of *Metaphysics Lambda*.
According to 'Abd al-Latif God precedes the intellect in ruling
things: he orders the intellect to govern. But, having stated that the
self-subsistent substance is not generated from something else,
'Abd al-Latif maintains that intellect does not need anything
other than itself in its conceptualizing and formation
(*tasawwuri-hi wa taswiri-hi*), that it is perfect and complete
eternally, and that it is the cause of itself.
### 4.4 Metaphysical Science as of Science of Sovereignty
At this point 'Abd al-Latif introduces the description of the
Science of Sovereignty (*'ilm al-rububiyya*) which echoes
that of the first chapter in the *Theology of Aristotle*: it is
not a physical science that limits itself to ascend from effects to
causes, but a science which, when it comes close to causes, is able to
go back to consider the effects in greater depth approaching the
divine knowledge of things.
Moreover, 'Abd al-Latif summarizes in the contents, but not in
the order, a selection of twenty propositions of Proclus (1-3,
5, 62, 86, 15-17, 21, 54, 76, 78, 91, 79, 80, 167, and
72-74: see Zimmermann 1986), four *quaestiones* of
Alexander of Aphrodisias (Van Ess 1966; Fazzo & Wiesner 1993) and
the adaptation of John Philoponus' *De aeternitate mundi
contra Proclum* IX,8 and IX,11 (Hasnawi 1994), entitled *What
Alexander of Aphrodisias Extracted from the Book of Aristotle Called
Theology, Namely the Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty* (Endress
1973). In doing that 'Abd al-Latif sets for himself three
objectives. In the first place, he wants to stress the crucial aspects
of the doctrine of the First Cause understood as One, presented in the
previous chapters. In the second place, he discusses the relationship
between the One and the many, and, not by chance, he does so after a
series of chapters (16-20) devoted to the relationship between
the First Cause and the world. As for these two objectives, he
stresses the basic features of the First Cause: it is One and it gives
unity to that which is multiple; it is One in itself and the True One
without composition; it is the cause of all that which is multiple in
that, although it is by essence One, its causal action propagates in a
multiplicity of effects; it is above eternity and time; it is life
that does not end, light that does not extinguish, it is Pure Being,
it is the first agent, it is ineffable and nothing can be properly
predicated of it, it is unknowable, the apex of the hierarchy of being
which is composed of the intellect, intelligible realities, the Soul,
the souls, and, finally, the corporeal realities of nature. Then he
turns to the providence of the First Cause with regard to its effects:
this providence exists, is mediated by the spheres and preserves the
species on earth. The divine power acts upon the sublunary world by
contact, and, starting from the first sphere of fire, the divine power
is in matter according to the receptivity of the various matters.
'Abd al-Latif ends his presentation of the metaphysical science
by summarizing the text of the pseudo-*Theology* from chapter 2
to chapter 10 (chapter nine is not included), more or less literally
(Badawi 1955a, Ajoun 2017). Through the
pseudo-*Theology*--as we have seen before, an item of the
Arabic Plotinus--'Abd al-Latif was exposed to a Neoplatonic
doctrine on the causality of the Platonic ideas which took into
account the Aristotelian themes of the immobile causality of the First
Mover and the coincidence of the nature of what is the supreme
intelligent and what is the supreme intelligible. 'Abd al-Latif
writes about the First Principle, True One, and Creator, which is
known only through imperfect images and which is infinite in its
essence, the process of emanation and the hierarchy from the First
Principle to the word of coming to be, the nature and movement of the
celestial bodies which move out of the desire to imitate the
perfection of the First Unmoved Mover and to assimilate themselves to
the Pure Good to the extent to which they are capable; the movement of
the first sphere and the life in the world of coming to be; the
ontological anteriority of the First Cause with respect to the
proximate causes, the ascent of human soul from sensible to
intellectual knowledge up to the First Principle, which is true
intellect, true being, true perfection, true science and true
substance. At the end he deals with the limits of our senses and of
the human intellect in understanding the First Cause and the others
separate beings: our intellect is weak in understanding concepts such
as movement, time, matter, privation, and possibility, and it can
attain them only through analogies and long meditation. Moreover, for
our intellect the First Principle is the condition of knowing without
being known by us, as the sun is the condition of our vision even
though we cannot bear the direct sight of it. The *Book on the
Science of Metaphysics* ends with the announcement of a treatise
on political philosophy to follow, entitled *The Conditions of the
Perfect State and its Consequences*: if people are educated to
grew up in virtues, it will be possible to realize *al-madina
al-fadila*, the Farabian perfect state.
This overview of the reception and use of the Greek and Arabic sources
by 'Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi in his *Book on the Science of
Metaphysics* proves that, in the framework of al-Farabi's
awareness of the manifold nature of metaphysics--ontology,
knowledge of causes, universal science, and divine science or
theology--the return to the Ancients, and to Aristotle, declared
by 'Abd al-Latif to be necessary in his biography, was certainly
not a return to the Aristotle of the Greek sources, linguistic access
to which had by that time been lost for a couple of centuries. Rather
it was a return to the Aristotle of his own tradition: that strongly
Neoplatonized Aristotle of the origins of the Kindian
*falsafa*. 'Abd al-Latif's treatise on metaphysics
is in fact deeply rooted in the whole set of Greek works on first
philosophy that had been translated or paraphrased into Arabic under
the impulse and direction of al-Kindi: in al-Kindi as in 'Abd
al-Latif's project where the knowledge of the causes comes to
coincide with a natural theology that investigates the First
Principle, the *De Providentia* of Alexander of Aphrodisias,
Proclus' *Elements of Theology*, and the last three of
Plotinus' *Enneads* constitute a natural development of
book *Lambda* of the *Metaphysics*.
## 5. Good and bad Epistemologies and Practices
'Abd al-Latif's attitude towards contemporary medicine and
the practice of alchemy helps us understand his consideration for the
epistemology of the sciences, which must be based on universal grounds
as that of the Ancients, and it explains once more the primacy
'Abd al-Latif assigns to the philosophy of the Greeks which he
considered the right way of thinking and therefore of acting.
### 5.1 Medical Epistemology
'Abd al-Latif in the first part of his above mentioned
autobiographical work (Joosse 2011, 2014) focuses on the
epistemological status of the art of medicine using different
comparisons which seem to be in contradiction: medicine is like both
mathematics and the art of archery (Joosse & Pormann 2008).
Medicine is an art concerned with universals. For this reason it does
not make errors. Mathematics is also a science which considers
abstract concepts, but even in this theoretical science approximation
occurs (the examples are that of the impossibility of squaring a
circle and the approximation in writing an irrational number).
Concerning the physicians, they are like the expert in the art of
archery "who hits the mark in most cases" (Joosse 2014:
66), but they can make mistakes because they are concerned with
particulars. Good physicians, even if they do not hit the target, do
not miss it entirely. For 'Abd al-Latif his contemporaries are
like those whose arrows which do not hit the targets, but on the
contrary, fall in the opposite direction (Joosse & Pormann
2010).
The pitiful state of contemporary medicine, in contrast to the
medicine of the Ancients Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Galen, is caused
first of all because the contemporaries do not follow a medical
epistemology. 'Abd al-Latif observes that, even in antiquity,
medical sects had existed which taught false medicine. 'Abd
al-Latif recalls, in particular, the Empirical and Methodist sects
which were in opposition to the Dogmatic or Rationalist one, according
to the classic tripartite division of medical schools which were known
to Arabic authors due precisely to the Arabic translation of many
introductory works by Galen and pseudo-Galen. The Empirical sect of
Sceptical inspiration, in fact, was neither concerned to study the
anatomical structure of the human body nor the internal secrets of
illnesses. It rejected any possible analogy between the dead body and
the living body. It denied any general theory. The medicine which it
taught, therefore, translated itself into a medical practice totally
alien to the anatomic-physiological basis of symptoms and was wholly
linked to clinical phenomena and the classification of symptoms and
medicines. The Methodist sect of Stoic and Epicurean inspiration, for
which human life was the natural place for moral and physical
suffering, held that the human body was formed of atoms which could
not be perceived by the senses and which were in continual movement
through pores and channels. According to this sect, illness came about
in the case of an alteration in the quality and the movement of the
corpuscles or in the case of an excessive tightening or relaxing of
the pores through which the atoms moved. Therapy, therefore, was
reduced to baths designed to provoke sweat in cases of the tightening
of the pores and astringents and tonics in the case of dilation, in
order to return to an intermediate perviousness. 'Abd al-Latif
holds that the above sects are far removed from the medicine practiced
by the Dogmatic doctors of Platonic and Aristotelian inspiration who
considered anatomy and physiology to be the basic sciences and for
whom the detailed study of the internal causes of an illness was
primary and necessary. Nevertheless, the criteria followed by the
Empirical and the Methodist sects were thus far scientific: the
physicians followed a theory and did not proceed by pure and simple
supposition, as most contemporary physicians did (Joosse & Pormann
2010).
In 'Abd al-Latif's opinion, the medicine of his age must
rediscover and apply Greek medicine with its principles, descriptions
of diseases, and therapies. Greek theoretical medicine is concerned
with universals and is founded on the ground of universal principles
which are valid everywhere. In this respect, according to him, Greek
medicine is far superior to his contemporaries' practice and
must be learned by the physicians of his age according to the
principle of accumulation of knowledge which also guides 'Abd
al-Latif's philosophical project.
### 5.2 Against Alchemy
'Abd al-Latif was profoundly averse to alchemy, which was much
in vogue in his time (Wiedeman 1907; Joosse 2008, 2014: 29-62).
It can in no way be placed in the system of the sciences. It is a
complete fraud: the false alchemists are all engaged in the production
of elixirs or the "Philosophers' stone". They
believe
>
>
> in the substantial transmutation of metals and thought that the
> "differentia specifica" of metals could be produced during
> an artificial process, which in the end would always lead to the
> transformation of lead and other base metals into precious metals gold
> and silver. (Joosse 2008: 304)
>
>
>
Alchemy and its false presumptions must be distinguished from
scientific knowledge, such as mathematics, mineralogy, chemistry,
zoology, and botany. Proof of this is that the Ancients never spoke of
it: Pythagoras has not devoted a treatise to it, Plato and Aristotle
never speak of it, and thus neither do the Greek commentators after
them. There is not a single word on alchemy in all of Galen's
voluminous works, nor in that of John Philoponus. In the Islamic age
al-Jahiz, Hunayn ibn Ishaq, his son Ishaq, his grandson Hunayn, Abu
Bishr Matta, and Abu al-Faraj ibn al-Tayyib keep all silent on the
subject. The father of this false science would seem to have been
Jabir ibn Hayyan who has turned generations of students after him
astray. Al-Farabi, the greatest Islamic philosopher, mentions elixirs
(*al-iksir*) in a highly negative way only once. Even Avicenna,
in his treatise on alchemy does not give this art a rational basis.
Alchemy is guilty of having waylaid generations of scholars.
'Abd al-Latif's life and works testifies the crucial role
played by many Muslim men of learning and science, who attended the
milieus of the Islamic schools between the 12th and
13th centuries, in the transmission of the Greek
philosophical and medical knowledge, still perceived as essential to
the training of the learned Muslim. |
al-farabi | ## 1. *Enumeration of the Sciences*
In what follows we will underline important scholarly developments of
the last thirty years and add useful complements to these listings. In
order to highlight these scholarly developments we will follow the
traditional order of the Aristotelian sciences that
al-Farabi himself offers in his *Enumeration of
the sciences*, *'Ihsa'
al-'ulum*, one of his most famous texts, as its
Medieval Latin versions had much influence in the West. There is no
full English translation of this text, but Amor Cherni (2015)
published an edition with French translation and commentaries.
Recently, a new critical edition with German translation of one of the two
Medieval Latin versions have come out: *Uber die
Wissenschaften (de scientiis)* Dominicus Gundissalinus'
version (2006). Alain Galonnier published a critical edition, French translation and study of the other Medieval latin version: Le De scientiis Alfarabii de Gerard de Cremone (2016). Following this
traditional theoretical order makes much sense since we know very
little about the chronological order of
al-Farabi's works, even if there is some
indication that *The Opinions of the People of the Virtuous
City*, also known as *The Perfect State*, and *The
Political Regime*, also known as *The Principles of the
Beings*, may be among his latest works. The paucity of serious
information about the chronological order of
al-Farabi's works makes it difficult to
determine whether some inconsistencies and tensions between different
works result from an evolution in his thought, as Damien Janos claims (2019, pp. 166-70), or hint at a distinction
between exoteric and esoteric treatises or simply arise from
limitations inherent to human nature that affect even the greatest
philosophers. As al-Farabi understood philosophy as
all-encompassing and attempted to present coherent views, some works
straddle several philosophical disciplines and so we will indicate
when such is the case. Al-Farabi's knowledge
of Aristotle's works is extensive, and even includes some of his
zoological treatises.
## 2. Language
In the *Enumeration of the Sciences*
al-Farabi first focuses on language, grammar,
metrics, etc. His *Kitab al-Huruf* (Book of Letters)
or *Particles*, gives us much information on his views on
language. Muhsin Mahdi, who published the first edition of this text
in 1969a based on a single manuscript, later on found two other manuscripts but could not complete a new edition. Making
use of the new material already gathered by Mahdi, Charles Butterworth
has prepared a second edition with facing full English
translation to be published by Cornell University Press. Muhammad Ali Khalidi gave a partial English translation
covering the middle section (2005). Therese-Anne Druart
(2010) began studying al-Farabi's innovative
views of language. In Freiburg-im-Brisgau Nadja Germann (2015-16) and her team
have been working on language and logic in classical Arabic and are more and
more impressed by the sophistication of
al-Farabi's positions. As for
al-Farabi, music is at the service of speech, the
last section of the *Great Book of Music* explains how
technically to fit music to speech, i.e., poetry, in order to enhance
the meaning of a text. Azza Abd al-Hamid Madian's 1992 Ph. D.
dissertation for Cornell University, *Language-music relationships
in al-Farabi's "Grand Book of
Music"*, includes an English translation of this section.
## 3. Logic
Next to the study of language, al-Farabi considers
logic. For a long time the possibility of a serious study of
al-Farabi's logic remained somewhat elusive.
Editions and translations of his logical works, except for his
['Long'] *Commentary on Aristotle's De
Interpretatione* (Zimmerman 1981), were scattered in
various journals and collective works often difficult to access. Many
of these texts were more critically edited and gathered
in *al-mantiq 'inda al-Farabi*, ed. by
Rafiq al-'Ajam and Majid Fakhry in 4
vol. (1985-87). In 1987-89 Muhammad Taqi
Danishpazuh published in Qumm a more complete collection of
logical texts, including a newly discovered part of a long commentary
on the *Prior Analytics*. Soon afterwards, two books on Farabian logic followed: Shukri
B. Abed, *Aristotelian Logic and the Arabic Language in
Alfarabi* (1991) and Joep
Lameer, *Al-Farabi & Aristotelian
Syllogistics: Greek Theory & Islamic Practice* (1994). In 2006 Mauro Zonta published fragments of a long commentary
on the *Categories* in Hebrew, Arabic, and English translation. John
Watt (2008) assessed the influence of the Syriac organon on
al-Farabi and Kamran Karimullah (2014) dedicated a
lengthy article to al-Farabi's views on
conditionals. Translations now are coming out: Alfarabi's Book of Dialectic (Kitab al-Jadal) (David M. Di Pasquale, 2019), and Al-Farabi, Syllogism (Wilfird Hodges & Saloua Chatti, forthcoming), as well as further studies of al-Farabi's logic by Saloua Chatti (2019) and papers by Terrence J. Kleven (2013) and Riccardo Strobino (2019).
Some issues dealt with in logic are also relevant to ethics and
metaphysics. Al-Farabi sees logic as the path to happiness (Germann, 2015). He also discusses the issue of future contingents. If the truth
value of statements on future contingents is immediately determined,
i.e., before the event happens, then everything is predetermined and
freewill is an illusion. Aristotle treats of this issue in *On
Interpretation*, 9. Al-Farabi discusses more
complex aspects of this issue as he adds a consideration of
God's foreknowledge and defends human freewill against some
theologians (see Peter Adamson (2006), "The Arabic Sea Battle:
al-Farabi on the Problem of future
Contingents").
As Deborah L. Black (1990) showed, following the Alexandrian
tradition, philosophers in Islamic lands consider *Rhetoric*
and *Poetics* as integral to logic proper and so parts of
Aristotle's *Organon*. Lahcen E. Ezzaher (2008:
347-91) translated the short commentary on the Rhetoric.
Frederique Woerther (2018) & Maroun Aouad are preparing a
new edition of some of al-Farabi's texts on
rhetoric. Stephane Diebler in *Philosopher a Bagdad
au Xe siecle* (2007) [in fact a very useful collection of
translations of short Farabian works] gave a French translation of the
three very brief treatises al-Farabi dedicated to
Poetics. Geert Jan van Gelder & Marle Hammond (2008:
15-23) translated one of these treatises, *The Book of
Poetics*, into English, as well as a brief relevant passage in the
first part of *The Great Book of Music*. Terrence J. Kleven (2019) studies The Canons of Poetry. Scholars interested in
political philosophy have highlighted the distinctions
al-Farabi makes between (1) demonstrative discourse,
reflecting Aristotle's positions in the *Posterior
Analytics* (in Arabic this text is known as *The Book of
Demonstration*), and which alone is philosophical *stricto
sensu*, (2) dialectical discourse, typical of the
"*mutakallimun*" or theologians and linked to
Aristotle's *Topics*, and (3) rhetorical and poetical
discourse, used in the Qur'an or Jewish and Christian
Scriptures in order to address ordinary people.
Great respect for Aristotle's theory of demonstration led
al-Farabi to attempt to fit any theoretical
discipline in its framework, though some of them, such as music, do
not exclusively rest on necessary and universal primary principles, as
they also include principles derived from empirical observations
(Miriam Galston, 2019). As music is dear to
al-Farabi, it is in the first part of his *Great
Book on Music* that we find the most extensive consideration of
primary empirical principles and their derivation from careful
examination of practice, i.e., in this case of musical
performances.
## 4. Mathematics and Music
After logic comes mathematics. For al-Farabi
mathematical sciences include arithmetic, geometry, optics, astronomy,
music, the science of weights and mechanics. Only recently has more
attention be paid to this aspect of Farabian thought. Gad Freudenthal
(1988) focused on al-Farabi's views on
geometry. Except for pointing to al-Farabi's
rejection, in contradistinction to al-Kindi, of the validity of
what we now call astrology, scholars had neglected his views on
astronomy and cosmology. Damien Janos's *Method, Structure,
and Development in al-Farabi's Cosmology*
(2012) has filled this gap. His book throws new light on various
aspects of al-Farabi's astronomy, cosmology,
and philosophy of nature. It also highlights the link between
cosmology and metaphysics. Johannes Thomann (2010-11) pointed to
a newly discovered commentary on the Almagest attributed to
al-Farabi (Ms. Tehran Maglis 6531).
In the *Enumeration* al-Farabi follows the
traditional classification of music under mathematics. In *The
Great Book of Music* he certainly indicates that music derives
some of its principles from mathematics but he also insists, as we
said above, on the importance of performance for determining its
empirical principles. On some points the ear, rather than theoretical
reflections, is the ultimate judge, even if at times the ear
contradicts some mathematical principle. For instance, he is well
aware that a semitone is not exactly the half of a tone. Of *The
Great book of Music* there exists only one full translation, that
of Rodolphe d'Erlanger into French (originally published in
1930-35 before the Arabic text was edited; reprint 2001). Only
partial English translations exist. I referred to two of them: one in
the section on language and one in the logic section under poetics.
George Dimitri Sawa (2009) translated the two chapters on rhythm.
Alison Laywine (McGill University), both a philosopher with excellent
knowledge of Greek musical theories and a 'Oud player, is
preparing a full English translation of this complex and lengthy text.
Yet, *The Great Book* is not the only text
al-Farabi dedicated to music. After having written
it, dissatisfied with his explanation of rhythms, he subsequently
wrote two shorter texts on rhythms (English translation of both by Sawa
2009). Apparently al-Farabi invented a system of
notation for rhythms. In his *Philosophies of Music in Medieval
Islam* Fadlou Shehadi (1995) dedicates his third chapter to
al-Farabi. Therese-Anne Druart (2020) shows how al-Farabi links music to language, logic and even politics.
## 5. Physics
After mathematics comes physics. We have only a few Farabian texts
dealing with physics taken in the broadest sense and covering the
whole of natural philosophy. Paul Lettinck addresses some of
al-Farabi's views on physics in his
*Aristotle's Physics and its Reception in the Arabic
World* (1994) and Janos (2012) also does so. Marwan Rashed (2008)
attempted a reconstruction of a lost treatise on changing beings.
Al-Farabi wrote a little treatise rejecting the
existence of the vacuum by means of an experiment. Necati Lugal & Aydin Sayili (1951)
published the Arabic with an English translation.
The substantive *Refutation of Galen's Critique of
Aristotle's Views on Human Organs* merits serious studies.
'Abdurrahman Badawi edited it in his *Traites
philosophiques* (1983: 38-107). It shows
al-Farabi's interest in Aristotle's
zoological works and develops interesting parallels between the
hierarchical structure of the organs of the human body, that of
cosmology, that of emanation, and that of the ideal state. Badr El-Fakkak (2017) explains these parallels and Jawdath Jadour (2018) studies the structure of this text, which remains untranslated, and presents a new edition of al-Farabi's Epistle on medicine.
Physics includes Aristotle's *On the soul* and scholars
have paid much attention to al-Farabi's little
treatise *On intellect* (ed. by M. Bouyges, 1983). A full
English translation of this important treatise, of which there exist
two Medieval Latin versions, was finally given by McGinnis &
Reisman in their *Classical Arabic Philosophy* (2007:
68-78). Philippe Vallat published an extensive study of al-Farabi's views on the intellect (2019a). The issue of the soul and the intellect is linked to logic, ethics, cosmology, and metaphysics. It also gives rise to a
debate. Earlier scholars considered that for
al-Farabi universals are acquired by emanation from
the Agent Intellect, which for him is the tenth and last Intelligence,
even if in many passages the second master uses the language of
abstraction. Recently, Richard Taylor (2006 & 2010) argued that,
on the contrary, there is genuine abstraction in
al-Farabi, even if in some ways it involves the
emanative power of the Agent Intellect.
## 6. Metaphysics
Metaphysics follows physics. It is not easy to assess
al-Farabi's understanding of metaphysics. The
very brief treatise, *The Aims of Aristotle's
Metaphysics*, insists that, contrary to what most people assume,
metaphysics is not a theological science but rather investigates
whatever is common to all existing beings, such as being and unity.
McGinnis and Reisman provide a full English translation in their
*Classical Arabic Philosophy* (2007: 78-81). In 1989
Muhsin Mahdi published the Arabic text of a short treatise *On One
and Unity*. It is still untranslated but Damien Janos (2017) explained its structure and contents and Philippe Vallat (2019b) studied it. Many passages of *The Book of Letters* are of
great metaphysical import as Stephen Menn (2008) showed. These texts
raise the question of the exact relation between logic and
metaphysics, as, for instance, both disciplines treat of the
categories (see Therese-Anne Druart (2007) & Kristell Trego (2018)). Such texts
present an Aristotelian outlook focusing on ontology that sharply
distinguishes metaphysics from Kalam and seem to leave limited
space for philosophical theology and Neo-Platonic descent in
particular.
On the other hand, both *The Opinions of the People of the Perfect
City* and *The Political Regime* or *The Principles of
Beings* begin with a metaphysical part presented as a Neo-Platonic
descent followed by a second part dealing with the organization of the
city or state and do not treat of being and unity as the most
universal notions. The hierarchical structure of the ideal state
mirrors the hierarchical emanationist structure presented in the first
part. Walzer edited the former with an English translation under the
title *The Perfect State* (1985) and Fauzi M. Najjar edited the
latter (1964). Charles Butterworth (2015) provided the first full
English translation of *The Political Regime* in *The
Political Writings*, vol. II, pp. 27-94. The question of how
exactly the ontology relates to the Neo-Platonic descent or emanation
has not yet been fully clarified, though *The Enumeration of the
Sciences* addresses both aspects. Furthermore, whether the
Neo-Platonic descent grounds the political philosophy or metaphysics
is simply a rhetorical appeal to make
al-Farabi's controversial political and
philosophical views palatable to religious authorities and ordinary
people is a hotly debated issue. Disciples of Leo Strauss and of
Muhsin Mahdi divide al-Farabi's views into
exoteric ones for a broad audience and esoteric ones written for an
intellectual elite. The exoteric are more compatible with the
religious views and speak, for instance, of an immortality of the
human soul, whereas such views are deliberately muted in esoteric
writings (below we will see that a lost treatise of
al-Farabi may have denied the immortality of the
soul). Among the most recent "Straussian" positions on
this debate one can find two papers by Charles E. Butterworth: (1)
"How to Read Alafarabi" (2013), and (2)
"Alfarabi's Goal: Political Philosophy, Not Political
Theology" (2011). Recently, Philippe Vallat (2019c) attempted to clarify what al-Farabi means by "esoterism," Some other scholars such as Dimitri Gutas, S. Menn
and Th.-A. Druart take Farabian metaphysics, including the
Neo-Platonic descent as at the core of
al-Farabi's works, even if in his
*Philosophy of Aristotle*, al-Farabi treats
little of metaphysics. We will say more on this controversy in
presenting ethics and politics, which in the Farabian classification
of sciences, follow metaphysics.
## 7. Ethics and Politics
Al-Farabi dealt little with ethics, but part of the
controversy stems from what we may know of his lost *Commentary on
the Nicomachean Ethics*, his main foray in Ethics. Despite the
existence of an Arabic translation of Aristotle's
*Nicomachean Ethics* (ed. by A. A. Akasoy & A. Fidora with
an English translation by D.M. Dunlop, 2005), we see few signs of its
influence in al-Farabi's extant writings. Yet,
al-Farabi wrote on it a lost commentary, to which
three Andalusian philosophers, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tufayl and
Averroes, refer. According to them, therein
al-Farabi denied the immortality of the human soul
as well as the possibility of any conjunction with the active or Agent
Intellect, considering them tall tales. Yet, in many other works, such
as the *Treatise on the Intellect*, the *Opinions*, and
the *Political Regime*, he claims that this conjunction is
possible and constitutes ultimate happiness. If what the Andalusian
philosophers report, presents an accurate reading of this lost text,
then the disciples of Leo Strauss may have some justification in reading
al-Farabi's works as divided between exoteric
and esoteric ones since the content of this work would contradict
views in more popular texts, such as the *Opinions* in which
the Neo-Platonic influence is the strongest. Neo-Platonic metaphysics,
construed mainly as the descent and emanation, would provide an
exoteric view good for a more general public, but denied in the
esoteric works reserved for an intellectual elite. Chaim
Meir Neria (2013) published two quotations from this commentary (in
Hebrew translation and with English translation) that have been newly
discovered and gave a summary of the issue.
Though we do not have any ethical text from
al-Farabi relying mainly on the *Nicomachean
Ethics*, Marwan Rashed (2019) discussed his ethical outlook in relying on the Attainment of Happiness. We do have a brief ethical treatise in the tradition of
Hellenistic ethics, *Directing Attention to the Way of
Happiness* or *Tanbih* (not to be confused with the
*Attainment of Happiness* or *Tahsil*), which is
propaedeutic to the study of philosophy proper and of logic in
particular (English translation in McGinnis & Reisman's
*Classical Arabic Philosophy* (2007: 104-20)). This
treatise (1) incites the student to curb his passions in order to be
able to focus on his studies and (2) encourages him to begin the study
of philosophy and of logic in particular. It is obviously
pre-philosophical and serves as introduction to a Farabian elementary
introduction to logic *The Utterances Employed in Logic*
(Mahdi's edition, 1968;
no English translation). Al-Farabi's
conception of truly philosophical ethics remains unclear as we have so
little extended textual basis to establish it. Janne Mattila (2017) compared the philosopher's ethical progression in al-Farabi and in al-Razi. Ethics, when treating of our relations with other people, implies intersubjectivity, but al-Farabi, though not treating it much in what concerns this life, offers an interesting picture of it in the afterlife (Druart, 2017).
Al-Farabi's political philosophy fared much better
and has attracted much attention from many scholars. According to
*The Enumeration*, it also includes *kalam*, i.e.,
non-philosophical theology, and *fiqh* or Islamic law. Many
Farabian political works have been translated into English. Muhsin
Mahdi translated three of them in *Philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle* (1969b; reprint 2001), which contains *The Attainment
of Happiness*, *The Philosophy of Plato*, and *The
Philosophy of Aristotle*. These three texts form a trilogy.
Charles E. Butterworth in, *The Political Writings*, vol. I
(2001), translated *Selected Aphorisms*, part V of *The
Enumeration of the Sciences*, *Book of Religion*, and
*The Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the
Divine and Aristotle* and in vol. II (2015), *Political
Regime* and *Summary of Plato's Laws*.
Al-Farabi does not take inspiration from
Aristotle's *Politics* (a text which does not seem to
have been translated or summarized into Arabic) but rather takes some
inspiration from Plato's *Republic* and *Laws*,
even if his access to these two texts may have been rather limited, as
there is some doubt that a full Arabic translation of them ever
existed. Though Averroes wrote a commentary of sort on the
*Republic*, its brevity and content do not testify to an
in-depth knowledge of the whole text. Yet, David C. Reisman (2004)
discovered an Arabic translation of a single passage from the
*Republic* (VI, 506d3-509b10). As for the *Laws*,
we certainly have al-Farabi's *Summary of
Plato's Laws*, but this text (Arabic ed. by Th.-A. Druart
(1998) and English translation by Butterworth, in *The Political
Writings*, II, (2015: 129-73)) is very brief and covers only
the first eight books. Whether this summary relies on a full or
partial Arabic translation of the *Laws* or on a translation of
a Greek summary, possibly that of Galen (lost in Greek), at this stage
cannot be determined. For the latest *status quaestionis* about
Arabic translations of Plato's works and their paucity, see
Dimitri Gutas (2012). Al-Farabi's own brief
*Philosophy of Plato* does not exhibit detailed knowledge of
Plato's works.
Though al-Farabi's political philosophy takes
some inspiration from Plato, it much transforms it in important and
interesting ways to reflect a very different world and adapt it to it.
Instead of a monolingual and monoethnic city state,
al-Farabi envisions a vast multicultural,
multilingual, and multireligious empire (Alexander Orwin, 2017). He also sees the necessity to
make of the philosopher king a philosopher prophet ruler.
Al-Farabi's *Summary of Plato's
Laws* caused much controversy, which Butterworth narrates in the
introduction to his translation (2015: 97-127). In 1995 Joshua
Parens, making use of a draft of Druart's edition, published
*Metaphysics as Rhetoric: Alfarabi's* Summary of
Plato's "Laws". He argued that
al-Farabi takes metaphysics, or maybe more exactly
special metaphysics or the Neo-Platonic descent, i.e., what treats of
immaterial beings rather than ontology, as a form of rhetoric, and
that such was already the case for Plato. Whether or not we should
read Plato as Parens and other Straussians claim
al-Farabi understood him is a hotly debated
question.
Marwan Rashed (2009) introduced a new element in the controversy by
putting into serious doubt the authenticity of
al-Farabi's *Harmonization of the Opinions
of the Two Sages*. Following an Alexandrian tradition, this
treatise (for Butterworth's 2001 English translation, see above)
argues that, despite a series of issues on which Aristotle and Plato
seem to contradict each other, there is remarkable harmony between
these two sages, as one can easily resolve such contradictions. This
text also refers (1) to the so-called *Aristotle's
Theology*, which in fact Aristotle never wrote, as it derives from
Plotinus, and (2) to Proclus Arabus, as Peter Adamson (forthcoming)
shows. On the other hand, Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, in her 2008
critical edition and Italian translation of this text
(al-Farabi, *L'armonia delle opinioni dei
due sapienti, il divino Platone e Aristotele*), argued for the
Farabian authenticity of this text. Whether one accepts the Farabian
authorship of this text affects one's understanding of the whole
controversy of how to read al-Farabi, as well as
one's understanding of the relationship between his
Aristotelianism and his Neo-Platonism. It also makes the whole issue
of the relationship between his metaphysics and his political
philosophy still more complex and convoluted.
Among the most recent developments, expressed in various articles, on
the Straussian side, let us point to Butterworth's "How to
Read Alfarabi" (2013) and "Alfarabi's Goal:
Political Philosophy, Not Political Theology" (2011) to which I
referred earlier. On the other side, we can point to Charles
Genequand's "Theologie et philosophie. La
providence chez al-Farabi et
l'authenticite de l'*Harmonie des opinions des
deux sages*" (2012), which objects to M. Rashed's
declaring the *Harmonization* inauthentic, and his (2013)
"Le Platon d'al-Farabi". Amor
Cherni (2015), on the other hand, published a book on the
relation between politics and metaphysics in
al-Farabi (*La cite et ses opinions:
Politique et metaphysique ches Abu Nasr
al-Farabi*), which includes an appendix
rejecting the authenticity of *The Harmonization*.
## 8. Conclusion
Though we now have more decent editions of
al-Farabi's texts and more complete
translations, in English and in French in particular, many such
editions and translations are scattered in various books and journals.
Gathering all of al-Farabi's available texts
is no mean accomplishment. If Oxford University Press would publish
*The Philosophical Works of al-Farabi*, as it
did for al-Kindi in 2012 (one volume, ed. by P. Adamson &
P.E. Pormann), beginning with those still untranslated or not fully
translated into English, as well as those whose English translation is
hidden in rare books or unusual journals, we would be eternally
grateful, but we are well aware that it would require several volumes
and much time.
Some texts still need to be better edited. Some texts are not
translated at all into any European language or not yet into English.
Scholars do not always seem fully aware of what is available and what
other scholars have said. Much more work still needs to be done, but a
clearer and more complex picture of
al-Farabi's works is emerging. It highlights
their breadth and sophistication, even if we still have trouble
piecing together all the parts. |
al-farabi-metaphysics | ## 1. Farabi's project of reviving the sciences of the ancients
Farabi does metaphysics, not by writing a commentary
on Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, but by trying to
reconstruct Aristotle's aims and demonstrative method and to
write the book that Aristotle would have written had he been writing
in Arabic for a largely Muslim readership. This is a part of
Farabi's approach to the "sciences of
the ancients", i.e., to Greek philosophy, mathematics, and
medicine, with all their sub-disciplines. A brief summary follows but,
for a fuller account, see
Supplement: Farabi's project of reviving the sciences of the ancients.
Farabi, more than any other medieval philosopher,
distrusts the surface appearance of Greek philosophy as presented to
him in the Arabic translations. He tries to go beyond this surface to
reconstruct the ancient authors' aims and methods, and even to
reconstruct the structure of their Greek expressions, which he
suspects have been badly served by the Arabic translations. In some
cases the Greek texts he is interested in were not available to him
even in Arabic translation, but only in translations of later ancient
summaries or descriptions, but this does not stop him from trying to
reconstruct their underlying thought. (He has access to translations
of almost all of the texts of Aristotle that we have now, but
apparently to none of the texts of Plato.) He thinks this is worth the
effort because he thinks that the Greeks, especially Plato and
Aristotle, developed sciences which have since decayed or have been
transmitted only imperfectly to the Arabic-writing Muslim-ruled lands,
but which it is still possible to reconstruct and to apply to the
urgent questions of his own time.
Farabi is particularly interested in applying the
"sciences of the ancients", and particularly metaphysics,
to resolve the issues addressed and disputed by the "religious
sciences" within Islam, especially *kalam* or
"dialectical theology". These issues include whether the
world was created in time or has existed from eternity, proofs of
God's existence and of his having no partner or contrary,
God's attributes (knowledge, power, will ...) and his
action in creating the world, and how his causality relates to the
causality of creatures. (Farabi systematically
addresses these issues, as well as *kalam* issues about
prophecy, the religious community, and the "return" or
afterlife, in his *Principles of the Opinions of the Perfect
City*: see
Section 4
below.) Farabi thinks that the arguments about
these issues within the Muslim community (and other religious
communities within the Muslim world) have been merely dialectical, so
that it is equally possible to argue on both sides of each issue. He
thinks that if the sciences of the ancients, especially metaphysics,
can be reconstructed and practiced according to a demonstrative
method, they will be able to resolve these disputes. He thinks,
however, that earlier philosophers in the Muslim world, in practicing
what they saw as Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy, have argued
sub-demonstratively, and so have been unable to resolve the disputes.
Farabi claims to be the first person in the Muslim
world to have mastered Aristotle's *Posterior Analytics*
and so recaptured Aristotle's demonstrative method. And he
claims to be the first to have understood Aristotle's
*Metaphysics*, and to have mastered the science of being and
its universal attributes which gives the only scientific foundation
for making judgments about God and his causality.
Farabi and his contemporaries use the word
"philosophy" (in Arabic "*falsafa*"),
borrowed from the Greek, only for those schools and disciplines that
present themselves as continuing ancient Greek philosophy. Before
Farabi's time this kind of philosophy was
mainly practiced, in the Muslim world, by Christians, often
Syriac-Arabic bilinguals (and almost all the translators of Greek
texts were Christian); although Christian philosophers also had Muslim
and Jewish students, and although some Isma'ili Shi'ites had
integrated a version of Greek philosophy into their ideal of what the
imam must know. Farabi wants to break the
association of philosophy with particular (and often marginalized)
linguistic and religious communities. The Arabic grammarian
Sirafi had accused Farabi's
Christian teacher Abu Bishr Matta of presenting as
universal rules of logic, normative for any rational being, what were
simply rules of Greek grammar, as translated from Greek through Syriac
into Arabic and probably damaged in translation. Against this charge,
Farabi wants to show that logic, and philosophy is
general, is not community-bound like Arabic grammar or Muslim
*kalam*. Logic is to thought as the grammar of a
particular language is to that language: its rules apply to all
thought insofar as it is correct, whatever language it may be
expressed in, and they give the common core shared by all languages,
abstracted from the merely conventional and community-relative aspects
of particular languages. And philosophy is to religion as logic is to
grammar, giving rules for how to think about God and the physical
world and human beings, and therefore for how to act to achieve the
aim of human life, which apply to all humans insofar as they reason
and act correctly; and these rules give the common core of doctrines
and practical prescriptions shared by all religions, or at least by a
plurality of correct religions, abstracted from the merely
conventional and community-relative aspects of particular
religions.
## 2. Farabi on metaphysics as a science and Aristotle's *Metaphysics*
Farabi aims to revive the sciences of the ancients,
especially the philosophical disciplines practiced by Plato and
Aristotle, to replace the (as he thinks) non-demonstrative disciplines
of his contemporaries, and to resolve their otherwise interminable
disputes. This centrally includes a project of reviving scientific
metaphysics, because metaphysics (rather than physics or other
sciences) offers the hope of a scientific demonstration that God
exists and has no partner or contrary, and a scientific resolution of
the *kalam* issues about God's attributes and acts,
and the relation of God's acts to creatures and their
acts.[1]
Perhaps metaphysics can also determine whether the human soul, or
some part of it, survives death, and thus can resolve the
*kalam* issue about our "return" to God. But
also, apart from whatever metaphysics may say about immortality,
Farabi thinks, following Aristotle, that the highest
human happiness consists in the contemplation of God, so that
metaphysics will describe the *content* of our possible
happiness after death, and will come as close as we can come to
anticipating it in this life.
Farabi did not write any one systematic work on
metaphysics, corresponding to Aristotle's *Metaphysics*,
although his *Book of Letters* and *On the One and
Unity*, taken together, stand in a close relation to some parts
and aspects of Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, and parts of
his *Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Perfect
City* and *On the Political Constitution* stand in close
relations to other parts and aspects of the *Metaphysics*
(other parts of these treatises are closer to other Greek models).
Farabi's starting-point in trying to revive
the science of metaphysics and to reconstruct and imitate its
classical texts (above all Aristotle's *Metaphysics*) is
his discussion of the "aim" or "object"
[Arabic *gharad* = Greek *skopos*] of metaphysics.
Farabi takes over late ancient philosophers'
assumptions that each of Aristotle's treatises is devoted to
teaching some one science, and that each science (and the treatise
teaching it) has some one "aim", such that everything the
science treats is somehow related to that aim. Thus the
"aim" of medicine is health: the science of medicine also
discusses, for instance, anatomy and pathology and pharmacology, but
only because they are somehow related to health. Much of
Farabi's discussion of Aristotle's texts
picks up late ancient discussions of what science each text transmits,
the "aim" of the science and the text, how those sciences
function together to attain the human good and what role each text can
play in that larger undertaking. In order to reconstruct what
Aristotle would say now, instead of what he said in Greek in the
*Metaphysics*, if he were addressing a different linguistic and
religious community in a different historical situation,
Farabi must start by understanding the aim of
metaphysics as a science and how each book of the *Metaphysics*
is directed toward attaining that aim. He gives surveys of the Greek
sciences in his *Enumeration of the Sciences* and
*Attainment of Happiness*, and of Aristotle's works in
the *Philosophy of Aristotle*, all of which include brief
discussions of metaphysics; he also has a brief discussion of
metaphysics and its relation to some other sciences in his *Book of
Letters*, and he writes an entire short treatise *On the aims
of the Sage in each book of the treatise which is called the Book of
Letters, that is, the determination of Aristotle's aim in his
treatise the Metaphysics* (for short, *On the Aims of the
Metaphysics*). In the bulk of the *Book of Letters* and
*On the One and Unity* he is not talking *about*
metaphysics as a science or about Aristotle's text, but rather
imitating Aristotle in practicing this science. Some of *On the
Aims of the Metaphysics* is also imitating Aristotle, since, in
describing the distinction between the different theoretical sciences
(physics, mathematics, metaphysics) and the different things that
metaphysics considers, he is imitating Aristotle's discussion in
*Metaphysics* VI,1.
Farabi starts *On the Aims of the
Metaphysics* by saying:
>
>
> Our intention in this book is to indicate the aim that is contained in
> the treatise of Aristotle called *Metaphysics*, and [to
> indicate] its primary divisions. For many people have followed their
> fancy that the meaning and content of this treatise is the account of
> the Creator (glory be to Him and be He exalted!) and the intelligence
> and the soul and the other things that are related to these, and that
> the science of metaphysics and the science of
> theology[2]
> are one and the same. And thus we find that most of those who
> investigate [this treatise] are confused and go astray, since we find
> that most of the account in it lacks this aim, indeed we do not find
> in it any special discussion of this aim except what is in the
> eleventh book, which bears the sign *lam* [L or
> L].[3]
>
>
>
Here Farabi is referring to the discussion, which
Arabic writers had inherited from late ancient Greek commentators,
about the aim of the *Metaphysics*, or equivalently about what
the science of metaphysics is about: Aristotle himself does not use
the word or phrase
"metaphysics",[4]
but he speaks both of "wisdom
[*sophia*]"[5]
and of "first philosophy", and Greek and Arabic
commentators assume that "wisdom" and "first
philosophy" are different names for the same science, and that
the *Metaphysics* as a whole is dedicated to this science,
which can therefore also be called "metaphysics". For two
reasons, there is an inherited problem about what this science is
about. The first reason is that Aristotle in different places says
different, not obviously compatible, things about what this science is
about: notably, in the *Metaphysics* I,1-2 he says that
wisdom is the science of first causes and principles; in
*Metaphysics* VI,1 and in several texts outside the
*Metaphysics* he says that first philosophy is the science of
divine things (which he calls "theology") or the science
of eternally unchangeable separately existing
things;[6]
in *Metaphysics* IV,1-2 he says that there is a science
of being as such and its attributes, and in *Metaphysics* VI,1
he apparently identifies that science with first philosophy or
theology; and in *Metaphysics* IV,2 he also identifies the
science of being as such with the science of substance. So the
commentators try in different ways to reconcile these different things
that Aristotle says about wisdom or first philosophy. The second
reason that there is a problem is that what Aristotle actually
*does* in the different books of the *Metaphysics* does
not obviously fit with what he *says* that wisdom or first
philosophy will do. If, as Farabi says here,
"most people" have concluded that "the meaning and
content of this treatise is the account of the Creator ... and
the intelligence and the soul and the other things that are related to
these"--i.e., an account of things that can be argued to be
eternal and separable from matter--this is not because (as
Farabi puts it here) they have simply
"followed their fancy", or because they have confused
Greek metaphysics with Islamic *kalam*. Rather, it is
because Aristotle repeatedly *says* that first philosophy is a
science of separate eternally unchanging things. The problem is that,
as Farabi says, most of the *Metaphysics*
outside of Book XII (indeed, outside of roughly the second half of
Book XII) does not seem to be talking about such things, except
inasmuch as *Metaphysics* XIII-XIV try to refute other
philosophers' candidates for separate eternally unchanging
things, namely Platonic Forms and mathematical objects. So
Farabi's problem in *On the Aims of the
Metaphysics* will not be simply to find a way of reconciling the
different things Aristotle *says* about wisdom or first
philosophy and show how these can all be referring to the same
science, but also to say what Aristotle actually *does* in each
book of the *Metaphysics* and to show how it contributes to
this science.
In his *Enumeration of the Sciences* Farabi
gives a description of "the divine science" (corresponding
to Aristotle's word "theology" in
*Metaphysics* VI,1, and his description of wisdom as
"divine science" in *Metaphysics* I,2), crowning
his previous descriptions of mathematics and physics. Here
Farabi says the divine science is divided into three
parts. The first part investigates "beings and the things that
belong to them inasmuch as they are beings": this reflects
Aristotle's programmatic declaration in *Metaphysics*
IV,1. The second part, says Farabi, investigates
(i.e., establishes) the principles of the particular sciences, and
also investigates (i.e., refutes) false opinions of earlier
philosophers about the principles of these sciences, among which
Farabi mentions the opinion that mathematical
objects are separately existing substances: the latter would reflect
*Metaphysics*
XIII-XIV,[7]
but Farabi is probably also thinking of the
refutation in *Metaphysics* IV,3-8 of people who deny the
principle of noncontradiction. (There is little support in Aristotle
for the idea that metaphysics establishes principles of other
sciences, except for universal axioms like noncontradiction and
excluded middle, but this idea can be found in late ancient
commentators. Aristotle does accept cases where one science can
establish principles that are assumed in another science--for
instance, number theory establishes principles that are assumed in
mathematical music theory, and geometry establishes principles that
are used in astronomy and optics--and Porphyry says that
metaphysics is related to physics in this
way.)[8]
The third part of the "divine science"--and here
Farabi has much more to say--shows that there
are beings which neither are bodies nor exist in bodies, that these
beings are not one but many, and not infinitely but finitely many, and
that they do not all share the same degree of perfection, but rather
some are superior and others inferior. This then leads to the
conclusion that these beings separate from bodies culminate in some
first being which has nothing prior to it and thus has no further
cause of its existence. And, Farabi says, this
science shows that this being also has no partner (nothing sharing its
degree of perfection) and no contrary; that there is no multiplicity
in it in any way, and that it is one, being, and true in a stronger
sense than everything else; and that it is the first cause which
bestows being, unity and truth on everything else. Then,
Farabi says, this science shows that this being
deserves the name "God", and satisfies the rest of the
divine attributes; and then it shows how other beings arise from God
and how they form an ordered hierarchy (some beings arise from God
directly, others indirectly through these), explains how God acts on
other things, and refutes the false opinion that God is responsible
for evils. The description of this third part of the "divine
science" reads like an analytical table of contents for much of
what Farabi does in his *Principles of the
Opinions of the People of the Perfect City* and *Political
Regime*, but it is not closely related to anything in Aristotle.
At best, it is an enormously expanded version of some things that
Aristotle covers very quickly in *Metaphysics* XII,6-10:
XII,6 shows that there are separate incorporeal substances, XII,7
justifies the name "god", XII,8 argues that there is a
finite multiplicity of such substances but only one first among them,
and then XII,10 identifies this first principle with the good itself
and argues (very sketchily) that it is the cause of good order in the
cosmos and that there is no evil principle contrary to it. Aristotle
does not seem to say in *Metaphysics* XII that the first
principle is one, being, and true in a stronger sense than everything
else, or that it bestows being, unity and truth on everything else
(the best support for this view might be *Metaphysics* II,1
993b23-31). But the more serious problem is that
Farabi here just gives a list of the things that the
science will investigate or prove, without explaining why these tasks
all belong to the same science, and without explaining what principles
the science can draw on to demonstrate all these conclusions. His
account here looks like a wish-list of what he would like the science
to do, especially as a Greek scientific alternative to Islamic
*kalam*, but it does not explain how a science can do all
this. Rather than solving the inherited problem of how a single
science can meet the different descriptions that Aristotle gives of
wisdom or first philosophy, he aggravates the problem by adding more
things that the science must
do.[9]
In *On the Aims of the Metaphysics*, Farabi
tries to resolve the tension between "ontological" and
"theological" descriptions of metaphysics (science of
beings universally, vs. science of God or of separate immaterial
substances), and the tension between Aristotle's mostly
"theological" *descriptions* of his task and his
mostly "ontological" *practice* in the
*Metaphysics*, in two fundamental ways.
First, Farabi takes up Aristotle's contrast,
in *Metaphysics* IV,1 and VI,1, between metaphysics and the
"particular sciences" such as physics and the mathematical
disciplines, each of which takes some one genus of beings and
investigates what can be said of the things in that genus. By
contrast, says Farabi,
>
>
> universal science is that which investigates what is common to all the
> things that are, such as being and unity, and its kinds and its
> attributes, and things which are not accidents [proper to] any of the
> subjects of the particular sciences, [i.e., things] like priority and
> posteriority and potency and act and the perfect and the deficient and
> what is like these, and the common principle of all the things that
> are: this is the thing that must be called by the name of
> God.[10]
>
>
>
Farabi says that there can be only one such
universal science, because sciences are individuated by their
subject-domains: if there are two sciences, such that the
subject-domain of one includes something that is not within the
subject-domain of the other, then at least the second science is not a
universal science; so any two universal sciences would have the same
subject-domain, and would therefore be the same science. So a
universal science, if there is one, would be a science of being as
such, and also of unity if (as Farabi says,
following Aristotle in *Metaphysics* IV,2) unity is coextensive
with being, and also of any attributes (more literally
"consequences") of being or unity, i.e., predicates that
can be shown to apply to every existing thing just because it exists
or because it is one. (Since Farabi cites pairs like
"the perfect and the deficient", he apparently means to
include, not just attributes that apply to all beings, but also pairs
of attributes that apply disjunctively to all beings, in something
like the way that even and odd apply disjunctively to all numbers.)
Farabi does not argue here that there is a universal
science, beyond saying that "it does not belong to any of [the
particular sciences] to investigate what is common to all the things
that are". Perhaps his view is that there is at least something
to investigate here, namely "what, if anything, is common to all
the things that are?". If that investigation yields no answer,
or a negative answer, then there is no universal science; if we
discover, for some value of *P*, that *P* belongs
universally to all the things that are, then that proposition and the
arguments for it belong to the universal science, so there is a
universal science. Farabi is not assuming that being
is univocal and so constitutes a single genus. He says in *On the
Aims* that Aristotle in *Metaphysics* V investigates
whether the terms for being and its attributes are univocal or not,
and in his *Book of Letters* (see
Section 3 below) he says that
being is not univocal, but is said of substances primarily and of
other things derivatively. So if all beings have some attribute
*P*, it will be because substances are *P* primarily,
and other beings are *P* because substances are; but this is
still enough for "all beings are *P*" to be a
theorem of the universal science.
We have seen that Farabi lists God as one of the
things investigated by the universal science. God is investigated by
the science that "investigates what is common to all the things
that are" because God is "the common principle of all the
things that are": he belongs to all beings in common, not
because he is an attribute predicated of all beings, but because he is
a cause of all beings. More precisely, he is a cause of all beings
*qua* being: that is, he is a cause, to the things that
are, of the fact *that they are*, rather than of other facts
about them. As Farabi says a bit further down,
>
>
> the divine science must enter into this science, since God is the
> principle of being *simpliciter*, not of one being as
> distinguished from another being. And the division which gives the
> principle of being must be the divine science, since these concepts
> are not proper to physics but are higher than physics in generality.
> So this science is higher than the science of nature, and
> *after* the science of nature, and for this reason it should be
> called the science of metaphysics [lit. the science of what is after
> nature].
>
>
>
Here Farabi is taking a stand on an issue that was
controversial among Aristotelians, by saying that we do not come to
know God through the science of physics, even though Aristotle argues
in his *Physics* 8 that the eternal circular motions are caused
by eternally unmoved movers. Farabi is saying that
the right way to come to know God is as a cause of existence rather
than as a cause of motion. On the face of it, this could be taken in
two ways. (a) Perhaps Farabi means that God is both
a cause of existence (to everything) and a cause of motion (to the
things that move, i.e., to bodies rather than to incorporeal
substances), but that the right way to gain scientific knowledge of
God is to know him as the cause of existence.
Farabi's reason might be that, when we know
about God that he is a first cause of motion (an unmoved mover), we do
not thereby know *what God is*, since *what God is* must
apply only to God, and there are many unmoved movers, of the many
circular motions in the heavens. Farabi's
point may be that there is only one first cause of existence (although
many first causes of motion), and knowing about God that he is a first
cause of existence gives us knowledge of *what God is*. (b) In
fact, however, Farabi thinks that the first cause of
existence is prior to the first cause of motion in a stronger sense:
knowing the first cause of motion does not give us knowledge of God,
because God is not a cause of motion at all. On
Farabi's account in the *Perfect City*
and *Political Regime*, God is not the first of the unmoved
movers, but is rather a cause of existence to the unmoved movers and
thus indirectly to everything else. So an ascent to the first cause of
motion does not get us to God at all, but only to some lower being:
only a study of the causes of being will get us to God.
So far, Farabi's description of metaphysics is
ontological: theology is part of metaphysics, because theology is part
of the study of being, namely the study of the first cause of
existence. This allows Farabi to reconcile
Aristotle's saying in *Metaphysics* VI,1 that first
philosophy is a science of being qua being with his saying in
the same chapter that first philosophy is theology. Unfortunately,
this solution seems to conflict with something else Aristotle says in
the same chapter, namely that
>
>
> physics is about things that are inseparate but not unmoved, some of
> mathematics about things that are unmoved, but probably not separate
> but rather existing in matter, whereas first philosophy is about
> things that are both separate and unmoved.
> (1026a13-16)[11]
>
>
>
This seems to mean, not just that the study of things that are
separate and unmoved belongs to first philosophy, but that first
philosophy is *defined* as the science of things that are
separate and unmoved. How then is first philosophy the science of
being and its universal attributes? One possible answer would be that
first philosophy is by definition the science of God (or perhaps the
science of separate unmoved things including God), and that it studies
being and its universal attributes instrumentally, because starting
with them and investigating their causes is the only way we have to
come to knowledge of God. (This might imply that those aspects of the
study of being and its universal attributes which are not useful for
drawing conclusions about God would *not* belong to first
philosophy.) But Farabi gives a different answer, by
reinterpreting what Aristotle means by "separate". This is
the *second* way that Farabi tries to resolve
the tension between ontological and theological descriptions of
metaphysics.
Farabi infers from the universality of the science
he has described, including its investigation of God as the cause of
existence universally, that
>
>
> this science is higher than the science of nature, and *after*
> the science of nature, and for this reason it should be called the
> science of metaphysics [i.e., literally, the science of what is after
> nature].
>
>
>
But, as he admits, mathematics too "is higher than the science
of nature since its subjects are abstracted from matters": so
why doesn't it count as metaphysics? Aristotle in
*Metaphysics* VI,1 says that mathematics falls short of being
first philosophy because its objects, although unchanging, do not
exist separately but rather are thought in abstraction from the things
they really exist in, whereas the objects of first philosophy are not
merely *thought* in abstraction but *really exist*
separately. Farabi takes this up, and, like all
ancient and medieval interpreters, takes "abstraction" and
"separation" to mean abstraction and separation *from
matter*. It makes sense to say that God exists really separated
from matter and triangles don't. But Farabi
thinks that the objects of metaphysics include not only God but also
being and unity. Why should being and unity be any more
"separate" than triangles are? Here
Farabi reinterprets the notion of separation.
*Some* of the objects of metaphysics, like God, "are
things that have no existence at all in natural things". But
others, like being and its universal attributes, "are things
that exist in natural things but are imagined as abstracted from
them", and are to that extent like mathematical objects; but,
unlike mathematical objects, they
>
>
> do not exist *per se* in these [natural] things in such a way
> that their existence could not be divested from them: these are the
> things whose subsistence is in natural things but which exist both in
> natural things and in non-natural things.
>
>
>
So because being and its universal attributes are attributes of
natural things but are *also* attributes of separately existing
immaterial things, they too can be said to be "separate"
from natural things and from matter.
Recall that in the *Enumeration of the Sciences*
Farabi describes metaphysics as investigating three
things--being and its attributes, the principles of the
particular sciences, and separate incorporeal beings (especially
God)--but he does not explain why the three investigations fall
under a single science or what premisses the science can draw on to
resolve the questions. In *On the Aims of the Metaphysics* he
tries to explain how these investigations fit together. The science
starts by studying its primary subject, namely being and unity; then,
"since the science of opposites is the same", their
opposites, non-being and multiplicity; then it divides being and unity
and their opposites into their main species, or rather
quasi-species--"quasi" because substances, qualities,
and the other categories are each called "being" in a
different sense, whereas if being were a genus and they were its
species it would be said of them all in the same
sense.[12]
Then the science investigates the attributes and principles of being
and unity and their opposites,
>
>
> and these things are divided and subdivided until the subjects of the
> particular sciences are reached, and this science terminates and there
> are manifested in it the principles of all the particular sciences and
> the definitions of their subjects.
>
>
>
Because being and unity are not univocal, we cannot just
straightforwardly investigate their attributes and causes, but once
they have been analyzed into their different senses, we can
investigate the attributes and causes of each sense of being or unity
in the same way that any other science investigates the attributes and
causes of some given genus. A given effect, say substantial being, may
have different kinds of causes (for instance, both a formal cause and
a material cause), and these different kinds of causes may not all
converge on a first principle which is a cause in all these ways at
once (there will not be a single first principle that is both a formal
and a material cause). Some chains of causes may proceed upwards
*ad infinitum* without reaching a first principle (like the
chain of my ancestors, if the world and species within it are
eternal); and chains of causes of some kind may lead to many first
causes which have no further causes of that kind, rather than to a
single first cause (each animal has a soul as a first formal cause
which has no higher formal cause, but there will be as many such
souls, not a single soul which is a first formal cause of all
animals). Nonetheless, Farabi claims that there is a
single first cause of all beings, which does not itself have a cause
of any kind; if so, such a thing would deserve the name
"God".[13]
If the science can show that there is such a single first principle,
the science would then try to deduce what this principle must be like
in order to be a cause of all beings, and in order not to have any
further cause itself, and would then try to deduce how it must acts in
order to cause the existence of other things, some directly and others
indirectly. Here in *On the Aims* Farabi says
that Aristotle does all these things in *Metaphysics* XII:
>
>
> The eleventh book [i.e., Book XII, Lambda] is about the principle of
> substance and [thereby] of all existence, the existence [of this
> principle] and the confirmation that it is knowing by its essence and
> true by its essence, and about the separate beings which are after it,
> and about how the existence of beings depends on it.
>
>
>
But that is all that Farabi says here, and he never
gives any more detailed discussion of how he thinks Aristotle does
this in *Metaphysics* XII. But Farabi himself
tries to deliver on this promise in his *Perfect City* and
*Political Regime*, which we will turn to after discussing his
analysis of being and unity and other equally universal concepts in
his *Book of Letters* and *On the One and Unity*.
## 3. Farabi's ontology: the *Book of Letters* and *On the One and Unity*
Farabi's most widely-known and perhaps
best-understood work, the *Principles of the Opinions of the People
of the Perfect City*, and his often similar *Political
Regime*, presuppose analyses of being and unity in arguing for
conclusions about God and his attributes and his causality; but
Farabi makes these analyses fully explicit only in
two much less widely known and less well-understood texts, the
*Kitab al-huruf* = *Book of Letters*
and *On the One and Unity*, which are intended to be read
together. Both of these texts were edited for the first time by Muhsin
Mahdi, the *Book of Letters* in 1969 and *On the One and
Unity* in 1989; only partial translations of the *Book of
Letters*, and no translations at all of *On the One and
Unity*, have been published in English or any western European
language.[14]
Both texts are difficult, and at least the *Book of Letters*
presents serious textual problems; there have been few studies of
*On the One and Unity*, and most studies of the *Book of
Letters* have focussed on its socio-political rather than
metaphysical
sections.[15]
So what is said here must remain tentative.
### 3.1 Farabi's project in the *Book of Letters*
The most basic questions about the *Book of Letters* are what,
if anything, the treatise is about overall, and how the different
parts of the treatise contribute to knowledge of that aim. Mahdi 1969a
divides the text into three "Parts"
[*abwab*]; in the manuscripts that have been studied so
far, the three Parts are probably not transmitted in the right order,
some parts of the text and perhaps in particular an introduction are
missing, and it is not obvious what the subject-matters of the three
Parts have to do with each other. The title *Kitab
al-huruf* = *Book of Letters* is the same title
by which Farabi in *On the Aims* cites
Aristotle's *Metaphysics* (which presumably gets called
*Book of Letters* because Arabic authors cite its individual
books by the names of letters of the alphabet, just as we do now), so
the title suggests that Farabi intends this treatise
to correspond to the *Metaphysics*; and there are heavy
overlaps of content between the *Book of Letters* and
Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, especially but not exclusively
Book V, which make it very unlikely that the correspondence of titles
is a coincidence. But the title *Kitab
al-Huruf* can also mean something else, since
"*huruf*" (sg. *harf*),
besides meaning "letters", can also mean grammatical
"particles", i.e., any words that can neither be declined
like a noun nor conjugated like a verb, so pronouns and articles and
prepositions and adverbs and
conjunctions.[16]
Parts I and III of the *Book of Letters* are organized
"lexically" (like Farabi's *On
Intelligence*), around the many meanings of each of a series of
terms, and the majority of the terms here are grammatically particles
rather than nouns or verbs: once again, it seems very unlikely that
this is a coincidence. But how can the same book be *Kitab
al-Huruf* both in the sense of filling the role of
Aristotle's *Metaphysics*, and in the sense of being
about grammatical particles? And how would a study of the meanings of
particles (and of some selected nouns) contribute to metaphysics as
Farabi has described it in *On the Aims*? To
see how this could work, we have to see something about the projects
of the three Parts of the *Book of Letters* and how they fit
together; and we have to start with Part II, which
Farabi probably intended to come first, and which
can be taken as programmatic for the whole treatise. After discussing
the project of the treatise, we will focus on its most remarkable
claims about the different senses of being [*mawjud*] and
the corresponding senses of existence [*wujud*], and
about how they should be investigated, and the implications for
metaphysics. Finally, we will look more briefly at the corresponding
claims about one and unity in *On the One and Unity*.
Part II of the *Book of Letters* gives an account of the
development of the "syllogistic arts" (arts of reasoning
such as rhetoric, dialectic and sophistic), culminating in
demonstrative science, within a given linguistic and religious
community, and their transmission from one community to another.
Farabi is especially interested in the
*language* of these arts, especially of demonstrative science.
He talks about the origin of language as such; but language as it
naturally arises is not well suited to being the vehicle of
demonstrative science, because it is chiefly devoted to naming and
describing the objects of immediate practical interest to human
beings, which are not the main objects of theoretical interest. But
natural language can be extended in two main ways to provide the
terminology of the syllogistic arts. First, terms of ordinary language
can be extended metaphorically to new meanings, and can then be frozen
for use as technical terms; and this process of metaphorical extension
and freezing can be repeated indefinitely many times. Second, new
terms can be formed from old ones by regular grammatical processes of
morphological derivation, and this type of extension too can be
repeated and combined with the first type. Special problems, however,
arise when the arts, especially demonstrative science, are transmitted
from one community to another, and the translators must create a new
technical vocabulary in the target-language. If the technical terms of
the source-text were derived by freezing metaphorically extended words
in the source-language, the translator may try to create new technical
terms either by imitating the metaphors of the source-language in the
target-language, where they may be much less natural, or else by
forming new terms from metaphors more natural to the target language:
either way, there is a risk of misunderstanding.
Farabi talks about these problems in general, but he
devotes special attention to the transmission of demonstrative
philosophy and its vocabulary from Greek into (Syriac and thus)
Arabic.
Although Farabi does not make explicit connections
between the different Parts of the *Book of Letters*, Part II
can be seen as giving an implicit program for Parts I and III, each of
which is organized lexically around a list of terms: in each case
Farabi lists the different meanings of the term,
starting with an ordinary-language meaning and then explaining how it
is metaphorically extended to a series of further meanings, including
technical meanings in the different arts and especially in philosophy.
Part I treats in this way terms including the names of many of the ten
Aristotelian categories, or the interrogative particles from which
names of categories are derived ("*kamiyya*" =
quantity is derived from "*kam*?" = "how
much?", and so on); it also discusses particles such as
"from" and "because" and nouns such as
"being", "essence", and
"accident", with a heavy overlap with the list of terms
investigated in Aristotle's *Metaphysics* V. Part Three
applies the same lexical method to the four kinds of scientific
question or investigation described in *Posterior Analytics*
II, the questions "whether *X* is", "what
*X* is", "that *S* is *P*", and
"why *S* is *P*". In each of these cases
Farabi distinguishes the ways of investigating these
questions in different disciplines--for instance, how they are
investigated in dialectic vs. how they are investigated in
demonstrative science--as if they turned on different meanings
that the particles, "whether" or "what" or
"that" or "why", have in different syllogistic
arts. There are clear connections between Parts I and III, notably
between Part I on the senses of "being"
[*mawjud*] and Part III on the senses of "whether
it is" [*hal mawjud*]. Farabi
evidently thinks that people have gone wrong in the sciences through
confusing different meanings of the terms he discusses, in particular
through confusing ordinary-language meanings of these terms with
technical meanings in the syllogistic arts, or confusing meanings in
one syllogistic art with meanings in another. And he thinks these
problems are made worse when the technical terms of these arts are
first developed in one language (Greek) and then translated into
another (Arabic) in the ways he has described in Part II: if a word
which has a meaning in ordinary Arabic (or in the technical vocabulary
of some native Arabic art), or a word morphologically derived from
such an Arabic word, has its meaning extended to serve as the
artificial Arabic equivalent of some Greek technical term, then there
is a serious risk that it will be misunderstood by Arabic readers.
This explains why Farabi thinks that the sort of
work Aristotle does in *Metaphysics* V, distinguishing
different meanings of a series of technical terms, would be even more
necessary in Arabic than it was in Greek.
### 3.2 Logical and grammatical form, and the role of particles
Something more, however, is needed to explain why
Farabi concentrates so heavily on the meanings of
*particles*, and why he thinks (as he does) that this study
will lead to a scientific investigation of being and its causes.
A crucial point is that Farabi is worried not just
about lexical confusions (confusions between two meanings of a term or
between two similar terms), but about confusions arising from the
misleading grammatical form of a term: he thinks that these confusions
have given rise to serious philosophical errors, and he thinks that
the translation process has made such confusions more likely. Part I
of the *Book of Letters* distinguishes between the primitive
terms of a language and the terms derived or "paronymous"
[*mushtaqq*] from them. Farabi takes the
notion of paronymy ultimately from Aristotle's
*Categories* 1 (1a12-15). A proper noun like
"Socrates", a common noun like "horse", and an
abstract accidental term like "whiteness" are all
primitive terms, but the concrete accidental term "white"
is paronymous or derived from "whiteness", not necessarily
in the sense that it arises later in the history of the language than
"whiteness", but in the sense that something is called
"white" (rather than "whiteness")
*because* there is a whiteness in it. Farabi,
unlike Aristotle, also treats (finite) verbs as being paronymous from
their infinitives, where the infinitive [*masdar*] in
Arabic is a noun expressing the action of the verb. The grammatical
form of a paronymous term suggests that something is *X* by
having an *X*-ness present in it, or *V*'s by
having an action of *V*-ing in it. But sometimes the
grammatical form of a term misleadingly fails to track its logical
form, and in these cases there is a risk of being deceived by what
Aristotle in *On Sophistical Refutations* calls sophisms of
*skhema tes lexeos*: this is usually
translated into English as "sophisms of figure of speech",
but they would more accurately be called "sophisms of
grammatical form", i.e., sophisms which arise because the
grammatical form of an expression fails to correspond to its logical
form, and which can be solved only by diagnosing this
discrepancy.[17]
The Arabic translators of Greek philosophical texts, in trying to
find Arabic equivalents for the Greek source-terms, often use such
awkward and potentially misleading expressions, and so do Arabic
philosophical texts written in imitation of the language of the
translations. In particular, Farabi says that the
Greek word for "being" was non-paronymous, but that some
translators, not finding a good non-paronymous Arabic equivalent,
instead used the paronymous word, "*mawjud*",
literally "found", and that this gave rise to the
grammatical appearance that something is existent or
"found" [*mawjud*] through an existence or
"finding" [*wujud]* present in it, as
something is white through a whiteness present in it.
Farabi, applying a methodological principle of
charity, seems to assume that in each case the Greek original was free
of such infelicities: this means that, in practice, his reconstructed
Greek serves as an ideal logical language, i.e., a language in which
grammatical form always tracks logical form.
Where grammatical form tracks logical form, a non-paronymous noun will
signify either a substance or a being in one of the nine Aristotelian
categories of accidents, and a paronymous noun or a verb will signify
that such a being is present in or attributed to some underlying
subject. But metaphysics, as Farabi understands it,
is not about things in the categories (*Book of Letters*
I,11-17), but rather about the categories themselves (especially
substance) and about trans-categorial concepts such as being, unity,
essence, cause, and also God (who also, for Farabi,
does not fall under any category). And where grammatical form tracks
logical form, these concepts will be signified neither by
non-paronymous nouns, nor by paronymous nouns or verbs, but by
particles. Particles in an ideal logical language thus correspond
roughly to what a modern philosopher would call logical constants. And
it is clear that Farabi thinks that at least some
important metaphysical notions were expressed in Greek by particles,
or by terms morphologically derived from
particles.[18]
As noted above, the names of many of the Aristotelian categories in
Arabic (and of some of them in Greek) either are particles or are
morphologically derived from particles, and the scientific questions
from *Posterior Analytics* II, which Farabi
treats in *Book of Letters* Part III, are distinguished by
their different interrogative words ("if/whether",
"what", "why"), which in Arabic are all
particles. And Farabi may well have thought that the
Greek original of *Metaphysics* V was devoted to distinguishing
the many meanings of *particles* (not just of words in
general), not in the sense that the lexical items that head each
chapter of *Metaphysics* V are in all cases themselves
particles or even nouns morphologically derived from particles
(although some of them
are),[19]
but in the sense that the many meanings of these nouns would track
the many meanings of some particle, as the meanings of the noun
"cause" (*Metaphysics* V,2) track the meanings of
the particle "because". There is in fact good reason to
think this is true for a reasonable number of the chapters of
*Metaphysics*
V.[20]
*Metaphysics* V also discusses the categories of quantity and
quality (V,13-14), where, as noted, the name of the category is
derived from an interrogative word which is a particle in Arabic and
which Farabi might well expect to be a particle in
Greek (although in fact it is not), and the category of substance
(V,8), where it is reasonable to say that the many meanings of
"substance" track the many meanings of the question
"what it is" from *Posterior Analytics* II and
*Book of Letters* Part III, where again the interrogative word
"what" (*ti* in Greek, *ma* in Arabic)
is a particle in Arabic. We can also reasonably say that the many
meanings of "being" (V,7, *on* in Greek,
*mawjud* in Arabic) track the many meanings of the
question "whether it is" from *Posterior Analytics*
II and *Book of Letters* Part III (*ei esti* in Greek,
*hal mawjud* in Arabic), where the interrogative word
"whether" is a particle in both languages. More
surprisingly, although Farabi cites the Greek word
for "being" as *astin* = *estin*,
which is in fact the third-person singular present-tense verb
"is", he says explicitly that this word is not a verb and
that it is not a paronymous noun: his description of its functions
implies that it also cannot be a non-paronymous noun, and so for
Farabi this word must be a
particle.[21]
### 3.3 Farabi on the word for being, in Greek and Arabic
Farabi's analysis of the Greek word for being
as a particle is important in his reconstruction of the syntax of
Greek as something close to a logically ideal language, in his
reconstruction of the underlying logical syntax of any language, and
in his diagnosis of the misunderstandings that can arise when the
grammatical form of an expression in some natural language fails to
track its underlying logical form, as when the paronymous Arabic word
*mawjud* = "being" suggests that being is an
accident. While Farabi gives what we can think of as
an Arabic analogue to Aristotle's discussion in
*Metaphysics* V,7 of the many meanings of "being",
the Arabic analogue focusses on several features that the Greek
original does not: the paronymous form of the word
*mawjud*, the difficulties that led the translators to
draft the word *mawjud*, literally "found",
into service as an equivalent to the Greek word for being, and the
relation between *mawjud* = "being" in the
sense of "that which is", and *wujud* =
"existence" or "being" in the sense of
"the being of that which is". Furthermore, while the use
of *mawjud* in the syllogistic arts to mean
"being" is always a metaphorical extension from the
original meaning "found", and its use,
Farabi also thinks that *mawjud* =
"being" has *different* meanings in different
syllogistic arts, and in particular that it has a distinctive meaning
in demonstrative science, contrasting with its meaning in dialectic,
and that the paronymous form of the word, while it has some
justification in dialectic, is more seriously misleading in
demonstrative science. Farabi thinks that bringing
out the distinctive scientific meaning of "being", and the
distinctive logical form of the word "being" as used in
demonstrative science, will show the path to a scientific treatment of
being, based on distinctively scientific ways of investigating (for a
given *X*) both the question *whether *X* is* and
the question *what *X* is*.
Farabi says:
>
>
> in all other languages [i.e., other than Arabic], such as Persian and
> Syriac and Sogdian, there is an expression which they use to signify
> all things without specifying one thing as opposed to another thing
> [i.e., it is a predicate which is true of any subject whatever], and
> they also use it to signify the connection
> [*ribat*, elsewhere translated
> "copula"] between the predicate and what it is predicated
> of: this is what connects the predicate with the subject when the
> predicate is a noun or when they want the predicate to be connected
> with the subject absolutely, without any mention of time. (*Book of
> Letters* I,82, p.111,4-8)
>
>
>
A brief summary is given below of Farabi's
view on how being is expressed in Greek and Arabic, and of the
difficulties faced by the Arabic translators, but for a fuller
discussion see
Supplement: Farabi on the word for being, in Greek and Arabic
Farabi assumes that Greek (like Arabic)
distinguishes syntactically between tensed and tenseless sentences,
and that (unlike Arabic) it expresses the copula in both kinds of
sentences. Because, according to Aristotle's definition of
"verb" in *On Interpretation* 3, a verb must
"consignify a time", the tenseless copula cannot be a
verb. Nor can it be a noun: if to predicate one noun of another we
must insert a third noun between them, there will be an infinite
regress of copulas. So the tenseless copula *estin* (or
*astin*), in Greek as Farabi
reconstructs it, must be a particle, although there will also be
tensed copulas which are verbs paronymously derived from this
particle. He also thinks that the same particle can function, not only
in 2-place contexts, i.e., in tenseless predicative statements
"*X* is *Y*", but also in 1-place contexts,
i.e., in tenseless statements of existence "*X*
is": and he assumes that this is the word that Aristotle is
discussing in the chapter on the meanings of being,
*Metaphysics* V,7.
We have seen that Farabi thinks that all languages
*other than Arabic* have a word with these functions. Since
Arabic has no word that does all these things, he thinks that the
Arabic translators of Greek philosophical texts have had trouble with
this word, and he discusses different strategies that they have
adopted. The most common strategy is to use the Arabic passive
participle "*mawjud*", literally
"found", as a tenseless "is" in both 1-place
or 2-place contexts, and to use passive forms of the verb
"*wajada*", "find", for the tensed
"is" and "was" and "will be". The
disadvantage of "*mawjud*" is that then the
Arabic word for "is" or "being", unlike the
Greek word it translates, is grammatically paronymous, so that its
grammatical form does not correspond to its logical form:
the expression "*mawjud*" is, in its first
imposition in Arabic, paronymous, and every paronymous term by its
construction gives the impression that there is in what it signifies
an implicit subject and, in this subject, the meaning
[*ma'na*] of the *masdar* [the
infinitive, functioning in Arabic as an abstract noun] from which [the
term] was derived [i.e., as "white" implies, without
explicitly mentioning, a subject in which whiteness is present]. For
this reason the expression "*mawjud*" has
given the impression that there is in every thing a meaning/entity
[*ma'na*] in an implicit subject, and that this
meaning/entity is what is signified by the expression
"*wujud*" ["finding" or
"being found"]: so it gave the impression that
*wujud* is in an implicit subject, and
*wujud* was understood as being like an accident in a
subject. (*Book of Letters* I,84, p.113,9-14)
There is thus a grammatical appearance that *X* exists or is a
being ("*X* *mawjud*") through an
accident of existence or beingness which inheres in *X*, or an
act of finding *X*; and Farabi thinks that
this appearance gives rise to serious metaphysical errors. His account
of the logical syntax of being in the *Book of Letters* is
designed to expose and root out these errors. In particular, it will
function as a critique of anyone who wants to understand God as
something like a Platonic form of being, so that other things would
exist by participating in this form. (Averroes, later, will adapt
Farabi's account of the logical syntax of
being to give a criticism of Avicenna's distinction between
essence and existence, see Menn 2011.) But Farabi
also wants to give the ontological foundations for a positive
metaphysical account of God, which he thinks Aristotle was aiming at
in *Metaphysics* XII and which he will try to reconstruct in
his *Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Perfect
City* and his *Political Regime* (see
Section 4
below).
### 3.4 Farabi on the senses of being [*mawjud*] and the corresponding senses of existence [*wujud*]
We might expect Farabi to say that the paronymous
form of the Arabic word for being or "exists"
[*mawjud*] is a mere grammatical accident and that there
is no such thing as the existence [*wujud*] through which
things exist. Instead he distinguishes (at least) two senses of being
[*mawjud*], each applicable in both 1- and 2-place
contexts, and says that in each case there is a corresponding sense of
existence [*wujud*]. But he thinks that only a conflation
between these two senses of being would lead us to believe that a
being *X* exists through an existence which is both independent
of the mind and extrinsic to the essence of *X*.
Farabi tries to connect these two main senses of
being with differences in how the term "being" is
understood in different disciplines, specifically in dialectic and
demonstrative science, and with differences in how dialectic and
demonstrative science investigate the questions whether *X* is
and what *X* is, which Farabi discusses in
*Book of Letters* III in connection with the particles
"whether" and "what". His discussion is
complicated and difficult, but some of his main points seem to be as
follows.
Farabi in *Book of Letters* I,88-94
describes the different senses of being [*mawjud*] and
the corresponding senses of existence [*wujud*],
concentrating on 1-place
contexts.[22]
Aristotle in *Metaphysics* V,7 distinguishes four main senses
of being (giving mostly 2-place examples), in some cases with
sub-senses: being *per accidens*, being *per se* (with
subsenses corresponding to the different categories), being as the
true, and being in actuality or potentiality. Farabi
has nothing in I,88-94 corresponding to being *per
accidens*,[23]
and his treatment of the other main senses of being corresponds only
roughly to Aristotle's--of course, his treatment is longer
and more detailed, and includes the discussion of existence
[*wujud*], which does not correspond to anything in
*Metaphysics* V,7. Farabi starts in I,88 by
distinguishing three main senses of being, namely the sense of being
which is divided into different senses for the different categories
(pp.115,15-116,3), being as the true, i.e., what "is
outside the soul and is in itself [*bi-'aynihi*] as it is
in the soul" (p.116,3-6), and being as what is
"circumscribed [*munhaz*] by some quiddity
outside the soul, whether it has been represented in the soul or has
not been represented" (p.116,6-7). But in I,90 he says
that these three senses of being can be reduced to two, "that it
is true and that it has some quiddity outside the soul"
(p.117,18-19). In this discussion Farabi is
giving his interpretation of two of Aristotle's four senses of
being, being *per se* and being as the true. (Later, in
I,93-94, he discusses being in actuality and potentiality, but
only as a subdivision within being as what has a quiddity outside the
soul, and it does not seem to play a large role in the *Book of
Letters*.) In I,89, starting from the I,88 enumeration of three
main senses of being, he discusses what kind of existence
[*wujud*] corresponds to each of these senses of being
[*mawjud*]; and in I,92 he tries to show that being as
what has a quiddity outside the soul (unlike being as the true) is
said not univocally, but of some things in more primary senses and of
other things in derivative senses, across different categories and
even within the category of substance.
Clearly the foundation of Farabi's account of
being is his distinction between being as the true and being as what
is circumscribed by a quiddity outside the soul. It is not immediately
obvious what he means by this distinction, and there is no obvious
precedent, either in Greek or in Arabic, for his notion of
"circumscription". At first blush, "being outside
the soul and in itself as it is in the soul" and "being
circumscribed by some quiddity outside the soul" (or
"having some quiddity outside the soul") sound similar,
although it is clear that Farabi wants them to be
very different. We might guess that the main difference is something
can have a quiddity outside the soul even if it is not represented in
the soul (as Farabi notes p.116,7); and in this
sense Farabi says that "whatever is true is
also circumscribed by some quiddity outside the soul" (I,91
p.117,20). But the deeper difference is that while "being
circumscribed by some quiddity outside the soul" is predicated
of an external object, being in the sense of "true", i.e.,
"being outside the soul as it is in the soul", is
predicated of something in the soul, and asserts that what is in the
soul has something outside the soul corresponding to it. So in I,89,
in discussing the kinds of existence [*wujud*]
corresponding to each sense of "being"
[*mawjud*], Farabi says that "the
existence [*wujud*] of what is true is a certain relation
which
thoughts[24]
have to something outside the soul" (p.117,4-5).
Farabi is explicit that being in the sense of
"true" applies not only to the soul's judgments but
also to its concepts (I,88 p.116,3-5): to say of a concept that
it "is" in the sense of "is true" is to say
that it is instantiated. Farabi is apparently the
first person to have said that existence, in one sense of existence,
is a second-order predicate or second-order concept, a concept that is
predicated only of concepts; but, unlike Frege, he understands
concepts psychologistically, as mental
states.[25]
Despite Farabi's saying in I,91 (cited just
above) that being-as-having-a-quiddity-outside-the-soul is more widely
extended than being-as-true, it emerges from his later discussions
that, taking "quiddity outside the soul" in a strict
sense, having a quiddity outside the soul is *more* demanding,
and that we must first ask whether something *is* in the sense
of true, i.e., whether a given concept is instantiated outside the
soul, and only then, if the answer is yes, ask whether what
instantiates it is also circumscribed by a quiddity outside the soul.
If a concept is not instantiated outside the soul, such as (for
Aristotle and Farabi) the concept of vacuum, then,
while there vacuum has a quiddity-in-an-extended sense, since we can
ask "what is vacuum?" and answer the question by giving an
explanation of the name "vacuum", a so-called
"nominal definition" which identifies what concept the
word "vacuum" stands for, nonetheless vacuum has no
quiddity in the proper sense, and certainly no quiddity outside the
soul (I,91 p.118,4-9). Even after we have determined "that
what is understood by the expression is the same outside the
soul", we can still ask "does it exist [*hal
mawjud*] or not?", meaning now not "is it
true?" but rather "does it have some thing by which its
constitution [*qiwam*] [is] and which is present in
it" (III,229
p.214,4-9).[26]
This will be "one of the causes of its existence", so
that "our saying 'does the thing exist?' in the
second way" is equivalent to "does it have a cause by
which its constitution [is] in its essence?" (III,229
p.214,11-13). For
>
>
> not everything which is understood by some expression, such that what
> is understood by it is also outside the soul, is such that it also has
> an essence: like the meaning of "privation", for it is a
> meaning which is understood, and it is outside the soul as it is
> understood, but it is not an essence and does not have an essence.
> (III,240 p.218,12-15)
>
>
>
Examples of concepts which are instantiated, but whose instantiations
are not circumscribed by a quiddity, might include on the one hand
negations like not-a-horse or privations like blindness, and on the
other hand beings *per accidens*, i.e., accidental combinations
like white horse. Each of these will have a nominal definition which
identifies what concept the name stands for, but it will not have a
real definition expressing a real quiddity, "the thing by which
its constitution [is] and which is in it": things can be
not-horses or blind through many different positive causes, and a
white horse will have a cause of being white and a cause of being a
horse, but no one cause that constitutes it as a white horse.
In *Book of Letters* I,88-90 Farabi
describes not only the different senses of "being
[*mawjud*]", but also the corresponding senses of
"existence [*wujud*]", i.e., that through
which a *mawjud* in each sense is *mawjud*.
As we have already seen, "the existence [*wujud*]
of what is true is a certain relation which thoughts have to something
outside the soul" (p.117,4-5). The existence
[*wujud*] of something which is a being
[*mawjud*] in the sense in which being is divided into
the categories will just be the category under which that thing falls,
which licenses calling it a being. Farabi's
treatment of the existence [*wujud*] of something which
is a being [*mawjud*] in the sense of being circumscribed
by some quiddity outside the soul depends on whether it is a complex
(divisible) or a simple (indivisible) quiddity.
>
>
> As for that whose quiddity is divisible, three [kinds of] things are
> said to be its quiddity: (i) its unarticulated whole, (ii) [its whole]
> articulated by the parts by which its constitution [is], (iii) each of
> the parts of the whole, each of them through [?] the whole in turn.
> Its whole is what its name signifies, and what is articulated by its
> parts is what its definition signifies, and each of its parts is genus
> and differentia, each in turn, or matter and form, each in turn. (I,88
> p.116,8-13)
>
>
>
The existence [*wujud*] of a being
[*mawjud*] circumscribed by a complex quiddity, but not
of a being circumscribed by a simple quiddity, can therefore be
distinguished from the being itself:
>
>
> in the case of what is divided so that it has a whole and the
> articulated [result] of this whole, the being [*mawjud*]
> and the existence [*wujud*] are different: the being is
> [the thing] as a whole (this is the possessor of the quiddity) and the
> existence is the quiddity of this thing, either articulated or each of
> the parts of the whole, either its genus or its differentia, and since
> its differentia is more proper to it, [the differentia] is more
> appropriately called the existence which is proper to it. (I,89
> p.117,1-4)
>
>
>
(Farabi adds that since the existence
[*wujud*] of something which is a being in the sense of
falling under a category is the category or highest genus under which
it falls, this will also be its existence as a part of its quiddity,
so that being in the sense of falling under a category reduces to
being in the sense of having a quiddity, and the initial three senses
of being reduce to two, I,89 p.117,5-8 and I,90
p.117,14-19.) By contrast, "everything whose quiddity is
indivisible either is a being which does not exist [*yakuna
mawjudan la yujadu*]"--because the
finite verb "exists" is paronymous and would imply that
existence belongs to it as an accident--"or else the
meaning of its existence and that it exists [*ma'na
wujudihi wa-annahu mawjudun*] are one and the same,
and that it is an existence [*wujud*] and that it is a
being [*mawjud*] are one and the same meaning",
since its existence [*wujud*] is not a further entity
explaining the fact that it is a being [*mawjud*], but is
just that being, which is simple and not explained by any further
cause to explain it (I,89 p.117,8-10). This will be true both of
each of the categories or highest genera (each category is an
undefinable highest genus, and not a composite of being as a genus and
some differentia added to being), and of "whatever is not in a
subject and is not a subject of anything at all, for it is forever
simple in its quiddity" (I,89
p.117,10-13).[27]
In all of this Farabi is broadly following the
Aristotelian idea that, for any composite object *X*, we can
ask "what is *X*?" and answer the question either
by giving a definition of *X* spelling *X* out into many
in-some-sense-constituents of *X*, or by giving some one such
constituent of *X*, which is a *partial* answer to
"what is
*X*?".[28]
Farabi is also following Aristotle in insisting
that all of the things which should be mentioned in the definition of
*X* are causes of *X*'s being ("the thing by
which [*X*'s] constitution [is]"), and,
furthermore, essential causes, in the sense that it is not simply that
some instance of *X* happens for this reason, but that a thing
wouldn't be *X* if it weren't caused in this way:
according to Aristotle in *Metaphysics* VIII,4, a scientific
definition of *X* should mention all and only such causes of
*X*. He is also following Aristotle in saying that this process
must come to a stop with simples, where there will be no further
definition and no distinction between the thing and any further answer
to "what is it?". He also follows Aristotle further down,
in *Book of Letters* III,244, in saying that in asking for the
cause of *X*'s being, we cannot look for a middle term
between the subject and predicate of "*X* is [*X*
*mawjud*]", or between the subject and predicate of
"*X* is *X*". Rather, we must unpack this
judgment so that its subject and predicate are different, so that we
can seek a middle term connecting them ("why are there
eclipses?" might be unpacked as "why is the moon
eclipsed?" or "why is the moon darkened at
opposition?"): if *X* is simple, so that
"*X* is" cannot be unpacked into a judgment with
distinct subject and predicate, then there is no further investigation
into why *X* is, and therefore also not into what *X*
is.[29]
But Farabi is putting all of this in the service of
an argument which has no direct parallel in Aristotle, that, contrary
to the linguistic appearance of the paronymous term
*mawjud* (being or existent), a thing does not exist
through an accident of existence [*wujud*] as it is white
through an accident of whiteness (so I,84, p.113,9-14, cited
above). If we say that *X* exists [*mawjud*] in
the sense that *X* is true, then the existence
[*wujud*] of *X* is not an attribute of the real
thing *X* outside the mind, but only an attribute of the mental
concept of *X*, namely, that that concept is instantiated
outside the mind. If we say that *X* exists
[*mawjud*] in the sense that *X* is circumscribed
by a real quiddity, then the existence [*wujud*] of
*X* is that quiddity: either it is the whole essence of
*X* as spelled out by its definition, or it is some part of the
essence of *X*, or if *X* is simple it is just
*X* itself, but in no case is it an accident of *X*.
(Farabi also says similar things about two-places
uses of *mawjud* as a tenseless copula "*X*
is *Y*": particularly in I,101 he argues that
"*X* is *Y*" has a sense which does not
assert, e.g., that the quiddity of *X* is to be *Y*, or
that either *X* or *Y* have real quiddities outside the
mind. What it asserts is something like two-place being-as-truth, but
Farabi says that such a sentence need not assert
that something is *outside* the mind as it is in the mind,
since in some "*X* is *Y*" is true although
neither *X* nor *Y* exists outside the mind.)
Farabi's distinction between being-as-true and
being-as-having-a-quiddity-outside-the-mind also allows him to resolve
the issue about whether being is univocal or whether it is said of one
thing (or of one kind of thing) primarily and of other things in a
dependent and derivative sense. Looking only at one-place cases,
being-as-true must be univocal to beings in all categories, and also
to beings in no category such as negations or privations and beings
*per accidens* like white horse. For I must be able to ask
"is the concept of *X* instantiated?" before I know
what category the instances of *X* will fall under, or even
whether *X* will turn out to be merely a privation, or an
accidental combination of two positive entities. (If *X* is
eclipse, we might reasonably start by keeping many of these options
open: only the investigation of actual eclipses, if it turns out that
there are some, will determine which option is right.) By contrast,
"what has a quiddity outside the soul, although [being in this
sense] is general, is said by priority and posteriority in
order" (I,92 p.118,14-16), since if the quiddity of
*X* involves a reference to *Y* as the cause of
existence to *X*, then *Y* has a prior and stronger
claim than *X* to have a quiddity outside the soul, rendering
it capable of independent existence. First, substances will be prior
in this way to accidents, since for an accident to be is for it to
belong to a substance, and the scientific definition of any kind of
accident will mention the kind of substance that it can be predicated
of. But then, within the category of substance, "what requires a
differentia or genus in this category in order for its quiddity to be
realized is more deficient with respect to quiddity than the thing in
this category which is a cause of the realization of its
quiddity", and by pursuing causes of quiddities in this way we
can come to some first substance, "whether this is one or more
than one", which has a stronger claim to the title of
"being" than all other substances, and *a fortiori*
than accidents (I,92 pp.118,18-119,4).
>
>
> And if something is discovered outside all these categories which is
> the
> cause[30]
> of the realization of the quiddity of the most
> fundamental[31]
> thing in this category [i.e., the category of substance], then this
> \*is more deserving to be called "being"
> [*mawjud*] than the most perfect thing in this category,
> and this is the first cause of existence [*wujud*] to the
> most perfect thing in this category, and this most perfect thing [sc.
> within the category of substance] is the cause in the quiddity
> of\*[32]
> the other things in this category, and what is in this category is
> the cause in the quiddity of the other categories: thus the beings,
> where what is meant by "being" is what has a quiddity
> outside the soul, are ordered by this order. (I,92
> p.119,4-8)
>
>
>
It was traditional enough to say that God (and only God) is being in
the strictest sense, and is the cause of existence to all other
beings. But Farabi's version is importantly
different. Farabi is taking up Aristotle's
program of defining each thing through its essential cause, and
arguing that this kind of cause of *X*'s existing (such
that something would not be an *X* if it were caused in some
other way) is the *existence* [*wujud*] of
*X* and has a stronger claim to the title of being
[*mawjud*] than *X*: if this causal chain leads
ultimately to God, so that God is ultimately involved in the quiddity
of each other thing, then Farabi will have a
scientific Aristotelian way of filling in the program of the *Aims
of the Metaphysics*, of showing how an analysis of being and of
its causes (once we grasp the relevant senses of being and of cause)
will lead to God as the first cause of being and universal first
principle. As this is presented in the *Book of Letters*, it is
just a program for research, which might or might not lead up to a
single first cause of existence from which all other beings can be
derived carried out. But in the *Perfect City* and the
*Political Regime* Farabi gives at least a
sketch of the upward causal argument to God as a single first cause of
existence, and of the downward path from God to all other beings.
Farabi sees a charter for this causal investigation
of the existence of thing especially in Aristotle's
*Posterior Analytics* II.
### 3.5 Farabi on the scientific questions about being
Farabi further develops the discussion of the
relation between a being and its existence, in different senses of
"existence", in *Book of Letters* III. Here he is
officially continuing the discussion of particles by explaining the
meanings of various interrogative particles in different
"syllogistic arts": the main interest is to explain the
distinctive meanings these particles have in demonstrative science,
and to warn against confusing them with the meanings they have in
other disciplines. This resembles the discussion in *Book of
Letters* I, but the particles (and "logical" particles
which are grammatically nouns in Arabic) discussed in *Book of
Letters* I correspond roughly to those discussed in
Aristotle's *Metaphysics* V; *Book of Letters*
III, by contrast, picks up issues from *Posterior Analytics*
II. There Aristotle discusses the different kinds of scientific
"question" or "investigation"
[*zetesis*], and he specifies each one by an
interrogative particle ("whether", "what",
"why"). But Aristotle is interested mainly in the methods
the scientist uses to *answer* these questions; nobody before
Farabi had thought there was a distinctive
scientific meaning of the particles themselves. But Aristotle does
talk about how the scientist should investigate whether something is,
what something is, and why something is, and Farabi
takes this discussion as giving not just a methodology but a
scientific account of existence and quiddity, i.e., of the scientific
meanings of the particles "whether" and
"what".
Aristotle discusses there four types of scientific question or
investigation, "whether *X* is", "what
*X* is", "whether *X* is *Y*",
and "why *X* is *Y*". His main claim is that
the investigation *what* *X* is stands to the
investigation *whether* *X* is, as the investigation
*why* *X* is *Y* stands to the investigation
*whether* *X* is *Y*. So in order to determine
*what* *X* is, we must first investigate
*whether* *X* is, and then, if the answer is yes,
investigate *why* *X* is. An answer to *why*
*X* is can be converted into a scientific answer to
*what* *X* is; where to discover *why* *X*
is, we must reformulate the judgment "*X* is" as a
two-place judgment with distinct subject and predicate terms, and then
look for a middle term connecting them. In the standard example, if
*X* is (lunar) eclipse, before we can scientifically
investigate what eclipses are, we must first investigate whether there
are eclipses; if there are, and if the nominal definition of (lunar)
eclipse is "darkening of the moon at opposition", then we
investigate why the moon is sometimes darkened at opposition; and if
we conclude that this is due to the interposition of the earth between
the moon and the sun, we can convert this into a scientific definition
of eclipse as "darkening of the moon at opposition due to the
interposition of the earth between the sun and the moon".
Farabi takes all this up in *Book of Letters*
III,226 and following, under the headings of the scientific meanings
of the particles "whether", "what", and
"why": or rather, when he says "whether *X*
exists" (or "does *X* exist?", *hal
*X* mawjudun*), *both* the word
"whether" and the word "exists" are logically,
if not grammatically, particles. Farabi follows
Aristotle in saying that there is an ordered series of questions or
investigations: first we must ask *whether* *X* exists,
and only then, if the answer is yes, can we ask *what*
*X* is, by asking *why* *X* exists. But
Farabi's story is more complicated than
Aristotle's, because he distinguishes different senses both of
"whether *X* exists" and of "what *X*
is". Fundamentally, Farabi thinks that there
is a series of four questions: first "what *X* is"
seeking the nominal definition of *X*, which spells out the
concept of *X* in the soul; then "whether *X*
is" in the sense of being-as-the-true, asking whether *X*
exists outside the soul as it does in the soul; then "whether
*X* is" in the sense of being as having a quiddity
outside the soul, asking rather "does it have some thing by
which its constitution [*qiwam*] [is] and which is
present in it" (III,229 p.214,6-7, cited above); then
"what *X* is" seeking the quiddity of *X*
outside the soul, namely this thing present in *X* which is the
cause of *X*'s constitution. The *Posterior
Analytics* has nothing corresponding to the distinction between
the two "whether *X* is" questions, but
*Posterior Analytics* II,2 does say that when we
ask/investigate whether *X* is *Y*, or whether
*X* *is*, we are asking "whether there is a middle
term for it", and that when we then ask/investigate *why*
*X* is *Y*, or *what* *X* is, we are
asking "what that middle term is" (89b37-90a1). And
Farabi argues that this requires a distinctive
meaning of "is" in the question "whether *X*
is", since *X* could exist in the sense that it is
outside the soul as it is in the soul, without there being a middle
term between some subject and some predicate which would cause
*X*'s existence. There are at least two ways this could
happen. First, if *X* is a privation or even
"privation" in general (see III,240 p.218,12-15,
quoted above), or presumably also if *X* is an *ens per
accidens* like white horse, there simply is nothing outside the
mind by which *X* is constituted. Second, if *X* has/is
a *simple* quiddity, then "*X* is" cannot be
expanded into a sentence "*Y* is *Z*" where
there might be a middle term between the subject and the predicate. So
once we have established that *X* exists outside the soul, we
must still investigate whether *X* is constituted by some cause
outside the soul, and then what that cause is.
Farabi takes this result as indicating that
dialectic and demonstrative science give different meanings, not only
to the "what is *X*?" question and thus to quiddity
(dialectic seeking a nominal definition, science a causal definition),
but also to the "whether *X* is" question and thus
to existence. So he says that, as in dialectic the two-place
investigation "whether *X* is *Y*" is only
concerned with the copula (not with whether it is essential
predication), so in dialectic the one-place investigation
"whether *X* is" is asking only about being as the
true, i.e., about whether the concept of *X* is instantiated
(III,246-7). He connects this with an inherited problem in
Aristotle's dialectic: in the *Topics* Aristotle
classifies dialectical problems as asking whether *Y* is an
accident of *X*, whether *Y* is the genus of *X*,
whether *Y* is proper to *X*, or whether *Y* is
the definition of *X*--so how should we treat the question
whether *X* exists? As Farabi says, Alexander
of Aphrodisias in his commentary on the *Topics* classifies
questions of existence as questions of accident, treating the
existence of *X* as an accident of *X*. And
Farabi says that he is right to do so, since
dialectic is asking whether the concept of *X* in the mind is
instantiated outside the mind, and this belongs as an accident to the
concept of *X*. However, if we mean whether the real thing
*X* outside the mind is constituted by some quiddity, or
whether *X* falls under one of the categories, then we would be
asking whether something belongs to *X* as its genus or
definition. Farabi also says that different
particular sciences give different meanings to these questions.
Notably, in physics the questions "whether *X* is"
and "what *X* is" are asking for *any kind*
of cause of *X*'s existing, whether that cause is
internal to *X* or not (III,237)--it could be an extrinsic
efficient or final cause, like the earth blocking sunlight from
reaching the moon, which would be incorporated into a physical
definition, as in this case of eclipse. Most importantly, in
"the divine science", if we ask whether God *is*,
and if we mean by this whether there is some cause through which God
is
constituted,[33]
then while this is a legitimate question the answer can only be no
(III,238-9 and III,243). Nonetheless, we can still ask of God
"whether he is some circumscribed essence" (III,240,
p.218,11), and we can discover that he is, not because we can give a
definition analyzing that essence into simpler terms, but because in
analyzing other beings and seeking their causal definitions, tracing
them back step by step to their causes, we discover that they all lead
ultimately to a single first cause of their existence, so that God
enters into the fully spelled out quiddities of everything else
(III,251). Because we learn in this way that God is simple and
dependent on no cause, we can ask "whether his existence is an
existence which, in order for him to exist through it, needs nothing
other than itself in any way" (III,242 p.220,1-2), neither
a substratum nor an efficient cause, and the answer is yes. So too in
the divine science, if we ask "whether God is *X*"
for some predicate *X* (whether God is an intelligence, is
knowing, is one, is a maker or cause of something else's
existing, III,242 p.220,2-5), and if we mean by that
"whether there is a middle term for it" as *Posterior
Analytics* II,2 suggests, i.e., a cause to God of his being
*X*, such as an accident inhering in God, or a part of
God's essence distinct from the whole essence, then again the
answer can only be no. But we can also mean
>
>
> whether the existence by which his constitution is not by anything
> other than he, is that he is intelligence and knowing, and whether his
> essence is that he is intelligence,
>
>
>
and in asking whether he is the cause or agent of something
else's existing we can mean
>
>
> whether his existence by which he is existent, or his quiddity which
> specifies him, or which belongs to him, necessitates that he is a
> cause of the existence of something other than he, or the maker of
> something other than he. (III,242 p.220,3-6)
>
>
>
And again we discover, by tracing back the causes of things to a first
cause which needs nothing beyond itself to know and to produce, that
the answer is yes. This text is a charter for the theological parts of
the *Perfect City* and *Political Regime*, discussed in
Section 4
below.
### 3.6 *On the One and Unity*: senses of unity, different relations between one and many, and the circumscription of a thing by its quiddity
To Farabi's "general
metaphysics"--his study of being and its universal
attributes, rather than of God as the first cause of
being--belongs not only the *Book of Letters* but also
*On the One and Unity*. Farabi in *On the
Aims of the Metaphysics* had included unity alongside being in the
object of metaphysics; and when *Book of Letters* I follows the
agenda and many of the subject-headings of Aristotle's
"lexicon" in *Metaphysics* V, it is strange that it
leaves out unity, which Aristotle treats in *Metaphysics* V,6.
But the treatment of unity, missing from the *Book of Letters*,
is supplied by *On the One and Unity* [henceforth *On the
One*]. Since the *Book of Letters* as is incompletely
transmitted, it is not entirely out of the question that *On the
One* is a missing part of the *Book of Letters*. Perhaps
more likely, *On the One* was originally intended as a part of
the *Book of Letters*, but got too long and complicated, and
was spun off as a separate treatise. The treatise is too complicated
and too little-studied (with major editorial problems) to treat here
in full detail, but we can describe some major themes. The treatise is
helpful in understanding the notion of circumscription by a quiddity,
which is thematized both in the *Book of Letters* and *On
the One* and used without explanation in the *Perfect City*
and *Political Regime*, and also in understanding
Farabi's explanation of Aristotle's
claim in *Metaphysics* IV,2 that being and unity are
coextensive and mutually entailing, and his account in the *Perfect
City* and *Political Regime* of how unity is predicated of
God.
Main themes of the treatise include distinguishing a whole family of
senses of "one" (in a few cases Farabi
also gives the corresponding senses of the abstract
"unity"), but also and especially distinguishing different
ways that senses of "one" are related to senses of
"many". The treatise can read like a dry catalogue, and
Farabi rarely gives arguments or admits that his
claims might be controversial, but it is often clear that he has an
opponent in mind. That opponent might be a type rather than a
particular earlier philosopher, but it seems likely that it is
specifically al-Kindi. Kindi had argued in *On First
Philosophy* that any thing other than God that is called
"one" is many as well as one, and therefore that it is one
not essentially but only accidentally, indeed that it is one only
improperly or "metaphorically"; and he argues that such a
thing can be one only through participation in some unity extrinsic to
it, which (to avoid infinite regress) must be purely one and not also
many. Kindi also argues that any many is a collection of ones:
and since everything is either one or many, and any many depends on
ones, and any one depends on a *pure* one, and God is the only
pure one, everything owes its existence directly or indirectly to God.
While Kindi, like Farabi, gives a long list of
different kinds of things that can be said to be one, and while he has
different reasons for disqualifying each of them from being a pure
one, i.e., a one that is not also many, typically he seems to think
that each of these senses of "one" is predicated of some
subject which is many, so that if the unity were removed, that
underlying multiplicity would remain. Kindi infers that each of
these ones is a many-that-is-one, and therefore that it has contrary
attributes, and therefore that it is not essentially one, and even
that it is only metaphorically one, since (as he argues in a tradition
going back to Zeno of Elea and to the first Hypothesis of
Plato's *Parmenides*) for something to be truly one is
for it not to be many in any way, e.g., by having many
constituents.[34]
Farabi by contrast maintains, following Aristotle in
*Metaphysics* IV,2, that unity is coextensive with being, and
that both "one" and "being" are truly and
properly said of many things. Indeed, Farabi claims,
not just that these many things are each truly being and truly one,
but that they are *essentially* so, i.e., that they are not
being and one [*mawjud*, *wahid*]
through an existence or unity [*wujud*,
*wahda*] which is accidental to them or extrinsic to
their quiddity, as something is white through an accident of
whiteness. There are senses of being, notably being as the true, in
which existence is accidental, but in the primary sense of being, and
the sense of primary interest to the metaphysician, the things's
existence is its quiddity or part of its quiddity; and so too,
Farabi claims, for the unity corresponding to the
sense of "one" of primary interest to the metaphysician,
which is convertible with this sense of "being". In order
for Farabi to deflect Kindi's arguments
against the claim that there are many things that are each truly and
essentially one, it is crucial for him not only to distinguish
different senses of "one", but also to distinguish
different ways that senses of "one" can be related to
senses of "many". Farabi distinguishes
between a many that is the *subject* of a one, a many that is
*opposite* to a one, and a many that *arises from* a
one. When Farabi says that some sense of
"many" is the *opposite* of some sense of
"one", he apparently means that these kinds of unity and
multiplicity are contraries or that one of them is the privation of
the other. When he talks about a many that *arises* from a one,
he seems to mean what Aristotle calls a many that is "measured
by" a one, i.e., a many composed out of ones of this type, so
that the one or unit can be used to count the many. (Aristotle says in
*Metaphysics* *X* that in this kind of one-many
relationship the unity and the multiplicity are *correlatives*,
as the measure and the measured, whereas when one and many are related
as indivisible and divisible, unity as indivisibility is a
*privation* of multiplicity as divisibility. Or perhaps he
really means that, although from the point of view of our language and
our concepts divisibility is the more basic and indivisibility is its
privation, in reality indivisibility is basic and divisibility is its
privation. In Aristotle's terminology, possession and privation
are one kind of opposites, contraries are another, contradictories are
another, and correlatives are yet another. But
Farabi apparently does not count correlatives here
as opposites.)
Farabi grants to his implicit opponent that some
senses of "one" do presuppose a many as their subject, so
that if the one were removed the many would remain. There are
two-place senses of "one", as there are two-place senses
of "being": for instance, we can say "*X* and
*Y* are one in species". Or perhaps it is better to say,
not that these are two-place senses of "one", but that
they are plural-subject senses, since we can equally well say
"*X* and *Y* and *Z* are one in
species". In any case Farabi grants that there
are several senses of "one" which presuppose a many as
their subject. Perhaps surprisingly, Farabi includes
here not only "one in species" and the like but also
"one in number": he thinks that the appropriate expression
is not, e.g., "Aristotle is one in number" but
"Plato's best student and Alexander's teacher are
one in number". Also perhaps surprisingly, he tries to trace
back the other plural-subject senses of "one" to
"one in number", saying for instance that if *X*
and *Y* are one in species, then the species of *X* and
the species of *Y* are one in number (#1-#8).
Farabi also grants that there are some senses even
of the one-place predication "*X* is one" which
presuppose, not a plural subject, but still a subject consisting of
many parts, so that for *X* to be one is for *X*'s
parts to be related in an appropriate way. For instance, for
*X* to be one as continuous is for *X* to have parts
whose limits are the same; for *X* to be one as contiguous is
for *X* to have parts whose limits, while not the same, are
kept in contact by some bond; for *X* to be one as whole as for
*X* to have all the parts it needs in order to perform its
activity well (#9-#15). But Farabi says that
where many things are said to be one, or where something is said to be
one in a way presupposing that it has many parts, this sense of
"many" and this sense of "one" are not
opposite: nothing is predicated of its opposite. Thus the opposite of
one-in-number is many-in-number, but the subject of one-in-number is
many names or descriptions of the same thing; the opposite of
one-as-continuous is discretely many things disconnected from each
other, but the subject of one-as-continuous is magnitude.
Farabi insists equally emphatically that there are
senses of "one" that are not plural-subject senses and do
not presuppose a subject with many parts, and indeed in some cases
contradict having a subject with many parts. One sense of
"one" is as "undivided" or
"indivisible" (the Arabic phrase, like the Greek word, is
ambiguous between these two construals). Or perhaps rather, as
Farabi suggests at the end of the treatise, all
senses of "one" can be traced back in one way or another
to being undivided (#95). Certainly there are many ways that something
could be divided, and filling them out leads to different senses of
one-as-undivided or one-as-indivisible. For instance, as
Farabi notes, "one" is said of something
extended that is divisible but not actually divided; of something that
is spatially located but quantitatively indivisible, i.e., a point; of
what is not spatially located and is therefore quantitatively
indivisible; of what has (or is) a simple quiddity not divisible into
parts of a definition such as genus and differentia; and of what is
not "divided" between a paronymously named subject
*X* and an *X*-ness through which it is *X*
(#20-24). Some of these senses of "one", such as one
in the sense of an indivisible point, are *never* predicated of
a many. Something can also be called one because it does not have a
partner, i.e., because is the *only* F, for some predicate F,
or if nothing else is F in the same way that it is F; and especially
if F is its quiddity, as, e.g., the moon can be called
"one" in the sense that there is nothing else of the same
species as it (#25, pp.55-6). This sense of "one",
too, does not presuppose any plurality in its subject.
Farabi also talks about different senses of
"one" as "circumscribed" in some way (see
below): at least some of these senses do not presuppose any plurality
in their subject, and apparently in all these senses, if the subject
that is one were stripped of its unity, it would not become many
instead. Farabi apparently does not say that
"one" in such a sense does not have an opposite, but it
does not have an opposite that is a sense of "many": the
opposite of "one" in such a sense would be the
*contradictory*, "not one", but not a contrary or
privative "many".
Farabi also insists that the many *arising
from* some sense of "one", i.e., a many composed out
of things that are each one in this sense, is not the many
*opposite to* this sense of "one", although he
admits that in some cases the many arising from the one and the many
opposite to the one are the same *per accidens*
(#37-#49). As before, there are senses of "one" that
do not have an opposite sense of "many". There are also
senses of "one" that do have an opposite sense of
"many", but where the many that arises from the one is not
the same as the many that is opposite to the one. Thus the many
arising from the one as a point (the one as what is indivisible
although spatially located) is many points, while the opposite of the
one as a point is a continuous extension. The many arising from the
one as having-no-partner-in-its-species might be a plurality like a
unique moon and a unique sun (or a unique phoenix), each without a
partner in its distinct species, whereas the opposite of
having-no-partner-in-its-species is having-a-partner-in-its-species.
The opposite of the one as indivisible quiddity is a divisible
quiddity; the many arising from the one as indivisible quiddity is
several indivisible quiddities, which *could* be a divisible
quiddity if, say, one of them is an unanalyzable genus and the others
are successive unanalyzable differentiae of that genus, but the
several indivisible quiddities *need not* be a single quiddity
at all. But, beyond these examples, Farabi's
basic point is that, in the many *arising* from a one, the one
is an essential constituent of the many, "a part by which its
constitution [is]" (#62, p.75): and so it can no more be
opposite to this one than a species can be opposite to its constituent
genera and differentiae. And likewise, if a one, in some sense of
"one", is what it is by being a unit, a constituent of a
many, then it cannot be opposite to that many, even if there is some
*other* sense of "many" which is its opposite.
When Farabi says that there are senses of
"one" which do not presuppose any plurality and which have
no opposite except a bare contradictory--so that there is no
sense of "many" *opposite* to these senses of
"one", although there is a sense of "many"
*arising* from each such sense of "one"--he is
interested above all in the sense of "one" as
"circumscribed by a quiddity" (first introduced #17).
Farabi does not assume that the reader will already
be familiar with this analysis of a special sense of
"one": he tries to build up to it from other senses of
"one" as "circumscribed" in some other way. He
starts by talking about a "body circumscribed by a limit that
specifies [*takhussu*] it" (#16, p.50).
"Circumscribed" here has a straightforward literal sense:
the body is surrounded on all sides by its limit or boundary.
"Specifies" adds that everything inside that limit is the
body, and everything outside that limit is not the body. This may
connect with "one" as having no partner in some property,
since the body is the only thing inside its limit.
Farabi passes from "one" as a body to a
circumscribed by a limit to "one" as a body circumscribed
by a place, where a body's place is, on the Aristotelian
analysis, not the limit of the body itself but the limits of the
bodies that surround it. Here again, everything that is in the place
is the body, and everything that is not in the place is not the body.
Thus the limit, or the place, contributes in two ways to making the
body one: it makes the parts of the body one with each other, and it
makes the body one body distinguished from other bodies, with which it
yields the many that "arises from" this sense of one. The
unity [*wahda*] corresponding to these senses of
"one" [*wahid*] is presumably the
circumscription [*inhiyaz*] by the limit or the
place, which is an accident of an underlying
subject.[35]
But Farabi denies that if this unity were removed,
its subject would thereby become a many: rather, it would fuse with
other things into a larger one when the circumscription separating
them from each other is removed (#28). Still, these kinds of unity do
*also* unify a divisible subject, as do the unity of what is
one as continuous or contiguous or whole. But Farabi
is building up to a less familiar but more fundamental, non-spatial
kind of circumscription which has only the function of distinguishing
a one from other ones and not the function of uniting a plurality.
Farabi talks about the circumscription of a thing by
any attribute, which would include limits and places and other
accidents such as qualities (some examples at #78), but he
concentrates overwhelmingly on the circumscription of a thing by its
quiddity. This can happen at different levels of generality--it
can be a specific or a generic quiddity (#27). What is circumscribed
by a quiddity, unlike what is circumscribed by a limit or a place,
need not be a body and need not be divisible, but can be as general as
"being" or "thing" (#64). In some cases, if a
thing's circumscription by its quiddity were removed, it would
fuse into a one with other ones when it the attributes distinguishing
it from these others are removed, as a body circumscribed by a limit
or place would fuse into a one with other bodies when its
circumscription by its limit or place is removed. If a thing's
circumscription by its specific quiddity were removed, it would still
be circumscribed by its generic quiddity, and would fuse into a one
with the other things in its genus, but if *all*
circumscription by a quiddity were removed from it, there would no
longer be anything left at all (#27). So there is no opposite to this
sense of "one" except sheer non-being (#27): there is a
sense of "many" *arising from* this sense of
"one", but it is not *opposite to* this sense of
"one" (#49). The cases of circumscription by a limit or a
place might wrongly lead us to think that whenever something is called
"one" its unity is an accident attaching to some
underlying subject, but in the present case if the unity were removed
the quiddity would be destroyed. Farabi does seem to
distinguish a thing's unity in this sense from its quiddity when
he says that the unity of a species, as circumscribed by its specific
quiddity, is the differentia by which it is circumscribed from other
species of its genus (#78): but this is still essential to the thing,
and we know from the *Book of Letters* that the differentia can
be called the existence of the thing, as here it is called the unity
of the thing.
Farabi says that what is one in the strongest
[*ahra*] sense is what is circumscribed by a
quiddity (#78). He says equally that what is circumscribed by a
quiddity is "circumscribed by its portion [or allotment] of
existence [*qist al-wujud*]" (#17), i.e., by
its being what it is: this being-what-it-is is described in the
*Book of Letters* as the existence [*wujud*] of
the thing, and *On the One and Unity* argues that it is also
the thing's unity [*wahda*].
Farabi uses this analysis to try to make good on
Aristotle's programmatic claim in *Metaphysics* IV,2 that
being and one are mutually entailing and in a way equivalent, or that
there is a sense of "being" and a sense of
"one", or a family of senses of "being" and a
corresponding family of senses of "one" which are mutually
entailing and in a way equivalent. Thus here in *On the One*
#17 he says that "one" in *this* meaning, i.e., the
meaning "circumscribed by a quiddity", is mutually
entailing or equivalent [*musawiq*] with being. So
"one" in this sense needs to apply to things in all
categories, not just substances, and indeed Farabi
says that in #17, and he adds that it also applies to "other
things, if there are any outside the categories" (#17, p.51,
compare the *Book of Letters* on a possible ascent to a first
cause of being to substances which would itself be outside all
categories including substance). Again, if "one" in this
sense is necessarily coextensive with being, Farabi needs
to say that not only species and genera but also individual substances
(and individual qualities and so on) are each circumscribed by their
own quiddity--not merely by a shared quiddity and an individual
place or other accidental attributes--so that there are
*many* things in each species, in the sense of
"many" arising from this sense of "one".
>
>
> The meaning [*ma'na*] of human [i.e., the species
> human] is circumscribed and isolated from what is not human, i.e.,
> horse and so on, and *this* human is circumscribed from
> *that* human by a circumscription more perfect [or complete]
> than the circumscription of human from horse. (#64, p.78)
>
>
>
Farabi is thus committed to individual quiddities,
even though our language does not allow us to formulate a
*definition* of any individual. "Every being and every
thing must have no partner in something which is attributed to
it" (#26, p.56), and "having no partner" in turn is
mutually entailing or equivalent [*musawiq*] with
"circumscribed by a quiddity" (#26, p.57).
>
>
> "One" is said of everything that is circumscribed by a
> quiddity which specifies it [*takhussuhu*] and an
> existence which specifies it, by which it is circumscribed from
> everything other than it, and it is one by a unity which is that by
> which it is circumscribed from other things. And if the quiddity of
> each thing is circumscribed from other things only by some category,
> it [i.e., this sense of "one"] is equivalent to the
> "being" that signifies the categories, and to whatever
> else is equivalent to "thing". (#94,
> pp.101-102)[36]
>
>
>
Thus Farabi's analyses of the senses of
"being" in the *Book of Letters*, and of the senses
of "one" in *On the One*, give the basis for his
account of a "transcendental" sense of "one"
in which it is mutually entailing with "being", and also
for his account of how unity and existence are predicated of God (see
the next section): once we distinguish the different senses, and
understand how they are related, we will see that circumscription by a
quiddity is both the strongest sense of existence and the strongest
sense of unity. And since every being in every category, individual or
universal, is circumscribed by a quiddity,
Farabi's analysis allows him to vindicate his
claim against Kindi that each of these things is truly one, and
indeed essentially one.
## 4. Farabi's philosophical theology: the *Perfect City* and *Political Regime*
Finally, we turn to metaphysical texts where Farabi
tries to do what in the *Enumeration of the Sciences* he says
that the "third part of the divine science" does: namely,
to show that there are beings separate from bodies, culminating in a
first uncaused being which has no partner and no contrary, contains no
multiplicity, is one, being, and true in a stronger sense than
everything else, is the first cause of existence, unity and truth to
everything else, and satisfies (some interpretation of) the other
traditional divine attributes; and then to show how this first being
acts to produce other beings directly or indirectly, and how its
action relates to
theirs.[37]
This is also what Farabi more briefly says in the
*Aims of the Metaphysics* that Aristotle does in
*Metaphysics* XII:
>
>
> The eleventh book [i.e., Book XII on our numbering] is about the
> principle of substance and of all existence, its existence and the
> confirmation that it is knowing by its essence and true by its
> essence, and about the separate beings which are after it, and about
> how the existence of beings depends on it.
>
>
>
Presumably Farabi thinks that Aristotle drew these
conclusions on the basis of his analyses of the senses of being and
unity, of the ways in which one kind of being [*mawjud*]
could be prior to another being, of what a being's existence
[*wujud*] is, of how one being can cause existence to
another being, and so on. Farabi himself undertakes
such analyses in his *Book of Letters* and *On the One*,
and in one section of the *Book of Letters* he sketches in a
purely hypothetical way how they might lead to a first being that is
being in the strongest sense.
However, the two extant books where Farabi tries to
carry out this part of metaphysics, the *Perfect City* and the
*Political Regime*, are of a rather different character from
the texts that he wrote for an audience within the Baghdad
philosophical school, engaging with Aristotle's texts and trying
to rewrite them for a modern audience. Neither of these books is
devoted exclusively to metaphysics: each first gives a long account of
God as first cause, and then an account of the heavenly and sublunar
things that proceed from God, before focussing on the human soul,
human societies and their governance, prophecy, and the conditions for
the soul's successful "return" to God or for more or
less satisfactory approximations. Especially in the *Perfect
City* it is clear that Farabi is adopting an
overall sequence of topics from *kalam* treatises, and is
trying to show that the methods of *falsafa* allow him to give
a scientific content to the knowledge of God, and a demonstrative
resolution of the issues in dispute, which in his view the methods of
*kalam* cannot. The full titles of the two texts, the
*Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Perfect City*
and the *Political Regime known as "Principles of
Beings"* suggest that he is trying to reconstruct and
rewrite Plato's *Republic* (about which he has only
indirect information), or perhaps a sequence of several Platonic texts
including the
*Republic*.[38]
In Plato, the thesis that the best society will be ruled by
philosophers leads to a discussion of the objects the philosophers
need to know, Platonic Forms and especially the Good-itself, and this
may give Farabi a model for including in these
treatises a metaphysical account of the first cause and how other
things proceed from it: the rulers of the best society will know these
truths, and other members of the society will either believe them
without demonstration, or accept some imitation of
them.[39]
But while Plato starts with a discussion of the city and uses it to
motivate digressions into metaphysics, Farabi starts
at the top, with metaphysics (in the *Political Regime* with a
classification of "principles" or non-bodily causes, in
the *Perfect City* with the first cause), with no prior context
or motivation. He does *not* frame the metaphysics by saying
that this is what the people of the perfect city know or believe.
Rather, he starts from the first cause, explains how the various types
of being in the cosmos, including human souls, depend on it, and draws
conclusions about what sort of city would further human perfection and
what its rulers or other inhabitants would have to know or believe:
this conforms to the structure of *kalam* treatises,
which typically start with God's existence and unity and
attributes and acts, then talk about God's creation including
human beings, and then about prophecy and the religious community and
the afterlife (*akhira*) or "return"
(*ma'ad*) to
God.[40]
Farabi does not seem to know about the metaphysics
of the *Republic*, and in any case it would not give him what
he needs. He fills in the content of the metaphysics from elsewhere,
from *Metaphysics* XII as he would like it to be, guided by
later Greek interpreters--Themistius' commentary, and texts
of Plotinus and Proclus in their Arabic adaptations. This goes beyond
the actual *Metaphysics* XII both in that it infers to God as a
first cause of existence rather than of motion, and in that it
includes a downward way from God to the beings that derive their
existence from
him.[41]
Farabi is also much more systematic than Aristotle,
in the manner of a *kalam* treatise, in showing that God
is simple, i.e., free from all the different modes of composition, and
is unique and has no contrary (all things that *Metaphysics*
XII does briefly say), and in going through a whole series of
attributes of God. It is plausible that both treatises are directed to
potential princely patrons, perhaps after Farabi's
departure from Baghdad for Aleppo and Damascus late in his life.
Farabi would be trying to break *falsafa* out
of its Christian (or Isma'ili) ghetto and to
present it as a "religious science" superior to
*kalam*, not exclusively Muslim but suited for Muslim
needs: Farabi presents *falsafa* as giving
the content of the ruler's or his adviser's religious
knowledge, and implicitly presents himself as an adviser to
princes.[42]
Thus both the *Perfect City* and the *Political Regime*
are supposed to be intelligible to a non-specialist audience. In
neither case does Farabi show himself struggling with a
difficult Greek model, and while he draws on his technical analyses of
being and unity from the *Book of Letters* and *On the
One*, this technical substructure is tastefully concealed. The
*Political Regime* seems to stay closer to
Farabi's Greek
models,[43]
and may thus be the earlier of the two texts, while in the
*Perfect City* he seems to have more fully digested those
models and to be presenting the results in a simpler and more
independent form, concentrating on the elements more central to
presenting *falsafa* as a "religious science" to a
contemporary Muslim audience. But some passages remain verbally
identical or almost identical in the two
treatises.[44]
Both treatises put human beings and their societies in an Aristotelian
cosmological context, which Farabi describes in some
detail. Humans and other kinds of animals, and also plants, are
composites of some kind of soul (including, for humans, a rational
soul) with a body composed out of the four sublunar elements, earth
and water and air and fire; the whole sublunar world is governed,
ultimately by God, but proximately by a series of nested heavenly
spheres (each moved by an incorporeal intelligence) and by the
"active intelligence" which is a source both of
intellectual cognition to the human rational soul and of intelligible
order to the sublunar world. But in what follows I will discuss only
the strictly metaphysical parts of these texts, not the cosmology or
the theories of the human soul, prophecy, or society. I will mainly
follow the *Perfect City*, while noting some interesting
differences in the *Political Regime*. The *Political
Regime* in general seems more interested in classification and
comparison. The human soul is introduced by being compared to various
higher and lower things, and the way it achieves its intended
perfection is compared to the ways they do. Likewise, God is
introduced, in the prologue to the *Political Regime*, on a
list of six kinds of incorporeal "principles" of physical
things, and his causality is compared with the modes of causality of
these other
principles.[45]
The *Perfect City* sweeps away this introductory framework, and
starts directly with the thesis-statement, "The first being
[*mawjud*] is the first cause of existence
[*wujud*] to all other beings
[*mawjudat*]".
Farabi's strategy is to argue that there is a
unique "first being", and then to derive its attributes,
including that it produces other things, and indeed produces
everything else either directly or indirectly; in the process he hopes
to have shown that this first being has enough of the traditional
attributes of God, suitably reinterpreted, that the readers will
acknowledge it as God. The *Perfect City* never once uses the
word "God", and this is surely a deliberate strategy. We
cannot validly deduce "God exists", or "God is
F" for any value of F, unless we have at least one premise
containing the term "God", and no such premises are
available. Especially in Islam it is very common to refer to God, not
by the name "God", but by one of his attributes, and
Farabi in the *Perfect City* consistently
uses "the First", one of the standard Qur`anic
attributes (Q
57:3).[46]
Farabi does not accompany the initial thesis of the
*Perfect City*, "The first being [*mawjud*]
is the first cause of existence [*wujud*] to all other
beings [*mawjudat*]", by any explicit proof.
What is his strategy for convincing the reader to accept it? On the
face of it, there are several ways in which this thesis could be
falsified. There might be no first being, because every being has
another being prior to it, *ad infinitum*. Or there might be
many beings each of which is "first" in the weak sense
that it has nothing prior to it; in which case no being will be
"first" in the strong sense that it is prior to everything
other than itself. (We might also want clarification of what
priority-relation Farabi is talking about. He does
not explicitly say, but he seems to mean roughly what Aristotle calls
priority in being by contrast with priority in time and priority in
definition. *X* is prior to *Y* in being if *X*
can exist without *Y* existing but not *vice versa*, or
if neither can exist without the other existing but *X* is the
cause of *Y*'s existing.) If there is some *X*
which is "first" in the strong sense that it is prior to
everything other than itself, Farabi seems to think
it will be clear that *X* is the first cause of existence,
either immediately or by a chain of intermediate causes, to any other
being *Y*, because every being other than the first will have
some cause (distinct from itself) of its existence, and because, if
(as Farabi assumes) there can be no circles or
infinite regresses of such causes, the chain of its causes can only
terminate in the first being *X*. Farabi says
nothing here about the infinite regress problem (although he is
certainly aware of the issue, and we can make plausible guesses about
why he thinks the objectionable infinite regresses do not
arise).[47]
But he has a clear (although not obviously successful) strategy for
showing that there cannot be many things each of which is
"first" in the weak sense that it has nothing prior to it,
and therefore nothing which is prior to everything other than itself.
Farabi does not *immediately* draw this
conclusion: rather, it is supposed to follow from a series of
inferences he makes about what anything that is "first"
must be like.
Farabi's general strategy is (1) to argue that
anything that is "first" must not have any kind of cause,
since any such cause would be prior to it and it would not be first,
and that it has no privation or potentiality (either of which would
imply dependence on something prior); then (2) to infer that since it
has no cause it must be *simple*, i.e., that it is
"one" in the sense of not having any of the different
kinds of internal composition (e.g., out of matter and form, genus and
differentia, or physically extended parts); then (3) to infer from its
simplicity and non-dependence that it has no partner and no contrary,
i.e., that it is "one" in the sense of being unique; (4)
then to infer from its negative attributes (especially its
immateriality) to its being
intelligence[48]
and to the kind of intelligence it is, and then to derive its other
positive attributes from its being this kind of intelligence (or
simply to reduce the other attributes to its being this kind of
intelligence); and finally (5) to infer from its simplicity to the
only possible way that it can generate something outside itself. Since
we know that there are things other than the First, and since anything
other than the First must derive its being directly or indirectly from
the First, it will follow that the First does immediately generate at
least one thing, a "Second"; and Farabi
will try to sketch how the First either directly or indirectly causes
all the main types of constituents of the world.
Farabi's transitions from the First's
simplicity to its uniqueness, from its negative attributes to its
being intelligence, and from its intrinsic attributes to its producing
something outside it, are all high-risk moments, and will all be
challenged by other Arabic thinkers.
We will concentrate here on the stages of argument up through the
uniqueness of the First, with a few comments at the end on how
Farabi hopes to get to its being intelligence (and
to what kind of intelligence it is) and to its generating a Second.
Sometimes Farabi just states his conclusions without
explicit argument, and sometimes he suggests what premisses the
conclusion is supposed to follow from, while leaving it to the reader
to figure out *how* it is supposed to follow. It is usually not
too hard to fill in a broadly plausible argument. But the obvious ways
of doing this, not drawing on any technical Farabian metaphysical
notions, are often disappointingly vague. We may be able to get more
precise, using notions from the *Book of Letters* and *On
the One* which Farabi's terminology here
points back to.
At a first stab: Farabi argues that, if something is
"first" in the sense that nothing is prior to it, it
cannot be dependent on anything for its existence or for its
continuation in existence. Therefore it has existed without beginning
and will exist without end, and has no potentiality for not existing.
It has no efficient cause, but also no material cause: if it had a
material cause, its matter would be prior to it, and presumably it
would also depend on an efficient cause to turn its matter into it. It
is less obvious how Farabi wants to infer that it is
perfect, with no deficiency or privation, but perhaps the thought is
that if it were deprived of F, it would have to be of such a kind that
it *could* be F, and therefore it (or its matter) would be
potentially F. And Farabi apparently thinks he can
conclude, not just that a first being has no potentiality for not
existing, but that it has no potentiality for any predicate that it
does not have by its
essence:[49]
perhaps his reason is that if it were potentially F, it would depend
on something else which is actually F to make it actually F, and this
other thing would be prior to it. Farabi also says
that a first being has no *final* cause, and while he
officially says here only that there is no final cause for its
*existence*, he also thinks that there is no final cause that
it aims to achieve through its *activities*, again because it
would be in potentiality to some perfection that it does not have by
its essence. It also has no form, because nothing can have a form
unless it also has an underlying matter, which has already been
excluded. And Farabi adds another argument, that
>
>
> if it had a form, its essence [*dhat*] would be composed
> out of matter and form, and if it were so then its constitution
> [*qiwam*] would be through its two parts out of which it
> is composed, and its existence [*wujud*] would have a
> cause. (Walzer 1985, 58,2-5
>
>
>
This allows him to generalize from the case of matter and form to
other kinds of constituents: as he says when he comes back to this
issue after the uniqueness arguments,
>
>
> it is not divisible in account [Arabic *qawl* = Greek
> *logos*] into things by which it is
> substantified,[50]
> since it is impossible that each part of the account which explicates
> its meaning should signify a part of what it is substantified by. For
> if it were so, the parts by which it is substantified would be causes
> of its existence [*wujud*] in the way that the meanings
> which the parts of a thing's definition signify are causes of
> the existence of the thing defined, and in the way that the matter and
> the form are causes of the existence of what is composed out of them;
> and this is impossible for it, since it is first and its existence has
> no cause at all. And if it is not divisible by these divisions, it is
> even further from being divisible by divisions of quantity or the
> other ways of being divided. (Walzer 1985, 66,8-68,1)
>
>
>
So any kind of composition is incompatible with its being first, since
each of its components would be prior to it and would be a (partial)
cause of its existence; we could also argue that the components would
need a cause to unify them, and that this cause would cause the
existence of the composite.
Farabi gives a series of arguments for the
conclusions (central from a Muslim point of view) that a First can
have no partner and no contrary. He does not actually use the word
"partner" here, but uses phrases like "nothing other
than it can have the existence [*wujud*] that it
has". While Farabi gives a number of arguments
for these conclusions, we can reconstruct perhaps the central
arguments as follows. To conclude that, if *X* is first, no
other being *Y* can have the same existence that *X*
has, Farabi says that, if this were so, *X*
and *Y* would not differ, and so would be the same thing, not
two things. But what justifies the claim that *X* and
*Y* would not differ? Farabi says,
>
>
> if there were a difference between them, then that by which they
> differ would be other than what they share, and the thing by which
> each of them differs from the other would be a part of that by which
> their existence is constituted, and what they share would be the other
> part: so each of them would be divided in account, and each of its
> parts would be a cause of the constitution of its essence, and so it
> would not be first. (Walzer 1985, 58,13-60,3)
>
>
>
An obvious objection is that although *X*, being first, must be
simple, *Y* might not be: perhaps *X* is wholly
constituted by what *X* and *Y* share, but *Y* is
only partially constituted by this common element and is partially
constituted by something else. Farabi considers this
objection and replies that in that case
>
>
> the existence of the latter is not the existence of the former, rather
> the essence of the former is simple and indivisible and the essence of
> the latter is divisible, and therefore the latter has two parts by
> which it is constituted, and therefore its existence has a cause, and
> therefore its existence is inferior to the existence of the former and
> deficient in comparison with it, and therefore it is not existence in
> the first rank, (Walzer 1985, 60,9-13)
>
>
>
contrary to the hypothesis that *Y* has the same existence that
*X* has.
Farabi gives two arguments that, if *X* is
first, it cannot have a contrary *Y*. Both arguments turn on a
definition of "contrary": *X* and *Y* are
contrary if they cannot be together in the same place or substratum,
so that *X* is present in some place or substratum through
*Y*'s being absent from it, and *X* is absent from
a place or substratum through *Y*'s being present in it.
On the basis of this definition, Farabi argues, first,
that if the First, *X*, were contrary to *Y*, then
*X*'s being (in some place or substratum, or being at
all) would be conditioned on *Y*'s absence, and therefore
*X*'s substance would not be sufficient to explain
*X*'s continuing to exist, or *X*'s existing
at all: so, Farabi says, *X*'s
constitution [*qiwam*] would not be in *X*'s
substance (alone), but would be through something else, and so
*X* would not be first. Second, *X* and *Y* would
have to have something common that is receptive of both of them, so
that this common thing would persist in being and *X* and
*Y* would succeed each other in it, and so this common thing
would be prior to them and neither of them would be first. These
arguments are recognizably developments of Aristotle's arguments
in *Metaphysics* XII against there being a pair of contrary
first principles like Empedocles' Love and Strife, although
Aristotle relies on the premiss that the first principle is pure
actuality, while Farabi makes relatively little use
of the notion of actuality and relies on the premisses that the first
principle is simple and that it does not depend on anything else for
its
existence.[51]
Farabi's conclusion that the First has no
contrary is not simply a special case of his conclusion that the First
has no partner, or as he says that "nothing other than it can
have the existence [*wujud*] that it has", since he
does not assume that contraries would have the same existence or would
be members of the same species or genus.
But it would be unfair to summarize Farabi's
arguments by saying
>
>
> the First must have nothing to be prior to it, therefore it must be
> simple; so there cannot be two Firsts, since if there were they would
> have something in common and something that distinguishes them, and so
> they (or at least one of them) would not be simple.
>
>
>
This argument seems open to an immediate objection: why would they
have to have anything in common, except that they are both first, in
the sense that neither of them has anything prior to it? And being
"first" in this sense is a mere negation--indeed
merely the negation of a relation to something else--and so
firstness would not be a *constituent* of the thing that is
first, and so would not threaten its simplicity. And, while it is not
clear that Farabi has an adequate reply to this
objection, his argument is more sophisticated than this quick summary
would suggest, and its extra sophistication may give him more
resources to deal with objections, including the objection that
Farabi has not ruled out the possibility of infinite
regresses and that there may be no First, or that there could be a
First and also other things independent of the First if the chains of
their causes go back *ad infinitum* without leading to a
First.
It should be clear already that Farabi's
argument in the *Perfect City* uses the word
"existence" [*wujud*] a great deal, in
contexts where it is not obviously necessary. Why say that "the
first being is the first cause of existence to all other beings"
and not just "the first being is the cause of all other
beings"? Why say "nothing other than it can have the
existence that it has" rather than "nothing other than it
is first" or "nothing other than it is in the same species
or genus as it"? Why say that if *X* and *Y* are
similar in one respect and different in another respect,
>
>
> the thing by which each of them differs from the other would be a part
> of that by which their existence is constituted, and what they share
> would be the other part: so each of them would be divided in account,
> and each of its parts would be a cause of the constitution of its
> essence, and so it would not be first
>
>
>
rather than "the thing by which each of them differs from the
other would be a part of it, and what they share would be the other
part, and then its parts would be prior to it, and so it would not be
first"?
What does it mean, for Farabi, to say that
*X* is the cause of existence to *Y*, or that *X*
is the existence of *Y*, or that *X* enters into the
constitution [*qiwam*] of *Y* or is part of that
by which the existence of *Y* is constituted? At first blush,
the first sentence of the *Perfect City*, "the first
being [*mawjud*] is the first cause of existence
[*wujud*] to all other beings
[*mawjudat*]", seems to be taking the
position of al-Kindi that Farabi had
criticized in the *Book of Letters*, according to which the
first being, God, would be a separately existing existence-itself,
such that everything else would come to exist by participating in it:
things would exist [would be *mawjud*] through an
existence [*wujud*] as they are white though a whiteness,
and God would be that existence. Is he here, in the *Perfect
City*, slipping into the kind of popularizing philosophy that he
had criticized through a logical syntax of language in the *Book of
Letters*? An immediate response is that
Farabi's position in the *Perfect City*
is not the same as Kindi's, since Farabi
does not say that God is the existence of anything else. But we would
still want to know how God is the cause of the existence of other
things, and more generally what it means to say that *X* is the
cause of the existence of *Y*, and what role this plays in
Farabi's argument in the *Perfect
City*. And Farabi's positive theory in the
*Book of Letters* gives us resources for understanding
this.
As we saw in
Section 3.4,
on Farabi's analysis in the *Book of
Letters* there are two main senses of being
[*mawjud*], with corresponding senses of existence
[*wujud*]. If "being" [*mawjud*]
means "being outside the mind as it is inside the mind",
then the subject of which is predicated is a thought in the mind (a
concept or judgment), and its existence [*wujud*] is its
relation to something extramental, and this existence holds univocally
of all true thoughts. Clearly this cannot be what
Farabi means in the *Perfect City*--it
would be pointless to ask, in this sense, whether something else has
the same existence [*wujud*] that the First has. On the
other hand, if "*mawjud*" means "being
circumscribed by a quiddity outside the mind", then the subject
of which it is predicated is a thing really existing outside the mind,
and, according to *Book of Letters* I,89, its corresponding
*wujud* is either its quiddity or part of its quiddity.
Interpreting *wujud* as quiddity does not make sense of
the *Perfect City*'s question whether anything else has
the same *wujud* as the First: it would be trivially true
that no two distinct things could have the same quiddity, or, if we
say that the quiddity of a thing is just its form without its matter,
it would still be trivially true that no two distinct
*immaterial* things could have the same quiddity. But
"part of a quiddity" works, particularly if we reflect on
what kind of part of the quiddity of *X* could be called the
*wujud* of *X*, and why. As we saw in
Section 3.4,
Farabi in the *Book of Letters*, following
Aristotle's *Metaphysics* VII,17, analyzes
*X*'s existence [*wujud* = *ousia* in
Aristotle's Greek] as the cause of the fact that *X*
exists, and, in order to search for this cause as a middle term, tries
to reanalyze the existential judgment "*X* exists"
as a predicative judgment, something like "*Y* is
*X*" where *Y* is the *per se* subject of
*X*. If *X* is entirely simple, then "*X*
exists" cannot be reanalyzed in this way, but in this case there
is no cause of the fact that *X* exists, and *X*'s
existence [*wujud*] is identical to *X* without
remainder. In cases where *X* can be analyzed into a subject
and a predicate, one meaning of "*X* exists" is
that there is a middle term explaining why the predicate belongs to
the subject: and this middle term (not the linguistic expression but
the reality it signifies) is one of the things that can be called
"the existence [*wujud*] of *X* by which it
is constituted" or "the cause of existence to
*X*" or "a part by which its existence [is
constituted]". In this sense the interposition of the earth
between the sun and the moon is a partial existence
[*wujud*] of eclipse, or a part of the quiddity of
eclipse which is a cause of existence to eclipse, or a cause of the
constitution of
eclipse.[52]
Since the First is entirely simple, its quiddity cannot be spelled
out into a definition, and so the First's existence is identical
to the First without remainder, and there is no way that two simple
things can share the same existence. But the First is a "cause
of existence" to a Second, or is "part of that by which
the existence of the Second is constituted", and similar
expressions, if the First enters as a cause into the real causal
definition of the Second, which it does, since (as we will see) the
Second is constituted by its act of cognizing the First. This makes
sense of the different things Farabi says in the
*Perfect City* about *X* being the cause of existence to
*Y*, or *X* being a part of the constitution
[*qiwam*] of *Y*, of *X* and *Y*
sharing the same existence. It also helps to show what the extra
content is to saying "*X* is the cause of existence to
*Y*" rather than just "*X* is the cause of
*Y*", and helps to explain
Farabi's ground for his assumption that there
is a First, i.e., that there is not an infinite regress of causes of
existence: if *X* is the cause of *Y*, *X* counts
as the cause of existence to *Y* only if *X* would be
mentioned in a causal definition of *Y*, i.e., if it is
essential to *Y* to be caused by *X*, so that a
*Y* not caused by *X* would not really be a *Y*.
If there were an infinite regress of causes of existence to
*X*, it would follow that the causal definition of *X*
would be infinitely long, which Farabi presumably
regards as absurd, as does Aristotle in *Metaphysics* II,2.
There may well be an infinite regress of causes of
*coming-to-be*, e.g., the infinite chain of my ancestors, but
because these are not causes of *existence*, which would enter
into the quiddity of the effect and so would be mentioned in its
scientific definition, they do not lead to the absurdity of an
infinitely long definition.
As we saw in
Section 3.4,
*Book of Letters* I,92 sketches out a program for finding a
chain of causes of existence, where each cause enters into the
quiddity of its effect and has a stronger claim to the title of
"being" [*mawjud*]. A substance is a cause of
existence to the accidents proper to it, and enters into their
quiddity, but then there will be a hierarchy of causes of existence
within the category of substance itself, until we reach some first
substance, "whether this is one or more than one", which
has a stronger claim to the title of "being" than all
other substances, and *a fortiori* than accidents.
>
>
> And if something is discovered outside all these categories which is
> the cause of the realization of the quiddity of the most fundamental
> thing in this category [i.e., the category of substance], then this is
> more deserving to be called "being"
> [*mawjud*] than the most perfect thing in this category,
> and this is the first cause of existence [*wujud*] to the
> most perfect thing in this category, and this most perfect thing [sc.
> within the category of substance] is the cause in the quiddity of the
> other things in this category, and what is in this category is the
> cause in the quiddity of the other categories: thus the beings, where
> what is meant by "being" is what has a quiddity outside
> the soul, are ordered by this order. (*Book of Letters*
> I,92)[53]
>
>
>
Farabi in the *Perfect City* and
*Political Regime* claims to have shown that there is indeed
exactly one such first being, which enters as an essential cause into
the quiddities of other things. The claim is not that the First acts
on each quiddity, from "outside" the quiddity, to give
that quiddity actual existence, but rather that whatever
*immediately* depends on the First is essentially constituted
by its act of cognizing the First, so that a full account of what the
Second is necessarily involves the First; and lower things are
essentially constituted by their relations to these higher things, and
so are essentially dependent on the First.
The *Perfect City* and *Political Regime* make
particularly striking use of Farabi's
"general" metaphysical treatises, the *Book of
Letters* and *On the One*, in their accounts of the senses
in which the First is *one*. The *Perfect City* and
*Political Regime* go through a list of attributes of God, and
try to show that (and in what sense) each of them belongs to the
First, and from a Muslim point of view one of God's most
important attributes is that he is *one*--first in the
sense that there is no other god, and then also in the sense that he
contains no internal multiplicity. The *Perfect City* marks
several senses in which the First is "one". It is one in
that no other being shares its species of existence (66,5-7),
and it is one in that it is "undivided" or
"indivisible", into quantitative parts or any other kind
of parts (68,2-6); but then, finally,
>
>
> if the First is indivisible in its substance then the existence by
> which it is circumscribed [*yanhazu*] from
> existences other than it cannot be other than [the existence] by which
> it exists [is *mawjud*] in itself, and therefore it is
> circumscribed from what is other than it through a unity which is its
> essence [i.e., through a unity which it *is*, not through a
> unity distinct from itself]. For one of the meanings of unity is the
> specific existence [*wujud
> khass*][54]
> by which each being is circumscribed from what is other than it: this
> is that by which every being is called one inasmuch as it exists [is
> *mawjud*] in respect of the existence which specifies it,
> and this is the meaning of "one" which is coextensive with
> existence. So the First is one in this way too, and is more deserving
> of the name and meaning of "one" than any one other than
> it.
>
>
>
Here the *Perfect City* is relying on the conclusion of the
*Book of Letters* that "circumscribed by its
quiddity" is one of the meanings of "being" and the
conclusion of the *On the One* that "circumscribed by its
quiddity" is one of the meanings of "one", and using
these conclusions to interpret Aristotle's claim in
*Metaphysics* IV,2 that "being" and
"one" are mutually entailing. Any being *X* has a
"specific existence" which "circumscribes it",
i.e., distinguishes it from all other things, and it is *one*
in the sense that it is uniquely specified by this existence. If
*X* is a member of a species, then *X*'s
"specific existence" might include the matter or the place
or other accidental attributes which distinguish *X* from other
members of the same species. But, Farabi is saying,
if *X* is the First and therefore indivisible in its substance,
it cannot have both a quiddity which it shares with other things and
then a distinct "specific existence" which distinguishes
it from those other things. So because it is *one* both as
"unique" and as "indivisible", its unity, that
by which it is one, is completely identical with the quiddity by which
it exists [is a being]. Here, as with the other attributes which he
demonstrates of the First, Farabi is paralleling the
Mu'tazilite pattern of asserting that, for any attribute F such
that we can say that God is F, the F-ness through which God is F is
identical with the divine essence. But Farabi claims
to have based his account of the First and its attributes on
demonstrations grounded in analyses of the meanings of being, unity,
intelligence and the other fundamental philosophical concepts;
whereas, Farabi would say, when the
Mu'tazilites say that God is F through an F-ness which is
identical with his essence, and therefore is F in a different way from
creatures, this is bare assertion to save their theses that God is
simple and that he is nonetheless F, and does not rest on an analysis
of a special sense of F that applies to God and how it relates to more
ordinary senses of F. In the cases of being and unity, the special
metaphysics of the *Perfect City* and *Political Regime*
is supposed to rest on the general metaphysics of the *Book of
Letters* and *On the One, and* is supposed to vindicate
Farabi's claim that Aristotelian general
metaphysics, when properly understood, will give the path to a
scientific special metaphysics.
We conclude by briefly sketching two further, and problematic, key
steps in the metaphysical section of the *Perfect City* and
*Political Regime*, namely Farabi's
argument that the First is both intelligence [*'aql* =
Greek *nous*] and intelligible [*ma'qul* =
*noeton*], and his argument that the First is a cause of
existence to other things, and immediately to a single Second, the
immaterial intelligence which moves the outermost sphere (in the
*Perfect City*), or to a small finite number of Seconds, the
immaterial intelligences which move the different heavenly spheres (in
the *Political Regime*). By arguing that the First is
intelligence and intelligible, Farabi tries to
derive versions of the attributes of knowledge and truth standardly
ascribed to God, and by arguing that it produces a Second he tries to
derive a version of the act of creation standardly ascribed to God.
But he is deriving radically stripped-down versions of these
attributes and acts, since the First directly knows only itself, and
directly creates only the Second (or a few Seconds), even if it may be
said as a consequence to indirectly know and create other things
too.
Farabi's basic steps in arguing that the First
is intelligence and intelligible are the premisses that
>
>
> what prevents the form from being intelligence and from actually
> intellectually cognizing is the matter in which the thing exists
>
>
>
and that
>
>
> what prevents the thing from being intelligible in actuality [or
> "from being intellectually cognized in actuality"] and
> from being by its substance intelligible [or "intellectually
> cognized"] is also matter. (Walzer 1985, 70)
>
>
>
Since the First has no matter, it would follow that it is actually
intelligence and actually intellectually cognized.
Farabi's first premiss, that anything would be
intellectually cognizing if it did not have a matter blocking it,
initially seems strange and ill-motivated. But
Farabi would see the second premiss, that matter is
the obstacle to something's being intellectually cognized, as
grounded in an Aristotelian analysis of intellectual cognition: the
mind intellectually cognizes the form of a material thing precisely by
abstracting it from its matter, and if the object had no matter to
begin with, then there is nothing further to do to it and it is
already intellectually
cognized.[55]
And Farabi apparently sees the first premiss as
following from the second: if *X* is intrinsically without
matter, it is actually intellectually cognized *intrinsically*,
and not through a relation to something else which would cognize it:
and this can only because it actually intellectually cognizes
*itself*, and does so intrinsically or essentially, not in
dependence on some other
cause.[56]
Following this Aristotelian analysis, the First's act of
intellectually cognizing its object would not be an *accident*
of the First, but would be its essence; put the other way around, the
First would be an intelligence, not by being a power for
intellectually cognizing various objects, but by being an *act*
of cognizing its object, namely the First itself. So, as
Farabi says,
>
>
> that it is intelligence [or "intellectual cognition"] and
> that it is intellectually cognized and that it is intellectually
> cognizing are all a single essence and a single undivided substance.
> (Walzer 1985,
> 70)[57]
>
>
>
Or, as Farabi says in switching from the
Aristotelian language of "intelligence" to the
Qur`anic and *kalam* language of God's
attribute of knowledge, the First's knowledge does not require
anything other than itself for it to know, and its knowledge is
identical with its essence (Walzer 1985, 72). This sounds like the
Mu'tazilites in claiming to reconcile God's knowledge with
his simplicity. But while the Mu'tazilites try to show how
God's knowledge can be simple and eternal despite God's
knowing a vast plurality of things, some of which change,
Farabi short-circuits the problem by saying that
God's knowledge is just knowledge of himself. Perhaps
Farabi would say that the problem just cannot be
solved if we assume that God is omniscient. Or perhaps he would say,
with Themistius (followed by many medieval philosophers), that God in
knowing himself also implicitly knows other things because he is a
*cause* of those other things.
Farabi also applies his groundwork from the *Book
of Letters* to save the Qur`anic attribute that God is
"true" or "truth" [*al-haqq*].
The First is "truth" [*haqiqa*] in the
sense in which the *haqiqa* of *X* is the
quiddity of *X*, i.e., the existence [*wujud*]
which specifies *X* as distinct from all other things, which
might be expressed by the definition or the ultimate differentia of
*X*; and, as Farabi has already argued, there
is no distinction between the First itself and the existence by which
the First is distinguished from other things. Also, if *S*
thinks *X* in a way that corresponds to the way *X* is
in itself, *S*'s thought of *X* can be called
"true" [*haqq*], and *X* can also be
called true insofar as it corresponds to *S*'s thought of
*X*. Since the First knows itself, it can be called
"true" in this sense through itself, apart from any
relation to anything outside itself; and because this is essential to
it, the "truth" [*haqiqa*] through
which it is "true" in this sense is not anything other
than itself (Walzer 1985, 74). For the First to be "truth"
in this second sense seems to be equivalent to its being essentially
intellectually cognized.
In passing from the First as intelligence to the First as causing
being, Farabi is passing, in *kalam* terms,
from God's attributes to God's acts. His account of the
First as intelligence was perhaps less concerned to show that God has
knowledge, more concerned to show that God's knowledge is
identical with his essence, and to show in consequence the differences
between the way that God knows and the ways that other things know.
His account of the First as causing being to other things, or (in
*kalam* terms) of God's act of creation, does not
attempt to deduce, starting from what we have shown about the First,
that it must create other things rather than remaining in isolation.
He does say that
>
>
> when the First exists with the existence which it has, it necessarily
> follows that there exist from it all the other beings whose existence
> is not by human will and choice, with the existences which they have,
> (Walzer 1985, 88,11-14)
>
>
>
but he gives no argument that the First's existence entails the
existence of other things. Rather, he seems to rely on the argument
that since other things in fact exist, their existence must ultimately
be caused by the First; his main concern is not to show *that*
the First causes the existence of other things, but to show
*how* it causes the existence of other things, and in
particular to show that that by which the First causes the existence
of other things is identical with its essence, just as that by which
the First knows is identical with its
essence.[58]
As Farabi says, "it is not divided into two
things, such that the substantiation of its essence is by one of them
and something else's arising from it is by the other"
(Walzer 1985, 92,3-5): as he says a bit further down, the First
does not require an accident or a motion in itself in order for
something else to arise from it. (Nor is it affected or moved
*by* something else's arising from it, since it cannot be
affected or moved at all.) Nor, more generally, does the First require
*anything* other than its essence--whether an accident or
motion that would inhere in the First itself, or an external
instrument or material substrate that the First would cooperate with
in producing some effect--in order for something other than
itself to arise from it. The First does cooperate with external
instruments and material substrata in producing *some* of its
effects, and this is important for Farabi in
explaining how it can produce a plurality of effects, and how it can
produce more and less perfect effects, and how it can produce effects
which are connected or "ordered" rather than independent
of each other. But the First must be able to produce at least some
first effect without an instrument or substratum, or it would not be
able to produce anything at all, and in that first case the existence
of the First must be a sufficient cause of the existence of its
effect.
Farabi gives no further explanation of how or why
the existence of *X* can be a sufficient cause of the existence
of *Y*. (He says that the existence of *Y*
"emanates" [using the root *f-y-d*] from the
existence of *X*, but this is just a technical term meaning
that *X*'s existence, rather than some further act of
*X*, causes *Y* to exist; the term
"emanation" does not explain *how* this happens,
and Farabi does not pretend that it does.) He just
infers that this must happen in some cases, since more than one thing
exists. Farabi's situation is analogous to
Aristotle's in *Metaphysics* XII. After Aristotle has
argued that the existence of motion presupposes a first cause which is
essentially pure actuality, and which therefore cannot be changed or
moved, he faces the problem of explaining how such a cause can move
something else. Aristotle answers that while an eternally unchanging
cause cannot, by itself, cause changing motions, it can cause an
eternally constant motion (such as the eternal rotation of a heavenly
sphere around its axis) if it causes it as a *final* cause, as
an object desired by the object in motion. This leaves many
puzzles--why should this desire lead a heavenly sphere to move in
circles, how will that help it attain the desired object--but
Aristotle can say that since every other kind of causality is
impossible, this is what must be happening even if we don't
understand the details. Farabi faces a similar
difficulty in explanation, but he finds Aristotle's solution
unsatisfying, not so much because these details are missing, as
because it does not explain why the heavenly spheres, or their
incorporeal movers other than the First exist--at best, Aristotle
assumes that the incorporeal substances and the spheres exist, and
explains why the spheres move. Farabi, by contrast,
has undertaken to understand the First as a cause of
*existence*; and final causality, even if it is sufficient to
explain the motion of an already existent substance, does not seem
sufficient to explain the existence of substances other than the
First, either the heavenly spheres or their incorporeal movers. The
First must cause existence before it can cause motion, and in fact
Farabi does not make it a mover at all, but rather
says that it is responsible for the existence of something which is in
turn the first cause of motion. And if the First causes existence at
all, it must first cause the existence of at least one thing simply by
its own existence, not cooperating with any further attribute or
motion or instrument or matter. Farabi does not and
cannot say anything about *what the First does* to cause the
existence of something else (he does not say that it causes the
existence of something else by thinking that thing, or even that it
causes the existence of something else as a byproduct of thinking
itself); rather, he tries to describe how, and in what order, other
things are essentially dependent on the First.
In the *Perfect City* Farabi says that the
First causes existence, immediately and without cooperation with an
instrument or matter, only to a single thing, the Second; in the
*Political Regime*, apparently, the First causes existence
immediately to several things, the Seconds. But in both treatises,
when he introduces his discussion of the First as the cause of
existence to other things, he does not start by singling out a Second
or Seconds. Rather, he starts by saying that "the substance of
[the First] is a substance from which every existence emanates,
whatever this existence may be like, whether it is perfect or
deficient"; (Walzer 1985,
94),[59]
but he then immediately adds that "when all the beings arise
from it, they are ordered in their ranks, and each being receives from
it the portion of existence which is due to it and the rank which is
due to it"
(ibid.).[60]
But then there is a problem why the First's single simple
existence, assuming that it causes the existence of something else,
should cause a plurality of beings receiving greater or lesser
"portions" of existence from it.
Farabi's answer to this problem seems to be
less developed in the *Political Regime* than in the
*Perfect City*. In the *Political Regime*, he says that
the Seconds (the intelligences that move the heavenly bodies), and
apparently also the "active intelligence" that governs the
sublunar world, "have all received existence from the
First" (Butterworth 2015, 46, #34, translation modified); other
things depend on the Seconds or the active intelligence for their
existence, and for this reason receive lesser portions of existence.
Farabi says here that the Seconds, like the First,
are such that their specific existence is sufficient for the existence
of something else to emanate from them (ibid.): each Second produces a
heavenly sphere composed of body and soul (it produces not merely the
*motion* but the *existence* of the sphere), and
sublunar substances depend for their existence both on the heavenly
spheres and on the active
intelligence.[61]
The *Political Regime* says that the Seconds have different
ranks (Butterworth 2015, 46, #34) but it does not say anything to
explain why there should be many of them or why they should differ in
rank. In particular, it does not say that lower Seconds depend on
higher Seconds for their existence: each Second is described only as
producing a heavenly sphere, not as producing another Second, and as
far as we can tell each Second is produced immediately by the First
without cooperation with any other cause. However, in the *Perfect
City*, Farabi says that the First, immediately
and by itself alone, produces only a single Second (Walzer 1985, 100),
and that all other beings are produced by the First in conjunction
with instruments or material substrata, where these must be either the
Second or things which are produced by the First in conjunction with
the Second. This allows Farabi to explain why there
should be a plurality of separate immaterial substances, and why they
should differ in rank: the Second which is immediately produced by the
First has a greater "portion of existence" than the Third
which depends essentially on the Second, and so on, and all of these
separate intelligences (the movers of the heavenly spheres and then
the active intelligence that governs the sublunar world) have greater
portions of existence than sublunar substances which essentially
depend on the heavenly spheres and on the active intelligence. Here
Farabi is following out the program of *Book of
Letters* I,92, discussed above, of finding a single first
substance (here the Second, i.e., the mover of the outermost heavenly
sphere) on which all other substances are essentially dependent, and
then tracing it back in turn to a single simple First: the causal
definition of any other substance, if made fully explicit, would have
to refer to the motion of the outermost sphere and to the Second as
its cause, and thus ultimately to the First. But
Farabi has the problem of explaining how a single
Second can be responsible for causing all this multiplicity of
essentially differing beings. The *Perfect City*, like the
*Political Regime*, stresses that the Seconds (or Second,
Third, and so on), like the First, are each an intelligence which is
essentially actually cognizing and is itself the object it cognizes,
and whose specific existence is sufficient for the existence of
something else to emanate from it; both treatises also stress that
these intelligences are also inferior to the First, notably in that
they do not have their full perfection purely in themselves, but only
through a relation to the First, namely through intellectually
cognizing the First. But if each of these intelligences, like the
First, immediately produces only a single being like itself, they will
not be able to explain the multiplicity and complexity of the beings
that arise indirectly from the First. In the *Political Regime*
apparently each of the Seconds produces just a single being, namely
the heavenly sphere it governs (although this sphere has some
complexity as a compound of body and soul, and although the active
intelligence that governs the sublunar world has more complex
effects), but in the *Perfect City* each of these intelligences
has to produce *two* beings, namely the heavenly sphere it
governs and the next
intelligence.[62]
Thus
>
>
> from the First emanates the existence of the Second, and this Second
> too is a substance which is not embodied at all and is not in matter,
> and it intellectually cognizes itself [or "its essence"]
> and it intellectually cognizes the First, and its intellectual
> cognition of itself is not something other than its essence; and by
> its intellectually cognizing the First there follows necessarily from
> it the existence of a Third, and by its being substantified by the
> essence which is specific to it there follows necessarily from it the
> existence of the first heaven. (Walzer 1985, 100)
>
>
>
So for the *Perfect City*, as in the *Political Regime*,
the Second, like the First, essentially cognizes itself, and there is
no distinction between its act of cognizing itself, the existence by
which it is substantially constituted, and that through which it gives
rise to the existence of the heavenly sphere it governs. But the
*Perfect City* can say that there is a distinction between this
intelligence's cognition *of itself*, which is essential
to it, and its cognition *of the First*, through which it
attains a perfection, by relation to something else, exceeding what it
has just by itself. Or perhaps it would be better to say that its
essence includes a relation to the First, and that its essence is
therefore compound, in something like the way that a species-essence
composed of genus and differentia is compound.
Farabi does not want to say that an immaterial
intelligence is composed of two beings
[*mawjudat*], such as substance and accident or
matter and form, but he wants to say that it has two
*existences* [*wujudat*], that it
*is* in two ways or in a compound way. His wager in the
*Perfect City* is that he can explain this plurality of
existences in immaterial substances by the way in which they are
caused by the First, and that this plurality of existences will in
turn explain how these immaterial substances can give rise to the many
complex beings ultimately arise from the First. |
al-farabi-logic | ## 1. Al-Farabi's Writings and Their Background
Al-Farabi's surviving works contain well over a
thousand pages that are devoted to explaining the contents of
Aristotle's logical writings and aimed at educated readers of
Arabic. Much of this material reveals al-Farabi's
strong interest in the nature of language.
Al-Farabi's intellectual background was not so
much Aristotle himself. Rather it was the Aristotelian part of the
syllabus of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy that flourished in
Alexandria (in Egypt) in the fifth and sixth centuries (see
D'Ancona 2022). Al-Farabi tells us that
eventually "instruction was moved from Alexandria to
Antioch" (in Syria), until the last members of the school
scattered "taking their books with them". He says that he
himself studied with one of these last members,
Yuhanna bin Haylan, and together they read
Aristotle up to the end of *Posterior Analytics.* He adds that
the Alexandrian school came to describe the part of Aristotle's
*Organon* from modal logic onwards as "the part that is
not read", since under the Christians the modal material had
been kept hidden. (Al-Farabi's account is in a
lost work quoted by the historian Ibn Abi Usaybi'a
[*'Uyun* 604f]; see the translation in Fakhry 2002:
159.)
Al-Farabi has oversimplified the history (see Lameer
1997 and Watt 2008). But he correctly implies that his understanding
of Aristotle is based on the Alexandrian syllabus and its later
offshoots in the Middle East. For example, the account of logic in his
influential [*Catalogue*] has been shown to be an edited
translation of a work from the Alexandrian teaching
materials.[1]
So for understanding al-Farabi it becomes important to
know when he is giving his own considered view and when he is merely
passing on parts of the Alexandrian syllabus. As yet there is no
consensus about this, or about the order in which he wrote his
works.
The Alexandrian Neoplatonists saw philosophy as an avenue by which we
can achieve happiness through knowledge of The One (see Wildberg
2021). To add intellectual rigor to this mystical endeavor they
included the logical writings of Aristotle in the early stages of
their teaching syllabus. They devised a body of introductory texts to
explain how Aristotle's logic saves us from incorrect thinking
and acting, and why Aristotle devised his logic syllabus--his
*Organon*--in the form that he gave
it.[2]
Some features of al-Farabi's presentation are
most easily explained in terms of the Alexandrians. For example, the
Aristotelian part of their syllabus, after Porphyry's
*Eisagoge*, began with Aristotle's *Categories*,
so al-Farabi duly seeks reasons why categories are an
essential first step in logic. Their *Organon* also included
Aristotle's *Rhetoric* and his *Poetics*; so
al-Farabi explains why the arts of rhetoric and poetry
are really parts of logic. If their *Organon* had contained a
book on music, al-Farabi would have explained why
musical theory is a branch of
logic.[3]
(On music see
Section 10
below.)
Al-Farabi's logical writings take various forms.
Some of them are Long Commentaries on works of Aristotle, which
dissect Aristotle's text in sometimes excruciating detail; only
the Long Commentary on *De Interpretatione* survives in full,
though we have parts of others. More friendly are the Epitomes, in
which al-Farabi rewrites works in the *Organon*
from his own point of view. There are also a number of texts that
serve as introductions to the *Organon*, though they are not
necessarily elementary. We call attention to three works in this last
group. The first, [*Indication*], teaches that logic is the art
of making correct discriminations, and hence is the key to happiness
in life as a whole. It also explains that we must study language
before we study logic. The second, [*Expressions*], is a sequel
to [*Indication*] and introduces the vocabulary of logic.
The third work is the extraordinarily original and insightful
[*Letters*], which weaves together language, logic, and
metaphysics. We will take this work as the best basis for
understanding al-Farabi's overall view of
language and logic. Sections 2 to 5 below will review what we take to
be the core of this view. The remaining
Sections 6 to 10
will pick up particular themes.
Besides the Alexandrian material, al-Farabi was able to
call on highly professional Arabic translations of the books of the
*Organon*. He also had translations of some logical writers
from the Roman Empire, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and
Themistius. He is not known to have made any use of earlier Arabic
texts relating to logic, such as the *Logic* of Ibn
al-Muqaffa' and writings of al-Kindi. (Zimmermann [1981:
lxviii-xcviii] and Lameer [1994: Chapter 1] discuss what earlier
logical writings were available to al-Farabi. See also
Walzer [1962: 129-136] for al-Farabi's
sources on Aristotle's poetics.)
Al-Farabi's work on logic and language had a
direct effect on several Arabic authors in the two hundred years after
his
death.[4]
These include Ibn Bajja (in Latin Avempace), Ibn Sina
(Avicenna), Al-Ghazali (Algazel), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes).
He also influenced a number of medieval Jewish authors including
Maimonides. The Latins knew him as Alfarabius or Alpharabius or
Abunaser. His influence can be seen in Scholastic treatments of
determinism, poetic argument, and the classification of
sciences.[5]
## 2. The Origin of Languages
Al-Farabi describes how a language develops within a
community. In [*Letters*] (114, 115) 134.16-135.14 he
pictures a community whose members have concepts
(*ma'qulat*, literally "intellected
things", or "intelligibles" in Scholastic
terminology) that allow them to pick out identifiable objects in the
external world, either individually or as kinds of thing. He refers to
these concepts drawn from perception of the external world as
"primary concepts". These people have beliefs, and they
are able to reason about the world, to deliberate about their actions,
and to communicate by pointing. But as yet these people have no
language.
The first development towards language is that the people come to
realize that they can communicate their needs to each other better if
they agree to label some objects and concepts with vocal sounds. This
sets up a conventional correlation between simple (i.e., uncompounded)
primary concepts and words, and eventually this correlation comes to
be accepted by the whole community. The words are said to
"signify" the concepts to which they are correlated.
Al-Farabi envisages that a lawmaker will regulate the
correlation and add some words to it for the benefit of the community
([*Letters*] (120) 138.4-8). Thus a national lexicon is
created; the sounds that are used form a national alphabet.
Once the idea has become established that words signify meanings, the
community will aim to develop the language so that words imitate the
"ordering" or "regime"
(*intizam*) of the primary concepts
([*Letters*] (122) 139.2-4). This regime includes any
relationships that the concepts have as concepts. For example, two
concepts may be similar; so an effort will be made to find a pair of
similar words to express these concepts. Al-Farabi
notes that this effort may misfire and result in homonymy--a
single word being used for two different concepts ([*Letters*]
(124) 140.8-10). The pressure to copy similarities also leads to
metaphors ([*Letters*] (127) 141.10).
Also some concepts are derived from others; the word for the derived
concept should be grammatically derived from the word for the other
concept. The words for underived concepts should not be grammatically
derived. Al-Farabi notes that in practice this
correlation sometimes fails. For example, he takes it that the
participle "living" (*hayy*) is derived, but
it is sometimes used to signify the underived concept
"animal" ([*Letters*] (26) 74.16, (36) 81.18f).
Likewise the underived concept "is" is sometimes signified
by the derived passive participle *mawjud*
([*Letters*] (84) 113.9).
Also concepts can be combined into compound concepts, and this
possibility will be copied in the language too. ([*Letters*]
(126) 140.20-141.3.) Taking this view, al-Farabi
makes a number of remarks that contain the first explicit formulations
of the thesis of
compositionality.[6]
Al-Farabi clearly believes that mismatches between
words and concepts are a bad thing, but it's less clear why he
believes this, or what he thinks should be done about it. The original
matching was set up by an artless consensus of the community,
presumably because it served some social purpose.
Al-Farabi never analyses in detail what this purpose
might be, or, for example, how it would be damaged by using derived
words for underived concepts. Does he really fear that a mismatch
could lead to a breakdown in communication, even if the whole
community adopts the mismatch? Germann (2015/6: 138f) has suggested
that his fear is more specific: he worries that if mismatches develop,
teachers--including philosophy teachers--may be unable to
pass information reliably to their students.
Another possibility is that he is afraid that a mismatch will cause
errors in logical reasoning, because the relationships between
concepts that make an argument valid will not be visible in the
corresponding words. In [*Expressions*] 102.8-15, after
telling us that demonstrations and syllogisms take place in internal
speech, not external, he comments that
>
>
> most students don't have the ability to imagine how concepts are
> ordered in the mind, so instead one takes expressions that signify the
> concepts, so as to enable the student's mind to make a
> transition from them to the concepts.
>
>
>
Any mismatch between concepts and words could disrupt this process.
In any event, al-Farabi is in no hurry to reform the
language. He is content to continue using the word
*mawjud* for "is".
There is one part of the regime of primary concepts that
al-Farabi never suggests that language should
replicate. Some concepts are more inclusive than others; for example,
"animal" is more inclusive than "human".
Following one reading of Aristotle, al-Farabi believes
that there are ten maximally inclusive simple primary concepts
(ignoring "thing", "concept",
"one", and "being" which include all
concepts). He refers to these ten concepts as "categories"
(*maqulat*, not to be confused with
*ma'qulat* above). But we will prefer to call
them by their alternative name "supreme genera", because
al-Farabi confusingly also applies the name
"category" to all simple primary concepts. Languages do
distinguish the minimally inclusive concepts, those that apply to just
one thing, by using proper names for them. But it's unrealistic
to expect languages to copy the rest of this regime of inclusions, and
we know of no place where al-Farabi suggests that it
should.
Some of the historical processes mentioned above will have the effect
of making people think about the primary concepts and their regime.
Al-Farabi points out that as a result, people will now
have concepts that classify concepts in the soul rather than
identifiable objects in the external world. So these are a new kind of
concept, and al-Farabi calls them "secondary
concepts" (often translated as "second
intelligibles"). Thinking about secondary concepts will give us
"tertiary concepts", and so on to infinity. As examples of
secondary concepts, al-Farabi mentions
"genus", "species", "more/less
inclusive", "known", "concept". (All
this is in [*Letters*] (7,8)
64.9-65.8.)[7]
Although al-Farabi doesn't recommend any
particular reforms of language, he does make some detailed
recommendations for a philosopher who is seeking to translate
philosophy from another language and needs to introduce technical
terms for the purpose. ([*Letters*] (155) 157.19-158.21.)
It would be interesting to compare al-Farabi's
recommendations with his own practice, if we could be sure which of
the technical terms used for translating Greek writers we can credit
to him.
He does introduce some new names for notions that he himself
pioneered. Three noteworthy examples are:
1. He introduces *yufidu* "provides" as a
term of art for saying that the answer to a question posed in a
philosophical debate "provides" information (cf.
Section 4
below). The root is rare in his writings except for this usage, and
its use in a related sense in linguistic writers probably antedates
his use of it (see Giolfo & Hodges 2018).
2. He borrows from the linguists the term
*istithna'* ("exception") as a name for
the inference rules of his hypothetical logic (cf.
Section 6 below).
The choice rests on a formal similarity between these rules and a
property of the syntactic construction known as
"exception".[8]
3. His choice of the name "secondary concept" is based
on an analogy with Porphyry's theory of "second
impositions", i.e., words for talking about
words.[9]
## 3. The Origins of Syllogistic Arts
Al-Farabi's tale of the origins of language runs
on into a tale of how language makes it possible to handle concepts in
new ways. For al-Farabi one key difference between
language and concepts is that language is public and allows
communication between people. Hence many of the new uses of concepts
have to do with social interaction. In each case he is interested in
the development of new skills for handling concepts. Skills involve
instruments and rules for handling these instruments; so the
appearance of a new skill involves an acceptance of the rules
(*qawanin*, singular *qanun*) for
handling its instruments. A bundle of associated skills and their
rules is called an "art"
(*sina'a*).
The first new art that he calls attention to is rhetoric
(*khitaba*), the art of the orator, which uses
concepts in order to persuade people to do or believe certain things.
The main users of this skill are political and religious leaders, who
employ it in order to assert their authority. Alongside rhetoric
al-Farabi mentions the art of poetry
(*shi'r*), which uses concepts in order to bring people
to certain states of mind. He sees this art as most useful for
religious leaders. He also mentions an art which he calls the art of
sophistry. This art embodies the skill of producing bad arguments from
false premises. It's hard to see what could have led him to the
conclusion that there is such an art, beyond the fact that the
Alexandrian syllabus contained, wedged between a book on dialectical
methods and one on rhetorical methods, Aristotle's treatise
*Sophistical Refutations*. Aristotle's treatise is
usually understood to be teaching the art of detecting and refuting
bad arguments, not that of creating them!
One effect of the introduction of language is that people are able to
learn the opinions of other people. They will inevitably discover that
some people disagree with them, not least in speculations about the
nature of the universe. So the art of dialectics or debate
(*jadal*) is introduced in order to resolve differences of
opinion between two people. ([*Letters*] (140,141)
150.2-151.7.) But a dialectical resolution of a disagreement is
no guarantee of the truth of the agreed conclusion; one of the
debaters might just be better at arguing ([*Debate*]
40.9-13).
A realization that dialectics doesn't lead to certain truth will
inspire some individuals to seek other methods that do. At this point
the community discovers the art of "demonstration"
(*burhan*), which establishes truths with certainty.
Al-Farabi believes that among the Greeks this art was
achieved by Plato:
>
>
> Plato was the first to be aware of the demonstrative methods and to
> distinguish them from the dialectical, sophistical, rhetorical, and
> poetical methods. But from his point of view they were distinguished
> in use and according to matter, and in terms of what guidance he
> received from his considerations at leisure and his superior natural
> intelligence. He didn't prescribe universal rules for them.
> Afterwards Aristotle did prescribe such rules in his book
> *Posterior Analytics*. ([*Rhetoric*] 55.13-17)
>
>
>
It was a commonplace in the Neoplatonic schools that the high point of
logic was *Posterior Analytics* with its treatment of knowledge
with certainty. The Neoplatonists also considered that Aristotle had
arranged his *Organon* so that the path up to this summit
through *Categories*, *De Interpretatione*, and
*Prior Analytics* assembled the tools of logic, and the
downward slope from *Posterior Analytics* onwards allowed the
student to apply these tools within demonstrative methods, dialectical
methods, sophistical methods, rhetorical methods, and poetic methods
in turn. Al-Farabi inherited this view of Aristotle;
see [*Aristotle*] pp. 82-93.
He also inherited the zeal of the Neoplatonic schools to catalogue the
ingredients of logic. Thus in [*Letters*] he catalogued the
logical arts according to the social needs that brought them into
existence, while in [*Aristotle*] he catalogued them according
to the books of the *Organon* that Aristotle devoted to them.
These two principles of classification led to essentially the same
divisions between logical arts. But sometimes he used principles that
draw distinctions in different places. For example in
[*Syllogism*] he classified kinds of logic by the syllogisms
(i.e. two-premise inferences) that they used; we come to this
classification in Section 6 below. Elsewhere he classified kinds of
logic by the kinds of premise that they accepted in their syllogisms.
All the kinds of logic, even the less syllogistic kinds, must have
rules about what to adopt as starting premises. In the case of
rhetoric, practicality implies that the orator should choose premises
that the audience will accept; likewise in dialectics it makes sense
to start with premises that have some plausibility.
Al-Farabi believes that in practice the community will
insist on restrictions that add a note of objectivity: for example,
that experts agree to the premise, or that nobody positively disagrees
with it. He formulates some conditions along these lines, including
that the premises must be at least "standard"
(*masshur*) or "received"
(*maqbul*). (For discussion of such conditions and where
they apply, see Aouad 1992 and Black 1990: Chapter 5A. Chatti 2017
reviews how al-Farabi catalogues the starting points of
inferences in hypothetical logic. Kleven 2023 studies the treatment of
the starting points of reasoning in some of
al-Farabi's introductory essays, and adds some
interesting information about the manuscripts.)
Rhetorical reasoning might be the hardest to make sense of,
particularly when [*Letters*] suggests that the rhetorician's
job is done when he or she has persuaded the audience. Surely that aim
could be achieved by means that don't involve logic at all? But
recently it has come to be accepted that the Latin essay
[*Didascalia*] published in [*Rhetoric*] is probably a
translation of the prologue to al-Farabi's lost
*Long Commentary on Rhetoric*. In fact the work goes way beyond
vague remarks about methods of persuasion; see Woerther 2020. For
example al-Farabi observes that medical reasoning about
what remedies to apply to this present invalid, and agricultural
reasoning about how to increase the yield of this particular field,
cannot be demonstrative since they apply only to this particular
individual (invalid or field); so we have to take them as rhetorical
reasoning (Woerther (2020 p. 346)). On this reckoning, much of the
reasoning of our most respected experts must count as rhetoric.
In sections 23 and 24 towards the end of *Prior Analytics* ii,
Aristotle discusses argument by induction and argument by analogy,
with a view to showing that both of them are reducible to syllogism.
Since [*Syllogism*] is an epitome of *Prior Analytics*,
al-Farabi closes the book with some sections in which
he gives his own reductions of induction and analogy to syllogism.
Some manuscripts of [*Syllogism*], and some manuscripts of the
later work [*Short
Syllogism*],[10]
include a pair of essays which we will refer to as the Tailpiece; the
first essay is on the logical device of "transfer", and
the second is on the application of this device to reduce arguments in
Islamic jurisprudence (*fiqh*) to syllogisms. In the first of
these two essays al-Farabi refers to a number of named argument forms
(for example "transfer from the observed to the
unobserved"), and it is clear that he is referring to earlier
debates about these argument forms; but there is no agreement on
whether the debates were in Roman Empire medical circles or in Islamic
theology.
One particular strand in this complex is a distinction that
al-Farabi makes between two forms of analogy, which he
describes as *tahlil* and *tarkib*
respectively. Some authors have read these words as
"analysis" and "synthesis" respectively, and
tried to read these as descriptions of two different kinds of formal
proof. But this is certainly wrong, since the distinction that
al-Farabi himself draws between the two kinds of
argument is not about the form of the resulting proof, but about the
criteria for success in the search for a middle term.
Al-Farabi himself is a little conflicted at this point;
in loyalty to Aristotle he wants to emphasise the reduction to
syllogism, but the point he makes about search, which is central for
his application to *fiqh* in the second essay, is not about the
form of the final syllogistic proof at all. (See Chatti and Hodges
2020 for further details on the Tailpiece, and Hodges 2020 for the
increasing interest in search algorithms in this
period.)[11]
Further remarks comparing al-Farabi's dialectics with
Islamic *fiqh* can be found in Gyekye (1989) and Young (2017:
539-543).
## 4. Requests and Questions
Al-Farabi has explained that language grew out of a
need to communicate requests. Requests and questions of various kinds
are a central feature of his thinking. At [*Debate*] 43.2f he
distinguishes two main kinds of request: those that are requests for a
commitment, and those that are requests for knowledge or information.
This division corresponds to the roles of questions in debate and in
science respectively. We begin with debate.
### 4.1 Questions in Debate
Al-Farabi cites Aristotle as saying that the primary
aim in debate is to refute proposed views; reaching agreement is a
secondary aim ([*Debate*] 14.7-9). Accordingly the rules
of debate provide that one of the debaters, known as the
"questioner" (*sa'il*), has the role of
refuting the views offered by the other debater (the
"responder", *mujib*). It's also the
questioner's task to elicit from the responder commitments to
statements. (Committing is called "conceding" or
"submitting", *taslim*.) The questioner must
then try to refute these statements and the responder must try to
defend them. The questioner elicits a commitment by presenting to the
responder a pair of incompatible possibilities, and the responder must
choose which possibility to defend. This pair of incompatible
possibilities is referred to as "what was sought after"
(*matlub*, in Latin *quaesitum)*, or the
"question" (*mas'ala*).
The simplest case is where the questioner requires the responder to
commit to a view on whether some primary concept is instantiated in
the world. For example, "Is there or is there not a
vacuum?" More complicated, because it combines two concepts, is
a question like "Is the sky spherical or not?" More
bizarre, "Stone and human, which of the two is animal?"
([*Debate*] 43.16-20) When the responder has made a
commitment, the questioner must devise a syllogism whose conclusion
contradicts the commitment, and then attempt to get the responder to
commit to the premises of this syllogism and to its validity. The
responder is allowed to challenge on any of these points, whereupon
the two participants swap roles.
Al-Farabi comments that the rules of debate have been
found useful for other purposes besides resolving differences of
opinion. For example, in demonstrative science debate trains the
participants to be nimble and systematic thinkers; it clears out of
the way sophistical nonsense, and gives prima facie conclusions that
can then be checked by demonstrative methods. In fact it's not
humanly possible to reach philosophical truth without engaging in
debate. ([*Debate*] 29.21-38.3.) The relationship between
questioner and responder can serve as a template for the relationship
of teacher to pupil, so far as this is not simply passing information
from teacher to pupil. It can also be a basis for collaborative
research. ([*Demonstration*] 77.1-83.9.)
### 4.2 Questions Seeking Information
Al-Farabi's treatment of information-seeking
questions is strongly influenced by two contexts in which
Aristotle's *Organon* uses question words. The first of
these is in *Categories*, where Aristotle (at least as
al-Farabi reads him) classifies primary concepts under
the ten supreme genera. Aristotle explains his classification partly
through question words: "how much" (Arabic *kam*),
"how" (*kayfa*), "where"
(*ayna*), "when" (*mata*).
Al-Farabi takes note of most of these question words,
and adds two more: "what" (*ma*) and
"which" (*ayyu*) ([*Letters*] (166) 165.17,
(183) 181.16.) In [*Expressions*] 47.5-12 he notes that
the answers to some of these questions can be classified by the
question word or a word derived from it: "quantity"
(*kamiyya*), "quality" (*kayfiyya*),
"quiddity" or "whatness"
(*mahiyya*). (See the discussion of these questions in
Diebler 2005.)
The second context is the second book of *Posterior Analytics*.
In the opening lines of this book Aristotle lists the four
"things that we seek", namely that it is so (*annahu
yujadu*), why it is (*li-madha*), what it is
(*ma*) and which it is (*ayyu*). In
[*Letters*] (210) 200.16 al-Farabi adds the
question "is it the case that" (*hal*), which turns
Aristotle's "that it is" into a question.
Large parts of both [*Expressions*] and [*Letters*] are
devoted to explaining how we can elicit philosophical information by
asking these and similar
questions.[12]
Thus for each primary concept we can ask "What is it"?
Al-Farabi defines the genus (*jins*) of the
concept to be the answer to this question. By asking "which
thing" (in that genus), we get a more specific description that
provides the species (*naw'*) below the genus.
Al-Farabi explains how further questions can elicit the
differentiae and the definitions of concepts. The
"essence" (*dhat*) of a concept consists of
the concepts included in the definition of the concept; these concepts
in the essence are also described as "constitutive"
(*muqawwim*) for the concept.
Al-Farabi tries hard to convince us that the
philosophers' questions are a natural extension of everyday
questions. (Diebler 2005 draws a plausible comparison with ordinary
language philosophy.) But the effort hardly succeeds. In what everyday
context would we ask, about a date-palm, "What is it?" and
accept the answer "It's a body"? ([*Letters*]
(167) 166.16) The outcome is that al-Farabi
unintentionally raises problems that are still resonant in the
philosophy of questions. Compare "It's a body" with
the answer "[He] is a person who is over three inches
tall" discussed by Cross and Roelofsen 2018.
## 5. The Definition of Logic
In his [*Demonstration*] (64.5-7)
al-Farabi tells us:
>
>
> Two arts or sciences differ through having different subjects
> (*mawdu'*). If their subjects are identical
> then the arts or sciences are identical; if their subjects are
> different then the arts or sciences are different. Their subjects can
> differ either by having different features (*ahwal*,
> singular *hal*) or in themselves.
>
>
>
Thus an art or science--al-Farabi is very little
exercised about the difference between the two--studies some
entities called its subjects, and it ascribes to these entities some
features. Like other Aristotelians, al-Farabi flips
between saying (for example) that the subjects of arithmetic are
numbers and that the subject of arithmetic is number; the two
locutions mean the same.
In [*Letters*] sections 11-18 al-Farabi
undertakes to identify several arts or sciences in these terms, namely
"the art of logic and the sciences of nature, politics,
mathematics and metaphysics". The first step is to identify
their subjects. In all these cases, he says, the "primary
subjects" are the primary concepts ([*Letters*] 66.20f).
For example, in mathematics we study primary concepts from the point
of view of quantity, abstracting from their other features
([*Letters*] (15) 67.19-68.5). (See Druart 2007 and Menn
2008 on the important question of how metaphysics fits into this
picture.)
Al-Farabi tells us what features of the primary
concepts are studied in logic:
>
>
> Insofar as [the primary concepts] are signified by expressions, and
> insofar as they are universals, and insofar as they are predicates or
> subjects, and insofar as they are defined in terms of each other, and
> insofar as they are asked about and taken in a question about them,
> they are logical. They are taken so as to investigate the compounds of
> them, one with another, where the aforementioned things attach to
> them, and the features of the compounds after they have been
> compounded. ([*Letters*] (12)
> 67.1-5).[13]
>
>
>
>
He gives no examples, but here is one. In his book
[*Syllogism*] 27.6f he claims that the following argument is a
valid syllogism:
>
>
> No stone is an animal. Some body is an animal.
>
>
>
> This yields: Some body is not a stone.
>
>
>
We can paraphrase his claim:
(\*)
If a first sentence is taken as universal negative with subject
"stone" and predicate "animal", and a second
sentence is existential affirmative etc., and a third sentence etc.,
then the third sentence follows from the first two.
This paraphrase (\*) illustrates why "predicate" and
"subject" are listed among the logical features, and also
why logic has to consider compounds of primary concepts (since the
three sentences express propositions, which are compounds of
concepts). Al-Farabi's reference to being
"asked about and taken in a question about them" could
refer either to dialectical questions, or to the questions that
extract information about concepts, or possibly to both.
The features listed as characterizing the art of logic are concepts
that classify other concepts, and so they are secondary concepts. This
distinguishes logic from mathematics and natural science. For example,
natural science finds causes, but these causes are "not outside
the categories" ([*Letters*] (16) 68.17).
By describing simple primary concepts as the "first" or
"primary" subjects of logic, al-Farabi
suggests that there might be further subjects of logic. This makes
sense; why shouldn't the rules of logic apply to secondary
concepts just as much as to primary concepts? In fact the way
al-Farabi has set things up would allow him to explain
how this should go. Laws about secondary concepts will need tertiary
concepts. But there is no need to restate the laws of logic using
tertiary concepts, because "the features that attach to the
primary concepts are exactly the same as those that attach to the
secondary concepts", and so on all the way up
([*Letters*] (9) 65.16f).
There is an obvious criticism of al-Farabi's
definition of logic, namely that the features that he lists are too
vague. For example, how could we use his list to determine whether the
art of poetry is or is not a part of logic? The real problem is that
for al-Farabi himself with his Neoplatonic heritage,
logic consists of whatever Aristotle said in the *Organon*, and
al-Farabi never comes near finding any abstract way of
characterizing this body of
material.[14]
Al-Farabi gives an even vaguer characterization of the
subjects of logic in his [*Catalogue*] (59.9-11):
>
>
> As for the subjects of logic, about which it gives rules, they are
> concepts insofar as expressions signify them, and expressions insofar
> as they signify concepts.
>
>
>
This definition could have been copied from a text in the Neoplatonic
tradition.
We return briefly to the question why al-Farabi
includes the subject of categories in a logic syllabus. Commentaries
in the Alexandrian tradition normally started with a statement of the
purpose of the material to be discussed.
Al-Farabi's epitome [*Categories*] has no
such statement, but the surviving fragments of the longer
[*Commentary on Categories*] do address the question. They tell
us (p. 196) that Aristotle's *Categories* was intended to
catalogue the simple universal primary concepts, but Aristotle found
it sufficient to catalogue the ten supreme genera instead. Some people
(p. 202) didn't think *Categories* was specifically
intended for logic; but "under the conditions we have mentioned,
the contents of *Categories* turn out to be a specific part of
logic". But in fact no such conditions have been mentioned, at
least in the surviving fragments. What needs to be shown is that the
features (the *ahwal*) of categories studied in the
first book of the syllabus are ones that will serve some purpose in
later books. But this issue is not addressed at all.
Al-Farabi does address it in [*Rhetoric*]
87.16-89.4, where he says that the terms of premises can be in
any of the ten supreme genera, in any combination. This only confirms
the suspicion that the supreme genera are irrelevant to logical
reasoning.
## 6. Tools for Inference
In this section we run quickly through
al-Farabi's formal systems of logic. We assume
some knowledge of Aristotle's syllogistics, as in Smith (2022).
Al-Farabi discusses four logical systems: 6.1
Categorical syllogisms, 6.2 hypothetical syllogisms, 6.3 modal
syllogisms, 6.4 demonstrative syllogisms.
### 6.1 Categorical Logic
In [*Syllogism*] and [*Short Syllogism*]
Al-Farabi recognizes three figures of categorical
syllogisms, following
Aristotle.[15]
In these three figures he recognizes respectively four, four, and six
valid moods, as listed by Smith (2022) but not always in the same
order. (For example in [*Syllogism*] he puts *Darii*
before *Celarent*). Following Aristotle again, he regards the
first figure syllogisms as "perfect", i.e., self-evident
and not in need of justification. For the moods in second and third
figures he gives justifications by reduction to first figure,
following Aristotle in the main. (His chief departure from Aristotle
in these justifications is that he never uses proof by *reductio ad
absurdum*, though he does recognize such proofs as valid.)
Aristotle's justification of
*Darapti*[16]
relies on the conversion implication: from "Every *B* is
an *A*" infer "Some *A* is a *B*"
(cf. [*Syllogism*] 30.3). This implication fails to hold if we
allow "Every *B* is an *A*" to be true when
there are no *B*s. Accordingly al-Farabi declares
that "Every *B* is an *A*" is false unless there
is at least one *B* ([*Categories*] 124.14). Though he
sometimes seems to forget he said this, he is the earliest logician on
record as having spelled out this implication of "Every *B*
is an *A*".
Probably his main difference from Aristotle in categorical syllogisms
is his treatment of the pairs of formal premises (i.e., with letters
for terms) where Aristotle says "no syllogism occurs" in
the sense that no syllogistic conclusion follows validly.
Al-Farabi calls these premise-pairs
"nonproductive" (*ghayr muntij*). Aristotle had
used the fact that valid inference rules preserve truth as a means to
proving nonproductivity of a formal premise-pair; for any proposed
conclusion, he found nouns that could be put for the letters, in such
a way that the premises came out true and the conclusion false. During
the Roman Empire period a tendency developed for logicians to skip
these proofs and fall back instead on "laws of syllogism"
that were supposed to give necessary and sufficient conditions for a
premise-pair to be productive (cf. Lee 1984: 119f). This was generally
a lapse from the rigor of Aristotle's work, because the
arguments given to justify the laws of syllogism were of a poor
standard. Though al-Farabi does once briefly mention
Aristotle's counterexample method ([*Syllogism*]
20.2-5), in practice he relies entirely on the laws of
syllogism. By contrast the earlier logic texts of Paul the Persian and
Ibn al-Muqaffa', both heirs of the Alexandrian view, copied
Aristotle's nonproductivity proofs in categorical logic with
total formal rigor.
For further discussion of al-Farabi's categorical
syllogisms, see Chatti and Hodges 2020 and Chatti 2019.
### 6.2 Hypothetical Logic
A hypothetical sentence consists of two shorter sentences joined
together, as in the connected (*muttasil*) form "If
*p* then *q*" or the separated
(*munfasil*) form "Either *p* or
*q*". For the logic of these sentences,
al-Farabi confines his attention almost entirely to
simple inferences like modus ponens:
>
>
> If this visible thing is a human, then it is an animal; but it is a
> human. Therefore it is an animal.
>
>
>
or an inference with exclusive disjunction:
>
>
> This number is either even or odd; but it is even. Therefore it is not
> odd.
>
>
>
His treatment is so similar to the contents of Boethius' *De
Syllogismis Hypotheticis* that they must have drawn on a common
source now lost.
Al-Farabi points out that hypothetical sentences can be
chained so as to form "compound syllogisms", as for
example in
>
>
> Either *p* or *q*. If *p* then not *r*. If not
> *r* then *s*. If *s* then *t*. Not *t*.
> Therefore *q*.
>
>
>
This formalizes an argument at his [*Short Syllogism*]
90.6-9. He also gives examples of categorical syllogisms chained
together--though these can be found already in Aristotle.
### 6.3 Modal Logic
There is almost no mention of modal syllogisms in any of
al-Farabi's surviving works. He must have
discussed modal syllogisms in his [*Commentary on Prior
Analytics*]; but the relevant part of this work is lost and we
have to rely on citations by Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides. These
citations between them tell us of only one modal syllogistic mood that
al-Farabi either accepted or
rejected.[17]
From [*Commentary on De Interpretatione*] 193.3-19 and
quotations in Maimonides, we know that al-Farabi
claimed, against Galen, that logic with possibility statements is
useful in practical arts where actual outcomes have to be predicted,
such as medicine, agriculture, and navigation (Schacht & Meyerhof
1937: 67). This looks at first sight like a confusion between
possibility and probability. But more likely al-Farabi
believed that the laws of modal logic could be tweaked so as to work
with "Probably" in place of a modal operator. In fact
al-Farabi does say at [*Demonstration*]
44.20-22 that in many of the arts, "Necessarily every
*A* is a *B*" and "Most *A*s are
*B*s" are treated as equivalent. (But wouldn't this
correlate "Probably" with "Necessarily" rather
than "Possibly"? Al-Farabi is not here to
answer the question.)
There is further evidence of al-Farabi experimenting
with other sentence forms in modal logic. Both Avicenna (Street 2001)
and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, *Maqalat* 102.13f) cite
al-Farabi as considering syllogistic premises
containing "insofar as", for example, "Every
*A* can be a *B* insofar as it is a *B*".
From Averroes (Ibn Rushd, *Maqalat* 129.11-17)
we also know that al-Farabi observed that to get the
syllogism
>
>
> Every *C* is a possible *B*. Every *B* is a possible
> *A*.
>
>
>
> Therefore every *C* is a possible *A*.
>
>
>
(a form that Aristotle accepted as perfect) we need that "Every
*B*" in the second premise means "Every possible
*B*"; otherwise the *C*s might be possible *B*s
but not actual *B*s, so that they would escape the quantifier of
the second premise, and hence violate the *dictum de omni*.
From this al-Farabi inferred that at least in this
modal syllogism, Aristotle intended 'Every *B*' to be read as
'Every possible *B*'.
Exactly what al-Farabi meant by the *dictum de
omni* is hard to make out from Averroes' account. But
al-Farabi's use of it seems to contain an attempt
to give a set-theoretic justification of
*Barbara*[18]
in modal contexts. Another quotation from Averroes (Ibn Rushd,
*Maqalat* 154.18f) shows al-Farabi
using the *dictum de omni* (again presumably a set-theoretic
argument) to justify a syllogism where the major premise has a
negative subject:
>
>
> A sculpture is not an animal. What is not an animal is not a
> human.
>
>
>
> Therefore a sculpture is not a human.
>
>
>
This is
*Celarent*[19]
but with the middle term made negative.
### 6.4 Demonstrative Logic
We saw in
Section 3
above that al-Farabi believed Aristotle had prescribed
universal rules for demonstrative reasoning in his *Posterior
Analytics*. But apart from some discussion of techniques for
finding definitions, the only rules that al-Farabi
offers us in [*Demonstration*] are categorical syllogisms in
mood *Barbara* with extra pieces clamped on. (These are in the
section [*Demonstration*] 33.1-39.4; they are quoted in
Strobino 2019.)
This is disappointing, but at least it's clear where the extra
pieces come from. Demonstrative reasoning gives knowledge with
certainty, and in [*Certainty*] al-Farabi writes
down some necessary and sufficient conditions for certainty. (These
"conditions of certainty" are listed by
Lopez-Farjeat 2020 and discussed by Black 2006.) The condition
that is relevant here is the last one:
>
>
> If the previous conditions hold, it is not accidental that they
> do.
>
>
>
([*Certainty*] 100.18.) In other words they hold by reason of
essence. Also in a discussion of demonstration in
[*Attainment*] 51.15-52.17 al-Farabi tells
us that demonstration must proceed from some primary concepts, and the
concepts in question are those that are answers to the questions
"what", "by what", "how",
"from what", and "for what". These are not
exactly the questions listed in
Section 4.2 above,
but they are clearly in that territory. Again they indicate that a
demonstration should follow from the constitutive properties of the
subjects under discussion, i.e., from their essences.
Suppose we have constitutive properties of *A* and *B* which
between them ensure that every *A* is a *B*, and likewise
constitutive properties which ensure that every *B* is a
*C*. Then by *Barbara* we know that every *A* is a
*C*; but for demonstrative certainty we want "Every
*A* is a *C*" to be ensured by the constitutive
properties of *A* and *C*. Some of
al-Farabi's syllogisms confirm that this is so,
considering different kinds of constitutive
property.[20]
In some other cases the constitutive properties fail to yield the
required sentences, and al-Farabi comments that the
syllogism gives fact but not cause.
Galston (1981) offers reasons for thinking that
al-Farabi may have considered demonstrative proofs a
distant ideal, to be reached only after a substantial amount of work
at the dialectical
level.[21]
## 7. Logical Consequence
Al-Farabi's most sophisticated definition of
syllogism is at [*Expressions*] 100.3-5: a syllogism
is
>
>
> things that are arranged in the mind in an order
> (*tartib*) such that when the things have been put in this
> order, the mind as a result finds itself unavoidably looking down at
> something else of which it was ignorant before, so that it knows it
> now, and thus the mind is equipped to submit to the thing it looked
> down at, just as if it [already] knew that thing.
>
>
>
The reference to "order" must owe something to
Aristotle's remark at *Topics* 156a22-26 that in a
debate, the questioner can sometimes hoodwink the responder by asking
the questions in the wrong order. But by bringing the notion of order
into the definition of syllogism itself, al-Farabi
opens up a new chapter in logic (see Hodges 2018 on this and
Avicenna's development of the theme).
For further illumination on al-Farabi's
understanding of logical consequence, we need to explore what he says
about logical rules. At [*Catalogue*] 53.5-9 he tells
us:
>
>
> The art of logic provides in general the rules whose nature is to
> constitute the intellect and to guide a person along the correct and
> true path in everything where there can be conceptual error, and the
> rules that protect and guard him against mistakes and slips and errors
> in concepts, and the rules through which one tests things in concepts
> where one can't be trusted not to make an error.
>
>
>
But these are Neoplatonic
commonplaces.[22]
Elsewhere al-Farabi says deeper things about the rules
of logic, as follows.
Recall from
Section 3
above that on al-Farabi's understanding, the
correct methods of logic were known by the time of Plato, who had them
"according to matter", and it was Aristotle who
reformulated them as "universal rules". He very probably
has the same thing in mind when he says that Aristotle in *Prior
Analytics* considered declarative sentences "from the point
of view of their composition (*ta'lif*) and not of
their matter" ([*Commentary on De Interpretatione*]
53.3f). The point he is making here becomes clear if we go back to the
example syllogism spelled out at
(\*) in Section 5 above.
This is actually al-Farabi's second shot at this
syllogistic mood. In his first shot ([*Syllogism*] 26.11f) he
followed Aristotle's preferred style and used letters *A*,
*B*, *C* in place of the "matters" stone,
animal, and body respectively. So a corresponding paraphrase will
read
(\*\*)
For all primary concepts *A*, *B*, and *C*, if a
first sentence is taken as universal negative with subject *A*
and predicate *B*, etc. etc.
Here (\*\*) is a universal rule in the sense that it is for all
*A*, *B*, and *C*; the premises and conclusion contain
no matter and are bare compositions.
Mallet (1994: 329-335) calls attention to a passage in
[*Analysis*] 95.5-8, where al-Farabi says
he will explain "how we define syllogism" and how it is
used.
>
>
> Firstly, it is through knowledge of the topics, which are the
> universal premises whose particulars (*juz'iyyat*)
> are used as major premises in a syllogism and in each separate art.
>
>
>
>
If "particulars" means what it usually means in such a
context, namely existentially quantified statements, then this is just
wrong: existentially quantified statements are hardly ever major
premises in syllogisms. But as Mallet points out, the passage makes
sense if the "universal premises" are statements like (\*\*)
and their "particulars" are corresponding statements of
the form
(\*).
Al-Farabi is then saying that natural language
syllogisms are validated through being instances of universal rules
stating that all arguments of a certain form are valid. If this is a
correct reading, it makes al-Farabi a formal logician
in a strong sense. And indeed some writers have written about
al-Farabi's "formalism" (Zimmermann
1981: xl).
However, there are reasons for caution. As Mallet's paper shows,
al-Farabi in his further discussion of topics, both in
[*Analysis*] and in [*Debate*], heads off in completely
different directions (which are too complex to pursue here, but see
Hasnawi 2009 and Karimullah 2014). Moreover al-Farabi
has a habit of justifying inferences by reference to real-world
information about their terms (i.e., their matter) that is not
contained in the premises. He does this with the syllogistic mood
*Baroco* ([*Syllogism*] 27.8-12, [*Short
Syllogism*] 79.5-12), and there is a one-premise example at
[*Commentary on De Interpretatione*]
136.10.[23]
Elsewhere he plays fast and loose with the "forms" of
arguments, for example reducing a many-premise version of induction to
a two-premise categorical syllogism without giving any indication of
how a string of premises are reduced to a single one
([*Syllogism*] 35.14-18).
Al-Farabi often refers to "universal
rules". But they need not be laws that can be shown to hold
without exceptions. Take for example his essay [*Canons*],
which closes (272.16) with a statement that the work has presented
"universal rules" of poetry. The work consists mostly of
classifications of different types of poetry, together with
definitions of terms used in analyzing poetry, and a broad comparison
with decorative arts. These "rules" are at best things
that a person who aspires to work on the theory of poetry ought to
know.
In any case the only kind of justification that
al-Farabi offers for logical rules is that they have
been found useful for certain purposes in the community that uses them
(cf.
Section 3 above).
All in all, al-Farabi treats the formal rules of logic
as heuristics rather than as laws of a scientific theory. A case can
be made for viewing al-Farabi as one of the creators of
what is now known as "informal logic", as in the texts of
Hitchcock (2017) and Walton (1989). The pivotal role that he gives to
dialogue places him in the same world as Walton's book.
## 8. Truth and Falsehood
Al-Farabi defines a concept to be "true"
(*sadiq*) if it is the same
(*bi-'aynihi*) in the external world as it is in the soul
([*Letters*] (88) 116.3f) For this definition to make sense,
the concept need not be propositional. For example ([*Letters*]
118.5f), the concept "vacuum" is not true, because it
exists only in the mind and not in the external world (Abed (1991:
111-115) discusses the relationship between existence and truth
in al-Farabi).
Al-Farabi quite often uses the derived causative noun
*tasdiq*, which has a range of meanings between
"verification" (i.e., gaining certainty that a thing is
true) and "assent" (i.e., treating a thing as true).
Al-Farabi expounds this distinction at
[*Demonstration*] 20.4-21.12. He also points to the range
of meanings of *tasdiq* at [*Attainment*]
90.6f: it can occur "either through certain demonstration or
through persuasion". Presumably the certain demonstration brings
about verification and the persuasion brings about assent.
At [*Expressions*] 86.17-87.4 al-Farabi
tells us that teaching has three steps:
"conceptualization" (*tasawwur*), where we
understand what the concept is and what our teacher is telling us
about it; *tasdiq*; and "committing to
memory"
(*hifz*).[24]
[*Demonstration*] 80.22, in another passage on teaching, adds
that "We can seek *tasdiq* either of simple
things or of compound". For al-Farabi a
proposition is always compound, so he is telling us that
non-propositional concepts can be assented to.
The view that both propositions and non-propositional concepts can be
true runs fairly deep in al-Farabi's thinking,
although he recognizes that not everybody agrees with it
([*Commentary on De Interpretatione*] 52.13f). For example,
this view allows him to think of definition of non-propositional
concepts and demonstration of propositions as overlapping procedures;
there can be definitions that are identical with demonstrations except
in the order of their parts ([*Demonstration*]
47.11).[25]
Avicenna a hundred years later found it essential to distinguish
between non-propositional and propositional concepts. Provocatively he
used al-Farabi's own terminology of
*tasawwur* and *tasdiq* to fix the
distinction; for Avicenna any concept can be conceptualized, but only
propositions can go on to be
verified.[26]
A sentence can be switched between true and false by adding a negative
particle, for example, "It is not the case that"
(*laysa*). But it matters where the negative particle is put;
al-Farabi discusses a number of cases, ad hoc with no
clear overall pattern. One case that he discusses in detail is where
the negation is attached to a noun, as when we form the noun
"not-just" from the noun "just". (Adjectives
are counted as nouns.) Following Theophrastus (Fortenbaugh et al.
1992: 148-153) he identifies this kind of negation as
"metathetic" (*'uduli*); he takes
the resulting metathetic sentence to be an affirmation, not a denial.
Nothing can be both just and not-just, but there are things that are
neither, for example infants. So an infant is not just, but it is also
not not-just. For a similar reason the infant is not unjust. Also it
is false that the infant is just, and false that it is not-just.
Likewise it is false (rather than meaningless) that every heat is
curvilinear ([*Categories*] 125.8). (Thom 2008 steers a clear
path through these notions.)
Before al-Farabi, metathesis seems to have played
little or no role in rules of inference. So an example in
al-Farabi with a metathetic subject term is worth
noting:
>
>
> If every human is an animal, then every non-animal is a non-human.
>
>
>
This appears in his ([*Analysis*] 114.11f), where he introduces
it as a topic. (Fallahi 2019 discusses this example.)
Al-Farabi holds that "Come here" is neither
true nor false, but "You must come here", which can be
used in place of it (*yaqumu maqama(hu)*), is true or
false ([*Short De Interpretatione*] 47.3-48.1). The
reason is that the first sentence, unlike the second, has the wrong
shape to be true or false. He could be read as saying that every
command has the same meaning as some indicative sentence, but truth
and falsehood depend on the form of words used, not just on the
meaning. But closer inspection shows that he uses the phrase
*yaqumu maqama* for some quite weak equivalences
where the two sentences in question definitely mean different things.
For example, he uses the phrase when a questioner in a debate asks a
question with a metathetic affirmation in place of a denial
([*Commentary on De Interpretatione*] 136.6). His words for
different kinds of equivalence (for example, *bi-manzila*,
"in the same role as", which will be familiar to readers
of Classical Arabic linguistics) deserve closer study. Having written
[*Expressions*] and [*Letters*], he certainly deserves
to have his prepositional phrases taken seriously.
At [*Commentary on De Interpretatione*] 89.12-100.25
Al-Farabi presents a distinctive view of statements
about the future (cf. Adamson 2006, Knuuttila 2020). In connection
with a future battle, the disjunction "The battle either will or
will not take place" is a necessary proposition and hence true.
But since the future is indeterminate, neither of the sentences
"The battle will take place" and "The battle will
not take place" is true; moreover the lapse of truth value is
something intrinsic in the world, it is not just our ignorance.
Granted, if Allah knows that Zayd will leave home tomorrow, then it is
true now that Zayd will leave home tomorrow, and this implication is a
necessary truth. But the necessary truth of this implication
doesn't entail the necessary truth of its conclusion, and hence
Zayd still has the freedom to choose. Al-Farabi
doesn't make clear whether he is doubting the modal
inference
>
>
> Necessarily if *p* then *q*. Necessarily *p*. Therefore
> necessarily *q*
>
>
>
or whether he is allowing that there may be restrictions on what Allah
necessarily knows. (Hasnawi [1985: 28f] relates this passage to Muslim
debates about Allah's foreknowledge.)
## 9. Foundations of Arabic
In several works al-Farabi analyses features of Arabic
as a language. Some of these works contain comparisons between Arabic
and other languages: Greek, Syriac, Persian, and Sogdian in
[*Letters*], Greek and Persian in [*Commentary on De
Interpretatione*], and Greek in [*Expressions*].
Al-Farabi's comments on Greek include several
mistranslations and dubious grammatical remarks, making it clear that
he didn't read Greek (for al-Farabi's
knowledge of languages see Zimmermann 1981: xlviif). Also
al-Farabi has a strong tendency to classify languages
as (1) Arabic and (2) "other languages". So these
comparisons are far from being a serious contribution to comparative
linguistics, and one asks why he includes them.
On reading the comparisons, a pattern emerges.
Al-Farabi starts from a theory of the regime of
concepts (cf.
Section 2
above), and his chief concern is how well Arabic reflects this
regime. The role of "other languages" is always to
illustrate how other languages reflect the regime of concepts where
Arabic fails to do so. As Menn puts it, "in practice, his
reconstructed Greek serves as an ideal logical language, *i.e.*
a language in which grammatical form always tracks logical form"
(2008: 68).
Al-Farabi's starting point is the concepts
required for sentences that appear in categorical syllogisms, such
as
>
>
> Zayd is human. Every horse is animal. Some horse is not stone.
>
>
>
Here "Zayd" , "horse", "animal",
"stone" signify simple primary concepts; the proper name
"Zayd" signifies a particular (*juz'*), and
the other three words signify universals (*kulli*).
"Every" and "some" are quantifiers
(*sur*), and "is" is a copula
(*rabit*) signifying the connection between two
primary concepts so as to form an affirmation or a denial
([*Commentary on De Interpretatione*] 102.17)
Al-Farabi groups all these words into two classes: noun
(*ism*) for those signifying primary concepts, and particle
(*harf*) for the remainder. (Adjectives count as nouns.)
He makes clear that the particles are a disparate group and need
further classification ([*Expressions*] 42.8-12).
Al-Farabi introduces a distinction between concepts
that apply to a thing permanently and those (called accident,
*'arad*) that apply only temporarily. As a result,
concepts have a temporal regime, and language should reflect this.
Al-Farabi is at his most a priori here, claiming that
the temporal regime of concepts should be represented by a system of
three tenses: past, present, and future. We don't know whether
he simply failed to notice other ways in which time is represented in
Arabic grammar (for example, continuous tenses and pluperfect
constructions), or for some reason he dismissed these features as
marginal.
Broadly following Aristotle, al-Farabi adds to noun and
particle a third class, namely verb (*kalima*). A verb
simultaneously expresses three pieces of meaning: a simple primary
concept, a copular linking, and a tense (and hence a time). Thus in
"Zayd walked", the verb "walked" expresses (i)
the primary concept "walking", (ii) a linking of this
concept to the concept of Zayd, and (iii) a past tense.
In spite of his blind spot about tenses,
al-Farabi's comments on verbs in Arabic contain
some of his best linguistic insights. For example, he notes that since
tenses are needed only for talking about accidents, one should not
expect to find a verb whose primary concept is a permanent notion such
as "human" (*insan*). He tests this by
constructing a verb from "human", namely
*ta'annasa*. By the rules of Arabic, one would understand
it to signify something with a temporal feature, namely
"becoming a human" ([*Commentary on De
Interpretatione*] 34.4-9). Al-Farabi also
uses a quite subtle linguistic argument to show that Arabic has a word
that can express pure tense without copula or primary concept. This is
the word *kana*, as in "Zayd was walking",
*zaydun kana yamshi*. We can see that there is no
copula in *kana*, he tells us, because "Zayd is
walking", *zaydun yamshi*, already contains a copula
in the verb *yamshi* ([*Commentary on De
Interpretatione*] 42.6-18). We even find the beginnings of
an analysis of the structure of events in
al-Farabi's discussion of how the present tense
can signify either a point of time or an interval ([*Commentary on
De Interpretatione*] 40.3-41.18).
## 10. Poetry and Music
For al-Farabi, music theory sits on the very edge of
being a syllogistic art along with rhetoric and poetry:
>
>
> ... it becomes clear that [the theoretical art of music] has much
> in common with that of the scholars in the linguistic arts from the
> people of each tongue, and has much in common with the art of rhetoric
> and the art of poetry, both of which are parts of the art of logic in
> many things. ([*Music*] 173)
>
>
>
The link to poetry is clear, he tells us, given that poetry is
perfected by being set to music. Besides this there are formal
similarities: poetry is formed by concatenating letters from a finite
alphabet, and music is formed by concatenating sounds from a finite
palette. Al-Farabi grants that in the case of music the
palette is dictated by nature, whereas the letters of a national
alphabet are adopted by convention in that nation ([*Music*]
120f). But he notes that in some cultures the music accompanying a
poem is counted as a part of the poem, and that this can be justified
by the fact that sometimes the poetic metre is sustained by the music
rather than the words ([*Poetry*]
91.15-17).[27]
Al-Farabi never considers music on its own as a
syllogistic art. There is an obvious reason for this, namely that
music is not built of words, and syllogisms (by Aristotle's
definition which al-Farabi cites at
[*Syllogism*] 19.8) are a form of verbal discourse
(*qawl*). But this requires only that the premises are verbal;
the conclusion, on both Aristotle's definition and
al-Farabi's own quoted in
Section 7
above, is simply a "thing". Already in Aristotle the
conclusion of a practical syllogism is an action, not a proposition.
(Thus Aristotle, *De Motu Animalium* 7, 701a11: "The two
propositions result in a conclusion which is an action".)
In what sense is it true that poetry contains words that compel assent
to something that one didn't previously know?
Al-Farabi discusses this question in three essays:
[*Canons*], [*Poetry*], and [*Proportion*]. In
all of them, part of his answer is that poetry excites our imagination
and thereby persuades us to adopt certain attitudes.
This takes "syllogism" in a very weak sense. But in all
three works al-Farabi also indicates that poetry
contains text that is "potentially" a syllogism. His only
examples, in [*Proportion*] 505.22f, yield invalid categorical
syllogisms in second figure, as follows (see Aouad & Schoeler
2002):
1. The person is beautiful. The sun is beautiful. Therefore the
person is a
sun.[28]
2. Fire acts quickly. The sword acts quickly, viz. to kill. Therefore
the sword is a fire.
His point can be teased out in several different ways; the reader may
have better suggestions than ours. But here at least is a reading that
matches al-Farabi's text. Consider the following
line of Abu Tammam, in a poem written in 838 to celebrate a
military victory:
>
>
> Knowledge lies in the bright spears gleaming between two armies.
> (translated in Stetkevych 2002: 156)
>
>
>
Reading this in context, we realize that the poet is telling us that
the weapons gave certainty through a decisive victory. Knowledge is
what gives certainty. So we can expand the text by what it brings to
mind:
>
>
> The spears give certainty. Knowledge gives certainty. Therefore the
> spears are knowledge.
>
>
>
This is not deductive reasoning. It's a verbalizing of thoughts
that the poem brings to our minds. Spelling it out, we are drawn to
appreciate the fact that the battle resolved the situation. The text
is an invalid syllogism in just the same way as
al-Farabi's two examples above, but the fact that
it is in second figure is really neither here nor there.
Note that in this case the poem provides the conclusion, not the
premises. So it fits Black's (1990: 226) description that
"What appears in the finished product is not a poetic syllogism
... but only its conclusion". Are the hearers supposed to
reconstruct the poet's premises by telepathy? Black leaves the
problem open, but in fact it's a problem we have met before. In
[*Syllogism*] 19.10f al-Farabi tells us that
>
>
> A syllogism is just composed to reach a *quaesitum* which was
> previously defined; the *quaesitum* was assumed first and one
> seeks to verify it by a syllogism.
>
>
>
This applies in various contexts, for example, when the questioner in
a debate has the task of finding a syllogism to refute the
responder's claim; "the enquiry is always about a
*quaesitum* whose syllogism has not yet been found"
([*Debate*] 45.6). In the poetical case the hearers have the
task of finding a middle term that generates a poetic syllogism; in
our example the middle term is "giving certainty". And
again, the premises yield the conclusion by imaginative suggestion,
not by deduction.
There remain some problems with al-Farabi's
account of poetic syllogisms. First, he never says that only the
conclusion appears in the poem. Black (1990: 235-8) suggests
that the practical syllogism might be a key to understanding other
cases.
Second, why does al-Farabi say in [*Canons*]
268.15 that "poetic discourse is in all cases absolutely
false"? This is a gross exaggeration, and it raises the question
whether a poet can really expect the audience to assent to a pack of
lies. It seems we can handle this problem.
Al-Farabi's statement in [*Canons*] is a
typical Neoplatonist soundbite, witness the Alexandrian Elias (*In
Categorias Prooemium* 117.2-5):
>
>
> Either all the premises [of the syllogism] are true, making it
> demonstrative, or they are all false and they make it poetic and
> mythic, or some are true and some are false ....
>
>
>
Al-Farabi's own more mature view, in
[*Proportion*] 506.3f, is that
>
>
> Poetry doesn't aim either to tell lies or not to tell them; its
> aim and purpose is to arouse the imagination and the passion of the
> soul.
>
>
>
And even if some blatant lies do occur, we would surely admit (though
al-Farabi himself never quite says it in the texts that
we have) that a false statement may still contain poetic truth. |
al-farabi-soc-rel | ## 1. Conceptual Background
To our knowledge, al-Farabi was the first philosopher in the Islamic
world who not only displayed a serious interest in philosophy of
society and religion, but also developed a highly differentiated
account thereof. He did not, however, start from scratch. At his time,
the majority of those philosophical texts which were actually
translated from Greek (mostly through Syriac) into Arabic were
available, and al-Farabi was obviously an avid reader of his
predecessors. Accordingly, his writings display *(a)* intimate
familiarity with Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics*;
*(b)* acquaintance with the essentials of Plato's
*Politeia* (probably mediated by Galen's
*Compendium*; cf. Gutas 2012: 85); and, apparently,
*(c)* some knowledge of Aristotle's *Politica*, of
which only parts were available in Arabic (Pines 1975).
Al-Farabi's philosophy of society and religion can be described
as an intelligent and original synthesis, particularly, of these
oeuvres, a synthesis which shares the late-ancient commentators'
concern for harmonizing the positions of Aristotle and Plato.
Moreover, al-Farabi's philosophy of society and religion turns
out to be a clever adaptation of Greek ethico-political thought to the
needs and demands of its new context, the Islamic world of the
10th century.
Al-Farabi's Greek heritage is already visible on the most basic
conceptual level. A society, on his account, is an association of
human beings collaborating "[i]n order to preserve [themselves]
and to attain [their] highest perfections" (*Perfect
State* V, 15, 1: 229). Without collaboration, he insists,
"man cannot attain the perfection, for the sake of which his
inborn nature [*fitra*] has been given to him" (ibid.).
In function of their size, associations can or cannot furnish the
basis for a "perfect [*kamil*] society"
(*Perfect State* V, 15, 2: 229-31). Thus, the smallest
unit suited to harbor a perfect society is a city (*madina*).
Smaller associations, such as villages, quarters, streets, and houses
are *per se* imperfect; larger ones, like nations and the
"union of all the societies in the inhabitable world"
(ibid.), by contrast, are perfect.
The dependence of al-Farabi's thought thus far, particularly on
Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics* and *Politica* is
obvious. Both the notion that societies only of a certain size can
accommodate their members independent of external supplies, and the
idea that human beings strive for some sort of perfection, can be
traced back to the Stagirite's work. Moreover, just like
Aristotle, al-Farabi is convinced that attaining the highest possible
degree of perfection entails happiness, a key concept of his thought.
Inspired perhaps by the *Politica*, he further elaborates on
the concept of human perfection: first, he links it with the notion
that people live in societies and, second, draws the conclusion that
these societies serve a specific purpose, beyond the mere allocation
of daily needs, such as food, shelter, and protection. Societies have
their own 'natural *telos*' which consists,
according to al-Farabi, in guiding their members towards their end:
true felicity. As a consequence, a city
>
>
> ... in which people aim through association at co-operating for
> the things by which felicity in its real and true sense can be
> attained, is the excellent city [*madina fadila*], and the
> society in which there is a co-operation to acquire felicity is the
> excellent society [*ijtima' fadil*]. (*Perfect
> State* V, 15, 3:
> 231)[2]
>
>
>
[Unless indicated otherwise, material within square brackets in
quotations is added by the author of this entry.]
It is for this reason that society for al-Farabi constitutes an
indispensable object of philosophical inquiry. Basically, along with
anthropology (*'ilm al-insan*, a term al-Farabi himself
occasionally employs) and cosmology, philosophy of society seeks to
reveal humanity's final end as well as the means required to
achieve this goal (cf. *Enumeration* 1: 76). Accordingly, this
new 'discipline' is the main branch of practical
philosophy, centered on some core elements which, therefore, shall be
discussed in more detail in this entry, more precisely: the notions of
happiness and the afterlife; the idea of a similitude between society
and natural organisms as well as the cosmos as a whole; the moral
obligations, both cognitive and practical, entailed by the natural
givens; and the methods of directing the citizens of the *madina
fadila* towards their natural *telos*, the most prominent
of which being religion.
## 2. What is 'philosophy of society'?
### 2.1 Happiness and the afterlife
In line with Aristotle, al-Farabi leaves no doubt whatsoever that
there is one kind of happiness which constitutes the *telos* of
every human being. Occasionally, he distinguishes between
"earthly" and "ultimate felicity"
(*Attainment* i, 1: 13), however, from the majority of his
writings it is clear that happiness in the strict sense of the word,
that is, as the concomitant of the highest human perfection, is
ultimate
felicity.[3]
Yet, in contrast to Aristotle's notion of *eudaimonia*,
al-Farabi's ultimate happiness is a state associated with the
afterlife, when, according to his theory of the soul, the soul has
separated from the body (see the entry on
al-Farabi's psychology).
The achievement of this state is contingent upon a number of
preconditions.[4]
However, before these preconditions can be broached (see
section 2.2),
further scrutiny of al-Farabi's concepts of human perfection
and the afterlife is required.
Human perfection is defined by humanity's place within the
cosmic order. Prior to death, human beings are hybrids--corporeal
entities, on the one hand, yet also immaterial, on the other, due to
their intellects, that is, the rational faculty of their souls which
can survive death--and as such exposed to two sets of powers.
Just like every other inhabitant of the sublunary
world,[5]
human beings are subject to the natural laws determining corporeal
substances. In contrast, however, to all the other species belonging
to the sphere of generation and corruption, human beings moreover
experience a certain influence by the so-called 'active
intellect', an immaterial, incorruptible, supralunary entity
whose existence is pure
thinking.[6]
This active intellect does not affect the body of a human being, but
rather her intellect and imagination, i.e., those psychic faculties
involved in thinking. The most fundamental influence which the active
intellect exerts on the human soul consists in, first, the provision
and, second, the basic 'formatting' of the rational
faculty:
>
>
> ... [the active intellect] gives the human being a faculty and a
> principle by which to strive, or by which the human being is able to
> strive on his own for the rest of the perfections that remain for him.
> That principle is the primary sciences and the primary intelligibles
> attained in the rational part of the soul. (*Political Regime*
> B, 1, 68: 62)
>
>
>
Only due to these "primary sciences" and "primary
intelligibles" can human beings think in an abstract and
universal fashion and thus acquire knowledge about what there
is.[7]
And precisely in the realization of this activity, i.e., thinking,
and its perfection--ideally, the attainment of its most sublime
level, i.e., science--consists humanity's *telos*.
Human beings, hence, are born with the natural obligation to perfect
their rational faculty. While they are equipped by the active
intellect with this faculty and the principles of thought, their task
consists in actualizing this potential, i.e., their intellects,
"by which a human being is a human being" (*Political
Regime* A, 2, 8: 32). Becoming an intellect in actuality, just
like the active intellect and the other separate intelligences,
therefore, constitutes humanity's perfection. Once a human being
reaches this level of perfection, she acquires the state of ultimate
happiness:
>
>
> When the rational faculty attains to being an intellect in actuality,
> that intellect it now is in actuality also becomes similar to the
> separate things and it intellects its essence that is [now] intellect
> in actuality. .... Through this, it becomes such as to be in the
> rank of the active intellect. And when a human being obtains this
> rank, his happiness is perfected. (*Political Regime* A, 2, 8:
> 33; square brackets thus in the
> translation)[8]
>
>
>
Across al-Farabi's various writings, it remains unclear whether
this stage of ultimate felicity can already be reached during
one's lifetime, when the soul is still linked with the human
body, or only in the hereafter, once the soul has separated from the
body due to this latter's
death.[9]
Still, in striking contrast to Islamic teachings, al-Farabi is
convinced that the afterlife is exclusively psychic or rather
intellectual. In his thought there is no room for corporeal
resurrection. Instead, the felicity of the hereafter, according to
him, means purely intellectual pleasures, a state, however, which
requires preparation during one's lifetime, a state, moreover,
which allows for individual differences. In function of the excellence
an individual has achieved during her life, the felicity of her
afterlife will be greater or lesser. This excellence now, on
al-Farabi's account, can be measured against a number of
'natural duties', prerequisite for the attainment of
happiness, but differentiated in accordance with the individual
citizens' natural endowments:
>
>
> The people of the excellent city have things in common which they all
> perform and comprehend, and other things which each class knows and
> does on its own. Each of these people reaches the state of felicity by
> precisely these two things .... The same is true of the actions
> by which felicity is attained: the more they increase and are repeated
> ..., the stronger and more excellent and more perfect becomes the
> soul ..., until it arrives at that stage of perfection in which
> it can dispense with matter so that it becomes independent of it
> ....[10]
> |4: 265| When one generation passes away, their bodies cease to exist
> and their souls are released and become happy and when other people
> succeed them in their ranks ..., they occupy in their turn the
> same ranks in felicity as those who passed away before, and each joins
> those who resemble him in species, quantity and quality. ... |5:
> 267| The kinds of felicity are unequal in excellence and differ in
> three ways, in species, quantity and quality .... (*Perfect
> State* V, 16, 2: 261-3; 4: 265; 5:
> 267)[11]
>
>
>
True individual happiness, as al-Farabi sees it, thus turns out to be
a peculiar blend of Aristotelian, Platonic, and Neoplatonic elements.
It simultaneously embraces the idea of the individual felicity
attained by the philosophers, the notion of a purification and,
ultimately, deification of the human soul, and a theory of intellect
which largely intertwines cosmic and epistemic dimensions. While the
just-quoted passage from the *Perfect State* shows that, beyond
the knowledge of certain things, particular actions must be performed
as a precondition for the attainment of individual happiness,
al-Farabi's emphasis on cognition cannot be overestimated. For,
whatever he has in mind regarding activities, from the above it is
clear that the human *telos* is located at the level of
rationality. Happiness, consequently, consists in the
as-perfect-as-possible assimilation of the human soul to the active
intellect, whose unique activity is thinking.
This being said, a number of questions remain open and must be
addressed in what follows: first, the things every citizen of the
*madina* is expected to know; second, the role activities play
in the attainment of individual felicity; and, third, how
al-Farabi's just-discussed concept of happiness squares with his
distinction between different "classes" of citizens as
well as various degrees of felicity.
### 2.2 The preconditions of happiness
As the last citation from the *Perfect State* conveys, when
discussing the preconditions of felicity, al-Farabi distinguishes
between *(a)* common and *(b)* specific duties of the
citizens, as well as between *(i)* knowledge and *(ii)*
activities. His most detailed indications concerning these
preconditions address *(a.i)* the common things that everyone
must know and are spelled out in the following list:
>
>
> The things in common which all the people of the excellent city ought
> to know are: (1) In the first place to know the First Cause and all
> its qualities; (2) then the immaterial existents [including the above
> mentioned active intellect] ...; (3) the celestial substances
> ...; (4) [without number in Walzer's translation] then the
> natural bodies which are beneath them, and how they come to be and
> pass away ...; (5) then the generation of man; (6) then the first
> ruler ...; (7) then the rulers who have to take his place
> ...; (8) then the excellent city and its people and the felicity
> which their souls ultimately reach .... (*Perfect State*
> V, 17, 1: 277-9)
>
>
>
From this list it follows that al-Farabi presupposes a quite profound
knowledge of cosmology, physics, anthropology, and philosophy of
society. This is rather astounding in view of the fact that, as he
himself admits, only a minority of people are sufficiently gifted
intellectually to do science, which is to say, to understand those
things al-Farabi mentions in his
list.[12]
This raises the question of whether or not felicity is in effect
attainable by everyone, a question that will be pursued in
section 3.2
of this entry. Regarding the preconditions of happiness, however, it
can be concluded that, as far as the common knowledge requirements
*(a.i)* are concerned, al-Farabi sets the bar fairly high: only
accomplished philosophers will be able to fulfill these criteria.
As for the remaining preconditions, al-Farabi is far less explicit.
There are some indications regarding the common activities
*(a.ii)*. It appears that, once again in unison with Aristotle,
these embrace all sorts of exercises suited to purify one's soul
while it is still unified with 'its' body, as
al-Farabi's references to the soul's disposition as well
as his recurrent comparisons with arts and crafts suggest. Thus, he
intimates, in connection with the last quoted passage:
>
>
> When each of [the people of the excellent city] acts in this way
> [i.e., according to the citizens' common duties], these actions
> of his make him acquire a good and excellent disposition of the soul,
> and the more steadily he applies himself to them, the stronger and
> better becomes that disposition of this and increases in strength and
> excellence--just as steadily applying himself to performing the
> actions of writing well make a man acquire proficiency in the art of
> writing .... (*Perfect State* V, 16, 2: 261)
>
>
>
In the background of this notion of acquiring a better psychic
disposition by virtue of repeatedly performing certain activities, is
(in addition to Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics*) the
ancient medical tradition. Accordingly, even the (immaterial) rational
faculty of the soul can be positively affected, if those faculties of
the soul which operate by virtue of corporeal organs (such as sense
perception and imagination) are improved. This concerns, at the most
basic level, the mixture of the temperaments, which is directly
related to the nutritive faculty: the better one's temperaments
are in balance, the fewer are the negative influences by the body on
the soul, and the more easily this human being will, hence, be able to
use her rational faculty. On a slightly more complex level, this idea
of balance or harmony as a means to purify the soul also concerns the
realm of moral virtues. For while one's character is
fundamentally predisposed by her temperament, al-Farabi maintains that
virtues can be trained and improved. Thus, just as keeping the bodily
humors in check, being able to find the 'golden mean' in
ethical matters usually prepares the ground for a swifter and less
distracted application of one's rational
faculty.[13]
That al-Farabi in fact envisages moral virtues as one of the
preconditions of individual happiness, is further corroborated by his
assessment of deficient cities and societies. Among these communities
are the "immoral cities" whose inhabitants, despite
knowing better, "through their passion and will [are] inclined
toward" what al-Farabi considers to be wrong or presumed goods,
such as "status, honor, domination" (*Political
Regime* C, 3, 120: 90; cf. also *Book of Religion* 11:
101), which distract from humanity's natural *telos*.
Other examples of misguided ambitions include the quest for "the
enjoyment of pleasures" imagined to be found in gluttony,
drinking, and sexual intercourse (*Political Regime* C, 3, 119:
89). Al-Farabi's verdict regarding these communities is
unambiguous: "No one at all among the inhabitants of these
cities gains happiness" (ibid. 120: 90). As these examples and
al-Farabi's assessment evince, just like the balance of
one's temperaments, her character is significant in the pursuit
of happiness not for its own sake, but insofar as it fulfills a
preparatory task. It prepares the human being's soul so that it
can, to the best of its ability, perform its proper activity, i.e.,
reasoning.
Regarding, finally, those things which citizens are supposed to know
and do in accordance with their respective classes (referred to as
*b.i* and *b.ii* above,
first paragraph of this section), al-Farabi seems to think of the
various trades and professions performed in the
*polis*.[14]
As the next section will reveal, he differentiates between the
individual skills and weaknesses with which each human being is born.
He is convinced that, equipped with these specific talents, each human
being possesses her natural place and duty within society. Actualizing
her individual potential to the best of her capacities, hence,
contributes to the functioning and well-being of the community. This,
in fact, does not immediately lead towards individual happiness, but
is a necessary precondition as it contributes to covering the daily
needs and, thus, warranting the basis for society to aspire for its
own natural *telos* (see
section 1
above).
## 3. The principle of similitude
### 3.1 Being: man, society, cosmos
Al-Farabi's notion of ultimate felicity has tremendous impact on
his philosophy of society. In the light of humanity's particular
*telos*, a society can be "excellent
(*fadil*)", in the sense introduced
above,[15]
if and only if its cooperation pursues society's natural
*telos*, i.e., if it seeks to equip its members with the
necessary means for the attainment of individual happiness. Therefore,
the primary goal of governing a society must consist in providing the
means so that everyone can acquire theoretical
knowledge,[16]
learn about her natural duties, and put them into practice. In order
to explain his notion of the excellent society, al-Farabi falls back
on two recurrent examples, natural organisms and the cosmos. At first
glance, this comparison might appear inappropriate, linking voluntary
behavior in the case of human beings and society with the strictly
natural and causal processes characterizing the functioning of
organisms and the cosmos as a whole. However, al-Farabi's aim is
not to deny the distinction between the voluntary and the
natural--quite the contrary.
While human beings, on his account, are in fact endowed with free will
and, hence, can organize their own lives as well as their communities
*ad
libitum*,[17]
there is, as seen above, a natural norm for humanity distinguishing
the good life from the bad life and, in terms of eschatology, the
attainment of happiness from failure to do so. In this sense,
al-Farabi clearly subscribes to what nowadays would be called a
natural law ethics. And it is precisely at this level that his two
examples, organisms and the cosmos, come into play and lend his
notions of society and happiness a conspicuously Platonic flavor. In
al-Farabi's view, organisms and the cosmos are the perfect
models which human beings--for themselves as well as for their
social lives--are well advised to emulate:
>
>
> Both the city and the household have an analogy with the body of the
> human being. The body is composed of different parts ..., each
> doing a certain action, so that from all their actions they come
> together in mutual assistance to perfect the purpose of the human
> being's body. In the same way, both the city and the household
> are composed of different parts of a definite number ..., each
> performing on its own a certain action, so that from their actions
> they come together in mutual assistance to perfect the purpose of the
> city or the household. (*Selected Aphorisms* 25: 23)
>
>
>
Essentially, al-Farabi applies Aristotle's notion of
*ergon* to the cosmos and each of its members. Accordingly, the
cosmos as such is not only determined by a certain order, it actually
represents the best of all possible structures, as it is the effect of
the over-perfect first
cause.[18]
Consequently, every part of the cosmos possesses a specific function
which it must perform in order to keep the *perpetuum mobile*
cosmos running smoothly, without interruptions and disturbances. While
everything else executes its function by nature, human beings,
equipped with reason and free will, must choose to do so. Therefore,
they must understand the cosmic order and their own place and duty, or
rather *ergon*, in the frame of this all-embracing structure,
which, once again, underscores the significance attached to knowledge
in al-Farabi's thought.
And yet, the implications of the two paradigmatic examples, organisms
and the cosmos, reach further, inasmuch as both examples represent
complex entities with a diversified internal makeup. Granted, every
element of the cosmos or an organism in general contributes to the
well-being of the whole, nonetheless, each one has its peculiar
activity. The heart, for instance, is in charge of pumping the blood
through the blood vessels and thus keeping the body alive, whereas the
kidneys are responsible for filtering the blood and regulating water
fluid levels. Similarly, al-Farabi gives to understand that each human
being has a particular task within the framework of society, in view
of her specific skills (cf. above,
section 2.2,
regarding the citizens' specific knowledge and activities
[*b.i* and *b.ii*]):
>
>
> The excellent city resembles the perfect and healthy body, all of
> whose limbs co-operate .... Now the limbs and organs of the body
> are different and their natural endowments and faculties are unequal
> in excellence, there being among them one ruling organ, namely the
> heart, and organs which are close in rank to that ruling organ
> .... The same holds good in the case of the city. Its parts are
> different by nature, and their natural dispositions are unequal in
> excellence: there is in it a man who is the ruler, and there are
> others whose ranks are close to the ruler, each of them with a
> disposition and a habit through which he performs an action ....
> (*Perfect State* V, 15, 4: 231-3)
>
>
>
This analogy constitutes the core of al-Farabi's philosophy of
society, creating, however, several remarkable tensions within his
thought. Thus, as seen above, in the vein of Aristotle, he maintains
that humanity's specific difference is rationality and that the
natural *telos* of every human being consists in perfecting
this feature. Meanwhile, he also holds that human beings differ with
regard to their natural endowments. Accordingly, some are highly
intelligent, while others are not. Some have the potential to become
philosophers and recognize the makeup of the world, happiness, and the
natural norm encapsulated in these ontological givens;
others--actually the majority, as al-Farabi believes--do not
possess these capacities. This raises the two interrelated questions
of, first, how these individuals can nevertheless attain felicity, if
at all; and, second, how society must be set up in order to achieve
its own natural *telos* and offer each member an equal
opportunity for attaining individual happiness.
### 3.2 Knowing: things *versus* symbolic representations
In order to approach these questions, it is imperative to have a
closer look at al-Farabi's anthropology (*'ilm
al-insan*) which represents the backbone of his philosophy of
society and religion. In line with the Greek medical tradition,
particularly Galen, al-Farabi is convinced that individual natural
endowments depend chiefly on two factors, first, the region of the
world in which one happens to be born and, second, one's bodily
constitution, i.e., the body's concrete mixture of elements (cf.
above,
section 2.2).[19]
For although the human soul as such is immaterial, so long as it is
coupled with 'its' body, it depends for its activities
(including, in a way, thinking) on corporeal organs like the external
senses, allowing for sense perception and imagination. Notably,
one's temperament or natural disposition--determining
primarily those processes which can be associated with moods,
emotions, and, in general, character traits--thus turns out to be
the limiting factor defining whether a human being will be
sharp-witted or rather dull and, hence, able to perfect for herself
humanity's specific *ergon*, i.e., reasoning.
While at first glance this seems to imply natural predestination,
providing the happy few, on the one hand, with the means to attain
*eudaimonia*, but dooming the unfortunate many, on the other,
to misery, al-Farabi insists that every human being is equipped with
the necessary requirements to attain ultimate felicity, even those
whose natural disposition does not allow them to become philosophers.
For, according to him, people
>
>
> ... whose innate character is sound share in an innate character
> that disposes them to receive the intelligibles in which they all
> share and by which they strive toward objects and actions common to
> all of them. Then, afterward, they diverge and differ, thereby coming
> to an innate character that is particular to each one of them and to
> each group. So one among them is disposed to receive certain other
> intelligibles that are not shared, but are particular to him ....
> (*Political Regime* B, 1, 74: 65)
>
>
>
Accordingly, provided one is not born a fool or a madman but a
*compos
mentis*,[20]
every human being has the means to "strive toward objects and
actions common to all". These objects and actions common to all,
meanwhile, along with "other things which each class knows and
does on its own" (*Perfect State* V, 16, 2: 261)
precisely correspond to the prerequisites for the attainment of
happiness discussed above, in
section 2.2.
However, as likewise seen above, these prerequisites, and
particularly those things which all human beings ought to know, set
fairly high intellectual standards. Nonetheless, according to
al-Farabi, the requirement of knowing these common objects does not
exclude anyone from attaining happiness, because they
>
>
> ... can be known in two ways, either by being impressed on [the
> people's] souls as they really are or by being impressed on them
> through affinity and symbolic representation. (*Perfect State*
> V, 17, 2: 279)
>
>
>
Every human being, thus, can attain the individual felicity of the
hereafter,[21]
provided, that is, that she learns about the common objects in one of
these two ways. It is the duty of society or, more precisely, of the
ruler of the excellent city to ensure that everyone is taught these
things according to her capacities. In this connection, now, as will
be discussed in
section 4,
religion as the 'art of persuasion' has its specific
place and significance. Concerning al-Farabi's notion of
society, however, it is important to note that the chief duty ascribed
here to society and the excellent city has notable implications for
the nature of its government. Government, as can now be concluded and
is corroborated by various passages throughout al-Farabi's
oeuvre,[22]
must primarily be described as 'offering guidance',
'teaching', or 'habituating'.
At this point, the second aspect mentioned above, i.e., the
"innate character that is particular to each [individual] and to
each group" must be further elucidated (cf. the first quote in
this section). Human beings, as noted before, have the same
relationship to society as organs to the body. Owing to their
particular "innate character" or specific natural
disposition, they hold a particular natural place within the
'organism society', with a specific *ergon* they
ought to perform, so that the entire 'body' can function
well. Consequently, human beings not only have a natural duty towards
themselves, entailing individual felicity, but also towards society
and, even beyond, the cosmic order as a whole, contributing both to
the proper functioning of their society and to the happiness of the
'organism cosmos' and its various
parts.[23]
Hence, in correspondence with the particular trades and professions
implied by the members' individual skills, society is structured
by nature in an at once organic and hierarchical fashion:
>
>
> The ruling organ in the body is by nature the most perfect and most
> complete of the organs in itself and in its specific qualification
> ...; beneath it, in turn, are other organs which rule over organs
> inferior to them ...; they rule and are ruled. In the same way,
> the ruler of the city is the most perfect part of the city in his
> specific qualification and has the best of everything which anybody
> else shares with him; beneath him are people who are ruled by him and
> rule others. (*Perfect State* V, 15, 5: 235)
>
>
>
The natural hierarchy underlying a well-ordered society is spelled out
in terms of al-Farabi's distinction between ruling and serving
functions. In the excellent city, itself the perfect image of a
natural body as well as the cosmos as a whole, the criterion for
rulership, in the vein of Plato's *Politeia*, is
intelligence and wisdom. This is to say that there is a ruler by
nature who distinguishes herself by her intimate understanding of the
cosmic order, its normative implications, human nature, and how to
realize the discovered normative implications in view of the diverse
talents and limitations determining the citizens' "innate
characters". Ruling the city, as was already stated before,
consists in providing precisely this kind of guidance: actualizing the
various potentials in a well-coordinated manner which faithfully
resembles the functioning of organisms, and thus seeking to facilitate
every citizen's pursuit of
happiness.[24]
The excellent ruler, as can now be inferred, is not only the most
accomplished philosopher possessing a comprehensive theoretical
knowledge of all there
is.[25]
She is also and particularly the one who is able to ensure, first,
that every citizen is taught the things they need to do and to know,
thus inducing individual felicity; and, second, that everyone is
instructed in and carries out those "things which each class
knows and does on its own" (*Perfect State* V, 16, 2:
261; cf. also *Political Regime* B, 2, 78: 68), in this manner
simultaneously bringing about the well-being of the city and
contributing to the happiness of the organism cosmos. With this
background, al-Farabi's account of religion, i.e., the art of
persuasion or of teaching by virtue of "affinities and symbolic
representations" can be addressed.
## 4. Religion and the art of ruling
### 4.1 What is 'religion'?
>
>
> Religion is opinions and actions, determined and restricted with
> stipulations and prescribed for a community by their first ruler, who
> seeks to obtain through their practicing it a specific purpose with
> respect to them or by means of them. .... If the first ruler is
> excellent and his rulership truly excellent, then in what he
> prescribes he seeks only to obtain, for himself and for everyone under
> his rulership, the ultimate happiness that is truly happiness; and
> that religion will be the excellent religion. (*Book of
> Religion* 1: 93, slightly modified)
>
>
>
As this quotation amply evinces, al-Farabi has a fairly peculiar
notion of religion. First, it embraces "opinions" and
"actions" and, hence, those two elements which, as seen
above
(section 2.2),
play a significant role in connection with the attainment of
individual felicity. Accordingly, human beings need to know certain
things (in one of the two mentioned ways) and perform certain actions
in order to become truly happy. Second, religion is described as the
result of a first ruler's activities. More precisely, this ruler
is depicted as the one who first established the opinions and actions
to be held and performed by the community she
rules.[26]
Furthermore, in so doing she pursued a specific purpose. In other
words, these opinions and actions are supposed to be defended and
carried out, not for their own sake, but--provided "the
first ruler is excellent"--for the sake of ultimate
happiness. Religion, therefore, is not a goal in and of itself; it is
an instrument, more specifically, it is an instrument of
rulership.[27]
At first glance, al-Farabi's concept of religion may appear as
depreciative, particularly from the perspective of existing religions,
such as Islam. He bluntly denies religion the status of an autonomous
sphere of knowledge and wisdom; he rejects its claim to exclusive
truth; and he reduces it to a mere tool. However, these features
cannot be assessed *tel quel*, but require their specific
context, namely, al-Farabi's basic ontological and
epistemological views. According to him, the givens of
reality--the things constituting reality, their behavior, and the
underlying natural laws--are the effects of certain primary
principles, such as intelligence, soul, and matter, which are
ultimately all founded in a single, first cause (cf. above,
section 2.1).[28]
These facts now, on al-Farabi's account, can be known by human
beings, just as the moral obligations they entail (as discussed above,
section 3.1).
Accordingly, there is one objective reality and, epistemologically,
one objectively true account of it. There are, however, several
methods for appropriating this true account and, in turn, imparting it
to others, namely, "either ... as [these things] really are
or ... through affinity and symbolic representation"
(section 3.2).
Precisely this latter method of symbolic representation is identified
with religion, while its counterpart, teaching and knowing things as
they "really are", corresponds to philosophy. Doubtlessly,
philosophy is therefore superior to religion, as is often underscored
by scholarship and acknowledged by al-Farabi himself (cf. *Book of
Religion* 5: 97-8). This superiority, however, concerns only
the respective epistemic levels. While 'philosophy' is the
name of a knowledge based on demonstration and resulting in objective
certitude, 'religion' is the name for a knowledge based on
dialectical and rhetorical means and resulting only in probable
opinion and
conviction.[29]
From a pragmatic point of view, by contrast, the coordinate system
shifts considerably. From this angle, it is religion which turns out
to be no less important than philosophy, due to the givens of
anthropology: for by far the majority of people depend on
"symbolic representation" as the avenue to the knowledge
and activities required for the attainment of felicity, while only a
minority can grasp the things as they "really are".
The relation of religion to philosophy, therefore, is like the
relation of human beings to organisms, and of society to the cosmos:
that of similitude--provided, that is, it is an excellent
religion.[30]
It is a similitude of philosophy in various respects, on the one
hand, concerning its immanent structure, on the other, regarding its
mode of operation. Just like philosophy, it embraces a body of
theoretical knowledge (a creed) from which it derives practical rules
(the law); and just like philosophy, its principal purpose consists in
teaching and, thus, providing a means of governance to the ruler. From
this particular setting it can be concluded that what religion
teaches, or rather, what the ruler teaches by virtue of religion, is a
metaphorical account of what philosophy presents scientifically. This
is already conspicuous, for example, in the way al-Farabi presents the
theoretical doctrines (creed) conveyed by religion:
>
>
> Among the theoretical [things taught by the excellent religion] are
> those that describe God, may He be exalted. Then there are some that
> describe the spiritual beings, their ranks in themselves, their
> stations in relation to God, may He be exalted .... (*Book of
> Religion* 2: 94)
>
>
>
Even without presenting the entire list, it is obvious that al-Farabi
refers to the same issues as those detailed in his *Perfect
State* (see
section 2.2
above). However, while the *Perfect State* employed a
terminology reminiscent of philosophical jargon, the *Book of
Religion* falls back on religious terms. Instead of the first
cause, it speaks of God; instead of cosmology, it refers to theology;
instead of the separate intellects, it evokes angels and demons as
spiritual beings. The same kind of shift can be observed in connection
with the activities the excellent religion determines (law):
>
>
> As for actions, they are, first of all, the actions and speeches by
> which God is praised and extolled. Then there are those that praise
> the spiritual beings and the angels. Then there are those that praise
> the prophets, the most excellent kings, the righteous rulers, and the
> leaders of the right way who have gone before. (*Book of
> Religion* 3: 96, slightly modified)
>
>
>
Once again, already the formulas used by al-Farabi to indicate the
type of activities determined by religion, without giving a single
example, evoke associations with existing religions, particularly,
Islam. Thus, with God's praise one will easily connect the five
daily prayers demanded of Muslims; the "prophets",
"righteous rulers", and "leaders of the right
way" are reminiscent of the prophet Muhammad and his
predecessors; of the first four caliphs; and of either the imams of
Shi'ism or other spiritual leaders of Islam (e.g., sufis).
Notably, in light of the above
(section 2.2),
it is evident that a religion's holy scripture, like the
Qur'an, serves two functions--provided that the respective
religion fulfills the excellence criterion. With regard to the
doctrines it imparts, it offers a similitude of the objects people
actually ought to know in order to achieve their natural
*telos*.[31]
As to its practical implications, i.e., the rites and norms it
conveys, it executes the aforementioned preparatory function: it
trains the faithful in a behavior which is suited to foster exactly
the same moral virtues as those addressed by the *Nicomachean
Ethics* and referred to by al-Farabi himself: virtues which
improve the soul's disposition so as to realize, to the best of
one's capacities, its natural
*ergon*.[32]
### 4.2 Religion and rulership
The natural ruler of the excellent city, nation, or "union of
all the societies in the inhabitable world"
(section 2.1,
first quotation) is, against the backdrop of al-Farabi's
philosophy of society and religion, someone who is at once an
accomplished philosopher, prophet, supreme ruler, lawgiver, and imam.
She truly understands reality and its underlying principles and is
able to verify her knowledge demonstratively. However, she also has
the ability to 'translate' her knowledge into metaphors
and symbolic representations and present them, by means of rhetorical
devices, in a convincing
fashion.[33]
From the perspective of the majority of people, this metaphorical
account appears to be some sort of supernatural, divine revelation. In
a way, it is certainly 'divine', given al-Farabi's
cosmology. However, from the perspective of philosophy, it is clearly
not supernatural; it is merely a symbolic representation faithfully
encapsulating the essentials of metaphysics, natural philosophy,
anthropology, and philosophy of
society.[34]
Religion, embracing a doctrinal as well as a legal branch, is thus the
most important element of rulership. It is an enterprise that must be
carried on beyond the death of the first ruler, fostered and further
developed by subsequent rulers and those savants who in a given
society are situated fairly high in the natural hierarchy, being
intelligent and erudite themselves, and thus 'naturally'
in charge of disseminating the knowledge required for happiness. In
particular, those actions which the first ruler, for whatever reason,
did not determine, will have to be legislated at some
point.[35]
Notably, even though the supposed similitude of society with the
cosmos, as well as al-Farabi's own parlance, suggest that the
'natural' form of government would be a monarchy, he
remains fairly noncommittal on this
topic.[36]
Obviously, if there is at a given time in a given society a human
being unifying the required qualities, she will be the natural leader.
And in agreement with Plato's *Politeia*, al-Farabi seems
to believe that the founding act of creating a religion suited to
serve as the 'constitution' of an excellent
*polis*, presupposes a single, first ruler acting as the
original lawgiver. However, if subsequently there is nowhere in the
*madina* a single person incorporating these qualities, several
people with complementary properties should team up and henceforth
guide the community. This clearly exhibits that al-Farabi was not
particularly interested in concrete political structures and systems.
His attention, instead, was directed towards the metaphysical
principles underlying human associations and their normative
implications.
This peculiar stance is clearly displayed in al-Farabi's
discussion of deficient cities and societies. While the details differ
across his various treatises dedicated to this topic, the scale by
means of which he assesses 'excellence' and
'deficiency' is consistently those two factors identified
above: knowledge and action, on both the common and the class-related
levels. Thus, for instance, in the *Political Regime* he
distinguishes six deficient forms of cities, among which he lists the
"necessary societies" (*Political Regime* C, 2, 93:
76, substituting 'societies' for
'associations'). This kind of society or city, he
explains,
>
>
> ... is the one in which there is mutual assistance for earning
> what is necessary to constitute and safeguard bodies. .... Among
> the necessary cities, there may be some that bring together all of the
> arts that procure what is necessary. Their ruler is the one who has
> fine governance and excellent stratagems for using [the citizens] so
> that they gain the necessary things and fine governance in preserving
> these things for them or who bestows these things on them from what he
> has. (*Political Regime* C, 2, 94: 77)
>
>
>
At first glance, this seems just fine and precisely what good
rulership ought to accomplish. All the trades and professions required
for the *polis* to subsist are extant. The ruler is by no means
a tyrant exploiting her subjects, but rather excels in helping them to
gain these goods, preserving them and distributing them among the
latter. Nevertheless, what is deficient in this type of society is
adumbrated in the first phrase of the quote: the mutual cooperation
described here is directed exclusively towards the well-being of
bodies. It thus neglects society's proper purpose, namely, the
promotion of humanity's natural *telos*, which certainly
presupposes but cannot be reduced to well-functioning bodies.
Society, according to al-Farabi, as can be deduced from these
observations, ought to be a joint venture, grounded in the true
understanding of reality and its principles, and guided by a religion
which translates this understanding, first, into generally
comprehensible doctrines, i.e., similitudes, and, second, activities
suited to purify and prepare the citizens' souls in their quest
for felicity. Thus, it clearly ought to transcend the mere
satisfaction of daily needs and wants. Therefore, al-Farabi
concludes,
>
>
> ... the first ruler of the excellent city must already have
> thorough cognizance of theoretical philosophy; for he cannot
> understand anything pertaining to God's, may He be exalted,
> governance of the world so as to follow it except from that source. It
> is clear, in addition, that all of this is impossible unless there is
> a common religion in the cities that brings together their opinions,
> beliefs, and actions; that renders their divisions harmonious, linked
> together, and well ordered; and at that point they will support one
> another in their actions and assist one another to reach the purpose
> that is sought after, namely, ultimate happiness. (*Book of
> Religion* 27: 113, slightly modified)
>
>
>
## 5. Final remarks
Philosophy and religion turn out to possess a fairly peculiar relation
to one another in al-Farabi's thought. Philosophy, or rather
metaphysics, is the only way to advance to the most profound
explanation of all there is as well as humanity's natural duties
entailed by the natural givens. Accordingly, an excellent philosopher
can do without religion in her pursuit of happiness. Religion,
however, cannot do without philosophy and, *a fortiori*,
neither can society. In view of what is at stake in the case of
failure to grasp and convey the truth, the pressure put on philosophy
and, to some lesser extent, on religion in this theory is enormous.
Society cannot fulfill its *ergon* without either philosophy or
religion, nor without a government conscientiously imparting the
theoretical and practical duties; with the consequence that, apart
from a few 'born' philosophers, human beings will fail to
attain individual felicity.
While these are serious threats on the practical level, it appears
that as far as the underlying anthropology is concerned, al-Farabi
endorses a profoundly optimistic view. He is convinced that everything
which needs to be known and done to reach individual happiness is
attainable by virtue of humanity's natural endowments. As such,
there is no need for revelation of a supernatural kind. Instead, as
al-Farabi gives to understand, there is plenty of evidence to be found
in reality and its principles, which teach humanity about happiness.
There are, furthermore, abundant models, ranging from the cosmic order
to the makeup of the most primitive organisms, which need only be
emulated to guide humanity towards its final goal. And, last but not
least, there are philosophers who discovered and understood these
natural givens and implications already centuries
ago.[37]
Hence, the only thing that remains to be done, on his account, is to
put these insights into practice. |
al-farabi-psych | ## 1. The Origin and Nature of the Soul
In one of his best-known introductory works, *Enumeration of the
Sciences* (*Ihsa' al-Ulum*),
al-Farabi (ES: 87) explains that the eighth part of the
science of physics is devoted to what is common to the different kinds
of animals, namely, the soul, and is studied in Aristotle's
*Book of Animals* and in *On the Soul*.
Al-Farabi describes the soul as Aristotle did in *On
the Soul* 2.1, 412a19, that is, as the form or actualization
(entelekheia /
*antalashiya* or *at-tamam*) of a natural
organic body that potentially has
life.[1]
Living beings have different faculties: the nutritive, sensitive,
appetitive, and rational faculties. The presence of these capacities
in living beings is due to the different kinds of soul. The origin of
these souls and their capacities is explained by
al-Farabi from a metaphysical, cosmological, and
biological perspective.
In fact, al-Farabi's entire philosophy, including
his psychological and epistemological views, must be understood in
light of his ontological and cosmological worldview, a matter that has
been a source of considerable debate. In *The Political Regime*
and *The Virtuous City*, al-Farabi provides a
metaphysical and ontological explanation of the structure of the
universe, combining Neoplatonic emanationism and Aristotelian views on
the celestial spheres (M. Mahdi 2001: 6-11; 121-124).
Others have argued that al-Farabi's account
concerning these matters in both treatises should not be taken
literally, but as a political metaphor of the kind of regimes that can
be conceived in political philosophy. In contrast, P. Vallat and D.
Janos have rejected this view and have shown that far from a mere
rhetorical strategy, al-Farabi's cosmology
constitutes the foundation of his political thought. Though these
different approaches have motivated controversial interpretations of
al-Farabi's philosophy, this article concurs with
the interpretation of Vallat (2004: 85-128) and Janos (2012:
38-43). To take al-Farabi's cosmology as a
true component of his philosophy has serious implications for the
understanding of his philosophical psychology:
al-Farabi's conception of the soul and intellect
cannot be understood without taking into account his cosmological
model. In this way it becomes clear that his psychology and cosmology
taken together motivate his political philosophy.
As D. Janos (2010: 19-44) has shown in depth,
al-Farabi's cosmology draws on the *Proclus
Arabus* (mainly the *Mahd al-khayr* [*Elements of
Theology*]), late ancient commentators such as Alexander,
Simplicius, Themistius, and in general from the *Neoplatonica
Arabica*, including the *Plotinus Arabus* (Janos 2012:
4-6; 11-37; D'Ancona 2014). Both *The Political
Regime* and *The Virtuous City* are key sources for the
reconstruction of al-Farabi's cosmology which
consists in a hierarchical emanationist model constituted by six
principles: (1) the First Existent or First Cause, (2) the second
intellects, (3) the active (or agent) intellect, (4) the soul, (5)
form, and (6) matter (al-Farabi KS: 31; PR: 29). The
First Cause is one and unique, precluding any multiplicity, whereas
all other principles are multiple. The first three principles are not
bodies, nor are in a body; they are immaterial and separate, whereas
the three last principles are not bodies but are connected to the
bodies. Notice that the soul is one of the principles that will be
originated through the emanative process and is described as a
principle that is not a body in itself but is in a body.
Al-Farabi explains that the universe contains six kinds
of body. In decreasing order of perfection, there are: (1) celestial
bodies, (2) rational animals, (3) non-rational animals, (4) plants,
(5) minerals, and (6) the four elements (al-Farabi KS:
31; PR: 29).
According to the emanation (*fayd*) process described by
al-Farabi, the existence of every being proceeds from
the First Existent (*mawjud al-awwal*), which is perfect,
eternal, everlasting, uncaused, free of matter and without form, with
no purpose or aim external to itself, with no partner or opposite, and
indivisible (al-Farabi VC: 56-89). The First
Existent is distinguished from all other beings due to its oneness,
which is its essence. This description seems very close to the
Neoplatonic conception of the One, but it is not exactly the same.
Al-Farabi instead argues that, given that this First
Existent is not in matter and has no matter, it should be an actual
intellect (*'aql bi'l fi'l*). The First
Existent is also intelligible (*ma'qul*) through its
substance, and its identity consists in simultaneously being the act,
the subject, and the object of its own intellection
(al-Farabi VC: 70-71). This description is based
on Aristotle's characterization of the unmoved mover in
*Metaphysics Lambda* as thought thinking itself.
Every existent comes to be, according to al-Farabi, by
the First Existent. This takes place through a sort of expansion or
emanation through which the First Existent necessarily gives existence
to every being in the universe. Yet this does not imply any addition
to its own perfection. In the initial emanation, from the First
Existent proceed the second intellects. These intellects themselves,
through the apprehension of themselves and the First Existent, are in
turn the cause of the celestial bodies. In *The Political
Regime* al-Farabi mentions that the number of
second intellects or second causes is identical to the number of
celestial spheres from the highest, the first heaven, to the last,
namely, the sphere of the moon (al-Farabi KS: 32; PR:
29). In *The Virtuous City* he explicitly enumerates nine
spheres starting with the first heaven, and then the fixed stars,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon
(al-Farabi VC: 100-105). There is a tenth
intellect, namely, the active intellect (*'aql al-fa
''al*), whose activity is very relevant mainly
for two reasons: (1) this intellect governs together with the
celestial spheres the sublunary world, and is even involved in the
processes of generation and corruption (al-Farabi LI:
29-30; OI:
75);[2]
(2) furthermore, as will be explained in the fourth section, this
intellect also provides the first principles of understanding through
which human beings can attain happiness (al-Farabi VC:
204-205).
Thus far we have explained the first three principles in
al-Farabi's emanationist model (the First Cause,
the second intellects, and the active intellect). The other three
principles (the soul, the matter and the form) have in common their
connection to the different bodies that comprise the universe. In
*The Political Regime* al-Farabi explains these
principles following a particular order: first the soul, then the
matter, and finally the form; in *The Virtuous City*, however,
he first explains what matter and form are and subsequently gives a
precise account of the soul and its faculties
(al-Farabi VC: 134-163). This latter approach is
clearer for two main reasons: (1) the long explanation that
al-Farabi provides concerning the origin of matter from
the most imperfect, that is, prime matter, to the most excellent,
namely, rational animals, sets forth a precise framework for the
understanding of the rational human soul; (2) the explanation
concerning the relation between matter and form gives us a better
understanding of the relation between body and soul. Matter is the
substratum of the form and, hence, the form does not have subsistence
by itself since it needs matter; however, matter only exists due to
the form (al-Farabi VC: 108-109).
Concerning the origin and composition of matter,
al-Farabi explains that the circular motion of the
celestial spheres generates prime matter (*al-madda
al-ula*), which is common to all bodies in the sublunary
world. The four elements proceed from prime matter and, when these
elements combine and mix in different ways and undergo the influence
of the heavenly bodies, they generate numerous kinds of bodies:
minerals, plants, non-rational animals, and rational animals
(al-Farabi VC:
112-115).[3]
Given that matter is the substratum of form, the different forms
appear when the combination of the elements takes place, giving rise
to different kinds of bodies. As there are different kinds of bodies,
there are also different kinds of forms, some of them of lower
perfection, as the form of minerals or plants, and others more
perfect, as the form of rational animals. This perfection is given by
the faculties that each body has according to its natural disposition:
while plants have basic faculties such as nutrition or reproduction,
rational animals have a higher faculty, the intellect, which enables
human beings to attain intelligibles in act.
In *The Political Regime* al-Farabi deals with
the relation between matter and form, and explains that form is the
actualization of matter in the sense that form is more excellent than
matter; however, matter is the substratum of form and without matter
there is no form (al-Farabi KS: 39; PR: 36). As can be
seen, al-Farabi is a partisan of Aristotelian
hylomorphism. This relates to his understanding of the soul as the
form or actualization of the body and thus perishable with the body.
For al-Farabi, as for Aristotle, the soul is
responsible for the capacities or operations of the human body. When
referring to the human soul, al-Farabi holds that the
rational part can come to realize itself to such a degree of
perfection that it no longer has need of the body, and can come very
close to reaching the status of a separate being
(al-Farabi KS: 42; PR: 38). In other words, the
rational part is able to separate itself from its other
faculties--sensitive, appetitive, and imaginative--in order
to attain perfection by transforming itself into an eternal
imperishable intellect. As can be seen, al-Farabi
renders an account on the origin of the soul and its faculties by
means of a rather complex ontological and cosmological process,
through which the human soul progressively attains greater perfection.
Nevertheless, before explaining what this perfection consists in, I
shall discuss al-Farabi's understanding of the
faculties of the soul and their function.
## 2. The Soul and its Faculties
In *The Virtuous City* al-Farabi devotes an
entire chapter to the faculties of the human soul, from the most basic
and lowest, namely nutrition, to the most perfect and highest, that
is, the rational or intellective faculty (al-Farabi VC:
164-175). Nutrition is shared among plants, animals and human
beings; next there is a group of faculties, the external senses
(touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight). Animals and human being
share these senses. Along with these sensitive faculties there is also
the appetitive faculty through which humans and animals experience
desire or aversion towards the objects they perceive through the
senses. Then, proceeding with the internal senses, there is the
imaginative faculty whose function is to retain the sensible
impressions when these are no longer present to the external senses.
This faculty also has the capacity to combine sensibles with each
other, to connect and disconnect them in different compositions and
divisions, some of them being false, and some true
(al-Farabi VC: 168-169). The imaginative faculty
is also linked to the appetitive faculty given that it is possible to
desire imaginative representations. The role of this faculty in human
cognition is particularly relevant and is given separate attention in
the next section. Last and highest in al-Farabi's
account is the rational or intellective faculty
(*'aql*).
Al-Farabi gives a complete explanation of the way in
which all the faculties of the soul work together. Each faculty has a
ruling organ and others that are auxiliaries and subordinates
(al-Farabi VC: 174-187). He holds that the ruling
organ in the human body is the heart; the brain is a secondary ruling
organ subordinated to the heart; however, all the other organs and
limbs are subordinated to the brain. The heart rules every faculty
through subordinate organs and limbs. Thus, the ruling organ of
nutrition is the heart and the subordinates are the other organs that
intervene in the process of nutrition, that is, the stomach, the
liver, the spleen, etc. The faculty of sensation is explained
following the same model: the heart rules sensation, and its
subordinates or auxiliaries are the five senses whose function is to
apprehend sensibles. The imaginative faculty is located in the heart
and has no auxiliaries distributed in other organs, but it controls
what is provided by the five senses. According to
al-Farabi, the imaginative faculty is able to separate
and connect what is provided by the five senses in different ways,
sometimes attaining an image in agreement with what has been
perceived, sometimes something different (al-Farabi VC:
168-169). Concerning the rational faculty,
al-Farabi explains that it is also located in the heart
and has neither auxiliaries nor subordinates, but rules the other
faculties, namely, the imaginative, the sensitive, and the nutritive
(al-Farabi VC: 169-171).
The appetitive faculty makes the will (*irada*) arise once
the sensitive, the imaginative, or the rational faculties have
apprehended something. Appetite, according to
al-Farabi, may be towards knowing or doing a thing,
either with the whole body or with some limb or organ. The auxiliaries
and subordinates of this faculty are, therefore, all the organs
involved in the motion of the body. In other words, the limbs, nerves,
and muscles spread throughout the body serve as instruments and
subordinates of the appetitive faculty (al-Farabi VC:
170-171).
Notice that al-Farabi is following Aristotle according
to whom the heart is the center of the biological and even perceptive
capacities of animals and human beings. The heart is relevant because
it is the source of innate heat or the vital innate spirit, which
spreads through the blood vessels sustaining and preserving all the
parts of the body. The second major organ, the brain, regulates the
heat disseminated by the heart (al-Farabi VC:
176-177). This innate heat is the principle of life. This
biological account helps explain the origin and nature of the soul. In
the previous section I explained al-Farabi's
understanding of the origin and composition of matter and its relation
to the form. When referring specifically to the conformity of the
human body and the origin of the rational soul,
al-Farabi holds that the conformity of this kind of
body with its corresponding set of faculties is only possible when the
heat of the heart reaches a certain temperature.
Following Aristotle, al-Farabi explains the role of the
reproductive faculty (al-Farabi VC: 186-197) in
the origin of the body and the soul. He holds that the female prepares
the matter while the male prepares the form. Once again, he insists on
the centrality of the heart, which provides the matter of the living
being through the womb and the form through the organ that generates
the semen. The semen, once entering the womb, finds inside of it the
blood that had been previously prepared by the womb in order to
receive the human form contained in the semen. The semen in turn
endows this blood with a capacity that enables the blood to move and
start forming the different organs that make up the human body. Hence,
the blood from the womb serves as the matter that receives the human
form contained in the semen, which is to say that the semen serves as
the rennet by which the milk is curdled. Just as the rennet is that by
virtue of which fresh milk curdles, while not being part of the
curdled milk nor of its matter, so it happens with the semen, which is
not part of the clogged blood or of its matter. Hence, the embryo is
constituted in the same way that fresh milk is curdled by the action
of the curdling principle, that is, the rennet.
When the blood in the womb receives the form from the semen, the first
thing that arises is precisely the heart (al-Farabi VC:
186-187). The other organs in the body emerge only once the rest
of the faculties, beginning with the nutritive faculty, are present in
the heart. The developing organs include those that are endowed with
specifically female or male procreative faculties. Therefore, male and
female individuals share all organs but those with reproductive
functions and, similarly, both share all the faculties of the soul,
that is, the sensitive, the imaginative, and the rational faculties
(al-Farabi VC: 196-197).
All of this detailed biological discussion helps explain the emergence
of the perceptive faculties in animals and human beings. Both have
sensation so that they can receive the impressions produced by
external objects and, through the imaginative faculty, they can retain
sensibles while no longer being in contact with the exterior world.
Animals are able to react to the external world because they possess
sensation and imagination, so they can experience pleasure and pain,
or detect those situations that are damaging or dangerous for them. In
the case of human beings, in addition to the imaginative faculty, the
rational faculty is essential for cognition: human cognition is
characterized not by the mere attainment of sensible forms but,
rather, by the attainment of intelligibles. Furthermore, it is the
faculty through which human beings attain the sciences and the arts,
and through which they are able to discern between good habits and
good deeds from those that are bad. By this faculty humans are able to
reflect on whether something should be done and they can recognize
what is useful, pleasant, and harmful (al-Farabi VC:
165).
The rational faculty is both theoretical and practical
(al-Farabi KS: 32-33; PR: 29-31). In its
theoretical aspect, the rational faculty allows humans to attain the
knowledge of things that are in a certain way and cannot be otherwise;
that is, humans are not able to act upon them or alter them. For
example, we cannot do anything to alter the fact that three is an odd
number and four an even number (al-Farabi SA: SS7,
15-16). In contrast, in its practical aspect, the rational
faculty deals with those things humans can act upon and alter. In this
practical dimension, the rational faculty involves skills and
calculation. Skills refer to acquired abilities for practicing
activities such as carpentry, farming, medicine, or sailing, while
calculation is related to those situations where we need to deliberate
about something we want to do, when we want to do it, whether it is
possible to do it and, if possible, how it should be done
(al-Farabi VC: 208-209; SA: SS7,
15-16).
As can be seen, the rational faculty is responsible for human
cognition in all its aspects. However, though al-Farabi
gives much importance to this faculty, he also devotes much attention
to the imaginative faculty in itself and its interactions with the
rational faculty. The two following sections review in more detail the
role of the imaginative and the rational or intellective faculties in
human cognition, respectively.
## 3. The Relevance of the Imaginative Faculty
According to al-Farabi the imaginative faculty is very
active in human cognitive acts. As outlined above, its function is to
retain sense impressions when they are no longer perceived as external
stimuli, and also to combine, compose, and even reproduce, those
impressions. Following the Aristotelian account,
al-Farabi thinks that the imaginative faculty is
intermediate between the sensitive and rational faculties. In fact, in
the case of human beings, its function is to provide reason with the
impressions attained through the senses, but it also serves the
rational faculty in other ways, as will be shown.
In the waking state the imaginative faculty is permanently engaged
with the rational, appetitive, and sensible faculties. In such a state
the sensible faculty is actively working in interaction with sensibles
and sense impressions. Likewise, as mentioned, the imaginative faculty
provides both the rational and appetitive faculties with these sense
impressions. Nevertheless, when in the sleeping state, the sensitive,
appetitive, and rational faculties cease their activities, and this is
when the imaginative faculty performs a distinctive action of its own.
Given that the sensitive faculty is at ease and no longer receiving
fresh sense impressions, the imaginative faculty turns now to the
impressions preserved in itself, and acts upon them by means of
composition and division. Hence, the imaginative faculty has the power
to preserve and manipulate sense impressions through composition or
division, both in the case of those freshly offered by the senses
while in the waking state and those that have been stored in it
(al-Farabi VC: 210-227).
In addition to the powers described above, the imaginative faculty has
a distinctive capacity, that is, "reproductive imitation"
or mimesis (*muhakat*). Reproductive imitation refers
to the capacity displayed by the imaginative faculty to imitate a
series of elements by means of the sensibles stored in it. Through
these sensibles, the imaginative faculty can imitate impressions that
pertain to the sensitive faculty, intelligibles that pertain to the
rational faculty, desires that pertain to the appetitive faculty, and
also aspects proper to the nutritive faculty and even the temperament
of the body (al-Farabi VC: 210-213). This is why
the imagination has the capacity to stimulate particular emotions,
humors, desires, and temperaments that move the body and put it into
action (al-Farabi VC: 216-219).
Regarding the relation between the imaginative and rational faculties,
since the imaginative faculty only deals with sensibles, in order to
relate to the intelligibles it must imitate them by means of
sensibles. For this reason, when providing his theory of prophecy and
divination, al-Farabi argues that while the active
intellect usually enables the actualization of the potential
intelligibles in the material intellect, in some special cases the
active intellect directly provides intelligibles that are accessible
to the imaginative faculty in the form of particular sensibles. These
events can take place both in the waking and sleeping states, but are
rather rare while waking and restricted to a few people
(al-Farabi VC: 220-223).
When an individual has a very powerful imaginative faculty, to such a
degree that it is no longer restricted to the supply of images to the
other faculties, it is thus free to experience sensibles of extreme
beauty and perfection by means of imitation. The highest rank of
perfection that the imaginative faculty can achieve is precisely when
an individual attains prophecy or awareness of present or future
events, as well as the capacity to see glorious or divine beings. This
can be achieved by means of present and future particulars and the
transcendent intelligibles of divine beings, both granted by the
active intellect. However, al-Farabi also expounds a
series of inferior ranks below this most perfect attainment of vision,
each progressively more imperfect than the precedent in terms of
whether the vision takes place during waking or sleeping states, and
whether the individual has access to particulars or intelligibles.
According to al-Farabi, the most common kind of vision
is that of individuals who receive particulars while in the sleeping
state.
Although al-Farabi's conception of the
imaginative faculty departs from Aristotle's view, it combines
some elements coming from the Hellenistic and the Middle Platonist
traditions that, as Walzer (1957: 142-148) points out, may have
been taken from Porphyry and Proclus. The result is a psychological
explanation of prophecy and divination. In recent years, scholars
working on the Arabic version of Aristotle's treatise *On
Divination in Sleep* (Hansberger 2008: 73-74; 2010: 158)
have suggested that this work is a relevant source for the
understanding of the Islamic philosophical conception of prophecy,
including that of al-Farabi. The Arabic *On
Divination in Sleep* is an adulterated version of
Aristotle's text and provides a different explanation of
veridical dreams within a Neoplatonic metaphysical framework, where a
universal intellect distributes veridical dreams and some people with
outstanding psychological capacities are able to receive them and
interpret
them.[4]
Even though no explicit references are made to *On Divination in
Sleep* in al-Farabi's *The Virtuous
City*, there are noticeable similarities between the two
treatises.
## 4. Doctrine on the Intellect
It has been mentioned that it is through the intellect that human
beings know intelligibles, attain the sciences and the arts, and
discern and reflect on practical matters. In *The Treatise on the
Intellect*, known in Latin as *De intellectu*,
al-Farabi provides a complete account of the different
senses of the term *'aql* (nous,
intellect or reason) starting with (1) the use that most people have
given to the term, then (2) the way in which Islamic theologians have
used it and, (3) finally, the different senses it has in
Aristotle's works, concretely, in *Posterior Analytics*,
*Nicomachean Ethics*, *On the Soul*, and
*Metaphysics* (al-Farabi LI: 3-4; OI: 68).
Most people use the term *'aql* to describe the capacity
that enables a person to discern which deeds are virtuous and which
are not by means of deliberation. This first sense is very close to
Aristotle's conception of prudence. Similarly, Islamic
theologians use this term to refer to those actions that are accepted
or repudiated in general or by the majority. More important for our
purposes in this article are the different senses of the term in the
Aristotelian corpus. According to al-Farabi, in
*Posterior Analytics* 2.19, *'aql* is understood
as a faculty of the soul by means of which certainty about necessary,
true, and universal premises is attained. Premises of this kind are
not arrived at by means of syllogisms, but are present in the subject
in a prior way, either by nature or without one being aware of how
these premises were acquired. Hence, this faculty is some part of the
soul by which humans have access to the first principles of the
theoretical sciences. I shall refer to this use of the term in detail
in the final section of this article (al-Farabi LI:
5-9; OI: 69-70).
In *Nicomachean Ethics* 6.6, Aristotle uses the term
nous to refer to a part of the soul, namely
prudence (phronesis /
*ta'aqqul*), the ability to apprehend through experience
the principles of practical matters. Certainly, just as Aristotle
refers to the first principles of the theoretical sciences, he
holds--and al-Farabi after him--that there
are also first principles of the practical
sciences.[5]
Another sense is found in *On the Soul* 3.4 where, according
to al-Farabi, Aristotle divides the intellect into (1)
potential (also known as material or passive) (*'aql
bi-l-quwah*), (2) actual or intellect in actuality (*'aql
bi'l-fi'l*), (3) acquired intellect (*'aql
al-mustafad*), and (4) active or agent intellect
(*'aql al-fa ''al*)
(al-Farabi LI: 9-11; LC: 215; OI: 70-71).
Notice that these stages are not present in Aristotle's *On
the Soul*, but in Alexander's *On the Intellect*.
This is one of the aspects that show evidence that
al-Farabi draws extensively upon Alexander, as several
scholars have noticed (Davidson 1992: 48-63 & 65-70;
Geoffroy 2002: 191-231; Vallat 2004: 33-42). Finally, in
*Metaphysics Lambda*, according to
al-Farabi's account, Aristotle refers to the
First Principle of existing things as the First Intellect
(al-Farabi LI: 35-36; OI: 78).
Given the purpose of this article, the account of the intellect as
used in the psychological context of the *On the Soul* deserves
deeper consideration (al-Farabi LI: 12-35; LC:
215-221; OI: 71-78). This approach is exhaustively
examined both in *The Treatise on the Intellect* and in *The
Virtuous City*. In the latter there is a complete account of the
way in which the rational or intellectual faculty acts
(al-Farabi VC: 196-211). Once
al-Farabi has explained the role of the imaginative
faculty as that which provides the intellect with impressions attained
through the senses, he next explains the process whereby they become
intelligibles in act. Following Aristotle and the Aristotelian
tradition, al-Farabi describes the intellect as being
itself potential or, using Alexander's terminology, an innate
"natural disposition"
(epitedeiotes
/ *isti'dad*) (al-Farabi VC:
198-199; Geoffroy 2002: 204). This kind of intellect is
frequently called "potential", "material", or
"passive", and is simply the rational faculty with which
all human beings are endowed.
In *The Treatise on the Intellect* al-Farabi
refers to the material intellect (nous
ulikos, a Greek term coined by
Alexander) as a soul or part of the soul, or one of the faculties of
the soul, or something that is in potency to abstract the forms from
their matter and turning these into forms for itself
(al-Farabi LI: 12-16; LC: 215; OI:
71-72).[6]
When these forms are abstracted, they become intelligibles or forms
for the material intellect. It can be rightly said that for
al-Farabi the material intellect is like the matter
where the abstracted forms come to be, where the material intellect
itself becomes the abstracted forms, just as the imprinted object
leaves its mark on a piece of wax.
Before a form of the objects outside the soul has been abstracted, the
material intellect is just in potency to receive those forms or
potential intelligibles; but when these latter come to be in the
material intellect, the material intellect becomes an actual
intellect, and the potential intelligibles are actualized. Now, the
existence of actual intelligibles is different from their existence as
potential intelligibles or forms in matter. When external to the soul
and linked to matter, forms are affected by place, time, position,
quantity, and the like. But when forms are actualized in the soul,
many of these qualities are removed and their existence thus becomes
different from their former existence as forms of bodies outside the
soul (al-Farabi LI: 16-17; LC: 216; OI: 72).
Since the actual intellect becomes itself the actual intelligibles,
then they are one and the same thing: what is understood is not
different from the intellect itself, since the actual intelligible has
become the form of the actual intellect. If other intelligibles come
to be in the actual intellect, they will also be actualized. As a
consequence, the actual intellect will be able to understand on its
own and not by means of forms in matter outside from itself. When this
stage of intellection is attained, the actual intellect becomes the
so-called "acquired" intellect (al-Farabi
LI: 19-21; LC: 216-217; OI: 72-73).
Whereas forms linked to matter have to be abstracted in order to
become actual intelligibles in the actual intellect, the process of
abstraction is not required in the case of forms separate from matter,
that is, the separate entities that belong to the supralunar realm.
These separate forms are grasped by the intellect not as actual
intellect but as the acquired intellect, and thus become forms for it.
Moreover, the acquired intellect is a perfection of the human
intellect because it has no need to perform the activity of
abstraction in order to grasp forms existing separately from matter.
In other words, it is the acquired intellect that enables the grasping
of separate forms through the assistance of the active intellect.
Evidently, this view differs from Aristotle's original stance,
since al-Farabi, once again following Alexander, links
psychology and cosmology, that is, the acquired intellect and the
active intellect.
Regarding the active intellect, as mentioned in the first section,
this intellect is a separate form, which is not linked to matter, and
has never been and never will be. According to
al-Farabi, in its species the active intellect is an
actual intellect quite similar to the acquired intellect. The active
intellect is what turns the material intellect into an actual
intellect and what turns the potential intelligibles into actual
intelligibles. To describe the assistance of the active intellect in
this process, al-Farabi resorts to the well-known
analogy of light, used by Aristotle in *On the Soul* 3, which
raised a great deal of discussion among late ancient and medieval
commentators of Aristotle.
The way al-Farabi builds the referred analogy echoes
Alexander and Themistius (Davidson 1992: 50). Al-Farabi
describes the relationship of the active intellect and the material
intellect as that held between the sun and sight
(al-Farabi LI: 24-27; LC: 218-219; OI:
74-75). As H. A. Davidson (1992: 50-51) states, the
analogy is built upon Aristotle's theory of vision, but
al-Farabi stresses the sun as the source of the
light.[7]
Therefore, al-Farabi equates the sun as the source of
light with the active intellect, and not with the light itself. In
this sense, following Davidson's description, the light from the
sun does four things: (1) it enters the eye and turns its potential
vision into actual vision; (2) it enables potentially visible colors
to become visible in actuality; (3) it itself becomes visible to the
eye; and (4) it renders the sun, its source, visible to the eye. The
analogy works as follows: (1) the active intellect turns the material
or passive intellect into intellect in actuality; (2) it transforms
potential intelligibles (sense impressions stored in the imaginative
faculty) into actual intelligibles; (3) it itself becomes an
intelligible object for the human intellect; and (4) it renders the
active intellect as an intelligible object for the human intellect.
With this analogy al-Farabi suggests that the active
intellect provides some sort of illumination or flow of light by which
the human intellect is actualized enabling it to grasp the forms by
abstraction.
Through the intellective process described, the active intellect makes
the forms that are in matter progressively more immaterial and brings
about the acquired intellect. Since the acquired intellect is of the
same sort as the active intellect, the human intellect thus becomes
progressively closer to the active intellect. In the view of
al-Farabi, this is precisely the ultimate goal and
happiness (*sa'adah*) of human beings, and
constitutes the way in which they attain definitive perfection:
through the intellectual process the acquired intellect gradually
becomes a substance that performs the action by virtue of which it
realizes itself fully as substance and, in this way, remains in
existence in the afterlife (*hayah al-akhirah*)
(al-Farabi LI: 27; 31-32; LC: 219-220; OI:
75-76). Through this gradual process of perfection, the acquired
intellect ends up acting only within itself, equating its own action
with its own existence. When this stage is reached, the body is no
longer needed as its matter in order to subsist, whereas it was
initially needed for actions such as sensation and imagination to take
place. Hence, the most perfect state the intellect can achieve is when
it can subsist independently from the body. Nevertheless, the way in
which al-Farabi understood the relation between the
acquired and agent intellects, was harshly criticized by Averroes who
judged it impossible to conceive the transformation of the material
intellect within the perishable human being into an immaterial and
eternal substance at the level of the agent intellect (Averroes LCD:
387-388).
## 5. Theory of Scientific Knowledge
As mentioned in the previous section, the term *'aql*
(intellect) is used in different ways. We have dealt with the way in
which al-Farabi uses it in the psychological context of
Aristotle's treatise *On the Soul*. However, in his
account of the different senses of the term, al-Farabi
also refers to its use in *Posterior Analytics* 2.19, where
Aristotle uses the term nous in an
epistemological context when he talks about a faculty of the soul by
means of which certainty about necessary, true, and universal premises
is attained. In his *Aphorisms* al-Farabi
describes the theoretical intellect in the same terms when he says
that this intellect
>
>
> is the faculty by which we attain by nature, and not by examination or
> syllogistic reasoning, certain knowledge concerning the necessary,
> universal premises that are principles of the sciences.
> (al-Farabi SA: SS34, 28-29)
>
>
>
By "principles of the sciences", al-Farabi
refers to principles such as 'the whole is greater than the
part,' 'amounts equal to a single amount are mutually
equal,' and premises of this kind, following Aristotle
explicitly once again. These premises are the first point from which a
thing is known or comes to be known (Aristotle *Metaphysics* 5,
1013a18). As explained earlier, the human intellect passes from
potency to act through the assistance of the active intellect, and
when the intellect in act becomes acquired intellect and reaches the
capacity to understand on its own, this means that it already has the
actual disposition to infer and reason by itself. In other words, the
intellect has attained the habit of knowledge, and therefore is able
to attain scientific knowledge (*'ilm*).
Al-Farabi's understanding of "scientific
knowledge", has nothing to do with the modern notion of
"science"; rather he is using Aristotle's notion of
*apodeixis*, that is, a type of knowledge that guarantees
certainty, and is confined to mathematics and metaphysics. In this
respect, Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition after him are far
from modern experimental science, since the main concern of the former
is the attainment of absolute certainty. According to
al-Farabi, scientific knowledge is a virtue of the
theoretical intellect that enables the rational soul to attain
certainty about those beings whose existence and constitution do not
depend on human artifice, as well as what those beings are and how
they are,
>
>
> from demonstrations composed of accurate, necessary, and primary
> premises of which the intellect becomes certain and attains knowledge
> by nature. (al-Farabi SA: SS35, 29)
>
>
>
This language resembles that found in *Posterior Analytics*
2.19, and also in *Nicomachean Ethics* 6.3.
Following al-Farabi's explanation of
*'ilm* in his *Aphorisms*, there are two types of
scientific knowledge: (1) becoming certain of the existence and the
reason of the existence of a thing, and why it cannot possibly be
otherwise; and (2) becoming certain of the existence of a thing and
why it cannot be something else, but without considering the reason
for its existence.
Al-Farabi goes on to define scientific knowledge as
being accurate, certain, and steadfast in any given moment, which
means it does not change through time and does not go in and out of
existence. Certainty cannot contain doubt and falsehood, since what
can in any way be false cannot be considered certain or be said to be
knowledge. For this very reason, al-Farabi points out
that the ancients did not consider sensation of what can change as
knowledge; rather, scientific knowledge is confined to the
"certainty" about the existence of things that cannot
possibly change. In order to explain this al-Farabi
offers the example of the number three being always an odd number, and
how it cannot be otherwise.
The notion of "certainty" (*yaqin*) has a
relevant place in al-Farabi's epistemology and is
linked also to his conception of the logical arts. In fact, he
understands logic (*mantiq*) as a tool
(*alah*) that leads to certainty when used correctly. He
conceives five logical arts: demonstration, dialectic, sophistry,
rhetoric, and poetics (al-Farabi ES: 37-45).
Dialectic engenders belief (*zann*) through arguments
built upon generally-accepted opinions; sophistry is a logical art
that makes general opinions appear true; rhetoric persuades by means
of appealing elocutions; poetics persuades by means of alluring or
repulsive images; finally, demonstration, the highest of the logical
arts, leads to certainty by means of universal and necessary
premises.[8]
The non-demonstrative logical arts--dialectic, sophistry,
rhetoric, and poetics--engender opinion in different degrees
whereas, in contrast, demonstration engenders certainty. However, in
some places al-Farabi admits that it could be the case
that these non-demonstrative arts would lead to assent to beliefs in a
way very close to certainty (al-Farabi KB: 20-21;
BD: 64-65). For this reason, as D. Black (2006: 11-45) has
pointed out, it is important to distinguish in
al-Farabi between "certainty"
(*yaqin*) and "absolute certainty"
(*al-yaqin 'ala al-itlaq*).
There are two works where al-Farabi treats the notion
of absolute certainty in detail. The first is his *Book of
Demonstration* (*Kitab al-burhan*) and the second
is the *Book on the Conditions of Certitude* (*Kitab
Sara'it al-yaqin*). In both treatises
al-Farabi provides some conditions for absolute
certainty. The second treatise contains an exhaustive account of these
conditions, six in number: (1) to believe that something is in some
way and not another, (2) to agree that this belief corresponds and is
not opposed to the external existence of the thing, (3) to know the
correspondence between the belief of the existence and the existence
of the thing in reality, (4) to know that it is not possible for this
correspondence to happen and there to be opposition, (5) to know that
opposition between belief and reality cannot happen at any time, and
(6) to know that all this is not accidental, but essential
(al-Farabi KY: 98). According to D. Black (2006: 16),
these conditions can be understood as follows:
* *S* believes that *p* (the belief condition);
* *p* is true (the truth condition);
* *S* knows that *p* is true (the knowledge
condition);
* it is impossible that *p* not be true (the necessity
condition);
* there is no time at which *p* can be false (the eternity
condition); and,
* conditions 1-5 hold essentially, not accidentally (the
non-accidentality condition).
D. Black realizes that al-Farabi's first three
conditions for certainty seem to evoke the traditional tripartite
definition of knowledge as "justified true belief", an
essential and debated notion in contemporary epistemology. However, as
D. Black herself notices, in al-Farabi the
justification condition, that is, 'having good reasons or
sufficient evidence to believe something,' is replaced by the
knowledge condition and, in this sense, knowledge itself becomes a
necessary ingredient within certainty, and therefore is insufficient
for raising a belief to the status of absolute certainty. For this
reason, certainty for al-Farabi requires two conditions
from the knower: (1) to know that a proposition *x* is true, and
(2) to know that she knows. This is very close, as D. Black notices,
to what contemporary epistemology calls "second
order-knowledge" (Black 2006: 19-21).
In the *Book of Demonstration* al-Farabi states
that the goal of scientific demonstration is precisely absolute or
necessary certainty (al-Farabi KB: 26; BD: 68). In a
very short treatise entitled *Introductory Letter on Logic*
(*Risalah sudira biha al-kitab*)
al-Farabi writes:
>
>
> Philosophical discourse is called demonstrative. It seeks to teach and
> make clear the truth in the things which are such that they afford
> certain knowledge. (al-Farabi IR: 231)
>
>
>
It seems, therefore, that al-Farabi has a strict
conception of demonstrative science inspired by Aristotle's
*Posterior Analytics*. Nevertheless, although
al-Farabi gives demonstration and absolute certainty a
relevant place in his conception of philosophy, he also considers that
our knowledge is not limited to absolute certainty. He also takes into
consideration other forms of knowledge that can lead us to what should
be called non-necessary certainty, as is the case with the different
kinds of knowledge we attain by means of the non-demonstrative logical
arts. In this regard, al-Farabi considers that from the
different kinds of arguments we can conceive different degrees of
certainty and therefore, different kinds of beliefs (from absolute
certainty to non-necessary certainty or strong belief). |
al-ghazali | ## 1. Life
Later Muslim medieval historians say that Abu Hamid
Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali was born in 1058 or 1059
in Tabaran-Tus (15 miles north of modern Meshed, NE Iran),
yet notes about his age in his letters and his autobiography indicate
that he was born in 1055 or 1056 (Griffel 2009, 23-25).
Al-Ghazali received his early education in his hometown of
Tus together with his brother Ahmad (*c.*1060-1123 or
1126) who became a famous preacher and Sufi scholar. Muhammad went on
to study with the influential Ash'arite theologian
al-Juwayni (1028-85) at the Nizamiyya Madrasa in
nearby Nishapur. This brought him in close contact with the court of
the Grand-Seljuq Sultan Malikshah (reg. 1071-92) and his
grand-vizier Nizam al-Mulk (1018-92). In 1091 Nizam
al-Mulk appointed al-Ghazali to the prestigious
Nizamiyya Madrasa in Baghdad. In addition to being a confidante
of the Seljuq Sultan and his court in Isfahan, he now became closely
connected to the caliphal court in Baghdad. He was undoubtedly the
most influential intellectual of his time, when in 1095 he suddenly
gave up his posts in Baghdad and left the city. Under the influence of
Sufi literature al-Ghazali had begun to change his
lifestyle two years before his departure (Griffel 2009, 67). He
realized that the high ethical standards of a virtuous religious life
are not compatible with being in the service of sultans, viziers, and
caliphs. Benefiting from the riches of the military and political
elite implies complicity in their corrupt and oppressive rule and will
jeopardize one's prospect of redemption in the afterlife. When
al-Ghazali left Baghdad in 1095 he went to Damascus and
Jerusalem and vowed at the tomb of Abraham in Hebron never again to
serve the political authorities or teach at state-sponsored schools.
He continued to teach, however, at small schools (singl.
*zawiya*) that were financed by private donations. After
performing the pilgrimage in 1096, al-Ghazali returned via
Damascus and Baghdad to his hometown Tus, where he founded a
small private school and a Sufi convent
(*khanqah*). In 1106, at the beginning of the 6th
century in the Muslim calendar, al-Ghazali broke his vow
and returned to teaching at the state-sponsored Nizamiyya
Madrasa in Nishapur, where he himself had been a student. To his
followers he justified this step with the great amount of theological
confusion among the general public and pressure from authorities at
the Seljuq court (al-Ghazali 1959a, 45-50 = 2000b,
87-93). Al-Ghazali regarded himself as one of the
renewers (singl. *muhyi*) of religion, who, according to
a *hadith*, will come every new century. In Nishapur,
al-Ghazali's teaching activity at the
Nizamiyya madrasa led to a controversy that was triggered by
opposition to his teachings, particularly those in his most widely
read work, *The Revival of the Religious Sciences*, and by
accusations that these show a distinct influence from
*falsafa*. Al-Ghazali was summoned to defend
himself in front of the Seljuq governor Sanjar (d. 1157). The latter,
however, acquitted him from all charges and supported his teaching
activity in Nishapur (Garden 2014: 143-168). On this occasion,
al-Ghazali again asked to be released from his obligations
at the Nizamiyya madrasa, a request that was denied. All this
time, he continued to teach at his *zawiya* in Tus
where he died in December 1111 (Griffel 2009, 20-59).
## 2. Al-Ghazali's Reports of the *falasifa*'s Teachings
After having already made a name for himself as a competent author of
legal works, al-Ghazali published around 1095 a number of
books where he addresses the challenges posed by *falsafa* and
by the theology of the Isma'ilite Shiites. The
movement of *falsafa* (from Greek: *philosophia*)
resulted from the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific
literature into Arabic from the 8th to the early 10th centuries. The
Arabic philosophers (*falasifa*) were heirs to the
late-antique tradition of understanding the works of Aristotle in
Neoplatonic terms. In philosophy the translators from Greek into
Arabic focused on the works of Aristotle and although some distinctly
Neoplatonic texts were translated into Arabic--most notably the
pseudo-Aristotelian *Theology*, a compilation from
Plotinus' *Enneads*--the most significant
Neoplatonic contributions reached the Arabs by way of commentaries on
the works of the Stagirite (Wisnovsky 2003, 15). *Falsafa* was
a movement where Christians, Muslims, and even pagan authors
participated. After the 12th century it would also include Jewish
authors. For reasons that will become apparent, al-Ghazali
focused his comments on the Muslim *falasifa*. In the
early 10th century al-Farabi (d. 950) had developed
a systemic philosophy that challenged key convictions held by Muslim
theologians, most notably the creation of the world in time and the
original character of the information God reveals to prophets.
Following Aristotle, al-Farabi taught that the world
has no beginning in the past and that the celestial spheres, for
instance, move from pre-eternity. Prophets and the revealed religions
they bring articulate the same insights that philosophers express in
their teachings, yet the prophets use the method of symbolization to
make this wisdom more approachable for the ordinary people. Avicenna
continued al-Farabi's approach and developed
his metaphysics and his prophetology to a point where it offers
comprehensive explanations of God's essence and His actions as
well as a psychology that gives a detailed account of how prophets
receive their knowledge and how they, for instance, perform miracles
that confirm their missions. Avicenna's philosophy offers
philosophical explanations of key Muslim tenets like God's unity
(*tawhid*) and the central position of prophets among
humans.
In his autobiography al-Ghazali writes that during his
time at the Baghdad Nizamiyya he studied the works of the
*falasifa* for two years before he wrote his
*Incoherence of the Philosophers* in a third year
(Ghazali 1959a, 18 = 2000b, 61). It is hardly credible,
however, that al-Ghazali began to occupy himself with
*falsafa* only after he became professor at the Nizamiyya
in Baghdad. This account is apologetic and aims to reject the claim of
some of his critics that he had learned *falsafa* before his
own religious education was complete. Most probably he had become
acquainted with *falsafa* while studying with al-Juwayni,
whose works already show an influence from Avicenna.
Al-Ghazali's response to Aristotelianism, the
*Incoherence of the Philosophers*, is a masterwork of
philosophical literature and may have been decades in the making. It
is accompanied by works where al-Ghazali provides faithful
reports of the philosophers' teachings. Two of those works have
come down to us. The first is an almost complete fragment of a long
book where al-Ghazali copies or paraphrases passages from
the works of philosophers and combines them to a comprehensive report
about their teachings in metaphysics (Griffel 2006, al-Akiti 2009).
The fragment unfortunately bears no title. The second work, the
*Doctrines of the Philosophers* (*Maqasid
al-falasifa*, on the translation of the title see Shihadeh
2011, 90-92), is a loosely adapted Arabic translation of the
parts on logics, metaphysics, and the natural sciences in
Avicenna's Persian work *Philosophy for
'Ala' al-Dawla* (*Danishnamah-yi
Ala'i*) (Janssens 1986). Previously it has been
assumed that the *Doctrines of the Philosophers* was written as
a preparatory study to his major work, the *Incoherence.* This
can no longer be upheld. Both reports of al-Ghazali stand
only in a very loose connection to the text of the *Incoherence of
the Philosophers*. The *Incoherence* and the
*Doctrines* use different terminologies and the latter presents
its material in ways that does not support the criticism in the
*Incoherence* (Janssens 2003, 43-45). The *Doctrines
of the Philosophers* may have been a text that was initially
unconnected to the *Incoherence* or that was generated after
the composition of the latter. Only its introduction and its brief
*explicit* create a connection to the refutation in the
*Incoherence*. These parts were almost certainly written (or
added) after the publication of the *Incoherence* (Janssens
2003, 45; Griffel 2006, 9-10).
*The Doctrines of the Philosophers* was translated into Latin
in the third quarter of the 12th century and into Hebrew first in 1292
and at least another two times within the next fifty years. These
translations enjoyed much more success than the Arabic original.
Whereas in Arabic, numerous books that follow a similar goal of
presenting (and soon also improving) Avicenna's philosophical
system were composed during the 12th and 13th centuries, none of them
were translated into Latin and very few became available in Hebrew. In
the Latin as well as in the Hebrew traditions, translations of *The
Doctrines of the Philosophers* overshadowed all of
al-Ghazali's other writings. The Latin translation,
sometimes referred to as *Summa theoricae philosophiae* or as
*Logica et philosophia Algazelis*, was the only book by
al-Ghazali translated during the period of the
transmission of Arabic philosophy to Christian Europe (the part on
logic is edited in Lohr 1965, the two remaining parts on metaphysics
and the natural sciences in al-Ghazali 1933). It was
translated by Dominicus Gundisalivi (Gundissalinus, d. *c.*
1190) of Toledo in collaboration with someone referred to as
"Magister Iohannes" (d. 1215), also known as Iohannes
Hispanus (or Hispalensis), probably an Arabized Christian (a Mozarab),
who was dean at the cathedral of Toledo in the 1180s and 1190s
(Burnett 1994). The two translators seem to have omitted the short
introduction and the *explicit* where the work is described as
an uncommitted report of the *falasifa*'s
teachings. A small number of Latin manuscripts show signs that this
translation was revised during the 13th century (Lohr 1965, 229) and
in one case they preserve a Latin rendition of
al-Ghazali's original introduction (edited in Salman
1935, 125-27). That, however, had next to no influence on the
text's reception (Salman 1935), and the version that circulated
among readers of Latin does not include al-Ghazali's
distancing statements (al-Ghazali 1506). The book thus
concealed its character as a report of Avicenna's teachings and
its author "Algazel" was considered a faithful follower of
Avicenna who had produced a masterful compendium of the latter's
philosophy. During the late 12th, the 13th, and the 14th centuries the
*Summa theoricae philosophiae* was a principal source on the
teachings of the Arabic philosophers in books by authors like Albert
the Great (d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) that were essential
to the development of the Latin philosophical tradition. The work was
still used sporadically in the 15h century and even more often in the
16th century (Minnema 2014; Alonso 1958; d'Alverny 1986).
Al-Ghazali's identification as one of them is
usually attributed to the limited knowledge of Latin scholars about
matters relating to the authors of the texts they read. The
assumption, however, that the *Doctrines of the Philosophers*
is not merely a report of the teachings of the *falasifa*
but rather represents al-Ghazali's genuine positions
in philosophy is not limited to the Latin tradition. There are Arabic
manuscripts that attribute a text that is quite similar to the
*Doctrines of the Philosophers* to al-Ghazali
without mentioning that the teachings therein are an uncommitted
report. The oldest of these manuscripts was produced at the beginning
of the 13th century at Maraghah, an important center of scholarship in
NW Iran and is available in facsimile (Pourjavady 2002, 2-62).
It shows that also in the Arabic tradition, the positions reported in
the *Doctrines of the Philosophy* were closely associated with
al-Ghazali. The "mis-identification" of
al-Ghazali as a follower of Avicenna may have its roots in
an attitude among some Arabic readers of al-Ghazali who
saw in him a closer follower of the *falasifa* than the
mainstream Arabic tradition wished to acknowledge.
In its several Hebrew versions, al-Ghazali's
*Doctrines of the Philosophers* (known as *De'ot
ha-filosofim* and *Kavvanot
ha-filosofim*) was one of the most
widespread philosophical texts studied among Jews in Europe
(Steinschneider 1893, 1:296-326; Harvey 2001). The translator of
the first Hebrew version of 1292, the Jewish Averroist Isaac Albalag,
attached his own introduction and extensive notes to the text (Vajda
1960). This and the other two Hebrew translations attracted a great
number of commentators, including Moses Narboni (d. 1362), who was
active in southern France and Spain, and Moses Almosnino (d.
*c.*1580) of Thessalonica (Steinschneider 1893,
1:311-25). Al-Ghazali's *Doctrines of the
Philosophers* was a very popular text up to the 16th century and
over 75 manuscripts of the Hebrew translations are extant (Eran 2007,
Harvey 2015: 289). Some Jewish scholars, like the 14th century Katalan
Hasdai Crescas, saw in this Avicennan text a welcome alternative to
the equally widespread teachings of Averroes (Harvey and Harvey 2002;
Harvey 2015: 300-302). In fact, by the 15th century the Hebrew
version of al-Ghazali's *Doctrines of the
Philosophers* may have replaced Averroes as the most popular
source among Jews for the study of the Aristotelian natural sciences
(Harvey 2015: 289). Although the Hebrew translations make the
character of the work as a report clear, al-Ghazali
was--as in the Latin tradition--regarded as a much closer
follower of *falsafa* than in the mainstream Arabic tradition.
The Hebrew tradition, for instance, makes widely available the
translation of a text ascribed to al-Ghazali where the
author responds to questions about astronomy and cosmology that are
quite far from Ash'arism and much closer to Aristotelianism
(Langermann 2011). This relatively widespread Hebrew text (edited and
translated in al-Ghazali 1896), referred to as
*Teshuvot she'alot*, "Answers to
Questions," or more recently as the "Hebrew
*Ajwiba*," exists in eleven Hebrew manuscripts (Harvey
2015: 298). Its Arabic original is known only from a very small number
of manuscripts, among them the one from Maraghah (Pourjavady 2002,
63-99). Accounts saying that al-Ghazali taught
philosophical positions he had openly condemned in his
*Incoherence* were relatively widespread in Hebrew literature
(Marx 1935, 410, 422-24). Moses Narboni, for instance, believed
that al-Ghazali used a stratagem to teach philosophy at a
time when it was, according to Narboni, officially prohibited. By
pretending to refute philosophy in his *Incoherence* he could
justify the writing of the *Doctrines*. The *Doctrines*
is therefore the main work on philosophy by al-Ghazali,
Narboni suspected, while the *Incoherence* serves only the
function of legitimizing the former's publication by saying that
a refutation must rely on a thorough knowledge of what is to be
refuted (Chertoff 1952, part 2, 6-7). This tendency among Hebrew
authors to disentangle al-Ghazali from the criticism of
philosophy expressed in his *Incoherence* led the Algerian
Jewish scholar Abraham Gavison (fl. 16th cent.) to report erroneously
that al-Ghazali was the author of both *The*
*Incoherence of the Philosophers* as well as its repudiation
*The Incoherence of the Incoherence* (*Tahafut
al-tahafut*), a work in reality written by Averroes (Gavison
1748, fol. 135a). In addition to his *Doctrines*, his
*Incoherence*, which was translated in 1411, and the text known
as *Teshuvot she'alot* (whose ascription to
al-Ghazali is doubtful), at least two other works by
al-Ghazali were translated into Hebrew: *Mishkat
al-anwar* and *Mizan al-'amal*
(Steinschneider 1893, 1:326-48, the text *Moznei
ha-'iyyunim* mentioned there is not by
al-Ghazali).
## 3. Al-Ghazali's "Refutations" of *falsafa* and Isma'ilism
Al-Ghazali describes the *Incoherence of the
Philosophers* as a "refutation" (*radd*) of the
philosophical movement (Ghazali 1959a, 18 = 2000b, 61),
and this has contributed to the erroneous assumption that he opposed
Aristotelianism and rejected its teachings. His response to
*falsafa* was far more complex and allowed him to adopt many of
its teachings. The *falasifa* are convinced,
al-Ghazali complains at the beginning of the
*Incoherence*, that their way of knowing by
"demonstrative proof" (*burhan*) is superior
to theological knowledge drawn from revelation and its rational
interpretation. This conviction led "a group" among the
Muslim *falasifa* who disregard Islam and who neglect its
ritual duties and its religious law (*shari'a*). In
his *Incoherence* al-Ghazali discusses twenty key
teachings of the *falasifa* and rejects the claim that
these teachings are demonstratively proven. In a detailed and
intricate philosophical discussion al-Ghazali aims to show
that none of the arguments in favor of these twenty teachings fulfills
the high epistemological standard of demonstration
(*burhan*) that the *falasifa* have set for
themselves. Rather, the arguments supporting these twenty convictions
rely upon unproven premises that are accepted only among the
*falasifa*, but are not established by reason. By showing
that these positions are supported by mere dialectical arguments
al-Ghazali aims to demolish what he regarded was an
epistemological hubris on the side of the *falasifa*. In
the *Incoherence* he wishes to show that the
*falasifa* practice *taqlid*, meaning they
merely repeat these teachings from the founders of their movement
without critically examining them (Griffel 2005).
The initial argument of the *Incoherence* focuses on
*apodeixis* and the demonstrative character of the arguments
refuted therein. While the book also touches on the truth of these
teachings, it "refutes" numerous positions whose truths
al-Ghazali acknowledges or which he subscribed to in his
later works. In these cases al-Ghazali wishes to show that
while these particular philosophical teachings are sound and true,
they are not demonstrated. The ultimate source of the
*falasifa*'s knowledge about God's nature,
the human soul, or about the heavenly spheres, for instance, are the
revelations given to early prophets such as Abraham and Moses. Their
information made it into the books of the ancient philosophers who
falsely claimed that they gained these insights by reason alone.
Among the twenty discussions of the *Incoherence*, sixteen are
concerned with positions held in the *falasifa*'s
metaphysics (*ilahiyyat*) and four with positions
that appear in their natural sciences
(*tabi'iyyat*). The 17th discussion on
causality will be analyzed below. The longest and most substantial
discussion is the first, which deals with Avicenna's and
al-Farabi's arguments in favor of the
world's pre-eternity (Hourani 1958, Marmura 1959).
Al-Ghazali denies that this position can be
demonstratively proven and draws from arguments that were earlier
developed by anti-Aristotelian critics such as the Christian John
Philoponus (Yahya l-Nahwi,
*c.*490-*c.*570) of Alexandria. Philoponus'
arguments, most importantly those that deny the possibility of an
infinite number of events in the past, had entered the Arabic
discourse on the world's creation earlier during the 9th century
(Davidson 1987, 55-56, 86-116, 366-75).
At the end of the *Incoherence* al-Ghazali asks
whether the twenty positions discussed in the book are in conflict
with the religious law (*shari'a*). Most of them
are wrong, he says, yet pose no serious problems in terms of religion,
where they should be considered "innovations" (singl.
*bid'a*). A small group of positions is considered wrong
as well as religiously problematic. These are three teachings from
Avicenna's philosophy, namely (1) that the world has no
beginning in the past and is not created in time, (2) that God's
knowledge includes only classes of beings (universals) and does not
extend to individual beings and their circumstances (particulars), and
(3) that after death the souls of humans will never again return into
bodies. In these three cases the teachings of Islam, which are based
on revelation, suggest the opposite, al-Ghazali says, and
thus overrule the unfounded claims of the *falasifa*.
What's more, these three teachings may mislead the public to
disregarding the religious law (*shari'a*) and are,
therefore, dangerous for society (Griffel 2000, 301-3). In his
function as a Muslim jurisprudent al-Ghazali adds a brief
*fatwa* at the end of his *Incoherence* and
declares that everybody who teaches these three positions publicly is
an unbeliever (*kafir*) and an apostate from Islam, who
can be killed (al-Ghazali 2000a, 226).
Al-Ghazali's efforts in dealing with the
philosophical movement amount to defining the boundaries of religious
tolerance in Islam. Soon after the *Incoherence*, he wrote a
similar book about the movement of the Isma'ilite
Shiites, known as the "Batinites" ("those who
arbitrarily follow an inner meaning in the Qur'an").
Initially the Isma'ilite Shiites were supporters of
the Fatimid counter-caliphate in Cairo and opposed the political
and religious authority of the Sunni caliph in Baghdad and the Seljuq
Sultans that he installed. During al-Ghazali's
lifetime, however, there occurred a schism within the clandestine
Isma'ilite movement. The "new
propaganda" of the Isma'ilites in Iraq and
Iran was now independent from the center in Cairo and developed its
own strategies. A key element of their--not entirely
unsuccessful--efforts to persuade people to their camp was their
criticism of sense perception and of rational arguments
(al-Ghazali 1954, 34; 1964b, 76, 80).
Al-Ghazali was closely familiar with the
Isma'ilites' propaganda efforts but did not
always have reliable information on their teachings on cosmology and
metaphysics. These were deeply influenced by cosmological notions in
late antique Gnostic and Neoplatonic literature (Walker 1993, de Smet
1995). What information he got, al-Ghzali seems to have
received from the Persian writings of the Isma'ilite
propagandist and philosopher Nasir-i Khosrow (d. *c.*
1075), who lived a generation earlier in Balkh in Khorasan and in the
remote region of the Pamir Mountains (Andani 2017).
Al-Ghazali, however, did not know about the schism within
the movement. In his book on the *Scandals of the Esoterics*
(*Fada'ih al-Batiniyya*) he looks closely at
those teachings that he knew and discusses which of them are merely
erroneous and which are unbelief. He assumes--wrongly--that
the Isma'ilite propagandists teach the existence of
two gods. Yet this presentation is not so much a misunderstanding on
the side of al-Ghazali but rather a deliberate
misrepresentation, based on a long discourse of
anti-Isma'ilite polemics (Andani 2017: 193). This
assumed dualism and the Isma'ilites' denial of
bodily resurrection in the afterlife leads to their condemnation by
al-Ghazali as unbelievers and apostates from Islam
(al-Ghazali 1964b, 151-55 = 2000b,
228-29).
## 4. The Place of *falsafa* in Islam
In his attempt to define the boundaries of Islam
al-Ghazali singles out a limited number of teachings that
in his opinion overstep the borders. In a separate book, *The*
*Decisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine
Unbelief* (*Faysal al-tafriqa bayna l-Islam
wa-l-zandaqa*) he clarifies that only teachings that violate
certain "fundamental doctrines" (*usul
al-'aqa'id*) should be deemed unbelief and
apostasy. These doctrines are limited to three: monotheism,
Muhammad's prophecy, and the Qur'anic descriptions of life
after death (al-Ghazali 1961, 195 = 2002, 112). He
stresses that all other teachings, including those that are erroneous
or even regarded as "religious innovations" (singl.
*bid'a*), should be tolerated. Again other teachings may
be correct, al-Ghazali adds, and despite their
philosophical background, for instance, should be accepted by the
Muslim community. Each teaching must be judged by itself, and if found
sound and in accordance with revelation, should be adopted
(al-Ghazali 1959a, 25-27 = 2000b, 67-70). This
attitude leads to a widespread application of Aristotelian teachings
in al-Ghazali's works on Muslim theology and
ethics.
Al-Ghazali's refutations of the
*falasifa* and the Isma'ilites have a
distinctly political component. In both cases he fears that the
followers of these movements as well as people with only a cursory
understanding of them might believe that they can disregard the
religious law (*shari'a*). In the case of the
Isma'ilites there was an additional theological
motive. In their religious propaganda the
Isma'ilites openly challenged the authority of Sunni
theology, claiming its religious speculation and its interpretation of
scripture is arbitrary. The Sunni theologians submit God's word
to judgments that appear to be reasonable, the
Isma'ilites said, yet they are purely capricious, a
fact evident from the many disputes among Sunni theologians. No
rational argument is more convincing than any of its opposing rational
arguments, the Isma'ilites claimed, since all
rational proofs are mutually equivalent (*takafu'
al-adilla*). Only the divinely guided word of the Shiite Imam
conveys certainty (al-Ghazali 1964b, 76, 80 = 2000b, 189,
191). In response to this criticism al-Ghazali introduces
the Aristotelian notion of demonstration (*burhan*).
Sunni theologians argue among each other, he says, because they are
largely unfamiliar with the technique of demonstration. For
al-Ghazali, reason (*'aql*) is executed most
purely and precisely by formulating arguments that are demonstrative
and reach a level where their conclusions are beyond doubt.
Al-Ghazali wrote in one of his letters to a student that
later circulated as an independent epistle: "A [valid] rational
demonstration is never wrong" (Griffel 2015: 110-112).
This also implies that the results of true demonstrations cannot
conflict with revelation since neither reason nor revelation can be
considered false. If demonstration proves something that violates the
literal meaning of revelation, the scholar must apply interpretation
(*ta'wil*) to the outward text and read it as a
symbol of a deeper truth. There are, for instance, valid demonstrative
arguments proving that God cannot have a "hand" or sit on
a "throne." These prompt the Muslim scholar to interpret
the Qur'anic passages where these words appear as symbols
(al-Ghazali 1961, 175-89 = 2002, 96-103). The
interpretation of passages in revelation, however, whose outward
meaning is not disproved by a valid demonstration, is not allowed
(Griffel 2000, 332-35; 2009, 111-16).
Al-Ghazali's rule for reconciling apparent conflicts
between reason and the literal meaning of revelation was widely
accepted by almost all later Muslim theologians, particularly those
with rationalist tendencies. Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), however,
criticized al-Ghazali's rule from an scriptualist
angle. Ibn Taymiyya (1980, 1:86-87) rejected
al-Ghazali's implication that in cases of conflict
between reason and the revealed text, priority should be given to the
former over the latter. He also remarked that
al-Ghazali's own arguments denying the possibility
that God sits on a "throne" (Qur'an 2.255), for
instance, fail to be demonstrative. Ibn Taymiyya flatly denied the
possibility of a conflict between reason and revelation and maintained
that the perception of such a disagreement results from subjecting
revelation to premises that revelation itself does not accept (Heer
1993, 188-92).
On the *falasifa*'s side Averroes accepted
al-Ghazali's rule for reconciling conflicts between
reason and the outward meaning of revelation but he did not agree with
his findings on what can and cannot be demonstrated (Griffel 2000,
437-61). Averroes composed a refutation of
al-Ghazali's *Incoherence*, which he called
*The Incoherence of the [Book of the] Incoherence*
(*Tahafut al-tahafut*). This work was translated
twice into Latin in 1328 and 1526, the later one on the basis of an
earlier Hebrew translation of the text (Steinschneider 1893,
1:330-38). The two Latin translations both have the title
*Destructio destructionum* (the later one is edited in Averroes
1961). They were printed numerous times during the 16th century and
made al-Ghazali's criticism of Aristotelianism known
among the Averroists of the Renaissance. The Italian Agostino Nifo
(*c.*1473- after 1538), for instance, wrote a Latin
commentary to Averroes' book. While accepting the principle that
only a valid demonstration allows interpreting the Qur'an
symbolically, Averroes maintained that Aristotle had already
demonstrated the pre-eternity of the world, which would elevate it,
according to al-Ghazali's rules, to a philosophical
as well as religious doctrine. Averroes also remarked that there is no
passage in the Qur'an that unambiguously states the creation of
the world in time (Averroes 2001, 16). Al-Ghazali was
clearly aware of this but assumed that this tenet is established
through the consensus (*ijma'*) of Muslim
theologians (Griffel 2000, 278, 429-30; 2002, 58). While
al-Ghazali condemns the pre-eternity of the world at the
end of his *Incoherence of the Philosophers*, the subject of
the world's pre-eternity is no longer raised in his later more
systematic work on the boundaries of Islam, *The* *Decisive
Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Clandestine Unbelief*.
## 5. The Ethics of the *Revival of the Religious Sciences*
Soon after al-Ghazali had published his two refutations of
*falsafa* and Isma'ilism he left his position
at the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad. During this period he began
writing what most Muslim scholars regard as his major work, *The
Revival of the Religious Sciences* (*Ihya'
'ulum al-din*). The voluminous *Revival*
is a comprehensive guide to ethical behavior in the everyday life of
Muslims (Garden 2014: 63-122). It is divided into four sections, each
containing ten books. The first section deals with ritual practices
(*'ibadat*), the second with social customs
(*'adat*), the third with those things that
lead to perdition (*muhlikat*) and hence should be
avoided, and the fourth with those that lead to salvation
(*munjiyat*) and should be sought. In the forty books of
the *Revival* al-Ghazali severely criticizes the
coveting of worldly matters and reminds his readers that human life is
a path towards Judgment Day and the reward or punishment gained
through it. Compared with the eternity of the next life, this life is
almost insignificant, yet it seals our fate in the world to come. In
his autobiography al-Ghazali writes that reading Sufi
literature made him realize that our theological convictions are by
themselves irrelevant for gaining redemption in the afterlife. Not our
good beliefs or intentions count; only our good and virtuous actions
will determine our life in the world to come. This insight prompted
al-Ghazali to change his lifestyle and adopt the Sufi path
(al-Ghazali 1959a, 35-38 = 2000b, 77-80). In
the *Revival* he composed a book about human actions
(*mu'amalat*) that wishes to steer clear of
any deeper discussion of theological insights
(*mukashafat*). Rather, it aims at guiding people
towards ethical behavior that God will reward in this world and the
next (al-Ghazali 1937-38, 1:4-5).
In the *Revival* al-Ghazali attacks his colleagues
in Muslim scholarship, questioning their intellectual capacities and
independence as well as their commitment to gaining reward in the
world to come. This increased moral consciousness brings
al-Ghazali close to Sufi attitudes, which have a profound
influence on his subsequent works such as *The Niche of Lights*
(*Mishkat al-anwar*). These later works also reveal
a significant philosophical influence on al-Ghazali. In
the *Revival* he teaches ethics that are based on the
development of character traits (singl., *khulq*, pl.
*akhlaq*). Performing praiseworthy deeds is an effect of
praiseworthy character traits that warrant salvation in the next life
(al-Ghazali 1937-38, 1:34.4-5). He criticizes
the more traditional concept of Sunni ethics that is limited to
compliance with the ordinances of the religious law
(*shari'a*) and following the example of the
Prophet Muhammad. Traditional Sunni ethics are closely linked to
jurisprudence (*fiqh*) and limit itself, according to
al-Ghazali, to determining and teaching the rules of
*shari'a*. Traditional Sunni jurisprudents are mere
"scholars of this world" (*'ulama'
al-dunya*) who cannot guide Muslims on the best way to gain
the afterlife (al-Ghazali 1937-38, 1:30-38,
98-140).
In his own ethics al-Ghazali stresses that the
Prophet--and no other teacher--should be the one person a
Muslim emulates. He supplements this key Sunni notion with the concept
of "disciplining the soul" (*riyadat
al-nafs*). At birth the essence of the human is deficient and
ignoble and only strict efforts and patient treatment can lead it
towards developing virtuous character traits (al-Ghazali
1937-38, book 23). The human soul's temperament, for
instance, becomes imbalanced through the influence of other people and
needs to undergo constant disciplining (*riyada*) and
training (*tarbiya*) in order to keep these character traits at
equilibrium. Behind this kind of ethics stands the Aristotelian notion
of *entelechy*: humans have a natural potential to develop
rationality and through it acquire virtuous character. Education,
literature, religion, and politics should help realizing this
potential. Al-Ghazali became acquainted with an ethic that
focuses on the development of virtuous character traits through the
works of Muslim *falasifa* like Miskawayh (d. 1030) and
Muslim scholars like al-Raghib al-Isfahani (d.
*c.*1025), who strove to make philosophical notions compatible
with Muslim religious scholarship (Madelung 1974). As a result
al-Ghazali rejected the notion, for instance, that one
should try to give up potentially harmful affections like anger or
sexual desire. These character traits are part of human nature,
al-Ghazali teaches, and cannot be given up. Rather,
disciplining the soul means controlling these potentially harmful
traits through one's rationality (*'aql*). The
human soul has to undergo constant training and needs to be
disciplined similar to a young horse that needs to be broken in,
schooled, and treated well.
At no point does al-Ghazali reveal the philosophical
origins of his ethics. He himself saw a close connection between the
ethics of the *falasifa* and Sufi notions of an ascetic
and virtuous lifestyle. In his *Revival* he merges these two
ethical traditions to a successful and influential fusion. In his
autobiography al-Ghazali says that the ethics of the
*falasifa* and that of the Sufis are one and the same.
Congruent with his position that many teachings and arguments of the
*falasifa* are taken from earlier revelations and from
the divinely inspired insights of mystics, who existed already in
pre-Islamic religions (Treiger 2012, 99-101) he adds that the
*falasifa* have taken their ethics from the Sufis,
meaning here mystics among the earlier religions
(al-Ghazali 1959a, 24 = 2000b, 67).
Another important field where al-Ghazali introduced
Avicennan ideas into Ash'arite *kalam* in a way
that this tradition eventually adopted them is human psychology and
the rational explanation of prophecy (Griffel 2004, al-Akiti 2004).
Based on partly mis-translated texts by Aristotle (Hansberger 2011),
Avicenna developed a psychology that assumes the existence of several
distinct faculties of the soul. These faculties are stronger or weaker
in individual humans. Prophecy is the combination of three faculties
which the prophet has in an extraordinarily strong measure. These
faculties firstly allow the prophet to acquire theoretical knowledge
instantly without learning, secondly represent this knowledge through
symbols and parables as well as divine future events, and thirdly to
bring about effects outside of his body such as rain or earthquakes.
These three faculties exist in every human in a small measure, a fact
proven by the experience of *deja vu*, for
instance, a phenomenon referred to in the Arabic philosophic tradition
as "the veridical dream" (*al-manam
al-sadiq*). Al-Ghazali adopted these teachings
and appropriated them for his own purposes (Treiger 2012). The
existence of the three faculties in human souls that make up prophecy
serves for him as an explanation of the higher insights that mystics
such as Sufi masters have in comparison to other people. While
prophets have strong prophetic faculties and ordinary humans very weak
ones, the "friends of God" (*awliya'*,
i.e. Sufi masters) stand in between these two. They are endowed with
"inspiration" (*ilham*), which is similar to
prophecy and which serves in al-Ghazali as one of the most
important sources of human knoweldge. Unlike Avicenna, for whom
prophets and maybe also some particularly talented humans
(*'arifun* in his language) acquire the same
knowledge that philosophers reach through apodictic reasoning, in
al-Ghazali the prophets and *awliya'*
have access to knowledge that is superior to that available solely
through reason.
Despite the significant philosophical influence on
al-Ghazali's ethics, he maintained in Islamic law
(*fiqh*) the anti-rationalist Ash'arite position that
human rationality is mute with regard to normative judgments about
human actions and cannot decide whether an action is
"good" or "bad." When humans think they know,
for instance, that lying is bad, their judgment is determined by a
consideration of their benefits. With regard to the ethical value of
our actions we have a tendency to confuse moral value with benefit. We
generally tend to assume that whatever benefits our collective
interest is morally good, while whatever harms us collectively is bad.
These judgments, however, are ultimately fallacious and cannot be the
basis of jurisprudence (*fiqh*). "Good" actions are
those that are rewarded in the afterlife and "bad" actions
are those that are punished (al-Ghazali 1904-07,
1:61). The kind of connection between human actions and reward or
punishment in the afterlife can only be learned from revelation
(Hourani 1976, Marmura 1968-69). Muslim jurisprudence is the
science that extracts general rules from revelation. Like most
religious sciences it aims at advancing humans' prospect of
redemption in the world to come. Therefore it must be based on the
Qur'an and the *sunna* of the Prophet while it uses logic
and other rational means to extract general rules.
Al-Ghazali was one of the first Muslim jurists who
introduced the consideration of a "public benefit"
(*maslaha*) into Muslim jurisprudence. In addition to
developing clear guidance of how to gain redemption in the afterlife,
religious law (*shari'a*) also aims at creating an
environment that allows each individual wellbeing and the pursuit of a
virtuous and pious lifestyle. Al-Ghazali argues that when
God revealed divine law (*shari'a*) He did so with
the purpose (*maqsad*) of advancing human benefits in this
world *and* the next. Al-Ghazali identifies five
essential components for wellbeing in this world: religion, life,
intellect, offspring, and property. Whatever protects these
"five necessities" (*al-daruriyyat
al-khamsa*) is considered public benefit (*maslaha*) and
should be advanced, while whatever harms them should be avoided. The
jurisprudent (*faqih*) should aim at safeguarding these
five necessities in his legal judgments. In recommending this,
al-Ghazali practically implies that a "*maslaha
mursala*," a public benefit that is not mentioned in the
revealed text, is considered a valid source of legislation (Opwis 2007
and 2010, 65-88).
## 6. Cosmology in the *Revival of the Religious Sciences*
Despite his declared reluctance to enter into theological discussions,
al-Ghazali addresses in his *Revival* important
philosophical problems related to human actions. In the 35th book on
"Belief in Divine Unity and Trust in God" (*Kitab
al-Tawhid wa-l-tawakkul*) he discusses the relationship
between human actions and God's omnipotence as creator of the
world. In this and other books of the *Revival*
al-Ghazali teaches a strictly determinist position with
regard to events in the universe. God creates and determines
everything, including the actions of humans. God is the only
"agent" or the only "efficient cause"
(*fa'il*, the Arabic term means both) in the world.
Every event in creation follows a pre-determined plan that is
eternally present in God's knowledge. God's knowledge
exists in a timeless realm and does not contain individual
"cognitions" (*'ulum*) like human
knowledge does. God's knowledge does not change, for instance,
when its object, the world, changes. While the events that are
contained in God's knowledge are ordered in "before"
and "after", there is no past, present, and future.
God's knowledge contains the first moment of creation just as
the last, and He knows "in His eternity," for instance,
whether a certain individual will end up in paradise or hell (Griffel
2009, 175-213).
For all practical purposes it befits humans to assume that God
controls everything through chains of causes (Marmura 1965,
193-96). We witness in nature causal processes that add up to
longer causal chains. Would we be able to follow a causal chain like
an "inquiring wayfarer" (*salik
sa'il*), who follows a chain of events to its origin,
we would be led through causal processes in the sub-lunar sphere, the
"world of dominion" (*'alam al-mulk*),
further to causes that exist in the celestial spheres, the
"world of sovereignty" (*'alam
al-malakut*), until we would finally reach the highest
celestial intellect, which is caused by the being beyond it, God
(al-Ghazali 1937-38, 13:2497-509 = 2001,
15-33; see also idem 1964a, 220-21). God is the starting
point of all causal chains and He creates and controls all elements
therein. God is "the one who makes the causes function as
causes" (*musabbib al-asbab*) (Frank 1992, 18).
God's "causal" determination of all events also
extends to human actions. Every human action is caused by the
person's volition, which is caused by a certain motive
(*da'iya*). The person's volition and motive
are, in turn, caused by the person's convictions and his or her
knowledge (*'ilm*). Human knowledge is caused by various
factors, like one's experience of the world, one's
knowledge of revelation, or the books one has read
(al-Ghazali 1937-38, 13:2509-11 = 2001,
34-37). There is no single event in this world that is not
determined by God's will. While humans are under the impression
that they have a free will, their actions are in reality compelled by
causes that exist within them as well as outside (Griffel 2009,
213-34).
Al-Ghazali viewed the world as a conglomerate of
connections that are all pre-determined and meticulously planned in
God's timeless knowledge. God creates the universe as a huge
apparatus and employs it in order to pursue a certain goal
(*qasd*). In two of his later works al-Ghazali
compares the universe with a water-clock. Here he describes three
stages of its creation. The builder of the water-clock first has to
make a plan of it, secondly execute this plan and build the clock, and
thirdly he has to make the clock going by supplying it with a constant
source of energy, namely the flow of water. That energy needs to be
carefully measured, because only the right amount of energy will
produce the desired result. In God's creation of the universe
these three stages are called judgment (*hukm*), decree
(*qada'*), and pre-destination (*qadar*)
(al-Ghazali 1971, 98-102; 1964a, 12-14). God
designs the universe in His timeless knowledge, puts it into being at
one point in time, and provides it with a constant and well-measured
supply of "being" (*wujud*). According to
Avicenna's explanation of creation--which
al-Ghazali was not opposed to--"being" is
passed down from God to the first and ontologically highest creation
and from there in a chain of secondary efficient causes to all other
existents. It is important to acknowledge, however, that God is the
only true efficient cause (*fa'il*) in this chain.
He is the only "agent," all other beings are merely
employed in His service (Griffel 2009, 236-53).
Nature is a process in which all elements harmoniously dovetail with
one another. Celestial movements, natural processes, human actions,
even redemption in the afterlife are all "causally"
determined. Whether we will be rewarded or punished in the afterlife
can be understood, according to al-Ghazali, as the mere
causal effect of our actions in this world. In the 32nd book of his
*Revival* al-Ghazali explains how knowing the
Qur'an causes the conviction (*i'tiqad*) that
one is punished for bad deeds, and how that conviction may cause
salvation in the afterlife:
>
> ...and the conviction [that some humans will be punished] is a
> cause (*sabab*) for the setting in of fear, and the setting in
> of fear is a cause for abandoning the passions and retreating from the
> abode of delusions. This is a cause for arriving at the vicinity of
> God, and God is the one who makes the causes function as causes
> (*musabbib al-asbab*) and who arranges them
> (*murattibuha*). These causes have been made easy for
> him, who has been predestined in eternity to earn redemption, so that
> through their chaining-together the causes will lead him to paradise.
> (al-Ghazali 1937-38, 11:2225.)
>
All these are teachings that are very close to those of Avicenna
(Frank 1992, 24-25). Al-Ghazali also followed
Avicenna in his conviction that this universe is the best of all
possible worlds and that "there is in possibility nothing more
wondrous than what is" (*laysa fi-l-imkan
abda' mimma kan*) (al-Ghazali
1937-38, 13:2515-18 = 2001, 47-50). This led to a
long-lasting debate among later Muslim theologians about what is meant
by this sentence and whether al-Ghazali is, in fact, right
(Ormsby 1984). It must be stressed, however, that contrary to
Avicenna--and contrary to Frank's (1992, 55-63)
understanding of him--al-Ghazali firmly held that God
exercises a genuine free will and that when He creates, He chooses
between alternatives. God's will is not in any way determined by
God's nature or essence. God's will is the undetermined
determinator of everything in this world.
## 7. Causality in al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali's cosmology of God's determination
and His control over events in His creation through chains of causes
(singl. *sabab*) aimed at safeguarding the Sunni doctrine of
omnipotence and divine pre-determination against the criticism of
Mu'tazilites and Shiites. Humans have only the impression of a
free will (*ikhtiyar*). In reality they are compelled to
choose what they deem is the best action (*khayr*) among the
present alternatives. Avicenna's determinist ontology, where
every event in the created world is by itself contingent (*mumkim
al-wujud bi-dhatihi*) yet also necessitated by
something else (*wajib al-wujud bi-ghayrihi*),
provided a suitable interpretation of God's pre-determination
and is readily adopted by al-Ghazali although he never
admits that or uses Avicenna's language. In Avicenna the First
Being, which is God, makes all other beings and events necessary. In
al-Ghazali God's will, which is distinct from His
essence, necessitates all beings and events in creation. The
adaptation of fundamental assumptions in Avicenna's cosmology
together with an almost wholesale acceptance of Avicenna's
psychology and his prophetology led Frank (1992, 86) to conclude
"that from a theological standpoint most of [Avicenna's]
theses which he rejected are relatively tame and inconsequential
compared to those in which he follows the philosopher."
While al-Ghazali's determinist cosmology is a
radical but faithful interpretation of the Ash'arite tenet of
divine pre-determination, the way al-Ghazali writes about
it in his *Revival* and later works violates other principles
of Ash'arism and has led to much confusion among modern
interpreters. The remainder of this article will make an attempt to
resolve current interpretative problems and explain
al-Ghazali's innovative approach towards
causality.
### 7.1 Occasionalism versus Secondary Causality
Al-Ash'ari (873-935), the founder of the theological
school that al-Ghazali belonged to, had rejected the
existence of "natures" (*taba'i'*
) and of causal connections among created beings. In a radical attempt
to explain God's omnipotence, he combined several ideas that
were developed earlier in Muslim *kalam* to what became
known as occasionalism. All material things are composed of atoms that
have no qualities or attributes but simply make up the shape of the
body. The atoms of the bodies are the carrier of
"accidents" (singl. *'arad*), which are
attributes like weight, density, color, smell, etc. In the cosmology
of al-Ash'ari all immaterial things are considered
"accidents" that inhere in a "substance"
(*jawhar*). Only the atoms of spatially extended bodies can be
substances. A person's thoughts, for instance, are considered
accidents that inhere in the atoms of the person's brain, while
his or her faith is an accident inhering in the atoms of the heart.
None of the accidents, however, can subsist from one moment
(*waqt*) to the next. This leads to a cosmology where in each
moment God assigns the accidents to bodies in which they inhere. When
one moment ends, God creates new accidents. None of the created
accidents in the second moment has any causal relation to the ones in
the earlier moment. If a body continues to have a certain attribute
from one moment to the next, then God creates two identical accidents
inhering in that body in each of the two subsequent moments. Movement
and development generate when God decides to change the arrangement of
the moment before. A ball is moved, for instance, when in the second
moment of two the atoms of the ball happen to be created in a certain
distance from the first. The distance determines the speed of the
movement. The ball thus jumps in leaps over the playing field and the
same is true for the players' limbs and their bodies. This also
applies to the atoms of the air if there happen to be some wind. In
every moment, God re-arranges all the atoms of this world anew and He
creates new accidents--thus creating a new world every moment
(Perler/Rudolph 2000, 28-62).
All Ash'arite theologians up to the generation of
al-Ghazali--including his teacher
al-Juwayni--subscribed to the occasionalist ontology
developed by al-Ash'ari. One of al-Juwayni's
late works, the *Creed for Nizam al-Mulk*
(*al-'Aqida al-Nizamiyya*), shows, however,
that he already explored different ontological models, particularly
with regard to the effects of human actions (al-Juwayni 1948,
30-36; Gimaret 1980, 122-28). A purely occasionalist model
finds it difficult to explain how God can make humans responsible for
their own actions if they do not cause them. As a viable alternative
to the occasionalist ontology, al-Ghazali considered the
Avicennan model of secondary causes. When God wishes to create a
certain event He employs some of His own creations as mediators or
"secondary causes." God creates series of efficient causes
where any superior element causes the existence of the inferior ones.
Avicenna stresses that no causal series, in any of the four types of
causes, can regress indefinitely. Every series of causes and effects
must have at least three components: a first element, a middle
element, and a last element. In such a chain only the first element is
the cause in the real sense of the word (*'illa mutlaqa*)
of all subsequent elements. It causes the last element of that
chain--the ultimate effect--through one or many
intermediaries (singl. *mutawassat*), which are the middle
elements of the chain. Looking at a chain of efficient causes, the
"finiteness of the causes" (*tanahi
l-'ilal*) serves for Avicenna as the basis of a proof of
God's existence. Tracing back all efficient causes in the
universe will lead to a first efficient cause, which is itself
uncaused. When the First Cause is also shown to be incorporeal and
numerically one, one has achieved a proof of God's existence
(Avicenna 2005, 257-9, 270-3; Davidson 1987,
339-40).
### 7.2 The 17th Discussion of the *Incoherence*
Al-Ghazali offers a brief yet very comprehensive
examination of causality within the 17th discussion of his
*Incoherence of the Philosophers*. The 17th discussion is not
triggered by any opposition to causality. Rather it aims at forcing
al-Ghazali's adversaries, the
*falasifa*, to acknowledge that all prophetical miracles
that are reported in the Qur'an are possible. If their
possibility is acknowledged, a Muslim philosopher who accepts the
authority of revelation must also admit that the prophets performed
these miracles and that the narrative in revelation is truthful.
Al-Ghazali divides the 17th discussion into four different
sections. He presents three different "positions" (singl.
*maqam*) of his (various) opponents and addresses them
one by one. His response to the "second position", which
is that of Avicenna, is further divided into two different
"approaches" (singl*. maslak*). This four-fold
division of the 17th discussion is crucial for its understanding.
Al-Ghazali addresses different concepts about causality
within the different discussions and develops not one, but at least
two coherent responses.
For a detailed discussion of the four parts in the 17th discussion the
reader must be referred to chapter 6 in Griffel 2009 (147-73).
The following pages give only an outline of
al-Ghazali's overall argument. In the opening
sentence of the 17th discussion al-Ghazali introduces the
position he wishes to refute and he lines out elements that
alternative explanations of causality must include in order to be
acceptable for al-Ghazali. This opening statement is a
masterwork of philosophical literature:
>
> The connection (*iqtiran*) between what is habitually
> believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect
> is not necessary (*daruri*), according to us. But
> [with] any two things [that are not identical and that do not imply
> one another] (...) it is not necessary that the existence or the
> nonexistence of one follows necessarily (*min darura*)
> from the existence or the nonexistence of the other (...). Their
> connection is due to the prior decision (*taqdir*) of
> God, who creates them side by side (*'ala
> al-tasawuq*), not to its being necessary by itself,
> incapable of separation. (al-Ghazali 2000a, 166)
>
Al-Ghazali lays out four conditions that any explanation
of physical processes that is acceptable to him must fulfill: (1) the
connection between a cause and its effect is not necessary, (2) the
effect can come to exist without this particular cause ("they
are not incapable of separation"), (3) God creates two events
concomitant, side by side, and (4) God's creation follows a
prior decision (*taqdir*). On first sight, it seems that
only an occasionalist explanation of physical processes would fulfill
these four conditions, and this is how this statement has mostly been
understood. Rudolph (in Perler/Rudolph 2000, 75-77), however,
pointed out that not only occasionalism but other types of
explanations also fulfill these four criteria. Most misleading is the
third requirement that God would need to create events "side by
side." These words seem to point exclusively to an occasionalist
understanding of creation. One should keep in mind, however, that this
formula leaves open, *how* God creates events. Even an
Avicennan philosopher holds that God creates the cause concomitant to
its effect, and does so by means of secondary causality. While the
17th discussion of al-Ghazali's *Incoherence*
points towards occasionalism as a possible solution, it also points to
others. Al-Ghazali chooses a certain linguistic
association to occasionalism, which has led many interpreters of this
discussion to believe that here, he argues exclusively in favor of
it.
It is important to understand that al-Ghazali does not
deny the existence of a connection between a cause and its effect;
rather he denies the necessary character of this connection. In the
First Position of the 17th discussion al-Ghazali brings
the argument that observation cannot prove causal connections.
Observation can only conclude that the cause and its effect occur
concomitantly:
>
> Observation (*mushahada*) points towards a concomitant
> occurrence (*al-husul 'indahu*) but not to a
> combined occurrence (*al-husul bihi*) and that there is
> no other cause (*'illa*) for it. (al-Ghazali
> 2000a, 167.)
>
It would be wrong, however, to conclude from this argument that
al-Ghazali denied the existence of causal connections.
While such connections cannot be proven through observation (or
through any other means), they may or may not exist. In the First
Position al-Ghazali rejects the view that the connection
between an efficient cause and its effect is simply necessary *per
se*, meaning that the proximate cause alone is fully responsible
for the effect and that nothing else is also necessary for the effect
to occur. In another work this position is described as one held by
"materialists" (*dahriyyun*) who deny that
the world has a cause or a maker (al-Ghazali 1959a, 19 =
2000b, 61). The Mu'tazilite view of *tawallud*, meaning
that humans are the sole creators of their own actions and their
immediate effects, also falls under this position
(al-Ghazali 2000, 226.13-14). Like in the connection
between a father and his son, where the father is not the
*only* efficient cause for the son's existence, so there
may be in every causal connection efficient causes involved other than
the most obvious or the most proximate one. The proximate efficient
cause may be just the last element in a long chain of efficient causes
that extends via the heavenly realm. The intellects of the celestial
spheres, which were thought to be referred to in revelation as
"angels," may be middle elements or intermediaries in
causal chains that all have its beginning in God.
Al-Ghazali rejects the position of the materialists and
the Mu'tazilites because it does not take account of the fact
that God is the ultimate efficient cause of the observed effect. God
may create this effect directly or by way of secondary causality.
Discussing the example that when fire touches a ball of cotton it
causes it to combust, al-Ghazali writes about the First
Position that the fire *alone* causes combustion:
>
> This [position] is one of those that we deny. Rather we say that the
> efficient cause (*fa'il*) of the combustion through
> the creation of blackness in the cotton and through causing the
> separation of its parts and turning it into coal or ashes is
> God--either through the mediation of the angels or without
> mediation. (al-Ghazali 2000a, 167.)
>
Secondary causality is a viable option for al-Ghazali that
he is willing to accept. Still he does not accept the teachings of
Avicenna, which are discussed in the Second Position. Avicenna
combines secondary causality with the view that causal processes
proceed with necessity and in accord with the natures of things, and
not by way of deliberation and choice on the side of the efficient
cause. The ultimate efficient cause in a cosmology of secondary
causality is, of course, God. The Avicennan opponent of the Second
Position teaches secondary causality *plus* he holds that the
causal connections follow with necessity from the nature of the First
Being. They are not created through God's deliberation and
choice but are a necessary effect of God's essence.
### 7.3 Two Different Concepts of the Modalities
When al-Ghazali writes that the connection between a cause
and its effect is not necessary he attacks Avicenna's
necessitarian ontology not his secondary causality. The dispute
between al-Ghazali and Avicenna is not about causality as
such, rather about the necessary nature of God's creation.
Kukkonen (2000) and Dutton (2001) have shown that the two start with
quite different assumptions about necessity. Avicenna's view of
the modalities follows the statistical model of Aristotle and connects
the possibility of a thing to its temporal actuality (Back 1992).
A temporally unqualified sentence like, "Fire causes cotton to
combust," contains implicitly or explicitly a reference to the
time of utterance as part of its meaning. If this sentence is true
whenever uttered, it is necessarily true. If its truth-value can
change in the course of time, it is possible. If such a sentence is
false whenever uttered, it is impossible (Hintikka 1973, 63-72,
84-6, 103-5, 149-53). In Aristotelian modal
theories, modal terms were taken to refer to the one and only
historical world of ours. For Avicenna, fire necessarily causes cotton
to combust because the sentence "Fire causes cotton to
combust," was, is, and will always be true.
Al-Ghazali's understanding of the modalities
developed in the context of Ash'arite *kalam* and
does not share the statistical model of Aristotle and Avicenna.
Ash'arite *kalam* developed an understanding that
is closer to our modern view of the modalities as referring to
synchronic alternative states of affairs. In the modern model, the
notion of necessity refers to what obtains in all alternatives, the
notion of possibility refers to what obtains in at least in one
alternative, and that which is impossible does not obtain in any
conceivable state of affairs (Knuuttila 1998, 145). Ash'arite
*kalam* pursued the notion that God is the
particularizing agent (*mukhassis*) of all events in the world,
who determines, for instance, when things come into existence and when
they fall out of existence (Davidson 1987, 159-61,
176-80). The idea of particularization (*takhsis*)
includes implicitly an understanding of possible worlds that are
different from this. The process of particularization makes one of
several alternatives actual. In his *Creed for Nizam
al-Mulk*, al-Juwayni explains the Ash'arite
understanding of the modalities. Every sound thinking person finds
within herself, "the knowledge about the possibility of what is
possible, the necessity of what is necessary, and the impossibility of
what is impossible" (al-Juwayni 1948, 8-9). We know
this distinction instinctively without learning it from others and
without further inquiry into the world. It is an impulse
(*badiha*) in our rational judgment
(*'aql*). Al-Juwayni explains this impulse:
>
> The impulsive possibility that the intellect rushes to apprehend
> without [any] consideration, thinking, or inquiry is what becomes
> evident to the intelligent person when he sees a building. [The
> building] is a possibility that comes into being (*min jawaz
> huduthihi*). The person knows decisively and offhand that
> the actual state (*huduth*) of that building is from
> among its possible states (*ja'izat*) and that it
> is not impossible in the intellect had it not been built.
> (al-Juwayni 1948, 9)
>
The intelligent person (*al-'aqil*)--here
simply meaning a person with full rational capacity--realizes
that all the features of the building, its height, its length, its
form, etc., are actualized possibilities and could be different. The
same applies to the time when the building is built. We immediately
realize, al-Juwayni says, that there is a synchronic alternative
state to the actual building. This is what we call possibility or more
precisely contingency (*imkan*). Realizing that there is
such an alternative is an important part of our understanding:
"The intelligent person cannot realize in his mind anything
about the states of the building without comparing it with what is
contingent like it (*imkan mithlihi*) or what is
different from it (*khilafihi*)." (al-Juwayni
1948,9.)
In at least three passages of the *Incoherence*
al-Ghazali criticizes Avicenna's understanding of
the modalities. Here he refers to another, closely related dispute,
namely that for Avicenna the modalities exist in reality while for
al-Ghazali they exist only as judgments in the minds of
humans (al-Ghazali 2000, 42.2-5, 124.10-11,
207.4-14). He denies Avicenna's premise that possibility
needs a substrate. This premise is Aristotelian--it is the basis
to the principle of entelechy, namely that all things have
potentialities and are driven to actualize them (Dutton 2001,
26-7) Al-Ghazali shifts, as Kukkonen (2000,
488-9) puts it, the locus of the presumption of a thing's
actual existence from the plane of the actualized reality to the plane
of mental conceivability.
When al-Ghazali says that "according to us"
the connection between the efficient cause and its effect is not
necessary, he aims to point out that the connection *could* be
different even if it never will be different. For Avicenna, the fact
that the connection never was different and never will be different
implies that it is necessary. Nowhere in his works requires
al-Ghazali that any given causal connection was different
or will be different in order to be considered not necessary. We will
see that he, like Avicenna, assumes causal connections never were and
never will be different from what they are now. Still they are not
necessary, he maintains. The connection between a cause and its effect
is contingent (*mumkin*) because an alternative to it is
conceivable in our minds. We can imagine a world where fire does not
cause cotton to combust. Or, to continue reading the initial statement
of the 17th discussion:
>
> (...) it is within divine power to create satiety without eating,
> to create death without a deep cut (*hazz*) in the neck, to
> continue life after having received a deep cut in the neck, and so on
> to all connected things. The *falasifa* deny the
> possibility of [this] and claim it to be impossible.
> (al-Ghazali 2000a, 166.)
>
Of course, a world where fire doesn't cause combustion in cotton
would be radically different from the one we live in. A change in a
single causal connection would probably imply that many others would
be different as well. Still, such a world can be conceived in our
minds, which means it is a possible world. God, however, did not
choose to create such an alternative possible world (Griffel 2009,
172-3).
In the initial statement of the 17th discussion al-Ghazali
claims that "the connection [between cause and effect] is due to
the prior decision (*taqdir*) of God." When he
objects to Avicenna that these connections are not necessary,
al-Ghazali wishes to point out that God could have chosen
to create an alternative world where the causal connections are
different from what they are. Avicenna denied this. This world is the
necessary effect of God's nature and a world different from this
one is unconceivable. Al-Ghazali objects and says this
world is the contingent effect of God's free will and His
deliberate choice between alternative worlds.
### 7.4 The Cum-Possibility of Occasionalism and Secondary Causality
In the Second Position of the 17th discussion al-Ghazali
presents two different "approaches" (singl.
*maslak*) in order to counter Avicenna's position that
the necessary connection between existing causes and effects renders
some miracles in the Qur'an impossible. In the First Approach
al-Ghazali denies the existence of "natures"
(*taba'i'*) and of causal connections and
maintains that God creates every event immediately. This is the part
of the 17th discussion where he presents occasionalism as a viable
explanation of what we have usually come to refer as efficient
causality. God's eternal and unchanging knowledge already
contains all events that will happen in creation. By creating
combustion every time fire touches cotton, God follows a certain
custom (*'ada*). In real terms, however, combustion
occurs only concomitantly when fire touches cotton and is not
connected to this event. In the First Approach of the Second Position
in the 17th discussion (al-Ghazali 2000a,
169.14-171.11) and in some of his later works
(al-Ghazali 1962), he maintains that causal processes may
simply be the result of God's habit and that He creates what we
consider a cause and its effect individually and immediately. When God
wishes to perform a miracle and confirm the mission of one of His
prophets, he suspends His habit and omits to create the effect He
usually does according to His habit.
The Second Approach (al-Ghazali 2000a, 171.12-174.8)
presents a very different explanation of prophetical miracles. Marmura
(1981) called it "al-Ghazali's second causal
theory." Here al-Ghazali accepts the existence of
"natures" (*taba'i'*) and of
unchanging connections between causes and their effects. In the second
causal theory al-Ghazali merely points out that despite
human efforts in the natural sciences, we are far away from knowing
all causes and explaining all processes in nature. It may well be the
case that those miracles that the *falasifa* deny have
immanent natural causes that are unknown to us. When Moses, for
instance, threw his stick to the ground and it changed into a serpent
(Qur'an, 7.107, 20.69, 26.32) the material of the wooden stick
may have undergone a rapid transformation and become a living animal.
We know that wood disintegrates with time and becomes earth that
fertilizes and feeds plants. These plants are, in turn, the fodder of
herbivores, which are consumed by carnivores like snakes. The
*falasifa* cannot exclude that some unknown cause acts as
a catalyst and may rapidly expedite the usually slow process where the
matter of a wooden stick is transformed into a snake. These and other
explanations given in the Second Approach are only examples of how the
prophetical miracles may be the result of natural causes that are not
fully understood by humans.
Marmura (1965, 183; 1981, 97) rejected the suggestion that
al-Ghazali might have held occasionalism and secondary
causality as two cum-possible cosmological explanations. Marmura
conceded that al-Ghazali makes use of causalist language
"sometimes in the way it is used in ordinary Arabic, sometimes
in a more specifically Avicennian / Aristotelian way" and that
this usage of language is innovative for the Ash'arite school
discourse (1995, 89). Yet in all major points of Muslim theology
al-Ghazali held positions that follow closely the ones
developed by earlier Ash'arite scholars, namely the possibility
of miracles, the creation of humans acts, and God's freedom
during the creation of the universe (1995, 91, 93-97,
99-100). In Marmura's view, al-Ghazali never
deviated from occasionalism, while he sometimes expressed his opinions
in ambiguous language that mocked philosophical parlance, probably in
order to lure followers of *falsafa* into the
Ash'arite occasionalist camp.
That al-Ghazali considered occasionalism and secondary
causality as cum-possible explanations of God's creative
activity is stated, however, in a passage in the 20th discussion of
the *Incoherence* on the subject of corporeal resurrection in
the afterlife. The *falasifa* argue that corporeal
resurrection is impossible because it requires the transformation of
substances like iron into a garment, which is impossible. In his
response, al-Ghazali refers to the Second Approach of the
Second Position in the 17th discussion where, he says, he had already
discussed this problem. He argues that the unusually rapid recycling
of the matter that makes up the piece of iron into a piece of garment
is not impossible. "But this is not the point at issue
here," al-Ghazali says. The real question is whether
such a transformation "occurs purely through [divine] power
without an intermediary, or through one of the causes." He
continues:
>
> Both these two views are possible for us (*kilahuma
> mumkinan 'indana*) (...) [In the 17th
> discussion we stated] that the connection of connected things in
> existence is not by way of necessity but through habitual events,
> which can be disrupted. Thus, these events come about through the
> power of God without the existence of their causes. The second [view]
> is that we say: This is due to causes, but it is not a condition that
> the cause [here] would be one that is well-known
> (*ma'hud*). Rather, in the treasury of things that
> are enacted by [God's] power there are wondrous and strange
> things that one hasn't come across. These are denied by someone
> who thinks that only those things exists that he experiences similar
> to people who deny magic, sorcery, the talismanic arts, [prophetic]
> miracles, and the wondrous deeds [done by saints].
> (al-Ghazali 2000a, 222.)
>
Al-Ghazali maintained this undecided position throughout
his lifetime. Given the fact that neither observation nor any other
means of knowing (including revelation) gives a decisive proof for the
existence or non-existence of a connection between a cause and its
effect, we must suspend our judgment on this matter. God may create
through the mediation of causes that He employs, or directly without
such mediation. This undecided position is unfortunately nowhere
clearly explained. It can be gathered from isolated statements like
the one above and the fact that after the *Incoherence*
al-Ghazali wrote books where he maintained a distinctly
occasionalist cosmology (al-Ghazali 1962) and others like
the 35th book of his *Revival* or the *Niche of Lights*,
where he uses language that is explicitly causalist. In none of these
books, however, he commits himself to the position that the cause is
connected to its effect. God may create the two independently from one
another or He may create them through the mediation of secondary
causes. In his very last work, completed only days before his death,
al-Ghazali discusses whether God creates "through
the mediation" (*bi-wasita*) of his creations or
not, and maintains that the matter cannot be settled decisively
(al-Ghazali 1985, 68-69).
In all this al-Ghazali accepted the unchanging character
of this creation. Once God chose to create this world among
alternatives, He also chose not to change the rules that govern it.
While it is conceivable and therefore possible that God would break
his habit or intervene in the assigned function of the secondary
causes, He informs us in His revelation that He will not do so. In the
31st book of his *Revival*, al-Ghazali says that
God creates all things one after the other in an orderly manner. After
making clear that this order represents God's habit
(*sunna*), he quotes the Qur'an (33:62 and 48:23):
"You will not find any change in God's habit."
(al-Ghazali 1937-38, 11:2084-85.) This verse
is quoted several times in the *Revival*; in one passage
al-Ghazali adds that we should not think God will ever
change His habit (ibid, 4:12). Prophetical miracles are merely
extraordinary occurrences that take place within the system of the
strictly habitual operation of God's actions or within the
"natural laws" that govern the secondary causes. Miracles
are programmed into God's plan for His creation, so to speak,
from the very beginning and do not represent a direct intervention or
a suspension of God's lawful actions (Frank 1992, 59; idem,
1994, 20). Given that there will never be a break in God's
habit, an occasionalist universe will always remain indistinguishable
from one governed by secondary causality. |
al-kindi | ## 1. Life and Works
### 1.1 Life
Al-Kindi was a member of the Arab tribe of Kinda, which had played an
important role in the early history of Islam. His lineage earned him
the title "philosopher of the Arabs" among later writers.
We know that al-Kindi died after 866 CE, and his death date is usually
put in the early 870s. His birth date is harder to pin down, but he
is said to have served as a scholar under the caliph al-Ma'mun,
whose reign ended in 833, and he was certainly associated with the
court of the next caliph, al-Mu'tasim (reigned
833-842). He is thus usually reckoned to have been born around
800 CE. He was born in Basra and educated in Baghdad. His
philosophical career peaked under al-Mu'tasim, to whom al-Kindi
dedicated his most famous work, *On First Philosophy*, and
whose son Ahmad was tutored by al-Kindi.
Al-Kindi's philosophical activities centered around the
translation movement that had been initiated and supported by the
'Abbasid caliphs since prior to al-Kindi's birth (on this
see Endress 1987/1992, Gutas 1998). Al-Kindi oversaw one of the two
main groups of translators in the ninth century (the other group was
led by Hunayn ibn Ishaq). The "Kindi circle" (see Endress
1997) translated numerous works of philosophy and science from Greek
into Arabic. (On the output of the circle see below, 2.1.) Al-Kindi
seems to have been a mediator between the patrons of these translators
and the scholars who actually did the translating, many of whom were
Syrian Christians or of Syrian extraction. His own writings might be
thought of as a sustained public relations campaign intended to display
and advertise the value of Greek thought for a contemporary ninth
century Muslim audience.
### 1.2 Works
We are fortunate in having a list of titles of works ascribed to
al-Kindi, which is found in the *Fihrist* of the tenth century
bookseller Ibn al-Nadim. Thanks to Ibn al-Nadim we know that al-Kindi
wrote hundreds of treatises on a very wide variety of scientific and
philosophical disciplines. Indeed the scientific and mathematical
titles far outnumber the philosophical titles. Many of the latter would
now be lost if not for a single manuscript, held in Istanbul, which
contains most of al-Kindi's extant philosophical writings (edited
in Abu Rida 1950 and 1953; several important texts are edited and
translated in Rashed and Jolivet 1998). This includes the work for
which he is best known, *On First Philosophy*. Our version of
this treatise is incomplete, comprising only the first part, which is
divided into four sections. The first section is essentially an
exhortation to the reader to honor Greek philosophical wisdom. The
second contains al-Kindi's celebrated discussion of the eternity
of the world. The third and fourth establish the existence of a
"true One," i.e. God, which is the source of unity in all
other things, and consider the inapplicability of language to this true
One.
The Istanbul manuscript also includes one of the few copies of
al-Kindi's *On the Intellect* to survive in Arabic (it is
also preserved in Latin translation). This is the first treatise in the
Arabic tradition to give a taxonomy of the types of intellect, such as
will become familiar in al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes. Other works
shed further light on al-Kindi's psychology (i.e. theory of
soul): the *Discourse on the Soul* consists of supposed
quotations from Greek philosophers, *That There are Separate
Substances* uses Aristotle's *Categories* to prove
that the soul is immaterial, and *On Sleep and Dream* gives an
account of prophetic dreams in terms of Aristotle's theory of the
imagination. Related to al-Kindi's psychological theories is his
only significant surviving work on ethics, *On Dispelling
Sorrows*. (He also composed a collection of ethical anecdotes and
sayings ascribed to Socrates, for which see Fakhry 1963.)
Al-Kindi sets out his cosmological theories in two further texts
found in the same manuscript, *On the Proximate Agent Cause of
Generation and Corruption* and *On the Prostration of the
Outermost Sphere*. Also relevant here are numerous works on
meteorology and weather forecasting. These apply the same cosmological
ideas to show how heavenly motion produces rain and other
meteorological phenomena in the lower world where we live. While these
works are influenced by Aristotle, al-Kindi also draws on other Greek
sources, such as Ptolemy. His knowledge of the Greek scientific
tradition was in fact extensive. For instance, he uses Euclid and ideas
that can be traced to Ptolemy in a well-known work on optics, *On
Perspectives*, which is preserved only in Latin. Al-Kindi's
extant scientific corpus is sizable and includes treatises on the
manufacture of drugs, music, astrology, and mathematics (see further
Rosenthal 1942). But the focus here will be on al-Kindi's
philosophical views.
## 2. Influences on al-Kindi
### 2.1 Greek influences
As one would expect given his prominent role in the translation
movement, al-Kindi's works are suffused with ideas from Greek
thought. His philosophical works are indebted in part to the
mathematical and scientific authors translated by his day, for
instance Nicomachus of Gerasa; Euclid influenced his methodology as
well as his mathematics (cf. Gutas 2004). But the most important
influence on his philosophy was from Aristotle, whose corpus al-Kindi
surveys in a treatise called *On the Quantity of Aristotle's
Books* (Abu Rida 1950, 363-84; also Guidi and Walzer 1940,
Cortabarria Beitia 1972, Jolivet 2004, Ighbariah 2012). This work provides a fairly
thorough overview of Aristotle's corpus, though al-Kindi clearly has
not read some of the treatises he discusses. When al-Kindi comes to
mention the contents of the *Metaphysics* he gives the
following, rather surprising, summary:
>
>
> His purpose in his book called *Metaphysics* is to explain
> things that subsist without matter and, though they may exist together
> with what does have matter, are neither connected nor united to matter;
> to affirm the oneness of God, the great and exalted, to explain His
> beautiful names, and that He is the agent cause of the universe, which
> perfects [all things], the God of the universe who governs through His
> perfect providence and complete wisdom.
While this may not look like an accurate description of Aristotle's
*Metaphysics*, it is a wholly accurate description of
al-Kindi's own conception of the science of metaphysics. That he
conflates metaphysics with theology is clear from the opening of
*On First Philosophy*, which says that since philosophy in
general is the study of truth, "first philosophy" is
"the knowledge of the first truth who is the cause of all
truth." And indeed Aristotle's *Metaphysics* is a major
influence on this work. However, as is typical of al-Kindi's
philosophical writings, *On First Philosophy* also makes
extensive use of ideas from translations of Neoplatonic writings. The
proof for the existence of a "true One" is based in part
on Proclus (as shown in Jolivet 1979), and one can detect influences
from the Arabic version of Plotinus produced in al-Kindi's circle, the
so-called *Theology of Aristotle*. Perhaps the most important
single influence, however, is an attack on Aristotle by the
Neoplatonist Christian thinker John Philoponus, over the issue of the
world's eternity.
*On First Philosophy*, then, is a particularly good example of
how al-Kindi combines Neoplatonic and Aristotelian ideas in his vision
of a coherent philosophy derived from the Greeks. The way for this
synoptic conception of the Greek inheritance had actually been prepared
by the Neoplatonists themselves, whose commentaries on Aristotle
presage the harmonizing tendencies obvious in al-Kindi. But as a
promoter of Greek wisdom, al-Kindi would in any case have been eager to
deemphasize any tensions between Greek philosophers, or any failings on
the part of Greek thinkers. For example he gives no sign that his
position on the eternity of the world departs from that of Aristotle.
(Interestingly he is more willing to recognize shortcomings on the part
of Greek scientific thinkers, for instance in Euclid's optics,
though even here he emphasizes the need for a charitable approach.)
Later in the first section of *On First Philosophy*, al-Kindi
unleashes a torrent of abuse against unnamed contemporaries who
criticize the use of Greek ideas:
>
>
> We must not be ashamed to admire the truth or to acquire it, from
> wherever it comes. Even if it should come from far-flung nations and
> foreign peoples, there is for the student of truth nothing more
> important than the truth, nor is the truth demeaned or diminished by
> the one who states or conveys it; no one is demeaned by the truth,
> rather all are ennobled by it.
Although al-Kindi was unyielding in his support for the ideas
disseminated in the translation project, he was inevitably influenced
by the intellectual currents of his day. This comes out most clearly
when al-Kindi uses Greek ideas to engage with the problems of his time,
especially in the arena of theology.
### 2.2 Contemporary influences
Two examples of this engagement, to be discussed in more detail in
the next section, are al-Kindi's treatment of divine attributes,
and his views on creation. As we will see al-Kindi held an austere view
on the question of attributes, on the basis that predication invariably
implies multiplicity, whereas God is unrestrictedly one. This has been
compared (Ivry 1974, Adamson 2003) to the position of the
Mu'tazilites, who were the main contemporary theologians of the
ninth century. Mu'tazilite influence may also be present in
al-Kindi's theory that creation is a "bringing to be of
being from non-being," and especially in his denial that creation
can be eternal. (This may be related to the Mu'tazilite claim
that the Koran is created and not eternal; see Adamson 2007, ch.4.)
Al-Kindi uses philosophy to defend and explicate Islam in several
works. He wrote a short treatise attacking the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity, using concepts drawn from the *Isagoge* of Porphyry
(al-Kindi's refutation was the subject of a counter-refutation by
the tenth century Christian philosopher, Yahya ibn 'Adi; see
Perier 1920). While this is the only extant work that engages in
theological controversy, we know from the *Fihrist* that he
wrote other treatises on similar themes. The extant corpus also
contains passages in which al-Kindi expounds the meaning of passages
from the Koran. Most striking, perhaps, is his discussion of creation
*ex nihilo* in the midst of *On the Quantity of
Aristotle's Books*. This passage is a commentary on Koran
36: 79-82. Al-Kindi mentions the same Koranic passage, and discusses the
special nature of prophetic knowledge, in a meteorological work
entitled *On Why the Higher Atmosphere is Cold* (see Abu Rida
1953, 92-93). The cosmological work *On the Prostration of the
Outermost Sphere*, meanwhile, is entirely devoted to explaining the
Koranic verse "the stars and the trees prostrate
themselves" (55: 6) in terms of al-Kindi's account of
heavenly influence on the sublunary world. Al-Kindi's remarks
here show his interest in the contemporary disciplines of grammar and
Koranic exegesis.
A desire to integrate Greek ideas into his own culture is shown in a
different way by *On Definitions*, a list of technical
philosophical terms with definitions (see Abu Rida 1950, 165-79;
also Allard 1972, Klein-Franke 1982). This work is ascribed to
al-Kindi, and though its authenticity has been doubted it is almost
certainly at least a production of al-Kindi's circle. Most of the
defined terms correspond to Greek technical terms, and thus build up
an Arabic philosophical terminology which is intended to be equivalent
to that of the Greeks. It is striking that, so early in the Arabic
philosophical tradition, there was already a perceived need for a
novel technical language for communicating philosophical ideas in a
different setting (and of course for translating Greek into
Arabic). Some, though certainly not all, of the terms listed in *On
Definitions* will indeed become standard in the later
philosophical tradition.
## 3. Metaphysics
### 3.1 Divine simplicity
Al-Kindi's most significant work, *On First Philosophy*
(for which see Abu Rida 1950, 97-162, Ivry 1974, Rashed and Jolivet
1998, 9-99), is devoted to "first philosophy" or
metaphysics, a science al-Kindi immediately identifies with the study
of God. Since all philosophy is an inquiry into truth, first philosophy
is the knowledge of God, who is "the first truth and the cause of
all truth." While this may not sound like it has much to do with
Aristotle's understanding of first philosophy as the science of
being, al-Kindi closely associates being with truth ("everything
that has being has truth"). For him, to say that God is the cause
of all truth is tantamount to saying that God is the cause of all
being, a point made more explicit at the end of what remains to us of
*On First Philosophy* (see further below, 3.2).
The central concept in the theology of *On First Philosophy*,
however, is neither truth nor being, but oneness. Indeed al-Kindi
argues for a first cause of being precisely by arguing for a first
cause of oneness, and asserting that "bringing something to
be" means imposing unity of a certain kind. Al-Kindi's
philosophical theology thus has two main aspects: a proof that there
must be some "true One" that is the cause of the unity in
all things, and a discussion of the nature of this true One. These
aspects are treated, respectively, in the third and fourth sections
of *On First Philosophy*.
In the third section, al-Kindi first proves that nothing can be its
own cause, a point that is not used explicitly in what follows, but
may be intended to show that nothing can be the cause of its own
unity. He then undertakes an exhaustive survey of the various types of
"utterance (*lafz*)." Following Porphyry's
*Isagoge*, he classifies all predicates or terms
(*maqulat*) into genus, species, difference, individual, proper
accident, and common accident. Taking them in turn, al-Kindi argues
that each type of predicate implies both unity and multiplicity. For
example, *animal* is one genus, but it is made up of a
multiplicity of species; *human* is one species but is made up
of many individuals; and a single human is one individual but made up
of many bodily parts. Finally, al-Kindi seeks an explanation for the
association of unity and multiplicity in all these things. He argues
that the association cannot be merely the product of chance; nor can
it be caused by any part of the set of things that are both one and
many. So there must be some external cause for the association of
unity and multiplicity. This cause will be exclusively one, entirely
free of multiplicity: al-Kindi expresses this by saying that it is
"essentially" one, whereas the other things are
"accidentally" one. He also speaks of it as "one in
truth," whereas other things are one
"metaphorically." In short, the cause in question is the
"true One," or God.
Now, since we have already seen that every sort of term or
expression implies multiplicity as well as unity, it is no surprise
that in section four of *One First Philosophy* al-Kindi goes on
to argue that the various sorts of predicate are inapplicable to the
true One. He sums up his conclusion as follows (Rashed and Jolivet
1998, 95):
>
>
> Thus the true One possesses no matter, form, quantity, quality, or
> relation. And is not described by any of the other terms: it has no
> genus, no specific difference, no individual, no proper accident, and
> no common accident. It does not move, and is not described through
> anything that is denied to be one in truth. It is therefore only pure
> unity, I mean nothing other than unity. And every unity other than it
> is multiple.
As mentioned above, this conclusion has been compared to the view of
those contemporary theologians referred to as Mu'tazilites. They
similarly took a strict view on the question of divine attributes,
arguing that God's simplicity ruled out the acceptance of any
attributes distinct from God's essence. However it is Greek
antecedents that are clearly the main influence on al-Kindi here. His
"true One" bears a strong resemblance to the first
principle of the Neoplatonists. Indeed we might be reminded of Plato
himself, insofar as al-Kindi's God seems to function like a
Platonic Form. Just as the Form of Equal is entirely equal and not at
all unequal, and serves to explain equality in other things, so God is
entirely one, not at all multiple, and explains the unity in other
things.
### 3.2 Creation
This is, however, only a part of al-Kindi's view on divine
causation. Because, as we have seen, al-Kindi thinks that to be a thing
of a certain kind is to be one in a certain way, he infers that the
true One is the cause of being as well as unity (see further Adamson
2002b). In particular, he believes that God is an "agent"
or efficient cause. This view is expressed in a succinct text (possibly
a fragment from a longer, lost work) headed with the title *On the
True, First, Complete Agent and the Deficient Agent that is
Metaphorically* [*an Agent*] (Abu Rida 1950, 182-4). The
text begins as follows:
>
>
> We say that the true, first act is the bringing-to-be of beings from
> non-being. It is clear that this act is proper to God, the exalted, who
> is the end of every cause. For the bringing-to-be of beings from
> non-being belongs to no other. And this act is a proper characteristic
> [called] by the name "origination."
Al-Kindi goes on to explain that whereas God is a "true"
agent, since He is a cause of being and acts without being acted upon,
all other agents are only "metaphorically" agents, because
they both act and are acted upon. The force of the term
"metaphorical" here is the same as it was in *On First
Philosophy*: just as created things are both many and one, and thus
not "truly" one, so they are both passive and active, and
thus not "truly" agents.
This short text raises two interesting questions about how al-Kindi
conceived of divine action. First, what does he have in mind when he
describes God's agency as being mediated by the action of
"metaphorical agents" (God "is the proximate cause
for the first effect, and a cause through an intermediary for His
effects that are after the first effect")? Second, what is
involved in "bringing being to be from non-being"?
Regarding the first question, one might suppose that al-Kindi is
following Neoplatonic texts, and that he has in mind a mediated
emanation of effects from the first principle. If this is right, then
the "first effect" will be the "world of the
intellect" mentioned in other Kindian texts (e.g. the
*Discourse on the Soul*, repeating this phrase from the
*Theology of Aristotle*). This is supported by a non-committal
remark in *On First Philosophy* that "one might think the
intellect is the first multiple" (Rashed and Jolivet 1998, 87).
But it seems at least as likely that the "first effect"
mentioned here is the world of the heavens: by creating the heavens and
setting them in motion, God indirectly brings about things in the
sublunary world (see further below, 5.2). This would be a more
Aristotelian version of the idea that divine causation is mediated.
Regarding the second question, the idea that God is an *agent*
*cause of being* may likewise seem at first to be a departure
from Aristotle. But in fact Neoplatonist authors like Ammonius had
explicitly argued that Aristotle's God was an efficient cause of
being, not just a final cause of motion. And a passage in *On the
Quantity of Aristotle's Books* -- the aforementioned
discussion of Koran 36: 79-82 -- understands creation on the
model of Aristotelian change, in which something passes from one
contrary to another. In the case of creation, one contrary is
"non-being" and the other "being." Al-Kindi's
discussion of this has parallels in ninth century theological
discussions of creation (see Adamson 2003). But his main source,
surprisingly, is Ammonius' student John Philoponus, a Christian
Neoplatonist who had also spoken of creation as bringing something to
be "from non-being." What separates al-Kindi and
Philoponus from Aristotle is their idea that this kind of
"change" from non-being to being requires no subject. For
example, for there to be a change from non-white to white, there must
be some subject or substrate for both the privation of the whiteness
and the whiteness itself (for instance the fence that goes from being
non-white to being white when it is painted). God, by contrast, can
bring about being *ex nihilo*, with no subject for the change.
Al-Kindi emphasizes also that God's creative act requires no time to
be realized.
### 3.3 Eternity of the world
These two points bring us to a more extensive use of Philoponus by
al-Kindi, in the latter's well-known argument that the world is
not eternal (for which see Davidson 1969 and 1987, and Staley 1987).
Most Greek philosophers followed Aristotle in holding that the world is
eternal, meaning not only that it will never cease to exist, but that
it has always existed. This was the doctrine of Aristotle and the
Stoics, and also of orthodox Neoplatonists, who interpreted
Plato's *Timaeus* as likewise committed to the past
eternity of the world. Philoponus was an exception to this rule. In a
work rebutting the Neoplatonist Proclus' arguments in favor of
the world's eternity, he argued at great length that
Plato's *Timaeus* rightly envisions a world with a
beginning in time. And in another work directed against Aristotle,
Philoponus tried to undermine the arguments of the *De Caelo*
and *Physics* by which Aristotle had shown that the world is
eternal.
In section two of *On First Philosophy*, and several other
short works that repeat the same arguments found in this section,
al-Kindi follows arguments that derive from Philoponus. (Exactly which
text or texts by Philoponus he used is unclear, but it would seem that
he at least knew parts of *Against Aristotle*.) Interestingly,
al-Kindi completely ignores a major aspect of Philoponus'
polemic: in the *De Caelo*, Aristotle had argued that the
heavens must be eternal, because they have perfect, circular motion and
are therefore not made out of any of the corruptible four elements of
our lower world. Whereas Philoponus attacks this cosmology with a
lengthy and detailed refutation, al-Kindi simply accepts that the
heavens are made out of an ungenerable and indestructible fifth element
- but blithely adds that they are nonetheless originally brought
into being by God with a beginning in time. (For this see the treatise
*That the Nature of the Celestial Sphere is Different from the
Natures of the Four Elements*, edited at Abu Rida 1953, 40-6.)
When al-Kindi comes to argue explicitly against the eternity of the
world, he uses Philoponus' strategy of using Aristotle against
himself. Aristotle famously held that there can be no such thing as an
actual infinite. Thus, for instance, the body of the world cannot be
infinitely large. Because the cosmos is finite in spatial magnitude,
argues al-Kindi, nothing predicated of the body of the cosmos can be
infinite. Since time is one of the things predicated of this body, time
must be finite; therefore the world is not eternal.
This argument seems to be a poor one. Even if Aristotle admits that
nothing infinite can be predicated of a finite body, he will want to
say that al-Kindi's argument fails to take full account of the
distinction between *actual* and merely *potential*
infinities. An actual infinity is an infinity which is simultaneously
present in its entirety - for example, an infinitely large body,
or in general any set with an infinite number of members existing at
the same time. A potential infinity is when a finite magnitude can be
extended or multiplied indefinitely. For example, Aristotle thinks
that any finite magnitude of space or time is potentially infinite, in
that it can in principle be divided into as many parts as one wishes,
with smaller divisions still possible. The body of the cosmos, as
al-Kindi admits himself, is also potentially infinite, in the sense
that there is nothing conceptually impossible about increasing its
size indefinitely. Notice, though, that in either case the actual
result of such a process will be finite: any determinate addition to
the size of a body will still yield a body of finite size. Likewise,
no matter how finely I divide a body, any particular act of division
will yield a finite number of parts.
Now, Aristotle believes that the eternity of the world commits him
only to a *potential* infinity. This is because saying that the
world has always existed does not imply that any infinity is
*presently* actual. Rather, it implies only that "the
world has already existed for *N* years" will be true for
any value of N. One can, so to speak, go as far as one wishes into the
past, positing increasingly large (but still finite) periods of past
time, just as one can divide a body as finely as one wishes. And it is
far from clear that this sort of *potential* infinity is
inapplicable to a finite magnitude. Does al-Kindi have any response to
this?
He does, though his response comes only at the end of his treatment
of the world's eternity. The response, found also in Philoponus,
is that even to reach the present moment, an actually infinite number
of moments must already have elapsed. In other words, there is
currently an actually infinite number of moments (or years, or
whatever) that have elapsed "since the world began." And,
as Aristotle himself says, the infinite cannot be traversed. Whether
this argument is successful is unclear. It seems to presuppose that we
select an infinitely distant point in past time, and then reckon the
number of years that have elapsed since then. But Aristotle will
presumably want to block the initial move of selecting an infinitely
distant point in past time, insisting that any *particular*
point we choose in the past will be removed from the present by a
merely finite number of years.
## 4. Psychology
### 4.1 The human soul
We have two works by al-Kindi devoted to the ontology of the human
soul: *That There are Incorporeal Substances* and *Discourse
on the Soul*. The two depend on very different Greek sources, and
are very different in rhetorical presentation. But the doctrine that
emerges from them is not necessarily inconsistent.
*That There are Incorporeal Substances* (Abu Rida 1950,
265-69, Adamson and Pormann 2009) is a creative application of
ideas from Aristotle's
*Categories* to the problem of showing that the human soul is
an immaterial substance. Al-Kindi takes up this task in stages, first
proving that the soul is a substance, then showing that it is
immaterial. He argues that the soul is a substance by drawing on the
opening chapters of the *Categories* to claim that the essence
of something shares a name and definition with that thing. Since the
soul is the essence of the living being, and the living being is a
substance, the soul is also a substance. Furthermore, it is an
immaterial substance: for the soul is "the intellectual form of
the living thing," and an intellectual form is a species. But
species, al-Kindi argues, are immaterial; therefore the soul is
immaterial. Among the problematic moves in this train of argument is
the identification of the human soul with the species of human. This
would seem to be al-Kindi's attempt to bring together the idea of
species, which is a "secondary substance" in the
*Categories*, with the doctrine of form found in such works as
the *De Anima* and *Metaphysics*. Al-Kindi simply
conflates the two, without argument - he does not address the
obvious question of how there can be many human souls, all of which
are identical with the single species *human*.
Apart from brief opening and closing remarks, *Discourse on the
Soul* (Abu Rida 1950, 272-80; also D'Ancona 1996,
Genequand 1987, Jolivet 1996) consists entirely of supposed quotes
from Greek authorities - Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle
- about the nature of the soul. The actual sources used are
unclear, though the *Republic* is the ultimate source for a
section describing Plato's tripartite soul. The section on Aristotle
is a fable about a Greek king, and has nothing to do with any extant
Aristotelian work. The tenor of these remarks is hortatory, ascetic
and even visionary: our task is to cleanse our souls from the
"stains" that adhere to it from the body, and to ascend
through the heavenly spheres, ultimately to the "world of the
intellect" where it will reside in "the light of the
Creator." The soul in question here would seem to be the
rational soul: the lower parts of Plato's tripartite soul (the
irascible and concupiscent parts) are described as faculties seated in
the body. The point of this psychological doxography is not unlike
that of *Incorporeal Substances*: the soul is a "simple
substance," separate from body. Indeed this is presented as the
overall message of the treatise in al-Kindi's closing remarks.
### 4.2 Epistemology
This rigorously dualist psychology has far-reaching effects in
al-Kindi's epistemology and ethics. It is clear from the
*Discourse* that when al-Kindi speaks of the soul as separate
from body, even during our worldly life, he is referring only to the
intellective or rational soul. While this does not by itself rule out
that intellection and reason are somehow grounded in bodily experience,
al-Kindi does not pursue an empiricist program in contexts where he
addresses epistemological issues.
The most important text on epistemology is al-Kindi's
best-known work apart from *On First Philosophy*, namely *On
the Intellect* (Abu Rida 1950, 353-8; also McCarthy 1964,
Ruffinengo 1997). This treatise has received an unusual amount of
attention, despite its brevity and compressed argument, because it is
the first Arabic work to show the influence of Greek taxonomies of the
intellect into levels or types. (See especially Jolivet 1971, with
Endress 1980.) These taxonomies, with various versions put forward by
Alexander, Themistius, Philoponus and other commentators, were in turn
attempts to systematize Aristotle's remarks on intellect in
*De Anima* book 3 and elsewhere.
Far from grounding intellect in sensation, al-Kindi argues in *On
the Intellect* that the human intellect has a parallel, but
separate, function to human sense-perception. (For a similar contrast
see also *On First Philosophy*, section 2.) Just like sensation,
the human intellect in itself begins in a state of potentiality. This
is the first type of intellect, the potential intellect, which is
merely an ability to grasp intellectual forms. Once it grasps a form
and is actually thinking, it becomes "actual intellect." We
are then able to think about these forms at will. Our ability to do so
is what al-Kindi calls the "acquired intellect" (not to be
confused with "acquired intellect" in al-Farabi, who means
by this a comprehensive attainment of the many intellectual forms).
Notice that these types of intellect are really only the same, human
intellect in three different states: wholly potential, wholly actual,
and temporarily potential but able to actualize at will.
But how in the first place do we get from potential intellect to
actual intellection? It is here that al-Kindi might have told some sort
of empiricist story, perhaps involving abstraction; such a story plays
at least some role in al-Kindi's successors al-Farabi and
Avicenna. But instead al-Kindi gives a thoroughly intellectualist
account of how we come to think, one which is parallel to, but distinct
from, his account of sensation. Just as sensation is actualized by an
external sensible form, so intellect is actualized by an external
intelligible form. This form will reside in the final type of
intellect, the "first intellect," which is al-Kindi's
version of the infamous "maker intellect" in
Aristotle's *De Anima* 3.5. While it is unclear what
position this first intellect is meant to have in al-Kindi's
ontology, it is clear that it is distinct from human intellect. The
first intellect is "always in act," which means that it can
serve as an external source for intelligible forms, just as sensible
object serves as an external source for a sensible form.
We get some sense of how al-Kindi might have applied this highly
intellectualist epistemology in specific contexts from works on
recollection and on dreams. His *On Recollection* (for which see
Endress 1986 and 1994) argues explicitly that we *cannot* derive
intelligible forms from sense-perception. Thus we do not
"learn" these forms, but simply "remember" them
from before the soul entered into the body. Here al-Kindi is of course
broadly following the account of recollection given by Plato in the
*Meno* or *Phaedo*, though how he might have known of
this account remains obscure. (Most likely it is from an Arabic
version, perhaps in summary, of the *Phaedo*.)
A longer and more detailed text is *On Sleep and Dream* (Abu
Rida 1950, 293-311; also Ruffinengo 1997), which gives a naturalistic
account of why prophetic dreams occur, and how they may be interpreted.
Here al-Kindi's chief source was Aristotle's *Parva
Naturalia*, which include the works *On Sleep*, *On
Dreams*, and *On Prophecy in Sleep*. The extant Arabic
version of these texts, which may well be related to the version used
by al-Kindi, is importantly different from the Greek version, in that
it admits that genuinely prophetic dreams can be sent from God (cf.
Pines 1974). If al-Kindi knew this version then he follows it only in
part: he embraces the idea of prophetic dreams, but does not claim that
they come to us from God. To explain dreams al-Kindi invokes a faculty
we have not yet discussed, namely imagination or *phantasia*.
Following Aristotle, al-Kindi says that dreams occur when we are
sleeping because the senses are no longer active, and the imagination
has free rein to conjure up forms on its own. We are also given a
physiological account of sleep, which departs from Aristotle by placing
the imaginative faculty in the brain. Whereas Aristotle has some
difficulty explaining, and is in fact rather skeptical about, the
phenomenon of prophetic dreams, al-Kindi is enthusiastic about them. He
even explains the various types of dream, with their accuracy
determined by the physical state of the brain. But despite the
physiological aspects of al-Kindi's account, the fundamental
explanatory work is done by the incorporeal soul, which
"announces" its visions of the future to the imagination.
Again, the rational soul grasps its objects by itself. Tellingly,
al-Kindi thinks that sensation hinders this power of the soul, rather
than contributing anything to it.
### 4.3 Application to ethics
Given that al-Kindi sharply divides the rational soul from the body
and the lower psychological faculties, and that he sees the rational
soul as our true "self" or "essence" and as the
only part of us that survives the death of the body, it is no surprise
that his ethical thought is likewise highly intellectualist.
Unfortunately, the numerous works on ethical and political topics
ascribed to him in the *Fihrist* are almost all lost. The most
significant remaining text is *On Dispelling Sadness* (Ritter
and Walzer 1938, also Butterworth 1992, Druart 1993, Jayyusi-Lehn 2002,
Mestiri and Dye 2004). This is also the work of al-Kindi that will be
most often cited by subsequent thinkers, for example by Miskawayh in
his *Tahdhib al-Akhlaq* (*The Refinement of
Character*).
*On Dispelling Sadness*, as its title indicates, is a work in
the genre of philosophical consolation. Much of the text consists in
practical advice, maxims and anecdotes that one may bear in mind when
one finds oneself affected by sorrow. One particularly striking passage
allegorizes our earthly life as a temporary landfall during a sea
voyage; this image derives ultimately from Epictetus. The philosophical
foundations of the treatise, though, are laid in the early sections,
where al-Kindi gives a principled argument against placing value on
physical objects. By their very nature, he says, wealth and other
physical goods are vulnerable and transitory. No one can be sure that
their possessions will not be taken from them - they may
"be seized by any power." And more crucially, the very fact
that they are physical means that they are subject to generation and
corruption, and are therefore fleeting. Instead, we should value and
pursue things that are stable and enduring, and that cannot be taken
from us: these will be the things in the now familiar "world of
the intellect." To the extent that one's desires are
directed solely towards intelligible things, one will be invulnerable
to sadness. This argument, then, shows that sadness is always needless.
The anecdotes and more practical "remedies" offered in the
rest of the treatise are intended to make it easier for us to accept
and live in accordance with this conclusion.
## 5. Science
### 5.1 The use of mathematics
Despite the anti-empiricist character of al-Kindi's epistemology noted
above, he devoted enormous energy to various branches of the physical
sciences. Particularly well represented in the extant corpus are his
work on optics and medicine, especially the compounding of drugs (for
optics see Rashed 1997; for medicine see Gauthier 1939, Klein-Franke
1975, Celentano 1979; for these aspects of al-Kindi's thought
generally see Adamson 2007, ch.7). What is characteristic about
al-Kindi's approach to such topics is the use of mathematics. It has
been persuasively argued that mathematics was fundamental to
al-Kindi's own philosophical method (Gutas 2004, cf. Endress 2003); a
good example is his mathematical approach to Aristotle's categories,
which makes quantity and quality fundamental for Aristotelian logic
(Ighbariah 2012). Certainly he missed no opportunity to apply
mathematical techniques to what we would now think of as
"scientific" topics. In addition, he wrote numerous works
on music (edited in Zakariyya' 1962), which for the ancients and
al-Kindi himself was a branch of the mathematical sciences. He also
wrote extensively on more recognizably mathematical topics, as is
attested by the *Fihrist*, though again much of this material
is lost.
A good example of how al-Kindi applied mathematics to other fields
is his use of geometry in optics (see further Lindberg 1971, Rashed
1997, Adamson 2006). On this subject al-Kindi followed the tradition
inaugurated by Euclid, and carried on by Ptolemy and others, in which
geometrical constructions were used to explain phenomena such as visual
perspective, shadows, refraction, reflection, and burning mirrors. This
procedure implies that light and vision can be formalized as
geometrical lines, an implication that al-Kindi and his sources embrace
by claiming that vision occurs when "rays" emitted from the
eyes along straight lines strike a visual object. Likewise, objects are
illuminated when a light source emits light rays that strike the
objects' surfaces. Aspects of al-Kindi's account anticipate
that of Ibn al-Haytham, who some decades later would be the first to
explain vision accurately.
Now, this account based on "rays" also seems to underlie
al-Kindi's most ambitious work on the physical sciences: a
lengthy treatise entitled *On Rays* (*de Radiis*, for
which see D'Alverny and Hudry 1974) and preserved only in Latin.
There is some question as to its authenticity, but it seems plausible
that *On Rays* represents al-Kindi's attempt to explain
all physical interaction - from heating and cooling, to vision,
to astral influence, to magical incantations - in terms of a
fundamentally geometrical mechanism. (For connections to the optical
works, see Travaglia 1999.)
### 5.2 Cosmology
A central part of *On Rays* explains that the stars and
planets bring about events in the sublunary world by means of rays
emitted from the heavenly bodies to points on the earth's
surface. This differs from an account found in several other
cosmological treatises by al-Kindi, where he follows Alexander of
Aphrodisias in holding that the heavenly bodies literally heat up the
lower world by means of friction as they pass over it. In either case,
however, the account given is intended to explain the efficacy of the
science of astrology. Al-Kindi wrote numerous works on this subject,
and his associate Abu Ma'shar was the greatest figure in Arabic
astrology. Both of them saw astrology as a rational science,
undergirded by a well-worked out theory of physical causes (see further
Burnett 1993, Adamson 2002a).
Al-Kindi's corpus includes several treatises on cosmology,
explaining and defending a picture of the cosmos as four concentric
circles of elements, which are mixed together by the outer, heavenly
spheres to yield complex compound substances like minerals, plants, and
animals. Though al-Kindi's main influences are works of Aristotle
and his commentators, especially Alexander, he also knows something of
the *Timaeus*, as is shown by a treatise explaining why Plato
associated the elements and heavens with the Platonic solids (Abu Rida
1953, 54-63; also Rescher 1968).
One respect in which al-Kindi follows Alexander is his conviction that
the heavenly spheres are the means by which God exercises providence
over the sublunary world (see Fazzo and Wiesner 1993). Al-Kindi's
bold claims for astrology already commit him to the idea that a wide
range of specific events can be predicted on the basis of astral
causation. His doctrine of providence goes further by implying that
*all* events in the lower world are caused by the stars,
which are carrying out the benign "command" of God. This
doctrine is set out in *On the Prostration of the Outermost
Sphere* (Abu Rida 1950, 244-261, Rashed and Jolivet 1998, 177-99)
and *On the Proximate Agent Cause of Generation and Corruption*
(Abu Rida 1950, 214-237). The former explains that the heavens are
possessed of souls, and freely follow God's command so as to move in
such a way that the providentially intended sublunary things and
events will come about. This, according to al-Kindi, is what the Koran
refers to when it says that the stars "prostrate"
themselves before God. In *Proximate Agent Cause*, meanwhile,
al-Kindi gives a more detailed account of the means by which the
heavens cause things in the lower world (here he invokes friction, not
rays). The most obvious effect of the stars on our world is of course
the seasons, because the sun (due to its size and proximity) is the
heavenly body with the most powerful effect. If there were no such
heavenly causation, according to al-Kindi, the elements would never
have combined at all, and the lower realm would consist of four
spheres of unmixed earth, water, air and fire.
Al-Kindi's account of astral causation and providence is a very good
example of his philosophical method: combining and building on ideas
taken from Aristotle, later Greek philosophers, and
"scientific" authors like Ptolemy, he gives a rational
account of a central concept in Islam. *Prostration* shows that
he is even willing to use such an account to expound the Koran itself.
Al-Kindi is confident that, once exposed to judicious presentations of
Greek wisdom, his more enlightened contemporaries and sponsors will
agree that these foreign texts can be used -- jointly with
autochthonous "Arabic" disciplines like grammar -- in
the service of a deeper understanding of Islam itself.
## 6. Legacy
Al-Kindi's optimism on this score was not necessarily borne
out in subsequent generations. But among thinkers influenced by
al-Kindi, one can discern a continuing tendency to harmonize
"foreign" philosophy with the "indigenous"
developments of Muslim culture. This is one feature of what might be
called the "Kindian tradition," an intellectual current
that runs up through the tenth century, which is most obviously
represented by first and second generation students of
al-Kindi's. Particularly prominent among these figures is
al-'Amiri, a well-known Neoplatonist thinker who was a second
generation student of al-Kindi's (the link was al-Kindi's
student Abu Zayd al-Balkhi). Also influenced by al-Kindi were the
Jewish thinker Isaac Israeli (on whom see Altmann and Stern 1958) and
the aforementioned tenth century polymath Miskawayh.
While al-Kindi is only rarely cited by authors writing in Arabic
later than the tenth century, he was a significant figure for Latin
medieval authors. Most influential were his works on astrology (see
Burnett 1999); but works like *On the Intellect* were also
translated, and as noted above there are works in the Kindian corpus
that are extant only in Latin. One of these, *On Rays*, was the
target of a polemic composed by Giles of Rome.
To this we might add that philosophy in the Islamic world was itself
a broader legacy of al-Kindi's, and this in two respects.
Firstly, the translations produced in the Kindi circle would become
standard philosophical texts for centuries to come - particularly
influential would be their translations of certain Aristotelian works
(such as the *Metaphysics*) and of Plotinus, in the *Theology
of Aristotle*. Secondly, though authors like al-Farabi and Averroes
hardly mention al-Kindi by name (al-Farabi never does so, and Averroes
does so only to criticize his pharmacological theory), they are
carrying on his philhellenic project, in which the practice of
philosophy is defined by an engagement with Greek philosophical
works. |
abu-bakr-al-razi | ## 1. Life and Works
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya`
al-Razi made his fame mostly as a doctor. As his name
"al-Razi" indicates, he hailed from the Persian
city of Rayy, near modern-day Tehran. His biographers report that he
ran a hospital there, and another in Baghdad. He received patronage
from Abu Salih al-Mansur (d. 914),
the governor of Rayy, to whom al-Razi dedicated a
substantial medical treatise, *The Book for
al-Mansur*. We have a variety of anecdotes about
al-Razi's medical practice, some found in his own
works and some in his medieval biographers, for instance that
al-Razi would deal only with patients whose condition
stumped his students. We also know, because he tells us himself, that
he suffered from eye problems and a hand injury from copious reading,
copying, and writing.
This latter piece of information is found in *The Philosophical Way
of Life*, which is a good first text to read by al-Razi
(Arabic edition in al-Razi
RF;
English translation in al-Razi
PWL).
In it he rebuts accusations that he is a hypocrite for claiming to
model his lifestyle on that of Socrates, when in fact Socrates was
rigorously ascetic and al-Razi is not (see Strohmaier 1974).
Al-Razi responds by saying that reports of Socrates'
asceticism, which unbeknownst to him go back to a confusion in the
sources between Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic, do not tell the whole
story. In fact Socrates adopted a lifestyle of moderation as he
matured, and it is this model that al-Razi imitates.
This is one of only two complete surviving works by al-Razi
devoted solely to a philosophical topic; the other one also deals with
ethics. This is *The Spiritual Medicine* (Arabic edition in
al-Razi RF; English translation in al-Razi
SPR
and for discussion Adamson 2016), a longer book of ethical advice
presented to his patron al-Mansur as a complement to the
aforementioned medical treatise. Here al-Razi offers
treatment for the soul, following on his overview of treatments for
the body (Adamson 2019). Apart from this, the most significant
surviving work for his philosophy is his *Doubts about Galen*
(Arabic critical edition and translation by Koetschet in
al-Razi
DG).
Al-Razi considered Galen the greatest of medical
authorities, but on the basis of Galen's own critical attitude
towards esteemed predecessors, felt free to critique weak points in
the extensive corpus of Galenic works that had been translated into
Arabic. While a number of these points naturally concern medicine, the
*Doubts* also touches on a wide range of philosophical issues,
as discussed below.
Beyond this, the extant writings have to do mostly with medicine,
including a number of smaller treatises, like a celebrated text on the
difference between smallpox and measles (English translation in
al-Razi
SM), and the by no means small *Comprehensive Book*, a
staggeringly huge collection of notes on medicine that was compiled by
al-Razi's students after his death. The
*Comprehensive Book* is sometimes said to present
al-Razi's "case notes". But, while it is
true that he reports on his own medical experiences, the work is more
accurately described as a collection of excerpts from Greek and Arabic
medical sources. When he does introduce "case notes" this
is to provide counterexamples and amplifications for the textual
evidence (Savage-Smith 2012). Broadly speaking, despite his often
harsh diatribe against Galen's failures in the *Doubts*,
al-Razi's own medical theories fall broadly within the
Galenic framework, and thus deploy such standard concepts as the four
humors, the natural powers of the body, and the role of
*pneuma* in explaining animal sensation and motion.
A final group of works that come down to us from al-Razi
discuss alchemy (Ruska 1935). He was evidently a practicing alchemist
and describes in detail a wide variety of chemical procedures, all
aimed towards the goal of manufacturing valuable minerals and stones,
or likenesses thereof. It may be that al-Razi's
atomist theory of matter provided him with a basis for understanding
these processes. Chemical transformation would involve breaking down
complex substances to more primitive particles and then recombining
them in other proportions to produce the desired result (Kraus
1942-3: vol. 2, 10-11; Adamson 2021: 96-98).
Beyond these extant works we have reports on the full range of
al-Razi's writings by later authors who recorded lists
of their titles. These confirm that he wrote much on medicine,
philosophy, and alchemy, as well as mathematics, logic, and poetry.
Most eye-catching here, though, are works in which he discussed
religion and, especially, prophecy. The latter bear titles like *On
the Tricks of Supposed Prophets* and *On the Necessity of the
Prophetic Mission*. That could just show that he was concerned to
refute the claims of spurious prophets, while accepting the legitimacy
of true prophets. But in reports by still other authors, we are given
a picture of al-Razi as a fundamentally anti-religious
author who rejected all revelation and prophecy. This is especially
the case with al-Razi's contemporary, also from Rayy,
Abu Hatim al-Razi (d. 934). In a treatise
called *The Proofs of Prophecy*, Abu Hatim
recounts face-to-face debates he had with al-Razi and then
summarizes, and elaborately refutes, a treatise by al-Razi
that supposedly sought to unmask the falsehoods of all revelatory
religious traditions (see
AHR
in the bibliography).
Along with Abu Hatim, two other sources are crucial
for reconstructing al-Razi's cosmology. These are
Nasir-e Khosraw (d. 1088), who explained this cosmology in
order to refute it in his Persian work *Provision for the
Traveler* (hereafter
NK,
selective trans. into Arabic in al-Razi RF), and yet
another al-Razi, this time the famous theologian-philosopher
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1210), in his *Exalted
Topics* (hereafter
FDR).
From these and a few other sources, we can piece together the details
of a remarkable account of the creation of the world, which invokes
five factors that have always existed and come together to produce the
cosmos: God, Soul, matter, time, and place. Abu Hatim
and Nasir-e Khosraw both present this as an appalling
departure from Islam, since it involves postulating four eternal
principles alongside God.
## 2. The Five Eternal Principles
Some reports suggest that al-Razi saw his five principles as
having a systematic structure: God and Soul are active and alive,
matter passive and non-living, and time and place neither active, nor
passive, nor alive. But the scheme does not seem to be motivated by
its ability to satisfy all logical possibilities. Rather,
al-Razi argues specifically for each of the five principles.
God's existence is demonstrated on the basis of the good design
of the universe; more contentious are the other four.
While the Soul is invoked as the source of life in bodies, its primary
function in al-Razi's philosophy is to facilitate a
distinctive theodicy. The presence of great suffering in the world,
alongside the aforementioned good design of that world, shows that it
cannot have been created directly by God. Furthermore,
al-Razi is concerned with a traditional argument against the
eternity of the universe, namely that a perfectly wise and rational
God could not arbitrarily choose a moment for the universe to begin
existing. Both problems are solved by postulating a Soul which is
"foolish" where God is wise. The Soul conceives of a
desire or even passion (*'ishq*) to be "mixed"
with matter, which initiates the process of the world's
creation. God intervenes to make the world as good as it can be, but
our bodily life is still inevitably full of pain.
One question that arises here is why God would not prevent the Soul
from mixing with matter, if this is such a bad idea.
Al-Razi's explanation is that God allows it to happen
as a learning experience for the Soul (Goodman 1975). God bestows upon
the Soul the gift of reason or intellect (*'aql*), and
Soul can use this to realize that it should be working to free itself
from its unwise bond with matter (Druart 1996). We have reports of
parables used by al-Razi to explain this. A wise father
might allow his inexperienced child to venture to a dangerous country,
but send with him a good advisor (namely the intellect; Fakhr
al-Din al-Razi, FDR: vol. 4, 416). Similarly, a wise
father might allow his foolish child to go into an alluring garden
full of thorns and stinging insects, so as to teach the child a lesson
(Abu Hatim al-Razi, AHR: 18-19). This
theodicy points the way towards a conception of our ultimate end,
namely to escape from the material world, achieving
"liberation" through moderate lifestyle and the practice
of philosophy.
As for matter, time, and place, these principles are required in order
that the universe may be created at all (for an overview see Fakhry
1968). First, al-Razi thinks that there must already be some
material before the cosmos exists, out of which it is constructed. As
Nasir-e Khosraw (NK: 75) complains, al-Razi
believed that creation *ex nihilo* was impossible. He argued
for this on the grounds that we constantly see things being produced
through lengthy processes of development, even though instantaneous
manifestation would be far easier and involve less suffering: he gives
the example of the need for childbirth and growth to maturity. His
point is that God would not cause this to happen, if He could just
make humans exist from nothing. Time and place are needed for an
analogous reason. Time cannot be created, since creation must occur
*at* a time, and place cannot be created, because there would
already need to be somewhere to put it.
Al-Razi's conception of matter is unusual among
*falasifa*, that is, thinkers of the Islamic world who
respond primarily to the Greek philosophical tradition. More or less
all of them, from al-Kindi (d. after 870) to
al-Farabi (d. 950), Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d.
1037), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 1198), endorse a broadly
Aristotelian understanding of bodies as potentially subject to
indefinite division. By contrast, al-Razi is an atomist
(Pines 1936 [1997], Baffioni 1982, Langermann 2009). He believes that
the four elements (or possibly five: our sources are not clear as to
whether he thinks the heavens are constituted from a distinct fifth
element) differ in their properties because of variations in the ratio
of atoms to void. Thus earth, which has little or no void in it, is
dark, cold, dense, and moves downward; fire is luminous, hot, subtle,
and moves upward. Actually these are not strictly
"elements" but only the most basic compounds of atoms,
which are truly fundamental. Though contemporary Islamic theologians
were also atomists (Dhanani 1994), al-Razi's theory
differs from theirs in some respects, and we know that he debated the
topic of matter with a theologian named
al-Misma'i.
Al-Razi referred to atoms as "absolute
(*mutlaq*) matter", a locution echoed in his
characterizations of the last two principles, namely "absolute
time" and "absolute place". These are also known,
respectively, as "eternity (*dahr*)" or
"duration (*mudda*)" and "void
(*khala`*)". As we learn from the report of the
debate with Abu Hatim, al-Razi was concerned
to stress the independence of time and place from bodies, that is,
from composites of atoms (Abu Hatim al-Razi,
AHR: 12). Time in itself is simply eternal duration, with events
(including the creation of the world) and motions happening within
that duration. Similarly, place in itself is an infinite void, into
which the bounded physical cosmos is placed. As already explained,
void also exists (at least at the microscopic level) within the
cosmos, since its admixture into bodies explains the variation between
the elements.
Al-Razi's theories may be usefully contrasted to those
of Aristotle; we know he was familiar with Aristotle's
*Physics* because he tells us as much in his *Philosophical
Way of Life*. For Aristotle, time and place are dependent or
supervenient phenomena: place is the inner boundary of the body that
contains the body that is in place, while time is the number of
motion. Al-Razi by contrast makes space-time independent.
For instance he proposed a thought experiment that, if the universe
were taken away, its place would remain (a similar idea is proposed by
Philoponus *in Phys.* 574, translated in Philoponus
CPV:
36). However his attitude towards Aristotelian physics is more
nuanced than straightforward rejection (Adamson 2021: ch.5). For he
accepts that one may speak of "relative" time and place,
which would be the time and place of a particular motion and
particular body, respectively. For example a year would be a
demarcated segment of eternal duration that measures the sun's
motion along the ecliptic, while the place of a ball would be the
limit of the region of void occupied by the ball. Likewise,
al-Razi includes the Aristotelian elements, earth, water,
air, fire, and perhaps ether, in his cosmology but does not accept
that these are fundamental. As just seen, the real
"element" that underlies them is atomic.
Thus Aristotle managed to articulate genuine principles of physics,
but only "relative" ones that need to be understood within
a more basic framework. It was Plato who, in al-Razi's
opinion, had gotten closest to putting forward that framework.
Abu Hatim says that al-Razi told him as
much: "what Plato says is hardly different from what I believe
concerning time, and this, according to me, is the best thing that has
been said about it" (Abu Hatim
al-Razi, AHR: 13). The text he must have in mind is
Plato's *Timaeus*, which he would have known through the
intermediary of Galen (see Galen,
CTP
for the Arabic translation of his paraphrase of the dialogue). The
*Timaeus* likewise postulates a pre-existing matter that is
formed into the cosmos; it can also be read as suggesting that time
and place in some sense pre-exist the cosmos. Furthermore, Plato puts
forward an atomic theory in the *Timaeus*. In fact,
al-Razi rises to the defense of that theory in *Doubts
about Galen* (al-Razi, DG: SS15.1-6). So there is
good reason to believe that al-Razi was modeling his
cosmology primarily on Plato's, as he understood it, albeit with
adjustments.
On the other hand, Nasir-e Khosraw tells us that
al-Razi plagiarized this whole theory from his teacher,
Iranshahri. He is an obscure figure whose works are
lost, though al-Biruni (d. ca. 1050) does speak of him
as an expert in astronomy and the diversity of religions. Another
witness, Abu l-Ma'ali (fl. 1092), has
Iranshahri claiming to have been a prophet who had
received revelation from an angel, like the Prophet Muhammad did. He
reports that for Iranshahri, all religions put forth a
single teaching, an idea which might be thought to resonate with
al-Razi's own irenic, rationalist approach to
revelation. If Nasir-e Khosraw is right to trace the Razian
cosmology to this shadowy teacher, then perhaps we should think of
al-Razi's project as a creative fusion of
Iranshahri's ideas and Plato's.
## 3. Ethics
From the foregoing discussion of al-Razi's theodicy it
may seem obvious that his ethical teaching would focus on the goal of
liberation from the body and its concerns. But as mentioned already,
his *Philosophical Way of Life* defends a lifestyle of
moderation, and distances itself from outright asceticism.
Furthermore, in this text he says that bodily pleasure may licitly be
sought so long as one does not transgress what he calls a "limit
past which one may not go". This limit dictates that we should
partake of no pleasures
>
>
> that can be attained only by engaging in evildoing, murder, and in
> general anything that displeases God, when the judgment of intellect
> and justice is that it is unnecessary. All else is permitted.
> (al-Razi, RF: 106-7)
>
>
>
On the other hand, in the *Spiritual Medicine* he seems to take
a dim view of pleasures, and offers advice for resisting the allure of
food, drink, sex, and luxury. One point made in both works is that it
is a violation of reason to enjoy things that entail more pain than
pleasure in the long run, like overeating. In the *Spiritual
Medicine* al-Razi tells the story of how he chastized a
man who gobbled down a plate of dates, warning him that it would lead
to illnesses, and thus "many times more pain than the pleasure
you have had" (al-Razi, RF: 71).
Two interpretations have been offered to explain
al-Razi's position on pleasure. According to Lenn E.
Goodman (1971, 1999, followed by Groff 2014), al-Razi was
defending an Epicurean ethic in which pleasure should be maximized. On
this account, his rationale for moderation is that it is the way to
have the most pleasure: going too far with pleasures turns out to be
more painful in the long run. This interpretation has been criticized
by Adamson (2008a, 2021), on the grounds that it ignores
al-Razi's own theory of pleasure. According to this
theory, which is clearly based on the *Timaeus*, pleasure can
be had only as the result of a process of removing a harmful state.
For example, drinking is pleasant because it eliminates thirst. On
this account of pleasure, as Plato himself pointed out, hedonism is an
attempt to win at a zero-sum game: you can only have pleasure to the
extent that you have suffered pain, or at least harm. (Not all harm is
felt as pain, just as not all restoration is felt as pleasure, because
only fast changes are noticeable.) Furthermore, al-Razi says
himself in the *Doubts about Galen* (DG: SS7.7) that
pleasure is *not* the good to be sought in itself, which is a
direct rejection of the sort of hedonism adopted in Epicureanism.
On this latter reading, much of al-Razi's advice for
readers focuses on helping non-philosophers work towards a moderate
lifestyle, which will prepare them for the more serious and important
undertaking of adopting a "philosophical way of life" that
will ultimately lead to liberation from the body. Al-Razi
himself seems to accept this distinction between
"pre-philosophical" and "philosophical" ethics
(Druart 1997, Adamson 2016), for example in the aforementioned passage
about the glutton who loves dates. Al-Razi says he
threatened the man with stomach aches and illness because
>
>
> this and other such remarks are of more benefit to someone who has not
> engaged in philosophical training than proofs built on philosophical
> principles.
>
>
>
As for the truly philosophical life, it resides in the Platonic ideal
of imitating God (*Theaetetus* 176b), realized through the
pursuit of wisdom and justice towards all living things. In a
remarkable passage of the *Philosophical Way of Life*,
al-Razi stresses the importance of not mistreating beasts of
burden and other non-rational animals (Adamson 2012). This would
explain the "upper limit" placed on the pursuit of
justice: that limit does not derive from the need to maximize pleasure
and minimize pain, but from the injunction to avoid "displeasing
God" by engaging in injustice.
In more recent publications this interpretive dispute seems to be
moving towards agreement. Goodman (2015) now concedes that
al-Razi, unlike Epicurus, does not make pleasure the highest
good and sole criterion in ethics. He does however adopt a therapeutic
approach to ethics, which is characteristic of Epicureanism, as of
course is the advice to avoid things that bring pain than pleasure all
things considered. Adamson accepts this (2021: 6), but suggests that
the resonances with Epicureanism may rather reflect a more general
reception of Hellenistic ethics by al-Razi, again through
the intermediary of Galen (see also Bar-Asher 1989).
## 4. Medicine and the *Doubts*
As yet, al-Razi's extensive medical corpus has barely
been explored with a view to its philosophical significance. An
account of the human body and its primary organs in the *Spiritual
Life*--here ascribed to Plato--echoes what he says on
this topic in medical works (Adamson 2021: 57-58). His view,
following both Galen and the *Timaeus*, is that humans have
three general powers or faculties (*quwan*), the rational,
animal or irascible, and vegetative or desiderative, associated
respectively with the brain, heart, and liver. The rational soul is
not really seated in the brain, as the other two faculties are seated
in their organs; it uses the brain only as an instrument. In medical
contexts al-Razi makes the same three organs to be the seats
of these powers, albeit that the power in the brain is instead called
"psychic (*nafsani*)", perhaps to
acknowledge the fact that its powers of voluntary self-motion and
sensation also belong to irrational animals.
Al-Razi's views on medical epistemology are also
Galenic, and presuppose that the best doctor should understand the
human body at a theoretical level while also drawing on a wealth of
experience (Pormann 2008). This provides a methodological context for
understanding the aforementioned *Comprehensive Book*, which as
mentioned collects book-learning on medical theory, but uses
al-Razi's own empirical observations to confirm or
disconfirm those theories.
But the most rewarding medical text for philosophical readers is
*Doubts about Galen.* Or rather, it should be said that this
work deals with a range of philosophical, as well as medical, issues,
including the relation between soul and body, vision, atomism, and
pleasure (see the ample introduction by Koetschet in
al-Razi, DG). Regarding the first of these issues,
al-Razi criticizes Galen for suggesting that the soul is
entirely dependent on bodily states or "temperament", that
is, the mixture of the body's constituents. As in the
*Spiritual Medicine*, he defends Plato's idea that the
rational part of the soul only uses the brain as an "instrument
(*ala*)", and that injury to the brain impedes
rational function only in the way that damage to a flute would make it
harder for the flute player to perform (al-Razi, DG:
SS21.4). When it comes to vision, al-Razi strikes a less
Platonist note, since he rejects Galen's
"extramissionist" theory, which is in part inspired by
Plato's *Timaeus*. According to Galen, spirit
(*pneuma*) is sent forth from the eyes and transforms air,
making it into an instrument for contacting the visual object
(Ierodiakonou 2014). Instead, al-Razi defends the view that
incorporeal images are sent from the seen object and arrive at the eye
(Koetschet 2017a).
One of the more elaborate philosophical discussions in the *Doubts
about Galen* comes early in the work, and is devoted to the
eternity of the world (this section is translated in PWL).
Al-Razi here takes issue with Galen's suggestion that
empirical observation shows that the world was not created after not
existing. Galen's idea, based on a passage in Aristotle (*On
the Heavens* 1.3, 270b11-16), is that the universe seems to
be unchanging in its general features. If it is unchanging then it is
not liable to corruption, and what is incorruptible is also
ungenerable. Thus the universe has always existed, and always will.
Al-Razi has little difficulty poking holes in this argument:
he points out that the universe could be unchanging for a long time,
and then be destroyed all at once, like a glass being smashed or a
building collapsing when previously solid ground under it gives way
(al-Razi, DG: SS2.3). Furthermore, the incorruptibility
of the universe would not be guaranteed by its lacking a natural
tendency to decay. One also needs to rule out that there is some
external cause that could destroy it (al-Razi, DG:
SS2.5). As often in the *Doubts*, al-Razi is here
not trying to show that Galen's conclusion is wrong--though
in this case, we know that he thinks it is wrong--but that the
argument offered for the conclusion is not sufficient. Ironically,
this seems to be in accord with Galen's own original intention.
Galen's argument is taken from his *On Demonstration* and
was actually offered as an example of a proof that is *not*
demonstrative (Koetschet 2015). Al-Razi is either being
remarkably contentious, or has lost sight of the context of the
argument: he even accuses Galen of being inconsistent, as he elsewhere
states that it cannot be proven whether or not the universe is
eternal.
## 5. Religion and Prophecy
If the five eternal theory was considered problematic by
contemporaries and later authors, al-Razi's views on
religion were considered utterly outrageous and heretical. In his
*Proofs of Prophecy*, Abu Hatim selectively
quotes and paraphrases from a work by al-Razi on this topic,
and presents him as having flatly denied the validity of prophetic
revelation. Accepting this evidence as more or less reliable, some
modern-day scholars have celebrated al-Razi as a
"freethinker" comparable with such daringly unorthodox
thinkers as Ibn al-Rawandi (Urvoy 1996, Stroumsa 1999), or
even as having had pagan sympathies (Vallat 2015a, 2015b, 2016).
Against this, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi quotes our
al-Razi as having offered interpretations of the
Qur`an, which were designed to show that this revelatory
text and indeed the whole history of prophecy was in agreement with
his own philosophy (this evidence is presented and discussed in Rashed
2000, 2008). The bio-bibliographical tradition is also ambiguous in
its evidence. For instance al-Biruni, who clearly
admired al-Razi, admits that he made foolish and obstinate
remarks about religion and prophecy. But another broadly favorable
witness, Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, says that a supposed work
attacking religion was perhaps written by "malicious enemies of
al-Razi and ascribed to him" (for references, see
Adamson 2021: 11).
The most ample, if not necessarily trustworthy, evidence is found in
Abu Hatim. He says that in face-to-face debate,
al-Razi argued against prophecy on the grounds that it would
be unjust to single out only some people for knowledge that is useful
by everyone. Furthermore, appointing only a certain few as religious
leaders (*imam*s) would lead to dissension between their
followers (Abu Hatim, AHR: 1). Followers of religious
law are guilty of the cardinal intellectual sin of the Islamic world,
*taqlid*, which means uncritically adopting beliefs on the
basis of authority (AHR: 24). Instead, al-Razi argues, God
gives reason (*'aql*) to everyone, and in this respect
everyone is created equal, able to determine for themselves what goals
they should be pursuing. Furthermore, Abu Hatim tells
us about a range of more specific religious teachings rejected by
al-Razi in his book against prophecy, such as
anthropomorphic descriptions of God and the possibility of miracles,
including the inimitability of the Qur`an
(*i'jaz*).
In several respects this teaching on prophecy fits well with what we
know of al-Razi's philosophy more generally. It
invokes the idea that reason is given to the soul as a gift from God,
something confirmed in other sources and suggested at the beginning of
al-Razi's *Spiritual Medicine*. Furthermore,
Abu Hatim has al-Razi arguing that God would
not send prophets because this is an unreasonable and overly difficult
way to achieve His goals (Abu Hatim, AHR: 1;
131-2). Why not just give everyone the ability to figure things
out for themselves? This same premise that God only proceeds in the
most rational way is also important in his theodicy as we know it from
other sources, as seen above. Furthermore the critique of
*taqlid*, while admittedly commonplace, does sound like it
could come from al-Razi: his irreverent approach to Galen
bears witness to a similar independence of mind, albeit in a very
different context.
On the other hand, the evidence presented by Fakhr al-Din casts
serious doubt on the notion that al-Razi was openly hostile
to the Islamic revelation. And this is backed up by evidence internal
to al-Razi's own surviving works, for instance
acknowledgment of the preeminent value of "books sent by
God" in *Doubts about Galen* (al-Razi, DG:
SS2.1). At a minimum it seems clear that al-Razi was a
forthright rationalist, who believed that the truth of a revelatory
text would necessarily accord with the truth discoverable by human
reason. But that position would not be so remarkable: it is shared
from other philosophers of the Islamic world, from al-Kindi to
al-Farabi to Ibn Rushd. The question is whether
al-Razi went further and insisted that revelation is
useless, or even counterproductive, as claimed by Abu
Hatim.
Recent material brought to light by Philippe Vallat (2015a, 2015b,
2016) could confirm this interpretation. It would show that
al-Razi said in debate with a theologian named Abu
Qasim al-Balkhi, also called al-Ka'bi, that
"prophets are unnecessary, because we have reason which
suffices, assuming that prophecy is in accordance with reason"
(on al-Ka'bi in general see El Omari 2016; and on their
debate Rashed 2000, Shihadeh 2006: 103). It has however been argued
that Vallat's new evidence cannot convincingly be linked to the
debate between al-Ka'bi and al-Razi, who is never
named in these texts (Adamson 2021: 148-151). A different
approach would be to read Abu Hatim as having
distorted al-Razi's position, which may have been a
more targeted attack on schismatic and controversialist groups
including the Isma'ili branch of Islam to which
Abu Hatim belonged. Isma'ilism is
characterized by its insistence on the need for a religious leader or
*imam* to guide the faithful to a true understanding of
Islam. It may have been this doctrine, and not prophecy more
generally, that al-Razi attacked, as a signal example of the
dangers of *taqlid* (Mohaghegh 1970: 160-1; Adamson
2021: 147).
## 6. Legacy
Whatever the case, there is no doubt that the
Isma'ilis were especially hostile to
al-Razi. Alongside Abu Hatim
al-Razi and the aforementioned Nasir-e Khosraw,
who was also an Isma'ili, one may mention another
representative of this group named Hamid al-Din
al-Kirmani (d. after 1020), who attacked
al-Razi's ethical teachings (Hamid
al-Din al-Kirmani, see
HDK
in bibliography). This is not to say that only
Isma'ili authors are critical of
al-Razi, though. Another opponent, who polemicizes against
al-Razi's cosmology and apparent belief in the
possibility of transmigration (al-Razi, RF: 174), is the
Andalusian jurist and philosopher Ibn Hazm. Also in the Western
Islamic world, Maimonides includes a diatribe against the Razian
theodicy in his *Guide for the Perplexed* (GP: SS3.12).
Though Ibn Hazm associates other thinkers with
al-Razi's teachings (al-Razi, RF: 170 and
174) it does not seem that his daring ideas gained much traction among
later philosophers. Perhaps the most productive engagement with the
five eternal theory is found in Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.
He gives a fair hearing to al-Razi's account of place
and time, and adopts a similar view on the question of time in
particular (Adamson and Lammer 2020).
In his primary vocation of medicine, too, al-Razi had his
critics, including Ibn Sina, his only rival for the title of
most influential figure in the Islamic medical tradition. In an
epistolary exchange with al-Biruni, Ibn Sina
says that al-Razi overreached his competence in both
philosophy and medicine ("he exceeded his abilities when lancing
abscesses and examining urine and feces", quoted at
al-Razi, RF: 290). Al-Razi's project in
*Doubts* was also deemed presumptuous by later medical writers,
who composed refutations of the work. Nonetheless,
al-Razi's works were widely consulted by doctors in
the Islamic world, and he had a wide diffusion in the Latin speaking
world under the name "Rhazes". This began in the medieval
period and persisted through the Renaissance, with sixty-seven printed
editions of his works before 1700 (Hasse 2016: 8). No less an
authority than Vesalius edited an older translation of
al-Razi's *Book for al-Mansur*, and
al-Razi's medical writings were on the teaching
syllabus at Bologna, the most important university in Europe for
medical training (Siriasi 1990: 131 and 178). The independent-minded
Girolamo Cardano, who in personality and diversity of interests was in
some ways the heir of Galen and al-Razi, praised the latter
as one of several doctors from the Islamic world who had improved upon
Galenic medicine through empirical observation (*experimentum*)
(Siriasi 1997: 60). More recently, al-Razi has been praised
for his innovative approach and for breakthroughs in the history of
medicine, for example by investigating differential diagnosis
(Iskandar 1962) and using a control group to test the efficacy of a
drug (Pormann 2008). Thus al-Razi the doctor has had a more
illustrious posthumous career than al-Razi the
philosopher. |
al-din-al-razi | ## 1. Life and Works
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi's life was shaped by the
political situation in central Asia in the generations just before the
Mongol conquest of that region. He was born in the Persian city of
Rayy, near modern-day Tehran, in 1149 CE (544 of the Muslim calendar).
The name "Razi" refers to this birthplace,
leading to potential confusion with other philosophers from Rayy,
including the earlier Abu Bakr al-Razi (d. 920) and the
later Qutb al-Din al-Razi (d.1364). Fakhr
al-Din did not stay in Rayy, but traveled widely throughout
Persia and central Asia for the rest of his life in search of
education, patronage, and worthy intellectual opponents. In fact, he
did not need to venture far for his initial education. His father was
an expert in Islamic theology and law, a second-generation student of
the major Ash'arite thinker al-Juwayni (d.1085). Thus the
young Fakhr al-Din was from early on trained in the rational
theology (*kalam*) of the Ash'arite school and the
legal system of his father's Shafi'i school. He
went on to study in Nishapur, where he first encountered the works of
al-Farabi (d.950-51) and Ibn Sina
(Avicenna, d.1037). Responding to the latter would become the central
project of his own philosophical career. At Maragha, he studied
with the teacher Majd al-Din al-Jili (d. after 1175).
Al-Suhrawardi (d. 1191), the famous founder of the
"Illuminationist" philosophical tradition, was also a
student of al-Jili's.
The mature career of Fakhr al-Din has been divided into three
phases in a recent detailed overview of his life (Griffel 2021:
264-303; see also Street 1997, Griffel 2007, Altas 2013a
and 2013b, Shihadeh 2022). These phases were marked by patronage
relationships with two political powers who were vying for dominance
in central Asia, the Khwarazm-Shahs and the Ghurids.
Fakhr al-Din first enjoyed the support of the
Khwarazm-Shahs for about two decades, before joining the
Ghurids in 1197 after a military defeat of the
Khwarazm-Shahs at the hands of the Ghurids. By all
accounts this led to great wealth and standing, as Fakhr al-Din
became an ornament to the Ghurid court and a close companion and
teacher of the sultan Ghiyath al-Din (d.1203). This did not
mean he could stay above the political fray, though. He was accused of
lingering loyalty to the enemies of the court and was also involved in
a religious rivalry between Ash'arism and the more literalist,
less rationalist Karramite theological movement. His travels in
Transoxania seeking out debates with other jurists and theologians
have similarly been explained as an attempt to promote Ash'arite
*kalam* against Maturidi opponents, and
Shafi'i legal thought against Hanbali opponents
(for his legal thought see, e.g., Opwis 2012, Basoglu 2014).
In a record of these encounters around the year 1186, called
*Debates* (*Munazarat*), Fakhr
al-Din presents himself as "the only respectable scholar
among a swarm of dimwits" (Griffel 2021: 296; for this work see
Kholeif 1966). At the end of his life, we see a third phase of
patronage as he rejoins the Khwarazm-Shahs after they take
the city of Herat from the Ghurids. Fakhr al-Din died two
years later in that city, in 1210 CE (606 of the Muslim calendar).
Despite his extensive travels and political maneuvering, Fakhr
al-Din found time to compose a startlingly large body of work.
Many will associate his name most immediately with his titanic
*Great Commentary on the Quran* (also called *Keys to the
Hidden*: *Mafatih al-ghayb*). The modern
printing runs to no fewer than 32 volumes (here it is almost
obligatory to cite Ibn Taymiyya's barb that the work
"contains everything apart from exegesis of the Quran").
Fakhr al-Din wrote extensively on law, theology, and
"occult sciences" like magic and astrology. As can be
learned from studies of his Quranic commentary (Jaffer 2015) and a
treatise of his on the occult disciplines (Noble 2021), every work of
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi can be profitably read with his
philosophical interests in mind. But in this overview we will largely
restrict our focus to the theological-philosophical treatises that are
of most evident importance for the historian of philosophy. Scholars
sometimes refer to these as *summae*, which suggests a parallel
with Latin scholastic works like those by Thomas Aquinas. The
comparison is not misleading, insofar as Fakhr al-Din was
avowedly a theologian, but one who pursued philosophical problems at
length and with great sophistication.
A couple of problems confront anyone who is trying to come to grips
with his writings in this area. First, the sheer quantity of material.
His first *summa*, entitled *Eastern Points of Investigation
on Metaphysics and Physics* (*al-Mabahith
al-mashriqiyya fi 'ilm al-ilahiyyat
wa-l-tabi'iyyat*) is more than 1200 pages
long in the modern printing. His final *summa*, written in his
final years and arguably best representing his own views on a wide
range of topics, is the similarly titled *Exalted Topics of Inquiry
within Divine Science* (*al-Matalib
al-'aliya min al-'ilm al-ilahi*) and is
printed in nine books bound in five volumes. In between these two
works we have, among other texts, the shorter but highly innovative
and influential *Mulakhkhas al-hikma* (*Epitome
of Philosophy*) and not one but two exegetical works devoted to
Ibn Sina's *Pointers and Reminders*
(*al-Isharat wa-l-tanbihat*), a critical
abridgment from 1201 (*Lubab al-Isharat*) and an
earlier, and very extensive, line-by-line critical commentary
(*Sharh al-Isharat*).
Fakhr al-Din's decision to devote such a detailed
commentary to a work by Ibn Sina is historically revealing.
While his contemporary Sharaf al-Din al-Mas'udi
(d. before 1204) did compose a set of *Doubts*
(*Shukuk*) on the same text, the commentary of
al-Razi on *al-Isharat* seems to be the
first lemmatized exegesis of an Arabic philosophical work (see also
Wisnovsky 2013, Shihadeh 2014 and 2017), as had been devoted to
Aristotle in late antiquity and earlier Arabic philosophy. Even a
casual perusal of Fakhr al-Din's corpus makes clear that he
has identified Ibn Sina as the chief representative of
*falsafa*, a word which is most naturally translated
"philosophy" (since it is likewise derived from the Greek
*philosophia*) but which really has a narrower meaning in this
period, since it is so closely tied to Ibn Sina's
distinctive teachings. To be a *faylasuf* is to uphold
such doctrines as the necessary and eternal emanation of the universe
from God. (A more generic word for the discussion of such issues,
without any particular doctrinal commitment, would be
*hikma*, literally meaning "wisdom"; see
Griffel 2021.) While Fakhr al-Din follows his famous predecessor
and fellow Ash'arite al-Ghazali (d. 1111) in targeting
Ibn Sina as the outstanding exponent of *falsafa*, he
does not go along with al-Ghazali's idea that the
*falasifa* were heretics and apostates from Islam.
Instead, he seems to welcome the powerful challenge posed by Ibn
Sina's thought, since it gives him something worthy of
his own considerable critical acumen and helps him to map out the wide
range of issues tackled in his *summae*. These fall into the
domains of logic, physics, psychology, ethics, and above all,
metaphysics (general survey in Zarkan 1963). Indeed Fakhr
al-Din used metaphysics to restructure the curriculum of the
sciences, something we especially see in his *Mulakhkhas*
(Eichner 2007, 2009). This work adopts a new arrangement, which would
be influential on later thinkers. Fakhr al-Din first tackles
logic, then "generalities (*al-umur
al-'amma*)", then natural philosophy, and finally
philosophical theology. The second and fourth parts of the project
correspond to what is called general and special metaphysics in the
Latin scholastic tradition, and the parallel does not end there. Like
Duns Scotus, Fakhr al-Din offers an analysis of existence (the
central case of a metaphysical "generality") by way of
disjunction, e.g., existence may be one or many, necessary or
contingent, infinite or finite, self-sufficient or dependent, etc.
While these contrasts are largely drawn from Ibn Sina, Fakhr
al-Din innovates with his systematic use of the disjunctions to
structure general metaphysics. This also means, as we will see below,
that his discussions of metaphysics are by no means restricted to
raising and answering questions about God, as we might expect from a
"theologian".
In fact, while Fakhr al-Din's Ash'arite sympathies are
often evident, and he does also write works that summarize
*kalam* teachings, he is not consistent in taking a clear
stance in favor of Ash'arite *kalam* and against
Avicennan *falsafa*. Instead, the really stable feature of his
work is a method that is, again, reminiscent of Latin scholasticism
and its genre of disputed questions. His various *summae* are
organized into topics for inquiry (hence the use of words like
*mabahith* and *matalib* in the
titles of the works), with arguments considered for and against every
conceivable stance that could be adopted on each topic. (The famous
Sufi poet al-Rumi compared this approach to "tearing
science apart like bread and feeding it to the birds".) The fact
that no actual historical figure or school has adopted a possible
position will not prevent Fakhr al-Din from considering it.
By using this "dialectical" procedure (Wisnovsky 2004,
Shihadeh 2005, Griffel 2011) Fakhr al-Din is able to stand in
judgment over the whole historical tradition leading up to him.
Alongside Ibn Sina and other philosophers, notably the
slightly earlier Abu l-Barakat al-Baghdadi (d.
1160s), the *kalam* tradition supplies him with a stock of
positions and arguments to rehearse and critique. He will thus
frequently refer in the third person to "theologians
(*mutakallimun*)", as if this were a group that does
not include him. The upshot is that Fakhr al-Din puts himself
forward as the arbiter in debates that span the
*falsafa-kalam* divide. If he is not consistent in
adopting one or another teaching himself (many times, a lengthy
investigation in his works ends with only a brief statement of the
likeliest answer, or none at all, followed with a pious "but God
knows best"), this is perhaps because the exhaustive method of
testing arguments and doctrines is more important to him than the
assertion of any one doctrine.
## 2. Logic and Epistemology
In the Islamic world, representatives of *falsafa* largely
accept the traditional Aristotelian presentation of the manner of the
acquisition of knowledge. This is the Peripatetic *Organon*,
which starts from the predicables and moves through syllogistic to
demonstrative science and essential definitions. Fakhr al-Din,
however, presents a different structure for logic and epistemology,
which leaves the traditional organization of the *Organon*
behind. The new structure revolves around two ways of acquiring
knowledge, conceptualization (*tasawwur*) and assent
(*tasdiq*) (El-Rouayheb 2019: 29).
"Conceptualization" stands for mentally entertaining a
concept, such as "human" or "rational animal",
without ascribing any truth-value to it, while "assent"
stands for claiming that the human is rational animal in the real
world (Lameer 2006). Fakhr al-Din's reorganization of logic
and epistemology may have been one inspiration for later authors who
re-define the subject matter of logic as "the objects of
conception and assent" (El-Rouayheb 2012).
Fakhr al-Din complements this picture with his critique of
definitions, a rejection of the intentional acquisition of knowledge
through conceptualization (Falaturi 1969, Ibrahim 2013, Ozturan
2018, Jacobsen Ben Hammed 2020, Benevich 2022a). According to the
traditional Aristotelian epistemology, wholly embraced by Ibn
Sina, we know what a human is by acquiring a complete
definition of the essence of what it means to be a human, through a
combination of all inherent generic and specific aspects, for instance
"being an animal" and "being rational". Fakhr
al-Din denies that this is how we learn what things are. For him,
as for his contemporaries Abu l-Barakat and
al-Suhrawardi, the best that we can hope to achieve with the
traditional Aristotelian-Avicennan approach is a nominal definition,
the explication of a meaning we have in our minds
(*Muhassal*, 84; *Mulakhkhas*:
*Mantiq*, 106). By defining humans as "rational
animals", we do not learn anything new about real humans.
Rather, we just explain what we meant by "humans" in the
first place.
Fakhr al-Din's main argument against real definitions is a
reapplication of an old epistemological problem that goes back to
Meno's paradox in Plato (*Meno*, 80d6-10).
Al-Razi formulates it as follows:
>
>
> If one is not aware of the object of inquiry, inquiry is impossible.
> For, if one is entirely unaware of something, the soul undertakes no
> inquiry into it. If on the other hand one *is* aware of it,
> inquiry is again impossible, since it is absurd to make something
> available when it is already available (*tahsil
> al-hasil*).
>
>
>
*If someone says*: [the inquirer] is aware of [the object of
inquiry] in some respect or other, *I respond*: the respect in
which he is aware of it is distinct from the respect in which he is
not aware of it. [82] He cannot inquire into the first [respect],
since it is [already] available. Nor can he inquire into the second
[respect], since he is absolutely unaware of it
(*Muhassal*, 81-82)
How can we learn something new if we do not even know what to look
for; and if we already know what we are looking for, what sense does
it make to learn something new about it? Al-Farabi and
Ibn Sina mostly accepted the Aristotelian solution to the
paradox, namely that we can know something in one respect, and inquire
into it and learn something new about it in another respect (Black
2008, Marmura 2009). Fakhr al-Din rejects this solution, on the
grounds that the problem may be applied to each aspect individually.
If we do not know one aspect but already know another aspect, new
inquiry is impossible for both, with the two aspects falling prey to
the two different horns of the paradox.
In his analysis of the acquisition of knowledge, Fakhr al-Din
addresses the traditional epistemological distinction inherited from
*kalam* between "necessary"
(*daruri*) and "acquired"
(*iktisabi*) knowledge. We receive
"necessary" items of knowledge as a given, whether or not
we want to do so. For instance, when I look at a red apple, I have no
power over seeing that the apple is red. I cannot just decide to see
it as blue. By contrast, acquired knowledge means that we are
intentionally involved in the acquisition of knowledge. I might for
instance try to learn why humans have certain features that belong to
them, though I need not do so (see further Abrahamov 1993, Radhi
Ibrahim 2013, Benevich 2022b). Fakhr al-Din goes against this
standard *kalam* account by denying the second type of
knowledge. According to him, we do not have any power over our
conceptualization of things, nor over any beliefs that derive from
conceptualization (*Arba'in*, vol.1, 330-332).
Rather, all items of conceptualization and assent are given to us,
which in the occasionalist Ash'arite framework means given
directly by God (Jacobsen Ben Hammed 2020, Benevich 2022a). We are
thus "forced" to have whatever knowledge we wind up
having. The nature of the objects known is not so clear: it has been
argued that for Fakhr al-Din we can only get to objects of
phenomenal experience (Ibrahim 2013), and also that for him we can get
at the things in themselves (Benevich 2022a). Either way, the
necessary items of knowledge are the primary data for epistemic
agents. We do not learn what humans are through an inquiry and by
producing essential definitions. We know what humans are through
direct experience, which is not up to us.
For someone who denies that we can voluntarily acquire knowledge
through either conceptualization or assent, Fakhr al-Din devotes
surprising effort to discussing the ways of acquiring assents. He
introduces a few substantial innovations in the Avicennan theories of
the types of propositions and syllogistics. In fact, Fakhr al-Din
introduces several notions and distinctions that become standard in
the subsequent history of Arabic logic. Most of them are rooted in Ibn
Sina's logical apparatus, but Fakhr al-Din makes
great effort to critically revise and re-organize them, creating the
foundations of what has been called "revisionist Avicennan
logic" (El-Rouayheb 2019: 68-69). One of the most
important innovations is Fakhr al-Din's suggestion that Ibn
Sina failed to distinguish between the alethic and temporal
understanding of necessity. "Every *A* is necessarily
*B*" does not need to mean the same as "Every
*A* is always *B*". With this distinction, Fakhr
al-Din creates what Street has called "profusion of
propositional types", which would be extensively discussed in
the later period of Arabic logic (Street 2014, 2016; see further
Strobino & Thom 2016).
Another important contribution in logic is Fakhr al-Din's
distinction between two readings of the subject term of a proposition:
externalist (*khariji*) and essentialist
(*haqiqi*). When we say "Every *A*
is *B*" on the externalist reading, we mean that every
single thing which actually happens to be *A* in the real world
is *B*. On the essentialist reading, "Every *A* is
*B*" means "everything, were it to be described as
*A*, would be *B*" (*Mulakhkhas:
Mantiq*, 141-42). The distinction between the
externalist and the essentialist reading is Fakhr al-Din's
response to the earlier Arabic discussions of the subject term by
al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Al-Farabi was
credited with the ampliation of the subject term to the possible. In
other words, for him, "Every *A* is *B*"
means "everything that is possibly *A*, is
*B*". Ibn Sina was more restrictive:
"Every *A* is *B*" means "everything
that is actually *A*, is *B*". This need not mean
"everything that actually is *A* in *the real
world*" but can also refer to whatever is actually described
as *A* in the mind (Street 2005, 2010, 2014, and 2016, cf.
Chatti 2016). Fakhr al-Din's distinction between the
essentialist and the externalist readings of the subject term may be a
reaction to Ibn Sina's ampliation of the subject term
to include the mental realm. As we will see in
Section 4,
Fakhr al-Din denies mental existence, and hence requires
different formulation for the readings of the subject term that do not
refer to real-world actuality.
## 3. Physics
Fakhr al-Din's treatment of the principles of physics
provides an illuminating example of his philosophical method. In his
various *summae* he addresses the same set of issues treated in
Ibn Sina's physics, which are ultimately those already
addressed by Aristotle's *Physics*. Thus we get
considerations of body, motion, time, place, and void. Yet ideas from
the *kalam* tradition are brought into the mix too, and
sometimes allowed to prevail. Thus he usually upholds the atomism
shared by both the Mu'tazilite and Ash'arite schools of
*kalam* against the continuism of Ibn Sina. In
other cases, Fakhr al-Din seems to be following the lead of
Abu Bakr al-Razi (who was himself an atomist), as he
embraces a "Platonic" understanding of time and place,
according to which these are independent principles rather than
measurements and limits of bodies and their motions.
The fundamental distinction in *kalam* physics is that
between the atomic substance (*jawhar*) or "indivisible
part", on the one hand, and the accidental properties
(*a'rad*) that belong to these atoms, on the
other hand (Dhanani 1994, Sabra 2006). As far back as the initial
reception of Greek philosophy into Arabic, *falasifa* like
al-Kindi (in a lost work) had rejected atomism in favor of
Aristotelian continuism. This is the view that every part of every
body, no matter how small, can in principle be divided into yet
smaller sub-parts. Ibn Sina was also a strong opponent of
atomism (Lettinck 1988, McGinnis 2013, Dhanani 2015), and his
arguments provoked discussion in a number of twelfth century authors
(see, e.g., McGinnis 2019). Fakhr al-Din is thus joining a
long-running debate when he addresses the cogency of atomism. His
statements on the question present a typically confusing picture. He
seems to reject atomism in his "philosophical"
(*falsafi*, *hikmi*) works, only to
accept it in his *kalam* works (Zarkan 1963:
67-98). However his late *summa*, the
*Matalib*, may show that he came to embrace
*kalam* atomism as his own considered view (Dhanani 2015;
see also Setia 2004 and 2006, and Baffioni 1982: 211-75; for his
opposition to hylomorphism see Ibrahim 2020).
As a decisive consideration in favor of atomism he here states that,
if continuism were true, each body would have an infinity of parts, so
that a mustard seed could be "stretched" to coincide with
the whole universe (*Matalib* vol.6, 71; see Dhanani
2015: 102 for the passage). Another atomist argument is that if a true
sphere were to meet a true surface, it would make contact at an
indivisible point. We can further argue as follows:
>
>
> Once it is established that the locus of contact is something
> indivisible, the existence of the individual atom must be
> acknowledged. For if we roll a sphere in a full circle on a plane
> surface, there can be no doubt that as soon as one point of contact
> ceases, contact is established with another
> (*Matalib* vol.6, 48-9).
>
>
>
As this argument shows, the atoms under consideration here are akin to
geometrical points, rather than the very small, extended but
indivisible bodies proposed in ancient Greek atomism and by the
earlier Abu Bakr al-Razi. This itself an inheritance
from the *kalam* tradition. Geometry was also used by some
to rebut atomism, so in both the *Matalib* and a
separate treatise dedicated to this issue (Altas 2015), Fakhr
al-Din sets out geometrical arguments against atomism and offers
counter-refutations.
If he is indeed an atomist, it would make sense that he should believe
in the possibility of void, since in both classical and
*kalam* atomism these two doctrines are usually found
together. Abu Bakr al-Razi and Abu l-Barakat
al-Baghdadi were also proponents of the void, and both were
influential figures for Fakhr al-Din. On this topic, he seems to
be fairly consistent in upholding the possibility of void against
Aristotelian and Avicennan arguments for its impossibility (Adamson
2018a). For example, he rejects the Aristotelian argument that, if the
speed of motion is inversely proportional to the density of the
medium, then motion in a void would be infinitely fast:
>
>
> If we assume that part of the [required] time is to accommodate the
> motion in itself, and part of it to accommodate the hindrance, then
> the motion in pure void will take place in that amount of time that is
> appropriate to the motion as it is in itself. Motion occurring in a
> plenum, meanwhile, will occur in that amount of time plus a further
> amount of time, as rendered appropriate by whatever is in the interval
> that offers [175] hindrance. So it is established that the conclusion
> they sought to force [on the proponent of void, sc. that motion in a
> void would be infinitely fast given the total lack of resistance] does
> not follow (*Matalib*, vol.5,
> 174.19-175.1).
>
>
>
In other words, the density of the medium only slows the intrinsic
speed of the motion that it would have in a vaccuum, which is
finite.
Void is defined either as a case in which two bodies fail to be in
contact, with no body between them (*Arba'in* vol.2,
32) or as a space that has nothing placed within it
(*Matalib* vol.5, 155). Physical arguments provide
evidence that void is in fact not just possible but actually occurs,
as when two flat surfaces are pulled apart: it will take some time,
however minimal, until air rushes in to fill the empty space
(*Arba'in* vol.2, 35). The second definition of void
just mentioned brings us to Fakhr al-Din's notion of space
or place, and already suggests his view that place is not dependent on
bodies, as Ibn Sina had claimed (Adamson 2017). For Ibn
Sina, following Aristotle, place is the inner boundary of a
containing body, for example the interior surface of a jug that
surrounds the water placed in the jug (Lammer 2018: SS5.3). Fakhr
al-Din subjects this conception to a barrage of criticisms, for
example that a jewel inside a bag would remain in the same
"place" even as it is being transported between cities
(*Matalib* vol.5, 147). Instead, place is for him
indeed "space" (*fada`*,
*hayyiz*), which is independent of bodies and may be
either occupied by a body or not.
We find a parallel between this idea about space and his account of
time (Setia 2008, Adamson 2018b, Adamson & Lammer 2020). For Ibn
Sina time is a measure of motion ('Abd
al-Muta'al 2003, McGinnis 2003 and 2008). In the first
instance it is the measure of the motion of the outermost heaven,
since this is the fastest motion in the cosmos, which accounts for the
apparent diurnal rotation of the fixed stars around the Earth. This,
for Fakhr al-Din, is the "peripatetic" account of
time. In his *Matalib* he refutes it and also a
variant of the view found in Abu l-Barakat, according to
which time is the measure of *existence* rather than motion.
Fakhr al-Din does at least agree that time is real. To establish
this he cites an old *kalam* idea that time offers a
coordination between independent events (*Mabahith*
vol.1, 761; *Matalib* vol.5, 47), which is why it is
possible for me to arrange to meet with you tomorrow (one event) when
the sun rises (another event). But time's existence is not
supervenient on motions or cases of existence. Were that the case,
then we would have multiple, simultaneous times for the various
motions, which would need a superordinate time to coordinate them.
Fakhr al-Din's discussions of time give us a nice example
of how his views developed, even while circling around the same set of
arguments (Adamson & Lammer 2020). In the
*Mabahith* he expresses an an agnostic point of
view:
>
>
> I have not yet arrived at the realization of the truth about time, so
> let your expectation from this book be a thorough examination and
> report of whatever can possibly be said [about time] from all points
> of view (*Mabahith* vol.1, 761).
>
>
>
When he writes the *Mulakhkhas*, by contrast, he is
coming around to the view that beforeness and afterness are
"items of consideration" (*umur
i'tibariyya*). Yet at the end of his career, he has
adopted the contrary view. Now he endorses what he says is
Plato's view of time: it is "a substance subsisting in
itself and independent in itself" (*Matalib*
vol.6, 76). The allusion to Plato presumably refers to the
*Timaeus*. He is apparently following his fellow philosopher of
Rayy, Abu Bakr al-Razi, both in accepting the
independence of time and place and in seeing Plato as an authority for
that physical theory (Adamson 2021a: ch.5). One difference between the
two Razis, however, is that Fakhr al-Din makes it clear
that time and place are both created by God, and not
"eternal" principles. Thus his overall account of physics
envisions a created spatio-temporal framework within which bodies may,
but need not, exist.
## 4. Metaphysics
Just as "substance" (*ousia*) may rightfully be
called the central notion of Aristotelian metaphysics, so is
"existence" (*wujud*) the core notion of
Avicennan metaphysics. Ibn Sina's metaphysics is a
study of the relationship between different kinds of things and the
mode of their existence, which ultimately results in identifying a
special, necessary mode of existence, which belongs to one being
alone, namely God (see, e.g., Bertolacci 2016). There are two core
doctrines of Ibn Sina's metaphysics, both widely
discussed after him in the Islamic world, and both addressed by Fakhr
al-Din in detail: the distinction between essence and existence,
and the idea that God is sheer existence, necessary in all
respects.
"Existence" refers for Ibn Sina to the very fact
that things are, irrespective of what they are. For instance, it is
one thing for a red apple to be a red apple, and it is a completely
different thing for the red apple to *be*. To establish the
distinction between what things are (that is, their essence), and
whether they are (that is, their existence), Ibn Sina uses
an argument from conceivability. We can conceive of a red apple
without knowing whether it exists, hence its existence must be
different from its essence (*Isarat*,
*namat* 4, 266). But how should we understand this
distinction between essence and existence? In the post-Avicennan
tradition, there are two main answers to this question: the
distinction between essence and existence is real
(*haqiqi*) or it is merely conceptual
(*i'tibari*). The first answer requires that
there are two different items outside the mind, which together make up
the existent red apple. The second response means that there is just
one item in the extramental world, the existent red apple; but we can
analyse it conceptually into "existence" and "red
apple" (Wisnovsky 2012, Eichner 2011b).
Within this debate, Fakhr al-Din seems to take the realist stance
that essence and existence are distinct outside the mind (Benevich
2017). For instance, he feels compelled to address one of the most
pressing issues for the realists. If essence and existence are
distinct in reality, does this mean that all essences are already
somehow out there before existence attaches to them? Fakhr al-Din
is not puzzled by that difficulty:
>
>
> The essence as such (*min haytu hiya hiya*) is an
> essence distinct from existence and non-existence. This does not imply
> the subsistence of something existent in something non-existent
> (*Arba'in*, vol.1, 88).
>
>
>
The essence of the red apple as such (*min haythu hiya
hiya*) is indeed prior to its existence. The essences of things,
considered as such, are in a different, third state of being, neither
existent nor non-existent (*Mabahith*, vol.1, 129).
Of course, this does not mean that there are essences of red apples
hanging around before they even become existent. Just like Ibn
Sina, Fakhr al-Din accepts that essence and existence
are extensionally identical: all instances of essence are also
instances of existence (Wisnovsky 2012). But Fakhr al-Din offers
a realist take on the Avicennan distinction by introducing a clear
priority of essence over existence; more recent interpreters disagree
as to whether this is faithful to Ibn Sina's own
metaphysics (Bertolacci 2012, Benevich 2019b, Janos 2020).
Fakhr al-Din consistently uses his theory of the priority of
essence over existence to discuss what Ibn Sina considered a
special case, God. In Fakhr al-Din's understanding, for Ibn
Sina, God's essence is just identical to His
existence. For Ibn Sina, this would be the only way to
guarantee that God exists necessarily. For, if there were any
composition at all of *A* and *B*, *A* could fail
to be *B*, and *B* could fail to attach to *A*;
some further cause would be needed to guarantee the connection between
the two. Thus, the only way to secure that *A* is necessarily
*B* is just to say that *A* is *B*. That would
mean that God's essence is not even conceptually distinct from
God's existence. There is an obvious problem with this doctrine,
however. If God's essence is sheer existence, but existence also
belongs to, for example, a red apple, how is the existence of the red
apple different from the divine essence? Ibn Sina's
reply depends on the notion of the analogy or modulation
(*taskik*) of existence, whereby one kind of existence
belongs to the red apple and another kind belongs to--or rather,
just *is*--God (Treiger 2012, De Haan 2015, Druart 2014,
Zamboni 2020, Janos 2021). But Fakhr al-Din, again much like Duns
Scotus almost a century later, refuses to take this route. Instead, he
insists on the univocity of existence. Everything that exists, does so
in the same manner of existence. Thus Fakhr al-Din is also
compelled to deny the identity of essence and existence in God's
case. God's existence will still be necessary, because His
essence is such that it implies its own existence. So in God essence
is prior to existence. This priority should not bother or indeed
surprise us, since we just have learned that *all* essences are
prior to their existence. The upshot is that what is special about God
is His essence, not a unique kind of existence
(*Muhassal*, 67; see further Mayer 2003,
Benevich 2020a).
Fakhr al-Din's contribution to history of metaphysics
recalls not only Duns Scotus but also Thomas Aquinas. Like Aquinas, he
offers a taxonomy of proofs for God's existence, which becomes
standard in philosophy of the Islamic world after him. Fakhr
al-Din distinguishes between four mains proofs for God's
existence available to him at his time: from the contingency of
essences; from the temporal origination (*huduth*)
of essences; from the contingency of attributes; and from the temporal
origination of attributes. The first argument may be easily identified
with Ibn Sina's proof for God's existence, which
establishes the existence of the Necessary Being by reasoning from the
contingency of all beings in the world (Marmura 1980; Mayer 2001;
Zarepour 2022). The second argument is the *kalam*
cosmological argument. It argues for the existence of a Creator based
on the fact that the world came to be at some point. The third
argument, from the contingency of attributes, alludes to the fact that
everything in the world exists in a certain way, while it could have
easily been some other way. Therefore, there needs to be some agent
that determined how things would exist. Finally, the fourth argument
comes closest to what we would designate as a design argument. The
attributes of things in the world are not just one way when they could
have been different, but are in the best way possible. Hence, there
must be a wise agent who chose these marvelous features for the world.
Fakhr al-Din contends that the first argument, that is, Ibn
Sina's argument for the existence of a Necessary Being
is more fundamental than all other arguments
(*Ma'alim*, 42).
So, while disagreeing with Ibn Sina whether God's
essence and existence are identical, Fakhr al-Din does accept
that God is a Necessary Being. Still, probably due to his
*kalam* allegiances, he is not ready to accept that God is
a necessary being in all respects. For instance, Ibn
Sina's God cannot know particular individuals.
Knowledge of what is happening right now while you are reading this
article would involve a change in God, since He would need to stop
knowing that you are reading this sentence as soon as you move on to
the next one. But if God changes, then He is not necessary in all
respects, since necessity implies immutability. So the only way for
God to know what happens in the world is to conceive of universal
rules, laws of nature, and causation, without knowing which of those
rules are being at work right now (Marmura 2005, Adamson 2005; cf.
Acar 2004 and Nusseibeh 2009). Following Abu l-Barakat and
al-Ghazali, Fakhr al-Din rejects this line of
reasoning, on the grounds that change in God's knowledge is
merely relational (*Arba'in*, vol.1, 198). Imagine
that you are standing still and something passes by you from right to
left; in such a case you do not change, but your relation to that
moving thing does change. Now, we need to imagine the same with
respect to God's knowledge the chain of events: it passes by God
and God observes it, without God essentially changing.
This account of divine knowledge requires a very specific
understanding of knowledge and cognition. Fakhr al-Din
al-Razi, again following Abu l-Barakat and
al-Ghazali, defines cognition as a relational state
(*hala idafiyya*). Fahr al-Din
opposes this theory to the representationalist theory of cognition,
commonly ascribed to Ibn Sina at this time:
>
>
> Perception does not just come down to the making of an impression. The
> truth is rather that it is a relational connective state. For we know
> self-evidently that we have seen Zayd, given that our visual capacity
> faculty has a certain relation to him. Anyone who claims that the
> object seen is not Zayd, who exists extramentally and is not seen at
> all, and that the object seen is rather his representation
> (*mital*) and likeness
> (*sabah*), has put into doubt the most important
> and powerful items of necessary knowledge (*Sarh
> al-Isarat* vol.2, 233).
>
>
>
According to representationalism, cognition involves the inherence of
the cognized object in the object of cognition. For instance, when I
think of a red apple, the idea of a red apple must be
"imprinted" in my mind. For Fakhr al-Din, cognition
is a direct relation between the agent of cognition and the object of
cognition itself, that is, the red apple in itself.
Representations--if there are any--are not the objects of
cognition (Benevich 2019a, 2020b; Griffel 2021: 341-84).
One may wonder how this theory could explain the cognition of
non-existent objects. To what does my mind relate when I think of a
phoenix, or of a square circle? Ibn Sina introduced the
notion of mental existence in response to this kind of question. The
phoenix may fail to be existent *outside* the mind, but it
exists in my mind while I am thinking about it, again being imprinted
in my mind (Black 1997). Just as Fakhr al-Din rejects the
representationalist theory of cognition, he consistently rejects the
Avicennan notion of mental existence (*wujud
dhihni*). For him, when I think of non-existent beings, I
just think of elements that constitute those beings and are observable
in the world. For instance, thinking of a square circle means thinking
of a square and a circle as if they were combined (Benevich 2018; on
the related issue of the "paradox of the unknown" see
Lameer 2014).
With this relational theory of cognition in hand, Fakhr al-Din is
able to resolve the puzzle of how God knows about changing things.
Objects of cognition are external to the agent of cognition, so that
change in those objects and the subsequent change in the process of
cognition does not involve any change in the agent. Thus we can say
that God is a necessary being, but not necessary in all respects,
since His relational cognition of current events is constantly in the
process of change. Yet this implies no change in God's essence.
Moreover, we have seen above that Ibn Sina suggests that God
has knowledge of universal rules of causation and natural laws. Fakhr
al-Din argues that precisely this kind of knowledge that Ibn
Sina ascribes to God, that is, the knowledge of universal
rules and causation, results in knowing every single event in the
world at the time when it happens (*Matalib*, vol.3,
163-64).
Fakhr al-Din's reasoning here presupposes a strictly
determinist account of the world. There is a causal explanation for
each event, and God knows it. And indeed, Fakhr al-Din is willing
to embrace determinism fully. For instance, with respect to human
actions, he argues that they are determined by the combination of our
motivations, beliefs, and capacities. We do not have control over any
of these (as we saw in Section 1, Fakhr al-Din insists that our
beliefs are not up to us); so we do not have any control over our
actions either (*Matalib*, vol.9, 35-43).
There are two important premises underlying Fakhr al-Din's
determinism, both borrowed from Ibn Sina. One is that there
must be, for everything that exists but could have failed to exist,
some reason why it exists; this is said to "preponderate"
the thing to exist rather than not existing. Second, when that reason
is present, the phenomenon must inevitably happen. Therefore, in the
presence of our capacities and motivations, we have no choice but to
act, and do so necessarily (*Matalib*, vol.9,
21-23; *Mabahith*, vol.2, 517; on
al-Razi's theory of action see further Shihadeh
2006).
## 5. Psychology
A fundamental assumption of Aristotelian psychology is that the souls
of all living things are characterized by a range of
"powers" or "faculties" (Greek
*dunameis*, Arabic *quwan*). These powers account for
the distinction between plants, animals, and humans: plants have the
"vegetative" powers of nutrition, growth, and
reproduction; animals the powers of sensation, locomotion, and
imagination; humans alone (among embodied beings) have the power of
reason or intellect. Ibn Sina made significant alterations
to this scheme, not least by introducing a theory of "internal
senses" to account for cognitive capacities lying between
sensation and full-blown intellection. But broadly speaking, he
adhered to the tradition of faculty psychology. Fakhr
al-Din's earlier contemporary Abu l-Barakat
al-Baghdadi rejected this whole approach. For him the soul
is a unity and is the single subject of all cognition (Kaukua
2016).
Fakhr al-Din agrees, and in several of his works offers arguments
intended to confirm Abu l-Barakat's thesis. The most
powerful of these is that the soul is capable of what we might call
"hybrid judgments". These are modeled on the sort of case
considered already by Aristotle, that honey is both white and sweet:
here vision and taste might seem to be making a judgment about the
same object, suggesting that they belong to a single subject, which
could be the entire soul. Such is Aristotle's commitment to
faculty psychology, though, that he instead introduces a new power
within the soul (the "common sense") to take
responsibility for judgments that involve more than one sense
modality. Or at least, this is how he was understood in the later
tradition.
Fakhr al-Din argues, however, that the same pattern repeats
across all the faculties. For example, Ibn Sina had drawn a
strict contrast between the human intellect and the lower cognitive
faculties, on the grounds that the former grasps universals while the
latter powers--from sensation to imagination and
memory--deal only with particulars. But, says Fakhr al-Din,
we are able to apply a universal to a particular ("Zayd is
human"). It must be the unified soul that is responsible for
such judgments:
>
>
> When we perceive a particular individual human, we know that he is a
> particular belonging to the universal "human" and not a
> particular belonging to the universal "horse". That which
> judges a particular man to be a particular belonging to the universal
> "human" and not a particular belonging to the universal
> "horse", must inevitably be perceptive of the particular
> man, the universal "human", and the universal
> "horse". And so that which perceives particulars is also
> that which perceives universals (*Mabahith* vol.2,
> 255; 345-6; *Sharh al-Isharat* vol.2,
> 265-7; the unity of the soul is discussed in depth at
> *Matalib* vol.7, 159ff).
>
>
>
Another point, which again is taken over from Abu
l-Baghdadi, is that the human soul at least has a kind of
"first person perspective" on its cognitive actions. It is
capable of grasping itself directly--as argued by Ibn
Sina himself in his famous "flying man"
argument--and of grasping itself as the subject of all its
cognitions. Note that, since these arguments all turn on active
cognition, Fakhr al-Din is willing to exempt the non-cognitive
vegetative powers from this unified soul (*Mabahith*
vol.2, 256-7). But there is no division of powers distinguishing
the "animal soul" from the rational soul that is
distinctive of humans.
This does not stop Fakhr al-Din from using Ibn
Sina's method for proving that the human soul is an
immaterial substance (Adamson 2021b, Alpina 2021). Ibn
Sina's proof inferred the rational soul's nature
from the nature of its objects: since it grasps indivisible
intelligible forms, it must itself be indivisible, and therefore not a
body. In this case Fakhr al-Din chooses not to refute the
Avicennan line of argument but to improve upon it, by adding further
arguments to show that intelligibles are indeed indivisible
(*Mabahith* vol.2, 362-5, also
*Sharh* vol.2, 285-8). He does still worry that the
argument is incomplete: the rational soul could be indivisible but not
immaterial if it were an atom (*Matalib* vol.7, 62),
so the cogency of the argument will depend on showing that atomism is
incoherent (see above, Section 3). And even if we reject atomism,
Avicennan prime matter is arguably also indivisible
(*Sharh* vol.2, 295). Still Fakhr al-Din seems to be
at least well-disposed towards the idea that the soul's ability
to grasp intelligibles establishes its immateriality.
Since this ability belongs to the entire, unified soul and not is just
one "faculty" that could exist on its own as a disembodied
mind, this should secure immateriality, and hence the prospect of
immortality, for the human soul. When he speaks about the nature of
the human soul, he sometimes says that it is a luminous substance that
fuses with the body like rosewater in rose petals or oil in sesame,
which seems to make it a kind of very subtle body but not, he says,
like those perceptible to the senses (for passages see Jaffer 2015:
192). But it other contexts, Fakhr al-Din seems to be ready to
embrace full-fledged substance dualism. For this conclusion he
typically uses argumentation based on introspection, such as his
version of Ibn Sina's Flying Man argument, or the
immediate awareness of personal identity over time (see, e.g.,
*Matalib*, vol.7, 101; 105).
What about animal souls? The arguments presented so far clearly blur
the sharp distinction that Ibn Sina and other
*falasifa* drew between human and animal souls. But Fakhr
al-Din goes further. In both his *Mulakhkhas* and
his *Matalib* he suggests that non-human animals
have intelligence that is not different in kind from human rationality
(Adamson & Somma forthcoming, Virgi 2022). Animals are self-aware,
know that they persist through time, grasp universals, and can make
plans and solve problems. This does not necessarily mean that animals
are equal to humans in their intelligence. Rather there may be a
continuum of cognitive capacities, with some animals ranged further
away from humans, others closer to them. But
>
>
> if what is meant by "reason" is any of the types of
> intelligence, then this intelligence should be attributed to
> [non-human] animals. (*Matalib* vol.7, 311)
>
>
>
He may have found this view plausible in part because, again following
Abu l-Barakat, he is open to the idea that even just within
the human "species" we have differences that amount to
distinctions in quiddity (*Matalib* vol.7, 141). So
from this point of view too, there is little reason to embrace a stark
opposition between human and non-human animal nature.
## 6. Ethics
One passage which makes that point is found in his *Book on the
Soul and Spirit* (*Kitab al-Nafs wa-l-ruh*
86-7): humans differ so much in their character traits that one
may suspect they do not all share the same essence. That exemplifies
the approach of this separate treatise, which is to stage a joint
inquiry into ethics and the soul. One theme addressed here is the
improvement of our "character traits
(*akhlaq*)". This is hardly surprising: the
centrality of this concept in Arabic moral thinking was such that
ethics itself was referred to as *'ilm al-akhlaq*
(literally, "the science of character traits"). And
philosophers both before Fakhr al-Din, like Miskawayh (d.1040)
and Yahya Ibn 'Adi (d.974), and after him, like
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d.1274), put
character traits in both the thematic focus of their writings on
ethics and the titles of those writings. These works are part of a
broadly Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics, which encourages
readers to pursue excellent rather than base character. Ibn
Sina also contributed to this tradition, as in two short
works called *On Ethics* (again*, Fi l-'ilm
al-akhaq*) and *On Governance* (*Fi
l-Siyasa*; for Ibn Sina'S influence on later
practical philosophy see Kaya 2014).
Fakhr al-Din was of course aware of this approach to ethics, and
took an interest in the topic of virtue (al-Shaar 2012). But he was no
Aristotelian. Historically, we can say that he responds more to
*kalam* ethics; philosophically, we can say that he was a
consequentialist rather than a virtue theorist (for this the essential
reading is Shihadeh 2006; see also his 2016). Taking the historical
point first, as an Ash'arite he is committed to what would now be
called a "divine command theory". That is, the right
action is whatever is commanded by God, the wrong action is whatever
is forbidden. The Ash'arite stance emerged as a critique of the
Mu'tazilite position, which holds that certain types of action
are known to be wrong without recourse to revelation, for example
lying. We can always imagine circumstances in which
"intrinsically wrong" action types turn out to be right
after all, like lying to a tyrant to avoid betraying a prophet
(*Arba'in* vol.1, 348). Therefore this
Mu'tazilite theory is untenable.
Fakhr al-Din's early works uphold a straightforward divine
command theory. But he comes to pair this with a hedonist and
consequentialist ethics, which assumes that pleasure is good for
humans and pain bad. To avoid a regress of normative explanation,
there must be some fundamental norm, and in Fakhr al-Din's
view hedonism provides that norm. The connection between hedonism and
Ash'arite ethics is that God has promised us pleasure if we
follow His commands, and pain if we do not. Thus, the divine command
theory turns out to be justified on egoistic, consequentialist grounds
(Shihadeh 2016: 66). This also opens the prospect for determining what
we should do in the absence of a divine command: whatever is
"beneficial", in other words pleasure-maximizing for the
agent. Because pleasure is now so central to his ethical theory, he
devotes significant attention to its nature, refuting the originally
Platonic "restoration theory" according to which all
pleasure is a return to a natural state from a harmful or painful
state (*Sharh* vol.2, 552-4). This analysis might
apply to the base pleasures of food or sex, but would not hold for
higher pleasures like the grasping of knowledge (see his *Epistle
Censuring the Pleasures of this World*, in Shihadeh 2016).
If we again take his late work, the *Matalib*, as
our best evidence for Fakhr al-Din's final philosophical
views, then we can infer that he retained his commitment to
consequentialism. Characteristically, he itemizes arguments against
his own position and refutes them one by one
(*Matalib* vol.3, 66-9). For example, you
might encounter an ill person in a wasteland where no one else is
around to see, and help them. What pleasure are you getting out of
this? None, it would seem, yet you would and should do it nonetheless.
Fakhr al-Din explains that you would be acting on the principle
that, if you were in the same position as the unfortunate person, you
would want to be treated in the same way. This is not an appeal to
some kind of Kantian categorical imperative, but more like what we now
call "rule utilitarianism". That is, we should act in such
a way that if people in general acted like this, pleasure would be
maximized and pain minimized (for a similar interpretation see
Shihadeh 2016: 80, who emphasizes that the motivation is
"neither altruistic nor based on a sense of duty... but is
a self-centred, prudential motivation").
This example shows that Fakhr al-Din was not simply reacting to
Avicennan *falsafa* by rehearsing an Ash'arite
*kalam* view (though he does also refute Ibn
Sina's proposal, inspired by Neoplatonism, that evils
are cases of non-being). He also applied his philosophical acuity to
reflect on, and modify, the Ash'arite position. In the later
tradition he was sometimes accused of adopting skepticism. A
representative anecdote has him weeping after being disabused of
something he had formerly taken as certain truth and lamenting,
"what is there to prove that all my beliefs are not of this
nature?" (quoted at Kholeif 1966: 18). The impression of
skepticism could also be encouraged by his tendency to provide only a
minimal verdict, or no verdict at all, at the end of a lengthy
dialectical investigation of some issue. This is something else that
annoyed later readers: the sheer accumulation of arguments he offered
for unacceptable views was dangerous, even if refutations of these
arguments were given thereafter. And it does seem that he saw certain
demonstration as being impossible on many theological and
philosophical issues. But he was not a global skeptic. As discussed
above, he had views about what it would mean to have knowledge, and
assumed that knowledge is indeed attainable. His massive and still
inadequately explored corpus testifies to his determination to attain
that knowledge like no one else in his time, and thus to supplant Ibn
Sina as the indispensable thinker of the Islamic world. |
albalag | ## 1. Life and Works
Little is known about Isaac Albalag. All that we know about him is
that he lived in the second half of the thirteenth century either in
Catalonia or Provence (Sirat 1985: 238). References to Albalag in the
medieval Jewish literature indicate that he was not a figure of
favorable reputation. His name appears in a number of Jewish writings
usually in association with humiliating accusations of heresy. The
Kabbalist Shem Tov Ibn Shem Tov (d.1440), for instance,
accuses Albalag of heresy for advocating a heretical view regarding
the fate of the human soul (*Sefer ha `emunot* [the Book
of Beliefs], I:1). In *Sefer Neveh Shalom* (Indwelling of
Peace), the fifteenth-century Spanish thinker Abraham Shalom
attacks Albalag for eliminating the doctrine of creation by radically
naturalizing the account for celestial motion (Vajda 1960: 271).
Albalag's worth as a philosopher did not go unnoticed,
notwithstanding. Isaac Polqar (14th century), the author of
*'Ezer ha-dat* (The Support of Faith) holds Albalag in
great esteem and cites him approvingly in dealing with the
controversial issue of the origin of the world (*'Ezer
ha-dat*: part II: p.46).
Albalag wrote only one treatise, *Sefer Tiqqun ha de'ot*
(The Emendation of the Opinions)--I here employ Manekin's
translation of the title (Manekin 2007: 140)--which is a
translation with commentarial notes on the first two sections of Abu
Hamid al-Ghazali's encyclopedic treatise *kitab
Maqasid al-Falasifah* (The Opinions of the
Philosophers), Logic and Metaphysics. The third section, Natural
Philosophy, was completed by Isaac Polqar (Vajda 1960: 268).
Two goals stand behind the composition of the *Tiqqun*. The
primary one, as the title reveals (Emendation of the Opinions), is
corrective. Motivated by confidence in Aristotelianism, Albalag adopts
a critical stance towards any doctrine that deviates from Aristotelian
teachings and rules. For him, most errors in the philosophical
discourse are instances of deviation from Aristotle or
misunderstandings of his teachings. The cumulative literature of
commentaries on Aristotle, excluding Averroes' commentaries, is
replete with such instances. Avicenna is particularly regarded by
Albalag as a major source of error and thus the process of
"emendation" (*Tiqqun*) largely consists in
systematic critiques of Avicennian philosophy. But Avicenna is not the
sole target of criticism, though he is the central one. Albalag also
criticizes other philosophers such as al-Farabi, Maimonides, and
al-Ghazali--it is not unlikely that Albalag thought, like
Medieval Latin philosophers, that *Maqasid
al-Falasifah* was a genuine representation of
al-Ghazali's philosophical view (for al-Ghazali's
philosophical image in Latin literature see Salman 1999; Shihadeh
2011).[1]
*Maqasid al-Falasifah* encompasses a concise
presentation of the opinions of the philosophers, and as a result it
furnishes Albalag with an ideal framework for pursuing the announced
process of "emendation" (*Tiqqun*). In most of his
discussions, critiques, and corrections Albalag derives what he
regards as the correct understanding of Aristotle from Averroes'
writings.
The second goal of the *Tiqqun* is pedagogical. Here, again,
al-Ghazali's *Maqasid al-Falasifah*
serves as an adequate vehicle. Thanks to al-Ghazali's style
which is free of complexities and accords with "popular
beliefs", the *Maqasid* provides a suitable
medium for instructing students who have little training in philosophy
(*Tiqqun* preface: 4). By translating and commenting on
al-Ghazali's *Maqasid*, Albalag hopes to offer
a piecemeal instruction in philosophy, starting with a presentation of
Ghazali's summary of the doctrines of the philosophers and
culminating in the establishment of Aristotelian demonstrative
doctrines. Overall, the *Tiqqun* follows the structure of the
*Maqasid* except on some occasions where Albalag
engages in large digressions.
## 2. Logic
The first part of the *Tiqqun* (Logic) is, more or less, a
faithful translation of the *Maqasid.* Although this
part is generally unoriginal, it may still be credited with a specific
contribution. Manuscripts of the *Tiqqun* include a sympathetic
discussion of the fourth figure of syllogism. This figure was
attributed by most Medieval logicians to Galen, though this
attribution remains disputed in modern scholarship (Rescher 1965;
Sabra 1965), and was dismissed as lacking utility and
"naturalness" (see Gersonides *Sefer ha-heqqesh
ha-Yashar* [The Book of the Correct Syllogism]: 147). It is not
clear, however, whether Albalag himself wrote this discussion or
whether it was written by Abner of Burgos, a thirteenth-century
Jewish-convert-to-Christianity philosopher, as suggested by some
textual evidence (Vajda 1960: 275-276). In any case, the
inclusion of this discussion in the *Tiqqun* independently of
any explicit criticism indicates that Albalag agrees with its positive
attitude towards the fourth figure of syllogism.
The Aristotelian syllogism does not determine a specific order for the
major and minor premises. Hence, the terms comprising the premises,
the "unique major" and "minor" terms and the
shared middle term, may be arranged in three possible figures as
follows:
* in the first figure, the middle term is subject in one premise
and predicate in the other,
* in the second, it is subject in both premises, and
* in the third, it is predicate in both (Manekin 1996: 50).
Some later logicians distinguished the order of the major and minor
premises with the result that the first figure was divided into two
figures:
* in the first, the middle term is the subject in the minor and
predicate in the major premises, and
* in the second, it is the subject in the major and the predicate
in the minor premises (*ibid*, 1996: 50).
The additional fourth figure "is sometimes placed after the
first figure, rather than the third" (*ibid*, 1996: 50).
The *Tiqqun* provides a quasi-defense of the fourth figure as a
"valuable" form of reasoning (*Tiqqun* n.5:12).
This interrupts Albalag's overall adherence to Averroes who,
like the majority of Medieval logicians, rejects the fourth figure due
to considerations that have to do with "naturalness."
According to Averroes, "the form of reasoning embodied in the
fourth figure of syllogism does not exist in us by nature" and
involves "absurd self-predication" (Manekin 1996: 56). In
Hebrew logical writings, limited attempts were advanced to establish
the validity of that figure, most famously by Gersonides. The
discussion in the *Tiqqun* is another attempt to this effect
where the author, interestingly, subjects even Aristotle to criticism
for omitting this form of reasoning (*Tiqqun* n.5: 12).
## 3. Epistemology
### 3.1 Knowledge, Belief and Intellectual Perfection
Like most Medieval Aristotelians, Albalag understands the ultimate
goal of man in terms of intellectual perfection (*Tiqqun*
preface: 2-3, n.30: 42; cf. Maimonides,
*Guide* III:54; Farabi, *Selected Aphorisms*: 61;
Averroes, *Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction*: 103). To
fulfill this goal one has to attain knowledge of existents in a manner
"that dispels doubt" (*Tiqqun* preface: 3). The
formula of "dispelling doubt" points to the conception
of certainty (*yaqin)*, which is defined in the Arab
Aristotelian tradition as a cognitive state in which the cognizer
acquiesces that what she perceived is necessarily true and cannot be
otherwise (see Black 2006: 15-25). In line with this tradition,
Albalag specifies the logical tool of demonstration as *the*
means for fulfilling the criterion of dispelling doubt (i.e.,
attaining certainty).
This, however, raises a difficulty, for the ultimate goal of man would
seem to be exclusively tied to philosophy, while the role of religion
would be meager. Although this difficulty is not peculiar to Albalag,
it is particularly strong in the *Tiqqun* where a notable
dichotomy between *`emunah* (belief) and
*yedi'ah* (scientific knowledge) serves to confine
religion/Scripture to a domain of knowledge that is quantitatively and
qualitatively different from demonstrative knowledge (i.e., prophetic
knowledge). Whether this knowledge qualifies as an alternative or a
parallel means to philosophy in fulfilling the epistemic requirement
of intellectual perfection is a complex question. Insofar as the
*Tiqqun* is concerned, *`emunah* can rightly be
equated with fideism (see *Tiqqun* n.30: 38, 51), unlike the
philosophical conception of belief (for which
*`i'tiqad* and *tasdiq* were
the basic technical terms in Arabic) advocated by many Jewish and
Muslim philosophers and theologians (see, for instance, al-Farabi
*Book of Demonstration*: 63-4; Sa'adia Ga`on
*Book of Beliefs*: 14; Maimonides *Guide*
I:50). In view of the latter, belief consists in judgment or
affirmation, following from cognitive processes and syllogistic
reasoning, that a given perceived object is true. In this way, belief
is said to be associated with certainty or approximation of certainty
depending on the form of reasoning.
The *Tiqqun*, by contrast, points to a traditional conception
of belief; one that amounts to simple acceptance of a given Scriptural
doctrine or a set of doctrines as true without prior rational
justification (*Tiqqun* n.30: 51). Simple belief can always be
regarded as a source of certainty on account of prophetic authority
and this appears to be the basic standpoint of the *Tiqqun*
(for background on the conception of belief in Jewish thought see
Wolfson 1942: 213-261; Kellner 1986; Rosenberg 1984:
273-307). Yet it is important to consider the implications that
the *Tiqqun's* extreme skeptical stance in regard to
prophetic knowledge raises for this standpoint. The *Tiqqun*
encompasses a number of significant remarks stressing the
inaccessibility of the Torah's prophetic secrets to non-prophets
--we will see below that the Torah has two layers of esoteric
knowledge, prophetic and philosophical. What remains is the layer of
philosophical knowledge to which philosophers, as Albalag points out,
could have access. Accessing this layer of knowledge essentially
depends on allegorical interpretation of Scripture in terms of what
was learned from demonstrative sciences (see below). This means that
whatever assent Scripture evokes in a person who is well-trained in
demonstrative sciences (i.e., a philosopher) will be of the type of
reason-based, namely demonstrative, assent (cf. Averroes *Decisive
Treatise*: 17-18). It would, thus, be beside the point to
speak of "simple belief" (*`emunah pashotah*),
unless we grant that simple faith attaches to the surface layer of
Scripture. But this, again, would be implausible, since Albalag admits
that this layer is addressed to the multitude of people who,
"like animals", lack rationality, rather than philosophers
(*Tiqqun* n.30: 45; for further discussion see Guttmann
1945).
### 3.2 Human Knowledge: Means and Limits
Although Albalag does not devote a specific discussion to the theory
of knowledge, many questions pertaining to the limit, means, and
features of human knowledge recur throughout the *Tiqqun*. His
treatment of these questions show indebtedness to Aristotelian
epistemological theories as expounded by Arab Aristotelians, in
particular Averroes. Following the framework of the theory of
representational knowledge, standard among Arab Aristotelians, Albalag
divides knowledge into representation and assent. The former, which is
a prerequisite for the latter, is acquired by definition, while assent
is acquired by a proof (*Tiqqun* [Logic]: 98; cf.
*Maqasid*: 12). As noted previously, Albalag adopts
the Aristotelian theory of syllogism, assigning a primary significance
to demonstrative syllogisms in evoking certain assent. Moreover,
like Averroes, Albalag places conspicuous emphasis on the empirical
foundation of human knowledge (for Averroes' epistemology see
Black 2019). Intelligible thoughts arise in the soul through the
cognitive process of abstraction and syllogistic reasoning. Without
external images, Albalag affirms, it would be impossible for the soul
to apprehend the intelligible forms, just as it is impossible for a
person who is deprived of visual data to apprehend the quiddity of
colors (*Tiqqun*, n.11: 16, n.44: 71; cf. Aristotle
*De Anima* III, 7, 431a, 14-17).
Although the *Tiqqun* is generally characterized by confident
rationalism, it involves skeptical elements that echo
Maimonides' critiques of the limitation of the human intellect
in regard to metaphysical knowledge (for these critiques in Maimonides
see Pines 1979; Stern 2013). Albalag admits, like Maimonides,
that attaining *complete* knowledge of immaterial beings lies
beyond the capacity of the human intellect. The reason for this
limitation is, first and foremost, the material component of human
beings (*homer*) which acts as both a constant impediment
to the pursuit of knowledge and a cause of intellectual deficiency
(*Tiqqun* n.11: 16, n.38: 58; cf. *Guide*
III:9).
## 4. Conception of Being and God's Existence
Avicenna's proof of God's existence, famously known as
"*Burhan al-sidiqin*", Demonstration of
the Truthful (Mayer 2001), occupies a good deal of Albalag's critical
discussion. The proof is meant to be a metaphysical proof, one that
takes place in the science of Metaphysics and proceeds from analyses
of the conception of existence qua existence.
Avicenna divides "actual" beings, as opposed to impossible
things, into necessary in itself and possible in itself but necessary
through another (Davidson 1987: 292-3; McGinnis 2010:
159-164). The necessary in itself is that which has existence in
its essence and an impossibility arises whenever it is assumed not to
exist. By contrast, the possible in itself but necessary through
another is that which "has no existence in essence" and
"no impossibility" arises whether it is assumed to exist
or not (Avicenna *al-Najat*: 546; cf.
*al-`isharat*: 122; cf. al-Ghazali
*Maqasid*: 100-101). In other words, both
existence and non-existence are equal states with respect to it. This
latter point is crucial to Avicenna's proof, for it stipulates
that there must be an external cause that ultimately preponderates
existence over non-existence in things that are possible. This cause
must be necessary in itself. Considering all possible things as an
"aggregate" (*jumlah)*, two alternatives arise in
regard to the cause of that aggregate (Avicenna,
*al-Najat*: 567-8): either the aggregate of possible
things is self-caused or caused by something external. Avicenna
dismisses the former alternative as impossible because the nature of
what is possible in itself does not change independently of a cause;
possible things become necessary only through other causes. Hence, an
aggregate of possible things is also possible in itself and cannot be
self-caused. Furthermore, "a chain" (*silsilah)* of
possible things cannot continue *ad infinitum* and it must end
to a being that is necessary in itself. The trait of "necessary
existence" further entails a number of divine attributes such as
oneness, simplicity and goodness, which permits identifying the
Necessary Existent with the deity (Adamson 2013: 172).
To Albalag, Avicenna's proof of God as Necessary Existent
appeared to involve flagrant deviations from Aristotle. Firstly,
Avicenna's procedure for establishing the existence of the First
Principle in the science of metaphysics is methodologically incorrect.
(*Tiqqun* n.8: 13-14). Appealing to Averroes, Albalag
argues that the existence of the prime mover must be accepted from
natural philosophy--not insofar as it is the deity--while
metaphysicians proceed therefrom in examining its states and
attributes. Obviously, the theoretical basis for this argument is
Aristotle's rule that "no master of any art can
demonstrate the proper principles of his art"
(*Metaphysics* IV 1003a21-22), which, according to
Averroes, means that a given science does not demonstrate the
existence of its subject, but must concede to their existence either
as something which is "self-evident" or as
"something that has been demonstrated in another science"
(Wolfson 1950-1 : 691). Since the First
Principle is the subject matter of metaphysics, its existence cannot
be established in that specific science.
Secondly, Avicenna breaks away from Aristotle in that he proceeds in
establishing the existence of the First Principle from analyses of the
conception of being rather than motion and moved objects (for
Aristotle's argument see *Physics* 7 & 8). In order
to establish the Necessary Existent, Avicenna proceeds from a
conception of being that Albalag, following Averroes, dismisses as
spurious (for Averroes see *al-kashf*: 14). His discomfort with
this conception has to do primarily with the fact that it is alien to
Aristotle. But Albalag additionally speaks of errors and absurd implications,
especially in the science of metaphysics, that follow from
Avicenna's method of distinguishing two types of necessary
existents, i.e., that which is necessary in itself and that which is
necessary by another. One implication pertains to the nature of
separate intellects. Assuming that anything which is *not*
necessary in itself involves two modes, necessity and possibility, as
Avicenna holds, then separate intellects would also involve both
necessity and possibility. This, however, absurdly clashes with the
essential nature of separate intellects as immaterial beings, since
possibility must reside in a substratum (*Tiqqun* n.8: 14,
n.29: 27).
These deviations from Aristotle provided Albalag with sufficient
reason to reject the metaphysical proof of God. Moreover,
Avicenna's supplementary arguments, as reproduced by al-Ghazali
in the *Maqasid*, to the effect that the Necessary
Existent is one, simple and incorporeal fall short of satisfying the
epistemic criterion of dispelling doubt (i.e., certainty), unlike
Aristotle's argument from motion which, as Albalag asserts,
"dispels doubt" (*Tiqqun* n.33: 53). But although
Albalag only trusts Aristotle's argument, he points to a subtle
problem whose origin goes back to ancient commentaries on Aristotle:
the problem of the relation of the Prime Mover to the deity (for this
problem see Avicenna *Shifa`*
[*Metaphysics*]: 13). Aristotle's argument from motion
arrives at the existence of a mover that is not a body or a force in a
body. But whether that mover is the First Principle/Cause, i.e., the
deity, or a first effect remains an open question (*Tiqqun*
n.8: 14, n.38: 61). Philosophers hold no unanimous answer to this
question. While Avicenna concludes that the deity is ontologically
superior to the Prime Mover known from Aristotle's analyses of
motion (*Tiqqun* n.38: 61), Averroes identifies the Prime Mover
with the deity in all his writings (see for instance the
*Commentary on Metaphysics*: 172)--the exclusion being, as
Albalag correctly notes, the *Epitome of Metaphysics* (see
*Talhis ma ba'd
al-tabi'ah*: 149) where Averroes follows
Avicenna's standpoint (*Tiqqun* n.69: 96).
Curiously, Albalag does not immediately side with either camp.
However, his discussions of the relation of the Prime Mover to the
celestial and sublunary realms confirm Averroes' standpoint by
establishing the primacy of the Prime Mover as a cause of all
sublunary and celestial entities, and Its absolute unity and
simplicity, two essential specifications of the deity (see below).
## 5. God-world Relationship
To reconstruct a rough picture of Albalag's understanding of the
God-world relationship, we consider three interrelated themes: the
origin of the world, divine will, and divine wisdom.
### 5.1 The Origin of the World
On scientific grounds, Albalag dismisses the doctrine of temporal
origination as "defective" and accepts the eternal
existence of the universe as an indisputable truth (we will see below
that he accepts the former on the authority of Scripture). Albalag,
however, attempts to present the Aristotelian theory of eternity and
its fundamental premises in a theologically appealing fashion. Thus,
he introduces the theory of "eternal origination"
(*hidush nesahi*) which maintains that
"there was no moment at which the universe was not
originated" (*Tiqqun* n.30: 30; cf. *Tahafut
al-Tahafut*, Third Discussion). That the universe has no
temporal beginning is a premise that Albalag accepts based on
Aristotle's demonstration of the eternal existence of spheres
and celestial motion (see for instance *Tiqqun*, n.30: 30,
60:84-97; cf. *De Caelo* I: 2-3). What remains is
to show that the universe is not self-sufficient. This procedure is
necessary in order to avoid confusing the philosophical doctrine of
eternity with that of Epicurus which maintains that "the
universe has no cause" (*Tiqqun* n.30: 45). More
specifically, it shows that the philosophical conception of eternal
causation is not heretical and does by no means eliminate the idea of
origination.
For this purpose, Albalag engages in a philosophical discussion in
which he sets out to demonstrate the consistency of the theory of
eternal origination--in addition, he offers interpretive notes to
show that the doctrine of eternal origination is not offensive to
Scripture (for the interpretive notes see Feldman 2000: 19-30).
His discussion indirectly links to some elements of al-Ghazali's
refutation of philosophers in *Tahafut al-Falasifah*
concerning their conceptions of God and the universe.
Al-Ghazali's central point of contention is that the
philosophers' exposition of the relation of God to the universe
dwells on two premises that form an oxymoron, namely that the universe
is eternal and that it has an Agent and Maker (see *Tahafut
al-Falasifah* third and tenth discussions). Contrary to
al-Ghazali, Albalag holds these premises to be absolutely consistent.
What is more, he introduces the theory of eternal origination as a
more adequate way for articulating the universe and divine causation
than the doctrine of temporal origination, the "defective"
doctrine of the multitude which confines divine causation to
temporality. If perfection indicates absoluteness, then the term
"perfect" (*shalem*) applies to both "the
absolute" (*muhlat*) universe, which
eternally and immutably exists, and "the absolute" Creator
whose act of creation is free from temporal or circumstantial
limitations.
The doctrine of eternal origination rests on a conception of the
universe as a moving entity in which the cause-effect relationship is
a relation between a mover and a moved object (see *Tiqqun*
n.30: 29; cf. *Tahafut al-Tahafut*: third discussion,
101). In the natural realm, all processes of generation and corruption
consist in motion--for instance the movement from potential to
actual existence--and occurs through motion. All natural changes
depend on the movements of the celestial spheres, which in turn depend
on the Mover of the outermost sphere, the Prime Mover (*Tiqqun*
n.30: 29, n.39: 62).
Beyond this well-known Aristotelian conception of the Prime Mover as
the ultimate cause of motion in the universe, Albalag seeks to prove
that the very act of producing motion is sufficient to make the Prime
Mover a cause/creator of the universe. To this end, he differentiates
between two classes of existents in terms of their dependence on
motion:
1. existents whose subsistence requires motion, and
2. existents whose subsistence *do not* require motion; only
their coming-to-be requires motion.
Things belonging to the latter class continue to exist after their
causes perish--for instance, a house continues to exist after the
death of its builder. By contrast, things belonging to the former
class perish as soon as motion ceases--for instance wind does not
continue to exist as soon as the motion of air ceases (*Tiqqun*
30: 30; cf. Averroes *Tahafut al-Tahafut*, fourth
discussion: 156-8). These things are said to be more in need of
a cause than things belonging to the former class are, for should the
cause disappear from existence "for a twinkling of an
eye", they would necessarily perish (*Tiqqun* n.30: 30).
The universe as a whole belongs to this class. Both the natural and
celestial realms subsist because their constituent "parts are
eternally originated" through the motion produced by the Prime
Mover; the parts of the natural and celestial realms referring to
sublunary existents and the "successive" stages of
celestial motion respectively (*Tiqqun*, n.30: 30).
### 5.2 Divine Will
Within the framework of the theory of eternal creation, Albalag deals
with another problematic issue, which also links to al-Ghazali's
refutations of philosophers in *Tahafut
al-Falasifah*: the nature of divine causation, whether it is
voluntary or involuntary. In this treatise, Al-Ghazali maintains that
volition is a fundamental characteristic of acting causes; "the
agent must be willing, choosing and knowing what he wills "
(*Tahafut al-Falasifah*, third discussion:
135). Causes that act by necessity, that is, without willing or
choosing, fall in the category of natural involuntary
causes. Proceeding from this conception of agency, Al-Ghazali asserts
that the conception of divine causation that philosophers espouse
deprives the deity of volition. Again, the theory of eternity is
brought into focus. Necessity is a key postulation of the scheme of
eternity. Philosophers, according to al-Ghazali, hold the perpetual
procession of the universe from God to be necessary in the same manner
that the connection between "the sun and light" is
necessary (*Tahafut*, third discussion: 135;
cf. *Tiqqun* n.23: 24). In opposition to al-Ghazali, Albalag
broadens the conception of agency to include both involuntary natural
and voluntary causes. However, he emphasizes that a natural cause is
insufficient to produce an effect. It must primarily be moved by a
voluntary agent. In the empirical world, natural causes bring forth
effects inasmuch as they are being moved by close or remote voluntary
agents. In this connection, Albalag states that "in this way all
material effects are related to God and it is said of Him that He is
their Maker", vaguely indicating that God is the ultimate
voluntary cause in the universe. Other than articulating the God-world
causal relationship in terms of motion, Albalag barely explains the
nature of divine will or the manner in which it causes the perpetual
production of the universe.
In other contexts, Albalag argues, in opposition to al-Ghazali, that
divine agency is neither natural nor voluntary, but an intermediary
type that lies beyond human understanding. This, however, does not
mean that God has no will. The truth is that God has a capacity that
constitutes for Him what will constitutes for human beings. The exact
nature of this capacity, which human beings call will, is obscure,
even though demonstration establishes that it exists. Nonetheless,
considering the defining criteria of the conception of divine
perfection, it is inferred that this capacity shares no features with
empirical will. Unlike empirical will which follows from a stimulus
and seeks to fulfill a desire, divine will is self-sufficient. While
empirical will is temporal, originates with a stimulus and perishes as
soon as the desire is fulfilled, divine will, consistently with the
eternal and immutable nature of God, is eternal and immutable, being
characterized as a benevolent and immutable capacity to eternally
"choose" the best of two opposite things:
>
>
> Even though He possesses power over everything, the manner of His will
> is such that it constantly attaches itself to a single object, the
> best among two opposites. Certainly, if He willed evil He would be
> capable of doing it, but His will desires nothing but what is good
> only. (*Tiqqun* n.23: 24 [my translation]; cf. *Guide*
> III:25 where Maimonides states that God acts in the best way)
>
>
>
On this basis, the universe maintains a fixed natural order such that
"nothing can be added to or reduced from it"
(*Tiqqun* n.30: 39), since God's will continuously and
immutably chooses this order.
### 5.3 Divine Knowledge
If God possesses will, then He must also possess wisdom, since
deliberation and choosing assume knowledge of the thing that is
willed. That is to say, the God-world relationship is based on will
and wisdom. In discussing the nature of divine knowledge, Albalag
displays an obsession with divine perfection. Thus, he differentiates
between divine and human knowledge on the basis of type rather than
rank, removing any ground for comparing them or inferring premises
about God's mode of apprehension and knowledge from the
characteristics of human knowledge and cognition. This idea of the
distinctiveness of divine knowledge, and, indeed all divine
attributes, is best expressed in terms of Maimonides' theory of
equivocation. According to Maimonides, terms such as wisdom, power and
will are predicated of God and creatures only equivocally. When
predicated of God and other creatures, these terms are semantically
dissimilar, sharing only the names rather than meaning (*Guide*
I:56; cf. *Tiqqun* n.23: 24). Epistemologically speaking,
moreover, they are not informative; constituting an artificial
language, which we predicate of God owing to our inability to fathom
and signify the corresponding characteristics in Him (Benor 1995;
Stern 2013: 198-204).
On this conception of divine attributes, Albalag examines
Avicenna's theory of divine knowledge, as reproduced by
al-Ghazali in the *Maqasid*, according to which
"God knows particulars in a universal fashion"
(*Maqasid*: 118). Avicenna's theory of divine
knowledge has been subject to different interpretations (Marmura 1962:
299-312; Adamson 2005: 257-278; Belo 2006: 177-199).
For Albalag, it simply means that God's knowledge is universal.
Since this way of articulating divine knowledge implies a
correspondence between divine and human knowledge, Albalag naturally
rejects it and scolds al-Ghazali for diffusing improper doctrines
about God. In opposition, he insists that God's knowledge is
opposite in characteristics, not merely superior in rank, to human
knowledge: it is neither particular nor universal, it is atemporal,
indivisible, absolutely actual and self-sufficient, being exclusively
dependent on the mode of self-intellection which is peculiar to God
and separate intellects (*Tiqqun* n.42: 76).
Given this radical notion of transcendency, it would seem that the
celestial realm and sublunary species and individuals lie beyond the
domain of God's knowledge. But Albalag insists that God's
knowledge is all-encompassing. To establish this, he appropriates
Averroes' conception of the divine essence as a unified Form of
the forms of all existents (Averroes *Commentary on
Metaphysics*: 197). Through the very act of self-intellection,
God, as Albalag concludes, apprehends all existents, including
sublunary existents (*Tiqqun* n.42: 66). This conclusion is
accompanied by an important clarification for the sake of maintaining
divine perfection and transcendence unimpaired: forms contained in the
essence of God do not exactly correspond to the forms of sublunary
things insofar as they are material objects, but exist in the divine
essence in the noblest possible manner, being absolutely simple,
indivisible and independent of accidents.
### 5.4 The Problem of Determinism
In the *Maqasid*, al-Ghazali restates the basic
elements of Avicenna's deterministic metaphysics and its
implication for the nature and domain of divine knowledge. He
explains, in light of Avicenna's conception of being, the manner
in which God knows future events. Possible things are necessitated by
their causes; when a cause exists, the effect must necessarily follow.
As such, knowledge of a cause allows one to predict, beyond doubt, the
occurrence of the associated effect or event. Inasmuch as God has
complete knowledge of the hierarchy of the causes, He has knowledge of
all future events (*Maqasid*: 118; cf. Avicenna
*al-Najat*: 587-599)
For Albalag, this deterministic worldview on which al-Ghazali's
account of God's knowledge of future events dwells follows from
a narrow understanding of the cause-effect relationship. Possible
things, according to Albalag, are realized by either material or
efficient causes, or both. Some of these causes are either volitional
or natural. Volitional causes, "hinge solely on the power of the
chooser", which means that effects are not necessary and cannot
be predicted. Effects arising from natural causes are necessary, only
when the natural causes are necessary, that is, when they maintain a
fixed order and cannot be hindered by other accidental or voluntary
causes. An example of this is a solar eclipse. Foreknowledge of this
event and ones like it are correspondingly necessary with respect to
the knower. By contrast, some natural causes, despite having an
order, can be impeded by voluntary or accidental causes. In such
cases, the effects are not necessary, and hence it is not possible to
make certain predictions about their occurrence.
>
>
> I maintain that for any possible thing, if all its proximate an remote
> causes succeed each other essentially and maintain order in their
> actions, and no hindrance can prevent any of them, then it is to be
> judged the same as a necessary thing with respect to knower. However,
> regarding other possible things one cannot know with certain knowledge
> the fact or the time of their occurrence before their occurrence.
> (quotation from Manekin 2007: 141)
>
>
>
Albalag is aware that this note entails a denial of God's
knowledge of every future event. For this reason, he clarifies that
his intention is not to propose that God is ignorant of future events,
for, indeed, he thinks that God knows them, but in a manner that is
different from human knowledge.
Although Albalag is critical, overall, of al-Ghazali's account
of God's foreknowledge, he recommends teaching it to the
multitude because it is easy for them to comprehend. Albalag still
points to the theological implication associated with it.
>
>
> When you examine al-Ghazali's statements carefully you will find
> that they entail the annulment of man's choice and the
> conclusion that his actions are compelled, as well as the annulment of
> the nature of the possible altogether. These opinions not only
> constitute repudiation of philosophy but also heresy with respect the
> Torah. (Quotation from Manekin 2007: 142)
>
>
>
## 6. Cosmology
In discussing the fundamental traits of the Necessary Existent,
al-Ghazali considers the implications of the divine attribute of
absolute simplicity to the scope of divine causation and conception of
the universe. Al-Ghazali explains, following Avicenna, that from what
is one and simple (i.e., the Necessary Existent) only one thing may
proceed (*Maqasid*: 157;
cf. *al-Shifa`* [Metaphysics]:
326-334; *al-Najat*: 649-657). Underlying this
understanding of the scope of divine causation is a conception of the
relationship between cause and effect as one of correspondence;
"the action must be consistent with the essential nature of its
cause" (Kogan 1984: 249). Thus, a single cause has one act and
produces only a single effect. In keeping with this conception, and
considering the absolute simplicity of the First Principle,
al-Ghazali, describes an emanationist cosmology in which the First
Principle causes multiplicity *not* directly, but through a
chain of emanative intermediaries that successively proceed from one
another. The First Principle produces only one entity, the first
intellect, by thinking Itself. In turn, the first intellect produces,
by thinking its Cause and itself, the second intellect and the first
celestial sphere (*Maqasid*: 157). The reason for
this multiplicity is that the first intellect is not absolutely simple
like the First Principle, but complex: in addition to thinking its
Principle, it thinks itself insofar as it is possible and insofar as
it is necessary by virtue of the First Principle. The process of
emanation continues in a descending manner, terminating with the
Active Intellect, the intellect of the sphere of the moon which is the
immediate source of the forms of sublunary entities.
Convinced that the scheme of emanation constitutes an unsatisfactory
deviation from Aristotle, Albalag devotes extensive discussions to
elucidating its inconsistency and fallacies, and alternatively
establishing what he regards as the correct Aristotelian scheme.
Unlike the scheme of emanation, this scheme ascribes the
universe's manifold existents to God's direct causation:
"from what is one and simple many things can come to be"
(*Tiqqun* n.96:
69).[2]
Albalag describes a hierarchical cosmological scheme of separate
intellects and celestial spheres in which each separate intellect
relates to the corresponding sphere as a cause of motion while the
First Principle/Intellect relates to all separate intellects as a
direct formal
cause.[3]
Two theories account for this cosmological scheme:
1. the theory of divine knowledge, which, as illustrated formerly,
maintains that the First Intellect apprehends the forms of all
existents by thinking Its essence, and
2. the Aristotelian theory of "cognitive identification"
according to which the knowing subject, the known object and thinking
are identical in actual thinking (for further details about this
theory see Black 1999).
By definition, separate intellects are intellects *in actu*
whose substantiation *is* the very act of thinking. Without
knowledge, the essence of the separate intellect would be nullified.
Thus, separate intellects, just like the First Intellect, have actual
knowledge of the forms of all existents. In actual thinking, the
knower, the known object, and the act of thinking are identical
(*Tiqqun* n.42: 65), the relationship of identity being
particularly formal as Aristotle's dictum of cognitive
identification establishes (*De Anima* 3.8 431b21). This means
that in separate intellects "essence/form", the known
object and the act of thinking are the same. In this way, the First
Intellect is said to be "the formal cause" of the separate
intellects on the grounds that It provides them with "their
forms", i.e., the intelligible forms which they apprehend and by
means of which they are what they are, intellects *in actu*
(*Tiqqun* n.69:
98).[4]
This cosmological account, however, calls for explaining how separate
intellects are differentiated. After all, separate intellects share
the feature of immateriality, hence they cannot be numbered.
Furthermore, considering the fact that separate intellects share the
same epistemological content (i.e., the forms of all existents derived
from the First Intellect) and that the knower is identical with the
object known, according to the Aristotelian dictum of "cognitive
identity", separate intellects should all be identical. In the
Avicennian-emanative scheme, intellects are numbered on account of the
causal relation between them, each intellect being the cause of an
intellect emanating from it and "only God, who is at the top of
the series is an uncaused caused" (Wolfson 1958 : 244). By
rejecting the conception of an emanative causal relationship between
intellects, Albalag, however, could not speak of a distinction in
terms of causal relation. Alternatively, he follows Averroes in
positing ontological hierarchy as the differentiating factor between
intellects (*Tahafut al-Tahafut*: fifth discussion:
173). While each separate intellect derives its knowledge directly
from the First Intellect, each stands in a specific hierarchical
relation to the First Intellect, the ranking of each intellect being
in accordance with the extent of purity of its mode of apprehension;
the purer and simpler the mode of apprehension the closer the
intellect in rank to the First Intellect. Overlap between these modes
is not possible, which ensures that separate intellects remain
differentiated.
Beyond this cosmological account, Albalag indicates that multiplicity
in the sublunary realm also comes forth from the deity; the First is
said to be the cause of multiplicity inasmuch as It is the ultimate
cause of the cosmic unity. Were it not for the unifying force that
holds the parts together, the universe as a totality and its
parts--each of which comes to be by virtue of a unifying force
that conjoins its constituent parts like matter and form and the
elements--would not exist (*Tiqqun* n.69: 97; cf.
Averroes *Tahafut al-Tahafut*, third discussion:
108).
## 7. Celestial Motion
In the Avicennian-emanative scheme celestial motion is ascribed to two
principles:
1. proximate movers (internal souls), and
2. the separate unmoved intellects corresponding to the concentric
spheres.
Whereas the soul functions as the efficient cause of motion, the
separate unmoved movers function as the final cause of motion insofar
as they represent an object of love and desire. The point is that
since celestial souls are corporeal and finite, they are insufficient
to account for the spheres' perpetual activities. The
perpetuation of motion, accordingly, must be the function of
immaterial and incorruptible principles. These are the unmoved
separate intellects of which the mover of the outermost spheres is the
highest in rank (Avicenna *Shifa`*
[Metaphysics]: 308; cf. *Maqasid*:
149).
As with many of Avicenna's theories, Albalag raises a number of
objections to this account of celestial motion. Firstly, Albalag
dismisses the conception of complementary efficient-final causation as
unwarranted, since, in his understanding, a final cause could hardly
continue the activity of a terminated efficient cause. Secondly,
Albalag rejects the theory of the spheres' animation by souls
(For background on this theory see Wolfson 1962: 65- 93;
Freudenthal 2002: 111-137). His argument against that theory
proceeds from the eternity premise as follows. Forces inhering in
bodies (including celestial bodies) are finite. As such, they could
hardly move the body in which they inhere infinitely. But we know that
the nature of spheres is such that they move eternally and this means
that celestial souls are superfluous in this regard. That Nature
(*ha teva'*) "does nothing in vain"
(cf. Aristotle *Politics* 1252b30-1253a1;
Averroes *Commentary on Metaphysics*: 178) prompts the
conclusion that spheres do not have souls (*Tiqqun* n.61: 87).
Although the basic lines of this argument are derived from Averroes,
Albalag seems to adopt a firmer position than Averroes in denying the
animation of spheres by souls. While Averroes rejects Avicenna's
twofold account of celestial motion and argues in some of his works
(especially *De Substantia Orbis*: 71; cf. *Commentary on
Metaphysics*: 164) that celestial motion could hardly be dependent
on a finite force inhering in the celestial body, he uses the term
soul interchangeably with form in reference to the principles of
motion in celestial spheres: the immaterial separate intellects. In
other works, we still find indications that spheres are ensouled
(e.g., *Tahafut al-Tahafut*, fourth discussion).
These variations in Averroes' standpoint in regard to the theory
of the spheres' animation by souls have invited different
interpretations (see Donati 2015; Kogan 1984: 190-201).
As for Albalag, his account of celestial motion consistently
attributes celestial motion to the efficient, formal and final
causation of separate intellects. Relaying on Averroes, while giving
the credit to Aristotle, Albalag argues that the three modes of
causation are one in the divine realm (cf. Averroes *Commentary on
Metaphysics*: 149). While separate intellects are themselves
invariable, they produce motion in the spheres in three different
manners (*Tiqqun* n.64: 92).
## 8. The Relationship Between Religion and Philosophy
Albalag is most famous in modern scholarship for his view of the
relationship between religion and philosophy. In the context of
medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, he stands out as perhaps the only
philosopher to straightforwardly stress, accept and account for the
tension between philosophy and prophetic knowledge. His name is
usually connected with the doctrine of the "double truth",
which maintains that the truth of prophecy and the truth of philosophy
may contradict each other while at the same time remaining
simultaneously true (Sirat 1985: 238; Zinberg 1973:
107]; Vajda 1960: 264-265). The origin of this doctrine had long
been attributed to Averroes and Latin Averroists until recent studies
challenged this attribution. Some scholars have argued that the double
truth doctrine never existed as an actual dogma (Dales 1984).
Similarly, some scholars question the attribution of the double truth
doctrine to Albalag (Guttmann 1966: 227-229) and Elijah
Delmedigo, another Jewish Averroist whose treatment of the question in
discussion involves some elements alluding to the double truth
doctrine (for Delmedigo, see Fraenkel 2013).
The discussion of the question of the relationship between religion
and philosophy in the *Tiqqun* is complex and spans a number of
contexts. On the one hand, Albalag states in the preface to the
*Tiqqun* that there is no essential distinction between
philosophy and the Torah except that the former, addressing the select
few, conveys the truth in a demonstrative manner, while the latter,
addressing the multitude, conveys the truth in a figurative language
in accordance with their limited comprehension. By this means, Albalag
seems to align with the understanding of religion as an imitation of
philosophy which was founded by al-Farabi and adopted by many Muslim
and Jewish philosophers, most significantly Averroes and arguably
Maimonides (see al-Farabi *The Book of Letters*: 19-26;
Maimonides *Guide*: preface; Averroes *Decisive
Treatise*: 1-3, 7-10). Both philosophers not only
maintain that religion and philosophy are compatible, but also accord
philosophy a crucial role in arriving at the true meaning of Scripture
(Maimonides *Guide*: preface; Averroes *Decisive
Treatise*: 1-3, 7-10). Furthermore, Averroes sets
forth a religious epistemology based on the principle that
"truth does not oppose truth; rather, it agrees with and bears
witness to it" (*Decisive*: 9). On this principle,
contradictions between *al-Shari'ah* (Religious Law) and
philosophy are viewed as mere apparent, rather than essential,
contradictions that result from the literary form of
Scripture--consisting in similes, metaphors and
stories--which is directed to the multitude. Since
*al-Shari'ah* cares for all people, "the red and
black", it conveys the truth in different methods in accordance
with the diverse intellectual capacities of people and types of assent
they are fit for (*ibid*, 8). Only those who are adept in science
(*al-rasihuna fi-l'ilm*) can have access to the
internal meaning of Scripture, which is designed according to the
truth as it is, thereby attaining certain, demonstrative, assent to
Scripture. Drawing on Averroes' religious epistemology,
post-Maimonidean philosophers, continuing Maimonides'
philosophical-religious
enterprise,[5]
undertook to interpret Judaism as "a philosophical
religion" by giving principles of Judaism that appeared to be in
conflict with philosophy naturalistic interpretations (for the concept
of philosophical religion see Fraenkel 2012: 5). In a similar vein,
Albalag engages in allegorical interpretations of some elements of the
Account of the Beginning, stating, in an obviously apologetic tone,
that "it is possible to extract the philosophical doctrine of
eternal creation from the Torah" (*Tiqqun* n.30,
33).
On the other hand, Albalag reveals ambivalence about the feasibility
of the philosophical approach to religion. His main stated concern is
that the true meaning of Scripture is not readily accessible. The
reason is that prophetic knowledge, as Albalag repeatedly affirms, is
exclusive to prophets and even the ablest philosopher has no access to
the "intention" of the prophet. Thus, when philosophers
assign philosophical meanings to verses of the Torah they may just be
swerving away from their actual tenor. Albalag finds Maimonides to be
particularly at fault in this regard and therefore he labels him as
one of the "hasty" people (*nemharim*) of our time
who did harm not only to "faith", but also to
"wisdom" (*Tiqqun* n.1: 5; *Tiqqun* n.30:
44). In their attempts to rationally support religious doctrines they
acted "with ignorance" as they
1. denied demonstrative philosophical doctrines, advocating,
instead, weak speculative arguments, and
2. unhesitatingly ascribed meanings to Scripture in terms of these
arguments and based on their understanding of Scripture.
Two points of contention seem to underlie this critique. The first is
that those "hasty" people tend to compromise philosophy in
order to satisfy theological considerations. The second is sceptical.
While many philosophers confidently interpret Scripture allegorically
on the assumption that the internal meaning of Scripture accords with
philosophy, Albalag merges his interpretive notes on the Account of
the Beginning--the sole context where he offers interpretations
of that sort--with remarks emphasizing the inaccessibility of
prophetic knowledge to non-prophets.
In response, Albalag offers what may be characterized as a restrictive
scheme for interpreting the Jewish Scripture in terms of philosophy.
This scheme regards demonstration as *the* means for attaining
the truth and Scripture as a divine source for the truth. Scripture
contains two layers of secrets: philosophical and prophetic. A
philosopher arrives at the former layer by engaging in allegorical
interpretation after he has obtained knowledge through demonstrative
reasoning:
>
>
> for one who seeks the truth, it is not proper [for him] to seek its
> premises from what he apprehends from Scripture by his own effort
> without primarily [engaging in] demonstrative reasoning. Rather, he
> has to learn the truth first through demonstration and thereafter seek
> support from Scripture. (*Tiqqun* n.30: 37; cf. Averroes
> *Decisive Treatise*: 7)
>
>
>
When Scripture does not agree with demonstrative knowledge, this
points to the presence of a deeper layer of secrets, prophetic secrets
to which only a prophet has access. On this occasion, the disharmony
between demonstrative and prophetic knowledge is treated with fideism,
by accepting the Scriptural doctrine on the basis of simple faith. One
should not, however, abandon the demonstrative doctrine. Both
doctrines remain "true" (*`emet*) to the
philosopher-believer.
These claims lie behind the attribution of the double truth doctrine
to Albalag in modern scholarship. It should be noted, however, that
the scope of application of the double truth doctrine in the
*Tiqqun* is meagre, being limited to the tension between
religion and philosophy in regard to the issue of the origin of the
world. Towards the end of his discussion of this issue Albalag
declares that he accepts as "true" both the philosophical
doctrine of eternal creation and the biblical doctrine of temporal
creation, the former based on analysis of "nature" and by
means of "demonstration" and the latter based on
"the authority of the prophet by way of miracle"
(*Tiqqun* n.30: 52). This peculiar way of treating the question
of the relationship between religion and philosophy draws a parting
line between Albalag and the tradition of Arab Aristotelians and
Jewish Averroists in which religion and philosophy are held to be
seemingly different representations of the same truth.
## 9. Theory of Prophecy
Underlying the double truth doctrine is a unique theory of prophecy
that credits Albalag with novelty. Deviating from the widely accepted
conception of prophecy in medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy,
which views prophets as accomplished philosophers and qualitatively
equates prophetic knowledge with philosophy, this theory links
prophets and prophetic knowledge to the divine realm (i.e., the realm
of separate intellects) while at the same time stressing the absolute
transcendence and unknowability of that realm. It correspondingly
stresses essential distinctions between philosophical reasoning and
knowledge, on the one hand, and prophecy and prophetic knowledge, on
the other. Prophets, according to Albalag, are extraordinary human
beings endowed with a special mode of apprehension. Thanks to this
mode of apprehension prophets have access to knowledge that differs
from philosophical knowledge in both content and type. Not only do
prophets arrive at answers to questions that lie beyond the capacity
of human reason, but they also grasp the truth in a transcendent
manner, independently of physical tools and the cognitive processes
necessary for rational knowledge (Guttmann 1945: 86).
>
>
> Their [the philosopher's and prophet's] modes of
> apprehension are distinct. Not only that, but they are [like two]
> opposites, since this [the philosopher] perceives intelligible [forms]
> through sensory objects, whereas the latter [the prophet] perceives
> sensory objects through intelligible [forms]. (*Tiqqun* n.30:
> 44 [my translation])
>
>
>
This note suggests that the prophetic mode of apprehension is similar
to that of separate intellects which is described in the
*Tiqqun* in similar terms: "if there exists a separate
intellect in the universe whose knowledge is not obtained through
physical tools", its "grasp of things would be completely
*opposite* to that of the human [intellect]"
(*Tiqqun* n.11: 16; cf. n.42: 67). The distinction in the mode
of apprehension entails fundamental distinctions in the
characteristics of the perceived knowledge. Human knowledge passes
from potentiality to actuality. It is either universal or particular.
It is temporal and involves features of multiplicity, compositeness
and materiality. By contrast, divine knowledge is transcendent; it is
"neither particular nor universal." It is constantly
actual and absolutely indivisible, simple and atemporal
(*Tiqqun* n.42: 67). In this way, prophetic knowledge, like
knowledge of the separate intellects, is said to be qualitatively
distinct from philosophical knowledge. Radically maximizing the
distinction between prophecy and philosophy, Albalag emphasizes the
possibility of contradiction.
>
>
> Just as the ways through which they [the philosopher and the prophet]
> apprehend things are so distinct, their respective grasps of things
> are so distinct that it is possible for the former [the philosopher]
> to perceive from below [based on nature and reasoning] the opposite
> (*hefekh*) of what the latter [the prophet] perceives from
> above. (*Tiqqun* n.30: 45 [my translation])
>
>
>
This theory of prophecy parts ways with the standard contemporary
theory of prophecy according to which prophets are accomplished
philosophers endowed with a strong imaginative faculty. By virtue of
this faculty, prophets, unlike philosophers, are able to carry out the
necessary political role of establishing laws conducive to the welfare
of society, and reformulate theoretical knowledge in a language easy
for the multitude to understand. Whatever theoretical knowledge a
prophet attains through emanation from the Active Intellect--the
intellect of the sphere of the moon to which philosophers variably
ascribed epistemological and ontological roles in the sublunary
realm--accords with philosophical knowledge; the difference being
particularly quantitative (Macy 1986; Rahman 1958). Even the
Avicennian theory of prophecy, which links the prophetic mind to the
divine realm, does not ascribe to prophetic knowledge a specific
qualitative merit above philosophical knowledge; prophets apprehend
the principles of all existents, the middle term of every syllogism
and intelligible forms instantaneously and effortlessly through divine
intuition (*hads*). (Rahman, 1958: 32; Marmura 1963:
49-51; Morris 1992: 84). That is, there are no grounds for
contradiction, as Albalag's theory of prophecy suggests.
## 10. Political Thought
In the context of medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, political
thought was largely concerned with investigating the connection
between social good and human happiness, on the one hand, and
philosophy and religion on the other. In the last section of the
Metaphysics of the *Maqasid*, al-Ghazali
recapitulates Avicenna's view of the relationship between social
welfare and religion. Proceeding from the Aristotelian dictum that
"man is political by nature" (Aristotle *Politics*
1252b30-1253a1), al-Ghazali stresses that human beings cannot
dispense with social interaction and cooperation for fulfilling their
basic needs and for the sake of attaining the highest good of man.
This, however, is not possible unless society is stable and justly
governed. The realization of these conditions is tied to the existence
of a lawgiver that enacts laws and promotes doctrines that are
conducive to the social and spiritual well-being.
Remarkably, Albalag starts the *Tiqqun* with the political
theme with which al-Ghazali concludes the *Maqasid*.
The preface to the *Tiqqun* offers a gloss on the political
nature of human beings, emphasizing the essentiality of society to the
individual's well-being and human survival in general. But,
again, society can be conducive to well-being only under specific
circumstances. From the point of view of a Medievalist like Albalag,
pluralism stands as a major enemy to social stability. The more
diversified the society the less stable and more conflict-fraught it
is. Pluralism may result in constant warring among people to such an
extent as to threaten human existence. Thus comes the need for a
lawgiver who promotes social harmony by unifying people in creed and
praxis.
Albalag accommodates the Torah into this political theme, assigning it
a crucial role in establishing social and political order and
maintaining the divinely ordained perpetual existence of the human
species. Nothing in this outlook deviates from the view of Medieval
Aristotelians regarding the socio-political benefit of Divine Law.
Maimonides, for instances, deems the Torah a key factor in the
establishment and preservation of social well-being. Still Albalag
departs from Maimonides, as well as prominent Muslim philosophers such
as al-Farabi and Averroes, in that he confines the Torah to this
specific socio-political purpose. These philosophers define divine Law
in terms of its goal: unlike man-made laws which care only for the
welfare of society, divine Law cares for both the welfare of society
and welfare of the soul (Fraenkel 2012: 175; Z. Harvey 1980:
199-200). Maimonides particularly emphasizes that the
Torah's goal does not exclusively focus on the practical domain
and that it concerns itself with theoretical virtues. Even practical
actions prescribed in the Torah are conducive to the fulfillment of
the commandment to "love the Lord" (Deuteronomy
6:4-5), which in Maimonides' interpretation is an
injunction for the true worship of God: intellectual worship. The
Torah, accordingly, calls upon people to seek knowledge of all
existents by virtue of which man attains intellectual perfection,
truly worshiping God (*Eight Chapters*: 78; cf. *Guide*
III:53).
Unlike Maimonides, Albalag scarcely associates the Torah with any
explicit role in promoting theoretical virtues. Indeed, he
differentiates between philosophy and the Torah in terms of their
respective final goals. While philosophy aims for the happiness of the
select few, the Torah aims for the happiness of the multitude, the
former type of happiness is intellectual whereas the latter is
exclusively civic. In this connection, Albalag defines four basic
principles of the Torah, which, as he states, are also foundational to
philosophy and religious systems. These principles are:
1. reward and punishment,
2. the survival of the soul after death,
3. the existence of a deity that rewards and punishes, and
4. the existence of a divine providence that watches over human
beings, each according to his deeds.
As many scholars noted, these four principles belong to the category
of principles that are necessary for social well-being (Touati 1962:
44-47; Schweid 2008: 320-321; Guttmann 1945:
90-91). Furthermore, Albalag explains that the Torah adopts a
strategy of concealment. Revealing or concealing doctrines is
determined on the basis of their respective benefits to society and
social well-being. All in all, the preface to the *Tiqqun*
stresses the value of the Torah as a political treatise that is
necessary for the establishment of justice and social well-being.
## 11. Conclusion
*Sefer Tiqqun ha de'ot* represents a significant
development in the domain of Jewish thought in particular and
philosophy in general. In a time when post-Maimonidean philosophers
exerted efforts to enhance the philosophical-religious
enterprise of Maimonides (as they understood Maimonides'
enterprise to be), Albalag highlights the shortcomings of that
enterprise, advocating as an alternative the double truth doctrine. In
application, however, this doctrine is strikingly restricted to a very
narrow scope, while the superiority of philosophy as a source of true
knowledge and certainty is made noticeable throughout the
*Tiqqun*. Unlike the religious domain in which truth is
qualified by degrees, the ultimate of which being exclusively
accessible to prophets, and subject to human interpretations, truth in
the philosophical domain is absolute. It can be obtained through
demonstrative reasoning and learned from Aristotelian sciences. It is
this understanding of philosophical truth that motivated Albalag to
undertake scrutiny of the philosophical discourse in order to purge it
from errors and reinstate correct Aristotelianism, as he understands
it through the writings of Averroes, the Commentator. On the whole,
Albalag's enterprise marks an attempt to break away from
some of the major Neo-Platonic trends that had characterized the
Avicennian-Farabian interpretation of Aristotle. |
albert-saxony | ## 1. Life and Works
In the later Middle Ages Albert of Saxony (*Albertus de
Saxonia*) was sometimes called *Albertucius* (Little
Albert), to distinguish him from the thirteenth-century theologian
Albert the Great. He is however a master of great importance in his
own right. He was born at Rickensdorf, in the region of Helmstedt
(Lower Saxony) in present-day Germany, in the beginning of the 1320s.
After initial schooling in his native area, and possibly a sojourn at
Erfurt, he made his way to Prague and then on to Paris. He was member
of the English-German Nation and became a master of arts in 1351. He
was Rector of the University of Paris in 1353. He remained in Paris
until 1362, during which time he taught arts and studied theology at
the Sorbonne, apparently without obtaining a degree in the latter
discipline. His logical and philosophical works were composed during
this period. After two years of carrying out diplomatic missions
between the Pope and the Duke of Austria, he was charged with founding
the University of Vienna, of which he became the first Rector in 1365.
Appointed canon of Hildesheim in 1366, he was also named Bishop of
Halberstadt the same year, serving in that office until his death on
July 8, 1390.
Not having left any theological writings or a commentary on
Aristotle's *Metaphysics* (at least none that we know
of), Albert is primarily known for his works on logic and natural
philosophy. Albert's masterwork in logic is the *Logica*
(later designed as *Perutilis logica*, Very Useful Logic).
Albert also composed a voluminous collection of *Sophismata*,
which examines numerous sentences that raise difficulties of
interpretation due to the presence of syncategorematic words --
i.e., terms such as quantifiers and certain prepositions, which,
according to medieval logicians, do not have a proper and determinate
signification but rather modify the signification of the other terms
in the propositions in which they occur. He also wrote several
question commentaries: *Quaestiones* on the *Ars Vetus*
or Old Logic (i.e., the *Isagoge* of Porphyry and
Aristotle's *Categories* and *De
Interpretatione*), *Quaestiones* on the *Posterior
Analytics*, and a series of 25 *Quaestiones logicales*
(Logical Questions), addressed to semantic problems and the status of
logic. Albert of Saxony also commented the main texts of the
Aristotelian natural philosophy (*Physica, De caelo, De generatione
et corruptione, De sensu et sensato, Meteorologica*) together with
the *De sphaera* of John of Sacrobosco. By contrast, the
*Quaestiones de anima* that were attributed to him are of
dubious authenticity. He also wrote commentaries on *Ethics*
and *Economics*, and texts of mathematics: a treatise *De
proportionibus*, a *Quaestio de quadratura circuli*, a
*Tractatus de maximo et minimo*.
The most renowned philosopher when Albert studied and taught in the
Faculty of Arts at Paris was John Buridan. Albert was one of several
masters contemporary with or immediately following Buridan whose work
transformed logic and natural philosophy in the later Middle Ages. For
a long time he was thought to have been a pupil or follower of
Buridan, but this idea is now widely questioned. Some of his works on
logic and physics were composed before Buridan had lectured on these
subjects for the last time, and Buridan clearly takes notice of them,
whether for criticizing or for adopting Albert's views. In
logic, he seems to have been influenced by certain ideas and methods
imported from England. His logic depends very much on Ockham's,
but the influence of William Heytesbury is also evident in his
*Sophismata*. Walter Burley was another important influence on
Albert, though this is somewhat puzzling in view of the fact that they
had opposing views on the nature of universals. In any case, Burley
seems to have been on Albert's mind when he wrote his commentary
on the *Nicomachean Ethics* as well as when he was developing
his theory of consequences.
These different influences have sometimes made Albert seem no more
than an eclectic compiler of the views of others. But, in addition to
providing the context for some of his own contributions,
Albert's fluency with the views of his contemporaries gives him
a unique place in the development of logic and philosophy at the
University of Paris in the fourteenth century.
## 2. Logic
On most topics the *Logica* (a text based on lectures first
given before 1356 and finally revised for publication before 1360) is
influenced by Ockham's *Summa logicae*, though it offers
an independent approach in the treatises on obligations, insolubles,
and consequences, which had assumed greater importance during this
period. As has been known for some time, this work is a remarkable
handbook organized into six treatises: the first defines the elements
of propositions; the second treats of the properties of terms; the
third of the truth conditions of different types of proposition; the
fourth of consequences (including syllogisms, and in fact adding to it
the theory of topics); the fifth of fallacies; and the sixth of
insolubles and obligations.
In the first part of the *Logica*, which sets out the
terminology of the entire text, Albert returns to the Ockhamist
conception of the sign and in so doing distances himself from the
position defended by Buridan. After clearly including the term (an
element of the proposition) in the genus of signs -- by which he
provides, in the tradition of Ockham, a semiotic approach to
logico-linguistic analysis -- he establishes signification
through a referential relation to a singular thing, defining the
relation of spoken to conceptual signs as a relation of subordination.
He is also an Ockhamist in his conception of universals, which he
regards as spoken or conceptual signs, and in his theory of
supposition, which essentially restates the Ockhamist divisions of
supposition, despite of some refinements as *descensus
copulatim*, perhaps influenced by Heytesbury. In particular, he
restores the notion of simple supposition -- i.e., the reference
of a term to the concept to which it is subordinated, when it
signifies an extra-mental thing -- which is criticized and
rejected by Buridan. Finally, Albert is close to the *Venerabilis
Inceptor* in his theory of the categories, where he refuses to
consider quantity as something absolutely real, reducing it instead to
a disposition of substance and quality. Albert in fact contributed as
much as Ockham to the spread of this conception of the relation
between substance and quantity in natural philosophy in Paris and
Italy.
Albert's treatment of relations is, on the other hand, highly
original. Although (like Ockham) he refuses to make relations into
things distinct from absolute entities, he clearly ascribes them to an
act of the soul by which absolute entities are compared and placed in
relation to each other, an "act of the referring soul [*actus
animae referentis*]". This leads him to reject completely
certain propositions Ockham had admitted as reasonable, even if he did
not construe them in quite the same way, e.g., 'Socrates is a
relation'. Both Ockham and Buridan had allowed that the term
'relation' could refer to the things signified or connoted
by concrete relative terms (whether collectively or not).
So Albert was not content with merely repeating Ockhamist arguments.
More often than not, he developed and deepened them, e.g., in
connection with the notion of the appellation of form. This property
of predicates, which had previously been used by the *Venerabilis
Inceptor*, was employed by Albert in an original manner when he
adopted it instead of Buridan's appellation of reason
(*appellatio rationis*) to analyze verbs expressing
propositional attitudes. Every proposition following a verb such as
'believe' or 'know' appellates its form. In
other words, it must be possible to designate the object of the belief
via the expression understood as identical to itself in its material
signification and without reformulation. Another area in which Albert
deviates from Ockham is his rejection of the idea that any distinction
with multiple senses must have an equivocal proposition as its object.
According to Albert, equivocal propositions can only be conceded,
rejected, or left in doubt.
He adopts the same position as Burley about the issue of the complex
subject-term (including an oblique case) in a categorical proposition,
as in 'Any man's donkey is running [*Cuiuslibet hominis
asinus currit*]'. He supports a logico-semantical model in
which 'man [*homo*]' is the logical subject while
'a man's donkey [*hominis asinus*]' is the
grammatical one. This theory is criticized by Buridan, for whom the
logical subject is always the grammatical subject.
Albert's semantics becomes innovative when he admits that
propositions have their own proper significate, which is not identical
to that of their terms (see especially his *Questions on the
Posterior Analytics* I, qq. 2, 7, 33). Like syncategorematic terms
(see his *Questions on the Categories*, qu. 1 'On
Names'), propositions signify the "mode of a thing
[*modus rei*]". This position is not repeated in the
*Logical Questions*. In any case, Albert avoids hypostatizing
these modes by explaining them as relations between the things to
which the terms refer. It cannot be said here that Albert is moving
towards the "complexly signifiable [*complexe
significabile*]" of Gregory of Rimini, although his remarks
are reminiscent of the latter theory. Still, he uses the idea of the
signification of a proposition to define truth and to explain
'insolubles', i.e., propositions expressing paradoxes of
self-reference. On Albert's view, every proposition signifies
that it is true by virtue of its form. Thus, an insoluble proposition
is always false because it signifies at the same time that it is true
and that it is false.
The *Questiones circa logicam* (*Questions on Logic*)
were written at roughly the same time as the *Logica* and the
*Questiones circa artem veterem*, that is to say about 1356.
They explore in a series of disputed questions the status of logic and
semantics on topics such as the relation of words to concepts, the
difference between natural and conventional signification, etc., as
well as the theory of reference and truth. Albert defines
signification by *representation*. He distinguishes two ways of
understanding *suppositio*, the first as the act of the mind
itself; the second as an operation constituting one of the properties
of terms.
In his *Sophismata,* Albert usually follows Heytesbury. The
distinction between compounded and divided senses, which is presented
in a highly systematic way in Heytesbury's *Tractatus de
sensu composito et diviso*, is the primary instrument (besides the
appellation of form) for resolving difficulties connected with
epistemic verbs and with propositional attitudes more generally. This
is abundantly clear in his discussion of infinity. Rather than
appealing to the increasingly common distinction between the
categorematic and syncategorematic uses of the term
'infinite' and then indicating the different senses it can
have depending on where it occurs in a proposition, he treats the
infinite itself as a term. Albert's approach involves analyzing
the logical and linguistic conditions of every proposition involving
the term 'infinite' that is significant and capable of
being true. This leads him to sketch a certain number of possible
definitions (where he appears to take into account the teachings of
Gregory of Rimini), as well as to raise other questions, e.g., on the
relation between finite and infinite beings (in propositions such as
'Infinite things are finite [*infinita sunt
finita*]'), on the divisibility of the continuum, and on
qualitative infinity. There are echoes in Albert not only of the
approach Buridan had systematically implemented in his
*Physics*, but also of the analyses of English authors --
again, especially Heytesbury. As is often the case, the treatment
proposed by Albert in the *Sophismata* provides good evidence
of the extent to which philosophers were gripped by questions about
infinity at that time.
Finally, one of the fields in which Albert is considered a major
contributor is the theory of consequences. In the treatise of the
*Perutilis Logica* devoted to consequences, Albert often seems
to follow Buridan. But whereas Buridan maintained the central role of
Aristotelian syllogistic, Albert, like Burley, integrated syllogistic
and the study of conversions into the theory of consequences.
Consequence is defined as the impossibility of the antecedent's
being true without the consequent's also being true --
truth itself being such that howsoever the proposition signifies
things to be, so they are. The primary division is between formal and
material consequences, the latter being subdivided into consequences
*simpliciter* and *ut nunc*. A syllogistic consequence
is a formal consequence whose antecedent is a conjunction of two
quantified propositions and whose consequent is a third quantified
proposition. Albert is thus led to present a highly systematic theory
of the forms of inference, which represents a major step forward in
the medieval theory of logical deduction.
## 3. Natural Philosophy and Mathematics
It is this analysis of language together with a particularist ontology
that places Albert in the tradition of nominalism. This is combined
with an epistemological realism that emerges, e.g., in his analysis of
the vacuum. In certain respects, Albert's work is an extension
of physical analysis to imaginary cases. Distinguishing, as Buridan
did, between what is absolutely impossible or contradictory and what
is impossible "in the common course of nature"
(*Questions on De Caelo* I, qu. 15), he considers hypotheses
under circumstances that are not naturally possible but imaginable
given God's absolute power (e.g., the existence of a vacuum and
the plurality of worlds). However, even if we can imagine a vacuum
existing by divine omnipotence, no vacuum can occur naturally
(*Questions on the Physics* IV, qu. 8). Albert refuses to
extend the reference of physical terms to supernatural, purely
imaginary possibilities. In the same way, one can certainly use the
concept of a point, although this would only be an abbreviation of a
connotative and negative expression. There is no simple concept of a
point, a vacuum, or the infinite, and although imaginary hypotheses
provide an interesting detour, physics must in the end provide an
account of the natural order of things.
Historically, Albert's reputation in natural philosophy is at
least as high as the one he had in logic. His commentaries on the
*Physics*, on *De caelo* or on *De generatione et
corruptione* are close to Oresme's and
Buridan's. He appeals to the authority of his "revered
masters from the Faculty of Arts at Paris" at the beginning of
his questions on *De caelo*. Even so, it should be noted that
his *Physics* was composed soon after 1351, before the final
version of Buridan's *Questions on the Physics* (between
1355 and 1358). On some points we know that Buridan modifies his
positions between the third and the final versions of his commentary,
and we can presume that this is in response sometimes to Oresme's
ideas, but sometimes also to Albert's.
On some other issues, the oppositions remain strong between the two
masters. We have already seen that on the question of the status of
the category of quantity, then at the border of logic and physics,
Albert followed Ockham and distanced himself from Buridan by reducing
quantity to a disposition of substance or quality. This move becomes
evident in certain physical questions, e.g., in the study of
condensation and rarefaction, where Albert openly disagrees with
Buridan by arguing that condensation and rarefaction are possible only
through the local motion of the parts of a body, and without needing
to assume some quantity that would have a distinct reality on its own.
Nevertheless, he defines the concept of a "lump of matter
[*materie massa*]" without giving it any autonomous
reality, although it does help fill out the idea of a 'quantity
of matter', which Giles of Rome had already distinguished from
simple extension.
Similarly, Albert is sometimes seen as standing alongside Ockham on
the nature of motion, rejecting the idea of motion as a flux
(*fluxus*), which is the position Buridan had adopted. In
contrast to Buridan, Albert treats locomotion in the same way as
alteration (movement according to quality): in neither case is it
necessary to imagine local motion as a *res successiva*
distinct from permanent things, at least if the common course of
nature holds and one does not take into account the possibility of
divine intervention.
Concerning the motion of projectiles, gravitational acceleration, and
the motion of celestial bodies, Albert's position is similar to
Buridan's major innovation, i.e., the theory of
*impetus*, a quality acquired by a moving body (see
Buridan's *Questions on the Physics* VIII, qu. 13, on
projectile motion). Like Buridan, he extends this approach to
celestial bodies in his commentary on *De caelo*, clearly
following its consequences in rejecting intelligences as agents of
motion and in treating celestial and terrestrial bodies using the same
principles. Nevertheless, he formulates the idea of *impetus*
in more classical terms as a *virtus impressa* (impressed
force) and *virtus motiva* (motive force). Albert makes no
pronouncements about the nature of this force, claiming that this is a
question for the metaphysician. His work also mentions the mean speed
theorem, a method of finding the total velocity of a uniformly
accelerated (or decelerated) body, which had been stated (though
without being demonstrated) in Heytesbury's *Tractatus de
motu*, and also adopted by Nicole Oresme. Albert was part of a
general scientific trend which sought the first formulations of the
principles of dynamics.
He shares with Buridan the theory according to which, to explain the
fact that a part of the earth is above the water, we have to
distinguish, for the earth, a centre of magnitude and a centre of
gravity, because of the evaporation of water, but also because of the
rarefaction of a part of the earth under the influence of the solar
heath (*Quaestiones in De caelo*, II, q. 25 and 28). He
explained also a number of curious natural phenomena, taking
particular interest in earthquakes, tidal phenomena, and geology.
Albert wrote a treatise on proportions dedicated to the analysis of
motion, highly influenced by the treatise *De proportionibus
velocitatum in motibus* of Thomas Bradwardine. He explains in a
synthetic way the elements of the theory of proportions, applying this
theory to different motions (local motion, alteration, augmentation,
and diminution). Motion is to be studied "from the point of view
of the cause" and "from the point of view of the
effect". Like Oresme, Albert adopts the idea that motion varies
according to a geometrical progression when the relation of motive
force to resistance varies arithmetically. His treatise is less
innovative than Oresme's, but it is a clear exposition that was
very widely read.
Albert was interested in certain mathematical problems. In addition to
authoritative arguments and purely empirical justifications, his
question on the squaring of the circle uses properly mathematical
arguments appealing to both Euclid (in the version of Campanus of
Novarra) and Archimedes (translated by Gerard of Cremona). His most
original contribution is a proposal to dispense with Euclid's
proposition X.1, replacing it with a postulate stating that if A is
less than B, then there exists a quantity C such that A<C<B.
Finally, a treatise *De maximo et minimo*, considering the
limits of active and passive potencies, written in the tradition of
the Oxford Calculators, at the frontiers of logic and natural
philosophy.
## 4. Impact and Influence
Albert of Saxony is not a compiler. Even if he shares many ideas with
the contemporary masters of arts, he is often original. His teachings
on logic and metaphysics were extremely influential. Although Buridan
remained the predominant figure in logic, Albert's
*Logica* was destined to serve as a popular text because of its
systematic nature and also because it takes up and develops essential
aspects of the Ockhamist position. But it was his commentary on
Aristotle's *Physics* that was especially widely read.
Many manuscripts of it can be found in France and Italy, but also in
Erfurt, Vienna and Prague. Thanks to Albert of Saxony, many new ideas
raised in Parisian physics and cosmology in the later Middle Ages
became widespread in Central Europe. Albert's *Physics*,
much more than Oresme's and even Buridan's, basically
guaranteed the transmission of the Parisian tradition also in Italy,
where it was authoritative along with the works of Heytesbury and John
Dumbleton. His commentary on Aristotle's *De caelo* was
also influential, eclipsing Buridan's commentary on this text.
Blasius of Parma read it in Bologna between 1379 and 1382. A little
later, it enjoyed a wide audience at Vienna. His *Treatise on
Proportions* was often quoted in Italy where, in addition to the
texts of Bradwardine and Oresme, it influenced the application of the
theory of proportions to motion.
Albert played an essential role in the diffusion throughout Italy and
central Europe of new ideas discussed in the Mid-Fourteenth century by
Parisian masters, but which were also clearly shaped by Albert's
own grasp of English innovations. He manifests an undeniable
originality on many topics in logic and physics. |
albert-great | ## 1. Life of Albert the Great
The precise date of Albert's birth is not known. It is generally
conceded that he was born into a knightly family sometime around the
year 1200 in Lauingen an der Donau in Germany. He was apparently in
Italy in the year 1222 where he was present when a rather terrible
earthquake struck in Lombardy. A year later he was still in Italy and
studying at the University of Padua. The same year Jordan of Saxony
received him into the Dominican order. He was sent to Cologne in order
to complete his training for the order. He finished this training as
well as a course of studies in theology by 1228. He then began
teaching as a lector at Cologne, Hildesheim, Freiburg im Breisgau,
Regensburg, and Strassburg. During this period he published his first
major work, *De natura boni*.
Ten years later he is recorded as having been present at the general
chapter of the Dominican Order held in Bologna. Two years later he
visited Saxony where he observed the appearance of a comet. Some time
between 1241 and 1242 he was sent to the University of Paris to
complete his theological education. He followed the usual prescription
of lecturing on the *Sentences* of Peter Lombard. In addition
he began writing his six part *Summa parisiensis* dealing with
the sacraments of the Church, the incarnation and resurrection of
Christ, the four coevals, human nature, and the nature of the good. He
took his degree as master of theology in 1245 and began to teach
theology at the university under Gueric de Saint-Quentin. St. Thomas
Aquinas became his student at this time and remained under
Albert's direction for the next three years. In 1248 Albert was
appointed regent of studies at the *studium generale* that was
newly created by the Dominican order in Cologne. So Albert, along with
Thomas Aquinas, left Paris and went to Cologne. Thomas continued his
studies under Albert in Cologne and served as *magister
studium* in the school as well until 1252. Then Thomas returned to
Paris to take up his teaching duties while Albert remained in Cologne,
where he began to work on the vast project he set himself of preparing
a paraphrase of each of the known works of Aristotle.
In 1254 the Dominican order again assigned Albert a difficult task.
He was elected the prior provincial for the German-speaking province
of the order. This position mandated that Albert spend a great deal of
his time traveling throughout the province visiting Dominican
convents, priories, and even a Dominican mission in Riga. This task
occupied Albert until 1256. That year he returned to Cologne, but left
the same year for Paris in order to attend a General Chapter of his
order in which the allegations of William of St. Amour's *De
periculis novissimorum temporum* against mendicant orders were
considered. A little later Pope Alexander IV asked Albert to go to
Anagni in order to speak to a commission of Cardinals who were looking
into the claims of William. While engaged in this charge Albert
completed his refutation of Averroistic psychology with his *De
unitate intellectus contra Averroistas*. Afterwards Albert
departed for another tour of the province of Germany. In 1257 he
returned to the papal court, which was now located in Viterbo. He was
relieved of his duties as prior provincial and returned again to
Cologne as regent of studies. He continued to teach until 1259 when he
traveled to Valenciennes in order to attend a General Chapter of his
order. At that time, along with Thomas Aquinas, Peter of Tarentasia,
Bonhomme Brito, and Florent de Hesdin, he undertook on behalf of his
order an extensive discussion of the curriculum of the scholastic
program used by the order.
The next year of his life found Albert once again appointed to an
onerous duty. In obedience to the wishes of the pope Albert was
consecrated a bishop of the Church and sent to Ratisbon (modern
Regensburg) in order to undertake a reform of abuses in that diocese.
Albert worked at this task until 1263 when Pope Urban IV relieved him
of his duties and asked Albert to preach the Crusade in the German
speaking countries. This duty occupied Albert until the year 1264. He
then went to the city of Wurzburg where he stayed until 1267.
Albert spent the next eight years traveling around Germany conducting
various ecclesiastical tasks. Then in 1274 while he was traveling to
the Council of Lyons Albert received the sad news of the untimely
death of Thomas Aquinas, his friend and former student of many
years. After the close of the Council Albert returned to
Germany. There is evidence that he traveled to Paris in the year 1277
in order to defend Aquinas' teaching, which was under attack at
the university. In 1279, anticipating his death he drew up his own
last will and testament. On November 15, 1280 he died and was buried
in Cologne. On December 15, 1931 Pope Pius XI declared Albert both a
saint and a doctor of the Church. On the 16th of December
1941 Pope Pius XII declared Albert the patron saint of the natural
sciences.
## 2. Philosophical Enterprise
An examination of Albert's published writings reveals something
of his understanding of philosophy in human culture. In effect he
prepared a kind of philosophical encyclopedia that occupied him up to
the last ten years of his life. He produced paraphrases of most of the
works of Aristotle available to him. In some cases where he felt that
Aristotle should have produced a work, but it was missing, Albert
produced the work himself. If he had produced nothing else it would be
necessary to say that he adopted the Aristotelian
philosophical-scientific program and subordinated it to the Neoplatonic tradition. Albert's
intellectual vision, however, was very great. Not only did he
paraphrase "The Philosopher" (as the medievals called
Aristotle) but Porphyry, Boethius, Peter Lombard, Gilbert de la
Porree, the *Liber de causis*, and Ps.-Dionysius. He
also wrote a number of commentaries on the Bible. In addition to all
of this work of paraphrasing and commenting, in which Albert labored
to prepare a kind of unified field theory of medieval Christian
intellectual culture, he also wrote a number of works in which he
developed his own philosophical-scientific-theological vision. Here
one finds titles such as *De unitate intellectus*,
*Problemata determinate*, *De fato*,
*De XV problematibus*, *De natura boni*,
*De sacramentis*, *De incarnatione*,
*De bono*, *De quattuor coaequaevis*,
*De homine*, and his unfinished
*Summa theologiae de mirabilis scientia Dei*.
Albert's labors resulted in the formation of what might be
called a Christian reception of Aristotle in the Western Europe.
Albert himself had a strong bias in favor of Neo-Platonism,and his
work on Aristotle shows him to have had a deep understanding of the
Aristotelian program. Along with his student Thomas Aquinas he was of
the opinion that Aristotle and the kind of natural philosophy that he
represented was no obstacle to the development of a Christian
philosophical vision of the natural order. In order to establish this
point Albert carefully dissected the method that Aristotle employed in
undertaking the task of expounding natural philosophy. This method,
Albert decided, is experientially based and proceeds to draw
conclusions by the use of both inductive and deductive
logic. Christian theology, as Albert found it taught in Europe rested
firmly upon the revelation of Sacred Scripture and the Church
Fathers. Therefore, he reasoned, the two domains of human culture are
distinct in their methodology and pose no threat to each other. Both
can be pursued for their own sake. Philosophy was not to be valued
only in terms of its ancillary relation to theology. As recent
research has shown, Albert subordinated his use of Aristotle to his
understanding of the Neoplatonic view of reality that he found in the
writings of Pseudo Dionysius and the *Liber de causis*. He saw
all of reality in terms of the Neoplatonic categories of exit and
return, which he referred to in his writings with the terms
*exitus*, *perfectio*, and *reductio*. This
schema gave him a framework into which he could develop the scientific
insights of Aristotle. But within this framework he insisted that natural science must investigate the causes that are operating in nature as based on empirical evidence.
## 3. Logic
Albert carefully prepared a paraphrase of Aristotle's
*Organon* (the logical treatises in the Aristotelian corpus). He
then used the results of this paraphrase to address the problem of
universals as he found it discussed in the philosophical literature and
debates of the medieval philosophical culture. He defined the term
universal as referring to " ... that which, although it
exists in one, is apt by nature to exist in
many."[1]
Because it is apt
to be in many, it is predicable of them. (*De praed*., tract II,
c. 1) He then distinguished three kinds of universals, those that
pre-exist the things that exemplify them
(*universale ante rem*),
those that exist in individual things (*universale in re*),
and those that exist in the mind when abstracted from individual things
(*universale post rem*).
Albert attempted to formulate an answer to Porphyry's famous problem
of universals--namely, do the species according to which we
classify beings exist in themselves or are they merely constructions
of the mind? Albert appealed to his three-fold distinction, noting
that a universal's mode of being is differentiated according to which
function is being considered. It may be considered in itself, or in
respect to understanding, or as existing in one particular or
another.[2]
Both the nominalist and realist solutions to Porphyry's problem are
thus too simplistic and lack proper distinction. Albert's distinction
thus allowed him to harmonize Plato's realism in which universals
existed as separate forms with Aristotle's more nominalistic theory of
immanent forms. For universals when considered in themselves
(*secudum quod in seipso*) truly exist and are free from
generation, corruption, and
change.[3]
If, however, they are taken in reference to the mind (*refertur ad
intelligentiam*) they exist in two modes, depending on whether
they are considered with respect to the intellect that is their cause
or the intellect that knows them by
abstraction.[4]
But when they are considered in particulars (*secundum quod est in
isto vel in illo*) their existence is exterior to as well as
beyond the mind, yet existing in things as
individuated.[5]
## 4. Metaphysics
Albert's metaphysics is an adaptation of Aristotelian
metaphysics as conditioned by a form of Neo-Platonism. His reading the
*Liber de causis* as an authentic Aristotelian text influenced
his understanding of Aristotle. It seems that Albert never realized the
Neo-Platonic origin of the work. As with the other works of Aristotle
he prepared a paraphrase of the work entitled *De causis et processu
universitatis*, and used it as a guide to interpreting other works
by Aristotle. However, he also used the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius to
correct some of the doctrine found in the *Liber de causis*.
Albert blends these three main sources of his metaphysics into a
hierarchical structure of reality in which there is an emanation of
forms directed by what Albert calls "a summoning of the
good" (*advocatio boni*). The good operates metaphysically
as the final cause of the order of forms in the universe of beings. But
it is also the First Cause. And its operation in the created order of
being is discovered as an attraction of all being back to itself.
"We exist because God is good," Albert explains, "and
we are good insofar as we
exist."[6]
Thus the balanced relations of the exit and return of all things
according to classical Neo-Platonism is skewed in favor of the
relationship of return. This is because Albert, as a Christian
philosopher, favors a creationist view of being over the doctrine of
pure emanation. Rejecting also the doctrine of universal hylomorphism
Albert argues that material beings are always composite in which the
forms are inchoate until they are called forth by the ultimate
good. Spiritual creatures (excluding man) have no material
element. Their being summoned to the good is immediate and final. The
summoning of the inchoate forms of material beings, however, is not
direct. It depends upon the intervention of the celestial spheres.
The First Cause, which Albert understands as God, is an absolutely
transcendent reality. His uncreated light calls forth a hierarchically
ordered universe in which each order of being reflects this light.
God's giving existence to creatures is understood by Albert as
their procession from him as from a first
cause.[7]
At the top of this hierarchy of light are found the purely spiritual
beings, the angelic orders and the intelligences. Albert carefully
distinguishes these two kinds of beings. He basically accepts the
analysis of the angelic orders as found in Pseudo-Dionysius' treatise
of the celestial hierarchy. The intelligences move the cosmic spheres
and illuminate the human soul. The intelligences, just as the order of
angels, form a special hierarchy. The First Intelligence, as Albert
calls it, contemplates the entire universe and uses the human soul, as
illuminated by the lower intelligences, to draw all creatures into a
unity.
Beneath the angels and intelligences are the souls that possess
intellects. They are joined to bodies but do not depend on bodies for
their existence. Although they are ordered to the First Intelligence
so as to enjoin contemplative unity on the entire cosmos, Albert
rejects the Averroistic theory of the unity of the intellect. Each
human soul has its own intellect. But because the human soul uniquely
stands on the horizon of both material and spiritual being it can
operate as a microcosm and thus can serve the purpose of the First
Intelligence, which is to bind all creatures into a universe.
Finally there are the immersed forms. Under this heading Albert
establishes another hierarchy with the animal kingdom at the top,
followed by the plant kingdom, then the world of minerals (in which
Albert had a deep interest), and finally the elements of material
creation.
One important aspect of Albert's metaphysics appears in his
commentary on Aristotle' *Metaphysics*. In this work
Albert relies heavily on both Averroes in his *Long Commentary on
the Metaphysics* and Avicenna's *Philosophia
prima*. While the commentary of Averroes is an almost literal
analysis of the text of Aristotle, Avicenna's analysis often
departs from this literal approach and incorporates ideas that
Avicenna found in Aristotle's *Posterior
Analytics*. Albert seems to be using Averroes when he is
paraphrasing Aristotle's text, but relies on Avicenna when he
departs from the paraphrasing. As a result of this usage Albert
proceeds to develop his own ideas of first philosophy as outlined
above. This can be seen for example in his analysis of the fifth book
of the *Metaphysics* in his digression on unity found in
tractate 1, chapter 8. Following Avicenna he argues that unity cannot
be an essential feature of any substance.
## 5. Psychology and Anthropology
Albert's interest in the human condition is dominated by his
concern with the relationship of the soul to the body on the one hand
and the important role that the intellect plays in human psychology.
According to Albert, man is identified with his
intellect.[8]
With regard to the relationship between the soul and the body Albert
appears to be torn between the Platonic theory which sees the soul as
a form capable of existing independently of the body and the
Aristotelian hylomorphic theory which reduces the soul to a functional
relationship of the body. With respect to human knowing, for example,
he maintains the position that the human intellect is dependent upon
the
senses.[9]
In order to resolve the conflict between the two views Albert availed
himself of Avicenna's position that Aristotle's analysis
was focused on the function and not the essence of the
soul. Functionally, Albert argues, the soul is the agent cause of the
body. "Just as we maintain that the soul is the cause of the
animated body and of its motions and passions insofar as it is
animated," he reasons, "likewise we must maintain that the
lowest intelligence is the cause of the cognitive soul insofar as it
is cognitive because the cognition of the soul is a particular result
of the light of the
intelligence."[10]
Having been created in the image and likeness of God it not only
governs the body, as God governs the universe, but it is responsible
for the very existence of the body, as God is the creator of the
world. And just as God transcends his creation, so does the human soul
transcend the body in its interests. It is capable of operating in
complete independence of corporeal functions. This transcendental
function of the soul allows Albert to focus on what he believes is the
essence of the soul--the human intellect.
Viewed as essentially an intellect, the human soul is an incorporeal
substance. Albert divides this spiritual substance into two
powers--the agent intellect and the possible
intellect.[11]
Neither of these powers needs the body in order to function. Under
certain conditions concerning its powers the human intellect is
capable of transformation. While it is true that under the stimulus or
illumination of the agent intellect the possible intellect can
consider the intelligible form of the phantasms of the mind which are
derived from the senses, it can also operate under the sole influence
of the agent intellect. Here, Albert argues, the possible intellect
undergoes a complete transformation and becomes totally actualized, as
the agent intellect becomes its form. It emerges as what he calls the
"adept intellect" (*intellectus
adeptus*).[12]
At this stage the human intellect is susceptible to illumination by
higher cosmic intellects called the "intelligences". Such
illumination brings the soul of man into complete harmony with the
entire order of creation and constitutes man's natural
happiness. Since the intellect is now totally assimilated to the order
of things Albert calls the intellect in its final stage of development
the "assimilated intellect" (*intellectus
assimilativus*). The condition of having attained an assimilated
intellect constitutes natural human happiness, realizing all the
aspirations of the human condition and human culture. But Albert makes
it clear that the human mind cannot attain this state of assimilation
on its own. Following the Augustinian tradition as set forth in the
*De magistro* Albert states that "because the divine
truth lies beyond our reason we are not able by ourselves to discover
it, unless it condescends to infuse itself; for as Augustine says, it
is an inner teacher, without whom an external teacher labors
aimlessly."[13]
There is thus an infusion involved with divine illumination, but it
is not a pouring forth of forms. Rather, it is an infusion of an inner
teacher, who is identified with divine truth itself. In his commentary
on the *Sentences* Albert augments this doctrine when he argues
that this inner teacher strengthens the weakness of the human
intellect, which by itself could not profit by external
stimulation. He distinguishes the illumination of this interior
teacher from the true and final object of the
intellect.[14]
Divine light is only a means by which the intellect can attain its
object.[15]
This is consistent with his emphasis upon the analogy of divine light
and physical light, which pervades so much of his thinking. It
follows, then, that in the order of human knowing there are first of
all the forms that are derived from external things. They cannot teach
us anything in any useful way until the light of an inner teacher
illuminates them. So light is the medium of this vision. But the inner
teacher himself is identified with the divine truth, which is the
final object and perfection of the human intellect. In his
*Summa*, however, Albert makes further distinctions concerning
the object of human knowing. Natural things, he tells us, are received
in a natural light, while the things that the intellect contemplates
in the order of belief (*ad credenda vero*) are received in a
light that is gratuitous (*gratuitum est*), and the beatifying
realities are received in the light of
glory.[16]
It seems that Albert has abandoned the position that even
*naturalia* require divine illumination. Strictly speaking, he
has not abnegated his earlier position. *Naturalia* may very
well still require the work of a restorative inner teacher. In the
*Summa*, however, Albert is anxious to stress the radical
difference natural knowing has from supernatural knowing. He has
already established this difference in his study of the human
intellect (*De intellectu*) where he tells us, "Some
[intelligibles] with their light overpower our intellect which is
temporal and has continuity. These are like the things that are most
manifest in nature which are related to our intellect as the light of
the sun or a strong scintillating color is to the eyes of the bat or
the owl. Other [intelligibles] are manifest only through the light of
another. These would be like the things which are received in faith
from what is primary and
true."[17]
But in both natural and supernatural knowing Albert is careful to
stress the final object and perfection of the human intellect. This
leads naturally to a consideration of Albert's understanding of
ethics.
## 6. Albertus Magnus and the Sciences
In the first section of his *Commentary on Aristotle's
Physics* Albertus Magnus discusses the possibility of the study of
natural science. If science could only study particulars, Albert
argues, then there would be no science in the sense of the
demonstration of necessary causes because there would be as many
sciences as there are particulars. But particulars, Albert goes on to
point out, belong to definite kinds (species) and these can be studied
because their causes *can be demonstrated*. Species have common
attributes and a determined subject of which the attributes can be
determined with necessity. Thus science is possible.
And this conviction about science being possible, as opposed to the
Platonic and Neoplatonic tendency to discount the world of particular
reality, and its presumed unaccountable changeableness, was not just a
theoretical position on Albert's part. He devotes a great deal of
his time and attention to the actual empirical study of the
relationships between attributes and natural subjects. Furthermore, he
orders such study into what today would be called the "natural
sciences". Besides the study of the heavens and the earth and
generation and corruption that he found in Aristotle, he adds the study
of meteors, the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms.
Albert inherited astronomy as part of the scholastic curriculum known
as the *quadrivium**.* But his interest in this science
was not merely conceptual; he was also interested in using mathematical
calculations and conferring with astronomical tables to study the
nature of celestial bodies. He was concerned with the constellations,
the sizes of planets and stars and their positions and movements in the
heavens. He seems to have known about astronomical instruments,
particularly the astrolabe, but gives no clue as to what method of
investigation he used to carry out his studies. He did make it clear,
however, that the principles of physics had to be applied to celestial
bodies, which he regarded as natural physical bodies moving in real
space.
Besides studying the properties of the celestial bodies themselves, he
also was concerned with their effects on terrestrial objects. For
example, he seems to have understood that the tides on earth were
related to celestial bodies.
After astronomy, Albert develops a particular order in which he
proposes to study the other sciences. In his *Meteora*, he
explains that sublunary moveable bodies can be studied in three ways.
First, in so far as they come into and pass out of being (generation
and corruption). Then they must be investigated with respect to their
mixture with other moveable bodies. And lastly, they need to be studied
with respect to their contraction to the mineral, vegetable, and animal
species. This last phase of his plan, however, is where Albert made his
own contribution to the development of modern science as it is known
today. That is, he undertook his own empirical investigations into the
mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms.
Albert's *Treatise on Minerals* (*De mineralibus*)
shows that he undertakes his own observations and did not merely
collate authorities on the topic. He studies different kinds of
minerals and metals as well as rare stones. Beginning with the mineral
kingdom, he notes the properties of each mineral specimen, including
where it was found along with its cause or causes. Next, he deals with
rare stones, investigating the powers of these specimens along with
their causes. He then produces an alphabetical list of a large number
of these more precious stones. Throughout the treatise, Albert is
careful always to proceed from the effects or properties of the mineral
world to hypotheses concerning their causes. It is clear from his text
that he himself made a number of studies (experiments) with different
minerals.
Next, Albert studies the plant kingdom. In his *Treatise on
Plants* (*De vegetabilibus*), as in his *Treatise on
Minerals*, he combines his own observations with those of other
authorities, providing an alphabetical list of plants as he did for
stones in his *Treatise on Minerals*. But he adds a long section
on the cultivation of plants. He makes the interesting observation that
the properties of certain plants are caused by celestial bodies. He
also indicates the medicinal properties of certain plants, although he
is careful to point out that his principal concern is in understanding
the nature of plants based on a study of their properties and
virtues.
Albert's interest in the natural order concludes with his
investigations of the final level of natural beings, the animal
kingdom. His *Treatise on Animals* (*De animalibus*)
involves Aristotle's studies of animals as well as material taken
from Thomas of Cantimpre's encyclopedic *On the Nature
of Things* (*De natura rerum*). But Albert inserts his own
studies of animals into the treatise. He investigates the causes of the
properties of different kinds of animals based on their operations and
powers. Again, Albert organizes a kind of dictionary of animals based
on their various species, listed in alphabetical order as he had done
in the other special sciences.
It seems to have been of considerable importance to Albert to do two
things in developing his scientific investigations. First, to review
and organize the authorities in each of the branches of science and
second to test by his own experience the claims made by these
authorities. In this way, he was careful to accommodate readers who
were used to consulting authorities instead of experience by providing
a context in which he could introduce his new findings.
## 7. Ethics
Albert's ethics rests on his understanding of human freedom. This
freedom is expressed through the human power to make unrestricted
decisions about their own actions. This power, the *liberum
arbitrium*, Albert believes is identified neither with the
intellect nor the will. He holds this extraordinary position because
of his analysis of the genesis of human action. In his treatise on man
(*Liber de homine*) he accounts for human action as beginning
with the intellect considering the various options for action open to
a person at a given moment in time. This is coupled by the will
desiring the beneficial outcome of the proposed event. Then the
*liberum arbitrium* chooses one of the options proposed by the
intellect or the object of the will's desire. The will then moves the
person to act on the basis of the choice of the *liberum
arbitrium*. Brutes do not have this ability, he argues, and must
act solely on their initial desire. Hence they have no power of free
choice. In his later writings, however, Albert eliminates the first
act of the will. But even so he distinguishes the *liberum
arbitrium* from both the will and the intellect, presumably so
that it can respond to the influences of both these faculties
equally. Thus the way to ethics is open.
Albert's concern with ethics as such is found in his two
commentaries on Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics*. The
prologues to both these works reveal Albert's original thoughts
on some problems about the discipline of ethics. He wonders if ethics
can be considered as a theoretical deductive science. He concludes that
it can be so considered because the underlying causes of moral action
(*rationes morum*) involve both necessary and universal
principles, the conditions needed for a science according to the
analysis of Aristotle that Albert
accepted.[18]
The *rationes morum* are contrasted by him to the mere
appearance of moral
behaviour.[19]
Thus virtue can be discussed in abstraction from particular actions
of individual human agents. The same is true of other ethical
principles. However, Albert maintains that it is possible to refer to
particular human acts as exemplifying relevant virtues and as such to
include them in a scientific discussion of
ethics.[20]
Therefore, ethics is theoretical, even though the object of its
theory is the practical.
Another concern that Albert expresses is how ethics as a theoretical
deductive science can be relevant to the *practice* of the
virtuous life. He addresses this problem by distinguishing ethics as a
doctrine (*ethica docens*) from ethics as a practical activity
of individual human beings (*ethica
utens*).[21]
The outcomes of these two aspects of ethics are different he
argues. Ethics as a doctrine is concerned with teaching. It proceeds
by logical analysis concentrating on the goals of human action in
general. As such its proper end is knowledge. But as a practical and
useful art ethics is concerned with action as a means to a desired
end.[22]
Its mode of discourse is rhetorical--the persuasion of the
human being to engage in the right actions that will lead to the
desired
end.[23]
Albert sees these two aspects of ethics as linked together by the
virtue of prudence. It is prudence that applies the results of the
doctrine of ethics to its
practice.[24]
Ethics considered as a doctrine operates through prudence as a remote
cause of ethical action. Thus the two functions of ethics are related
and ethics is considered by Albert as both a theoretical deductive
science and a practical applied science.
Albert goes beyond these methodological considerations. He addresses
the end of ethics, as he understands it. And here his psychology bears
fruit. For he embraces the idea that the highest form of human
happiness is the contemplative life. This is the true and proper end
of man, he claims. For the adept intellect, as noted above, is the
highest achievement to which the human condition can aspire. It
represents the conjunction of the apex of the human mind to the
separated agent intellect. In this conjunction the separated agent
intellect becomes the form of the soul. The soul experiences
self-sufficiency and is capable of contemplative wisdom. This is as
close to beatitude as man can get in this life. Man is now capable of
contemplating separated beings as such and can live his life in almost
stoical detachment from the concerns of sublunar existence.
## 8. The Influence of Albert the Great
Albert's influence on the development of scholastic philosophy in the
thirteenth century was enormous. He, along with his most famous
student Thomas of Aquinas, succeeded in incorporating the philosophy
of Aristotle into the Christian West. Besides Thomas, Albert was also
the teacher of Ulrich of Strassburg (1225 - 1277), who
carried forward Albert's interest in natural science by writing a
commentary on Aristotle's *Meteors* along with his metaphysical
work, the *De summo bono*; Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg
(c.1200 - 1268) who wrote the famous *Compendium theologicae
veritatis*; John of Freiburg (c.1250 - 1314) who wrote the
*Libellus de quaestionibus casualibus*; and Giles of Lessines
(c. 1230 - c. 1304) who wrote a treatise on the unity of
substantial form, the *De unitate formae*. The influence of
Albert and his students was very pronounced in the generation of
German scholars who came after these men. Dietrich of Freiberg, who
may have actually met Albert, is probably the best example of the
influence of the spirit of Albert the Great. Dietrich (c. 1250 -
c. 1310) wrote treatises on natural science, which give evidence of
his having carried out actual scientific investigation. His treatise
on the rainbow would be a good example. But he also wrote treatises on
metaphysical and theological topics in which the echoes of Albert can
be distinctly heard. Unlike Albert he did not write commentaries on
Aristotle, but preferred to apply Albertist principles to topics
according to his own understanding. On the other hand Berthold of
Moosburg (+ c. 1361) wrote a very important commentary on Proclus'
*Elements of Theology*, introducing the major work of the great
Neo-Platonist into German metaphysics. Berthold's debt to Albert is
found throughout his commentary, especially with regard to
metaphysical topics. Many of these Albertist ideas and principles
passed down to thinkers such as Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, and
Heinrich Suso where they took on a unique mystical flavor. The
Albertist tradition continued down to Heymeric de Campo (1395 -
1460) who passed it on to Nicholas of Cusa. From Nicholas the ideas
pass down to the Renaissance. The philosophers of the Renaissance seem
to have been attracted to the Albert's understanding of Neo-Platonism
and his interest in natural science. |
albo-joseph | ## 1. Biographical Sketch
The known details of Albo's life are sparse. As far as we know,
he was born in Christian Spain in the crown of Aragon around 1380, and
died in the crown of Castile around 1444. In documenting the
highlights of his career, we should first mention his period of study
in the school of Hasdai Crescas in Saragossa. Further, in
1413-1414 he played a dominant role in the Disputation at
Tortosa, a major public polemic between the Jewish convert to
Christianity Geronimo de Santa Fe (formerly Joshua Lorki), who
represented the pope, and delegates from many Jewish communities in
Christian Spain. In this debate, Albo represented the Jewish community
of Daroca in Aragon (Graetz 1894, 179-220; Baer 1961,
170-232; Rauschenbach 2002, 11-47). After this community
was decimated in 1415, he moved to the town of Soria in Castile
(Gonzalo Maeso 1971, 131; Motis Dolader 1990, 148). But Albo is mainly
known for his philosophical treatise,
*Sefer ha-'Ikkarim*, which he finished around 1425. Aside from
acting as a philosopher and spiritual leader, Albo served as a
preacher and possibly also as a physician. Apparently, Albo had a
command of Spanish and Latin in addition to Hebrew, the language of
*Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* (Husik 1928-30, 67), but we cannot
determine his level of fluency in Arabic.
## 2. Historical Background
The roots of Albo's philosophical theory are located deep within the
ground of the historical reality in which he lived and worked. The
central circumstance that directly shaped his thought was the
distressed state of Jewish society in Christian Spain. Beginning in the
fourteenth century, the Jews in Spain were subject to religious
persecution on the part of the Catholic Church and Christian society in
general. Jewish thought also suffered from sharp ideological conflict
between conservative thinkers and rationalists over both theological
and social issues.
First of all, in pressuring the Jews to convert, the Christian
authorities instituted extreme economic measures and passed
discriminatory social legislation. They used coercive tactics in their
exhortations. They also organized harsh pogroms, such as those of
1391. These repressive measures forced many Jews to die a martyr's
death. They also led to mass conversion of Jews to Christianity and to
deterioration on the social, economic, and spiritual planes (Baer
1961, 95-243; Netanyahu 1966, cf. index
["Conversions"]; Ben-Sasson 1984, 208-220,
232-238; Gutwirth 1993).
In addition, this period witnessed the revival of the dispute between
followers of Maimonides and his opponents. On one side of this
conflict stood the rationalists. They espoused the study of philosophy
and attempted to integrate it into their religious-spiritual world
while resolving the contradictions that emerged between philosophy and
the sources of revelation. On the other side stood the conservatives,
who rejected the study of philosophy. They adhered to the classic
religious sources, the Bible and the Talmud, and viewed kabbalistic
literature as a continuation of the chain of revelation. One of the
focal points of the conflict between these two theological schools
was the exchange of mutual accusations on the issue of responsibility
for the dire situation of Jewish society under Christian persecution
(Schwartz 1991).
Modern scholars have conducted comprehensive studies of the
relationship between the characteristics of Jewish philosophy in Spain
during the fifteenth century, including Albo's thought, and the
historical reality of that period (Baer 1961, 232-243; Davidson
1983, 112-113; Cohen 1993; Manekin 1997).
## 3. Introduction to *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim*
*Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* is Albo's monumental philosophical
treatise. This book offers an extensive description of the author's
theoretical doctrine. Forming the basis of this doctrine and the
framework for the rest of his formulations are his principles of
faith, which attempt to define the beliefs that are the necessary
fundamentals of a system of laws whose source is the divine. Before we
examine the various philosophical views incorporated within this book,
we will offer a concise description of its structure, stylistic
characteristics, and goals.
*Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* is composed of a preface, which
includes a highly detailed table of contents; an introduction; and
four treatises divided into chapters. Although Albo completed writing
the book around 1425, scholars have long agreed that before the book
was published in its entirety, a preliminary version appeared,
comprising the first of the four treatises (Back 1869, 8-10;
Tanzer 1896, 19-22, 27; Schweid 1967, 25).
In the first treatise of *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim*, Albo
presents in detail his theory of principles and the various issues it
includes. Albo points out several problems with the lists of
principles of faith proposed by his predecessors. In particular, he
challenges Maimonides' list of thirteen principles of faith,
proposing in their place a concise list numbering only three basic
beliefs. Absent these beliefs, Albo believes that divine law has no
existence or significance: 1) the existence of God, 2) the divine
origin of the Torah, and 3) reward and punishment. This list
determines the structure of the entire book, since the following three
treatises address each one of the three principles in turn. The main
topic of the second treatise is the existence of God, and it discusses
the theory of divinity, especially the theory of divine
attributes. The third treatise, whose main topic is the divine origin
of the Torah, covers the issues of human perfection, general prophecy,
and Mosaic prophecy and law. It concludes with a thorough discussion
of the religious emotions of fear and love of God. The fourth and last
treatise, whose main subject is reward and punishment, divides into
two sections. The first section describes the theory of divine
providence, the problem of evil and the significance of the precepts
of prayer and repentance. The second section in the fourth treatise
speaks of the theory of recompense, emphasizing that of the world to
come. We should note here that Albo's theory of principles also
includes additional components. Each one of the principles
necessarily leads to further beliefs, which he calls
"roots," and these in turn lead to a third level of less
important beliefs, which he calls "branches."
The language of *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* is straightforward, and its
philosophical arguments are formulated in a relatively simple and
clear manner. These characteristics mean that a broad audience of
readers can approach this philosophical work on their
own. Furthermore, the modern reader can rely on Albo's clear
formulations to gain a preliminary acquaintance with many of the
philosophical viewpoints offered in the general framework of medieval
Jewish philosophy.
An additional stylistic aspect of *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* touches
directly on the body of his theory. The book includes a number of
internal contradictions on a wide variety of philosophical issues.
This fact has led most scholars to the conclusion that this is an
eclectic work, lacking originality and vision, at a low philosophical
level (Guttmann 1955; Guttmann 1964, 247-251; Ravitzky 1988,
104-105). Yet recent scholars have proposed a new angle of
perception on the significance of these internal contradictions,
identifying in *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* an esoteric writing style
similar to that of Maimonides' *Guide of the
Perplexed*. According to this viewpoint, the internal
contradictions are not the result of lack of attention on the part of
an eclectic and average philosopher who combined various sources
without regard to the differences between them. On the contrary, they
believe these contradictions demonstrate meticulous attention on the
part of the philosopher. The maverick position claims that Albo
intentionally embedded in his book conflicting opinions in order to
hide his true viewpoint on various theological issues from certain
groups of readers. Among other evidence, this research position relies
on Albo's explicit statement in the introductory comment to the second
treatise (Schwartz 2002, 183-196; Ehrlich 2009a).
Most scholars assume that we should understand Albo's goal in
writing *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* against the
background of the historical reality in which he lived. As indicated,
the book was written as an attempt to address the severe social and
religious distress of the Jews of Christian Spain in the late
fourteenth - early fifteenth centuries. In the framework of this
approach, we may discern two different goals that the book intends to
serve.
>
> *Social goal* -to offer a rationalist
> apologetic for Judaism alongside a refutation of the doctrines of
> Christianity, with the aim of limiting the phenomenon of conversion and
> the spiritual decline of the Jews of Christian Spain at that time
> (Husik 1928-30, 62-65).
>
>
> *Theoretical goal* - to redefine the
> principles of Judaism and discuss its theoretical relation to
> philosophy, in light of the intensification of internal arguments on
> these issues within Jewish thought during the period discussed (Back
> 1869, 5-6; Lerner 2000, 90-95).
>
>
>
*Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* was first published in 1485 as one of the
first works of Jewish philosophy to reach the printing press. The book
made a considerable impact throughout the fifteenth century, with
renowned Jewish philosophers citing it and contending with its
ideas. Among them we may name such personalities as Isaac Arama,
Abraham Bibago and Isaac Abravanel. From the sixteenth to the
eighteenth centuries, his thought continued to engage Jewish and
non-Jewish philosophers, including Baruch Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn,
and several Christian theologians. During this period, two authors
wrote commentaries on *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim*: Jacob Koppelman
(*Ohel Ya'akov*, Freiburg 1584) and Gedaliah Lipschitz (*Etz
Shatul*, Venice 1618). In addition, the book was translated into
Latin, German, English and Russian, and its first treatise was
translated into Italian. In 1929, Isaac Husik published a critical
edition of *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim*, including his translation of
the book into English, an introduction, and detailed notes and indices
(Albo 1929).
Before taking up our discussion of Albo's thought, we must point out a
significant methodological problem that this discussion entails. On
the one hand, the common opinion in the literature on Albo estimates
that he was not an original philosopher at all, and that the body of
his book merely summarizes the various approaches he knew from the
works of the Jewish philosophers that preceded him. This theory, in
its extreme version, argues that even the theory of principles, the
main reason for his book's renown, is not Albo's unique creation. In
contrast, a more recent trend in research on Albo's work identifies
clear characteristics of esoteric writing in his book. This theory
interprets the conflicting opinions on the issues in the book as
belonging to two separate layers of writing - the external,
exoteric layer, and the inner, esoteric layer. In many cases, these
two research approaches lead to differing opinions regarding the
question of Albo's independent philosophical positions.
Because of this, the overview below will present the central issues
addressed in *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* with a faithful reflection of
the state of present research on Albo's philosophy. At the same time,
we will refrain from categorizing his various philosophical
views. This essay will discuss Albo's theories of: (1) law, (2)
principles, (3) divinity, (4) humanity, and (5) providence and
recompense.
## 4. The Theory of Law
In striving to formulate a list of the fundamental beliefs of religion
from within his theory of principles (which we will explain in the
next section), Albo abandons the status quo of similar lists composed
by his predecessors. Instead of naming the principles of Mosaic law
("the Torah of Moses") as, for example, Maimonides did in
his well-known list of thirteen principles, Albo widens his target and
lists the principles of "divine law." By this term he
refers to the entire system of laws whose source is in the revelation
of God to humanity. This change leads Albo to dedicate a particularly
long discussion (treatise 1, chapters 5-8) to the topic of the
various types of law. Albo distinguishes three such types. The first
of these is divine law, meaning a law whose origin is in divine
revelation, such as Judaism. The second type is conventional law, a
system of laws that human beings establish by mutual agreement in
numerous political and social frameworks. Its purpose is to maintain
the moral order of society and ensure the ongoing function of its
systems. The third form of law according to Albo is natural law, or
the basic laws of morality that aim to prevent injustice and promote
honest behavior. Following is a short explanation of two main aspects
of Albo's theory of law that the academic literature covers: the
concept of natural law, its origins, meaning and influence; and the
method of verification of divine law.
**Natural law.** Albo was one of the first Jewish
philosophers to specifically address the concept of natural law along
with his contemporary Zerahia Halevi Saladin. Apparently, this was due
to the influence of the Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas, who
classified laws in his book *Summa Theologica*. Albo's
view of natural law has attracted the attention of many scholars, in
comparison to other topics in his philosophy, but the popular view
among these scholars is that Albo did not attach great importance to
this concept (Guttmann 1955, 176-184; Lerner 1964; Novak 1983,
319-350; Melamed 1989; Ehrlich 2006; Ackerman 2013).
**Verification of divine law.** One of the formative
factors in Albo's philosophy was the anti-Christian polemic. For this
reason, one of the questions that engages him is the method of
distinguishing between the true divine law, meaning the Torah of Moses,
and a false religion that also claims to be of divine origin, meaning
Christianity. Albo proposes two criteria for distinguishing between the
two. Firstly, the true divine law is the one whose beliefs do not
contradict any one of the necessary principles of divine law. Secondly,
the true divine law provides incontrovertible proof of the credibility
of its messenger, who informs the world of the law's existence and
divine origin (treatise 1, chapter 18). An important study on this
issue argued that the first point is problematic, because it assumes
that philosophy defines the basic beliefs of divine law and thus
determines which law is truly divine. This is in opposition to the
Averroistic approach, which disallows the use of philosophy for
verifying religious matters. The solution for this problem lies in an
alternate understanding of the role of philosophy in inter-religious
debate. Philosophy does not serve as an affirming mechanism to validate
certain beliefs, but only as a negating tool for identifying beliefs
that stand in direct conflict with the basic rules of logic. In other
words, Albo does not use philosophy to prove the validity of the
beliefs of Judaism, but rather to reject Christianity as a false
religion in light of its beliefs that stand in contradiction to
philosophy (Lasker 1980).
## 5. The Theory of Principles
Albo's theory of principles is the focal point of his book, the
framework upon which its sections are built, and the element that
grants the book its name. Naturally, the academic debate on the theory
of principles is also quite extensive. Below we will relate to two
aspects of the theory. First we will present the conceptual structure
of the theory of principles as detailed in the first treatise of
*Sefer ha-'Ikkarim*, and then we will survey the various
approaches of the scholarship on this theory.
Albo presents his theory of principles as an alternative to previous
theories of principles, especially that of Maimonides. Additionally,
Albo openly criticizes his predecessors' lists of principles. In their
stead, he proposes a system of fundamental beliefs divided into three
levels, which he calls "principles," "roots,"
and "branches." The principles are those beliefs that are
derived necessarily from the term "divine law." They are:
(1) the existence of the divine entity ("existence of
God"); (2) the divine origin of the system of laws ("Torah
from heaven"); and (3) the existence of divine providence,
expressed in compensatory reward and punishment for humanity
("reward and punishment"). From these principles stem
eight "roots," which are beliefs that instill clear and
detailed content into the general concept of the principle. The first
principle, the existence of God, develops into four roots: (1) the
unity of God, (2) the incorporeality of God, (3) God's independence of
time, (4) God's lack of deficiencies. The second principle, Torah from
heaven, leads to three roots: (5) God's knowledge, (6) prophecy, and
(7) the genuineness of the divine messenger. The third principle,
reward and punishment, branches into a single root: (8)
providence. Denial of any of the principles or roots represents a
heresy of the divine law.
The third category, "branches," comprises beliefs that
Albo argues are true and that every follower of divine law must
accept. But in contrast to the first two categories, Albo does not
define refusal to accept the branches as heresy of the divine law, but
rather only as a sin requiring atonement. Albo lists six beliefs in
this category: (1) creation *ex nihilo*; (2) the supremacy of
Moses' prophecy; (3) the eternal nature of the Torah; (4) the
possibility of obtaining human perfection through the performance of a
single commandment; (5) the resurrection of the dead; (6) the coming
of the Messiah.
Early scholars of Albo's work in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries argued that Albo's contribution to the history of
Jewish thought was limited to his theory of principles and the first
treatise of his book (Schlesinger 1844, xi-xiv; Back 1869,
3-5, 8-9; Tanzer 1896, 23-30). Later scholars
called his theory unoriginal, and identified the philosophical sources
that influenced it, especially Maimonides, Ibn Rushd, Nissim of Gerona,
Hasdai Crescas and Simeon ben Zemah Duran (Guttmann 1955,
170-176; Waxman 1956, 158-161; Schweid 1963; Klein-Braslavi
1980, 194-197). A subsequent, third scholarly trend attempted to
clarify the nature of the internal relationship between the categories
of Albo's theory of principles (principles, roots, and branches), and
examined Albo's position regarding the concept of heresy (Kellner 1986,
140-156).
## 6. The Theory of Divinity
The central discussion in the theory of divinity in *Sefer
ha-'Ikkarim* is located in the second treatise, which is dedicated
to the principle of the existence of God and its derivative roots. The
philosophical issue at the focal point of this discussion is the
theory of divine attributes. Scholars of Albo's theory of attributes
have discerned an internal contradiction between rationalist and
conservative positions in his discussion of this topic. On the one
hand, in a number of locations he purports to support Maimonides'
negative theology, and interprets the various attributes of God as
negative attributes. On the other hand, elsewhere he relates positive
attributes to God, in accordance with the method of his teacher,
Crescas. Some scholars have ascribed this contradiction to the
eclectic character of Albo's work (Wolfson 1916-17,
213-216; Guttmann 1955, 184-191), while others have
related it to the esoteric style of writing of *Sefer
ha-'Ikkarim*. Possibly, they suggest, his goal here was to
conceal his conservative position on this issue from the circles of
rationalist thinkers he frequented (Schwartz 2002, 187-196;
Ehrlich 2009a, 88-93).
The second treatise of the book raises another important philosophical
problem, the significance of the concept of time. One of the roots of
the principle of the existence of God is God's independence of
time. In Albo's discussion of this root, he discriminates between two
different concepts of time, Aristotelian-physical and
Neoplatonic-ontological. Two central trends appear in the academic
literature on this topic. The first places the concept of time at the
focus of the discussion, attempting to clarify the relationship
between the two different concepts of time that appear in Albo's
discussion (Harvey 1979-80). Those scholars who take the second
position discuss Albo's concept of time as part of their attempt to
identify his cosmogonic view, in other words, which theory of the
origin of the world he upholds (Klein-Braslavi 1976, 118-120,
126; Rudavsky 1997, 470-473). In this context, we should point
out that comprehensive study of Albo's writing on this issue reveals a
certain difficulty in categorizing his exact position. Together with
explicit dogmatic statements supporting the theory of creation *ex
nihilo* appearing in the first treatise, we find other statements,
although less overt, some of which argue for the eternal existence of
matter, and some of which even support the eternal existence of the
world (Ehrlich 2009a, 94-112).
## 7. The Theory of Humanity
The central discussion on the theory of humanity in *Sefer
ha-'Ikkarim* is located in the third treatise, which covers
the principle of Torah from heaven and its roots. The philosophical
issue present throughout the sections of this treatise is that of the
nature of human perfection. To put it mildly, Albo's discussion on this
topic has not merited intensive treatment in the academic literature.
Aside from this concept, the treatise addresses in depth the idea of
prophecy and several aspects of the Torah of Moses and its
commandments. In one section of his discussion on the last topic, Albo
responds to the attacks of a Christian scholar on the Torah of Moses,
including both apologetic and polemic elements in his rejoinders.
In the introductory chapters of the third treatise, Albo criticizes
the position of the rationalist Jewish philosophers, who associated
human perfection with the level of individual intellectual
achievement. In contrast to this approach, Albo proposes a
conservative theory, arguing that human perfection depends on the
fulfillment of the Torah's commandments, in other words, the practical
worship of God (treatise 3, chapters 1-7). Yet on this subject
as well, we note considerable internal contradictions, which we will
illustrate with several examples. Firstly, in the first treatise of
his book, Albo clearly determines that human perfection depends on
faith in God and in the principles of divine law (treatise 1, chapters
21-22). Secondly, in several places in the book he diminishes
the value of the practical element of fulfilling the commandments of
the Torah, and emphasizes in its stead the element of awareness, or
intent (treatise 3, chapters 28-29). A third contradiction is
found in the final chapters of the third treatise, which analyze the
concepts of reverence and love for God. Albo considers these to be
the highest levels of divine worship. He defines love of God as an
intellectual phenomenon whose level depends on the intellectual status
of the person (treatise 3, chapters 35-36; Ehrlich
2004a). According to the two main theories found in the academic
literature, these contradictions may characterize either eclectic or
esoteric writing.
To Albo, prophecy is not a natural characteristic of the human soul,
but rather depends on divine will. God, should He so will, grants
divine inspiration to the prophet. His primary purpose in so doing is
to inform humanity of the commandments so that through them they may
achieve human perfection (treatise 3, chapter 8). Scholars who have
studied Albo's theory of prophecy have pointed out that it integrates
both rationalist elements from Maimonides' parallel discussion and
spiritual, supra-intellectual elements from the writings of Rabbi
Judah Halevi and Crescas on this subject. Some have seen in this
integration a demonstration of Albo's purpose in remaining faithful to
the Aristotelian tradition of Maimonides, while attempting (not always
successfully) to bend it as far as possible in the conservative
direction (Schweid 1965). Others have considered this integration an
expression of the general problematic character of Albo's thought that
does not contend with the problems it produces. These scholars also
argue that Albo's basic approach is that prophecy transcends the
natural, and that this concept is grounded in the deep-seated
tradition of Jewish thought (Kreisel 2001, 540-543). Here as
well, we should not ignore the possibility that the internal
contradictions in Albo's discussion reflect an esoteric writing
style.
Albo distinguishes between various levels of prophecy, with the
central goal of establishing the supremacy of Mosaic prophecy as the
starting point for validating Mosaic law as the divine law. According
to Albo, Moses is the most exalted prophet, for only in his case did
divine inspiration directly reach the intellectual power of his soul,
without the mediation of the imagination. The significance of this
proclamation is that only for Moses' prophecy is there no doubt
regarding the validity of its content (treatise 3, chapters
8-10). Albo also claims that at the giving of the Torah on Mt.
Sinai, the Israelites all received prophetic inspiration; however, they
were not on the prophetic level, and this is in support of Moses'
advanced status (treatise 3, chapter 11).
After discussing the prophecy of Moses, Albo takes up the topic of the
divine Torah that Moses gave to the people of Israel. He treats a
number of aspects of this issue, such as the classification of the
*mitzvot* (commandments), the status of the Ten Commandments,
and the importance of the Oral Law. Yet apparently, the thrust of his
efforts is directed toward establishing the idea of the eternity of
the Torah, apparently in response to the Jewish-Christian polemic on
this topic. Remaining faithful to his dogmatic method, Albo argues
that in Mosaic law, and in divine law in general, changes in the
details of the commandments may take place, but their fundamental
principles cannot change (treatise 3, chapters 13-22).
Within his discussion on Mosaic law, Albo includes a chapter
describing its condemnation by an anonymous Christian scholar
(treatise 3, chapter 25). The Christian contends that in every
possible parameter, the religion of Jesus supersedes Mosaic law, and
Albo replies to this assault in detail. The present forum is too
limited to specify the content of this polemic, but suffice it to say
that this chapter in particular reflects Albo's quite extensive
knowledge of the Christian religion. He demonstrates proficiency in
Christian writings, and in addition, he recognizes the internal
tension within Christianity between the papacy and the Roman
Empire. He reveals knowledge of Church history, and finally, he
challenges the central Christian doctrines (the Trinity,
transubstantiation, and the virgin birth) while describing them in
detail. It should be noted that Albo's polemic against Christianity is
not limited to this chapter, but runs throughout the book, both
explicitly and implicitly (Schweid 1968; Lasker 1977, cf. index
["Albo, Joseph"]; Rauschenbach 2002, 142-156).
## 8. The Theory of Providence and Recompense
The fourth and last treatise of *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim* is
primarily concerned with the principle of reward and punishment and
its roots. The first part of this treatise (chapters 1-28)
contains Albo's central discussion on the theory of providence, while
the second part (chapters 29-51) incorporates his main
discussion on the theory of recompense. Below we will discuss these
two theories in their order of appearance in the book.
Albo begins this treatise with the statement that humanity has basic
free will, for this is the necessary condition of the concept of
recompense. Additionally, he argues that this human freedom does not
conflict with God's omniscience, nor with the existence of an
astrological-deterministic system in the universe (treatise 4,
chapters 1-6; Sadik 2012; Weiss 2017). His direct discussion of
the concept of divine providence divides into three main parts. First,
he discusses the proofs of the veracity of providence from natural and
human reality, and from intellectual investigation (treatise 4,
chapters 8-10). Then he treats the principal theological
challenge to the concept of providence, namely, the problem of evil,
or the suffering of the righteous and success of the wicked (treatise
4, chapters 12-15). Finally, he examines the specific religious
consequences of providence, paying special attention to the
theoretical infrastructure of the precepts of prayer (treatise 4,
chapters 16-24) and repentance (treatise 4, chapters
25-28; Ehrlich 2008; Harvey 2015). These last two discussions
are of exceptional scope within medieval Jewish philosophy.
Albo's discussions of free will, of proofs for divine providence, and
of the problem of evil do not include almost any original ideas, and he
mostly relies on the writings of the Jewish philosophers who preceded
him. In contrast, his treatment of prayer and repentance seem to
reveal a certain level of innovation. Regarding free will, Albo
apparently adopts Maimonides' opinion that divine knowledge differs
significantly from human knowledge, and that God's absolute knowledge
does not necessarily abrogate free will for human beings. The academic
literature considers several of Albo's discussions on providence to be
nothing more than comprehensive summaries of the work of his
precursors. This category includes his methods of proving the
existence of divine providence over humanity, as well as his attempts
to defend the concept of God's absolute good, despite what seems to be
injustice in the world (Bleich 1997, 340-358). Still, in the
rest of the treatise Albo presents broad, methodical discussions on
the various philosophical aspects of the issues of prayer and
repentance, for which his predecessors addressed mainly the halakhic
features.
Albo's central argument on the topic of prayer is that it
influences a person's status by causing an internal change
within that person. This change raises the person to a level where he
receives constant divine inspiration through God's
benevolence. The basic assumption of this concept is that prayer
cannot cause any change in God, since such an assumption would detract
from divine perfection. Thus we should conceive of prayer as the
internal act of a person upon the self, raising the self to a higher
spiritual level (treatise 4, chapters 16-18). This model stands
in opposition to the traditional conception of prayer as a channel of
communication between the praying person and the listening God.
Albo understands the significance of repentance in two directions.
The first is based on his concept of prayer, and defines repentance as
an act in which a person uplifts himself to a higher level than at the
time of the sin. In this way, he changes his identity, and is no
longer deserving of punishment for the act he performed in his
previous identity (treatise 4, chapter 18). The second conception of
repentance focuses not on the person but on the sinful act he has
committed. Under this rubric, repentance retroactively expropriates
the conscious foundations of this act. In other words, repentance
redefines the sinful act as unintentional, and thus undeserving of
punishment (treatise 4, chapter 27).
The second half of the fourth treatise of *Sefer ha-'Ikkarim*
presents Albo's theory of recompense. The main issue Albo raises here
is the character of the reward and punishment destined for a person in
the world to come. Throughout his wide-ranging discussion on the
question of recompense in the next world, Albo confronts two
conflicting points of view. Maimonides views recompense as applying to
the soul alone, while Nahmanides opines that it affects the body as
well (treatise 4, chapters 29-41). Albo's own opinion on this
subject is unclear. At the beginning of the discussion, he seems to
support Maimonides' viewpoint, but he continues the discussion with
the assumption that he cannot definitely rule out Nahmanides'
approach, which is supported by sources from kabbalistic literature.
Scholars who have discerned the unique character of this section have
described Albo's position in almost every possible way. Some say he
avoids commitment (Sarachek 1932, 224), while others think he adopts a
synthetic middle position (Schwartz 1997, 202-208); still others
believe he accepts Maimonides' approach (Husik 1966, 426), and their
opponents argue that he accepts Nahmanides' view (Agus 1959,
238-239). Apparently, therefore, this issue in Albo's
philosophical-religious theory is especially obscure (Ehrlich 2009b). |
alcmaeon | ## Life and Works
### 1.1 Medical Writer or Philosopher?
Alcmaeon, son of Peirithous (otherwise unknown), lived in the Greek
city of Croton on the instep of the boot of Italy. Diogenes Laertius,
in his brief life of Alcmaeon (VIII. 83), asserts that he wrote mostly
on medical matters. There is, however, little direct evidence for his
work as a practicing physician. Later writers in the medical
tradition, such as Galen (DK A2), treat him as a philosopher-scientist
rather than as a physician, so that some scholars (Mansfeld 1975; cf.
Perilli 2001 for a critique) have concluded that he was not a doctor
at all but rather a typical Presocratic *physiologos* (writer
on nature). The majority of scholars, however, because of
Diogenes' remark and because of the focus on the functioning of
the human body in the testimonia and fragments, refer to Alcmaeon as a
physician-philosopher. The historian Herodotus tells us that, in the
second half of the sixth century, the physicians of Croton were the
best in the Greek world (III. 131) and recounts in some detail the
activities of the most prominent Crotoniate physician of the time,
Democedes (III. 125-138). Thus, whether a practicing physician
or not, Alcmaeon undoubtedly owes some of his interest in human
physiology and psychology to the medical tradition in Croton. In the
fifth century, it is difficult to draw clear lines between the work of
a medical writer/physician and a philosopher/scientist. Presocratic
cosmologies of this period devoted some attention to questions of
human physiology and medicine, and conversely the early treatises in
the Hippocratic corpus often paid some attention to cosmology (see
Aristotle, *Resp*. 480b23 ff.). The earliest Presocratic
cosmologies in Ionia (e.g., those of Anaximander and Anaximenes) did
not deal with physiology, and it is possible that the new interest in
physiology in cosmologies of the fifth century (e.g., those of
Empedocles and Anaxagoras) was due to the influence of Alcmaeon (Zhmud
2012a, 366; 2014, 100).
### 1.2 Was Alcmaeon a Pythagorean?
Croton is also famous as the center of Pythagoras' activity from
ca. 530, when he left Samos. Alcmaeon addressed his book to three men
who may have been Pythagoreans:
>
> Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus,
> Leon, and Bathyllus... (DK, B1)
>
We know nothing of Leon and Bathyllus, except that Iamblichus, in
*On the Pythagorean Way of Life* (=*VP*), lists a
Pythagorean named Leon from Metapontum and a Pythagorean Bathylaus
from Poseidonia (Paestum), both Greek cities of southern Italy
(*VP* 267). Bro(n)tinus is identified as a Pythagorean from
Croton in some places (D.L. VIII. 42; Iamb. *VP* 132) and from
Metapontum in others (*VP* 194, 267). He is either the father
or the husband of Theano, who is in turn either the wife or student of
Pythagoras. Does this "dedication" of his book to
Pythagoreans indicate that Alcmaeon himself was a Pythagorean? Even if
this is a dedication, it does not follow that Alcmaeon agreed with the
views of his addressees. Comparison with Empedocles' address to
Pausanias suggests, moreover, that what we have is not a dedication
but an exhortation or an attempt to instruct (Vlastos 1953, 344, n.
25). Comparison with other early Greek prose writers such as Hecataeus
and Heraclitus shows that books could begin with criticism of the
views of others so that Alcmaeon's address to these Pythagoreans
may be polemical (Kouloumentas 2018).
Diogenes Laertius, in his *Lives of the Philosophers*
(3rd century AD), includes Alcmaeon among the Pythagoreans
and says that he studied with Pythagoras (VIII. 83). Later authors
such as Iamblichus (*VP* 104, 267), Philoponus (*De An.*
p. 88), and the scholiast on Plato (*Alc*. 121e) also call
Alcmaeon a Pythagorean. A majority of scholars up to the middle of the
twentieth century followed this tradition. However, it is not true
that the ancient "tradition is unanimous in presenting him as a
Pythagorean" (Zhmud 2012a, 123). In fact, the majority of
ancient sources do not describe him as a Pythagorean (e.g., Clement
[DK 24A2], Galen [DK24A2], Aetius [DK 24A4, 6, 8-10, 13,
17-18], Censorinus [DK 24A13-14], and Chalcidius [DK
A10]). The best argument for regarding him as Pythagorean would be his
inclusion in Iamblichus' catalogue of Pythagoreans at the end of
his *On the Pythagorean Life*, if we could be sure that all
parts of that catalogue go back to Aristoxenus in the fourth century,
since Aristoxenus is a very knowledgeable source on Pythagoreanism
(Zhmud 2012a, 122; 2012b, 241-43). However, certain parts of the
catalogue are very unlikely go back to Aristoxenus and we cannot be
certain that the inclusion of Alcmaeon was due to him (Huffman 2005,
297-99). Apart from this possibility regarding Aristoxenus, no
one earlier than Diogenes Laertius (ca. 200 AD) calls Alcmaeon a
Pythagorean. Aristotle wrote two books on the Pythagoreans but wrote a
separate book on Alcmaeon. Aristotle and Theophrastus refer to him a
number of times but never identify him as a Pythagorean, and this is
the practice of the doxographical tradition (see A4, 6, 8-10,
13-14, 17-18, in *DK* 24). Simplicius
(6th AD) reports that some have handed down the view that
Alcmaeon is a Pythagorean but notes that Aristotle denies it (*De
An.* 32.3). Most telling is Aristotle's discussion of
Alcmaeon in *Metaphysics* book I (986a22 ff.). He notes a
similarity between Alcmaeon and a group of Pythagoreans in positing
opposites as the principles of things but expresses uncertainty as to
who influenced whom. Earlier scholars took this comparison of Alcmaeon
to the Pythagoreans as confirmation that he was a Pythagorean. Most
scholars of the last fifty years, however, have come to recognize that
Aristotle's treatment of Alcmaeon here suggests the exact
opposite; it only makes sense to compare him with the Pythagoreans and
wonder who influenced whom, if he is not a Pythagorean (e.g., Guthrie
1962, 341: "Aristotle ... expressly distinguishes him from
the Pythagoreans"). Certainly most of the opposites which are
mentioned as crucial to Alcmaeon do not appear in the Pythagorean
table of opposites, and there is no trace of the crucial Pythagorean
opposition between limit and unlimited in Alcmaeon. The overwhelming
majority of scholars since 1950 have accordingly regarded Alcmaeon as
a figure independent of the Pythagoreans (e.g., Guthrie 1962, 341;
Burkert 1972, 289; KRS 1983, 339; Lloyd 1991, 167; Kahn 2001; Riedweg
2005, 115; Primavesi 2012, 447. Zhmud [2012a, 121-124; 2014,
97-102] is the notable exception), although, as a fellow citizen
of Croton, he will have been familiar with their thought.
### 1.3 Date
No issue concerning Alcmaeon has been more controversial than his
date. Some have sought to date him on the basis of his address to
Brotinus (e.g., Zhmud 2012a, 122). Brotinus' dates are too
uncertain to be of much help, however. If he is Theano's father
and Theano was Pythagoras' wife, he could be a contemporary of
Pythagoras (570-490) or even older. If he is Theano's
husband and she was a student of Pythagoras in his old age and thus
twenty in 490, Brotinus could have been born as late as 520. This
suggests that Brotinus could have been the addressee of the book any
time between 550 and 450 BCE. The center of controversy, however, has
been a sentence in the passage of Aristotle's
*Metaphysics* discussed above:
>
> Alcmaeon of Croton also seems to have thought along similar lines, and
> either he took this theory over from them [i.e. the Pythagoreans] or
> they from him. **For in age Alcmaeon was in the old age of
> Pythagoras**, and his views were similar to theirs
> (986a27-31).
>
The sentence in bold above is missing in one of the major manuscripts
and Alexander makes no mention of it in his commentary on the
*Metaphysics*. It does appear in the other two major
manuscripts and in Asclepius' commentary. A number of scholars
have regarded it as a remark by a later commentator, which has crept
into the text (e.g., Ross 1924, 152; Burkert 1972, 29, n.60) and this
is the view of the most recent editor (Primavesi 2012, 447-8).
It is a surprising remark for Aristotle to make, since he only refers
to Pythagoras once elsewhere in all his extant writings and throughout
this passage of the *Metaphysics* refers to the Pythagoreans or
Italians in the plural. Other scholars regard the remark as genuine
(e.g., Wachtler 1896; Guthrie 1962, 341-3; Zhmud 2012a, 122).
Even if we accept the remark as genuine, the assertion that Alcmaeon
"was" (*egeneto*) in the old age of Pythagoras is
ambiguous. Does it mean that Alcmaeon was born in the old age of
Pythagoras, or that he lived (flourished?) in the old age of
Pythagoras? Diels emended the sentence to say that Alcmaeon was
"young" in the old age of Pythagoras and this emendation
is supported by a similar remark found in Iamblichus (*VP*
104). Although Diels accepted the text as Aristotelian, others have
seen the parallel with Iamblichus as evidence that it is a remark by a
later commentator and have pointed out that the report in Iamblichus
involves several chronological impossibilities (e.g., that Philolaus
was young in the old age of Pythagoras). Moreover, Diels' text
suggests that the purpose of the remark was to show Alcmaeon's
dependence on Pythagoras, which would show that the remark cannot be
due to Aristotle, who has just distinguished Alcmaeon from the
Pythagoreans and expressed doubts as to who influenced whom (Primavesi
2012, 447-8). Even if the remark is unlikely to go back to
Aristotle, his doubts about who influenced whom suggest that Alcmaeon
belonged to the late sixth or early fifth century (Schofield 2012,
156), which would argue against the late date of 440 adopted by
Mansfeld (2013, 78, n. 1). One group of scholars thus dates the
publication of Alcmaeon's book to around 500 (Burkert 1972, 292;
Kirk, Raven, Schofield 1983, 339 [early 5th]; Zhmud 2012a,
122 [not later than 490]) so that he would have been born around 540.
Another group has him born around 510 so that his book would have been
published in 470 or later (Guthrie 1962, 358 [480-440 BCE];
Lloyd 1991, 168 [490-430 BCE]). In either case Alcmaeon probably
wrote before Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Philolaus. He is either the
contemporary or the predecessor of Parmenides. Attempts to date him on
the basis of internal evidence alone, i.e. comparison of his doctrines
with those of other thinkers, have led to the widest divergence of
dates. Edelstein says that he may have lived in the late fifth century
(1942, 372), while Lebedev makes him active in the late 6th
(1993).
### 1.4 Alcmaeon's Book and the Evidence for Its Contents
The ancient tradition assigns one book to Alcmaeon, which came to bear
the traditional title of Presocratic treatises, *On Nature*
(DK, A2), although this title probably does not go back to Alcmaeon
himself. Favorinus' report that Alcmaeon was the first to write
such a treatise (DK, A1) is almost certainly wrong, since Anaximander
wrote before Alcmaeon. Theophrastus' detailed report of
Alcmaeon's account of the senses (DK, A5) and the fact that
Aristotle wrote a treatise in response to Alcmaeon (D.L. V. 25)
suggest that the book was available in the fourth century BCE. It is
unclear whether Alcmaeon wrote in the Doric dialect of Croton or in
the Ionic Greek of the first Presocratics (Burkert, 1972, 222, n. 21).
The report that an Alcimon of Croton was the first to write animal
fables might be a reference to a poet of a similar name. Fragment 5 in
DK ("It is easier to be on one's guard against an enemy
than a friend.") sounds very much like the moral of such a fable
(Gomperz 1953, 64-5). Diels and Kranz (=DK) identify five other
fragments of Alcmaeon (Frs. 1, 1a, 2, 3, 4) and arrange the testimonia
under 18 headings. Fragments 1a, 3 and 4, however, are really
testimonia which use language of a later date, although some of
Alcmaeon's terminology is embedded in them. The three lines of
Fragment 1, which probably began the book, and the half line in
Fragment 2 are the only continuous texts of Alcmaeon. Another brief
fragment/testimonium should be added to the material in DK: "the
earth is the mother of plants and the sun their father"
(Nicolaus Damascenus, *De plantis* I 2.44; see Kirk 1956 and
Lebedev 1993). There is also the possibility that Fr. 125 of the
Spartan poet Alcman ("Experience is the beginning of
learning.") should, in fact, be assigned to Alcmaeon (Lanza
1965; Barnes 1982, 610).
## 2. Epistemology and Psychology
### 2.1 The Limits of Knowledge
Alcmaeon began his book by defining the limits of human knowledge:
>
> Concerning things that are not perceptible [concerning mortal things]
> the gods have clarity, but insofar as it is possible for human beings
> to judge (*tekmairesthai*) ... (DK, B1)
>
Such skepticism about human knowledge is characteristic of one strand
of early Greek thought. Both Alcmaeon's predecessors (e.g.,
Xenophanes B34) and his successors (e.g., Philolaus B6) made similar
contrasts between divine and human knowledge, but in Alcmaeon's
case, as in these other cases, we do not have enough evidence to be
sure what he intended. Most of the subjects that Alcmaeon went on to
discuss in his book could not be settled by a direct appeal to sense
perception (e.g., the functioning of the senses, the balance of
opposites in the healthy body, the immortality of the soul). In this
sense he was dealing largely with what is "not
perceptible" (*aphanes*). Alcmaeon is decidedly not an
extreme skeptic, however, in that he is willing to assign clear
understanding about such things to the gods and by implication admits
that even humans have clear understanding of what is directly
perceptible. Moreover, while humans cannot attain clarity about what
cannot be perceived, Alcmaeon thinks that they can make reasonable
judgments from the signs that are presented to them by sensation
(*tekmairesthai*). He thus takes the stance of the scientist
who draws inferences from what can be perceived, and he implicitly
rejects the claims of those who base their account of the world on the
certainty of a divine revelation (e.g., Pythagoras, Parmenides
B1).
There are difficulties with the text of Fr. 1, which make its
interpretation problematic. Some scholars exclude the material in
brackets above because it is hard to see how to connect it to what
precedes (e.g., Wachtler 1896), while others keep the material and
suppose that we are to understand an "and" coordinating
the phrase in brackets with what precedes it (e.g., DK 1952). Other
scholars would place a semicolon or colon after "things that are
not perceptible" so that up to the colon Alcmaeon is identifying
his topic or the area of disagreement with this addressees, while
after the colon he begins his own account (Kouloumentas 2018 following
Gomperz). Gemelli Marciano (2007, 18-22), on the other hand, has
suggested that the material in brackets above should be kept but made
dependent on the immediately preceding phrase rather than coordinated
with it, so that the fragment would read:
>
> Concerning things that are not perceptible concerning mortals the gods
> have clarity, but insofar as it is possible for human beings to judge
> ... (DK, B1)
>
If we regard Alcmaeon as primarily a doctor or medical thinker, rather
than as a cosmologist, "things that are not perceptible
concerning mortals" is likely to refer to the interior of the
body and hidden diseases. Passages in the Greek medical writings of
the fifth century provide clear parallels for the difficulty of
knowing about the interior of the body and invisible maladies (Gemelli
Marciano 2007, 20-21). On this reading Fr.1 is addressed to
medical students. Parallels with medical treatises suggest that, after
first raising difficulties about medical knowledge in these matters,
Alcmaeon may have gone on to assert that these difficulties can be
overcome with the proper teaching, the teaching that followed in his
book. If this is the correct context in which to read the fragment, it
is not so much about the limits of understanding as the success of
medical teaching in overcoming apparent limits.
### 2.2 Understanding and Empiricism
According to Theophrastus, Alcmaeon was the first Greek thinker to
distinguish between sense perception and understanding and to use this
distinction to separate animals, which only have sense perception,
from humans, who have both sense perception and understanding (DK,
B1a, A5). Alcmaeon is also the first to argue that the brain is the
central organ of sensation and thought (DK, A5, A8, A10). There is no
explicit evidence, however, as to what Alcmaeon meant by
understanding. The word translated as understanding here is
*suniemi*, which in its earliest uses means "to
bring together," so that it is possible that Alcmaeon simply
meant that humans are able to bring the information provided by the
senses together in a way that animals cannot (Solmsen 1961, 151).
Animals have brains too, however, and thus might appear to be able to
carry out the simple correlation of the evidence from the various
senses, whereas the human ability to make inferences and judgments
(DK, B1) appears to be a more plausible candidate for the distinctive
activity of human intelligence. It is possible that we should use a
passage in Plato's *Phaedo* (96a-b = A11) to explicate
further Alcmaeon's epistemology. The passage is part of
Socrates' report of his early infatuation with natural science
and with questions such as whether it is the blood, or air, or fire
with which we think. He also reports the view that it is the brain
that furnishes the sensations of hearing, sight, and smell. This
corresponds very well with Alcmaeon's view of the brain as the
central sensory organ and, although Alcmaeon is not mentioned by name,
many scholars think that Plato must be referring to him here. Socrates
connects this view of the brain with an empiricist epistemology, which
Aristotle will later adopt (*Posterior Analytics* 100a3 ff.).
This epistemology involves three steps: first, the brain provides the
sensations of hearing, sight and smell, then, memory and opinion arise
from these, and finally, when memory and opinion achieve fixity,
knowledge arises. Some scholars suppose that this entire epistemology
is Alcmaeon's (e.g., Barnes 1982, 149 ff.), while others more
cautiously note that we only have explicit evidence that Alcmaeon took
the first step (e.g., Vlastos 1970, 47, n.8).
### 2.3 Did Alcmaeon Practice Dissection?
Alcmaeon's empiricism has sometimes been thought to have arisen
from his experience as a practicing physician (Guthrie 1962). He has
also been hailed as the first to use dissection, but this is based on
a hasty reading of the evidence. Calcidius, in his Latin commentary on
Plato's *Timaeus*, praises Alcmaeon, along with
Callisthenes and Herophilus, for having brought many things to light
about the nature of the eye (DK, A10). Most of what Calcidius goes on
to describe, however, are the discoveries of Herophilus some two
centuries after Alcmaeon (Lloyd 1975, Mansfeld 1975, Solmsen 1961).
The only conclusions we can reasonably draw about Alcmaeon from the
passage are that he excised the eyeball of an animal and observed
*poroi* (channels, i.e. the optic nerve) leading from the eye
in the direction of the brain (Lloyd 1975). Theophrastus'
account of Alcmaeon's theory of sensation implies that he
thought that there were such channels leading from each of the senses
to the brain:
>
> All the senses are connected in some way with the brain. As a result,
> they are incapacitated when it is disturbed or changes its place, for
> it then stops the channels, through which the senses operate. (DK, A5)
>
There is no evidence, however, that Alcmaeon dissected the eye itself
or that he dissected the skull in order to trace the optic nerve all
the way to the brain. Alcmaeon's account of the other senses,
far from suggesting that he carried out dissections in order to
explain their function, implies that he did not (Lloyd 1975; for a
partial critique of Lloyd see Perilli 2001). Alcmaeon's
conclusion that all of the senses are connected to the brain may have
been drawn from nothing more than the excision of the eye and the
general observation that the sense organs for sight, hearing, smell,
and taste are located on the head and appear connected to passages
which lead inward towards the brain (Gomperz 1953, 69). It is striking
in this regard that Alcmaeon gave no account of touch (DK, A5), which
is the only sense not specifically tied to the head. It would be a
serious mistake then to say that Alcmaeon discovered dissection or
that he was the father of anatomy, since there is no evidence that he
used dissection systematically or even that he did more than excise a
single eyeball.
### 2.4 Sense Perception
Theophrastus says that Alcmaeon did not explain sensation by the
principle of like to like (i.e. by the likeness between the sense
organ and what is perceived), a principle which was used by many early
Greek thinkers (e.g., Empedocles). Unfortunately he gives no general
account of how Alcmaeon did think sensation worked (DK, A5). Alcmaeon
explained each of the individual senses with the exception of touch,
but these accounts are fairly rudimentary. He regarded the eye as
composed of water and fire and vision as taking place when what is
seen is reflected in the gleaming and translucent part of the eye.
Hearing arises when an external sound is first transmitted to the
outer ear and then picked up by the empty space (*kenon*) in
the inner ear, which transmits it to the brain. Taste occurs through
the tongue, which being warm and soft dissolves things with its heat
and, because of its loose texture, receives and transmits the
sensation. Smell is the simplest of all. It occurs "at the same
time as we breathe in, thus bringing the breath to the brain"
(DK, A5).
### 2.5 The Immortality of the Soul
Alcmaeon developed the first argument for the immortality of the soul,
but the testimonia concerning it differ slightly from one another, and
it appears to have been taken over and developed by Plato, so that it
is very hard to determine exactly how to reconstruct Alcmaeon's
own argument. Barnes (1982, 116-120) and Hankinson (1998,
30-3) provide the most insightful analysis. Alcmaeon appears to
have started from the assumption that the soul is always in motion. At
one extreme we might suppose that Alcmaeon only developed the simple
argument from analogy, which Aristotle assigns to him (*De An.*
405a29). The soul is like the heavenly bodies, which Alcmaeon regarded
as divine and immortal (DK, A1, A12), in being always in motion, so it
is also like them in being immortal. This is clearly fallacious, since
it assumes that things that are alike in one respect will be alike in
all others. The version in the doxographical tradition is more
sophisticated (DK, A12). Alcmaeon thought that the soul moved itself
in continual motion and was therefore immortal and like to the divine.
The similarity to the divine is not part of the inference here but
simply an illustrative comparison. However, Mansfeld has recently
pointed out that the doxographical report in Aetius is just a
paraphrase of Aristotle's earlier report with the significant
addition that the soul is self-moving. Examination of the context in
Aetius shows that the self-motion of the soul, which is attested
independently for Plato and Xenocrates, was projected back on
Pythagoras and Thales, who are very unlikely to have held such a view.
This context and Aristotle's failure to assign self-motion to
Alcmaeon makes it likely that the same projection occurred in the case
of Alcmaeon, who thus is likely to have assigned continual motion but
not self motion to the soul (Mansfeld 2014b, see also Laks 2018). The
core of the simpler argument is the necessary truth that what is
always in motion must be immortal. This is the assumption from which
Plato starts his argument for the immortality of the soul
at *Phaedrus* 245c, but how much of Plato's analysis of
what is always in motion can be assigned to Alcmaeon? Plato makes no
mention of Alcmaeon in the passage. There are still serious questions
for Alcmaeon, even on the more sophisticated version of the
argument. We might well recognize that things with souls, i.e. things
that are alive, are able to move themselves, and conclude that it is
souls that bring this motion about. We might also conclude that the
soul, as what moves something else, must be in motion itself (the
synonymy principle of causation). But why did Alcmaeon suppose that
the soul must be always in motion? (Hankinson [1998, 32] provides two
possible answers and discusses the difficulties with them.) Horn
argues that there is no obvious meaning to the idea that the human
soul is in continual motion so that Alcmaeon must be talking about a
world soul, which has the continual motion of the heavens (2005,
157-8). However, Mansfeld rightly argues that Aristotle's
report on Alcmaeon's view of the soul is clearly about the human
soul; since the soul being discussed is said to be similar to the
heavenly motions it has to be distinct from them (2014a). Finally,
what sort of motion is being ascribed to souls? The natural assumption
might be that the soul's motion is thinking, but, at this early
point in Greek thought, Alcmaeon was more likely to have thought that,
if the soul is going to cause motion in space, it too must be in
locomotion. Plato describes the soul as composed of two circles with
contrary motions, which imitate the contrary motions of the fixed
stars and the planets, so that the soul becomes a sort of orrery in
the head (*Timaeus* 44d). It has been suggested that this image
is borrowed from Alcmaeon (Barnes 1982, 118; Skemp 1942, 36 ff.).
In Fragment 2, Alcmaeon is reported to have said that:
>
> Human beings perish because they are not able to join their beginning
> to their end.
>
At first sight, this assertion might appear to conflict with
Alcmaeon's belief that the soul is immortal. It seems likely,
however, that Alcmaeon distinguished between human beings as
individual bodies, which do perish, and as souls, which do not (Barnes
1982, 115). There is no evidence about what Alcmaeon thought happened
to the soul, when the body perished, however. Did he believe in
reincarnation as the Pythagoreans did? No ancient source associates
Alcmaeon with reincarnation and his sharp distinction between animals
and human beings may suggest that he did not believe in it (Guthrie
1962: 354). He might have thought that the soul joined other divine
beings in the heavens. The point of Fragment 2 may be that, whereas
the heavenly bodies do join their beginnings to their ends in circular
motion, humans are not able to join their end in old age to their
beginning in childhood, i.e. human life does not have a cyclical
structure. We might even suppose that the soul tries to impose such a
structure on the body from its own circular motion but ultimately
fails (Guthrie 1962, 353). It has been rather speculatively suggested
that, since Alcmaeon explains sleep and waking by the blood retreating
into the inner vessels and then expanding again into the outer vessels
(see 3.2 below), it may be that this "circular motion" of
the blood that fails in death (Kouloumentas 2018b).
## 3. Medical Doctrines
### 3.1 Health and Disease
Fragment 4 presents Alcmaeon's account of health and
disease:
>
> Alcmaeon said that the equality (*isonomia*) of the powers
> (wet, dry, cold, hot, bitter, sweet, etc.) maintains health but that
> monarchy among them produces disease.
>
This is, in fact, not a fragment but a testimonium and much of the
language comes from the doxographical tradition rather than Alcmaeon.
The report goes on to say that Alcmaeon thought that disease arose
because of an excess of heat or cold, which in turn arose because of
an excess or deficiency in nutrition. Disease is said to arise in the
blood, the marrow, or the brain. It can also be caused by external
factors such as the water, the locality, toil, or violence. The idea
that health depends on a balance of opposed factors in the body is a
commonplace in Greek medical writers. Although Alcmaeon is the
earliest figure to whom such a conception of health is attributed, it
may well be that he is not presenting an original thesis but rather
drawing on the earlier medical tradition in Croton. Perhaps what is
distinctive to Alcmaeon is the use of the specific political metaphor
and most scholars (e.g., Sassi 2007, 198; Jouanna 1999, 327;
Kouloumentas 2014, 871) agree that the political terminology
(*isonomia*, *monarchia*) goes back to him. Indeed,
these terms are not found elsewhere in the Greek medical
tradition. Just as Anaximander explained the order of the cosmos in
terms of justice in the city-state, so Alcmaeon used a political
metaphor to explain the order of the human body. It is commonly
recognized that *isonomia* (equality) is not a specific form of
government but rather a concept of political equality in terms of
which forms of government are evaluated (Ostwald 1969, 108; Meier
1990, 162 calls it a "yardstick", Vlastos 1981,
173-74 a "banner"). Its primary application is to
democracies (Herodotus III.80) but it is also applied to moderate
oligarchies that have democratic features (Thucydides III.
62.3-4). Although a significant number of scholars argue that
there is a purely aristocratic application for *isonomia* as
the equality of aristocratic peers in opposition to a tyrant (e.g.,
Raaflaub 2004: 95; Zhmud 2012a: 358), one of the most noted early
adherents of this view later abandoned it (Ehrenberg 1956: 67) and it
appears more likely that the term *isonomia* originated with
the radical democracy which emerged in Athens in the late sixth
century and was only applied in a secondary sense to moderate
oligarchies (Vlastos 1973, 175-7; Ostwald 1969, 99-106).
Is Alcmaeon's use of the term simply descriptive of the equality
of powers that is necessary for the healthy body, or does his use of
the term to describe health suggest that he was in sympathy with
radical democracy (Vlastos 1953, 363)? We simply have no direct
evidence for Alcmaeon's political views. However, Aristotle
emphasizes that Alcmaeon posited an indefinite number of opposites as
active in the human body in contrast to the Pythagoreans who specified
ten pairs (see 4.2 below), which suggests that Alcmaeon's
"body" politic was not an oligarchy with a numerically
defined group of peers but rather a democracy which gave equality to
the full range of opposites. Mansfeld has recently argued that
scholars are wrong to ascribe the key terms *isonomia* and
*monarchia* to Alcmaeon (Mansfeld 2014a). Such a metaphorical
use of *isonomia* is unparalleled at this early date and is
much more likely to have been introduced later in the doxographical
tradition. Moreover, *monarchia* may have been introduced by a
doxographer familiar with its use in the famous debate on
constitutions in Herodotus (III 80-3), where *isonomia*
also appears (III 80). Mansfeld concludes that this origin of the
terms from the doxography is more likely than assuming influence on
Alcmaeon from the reforms of Cleisthenes. The difficulty with
Mansfeld's approach is that the striking thing about the report
on Alcmaeon is precisely the political metaphor and it seems more
plausible that his views were introduced into the doxography because
of that metaphor than that his views were typical Greek views on
disease and the metaphor only arose as an artefact of the
doxographical tradition. If he did introduce the political metaphor
then it is as probable as not that he used the terms ascribed to him,
especially since both appear only a little later in Herodotus,
although not with a metaphorical sense.
### 3.2 Sleep, Embryology, and the Use of Analogy
Alcmaeon is the first to raise a series of questions in human and
animal physiology that later become stock problems, which every
thinker tries to address. He thus sets the initial agenda for Greek
physiology (Longrigg 1993, 54-7; Lloyd 1966, 322 ff.). He said
that sleep is produced by the withdrawal of the blood away from the
surface of the body to the larger ("blood-flowing")
vessels and that we awake when the blood diffuses throughout the body
again (DK, A18). Death occurs when the blood withdraws entirely.
Hippocratic writers (*Epid*. VI 5.15) and Aristotle
(*H.A.* 521a15) both seem to have adopted Alcmaeon's
account of sleep. It is very unlikely, however, that Alcmaeon
distinguished between veins (the "blood-flowing vessels")
and arteries, as some have claimed. It is more likely that he simply
distinguished between larger more interior blood vessels as opposed to
smaller ones close to the surface (Lloyd 1991, 177). He probably
argued that human seed was drawn from the brain (DK, A13). It has
recently been suggested (Konig 2019), however, that he instead
thought 1) that sperm came from the whole body, 2) that the brain was
its transit port and 3) that it was ultimately a product of
digestion. But no ancient source directly assigns any of these
doctrines to Alcmaeon and the arguments in favor of them are very
indirect. Contrary to a popular Greek view, which regarded the father
alone as providing seed, a view that would be followed by Aristotle
(Lloyd 1983, 86 ff.), Alcmaeon may have argued that both parents
contribute seed (DK, A13) and that the child takes the sex of the
parent who contributes the most seed (DK, A14). It has recently been
suggested, however, that our sole source for these views (Censorinus)
is mistaken and that, while Alcmaeon thought that both the male and
female contributed to the child, only the male contributed seed
(Leitao 2012: 278-79), the female contributing menses. According
to one report, Alcmaeon thought that the head was the first part of
the embryo to develop, although another report has him confessing that
he did not have definite knowledge in this area, because no one is
able to perceive what is formed first in the infant (DK, A13). These
reports are not inconsistent and conform to the epistemology with
which Alcmaeon began his book. It is plausible to suppose that he
regarded the development of the embryo as one of the imperceptibles
about which we can have no certain knowledge. On the other hand, he
may have regarded it as a reasonable inference that the part of the
body which controls it in life, i.e., the brain, developed first in
the womb. Dissection is of obvious relevance to the debate about the
development of the embryo, and Alcmaeon's failure to appeal to
dissection of animals in this case is further evidence that he did not
employ it as a regular method (Lloyd 1979, 163). Alcmaeon studied not
just humans but also animals and plants. He gave an explanation of the
sterility of mules (DK, B3) and, if we can believe Aristotle, thought
that goats breathed through their ears (DK, A7). More significantly,
he used analogies with animals and plants in developing his accounts
of human physiology. Thus, the pubic hair that develops when human
males are about to produce seed for the first time at age fourteen is
analogous to the flowering of plants before they produce seed (DK,
A15); milk in mammals is analogous to egg white in birds (DK,
A16). The infant in the womb absorbs nutrients through its entire
body, like a sponge, although another report suggests that the embryo
already feeds through its mouth (DK, A17). However, the text of the
latter report should perhaps be amended from *stomati* [mouth]
to
*somati* [body], thus removing the contradiction
(Olivieri 1919, 34). Analogies such as these will become a staple item
in later Greek biological treatises, but Alcmaeon is one of the
earliest figures in this tradition.
## 4. Cosmology
### 4.1 Astronomy
As indicated in section 1 above, there is considerable controversy as
to whether and to what extent Alcmaeon was a typical Presocratic
cosmologist. Certainly the evidence for his cosmology is meager. There
are three references to his astronomical theory (DK, A4). He is
reported to have recognized that the planets have a motion from west
to east opposite to the motion of the fixed stars. Some doubt that
such knowledge was available at the beginning of the fifth century
(Dicks 1970, 75). Others suggest that Anaximenes, in the second half
of the sixth century, had already distinguished between the fixed
stars, which are nailed to the ice-like vault of the sky, and planets
which float on the air like leaves (DK13A7; Burkert 1972, 311).
Alcmaeon's belief that the sun is flat is another possible
connection to Anaximenes, who said that the sun was flat like a leaf
(DK13A15). Finally, another similarity to Ionian astronomy is found in
Alcmaeon's agreement with Heraclitus that lunar eclipses were to
be explained by the turning of a bowl-shaped moon. One might have
expected, however, that the moon would be flat like the sun (West
1971, 175).
### 4.2 Opposites
Did Alcmaeon present a cosmogony or cosmology in terms of the
interaction of pairs of opposites? Such a cosmology could be seen as
yet another connection to earlier speculation in Ionia, since
Anaximander's cosmos is based on the "justice"
established between conflicting opposites (DK12B1). Heraclitus is also
a possible influence on Alcmaeon, since he seems to envisage an
endless process of opposites turning into one another such as is
proposed for Alcmaeon (Mansfeld 2014a, 91-2). Aristotle provides
the primary evidence for such a cosmology in Alcmaeon
(*Metaph*. 986a22 ff. = A3), but he compares Alcmaeon not to
the Ionians but to a group of Pythagoreans who proposed a table of ten
pairs of opposites. Alcmaeon agrees with these Pythagoreans in
regarding the opposites as principles of things. Aristotle complains,
however, that Alcmaeon did not arrive at a definite set of opposites
but spoke haphazardly of white, black, sweet, bitter, good, bad,
large, and small, and only threw in vague comments about the remaining
opposites. It may well be that Alcmaeon's primary discussion of
opposites was in relation to his account of the human body (DK, B4;
see the discussion of his medical theories above). Aristotle's
language supports this suggestion to some extent, when he summarizes
Alcmaeon's view as that "the majority of *human*
things (*ton anthropinon*) are in
pairs" (*Metaph*. 986a31). Isocrates (DK, A3) says that
Alcmaeon, in contrast to Empedocles, who postulated four elements,
said that there were only two, and, according to a heterodox view,
Alcmaeon posited fire and earth as basic elements (Lebedev 1993). Most
scholars follow Aristotle, however, in supposing that Alcmaeon thought
that the human body and perhaps the cosmos is constituted from the
balance of an indefinite number of opposites. Some have seen
Alcmaeon's unwillingness to adopt a fixed set of opposites as a
virtue and a further sign of his empiricism, which is willing to
accept that the world is less tidy than theoretical constructs, such
as the Pythagorean table of opposites, would suggest (Guthrie 1962,
346).
## 5. Importance and Influence
Alcmaeon has been somewhat neglected in recent scholarship on early
Greek philosophy (e.g., he hardly appears in Curd and Graham 2008,
Long 1999 and Taylor 1997, the most recent surveys of the subject, but
both Guthrie 1962 and now Zhmud 2012a and 2014 stress his importance).
There would appear to be several reasons for this neglect. First, what
remains of Alcmaeon's book has little to say on the metaphysical
questions about the first principles of the cosmos and about being,
which have dominated recent scholarship on the Presocratics. Second,
doubts about his date and about the focus of his investigations have
made it difficult to place him in the development of early Greek
thought. Finally, a more accurate appreciation of his use of
dissection has deflated some of the hyperbolic claims in earlier
scholarship about his originality. The extent of his originality and
the importance of his influence depend to a degree on his dating. An
extremely late dating for his activity (after 450 BCE) makes him
appear to espouse the typical views of the age rather than to break
new ground. If he was active in the early fifth century, his views are
much more original. That Aristotle wrote a separate treatise in
response to Alcmaeon argues in favor of his originality. He should
probably be regarded as a pioneer in applying a political metaphor to
the balance of opposites that constitute the healthy human body. The
range of his work in biology is remarkable for the early fifth century
and he may have initiated a physiological emphasis in Greek philosophy
which was not present in Ionian philosophers, such as Anaximander and
Anaximenes, and set the agenda in this area for later Presocratics
(Zhmud 2012a, 366). It is sometimes said that his conception of
*poroi* (channels), which connect the sense organs to the
brain, influenced Empedocles' theory of *poroi*, but the
theories may share no more than the name. In Empedocles, all materials
have pores in them, which determine whether they mix well with other
objects. Sense organs also have pores, but these function not to
connect the sense organ to the seat of intelligence (which for
Empedocles is the heart) but to determine whether the sense organ can
receive the effluences that are poured forth by external objects
(Solmsen 1961, 157; Wright 1981, 230). Alcmaeon's influence was
significant in three final ways: 1) His identification of the brain as
the seat of human intelligence influenced Philolaus (DK, B13), the
Hippocratic Treatise, *On the Sacred Disease*, and Plato
(*Timaeus* 44d), although a number of thinkers including
Empedocles and Aristotle continued to regard the heart as the seat of
perception and intelligence. 2) His empiricist epistemology may lie
behind important passages in Plato (*Phaedo* 96b) and Aristotle
(*Posterior Analytics* 100a). 3) He developed the first
argument for the immortality of the soul, which may have influenced
Plato's argument in the *Phaedrus* (245c ff.). |
alexander | ## 1. Life
Alexander was born in Sydney on 6 January 1859, to a Jewish family. He
was the third son of Samuel Alexander, a British emigrant and saddler.
Alexander's father died a few weeks after his birth, and five
years later the remaining family moved to Melbourne. Alexander was
home-educated by tutors before entering Wesley College in 1871.
Alexander entered the University of Melbourne in 1875, and
subsequently won awards in arts, sciences, languages and natural
philosophy. In 1877, Alexander sailed for England, in an attempt to
win a scholarship at Oxbridge. He successfully obtained a scholarship
at Balliol College, Oxford, and went on to win a First in 1881. The
following year, Alexander was awarded a Fellowship at Lincoln College,
Oxford.
At this time, the Oxford philosophical scene was dominated by British
idealism, and Alexander formed lifelong ties with the Absolute
idealists F. H. Bradley, A. C. Bradley, and Bernard Bosanquet. This
idealist influence is evident in Alexander's earliest works, on
Hegel and moral progress. Arguably, it is also evident in his later
works on metaphysics too. As a student, Alexander also read
Plato--under the tutelage of the idealist Benjamin
Jowett--and Hegel.
Although Alexander remained largely UK-based, in 1882
he travelled to Germany for a year, spending at least some of
this time at the University of Berlin, where he became familiar with
the physiological psychology of Hermann von Helmholtz. In 1890 he
travelled to Freiburg, Germany, to spend roughly another year working
in Hugo Munsterberg's new psychological laboratory.
In 1893, Alexander accepted a Professorship at the University of
Manchester. He took an active part in the university life there, and
strongly supported feminism. Alexander remained at Manchester for the
rest of his life, and in 1902 he brought various family members
over--including his mother and three of his siblings--from
Australia to Manchester. He did not marry. Although Alexander never
returned to Australia he maintained a correspondence with several
Australian philosophers, including the Scottish-born John
Anderson.
As Alexander developed his anti-idealist views, he published on
naturalism and realism. He corresponded at length with fellow British
emergentists C. Lloyd Morgan and C. D. Broad on psychology and
metaphysics. Whilst he rejected idealism, he also continued to
correspond with F. H. Bradley and Bosanquet. During the War, Alexander
canvassed for recruits, and assisted Belgian refugees.
Interest in Alexander's work grew as he became President of
the Aristotelian Society from 1908-1911 (he
became President again, from 1936-1937). He was invited to
deliver the Gifford lectures during the war years 1917 and 1918.
These were called 'Space, time, and deity' and would form the basis of
his (1920) *Space, Time, and Deity*. Laird reports
that, after the war, Alexander struggled with writing its two volumes:
"He was overwhelmed by a sense of his littleness in comparison
with the task to which he was tied" (Laird 1939: 61).
Nonetheless, *Space, Time, and Deity* was finally
finished, assuring Alexander's place within the British philosophical
landscape. It was praised by new realists and idealists alike. As
John Passmore puts it:
>
>
> ...even when he [Alexander] broke with the Idealists, they
> continued to speak of him with a respect they rarely showed to the New
> Realists--although this charity did not survive the bleakness of
> Cambridge, where McTaggart, forgetting his own blackened pots,
> complained of *Space, Time, and Deity* that "in every
> chapter we come across some view which no philosopher, except
> Professor Alexander, has ever maintained". It would be inhuman
> to expect the arch-enemy of Time to praise its arch-prophet. (Passmore
> 1957: 268)
>
>
>
Bleakness of Cambridge aside, Alexander received many honours during
his lifetime. These include his election as a Fellow of the British
Academy in 1913, an honorary D.Litt from Oxford in 1924, an honorary
Litt.D from the University of Liverpool in 1925, and another from the
University of Cambridge in 1934. In 1923, Alexander retired from
Manchester. In a speech, he described how proud and happy he was
during his time as a professor there, "during which I tried to
do my part" (Alexander, cited in Laird 1939: 71).
Alexander's retirement did not stem the tide of his output.
Having completed *Space, Time, and Deity*, Alexander continued
to produce a stream of articles as prolific as it was diverse. He
wrote several pieces comparing his metaphysics to that of Spinoza, and
Alexander took pride--rooted partly in their shared Jewish
heritage--in the deep similarity he perceived there. Alexander
also wrote on the nature of art, history, Moliere, Pascal, theology,
and Jane Austen. Alexander was a lifelong fan of Austen, and
particularly loved *Persuasion*. His friend and colleague, J.
H. Muirhead, suggested that Alexander's love of literature may
have resulted from partial deafness, which made it difficult for
him to appreciate music.
Ultimately, Alexander turned his philosophic attention away from
metaphysics to art and value. Lord Listowel describes
Alexander's move towards aesthetics:
>
>
> But why, of the many unsailed seas he must have been tempted to chart,
> did his insatiable curiosity launch him on a last voyage into the
> rough waters of aesthetic theory? There is no certain answer to this
> question. What we do know is that the third person of the hallowed
> trinity whose members are Truth, Goodness, and Beauty had hitherto
> been sadly neglected as compared with the first two, and that a
> treatise on aesthetics was urgently required as the coping stone of a
> neatly finished philosophical system. Yet it would be a grievous error
> to suppose that his fondness for the subject was due solely or even
> mainly to systematic grounds. Art, in its manifold shapes, attracted
> him irresistibly... [he] wrote and talked about Art because he
> really loved the pictures, statues, mansions, poems, novels, and plays
> that are its concrete manifestations. (Listowel 1939: 181)
>
>
>
Alexander's full system of aesthetics can be found in his final
monograph, *Beauty and Other Forms of Value* (1933).
In his late years, Alexander continued to publish, but Laird reports
that Alexander was greatly troubled from the 1930s by the suffering of
Jewish refugees; Alexander did all he could to help with pen and purse
(Laird 1939: 94). Alexander died on 13 September 1938, and his ashes
lie in the Manchester Southern Cemetery. He bequeathed the majority of
his estate, and his philosophical papers, to the University of
Manchester. A bust of Alexander, by the artist Epstein, stands in the
University of Manchester's Samuel Alexander Building (formerly
known as the Hall of the Arts Building). Alexander reportedly said
that he would be happy to have *Erravit cum Spinoza* engraved
on his funeral urn; Muirhead suggested that instead he should have
*Ut alter Spinoza
philosophatus*[1]
(Muirhead 1939: 14).
A biography of Alexander can be found in Laird's (1939) memoir;
see also Muirhead (1939) and G. F. Stout (1940).
## 2. Early Writings
### 2.1 History of Philosophy: Hegel and Locke
Alexander's first publication, "Hegel's Conception
of Nature" (1886), reveals Alexander's philosophic
upbringing in Oxford's British Hegelian enclave. Alexander aims to set
out Hegel's conception of nature, "so fantastic and
so poetical that it may often be thought not to be
serious", as clearly as possible. He also aims to show
where it agrees with, and diverges from, contemporary science. The
article explains that science leads to a philosophy of nature
through observation--for example, transforming seemingly isolated
individuals into universals by discovering their general
character--and the discovery of laws. Alexander also compares
Hegel's account to contemporary theories of evolution, and
argues there is a "great likeness" (Alexander 1886: 518).
Arguably, some of the positions that Alexander attributes to Hegel are
similar to his own mature views; for example, Alexander reads Hegel as
holding that space and time are "in the world" as much as
matter (Alexander 1886: 506).
Alexander's early monograph *Locke* (1908) discusses
John Locke's *Essay* on ethics, politics, and
religion. This short book reveals Alexander's admiration
for Locke, and Lockean empiricism. Whilst this work is mainly of
scholarly interest, Alexander spends one chapter "Observations
on the *Essay*" critiquing Locke, and here Alexander
reveals the bent of his own early views. For example, Alexander
complains that Locke might have gone further had he applied his
observations regarding the continuity of mental experience to
substance (Alexander 1908: 52). This is suggestive, given that one of
Alexander's later key claims concerning spacetime--the
stuff of substances--is that it is continuous.
### 2.2 Evolutionary Ethics
Alexander's first monograph, *Moral Order and
Progress* (1889), defends evolutionary ethics, the
naturalist thesis that human morality is a product of biological
evolution. The monograph is based on a dissertation written by
Alexander at Oxford, for which he won the 1887 T. H. Green Moral
Philosophy Prize. In the preface, Alexander writes,
>
>
> I am proud to have my work connected, however indirectly, with the
> name of T. H. Green; and I feel this all the more because, though, as
> will be obvious, my obligations to him are very great, I have not
> scrupled to express my present dissent from his fundamental
> principles. (vii)
>
>
>
The preface also reveals the strong idealist backdrop against which
Alexander's work is set: the monograph is dedicated to A. C.
Bradley, and in the preface Alexander personally thanks D. G. Ritchie,
William Wallace, R. L. Nettleship, and J. S. Haldane. Alexander adds
that he owes a special debt of gratitude to F. H. Bradley, who went
through the essay with him (Alexander 1889: ix). Alexander continued
to exchange philosophic ideas with many of these idealists throughout
their lives.
Alexander opens the monograph by stating that the proper business of
ethics is the study of moral judgements, such as "It is wrong to
lie". Alexander sets out to discover the nature of morality,
asking what these judgements actually express (Alexander 1889:
1-3). He does so by examining a selection of "working
conceptions" in ethics--including right, wrong, and
duty--and asking what they correspond to. In the same way that
the working conceptions of physics--including energy, matter and
motion--are ordered according to a "natural
coherence", Alexander aims to order ethical conceptions.
Alexander concludes that these working conceptions correspond to ways
of maintaining equilibrium in society. For example, ideas of good or
right imply nothing more than "an adjustment of parts in an
orderly whole": the equilibrium of different persons in
society.
>
>
> [T]he predicate 'good' applied to an action... means
> that the act is one by which the agent seeks to perform the function
> required of him by his position in society. (Alexander 1889: 113)
>
>
>
Alexander takes this thesis to be the common ground of at least two
current rival ethical theories:
>
>
> Now nothing is more striking at the present time than the convergence
> of the main opposing ethical theories, at any rate, in our own
> country--on the one hand, the traditional English mode of
> thought, which advancing through utilitarianism has ended in the
> so-called evolutionary ethics; and on the other, the idealistic
> movement which is associated with the German philosophy derived from
> Kant... Both these views recognise that kind of proportion
> between the individual and his society, or between him and the law,
> which is expressed under the phrase, organic connection. (Alexander
> 1889: 5-6)
>
>
>
Alexander's perception of progress in ethical theory, towards
this correct end point, is Hegelian in style.
Alexander's ethical system is a kind of evolutionary ethics,
akin to that of Leslie Stephen. By applying evolution to
ethics, Alexander explains that one can mean either the mere
integration of the biological into the ethical sphere, or treating
morals as one part of a comprehensive view of the universe, in which a
steady development from the lower to the higher can be observed, a
development which follows the law of the survival of the fittest
(Alexander 1889: 14). Alexander, of course, means both. He emphasises
that while his ethical system, based on the organic nature of society,
is due in part to the influence of the biological sciences, it would
be an "entire misapprehension" to think that it were
entirely due to this influence; his views are also the result of
progress in ethics and politics (Alexander 1889: 7-8).
It is worth noting that, despite the spectre of Hegelian idealism
hovering in the background of this work, Alexander firmly resists
idealism's tendency towards monism, the view that the universe is
in some sense One:
>
>
> [T]he conception of a common good is apt to suggest an absolute
> identity of good... in greater or less degree all forms of
> so-called Monism, which hold that in the good act the individual is at
> one with others, and with the Universal Being, are victims of the
> misconception. (Alexander 1889: 174)
>
>
>
In other words, Alexander is arguing that just because he is putting
forward one conception of goodness--organic connection within
society--we should not accept that individuals within society are
not individuals.
## 3. Metaphysics and Related Views
### 3.1 Realism and Compresence
Although Alexander may have defended realism from his
earliest works, his mature realism can be found in a battery of later
papers, published in quick succession: including his
1909-10, 1912a, 1912b and 1914. These papers advance theses
that Alexander would expand on in *Space, Time, and Deity*
(1920).
In "The Basis of Realism" (1914), Alexander rejects
idealism in favour of realism. He writes that the "temper"
of realism is to de-anthropomorphise: to put man and mind in their
proper places in the world of things. Whilst mind is properly
understood as part of nature, this does not diminish its value
(Alexander 1914: 279-80). For Alexander, realism is thus
naturalistic. This paper is an expansion of Alexander's less
rigorous (1909-10), where he compares the new conception of mind
as a mere part of the universe--as opposed to being at the centre
of the universe--to the move from geocentrism to
heliocentrism.
A key part of Alexander's view is that minds exist in the world
alongside other things. Minds are "compresent" with other
objects in the world, such as tables and mountains. In fact, all
existents are compresent with each other:
>
>
> There is nothing peculiar in the relation itself between mind and its
> objects; what is peculiar in the situation is the character of one of
> the terms, its being mind or consciousness. The relation is one of
> compresence. But there is compresence between two physical things. The
> relation of mind and object is comparable to that between table and
> floor. (Alexander 1914: 288)
>
>
>
According to Alexander, we perceive the world directly: we do not
perceive representations or ideas of tables, but the tables themselves
(or aspects of the tables). We are conscious of our
perceptual process, a consciousness he labels
"enjoyment". Any direct theory of perception must account
for error. If we perceive the world directly, how do we make
mistakes about it? Alexander's answer is that we do not perceive
the world incorrectly, but we can incorrectly apply partial
perceptions to wholes. For example, we may correctly perceive a table
as having a flat edge, but incorrectly apply that perception to
the table as a whole.
Alexander also argues here that minds emerge from lower-level living
organisms, and are no less real for it:
>
>
> [M]ind, though descended on its physical side from lower forms of
> existence, is, when it comes, a new quality in the world, and no more
> ceases to be original because in certain respects it is resoluble into
> physical motions, than colour disappears because it is resoluble into
> vibrations. (Alexander 1914: 304)
>
>
>
The biology that informed Alexander's early (1889) work on
ethics survives in his account of mind: mind emerges in the world
through evolution. This theory of "emergent evolution" is
akin to that advanced by C. Lloyd Morgan; Alexander later references
Morgan's *Instinct and Experience* (1912). Alexander
adds here that the lowest level of existence is space and
time--that they are "the foundation of all
reality"--and he greatly expands on this view in his book
(1920).
On Alexander's realism, including the motivations underlying
it and the question of whether realism can be found in his
earliest work, see Weinstein (1984), Fisher (2017; 2021b),
and Thomas (2021).
### 3.2 *Space, Time, and Deity*
This difficult two-volume work sets out Alexander's grand
metaphysical picture, a sweeping system that offers a
cosmogony, an explanation of how the world came to be in its
current state; and a hierarchical ontology based on emergence
that attempts to account for matter, life, mind, value, and deity.
Alexander does not argue for this picture. Rather, he intends that his
picture should provide a description of the world. This is in line
with his general methodology.
>
>
> Philosophy proceeds by description; it only uses argument in order to
> help you to see the facts, just as a botanist uses a microscope.
> (Alexander 1921b: 423)
>
>
>
The idea is that *Space, Time, and Deity* offers a description
of the world that best fits the facts.
The first chapter of *Space, Time, and Deity* opens with
Alexander's proclamation that all the vital problems of
philosophy depend on space and time (Alexander 1920i: 35). Alexander
conceives space and time as the stuff out of which all things are
made: space and time are real and concrete, and out of them emerge
matter, life, and so on. Space and time are unified in a
four-dimensional manifold, spacetime. This single vast entity does not
move but contains all motions within itself, and so Alexander labels
it "Motion". In this respect, Alexander's spacetime
bears some resemblance to F. H. Bradley's (1893) Absolute:
neither Motion nor the Absolute move or exist in time, but they both
contain motion and time within themselves.
Alexander presents a metaphysical argument for the unity of space and
time, arguing they are merely distinguishable aspects of Motion. He
argues that space and time must be unified because, when abstracted
away from each other, it becomes clear that they could not exist
independently. Time would become a mere "now", incapable
of succession; and space would become a mere "blank",
without distinguishable elements (Alexander 1920i: 47). Motion is both
successive and boasts distinguishable elements - this is
*because* it is the union of space and time. Alexander's
metaphysical argument for this union was severely criticised by
Broad (1921a,b).[2]
Alexander considered his account of spacetime to be in line with the
physics of his day. The following might be understood as an
argument from physics for his position:
>
>
> Our purely metaphysical analysis of Space-Time on the basis of
> ordinary experience is in essence and spirit identical with
> Minkowski's conception of an absolute world of four dimensions,
> of which the three-dimensional world of geometry omits the element of
> time. (Alexander 1920i: 87)
>
>
>
Alexander goes on to distinguish between the characters of empirical
existents that are variable--such as life, redness or
sweetness--and those that are pervasive.
>
>
> [These pervasive qualities] belong in some form to all existents
> whatever. Such are identity (numerical identity for example),
> substance, diversity, magnitude, even number... The pervasive
> categories of existence are what are known from Kant's usage as
> the categories of experience, and I shall call them, in distinction
> from the empirical ones or qualities, categorial characters.
> (Alexander 1920i: 184-5)
>
>
>
Categorial qualities are the properties of spacetime, and this is why
the categories apply to all things within spacetime. This discussion
builds on Alexander's "The Method of Metaphysics; and the
Categories" (1912). In a later paper, "Some
Explanations" (1921b), which aims to answer critics'
worries, Alexander explains that the existence of the categories
implies the existence of something that contains them: spacetime.
>
>
> [F]or me the doctrine of the categories, taken along with the notion
> of S-T [spacetime], is central... What is "relation"
> in virtue of which duration is a whole of related successive moments?
> What does relation stand for in our experience? I answer that it
> already implies S-T, and that until it receives its concrete
> interpretation it is in metaphysics a word. (Alexander 1921b:
> 411-2)
>
>
>
The idea is that, by supposing the existence of spacetime, we explain
the existence of relations (characteristics of reality that hold
between all things). Similarly, the existence of spacetime explains
the existence of all other categories. For more on relations, see
Alexander's (1921b).
The second volume of *Space, Time, and Deity* asks how
spacetime is related to the various levels of existence within it:
matter, life, mind and deity. Alexander argues we should model the
emergence of levels within spacetime on the emergence of mind from
body:
>
>
> Empirical things are complexes of space-time with their qualities, and
> it is now my duty to attempt to show how the different orders of
> empirical existence are related to each other... [T]he nature of
> mind and its relation to body is a simpler problem in itself than the
> relation of lower qualities of existence to their inferior basis; and
> for myself it has afforded the clue to the interpretation of the lower
> levels of existence. (Alexander 1920ii: 3)
>
>
>
Analogous to the way that Alexander takes mind to emerge from body,
new levels of being emerge from spacetime when the motions within
spacetime become complex enough:
>
>
> Empirical things or existents are... groupings within Space-Time,
> that is, they are complexes of pure events or motions in various
> degrees of complexity. Such finites have all the categorial
> characters, that is, all the fundamental features which flow from the
> nature of any space-time... [A]s in the course of Time new
> complexity of motions comes into existence, a new quality
> emerges... The case which we are using as a clue is the emergence
> of the quality of consciousness from a lower level of complexity which
> is vital [i.e., life]. (Alexander 1920ii: 45)
>
>
>
Alexander has been criticised for explaining the emergence of
qualities within spacetime by analogy with mind-body emergence, as the
latter kind of emergence is rarely taken to be as unproblematic as
Alexander appears to conceive it. For more on this, see for example
Emmet (1950).
According to Alexander, the emergence of new levels of being within
spacetime is driven by a "nisus", a striving or felt push
towards some end:
>
>
> There is a nisus in Space-Time which, as it has borne its creatures
> forward through matter and life to mind, will bear them forward to
> some higher level of existence. (Alexander 1920ii: 346)
>
>
>
This means that the emergence of qualities in spacetime is not merely
a process, it is a progress. Exactly what the nisus *is* has
divided
commentators.[3]
but however it is best understood, it pushes the emergence of new
qualities within spacetime, and this includes the push towards
deity.
The second volume of *Space, Time, and Deity* also contains a
relatively brief discussion of beauty, and other forms of value.
Alexander hugely expands on this account in his 1933 monograph;
see Section 4.2 below.
Alexander engaged in extended correspondence on *Space, Time, and
Deity:* his letters with F. H. Bradley, C. D. Broad, and C.
Lloyd Morgan are particularly important. Some of the Bradley
correspondence can be found in Bradley's (1999) *Collected
Works*. Other letters can be found in Samuel Alexander
Papers, John Rylands Library, Manchester.
Secondary literature on Alexander's spacetime metaphysics
includes Brettschneider (1964), Broad (1921a,b), Murphy's
(1927-1928) series, Emmet (1950), Thomas (2013), Fisher (2015),
and Rush (2021). Schaffer's (2009) argues for the identification
of spacetime with matter, and traces this line of thought to
Alexander. Secondary literature on Alexander's account of
mind-body emergence include classic critiques from Broad (1921a,b),
Calkins (1923) and Emmet (1950). Stout (1922) discusses and rejects
Alexander's theory of perception. There has been more recent
work on Alexander's account of emergence in general; see
McLaughlin (1992), Gillet (2006), and O'Connor and Wong
(2012).
### 3.3 Philosophy of Religion
One of the optimistic conclusions of *Space, Time, and Deity*
is that, in the future, deity will emerge as a quality of the universe
as a whole. This deity-world emergence is akin to mind-body emergence.
In the following passage, Alexander explains that we should not
identity God with spacetime. Instead, the spacetime system is in the
process of "engendering" God:
>
>
> The universe, though it can be expressed without remainder in terms of
> Space and Time, is not merely spatio-temporal. It exhibits materiality
> and life and mind. It compels us to forecast the next empirical
> quality of deity. On the one hand, we have the totality of the world,
> which in the end is spatio-temporal; on the other the quality of deity
> engendered or rather being engendered, within that whole. These two
> features are united in the conception of the whole world as expressing
> itself in the character of deity, and it is this and not bare
> Space-Time which for speculation is the ideal conception of God.
> (Alexander 1920ii: 353-4)
>
>
>
For Alexander, God is the whole world possessing the quality of deity
(Alexander 1920ii: 353). However, the "whole world" does
not yet exist because Alexander's universe is one of process;
the universe is in progress towards becoming complete, and this is why
Alexander claims the universe is in process towards deity. The whole
world, which will possess the quality of deity, does not yet exist,
but part of it does: "As an actual existent, God is the infinite
world with its nisus towards deity" (Alexander 1920ii: 353). The
quality of deity has not yet arrived--and indeed, may never
arrive--but God exists in the sense that part of his body, the
growing world, does.
A potential problem for Alexander is that God is frequently perceived
as being atemporal. In contrast, on Alexander's system, God is
both spatial and temporal. Alexander recognises that this could be
considered a problem, but argues that in fact it is an advantage. If
God does not "precede" the world, but rather is the
product of it, you can avoid one formulation of the problem of
evil, on which God creates the world and allows suffering within it
(Alexander 1920ii: 399).
>
>
> God is then not responsible for the miseries endured in working out
> his providence, but rather we are responsible for our acts. (Alexander
> 1920ii: 400)
>
>
>
A created deity makes our positions as free agents more important.
Alexander's account of deity is explored further in his 1927
"Theism and Pantheism", reprinted in his
*Philosophical and Literary Pieces* (1939). This paper argues
that theology is a kind of science aiming to account for a
certain kind of experience: one's sense of the divine in the
world (Alexander 1939: 316). Alexander discusses a particular
philosophical problem facing theism, the question of whether
transcendence (i.e., being beyond the material world) and immanence
(i.e., living within the world) can be combined in one being, as is
often claimed of God. Alexander argues he can offer a solution: God
can be understood as being transcendent and immanent if he will emerge
from the world:
>
>
> God... is himself in the making, and his divine quality or deity
> a stage in time beyond the human quality. And as the root and leaves
> and sap of the plant feed its flower, so the whole world, as so far
> unrolled in the process of time, flowers into deity...
> God's deity is thus the new quality of the universe which
> emerges in its forward movement in time. (Alexander 1939: 330)
>
>
>
God is transcendent in the sense that he is still in the making, and
immanent in the sense that he will bloom from the whole world.
Extended discussions of Alexander's theism can be found in Titus
(1933) and Thomas (2016). Brief discussions can be found in
McCarthy (1948) and Stiernotte (1954). Emergentist
theologies, holding that in *some* sense God will emerge
from the universe, are currently enjoying a revival, and in this
context Clayton (2004) discusses Alexander's system as a rival
to his own.
## 4. Late Writings
### 4.1 History of Philosophy: Spinoza
After the publication of *Space, Time, and Deity*, Alexander
reportedly came across the system of Spinoza for the first time. In a
late series of papers, including *Spinoza and Time*
(1921a) and "Lessons from Spinoza" (1927), Alexander
reconstructs his system as a "gloss" of Spinoza.
Alexander argues that philosophy and physics has only just begun to
"Take time seriously" and, had Spinoza been aware of
these developments, his ontology would ultimately have resembled
Alexander's. Alexander particularly refers to the thesis that
space and time should be combined into the four dimensional manifold
spacetime.
Spinoza's *Ethics* argues there is only one substance, and
this substance is identical with God and nature. The substance has an
infinite number of attributes, including spatial extension, and it
supports an infinity of dependent modes. Alexander argues that his
system is similar to Spinoza's except that he understands the
single substance--Motion--to have only two attributes, space
and time.
>
>
> In our gloss upon Spinoza the ultimate reality is full of Time, not
> timeless but essentially alive with Time, and the theatre of incessant
> change. It is only timeless in the sense that taken as a whole it is
> not particularised to any one moment of duration, but comprehends them
> all... Reality is Space-Time or motion itself, infinite or
> self-contained and having nothing outside itself. (Alexander 1921a:
> 39)
>
>
>
Alexander argues his gloss solves problems
in Spinoza's original system. He also praises Spinoza for
successfully combining religious values and naturalism (Alexander
1927: 14). Alexander concludes one of his pieces on this topic by
saying that he takes pride in the similarity between his system and
Spinoza's (Alexander 1921a: 79). Alexander was corresponding at
this time with the Spinoza scholar Harold Joachim.
There is very little secondary literature on this aspect of
Alexander's thought, although Thomas (2013) has argued Alexander
is best understood through Spinoza.
### 4.2 Art and Other Forms of Value
Alexander's writing on art falls into two kinds. First, there
are essays on literature and art. These are all reprinted in
Alexander's (1939), and cover a wide range of
topics: from the art of Jane Austen, to the writings of Pascal,
to the origin of the creative impulse. Second, there are the pieces
comprising Alexander's account of value. Alexander's early
interest in ethics--exemplified in his first monograph
(1889)--survived in his later work as a preoccupation with the
nature of value, albeit with a focus on the aesthetic value of beauty.
Alexander's (1920) contained several chapters on the nature of
value, and he goes on to supplement these with further papers on the
same theme. These include "Naturalism and Value", and
"Value", both reprinted in Alexander's
*Philosophical and Literary Pieces* (1939); and "Morality
as An Art" (1928). These papers culminate in another monograph,
*Beauty and Other Forms of Value*
(1933), Alexander's most important work on the topic. His
writings on value are of greater philosophic interest than those on
literature and art.
The views that Alexander expresses in "Morality as An Art"
provide a useful introduction to his full account. In this paper,
Alexander argues we can fruitfully understand morality by comparing it
with fine art. He argues that, just as the value of beauty found in
art is a human construction, so are moral values:
>
>
> For it is the most obvious feature of fine art that it is a human
> construction. But it is not so evident that truth and morality are as
> much constructions of ours as beauty is... I am here to plead the
> opposite doctrine. The highest so-called values, truth, beauty, and
> goodness, are all of them human inventions, and the valuable is what
> satisfies certain human instincts or impulses. (Alexander 1928:
> 143)
>
>
>
An objection to this view is that beauty is not constructed; we might
find it in a natural landscape, for example. Alexander replies to this
that landscapes and other natural phenomena are rendered beautiful by
the parts that we pick out, akin to a photographer composing a
picture. As such, the beauty of nature is composed by us (Alexander
1928:149). This entails that there is no difference in kind between
natural beauty and art; for more on this, see Alexander's
"Art and the Material" (reprinted in Alexander 1939).
Alexander argues we construct values in response to certain needs. For
example, beauty satisfies the impulse of constructiveness in humans.
In "Value", Alexander connects human art to the dam
building of beavers (Alexander 1939: 296). Analogously, morality
satisfies the impulse of gregariousness or sociality in humans.
>
>
> [I]t is humanized out of the purely animal sociality... which we
> find in animals that live in herds like wild dogs, or form societies
> like bees. (Alexander 1928: 150)
>
>
>
*Beauty and other forms of Value* (1933) expands on this
account. Alexander perceives his naturalistic account of value to be
similar to that offered by Spinoza. In "Naturalism and
Value", Alexander tells us that Spinoza's is the
"true" naturalism: everything is extension, including
value, and yet everything is still divine (Alexander 1939: 279).
Building on the many smaller pieces that preceded it, *Beauty and
Other Forms of Value* provides a full naturalist account of value.
Alexander's approach is to discuss the supreme values in
turn, beginning with beauty, and moving on to truth and goodnes.
He continues down to lesser values. He aims to explain not just
what values are, but also how they came to be.
Alexander argues that anything can have value if it matters to a
thing. In this sense, food is valuable to an animal, and moisture is
valuable to a plant. However, the "supreme"
values--beauty, goodness and truth--can be distinguished
from others because they are the only values that are valuable in
themselves, for their own sake:
>
>
> When we come to the highest values, the beautiful, the true and the
> good, these in one respect are like wheat and apples: they are objects
> of a certain constitution--statues and sonatas, landscapes,
> generous deeds, chemistry. Their pre-eminence as values is that they
> have no being apart from their value. That is because they are not
> merely found, like apples, and their value, like the value of apples
> for food, then discovered, but are made to have value, come into
> existence along with their value. (Alexander 1933: 293)
>
>
>
The claim that these values come into existence along with their value
is of course referring to Alexander's thesis, also given in
his *Beauty and other forms of Value* (1933), that the
supreme values are human inventions.
As we saw above, Alexander argues that humans construct values in
response to certain needs or instincts. The final part of *Beauty
and Other Forms of Value* identifies the animal origin of our
supreme values. For example, there is an analogy to be drawn between
the social impulse in humans and in bees. "Naturalism and
Value" explains that in the same way that bees'
instinct for finding honey once seemed to be
"magical" and yet has been explained by biology in
naturalistic terms, similarly values appear to be magical and yet can
be explained naturally (Alexander 1939: 282). He goes on to argue that
Darwin's theory of evolution plays an important role in the
development of value:
>
>
> [T]he doctrine of natural selection may be described as the history of
> how value makes its entry into the organic world. So far as it is a
> necessary part of the process by which species are established, it is
> the principle which constitutes the history of value, for it shows how
> the mere interests of individual organisms come to be well-founded and
> to be values. (Alexander 1933: 287)
>
>
>
The idea is that, for animals, things that have value are usually
those that will further the survival of the species, such as food.
Animals whose interests do not help to maintain their existence
succumb under the conditions of their existence, and "leave the
field" for others. In this way, natural selection provides a
history of value. More on this can be found in Alexander's
"Naturalism and Value" (reprinted in Alexander 1939). This
integration of the theory of evolution into Alexander's
aesthetics should come as no surprise to us, being as it is a theme in
Alexander's larger work.
Alexander's writings on art and value were well received in
their day:
>
>
> [Alexander's] happy blending of Herbert Spencer's patient
> empiricism with the bolder systematic sweep of Bradley and the giant
> figures of German idealism was nowhere more fruitful than in his
> treatment of aesthetics. (Listowel 1939: 183)
>
>
>
The secondary literature includes Listowel (1939), Fox (1934),
Hooper (1950), and Innis (2017).
### 4.3 The Historicity of Things
"The Historicity of Things" (1936) is one of
Alexander's last papers. One reason it is valuable is
that it gives a concise overview of Alexander's spacetime
metaphysics in his own words. Another reason it is valuable is
that it tackles an unusual theme: the relationship between history and
nature. Alexander argues that while some of the contributions to
philosophy from science are clear, it is less clear what philosophy
can learn from history (Alexander 1936: 12). Alexander argues that, as
time and motion belong to the most fundamental level of reality, all
that exists is "historical". As such, science begins with
history:
>
>
> History can claim to be mistress of science, as much as mathematics,
> though in a different sense. They stand for the two vital elements in
> every science which cannot be separated, if they can be considered
> separately, the constructive process by which we discover by our
> thought the order inherent in things, and the raw material
> itself... It must be remembered, however, of course, that
> historical *science* is but one of the sciences which arise
> from the facts and happenings of the world. (Alexander 1936: 24)
>
>
>
Alexander's characterisation of history as having the whole
world as its subject matter is interesting not least because it proved
so controversial. Both R. G. Collingwood and Hilda Oakeley, two
philosophers of history associated with British idealism, took strong
issue with Alexander's description; see Collingwood's
reprinted *Principles of History* (1938 [1999: 56]) and
Oakeley's "The World as Memory and as History"
(1925-6).
Both Oakeley and Collingwood corresponded with Alexander, and what has
survived of their correspondence can be found in the Samuel Alexander
Papers at the John Rylands Library. The Alexander-Collingwood
correspondence has been published in Kobayashi (2021), who also
provides discussion.
## 5. Alexander's Legacy
Alexander's work impacted a wide variety of thinkers, and he was
especially widely read from the 1910s to the 1930s. His work was
used and referenced by the likes of British new realists Bertrand
Russell, G. E. Moore, and G. F. Stout, John Laird, C. D. Broad;
and by American realists Edwin B. Holt, and George P. Adams;
for a longer list, see Fisher (2021a).
The last decade has seen increasing scholarly interest in tracing
Alexander's influence on other philosophers. For example, his work was
also picked up by John Anderson, who attended Alexander's
1917-1918 Gifford lectures. Lines of thought stemming from
Alexander can be found in Anderson's Australian student, D.M.
Armstrong; and in American philosopher Donald C. Williams. On
Alexander's influence on Anderson and Armstrong, see Gillett
(2006), Fisher (2015), Cole (2018, SS1; SS5.2); and Weblin
(2021). On Williams, see Fisher (2015) and Williams (2021).
Metaphysician Dorothy Emmet's (2021) piece shows her work also
owed a lot to Alexander.
The extent of Alexander's intellectual relationship with
philosopher of history R. G. Collingwood is only recently coming to be
appreciated; see O'Neill (2006), Connelly (2021), and Kobayashi
(2021). Unusually for a realist, Alexander's work was also
picked up by at least two British idealists, May Sinclair and Hilda
Oakeley; see Thomas (2015; 2019). |
alexander-aphrodisias | ## 1. Life and Works
### 1.1 Date, Family, Teachers, and Influence
Next to nothing is known about Alexander's origin, life circumstances,
and career. His native city was (probably) the Aphrodisias in Caria,
an inland city of southwestern Asia Minor. His father's name was
Hermias. The only direct information about his date and activities is
the dedication of his *On Fate* to the emperors Septimius
Severus and Caracalla in gratitude for his appointment to an endowed
chair. Their co-reign lasted from 198 to 209 CE; this gives us a rough
date for at least one of Alexander's works. Nothing is known about his
background or his education, except that his teacher was Aristoteles
of Mytilene, rather than the more famous Aristocles of Messene, as had
been conjectured by certain scholars since the 16th. century. He is
also said to have been a student of Sosigenes and of Herminus, the
pupil of the commentator Aspasius, the earliest commentator on
Aristotle whose work has in part survived (for information concerning
Alexander's teachers and their philosophy, see Moraux 1984, 335-425).
How much Alexander owed to his teachers is hard to guess, for he
sometimes criticizes Sosigenes and Herminus extensively. But it is
clear from the scope and depth of his work that he was a well-trained
philosopher with a broad range of knowledge and interests.
Though the dedication to the emperors tells us that Alexander was
appointed to a chair in philosophy, there is not sufficient evidence
as to whether, as is often asserted, he obtained one of the four
chairs, representing the four traditional schools, established in
Athens by Marcus Aurelius in 176 CE. There were similar established
chairs in several cities (on Athens see Lynch 1972, 192-207;
213-216). Given the amount and scope of his writing he must have
been an active teacher with a flourishing school. It is therefore
possible that some of the short essays attributed to Alexander are
actually the production of one of his collaborators or disciples. But
nothing is known about any of his associates and students (cf.
Sharples 1990a). To us his work therefore represents both the heyday
and the end of the series of commentators who explained Aristotle
exclusively on the basis of Aristotelian texts, without commitment to
some other doctrine. Alexander concludes the series of these purely
'Peripatetic' commentators (beginning with Andronicus of
Rhodes in the first century BCE), who try to explain "Aristotle
by Aristotle" (Moraux 1942, xvi). Though later commentators,
starting with Porphyry, the disciple and editor of Plotinus, relied
heavily on his works, they had a Neo-Platonist approach. Since
Porphyry lived considerably later than Alexander (ca. 234-305/10
CE), Alexander's school may have continued to exist until it became
outmoded by the 'Neo-Platonist turn'. Porphyry's report
that Plotinus included texts by Alexander 'and related authors
in his discussions' (*The Life of Plotinus*, 14.13) makes
this quite likely. Alexander's commentaries formed a central part of
the Arabic tradition and was heavily used by Maimonides. It thereby
influenced the Latin West after the revival of Aristotelianism in the
Middle Ages. The scarcity of Latin translations of Alexander's
commentaries suggests a certain preference for the interpretation of
the later, Neoplatonist, commentators. If William of Moerbeke confined
his translations of Alexander's commentaries to those on the
*Meteorologica* and the *De sensu* that may in part be
due to the availability of Boethius' commentaries on Aristotle's
*Prior Analytics* and the *Topics*, but it leaves
unexplained why he did not translate the commentary on the
*Metaphysics*.
### 1.2 Works and their history
As the list of his work shows, Alexander was a prolific writer. His
writings comprise both commentaries (*hupomnemata*) on
the works of Aristotle and several systematic treatises of his own
(including works on 'problems', consisting of series of
essays on different Aristotelian texts and topics). Of the
commentaries, the following are extant: *On Prior Analytics*
*I*, *Topics, Metaphysics, Meteorologica,* and *On
Sense Perception*. Of the commentary on the *Metaphysics*
only the first five books are by general consent accepted as genuine;
the remaining nine books are attributed to the late commentator
Michael of Ephesus (11th-12th century CE.). The commentary on the
*Sophistical Refutations*, ascribed to Alexander in some
manuscripts, is considered spurious. References by later commentators
show that Alexander's commentaries covered all of Aristotle's
theoretical philosophy, including his physical writings (with the
exception of the biological works). The list of his lost work is long:
there are references to commentaries on the *Categories*,
*De interpretation*e, *Posterior Analytics*,
*Physics*, and *On the Heavens*, as well as *On the
Soul* and *On Memory*. Alexander did not write commentaries
on Aristotle's *Ethics* or *Politics*, nor on the
*Poetics* or the *Rhetoric*. That he had quite some
interest in ethical problems, however, is witnessed by the discussions
in his own treatises. Among the extant short systematic writings the
following are regarded as genuine: *Problems and Solutions, Ethical
Problems, On Fate*, *On Mixture and Increase*, *On the
Soul* and a *Supplement to On the Soul*
('Mantissa' lit. 'make-weight') that not only
contain discussions of questions concerning psychology but also
problems in physics, ethics, vision and light, as well as fate and
providence. The 'Mantissa' may not be by Alexander but a
compilation of notes by his students. The rest, *Medical Questions,
Physical Problems*, and *On Fevers* are considered
spurious. Of his lost works some have been preserved in Arabic because
they were highly influential (see D'Ancona & Serra 2002): *On
the Principles of the Universe*, *On Providence*,
*Against Galen on Motion*, and *On Specific
Differences*. Because of Alexander's prestige and authority as an
interpreter of Aristotle, many of his works now lost were incorporated
in the commentaries of his successors, whether they name him or not.
Nothing certain is known about the relative chronology of his
writings, but this is not an issue of much importance, since his
commentaries may well represent the results of many years of teaching,
with later insertions and additions, in a way quite similar to
Aristotle's own texts. This would explain the lack of any attempt at
elegance and the occurrence of inconsistencies or unclear transitions
in Alexander.
## 2. Alexander as commentator
In general, Alexander goes on the assumption that Aristotelian
philosophy is a unified whole, providing systematically connected
answers to virtually all the questions of philosophy recognized in his
own time. Where there is no single, clearly recognizable Aristotelian
point of view on some question, he leaves the matter undecided, citing
several possibilities consistent with what Aristotle says. Sometimes
Alexander tries to force an interpretation that does not obviously
agree with the text, but he avoids stating that Aristotle contradicts
himself and, with rare exceptions, that he disagrees with him. Readers
will not always be convinced by his suggestions but they will often
find them helpful and informative where Aristotle is overly compressed
and obscure. As a remark in his commentary on the *Topics*
shows, Alexander was quite aware that his style of philosophic
discussion was very different from that of the time of Aristotle
(*In top*. 27,13): "This kind of speech [dialectic
refutation] was customary among the older philosophers, who set up
most of their classes in this way -- not on the basis of books as
is now done, since at the time there were not yet any books of this
kind." As this explanation indicates, however, he seems to have
regarded the bookishness of his own time as an advantage over the
dialectic style rather than a disadvantage.
Like the other commentaries in the ancient tradition, Alexander's
derive from his courses of lectures ('readings') on
Aristotle's works. In commenting, Alexander usually refrains from
giving comprehensive surveys. He generally starts with a preface on
the work's title, its scope and the nature of the subject matter. He
then takes up individual passages in rough succession by citing a line
or two (this provides the '*lemma*' for the ensuing
discussion) and explaining what he considers as problematic (in
explanatory paraphrases, clarifications of expressions, or refutations
of the views of others), often in view of what Aristotle says about
the issue elsewhere. This procedure clearly presupposes that the
students had their own texts at hand and were sufficiently familiar
with Aristotle's philosophy as a whole. Alexander does not generally
go through the text line by line, but chooses to discuss certain
issues while omitting others. Paraphrases are interrupted by
clarifications of terminology, and sometimes, at crucial points, by
notes on divergent readings in different manuscripts and a
justification of his own preference concerning Aristotle's original
words. Decisions on such philological problems are based on what makes
better sense in conforming with Aristotle's intentions here or
elsewhere. As Alexander indicates, such philological explorations were
considered as part of the commentator's work (cf. *On Aristotle
Metaphysics* *A*, 59, 1-9): "The first reading,
however, is better; this makes it clear that the Forms are causes of
the essence for the other things, and the One for the Forms. Aspasius
relates that the former is the more ancient reading, but that it was
later changed by Eudorus and Euharmostus." Alexander's concern
with textual problems makes him a valuable source for textual
criticism, as can be seen from Kotwick's (2016) monograph on the text
of Aristotle's *Metaphysics*.
Though Alexander follows the Aristotelian texts quite conscientiously,
he often concentrates on special points and the respective passages
while passing over others with brief remarks. Thus in his comments on
the first book of Aristotle's *Metaphysics* he devotes more
than half of his exegesis to the two chapters in which Aristotle
attacks Plato's theory of Forms (*Metaph*. A, 6 & 9). Since
Aristotle there focuses on Plato's attempt to connect the Forms with
numbers, a theory that is not elaborated in the dialogues, Alexander's
disquisition turns out to be our most valuable source on the vexed
question of Plato's Unwritten Doctrine and also on the impact of this
doctrine on the members of the Early Academy (see Harlfinger &
Leszl, 1975; Fine 1993). Though on the whole Alexander adopts
Aristotle's critical stance towards Plato's separate Forms, he
sometimes at least indicates the possibility of dissent. When, for
instance, Aristotle claims that Plato recognizes only two of his own
four causes, the formal and the material cause, Alexander refers to
the demiurge's activities in the *Timaeus* as an example for an
efficient cause acting for the sake of a final cause. But then he adds
a justification to explain why Aristotle acknowledges neither of the
two causes in his report on Plato (59,28-60,2): "The
reason is either because Plato did not mention either of these in what
he said about the causes, as Aristotle has shown in his treatise
*On the Good*; or because he did not make them causes of the
things involved in generation and destruction, and did not even
formulate any complete theory about them."
There is not room here to discuss each of Alexander's commentaries
individually. Some remarks on his treatment of Aristotle's logic in
his commentary on *Prior Analytics I* can serve the purpose of
a general survey (cf. the Introduction in trsl. Barnes et al. 1991).
As his explanations show, Alexander was fully familiar with the
development of logic after Aristotle, under Theophrastus and the
Stoics. On the whole, he presents the Aristotelian kind of logic as
the obviously right one, treating the Stoic approach as wrong-headed.
When he confronts problems in Aristotle's syllogistic he sometimes
expresses bafflement, and indicates the difficulties or even
inconsistencies he sees in the text. But he usually tries to smooth
them over or offers an alleged Aristotelian solution. In any case he
avoids, if at all possible, openly criticizing Aristotle or
contradicting him. As his analyses show, Alexander was not an original
logician with innovative ideas of his own, as was his contemporary,
Galen. He does not always get Aristotle right and sometimes blunders
in his exegesis. In addition, his style is uninviting. If Aristotle is
hard to comprehend on account of his clipped and elliptic style,
Alexander is often hard to follow because of his long and tortuous
periods. In the past this has made his commentary on the *Prior
Analytics* inaccessible to all but experts. The English
translations try to make up for these deficiencies by cutting up long
periods into shorter sentences. This will greatly enhance the
usefulness of Alexander's reconstruction and assessment of those
aspects of Aristotle's logic that are still a matter of controversy
nowadays.
The idea that discrepancies in Aristotle's texts are due to the
development of his philosophy was as alien to Alexander as it was to
all other thinkers in antiquity. Instead, he treats Aristotle's
philosophy as a unitary whole and tries to systematize it by forging
together different trains of thought, and smoothing over
inconsistencies. Thereby he contributed to the emergence of what was
to become the canonical 'Aristotelianism' that was
attacked in early modern times as a severe obstacle to new ideas and
scientific development. Though Alexander indicates that he was aware
of changes at particular points (he regarded the *Categories*
as Aristotle's earliest work and notes that it does not yet observe
the systematic distinction between genus and species), he does not
consider the possibility that there were different phases with
substantial changes in the Master's work. If such conservatism
surprises us in view of the fact that Alexander's own work shows
traces of revisions and improvement, we must keep in mind that in the
eyes of 'The Commentator' Aristotle was an authority quite
outside the common order. The doctrine of the Master was not the
product of an ordinary human mind, subject to trial and error, but a
magisterial achievement in a class of its own.
## 3. Alexander as philosopher
As a philosopher, Alexander presents in his writings an Aristotelian
point of view that reflects in many ways the conditions of his own
time, on questions that were not or not extensively discussed by
Aristotle himself. His *Problems and Solutions*
(*Quaestiones*), in three books, are collections of short
essays, which were apparently grouped together in different books
already in antiquity. As their Greek title (*phusikai scholikai
aporiai kai luseis*. lit. 'School-discussion of problems and
solutions on nature', cf. Sharples 1992, 3) indicates, these
three books address problems in natural philosophy in the broadest
sense. The fourth collection, *Problems of Ethics*
(*ethika problemata*) proceeds in a similar way. As
the lists of the essays' titles at the beginning of each book
show, the collections contain a hodgepodge of topics, arranged in a
quite loose order. The intellectual level of these discussions is
uneven and the titles of the treatises are sometimes misleading. Some
of essays do present problems and solutions, but others contain
exegeses of problematic passages in Aristotle's texts. There are also
mere paraphrases or summaries of certain texts, collections of
arguments for a certain position, and sketches of larger projects that
were never worked out. It is unclear when and by whom these
collections were put together. As mentioned above, some of the essays
may be the work of Alexander's associates, or lecture-notes taken by
his students. Most interesting from our point of view are those
questions that deal with metaphysical issues, like the relation of
form and matter, and with the status of universals in general (see
Tweedale 1984, Sharples 2005, and Sirkel 2011). Of particular interest
are also those discussions in book II that are concerned with certain
aspects of Aristotle's psychology, because Alexander's commentary on
the *De anima* is lost; they supplement his treatise *On the
Soul*. Of special interest here is his work that has been dubbed
'*De anima libri Mantissa*' (=
'makeweight' for his book *On the Soul*) by its
first modern editor, I. Bruns. Of interest are also the essays on the
notion of providence (an important topic at Alexander's time, in part
due to the influence of the Stoics' focus on divine providence).
These essays defend the view that while there is no special care for
individuals, providence over the objects in the sublunary sphere is
exercised by the movement of the heavenly bodies in the sense that
they preserve the continuity of the species on earth.
Since Alexander did not write a commentary on Aristotle's ethics, his
*Ethical Problems*, despite their somewhat disorganized state,
are of considerable interest (cf. Madigan 1987; Sharples 1990; 2001,
2). For, apart from Aspasius' early commentary on parts of the
*Nicomachean Ethics* there are no extant commentaries on
Aristotle's ethics before the composite commentary by various hands of
the Byzantine age (Michael of Ephesus in the 11th/12th c. and his
contemporary Eustratius, together with some material extracted from
earlier authors, cf. Sharples 1990, 6-7, 95). This gap may
suggest that ethics had become a marginal subject in later antiquity.
Alexander's *Ethical Problems* are therefore the only link
between Aspasius and the medieval commentaries. Though Alexander's
collection of essays displays no recognizable order, it is worth
studying because many of the 'questions' address central
issues in Aristotle's ethics. Some, for instance, are concerned with
the notion of pleasure as a good and pain as an evil; with pleasure as
a supplement of activity supporting its connection with happiness;
with the relation between virtues and vices; with virtue as a mean;
and with the concept of the involuntary and the conditions of
responsibility. Alexander's discussions confirm not only his thorough
familiarity with Aristotle's ethics, but also reflect the debates of
the Peripatetics with the Epicureans and Stoics in Hellenistic times,
as shown especially by the terminology he uses. The Hellenistic
background also explains the fact that Alexander pays special
attention to logical and physical distinctions in connection with
ethical problems.
The best example of his procedure is Alexander's construal of an
Aristotelian conception of fate in the treatise *On Fate*.
Though its long, and at times inelegant, passages do not make for easy
reading, this is no doubt the essay that is most interesting for a
general public (cf. Sharples 1983 and 2001, 1). Not only is it the
most comprehensive surviving document in the centuries-long debate on
fate, determinism, and free will that was carried on between the
Stoics, the Epicureans and the Academic Skeptics, it also contains
some original suggestions and points of criticism, as a comparison
with Cicero's *On Fate* would show. It is unclear whether there
had been a genuinely Peripatetic contribution to this debate before
Alexander. If there was not, Alexander clearly filled a significant
gap. Though Aristotle himself in a way touches on all important
aspects of the problem of determinism -- logical, physical, and
ethical -- in different works, he was not greatly concerned with
this issue, nor does he entertain the notion of fate
(*heimarmene*) as a rational cosmic ordering-force, as
the Stoics were going to introduce. In *De interpretatione* 9,
he famously proposed to solve the problem of 'future
truth' by suspending truth-values for statements in the future
tense concerning individual contingent events. In his ethics he deals
with the question of whether individuals have free choice, once their
character is settled. As Aristotle sees it, there is little or no
leeway, but he holds individuals responsible for their actions because
they collaborated in the acquisition of their character (*EN*
III, 1-5). In his physical works Aristotle limits strict
necessity to the motions of the stars, while allowing for a wide range
of events in the sublunary realm that do not happen of necessity but
only for the most part or by chance (*Phys*. II, 4-6).
Though he subscribes to the principle that the same causal
constellations have the same effects, he also allows for 'fresh
starts' in a causal series (*Metaph*. E 3). Given these
various limitations, Aristotle had no reason to treat determinism as a
central philosophical problem either in his ethics or in his physics.
The situation changed, however, once the Stoics had established a
rigorously physicalist system ruled by an all-pervasive divine mind.
It is this radicalization of the determinist position that sharpened
the general consciousness of the problematic, as witnessed by the
relentless attacks on the Stoics by their opponents, most of all by
the Academic skeptics and the Epicureans, which lasted for
centuries.
This long-standing debate prompted Alexander to develop an
Aristotelian concept of fate by identifying it with the natural
constitution of things, including human nature (*On Fate*, ch.
2-6). Since there is always the possibility that something
happens against the natural and normal order of things, there are
exceptions to what is 'fated' and there is room for chance
and the fortuitous. Most of the treatise is occupied not with the
defense of this Peripatetic position, but rather with attacks on the
various aspects of the determinist position. Alexander claims to show
why the Stoics' attempt (though he nowhere names them) to defend
a compabilitist position must fail. The determinists, he says, are
neither entitled to maintain a coherent concept of luck and the
fortuitous, nor of contingency and possibility, nor of deliberation
and potency. The bulk of this polemical discussion concentrates on the
difficulties for the Stoic position by claiming that their concept of
fate makes human deliberation superfluous and therefore imports
disastrous consequences for human morality and life in general (chs.
7-21). Alexander also presents, albeit in a dialectical fashion
intended to lead to the defeat of the Stoic tenets, the arguments used
by the Stoics in their defense of contingency, chance, and human
responsibility. As he claims time and again, the Stoics can defend the
use of these terms at best in a verbal sense. In addition, their
notion of divine foreknowledge and prophecy turns out to be incoherent
(chs. 22-35). The stringency and originality of Alexander's
critique cannot be discussed here (cf. Sharples 1983; Bobzien 1998).
While his presentation is not free from repetition and while the order
of the arguments leaves something to be desired, it is an interesting
text that displays a lively engagement with the issues and quite some
philosophical sophistication. He argues that truly free action
requires that at the time one acts, it is open to one both to do and
not to do what one does in fact then do. Thus Alexander originates the
position later known as 'libertarianism' in the theory of
free action. Alexander's construction of an Aristotelian account of
fate and divine providence that limits them to nature and its overall
benign order clearly argues for a weak conception of fate; but it is
the only one that Alexander regards as compatible with the principles
of Aristotelian philosophy of nature and ethics. That the concept of
fate greatly intrigued him is confirmed by the fact that he returns to
the issue in his addendum ('Mantissa') to the treatise
*On the Soul* and in some of his *Problems* (2.4.5, cf.
Sharples 1983, esp. the Introduction).
The attempt to 'naturalize' crucial concepts in
Aristotle's philosophy is typical of Alexander's philosophical stance
in general. He regards universals as inseparable from particulars and
as secondary to them, and stresses the unity of matter and form.
Similarly, he treats the human soul as the perishable form imposed
upon the bodily elements to constitute a living human being. He argues
that the intellect develops from an embodied intellect (that is
focused upon the material world) to a state that eventually contains
forms that are not embodied. He rules out personal immortality by
identifying the active intellect with pure form and with God, the
Unmoved Mover (see *On the Soul* and Caston 2012). In his
emphasis on a naturalist point of view he appears remarkably free from
the increasingly spiritualistic and mystical tendencies of his own
time. In the treatise *On Mixture and Increase* Alexander
expands on problems that Aristotle touched upon only briefly in *On
Generation and Corruption* I 10, but his main concern is --
as it is in his *On Fate* -- to prove that the Stoic
position of a 'thorough' mixture of two substances cannot
be maintained. These treatises suggest that at the beginning of the
third century philosophical discussions between the traditional
schools were still lively. We have, of course, no other evidence on
that issue. But there would be little point in proving the superiority
of the Peripatetic doctrine, as he does in *On Fate*, to the
emperors if the issue was by general consent regarded as obsolescent.
It is unlikely, therefore, that Alexander's polemics are only a kind
of shadow-boxing against long-gone adversaries.
## 4. Importance and Influence
There is no information concerning the impact of Alexander's teaching
in his lifetime. But certain indications of critical attacks on his
contemporary Galen (129-216 CE) suggest that he was engaged in
controversy with other contemporaries as well. Whether his polemics
against contemporary versions of Stoic doctrine were part of a
personal exchange or rather a bookish exercise is unclear. If
Alexander held the chair of Peripatetic philosophy at Athens it is
quite possible that he was in direct contact with the incumbents of
the other philosophical chairs there. He was, of course, not the first
commentator on Aristotle. But posterior exegetes certainly treated as
exemplary his method and his standards for explaining problems and
obscurities in Aristotle's texts. This is indicated both by explicit
references in later commentators and by the unacknowledged
exploitation of his work in some extant later commentaries on the same
texts. As the translations of his work into Arabic and, to a lesser
degree, into Latin show, he continued to be treated as a leading
authority and his work influenced the Aristotelian tradition
throughout late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance.
Scholars nowadays continue to make use of his commentaries, not only
for historical reasons but also because his suggestions are often
worth considering in their own right. Because in recent years much
more attention has been paid to the philosophers in late antiquity,
not only to the Neo-Platonists, Alexander's work has come under
detailed scrutiny in various respects by specialists, as witnessed by
an increase in publications both on general and on special aspects of
his exegetical and philosophical work. The accessibility of most of
his writings in English translations will make apparent to a more
general readership that Alexander's work is not only relevant for
specialists in the history of philosophy, but opens up an interesting
age of transition in the history of philosophical and scientific
ideas. |
algebra | ## 1. Elementary algebra
Elementary algebra deals with numerical terms, namely
*constants* 0, 1, 1.5, \(\pi\), *variables* \(x,
y,\ldots\), and combinations thereof built with *operations*
such as \(+\), \(-\), \(\times\) , \(\div\) , \(\sqrt{\phantom{x}}\),
etc. to form such terms as \(x+1, x\times y\) (standardly abbreviated
\(xy\)), \(x + 3y\), and \(\sqrt{x}\).
Terms may be used on their own in *formulas* such as \(\pi
r^2\), or in equations serving as *laws* such as \(x+y = y+x\),
or as *constraints* such as \(2x^2 -x+3 = 5x+1\) or \(x^2 + y^2
= 1\).
Laws are always true; while they have the same form as constraints
they constrain only vacuously in that every valuation of their
variables is a solution. The constraint \(x^2 +y^2 = 1\) has a
continuum of solutions forming a *shape*, in this case a circle
of radius 1. The constraint \(2x^2 -x+3 = 5x-1\) has two solutions,
\(x = 1\) or 2, and may be encountered in the solution of *word
problems*, or in the determination of the points of intersection
of two curves such as the parabola \(y = 2x^2 -x+3\) and the line \(y
= 5x-1\).
### 1.1 Formulas
A formula is a term used in the computation of values by hand or
machine. Although some attributes of physical objects lend themselves
to direct measurement such as length and mass, others such as area,
volume, and density do not and must be computed from more readily
observed values with the help of the appropriate formula. For example
the area of a rectangle \(L\) inches long by \(W\) inches wide is
given by the formula \(LW\) in units of square inches, the volume of a
ball of radius \(r\) is \(4\pi r^3 /3\), and the density of a solid of
mass \(M\) and volume \(V\) is given by \(M/V\).
Formulas may be combined to give yet more formulas. For example the
density of a ball of mass \(M\) and radius \(r\) can be obtained by
substituting the above formula for the volume of a ball for \(V\) in
the above formula for the density of a solid. The resulting formula
\(M/(4\pi r^3 /3)\) is then the desired density formula.
### 1.2 Laws
Laws or identities are equations that hold for all applicable values
of their variables. For example the commutativity law
\[ x+y = y+x \]
holds for all real values of \(x\) and \(y\). Likewise the
associativity law
\[ x+(y+z) = (x+y)+z \]
holds for all real values of \(x, y\) and \(z\). On the other hand,
while the law \(x/(y/z) = zx/y\) holds for all numerical values of
\(x\), it holds only for nonzero values of \(y\) and \(z\) in order to
avoid the illegal operation of division by zero.
When a law holds for all numerical values of its variables, it also
holds for all expression values of those variables. Setting \(x = M, y
= 4\pi r^3\), and \(z = 3\) in the last law of the preceding paragraph
yields \(M/(4\pi r^3 /3) = 3M/(4\pi r^3)\). The left hand side being
our density formula from the preceding section, it follows from this
instance of the above law that its right hand side is an equivalent
formula for density in the sense that it gives the same answers as the
left hand side. This new density formula replaces one of the two
divisions by a multiplication.
### 1.3 Word problems
If Xavier will be three times his present age in four years time, how
old is he? We can solve this *word problem* using algebra by
formalizing it as the equation \(3x = x + 4\) where \(x\) is
Xavier's present age. The left hand side expresses three times
Xavier's present age, while the right hand side expresses his
age in four years' time.
A general rule for solving such equations is that any solution to it
is also a solution to the equation obtained by applying some operation
to both sides. In this case we can simplify the equation by
subtracting \(x\) from both sides to give \(2x = 4\), and then
dividing both sides by 2 to give \(x = 2\). So Xavier is now two years
old.
If Xavier is twice as old as Yvonne and half the square of her age,
how old is each? This is more complicated than the previous example in
three respects: it has more unknowns, more equations, and terms of
higher degree. We may take \(x\) for Xavier's age and \(y\) for
Yvonne's age. The two constraints may be formalized as the
equations \(x = 2y\) and \(x = y^2 /2\), the latter being of degree 2
or *quadratic*.
Since both right hand sides are equal to \(x\) we can infer \(2y = y^2
/2\). It is tempting to divide both sides by \(y\), but what if \(y =
0\)? In fact \(y = 0\) is one solution, for which \(x = 2y = 0\) as
well, corresponding to Xavier and Yvonne both being newborns. Setting
that solution to one side we can now look for solutions in which \(y\)
is not zero by dividing both sides by \(y\). This yields \(y = 4\), in
which case \(x = 2y = 8\). So now we have a second solution in which
Xavier is eight years old and Yvonne four.
In the absence of any other information, both solutions are
legitimate. Had the problem further specified that Yvonne was a
toddler, or that Xavier was older than Yvonne, we could have ruled out
the first solution.
### 1.4 Cartesian geometry
Lines, circles, and other curves in the plane can be expressed
algebraically using *Cartesian coordinates*, named for its
inventor Rene Descartes. These are defined with respect to a
distinguished point in the plane called the *origin*, denoted
\(O\). Each point is specified by how far it is to the right of and
above \(O\), written as a pair of numbers. For example the pair (2.1,
3.56) specifies the point 2.1 units to the right of \(O\), measured
horizontally, and 3.56 units above it, measured vertically; we call
2.1 the \(x\) coordinate and 3.56 the \(y\) coordinate of that point.
Either coordinate can be negative: the pair \((-5, -1)\) corresponds
to the point 5 units to the left of \(O\) and 1 unit below it. The
point \(O\) itself is coordinatized as (0, 0).
*Lines.* Given an equation in variables \(x\) and \(y\), a
point such as (2, 7) is said to be a *solution* to that
equation when setting \(x\) to 2 and \(y\) to 7 makes the equation
true. For example the equation \(y = 3x+5\) has as solutions the
points (0, 5), (1, 8), (2, 11), and so on. Other solutions include
(.5, 6.5), (1.5, 9.5), and so on. The set of all solutions constitutes
the unique straight line passing through (0, 5) and (1, 8). We then
call \(y = 3x+5\) the *equation of* that line.
*Circles.* By Pythagoras's Theorem the square of the
distance between two points \((x, y)\) and \((x', y')\) is given by
\((x'-x)^2 +(y'-y)^2\). As a special case of this, the square of the
distance of the point \((x, y)\) to the origin is \(x^2 +y^2\). It
follows that those point at distance \(r\) from the origin are the
solutions in \(x\) and \(y\) to the equation \(x^2 +y^2 = r^2\). But
these points are exactly those forming the circle of radius \(r\)
centered on \(O\). We identify this equation with this circle.
*Varieties* The roots of any polynomial in \(x\) and \(y\) form
a curve in the plane called a *one-dimensional variety* of
*degree* that of the polynomial. Thus lines are of degree 1,
being expressed as polynomials \(ax+by+c\), while circles centered on
\((x', y')\) are of degree 2, being expressed as polynomials
\((x-x')^2 +(y-y')^2 -r^2\). Some varieties may contain no points, for
example \(x^2 +y^2 +1\), while others may contain one point, for
example \(x^2 +y^2\) having the origin as its one root. In general
however a two-dimensional variety will be a curve. Such a curve may
cross itself, or have a cusp, or even separate into two or more
components not connected to each other.
*Space* The two-dimensional plane is generalized to
three-dimensional space by adding to the variables \(x\) and \(y\) a
third variable \(z\) corresponding to the third dimension. The
conventional orientation takes the first dimension to run from west to
east, the second from south to north, and the third from below to
above. Points are then triples, for example the point \((2, 5, -3)\)
is 2 units to the east of the origin, 5 units to the north of it, and
3 units below it.
*Planes and spheres*. These are the counterparts in space of
lines and circles in the plane. An equation such as \(z = 3x + 2y\)
defines not a straight line but rather a flat plane, in this case the
unique plane passing through the points (0, 1, 2), (1, 0, 3), and (1,
1, 5). And the sphere of radius \(r\) centered on the origin is given
by \(x^2 +y^2 +z^2 = r^2\). The roots of a polynomial in \(x, y\) and
\(z\) form a surface in space called a two-dimensional variety, of
degree that of the polynomial, just as for one-dimensional varieties.
Thus planes are of degree 1 and spheres of degree 2.
These methods generalize to yet higher dimensions by adding yet more
variables. Although the geometric space we experience physically is
limited to three dimensions, conceptually there is no limit to the
number of dimensions of abstract mathematical space. Just as a line is
a one-dimensional subspace of the two-dimensional plane, and a plane
is a two-dimensional subspace of three-dimensional space, each
specifiable with an equation, so is a *hyperplane* a
three-dimensional subspace of four-dimensional space, also specifiable
with an equation such as \(w = 2x - 7y + z\).
## 2. Abstract Algebra
Elementary algebra fixes some domain, typically the reals or complex
numbers, and works with the equations holding within that domain.
*Abstract* or *modern algebra* reverses this picture by
fixing some set \(A\) of equations and studying those domains for
which those equations are identities. For example if we take the set
of all identities expressible with the operations of addition,
subtraction, and multiplication and constants 0 and 1 that hold for
the integers, then the algebras in which those equations hold
identically are exactly the commutative rings with identity.
Historically the term modern algebra came from the title of the first
three editions of van der Waerden's classic text of that name,
renamed simply "Algebra" for its fourth edition in 1955.
Volume 1 treated groups, rings, general fields, vector spaces, well
orderings, and real fields, while Volume 2 considered mainly linear
algebra, algebras (as vector spaces with a compatible multiplication),
representation theory, ideal theory, integral algebraic elements,
algebraic functions, and topological algebra. On the one hand modern
algebra has since gone far beyond this curriculum, on the other this
considerable body of material is already more than what can be assumed
as common knowledge among graduating Ph.D. students in mathematics,
for whom the typical program is too short to permit mastering all this
material in parallel with focusing on their area of
specialization.
A core feature of abstract algebra is the existence of domains where
familiar laws fail to hold. A striking example is commutativity of
multiplication, which as we noted in the introduction need not hold
for the multiplication of an arbitrary group, even so simple a group
as the six permutations of three letters.
### 2.1 Semigroups
We begin with the concept of a binary operation on a set \(X\), namely
a function \(f: X^2 \rightarrow X\) such that \(f(x, y)\) is an
element of \(X\) for all elements \(x, y\) of \(X\). Such an operation
is said to be *associative* when it satisfies \(f(f(x, y), z) =
f(x, f(y, z))\) for all \(x, y, z\) in \(X\).
A *semigroup* is a set together with an associative operation,
called the *multiplication* of the semigroup and notated \(xy\)
rather than \(f(x, y)\).
The product \(xx\) of an element with itself is denoted \(x^2\).
Likewise \(xxx\) is denoted \(x^3\) and so on.
*Examples*
* The set of all nonempty words over a given alphabet under the
operation of concatenation.
* The set of all functions \(f: X \rightarrow X\) on a set \(X\)
under the operation of function composition.
* The set of integer \(n\times n\) matrices under matrix
multiplication, for a fixed positive integer \(n\).
Concatenation \(uv\) of words \(u, v\) is associative because when a
word is cut into two, the concatenation of the two parts is the
original word regardless of where the cut is made. The concatenation
of **al** and **gebra** is the same as that
of **algeb** and **ra**, illustrating
associativity of concatenation for the case \(x = \)
**al**, \(y =\) **geb**, \(z =\)
**ra**.
Composition \(f\cdot g\) of two functions \(f\) and \(g\) is
associative via the reasoning
\[\begin{align\*}
(f\cdot(g\cdot h))(x) &= f((g\cdot h)(x)) \\
&= f(g(h(x))) \\
&=(f\cdot g)(h(x)) \\
&=((f\cdot g)\cdot h)(x)
\end{align\*}\]
for all \(x\) in \(X\), whence \(f\cdot(g\cdot h) = (f\cdot g)\cdot
h\).
A semigroup \(H\) is a *subsemigroup* of a semigroup \(G\) when
\(H\) is a subset of \(G\) and the multiplication of \(G\) restricted
to \(H\) coincides with that of \(H\). Equivalently a subsemigroup of
\(G\) is a subset \(H\) of \(G\) such that for all \(x, y\) in \(H,
xy\) is in \(H\).
*Examples*
* The semigroup of all nonempty words over a given alphabet has as a
subsemigroup the words of even length; however the words of odd length
do not form a subsemigroup because the concatenation of two odd-length
words is not of odd length.
* The semigroup of all functions \(f: X \rightarrow X\) on a set
\(X\) under function composition has as subsemigroups the injective or
one-to-one functions, the surjective or onto functions, and the
bijections or permutations.
A binary operation is called *commutative* when it satisfies
\(f(x, y) = f(y, x)\) for all \(x, y\) in \(X\). A *commutative
semigroup* is a semigroup whose operation is commutative. All the
examples so far have been of noncommutative semigroups. The following
illustrate the commutative case.
*Examples*
* The set of positive integers under addition.
* The set of all integers under addition.
* The set of words on a one-letter alphabet under
concatenation.
* The set \(\{0, 1\}\) of bits (binary digits) under any of the
operations AND, OR, XOR.
* The set \(2^X\) of subsets of a fixed set \(X\) under any of the
set theoretic operations intersection, union, symmetric
difference.
* The set of vectors in the upper right quadrant of the plane under
vector addition.
* The same but omitting the origin.
* The set of all three-dimensional vectors under vector
addition.
* The set of polynomials in one variable \(x\) with integer
coefficients under polynomial addition.
* The set of integer \(m\times n\) matrices under matrix addition,
for fixed positive integers \(m,n\).
An element \(x\) of \(X\) is a *left identity* for \(f\) when
\(f(x, y) = y\) for all \(y\) in \(X\), and a *right identity*
when \(f(y, x) = y\) for all \(y\) in \(X\). An *identity* for
\(f\) is an element that is both a left identity and a right identity
for \(f\). An operation \(f\) can have only one identity, because when
\(x\) and \(y\) are identities they are both equal to \(f(x,y)\).
A *monoid* is a semigroup containing an identity for the
multiplication of the semigroup, notated 1.
*Examples*
* The identity for concatenation is the empty word. Hence words
under concatenation form a monoid when the empty word is allowed.
* The identity for addition is zero, or the origin in the case of
vector addition. Hence any of the above examples of semigroups for
which the operation is addition forms a monoid if and only if it
contains zero.
* The identity for composition is the identity function \(1\_X : X
\rightarrow X\) defined as \(1\_X (x) = x\) for all \(x\) in \(X\),
whence the semigroup of all functions on a set \(X\) forms a
monoid.
A monoid \(H\) is a *submonoid* of a monoid \(G\) when it is a
subsemigroup of \(G\) that includes the identity of \(G\).
### 2.2 Groups
When two elements \(x, y\) of a monoid satisfy \(xy = 1\) we say that
\(x\) is the left inverse of \(y\) and \(y\) is the right inverse of
\(x\). An element \(y\) that is both a left and right inverse of \(x\)
is called simply an inverse of \(x\).
A *group* is a monoid every element of which has an
inverse.
The cardinality of a group is traditionally referred to
as its *order*. A group element \(g\) is said to be of order
\(n\) when \(n\) is the least positive integer for which \(g^n = 1\).
*Examples*
* The monoid of integers under addition, because every integer \(x\)
has inverse \(-x\).
* The set \(\{0, 1\}\) of bits (binary digits) under the operation
\(\XOR\), because each bit is its own inverse: \(0 \XOR 0 = 1 \XOR 1 =
0\). This is just the case \(n = 2\) of the monoid
\(\{0,1,2,\ldots,n-1\}\) of integers mod(ulo) \(n\) under addition mod
\(n\) (e.g. \(3 + 4 = 2\) (mod 5)). Here 0 is its own inverse and the
inverse of \(m\) when nonzero is \(n - m\).
* The monoid \(S\_X\) of bijections or permutations \(f: X
\rightarrow X\) under composition, because every permutation has an
inverse \(f^{-1}\). When \(X\) has \(n\) elements \(S\_n\) is of order
\(n!\). \(S\_n\) is abelian if and only if \(n \le 2\).
* The monoid of rotations of the plane about a point under
composition, because every rotation can be reversed. This group is
called the circle group, denoted SO(2).
* The monoid of rotations of three-dimensional space about a point
under composition, again because every rotation can be reversed. This
group is denoted SO(3).
* The monoid of symmetries (rotations and reflections) of the
regular \(n\)-gon about its center that carry the \(n\)-gon into
itself, again by reversibility. This group is called the *dihedral
group* \(D\_n\), and is of order \(2n\). Like \(S\_n, D\_n\) is
abelian if and only if \(n \le 2\); in particular \(D\_3 = S\_3\).
A *subgroup* of a group \(G\) is a submonoid of \(G\) closed
under inverses. The monoids of natural numbers and of even integers
are both submonoids of the monoid of integers under addition, but only
the latter submonoid is a subgroup, being closed under negation,
unlike the natural numbers.
An *abelian group* is a group whose operation is commutative.
The group operation of an abelian group is conventionally referred to
as addition rather than multiplication, and abelian groups are
sometimes called additive groups.
A *cyclic* group is a group \(G\) with an element \(g\) such
that every element of \(G\) is of the form \(g^i\) for some positive
integer \(i\). Cyclic groups are abelian because \(g^{i}g^j = g^{i +
j} = g^j g^{i}\). The group of integers under addition, and the groups
of integers mod \(n\) for any positive integer \(n\), all form cyclic
groups, with 1 as a generator in every case. All cyclic groups are
isomorphic to one of these. There are always other generators when the
group is of order 3 or more, for example \(-1\), and for groups of
prime order every nonzero element is a generator.
### 2.3 Rings
A *ring* is an abelian group that is also a monoid by virtue of
having a second operation, called the *multiplication* of the
ring. Zero *annihilates*, meaning that \(0x = x0 = 0\).
Furthermore multiplication distributes over addition (the group
operation) in both arguments. That is, \(x(y+z) = xy + xz\) and
\((x+y)z = xz + yz\).
*Examples*
* The additive group of integers expanded with the operation of
integer multiplication.
* The additive group of polynomials in one variable \(x\) with
integer coefficients expanded with polynomial
multiplication.
* The additive group of integer \(n\times n\) matrices, for a fixed
positive integer *n,* expanded with matrix
multiplication.
* The group of numbers of the form \(a+b\sqrt{2}\) where \(a\) and
\(b\) are integer, because \((a+b\sqrt{2})(c+d\sqrt{2}) =
ac+2bd+(bc+ad)\sqrt{2}\).
* The group of integers mod \(n\) for \(n \ge 2\), because
\((x+an)(y+bn) = xy + (xb + ya + abn)n\).
In all but the last example, the integers (other than the integer
\(n\) giving the size of the matrices) may be replaced by any of the
rationals, the reals, or the complex numbers. When replacing the
integers with the reals the fourth example becomes simply the ring of
reals because even if \(b\) is zero \(a\) can be any real. However
when replacing with the rational numbers the ring includes the
rationals, but is more than that because \(\sqrt{2}\) is irrational,
yet it does not contain for example \(\sqrt{3}\).
### 2.4 Fields
A *field* is a ring for which the multiplicative monoid of
nonzero ring elements is an abelian group. That is, multiplication
must be commutative, and every nonzero element \(x\) must have a
reciprocal \(1/x\).
*Examples*
* The ring of rationals, because rational multiplication is
commutative and every nonzero rational \(m/n\) has reciprocal
\(n/m\).
* The ring of reals, and the ring of complex numbers, for the
analogous reasons.
* The ring of numbers of the form \(a+b\sqrt{2}\) where \(a\) and
\(b\) are rational, because \(a+b\sqrt{2}\) is zero only when
\(a=b=0\), and otherwise has reciprocal \((a-b\sqrt{2})/(a^2 -2b^2
)\); called the field of *quadratic irrationals*.
* The ring \(Z\_p\) of integers modulo a prime \(p\), because the
multiplicative monoid of nonzero numbers includes a number \(g\) such
that \(g^{p-1} = 1\) and every nonzero number has the form \(g^i\) for
some integer \(i\), and hence has an inverse, namely
\(g^{p-1-i}\).
The last example does not generalize directly to other moduli. However
for any modulus that is a power \(p^n\) of a prime, it can be shown
that there exists a unique multiplication making the group \(Z\_{p^n}\)
a ring in a way that makes the nonzero elements of the ring a cyclic
(and therefore abelian) group under the multiplication, and hence
making the ring a field. The fields constructed in this way are the
only finite fields.
### 2.5 Applications
Why study entire classes? Well, consider for example the set \(Z\) of
integers along with the binary operation of addition \(x+y\), the
unary operation of negation \(-x\), and the constant 0. These
operations and the constant satisfy various laws such as \(x+(y+z) =
(x+y)+z, x+y = y+x, x+0 = x\), and \(x+(-x) = 0\). Now consider any
other algebra with operations that not only have the same names but
also satisfy the same laws (and possibly more), called a
*model* of those laws. Such an algebra could serve any of the
following purposes.
(i) It could tell us to what extent the equational laws holding of the
integers characterize the integers. Since the set \(\{0, 1\}\) of
integers mod 2 under addition and negation satisfies all the laws that
the integers do, we immediately see that no single equational property
of the integers tells us that there are infinitely many integers. On
the other hand any finite model of the equational theory of the
integers necessarily satisfies some law that the integers don't
satisfy, in particular the law \(x+x+\ldots +x = 0\) where the number
of \(x\)\(s\) on the left hand side is the size of the
model. Since the equational theory of the integers contains no such
law we can tell from its theory as a whole that the integers must be
an infinite set. On the other hand the rational numbers under addition
and negation satisfy exactly the same equational properties as the
integers, so this theory does not characterize the algebra of integers
under addition and subtraction with sufficient precision to
distinguish it from the rationals.
(ii) It could provide us with a useful new domain that can be
substituted for the integers in any application depending only on
equational properties of the integers, but which differs from the
integers in other (necessarily nonequational) useful respects. For
example the rationals, which satisfy the same laws as we just noted,
differ in having the *density* property, that between any two
rationals there lies another rational. Another difference is that it
supports division: whereas the ratio of two integers is usually not an
integer, the ratio of two rationals is always a rational. The reals
also satisfy the same equations, and like the rationals are dense and
support division. Unlike the rationals however the reals have the
*completeness* property, that the set of all upper bounds of
any nonempty set of reals is either empty or has a least member,
needed for convergent sequences to have a limit to converge to.
This idea extends to other operations such as multiplication and
division, as with fields. A particularly useful case of such a
generalization is given by the use of complex numbers in Cartesian
geometry. When \(x\) and \(y\) range over the field of reals, \(x^2
+y^2 =1\) describes the ordinary Euclidean circle in two dimensions,
but when the variables range over the complex numbers this equation
describes the complex counterpart of the circle, visualizable as a
two-dimensional surface embedded in four real dimensions (regarding
the complex plane as having two real dimensions). Or if the variables
range over the integers mod 7, which form a field under the usual
arithmetic operations mod 7, the circle consists of eight points,
namely \((\pm 1, 0), (0, \pm 1)\), and \((\pm 2, \pm 2)\). Certain
theorems about the Euclidean circle provable purely algebraically
remain provable about these other kinds of circles because all the
equations on which the proof depends continue to hold in these other
fields, for example the theorem that a line intersects a circle in at
most two points.
(iii) It could help us decide whether some list of equational laws
intended to axiomatize the integers is *complete* in the sense
that any equation holding of the integers follows from the laws in
that list. If some structure satisfies all the axioms in the list, but
not some other equation that holds of the integers, then we have a
witness to the incompleteness of the axiomatization. If on the other
hand we can show how to construct any algebra satisfying the axioms
from the algebra of integers, limiting ourselves only to certain
algebraic constructions, then by a theorem of Birkhoff applicable to
those constructions we can infer that the axiomatization is
complete.
(iv) It could give another of way of defining a class, besides the
standard way of listing axioms. In the case at hand, the class of all
algebras with a constant, a unary operation, and a binary operation,
satisfying all the laws satisfied by the integers, is exactly the
class of abelian groups.
## 3. Universal Algebra
Universal algebra is the next level of abstraction after abstract
algebra. Whereas elementary algebra treats equational reasoning in a
particular algebra such as the field of reals or the field of complex
numbers, and abstract algebra studies particular classes of algebras
such as groups, rings, or fields, universal algebra studies classes of
classes of algebras. Much as abstract algebra numbers groups, rings,
and fields among its basic classes, so does universal algebra count
varieties, quasivarieties, and elementary classes among its basic
classes of classes.
A *model* of a theory is a structure for which all the
equations of that theory are identities. Terms are built up from
variables and constants using the operations of the theory. An
equation is a pair of terms; it is satisfied by an algebra when the
two terms are equal under all valuations of (assignments of values to)
the \(n\) variables appearing in the terms, equivalently when they
denote the same \(n\)-ary operation. A quasiequation is a pair
consisting of a finite set of equations, called the premises or
antecedents, and another equation, the conclusion; it is satisfied by
an algebra when the two terms of the conclusion are equal under all
valuations of the \(n\) variables appearing in the terms satisfying
the premises. A first order formula is a quantified Boolean
combination of relational terms.
A *variety* is the class of all models of a set of equations. A
*quasivariety* is the class of all models of a set of
quasiequations. An *elementary class* is the class of all
models of a set of first-order formulas.
Quasivarieties have received much less attention than either varieties
or elementary classes, and we accordingly say little about them here.
Elementary classes are treated in sufficient depth elsewhere in this
encyclopedia that we need not consider them here. We therefore focus
in this section on varieties.
Abelian groups, groups, rings, and vector spaces over a given field
all form varieties.
A central result in this area is the theorem that a lattice arises as
the lattice of subalgebras of some algebra if and only if it arises as
the lattice of congruences on some algebra. Lattices of this sort are
called *algebraic lattices*. When the congruences of an algebra
permute, its congruence lattice is modular, a strong condition
facilitating the analysis of finite algebras in particular.
### 3.1 Concepts
Familiar theorems of number theory emerge in algebraic form for
algebras. An algebra \(A\) is called directly irreducible or
*simple* when its lattice of congruences is the two-element
lattice consisting of \(A\) and the one-element algebra, paralleling
the notion of prime number \(p\) as a number whose lattice of divisors
has two elements \(p\) and 1. However the counterpart of the
fundamental theorem of arithmetic, that every positive integer factors
uniquely as a product of primes, requires a more delicate kind of
product than direct product. Birkhoff's notion of subdirect
product enabled him to prove the Subdirect Representation Theorem,
that every algebra arises as the subdirect product of its subdirectly
irreducible quotients. Whereas there are many subdirectly irreducible
groups, the only subdirectly irreducible Boolean algebra is the
initial or two-element one, while the subdirectly irreducible rings
satisfying \(x^n = x\) for some \(n \gt 1\) are exactly the finite
fields.
Another central topic is duality: Boolean algebras are dual to Stone
spaces, complete atomic Boolean algebras are dual to sets,
distributive lattices with top and bottom are dual to partially
ordered sets, algebraic lattices are dual to semilattices, and so on.
Duality provides two ways of looking at an algebra, one of which may
turn out to be more insightful or easier to work with than the other
depending on the application.
The structure of varieties as classes of all models of some equational
theory is also of great interest. The earliest result in this area is
Birkhoff's theorem that a class of algebras is a variety if and
only if it is closed under formation of quotients (homomorphic
images), subalgebras, and arbitrary (including empty and infinite)
direct products. This "modern algebra" result constitutes
a completeness theorem for equational logic in terms of its models.
Its elementary counterpart is the theorem that the equational theories
on a free algebra \(F(V)\), defined as the deductively closed sets of
equations that use variables from \(V\), are exactly its substitutive
congruences.
A locally finite variety is one whose finitely generated free algebras
are finite, such as pointed sets, graphs (whether of the directed or
undirected variety), and distributive lattices. A congruence
permutable variety is a variety all of whose algebras are congruence
permutable. Maltsev characterized these in terms of a necessary and
sufficient condition on their theories, namely that \(F\)(3) contain
an operation \(t(x, y, z)\) for which \(t(x, x, y) = t(y, x, x) = y\)
are in the theory. Analogous notions are congruence distributivity and
congruence modularity, for which there exist analogous syntactic
characterizations of varieties of algebras with these properties. A
more recently developed power tool for this area is McKenzie's
notion of tame congruences, facilitating the study of the structure of
finite algebras.
Within the algebraic school, varieties have been defined with the
understanding that the operations of a signature form a set. Insights
from category theory, in particular the expression of a variety as a
monad, defined as a monoid object in the category \(C^C\) of
endofunctors of a category \(C\) (Set in the case of ordinary
universal algebra) indicate that a cleaner and more general notion of
variety is obtained when the operations can form a proper class. For
example the important classes of complete semilattices, CSLat, and
complete atomic
Boolean algebras,
CABA, form varieties only with this broader notion of signature. In
the narrow algebraic sense of variety, the dual of a variety can never
be a variety, whereas in the broader monadic notion of variety, the
variety Set of sets is dual to CABA while CSLat is self-dual.
### 3.2 Equational Logic
*Axiom systems.* Identities can also be used to transform
equations to equivalent equations. When those equations are themselves
identities for some domain, the equations they are transformed into
remain identities for that domain. One can therefore start from some
finite set of identities and manufacture an unlimited number of new
identities from them.
For example if we start from just the two identities \((x+y)+z =
x+(y+z)\) and \(x+y = y+x\), we can obtain the identity \((w+x)+(y+z)
= (w+y)+(x+z)\) via the following series of transformations.
\[\begin{align\*}
(w+x)+(y+z) &= ((w+x)+y)+z \\
&=(w+(x+y))+z \\
&=(w+(y+x))+z \\
&=((w+y)+x)+z \\
&=(w+y)+(x+z)
\end{align\*}\]
This process of manufacturing new identities from old is called
*deduction*. Any identity that can be generated by deduction
starting from a given set \(A\) of identities is called a
*consequence* of \(A\). The set of all consequences of \(A\) is
called the *deductive closure* of \(A\). We refer to \(A\) as
an *axiomatization* of its deductive closure. A set that is its
own deductive closure is said to be *deductively closed*. It is
straightforward to show that *a set is deductively closed if and
only if it is the deductive closure of some set*.
An *equational theory* is a deductively closed set of
equations, equivalently the set of all consequences of some set \(A\)
of equations. Every theory always has itself as its own
axiomatization, but it will usually also have smaller axiomatizations.
A theory that has a finite axiomatization is said to be *finitely
based* or *finitely axiomatizable*.
***Effectiveness.*** Finitely based theories can
be effectively enumerated. That is, given a finite set \(A\) of
equations, one can write a computer program that prints consequences
of \(A\) for ever in such a way that every consequence of \(A\) will
appear at some finite position in the infinite list of all
consequences. The same conclusion obtains when we weaken the
requirement that \(A\) be finite to merely that it can be effectively
enumerated. That is, if the axiomatization is effectively enumerable
so is its deductive closure.
(In reconciling the finite with the infinite, bear in mind that if we
list all the natural numbers 0, 1, 2, ... in order, we obtain an
infinite list every member of which is only finitely far from the
beginning, and also has a well-defined predecessor (except for 0) and
successor. Only if we attempt to pad this list out at the
"end" with infinite numbers does this principle break
down.
One way to visualize there being an "end" that could have
more elements beyond it is to consider the rationals of the form
\(1/n\) for all nonzero integers \(n\), in increasing order. This list
starts out \(-1/1, -1/2, -1/3,\ldots\) and after listing infinitely
many negative rationals of that form, with no greatest such, switches
over to positive rationals, with no first such, finally ending with
1/3, 1/2, 1/1. The entire list is discrete in the sense that every
rational except the endpoints \(-1/1\) and 1/1 has a well-defined
predecessor and successor in this subset of the rationals, unlike the
situation for the set of all rationals between \(-1/1\) and \(1/1\).
This would no longer be the case were we to introduce the rational 0
"in the middle", which would have neither a predecessor
nor a successor.)
***Equational Logic.*** Our informal account of
deduction can be formalized in terms of five rules for producing new
identities from old. In the following, \(s\) and \(t\) denote
arbitrary terms.
(*R*1)
From nothing infer \(t = t\).
(*R*2)
From \(s = t\) infer \(t = s\).
(*R*3)
From \(s = t\) and \(t = u\) infer \(s = u\).
(*R*4)
From \(s\_1 = t\_1, s\_2 = t\_2 , \ldots ,s\_n = t\_n\) infer \(f(s\_1,
s\_2 , \ldots ,s\_n)= f(t\_1, t\_2 , \ldots ,t\_n)\), where \(f\) is an
\(n\)-ary operation.
(*R*5)
From \(s = t\) infer \(s' = t'\) where \(s'\) and \(t'\) are the
terms resulting from consistently substituting terms for variables in
\(s\) and \(t\) respectively.
"Consistently" in this context means that if a term is
substituted for one occurrence of a given variable, the same term must
be substituted for all occurrences of that variable in both \(s\) and
\(t\). We could not for example appeal solely to *R*5 to
justify substituting \(u+v\) for \(x\) in the left hand side of \(x+y
= y+x\) and \(v+u\) for \(x\) in the right hand side, though some
other rule might permit it.
An equational theory as a set of pairs of terms amounts to a binary
relation on the set of all terms. Rules *R*1-*R*3
correspond to respectively reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity of
this binary relation, \(i.e\). these three rules assert that an
equational theory is an *equivalence relation*. Rule
*R*4 expresses the further property that this binary relation
is a *congruence*. Rule *R*5 further asserts that the
relation is a substitutive congruence. It can be shown that a binary
relation on the set of terms is an equational theory if and only if it
is a substitutive congruence. These five rules therefore completely
axiomatize equational logic in the sense that every consequence of a
set \(A\) of equations can be produced from \(A\) via finitely many
applications of these five rules.
### 3.3 Birkhoff's Theorem
A variety is by definition the class of models of some equational
theory. In 1935 Birkhoff provided an equivalent characterization of
varieties as any class closed under quotients (homomorphic images),
direct products, and subalgebras. These notions are defined as
follows.
Given two algebras \((X, f\_1 , \ldots f\_k)\) and \((Y, g\_1 , \ldots
g\_k)\), a *homomorphism* \(h: (X, f\_1 , \ldots f\_k) \rightarrow
(Y, g\_1 , \ldots g\_k)\) is a function \(h: X \rightarrow Y\)
satisfying \(h(f\_i (x\_0 , \ldots ,x\_{n\_{ i}-1 })) = g\_i (h(x\_0),
\ldots ,h(x\_{n\_{ i}-1 })))\) for each \(i\) from 1 to \(k\) where
\(n\_i\) is the arity of both \(f\_i\) and \(g\_i\).
A *subalgebra* of an algebra is a set of elements of the
algebra closed under the operations of the algebra.
Let \(I\) be an arbitrary set, which may be empty, finite, or
infinite. A *family* \(\langle A\_{i}\rangle\_{i\in I}\) of
algebras \((X\_i, f\_{1}^i,\ldots, f\_k^i)\) indexed by \(I\) consists of
one algebra \(A\_i\) for each element \(i\) of \(I\). We define the
*direct product* \(\Pi A\_i\) (or \(\Pi\_{i\in I} A\_i\) in full)
of such a family as follows.
The underlying set of \(\Pi A\_i\) is the cartesian product \(\Pi X\_i\)
of the underlying sets \(X\_i\), and consists of those \(I\)-tuples
whose \(i\)-th element is some element of \(X\_i\). (\(I\) may even be
uncountable, but in this case the nonemptiness of \(\Pi X\_i\) as a
consequence of the nonemptiness of the individual \(X\_i\)'s is
equivalent to the axiom of choice. This should be kept in mind for any
constructive applications of Birkhoff's theorem.)
The \(j\)-th operation of \(\Pi A\_i\), of arity \(n\_j\), takes an
\(n\_j\)-tuple \(t\) of elements of \(\Pi X\_i\) and produces the
\(I\)-tuple \(\langle f\_{j}^i(t\_{1}^i , \ldots t\_{n\_{ j}
}^i)\rangle\_{i\in I}\) where \(t\_k^i\) is the \(i\)-th component of
the \(k\)-th component of \(t\) for \(k\) from 1 to \(n\_j\).
Given two algebras \(A\), \(B\) and a homomorphism \(h: A \rightarrow
B\), the *homomorphic image* \(h(A)\) is the subalgebra of
\(B\) consisting of elements of the form \(h(a)\) for \(a\) in
\(A\).
Given a class \(C\) of algebras, we write \(P(C)\) for the class of
all algebras formed as direct products of families of algebras of \(C,
S(C)\) for the class of all subalgebras of algebras of \(C\), and
\(H(C)\) for the class of all homomorphic images of algebras of
\(C\).
It is relatively straightforward to show that any equation satisfied
by all the members of \(C\) is also satisfied by all the members of
\(P(C), S(C)\), and \(H(C)\). Hence for a variety \(V, P(V) = S(V) =
H(V)\).
Birkhoff's theorem is the converse: for any class \(C\) such
that \(P(C) = S(C) = H(C), C\) is a variety. In fact the theorem is
slightly stronger: for any class \(C\), *HSP*\((C)\) is a
variety. That is, to construct all the models of the theory of \(C\)
it suffices to close \(C\) first under direct products, then under
subalgebras, and finally under homomorphic images; that is, later
closures do not compromise earlier ones provided \(P, S\), and \(H\)
are performed in that order.
A basic application of Birkhoff's theorem is in proving the
completeness of a proposed axiomatization of a class \(C\). Given an
arbitrary model of the axioms, it suffices to show that the model can
be constructed as the homomorphic image of a subalgebra of a direct
product of algebras of \(C\).
This completeness technique complements the completeness observed in
the previous section for the rules of equational logic.
## 4. Linear Algebra
### 4.1 Vector Spaces
Sibling to groups, rings, and fields is the class of *vector
spaces* over any given field, constituting the universes of linear
algebra. Vector spaces lend themselves to two opposite approaches:
axiomatic or abstract, and synthetic or concrete. The axiomatic
approach takes fields (whence rings, whence groups) as a prerequisite;
it first defines a notion of \(R\)-module as an abelian group with a
scalar multiplication over a given ring \(R\), and then defines a
vector space to be an \(R\)-module for which \(R\) is a field. The
synthetic approach proceeds via the familiar representation of vector
spaces over the reals as \(n\)-tuples of reals, and of linear
transformations from \(m\)-dimensional to \(n\)-dimensional vector
spaces as \(m\times n\) matrices of reals. For the full generality of
vector spaces including those of infinite dimension, \(n\) need not be
limited to finite numbers but can be any cardinal.
The abstract approach, as adopted by such classical texts as Mac Lane
and Birkhoff, has a certain purist appeal and is ideally suited to
mathematics majors. The concrete approach has the benefit of being
able to substitute calculus or less for groups-rings-fields as a
prerequisite, suiting it to service courses for scientists and
engineers needing only finite-dimensional matrix algebra, which enjoys
enormous practical applicability. Linear algebra over other fields, in
particular finite fields, is used in coding theory, quantum computing,
etc., for which the abstract approach tends to be better suited.
For any field \(F\), up to isomorphism there is exactly one vector
space over \(F\) of any given finite dimension. This is a theorem in
the abstract approach, but is an immediate consequence of the
representation in the concrete approach (the theorem is used in
relating the two approaches).
Another immediate consequence of the concrete approach is duality for
finite-dimensional vector spaces over \(F\). To every vector space
\(V\), of any dimension, corresponds its dual space \(V^\*\) comprised
of the *functionals* on \(V\), defined as the linear
transformations \(f: V\rightarrow F\), viewing the field \(F\) as the
one-dimensional vector space. The functionals form a vector space
under coordinatewise addition \((f+g)(u) = f(u)+g(u)\) and
multiplication \((xf)(u) = x(f(u))\) by any scalar \(x\) in \(F\), and
we take \(V^\*\) to be that space. This operation on vector spaces
extends to the linear transformations \(f: U\rightarrow V\) as \(f^\* :
V^\*\rightarrow U^\*\) defined such that \(f\) maps each functional \(g:
V\rightarrow F\) to \(g\cdot f: U\rightarrow F\). Repeating this
operation produces a vector space that, in the finite-dimensional
case, is isomorphic to \(V\), that is, \(V \cong V^{\*\*}\), making the
operation an involution. The essence of duality for finite-dimensional
vector spaces resides in its involutary nature along with the reversal
of the linear transformations.
This duality is easily visualized in the concrete approach by viewing
linear transformations from \(U\) to \(V\) as \(m\times n\) matrices.
The duality simply transposes the matrices while leaving the machinery
of matrix multiplication itself unchanged. It is then immediate that
this operation is an involution that reverses maps--the \(m\times
n\) matrix linearly transforming an \(n\)-dimensional space \(U\) to
an \(m\)-dimensional one \(V\) transposes to an \(n\times m\) matrix
linearly transforming the \(m\)-dimensional space \(V^\*\) to the
\(n\)-dimensional space \(U^\*\).
### 4.2 Associative Algebras
The linear transformations \(f: V\rightarrow V\) on a vector space
\(V\) can be added, subtracted, and multiplied by scalars, pointwise
in each case, and hence form a vector space. When the space has finite
dimension \(n\), the linear transformations are representable as
\(n\times n\) matrices.
In addition they can be composed, whence they form a vector space
equipped with a bilinear associative operation, namely composition. In
the finite-dimensional case, composition is just the usual matrix
product. Vector spaces furnished with such a product constitute
*associative algebras*. Up to isomorphism, all associative
algebras arise in this way whether of finite or infinite dimension,
providing a satisfactory and insightful characterization of the notion
in lieu of an axiomatic characterization, not given here.
Well-known examples of associative algebras are the reals, the complex
numbers, and the quaternions. Unlike vector spaces, many nonisomorphic
associative algebras of any given dimension greater than one are
possible.
A class of associative algebras of interest to physicists is that of
the Clifford algebras. Clifford algebras over the reals (which as
vector spaces are Euclidean spaces) generalize complex numbers and
quaternions by permitting any number of formal quantities \(e\)
analogous to \(i = \sqrt{-1}\) to be adjoined to the field of reals.
The common feature of these quantities is that each satisfies either
\(e^2 = -1\) or \(e^2 = 1\). Whereas there are a great many
associative algebras of low dimension, only a few of them arise as
Clifford algebras. The reals form the only one-dimensional Clifford
algebra, while the hyperbolic plane, defined by \(e^2 = 1\), and the
complex plane, defined by \(e^2 = -1\), are the two two-dimensional
Clifford algebras. The hyperbolic plane is just the direct square of
the real field, meaning that its product is coordinatewise, \((a,
b)(c, d) = (ac, bd)\), unlike that of the complex plane where it
defined by \((a, b)(c, d) = (ac - bd, ad+bc)\). The two
four-dimensional Clifford algebras are the \(2\times 2\) matrices and
the quaternions. Whereas the \(2\times 2\) matrices contain zero
divisors (nonzero matrices whose product is zero), and so form only a
ring, the quaternions contain no zero divisors and so form a division
ring. Unlike the complex numbers however, the quaternions do not form
a field because their multiplication is not commutative. Complex
multiplication however makes the complex plane a commutative division
ring, that is, a field.
## 5. Algebraization of mathematics
A number of branches of mathematics have benefited from the
perspective of algebra. Each of algebraic geometry and algebraic
combinatorics has an entire journal devoted to it, while algebraic
topology, algebraic logic, and algebraic number theory all have strong
followings. Many other more specialized areas of mathematics have
similarly benefited.
### 5.1 Algebraic geometry
Algebraic geometry begins with what we referred to in the introduction
as shapes, for example lines \(y = ax +b\), circles \(x^2 +y^2 =
r^2\), spheres \(x^2 +y^2 +z^2 = r^2\), conic sections \(f(x, y) = 0\)
where \(f\) is a quadratic polynomial in \(x\) and \(y\), quadric
surfaces \(f(x, y, z) = 0\) with \(f\) again quadratic, and so on.
It is convenient to collect the two sides of these equations on the
left so that the right side is always zero. We may then define a shape
or *variety* to consist of the roots or *zeros* of a
polynomial, or more generally the common zeros of a set of
polynomials.
Ordinary analytical or Cartesian geometry is conducted over the reals.
Algebraic geometry is more commonly conducted over the complex
numbers, or more generally over any algebraically closed field. The
varieties definable in this way are called *affine
varieties*.
Sometimes however algebraic closure is not desirable, for example when
working at the boundary of algebraic geometry and number theory where
the field may be finite, or the rationals.
Many kinds of objects are characterized by what structure their maps
hold invariant. Posets transform via monotone functions, leaving order
invariant. Algebras transform via homomorphisms, leaving the algebraic
structure invariant. In algebraic geometry varieties transform via
*regular* \(n\)-ary *functions* \(f: A^n \rightarrow
A\), defined as functions that are locally rational polynomials in
\(n\) variables. Locally rational means that at each point of the
domain of \(f\) there exists a neighborhood on which \(f\) is the
ratio of two polynomials, the denominator of which is nonzero in that
neighborhood.
This notion generalizes to regular functions \(f: A^n \rightarrow
A^m\) defined as \(m\)-tuples of regular \(n\)-ary functions.
Given two varieties \(V, V'\) in \(A^n\) and \(A^m\) respectively, a
regular function from \(A^n\) to \(A^m\) whose restriction to \(V\) is
a function from \(V\) to \(V'\) is called a *regular function of
varieties*. The category of affine varieties is then defined to
have as its objects all affine varieties and as its morphisms all
regular functions thereof.
Polynomials being continuous, one would expect regular functions
between varieties to be continuous also. A difficulty arises with the
shapes of varieties, where there can be cusps, crossings, and other
symptoms of singularity. What is needed here is a suitable topology by
which to judge continuity.
The trick is to work not in affine space but its *projective
space*. To illustrate with Euclidean three-space, its associated
projective space is the unit sphere with antipodal points identified,
forming a two-dimensional manifold. Equivalently this is the space of
all (unoriented) lines through the origin. Given an arbitrary affine
space, its associated projective space is the space of all such lines,
understood as a manifold.
The topology on projective space appropriate for algebraic geometry is
the *Zariski topology*, defined not by its open sets but rather
by its closed sets, which are taken to be the algebraic sets, namely
those sets constituting the common zeros of a set of homogeneous
polynomials. The crucial theorem is then that regular maps between
affine varieties are continuous with respect to the Zariski
topology.
### 5.2 Algebraic number theory
Algebraic number theory has adopted these generalizations of algebraic
geometry. One class of varieties in particular that has been of great
importance to number theory is that of elliptical curves.
A celebrated success of algebraic number theory has been Andrew
Wiles' proof of Fermat's so-called "last
theorem." This had remained an open problem for over three and a
half centuries.
### 5.3 Algebraic topology
Algebraic topology analyzes the holes and obstructions in connected
topological spaces. A topologist is someone who imagines all objects
to be made of unbreakable but very pliable playdough, and therefore
does not see the need to distinguish between a coffee cup and doughnut
because either can be turned into the other. Topology is concerned
with the similarities and differences between coffee cups with \(n\)
handles, surfaces with \(n\) holes, and more complicated shapes.
Algebraic topology expresses the invariants of such shapes in terms of
their homotopy groups and homology groups.
### 5.4 Algebraic logic
Algebraic logic got off to an early start with Boole's
introduction of Boolean algebra in an 1847 pamphlet. The methods of
modern algebra began to be applied to Boolean algebra in the 20th
century. Algebraic logic then broadened its interests to first order
logic and modal logic. Central algebraic notions in first order logic
are ultraproducts, elementary equivalence, and elementary and
pseudoelementary varieties. Tarski's cylindric algebras
constitute a particular abstract formulation of first order logic in
terms of diagonal relations coding equality and substitution relations
encoding variables. Modal logic as a fragment of first order logic is
made algebraic via Boolean modules.
## 6. Free Algebras
Given any system such as integer arithmetic or real arithmetic, we can
write \(T\) for the set of all definite terms such as \(1 + (2/3)\)
built from constants and constituting the definite language, and
\(T[V]\) for the larger indefinite language permitting variables drawn
from a set \(V\) in place of some of the constant symbols, with terms
such as \(x + (2/y)\). When \(V\) contains only a single variable
\("x"\), \(T[\{"x"\}]\) is usually abbreviated
to \(T["x"]\) or just \(T[x\)] which is usually
unambiguous. This convention extends to the algebra \(\Phi\) of terms
of \(T\) together with its list of operation symbols viewed as
operations for combining terms; we write \(\Phi[V\)] and call it the
*term algebra* on \(V\).
This notion of term algebra is a purely syntactic one involving only
the operation symbols, constants, and variables of some language. The
terms \(2 + 3\) and \(3 + 2\) are distinct; likewise \(x + y\) and \(y
+ x\) are distinct terms. As such they can be considered concrete
terms.
Now in a universe such as the integers certain concrete terms are
equivalent in the sense that they always evaluate to the same element
of the universe regardless of the values of their variable, for
example \(x + y\) and \(y + x\). It is convenient to collect
equivalent concrete terms into equivalence classes each of which is to
be thought of as an abstract term.
As a simple example of abstract terms consider linear polynomials of
the form \(ax + by\) where \(a\) and \(b\) are nonnegative integers,
for example \(7x + 3y\). The set of all such polynomials includes 0
and is closed under polynomial addition, an associative and
commutative operation. This set together with the operation of
addition and the zero polynomial therefore constitutes a commutative
monoid.
This monoid is an example of a free algebra, namely the free
commutative monoid on two generators \(x\) and \(y\). What makes it
free is that it satisfies no laws other than those of a commutative
monoid. It is not however a free monoid because it satisfies the
commutative law. The free monoid on two generators \(x\) and \(y\) is
instead the set of all finite strings over the two-letter alphabet
\(\{x,y\}\).
When commutativity is introduced as a law, it identifies the
previously distinct strings \(xy\) and \(yx\) as a single polynomial;
more generally any two strings with the same number of \(x\)s and
\(y\)s are identified.
Free monoids and free commutative monoids are examples of free
\(C\)-algebras where \(C\) is a class of algebras. In these two
examples the class \(C\) is respectively that of monoids and
commutative monoids.
A free \(C\)-algebra is an algebra that lives at the frontier of
syntax and semantics. On the semantic side it is a member of \(C\). On
the syntactic side its elements behave like terms subject to the laws
of \(C\), but no other laws expressible with its generators.
Commutativity \(xy = yx\) is expressible with two generators and so a
free monoid on two or more generators cannot be commutative, though
the free monoid on one generator, namely the set of all finite strings
over a one-letter alphabet does form a commutative monoid on one
generator.
On the syntactic side, the free \(C\)-algebra \(B\) on a set \(X\)
arises as a quotient of the term algebra formed from \(X\) (viewed as
a set of variables) using the operation symbols and constants common
to the algebras of \(C\). The quotient identifies those terms that
have the same value for all algebras \(A\) of \(C\) and all valuations
assigning values in \(A\) to the variables of \(X\). This performs
just enough identifications to satisfy every law of \(C\) (thereby
making this quotient a \(C\)-algebra) while still retaining the
syntactic essence of the original term algebra in a sense made more
precise by the following paragraph.
(Since the concept of a term algebra can seem a little circular in
places, a more detailed account may clarify the concept. Given the
language of \(C\), meaning the operation symbols and constant symbols
common to the algebras of \(C\), along with a set \(X\) of variables,
we first form the underlying set of the algebra, and then interpret
the symbols of the language as operations on and values in that set.
The set itself consists of the terms built in the usual way from those
variables and constant symbols using the operation symbols; in that
sense these elements are syntactic. But now we change our point of
view by treating those elements as semantic, and we look to the
constant symbols and operation symbols of the language as syntactic
entities needing to be interpreted in this semantic domain (albeit of
terms) in order to turn this set of terms into an algebra of terms. We
interpret each constant symbol as itself. And we interpret each
\(n\)-ary operation symbol \(f\) as the \(n\)-ary operation that takes
any \(n\) terms \(t\_1 , \ldots ,t\_n\) as its \(n\) arguments and
returns the single term \(f(t\_1 , \ldots ,t\_n)\). Note that this
interpretation of \(f\) only *returns* a term, it does not
actually *build* it. All term building was completed when we
produced the underlying set of the algebra.)
From the semantic side, a \(C\)-algebra \(B\) together with a subset
\(X\) of \(B\) thought of as variables is said to be a free
\(C\)-algebra on \(X\), or is freely generated by \(X\), when, given
any \(C\)-algebra \(A\), any valuation in \(A\) of the variables in
\(X\) (that is, any function \(f: X\rightarrow A\)) uniquely extends
to a homomorphism \(h: B\rightarrow A\). (We say that \(h:
B\rightarrow A\) extends \(f: X\rightarrow A\) when the restriction of
\(h\) to \(X\) is \(f\).)
As a convenient shorthand a free \(C\)-algebra on no generators can
also be called an initial \(C\)-algebra. An initial \(C\)-algebra has
exactly one homomorphism to every \(C\)-algebra.
Before proceeding to the examples it is worthwhile pointing out an
important basic property of free algebras as defined from the semantic
side.
*Two free algebras \(B, B'\) on respective generator sets \(X, Y\)
having the same cardinality are isomorphic.*
By way of proof, pick any bijection \(f: X\rightarrow Y\). This, its
inverse \(f': Y\rightarrow X\), and the two identity functions on
respectively \(X\) and \(Y\), form a system of four functions closed
under composition. Each of these functions is from a generator set to
an algebra and therefore has a unique extension to a homomorphism.
These four homomorphisms are also closed under composition. The one
from \(B\) to itself extends the identity function on \(X\) and
therefore must be the identity homomorphism on \(B\) (since the latter
exists and its restriction to \(X\) is the identity function on
\(X)\). Likewise the homomorphism from \(G\) to \(G\) is an identity
function. Hence the homomorphisms between \(B\) and \(G\) compose in
either order to identities, which makes them isomorphisms. But this is
what it means for \(B\) and \(B'\) to be isomorphic.
This fact allows us to say *the* free algebra on a given set,
thinking of isomorphic algebras as being "morally" the
same. Were this not the case, our quotient construction would be
incomplete as it produces a unique free algebra, whereas the above
definition of free algebra allows any algebra isomorphic to that
produced by the quotient construction to be considered free. Since all
free algebras on \(X\) are isomorphic, the quotient construction is as
good as any, and is furthermore one way of proving that they exist. It
also establishes that the choice of set of variables is irrelevant
except for its cardinality, as intuition would suggest.
### 6.1 Free monoids and groups
Take \(C\) to be the class of monoids. The term algebra determined by
the binary operation symbol and the constant symbol for identity can
be viewed as binary trees with variables and copies of the constant
symbol at the leaves. Identifying trees according to associativity has
the effect of flattening the trees into words that ignore the order in
which the operation was applied (without however reversing the order
of any arguments). This produces words over the alphabet \(X\)
together with the identity. The identity laws then erase the
identities, except in the case of a word consisting only of the
identity symbol, which we take to be the empty word.
Thus the monoid of finite words over an alphabet \(X\) is the free
monoid on \(X\).
Another representation of the free monoid on \(n\) generators is as an
infinite tree, every vertex of which has \(n\) descendants, one for
each letter of the alphabet, with each edge labeled by the
corresponding letter. Each vertex \(v\) represents the word consisting
of the letters encountered along the path from the root to \(v\). The
concatenation of \(u\) and \(v\) is the vertex arrived at by taking
the subtree whose root is the vertex \(u\), noticing that this tree is
isomorphic to the full tree, and locating \(v\) in this subtree as
though it were the full tree.
If we ignore the direction and labels of the edges in this tree we can
still identify the root: it is the only vertex with \(n\) edges
incident on it, all other vertices have \(n+1\), namely the one
incoming edge and the \(n\) outgoing ones.
The free *commutative* monoid on a set is that monoid whose
generators behave like letters just as for free monoids (in particular
they are still atoms), but which satisfy the additional law \(uv =
vu\). We make further identifications, *e.g.* of
"dog" and "dgo". Order of letters in a word is
now immaterial, all that matters is how many copies there are of each
letter. This information can be represented as an \(n\)-tuple of
natural numbers where \(n\) is the size of the alphabet. Thus the free
commutative monoid on \(n\) generators is \(N^n\), the algebra of
\(n\)-tuples of natural numbers under addition.
It can also be obtained from the tree representation of the free
monoid by identifying vertices. Consider the case \(n = 2\) of two
letters. Since the identifications do not change word length, all
identifications are of vertices at the same depth from the root. We
perform all identifications simultaneously as follows. At every vertex
\(v\), identify \(v\_{01}\) and \(v\_{10}\) and their subtrees. Whereas
before there were \(2^n\) vertices at depth \(n\), now there are
\(n+1\). Furthermore instead of a tree we have the upper right
quadrant of the plane, that is, \(N^2\), rotated 135 degrees
clockwise, with every vertex \(v\) at the top of a diamond whose other
vertices are \(v\_0\) and \(v\_1\) at the next level down, and the
identified pair \(v\_{01} = v\_{10}\) below both.
To form the free group on \(n\) generators, first form the free monoid
on \(2n\) generators, with generators organized into complementary
pairs each the inverse of the other, and then delete all adjacent
complementary pairs from all words.
This view is not particularly insightful. The group counterpart of the
tree representation does a better job of presenting a free group.
Consider the free group on \(n = 2\) generators \(A\) and \(B\). We
start with the free monoid on 4 generators \(A, B, a, b\) where \(a\)
is the inverse of \(A\) and \(b\) that of \(B\). Every vertex of this
tree has 4 descendants. So the root has degree 4 and the remaining
vertices have degree 5: every vertex except the root has one edge
going in, say the generator \(a\), and four out. Consider any nonroot
vertex \(v\). The effect of deleting adjacent complementary pairs is
to identify the immediate ancestor of \(v\) with one of the four
descendants of \(v\), namely the one that makes the path from the
ancestor to the descendant a complementary pair. For every nonroot
vertex \(v\) these identifications reduce the degree of \(v\) from 5
to 4. The root remains at degree 4.
So now we have an infinite graph every vertex of which has degree 4.
Unlike the tree for the free monoid on 2 generators, where the root is
topologically different from the other vertices, the tree for the free
group on 2 generators is entirely homogeneous. Thus if we throw away
the vertex labels and rely only on the edge labels to navigate, any
vertex can be taken as the identity of the group.
This homogeneity remains the case for the free abelian group on 2
generators, whose vertices are still of degree 4. However the
additional identifications turns it from a tree (a graph with no
cycles) to a grid whose vertices are the lattice points of the plane.
That is, the free abelian group on 2 generators is \(Z^2\), and on
\(n\) generators \(Z^n\). The edges are the line segments joining
adjacent lattice points.
### 6.2 Free rings
With no generators the free monoid, free group, and free ring are all
the one-element algebra consisting of just the additive identity 0. A
ring with identity means having a multiplicative identity, that is, a
word \(\varepsilon\). But this makes \(\varepsilon\) a generator for
the additive group of the ring, and the free abelian group on one
generator is the integers. So the free ring with identity on no
generators is the integers under addition and now multiplication.
The free ring on one generator \(x\) must include \(x^2 , x^3\), etc.
by multiplication, but these can be added and subtracted resulting in
polynomials such as \(7x^3 -3x^2 +2x\) but without a constant term,
with the exception of 0 itself. The distributivity law for rings means
that a term such as \((7x+x^2 )(2x^3 +x)\) can be expanded as \(7x^2
+x^3 +14x^4 +2x^5\). It should now be clear that these are just
ordinary polynomials with no constant term; in particular we are
missing the zero-degree polynomial 1 and so this ring has no
multiplicative identity. However it is a commutative ring even though
we did not specify this. The free ring with identity on one generator
introduces 1 as the multiplicative identity and becomes the ordinary
one-variable polynomials since now we can form all the integers. Just
as with monoids, the free ring with identity on two generators is not
commutative, the polynomials \(xy\) and \(yx\) being distinct. The
free *commutative* ring with identity on two generators however
consists of the ordinary two-variable polynomials over the
integers.
### 6.3 Free combinatorial structures
From the examples so far one might conclude that all free algebras on
one or more generators are infinite. This is by no means always the
case; as counterexamples we may point to a number of classes: sets,
pointed sets, bipointed sets, graphs, undirected graphs, Boolean
algebras, distributive lattices, etc. Each of these forms a locally
finite variety as defined earlier.
A pointed set is an algebra with one constant, say \(c\). The free
pointed set on \(x\) and \(y\) has three elements, \(x, y\), and
\(c\). A bipointed set is an algebra with two constants \(c\) and
\(d\), and the free bipointed set on \(x\) and \(y\) then has four
elements, \(x, y, c\), and \(d\).
Graphs, of the oriented kind arising in say automata theory where
multiple edges may connect the same two vertices, can be organized as
algebras having two unary operations \(s\) and \(t\) satisfying
\(s(s(x)) = t(s(x)) = s(x)\) and \(t(t(x)) = s(t(x)) = t(x)\). The
free graph on one generator \(x\) has three elements, \(x, s(x)\), and
\(t(x)\), constituting respectively an edge and its two endpoints or
*vertices*. In this framework the vertices are the elements
satisfying \(s(x) = x\) (and hence \(t(x) = x\) since \(x = s(x) =
t(s(x)) = t(x)\)); all other elements constitute edges. The free graph
on \(n\) generators consists of \(n\) such edges, all independent.
Other graphs arise by identifying elements. There is no point
identifying an edge with either another edge or a vertex since that
simply absorbs the first edge into the second entity. This leaves only
vertices; identifying two vertices yields a single vertex common to
two edges, or to the same edge in the identification \(s(x) = t(x)\)
creating a self-loop.
The term "oriented" is to be preferred to
"directed" because a directed graph as understood in
combinatorics is an oriented graph with the additional property that
if \(s(x) = s(y)\) and \(t(x) = t(y)\) then \(x = y\); that is, only
one edge is permitted between two vertices in a given direction.
Unoriented graphs are defined as for graphs with an additional unary
operation \(g\) satisfying \(g(g(x)) = x\) and \(s(g(x)) = t(x)\)
(whence \(s(x) = s(g(g(x))) = t(g(x)))\). The free undirected graph on
\(x\) consists of \(x, s(x), t(x)\), and \(g(x)\), with the pair \(x,
g(x)\) constituting the two one-way lanes of a two-lane highway
between \(s(x) = t(g(x))\) and \(t(x) = s(g(x)\)). Identification of
elements of undirected graphs works as for their oriented
counterparts: it is only worth identifying vertices. However there is
one interesting twist here: vertices can be of two kinds, those
satisfying \(x = g(x)\) and those not. The latter kind of vertex is
now asymmetric: one direction of the bidirectional edge is identified
with its vertices while the other one forms an oriented loop in the
sense that its other direction is a vertex. This phenomenon does not
arise for undirected graphs defined as those satisfying "if
\(s(x) = s(y)\) and \(t(x) = t(y)\) then \(x = y\)."
### 6.4 Free logical structures
Boolean algebras are traditionally defined axiomatically as
complemented distributive lattices, which has the benefit of showing
that they form a variety, and furthermore a finitely axiomatizable
one. However Boolean algebras are so fundamental in their own right
that, rather than go to the trouble of defining lattice, distributive,
and complemented just for this purpose, it is easier as well as more
insightful to obtain them from the initial Boolean algebra. It
suffices to define this as the two-element set \(\{0, 1\}\), the
constants (zeroary operations) 0 and 1, and the \(2^{2^2} = 16\)
binary operations. A Boolean algebra is then any algebra with those 16
operations and two constants satisfying the equations satisfied by the
initial Boolean algebra.
An almost-definitive property of the class of Boolean algebras is that
their polynomials in the initial Boolean algebra are all the
operations on that algebra. The catch is that the inconsistent class
consisting of only the one-element or inconsistent algebra also has
this property. This class is easily ruled out however by adding that
Boolean algebra is consistent. But just barely--adding any new
equation to Boolean algebra (without introducing new operations)
axiomatizes the inconsistent algebra.
Sheffer has shown that the constants and the 16 operations can be
generated as polynomials in just one constant, which can be 0 or 1,
and one binary operation, which can be NAND, \(\neg(x\wedge y)\), or
NOR, \(\neg(x\vee y)\). Any such sufficient set is called a
*basis*. Along the same lines Stone has shown that conjunction,
exclusive-or, and the constant 1 form a basis. The significance of
Stone's basis over Sheffer's is that Boolean algebras
organized with those operations satisfy all the axioms for a
commutative ring with identity with conjunction as multiplication and
exclusive-or as addition, as well as the law \(x^2 = 1\). Any ring
satisfying this last condition is called a *Boolean ring*.
Boolean rings are equivalent to Boolean algebras in the sense that
they have the same polynomials.
An atom of a Boolean algebra is an element \(x\) such that for all
\(y, x\wedge y\) is either \(x\) or 0. An atomless Boolean algebra is
one with no atoms.
There is exactly one Boolean algebra of cardinality every finite power
of 2, and it is isomorphic to the Boolean algebra of a power set
\(2^X\) of that cardinality under the set operations of union,
intersection, and complement relative to \(X\). Hence all finite
Boolean algebras have cardinality a power of 2. This situation changes
with infinite Boolean algebras; in particular countable Boolean
algebras exist. One such is the free Boolean algebra on countably many
generators, which is the only countable atomless Boolean algebra. The
finite and cofinite (complement of a finite set) subsets of the set
\(N\) of natural numbers form a subalgebra of the powerset Boolean
algebra \(2^N\) not isomorphic to the free Boolean algebra, but it has
atoms, namely the singleton sets.
The free Boolean algebra \(F(n)\) on \(n\) generators consists of all
\(2^2 n\) \(n\)-ary operations on the two-element Boolean algebra.
Boolean algebras therefore form a locally finite variety.
The equational theory of distributive lattices is obtained from that
of Boolean algebras by selecting as its operations just the monotone
binary operations on the two-element algebra, omitting the constants.
These are the operations with the property that if either argument is
changed from 0 to 1, the result does not change from 1 to 0. A
distributive lattice is any model of those Boolean equations between
terms built solely with monotone binary operations. Hence every
Boolean algebra is a distributive lattice.
Distributive lattices can be arbitrarily "thin." At the
extreme, any chain (linear or total order, \(e.g\). the reals
standardly ordered) under the usual operations of max and min forms a
distributive lattice. Since we have omitted the constants this
includes the empty lattice, which we have not excluded here as an
algebra. (Some authors disallow the empty set as an algebra but this
proscription spoils many good theorems without gaining any useful
ones.) Hence there exist distributive lattices of every possible
cardinality.
Every finite-dimensional vector space is free, being generated by any
choice of basis. This extends to infinite-dimensional vector spaces
provided we accept the Axiom of Choice. Vector spaces over a finite
field therefore form a locally finite variety when scalar
multiplication is organized as one unary operation for each field
element.
### 6.5 Free algebras categorially
We now consider how free algebras are organized from the perspective
of category theory. We defined the free algebra \(B\) generated by a
subset \(X\) of \(B\) as having the property that for every algebra
\(A\) and every valuation \(f: X\rightarrow A\), there exists a unique
homomorphism \(h: B\rightarrow A\). Now every homomorphism \(h:
B\rightarrow A\) necessarily arises in this way, since its restriction
to \(X\), as a function from \(X\) to \(A\), is a valuation.
Furthermore every function \(f: X\rightarrow A\) arises as the
restriction to \(X\) of its extension to a homomorphism. Hence we have
a bijection between the functions from \(X\) to \(A\) and the
homomorphisms from \(B\) to \(A\).
Now the typing here is a little casual, so let us clean it up. Since
\(X\) is a set while \(A\) is an algebra, \(f\) is better typed as
\(f: X\rightarrow U(A)\) where \(U(A)\) denotes the underlying set of
\(A\). And the relationship of \(X\) to \(B\) is better understood
with the notation \(B = F(X)\) denoting the free algebra generated by
the set \(X\). So \(U\) maps algebras to sets while \(F\) maps sets to
algebras. \(F\) and \(U\) are not in general inverses of each other,
but they are nonetheless related in a way we now make precise.
For any category \(\mathbf{C}\), the notation \(\mathbf{C}(A, B)\) is
generally used to denote the set of all morphisms from object \(A\) to
object \(B\) in category \(\mathbf{C}\). And the set of all functions
from the set \(X\) to the set \(Y\) can be understood as the
particular case \(\mathbf{Set}(X, Y)\) of this convention where
\(\mathbf{C}\) is taken to be the class \(\mathbf{Set}\) of all sets,
which we can think of as *discrete* algebras, that is, algebras
with no structure. A class of algebras along with a specified set of
homomorphisms between any two of its members is an instance of a
*category*. The members of the class are called the
*objects* of the category while the homomorphisms are called
the *morphisms*.
The bijection we have just observed can now be stated as
\[ \mathbf{C}(F(X), A) \cong \mathbf{Set}(X, U(A)) \]
Such a bijection is called an *adjunction* between
\(\mathbf{Set}\) and \(\mathbf{C}\). Here \(F: \mathbf{Set}\rightarrow
\mathbf{C}\) and \(U: \mathbf{C}\rightarrow \mathbf{Set}\) are
respectively the left and right *adjoints* of this adjunction;
we say that \(F\) is left adjoint to (or of) \(U\) and \(U\) right
adjoint to \(F\).
We have only described how \(F\) maps sets to algebras, and \(U\) maps
algebras to sets. However \(F\) also maps functions to homomorphisms,
mapping each function \(f\) to its unique extension as a homomorphism,
while \(U\) maps homomorphisms to functions, namely the homomorphism
itself as a function. Such maps between categories are instances of
*functors*.
In general a category \(C\) consists of objects \(a, b, c\) and
morphisms \(f: a\rightarrow b\), together with an associative
composition law for "composable" morphisms \(f:
b\rightarrow c\), \(g: a\rightarrow b\) yielding the morphism \(fg:
a\rightarrow c\). Furthermore every object a has an identity element
\(1\_a : a\rightarrow a\) which whenever composable with a morphism
\(f\) (on one side or the other) composes with it to yield \(f\). A
functor \(F: C\rightarrow D\) maps objects of \(C\) to objects of
\(D\) and morphisms of \(C\) to morphisms of \(D\), such that \(F(fg)
= F(f)F(g)\) and \(F(1\_a) = 1\_{F(a)}\). That is, functors are
"homomorphisms of categories," preserving composition and
identities.
With no further qualification such a category is considered an
*abstract* category. The categories we have been working with
are *concrete* in the sense that they come with a given
underlying set or *forgetful* functor \(U: C\rightarrow\)Set.
That is, algebras are based on sets, homomorphisms are certain
functions between these sets, and \(U\) simply "forgets"
the algebraic structure. Such forgetful functors are *faithful*
in the sense that for any two morphisms \(f, g: a\rightarrow b\) of
\(C\), if \(U(f) = U(g)\) then \(f = g,\) i.e. \(U\) does not identify
distinct homomorphisms. In general a concrete category is defined as a
category \(C\) together with a faithful forgetful functor \(U:
C\rightarrow \textrm{Set}\).
Categories themselves admit a further generalization to 2-categories
as algebras over two-dimensional graphs, with associative composition
of 1-cells generalized to the 2-associative pasting of 2-cells. A
further simplification of the free-algebra machinery then obtains,
namely via abstract adjunctions as the natural 2-dimensional
counterpart of isomorphisms in a category, which in turn is the
natural 1-dimensional counterpart of equality of elements in a set,
the 0-dimensional idea that two points can turn out to be one. This
leads to a notion of abstract monad as simply the composition of an
adjoint pair of 1-cells, one of which is the 1-cell abstracting the
functor \(F\) that manufactures the free algebra \(F(V)\) from \(V\).
Ordinary or concrete monads arise as the composition of functors as
concrete 1-cells of a 2-category of categories. |
algebra-logic-tradition | ## 1. Introduction
Boole's *The Mathematical Analysis of Logic* presents many
interesting logic novelties: It was the beginning of
nineteenth-century mathematization of logic and provided an
*algorithmic* alternative (via a slight modification of
ordinary algebra) to the *catalog* approach used in traditional
logic (even if reduction procedures were developed in the latter).
Instead of a list of valid forms of argument, the validity of
arguments were determined on the basis of general principles and
rules. Furthermore, it provided an effective method for proving
logical laws on the basis of a system of postulates. As Boole wrote
later, it was a proper "science of reasoning", and not a
"mnemonic art" like traditional Syllogistics (Boole 1997:
136). Three-quarters of the way through this book, after finishing
his discussion of syllogistic logic, Boole started to develop the
general tools that would be used in his *Laws of Thought*
(1854) to greatly extend traditional logic by permitting an argument
to have many premises and to involve many classes. To handle the
infinitely many possible logical arguments of this expanded logic, he
presented theorems that provided key tools for an algorithmic analysis
(a catalog was no longer feasible).
Boole's ideas were conceived independently of earlier anticipations,
like those developed by G.W. Leibniz. They emerged from the particular
contexts of English mathematics (see Peckhaus 2009). According to
Victor Sanchez Valencia, the tradition that originated
with Boole came to be known as the *algebra of logic* since the
publication in 1879 of *Principles of the Algebra of Logic* by
Alexander MacFarlane (see Sanchez Valencia 2004: 389).
MacFarlane considered "the analytical method of reasoning about
Quality proposed by Boole" as an algebra (see MacFarlane 1879:
3).
This approach differs from what is usually called *algebraic
logic*; though there is some overlap, the historical development
of the two areas are different. Algebraic logic is understood as:
>
>
> *a style* [of logic] *in which concepts and relations
> are* expressed by mathematical symbols [\(\ldots\)] so that
> mathematical techniques can be applied. Here mathematics shall mean
> mostly algebra, i.e., the part of mathematics concerned with finitary
> operations on some set. (Hailperin 2004: 323)
>
>
>
Algebraic logic can be already found in the work of Leibniz, Jacob
Bernoulli and other modern thinkers, and it undoubtedly constitutes an
important antecedent of Boole's approach. In a broader perspective,
both are part of the tradition of *symbolic knowledge* in the
formal sciences, as first conceived by Leibniz (see Esquisabel 2012).
This idea of algebraic logic was continued to some extent in the
French Enlightenment in the work of Condillac and Condorcet (see
Grattan-Guinness 2000: 14 ff.)
Boole's methodology for dealing with logical problems can be described
as follows:
1. Translate the logical data into suitable equations;
2. Apply algebraic techniques to solve these equations;
3. Translate this solution, if possible, back into the original
language.
In other words, symbolic formulation of logical problems and solution
of logical equations constitutes Boole's method (see Sanchez
Valencia 2004: 389).
Later, in his *Pure Logic* from 1864, Jevons changed Boole's
partial operation of union of disjoint sets to the modern unrestricted
union and eliminated Boole's questionable use of uninterpretable terms
(see Jevons 1890). Peirce (1880) eliminated explicitly the
Aristotelian derivation of particular statements from universal
statements by giving the modern meaning for "All \(A\) is
\(B\)". In addition, he extended the algebra of logic for
classes to the algebra of logic for binary relations and introduced
general sums and products to handle quantification. Ernst
Schroder, taking inspiration from previous work by Hermann
(1809-1877) and Robert Grassmann (1815-1901) and using the
framework developed by Peirce, developed and systematized the
19th Century achievements in the algebra of logic in his
three-volume work *Vorlesungen uber die Algebra der Logik*
(1890-1910).
The contributions of Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) to logic from the
period 1879-1903, based on an *axiomatic* approach to
logic, had very little influence at the time (and the same can be said
of the *diagrammatic* systems of C.S. Peirce developed at the
turn of the century). Whitehead and Russell rejected the algebra of
logic approach, with its predominantly equational formulations and
algebraic symbolism, in favor of an approach strongly inspired by the
axiomatic system of Frege, and using the notation developed by
Giuseppe Peano, namely to use logical connectives, relation symbols
and quantifiers.
During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the algebra of
logic was further developed in the works of Platon Sergeevich
Poretzsky (1846-1907), Louis Couturat (1868-1914), Leopold
Lowenheim (1878-1957), and Heinrich Behmann
(1891-1970) (see Styazhkin 1969). In particular, elimination
theorems in the algebra of logic influenced decision procedures for
fragments of first-order and second-order logic (see Mancosu, Zach,
Badesa 2009).
After WWI David Hilbert (1862-1943), who had at first adopted
the algebraic approach, picked up on the approach of
*Principia*, and the algebra of logic fell out of favor.
However, in 1941, Tarski treated relation algebras as an equationally
defined class. Such a class has many models besides the *collection
of all binary relations on a given universe* that was considered
in the 1800s, just as there are many Boolean algebras besides the
*power set Boolean algebras* studied in the 1800s. In the years
1948-1952 Tarski, along with his students Chin and Thompson,
created cylindric algebras as an algebraic logic companion to
first-order logic, and in 1956 Paul Halmos (1916-2006)
introduced polyadic algebras for the same purpose. As Halmos (1956 b,
c and d) noted, these new algebraic logics tended to focus on studying
the extent to which they captured first-order logic and on their
universal algebraic aspects such as axiomatizations and structure
theorems, but offered little insight into the nature of the
first-order logic which inspired their creation.
## 2. 1847--The Beginnings of the Modern Versions of the Algebra of Logic
In late 1847, Boole and Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871) each
published a book on logic--Boole's *Mathematical Analysis of
Logic* (1847) and De Morgan's *Formal Logic* (1847). De
Morgan's approach was to dissect every aspect of traditional deductive
logic (usually called 'Aristotelian logic') into its
minutest components, to consider ways to generalize these components,
and then, in some cases, undertake to build a logical system using
these components. Unfortunately, he was never able to incorporate his
best ideas into a significant system. His omission of a symbol for
equality made it impossible to develop an equational algebra of logic.
It seems that synthesis was not De Morgan's strong suit.
De Morgan's book of 1847 was part of a revival in logic studies that
originated at the beginning of 19th Century with Joseph Diez Gergonne
(1771-1859) in France, and Bernhard Bolzano (1781-1848) in
Bohemia, among others. George Bentham and William Hamilton in the
United Kingdom were also part of this revival and their studies
focused on the nature of variations of the categorical sentences in
traditional syllogistic, including what was called
"quantification of the predicate"; for example, "All
\(A\) are some \(B\)" or "Some \(A\) are all
\(B\)". It was thought that this problem required an extension
of the syllogistic logic of Aristotle and that some form of symbolic
method was needed both to handle such statements and provide a
classification of their different types (see Heinemann 2015 chapters 2
and 3).
Boole approached logic from a completely different perspective, namely
how to cast Aristotelian logic in the garb of symbolical algebra.
Using symbolical algebra was a theme with which he was well-acquainted
from his work in differential equations, and from the various papers
of his young friend and mentor Duncan Farquharson Gregory
(1813-1844), who made attempts to cast other subjects such as
geometry into the language of symbolical algebra. Since the
application of symbolical algebra to differential equations had
proceeded through the introduction of differential operators, it must
have been natural for Boole to look for operators that applied in the
area of Aristotelian logic. He readily came up with the idea of using
"selection" operators, for example, a selection operator
for the color red would select the red members from a class. In his
1854 book, Boole realized that it was simpler to omit selection
operators and work directly with classes. (However he kept the
selection operators to justify his claim that his laws of logic were
not ultimately based on observations concerning the use of language,
but were actually deeply rooted in the processes of the human mind.)
From now on in this article, when discussing Boole's 1847 book, the
selection operators have been replaced with the simpler direct
formulation using classes.
Since symbolical algebra was just the syntactic side of ordinary
algebra, Boole needed ways to interpret the usual operations and
constants of algebra to create his algebra of logic for classes.
Multiplication was interpreted as intersection, leading to his one new
law, the idempotent law \(XX = X\) for multiplication, rediscovering a
logical law already formulated by Leibniz. Addition was defined as
union, provided one was dealing with *disjoint* classes; and
subtraction as class difference, provided one was subtracting a
subclass from a class. In other cases, the addition and subtraction
operations were simply undefined, or as Boole wrote,
*uninterpretable*. The usual laws of arithmetic told Boole that
1 must be the universe and \(1 - X\) must be the complement of
\(X\).
The next step in Boole's system was to translate the four kinds of
categorical propositions into equations, for example "All \(X\)
is \(Y\)" becomes \(X = XY\), and "Some \(X\) is
\(Y\)" becomes \(V = XY\), where \(V\) is a new symbol. To
eliminate the middle term in a syllogism Boole borrowed an elimination
theorem from ordinary algebra, but it was too weak for his algebra of
logic. This would be remedied in his 1854 book. Boole found that he
could not always derive the desired conclusions with the above
translation of particular propositions (i.e., those with existential
import), so he added the variants \(X = VY\), \(Y = VX\), and \(VX =
VY\) (see the entry on
Boole).
The symbolic algebra of the 1800s included much more than just the
algebra of polynomials, and Boole experimented to see which results
and tools might apply to the algebra of logic. For example, he proved
one of his results by using an infinite series expansion. His
fascination with the possibilities of ordinary algebra led him to
consider questions such as: What would logic be like if the idempotent
law were replaced by the law \(X^3 = X\)? His successors, especially
Jevons, would soon narrow the operations on classes to the ones that
we use today, namely union, intersection and complement.
As mentioned earlier, three-quarters of the way through his brief book
of 1847, after finishing derivations of the traditional Aristotelian
syllogisms in his system, Boole announced that his algebra of logic
was capable of far more general applications. Then he proceeded to add
general theorems on developing (expanding) terms, providing
interpretations of equations, and using long division to express one
class in an equation in terms of the other classes (with side
conditions added).
Boole's theorems, completed and perfected in 1854, gave algorithms for
analyzing infinitely many argument forms. This opened a new and
fruitful perspective, deviating from the traditional approach to
logic, where for centuries scholars had struggled to come up with
clever mnemonics to memorize a very small catalog of valid conversions
and syllogisms and their various interrelations.
De Morgan's *Formal Logic* did not gain significant
recognition, primarily because it was a large collection of small
facts without a significant synthesis. Boole's *The Mathematical
Analysis of Logic* had powerful methods that caught the attention
of a few scholars such as De Morgan and Arthur Cayley
(1821-1895); but immediately there were serious questions about
the workings of Boole's algebra of logic: Just how closely was it tied
to ordinary algebra? How could Boole justify the procedures of his
algebra of logic? In retrospect it seems quite certain that Boole did
not know why his system worked. His claim, following Gregory, that in
order to justify using ordinary algebra it was enough to check the
commutative law \(XY = YX\) for multiplication and the distributive
law \(X(Y + Z) = XY + XZ\), is clearly false. Nonetheless it is also
likely that he had checked his results in a sufficient number of cases
to give substance to his belief that his system was correct.
## 3. 1854--Boole's Final Presentation of his Algebra of Logic
In his second book, *The Laws of Thought*, Boole not only
applied algebraic methods to traditional logic but also attempted some
reforms to logic. He started by augmenting the laws of his 1847
algebra of logic (without explicitly saying that his previous list of
three axioms was inadequate), and made some comments on the rule of
inference (performing the same operation on both sides of an
equation). But then he casually stated that the foundation of his
system actually rested on a single (new) principle, namely it sufficed
to check an argument by seeing if it was correct when the class
symbols took on only the values 0 and 1, and the operations were the
usual arithmetical operations. Let us call this *Boole's Rule of 0
and 1*. No meaningful justification was given for Boole's adoption
of this new foundation, it was not given a special name, and the scant
references to it in the rest of the book were usually rather clumsily
stated. For a modern analysis of this Rule of 0 and 1 see Burris &
Sankappanavar 2013.
The development of the algebra of logic in the *Laws of
Thought* proceeded much as in his 1847 book, with minor changes to
his translation scheme, and with the selection operators replaced by
classes. There is a new and very important theorem (correcting the one
he had used in 1847), the Elimination Theorem, which says the
following: given an equation \(F(x,y, z, \ldots) = 0\) in the class
symbols \(x, y, z\), etc., the most general conclusion that follows
from eliminating certain of the class symbols is obtained by (1)
substituting 0s and 1s into \(F(x, y, z, \ldots)\) for the symbols to
be eliminated, in all possible ways, then (2) multiplying these
various substitution instances together and setting the product equal
to 0. Thus eliminating \(y\) and \(z\) from \(F(x, y, z) = 0\) gives
\(F(x, 0, 0)F(x, 0, 1)F(x, 1, 0)F(x, 1, 1) = 0\). This theorem also
played an important role in Boole's interpretation of Aristotle's
syllogistic.
From an algebra of logic point of view, the 1854 treatment at times
seems less elegant than that in the 1847 book, but it gives a much
richer insight into how Boole thinks about the foundations for his
algebra of logic. The final chapter on logic, Chapter XV, was an
attempt to give a uniform proof of the Aristotelian conversions and
syllogisms. (It is curious that prior to Chapter XV Boole did not
present any examples of arguments involving particular propositions.)
The details of Chapter XV are quite involved, mainly because of the
increase in size of expressions when the Elimination and Development
Theorems are applied. Boole simply left most of the work to the
reader. Later commentators would gloss over this chapter, and no one
seems to have worked through its details.
Aside from the Rule of 0 and 1 and the Elimination Theorem, the 1854
presentation is mainly interesting for Boole's attempts to justify his
algebra of logic. He argued that in symbolical algebra it was quite
acceptable to carry out equational deductions with partial operations,
just as one would when the operations were total, as long as the terms
in the premises and the conclusion were interpretable. He said this
was the way ordinary algebra worked with the uninterpretable
\(\sqrt{-1}\), the square root of [?]1. (The geometric
interpretation of complex numbers was recognized early on by Wessel,
Argand, and Gauss, but it was only with the publications of Gauss and
Hamilton in the 1830s that doubts about the acceptability of complex
numbers in the larger mathematical community were overcome. It is
curious that in 1854 Boole regarded \(\sqrt{-1}\) as
uninterpretable.)
There were a number of concerns regarding Boole's approach to the
algebra of logic:
1. Was there a meaningful tie between his algebra of logic and the
algebra of numbers, or was it just an accident that they were so
similar?
2. Could one handle particular propositions in an algebraic logic
that focused on equations?
3. Was it really acceptable to work with uninterpretable terms in
equational derivations?
4. Was Boole using "Aristotelian" semantics (the
semantics presupposed in traditional logic, where the extension of a
term is nonempty)?
## 4. Jevons: An Algebra of Logic Based on Total Operations
Jevons, who had studied with De Morgan, was the first to offer an
alternative to Boole's system. In 1863 he wrote to Boole that surely
Boole's operation of addition should be replaced by the more natural
'inclusive or' (or 'union'), leading to the
law \(X + X = X\). Boole completely rejected this suggestion (it would
have destroyed his system based on ordinary algebra) and broke off the
correspondence. Jevons published his system in his 1864 book, *Pure
Logic* (reprinted in Jevons 1890). By 'pure' he meant
that he was casting off any dependence on the algebra of
numbers--instead of classes, which are associated with quantity,
he would use predicates, which are associated with quality, and his
laws would be derived directly from the (total) fundamental operations
of inclusive disjunction and conjunction. But he kept Boole's use of
equations as the fundamental form of statements in his algebra of
logic.
By adopting De Morgan's convention of using upper-case/lower-case
letters for complements, Jevons' system was not suited to provide
equational axioms for modern Boolean algebra. However, he refined his
system of axioms and rules of inference until the result was
essentially the modern system of Boolean algebra for *ground
terms*, that is, terms where the class symbols are to be thought
of as constants, not as variables.
It must be noticed that modern equational logic deals with
*universally quantified* equations (which would have been
called *laws* in the 1800s). In the 19th century
algebra of logic one could translate "All \(X\) is \(Y\)"
as the equation \(X = XY\). This is *not* to be viewed as the
universally quantified expression \((\forall X)(\forall Y)(X = XY)\).
\(X\) and \(Y\) are to be treated as constants (or schematic letters).
Terms that only have constants (no variables) are called
*ground* terms.
By carrying out this analysis in the special setting of an algebra of
predicates (or equivalently, in an algebra of classes) Jevons played
an important role in the development of modern equational logic. As
mentioned earlier, Boole gave inadequate sets of equational axioms for
his system, originally starting with the two laws due to Gregory plus
his idempotent law; these were accompanied by De Morgan's inference
rule that one could carry out the same operation (Boole's fundamental
operations in his algebra of logic were addition, subtraction and
multiplication) on equals and obtain equals. Boole then switched to
the simple and powerful (but unexplained) Rule of 0 and 1.
Having replaced Boole's fundamental operations with total operations,
Jevons proceeded, over a period of many years, to work on the axioms
and rules for his system. Some elements of equational logic that we
now take for granted required a considerable number of years for
Jevons to resolve:
*The Reflexive Law* (\(A=A\)). In 1864 Jevons listed this as a
postulate (1890, p. 11) and then in SS24 he referred to \(A = A\)
as a "useless Identical proposition". In his 1869 paper on
substitution it became the "Law of Identity". In the
*Principles of Science* (1874) it was one of the three
"Fundamental Laws of Thought".
*The Symmetric Law* (\(B = A\) follows from \(A = B\)). In 1864
Jevons wrote "\(A = B\) and \(B = A\) are the same
statement". This is a position he would maintain. In 1874 he
wrote
>
>
> I shall consider the two forms \(A = B\) and \(B = A\) to express
> exactly the same identity written differently.
>
>
>
For a final form of his algebra of logic we turn to the laws which he
had scattered over 40 pages in *Principles of Science* (1874),
having replaced his earlier use of + by \(\ORjev\), evidently to move
further away from any appearance of a connection with the algebra of
numbers:
Laws of Combination
\[ \begin{align} A &= AA = AAA = \& c & \mbox{Law of
Simplicity (p. 33)}\\ AB &= BA & \mbox{A Law of
Commutativeness (p. 35)}\\ A \ORjev A & = A &\mbox{Law of
Unity (p. 72)}\\ A \ORjev B &= B \ORjev A &\mbox{A Law of
Commutativeness (p. 72)}\\ A(B \ORjev C) &= AB \ORjev AC &
\mbox{(no name given) (p. 76)}\\ \end{align} \]
Laws of Thought
\[ \begin{align} A &= A & \mbox{Law of Identity (p. 74)}\\ Aa
&= o & \mbox{Law of Contradiction (p. 74)}\\ A &= AB
\ORjev Ab & \mbox{Law of Duality (p. 74)}\\ \end{align} \]
For his single rule of inference Jevons chose his principle of
substitution--in modern terms this was essentially a combination
of ground replacement and transitivity. He showed how to derive
transitivity of equality from this; he could have derived symmetry as
well but did not. The associative law was missing--it was
implicit in the lack of parentheses in his expressions.
It was only in his *Studies in Deductive Logic* (1880) that
Jevons mentioned McColl's use of an accent to indicate negation. After
noting that McColl's accent allowed one to take the negation of
complex bracketed terms he went on to say that, for the most part, he
found the notation of De Morgan, the notation that he had always used,
to be the more elegant.
## 5. Peirce: Basing the Algebra of Logic on Subsumption
Peirce started his research into the algebra of logic in the late
1860s. In his paper "On an Improvement in Boole's calculus of
Logic" (Peirce 1867), he arrived independently at the same
conclusion that Jevons had reached earlier, that one needed to replace
Boole's partial operation of addition with the total operation of
union (see CP 3.3.6). In his important 1880 paper, "On the
Algebra of Logic", Peirce quietly broke with the traditional
extensional semantics and introduced a usual assumption of modern
semantics: the extension of a concept, understood as a class, could be
empty (as well as the universe), and stated the truth values of the
categorical propositions that we use today. For example, he said the
proposition "All \(A\) is \(B\)" is true if \(A\) and
\(B\) are both the empty class. Conversion by Limitation, that is, the
argument "All \(A\) is \(B\)" therefore "Some \(B\)
is \(A\)", was no longer a valid inference. Peirce said nothing
about the reasons for and merits of his departure from the traditional
semantic assumption of existence.
Peirce also broke with Boole's and Jevons' use of equality as the
fundamental primitive, using instead the relation of
"subsumption" interpretable in different ways (subclass
relation, implication, etc.). He stated the partial order properties
of subsumption and then proceeded to define the operations of + and
x as least upper bounds and greatest lower bounds--he
implicitly assumed such bounds existed--and listed the key
equational properties of the algebras with two binary operations that
we now call lattices. Then he claimed that the distributive law
followed, but said the proof was too tedious to include. The
fruitfulness of this perspective is evident in his seminal paper from
1885. There Peirce introduced a system for propositional logic based
on five axioms for implication (represented by the sign
'\(-\kern-.4em<\)'), including what is now called
Peirce's law. It certainly made the algebra of logic more elegant.
## 6. De Morgan and Peirce: Relations and Quantifiers in the Algebra of Logic
De Morgan wrote a series of six papers called "On the
Syllogism" in the years 1846 to 1863 (reprinted in De Morgan
1966). In his efforts to generalize the syllogism, De Morgan replaced
the copula "is" with a general binary relation in the
second paper of the series dating from 1850. By allowing different
binary relations in the two premises of a syllogism, he was led to
introduce the composition of the two binary relations to express the
conclusion of the syllogism. In this pursuit of generalized syllogisms
he introduced various other operations on binary relations, including
the converse operation, and he developed a fragment of a calculus for
these operations. His main paper on this subject was the fourth in the
series, called "On the syllogism, No. IV, and on the logic of
relations" published in 1859 (see De Morgan 1966).
Following De Morgan's paper, Peirce, in his paper "Description
of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives, resulting from an
Amplification of the Conceptions of Boole's Calculus of Logic"
from 1870, lifted Boole's work to the setting of binary
relations--with binary relations one had, in addition to union,
intersection and complement, the natural operations of composition and
converse. A binary relation was characterized as a set of ordered
pairs (see 3.328). He worked on this new calculus between 1870 and
1883. Like De Morgan, Peirce also considered a number of other natural
operations on relations. Peirce's main paper on the subject was
"On the Algebra of Logic" (1880). By employing
unrestricted unions, denoted by S, and unrestricted
intersections, denoted by P, Peirce thus introduced quantifiers
into his algebra of logic.
In a paper from 1882, "Brief Description of the Algebra of
Relatives", reprinted in De Morgan 1966, he used these
quantifiers to define operations on relations by means of operations
on certain kind of coefficients. De Morgan gets credit for introducing
the concept of relation, but Peirce is considered the true creator of
the theory of relations (see, e.g., Tarski 1941: 73). However, Peirce
did not develop this theory. As Calixto Badesa wrote, "the
calculus of relatives was never to Peirce's liking" (Badesa
2004: 32). He considered it too complicated because of the combination
of class operations with relational ones. Instead, he preferred from
1885 onwards to develop a "general algebra" including
quantifiers but no operation on relations. In this way, he arrived at
an elementary and informal presentation of what is now called
first-order logic (see Badesa 2004, *loc. cit*.).
## 7. Schroder's systematization of the algebra of logic
The German mathematician Ernst Schroder played a key role in the
tradition of the algebra of logic. A good example was his challenge to
Peirce to provide a proof of the distributive law, as one of the key
equational properties of the algebras with two binary operations.
Peirce (1885) admitted that he could not provide a proof. Years later
Huntington (1904: 300-301) described part of the content of a
letter he had received from Peirce in December 1903 that claimed to
provide the missing proof--evidently Peirce had stumbled across
the long lost pages after the death of Schroder in 1902. Peirce
explained to Huntington that he had originally assumed Schroder's
challenge was well-founded and that this apparent shortcoming of his
paper "was to be added to the list of blunders, due to the
grippe, with which that paper abounds, ...". Actually
Peirce's proof did not correct the error since the distributive law
does not hold in lattices in general; instead his proof brought in the
operation of complementation--he used the axiom
>
>
> if \(a\) is not contained in the complement of \(b\) then \(a\) and
> \(b\) have a common lower bound.
>
>
>
On the basis of his previous algebraic work, Schroder wrote an
encyclopedic three volume work at the end of the 19th
century called *Vorlesungen uber die Algebra der Logik*
(1890-1905), built on the subsumption framework with the modern
semantics of classes as presented by Peirce. This work was the result
of his research in algebra and revealed different influences.
Schroder aimed at a general algebraic theory with applications in
many mathematical fields, where the algebra of logic was at the core.
As Geraldine Brady pointed out, it offers the first exposition of
abstract lattice theory, the first exposition of Dedekind's theory of
chains after Dedekind, the most comprehensive development of the
calculus of relations, and a treatment of the foundations of
mathematics on the basis of the relation calculus (see Brady 2000: 143
f.)
The first volume concerned the equational logic of classes, the main
result being Boole's Elimination Theorem of 1854. Three rather
complicated counter-examples to Peirce's claim of distributivity
appeared in an appendix to Vol. I, one of which involved nine-hundred
and ninety identities for quasigroups. On the basis of this volume,
Dedekind (1897) composed an elegant modern abstract presentation of
lattices (which he called *Dualgruppen*); in this paper he
presented a five-element counter-example to Peirce's claim of the
distributive law.
Volume II augments the algebra of logic for classes developed in
Volume I so that it can handle existential statements. First, using
modern semantics, Schroder proved that one cannot use equations
to express "Some \(X\) is \(Y\)". However, he noted that
one can easily express it with a negated equation, namely \(XY \ne
0\). Volume II, a study of the calculus of classes using both
equations and negated equations, attempted to cover the same topics
covered in Vol. I, in particular there was considerable effort devoted
to finding an Elimination Theorem. After dealing with several special
cases, Schroder recommended this topic as an important research
area--the quest for an Elimination Theorem would be known as the
Elimination Problem.
Inspired mainly by Peirce's work, Schroder examined the algebra
of logic for binary relations in Vol. III of his *Vorlesungen
uber die Algebra der Logik*. As Tarski once noted, Peirce's
work was continued and extended in a very thorough and systematic way
by Schroder. One item of particular fascination for him was this:
given an equation \(E(x, y, z, \ldots) = 0\) in this algebra, find the
general solution for one of the relation symbols, say for \(x\), in
terms of the other relation symbols. He managed, given a particular
solution \(x = x0\), to find a remarkable term \(S(t, y, z, \ldots)\)
with the following properties: (1) \(x = S(t, y, z, \ldots)\) yields a
solution to \(E = 0\) for any choice of relation \(t\), and (2) every
solution \(x\) of \(E = 0\) can be obtained in this manner by choosing
a suitable \(t\). Peirce was not impressed by Schroder's
preoccupation with the problem of solving equations, and pointed out
that Schroder's parametric solution was a bit of a hoax--the
expressive power of the algebra of logic for relations was so strong
that by evaluating the term \(S(t, y, z, \ldots)\) one essentially
carried out the steps to check if \(E(t, y, z, \ldots) = 0\); if the
answer was yes then \(S(t, y, z, \ldots)\) returned the value \(t\),
otherwise it would return the value \(x0\).
Summing up, Schroder constructed an algebraic version of modern
predicate logic and also a theory of relations. He applied it to
different fields (e.g., Cantor's set theory), and he considered his
algebraic notation as a general or universal language
(*pasigraphy*, see Peckhaus 2004 and Legris 2012). It is to be
noted that Lowenheim in 1940 still thought it was as reasonable
as set theory. According to him, Schroder's idea of solving a
relational equation was a precursor of Skolem functions, and
Schroder inspired Lowenheim's formulation and proof of the
famous theorem that every "arithmetical" sentence with an
infinite model has a countable model. Schroder's calculus of
relations was the basis for the doctoral dissertation of Norbert
Wiener (1894-1964) in Harvard (Wiener 1913). According to Brady,
Wiener gave the first axiomatic treatment of the calculus of
relations, preceding Tarski's axiomatization by more than twenty years
(see Brady 2000: 165).
## 8. Huntington: Axiomatic Investigations of the Algebra of Logic
At the turn of the 19th Century, David Hilbert
(1862-1943) presented, in his *Grundlagen der Geometrie*,
Euclidean geometry as an axiomatic subject that did not depend on
diagrams for its proofs (Hilbert 1899). This led to a wave of interest
in studying axiom systems in mathematics; in particular one wanted to
know if the axioms were independent, and which primitives led to the
most elegant systems. Edward Vermilye Huntington (1874-1952) was
one of the first to examine this issue for the algebra of logic. He
gave three axiomatizations of the algebra of logic, showed each set of
axioms was independent, and that they were equivalent (see Huntington
1904). In 1933 he returned to this topic with three new sets of
axioms, one of which contained the following three equations (1933:
280):
\[ \begin{align} a + b &= b + a \\ (a + b) + c &= a + (b + c)
\\ (a' + b')' + (a' + b)' &= a. \end{align} \]
Shortly after this, Herbert Robbins (1915-2001) conjectured that
the third equation could be replaced by the slightly simpler
\[ [(a + b)' + (a + b')']' = a. \]
Neither Huntington nor Robbins could prove this, and later it
withstood the efforts of many others, including even Tarski and his
talented school at Berkeley. Building on partial results of Winker,
the automated theorem prover EQP, designed by William McCune of the
Argonne National Laboratory, found a proof of the Robbins Conjecture
in 1996. This accomplishment was popularized in Kolata 2010.
According to Huntington (1933: 278), the term "Boolean
algebra" was introduced by Henry M. Sheffer (1882-1964) in
the paper where he showed that one could give a five-equation
axiomatization of Boolean algebra using the single fundamental
operation of joint exclusion, now known as the Sheffer stroke (see
Sheffer 1913). Whitehead and Russell claimed in the preface to the
second edition of *Principia* that the Sheffer stroke was the
greatest advance in logic since the publication of *Principia*.
(Hilbert and Ackermann (1928), by contrast, stated that the Sheffer
stroke was just a curiosity.) Neither realized that decades earlier
Schroder had discovered that the dual of the Sheffer stroke was
also such an operation--Schroder's symbol for his operation
was that of a double-edged sword.
In the 1930s Garrett Birkhoff (1911-1996) established the
fundamental results of equational logic, namely (1) equational classes
of algebras are precisely the classes closed under homomorphisms,
subalgebras and direct products, and (2) equational logic is based on
five rules: reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity, replacement, and
substitution. In the 1940s, Tarski joined in this development of
equational logic; the subject progressed rapidly from the 1950s till
the present time.
## 9. Stone: Models for the Algebra of Logic
Traditional logic studied certain simple relationships between
classes, namely *being a subclass of* and *having a nonempty
intersection with*. However, once one adopted an axiomatic
approach, the topic of possible models besides the obvious ones
surfaced. Beltrami introduced models of non-Euclidean geometry in the
late 1860s. In the 1890s Schroder and Dedekind constructed models
of the axioms of lattice theory to show that the distributive law did
not follow. But when it came to the algebra of classes, Schroder
considered only the standard models, namely each was the collection of
all subclasses of a given class.
The study of general models of the axioms of Boolean algebra did not
get underway until the late 1920s; it was soon brought to a very high
level in the work of Marshall Harvey Stone (1903-1989) (see his
papers 1936, 1937). He was interested in the structure of rings of
linear operators and realized that the central idempotents, that is,
the operators \(E\) that commuted with all other operators in the ring
under multiplication (that is, \(EL = LE\) for all \(L\) in the ring)
and which were idempotent under multiplication (\(EE = E\)) played an
important role. In a natural way, the central idempotents formed a
Boolean algebra.
Pursuing this direction of research led Stone to ask about the
structure of an arbitrary Boolean algebra, a question that he answered
by proving that *every Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a Boolean
algebra of sets*. In his work on Boolean algebras he noticed a
certain analogy between kernels of homomorphisms and the ideals
studied in ring theory--this led him to give the name
"ideal" to such kernels. Not long after this he discovered
a translation between Boolean algebras and Boolean rings; under this
translation the ideals of a Boolean algebra corresponded precisely to
the ideals of the associated Boolean ring. His next major contribution
was to establish a correspondence between Boolean algebras and certain
topological spaces now called Boolean spaces (or Stone spaces). This
correspondence would later prove to be a valuable tool in the
construction of exotic Boolean algebras. These results of Stone are
still a paradigm for developments in the algebra of logic.
Inspired by the rather brief treatment of first-order statements about
relations in Vol. III of the *Algebra der Logik*,
Lowenheim (1915) showed that if such a statement could be
satisfied in an infinite domain then it could be satisfied in a
denumerable domain. In 1920 Thoralf Skolem (1887-1963)
simplified Lowenheim's proof by introducing Skolem normal forms,
and in 1928 Skolem replaced his use of normal forms with a simpler
idea, namely to use what are now called Skolem functions. He used
these functions to convert first-order sentences into universal
sentences, that is to say, into sentences in prenex form with all
quantifiers being universal (\(\forall\)).
## 10. Skolem: Quantifier Elimination and Decidability
Skolem was strongly influenced by Schroder's *Algebra der
Logik*, starting with his PhD Thesis. Later he took a particular
interest in the quest for an Elimination Theorem in the calculus of
classes. In his 1919 paper he established some results for lattices,
in particular, he showed that one could decide the validity of
universal Horn sentences (i.e., universal sentences with a matrix that
is a disjunction of negated and unnegated atoms, with at most one
positive atom) by a procedure that we now recognize to be a polynomial
time algorithm. This algorithm was based on finding a least fixed
point of a finite partial lattice under production rules derived from
universal Horn sentences. Although this result, which is equivalent to
the uniform word problem for lattices, was in the same paper as
Skolem's famous contribution to Lowenheim's Theorem, it was
forgotten until a chance rediscovery in the early 1990s. (Whitman
(1941) gave a different solution to the more limited equational
decision problem for lattices; it became widely known as the solution
to the word problem in lattices.)
Skolem (1920) gave an elegant solution to the Elimination Problem
posed by Schroder for the calculus of classes by showing that if
one added predicates to express "has at least \(n\)
elements", for each \(n = 1, 2, \ldots\), then there was a
simple (but often lengthy) procedure to convert a first-order formula
about classes into a quantifier-free formula. In particular this
showed that the first-order theory of the calculus of classes was
decidable. This quantifier-elimination result was used by Mostowski
(1952) to analyze first-order properties of direct powers and direct
sums of single structures, and then by Feferman and Vaught (1959) to
do the same for general direct sums and direct products of
structures.
The elimination of quantifiers became a main method in mathematical
logic to prove decidability, and proving decidability was stated as
the main problem of mathematical logic in Hilbert and Ackermann
(1928)--this goal was dropped in subsequent editions because of
the famous undecidability result of Church and Turing.
## 11. Tarski and the Revival of Algebraic Logic
Model theory can be regarded as the product of Hilbert's methodology
of metamathematics and the algebra of logic tradition, represented
specifically by the results due to Lowenheim and Skolem. But it
was Tarski who gave the discipline its classical foundation. Model
theory is the study of the relations between a formal language and its
interpretation in "realizations" (that is, a domain for
the variables of the language together with an interpretation for its
primitive signs). If the interpretation happens to make a sentence of
the language state something true, then the interpretation is a
*model* of the sentence (see the entry on
model theory).
Models consist basically of algebraic structures, and model theory
became an autonomous mathematical discipline with its roots not only
in the algebra of logic but in abstract algebra (see Sinaceur
1999).
Apart from model theory, Tarski revived the algebra of relations in
his 1941 paper "On the Calculus of Relations". First he
outlined a formal logic based on allowing quantification over both
elements and relations, and then he turned to a more detailed study of
the quantifier-free formulas of this system that involved only
relation variables. After presenting a list of axioms that obviously
held in the algebra of relations as presented in Schroder's third
volume he proved that these axioms allowed one to reduce
quantifier-free relation formulas to equations. Thus his calculus of
relations became the study of a certain equational theory which he
noted had the same relation to the study of all binary relations on
sets as the equational theory of Boolean algebra had to the study of
all subsets of sets. This led to questions paralleling those already
posed and resolved for Boolean algebras, for example, was every model
of his axioms for relation algebras isomorphic to an algebra of
relations on a set? One question had been answered by Arwin Korselt
(1864-1947), namely there were first-order sentences in the
theory of binary relations that were not equivalent to an equation in
the calculus of relations--thus the calculus of relations
definitely had a weaker expressive power than the first-order theory
of relations. Actually the expressive power of relation algebra is
exactly equivalent to first-order logic with just three variables.
However, if in relation algebras (the calculus of relations) one wants
to formalize a set theory which has something such as the pair axiom,
then one can reduce many variables to three variables, and so it is
possible to express any first-order statement of such a theory by an
equation. Monk proved that, unlike the calculus of classes, there is
no finite equational basis for the calculus of binary relations (see
Monk 1964). Tarski and Givant (1987) showed that the equational logic
of relation algebras is so expressive that one can carry out
first-order set theory in it.
Furthermore, cylindric algebras, essentially Boolean algebras equipped
with unary cylindric operations \(C\_x\) which are intended to capture
the existential quantifiers (\(\exists x\)), were introduced in the
years 1948-1952 by Tarski, working with his students Louise Chin
and Frederick Thompson (see Henkin & Tarski 1961), to create an
algebra of logic that captured the expressive power of the first-order
theory of binary relations. Polyadic algebra is another approach to an
algebra of logic for first-order logic--it was created by Halmos
(1956c). The focus of work in these systems was again to see to what
extent one could parallel the famous results of Stone for Boolean
algebra from the 1930s. |
alienation | ## 1. The Basic Idea
### 1.1 Introduced
The term 'alienation' is usually thought to have comparatively modern
European origins. In English, the term had emerged by the early
fifteenth century, already possessing an interesting cluster of
associations. 'Alienation', and its cognates, could
variously refer: to an individual's estrangement from God (it
appears thus in the Wycliffe Bible); to legal transfers of ownership
rights (initially, especially in land); and to mental derangement (a
historical connection that survived into the nineteenth-century usage
of the term 'alienist' for a psychiatric doctor). It is
sometimes said that 'alienation' entered the German
language via English legal usage, although G.W.F. Hegel
(1770-1831), for one, typically uses
'*Entausserung*', and not
'*Entfremdung*' to refer to property transfer
(Hegel 1991a: SS65). (It is only the latter term which has an
etymological link to '*fremd*' or
'alien'.) Moreover, perhaps the first philosophical
discussion of alienation, at least of any sophistication, was in
French. In the *Second Discourse*, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778) diagnoses 'inflamed' forms of *amour
propre*--a love of self (which is sometimes rendered as
'pride' or 'vanity' in older English
translations)--whose toxicity is amplified by certain social and
historical developments, as manifesting themselves in alienated forms
of self; that is, in the actions and lives of individuals who have
somehow become divided from their own nature (see Rousseau 1997, and
Forst 2017, 526-30).
There are limits to what can usefully be said about the concept of
alienation in general; that is, what can usefully be said without
getting involved in the complexities of particular accounts, advanced
by particular authors, or associated with particular intellectual
traditions. However, there is a basic idea here which seems to capture
many of those authors and traditions, and which is not unduly
elusive or difficult to understand.
This basic idea of alienation picks out a range of social and
psychological ills involving a self and other. More precisely, it
understands alienation as consisting in the problematic separation of
a subject and object that belong together.
### 1.2 Elaborated
That formulation of the basic idea is perhaps too abbreviated to be
easily intelligible, and certainly benefits from a little elaboration.
The characterisation of alienation offered here--as a social or
psychological ill involving the problematic separation of a subject
and object that belong together--involves three constituent
elements: a subject, an object, and the relation between them. It will
be helpful to say a little more about each of these in turn.
First, the *subject* here is a self; typically, but not
necessarily, a person, an individual agent. 'Not
necessarily' because the subject could also be, for instance, a
group of some kind. There seems to be no good reason to deny that a
collective as well as an individual agent might be alienated from some
object. For instance, as well as Anna being alienated from her
government, it might be that women or citizens find themselves
alienated from their government.
Second, the relevant *object* can take a variety of forms.
These include: entities which are not a subject; another subject or
subjects; and oneself. The object here might be an entity which is not
a subject; for example, Beatrice might be alienated from the natural
world, from a social practice, from an institution, or from a social
norm, where none of those entities are understood as agents of any
kind. In addition, the object might be an entity which is another
subject, another person or group; for example, Beatrice might be
alienated from her childhood friend Cecile, and Beatrice might also be
alienated from her own family. Lastly, the object here might be the
original subject; that is, there might be reflexive variants of the
relation, for example, in which Beatrice is alienated from
herself.
Third, the *relation* is one of problematic separation between
a subject and object that belong together. All of these elements are required: there has to be a separation; the separation has to be problematic; and it has to obtain
between a subject and object that properly belong together.
The idea of *separation* is important. Not all problematic
relations between relevant entities involve alienation. For instance,
being overly integrated into some other object might also be a
problematic or dysfunctional relation but it is not what is typically
thought of as alienation. Imagine, for instance, that Cecile has no
life, no identity, finds no meaning, outside of her family membership.
It is tempting, at least for modern individuals, to say that she has
an 'unhealthy' relationship with her family, but it would
seem odd to say that she was alienated from it. Alienation typically
involves a separation from something.
These problematic separations can be indicated by a wide
variety of words and phrases. No particular vocabulary seems to be
required by the basic idea. The linguistic variety here might include
words suggesting: breaks ('splits',
'ruptures', 'bifurcations',
'divisions', and so on); isolation
('indifference', 'meaninglessness',
'powerlessness', 'disconnection', and so on);
and hostility ('conflicts', 'antagonism',
'domination', and so on). All these, and more, might be
ways of indicating problematic separations of the relevant kind. Of
course, particular authors may use language more systematically, but
there seems little reason to insist that a specific vocabulary is
required by the basic idea.
The idea of the relevant separation having to be, in some way,
*problematic*, is also important. Separations between a subject
and object do not necessarily appear problematic. Relations of
indifference, for example, might or might not be problematic. For an
unproblematic instance, consider Daniela, a distinguished Spanish
architect, who--when it is brought to her
attention--discovers that she is unconcerned with, and apathetic
towards, the complex constitutional relationship between the Pacific
islands of Niue and New Zealand. Her indifference in this case looks
unproblematic. Less obviously perhaps, the same might be true of
relations of hostility; that is, that hostility also might or might
not be problematic. For an unproblematic instance, consider Enid and
Francesca, two highly competitive middleweight boxers competing in the
Olympics for the first time. It may well be that a certain amount of
antagonism and rancour between these two individual sportswomen is
entirely appropriate; after all, if Enid identifies too closely with
Francesca--imagine her experiencing every blow to
Francesca's desires and interests as a defeat for her
own--she is not only unlikely to make it to the podium, but is
also, in some way, failing qua boxer.
The suggestion here is that to be appropriately
problematic--appropriate, that is, to constitute examples of
alienation--the separations have to obtain between a subject and
object that *properly* belong together (Wood 2004: 3). More
precisely, that the candidate separations have to frustrate or
conflict with the proper harmony or connectedness between that subject
and object. Imagine, for instance, that both the indifference of
Daniela, and the hostility of Enid, now also take appropriately
problematic forms. Perhaps we discover that Daniela has become
increasingly indifferent to her lifelong vocation, that she no longer
cares about the design and construction issues over which she had
previously always enthused and obsessed; whilst Enid has started to develop feelings of loathing and suspicion for her domestic partner who she had previously trusted and loved. What makes these examples of separation (indifference and hostility) appear appropriately problematic is that they violate some
baseline condition of harmony or connectedness between the relevant
entities. (A baseline condition that does not seem to obtain in the
earlier examples of *un*problematic separation.) Alienation
obtains when a separation between a subject and object that properly
belong together, frustrates or conflicts with that baseline
connectedness or harmony. To say that they properly belong together is
to suggest that the harmonious or connected relation between the
subject and object is rational, natural, or good. And, in turn, that
the separations frustrating or conflicting with that baseline
condition, are correspondingly irrational, unnatural, or bad. (For
some resistance to this characterisation, see Gilabert 2020,
55-56.) Of course, that is not yet to identify what might establish
this baseline harmony as, say, rational, natural, or good. Nor is it
to claim that the disruption of the baseline harmony is
all-things-considered bad, that alienation could never be a justified
or positive step. (These issues are discussed further in sections 4.1
and 5.2, respectively.)
### 1.3 Modesty Of
This basic idea of alienation appears to give us a diverse but
distinct set of social and psychological phenomena; picking out a
class of entities which might have little in common other than this
problematic separation of subject and object. The problematic
separations here are between the self (including individual and
collective agents) and other (including other selves, one's own
self, and entities which are not subjects). So understood, the basic
idea of alienation seems to play largely a diagnostic or critical
role; that is, the problematic separations might indicate that
something is awry with the self or social world, but do not, in
themselves, offer an explanation of, or suggest a solution to, those
ills.
On this account, the basic idea of alienation looks conceptually
rather modest. In particular, this idea is not necessarily committed
to certain stronger claims that might sometimes be found in the
literature. That all these social and psychological ills are
characterised by a problematic separation, for example, does not make
alienation a natural kind, anymore than--to borrow an example
associated with John Stuart Mill--the class of white objects is a
natural kind (Wood 2004: 4). Nor, for instance, need there be any
suggestion that the various forms of alienation identified by this
account are necessarily related to each other; that, for example, they
are all explained by the same underlying factor. Of course, particular
theorists may have constructed--more or less
plausible--accounts of alienation that do advance those, or
similar, stronger claims. For instance, the young Karl Marx
(1818-1883) is often understood to have suggested that one of
the systematic forms of alienation somehow explains all the other ones
(Wood 2004: 4). The claim here is simply that these, and other,
stronger claims are not required by the basic idea.
That said, the basic idea of alienation appears to require only a few
additions in order to extend its critical reach significantly.
Consider two further suggestions often made in this context: that
alienation picks out an array of non-trivial social and psychological
ills that are prevalent in modern liberal societies; and that the idea
of 'alienation' is distinct from that of
'injustice' on which much modern liberal political
philosophy is focused. These familiar claims are not extravagant, but,
so understood, the concept of alienation would appear to have some
critical purchase on both contemporary liberal societies (for
containing alienation) and contemporary liberal political philosophy
(for neglecting alienation). The implied critical
suggestion--that the concept of alienation reveals that something
significant is awry with both liberal society and liberal
understandings--looks far from trivial. (Of course, establishing
that those purported failings reveal fundamental flaws in either
liberal society, or liberal political philosophy, is rather harder to
accomplish.)
Particular theories of alienation typically restrict the range of
problematic separations that they are interested in, and introduce
more explanatory accounts of the extent and prognosis of alienation so
characterised. They might, for instance, focus on social rather than
psychological ills, and maintain that these are caused by certain
structural features--particular aspects of its economic
arrangements, for instance--of the relevant society. Such
explanatory claims are of considerable interest. After all,
understanding the cause of a problem looks like a helpful step towards
working out whether, and how, it might be alleviated or overcome.
However, these explanatory claims are not readily open to general
discussion, given the significant disagreements between particular
thinkers and traditions that exist in this context. Note also that
introducing these various restrictions of scope, and various competing
explanatory claims, increases the complexity of the relevant account.
However, these complexities alone scarcely explain the--somewhat
undeserved--reputation that the concept of alienation has for
being unduly difficult or elusive. It might be that their impact is
compounded--at least in the intellectual traditions with which
the concept of alienation is most often associated (Hegelianism and
Marxism)--by language and argumentative structures that are
unfamiliar to some modern readers.
## 2. Adjacent Concepts
### 2.1 Introduced
It may be helpful to say something about the relation of alienation to
what can be called 'adjacent' concepts. The two examples
discussed here are both drawn from Hegelian and Marxist traditions;
namely, the concepts of fetishism and objectification. Disambiguating
the relationship between these various concepts can help clarify the
general shape of alienation. However, they are also discussed because
particular accounts of alienation, both within and beyond those two
traditions, are sometimes said--more or less plausibly--to
conflate alienation either with fetishism, or with objectification. Even if some particular treatments of alienation
do equate the relevant concepts with each other, alienation is better
understood as synonymous with neither fetishism nor
objectification. Rather, fetishism is only one form that alienation can take, and not all objectification involves alienation.
### 2.2 Fetishism
The first of these adjacent ideas is fetishism.
'Fetishism' refers here to the idea of human creations
which have somehow escaped (we might say that they have
inappropriately separated out from) human control, achieved the
appearance of independence, and come to enslave or dominate their
creators.
Within Hegelian and Marxist traditions, a surprisingly wide range of
social phenomena--including religion, the state, and private
property--have been characterised as having the character of a
fetish. Indeed, Marx sometimes treats the phenomenon of fetishism as a
distinguishing feature of modernity; where previous historical epochs
were characterised by the rule of persons over persons, capitalist
society is characterised by the rule of things over persons.
'Capital', we might say, has come to replace the feudal
lord. Consider, for instance, the frequency with which 'market
forces' are understood and represented within modern culture as
something outside of human control, as akin to natural forces which
decide our fate. In a famous image--from the *Communist
Manifesto*--Marx portrays modern bourgeois society as
'like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers
of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells' (Marx
and Engels 1976: 489).
In order to elaborate this idea of fetishism, consider the example of
Christian religious consciousness, as broadly understood in the
writings of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872). (Feuerbach was a
contemporary of, and important influence on, the young Marx, amongst
others.) The famous, and disarmingly simple, conclusion of
Feuerbach's philosophical analysis of religious consciousness is
that, in Christianity, individuals are worshipping the predicates of
human nature, freed of their individual limitations and projected onto
an ideal entity. For Feuerbach, however, this is no purely
intellectual error, but is rather ripe with social, political, and
psychological consequences, as this 'deity' now comes to
enslave and dominate us. Not least, the Christian God demands real
world sacrifices from individuals, typically in the form of a denial
or repression of their essential human needs. For instance, the
Christian idea of marriage is portrayed as operating in a way that
represses and punishes, rather than hallows and satisfies, the flesh
of humankind (Leopold 2007: 207-210).
Religious consciousness, on this Feuerbachian account, looks to be a
case where alienation takes the form of fetishism. That is, there is
both a problematic separation here between subject and object
(individuals and their own human nature), and it takes the form of a
human creation (the idea of the species embodied in God) escaping our
control, achieving the appearance of independence, and coming to
enslave and dominate us. The same looks to be true, on
Marx's account, of production in contemporary capitalist
societies. Capital takes on the appearance of an independent social
power which determines what is produced, how it is produced, and the
economic (and other) relations between producers. Marx himself was
struck by the parallel, and in the first volume of *Capital*,
offers the following analogy: 'As, in religion, man is governed
by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is
governed by the products of his own hand' (Marx 1996: 616).
However, rather than equating alienation and fetishism, fetishism is
better thought of as a particular form that alienation might take. (To
be clear, there looks to be no reason to think that Marx would, or
should, disagree with this claim.)
Note, in particular, that although Marx's discussions of
alienation often utilise the language of fetishism, not all of them
take that form. Consider, for instance, the problematic separation
sometimes said to exist between modern individuals and the natural
world, as the former think of themselves and behave as if they were
isolated, or cut off, or estranged, from the latter. The idea here is
reflected in the less 'Promethean' moments of Marx's
work, for example, in the suggestion that the appropriate relation
between humankind and nature would involve not our instrumental
domination of 'the other', but rather a sympathetic
appreciation of our complex interdependence with the natural world of
which we are, in reality, a part. Those moments are perhaps most
evident in Marx's discussion of contemporary
'ecological' threats--including deforestation,
pollution, and population growth--and typically involve his
'metabolic' account of the appropriate relation between
humankind and nature (Foster 1999). The inappropriate modern relation
between humankind and nature here looks like an example of
alienation--there is a problematic separation of self and
other--but certain central characteristics of fetishism would
appear to be absent. Most obviously, the natural world is not a human
creation which has escaped our control; not least, because
nature is not a human creation. Moreover, the impact on humankind
of this particular separation does not comfortably suit the language
of enslavement and domination. Indeed, if anything, our inappropriate
separation from the natural world seems to find expression in our own
ruthlessly instrumental treatment of nature, rather than in
nature's tyranny over us.
### 2.3 Objectification
The second of these adjacent ideas is objectification. The
concept in question is not the idea of objectification--familiar
from certain feminist and Kantian traditions--which concerns the
moral impropriety of systematically treating a human being as if she
were an object, thing, or commodity (Nussbaum 1995). That is a
distinct and important phenomenon, but it is not the one that is
relevant here. In the present context, objectification refers rather
to the role of productive activity in mediating the evolving
relationship between humankind and the natural world. This association
is most familiar from certain Hegelian and Marxist traditions, with
Marx often using the German term
'*Vergegenstandlichung*' to capture what is
here called 'objectification' (e.g., 1975: 272).
Humankind is seen as being part of, and dependent upon, the natural
world. However, nature is initially somewhat stingy with its
blessings; as a result, human beings confront the natural world from
an original position of scarcity, struggling through productive
activity of various kinds to change the material form of
nature--typically through making things--in ways that make
it better reflect and satisfy their own needs and interests. In that
evolving process, both the natural world and humankind come to be
transformed. Through this collective shaping of their material
surroundings, and their increasing productivity, the natural world is
made to be, and seem, less 'other', and human beings
thereby come to objectify themselves, to express their essential
powers in concrete form. These world transforming productive
activities, we might say, embody the progressive self-realisation of
humankind.
On this account, all productive activity would seem to involve
objectification. However, Marx insists that not all productive
activity involves alienation. Moreover, some other forms of
alienation--unrelated to productive activity--have no
obvious connection with objectification.
Marx maintains that productive activity might or might not take an
alienated form. For instance, productive activity in capitalist
societies is typically said to take an alienated form; whereas
productive activity in communist societies is typically predicted to
take an unalienated or meaningful form. Schematically, we might
portray alienated labour (characteristic of capitalist
society) as: being forced; not involving self-realisation (not
developing and deploying essential human powers); not intended to
satisfy the needs of others; and not appropriately appreciated by
those others. And, schematically, we might portray unalienated or
meaningful work (characteristic of communist society) as:
being freely chosen; involving self-realisation (the development and
deployment of essential human powers); being intended to satisfy the
needs of others; and being appropriately appreciated by those
others (Kandiyali 2020). Productive activity mediates the
relationship between humankind and the natural world in both of these
societies, but alienation is found only in the former (capitalist)
case.
For an example of a view which might be said to equate objectification
with alienation, consider what is sometimes called the
'Christian' view of work. On this account, work is seen as
a necessary evil, an unpleasant activity unfortunately required for
our survival. It owes its name to Christianity's embrace of the
claim that alienated work is part of the human condition: at least
since the Fall, human beings are required to work by the sweat of
their brows (see Genesis 31:9). On Marx's account, or something
like it, one might characterise this Christian view as mistakenly
equating objectification and alienation, confusing productive activity
as such with its stunted and inhuman forms. Indeed, one might go
further and suggest that this kind of confusion reflects the alienated
social condition of humankind, embodying an emblematic failure to
understand that material production is a central realm in which human
beings can express, in free and creative ways, the kind of creatures
that they are.
In addition, according to the basic idea defended here, equating
alienation and objectification fails to appreciate that certain forms
of alienation might have nothing at all to do with productive
activity. Their mutual hostility and undisguised contempt confirm that
Gillian and her sister Hanna are alienated from each other, but there
seems little reason to assume that their estrangement is necessarily
related to the world of work or their respective place in it. The
sisters' engagement in productive activity and the forms that it
takes, might well have nothing to do with the problematic separation
here. Imagine that the latter arose from a combination of sibling
rivalry, stubbornness, and a chance misunderstanding at a time of
family crisis involving the death of a parent. This possibility gives
us another reason not to equate alienation and objectification.
In short, neither fetishism, nor objectification, are best construed as identical with alienation. Rather than being synonymous, these concepts only partially overlap. Fetishism can be understood as picking out only a subset--on some accounts perhaps
a large subset--of cases of alienation. And there are forms of
objectification which do not involve alienation (the meaningful work
in communist societies, for instance), as well as forms of
alienation--outside of productive activity--with no obvious
connection to objectification.
## 3. Subjective and Objective Alienation
### 3.1 The Distinction Between Subject and Objective Alienation
The basic idea of alienation may not be unduly elusive or
difficult to understand. However, it obviously does not follow
that there are no complexities or slippery issues here, perhaps
especially once we venture further into the relevant literature.
Three interesting complexities are introduced here. They concern,
respectively: the distinction between subjective and objective
alienation; the need for a criterion identifying candidate separations
as problematic; and the relation between alienation and
value.
This section provides an introduction to, and some initial reflections
on, the first of these interesting complexities; namely, the division
of alienation into subjective and objective varieties (Hardimon 1994:
119-122). Not all theorists or traditions operate (either,
explicitly or implicitly) with this distinction, but it can be a
considerable help in understanding the diagnosis offered by particular
authors and in handling particular cases.
First, alienation is sometimes characterised in terms of how subjects
feel, or think about, or otherwise experience, the problematic
separation here. This can be called *subjective* alienation.
For instance, Ingrid might be said to be alienated because she feels
estranged from the world, because she experiences her life as lacking
meaning, because she does not feel 'at home [*zu
Hause*]' in the world--to adopt the evocative shorthand
sometimes used by Hegel--and so on (e.g. 1991a: SS4A,
SS187A, and SS258A).
Second, alienation is sometimes characterised in terms which make no
reference to the feelings, thoughts, or experience of subjects. This
can be called *objective* alienation. For instance, Julieta
might be said to be alienated because some separation prevents her
from developing and deploying her essential human characteristics,
prevents her from engaging in self-realising activities, and so on.
Such claims are controversial in a variety of ways, but they assume
alienation is about the frustration of that potential, and they make
no reference to whether Julieta herself experiences that lack as a
loss. Maybe Julieta genuinely enjoys her self-realisation-lacking
life, and even consciously rejects the goal of self-realisation as
involving an overly demanding and unattractive ideal.
Subjective alienation is sometimes disparaged - treated, for example,
as concerning 'merely' how an individual
'feels' about 'real' alienation. However, subjective alienation is better understood as a full-blown, meaningful, variety of alienation, albeit
not the only one. If you genuinely feel alienated, then you really are
(subjectively) alienated.
### 3.2 Diagnostic Schema
This distinction between subjective and objective alienation can give
us a useful diagnostic schema. Let us assume--no doubt
controversially--that all combinations of these two forms of
alienation are possible. That gives us four social outcomes to
discuss:
>
>
>
> | | | |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | Social
>
> Situation: | Subjective
>
> Alienation: | Objective
>
> Alienation: |
> | (i) | [?] | [?] |
> | (ii) | [?] | [?] |
> | (iii) | [?] | [?] |
> | (iv) | [?] | [?] |
>
>
>
> Where: [?] = Absent and [?] = Present
>
>
>
### 3.3 Applications
These various alternative combinations--numbered (i) to (iv)
above--correspond, very roughly, to the ways in which particular
authors have characterised particular kinds of social arrangement or
types of society. Consider, for example, the different views of modern
class-divided society taken by Hegel and Marx.
Marx can be characterised as diagnosing contemporary capitalist
society as corresponding to situation (i); that is, as being a social
world which contains both objective and subjective alienation. On what
we might call his standard view, Marx allows that objective and
subjective alienation are conceptually distinct, but assumes that in
capitalist societies they are typically found together sociologically
(perhaps with the subjective forms tending to track the objective
ones). However, there are passages where he deviates from that
standard view, and--without abandoning the thought that objective
alienation is, in some sense, more fundamental--appears to allow
that, on occasion, subjective and objective alienation can also come
apart sociologically. At least, that is one way of reading a
well-known passage in *The Holy Family* which suggests that
capitalists might be objectively but not subjectively alienated. In
these remarks, Marx recognises that capitalists do not get to engage
in self-realising activities of the right kind (hence their objective
alienation), but observes that--unlike the proletariat--the
capitalists are *content* in their estrangement; not least,
they feel 'at ease' in it, and they feel
'strengthened' by it (Marx and Engels 1975: 36).
In contrast, Hegel maintains that the modern social world approximates
to something more like situation (iii); that is, as being a social
world not containing objective alienation, but still containing
subjective alienation. That is, for Hegel, the social and political
structures of the modern social world do constitute a home, because
they enable individuals to realise themselves, variously as family
members, economic agents, and citizens. However, those same
individuals fail to understand or appreciate that this is the case,
and rather feel estranged from, and perhaps even consciously reject,
the institutions of the modern social world. The resulting situation
has been characterised as one of 'pure subjective
alienation' (Hardimon 1994: 121).
That Hegel and Marx diagnose modern society in these different ways
helps to explain their differing strategic political commitments. They
both aim to bring society closer to situation (iv)--that is, a
social world lacking systematic forms of both objective and subjective
alienation--but, since they disagree about where we are starting
from, they propose different routes to that shared goal. For Marx,
since we start from situation (i), this requires that the existing
world be overturned; that is, that both institutions and attitudes
need to be revolutionised (overcoming objective and subjective
alienation). For Hegel, since we start from situation (iii), this
requires only attitudinal change: we come to recognise that the
existing world is already objectively 'a home', and in
this way 'reconcile' ourselves to that world, overcoming
pure subjective alienation in the process.
Situation (ii) consists of a social world containing objective, but
not subjective, alienation - a situation that can be characterised as
one of 'pure objective alienation' (Hardimon
1994: 120). It is perhaps not too much of a stretch to think of
this situation as corresponding, very roughly, to one of the Frankfurt
School's more nightmarish visions of contemporary capitalist
society. (The Frankfurt School is the colloquial label given to
several generations of philosophers and social theorists, in the
Western Marxist tradition, associated--more or less
closely--with the Institute for Social Research founded in
1929-1930.) For example, in the pessimistic diagnosis of Herbert
Marcuse (1898-1979), articulated in *One-Dimensional Man*
(1964), individuals in advanced capitalist societies appear happy in
their dysfunctional relationships--they 'identify
themselves' with their estranged circumstances and gain
'satisfaction' from them (2002: 13). Objective alienation
still obtains, but no longer generates social conflict, since the
latter is assumed--not implausibly--to require agents who
feel, or experience, some form of hostility or rebelliousness towards
existing social arrangements.
That latter assumption raises the wider issue of the relation between
alienation and, what might be called 'revolutionary
motivation'. Let us assume that radical social change requires,
amongst other conditions, an agent--typically a collective
agent--with both the strength and the desire to bring that change
about. The role of alienation in helping to form that latter
psychological prerequisite--the desire to bring about change on
the part of the putative revolutionary agent--looks complicated.
First, it would seem that the mere fact of objective alienation cannot play
the motivating role, since it does not involve or require any feeling,
or thinking about, or otherwise experiencing, the problematic
separation here. It remains possible, of course, that a subject's knowledge of that alienation
might--depending, not least, on one's views on the
connections between reasons and motivations--provide an
appropriately psychological incentive to revolt. Second, the relation
between subjective alienation and motivation looks more complex than
it might initially seem. Note, in particular, that some of the
experiential dimensions of subjective alienation look less likely than
others to generate the psychological prerequisites of action here.
Feelings of powerlessness and isolation, for instance, might well
generate social withdrawal and individual atomism, rather than radical
social engagement and cooperative endeavour, on the part of the
relevant agents. In short, whether subjective alienation is a friend
or an enemy of revolutionary motivation would seem to depend on the
precise form that it takes.
Interestingly, situation (ii)--that is, the case of 'pure
objective alienation'--might also be thought to approximate
to the social goal of certain thinkers in the tradition of
existentialism (the tradition of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980),
Albert Camus (1913-1960), and others). Some interpretative
generosity may be needed here, but existentialists appear to think of (something like) objective alienation as a permanent feature of all human societies. Rejecting both substantive accounts of essential human nature, and the ethical embrace of social relations
that facilitate the development and deployment of those human
characteristics, they rather maintain that the social world will
always remain 'other', can never be a 'home'.
However, although this 'otherness' can never be overcome,
there do look to be better and worse ways of dealing with it. What is
essential to each individual is what they make of themselves, the ways
in which they choose to engage with that other. The preferred outcome
here seems to involve individuals embodying a norm of
'authenticity', which amongst other conditions--such
as choosing, or committing, to their own projects--may require
that they have the 'courage' to 'grasp, accept, and,
perhaps even affirm' the fact that the social world is not a
home for them (Hardimon 1994: 121).
This also clarifies that situation (iv)--which contains
systematic forms of neither objective or subjective
alienation--is the social goal of some but not all of these
authors (of Hegel and Marx, for instance, but not the
existentialists). Of course, (iv) might also be a characterisation of
the extant social world according to a hypothetical, and
over-optimistic, apologist for the present.
## 4. What Makes a Separation Problematic?
### 4.1 Criteria of 'Impropriety'
The second of the interesting complexities broached here concerns what
we can call the need for a criterion of
'impropriety' - that is, a criterion by which candidate
separations might be identified as problematic or not. Recall the
earlier suggestion that accounts of alienation require some benchmark
condition of harmony or connectedness against which separations might
be assessed as problematic or not.
Historically, this role--identifying whether candidate
separations are problematic--has often been played by accounts of
our essential human nature. However, motivated by suspicion of that
latter idea, theorists of alienation have sometimes sought
alternatives to fulfil that role.
### 4.2 Essential Human Nature
To see how the appeal to human nature works, imagine two hypothetical
theorists--Katerina and Laura--seeking to assess whether
alienation exists in a particular society. We can stipulate that the
institutions and culture of this particular society are
individualistic--in the sense that they systematically frustrate
cooperation and sociability--and that the two theorists share
many, but not all, of the same views. In particular, assume that our
two theorists *agree* that: alienation is a coherent and useful
concept; the account of alienation given here is, broadly
speaking, plausible; the only serious candidate for a problematic
separation in this particular society are those arising from its
individualism; and our essential human nature provides the
benchmark of 'propriety' for assessing separations. Simply
put, separations are problematic if they frustrate, and unproblematic
if they facilitate, 'self-realisation'. Self-realisation
is understood here as a central part of the good life and as
consisting in the development and deployment of an individual's
essential human characteristics. However, assume also that Katerina
and Laura *disagree* about what comprises human nature. In
particular, they disagree about whether cooperation and sociability
are essential human characteristics, with Katerina insisting that they
are and Laura insisting that they are not. It seems to follow that
Katerina will conclude, and Laura will deny, that this society is one
containing alienation. For Katerina, the widespread lack of
cooperation and sociability confirm that the basic social institutions
here *frustrate* our self-realisation. For Laura, the very same
widespread lack of cooperation and sociability confirm that the basic
social institutions *facilitate*, or at least do *not*
frustrate, our self-realisation.
Note that in sub-section 1.2, where the basic idea of alienation was
elaborated, various relations between subject and object were
distinguished, only one of which was characterised as reflexive.
However, in the light of the present discussion, we might now think it
more accurate to say that--on this kind of account, which
uses our essential human nature to identify alienation--only
one of them was *directly* reflexive, because there is some
sense in which all of those dimensions of alienation involve a
separation from some aspect of our own human nature. After all, this
is precisely what picks out the relevant separation as problematic.
For example, the separation of individuals from each other is, for
Katerina, indirectly also a separation from human nature, from the
cooperation and sociability that characterises our essential
humanity.
### 4.3 An Alternative Criterion
As already noted, this benchmark--by which candidate separations
are assessed as problematic or not--is often, but not always,
played by accounts of our essential human nature. Given the widespread
contemporary suspicion of such accounts--not least, by those
opposed to what is sometimes called 'essentialism' about
human nature--it might be helpful to sketch a recent account
of alienation which is not dependent on such assumptions (or, at
least, consciously strives to avoid them). There is also a potential
benefit here for those of us who do not fully share that suspicion,
namely, that such an example might provide some sense of the
diversity of available theories of alienation.
Rahel Jaeggi offers an account of alienation of this kind, and
situates it explicitly in the tradition of Critical Theory - the kind
of emancipatory theory associated with the Frankfurt School. On this
account, the idea of alienation has the potential to help us
understand and change the world, but only if it receives some
significant conceptual reconstruction. Alienation is still associated
with the frustration of freedom, with disruptions to something like
'self-realisation'. However, this account--unlike its
forerunners and associates--is said not to be fatally compromised
by a commitment to either 'strongly objectivistic'
theories of the good life or 'essentialist' conceptions of
the self (Jaeggi 2014: 40).
The crucial term of art here is 'appropriation', which
Jaeggi uses to refer to the capacity for, and process of, relating to
our own actions and projects in ways which engage 'something
like self-determination and being the author of one's own
life' (2014: 39). Appropriation is successful--and
alienation is absent--when 'one is present in one's
actions, steers one's life instead of being driven by it,
independently appropriates social roles and is able to identify with
one's desires, and is involved in the world' (Jaeggi 2014:
155). In contrast, appropriation is unsuccessful--and alienation
is present--when there is 'an inadequate power and a lack
of presence in what one does, a failure to identify with one's
own actions and desires and to take part in one's own
life' (Jaeggi 2014: 155). Alienation is thus identified with
systematic disruptions of the process of appropriation - in particular,
in those systematic disruptions which lead us to fail to experience
our actions and projects as our own. These disruptions are said
typically to take one of four forms: first,
'powerlessness' or the experience of losing control over
one's own life; second, 'loss of authenticity'
especially when one is unable to identify with one's own social
roles; third, 'internal division' where one experiences
some of one's own desires and impulses as alien; and fourth,
'indifference' or a detachment from one's own
previous projects and self-understandings.
This model fits happily enough with our basic idea of alienation as
consisting in a problematic separation between self and other
that belong together. However, the conditions for identifying
the relevant dysfunctional relation here are intended to be less
demanding and controversial than those involving claims about our
essential human nature. There is a kindred notion of freedom as
self-realisation, but it is said to be the realisation of a thin kind
of self-determining agency and not the actualisation of some thick
'pre-given' identity of an essentialist sort. A normative
dimension remains, but it is presented as expansive and broadly
procedural. It is expansive in that a wide range of actions and
projects might be included within its remit. And it is procedural in
that the benchmark for judging the success of these various actions
and projects is that they were brought about in the right kind of
self-determination delivering way, and not that their content reflects
a narrow and controversial account of what human beings are 'in
essence'.
Modern culture is said to recognise and value the kind of freedom at
the heart of this picture of appropriation. As a result, this account
of alienation can be presented as a form of *immanent
critique* - that is, as utilising a standpoint which judges
individuals and forms of life according to standards that those
individuals have themselves propounded or which those forms of life
presuppose. At the individual level, this critique might involve
identifying potential tensions between the conditions for treating
people as responsible agents, and the obstructions to such agency that
characterise alienated selves - for instance, the feelings of
powerlessness that prevent individuals from directing and embracing
their own lives. And at the social level, this critique might involve
identifying potential discrepancies between modern ideals of freedom
and their actual realisation in the contemporary world - for instance,
the existence of social or political roles that an individual can
never make their own (Jaeggi 2014: 41-42).
Of course, there remain questions about this account, and three are
broached here. First, one might doubt whether the contrast between
essentialist accounts of human nature, on the one hand, and a thinner
kind of self-governing agency, on the other, can either be sustained
or play the role intended. Second, one might wonder about the
ground(s) of normativity; after all, that the kind of subjectivity or
self-determination which appropriation embodies is recognised and
valued in modern culture does not in itself establish its ethical
worth. (More generally, it can seem easier to dismiss Hegelian
teleology, or Marxist perfectionism, than it is to find wholly
satisfactory replacements for them.) Third, one might be sceptical
about the degree of social criticism here, since both the sources of,
and solutions to, Jaeggi's paradigmatic examples of
unsuccessful appropriation ('powerless', 'loss
of authenticity', 'internal division',
and 'indifference') seem to focus on the
'thoughts and dispositions' of individuals rather than the
structures of particular societies (Haverkamp 2016, 69). Of course,
there might be plausible responses to these critical worries, some
of which could draw on Jaeggi's own subsequent work
(see espcially 2018).
## 5. Alienation and Value
### 5.1 Negative Element
The third of these interesting complexities concerns the ethical
dimension of alienation. The connections between alienation and ethics
are many and diverse, and there is no attempt here to sketch that
wider landscape in its entirety. Instead, attention is drawn to two
topographical features: the claim that alienation is necessarily a
negative, but not a wholly negative, phenomenon, is elaborated and
defended; and the suggestion that some forms of moral theory or even
morality itself might encourage or embody alienation is briefly
outlined.
The claim that alienation is necessarily a negative, but not a wholly
negative, phenomenon can be addressed in two parts. Defending the
first part of that claim looks straightforward enough. Alienation, on
the present account, consists in the separation of certain entities
- a subject and some object--that properly belong together.
As a result, alienation always involves a loss or lack of something of
value, namely, the 'proper'--rational, natural, or
good--harmony or connectedness between the relevant subject and
object.
### 5.2 Positive Element
It is the second part of the claim which looks less obvious: that
alienation is not a wholly negative phenomena, that is, that the loss
or lack here may not always be the whole story, ethically speaking.
Note, in particular, that some well-known accounts also locate an
achievement of something of value in the moment of alienation. The resulting ethical
'gains' and 'losses' would then need to be weighed and
judged overall.
In order to illustrate this possibility--that alienation can
involve the achievement of something of value--consider the
nuanced and critical celebration of capitalism found, but not always
recognised, in Marx's writings. One pertinent way of introducing
this account involves locating the moment of alienation within a
pattern of development that we might call 'dialectical' in
one sense of that slippery term.
The dialectical pattern here concerns the developing relationship
between a particular subject and object: the individual, on the one
hand, and their social role and community, on the other. By a
*dialectical* progression is meant only a movement from a stage
characterised by a relationship of 'undifferentiated
unity', through a stage characterised by a relationship of
'differentiated disunity', to a stage characterised by a
relationship of 'differentiated unity'.
There are no further claims made here about the necessity, the naturalness, or the
prevalence, of such progressions (Cohen 1974: 237).
The dialectical progression here involves three *historical*
stages:
First, *past* (pre-capitalist) societies are said to
embody undifferentiated unity. In this stage, individuals
are buried in their social role and community, scarcely
conceptualising, still less promoting, their own identity and
interests as distinguishable from those of the wider community.
Second, *present* (capitalist) societies are said to
embody differentiated disunity. In this stage, independence
and separation predominate, and individuals care only for themselves,
scarcely thinking of the identity and interests of the wider
community. Indeed, they are typically isolated from, and indifferent
or even hostile towards, the latter.
Third, *future* (communist) societies are said to
embody differentiated unity. In this stage, desirable
versions of community and individuality flourish together. Indeed, in
their new forms, communal and individual identities and communal and
individual interests presuppose and reinforce each other. It is
sometimes said that the contents of the first two stages (community
and individuality, respectively) have thereby been
'sublated'--that is, elevated, cancelled, and
preserved--in this third stage. 'Sublated' is an
attempted English translation of the German verb
'*aufheben*'and its cognates, which Hegel
occasionally uses to suggest this elusive combination of ideas (e.g.
Hegel 1991b: SS24A3, SS81A1).
In the present context, the crucial historical stage is the second
one. This is the stage of alienation, the stage of disunity which
emerges from a simple unity before reconciliation in a higher
(differentiated) unity (Inwood 1992: 36). This is the stage associated
with present (capitalist) societies involving the problematic
separation of individuals from their social role and community. In the
first historical stage (of past pre-capitalist societies) there is a
problematic relation, but no separation. And in the third historical
stage (of future communist societies) there is a separation but it is
a healthy rather than problematic one. In this second historical stage
of alienation, there is a loss, or lack, of something of value;
roughly speaking, it is the loss or lack of the individuals'
attachment to their social role and community. (More precisely, we
might say that they have lost a sense of, and connection to, the
community, and that they lack a healthy sense of, and connection to,
the community.)
However, this disvalue is not the whole of the historical story,
ethically speaking. In comparison with the first stage, the second
stage also involves a liberation of sorts from the object in which
subjects were previously 'engulfed' (Cohen 1974: 239). The
'of sorts' is a way of acknowledging that this is a rather
distinctive kind of liberation. The individual here is not necessarily
rid of the constraints of the other (of their social position and
community), but they do now at least identify and experience them as
such--that is, as constraints on the individual--whereas
previously the individual was engulfed by that other and failed to
think of themselves as having any identity and interests outside of
their social position. In short, the loss or lack of something of
value is not the only feature of the second stage of alienation. There
is also an important gain here, namely, the achievement of what we can
call 'individuality'. This significant good was missing in
the first pre-capitalist stage, and--freed from its present
distorting capitalist form--it will be preserved and developed in
the communist future of the third historical stage.
This claim goes beyond the familiar suggestion that alienation forms a
necessary step in certain Hegelian and Marxist developmental
narratives. The suggestion here is that internal to the second stage,
the stage of alienation, there is both a problematic separation from
community and a positive liberation from engulfment. Those who see
only the negative thread in alienation, and fail to see 'what is
being achieved within in and distorted by it', will miss an
important, albeit subtle, thread in Marx's account of the
progressive character of capitalism (Cohen 1974: 253).
There is a lot going on in this schematic discussion of historical
stages. The point emphasised here is that theorists--even
critics--of alienation need not assume that it is a wholly
negative phenomena, ethically speaking. Marx, for example, recognises
that the moment of alienation, for all its negative features, also
involves the emergence of a good (individuality), which, in due course
(and freed from the limitations of its historical origins), will be
central to the human flourishing achieved in communist
society.
### 5.3 Morality as Alienating
This claim--that alienation might not be a wholly negative
phenomenon--concerns the normative dimensions of alienation.
However, it is sometimes suggested that the concept of alienation
might provide a standpoint from which morality itself, or at least
some forms of it, can be criticised. This looks to be a very
different kind of thought.
The broad suggestion is that morality, or certain conceptions of
morality, might embody, or encourage, alienation. More precisely,
morality, or certain conceptions of morality, might embody or
encourage a problematic division of self and a problematic separation
from much that is valuable in our lives. Consider, for example,
accounts of the moral standpoint as requiring universalisation and
equal consideration of all persons (Railton 1984: 138). It could seem
that adopting such a standpoint requires individuals to disown or
downplay the relevance of their more personal or partial (as opposed to impartial) beliefs and
feelings. The picture of persons divided into cognitive and affective
parts, with the partial and personal relegated to the downgraded
sphere of the latter (perhaps conceptualised as something closer to
mere sentiment than reason) is a familiar one. In addition to that
problematic bifurcation of the self, such accounts might seem to cut
us off from much that is valuable in our lives. If these impersonal
kinds of moral consideration are to dominate our practical reasoning,
then it seems likely that an individual's particular
attachments, loyalties, and commitments will have, at best, a marginal
place (Railton 1984: 139). In aspiring to adopt 'the point of
view of the universe'--to use the well-known phrase of
Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) - there can sometimes seem to
be precious little security or space remaining for, say, friendship,
love, and family (Sidgwick 1907: 382). So understood, morality, or
certain conceptions of morality, are charged with embodying and
encouraging alienation in the form of both a divided self, and a
separation of self and world.
The weight and scope of these kinds of concerns about alienation
can obviously vary; that is, they might be thought to have more or
less critical purchase on a wider or narrower range of targets. There
are various possibilities here. These concerns might, for
example, be said to apply: first, only to certain kinds of personality
types inclined to adopt particular moral theories, and not to the
theories themselves (Piper 1987); second, only to certain ways of
formulating particular moral theories (the objections here being
overcome by a more adequate formulation of
the particular theories in question); third, only to particular
moral theories (such as act utilitarianism, certain forms of
consequentialism, or all impartial moral theories) to which they
constitute foundational objections (but not to morality as such);
and, fourth, as a foundational objection that counts
against 'the peculiar institution' of morality itself
(Williams 1985: 174). Given both that variety and the subject matter
of this entry, it may not be helpful to generalise much more here.
However, the point is hopefully made that the ethical dimensions of
the present topic extend beyond the normative assessment of the
relevant separations. Indeed, taking alienation seriously might lead
us to think more critically about some familiar moral standpoints and
theories.
## 6. Some (Unresolved) Empirical Issues
### 6.1 Content
The above discussion of the concept of alienation--clarifying its
basic shape, sketching some of its theoretical forms, and introducing
a few complexities--still leaves many issues unresolved.
These include many empirical and quasi-empirical issues. The
present section is concerned with some of the
empirical assumptions and claims that appear in what might be
called broadly philosophical accounts of alienation of the kind
discussed above. It is not directly concerned with the extensive
social scientific literature on alienation. That latter
literature is often preoccupied
with 'operationalising' the concept--for
instance, treating job satisfaction or absenteeism as proxies of
alienated work--in order to engineer predictive models in
disciplines (including education, psychology, sociology, and
management studies) dealing with a variety of real world contexts
(see e.g. Chiaburu *et al* 2014).
As an example of some of the empirical dimensions of broadly
philosophical accounts of alienation, consider Marx's
characterisation of capitalist society as characterised by
separations which frustrate self-realisation, especially
self-realisation in work. To come to a considered judgement about the
plausibility of his views on this topic, one would have to be in a
position to assess, amongst other issues, whether work in capitalist
societies is necessarily alienated. One would need to judge not only
whether existing work is rightly characterised as alienated (as
forced, frustrating self-realisation, not intended to satisfy the
needs of others, and not appropriately appreciated by those others),
but also, if so, whether it could be made meaningful and unalienated
without undermining the very features which made the relevant society
a capitalist one. (There are, of course, also many more
normative-looking issues here regarding that account of human
flourishing: whether, for example, Marx overestimates the value of
creative and fulfilling work, and underestimates the value of,
say, leisure and intellectual excellence.) Reaching anything like a
considered judgment on these empirical and quasi-empirical issues
would clearly require some complicated factual assessments of, amongst
other issues, the composition and functioning of human nature and the
extant social world.
### 6.2 Extent
A range of complex empirical and quasi-empirical issues also look to
be woven into Marx's views about the historical extent of
alienation. Consider the various claims about the
historical location and comparative intensity of alienation that can
be found in his writings (and in certain secondary
interpretations of those writings). These include: first, that
certain systematic forms of alienation--including alienation in
work--are not a universal feature of human society (not least,
they will not be a feature of a future communist order); second, that
at least some systematic forms of alienation--presumably
including the alienation that Marx identifies as embodied in religious belief --are widespread in pre-capitalist
societies; and third, that systematic forms of alienation are greater
in contemporary capitalist societies than in pre-capitalist
societies. There seems no good textual or theoretical reason to
lumber Marx with the view that less systematic forms of alienation--such as the hypothetical estrangement of Gillian from her sister Hanna (which arose from sibling rivalry, stubbornness, and a chance misunderstanding at a time of family crisis)--could never exist under communism.
Take the last of these assorted empirical claims attributed to Marx - the comparative
verdict about the extent or intensity of systematic forms of alienation in capitalist
societies. Its plausibility is scarcely incontrovertible given the
amount of sheer productive drudgery, and worse, in pre-capitalist
societies. Nor is it obvious how one might attempt to substantiate the
empirical dimensions of the claim. The empirical difficulties of
measuring subjective alienation look considerable enough (especially
given the limitations of historical data), but alienation for Marx is
fundamentally about the frustration of objective human potentials,
those separations that prevent self-realisation, perhaps especially
self-realisation in work. One suggestion, made in this context, is
that the scale of alienation in a particular society might be
indicated by the gap between the liberating potential of human
productive powers, on the one hand, and the extent to which that
potential is reflected in the lives actually lived by producers, on
the other (Wood 2004: 44-48). Whatever the appeal of that
suggestion, the social scientific details of how one might actually
apply that kind of measure in particular historical cases remain
unclear.
### 6.3 Prognosis
Related worries might also apply to claims about the prognosis for
alienation, in particular, about whether and how alienation might be
overcome. Consider, for instance, Marx's view that communist
society will be free of certain systematic forms of alienation, such
as alienation in work. Marx's view about communism rests crucially on the judgement that it is the social relations of
capitalist society, and not its material or technical arrangements,
which are the cause of systematic forms of alienation. For instance,
he holds that it is not the existence of science, technology, and
industrialisation, as such, which are at the root of the social and
psychological ills of alienation, but rather how those factors tend to
be organised and used in a capitalist society. (For present
purposes, just assume that a society is capitalist when its
economic structure is based on a particular class division - in
which producers can only access means of production by selling their
labour power--and when production, and much else, is driven
by a remorseless search for profit.) In volume one of
*Capital*, Marx writes approvingly of workers who, through time
and experience, had learnt 'to distinguish between machinery and
its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against
the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which
they are used' (1996: 432). If this had not been his view, Marx
could not have, consistently, also suggested that communist society
- which, on his account, is similarly technologically advanced
and industrial--could avoid this kind of alienation. This
suggestion is, nonetheless, strikingly sanguine. Marx is confident,
for instance, that the considerable gulf between the gloomy results of
adopting machinery in the capitalist present (where it increases the
repetitiveness of tasks, narrows talents, promotes
'deskilling', and so on) and the bright promise of its
adoption in the communist future (where it will liberate us from
uncreative tasks, create greater wealth, develop all-round abilities,
and so on) is easily bridged. However, Marx's
'utopophobia'--that is, his reluctance to say very
much, in any close detail, about the future shape of socialist
society - prevents him from offering any serious discussion
about how precisely this might be done (Leopold 2016). As a result,
even the mildest of sceptics could reasonably worry that a range of
difficult empirical and other questions are evaded rather than
answered here.
This issue--whether, and to what extent, alienation can be
overcome in modern societies--is sometimes conflated with the
issue of whether, and to what extent, alienation is a historically
universal phenomena. To see that these are distinct questions,
imagine that alienation only emerges in economically developed
societies, that it is a necessary feature of economically developed
societies, and that economically developed societies never revert
voluntarily to economically undeveloped ones. These are not
implausible claims, but together they seem to entail that, although
only a subset of historical societies are scarred by
alienation, if you happen to live in an economically developed
society, then--involuntary Armageddon apart--alienation will
remain the fate of you and your successors.
My aim here is not to make significant progress in resolving any of
these empirical and quasi-empirical issues, but rather to
acknowledge their existence and extent. Since the concept of
alienation diagnoses a complex range of social ills involving self and
other, it is perhaps not surprising that a variety of such issues
are implicated in these various accounts of its proper
characterisation, its historical scope, and the possibilities for
overcoming it. Nonetheless, it remains important to acknowledge the
existence and complexity of these empirical and quasi-empirical
threads, not least because they are not always adequately recognised
or dealt with in the broadly philosophical discussions of alienation
which are the focus of the discussion here. |
althusser | ## 1. Life
Louis Althusser was born on October 16th, 1918 in Bir
Mourad Rais (formerly Birmandreis), a suburb of Algiers.
Hailing from Alsace on his father's side of the family, his
grandparents were French citizens who had chosen to settle in
Algeria. At the time of his birth, Althusser's father was a
lieutenant in the French Military. After this service was up, his
father returned to Algiers and to his work as a banker. By all
accounts save for the retrospective ones contained in his
autobiographies, Althusser's early childhood in North Africa was
a contented one. There he enjoyed the comforts of the Mediterranean
environment as well as those provided by an extended and stable
petit-bourgeois family.
In 1930, his father's work moved the family to Marseille. Always
a good pupil, Althusser excelled in his studies and became active in
the Scouts. In 1936, the family moved again, this time to Lyon. There,
Althusser was enrolled in the prestigious Lycee du Parc. At the
Lycee, he began taking classes in order to prepare for the
competitive entrance exams to France's *grandes
ecoles*. Raised in an observant family, Althusser was
particularly influenced by professors of a distinctly Catholic
tendency. These included the philosophers Jean Guitton and Jean
Lacroix as well as the historian Joseph Hours. In 1937, while still at
the Lycee, Althusser joined the Catholic youth group
*Jeunesse etudiantes chretiennes*. This interest
in Catholicism and his participation in Catholic organizations would
continue even after Althusser joined the Communist Party in 1948. The
simultaneous enthusiasm that Althusser showed in Lyon for Royalist
politics did not last the war.
In 1939, Althusser performed well enough on the national entrance
examinations to be admitted to the Ecole Normale
Superieure (ENS) in Paris. However, before the school year
began, he was mobilized into the army. Soon thereafter, he was
captured in Vannes along with the rest of his artillery regiment. He
spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of war at a camp in
Northern Germany. In his autobiographical writings, Althusser credits
the experiences of solidarity, political action, and community that he
found in the camp as opening him up to the idea of communism. Indeed,
his prison writings collected as *Journal de captivite,
Stalag XA 1940-1945* evidence these experiences. They also
provide evidence of the cycles of deep depression that began for
Althusser in 1938 and that would mark him for the rest of his
life.
At the end of the war and following his release from the P.O.W. camp
in 1945, Althusser took his place at the ENS. Now 27 years old, he
began the program of study that was to prepare him for the
*agregation*, the competitive examination which
qualifies one to teach philosophy in French secondary schools and that
is often the gateway to doctoral study and university employment.
Perhaps not surprisingly for a young man who had just spent half a
decade in a prison camp, much happened during the three years he spent
preparing for the exam and working on his Master's thesis.
Though still involved in Catholic groups and still seeing himself as a
Christian, the movements that Althusser associated with after the war
were leftist in their politics and, intellectually, he made a move to
embrace and synthesize Christian and Marxist thought. This synthesis
and his first published works were informed by a reading of
19th Century German idealist philosophy, especially Hegel
and Marx, as well as by progressive Christian thinkers associated with
the group *Jeunesse de l'Eglise*. Indeed, it was
19th Century German Idealism with which he was most engaged
during his period of study at the ENS. In line with this interest (one
shared with many other French intellectuals at the time), Althusser
obtained his *diplome d'etudes
superieures* in 1947 for a work directed by Gaston
Bachelard and titled "On Content in the Thought of G.W.F.
Hegel." In 1948, he passed his *agregation*,
coming in first on the written portion of the exam and second on the
oral. After this showing, Althusser was offered and accepted the post
of *agrege repetiteur* (director of
studies) at the ENS whose responsibility it was to help students
prepare for their own *agregations*. In this capacity,
he began offering courses and tutorials on particular topics in
philosophy and on particular figures from the history of philosophy.
As he retained this responsibility for more than thirty years and
worked with some of the brightest thinkers that France produced during
this time (including Alain Badiou, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel
Foucault), through his teaching Althusser left a deep and lasting
impression on a generation of French philosophers and on French
philosophy.
In addition to inaugurating his extended association with the ENS, the
first few years spent in Paris after the war saw Althusser begin three
other long-lasting relationships. The first of these was with the
French Communist Party, the second with his companion and eventual
wife, Helene Rytmann-Legotien, and the third with
French psychiatry. Begun to treat recurrent bouts of depression, this
last affiliation continued for the rest of his life and included
frequent hospitalization as well as the most aggressive treatments
post-war French psychiatry had to offer such as electroconvulsive
therapy, narco-analysis, and psychoanalysis.
The second relationship begun by Althusser was little happier and no
less dependent than the first. At its outset, Althusser's bond
with Rytmann-Legotien was complicated by his almost
total inexperience with women and by her being eight years older than
him. It was also made difficult by the vast differences in their
experience of the world and by her relationship with the Communist
Party. Whereas Althusser had known only home, school, and P.O.W.
camp, Rytmann-Legotien had traveled widely and had long
been active in literary and radical circles. At the time the two met,
she was also embroiled in a dispute with the Party over her role in
the resistance during World War II.
Though Althusser was not yet a Party member, like many of his
generation, he emerged from the War deeply sympathetic to its moral
aims. His interest in Party politics and involvement with Party
members grew during his time as a student at the ENS. However, the
ENS' suspicion of communists as well
as Rytmann-Legotien's troubles with the Party
complicated Althusser's relationship with each of these
institutions. Nonetheless, shortly after being offered the post of
*agrege repetiteur* (and thus safe
from being bypassed for the position due to his membership), Althusser
joined the Communist Party. For the next few years, Althusser tried to
advance the aims of the Communist Party as well as the goal of getting
Helene Rytmann-Legotien accepted back into it. He
did so by being a good militant (going to cell meetings, distributing
tracts, etc), by re-starting a Marxist study group at the ENS (the
*Cercle Politzer*), and by making inquiries into
Helene Rytmann-Legotien's wartime
activities in the hopes of clearing her name. By his own account, he
made a terrible activist and he also failed to rehabilitate
her reputation. Nonetheless, his relationship with the Party and
with his future wife deepened during this period.
During the 1950s, Althusser lived two lives that were only somewhat
inter-related: one was that of a successful, if somewhat obscure
academic philosopher and pedagogue and the other that of a loyal
Communist Party Member. This is not to say that Althusser was
politically inactive at the school or that his communism did not
influence his philosophical work. On the contrary, Althusser recruited
colleagues and students to the Party and worked closely with the
communist cell based at the ENS. In addition, at mid-decade, he
published a few introductions to Marxist philosophy. However, in his
teaching and advising, he mostly avoided bringing in Marxist
philosophy and Communist politics. Instead, he catered to student
interest and to the demands of each new *agregation* by
engaging closely with classic philosophical texts and with
contemporary philosophy and social science. Further, the bulk of his
scholarship was on 18th Century political philosophy.
Indeed, the only book-length study Althusser published during his
lifetime was a work on Montesquieu, which appeared at the end of the
decade. At the ENS, Althusser's professionalism as well as his
ability to think institutionally was rewarded in 1954 with a promotion
to *secretaire de l'ecole
litteraire*, a post where he had some responsibility for
the management and direction of the school.
It would have surprised no one if Althusser had continued to influence
French political and philosophical life subtly, through the students
that he mentored, through his scholarship on the history of political
philosophy, through the colloquia among philosophers, scientists, and
historians that he organized, and through his routine work as a Party
member. However, in 1961, with an essay titled "On the Young
Marx," Althusser aggressively entered into a heated debate about
the continuity of Marx's oeuvre and about what constitutes the
core of Marxist philosophy. Appearing at a time of crisis in the
French Communist Party's direction and seeming to offer a
"scientific" alternative to Stalinism and to the humanist
revisions of Marxism then being proffered, the theoretical viewpoint
offered by Althusser gained adherents. Invigorated by this recognition
and by the possibility that theoretical work might actually change
Communist Party practice, Althusser began to publish regularly on
Marxist philosophy. These essays occasioned much public discussion and
philosophical activity both in France and abroad. At the same time as
these essays began creating a stir, Althusser changed his teaching
style at the ENS and began to offer collaborative seminars where he
and his students attempted a "return to Marx" and to
Marx's original texts. In 1965, the fruit of one of these
seminars was published as *Reading Capital*. That same year,
the essays on Marxist theory that had made such a sensation were
collected and published in the volume *For Marx*. Amplifying
these books' collective impact well beyond the realm of
intra-party discussion was the general trend in literary and social
scientific theory labeled "structuralism" and with which
Althusser's re-reading of Marx was identified.
At mid-decade, Althusser seized on these works' popularity and
the fact that his arguments had created a faction within the French
Communist Party composed mostly of young intelligentsia to try and
force change. This gambit to have the Party directed by theorists
rather than by a Central Committee, whose Stalinism remained
entrenched and who believed in the organic wisdom of the worker, met
with little success. At the most, he succeeded in carving out some
autonomy for theoretical reflection within the Party. Even though it
is his most well-known intervention, this was not the first attempt by
Althusser to try and influence the Party (he had tried once before
during the mid 1950s from his position as cell leader at the ENS) and
it would not be his last. While he lost much of the student support
that his work had created when he remained silent during the
"revolutionary" events of May 1968 (he was in a
psychiatric hospital at the time), he campaigned once more to
influence the Party during the mid 1970s. This intervention occurred
in response to the French Communist Party's decision to abandon
traditional Marxist-Leninist aspects of its platform so as to better
ally itself with the Socialist Party. Though Althusser's
position was well publicized and found its supporters, in the end, his
arguments were unable to motivate the Party's rank-and-file such
that its leadership would reconsider its decision.
During the decades in which he became internationally known for his
re-thinking of Marxist philosophy, Althusser continued in his post at
the ENS. There he took on increasing institutional responsibility
while continuing to edit and, with Francois Maspero, to publish
his own work and that of others in the series *Theorie*.
In 1975, Althusser acquired the right to direct research on the basis
of his previously published work. Shortly after this recognition, he
married his longtime companion, Helene
Rytmann-Legotien.
Following the French Left's and the Communist Party's
electoral defeats in the 1978 elections, Althusser's bouts of
depression became more severe and more frequent. In November 1980,
after a painful surgery and another bout of mental illness, which saw
him hospitalized for most of the summer and whose symptoms continued
after his return to the ENS in the fall, Althusser strangled his wife.
Before he could be arrested for the murder, he was sent to a mental
hospital. Later, when an examining magistrate came to inform him of
the crime of which he was accused, Althusser was in so fragile a
mental state that he could not understand the charges or the process
to which he was to be submitted and he was left at the hospital. After
an examination, a panel of psychiatrists concluded that Althusser was
suffering at the time of the murder from severe depression and
iatrogenic hallucinations. Citing a French law (since changed), which
states that "there is neither crime nor delict where the suspect
was in a state of dementia at the time of the action," the
magistrate in charge of Althusser's case decided that there were
no grounds on which to pursue prosecution.
The last ten years of Althusser's life were spent in and out of
mental hospitals and at the apartment in Paris' 20th
arrondissement where he had planned to retire. During this period, he
was visited by a few loyal friends and kept up some correspondences.
Given his mental state, his frequent institutionalizations, his
anomie, and the drugs he was prescribed, these were not very
productive years. However, at mid-decade, he did find the energy to
re-visit some of his old work and to attempt to construct from it an
explicit metaphysics. He also managed to write an autobiography, a
text he averred was intended to provide the explanation for the murder
of his wife that he was never able to provide in court. Both texts
only appeared posthumously. When his mental and physical health
deteriorated again in 1987, Althusser went to live at a psychiatric
hospital in La Verriere, a village to the west of Paris. There,
on the 22nd of October, 1990, he died of a heart attack
## 2. Early Work (1946-60)
Despite its being anthologized and translated during the mid 1990s,
there has until recently been relatively little critical attention
paid to Althusser's writings prior to 1961. Certainly, in terms
of method, style, and inspiration, the Althusser found in these works
differs significantly from the Althusser of *For Marx* and
*Reading Capital*. In his writings from the 1940s, for
instance, his method and conclusions resemble those of the Marxist
Humanists of whom he would later be so critical, while texts from the
1950s deploy without irony the Stalinist shibboleths he would later
subject to such castigation. Nonetheless, as these texts announce many
of Althusser's perennial themes and because some of the
contradictions these works possess are shared with his classic texts
and are repeated again in his late work, these early essays, books,
and translations are worthy of examination
### 2.1 Christianity and Marxism
Althusser's philosophical output between 1946 and 1961 can
roughly be divided into four categories. The first category includes
those essays, mostly written between 1946 and 1951, where Althusser
explores possible rapports between Christianity and Marxism. In the
first of these essays "The International of Decent
Feelings," Althusser argues from what he takes to be "the
truth of Christianity" against the popular post-war view that
the misery, guilt, and alienation of the human condition in the atomic
age is equally experienced by all subjects. For him, this
existentialist diagnosis is a type of idolatry: it replaces
recognition of our equality before God with our equality before the
fear of death. In that it does so, it is twice anti-Christian. For, in
addition to the sin of idolatry (death equals God), it fails to
acknowledge the existence of a particular class, the proletariat, for
whom anguish is not its lot and who is actually capable of delivering
the emancipation from fear by re-appropriating the products of human
production, including the atomic bomb. A subsequent essay from 1947,
"A Matter of Fact," continues in this vein, suggesting the
necessity of socialist means for realizing Christian ends. It also
includes a Hegelian critique of the existing Catholic Church which
suggests that the church is incapable of such an alliance without a
theological revolution. Each of these essays includes the suggestion
that critique and reform will occasion a better church and a truer
Christianity. By 1949, however, Althusser was totally pessimistic
about this possibility and, in a letter to his mentor Jean Lacroix, he
argued that the sole possibility for realizing Christian values is
through communist action. Though some critics have argued that
Christian and Catholic values and modes of reasoning inform all of
Althusser's philosophy, any explicit consideration of a
practical and theoretical reconciliation between the two was abandoned
at this point in Althusser's development.
### 2.2 Hegelian Marxism
The second category of Althusser's early work, one closely
related to the first, are those texts that deal with Hegel. Written
primarily for an academic audience, they approach Hegel's
philosophy either critically, in terms of the history of its reception
and use, or exegetically, in terms of examining what possibility
Hegel's metaphysics, logic, politics, epistemology, and
understanding of subjectivity offer to those interested in
understanding and encouraging societal transformation. Between 1946
and 1950, the results of Althusser's exegeses were positive:
Hegel indeed had something to offer. This judgment finds its most
detailed explanation in Althusser's 1947 thesis "On
Content in the thought of G.W.F. Hegel." In addition to
detailing Hegel's relation to Kant and criticizing the
simplification of the dialectic by Hegel's commentators,
Althusser argues in this work that the dialectic "cannot be
attacked for its form" (1947, 116). Instead, Hegel can only be
critiqued for a failure of the contents of the form (as these contents
are specified in Hegel's historical and political works) to have
actually fulfilled the absolute idea. Following the Young Hegelians,
then, Althusser uses Hegel's dialectic against itself to
criticize claims like the one made in *The Philosophy of Right*
that the Prussian state is the fulfillment of the dialectic. Though he
uses Marx's *Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
Right* to make his points and though he is in agreement with Marx
that the Hegelian concept, realized in thought, must now be realized
in the world, Althusser does not suggest in his thesis that
Marx's philosophy leaves Hegel's insights about, history,
logic, and the subject behind. Instead, he contends that Marx is
guilty of committing the same error as Hegel in mistaking historical
content for the fulfillment of the dialectic. Because all knowledge is
historical, Althusser argues, Marxists can only correct for this error
by appeal to the idea of the dialectic and to its end in the absolute
and the eternal, to a time "when the human totality will be
reconciled with its own structure" (1947, 156). Something like
this argument will appear again in his classical work as a critique of
the empiricist tendency in Marxist philosophy.
### 2.3 Marx not Hegel
By the early 1950s, Althusser's judgments that Marxism was, of
necessity, Hegelian and that it aimed at human fulfillment had
undergone revision. This transition to thinking about Marx as the
originator of a philosophy totally distinct from Hegel's was
signaled in a review essay from 1950 which argued that the post-war
mania for Hegel in France was only a bourgeois attempt to combat Marx.
In two short essays from 1953 on Marxist philosophy, this switch is
fully apparent. In these texts, Althusser aligns himself with the
position advanced by Mehring and Lenin that, at a certain point in
Marx's development, Hegel is left behind and that, afterwards,
Marx forged his own original concepts and methodology. In his
description of what these concepts and methodology are, Althusser
pretty much follows the Party line, insisting that Marx reversed the
Hegelian dialectic, that historical materialism is a science, that the
sciences verify dialectical materialism, and that the proletariat
needs to be taught Marxist science from above. Though these essays
repeat the Party philosophy as formulated by Lenin, Stalin, and
Zhdanov, they also include recognizable Althusserian themes and show
his thinking about these themes to be in transition. For instance,
both essays retain the idea from Althusser's 1947 thesis about
the quasi-transcendental status of present scientific knowledge. Both
also anticipate future concerns in their speculations about the
ideological character of current scientific knowledge and in their
incorporation of ideas from Mao about the relationship between theory
and practice. Written as a response to Paul Ricoeur and representing
the last example of this third category of Althusser's early
work, a text from 1955 argues for the objectivity of historical
science. This is a theme to which he would return. Noticeably absent
from this body of work, however, are the detailed and original claims
Althusser would make in the early 1960s about Marx's
philosophy.
### 2.4 Historical Work: Montesquieu and Feuerbach
Two essays that Althusser wrote in the mid 1950s were the first to
focus exclusively on Marxist philosophy and are interesting inasmuch
as they evidence his rejection of Hegel and his embrace of the
Party's Marxism-Leninism. In addition, these texts suggest the
need for a thorough study of Marx. This study, however, would wait
until the beginning of the next decade. For the rest of the 1950s,
most of Althusser's published work involved the study of
philosophical figures who preceded Marx. These figures included
Montesquieu, on whose political philosophy and theory of history he
wrote a book-length study, and Feuerbach, whose writings he translated
and commented upon. The dual thesis of Althusser's Montesquieu
book: that, insofar as Montesquieu studies the "concrete
behavior of men" he resists idealism and inaugurates the study
of history as a science and that, insofar as Montesquieu accepts past
and present political formations as delimiting the possibilities for
political life, he remains an idealist, is one that will find echoes
in Althusser's study of Marx during the next decade. Similarly,
inasmuch as he makes the argument in a commentary (1960) that part of
his intention in translating Feuerbach is to show just what Marx owes
in his early writings to the author of *The Essence of
Christianity* so that these may be better seen as absent from
Marx's mature work, these studies of Feuerbach can also be seen
as propaedeutic to the study of Marx which Althusser inaugurated in
1961 with his article "On the Young Marx".
## 3. Classic Work (1961-1966)
With the perspective afforded by the mass of posthumous writings
published since the 1990s, it has become clear that Althusser was
perennially concerned with important issues in metaphysics,
epistemology, philosophy of science, historiography, hermeneutics, and
political philosophy. However, it is also true that the primary medium
Althusser employed for thinking through problems in these areas was
Marxist philosophy. This is especially true of the period between 1961
and 1966 when the majority of his published and unpublished work
concerned itself with how to read Marx, the definition of Marxist
philosophy, and how to understand and apply Marxian concepts. In
addition, if we are to take Althusser's retrospective word for
it, the pieces he published during this period were intended as
political-theoretical acts, polemics meant to respond to contemporary
opinions and policies and to shift the terms of these arguments as
well as the actions which were their results. For these reasons, it is
natural when discussing these texts to focus upon the contexts that
engendered them and upon the positions within Marxist philosophy that
Althusser stakes out by their means. Alternatively, as Althusser
indicates in many of these pieces his debts to contemporaneous
theorists and to philosophical predecessors such as Spinoza, there is
the temptation to understand his thought as a combination of the
insights contributed by these thinkers with Marxist philosophy. While
each is a useful approach to understanding and explaining
Althusser's philosophy, when excessive attention is paid to one
or another of them, one risks historicizing his contributions or
suggesting that they are merely derivative. Seeking to avoid either
result, even though the following discussion will note the context for
Althusser's work, its relation to Marxist philosophy, and the
non-Marxist philosophical insights that contribute to its method and
conclusions, this account will also suggest the uniqueness of his
contributions to hermeneutics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy
of science, historiography, and political philosophy.
For multiple, overlapping, and complicated reasons of which the most
relevant may be the discrediting of Stalin's personage,
policies, and version of Marxist philosophy that followed
Khrushchev's "Secret Speech," Europe in the late
1950s saw a blossoming of political and philosophical alternatives to
the version of Marxism-Leninism promulgated by the Soviet Union. This
version of Marxist philosophy had dominated European leftist thought
and action since the dawn of the Cold War in 1947 and, in France, was
widely disseminated via Communist Party schools and literature. While
political and philosophical change were slow to occur in the French
Communist Party, by the late 1950s, many intellectuals associated with
the Party began to ask questions about what constitutes the core of
Marx's philosophy and about how this philosophy guides, relates
to, or allows for political action.
For many of these intellectuals, answering this question meant a
return to Marx's early work (those texts written before 1845) in
the hopes of finding the "key" to his philosophy. In
pieces like "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's
Philosophy of Right" (1844), and the *Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts* (1844), these thinkers found and
championed a Marx obviously indebted to a Hegelian dialectical
understanding of subjectivity and historical development and deeply
concerned about ending human alienation. It is to this
project--that of finding the true method, aim, and intent of
Marx's philosophy in his early work's emphasis on the
realization of full human freedom and potentials through dialectical
historical change--that Althusser made the first of his public
"interventions" into Marxist philosophy. He inaugurated
this effort with the essay "On the Young Marx" (1961),
which sought to demonstrate that this method of looking to
Marx's early work for the key to his philosophy was
methodologically suspect and ideologically driven. Further, in this
essay and in subsequent work, he developed an alternate method of
investigation or "reading" that would allow Marx's
true philosophy to be revealed in its purity.
From the fruits of this new method of reading, Althusser argued that
not only was Marx the originator of a new philosophy, Dialectical
Materialism, that had nothing to do with its Hegelian and Feuerbachian
predecessors, but that he also founded a new science, Historical
Materialism, which broke with and superseded such ideological and
pre-scientific precursors as the political economics of Smith and
Ricardo. For the most part, the essays collected in *For Marx*
(1965) and the seminar papers issued as *Reading Capital*
(1965) develop and utilize this method of reading in order to justify
and describe Marxist philosophy and Marxist science as well as to
distinguish between these two theoretical activities. In so doing,
Althusser says quite a bit about the nature of knowledge and the
general relations between philosophy, science, politics, and ideology.
Further, Althusser applies this hermeneutic method to argue against
what he labeled "empiricist" understandings of Marx. These
included the Humanist interpretations of Marx described above as well
as variations on the orthodox Marxist-Leninist theory, which specified
the strict determination of culture and history by the existing modes
of economic exchange and resulting class struggles. The following
paragraphs discuss this theory of reading, how it produces a different
understanding of Marx's philosophy than that which is derived
from Humanist and Economist readings, and how it informs his
epistemology, philosophy of science, historiography, and political
philosophy.
### 3.1 Hermeneutic Theory
The label that Althusser gave to the method by which he approached
Marx's texts was that of a "symptomatic reading."
Instead of looking back at Marx's early work in order to find
the "essence" of his philosophy, one of whose expressions
was *Capital*, and also instead of trying to build a true or
consistent theory out of Marx's oeuvre by explaining away
contradictions within it and noting certain passages as key, Althusser
argued that Marx's true philosophy was largely absent from his
work prior to 1845. Even in mature texts such as *Capital*,
Althusser maintained that Marx's philosophy remained largely
implicit, as the background system of concepts which allowed the
scientific work Marx was involved in generating to take place. The
symptomatic method of reading was designed to make these concepts
explicit and "to establish the indispensable minimum for the
consistent existence of Marxist philosophy**"**
(1965a [2005], 35).
The three inspirations Althusser gave for this interpretive method
were those provided by Spinoza, Freud by way of Lacan, and that
provided by Marx himself. In addition, he added to these examples
insights from the French tradition of historical epistemology about
the way in which sciences come to be constituted. One of the ideas
borrowed from Spinoza was the contention that texts and authors are
the products of their times and that the thoughts authors set down on
the page cannot help but be a part of, and be affected by, the
ideological currents that accompany and allow for the satisfaction of
needs in a specific era. So then, similar to the way in which Spinoza
argued in the *Theological Political-Treatise* that by engaging
in a materialist historical study of the Bible one could disentangle
those prophetic laws and commands which were merely the result of
temporal exigencies and the prophet's imagination from those
which represented the true word of God, so Althusser argued that one
could disentangle those concepts which were merely ideological in
Marx's texts from those which comprised his true philosophy.
Though this theory was later to be complicated and revised, during
this period, Althusser consistently argued that Marx's work
prior to 1845 was ideological and that it was saturated with
non-Marxian concepts borrowed from Hegel's and Feuerbach's
philosophical anthropologies. Althusser did recognize that some of
Marx's early work is marked by its rejection of idealist
premises and concepts. However, inasmuch as this early work was seen
to espouse a telic view of humanity in which the individual and
society was said to undergo a necessary historico-dialectical
development, Althusser identified it as fundamentally Hegelian. That
there was a materialist correction to this basic narrative with
Marx's embrace of Feuerbach, Althusser also granted. However,
the replacement by Marx of a speculative anthropology which saw the
historical development of society as the self-fulfillment of human
freedom with a materialist anthropology that cited the same logic of
development but which specified that the motor of this development was
human beings in their "sensuous life activity," was seen
by Althusser to represent little conceptual and no logical advance
from Hegel.
This "theory of the break," which held that Marx's
early work was Hegelian and ideological and that, after a decisive
rupture in 1845 and then a long period of transition between
1845-1857, his work became recognizably Marxist and scientific,
would seem to indicate that all one has to do to understand
Marx's philosophy is to read this mature work. However, the
actual case is not so simple. While reading *Capital* and other
late works is necessary for understanding Marx's philosophy, it
is not sufficient. It is not sufficient, Althusser argued, because,
even in his post-1857 writings, Marx provides no systematic exposition
of his epistemology or his ideas about social structure, history, and
human nature, all of which were necessary for Marxist
philosophy's consistent and continuing existence.
Many interpreters of Marx, and not just those Althusser directly
engaged with during the early 1960s, have maintained that such texts
as the *1859 Preface* and the *1844 Manuscripts* provide
keys to understanding Marx's philosophy. However, Althusser made
the case that these texts were contradictory and insufficient for this
purpose. It is with this contention that the models provided by
psychoanalysis and by Marx's own critique of classical political
economy come to inform Althusser's overall hermeneutic strategy.
Part of this strategy, Althusser maintains, is directly taken from
Marx's own method. Thus, in a way parallel to Marx pointing out
in *Capital* V.II (1885) that Adam Smith needed the concept of
the "value of labor" for his explanations of capitalist
economic activity but could not fully generate it out of the systems
of ideas available to him, Althusser argued that, though Marx was
recognizably engaged in the work of Historical Materialism in
*Capital*, the philosophical theory or background conceptual
framework that allowed this investigation to proceed was not fully
articulated.
The explicit project of *Reading Capital* and of many of the
essays included in *For Marx* was to make these fundamental
concepts explicit. It was to do so by paying attention to the
theoretical "problematic," or background ideological
framework in which the work was generated, by analyzing those passages
where a philosophical concept had to have been in use but was not made
explicit, and by noting and explaining where and why one theoretical
pronouncement is in contradiction with itself or with another passage.
For Althusser, such areas of Marx's text are
"symptoms," in the psychoanalytic sense of the word, of
the necessary but unarticulated philosophical framework that
underwrites and allows his scientific investigations. Of these
frameworks, Marx was not fully conscious. However, they were what
allowed him to investigate and describe such socio-economic events as
the transformation of money into capital without recourse to Hegelian
logic and concepts. Althusser argues that by paying attention to these
passages in Marx's text as well as by seeking out Marxist
concepts as these were developed during the course of practical
Marxist activity by theorists such as Lenin and Mao, an attentive
reader can render explicit Marx's philosophy.
That the concepts Althusser derived from his symptomatic reading of
Marx, Lenin, and Mao were Marxist concepts was avowed. Nevertheless,
Althusser also acknowledged that some of the concepts found latent in
these texts were derived from and consistent with his philosophical
and social scientific contemporaries as well as with those of Spinoza.
Of course, this is not inconsistent with the theory of reading and
authorship that underwrites a symptomatic reading of a text. Inasmuch
as authors and readers are always said to think with concepts borrowed
from or supplied by the problematic that they inhabit, there is no
such thing as an innocent or objective reading: we understand things
with and through the concepts available to us. Perhaps nowhere is this
borrowing more evident than in Althusser's ideas about how
scientific and philosophic knowledge is generated. Though Althusser is
very careful to back up his arguments about Marx's epistemology
with close analyses of Marx's work, it is apparent that the
model for knowledge acquisition that is developed in *Reading
Capital* owes much to Spinoza and to the French tradition of
historical epistemology.
### 3.2 Epistemology and Philosophy of Science
With his re-reading of Marx, Althusser wished to offer an alternative
to the two then dominant understandings of Marx's philosophy.
Both understandings were charged with the same mistake. This mistake
was, fundamentally, an epistemological one: each cast Marx as an
empiricist. At first glance, this charge might seem ridiculous. This
is especially the case as, according to Althusser's own
critique, both understandings of Marx offered variants of the Hegelian
claim that there is a reason to history. For Althusser, however, both
readings were "empiricist" inasmuch as each ascribed to
Marx a theory of knowledge in which the subject, by means of a process
of observation and abstraction, comes to know what an object really
and truly is, according to its essence. This is a definition of
empiricism meant to include philosophers as diverse as Locke, Kant,
and Hegel and traditions as varied as British Empiricism, German
Idealism, Positivism, and Pragmatism. In the case of Humanist Marxism,
the object that comes to be known by its essence is the human subject
in its full freedom. It does so by means of critique and by creatively
overcoming that which is alien to it or "merely
historical." In the case of orthodox Marxism-Leninism, this
object is the economy, the reality that underlies, causes, and can
explain all historical structures and transformations. The economy
comes to be known as it truly is only by the proletariat, by those
whom the historical process has endowed with an objective gaze and who
possess the ability to make this truth objective.
In opposition to the empiricist model of knowledge production,
Althusser proposes that true or scientific knowledge is distinguished
from ideology or opinion not by dint of an historical subject having
abstracted the essence of an object from its appearances. Instead,
this knowledge is understood to be produced by a process internal to
scientific knowledge itself. Though this transformation takes place
entirely in thought, Althusser does not maintain that scientific
knowledge makes no use of facts. However, these facts or materials are
never brute. Rather, specific sciences start with pre-existing
concepts or genera such as "humors,"
"unemployment," "quasars," or
"irrational numbers." These genera may be ideological in
part or in whole. Science's job is to render these concepts
scientific. This labor is what Althusser terms "theoretical
practice." The result of this practice is scientific knowledge.
Scientific knowledge is produced by means of applying to these genera
the body of concepts or "theory" that the science
possesses for understanding them. This body of concepts may be more or
less unified and consistent and it may be more or less consciously
articulated. Further, the sum of the individual concepts that this
theory consists of delimits the possible ways in which the genera that
a science begins with can be understood.
When applied, a science's theory weeds out ideological notions
associated with the original concept or genera. The result of this
application of theory to genera is the transformation of the
"ideological generality into a scientific generality"
(1963b [2005], 185). An example of such a process is the
transformation in medical science of a concept like "phlegmatic
humors" into the idea of blood-borne pathogens by dint of the
theory of circulation and infectious disease. Once generated, such
scientific concepts inform regular scientific practice, allowing
specific research programs within an individual science to progress.
Althusser himself gives examples of three such major transformations.
The first is the founding of modern physics by Galileo, the other that
of Greek mathematics, and the third, that of Marx's founding of
the science of Historical Materialism out of Classical Political
Economy. Each of these foundings is marked by what Althusser terms an
"epistemological break," or a period when ideological
concepts are replaced by scientific ones. Any similarity here to
Kuhnian ideas about revolutionary and normal science is not
surprising. Both Canguilhem and Bachelard, from whom Althusser drew
inspiration for his theory, were part of a dialogue that took in the
work of Alexander Koyre on scientific revolutions, a thinker
from whom Kuhn, in turn, drew his inspiration.
Althusser's debt to the tradition of French historical
epistemology in this account of knowledge production and philosophy of
science should now be evident. However, this epistemology's
Marxian and Spinozistic elements may be less pronounced. The
vocabulary adopted above to express this theory, however, gestures to
both influences. For Althusser, Marx's founding of the science
of history is crucial not only to politics (as will be addressed
below) but also to understanding all of human activity, including
scientific activity. That there is a circular logic to this
epistemological theory, Althusser readily admits, for it is only the
science of Historical Materialism that allows us to understand
scientific practice in general. Althusser, though, is comfortable with
this circularity. This is because, insofar as this understanding of
scientific practice in general allows us to understand how individual
sciences produce their knowledge, Historical Materialism is a science
that functions like any other.
For Althusser, the concept that helps to produce this understanding of
scientific practices is that of the "mode of production."
With it, he argues, Marx supplied theorists with an idea sufficient to
comprehend the way in which we materially produce our selves, our
environments, our knowledges, and our histories. Indeed, this concept
makes it possible to analyze all of our activities in their
specificity and to understand them in their relation to the totality
of which they are a part. As it must be if we are to make sense of
scientific practice as one aspect of the total mode of production,
much more than the activity of economic production must be included in
this totality of productive practices. Added by Althusser to these two
aspects of the mode of production are those of ideological, political,
and philosophical production, among others.
In each of the practices that together comprise, at any given time, a
specific mode of production, some form or forms of labor uses the
existing means of production to transform existing materials into new
products. According to Althusser, this realization is Marx's
basic insight. In scientific production, for example, thinkers use
existing theories to transform existing concepts into new, scientific
concepts. However, and this is where Althusser's Spinozism
becomes apparent and also where he breaks with economistic
understandings of Marx, it is not the case that the analysis of any
one mode of production within the totality of productive practices is
capable of generating an understanding of the way in which all rest of
the productive processes are causally determined. Rather, and in line
with the parallelism attributed by Leibniz to Spinoza, as each
productive process transforms a unique material (concepts in science,
goods in economics, social relations in politics), each process can
only be understood in terms of its unique causal structure. In
addition, and again also in a way similar to Spinoza's account
of substance as seen from different aspects, each productive process
is understood to stand in relation to and play a part of a complexly
structured whole, none of which is reducible to being the simple or
essential cause of the others.
That Althusser regards most, if not all, human activity as consisting
of material processes of production and reproduction can be used as a
key to understanding other parts of his philosophy. These include his
thoughts on the structure of the social and political world, the
historical process, and philosophy. As philosophy is closely related
to science and because it is charged with a task that allows the
production of knowledge about the other socio-economic practices to be
generated, it is probably best to start with Althusser's
understanding of philosophy as a material practice of production
before proceeding to a discussion of how Althusser understands the
other practices listed above.
### 3.3 The Role of Philosophy
According to Althusser, most activity labeled "philosophy"
is really a type of ideological production. By this, he means to say
that most philosophy reproduces, in highly abstract form, notions
about the world whose effect is to sustain existing socio-economic
relations. As such, philosophy merely reflects the background values,
attitudes, and ideas that allow the socio-economic world to function.
However, for Althusser, genuine philosophy functions as a
"Theory of theoretical practice" (1965b). In this mode, it
works to provide an aid to scientific practice by distinguishing
between ideological concepts and scientific ones as well as by
clarifying and rendering consistent the scientific concepts that
enable a science to transforms existing ideas into scientific
knowledge.
For Althusser, it is not necessary that this process of distinction
and clarification be accomplished before a specific theoretical
practice can generate scientific knowledge. In fact, scientific
activity often proceeds without a clear understanding of the concepts
that allow it to produce its knowledge. Indeed, Althusser maintained
that this was Marx's lot when he was writing *Capital*:
scientific knowledge of the capitalist economic system was being
produced, but Marx did not possess a full awareness of the concepts
allowing this production. According to this definition of philosophy
as the Theory of theoretical practice, Althusser's re-reading of
*Capital* and other texts was philosophical insofar as it was
able to name and distinguish the concepts that allowed Marx's
scientific analysis of history to proceed.
### 3.4 Marxist Philosophy
The latent concepts rendered explicit by the practice of symptomatic
reading were said by Althusser to constitute the theory of Dialectical
Materialism, or what is the same thing, Marx's philosophy. With
these concepts made explicit, Althusser believed that Marxist science,
or Historical Materialism, could employ them in order to achieve
better analyses of specific modes of production and better
understandings of the opportunities that specific modes of production
presented for political change. Some of these concepts have already
been articulated in the discussion of the mode of production above,
but without being named. To label these concepts and then to add some
more, the idea that each individual productive process or element
stands in relation to and plays a part of a complexly structured
whole, none of which is reducible to being the simple or essential
cause of the others, is what Althusser terms the idea of
"structural causality." This concept, in turn, is closely
related to the idea of "overdetermination" or the theory
that every element in the total productive process constituting a
historical moment is determined by all the others.
Another Marxist philosophical concept that allows the historical
materialist scientist to understand the logic of a specific mode of
production is that of "contradiction." This is the idea
that, at any given period, multiple, concrete and definite practices
take place within a mode of production. Among and within these
specific practices, there may or may not be tensions. To take an
example from Marx's chapter on "Primitive
Accumulation" in *Capital V.I*, at the same time as
peasants holdings were being expropriated in the late 15th
and early 16th centuries by a nascent bourgeoisie, the
church and the aristocracy were passing laws against this
appropriation. Any isolable element of the total structure, be it a
person, a social class, an institution, or the state, in some way
reflects and embodies these practices and these antagonisms and as
such each is said to be "overdetermined." Further,
Althusser specifies that the development of productive practices
within a specific mode of production is often "uneven" in
addition to possibly being antagonistic. This means, for instance,
that some economic elements within a whole may be more or less
capitalistic while others simultaneously operate according to
socialist norms. Thus, the development within a mode of production of
the practices specific to it is not necessarily homogenous or
linear.
Added to the Marxian concepts of structural causality, contradiction,
uneven development, and overdetermination is that of the
"structure in dominance." This concept designates that
major element in a structural whole that tends to organize all of the
other practices. In much of the contemporary world and inasmuch as it
tends to organize the production of moral values, scientific
knowledge, the family, art, etc. this structure is the economic
practice of commodity production and consumption. However, in another
era and in other places, it may be the production and dissemination of
religious beliefs and practices that dominates and organizes the
socio-economic structure.
### 3.5 Social and Political Philosophy, Historiography
With this understanding of the elements that compose any
socio-economic structure and their relations made explicit, something
can now be said about the social and political philosophies that
follow from it. First, with the idea that human individuals are merely
one of the sites at which the contradictory productive forces that
characterize an era are enacted, Althusser signals that the primary
object of social philosophy is not the human individual. Second, with
the idea that the state produced by political activity is merely one
productive process among others, Althusser signals that the primary
element in political philosophy is not the state. Though both states
and individuals are important elements of the socio-economic whole,
nothing philosophical is learned by examining the essence of the
individual or the way in which justice is embodied by the state.
As Althusser understands them, whatever conceptions we have of the
nature of human beings or about the proper function of the state are
historically generated and serve to reproduce existing social
relations. In other words, they are ideological. Apart from the
necessity of human beings to engage in productive relations with other
human beings and with their environment in order to produce their
means of subsistence, there is no human nature or essence. This is the
core of Althusser's "anti-humanist" position.
Further, though some order must exist in order to allow for the
production and reproduction of social life, there is no essential or
best form that this order must take. This is not to say that human
beings do not conceive of or strive for the best order for social life
or that they do not believe that they are essentially free or equal
and deserving of rights. It also does not mean that all of our ideas
are homogenous and that heterogeneous ideas about what is best cannot
exist side by side in the same system without leading to conflict
(though they sometimes do). However, the science of Historical
Materialism has revealed the desire for such orders to be historically
generated along with the ideas about human nature that justify
them.
This account of the ideological role of our conceptions of human
nature and of the best political arrangement shows Althusser to differ
little from interpretations of Marx which hold that political
ideologies are the product of and serve existing economic relations.
However, and as was detailed above, Althusser rejects the simple
understanding of causality offered by this model in which economic
practices order consciousness and our cultural practices. He also
rejects the philosophy of history that often accompanies this model.
This philosophy has it that certain economic practices not only
generate corresponding cultural practices, but that there is a pattern
to economic development in which each economic order inexorably leads
to its own demise and replacement by a different economic system. In
this understanding of history, feudalism must lead to capitalism and
capitalism to socialism. Althusser, however, argues against the idea
that history has a subject (such as the economy or human agency) and
that history has a goal (such as communism or human freedom). History,
for Althusser, is a process without a subject. There are patterns and
orders to historical life and there is historical change. However,
there is no necessity to any of these transformations and history does
not necessarily progress. Transformations do occur. However, they do
so only when the contradictions and levels of development inherent in
a mode of production allow for such change.
## 4. Revisions (1966-78)
From the time of its initial dissemination, Althusser's
re-reading of Marx was met by almost equal amounts of enthusiasm and
castigation. For every reader who found in his prose an explanation of
Marx's philosophy and science that rendered Marx philosophically
respectable and offered renewed hope for Marxist theory, there were
critics who judged his work to be idealist, Stalinist, dogmatist, or
excessively structuralist, among myriad other charges. Though many of
the initial reactions were contradictory and evidenced
misunderstandings of what Althusser was up to, compelling criticisms
were also offered. One was that Althusser was only able to offer his
reading by ignoring much of what Marx actually wrote about his logic
and about the concepts important to his analysis. Another criticism,
and one voiced to Althusser by leaders of the French Communist Party,
was that Althusser's reading of Marx offered little on the
relationship between Marxist theory and Marxist political
practice.
It took a long time before Althusser explicitly addressed the charge
that he had ignored much of what Marx had to say about his own logic
and concepts. However, buffeted by these criticisms and with a sense
that there were idealist or "theoreticist" tendencies in
his reading of Marx and that the relationship between theory and
practice was indeed under-developed, Althusser set out during the late
1960s and 1970s to correct and revise his take on the relationships
among philosophy, science, ideology, and politics. To some readers,
these revisions represented a politically motivated betrayal of his
theoretical accomplishments. For others, they simply revealed his
project as a whole to be untenable and self-contradictory. Some recent
critics, however, have argued that these revisions are consistent with
and necessary to the development of what they view to be the overall
goal of Althusser's work: the development of a materialist
political philosophy adequate for political practice.
### 4.1 The Relationship between Theory and Practice
Althusser's initial revisions to his understanding of the social
structure and knowledge production were informed by a renewed
attention to the works of Lenin and by a seminar he convened at the
ENS in 1967 for leading scientists and interested students. This
course resulted in a series of papers, gathered together as
*Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists*
(1967a), in which Althusser began rethinking the relations among
philosophy, science, ideology, and politics. Though this revision was
later to be made more explicit, one of the most striking aspects of
these papers was Althusser's abandonment of the Spinozistic
claim that the different levels of theoretical practice were
autonomous. He now maintained that there was no criterion sufficient
to demarcate scientific from ideological concepts and that all
theoretical concepts are marked by ideology. This did not mean,
however, that any concept was as good as any other. Scientists,
through their work on the material real, tended to generate better
understandings of things than were available intuitively. Further, he
argued that philosophy still had a role to play in the clarification
of scientific concepts. This is the case because, no matter how much
work scientists do to understand the material real and to generate
better concepts, they must always employ ideological concepts to frame
their investigations and its results. Marxist philosophers, he
maintained, could be useful to scientists by pointing out, from the
standpoint of politics and by the method of historical critique, where
and how some of the concepts scientists employed were ideological. The
result of this intervention of philosophy into politics would not be
"truer" concepts, but ideas that were more
"correct" or "right" in both the normative and
positive senses of these words.
Parallel to this move, and motivated by the need to provide the link
between philosophical theory and political practice that was largely
missing from his classic work, Althusser now argued that philosophy
had a useful role to play between politics and science. Political
practice, Althusser maintained, was mostly motivated by ideological
understandings of what the good is and how to accomplish it. Though he
did not argue that there was a way to leave ideology behind and to
reveal the good in itself, he did maintain that science could help to
correct ideological thinking about political means and ends. Social
science in particular could do so by showing how certain goals were
impossible or misguided given present socio-economic relations and by
suggesting that, at a certain time and in a certain place, other means
and other ends might be more fruitfully adopted and pursued. As
scientific knowledge does not speak directly to the public or to
politicians, Althusser assigned materialist philosophers the job of
communicating scientific knowledge of the material real, its
conditions, and its possibilities to politicians and the public. If
this communication is successful, Althusser maintained, one should not
expect all political activity to be successful. Instead, one should
expect a modest shift from an idealist ideology to one that is
materialist and more scientific and which has a better chance of
realizing its goals.
### 4.2 Theory of Ideology
During the 1970s, Althusser continued the revisions begun in 1967 and
elaborated other Marxian ideas he believed to be underdeveloped.
Perhaps the best known of the new conceptual formulations resulting
from these efforts is that of "ideological
interpellation." This account of how a human being becomes a
self-conscious subject was published in an essay titled
"Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (1970). It
was excerpted from a larger essay titled "On the Reproduction of
Capitalism." This work analyzed the necessary relationship
between state and subject such that a given economic mode of
production might subsist. It includes not only an analysis of the
state and its legal and educational systems but also of the
psychological relationship which exists between subject and state as
ideology. This narrative of subjectification was intended to help
advance Althusser's argument that regimes or states are able to
maintain control by reproducing subjects who believe that their
position within the social structure is a natural one. Ideology, or
the background ideas that we possess about the way in which the world
must function and of how we function within it is, in this account,
understood to be always present. Specific socio-economic structures,
however, require particular ideologies. These ideologies are
instantiated by institutions or "Ideological State
Apparatuses" like family, schools, church, etc., which provide
the developing subject with categories in which she can recognize
herself. Inasmuch as a person does so and embraces the practices
associated with those institutions, she has been successfully
"hailed" or "interpellated" and recognized
herself as that subject who does those kinds of things. As the effect
of these recognitions is to continue existing social relations,
Althusser argued that a Dictatorship of the Proletariat is necessary
so that Ideological State Apparatuses productive of the bourgeois
subject can be replaced with those productive of proletarian or
communist subjects.
### 4.3 Aesthetic Theory
Althusser's engagement with aesthetic theory was not nearly
so consistent as those with philosophy of science and social
philosophy. However, dramaturgical speculations from the
early 1960s were crucial to the development of his method of
symptomatic reading and forays into the criticism of
visual art beginning in the mid-1960s likewise proved of decisive
importance for the development of his theory of ideology. In
particular, Althusser's Brechtian musings on aesthetics
provide partial answers to the question of how criticism
of ideological notions of the real as well as the
development of revolutionary strategy is possible. Althusser does
not argue that art provides a glimpse of actual social conditions
unfiltered by ideology. Indeed, he argues that art mostly
reproduces ideology. Further, there is no formal way
to distinguish between a work of art and other cultural
productions like advertising. A person can "sees
herself" in a pick-up truck advertisement as easily as a
subject can mis-recognize herself as the subject of a drama.
However, some art, that which Althusser
deems "authentic" (1996a), troubles a subject's
usual relationship between herself and the world. This habitual
relation is one where the world is always seen to conform to and
to confirm the subject's view of "the way
things are". Authentic art though makes felt or known the
distance between the real world and a subject's
habitual ideological view of it. In this moment, the space for
criticism, investigation, and, perhaps, the possibility for
acting to change the world is inaugurated.
### 4.4 Marx's Philosophy Redux
In 1978 and as a response to what he saw, yet again, as the
theoretical and political misdirection of the Communist movement,
Althusser authored a piece, "Marx in his Limits," which
was intended to separate the good from the bad in Marx's
philosophy. In his classic work (1960-65), Althusser had tried to
accomplish this goal by separating out ideological concepts and by
bringing forth the scientific ones. However, in "Marx in his
Limits," he now argued that such a method of separation cannot
work because--within Marx's writings and throughout his
oeuvre--both good and bad, materialist and idealist concepts, are
hopelessly intermixed and many are underdeveloped.
Inasmuch as Althusser admits in this piece that Marx never fully
abandoned Hegel's logic, the concept of human alienation, or the
idea that history has a goal, the inventory Althusser offers can be
seen as an assenting response to the charge that he had ignored
Marx's explicit statements in order to imagine for Marx a
consistent and "true" philosophy. Althusser does not give
up on the task of articulating a better Marxist philosophy, however.
Instead, he argues that there is another, "materialist"
criterion that allows us to see the limits of Marx's thinking
and to recognize those points in his work where Marx was unable to
transcend his bourgeois background and his education in German
Idealism. This criterion is that of the practical success or failure
of Marx's concepts as each has been employed in the history of
Marxist movements. When we have made this inventory and grouped
together the successful concepts, what we are left with is a
materialist Marxism, a Marxism which endorses the scientific method as
the best way for understanding ourselves and our potential but that
also understands that this method is fallible. Remaining also is a
Marxism which does not subscribe to any philosophy of history and
which certainly does not maintain that capitalism will inevitably lead
to communism. This Marxism has no system of interrelated concepts that
guarantee a scientific analysis. Further, it possesses no worked-out
theory of the relations between economic structures and cultural
structures but for that limited knowledge which scientific practice
provides. Finally, this Marxism has given up the dream of analyzing
the whole of culture and its movement from the outside; it realizes
that one thinks inside and about the culture one inhabits in order to
possibly effect and change that culture.
## 5. Late work (1980-1986): Aleatory Materialism
After being interrupted by ill health and by the events following from
the murder of his wife, in 1982 Althusser returned to the question of
what was essential to Marx's philosophy and expanded the scope
of this inquiry to include speculation about the metaphysics that must
underlie it. Freed by his ignoble status from the task of influencing
the direction of the Communist movement, the texts associated with
this project and gathered together in the book *Philosophy of the
Encounter* differ tremendously in subject matter, style, and
method from his other writings. Whether these texts represent a
continuation of, or even the key to his philosophy or whether they are
an aberration is presently being debated in the secondary literature.
However, as there is strong textural and archival evidence that many
of the ideas explicitly expressed in these works had been gestating
for a long time, the contention that these writings are of a piece
with his earlier work seems to be gaining ground.
The principal thesis of Althusser's last philosophical writings
is that there exists an "underground" or little recognized
tradition in the history of philosophy. Variously labeled a
"materialism of the encounter" or "aleatory
materialism," the method which he uses to articulate this
philosophy is to simply comment upon works by philosophers who
exemplify this current and to point out where, how, and to what extent
they do so. In addition to Marx, the philosophers that he cites as
being part of this underground tradition include Democritus, Epicurus,
Lucretius, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu,
Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida. From these readings in the
history of philosophy, Althusser aims to suggest that this tradition
exists and that it is both philosophically fecund and viable. He also
wishes to return to and bolster the thesis he first ventured in the
late 1960s that there are really only two positions in philosophy:
materialism and idealism. As he understood it, the two tendencies are
always in a war of opposition with the one functioning to reinforce
the status quo and the other to possibly overcome it.
Perhaps because it functions in opposition to the idealist tendency in
philosophy, aleatory materialism is marked almost as much by its
rejections as it is by the positive claims it contains about the world
and about history. As Marx is included within this tradition, it is
not surprising that many of these rejections are also attributed to
him during the course of Althusser's earlier work. These include
a dismissal of what Althusser calls "the principle of
Reason," or the idea that the universe or history has an origin
or an end. With this prohibition, Althusser means to exclude from this
tradition not only the usual suspects in the rationalist tradition,
but also mechanical and dialectical materialisms with their logics of
determination. Also dismissed, he maintains, is the myth that somehow
philosophy and philosophers are autonomous, that they see the world
from outside and objectively. Though there is an objective world,
philosophy does not have knowledge of this world as its object for
there is no way for it to ground itself and the material it thinks
with and through arises historically. Philosophy is therefore not a
science or the Science of sciences and it produces no universal Truth.
Rather, the truths it produces are contingent and are offered in
opposition to other competing truths. If philosophy does have an
object, it is the void, or that which is not yet but which could
be.
That the philosophy of the encounter lacks an object does not mean
that it lacks positive propositions. However, given the
epistemological status attributed to philosophy by Althusser, these
metaphysical propositions or "theses" are true only
insofar as they have explanatory or practical value. First among them,
following Democritus, is the thesis that matter is all that exists.
Second is the thesis that chance or the aleatory is at the origin of
all worlds. That the patterns which constitute and define these worlds
can be known, described, and predicted according to certain laws or
reasons is also true. However, the fact that these worlds ever came to
be organized in these patterns is aleatory and the patterns themselves
can only ever be known immanently. Third, new worlds and new orders
themselves arise out of chance encounters between pre-existing
material elements. Whether or not such orders emerge is contingent:
they do not have to occur. When material elements collide, they either
"take" and a new order is founded, or they do not and the
old world continues.
To Althusser, the propositions which have explanatory value at the
level of ontology and cosmology also have value at the level of
political philosophy. After first citing Rousseau and Hobbes as
example of philosophers who recognized that the origin and continued
existence of political orders is contingent, Althusser turns to
Machiavelli and Marx for his principal examples of how aleatory
materialism functions in the political realm. The anti-teleological,
scientistic, and anti-humanist, Marxist philosophy developed by
Althusser over the course of his career works well with the
materialist metaphysics recounted above. In this understanding of
Marxist philosophy, societies and subjects are seen as patterns of
activity that behave in predictable ways. Though scientists may study
and describe these orders in their specificity, it does not at first
appear that philosophy can do much except to categorize these
interactions at the most general level. However, citing Marx's
work again and taking inspiration from Machiavelli's project of
installing "a new prince in a new principality," Althusser
argues that the materialist philosopher may accomplish somewhat more
than this with her descriptions, critiques, and predictions. This is
because, by examining a political order not from the perspective of
its necessity but with an awareness of its contingency, this
philosopher may be able think the possibility of its transformation.
If chance smiles on her, if someone listens and if effects occur, then
elements might recombine and a new political might take hold. This is,
to be sure, a very limited and unpredictable power attributed to the
philosopher. However, it is also the only one that Althusser in his
late works argues is adequate for political practice and that does
not, like idealism, merely serve to reproduce existing relations. |
altruism | ## 1. What is altruism?
Before proceeding, further clarification of the term
"altruism" is called for.
### 1.1 Mixed motives and pure altruism
Altruistic acts include not only those undertaken in order to do good
to others, but also those undertaken in order to avoid or prevent harm
to them. Suppose, for example, someone drives her car extra cautiously
because she sees that she is in an area where children are playing, and
she wants to insure that she injures no one. It would be appropriate to
say that her caution is altruistically motivated. She is not trying to
make those children better off, but she is being careful not to make
them worse off. She does this because she genuinely cares about them for
their sake.
Furthermore, altruistic acts need not involve self-sacrifice, and they
remain altruistic even when they are performed from a mixture of
motives, some of which are self-interested. The driver in the
preceding example may have plenty of time to get where she is going;
slowing down and paying extra attention may not be contrary to her own
good. Even so, her act counts as altruistic if *one* of her
motives for being cautious is her concern for the children for their
sake. She may also be aware that if she injures a child, she could be
punished for reckless driving, which she of course wants to avoid for
self-interested reasons. So, her caution is both altruistic and
self-interested; it is not motivated by only one kind of reason. We
should not be confused by the fact that "self-interested"
and "altruistic" are opposites. A single *motive*
cannot be characterized in both ways; but a single *act* can be
undertaken from both motives.
If someone performs an act entirely from altruistic motives--if,
that is, self-interested motives are entirely absent--we can
describe her act as a case of "pure" altruism. We should
be careful to distinguish purely altruistic behavior from
self-sacrificing behavior: the former involves no gain for oneself,
whereas the latter involves some loss. If someone has a theater ticket
that he cannot use because he is ill, and he calls the box office so
that the ticket can be used by someone else, that is a case of pure
altruism, but it involves no sacrifice.
### 1.2 Self-sacrifice, strong and weak altruism
Consider someone whose deliberations are always guided by this
principle: "I shall never do anything unless doing so is best
for me". Such an individual is refusing ever to sacrifice his
well-being even to the slightest degree. But in view of the
terminological points just made, he could have altruistic motives for
some of what he does--or even for much or all that he does! On
any given occasion, he could have mixed motives: he is careful always
to do what is best for himself, but that allows him also to be
motivated by the perception that what he does is also good for others.
It would be odd or misleading to say that such an individual is an
altruistic person. Many people would criticize him for being
insufficiently altruistic. It is part of common sense morality that
one should be willing to compromise with other people--to
cooperate with others in ways that require one to accept what is less
good for oneself than some other alternative, so that others can have
their fair share.
These reflections lead to a peculiar result: each act undertaken by
such an individual could be altruistically motivated, and yet we are
reluctant, and reasonably so, to say that he is an altruistic person.
The best way to accommodate both ideas, which seem to be in tension,
would be to make a distinction between two uses of the word
"altruism". An act is altruistic in the strong sense if is
undertaken in spite of the perception that it involves some loss of
one's well-being. An act is altruistic in the weak sense if it
is motivated, at least in part, by the fact that it benefits someone
else or the fact that it will not injure anyone else. The individual
described two paragraphs above is someone who never acts
altruistically in the strong sense. That policy seems objectionable to
many people--even though he may act altruistically in the weak
sense on many occasions.
### 1.3 Moral motives and altruistic motives
Some of what we do in our interactions with other people is morally
motivated but not altruistic. Suppose *A* has borrowed a book
from *B* and has promised to return it within a week. When
*A* returns the book by the deadline, his motive might be
described as moral: he has freely made a promise, and he takes himself
to have an obligation to keep such promises. His motive is simply to
keep his word; this is not an example of altruism. But if *A*
gives *B* a book as a gift, thinking that *B* will enjoy it
and find it useful, he is acting simply out of a desire to benefit
*B*. His motive in this case is altruistic.
Similarly, suppose a mother refrains from giving her adult son advice
about a certain matter because she thinks that it is not her place to
do so--it would be interfering too much in his private affairs.
Even so, she might also think that he would benefit from receiving her
advice; she respects his autonomy but fears that as a result he will
decide badly. Her restraint is morally motivated, but it would not
normally be described as an act of altruism.
As these examples indicate, the notion of altruism is applicable not
to every morally motivated treatment of others, but more narrowly to
what is done out of a concern for the good of others--in other
words, for their well-being. Altruistic acts might be described as
charitable or benevolent or kind, for these words also convey the idea
of acting for the good of others, and not merely rightly towards
others.
Often the individuals who are the "targets" of altruistic
behavior are selected for such treatment because of a personal tie
between the benefactor and the beneficiary. If *A* was
extraordinarily kind to *B* when *B* was a child, and at a
later time *B* is in a position to help *A* out of a
difficult situation, the help *B* gives to *A* is
altruistically motivated, even though their common past explains why
it is *A* that *B* has chosen to help (rather than a
stranger in need). Here it is assumed that *B* is not promoting
*A*'s well-being as a mere means to his own
(*B*'s) own well-being. If that were so, *B* would not
be benefiting *A* for *A*'s sake, but only for
*B*'s sake. (A further assumption is that *B* is not
motivated simply by a sense that he owes repayment to *A*;
rather, he not only feels indebted to *A* but also genuinely
cares about him.) The people whom we treat altruistically are often
those to whom we have a sentimental attachment, or towards whom we
feel grateful. But that is not the only possibility. Some altruistic
acts are motivated simply by a recognition of the great need of those
who benefit from them, and the benefactor and beneficiary may be
strangers to each other.
That an act is altruistically motivated does not entail that it is
justified or praiseworthy. *A* may *mistakenly* think that
she is enhancing the well-being of *B*; *B* might also
*mistakenly* think that she is benefiting from *A*'s
efforts. We could say that in such cases there is something admirable
about *A*'s motive, but nonetheless judge that she ought not
to have acted as she did.
### 1.4 Well-Being and perfection
As noted above, altruistic acts are guided by assumptions made by the
agent about the well-being of some other individual or group. What
well-being consists in is a disputed matter, but it is uncontroversial
that a distinction must be drawn between (i) what constitutes
well-being and (ii) what is a necessary means towards or a
pre-condition of well-being. This kind of distinction is familiar, and
is applicable in all sorts of cases. For example, we distinguish
between what a breakfast consists in (cereal, juice, coffee) and the
things one needs in order to eat breakfast (spoons, glasses, mugs).
There is no such thing as eating breakfast but not eating anything
that breakfast consists in. In the same way, well-being must be sought
and fostered by seeking and fostering the good or goods in which
well-being consists. Rival theories of well-being are competing ways
of answering the question: what are its constituents? After we have
answered that question, we need to address the further question of how
best to obtain those constituents. (Contemporary discussions of
well-being can be found in Badhwar 2014; Feldman 1994, 2010; Fletcher
2016; Griffin 1986; Kraut 2007; Sumner 1996 Tiberius 2018.)
Well-being admits of degrees: the more one has of the good or goods in
which it consists, the better off one is. It would be an awkward
manner of speaking to say of someone: "she has well-being".
A more natural way to express that idea would be to use such terms as
these: "she is faring well", "she is well off",
"she is flourishing", "her life is going well for
her". The constituents of well-being can also be spoken of as
benefits or advantages--but when one uses these terms to refer to
well-being, one must recognize that these benefits or advantages are
constituents of well-being, and not merely of instrumental value.
Benefits and advantages, in other words, fall into two categories:
those that are good for someone merely because they foster other
goods, and those that are good for someone in that they are
constituents of that individual's well-being.
A distinction must be drawn between being good *at* something
and having what is good *for* oneself. It is one thing to say,
"he is good at acting" and another to say "acting is
good for him". Philosophers speak of the former as
"perfectionist value" and the latter as "prudential
value". That is because when one tries to be good at something,
one hopes to move closer to the ideal of perfection. Prudential value
is the kind of good that it would be in someone's interest to
obtain--it is another term that belongs to the group we have been
discussing: "well-being", "welfare",
"benefit", and so on.
Even though perfectionist and prudential value must be distinguished,
it should not be inferred that that being good at something is not a
constituent of well-being. To return to the example used in the
preceding paragraph: if someone has great talent as an actor and
enjoys acting and every aspect of theatrical life, it is plausible to
say that his well-being consists, at least to some extent, in his
enjoyment of these activities. There are two different facts in play
here: (i) he is an excellent actor, and (ii) being an excellent actor
is good for him (not as a mere means, but as a component of his
well-being). The value referred to in (i) is perfectionist value, and
in (ii) prudential value. It would be prudent of him, in other words,
to continue to excel as an actor.
These points about well-being and excellence are pertinent to a study
of altruism because they help guard against a too narrow conception of
the sorts of goods that an altruist might promote in others. Altruists
do not aim only at the relief of suffering or the avoidance of
harm--they also try to provide positive benefits to others for
their sake. What counts as a benefit depends on what the correct
theory of well-being is, but it is widely and plausibly assumed that
certain kinds of excellence are components of a good life. For
example, someone who founds a school that trains children to excel in
the arts and sciences, or in sports, simply so that they will enjoy
exercising such skills, would be regarded as a great public benefactor
and philanthropist. Similarly, teachers and parents who foster in
their students and children a love of literature and the skills needed
to appreciate it would be viewed as altruists, if they are motivated
by the thought that by themselves these activities are benefits to
those students and children.
However, it is possible for someone to be dedicated to excellence and
at the same time to be utterly indifferent to human
well-being--and when this happens, we have no inclination to say
that such a person is motivated by altruism. Someone might be devoted
to a subject--mathematics, or philosophy, or
literature--rather than to the well-being of those who study and
master that subject. For example, imagine a student of literature who
cares deeply about James Joyce's *Ulysses*, because he
takes it to be one of the supreme achievements of the human mind. He
does not want that novel merely to gather dust on library
shelves--it deserves readers who love and understand it, and so
the skills needed to appreciate it must be kept alive from one
generation to another. This kind of devotion to perfectionist value is
not a form of altruism.
For an act to be altruistically motivated is for the
*benefactor*--not the beneficiary--to have a certain
attitude towards it. A child who acquires from a tennis instructor the
skills of a good athlete and a love of the game may simply think of
tennis as great fun--not as something that benefits him or as a
constituent of his life going well. The child does not need to
practice his skills because he believes that doing so is good for him:
that is not a necessary condition of his being the beneficiary of an
altruistic act. Similarly, someone might deny that physical suffering
counts as something that is bad for him. (He should deny this,
according to the Stoics.) But on any plausible theory of well-being,
he is wrong about that; someone who aims to diminish the pain of
another individual, out of a concern for that individual's
well-being, is acting altruistically.
To take another example, consider someone who develops a love of
philosophy and immerses herself in the subject. When she asks herself
whether she is doing this for her own good, she may reply that her
reasons are quite different. She may say, "philosophy is
worthwhile in itself". Or: "I want to solve the mind-body
problem and the free will problem because these are deep and important
issues". If we suggested to her that her philosophical struggles
are a component of her well-being, she might regard that as a strange
way of looking at things. But her view is not
authoritative--whether she is right depends on what the best
theory of well-being is. Others who care about her could plausibly
believe that her love of philosophy is a component of her well-being,
because it constitutes an enrichment and deepening of her mind, which is of value to her in itself, whether or not it leads to some further result. If they help her pursue her
philosophical interests simply for her sake, their motives would be
altruistic, even if she herself does not care about philosophy because
she thinks it is good for her.
## 2. Does altruism exist?
### 2.1 Psychological egoism: strong and weak versions
According to a doctrine called "psychological egoism", all
human action is ultimately motivated by self-interest. The
psychological egoist can agree with the idea, endorsed by common
sense, that we often seek to benefit others besides ourselves; but he
says that when we do so, that is because we regard helping others as a
mere means to our own good. According to the psychological egoist, we
do not care about others for their sake. Altruism, in other words,
does not exist.
Since we have distinguished several different ways of using the term
"altruism", it will be helpful to make similar
distinctions between different varieties of psychological egoism.
Recall that an act is altruistic in the weak sense if it is motivated,
at least in part, by the fact that it benefits someone else (or the
fact that it will not injure anyone else). Psychological egoism, as
defined in the preceding paragraph, denies that altruism in this sense
exists. That is the strongest form of this doctrine; it is usually
what philosophers have in mind when they discuss psychological egoism.
But we can imagine weaker versions. One of them would deny that
altruism is ever pure; it would say, in other words, that whenever we
act, *one* of our motives is a desire for our own good. Another
weaker form of psychological egoism would hold that we never
voluntarily do what we foresee will sacrifice our well-being to some
extent. This third form of psychological egoism would admit that
sometimes one of our reasons for acting is the good we do for others
for their sake; but it claims that we never act for the good of others
when we think that doing so would make us worse off.
### 2.2 An empirical argument for psychological egoism
Someone might arrive at one or another of these forms of psychological
egoism because she takes herself to be a keen observer of the human
scene, and her acquaintance with other people has convinced her that
this is how they are motivated. But that way of justifying
psychological egoism has a serious weakness. Others can say to this
psychological egoist:
>
>
> Perhaps the people *you* know are like this. But my experience
> of the world is rather different from yours. I know many people who
> try to benefit others for their sake. I myself act altruistically. So,
> at most, your theory applies only to the people in your social
> world.
>
>
>
The psychological egoist can respond to this criticism in either of
two ways. First, she might claim that his doctrine is supported by
experimental evidence. That is, she might believe that (i) the subjects
studied by psychologists in carefully conducted experiments have been
shown to be not purely altruistic, or (more strongly) that these
subjects ultimately care only about their own good; and (ii) that we
can infer from these experiments that *all* human beings are
motivated in the same way.
This is a disputed matter. There is experimental evidence that casts
doubt on psychological egoism in its strong and in weaker forms, but
the controversy continues (see Batson 2011; Stich et al. 2010).
### 2.3 An *a priori* argument for psychological egoism
A second response on the part of the psychological egoist would
consist in an *a priori* philosophical argument for one or
another version of that doctrine. According to this line of thinking,
we can see "from the armchair"--that is, without
seeking empirical confirmation of any sort--that psychological
egoism (in one of its forms) *must* be true.
How might such an argument go? Drawing upon some ideas that can be
found in Plato's dialogues, we might affirm two premises: (i)
What motivates us to act is always a desire; (ii) all desires are to
be understood on the model of hunger (see *Meno* 77c;
*Symposium* 199e-200a, 204e).
To elaborate on the idea behind (ii): When we are hungry, our hunger
has an object: food (or perhaps some particular kind of food). But we
do not want to ingest the food for its own sake; what we are really
after is the feeling of satisfaction that we expect to get as a result
of eating. Ingesting this or that piece of food is something we want,
but only as a means of achieving a sense of satisfaction or
satiation.
If all desire is understood in the same way, and all motivation takes
the form of desire, then we can infer that psychological egoism in its
strong form is true (and therefore its weaker versions are also true).
Consider an action that seems, on the surface, to be altruistically
motivated: I give you a gift simply because I think you will like it.
Now, since I want to give you this gift, and all desire should be
understood as a kind of hunger, I am hungering after your feeling
pleased, as I hunger after a piece of food. But just as no one wants
to ingest a piece of food for its own sake, I do not want you to feel
pleased for your sake; rather, what I am seeking is the feeling of
satisfaction I will get when you are pleased, and your being pleased
is simply the means by which I achieve satisfaction. Accordingly, we
don't have to be keen observers of other people or look within
ourselves to arrive at psychological egoism. We can recognize that
this doctrine is correct simply by thinking about the nature of
motivation and desire.
### 2.4 Hunger and desire
But the assumption that all desires are like hunger in the relevant
respect is open to question. Hunger is not satisfied if one still
*feels* hungry after one has eaten. It seeks a certain kind of
consciousness in oneself. But many kinds of desires are not like that.
Suppose, for example, that I want my young children to be prosperous
as adults long after I have died, and I take steps that increase to
some small degree their chances of achieving that distant goal. What
my desire is for is their prosperity far into the future, not my
current or future feeling of satisfaction. I don't know and
cannot know whether the steps that I take will actually bring about
the goal I seek; what I do know is that I will not be alive when they
are adults, and so even if they are prosperous, that will give me no
pleasure. (Since, by hypothesis I can only hope, and do not feel
confident, that the provisions I make for them will actually produce
the good results I seek for them, I get little current satisfaction
from my act.) It would make no sense, therefore, to suggest that I do
not want them to be prosperous for their sake, but only as a means to
the achievement of some goal of my own. My goal is their well-being,
not my own. In fact, if I allocate to them resources that I myself
need, in the hope that doing so will make their lives better, I am
doing something that one form of psychological egoism says is
impossible: sacrificing my own good, to some degree, for the sake of
others. If the psychological egoist claims that such self-sacrifice is
impossible because all desire is like hunger, the reply should be that
this model does not fit all cases of desire.
Recall the two premises used by the armchair psychological egoist: (i)
What motivates us to act is always a desire; (ii) all desires are to
be understood on the model of hunger. The second premise is
implausible, as we have just seen; and, since both premises must be
true for the argument to reach its conclusion, the argument can be
rejected.
### 2.5 Desire and motivation
It is worth observing, however, that first premise of this argument is
also open to question.
This thesis that what motivates us to act is always a desire should be
accepted only if we have a good understanding of what a desire is. If
a desire is simply identified with whatever internal state moves
someone to act, then the claim, "what motivates us to act is
always a desire", when spelled out more fully, is a tautology.
It says: "the internal state that moves us to act is always the
internal state that moves us to act". That is not a substantive
insight into human psychology, but a statement of identity, of the
form "*A* = *A*". We might have thought we were
learning something about what causes action by being told, "what
motivates people is always a desire", but if
"desire" is just a term for whatever it is that motivates
us, we are learning nothing (see Nagel 1970: 27-32).
Here is a different way of making the same point: As the words
"desire" and "want" are often used, it makes
good sense to say: "I don't want to do this, but I think I
ought to". That is the sort of remark we often make when we take
ourselves to have an unpleasant duty or obligation, or when we face a
challenge that we expect to be difficult and stressful. In these sorts
of situation, we do not hunger after the goal we move towards. So, as
the word "desire" is often used, it is simply false that
what motivates us to act is always a desire. Now, the psychological
egoist who seeks an *a priori* defense of this doctrine might
say:
>
>
> when I claim that what motivates us to act is always a desire, I am
> not using the word "desire" as it is sometimes used. My
> usage is much broader. Among desires, in this broad sense, I include
> the belief that one ought to do something. In fact, it includes any
> internal state that causes someone to act.
>
>
>
Clearly, the thesis that what moves us is always a desire, when so
understood, is empty.
The common sense terms we often use to explain why we help others do
not need to refer to our own desires. You are in a public space and
come across someone off-putting in appearance but who seems to need
your help. He appears to be in pain, or confused, or needy in some
way. Recognizing this, you take yourself to have a good reason to
offer him your assistance. You think that you ought to ask him whether
you can help--even though that will delay you and may cause you
some trouble and discomfort. These ways of describing your motivation
are all that is needed to explain why you offered him your help, and
it is not necessary to add, "I wanted to help him".
Admittedly, when "desire" is used to designate whatever it
is that motivates someone, it is true that you wanted to help him. But
what does the explanatory work, in these cases, is your recognition of
his need and your judgment that therefore you ought to offer your
help. Saying, "I wanted to help him" would be misleading,
since it would suggest that there was something pleasant that you
expected to get by offering your assistance. After you have given him
your help, it is true, you might think back on this encounter, and be
pleased that you had done the right thing. But you might not--you
might be worried that what you did actually made him worse off,
despite your good intentions. And in any case, if you do look back
with pleasure at your good deed, it does not follow that feeling good
was your goal all along, and that you merely used him as a means to
that end. That would follow only if desire by its very nature is a
form of hunger.
### 2.6 Pure altruism and self-sacrifice
Of the three forms of psychological egoism distinguished above, the
one that is least open to objection is the weak form that holds that
altruism is never pure. It claims that whenever we act, *one*
of our motives is a desire for our own good. There is no good *a
priori* argument for this thesis--or, at any rate, the *a
priori* argument we have been considering for the strongest form
of psychological egoism does not support it, because the two premises
used in that argument are so implausible. But it might nonetheless be
suggested that as a matter of fact we always do find some
self-interested motivation that accompanies altruistically motivated
behavior. It is difficult to refute that proposal. We should not
pretend that we know all of the considerations and causes that
underlie our behavior. Some of our motives are hidden, and there is
too much going on in our minds for us to be aware of the whole of our
psychology. So, for all we know, we might never be pure altruists.
But what of the other weak form of psychological egoism?--the one
that admits that sometimes one of our reasons for acting is the good
we do for others for their sake, but claims that we never act for the
good of others when we think that doing so would make us worse off. It
says, in other words, that we never voluntarily do what we foresee
will sacrifice our well-being to some extent.
The first point to be made about this form of psychological egoism is
that, once again, there is no *a priori* argument to support
it. The two premises we have been examining--that all action is
motivated by desire and all desire is like hunger--are
implausible, and so they do not support the thesis that we never
sacrifice our well-being to any degree. If this form of psychological
egoism is to be sustained, its evidence would have to be drawn from
the observation of each human being's reasons for acting. It
would have to say: when our motives are carefully scrutinized, it may
indeed be found that although we do good to others for the sake of
those others, we never do so when we think it would detract even
slightly from our own well-being. In other words, we count the good of
others as something that by itself gives us a reason, but it is always
a weak reason, in that it is never as strong as reasons that derive
from our self-interest.
We have no reason to suppose that human behavior is so uniform in its
motivation. A far more plausible hypothesis about human motives is
that they vary a great deal from one person to another. Some people
are never altruistic; others are just as this weak form of
psychological egoism says: they are altruistic, but only when they
think this will not detract from their own well-being; and then there
is a third and large category filled with people who, to some degree
or other, are willing to sacrifice their well-being for others. Within
this category there is wide range--some are willing to make only
small sacrifices, others larger sacrifices, and some extraordinarily
large sacrifices. This way of thinking has the great advantage of
allowing our experience of each individual to provide us with the
evidence by means of which we characterize him. We should not label
everyone as an egoist on the basis of some *a priori* theory;
rather, we should assess each person's degree of egoism and
altruism on the basis of what we can discern of their motives.
### 2.7 Does egoism exist?
One further point should be made about our reasons for supposing that
there is such a thing as altruism. Just as we can ask, "what
entitles us to believe that altruism exists?" so we can ask:
"what entitles us to believe that egoism exists?" Consider
the possibility that whenever we act for our own good, we are not
doing so only for our own sake, but also for the sake of someone else.
On what grounds are we entitled to reject that possibility?
Once again, the egoist might reply that it is an *a priori*
truth that all of our actions are ultimately motivated only by
self-interest, but we have seen the weakness of the premises that
support that argument. So, if the hypothesis that sometimes one acts
only for one's own sake is true, it must recommend itself to us
because close observation of human behavior supports it. We must find
actual cases of someone promoting his own good *only* for his
own sake. It is no easier to be confident about such matters than it
is easy to be confident that someone has acted out of purely
altruistic motives. We realize that much of what we do for ourselves
has consequences for other people as well, and we care to some degree
about those other people. Perhaps our ultimate motivation always
includes an other-regarding component. It is more difficult to find
evidence against that suggestion than one might have thought.
To take matters to an extreme, it might be suggested that our ultimate
motivation is always entirely other-regarding. According to this
far-fetched hypothesis, whenever we act for our own good, we do so not
at all for our own sake, but always entirely for the sake of someone
else. The important point here is that the denial that altruism exists
should be regarded with as much suspicion as this contrary denial,
according to which people never act ultimately for their own good.
*Both* are dubious universal generalizations. Both have far
less plausibility than the common sense assumption that people
sometimes act in purely egoistic ways, sometimes in purely altruistic
ways, and often in ways that mix, in varying degrees, the good of
oneself and the good of others.
## 3. Self and others: some radical metaphysical alternatives
An assumption that many people make about egoistic and altruistic
motives is that it is more difficult to justify the latter than the
former, or that the former do not require justification whereas the
latter do. If someone asks himself, "Why should I take my own
good to be a reason to do anything?" it is tempting to respond
that something is amiss in the very asking of this
question--perhaps because there can be no answer to it.
Self-interest, it might be said, can be given no justification and
needs none. By contrast, since other people are *other*, it
seems as though some reason needs to be given for building a bridge
from oneself to those others. In other words, we apparently have to
find something in others that justifies our taking an interest in
their well-being, whereas one need not seek something in oneself that
would justify self-regard. (Perhaps what we find in others that
justifies altruism is that they are just like oneself in important
respects.) It is worth asking whether this apparent asymmetry between
justifying self-interest and justifying altruism is real or only
apparent.
One response to this question is that the asymmetry is illusory
because the very distinction between oneself and others is artificial
and an obstacle to clear thinking. One can begin to challenge the
validity or importance of the distinction between self and others by
noticing how many changes occur in the inner life of what is,
conventionally speaking, a single "person". The mind of a
newborn, a child, an adolescent, a young adult, a middle aged person,
and an old person approaching death--these can have at least as
many differences as do those who are conventionally counted as two
distinct individuals. If a young man of twenty years sets aside money
to provide for his retirement in old age, he is saving for someone who
will be quite different from himself. Why should that not be called
altruism rather than self-interest? Why does it matter whether it is
called acting for his own good or for the good of another? (See Parfit
1984.)
Another kind of challenge to the validity of the distinction between
self and others derives from the observation made by David Hume that
when we look within and make an inventory of the contents of our
mental life, we have no acquaintance with any entity that would
provide a reference for the word "self". Introspection can
tell us something about sensations, feelings, and thoughts--but
we do not have any experience of some entity that is the one who has
these sensations, feelings, and thoughts. That point might be regarded
as a reason to reject the common sense view that when you refer to
yourself, and distinguish yourself from someone else, there is
something real that you are talking about, or some valid distinction
between yourself and others. It might be thought, in other words, that
the ordinary distinction between altruistic and egoistic motives is
misguided because there are no such things as selves.
A third metaphysical possibility is this: human beings cannot be
understood one by one, as though each were a self-sufficient and fully
real individual. That way of thinking about ourselves fails to
recognize the profound way in which we are by our nature social
beings. You and I and others are by our nature mere parts of some
larger social unit. As an analogy, one might think of the human body
and such parts of the body as fingers, hands, arms, legs, toes, torso,
and so on. They cannot exist, much less function properly, in
isolation. Similarly, it might be said that individual human beings
are mere fragments of a larger social whole. Accordingly, instead of
using the concepts expressed by the terms
"self-interested" and "altruistic", we should
see ourselves as contributors to the success and well-functioning of
the larger community to which we belong (see Brink 2003; Green
1883).
The remainder of this essay will set aside these unorthodox
alternatives to the common sense metaphysical framework that we
normally presuppose when we think about self-interested and altruistic
motives. It would take us too far afield to examine them. We will
continue to make these assumptions: First, a single individual human
being persists over time from birth to death, even when the mental
life of that individual undergoes many changes. Second, there is
someone one is referring to when one talks about oneself, even though
there is no object called the "self" that we detect
introspectively. And the fact that we do not encounter such an object
by introspection is no reason to doubt the validity of the distinction
made between oneself and others. Third, although certain things (arms,
legs, noses, etc.) are by their very nature parts of a whole, no human
being is by nature a part in that same way. Rejecting these ideas, we
will continue to assume, with common sense, that for each human being
there is such a thing as what is good for that human being; and that
the questions, "what is good for me?", "what is good
for that other individual, who is not me?" are different
questions. Accordingly, it is one thing for a reason to be
self-interested, and another for it to be altruistic (although of
course one and the same act can be supported by both kinds of
reasons).
Assuming, then, that the distinction between these motives is real,
the questions we asked at the beginning of this section remain: Why
ought one to be altruistic? Does one need a justification for being
motivated in this way? Is egoistic motivation on a sounder footing
than altruistic motivation, in that it stands in no need of
justification?
## 4. Why care about others?
Radically different ways of answering these questions can be found in
moral philosophy. The first makes self-interested motivation
fundamental; it holds that we should be altruistic because it is in
our interest to be so moved. That strategy is often attributed to the
Greek and Roman philosophers of antiquity--Plato, Aristotle, the
Stoics, and the Epicureans (see Annas 1993).
In the modern era, a second approach has come to the fore, built on
the notion that moral thinking is not self-centered but impartial and
impersonal. Its basic idea is that when we think *morally*
about what to do, reason takes a god's-eye perspective and sets
aside the emotional bias we normally have in our own favor, or in
favor of our circle of friends or our community. Here Kant 1785 is a
representative figure, but so too are the utilitarians--Jeremy
Bentham 1789, John Stuart Mill 1864, and Henry Sidgwick 1907.
A third approach, championed by David Hume (1739), Adam Smith (1759),
and Arthur Schopenhauer (1840), gives sympathy, compassion, and
personal affection--rather than impartial reason--a central
role to play in the moral life. It holds that there is something
extraordinarily valuable in the sentimental bonds that take hold among
human beings--a feature of human life that is overlooked or
distorted when morality is understood solely or primarily in
impersonal terms and from a god's-eye point of view. In
favorable conditions, we naturally and emotionally respond to the weal
and woe of others; we do not and should not look for reasons to do so.
(The assorted ideas labeled "sentimentalism" in this entry
are an amalgam of ideas derived loosely from the writings of Blum
1980; Noddings 1986; Slote 1992, 2001 2010, 2013; and others. The term
is sometimes applied to a family of meta-ethical views that ground the
meaning or justification of moral propositions in attitudes rather
than response-independent facts (Blackburn 2001). Here, by contrast,
sentimentalism is a ground-level thesis about what is most valuable in
human relationships. It could be combined with meta-ethical
sentimentalism, but need not be.)
These three approaches are hardly an exhaustive survey of all that has
been said in the Western philosophical tradition about altruism. A
fuller treatment would examine the Christian conception of love, as
developed by thinkers of the medieval period. To a large extent, such
figures as Augustine and Aquinas work within a eudaimonistic
framework, although they are also influenced by the Neoplatonic
picture of the visible world as an outpouring of the bountifulness of
divine goodness. To the extent that rewards of heaven and the
sufferings of hell play a role in a theocentric framework, there are
instrumental reasons, for those who need them, to care for others. But
there are other reasons as well. Other-regarding virtues like charity
and justice are perfections of the human soul and are therefore
components of our earthly well-being. Christian philosophy rejects
Aristotle's doctrine that divine being has no ethical qualities
and makes no interventions in human life. God is a person who loves
his creation, human beings above all. When we love others for
themselves, we imitate God and express our love for him (Lewis
1960).
### 4.1 Eudaimonism
The term "eudaimonism" is often used by philosophers to
refer to the ethical orientation of all or the major philosophers of
Greek and Roman antiquity. "*Eudaimonia*" is the
ordinary Greek word they apply to the highest good. As Aristotle
observes at the beginning of the *Nicomachean Ethics*, whenever
we act, we aim at some good--but goods are not all at the same
level. Lower goods are undertaken for the sake of more valuable goals,
which are in turn pursued in order to achieve still better goods. This
hierarchy of value cannot continue endlessly--a life must have
some ultimate goal, something that is valuable in itself and not for
the sake of anything still better. What that goal should be, Aristotle
acknowledges, is a much disputed matter; but at any rate, everyone
uses the word "*eudaimonia*" to designate that
highest good. ("Happiness" is the standard translation,
but "well-being" and "flourishing" may be
closer to the Greek word's meaning.)
Aristotle does not say that one's ultimate goal should be
one's own well-being (*eudaimonia*) *and no one
else's*. On the contrary, he holds that the *common*
good (the good of the whole political community) is superior to the
good of a single individual. Nonetheless, it has become common among
scholars of ancient ethics to attribute to Aristotle and the other
major moral philosophers of antiquity the assumption that one's
ultimate goal should *just* be one's own well-being.
Is this an implausible assumption? That is the accusation of many
systems of modern moral philosophy, but one must be careful not to
attribute to Greek and Roman ethics an extreme endorsement of
selfishness. One way to see that this would be unfair is to recognize
how important it is to Aristotle that we love others *for their
sake*. That is a key ingredient of his lengthy discussion of
friendship and love in Books VIII and IX of the *Nicomachean
Ethics*. There he argues that (i) friendship is an ingredient of a
good life, and (ii) to be a friend to someone (or at any rate a friend
of the best sort) one must not treat him as a mere means to
one's own advantage or one's own pleasure. He elaborates
on (ii) by adding that in friendships of the best sort, each
individual admires the other for the excellence of that other
person's character, and benefits him for that reason. It is
clear, then, that he explicitly condemns those who treat others as
mere means to their own ends. So, even if it is true that, according
to Aristotle, one's ultimate goal should be one's own
well-being (and no one else's), he combines this with the denial
that the good of others should be valued solely as a means to
one's own.
It is crucial, at this point, that we keep in mind the distinction,
drawn above in
section 1.4,
between (i) what constitutes well-being and (ii) what is a necessary
means towards or a pre-condition of well-being. Aristotle argues that
one's well-being is constituted by the excellent use of
one's reason, and that such virtues as justice, courage, and
generosity are among the qualities in which one's good consists.
When one acts with justice and generosity towards one's family,
or friends, or the larger community, that is good for oneself (one is
achieving one's ultimate goal) and it is also good for
others--in fact, one's action is motivated in part by the
desire to benefit those others for *their* sake. If treating
others justly and in accordance with the other ethical virtues were
merely a means towards one's own well-being, Aristotle's
framework for ethics would be objectionably self-regarding--and
it would be difficult for it to endorse, without inconsistency, the
thesis that we ought to benefit others for their sake.
We should recall a point made in
section 1.1:
altruistic acts need not involve self-sacrifice, and they remain
altruistic even when they are performed from a mixture of motives,
some of which are self-interested. For Aristotle, altruism should
*always* be accompanied by self-interested motives. His system
of practical thought could be dismissed out of hand if one begins with
the assumption that moral motivation must be purely altruistic, free
from all taint of self-regard. Otherwise, it would not count as
*moral*. That idea has some currency, and it is often
attributed (rightly or wrongly) to Kant. But on reflection, it is open
to question. If it is the case that whenever one has a good reason to
benefit someone else for that person's sake, there is also a
second good reason as well--namely, that in doing so one will
also benefit oneself--it would be implausible to suppose that one
should not let that second reason have any influence on one's
motivation.
Nonetheless, if another point made earlier is correct, there
*is* a serious problem for Aristotle's eudaimonism. In
section 1.2,
we noted that someone is open to criticism if he is always guided by
the principle, "I shall never do anything unless doing so is
best for me". Such a person seems insufficiently altruistic,
insufficiently willing to make compromises for the good of others. He
is (to use the term introduced earlier) never altruistic in the strong
sense. Aristotle, it might be said, would have been on firmer ground
if he had said that ultimately one should act for one's own good
*and that of others*. (To be fair to him, he does not deny
this; on the other hand, he does say that treating others well never
makes one worse off.)
If the project undertaken by Greek and Roman moral philosophy is to
begin with the unquestioned assumption that one should never act
contrary to one's own good, and that one's ultimate end
should be only one's own eudaimonia, it faces the serious
objection that it will never be able, on this basis, to give proper
recognition to the interests of others. The idea underlying this
objection is that we should be *directly* concerned with
others: the fact that an act one performs benefits someone
*else* can already provide a reason for undertaking it, without
having to be accompanied by a *self*-interested reason. There
is no argument to be found in ancient ethics -none is
offered--that purports to show that the only way to justify
having other-regarding motives is by appealing to the good it does
oneself to have them.
At the same time, that gives us no reason to dismiss out of hand the
efforts made by these authors to show that in fact one does benefit by
having altruistic motives. There is nothing morally offensive about
asking the question: "is it good for someone to be a good
person?" once it is understood that being a good person might be
a *component* of well-being, not a means to further private
ends. As noted earlier
(section 1.4),
certain kinds of excellence are widely assumed to be components of a
good life. The examples used there were excellence in the arts, the
sciences, and sport. But excelling at ethical life is also a plausible
example, since it consists in developing and exercising cognitive,
emotional, and social skills that we are pleased and proud to have. In
any case, it would be sheer dogmatism to close our minds and refuse to
listen to the arguments found in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics that
ethical virtue is of great value because it is a component (and for
the Stoics the sole component) of one's well-being.
### 4.2 Impartial Reason
We turn now to the idea, central to one modern approach to ethics,
that when we think morally, we reason from an impartial or impersonal
perspective. Moral thinking is not self-centered. Of course we all
have an emotional bias that attaches special weight to self-interest,
and we are often partial to our particular circle of friends or our
community. But when we look at the world from a moral point of view,
we try to set aside this self-centered framework. Taking a god's
eye perspective on things, we ask ourselves what *one* ought to
do in this or that situation--not what would be good for me or my
friends. It is as though we forget about locating ourselves as this
particular person; we abstract away from our normal self-centered
perspective and seek the solution to a practical problem that anyone
similarly impartial would also arrive at.
We can find anticipations or analogues of this idea in ancient
ethics--for example, in Plato's and Aristotle's
recognition that the political community serves the *common*
good rather the interest of some one class or faction; and in the
Stoic belief that the cosmos is governed by a providential force that
assigns to each of us a distinctive role by which we serve not just
ourselves but also the whole. In the ideal city of Plato's
*Republic*, the family and private property are abolished
within the elite classes, because these institutions interfere with
the development of a common concern for all individuals. It is not
clear how these ideas can be made to fit within a eudaimonistic
framework. How can the good of the community serve as the highest
standard of evaluation if one's own good alone is one's
highest end? One way of looking at the history of ethics would be to
say that modern ethics salvages the impartialism that occasionally
appears in ancient ethics, and rightly abandons its attempt to derive
a justification of altruism from a prior commitment to self-interest.
Contemporary eudaimonists, of course, would tell a different story
(see, for example Annas 1993; LeBar 2013; Russell 2012).
The notion of impartiality has thus far been described in highly
general terms, and it is important to see that there are different
ways of making it more concrete. One way of doing so is adopted by
utilitarians, and more generally, by consequentialists. (The
utilitarianism of Bentham 1789, Mill 1864, and Sidgwick 1907 holds
that one is to maximize the greatest balance of pleasure over
pain--treating pleasure and the absence of pain as the sole
constituents of well-being. Consequentialism abstracts away from this
hedonistic component of utilitarianism; it requires one to maximize
the greatest balance of good over bad. See Driver 2012.) In their
calculus, no individual's good is given greater weight or
importance than any other's. Your own good, therefore, is not to
be treated by you as having greater weight as a reason than anyone
else's, simply because it is your own good. The well-being of a
human being (or of a sentient creature) is what provides one with a
reason to act: that is why one has a reason to take one's own
good into consideration in practical thinking. But the same point
applies equally and with equal force to the well-being of anyone
else.
But that is not the only way of taking the general notion of
impartiality and making it more specific. The general idea, as stated
earlier, is that moral thinking, unlike prudential thinking, is not
self-centered. One can make this idea more concrete by taking it to
mean that there is a single set of rules or norms that apply equally
to all human beings, and so the standard by which one answers the
question, "what should I do in this situation?" is the
standard by which one answers the question, "what should anyone
do in this situation?" Someone whose practical reasoning is
guided by this condition is abiding by an ideal of impartiality. He
makes no special exceptions for himself or his friends.
Suppose, for example, that you are a lifeguard and one afternoon you
must choose between swimming north to rescue one group and swimming
south to rescue another. The northern group includes your friend, but
the southern group, full of strangers, is much larger. The ideal of
impartiality described in the previous paragraph does not by itself
determine what one should do in this situation; what it requires is
simply that it should make no difference that the lifeguard faced with
this dilemma is *you* (and the northern group includes
*your* friend). What *you* should do, if you are the
lifeguard, is what *any* lifeguard ought to do in that
situation. If it is right to take friendship into consideration, when
making this decision, then it would be right for anyone to do so.
(What would be right, in that case, would be for each individual to
choose the good of *his or her* friend over the good of
strangers.)
The consequentialist has a more radical interpretation of what
impartiality means and requires. His ideal of impartiality does not
allow the lifeguard to take into consideration the fact that by
swimming north he will be able to save *his* friend. After all,
the well-being of his friend is not made more valuable simply
because that person is *his* friend. Just as my good is not
made more valuable than the good of others simply because it is
*my* good, so too the well-being of my friend deserves no extra
weight because he is a friend of *mine*. So, the lifeguard,
according to the consequentialist, must choose to save one group
rather than the other solely on the basis of the greater balance of
good over bad.
The consequentialist will correctly point out that quite often one is
in a better position to promote one's own good than that of
others. As a rule, I have more knowledge about what is good for me
than I have about what is good for strangers. It often requires fewer
resources for me to benefit myself than to benefit others. I know
immediately when I am hungry without having to ask, and I know what
kind of food I like. But additional steps are needed to find out when
others are hungry and which food they like. These sorts of facts about
one's special relationship to oneself might allow the
consequentialist to justify giving somewhat more attention to
one's own well-being than that of anyone else. Even so, there is
only one individual who is me; and the number of other individuals
whom I can benefit, if I make the effort, is very large. When all of
these factors are taken into consideration, it will often be the case
that self-interested reasons ought to give way to altruistic
motives.
Consequentialism evidently does not recognize certain ways in which
each human being has a special relation to her own well-being--a
relation different from the one she has to the well-being of others.
When each of us becomes an adult, we are normally charged with the
special responsibility of having to look after our own welfare. Young
children are not expected to be in command of their own lives; they
are not yet competent to occupy this role. But the point of their
education is to train them so that as adults they can be responsible
for themselves. A fully mature person is rightly expected by others to
care for someone in particular--namely herself. She is given room
to make decisions about her own life but is not given the same kind
and degree of authority over the lives of others. If she would like to
devote herself to others, she cannot simply do so without receiving
their permission, or without taking other steps that make her entry
into their lives permissible. Consequentialism, by contrast, regards
all adult human beings as equally responsible for the well-being of
all. It does not take seriously the idea that our social relations are
governed by a division of labor that charges each with a special
responsibility for herself--and certain others as well
(one's children, one's friends, and so on.)
According to the weaker interpretation of impartiality described
above, moral rules reflect this division of labor. (By the
"weaker interpretation" is meant the thesis that moral
thinking avoids being self-centered because it upholds a single set of
rules or norms that apply equally to all human beings.) Consider, for
example, the duty we normally have to help others, even when they are
strangers. If someone is in need, and asks for your assistance, that
gives you a reason to help him, and you should do so, *provided
that compliance with such appeals is not overly burdensome*.
Notice the escape clause: it builds into the duty to aid others a
recognition of the importance of each person having a significant
degree of control over his own life. Common sense morality assumes
that what we owe to others might call for some sacrifice of our own
good, but also that in the ordinary business of life the degree of
sacrifice should fall within certain limits, so that we can make good
use of the responsibility we have been given as adults to seek our own
good. The balance struck by moral rules between the claims of
self-interest and the claims of others is what makes it possible for
those rules to be recognized and accepted as appropriate. These rules
leave us free to volunteer to make greater sacrifices; but such
greater sacrifices are not required of us except in extraordinary
circumstances (wars, disasters, emergencies).
The three approaches to altruism that we have examined thus far give
three rather different answers to the question: "why should one
act for the sake of others and not only for one's own
sake?"
Eudaimonism replies that those who act for the sake of others are
benefited by having an altruistic disposition.
The consequentialist's answer begins with the claim that
one's own well-being ought to be of concern to oneself simply
because it is *someone's* well-being; it should not be of
importance to oneself simply because it is one's own well-being.
There is, in other words, no reason why a benefit should go to you
rather than someone else just because you are the one who would be
receiving it. Accordingly, if one assumes, as one should, that one
should act for one's own sake, then one has no less a reason to
act for the good of anyone and everyone else.
If we adopt a weaker interpretation of impartiality, we see the
justification of altruism simply by seeing that we have a duty to aid
other people in certain circumstances. The moral rule that requires us
to help others is a rule that calls upon us to help them not as a
means to our own good, but simply in virtue of their need. And we see
the rule as justified by recognizing that it strikes a proper balance
between our self-concern and the appropriate claims of others.
Notice that both consequentialism and the weaker impartialist position
are compatible with the eudaimonist's thesis that having
altruistic motives is a component of one's own well-being. What
these two forms of impartialism reject is the stronger eudaimonistic
thesis that one's ultimate goal should be one's own
well-being and that alone.
That stronger eudaimonistic thesis and consequentialism stand at
opposite poles from each other, in the following respect: The first of
these poles elevates the self to a position of primacy, since it is
only one's own well-being that constitutes one's ultimate
goal; by contrast, consequentialism, at the opposite extreme, deflates
the self to the point where it has no more claim to one's
attention than does any other individual. The weak impartialist
attempts to occupy a middle ground.
### 4.3 Nagel and the impersonal standpoint
Yet another conception of impartiality--and a novel argument for
the rationality of altruism--can be found in the work of Thomas
Nagel. In *The Possibility of Altruism* (1970), he seeks to
undermine both psychological egoism, in its strong form, as defined in
section 2.1
above, and its normative counterpart (sometimes called
"rational egoism or "ethical egoism"), which holds
that one *ought* to have no direct concern with the good of
others. *Indirect* concern, the ethical egoist grants, can be
justified: the good of others may be instrumental to one's own
good, or one might happen to have a sentimental attachment to others.
But absent these contingent relations to others, one has, according to
the ethical egoist, no reason to care about their well-being.
Nagel doubts that anyone actually is a psychological egoist (1970:
84-85), but his major concern is to refute ethical egoism, by
showing that altruism is a rational requirement on action. His
idea is not simply that we ought in certain circumstances to help
others for their sake; it is also that we are acting irrationally if
we do not. That is because it is required of us as rational beings to
view ourselves and others from what Nagel calls "the impersonal
standpoint". As he puts it,
>
>
> to recognize others fully as persons requires a conception of oneself
> as identical with a particular, impersonally specifiable inhabitant of
> the world, among others of a similar nature. (1970: 100)
>
>
>
Nagel likens the impersonal standpoint to the prudential policy of
regarding all times in one's life as equal in importance. One
has reason not to be indifferent to one's future because the
present moment is not more reason-giving simply by virtue of being
present. Similarly, he holds, one has reason not to be indifferent to
other people, because the fact that some individual is me is not more
reason-giving simply because he is me. Terms like "now"
and "later, " "me and not me" point to no
differences that make a rational difference. A time that is later
eventually becomes a time that is now; that is why it is arbitrary and
irrational to discount the future simply because it is future. Giving
greater weight to someone's good because that person is me is no
less irrational.
The "impersonal standpoint", as Nagel conceives it, is a
view of the world from outside it, one that deprives one of
information about which individual in that world one is. (It is, in
the phrase Nagel chose as the title of his 1986 book, *The View
From Nowhere*.) From this perspective, one need not be a
utilitarian or consequentialist--one need not maximize the good,
but can abide by the constraints of principles of the right. But
certain principles *are* ruled out from the impersonal
standpoint: egoism is, as well as any other principle that gives one
individual or group a reason not shared by all others. For example, if
someone has reason to avoid pain, that must be because
pain--anyone's pain--is to be avoided. So, it cannot
be the case that although I have a reason to avoid pain, others are
permitted to be indifferent to my plight, as if that pain were not an
objectively bad thing, something that gives only the person who feels
it a reason to oppose it. Nagel called such reasons
"objective", as contrasted with "subjective".
Parfit, in *Reasons and Persons (1984)*, speaks instead of
"agent-relative" and "agent neutral" reasons,
and subsequently Nagel himself adopted these terms. The critique of
egoism in *The Possibility of Altruism* rests on the thesis
that all genuine reasons are agent neutral.
What Nagel's position and utilitarianism have in common is a
perspective that is the opposite of the self-centered world of
rational egoism: from the point of view of this self-less perspective,
each individual is just a tiny part of a vast universe of moral
subjects, each of no more importance or value than any other. Our
common sense point of view, moving from our inner life looking
outward, lulls us into a massive kind of insularity--a tendency
to downplay or ignore the fact that we are just one individual of no
greater importance than any other. We put ourselves at the center of
our world, and this can only be corrected by stepping back, leaving
out of our picture the particular individual one is, and making
general judgments about how human beings should behave towards each
other. From this perspective, when one person ought to do something,
some related requirement is imposed on all others as well -some
"ought" statement applies to each.
Nagel is faced with the problem of how to explain why self-interest is
not regularly swamped by agent-neutral reasons. If anyone's pain
imposes on *all* other moral agents a requirement of some sort,
then one person's pain is everyone's problem. As Nagel
says in *The View From Nowhere*, (using the term
"objective standpoint" for the impersonal standpoint),
>
>
> when we take up the objective standpoint, the problem is not that
> values seem to disappear but that there are too many of them, coming
> from every life and drowning out those that arise from our own. (1986:
> 147)
>
>
>
It would be consistent with this picture to add that the weight of
reasons that derive from the situation of other people is extremely
small and becomes increasingly so, as they are added together.
Therefore, it might be said, they do not often outweigh reasons of
self-interest. But that would be an *ad hoc* stipulation, and
would differ only slightly from the egoist's thesis that the
good of others has *no* independent weight. It is hard to
believe that we are forced to choose between ethical egoism (which
says that only one's own pain ought to be one's direct
concern) and Nagel's conception of impartiality (according to
which everyone's pain ought to weigh on me, because that of
others is as bad as my own). The first demands no altruism of us, the
second too much.
### 4.4 Sentimentalism and fellow feeling
Some philosophers would say that the approaches to altruism discussed
thus far are missing an important--perhaps the most
important--ingredient in moral motivation. These approaches, one
might say, make altruism a matter of the head, but it is much more a
matter of the heart. The eudaimonist can say that we should have a
certain amount of fellow feeling, but justifies that emotional
response by giving a self-interested reason for being so motivated.
The consequentialist seems to leave no legitimate room in our moral
thinking for the friendly feelings and love we have for particular
individuals, for these sentiments are often at odds with the project
of increasing the total amount of good in the world. The weak
impartialist says that in certain situations we are to be moved by the
good of others, but that is only because there is a moral rule,
striking a reasonable balance between oneself and others, that
requires one to do so. All three approaches--so the objection
goes--are too cold and calculating. They call upon us to treat
others in accordance with a formula or rule or general policy. What is
most important in human relationships cannot be captured by an
approach that begins with a general rule about how to treat others,
and justifies a certain way of treating each particular individual
simply by applying that general rule.
It would miss the point of this critique if one said, in response,
that having an emotional response to the good of others is an
effective means of getting oneself to give them the aid they need.
(For example, the consequentialist can say that this doctrine does
call upon us to act on the basis of friendly feelings and love towards
particular individuals, because over the long run relationships
solidified by such sentiments are likely to result in a greater
balance of good over bad than would colder relationships.) But a
defender of the critique put forward in the preceding paragraph would
reply that one's emotional response to the good or ill of others
can be assessed as appropriate independently of the effectiveness of
one's emotions as motivators of action. When we feel compassion
for the suffering of a particular individual, that reaction is already
justified; the suffering of another ought to elicit such a response
simply because that is the appropriate reaction. Consider, as an
analogy, the proper reaction to the death of a loved one; this calls
forth grief and ought to do so, even though grief cannot undo
one's loss. In the same way, it could be said that altruistic
feelings are the appropriate response to the good and ill of others,
quite apart from whether those feelings lead to results. That does not
imply that it does not matter whether one *does* anything for
the good of others. One ought to alleviate their suffering and seek
their well-being; that is because this is the proper behavioral
expression of one's feeling for them. If, in the face of the
suffering of others, one feels nothing and offers no help, the
fundamental flaw in one's response is one's emotional
indifference, and a secondary flaw is the failure to act that flows
from that emotional defect.
According to this "sentimentalist" approach to altruism,
the question, "why should one act for the sake of others and not
only for one's own sake?" should not be answered by
appealing to some notion of impartiality or some conception of
well-being. That would be no better than trying to justify grief by
way of impartiality or well-being. The sentimentalist simply asks us
to recognize that the situation of this or that human being (or
animal) rightly calls forth a certain emotional response, and the help
we give is the proper expression of that sentiment.
## 5. Kant on sympathy and duty
To assess the role that sympathy should play in our relations with
other human beings, it will be helpful to consider Kant's
discussion of this question in the *Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals* (1785). He notes that
>
>
> many souls are so compassionately disposed that, without any further
> motive of vanity or self-interest, they find an inner pleasure in
> spreading joy around them. (4:398)
>
>
>
He is by no means contemptuous of them--on the contrary, he says
that they "deserve praise and encouragement" (4:398). But
not the highest praise or the strongest encouragement.
What they do not deserve, he says, is our "esteem",
because their motivation "has no genuinely moral worth".
That is because the "maxim" of what they do "lacks
the moral merit of such actions done not out of inclination but out of
duty" (4:398). Kant means that these people are not following a
rule when they help others--a rule, rationally acceptable to all,
according to which all those who are in such and such circumstances
ought to be helped because it is morally right to do so. (The term
"such and such circumstances" is a place-holder for a
phrase stating in general terms what those circumstances are.) These
compassionate people act instead on an emotional basis: they are
pained by the misfortunes of others, and they know that if they offer
their help, they will give themselves pleasure. That is a good motive,
Kant thinks, but it ought not to be one's sole or primary reason
for helping others.
Kant elaborates on his claim by imagining a transformation in one of
these sympathetic and compassionate people: suppose someone's
misfortunes have brought him sorrows that extinguish his feeling for
others. He retains his power to "assist others in
distress" but now "their adversity no longer stir[s]
him". He feels no "inclination" to help them, but
does so nonetheless, simply because he believes he has a moral duty to
do so. Kant says that when this happens, this man's character
and his action have "*moral* worth"--whereas
they had none before. His motive is now "incomparably the
highest"--not only is it better than before, but, because
it is now a moral motive, it has a kind of value that takes priority
over every other kind (4:398).
What should we make of this? To begin with, we should acknowledge that
if someone assists another person because he is aware of that
person's suffering and is distressed by it, he may not be acting
for the most admirable of motives. For example, if you hear someone
crying, and this leads you to help him, you may be motivated solely by
your desire for a good night's sleep, which you could not have
had, had he continued to cry. Alleviating his pain was not your
ultimate end -it was just a way to quiet him down, so that you
could enjoy some peace. We might say that you "did a good
thing", but you don't deserve any praise or admiration for
doing so. But this falls far short of vindicating Kant's claim.
This is not really a case of acting compassionately, because it was
not that other person's suffering you cared about--only his
crying, and only because this distressed you.
Before we move closer to the sort of case that Kant is discussing, it
will be helpful to engage in a thought experiment due to Robert Nozick
(1974: 42-5). He imagines an "experience machine" in
which a neuroscientist manipulates your brain so that you can have any
experiences of your choosing. Those experiences would be illusory, but
they could be as lifelike, rich, and complex as you choose. You might,
for example, enter the machine in order to have an experience exactly
like that of climbing Mt. Everest; you would be lying on a table with
your brain attached to the machine, but it would be exactly as though
you were facing great danger, wind, cold, snow, and so on. Nozick
claimed that we would not choose to plug into the machine, and rightly
so, because there is much of value beyond the experiential component
of our lives.
With this device in mind, let's return to Kant's
compassionate souls who "without any further motive of vanity or
self-interest, ... find an inner pleasure in spreading joy around
them". We can offer them the opportunity to plug into the
experience machine, and it would then seem to them as if they were
"spreading joy around them". They would not in fact be
helping anyone, but it would seem to them as though they were, and
that would fill them with joy. Clearly, there would be little or
nothing to admire in those who would enter the machine on these terms.
But what about a compassionate person who refuses this offer, and
prefers to find joy in actually helping people--not merely in
seeming to help them? To be more precise, we might offer someone the
following choice: (a) You will experience great joy in the machine,
imagining yourself to be helping others; (b) you will experience less
joy outside the machine, but it will be joy taken in actually helping
others. A genuinely compassionate person would choose (b). He would be
giving up a certain amount of pleasure in order to be of use to
others. And there is certainly something admirable about that.
According to Kant, however, there is still something of great worth
that is missing in the motivation of this genuinely compassionate
person, willing though he is to make some sacrifice in his own
well-being for the sake of others. His reason for helping is not that
it would be morally wrong to fail to do so--wrong because he
would be violating a moral rule that makes it a duty for him to help
them. What motivates him to aid others is simply that he is inclined
to do so. If he did not take any pleasure in being of assistance, he
would not do so.
We should agree with Kant that there are situations in which it would
be morally wrong for one person to refuse to help another, whether
that person has fellow feeling for others or not. For example, suppose
a child needs to be taken to the hospital, and it so happens that you
can do so at some small cost or inconvenience to yourself. Although
this child is a stranger to you, you are someone who finds children
adorable and likes to be with them. And so you willingly accompany the
child to the hospital. Your love of children is admirable, but you
would still be subject to criticism, if that were your sole motivation
for assisting this child. By hypothesis, in the situation we are
imagining, it would be wrong to refuse--and yet the wrongness of
refusing, by hypothesis, is not one of your motives.
But Kant's point is of limited application, for there are many
other kinds of situation in which assisting others for their sake is
admirable but not a moral duty. Suppose, for example, a novelist takes
time away from her work each day in order to read to blind people in
her community. She does not have a moral obligation to assist those
people; she helps them because she loves books and she wants to spread
the joy she takes in literature to others. Perhaps at some point in the
future, her interests will change--she might no longer write
novels, and she might get no pleasure from reading to others. She might
then no longer volunteer to read to the blind. Kant must say that the
help given by this writer does not deserve our "esteem"
and "has no genuinely moral worth", because she acts from
inclination rather than duty. But it is implausible to withhold these
words of praise. The author does not read to others merely as a means
to advance her career or her own well-being. Although she enjoys
reading to others, she may believe that it would be better for her to
spend more of her time working on her own writing projects. She makes
some sacrifices because she believes that other people's lives
will improve if she can instill in them the joy she takes in these
books. Surely her motives have "moral worth" in the normal
sense of that term: her reason for acting is to help others.
Recall Kant's thought experiment in which a person full of
sympathy and compassion suffers severe misfortunes that extinguish all
of his feeling for others. He is still able to benefit others, and he
still has a strong sense of duty. Kant seems to be implying that if
such an individual continues to "assist others in
distress" because he sees that he has a duty to do so, then
there is no moral defect in him at all. His motivation, on the
contrary, is exemplary, because it has "moral worth"
(unlike the motivation of the individual who is moved by inclination
and fellow feeling). Surely Kant is right that we ought not to lower
our opinion of him merely because he has experienced severe
misfortunes--assuming that he did not bring them on himself. He
says that the adversity of others "no longer stir[s]" this
poor soul, and presumably he would add that this emotional condition
is not this unfortunate man's fault either. But even if there is
nothing *blameworthy* in this man's emotional
indifference to the good of others, it is also true that his
relationship with others has been *damaged*. He cannot respond
to others as he should. Lacking any inclination to spread joy to
others, when he undertakes projects that fulfill his duty to promote
their happiness or diminish their unhappiness, he will do so in a
joyless, dutiful manner, thereby tarnishing the relationship he ought
to have with them. If, for example, he volunteers to read to the
blind, he will be unable to communicate to them a love of
literature--for he himself feels no "inner pleasure"
when he reads, and has no inclination to help others, due to his own
suffering. When he receives news of his adult children's
misfortunes, he will not respond with sympathy or
compassion--such news will simply leave him cold (although he
will fulfill his parental duties, if his assistance is morally
required). It would be appropriate, then, to say that this man
exhibits significant *moral* defects. He lacks the motivation
to act towards others as he should, and to feel for others as he
should.
## 6. Sentimentalism revisited
We are now in a better position to sort through the package of ideas
labeled "sentimentalism" in preceding sections, and to
recognize that some are far more plausible than others.
First, we should accept the sentimentalist thesis that one's
feelings can be assessed as fitting or unfitting on grounds other than
their causal effect on one's actions. We should, for example,
care about what happens to our children even when we can do nothing to
help them; that emotional response is appropriate because it is part
of what it is to be a good parent. This point allows us to concede
that in certain situations one ought to try to suppress an emotional
response that would normally be appropriate. If one has a duty to
minister to many people who are suffering, one may be more effective
in aiding them if one keeps oneself from feeling the emotions that are
fitting. A nurse working in a war zone, for example, might save more
lives if she trains herself, for now, to feel little emotion when she
hears the moans and cries of the wounded. She has reason to feel
compassion, but that is overridden by stronger reasons to act
effectively to relieve their burden.
A closely related sentimentalist point that should be accepted is that
aiding someone in need, but doing so in a manifestly cold, affectless,
or hostile manner is, in many situations, a defective response.
A second idea associated with sentimentalism in
section 4.4
was this:
>
>
> what is most important in human relationships cannot be captured by an
> approach that begins with a general rule about how to treat others,
> and justifies a certain way of treating each particular individual
> simply by applying that general rule.
>
>
>
The kernel of truth in this statement is that some of the most
valuable components of our lives are not available by following a
rule. We do not fall in love with people by applying a general
principle, standard, or criterion about whom we ought to fall in love
with. We do not develop a passion for mathematics, or history, or
tennis, by seeing these pursuits as specific instances of something
more general that we care about. Some of the most valuable components
of our lives are available to us only if they arise spontaneously from
feelings that respond to the lovable features of the world or the
people in it.
But that leaves a great deal of room for the project of treating
people in accordance with rules that we accept because they survive
our rational scrutiny. For example, it would be absurd to suggest that
we should abstain from torturing someone if (but only if) we have an
untutored and negative emotional reaction to torturing him. With
respect to torture, we need to respond to a general question: are
there circumstances in which it would be justified? (And to answer
that question, we must first ask: what is torture?) The only way to
address these questions is one in which we reason our way towards a
general policy--a rule, however simple or complex, that governs
the use of torture. And surely such a rule should be
impartial--it should be a single rule that applies to all, not
tailored to serve the interests of some nations or factions to which
we belong.
The same point applies to questions about everyday rules that govern
such acts as promise-keeping, lying, theft, and other kinds of suspect
behavior. Here too we rightly expect each other to have a general
policy, one that takes these sorts of actions to be wrong in normal
circumstances. That a promise has been freely made is normally a
decisive reason for keeping it; someone who keeps a promise only if he
has a positive feeling about doing so would not be treating others as
they rightly expect to be treated. (For opposing views, see Dancy
2004; Ridge and McKeever 2006.)
A third question about the relation between our sentiments and
altruism arises when we ask about the proper basis for charitable
giving. Consider, for example, someone who donates money to an
organization devoted to fighting cancer, and chooses to do so because
his mother has died of cancer. His gift is an expression of his love
for her; it is meant, of course, to do good to others, but those
others are chosen as beneficiaries because he takes the reduction of
this disease to be an appropriate expression of his feelings for her.
Utilitarianism cannot easily accept this form of altruism, since it
begins with the premise that charitable acts, like everything else,
are right only if they do the most good--and it could easily be
the case that money allocated to cancer research would do more good if
donated to some other humanitarian cause. But if one does not
presuppose the truth of utilitarianism, it is not difficult to defend
the practice of choosing one charity over another on the basis of
one's sentimental attachments. If friendships and other loving
relationships have a proper place in our lives even if they do not
maximize the good, then sentiment is an appropriate basis for
altruism. (For an opposing view, see Singer 2015.)
That does not entail that it is always right to follow our feelings
when we decide whether to help this person or organization rather than
that. Suppose you belong to a group dedicated to reducing the number
of people who die in drowning accidents, and you are on your way to an
essential meeting of this organization. If you miss the meeting, let
us suppose, the group will have to suspend its operations for many
months--with the result that the number of drownings will remain
high. On your way, you pass a child who is in danger of drowning, and
cries for your help. You must choose: either you can save this one
child, or you can attend the meeting and thereby save many more from
drowning. When you hear the child's cries for help, you cannot
help responding emotionally; it would be cold and calculating to pass him
by, even if in doing so you will be saving many more. What ought you
to do?
The fact that your emotions are fully aroused by the child's
cries does not have the same bearing on this issue as does the love
felt by a son for his departed mother in the previous example. The
drowning child whose cries fill you with compassionate feeling is a
stranger to you. So your alternatives in this case are whether to help
one stranger (the one who is tugging at your heartstrings) or many
(whom you do not see or hear at the moment). It would not be
implausible to hold that sentiment plays an appropriate role in
altruism when it is the expression of a long-term and meaningful bond,
but not when it is a short-lived reaction to the cries of a
stranger.
## 7. Conclusion
We have found no reason to doubt that we both can and should be
altruistic to some extent. To what extent? Utilitarians and
consequentialists have an exact answer to that question: one is to
give equal weight to the good of every human being (or every sentient
creature), counting oneself as just one small part of that universal
good. If that is more altruism than can be required of us, the better
alternative is not to retreat to the other extreme (egoism). Rather,
how much altruism is appropriate for an individual varies according to
that individual's situation in life.
Altruism is not necessarily admirable. It is to be admired only in
circumstances in which it is appropriate to act for another's
sake--and only when what one aims to do for another really does
benefit that individual. If one seeks what one takes to be the good of
others for their sake, but is mistaken about what is really good for
them, one's action is defective. Altruism is fully admirable
only when combined with a correct understanding of well-being.
What is wrong with those who do not care about others for their sake?
It could be the case that such individuals are themselves worse off
for their lack of altruistic motivation. That is what a eudaimonist
must say, and we have not objected to that aspect of eudaimonism. It
could also be the case that there is a failure of rationality among
those who are never altruistic or insufficiently altruistic. But it
should not be assumed that there must be something else that goes awry
in those who are not altruistic or not altruistic enough, beyond the
fact that when they ought to have cared about some individual other
than themselves, they failed to do so. |
altruism-biological | ## 1. Altruism and the Levels of Selection
The problem of altruism is intimately connected with questions about
the level at which natural selection acts. If selection acts
exclusively at the individual level, favouring some individual
organisms over others, then it seems that altruism cannot evolve, for
behaving altruistically is disadvantageous for the individual organism
itself, by definition. However, it is possible that altruism may be
advantageous at the *group* level. A group containing lots of
altruists, each ready to subordinate their own selfish interests for
the greater good of the group, may well have a survival advantage over
a group composed mainly or exclusively of selfish organisms. A process
of between-group selection may thus allow the altruistic behaviour to
evolve. *Within* each group, altruists will be at a selective
disadvantage relative to their selfish colleagues, but the fitness of
the group as a whole will be enhanced by the presence of altruists.
Groups composed only or mainly of selfish organisms go extinct,
leaving behind groups containing altruists. In the example of the
Vervet monkeys, a group containing a high proportion of alarm-calling
monkeys will have a survival advantage over a group containing a lower
proportion. So conceivably, the alarm-calling behaviour may evolve by
between-group selection, even though within each group, selection
favours monkeys that do not give alarm calls.
The idea that group selection might explain the evolution of
altruism was first broached by Darwin himself. In *The Descent of
Man* (1871), Darwin discussed the origin of altruistic and
self-sacrificial behaviour among humans. Such behaviour is obviously
disadvantageous at the individual level, as Darwin realized: "he
who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather
than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his
noble nature" (p.163). Darwin then argued that self-sacrificial
behaviour, though disadvantageous for the individual
'savage', might be beneficial at the group level: "a
tribe including many members who...were always ready to give aid to
each other and sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be
victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural
selection" (p.166). Darwin's suggestion is that the altruistic
behaviour in question may have evolved by a process of between-group
selection.
The concept of group selection has a chequered and controversial
history in evolutionary biology. The founders of modern
neo-Darwinism--R.A. Fisher, J.B.S.
Haldane and S. Wright--were all aware that
group selection could in principle permit altruistic behaviours to
evolve, but they doubted the importance of this evolutionary
mechanism. Nonetheless, many mid-twentieth century ecologists and
some ethologists, notably Konrad Lorenz, routinely assumed that
natural selection would produce outcomes beneficial for the whole
group or species, often without even realizing that individual-level
selection guarantees no such thing. This uncritical 'good of the
species' tradition came to an abrupt halt in the 1960s, due
largely to the work of G.C. Williams (1966) and J. Maynard Smith
(1964). These authors argued that group selection was an inherently
weak evolutionary force, hence unlikely to promote interesting
altruistic behaviours. This conclusion was supported by a number of
mathematical models, which apparently showed that group selection
would only have significant effects for a limited range of parameter
values. As a result, the notion of group selection fell into
widespread disrepute in orthodox evolutionary circles; see Sober and
Wilson 1998, Segestrale 2000, Okasha 2006, Leigh 2010 and Sober 2011 for details of the
history of this debate.
The major weakness of group selection as an explanation of altruism,
according to the consensus that emerged in the 1960s, was a problem
that Dawkins (1976) called 'subversion from within'; see
also Maynard Smith 1964. Even if altruism is advantageous at the
group level, within any group altruists are liable to be exploited by
selfish 'free-riders' who refrain from behaving
altruistically. These free-riders will have an obvious fitness
advantage: they benefit from the altruism of others, but do not incur
any of the costs. So even if a group is composed exclusively of
altruists, all behaving nicely towards each other, it only takes a
single selfish mutant to bring an end to this happy idyll. By virtue of
its relative fitness advantage within the group, the selfish mutant
will out-reproduce the altruists, hence selfishness will eventually
swamp altruism. Since the generation time of individual organisms is
likely to be much shorter than that of groups, the probability that a
selfish mutant will arise and spread is very high, according to this
line of argument. 'Subversion from within' is generally
regarded as a major stumbling block for group-selectionist theories
of the evolution of altruism.
If group selection is not the correct explanation for how the
altruistic behaviours found in nature evolved, then what is? In the
1960s and 1970s a rival theory emerged: kin selection or
'inclusive fitness' theory, due originally to Hamilton
(1964). This theory, discussed in detail below, apparently showed how
altruistic behaviour could evolve
*without* the need for group-level selection, and quickly
gained prominence among biologists interested in the evolution of
social behaviour; the empirical success of kin selection theory
contributed to the demise of the group selection concept. However, the
precise relation between kin and group selection is a source of
ongoing controversy (see for example the recent exchange
in *Nature* between Nowak, Tarnita and Wilson 2010 and Abbot
et. al. 2011). Since the 1990s, proponents of 'multi-level
selection theory' have resuscitated a form of group-level
selection--sometimes called 'new' group selection--and
shown that it can permit altruism to evolve (cf. Sober and Wilson
1998). But 'new' group selection turns out to be
mathematically equivalent to kin selection in most if not all cases,
as a number of authors have emphasized (Grafen 1984, Frank 1998, West
*et al*. 2007, Lehmann *et al*. 2007, Marshall 2011); this point was
already appreciated by Hamilton (1975). Since the relation between
'old' and 'new' group selection is itself a
point of controversy, this explains why disagreement about the
relation between kin and group selection should persist.
## 2. Kin Selection and Inclusive Fitness
The basic idea of kin selection is simple. Imagine a gene which
causes its bearer to behave altruistically towards other organisms,
e.g. by sharing food with them. Organisms without the gene are
selfish--they keep all their food for themselves, and sometimes get handouts
from the altruists. Clearly the altruists will be at a fitness
disadvantage, so we should expect the altruistic gene to be eliminated
from the population. However, suppose that altruists are discriminating
in who they share food with. They do not share with just anybody, but
only with their relatives. This immediately changes things. For
relatives are genetically similar--they share genes with one another.
So when an organism carrying the altruistic gene shares his food, there
is a certain probability that the recipients of the food will also
carry copies of that gene. (How probable depends on how closely related
they are.) This means that the altruistic gene can in principle spread
by natural selection. The gene causes an organism to behave in a way
which reduces its own fitness but boosts the fitness of its
relatives--who have a greater than average chance of carrying the gene
themselves. So the overall effect of the behaviour may be to increase
the number of copies of the altruistic gene found in the next
generation, and thus the incidence of the altruistic behaviour
itself.
Though this argument was hinted at by Haldane in the 1930s, and to a
lesser extent by Darwin in his discussion of sterile insect castes
in *The Origin of Species*, it was first made explicit by
William Hamilton (1964) in a pair of seminal papers. Hamilton
demonstrated rigorously that an altruistic gene will be favoured by
natural selection when a certain condition, known as
*Hamilton's rule*, is satisfied. In its simplest version, the
rule states that *b* > *c*/*r*, where *c* is
the cost incurred by the altruist (the donor), b is the benefit
received by the recipients of the altruism, and r is
the *co-efficient of relationship* between donor and
recipient. The costs and benefits are measured in terms of
reproductive fitness. The co-efficient of relationship depends on the
genealogical relation between donor and recipient--it is
defined as the probability that donor and recipient share genes at a
given locus that are 'identical by descent'. (Two genes
are identical by descent if they are copies of a single gene in a
shared ancestor.) In a sexually reproducing diploid species, the value
of r for full siblings is 1/2, for parents and offspring
1/2, for grandparents and grandoffspring 1/4, for full
cousins 1/8, and so-on. The higher the value of r, the greater
the probability that the recipient of the altruistic behaviour will
also possess the gene for altruism. So what Hamilton's rule tells us
is that a gene for altruism can spread by natural selection, so long
as the cost incurred by the altruist is offset by a sufficient amount
of benefit to sufficiently closed related relatives. The proof of
Hamilton's rule relies on certain non-trivial assumptions; see Frank
1998, Grafen 1985, 2006, Queller 1992a, 1992b, Boyd and McIlreath 2006
and Birch forthcoming for details.
Though Hamilton himself did not use the term, his idea quickly
became known as 'kin selection', for obvious reasons. Kin
selection theory predicts that animals are more likely to behave
altruistically towards their relatives than towards unrelated members
of their species. Moreover, it predicts that the *degree* of
altruism will be greater, the closer the relationship. In the years
since Hamilton's theory was devised, these predictions have been amply
confirmed by empirical work. For example, in various bird species, it
has been found that 'helper' birds are much more likely to
help relatives raise their young, than they are to help unrelated
breeding pairs. Similarly, studies of Japanese macaques have shown that
altruistic actions, such as defending others from attack, tend to be
preferentially directed towards close kin. In most social insect
species, a peculiarity of the genetic system known as
'haplodiploidy' means that females on average share more
genes with their sisters than with their own offspring. So a female may
well be able to get more genes into the next generation by helping the
queen reproduce, hence increasing the number of sisters she will have,
rather than by having offspring of her own. Kin selection theory
therefore provides a neat explanation of how sterility in the social
insects may have evolved by Darwinian means. (Note, however, that the
precise significance of haplodiploidy for the evolution of worker
sterility is a controversial question; see Maynard Smith and Szathmary
1995 ch.16, Gardner, Alpedrinha and West 2012.)
Kin selection theory is often presented as a triumph of the
'gene's-eye view of evolution', which sees organic
evolution as the result of competition among genes for increased
representation in the gene-pool, and individual organisms as mere
'vehicles' that genes have constructed to aid their
propagation (Dawkins 1976, 1982). The gene's eye-view is certainly
the easiest way of understanding kin selection, and was employed by
Hamilton himself in his 1964 papers. Altruism seems anomalous from the
individual organism's point of view, but from the gene's point of view
it makes good sense. A gene wants to maximize the number of copies of
itself that are found in the next generation; one way of doing that is
to cause its host organism to behave altruistically towards other
bearers of the gene, so long as the costs and benefits satisfy the
Hamilton inequality. But interestingly, Hamilton showed that kin
selection can also be understood from the organism's point of view.
Though an altruistic behaviour which spreads by kin selection reduces
the organism's personal fitness (by definition), it increases what
Hamilton called the organism's *inclusive* fitness. An
organism's inclusive fitness is defined as its personal fitness, plus
the sum of its weighted effects on the fitness of every other organism
in the population, the weights determined by the coefficient of
relationship r. Given this definition, natural selection will act to
maximise the inclusive fitness of individuals in the population (Grafen 2006).
Instead of thinking in terms of selfish genes trying to maximize their
future representation in the gene-pool, we can think in terms of
organisms trying to maximize their inclusive fitness. Most people find
the 'gene's eye' approach to kin selection heuristically
simpler than the inclusive fitness approach, but mathematically they
are in fact equivalent (Michod 1982, Frank 1998, Boyd and
McIlreath 2006, Grafen 2006).
Contrary to what is sometimes thought, kin selection does not
require that animals must have the ability to discriminate relatives
from non-relatives, less still to calculate coefficients of
relationship. Many animals can in fact recognize their kin, often by
smell, but kin selection can operate in the absence of such an ability.
Hamilton's inequality can be satisfied so long as an animal behaves
altruistically towards other animals that are *in fact* its
relatives. The animal *might* achieve this by having the ability
to tell relatives from non-relatives, but this is not the only
possibility. An alternative is to use some proximal indicator of
kinship. For example, if an animal behaves altruistically towards those
in its immediate vicinity, then the recipients of the altruism are
likely to be relatives, given that relatives tend to live near each
other. No ability to recognize kin is presupposed. Cuckoos exploit
precisely this fact, free-riding on the innate tendency of birds to
care for the young in their nests.
Another popular misconception is that kin selection theory is
committed to 'genetic determinism', the idea that genes
rigidly determine or control behaviour. Though some sociobiologists
have made incautious remarks to this effect, evolutionary theories of
behaviour, including kin selection, are not committed to it. So long as
the behaviours in question have a genetical *component*, i.e.
are influenced to some extent by one or more genetic factor, then the
theories can apply. When Hamilton (1964) talks about a gene which
'causes' altruism, this is really shorthand for a gene
which increases the probability that its bearer will behave
altruistically, to some degree. This is much weaker than saying that
the behaviour is genetically 'determined', and is quite
compatible with the existence of strong environmental influences on the
behaviour's expression. Kin selection theory does not deny the truism
that all traits are affected by both genes and environment. Nor does it
deny that many interesting animal behaviours are transmitted through
non-genetical means, such as imitation and social learning (Avital and
Jablonka 2000).
The importance of kinship for the evolution of altruism is very widely
accepted today, on both theoretical and empirical grounds. However,
kinship is really only a way of ensuring that altruists and recipients
both carry copies of the altruistic gene, which is the fundamental
requirement. If altruism is to evolve, it must be the case that the
recipients of altruistic actions have a greater than average
probability of being altruists themselves. Kin-directed altruism is
the most obvious way of satisfying this condition, but there are other
possibilities too (Hamilton 1975, Sober and Wilson 1998, Bowles and
Gintis 2011, Gardner and West 2011). For example, if the gene that
causes altruism also causes animals to favour a particular feeding
ground (for whatever reason), then the required correlation between
donor and recipient may be generated. It is this correlation, however
brought about, that is necessary for altruism to evolve. This point
was noted by Hamilton himself in the 1970s: he stressed that the
coefficient of relationship of his 1964 papers should really be
replaced with a more general correlation coefficient, which reflects
the probability that altruist and recipient share genes, whether
because of kinship or not (Hamilton 1970, 1972, 1975). This point is
theoretically important, and has not always been recognized; but in
practice, kinship remains the most important source of statistical
associations between altruists and recipients (Maynard Smith 1998,
Okasha 2002, West
*et al*. 2007).
### 2.1 A Simple Illustration: the Prisoner's dilemma
The fact that correlation between donor and recipient is the key to
the evolution of altruism can be illustrated via a simple 'one shot'
Prisoner's dilemma game. Consider a large population of organisms who
engage in a social interaction in pairs; the interaction affects their
biological fitness. Organisms are of two types: selfish (S) and
altruistic (A). The latter engage in pro-social behaviour, thus
benefiting their partner but at a cost to themselves; the former do
not. So in a mixed (S,A) pair, the selfish organism does better--he
benefits from his partner's altruism without incurring any
cost. However, (A,A) pairs do better than (S,S) pairs--for the former
work as a co-operative unit, while the latter do not. The interaction
thus has the form of a one-shot Prisoner's dilemma, familiar from game
theory. Illustrative payoff values to each 'player', i.e., each partner
in the interaction, measured in units of biological fitness, are shown
in the matrix below.
>
>
>
> | | | |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | | | **Player 2** |
> | | | Altruist | Selfish |
> | **Player 1** | Altruist | 11,11 | 0,20 |
> | Selfish | 20,0 | 5,5 |
>
>
> **Payoffs for (Player 1, Player 2) in units of reproductive
> fitness**
The question we are interested in is: which type will be favoured by
selection? To make the analysis tractable, we make two simplifying
assumptions: that reproduction is asexual, and that type is perfectly
inherited, i.e., selfish (altruistic) organisms give rise to selfish
(altruistic) offspring. Modulo these assumptions, the evolutionary
dynamics can be determined very easily, simply by seeing whether
the *S* or the *A* type has higher fitness, in the
overall population. The fitness of the *S*
type, *W*(*S*), is the weighted average of the payoff to
an *S* when partnered with an *S* and the payoff to
an *S* when partnered with an *A*, where the weights are
determined by the probability of having the partner in
question. Therefore,
>
> *W*(*S*) = 5 \* Prob(*S* partner/*S*) +
> 20 \* Prob(*A* partner/*S*)
>
>
(The conditional probabilities in the above expression should be read
as the probability of having a selfish (altruistic) partner, given
that one is selfish oneself.)
Similarly, the fitness of the *A* type is:
>
> *W*(*A*) = 0 \* Prob(*S* partner/*A*) +
> 11 \* Prob(*A* partner/*A*)
>
>
From these expressions for the fitnesses of the two types of organism,
we can immediately deduce that the altruistic type will only be
favoured by selection if there is a statistical correlation between
partners, i.e., if altruists have greater than random chance of being
paired with other altruists, and similarly for selfish types. For
suppose there is no such correlation--as would be the case if the
pairs were formed by random sampling from the population. Then, the
probability of having a selfish partner would be the same for
both *S* and *A* types, i.e., P(*S*
partner/*S*) = P(*S* partner/*A*). Similarly,
P(*A* partner/*S*) = P(*A*
partner/*A*). From these probabilistic equalities, it follows
immediately that *W*(*S*) is greater
than *W*(*A*), as can be seen from the expressions for
*W*(*S*) and *W*(*A*) above; so the
selfish type will be favoured by natural selection, and will increase
in frequency every generation until all the altruists are eliminated
from the population. Therefore, in the absence of correlation between
partners, selfishness must win out (cf. Skyrms 1996). This confirms the point noted in
section 2--that altruism can only evolve if there is a statistical
tendency for the beneficiaries of altruistic actions to be altruists
themselves.
If the correlation between partners is sufficiently strong, in this
simple model, then it is possible for the
condition *W*(*A*) > *W*(*S*) to be
satisfied, and thus for altruism to evolve. The easiest way to see
this is to suppose that the correlation is perfect, i.e., selfish
types are always paired with other selfish types, and ditto for
altruists, so P(*S* partner/*S*) = P(*A*
partner/*A*) = 1. This assumption implies
that *W*(*A*)=11 and *W*(*S*)=5, so
altruism evolves. With intermediate degrees of correlation, it is also
possible for the condition *W*(*S*)
> *W*(*A*) to be satisfied, given the particular
choice of payoff values in the model above.
This simple model also highlights the point made previously, that
donor-recipient correlation, rather than genetic relatedness, is the
key to the evolution of altruism. What is needed for altruism to
evolve, in the model above, is for the probability of having a partner
of the same type as oneself to be sufficiently larger than the
probability of having a partner of opposite type; this ensures that
the recipients of altruism have a greater than random chance of being
fellow altruists, i.e., donor-recipient correlation. Whether this
correlation arises because partners tend to be relatives, or because
altruists are able to seek out other altruists and choose them as
partners, or for some other reason, makes no difference to the
evolutionary dynamics, at least in this simple example.
## 3. Conceptual Issues
Altruism is a well understood topic in evolutionary biology; the
theoretical ideas explained above have been extensively analysed,
empirically confirmed, and are widely accepted. Nonetheless, there are
a number of conceptual ambiguities surrounding altruism and related
concepts in the literature; some of these are purely semantic, others
are more substantive. Three such ambiguities are briefly discussed
below; for further discussion, see West *et al*. 2007, Sachs
*et al*. 2004 or Lehmann and Keller 2006.
### 3.1 Altruism, Co-operation, Mutualism
According to the standard definition, a social behaviour counts as
altruistic if it reduces the fitness of the organism performing the
behaviour, but boosts the fitness of others. This was the definition
used by Hamilton (1964), and by many subsequent authors. However,
there is less consensus on how to describe behaviours that boost the
fitness of others but also boost the fitness of the organism
performing the behaviour. As West *et al*. (2007) note, such
behaviours are sometimes termed 'co-operative', but this
usage is not universal; others use 'co-operation' to refer
to behaviour that boosts the fitness of others irrespective of its
effect on self; while still others use 'cooperation' as a
synonym for altruism. (Indeed, in the simple Prisoner's dilemma game
above, the two strategies are usually called 'co-operate'
and 'defect'.) To avoid this confusion, West *et
al*. (2007) suggest the term 'mutual benefit' for
behaviours that benefit both self and other, while Sachs *et
al*. (2004) suggest 'byproduct benefit'.
Whatever term is used, the important point is that behaviours that
benefit both self and others can evolve much more easily than
altruistic behaviours, and thus require no special mechanisms such as
kinship. The reason is clear: organisms performing such behaviours
thereby increase their personal fitness, so are at a selective
advantage vis-a-vis those not performing the behaviour. The fact that
the behaviour has a beneficial effect on the fitness of others is a
mere side-effect, or byproduct, and is not part of the explanation for
why the behaviour evolves. For example, Sachs *et al*. (2004)
note that an action such as joining a herd or a flock may be of this
sort; the individual gains directly, via his reduced risk of
predation, while simultaneously reducing the predation risk of other
individuals. By contrast with an altruistic action, there is no
personal incentive to 'cheat', i.e., to refrain from
performing the action, for doing so would directly reduce personal
fitness.
Also indicative of the difference between altruistic behaviour and
behaviour that benefit both self and others is the fact that in the
latter case, though not the former, the beneficiary may be a member of
a different species, without altering the evolutionary dynamics of the
behaviour. Indeed, there are numerous examples where the
self-interested activities of one organism produce an incidental
benefit for a non-conspecific; such behaviours are sometimes called
'mutualistic', though again, this is not the only way that
the latter term has been used (West *et al*. 2007). By
contrast, in the case of altruism, it makes an enormous difference
whether the beneficiary and the donor are con-specifics or not; for
if not, then kin selection can play no role, and it is quite unclear how
the altruistic behaviour can evolve. Unsurprisingly, virtually all the
bona fide examples of biological altruism in the living world involve
donors and recipients that are con-specifics. (Cases of so-called
'reciprocal altruism' are sometimes thought to be
exceptions to this generalization; but see section 4 below.)
### 3.2 Weak and Strong Altruism
A quite different ambiguity concerns the distinction between weak and
strong altruism, in the terminology of D.S. Wilson (1977, 1980,
1990). This distinction is about whether the altruistic action entails
an absolute or relative fitness reduction for the donor. To count as
strongly altruistic, a behaviour must reduce the *absolute*
fitness (i.e., number of offspring) of the donor. Strong altruism is
the standard notion of altruism in the literature, and was assumed
above. To count as weakly altruistic, an action need only reduce
the *relative* fitness of the donor, i.e., its fitness relative
to that of the recipient. Thus for example, an action which causes an
organism to leave an additional 10 offspring, but causes each
organism(s) with which it interacts to leave an additional 20
offspring, is weakly but not strongly altruistic. The action boosts
the absolute fitness of the 'donor', but boosts the
absolute fitness of other organisms by even more, thus reducing the
donor's relative fitness.
Should weakly altruistic behaviours be classified as altruistic or
selfish? This question is not merely semantic; for the real issue is
whether the conditions under which weak altruism can evolve are
relevantly similar to the conditions under which strong altruism can
evolve, or not. Many authors argue that the answer is
'no', on the grounds that weakly altruistic behaviours are
individually advantageous, so can evolve with no component of kin
selection or donor-recipient correlation, unlike strongly altruistic
behaviours (Grafen 1984, Nunney 1985, West *et
al*. 2007). To appreciate this argument, consider a
game-theoretic scenario similar to the one-shot Prisoner's dilemma of
section 4, in which organisms engage in a pair-wise interaction that
affects their fitness. Organisms are of two types, weakly altruistic
(*W*) and non-altruistic (*N*). *W*-types perform
an action that boosts their own fitness by 10 units and the fitness of
their partner by 20 units; *N*-types do not perform the action. The
payoff matrix is thus:
>
>
>
> | | | |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | | | **Player 2** |
> | | | Weak Altruist | Non |
> | **Player 1** | Weak Altruist | 30,30 | 10,20 |
> | Non | 20,10 | 0,0 |
>
>
> **Payoffs for (Player 1, Player 2) in units of reproductive
> fitness**
The payoff matrix highlights the fact that weak altruism is
individually advantageous, and thus the oddity of thinking of it it as
altruistic rather than selfish. To see this, assume for a moment that
the game is being played by two rational agents, as in classical game
theory. Clearly, the rational strategy for each individual
is *W*, for *W* dominates *N*. Each individual
gets a higher payoff from playing *W*
than *N*, *irrespective of what its opponent
does*--30 rather than 20 if the opponent plays *W*, 10 rather
than 0 if the opponent plays *N*. This captures a clear sense
in which weak altruism is individually advantageous.
In the context of evolutionary game theory, where the game is being
played by pairs of organisms with hard-wired strategies, the
counterpart of the fact that *W* dominates *N* is the
fact that *W* can spread in the population even if pairs are
formed at random (cf. Wilson 1980). To see this, consider the
expressions for the overall population-wide fitnesses of *W*
and *N*:
>
> *W*(*W*) = 30 \* Prob(*W* partner/*W*) + 10
> \* Prob(*N* partner/*W*)
>
>
> *W*(*N*) = 20 \* Prob(*W* partner/*N*) + 0
> \* Prob(*N* partner/*N*)
>
>
>
(As before, Prob(*W* partner/*W*) denotes the
conditional probability of having a weakly altruistic partner given
that one is weakly altruistic oneself, and so-on.) From these
expressions, it is easy to see that *W*(*W*)
> *W*(*N*) even if the there is no correlation among
partners, i.e., even if Prob(*W* partner/*W*) =
P(*W* partner/*N*) and P(*N* partner/*W*)
= P(*N* partner/*N*). Therefore, weak altruism can evolve in the
absence of donor-recipient correlation; as we saw, this is not true of
strong altruism. So weak and strong altruism evolve by different
evolutionary mechanisms, hence should not be co-classified, according
to this argument.
However, there is a counter argument due to D.S. Wilson (1977, 1980),
who maintains that weak altruism cannot evolve by individual selection
alone; a component of group selection is needed. Wilson's argument
stems from the fact that in a mixed (*W*,*N*) pair, the
non-altruist is fitter than the weak altruist. More generally, within
a single group of any size containing weak altruists and
non-altruists, the latter will be fitter. So weak altruism can only
evolve, Wilson argues, in a multi-group setting--in which the
within-group selection in favour of *N*, is counteracted by
between-group selection in favour of *W*. (On Wilson's view, the
evolutionary game described above is a multi-group setting, involving
a large number of groups of size two.) Thus weak altruism, like strong
altruism, in fact evolves because it is group-advantageous, Wilson
argues.
The dispute between those who regard weak altruism as individually
advantageous, and those like Wilson who regard it as group
advantageous, stems ultimately from differing conceptions of
individual and group selection. For Wilson, individual selection means
within-group selection, so to determine which strategy is favoured by
individual selection, one must compare the fitnesses of *W*
and *N* types within a group, or pair. For other theorists,
individual selection means selection based on differences in
individual phenotype, rather than social context; so to determine
which strategy is favoured by individual selection, one must compare
the fitnesses of *W* and *N* types in the same social
context, i.e., with the same partner. These two comparisons yield
different answers to the question of whether weak altruism is
individually advantageous. Thus the debate over how to classify weak
altruism is intimately connected to the broader levels of selection
question; see Nunney 1985, Okasha 2005, 2006, Fletcher and Doebeli
2006, West *et al*. 2007, for further discussion.
### 3.3 Short-term versus Long-term Fitness Consequences
A further source of ambiguity in the definition of biological altruism
concerns the time-scale over which fitness is measured. Conceivably,
an animal might engage in a social behaviour which benefits another
and reduces its own (absolute) fitness in the short-term; however, in
the long-term, the behaviour might be to the animal's advantage. So if
we focus on short-term fitness effects, the behaviour will seem
altruistic; but if we focus on lifetime fitness, the behaviour will
seem selfish--the animal's lifetime fitness would be reduced if it
did not perform the behaviour.
Why might a social behaviour reduce an animal's short-term fitness but
boost its lifetime fitness? This could arise in cases of 'directed
reciprocation', where the beneficiary of the behaviour returns the
favour at some point in the future (cf. Sachs *et al*. 2004). By
performing the behaviour, and suffering the short-term cost, the
animal thus ensures (or raises the chance) that it will receive return
benefits in the future. Similarly, in symbioses between members of
different species, it may pay an organism to sacrifice resources for
the benefit of a symbiont with which it has a long-term relationship,
as its long-term welfare may be heavily dependent on the symbiont's
welfare.
From a theoretical point of view, the most satisfactory resolution of
this ambiguity is to use lifetime fitness as the relevant parameter
(cf. West *et al*. 2007) Thus an action only counts as
altruistic if it reduces an organism's lifetime fitness. This
stipulation makes sense, since it preserves the key idea that the
evolution of altruism requires statistical association between donor
and recipient; this would not be true if short-term fitness were used
to define altruism, for behaviours which reduce short-term fitness but
boost lifetime fitness can evolve with no component of kin selection,
or donor-recipient correlation. However, the stipulation has two
disadvantages: (i) it makes it harder to tell whether a given
behaviour is altruistic, since lifetime fitness is notoriously
difficult to estimate; (ii) it has the consequence that most models of
'reciprocal altruism' are mis-named.
## 4. Reciprocal Altruism
The theory of reciprocal altruism was originally developed by Trivers
(1971), as an attempt to explain cases of (apparent) altruism among
unrelated organisms, including members of different species. (Clearly,
kin selection cannot help explain altruism among non-relatives.)
Trivers' basic idea was straightforward: it may pay an organism to
help another, if there is an expectation of the favour being returned
in the future. ('If you scratch my back, I'll scratch
yours'.) The cost of helping is offset by the likelihood of the
return benefit, permitting the behaviour to evolve by natural
selection. Trivers termed with evolutionary mechanism
'reciprocal altruism'.
For reciprocal altruism to work, there is no need for the two
individuals to be relatives, nor even to be members of the same
species. However, it is necessary that individuals should interact
with each more than once, and have the ability to recognize other
individuals with whom they have interacted in the
past.[1]
If individuals interact only once in their lifetimes and never meet
again, there is obviously no possibility of return benefit, so there
is nothing to be gained by helping another. However, if individuals
encounter each other frequently, and are capable of identifying and
punishing 'cheaters' who have refused to help in the past,
then the helping behaviour can evolve. A 'cheat' who
refuses to help will ultimately sabotage his own interests, for
although he does not incur the cost of helping others, he forfeits the
return benefits too--others will not help him in the
future. This evolutionary mechanism is most likely to work where
animals live in relatively small groups, increasing the likelihood of
multiple encounters.
As West *et al*. (2007) and Bowles and Gintis (2011) note, if altruism is defined by reference to
lifetime fitness, then Trivers' theory is not really about the
evolution of altruism at all; for behaviours that evolve via
reciprocation of benefits, as described by Trivers, are ultimately of
direct benefit to the individuals performing them, so do not reduce
lifetime fitness. Despite this consideration, the label 'reciprocal
altruism' is well-entrenched in the literature, and the evolutionary
mechanism that it describes is of some importance, whatever it is
called. Where reciprocal altruism is referred to below, it should be
remembered that the behaviours in question are only altruistic in the
short-term.
The concept of reciprocal altruism is closely related to the
Tit-for-Tat strategy in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) from
game theory. In the IPD, players interact on multiple occasions, and
are able to adjust their behaviour depending on what their opponent
has done in previous rounds. There are two possible strategies,
co-operate and defect; the payoff matrix (per interaction) is as in
section 2.1 above. The fact that the game is iterated rather than
one-shot obviously changes the optimal course of action; defecting is
no longer necessarily the best option, so long as the probability of
subsequent encounters is sufficiently high. In their famous computer
tournament in which a large number of strategies were pitted against
each other in the IPD, Axelrod and Hamilton (1981) found that the
Tit-for-Tat strategy yielded the highest payoff. In Tit-For-Tat, a
player follows two basic rules: (i) on the first encounter, cooperate;
(ii) on subsequent encounters, do what your opponent did on the
previous encounter. The success of Tit-for-Tat was widely taken to
confirm the idea that with multiple encounters, natural selection
could favour social behaviours that entail a short-term fitness
cost. Subsequent work in evolutionary game theory, much of it inspired
by Axelrod and Hamilton's ideas, has confirmed that repeated games
permit the evolution of social behaviours that cannot evolve in
one-shot situations (cf. Nowak 2006); this is closely related to the
so-called 'folk theorem' of repeated game theory in economics
(cf. Bowles and Gintis 2011). For a useful discussion of social
behaviour that evolves via reciprocation of benefits, see Sachs
*et al*. 2004.
Despite the attention paid to reciprocal altruism by theoreticians,
clear-cut empirical examples in non-human animals are relatively few
(Hammerstein 2003, Sachs *et al*. 2004, Taborsky 2013). This is
probably because the pre-conditions for reciprocal altruism to evolve-
multiple encounters and individual recognition--are not especially
common. However, one possible example is provided by blood-sharing in
vampire bats (Wilkinson 1984, 1990, Carter & Wilkinson 2013). It
is quite common for a vampire bat to fail to feed on a given
night. This is potentially fatal, for bats die if they go without food
for more than a couple of days. On any given night, bats donate blood
(by regurgitation) to other members of their group who have failed to
feed, thus saving them from starvation. Since vampire bats live in
small groups and associate with each other over long periods of time,
the preconditions for reciprocal altruism are likely to be met.
Wilkinson and his colleagues' studies showed that bats tended to share
food with their close associates, and were more likely to share with
others that had recently shared with them. These findings appear to
accord with reciprocal altruism theory.
Trivers (1985) describes an apparent case of reciprocal altruism
between non con-specifics. On tropical coral reefs, various species of
small fish act as 'cleaners' for large fish, removing
parasites from their mouths and gills. The interaction is mutually
beneficial--the large fish gets cleaned and the cleaner gets
fed. However, Trivers notes that the large fish sometimes appear to
behave altruistically towards the cleaners. If a large fish is
attacked by a predator while it has a cleaner in its mouth, then it
waits for the cleaner to leave before fleeing the predator, rather
than swallowing the cleaner and fleeing immediately. Trivers explains
the larger fish's behaviour in terms of reciprocal altruism. Since the
large fish often returns to the same cleaner many times over, it pays
to look after the cleaner's welfare, i.e., not to swallow it, even if
this increases the chance of being wounded by a predator. So the
larger fish allows the cleaner to escape, because there is an
expectation of return benefit--getting cleaned again in the
future. As in the case of the vampire bats, it is because the large
fish and the cleaner interact more than once that the behaviour can
evolve.
## 5. But is it 'Real' Altruism?
The evolutionary theories described above, in particular kin
selection, go a long way towards reconciling the existence of altruism
in nature with Darwinian principles. However, some people have felt
these theories in a way devalue altruism, and that the behaviours they
explain are not 'really' altruistic. The grounds for this
view are easy to see. Ordinarily we think of altruistic actions as
disinterested, done with the interests of the recipient, rather than
our own interests, in mind. But kin selection theory explains
altruistic behaviour as a clever strategy devised by selfish genes as
a way of increasing their representation in the gene-pool, at the
expense of other genes. Surely this means that the behaviours in
question are only 'apparently' altruistic, for they are
ultimately the result of genic self-interest? Reciprocal altruism
theory also seems to 'take the altruism out of
altruism'. Behaving nicely to someone in order to procure return
benefits from them in the future seems in a way the antithesis of
'real' altruism--it is just delayed self-interest.
This is a tempting line of argument. Indeed Trivers (1971) and,
arguably, Dawkins (1976) were themselves tempted by it. But it should
not convince. The key point to remember is that biological altruism
cannot be equated with altruism in the everyday vernacular sense.
Biological altruism is defined in terms of fitness consequences, not
motivating intentions. If by 'real' altruism we mean
altruism done with the conscious intention to help, then the vast
majority of living creatures are not capable of 'real'
altruism nor therefore of 'real' selfishness either. Ants
and termites, for example, presumably do not have conscious intentions,
hence their behaviour cannot be done with the intention of promoting
their own self-interest, nor the interests of others. Thus the
assertion that the evolutionary theories reviewed above show that the
altruism in nature is only apparent makes little sense. The contrast
between 'real' altruism and merely apparent altruism simply
does not apply to most animal species.
To some extent, the idea that kin-directed altruism is not
'real' altruism has been fostered by the use of the
'selfish gene' terminology of Dawkins (1976). As we have
seen, the gene's-eye perspective is heuristically useful for
understanding the evolution of altruistic behaviours, especially those
that evolve by kin selection. But talking about 'selfish'
genes trying to increase their representation in the gene-pool is of
course just a metaphor (as Dawkins fully admits); there is no literal
sense in which genes 'try' to do anything. *Any*
evolutionary explanation of how a phenotypic trait evolves must
ultimately show that the trait leads to an increase in frequency of
the genes that code for it (presuming the trait is transmitted
genetically.) Therefore, a 'selfish gene' story can by
definition be told about any trait, including a behavioural trait,
that evolves by Darwinian natural selection. To say that kin selection
interprets altruistic behaviour as a strategy designed by
'selfish' genes to aid their propagation is not wrong; but
it is just another way of saying that a Darwinian explanation for the
evolution of altruism has been found. As Sober and Wilson (1998) note,
if one insists on saying that behaviours which evolve by kin selection
/ donor-recipient correlation are 'really selfish', one
ends up reserving the word 'altruistic' for behaviours
which cannot evolve by natural selection at all.
Do theories of the evolution of biological altruism apply to humans?
This is part of the broader question of whether ideas about the
evolution of animal behaviour can be extrapolated to humans, a
question that fuelled the sociobiology controversy of the 1980s and is
still actively debated today (cf. Boyd and Richerson 2006, Bowles and
Gintis 2011, Sterelny 2012). All biologists accept that *Homo sapiens* is an
evolved species, and thus that general evolutionary principles apply
to it. However, human behaviour is obviously influenced by culture to
a far greater extent than that of other animals, and is often the
product of conscious beliefs and desires (though this does not
necessarily mean that genetics has no influence.) Nonetheless, at
least some human behaviour does seem to fit the predictions of the
evolutionary theories reviewed above. In general, humans behave more
altruistically (in the biological sense) towards their close kin than
towards non-relatives, e.g. by helping relatives raise their children,
just as kin selection theory would predict. It is also true that we
tend to help those who have helped us out in the past, just as
reciprocal altruism theory would predict. On the other hand, humans
are unique in that we co-operate extensively with our non-kin; and
more generally, numerous human behaviours seem anomalous from the
point of view of biological fitness. Think for example of adoption.
Parents who adopt children instead of having their own reduce their
biological fitness, obviously, so adoption is an altruistic behaviour.
But it does not benefit kin--for parents are generally
unrelated to the infants they adopt--and nor do the parents
stand to gain much in the form of reciprocal benefits. So although
evolutionary considerations can help us understand some human
behaviours, they must be applied judiciously.
Where human behaviour is concerned, the distinction between biological
altruism, defined in terms of fitness consequences, and
'real' altruism, defined in terms of the agent's conscious
intentions to help others, does make sense. (Sometimes the label
'psychological altruism' is used instead of
'real' altruism.) What is the relationship between these
two concepts? They appear to be independent in both directions, as
Elliott Sober (1994) has argued; see also Vromen (2012) and Clavien and Chapuisat (2013). An action
performed with the conscious intention of helping another human being
may not affect their biological fitness at all, so would not count as
altruistic in the biological sense. Conversely, an action undertaken
for purely self-interested reasons, i.e., without the conscious
intention of helping another, may boost their biological fitness
tremendously.
Sober argues that, even if we accept an evolutionary approach to human
behaviour, there is no particular reason to think that evolution would
have made humans into egoists rather than psychological altruists (see
also Schulz 2011). On the contrary, it is quite possible that natural
selection would have favoured humans who genuinely do care about
helping others, i.e., who are capable of 'real' or
psychological altruism. Suppose there is an evolutionary advantage
associated with taking good care of one's children--a quite
plausible idea. Then, parents who
*really do* care about their childrens' welfare, i.e., who are
'real' altruists, will have a higher inclusive fitness,
hence spread more of their genes, than parents who only pretend to
care, or who do not care. Therefore, evolution may well lead
'real' or psychological altruism to evolve. Contrary to
what is often thought, an evolutionary approach to human behaviour does
*not* imply that humans are likely to be motivated by
self-interest alone. One strategy by which 'selfish genes'
may increase their future representation is by causing humans to be
*non*-selfish, in the psychological sense. |
altruism-empirical | ## 1. Some Philosophical Background
People often behave in ways that benefit others, and they sometimes do
this knowing that it will be costly, unpleasant or dangerous. But at
least since Plato's classic discussion in the second Book of the
*Republic*, debate has raged over *why* people behave in
this way. Are their motives *really* altruistic, or is their
behavior ultimately motivated by self-interest? Famously, Hobbes gave
this answer:
>
>
> No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is
> voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his
> own good; of which, if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be
> no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of mutual help.
> (1651 [1981]: Ch. 15)
>
>
>
Views like Hobbes' have come to be called
*egoism*,[1]
and this rather depressing conception of human motivation has
apparently been favored, in one form or another, by a number of
eminent philosophical advocates, including Bentham, J.S. Mill and
Nietzsche.[2]
Egoism was also arguably the dominant view about human motivation in
the social sciences for much of the twentieth century (Piliavin &
Charng 1990: 28; Grant 1997). Dissenting voices, though perhaps fewer
in number, have been no less eminent. Butler, Hume, Rousseau, and Adam
Smith have all argued that, sometimes at least, human motivation is
genuinely altruistic.
Though the issue dividing egoistic and altruistic accounts of human
motivation is largely empirical, it is easy to see why philosophers
have thought that the competing answers will have important
consequences for moral theory. For example, Kant famously argued that
a person should act "not from inclination but from duty, and by
this would his conduct first acquire true moral worth" (1785
[1949]: Sec. 1, parag. 12). But egoism maintains that *all*
human motivation is ultimately self-interested, and thus people
*can't* act "from duty" in the way that Kant
urged. Thus if egoism is true, Kant's account would entail that
no conduct has "true moral worth". Additionally, if egoism
is true, it would appear to impose a strong constraint on how a moral
theory can answer the venerable question "Why should I be
moral?" since, as Hobbes clearly saw, the answer will have to
ground the motivation to be moral in the agent's
self-interest.
There are related implications for political philosophy. If the
egoists are right, then the *only* way to motivate prosocial
behavior is to give people a selfish reason for engaging in such
behavior, and this constrains the design of political institutions
intended to encourage civic-minded behavior. John Stuart Mill, who was
both a utilitarian and an egoist, advocated a variety of manipulative
social interventions to engender conformity with utilitarian moral
standards from egoistic moral
agents.[3]
It is easy to find philosophers suggesting that altruism is required
for morality or that egoism is incompatible with morality--and
easier still to find philosophers who claim that *other*
philosophers think this. Here are a few examples culled from a
standard reference work that happened to be close at hand:
>
>
> Moral behavior is, at the most general level, altruistic behavior,
> motivated by the desire to promote not only our own welfare but the
> welfare of others. (Rachels 2000: 81)
>
>
>
> [O]ne central assumption motivating ethical theory in the Analytic
> tradition is that the function of ethics is to combat the inherent
> egoism or selfishness of individuals. Indeed, many thinkers define the
> basic goal of morality as "selflessness" or
> "altruism". (W. Schroeder 2000: 396)
>
>
>
> Philosophers since Socrates worried that humans might be capable of
> acting only to promote their own self-interest. But if that is all we
> can do, then it seems morality is impossible. (LaFollette 2000a: 5)
> [4]
>
>
>
While the egoism/altruism debate has historically been of great
philosophical interest, the issue centrally concerns psychological
questions about the nature of human motivation, so it's no
surprise that psychologists have done a great deal of empirical
research aimed at determining which view is correct. The psychological
literature will be center-stage in
section 5,
the longest section in this entry, and in
section 6.
But before considering the empirical literature, it is important to be clear
on what the debate is about.
## 2. Defining "Egoism" and "Altruism"--The Standard Account
Providing definitions for "egoism" and
"altruism" is a contentious matter, since these terms have
been understood in radically different ways both in philosophy and in
the biological and social sciences. In this entry the focus will be on
the most widespread interpretation of
"egoism" and "altruism", understood as
descriptive claims about human psychology, within philosophy.
We'll call it "the standard account", versions of
which have been offered by numerous authors including Broad (1950),
Feinberg (1965 [1999]), Sober and Wilson (1998: Chs. 6 & 7),
Rachels (2003: Ch. 6), Joyce (2006: Ch. 1), Kitcher (2010, 2011: Ch.
1), May (2011a), and many others. Not surprisingly, there are minor
differences among the accounts provided by these authors, and those
differences occasionally provoke disagreement in the literature. But
all of them bear a strong family resemblance to the one we're
about to
sketch.[5]
At the end of this section, a different account of altruism proposed
in philosophy is briefly discussed. Biological accounts of altruism
will be considered in
section 3,
and accounts proposed by social scientists will be discussed in
section 4.
But our present focus is the standard philosophical account.
As already intimated, while advocates of altruism and of
egoism agree that people often help others, they disagree about
*why* they do this. On the standard account, defenders of
altruism insist that, sometimes at least, people are motivated by an
ultimate desire for the well-being of another person, while defenders
of egoism maintain that all ultimate desires are self-interested. This
formulation invites questions about (1) what it is for a behavior to
be *motivated by an ultimate desire*, and (2) the distinction
between *desires that are self-interested* and *desires for
the well-being of others*.
The first question, regarding ultimate desires, can be usefully
explicated with the help of a familiar account of *practical
reasoning*.[6]
On this account, practical reasoning is a causal process via which a
desire and a belief give rise to or sustain another desire. For
example, a desire to drink an espresso and a belief that the best
place to get an espresso is at the espresso bar on Main Street may
cause a desire to go to the espresso bar on Main Street. This desire
can then join forces with another belief to generate a third desire,
and so on. Sometimes this process will lead to a desire to perform a
relatively simple or "basic" action, and that desire, in
turn, will cause the agent to perform the basic action without the
intervention of any further desires. Desires produced or sustained by
this process of practical reasoning are *instrumental*
desires--the agent has them because she thinks that satisfying
them will lead to something else that she desires. But not
*all* desires can be instrumental desires. If we are to avoid
circularity or an infinite regress there must be some desires that are
*not* produced because the agent thinks that satisfying them
will facilitate satisfying some other desire. These desires that are
not produced or sustained by practical reasoning are the agent's
*ultimate* desires, and the objects of ultimate
desires--the states of affairs desired--are often said to be
desired "for their own sake". A behavior is
*motivated* by a specific ultimate desire when that desire is
part of the practical reasoning process that leads to the
behavior.
Although the second question, about the distinction between
self-interested desires and desires for the well-being of others,
would require an extended discussion in any comprehensive treatment of
the debate between egoists and altruists, some rough and ready
examples of the distinction will suffice
here.[7]
The desires that another person's life be saved, that another
person's suffering be alleviated, or that another person be
happy are paradigm cases of desires for the well-being of others,
while desires to experience pleasure, get rich, and become famous are
typical examples of self-interested desires. The self-interested
desires to experience pleasure and to avoid pain have played an
especially prominent role in the debate, since one version of egoism,
often called *hedonism*, maintains that these are our
*only* ultimate desires. Stich et al. (2010) maintain that some
desires, like the desire that I *myself* be the one to
alleviate my friend's suffering, are hard to classify, and
conclude that both egoism and altruism are best viewed as somewhat
vague.[8]
Whether or not this is correct, it is clear that there are
*many* desires that are *neither* self-interested nor
desires for the well-being of others. One of the earliest examples was
provided by Bishop Joseph Butler (1726 [1887]) who noted that revenge
often engenders malevolent desires, like the desire that another
person be harmed, which are obviously not desires for the well-being
of the that person, and are not self-interested
either.[9]
Other examples include the desire that great works of art be
preserved and the desire that space exploration be pursued. More
interesting for moral theory are the desire to do one's moral
duty, and the desire to obey God's commandments. If people have
*ultimate* desires like these, then egoism is false. But, of
course, the existence of ultimate desires like these would not show
that altruism is true. The take-away from such cases is that on the
standard account, egoism and altruism might *both* be
mistaken.
Though interpretations of "altruism" in the standard
account family predominate in the philosophical literature, some
philosophers use the term in a very different way. A paper by Thomas
Schramme (2017) provides a clear example.
>
>
> [A]ltruism need not be reduced to its opposition to egoism. In this
> chapter, altruism is discussed as a psychological basis for moral
> conduct more generally, not just in terms of motivations to benefit
> others. Here *altruism* stands for the capacity to take the
> moral point of view and be disposed to act accordingly.... Seen
> in this way, altruism is a short word for the psychological phenomenon
> of the internalized pull of morality... (2017: 203-204).
>
>
>
>
> Altruism is then basically identical with taking the moral point of
> view, i.e., an individual appreciation of the normative force of
> morality. (2017: 209).
> [10]
>
>
>
Schramme is, of course, aware that many authors reject "such a
close connection of general moral motivation and altruistic
motivation" but he maintains that this account of altruism
"can certainly be found in the philosophical debate"
(2017: 209). Much the same claim is made by Badhwar (1993: 90):
In the moral philosophy of the last two centuries, altruism of one
kind or another has typically been regarded as identical with moral
concern.
Schramme is surely right that
>
>
> [t]he fact that we can understand altruism both as referring to moral
> behavior quite generally and as restricted to a more specific set of
> helping behaviors may lead to confusion. (2017: 204)
>
>
>
Though some philosophers may believe there is a substantive dispute
about which account of altruism is correct, others think that
the issue is purely terminological. As noted earlier, the primary
concern in this entry is with what this entry dubs the "standard
account" of altruism. But in the next two sections a number of
accounts are considered that differ both from the standard account and
from the account discussed by Schramme and Badhwar.
## 3. Altruism and Evolution
Readers familiar with some of the popular literature on the evolution
of morality that has appeared in the last few decades might suspect
that recent work in evolutionary biology has resolved the debate
between egoists and altruists. For some readers--and some
writers--seem to interpret evolutionary theory as showing that
altruism is biologically impossible. If altruistic organisms were
somehow to emerge, this literature sometimes suggests, they would lose
the competition for survival and reproduction to their selfish
conspecifics, and they would quickly become extinct. On this view, any
appearance of altruism is simply an illusion. In the memorable words
of biologist Michael Ghiselin (1974: 247) "Scratch an
'altruist' and watch a 'hypocrite'
bleed".
But as Sober and Wilson (1998) have argued with great clarity, there
is no *simple* connection between evolutionary theory and the
philosophical debate between egoism and altruism. This is because the
concept of altruism that is important in evolutionary theory is quite
different from the standard concept of altruism invoked in the
philosophical debate. For biologists, an organism behaves
altruistically if and only if the behavior in question reduces its own
fitness while increasing the fitness of one or more other organisms.
Roughly speaking, an organism's fitness is a measure of how many
descendants it will
have.[11]
As Sober and Wilson note, on this evolutionary account of altruism,
an organism can be altruistic even if it does not have a mind capable
of having beliefs and desires. Thus there can be no easy inference
from biological altruism to psychological altruism. Nor does the
inference go in the opposite direction. To make the point, Sober and
Wilson (Ch. 10) note that natural selection might well equip humans or
other psychologically sophisticated organisms with ultimate desires to
foster the welfare of their offspring under certain circumstances.
Organisms with these ultimate desires would be *psychological*
altruists, though the behavior that the desires gave rise to would
typically *not* be *evolutionarily* altruistic, since by
helping their offspring organisms typically are increasing their own
fitness. So, contrary to the presumption that evolutionary biology has
resolved the debate between egoists and altruists in favor of egoism,
it appears that evolutionary theory little to offer that will support
that
conclusion.[12]
## 4. Altruism in the Social Sciences
In recent decades there has been an enormous amount of discussion of
altruism in psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology and
primatology. Much of the work in psychology, including all of the work
recounted in
section 5,
has adopted the "standard account" of altruism. But some
psychologists, and many researchers in other disciplines, have
something very different in mind. In a useful review of recent
discussions of altruism, Clavien and Chapuisat lament the fact
that
>
>
> [t]he notion of altruism has become so plastic that it is often hard
> to understand what is really meant by the authors using the term, and
> even harder to evaluate the degree to which results from one research
> field--e.g., experimental economics--may facilitate the
> resolution of debates in another research field--e.g.,
> evolutionary biology or philosophy. (2013: 134)
>
>
>
One of the notions that Clavien and Chapuisat find playing a role in
evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary game theory and experimental
economics is what they call "preference altruism".
"An action is altruistic", in this sense, "if it
results from preferences for improving others' interests and
welfare at some cost to oneself" (2013: 131). Though the
agent's psychology is relevant, on this account of altruism,
there is no mention of the agent's *ultimate* desires.
Thus an action can be preference altruistic even if the agent's
preference for improving someone else's welfare is an
instrumental preference engendered by the belief that improving the
recipient's welfare will contribute to the agent's own
pleasure or treasure.
A second, quite different, concept of altruism invoked in these
disciplines is what Clavien and Chapuisat call "behavioral
altruism". On this interpretation of altruism, an agent's
psychology plays no role in determining whether her action is
altruistic.
>
>
> A behavior is altruistic if it brings any kind of benefit to other
> individuals at some cost for the agent, and if there is no foreseeable
> way for the agent to reap compensatory benefits from her behavior.
> (2013: 131)
>
>
>
Ramsey (2016) makes a plausible case that some eminent primatologists
and psychologists (including de Waal (2008) and Warneken and Tomasello
(2008)) invoke an even less demanding account of altruism, one that
requires that the recipient benefit but drops the requirement that
altruistic behavior must involve some cost to the agent. Ramsey labels
this notion "helping altruism".
Combining accounts from philosophy, biology and the social sciences,
Piccinini and Schulz (2019) offer a multidimensional taxonomy for
different accounts of altruism, and argue that the distinctions they
draw are essential for assessing the moral status of different kinds
of altruism.
In reviewing the many different ways in which the term
"altruism" has been used in the empirical and
philosophical literature, it is hard to resist allusions to the
biblical Tower of Babel. But for the remainder of this entry, these
interpretations of "altruism" will be left behind. From
here on, the focus will be on altruism as it is understood in the
standard account.
## 5. The Egoism vs. Altruism Debate in Psychology
The psychological literature relevant to the egoism *vs.*
altruism debate is
vast;[13]
in the interests of a tolerable brevity, the entry will focus on the
work of Daniel Batson and his associates, who have done some of the
most influential and philosophically sophisticated work in this
area.
Batson, along with many other researchers, begins by borrowing an idea
that has deep roots in philosophical discussions of altruism. Though
the details and the terminology differ significantly from author to
author, the core idea is that altruism is often the product of an
*emotional response* to the distress of another person. Aquinas
(1270 [1917]: II-II, 30, 3), for example, maintains that
>
>
> mercy is the heartfelt sympathy for another's distress,
> impelling us to succour him if we can.
>
>
>
And Adam Smith (1759 [1853]: I, I, 1. 1) tells us that
>
>
> pity or compassion [is] the emotion we feel for the misery of others,
> when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively
> manner
>
>
>
and these emotions
>
>
> interest [man] in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness
> necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the
> pleasure of seeing it.
>
>
>
Batson (1991: 58) labels this response "empathy" which he
characterizes as "an other-oriented emotional reaction to seeing
someone suffer", and calls the traditional idea that empathy
leads to altruism the *empathy-altruism hypothesis.* On
Batson's account (1991: 86), empathy
>
>
> includes feeling sympathetic, compassionate, warm, softhearted,
> tender, and the like, and according to the empathy-altruism
> hypothesis, it evokes altruistic motivation
>
>
>
though that motivation does not always lead to behavior. Batson (1991:
117) contrasts empathy with a cluster of affective responses he calls
"personal distress" which is "made up of more
self-oriented feelings such as upset, alarm, anxiety, and
distress".[14]
If the philosophical tradition that suggests the empathy-altruism
hypothesis is on the right track, and Batson believes it is, one would
predict that when people feel empathy they will desire to help those
who evoke the emotion, and thus be more inclined to engage in helping
behavior than people who do not feel empathy. This does not mean that
people will *always* engage in helping behavior when they feel
empathy, since people may often have conflicting desires, and not all
conflicts are resolved in favor of empathy's urgings. Nor does
it mean that when people feel little or no empathy they will not
engage in helping behavior, since the desire to help can also be
produced by a variety of processes in which empathy plays no role. But
we should expect that typically people feeling empathy will be more
likely to help than people who aren't feeling empathy, and the
stronger their feelings of empathy the more likely it is that they
will engage in helping behavior.
In order to put this claim to empirical test, it is important to have
ways of inducing empathy in the laboratory, and there is a substantial
body of literature suggesting how this can be done. For example,
Stotland (1969) showed that subjects who were instructed to
*imagine* how a specified person (often called "the
target") *felt* when undergoing what subjects believed to
be a painful medical procedure reported stronger feelings of empathy
and showed greater physiological arousal than subjects who were
instructed to watch the target person's
movements.[15]
Relatedly, Krebs (1975) demonstrated that subjects
who observe someone *similar to themselves*
undergo painful experiences show more physiological
arousal, report identifying with the target more strongly, and report
feeling worse while waiting for the painful stimulus to begin than do
subjects who observe the same painful experiences administered to
someone who is not similar to themselves. Krebs also showed that
subjects are more willing to help at some personal cost when the
sufferer is similar to themselves. Batson (1991: 82-87) interprets
these findings as indicating that people are more inclined to feel
empathy for those they believe to be similar to themselves, and thus
that empathy can often be induced by providing a person with evidence
that she and a target person are similar.
To make the case that empathy leads to helping behavior, Batson relies
in part on work by others, including the just-cited Krebs (1975) study
and a study by Dovidio et al. (1990). In that latter study,
Stotland's technique for manipulating empathy by instructing
subjects to take the perspective of the person in distress was used to
induce empathy for a young woman. Subjects focused on one of two quite
different problems that the young woman faced. When given an
opportunity to help the young woman, subjects in whom empathy had been
evoked were more likely to help than subjects in a low empathy
condition, and the increase in helping was specific to the problem
that had evoked the empathy.
Many of Batson's own experiments, some of which are
described below, also support the contention that both spontaneously
evoked empathy and empathy engendering experimental manipulations
increase the likelihood of helping behavior. Another important source
of support for the link between empathy and helping behavior is a
meta-analysis of a large body of experimental literature by Eisenberg
and Miller (1987) which found positive correlations between empathy
and prosocial behavior in studies using a variety of techniques to
assess empathy. On the basis of these and other findings, Batson
(1991: 95) argues that
>
>
> there is indeed an empathy-helping relationship; feeling empathy for a
> person in need increases the likelihood of helping to relieve that
> need.
>
>
>
It might be thought that establishing a causal link between empathy
and helping behavior would be bad news for egoism. But, as Batson
makes clear, the fact that empathy leads to helping behavior does not
resolve the dispute between egoism and altruism, since it does not
address the nature of the *motivation* for the helping behavior
that empathy evokes. One possibility is that empathy does indeed cause
a genuinely altruistic desire to help--an ultimate desire for the
well-being of the sufferer. But there are also a variety of egoistic
routes by which empathy might lead to helping behavior. Perhaps the
most obvious of these is that empathy might simply be (or cause) an
unpleasant experience, and that people are motivated to help because
they believe this is the best way to *stop* the unpleasant
experience that is caused by someone else's distress.
Quite a different family of egoistic possibilities focus on the
rewards to be expected for helping and/or the punishments to be
expected for withholding assistance. If people believe that others
will reward or sanction them for helping or failing to help in certain
circumstances, and that the feeling of empathy marks those cases in
which social sanctions or rewards are most likely, then we would
expect people to be more helpful when they feel empathy, even if their
ultimate motivation is purely egoistic. A variation on this theme
focuses on rewards or punishments that are self-administered. If
people believe that helping may make them feel good, or that failing
to help may make them feel bad, and that these feelings will be most
likely to occur in cases where they feel empathy, then once again we
would expect people who empathize to be more helpful, though their
motives may be not at all altruistic.
During the last four decades, Batson and his collaborators have
systematically explored these egoistic hypotheses and many others.
Their strategy is to design experiments in which the altruistic
explanation of the link between empathy and helping can be compared to
one or another specific egoistic explanation. Reviewing all of these
experiments would require a far longer
entry.[16]
Instead the focus will be on two clusters of experiments that
illustrate the potential philosophical rewards of designing and
interpreting experiments in this area, as well as some difficulties
with the project.
### 5.1 The Social Punishment Hypothesis
One of the more popular egoist alternatives to the empathy-altruism
hypothesis is the idea that people engage in helping behavior because
they fear that other people will punish them if they do not. If I
don't help, the actor is supposed to worry, people will be angry
or they will think badly of me, and this may have negative effects on
how they treat me in the future. As it stands, this egoist hypothesis
can't explain the fact that empathy increases the likelihood of
helping, but a more sophisticated version is easy to construct by
adding the assumption that people think social sanctions for not
helping are more likely when the target engenders empathy.
To test this hypothesis--which Batson calls the *socially
administered empathy-specific punishment hypothesis*--against
the empathy-altruism hypothesis, Batson and his associates (Fultz et
al. 1986) designed an experiment in which they manipulated both the
level of empathy that subjects felt for the target and the likelihood
that anyone would know whether or not the subject had opted to help a
person in need. Others can form a negative evaluation of your decision
not to help only if they *know* the choice you are facing and
the decision you have made; if your decision is secret, you need have
no fear of social sanctions. Thus the socially administered
empathy-specific punishment hypothesis predicts that subjects who
exhibit high empathy on a given occasion will be more likely to help
when they believe others will know if they fail to do so. On the
empathy-altruism hypothesis, by contrast, high empathy subjects are
motivated by an ultimate desire to help, and thus their helping levels
should be high whether or not others would know if they decided not to
help. In the low empathy condition, both hypotheses predict that
levels of helping will be low. These predictions are summarized in
Tables 1 and 2.
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|
| | |
| --- | --- |
| *Potential for Negative
Social Evaluation* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *High* | Low | High |
| *Low* | Low | Low |
| |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
| |
Table 1. Predictions About the Amount of
Helping (Low or High) on the Socially Administered Empathy-Specific
Punishment Hypothesis.
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|
| | |
| --- | --- |
| *Potential for Negative
Social Evaluation* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *High* | Low | High |
| *Low* | Low | High |
| |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
| |
Table 2. Predictions About the Amount of
Helping (Low or High) on the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis.
Subjects in the experiment were told that they were participating in
an impression formation study, and that they had been randomly
assigned to the role of "listener" in which they would
read confidential notes from another student participant, the
"communicator". They were given two notes from Janet
Arnold, an out-of-state freshman who reveals that she is very lonely
and hoping to find a friend. After completing a form on which subjects
indicated their impressions of Janet and their emotional responses to
her note, they were presented with an unexpected opportunity to
befriend Janet by volunteering to take part in a study of long-term
relationships involving an initial meeting with Janet and periodic
phone interviews about the development of their friendship.
Participants who were willing to help were asked how much time they
were willing to spend with Janet during the next month.
To manipulate empathy, Batson and his associates used the Stotland
technique. Subjects assigned to the low-empathy condition were
instructed to
>
>
> Read the information in the communicator's notes carefully,
> trying to be as objective as possible. Try to focus on the techniques
> used to get the communicator's message across.
>
>
>
Subjects assigned to the high-empathy condition were instructed to
>
>
> Read the information in the communicator's notes carefully,
> trying to take the perspective of the individual writing the notes.
> Try to imagine how this individual feels about what he or she writes.
> (1991: 132)
>
>
>
Four steps were taken to manipulate the perceived potential for
negative social evaluation. In the *low-potential* condition
(1991: 132):
1. Subjects were told that they would be the only person ever to read
the communicator's notes, and the notes were delivered in a
sealed envelope.
2. Subjects were assured that the questionnaires reporting their
reactions to Janet's note would be anonymous.
3. Subjects' responses to the invitation to participate in the
long-term relationship study were returned to the professor in a
sealed envelope, so no one would know if they did not want to help
Janet. (Since they believed the professor had not read Janet's
note, they could be expected to surmise that he would not know that
Janet needed a friend.)
4. In the letter inviting them to participate in the relationship
study, subjects were told that Janet would be contacted "only if
you want a meeting; if you do not, then we will not contact the
communicator and he or she will not know that you were ever asked
about actually meeting".
In the *high-potential* condition (1991: 133):
1. Subjects were told that the experimenter would read the
communicator's notes. Also, the experimenter would collect the
questionnaire when the subject completed it and would compare the
content of the notes with the impressions the subject formed.
2. No envelope was provided for their response to the invitation to
participate in the long-term relationship study, so subjects could
infer that the experimenter would know about Janet's need for a
friend, about their emotional reaction to Janet, and would also know
whether or not they had agreed to help Janet.
3. Subjects were told that Janet would know if they decided not to
help.
As Batson notes, procedures in the high-potential condition
>
>
> were designed to highlight the possibility of negative social
> evaluation if the participant decided not to volunteer to spend time
> with Janet.
>
>
>
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|
| | |
| --- | --- |
| *Potential for Negative
Social Evaluation* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *High* | 0.67 | 1.71 |
| *Low* | 1.29 | 2.44 |
| |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
| |
Table 3. Amount of Help Offered Janet,
given as the mean amount of time participants offered to spend with
Janet (Fultz et al. 1986, Study 2)
The results, given in Table 3, indicate that the socially administered
empathy-specific punishment hypothesis did not fare well. On the basis
of this experiment and a similar experiment in which empathy for Janet
was not manipulated but was measured by self-report, Batson concludes
that the socially administered empathy-specific punishment hypothesis
is not consistent with the experimental facts.
>
>
> Contrary to what the social-evaluation version of the empathy-specific
> punishment hypothesis predicted, eliminating anticipated negative
> social evaluation in these two studies did not eliminate the
> empathy-helping relationship. Rather than high empathy leading to more
> help only under high social evaluation, it led to more helping under
> both low and high social evaluation. This pattern of results is not
> consistent with what would be expected if empathically aroused
> individuals are egoistically motivated to avoid looking bad in the
> eyes of others; it is quite consistent with what would be expected if
> empathy evokes altruistic motivation to reduce the victim's need
> (Batson 1991: 134).
>
>
>
Though two experiments hardly make a conclusive case, these studies
make the socially administered empathy-specific punishment hypothesis
look significantly less plausible than the empathy-altruism
hypothesis. So one popular egoist hypothesis has been dealt a serious
blow: high empathy subjects were more likely to help *whether or
not* they could expect their behavior to be socially
scrutinized. At least in some circumstances, empathy appears to
facilitate helping independently of the threat of social sanction.
### 5.2 The Aversive-Arousal Reduction Hypothesis
Another popular egoistic strategy for explaining the link between
empathy and helping behavior is the *aversive-arousal reduction
hypothesis*, which maintains that witnessing someone in need, and
the empathy it evokes, is an unpleasant or aversive experience, and
that helping is motivated by the desire to diminish that aversive
experience.[17]
If this is right, Batson maintains, people in a high empathy
condition will sometimes have two quite different ways of reducing the
aversive experience--they can help the person in need or they can
simply *leave*. Which strategy a person adopts will depend, in
part, on how difficult or costly it is to depart the scene. If escape
is easy, people will be more likely to take that option, while if
leaving is more difficult people will be more likely to help, since
that is a less costly way of ending the aversive experience. If, on
the other hand, the empathy-altruism hypothesis is correct and empathy
leads to genuinely altruistic motivation, one would expect people in a
high empathy condition to help whether escape is easy or hard, since
only helping will satisfy an altruistic desire.
Altruism and egoism both allow that even in the absence of empathy, an
emotionally disturbing need situation will produce feelings of
personal distress, thus they would *both* predict that people
in a low empathy condition will be more inclined to help when escape
is difficult, and less inclined when escape is easy. Batson summarizes
these predictions in Tables 4 and 5 (Batson 1991: 111).
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|
| | |
| --- | --- |
| *Escape* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *Easy* | Low | Low |
| *Difficult* | High | High/Very High |
| |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
| |
Table 4. Predictions from the
Aversive-Arousal Reduction Hypothesis for the Rate of Helping in an
Escape X Empathy Design
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|
| | |
| --- | --- |
| *Escape* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *Easy* | Low | High |
| *Difficult* | High | High |
| |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
| |
Table 5. Predictions from the
Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis for the Rate of Helping in an Escape X
Empathy Design
To test these predictions, Batson and his associates conducted a total
of six experiments. In one of these (experiment 1 in Batson, Duncan,
et al. 1981), student subjects were required to watch, via what they
believed to be closed circuit TV transmission--actually a
scripted video recording--as another student subject,
Elaine--actually a confederate--attempted to perform a task
while receiving electric shocks at random intervals. Observer subjects
were told that their task would be to form and report an impression of
how Elaine performs under aversive conditions. On the tape, Elaine is
clearly finding the shocks very uncomfortable, and after her second
trial at doing the task, she explains to Martha, the assistant
administering the shocks, that she is unusually sensitive to mild
electric shocks because of a childhood trauma. Martha then suggests
that perhaps the observer subject might be willing to help Elaine by
taking her place, and the experimenter asks whether the subject is
willing to do that. To manipulate ease of escape, some subjects were
told that if they decide not to take Elaine's place, they will
be required to watch eight additional trials, while other subjects
were told that if they decide not to take Elaine's place they
are free to go. To manipulate the level of empathy that subjects feel
for Elaine, subjects were given a copy of a personal values and
interests questionnaire, allegedly filled out by Elaine, in order to
help them form an impression of her performance. In the high empathy
condition, Elaine's values and interests were very similar to
the subject's (which had been determined in a screening session
several weeks before), while in the low empathy condition, they were
very different.
The results, given in Table 6, clearly exhibit the pattern predicted
by the empathy-altruism hypothesis, not the pattern predicted by the
aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis.
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|
| | |
| --- | --- |
| *Escape* | *Empathy* |
| *Low* | *High* |
| *Easy* | 0.18 | 0.91 |
| *Difficult* | 0.64 | 0.82 |
| |
| - | **Level of Empathy** |
| - | **Level of Helping** |
| |
Table 6. Proportion of Subjects Agreeing
to Take Shocks for Elaine (Batson, Duncan, et al. 1981,
Experiment 1)
In additional experiments, Batson and his associates used four
different techniques to create the low- and high-empathy conditions,
two techniques for manipulating ease of escape, and two different need
situations (Batson, Duncan, et al. 1981; Toi and Batson 1982; Batson,
O'Quin et al. 1983). The results in all of these experiments
exhibited the same pattern. Intriguingly, in another experiment,
Batson and colleagues attempted to break the pattern by telling the
subjects that the shock level they would have to endure was the
highest of four options, "clearly painful but not
harmful". They reasoned that, under these circumstances, even if
high empathy subjects had an ultimate desire to help, this desire
might well be overridden by the desire to avoid a series of very
painful shocks. As expected, the pattern of results in this experiment
fit the pattern in
Table 4.
These are impressive findings. Over and over again, in well designed
and carefully conducted experiments, Batson and his associates have
produced results which are clearly compatible with the predictions of
the empathy-altruism hypothesis, as set out in
Table 5,
and clearly incompatible with the predictions of the aversive-arousal
reduction hypothesis, as set out in
Table 4.
Even the "clearly painful shock" experiment, which
produced results in the pattern of Table 4, are comfortably compatible
with the empathy-altruism hypothesis; as noted earlier, the
empathy-altruism hypothesis allows that high empathy subjects may have
desires that are stronger than their ultimate desire to help the
target, and the desire to avoid a painful electric shock is a very
plausible candidate.
There is, however, a problem to be overcome before one concludes that
the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis cannot explain the findings
that Batson and his associates have reported. In arguing that
Table 4
reflects the predictions made by the aversive-arousal reduction
hypothesis, Batson must assume that escape will alleviate the aversive
affect in both low & high empathy situations, and that subjects
*believe* this (although the belief may not be readily
available to introspection). One might call this the *out of
sight, out of mind* assumption. Elaborating on an idea suggested
by Hoffman (1991) and Hornstein (1991), an advocate of egoism might
propose that although subjects do believe this when they have little
empathy for the target, *they do not believe it when they have high
empathy for the target*. Perhaps high empathy subjects believe
that if they escape they will continue to be troubled by the thought
or memory of the distressed target and thus that physical escape will
not lead to psychological escape. Indeed, in cases where empathy is
strong and is evoked by attachment, this is just what common sense
would lead us to expect. Do you really believe that if your mother was
in grave distress and you left without helping her you would not
continue to be troubled by the knowledge that she was still in
distress? We're guessing that you don't. But if the
high-empathy subjects in Batson's experiments believe that they
will continue to be plagued by distressing thoughts about the target
even after they depart, then the egoistic aversive-arousal reduction
hypothesis predicts that these subjects will be inclined to help in
both the easy physical escape and the difficult physical escape
conditions, since helping is the only strategy they believe will be
effective for reducing the aversive arousal. So neither the results
reported in
Table 6
nor the results of any of Batson's other experiments would give
us a reason to prefer the empathy-altruism hypothesis over the
aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis, because both hypotheses make
the same prediction.
Is it the case that high empathy subjects in experiments like
Batson's believe that unless they help they will continue to
think about the target and thus continue to feel distress, and that
this belief leads to helping because it generates an egoistic
instrumental desire to help? This is, of course, an empirical
question, and a cleverly designed experiment by Stocks and his
associates (Stocks et al. 2009) suggests that, in situations like
those used in Batson's experiments, a belief that they will
continue to think about the target does *not* play a
significant role in causing the helping behavior in high empathy
subjects.
Batson's work on the aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis,
buttressed by the Stocks et al. finding, is a major advance in the
egoism vs. altruism debate. The aversive-arousal reduction hypothesis
has been one of the most popular egoistic strategies for explaining
helping behavior. But the experimental findings strongly suggest that
in situations like those that Batson and his associates have studied,
the empathy-altruism hypothesis offers a much better explanation of
the subjects' behavior than the aversive-arousal reduction
hypothesis.
As noted earlier, Batson and his colleagues have also designed
experiments pitting the empathy-altruism hypothesis against a
substantial list of other egoistic explanations for the link between
empathy and helping behavior. In each case, the evidence appears to
challenge the egoistic alternative, though as is almost always the
case in empirical work of this sort, some researchers remain
unconvinced.[18]
There is however, an influential critique of Batson's work that
challenges *all* of his experimental work on the
empathy-altruism hypothesis. It argues that empathy and its precursors
alter people's self-concept in a way that undermines the claim
that their helping behavior is genuinely altruistic.
### 5.3 The Challenge Posed by "Self-Other Merging"
During the last three decades, psychologists have devoted a great deal
of effort to exploring how people think of the self. One major theme
in this literature is that people's conception of themselves
varies across cultures, and that in many non-western cultures
one's social roles and one's relation to other people play
a much more central role in people's self-concepts than they do
in the individualistic West (Markus & Kitayama 1991; Baumeister
1998). One very simple way of studying these differences is to ask
people to respond to the question "Who am I?" fifteen
times. Non-westerners will typically mention social groups, group
roles and relationships: "I am Maasai", "I am a
person who brings fruit to the temple", "I am my
father's youngest son". Westerners, by contrast, will
typically mention personal attributes, aspirations and achievements:
"I am intelligent", "I am a pre-med student",
"I am the fastest swimmer in my school" (Ma &
Schoeneman 1997). Another theme is that people's conception of
themselves is situationally malleable--it changes depending on
who we are with, where we are and what we are doing (Kihlstrom &
Cantor 1984; Markus & Wurf 1987).
While this sort of situational malleability may not be surprising, a
number of psychologists have suggested a much more radical situational
malleability. Under certain circumstances, notably when we have a
close personal relationship with another person, when we are trying to
take the perspective of another person, or when we feel empathy for
another person, the conceptual boundary between the self and the other
person disappears; the self and the other merge. According to Arthur
Aron and colleagues,
>
>
> Much of our cognition about the other in a close relationship is
> cognition in which the other is treated as self or confused with
> self--the underlying reason being a self-other merging. (Aron et
> al. 1980: 242)
>
>
>
If this is true, then it poses a fundamental challenge to the claim
that helping behavior directed at someone for whom we feel empathy is
really altruistic. For, as Melvin Lerner memorably observed:
>
>
> It seems that we respond sympathetically, with compassion and a sense
> of concern, when we feel a sense of identity with the victim. In
> effect, we are reacting to the thought of ourselves in that situation.
> And, of course, we are filled with the "milk of human
> kindness" for our own sweet, innocent selves. (Lerner 1980:
> 77)
>
>
>
A bit less colorfully, Batson notes that for "the contrast
between altruism and egoism to be meaningful", an individual
providing help "must perceive self and other to be distinct
individuals" (2011: 145-146). And
>
>
> if the distinction between self and other vanishes then so does the
> distinction between altruism and egoism, at least as these terms are
> used in the empathy-altruism hypothesis. (2011: 148)
>
>
>
Psychologists who have debated the rather astonishing claim that
people who provide help to others often lose track of the distinction
between themselves and the person being helped have proposed several
different ways of determining whether this sort of "self-other
merging" has occurred. Before considering these, however, we
should remind ourselves of an important philosophical distinction that
will be crucial in assessing tests for self-other
merging.[19]
The distinction is often made using the labels "qualitative
identity" and "numerical identity". Qualitative
identity is the relation that often obtains between two TV sets
manufactured by the same company. They share most of their important
properties. Numerical identity is a relationship that obtains between
a person at one time in his life and that same person at another time
in his life. If the time gap is substantial, the person at the earlier
time may differ in many ways from the person at the later time. When
you were a baby, you weighed less than 10 kg, spoke no language, and
couldn't walk. But you now are numerically the same person as
the baby. Numerical identity can be of enormous legal and moral
importance, a point nicely illustrated by the trial of John Demjanuk,
the Ukrainian-born auto worker who was accused of being the sadistic
Nazi concentration camp guard whose victims called him "Ivan the
Terrible". The man on trial, in 1988, differed in many ways from
the concentration camp guard: he was much older, heavier, bald, and
spoke English. He was obviously not even close to being qualitatively
identical with perpetrator of Ivan's crimes. What the court had
to determine was not whether Ivan and Demjanuk were qualitatively
identical but whether they were numerically
identical.[20]
What makes this distinction important for present purposes is that
the sort of identity that is relevant to the debate between egoists
and altruists is numerical identity, not qualitative identity. If
Sophia, at age 30, sets aside a large sum of money that will be paid
to Sophia at age 70, young Sophia is not being altruistic. If her
ultimate goal is to ensure that old Sophia has the means to live a
comfortable life, then young Sophia's action is
straightforwardly egoistic. The take-home message here is that if a
test used to determine whether person *A* takes herself to be
identical to person *B* is to be relevant to the egoism versus
altruism debate, the test must provide evidence that person *A*
takes herself to be *numerically* identical to person *B*,
not that she takes herself to be *qualitatively* identical to
person *B*.
Now let's consider how psychologists have attempted to assess
whether experimental participants feel a sense of identity with
someone they might be called on to help. In one of the most
influential studies claiming to show that helping is often the product
of a feeling of oneness, Cialdini et al. (1997) used a pair of
tests.
>
>
> [P]articipants rated the extent of oneness they felt with the [person
> they might help] by responding to two items that were combined in all
> analyses to form a oneness index. The first item incorporated the
> Inclusion of Other in Self (IOS) Scale used by Aron et al. (1992) to measure self-other
> boundary overlap. It consisted of a set of seven pairs of increasingly
> overlapping circles. Participants selected the pair of circles that
> they believed best characterized their relationship with the [person
> they might help]. The second item asked participants to indicate on a
> 7-point scale the extent to which they would use the term *we*
> to describe their relationship with the [person they might help].
> (1997: 484)
>
>
>
In a critique of the Cialdini et al. paper, Batson, Sager, et al.
(1997) used three measures of self-other merging. One was the IOS
Scale used by Cialdini et al. The second was a "perceived
similarity" task in which "[p]articipants were asked,
'How similar to you do you think the person ...is?'
(1 = somewhat, 9 = extremely)" (1997: 500). In the third,
participants rated both themselves and the target on a series of
personal attributes. The "measure of merging was the mean
absolute difference between ratings of self and other" (1997:
498).
It does not seem that any of these four tests of self-other merging
provide a reason to believe that the participant views herself as
numerically identical with another person. Indeed, both the perceived
similarity test and the personal attribute rating test seem to be
assessing qualitative identity rather than numerical identity. And it
is far from clear what, if anything, the other two tests are
measuring. So it seems that there is really no evidence at all that
people in close relationships lose track of the distinction between
themselves and another person. Indeed, as May notes, if someone really
did believe that he exists in two obviously distinct bodies, the most
natural conclusion to draw would be that he is delusional (May 2011b:
32).
While the literature on self-other merging provides little reason to
believe that normal people take themselves to be numerically identical
with another person, it does provide a different kind of challenge to
the empathy-altruism hypothesis defended by Batson and his colleagues.
That hypothesis, it will be recalled, is that empathy often causes an
ultimate desire to help another person. But in the Cialdini et al.
(1977) paper cited earlier, they report three studies indicating that
empathy, though it does occur, is not playing any causal role in the
process that leads to helping. Rather, they maintain, it is
"merging"--which is used here as a label for whatever
the IOS scale and the use-of-*we* test measure--that is
actually leading participants to help. Though the Cialdini et al.
paper is quite sophisticated, Batson et al. (1997) pointed out a number of
methodological problems. When they conducted a pair of experiments
that avoided these methodological problems, the role of empathy in
producing helping behavior was clearly evident. However, most
experiments exploring the link between empathy and helping behavior,
including this one, use a relatively small number of participants. And
the "replication crisis" that has emerged in recent years
has led many to worry about the robustness of the effects reported in
experiments like these (Chambers 2017). McAuliffe et al. (2018) have
addressed these concerns. Their high powered, pre-registered study,
run on the internet, analyzed data from 680 participants. Their
findings were "unambiguously supportive" (2018: 504) of
the link between empathy and helping behavior.
### 5.4 Have Batson's Studies Made a Convincing Case for the Existence of Altruism in Humans?
Batson's answer to this question is clear.
>
>
> Having reviewed the evidence from research designed to test the
> empathy-altruism hypothesis against the six egoistic alternatives
> ..., it is time to come to a conclusion--albeit
> tentative--about the status of this hypothesis. The idea that
> empathy produces altruistic motivation may seem improbable given the
> dominance of Western thought by the doctrine of universal egoism. Yet,
> in the words of Sherlock Holmes, "When you have eliminated the
> impossible, whatever remains, *however improbable*, must be the
> truth". It seems impossible for any known egoistic explanation
> of the empathy-helping relationship--or any combination of
> them--to account for the research evidence we have reviewed. So
> what remains? The empathy-altruism hypothesis. Pending new evidence or
> a plausible new egoistic explanation of the existing evidence, we seem
> forced to accept this improbable hypothesis as true. (Batson 2011:
> 160)[21]
>
>
>
>
Batson's research program is compelling, and he certainly has
shown that the empathy-altruism hypothesis is "in the
hunt", but his findings are not conclusive. There are a number
of reasonable challenges to the methodology and the conclusions in some
of Batson's studies. Setting these out in detail is a
substantial project (see Stich, Doris, & Roedder 2010). But there
is also a plausible egoistic hypothesis that has not been
systematically explored.
In recent years, a number of authors have made an impressive case for
the hypothesis that belief in a "Big God"--a
supernatural being who is omniscient, morally concerned, and acts as a
policing agent in human affairs--played a crucial role in the
transition from face-to-face "band level" human groups
made up of at most a few hundred individuals to much larger tribal
groups, and ultimately to chiefdoms and nation states (Norenzayan et
al. 2016). These are provocative and controversial ideas. Much less
controversial is the claim that many people believe that even when no
other human can observe them, a supernatural being of some sort is
aware of what they are doing and thinking, and that this being may
punish thoughts and behavior it disapproves of and reward thoughts and
behavior it approves of, with the punishments and rewards delivered
either during the agent's lifetime or after she
dies.[22]
In the experiments, described in
section 5.1,
designed to test the empathy-altruism hypothesis against the social
punishment hypothesis, Batson and his colleagues went to great lengths
to insure that participants in the "low potential for negative
social evaluation" condition would think that no one knew of
their decisions, and thus that no one would think badly of them or
sanction them if they decided not to help. But, of course, none of the
steps taken to insure secrecy would be effective in keeping an
omniscient God from knowing what these participants had decided. So if
we assume that many people believe an omniscient God wants them to
help others in need, and that they believe Divine sanctions for not
helping are more likely when the target engenders
empathy,[23]
the experiments do nothing to rule out a variation of the social
punishment hypothesis which maintains that participants are motivated
by a desire to avoid punishments administered by God.
The egoistic alternative just sketched, which might be called
"the divine punishment hypothesis", also leads to
the pattern of predictions derived from the empathy-altruism
hypothesis sketched in
Table 5,
and the results reported in
Table 6.
The bottom line is that using the Sherlock Holmes standard that Batson
favors, there is still a lot of work to do. There is a family of
egoistic hypotheses invoking beliefs in supernatural
punishments--or supernatural rewards--that still needs to be
ruled out before we accept the "improbable hypothesis" as
true.[24]
## 6. Beyond Egoism vs. Altruism
In the colorful passage quoted at the beginning of
section 5.4,
Batson seems to suggest that in the debate between egoists and
altruists there are only two possible outcomes. If all human behavior
is ultimately motivated by self-interested desires, then the egoist
wins; if some human behavior is motivated by ultimate desires for the
well-being of other people, then the altruist wins. However, as
noted in
section 2,
the dialectical landscape is more complex, for there are many desires
that are neither self-interested nor desires for the well-being of
other people. If any of these are ultimate desires that lead to
behavior, then the egoist is mistaken. But, as Batson clearly
recognizes, this would not vindicate altruism; both egoism and
altruism might be mistaken.
Batson has used the term *principlism* for one family of
ultimate desires that would support neither egoism nor altruism.
>
>
> Principlism is motivation with the ultimate goal of upholding some
> moral principle--for example, a principle of fairness or justice,
> or the utilitarian principle of greatest good for the greatest number.
> (Batson 2011: 220)
>
>
>
Under some circumstances, one or another of these principles might
require helping behavior, though that helping behavior would not be
altruistic, since the ultimate desire motivating the behavior is to
uphold the principle. On Batson's view, we really don't
know much about principlism.
>
>
> To the best of my knowledge, there is no clear empirical evidence that
> upholding justice (or any other moral principle) functions as an
> ultimate
> goal.[25]
> Nor is there clear empirical evidence that rules this possibility
> out. (Batson 2011: 224)
>
>
>
But if that's right, then Batson's conclusion that the
empathy-altruism hypothesis is true and that people are sometimes
altruistic is premature. For even if it were conceded that all the
plausible *egoistic* alternatives to empathy-altruism have been
excluded, the job of testing empathy-altruism against principalist
alternatives has hardly begun. Moreover, the scope of that project may
be much larger than Batson imagines.
One way to see this is to ask which action guiding principles are
*moral*
principles.[26]
There is ongoing debate about this question in both philosophy and
psychology (Stich 2018). Though Batson does not address that debate,
the examples he offers ("fairness or justice or the utilitarian
principle") suggest that when he talks about moral principles he
has a rather limited set of principles in mind. But if principlism is
limited to a relatively small set of moral principles familiar from
the philosophical literature, then principlism hardly exhausts the
non-egoistic alternatives that defenders of psychological altruism
must rule out. In recent years, there has been a growing body of work
on the role of *norms* in human life, where norms are
understood as action guiding rules that can govern just about any
human activity. Researchers from a variety of disciplines have argued
that norms, and a robust innate psychology for acquiring, storing and
acting on norms, have played a fundamental role in shaping human
culture and making humans the most successful large animal on the
planet (Henrich 2015; Boyd 2018; Kelly & Davis 2018). Others have
proposed accounts of norm psychology on which people have ultimate
desires to comply with culturally acquired norms (Sripada & Stich
2006) and accounts of how a psychological system generating such
ultimate desires might be favored by natural selection (Sripada 2008).
The sorts of behavioral rules that count as norms in this literature
might well include the sorts of moral principles that Batson had in
mind when he characterized principlism. But these are only a small
subset of the norms that these researchers have in mind. What makes
all of this relevant to our current topic is that *any*
culturally acquired norm might generate an ultimate desire to comply,
and *most* of those ultimate desires are neither egoistic nor
altruistic. Thus to make a plausible case that an episode of helping
behavior is altruistic, it is not enough to rule out egoistic
explanations and explanations that appeal to principlism. The defender
of psychological altruism must also rule out explanations that trace
the helping behavior to an ultimate desire to comply with any of the
vast collection of norms that prevail in human cultures. And
that's a job that defenders of altruism have not even begun.
Another possibility is that some helping behavior might not be
motivated by ultimate desires at all. Gesiarz and Crockett (2015)
argue that, in addition to the goal-directed system, behavior,
including helping behavior, is sometimes produced by what they call
the *habitual* and *Pavlovian* systems. The habitual
system leads to actions that have the highest expected value based on
previous life experiences rather than possible consequences indicated
by features of the current situation. As a result, helping behavior
may be repeated in the future and in circumstances in which motivating
factors like the promise of rewards are absent if the behavior has
been rewarded in the past. Like the habitual system, the Pavlovian
system produces behavior with the highest expected value based on the
past. Unlike the habitual system, however, the Pavlovian system
produces behavior that has been successful in the evolutionary past,
rather than in an individual's past. This means that behavioral
dispositions that have led to reproductive success in a
individual's evolutionary past may have become innate or
"hard-wired" through natural selection. If it is indeed
the case that some helping behavior is produced by the habitual or
Pavlovian systems, then egoism is false. And if some helping behavior
is egoistically motivated and the rest is produced by the habitual and
Pavlovian systems, then altruism is also false.
## 7. The Bottom Line
Batson and his collaborators have accomplished a great deal. They have
formulated a sophisticated altruist hypothesis, the empathy-altruism
hypothesis, that can be tested against competing egoist hypotheses,
and they have designed experiments making a strong case that many of
those egoist hypotheses are false. But to show that altruism is true,
it is not enough to show that specific egoist hypotheses can't
explain specific episodes of helping behavior. Nor would it be enough
to show that all plausible versions of egoism are false. It must also
be shown that episodes of helping behavior that can't be
explained egoistically can't be explained by another process,
such as principalistic ultimate motivation or ultimate motivation by a
non-moral norm. In addition, the defender of altruism must show that
non-egoistic episodes of helping behavior are not the product of the
habitual or Pavlovian systems. None of Batson's experiments were
designed to rule out these non-egoistic options or others that might
be suggested. So there is still much work to be done.
On a more positive note, it seems that Batson and his associates have
shown quite conclusively that the methods of experimental psychology
can move the debate forward. Indeed, one might argue that Batson has
made more progress in this area during the last four decades than
philosophers using the traditional philosophical methodology of a
priori arguments buttressed by anecdote and intuition have made in the
previous two millennia. Their work powerfully demonstrates the utility
of empirical methods in moral psychology; philosophical moral
psychologists debating the altruism-egoism question have always made
empirical claim, and it is now evident that the human sciences possess
resources to help us empirically assess those empirical claims. |
alyngton | ## 1. Life and Works
Not a great deal is known of Robert Alyngton's life. Most of the
information about him comes from Emden 1957-59. From 1379 until
1386, he was fellow of Queens College (the same Oxonian college where
Wyclif started his theological studies in 1363 and Johannes Sharpe
taught in the 1390s); he became *Magister Artium* and, by 1393,
doctor of theology. He was chancellor of the University in 1393 and
1395. In 1382 he preached Wyclif's religious and political ideas
in Hampshire (McHardy 1987). He was rector of Long Whatton,
Leicestershire, where he died by September 1398.
According to Emden 1957-59 and Ashworth & Spade 1992,
Alyngton was of considerable repute as a logician. Among his extant
works, the following can be mentioned (the most complete list of his
writings is found in Bale 1557-59 [pp. 519-20]):
* A commentary on Aristotle's *Categories*
(*Litteralis sententia super Praedicamenta Aristotelis*
[henceforward *In Cat*.]), partially edited in Conti 1993 (pp.
242-306). (All references are to the pages of this edition or,
for the unedited portions, to the ms. London, Lambeth Palace
393.)
* A treatise on the supposition of terms (*Tractatus de
suppositionibus terminorum*).
* A commentary on the *Liber sex principiorum*.
* A treatise on the genera of being (*Tractatus
generum*).
## 2. Being and Categories
The point of departure of every realist interpretation of the
*Categories* is the notion of being (*ens*) in its
relationship to the ten categories, as Realists considered the
categorial table to be a division of beings. Like Burley, Alyngton
affirms that (i) the division into categories is first of all a
division of things existing outside the mind, and only secondarily of
the mental concepts and spoken or written terms which signify them,
and (ii) things belonging to one categorial field are really distinct
from those belonging to another--for instance, substances are
really distinct from quantities, qualities, and relations, quantities
are really distinct from substances, qualities, and relations, and so
on (*In Cat*., cap. *de numero et sufficientia
praedicamentorum*, Conti pp. 251, 252-53).
Unfortunately Alyngton does not define being; yet, what he says about
(1) the subject of the *Categories* (the real categorial being
which can be signified by simple expressions, namely terms (*In
Cat*., cap. *de numero et sufficientia praedicamentorum* ,
p. 252), and (2) analogy (*In Cat*., cap. *de
aequivocis*, ms. London, Lambeth Palace 393, fol. 70r-v)
seems to entail that, like Wyclif, he also thinks of being as a sort
of an extramental reality proper to everything (God and creatures;
substances and accidents; universal and individual items; things,
collections of things, and states of affairs) according to different
modes and degrees.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all the realist authors,
with the only notable exception of Duns Scotus, regarded categorial
items as composed of two main aspects: the inner nature or essence,
and their peculiar mode of being or of being predicated (*modi
essendi vel praedicandi*). They maintained that the categorial
table divides categorial items according to their modes of being (or
of being predicated) and not according to their inner natures (or
essences). In particular, Thomas Aquinas (*Sententia super
Metaphysicam*, liber V, lectio 9) based his method of finding the
ten Aristotelian categories on the differences of modes of being
predicated, and recognized three fundamental modes of being
predicated: essentially, proper to substances, when the predication
indicates what a given thing is; accidentally, proper to quantities,
qualities, and relatives, when the predication indicates that
something inheres in a subject; and externally, proper to the
remaining six categories, when the predication indicates that
something which does not inhere in the subject nevertheless affects
it. On the contrary Albert the Great (*Liber de
praedicamentis*, tr. I, cap. 7) and Simon of Faversham
(*Quaestiones super librum Praedicamentorum*, q. 12) based
their method of finding the categories on the differences of modes of
being. They admitted two fundamental modes of being: being by itself,
proper to substance; and being in something else, proper to the nine
genera of accidents. The latter was subdivided into being in something
else absolutely, proper to quantities and qualities, and being in
something else in virtue of a relation to a third thing (*esse ad
aliud*), proper to the remaining seven categories. Walter Burley,
whose last commentary on the *Categories* is, along with
Wyclif's *De ente praedicamentali*, the main source of
Alyngton's commentary on the *Categories*, recalled two
ways of deducing the ten Aristotelian categories, both based on the
various levels of similarity among their own modes of being. Alyngton
follows very closely Burley's first way of deriving the ten
categories. In his opinion, there are two fundamental modes of being
proper to things: being by itself, which characterizes substances, and
being or inhering in something else, which characterizes accidents.
The latter is subdivided into three less general modes: being in
something else in virtue of its matter; being in something else in
virtue of its form; and being in something else in virtue of the whole
composite. Something can inhere in something else in virtue of its
matter, form, and composite according to three different ways: from
inside (*ab intrinseco*), from outside (*ab
extrinseco*), and partially from inside and partially from outside
(*partim ab intrinseco et partim ab extrinseco*). If something
is in something else in virtue of its matter and from inside, then it
is a quantity; if from outside, it is a where; if partially from
inside and partially from outside, it is an affection. If something is
in something else in virtue of its form and from inside, then it is a
quality; if from outside, it is when (*quando vel
quandalitas*); if partially from inside and partially from
outside, it is an action. If something is in something else in virtue
of the whole composite and from inside, then it is a relation; if from
outside, it is a possession (*habitus*); if partially from
inside and partially from outside, it is a position (*In Cat*.,
cap. *de numero et sufficientia praedicamentorum*, pp.
252-53).
Alyngton's choice implies an anti-reductionist approach to the
matter, which is confirmed by the solution of the problem of what
properly falls into the categorial fields. According to the standard
realist conception, not only the accidental forms, such as whiteness,
but also the compounds they cause when inhering in substances, such as
a white-thing (*album*), fall into the categories. Burley
thought that whilst the accidental forms properly fall into the
categories, the aggregates made up from a substance and an accidental
form do not, since they are beings *per accidens*, wanting in
real unity. In his opinion, such an aggregate may be said to fall into
a certain category, the category into which its accidental form falls,
only by reduction, in virtue of the accidental form itself. On the
contrary, Wyclif maintained that the aggregates built up by a
substance and an accidental form fall *per accidens* into both
the category of substance and the category which the accidental form
at issue belongs to (cf. Wyclif, *De ente praedicamentali*,
cap. 1, pp. 3-4). Alyngton combines in an original way the two
slightly different opinions of Burley and Wyclif. He affirms that a
thing can be said to belong to a category in a threefold way: by
itself, by accident (*per accidens*), and by reduction (*per
reductionem*). Something is in a category by itself if and only if
the highest genus of that category is predicated by itself and and
directly (*in recto*) of it (*In Cat*., cap. *de
numero et sufficientia praedicamentorum*, p. 259). In other words,
if and only if the highest genus of that category is one of the
constitutive elements of the essence of the thing at issue. Accidental
forms belong *per se* to the nine categories of accidents
(*In Cat*., cap. *de relativis*, p. 300). Something is
in a category by accident if and only if it is an aggregate from a
substance and an accidental form. Such aggregates belong per accidens
both to the category of substance and to the category in which its
accidental form is by itself (*In Cat*., cap. *de numero et
sufficientia praedicamentorum*, p. 259; and cap. *de
relativis*, p. 300). Something can be in a category by reduction
in two different ways: in a broad sense (*large*) and in a
strict sense (*stricte*). Something is in a category by
reduction *large* if and only if it is an aggregate, and the
highest genus of a certain category is predicated only indirectly of
it. Something is in a category by reduction *stricte* if and
only if it is not an aggregate, and, (a) like differences, it is a
component of the reality of a thing which is in a category by itself,
but the highest genus of that category is not predicated of it; or (b)
it is the privation correlated to a certain property which, in turn,
is in a category by itself; or (c), like extra-categorial principle
such as God, the unity, and the point, it somehow instantiates the
mode of being proper to a certain categorial field, but the highest
genus of that category is not one of the constitutive elements of the
essence of that thing (*In Cat*., cap. *de numero et
sufficientia praedicamentorum*, pp. 259-60).
Fundamental to Alyngton's deduction of the categories and
solution of the problem of what falls into the categorial fields (and
how) is a close isomorphism between language (mental, written, and
spoken) and the world. Like Burley and Wyclif, he was firmly convinced
that our thought is modelled on reality itself, so that it reproduces
reality in all its elements, levels, and inner relations. Therefore,
one of the best ways of understanding the world lay for him in an
accurate investigation of our notions and conceptual schemes, as they
show the structure of the world. A logical consequence of this
conviction was his strong propensity towards reification: he
hypostatises the notion of being and considers equivocity, analogy,
and univocity not only as semantic relations between terms and things,
but also as real relations between extra-mental items (*In
Cat*., cap. *de aequivocis*, ms. London, Lambeth Palace
393, fols. 69v-70r).
According to the common interpretation of the opening passage of the
*Categories*, equivocal terms are correlated with more than one
concept and refer to a multiplicity of things sharing different
natures, whereas univocal terms are correlated with only one concept
and refer to a multiplicity of things sharing one and the same nature.
In his last commentary on the *Physics* (after 1324), Burley
had maintained that the term 'being' is at the same time
univocal and equivocal with respect to the categories, as a single
concept corresponds to it (broadly speaking univocity), but the
categorial items share it in different ways, according to a hierarchy
of value (broadly speaking equivocity)--see his *Expositio in
libros octo Physicorum*, lib. I, tr. 2, cap. 1, ed. Venice 1501,
fols. 12vb-13ra. In turn, Wyclif had admitted three main types of
equivocity: by chance (*a casu*), analogical, and generic, the
second of which applies to the relationship between being and
categories (*De ente praedicamentali*, cap. 2). Alyngton
recognises four main kinds of equivocity: by chance; deliberate (*a
consilio*); analogical; and generic. Equivocals by chance are
those things that just happen to have the same name, but with
different meanings and/or reasons for imposing the name. Those things
are deliberate equivocals which have distinct natures but the same
name, and are subordinated to different but correlated concepts. Those
things are analogical which share the nature signified by their common
name in various degrees and/or ways. Generic equivocals are those
things which share the same generic nature in the same way, but have
distinct specific natures of different absolute value (*In
Cat*., cap. *de aequivocis*, fol. 70r-v). So, within
Alyngton's system, what differentiates analogy from univocity is
the way in which a certain nature (or property) is shared by a set of
things: analogous things share it according to different degrees
(*secundum magis et minus*, or *secundum prius et
posterius*), univocal things share it all in the same manner and
to the same degree (*In Cat*., cap. *de univocis*, fol.
71v). Alyngton argues that being is not a sort of genus in relation to
the ten categories, since it does not manifest their essence, nor is
it predicated univocally of them; being is analogous in relation to
the ten categories. It is the basic stuff of the metaphysical
structure of each reality, which possesses it in accordance with its
own nature and level in the hierarchy of essences (*In Cat*.,
cap. *de numero et sufficientia praedicamentorum*, pp.
255-56).
## 3. Universals and Predication
Among the many kinds of beings (*entia*) that Alyngton admits,
the most important set is that consisting of universal items.
Universals are among the most disputed topics in Medieval
philosophical literature. Like Wyclif and the other Oxford Realists,
Alyngton claims that universals fully exist outside the mind and are
really identical-to and formally distinct-from the individuals which
instantiate them. Like Albert the Great whom he quotes by name,
Alyngton recognizes three main kinds of universals:
1. *ante rem* or ideal universals--that is, the ideas in
God, the archetypes of all that is;
2. *in re* or formal universals--that is, the common
natures shared by individual things; and
3. *post rem* or intentional universals--that is, mental
signs of the formal universals.
The ideas in God are the causes of formal universals, and formal
universals are the causes of intentional universals. Furthermore, like
Burley and Wyclif, Alyngton holds that formal universals actually
exist (*in actu*) outside our minds, and not potentially only
(*in potentia*) as moderate realists thought (*In Cat*.,
cap. *de substantia*, p. 279)--even if, unlike Burley, he
maintains they are really identical with their individuals, for
otherwise it would be impossible to explain, against the Nominalists,
why and how individual substances show different and more or less
close kinds of similarity among themselves (*In Cat*., cap.
*de substantia*, pp. 267-68).
According to Alyngton, who depends here on Avicenna and Wyclif, formal
universals are common natures in virtue of which the individuals that
share them are exactly what they are--as the human species is the
form by which every man formally is a man. *Qua* natures, they
are prior, and so indifferent, to any division into universals and
individuals. Universality (*universalitas* or
*communicabilitas*) is as it were their inseparable property,
but not a *constitutive* mark of the nature itself (*In
Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, fol. 101v). As a consequence,
formal universals can be conceived of in two different manners: as
first intentions or as second intentions. In the former case, they are
natures of a certain kind and are identical with their individuals
(for example, man is the same thing as Socrates). In the latter case,
they are properly universals (that is, something that can exist in
many things and can be shared by them), and are distinct from their
individuals considered *qua* individuals, because of opposite
constitutive principles (*In Cat*., cap. *de
substantia*, p. 268). Therefore, universals are really
(*realiter*) identical to, but formally (*formaliter*)
distinct from their individuals. In fact, universals are formal causes
in relation to their individuals, and individuals are material causes
in relation to their universals. Thus three different kinds of
entities can be qualified as formal universals:
1. the common natures instantiated by individuals--which are
things of first intention;
2. the form itself of universality, which belongs to a certain common
nature when seen in its relation to the individuals--which is a
thing of second intention; and
3. the thinkability proper to the common nature, by which it is a
possible object of our mind--that is, the real principle that
connects formal universals with mental universals (*In Cat*.,
cap. *de substantia*, p. 277).
Alyngton accepts the traditional realistic account of the relationship
between formal universals and individuals, and, like Wyclif, improves
it by defining its logical structure more accurately, in order to
avoid the inconsistencies stressed by Ockham and his followers.
Alyngton thought that a universal of the category of substance could
directly receive only the predications of substantial forms more
common than itself. On the other hand, accidental forms inhering in
substantial individuals could be predicated only indirectly
(*essentialiter*) of the substantial form itself that those
individuals instantiate, predicated indirectly through and in virtue
of the individuals of that substantial form. So his description of the
logical structure of the relationship between universals and
individuals demanded a redefinition of predication. Alyngton was
probably the first to ameliorate Wyclif's theory of predication
by dividing predication into formal predication (*praedicatio
formalis*) and remote inherence (*inhaerentia remota*) or
predication by essence (*praedicatio secundum essentiam*).
Remote inherence is grounded in a partial identity between subject and
predicate, which share some but not all metaphysical constituents, and
does not demand that the form signified by the predicate term be
directly present in the entity signified by the subject term. On the
other hand, such a direct presence is needed by formal predication.
"Man is an animal" and "Socrates is white" are
instances of formal predication; "(What is) singular is (what
is) common" (*singulare est commune*) and "Humanity
is running" (*humanitas est currens*) are instances of
remote inherence, as according to Alyngton it is possible to attribute
the property of being running to the form of humanity if at least one
man is running. However, he makes sure to use as a predicate term a
substantival adjective in its neuter form, because only in this way
can it be made apparent that the form signified by the predicate term
is not directly present in the subject, but is indirectly attributed
to it, through its individuals (*In Cat*., cap. *de
substantia*, pp. 288-90).
## 4. The Theory of Substance
These remarks on the relations between forms and substances bring us
to the core of Alyngton's ontology: the doctrine of substance,
developed in the fifth chapter of his commentary on the
*Categories*. Alyngton's treatment can be divided into
two main parts. (i) The first attempts to clarify what characterizes
substance, and therefore what falls by itself into that category; (ii)
the second is concerned with the distinction between primary (or
individual) and secondary (or universal) substances.
Alyngton lists seven opinions about the nature and mode of being of
substance, the last of which he supports.
1. According to the first one, proper to grammarians, substance is
what the term 'substance' refers to when utilized in a
broad sense, that is, the quiddity (*quidditas*) or essence
(*essentia*) of anything. In this case, substance is not a
category, since the items which fulfil this description do not share
any common nature (*In Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, p.
263).
2. The second opinion is that of Avicenna, who affirms that any
entity which does not inhere in something else is a substance (cf.
*Liber de philosophia prima*, tr. 8, cap. 4, S. Van Riet ed., 2
vols., Louvain-Leiden: Peeters-Brill, 1977-80, vol. 2, pp.
403-404). According to this view, God, substantial differences,
and negative truths can be said to be substances, even though only in
an analogical way (*In Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, pp.
263-264).
3. A third meaning of the term 'substance' can be drawn
from the use (of that term) proper to common people and theologians:
everything which plays the role of foundation (*fundamentum*)
in relation to something else is a substance. In this sense, the
surface is the foundation (and therefore the substance) of the
whiteness (*In Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, p.
264).
4. The fourth opinion seems to be the same as the anonymous one
discussed and partially criticized by Burley in his last commentary on
the *Categories* (C.E. 1337, cap. *de substantia*, ed.
Venetiis 1509, fol. 22rb-va). Substance would be (i) a positive
being, which (ii) does not inhere in something else, and (iii) is
naturally apt to play the role of subject in relation to absolute
accidents (that is, quantities and qualities). According to this view,
matter, form, the composite made up of matter and form, and the
angelic intelligences are substances, whereas substantial differences
and negative truths are not, since the former do not satisfy the third
requisite, nor the latter the first one (*In Cat*., cap. *de
substantia*, p. 264).
5. The fifth opinion is that of Boethius (cf. *In Categorias
Aristotelis libri quattuor*, PL, vol. 64, 184A-B), according
to whom substance is (i) a positive being, which (ii) does not inhere
in something else, and (iii) is a compound of matter and form (*In
Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, p. 264).
6. The sixth opinion is that of Burley (cf. *Expositio super
Praedicamenta Aristotelis*, cap. *de substantia*, fol.
24ra.), to whom Alyngton refers by the expression '*moderni
logici*'. According to Burley, (i) not being in a subject,
(ii) having an essence, (iii) autonomy and independent existence, and
(iv) the capacity of underlying accidental forms are the main aspect
of substances. This means that primary substances alone are substances
properly speaking, while matter and form, and substantial differences
are not (*In Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, p. 265).
7. The last opinion is that of Wyclif (cf. *De ente
praedicamentali*, cap. 5, pp. 36-39), quoted extensively and
almost verbatim. Alyngton claims that it is superior to the preceding
ones (*septima est expositio metaphysica et altior ad intelligendum
quam praenominatae*). According to this view, the constitutive
principle of the substance is not the capacity of underlying absolute
accidents, but it is the capacity of underlying potency and act, which
are its inner foundations--the capacity of underlying accidents
being only a derivative property (*In Cat*., cap. *de
substantia*, p. 267).
Wyclif's position about the nature of substance implies that the
distinction between potency and act is, from the point of view of
metaphysics, the most fundamental distinction, of which that between
form and matter is but one example. As (i) prime matter is pure
potentiality, while form is act, and (ii) the distinction between
potency and act is wider than that between matter and form, the latter
is a particular case of the former. In fact, according to Wyclif, the
distinction between potency and act runs though the whole of creation,
since it applies also to any kinds of spiritual creatures, whereas the
distinction between matter and form is found only in the corporeal
creatures. On the contrary, Alyngton seems to interpret the
distinction between potency and act as a particular case of the
distinction between matter and form, since he constantly explains the
meaning of the opposition potency-act in terms of the opposition
between matter and form in a crucial passage that he quotes from
Wyclif's *De ente praedicamentali* (*In Cat*.,
cap. *de substantia*, p. 267 [= Wyclif, *De ente
praedicamentali*, cap. 5, pp. 38-39]). The result is a sort
of universal hylemorphism, since in this way matter and form serve as
principles in the order of being as well as in the order of becoming.
All the more so because Alyngton seems to accept the thesis that
(angelic) intelligences are not pure forms existing by themselves, but
formal principles necessarily joined to the matter of the heavens in
such a way as to make up living beings (*In Cat*., cap. *de
substantia*, p. 264).
A second consequence of this approach to the problem of the nature of
substance is that, within his system, primary substances alone are
substances properly speaking. This conclusion is confirmed by his
analysis of the distinctive mark (*proprium*) of substance:
while remaining numerically one and the same, being capable of
admitting contrary properties, the modification taking place through a
change in the subject itself of the motion at issue. Alyngton appears
to think that this description is satisfied only by primary (that is,
individual) substances (*In Cat*., cap. *de substantia*,
fol. 104v). Secondary substances therefore are *per se* in the
category of substance only insofar as they are constitutive parts of
primary substances. Thus, secondary substances belong to the category
of substance by virtue of the individual substances that instantiate
them, since they are not formally substances. In fact, unlike primary
substances, secondary substances are forms, and consequently
incomplete entities with an imperfect and dependent mode of existence.
They require composite substances in order to properly exist. No form
as such, not even the substantial ones, is formally a substance, since
no form as such has (i) the capacity of underlying potency and act,
and (ii) matter and form as its inner constituent. Secondary
substances are related to primary substances as formal principles of
the latter. It is in this way that humanity and (say) Socrates are
linked together. For this reason no secondary substances as such are
totally identical with primary substances (*In Cat*., cap.
*de substantia*, p. 280; see also pp. 281 and 282-283).
As a consequence, while 'man is animal' ('*homo
est animal*') is a sentence to which a formal predication
corresponds in the world, a predication by essence matches
'humanity is animality' ('*humanitas est
animalitas*'). Any (individual) man is an animal because of
the form of humanity present in him *qua* its essential
constituent, albeit the form of humanity as such is not the principle
of animality. Therefore, humanity is not formally animality nor
rationality, even though it is animality plus rationality (*In
Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, pp. 283-284; see also
cap. *de quantitate*, fols. 106v-107r).
Primary substances are the substrate of existence of any other kinds
of categorial being, as nothing exists in addition to primary
substances but secondary substances and accidents, which both are
forms present in individual substances. Like Aristotle
(*Categories* 5, 2b5-6), Alyngton can therefore affirm
that primary substances are the necessary condition of existence for
any other items of the world: nothing could exist, if primary
substances stopped existing (*In Cat*., cap. *de
substantia*, p. 286). This does not mean, however, that it would
be possible to find in the world a primary substance (i) that would
not belong to a certain species, and (ii) without any accident
inhering in it. It means that, from the point of view of full
existence, accidents and secondary substances always presuppose
primary substances, as to be a primary substance is to be an
autonomous singular existing item (*hoc aliquid*), whilst (i)
to be a secondary substance is to be a *quale quid*, that is,
an inner and essential determination (or form) of a primary substance,
and (ii) to be an accident is to be an outer determination or aspect
of a primary substance (*In Cat*., cap. *de substantia*,
fol. 101v).
## 5. The Absolute Accidents
Since Alyngton thinks of primary substances as the ultimate substrates
of existence in relation to anything else, the only way to safeguard
the reality of accidents as well as their distinction from substance
and from each other, while at the same time, to affirm their
dependence on substance in existence, was to conceive of them as forms
of the substance itself, and therefore as something existentially
incomplete. Accordingly, like Wyclif, he insists that quantity,
quality, and relations, considered as abstract accidents, are forms
inherent in primary substances, whereas, if considered from the point
of view of their actual existence as concrete items, they are not
really distinct from the substance in which they are present, but only
formally, as they are modes of substances. So, the chief features of
Alyngton's treatment of accidents are his twofold consideration
of them as abstract forms and as concrete properties as well as his
commitment to their objective reality, since, in his opinion, they are
mind-independent items of the world in both cases. Hence, the main
goals of his reading of the chapters 6-8 of the Aristotelian
treatise are showing the ordered internal structure of the chief
categories of accidents, and reasserting their reality and real
distinction from the category of substance, against those thinkers,
like Ockham and his followers, who had attempted to reduce quantity
and relations to mere aspects of material substances.
1. (*Quantity*) According to the standard realist
interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories,
followed also by Alyngton among the nine genera of accidents, quantity
is the most important one, as it is the basis of all further
accidents, since quantity orders material substances for receiving
quality and the other accidental forms (*In Cat*., cap. *de
quantitate*, fol. 106r). On the contrary, Ockham had claimed that
it was superfluous to posit quantitative forms really distinct from
substance and quality, since quantity presupposes what it is intended
to explain, that is, the extension of material substances and their
having parts outside parts. As an accident, quantity needs substance
as its substrate of inherence (cf. Ockham, *Expositio in librum
Praedicamentorum Aristotelis*, cap. 10.4, in *Opera
philosophica*, vol. 2, pp. 205-24). Like Burley and Wyclif,
Alyngton denies that material substance can be actually extended
without the presence of the general form of quantity in it, thereby
affirming its necessity. Hence, he tries to confute Ockham's
argumentation. He thinks that the existence of quantity always implies
that of substance, but he also believes that the actual existence of
parts in a substance necessarily implies the presence of a general
form of quantity in it, really distinct from the substance (say
Socrates) in which it inheres, and formally distinct from the fact,
grounded on the substance at issue, that this same substance is a
quantified thing. For Alyngton, what characterizes quantity and
differentiates it from the other accidental forms, and in particular
from quality, are the following features: (1) being the appropriate
measure of anything, and (2) being an absolute entity which makes it
possible that material substances actually have parts outside parts
(*In Cat*., cap. *de quantitate*, fols. 106v, 107r,
114v).
If the highest genus of the category of quantity is a form, the seven
species Aristotle enumerates (line, surface, solid, time, place,
number, and speech) clearly are not. Alyngton tries to meet this
difficulty by reformulating the notion of quantified-thing
(*quantum*), and by proposing a method for deducing the seven
species of quantity from the highest genus (a sort of *sufficientia
quantitatum*). He considers the seven species Aristotle lists not
as quantitative forms, but as the most proper and primary bearers of
the quantitative nature, revealed by the highest genus of the
category. In fact, encouraged by the Aristotelian distinction between
strict and derivative quantities (*Categories* 6,
5a38-b10), like Burley, he distinguishes two different ways of
being quantified: by itself and accidentally (*per accidens*).
Only the seven species of quantity would be *quanta* by
themselves, while any other *quantum* would be such *per
accidens*, and so indirectly, because of its connection to one (or
more) of the seven *quanta per se* (*In Cat*., cap.
*de quantitate*, fol. 116r).
In Alyngton's view, the seven species of quantity correspond to
the seven possible ways of measuring the being (*esse*) of the
material substance. In fact, substance has two main kinds of being:
permanent and in succession. And both of them can be either discrete
or continuous. In turn, the being permanent and continuous of material
substance can be measured either from inside or from outside. If from
inside, then in three different modes: according to one, two or all
the three dimensions proper to material substances. In the first case,
the measure is line, in the second surface, and in the third solid. If
it is measured from outside, then it is place. The being of material
substance which is permanent and discrete is measured by numbers. The
being which is in succession and continuous is measured by time. And
finally, the being of substance which is in succession and discrete is
measured by the quantity called 'speech' (*oratio*)
(*In Cat*., cap. *de quantitate*, fol.
107r-v).
Alyngton's derivation of the seven species of quantity from a
unique principle common to them is unconvincing, but extremely
interesting, nonetheless, as it clearly shows that he wants to stress
the unity of the category of quantity, which at first appears
heterogeneous, and to trace the problem of reality and real
distinction of quantities back to that of the nature and status of its
distinctive mark.
2. (*Quality*) The chapter on quality is the least complex and
interesting part of the whole commentary, since Alyngton is faithful
to Aristotle's text and doctrine, and sometimes even offers
rather unproblematic analyses and elucidations. The main general topic
he deals with is the internal structure of the category.
In the first lines of the eighth chapter of the *Categories*
(8a25-26) Aristotle observes that quality is among those things
that are spoken of in a number of ways--an affirmation which
seems to imply that quality is not a highest genus, as, according to
Aristotle himself, what is spoken of in a number of ways always
gathers in several different natures. Furthermore, the Stagirite
speaks of four species of quality (habits and dispositions, natural
capacities and incapacities, affective qualities and affections,
figures and shapes), without explaining how they are related to one
another and to the highest genus of the category. No Aristotelian
commentator had ever thought that quality was spoken of in many ways
purely equivocally. Therefore no Aristotelian commentator had ever
presumed that the term 'quality' could have several
different (but connected) meanings. On the contrary, they unanimously
took for granted that it had a unique *ratio*, common to all
the items belonging to the category. They disagreed, however, about
the status and hierarchical order of the four species mentioned by
Aristotle. For example, Albert the Great held that quality at once and
directly splits up into the four species, which would all be equally
far from the highest genus. Duns Scotus, Ockham, and Walter Burley
maintained that the so called 'species' of the quality
were not properly species (or intermediate genera), but modes of
quality, since many singular qualities would belong to the first three
species at the same time, as, unlike species, modes are not
constituted by opposite properties. Alyngton rejected both opinions.
The latter because it compromises the actual goal of a correct
categorial theory, and the former because it does not fit in with the
standard infracatagorial structure described by Porphyry in his
Isagoge. Consequently, he inserts an intermediate level between the
highest genus of the category and the four species by claiming that
quality is first of all divided into perceptible (*sensibilis*)
and non-perceptible (*insensibilis*) qualities. Affective
qualities and affections, figures and shapes stem from the former kind
of quality, while habits and dispositions, natural capacities and
incapacities derive from the latter. In fact, (1) figures and shapes
are those perceptible qualities which inhere in substances because of
the mutual position of its quantitative parts, while affective
qualities and affections inhere in substances because of the form
itself of the substantial composite. (2) Natural capacities and
incapacities are inborn non-perceptible qualities, while habits and
dispositions are due to the activity, both physical and, if it is the
case, intellectual, of the substance in which they inhere (*In
Cat*., cap. *de qualitate*, fol. 130r).
## 6. Relations and Relatives
Aristotle's treatment of relations and relatives in the
*Categories* is opaque and incomplete, since (1) he does not
have any notion of relation, as he speaks of relatives and conceives
of them as those entities to which non-absolute terms of our language
refer; (2) he does not discuss the question of the reality of
relatives; (3) he does not clarify the connection between the two defi
nitions of relatives he proposes in the seventh chapters of the
*Categories*; (4) he does not give any effective criterion for
distinguishing relatives from some items belonging to other categories
(cf. Ackrill 1963, pp. 98-103). Because of these
facts, in the Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages many authors tried
to reformulate the doctrine of relatives. The most successful and
interesting attempt was that of the Neoplatonic commentators of the
sixth century, such as Olympiodorus, Philoponus, and Simplicius.
Unlike Aristotle, they were able to elaborate a notion of relation
(*schesis*) almost equivalent to our modern notion of two-place
predicates, as they conceived of relations as abstract forms whose
distinctive feature was the property of being present-in and joining
two different substances at once. This view was rejected by Latin
medieval authors. According to Boethius relation (respectus or
habitudo) is an accidental form which is in a substance (its substrate
of inherence) and simply entails a reference to another, without
inhering in that other. Shortly after the middle of the13th century,
Albert the Great explicitly denied that a relation could inhere (in
the technical sense of the word) in two substances at once (*Liber
de praedicamentis*, tr. 4, cap. 10). Some years later, the same
thesis was held by Simon of Faversham (*Quaestiones in librum
Praedicamentorum*, q. 43). In the 14th century, also Walter Burley
shared this approach, since it appeared to him to be the only thing
consistent with one of the basic principle of medieval metaphysics:
the equivalence and correspondence between accidental forms and their
substrates of inherence, so that no accidental form could inhere at
the same time and in full in two (or more) substances (cf. Burley,
*Expositio super librum Sex principiorum*, cap. *de
habitu*). On the contrary, Wyclif seems to support a different
opinion, similar to that of the Neoplatonists , as he maintained that
relation (1) is different from quality and quantity, since it
presupposes them, and (2) qua such is a sort of link between two
things (cf. Wyclif, *De ente praedicamentali*,
ch. 7. p. 61).
Alyngton's theory of *ad aliquid* is worthy of note,
as he possibly was the only late medieval author who followed and
developed Wyclif 's ideas on that topic. He conceived of
relation (*relatio*) as an accidental form which is present in
both the relatives at once - even though in different ways,
since it names only one of them. Consequently his relation can be
considered as a sort of ontological counterpart of our modern
functions with two variables, or two-place predicates (*In
Cat*., cap. *de relativis*, pp. 295-96). According
to Alyngton, whose account partially differs from that of Wyclif, in
the act of relating one substance to another four distinct
constitutive elements can be singled out: (1) the relation itself
- for instance, the form of paternity; (2) the subject of the
relation, that is, the substance that denominatively receives the name
of the relation - for instance, the (substance that is the)
father; (3) the object of the relation, that is, the substance which
the subject of the relation is connected with - for instance,
the (substance that is the) son; and (4) the foundation
(*fundamentum*) of the relation, that is, the absolute entity
in virtue of which the relation inheres in the subject and in the
object (*ibidem*, p. 299). The foundation is the main
component, since it joins the relation to the underlying substances,
lets the relation link the substrate to the object, and transmits some
of its properties to the relation (*ibidem*, p. 291). Like
Wyclif, Alyngton affirms that only qualities and quantities can be the
foundation of a relation (*ibidem*). Some consequences about
the nature and status of relations and relatives derive from these
premises: (1) relation is a categorial item whose reality is feebler
than that of any other accidental form, as it depends upon the
simultaneous existence of three different items: the subject, the
object, and the foundation (*ibidem*, p. 295). (2) A relation
can start inhering in a substance without any change in the latter,
but simply because of a change in another substance. For example:
given two things, one white and the other black, if the black thing
becomes white, then, because of this change, a new accident, that is,
a relation of similarity, will inhere also in the fi rst thing, apart
from any other change in it. (3) All the real relatives (relativa
secundum esse) are simultaneous by nature, since the real cause of
being a relative is relation, which at the same time inheres in two
substances, thereby making both ones relatives (*ibidem*,
p. 301). On this basis Alyngton can divide relations into
transcendental and categorial relations (*ibidem*, pp.
290-91), and, what is more, among the latter he can contrast
real relatives (*relativa secundum esse*) with relatives of
reason (*relativa rationis*) without utilizing references to
our mental activities nor to semantic principles. In fact, on the one
hand, Alyngton describes real relatives as those aggregates (1) made
up of a primary substance, (2) an absolute accidental form (quantity
or quality), and (3) a relation which correlates the substance at
issue to another substance existing in actu. On the other hand, he
defi ne relatives of reason as those aggregates characterized by the
occurrence of at least one of these negative conditions: (1) either
the relation's subject of inherence or its object is not a
substance; (2) the object is not an actual entity; (3) the foundation
of the relation is not an absolute accident (*ibidem*, p. 293).
The strategy which supports this choice is evident: Alyngton wanted to
substitute references to mental activity with references to the
external world, thus using only objective criteria, based on the
framework of reality itself in order to classifying things.
## 7. The Semantics of Second Intentions
Not until the end of the fourteenth century did anyone claim
extramental reality for second intentions, not even Walter Burley.
According to him, second intentions are concepts that have a
foundation in the extramental world, but are not "things"
in the proper sense of the term. This account implied that the
keystone of medieval realism, the principle of one-to-one
correspondence between language and the world, has to suffer an
exception, since no common nature matches second intention terms. It
was just in order to do away with this exception that Alyngton (then
followed by William Penbygull, Roger Whelpdale, and John Tarteys)
hypostatized second intentions, heavily modifying the standard theory
of the status of second intentions. In fact, Alyngton not only
considers second intentions as objective, but clearly hypostatizes
them, speaking of them in terms of real determinations joined to the
modes of being of extramental things and directly inhering in them
(*In Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, pp. 268-69). As
a consequence, he conceives of logic as an analysis of the general
framework of reality, since according to him logic turns on structural
forms (aimed at building up semantic contents), which are, as forms,
independent of both such contents and of the mental acts by which they
are learned. It is through these forms that the network connecting the
basic constituents of the world (individuals and universals,
substances and accidents) is disclosed to us (*In Cat*., cap.
*de substantia*, pp. 278-79). The strategy that supports
this choice is evident: as in the case of relations of reason,
Alyngton is trying to substitute references to external reality for
references to mental activity. In other words, he seeks to reduce
epistemology to ontology. From a logical point of view, this means
that the same interpretative pattern is employed in order to account
for both the semantic power of proper names and common terms (that is,
those expressions that refer to a class of individuals), and first and
second intentions. Like proper names, common terms also primarily
signify and label a unique object--that is, a common nature. But
unlike the object signified by a proper name, the reality of the
common nature is distributed among many individuals as their main
metaphysical constituent, since it determines the typical features of
the individuals themselves. By associating common terms with such
objects as their main referent, Alyngton thinks he can explain the
fact that a common term can stand for and label many individuals at
once. Only in this way does he believe we can grant the value of our
knowledge, which otherwise lacks an adequate foundation (*In
Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, fols. 101v-102v).
Still, this procedure, so strong and powerful, leads to a paradox when
applied to terms of second intention by which we speak of singular
objects considered as such--that is, terms (or expressions) like
'first substance' (*substantia prima*),
'individual' (*individuum*), and so on. In fact,
according to Alyngton (and many other Realists of that period), a
common term is always matched by a common nature really existing in
the world. Therefore, as the term 'individual' appears to
be common, since it can stand for a multiplicity of things, it should
signify an extramental common nature shared by them. As a consequence,
we would have to admit the existence of an *individual common
nature*, that is a (self-contradictory) entity present in all the
individuals as the cause of their being individuals. Alyngton, who
would not give up the principle of the one-to-one relation between
philosophical language and the world, could remove this paradox only
by classifying this kind of term among atomic (*discreti*)
terms--that is, terms or nominal syntagms, like
'Socrates' or 'this man' (*hic homo*),
that refer to individuals and not to sets of individuals. According to
Alyngton, there are three main kinds of atomic terms:
1. personal pronouns, which identify a singular definite referent by
means of an ostensive definition (*a demonstratione*);
2. proper names; and
3. range-narrowed expressions (*a limitatione
intellectus*)--that is, expressions, like 'this
man', that identify a singular referent as a member of a given
(manifested) set of individuals. Also expressions like 'first
substance' and 'individual' belong to this third
type, since they presuppose a general concept (substance and being, in
the example), the range of which is narrowed to a unique object among
substances and beings by an act of our intellect--to one object
that is not common (*In Cat*., cap. *de substantia*, pp.
270-71).
The rule that terms can be listed as common ones if and only if they
signify a common nature is safe, but at the cost of a counterintuitive
categorization of their semantic power. In fact, according to
Alyngton's account, saying that Socrates and Plato are first
substances simply means that (i) each one is what he is, and that (ii)
what each one is is a non-universal substance. This is a solution that
entails that to be an individual is not a positive state of affairs,
but a negative one, and therefore connects Alyngton's ontology
with Henry of Ghent's theory of individuation.
## 8. Alyngton in the History of Medieval Thought
Alyngton's theory of categories is an interesting example of
that partial dissolution of the traditional doctrine which took place
in between the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th
centuries. Within Alyngton's metaphysics, (1) the relationships
between primary (or individual) substances and secondary (or
universal) substances, and (2) between substances and accidents (both
abstract and concrete) as well as (3) the inner natures of essential
and accidental predications are so different from their Aristotelian
originals that the general meaning of the categorial doctrine is
deeply modified. According to Alyngton, the formal-and-essential
predication and the formal-and-accidental predication would correspond
to Aristotle's essential and accidental predications
respectively. But he regards remote inherence as more general than
formal predication. Therefore, in his system formal predication is a
sort of sub-type of the remote inherence. This means that he
recognises a single ontological pattern, founded on a partial
identity, as the basis of every kind of predicative relation. Thus,
the *praedicatio formalis essentialis* and the *praedicatio
formalis accidentalis* are very different from their Aristotelian
models, as they express degrees in identity as well as the remote
inherence. As a consequence, the relationships between substance and
accidents and between individuals and universals (and hence the
ontological status of universal substances and that of accidents) are
completely changed. In Alyngton's view, both concrete accidents,
qua modes of individual substances, and universal substances, qua the
main components of the natures of individual substances, are really
identical-to and formally distinct-from primary substances. Moreover,
in the *Categories* Aristotle (1) characterizes primary
substances as those beings which are neither present in a subject nor
predicable of a subject, and (2) considers the capacity of underlying
accidents as the constitutive principle of substance, while Alyngton
(1) defi nes primary substance as what (i) is apt to underlie potency
and act, and (ii) has matter and form as its inner foundations, and
(2) explicitly affi rms that underlying accidents is only a derivative
property of substance. Finally, because of his strong propensity
towards hypostatization (as we have seen, Alyngton methodically
replaces logical and epistemological rules with ontological criteria
and references), he interprets Aristotle's theory of homonymy,
synonymy, and paronymy as an ontological theory about real items and
not as a semantic one about the relations between terms and things. In
conclusion, Alyngton conflates the real and logical (so to say) levels
into one: just like Burley and Wyclif , he considers logic as the
theory of the discourse on being, turning on structural forms and
relations, which exist in the world and are totally independent of the
mental acts by which they are grasped. It is through these structural
forms and relations that the network connecting the basic items of
reality (individuals and universals, substances and accidents) is
clearly disclosed. Yet, because of his peculiar ideas on substance and
predication, his world is different from those of Burley and of
Wyclif. On Burley 's view, macro-objects (i.e., what is
signified by a proper name or by an individual expression, such as
'Socrates ' or 'this particular horse') are
the basic components of the world. They are aggregates made up of
really different items: primary substances and substantial and
accidental forms existing in them. Primary substances and substantial
and accidental forms are like simple (or atomic) objects, each
possessing a unique, well-defi ned nature. Although they are simple,
some of these components are in a sense composite because they are
reducible to something else - for example, primary substance is
composed of a particular form and matter. Primary substance differs
from the other components of a macro-object because of its peculiar
mode of being as an autonomous and independently existing object, in
contrast with the other categorial items, which necessarily presuppose
it for their existence. Primary substances are therefore substrates of
existence in relation to everything else. The distinction between
substantial and accidental forms derives from their different
relations to primary substances: substantial, universal forms disclose
the natures of primary substances; by contrast, those forms that
simply affect primary substances without being actually joined to
their natures are accidental forms. As a result, the macro-object is
not simply a primary substance but an orderly collection of categorial
items, so that primary substance, even though it is the most important
element, does not contain the whole being of the macro-object. On
Wyclif 's view, whatever is is a proposition
(pan-propositionalism). The constitutive property of any kind of being
is the capacity of being the object of a complex act of signifying.
This choice implies a revolution in the standard medieval theory of
transcendentals, since Wyclif actually replaces being with true.
According to the common belief, *verum* was nothing but being
itself considered in relation to an intellect, no matter whether
divine or human. According to Wyclif, being is no more the main
transcendental and its notion is not the first and simplest, but there
is something more basic to which being can be brought back: the truth
(*veritas*) (or true, *verum*). Only what can be signifi
ed by a complex expression is a being, and whatever is the proper
object of an act of signifying is a truth. 'Truth' is
therefore the true name of being itself. From the ontological point of
view this entails the uniqueness in type of the *significata*
of every class of categorematic expressions. Within Wyclif 's
world it is the same (kind of ) object which both concrete terms and
propositions refer to, as primary substances have to be regarded as
(atomic) states of affairs. According to him, from the metaphysical
point of view a singular man, for instance, is nothing but a real
proposition, with its real suject (the concrete existence in time of
that singular thing, say Socrates), its real predicate (the common
nature, i.e., the human nature viewed qua universal), and its copula
(the singular essence, i. e., the individual essence of Socrates). The
result is that Wyclif 's world consists of molecular objects,
which are not simple, but composite, because they are reducible to
something else, belonging to a different rank of reality, and unable
to exist by itself: being and essence, potency and act, matter and
form, abstract genera, species and differences. For that reason,
everything one can speak about or think of is both a thing (or
molecular object) and a sort of atomic state of affairs, while every
true proposition expresses either an atomic or a molecular state of
affairs, that is the union (if the proposition is affirmative) or the
separation (if the proposition is negative) of two (or more) molecular
objects. On the contrary, Alyngton's world consists of atomic
objects whose constitutive elements are abstract forms (or essences),
both substantial and accidental, potency and act, and matter. In fact,
according to him, unlike Burley, what is signified by a proper name or
by an individual expression is a primary substance, and, unlike
Wyclif, simple and complex expressions have different
*significata*. Moreover, in his view, Socrates cannot be
regarded as an aggregate, since the beings of the substantial
universal forms predicated of him and those of the concrete accidental
forms inhering in him coincide with the being of that primary
substance Socrates himself is. Thus, if we consider Socrates from the
point of view of his being, Socrates is simply an atomic object, a
primary substance. If we consider him from the point of view of the
essences that he contains in himself, then he is a compound of really
different forms, which can exist only in it, as its components, and
through its being. This is the inner sense (1) of the formula
'really identical and formally distinct' that Alyngton
employs for explaining the relation between universals and individuals
as well as the relation between substance and concrete accidents; and
(2) of his description of the nature and peculiar mode of being of the
primary substance: to be a primary substance is to be *the
being* of whatever can be. |
ambiguity | ## 1. Introduction
Ambiguity is generally taken to be a property enjoyed by signs that
bear multiple (legitimate) interpretations in a language or, more
generally, some system of signs. 'legitimate' is a cover
term I'm using to nod to the fact that many signs can, in principle,
bear just about any interpretation. The relativization is to
prevent ambiguity in terms like like 'leaped'
which means leaped in English but loved in German. In
common parlance, the word 'ambiguity' is used loosely:
often simple underspecificity will suffice for a charge of ambiguity.
The U.S.'s policy towards the unification of China and Taiwan
has been described as a policy of 'strategic ambiguity',
one that allows the U.S. to be non-specific with respect to the status
of Taiwan. 'Jane's sister will come to visit' is
sometimes thought to be ambiguous when Jane has multiple sisters. A
movie with a character that heads to surgery at the end, leaving it
open whether he lives or dies, is said to have an ambiguous ending.
There is a medical condition known as 'ambiguous
genitalia' in which the genitals don't categorize clearly, or
exclusively, into male or female genitalia.
In many domains, however, theorists have found it useful to divide the
phenomenon of ambiguity from other phenomena (e.g.,
underspecification, vagueness, context sensitivity). Ambiguity is of
interest to philosophers for a variety of reasons, some of which we
will look at below. First, ambiguity makes vivid some of the
differences between formal languages and natural languages and
presents demands on the usage of the former to provide
representations of the latter. Second, ambiguity can have a
deleterious effect on our ability to determine the validity of
arguments in natural language on account of possible equivocation.
Third, ambiguity in art can intentionally (or unintentionally)
increase the interest in a work of art by refusing to allow easy
categorization and interpretation. Fourth, ambiguity in the statement
of the law can undermine their applicability and our ability to
obey them. Finally, ambiguity resolution is an important feature of our
cognitive understanding and interpretative abilities. Studying
ambiguity and how we resolve it in practice can give us insight into both thought
and interpretation.
Ambiguity has excited philosophers for a very, very long time. It was
studied in the context of the study of fallacies in Aristotle's
*Sophistical Refutations*. Aristotle identifies various
fallacies associated with ambiguity and
amphiboly[1]
writing:
>
>
> There are three varieties of these ambiguities and amphibolies: (1)
> When either the expression or the name has strictly more than one
> meaning... (2) when by custom we use them so; (3) when words that
> have a simple sense taken alone have more than one meaning in
> combination; e.g. 'knowing letters'. For each word, both
> 'knowing' and 'letters', possibly has a single
> meaning: but both together have more than one-either that the letters
> themselves have knowledge or that someone else has it of them.
> (*Sophistical Refutations* bk. 4)
>
>
>
The stoics were also intrigued by ambiguity (see Atherton 1993).
Chrysippus claimed at one point that every word is
ambiguous - though by this he meant that the same person may
understand a word spoken to him in many distinct ways. Philosophers
concerned with the relation between language and thought, particularly
those who argue for a language of thought, concerned
themselves with whether the language in which we think could contain
ambiguous phrases. Ockham, for example, was willing to countenance
ambiguities in mental sentences of a language of thought but not
mental terms in that language (see Spade p. 101). Frege contemplated
non-overlap of sense in natural language in a famous footnote,
writing:
>
>
> ...So long as the reference remains the same, such variations of
> sense may be tolerated, although they are to be avoided in the
> theoretical structure of a demonstrative science and ought not to
> occur in a perfect language. (Frege 1948 [1892], p. 210 fn. 2)
>
>
>
Frege's hostility to ambiguity remains with
us today. Frequently we use formal languages precisely so that we can
disambiguate otherwise ambiguous sentences (brackets being a paradigm
example of a disambiguating device).
Giving an account of ambiguity (and disambiguation) requires one to
discern the bearer(s) of ambiguity. Propositions, for example, are
presumably unambiguous (since they are meanings they can't be
subject to further considerations of meaning). This leaves a range of
potential objects: utterances, utterances relative to a context,
sentences, sentences relative to a context, discourses,
inscriptions.... The differences aren't trivial: a written
down sentence corresponds to many possible ways of being uttered in
which features such as prosody can prevent certain meanings that the
written down sentence seems capable of enjoying. Two written
utterances may sound the same (if they contain words that sound alike)
without being spelt alike (if the words aren't co-spelled) thus
resulting in phonological ambiguity without corresponding orthographic
ambiguity. I'm going to (somewhat perversely) simply use
'sentence' and 'phrase' ambiguously, and I
will attempt to disambiguate when necessary. We will also look briefly
at the application of ambiguity to discourse transitions.
One important question regarding ambiguity is how we ought to
represent ambiguities. With structural ambiguities there is no
independent issue but with lexical ambiguities there is a real issue.
It's tempting to see this as a question we could answer in any
number of equally good ways. For example, we may choose to represent
the meaning of 'bank' disjunctively or we may choose to
individuate 'bank' as multiple lexical items that simply
sound and look alike, perhaps using subscripts. Both are potentially
problematic if taken as analyses: disjunctive meanings are not unique
to ambiguity (I can introduce any term I like with a single
disjunctive meaning), and representation using subscripts simply masks
the question of what the subscripts represent. This suggests that the
issue is more like a problem than a nuisance or a trivial choice and
actually has serious ramifications for how to pursue truth conditional
semantics. (See Davidson 1967, Gillon 1990, and Saka 2007 (Ch. 6) for
an interesting account of the problem regarding representing
ambiguity.) I'll proceed as though lexical ambiguities are properly
represented as two separate words/lexical items that overlap with
respect to some significant feature (phonologically, graphemically,
pictorially...).
A brief terminological point: 'polysemy' refers to a
phenomenon that is closely related to ambiguity, but often is
characterized as a term with multiple meanings that are, in some hard
to specify sense, interestingly related. For example, 'in'
is often thought to be a paradigm of polysemy: to be in a car, in my
thoughts and in trouble seem to play on notions of containment but
there is clearly a difference in how we interpret 'in' in
each case. It is sometimes characterized as a phenomenon subsumable
under ambiguity (basically, an ambiguity with the meanings that are
tightly related meanings) but sometimes it is taken to be a different
phenomenon altogether. One traditional carving is that ambiguity in
words is a matter of two or more lexical entries that correspond to
the same word and polysemy a single lexeme that has multiple
meanings.[2] For
the rest of this article, I will assume that polysemy is simply
ambiguity with tightly corresponding meanings and I will not try to
distinguish polysemy from ambiguity very carefully. Many cognitive
linguists contend that there there is no principled way to divide
these in any case. It's worth noticing that terms could be both
ambiguous and polysemous if it had three meanings, two of which were
suitably related and one which was quite far apart from the other
two. See Vicente and Falkum (2017) for a detailed look at
polysemy.
## 2. What (Linguistic) Ambiguity Isn't
'Ambiguity', as used by philosophers of language and
linguists, refers to a more specific phenomenon than that of multiple permissible interpretations. Distinguishing
ambiguity from these related phenomenon can be a difficult and
tendentious (and sometimes tedious!) affair. We will discuss testing for ambiguity below: for
now, we will try to isolate ambiguity by separating it from other
typical cases with which ambiguity is easily conflated.
### 2.1 Vagueness
Characterizing vagueness is notoriously (and ironically) difficult,
but it seems to stem from lack of precision in the meaning or
reference of a term or phrase. There are clearly words that are
ambiguous but not (obviously) vague: 'bat' is not vague
but it is ambiguous. 'Is bald' looks to be vague but not
ambiguous.
A general hallmark of vagueness is that it involves borderline cases:
possible cases that are neither clearly in the extension of the vague
term nor clearly not in its extension. An alternative characterization
involves fuzzy boundaries rather than borderline cases (see Fara 2000,
47-48). Cases of ambiguity can be like this: one can imagine a sorites
series involving something that is clearly a baseball bat at
*t*1 that is changed particle by particle into a
chiropteran with borderline cases of each mid-series, thus being a
vague case of 'bat' in both senses. However, ambiguity
need not be characterized by borderline cases nor by sorites-series
susceptibility.
Interestingly, there are views regarding vague language that treat
vagueness as at least akin to ambiguity. Braun and Sider (2007) treat
sentences with vague terms as expressing multiple distinct
propositions and supervaluationism treats vague terms as expressing
multiple distinct semantic values. But the relevant notion of multiple
expression seem different from paradigmatic ambiguity, where two
meanings are definitely meanings of a term or phrase, not where a
bunch of meanings are acceptable ways of making a term more
precise. If anything, one might think that these views treat vagueness
as a sort of polysemy.
### 2.2 Context Sensitivity
Context sensitivity is (potential) variability in content due purely
to changes in the context of utterance without a change in the
convention of word usage. Thus, 'I am hungry' varies in
content speaker to speaker because 'I' is context
sensitive and shifts reference depending on who utters it.
'I', however, is not massively ambiguous - if
anything, the mystery of context sensitive terms has been how they
could have a single meaning with multiple reference.
'Bank' is ambiguous, not (at least, not obviously) context
sensitive. Of course, knowledge of context may well help disambiguate
an ambiguous utterance. Nonetheless, ambiguity is not characterized by
interaction with (extra- linguistic) context but is a property of the
meanings of the terms.
### 2.3 Under-specification and Generality
I have a sister in New York, a sister in Kingston and one in Toronto.
If I tell you that I am going to visit one of my sisters, what I say
underspecifies which sister I am going to see. This can be frustrating
if you are trying to figure out where I am going. But this
isn't due to 'one of my sisters' being ambiguous
ambiguous. Its meaning is clear. The sentence is
'sense-general'; it doesn't specify some detail without
thereby being ambiguous with respect to that detail. In general,
under- determination and generality may leave open many possibilities
without being ambiguous between those possibilities. One more
terminological note: in the cognitive linguistics literature (e.g.
Dunbar 2001) it is common to treat what we call 'sense
generality' as vagueness: a single lexeme with a unified meaning
that is unspecified with respect to certain features.
Similarly, if I tell you that I am going to visit my aunt, I
underspecify whether it is my mother's sister or my
father's sister whom I am going to go visit. Nothing follows
about the univocality or ambiguity of 'aunt'. It simply
means 'aunt' is true of things that are female siblings of
your parent. By the same token, 'human' doesn't make
any demand on an person's mass in order to be part of its
extension.
It is easy to mistake sense generality for ambiguity, as often the
extension of a univocal term can break up into two or more distinct
salient categories. The sentence 'I ordered filet mignon'
doesn't specify whether or not the filet was to be given to me
cooked or raw.
You will surely be annoyed and say 'that's not what I
meant' at a restaurant if the waiter brings the filet raw, but
not so at the butcher shop. Often it is difficult to tell when the
distinction in extension corresponds to an ambiguity in the meaning of
the term. But difficulty in telling these apart in some cases should
not lead us to abjure the distinction.
### 2.4 Sense and Reference Transfer
One difficult phenomenon to classify is transference of sense or
reference (see Nunberg, Ward). When you say 'I am parked on G
St.', you presumably manage to refer to the car rather than
yourself. Similarly, 'I am traditionally allowed a final
supper' said by a prisoner is not about himself (there are no
traditions regarding him). The mechanics of reference transfer are
mysterious, and the interaction of transferred terms with the syntax
is a matter of some dispute.
Of course, sentences can have many of these properties at once.
'My uncle wonders if I am parked where the bank begins' is
sense-general, ambiguous, context-sensitive, vague and it involves
reference-transfer. Nonetheless, it is important to keep these
properties apart as the semantic treatment we give each may vary
wildly, the ways of testing for them may require highly specialized
considerations and their source may well differ radically from
phenomenon to phenomenon.
## 3. Types of Ambiguity
There are different sources and types of ambiguities. To explore
these, however, we will need to adopt some terminology to make clear
what sorts of phenomena we are looking at. Those familiar with some of
the issues in current syntactic theory can skip until the next
section.
Modern linguistic theory involves, in part, the study of syntax. The
dominant strain of current syntactic theory takes the lexicon as
primitive and studies the rule-governed derivation of syntactic forms,
which are structures known as LFs (or, more misleadingly, Logical
Forms). The relationship of sentences in natural language to LFs can
be one to many: the phonological/orthographic forms of a sentence can
be associated with more than one LF. Thus, 'every man loves a
woman' has been argued (e.g., May 1977) to involve two distinct
logical forms. It has also been argued (see May 1985) to involve one
that is multiply interpretable with constrained but not determined
quantifier scopes.
A standard, but controversial, assumption is that LFs are the input to
semantic theory, not the phonological/orthographic objects we hear and
see. (see May 1985). Thus, while LFs may not be ambiguous, the
sentences we actually use and assert often are. If this assumption
turns out to be false, then it will be a great deal more difficult to
locate the source of some ambiguities.
LFs can be represented as trees, and the terminal nodes of the
branches are taken from the lexicon. A lexicon is a repository of
lexical items, which need not look like words and they certainly need
not correspond to our intuitions about words. Thus, intuitions about a
word's modal profile suggest that it can undergo massive shifts
in its orthographic and phonetic properties. It is far less clear that
the lexemes retain their identity over shifts of phonological
properties. We should be a bit careful, then, about the relationship
between words and lexemes: a word may retain its identity while the
lexeme it is derived from may not constitute it over time.
Fortunately, issues of concerning the diachronic identity of words
won't concern us much here.
The LF driven picture of semantic interpretation is controversial for
many reasons: some people don't think that LFs are properly
thought of as inputs to anything, never mind semantic interpretation.
Culicover and Jackendoff (2005) argue for much less extensive
syntactic structures coupled with very messy mappings to semantic (or
'conceptual') structures. Others think that most of the
work done by LFs could be done by taking a notion of surface syntax
seriously, trading in syntactic structure for very complicated
semantic theories to account for the data. (Bittner 2007, Jacobson
1999). Thus, the description of some of the ambiguities as syntactic
or structural rather than semantic can be somewhat controversial.
However, everyone in the game needs something to serve as the input to
semantic interpretation and everyone needs some way to describe those
structures (if you don't, call me and let's talk about it...) so
hopefully similar points will hold in your preferred syntactic
framework. We will highlight some of these controversies where
necessary.
One more clarification: ambiguity is a property of either sentences or
perhaps the speech acts in which the sentences are used. But ambiguity
of a sentence or sentences uttered does not necessarily result in
any unclarity regarding what was expressed or meant by the speaker.
There is no guarantee that unambiguous utterances will result in full
univocal clear understanding either. In some syntactic contexts, the
ambiguity won't show up at all: 'I want to see you
duck' is a case in which the NP interpretation of
'duck' is simply unavailable (especially with no comma
after 'you'). In many cases our best theory predicts
an ambiguity in the sentence used, without predicting confusion over
how the utterance ought to be interpreted.
### 3.1 Lexical Ambiguity
The lexicon contains entries that are homophonous, or even co-spelled,
but differ in meanings and even syntactic categories.
'Duck' is both a verb and a noun as is
'cover'. 'Bat' is a noun with two different
meanings and a verb with at least one meaning. 'Kick the
bucket' is arguably ambiguous between one meaning involving
dying and one meaning involving application of foot to bucket.
This sort of ambiguity is often very easy to detect by simple
linguistic reflection, especially when the meanings are wildly
distinct such as in the case of 'bat'. It can be more
difficult, however, when the meanings are closely related. A classic
case is the short word 'in'. The meaning(s) of
'in', if it is ambiguous, seem to crucially involve a
general notion of containment, but at a more fine-grained level, the
types of containment can seem wildly distinct. One can be in therapy,
in Florida, in the Mafia, in the yearbook...but it seems like a
joke to say that one is in therapy and the Mafia.
The considerations suggest that 'in' is ambiguous, but
perhaps it is univocal with a very sense general meaning that involves
containment of an appropriate sort and different objects require
different sorts of appropriate containment. Telling between these two
possibilities is difficult. An even harder case of lexical ambiguity
involves the putative ambiguity in 'any' between the
reading as a universal quantifier and a 'free choice'
item. (see Dayal 2004)
A few points about lexical ambiguity should be kept in mind, so
I'll repeat them. First, a bookkeeping issue: should we relegate
lexical ambiguity to the lexicon (two non-identical entries for
ambiguous terms) or to semantic interpretation (one lexical entry, two
or more meanings)? We'll go with the first option (so the two meanings
of 'bank' correspond to two separate lexical items) but
nothing I know of forces this choice. Second, the word/lexical item
distinction may cause us some trouble. While 'holey' and
'holy' are homophonous, they are not co-spelled. Thus an
utterance of 'the temple is holey' is ambiguous between
two sentences, while an inscription in English is not. Sometimes
co-spelled words are distinct sounding, such as 'refuse'
which is distinct sounding (in my dialect at least) between
'ree-fuze' and 'reh-fuse'. Fortunately, we
have the relevant categories to describe these differences and we can
talk about ambiguity in sound or in notation (or in sign).
### 3.2 Syntactic Ambiguity
Syntactic ambiguity occurs when there are many LFs that correspond to
the same sentence - assuming we don't think of sentences as
distinct if their LFs are distinct. This may be the result of scope,
movement or binding, and the level at which the ambiguity is localized
can involve full sentences or phrases. Here are some examples of
purportedly syntactic ambiguities.
#### 3.2.1 Phrasal
A phrase can be ambiguous by corresponding to distinct syntactic
structures. The classic example:
>
> superfluous hair remover
>
can mean the same as 'hair remover that is superfluous' or
'remover of hair that is superfluous'. The ambiguity
results from the lack of representation of constituent structure in the English
sentence, since it is unclear if the noun 'hair remover'
is modified by 'superfluous' in its specifier or if the
'superfluous hair' is the specifier of the noun
'remover'. In current syntax, the phrase would be
associated with two different NPs.
Similarly, a phrase can be ambiguous between an adjunct and an
argument:
1. John floated the boat between the rocks.
'between the rocks' can modify the event of floating,
saying where it happened and thus acts as an adjunct. It can also act
as an argument of 'float', specifying where the resulting
location of the boat on account of the floating. It can also act as an
adjunct modifying 'the boat', helping to specify which
boat it is. All of these are readings of (1) and in each case we find
'between the rocks' playing very different roles. Assuming
these roles are dictated by their relations in the relevant LF, we get three very
different LFs that correspond to (1).
Thematic assignments can be similarly ambiguous at the level of LF
with deleted phrases:
2. The chicken is ready to eat.
(2) can mean that the chicken is ready to be fed or to be fed to
someone depending on the thematic assignment. In a popular semantic
framework, this is because 'the chicken' is assigned agent
on one reading and patient on another. Arguably, these assignments is
corresponds syntactic phenomenon assuming principles that align
thematic role and syntactic position (see Baker 1988, 1997; Williams
1994; and Grimshaw 1990) but the semantic point stands either way.
They result in a clear ambiguity that we may term 'thematic
ambiguity' for present purposes.
Multiple connectives present similar ambiguities. The following
ambiguity, for example, is borne directly out of failure to tell which
connective has widest scope:
3. He got drunk and fired or divorced.
We teach our students in propositional logic to disambiguate these
with brackets but we are not so lucky when it comes to the
orthographic and phonetic groupings in natural language.
An interesting case is the semantics of modals. At least some modal
auxiliaries and adverbs seem to allow for distinct senses such as
metaphysical, deontic, doxastic and perhaps practical. Consider
4. John ought to be at home by now.
(4) can mean that John's presence at home is, given everything
we know, guaranteed. It might mean that, though we have no idea where
he is, he is under the obligation to be at home. Similarly:
5. The coin might come up heads.
(5) means that there is an open metaphysical possibility in which the
coin comes up heads. It also means that everything we know
doesn't tell us that the coin won't come up heads. On the
latter reading, for example, we can utter (5) truly even if we know
that the coin is weighted, but we aren't sure in which way.
Similarly:
6. You must eat a piece of cake.
(6) can express a moral imperative: you are obliged morally to eat a
piece of cake. It can express a practical obligation: given your
tastes you'd be remiss if you didn't eat a piece. Though
this would rarely make sense, (6) can suggest a doxastic certainty:
everything we know entails that you won't fail to eat the
cake.
The multiplicity of interpretation in these modals is pretty clear.
One particularly controversial case involves imperative vs epistemic
interpretations of 'must' as in 'He must be
here'. However, whether or not it is a lexical or structural
ambiguity (or best treated as a case of univocality with indexicality)
is a source of some controversy (see Drubig 2001). In the semantics
literature, views on which modalities are treated indexically rather
than as cases of ambiguity pretty much dominate all contemporary
thinking, as we shall see in section 6.3.
#### 3.2.1 Quantifier and Operator Scope
Finally, and of much interest to philosophers and logicians, there are
scopal ambiguities involving operators and quantifiers. For example:
7. Every woman squeezed a man.
(7) can express
8. [[?]*x*:W*x*][[?]*y*:M*y*](*x*
squeezed *y*)
(In regimented English: For every womani there is at least
one man that shei squeezed.)
Or
9. [[?]*y*:M*y*][[?]*x*:W*x*](*x*
squeezed *y*)
(In regimented English: There is at least one mani who is
such that every womanj squeezed himi.)
These ambiguities can be very difficult to hear in some cases. For
example:
10. Someone is in a car accident every 10 seconds.
No one is tempted to hear the reading of (10) that involves an unlucky
driver who is constantly in car accidents. Thus, our best theory may
determine an ambiguity that is never the intended meaning of an
utterance of the ambiguous sentence. If we were able to revive people
frequently and very quickly and immediately get them into cars , we would presumably start to consider the currently
pragmatically unavailable reading of (10) more seriously.
Operators have scopal interactions with quantifiers as well. The
semantics of modal auxiliaries, adverbs, temporal modifiers and tense
are the subject of much concern but one thing is clear: they have
interactive effects.
Modal and temporal fallacies abound if we aren't careful about
scope:
(P1)
John is a bachelor.
(P2)
All bachelors are necessarily unmarried.
(C)
Therefore John is necessarily unmarried.
If we allow 'necessarily' to have 'bachelors'
etc. within its scope, P2 is true but the conclusion is not entailed.
If the modal is interpreted narrowly, the conclusion follows but P2 is
false and so is the conclusion.
There is a great deal of controversy over how scope is to be handled.
Orthodoxy suggests movement of quantifiers at LF where quantifier
scope is made explicit and unambiguous. May (1985) is often cited as
the canonical source for this - but it is worth noting that in
that work May treats some LFs as underdetermining some semantic scopal
relations. The situation is less clear with temporal and modal (and
other) operators: many semantic theories treat tense and temporal
adverbs as quantifiers, while some treat modal expression in this
manner. Other treat them as the operators or adverbs they appear to
be. One respectable semantic tradition sees (P2) as ambiguous, for
example, between:
11. [[?]*w*][[?]*x*:Bachelor(*w*,*x*)](Unmarried(*x*,*w*))
(In regimented English: Every world is such that every bachelor at
that world is unmarried at that world.)
And
12. [[?]*x*:Bachelor(*w*,*x*)][[?]*w*'](Unmarried
(*x*,*w*'))
(In regimented English: Every bachelor at a world is such that at
every world he is a bachelor.)
On the first reading, the world-quantifier takes wide scope. On the
second, the bachelor-quantifier takes wide scope and the world
variable is unbound. On the operator treatment, we dispose of
quantification over worlds and let the predicates be interpreted
relative to the operators, perhaps as a matter of movement, perhaps by
other semantic means.
Negation has similarly been argued to present interesting scope
ambiguities (see Russell (1905) for an early example of a
philosophical use of this type of ambiguity). The following, according
to Russell, is ambiguous:
13. The present king of France is not bald.
As is:
14. All that glitters is not gold.
Russell claims that (13) and (14) are ambiguous between a reading on which negation that scopes over
the sentence as a whole and one reading on which it scopes under the determiner
phrase and over the predicate (though see Strawson (1950) See also Neale (1990)).
Long story short, of great interest to philosophers are these sorts of
scope worries as many an argument has been accused of looking
convincing because of a scope ambiguity (the causal argument for
God's existence, the ontological argument). The development of
logics capable of handling multiple quantification was an achievement
in part because they could sort out just this sort of linguistic
phenomenon.
One final note: even in the domain of scopal ambiguities, there are
controversies about whether to treat (some of) these apparent ambiguities as
ambiguities. Pietroski and Hornstein (2002) argue that many of these
cases aren't ambiguities at all and prefer a pragmatic
explanation of the multiple readings.
#### 3.2.2 Pronouns
Bound and unbound readings of pronouns give rise to similar problems,
though whether this is a semantic, syntactic or pragmatic ambiguity
has been the source of heated debate. If I tell you 'everyone
loves his mother', the sentence may be interpreted with
'his' being co-indexed with 'everyone' and
yielding different mothers (potentially) for different values of
'everyone' or it could be interpreted deictically saying
that everyone loves that [appropriate demonstration] guy's
mother. Static semantics usually treats the distinction between bound
and free pronouns as a fundamental ambiguity; dynamic semantics
relegates the distinction to an ambiguity in variable choice (see Heim
1982, 1983, and Kamp 1981).
The phenomenon is subject to syntactic constraints. We have a good
idea of the conditions under which we can fail to get bound readings,
as characterized by binding theory. Thus, we know that binding is
impossible in cross-over cases and cases where pronouns are 'too
close' to their binder ((15) is a case of 'weak
crossover', (16) is a case of 'strong crossover' and
(17) is a violation of principle B of binding theory):
15. ?His1 mother loves John1.
16. \*He1 loves John1.
17. \*John1 loves him1.
However, the impossibility of these readings demonstrates constraints
on interpretation. It doesn't resolve the ambiguity in
sentences where violations of binding theory do not occur.
### 3.3 Pragmatic Ambiguity
Pragmatics has been claimed to be the study of many different things;
but for our purposes we can focus on two: speech acts and truth conditional pragmatics.
#### 3.3.1 Speech Acts
Speech act theory is complicated and it is not easy to offer a neutral
account of the typology or interpretation of speech acts. But,
intuitively, an utterance (locutionary act) of the sentence 'The
cops are coming' can be an assertion, a warning, or an
expression of relief. 'I'm sorry you were raised so
badly' can be an assertion or an apology. 'You want to
cook dinner' can function as a request or as an
assertion. 'Can you pick me up later?' can function as a
request or a question or both. And these are just examples of speech
acts that are conventionally tied to these sentence forms. Many, if
not all, sentences can be used in multiple ways.
Interestingly, these ambiguities are not always signaled by the
content of the sentence. For example the following differ in their
potential for use in speech acts though they seem to express similar
content:
18. Can you pass the salt?
19. Are you able to pass the salt?
Some creativity may allow (19) to function as a request but it is very
difficult compared to (18). As such, some theorists have been
interested in trying to determine whether sentence types constrain the
speech act potential of utterances of them (see Murray and Starr
(2018) for an overview).
#### 3.3.2 Pragmatic Ambiguity
An interesting case of ubiquitous potential ambiguity is the notion, suggested by Donnellan (1966), that
the apparent referential use of some sentences with definite
descriptions. Donnellan writes:
>
> It does not seem possible to say categorically of a definite
> description in a particular sentence that it is a referring expression
> (of course, one could say this if he meant that it might be used to
> refer). In general, whether or not a definite description is used
> referentially or attributively is a function of the speaker's
> intentions in a particular case. ... Nor does it seem at all
> attractive to suppose an ambiguity in the meaning of the words; it
> does not appear to be semantically ambiguous. (Perhaps we could say
> that the sentence is pragmatically ambiguous ....) (Donnellan, p.
> 297)
>
Philosophers puzzled a great deal over the import of a
'pragmatic' ambiguity that wasn't a speech act
ambiguity or perhaps an ambiguity in what a speaker implies by
uttering a sentence. Kripke (1977) and Searle (1979: p. 150 fn. 3)
claim that pragmatic ambiguity is conceptually confused - either
the sentence bears two interpretations and there is a vanilla
ambiguity or the sentence used in univocal but the speaker is using it
to get across a different or additional piece of information. But the
intuition that perhaps pragmatics has a great role to play in
interpretation than merely an account of inferences licensed by the
needs of conversational coherence has led philosophers to consider
what ambiguity that resides in the interface of semantics and
pragmatics might look like (see Recanati (2010).
#### 3.3.3 Presuppositional Ambiguity
Ambiguity can be found at the level of presupposition, terms of
identifying the presupposition triggered by a sentence/utterance, as
well. The case of 'too' is instructive. It has long been
observed that the word 'too' triggers presuppositions, as
in:
20. Maria solved the problem too.
It's natural on first read to think that (20) carries the
presupposition that someone else solved the problem. But that need not
be the case: it may presuppose that Maria solved the problem as well
as having done something else, as in:
21. Maria came up with the problem. Maria solved the problem too.
Kent Bach (1982) explores the intriguing case of:
22. I love you too.
This can mean (at least) one of four distinct things:
23. I love you (just like you love me)
24. I love you (just like someone else does)
25. I love you (and I love someone else)
26. I love you (as well as bearing some other relationship (i.e.
admiring) to you)
If none of these are true, 'I love you too' is clearly
infelicitous.
### 3.4 Other Interesting Cases
#### 3.4.1 *Pros Hen* Ambiguity
Aristotle noticed in Metaphysics G2 that some words are related
in meaning but subtly distinct in what they imply. He thought that
'being' was like this and he illustrates his point with
examples such as 'health':
>
>
> There are many senses in which a thing may be said to
> 'be', but all that 'is' is related to one
> central point, one definite kind of thing, and is not said to
> 'be' by a mere ambiguity. Everything which is healthy is
> related to health, one thing in the sense that it preserves health,
> another in the sense that it produces it, another in the sense that it
> is a symptom of health, another because it is capable of it.
> (Metaphysics G2)
>
>
>
The idea here is that there are words like 'health' (and,
if Aristotle is right, 'being') that are ambiguous between
a 'primary' sense of 'healthy' is that which
applies to things that can enjoy health, such as people, dogs, plants,
and perhaps corporations but also a 'secondary' sense that
involves promoting or signaling the presence of health in the primary
sense. For example, your diet may be healthy not because it is
failing to suffer from a disease but because it promotes your
health. Your doctor may tell you that you have healthy urine on
account of it being a positive indication of your health. This
ambiguity is special in that the derivative senses of
'health' are all defined in terms of the more primary
sense of 'health'. The linguistic context doesn't always
settle which sense of is at play: 'dogs are healthy pets'
can both mean that dogs tend to be themselves healthy and that dogs
tend to promote health in their owners.
#### 3.4.2 Collective-Distributive Ambiguity
Another interesting ambiguity is the collective-distributive ambiguity that
occurs in the case of some predicates with certain quantificational or
conjunctive antecedents. Consider:
27. The politicians lifted the piano.
28. Sam and Jess brokered deals.
(27) enjoys a collective reading on which the piano lifting is true of
the politicians collectively but not true of any particular politician
and a similar ambiguity is present in (28). They also have
distributive readings involving as many liftings of the piano as there
were politicians and at least two different deal brokerings
respectively. See section (4.1) for relevant considerations.
#### 3.4.3 Ellipsis and Complement Ambiguity
An interesting case of ambiguity comes from ellipsis. The following is
clearly ambiguous:
29. John loves his mother and Bill does too.
We've already discussed the bound/unbound ambiguity inherent in
'John loves his mother'. Consider the bound reading of the
first sentence. Now, on that reading, there are still two
interpretations of the second sentence to deal with: one on which Bill
loves John's mother and one on which Bill loves his own. This
ambiguity has been given the regrettable name 'strict-sloppy
identity' and seems to be the result of what 'does
too' is short form for. There is a long-standing debate over
whether the mechanism is primarily one of copying over at LF (Fiengo
and May 1994), the result of expressing a lambda-abstracted predicate
(Sag, 1976; Williams, 1977) or the result of centering on a discourse
referent (see Hardt and Stone 1997). Ambiguities can arise from words that
aren't written or said as well as from ones that are.
Similar ambiguities come up in cases such as:
30. Sam loves Jess more than Jason.
(30) can mean either that Sam loves Jess more than he loves Jason or
that Sam loves Jess more than Jason loves Jess. This ambiguity arises
from phrasal and clausal comparatives: the phrasal comparative of
'more than' takes a noun phrase and relates Jess and Jason
(effectively saying that the degree to which Sam loves Jess exceeds
the degree to which he loves Jason). On the other hand, one can read
(30) as involving ellipsis in which 'loves Jess' is
stripped from the complement of Jason and left *sotto
voce*.
#### 3.4.4 Flexible Types
Montague (Montague 1973) held to a policy of holding fixed the
semantic type of lexical items by their category, so that names,
falling in the same category as quantifier phrases, were assigned the
same type as quantifier phrases. Otherwise, he reasoned, there would
be a type mismatch when we conjoined names and quantifier phrases.
Others, however, have been content to posit ambiguities in type for
one and the same expression. Thus, we may posit that
'John', when the word occurs alone, is of type
<*e*> (entity referring) but when conjoined with
'every man', it is of type
<<*e*,*t*> ,*t*> (a function
from functions to truth values) just like quantifier phrases. The
semantics is carefully rigged so as not to make a truth-conditional
difference; but there is ambiguity nonetheless in what names literally
express.
There are alternatives. We could retain the univocality of names and
treat 'and' as flexible in type depending on its
arguments. We could also treat 'and' as a type-shifter.
Similar considerations hold for verb phrases. Whether or not there is
an ambiguity present in such cases is likely to be determined by very
high level considerations, not by competent speakers ability to detect
a difference in intuitive meaning.
#### 3.4.5 Generic vs. Non-Generic Readings
Some terms are ambiguous between a generic and non-generic reading,
and the sentences they play into are similarly ambiguous between the
two readings. For example:
31. Dinosaurs ate kelp. (Carlson 1982: p. 163)
(31) is clearly ambiguous between a generic reading (equivalent
roughly to 'dinosaurs were kelp-eaters') and a
non-generic, episodic reading (equivalent to 'there were some
dinosaurs that ate some kelp'). The ambiguity can be located
with certain predicates as well:
32. John ate breakfast with a gold fork.
The habitual reading (describing how John favored utensil for eating
breakfast) vs. the episodic reading (describing a particular breakfast
John ate) is evident in (32).
#### 3.4.6 Inchoative Alternations
The following sentences are obviously related:
33. I broke the vase.
34. The vase broke.
'Broke' and other words like it (e.g.,
'boiled') have double lives as transitive and intransitive
verbs. This could encourage one to posit an ambiguity (or a polysemy)
since the putative lexical entries are closely related. However, that
would be awfully quick: another approach is to take words like
'broke' as playing two distinct syntactic roles
univocally, where the root 'broke' is a monadic predicate
of events. Another is to take 'broke' to be univocal and
allow the object to move into subject position. Whether or not the
term is ambiguous lexically depends a great deal on which theory of
the inchoative turns out to be right.
#### 3.4.7 Granularity
Yet another systematic (seeming) ambiguity corresponds roughly
to the type-token distinction that philosophers cherish, though it is
more general. Philosophers have noticed that (35) is ambiguous between
a type and a token reading:
35. I paid for the same car.
(35) can express a complaint that a car was paid for twice or the
claim that I now own a car that is like yours. How closely they have
to correspond in similarity is an open question. But interestingly,
the two senses cannot always be accessed felicitously:
36. ?I skidded on ice and hit the same car.
One cannot read (36) as saying, say, that my Honda hit another Honda.
It's tempting to think that 'same' is the culprit,
allowing for sameness across different levels of grain from the very
fine to the very coarse. The phenomenon is quite wide-spread, however
(See Hobbs 1985).
#### 3.4.8 Count/Mass Nouns
Another ambiguity, though perhaps best thought
of as polysemy due to the similarity of the meanings, concerns count
nouns like '(one) chicken' and mass nouns like, say, '(a lot of)
chicken'. David Lewis used the idea of a universal grinder (reported
by Pelletier in his (1975)) to suggest that we can make sense of mass
uses of substantive count nouns - apply the imaginary grinder to,
say, three guitars and you can then make sense of:
37. There was guitar all over the floor.
The possibility of grinding out mass nouns with the universal grinder
is limited to predicates that refer to things we can imagine being
grindable in their extensions - it's hard to see how one
gets a mass interpretation of 'melody' by grinding. The
applicability of the universal grinder, moreover, is not
linguistically universal in its ability to imbue one and the same noun
with a mass interpretation. The count/mass distinction concerns, in
part, whether nouns supply a criterion for counting (explaining why
count nouns play well with numerical determiners). Thus, continuing
our example of ground guitars, notice that (38) doesn't entail
and isn't entailed by (39):
38. John picked up more guitars than Sarah.
39. John picked up more guitar than Sarah.
This doesn't hold for, say 'footwear' and
'shoes' where owing more shoes entails owning more
footwear and vice versa. See Doetjes (2011) for discussion.
#### 3.4.9 Discourse Relations
Much recent work has gone into trying to give informative
explanations of the oddity of discourses such as:
40. ?Raskolnikov killed Alyona. The tacos at Lalos are delicious.
A standard Gricean response to this oddity is that (40) is odd
because the second sentence fails to be relevant to the first, and
thus uncooperative (unless the speaker wants to signal a hidden
connection between the tacos and the murder). This seems like a
promising start but the injunction to be relevant fails to provide
enough theoretical options to explain other transitions between
sentences. For example (due to Hobbs 1979):
41. Peter picked the lock. He learned how from Jason.
42. Peter picked the lock and he learned how from Jason.
An utterance (41) strongly conveys the information that Jason's
teaching Peter is what explains the lock picking. No such inference
seems available in (42), in which the learning to lock pick seems
(strangely) to temporally follow the lock picking. It's difficult to
see how the period vs. 'and' distinction could be responsible for
this. Moreover, much empirical work has been done to show that the
manner in which we interpret sentences as connected in a discourse
effects how we resolve the reference of anaphora. For example (Smyth
(1994)):
43. Phil tickled Stanley, and Liz poked him.
Clearly, the 'him' in (43) can be interpreted as Phil
or Stanley. But, crucially, how you interpret 'him' will
depend on how you connect the two sentences. On the one hand, the
interpretation of 'him' as referring to Phil goes hand in
hand with a causal relation - its was the tickling that caused
the poking (known as a *result* relation. Interpreting
'him' as referring to Stanley suggests goes hand in hand
with a *parallel* relation. Of course the inference is defeasible
- one can always break the connection between discourse relation
and pronoun resolution in a manner that looks much like cancellation
for Griceans ('...Liz poked him, I mean, Phil, for
unrelated reasons'). But the point is that the search for
discourse relations that help settle pronominal reference is good
evidence that the discourse relations are part of your linguistic
knowledge, not just a reflect of cooperative conversation and maxim
following or flaunting. The study of discourse relations has
flourished into a large literature in the last 20 years but the
relevant point for us is that it looks like (43) is ambiguous as a
discourse. This type of ambiguity is fairly novel and much work is
still needed to get clear on the number and nature of possible
relations that provide the possible resolutions of ambiguities like
(41).
## 4. Detecting Ambiguity
Now that we have separated types of ambiguity, we may reasonably ask
how we tell when a term or phrase contains an ambiguity. The answer
may be disappointing - there are tests and considerations but no
firm answers and probably a lot depends on what the 'best
theories' in linguistics etc. end up looking like. Nevertheless,
we can make some progress. The canonical source for these tests is
Zwicky and Sadock's 'Ambiguity Tests and How to Fail
Them' (1975).
These tests generally depend on the presence or lack of
interpretations and on judgments regarding the ridiculousness of
interpretation (the absurdity of the meaning is known as
*zeugma* - though it should probably be known as syllepsis). These
judgments can be difficult to make, especially in tricky philosophical
cases, so we must treat the results of the tests with care.
### 4.1 Conjunction Reduction
A standard test for ambiguity is to take two sentences that contain
the purportedly ambiguous term and conjoin them by using the term only
once in contexts where both meanings are encouraged. For example,
'light' is a predicate that can enjoy the same meaning as
either 'not dark' or 'not heavy'.
44. The colours are light.
45. The feathers are light.
The following, however, seems to be zeugmatic:
46. ?The colours and the feathers are light.
The reduced sentence is zeugmatic for obvious reasons. This is
evidence for ambiguity (or polysemy) in 'light'. On the
other hand, 'exist', which has been claimed to be
ambiguous, seems not to display such zeugmatic effects:
47. Toronto exists.
48. Numbers exist.
49. Triadic relations exist.
50. Toronto and numbers and triadic relations exist.
The test is limited in one way. If a term can be ambiguous but in a
way so subtle that competent speakers may miss it, then the zeugma might not be
noticeable. Given that these tests try to draw on linguistic judgments
to detect ambiguity, it's not clear how to proceed when there is
a case of disagreement over the presence of zeugma.
We can use the test in cases in which one wouldn't necessarily
expect zeugma, but merely lack of multiple interpretations. For
example:
51. Han and Chewbacca used superfluous hair removers.
(51) doesn't allow a reading on which Han used a hair remover
that was superfluous and Chewbacca used a remover of superfluous hair.
If multiple interpretations are impossible, there is evidence of
ambiguity. This is to be expected since the point of conjunction
reduction is to 'freeze' the syntactic structure and in
ambiguous cases, the effect is achieved.
As mentioned above, conjunction reduction has been used to argue that
collective-distributive ambiguities are due to an ambiguity in the
subject phrase. Consider:
52. John and Jane moved a piano.
One might think that the readings are generated by an ambiguity in
'and': sometimes it acts as a sentential operator and
sometimes as a term-forming operator that makes two names into a
single term for predication. However, notice that there are some
predicates that can only be (sensibly) interpreted collectively, such
as 'met':
53. John and Jane met for lunch.
In this case, there is no sense to be made of 'John met for
lunch and Jane met for lunch' and so the sentential conjunction
reading is not available. Using conjunction reduction on (52) and (53)
we get:
54. John and Jane moved a piano and met for lunch.
(54) has a reading on which 'moved the piano' is
interpreted distributively (two liftings) and 'met' is
read collectively. The felicity of the conjunction reduced (54)
suggests that the ambiguity isn't the result of an ambiguity in
conjunction. (see Schein (2006), McKay (2006)). We can try to use
the test in an extended manner on full sentences if we embed them
under 'says that' or perhaps 'believes that':
'John and Adam believe that Sarah bought a superfluous hair
remover' is infelicitous if the unconjoined sentences involve
different interpretations of 'superfluous hair
remover'.
The test has certain weaknesses. In actual utterances, intonation can
be used to indicate an assertion or an each question ('Ben
wanted to eat that?) conjoined with 'Ben wanted to eat
that' yields an infelicity even if the demonstrative has the
same value on both occasions - though we may try to fix things up
by demanding that the test be run using common intonation (at least in
spoken uses of the test!). On that note, the test will judge
demonstrative and indexicals to be ambiguous since they are famously
not generally conjunction reducible. Similar worries concern polysemy and ambiguity, which conjunction reduction may be overly sensitive to (See Viebahn (2016) for relevant considerations).
### 4.2 Ellipsis
Ellipsis tests work in a manner similar to conjunction reduction
tests. For example:
55. I saw his duck and swallow under the table and I saw hers too.
(Zwicky and Sadock 1975)
(55) can mean that I saw their birds under the table or that I saw
their activities of ducking and swallowing but it can't mean
that I saw one's birds and the other's activities. Similar
features hold for structural ambiguities:
56. I'm happy that every man met two women and Jim is too.
It isn't possible to interpret (56) as having 'every
man' with wide scope in one but narrow in the other. This
suggests a real ambiguity in the scope of the two quantifiers. This
test has led people some philosophers to surprising results. For
example, Atlas (1989) argues that the acceptability of the following
suggest that negation does not interact scopally with descriptions in
the ways we have come to expect:
57. John thinks that the King of France is not bald and Bob thinks so
too.
The purported availability of both readings suggests that sentences
with negation(s) and descriptions are sense-general rather than
ambiguous, contradicting many standard assumptions about the
available truth conditions these structures should make available. Alternatively, it may lead us to
think that there weren't as many readings as we initially
thought there were (or that we have the wrong theory of
descriptions).
### 4.3 Contradiction Tests
Another way to test for ambiguity is to test for lack of contradiction
in sentences that look to be contradictory. For example, say someone
argued that 'aunt' was ambiguous on account of not
specifying maternal from paternal aunt. If that was the case, we would
expect that we can access the two distinct senses of
'aunt' just as we can for 'bank'. However,
compare:
58. That bank isn't a bank.
59. \*She is an aunt but she isn't an aunt.
Both sentences are rather awkward but only one is doomed to
life as a contradiction. This is good evidence that 'aunt' is
unspecified with respect to which side of the family she comes from,
but not ambiguous. The tests can be used for most of the other types
of ambiguity:
60. My superfluous hair remover is not a superfluous hair remover; (I
need it!)
61. The goose is ready to eat but it's not ready to eat; (we
need to cook it first.)
(It helps to provide a paraphrase afterwards to bring out the distinct
senses). The tests can be used to detect lexical, structural and
thematic ambiguity.
### 4.4 Definitional Tests
Aristotle offers a test for ambiguity: try to construct a definition
that encompasses both meanings and posit an ambiguity only if you
fail. The notion of definition here has to be taken as a heavy-weight
notion: 'bank' is ambiguous even though you can
'define' it as 'financial institution or river
side'. However, we can get a reasonable grip on what Aristotle
had in mind. 'Uncle' is not ambiguous because it has a
single definition that covers both: *x* is an uncle iff
*x* is the brother of *y* and *y* has a
child.
The test depends partly on how strict we are about what counts as a
definition. And on the assumption that there are interesting
definitions to be had (see Fodor 1998).
### 4.5 Checking the Lexicon of Other Languages
Kripke, in his famous attack on Donnellan, suggests a few tests for
ambiguity that are more conceptual in nature. In particular, he makes
the following intriguing suggestion:
>
>
> "Bank" is ambiguous; we would expect the ambiguity to be
> disambiguated by separate and unrelated words in some other languages.
> Why should the two separate senses be reproduced in languages
> unrelated to English? First, then, we can consult our linguistic
> intuitions, independently of any empirical investigation. Would we be
> surprised to find languages that used two separate words for the two
> alleged senses of a given word? If so, then, to that extent our
> linguistic intuitions are really intuitions of a unitary concept,
> rather than of a word that expresses two distinct and unrelated
> senses. Second, we can ask empirically whether languages are in fact
> found that contain distinct words expressing the allegedly distinct
> senses. If no such language is found, once again this is evidence that
> a unitary account of the word or phrase in question should be sought.
> (Kripke 1977: p. 268)
>
>
>
In other words, since lexical ambiguity should involve something like
accidental homophony, one would expect that other languages would
lexicalize these meanings differently. Thus, it would not surprise one
to find out that the two meanings of 'bat' were expressed
by two different words in other languages. It may well surprise one to
find out that every action verb was lexicalized as two different
verbs, one for a reading on which the action was done intentionally,
one on which it wasn't in some other language.
One may worry about this test, especially with respect to its ability to
differentiating sense generality from ambiguity. It would not be
surprising to find out that other languages lexicalize
'uncle' in two different words (in Croatian, there is no
one word translation of 'uncle': 'stric' means
brother of one's father and 'ujak' means an uncle
from the mother's side). Nonetheless, there is no reason to
think that 'uncle' is ambiguous in English. Why
wouldn't language users create words to designate the specific
meanings that are left sense-general in a different language?
### 4.6 Problems for the Tests
#### 4.6.1 Privative Opposites
Zwicky and Sadock (1975) argue that sometimes the two (or more)
putative meanings of a word are related by overlapping except with
respect to one or more features. The Random House Dictionary, for
example, gives (amongst many others) the following two definitions for
'dog':
2. any carnivore of the dog family Canidae, having prominent canine
teeth and, in the wild state, a long and slender muzzle, a
deep-chested muscular body, a bushy tail, and large, erect ears.
Compare canid.
3. the male of such an animal.
Ignoring for now whether or not dictionaries manage to report
analyticities (is having a bushy tail really an analytic necessary
condition for being a dog?), it looks like sense (ii) and (iii) differ
merely by specification of gender, and so if this makes for ambiguity,
it may well be hard to test for. Similarly for verbs that allow a
factive and non-factive reading such as 'report' where the
factive reading entails the non-factive. If I say 'the police
reported that the criminal was apprehended but the police didn't
report that the criminal was apprehended' there is at least one
reading that is anomalous, but largely out of contradiction engendered
by entailment rather than univocality: it takes subtle intuitions to
train one's ear to hear ambiguities when the meanings are
largely overlapping. As mentioned above, Pietroski and Hornstein
(2002) make a similar point regarding syntactic ambiguities. Noting
that the two putative readings of 'every man loves a
woman' are such that the wide scope 'a woman'
reading entails the narrow, they ask whether or not we should be
countenancing a structural ambiguity or chalking up the two
'readings' to confusion over the specific and general
case. If these sorts of factors can interfere, we will indeed have to
apply our tests gingerly.
#### 4.6.2 The Inconsistency of Zeugma
A problem for the conjunction reduction test involves the
context-sensitivity of zeugma. As noted by Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
(following Cruse 1986), the following two are different in terms of
zeugma:
62. ?Judy's dissertation is thought provoking and yellowed with
age.
63. Judy's dissertation is still thought provoking although
yellowed with age.
Similarly, from the literature on generics:
64. Bees thrive in warm environments and hence are swarming my
porch.
These cases looks like a problem for the conjunction reduction test,
depending on how one thinks we should treat the ambiguity in generics.
One might think that this provides evidence against ambiguity in bare
plurals.
### 4.7 Contextual Resolution and Degree of Zeugma
As we suggested above, context-sensitivity, vagueness and indexicality
are frequently thought to be different phenomena than ambiguity,
requiring a different treatment than lexical proliferation or
differences in structure. However, in context, it can be pretty easy
to make them pass some of the tests for ambiguity. For example,
consider James, who wants to meet a man who is is tall for a
philosopher, and Jane who wants to meet a man who is tall for a
horse jockey (who tend to be a fair bit shorter on average). Let's
conjunction reduce and see what happens:
65. ?James and Jane want to meet a tall man.
Admittedly, (65) strikes me as meriting a '?' rather than
a '#', but I am unwilling to let it escape
unmarked. Let's try another case. Consider, James speaking to
Jill and disagreeing over the relevant height required to be tall:
66. ?That mani is tall but hei's not
tall.
It's possible, I think, to get a non-contradictory reading of
(66). But it requires, to my ear, adding a good helping of
focal stress on the second 'tall'. Of course, putting
focal stress on a word has semantic effects of its own. So we
don't have clear counter-examples to the tests here. But we do have
some evidence that running the tests requires controlling for
variables.
Similarly, speaker's reference and semantic reference
distinctions mentioned above can interfere with the proper operation
of the tests. Let's consider a variant on Kripke's famous
case. We see someone who looks like Smith (but is Jones) raking the
leaves and someone else sees Smith (the actual Smith) raking leaves.
Can we hear the following as non-zeugmatic?
67. We saw Smith raking the leaves and he did too.
In context, this sounds awfully bad to me. It doesn't seem,
however, that the word 'Smith' is ambiguous in sometimes
referring to Jones, sometimes Smith. The utterance of the word 'Smith'
however, may well be used with referential intentions that lead to
utterance ambiguity.
The bottom line is that in clear cases, the tests work great. In
controversial cases, one must be very careful and run many of them and
hope for the best; it will sometimes involve sifting through degrees
of zeugma rather than triumphantly producing an indisputable
result.
### 4.8 Metaphor and Non-Literal Usage
Metaphor and non-literal usage can also confound the tests. For
example:
68. #We saw Zoe down in the dumps and her therapist did
too.
69. #Life and the 401 are highways.
The metaphors aren't very good and (68) and (69) are clearly
zeugmatic. Given how many parts of speech can be used metaphorically,
slavish obedience to the test would postulate massive and
unconstrained ambiguity in natural language. (See Camp 2006) The
natural answer is to restrict the use of the test to cases in which
the words are used literally; but of course the tests are supposed to
help us decide when we have literal, semantic difference and when we
don't. To add to the complication, metaphors that are used in
similar manners over time tend to become 'dead'
metaphors - literally ambiguities that took a causal path through
metaphor. 'Deadline' is a pretty clear case of a metaphor
that has died. Since the passing of the non-literal into the
standardized literal is not exactly a transition whose time of
occurrence is obvious, it will be difficult in some cases to tell what
has been lexicalized as a different meaning and what has not (think,
again, of 'deadline' as a case, which once meant a line
the crossing of which would result in your death. Think of that next
time you are late with a paper...)
## 5. Philosophical Issues
There are a few main philosophical issues involved in ambiguity.
### 5.1 Validity
Many arguments look persuasive but fail on closer inspection on
account of structural and/or lexical ambiguity. For example,
consider:
70. Babe Ruth owned a bat.
71. Bats have wings.
72. Babe Ruth owned something with wings.
The argument *looks* valid and the premises seem true, on at
least one reading, but the conclusion doesn't follow.
If logic is to be free of issues that would complicate telling valid
from non-valid arguments by form, detecting ambiguity is essential to
logical representation of natural language arguments. Frege noted this
to be the main defect of natural language and a real obstacle to
trying to formalize it (as opposed to just using the formal language
without translation from natural language). We typically are more
optimistic on this point than Frege; but the long history of dispute
over such issues as the pragmatic-semantics distinction and skepticism
over the viability of semantic theory in general stand as
challenges.
### 5.2 Basic Semantic Methodology
Ambiguity has been used methodologically as a way to shield a theory
from counter-example. Kripke laments this tendency explicitly:
>
>
> It is very much the lazy man's approach in philosophy to posit
> ambiguities when in trouble. If we face a putative counterexample to
> our favorite philosophical thesis, it is always open to us to protest
> that some key term is being used in a special sense, different from
> its use in the thesis. We may be right, but the ease of the move
> should counsel a policy of caution: Do not posit an ambiguity unless
> you are really forced to, unless there are really compelling
> theoretical or intuitive grounds to suppose that an ambiguity really
> is present.(Kripke 1977, p.268)
>
>
>
Grice (1975) counsels a methodological principle: 'Senses are
not to be multiplied beyond necessity'.
This general moral seems right. It is worryingly easy to deflect a
counter-example or to explain an intuition by claiming differences in
meaning. On the other hand, in philosophical discourse, distinctions
that are quite fine can be made that may well be missed by normal
users of the language who are inclined to miss
differences in meaning that are slight. One thus often will be tempted
to posit ambiguity as a way to reconcile differences between two
plausible hypotheses about the meanings of words and phrases
('evidence' has both an internal sense and an external
sense, 'right action' has both a utilitarian sense and a
deontic sense...) A neat case of this is Gilbert Ryle's
contention that 'exists' is ambiguous mentioned above:
>
>
> ...two different senses of 'exist', somewhat as
> 'rising' has different senses in 'the tide is
> rising', 'hopes are rising', and 'the average
> age of death is rising'. A man would be thought to be making a
> poor joke who said that three things are now rising, namely the tide,
> hopes and the average age of death. It would be just as good or bad a
> joke to say that there exist prime numbers and Wednesdays and public
> opinions and navies; or that there exist both minds and bodies. (Ryle
> 1949, p. 23)
>
>
>
Ryle here makes use of the conjunction reduction test mentioned above
and has been the target of much scorn for his intuitions on this
matter. This may just go to show how hard it is to (dis)prove a claim
to ambiguity using the tests.
### 5.3 The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction
One long-standing issue about ambiguity is that it assumes a
difference between something like sense and reference. While some
words can clearly be used to refer to things that are wildly different
in ontic category, that has not been taken to be sufficient for a
claim to ambiguity. In theory, a phrase could be ambiguous and yet
differ not at all in reference: imagine a term *t* that was
ambiguous between two meanings, but it turned out as highly surprising
essential condition that things that were *t* in the first
sense were also *t* in the second sense - while this seems
unlikely to happen, it is by no means conceptually impossible.
However, the 20th century saw a vicious and sometimes relentless
attack on the distinction between facts about meaning and facts about
reference (see the entry on the
analytic/synthetic distinction).
If the line between these two is blurry, there will very
likely be cases in which the line between ambiguity and
sense-generality is blurry as well (and not just epistemologically).
Let's indulge in some possible-world anthropology on a group
that uses a term, 'gavagai' (Quine 1960). Furthermore, I
stipulate (perhaps counter-possibly) that the world is a
four-dimensional world with respect to the referent of
'gavagai' so if they refer at all with
'gavagai', they refer to something made up of stages. Now
we sit down to write the lexicon of the world's inhabitants and
we come to 'gavagai'. We write:
>
>
> 'Gavagai' (ga-vuh-guy): (N, sing.):
>
>
>
It's not easy to know what to write down for this entry as
it's not obvious what counts as semantic content for the word
and what counts as information about the referent of the word. For
example, say they clearly think that the referent of
'gavagai' is something that does not have temporal parts.
Does this mean that they fail to refer to rabbits with
'gavagai' or that they are mistaken about their nature? If
this question is hard to answer, we can generalize to harder cases:
say that some of the 'rabbits' in this world are
three-dimensional and some four- dimensional. Should we countenance an
ambiguity in 'gavagai' given that the people use it
indiscriminately to refer to both? Should we posit a lexical ambiguity
with two different definitions for 'gavagai'?
This case may be far-fetched; but we have a real live cases of it.
Field (1973) discusses the case of the term 'mass', which seems to have been
thought to pick out one property of objects but in fact picks out two
that are really very different in character. Deciding whether this is
a surprising case of disjunctive reference, or an indeterminacy in
reference is no easy task, but the decision has ramifications for
whether or not we categorize 'mass' as ambiguous or highly
sense-general (and if sense-general, what is the general sense?)
### 5.4 The Flexibility of the Lexicon
The lexicon is highly productive and easily extended. Most people,
including myself, upon hearing:
73. She bought a rabbit.
will think that it's safe to infer that she bought a
fuzzy little pet that hops around and likes carrots. However, upon
learning that there is a car by the same name made by Volkswagen, it
will be much less clear to me that I know what she bought.
Similar phenomena include dead metaphors and idioms. The former
include such items as 'branch' which now applies to
distinct sections of the government, the latter to phrases 'kick
the bucket.' (As an aside, I puzzled over several candidates for
both and realized it was hard to tell in most cases which were which!)
These clearly pass the ambiguity tests above by exhibiting zeugma,
i.e.,
74. ?The government and the trees have branches.
75. ?He kicked the bucket last week and she did too, twice.
It's controversial whether metaphors ever actually die and
whether or not, assuming they do die, they are metaphors. So it is
controversial whether or not 'branch' is lexically
ambiguous. It clearly has two readings but whether or not these are to
be reflected as lexical meanings is a difficult and vague
matter - not that it clearly matters all that much in most
cases.
### 5.5 Legal Interpretations
On the other hand, the facts about ambiguity can matter a great deal
when it comes to determining policy, extension of law etc. The law is
sensitive to this and makes certain division between ambiguities. For
example, the law divides between patent and latent ambiguity, where
the former roughly corresponds to a case where the meaning of a law is
unclear, the latter to cases where the meaning is clear but applies
equally well to highly disparate things. In effect, this is the
difference between ambiguity in sense and ambiguity in reference.
U.S. Constitution scholars sometimes claim that the Constitution is
'ambiguous' at key points. A famous example of such an ambiguity is the
succession of the vice president, where the framers stipulate
that:
>
>
> In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death,
> Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the
> said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, (Article 2,
> section 1)
>
>
>
The clause is not clear as to what 'devolve' means.
Of course, given what has been discussed, this looks to be more like a
case of under-specificity, or simply ignorance of a word's
meaning (in 1787), not ambiguity. As the distinction has no real legal
relevance in this case, it is ignored as it generally is in common
parlance.
## 6. Ambiguity and Indexicality: Are They Easily Told Apart?
In
section 2
we looked at phenomena that were not the same as ambiguity; in this
section, we look at a few cases in which we might have been wrong to
tear them apart.
### 6.1 Deictic vs. Bound Anaphora
It is often claimed that:
76. John loves his mother.
is ambiguous between a deictic reading and a bound reading. Syntactic
orthodoxy holds that either 'his' is co-indexed with John
or it bears a different referential index. Various theories of
anaphora, however, have claimed that we can dispense with the
fundamental ambiguity between free and bound anaphora and unify the
treatment of the two. Dynamic Semantics aspires to offer just such a
unified account, taking all anaphora to always refer to discourse
referents, or functions from information states to information states.
This provides a unified treatment of the function of anaphora in
natural language and dispenses with the need to think of anaphoric
interpretation as ambiguous as opposed to merely context-sensitive.
(See Heim 1982, 1983, and Kamp 1981).
### 6.2 The Scope of Indefinites
Consider:
77. Every man who read a book by Chomsky is happy.
(77) is ambiguous between one where 'a book by Chomsky'
takes wide scope over 'every man who reads' and one where
it takes narrow scope. Maybe so; but most quantifiers in fact cannot
escape from relative clauses. Relative clauses are known as
'scope islands', or contexts in which quantifiers
can't be interpreted as raised. In fact, it has been noted that
indefinites seem to escape from nearly any normal scope island
whatsoever. This suggests that treating the various readings as an
ambiguity akin to other scopal ambiguities is mistaken. Another
treatment of (77)'s multiplicity of readings involves domain
restriction: if we restrict the domain of 'a book' to only
one particular book, we can emulate the reading one would get from
treating 'a book' as having wide-scope. Domain restriction
traditionally is treated as a matter of context sensitivity rather
than ambiguity. We thus have some reason to doubt that the right
treatment of (77) has much to do with the phenomenon of scope. (see
Schwarzchild (2002) for further discussion).
### 6.3 Modals
As noted above, modals seem to come in various flavours (doxastic,
metaphysical, logical, deontic, practical...). It is tempting to
treat these as ambiguities involving the modal term. However, it is
worth noting that other treatments abound. Kratzer (1983) treats
modals as univocal but indexical: they get their differing
interpretations by taking in different input sets of worlds and
orderings induced on the relevant sets. If this is right, it may well
be that what looks like an ambiguity should actually be treated as a
matter of straightforward indexicality (much like 'I' is
not ambiguous but indexical).
### 6.4 Focal Stress
A really interesting case that may be loosely described as
ambiguity at the level of a sentence concerns focal stress and its
myriad of interesting effects. Generally focal stress is well known to
co-ordinate assertions with questions under discuss and to introduce
sets of alternatives into a discourse. In particular, these
alternative sets can have truth conditional effects, for example:
78. Putin only *poisons* his opponents.
79. Putin only poisons *his opponents*
(78) is falsified by Putin shooting an opponent, (79) is not.
(78) introduces a presupposition that Putin does something to his
opponents while (79) introduces a presupposition that Putin poisons
someone. The sentence, thought of in terms of orthography, 'Putin only
poisons his opponents' is thus ambiguous. Assuming that focal stress
is syntactically marked, the LF disambiguates. See (Rooth (1993) and
Herburger (2000) for semantic theories of focal stress).
### 6.5 Cancellation vs. Disambiguation
Griceans have long used cancellation as a method to detect
conversational implicatures, or information communicated by an utterer
of a sentence that isn't part of what's said by S. Cancellation is a
procedure by which an explicit denial of putatively conveyed
information is conjoined to the original utterance to see if the
result is a contradiction. For example, consider an utterance of:
80. I got drunk and I drove home (but not in that order).
The non-bracketed sentence, absent an utterance of the bracketed
content, will typically convey the order events as being mirrored in
the order of the conjuncts. But, as Grice famously argued, this
isn't due to an embedded ordering in the meaning of
'and' as shown by the addition of the bracketed content
not producing a contradiction. The Gricean stories about how we come
about this extra information in non-cancellation cases is fairly well
known. But given the preceding, it's not hard to see that an
option has been overlooked: why shouldn't we think of
'but' as playing the role of a disambiguator? If
'and' were ambiguous, for example, wouldn't one way
of avoiding an contradictory utterance involve adding a phrase that
ruled out one possible meaning? We saw Grice's claims about
Modified Occam's razor and so perhaps attributing an ambiguity
to 'and' is not so attractive. But perhaps an ambiguity
in the assignment of times to the present tense markers is, and the
putative cancellation serves to indicate the intended resolution of the
those variables? Or perhaps 'and' signals two or more
possible discourse relations and the putative cancellation services to
disambiguate between those? Lepore and Stone (2016) put disambiguation
to work in an attempt to show that ambiguities in interpretation are
more rife and wide spread than we might have previously assumed. If
they are right, ambiguity plays a more central role than perhaps might
have been thought in sentence, utterance and discourse
interpretation. It remains to see if they are. The point of these
examples is that it is often difficult to tell which theoretical
treatment best explains a case of multiple interpretability. One must
be cautious in one's approach to these issues. It is all too
easy to notice an apparent ambiguity, but often all too difficult to
explain its nature. |
ammonius | ## 1. Life and Works
### 1.1 Life
Ammonius' father Hermeias, after studying in Athens under
Syrianus (Head of School in Athens 431/2-437), returned to Alexandria,
where he established the teaching of Platonism as an additional
subject in the school of Horapollo (see below), alongside the
principal curriculum in rhetoric. Ammonius' mother Aedesia had
been chosen as a young girl by Syrianus, a relative of hers, to marry
Proclus, who would succeed their teacher Syrianus as head on the
latter's death in 437. When Proclus was kept from marrying her
by 'some god', Aedesia was then married to Proclus'
fellow student Hermeias. From these details, it is clear that
Ammonius, second of three sons of Hermeias and Aedesia (the eldest died in childhood), must have been born
after about 435, presumably not long before 445. He seems to have been
dead when Damascius (ca. 460-after 532) was writing his *Life of
Isidore* or *Philosophical History* in 526, but alive in
517, when his course on Aristotle's *Physics* was first
published by Philoponus.
Damascius, whose *Life of Isidore* is the source of most
details about Ammonius' life, greatly admired Aedesia for her
piety and charity, and while still a young student of rhetoric he gave
her eulogy at Horapollo's school. Although the municipal stipend
which had been paid to Hermeias (presumably as a teacher) continued to
be given her after Hermeias' death, from the time Ammonius and
his younger brother Heliodorus were small until their maturity,
Damascius says that Aedesia's charitable giving left her sons in
debt on her death in old age (ca. 475, since Damascius, still a boy
and a student of rhetoric, was honored to give her eulogy, ornamented
with heroic hexameters). These financial straits may have something to
do with Damascius' opinion that Ammonius was viciously greedy:
with this debt, he would certainly have striven to keep teaching and
collecting salary and fees; however, the preserved excerpts of
Damascius do not make this connection, perhaps in order to portray
Ammonius as simply greedy (see below, on Ammonius' alleged
'deal' with the Christian Bishop of Alexandria). For
Damascius the true offspring of this union of this exceptionally moral
and holy couple was Aedesia and Hermeias' eldest child, blessed
with divine gifts, who died at age seven and receives a rather
hagiographic description. Aedesia accompanied her two surviving sons
to Athens, where, at her suggestion, both studied with Proclus.
Aedesia and her sons must have returned before 475 from their study in
Athens under Proclus to Alexandria, where Ammonius began lecturing on
philosophy at the school of Horapollon. We have reports of lectures on
Plato by Ammonius from the beginning and end of his career. Sometime
between 475 and 485 Damascius, who studied under Ammonius and his
brother Heliodorus, heard Ammonius lecture on Platonic philosophy;
about 515 Olympiodorus heard him lecture on the *Gorgias*
(Olympiodorus, *in Gorg.* 199,8-10). Asclepius mentions
lectures (or seminars: *sunousiai*, *in Met.* 77,4) on
Plato and refers to an 'exegesis' (*in Met.* 70,31)
of the *Theaetetus*. Nonetheless, Damascius reports that
Ammonius was better versed in Aristotle, and it is his lectures on
Aristotle which, for the most part, have been transmitted to us.
In Ammonius' day, Alexandria, unlike Athens, was an important
center of Christian cult and culture, the third See of Christendom.
The school founded by Horapollo, where after Hermeias joined it the
two main courses of study were rhetoric and philosophy, was a hub of
the 'Hellenic' pagan learning, religion and culture.
Apparently, Christian professors taught there as well, however, though
the latter tended to lecture in their homes on Fridays, leaving the
school largely to the pagans on that day (Zacharias, *Life of
Severus* p. 23 Kugener); certainly, there were Christian students
in the classes of both their co-religionists and the Hellenes. The
atmosphere in Ammonius' classroom is (too?) vividly portrayed in
*Ammonius or On the Creation of the World*, written by one such
Christian student, Zacharias of Maiuma (Gaza's port-city), the
later Bishop of Mytilene, who studied with Ammonius in Alexandria
between 485 and 487. Zacharias' book recounts discussions
between 'The Christian', presumably Zacharias himself, and
'Ammonius' in front of the classroom; there is also
(perhaps added later, after Ammonius' death: Watts 2005) a
discussion with the medical philosopher (*iatrosophistes*)
Gesius, said to have been Ammonius' best student at the time.
This recounting of the 'dialogues in the Platonic manner'
(1. 7-8) should not be taken as historical: it is embellished by
Zacharias with various references to Platonic dialogues and their digs
at sophists; the arguments themselves largely depend upon another
contemporary work, the *Theophrastus* by Aeneas of Gaza, which
has no express connection with Ammonius. But Zacharias portrays
Ammonius' classroom as a battle over the souls of a mixture of
committed pagans and Christians, and some students leaning one way or
the other. Zacharias' contempt for Ammonius and for Platonic
philosophy is evident, and their discussion ends with Ammonius'
embarrassed silence. That the school could be a focus of hostile
Christian attention had been made abundantly clear by the lynching of
Hypatia at the hands of an Alexandrian mob in 415. Questions thus
arise about the relation of the school to what Damascius in his
*Life of Isidore* calls 'the dominant doctrine'.
How did the school manage to keep going as a largely pagan institution
in a strongly Christian city? Did the philosophers in the school make
any concessions, doctrinal or otherwise, to the Christian authorities?
Was the school enabled to continue teaching Platonic philosophy with
some pagan professors into the 530's by a concession of
Ammonius' to the Christian authorities?
It has been speculated that Ammonius may actually have converted to
Christianity. A remark in Philoponus' edition of Ammonius'
lectures on *De Anima* (104,21-23) to the effect that the
soul could be forced to profess tyrants' impious dogma, but
could not be forced to assent to it and believe it, might perhaps go
back to Ammonius and has been taken as possible evidence that he was
coerced to pay lip service to Christianity, as has the dialectically
coerced admission (2.1094-1121) of Zacharias' character
'Ammonius' that the Trinity really *is*
"three in hypostasis and being, but one in number"
(Westerink 1962, XI-XII and Cameron 1969,14-15). But there
is no convincing evidence of a conversion (cf. Blumenthal 1986,
322-323), nor of any *change* in the real Ammonius'
teaching.
Ammonius' tenure at the school saw a large-scale attack on the
pagan community of Alexandria in the wake of the revolt of Illus
(484-488) against the Emperor Zeno, during which harsh measures
were taken against the pagans by the Patriarch Peter III Mongus
(482-489), since Illus had allied himself with the corrupt pagan
Pamprepius and may have promised him that pagan practice would be
tolerated. It was probably during this crisis that Ammonius is
represented by Damascius as making an agreement or deal:
"Ammonius, who was wickedly greedy and saw everything in terms
of any profit he could make, concluded an agreement
(*sunthekas*) with the overseer (*episkopounta*,
i.e., bishop) of the dominant doctrine" (Photius, *Bibl.*
cod. 242.352a 11-14=Damascius 118B Athanassiadi; cf. her Intro.
30-1 and n. 37). Scholarly attention has focused on the nature
of Ammonius' 'deal' with the Bishop (presumed, by
connecting this persecution with the end of Illus' revolt, to
have been Peter Mongus; the appearance of the name of his successor,
Athanasius II [490-497] in a doublet of the same passage from
Damascius [Photius, *Bibl.* cod. 242.347a 20] is apparently an
intrusive, mistaken gloss). The suggestions have been put forward that
he agreed to continue the alleged Alexandrian Neoplatonic practice of
making the gods into one by collapsing the One into the Intellect (a
view congenial to Christianity); or that he agreed to lecture only on
Aristotle, avoiding Plato, or not to mention in his teaching the
Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity and divinity of the world; or
that he betrayed the hiding places of colleagues and pupils. Scholars
have adduced counterevidence against the first three suggestions,
concerning the school's doctrine. That Ammonius betrayed his
fellow Hellenes is a speculation based on his ability--alone
among the major figures of the school--to resume his teaching
unscathed after the turmoil of 489, on Damascius' association of
Ammonius' deal with a profit motive, and also on
Damascius' hints that Ammonius was unprincipled and given to
intrigue, as evidenced by an earlier power-struggle against Erythrius
(a three-time praetorian prefect) in Constantinople (Damascius 78E;
Athanassiadi 1999, 30-2). Indeed, the excerpts from Damascius
seem to indicate that Ammonius was a prime target of the investigation
and persecution led by the imperial envoy Nicomedes, who in an attempt
to get information on "the Ammonius affair" (Damascius
117A) ordered the arrest of Ammonius' friend Harpocras, a
professor of literature; he fled, but the order led to the arrest and
torture of Horapollo and Heraiscus, whom they tried to make
inform on Harpocras and Isidore (Damascius 117B). Thus, Damascius
perhaps implies that Ammonius set the investigators on Harpocras to
draw them away from himself.
Richard Sorabji (1990b, 12; see also 2005; 2016b, xiii-xiv;
2016c, 46-47) suggested that Ammonius might have agreed not to
allow the school to be a center of pagan and theurgic ritual, which he
would also de-emphasize in his teaching, or simply not to make trouble
with Christians, as the practice of theurgy or any attempt to convert
Christian students to it would do. On Sorabji's thesis, instead
of agreeing with Iamblichus' insistence on theurgy as
indispensable to reaching spiritual union with God, a doctrine largely
taken over by Proclus (on Proclus' theurgy and its three types,
see Sheppard 1982), Ammonius sided
with Porphyry's refusal to accept the efficacy of theurgy in
purifying the intellect and hence leading us to God. This
interpretation puts Ammonius in an altogether better light than does
Damascius', which is approved by Athanassiadi. For Sorabji his
financial gain was the continuation of his municipal salary, so that
he could keep his school open, rather than a craven payment for
services rendered to the Christian authorities; he did not betray his
friends; he did not betray philosophy, since he merely preferred the
noncommittal attitude of Porphyry in the matter of divine names and
theurgy to that of Iamblichus and Proclus; on the contrary, he saved
philosophy in Alexandria.
Sorabji's conjecture has attained something like a consensus
among scholars (e.g., Hadot 2015, 29) and is quite possibly correct.
There is still room for doubt, however. It is not clear that Ammonius
and his school rejected or downplayed theurgy; Olympiodorus (*in
Phd.*, Lect. 8, sec. 2) puts theurgy on the highest level of
virtue: philosophy can make us Intellect, while theurgy can unite us
with the intelligibles, so that we act paradeigmatically (cf. Blank
2010, 659-660). Still, as Sorabji says (2016c, 47), he
apparently addressed his students as if they were all Christians, and
without the volatile mix of pagans, Christians, and those who were
wavering, the danger of Ammonius' day was absent; Ammonius would
have had much more reason to agree to keep theurgy out of his
classroom after the riots of 486 and persecution of 489. If on the
basis of its absence from his commentaries on Aristotle we say that
Ammonius de-emphasized theurgy or kept it to himself, he appears to
have done so consistently throughout his career, so that this cannot
be used as evidence of any forced change in his teaching. Did he,
then, agree to continue doing what he had been doing all along?
Perhaps the mere fact of Ammonius' willingness to approach and
make an agreement with Peter was enough to justify the disdain of
Damascius.
Can we ascertain Ammonius' attitude to theurgy and
'Egyptian' or 'Hellenic' rites? Beyond the
commentaries we have three quasi-historical sources for Ammonius:
Damascius' *Life of Isidore* and Zacharias'
*Life of Severus* and *Ammonius*. In narrating the early
life of Severus (Bishop of Antioch 512-518, though he was a
pagan during his student days at Alexandria in the 480's),
Zacharias recounts the story of Paralius, a student in
Horapollo's school undecided between paganism and Christianity
(see Watts 2005). In 486 after taunting the philosopher Asclepiodotus
for his claim to have got his hitherto infertile wife pregnant by
Egyptian magic, Paralius was set upon and beaten by the Hellenic
students of the school on a Friday, when the Christians were largely
absent. This incident resulted in complaints to Entrechius the Prefect
and to the Bishop, Peter Mongus, leading to the ransacking of the
sanctuary of Isis at Menouthis and the burning of many hieratic cult
objects. The professors of the school accused in this incident were
Horapollon himself, along with the 'philosophers'
Asclepiodotus, Heraiscus, Ammonius, and Isidore. Nothing further
is said about Heraiscus or Ammonius; Zacharias had already
ridiculed Asclepiodotus, who subsequently repaired to Aphrodisias, and
he remarks that Isidore was later revealed as a magician and
troublemaker. Thus, Zacharias associates Ammonius with colleagues whom
he generally labels philosophers and adherents of the Egyptian
mysteries, but gives us no particulars about him. In his *Life of
Severus*, Zacharias focused on the conflicts between Alexandrian
pagans and Christians, showing the winning and salvific force of
Christianity. In the *Ammonius* he portrayed the superiority of
Christian doctrine, especially that the world was created, and the
dialectical victories of a Christian student over the more
philosophically experienced pagans Ammonius and Gesios. Therefore,
that book avoids the cultic conflict altogether and tells us nothing
about Ammonius relating to theurgic belief or ritual.
Damascius and his hero Isidore, on the other hand, were fervent
adherents of theurgy and practitioners of hieratic ritual, and
Damascius' cast of characters are divided into those who
practiced such ritual (good), those who were especially divinely
gifted (better), and those whose participation was nil or is passed
over in silence (bad guys); Ammonius is among the latter. The same was
not true of his family, however, as Damascius saw them. Hadot (2015,
1-14) argues for the importance of religiosity and theurgy in the
Alexandrian, as well as in the Athenian, school. Plutarch, who
introduced Iamblichean Platonism into Athens, had three famous
students: Hierocles, Syrianus, and Proclus. Of the first two,
Alexandrians by birth, Hierocles, author of a book on the Pythagorean
*Golden Verses*, returned to teach in his native city, while
Syrianus was chosen by Plutarch to succeed him. Proclus was younger
than these. Born in Byzantium and raised in Lycian Xanthos, convinced
that his Alexandrian teachers did not read Plato in the true spirit of
the philosopher and mindful of the divine vision and calling he had
received in Xanthos (Marinus, *Life of Proclus* 10)--not
the last gift he would receive from the gods--he left Alexandria
for Athens. Hermeias studied with Syrianus; his commentary on the
*Phaedrus* cites the *Chaldaean Oracles* and Orphic
*Hymns* frequently. Hermeias' wife Aedesia not only
shared her husband's virtuous character, she was "so pious
toward God and holy and, to tell the whole of it, beloved of the gods
that she was accorded many epiphanies" (Damascius, *Life of
Isidore* 56). Indeed, the first child born to the couple was a boy
of such wondrous qualities and virtue that he departed this life at
age seven, "unable to bear his embodied existence"
(*Life of Isidore* 57A). As for Ammonius himself, we have seen
him listed (Zacharias, *Life of Severus* 16 and 22) as one of
the four philosophy teachers associated with the philologist
(*grammatikos*) Horapollon and mocked for their adherence to
the pagan gods. Of these, Asclepiodotus and Isidore were explicitly
connected by Zacharias with Egyptian religion and magic. Damascius
(*Life of Isidore* 81) describes how Asclepiodotus was saved
from drowning by divine intervention, "such was his divine
power, even while he was still embodied". Heraiscus he
describes as having a divine nature and living in such a way that his
soul dwelt as much as possible among shrines and places of initiation
(*Life of Isidore* 72A, B). Of the four, then, only about
Ammonius does Damascius report nothing regarding theurgy, mysteries,
or holiness. Is this an accurate picture, or is Damascius'
silence as malicious as his words?
Ammonius' 'deal' with the Bishop is attested only by
Damascius, who despises Ammonius. Although he could have connected
Ammonius' agreement with his debts, Damascius chose instead to
emphasize his greed, blackening his character with a trait
(*aischrokerdes*) which Plato had said (*Republic*
408c3-4) would be incompatible with the demigod Asclepius'
divinity, if shown in his medical practice; it must be equally bad for
Ammonius in his profession. As Photius already reports, Damascius
always mixed praise for some traits with blame for others in each
person he reports on. He also plays characters one against the other
(cf. O'Meara 2006). Damascius prepared his claim about
Ammonius' greed by his idealization of Hermeias, who even told
merchants that their wares were priced too low (Damascius 54), and of
Aedesia, whose continuation of her husband's charitable giving
put the family into debt, and of the couple's saintly eldest son
(Damascius 56). The respect and love which Ammonius' parents
earned from both philosophers and the masses form an implicit contrast
to the conflict surrounding Ammonius and his greed. The rhetorical
structure of Damascius' narrative thus casts doubt on any
'deal' between Ammonius and the Bishop, which may have
been the result of pure speculation on Damascius' part, combined
with his animus toward Ammonius (see Blank 2010, 657-660).
Damascius actually admits (120B) making such an inference in the case
of Horapollon, who he says deserted to 'the others', a
conversion that "he apparently chose on his own, not compelled
by any misfortune, perhaps too from the demands of an insatiable
greed; for it is not easy to propose any other reason to excuse his
conversion".
Is a deal with the Bishop necessary to explain Ammonius'
continued ability to teach in Alexandria? The other professors of
philosophy appear to have fled or died during Nicomedes'
investigation in 489, while Ammonius, initially a focus of that
investigation, remained in Alexandria. We are not told that it became
impossible for pagans other than Ammonius to teach after 489, and
there were evidently Christian students in Ammonius' school
after that date, just as there were earlier. Since Damascius connects
Ammonius' deal with his avarice, we should like to know more
about his income. In major cities, the role of teacher was associated
with payment by the city, and in Constantinople there were chairs paid
by the Emperor; a law of Justinian in 529, the extension of an order
of his father (Justin I, 518-527), decrees (*Codex Justinianus*
1.5.18.4) that only those of orthodox faith may teach and receive a
public stipend (*sitesis demosia*). Damascius reports
that Hermeias had received a municipal stipend, presumably for
teaching, which his widow managed to have continued until her sons
could do philosophy (*hōs ephilosophēsan*, where *hōs* is used in the sense of *heōs*).
Scholars mostly think this makes it likely that Ammonius took up his
father's position on his return from Athens, or even that his
father's position in the school was held vacant for him and was
paid in the meanwhile. But there were at least four philosophers
teaching together with Horapollon in the 480s, so it is difficult to
assert that Ammonius held 'the chair' of philosophy;
perhaps there were a number of 'chairs'--difficult,
but not impossible, since Ammonius was undoubtedly the most important
and influential of the four. How long did Aedesia continue to receive
her dead husband's salary for her sons, "until they began
to do philosophy" (*hōs ephilosophēsan*): was
it until they could receive it in their own right? Damascius uses the
aorist tense of *philosopheō* to mean 'studied
philosophy' (54 Hermeias studied philosophy under Syrianus; 57B
Ammonius and Heliodorus studied philosophy under Proclus; 71B Isidore
studied philosophy under the brothers Heraiscus and Asclepiades;
cf. 63B while Hierios was studying [*philosophounta*]
philosophy). On that likely reading, Aedesia will have arranged for
her sons to be supported by the city until she could take them to
Athens to study philosophy, where they would, as members of the
Academy community, have been supported. When they returned to
Alexandria, they will have made their own way, with the support of
their mother and of family friends; whether with financial support
from students, from the city, or both, is unclear.
Hadot (2015, 23-25) thinks that Zacharias' account proves that
Horapollon's school was a private institution when Ammonius
taught there and that it is highly unlikely that a pagan philosopher
could have received a municipal salary in Alexandria in
Ammonius' day, due to Christian hostility. She argues Ammonius
and his colleagues will have relied on students' fees for their
income and therefore been more vulnerable than their Athenian
colleagues, who lived communally, supported by the wealth of the
Academy, which stemmed from bequests of the pious and learned
(*Life of Isidore* 102). Support for this may come from
Olympiodorus, who says (*in Gorg.* 43.2, 224.20-24; 43.4,
225.19-21; 43.6, 226.24-26) that philosophers will receive the merited
thanks of their students for their help and must therefore not ask
them for fees (*misthous*); but this is a hoary philosophical
cliche (cf. Xenophon, *Mem.* 1.2.6-8). In his
article on the complex of lecture rooms excavated in Alexandria,
Sorabji (2014, 36-37) points to the size of the establishment and its
rebuilding and expansion after the earthquake of 535 as indications of
generous municipal support. It may well be that Christian Alexandria
continued to support the teaching of pagan philosophers because they
had an audience of students. There were still pagan students and those
leaning toward paganism in the city. But Christians too will have been
drawn to the high reputation of pagan Greek literature and philosophy.
Christian students will also have sought the kind of dialectical
skills taught by pagan philosophers and rhetoricians, along with their
advanced logical and metaphysical teachings, the better to argue
against them and the better to understand the philosophical basis of
their own Christian faith (cf. Wildberg 2005, 234-236). After all,
Zacharias stayed in Alexandria a year after Severus left to study law
at Berytus because he needed further study of the rhetoricians and
philosophers, so as to fight the pagans, who were so proud of them,
with their own weapons (*Life of Severus* 46; cf. Champion
2014, 31-32).
### 1.2 Works
One work of Ammonius clearly survives in the written form he gave it,
his 'commentary' (*hupomnēma*) on
Aristotle's *De Interpretatione*. His commentary on
Porphyry's *Introduction* (*in Isag.*), is
described in the manuscripts variously as 'Ammonius the
Philosopher's Exegesis (or Prolegomena or Commentary) of the
Five Sayings' and is perhaps another work given its final form
by Ammonius; but its present Prooemium is, in any case, considered
inauthentic, and other passages are also interpolations (Busse,
*CAG* IV.3 p. vi).
We hear of other works published by Ammonius, but these are mostly
single book-rolls, monographs on particular points:
* On *Phaedo* 69d4-6, in which he defended Plato
against the charge that in the *Phaedo* he was ambivalent about
the immortality of the soul (Olympiodorus, *in Phd.* 8
SS17,6-7).
* On hypothetical syllogisms (fragment at Ammonius, *in An.
Pr.* 67,32-69,28).
* On the fact that Aristotle made God not only the final but also
the efficient cause of the whole world (Simplicius, *in Cael.*
271,13-21, *in Phys.* 1363,8-12).
* On the Astrolabe. That Ammonius wrote on this topic is mentioned
by Philoponus at the start of his own book on the use, construction,
and inscriptions of the astrolabe. A work entitled "Explanation
of the use of the astrolabe", said in the manuscripts to be by
one 'Aegyptius', is thought rather to be the work of
Ammonius, perhaps an epitome of a lost work of his (cf. Hase 1839,
158-171 and Pingree 1973, 33 n. 7). Ammonius taught Damascius
Ptolemy's *Syntaxis* and was known, along with his
brother Heliodorus, for his work on astronomy (cf. the
observations--one said to have been made by the brothers
together, on 22 Feb. 503--recorded by Heliodorus in his copy of
Ptolemy: Heiberg 1907, xxxv-xxxvii).
In addition, the commentary by an Ammonius on Aristotle's
*Topics* mentioned in Syriac and Arabic authors was perhaps
written by our Ammonius (cf. Stump 1978, 212 and Militello 2014, 92).
The other works of Ammonius which survive are all derived, directly or
indirectly, from his lectures, taken down by his students and hence
mostly described as being 'from the voice (*apo tēs
phones*, or: the lectures [*skholon*]) of
Ammonius'. Two of these are transmitted under the name of
Ammonius himself, but are thought to come from the notes of anonymous
students from Ammonius' lectures:
* *On Aristotle's Categories* (*in Cat.*):
'Prolegomena to the Ten Categories from the Voice of Ammonius
the Philosopher'.
* *On Aristotle's Prior Analytics I* (*in An.
Pr.*): 'Notes (*skholia*) on the first book of the
*Prior Analytics* from the Voice of Ammonius'.
Two courses bear the name of Asclepius (ca. 465- ?):
* *On Aristotle's Metaphysics* *1-7*
(*in Metaph.*); the title of the first book of this commentary
is: 'Notes on the greater first book of the *Metaphysics* of
Aristotle coming from Asclepius from the Voice of
Ammonius'.
* *On Nicomachus' Introduction to Arithmetic* (*in
Nicomachi Intro. Arith.*): 'Asclepius the Philosopher of
Tralles' Notes on the first book of the *Arithmetical
Introduction* of Nicomachus'.
Four courses are transmitted under the name of John Philoponus (ca.
490-ca. 570):
* *On Aristotle's Prior Analytics* (*in An.
Pr.*): 'John the Grammarian of Alexandria's school
annotations (*skholikai aposemeioseis*) on the first
book of the *Prior Analytics* from the seminars of Ammonius son of
Hermeias'.
* *On Aristotle's Posterior Analytics* (*in An.
Post.*): 'John of Alexandria's school annotations from
the seminars of Ammonius son of Hermeias with some of his own
observations (*epistaseis*) on the first book of the *Posterior
Analytics*' (what is transmitted as the commentary on Book II is
perhaps spurious).
* *On Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption* (*in
GC*): 'John the Grammarian of Alexandria's school
annotations from the seminars of Ammonius son of Hermeias with some of
his own observations on the first of the books *On Generation and
Corruption* of Aristotle'.
* *On Aristotle's On the Soul* (*in DA*;
authorship of the commentary on Book III is disputed): 'John of
Alexandria's school annotations from the seminars of Ammonius
son of Hermeias with some of his own observations on Aristotle's
*On the Soul*'.
The titles of three of Philoponus' Aristotle courses do not
mention Ammonius, and these were probably perceived as representing
rather the lectures of Philoponus than those of Ammonius. These are:
* *On Aristotle's Categories* (*in Cat.*); but
this might have been based on the notes published under
Ammonius' own name.
* *On Aristotle's Physics* (*in Phys.*):
'John Philoponus on the first book of Aristotle's Lecture
on Physics'; this mentions the date of 10 May 517, when Ammonius
was still alive, but shows signs of later revision.
* *On Aristotle's Meteorology* (*in
Meteor.*).
However, *On Nicomachus' Introduction to Arithmetic*
(*in Nicomachi Intro. Arith.*) is thought to be lectures by
Philoponus based on Asclepius' publication (see above) of his
own notes on Ammonius' lectures (cf. Taran 1969,
10-13).
## 2. Ammonius as Aristotelian Commentator
Ammonius established the tradition of Aristotelian commentary in
Alexandria. He was followed in this by his students Asclepius,
Philoponus (ca. 490-570), Simplicius (writing after 529 after
moving to the Athenian school and moving with it from Athens to Persia
after the school's closure under Justinian), and Olympiodorus
(495/505-after 565). The tradition continues through the Christian
commentators Elias (probably a pupil of Olympiodorus), David,
Ps.-Elias and Stephanus (fl. ca. 610).
Damascius commented that Ammonius, who explicated works of both Plato
and Aristotle, was more practiced in the latter (*Life of
Isidore* 57C). The Christian character in Zacharias'
dialogue (562-565) accuses Ammonius' star pupil Gesius and his
comrades, presumably including Ammonius, of being accustomed to refute
Plato's doctrines, while claiming to be his pupils and wanting
to be called 'Platonists'; he also uses a literal
interpretation of the cosmogony in Plato's *Timaeus* to
counter the Aristotelian doctrine of the world's co-eternity
with God espoused by the dialogue's 'Ammonius'
character. Still, Ammonius did lecture on Platonic texts. He is cited
by name nine times in his student Olympiodorus' commentary on
the *Gorgias*, three times on the *Phaedo*, and not at
all on *Alcibiades I*; the differences probably reflect the
fact that for the *Gorgias* Olympiodorus could rely less on a
previous tradition of Neoplatonic interpretation. In all cases, he is
cited with the greatest respect.
The most substantive comment cited by Olympiodorus from
Ammonius' lectures on the *Gorgias* (SS32,2-3)
is a defense of the four democratic politicians Socrates declines to
call statesmen (499b-503c); Ammonius says they are practitioners
of the 'intermediate' rhetoric, rather than of the false
kind. He draws his explanation from the *Republic* (425c-427a),
where he distinguishes three kinds of physician: the false kind that
gives prescriptions aimed at flattery and pleasing the patient, the
true kind that insists the patient do what is best for him, and the
intermediate kind that gives the patient a true prescription but does
not insist that he follow it. In this explanation, Ammonius follows
the lead of his father Hermeias, who cited (*in Phdr.* p.
231,26-232,14 Lucarini-Moreschini) this passage of the
*Gorgias* in his explanation of *Phaedrus* 260d as
referring to true, popular, and intermediate rhetoric and the
different kinds of therapy of the masses they apply. Ammonius'
lectures on Plato seem to have been enlivened by wit and personal
remarks, some apparently cited as apophthegms from the great teacher.
Socrates (*Gorgias* 513a) warns Callicles against assimilating
himself to the current Athenian *dēmos*, thereby
attaining power but perhaps losing all he holds dear. Such
assimilation, Olympiodorus says, destroys one's soul utterly;
the proper object to which one should assimilate one's soul is
the cosmos, that is, God. Like the Thessalian witches mentioned by
Socrates, nowadays too the Egyptian magicians claim to have the power
to 'draw down the moon' and run such risk of destruction,
if they fail. Olympiodorus notes that we must not believe these
mythical stories, though most people are deceived by them: this is
simply an eclipse; similarly, even now they say that there are
magicians in Egypt who can change men into crocodiles, asses, or any
shape they like--but one must not believe it. Indeed, Ammonius
told them, in his exegesis, "this experience overpowered me too,
and when I was a boy I used to believe these things were true"
(*in Gorg.* SS39,2). Known for astronomical expertise,
Ammonius was chiding his credulous audience. Another remark of
Ammonius' is cited in Olympiodorus' argument that the myth
at the end of the *Gorgias* that emphasizes the judgement of
our souls in the underworld over that of judges in our present life
shows that our actions derive from our own souls' autonomy.
Olympiodorus notes (SS48,5) that it is up to us to choose virtue
or vice and that there is no place for astrology, which would nullify
foresight, law, and justice: "Ammonius the philosopher says
'I know some men who have the astrological horoscope of
adulterers, yet are temperate, since the self-moving nature of the
soul dominates'". Again, Ammonius does not deny the
influence of the stars in our lives, but insists that our individual
choice plays an overriding role. Explaining that aristocracy is the
best government, Olympiodorus (SS42,1-2) likens the city to
the cosmos, ruled best by God, citing the Homeric line so favored by
Aristotle (*Metaphysics* 12.10, 1076a4) and his Neoplatonic
exegetes: "Rule of many is not good: let there be one
chief!". If someone objects that this is rather monarchy than
aristocracy, respond with Ammonius: "Keep silent; let him have
your fist"!
In his lectures on Aristotle, Ammonius was heavily indebted to his
teacher Proclus, even if he disagreed with him on some important
points. The introduction to his *in Int.* makes Ammonius'
great debt to Proclus clear: "Now, we have recorded the
interpretations of our divine teacher Proclus, successor to the chair
of Plato and a man who attained the limits of human capacity both in
the ability to interpret the opinions of the ancients and in the
scientific judgment of the nature of reality. If, having done that, we
too are able to add anything to the clarification of the book, we owe
great thanks to the god of eloquence" (1,6-11; cf. *in
An. Pr.* 43,30, with a citation of Proclus' *School
Commentary* [*skholikon hupomnēma*]). Proclus, in
turn, often used Iamblichus (see, e.g., *in An. Pr.* 40,16). In
addition, Ammonius used other commentators. For example in his *in
Int.*, most of his material comes from Proclus' lectures,
but Ammonius has polished up what he had in his notes of those
lectures, then added material of his own or from other sources. In
this case, Ammonius' main source for supplementing
Proclus' lectures was apparently the now lost voluminous
commentary (see Stephanus *in Int.* 63,9) of Porphyry, which
was also the major source of Boethius' commentary on *De
Int.* and probably also of Ammonius' citations of earlier
authors, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias (active late 2nd
to early 3rd century), Aspasius (first half of
2nd century), Herminus' (2nd C.), and the
Stoics. Both Porphyry and Proclus held *Int.* c. 14 to be
spurious (252,10 ff.). Although Ammonius agreed, unlike them he
decided to include commentary on the chapter, which he repeats
'verbatim' from Syrianus, having nothing of his own to add
(254,22-31; cf. 253,12).
The sources on which Ammonius drew and his mode of using them will
likely have varied according to the nature of the previous
commentaries he could work with for each text. In Asclepius'
published version of Ammonius' lectures, for example, we see a
very different procedure from the one Ammonius followed in writing out
his own commentary on *De Interpretatione* and basing it on
Proclus' lectures. It is difficult to say to what extent
Asclepius' commentary on *Metaphysics* A-Z is
either a reflection or a more thorough reworking of Ammonius'
lectures. Still, this work is reasonably thought to give the best
representation we have of the lectures themselves, copied down by
Ammonius' student 'from the voice' of the master.
Indications of the commentary's origin in the lectures abound
(cf. Luna 2001, 100-103): the explanation of a passage often
begins by referring to "what was said yesterday" (e.g.,
3,13; 433,18-19); we are told that "the teacher of
medicine Asclepius, who studied with us at these lessons" raised
a question, and "our professor of philosophy" answered him
(143,31 ff.). That faithful transcription of lectures was practiced
and thus could have formed the basis of a later reworking for
publication is implied by Damascius' story (45A) about
Theosebius, who compared his own transcripts of lectures on the
*Gorgias* given at two different times by his master Hierocles
and found nothing repeated between the two versions, "each of
which, however improbable it is to hear, hewed as much as possible to
the intention of Plato".
In Asclepius of Tralles' commentary on *Metaphysics* A-Z
there are two voices: the Peripatetic voice of Aristotle and Alexander
of Aphrodisias and the Neoplatonic voice of Syrianus and Ammonius.
Asclepius begins with a lemma taken from Aristotle, sometimes
paraphrases it, and explains its philosophical significance; then, if
necessary, he explains why Aristotle was wrong, saying that "we,
on the other hand, say" or "against this we say" or
"our teacher of philosophy Ammonius says", or else why
Aristotle appears wrong but really agrees with Plato. Next, he
explains the Aristotelian text itself, usually taking the explanation
from Alexander, either word-for-word or in paraphrase; occasionally,
he appears to have drawn his paraphrase of Alexander from Syrianus.
Asclepius' commentary and, presumably, Ammonius' lectures,
then, combine the inheritance of Alexander and of Syrianus, a move in
keeping with the opinion of Syrianus himself, who introduced his
commentary on *Metaphysics* G saying (54,11-15):
"[Aristotle] will attempt to teach [these things] in this book,
which, since it has been made sufficiently clear by the very
hardworking Alexander, we will not interpret in its entirety. But if
he seems to us to say something that is troublesome [and requiring]
scrutiny, that part we will try to examine, summarizing all the rest
for the sake of the treatise's coherence." The commentary
on *Metaphysics* A, closely studied by Cardullo (2012),
provides numerous clear examples of Asclepius'--i.e.,
Ammonius'--procedures. Thus, in explaining the famous
declaration of all men's desire for knowledge in the opening
sentence of the *Metaphysics*, Ammonius goes through a number
of different types of knowledge, following Aristotle, ending with art,
which is superior to experience, since it knows the
'*why*' and not just the
'*that*': "Hence Plato says of the divine
mind 'I do not call art that which is an irrational
thing'". With this reference to *Gorgias* 465a6,
Asclepius-Ammonius cites (28,3-6 on *Metaph.* 984b1) a
Platonic argument in explanation of an Aristotelian one to show their
close relation. Later, Asclepius attributes Aristotle's argument
that wisdom is chosen for itself, not for the sake of something else,
to Plato (20,15-16; cf. Cardullo 2012, 266 n. 391). In another
instance of this kind of association, Asclepius comments that
"it is good that sensible things exist: even pitch is necessary
for the perfection of the cosmos, and 'it is unjust to leave
such a great matter to chance or luck', but only to God, who has
created everything because of his own goodness". That the
reference is to the Demiurge of the *Timaeus* (29e) is evident
from the emphasis on the creator's goodness, and the producing
cause is here connected with the Unmoved Mover, which is a final cause
due to its goodness (Cardullo 2012, 294 n. 488).
From Ammonius' version of the list of ten preliminary topics
recommended by Proclus for those beginning to study Aristotle (cf.
Elias, *in Cat.* 107,24-27), we know that the study of
Aristotle in Ammonius' school began with logic, then moved on to
ethics, physics, mathematics, and theology (Ammonius, *in Cat.*
5,31-6,8). Ammonius also introduced as a new set a sequence of
lessons introductory to the study of Aristotle consisting of: an
introduction to philosophy; an introduction to Porphyry's
*Eisagōgē* or Introduction to Aristotle's
logic; a commentary on Porphyry's *Introduction*; the
reading of Porphyry's *Introduction* itself; an
introduction to the philosophy of Aristotle; an introduction to the
*Categories* (cf. Sorabji 2016c, 48-50; Hadot, 1988,
44-45). The introduction to philosophy was particularly
congenial and influential, giving a number of definitions of
philosophy and, particularly, two definitions 'from the
goal': Plato's 'assimilation to God as far as
possible' (*Theaetetus* 176b) and 'practice of
death' (*Phaedo* 64a; Ammonius, *in Isag.* 3,7 ff.
and 4,15 ff.). Lectures on the works of Plato and Aristotle presumably
lasted about an hour. In Proclus we see signs of such hour-long
divisions, as well as a division of the lecture on an individual
passage into discussion of its doctrine (*theōria*),
sometimes quite wide-ranging, followed by its wording
(*lexis*); signs of this division are still present in
Ammonius' *in Int.* Students evidently took copious
notes, which they might then publish, under their own names or that of
Ammonius himself.
The lectures of Ammonius and his students gave a very detailed
exegesis of their text and an indication of its philosophical
importance, including how it related to other texts of Aristotle and
Plato. These two philosophers were each taken to be substantially
self-consistent and uniform in opinion throughout his own writings,
and in agreement with one another and with the truth (see, e.g.,
Simplicius, *in DA* 1,3-21). According to Elias (*in
Cat.* 107,24-7), Proclus put together a list of ten
questions to be answered preliminary to the study of Aristotle, and it
is Ammonius who gives us the first preserved version of these. One of
the preliminary questions concerns the role of the interpreter. Elias
(*in Cat.* 122,25-123,5) says that the exegete is also a
knower, in the one capacity explaining what is unclear in his text and
in the other judging its truth and falsity. He ought not to insist
that his author is always correct, but he ought rather to value the
truth more than the man; he ought not to become an exclusive partisan
of his philosopher, as Iamblichus was for Plato. Further, he ought to
know all of Aristotle, so that he can show on the basis of
Aristotle's works that he agrees with himself; he ought to know
all of Plato, so that he can show that Plato agrees with himself,
while making the works of Aristotle an introduction to those of Plato.
These requirements are associated with Ammonius by Olympiodorus in his
commentary on the *Gorgias* (cf. Tarrant in Jackson et al.
1998, 11 and notes on 32.1 and 42.2), and one can see the insistence
on knowing and judging the truth over loyalty to Aristotle in
Ammonius' own introductory precepts (*in Cat.* 7,34
ff.).
The later Alexandrian commentators tend to emphasize that it is the
commentator's duty not to interpret apparent disagreements of
Aristotle with Plato literally, but to look to the sense and discover
the fundamental agreement or 'harmony'
(*sumphōnia*) of the two philosophers (e.g., Simplicius,
*in Cat.* 7,31). Ammonius' own statement of the qualities
of an exegete (*in Cat.* 7,34 ff.) does not say this, but in
practice he does point out the agreement of Plato and Aristotle
(*in Int.* 39,11). Syrianus and Proclus criticized, at times
harshly, Aristotle's disagreement with Plato's views on,
e.g., the existence of Forms and the demiurgic role of God as crafting
and creating the physical world. In contrast, Ammonius points out
(Asclepius, *in Metaph.* 69,17-27; cf. Sorabji 2005, vol.
3 sect. 5(d), and Cardullo 2012, 78-81) that, while Aristotle
'seems' to be attacking Plato on the Forms in
*Metaph.* 990b3, he actually agrees with Plato, since he
praises (*De An.* 429a28) those who say that the soul is the
place of Forms. Ammonius also makes God the efficient cause of all
things, in addition to being the final cause (see below, sect. 3.2).
This appears to be a characteristic difference of approach between
Syrianus-Proclus and Ammonius and his pupils: the latter outdo the
former in their concern to 'harmonize' Aristotle's
and Plato's views and their willingness to interpret Aristotle
as not disagreeing with Plato in any fundamental way.
## 3. Philosophical Positions
For four reasons it is difficult to pinpoint Ammonius' own
philosophical positions and contributions to philosophy or to the
interpretation of Aristotle: (1) Our evidence is confined to
commentaries on Aristotle, whose interpretation did not leave as much
scope for expounding Neoplatonic ideas as did that of Plato. (2) He
depends in these works on Proclus, whose Aristotle lectures or
commentaries do not survive, so that we cannot be sure what in them is
really his own. (3) Some of Ammonius' works failed to reach us.
(4) We have to depend to a significant degree on his pupils'
writings for our information about him and his contributions, and
their own stance may be difficult to separate from that of Ammonius
himself. The best approach at present attempts to piece together
Ammonius' views from his commentary on *De
Interpretatione*, from statements attributed to him by later
commentators, and from those lectures of Ammonius which were either
published by students under Ammonius' name or which, while
published under students' names, seem to show little sign of
having altered his teachings--namely, Asclepius on the
*Metaphysics* and the early commentaries of Philoponus (or
their early versions, in the case of commentaries, such as that on the
*Physics*, which were revised). The use of Philoponus to
recover Ammonius' positions was much advanced by Verrycken
1990a; his chronology of the commentaries by Philoponus--and
hence, the degree to which they may represent the thought of Ammonius,
before Philoponus departed from it in important ways--has
recently been revisited by Golitsis 2008 and Sorabji 2016d. (see
above, sect. 1.2).
### 3.1 Ammonius' Neoplatonism
It was claimed by K. Praechter (1910) that the Alexandrian Neoplatonic
school of Ammonius and his followers differed substantially from that
of Athens both before and after Ammonius' time, particularly by
downplaying the Iamblichean theurgic or magical and religious elements
and the complex Iamblichean and Proclan hierarchies and triadic
groupings at the different levels of reality recognized in
Neoplatonist metaphysics (on these, see, e.g., Wallis 1972,
100-110, 123-34, 146-54). In contrast to these wild
and woolly Athenian doctrines and practices, Praechter saw the
Alexandrian school, in whose commentaries such doctrines do not figure
prominently, as more restrained, rational, respectable; they were
sober interpreters of Aristotle and had a doctrine much more easily
reconcilable with the strong Christian cult of Alexandria. Scholars
like P. Merlan (1968) went further, making Ammonius the purveyor of a
strongly Christianized philosophy which featured a creative, personal
God.
Recent studies of the Alexandrians (especially Hadot 1978 on Hierocles
and Simplicius, Verrycken 1990a on Ammonius, Tempelis 1999, Luna 2001,
Cardullo 2009 and 2012, Hadot 2015, Sorabji 2016a and c) have largely
resulted in the abandonment of Praechter's claims. Overlapping
personal histories already cast doubt on the hypothesis of a gulf
between the two schools. As noted above, Plutarch's chosen
successor Syrianus came from Alexandria together with Hermeias, who
brought Plutarch's and Syrianus' teachings back from
Athens to his native city Alexandria. Ammonius studied with and was
evidently greatly influenced by Proclus in Athens. Furthermore,
references and allusions to various important pieces of Proclan
doctrine can be adduced from various places in the commentaries of
Ammonius and his students. The relative paucity, however, of such
references and their lack of centrality to the works in which they are
found makes it difficult to assess their significance in this regard.
The interpretation of certain statements which might be interpreted as
telling against Ammonius' espousal of, say, the transcendent
One, is also a complex matter. Ammonius' interpreters now
rightly rely to a great extent on context in understanding his works.
They ask, for example, whenever Ammonius does not mention a particular
Neoplatonic doctrine or mentions it in a simplified form, whether the
doctrine was necessary to an understanding of the passage on which
Ammonius was commenting. As noted above, Ammonius comments mostly on
Aristotle, especially his logical works. This was the first part of
the Neoplatonic curriculum: Marinus (*Life of Proclus* 13) says
that Syrianus taught Proclus all of Aristotle's works in less
than two years and "having led him through these, as it were,
preliminary initiatory rites and little mysteries, brought him to the
mystagogy of Plato". Ammonius apparently held a similar view of
the Aristotelian portion of the Neoplatonic curriculum, and in
commentary on such works may have felt no need to go into many of the
details of a complex Neoplatonic theology and metaphysics;, even if he
held such views. Even the *Metaphysics*, which according to
Ammonius dealt with things 'entirely unmoved', that is,
'theology' (Asclepius, *in Metaph.* 1,3 and
17-18) may not have been thought to require an explanation of
the highest levels of reality. In a second statement, explaining the
first line of the book, Asclepius says Aristotle aimed to speak about
"beings and how they are beings and, to reason about absolutely
all beings, insofar as they are beings" (2,9-11), which
Hadot (2015, 27) takes to exclude "the entire divine hierarchy
beyond being". The second statement, however, probably derives
from Alexander, who thinks that the *Metaphysics* is
theological in the sense that God is one of the causes of reality and
thus a subject of 'first philosophy' (cf. Cardullo 2012,
225 n. 230). Ammonius here elides the reasoning needed to get from the
study of being *qua* being to theology, and there is some
ambiguity as to the extent to which he thinks the role of theology in
Aristotle is the same as in Plato (Hadot 2015, 27 n. 83). In some
contexts a discussion of certain metaphysical doctrines might even
have been inappropriate, especially if the work under discussion was
meant to be studied by less advanced students. Thus, the fact that
Ammonius does not avail himself of certain opportunities to discuss
certain tenets of Neoplatonic metaphysics does not mean that he would
not espouse such tenets in other circumstances. Still, the very fact
that Ammonius was, as emphasized above, especially known for his
commentaries on Aristotle, could reflect a tendency on his part not to
have taught a full-blown Neoplatonic metaphysical system. Hadot 2015
gives a lengthy account of the similarities and differences in the
ways Aristotle and Plato were 'harmonized' by various
Platonists since Porphyry (cf. the account of various issues on which
harmonization was needed, as seen in Themistius and then in Ammonius,
in Sorabji 2016c, 18-20 and 53-55). In agreement with Cardullo
(e.g., 2009, 245) that one finds in Ammonius an "absolute
allegiance to Neoplatonism", Hadot interprets differences
between, say, Syrianus-Proclus and Ammonius as resulting from the
greater determination of the latter to minimize their possible
disagreements and Ammonius' consequently greater willingness to
bend Aristotle in Plato's direction. There may be debate over
whether this involved more 'Aristotelizing Plato' or
'Platonizing Aristotle' (cf. Sorabji 2016a,
xxvii-xxxi for a discussion of Hadot's objections to
Verrycken's [1990] view of Ammonius' simplification of the
metaphysics of the Athenian Neoplatonists). One may also wonder
whether Ammonius would have thought that his philosophy differed in
any important way from that of his Athenian teacher.
On the most general level, Ammonius says that the purpose and utility
of studying Aristotle's philosophy is "to ascend to the
common principle (*arkhē*) of all things and to be aware
that this is the one goodness itself, incorporeal, indivisible,
uncircumscribed, unbounded and of infinite potentiality" (*in
Cat.* 6,9-12). Thus, his stance, in this early work, is that
of a Neoplatonist, as has been clearly shown by Verrycken (1990a,
212-15). Thus he says that Aristotle's distinction of
spoken sound, affection of the soul, and thing in the world (*De
Int.* 16a3-8) corresponds to the Neoplatonic hypostases of
Soul, Intellect and God (*in Int.* 24,24-9). He also
places 'not-being' above the Intellect at the highest
plane of reality and occasionally writes in a manner reminiscent of
Proclus' divine henads. So there seems no doubt of his genuine
commitment to a Neoplatonic stance in metaphysics, even if, as
Verrycken would hold, he may not have espoused a system as complex as
that of Proclus.
Perhaps, though, Ammonius set different emphases and cited different
ultimate authorities than the Athenians. Following Iamblichus,
Syrianus and Proclus held that Plato taught the true philosophy that
originated with Pythagoras and various of his followers, including
Parmenides. They also thought the highest expression of this ancient
wisdom was found in the *Orphic Hymns* and in the *Chaldaean Oracles*, and
these two works were the final course Syrianus was willing to teach,
but only to Proclus and Domninus, though disagreement over which one
to study caused the two students to be taught separately, and
Proclus' study of the *Oracles* was interrupted by
Syrianus' death (Marinus, *Life of Proclus* 26). Proclus
later worked intensively on both texts, along with those of Porphyry
and Iamblichus, and taught them. In fact, "he attained the
highest degree of theurgic virtue" (*Life of Proclus*
27-28). Ammonius was certainly concerned, in Asclepius'
commentary on *Metaphysics* A, to point out on numerous
occasions that Aristotle--who criticized the Pythagoreans and,
according to Ammonius, also the line of reasoning that led from them
to Plato--had got them wrong, since he did not understand that
they expressed themselves 'symbolically' (cf. Cardullo
2009, 258-259). Again, some argue that Ammonius and his students
did not see the importance of the 'divine poetry' of
Orpheus and the *Chaldaean Oracles*. Hadot 2015, 13-14 counters
that citation of these poetic works is also infrequent in Aristotelian
commentaries of the Athenian school, while both Olympiodorus and
Damascius cite the *Oracles* in their commentaries on Plato's
*Phaedo*. In any event, it is important to note that we have no
record that Ammonius or his pupils lectured or commented on the four
great 'theological' dialogues in the Neoplatonic
curriculum: *Phaedrus, Symposium, Philebus, Parmenides* (cf.
Tarrant, in Jackson, et al. 1998, 3).
### 3.2 Aristotle's God as Efficient Cause of the World
Aristotle's intellectual God seems not to be a good fit for the
role of craftsman and creator which God plays in Plato's
*Timaeus*. Proclus (*in Tim.* 1.266.28-268.24)
says as much: while "the Peripatetics say there is something
separate [from the physical world], it is not creative
(*poiētikē*), but final (*telikon*); hence they
both removed the exemplars (*paradeigmata*) and set a
non-plural intelligence over all things." Indeed, Proclus says,
Aristotle's own principles ought to have made him admit that God
was a creator. According to Simplicius, Peripatetic interpreters,
including Alexander of Aphrodisias, accepted that God was a final
cause of the entire world, that God's moving the heavens made
him indirectly the efficient cause of sublunar motion, and that he was
also the efficient cause of the heavens' motion, but not of
their existence as a substance (*in Cael.* 271,13-21;
*in Phys.* 1360,24-1363,24). Simplicius goes on to say
that Ammonius devoted an entire book to arguing that, contrary to
these Peripatetics, God was both final and efficient cause of both the
movement and existence of the whole world, sublunar and supralunar.
This interpretation, according to Simplicius, allowed Ammonius to
harmonize Aristotle with Plato; it should not, therefore, be taken as
a concession to Christian doctrine. Instead of criticizing Aristotle,
as Proclus had done, Ammonius took five Aristotelian passages and
interpreted them as indicating that Aristotle did in fact reason along
the lines Proclus had indicated in his criticism. Thus, for example,
Ammonius argued, according to Simplicius, that in *Physics*
2.3, 194b29-32, that from which comes the origin of motion
(i.e., God, the unmoved mover) is itself a *productive* cause.
Ammonius also argued that "if, according to Aristotle, the power
of any finite body is itself finite, clearly whether it be a power of
moving or a power that produces being, then, just as it gets its
eternal *motion* from the unmoved cause, so it must receive its
eternal *being* as a body from the non-bodily cause"
(trs. of this and other relevant texts in Sorabji 2005, vol. 2, sect.
8(c)1). Ammonius' harmonization of Aristotle with Plato on this
point would prove essential to both Arabic Aristotelians and,
eventually, to Aquinas' ability to enlist Aristotle's God
for Christianity. Verrycken (1990, 218) interprets Ammonius'
conception of the relation of God and the world as based on the
Neoplatonic 'procession' (God's production of the
world) and 'reversion' (its direction toward God as final
cause), with God conceived as the divine Intellect. Verrycken (1990,
222) argues further that Ammonius and his school also conceived of
Aristotle's God as consisting of two Neoplatonic hypostases, the
Good and the Intellect, and that he/it could be viewed as either one,
depending on one's point of view: in metaphysics, as we see in
Asclepius' commentary, Aristotle's God is mostly
understood as the Good, "the first origin and final cause of all
reality"; in natural philosophy, as we see in Simplicius, God is
primarily the demiurgic Intellect, which is itself the final cause of
the world's movement.
### 3.3 Aristotle and anti-determinism
In his commentary on *On Interpretation* chapter 9, Ammonius
added two other determinist arguments to the famous 'there will
be a sea-battle tomorrow' argument, making his commentary into a
small treatise on determinism. The first of these was the
'Reaper' (131,20 ff.), an argument which Ammonius
considered more 'verbal', which perhaps goes back to
Diodorus Cronus and which greatly interested Zeno the Stoic: "if
you will [that is, you are going to] reap, it is not the case that
perhaps (*takha*) you will reap and perhaps you will not reap,
but you will reap, whatever happens (*pantōs*); and if
you will not reap, in the same way it is not that perhaps you will
reap and perhaps you will not reap, but, whatever happens, you will
not reap. But in fact, of necessity, either you will reap or you will
not reap." In consequence, Ammonius says, "the
'perhaps' is destroyed," and with it the contingent.
Against this, Ammonius argues that if the determinist intends
'you will reap' to be contingent, he has already lost his
point, but if he intends it as necessary, he is taking for granted
what he intends to prove; further, in that case, 'will reap,
whatever happens' will be true, but the determinist cannot say
'but in fact either you will reap or you will not reap',
since if one of these is necessary, the other is impossible. Sorabji
(1998, 4-5) argues that 'perhaps' is ambiguous,
marking either a hesitant statement about the future or a statement
about present possibilities, and that the determinist argument plays
on this ambiguity, something which he thinks Ammonius did not see.
The second determinist argument, said by Ammonius to be 'more
related to the nature of things', is from divine knowledge
(132,8 ff.): "the gods either know in a definite manner the
outcome of contingent things or they have absolutely no notion of them
or they have an indefinite knowledge of them, just as we do."
Ammonius shows that the gods must have definite knowledge of their
creations. Is the future definite, then, and not contingent, since the
gods know future facts in a definite manner? Ammonius' reply to
this question is based on the idea (from Iamblichus, originally) that
the type of knowledge depends on the type of knower, not on the type
of thing known. Therefore (136,1-17), due to their own nature,
the gods, and only they, can have definite
(*hōrismenē*) knowledge of future contingent facts,
though those facts are indefinite, in themselves, and not determined.
Indeed, with the gods nothing is past or future (133,20), for they are
outside of time.
Only after discussing these two additional arguments for the abolition
of contingency does Ammonius consider the sea-battle argument from
Aristotle's discussion (*De Int.*18b17-25,
19a30-32): if every affirmation must be true or false and if
there is a sea-battle today, it was always true to say that there
would be a sea-battle on this day and, hence, it was not possible for
this not to happen or not to be going to happen, so that it is
necessary for it to happen. Ultimately, all things which are going to
happen happen necessarily and none by chance. There has been, since
the Stoics, controversy over Aristotle's answers to this
argument. What has been called the 'standard
interpretation' holds that Aristotle thought that, unlike such
sentences about the past or present, sentences asserting future
singular contingent facts are neither true nor false, exempting them
from the principle of bivalence and avoiding the alleged deterministic
consequence that contingency and chance are destroyed. There has
likewise been a substantial debate over whether Ammonius was an
adherent of the 'standard interpretation' of
Aristotle's answer (cf. Sorabji 1998, Kretzmann 1998, Mignucci
1998, Seel 2000ab).
Ammonius, like Boethius, whose answer is somewhat more complicated,
attacks the problem by means of his interpretation of
Aristotle's opening remark in the chapter (18a28 ff.) that,
while the rule that, of every contradictory pair of sentences, one is
true and one false holds among sentences about what is or has
happened, as well as sentences about universals taken universally and
for singulars in the present or past tense, for universals not said
universally it is not necessary, as he has explained in the preceding;
"but in the case of future singulars it is not the same."
Ammonius interprets "it is not the same" as indicating a
doctrine that sentences about future singular contingent events
'divide the true and false' (i.e., obey the principle of
bivalence) but do so in an indefinite, 'not in a definite
manner' (*ouk aphōrismenōs*): either there
will be a sea-battle tomorrow or there will not be one, and certainly
there will not both be one and not, but whichever of these two will
turn out to be the case, the sentence correctly predicting that
outcome is true (and the other false) only in an indefinite, not a
definite way. Thus it is not "possible in a definite manner to
say which of them will be true and which will be false, since the
thing has not already occurred but can both occur and not occur"
(130,23 ff.).
The idea of being true 'in a definite' or 'in an
indefinite manner' does not occur in *De Int.* The
interpretation of Aristotle's response to the sea-battle
argument by this distinction probably goes back to Alexander of
Aphrodisias (cf. Alexander, *Quaestiones* 1.4 with Sharples
1992, esp. 32-6). The distinction itself is probably taken over
from the discussion of one of two contrary properties belonging to a
subject 'in a definite manner' in *Cat.* 10,
12b38-40, which may have been suggested to the commentators by
Aristotle's remark at *De Int.* 19a33 that
"sentences are true in the way things are." What precisely
is meant by the distinction between being true in a definite or in an
indefinite manner is obscure, controversial and much debated in the
literature: is it the distinction between necessary or causally
deterministic truth and mere truth, or that between being already true
and going to be, while not yet being, true (cf. Nicostratus'
characterization of 'the Peripatetics' in Simplicius,
*in Cat.* 406,13-407,15)?
At the end of his discussion (154,3 ff., interpreting 19a23 ff.),
Ammonius brings together necessary and definite truth, but not clearly
enough to resolve all questions about the latter. He uses
Aristotle's idea that sentences can be necessarily true in two
ways, either absolutely, no matter whether they are said of
perishable, existing or non-existent things, or for as long as the
predicate holds of the subject. The whole of a disjunction of
contradictory assertions, such as 'either there will be a
sea-battle tomorrow or there will not be a sea-battle tomorrow'
or 'either Socrates is walking or Socrates is not
walking', is necessarily true in the absolute sense. Ammonius
says that this is still the case when, due to the nature of the thing
in question, one of the disjuncts is true in a definite manner, as in
'either fire is hot or fire is not hot' (154,11). It
appears, then, that Ammonius treats only the contradictory
disjunctions as necessarily true in the absolute sense, while their
disjoined parts may be necessarily true in the other sense, that is,
only as long as the predicate holds of the subject. In the case of
certain facts, such as fire being hot, this is always the case, and of
two contradictory disjuncts the one which asserts this fact is always
true in a definite manner. In the case of contingent facts, then, one
disjunct will only be true in a definite manner when the subject
exists and the predicate is true of it. For Ammonius, when Aristotle
restricts the discussion to future *contingent* facts, this
makes it necessary that neither member of a contradiction said about
them be true in a definite manner, 'whatever happens',
since each, being contingent, must be susceptible of both truth and
falsity 'however it chances' or 'for the most
part' or 'for the lesser part'. Thus,
Ammonius' explanation of Aristotle's reply to the
determinist has an affinity with his answers to the
determinist's claims about the 'Reaper' (there, the
determinist is said to have illegitimately assumed that 'you
will reap' is necessary, not contingent; here, to have ignored
Aristotle's assumption that the disjuncts are contingent) and
about divine foreknowledge (there, the gods are said to know things
definitely, because these things are not future for the gods, although
they are both future and indefinite for us; here, the future disjuncts
are each contingent and, thus, not definitely true, it being open for
each to be true or false in the event). Ammonius' approach may
not be very satisfying to us, in that it does not answer the question
of what kind of truth-value Aristotle or Ammonius assigned to future
contingent propositions, but it keeps to the project of *De
Int.*, exploring the application of and the exceptions to the rule
that every contradictory pair of sentences has one member true and one
member false (cf. Whitaker 1996). Boethius (*in De Int.* II
106,30-107,16, 208,1-18) also uses the distinction between
being true in a definite and in an indefinite manner, but there is
debate among scholars as to whether he understands this distinction
and its role in Aristotle's argument in just the same way as
Ammonius (cf. Sorabji 1998, Kretzmann 1998, Mignucci 1998).
## 4. Influence
Ammonius was chiefly influential as the founder of the school of
Aristotle-interpretation in Alexandria. Nearly all the principal
commentators who came after him were his pupils or his pupils'
pupils. He gave a model for the method of exegesis of Aristotle and
Plato and his lecturing style made an impression on students. His
commentary on *De Interpretatione* was particularly important
and served as a source for Stephanus and other commentators. In its
translation by William of Moerbeke, this work was influential on
Aquinas and thus on medieval and later Aristotelian philosopy and
semantics (cf., e.g., Fortier 2012). Ammonius' new set of
introductions to philosophy and the study of Aristotle, once adopted
and adapted by his Alexandrian students--Olympiodorus, Elias,
David, Pseudo-Elias, and Philoponus, were also transferred to other
languages and cultures. Importantly, a number of his and his
students' works were studied and translated into Persian, Arabic
and Syriac, where Ammonius' influence was carried forward (cf.
the brief overview of the diffusion of Ammonius' new curriculum
and its introductions in Sorabji 2016c, 49-53, also with further
literature on the translations of works from Ammonius' school).
As an example of this diffusion, take the larger commentary on the
*Categories* by Sergius of Reshaina (d. 536), who studied with
Ammonius at Alexandria and later became a physician in his home city
(see Hugonnard-Roche 2004 and Watt 2010, both with further
literature). |
plotinus | ## 1. Life and Writings
Owing to the unusually fulsome biography by Plotinus' disciple
Porphyry, we know more about Plotinus' life than we do about most
ancient philosophers'. The main facts are these.
Plotinus was born in Lycopolis, Egypt in 204 or 205 C.E. When he was
28, a growing interest in philosophy led him to the feet of one
Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. After ten or eleven years with this
obscure though evidently dominating figure, Plotinus was moved to
study Persian and Indian philosophy. In order to do so, he attached
himself to the military expedition of Emperor Gordian III to Persia in
243. The expedition was aborted when Gordian was assassinated by his
troops. Plotinus thereupon seems to have abandoned his plans, making
his way to Rome in 245. There he remained until his death in 270 or
271.
Porphyry informs us that during the first ten years of his time in
Rome, Plotinus lectured exclusively on the philosophy of Ammonius.
During this time he also wrote nothing. Porphyry tells us that when
he himself arrived in Rome in 263, the first 21 of Plotinus' treatises
had already been written. The remainder of the 54 treatises
constituting his *Enneads* were written in the last seven or
eight years of his life.
Porphyry's biography reveals a man at once otherworldly and deeply
practical. The former is hardly surprising in a philosopher but the
latter deserves to be noted and is impressively indicated by the fact
that a number of Plotinus' acquaintances appointed him as guardian to
their children when they died.
Plotinus' writings were edited by Porphyry (there was perhaps another
edition by Plotinus' physician, Eustochius, though all traces of it
are lost). It is to Porphyry that we owe the somewhat artificial
division of the writings into six groups of nine (hence the name
*Enneads* from the Greek word for 'nine'). In fact,
there are somewhat fewer than 54 (Porphyry artificially divided some
of them into separately numbered 'treatises'), and the
actual number of these is of no significance. The arrangement of the
treatises is also owing to Porphyry and does evince an ordering
principle. *Ennead* I contains, roughly, ethical discussions;
*Enneads* II-III contain discussions of natural philosophy and
cosmology (though III 4, 5, 7, 8 do not fit into this rubric so
easily); *Ennead* IV is devoted to matters of psychology;
*Ennead* V, to epistemological matters, especially the intellect;
and *Ennead* VI, to numbers, being in general, and the One above
intellect, the first principle of all. It is to be emphasized that
the ordering is Porphyry's. The actual chronological ordering, which
Porphyry also provides for us, does not correspond at all to the
ordering in the edition. For example, *Ennead* I 1 is the
53rd treatise chronologically, one of the last things
Plotinus wrote.
These works vary in size from a couple of pages to over a hundred.
They seem to be occasional writings in the sense that they constitute
written responses by Plotinus to questions and problems raised in his
regular seminars. Sometimes these questions and problems guide the
entire discussion, so that it is sometimes difficult to tell when
Plotinus is writing in his own voice or expressing the views of
someone else. Typically, Plotinus would at his seminars have read out
passages from Platonic or Aristotelian commentators, it being assumed
that the members of the seminar were already familiar with the primary
texts. Then a discussion of the text along with the problems it
raised occurred.
One must not suppose that the study of Aristotle at these seminars
belonged to a separate 'course' on the great successor of
Plato. After Plotinus, in fact Aristotle was studied on his own as
preparation for studying Plato. But with Plotinus, Aristotle, it
seems, was assumed to be himself one of the most effective expositors
of Plato. Studying both Aristotle's own philosophy as explained by
commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd -
early 3rd c. C.E.) and his explicit objections to Plato was
a powerful aid in understanding the master's philosophy. In part,
this was owing to the fact that Aristotle was assumed to know Plato's
philosophy at first hand and to have recorded it, including Plato's
'unwritten teachings'. In addition, later Greek
historians of philosophy tell us that Plotinus' teacher, Ammonius
Saccas, was among those Platonists who assumed that in some sense
Aristotle's philosophy was in harmony with Platonism. This harmony
did not preclude disagreements between Aristotle and Plato. Nor did
it serve to prevent misunderstandings of Platonism on Aristotle's
part. Nevertheless, Plotinus' wholesale adoption of many Aristotelian
arguments and distinctions will seem less puzzling when we realize
that he took these both as compatible with Platonism and as useful for
articulating the Platonic position, especially in areas in which Plato
was himself not explicit.
## 2. The Three Fundamental Principles of Plotinus' Metaphysics
The three basic principles of Plotinus' metaphysics are called by him
'the One' (or, equivalently, 'the Good'),
Intellect, and Soul (see V 1; V 9.). These principles are both
ultimate ontological realities and explanatory principles. Plotinus
believed that they were recognized by Plato as such, as well as by the
entire subsequent Platonic tradition.
The One is the absolutely simple first principle of all. It is both
'self-caused' and the cause of being for everything else
in the universe. There are, according to Plotinus, various ways of
showing the necessity of positing such a principle. These are all
rooted in the Pre-Socratic philosophical/scientific tradition. A
central axiom of that tradition was the connecting of explanation with
reductionism or the derivation of the complex from the simple. That
is, ultimate explanations of phenomena and of contingent entities can
only rest in what itself requires no explanation. If what is actually
sought is the explanation for something that is in one way or another
complex, what grounds the explanation will be simple relative to the
observed complexity. Thus, what grounds an explanation must be
different from the sorts of things explained by it. According to this
line of reasoning, *explanantia* that are themselves complex,
perhaps in some way different from the sort of complexity of the
*explananda*, will be in need of other types of explanation. In
addition, a plethora of explanatory principles will themselves be in
need of explanation. Taken to its logical conclusion, the explanatory
path must finally lead to that which is unique and absolutely
uncomplex.
The One is such a principle. Plotinus found it in Plato's
*Republic* where it is named 'the Idea of the Good'
and in his *Parmenides* where it is the subject of a series of
deductions (137c ff.). The One or the Good, owing to its simplicity,
is indescribable directly. We can only grasp it indirectly by
deducing what it is not (see V 3. 14; VI 8; VI 9. 3). Even the names
'One' and 'Good' are *fautes de mieux*.
Therefore, it is wrong to see the One as a principle of oneness or
goodness, in the sense in which these are intelligible attributes.
The name 'One' is least inappropriate because it best
suggests absolute simplicity.
If the One is absolutely simple, how can it be the cause of the being
of anything much less the cause of everything? The One is such a
cause in the sense that it is virtually everything else (see III 8. 1;
V 1. 7, 9; V 3. 15, 33; VI 9. 5, 36). This means that it stands to
everything else as, for example, white light stands to the colors of
the rainbow, or the way in which a properly functioning calculator may
be said to contain all the answers to the questions that can be
legitimately put to it. Similarly, an omniscient simple deity may be
said to know virtually all that is knowable. In general, if A is
virtually B, then A is both simpler in its existence than B and able
to produce B.
The causality of the One was frequently explained in antiquity as an
answer to the question, 'How do we derive a many from the
One?' Although the answer provided by Plotinus and by other
Neoplatonists is sometimes expressed in the language of
'emanation', it is very easy to mistake this for what it
is not. It is not intended to indicate either a temporal process or
the unpacking or separating of a potentially complex unity. Rather,
the derivation was understood in terms of atemporal ontological
dependence.
The first derivation from the One is Intellect. Intellect is the
locus of the full array of Platonic Forms, those eternal and immutable
entities that account for or explain the possibility of intelligible
predication. Plotinus assumes that without such Forms, there would be
no non-arbitrary justification for saying that anything had one
property rather than another. Whatever properties things have, they
have owing to there being Forms whose instances these properties are.
But that still leaves us with the very good question of why an eternal
and immutable Intellect is necessarily postulated along with these
Forms.
The historical answer to this question is in part that Plotinus
assumed that he was following Plato who, in *Timaeus* (30c;
cf. *Philebus* 22c), claimed that the Form of Intelligible Animal
was eternally contemplated by an intellect called 'the
Demiurge'. This contemplation Plotinus interpreted as cognitive
identity, since if the Demiurge were contemplating something outside
of itself, what would be inside of itself would be only an image or
representation of eternal reality (see V 5) - and so, it would not
actually know what it contemplates, as that is in itself.
'Cognitive identity' then means that when Intellect is
thinking, it is thinking itself. Further, Plotinus believed that
Aristotle, in book 12 of his *Metaphysics* and in book 3 of his
*De Anima* supported both the eternality of Intellect (in
Aristotle represented as the Unmoved Mover) and the idea that
cognitive identity characterized its operation.
Philosophically, Plotinus argued that postulating Forms without a
superordinate principle, the One, which is virtually what all the
Forms are, would leave the Forms in eternal disunity. If this were
the case, then there could be no necessary truth, for all necessary
truths, e.g., 3 + 5 = 8, express a virtual identity, as indicated here
by the '=' sign. Consider the analogy of
three-dimensionality and solidity. Why are these necessarily
connected in a body such that there could not be a body that had one
without the other? The answer is that body is virtually
three-dimensionality and virtually solidity. Both
three-dimensionality and solidity express in different ways what a
body is.
The role of Intellect is to account for the real distinctness of the
plethora of Forms, virtually united in the One. Thus, in the above
mathematical example, the fact that numbers are virtually united does
not gainsay the fact that each has an identity. The way that identity
is maintained is by each and every Form being thought by an eternal
Intellect. And in this thinking, Intellect 'attains' the
One in the only way it possibly can. It attains all that can be
thought; hence, all that can be thought 'about' the
One.
Intellect is the principle of essence or whatness or intelligibility
as the One is the principle of being. Intellect is an eternal
instrument of the One's causality (see V 4. 1, 1-4; VI 7. 42, 21-23).
The dependence of anything 'below' Intellect is owing to
the One's ultimate causality along with Intellect, which explains, via
the Forms, why that being is the kind of thing it is. Intellect needs
the One as cause of its being in order for Intellect to be a
paradigmatic cause and the One needs Intellect in order for there to
be anything with an intelligible structure. Intellect could not
suffice as a first principle of all because the complexity of thinking
(thinker and object of thought and multiplicity of objects of thought)
requires as an explanation something that is absolutely simple. In
addition, the One may even be said to need Intellect to produce
Intellect. This is so because Plotinus distinguishes two logical
'phases' of Intellect's production from the One (see V
1. 7). The first phase indicates the fundamental activity of
intellection or thinking; the second, the actualization of thinking
which constitutes the being of the Forms. This thinking is the way
Intellect 'returns' to the One.
The third fundamental principle is Soul. Soul is *not* the
principle of life, for the activity of Intellect is the highest
activity of life. Plotinus associates life with desire. But in the
highest life, the life of Intellect, where we find the highest form of
desire, that desire is eternally satisfied by contemplation of the One
through the entire array of Forms that are *internal* to it.
Soul is the principle of desire for objects that are *external*
to the agent of desire. Everything with a soul, from human beings to
the most insignificant plant, acts to satisfy desire. This desire
requires it to seek things that are external to it, such as food.
Even a desire for sleep, for example, is a desire for a state other
than the state which the living thing currently is in. Cognitive
desires, for example, the desire to know, are desires for that which
is currently not present to the agent. A desire to procreate is, as
Plato pointed out, a desire for immortality. Soul explains, as
unchangeable Intellect could not, the deficiency that is implicit in
the fact of desiring.
Soul is related to Intellect analogously to the way Intellect is
related to the One. As the One is virtually what Intellect is, so
Intellect is paradigmatically what Soul is. The activity of
Intellect, or its cognitive identity with all Forms, is the paradigm
for all embodied cognitive states of any soul as well as any of its
affective states. In the first case, a mode of cognition, such as
belief, images Intellect's eternal state by being a
representational state. It represents the cognitive identity of
Intellect with Forms because the embodied believer is cognitively
identical with a concept which itself represents or images Forms. In
the second case, an affective state such as feeling tired represents
or images Intellect (in a derived way) owing to the cognitive
component of that state which consists in the recognition of its own
presence. Here, *x*'s being-in-the-state is the
intentional object of *x*'s cognition. Where the affective
state is that of a non-cognitive agent, the imitation is even more
remote, though present nevertheless. It is, says Plotinus, like the
state of being asleep in comparison with the state of being awake (see
III 8. 4). In other words, it is a state that produces desire that is
in potency a state that recognizes the presence of the desire, a state
which represents the state of Intellect. In reply to the possible
objection that a potency is not an image of actuality, Plotinus will
want to insist that potencies are functionally related to actualities,
not the other way around, and that therefore the affective states of
non-cognitive agents can only be understood as derived versions of the
affective and cognitive states of souls closer to the ideal of both,
namely, the state of Intellect.
There is another way in which Soul is related to Intellect as
Intellect is related to the One. Plotinus distinguishes between
something's internal and external activity (see V 4. 2, 27-33). The
(indescribable) internal activity of the One is its own
hyper-intellectual existence. Its external activity is just
Intellect. Similarly, Intellect's internal activity is its
contemplation of the Forms, and its external activity is found in
every possible representation of the activity of being eternally
identical with all that is intelligible (i.e., the Forms). It is also
found in the activity of soul, which as a principle of
'external' desire images the paradigmatic desire of
Intellect. Anything that is understandable is an external activity of
Intellect; and any form of cognition of that is also an external
activity of it. The internal activity of Soul includes the plethora
of psychical activities of all embodied living things. The external
activity of Soul is nature, which is just the intelligible structure
of all that is other than soul in the sensible world, including both
the bodies of things with soul and things without soul (see III 8. 2).
The end of this process of diminishing activities is matter which is
entirely bereft of form and so of intelligibility, but whose existence
is ultimately owing to the One, via the instrumentality of Intellect
and Soul.
According to Plotinus, matter is to be identified with evil and
privation of all form or intelligibility (see II 4). Plotinus holds
this in conscious opposition to Aristotle, who distinguished matter
from privation (see II 4. 16, 3-8). Matter is what accounts for the
diminished reality of the sensible world, for all natural things are
composed of forms in matter. The fact that matter is in principle
deprived of all intelligibility and is still ultimately dependent on
the One is an important clue as to how the causality of the latter
operates.
If matter or evil is ultimately caused by the One, then is not the
One, as the Good, the cause of evil? In one sense, the answer is
definitely yes. As Plotinus reasons, if anything besides the One is
going to exist, then there must be a conclusion of the process of
production from the One. The beginning of evil is the act of
separation from the One by Intellect, an act which the One itself
ultimately causes. The end of the process of production from the One
defines a limit, like the end of a river going out from its sources.
Beyond the limit is matter or evil.
We may still ask why the limitless is held to be evil. According to
Plotinus, matter is the condition for the possibility of there being
images of Forms in the sensible world. From this perspective, matter
is identified with the receptacle or space in Plato's *Timaeus*and the phenomenal properties in the receptacle prior to the
imposition of order by the Demiurge. The very possibility of a
sensible world, which is impressively confirmed by the fact that there
is one, guarantees that the production from the One, which must
include all that is possible (else the One would be self-limiting),
also include the sensible world (see I 8. 7). But the sensible world
consists of images of the intelligible world and these images could
not exist without matter.
Matter is only evil in other than a purely metaphysical sense when it
becomes an impediment to return to the One. It is evil when
considered as a goal or end that is a polar opposite to the Good. To
deny the necessity of evil is to deny the necessity of the Good (I 8.
15). Matter is only evil for entities that can consider it as a goal
of desire. These are, finally, only entities that can be
self-conscious of their goals. Specifically, human beings, by opting
for attachments to the bodily, orient themselves in the direction of
evil. This is not because body itself is evil. The evil in bodies is
the element in them that is not dominated by form. One may be
desirous of that form, but in that case what one truly desires is that
form's ultimate intelligible source in Intellect. More typically,
attachment to the body represents a desire not for form but a corrupt
desire for the non-intelligible or limitless.
## 3. Human Psychology and Ethics
The drama of human life is viewed by Plotinus against the axis of
Good and evil outlined above. The human person is essentially a soul
employing a body as an instrument of its temporary embodied life (see
I 1). Thus, Plotinus distinguishes between the person and the
composite of soul and body. That person is identical with a cognitive
agent or subject of cognitive states (see I 1. 7). An embodied person
is, therefore, a conflicted entity, capable both of thought and of
being the subject of the composite's non-cognitive states, such as
appetites and emotions.
This conflicted state or duality of personhood is explained by the
nature of cognition, including rational desire. Rational agents are
capable of being in embodied states, including states of desire, and
of being cognitively aware that they are in these states. So, a
person can be hungry or tired and be cognitively aware that he is in
this state, where cognitive awareness includes being able to
conceptualize that state. But Plotinus holds that the state of
cognitive awareness more closely identifies the person than does the
non-cognitive state. He does so on the grounds that all embodied or
enmattered intelligible reality is an image of its eternal paradigm in
Intellect. In fact, the highest part of the person, one's own
intellect, the faculty in virtue of which persons can engage in
non-discursive thinking, is eternally 'undescended'. It
is eternally doing what Intellect is doing. And the reason for
holding this is, based on Plotinus' interpretation of Plato's
Recollection Argument in *Phaedo* (72e-78b), that our ability to
engage successfully in embodied cognition depends on our having access
to Forms. But the only access to Forms is eternal access by cognitive
identification with them. Otherwise, we would have only images or
representations of the Forms. So, we must now be cognitively
identical with them if we are going also to use these Forms as a way
of classifying and judging things in the sensible world.
A person in a body can choose to take on the role of a non-cognitive
agent by acting solely on appetite or emotion. In doing so, that
person manifests a corrupted desire, a desire for what is evil, the
material aspect of the bodily. Alternatively, a person can distance
himself from these desires and identify himself with his rational
self. The very fact that this is possible supplies Plotinus with
another argument for the supersensible identity of the person.
Owing to the conflicted states of embodied persons, they are subject
to self-contempt and yet, paradoxically, 'want to belong to
themselves'. Persons have contempt for themselves because one
has contempt for what is inferior to oneself. Insofar as persons
desire things other than what Intellect desires, they desire things
that are external to themselves. But the subject of such desires is
inferior to what is desired, even if this be a state of fulfilled
desire. In other words, if someone wants to be in state B when he is
in state A, he must regard being in state A as worse than being in
state B. But all states of embodied desire are like this. Hence, the
self-contempt.
Persons want to belong to themselves insofar as they identify
themselves as subjects of their idiosyncratic desires. They do this
because they have forgotten or are unaware of their true identity as
disembodied intellects. If persons recognize their true identity,
they would not be oriented to the objects of their embodied desire but
to the objects of intellect. They would be able to look upon the
subject of those embodied desires as alien to their true selves.
Plotinus views ethics according to the criterion of what
contributes to our identification with our higher selves and what
contributes to our separation from that identification. All virtuous
practices make a positive contribution to this goal. But virtues can
be graded according to how they do this (see I 2). The lowest form of
virtues, what Plotinus, following Plato, calls 'civic' or
'popular', are the practices that serve to control the
appetites (see I 2. 2). By contrast, higher
'purificatory' virtues are those that separate the person
from the embodied human being (I 2. 3). One who practices
purificatory virtue is no longer subject to the incontinent desires
whose restraint constitutes mere civic or popular virtue. Such a
person achieves a kind of 'likeness to God' recommended by
Plato at *Theaetetus* 176a-b. Both of these types of virtue are
inferior to intellectual virtue which consists in the activity of the
philosopher (see I 2. 6). One who is purified in embodied practices
can turn unimpeded to one's true self-identity as a thinker.
Plotinus, however, while acknowledging the necessity of virtuous
living for happiness, refuses to identify them. Like Aristotle,
Plotinus maintains that a property of the happy life is its
self-sufficiency (see I.1.4-5). But Plotinus does not agree that a
life focused on the practice of virtue is self-sufficient. Even
Aristotle concedes that such a life is not self-sufficient in the
sense that it is immune to misfortune. Plotinus, insisting that the
best life is one that is in fact blessed owing precisely to its
immunity to misfortune, alters the meaning of
'self-sufficient' in order to identify it with the
interior life of the excellent person. This interiority or
self-sufficiency is the obverse of attachment to the objects of
embodied desires. Interiority is happiness because the longing for
the Good, for one who is ideally an intellect, is satisfied by
cognitive identification with all that is intelligible. If this is
not unqualifiedly possible for the embodied human being, it does at
least seem possible that one should have a second order desire,
deriving from this longing for the Good, that amounts to a profound
indifference to the satisfaction of first order desires.
Understanding that the good for an intellect is contemplation of all
that the One is means that the will is oriented to one thing only,
whatever transient desires may turn up.
## 4. Beauty
Plotinus' chronologically first treatise, 'On Beauty' (I
6), can be seen as parallel to his treatise on virtue (I 2). In it,
he tries to fit the experience of beauty into the drama of ascent to
the first principle of all. In this respect, Plotinus' aesthetics is
inseparable from his metaphysics, psychology, and ethics.
As in the case of virtue, Plotinus recognizes a hierarchy of beauty.
But what all types of beauty have in common is that they consist in
form or images of the Forms eternally present in Intellect (I 6. 2).
The lowest type of beauty is physical beauty where the splendor of the
paradigm is of necessity most occluded. If the beauty of a body is
inseparable from that body, then it is only a remote image of the
non-bodily Forms. Still, our ability to experience such beauty serves
as another indication of our own intellects' undescended character. We
respond to physical beauty because we dimly recognize its paradigm.
To call this paradigm 'the Form of Beauty' would be
somewhat misleading unless it were understood to include all the Forms
cognized by Intellect. Following Plato in *Symposium*, Plotinus
traces a hierarchy of beautiful objects above the physical,
culminating in the Forms themselves. And their source, the Good, is
also the source of their beauty (I 6. 7). The beauty of the Good
consists in the virtual unity of all the Forms. As it is the ultimate
cause of the complexity of intelligible reality, it is the cause of
the delight we experience in form (see V 5. 12).
## 5. Principal Opponents
Plotinus regarded himself as a loyal Platonist, an accurate exegete of
the Platonic revelation. By the middle of the 3rd century CE, the
philosophical world was populated with a diverse array of
anti-Platonists. In the *Enneads*, we find Plotinus engaged
with many of these opponents of Platonism. In his creative response to
these we find many of his original ideas.
Although Plotinus was glad to mine Aristotle's works for distinctions
and arguments that he viewed as helpful for explicating the Platonic
position, there were a number of issues on which Plotinus thought that
Aristotle was simply and importantly mistaken. Perhaps the major issue
concerned the nature of a first principle of all. Plotinus recognized
that Aristotle agreed with Plato that (1) there must be a first
principle of all; (2) that it must be unique; and (3) that it must be
absolutely simple. But Aristotle erred in identifying that first
principle with the Unmoved Mover, fully actual self-reflexive
intellection. Plotinus did not disagree that there must be an eternal
principle like the Unmoved Mover; this is what the hypostasis
Intellect is. But he denied that the first principle of all could be
an intellect or intellection of any sort, since intellection requires
a real distinction between the thinking and the object of thinking,
even if that object is the thinker itself. A real distinction indicates some sort of complexity or compositeness in the thing (a real minor distinction) or among things (a real major distinction); by contrast, in a conceptual distinction, one thing is considered from different perspectives or aspects. In the absolutely simple first principle of all, there can be no distinct elements or parts at all. In fact, the first
principle of all, the Good or the One, must be beyond thinking if it
is to be absolutely simple. The misguided consequence of holding this
view, according to Plotinus, is that Aristotle then misconceives being
such that he identifies it with substance or ousia. But for the first
principle of all actually to be such a principle, it must be unlimited
in the way that ousia is not. As a result, Aristotle makes many
mistakes, especially in metaphysics or ontology.
The second group of major opponents of Platonism were the Stoics. The
*Enneads* are filled with anti-Stoic polemics. These polemics
focus principally on Stoic materialism, which Plotinus finds to be
incapable of articulating an ontology which includes everything in the
universe. More important, Stoic materialism is unable to provide
explanatory adequacy even in the realm in which the Stoics felt most
confident, namely, the physical universe. For example, the Stoics,
owing to their materialism, could not explain consciousness or
intentionality, neither of which are plausibly accounted for in
materialistic terms. According to Plotinus, the Stoics were also
unable to give a justification for their ethical position - not
in itself too far distant from Plato's - since their
exhortations to the rational life could not coherently explain how one
body (the empirical self) was supposed to identify with another body
(the ideal rational agent).
With regard to Plotinus' contemporaries, he was sufficiently
exercised by the self-proclaimed Gnostics to write a separate
treatise, II 9, attacking their views. These Gnostics, mostly heretic
Christians, whose voluminous and obscure writings, were only partially
unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and translated in the last two
decades, were sufficiently close to Platonism, but, in Plotinus'
view, so profoundly perverse in their interpretation of it, that they
merited special attention. The central mistake of Gnosticism,
according to Plotinus, is in thinking that Soul is
'fallen' and is the source of cosmic evil. As we have
seen, Plotinus, although he believes that matter is evil, vociferously
denies that the physical world is evil. It is only the matter that
underlies the images of the eternal world that is isolated from all
intelligible reality. The Gnostics ignore the structure of Platonic
metaphysics and, as a result, wrongly despise this world. For
Plotinus, a hallmark of ignorance of metaphysics is arrogance, the
arrogance of believing that the elite or chosen possess special
knowledge of the world and of human destiny. The idea of a secret
elect, alone destined for salvation - which was what the
Gnostics declared themselves to be - was deeply at odds with
Plotinus' rational universalism.
## 6. Influence
Porphyry's edition of Plotinus' *Enneads* preserved for
posterity the works of the leading Platonic interpreter of antiquity.
Through these works as well as through the writings of Porphyry
himself (234 - c. 305 C.E.) and Iamblichus (c. 245-325
C.E.), Plotinus shaped the entire subsequent history of philosophy.
Until well into the 19th century, Platonism was in large
part understood, appropriated or rejected based on its Plotinian
expression and in adumbrations of this.
The theological traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all,
in their formative periods, looked to ancient Greek philosophy for the
language and arguments with which to articulate their religious
visions. For all of these, Platonism expressed the philosophy that
seemed closest to their own theologies. Plotinus was the principal
source for their understanding of Platonism.
Through the Latin translation of Plotinus by Marsilio Ficino
published in 1492, Plotinus became available to the West. The first
English translation, by Thomas Taylor, appeared in the late
18th century. Plotinus was, once again, recognized as the
most authoritative interpreter of Platonism. In the writings of the
Italian Renaissance philosophers, the 15th and
16th century humanists John Colet, Erasmus of Rotterdam,
and Thomas More, the 17th century Cambridge Platonists, and
German idealists, especially Hegel, Plotinus' thought was the
(sometimes unacknowledged) basis for opposition to the competing and
increasingly influential tradition of scientific philosophy. This
influence continued in the 20th century flowering of
Christian imaginative literature in England, including the works of
C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams. |
analogy-medieval | ## 1. Medieval Theories of Language
Medieval logicians and philosophers of language were principally
concerned with the relationship between utterances, concepts, and
things. Written language was only of secondary importance. They agreed
that spoken language was conventional, having its origin in
imposition, or the decision to correlate certain sounds with certain
objects. Concepts, however, were natural, in the sense that all human
beings with similar experiences had the same concepts, without any
decision being involved. The key semantic notion was signification,
rather than meaning, though translated sources tend to obscure this by
translating 'significatio' as 'meaning'. For a
term to signify is for it to function as a sign, to represent or make
known something beyond itself. A typical spoken term, such as
'horse' or 'dog', signifies in two ways. It
signifies or makes known the concept with which it has to be
correlated in order to function significatively at all, and it also
signifies or makes known something external to and independent of the
mind. Modifications were made to this simple scheme to cover the cases
of special terms, including syncategorematic terms, such as
'every' and 'not', fictional terms such as
'chimera', and privative terms such as
'blindness'; and modifications were also made to cover the
case of special predicates, such as "is a genus", or
"is thought about", but we need not concern ourselves with
these modifications here.
Theories of signification were complicated by the metaphysical problem
of common natures. If we say that words signify not only concepts but
things external to and independent of the mind do we mean that
'human being' and 'tall' signify special
common objects such as humanity or tallness, or do we mean that they
signify Socrates and his quality of being tall? For Aquinas, who did
not want to give common natures any kind of intermediary existence
independent of both concepts and actual things, the significate
(*significatum*) of a term was the intellect's conception
(whether simple or definitional) of the thing signified; the thing
signified (*res significata*) was usually the property or the
nature characterizing individual external objects; and the referent
(*suppositum*) was the individual external object itself,
viewed as the bearer of the property or nature. However,'human
being' cannot be said to *signify* Socrates, since the
mind cannot conceive physical individuals as such. In the fourteenth
century, further developments took place. There was a new focus on the
notion of a mental language superior to spoken language, and concepts,
as parts of this mental language, were themselves regarded as having
signification. Moreover, Scotists and nominalists agreed that, at
least in principle, physical individuals could be conceived as such.
William of Ockham and his followers not only denied the existence of
common natures but insisted that spoken words did not signify
concepts. As a result, both spoken words and the concepts to which
spoken words are subordinated have the same significates, namely
individual things and their individual properties, such as the
tallness of Socrates. Other nominalists, notably Buridan, insisted
that spoken words did signify concepts as well as individuals, for
concepts are required to mediate between spoken words and individual
things.
In addition to having signification, terms were also said to have
modes of signifying (*modi significandi*). These modes of
signifying were related to the term's logical and grammatical
functions, and include such essential features as being a noun, verb,
or adjective, and such accidental features as time (which includes
tense without being limited to it), gender, and case. More generally,
they included being abstract (e.g., justice) and concrete (e.g.,
just). They also include modes of predication, related to
Aristotle's ten categories, such as substantial (e.g., horse),
qualitative (e.g., brown), quantitative (e.g., square), relative and
so on. The notion of modes of signifying was developed from the early
twelfth century on, though it was specially emphasized by the
speculative grammarians of the late thirteenth century.
It is important to recognize that medieval thinkers had a
compositionalist view of language signification, and so words were
thought to be endowed as units both with their signification and with
nearly all their modes of signifying in advance of the role they would
subsequently play in propositions. Moreover, the doctrine of common
natures suggested that terms, at least those terms which seem to fall
within Aristotle's ten categories (substance, quality, quantity
and so on), each correspond to a common nature and so have a
signification which is fixed and precise. This meant that questions of
use and context, though explored by medieval logicians especially
through supposition theory, were not thought to be crucial to the
determination of a term as equivocal, analogical or univocal. It also
meant that terms which did not fit into Aristotle's categorial
framework needed a special account. This problem relates especially to
theology, because God was thought to transcend the categories in the
sense that none of them apply to him, and also to metaphysics, because
of the so-called transcendental terms, 'being',
'one', 'good'. These transcend the categories
in the sense that they belong no more to one category than to another,
and they do not correspond to common natures.
## 2. Problems in Logic, Theology, and Metaphysics
In order to understand how the theory of analogy arose we have to bear
in mind the history of education in the Latin-speaking western part of
Europe. During the so-called dark ages, learning was largely confined
to monasteries, and people had access to very few texts from the
ancient world. This situation had changed dramatically by the
beginning of the thirteenth century. The first universities (Bologna,
Paris, Oxford) had been established, and the recovery of the writings
of Aristotle supplemented by the works of Islamic philosophers was
well under way.
One source for the theory of analogy is the doctrine of equivocal
terms found in logic texts. Until the early twelfth century, the only
parts of Aristotle's logic to be available in Latin were the
*Categories* and *On Interpretation*, supplemented by a
few other works including the monographs and commentaries of Boethius.
The *Categories* opens with a brief characterization of terms
used equivocally, such as 'animal' used of real human
beings and pictured human beings, and terms used univocally, such as
'animal' used of human beings and oxen. In the first case,
the spoken term is the same but there are two distinct significates or
intellectual conceptions; in the second case, both the spoken term and
the significate are the same. We should note that equivocal terms
include homonyms (two words with the same form but different senses,
e.g., 'pen'), polysemous words (one word with two or more
senses), and, for medieval thinkers, proper names shared by different
people. By the mid-twelfth century the rest of Aristotle's logic
had been recovered, including the *Sophistical Refutations* in
which Aristotle discusses three types of equivocation and how these
contribute to fallacies in logic. For writers throughout the later
middle ages, the discussion of analogical terms was fitted into the
framework of univocal and equivocal terms provided by Aristotle and
his commentators. We will return to this below.
Twelfth-century theology is another important source for the doctrine
of analogy, for twelfth-century theologians such as Gilbert of
Poitiers and Alan of Lille explored the problem of divine language in
depth. Their work initially sprang from works on the Trinity by
Augustine and Boethius. These authors insisted that God is absolutely
simple, so that no distinctions can be made between God's
essence and his existence, or between one perfection, such as
goodness, and another, such as wisdom, or, more generally, between God
and his properties. New attention was also paid to Greek theologians,
especially Pseudo-Dionysius. These theologians insisted on God's
absolute transcendence, and on what came to be called negative
theology. We cannot affirm anything positive about God, because no
affirmation can be appropriate to a transcendent being. It is better
to deny properties of God, saying for instance that he is not good
(i.e., in the human sense), and still better to say that God is not
existent but super-existent, not substance but super-substantial, not
good but super-good. These theological doctrines raised the general
problem of how we can speak meaningfully of God at all, but they also
raised a number of particular problems. Must we say that "God is
justice" means the same as "God is just"? Must we
say that "God is just" means the same as "God is
good"? Can we say that God is just and that Peter is just as
well? For our purposes, this last question is the most important, for
it raises the question of one word used of two different
realities.
The third source for doctrines of analogy is metaphysics. The first
part of Aristotle's *Metaphysics* had been translated by
the mid-twelfth century, though the full text was recovered only
gradually. One crucial text is found in *Metaphysics* 4.2
(1003a33-35): "There are many senses (*multis
modis*) in which being (*ens*) can be said, but they are
related to one central point (*ad unum*), one definite kind of
thing, and are not equivocal. Everything which is healthy is related
to health.... and everything which is medical to
medicine...." In this text, Aristotle raises the general
problem of the word 'being' and its different senses, and
he also introduces what is known as *pros hen* equivocation or
focal meaning, the idea that different senses may be unified through a
relationship to one central sense. Another foundational text is from
Avicenna's *Metaphysics*, also translated into Latin
during the twelfth century, where he writes that being (*ens*)
is neither a genus nor a predicate predicated equally of all its
subordinates, but rather a notion (*intentio*) in which they
agree according to the prior and the posterior. As we shall see below,
this reference to the prior and the posterior is particularly
important.
Some further background for the development of doctrines of analogy is
provided by Aristotle's discussion of scientific reasoning in
his *Posterior Analytics*, first commented on in the 1220s by
Robert Grosseteste. One important issue was how analogical relations
might be used to find a way of referring to things which did not
belong to one genus and lacked a common name. A popular example
throughout the middle ages involved Aristotle's account of the
relation between the 'bone' of a cuttlefish, a spine, and
a normal bone (*Posterior Analytics*, 14.2, 98a20-23),
though there was some disagreement about the type of analogy involved.
Even more important was Aristotle's view that scientific
reasoning requires demonstrative syllogisms, which, in order to be
logically valid, must have a middle term that avoids the fallacy of
equivocation. How far analogical terms could fill that role was a
frequent topic of discussion and controversy. In the thirteenth
century, in his questions on Aristotle's *Physics*,
Geoffrey of Aspall remarked that analogy did not rule out univocity or
prevent a subject from being one, while in the early fourteenth
century, Scotus preferred to preserve unity by abandoning the use of
analogical terms. In the late fifteenth century Cajetan strongly
supported the claim that analogical terms could function as middle
terms. None of these authors suggested that natural science and
theology could appeal to analogical relationships to produce
probabilistic rather than demonstrative arguments.
## 3. History of the Word 'Analogy'
The Latin term '*analogia*' had various senses. In
scriptural exegesis, according to Aquinas, analogy was the method of
showing that one part of scripture did not conflict with another. In
rhetoric and grammar, analogy was the method of settling a doubt about
a word's form by appeal to a similar and more certain case.
Several twelfth-century theologians use the word in this sense. In
translations of Pseudo-Dionysius, the term had a strictly ontological
sense, for it refers to a being's capacity for participation in
divine perfections as this relates to lower or higher beings. In
logic, authors were aware that the Greek word
'analogia',
sometimes called '*analogia*' in Latin, but often
translated as '*proportio*' or
'*proportionalitas*', referred to the comparison
between two proportions. However, by the 1220s the word came to be
linked with the phrase "in a prior and a posterior sense"
and by the 1250s terms said according to a comparison of proportions
were normally separated from terms said according to a prior and a
posterior sense.
The phrase "in a prior and a posterior sense" seems to
have been derived from Arabic philosophy. H.A. Wolfson has presented
evidence for Aristotle's recognition of a type of term
intermediate between equivocal and univocal terms, some instances of
which were characterized by their use according to priority and
posteriority. He showed that Alexander of Aphrodisias called this type
of term 'ambiguous' and that the Arabic philosophers,
starting with Alfarabi, made being said in a prior and a posterior
sense the main characteristic of all ambiguous terms. So far as the
medieval Latin west is concerned, the main sources for the notion of
an ambiguous term said in a prior and a posterior sense are Algazel
and Avicenna, both of whom became known in the second half of the
twelfth century, and both of whom used the notion to explain uses of
the word 'being'.
The word 'analogical' soon became linked with the word
'ambiguous' in Latin authors. Speaking of the cuttlefish
example in his commentary on Aristotle's *Posterior
Analytics*, Grosseteste says that Aristotle's use of analogy
to find a common term produces ambiguous names said according to a
prior and a posterior sense, and he uses the phrase
"*ambiguum analogum*". In the same decade, the
*Glossa* of the theologian Alexander of Hales links being said
in a prior and a posterior sense with ambiguity and (in one possibly
unreliable manuscript) with analogy, and the writings of Philip the
Chancellor also link being said in a prior and a posterior sense with
analogy. In logic textbooks, the word 'analogy' in the new
sense appears in the *Summe metenses*, once dated around 1220,
but now thought to be by Nicholas of Paris, writing between 1240 and
1260. The new use of 'analogy' rapidly became standard in
both logicians and theologians.
## 4. Divisions of Equivocation
In order to understand the way in which theories of analogy developed,
we need to consider the divisions of equivocation found in medieval
authors. In his commentary on the *Categories*, Boethius
presented a series of divisions which he took from Greek authors. The
first division was into chance equivocals and deliberate equivocals.
In the first case, the occurrences of the equivocal term were totally
unconnected, as when a barking animal, a marine animal, and a
constellation were all called '*canis*' (dog).
Chance equivocation was also called pure equivocation, and it was
carefully distinguished from analogy by later writers. In the second
case, that of deliberate equivocation, some intention on the part of
the speakers was involved, and the occurrences of the equivocal term
could be related in various ways. Boethius himself gave four
subdivisions. These are found in various later sources, including
Ockham's commentary on the *Categories*, but as we shall
see, other subdivisions became more popular.
The first of Boethius's four subdivisions was similitude, used
of the case of the noun 'animal' said of both real human
beings and pictured human beings. Medieval logicians seem to have been
totally unaware of the fact that the Greek word used by Aristotle was
genuinely polysemous, meaning both animal and image, and they
explained the extended use of 'animal' in terms of a
likeness between the two referents -- a likeness which had
nothing to do with the significate of the term 'animal',
which picks out a certain kind of nature, but which was nonetheless
more than metaphorical in that the external shape of the pictured
object does correspond to that of the living object. Those medieval
authors whose discussion of equivocation was very brief tended to use
this example, and they often claimed that Aristotle introduced it in
order to accommodate analogy as a kind of equivocation. On the other
hand, authors whose discussion was more extensive tended to drop both
the example and the subdivision of similitude.
Boethius's second type of equivocation is
'*analogia*' in the Greek sense, and the standard
example was the word '*principium*' (principle or
origin), which was said to apply to unity with respect to number and
to point with respect to a line, or to both the source of a river and
the heart of an animal. '*Principium*' is a noun
and, as such, might be expected to pick out a common nature, but
although a unity, a point, a source and a heart can all be called
'*principium*' with equal propriety, there is no
common nature involved. Mathematical objects, rivers, and hearts,
represent not merely different natural kinds, but different
categories, in that mathematical objects fall under the category of
quantity, and hearts at least under the category of substance. What
allows these disparate things to be grouped together is a similarity
of relations: a source is to a river as a heart is to an animal
-- or so it was claimed. While theologians, including Aquinas
himself in *De veritate*, and the fourteenth-century Dominican
Thomas Sutton, occasionally make use of this type of analogy, most
logicians do not even mention it.
The last two subdivisions found in Boethius are 'of one
origin' (*ab uno*), with the example of the word
'medical', and 'in relation to one' (*ad
unum*), with the example of the word 'healthy'. These
subdivisions correspond to Aristotle's *pros hen*
equivocation. The example 'healthy' (*sanum*) as
said of animals, their diet, and their urine is particularly important
here. 'Sanum', like other adjectives, was classified as a
concrete accidental term. As such, it did not fall within an
Aristotelian category, since its primary signification had two
elements whose combination was variously explained. On the one hand,
some kind of reference is made to the abstract entity health, which
belongs to the category of quality; on the other hand, some kind of
reference is made to an external object which belongs to the category
of substance. This dual reference precludes the term from picking out
a natural kind, though in the case of other adjectives, such as
'brown', no problem is caused thereby. Brown things may
not form a natural kind, but at least they are all physical objects,
and 'brown' is used in the same sense of each one.
'Healthy', however, is more complicated. To say that Rover
is healthy is to say that Rover is a thing having health, and
obviously this analysis can't be applied to diet, which is
called healthy only because it causes health in an animal, or to
urine, which is called healthy only when it is the sign of health in
an animal. Whatever the properties which characterize urine and food,
they are different from those characterizing the animal.
We should also note that in the same passage of his commentary on the
*Categories*, Boethius linked deliberate equivocation with
metaphor, in which the sense of one word with an established
signification was extended to apply improperly to something else. A
favourite medieval example was 'smiling' said of flowering
meadows. Later logicians supported this link between equivocation and
metaphor by an appeal to Aristotle's divisions of equivocation
in his *Sophistical Refutations*, where he remarked that the
second type was based on common usage. As we shall see, the question
of metaphor's relation to analogy became particularly important
in post-thirteenth-century discussions.
## 5. Divisions of Analogy
Boethius's subdivisions had one major failure: they did not seem
to accommodate the different uses of the word 'being'
(*ens*). As a result, many authors used a new threefold
division which included Boethius's last two subdivisions and one
more. They presented the division as a division of deliberate
equivocals, and they identified deliberate equivocals with analogical
terms. This threefold division of analogy was established in the
thirteenth century, in response to a remark by Averroes in his
commentary on the *Metaphysics* to the effect that Aristotle
had classified 'healthy' as a case of relationship to one
thing as an end, 'medical' as a case of relationship to
one thing as an agent, and 'being' (*ens*) as a
case of relationship to one subject. It is found in Thomas
Aquinas's own commentary on the *Metaphysics*, as well as
in his fifteenth-century follower Capreolus. An analogical term is now
seen as one which is said of two things in a prior and a posterior
sense, and it is grounded in various kinds of attribution or
relationship to the primary object: food is healthy as a cause of a
healthy animal, a procedure is medical when applied by a medical
agent, a quality has being by virtue of the existent substance that it
characterizes.
A second threefold division of analogy arose from reflection on the
relationship between equivocal and analogical terms. Analogical terms
were said to be intermediaries between equivocal and univocal terms,
and the standard view was that analogical terms were intermediary
between chance equivocals and univocals, and hence that they were to
be identified with deliberate equivocals. The notion of an
intermediary term, however, is open to more than one interpretation,
and some authors went further in suggesting that at least some
analogical terms were intermediary between univocals and deliberate
equivocals, so that they were not equivocal in any of the normal
senses at all. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, an anonymous
commentator on the *Sophistical Refutations* gives the
following classification. First, there are analogical terms which are
univocal in a broad sense of 'univocal'. Here reference
was made to genus terms such as 'animal'. Human beings and
donkeys participate equally in the common nature animal, but are not
themselves equal, since human beings are more perfect than donkeys.
This type of analogy was routinely discussed in response to a remark
Aristotle had made in *Physics* VII (249a22-25) which, in
Latin translation, asserted that many equivocations are hidden in a
genus. Medieval logicians felt obliged to fit this claim into the
framework of equivocation and analogy, even if the consensus was that
in the end the use of genus terms was univocal. Second, there are
those analogical terms such as 'being' (*ens*)
which are not equivocal, because only one concept or nature
(*ratio*) seems to be involved, and which are not univocal
either, because things participate this one *ratio* unequally,
in a prior and a posterior way. It is these terms which are the
genuine intermediaries. Third, there are those analogical terms which
are deliberate equivocals, because there are two concepts or natures
(*rationes*) which are participated in a prior and a posterior
way. The example here was 'healthy'. This second threefold
division was much discussed. Duns Scotus bitterly criticized it in his
earlier logical writings. Walter Burley claimed that both the first
and the second kinds of analogical term could properly be regarded as
univocal in a wide sense. The division was popular in the fifteenth
century with such Thomists as Capreolus, who realized its closeness to
the account given by Aquinas in his *Sentences* commentary.
## 6. Thomas Aquinas
Despite the vast modern literature devoted to Aquinas's theory
of analogy, he has very little to say about analogy as such. He uses a
general division into equivocal, univocal, and analogical uses of
terms, and he presents both of the threefold divisions of analogy
mentioned in the previous section, but he offers no prolonged
discussion, and he writes as if he is simply using the divisions,
definitions, and examples with which everyone is familiar. His
importance lies in the way he used this standard material to present
an account of the divine names, or how it is we can meaningfully use
such words as 'good' and 'wise' of God.
The background to this account has to be understood in terms of
Aquinas's theology and metaphysics. Three doctrines are
particularly important. First, there is the distinction between being
existent, good, wise, and so on, essentially, and being existent,
good, wise, and so on, by participation. God is whatever he is
essentially, and as a result he is existence itself, goodness itself,
wisdom itself. Creatures are existent, good, wise, only by sharing in
God's existence, goodness, and wisdom, and this sharing has
three features. It involves a separation between the creature and what
the creature has; it involves a deficient similarity to God; and it is
based on a causal relation. What is essentially existent or good is
the cause of what has existence or goodness by participation. Second,
there is the general doctrine of causality according to which every
agent produces something like itself. Agent causality and similarity
cannot be separated. Third, there is Aquinas's belief that we
are indeed entitled to claim that God is existent, good, wise, and so
on, even though we cannot know his essence.
Against this background, Aquinas asks how we are to interpret the
divine names. He argues that they cannot be purely equivocal, for we
could not then make intelligible claims about God. Nor can they be
purely univocal, for God's manner of existence and his
relationship to his properties are sufficiently different from ours
that the words must be used in somewhat different senses. Hence, the
words we use of God must be analogical, used in different but related
senses. To be more precise, it seems that such words as
'good' and 'wise' must involve a relationship
to one prior reality, and they must be predicated in a prior and a
posterior sense, for these are the marks of analogical terms.
Nonetheless, the divine names do not function exactly like ordinary
analogical terms such as 'healthy'. We need to begin by
making use of the distinction between the thing signified (a nature or
property) and the mode of signifying. All the words we use have a
creaturely mode of signifying in that they imply time and composition,
neither of which can pertain to God. When speaking of God, we must
recognize this fact, and attempt to discount it. To say "God is
good" is not to imply that God has a separable property,
goodness, and that he has it in a temporally limited way. God is
eternally identical to goodness itself. But even when we have
discounted the creaturely mode of signifying, we are left with the
fact that God's goodness is not like our goodness.
One major controversy over Aquinas's writings concerns the variation
in his writings over the roles analogy of attribution and analogy of
proportionality (or analogy in the Greek sense). In his early
writings, Aquinas questioned whether the standard account of the
analogy of attribution was sufficient for his purposes. In his
commentary on the *Sentences*, he suggests that there is one
kind of analogy in which the analogical term is used in a prior and a
posterior sense, and another kind of analogy, the analogy of
imitation, which applies to God and creatures. In his *De
veritate*, he argues that the analogy of attribution involves a
determinate relation, which cannot hold between God and creatures, and
that the analogy of proportionality must be used for the divine names.
We must compare the relation between God and his properties to the
relation between creatures and their properties. It has been argued
that Aquinas discovered that this solution was deeply flawed, given
that the problem of divine names arises precisely because the
relationship of God to his properties is so radically different from
our relation to our properties. Accordingly, in his later discussions
of the divine names, notably in the *Summa contra gentiles* and
the *Summa theologiae*, Aquinas returns to the analogy of
attribution, but links it much more closely with his doctrines of
causal similitude. Montagnes has pointed
outthat Aquinas came to place much greater
emphasis on agent causation, the active transmission of properties
from God to creatures, than on exemplar causality, the
creature's passive reflection or imitation of God's
properties. In this context, Aquinas makes considerable use of his
ontological distinction between univocal causes, whose effects are
fully like them, and non-univocal causes, whose effects are not fully
like them. God is an analogical cause, and this is the reality that
underlies our use of analogical language. Other scholars, notably
Hochschild, have argued that Aquinas never abandons the doctrine of
the *De Veritate*. Citing passages in the *Summa
Theologiae*that explicitly employ analogy of proportionality,
Hochschild argues that Aquinas appeals to one or another
classification of analogy based on the dialectical context of his
remarks. Where the context calls for addressing the causal
relationship between God and creatures, Aquinas appeals to
classifications of analogy of attribution. Where the context calls for
addressing the formal structure of the similarity between God and
creatures, Aquinas appeals to analogy of proportionality. Hochschild
argues furthermore that there is an asymmetrical relationship between
analogy of proportionality and the forms of analogy of attribution
that involve cause and effect relationships between analogates.
Analogy of proportionality can occur with or without causal
relationships between the analogates. (E.g. There is an analogy of
proportionality between the intellect's act of seeing and the eye's
act of seeing, but no causal relationship between them.) However,
cause and effect relationships between analogates in an analogy of
attribution always presuppose an analogy of proportionality as the
formal structure of the similarity between the analogate that is the
cause and the analogate that is the effect.
Another controversy over Aquinas's writings on analogy concerns
his explicit statements in some passages (notably in
the *Summa Theologiae*) that one analogate is included in
the definition of the other analogate or analogates. Specifically, the
analogate of which the term is said in a prior way must be
included in the definition of the posterior analogate or analogates,
just as the definition of healthy food includes a reference to the
healthiness of an animal. There are two grounds for the
controversy. One is that Aquinas also explicitly denies (notably
in the *De Veritate*) that the rule that one analogate
appears in the definition of the others applies to cases of names said
of God and creatures. Another ground is that it is simply difficult to
see how the rule could apply to names said of God and creatures given
Aquinas's insistence (including in the *Summa Theologiae*) that
these names are not said of God only by relation to creatures nor are
they said of creatures only by relation to God. One proposed solution
to the difficulty of fitting the definition of a name as said of God
into the definition of a name as said of a creature draws on Aquinas's
doctrine of participation through agent causality.
Althoughthe reference to God in the definition
of the creatureis not direct or explicit, it
occurs throughour recognition that when
humans are said to be good, this means that they have a participated
goodness which must be caused by that which is goodness itself. The
nature of this causal relation between God and creature
explains the sense in which terms are said in a prior way of God.
Soas far as imposition is concerned, terms are
given their signification on the basis of creaturely effects, and,
before we learn about God, we may think that their prior use is to
refer to creaturely perfections. However, when we come to know God as
the first cause and fully perfect being, we recognize that their prior
application is to God. The sixteenth-century Thomist Francis Sylvester of
Ferrara proposes that the naming of the creature by reference to God
involves a distinct act of imposition of signification upon a name
from the original act of imposition. A merit of this approach is
that ithelps us to explain Aquinas's insistence on
the distinction between the analogy of many-to-one and the analogy of
one-to-another. In the first case, both food and medicine are said to
be healthy because each is related to something else, the health of an
animal. In the second case, food is said to be healthy because of its
relation to the health of an animal. Only the second kind of analogy
applies to the divine names, for no non-metaphorical name that we
apply to God can ever be explained in terms of something other than
God. Our use of divine names has to reflect God's absolute
priority.
## 7. John Duns Scotus and the Role of Concepts
One of the issues that Aquinas touched on but did not settle was that
of the number of *rationes* an analogical term was associated
with. This issue stems from Aristotle's
*Categories*. As translated by Boethius, Aristotle introduced
the distinction between univocal and equivocal terms by claiming that
whereas univocal terms were subordinated to one *substantiae
ratio*, equivocal terms were subordinated to more than one
*substantiae ratio*. The word '*ratio*' here
is capable of various interpretations, including 'definition or
description', 'analysis', or 'concept',
but by the early fourteenth century logicians and theologians came to
agree that the appropriate interpretation was 'concept'.
The second threefold division of analogy given above suggests the
importance of a focus on concepts; and the question of how many
concepts an analogical term was subordinated to came to be central.
The nominalists held that so-called analogical terms were either
metaphorical or were straightforwardly equivocal terms subordinated to
two distinct concepts, but the Thomists were split. Analogical terms
could be viewed as subordinated to an ordered cluster of concepts
(possibly but not necessarily described as a disjunction of concepts);
or they could be subordinated to a single concept which represents in
a prior and a posterior manner (*per prius et posterius*).
The issue was considerably complicated by the influence of John Duns
Scotus. In his early logical commentaries, Scotus had argued that it
was impossible to have two concepts that were related in a prior and
posterior way, just as it was impossible to have a single concept that
captured such a relationship. As a result, 'being' was a
chance equivocal, and metaphor, which was a matter of linguistic
usage, replaced semantic analogy. However, Scotus did believe in
metaphysical analogy, whereby God and creatures, substances and
accidents were related in a prior and posterior way, and in his later
theological works he argued that without a unified concept of being
neither metaphysics nor theology would be possible. Accordingly, he
replaced the claim that 'being' was a chance equivocal
with the claim that it was univocal. In order to support this claim,
he rejected the common doctrine that for a term to be univocal it had
to be a strictly categorial term, picking out some natural kind or
other. He argued that it was sufficient for univocity that
contradiction would arise when the term was affirmed and denied of the
same thing. He then argued that 'being' (*ens*) was
a univocal term subordinated to a single univocal concept.
What one should make of the relationship between the single
univocal concept of being and the being common to finite and infinite
being (as substance and accidents) has proved to be a dividing point
for the Scotist tradition. Dumont has described how even the earliest
followers of Duns Scotus struggled to bring together the seemingly
competing claims of Scotus himself that, on the one hand, (a) there is
one univocal concept of being that is common to God and creatures,
and, on the other hand, (b) God and creatures are entirely
diverse realities with no real commonality. Different Scotists have
emphasized one point or the other, with some Scotists taking the
position that there is a real community in being between God and
creatures in order to preserve the unity of the univocal concept of
being, and other Scotists taking the position that the univocal
concept of being is purely logical in order to preserve the real
diversity between God and creatures. In developing these positions,
Scotists distinguish between different orders or kinds of univocity
and analogy, including between logical and metaphysical univocity and
logical and metaphysical analogy. In the seventeenth century, the great
Scotist philosopher Bartolmaeus Mastrius proposed that, in reality,
being is analogous to God and creatures, but analogy is not a medium
between equivocation and univocation. Instead, every analogy reduces
logically to equivocation or to univocation. In the case of being as
common to God and creatures, the analogy reduces to univocation. In
recent scholarship, Cross has defended a similar interpretation of
Scotus's doctrine, affirming that the semantics of analogy reduce to
or depend upon a more fundamental core of univocity.
Even for those within the Thomistic tradition, Scotus' arguments
about the univocity of 'being' had to be taken seriously.
On the one hand, the word does not seem to be straightforwardly
equivocal, in the sense of being subordinated to more than one
concept, for we at least have the illusion of being able to grasp
'being' as a general term. As Scotus pointed out, in an
argument reproduced by all who considered the issue (dubbed "the
famous argument from a certain and a doubtful concept" by the early
Scotist Peter Thomae), we can grasp that something is a being while
doubting whether it is a substance or an accident, and this surely
involves having a relatively simple concept of being at our disposal.
On the other hand, there does not seem to be any common nature
involved, and in the absence of a common nature, Thomists thought that
to call the term 'univocal' was inappropriate. What was
needed was a way of allowing the concept to enjoy some kind of unity,
while allowing the word to have a significate that was not a simple
common nature. For many thinkers from the early fourteenth century
onward, the distinction between formal and objective concepts provided
the answer.
The formal concept was the act of mind or conception that represented
an object, and the objective concept was the object represented. A
formal concept is a sign or signifier, and an objective concept is
what is signified. If the spoken word 'being'
corresponds to just one formal concept (a point on which there were
some differences of opinion), the focus of discussion shifts to the
status of the objective concept. Is it the actual thing in the world
which is thought about; is it a common nature or some other kind of
intermediary entity which is distinct from the external object without
being mind-dependent; or is it a special kind of mind-dependent object
which has only objective being, the being of being thought (*esse
objective, esse cognitum*)? In the case of 'being',
since we are clearly not talking about either an individual thing or a
common nature, we get back to the original set of questions about
analogical concepts, now posed at a different level. That is, are we
talking about a special ordering intrinsic to a single objective
concept, or are we talking about an ordered sequence of objective
concepts which corresponds to the one formal concept?
## 8. Cardinal Cajetan: A New Approach
Thomists' discussions of analogy from the beginning of the fourteenth
century onward are dominated by controversy with the arguments of
Scotus and the Scotists. Beginning with the fifteenth-century Thomist John
Capreolus and culminating with the fifteenth-sixteenth century Thomist Thomas de
vio Cajetan, a set of influential Thomists turned to the threefold
division of analogy in Thomas Aquinas's commentary on
the *Sentences*as providing the key for resolving a
set of questions inspired by Scotus about (a) the number
of *rationes*, *intentiones*, or concepts
involved in analogy, (b) the distinction between logical and
metaphysical univocity and analogy, and (c) how analogy is compatible
with valid syllogistic demonstration. The approach of these Thomists
marks a departure from earlier Thomists, such as Hervaeus Natalis, and
arguably a departure from the later works of Thomas Aquinas himself
(such as the *Summa Contra Gentiles*, *De Potentia*, and
*Summa Theologiae*). Montagnes and Wippel have argued strongly
that these fifteenth-sixteenth century Thomists depart from the mature position
of Aquinas. Hochschild has argued to the contrary. McInerny argued
that Cajetan not only misses the mark on the mature thought of
Aquinas, but even misinterprets Aquinas's early commentary on the
*Sentences*. Dewan has contended that McInerny's criticism
of Cajetan relies both on overlooking direct statements by
Aquinas in the commentary on the *Sentences*passage
in question and on omissions of words and phrases from the passage
that support Cajetan's interpretation.
The commentary on the *Sentences*passage in question
divides analogy into: (1) the analogous according
to *intentio*("*intentio*" is a synonym
for *ratio*or concept), but not according
to *esse* (act of being); (2) the analogous according
to *esse*, but not according to *intentio*;
and (3) the analogous both according
to *intentio*and according to *esse*.
Aquinas offers healthy as belonging to an animal, to urine, and to
medicine as an example of the first kind of analogy; body as belonging
to corruptible and incorruptible bodies as an example of the second
kind of analogy -- which Aquinas says is not a case of analogy from the
perspective of logic but is analogy from the perspective of
metaphysics and physics; and, finally, being, truth, and goodness as
examples of the third kind of analogy. Capreolus and Cajetan affirm
that the first kind of analogy (analogy of attribution) requires more
than one *ratio*or concept -- e.g., one for the
healthiness of an animal; another for the healthiness of urine;
another for the healthiness of medicine; etc. They maintain that this
diversity of *rationes* prevents a name that is being said
by analogy in this way from appearing in a valid syllogistic
demonstration. By contrast, names said by analogy in the second way
have only one *ratio* and present no obstacle to
demonstrative reasoning. Indeed, names said by analogy in the second
way are not even considered analogous but univocal from the
perspective of logic, which considers
the *ratio*apart from
its *esse* rather
than the *ratio*together with
its *esse*. Names said by analogy in the third way have
one *ratio*in a qualified sense of unity. As Cajetan
explains it, strictly speaking the different analogates have
diverse *rationes*, but, inasmuch as the diverse
analogates in the third mode of analogy are proportionally similar to
one another, it follows that the *ratio*of one
isproportionally one and the same as
the *ratio*of the other. Cajetan draws the further
inference that valid demonstration can proceed on the basis of this
kind of analogy provided that what is demonstrated from one analogate
about another is demonstrated about the other only insofar as the
analogates are proportionally similar. Accordingly, Cajetan claims
that names said by analogy in the third way (which Cajetan calls
analogy of proper proportionality) meet John Duns Scotus's conditions
for univocity: they have sufficient unity to ground a contradiction
and to serve as a middle term in a syllogism without the fallacy of
equivocation.
The marriage that Capreolus makes implicitly and that Cajetan makes
explicitly between the third mode of analogy in
Aquinas's commentary on the *Sentences*and analogy
of proportionality in Aquinas's *De Veritate* plays a
key role in their approach to defending analogy against Scotist
objections, and it is one of several points on which modern
scholarship has taken Cajetan in particular to task as an interpreter
of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Cajetan is frequently criticised in
modern scholarship for his claim that analogy of proportionality
is the only mode of analogy that is analogy in the strict sense
(*proprie*) and the other modes of analogy are only analogy in
a looser sense (*abusive*). This claim is not original to
Cajetan, and can be found in the writings of the late thirteenth to early
fourteenth century Thomist, Thomas Sutton. Cajetan's contemporary
Thomist critics, such as Francis Sylvester of Ferrara and Sylvester
Mazzolini Prierias dispute Cajetan's interpretation of analogy of
proper proportionality and its relationship to other modes of analogy.
Francis Sylvester goes so far as to propose that analogy of
proportionality is a subdivision of a subdivision of analogy of
attribution. Tavuzzi has called attention to several other ways that
Cajetan's contemporary Thomists divided up the modes of analogy in
opposition to Cajetan's threefold division.
Whatever the merits of the writings of Capreolus and Cajetan on
analogy are for their insight into the position of Thomas Aquinas,
their writings and the writings of their Thomist and Scotist critics
offer great insight into the ongoing philosophical reflection of the
medieval Aristotelian tradition in the logic, metaphysics, and
epistemology of analogy. |
reasoning-analogy | ## 1. Introduction: the many roles of analogy
Analogies are widely recognized as playing an important
*heuristic* role, as aids to discovery. They have been
employed, in a wide variety of settings and with considerable success,
to generate insight and to formulate possible solutions to problems.
According to Joseph Priestley, a pioneer in chemistry and
electricity,
>
>
> analogy is our best guide in all philosophical investigations; and all
> discoveries, which were not made by mere accident, have been made by
> the help of it. (1769/1966: 14)
>
>
>
Priestley may be over-stating the case, but there is no doubt that
analogies have suggested fruitful lines of inquiry in many fields.
Because of their heuristic value, analogies and analogical reasoning
have been a particular focus of AI research. Hajek (2018)
examines analogy as a heuristic tool in philosophy.
Analogies have a related (and not entirely separable)
*justificatory* role. This role is most obvious where an
analogical argument is explicitly offered in support of some
conclusion. The intended degree of support for the conclusion can vary
considerably. At one extreme, these arguments can be strongly
predictive. For example:
***Example 1*.**
*Hydrodynamic analogies* exploit mathematical similarities
between the equations governing ideal fluid flow and torsional
problems. To predict stresses in a planned structure, one can
construct a fluid model, i.e., a system of pipes through which water
passes (Timoshenko and Goodier 1970). Within the limits of
idealization, such analogies allow us to make demonstrative
inferences, for example, from a measured quantity in the fluid model
to the analogous value in the torsional problem. In practice, there
are numerous complications (Sterrett 2006).
At the other extreme, an analogical argument may provide very weak
support for its conclusion, establishing no more than minimal
plausibility. Consider:
***Example 2*.**
Thomas Reid's (1785) argument for the existence of life on
other planets (Stebbing 1933; Mill 1843/1930; Robinson 1930; Copi
1961). Reid notes a number of similarities between Earth and the other
planets in our solar system: all orbit and are illuminated by the sun;
several have moons; all revolve on an axis. In consequence, he
concludes, it is "not unreasonable to think, that those planets
may, like our earth, be the habitation of various orders of living
creatures" (1785: 24).
Such modesty is not uncommon. Often the point of an analogical
argument is just to persuade people to take an idea seriously. For
instance:
***Example 3*.**
Darwin takes himself to be using an analogy between artificial and
natural selection to argue for the plausibility of the latter:
>
>
> Why may I not invent the hypothesis of Natural Selection (which from
> the analogy of domestic productions, and from what we know of the
> struggle of existence and of the variability of organic beings, is, in
> some very slight degree, in itself probable) and try whether this
> hypothesis of Natural Selection does not explain (as I think it does)
> a large number of facts.... (*Letter to Henslow*, May 1860
> in Darwin 1903)
>
>
>
Here it appears, by Darwin's own admission, that his analogy is
employed to show that the hypothesis is probable to some "slight
degree" and thus merits further investigation. Some, however,
reject this characterization of Darwin's reasoning (Richards
1997; Gildenhuys 2004).
Sometimes analogical reasoning is the only available form of
justification for a hypothesis. The method of *ethnographic
analogy* is used to interpret
>
>
> the nonobservable behaviour of the ancient inhabitants of an
> archaeological site (or ancient culture) based on the similarity of
> their artifacts to those used by living peoples. (Hunter and Whitten
> 1976: 147)
>
>
>
For example:
***Example 4*.**
Shelley (1999, 2003) describes how ethnographic analogy was used to
determine the probable significance of odd markings on the necks of
Moche clay pots found in the Peruvian Andes. Contemporary potters in
Peru use these marks (called *signales*) to indicate
ownership; the marks enable them to reclaim their work when several
potters share a kiln or storage facility. Analogical reasoning may be
the only avenue of inference to the past in such cases, though this
point is subject to dispute (Gould and Watson 1982; Wylie 1982, 1985).
Analogical reasoning may have similar significance for cosmological
phenomena that are inaccessible due to limits on observation
(Dardashti et al. 2017). See
SS5.1
for further discussion.
As philosophers and historians such as Kuhn (1996) have repeatedly
pointed out, there is not always a clear separation between the two
roles that we have identified, discovery and justification. Indeed,
the two functions are blended in what we might call the
*programmatic* (or *paradigmatic*) role of analogy: over
a period of time, an analogy can shape the development of a program of
research. For example:
***Example 5*.**
An 'acoustical analogy' was employed for many years by
certain nineteenth-century physicists investigating spectral lines.
Discrete spectra were thought to be
>
>
> completely analogous to the acoustical situation, with atoms (and/or
> molecules) serving as oscillators originating or absorbing the
> vibrations in the manner of resonant tuning forks. (Maier 1981:
> 51)
>
>
>
Guided by this analogy, physicists looked for groups of spectral lines
that exhibited frequency patterns characteristic of a harmonic
oscillator. This analogy served not only to underwrite the
plausibility of conjectures, but also to guide *and limit*
discovery by pointing scientists in certain directions.
More generally, analogies can play an important programmatic role by
guiding conceptual development (see
SS5.2).
In some cases, a programmatic analogy culminates in the theoretical
unification of two different areas of inquiry.
***Example 6*.**
Descartes's (1637/1954) correlation between geometry and
algebra provided methods for systematically handling geometrical
problems that had long been recognized as analogous. A very different
relationship between analogy and discovery exists when a programmatic
analogy breaks down, as was the ultimate fate of the acoustical
analogy. That atomic spectra have an entirely different explanation
became clear with the advent of quantum theory. In this case, novel
discoveries emerged *against* background expectations shaped by
the guiding analogy. There is a third possibility: an unproductive or
misleading programmatic analogy may simply become entrenched and
self-perpetuating as it leads us to "construct... data that
conform to it" (Stepan 1996: 133). Arguably, the danger of this
third possibility provides strong motivation for developing a critical
account of analogical reasoning and analogical arguments.
*Analogical cognition*, which embraces all cognitive processes
involved in discovering, constructing and using analogies, is broader
than analogical reasoning (Hofstadter 2001; Hofstadter and Sander
2013). Understanding these processes is an important objective of
current cognitive science research, and an objective that generates
many questions. How do humans identify analogies? Do nonhuman animals
use analogies in ways similar to humans? How do analogies and
metaphors influence concept formation?
This entry, however, concentrates specifically on analogical
arguments. Specifically, it focuses on three central epistemological
questions:
1. What criteria should we use to evaluate analogical arguments?
2. What philosophical justification can be provided for analogical
inferences?
3. How do analogical arguments fit into a broader inferential context
(i.e., how do we combine them with other forms of inference),
especially theoretical confirmation?
Following a preliminary discussion of the basic structure of
analogical arguments, the entry reviews selected attempts to provide
answers to these three questions. To find such answers would
constitute an important first step towards understanding the nature of
analogical reasoning. To isolate these questions, however, is to make
the non-trivial assumption that there can be a *theory of*
*analogical arguments*--an assumption which, as we shall
see, is attacked in different ways by both philosophers and cognitive
scientists.
## 2. Analogical arguments
### 2.1 Examples
Analogical arguments vary greatly in subject matter, strength and
logical structure. In order to appreciate this variety, it is helpful
to increase our stock of examples. First, a geometric example:
***Example 7***
(Rectangles and boxes). Suppose that you have established that of all
rectangles with a fixed perimeter, the square has maximum area. By
analogy, you conjecture that of all boxes with a fixed surface area,
the cube has maximum volume.
Two examples from the history of science:
***Example 8***
(Morphine and meperidine). In 1934, the pharmacologist Schaumann was
testing synthetic compounds for their anti-spasmodic effect. These
drugs had a chemical structure similar to morphine. He observed that
one of the compounds--*meperidine*, also known as
*Demerol*--had a physical effect on mice that was
previously observed only with morphine: it induced an S-shaped tail
curvature. By analogy, he conjectured that the drug might also share
morphine's narcotic effects. Testing on rats, rabbits, dogs and
eventually humans showed that meperidine, like morphine, was an
effective pain-killer (Lembeck 1989: 11; Reynolds and Randall 1975:
273).
***Example 9***
(Priestley on electrostatic force). In 1769, Priestley suggested that
the absence of electrical influence inside a hollow charged spherical
shell was evidence that charges attract and repel with an inverse
square force. He supported his hypothesis by appealing to the
analogous situation of zero gravitational force inside a hollow shell
of uniform density.
Finally, an example from legal reasoning:
***Example 10***
(Duty of reasonable care). In a much-cited case (*Donoghue v.
Stevenson* 1932 AC 562), the United Kingdom House of Lords found
the manufacturer of a bottle of ginger beer liable for damages to a
consumer who became ill as a result of a dead snail in the bottle. The
court argued that the manufacturer had a duty to take
"reasonable care" in creating a product that could
foreseeably result in harm to the consumer in the absence of such
care, and where the consumer had no possibility of intermediate
examination. The principle articulated in this famous case was
extended, by analogy, to allow recovery for harm against an
engineering firm whose negligent repair work caused the collapse of a
lift (*Haseldine v. CA Daw & Son Ltd.* 1941 2 KB 343). By
contrast, the principle was not applicable to a case where a workman
was injured by a defective crane, since the workman had opportunity to
examine the crane and was even aware of the defects (*Farr v.
Butters Brothers & Co.* 1932 2 KB 606).
### 2.2 Characterization
What, if anything, do all of these examples have in common? We begin
with a simple, quasi-formal characterization. Similar formulations are
found in elementary critical thinking texts (e.g., Copi and Cohen
2005) and in the literature on argumentation theory (e.g., Govier
1999, Guarini 2004, Walton and Hyra 2018). An analogical argument has
the following form:
1. \(S\) is similar to \(T\) in certain (known) respects.
2. \(S\) has some further feature \(Q\).
3. Therefore, \(T\) also has the feature \(Q\), or some feature
\(Q^\*\) similar to \(Q\).
(1) and (2) are premises. (3) is the conclusion of the argument. The
argument form is *ampliative*; the conclusion is not guaranteed
to follow from the premises.
\(S\) and \(T\) are referred to as the *source domain* and
*target domain*, respectively. A *domain* is a set of
objects, properties, relations and functions, together with a set of
accepted statements about those objects, properties, relations and
functions. More formally, a domain consists of a set of objects and an
interpreted set of statements about them. The statements need not
belong to a first-order language, but to keep things simple, any
formalizations employed here will be first-order. We use unstarred
symbols \((a, P, R, f)\) to refer to items in the source domain and
starred symbols \((a^\*, P^\*, R^\*, f^\*)\) to refer to corresponding
items in the target domain. In
*Example 9*,
the source domain items pertain to gravitation; the target items
pertain to electrostatic attraction.
Formally, an *analogy* between \(S\) and \(T\) is a one-to-one
mapping between objects, properties, relations and functions in \(S\)
and those in \(T\). Not all of the items in \(S\) and \(T\) need to be
placed in correspondence. Commonly, the analogy only identifies
correspondences between a select set of items. In practice, we specify
an analogy simply by indicating the most significant similarities (and
sometimes differences).
We can improve on this preliminary characterization of the argument
from analogy by introducing the *tabular representation* found
in Hesse (1966). We place corresponding objects, properties, relations
and propositions side-by-side in a table of two columns, one for each
domain. For instance, Reid's argument
(*Example 2*)
can be represented as follows (using \(\Rightarrow\) for the
analogical inference):
| | Earth \((S)\) | | Mars \((T)\) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **\(\leftarrow\)vertical\(
\rightarrow\)** | Known similarities: |
| orbits the sun | \(\leftarrow\)horizontal\(
\rightarrow\) | orbits the sun |
| has a moon | has moons |
| revolves on axis | revolves on axis |
| subject to gravity | subject to gravity |
| Inferred similarity: |
| | supports life | \(\Rightarrow\) | *may* support life |
Figure 1.
Hesse introduced useful terminology based on this tabular
representation. The *horizontal relations* in an analogy are
the relations of similarity (and difference) in the mapping between
domains, while the *vertical relations* are those between the
objects, relations and properties within each domain. The
correspondence (similarity) between earth's having a moon and
Mars' having moons is a horizontal relation; the causal relation
between having a moon and supporting life is a vertical relation
within the source domain (with the possibility of a distinct such
relation existing in the target as well).
In an earlier discussion of analogy, Keynes (1921) introduced some
terminology that is also helpful.
***Positive analogy*.** Let \(P\) stand for a list
of accepted propositions \(P\_1 , \ldots ,P\_n\) about the source domain
\(S\). Suppose that the corresponding propositions \(P^\*\_1 , \ldots
,P^\*\_n\), abbreviated as \(P^\*\), are all accepted as holding for the
target domain \(T\), so that \(P\) and \(P^\*\) represent accepted (or
known) similarities. Then we refer to \(P\) as the *positive
analogy*.
***Negative analogy*.** Let \(A\) stand for a list
of propositions \(A\_1 , \ldots ,A\_r\) accepted as holding in \(S\),
and \(B^\*\) for a list \(B\_1^\*, \ldots ,B\_s^\*\) of propositions
holding in \(T\). Suppose that the analogous propositions \(A^\* =
A\_1^\*, \ldots ,A\_r^\*\) fail to hold in \(T\), and similarly the
propositions \(B = B\_1 , \ldots ,B\_s\) fail to hold in \(S\), so that
\(A, {\sim}A^\*\) and \({\sim}B, B^\*\) represent accepted (or known)
differences. Then we refer to \(A\) and \(B\) as the *negative
analogy*.
***Neutral analogy*.** The *neutral*
analogy consists of accepted propositions about \(S\) for which it is
not known whether an analogue holds in \(T\).
Finally we have:
***Hypothetical analogy*.** The
*hypothetical* analogy is simply the proposition \(Q\) in the
neutral analogy that is the focus of our attention.
These concepts allow us to provide a characterization for an
individual analogical argument that is somewhat richer than the
original one.
\[\tag{4} \text{Augmented tabular representation} \\
\begin{array}{ccc}
\text{Source } (S) & \text{Target } (T) & \\
P & P^\* & \text{[positive analogy]} \\
A & {\sim}A^\* & \text{[negative analogy]} \\
{\sim}B & B^\* & \\
Q & & \\
\hline
& Q^\* & \text{(plausibly)}
\end{array}\]
An analogical argument may thus be summarized:
It is plausible that \(Q^\*\) holds in the target, *because* of
certain known (or accepted) similarities with the source domain,
*despite* certain known (or accepted) differences.
In order for this characterization to be meaningful, we need to say
something about the meaning of 'plausibly.' To ensure
broad applicability over analogical arguments that vary greatly in
strength, we interpret plausibility rather liberally as meaning
'with some degree of support'. In general, judgments of
plausibility are made after a claim has been formulated, but prior to
rigorous testing or proof. The next sub-section provides further
discussion.
Note that this characterization is incomplete in a number of ways. The
manner in which we list similarities and differences, the nature of
the correspondences between domains: these things are left
unspecified. Nor does this characterization accommodate reasoning with
multiple analogies (i.e., multiple source domains), which is
ubiquitous in legal reasoning and common elsewhere. To characterize
the argument form more fully, however, is not possible without either
taking a step towards a substantive theory of analogical reasoning or
restricting attention to certain classes of analogical arguments.
Arguments by analogy are extensively discussed within argumentation
theory. There is considerable debate about whether they constitute a
species of deductive inference (Govier 1999; Waller 2001; Guarini
2004; Kraus 2015). Argumentation theorists also make use of tools such
as speech act theory (Bermejo-Luque 2012), argumentation schemes and
dialogue types (Macagno et al. 2017; Walton and Hyra 2018) to
distinguish different types of analogical argument.
Arguments by analogy are also discussed in the vast literature on
scientific models and model-based reasoning, following the lead of
Hesse (1966). Bailer-Jones (2002) draws a helpful distinction between
analogies and models. While "many models have their roots in an
analogy" (2002: 113) and analogy "can act as a catalyst to
aid modeling," Bailer-Jones observes that "the aim of
modeling has nothing intrinsically to do with analogy." In
brief, models are tools for prediction and explanation, whereas
analogical arguments aim at establishing plausibility. An analogy is
evaluated in terms of source-target similarity, while a model is
evaluated on how successfully it "provides access to a
phenomenon in that it interprets the available empirical data about
the phenomenon." If we broaden our perspective beyond analogical
*arguments*, however, the connection between models and
analogies is restored. Nersessian (2009), for instance, stresses the
role of analog models in concept-formation and other cognitive
processes.
### 2.3 Plausibility
To say that a hypothesis is plausible is to convey that it has
epistemic support: we have some reason to believe it, even prior to
testing. An assertion of plausibility within the context of an inquiry
typically has pragmatic connotations as well: to say that a hypothesis
is plausible suggests that we have some reason to investigate it
further. For example, a mathematician working on a proof regards a
conjecture as plausible if it "has some chances of
success" (Polya 1954 (v. 2): 148). On both points, there is
ambiguity as to whether an assertion of plausibility is categorical or
a matter of degree. These observations point to the existence of two
distinct conceptions of plausibility, *probabilistic* and
*modal*, either of which may reflect the intended conclusion of
an analogical argument.
On the *probabilistic* conception, plausibility is naturally
identified with rational credence (rational subjective degree of
belief) and is typically represented as a probability. A classic
expression may be found in Mill's analysis of the argument from
analogy in *A System of Logic*:
>
>
> There can be no doubt that every resemblance [not known to be
> irrelevant] affords some degree of probability, beyond what would
> otherwise exist, in favour of the conclusion. (Mill 1843/1930:
> 333)
>
>
>
In the terminology introduced in
SS2.2,
Mill's idea is that each element of the positive analogy boosts
the probability of the conclusion. Contemporary
'structure-mapping' theories
(SS3.4)
employ a restricted version: each *structural* similarity
between two domains contributes to the overall measure of similarity,
and hence to the strength of the analogical argument.
On the alternative *modal* conception, 'it is plausible
that \(p\)' is not a matter of degree. The meaning, roughly
speaking, is that there are sufficient initial grounds for taking
\(p\) seriously, i.e., for further investigation (subject to
feasibility and interest). Informally: \(p\) passes an initial
screening procedure. There is no assertion of degree. Instead,
'It is plausible that' may be regarded as an epistemic
modal operator that aims to capture a notion, *prima facie*
plausibility, that is somewhat stronger than ordinary epistemic
possibility. The intent is to single out \(p\) from an
undifferentiated mass of ideas that remain bare epistemic
possibilities. To illustrate: in 1769, Priestley's argument
(*Example 9*),
if successful, would establish the *prima facie* plausibility
of an inverse square law for electrostatic attraction. The set of
*epistemic* possibilities--hypotheses about electrostatic
attraction compatible with knowledge of the day--was much larger.
Individual analogical arguments in mathematics (such as
*Example 7*)
are almost invariably directed towards *prima facie*
plausibility.
The modal conception figures importantly in some discussions of
analogical reasoning. The physicist N. R. Campbell (1957) writes:
>
>
> But in order that a theory may be valuable it must ... display an
> analogy. The propositions of the hypothesis must be analogous to some
> known laws.... (1957: 129)
>
>
>
Commenting on the role of analogy in Fourier's theory of heat
conduction, Campbell writes:
>
>
> *Some* analogy is essential to it; for it is only this analogy
> which distinguishes the theory from the multitude of others...
> which might also be proposed to explain the same laws. (1957: 142)
>
>
>
The interesting notion here is that of a "valuable"
theory. We may not agree with Campbell that the existence of analogy
is "essential" for a novel theory to be
"valuable." But consider the weaker thesis that an
acceptable analogy is *sufficient* to establish that a theory
is "valuable", or (to qualify still further) that an
acceptable analogy provides defeasible grounds for taking the theory
seriously. (Possible defeaters might include internal inconsistency,
inconsistency with accepted theory, or the existence of a (clearly
superior) rival analogical argument.) The point is that Campbell,
following the lead of 19th century philosopher-scientists
such as Herschel and Whewell, thinks that analogies can establish this
sort of *prima facie* plausibility. Snyder (2006) provides a
detailed discussion of the latter two thinkers and their ideas about
the role of analogies in science.
In general, analogical arguments may be directed at establishing
either sort of plausibility for their conclusions; they can have a
probabilistic use or a modal use.
*Examples 7*
through
9
are best interpreted as supporting modal conclusions. In those
arguments, an analogy is used to show that a conjecture is worth
taking seriously. To insist on putting the conclusion in probabilistic
terms distracts attention from the point of the argument. The
conclusion might be modeled (by a Bayesian) as having a certain
probability value *because* it is deemed *prima facie*
plausible, but not vice versa.
*Example 2*,
perhaps, might be regarded as directed primarily towards a
probabilistic conclusion.
There should be connections between the two conceptions. Indeed, we
might think that the same analogical argument can establish both
*prima facie* plausibility and a degree of probability for a
hypothesis. But it is difficult to translate between epistemic modal
concepts and probabilities (Cohen 1980; Douven and Williamson 2006;
Huber 2009; Spohn 2009, 2012). We cannot simply take the probabilistic
notion as the primitive one. It seems wise to keep the two conceptions
of plausibility separate.
### 2.4 Analogical inference rules?
Schema (4)
is a template that represents *all* analogical arguments, good
and bad. It is not an inference rule. Despite the confidence with
which particular analogical arguments are advanced, nobody has ever
formulated an acceptable rule, or set of rules, for valid analogical
inferences. There is not even a plausible candidate. This situation is
in marked contrast not only with deductive reasoning, but also with
elementary forms of inductive reasoning, such as induction by
enumeration.
Of course, it is difficult to show that no successful analogical
inference rule will ever be proposed. But consider the following
candidate, formulated using the concepts of schema (4) and taking us
only a short step beyond that basic characterization.
(5)
Suppose \(S\) and \(T\) are the source and target domains.
Suppose \(P\_1 , \ldots ,P\_n\) (with \(n \ge 1)\) represents the
positive analogy, \(A\_1 , \ldots ,A\_r\) and \({\sim}B\_1 , \ldots
,{\sim}B\_s\) represent the (possibly vacuous) negative analogy, and
\(Q\) represents the hypothetical analogy. In the absence of reasons
for thinking otherwise, infer that \(Q^\*\) holds in the target domain
with degree of support \(p \gt 0\), where \(p\) is an increasing
function of \(n\) and a decreasing function of \(r\) and \(s\).
Rule (5) is modeled on the
straight rule for enumerative induction
and inspired by Mill's view of analogical inference, as
described in
SS2.3.
We use the generic phrase 'degree of support' in place of
probability, since other factors besides the analogical argument may
influence our probability assignment for \(Q^\*\).
It is pretty clear that (5) is a non-starter. The main problem is that
the rule justifies too much. The only substantive requirement
introduced by (5) is that there be a nonempty positive analogy.
Plainly, there are analogical arguments that satisfy this condition
but establish no *prima facie* plausibility and no measure of
support for their conclusions.
Here is a simple illustration. Achinstein (1964: 328) observes that
there is a formal analogy between swans and line segments if we take
the relation 'has the same color as' to correspond to
'is congruent with'. Both relations are reflexive,
symmetric, and transitive. Yet it would be absurd to find positive
support from this analogy for the idea that we are likely to find
congruent lines clustered in groups of two or more, just because swans
of the same color are commonly found in groups. The positive analogy
is antecedently known to be irrelevant to the hypothetical analogy. In
such a case, the analogical inference should be utterly rejected. Yet
rule (5) would wrongly assign non-zero degree of support.
To generalize the difficulty: not every similarity increases the
probability of the conclusion and not every difference decreases it.
Some similarities and differences are known to be (or accepted as
being) utterly irrelevant and should have no influence whatsoever on
our probability judgments. To be viable, rule (5) would need to be
supplemented with considerations of *relevance*, which depend
upon the subject matter, historical context and logical details
particular to each analogical argument. To search for a simple rule of
analogical inference thus appears futile.
Carnap and his followers (Carnap 1980; Kuipers 1988; Niiniluoto 1988;
Maher 2000; Romeijn 2006) have formulated principles of analogy for
inductive logic, using Carnapian \(\lambda \gamma\) rules. Generally,
this body of work relates to "analogy by similarity",
rather than the type of analogical reasoning discussed here. Romeijn
(2006) maintains that there is a relation between Carnap's
concept of analogy and analogical prediction. His approach is a hybrid
of Carnap-style inductive rules and a Bayesian model. Such an approach
would need to be generalized to handle the kinds of arguments
described in
SS2.1.
It remains unclear that the Carnapian approach can provide a general
rule for analogical inference.
Norton (2010, and 2018--see Other Internet Resources) has argued
that the project of formalizing inductive reasoning in terms of one or
more simple formal schemata is doomed. His criticisms seem especially
apt when applied to analogical reasoning. He writes:
>
>
> If analogical reasoning is required to conform only to a simple formal
> schema, the restriction is too permissive. Inferences are authorized
> that clearly should not pass muster... The natural response has
> been to develop more elaborate formal templates... The familiar
> difficulty is that these embellished schema never seem to be quite
> embellished enough; there always seems to be some part of the analysis
> that must be handled intuitively without guidance from strict formal
> rules. (2018: 1)
>
>
>
Norton takes the point one step further, in keeping with his
"material theory" of inductive inference. He argues that
there is no universal logical principle that "powers"
analogical inference "by asserting that things that share some
properties must share others." Rather, each analogical inference
is warranted by some local constellation of facts about the target
system that he terms "the fact of analogy". These local
facts are to be determined and investigated on a case by case
basis.
To embrace a purely formal approach to analogy and to abjure
formalization entirely are two extremes in a spectrum of strategies.
There are intermediate positions. Most recent analyses (both
philosophical and computational) have been directed towards
elucidating criteria and procedures, rather than formal rules, for
reasoning by analogy. So long as these are not intended to provide a
universal 'logic' of analogy, there is room for such
criteria even if one accepts Norton's basic point. The next
section discusses some of these criteria and procedures.
## 3. Criteria for evaluating analogical arguments
### 3.1 Commonsense guidelines
Logicians and philosophers of science have identified
'textbook-style' general guidelines for evaluating
analogical arguments (Mill 1843/1930; Keynes 1921; Robinson 1930;
Stebbing 1933; Copi and Cohen 2005; Moore and Parker 1998; Woods,
Irvine, and Walton 2004). Here are some of the most important
ones:
(G1)
The more similarities (between two domains), the stronger the
analogy.
(G2)
The more differences, the weaker the analogy.
(G3)
The greater the extent of our ignorance about the two domains,
the weaker the analogy.
(G4)
The weaker the conclusion, the more plausible the analogy.
(G5)
Analogies involving causal relations are more plausible than
those not involving causal relations.
(G6)
Structural analogies are stronger than those based on superficial
similarities.
(G7)
The relevance of the similarities and differences to the
conclusion (i.e., to the hypothetical analogy) must be taken into
account.
(G8)
Multiple analogies supporting the same conclusion make the
argument stronger.
These principles can be helpful, but are frequently too vague to
provide much insight. How do we count similarities and differences in
applying (G1) and (G2)? Why are the structural and causal analogies
mentioned in (G5) and (G6) especially important, and which structural
and causal features merit attention? More generally, in connection
with the all-important (G7): how do we determine which similarities
and differences are relevant to the conclusion? Furthermore, what are
we to say about similarities and differences that have been omitted
from an analogical argument but might still be relevant?
An additional problem is that the criteria can pull in different
directions. To illustrate, consider Reid's argument for life on
other planets
(*Example 2*).
Stebbing (1933) finds Reid's argument "suggestive"
and "not unplausible" because the conclusion is weak (G4),
while Mill (1843/1930) appears to reject the argument on account of
our vast ignorance of properties that might be relevant (G3).
There is a further problem that relates to the distinction just made
(in
SS2.3)
between two kinds of plausibility. Each of the above criteria apart
from (G7) is expressed in terms of the strength of the argument, i.e.,
the degree of support for the conclusion. The criteria thus appear to
presuppose the *probabilistic* interpretation of plausibility.
The problem is that a great many analogical arguments aim to establish
*prima facie* plausibility rather than any degree of
probability. Most of the guidelines are not directly applicable to
such arguments.
### 3.2 Aristotle's theory
Aristotle sets the stage for all later theories of analogical
reasoning. In his theoretical reflections on analogy and in his most
judicious examples, we find a sober account that lays the foundation
both for the commonsense guidelines noted above and for more
sophisticated analyses.
Although Aristotle employs the term analogy (*analogia*) and
discusses
analogical predication,
he never talks about analogical reasoning or analogical arguments
*per se*. He does, however, identify two argument forms, the
*argument from example* (*paradeigma*) and the
*argument from likeness* (*homoiotes*), both closely
related to what would we now recognize as an analogical argument.
The *argument from example* (*paradeigma*) is described
in the *Rhetoric* and the *Prior Analytics*:
>
>
> Enthymemes based upon example are those which proceed from one or more
> similar cases, arrive at a general proposition, and then argue
> deductively to a particular inference. (*Rhetoric* 1402b15)
>
>
>
> Let \(A\) be evil, \(B\) making war against neighbours, \(C\)
> Athenians against Thebans, \(D\) Thebans against Phocians. If then we
> wish to prove that to fight with the Thebans is an evil, we must
> assume that to fight against neighbours is an evil. Conviction of this
> is obtained from similar cases, e.g., that the war against the
> Phocians was an evil to the Thebans. Since then to fight against
> neighbours is an evil, and to fight against the Thebans is to fight
> against neighbours, it is clear that to fight against the Thebans is
> an evil. (*Pr. An.* 69a1)
>
>
>
Aristotle notes two differences between this argument form and
induction (69a15ff.): it "does not draw its proof from all the
particular cases" (i.e., it is not a "complete"
induction), and it requires an additional (deductively valid)
syllogism as the final step. The argument from example thus amounts to
single-case induction followed by deductive inference. It has the
following structure (using \(\supset\) for the conditional):
![[a tree diagram where S is source domain and T is target domain. First node is P(S)&Q(S) in the lower left corner. It is connected by a dashed arrow to (x)(P(x) superset Q(x)) in the top middle which in turn connects by a solid arrow to P(T) and on the next line P(T) superset Q(T) in the lower right. It in turn is connected by a solid arrow to Q(T) below it.]](example.png)
Figure 2.
In the terminology of
SS2.2,
\(P\) is the positive analogy and \(Q\) is the hypothetical analogy.
In Aristotle's example, \(S\) (the source) is war between
Phocians and Thebans, \(T\) (the target) is war between Athenians and
Thebans, \(P\) is war between neighbours, and \(Q\) is evil. The first
inference (dashed arrow) is inductive; the second and third (solid
arrows) are deductively valid.
The *paradeigma* has an interesting feature: it is amenable to
an alternative analysis as a purely *deductive* argument form.
Let us concentrate on Aristotle's assertion, "we must
assume that to fight against neighbours is an evil," represented
as \(\forall x(P(x) \supset Q(x))\). Instead of regarding this
intermediate step as something reached by induction from a single
case, we might instead regard it as a hidden presupposition. This
transforms the *paradeigma* into a syllogistic argument with a
missing or *enthymematic* premise, and our attention shifts to
possible means for establishing that premise (with single-case
induction as one such means). Construed in this way, Aristotle's
*paradeigma* argument foreshadows deductive analyses of
analogical reasoning (see
SS4.1).
The *argument from likeness* (*homoiotes*) seems to be
closer than the *paradeigma* to our contemporary understanding
of analogical arguments. This argument form receives considerable
attention in *Topics* I, 17 and 18 and again in VIII, 1. The
most important passage is the following.
>
>
> Try to secure admissions by means of likeness; for such admissions are
> plausible, and the universal involved is less patent; e.g. that as
> knowledge and ignorance of contraries is the same, so too perception
> of contraries is the same; or vice versa, that since the perception is
> the same, so is the knowledge also. This argument resembles induction,
> but is not the same thing; for in induction it is the universal whose
> admission is secured from the particulars, whereas in arguments from
> likeness, what is secured is not the universal under which all the
> like cases fall. (*Topics* 156b10-17)
>
>
>
This passage occurs in a work that offers advice for framing
dialectical arguments when confronting a somewhat skeptical
interlocutor. In such situations, it is best not to make one's
argument depend upon securing agreement about any universal
proposition. The argument from likeness is thus clearly distinct from
the *paradeigma*, where the universal proposition plays an
essential role as an intermediate step in the argument. The argument
from likeness, though logically less straightforward than the
*paradeigma*, is exactly the sort of analogical reasoning we
want when we are unsure about underlying generalizations.
In *Topics* I 17, Aristotle states that any shared attribute
contributes some degree of likeness. It is natural to ask when the
degree of likeness between two things is sufficiently great to warrant
inferring a further likeness. In other words, when does the argument
from likeness succeed? Aristotle does not answer explicitly, but a
clue is provided by the way he justifies particular arguments from
likeness. As Lloyd (1966) has observed, Aristotle typically justifies
such arguments by articulating a (sometimes vague) causal principle
which governs the two phenomena being compared. For example, Aristotle
explains the saltiness of the sea, by analogy with the saltiness of
sweat, as a kind of residual earthy stuff exuded in natural processes
such as heating. The common principle is this:
>
>
> Everything that grows and is naturally generated always leaves a
> residue, like that of things burnt, consisting in this sort of earth.
> (*Mete* 358a17)
>
>
>
From this method of justification, we might conjecture that Aristotle
believes that the important similarities are those that enter into
such general causal principles.
Summarizing, Aristotle's theory provides us with four important
and influential criteria for the evaluation of analogical
arguments:
* *The strength of an analogy depends upon the number of
similarities.*
* *Similarity reduces to identical properties and
relations.*
* *Good analogies derive from underlying common causes or general
laws.*
* *A good analogical argument need not pre-suppose acquaintance
with the underlying universal (generalization).*
These four principles form the core of a *common-sense model*
for evaluating analogical arguments (which is not to say that they are
correct; indeed, the first three will shortly be called into
question). The first, as we have seen, appears regularly in textbook
discussions of analogy. The second is largely taken for granted, with
important exceptions in computational models of analogy
(SS3.4).
Versions of the third are found in most sophisticated theories. The
final point, which distinguishes the argument from likeness and the
argument from example, is endorsed in many discussions of analogy
(e.g., Quine and Ullian 1970).
A slight generalization of Aristotle's first principle helps to
prepare the way for discussion of later developments. As that
principle suggests, Aristotle, in common with just about everyone else
who has written about analogical reasoning, organizes his analysis of
the argument form around overall similarity. In the terminology of
section 2.2,
*horizontal relationships* drive the reasoning: *the
greater the overall similarity of the two domains, the stronger the
analogical argument*. Hume makes the same point, though stated
negatively, in his *Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion*:
>
>
> Wherever you depart, in the least, from the similarity of the cases,
> you diminish proportionably the evidence; and may at last bring it to
> a very weak analogy, which is confessedly liable to error and
> uncertainty. (1779/1947: 144)
>
>
>
Most theories of analogy agree with Aristotle and Hume on this general
point. Disagreement relates to the appropriate way of measuring
overall similarity. Some theories assign greatest weight to
*material analogy*, which refers to shared, and typically
observable, features. Others give prominence to *formal
analogy*, emphasizing high-level structural correspondence. The
next two sub-sections discuss representative accounts that illustrate
these two approaches.
### 3.3 Material criteria: Hesse's theory
Hesse (1966) offers a sharpened version of Aristotle's theory,
specifically focused on analogical arguments in the sciences. She
formulates three requirements that an analogical argument must satisfy
in order to be acceptable:
1. *Requirement of material analogy*. The horizontal relations
must include similarities between observable properties.
2. *Causal condition*. The vertical relations must be causal
relations "in some acceptable scientific sense" (1966:
87).
3. *No-essential-difference condition*. The essential
properties and causal relations of the source domain must not have
been shown to be part of the negative analogy.
#### 3.3.1 Requirement of material analogy
For Hesse, an acceptable analogical argument must include
"observable similarities" between domains, which she
refers to as *material analogy*. Material analogy is contrasted
with *formal analogy*. Two domains are formally analogous if
both are "interpretations of the same formal theory"
(1966: 68). *Nomic isomorphism* (Hempel 1965) is a special case
in which the physical laws governing two systems have identical
mathematical form. Heat and fluid flow exhibit nomic isomorphism. A
second example is the analogy between the flow of electric current in
a wire and fluid in a pipe. Ohm's law
\[\tag{6}
\Delta v = iR
\]
states that voltage difference along a wire equals current times a
constant resistance. This has the same mathematical form as
Poiseuille's law (for ideal fluids):
\[\tag{7}
\Delta p = \dot{V}k
\]
which states that the pressure difference along a pipe equals the
volumetric flow rate times a constant. Both of these systems can be
represented by a common equation. While formal analogy is linked to
common mathematical structure, it should not be limited to nomic
isomorphism (Bartha 2010: 209). The idea of formal analogy generalizes
to cases where there is a common mathematical structure between
*models* for two systems. Bartha offers an even more liberal
definition (2010: 195): "Two features are formally similar if
they occupy corresponding positions in formally analogous theories.
For example, pitch in the theory of sound corresponds to color in the
theory of light."
By contrast, material analogy consists of what Hesse calls
"observable" or "pre-theoretic" similarities.
These are horizontal relationships of similarity between properties of
objects in the source and the target. Similarities between echoes
(sound) and reflection (light), for instance, were recognized long
before we had any detailed theories about these phenomena. Hesse
(1966, 1988) regards such similarities as metaphorical relationships
between the two domains and labels them "pre-theoretic"
because they draw on personal and cultural experience. We have both
material and formal analogies between sound and light, and it is
significant for Hesse that the former are independent of the
latter.
There are good reasons not to accept Hesse's requirement of
material analogy, construed in this narrow way. First, it is apparent
that formal analogies *are* the starting point in many
important inferences. That is certainly the case in mathematics, a
field in which material analogy, in Hesse's sense, plays no role
at all. Analogical arguments based on formal analogy have also been
extremely influential in physics (Steiner 1989, 1998).
In Norton's broad sense, however, 'material analogy'
simply refers to similarities rooted in factual knowledge of the
source and target domains. With reference to this broader meaning,
Hesse proposes two additional material criteria.
#### 3.3.2 Causal condition
Hesse requires that the hypothetical analogy, the feature transferred
to the target domain, be *causally related* to the positive
analogy. In her words, the essential requirement for a good argument
from analogy is "a tendency to co-occurrence", i.e., a
causal relationship. She states the requirement as follows:
>
>
> The vertical relations in the model [source] are causal relations in
> some acceptable scientific sense, where there are no compelling a
> priori reasons for denying that causal relations of the same kind may
> hold between terms of the explanandum [target]. (1966: 87)
>
>
>
The causal condition rules out analogical arguments where there is no
causal knowledge of the source domain. It derives support from the
observation that many analogies do appear to involve a transfer of
causal knowledge.
The causal condition is on the right track, but is arguably too
restrictive. For example, it rules out analogical arguments in
mathematics. Even if we limit attention to the empirical sciences,
persuasive analogical arguments may be founded upon strong statistical
correlation in the absence of any *known* causal connection.
Consider
(*Example 11*)
Benjamin Franklin's prediction, in 1749, that pointed metal
rods would attract lightning, by analogy with the way they attracted
the "electrical fluid" in the laboratory:
>
>
> Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars: 1. Giving
> light. 2. Colour of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion.
> 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7.
> Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9.
> Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable
> substances. 12. Sulphureous smell.--The electrical fluid is
> attracted by points.--We do not know whether this property is in
> lightning.--But since they agree in all the particulars wherein
> we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in
> this? Let the experiment be made. (*Benjamin Franklin's
> Experiments*, 334)
>
>
>
Franklin's hypothesis was based on a long list of properties
common to the target (lightning) and source (electrical fluid in the
laboratory). There was no known causal connection between the twelve
"particulars" and the thirteenth property, but there was a
strong correlation. Analogical arguments may be plausible even where
there are no known causal relations.
#### 3.3.3 No-essential-difference condition
Hesse's final requirement is that the "essential
properties and causal relations of the [source] have not been shown to
be part of the negative analogy" (1966: 91). Hesse does not
provide a definition of "essential," but suggests that a
property or relation is essential if it is "causally closely
related to the known positive analogy." For instance, an analogy
with fluid flow was extremely influential in developing the theory of
heat conduction. Once it was discovered that heat was not conserved,
however, the analogy became unacceptable (according to Hesse) because
conservation was so central to the theory of fluid flow.
This requirement, though once again on the right track, seems too
restrictive. It can lead to the rejection of a good analogical
argument. Consider the analogy between a two-dimensional rectangle and
a three-dimensional box
(*Example 7*).
Broadening Hesse's notion, it seems that there are many
'essential' differences between rectangles and boxes. This
does not mean that we should reject every analogy between rectangles
and boxes out of hand. The problem derives from the fact that
Hesse's condition is applied to the analogy *relation*
independently of the use to which that relation is put. What counts as
essential should vary with the analogical argument. Absent an
inferential context, it is impossible to evaluate the importance or
'essentiality' of similarities and differences.
Despite these weaknesses, Hesse's 'material'
criteria constitute a significant advance in our understanding of
analogical reasoning. The causal condition and the
no-essential-difference condition incorporate local factors, as urged
by Norton, into the assessment of analogical arguments. These
conditions, singly or taken together, imply that an analogical
argument can fail to generate any support for its conclusion, even
when there is a non-empty positive analogy. Hesse offers no theory
about the 'degree' of analogical support. That makes her
account one of the few that is oriented towards the modal, rather than
probabilistic, use of analogical arguments
(SS2.3).
### 3.4 Formal criteria: the structure-mapping theory
Many people take the concept of
model-theoretic isomorphism
to set the standard for thinking about similarity and its role in
analogical reasoning. They propose *formal criteria* for
evaluating analogies, based on overall structural or syntactical
similarity. Let us refer to theories oriented around such criteria as
*structuralist*.
A number of leading computational models of analogy are structuralist.
They are implemented in computer programs that begin with (or
sometimes build) representations of the source and target domains, and
then construct possible analogy mappings. Analogical inferences emerge
as a consequence of identifying the 'best mapping.' In
terms of criteria for analogical reasoning, there are two main ideas.
First, the goodness of an *analogical argument* is based on the
goodness of the associated *analogy mapping*. Second, the
goodness of the analogy mapping is given by a metric that indicates
how closely it approximates isomorphism.
The most influential structuralist theory has been Gentner's
*structure-mapping* theory, implemented in a program called the
*structure-mapping engine* (SME). In its original form (Gentner
1983), the theory assesses analogies on purely structural grounds.
Gentner asserts:
>
>
> Analogies are about relations, rather than simple features. No matter
> what kind of knowledge (causal models, plans, stories, etc.), it is
> the structural properties (i.e., the interrelationships between the
> facts) that determine the content of an analogy. (Falkenhainer,
> Forbus, and Gentner 1989/90: 3)
>
>
>
In order to clarify this thesis, Gentner introduces a distinction
between *properties*, or monadic predicates, and
*relations*, which have multiple arguments. She further
distinguishes among different *orders* of relations and
functions, defined inductively (in terms of the order of the relata or
arguments). The best mapping is determined by *systematicity*:
the extent to which it places higher-order relations, and items that
are nested in higher-order relations, in correspondence.
Gentner's *Systematicity Principle* states:
>
>
> A predicate that belongs to a mappable system of mutually
> interconnecting relationships is more likely to be imported into the
> target than is an isolated predicate. (1983: 163)
>
>
>
A systematic analogy (one that places high-order relations and their
components in correspondence) is better than a less systematic
analogy. Hence, an analogical inference has a degree of plausibility
that increases monotonically with the degree of systematicity of the
associated analogy mapping. Gentner's fundamental criterion for
evaluating candidate analogies (and analogical inferences) thus
depends solely upon the syntax of the given representations and not at
all upon their content.
Later versions of the structure-mapping theory incorporate refinements
(Forbus, Ferguson, and Gentner 1994; Forbus 2001; Forbus et al. 2007;
Forbus et al. 2008; Forbus et al 2017). For example, the earliest
version of the theory is vulnerable to worries about hand-coded
representations of source and target domains. Gentner and her
colleagues have attempted to solve this problem in later work that
generates LISP representations from natural language text (see Turney
2008 for a different approach).
The most important challenges for the structure-mapping approach
relate to the *Systematicity Principle* itself. Does the value
of an analogy derive entirely, or even chiefly, from systematicity?
There appear to be two main difficulties with this view. First: it is
not always appropriate to give priority to systematic, high-level
relational matches. Material criteria, and notably what Gentner refers
to as "superficial feature matches," can be extremely
important in some types of analogical reasoning, such as ethnographic
analogies which are based, to a considerable degree, on surface
resemblances between artifacts. Second and more significantly:
systematicity seems to be at best a fallible *marker* for good
analogies rather than the essence of good analogical reasoning.
Greater systematicity is neither necessary nor sufficient for a more
plausible analogical inference. It is obvious that increased
systematicity is not *sufficient* for increased plausibility.
An implausible analogy can be represented in a form that exhibits a
high degree of structural parallelism. High-order relations can come
cheap, as we saw with Achinstein's "swan" example
(SS2.4).
More pointedly, increased systematicity is not *necessary* for
greater plausibility. Indeed, in causal analogies, it may even weaken
the inference. That is because *systematicity* takes no account
of the *type* of causal relevance, positive or negative. (McKay
1993) notes that microbes have been found in frozen lakes in
Antarctica; by analogy, simple life forms might exist on Mars.
Freezing temperatures are *preventive* or counteracting causes;
they are *negatively relevant* to the existence of life. The
climate of Mars was probably *more favorable* to life 3.5
billion years ago than it is today, because temperatures were warmer.
Yet the analogy between Antarctica and present-day Mars is *more
systematic* than the analogy between Antarctica and ancient Mars.
According to the *Systematicity Principle*, the analogy with
Antarctica provides stronger support for life on Mars today than it
does for life on ancient Mars.
The point of this example is that increased systematicity does not
always increase plausibility, and reduced systematicity does not
always decrease it (see Lee and Holyoak 2008). The more general point
is that systematicity can be misleading, unless we take into account
the *nature* of the relationships between various factors and
the hypothetical analogy. Systematicity does not magically produce or
explain the plausibility of an analogical argument. When we reason by
analogy, we must determine which features of both domains are relevant
and *how* they relate to the analogical conclusion. There is no
short-cut via syntax.
Schlimm (2008) offers an entirely different critique of the
structure-mapping theory from the perspective of analogical reasoning
in mathematics--a domain where one might expect a formal approach
such as *structure mapping* to perform well. Schlimm introduces
a simple distinction: a domain is *object-rich* if the number
of objects is greater than the number of relations (and properties),
and *relation-rich* otherwise. Proponents of the
structure-mapping theory typically focus on relation-rich examples
(such as the analogy between the solar system and the atom). By
contrast, analogies in mathematics typically involve domains with an
enormous number of objects (like the real numbers), but relatively few
relations and functions (addition, multiplication, less-than).
Schlimm provides an example of an analogical reasoning problem in
group theory that involves a single relation in each domain. In this
case, attaining maximal systematicity is trivial. The difficulty is
that, compatible with maximal systematicity, there are different ways
in which the objects might be placed in correspondence. The
structure-mapping theory appears to yield the wrong inference. We
might put the general point as follows: in object-rich domains,
systematicity ceases to be a reliable guide to plausible analogical
inference.
### 3.5 Other theories
#### 3.5.1 Connectionist models
During the past thirty-five years, cognitive scientists have conducted
extensive research on analogy. Gentner's SME is just one of many
computational theories, implemented in programs that construct and use
analogies. Three helpful anthologies that span this period are Helman
1988; Gentner, Holyoak, and Kokinov 2001; and Kokinov, Holyoak, and
Gentner 2009.
One predominant objective of this research has been to model the
cognitive processes involved in using analogies. Early models tended
to be oriented towards "understanding the basic constraints that
govern human analogical thinking" (Hummel and Holyoak 1997:
458). Recent connectionist models have been directed towards
uncovering the psychological mechanisms that come into play when we
use analogies: *retrieval* of a relevant source domain,
*analogical mapping* across domains, and *transfer* of
information and *learning* of new categories or schemas.
In some cases, such as the structure-mapping theory (SS3.4), this
research overlaps directly with the normative questions that are the
focus of this entry; indeed, Gentner's *Systematicity
Principle* may be interpreted normatively. In other cases, we
might view the projects as *displacing* those traditional
normative questions with up-to-date, computational forms of
naturalized epistemology.
Two approaches are singled out here because both raise important
challenges to the very idea of finding sharp answers to those
questions, and both suggest that connectionist models offer a more
fruitful approach to understanding analogical reasoning.
The first is the ***constraint-satisfaction
model*** (also known as the ***multiconstraint
theory***), developed by Holyoak and Thagard (1989, 1995).
Like Gentner, Holyoak and Thagard regard the heart of analogical
reasoning as *analogy mapping*, and they stress the importance
of systematicity, which they refer to as a *structural*
constraint. Unlike Gentner, they acknowledge two additional types of
constraints. *Pragmatic* constraints take into account the
goals and purposes of the agent, recognizing that "the purpose
will guide selection" of relevant similarities.
*Semantic* constraints represent estimates of the degree to
which people regard source and target items as being alike, rather
like Hesse's "pre-theoretic" similarities.
The novelty of the multiconstraint theory is that these
*structural*, *semantic* and *pragmatic*
constraints are implemented not as rigid rules, but rather as
'pressures' supporting or inhibiting potential pairwise
correspondences. The theory is implemented in a connectionist program
called **ACME** (Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine),
which assigns an initial activation value to each possible pairing
between elements in the source and target domains (based on semantic
and pragmatic constraints), and then runs through cycles that update
the activation values based on overall coherence (structural
constraints). The best global analogy mapping emerges under the
pressure of these constraints. Subsequent connectionist models, such
as Hummel and Holyoak's LISA program (1997, 2003), have made
significant advances and hold promise for offering a more complete
theory of analogical reasoning.
The second example is Hofstadter and Mitchell's
***Copycat*** program (Hofstadter 1995; Mitchell
1993). The program is "designed to discover insightful
analogies, and to do so in a psychologically realistic way"
(Hofstadter 1995: 205). Copycat operates in the domain of
letter-strings. The program handles the following type of problem:
Suppose the letter-string *abc* were changed to *abd*;
how would you change the letter-string *ijk* in "the same
way"?
Most people would answer *ijl*, since it is natural to think
that *abc* was changed to *abd* by the
"transformation rule": replace the rightmost letter with
its successor. Alternative answers are possible, but do not agree with
most people's sense of what counts as the natural analogy.
Hofstadter and Mitchell believe that analogy-making is in large part
about the *perception* of novel patterns, and that such
perception requires concepts with "fluid" boundaries.
Genuine analogy-making involves "slippage" of concepts.
The Copycat program combines a set of core concepts pertaining to
letter-sequences (*successor*, *leftmost* and so forth)
with probabilistic "halos" that link distinct concepts
dynamically. Orderly structures emerge out of random low-level
processes and the program produces plausible solutions. Copycat thus
shows that analogy-making can be modeled as a process akin to
perception, even if the program employs mechanisms distinct from those
in human perception.
The multiconstraint theory and Copycat share the idea that analogical
cognition involves cognitive processes that operate below the level of
abstract reasoning. Both computational models--to the extent that
they are capable of performing successful analogical
reasoning--challenge the idea that a successful model of
analogical reasoning must take the form of a set of quasi-logical
criteria. Efforts to develop a quasi-logical *theory* of
analogical reasoning, it might be argued, have failed. In place of
faulty inference schemes such as those described earlier
(SS2.2,
SS2.4), computational models substitute *procedures*
that can be judged on their performance rather than on traditional
philosophical standards.
In response to this argument, we should recognize the value of the
connectionist models while acknowledging that we still need a theory
that offers normative principles for evaluating analogical arguments.
In the first place, even if the construction and recognition of
analogies are largely a matter of perception, this does not eliminate
the need for subsequent critical evaluation of analogical inferences.
Second and more importantly, we need to look not just at the
construction of analogy mappings but at the ways in which individual
analogical arguments are debated in fields such as mathematics,
physics, philosophy and the law. These high-level debates require
reasoning that bears little resemblance to the computational processes
of ACME or Copycat. (Ashley's HYPO (Ashley 1990) is one example
of a non-connectionist program that focuses on this aspect of
analogical reasoning.) There is, accordingly, room for both
computational and traditional philosophical models of analogical
reasoning.
#### 3.5.2 Articulation model
Most prominent theories of analogy, philosophical and computational,
are based on overall similarity between source and target
domains--defined in terms of some favoured subset of
Hesse's *horizontal relations* (see
SS2.2).
Aristotle and Mill, whose approach is echoed in textbook discussions,
suggest counting similarities. Hesse's theory
(SS3.3)
favours "pre-theoretic" correspondences. The
structure-mapping theory and its successors
(SS3.4)
look to systematicity, i.e., to correspondences involving complex,
high-level networks of relations. In each of these approaches, the
problem is twofold: overall similarity is not a reliable guide to
plausibility, and it fails to explain the plausibility of any
analogical argument.
Bartha's ***articulation model*** (2010)
proposes a different approach, beginning not with horizontal
relations, but rather with a classification of analogical arguments on
the basis of the *vertical relations* within each domain. The
fundamental idea is that a good analogical argument must satisfy two
conditions:
*Prior Association*. There must be a clear connection, in the
source domain, between the known similarities (the positive analogy)
and the further similarity that is projected to hold in the target
domain (the hypothetical analogy). This relationship determines which
features of the source are *critical* to the analogical
inference.
*Potential for Generalization*. There must be reason to think
that the same kind of connection could obtain in the target domain.
More pointedly: there must be no *critical* disanalogy between
the domains.
The first order of business is to make the prior association explicit.
The standards of explicitness vary depending on the nature of this
association (causal relation, mathematical proof, functional
relationship, and so forth). The two general principles are fleshed
out via a set of subordinate models that allow us to identify critical
features and hence critical disanalogies.
To see how this works, consider
*Example 7*
(Rectangles and boxes). In this analogical argument, the source
domain is two-dimensional geometry: we know that of all rectangles
with a fixed perimeter, the square has maximum area. The target domain
is three-dimensional geometry: by analogy, we conjecture that of all
boxes with a fixed surface area, the cube has maximum volume. This
argument should be evaluated *not* by counting similarities,
looking to pre-theoretic resemblances between rectangles and boxes, or
constructing connectionist representations of the domains and
computing a systematicity score for possible mappings. Instead, we
should begin with a precise articulation of the prior association in
the source domain, which amounts to a specific proof for the result
about rectangles. We should then identify, relative to that proof, the
critical features of the source domain: namely, the concepts and
assumptions used in the proof. Finally, we should assess the potential
for generalization: whether, in the three-dimensional setting, those
critical features are known to lack analogues in the target domain.
The articulation model is meant to reflect the conversations that can
and do take place between an *advocate* and a *critic*
of an analogical argument.
### 3.6 Practice-based approaches
Studies of analogical reasoning based on scientific
practice provide valuable perspectives on criteria for evaluating
analogical arguments.
#### 3.6.1 Norton's material theory of analogy
As noted in
SS2.4,
Norton rejects analogical inference rules. But even if we agree with
Norton on this point, we might still be interested in having an
account that gives us guidelines for evaluating analogical arguments.
How does Norton's approach fare on this score?
According to Norton, each analogical argument is warranted by local
facts that must be investigated and justified empirically. First,
there is "the fact of the analogy": in practice, a
low-level uniformity that embraces both the source and target systems.
Second, there are additional factual properties of the target system
which, when taken together with the uniformity, warrant the analogical
inference. Consider Galileo's famous inference
(***Example 12***)
that there are mountains on the moon (Galileo 1610). Through his
newly invented telescope, Galileo observed points of light on the moon
ahead of the advancing edge of sunlight. Noting that the same thing
happens on earth when sunlight strikes the mountains, he concluded
that there must be mountains on the moon and even provided a
reasonable estimate of their height. In this example, Norton tells us,
the *the fact of the analogy* is that shadows and other optical
phenomena are generated in the same way on the earth and on the moon;
the additional fact about the target is the existence of points of
light ahead of the advancing edge of sunlight on the moon.
What are the implications of Norton's material theory when it
comes to evaluating analogical arguments? *The fact of the
analogy* is a local uniformity that powers the inference.
Norton's theory works well when such a uniformity is patent or
naturally inferred. It doesn't work well when the uniformity is
itself the *target* (rather than the *driver*) of the
inference. That happens with explanatory analogies such as
*Example 5*
(the *Acoustical Analogy*), and mathematical analogies such as
*Example 7*
(*Rectangles and Boxes*). Similarly, the theory doesn't
work well when the underlying uniformity is unclear, as in
*Example 2*
(*Life on other Planets*),
*Example 4*
(*Clay Pots*), and many other cases. In short, if
Norton's theory is accepted, then for most analogical arguments
there are no useful evaluation criteria.
#### 3.6.2 Field-specific criteria
For those who sympathize with Norton's skepticism about
universal inductive schemes and theories of analogical reasoning, yet
recognize that his approach may be too local, an appealing strategy is
to move up one level. We can aim for field-specific "working
logics" (Toulmin 1958; Wylie and Chapman 2016; Reiss 2015). This
approach has been adopted by philosophers of archaeology, evolutionary
biology and other historical sciences (Wylie and Chapman 2016; Currie
2013; Currie 2016; Currie 2018). In place of schemas, we find
'toolkits', i.e., lists of criteria for evaluating
analogical reasoning.
For example, Currie (2016) explores in detail the use of ethnographic
analogy
(***Example 13***)
between shamanistic motifs used by the contemporary San people and
similar motifs in ancient rock art, found both among ancestors of the
San (direct historical analogy) and in European rock art (indirect
historical analogy). Analogical arguments support the hypothesis that
in each of these cultures, rock art symbolizes hallucinogenic
experiences. Currie examines criteria that focus on assumptions about
stability of cultural traits and environment-culture relationships.
Currie (2016, 2018) and Wylie (Wylie and Chapman 2016) also stress the
importance of robustness reasoning that combines analogical arguments
of moderate strength with other forms of evidence to yield strong
conclusions.
Practice-based approaches can thus yield specific guidelines unlikely
to be matched by any general theory of analogical reasoning. One
caveat is worth mentioning. Field-specific criteria for ethnographic
analogy are elicited against a background of decades of methodological
controversy (Wylie and Chapman 2016). Critics and defenders of
ethnographic analogy have appealed to general models of scientific
method (e.g., hypothetico-deductive method or Bayesian confirmation).
To advance the methodological debate, practice-based approaches must
either make connections to these general models or explain why the
lack of any such connection is unproblematic.
#### 3.6.3 Formal analogies in physics
Close attention to analogical arguments in practice can also provide
valuable challenges to general ideas about analogical inference. In an
interesting discussion, Steiner (1989, 1998) suggests that many of the
analogies that played a major role in early twentieth-century physics
count as "Pythagorean." The term is meant to connote
mathematical mysticism: a "Pythagorean" analogy is a
purely formal analogy, one founded on mathematical similarities that
have no known physical basis at the time it is proposed. One example
is Schrodinger's use of analogy
(***Example 14***)
to "guess" the form of the relativistic wave equation. In
Steiner's view, Schrodinger's reasoning relies upon
manipulations and substitutions based on purely mathematical
analogies. Steiner argues that the success, and even the plausibility,
of such analogies "evokes, or should evoke, puzzlement"
(1989: 454). Both Hesse (1966) and Bartha (2010) reject the idea that
a purely formal analogy, with no physical significance, can support a
plausible analogical inference in physics. Thus, Steiner's
arguments provide a serious challenge.
Bartha (2010) suggests a response: we can decompose Steiner's
examples into two or more steps, and then establish that at least one
step does, in fact, have a physical basis. Fraser (forthcoming),
however, offers a counterexample that supports Steiner's
position. Complex analogies between classical statistical mechanics
(CSM) and quantum field theory (QFT) have played a crucial role in the
development and application of renormalization group (RG) methods in
both theories
(***Example 15***).
Fraser notes substantial physical disanalogies between CSM and QFT,
and concludes that the reasoning is based entirely on formal
analogies.
## 4. Philosophical foundations for analogical reasoning
What philosophical basis can be provided for reasoning by analogy?
What justification can be given for the claim that analogical
arguments deliver plausible conclusions? There have been several ideas
for answering this question. One natural strategy assimilates
analogical reasoning to some other well-understood argument pattern, a
form of deductive or inductive reasoning
(SS4.1,
SS4.2). A few philosophers have explored the possibility of
*a priori* justification
(SS4.3).
A pragmatic justification may be available for practical applications
of analogy, notably in legal reasoning
(SS4.4).
Any attempt to provide a general justification for analogical
reasoning faces a basic dilemma. The demands of generality require a
high-level formulation of the problem and hence an abstract
characterization of analogical arguments, such as schema (4). On the
other hand, as noted previously, many analogical arguments that
conform to schema (4) are bad arguments. So a general justification of
analogical reasoning cannot provide support for all arguments that
conform to (4), on pain of proving too much. Instead, it must first
specify a subset of putatively 'good' analogical
arguments, and link the general justification to this specified
subset. The *problem of justification* is linked to the
*problem of characterizing good analogical arguments*. This
difficulty afflicts some of the strategies described in this
section.
### 4.1 Deductive justification
Analogical reasoning may be cast in a *deductive* mold. If
successful, this strategy neatly solves the problem of justification.
A valid deductive argument is as good as it gets.
An early version of the deductivist approach is exemplified by
Aristotle's treatment of the argument from example
(SS3.2),
the *paradeigma*. On this analysis, an analogical argument
between source domain \(S\) and target \(T\) begins with the
assumption of positive analogy \(P(S)\) and \(P(T)\), as well as the
additional information \(Q(S)\). It proceeds via the generalization
\(\forall x(P(x) \supset Q(x))\) to the conclusion: \(Q(T)\). Provided
we can treat that intermediate generalization as an independent
premise, we have a deductively valid argument. Notice, though, that
the existence of the generalization renders the analogy irrelevant. We
can derive \(Q(T)\) from the generalization and \(P(T)\), without any
knowledge of the source domain. The literature on analogy in
argumentation theory
(SS2.2)
offers further perspectives on this type of analysis, and on the
question of whether analogical arguments are properly characterized as
deductive.
Some recent analyses follow Aristotle in treating analogical arguments
as reliant upon extra (sometimes tacit) premises, typically drawn from
background knowledge, that convert the inference into a deductively
valid argument--but without making the source domain
irrelevant. Davies and Russell introduce a version that relies upon
what they call *determination rules* (Russell 1986; Davies and
Russell 1987; Davies 1988). Suppose that \(Q\) and \(P\_1 , \ldots
,P\_m\) are variables, and we have background knowledge that the value
of \(Q\) is determined by the values of \(P\_1 , \ldots ,P\_m\). In the
simplest case, where \(m = 1\) and both \(P\) and \(Q\) are binary
Boolean variables, this reduces to
\[\tag{8}
\forall x(P(x) \supset Q(x)) \vee \forall x(P(x) \supset{\sim}Q(x)),
\]
i.e., whether or not \(P\) holds determines whether or not \(Q\)
holds. More generally, the form of a determination rule is
\[\tag{9}
Q = F(P\_1 , \ldots ,P\_m),
\]
i.e., \(Q\) is a function of \(P\_1,\ldots\), \(P\_m\). If we assume
such a rule as part of our background knowledge, then an analogical
argument with conclusion \(Q(T)\) is deductively valid. More
precisely, and allowing for the case where \(Q\) is not a binary
variable: if we have such a rule, and also premises stating that the
source \(S\) agrees with the target \(T\) on all of the values
\(P\_i\), then we may validly infer that \(Q(T) = Q(S)\).
The "determination rule" analysis provides a clear and
simple justification for analogical reasoning. Note that, in contrast
to the Aristotelian analysis via the generalization \(\forall x(P(x)
\supset Q(x))\), a determination rule does not trivialize the
analogical argument. Only by combining the rule with information about
the source domain can we derive the value of \(Q(T)\). To illustrate
by adapting one of the examples given by Russell and Davies
(***Example 16***),
let's suppose that the value \((Q)\) of a used car (relative to
a particular buyer) is determined by its year, make, mileage,
condition, color and accident history (the variables \(P\_i)\). It
doesn't matter if one or more of these factors are redundant or
irrelevant. Provided two cars are indistinguishable on each of these
points, they will have the same value. Knowledge of the source domain
is necessary; we can't derive the value of the second car from
the determination rule alone. Weitzenfeld (1984) proposes a variant of
this approach, advancing the slightly more general thesis that
analogical arguments are deductive arguments with a missing
(enthymematic) premise that amounts to a determination rule.
Do determination rules give us a solution to the problem of providing
a justification for analogical arguments? In general: no. Analogies
are commonly applied to problems such as
*Example 8*
(*morphine and meperidine*), where we are not even aware of
all relevant factors, let alone in possession of a determination rule.
Medical researchers conduct drug tests on animals without knowing all
attributes that might be relevant to the effects of the drug. Indeed,
one of the main objectives of such testing is to guard against
reactions unanticipated by theory. On the "determination
rule" analysis, we must either limit the scope of such arguments
to cases where we have a well-supported determination rule, or focus
attention on formulating and justifying an appropriate determination
rule. For cases such as animal testing, neither option seems
realistic.
Recasting analogy as a deductive argument may help to bring out
background assumptions, but it makes little headway with the problem
of justification. That problem re-appears as the need to state and
establish the plausibility of a determination rule, and that is at
least as difficult as justifying the original analogical argument.
### 4.2 Inductive justification
Some philosophers have attempted to portray, and justify, analogical
reasoning in terms of some well-understood inductive argument pattern.
There have been three moderately popular versions of this strategy.
The first treats analogical reasoning as generalization from a single
case. The second treats it as a kind of sampling argument. The third
recognizes the argument from analogy as a distinctive form, but treats
past successes as evidence for future success.
#### 4.2.1 Single-case induction
Let's reconsider Aristotle's argument from example or
*paradeigma*
(SS3.2),
but this time regard the generalization as justified via induction
from a single case (the source domain). Can such a simple analysis of
analogical arguments succeed? In general: no.
A single instance can sometimes lead to a justified generalization.
Cartwright (1992) argues that we can sometimes generalize from a
single careful experiment, "where we have sufficient control of
the materials and our knowledge of the requisite background
assumptions is secure" (51). Cartwright thinks that we can do
this, for example, in experiments with compounds that have stable
"Aristotelian natures." In a similar spirit, Quine (1969)
maintains that we can have instantial confirmation when dealing with
natural kinds.
Even if we accept that there are such cases, the objection to
understanding all analogical arguments as single-case induction is
obvious: the view is simply too restrictive. Most analogical arguments
will not meet the requisite conditions. We may not know that we are
dealing with a natural kind or Aristotelian nature when we make the
analogical argument. We may not know which properties are essential.
An insistence on the 'single-case induction' analysis of
analogical reasoning is likely to lead to skepticism (Agassi 1964,
1988).
Interpreting the argument from analogy as single-case induction is
also counter-productive in another way. The simplistic analysis does
nothing to advance the search for criteria that help us to distinguish
between relevant and irrelevant similarities, and hence between good
and bad analogical arguments.
#### 4.2.2 Sampling arguments
On the sampling conception of analogical arguments, acknowledged
similarities between two domains are treated as statistically relevant
evidence for further similarities. The simplest version of the
sampling argument is due to Mill (1843/1930). An argument from
analogy, he writes, is "a competition between the known points
of agreement and the known points of difference." Agreement of
\(A\) and \(B\) in 9 out of 10 properties implies a probability of 0.9
that \(B\) will possess any other property of \(A\): "we can
reasonably expect resemblance in the same proportion" (367). His
only restriction has to do with sample size: we must be relatively
knowledgeable about both \(A\) and \(B\). Mill saw no difficulty in
using analogical reasoning to infer characteristics of newly
discovered species of plants or animals, given our extensive knowledge
of botany and zoology. But if the extent of unascertained properties
of \(A\) and \(B\) is large, similarity in a small sample would not be
a reliable guide; hence, Mill's dismissal of Reid's
argument about life on other planets
(*Example 2*).
The sampling argument is presented in more explicit mathematical form
by Harrod (1956). The key idea is that the known properties of \(S\)
(the source domain) may be considered a random sample of all
\(S\)'s properties--random, that is, with respect to the
attribute of also belonging to \(T\) (the target domain). If the
majority of known properties that belong to \(S\) also belong to
\(T\), then we should expect most other properties of \(S\) to belong
to \(T\), for it is unlikely that we would have come to know just the
common properties. In effect, Harrod proposes a binomial distribution,
modeling 'random selection' of properties on random
selection of balls from an urn.
There are grave difficulties with Harrod's and Mill's
analyses. One obvious difficulty is the *counting*
*problem*: the 'population' of properties is poorly
defined. How are we to count similarities and differences? The ratio
of shared to total known properties varies dramatically according to
how we do this. A second serious difficulty is the *problem of
bias*: we cannot justify the assumption that the sample of known
features is random. In the case of the urn, the selection process is
arranged so that the result of each choice is not influenced by the
agent's intentions or purposes, or by prior choices. By
contrast, the presentation of an analogical argument is always
partisan. Bias enters into the initial representation of similarities
and differences: an advocate of the argument will highlight
similarities, while a critic will play up differences. The paradigm of
repeated selection from an urn seems totally inappropriate. Additional
variations of the sampling approach have been developed (e.g., Russell
1988), but ultimately these versions also fail to solve either the
counting problem or the problem of bias.
#### 4.2.3 Argument from past success
Section
3.6
discussed Steiner's view that appeal to
'Pythagorean' analogies in physics "evokes, or
should evoke, puzzlement" (1989: 454). Liston (2000) offers a
possible response: physicists are entitled to use Pythagorean
analogies on the basis of induction from their past success:
>
>
> [The scientist] can admit that no one knows how [Pythagorean]
> reasoning works and argue that the very fact that similar strategies
> have worked well in the past is already reason enough to continue
> pursuing them hoping for success in the present instance. (200)
>
>
>
Setting aside familiar worries about arguments from success, the real
problem here is to determine what counts as a similar strategy. In
essence, that amounts to isolating the features of successful
Pythagorean analogies. As we have seen (SS2.4), nobody has yet
provided a satisfactory scheme that characterizes successful
analogical arguments, let alone successful Pythagorean analogical
arguments.
### 4.3 *A priori* justification
An *a priori* approach traces the validity of a pattern of
analogical reasoning, or of a particular analogical argument, to some
broad and fundamental principle. Three such approaches will be
outlined here.
The first is due to Keynes (1921). Keynes appeals to his famous
Principle of the Limitation of Independent Variety, which he
articulates as follows:
(LIV)
The amount of variety in the universe is limited in such a way
that there is no one object so complex that its qualities fall into an
infinite number of independent groups (i.e., groups which might exist
independently as well as in conjunction) (1921: 258).
Armed with this Principle and some additional assumptions, Keynes is
able to show that in cases where there is *no negative
analogy*, knowledge of the positive analogy increases the
(logical) probability of the conclusion. If there is a non-trivial
negative analogy, however, then the probability of the conclusion
remains unchanged, as was pointed out by Hesse (1966). Those familiar
with Carnap's theory of logical probability will recognize that
in setting up his framework, Keynes settled on a measure that permits
no learning from experience.
Hesse offers a refinement of Keynes's strategy, once again along
Carnapian lines. In her (1974), she proposes what she calls the
*Clustering Postulate*: the assumption that our epistemic
probability function has a built-in bias towards generalization. The
objections to such postulates of uniformity are well-known (see Salmon
1967), but even if we waive them, her argument fails. The main
objection here--which also applies to Keynes--is that a
purely syntactic axiom such as the *Clustering Postulate* fails
to discriminate between analogical arguments that are good and those
that are clearly without value (according to Hesse's own
material criteria, for example).
A different *a priori* strategy, proposed by Bartha (2010),
limits the scope of justification to analogical arguments that satisfy
tentative criteria for 'good' analogical reasoning. The
criteria are those specified by the articulation model
(SS3.5).
In simplified form, they require the existence of non-trivial
positive analogy and no known critical disanalogy. The scope of
Bartha's argument is also limited to analogical arguments
directed at establishing *prima facie* plausibility, rather
than degree of probability.
Bartha's argument rests on a principle of symmetry reasoning
articulated by van Fraassen (1989: 236): "problems which are
essentially the same must receive essentially the same
solution." A modal extension of this principle runs roughly as
follows: if problems *might be* essentially the same, then they
*might have* essentially the same solution. There are two
modalities here. Bartha argues that satisfaction of the criteria of
the articulation model is sufficient to establish the modality in the
antecedent, i.e., that the source and target domains 'might be
essentially the same' in relevant respects. He further suggests
that *prima facie* plausibility provides a reasonable reading
of the modality in the consequent, i.e., that the problems in the two
domains 'might have essentially the same solution.' To
call a hypothesis *prima facie* plausible is to elevate it to
the point where it merits investigation, since it might be
correct.
The argument is vulnerable to two sorts of concerns. First, there are
questions about the interpretation of the symmetry principle. Second,
there is a residual worry that this justification, like all the
others, proves too much. The articulation model may be too vague or
too permissive.
### 4.4 Pragmatic justification
Arguably, the most promising available defense of analogical reasoning
may be found in its application to case law (see
Precedent and Analogy in Legal Reasoning).
Judicial decisions are based on the verdicts and reasoning that have
governed relevantly similar cases, according to the doctrine of
*stare decisis* (Levi 1949; Llewellyn 1960; Cross and Harris
1991; Sunstein 1993). Individual decisions by a court are
*binding* on that court and lower courts; judges are obligated
to decide future cases 'in the same way.' That is, the
reasoning applied in an individual decision, referred to as the
*ratio decidendi*, must be applied to similar future cases (see
*Example 10*).
In practice, of course, the situation is extremely complex. No two
cases are identical. The *ratio* must be understood in the
context of the facts of the original case, and there is considerable
room for debate about its generality and its applicability to future
cases. If a consensus emerges that a past case was wrongly decided,
later judgments will *distinguish* it from new cases,
effectively restricting the scope of the *ratio* to the
original case.
The practice of following precedent can be justified by two main
practical considerations. First, and above all, the practice is
*conservative*: it provides a relatively stable basis for
replicable decisions. People need to be able to predict the actions of
the courts and formulate plans accordingly. *Stare decisis*
serves as a check against arbitrary judicial decisions. Second, the
practice is still reasonably *progressive*: it allows for the
gradual evolution of the law. Careful judges distinguish bad
decisions; new values and a new consensus can emerge in a series of
decisions over time.
In theory, then, *stare decisis* strikes a healthy balance
between conservative and progressive social values. This justification
is pragmatic. It pre-supposes a common set of social values, and links
the use of analogical reasoning to optimal promotion of those values.
Notice also that justification occurs at the level of the practice in
general; individual analogical arguments sometimes go astray. A full
examination of the nature and foundations for *stare decisis*
is beyond the scope of this entry, but it is worth asking the
question: might it be possible to generalize the justification for
*stare decisis*? Is a parallel pragmatic justification
available for analogical arguments in general?
Bartha (2010) offers a preliminary attempt to provide such a
justification by shifting from social values to epistemic values. The
general idea is that reasoning by analogy is especially well suited to
the attainment of a common set of epistemic goals or values. In simple
terms, analogical reasoning--when it conforms to certain
criteria--achieves an excellent (perhaps optimal) balance between
the competing demands of stability and innovation. It supports both
conservative epistemic values, such as simplicity and coherence with
existing belief, and progressive epistemic values, such as
fruitfulness and theoretical unification (McMullin (1993) provides a
classic list).
## 5. Beyond analogical arguments
As emphasized earlier, *analogical reasoning* takes in a great
deal more than analogical arguments. In this section, we examine two
broad contexts in which analogical reasoning is important.
The first, still closely linked to analogical arguments, is the
confirmation of scientific hypotheses. Confirmation is the process by
which a scientific hypothesis receives inductive support on the basis
of evidence (see
evidence,
confirmation, and
Bayes' Theorem).
Confirmation may also signify the *logical relationship* of
inductive support that obtains between a hypothesis \(H\) and a
proposition \(E\) that expresses the relevant evidence. Can analogical
arguments play a role, either in the process or in the logical
relationship? Arguably yes (to both), but this role has to be
delineated carefully, and several obstacles remain in the way of a
clear account.
The second context is *conceptual and theoretical development*
in cutting-edge scientific research. Analogies are used to suggest
possible extensions of theoretical concepts and ideas. The reasoning
is linked to considerations of plausibility, but there is no
straightforward analysis in terms of analogical arguments.
### 5.1 Analogy and confirmation
How is analogical reasoning related to the confirmation of scientific
hypotheses? The examples and philosophical discussion from earlier
sections suggest that a good analogical argument can indeed provide
support for a hypothesis. But there are good reasons to doubt the
claim that analogies provide actual confirmation.
In the first place, there is a logical difficulty. To appreciate this,
let us concentrate on confirmation as a relationship between
propositions. Christensen (1999: 441) offers a helpful general
characterization:
Some propositions seem to help make it rational to believe other
propositions. When our current confidence in \(E\) helps make rational
our current confidence in \(H\), we say that \(E\) confirms \(H\).
In the Bayesian model, 'confidence' is represented in
terms of subjective probability. A Bayesian agent starts with an
assignment of subjective probabilities to a class of propositions.
Confirmation is understood as a three-place relation:
(11)
*Bayesian confirmation*
\(E\) confirms \(H\) relative to \(K \leftrightarrow Pr(H \mid E \cdot
K) \gt Pr(H \mid K)\).
\(E\) represents a proposition about accepted evidence, \(H\) stands
for a hypothesis, \(K\) for background knowledge and \(Pr\) for the
agent's subjective probability function. To confirm \(H\) is to
raise its conditional probability, relative to \(K\). The shift from
*prior probability* \(Pr(H \mid K)\) to *posterior
probability* \(Pr(H \mid E \cdot K)\) is referred to as
*conditionalization* on \(E\). The relation between these two
probabilities is typically given by Bayes' Theorem (setting
aside more complex forms of conditionalization):
\[\tag{12}
Pr(H \mid E \cdot K) = \frac{Pr(H \mid K) Pr(E \mid H \cdot K)}{Pr(E \mid K)}
\]
For Bayesians, here is the logical difficulty: it seems that an
analogical argument cannot provide confirmation. In the first place,
it is not clear that we can encapsulate the information contained in
an analogical argument in a single proposition, \(E\). Second, even if
we can formulate a proposition \(E\) that expresses that information,
it is typically not appropriate to treat it as evidence because the
information contained in \(E\) is *already* part of the
background, \(K\). This means that \(E \cdot K\) is equivalent to
\(K\), and hence \(Pr(H \mid E \cdot K) = Pr(H \mid K)\). According to
the Bayesian definition, we don't have confirmation. (This is a
version of the problem of old evidence; see
confirmation.)
Third, and perhaps most important, analogical arguments are often
applied to novel hypotheses \(H\) for which the prior probability
\(Pr(H \mid K)\) is not even defined. Again, the definition of
confirmation in terms of Bayesian conditionalization seems
inapplicable.
If analogies don't provide inductive support via ordinary
conditionalization, is there an alternative? Here we face a second
difficulty, once again most easily stated within a Bayesian framework.
Van Fraassen (1989) has a well-known objection to any belief-updating
rule other than conditionalization. This objection applies to any rule
that allows us to boost credences when there is no new evidence. The
criticism, made vivid by the tale of Bayesian Peter, is that these
'ampliative' rules are vulnerable to a
Dutch Book.
Adopting any such rule would lead us to acknowledge as fair a system
of bets that foreseeably leads to certain loss. Any rule of this type
for analogical reasoning appears to be vulnerable to van
Fraassen's objection.
There appear to be at least three routes to avoiding these
difficulties and finding a role for analogical arguments within
Bayesian epistemology. First, there is what we might call *minimal
Bayesianism*. Within the Bayesian framework, some writers
(Jeffreys 1973; Salmon 1967, 1990; Shimony 1970) have argued that a
'seriously proposed' hypothesis must have a sufficiently
high prior probability to allow it to become preferred as the result
of observation. Salmon has suggested that analogical reasoning is one
of the most important means of showing that a hypothesis is
'serious' in this sense. If analogical reasoning is
directed primarily towards *prior* probability assignments, it
can provide inductive support while remaining formally distinct from
confirmation, avoiding the logical difficulties noted above. This
approach is minimally Bayesian because it provides nothing more than
an entry point into the Bayesian apparatus, and it only applies to
novel hypotheses. An orthodox Bayesian, such as de Finetti (de Finetti
and Savage 1972, de Finetti 1974), might have no problem in allowing
that analogies play this role.
The second approach is *liberal Bayesianism*: we can change our
prior probabilities in a *non-rule-based fashion*. Something
along these lines is needed if analogical arguments are supposed to
shift opinion about an already existing hypothesis *without*
any new evidence. This is common in fields such as archaeology, as
part of a strategy that Wylie refers to as "mobilizing old data
as new evidence" (Wylie and Chapman 2016: 95). As Hawthorne
(2012) notes, some Bayesians simply accept that both initial
assignments and *ongoing revision* of prior probabilities
(based on plausibility arguments) can be rational, but
the *logic* of Bayesian induction (as described here) has
nothing to say about what values the prior plausibility assessments
for hypotheses should have; and it places no restrictions on how they
might change.
In other words, by not stating any rules for this type of probability
revision, we avoid the difficulties noted by van Fraassen. This
approach admits analogical reasoning into the Bayesian tent, but
acknowledges a dark corner of the tent in which rationality operates
without any clear rules.
Recently, a third approach has attracted interest: *analogue
confirmation* or *confirmation via analogue simulation*. As
described in (Dardashti et al. 2017), the idea is as follows:
>
>
> Our key idea is that, in certain circumstances, predictions concerning
> inaccessible phenomena can be confirmed via an analogue simulation in
> a different system. (57)
>
>
>
Dardashti and his co-authors concentrate on a particular example
(***Example 17***):
'dumb holes' and other analogues to gravitational black
holes (Unruh 1981; Unruh 2008). Unlike real black holes, some of these
analogues can be (and indeed have been) implemented and studied in the
lab. Given the exact formal analogy between our models for these
systems and our models of black holes, and certain important
additional assumptions, Dardashti et al. make the controversial claim
that observations made about the analogues provide evidence about
actual black holes. For instance, the observation of phenomena
analogous to Hawking radiation in the analogue systems would provide
confirmation for the existence of Hawking radiation in black holes. In
a second paper (Dardashti et al. 2018, Other Internet Resources), the
case for confirmation is developed within a Bayesian framework.
The appeal of a clearly articulated mechanism for analogue
confirmation is obvious. It would provide a tool for exploring
confirmation of inaccessible phenomena not just in cosmology, but also
in historical sciences such as archaeology and evolutionary biology,
and in areas of medical science where ethical constraints rule out
experiments on human subjects. Furthermore, as noted by Dardashti et
al., analogue confirmation relies on *new evidence* obtained
from the analogue system, and is therefore not vulnerable to the
logical difficulties noted above.
Although the concept of analogue confirmation is not entirely new
(think of animal testing, as in
*Example 8*),
the claims of (Dardashti et al. 2017, 2018 [Other Internet
Resources]) require evaluation. One immediate difficulty for the black
hole example: if we think in terms of ordinary analogical arguments,
there is *no positive analogy* because, to put it simply, we
have no basis of known similarities between a 'dumb hole'
and a black hole. As Crowther et al. (2018, Other Internet Resources)
argue, "it is not known if the particular modelling framework
used in the derivation of Hawking radiation *actually describes
black holes in the first place.*" This may not concern
Dardashti et al., since they claim that analogue confirmation is
distinct from ordinary analogical arguments. It may turn out that
analogue confirmation is different for cases such as animal testing,
where we have a basis of known similarities, and for cases where our
only access to the target domain is via a theoretical model.
### 5.2 Conceptual change and theory development
In
SS3.6,
we saw that practice-based studies of analogy provide insight into
the criteria for evaluating analogical arguments. Such studies also
point to *dynamical* or *programmatic* roles for
analogies, which appear to require evaluative frameworks that go
beyond those developed for analogical arguments.
Knuttila and Loettgers (2014) examine the role of analogical reasoning
in synthetic biology, an interdisciplinary field that draws on
physics, chemistry, biology, engineering and computational science.
The main role for analogies in this field is not the construction of
individual analogical arguments but rather the development of concepts
such as "noise" and "feedback loops". Such
concepts undergo constant refinement, guided by both positive and
negative analogies to their analogues in engineered and physical
systems. Analogical reasoning here is "transient, heterogeneous,
and programmatic" (87). Negative analogies, seen as problematic
obstacles for individual analogical arguments, take on a prominent and
constructive role when the focus is theoretical construction and
concept refinement.
Similar observations apply to analogical reasoning in its application
to another cutting-edge field: emergent gravity. In this area of
physics, distinct theoretical approaches portray gravity as emerging
from different microstructures (Linneman and Visser 2018).
"Novel and robust" features not present at the micro-level
emerge in the gravitational theory. Analogies with other emergent
phenomena, such as hydrodynamics and thermodynamics, are exploited to
shape these proposals. As with synthetic biology, analogical reasoning
is not directed primarily towards the formulation and assessment of
individual arguments. Rather, its role is to develop different
theoretical models of gravity.
These studies explore fluid and creative applications of analogy to
shape concepts on the front lines of scientific research. An adequate
analysis would certainly take us beyond the analysis of individual
analogical arguments, which have been the focus of our attention.
Knuttila and Loettgers (2014) are led to reject the idea that the
individual analogical argument is the "primary unit" in
analogical reasoning, but this is a debatable conclusion. Linneman and
Visser (2018), for instance, explicitly affirm the importance of
assessing the case for different gravitational models through
"exemplary analogical arguments":
>
>
> We have taken up the challenge of making explicit arguments in favour
> of an emergent gravity paradigm... That arguments can only be
> plausibility arguments at the heuristic level does not mean that they
> are immune to scrutiny and critical assessment tout court. The
> philosopher of physics' job in the process of discovery of
> quantum gravity... should amount to providing exactly this kind
> of assessments. (Linneman and Visser 2018: 12)
>
>
>
Accordingly, Linneman and Visser formulate explicit analogical
arguments for each model of emergent gravity, and assess them using
familiar criteria for evaluating individual analogical arguments.
Arguably, even the most ambitious heuristic objectives still depend
upon considerations of plausibility that benefit by being expressed,
and examined, in terms of analogical arguments. |
analysis | ## 1. General Introduction
This section provides a preliminary description of analysis--or
the range of different conceptions of analysis--and a guide to
this article as a whole.
### 1.1 Characterizations of Analysis
If asked what 'analysis' means, most people today
immediately think of breaking something down into its components; and
this is how analysis tends to be officially characterized. In the
*Concise Oxford Dictionary*, for example,
'analysis' is defined as the "resolution into
simpler elements by analysing (opp. *synthesis*)", the
only other uses mentioned being the mathematical and the
psychological
[Quotation].
And in the *Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy*,
'analysis' is defined as "the process of breaking a
concept down into more simple parts, so that its logical structure is
displayed"
[Quotation].
The restriction to concepts and the reference to displaying
'logical structure' are important qualifications, but the
core conception remains that of breaking something down.
This conception may be called the *decompositional* conception
of analysis (see
Section 4).
But it is not the only conception, and indeed is arguably neither the
dominant conception in the pre-modern period nor the conception that
is characteristic of at least one major strand in
'analytic' philosophy. In ancient Greek thought,
'analysis' referred primarily to the process of working
back to first principles by means of which something could then be
demonstrated. This conception may be called the *regressive*
conception of analysis (see
Section 2).
In the work of Frege and Russell, on the other hand, before the
process of decomposition could take place, the statements to be
analyzed had first to be translated into their 'correct'
logical form (see
Section 6).
This suggests that analysis also involves a *transformative*
or *interpretive* dimension. This too, however, has its roots
in earlier thought (see especially the supplementary sections on
Ancient Greek Geometry
and
Medieval Philosophy).
These three conceptions should not be seen as competing. In actual
practices of analysis, which are invariably richer than the accounts
that are offered of them, all three conceptions are typically
reflected, though to differing degrees and in differing forms. To
analyze something, we may first have to interpret it in some way,
translating an initial statement, say, into the privileged language
of logic, mathematics or science, before articulating the relevant
elements and structures, and all in the service of identifying
fundamental principles by means of which to explain it. The
complexities that this schematic description suggests can only be
appreciated by considering particular types of analysis.
Understanding conceptions of analysis is not simply a matter of
attending to the use of the word 'analysis' and its
cognates--or obvious equivalents in languages other than
English, such as '*analusis*' in Greek or
'*Analyse*' in German. Socratic definition is
arguably a form of conceptual analysis, yet the term
'*analusis*' does not occur anywhere in
Plato's dialogues (see
Section 2
below). Nor, indeed, do we find it in Euclid's
*Elements*, which is the classic text for understanding
ancient Greek geometry: Euclid presupposed what came to be known as
the method of analysis in presenting his proofs
'synthetically'. In Latin,
'*resolutio*' was used to render the Greek word
'*analusis*', and although
'resolution' has a different range of meanings, it is
often used synonymously with 'analysis' (see the
supplementary section on
Renaissance Philosophy).
In Aristotelian syllogistic theory, and especially from the time of
Descartes, forms of analysis have also involved
'reduction'; and in early analytic philosophy it was
'reduction' that was seen as the goal of philosophical
analysis (see especially the supplementary section on
The Cambridge School of Analysis).
Further details of characterizations of analysis that have been
offered in the history of philosophy, including all the classic
passages and remarks (to which occurrences of
'[Quotation]'
throughout this entry refer), can be found in the supplementary
document on
> Definitions and Descriptions of Analysis.
A list of key reference works, monographs and collections can be
found in the
> Annotated Bibliography, SS1.
### 1.2 Guide to this Entry
This entry comprises three sets of documents:
1. The present document
2. Six supplementary documents (one of which is not yet
available)
3. An annotated bibliography on analysis, divided into six
documents
The present document provides an overview, with introductions to the
various conceptions of analysis in the history of philosophy. It also
contains links to the supplementary documents, the documents in the
bibliography, and other internet resources. The supplementary
documents expand on certain topics under each of the six main
sections. The annotated bibliography contains a list of key readings
on each topic, and is also divided according to the sections of this
entry.
## 2. Ancient Conceptions of Analysis and the Emergence of the Regressive Conception
The word 'analysis' derives from the ancient Greek term
'*analusis*'. The prefix
'*ana*' means 'up', and
'*lusis*' means 'loosing',
'release' or 'separation', so that
'*analusis*' means 'loosening up' or
'dissolution'. The term was readily extended to the
solving or dissolving of a problem, and it was in this sense that it
was employed in ancient Greek geometry and philosophy. The method of
analysis that was developed in ancient Greek geometry had an
influence on both Plato and Aristotle. Also important, however, was
the influence of Socrates's concern with definition, in which
the roots of modern conceptual analysis can be found. What we have in
ancient Greek thought, then, is a complex web of methodologies, of
which the most important are Socratic definition, which Plato
elaborated into his method of division, his related method of
hypothesis, which drew on geometrical analysis, and the method(s)
that Aristotle developed in his *Analytics*. Far from a
consensus having established itself over the last two millennia, the
relationships between these methodologies are the subject of
increasing debate today. At the heart of all of them, too, lie the
philosophical problems raised by Meno's paradox, which
anticipates what we now know as the paradox of analysis, concerning
how an analysis can be both correct and informative (see the
supplementary section on
Moore),
and Plato's attempt to solve it through the theory of
recollection, which has spawned a vast literature on its own.
'Analysis' was first used in a methodological sense in
ancient Greek geometry, and the model that Euclidean geometry
provided has been an inspiration ever since. Although Euclid's
*Elements* dates from around 300 BC, and hence after both
Plato and Aristotle, it is clear that it draws on the work of many
previous geometers, most notably, Theaetetus and Eudoxus, who worked
closely with Plato and Aristotle. Plato is even credited by Diogenes
Laertius (*LEP*, I, 299) with inventing the method of
analysis, but whatever the truth of this may be, the influence of
geometry starts to show in his middle dialogues, and he certainly
encouraged work on geometry in his Academy.
The classic source for our understanding of ancient Greek geometrical
analysis is a passage in Pappus's *Mathematical
Collection*, which was composed around 300 AD, and hence drew on
a further six centuries of work in geometry from the time of
Euclid's *Elements*:
> Now analysis is the way from what is sought--as if it
> were admitted--through its concomitants (*akolouthon*)
> in order[,] to something admitted in synthesis. For in analysis we suppose
> that which is sought to be already done, and we inquire from what it
> results, and again what is the antecedent of the latter, until we on
> our backward way light upon something already known and being first in
> order. And we call such a method analysis, as being a solution
> backwards (*anapalin lysin*).
>
>
>
> In synthesis, on the other hand, we suppose that which was reached
> last in analysis to be already done, and arranging in their natural
> order as consequents (*epomena*) the former antecedents and
> linking them one with another, we in the end arrive at the
> construction of the thing sought. And this we call synthesis.
> [Full Quotation]
>
>
>
>
Analysis is clearly being understood here in the regressive
sense--as involving the working back from 'what is
sought', taken as assumed, to something more fundamental by
means of which it can then be established, through its converse,
synthesis. For example, to demonstrate Pythagoras's
theorem--that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled
triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two
sides--we may assume as 'given' a right-angled triangle with the
three squares drawn on its sides. In investigating the properties of
this complex figure we may draw further (auxiliary) lines between
particular points and find that there are a number of congruent
triangles, from which we can begin to work out the relationship
between the relevant areas. Pythagoras's theorem thus depends
on theorems about congruent triangles, and once these--and
other--theorems have been identified (and themselves proved),
Pythagoras's theorem can be proved. (The theorem is
demonstrated in Proposition 47 of Book I of Euclid's
*Elements*.)
The basic idea here provides the core of the conception of analysis
that one can find reflected, in its different ways, in the work of
Plato and Aristotle (see the supplementary sections on
Plato
and
Aristotle).
Although detailed examination of actual practices of analysis reveals
more than just regression to first causes, principles or theorems,
but *decomposition* and *transformation* as well (see
especially the supplementary section on
Ancient Greek Geometry),
the regressive conception dominated views of analysis until well into
the early modern period.
Ancient Greek geometry was not the only source of later conceptions
of analysis, however. Plato may not have used the term
'analysis' himself, but concern with definition was
central to his dialogues, and definitions have often been seen as
what 'conceptual analysis' should yield. The definition
of 'knowledge' as 'justified true belief' (or
'true belief with an account', in more Platonic terms) is
perhaps the classic example. Plato's concern may have been with
real rather than nominal definitions, with 'essences'
rather than mental or linguistic contents (see the supplementary
section on
Plato),
but conceptual analysis, too, has frequently been given a
'realist' construal. Certainly, the roots of conceptual
analysis can be traced back to Plato's search for definitions,
as we shall see in
Section 4
below.
Further discussion can be found in the supplementary document on
> Ancient Conceptions of Analysis.
Further reading can be found in the
> Annotated Bibliography, SS2.
## 3. Medieval and Renaissance Conceptions of Analysis
Conceptions of analysis in the medieval and renaissance periods were
largely influenced by ancient Greek conceptions. But knowledge of
these conceptions was often second-hand, filtered through a variety
of commentaries and texts that were not always reliable. Medieval and
renaissance methodologies tended to be uneasy mixtures of Platonic,
Aristotelian, Stoic, Galenic and neo-Platonic elements, many of them
claiming to have some root in the geometrical conception of analysis
and synthesis. However, in the late medieval period, clearer and more
original forms of analysis started to take shape. In the literature
on so-called 'syncategoremata' and
'exponibilia', for example, we can trace the development
of a conception of interpretive analysis. Sentences involving more
than one quantifier such as 'Some donkey every man sees',
for example, were recognized as ambiguous, requiring
'exposition' to clarify.
In John Buridan's masterpiece of the mid-fourteenth century,
the *Summulae de Dialectica*, we can find all three of the
conceptions outlined in
Section 1.1
above. He distinguishes explicitly between divisions, definitions and
demonstrations, corresponding to decompositional, interpretive and
regressive analysis, respectively. Here, in particular, we have
anticipations of modern analytic philosophy as much as reworkings of
ancient philosophy. Unfortunately, however, these clearer forms of
analysis became overshadowed during the Renaissance, despite--or
perhaps because of--the growing interest in the original Greek
sources. As far as understanding analytic methodologies was
concerned, the humanist repudiation of scholastic logic muddied the
waters.
Further discussion can be found in the supplementary document on
> Medieval and Renaissance Conceptions of Analysis.
Further reading can be found in the
> Annotated Bibliography, SS3.
## 4. Early Modern Conceptions of Analysis and the Development of the Decompositional Conception
The scientific revolution in the seventeenth century brought with it
new forms of analysis. The newest of these emerged through the
development of more sophisticated mathematical techniques, but even
these still had their roots in earlier conceptions of analysis. By
the end of the early modern period, decompositional analysis had
become dominant (as outlined in what follows), but this, too, took
different forms, and the relationships between the various
conceptions of analysis were often far from clear.
In common with the Renaissance, the early modern period was marked by
a great concern with methodology. This might seem unsurprising in
such a revolutionary period, when new techniques for understanding
the world were being developed and that understanding itself was
being transformed. But what characterizes many of the treatises and
remarks on methodology that appeared in the seventeenth century is
their appeal, frequently self-conscious, to ancient methods (despite,
or perhaps--for diplomatic reasons--because of, the
critique of the *content* of traditional thought), although
new wine was generally poured into the old bottles. The model of
geometrical analysis was a particular inspiration here, albeit
filtered through the Aristotelian tradition, which had assimilated
the regressive process of going from theorems to axioms with that of
moving from effects to causes (see the supplementary section on
Aristotle).
Analysis came to be seen as a method of discovery, working back from
what is ordinarily known to the underlying reasons (demonstrating
'the fact'), and synthesis as a method of proof, working
forwards again from what is discovered to what needed explanation
(demonstrating 'the reason why'). Analysis and synthesis
were thus taken as complementary, although there remained
disagreement over their respective merits.
There is a manuscript by Galileo, dating from around 1589, an
appropriated commentary on Aristotle's *Posterior
Analytics*, which shows his concern with methodology, and
regressive analysis, in particular (see Wallace 1992a and 1992b).
Hobbes wrote a chapter on method in the first part of *De
Corpore*, published in 1655, which offers his own interpretation
of the method of analysis and synthesis, where decompositional forms
of analysis are articulated alongside regressive forms
[Quotations].
But perhaps the most influential account of methodology, from the
middle of the seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth
century, was the fourth part of the Port-Royal *Logic*, the
first edition of which appeared in 1662 and the final revised edition
in 1683. Chapter 2 (which was the first chapter in the first edition)
opens as follows:
> The art of arranging a series of thoughts properly, either
> for discovering the truth when we do not know it, or for proving to
> others what we already know, can generally be called method.
>
>
>
> Hence there are two kinds of method, one for discovering the truth,
> which is known as *analysis*, or the *method of
> resolution*, and which can also be called the *method of
> discovery*. The other is for making the truth understood by
> others once it is found. This is known as *synthesis*, or the
> *method of composition*, and can also be called the *method
> of instruction*.
> [Fuller Quotations]
>
>
>
>
That a number of different methods might be assimilated here is not
noted, although the text does go on to distinguish four main types of
'issues concerning things': seeking causes by their
effects, seeking effects by their causes, finding the whole from the
parts, and looking for another part from the whole and a given part
(*ibid*., 234). While the first two involve regressive
analysis and synthesis, the third and fourth involve decompositional
analysis and synthesis.
As the authors of the *Logic* make clear, this particular part
of their text derives from Descartes's *Rules for the
Direction of the Mind*, written around 1627, but only published
posthumously in 1684. The specification of the four types was most
likely offered in elaborating Descartes's Rule Thirteen, which
states: "If we perfectly understand a problem we must abstract
it from every superfluous conception, reduce it to its simplest terms
and, by means of an enumeration, divide it up into the smallest
possible parts." (*PW*, I, 51. Cf. the editorial
comments in *PW*, I, 54, 77.) The decompositional conception
of analysis is explicit here, and if we follow this up into the later
*Discourse on Method*, published in 1637, the focus has
clearly shifted from the regressive to the decompositional conception
of analysis. All the rules offered in the earlier work have now been
reduced to just four. This is how Descartes reports the rules he says
he adopted in his scientific and philosophical work:
> The first was never to accept anything as true if I did not
> have evident knowledge of its truth: that is, carefully to avoid
> precipitate conclusions and preconceptions, and to include nothing more
> in my judgements than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and
> so distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it.
>
>
>
> The second, to divide each of the difficulties I examined into as
> many parts as possible and as may be required in order to resolve
> them better.
>
>
>
>
> The third, to direct my thoughts in an orderly manner, by beginning
> with the simplest and most easily known objects in the order to
> ascend little by little, step by step, to knowledge of the most
> complex, and by supposing some order even among objects that have no
> natural order of precedence.
>
>
>
>
> And the last, throughout to make enumerations so complete, and
> reviews so comprehensive, that I could be sure of leaving nothing
> out. (*PW*, I, 120.)
>
>
>
The first two are rules of analysis and the second two rules of
synthesis. But although the analysis/synthesis structure remains,
what is involved here is decomposition/composition rather than
regression/progression. Nevertheless, Descartes insisted that it was
geometry that influenced him here: "Those long chains composed
of very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers customarily use
to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, had given me
occasion to suppose that all the things which can fall under human
knowledge are interconnected in the same way." (*Ibid*.
[Further Quotations])
Descartes's geometry did indeed involve the breaking down of
complex problems into simpler ones. More significant, however, was
his use of algebra in developing 'analytic' geometry as
it came to be called, which allowed geometrical problems to be
transformed into arithmetical ones and more easily solved. In
representing the 'unknown' to be found by
'*x*', we can see the central role played in
analysis by the idea of taking something as 'given' and
working back from that, which made it seem appropriate to regard
algebra as an 'art of analysis', alluding to the
regressive conception of the ancients. Illustrated in analytic
geometry in its developed form, then, we can see all three of the
conceptions of analysis outlined in
Section 1.1
above, despite Descartes's own emphasis on the decompositional
conception. For further discussion of this, see the supplementary
section on
Descartes and Analytic Geometry.
Descartes's emphasis on decompositional analysis was not
without precedents, however. Not only was it already involved in
ancient Greek geometry, but it was also implicit in Plato's
method of collection and division. We might explain the shift from
regressive to decompositional (conceptual) analysis, as well as the
connection between the two, in the following way. Consider a simple
example, as represented in the diagram below,
'collecting' all animals and 'dividing' them
into *rational* and *non-rational*, in order to define
human beings as rational animals.
> ![division](Diagplat.jpg)
On this model, in seeking to define anything, we work back up the
appropriate classificatory hierarchy to find the higher (i.e., more
basic or more general) 'Forms', by means of which we can
lay down the definition. Although Plato did not himself use the term
'analysis'--the word for 'division' was
'*dihairesis*'--the finding of the
appropriate 'Forms' is essentially analysis. As an
elaboration of the Socratic search for definitions, we clearly have
in this the origins of conceptual analysis. There is little
disagreement that 'Human beings are rational animals' is
the kind of definition we are seeking, defining one concept, the
concept *human being*, in terms of other concepts, the
concepts *rational* and *animal*. But the construals
that have been offered of this have been more problematic.
Understanding a classificatory hierarchy *extensionally*, that
is, in terms of the classes of things denoted, the classes higher up
are clearly the larger, 'containing' the classes lower
down as subclasses (e.g., the class of animals includes the class of
human beings as one of its subclasses). *Intensionally*,
however, the relationship of 'containment' has been seen
as holding in the opposite direction. If someone understands the
concept *human being*, at least in the strong sense of knowing
its definition, then they must understand the concepts
*animal* and *rational*; and it has often then seemed
natural to talk of the concept *human being* as
'containing' the concepts *rational* and
*animal*. Working back up the hierarchy in
'analysis' (in the regressive sense) could then come to
be identified with 'unpacking' or
'decomposing' a concept into its
'constituent' concepts ('analysis' in the
decompositional sense). Of course, talking of
'decomposing' a concept into its
'constituents' is, strictly speaking, only a metaphor (as
Quine was famously to remark in SS1 of 'Two Dogmas of
Empiricism'), but in the early modern period, this began to be
taken more literally.
For further discussion, see the supplementary document on
> Early Modern Conceptions of Analysis,
which contains sections on Descartes and Analytic Geometry, British
Empiricism, Leibniz, and Kant.
For further reading, see the
> Annotated Bibliography, SS4.
## 5. Modern Conceptions of Analysis, outside Analytic Philosophy
As suggested in the supplementary document on
Kant,
the decompositional conception of analysis found its classic
statement in the work of Kant at the end of the eighteenth century.
But Kant was only expressing a conception widespread at the time. The
conception can be found in a very blatant form, for example, in the
writings of Moses Mendelssohn, for whom, unlike Kant, it was
applicable even in the case of geometry
[Quotation].
Typified in Kant's and Mendelssohn's view of concepts, it
was also reflected in scientific practice. Indeed, its popularity was
fostered by the chemical revolution inaugurated by Lavoisier in the
late eighteenth century, the comparison between philosophical
analysis and chemical analysis being frequently drawn. As Lichtenberg
put it, "Whichever way you look at it, philosophy is always
analytical chemistry"
[Quotation].
This decompositional conception of analysis set the methodological
agenda for philosophical approaches and debates in the (late) modern
period (nineteenth and twentieth centuries). Responses and
developments, very broadly, can be divided into two. On the one hand,
an essentially decompositional conception of analysis was accepted,
but a critical attitude was adopted towards it. If analysis simply
involved breaking something down, then it appeared destructive and
life-diminishing, and the critique of analysis that this view
engendered was a common theme in idealism and romanticism in all its
main varieties--from German, British and French to North
American. One finds it reflected, for example, in remarks about the
negating and soul-destroying power of analytical thinking by Schiller
[Quotation],
Hegel
[Quotation]
and de Chardin
[Quotation],
in Bradley's doctrine that analysis is falsification
[Quotation],
and in the emphasis placed by Bergson on 'intuition'
[Quotation].
On the other hand, analysis was seen more positively, but the Kantian
conception underwent a certain degree of modification and
development. In the nineteenth century, this was exemplified, in
particular, by Bolzano and the neo-Kantians. Bolzano's most
important innovation was the method of variation, which involves
considering what happens to the truth-value of a sentence when a
constituent term is substituted by another. This formed the basis for
his reconstruction of the analytic/synthetic distinction,
Kant's account of which he found defective. The neo-Kantians
emphasized the role of structure in conceptualized experience and had
a greater appreciation of forms of analysis in mathematics and
science. In many ways, their work attempts to do justice to
philosophical and scientific practice while recognizing the central
idealist claim that analysis is a kind of abstraction that inevitably
involves falsification or distortion. On the neo-Kantian view, the
complexity of experience is a complexity of form and content rather
than of separable constituents, requiring analysis into
'moments' or 'aspects' rather than
'elements' or 'parts'. In the 1910s, the idea
was articulated with great subtlety by Ernst Cassirer
[Quotation],
and became familiar in Gestalt psychology.
In the twentieth century, both analytic philosophy and phenomenology
can be seen as developing far more sophisticated conceptions of
analysis, which draw on but go beyond mere decompositional analysis.
The following
Section
offers an account of analysis in analytic philosophy, illustrating
the range and richness of the conceptions and practices that arose.
But it is important to see these in the wider context of
twentieth-century methodological practices and debates, for it is not
just in 'analytic' philosophy--despite its
name--that analytic methods are accorded a central role.
Phenomenology, in particular, contains its own distinctive set of
analytic methods, with similarities and differences to those of
analytic philosophy. Phenomenological analysis has frequently been
compared to conceptual clarification in the ordinary language
tradition, for example, and the method of 'phenomenological
reduction' that Husserl invented in 1905 offers a striking
parallel to the reductive project opened up by Russell's theory
of descriptions, which also made its appearance in 1905.
Just like Frege and Russell, Husserl's initial concern was with
the foundations of mathematics, and in this shared concern we can see
the continued influence of the regressive conception of analysis.
According to Husserl, the aim of 'eidetic reduction', as
he called it, was to isolate the 'essences' that underlie
our various forms of thinking, and to apprehend them by
'essential intuition'
('*Wesenserschauung*'). The terminology may be
different, but this resembles Russell's early project to
identify the 'indefinables' of philosophical logic, as he
described it, and to apprehend them by 'acquaintance'
(cf. *POM*, xx). Furthermore, in Husserl's later
discussion of 'explication' (cf. *EJ*,
SSSS 22-4
[Quotations]),
we find appreciation of the 'transformative' dimension of
analysis, which can be fruitfully compared with Carnap's
account of explication (see the supplementary section on
Carnap and Logical Positivism).
Carnap himself describes Husserl's idea here as one of
"the synthesis of identification between a confused,
nonarticulated sense and a subsequently intended distinct,
articulated sense" (1950, 3
[Quotation]).
Phenomenology is not the only source of analytic methodologies
outside those of the analytic tradition. Mention might be made here,
too, of R. G. Collingwood, working within the tradition of British
idealism, which was still a powerful force prior to the Second World
War. In his *Essay on Philosophical Method* (1933), for
example, he criticizes Moorean philosophy, and develops his own
response to what is essentially the paradox of analysis (concerning
how an analysis can be both correct and informative), which he
recognizes as having its root in Meno's paradox. In his
*Essay on Metaphysics* (1940), he puts forward his own
conception of metaphysical analysis, in direct response to what he
perceived as the mistaken repudiation of metaphysics by the logical
positivists. Metaphysical analysis is characterized here as the
detection of 'absolute presuppositions', which are taken
as underlying and shaping the various conceptual practices that can
be identified in the history of philosophy and science. Even among
those explicitly critical of central strands in analytic philosophy,
then, analysis in one form or another can still be seen as alive and
well.
For further reading, see the
> Annotated Bibliography, SS5.
## 6. Conceptions of Analysis in Analytic Philosophy and the Introduction of the Logical (Transformative) Conception
If anything characterizes 'analytic' philosophy, then it
is presumably the emphasis placed on analysis. But as the foregoing
sections have shown, there is a wide range of conceptions of
analysis, so such a characterization says nothing that would
distinguish analytic philosophy from much of what has either preceded
or developed alongside it. Given that the decompositional conception
is usually offered as the main conception today, it might be thought
that it is this that characterizes analytic philosophy. But this
conception was prevalent in the early modern period, shared by both
the British Empiricists and Leibniz, for example. Given that Kant
denied the importance of decompositional analysis, however, it might
be suggested that what characterizes analytic philosophy is the
*value* it places on such analysis. This might be true of
Moore's early work, and of one strand within analytic
philosophy; but it is not generally true. What characterizes analytic
philosophy as it was founded by Frege and Russell is the role played
by *logical analysis*, which depended on the development of
modern logic. Although other and subsequent forms of analysis, such
as linguistic analysis, were less wedded to systems of formal logic,
the central insight motivating logical analysis remained.
Pappus's account of method in ancient Greek geometry suggests
that the regressive conception of analysis was dominant at the
time--however much other conceptions may also have been
implicitly involved (see the supplementary section on
Ancient Greek Geometry).
In the early modern period, the decompositional conception became
widespread (see
Section 4).
What characterizes analytic philosophy--or at least that central
strand that originates in the work of Frege and Russell--is the
recognition of what was called earlier the *transformative* or
*interpretive* dimension of analysis (see
Section 1.1).
Any analysis presupposes a particular framework of interpretation,
and work is done in *interpreting* what we are seeking to
analyze as part of the process of regression and decomposition. This
may involve *transforming* it in some way, in order for the
resources of a given theory or conceptual framework to be brought to
bear. Euclidean geometry provides a good illustration of this. But it
is even more obvious in the case of analytic geometry, where the
geometrical problem is first 'translated' into the
language of algebra and arithmetic in order to solve it more easily
(see the supplementary section on
Descartes and Analytic Geometry).
What Descartes and Fermat did for analytic geometry, Frege and
Russell did for analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy is
'analytic' much more in the sense that analytic geometry
is 'analytic' than in the crude decompositional sense
that Kant understood it.
The interpretive dimension of modern philosophical analysis can also
be seen as anticipated in medieval scholasticism (see the
supplementary section on
Medieval Philosophy),
and it is remarkable just how much of modern concerns with
propositions, meaning, reference, and so on, can be found in the
medieval literature. Interpretive analysis is also illustrated in the
nineteenth century by Bentham's conception of
*paraphrasis*, which he characterized as "that sort of
exposition which may be afforded by transmuting into a proposition,
having for its subject some real entity, a proposition which has not
for its subject any other than a fictitious entity"
[Full Quotation].
He applied the idea in 'analyzing away' talk of
'obligations', and the anticipation that we can see here
of Russell's theory of descriptions has been noted by, among
others, Wisdom (1931) and Quine in 'Five Milestones of
Empiricism'
[Quotation].
What was crucial in the emergence of twentieth-century analytic
philosophy, however, was the development of quantificational theory,
which provided a far more powerful interpretive system than anything
that had hitherto been available. In the case of Frege and Russell,
the system into which statements were 'translated' was
predicate logic, and the divergence that was thereby opened up
between grammatical and logical form meant that the process of
translation itself became an issue of philosophical concern. This
induced greater self-consciousness about our use of language and its
potential to mislead us, and inevitably raised semantic,
epistemological and metaphysical questions about the relationships
between language, logic, thought and reality which have been at the
core of analytic philosophy ever since.
Both Frege and Russell (after the latter's initial flirtation
with idealism) were concerned to show, against Kant, that arithmetic
is a system of analytic and not synthetic truths. In the
*Grundlagen*, Frege had offered a revised conception of
analyticity, which arguably endorses and generalizes Kant's
logical as opposed to phenomenological criterion, i.e., (ANL) rather than (ANO) (see the
supplementary section on
Kant):
> (AN) A truth is *analytic* if its proof depends only
> on general logical laws and definitions.
The question of whether arithmetical truths are analytic then comes
down to the question of whether they can be derived purely logically.
(Here we already have 'transformation', at the
theoretical level--involving a reinterpretation of the concept
of analyticity.) To demonstrate this, Frege realized that he needed
to develop logical theory in order to formalize mathematical
statements, which typically involve multiple generality (e.g.,
'Every natural number has a successor', i.e. 'For
every natural number *x* there is another natural number
*y* that is the successor of *x*'). This
development, by extending the use of function-argument analysis in
mathematics to logic and providing a notation for quantification, was
essentially the achievement of his first book, the
*Begriffsschrift* (1879), where he not only created the first
system of predicate logic but also, using it, succeeded in giving a
logical analysis of mathematical induction (see Frege *FR*,
47-78).
In his second book, *Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik* (1884),
Frege went on to provide a logical analysis of number statements. His
central idea was that a number statement contains an assertion about
a concept. A statement such as 'Jupiter has four moons'
is to be understood not as predicating of Jupiter the property of
having four moons, but as predicating of the concept *moon of
Jupiter* the second-level property *has four instances*,
which can be logically defined. The significance of this construal
can be brought out by considering negative existential statements
(which are equivalent to number statements involving the number 0).
Take the following negative existential statement:
> (0a) Unicorns do not exist.
If we attempt to analyze this *decompositionally*, taking its
grammatical form to mirror its logical form, then we find ourselves
asking what these unicorns are that have the property of
non-existence. We may then be forced to posit the
*subsistence*--as opposed to *existence*--of
unicorns, just as Meinong and the early Russell did, in order for
there to be something that is the subject of our statement. On the
Fregean account, however, to deny that something exists is to say
that the relevant *concept* has no instances: there is no need
to posit any mysterious *object*. The Fregean analysis of (0a)
consists in *rephrasing* it into (0b), which can then be
readily formalized in the new logic as (0c):
> (0b) The concept *unicorn* is not instantiated.
>
>
>
> (0c) ~([?]*x*) *Fx*.
>
>
>
Similarly, to say that God exists is to say that the concept
*God* is (uniquely) instantiated, i.e., to deny that the
concept has 0 instances (or 2 or more instances). On this view,
existence is no longer seen as a (first-level) predicate, but
instead, existential statements are analyzed in terms of the
(second-level) predicate *is instantiated*, represented by
means of the existential quantifier. As Frege notes, this offers a
neat diagnosis of what is wrong with the ontological argument, at
least in its traditional form (*GL*, SS53). All the
problems that arise if we try to apply decompositional analysis (at
least straight off) simply drop away, although an account is still
needed, of course, of concepts and quantifiers.
The possibilities that this strategy of 'translating'
into a logical language opens up are enormous: we are no longer
forced to treat the surface grammatical form of a statement as a
guide to its 'real' form, and are provided with a means
of representing that form. This is the value of logical analysis: it
allows us to 'analyze away' problematic linguistic
expressions and explain what it is 'really' going on.
This strategy was employed, most famously, in Russell's theory
of descriptions, which was a major motivation behind the ideas of
Wittgenstein's *Tractatus* (see the supplementary
sections on
Russell
and
Wittgenstein).
Although subsequent philosophers were to question the assumption that
there could ever be a definitive logical analysis of a given
statement, the idea that ordinary language may be systematically
misleading has remained.
To illustrate this, consider the following examples from Ryle's
classic 1932 paper, 'Systematically Misleading
Expressions':
> (Ua) Unpunctuality is reprehensible.
>
>
>
> (Ta) Jones hates the thought of going to hospital.
>
>
>
In each case, we might be tempted to make unnecessary reifications,
taking 'unpunctuality' and 'the thought of going to
hospital' as referring to objects. It is because of this that
Ryle describes such expressions as 'systematically
misleading'. (Ua) and (Ta) must therefore be rephrased:
> (Ub) Whoever is unpunctual deserves that other people
> should reprove him for being unpunctual.
>
>
>
> (Tb) Jones feels distressed when he thinks of what he will undergo if
> he goes to hospital.
>
>
>
In these formulations, there is no overt talk at all of
'unpunctuality' or 'thoughts', and hence
nothing to tempt us to posit the existence of any corresponding
entities. The problems that otherwise arise have thus been
'analyzed away'.
At the time that Ryle wrote 'Systematically Misleading
Expressions', he, too, assumed that every statement had an
underlying logical form that was to be exhibited in its
'correct' formulation
[Quotations].
But when he gave up this assumption (for reasons indicated in the
supplementary section on
The Cambridge School of Analysis),
he did not give up the motivating idea of logical analysis--to
show what is wrong with misleading expressions. In *The Concept of
Mind* (1949), for example, he sought to explain what he called
the 'category-mistake' involved in talk of the mind as a
kind of 'Ghost in the Machine'. His aim, he wrote, was to
"rectify the logical geography of the knowledge which we
already possess" (1949, 9), an idea that was to lead to the
articulation of *connective* rather than *reductive*
conceptions of analysis, the emphasis being placed on elucidating the
relationships between concepts without assuming that there is a
privileged set of intrinsically basic concepts (see the supplementary
section on
Oxford Linguistic Philosophy).
What these various forms of logical analysis suggest, then, is that
what characterizes analysis in analytic philosophy is something far
richer than the mere 'decomposition' of a concept into
its 'constituents'. But this is not to say that the
decompositional conception of analysis plays no role at all. It can
be found in the early work of Moore, for example (see the
supplementary section on
Moore).
It might also be seen as reflected in the approach to the analysis of
concepts that seeks to specify the necessary and sufficient
conditions for their correct employment. Conceptual analysis in this
sense goes back to the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues (see
the supplementary section on
Plato).
But it arguably reached its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. As
mentioned in
Section 2
above, the definition of 'knowledge' as 'justified
true belief' is perhaps the most famous example; and this
definition was criticised in Gettier's classic paper of 1963.
(For details of this, see the entry in this Encyclopedia on
The Analysis of Knowledge.)
The specification of necessary and sufficient conditions may no
longer be seen as the primary aim of conceptual analysis, especially
in the case of philosophical concepts such as
'knowledge', which are fiercely contested; but
consideration of such conditions remains a useful tool in the
analytic philosopher's toolbag.
For a more detailed account of the these and related conceptions of
analysis, see the supplementary document on
> Conceptions of Analysis in Analytic Philosophy.
For further reading, see the
> Annotated Bibliography, SS6.
## 7. Conclusion
The history of philosophy reveals a rich source of conceptions of
analysis. Their origin may lie in ancient Greek geometry, and to this
extent the history of analytic methodologies might be seen as a
series of footnotes to Euclid. But analysis developed in different
though related ways in the two traditions stemming from Plato and
Aristotle, the former based on the search for definitions and the
latter on the idea of regression to first causes. The two poles
represented in these traditions defined methodological space until
well into the early modern period, and in some sense is still
reflected today. The creation of analytic geometry in the seventeenth
century introduced a more reductive form of analysis, and an
analogous and even more powerful form was introduced around the turn
of the twentieth century in the logical work of Frege and Russell.
Although conceptual analysis, construed decompositionally from the
time of Leibniz and Kant, and mediated by the work of Moore, is often
viewed as characteristic of analytic philosophy, logical analysis,
taken as involving translation into a logical system, is what
inaugurated the analytic tradition. Analysis has also frequently been
seen as reductive, but connective forms of analysis are no less
important. Connective analysis, historically inflected, would seem to
be particularly appropriate, for example, in understanding analysis
itself. |
analytic-synthetic | ## 1. The Intuitive Distinction
Compare the following two sets of sentences:
I.
(1)
*All doctors that specialize on children are rich.*
(2)
*All pediatricians are rich.*
(3)
*Everyone who runs damages their bodies*.
(4)
*If Holmes killed Sikes, then Watson must be dead.*
II.
(5)
*All doctors that specialize on children are doctors.*
(6)
*All pediatricians are doctors.*
(7)
*Everyone who runs moves.*
(8)
*If Holmes killed Sikes, then Sikes must be dead.*
Most competent English speakers who know the meanings of all the
constituent words would find an obvious difference between the two
sets: whereas they might wonder about the truth or falsity of those of
set I, they would find themselves pretty quickly incapable of doubting
those of II. Unlike the former, these latter seem to be justifiable
automatically, "just by knowing what the words mean," as
many might spontaneously put it. Indeed, denials of any of them,
e.g.,
III.
(9)
#*Not all pediatricians are doctors - some aren't
at all!*
(10)
#*Not everyone who runs moves - some remain completely
still!*
would seem to be in some important way *unintelligible*, very
like contradictions in terms (the "#" indicates semantic
anomaly). Philosophers standardly refer to sentences of the first set
as "synthetic," those of the second as (at least
apparently) "analytic." (Members of set III. are sometimes
said to be "analytically false," although this term is
rarely used, and "analytic" is standardly confined to
sentences that are regarded as true.) We might call sentences such as
(5)-(10) part of the "analytic data" to which philosophers
and linguists have often appealed in invoking the distinction (without
prejudice, however, to whether such data might otherwise be
explained). Some philosophers might want to include in set III. what
are called *category mistakes* (q.v.) such as #*The number
three likes Tabasco sauce*, or #*Saturday is in bed* (cf.,
Ryle, 1949 [2009]), but these have figured less prominently in recent
discussions, being treated not as semantically anomalous, but as
simply false and silly (Quine 1960 [2013, p. 210]).
Many philosophers have hoped that the apparent necessity and *a
priori* status of the claims of logic, mathematics and much of
philosophy could be explained by their claims being analytic, our
understanding of the meaning of the claims explaining why they seemed
to be true "in all possible worlds," and knowable to be
so, "independently of experience." This view led many of
them to regard philosophy as consisting in large part in the
"analysis" of the meanings of the relevant claims, words
and
concepts;[1]
i.e., a provision of conditions that were individually necessary and
jointly sufficient for the application of a word or concept, in the
way that, for example, *being a female* and *being a
parent* are each necessary and together sufficient for *being a
mother*. Such a conception seemed to invite and support (although
we'll see it doesn't entail) the special methodology of
"armchair reflection" on concepts in which many
philosophers traditionally engaged, independently of any empirical
research.
### 1.1 Kant
Although there are precursors of the contemporary notion of the
analytic in Leibniz, and in Locke and Hume in their talk of
"relations of ideas," the conception that currently
concerns many philosophers has its roots in the work of Kant (1787
[1998]) who, at the beginning of his *Critique of Pure Reason*,
wrote:
>
>
> In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate
> is thought (if I only consider affirmative judgments, since the
> application to negative ones is easy) this relation is possible in two
> different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as
> something that is (covertly) contained in this concept A; or B lies
> entirely outside the concept A, though to be sure it stands in
> connection with it. In the first case, I call the judgment analytic,
> in the second synthetic. (1787 [1998], B10)
>
>
>
He provided as an example of an analytic judgment, "All bodies
are extended": in thinking of a body we can't help but
also think of it being extended in space; that would seem to be just
part of what is meant by "body." He contrasted this with
"All bodies are heavy," where the predicate ("is
heavy") "is something entirely different from that which I
think in the mere concept of body in general" (B11), and we must
put together, or "synthesize," the different concepts,
body and heavy (sometimes such concepts are called
"ampliative," "amplifying" a concept beyond
what is "contained" in it).
Kant tried to spell out his "containment" metaphor for the
analytic in two ways. To see that any of set II is true, he wrote,
"I need only to analyze the concept, i.e., become conscious of
the manifold that I always think in it, in order to encounter this
predicate therein" (B10). But then, picking up a suggestion of
Leibniz, he went on to claim:
>
>
> I merely draw out the predicate in accordance with the principle of
> contradiction, and can thereby at the same time become conscious of
> the necessity of the judgment. (B11)
>
>
>
As Jerrold Katz (1988) emphasized, this second definition is
significantly different from the "containment" idea, since
now, in its appeal to the powerful method of proof by contradiction,
the analytic would include all of the (potentially infinite) deductive
consequences of a particular claim, many of which could not be
plausibly regarded as "contained" in the concept expressed
in the claim. For starters, *Bachelors are unmarried or the moon is
blue* is a logical consequence of *Bachelors are
unmarried*--its denial contradicts the latter (a denial of a
disjunction is a denial of each disjunct)--but clearly nothing
about the color of the moon is remotely "contained in" the
concept *bachelor*. To avoid such consequences, Katz (e.g.,
1972, 1988) went on to try to develop a serious theory based upon only
the initial containment idea, as, along different lines, does Paul
Pietroski (2005, 2018).
One reason Kant may not have noticed the differences between his
different characterizations of the analytic was that his conception of
"logic" seems to have been confined to Aristotelian
syllogistic, and so didn't include the full resources of modern
logic, where, as we'll see, the differences between the two
characterizations become more glaring (see MacFarlane 2002). Indeed,
Kant demarcates the category of the analytic chiefly in order to
contrast it with what he regards as the more important category of the
"synthetic," which he famously thinks is not confined, as
one might initially suppose, merely to the
empirical.[2]
He argues that even so elementary an example in arithmetic as
*7+5=12* is synthetic, since the concept of *12* is not
contained in the concepts of *7*, *5*, or *+*,:
appreciating the truth of the proposition would seem to require some
kind of active "synthesis" by the mind uniting the
different constituent thoughts (1787 [1998], B15). And so we arrive at
the category of the "synthetic *a priori*," whose
very possibility became a major concern of his work. Kant tried to
show that the activity of synthesis was the source of the important
cases of *a priori* knowledge, not only in arithmetic, but also
in geometry, the foundations of physics, ethics, and philosophy
generally, a controversial view that set the stage for much of the
philosophical discussions of the subsequent centuries (see Coffa 1991,
pt. I).
Apart from geometry, Kant, himself, actually didn't focus much
on the case of mathematics. But, as mathematics in the 19th C. began
reaching new heights of sophistication, worries were increasingly
raised about its foundations. It was specifically in response to these
latter worries that Gottlob Frege (1884 [1980]) tried to improve upon
Kant's formulations of the analytic, and presented what is
widely regarded as the next significant discussion of the
topic.[3]
### 1.2 Frege
Frege (1884 [1980], SSSS5,88) and others noted a number of
problems with Kant's "containment" metaphor. In the
first place, as Kant (1787 [1998], B756) himself would surely have
agreed, the criterion would need to be freed of
"psychologistic" suggestions, or claims about merely the
accidental thought processes of thinkers, as opposed to claims about
truth and justification that are presumably at issue with the
analytic. In particular, mere associations are not always matters of
meaning: many people in thinking about Columbus may automatically
think "the discoverer of America," or in thinking about
the number 7 they "can't help but also think" about
the numeral that denotes it, but it's certainly not analytic
that Columbus discovered America, or that a number is identical with a
numeral. Moreover, while it may be arguably analytic that a circle is
a closed figure of constant curvature (see Katz, 1972), someone could
fail to notice this and so think the one without the other.
Even were Kant to have solved this problem, it isn't clear how
his notion of "containment" would cover cases that seem to
be as "analytic" as any of set II, such as:
IV.
(11)
*Anyone who's an ancestor of an ancestor of Bob is an
ancestor of Bob.*
(12)
*If Bob is married to Sue, then Sue is married to
Bob.*
(13)
*If something is red, then it's colored.*
The transitivity of *ancestor* or the symmetry of
*married* are not obviously "contained in" the
corresponding thoughts in the way that the idea of *extension*
is plausibly "contained in" the notion of *body*,
or *male* in the notion of *bachelor*. (13) has seemed
particularly troublesome: what else besides *colored* could be
included in the analysis? The concept *red* involves color
- and what else? It is hard to see what else to
"add" - except *red* itself!
Frege attempted to remedy the situation by completely rethinking the
foundations of logic, developing what we now think of as modern
symbolic logic. He defined a perfectly precise "formal"
language, i.e., a language characterized by the "form"
- standardly, the shape--of its expressions, and he
carefully set out an account of the syntax and semantics of what are
called the "logical constants," such as "and,"
"or," "not," "all" and
"some," showing how to capture a very wide class of valid
inferences containing them. Saying precisely how the constants are
determined is a matter of controversy (see *Logical
Constants*), but, at least roughly and intuitively, they can be
thought of as those parts of language that don't
"point" or "function referentially," aiming to
refer to something in the world, in the way that ordinary nouns,
verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions seem to do.
"Socrates" refers to Socrates, "dogs" to dogs,
"(is) clever" to cleverness and/or clever things, but
words like "or" and "all" don't seem to
function referentially at all. At any rate, it certainly isn't
clear that there are any *ors* and *alls* in the world,
along with Socrates, the dogs, and sets or properties of them.
This distinction between non-logical, "referring"
expressions and logical constants allows us to define a logical truth
in a way that has become common (and will be particularly useful in
this entry) as *a sentence that is true no matter what non-logical
expressions occur in it* (cf. Tarski, 1936 [1983], Quine, 1956
[1976], Davidson 1980). Consequently (placing non-logical expressions
in bold, and re-numbering prior examples):
(14)
*All **doctors** that **specialize on
children** are **doctors**.*
counts as a (strict) logical truth: no matter what grammatical
expressions we put in for the non-logical terms "doctor",
"specialize on" and "children" in (14), the
sentence will remain true. For example, substituting
"cats" for "doctors", "chase" for
"specialize on" and "mice" for
"children," we get:
(15)
*All cats that chase mice are cats.*
(Throughout this discussion, by "substitution" we shall
mean uniform substitution of one presumably univocal expression for
another in all its occurrences in a sentence.) But what about the
others of set II? Substituting "cats" for
"doctors" and "mice" for
"pediatricians" in
(16)
*All pediatricians are doctors*.
we get:
(17)
*All mice are cats*.
which is obviously false, as would many such substitutions render the
rest of the examples of II. (14) and (15) are patent logical truths;
their truth depends only upon the semantic values of their logical
particles. But *All pediatricians are doctors* and the other
examples, (6)-(8) and (11)-(13), are not *formal*
logical truths, specifiable by the logical *form* of the
sentence (or its pattern of logical particles) alone; nor are their
denials, e.g., (9) and (10), *formal* contradictions (i.e., of
the *form*, where '*p*' stands in for any
sentence: "*p* and it is *not* the case that
*p*"). How are we to capture them?
Here Frege appealed to the notion of "definition," or
--presuming that definitions preserve
"meaning"-- "synonymy": the non-logical
analytic truths are those that can be converted to formal logical
truths by substitution of definitions for defined terms, or synonyms
for synonyms. Since "mice" is not synonymous with
"pediatrician," (17) is not a substitution into (16) of
the required sort. We need, instead, a substitution of *the
definition* of "pediatrician," i.e., "doctor
that specializes on children," which would convert (16) into our
earlier purely formal logical truth:
(14)
*All doctors that specialize on children are doctors*.
Of course, these notions of *definition, meaning* and
*synonymy* would themselves need to be clarified, But they were
thought at the time to be sufficiently obvious notions whose
clarification didn't seem particularly urgent until W.V.O. Quine
(1953 [1980a]) raised serious questions about them much later (see
SS3.3ff below). Putting those questions to one side, Frege made
spectacularly interesting suggestions, offering a famous definition,
for example, of the "ancestral" relation involved in (11)
as a basis for his definition of *number* (see
*Frege's Theorem and Foundations for Arithmetic*), and
inspiring the program of "logicism" (or the reduction of
arithmetic to logic) that was pursued in Whitehead and Russell's
(1910-13) monumental *Principia Mathematica*, and the
(early) Ludwig Wittgenstein's (1922) *Tractatus
Logico-philosophicus*.
Frege was mostly interested in formalizing arithmetic, and so
considered the logical forms of a relative minority of natural
language sentences in a deliberately spare notation - he
didn't take on the likes of (12)-(13). But work on the logical
(or syntactic) structure of the full range of sentences of natural
language has blossomed since then, initially in the work of Bertrand
Russell (1905), in his famous theory of definite descriptions (see
*Descriptions*), which he (1912) combined with his views about
the knowledge by "acquaintance" with sense-data and
universals into a striking "fundamental principle in the
analysis of propositions containing descriptions":
>
>
> Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of
> constituents with which we are acquainted (1912:58),
>
>
>
an early version of a proposal pursued by Logical Positivists, to be
discussed in the next sections below. Frege's and
Russell's formalizations are also indirectly the inspiration for
the subsequent work of Noam Chomsky and other "generative"
linguists and logicians (see *supplement)*. Whether
Frege's criterion of analyticity will work for the rest of II
and other analyticities depends upon the details of these latter
proposals, some of which are discussed in the *supplement*,
## 2. High Hopes
Influenced by these developments in logic, many philosophers in the
first half of the Twentieth Century thought analyticity could perform
crucial epistemological work not only in accounting for our apparently
*a priori* knowledge of mathematics, but also --with a
little help from British empiricism--of our understanding of
claims about the spatiotemporal world as well. Indeed,
"analysis" and the "linguistic turn" (Rorty,
1992) soon came to constitute the very way many Anglophone
philosophers characterized their work, particularly since such
analyses of what we mean by our words seemed to be the sort of
enterprise available to "armchair reflection" that seemed
to many a distinctive feature of that work (see Haug, 2014). Many
thought this project would also perform the more *metaphysical*
work of explaining the *truth* and *necessity* of
mathematics, showing not only how it is we could *know* about
these topics independently of experience, but how they could be
*true in this and in all possible worlds*, usually, though,
without distinguishing this project from the epistemic one. Thus,
Gilbert Harman (1967 [1999] begins his review of the topic combining
the two projects:
>
>
> What I shall call a 'full-blooded theory of analytic
> truth' takes the analytic truths to be those that hold solely by
> virtue of meaning or that are knowable solely by virtue of meaning.
> (p. 119, see also p. 127),
>
>
>
taking himself to be expressing the views of a number of other then
contemporary philosophers.
This seemed like a grand unified plan until Saul Kripke (1972) and
Hilary Putnam (1975) drew attention to fundamental differences between
the metaphysical and epistemic modalities that had tended to be run
together throughout this period. They pointed out that, for example,
"water is H2O" might well be *necessarily* true,
but not knowable *a priori*, and "The meter stick in
Paris is one meter long" might be knowable *a priori* but
not be necessarily true (that very stick might have been broken and
never used for measurements; see *A Priori Justification and
Knowledge*).
Once the metaphysical and epistemic issues are separated, it becomes
less obvious that mere matters of meaning could really explain all
*necessities*. Recall that Frege's ambition had been to
reduce mathematics to logic by showing how, substituting synonyms for
synonyms, every mathematical truth could be shown to be a logical one.
He hadn't gone on to claim that the logical truths
*themselves* were true or necessary by virtue of meaning alone.
These were "Laws of Truth" (Frege, 1918/84:58), and it
wasn't clear what sort of explanation could be provided for
them. Obviously, appealing merely to further synonym substitutions
wouldn't suffice. As Michael Devitt (1993a) pointed out:
>
>
> the sentence 'All bachelors are unmarried' is not true
> solely in virtue of meaning and so is not analytic in the...sense
> [of true in virtue of meaning alone]. The sentence is indeed true
> partly in virtue of the fact that 'unmarried' must refer
> to anything that 'bachelor' refers to but it is also true
> partly in virtue of the truth of 'All unmarrieds are
> unmarried.' (Devitt 1993a, p. 287; cf., Quine 1956 [1976], p.
> 118)
>
>
>
It was certainly not clear that the truth of "All unmarrieds are
unmarrieds" is based on the same sort of arbitrary synonymy
facts that underlie "All bachelors are unmarried." In any
event, a different kind of account seemed to be needed (see
footnotes 9 and 16).
Jerrold Katz and Paul Postal (1991, pp. 516-7) did claim that
adequate linguistic theory should, *inter alia*, explain why,
if *John killed Bill* is true, then so is *Bill is
dead.* However, as David Israel (1991) pointed out in reply:
"there are facts about English, about what propositions are
expressed by certain utterances, and then there is a non-linguistic
fact: that one proposition entails another" (p. 571). Utterances
of *sentences* are one thing; the *propositions* (or
*thoughts*) many different sentences may *express*,
quite another, and the two shouldn't be confused:
>
>
> It is just not true that if the *proposition* expressed by [an
> utterance of *John killed Bill*] is true that, then "in
> virtue of [natural language] so, necessarily, is" the
> *proposition* expressed by [an utterance of *Bill is
> dead*]. Rather, if the proposition that, according to the grammar
> of English, is expressed by [an utterance of *John killed
> Bill*] is true, then, in virtue of the structure of the
> *propositions* concerned, the *proposition* that,
> according to the grammar of English, is expressed by [an utterance of
> *Bill is dead*] must also be true.--(D. Israel, 1991, p. 71,
> emphasis added)
>
>
>
Providing the metaphysical basis for logical truth is a fine issue
(see *Logical Truth*), but as Devitt (1993a and b) and others
(e.g., Paul Boghossian, 1996, Williamson, 2007) went on to stress, it
has been the epistemological issues about justifying our
*beliefs* in necessary truths that have dominated philosophical
discussions of the analytic in the last seventy
years.[4]
Consequently, we will focus primarily on this more modest,
epistemological project in the remainder of this entry.
### 2.1 Mathematics
As we noted (SS1.2), Frege had developed formal logic to account
for our apparently *a priori* knowledge of mathematics. It is
worth dwelling on the interest of this problem. It is arguably one of
the oldest and hardest problems in Western philosophy, and is easy
enough to understand: ordinarily we acquire knowledge about the world
by using our senses. If we are interested, for example, in whether
it's raining outside, how many birds are on the beach, whether
fish sleep or stars collapse, we look and see, or turn to others who
do. It is a widespread view that Western sciences owe their tremendous
successes precisely to relying on just such "empirical"
(experiential, experimental) methods. However, it is also a patent
fact about all these sciences, and even our ordinary ways of counting
birds, fish and stars, that they depend on often immensely
sophisticated mathematics, and mathematics does not seem to be known
on the basis of experience. Mathematicians don't do experiments
in the way that chemists, biologists or other "natural
scientists" do. They seem simply to *think*, seeming to
rely precisely on the kind of "armchair reflection" to
which many philosophers also aspire. In any case, they don't try
to justify their claims by reference to experiments, arguing that
twice two is four by noting that pairs of pairs tend in all cases
observed so far to be quadruples.
But how could mere processes of thought issue in any knowledge about
the independently existing external world? The belief that it could
would seem to involve some kind of mysticism; and, indeed, many
"naturalistic" philosophers have felt that the appeals of
"Rationalist" philosophers to some special faculty of
"rational intuition," such as one finds in philosophers
like Plato, Descartes and Leibniz and, more recently, Katz (1988,
1990), George Bealer (1987) and Laurence Bonjour (1998), these all
seem no better off than appeals to "revelation" to
establish theology. The program of logicism and "analysis"
seemed to many to offer a more promising, "naturalistic"
alternative.
### 2.2 Science and Beyond
But why stop at arithmetic? If logical analysis could illuminate the
foundations of mathematics by showing how the axioms of arithmetic
could all be derived from pure logic by substitution of synonyms,
perhaps it could also illuminate the foundations of the rest of our
knowledge by showing how its claims could similarly be derived from
some kind of combination of logic and experience. Such was the hope
and program of Logical Positivism (see *Logical Empiricism*)
championed by, e.g., Moritz Schlick, A.J. Ayer and, especially, Rudolf
Carnap from about 1915 in Vienna and Berlin to well into the 1950s in
England and America. Of course, such a proposal did presume that all
of our concepts were somehow "derived" either from logic
or experience, but this seemed in keeping with the then prevailing
presumptions of empiricism, which, they assumed, had been vindicated
by the immense success of the empirical sciences.
For the Positivists, earlier empiricists, such as Locke, Berkeley and
Hume, had erred only in thinking that the mechanism of construction
was mere association. But association can't account for the
structure of even a simple judgment, such as *Caesar is bald*.
This is not merely the excitation of its constituent ideas,
*Caesar*, *is*, and *bald*, along the lines of
the idea of *salt* exciting the idea of *pepper*, but,
as Frege had shown, involves combining the noun *Caesar* and
the predicate *is bald* in a very particular way, a fact that
was important in accounting for more complex judgments such as
*Caesar is bald or not bald*, or *Someone is bald*. Our
thoughts and claims about the world have some kind of *logical
structure*, of a sort that seems to begin to be revealed by
Frege's proposals. Equipped with his logic, it was possible to
provide a more plausible formulation of conceptual empiricism: our
claims about the empirical world were to be *analyzed* into the
(dis)confirming experiences out of which they must somehow have been
*logically* constructed.
But constructed out of *which* experiences? For the
Positivists, the answer seemed obvious: out of the experiential
*tests* that would standardly *justify*, *verify*
or *confirm* the claim. Indeed, as Ayer (1934, chap 1) made
plain, a significant motivation for the Positivists was to save
empirical knowledge from the predations of traditional sceptical
arguments about the possibility that all of life is a dream or the
deception of an evil demon: if meaning could be tied to verification,
such possibilities could be rendered "meaningless" because
unverifiable (see Jerry Fodor, 2001, pp. 3-5, for a penetrating
discussion of this motivation). In any event, interpreting
Wittgenstein's (1922) *Tractatus* claims about the nature
of language epistemologically along the lines of the American
philosopher, C.S. Peirce, they proposed various versions of their
"Verifiability Theory of Meaning," according to which the
meaning (or what they called the "cognitive significance")
of any sentence was *constituted* by the conditions of its
empirical
(dis-)confirmation.[5]
Thus, to say that the temperature of a liquid is of a certain
magnitude is to say, for example, that the mercury in a thermometer
immersed in the liquid would expand to a certain point marked by a
numeral representing that magnitude, a claim that would ordinarily be
disconfirmed if it didn't. Closer to "experience":
to say that there is a cat on a mat is just to say that certain
patterns of certain familiar visual, tactile and aural appearances are
to be expected under certain circumstances.
The project of providing analyses in this way of especially
problematic concepts like those concerning, for example, *material
objects, knowledge, perception, causation, expectation, freedom*,
and *the self*, was pursued by Positivists and other analytic
philosophers for a considerable period (see Carnap 1928 [1967] for
some rigorous examples, Ayer 1934 [1952] for more accessible ones).
With regard to material object claims, the program came to be known as
"phenomenalism"; with regard to the theoretical claims of
science, as "operationalism" ; and with regard to the
claims about people's mental lives, "analytical
behaviorism" (the relevant experiential basis of mental claims
being taken to be observations of others' behavior). Although
these programs became extremely influential, and some form of the
verifiability criterion was often (and sometimes still is) invoked in
physics and psychology to constrain theoretical speculation, they
seldom, if ever, met with any serious success. No sooner was an
analysis, say, of "material object" or
"freedom" or "expectation," proposed than
serious counterexamples were raised and the analysis revised, only to
be faced with still further counterexamples (see Roderick Chisholm
1957, and Fodor 1981, for discussion). Despite what seemed its initial
plausibility, philosophers came to suspect that the criterion, and
with it the very notion of analyticity itself, rested on some
fundamental mistakes.
## 3. Problems with the Distinction
### 3.1 The Paradox of Analysis
One problem with the entire program was raised by C.H. Langford (1942)
and discussed by G.E. Moore (1942 [1968], pp. 665-6): why should
analyses be of any conceivable interest? After all, if an analysis
consists in providing the definition of an expression, then it should
be providing a synonym for it, and this, then, should be wholly
uninformative: if *brother* is analyzed as the presumably
synonymous *male sibling*, then the claim *Brothers are male
siblings* should be synonymous with *Brothers are
brothers*, and thinking the one should be no different from
thinking the other. But, aside from such simple cases as
*brother* and *bachelor*, proposed analyses, if
successful, often seemed quite non-obvious and philosophically
informative. The proposed reductions of, say, material object
statements to sensory ones (even where successful) were often fairly
complex, had to be studied and learned, and so could hardly be
uninformative. So how could they count as seriously
analytic?[6]
This is "the paradox of analysis," which can be seen as
dormant in Frege's own move from his (1884) focus on definitions
to his more controversial (1892a) doctrine of "sense,"
where two senses are distinct if and only if someone can think a
thought containing the one but not other, as in the case of the senses
of "the morning star" and "the evening star."
If analyses or definitions preserved sense, then, unlike the case of
"morning star" and "evening star," whenever
one thought the definiendum, one should thereby be thinking the
definiens. And perhaps one can't think Bill is Bob's
brother without thinking Bill is Bob's male sibling. But few of
Frege's definitions of arithmetic concepts are nearly so simple
(see *Gottlob Frege*, SS2.5). In their case, it seems
perfectly possible to think the definiendum, say, *number*,
without thinking the elaborate definiens Frege provided (cf. Bealer
1982, Michael Dummett 1991, and John Horty 1993, 2007, for extensive
discussions of this problem, as well as of further conditions, e.g.,
*fecundity*, that Frege placed on serious definitions).
These problems, so far, can be regarded as relatively technical, for
which further technical moves within the program might be made. For
example, one might make further distinctions within the theory of
sense between an expression's "content" and the
specific "linguistic vehicle" used for its expression, as
in Fodor (1990a) and Horty (1993, 2007); and perhaps distinguish
between the truth-conditional "content" of an expression
and its idiosyncratic role, or "character," in a language
system, along the lines of the distinction David Kaplan (1989)
introduced to deal with indexical and demonstrative expressions (such
as *I*, *now*, and *that*; see
*Demonstratives*, and *Narrow Mental Content*, as well
as Stephen White, 1982). Perhaps analyses could be regarded as
providing a particular "vehicle," having a specific
"character," that could account for why one could
entertain a certain concept without entertaining its analysis (cf.
Gillian Russell 2008, and Paul Pietroski 2002, 2005 and 2018 for
related suggestions).
However, the problems with the program seemed to many philosophers to
be deeper than merely technical. By far, the most telling and
influential of the criticisms both of the program, and then of
analyticity in general, were those of Quine, who began as a great
champion of the program (see esp. his 1934), and whose subsequent
objections therefore carry special weight. The reader is well-advised
to consult particularly his (1956 [1976], hereafter "CLT")
for as rich and deep a discussion of the issues up to that time as one
might find. The next two sections abbreviate some of that
discussion.
### 3.2 Problems with Logicism
Although pursuit of the logicist program produced a great many
insights into the nature of mathematics, there emerged a number of
serious difficulties with it. Right from the start there was, of
course, the problem of the logical truths themselves. Simply saying,
as Frege had, that they are "Laws of Truth" doesn't
seem to explain how we could know them *a priori*. But perhaps
they, too, are "analytic" involving perhaps some sort of
"implicit" acceptance of certain rules merely by virtue of
accepting certain patterns of reasoning. But any such proposal has to
account for people's frequent, often apparent violations of
rules of logic in fallacious reasoning and in ordinary speech, as well
as of disputes about the laws of logic of the sort that are raised,
for example, by mathematical intuitionists, who deny the Law of
Excluded Middle ("p or not p"), or, more recently, by
"para-consistent" logicians, who argue for the toleration
even of contradictions to avoid certain
paradoxes.[7]
Moreover, given that the infinitude of logical truths needs to be
"generated" by rules of inference, wouldn't that be
a reason for regarding them as "synthetic" in Kant's
sense (see Frege 1884 [1980], SS88, Katz 1988, pp. 58-9, and
MacFarlane 2002)?
Much more worrisome is a challenge raised by Quine (CLT, SSII):
even if certain logical truths seemed undeniable, how does claiming
them to be analytic differ from claiming them to be simply
"obvious"?[8]
>
>
> Consider...the logical truth "Everything is
> self-identical", "(x)(x = x)". We can say that it
> depends for its truth on traits of the language (specifically on the
> usage of "="), and not on traits of its subject matter;
> but we can also say, alternatively, that it depends on an obvious
> trait, viz., self-identity, of its subject matter, viz., everything.
> The tendency of [my] present reflections is that there is no
> difference. (CLT, p. 113)
>
>
>
Pressing the point more deeply:
>
>
> I have been using the vaguely psychological word "obvious"
> non-technically, assigning it no explanatory value. My suggestion is
> merely that the linguistic doctrine of elementary logical truth
> likewise leaves explanation unbegun. I do not suggest that the
> linguistic doctrine is false and some doctrine of ultimate and
> inexplicable insight into the obvious trait of reality is true, but
> only that there is no real difference between these two
> pseudo-doctrines. (CLT, p. 113)
>
>
>
As we'll see, this is the seed for the challenge that continues
to haunt proposals about the analytic to this day: what explanatory
difference is there between "analytic" claims and simply
widely and firmly held beliefs, such as that *The earth has existed
for many years* or *There have been black dogs*?
We'll consider some proposals --and their problems--
in due course, but it's important to bear in mind that, if no
difference can be sustained, then it's difficult to see the
significance of the logicist program or of the claims of (strictly)
"analytic" philosophy generally.
The most immediately calamitous challenge to Logicism was, however,
the famous paradox Russell raised for one of Frege's crucial
axioms, his *prima facie* plausible "Basic Law V"
(sometimes called "the unrestricted Comprehension Axiom"),
which had committed him to the existence of a set for every predicate.
But what, asked Russell, of the predicate *x is not a member of
itself*? If there were a set for that predicate, that set itself
would be a member of itself if and only if it wasn't;
consequently, there could be no such set. Therefore Frege's
Basic Law V couldn't be true (but see *Frege's Theorem
and Foundations for Arithmetic* for ways to rescue something close
to logicism, discussed in SS5 below).
What was especially upsetting about Russell's paradox was that
there seemed to be no intuitively satisfactory way to repair set
theory in a way that could lay claim to being as obvious and/or merely
a matter of logic or meaning in the way that Frege and the Positivists
had hoped. Various proposals were made, but all of them seemed simply
tailor-made to avoid the paradox, and seemed to have little
independent appeal (although see Boolos, 1971, for a defense of the
"iterative" notion of set). Certainly none of them
appeared to be analytic. Indeed, as Quine notes:
>
>
> What we do [in set theory] is develop one or another set theory by
> obvious reasoning, or elementary logic, from unobvious first
> principles which are set down, whether for good or for the time being,
> by something like convention. (CLT, p. 111)
>
>
>
### 3.3 Convention?
Convention, indeed, would seem to be at the very heart of the
analytic. After all, aren't matters of meaning, unlike matters
of fact, in the end really matters of arbitrary conventions about the
use of words? For example, someone could invest a particular word,
say, "schmuncle," with a specific meaning merely by
stipulating that it mean, say, unmarried uncle. Wouldn't that
afford a basis for claiming then that "A schmuncle is an
uncle" is analytic, or knowable to be true by virtue of the
(stipulated) meanings of the words alone?
Carnap (1956a) proposed setting out the "meaning
postulates" of a scientific language as just such conventional
stipulations. This had the further advantage of allowing terms to be
"implicitly defined" by their conventional roles in such
postulates, which might then serve as part of a theory's laws or
axioms. The strategy seemed especially appropriate for defining
logical constants, as well as for dealing with cases like (11)-(13)
above, e.g. "Red is a color," where mere substitution of
synonyms might not
suffice.[9]
So perhaps what philosophical analysis is doing is revealing the
tacit conventions of ordinary language, an approach particularly
favored by Ayer (1934/52).
Quine is sceptical such a strategy could work for the principles of
logic itself. Drawing on his earlier discussion (1936 [1976]) of the
conventionality of logic, he argues that logic itself could not be
entirely established by such conventions, since:
>
>
> the logical truths, being infinite in number, must be given by general
> conventions rather than singly; and logic is needed then in the
> meta-theory, in order to apply the general conventions to individual
> cases (CLT, p. 115)
>
>
>
If so, and if logic is established by convention, then one would need
a *meta*-meta-theory to establish the conventions for the use
of the logical particles of the meta-theory, and so on for what seemed
like an infinite regress of meta-theories. This is certainly an
argument that ought to give the proponents of the conventionality of
logic pause: for, indeed, how could one hope to set out the general
conventions for "all" or
"if...then..." without at some point using the
notions of "all" and "if...then..."
("ALL instances of a universal quantification are to be
true". "IF *p* is one premise, and *if p then
q* another, THEN conclude *q*")? (See Warren, 2017,
however, for a reply, exploiting the resources of implicit definition;
cf. fns 9 and 16.)
As we noted, Quine sees more room for convention in choosing between
different, incompatible versions of set theory needed for mathematics
that were developed in the wake of Russell's paradox. Here:
>
>
> We find ourselves making deliberate choices and setting them forth
> unaccompanied by any attempt at justification other than in terms of
> elegance and convenience. (CLT, p. 117).
>
>
>
But then it's hard to see the difference between mathematics and
the conventional "meaning postulates" Carnap had proposed
for establishing the rest of science --and then the difference
between them and any other claims of a theory. As Quine goes on to
argue, although stipulative definitions (what he calls
"legislative postulations")
>
>
> contribute truths which become integral to the corpus of truths, the
> artificiality of their origin does not linger as a localized quality,
> but suffuses the corpus. If a subsequent expositor singles out those
> once legislatively postulated truths again as postulates, this
> signifies nothing... He could as well choose his postulates from
> elsewhere in the corpus, and will if he thinks it this serves his
> expository ends. (CLT, pp. 119-20)
>
>
>
Carnap's legislated "meaning postulates" should
therefore be regarded as just an arbitrary selection of sentences a
theory presents as true, a selection perhaps useful for purposes of
exposition, but no more significant than the selection of certain
towns in Ohio as "starting points" for a journey Quine
(1953 [1980a], p. 35).
Quine's observation certainly seems to accord with scientific
practice. Suppose, say, Newton, himself, had explicitly set out
"F=ma" as a stipulated definition of "F":
would "F=ma" be therefore justifiable by knowing the
meaning the words alone? Our taking such a stipulation seriously would
seem to depend upon our view of the plausibility of the surrounding
theory as a whole. After all, as Quine continues:
>
>
> [S]urely the justification of any theoretical hypothesis can, at the
> time of hypothesis, consist in no more than the elegance and
> convenience which the hypothesis brings to the containing bodies of
> laws and data. How then are we to delimit the category of legislative
> postulation, short of including under it every new act of scientific
> hypothesis? (CLT, p. 121)
>
>
>
So conventional legislation of claims, such as Carnap's meaning
postulates, affords the claims no special status. As vivid examples,
Putnam (1965 [1975]) discusses in detail revisions of the definitions
of "straight line" and "kinetic energy" in the
light of Einstein's theories of
relativity.[10]
This appeal to "the containing bodies of laws and data"
essentially invokes Quine's famous holistic metaphor of the
"web of belief" with which CLT eloquently concludes:
>
>
> the lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences [which] develops and
> changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and
> additions of our own, more or less directly occasioned by the
> continuing stimulation of our sense organs. It is a pale grey lore,
> black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no
> substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black
> threads in it, or any white ones (CLT, p.
> 132)[11]
>
>
>
### 3.4 Verification and Confirmation Holism
The picture presented in this last and many similar passages expresses
a tremendously influential view of Quine's that led several
generations of philosophers to despair not only of the
analytic-synthetic distinction, but of the category of *a
priori* knowledge entirely. The view has come to be called
"confirmation holism," and Quine had expressed it more
shortly a few years earlier, in his widely read article, "Two
Dogmas of Empiricism" (1953 [1980a]):
>
>
> Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense
> experience not individually, but only as a corporate body. (1953
> [1980a], p. 41)
>
>
>
Indeed, the "two dogmas" that the article discusses are
(i) the belief in the intelligibility of the "analytic"
itself, and (ii), what Quine regards as the flip side of the same
coin, the belief that "each statement, taken in isolation from
its fellows, can admit of confirmation or infirmation at all"
(p. 41), i.e., the very version of the Verifiability Theory of Meaning
we have seen the Positivists enlisted in their effort to
"analyze" the claims of science and
commonsense.[12]
Quine bases his "confirmation holism" upon observations of
Pierre Duhem (1914 [1954]), who drew attention to the myriad ways in
which theories are supported by evidence, and the fact that an
hypothesis is not (dis)confirmed merely by some specific experiment
considered in isolation from an immense amount of surrounding theory.
Thus, a thermometer will be a good indication of ambient temperature
only if it's made of the right materials, calibrated
appropriately, and there aren't any other forces at work that
might disturb the measurement--and, of course, only if the
background laws of physics and other beliefs that have informed the
design of the measurement are sufficiently correct. A failure of the
thermometer to measure the temperature could be due to a failure of
any of these other conditions, which is, of course, why experimenters
spend so much time and money constructing experiments to
"control" for them. Moreover, with a small change in our
theories or background beliefs, or just in our understanding of the
conditions for measurement, we might change the tests on which we
rely, but often without changing the meaning of the sentences whose
truth we might be trying to establish (which, as Putnam 1965 [1975]
pointed out, is precisely what practicing scientists regularly
do).
What is novel--and highly controversial--about Quine's
understanding of these commonplace observations is his extension of
them to claims presumed by most people (e.g., by Duhem himself) to lie
outside their scope, viz., the whole of mathematics and even logic! It
is this extension that seems to undermine the traditional *a
priori* status of these latter domains, since it appears to open
the possibility of a revision of logic, mathematics and any supposed
analytic claims in the interest of the plausibility of the one,
overall resulting empirical theory--containing the empirical
claims *and* those of logic, mathematics and the analytic!
Perhaps this wouldn't be so odd should the revisability of such
claims permit their ultimately admitting of a justification that
didn't involve experience. But this is ruled out by
Quine's insistence that scientific theories, along with their
logic and mathematics, are confirmed "*only*" as
"corporate
bodies."[13]
One might wonder why, though, there have historically been virtually
no revisions of mathematics on empirical grounds. A common example
offered is how Riemannian replaced Euclidean geometry in
Einstein's theory of General Relativity. But this mis-interprets
the history. Non-Euclidean geometries were purely conceptual
developments in the 19th C. by mathematicians such as Gauss, Riemann
and Lobechevsky. Einstein simply argued in 1916 that one of these
conceptual possibilities seemed to be better supported by physics than
was the traditional Euclidean one, and should therefore be taken to be
true of actual space(-time). It is only this latter claim that is
empirical.
Certainly, though, Quine's holism has been an epistemic
possibility that many have taken seriously. For example, influenced by
Quine's claim, Putnam (1968 [1975]) argued that one ought to
revise even elementary logic in view of the surprising results of
quantum mechanics (a proposal not without its critics, see *Quantum
Logic and Probability Theory*). And in his (1962 [1975] he also
argued that it isn't hard to imagine discovering that a
purported analytic truth, such as *Cats are animals*, could be
given up in light of discovering that the little things are really
cleverly disguised robots controlled from Mars (but see Katz, 1990,
pp. 216ff and G. Russell, 2008, for replies, and the
*supplement* SS3 for further discussion).
### 3.5 Quine on Meaning in Linguistics
Quine's discussion of the role of convention in science seems
right; but how about the role of meaning in ordinary natural language
(cf. Chomsky's 2000 cautions mentioned in
footnote 10)?
Is it really true that in the "pale grey lore" of all the
sentences we accept, there aren't some that are
"white" somehow "by virtue of the very meanings of
their words"? What about our examples in our earlier set II?
What about sentences of the sort that interest Juhl and Loomis (2010)
that merely link patent synonyms, as in "Lawyers are
attorneys," or "A fortnight is a period of fourteen
days"? As Grice and Strawson (1956) and Putnam (1965 [1975])
pointed out, it is unlikely that so intuitively plausible a
distinction should turn out to have *no basis at all* in
fact.
Quine addressed this issue, first, in his (1953 [1980a], chapter 3),
and then in a much larger way in his (1960, chapter 2, and 1974) and
related articles. In his (1953 [1980a]) he pressed his objection to
analyticity further to the very ideas of synonymy and the linguistic
meaning of an expression, on which, we saw, Frege's criterion of
analyticity crucially relied. His objection is that he sees no way to
make any serious explanatory sense of them. He explored plausible
explanations in terms of "definition,"
"intension," "possibility," and
"contradiction,", pointing out that each of these notions
seems to stand in precisely as much need of explanation as synonymy
itself (recall our observation in SS1.2 above regarding the lack
of any *formal* contradiction in "Some pediatricans
aren't doctors"). The terms seem to be mutually definable
in what seems to be a--viciously?--small "closed curve
in space" (Quine 1953 [1980a], p. 30). Though they might be
invoked to explain one another, they could not in the end answer the
challenge of how to distinguish an analytic claim from simply a
tenaciously held belief.
To take a recent example, David Chalmers (2012) revisits
Carnap's (1956b) proposal for basing synonymy on
"intension" by way of eliciting a person's judgments
about the extension of a term/concept in all possible
worlds:[14]
>
>
> Carnap's key idea is that we can investigate the intension that
> a subject associated with an expression by investigating the
> subject's judgments about possible cases. To determine the
> intension of an expression such as 'Pferd' for a subject,
> we present the subject with descriptions of various logically possible
> cases, and we ask the subject whether he or she is willing to apply
> the term 'Pferd' to objects specified in these cases. If
> we do this for enough cases, then we can test all sorts of hypotheses
> about the intension of the expression. (Chalmers 2012, p. 204)
>
>
>
But how are the informants to understand the questions they're
being asked? If they understand the term "possible" as
logicians do, as *truth in a set-theoretically specified
model*, then it will be too weak: there are obviously models in
which synonymous expressions e.g., "horse" and
"Pferd," or "bachelor" and "unmarried
male*"* are assigned non-overlapping sets (cf. Quine
[1953 [1980a], pp. 22-3), so that it's logically possible
for there be a horse that's not a Pferd, or a bachelor
that's married (again, "a married bachelor" is
formally contradictory only if one substitutes synonyms for synonyms;
but we certainly can't appeal to *synonymy* in trying to
*define* synonymy). But if "possible" is understood
(as it ordinarily would be) as merely *imaginable*, then it
will be far too strong, ruling out ideas that the scientifically
under-informed might find impossible, e.g., curved space-time,
something having the properties of both waves and particles, or
completely unconscious thoughts (which, at least, e.g., John Searle
1992, pp. 155-6, and Galen Strawson 1994, pp. 166-7 report
having trouble conceiving). As Quine (1953 [1980a]) famously argued,
such appeals to informant verdicts will only work if the informants
understand the questions as about *the very terms the proposed test
is supposed to define*, viz., "possible" as
constrained by synonymy or preservation of meaning. Although, as many
have noted (e.g., Williamson 2007, p. 50), there may be explanatory
circularities in the best of theories, the circularity here seems
particularly vicious, with the relevant ideas appearing not to perform
any explanatory work other than bringing in each other's
laundry.
Why was Quine so convinced of this last claim? Because he thought it
was possible to provide a satisfactory explanation of human language
without them, indeed, without any mentalistic notions at all. In his
(1953 [1980b], 1960 [2013] and 1974) he sketched a behavioristic
theory of language that doesn't rely on the postulation of
determinate meaning or reference, and argued that, indeed, translation
is "indeterminate": there is "no fact of the
matter" about whether two expressions do or do not have the same
meaning (see *Indeterminacy of Translation*). This would appear
to imply that there are pretty much no facts of the matter about
people's mental lives at all! For, if there is no fact of the
matter about whether two people mean the same thing by their words,
then there is no fact of the matter about the content of
anyone's thoughts. Quine himself took this consequence in
stride--he was, after all, a behaviorist- regarding it as
"of a piece" with Franz Brentano's (1874 [1995])
famous thesis of the "irreducibility of the intentional";
it's just that for him, unlike for Brentano, it simply showed
the "baselessness of intentional idioms and the emptiness of a
science of intention" (1960 [2013], p. 202). Needless to say,
many subsequent philosophers have not been happy with this view, and
have wondered where Quine's argument went wrong.
### 3.6 Explaining Away the Appearance of the Analytic
One problem many have had with Quine's argument is about how to
explain *the appearance* of the analytic. It just seems an
empirical fact that most people would spontaneously distinguish our
original two sets of sentences (SS1) by saying that sentences of
the second set, such as "All pediatricians are doctors for
children" are "true by definition," or could be
known to be true just by knowing the meanings of the constituent
words. Moreover, they might agree about an indefinite number of
further examples, e.g., that ophthalmologists are eye doctors,
grandfathers are parents of parents, sauntering a kind of movement,
pain and beliefs mental states, and promising an intentional act.
Again, as Grice and Strawson (1956) and Putnam (1965 [1975]) stressed,
it's implausible to suppose that there's *nothing*
people are getting at in these judgments.
#### 3.6.1 Centrality
Quine's (1953 [1980a]) initial explanation of the appearance of
the analytic invoked his metaphor of the web of belief, claiming that
sentences are more or less revisable, depending upon how
"peripheral" or "central" their position is in
the web, the more peripheral ones being closer to experience. The
appearance of sentences being "analytic" is simply due to
their being, like the laws of logic and mathematics, comparatively
central, and so are given up, if ever, only under extreme pressure
from the peripheral forces of experience. But no sentence is
absolutely immune from revision; all sentences are thereby empirical,
and none is actually analytic.
There are a number of problems with this explanation. In the first
place, centrality and the appearance of analyticity don't seem
to be so closely related. As Quine (1960, p. 66) himself noted, there
are are plenty of central, unrevisable beliefs that don't seem
remotely analytic, e.g., "There have been black dogs,"
"The earth has existed for more than five minutes,"
"Mass-energy is conserved"; and many standard examples of
what seem analytic aren't seriously central: "Bachelors
are unmarried," "A fortnight is two weeks" or
"A beard is facial hair" are pretty trivial verbal issues,
and could easily be revised if people really cared (cf., Juhl and
Loomis, 2010, p. 118).
Secondly, it's not mere unrevisability that seems distinctive of
the analytic, but rather *a certain sort of unintelligibility*:
for all the unrevisability of "There have been black
dogs," it's perfectly possible to *imagine* it to
be false. In contrast, what's peculiar about analytic claims is
that their denials often seem peculiarly impossible to seriously
think: it seems distinctively impossible to imagine a married
bachelor. Now, of course, as we noted, this could be due simply to a
failure of imagination. But what's striking about about the
unrevisability of many apparently analytic cases is that they
don't appear to be like scientifically controversial cases such
as curved space-time or completely unconscious thoughts. The standard
cases about, e.g., bachelors or pediatricians seem entirely innocuous.
Far from unrevisability explaining analyticity, *it would seem to
be analyticity that explains this peculiar unrevisability*: the
only reason someone might balk at denying bachelors are unmarried is
that, well, that's just what the word "bachelor"
means![15]
The challenge, though, is to clarify the basis for this sort of
explanation.
It is important to note here a crucial change that Quine (and earlier
Positivists) casually introduced into the characterization of the
*a priori*, and consequently into much of the now common
understanding of the analytic. Where Kant and others had traditionally
assumed that the *a priori* concerned beliefs
"justifiable independently of experience," Quine and many
other philosophers of the time came to regard it as consisting of
beliefs "unrevisable in the light of experience." And, as
we have seen, a similar status is accorded the at least apparently
analytic. However, this would imply that people taking something to be
analytic or *a priori* would have to regard themselves as being
*infallible* about it, forever unwilling to revise it in light
of further evidence or argument. But this is a further claim that many
defenders of the traditional notions need not embrace (consider,
again, the disputes philosophers have about the proper analysis of
terms such as "knowledge" or "freedom").
Indeed, a claim might be in fact analytic and justifiable
independently of experience, but nevertheless perfectly well revised
in the light of it. Experience, after all, might mislead us, as it
(perhaps) misled Putnam when he suggested revising logic in light of
difficulties in quantum mechanics, or suggested revising "cats
are animals," were we to discover the things were robots. Just
which claims are genuinely analytic and *a priori* might not be
available in the "armchair" at the introspective or
behavioral surface of our lives in the way that Quine and much of the
philosophical tradition has assumed. Certainly the "dispositions
to assent or dissent from sentences" on which Quine (1960
[2013], chapter 2) standardly relied are likely very dubious guides
(see the findings of "experimental philosophy" discussed
in SS4.1 below). Behavioral dispositions in general may have any
of a variety of aetiologies that aren't clearly distinguishable
in actual behavior (one wonders how much of Quine's seamless
epistemology went hand in hand with his mentalistically seamless
behavioristic psychology). The relevant dispositions might be hidden
more deeply in our minds, and our access to them as fallible as our
access to any other such facts about ourselves. The genuinely analytic
may be a matter of difficult reflective analysis or deep linguistic
theory (see Bealer, 1987, Bonjour 1998, Rey, 1998, and
*supplement*), a possibility to which we will return
shortly.
#### 3.6.2 One Criterion Concepts
In his expansion of Quine's point, Putnam (1962 [1975]) tried to
rescue what he thought were theoretically innocuous examples of
analytic truths by appeal to what he called
"one-criterion" concepts, or concepts like, e.g.,
*pediatrician, bachelor, widow*, where there seems to be only
one "way to tell" whether they apply. However, as Fodor
(1998) pointed out, so stated, this latter account won't suffice
either, since the notion of "criterion" seems no better
off than "meaning" or "analytic." Moreover, if
there were one way to tell what's what, there would seem,
trivially, to be indefinite numbers of other ways: look for some
reliable correlate (living alone, frequenting singles bars for
"bachelor"), or, just ask someone who knows the one way;
or ask someone who knows someone who knows; or..., etc., and so
now we would be faced with saying which of these ways is genuinely
"criterial," which would seem to leave us with the same
problem we faced in saying which way appears to be
"analytic."
Fodor (1998) tried to improve on Putnam's proposal by suggesting
that a criterion that appears to be analytic is the one on which all
the other criteria depend, but which does not depend upon them. Thus,
telling that someone is a bachelor by checking out his gender and
marriage status doesn't depend upon telling by asking his
friends, but telling by asking his friends does depend upon telling by
his gender and marriage status; and so we have an explanation of why
"bachelors are unmarried males" seems analytic, but, said
Fodor, without it's actually being so (perhaps somewhat
surprisingly, given his general "asymmetric dependence"
theory of content, see his 1990b and Rey, 2009, to be discussed
shortly, SSSS4.2-4.3).
However, such asymmetric dependencies among criteria alone will not
"explain (away)" either the reality or the appearance of
the analytic, since there would appear to be asymmetric dependencies
of the proposed sort in non-analytic cases. Natural kinds are dramatic
cases in point (see Putnam 1962 [1975], 1970 [1975], 1975). At some
stage in history probably the only way anyone could tell whether
something was a case of polio was to see whether there was a certain
constellation of standard symptoms, e.g. paralysis; other ways
(including asking others) asymmetrically depended upon that way. But
this wouldn't make "All polio cases exhibit
paralysis" remotely analytic--after all, the standard
symptoms for many diseases can sometimes be quite misleading. It
required serious empirical research to discover the proper definition
of a natural kind term like "polio." Precisely as Putnam
otherwise stressed, methods of testing are so variable it is doubtful
that even "single criterion" tests could provide a basis
for the identification of the stable meanings of words.
Indeed, as many philosophers in the wake of Quine's and
Putnam's work came to suspect, the recourse of philosophy in
general to *epistemology* to ground semantics may have been a
fundamental mistake. It was an enticing recourse: it seemed to offer a
way to dispatch philosophical disputes and secure empirical knowledge
from sceptical challenges regarding demons and dreams. But the above
difficulties suggested that those disputes and challenges would need
to be met in some other way, perhaps by looking not to words, but to
the world instead.
#### 3.6.3 The World, not Words
Indeed, another strategy that a Quinean can deploy to explain the
appearance of the analytic is to claim that analyses are really not of
the meanings of *words*, but of the actual *phenomena in the
world* to which they refer (see Fodor, 1990b, 1998). Thus, claims
that, e.g., cats are animals, triangles are three-sided, or that every
number has a successor should not be construed as claims about the
meanings of the words "cat", "triangle" or
"number," but about the *nature* of *cats,
triangles* and *numbers* themselves. Arguably, many such
claims, if they are true, are *necessarily* so (cf., Kripke,
1972; Putnam, 1975), and may be commonly understood to be, and this
might make them seem analytic. But then we would be faced with
precisely the challenge that Quine raised: how to distinguish claims
of analyticity from simply deeply held beliefs about "the
nature" of things.
This recourse to the world may, however, be a little too swift. Cases
of (arguably) deeply explanatory natural kinds such as *polio*
or *cats* contrast dramatically with cases of more superficial
kinds like *bachelor* or *fortnight*. whose natures are
not specified by any explanatory science, but are pretty much
exhausted by what would seem to be the meanings of the words. Again,
unlike the case of polio and its symptoms, the reason that gender and
marriage status are the best way to tell whether someone is a bachelor
is, again, that that's just what "bachelor" means.
Indeed, should a doctor propose revising the test for polio in the
light of better theory--perhaps reversing the dependency of
certain tests--this would not even begin to appear to involve a
change in the meaning of the term. Should, however, a feminist
propose, in the light of better politics, revising the use of
"bachelor" to include women, this obviously would. If the
appearance of the analytic is to be explained away, it needs to
account for such differences in our understanding of different sorts
of revisions in our beliefs, which don't *appear* to be
issues regarding the external world.
## 4. Post-Quinean Strategies
There has been a wide variety of responses to Quine's
challenges. Some, for example, Davidson (1980), Stich (1983) and
Dennett (1987), seem simply to accept it and try to account for our
practice of meaning ascription within its "non-factual"
bounds. Since they follow Quine in at least claiming to forswear the
analytic, we will not consider their views further here. Others, who
might be (loosely) called "neo-Cartesians," reject
Quine's attack as simply so much prejudice of the empiricism and
naturalism that they take to be his own uncritical dogmas (SS4.1
in what follows). Still others hope simply to find a way to break out
of the "intentional circle," and provide an account of at
least what it means for one thing (a state of the brain, for example)
to mean (or "carry the information about") another
external phenomenon in the world (SS4.2). Perhaps the most
trenchant reaction has been that of empirically oriented linguists and
philosophers, who look to a specific explanatory role the analytic may
play in an account of thought and talk (SS4.3). This role is
currently being explored in considerable detail in the now various
areas of research inspired by the important linguistic theories of
Noam Chomsky (SS4.4, and *supplement, Analyticity and Chomskyan
Linguistics*).
### 4.1 Neo-Cartesianism
The most unsympathetic response to Quine's challenges has been
essentially to stare him down and insist upon an inner faculty of
"intuition" whereby the truth of certain claims is simply
"grasped" directly through, as Bonjour (1998) puts it:
>
>
> an act of rational insight or rational intuition ... [that] is
> seemingly (a) direct or immediate, nondiscursive, and yet also (b)
> intellectual or reason-governed ... [It] depends upon nothing
> beyond an understanding of the propositional content itself....
> (p. 102)
>
>
>
Bealer (1987, 1999) defends similar proposals. Neither Bonjour nor
Bealer are in fact particularly concerned to defend the analytic by
such claims, but their recourse to mere understanding of propositional
content is certainly what many defenders of the analytic have had in
mind. Katz (1998, pp. 44-5), for example, explicitly made the
very same appeal to intuitions on behalf of the analytic claims
supported by his semantic theory. Somewhat more modestly, Peacocke
(1992, 2004) claims that possession of certain logical concepts
requires that a person find certain inferences "primitively
compelling," or compelling not by reason of some inference that
takes "their correctness...as answerable to anything
else" (1992, p. 6; see also his 2004, p. 100 and the other
references in fn 9 above for the strategy, and fn 7, as well as
Harman, 1996 [1999], and Horwich, 2000, for qualms).
Perhaps the simplest reply along these lines emerges from a suggestion
of David Lewis (1972 [1980]), who proposes to implicitly define, e.g.,
psychological terms by conjoining the "platitudes" in
which they appear:
>
>
> Include only platitudes that are common knowledge among us -
> everyone knows them, everyone knows that everyone else knows them, and
> so on. For the meanings of our words are common knowledge, and I am
> going to claim that names of mental states derive their meaning from
> these platitudes. (1972 [1980], p. 212)
>
>
>
Enlarging on this idea, Frank Jackson (1998) emphasizes the role of
intuitions about possible cases, as well as the need sometimes to
massage such intuitions so as to arrive at "the hypothesis that
best makes sense of [folk] responses" (p. 36; see also pp.
34-5).[16]
The Quinean reply to all these approaches is, again, his main
challenge: how in the end are we to distinguish such claims of
"rational insight," "primitive compulsion,"
inferential practices or folk beliefs, from merely some deeply
entrenched empirical convictions, folk practices or, indeed, from mere
dogmas? Isn't the history of thought littered with what have
turned out to be deeply mistaken claims, inferences and platitudes
that people at the time have found "rationally" and/or
"primitively compelling," say, with regard to God, sin,
disease, biology, sexuality, or even patterns of reasoning themselves?
Again, consider the resistance Kahneman (2011) reports people
displaying to correction of the fallacies they commit in a surprising
range of ordinary thought (cf. fn 7 above); or in a more disturbing
vein, how the gifted mathematician, John Nash, claimed that his
delusional ideas "about supernatural beings came to me the same
way that my mathematical ideas did" (Nasar 1998, p. 11).
Introspected episodes, primitive compulsions, intuitions about
possibilities, or even tacit folk theories alone are not going to
distinguish the analytic, since these all may be due as much to
people's (possibly mad!) empirical theories as to any special
knowledge of meaning.
A particularly vivid way to feel the force of Quine's challenge
is afforded by a recent case that came before the Ontario Supreme
Court concerning whether laws that confined marriage to heterosexual
couples violated the equal protection clause of the constitution (see
Halpern *et al*. 2001). The question was regarded as turning in
part on the meaning of the word "marriage", and each party
to the dispute solicited affidavits from philosophers, one of whom
claimed that the meaning of the word *was* tied to
heterosexuality, another that it *wasn't*. Putting aside
the complex moral-political issues, Quine's challenge can be
regarded as a reasonably sceptical request to know how any serious
theory of the world might settle it. It certainly wouldn't be
sufficient merely to claim that marriage is/isn't necessarily
heterosexual on the basis of common "platitudes," much
less on "an act of rational insight [into] the propositional
content itself"; or because speakers found the inference from
marriage to heterosexuality "primitively compelling" and
couldn't imagine gay people getting
married![17]
Indeed, some philosophers have offered some empirical evidence that
casts doubt on just how robust the data for the analytic might be. The
movement of "experimental philosophy" has pointed to
evidence of considerable malleability of subject's
"intuitions" with regard to the standard kinds of thought
experiments on which philosophical defenses of analytic claims
typically rely. Thus, Weinberg, Nichols and Stich (2001) found
significant cultural differences between responses of Asian and
Western students regarding whether someone counted as having knowledge
in a standard "Gettier" (1963) example of accidental
justified true belief; and Knobe (2003) found that
non-philosophers' judgments about whether an action is
intentional depended on the (particularly negative) moral qualities of
the action, and not, as is presumed by most philosophers, on whether
the action was merely intended by the agent. Questions, of course,
could be raised about these experimental results (How well did the
subjects understand the project of assessing intuitions? Did the
experiments sufficiently control for the multitudinous
"pragmatic" effects endemic to polling procedures? To what
extent are the target terms merely polysemous - see
*supplement*, SS3- allowing for different uses in
different contexts?) However, the results do serve to show how the
determination of meaning and analytic truths can be regarded as a far
more difficult empirical question than philosophers have traditionally
supposed (see Bishop and Trout, 2005, and Alexander and Weinberg,
2007, for further discussion).
### 4.2 Externalist Theories of Meaning
Developing the strategy of SS3.3C above, Externalist theories of
meaning (or "content") try to meet at least part of
Quine's challenge by considering how matters of meaning need not
rely on *epistemic*. or really *any* *internal*
connections among thoughts or beliefs, in the way that many
philosophers had traditionally supposed, but as involving largely
causal and social relations between uses of words and the phenomena in
the world that they pick out. This suggestion gradually emerged in the
work of Putnam (1962 [1975], 1965 [1975] and 1975), Kripke (1972
[1980]) and Burge (1979, 1986), but it took the form of positive
theories in, e.g., the work of Devitt (1981, 2015), Dretske (1988) and
Fodor (1990b), who tried to base meaning in various actual or
co-variational causal relations between states of the mind/brain and
external phenomena (see *Indicator Semantics*; as well as the
work on "teleosemantics" of Millikan, 1984), Papineau,
1987, and Neander, 1995, 2017, who look to mechanisms of natural
selection; see *Teleological Theories of Mental Content*).
Consider, for example, Fodor's proposal. Simplifying it
slightly, Fodor (1990b) claimed that
>
>
> a symbol *S* means *p* **if**
>
>
>
> (i)
> under some conditions, C, it's a *law* that *S*
> is entokened iff *p*, and
> (ii)
> any other tokening of *S* synchronically depends upon (i),
> but not *vice versa*.
>
>
Thus, tokenings of "horse" mean *horse* because
there are (say, optimal viewing) conditions under which tokenings of
"horse" co-vary with horses, and tokenings of
"horse" caused by cows asymmetrically depend upon that
fact. The intuitive idea here is that what makes "horse"
mean *horse* is that errors and other tokenings of
"horse" in the absence of horses (e.g., dreaming of them)
depend upon being able to get things right, but not *vice
versa*: getting things right doesn't depend upon getting
them wrong. The law in (i), so to say, "governs" the
tokenings of (ii). (Note that this condition is *metaphysical*,
appealing to *actual laws* of entokenings, and not upon
asymmetric dependencies between *epistemic* criteria suggested
by Fodor in his defense of Putnam we discussed in SS3.6.2.)
Fodor's and related proposals are not without their problems
(see Loewer, 1996, Rey, 2009 and *Causal Theories of Mental
Content*). Nevertheless, it's worth noting that,
*were* such theories to succeed in providing the kind of
explanatorily adequate, non-circular account of intentionality to
which they aspire, they would go some way towards saving at least
intentional psychology from Quine's attack, and provide at least
one *prima facie* plausible, naturalistic strategy for
distinguishing facts about meaning from facts about mere belief. The
proposals, unlike those in the traditions of Carnap or of
neo-Cartesians, have at least the *form* of a serious
reply.
However, even if such externalist strategies, either Fodor's or
teleosemantic ones, were to save intentionality and meaning, they
would do so only by forsaking the high hopes we noted in SS2
philosophers harbored for the analytic. For externalists are typically
committed to counting expressions as "synonymous" if they
happen to be linked in the right way to the same external phenomena,
even if a thinker couldn't realize that they are by *a
priori* (or, at any rate, "armchair") reflection
alone. By at least the Fregean substitution criterion (SS1.2),
they would seem to be committed to counting as "analytic"
many patently empirical sentences as "Water is H2O,"
"Salt is NaCl" or "Mark Twain is Samuel
Clemens," since in each of these cases, something may co-vary in
the relevant way with tokenings of the expression on one side of the
identity if and only if it co-varies with tokenings of the one on the
other (similar problems and others arise for teleosemantics; see Fodor
1990b, pp. 72-73).
Of course, along the lines of the worldly turn we noted in
SS3.6.3, an externalist might cheerfully just allow that some
sentences, e.g., "water is H20," are in fact analytic,
even though they are "external" and subject to empirical
(dis)confirmation. Such a view would actually comport well with an
older philosophical tradition less interested in the meanings of our
*words* and *concepts*, and more interested in the
"essences" of *the worldly phenomena they pick
out*. Locke (1690 [1975], II, 31, vi), for example, posited
"real" essences of things rather along the lines
resuscitated by Putnam (1975) and Kripke (1972 [1980]), the real
essences being the conditions in the world independent of our thought
that make something the thing it is. Thus, *being H2O* may be
what makes something *water*, and (to take the striking
examples of diseases noted by Putnam, 1962 [1975]) being the
activation of a certain virus is what makes something polio. But, of
course, such an external view would still dash the hopes of
philosophers looking to the analytic to explain *a priori*
knowledge (but see Bealer 1987 and Jackson 1998 for strategies to
assimilate such empirical cases to nevertheless *a priori*,
armchair analysis). Such a consequence, however, might not faze an
externalist like Fodor (1998), who is concerned only to save
intentional psychology, and might otherwise share Quine's
scepticism about the analytic and the *a priori*.
Two final problems, however, loom over any such externalist
strategies. One is how to provide content to
"response-dependent" terms, such as
"interesting," "amusing," "sexy,"
"worrisome," whose extensions vary greatly with users and
occasions. What seems crucial to the contents of such terms is not any
*externalia* that they might pick out, but simply some
*internal* reactions of thinkers that might vary among them
even under *all* conditions, but without difference in meaning.
At any rate, there's no reason to suppose there's any sort
of law that links the same phenomena to different people who find
different things "interesting," "funny," or
even "green" (cf. Russell, 1912; Hardin, 2008). The other
problem is how to distinguish necessarily *empty* terms that
purport to refer to (arguably) impossible phenomena such as perfectly
flat surfaces, Euclidean figures, fictional characters or immortal
souls. An externalist would seem to be committed to treating all such
terms as synonymous, despite, of course, the fact that thoughts about
them should obviously be distinguished (see Rey, 2009).
### 4.3 Internal Dependencies
A promising strategy for replying to these latter problems, as well as
to Quine's challenge in a way that might even begin to provide
what the neo-Cartesian wants, can be found in a proposal of Paul
Horwich (1998, 2005). He emphasizes how the meaning properties of a
term are the ones that play a "basic explanatory role"
with regard to the use of a term generally, the ones ultimately in
virtue of which a term is used with that meaning. For example, the use
of "red" to refer to the color of blood, roses, stop
signs, etc,. is arguably explained by its use to refer to certain
apparent colors in good light, but not *vice versa*: the latter
use is "basic" to all the other uses. Similarly, uses of
"and" explanatorily depend upon its basic use in
inferences to and from the sentences it conjoins, and number terms to
items in a sequence respecting Peano's axioms (Horwich,
1998:45,129; see also Devitt 1996, 2002 for a similar proposal).
Although by allowing for purely internal explanatory conditions, this
strategy offers a way to deal with response-dependent and necessarily
empty terms, and promises a way of distinguishing analyticities from
mere beliefs, there are still several further potential problems it
faces. The first is that merely appealing to a "basic
explanatory" condition for the use of a word doesn't
distinguish misuses and metaphors from etymologies, derived idioms and
"dead metaphors": saying "Juliet is the sun"
can be explained by the use of "sun" to refer to the sun,
but so can "lobbying" be explained by the use of
"lobby" for lobbies of buildings (where politicians often
met), and "the eye of a needle" by the shape of an animal
eye. In these latter cases, the words seem to be "frozen"
or "dead" metaphors, taking on meanings of their own.
While they are *explained* by original "basic"
uses, they are no longer "governed" by them.
Here it may be worth combining something of the Horwich view with
something of Fodor's aforementioned cousin suggestion of the
asymmetric counterfactual (SS4.2), along lines suggested by Rey
(2009; 2020a, SS10.3): the new "dead" uses of an idiom
or metaphor no longer *asymmetrically depend* upon the
explanatorily basic use. "Eye of a needle" would still
mean the hole at the end of a needle, even if "eye" no
longer referred to animal eyes. But "eye" used to refer
to, say, the drawing of an eye, would both asymmetrically and
explanatorily depend upon its being used to refer to actual eyes. And
describing a three-way correspondence as "triangular" may
asymmetrically and explanatorily depend upon thinking of certain
geometric figures as triangular, but not *vice versa* -
despite the impossibility of there ever being any actual triangles in
the external world (see Allott and Textor, 2022, for development of
this suggestion). Taking the asymmetric dependency to be
"internally" explanatory relieves it of the excessive
externalism with which Fodor burdened it, while avoiding the
etymologies and dead metaphors facing Horwich's view on its
own.
However, although such a proposal may offer a promising strategy for
meeting Quine's challenge about many ordinary terms, it
isn't clear it would work for highly theoretic ones. For if
Quine (1953 [1980a]) is right about even a limited holism involved in
the use of scientific terms, then there may be no sufficiently local
basic facts on which all other uses of a term asymmetrically and
explanatorily depend. To take the kind of case that most interested
Quine, it certainly seems unlikely that there is some small set of
uses of, say, "number," "positron,"
"space" or "biological species" that are
explanatorily basic, on which all other uses really depend. Such terms
often come with a large cluster of terms appearing in claims that come
as, so to say, a loose "package deal," and revision over
time may touch any particular claim in the interests of overall
explanatory adequacy. Uses of a term involved in the expression of
belief, either in thought or talk, will likely be justified and
explained by the same processes of holistic confirmation that led
Quine to his scepticism about the analytic in the first place (cf.
Gibbard, 2008). Of course, Quine might be wrong about taking the case
of theoretic terms in science to be representative of terms in human
psychology generally (cf. Chomsky, 2000,
footnote 10
above), and the above proposal might be confined to some restricted
portions of a speaker's psychology, e.g., to perception (as in
Fodor, 1983, 2000). But, to put it mildly, the verdict on these issues
is not quite in (see *supplement* SSSS4-5).
Lastly, a third (and, for some, a serious) possible drawback of this
strategy is that it still risks rendering matters of meaning far less
"transparent" and introspectively accessible than
philosophers have standardly supposed. There is little reason to
suppose that what is asymmetrically-explanatorily basic about
one's use of a term in thought or talk is a matter that is
available to introspection or armchair reflection. As in the case of
"marriage" mentioned earlier, but certainly with respect
to other philosophically problematic notions, just which properties,
if any, are explanatorily basic may not be an issue that is at all
easy to determine. What are the asymmetric-explanatorily basic uses of
"freedom" or "soul"? Do even people's
uses of animal terms really depend upon dubbings of species - or
of individual exemplars - or do they depend more upon an innate
disposition to think in terms of underlying biological kinds (cf. Keil
2014, pp. 327-333)? Do their uses of number words and concepts
really depend upon their grasp of Peano's axioms? Perhaps the
usage is grounded more in practices of (finite) counting, estimates
and noticing merely *finite* one-to-one correspondences; or
perhaps they lie in the general recursive character of
*language* (cf. Hauser et al 2002). Again, one may need the
resources of a psychology that delves into far more deeply into the
complex, internal causal relations in the mind than are available at
its introspective or behavioral surface.
### 4.4 Chomskyan Strategies
Such an interest in a deeper and richer *internal* psychology
emerged most dramatically in the 1950s in the work of Noam Chomsky. In
his (1957, 1965, 1968 [2006]) he began to revolutionize linguistics by
presenting substantial evidence and arguments for the existence of an
innate "generative" grammar in a special language faculty
in people's brains that he argued was responsible for their
underlying competence to speak and understand natural languages. This
opened up the possibility of a response to Quine's (1960)
scepticism about the analytic within his own naturalistic framework,
simply freed of its odd behaviorism, which Chomsky and others had
independently, empirically refuted (see Chomsky 1959, and Gleitman,
Gross and Reisberg 2011, chapter 7). Some of it also dovetails nicely
with ideas of Friedrich Waismann and the later Wittgenstein, as well
as with important recent work on polysemy. But the program Chomsky
initiated is complex, and its relation to the analytic quite
controversial, and so discussion of it is relegated to the following
*supplement* to this entry:
>
> Supplement: Analyticity and Chomskyan Linguistics.
>
## 5. Conclusion
Suppose, per the discussion of at least SS3 of the
*supplement*, that linguistics *were* to succeed in
delineating a class of analytic sentences grounded in the constraints
of a special language faculty in the way that some Chomskyans
sometimes seem to suggest. Would such sentences serve the purposes for
which we noted earlier (SS2) philosophers had enlisted them?
Perhaps some of them would. An empirical grounding of the analytic
might provide us with an understanding of what constitutes a
person's competence with specific words and concepts,
particularly logical or mathematical ones. Given that Quinean
scepticism about the analytic is a source of his scepticism about the
determinacy of cognitive states (see SS3.5 above), such a
grounding may be crucial for a realistic psychology, determining the
conditions under which someone has a thought with a specific
content.
Moreover, setting out the constitutive conditions for possessing a
concept might be of some interest to philosophers generally, since
many of the crucial questions they ask concern the proper
understanding of ordinary notions such as *material object, person,
action, freedom, god, the good*, or *the beautiful*.
Suppose, further, that a domain, such as perhaps ethics or aesthetics,
is "response dependent," *constituted* by the
underlying rules of our words and concepts; suppose, that is, that
these rules *constitute* the nature of, say, *the good, the
funny*, or *the beautiful*. If so, then it might not be
implausible to claim that successful conceptual analysis could provide
us with some *a priori* knowledge of such domains (although,
again, sorting out the rules may require empirical linguistic and
psychological theories not available to "armchair
reflection").
But, of course, many philosophers have wanted more than these
essentially psychological gains. They have hoped that analytic claims
might provide a basis for *a priori* knowledge of domains that
exist independently of us and are not exhausted by our concepts. An
important case in point would seem to be the very case of arithmetic
that motivated much of the discussion of the analytic in the first
place. Recent work of Crispin Wright (1983) and others on the logicist
program has shown how a version of Frege's program might be
rescued by appealing not to his problematic Basic Law V, but instead
merely to what is called "Hume's Principle," or the
claim that for *the number of Fs* to be equal to *the number
of Gs* is for there to be a "one-to-one
correspondence" between the Fs and the Gs (as in the case of the
fingers of a normal right and left hand), even in infinite cases.
According to what is now regarded as "Frege's
Theorem," the Peano axioms for arithmetic can be derived from
this principle in standard second-order logic (see *Frege's
theorem and foundations for arithmetic*).
Now, Wright has urged that Hume's Principle might be regarded as
analytic, and perhaps this claim could be sustained by an examination
of the language faculty along the lines of a Chomskyan linguistics set
out in the *supplement.* If so, then wouldn't that
vindicate the suggestion that arithmetic can be known *a
priori*? Not obviously, since Hume's Principle is a claim
not merely about *the concepts* F and G, but about the
presumably *concept-independent fact* about the number of
things that are F and the number of things that are G, and, we can
ask, what justifies any claim about them? As George Boolos (1997)
asked in response to Wright:
>
>
> If numbers are supposed to be identical if and only if the concepts
> they are numbers of are equinumerous, what guarantee do we have that
> every concept has a number? (p. 253)
>
>
>
Indeed, as Edward Zalta (2013) observes,
>
>
> The basic problem for Frege's strategy, however, is that for his
> logicist project to succeed, his system must at some point include
> (either as an axiom or theorem) statements that explicitly assert the
> existence of certain kinds of abstract entities and it is not obvious
> how to justify the claim that we know such explicit existential
> statements. (2013, Section 6.2)
>
>
>
The concept of a unique successor to every number might be a defining
feature of the lexical item, "number," but that
doesn't itself imply that *an infinity of numbers actually
exists*. Meanings and concepts are one thing; reality quite
another. Justification of such existential statements and, with them,
Hume's Principle would seem to have to involve something more
than appealing to merely the concept, but also --to recall
Quine's (CLT, p. 121, SS3.3 above) claim-- to
"the elegance and convenience which the hypothesis brings to the
containing bodies of laws and data," i.e., to our best overall
empirical theory of the world, irrespective of what constraints
language might impose (see Wright, 1999, and Horwich, 2000, for
further discussion).
The problem here becomes even more obvious in non-mathematical cases.
For example, philosophers have wanted to claim not merely that our
concepts of *red* and *green* exclude the possibility of
our thinking that something is both colors all over, but that this
possibility is ruled out for the *actual* colors,
***red*** and ***green***,
themselves (if such there be). It is therefore no accident that
Bonjour's (1998, pp. 184-5) defense of *a priori*
knowledge turns on resuscitating views of Aristotle and Aquinas,
according to which *the very properties of **red** and
**green*** *themselves* are constituents of
the propositions we grasp. But it is just such a wonderful coincidence
between merely our *concepts* and actual worldly
*properties* that a linguistic semantics alone obviously cannot
ensure.
But suppose, nevertheless, there *did* in fact exist a
correspondence between our concepts and the world, indeed, a deeply
reliable, counterfactual-supporting correspondence whereby it was in
fact *metaphysically impossible* for certain claims
constitutive of those concepts not to be true. This is, of course, not
implausible in the case of logic and arithmetic, and is entirely
compatible with, e.g., Boolos' reasonable doubts about them
(after all, it's always possible to doubt what is in fact a
necessary truth). Such necessary correspondences between thought and
the world might then serve as a basis for claims to *a priori*
knowledge in at least a reliabilist epistemology, where what's
important is not believers' abilities to *justify* their
claims, but merely the *reliability* of the processes by which
they arrive at them (see *Reliabilist Epistemology*). Indeed,
in the case of logic and arithmetic, the beliefs might be arrived at
by steps that were not only *necessarily reliable*, but might
also be taken to be so by believers, in ways that might in fact depend
in no way upon experience, but only on their competence with the
relevant words and concepts (Kitcher 1980; Rey 1998; and Goldman 1999
explore this strategy).
Such a reliabilist approach, though, might be less than fully
satisfying to someone interested in the traditional analytic *a
priori*. For, although someone might turn out in fact to have
analytic *a priori* knowledge of this sort, she might not
*know* that she does (reliabilist epistemologists standardly
forgo the "KK Principle," according to which if one knows
that p, one knows *that one knows* that p). Knowledge that the
relevant claims were knowable *a priori* might itself be only
possible by an empirically informed understanding of one's
language faculty and other cognitive capacities *a la*
Chomsky, and by its consonance with the rest of one's theory of
the world, *a la* Quine. One would only know *a
posteriori* that something was knowable *a priori*.
The trouble then is that claims that people do have a capacity for
*a priori* knowledge seem quite precarious. As we noted earlier
(footnote 7),
people are often unreliable at appreciating deductively valid
arguments; and appreciating the standard rules even of natural
deduction is for many people often a difficult intellectual
achievement. Consequently, people's general competence with
logical notions may not in fact consist in any grip on valid logical
rules; and so whatever rules do underlie that competence may well turn
out *not* to be the kind of absolutely reliable guide to the
world on which the above reliabilist defense of *a priori*
analytic knowledge seems to depend. In any case, in view merely of the
serious possibility that these pessimistic conclusions are true,
it's hard to see how any appeal to the analytic to establish the
truth of any controversial claim in any mind-independent domain could
have any special justificatory force without a sufficiently detailed,
empirical psychological theory to back it up.
Moreover, even if we did have a true account of our minds and the
semantic rules afforded by our linguistic and conceptual competence,
it's not clear it would really serve the "armchair"
purposes of traditional philosophy that we mentioned at the outset
(SS1). Consider, for example, the common puzzle about the
possibility that computers might actually think and enjoy a mental
life. In response to this puzzle some philosophers, e.g, Wittgenstein
(1953 [1967], SSSS111, 281), Ziff, 1959, and Hacker, 1990,
have suggested that it's analytic that a thinking thing must be
*alive*, a suggestion that certainly seems to accord with many
folk intuitions (many people who might cheerfully accept a
computational explanation of a thought process often balk at the
suggestion that an inanimate machine engaging in that computation
would actually be thinking). Now, as we noted in the
*supplement*, SS2, Chomsky (2000, p. 44) explicitly
endorses this suggestion. So suppose then this claim were in fact
sustained by linguistic theory, showing that the lexical item
"think" is, indeed, constrained by the feature [+animate],
and so is not felicitously applied to artifactual computers. Should
this really satisfy the person worried about the possibility of
artificial thought?
It's hard to see why. For the serious question that concerns
people worried about whether artifacts could think concerns whether
those artifacts could in fact share the genuine, *theoretically
interesting, explanatory properties* of a thinking thing (cf.
Jackson 1998, pp. 34-5). We might have no empirical, scientific
reason to suppose that genuine, biological *animacy* (n.b., not
merely the perhaps purely syntactic, *linguistic* feature
[+animate]!; see *supplement* SS2) actually figures among
them. And so we might conclude that, despite these supposed
constraints of natural language, inanimate computers could come to
"think" after all. Indeed, perhaps, the claim that
thinking things must be alive is an example of a claim that is
*analytic but false*, rather as the belief that cats are
animals would be, should it turn that the things are actually robots
from Mars; and so we should pursue the option of polysemy and
"open texture" that Chomsky also endorses, and proceed to
allow that artifacts could think.
Of course, a speaker could choose not to go along with, so to say,
opening the texture this far. But if the explanatory point were
nevertheless correct, other speakers could of course simply proceed to
define a new word "think\*" that lacks the animacy
constraint and applies to the explanatory kind that in fact turns out
to include, equally, humans and appropriately programmed artifacts.
The issue would reduce to merely a verbal quibble: so computers
don't "think"; they "think\*" instead.
Indeed, it's a peculiar feature of the entire discussion of the
analytic that it can seem to turn on what may in the end be mere
verbal quibbles. Perhaps the "linguist turn" of philosophy
that we sketched in SSSS1.2-3.3 led into a blind alley,
and it would be more fruitful to explore, so far as possible,
conceptual and/or explanatory connections that may exist in our minds
or or in the world to a large extent independently of language.
In any case, while the semantic conditions of a language might provide
a basis for securing *a priori* knowledge of claims about
mind-*dependent* domains, such as those of perhaps ethics and
aesthetics, in the case of mind-*independent* domains, such as
logic and mathematics, or the nature of worldly phenomena such as life
or thought, the prospects seem more problematic. There may be analytic
claims to be had here, but at least in these cases they would, in the
immortal words of Putnam (1965 [1975], p. 36), "cut no
philosophical ice...bake no philosophical bread and wash no
philosophical
windows."[18]
We would just have to be satisfied with theorizing about the
mind-independent domains themselves, without being able to justify our
claims about them by appeal to the meanings of our words alone.
Reflecting on the difficulties of the past century's efforts on
behalf of the analytic, it's not clear why anyone would really
want to insist otherwise. |
anaphora | ## 1. Unproblematic Anaphora
The simplest sorts of anaphoric pronouns are those that "pick
up" a reference from a previous referring expression whether in
the same sentence or another. Consider for example:
(3)
John left. He said he was ill.
(11)
John left his wallet on the table.
on the readings of these sentences on which "he" and
"his" co-refer with "John". In such cases, the
pronouns are anaphoric, and the expression "John" is
called *the antecedent* of the anaphoric expression. The
semantics of such anaphoric pronouns is very simple: the referent of
the anaphoric pronoun is the referent of its antecedent.
As indicated above, there are also anaphoric pronouns with quantifier
(rather than referring expression) antecedents. Examples include
(2)
above and:
(12)
Every
male skier loves his mother.
Again, on the readings of these sentences on which "he"
and "his" "look back" to their antecedents for
interpretation rather than being assigned independent reference (e.g.,
by pointing to Chris when uttering "his" in (12)). It is
widely held that in such cases, the pronouns function semantically as
variables bound by their quantifier antecedents. Thus, their semantic
function is just like that of bound variables of first order logic.
[3]
The insight that some pronouns with quantifier antecedents function
like bound variables in first order logic goes back at least to Quine
(1960, see chapter IV section 28). Historically, these cases have been
of more interest to linguists than philosophers. For example, one
thing that needs to be explained is that in a sentence like
"Sarah likes her", "Sarah" and
"her" cannot co-refer (in order to get a co-reference
reading, we must say "Sarah likes herself"), though we can
get the co-reference reading (or not) in a sentence like "Sarah
likes her sister". Accounting for these types of patterns of
sentence-internal anaphora is the central concern of the area of
linguistics called *binding theory* (see May 1980; Higginbotham
and May 1981; Chomsky 1981; Reinhardt 1983a,b; Buring 2005).
Though these insights are all important, if examples like
(3),
(11), and
(12)
were the only kinds of pronominal anaphora, they currently would not
be of much interest to so many philosophers and linguists.
## 2. Problematic Anaphora
Significant interest in anaphoric pronouns grew out of the realization
that there are anaphoric pronouns that cannot be understood as having
their references fixed by their antecedents (as in
(3)
and
(11)
above) nor as being variables bound by their quantifier antecedents
(as in
(2)
and
(12)
above). The three sorts of examples of this discussed here have
figured prominently in the literature on anaphora.
First, there is *discourse anaphora*: cases in which an
anaphoric pronoun has an antecedent in another sentence, where that
antecedent at least appears to be a
quantifier.[4]
Examples include:
(13)
An
anthropologist discovered the skeleton called "Lucy". He
named the skeleton after a Beatle's song.
(14)
Few
professors came to the party. They had a good time.
There are at least two reasons for thinking that the pronouns in (13)
and (14) are not variables bound by their quantifier antecedents. Both
reasons are discussed by Evans (1977). The first is that such a
treatment clearly yields the wrong truth conditions for examples like
(14). If "they" is a bound variable in (14), the two
sentences should be equivalent to
(14a)
Few
professors : *x* (*x* came to the party and *x* had a
good time)
(Or, more colloquially, "Few professors are such that they both
came to the party and had a good time.") This is clearly
incorrect, since the sentences of (14) entail that few professors
attended the party (i.e., the first sentence entails this), whereas
(14a) could be true if many professors
attended.[5]
The second reason for thinking pronouns in cases of discourse anaphora
aren't bound variables is that it seems committed to the claim
that the following anomalous sentences aren't anomalous:
\*15.
John
bought no sheep and Harry vaccinated them.
\*16.
Every professor came to the party. He had a great time.
If the (apparent) quantifiers in
(13)
and
(14)
can bind variables in sentences after those in which they occur, why
can't the quantifiers in (15) and (16)? If this could happen,
(15) and (16) should be fine and should together be equivalent to,
respectively:
(15a)
No
sheep were both bought by John and vaccinated by Harry.
(16a)
Every professor came to the party and had a great time.
But they are not. Thus, pronouns in discourse anaphora are not
variables (syntactically) bound by their quantifier
antecedents.[6]
Furthermore, there are cases of (plural) anaphora in which the
denotation of "they" is derived in a more indirect way
from the antecedent, as in (17), an example of complement
anaphora:
(17)
Few
students came to the party. They were busy studying.
Unlike in (14), where "they" picks out the professors who
came to the party, in (17), "they" picks out the students
who *didn't* come to the party. (For more about
complement anaphora, see Nouwen (2003a), for complement anaphora in the
psycholinguistics literature, see Sanford & Moxey (1993).)
Nor are these like example
(3),
in which the pronoun simply refers to the same thing as the
antecedent. Indefinite descriptions like "an
anthropologist" are commonly thought to be quantifiers, and
expressions like "few professors" are certainly
quantifiers, not referring expressions. On most theories of indefinite
descriptions, the first sentence of
(13)
is true just in case there is at least one anthropologist who
discovered the skeleton called "Lucy"; its truth does not
depend on any particular anthropologist. Thus there is no referential
antecedent in the first sentence for the pronoun in the second
sentence to be co-referential with.
A further problem with thinking of these pronouns as referential can
be seen by considering a slightly more complex example:
(18)
A man
broke into Sarah's apartment. Scott believes he came in the
window.
The crucial point is that the second sentence has a reading on which
it attributes to Scott a general belief instead of a belief about a
particular person. This reading would be true, for example, if Scott
believed that some man broke into Sarah's apartment by coming in
the window, but had no idea about who might have broken in. This is
(*prima facie*) evidence that the pronoun in the second
sentence is not a referring expression, because if it were, the second
sentence of (18) would only have a reading on which it attributes to
Scott a belief about the particular person the pronoun refers to. But
this is
incorrect.[7]
(On the other hand, for a treatment of such *de dicto*
readings while maintaining that the pronoun is a referring expression,
see Elbourne 2005: 99-106.)
Thus, with pronouns in discourse anaphora, we have examples of
pronouns that can neither be understood as picking up their referents
from their antecedents nor as being variables bound by their
antecedents. Discourse anaphora provides further interesting examples
to philosophers and linguists when the antecedents are under the scope
of quantifiers, modals, or negation. For example, the pronouns in
(19), (20), and (22) are infelicitous, but those in (21) and (23) are
felicitous. This is something further that an account of discourse
anaphora needs to
explain.[8]
(19)
Bryan
didn't buy a bottle of wine. #It is a pinot noir.
(20)
Bryan might buy a bottle of wine. #It is a pinot noir.
(21)
Bryan might buy a bottle of wine. It would be a pinot noir. (This
an example of *modal subordination*. For an introduction to
modal subordination see Roberts (1987, 1989, 1996).)
(22)
Bryan bought a bottle of wine at every store in the
neighborhood. #It was a pinot noir.
(23)
Bryan bought a bottle of wine at every store in the
neighborhood. It was always a pinot noir. (This is an example
of *quantificational subordination*. For more on
quantificational subordination see Brasoveanu 2006.)
A second sort of anaphoric pronoun that cannot be understood as a
referring expression or as a bound variable is in fact a special case
of discourse anaphora. However, it deserves separate mention because
it has generated so much interest. Consider the following discourse,
which we shall call a *Geach Discourse*, adapted from the
analogous conjunction in Geach 1967:
(24)
Hob
thinks a witch blighted Bob's mare. Nob wonders whether she
killed Cob's sow.
There is a reading of this discourse on which both sentences in it are
true even if there are no witches, so that "a witch" in
the first sentence must take narrow scope with respect to "Hob
thinks". But then the scope of "a witch" cannot
extend to the second sentence to bind the pronoun "she",
since the "scope" of "Hob thinks"
doesn't extend to the second sentence. Hence on the reading in
question, which we shall call the *Geach Reading*, the pronoun
"she" is not a bound variable. Further, since there are no
witches, and "she" is anaphoric on "a witch",
"she" in the second sentence must in some sense being used
to "talk about" a non-existent witch. Thus, it apparently
cannot be a referring term either, since its alleged referent
doesn't exist. So here again we have an anaphoric pronoun that
cannot be understood as a referring expression nor as a bound
variable. Examples of this sort are sometimes referred to
(misleadingly, in our view) as instances of *intentional
identity*.
The third sort of case in which an anaphoric pronoun cannot be
understood as a referring expression nor as a bound variable is that
of "donkey
anaphora".[9]
Here there are two varieties, which are called *conditional*
and *relative clause* donkey sentences, respectively:
(25)
If Sarah
owns a donkey, she beats it.
(26)
Every woman who owns a donkey beats it.
On the readings we are concerned with, neither (25) nor (26) is
talking about any particular donkey, and so the pronoun
"it" cannot be a term referring to a particular donkey.
Further, in the case of (25), all independent evidence available
suggests that a quantifier can't take wide scope over a
conditional and bind variables in its consequent (\*"If John owns
every donkeyi, he beats iti"). This
suggests that the (apparent) quantifier "a donkey" in (25)
cannot bind the pronoun in the consequent. In addition, even if
"a donkey" could magically do this in (25), assuming it is
an existential quantifier, we still wouldn't get the intuitive
truth conditions of (25), which require that Sarah beats
*every* donkey she owns. Similarly, the independent evidence
available suggests that quantifiers can't scope out of relative
clauses (\*"A man who owns every donkeyi beats
iti"), and so again the pronoun in (26) is not within
the scope of its quantifier antecedent and so is not bound by it.
Thus, the pronouns in both conditional and relative clause donkey
sentences can be neither understood as referring expressions nor as
bound variables.
So now we have three cases of anaphoric pronouns that cannot be
understood as referring expressions nor as bound variables: 1)
pronouns in discourse anaphora; 2) pronouns in Geach discourses and 3)
pronouns in (conditional and relative clause) donkey sentences.
Let's call these cases of *problematic anaphora*. The
recent interest in anaphora is largely an interest in finding a
semantic theory for problematic anaphora. In the next section, we
outline the main theories that have arisen to fill this void.
## 3. Recent Theories of Problematic Anaphora
Before discussing recent theories of problematic anaphora, a few
caveats are in order. First, our discussion will not be exhaustive. We
cover what we take to be the best known and most promising theories.
Second, because each theory is a formal, sophisticated semantic
theory, to describe a single theory in detail would itself be a paper
length project. Thus, we try instead to give a simple, informal sketch
of the main features of each theory. The notes and references point
the interested reader to places where he/she can get more detail.
Third, we shall confine ourselves to briefly describing how each
theory handles simple discourse anaphora of the sort exhibited by
(13)
above, in which a pronoun in one sentence is anaphoric on an
indefinite noun phrase in a previous sentence, and donkey anaphora
like
(25)
and
(26).
Readers interested in more details on how these theories deal with
embedding under quantifiers, negation, or modals should consult the
readings cited both in the previous section and in the sections below.
Readers interested in Geach discourses or "intentional
identity" should begin by consulting Asher (1987), Edelberg
(1986), Geach (1967), Kamp (1990), King (1994), Braun (2012), and the
works mentioned therein.
The first two of the theories discussed below, discourse
representation theory and dynamic semantics, represent departures from
traditional semantics, departures which were largely motivated at the
beginning by the problematic anaphora cases. The second two theories
discussed below, d-type theories and the CDQ theory, represent ways in
which the problematic anaphora data is dealt with within a traditional
semantic framework.
### 3.1 Discourse Representation Theory
In the early 1980s, Irene Heim (1982) and Hans Kamp (1981)
independently formulated very similar semantic theories that were in
part designed to handle problematic anaphora, particularly donkey and
discourse anaphora. The theories developed by Heim and Kamp have come
to be known as Discourse Representation Theory or DRT (see entry on
Discourse Representation Theory).[10]
We shall not attempt to describe differences between the formulations
of Heim and Kamp. Indeed, in our exposition we shall combine elements
of the two theories. Readers interested in the differences between the
two accounts should consult Heim (1982) and Kamp (1981) directly.
We believe it is fair to say that it was the development of DRT that
made the semantics of anaphora a central issue in philosophy of
language. One reason for this was the following bold statement by Kamp
(1981):
>
>
> A theory of this form differs fundamentally from those familiar from
> the truth-theoretical and model-theoretical literature, and thus a
> substantial argument will be wanted that such a radical departure from
> existing frameworks is really necessary. The particular analysis
> carried out in the main part of this paper should be seen as a first
> attempt to provide such an argument. The analysis deals with only a
> small number of linguistic problems, but careful reflection upon just
> those problems already reveals, I suggest, that a major revision of
> semantic theory is called for. (Kamp 1981: 278)
>
>
>
The problems that Kamp goes on to address are the treatment of donkey
anaphora and simple discourse anaphora. Hence Kamp appears to be
saying that these problems cannot be handled within more traditional
frameworks and thus that a DRT approach is necessary. Obviously, the
claim that the semantics of anaphora requires a radical revision in
semantic theory got the attention of philosophers of language. Thus,
the study of problematic anaphora blossomed during the 1980s and
1990s.
The first way in which DRT departs from more traditional approaches is
that it claims that indefinite noun phrases such as "an
anthropologist" or "a donkey" are essentially
predicates with free variables rather than existential quantifiers.
Thus, the above indefinites might as well look as follows at the level
of "logical form":
anthropologist(*x*)
donkey(*x*)
In effect, an indefinite introduces a "novel" variable,
(i.e., in DRT's terminology, establishes a *discourse
referent*) and a pronoun anaphoric on an indefinite is interpreted
as the same variable as was introduced by its indefinite antecedent.
Hence a simple discourse such as:
(27)
A man
loves Annie. He is rich.
in effect can be represented
as[11]
(27a)
man(*x*)
*x* loves Annie
*x* is rich
In addition to this, DRT builds in to the assignment of truth
conditions default existential quantification over free variables.
Thus, (27a) is true iff there is some assignment to the variable
"*x*" that is in the extension of "man",
"loves Annie" and "rich", that is, iff
something is a man who loves Annie and is rich. Thus, that indefinites
appear to have the force of existential quantifiers in cases like (27)
is not because they are existential quantifiers but because of the
default existential quantification of free variables.
Let us turn now to the DRT treatment of donkey anaphora. First, note
that both relative clause and conditional donkey anaphora appear to
have a sort of "universal force": the truth of
(25)
and
(26)
above, repeated here, require that Sarah beats every donkey she owns
and that every donkey owning woman beats every donkey she
owns.[12]
(25)
If Sarah owns a
donkey, she beats it.
(26)
Every woman who owns a donkey beats it.
Thus, the indefinite here mysteriously has universal force and
expresses something about every donkey owned by someone. Recall that
according to DRT, an indefinite is effectively a one-place predicate
with a free variable. The central idea of DRT in the case of both
conditional and relative clause donkey sentences is that the universal
force of the indefinite results from the variable in it being bound by
an operator with genuine universal force. In the case of (25), the
"conditional operator" has universal force, since it in
effect says that in every case (assignment to free variables) in which
the antecedent is true, the consequent is true. So (25) claims that
every assignment to "*x*" that makes "Sarah
owns *x*" and "*x* is a donkey" true, also
makes "Sarah beats *x*" true. So (25) is true iff
Sarah beats every donkey she owns. In (26), by contrast, the universal
quantifier (determiner) "every" not only binds the
variables associated with the predicative material "woman who
owns a donkey" (for example, presumably there is such a variable
in the subject argument place of "beats"), but it also
binds the variable introduced by the predicate-with-free-variable
"a donkey". So it is as though (26) has the "logical
form".[13]
(26a)
Every
*x*,*y* (woman(*x*) & donkey(*y*) &
*x* owns *y*) (*x* beats *y*)
Note that this account requires allowing quantificational determiners
("every") to bind multiple variables. This, again, is a
departure from more classical
approaches.[14]
Now since the DRT approach claims that indefinites get their apparent
quantificational force from other elements that bind the variables in
them, it predicts that when different determiners are involved in
relative clause donkey sentences, as in
(28)
Most
women who own a donkey beat it.
the indefinite should appear to have the quantificational force of the
new determiner ("Most"). So (16) should be true if most
pairs of women and donkeys they own are such that the women beat the
donkeys. Similar remarks apply to conditionals containing
"non-universal" quantifiers such as "usually",
as in
(29)
Usually,
if a woman owns a donkey, she beats it.
This should be true if most pairs of women and donkeys they own are
such that the women beat the donkeys. But this prediction,
particularly in the case of (28), seems clearly false. If there are
exactly ten donkey owning women and one woman owns ten donkeys and
beats them all, while the nine other women own a donkey each and
don't beat them, (28) intuitively seems false: most donkey
owning women fail to beat the donkeys they own. However, the DRT
account as formulated claims (28) is true in this situation. This
difficulty is one of the main criticisms of classical DRT in the
literature and is often called *the proportion problem* (Heim
(1990) claims that Nirit Kadmon so dubbed it). The criticism is
damaging, because it appears to refute what was claimed to be a
central insight of DRT: that the apparent quantificational force of
indefinites comes from other elements that bind the variables in
them.
A second difficulty with classical DRT as formulated here involves
cases such as
(18)
above, repeated here:
(18)
A man broke into
Sarah's apartment. Scott believes he came in the
window.
As mentioned above, (18) has a reading on which the second sentence of
the discourse attributes a general belief to Scott (something like the
belief that a man who broke into Sarah's apartment came in
through the window). But as formulated, DRT doesn't get this
reading. For the default existential quantification of free variables
acts in effect like a wide scope existential quantifier over the
entire discourse. Thus, it is as if (18) were as follows:
([?]*x*)(*x* is a man & *x* broke into
Sarah's apartment & Scott believes *x* came in the
window).
But this attributes a belief about a specific person to Scott. Hence
it can't capture the reading mentioned. Similarly, consider the
following sentences:
(30)
Every
women who has a secret admirer thinks he is stalking her.
(31)
If a woman has a secret admirer, usually she thinks he is
stalking her
These sentences also appear to have readings on which they attribute
general or *de dicto* beliefs to the women in question. That
is, they have readings on which they attribute to the women in
question *general* beliefs to the effect that they are being
stalked by secret admirers. This is why these sentences can be true
even though the women in question don't know who their secret
admirers are, and so have no beliefs about *particular* persons
stalking them. For reasons exactly similar to those given for the case
of the analogous reading of the second sentence of
(18),
these readings can't be captured by DRT as formulated here. We
shall see below that dynamic approaches have exactly similar problems.
Asher (1987) and Kamp (1990) attempt to remedy this problem (among
others). For further elaboration of the DRT framework, see also Kamp
and Reyle (1993) and van Eijck and Kamp (1997). For expansions of the
DRT framework, e.g., SDRT (segmented discourse representation theory),
see Asher and Lascarides (2003), for compositional versions of DRT,
see Muskens (1996) and Brasoveanu (2006, 2007, 2008).
### 3.2 Dynamic Semantic Approaches
As its name suggests, Discourse Representation Theory was designed to
capture the way in which certain features of a discourse, particularly
inter-sentential relations such as inter-sentential anaphora, affect
the interpretation of sentences in the discourse. At the same time,
Discourse Representation Theory as originally formulated in Kamp
(1981) failed to be compositional, at least in the sense of that term
familiar from Montagovian
approaches.[15]
The initial motivation for a dynamic semantic (see entry on
dynamic semantics)
approach to discourse and donkey anaphora was on the one hand to
preserve the "dynamic" elements of DRT, that is the view
that what an expression means is given by the way in which the
addition of the expression to a discourse changes the information
available to a hearer of the discourse, ("meaning as potential
for changing the state of information"). On the other hand,
dynamic semantic approaches wanted to adhere to compositionality. This
is made very clear in the introduction of the classic statement of the
dynamic semantic approach to discourse and donkey anaphora, namely
Groenendijk and Stokhof (1991). We shall here discuss their treatment
of discourse and donkey anaphora, *Dynamic Predicate Logic*
(henceforth DPL), and gesture at other treatments in the dynamic
semantic tradition. First generation dynamic semantic theories of anaphora like DPL give an account of singular cross-sentential anaphora as well as donkey sentences. Subsequent work in dynamic semantics has adapted and added to these tools to account for things like plural anaphora, quantificational subordination, and other issues. (See for example van den Berg (1996), Krifka (1996a), Nouwen (2003b), Brasoveanu (2007, 2010), and Keshet (2018).) Of the theories discussed in this entry, this is
the most difficult to explain informally. We shall keep the discussion
as informal as possible, and urge interested readers to consult the
works cited directly for more detail.
To begin with, let's look at how simple discourse anaphora is
handled on DPL. So consider again:
(27)
A man loves Annie. He is rich.
Now in DPL, indefinites such as "a man" are treated as
existential quantifiers. Further, DPL treats consecutive sentences in
discourses as being conjoined. So we can think of (27) as follows:
(27b)
([?]*x*)(man *x* & *x* loves Annie) &
*x* is rich
Here we have rendered the anaphoric pronoun "He" as the
variable "*x*", the same variable that is the
variable of its quantifier antecedent. This represents the anaphoric
connection. The important point to notice is that the anaphoric
pronoun/variable in (27b) is not within the syntactic scope of its
quantifier antecedent. This corresponds to the fact that in DPL, the
syntactic scopes of quantifiers are confined to the sentences in which
they occur, as current syntactic theory tells us they should be.
The key to understanding the DPL account of discourse anaphora lies in
understanding its semantics of the existential quantifier and
conjunction. Let's begin with existential quantification. The
basic idea here it that when we interpret an existential quantifier,
the output of that interpretation may affect the interpretation of
subsequent expressions. In standard predicate logic, the
interpretation of an existential quantifier is a set of assignment
functions. In DPL, it is a set of *ordered pairs* of input and
output assignment functions. The output assignment functions act as
the input to subsequent formulas. Take for example the simple formula
"\((\exists x)(\mbox{man } x)\)". In DPL, such a formula
takes all the input functions *g*, and for each one outputs all
the possible assignment functions *h* such that they differ from
*g* at most in that they assign *x* to an object in the
interpretation of "man" (i.e., they assign *x* to a
man). More generally, accounting for possibly more complex formulas in
the scope of the existential (including another quantifier), a pair of
sequences \(\langle g, h\rangle\) is in the interpretation of an
existential formula "\((\exists x)\Phi\)" just in case
there is an assignment function *k* differing from *g* at
most on *x* such that \(\langle k,h\rangle\); is in the
interpretation of "\(\Phi\)".[16]
So note how interpreting the existential quantifier results in
shifting from the input function *g* to *k*, where *k*
is now the input to "\(\Phi\)". This makes the existential
quantifier *internally dynamic*, capable of affecting the
interpretation of expressions within its syntactic scope. Further, the
fact that the output assignment functions of interpreting the whole
existentially quantified sentence are allowed to be different from the
input to the interpretation means that the processing of the
existentially quantified formula may affect the interpretation of
expressions *after* the existentially quantified formula, and
hence *outside* the scope of the existential quantifier. This
is to say that the existential quantifier is *externally
dynamic*, capable of affecting the interpretation of expressions
*outside* its syntactic scope. As we will see, an expression
can be internally dynamic and externally static (as well as internally
and externally static). At any rate, putting things very roughly, the
idea here is that once the existential quantifier "resets"
the value of "*x*" so that it satisfies the formula
the quantifier embeds, that value stays reset (unless there is a
subsequent existential quantifier attached to the same variable) and
can affect the interpretation of subsequent formulas.
Turning now to conjunction, the idea here is similar. Again, the
fundamental idea is that the interpretation of the left conjunct can
affect the interpretation of the right conjunct. A bit more formally,
a pair of assignment functions \(\langle g,h\rangle\); is in the
interpretation of a conjunction just in case there is an assignment
function *k* such that \(\langle g,k\rangle\); is in the
interpretation of the left conjunct and \(\langle k,h\rangle\); the
right
conjunct.[17]
So note how interpreting the left conjunct changes the input sequence
for the interpretation of the right conjunct. Again, this means that
conjunction is internally dynamic, possibly affecting the
interpretation of expressions in its scope. And again, that the output
of interpreting a conjunction, here *h*, can differ from the
input, here *g*, means that a conjunction is capable of affecting
things outside of it and hence outside of the scope of that
conjunction sign. Again, this is to say that conjunction is externally
dynamic.
To go through an example, we also need to understand the semantics of
an atomic formula like "man *x*". Atomic formulas act
like a test on the input assignments, allowing those assignments that
satisfy the condition to pass through and act as input to subsequent
assignments and rejecting the rest. However, atomic formulas do not
*change* assignment functions. More specifically, an input
output pair \(\langle g,h\rangle\) is in the interpretation of an
atomic formula "\(Rt\_1 \ldots t\_n\)" just in case \(h=g\)
and *h* assigns "\(t\_1\)"...
"\(t\_n\)" to something in the interpretation of
*R*.
Putting these elements all together, we are now in a position to see
how DPL accounts for (27b). Informally speaking, the first sentence of
(27b) takes all the input assignment functions *g* and outputs
all those assignments *h* in that they differ at most from
*g* in assigning "*x*" to a man who loves Annie.
Thus the output of the first sentence is all (and only) the possible
assignments of "*x*" (given the model) to men who
love Annie. The output of the first sentence is the input to the
second. The second sentence tests these assignments, allowing only
those through which also assign "*x*" to something in
the interpretation of "rich". The output of the second
sentence includes all and only the assignments of
"*x*" to rich men who love Annie. As long as the
model includes at least one rich man who loves Annie, there will be at
least one such output assignment. Hence the discourse is true iff
there is at least one rich man who loves Annie. Since conjunction is
externally dynamic, we can keep adding sentences with anaphoric
pronouns to similar effect. Thus in a discourse such as
(27c)
A man
loves Annie. He is rich. He is famous.
the discourse is all true iff some rich famous man loves Annie.
Thus the dynamic semantic treatment yields a truth conditional
equivalence between
\[
(\exists x)(\Phi) \mathbin{\&} \Psi
\]
and
\[
(\exists x)(\Phi \mathbin{\&} \Psi)
\]
even when
"\(\Psi\)" contains free occurrences of
"*x*". Hence it is often said that in DPL quantifiers
*semantically bind* free variables outside their syntactic
scope. This doesn't encounter the same problems as the syntactic
binding treatment rejected in
section 2,
since it allows quantifiers to provide values for subsequent
anaphoric pronouns without actually binding them in a way that falsely
predicts, e.g., that "Exactly one man loves Annie. He is
rich" is truth-conditionally equivalent to
\(\mbox{"}(\exists !x)(\mbox{man } x \mathbin{\&} x \mbox{
loves Annie} \mathbin{\&} x \mbox{ is rich})\mbox{"}\).
Because the treatment of donkey anaphora is a bit more complicated
technically, and because some of the main ideas of DPL are now on the
table, we will be more suggestive here. Again, we urge the interested
reader to consult Groenendijk and Stokhof (1991) directly.
First, consider conditional donkey anaphora:
(32)
If a
farmer owns a donkey, he beats it.
(32) gets regimented in DPL as follows:
(32a)
\((\exists x)(\mbox{farmer } x \mathbin{\&} \exists y(\mbox{donkey
} y \mathbin{\&} \mbox{own }x,y)) \rightarrow \mbox{beat }
x,y\)
There are three crucial points to the DPL treatment here. (1) The
existential quantifier is externally dynamic and hence may affect the
interpretation of variables outside its scope, and in particular
"*x*" in the consequent of (32a). (2)
"\(\rightarrow\)" is internally dynamic and allows the
interpretation of its antecedent to affect the interpretation of its
consequent (just as is conjunction). 1 and 2 together mean that the
quantifier in the antecedent of (32)/(32a) can semantically bind the
variable in the consequent, even though it is not in the syntactic
scope of the quantifier. But without doing anything further, we would
be left with (32a) having the truth conditions of
(32b)
\(
(\exists x)(\mbox{farmer } x \mathbin{\&} \exists y(\mbox{donkey }
y \mathbin{\&} \mbox{own } x,y)) \rightarrow \mbox{beat }
x,y)\)
where "\(\rightarrow\)" is the standard material
conditional. This doesn't give the intuitive truth conditions of
(32) on the reading that concerns us, i.e., that every donkey-owning
farmer beats every donkey he owns. The third and final element we need
to get the truth conditions to come out right is to say that a pair of
assignments \(\langle h,h\rangle\) is in the interpretation of a
conditional iff for all *k* such that \(\langle h,k\rangle\)
satisfies the antecedent, there is a *j* such that \(\langle
k,j\rangle\) satisfies the
consequent.[18]
This says, roughly, that for any output assignment *k* of a pair
of assignments satisfying the antecedent of the conditional
(assignment of a donkey-owning farmer to *x* and a donkey owned
by *x* to *y* in the case of (32)/(32a)), *k* is the
input of a pair \(\langle k,j\rangle\) that satisfies the consequent,
for some *j*. Since the consequent of the conditional in
(32)/(32a) is an atomic formula, *j*=*k*. So the account
claims that any output of a pair of sequences that satisfies the
existentially quantified antecedent also satisfies "*x*
beats *y*", and so also assigns to "*x*"
and "*y*" to something that stands in the beating
relation. That is, the truth of (32)/(32a) requires every
donkey-owning farmer to beat every donkey he owns.
Turning now to our relative clause donkey sentence, (repeated
here)
(26)
Every woman who owns a donkey beats it.
we shall be even more schematic. This gets regimented in DPL as
follows, (giving the predicate letters here the obvious meanings):
(26a)
\((\forall x)((Wx
\mathbin{\&} (\exists y)(Dy \mathbin{\&} Oxy)) \rightarrow
Bxy)\)
Note in particular that the "*y*" in
"*Bxy*" is not in the scope of the existential
quantifier. Now given a quite straightforward treatment of the
universal quantifier, on which it allows dynamic effects in its
scope,[19]
in all essentials, the example works like (32)/(32a). For stripping
the universal quantifier away, we have:
(26a')
\( ((Wx
\mathbin{\&} (\exists y)(Dy \mathbin{\&} Oxy))\rightarrow
Bxy\)
And overlooking the free variables left by stripping away the
universal quantifier (which anyway were in its scope and bound by it),
we simply have another conditional with an existential quantifier in
its antecedent and a formula in the consequent containing an
occurrence of the variable of that existential quantifier. So the
treatment goes essentially as it did for (32)/(32a) itself, with the
externally dynamic existential quantifier, internally dynamic
conditional, and universal quantification over assignments in the
semantics of the conditional all working their magic so that
(26)'s truth requires every donkey owning woman to beat every
donkey she owns.
Though DPL cannot handle relative clause donkey sentences such as:
(33)
Most
women who own a donkey beat it.
since it is working within the framework of a first order logic
without generalized quantifiers, this is only a limitation of this
particular formulation and not of dynamic approaches generally. Others
have formulated systems of dynamic semantics with generalized
quantifiers that are capable of dealing with examples like
(33).[20]
On the other hand, DPL and dynamic approaches generally do face a
problem. Put crudely, DPL (and dynamic approaches generally) solve the
problems of discourse and donkey anaphora by formulating semantics for
quantifiers that allows quantifiers to semantically bind variables
that aren't in their syntactic scopes. In this they
(self-consciously) resemble DRT. But then they face a problem similar
to one faced by DRT and mentioned above. Consider again our discourse
(18), repeated here
(18)
A man broke into Sarah's apartment. Scott believes
he came in the window.
As mentioned above, (18) has a reading on which the second sentence of
the discourse attributes a general belief to Scott (something like the
belief that a man who broke into Sarah's apartment came in
through the window). On a dynamic approach to (18), the quantifier in
the first sentence semantically binds the variable in the second
sentence. But then this semantically amounts to quantification into
the verb of attitude, and so will not result in a reading of the
second sentence on which it attributes a general belief to Scott.
Hence, dynamic approaches need to invoke some other mechanism to get
the reading of the second sentence in
question.[21]
Similarly, again consider the following sentences discussed in
connection with DRT above :
(30)
Every woman who
has a secret admirer thinks he is stalking her.
(31)
If a woman has a
secret admirer, usually she thinks he is stalking her.
As mentioned there, these sentences also appear to have readings on
which they attribute general or *de dicto* beliefs to the women
in question. That is, they have readings on which they attribute to
the women in question *general* beliefs to the effect that they
are being stalked by secret admirers. This is why these sentences can
be true even though the women in question don't know who their
secret admirers are, and so have no beliefs about *particular*
persons stalking them. For reasons exactly similar to those given for
the case of the analogous reading of the second sentence of (18),
these readings can't be captured by DPL or dynamic approaches
generally.
Paul Elbourne (2005) reviews three other serious problems for dynamic
approaches. The first is the problem of disjunctive antecedents
(discussed in detail in Stone 1992). The problem is with sentences
like the following:
(34)
If Mary
hasn't seen John lately, or Ann misses Bill, she calls him.
(Elbourne 2005: 19)
This is problematic because the pronouns cannot co-refer with the
antecedent (since it is disjunctive), but the antecedent also does not
introduce any suitable variables or quantifiers to provide values for
the pronouns, since they are definites (names) and not indefinites or
other quantificational expressions.
The other two problems involve anaphoric pronouns that don't
have a proper linguistic antecedent. The following example, originally
from Jacobson (2000), is one in which there is no linguistic
antecedent for the pronoun "it", though the pronoun has a
covarying interpretation with the quantifier "most faculty
members":
(35)
*A
new faculty member picks up her first paycheck from her mailbox.
Waving it in the air, she says to a colleague:* Do most faculty
members deposit it in the Credit Union? (Elbourne 2005:
20)
The second kind of example involves what is commonly called a
*paycheck pronoun*:
(36)
John
gave his paycheck to his mistress. Everybody else put it in the bank.
(Elbourne 2005: 21)
The problematic (salient) reading is the one is which everybody else
put *their own* paychecks in the bank. The first sentence only
introduces *John's* paycheck, hence "it"
doesn't have a proper antecedent. Standard dynamic accounts
don't have the machinery for dealing with pronouns without the
proper linguistic antecedent, since it is the antecedent's
effect on the context that accounts for the anaphoric pronoun's
interpretation (but see Keshet (2018) for a recent dynamic semantics of anaphora that includes an account of paycheck pronouns).[22]
### 3.3 Descriptive Approaches
There have been many accounts of the semantics of anaphora according
to which anaphoric pronouns in some sense function like definite
descriptions. Though there are important differences between such
theories, examples of theories of this sort include Evans (1977),
Parsons (1978, Other Internet Resources), Davies (1981), Neale (1990),
Heim (1990) and Elbourne (2005). Theories of this sort are often
called *E-Type* or
*D-type* approaches. Though it is beyond the scope of this
article to compare all the different accounts, some of the main
differences in types of accounts are as follows. E-type accounts are
sometimes distinguished as ones in which a definite description fixes
the referent of an anaphoric pronoun, whereas D-type accounts are
ones in which the pronoun itself has the semantics of a definite
description. However, it is common to describe the latter as 'E-type' as well. These are further sub-divided into those that treat
pronouns as definite descriptions merely at the level of semantics and
those that also treat them as descriptions at the level of syntax.
Finally, accounts differ in how the descriptive material is recovered.
Some accounts hold that the descriptive material has to be recovered
linguistically, from prior discourse. Others hold that it can be any
contextually salient description.
We will discuss two of the best known versions of the view, Neale
(1990) and Elbourne (2005). We should add that though Neale developed
the view in question in greater detail, Davies (1981) had earlier
defended essentially the same view in all crucial
respects.[23]
Thus, the view we go on to describe should probably be called *the
Davies-Neale view*. But since we shall focus on Neale's
presentation of the view, we shall talk of Neale's view.
On Neale's view, in all instances of problematic anaphora,
anaphoric pronouns "go proxy for" definite descriptions
understood as quantifiers along roughly Russellian lines. First,
consider discourse anaphora. Neale's view is that in a discourse
such as:
(37)
John
bought a donkey. Harry vaccinated it.
the pronoun "it" "goes proxy for" the definite
description "the donkey John bought." Hence the second
sentence of such a discourse is equivalent to the sentence
"Harry vaccinated the donkey John bought" with the
description understood in the standard Russellian fashion. Within a
generalized quantifier type framework, where "the" is
treated as a determiner that, like other determiners, combines with a
set term to form a quantified NP, the evaluation clause for sentences
containing a singular description (with wide scope) can be given as
follows
(38)
"[The \(x:Fx](Gx)\)" is true iff \(|\mathbf{F}|=1\) and
\(|\mathbf{F-G}|=0\)
So the second sentence of (37) is true iff Harry vaccinated the unique
donkey John bought. Thus far, then, the view is that pronouns
anaphoric on singular indefinites are interpreted as Russellian
definite descriptions.
There is, however, a further complication in Neale's theory that
is invoked in the explanation of donkey anaphora. In particular, Neale
introduces what he calls a "numberless description": a
description that, unlike semantically singular descriptions, puts no
cardinality constraint on the denotation of the set term that combines
with the determiner to form the quantified NP (other than that it must
be nonempty--note above how in the singular case \(|\mathbf{F}|\)
is constrained to equal one.) Following Neale, let "whe"
be the determiner (corresponding to "the") used to form
"numberless descriptions." Then the evaluation clause for
sentences containing numberless descriptions, analogous to (38) above,
would be
(39)
"[whe \(x: Fx](Gx)\)" is true iff \(|\mathbf{F}| \ge 1\)
and \(|\mathbf{F-G}|=0\)
Thus numberless descriptions are in effect universal quantifiers.
In addition to going proxy for Russellian singular descriptions in the
way we have seen, Neale claims that anaphoric pronouns sometimes go
proxy for numberless descriptions. In particular, Neale holds that
pronouns anaphoric on singular existential quantifiers (but outside of
their scope) can be interpreted *either* as standard Russellian
descriptions *or* as numberless descriptions. Now if the
pronouns in our conditional and relative clause donkey sentences
(repeated here)
(25)
If Sarah owns a donkey, she beats it.
(26)
Every woman who owns a donkey beats it.
are interpreted as a numberless description, (25) asserts that if
Sarah owns a donkey, she beats all the donkeys she owns and (26)
asserts that every donkey owning woman beats every donkey she owns.
Thus, Neale's account of donkey anaphora requires the pronouns
here to be interpreted as numberless descriptions.
Having seen how Neale's theory handles discourse anaphora and
donkey anaphora, we turn to difficulties with the account. An obvious
question concerning an account like this that allows pronouns
anaphoric on singular existential quantifiers to go proxy for both
Russellian *and* numberless descriptions is: what determines
whether such a pronoun is going proxy for a Russellian, as opposed to
a numberless, description? This question is pressing for Neale's
account, since there will be a substantial difference in the truth
conditions of a pronoun-containing sentence depending on whether the
pronoun receives a numberless or Russellian interpretation. In his
most explicit statement about the matter (1990: 237) Neale makes clear
that it is primarily whether the utterer had a particular individual
in mind in uttering the indefinite description that determines whether
a pronoun anaphoric on it receives a Russellian or a numberless
interpretation.[24]
If this is correct, then discourses of the form
(40)
A(n)
*F* is *G*. He/she/it is *H*.
generally ought to display both readings (in the suitable contexts),
depending on whether the utterer of the discourse had a particular
individual in mind in uttering "A(n) *F*". So the
second sentences of discourses of the form of (40) ought to have
readings on which they mean the unique *F* that is *G* is
*H* (Russellian) *and* on which they mean every *F*
that is *G* is *H* (numberless). But this does not seem to
be the case. In particular, such discourses do not have readings
corresponding to the numberless interpretation of the pronoun.
Consider the discourse anaphora analogue of the donkey conditional
(25):
(25a)
Sarah
owns a donkey. She beats it.
It seems clear that this discourse has no reading on which the second
sentence means that Sarah beats every donkey she owns, even if we
imagine that the utterer of the discourse had no particular donkey in
mind when she uttered the first sentence. Suppose, for example, that
the Homeland Security and Donkey Care Bureau comes to town and wants
information about local donkey ownership and beating. The speaker
tells them that she really don't know how many donkeys anybody
owns, and has never seen or had any other contact with particular
local donkeys. But she tells them that she has received some
information from reliable sources and it has been deemed
"credible". Asked what she has heard, she responds:
"Sarah owns a donkey and she beats it".
Even though she has no particular donkey in mind in uttering these
sentences, we simply don't get a numberless reading here. If
Sarah beats some donkey she owns, the speaker has spoken truly even if
she owns others she fails to beat. Or again, suppose we are debating
whether anybody has an eight track tape player anymore, and one of us
says "I'll bet the following is true: some guy with a
'68 Camaro owns an eight track player and he still uses
it." Again, there is no numberless reading for the pronoun in
the second sentence, even though the speaker clearly has no particular
eight-track player in mind. If some '68 Camaro driving guy owns
and uses an eight-track player, the sentence is true even if he owns
other eight track players that aren't
used.[25]
So it appears that Neale's account has no explanation of why the
pronouns in discourses like (25a) never have numberless readings.
Neale's account has similar problems with sentences like:
(41)
Some
woman who owns a donkey beats it.
Here again, Neale's theory predicts that this sentence has a
reading on which its truth requires that some woman beats every donkey
she owns. And again, even if we imagine the sentence being uttered
without any particular woman or donkey in mind, we don't get
this reading of the sentence predicted by Neale's theory, (say
we are discussing women's tendencies towards animals they own,
and one of us utters (41) simply thinking it is statistically likely
to be true). So Neale's account has no explanation as to why the
second sentence of discourse (25a) and sentence (41) lack the relevant
readings assigned to those sentences by his theory.[26]
Elbourne (2005) proposes a different D-type theory. The main thesis of
the book is that pronouns of all types, proper names, and definite
descriptions have a unified syntax and semantics: they are all of type
\(\langle s, e\rangle\) (functions from situations to individuals) and
are syntactically comprised of a definite determiner that takes two
arguments: an index and an NP (noun phrase).
His theory of unbound pronouns is *NP-deletion theory.*
NP-deletion is when an NP at the level of syntax is (felicitously)
unpronounced at the surface level as in:
(42)
I like
Bill's wine, but Max's is even better.
On Elbourne's theory, pronouns undergo *obligatory*
NP-deletion. That is, a sentence like
(25),
at the level of syntax is actually (25b):
(25)
If Sarah owns a
donkey, she beats it.
(25b)
If Sarah owns a donkey, she beats [it donkey].
Following Elbourne, we'll suppress mention of the index, since
it doesn't do any work here (anaphoric pronouns have a null
index on his view, though he does provide arguments for why this null
index is present--see Elbourne (2005: 118-126)). Pronouns
have the same semantics as the determiner "the"
(abstracting away from the phi-features of pronouns) so that (25b) has
the same semantics as (25c):
(25c)
If
Sarah owns a donkey, she beats the donkey.
This is motivated by the insight that pronouns pattern with
*minimal* definite descriptions rather than long ones, as other
D-type theories have it. For example, a theory like Neale's
predicts that (43a) has the semantics of (43b):
(43a)
A man
murdered Smith, but John does not believe that he murdered
Smith.
(43b)
A man murdered Smith, but John does not believe that the man who
murdered Smith murdered Smith.
But this is problematic, because (43a) clearly has a salient, true
reading, whereas (43b) does not. However, Elbourne observes that (43c)
has the same salient true reading as (43a):
* (43c) A man
murdered Smith, but John does not believe that the man murdered
Smith.
Treating pronouns as determiners is motivated more generally by Postal
(1966)'s arguments
that they at least sometimes have the same semantics as determiners
based on examples such as:
(44)
You
troops will embark but the other troops will remain.
Finally, positing an NP-deletion theory provides an elegant solution
to the problem of the formal link, which is that any good account of
anaphora has to explain why (45a) is felicitous but (46b) is not:
(45a)
Every
man who has a wife is sitting next to her.
(46b)
#Every
married man is sitting next to her. (Heim 1982, 1990)
Since NP-deletion generally requires a linguistic antecedent, if
pronouns are determiners that have undergone NP-deletion, this
explains the contrast.
As mentioned above, pronouns have the semantics of determiners.
Specifically, Elbourne proposes a situation semantics
(situations in natural language semantics),
where the semantics of pronouns (and determiners) are treated in a
Fregean way, as follows:
\[
[[\mbox{it}]]^g = \lambda\_{\langle\langle s,e\rangle\langle s,t\rangle\rangle}. \lambda s: \exists!x(\lambda s'. x)(s)
= 1. \iota x\ f(\lambda s'. x)(s)
= 1
\]
That is to say, pronouns come with presuppositions that there is a
unique individual in each situation that satisfies the predicate, and
(when that presupposition is satisfied), they refer to that individual
(in that situation). Conditional donkey anaphora works as follows. A
sentence like (47) has the structure at LF of (48):
(47)
If a man
owns a donkey, he beats it.
(48)
[[always
[if [[a man] [\(\lambda\)6 [[a donkey][ \(\lambda\)2 [t6 owns
t2]]]]]]][[he man] beats [it donkey]]] (Elbourne 2005:
52)[27]
The semantics of "always" is crucial to getting the truth
conditions right:
\([[\mbox{always}]]^g = \lambda p\_{\langle s,t\rangle}. \lambda
q\_{\langle s,t\rangle}. \lambda s\). for every minimal situation
\(s'\) such that \(s' \le s\) and \(p(s') = 1\), there is a situation
\(s''\) such that \(s'' \le s\) and \(s''\) is a minimal situation
such that \(s' \le s''\) and \(q(s'') = 1\)
Basically, "always" takes two sentences, and returns true
iff every minimal situation that satisfies the first sentence has a
minimal extension that satisfies the second sentence. A minimal
situation is one that contains one or more *thin
particulars*--an individual abstracted away from its
properties--and one or more properties or relations that the thin
particular(s) instantiate(s). An extension of a minimal situation
includes all those same particulars and properties and relations, with
(possibly) some more particulars, properties, or relations in
addition. On Elbourne's account "if" doesn't
play any role in contributing to the truth conditions of a donkey
conditional; it is semantically vacuous. It is the (sometimes silent)
adverb of quantification along with the semantics of the antecedent
and consequent that do the work in yielding the truth conditions. The
following are the truth conditions for (47) on Elbourne's
account. (We won't go through the derivation for relative clause
donkey anaphora, but it works similarly. See Elbourne 2005: 53.)
>
>
> \(\lambda s\_1\). For every minimal situation \(s\_4\) such that
>
> \(s\_4 \le s\_1\) and there is
> an individual *y* and a situation \(s\_7\) such that \(s\_7\) is a
> minimal situation such that \(s\_7\le s\_4\) and *y* is a man in
> \(s\_7\), such that there is a situation \(s\_9\) such that \(s\_9\le
> s\_4\) and \(s\_9\) is a minimal situation such that
>
> \(s\_7\le s\_9\) and
> there is an individual *x* and a situation \(s\_2\) such that
> \(s\_2\) is a minimal situation such that \(s\_2\le s\_9\) and *x*
> is a donkey in \(s\_2\), such that there is a situation \(s\_3\) such
> that \(s\_3\le s\_9\) and \(s\_3\) is a minimal situation such that \(s\_2
> \le s\_3\) and *y* owns *x* in \(s\_3\),
>
> there is a situation \(s\_5\) such that
>
> \(s\_5\le s\_1\) and \(s\_5\) is a minimal situation
> such that \(s\_4\le s\_5\) and \(\iota x\ x\) is a man in \(s\_5\) beats
> in \(s\_5\) \(\iota x\ x\) is a donkey in \(s\_5\). (2005: 52)
>
>
>
Thus on Elbourne's account (47) is true iff each donkey-owning
man beats every donkey he owns.
Elbourne surprisingly never goes through a derivation of a case of
cross-sentential anaphora as in:
(49)
A woman
walked in. She sat down.
His view is that this has the same semantics as (49a):
(49a)
A
woman walked in. The woman sat down.
But he doesn't provide an account of how this works, neither in
description nor detailed derivation. One worry about this is that in
the conditional and relative clause donkey sentences, the fact that
the pronoun(s) co-varies with its antecedent is accounted for by
"always" and "every". These expressions
quantify over situations in a way that guarantees that the man who
beats the donkey is the same man who owns that same donkey,
effectively acting as (semantic) binding. But there is no such
mechanism in place to guarantee that "the woman" in (the
situation in) the second sentence of (49) in any sense co-varies with
the woman (in the situation) in the first. It is not clear how
Elbourne's view can accomplish this without employing either a
dynamic notion of binding or a more traditional d-type account with
complete descriptions.
However, Elbourne's account doesn't encounter the same
problem as Neale's in predicting numberless readings where there
are none, as he doesn't posit a numberless interpretation of the
pronoun at all. This highlights a difference between the way that
Neale's theory approaches the truth conditions of conditional
donkey sentences and the way DRT, dynamic semantics, the CDQ theory
(discussed in the next section) and other D-type theories like
Elbourne's and Heim (1990)'s do (Heim 1990 also employs a
situation semantics to account for conditional donkey anaphora). In
these other theories, the requirement that all the donkey-owning men
beat all the donkeys they own for (47) to be true arises due to the
interaction of the semantic of indefinites, the semantics of anaphoric
pronouns and the semantics of
conditionals.[28]
Indeed, it is the latter that is primarily implicated in (47)'s
truth requiring that *all* donkeys owned by donkey-owning men
be beaten (since the theories posit some sort of universal
quantification in the semantics of conditionals). By contrast, on
Neale's view, the requirement that the men beat all the donkeys
they own for (47) to be true (on one of its readings) essentially
falls out of the semantics of the anaphoric pronoun alone, since on
one of its readings, it expresses universal quantification over
donkeys Sarah owns (the numberless description reading).
One problem that D-type theories face is that pronouns come with a uniqueness requirement (either as a presupposition or part of the asserted content). But it has been observed that pronouns anaphoric on indefinites do not have a uniqueness requirement; it seems that the truth conditions for such sentences are existential. This observation is nicely captures by Discourse Representation Theory, File Change Semantics, dynamic semantics, and the Context Dependent Quantifier approach (discussed in the next section). For example, consider (49) again. This seems true even if many women walked into the contextually salient place at the contextually salient time, and regardless of whether they sat down or not, so long as at least one woman walked in and sat down. Mandelkern & Rothschild (2020) call this phenomenon "definiteness filtering" and Lewis (forthcoming) calls it "the problem of non-uniqueness". Both of the cited works argue that there is evidence of uniqueness requirements on definites more generally, and the non-uniqueness is specific to the kind of constructions in (49). Mandelkern & Rothschild tentatively propose a D-type theory that employs situation semantics, while Lewis (forthcoming) argues for a D-type theory that takes definite descriptions to be ambiguous between presupposing worldly uniqueness and discourse uniqueness.[29]
Another problem that all D-type theories must address is the problem of
*indistinguishable participants.* Since on D-type theories,
pronouns in one way or another have the semantics of definite
descriptions, they come with uniqueness presuppositions. When it comes
to conditional donkey anaphora, the way to meet these uniqueness
presuppositions is by employing minimal situations--the definite
description then picks out the unique object satisfying the
description in the minimal situation. (With the exception of
Neale's theory: since he employs numberless pronouns, the
pronouns have no uniqueness presupposition.) Thus uniqueness is
satisfied within the situation, even if it can't be satisfied in
the larger world. But in examples of indistinguishable participants,
uniqueness cannot even be satisfied within a minimal situation.
Consider the typical example, (50):
(50)
If a
bishop meets a bishop, he blesses him.
In the minimal situation that satisfies the antecedent, there are
*two* bishops that have the same property (*meeting another
bishop*). Thus descriptions like "the bishop" or
"the bishop who meets a bishop" do not denote uniquely.
DRT and dynamic theories don't have any problem at all with
these examples because pronouns are treated as dynamically bound
variables, not definite descriptions, and each instance of "a
bishop" in the antecedent of (50) is associated with a different
variable, which prescribe the anaphoric links to the two pronouns in
the consequent. For D-type solutions to this puzzle see Heim(1990),
Ludlow (1994), Elbourne (2005, 2016), Lewis (forthcoming).
Finally, it should be mentioned that there are some who propose
*mixed* approaches, wherein some pronouns are treated as
dynamically bound variables whereas others are treated as D-type (see
Chierchia 1995; Kurafuji 1998, 1999). On these views, some pronouns
are ambiguous between the two readings, while others have only the
dynamically bound variable or D-type reading. This type of theory
avoids many of the problems raised for each type of account, since
they use dynamic semantics for the examples most amenable to a dynamic
explanation and d-type pronouns for example most amenable to that sort
of explanation. However, the theory comes at a considerable
theoretical cost in that it predicts a systematic ambiguity in
pronouns that is (arguably) not explicitly marked in any language.
(See Elbourne 2005 for further criticisms of these views.)
### 3.4 The Context Dependent Quantifier Approach
The Context Dependent Quantifier, or CDQ, account of anaphora was
suggested in Wilson (1984) and subsequently developed in King (1987,
1991,
1994).[30]
The idea underlying the application of CDQ to discourse anaphora is
that these expressions look like quantifier-like expressions of
generality, where the precise nature of the generality they express is
determined by features of the linguistic context in which they occur.
On the CDQ account, anaphoric pronouns with quantifier antecedents in
discourse anaphora are contextually sensitive devices of
quantification. That is, these anaphoric pronouns express
*quantifications*; and *which* quantifications they
express is partly a function of the *linguistic environments*
in which they are embedded. Consider the following discourses:
(51)
A man
from Sweden climbed Mt. Everest alone. He used no oxygen.
(52)
Most students passed the exam. They didn't get scores below
70%.
Looking at (51), suppose that in fact at least one Swede has soloed
Mt. Everest without oxygen. Then it would seem that the sentences of
(51) are true. If this is correct, then it appears that the second
sentence of (51) expresses a (existentially) *general* claim.
CDQ claims that the pronoun "He" in the second sentence is
itself a (existential) quantifier, and this explains why the second
sentence expresses a general claim: the generality is a result of the
presence of this quantifier in the sentence. Similar remarks apply to
(52), (except that "They" expresses a universal
quantifier). Further, consider the following example, which is similar
to our example (18) above:
(53)
A man
killed Alan last night. Michelle believes he used a knife to kill
him.
The second sentence of this discourse appears to have two different
readings. On one reading, it asserts that concerning the man who
killed Alan last night, Michelle believes of *that very man*
that he used a knife. This would be the case if, for example, Michelle
knew the man who killed Alan, believed that he killed Alan and based
on his well-known fondness of knives, believed he used this sort of
weapon. But the second sentence has another reading on which it
ascribes to Michelle the general belief to the effect that a man
killed Alan with a knife last night. On this reading the sentence
would be true if e.g., on the basis of conversations with personnel at
the hospital and having no particular person in mind, Michelle
believed that a man fatally stabbed Alan last night.
Again, CDQ claims these facts are to be explained by holding that the
pronoun in the second sentence is a quantifier. For then we should
expect that, like other quantifiers, it could take wide or narrow
scope relative to "Michelle believes". On the wide scope
reading of the pronoun/quantifier, the second sentence attributes to
Michelle a belief regarding a particular person. On the narrow scope
reading, it attributes to Michelle a general belief.
Occurrences of "ordinary quantifiers", such as
"every man" have what we might call a *force*, in
this case universal; what we might call a *restriction*, in
this case the set of men; and *scope* relative to other
occurrences of quantifiers, verbs of propositional attitude, and so
on. CDQ claims that the anaphoric pronouns in question also have
*forces* (universal, existential, etc.), *restrictions*
("domains over which they quantify") and *scopes*
relative to each other, verbs of propositional attitude, etc. However,
unlike "ordinary" quantifiers, these anaphoric pronouns
qua quantifiers have their forces, restrictions and relative scopes
determined by features of their linguistic environments. King (1994)
lays out how the forces, restrictions and relative scopes of these
anaphoric pronouns are determined, and we shall not describe those
details here.
As to donkey anaphora, without going through the details, let me just
say that CDQ assigns to a relative clause donkey sentence such as
(26)
above (repeated here)
(26)
Every woman who
owns a donkey beats it.
truth conditions according to which (26) is true iff every woman who
owns a donkey beats some donkey she owns (see King 2004 for details
and discussion). Some think that the truth of (26) requires every
woman who owns a donkey to beat *every* donkey she owns, and as
we saw, DRT, DPL, and the D-type theories discussed assign these truth
conditions to (26) (though this is not an essential feature of DRT or
dynamic semantic approaches more generally). The truth conditions CDQ
assigns to (26) correspond to what is often called the *weak
reading* of donkey sentences (Chierchia (1995) calls this the
\(\exists\)-reading) and the truth conditions the accounts discussed thus far
correspond to the *strong reading* of donkey sentences
(Chierchia calls this the \(\forall\)-reading). There actually has been a debate
in the literature as to which truth conditions sentences like (26)
have. There are sentences that are exactly like (26) except for the
descriptive material in them that clearly seem to have (only) the weak
reading. An example is:
(54)
Every
person who had a credit card paid his bill with it.
It seems clear that the truth of this sentence does not require every
person with a credit card to pay his bill with each credit card he
has. We will discuss these matters further in
section 4,
but for now let us simply note that CDQ differs from the other
accounts discussed on what truth conditions should be assigned to
sentences like (26) and (54) and that it is simply unclear which truth
conditions are the correct ones.
As for conditional donkey anaphora, the CDQ account is rather
complicated and we are only able to provide the briefest outline of
the account here (interested readers should consult King 2004). As we
saw above, a conditional donkey sentence such as
(25)
(25)
If Sarah owns a
donkey, she beats it.
is true iff Sarah beats every donkey she owns. Thus, "a
donkey" somehow seems to have ended up with universal force. The
CDQ account holds that this illusion of universal force for the
indefinite is really the result of the interaction of the semantics of
the conditional, the indefinite, understood as an existential
quantifier, and the CDQ "she", understood as a
context dependent quantifier with existential force ranging over
donkeys Sarah owns. Roughly, the account goes as follows. The
antecedent of (25) is equivalent to
(25a)
\((\exists x)(x
\mbox{ is a donkey} \mathbin{\&} \mbox{Sarah owns }
x)\)
Given the CDQ "it" and its context in (25), the consequent
of (25) is equivalent to
(25b)
\((\exists x)(x
\mbox{ is a donkey} \mathbin{\&} \mbox{Sarah owns } x
\mathbin{\&} \mbox{Sarah beats } x)\)
The semantics of the conditional involves universal quantification
over minimal situations. In particular, a conditional claims that for
every minimal situation \(s\_1\) in which its antecedent is true, there
is a situation \(s\_2\) that \(s\_1\) is part of in which its consequent
is true. In the case of (25), a minimal situation in which the
antecedent is true consists of Sarah and a single donkey she owns. The
final element here is that the definiteness and/or anaphoricness of
the CDQ "it" in the consequent of (25) makes a difference
to its truth conditions. The definiteness and anaphoricness of
"it" in (25) induces a sort of "familiarity
effect".[31]
In particular, for any (minimal) \(s\_1\) in which the antecedent is
true, there must be an \(s\_2\) that \(s\_1\) is part of in which the
consequent (understood as expressing the claim that Sarah beats a
donkey she owns) is true. But *in addition*, because of the
"familiarity" condition induced by the anaphoric definite
"it", there must be a donkey in \(s\_2\) that is also in
\(s\_1\) and that makes the consequent true. In other words,
familiarity requires that a donkey that makes the CDQ-containing
consequent true in \(s\_2\) also be present in \(s\_1\). In this sense,
the donkey is "familiar", having been introduced by the
antecedent and the situation \(s\_1\) in which it is true. To see what
this means, consider a situation \(s\_1\) that is a minimal situation
in which the antecedent is true. \(s\_1\) consists of Sarah owning a
single donkey. If e.g., Sarah owns ten donkeys, there are ten such
minimal situations. For (25) to be true, each such \(s\_1\) must be
part of a situation \(s\_2\) such that \(s\_2\) is a situation in which
Sarah beats a donkey that she owns and that is in \(s\_1\). Now the
only way that every minimal \(s\_1\) in which Sarah owns a donkey can
be part of an \(s\_2\) in which Sarah beats a donkey she owns in
\(s\_1\) is if Sarah beats every donkey she owns. Thus, the CDQ account
claims that (25) is true iff Sarah beats every donkey she owns.
Turning now to difficulties with CDQ, a main difficulty is that it
isn't clear whether the use of the notion of
*familiarity* in the account of conditional donkey sentences
can be ultimately upheld. Recall that the idea was that because
"it" is a definite NP, and because definite NPs generally
are thought to involve some sort of familiarity, the pronoun in the
donkey conditional induces a sort of familiarity effect. There are
really two distinct problems here. One is that though the pronoun
"it" is "syntactically" definite in that the
pronoun "it" is thought to be a definite NP, according to
CDQ it is "semantically" indefinite in (25), since it
expresses an existential quantification (over donkeys owned by Sarah).
But then if "it" really is semantically indefinite in
(25), why should it induce familiarity effects at all? (Jason Stanley
(p.c.) raised this difficulty). One might reply that it is the fact
that "it" is "syntactically" definite that
triggers the familiarity effects CDQ posits. But familiarity probably
is not well enough understood to allow us to assess this response. A
second, and perhaps more pressing, difficulty is this. Generally,
familiarity has something to do with whether what an expression is
being used to talk about is familiar or salient to the audience being
addressed. This is vague, of course, but the idea is that if one says
"The dog is hungry" to an audience who isn't even
aware of any dog that is around or relevant to the conversation, the
remark is somewhat infelicitous. That is because the definite NP
"The dog" was used to talk about something not familiar to
the audience. Now the question is: is it plausible to claim that this
and related phenomena are related to the rather complex effect CDQ
claims is induced by the anaphoricness/definiteness of
"it" in donkey conditionals? In the latter case, CDQ
claims the effect of familiarity is to make the CDQ "it"
in the consequent of donkey conditionals quantify over donkeys in the
minimal situations introduced by the antecedents of the conditionals
(in the case of (25), situations consisting of Sarah and a single
donkey she owns). The CDQ can only quantify over
"familiar" donkeys--those introduced by the
antecedent. One may well wonder whether the effect CDQ posits here can
really be seen to be a manifestation of phenomena that have
traditionally been explained in terms of familiarity.
## 4. How Many Readings Do Donkey Sentences Have?
We have already mentioned that there is some disagreement regarding
the truth conditions of sentences like
(26)
Every woman who
owns a donkey beats it.
Some think that the truth of (26) requires every woman who owns a
donkey to beat *every* donkey she owns. As mentioned above,
this is called the *strong reading* of a donkey sentence.
Others think that the truth of (26) requires that every donkey owning
woman beats *some* donkey she owns. As above, this is the
*weak reading* of (26). As we mentioned above, there are
sentences that are exactly like (26) except for the descriptive
material in them that clearly seem to have (only) the weak reading.
The example we gave was:
(54)
Every person who
had a credit card paid his bill with it.
It seems clear that the truth of this sentence does not require every
person with a credit card to pay his bill with each credit card he
has, but merely with some credit card he has. Our comments to this
point have suggested that the debate with respect to (26)/(54) and
weak vs. strong readings is over which one of the two sets of truth
conditions (26)/(54) have. Each of the theories discussed in this
entry only assign *one* of the existential or universal truth
conditions to relative clause donkey sentences (though this may be
more of an artifact of the specific implementations of the theories
than the theories themselves).
But some think that (at least some) donkey sentences have
*both* weak and strong readings. Chierchia (1994) and Kanazawa
(1994b) are examples. In their favor, for a given determiner, one can
find pairs of relative clause donkey sentences fronted by that
determiner such that one has the existential truth conditions (on its
most natural interpretation) and the other has the universal truth
conditions (on its most natural reading). For example, consider the
following pairs:
(55)
Weak Readings:
a.
Every person who had a
credit card paid his bill with it.
b.
Most women who have a dime will put it in the meter.
c.
No man with a teenage son lets him drive the car on the weekend.
(56)
Strong Readings:
a.
Every student who
borrowed a book from Peter eventually returned it.
b.
Most parents who have a teenage son allow him to go out on the
weekend.
c.
No man with an umbrella leaves it home on a day like
this.
Elbourne, for example, explicitly addresses this issue, since his
semantics captures only the strong reading. He claims that while this
may present a problem for his semantics, it is not a problem for
NP-deletion theory more generally, since replacing the pronoun in a
typical weak reading example with a minimal definite description also
yields a weak reading, e.g.:
(57)
Everyone
who has a dime put the dime in the meter. (Elbourne 2005:
84)
However, he doesn't present an account of how this reading might
be captured.
These examples and others suggest that whether a given relative clause
donkey sentence appears to favor the strong reading or weak reading is
influenced by a variety of factors, including the monotonicity
properties of the determiner on the wide scope quantifier, the lexical
semantics of the predicates occurring in the sentence, and general
background assumptions concerning the situations in which we are to
consider the truth or falsity of the sentences. However, it is very
hard to find significant generalizations regarding under what
conditions a given reading is
favored.[32]
Further, it is very hard to find sentences that clearly allow both a
strong and a weak reading.[33] This makes the view that the sentences
actually possess both readings as a matter of their semantics at least
somewhat suspect. If they really do possess both readings, why is it
so hard to find sentences that clearly allow both readings? And
finally, relative clause donkey sentences fronted by the determiner
"some" seem always to only have the existential truth
conditions:
(58)
Some
women who own a donkey beat it.
Obviously, the facts here are quite complicated.
Brasoveanu (2006, 2007, 2008) points out that there are also
*mixed* readings of donkey sentences, such as:
(59)
Every
person who buys a book on amazon.com and has a credit card uses it to
pay for it.
Sentence (59) intuitively is true iff for *every* book that a
credit-card owner buys on amazon.com, there is *some* credit
card or other that she uses to pay for the book. Hence the mixed
strong and weak reading. Brasoveanu accounts for these readings, along
with the weak/strong ambiguity in general, within his system of Plural
Compositional Discourse Representation Theory (PCDRT) by positing an
ambiguity at the level of indefinites. In his account, indefinites are
underspecified as to the presence of a maximization operator (which is
present in the strong indefinite but not the weak); the decision of
which indefinite to use in a specific case is a "context-driven
online process".
Theories that assign both sets of truth conditions to relative clause
donkey sentences generally do so by positing some sort of ambiguity,
either in the quantifiers, the pronouns, or the
indefinites.[34]
Though the matter isn't entirely clear, it seems plausible that
the theories discussed in this entry also may be able to assign both
the universal and the existential truth conditions to relative clause
donkey sentences by positing some sort of ambiguity. These matters
require further
investigation.[35]
A recent theory that does not rely on any ambiguity is presented in Champollion, Bumford & Henderson (2019). Champollion et al. argue for a trivalent semantics that allows for truth-value gaps for donkey sentences, along with a pragmatic theory that both fills in the gaps and predicts when hearers get a strong or weak interpretation. This explains the different readings of donkey sentences in terms of underspecification rather than ambiguity. The (dynamic) semantics delivers that a sentence like (26) is true iff every female donkey-owner beats every donkey she owns, false if at least one female donkey-owner does not beat any donkey she owns, and otherwise neither true nor false. Relying on Kriz (2016)'s framework for plural definites, speakers can use a sentence to address the question under discussion (QUD) that is true enough at a world w even if it lacks a truth value at w, so long as it is not false at any world equivalent to w. If the QUD is such that it requires that every female donkey-owner beat every donkey she owns, then worlds in which (say) some female donkey-owners who own multiple donkeys only beat one of their donkeys will be equivalent to worlds in which some female donkey owners do not beat any of their donkeys. However, if the QUD is such that it requires that every female donkey-owner beat some donkey she owns, such worlds will be equivalent for conversational purposes to worlds in which each female donkey-owner beats all the donkeys she owns, and thus speakers will judge the weak reading true in this scenario.
## 5. Anaphora in Sign Language
Another recent development in the study of anaphora comes from a
series of papers by Philippe Schlenker on anaphora in sign language,
particularly ASL (American Sign Language) and LSF (French Sign
Language) (2010, 2011, 2012a,b, 2013a,b, 2014, 2015). In sign
language, an antecedent is associated with a particular position in
signing space called a *locus*, and an anaphoric link to the
antecedent is obtained by pointing at that same locus. Unlike spoken
languages, which have a limited number of lexically encoded pronouns,
in sign language there seems to be no upper bound on how many loci can
simultaneously be used, aside from limitations of performance (since
signers have to remember what the loci are assigned to, and be able to
distinguish one from another). Schlenker (2015) gives an example of a
short discourse that involves 7 distinct loci. Given their unbounded
number and their overt connection to antecedents, Schlenker (as well
as others) posits that they are the overt realization of formal
indices, i.e., the variables that mark anaphoric connections in
theories like DRT and dynamic semantics. Despite their differences,
sign language and spoken language pronouns have enough in common that
a uniform theory is desirable, and Schlenker argues that sign language
provides evidence applicable to at least two debates in the anaphora
literature. First, there is good evidence that in sign language, there
is a single system of anaphora using loci for denoting individuals,
times, and worlds. This provides evidence in favor of those who think
that there are temporal and modal variables and pronouns in spoken
language. Second, Schlenker argues that the use of loci, which look
like an overt use of indices, very much resembles the dynamic semantic
account of pronominal anaphora since antecedents introduce variables
(loci) and anaphoric connections are made by repeating the same
variables (loci). Just as in spoken language, this occurs even when
the anaphoric pronouns are outside the syntactic scope of their
antecedents. Furthermore, according to Schlenker one of the most
decisive examples is the bishop example
(50),
repeated here:
(50)
If a bishop meets
a bishop, he blesses him.
In sign language, the only way to obtain the intended reading of the
sentence is for the pronouns to index different antecedents. This
shows that a theory need not only get the truth conditions right (as
some D-type theories can), but must account for the formal link
between each antecedent and pronoun. For criticism of the thesis that
loci are overt variables see Kuhn (2016).
The second major conclusion from Schlenker's research is that
sign language pronouns have an *iconic* element. For example,
the verb "ask" is signed near the chin/neck area of a
locus. If the locus denotes a person *standing* on a branch,
"ask" is signed at a fairly high spot in the locus. If the
locus denotes a person *hanging upside-down* from a branch,
"ask" is signed lower in the locus. This and many other
examples of iconicity in pronouns provides evidence that there needs
to be an account of iconicity integrated into the formal
semantics. |
anarchism | ## 1. Varieties of Anarchism
There are various forms of anarchism. Uniting this variety is the
general critique of centralized, hierarchical power and authority.
Given that authority, centralization, and hierarchy show up in various
ways and in different discourses, institutions, and practices, it is
not surprising that the anarchist critique has been applied in diverse
ways.
### 1.1 Political Anarchism
Anarchism is primarily understood as a skeptical theory of political
legitimation. The term anarchism is derived from the negation of the
Greek term *arche*, which means first principle,
foundation, or ruling power. Anarchy is thus rule by no one or
non-rule. Some argue that non-ruling occurs when there is rule by
all--with consensus or unanimity providing an optimistic goal
(see Depuis-Deri 2010).
Political anarchists focus their critique on state power, viewing
centralized, monopolistic coercive power as illegitimate. Anarchists
thus criticize "the state". Bakunin provides a paradigm
historical example, saying:
>
>
> If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another
> and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is
> unthinkable--and this is why we are the enemies of the State.
> (Bakunin 1873 [1990: 178])
>
>
>
A more recent example comes from Gerard Casey who writes,
"states are criminal organizations. All states, not just the
obviously totalitarian or repressive ones" (Casey 2012: 1).
Such sweeping generalizations are difficult to support. Thus anarchism
as political philosophy faces the challenge of specificity. States
have been organized in various ways. Political power is not
monolithic. Sovereignty is a complicated matter that includes
divisions and distributions of power (see Fiala 2015). Moreover, the
historical and ideological context of a given anarchist's
critique makes a difference in the content of the political
anarchist's critique. Bakunin was responding primarily to a
Marxist and Hegelian view of the state, offering his critique from
within the global socialist movement; Casey is writing in the
Twenty-First Century in the era of liberalism and globalization,
offering his critique from within the movement of contemporary
libertarianism. Some anarchists engage in broad generalizations,
aiming for a total critique of political power. Others will present a
localized critique of a given political entity. An ongoing challenge
for those who would seek to understand anarchism is to realize how
historically and ideologically diverse approaches fit under the
general anarchist umbrella. We look at political anarchism in detail
below.
### 1.2 Religious Anarchism
The anarchist critique has been extended toward the rejection of
non-political centralization and authority. Bakunin extended his
critique to include religion, arguing against both God and the State.
Bakunin rejected God as the absolute master, saying famously,
"if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish
him" (Bakunin 1882 [1970: 28]).
There are, however, religious versions of anarchism, which critique
political authority from a standpoint that takes religion seriously.
Rapp (2012) has shown how anarchism can be found in Taoism. And
Ramnath (2011) has identified anarchist threads in Islamic Sufism, in
Hindu *bhakti* movements, in Sikhism's anti-caste
efforts, and in Buddhism. We consider anarchism in connection with
Gandhi below. But we focus here on Christian anarchism.
Christian anarchist theology views the kingdom of God as lying beyond
any human principle of structure or order. Christian anarchists offer
an anti-clerical critique of ecclesiastical and political power.
Tolstoy provides an influential example. Tolstoy claims that
Christians have a duty not to obey political power and to refuse to
swear allegiance to political authority (see Tolstoy 1894). Tolstoy
was also a pacifist. Christian anarcho-pacifism views the state as
immoral and unsupportable because of its connection with military
power (see Christoyannopoulos 2011). But there are also non-pacifist
Christian anarchists. Berdyaev, for example, builds upon Tolstoy and
in his own interpretation of Christian theology. Berdyaev concludes:
"The Kingdom of God is anarchy" (Berdyaev 1940 [1944:
148]).
Christian anarchists have gone so far as to found separatist
communities where they live apart from the structures of the state.
Notable examples include New England transcendentalists such as
William Garrison and Adin Ballou. These transcendentalists had an
influence on Tolstoy (see Perry 1973 [1995]).
Other notable Christians with anarchist sympathies include Peter
Maurin and Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement. In more recent
years, Christian anarchism has been defended by Jacques Ellul who
links Christian anarchism to a broad social critique. In addition to
being pacifistic, Ellul says, Christian anarchism should also be
"antinationalist, anticapitalist, moral, and
antidemocratic" (Ellul 1988 [1991: 13]). The Christian anarchist
ought to be committed to "a true overturning of authorities of
all kinds" (Ellul 1988 [1991: 14]). When asked whether a
Christian anarchist should vote, Ellul says no. He states,
"anarchy first implies conscientious objection" (Ellul
1988 [1991: 15]).
### 1.3 Theoretical Anarchism
Anarchist rejection of authority has application in epistemology and
in philosophical and literary theory. One significant usage of the
term shows up in American pragmatism. William James described his
pragmatist philosophical theory as a kind of anarchism: "A
radical pragmatist is a happy-go-lucky anarchistic sort of
creature" (James 1907 [1981: 116]). James had anarchist
sympathies, connected to a general critique of systematic philosophy
(see Fiala 2013b). Pragmatism, like other anti-systematic and
post-Hegelian philosophies, gives up on the search for an
*arche* or foundation.
Anarchism thus shows up as a general critique of prevailing methods.
An influential example is found in the work of Paul Feyerabend, whose
*Against Method* provides an example of "theoretical
anarchism" in epistemology and philosophy of science (Feyerabend
1975 [1993]). Feyerabend explains:
>
>
> Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism
> is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its
> law-and-order alternatives. (Feyerabend 1975 [1993: 9])
>
>
>
His point is that science ought not be constrained by hierarchically
imposed principles and strict rule following.
Post-structuralism and trends in post-modernism and Continental
philosophy can also be anarchistic (see May 1994). So-called
"post-anarchism" is a decentered and free-flowing
discourse that deconstructs power, questions essentialism, and
undermines systems of authority. Following upon the deconstructive and
critical work of authors such as Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, and
others, this critique of the *arche* goes all the way
down. If there is no *arche* or foundation, then we are
left with a proliferation of possibilities. Emerging trends in
globalization, cyber-space, and post-humanism make the anarchist
critique of "the state" more complicated, since
anarchism's traditional celebration of liberty and autonomy can
be critically scrutinized and deconstructed (see Newman 2016).
Traditional anarchists were primarily interested in sustained and
focused political activism that led toward the abolition of the state.
The difference between free-flowing post-anarchism and traditional
anarchism can be seen in the realm of morality. Anarchism has
traditionally been critical of centralized moral authority--but
this critique was often based upon fundamental principles and
traditional values, such as autonomy or liberty. But
post-structuralism--along with critiques articulated by some
feminists, critical race theorists, and critics of
Eurocentrism--calls these values and principles into
question.
### 1.4 Applied Anarchism
The broad critical framework provided by the anarchist critique of
authority provides a useful theory or methodology for social critique.
In more recent iterations, anarchism has been used to critique gender
hierarchies, racial hierarchies, and the like--also including a
critique of human domination over nature. Thus anarchism also
includes, to name a few varieties: anarcha-feminism or feminist
anarchism (see Kornegger 1975), queer anarchism or anarchist queer
theory (see Daring et al. 2010), green anarchism or eco-anarchism also
associated with anarchist social ecology (see Bookchin 1971 [1986]),
Black and indigenous anarchisms and other anarchist critiques of white
supremacy and Eurocentrism (to be discussed below); and even
anarcho-veganism or "veganarchism" (see Nocella, White,
& Cudworth 2015). In the anarcho-vegan literature we find the
following description of a broad and inclusive anarchism:
>
>
> Anarchism is a socio-political theory which opposes all systems of
> domination and oppression such as racism, ableism, sexism,
> anti-LGBTTQIA, ageism, sizeism, government, competition, capitalism,
> colonialism, imperialism and punitive justice, and promotes direct
> democracy, collaboration, interdependence, mutual aid, diversity,
> peace, transformative justice and equity. (Nocella et al. 2015: 7)
>
>
>
A thorough-going anarchism would thus offer a critique of anything and
everything that smacks of hierarchy, domination, centralization, and
unjustified authority.
Anarchists who share these various commitments often act upon their
critique of authority by engaging in nonconformist practices (free
love, nudism, gender disruption, and so on) or by forming intentional
communities that live "off the grid" and outside of the
norms of mainstream culture. In extreme forms this becomes
anarcho-primitivism or anti-civilizational anarchism (see Zerzan 2008,
2010; Jensen 2006). Alternative anarchist societies have existed in
religious communes in post-Reformation Europe and in the early United
States, in Nineteenth Century American utopian communities, the hippy
communes of the Twentieth Century, anarchist squats, temporary
autonomous zones (see Bey 1985), and occasional gatherings of
like-minded people.
Given this sort of antinomianism and non-conformism it is easy to see
that anarchism also often includes a radical critique of traditional
ethical norms and principles. Thus radical ethical anarchism can be
contrasted with what we might call bourgeois anarchism (with radical
anarchism seeking to disrupt traditional social norms and bourgeois
anarchism seeking freedom from the state that does not seek such
disruption). And although some argue that anarchists are deeply
ethical--committed to liberty and solidarity--others will
argue that anarchists are moral nihilists who reject morality entirely
or who at least reject the idea that there could be a single source of
moral authority (see essays in Franks & Wilson 2010).
In more recent explorations and applications of anarchist thought, the
anarchist critique has been related and connected to a variety of
emerging theoretical issues and applied concerns. Hilary Lazar (2018)
for example, explores how anarchism connects to intersectionality and
issues related to multiculturalism. And Sky Croeser (2019) explores
how anarchism is connected to the emerging technologies including the
Internet. And there are anarchist elements in the development of
shared technological and information, as for example in the
development of cryptocurrencies, which create economies that outside
of traditional state-based economic systems.
### 1.5 Black, Indigenous, and Decolonizing Anarchism
As mentioned above, among the varieties of applied anarchism we find
anarchism associated with various liberation movements and critiques
of white supremacy, Eurocentrism, and colonialism. This could be
connected with feminist anarchism, women's liberation movements,
and an anarchist critique of patriarchy. We'll focus here on the
anarchist critique found in Black and indigenous liberation movements.
Gandhi's movement in India could be included here (as discussed
below).
One focal point here is a claim about anarchist characteristics
thought to be found in the social structures of indigenous peoples.
Sometimes this is a romantic projection of anti-civilizational
anarchists such as John Zerzan, who echoes Rousseau's naive and
ill-informed ideal of the "noble savage." One must be careful to avoid
essentializing claims made about indigenous cultures and political
societies. The Inca and the Aztec empires were obviously not utopian
anarchist collectives. Nonetheless, scholars of indigeneity affirm the
anarchist critique of dominant hegemonies as part of the effort of
liberation that would allow indigenous people a degree of
self-determination (see Johnson and Ferguson 2019).
Black and indigenous anarchisms provide a radical critique, which
holds that the global history of genocide, slavery, colonization, and
exploitation rest upon the assumption of white supremacy. White
supremacy is thus understood, from this point of view, as a
presupposition of statism, centralization, hierarchy, and authority.
The anarchist critique of white supremacy is thus linked to a critique
of social and political systems that evolved out of the history of
slavery and native genocide to include apartheid, inequality,
caste/racial hierarchies, and other forms of structural racism. Some
defenders of Black anarchism go so far as to suggest that when
"Blackness" is defined in opposition to structures of white supremacy,
there is a kind of anarchism woven into the concept. Anderson and
Samudzi write,
>
>
> While bound to the laws of the land, Black America can be understood
> as an extra-state entity because of Black exclusion from the liberal
> social contract. Due to this extra-state location, Blackness is, in so
> many ways, anarchistic. (Anderson and Samudzi 2017: no page
> numbers)
>
>
>
This implies that the experience of Black people unfolds in a social
and political world that its defined by its exclusion from power. A
similar implication holds for indigenous people, who have been
subjugated and dominated by colonial power. Liberation movements thus
spring from a social experience that is in a sense anarchic (i.e.,
developed in exclusion from and opposition to structures of power).
It is not surprising, then, that some liberatory activists espouse and
affirm anarchism. The American activist Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin,
for example, affirms anarchism in pursuit of Black liberation (Ervin
1997 [2016]). He explains that Black anarchism is different from what
he describes as the more authoritarian hierarchy of the Black Panther
party. He also argues against the authoritarian structure of
religiously oriented Black liberation movements, such as that led by
Martin Luther King, Jr.
A significant issue in Black and indigenous anarchisms is the effort
to decolonize anarchism itself. Many of the key figures in the
anarchist tradition are white, male, and European. The concerns of
anarchists such as Kropotkin or Bakunin may be different from the
concerns of African Americans or from the concerns of indigenous
people in Latin America or elsewhere around the globe. One solution to
this problem is to retrieve forgotten voices from within the
tradition. In this regard, we might consider Lucy Parsons (also known
as Lucy Gonzalez), a former slave who espoused anarchism. Parsons
explained that she affirmed anarchism because the political status quo
produced nothing but misery and starvation for the masses of humanity.
To resolve this an anarchist revolution was needed. Parsons said,
>
>
> Most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a
> revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful
> change to take place; still we are willing to work for peace at any
> price, except at the price of liberty. (Parsons 1905 [2010])
>
>
>
## 2. Anarchism in Political Philosophy
Anarchism in political philosophy maintains that there is no
legitimate political or governmental authority. In political
philosophy anarchy is an important topic for consideration--even
for those who are not anarchists--as the a-political background
condition against which various forms of political organization are
arrayed, compared, and justified. Anarchy is often viewed by
non-anarchists as the unhappy or unstable condition in which there is
no legitimate authority. Anarchism as a philosophical idea is not
necessarily connected to practical activism. There are political
anarchists who take action in order to destroy what they see as
illegitimate states. The popular imagination often views anarchists as
bomb-throwing nihilists. But philosophical anarchism is a theoretical
standpoint. In order to decide who (and whether) one should act upon
anarchist insight, we require a further theory of political action,
obligation, and obedience grounded in further ethical reflection.
Simmons explains that philosophical anarchists "do not take the
illegitimacy of states to entail a strong moral imperative to oppose
or eliminate states" (Simmons 2001: 104). Some anarchists remain
obedient to ruling authorities; others revolt or resist in various
ways. The question of action depends upon a theory of what sort of
political obligation follows from our philosophical, moral, political,
religious, and aesthetic commitments.
### 2.1 Anarchism in the History of Political Philosophy
There is a long history of political anarchism. In the ancient world,
anarchism of a sort can be found in the ideas of the Epicureans and
Cynics. Kropotkin makes this point in his 1910 encyclopedia article.
Although they did not employ the term anarchism, the Epicureans and
Cynics avoided political activity, advising retreat from political
life in pursuit of tranquility (*ataraxia*) and self-control
(*autarkeai*). The Cynics are also known for advocating
cosmopolitanism: living without allegiance to any particular state or
legal system, while associating with human beings based upon moral
principle outside of traditional state structures. Diogenes the Cynic
had little respect for political or religious authority. One of his
guiding ideas was to "deface the currency". This meant not
only devaluing or destroying monetary currency but also a general
rejection of the norms of civilized society (see Marshall 2010: 69).
Diogenes often mocked political authorities and failed to offer signs
of respect. While Diogenes actively disrespected established norms,
Epicurus counseled retreat. He advised living unnoticed and avoiding
political life (under the phrase *me politeuesthai*--which
can be understood as an anti-political admonition).
The assumption that anarchy would be unhappy or unstable leads to
justifications of political power. In Hobbes' famous phrase, in
the stateless--anarchic--condition of "the state
nature" human life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short. Hobbes' social contract--as well as other versions
of the social contract theory as found for example in Locke or
Rousseau--are attempts to explain how and why the political state
emerges from out of the anarchic state of nature.
Anarchists respond by claiming that the state tends to produce its own
sort of unhappiness: as oppressive, violent, corrupt, and inimical to
liberty. Discussions about the social contract thus revolve around the
question of whether the state is better than anarchy--or whether
states and state-like entities naturally and inevitably emerge from
out of the original condition of anarchy. One version of this argument
about the inevitable emergence of states (by way of something like an
"invisible hand") is found in Nozick's influential
*Anarchy, State, Utopia* (1974). While Nozick and other
political philosophers take anarchy seriously as a starting point,
anarchists will argue that invisible hand arguments of this sort
ignore the historical actuality of states, which develop out of a long
history of domination, inequality, and oppression. Murray Rothbard has
argued against Nozick and social contract theory, saying, "no
existing state has been immaculately conceived" (Rothbard 1977:
46). Different versions of the social contract theory, such as we find
in John Rawls's work, view the contract situation as a heuristic
device allowing us to consider justice from under "the veil of
ignorance". But anarchists will argue that the idea of the
original position does not necessarily lead to the justification of
the state--especially given background knowledge about the
tendency of states to be oppressive. Crispin Sartwell concludes:
>
>
> Even accepting more or less all of the assumptions Rawls packs into
> the original position, it is not clear that the contractors would not
> choose anarchy. (Sartwell 2008: 83)
>
>
>
The author of the present essay has described anarchism that results
from a critique of the social contract tradition as "liberal
social contract anarchism" (Fiala 2013a).
An important historical touchstone is William Godwin. Unlike Locke and
Hobbes who turned to the social contract to lead us out of the
anarchic state of nature, Godwin argued that the resulting
governmental power was not necessarily better than anarchy. Locke, of
course, allows for revolution when the state becomes despotic. Godwin
builds upon that insight. He explained, "we must not hastily
conclude that the mischiefs of anarchy are worse than those which
government is qualified to produce" (Godwin 1793: bk VII, chap.
V, p. 736). He claimed,
>
>
> It is earnestly to be desired that each man should be wise enough to
> govern himself, without the intervention of any compulsory restraint;
> and, since government, even in its best state, is an evil, the object
> principally to be aimed at is that we should have as little of it as
> the general peace of human society will permit. (Godwin 1793: bk III,
> chap. VII, p. 185-6)
>
>
>
Like Rousseau, who praised the noble savage, who was free from social
chains until forced into society, Godwin imagined original anarchy
developing into the political state, which tended on his view to
become despotic. Once the state comes into being, Godwin suggests that
despotism is the primary problem since "despotism is as
perennial as anarchy is transitory" (Godwin 1793: bk VII, chap.
V, p. 736).
Anarchism is often taken to mean that individuals ought to be left
alone without any unifying principle or governing power. In some cases
anarchism is related to libertarianism (or what is sometimes called
"anarcho-capitalism"). But non-rule may also occur when
there is unanimity or consensus--and hence no need for external
authority or a governing structure of command and obedience. If there
were unanimity among individuals, there would be no need for
"ruling", authority, or government. The ideas of unanimity
and consensus are associated with the positive conception of anarchism
as a voluntary association of autonomous human beings, which promotes
communal values. One version of the anarchist ideal imagines the
devolution of centralized political authority, leaving us with
communes whose organizational structure is open-ended and
consensual.
Given this emphasis on communal organization it is not surprising that
political anarchism has a close historical association with communism,
despite the connection mentioned above with free market capitalism.
Authors such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Goldman developed their
anarchism as a response to Marx and Marxism. One of the first authors
to explicitly affirm anarchism, Pierre Proudhon, defended a kind of
"communism", which he understood as being grounded in
decentralized associations, communes, and mutual-aid societies.
Proudhon thought that private property created despotism. He argued
that liberty required anarchy, concluding,
>
>
> The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is
> oppression. Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order
> with anarchy. (Proudhon 1840 [1876: 286])
>
>
>
Following Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and the other so-called
"classical anarchists", anarchism comes to be seen as a
focal point for political philosophy and activism.
Let's turn to a conceptual analysis of different arguments made
in defense of anarchism.
### 2.2 Absolute, Deontological, and *a priori* Anarchism
Anarchists often make categorical claims to the effect that no state
is legitimate or that there can no such thing as a justifiable
political state. As an absolute or *a priori* claim, anarchism
holds that all states always and everywhere are illegitimate and
unjust. The term "*a priori* anarchism" is found in
Simmons 2001; but it is employed already by Kropotkin in his
influential 1910 article on anarchism, where he claims that anarchists
are not utopians who argue against the state in *a priori*
fashion (Kropotkin 1927 [2002: 285]). Despite Kropotkin's claim,
some anarchists do offer *a priori* arguments against the
state. This sort of claim rests upon an account of the justification
of authority that is usually grounded in some form of deontological
moral claim about the importance of individual liberty and a logical
claim about the nature of state authority.
One typical and well-known example of this argument is found in the
work of Robert Paul Wolff. Wolff indicates that legitimate authority
rests upon a claim about the right to command obedience (Wolff 1970).
Correlative to this is a duty to obey: one has a duty to obey
legitimate authority. As Wolff explains, by appealing to ideas found
in Kant and Rousseau, the duty to obey is linked to notions about
autonomy, responsibility, and rationality. But for Wolff and other
anarchists, the problem is that the state does not have legitimate
authority. As Wolff says of the anarchist, "he will never view
the commands of the state as legitimate, as having a binding moral
force" (Wolff 1970: 16). The categorical nature of this claim
indicates a version of absolute anarchism. If the state's
commands are never legitimate and create no moral duty of obedience,
then there can never be a legitimate state. Wolff imagines that there
could be a legitimate state grounded in "unanimous direct
democracy"--but he indicates that unanimous direct
democracy would be "so restricted in its application that it
offers no serious hope of ever being embodied in an actual
state" (Wolff 1970: 55). Wolff concludes:
>
>
> If all men have a continuing obligation to achieve the highest degree
> of autonomy possible, then there would appear to be no state whose
> subjects have a moral obligation to obey its commands. Hence, the
> concept of a de jure legitimate state would appear to be vacuous, and
> philosophical anarchism would seem to be the only reasonable political
> belief for an enlightened man. (Wolff 1970: 17)
>
>
>
As Wolff puts it here, there appears to be "no state" that
is legitimate. This claim is stated in absolute and *a priori*
fashion, a point made by Reiman in his critique of Wolff (Reiman
1972). Wolff does not deny, by the way, that there are de facto
legitimate states: governments often do have the approval and support
of the people they govern. But this approval and support is merely
conventional and not grounded in a moral duty; and approval and
support are manufactured and manipulated by the coercive power and
propaganda and ideology of the state.
We noted here that Wolff's anarchism is connected to Kant. But
Kant is no anarchist: he defended the idea of enlightened republican
government in which autonomy would be preserved. Rousseau may be
closer to espousing anarchism in some of his remarks--although
these are far from systematic (see McLaughlin 2007). Some authors view
Rousseau as espousing something close to "*a posteriori*
philosophical anarchism" (see Bertram 2010 [2017])--which
we will define in the next section. Among classical political
philosophers, we might also consider Locke in connection with
"libertarian anarchism" (see Varden 2015) or Locke as
offering a theory "on the edge of anarchism", as Simmons
has put it (Simmons 1993). But despite his strong defense of
individual rights, the stringent way he describes voluntary consent,
and his advocacy of revolution, Locke believes that states can be
defended based upon the social contract theory.
Leaving the canonical authors of Western political philosophy aside,
the most likely place to find deontological and *a priori*
anarchism is among the Christian anarchists. Of course, most
Christians are not anarchists. But those Christians who espouse
anarchism usually do so with the absolute, deontological, and *a
priori* claims of the sort made by Tolstoy, Berdyaev, and
Ellul--as noted above.
### 2.3 Contingent, Consequentialist, and *a posteriori* Anarchism
A less stringent form of anarchism will argue that states could be
justified in theory--even though, in practice, no state or very
few states are actually legitimate. Contingent anarchism will hold
that states in the present configuration of things fail to live up to
the standards of their own justification. This is an *a
posteriori* argument (see Simmons 2001) based both in a
theoretical account of the justification of the state (for example,
the social contract theory of liberal-democratic theory) and in an
empirical account of how and why concrete states fail to be justified
based upon this theory. The author of the present article has offered
a version of this argument based upon the social contract theory,
holding that the liberal-democratic social contract theory provides
the best theory of the justification of the state, while arguing that
very few states actually live up to the promise of the social contract
theory (Fiala 2013a).
One version of the contingent anarchist argument focuses on the
question of the burden of proof for accounts that would justify
political authority. This approach has been articulated by Noam
Chomsky, who explains:
>
>
> [This] is what I have always understood to be the essence of
> anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on
> authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be
> met. Sometimes the burden can be met. (Chomsky 2005: 178)
>
>
>
Chomsky accepts legitimate authority based in ordinary experience: for
example, when a grandfather prevents a child from darting out into the
street. But state authority is a much more complicated affair.
Political relationships are attenuated; there is the likelihood of
corruption and self-interest infecting political reality; there are
levels and degrees of mediation, which alienate us from the source of
political authority; and the rational autonomy of adults is important
and fundamental. By focusing on the burden of proof, Chomsky
acknowledges that there may be ways to meet the burden of proof for
the justification of the state. But he points out that there is a
prima facie argument against the state--which is based in a
complex historical and empirical account of the role of power,
economics, and historical inertia in creating political institutions.
He explains:
>
>
> Such institutions face a heavy burden of proof: it must be shown that
> under existing conditions, perhaps because of some overriding
> consideration of deprivation or threat, some form of authority,
> hierarchy, and domination is justified, despite the prima facie case
> against it--a burden that can rarely be met. (Chomsky 2005:
> 174)
>
>
>
Chomsky does not deny that the burden of proof could be met. Rather,
his point is that there is a prima facie case against the state, since
the burden of proof for the justification of the state is rarely
met.
Contingent anarchism is based in consequentialist reasoning, focused
on details of historical actuality. Consequentialist anarchism will
appeal to utilitarian considerations, arguing that states generally
fail to deliver in terms of promoting the happiness of the greater
number of people--and more strongly that state power tends to
produce unhappiness. The actuality of inequality, classism, elitism,
racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression can be used to support
an anarchist argument, holding that even though a few people benefit
from state power, a larger majority suffers under it.
There is a significant difference between anarchism that is offered in
pursuit of utilitarianism's greater happiness ideal and
anarchism that is offered in defense of the minority against the
tyranny of the majority. As we shall see in the next section,
individualist anarchists are primarily concerned with the tendency of
utilitarian politics to sacrifice the rights of individuals in the
name of the greater good.
Before turning to that conception of anarchism, let's note two
classical authors who offer insight into utilitarian anarchism. Godwin
articulated a form of anarchism that is connected to a utilitarian
concern. Godwin's general moral thought is utilitarian in basic
conception, even though he also argues based upon fundamental
principles such as the importance of liberty. But Godwin's
arguments are *a posteriori*, based upon generalizations from
history and with an eye toward the future development of happiness and
liberty. He writes:
>
>
> Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an
> usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of
> mankind; and that, however we may be obliged to admit it as a
> necessary evil for the present. (Godwin 1793: bk V, ch. I, p. 380)
>
>
>
This claim is similar to Chomsky's insofar as it recognizes the
complicated nature of the historical dialectic. The goal of political
development should be in a direction that goes beyond the state (and
toward the development of individual reason and morality). But in our
present condition, some form of government may be "a necessary
evil", which we ought to strive to overcome. The point here is
that our judgments about the justification of the state are
contingent: they depend upon present circumstances and our current
form of development. And while states may be necessary features of the
current human world, as human beings develop further, it is possible
that the state might outlive its usefulness.
We should note that utilitarian arguments are often used to support
state structures in the name of the greater good. Utilitarian
anarchists will argue that states fail to do this. But utilitarian
conclusions are not usually based upon a fundamental appeal to moral
principles such as liberty or the rights of the individual. Thus
Bentham described claims about human rights as "anarchical
fallacies" because they tended to lead toward anarchy, which he
rejected. Bentham described the difference between a moderate
utilitarian effort at reform and the anarchist's revolutionary
doctrine of human rights, saying that
>
>
> the anarchist setting up his will and fancy for a law before which all
> mankind are called upon to bow down at the first word--the
> anarchist, trampling on truth and decency, denies the validity of the
> law in question,--denies the existence of it in the character of
> a law, and calls upon all mankind to rise up in a mass, and resist the
> execution of it. (Bentham 1843: 498)
>
>
>
More principled deontological anarchism will maintain that states
violate fundamental rights and so are not justified. But utilitarian
anarchism will not primarily be worried about the violation of a few
people's rights (although that is obviously a relevant
consideration). Rather, the complaint for a utilitarian anarchist is
that state structures tend to produce disadvantages for the greater
number of people. Furthermore what Oren Ben-Dor calls
"utilitarian-based anarchism" is based upon the idea that
there is no *a priori* justification of the state (Ben-Dor
2000: 101-2). For the utilitarian, this all depends upon the
circumstances and conditions. Ben-Dor calls this anarchism because it
rejects any *a priori* notion of state justification. In other
words, the utilitarian anarchist does not presume that states are
justifiable; rather a utilitarian anarchist will hold that the burden
of proof rests upon the defender of states to show that state
authority is justifiable on utilitarian grounds, by bringing in
historical and empirical data about human nature, human flourishing,
and successful social organization.
### 2.4 Individualism, Libertarianism, and Socialist Anarchism
Forms of anarchism also differ in terms of the content of the theory,
the focal point of the anarchist critique, and the imagined practical
impact of anarchism. Socialist forms of anarchism include communist
anarchism associated with Kropotkin and communitarian anarchism (see
Clark 2013). The socialist approach focuses on the development of
social and communal groups, which are supposed to thrive outside of
hierarchical and centralized political structures. Individualist forms
of anarchism include some forms of libertarianism or
anarcho-capitalism as well as egoistically oriented antinomianism and
non-conformism. The individualistic focus rejects group identity and
ideas about social/communal good, while remaining firmly rooted in
moral claims about the autonomy of the individual (see Casey
2012).
Individualistic anarchism is historically associated with ideas found
in Stirner who said, "every state is a despotism" (Stirner
1844 [1995: 175]). He argued that there was no duty to obey the state
and the law because the law and the state impair self-development and
self-will. The state seeks to tame our desires and along with the
church it undermines self-enjoyment and the development of unique
individuality. Stirner is even critical of social organizations and
political parties. While not denying that an individual could
affiliate with such organizations, he maintains that the individual
retains rights and identity against the party or social organization:
he embraces the party; but he ought not allow himself to be
"embraced and taken up by the party" (Stirner 1844 [1995:
211]). Individualist anarchism has often been attributed to a variety
of thinkers including Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and Thoreau.
Individualist anarchism also seems to have something in common with
egoism of the sort associated with Ayn Rand. But Rand dismissed
anarchism as "a naive floating abstraction" that
could not exist in reality; and she argued that governments properly
existed to defend people's rights (Rand 1964). A more robust
sort of pro-capitalist anarchism has been defended by Murray Rothbard,
who rejects "left-wing anarchism" of the sort he
associates with communism, while applauding the individualist
anarchism of Tucker (Rothbard 2008). Rothbard continues to explain
that since anarchism has usually been considered as being primarily a
left-wing communist phenomenon, libertarianism should be distinguished
from anarchism by calling it "non-archism" (Rothbard
2008). A related term has been employed in the literature,
"min-archism", which has been used to describe the minimal
state that libertarians allow (see Machan 2002). Libertarians are
still individualists, who emphasize the importance of individual
liberty, even though they disagree with full-blown anarchists about
the degree to which state power can be justified.
It is worth considering here, the complexity of the notion of liberty
under consideration by appealing to Isaiah Berlin's well-known
distinction between negative and positive liberty (Berlin 1969). Some
individualist anarchists appear to focus on negative liberty, i.e.,
freedom from constraint, authority, and domination. But anarchism has
also been concerned with community and the social good. In this sense,
anarchists are focused on something like positive liberty and concerned
with creating and sustaining the social conditions necessary for
actualizing human flourishing. In this regard, anarchists have also
offered theories of institutional rules and social structures that are
non-authoritarian. This may sound paradoxical (i.e., that anarchists
espouse rules and structures at all). But Prichard has argued that
anarchists are also interested in "freedom within" institutions and
social structures. According to Prichard rather than focusing on
state-authority, anarchist institutions will be be open-ended
processes that are complex and non-linear (Prichard 2018).
We see then, that individualist anarchism that focuses only on
negative liberty is often rejected by anarchists who are interested in
reconceiving community and restructuring society along more
egalitarian lines. Indeed, individualistic anarchism has been
criticized as merely a matter of "lifestyle" (criticized
in Bookchin 1995), which focuses on dress, behavior, and other
individualistic choices and preferences. Bookchin and other critics of
lifestyle individualism will argue that mere non-conformism does very
little to change the status quo and overturn structures of domination
and authority. Nor does non-conformism and lifestyle anarchism work to
create and sustain systems that affirm liberty and equality. But
defenders of lifestyle non-conformism will argue that there is value
in opting out of cultural norms and demonstrating contempt for
conformity through individual lifestyle choices.
A more robust form of individualist anarchism will focus on key values
such as autonomy and self-determination, asserting the primacy of the
individual over and against social groups as a matter of rights.
Individualist anarchists can admit that collective action is important
and that voluntary cooperation among individuals can result in
beneficial and autonomy preserving community. Remaining disputes will
consider whether what results from individual cooperation is a form of
capitalism or a form of social sharing or communism. Libertarian
anarchists or anarcho-capitalists will defend free market ideas based
upon individual choices in trading and producing goods for market.
On the other hand, socialist or communistically oriented anarchism
will focus more on a sharing economy. This could be a large form of
mutualism or something local and concrete like the sharing of family
life or the traditional potlatch. But these ideas remain anarchist to
the extent that they want to avoid centralized control and the
development of hierarchical structures of domination. Unlike
state-centered communism of the sort developed by Marxists, anarchist
communism advocates decentralization. The motto of this approach comes
from Kropotkin: "all for all". In *The Conquest of
Bread* (1892) Kropotkin criticizes monopolistic centralization
that prevents people from gaining access to socially generated wealth.
The solution is "all for all": "What we proclaim is
the Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!" (Kropotkin 1892
[1995: 20]). The communist idea that all humans should enjoy the
fruits of the collective human product shares something with the
Marxist idea of "to each according to his need" (Marx
1875). But Kropotkin argues for the need to evolve beyond centralized
communist control--what he criticizes as mere
"collectivism"--and toward anarchist communism:
>
>
> Anarchy leads to communism, and communism to anarchy, both alike being
> expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the
> pursuit of equality. (Kropotkin 1892 [1995: 31])
>
>
>
Kropotkin argues that the communal impulse already exists and that the
advances in social wealth made possible by the development of
individualistic capitalism make it likely that we will develop in the
direction of communal sharing. He argues that the tendency of history
is away from centralized power and toward equality and
liberty--and toward the abolition of the state. Kropotkin's
communist anarchism is based upon some historical and empirical
claims: about whether things can actually be arranged more
satisfactorily without state intervention; and about whether states
really do personify injustice and oppression. Libertarianism and
anarcho-capitalism also think that the free market will work to
adequately maximize human well-being and help individuals to realize
their own autonomy. But for the socialist and communist anarchists,
the question of individual self-realization is less important than the
idea of social development. Kropotkin's "all for
all" indicates a moral and ontological focus that is different
from what we find among the individualists.
Socialist and communally focused forms of anarchism emphasize the
importance of social groups. For example, families can be viewed as
anarchic structures of social cooperation and solidarity. A social
anarchist would be critical of hierarchical and domineering forms of
family organization (for example, patriarchal family structure). But
social anarchists will emphasize the point that human identity and
flourishing occur within extended social structures--so long as
it remains a free and self-determining community.
The tension between individualist and socialist anarchism comes to a
head when considering the question of the degree to which an
individual ought to be subordinated to the community. One problem for
so-called "communitarian" theories of social and political
life is that they can result in the submergence of individuals into
the communal identity. Individualists will want to struggle against
this assault upon autonomy and individual identity. Communalists may
respond, as Clark does, by claiming that the ideal of a genuine
community of autonomous individuals remains a hoped for dream of an
"impossible community" (Clark 2013). On the other hand
communally focused theorists will point out that individual human
beings cannot exist outside of communal structures: we are social
animals who flourish and survive in communities. Thus radical
individualism also remains a dream--and as more politically
oriented anarchists will point out, individualism undermines the
possibility of organized political action, which implies that
individualist anarchists will be unable to successfully resist
political structures of domination.
## 3. Anarchism and Political Activity
Anarchism forces us to re-evaluate political activity. Ancient Greek
philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato held that human beings
flourished within just political communities and that there was a
virtue in serving the polis. Modern political philosophy tended to
hold, as well, that political action--including obedience to the
law and the ideal of a rule of law--was noble and enlightened. In
Hegelian political philosophy, these ideas combine in a way that
celebrates citizenship and service to the state. And in contemporary
liberal political philosophy, it is often presumed that obedience to
the law is required as a *prima facie* duty (see Reiman 1972;
Gans 1992). Anarchists, of course, call this all into question.
The crucial question for anarchists is thus whether one ought to
disengage from political life, whether one ought to submit to
political authority and obey the law, or whether one ought to engage
in active efforts to actively abolish the state. Those who opt to work
actively for the abolition of the state often understand this as a
form of "direct action" or "propaganda of the
deed". The idea of direct action is often viewed as typical of
anarchists, who believe that something ought to be done to actively
abolish the state including: graffiti, street theater, organized
occupations, boycotts, and even violence. There are disputes among
anarchists about what ought to be done, with an important dividing
line occurring with regard to the question of violence and criminal
behavior.
Before turning to that discussion, let's note one further
important theoretical distinction with regard to the question of
taking action, connected to the typology offered above: whether action
should be justified in consequentialist or non-consequentialist terms.
Franks has argued that anarchist direct action ought to exemplify a
unity of means and ends (Franks 2003). On this view, if liberation and
autonomy are what anarchists are pursuing, then the methods used to
obtain these goods must be liberationist and celebrate
autonomy--and embody this within direct action. Franks argues
that the idea that "the end justifies the means" is more
typical of state-centered movements, such as Bolshevism--and of
right-wing movements. While some may think that anarchists are willing
to engage in action "by any means necessary", that
phraseology and the crass consequentialism underlying it is more
typical of radical movements which are not anarchist. Coercive
imposition of the anarchist ideal re-inscribes the problem of
domination, hierarchy, centralization, and monopolistic power that the
anarchist was originally opposed to.
### 3.1 Nonviolence, Violence, and Criminality
One significant philosophical and ethical problem for politically
engaged anarchists is the question of how to avoid ongoing cycles of
power and violence that are likely to erupt in the absence of
centralized political power. One suggestion, mentioned above, is that
anarchists will often want to emphasize the unity of means and ends.
This idea shows why there is some substantial overlap and conjunction
between anarchism and pacifism. Pacifist typically emphasize the unity
of means and ends. But not all pacifists are anarchists. However, we
mentioned above that there is a connection between anarchism and
Christian pacifism, as found in Tolstoy, for example. Gandhi was
influenced by Tolstoy and the anarchists. Although Gandhi is better
known as an anti-colonial activist, Marshall includes Gandhi among the
anarchists (Marshall 2010: chapter 26). It is possible to reconstruct
anti-colonial movements and arguments about self-determination and
home rule as a kind of anarchism (aimed at destroying colonial power
and imperial states). Gandhi noted that there were many anarchists
working in India in his time. In saying this, Gandhi uses the term
anarchism to characterize bomb-throwing advocates of violence. He
says: "I myself am an anarchist, but of another type"
(Gandhi 1916 [1956: 134]). Gandhian anarchism, if there is such a
thing, embraces nonviolence. In general nonviolent resistance as
developed in the Tolstoy-Gandhi-King tradition fits with an approach
that turns away from political power and views the state as a purveyor
of war and an impediment to equality and human development.
Objecting to this anarcho-pacifist approach are more militant
activists who advocate direct action that can include sabotage and
other forms of political violence including terrorism. Emma Goldman
explains, for example, that anti-capitalist sabotage undermines the
idea of private possession. While the legal system considers this to
be criminal, Goldman contends it is not. She explains,
>
>
> it is ethical in the best sense, since it helps society to get rid of
> its worst foe, the most detrimental factor of social life. Sabotage is
> mainly concerned with obstructing, by every possible method, the
> regular process of production, thereby demonstrating the determination
> of the workers to give according to what they receive, and no more.
> (Goldman 1913 [1998: 94])
>
>
>
Goldman struggled with the question of violence through the course of
her career. Early on she was a more vocal proponent of revolutionary
violence. She began to rethink this later. Nonetheless, like other
anarchists of her generation, she attributed violence to the state,
which she opposed. She writes:
>
>
> I believe that Anarchism is the only philosophy of peace, the only
> theory of the social relationship that values human life above
> everything else. I know that some Anarchists have committed acts of
> violence, but it is the terrible economic inequality and great
> political injustice that prompt such acts, not Anarchism. Every
> institution today rests on violence; our very atmosphere is saturated
> with it. (Goldman 1913 [1998: 59])
>
>
>
Goldman views anarchist violence as merely reactive. In response to
state violence, the anarchists often argued that they were merely
using violence in self-defense. Another defender of violence is
Malatesta who wrote that the revolution against the violence of the
ruling class must be violent. He explained:
>
>
> I think that a regime which is born of violence and which continues to
> exist by violence cannot be overthrown except by a corresponding and
> proportionate violence. (Malatesta 1925 [2015: 48])
>
>
>
Like Goldman, Malatesta warned against violence becoming an end in
itself and giving way to brutality and ferocity for its own sake. He
also described anarchists as preachers of love and advocates of peace.
He said,
>
>
> what distinguishes the anarchists from all others is in fact their
> horror of violence, their desire and intention to eliminate physical
> violence from human relations. (Malatesta 1924 [2015: 46])
>
>
>
But despite this rejection of violence, Malatesta advocates violence
as a necessary evil.
Anarchist violence appears as the violence of an individual against
the state. It is easy to see why such violence would be characterized
as terroristic and criminal. For an individual to declare war against
the state and take action to disrupt the state is criminal. And thus
anarchists have also been interested in a critique of crime and
criminality--arguing that it is the law and the legal system that
creates and produces crime and criminality. This critique was advanced
by Kropotkin as early as the 1870s, when he called prisons
"schools for crime". Similar ideas are found in Foucault
and in more recent criticisms of mass incarceration. Contemporary
anarchists will argue that mass incarceration is an example of state
power run amok.
### 3.2 Disobedience, Revolution, and Reform
The question of violence leads us to a further issue: the question of
obedience, disobedience, resistance, and political obligation. Much
could be said here about the nature of political obligation and
obedience: including whether obedience is merely pragmatic and
strategic or based upon notions about loyalty and claims about
identification with the nation and its laws. But it is clear that
anarchists have no principled reason for political obedience. If the
anarchist views the state as illegitimate, then obedience and
participation are merely a matter of choice, preference, and
pragmatism--and not a matter of loyalty or duty.
Christian anarchists will look, for example, to the case of Jesus and
his idea of rendering unto Caesar what is due to Caesar (Matthew
22:15-22). The anarchist interpretation of this passage claims
that this is an indication both of Jesus's disaffection with the
state and with his grudging acquiescence to political authority.
Christoyannopoulos argues, "Jesus' political subversion is
carried out through submission rather than revolt"
(Christoyannopoulos 2010: 156). The crucifixion, on this
interpretation, is a subversive event, which "unmasks"
political power as "demonic" and illegitimate. Jesus does
not recognize the ultimate moral and religious authority of Caesar or
Pilate. But he goes along with the political regime. Thus some
anarchists may simply be compliant and submissive.
But politically motivated anarchists encourage resistance to state
power, including strategic and principled disobedience. Such
disobedience could involve symbolic actions--graffiti and the
like--or acts of civil resistance, protests, tax resistance and
so on--up to, and possibly including, sabotage, property crime,
and outright violence. Again, there is overlap with the discussion of
violence here, but let's set that question aside and focus on
the notion of civil disobedience.
One important example is found in Thoreau, who famously explained his
act of disobedience by tax resistance as follows:
>
>
> In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion,
> though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can,
> as is usual in such cases. (Thoreau 1849 [1937: 687])
>
>
>
Thoreau's disobedience is principled. He recognizes that a
declaration of war against the state is a criminal act. He willingly
goes to jail. But he also admits that he will cooperate with the state
in other cases--since there is something advantageous about
cooperation. This indicates the complexity of the question of
cooperation, protest, and disobedience. Thoreau's essay,
"Civil Disobedience" (1849), is often viewed as an
anarchist manifesto. Kropotkin discussed him as an anarchist
(Kropotkin 1927 [2002]). And Tolstoy admired his act of civil
disobedience--as did Gandhi.
Anarchists continue to discuss strategies and tactics of disobedience.
One problem throughout this discussion is the degree to which
disobedience is effective. If there were to be successful anarchist
campaigns of disobedience they would have to be organized and
widespread. Whether such campaigns would actually work to disassemble
the state apparatus remains an open question.
Until their dreamed-of revolution comes, anarchist must consider the
degree to which cooperation with the state involves "selling
out" to the political status quo. Perhaps there are reforms and
short-term gains that can be obtained through traditional political
means: voting, lobbying legislators, etc. But anarchists have often
held to an all-or-nothing kind of approach to political participation.
We noted above that the Christian anarchist Jacques Ellul has said
that he does not vote because anarchy implies conscientious objection.
But herein lies a strategic conundrum. If progressively minded
anarchists opt out of the political system, this means that less
enlightened policies will prevail. By not voting or otherwise engaging
in ordinary politics, the anarchist ends up with a system that he or
she will be even less happy with than if he or she had actively
participated in the system.
This is, really, a problem of revolution versus reform. The
revolutionary wants revolution now, believing that it will occur by
way of direct action of various sorts. Perhaps the revolutionary is
also thinking that the psychological, cultural, and spiritual
evolution toward revolutionary consciousness can only occur when
direct action is taken: in order for anarchism to emerge, the
anarchist may think, one ought to behave and think like an anarchist.
But without a concerted and nation-wide revolution, revolutionary
action begins to look like mere selfishness, Epicurean opting out, or
what Bookchin criticized as "lifestyle anarchism".
Meanwhile those reform-minded folks who work within the system of
political power and legality can end up supporting a system that they
have doubts about. This philosophical problem of reform vs. revolution
exists for all radical political agendas. But the problem is
especially acute for anarchists, since anarchism is often an
all-or-none proposition: if the state is justified then gradualism and
reformism make sense; but if no state can be justified, then what is
sometimes called "reformist anarchism" is a non-starter
(see L. Davis 2012).
### 3.3. Utopian Communities and Non-Revolutionary Anarchism
Many anarchists are revolutionaries who want change to be created
through direct action. But given our preceding discussion of violence,
disobedience, and the potential for success of revolutionary activity,
the question arises about opting-out of political life. The Epicureans
and Cynics pointed in this direction. The history of anarchism is
replete with efforts to construct anarchist communes that are
independent and separated from the rest of state centered political
life.
We might pick up the history here with the Christian anarchists and
pacifists of the Reformation: the Mennonites, for example; or the
Quakers who refused to doff their hats for political authorities and
who sought a refuge in Pennsylvania. Indeed, there is an anarchist
thread to the colonization of North America, as those who were
disgruntled with European political and religious hierarchy left for
the "new world" or were forced out by the European
authorities. In the Seventeenth Century, Anne Hutchinson was cast out
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and forced to found a new community,
when she concluded that the idea of government was flawed. Hutchinson
is considered as one of the first anarchists of North America (see
Stringham 2007). Separatist communities were founded by the New
England abolitionists and transcendentalists, by Josiah Warren, and by
others.
Anarchist communes were formed in Europe during the Nineteenth Century
and in Spain during the 1930s. There have been ongoing movements and
organizations of indigenous peoples and others who inhabit the margins
of mainstream political life. In the 1960s and 70s, anarchist
separatism was reiterated in the Hippy communes and attempts to live
off the grid and get back to nature. Alternative communes, squats, and
spontaneous gatherings continue to occur.
Separatist communities have to consider: the degree to which they give
up on anarchist direct action against dominant political forces, the
extent to which they have to accommodate themselves to political
reality, and the risk that customary hierarchies will be reinstated
within the commune. For the revolutionary anarchist, separatism is a
strategy of avoidance that impedes political action. Separatist
communes must often obey the rules of the dominant political
organization in order to trade and get connected to the rest of the
world. Finally, a complaint made about separatist communes is that
they can end up being structured by sexist, classist, and other
hierarchical organizing principles. One might argue that until the
dominant culture is revolutionized, separatism will only be a pale
reflection of the anarchist ideal. And yet, on the other hand,
advocates of separatism will argue that the best way for anarchist
ideals to take hold is to demonstrate that they work and to provide an
inspiration and experimental proving ground for anarchism.
If revolutionary activity is taken off the table, then anarchists are
left with various forms of gradualism and reformism. One way this
might occur is through the creation of "temporary autonomous
zones" such as those described by Bey. Along these lines David
Graeber provides a description of the cultural and spiritual work that
would be required in order to prepare the way for anarchist
revolution. Graeber says that this would require "liberation in
the imaginary", by which he means that through activism, utopian
communities, and the like there can be a gradual change in the way
political power is imagined and understood (Graeber 2004).
Revolutionary anarchists will respond to this by arguing that
liberation in the imaginary is simply imaginary liberation: without
actual change in the status quo, oppression and inequality continue to
be a problem.
## 4. Objections and Replies
Let's conclude by considering some standard objections to
anarchism and typical replies.
### 4.1 Anarchism is Nihilistic and Destructive
**Objection:** This objection holds that anarchism is
merely another name for chaos and for a rejection of order. This
objection holds that anarchists are violent and destructive and that
they are intent on destroying everything, including morality
itself.
**Reply:** This objection does not seem to recognize that
anarchists come in many varieties. Many anarchists are also
pacifists--and so do not advocate violent revolution. Many other
anarchists are firmly committed to moral principles such as autonomy,
liberty, solidarity, and equality. Some anarchists do take their
critique of *arche* in a nihilistic direction that
denies ethical principles. But one can be committed to anarchism,
while advocating for caring communities. Indeed, many of the main
authors in the anarchist tradition believed that the state and the
other hierarchical and authoritarian structures of contemporary
society prevented human flourishing.
### 4.2 Anarchy Will Always Evolve Back into the State
**Objection**: This objection holds that anarchism is
inherently unstable. Hobbes and other early modern social contract
theories maintain that the state emerges as a necessary response to
natural anarchy which keeps order and protects our interests. A
different theory comes from Nozick, who argues that the
"night-watchman state" would emerge out of anarchy by an
invisible hand process: as people will exercise their liberty and
purchase protection from a protection agency, which would eventually
evolve into something like a minimal state.
**Reply**: Anarchists may argue that the state of nature
is simply not a state of war and so that Hobbes's description is
false. Some anarcho-primitivists will argue that things were much
better for human beings in the original state of nature in small
communities living close to the land. Other anarchists might argue
that the disadvantages of state organizations--the creation of
hierarchies, monopolies, inequalities, and the like--simply
outweigh the benefits of state structures; and that rational agents
would choose to remain in anarchy rather than allow the state to
evolve. Some anarchists may argue that each time a state emerges, it
would have to be destroyed. But others will argue that education and
human development (including technological development) would prevent
the reemergence of the state.
### 4.3 Anarchism is Utopian
**Objection**: This objection holds that there simply is
no way to destroy or deconstruct the state. So exercises in anarchist
political theory are fruitless. It would be better, from this point of
view to focus on critiques of hierarchy, inequality, and threats to
liberty from within liberal or libertarian political theory--and
to engage in reforms that occur within the status quo and mainstream
political organization.
**Reply**: Ideal theory is always in opposition to
non-ideal theory. But utopian speculation can be useful for clarifying
values. Thus philosophical anarchism may be a useful exercise that
helps us understand our values and commitment, even though political
anarchism has no hope of succeeding. Furthermore, there are examples
of successful anarchist communities on a small local scale (for
example, in the separatist communities discussed above). These
concrete examples can be viewed as experiments in anarchist theory and
practice.
### 4.4 Anarchism is Incoherent
**Objection**: This objection holds that a political
theory that abolishes political structures makes no sense. A related
concern arises when anarchism is taken to be a critique of authority
in every case and in all senses. If anarchists deny then that there
can be any *arche* whatsoever, then the claim
contradicts itself: we would have a ruling theory that states that
there is no ruling theory. This sort of criticism is related to
standard criticisms of relativism and nihilism. Related to this is a
more concrete and mundane objection that holds that there can be no
anarchist movement or collective action, since anarchism is
constitutionally opposed to the idea of a movement or collective
(since under anarchism there can be no authoritative ruler or set of
rules).
**Reply**: This objection only holds if anarchism is
taken to be an all-or-nothing theory of the absolutist variety.
Political anarchists do not necessarily agree with the skeptical
post-foundationalist critique which holds that there can be no ruling
principle or authority whatsoever. Rather, political anarchists hold
that there are legitimate authorities but that political power quickly
loses its authoritativeness and legitimacy. Furthermore, anarchists
tend to advocate for a principle and procedure for organization based
upon voluntarism and mutual aid, as well as unanimity and/or
consensus. From this point of view anarchist communities can work very
well, provided that they avoid coercive authority. To support this
point anarchists will point to historical examples of successful
anarchist communes. They will also point to ordinary human
relations--in families and civil society relationship--which
operate quite well apart form coercive and hierarchical political
authority
### 4.5 Philosophical Anarchism is "Toothless"
**Objection**: One objection to philosophical anarchism
of the sort discussed throughout this essay is that it remains merely
theoretical. Some political anarchists have little patience for
abstract discourses that do not engage in direct action. One worry
about philosophical anarchism is that in failing to act--and in
failing to take responsibility for the actions that ought to follow
from thought--philosophical anarchism remains a bourgeois
convenience that actually serves the status quo. Thus when
philosophical anarchists remain uncommitted in terms of the concrete
questions raised by anarchism--whether they should obey the law,
whether they should vote, and so on--they tend to support the
interests of defenders of the status quo.
**Reply**: In response to this objection, one might
defend the importance of philosophical reflection. It is important to
be clear about principles and ideas before taking action. And with
anarchism the stakes are quite high. The puzzles created by
philosophical anarchism are profound. They lead us to question
traditional notions of sovereignty, political obligation, and so on.
They lead us to wonder about cultural and ethical conventions,
including also our first principles regarding the theory and
organization of social life. Given the difficulty of resolving many of
these questions, the philosophical anarchist may hold that caution is
in order. Moreover, the philosophical anarchist might also defend the
importance of wonder. The anarchist critique gives us reason to wonder
about much that we take for granted. Wonder may not change the world
in immediate ways or lead to direct action. But wonder is an important
step in the direction of thoughtful, ethical action. |
anaxagoras | ## 1. Life and Work
Anaxagoras, son of Hegesibulus (or Eubulus), was a native of
Clazomenae, on the west coast of what is now Turkey. According to
Diogenes Laertius (see the article on *Doxography of Ancient
Philosophy*) (Diels-Kranz [DK] 59 A1), Anaxagoras came from an
aristocratic and landed family, but abandoned his inheritance to study
philosophy. (We do not know how he acquired his philosophical
learning). He came to Athens (perhaps about the middle of the
5th century, perhaps earlier), and was a friend and
protege of Pericles, the Athenian general and political
leader. There is controversy about his time in Athens; Diogenes
Laertius says that he came to Athens to study philosophy as a young
man. Some scholars claim that his arrival was as early as the Persian
invasion of 480 (O'Brien 1968, Woodbury 1981, Graham 2006), others
argue for a later date of about 456 (Mansfeld 1979, see also Mansfeld
2011 on Aristotle's evidence; there is a good discussion of the
problems about dating Anaxagoras' life in Sider 2005). It is clear
from their dramas that his work was known to Sophocles, Euripides, and
perhaps Aeschylus (Seneca suggests in his *Natural Questions*
4a.2.17 that they shared Anaxagoras' view about the source of the
Nile); it was certainly familiar to the comic playwright Aristophanes
(Curd 2007, Sider 2005; see Mansfeld 1979). He was a resident in the
city for at least twenty years; he was said to have been charged with
impiety (and perhaps with Medism, political sympathy with the
Persians), and banished from the city (437/6?). The charges against
Anaxagoras may have been as much political as religious, because of
his close association with Pericles. He retreated to Lampsacus (in the
eastern Hellespont) where he died; ancient reports say that he was
much honored there before and after his death. Democritus, a younger
contemporary, dated his own life in relation to Anaxagoras', saying
that he was young in the old age of Anaxagoras (DK59A5); he reportedly
accused Anaxagoras of plagiarism. Although Anaxagoras lived in Athens
when Socrates was a youth and young adult, there are no reports that
Anaxagoras and Socrates ever met. In Plato's *Phaedo*, Socrates
says that he heard someone reading from Anaxagoras' book (probably
Archelaus, who was, according to Diogenes Laertius, pupil of
Anaxagoras and teacher of Socrates). Anaxagoras is included in the
ancient lists of those who wrote only one book: in
the *Apology*, Socrates reports that it could be bought for a
drachma.
As with all the Presocratics, Anaxagoras' work survives only in
fragments quoted by later philosophers and commentators; we also have
testimonia about his views in many ancient sources. The standard
collection of Presocratic texts (both fragments and testimonia) is
H. Diels and W. Kranz, *Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker*, in
which Anaxagoras is given the identifying number 59. The Greek text
and translations can also be found in Gemelli-Marciano, 2007-2010; Graham, 2010; and Laks and Most, 2016a and 2016b. (For discussion
of the sources for the Presocratics, and problems associated with
them, see the article on *Presocratic Philosophy*.) Any
discussion of Anaxagoras' views must be a reconstruction that goes
beyond the few details that we have in the verbatim quotations, though
informed by the evidence of the fragments and testimonia. It should be
kept in mind in reading the following account that scholars disagree and that other
interpretations are possible.
According to Simplicius, a 6th century C.E. neo-Platonist
commentator on Aristotle, and our main source for the fragments,
Anaxagoras began his book by describing an original state of complete
(but not entirely uniform) mixture of all the ingredients of the
cosmos; that mixture is then set in motion by the action of
Mind/Intellect (*nous*). The ingredients are eternal and always remain in a
mixture of all with all, yet the rotary motion produces shifts in the
proportions of the ingredients in a given region. The expanding
rotation of the original mixture ultimately produces the continuing development
of the world as we now perceive it. The foundations of his theory,
descriptions of this development, and a discussion of *nous*
form the bulk of what remains to us of Anaxagoras' book. The
testimonia suggest that the book also included detailed accounts of
astronomical, meteorological, and geological phenomena as well as more
detailed discussions of perception and knowledge, now missing from our
collection of fragments, and known only by later reports and criticisms.
## 2. Metaphysical Principles
Anaxagoras was influenced by two strains in early Greek
thought. First, there is the tradition of inquiry into nature founded
by the Milesians, and carried on by Xenophanes (Mourelatos 2008b) and
by Heraclitus (Graham 2008). The early Milesian
scientist-philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes) sought to
explain the cosmos and all its phenomena, by appealing to regularities
within the cosmic system itself, without reference to extra-natural
causes or to the personified gods associated with aspects of nature by
traditional Greek religion (Graham 2006, Gregory 2007 and 2013). They
based their explanations on the observed regular behavior of the
materials that make up the cosmos (see White 2008 on the role of
observation and measurement in early Presocratic theories).
Second, there is the influence of Eleatic arguments, due to
Parmenides, concerning the metaphysical requirements for a basic
explanatory entity within this Milesian framework, and the
metaphysically proper way to go about inquiry (Curd, 2004, 2007; Sisko
2003; for different views, see Palmer 2009, Sisko 2013). Parmenides
can be seen as arguing that any acceptable cosmological account must
be rational, i.e., in conformity with the canons for proper inquiry,
and must begin with metaphysically acceptable entities that are wholly
and completely what they are; are not subject to generation,
destruction, or alteration; and are wholly knowable i.e., graspable by
thought and understanding (Parmenides B2, B3, B7, B8; see Mourelatos
2008a). Anaxagoras bases his account of the natural world on three
principles of metaphysics, all of which can be seen as grounded in
these Eleatic requirements: No Becoming or Passing-Away, Everything is
in Everything, and No Smallest or Largest.
### 2.1 No Becoming or Passing-Away
A fundamental tenet of Eleatic theory is that what-is-not cannot be
(Parmenides DK 28 B2). Parmenides, using this claim (see DK 28
B8.15-16), argued that coming-to-be and passing-away are therefore
ruled out, because genuine coming-to-be is change from what-is-not to
what-is, while destruction is change from what-is to what-is-not.
Thus, says Parmenides, what-is "is without start or stop, since
coming to be and passing away have wandered very far away, and true
trust drove them out"
(DK 28 B8.27-28).[1]
Anaxagoras accepts this principle, explaining apparent generation and
destruction by replacing them with mixture and separation (or
dissociation) of ingredients:
>
>
> The Greeks do not think correctly about coming-to-be and
> passing-away; for no thing comes to be or passes away, but is mixed
> together and dissociated from the things that are. And thus they
> would be correct to call coming-to-be being mixed together and passing-away
> being dissociated. (DK 59 B17)
What seems to us, through perception, to be generation of new entities or
destruction of old ones is not that at all. Rather, objects that
appear to us to be born, to grow, and to die, are merely arrangements
and re-arrangements of more metaphysically basic ingredients. The
mechanism for the apparent coming-to-be is mixing and separating out
from the mixture produced by the vortex motion of the ingredients. Through that mechanism, the real things, the ingredients,
can retain their character throughout. When an arrangement breaks
apart (or "passes away") the ingredients are dissociated
from one another (through separation) and can be re-mixed to form (or
"become") different arrangements, i.e., other perceptible
objects.
One way to think of Anaxagoras' point in B17 is that animals,
plants, human beings, the heavenly bodies, and so on, are *natural
constructs*. They are *constructs* because they depend
for their existence and character on the ingredients of which they are
constructed (and the pattern or structure that they acquire in the
process). Yet they are *natural* because their
construction occurs as one of the processes of nature. Unlike
human-made artifacts (which are similarly constructs of
ingredients), they are not teleologically determined to fulfill some
purpose. This gives Anaxagoras a two-level metaphysics. Things
such as earth, water, fire, hot, bitter, dark, bone, flesh, stone, or
wood are metaphysically basic and genuinely real (in the required
Eleatic sense): they are things-that-are. The objects constituted
by these ingredients are not genuinely real, they are temporary
mixtures with no autonomous metaphysical status: they are not
things-that-are. (The natures of the ingredients, and the
question of what is included as an ingredient, are addressed below; see
3.2 "Ingredients and Seeds"). This view, that the
ingredients are more real than the objects that they make up, is common
in Presocratic philosophy, especially in the theories of those thinkers
who were influenced by Parmenides' arguments against the
possibility of what-is-not and so against genuine coming-to-be and
passing-away. It can be found in Empedocles, and in the
pre-Platonic atomists, as well as, perhaps, in Plato's middle
period Theory of Forms (Denyer, 1983, Frede 1985, W.-R. Mann 2000, Silverman
2002).
### 2.2 Everything-in-Everything
>
>
>
> "All things were together." B1 (in part)
>
>
>
>
> "In everything there is a share of everything." B11 (in
> part)
>
>
>
As we have seen, Anaxagoras' commitment to Eleatic principles rules
out the possibility of genuine coming-to-be or passing-away. It also
rules out real qualitative changes and transformations. When a warm
liquid cools (it seems) the hot liquid becomes cold; when a child
ingests food (milk and bread, for instance), the milk and bread are
(it seems) transformed into flesh, blood, and bone. Yet Anaxagoras
objects to these claims because they entail that the hot ceases to be,
and the cold comes to be, in the liquid, and that the bread and milk
are destroyed while flesh, blood, and bone come to be. His solution is
to claim not only that "all things were together" in the
original mixture, but that everything is in everything at all
times. If there is already blood and bone in the milk and bread, then
the growth of the child can be attributed to the accumulation of these
ingredients from the bread and milk, and their assimilation into the
substance of the child's body, rather than to the transformation of
bread and milk into something else. Further, if there are both hot and
cold in the liquid, there is no disappearance into nothing of the hot
as the liquid cools, and no generation of the cold from what is not
(or even from what is not cold). The clearest statement of this is in
Anaxagoras B10, a quotation found in the following passage:
>
>
> When Anaxagoras discovered the old belief that nothing comes from
> that which is not in any way whatsoever, he did away with coming-to-be,
> and introduced dissociation in place of coming-to-be. For he
> foolishly said that all things are mixed with each other, but that as
> they grow they are dissociated. For in the same seminal fluid
> there are hair, nails, veins and arteries, sinew, and bone, and it
> happens that they are imperceptible because of the smallness of the
> parts, but when they grow, they gradually are separated off.
> "For how," he says, "can hair come from what is not
> hair, and flesh from what is not flesh?" He maintained
> this, not only about bodies, but also about colors. For he said
> that black is in white and white in black. And he laid down the
> same thing with respect to weights, believing that light is mixed with
> heavy and *vice versa*. (DK 59 B10; the passage is from the
> anonymous scholiast on a 4th c. C.E. work of Gregory
> of
> Nazianzus.[2])
Although interpreters both ancient (including this scholiast and
Simplicius) and modern (Guthrie 1965 is a good example) have seen
the desire to explain nutrition and growth as the primary
motivation for adopting the Everything-in-Everything principle, it is more
likely that Anaxagoras' adoption of the general metaphysical
principle of No-Becoming leads him to claim that everything is in
everything (Schofield 1981, Curd 2007). Nutrition and growth are simply particularly clear instances of the changes
that are ruled out as fundamentally real if there is no becoming.
The Everything-in-Everything principle asserts the omnipresence of
ingredients. In everything there is a mixture of all the ingredients
that there are: every ingredient is everywhere at all times. This
principle is a fundamental tenet of Anaxagoras' theory, and leads to
difficulties of interpretation (see, for instance, the debate between
Mathews 2002 and 2005 and Sisko 2005). If everything is in everything,
there must be interpenetration of ingredients, for it must be possible
for there to be many ingredients in the same space. Indeed, the
principle requires that all ingredients be in every space at all times
(the No Smallest or Largest principle also plays a role here: see
sect. 2.3). This will allow any ingredient to emerge from a mixture
through accumulation (or, having been unmixed, to become submerged in
one) at any point at any time, and thus allow for the appearance of
coming-to-be (or passing-away) of things or qualities.
Some scholars have supposed that Anaxagoras thought of these
ingredients as very small particles (Vlastos 1950, Guthrie 1965, Sider
2005, Lewis 2000). But a *particle* would have to be a smallest
amount of some type of ingredient, occupying some space all by
itself--with no other type of ingredient in it. Not only
does the No Smallest or Largest principle rule this out (see sect.
2.3), but the particulate interpretation seems inconsistent with the
Everything-in-Everything principle. It is crucial to
Anaxagoras' theory that there be (in actuality) no such pure bits
or volumes of any type of ingredient.
Instead one might conceive of the ingredients as fluid, like pastes or
liquids which can be smeared together, with different areas of the
mixture characterized by different relative densities of the
ingredients, all of which are nevertheless everywhere in it. Each
genuinely real ingredient could be mixed with every other, and so
would be contained in any area of the mixture, and in principle
visibly recoverable from it by accumulation or increased
concentration. The differing densities of the ingredients would allow
for differences in the phenomenal character of the mixture. To an
observer, different areas would appear hotter or colder, sweeter or
more bitter, more red than green, and so on, and rightly so. As the
relative concentration of ingredients in any area of the mixture
altered (through the mixture and separation brought about by the
rotation of the original blend of ingredients), the phenomenal
character of that region of the mixture would alter. An
intriguing account (Marmodoro 2015, 2017) suggests that Anaxagorean
ingredients are not material; rather they are primitive physical
qualitative powers or dispositions (in the parlance of contemporary
metaphysics, they are "gunky").
### 2.3 No Smallest or Largest
B1's claim that "all things were together" before the
original rotation occurred does not guarantee the truth of the
Everything-in-Everything principle. If separation occurs within an
original mixture of everything with everything, as a result of the
motion imparted by *nous*, then it could be that, given enough
time, ingredients would be segregated from one another (as they are in
Empedocles during the triumph of Strife, when the four roots are
completely separated). Anaxagoras needs to block this, so that he can
maintain his commitment to the No Becoming principle. In some region
that came by separation to contain, say, nothing but bone, there would
come to be pure bone (as a new entity), in replacement for and
destruction of the mixture that was previously there. He blocks this
possibility by claiming that there is no smallest (and no largest). If
there is no lower limit on the density of an ingredient, then no
ingredient will be completely removed from any region of the mixture
through the force of the rotary motion caused by
*nous*. Here are Anaxagoras' claims:
>
>
>
> Nor of the small is there a smallest, but always a smaller (for
> what-is cannot not be) -- but also of the large there is always a
> larger. And [the large] is equal to the small in extent
> (*plethos*), but in relation to itself each thing is both
> large and small.
> (B3[3])
>
>
>
>
> Since the shares of the large and the small are equal in number, in
> this way too, all things will be in everything; nor is it possible that
> [anything] be separate, but all things have a share of
> everything. Since it is not possible that there is a least, it
> would not be possible that [anything] be separated, nor come to be by
> itself, but just as in the beginning, now too all things are together.
> (B6 [in part])
>
>
>
The passage from B6 makes clear that the "no smallest"
principle is connected to the principle of Everything-in-Everything,
and B3 asserts that the "no smallest" claim depends on the
impossibility of what-is-not. Here is one way to interpret what
Anaxagoras is saying: if there were a smallest (particle, density,
amount) of any ingredient (call it *S*), we could in principle
through separation reduce the amount of *S* in some area of the
mixture to that smallest, and then induce further separation through
rotation, which would remove that ingredient from a particular area of
the mixture. That would leave some area without "everything
in everything." The area would cease to be *S* to
any degree and so would be not-*S*. In that area, the
explanation of coming-to-be in terms of emergence from a previous
mixture would fail. Note that Anaxagoras -- like other Greek
thinkers, including Plato -- assumes that anything that is
must be something or other and so slides easily between "what is
not *f*" and "what is not" (Furley
2002).
Anaxagoras' solution is to deny that there is any lower limit
on smallness. Adopting the model of density described above, he
can say that there is no lowest degree of density in the mixture.
This emphasis on density makes it clear that Anaxagoras'
technical sense of smallness is not one of particle size but of degree
of submergence or emergence in the mixture. For an ingredient to
be small is for there to be a comparatively low density of that
ingredient in a particular area of the mixture in comparison with all
the other ingredients (everything else) in that area. The
corresponding assertion that there is no upper limit on largeness can
then be interpreted as the claim that no matter how emergent from the
mixture (standing out from the background mixture) an ingredient is, it
can become still more emergent. So, no matter how sweet some water
tastes, there is still some salt in it. The salt in the sample is
small, i.e., submerged in the mixture of water and other ingredients,
but there will never cease to be salt in the sample.
Correspondingly, no matter how salty another sample is, it can always
become more salty and even "turn to salt" because there is
no upper limit to the degree of emergence from the background. As
the salt emerges, other ingredients will submerge, but will never
disappear, so that the wet itself is deeply submerged in the mix, and
we are left with an apparently solid block of salt (though that salt
will itself contain all other ingredients, with most of them in such
small concentrations that they are completely submerged and not
apparent to an observer). This account of large and small is
implied in Schofield 1980, and worked out more fully in Inwood 1986 and
Furth 1991; it is accepted in Curd 2007; see also Marmodoro 2017.
## 3. The Physical Principles
The Eleatic metaphysics that Anaxagoras accepts shapes the science
that he proposes. Anaxagoras offers an ambitious scientific theory that
attempts to explain the workings of the cosmos, even while accepting
the Eleatic ban on coming-to-be and passing-away. His goal is
scientific knowledge, i.e., understanding, as far as that is possible for human
beings.
### 3.1 Mixture and Rotation
The original state of the cosmos was an unlimited (*apeiron*)
mixture of all the ingredients. The mixture of ingredients, all
with all, exists eternally. Up to some point in the past, it was
motionless (59 B1, A45), and it was everywhere undifferentiated, or
almost so. According to B1, which Simplicius, the source for the
fragment, says was near the beginning of Anaxagoras' book:
>
>
> All things were together, unlimited both in amount and in
> smallness, for the small, too, was unlimited. And because all
> things were together, nothing was evident on account of smallness; for
> air and aether covered all things, both being unlimited, for these are
> the greatest among all things both in amount and in largeness.
This undifferentiated mass includes all there is of all the natural
ingredients that there are, the ingredients that will eventually form
the natural constructs that constitute the cosmos as we know it.
Nothing is ever added to or subtracted from this storehouse of stuffs,
although the mass of stuffs is not always homogeneous. In fact,
there are different densities of ingredients even at this earliest
(pre-motion) stage. B1 makes clear that air (dark, moist stuff)
and aether (bright fiery stuff) are the most emergent (largest)
ingredients, and their dominance means that the original mixture must
have been like a dense bright cloud: nothing else would be evident or
manifest, even had there been an observer. At some point
*nous* (the time being right) set the mixture in motion and
caused it to begin to revolve (first in a small area, and then in an
ever-widening area). The rotary motion causes the ingredients in
the mass to shift. This shifting produces what Anaxagoras calls
"separating off." Because the mass is a plenum, any
separation will be a rearrangement (thus a mixing) of
ingredients. The continouous ever-expanding rotation produces more and
more separation. The Everything-in-Everything principle continues
to hold, so there are all ingredients at all places at all times, but
the different densities of ingredients allow for local variations, and
so the rotating mass becomes qualitatively differentiated.
### 3.2 Ingredients and Seeds
Nowhere in the extant fragments does Anaxagoras give a complete list
of the ingredients in the mixture, or a clear indication of their
scope, so it is up to commentators to figure out what he meant, given
the available evidence. There are three alternatives. First, some
scholars have held that Anaxagoras limited the basic ingredients to
the opposites, such as hot and cold, wet and dry, sweet and bitter,
dark and light, and so on. It is the opposites that have explanatory
force in the theory, and all other things and properties are reducible
to the opposites. Supporters of this view include Tannery 1886, Burnet
1930, Cornford 1930, Vlastos 1950, Schofield 1980 (with reservations),
Inwood 1986, Spanu 1987-88, Sedley 2007, and Marmodoro 2015, 2017. On
this view all the material stuffs and all the objects in the universe
would be natural constructs. At the opposite extreme, a second option
accepts that literally everything in the natural world is in the
original mixture -- opposites, but also natural materials (fire,
earth, copper, iron, and the like), animals and plants (and their
parts such as flesh, blood, and bone), and so on. This view makes no
distinction between ingredients and what have been called natural
constructs above. It can be found in Strang 1963, Stokes 1965, Guthrie
1965, Barnes 1982, Furth 1991, Graham 1994 and 2004, Lewis
2000. Finally, there is a middle view, which rejects the
opposites-only account, and accepts that some things (plants and
animals, heavenly bodies) are natural constructs. The original mix
includes opposites, but also natural substances like metals and earth,
and the ingredients of animals, such as flesh, blood, and bone, but no
whole physical objects such as plants and animals themselves, or their
organic parts such as legs and hearts (Curd 2007; this view is
suggested in Schofield 1980, 132 ff.).
The "opposites only" view cannot stand (arguments
against it are given in Guthrie 1965 and Graham 2004). B15 may provide
some evidence for the view:
>
>
> The dense and the wet and the cold and the dark came together
> here, where <the> earth is now; but the rare and the hot and the
> dry <and the bright> moved out to
> the far reaches of the aether.
But Anaxagoras' own lists include more than the opposites (see B4a and
B4b). Further, the Principle of Predominance (in B12, see sect. 3.4)
would seem to require more than opposites, since it does not seem to
say that each thing is reducible to opposite characteristics that
predominate, but that each thing gets its character from the
particular material ingredients that predominate in it. Further
evidence against the opposites-only view is found in Aristotle.
Aristotle claims that for Anaxagoras, the elements (the basic
realities) are what Aristotle calls the homoiomerous parts (*On
Coming to Be and Passing Away* I.1 314a18). These are (for
Aristotle) things that are literally "like-parted," i.e.,
they are homogeneous all the way through, like a piece of pure gold,
rather than being different in their different parts (like a hand),
and Aristotle lists flesh, blood, bone, and adds "and the others
of which the part is called by the same name [as the whole]."
The term *homoiomeries* is Aristotelian, and has no role to
play in Anaxagoras (Graham 1994, Curd 2007; *contra*: Sisko
2009), but it is clear that for Aristotle, the ingredients in an
Anaxagorean mixture are not just the opposites.
If the attempt to reduce the Anaxagorean ingredients to opposites is
unsuccessful, so, too, is the interpretation that allows as an
ingredient every kind of thing in the phenomenal world. A minor
point is that Anaxagoras surely does not think that artifacts made by
human beings are part of the mixture, and there are other semi-natural
artifacts as well that would not seem to be present: cheese, bronze,
whiskey, for example. More importantly, the wide-scope view fails
to take seriously B17's replacement of coming-to-be and
passing-away with mixture and dissolution. Further, it is unclear
how the view can discriminate between an individual and its parts or
ingredients. Are there homunculi of individuals in the original
mix? (Lewis 2000 accepts this.) If so, how can the theory
explain that the growth of an organism is not simply its enlargement
(by adding ingredients) but also its development? (A
plant's leaves may grow larger, but its seed pods develop, and
are not just an enlargement of a structure that was already present in
the seedling plant.) In B4a Anaxagoras refers to the animals and
humans "that have been *compounded*, as many as have soul,"
and this suggests that B17's implicit model of living things as
natural constructs mixed together from the ingredients that are
genuinely real must be taken seriously.
It seems, then, best to interpret Anaxagoras as claiming that all
the material ingredients of natural living things and the heavenly
bodies are present in the original mix, but that these objects
themselves are not among the ingredients but are natural constructions,
produced by the processes of mixture and separation that we call
nutrition and growth, or by the rotations of the heavens and the
attendant clumping together and breaking apart of the ingredients of
the stars, clouds, comets, planets, and so on.
A problem for any account of the original mixture is Anaxagoras'
mention of seeds. The word for seeds (*spermata*) occurs twice
in the fragments, in lists of ingredients (in B4a and in B4b), but
Anaxagoras nowhere explains or makes it clear what it means. There are
a number of options: seeds have been taken to be the smallest possible
bits of ingredients (but, as argued above, there are no smallest bits
in Anaxagoras' system), or to be extremely small homunculi-like
ingredients that some interpretations take to be origins for
Anaxagoras of living things which then expand by the addition of other
ingredients (Lewis 2000). Furley 1976 and 2002 advocates the simplest
interpretation, that Anaxagoras simply means biological seeds (but not
homunculi), and this seems the best proposal (see also Barnes 1982,
Curd 2007, Sedley 2007, Marmodoro 2015, 2017, 147-153; Marmodoro also sees seeds as biological, containing pre-existing structures). A seed would then be a biological origin
point, and might perhaps be the route through which *nous*
(which controls all things that have soul, i.e., anything alive)
enters a living thing. If a seed is mixed with the right ingredients
in the right circumstances, a living thing will grow.
### 3.3 Mind/Intellect
According to Diogenes Laertius, Anaxagoras acquired the nickname Mr.
Mind (DK 59 A1); his view that the cosmos is controlled by
*nous*, mind or intelligence, first attracted and then
disappointed Socrates (Plato, *Phaedo* 97b8ff.). Plato and
Aristotle applauded Anaxagoras for using *nous* as the
first principle of motion, but both criticized him for failing to be
consistent in that use, arguing that once he invoked Mind to set the
original mixture in motion, Anaxagoras reduced later causes to
mindless mechanism.
Anaxagoras is adamant that *nous* is completely different
from the ingredients that constituted the original mixture. It is the
only thing to which the Everything-in-Everything principle does not
apply. Mind is present to some things, but it is not an ingredient or share as
flesh and blood are ingredients in a dog (B11: "In everything
there is a share of everything except *nous*, but there
are some things in which *nous*, too, is
present"). In B12 (the longest extant fragment), Anaxagoras
claims that if *nous* were just another ingredient it
could neither know nor rule in the way that it does.
>
>
> The other things have a share of everything, but *nous*
> is unlimited and self-ruling and has been mixed with no thing, but is
> alone itself by itself. For if it were not by itself, but had been
> mixed with anything else, then it would partake of all things, if it
> had been mixed with anything (for there is a share of everything in
> everything just as I have said before); and the things mixed together
> with it would thwart it, so that it would control none of the things
> in the way that it in fact does, being alone by itself. For it is the
> finest of all things and the purest, and indeed it maintains all
> discernment about everything and has the greatest strength. (59 B12,
> in part)
Mind/Intellect plays a number of roles in Anaxagoras' system. First, it
inaugurates the rotation of the mass of ingredients; it then controls
that rotation, and the local rotations that take place within the
large whirl that is the whole cosmos:
>
> *Nous* controlled the whole revolution, so that it
> started to revolve in the beginning. First it began to revolve from a
> small region, but it is revolving yet more, and it will revolve still
> more... And whatever sorts of things were going to be, and
> whatever sorts were and now are not, and as many as are now and
> whatever sorts will be, all these *nous* set in
> order. And *nous* also ordered this revolution, in which
> the things being separated off now revolve, the stars and the sun and
> the moon and the air and the aether. This revolution caused them to
> separate off. (59 B12, in part)
*Nous* then is not only first cause, it also, one might
say, is the preserver of order in the cosmos, as it maintains the
rotations that govern all the natural processes. Anaxagoras does not
explain how these processes work, or how *nous* can
affect the ingredients. But there is a hint of his reasoning in a
comment in Aristotle (*Metaphysics* I.3.984b15):
>
>
> When someone said that *nous* is present -- in
> nature just as it is in animals -- as the cause of the cosmos and
> of all its order, he appeared as a sober man among the random
> chatterers who preceded him. (We know that Anaxagoras clearly held
> these views, but Hermotimus of Clazomenae gets the credit for holding
> them earlier.)
Just as we control our bodies by our thoughts, so the cosmos is
controlled by *nous*; we may be unclear about the
details, but the results are obvious to us. One fundamental point
about Anaxagoras' theory of mind is that he nowhere in the extant
material identifies mind with a divine principle or god. In fragment
1018 and in *Trojan Women* (886), Euripides says that mind is
god in each of us, and connects the necessity of the universe with
Zeus and mind, and these claims are thought to have been influenced by
Anaxagoras' views. Although later testimonial reports in Aetius
and Iamblichus say that Anaxagoras connected *nous* and
god, there are many more reports of his denial of divinity to the
heavenly bodies and his alleged atheism.
*Nous* is the most powerful thing in the cosmos,
controlling the rotation and all ensouled things. Part of that power
and control lies in its powers of knowledge. Anaxagoras asserts that
*nous* has all judgment and discernment about all things;
moreover, this knowledge extends to everything that emerges from the
mixtures and dissociations caused by the original rotation:
>
>
> And *nous* discerned them all: the things that are being mixed
> together, the things that are being separated off, and the things that
> are being dissociated. And whatever sorts of things were going to be,
> and whatever sorts were and now are not, and as many as are now and
> whatever sorts will be, all these *nous* set in
> order. (B12, in part)
This suggests a beginning of an answer to the objections lodged
against Anaxagoras' use of *nous* as a cause. While
*nous* is not the teleological and ethical cause for which Socrates was
searching in the *Phaedo*, *nous* could serve as an
ultimate explanation. Anaxagoras nowhere says that
*nous* arranges things in a certain way because it is best for
them to be so, or even suggests something like an Aristotelian final
cause, (although Sedley 2007 argues that exactly this view is implicit
in the fragments, *contra*: Graham, 2009, Sisko 2010a). Things are the way
they are because that is the way things have unfolded
since *nous* first set everything in motion, and as it
continued to move them. (One might compare this to the role of the
unmoved mover as the ultimate cause in Aristotle's universe; despite
being the first cause the unmoved mover does not create.)
Anaxagoras links mind and soul in B12: "*nous* has
control over all things that have soul, both the larger and the
smaller." This suggests not only that Anaxagoras took the
actions of humans and animals as the model for how *nous*
controls the cosmos, but also suggests how *nous* differs from
the other ingredients. He claims that it is the purest and finest of
all things. Some scholars argue that it is only in Plato that we meet
a genuine notion of the immaterial (Renehan 1980, Sedley 2007), but
Anaxagoras' denial that *nous* is mixed with or partakes of
other ingredients (while still being in some of them) and his
insistence on its fineness and purity may suggest that he is thinking
of mind as a non-corporeal entity that can pervade and control a body
or even the whole cosmos without being a material part of it (Curd
2009). On either interpretation, if
*nous* were simply an ordinary ingredient on a par with the
other basic ingredients, then, as Anaxagoras notes in B12, its relative
smallness would allow it to be swamped and overcome
("thwarted") by the other ingredients.
### 3.4 The Principle of Predominance
Fragment B12 ends with a further discussion of mixture and separation,
and Anaxagoras' enunciation of what has come to be called the
"Principle of Predominance." After reasserting that no
ingredient is ever fully dissociated or separated from any other
(except for *nous*, which is not an ingredient),
Anaxagoras adds that all *nous* is alike (that is, cosmic
*nous* and mind in us share the same nature), but
"Nothing else is like anything else, but each one is and was
most manifestly those things of which there are the most in it."
Thus, something is hot, if hot predominates over the cold in it, flesh
if flesh predominates over other ingredients, and so on. The principle
does not claim that there is any single predominating ingredient at
each place in the mixture. Rather, the predominance seems to be along
numerous lines of possibility: more flesh than blood, more hot than
cold, more red than green, and so on (Furley 2002). This need not
mean that there is more humanity than doghood in a human being (indeed
it could not mean this, on the account advanced in this article, which
rules out dogs and humans as Anaxagorean ingredients). Rather, to be a
human being is to have a certain set of predominant characteristics
arranged in a certain way (that arrangement may be the work of soul
-- perhaps *nous* -- in a living thing).
A problem for the Principle of Predominance is to determine what it is
to be a predominant ingredient, especially given the
Everything-in-Everything and No Smallest principles. A classic example
is the following: the gold in this gold ring is that discontinuous
part of the total mixture in which gold predominates. But now, as
Strang says, "Consider the gold which predominates as an
ingredient: does it also, like the original piece of gold, contain
within it an admixture of all other substances? If so, it is gold
because gold predominates in it as an ingredient; and we can ask the
same question about the ingredient of the ingredient, and so on *ad
infinitum*" (Strang 1963, 101; see also Cornford
1930). Because there can be no pure gold (there is no pure anything),
it becomes difficult to see what the gold could be that predominates
in anything. But if I cannot determine what predominates in it, I
cannot determine what anything is.
Strang 1963 proposes a solution to the problem. While acknowledging
that there can never be pure instances of any ingredient in actuality,
there could be such instances in analysis. I can analyze mixtures and
determine predominant ingredients, but I will never be able to produce
a pure instance of such an ingredient. The problem here is how this
would be worked out, and why I can be certain that there are such
natures (as we might call them). Anaxagoras suggests two
things. First, in B12 he stresses that *nous* has the
power to know and understand all the ingredients (indeed cosmic
*nous* apparently knew all this before the rotation began; see
quotation above). Second, in B21 and B21a he suggests how
human *nous* (*nous* in us) can come to such an
understanding by relying on sense perception but moving beyond it in
thought (see sect. 5. Knowledge). Finally, because the ingredients are
genuinely basic entities in the sense required to ground a rational
cosmology in the Eleatic sense, they must be stable natures in the
Parmenidean sense (for a related account, see Marmodoro
2015). Anaxagoras is committed to the arguments that ground Eleatic
metaphysics; thus he can claim an *a priori* reason to think
that the ingredients can be knowable in the sense required by the
Principle of Predominance. His epistemological view that humans can
reach understanding through beginning with sense experience then fits
with these metaphysical commitments.
## 4. Science: The Anaxagorean Cosmos
Anaxagoras gave a complete account of the universe: of the heavens,
the earth, and geological and meteorological phenomena. The accounts
of the action of *nous* and the original rotation and its
consequences appear in the fragments: B9 describes the force and
velocity of the rotation, B12 and 13 explain the beginning of the
rotation and the subsequent breaking up and remixing of the mass of
ingredients, while B15 and 16 specify the cosmological consequences of
the continued rotation (Curd 2007 and 2008, Graham 2006, Gregory
2007). Most of the other information comes from the testimonia, but
there is enough in the remaining fragments to make it clear that
everything is ultimately explained by the great rotation set in motion
by *nous*. Further, and intriguingly, Anaxagoras claims that
the cosmic rotary motion could produce other worlds like our own.
### 4.1 Cosmology
The rotation of the mixture begins in a small area, and then spreads
out through the mass (B12). As the extent of the mixture is unlimited
(or infinite, *apeiron*), the rotation and expansion will
continue forever, bringing more and more ingredients into the whirl (a
summary of the process is in Gregory 2007). The force and speed of the
rotation is (according to B9) much faster at the edges, where the
expanding rotation meets the as-yet-unmoved mass of ingredients: what
we perceive of the rotation (probably the motions of the heavens) is
much slower than the unobserved rotation. The force is enough to pull
apart and rearrange the ingredients:
>
>
> When *nous* began to move [things], there was separation
> off from the multitude that was being moved, and whatever
> *nous* moved, all this was dissociated; and as things
> were being moved and dissociated, the revolution made them dissociate
> much more. (B13)
There are two sorts of dissociation. First, as the rotation enters the
as-yet-unmoved mass of ingredients, that mass begins to break up and
the ingredients start to shift in their concentrations. This causes
the original arrangement of ingredients to break up and begin to be
rearranged. Because the mixture is a plenum, any separation is at the
same time a rearrangement of ingredients. Then, those new
rearrangements are themselves subject to further break-up and further
rearrangement. Anaxagoras indicates this in the fragments by using
different terms for different stages in the process (although he is
not completely consistent in these uses). Normally, he uses the notion
of being separated off (forms of the verb *apokrinesthai*) for the
initial breaking apart of the mass. Re-arrangements are referred to as
mixing (*summisgesthai*) or compacting
(*sumpegnusthai*). He also uses "joining
together" (*proskrinesthai*) as a contrast to the
separating off process (*apokrinesthai*) in B4a and B4b. When,
in B17, he claims that passing-away is really dissociation, he uses
the word *diakrinesthai*. This is a later stage than the
earliest separations off of B1. The primary terms are compound forms
of the verb *krinein*, to distinguish. The word can also mean
"to judge" or "to determine," and through the
use of these compound terms, Anaxagoras reminds his readers that all
of the changes are ultimately traceable to the action of
*nous*, or Mind, that sets the mass moving in the first
instance.
Over time, the rotation throws lighter ingredients towards the edges
of the whirl and pushes the heavier ones to the center (B15), thus
putting more dark and heavy ingredients like earth in the center and
throwing air and aether (fire) away from the center. This gives the
traditional Greek picture of our Earth (itself a mixture of all
ingredients, with earth and heavy ores and minerals predominating)
covered (in many places) by water, with air and the fiery reaches of
the heavens.
The sun is a mass of fiery metal, and the moon is an earthy lump
(with no light of its own). The same rotation ultimately produces
the stars and planets as well. Sometimes the force of the
rotation snatches up stones from the surface of the Earth and spins
them around the Earth as they gradually rise higher through the force
of the rotation. Until these bodies are high enough, they remain
unseen between the Earth and the moon and so sometimes intervene to
prevent heavenly bodies from being seen by terrestrial observers.
The force and shaking of the rotation can cause slippage, and so
sometimes a star (a flaming mass of rock and iron) is thrown downwards
toward the earth as a meteor (such as the one Anaxagoras is supposed to
have predicted at Aegospotami; see Galzerano 2019). The fullest account of
Anaxagoras' view on meteors can be found in Plutarch's
*Life of Lysander* 12 (59 A12). Anaxagoras is also credited
with discovering the causes of eclipses -- the interposition of
another body between earth and the sun or the moon: sometimes he
credits this to the "unseen bodies" mentioned above (see
Graham and Hintz, 2007, Graham 2013a and 2013b, Taub 2003). According
to the ancient sources (see esp. A1 and A42), Anaxagoras also gave
explanations for the light of the Milky Way, the formation of comets,
the inclination of the heavens, the solstices, and the composition of
the moon and stars.
### 4.2 Meteorology and Geology
The rotation begun by *nous* ultimately affects phenomena
on the earth and above the surface of the earth. Anaxagoras claims
that the earth is flat, rests on air, and remains where it is because
of its size (A42; a number of geological and meteorological views
attributed to Anaxagoras were also apparently held by Anaximenes;
whether this is because Anaxagoras was following Anaximenes or because
the commentators conflate the two is unclear). Despite the manner of
its formation, the earth is stationary, not spinning. The (relative)
flatness of the earth allows water to spread over the earth, with
mountains and plains rising above the level of the water. The levels
change as water is evaporated or added by rain, and as water that has
been trapped in the earth by the rotation makes its way out through
rivers to the sea. Because the air under the earth is also moving
(pushed along by the cosmic rotation), it sometimes gets caught up in
the crevices of the earthy stuff. When this air cannot make its way
out, the force of the moving air causes earthquakes. Anaxagoras seems
determined to explain everything. The extant sources report views on
thunder and lightning, the source of the Nile, the first correct
account of the nature of hail, and inquiry into why the sea is
salty. He also offered accounts of sense perception and made
inquiries into embryology.
### 4.3 Other Worlds?
One of the more curious aspects of Anaxagoras' theory is hinted
at in B4a:
>
>
> Since these things are so, it is right to think that there are many
> different things present in everything that is being combined, and
> seeds of all things, having all sorts of forms, colors, and flavors,
> and that humans and also the other animals were compounded, as many as
> have soul. Also that there are cities that have been constructed
> by humans and works made, just as with us, and that there are a sun and
> a moon and other heavenly bodies for them, just as with us, and the
> earth grows many different things for them, the most valuable of which
> they gather together into their household and use. I have said
> this about the separation off, because there would be separation off
> not only for us but also elsewhere.
Where is the "elsewhere" where there would also be
separation off, and where there are sun and moon "for them, just
as with us"? Surprisingly, no ancient sources discuss this
(although Simplicius, who quotes the fragment, is clearly puzzled by
it, and argues for a neo-Platonic metaphysical interpretation). Modern
commentators have suggested that the other worlds are on the moon
and/or other planets (Johrens 1939, Zeller 1923), elsewhere on
the face of our Earth (Cornford, 1934), or even contained within
ourselves (and all other things) so that there are infinite worlds
within worlds (Mansfeld 1980, Schofield 1996, Sisko 2003). There is
also the possibility that Anaxagoras has no commitment to the reality
of these other worlds, but is simply engaging in a thought experiment
to show how the rotation would work (Frankel 1969, Vlastos 1975,
Schofield 1996). There may be another possibility (Curd 2007). The
unlimited rotation begins in a small area and expands indefinitely,
pulling more and more of the unlimited mass of as-yet-unmixed
ingredients into the whirl. Such an action could produce smaller local
rotations within the larger whirl (especially at the expanding edges,
as in the rotations of hurricane winds) and there, too, separation,
mixture, and dissociation would occur. Such processes would result in
the formation of systems like our own. This is not a
thought-experiment on Anaxagoras' part, but a commitment to the
law-likeness of the rotations controlled by
*nous*, and an awareness that similar processes will
produce similar phenomena. Our world-system is not unique in the
universe, although there is but one universe (constituted by the
entire limitless mass of ingredients).
## 5. Knowledge
Both ancient and modern critics have complained that Anaxagoras is
unclear about the nature of *nous* (Mind/Intelligence) and its
role in his theory (Laks 1993, 2002; Lesher 1995). In B12 Anaxagoras
claims that
*nous* has all discernment, and that *nous* "knew
them all: the things that are being mixed together, the things that
are being separated off, and the things that are being
dissociated." Further, Anaxagoras remarks that there is
*nous* in many things, and that it is alike in all the
things that it is in, both large and small (presumably those with
soul, i.e., living things). Aristotle says that Anaxagoras conflates
soul and mind, and B12 seems to confirm this, insofar as Anaxagoras
there treats *nous* primarily as a mover, yet also says
that it controls all things that have soul. It seems likely that in
things other than cosmic *nous*, those compacted or
mixed-together natural constructs that have soul, the powers of
*nous* include both knowing and perceiving. Nowhere do we have
an analysis of the process of thinking for Anaxagoras, and although
Aristotle and Theophrastus say that earlier thinkers identified
thinking and sense perception, there is little evidence for this view
in Anaxagoras (Laks 1999, Warren 2007).
It seems clear that if *nous* is to have all discernment and
to order the cosmos, it must have some knowledge of the contents of the
original mixture (Lesher 1995, Curd 2004). Further, if the
ingredients are fundamentally real things they must have stable and
knowable natures. (This follows from Parmenides' arguments
about the connection between what-is and what is knowable.) Thus,
there is a match between the natures of the ingredients and the
cognitive power of cosmic *nous*, but Anaxagoras leaves the
mechanism unexplained. It seems likely that cosmic *nous*
just has a direct intellectual grasp of these nature and acts in
accordance with that knowledge.
### 5.1 Mind in Us
Only a few fragments and testimonia discuss Anaxagoras'
views on perception and knowledge in living things. Aristotle and
Theophrastus give us some account of his theory of perception, saying,
most surprisingly, that for Anaxagoras all sensation is accompanied by
discomfort or pain (A92). Theophrastus links this to
Anaxagoras' belief that like is perceived by unlike; on
Theophrastus' view, perception is via touch, and unlike things
produce some irritation when touched. Theophrastus adduces loud noises
and very bright light as producers of pain in perceivers, and suggests
that the mechanism is the same in all cases of sensation. Some
irritation will be below the level of awareness for most perceivers,
which is why humans do not normally feel pain when
perceiving (see Warren 2007 for a good discussion of Anaxagoras on perception).
What is the relation between perception and knowledge?
Anaxagoras does not claim that perception alone is sufficient for
knowing; nor does he seem to embrace skepticism. Sextus
Empiricus, always on the lookout for arguments for and against any
dogmatic position, gives us most of the evidence for Anaxagoras'
views. Says Sextus, of the skeptic's methodology, "We
set what is thought in opposition to what appears, as Anaxagoras set
the appearance that snow is white in opposition to the claim that snow
is frozen water, water is black, and therefore snow is black"
(A97; but see the passage from Cicero in the same testimonium).
Here Anaxagoras accepts that snow seems to us to be white, but claims
that the reality must be that snow is black. The evidence of the
senses must be corrected by what we know through thought. In B21,
Anaxagoras recognizes the weakness of the senses ("Owing to
feebleness [of the senses], we are not able to determine the
truth"), but in B21a he accepts that sense perception can be a
step towards understanding: "appearances are a sight of the
unseen." This follows from his own theory, for the evidence
of our own control of our bodies by our minds, the facts of nutrition
and growth, and the local revolutions of the heavens are evidence for
the workings of cosmic *nous*, the No-Becoming principle, and
the great cosmic revolution. Like other Presocratics, Anaxagoras
leaves us with no detailed account of how knowledge derives from
perception through the refinements of thought: Anaxagoras'
account can be compared with that of Democritus, where the relation of
sense-perception and thought is similar and similarly unexplained.
## 6. Anaxagoras' Influence
Reportedly the first of the Presocratic philosophers to settle
in Athens, Anaxagoras was a significant figure, not only for later
philosophical thinkers, but also for the wider civic culture of his
time. He was clearly an important influence on Pericles.
Plutarch reports:
>
>
> But Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was the one who most associated with
> Pericles and who most bestowed on him that dignity and wisdom more
> weighty than demagoguery, and on the whole raised up and exalted the
> worthiness of his character ...These are not the only advantages
> that Pericles enjoyed because of his connection with Anaxagoras. It
> seems that Pericles rose above superstition, that attitude of
> astonishment about celestial occurrences which is produced in those
> who are ignorant about the causes of things and who are crazed by
> divinity and divine interventions because of their inexperience in
> these areas. Natural philosophy substitutes for festering superstition
> that unshaken piety that is attended by good hopes. (A15,
> A16)
That naturalism appears in the dramas of Euripides, who is often
described as a pupil of Anaxagoras, and in the comedies of
Aristophanes, who satirizes the views of Anaxagoras as well as the
figure of Socrates in *Clouds*. Anaxagoras' theory
of the floods of the Nile was known to Herodotus (and may be referred
to in Aeschylus). Despite stories that they did not get along,
there are signs of influence of Anaxagoras on Democritus (in his
accounts of perception and knowledge) and Anaxagoras' scientific
claims and discoveries affected all the thinkers of his time.
Once his views about meteors, hail, and eclipses became known, such
topics were always included in scientific accounts of astronomical and
meteorological phenomena. In the testimonia, Anaxagoras'
even temperament was taken as a model of good behavior, and he was
famous as a prognosticator of everything from meteor falls to rain
showers.
Anaxagoras' views appear among Socrates' survey of
previous naturalistic theories of explanation (*Phaedo* 96a6
ff.). More ominously, Meletus seems to have attributed Anaxagoras'
claims about the earthy nature of the moon and stars to Socrates at his
trial (see Plato's *Apology* 26e7ff., 59 A35). Although
Anaxagoras' alleged indictment for impiety was probably as much political
as a sign of his danger to public religion (attacking Anaxagoras was an
indirect attack on Pericles), he was seen as important and influential
enough to qualify to some as an enemy of the polis.
Philosophically, Anaxagoras' theories were also widely known and
influential. Some scholars have thought that the author of the Derveni
Papyrus (found in Northern Greece) was familiar with Anaxagoras'
theories (Betegh 2004; Kouremenos et al. 2006), and once he introduced
Mind as a cause, other thinkers followed him. Diogenes of Apollonia
claimed that air (as mind and god) directs all things. Zeno of Elea
(perhaps) and Melissus (certainly) criticize his theory. Anaxagoras'
view that "each one is and was most manifestly those things of
which there are the most in it" (the principle of Predominance)
is echoed in Plato's claims that sensible things acquire their
characters and names from the Forms in which they participate
(*Phaedo* 102a10 ff.). Plato even adopts Anaxagoras' language
of sharing or participating in (see Furley 2002), and like Anaxagoras' *nous*,
Platonic forms are "themselves by themselves" in being
self-explanatory (see Herrmann, 2007). Aristotle, although impatient
with the gaps in Anaxagoras' account of *nous*, expresses
admiration for his recognition that mind has a role to play in guiding
the cosmos, and he treats Anaxagoras' explanation of eclipses as a
model of scientific explanation. |
pyrrho | ## 1. Life
Pyrrho appears to have lived from around 365-360 BCE until
around 275-270 BCE (for the evidence see von Fritz (1963), 90).
We have several reports of philosophers from whom he learned, the most
significant (and the most reliable) of which concern his association
with Anaxarchus of Abdera. Alongside Anaxarchus (and several other
philosophers) he allegedly accompanied Alexander the Great on his
expedition to India. We are told that in the course of this expedition
he encountered some "naked wise men"
(*gumnosophistai*); Diogenes Laertius (9.61) claims that his
philosophy developed as a result of this meeting, but it is not clear
what basis, if any, he has for this assertion. In any case, after his
return to Greece Pyrrho did espouse a philosophy that attracted
numerous followers, of whom the most important was Timon of Phlius.
The travel writer Pausanias reports (6.24.5) seeing a statue of him in
the marketplace in Pyrrho's home town of Elis in the
Peloponnese; Diogenes also reports (9.64) that he was made high
priest, and that in his honor philosophers were made exempt from city
taxation. While Pausanias' report is easier to accept at face
value than Diogenes', both suggest that (at least locally) he
achieved considerable celebrity. However, there is no good reason to
believe that a Pyrrhonist 'movement' continued beyond his
own immediate followers; it was not until the first century BCE that
Pyrrhonism became the name of an ongoing philosophical tradition.
## 2. Ancient Sources and the Nature of the Evidence
With the exception of poetry allegedly written while on
Alexander's expedition (which, as far as we can tell, did not
survive that expedition), Pyrrho wrote nothing; we are therefore
obliged to try to reconstruct his philosophy from reports by others.
Unfortunately the reports that we have are fragmentary and, in many
cases, of doubtful reliability. Pyrrho's follower Timon wrote
numerous poems and prose works; but of these only fragments and in
some cases second-hand reports survive. It is likely that much of what
we hear about Pyrrho in later sources also derives indirectly from
Timon, but it is frequently not possible to judge, in individual
cases, whether or not this is so. Other difficulties concerning
Timon's evidence are, first, that he writes as a devotee rather
than as a neutral reporter, and second, that the great majority of
Timon's fragments derive from a poem called *Silloi*
(*Lampoons*), and consist of satirical thumbnail sketches of
other philosophers rather than any kind of direct exposition of
Pyrrho's outlook. (See the entry on Timon, section 2, for
details.) Nevertheless, Timon is clearly the most important and
the most trustworthy source of information about Pyrrho. Of the
evidence from Timon, one piece looks to be especially important.
This is a summary, by the Peripatetic Aristocles of Messene (late 1st
c. BCE), of an account by Timon of what appear to
be Pyrrho's most general philosophical attitudes. It is
widely agreed that this passage must be the centerpiece of any
interpretation of Pyrrho's philosophy. However, its usefulness
for this purpose depends in part on how much of it is actually talking
about *Pyrrho's* attitudes, as opposed to Timon's own
developments or expansions of them. As we shall see, this is one of
many difficulties in interpreting the passage.
With the exception of a very few snippets of information, the only
other source of evidence on Pyrrho that is close to contemporary is
Antigonus of Carystus, a biographer of the mid-third century BCE.
Diogenes Laertius, whose life of Pyrrho is our major source of
biographical anecdotes, frequently cites Antigonus, and is probably
indebted to him in many places even when he does not cite him;
Antigonus is also mentioned by Aristocles, and is likely to be the
origin of much or even most of the surviving biographical material on
Pyrrho. But Antigonus needs to be handled even more carefully than
Timon. He was not a philosopher, and there is no reason to think that
he was capable of or particularly interested in comprehending
philosophical nuances. Nor is it clear that accuracy was high on his
list of priorities; on the contrary, what we know about him suggests
that he was a purveyor of sensationalist gossip rather than a reliable
historian. His account probably did contain genuine information about
Pyrrho's demeanor and activities; but it would certainly be
unwise to take his anecdotes as a group on trust.
Cicero refers to Pyrrho about ten times, and Cicero is, in general, a
responsible reporter of other people's views. Unfortunately his
information about Pyrrho appears to be very incomplete, and, as we
shall see, the impression he conveys of him may very well be
inaccurate. With one exception, he never mentions him except in
conjunction with the famously non-orthodox Stoics Aristo and
(sometimes) Herillus, and the remarks in question always concern the
same one or two points in ethics; it looks as if his knowledge of
Pyrrho derives almost entirely from a single source that conveyed
little or nothing about Pyrrho individually. In addition, a number of
authors in later antiquity make isolated comments about Pyrrho. But
since these comments postdate the rise of the later Pyrrhonist
movement, there is often room for suspicion as to whether they reflect
genuine information about Pyrrho himself, as opposed to the later
philosophy that took his name.
Even given the difficulty referred to above, any attempt to interpret
Pyrrho's philosophy must pay close attention to the summary of
Timon in Aristocles. If the entire passage is summarizing the
views of Pyrrho (as Timon understood them), it clearly takes
precedence, in detail and trustworthiness, over the remaining
evidence -- *pace* Green (2017), who proposes a more holistic
approach. If, on the other hand, much of the passage conveys the views
of Timon, and only part of it the views of Pyrrho, the holistic
approach has more to recommend it, despite the paucity of the
remaining evidence. Even on this assumption, however, the Aristocles
passage remains as important as anything else, and to this we now
turn.
## 3. The Aristocles Passage
A word, first, about the provenance and evidential value of the
Aristocles passage. Several chapters from book 8 of Aristocles'
*Peri philosophias* (*On Philosophy*) appear in
quotation in the *Praeparatio evangelica* of Eusebius, the
fourth-century bishop of Caesarea. These chapters expound, and then
attack from an Aristotelian perspective, a number of philosophies that
impugn the reliability of one or other of our cognitive faculties.
Among these Aristocles counts Pyrrhonism, as represented by Pyrrho
himself and by the initiator of the later Pyrrhonist tradition,
Aenesidemus; Aristocles speaks of Aenesidemus (first century BCE,
q.v.), as recent, and is apparently not aware of any subsequent
members of the Pyrrhonist tradition. The chapter on Pyrrhonism opens
with a brief summary of the early Pyrrhonist outlook, as reported by
Timon, who refers to Pyrrho (14.18.1-5).
This convoluted transmission might lead one to doubt how much
authentic information can be extracted from the passage. But there is
no reason, first, to doubt Eusebius' explicit claim to be
quoting Aristocles verbatim. Aristocles is not quoting Timon verbatim;
some of the vocabulary in this passage is clearly reminiscent of
Aristocles' own vocabulary in other chapters. However, other
terms in the passage are quite distinct both from Aristocles'
own normal usage and from any of the terminology familiar to us from
later Pyrrhonism, yet were in use prior to Timon's day; it seems
easiest to account for these as authentic reproductions of
Timon's own language. In addition, the frequent mention of Timon
either by name or by the word *phesi*, 'he
says', suggests that Aristocles is taking pains to reproduce the
essentials of his account as faithfully as possible. And finally,
Aristocles' other chapters, where we are in a position to check
his summaries against other evidence of the views being summarized,
suggest that he is in general a reliable reporter of other
people's views, even views to which he himself is strongly
opposed--or at least, that he is reliable when he has access to
systematic written expositions of those views, as seems to be the case
here. As for Timon's reliability as a source for Pyrrho's
views, we cannot be sure, but we cannot do better; he is clearly
closer to Pyrrho than any other source who discusses him.
However, as already noted, there is a further question concerning how
far the passage is a report of Pyrrho's ideas and how far it gives
us Timon's creative development of them.
Even aside from that question, the interpretation of the
Aristocles passage is fraught with controversy. It follows that the
character of Pyrrho's thinking is, at its very core, a matter
for sharp disagreement. The present survey will begin by assuming that
the passage is all about Pyrrho, laying out the two main
alternatives (given this assumption) and exploring the
consequences of each. (Numerous other readings besides these two have
been proposed; in particular, the interpretation of Svavarsson (2004)
is an intriguing, though arguably unstable, hybrid of the two. But it
is fair to say that these two are the ones that have commanded by far
the most scholarly attention.) It will then explain why some scholars
have questioned this assumption, and what difference this would
make to our understanding of Pyrrho and of Timon's
relation to him. First, then, on the assumption that the whole
passage is Timon's summary of Pyrrho's thought:
Timon is reported as telling us that in order to be happy, one must
pay attention to three connected questions: first, what are things
like by nature? second, how should we be disposed towards things
(given our answer to the first question)? and third, what will be the
outcome for those who adopt the disposition recommended in the answer
to the second question? And the passage then gives us answers to
each of the three questions in order.
The answer to the question "what are things like by
nature?" is given by a sequence of three epithets; things are
said to be *adiaphora* and *astathmeta* and
*anepikrita*. Taken by themselves, these epithets can be
understood in two importantly different ways: they may be taken as
characterizing how things are (by nature) in themselves, or they may
be taken as commenting on human beings' lack (by our nature) of
cognitive access to things. *Adiaphora* is normally translated
'indifferent'. But this might be taken as referring either
to an intrinsic characteristic of things--namely that, in
themselves and by nature, they possess no differentiating features
-- or to our natural inability to discern any such features. In
the latter case 'undifferentiable' might be a more
perspicuous translation. (Beckwith (2011) plausibly connects the focus
on differentiating features, or the lack of them, with the
Aristotelian notion of differentiae; on either of the readings to be
explored, Aristotle's picture of the world and of our ability to
understand it would indeed be a prime example of the kind of view from
which Pyrrho is anxious to distance himself.) Similarly,
*astathmeta* might mean 'unstable' or
'unbalanced', describing an objective property of things;
or it might mean 'not subject to being placed on a
balance', and hence 'unmeasurable', which would
again place the focus on our cognitive inabilities. And
*anepikrita* might mean 'indeterminate', referring
to an objective lack of any definite features, or
'indeterminable', pointing to an inability on our part to
determine the features of things. The statement as a whole, then, is
either answering the question "what are things like by
nature?" by stating that things are, in their very nature,
indefinite or indeterminate in various ways -- the precise nature
of the thesis would be a matter for further speculation--or by
stating that we human beings are not in a position to pin down or
determine the nature of things. Let us call these the metaphysical and
the epistemological interpretations respectively.
It is clear that the metaphysical interpretation gives us a Pyrrho who
is not in any recognizable sense a sceptic. Pyrrho, on this
interpretation, is issuing a declaration about the nature of things in
themselves--precisely what the later Pyrrhonists who called
themselves sceptics were careful to avoid. On the epistemological
interpretation, on the other hand, Pyrrho is very much closer to the
tradition that took his name. There is still some distance between
them. To say that we *cannot* determine the nature of things
-- as opposed to saying that we have so far failed to determine
the natural features of things--is already a departure from the
sceptical suspension of judgement promoted by Sextus Empiricus. And to
put it, as on this reading Pyrrho does put it, by saying that
*things* are indeterminable, is a further departure, in that it
does attribute at least one feature to things in themselves --
namely, being such that humans cannot determine them. Nevertheless,
the epistemological interpretation clearly portrays Pyrrho as a
forerunner--a naive and unsophisticated forerunner, perhaps
-- of later Pyrrhonist scepticism, whereas the metaphysical
interpretation puts him in a substantially different light.
The natural way to try to choose between these two interpretations is
to see which of them fits best with the logic of the passage as a
whole. Unfortunately, a neutral decision on this does not seem be
possible. According to the manuscripts, the phrase that
follows the words we have been discussing reads "*for
this reason* (*dia touto*) neither our sensations nor our
opinions tell the truth or lie". On the metaphysical
interpretation, the idea would be that, since things are in
their real nature indeterminate, our sensations and opinions, which
represent things as having certain determinate features, are neither
true nor false. They are not true, since reality is not the way they
present it as being. It might then seem that they are false. But
if reality is indeterminate because it is constantly *changing*
(as the sensible world is sometimes portrayed, for example, in Plato),
then one might say that our perceptions of the fleeting, temporary
features of things are *not* simply false. Because these
features are temporary and fleeting, they do not belong to the real
nature of things, so the perceptions do not qualify as
true; but (assuming our senses are functioning normally) they are
features the things do actually manifest on particular occasions.
As for the epistemological interpretation, some scholars have
suggested that the manuscripts are in error at this point, and that
what the text should say is "*on account of the fact
that* (*dia to*) neither our sensations nor our opinions
tell the truth or lie". The change is justified on linguistic
grounds; it is alleged that the text in the manuscripts as they stand
is not acceptable Greek. The considerations for and against this
proposal are technical, and debate has yielded no consensus on this
question. However, it is clear that if one does make this small
alteration to the text, the direction of the inference is reversed;
the point about our sensations and opinions now becomes a reason for
the point about the nature of things, not an inference from it. And
this, it has been argued, points towards the epistemological
interpretation. The idea would then be that, since our sensations and
opinions fail to be consistent deliverers of true reports (or, for
that matter, false reports) about the world around us, there is no
prospect of our being able to determine the nature of things. However,
even if we retain the manuscript text, the epistemological reading may
still be possible (so Green (2017)). The idea would be that, in order
for our sensations and opinions to tell the truth or lie, they would
have to do two things: 1) present an appearance of things and 2)
present this appearance *as how things really are*. But since
we are not able to determine the latter (as we were just told in the
statement about the nature of things), our sensations and opinions
cannot do this; they can only register appearances, and that is not
enough for them to tell either truths or falsehoods.
The immediate inference from the statement about the nature of things,
then, is not decisive. And the remainder of the Aristocles
passage can be also read so as to fit with either the
metaphysical or the epistemological reading of his answer to the
question about the nature of things. The Aristocles passage continues
with the answer to the second question, namely the question of the
attitude we should adopt given the answer to the first question. We
are told, first, that we should not trust our sensations and opinions,
but should adopt an unopinionated attitude. On the epistemological
reading, the significance of this is obvious. But on the metaphysical
reading, too, we have already been told that our sensations and
opinions are not true, which is presumably reason enough for us not to
trust them; and the unopinionated attitude that is here recommended
may be understood as one in which one refrains from positing any
definite characteristics as inherent in the nature of
things--given that their real nature is wholly indefinite. (To
the objection that this thesis of indefiniteness is itself an opinion,
it may be replied that *doxa*, 'opinion', is
regularly used in earlier Greek philosophy, especially in Parmenides
and Plato, to refer to those opinions--misguided opinions, in the
view of these authors--that take on trust a view of the world as
conforming more or less to the way it appears in ordinary experience.
In this usage, the claim that reality is indefinite would not be a
(mere) opinion, but would be a statement of the truth.)
The passage now introduces a certain form of speech that is supposed
to reflect this unopinionated attitude. We are supposed to say
"about each single thing that it no more is than is not or both
is and is not or neither is nor is not". There are a number of
intricate questions about the exact relations between the various
parts of this complicated utterance, and especially about the role and
significance of the 'both' and 'neither'
components. But it is clear that this too is susceptible of being read
along the lines of either of the two interpretations introduced above.
On the metaphysical interpretation, we are being asked to adopt a form
of words that reflects the utter indefiniteness of the way things are;
we should not say of anything that it *is* any particular way
any more than that it is *not* that way (with 'is'
being understood, as commonly in Greek philosophy, as shorthand for
'is *F*', where *F* stands for any arbitrary
predicate). On the epistemological interpretation, we are being asked
to use a manner of speaking that expresses our suspension of judgement
about how things are. Sextus Empiricus specifically tells us that
'no more' (*ou mallon*) is a term used by the
sceptics to express suspension of judgement, and its occurrence in the
Aristocles passage can be taken as an early example of the same type
of usage.
Finally, in answer to the third question, we are told that the result
for those who adopt the unopinionated attitude just recommended is
first *aphasia* and then *ataraxia*. *Ataraxia*,
'freedom from worry', is familiar to us from later
Pyrrhonism; this is said by the later Pyrrhonists to be the result of
the suspension of judgement that they claimed to be able to induce.
The precise sense of *aphasia* is less clear. Beckwith (2011)
actually argues that the transmitted text is erroneous, and that we
should instead read *apatheia*, "lack of passion".
This is an attractive suggestion; *apatheia* is indeed a term
used not infrequently of Pyrrho's untroubled attitude (see
section 5), whereas a reference to *aphasia* would be
unparalleled in the other evidence on Pyrrho. However, the proposal is
inevitably speculative, and *aphasia* is a term in use in later
Pyrrhonism; it seems worth trying to elucidate it on the assumption
that the transmitted text is correct. It might mean
'non-assertion', as in Sextus--that is, a refusal to
commit oneself to definite alternatives; or it might mean, more
literally, 'speechlessness', which could in turn be taken
to be an initial reaction of stunned silence to the radical position
with which one has been presented (an uncomfortable reaction that is
subsequently replaced by *ataraxia*--the passage does say
that *aphasia* comes first and *ataraxia* comes later).
But the decision between these two ways of understanding the term is
independent of the broader interpretive issues bearing upon the
passage as a whole. For some form of 'non-assertion' is
clearly licensed by either the metaphysical or the epistemological
interpretation; and on either interpretation, the view proposed might
indeed render someone (initially) uncomfortable to the point of
'speechlessness'. The important point, though, is that
*ataraxia* is the end result; and this links back to the
introductory remark to the effect that the train of thought to be
summarized has the effect of making one happy.
We have, then, two major possibilities. On the one hand, Pyrrho can be
read as advancing a sweeping metaphysical thesis, that things are in
their real nature indefinite or indeterminate, and encouraging us to
embrace the consequences of that thesis by refusing to attribute any
definite features to things (at least, as belonging to their real
nature) and by refusing to accept at face value (again, as revelatory
of the real nature of things) those myriad aspects of our ordinary
experience that represent things as having certain definite features.
Or, on the other hand, Pyrrho can be read as declaring that the nature
of things is inaccessible to us, and encouraging us to withdraw our
trust (and to speak in such a way as to express our withdrawal of
trust) in ordinary experience as a guide to the nature of things. As
noted earlier, the second, epistemological interpretation makes
Pyrrho's outlook a great deal closer to that of the later
Pyrrhonists who took him as an inspiration. But that is not in itself
any reason for favoring this interpretation over the other,
metaphysical one. For on either interpretation Pyrrho is said to
promise *ataraxia*, the later Pyrrhonists' goal, and to
promise it as a *result* of a certain kind of withdrawal of
trust in the veracity of our everyday impressions of things; the
connection between these two points aligns Pyrrho with the later
Pyrrhonists, and sets him apart from every other Greek philosophical
movement that preceded later Pyrrhonism. The fact that this later
sceptical tradition took Pyrrho as an inspiration is therefore readily
understandable whichever of the two interpretations is correct (or
whichever they thought was correct). It is also true that, on the
metaphysical interpretation of the passage, the grounds on which
Pyrrho advanced his metaphysical thesis of indeterminacy are never
specified; this too, like the precise character of the thesis itself,
must be a matter for speculative reconstruction. But Aristocles only
purports to be giving the key points of Timon's summary; the
lack of detail, though disappointing, would not be surprising.
So far we have assumed that the Aristocles passage is supposed to
represent the thought of Pyrrho. But, as noted earlier, some scholars
have questioned that assumption (see especially Brunschwig
(1994), Marchand (2018)). Their reason is that there is only one place
in the Aristocles passage that reads "Timon says that Pyrrho says
..."; this is the threefold statement about the nature of things.
Elsewhere Aristocles says "Timon says", but nowhere else are we
specifically told that Timon is conveying the thought of Pyrrho.
Admittedly Aristocles introduces Pyrrho as one of those who question
our ability to know things, but he may have thought that Timon's own
(written) ideas are the closest we can get to Pyrrho's (unwritten)
ideas. Hence it is not obvious that anything beyond the threefold
statement about the nature of things should actually be attributed to
Pyrrho himself. Of course, when Aristocles says "Timon says", he
*may* have meant this as short for "Timon says Pyrrho says",
but he may also have intended to distinguish between the contributions
of Pyrrho and of Timon.
If we limit Pyrrho's contribution in this way, what difference does it
make? There is still the question whether the statement about the
nature of things is about how things are in themselves or about
our inability to grasp them. But in this case, all the mention of
sensations and opinions, of their truth or falsehood, and of what we
should say belongs to Timon, not to Pyrrho. And this opens the
possibility that the main philosophical outlook expressed in the
Aristocles passage, whether one reads it metaphysically or
epistemologically, is Timon's construction, building on a single idea
of Pyrrho's that may have been rather less broad in scope or ambitious
in character. In particular, as we shall see, much of the other
evidence on Pyrrho seems to depict him as focused on questions of
value, questioning our characterizations of things as good or bad
and doubting whether our views on such matters are stable or
reliable. His statement of the "indifferent" nature of things, as
reported in the Aristocles passage, may also have been of an
evaluative kind: things do not really -- or, we cannot tell
whether things really -- have the positive or negative evaluative
qualities we accord them.
## 4. Other Reports on Pyrrho's General Approach
The other evidence bearing upon Pyrrho's central philosophical
attitudes does nothing to settle the dispute between these various
possible interpretations of the Aristocles passage. A number of texts
explicitly or implicitly represent Pyrrho's outlook as
essentially identical to the sceptical outlook of the later
Pyrrhonists. However, all of these texts postdate the rise of later
Pyrrhonism itself, and none of them contains anything like the level
of detail of the Aristocles passage; there is no particular reason to
suppose that any of them represents a genuine understanding of Pyrrho
as distinct from the later Pyrrhonists. There are also a few texts
that appear to offer a picture of Pyrrho's thought that is
congenial to the metaphysical interpretation. The most significant of
these is a passage from near the beginning of Diogenes Laertius'
life of Pyrrho (9.61); Pyrrho, we are told, "said that nothing
is either fine or ignoble or just or unjust; and similarly in all
cases that nothing is the case in reality (*meden einai
tei aletheiai*), but that human beings do everything
by convention and habit; for each thing is no more this than
that". This looks as if it is attributing to Pyrrho a
metaphysical thesis, and a thesis according to which things have no
definite features; it does not seem to be portraying Pyrrho as an
advocate of suspension of judgement. However, the passage is
undoubtedly in some way confused. For immediately beforehand we are
told that Pyrrho was the one who initiated the type of philosophy
consisting of "inapprehensibility and suspension of
judgement", which sounds epistemic; and the previously quoted
passage is then cited as confirmation of this. In addition, while
"nothing is the case in reality" and "each thing is
no more this than that" sound wholly general, Diogenes'
examples are all in the domain of values, which ties in with the
possibility that Pyrrho's statement about the nature of things,
in the Aristocles passage, was only about values and that most of that
passage represents Timon's views rather than
Pyrrho's. This passage of Diogenes, then, cannot be used as
support for any particular understanding of Pyrrho.
## 5. Reports on Pyrrho's Demeanor and Lifestyle
Most of the remaining evidence about Pyrrho has to do with his
practical attitudes and behavior. There are a number of biographical
anecdotes, and there are a few fragments of Timon that purport to
depict Pyrrho's state of mind. Some of the biographical
anecdotes are clearly polemical inventions. For example, Diogenes
(9.62) reports Antigonus as saying that Pyrrho's lack of trust
in his senses led him to ignore precipices, oncoming wagons and
dangerous dogs, and that his friends had to follow him around to
protect him from these various everyday hazards. But he then reports
the dissenting verdict of Aenesidemus, according to which Pyrrho was
perfectly capable of conducting himself in a sensible manner. This
reflects a longstanding ancient dispute as to whether it is possible
to live if one radically abandons common-sense attitudes to the world.
Antigonus has transformed a hostile criticism of Pyrrho--that, if
one really were to adopt the attitudes he recommends, one
*would* be unable consistently to live as a sane human being
-- into an account of how Pyrrho actually did act; but there is
no reason to take this seriously as biography. (It does, however,
raise the question of what it means to mistrust the senses--as
the Aristocles passage tells us that either Timon or Pyrrho
did--if this is to be consistent with self-preservation in
one's ordinary behavior; we shall return to this point at the
end of this section.)
But there are many other anecdotes, preserved in Diogenes and
elsewhere, that cannot be dismissed in this fashion. The dominant
impression they convey as a group is of an extraordinary impassivity
or imperturbability; with rare exceptions (which he himself is
portrayed as regretting), Pyrrho is depicted as maintaining his calm
and untroubled attitude no matter what happens to him. (The exceptions
have led Pyrrho's outlook to be labeled
"aspirationalism"; see Ribeiro (2022). But while his
attainment of tranquility was admittedly not perfect, the picture we
get is of someone who was truly exceptional in this respect.) This
extends even to extreme physical pain--he is reported not to have
flinched when subjected to the horrific techniques of ancient
surgery--but it also encompasses dangers such as being on a ship
in a storm. (This is not to say that he did not avoid such troubles if
he could, as suggested by the apocryphal stories mentioned in the
previous paragraph; it is just to say that he did not lose his
composure in the face of life's inevitable hardships.) There is
another aspect to this untroubled attitude as well. In numerous
anecdotes Pyrrho is shown as unconcerned with adhering to the normal
conventions of society; he wanders off for days on end by himself, and
he performs tasks that would normally be left to social inferiors,
such as housework and even washing a pig. Here, too, the suggestion is
that he does not care about things that ordinary people do care about
-- in this case, the disapproval of others. (The passage from
Diogenes quoted in the previous section, according to which Pyrrho
held "that human beings do everything by convention and
habit" is not necessarily in conflict with this; by 'human
beings' Pyrrho might have meant *ordinary* human beings,
among whom he would not have included himself.)
The fragments of Timon also emphasize Pyrrho's exceptional
tranquility, and add a further, more philosophical dimension to it.
Several fragments suggest that this tranquility results from his not
engaging in theoretical inquiry like other philosophers, and with his
not engaging in debate with those philosophers. Other thinkers are
perturbed by their need to discover how the universe works, and their
need to prevail in arguments with their rivals; Pyrrho is unconcerned
about any of this.
Clearly it would be foolish to accept every detail of this composite
account. Timon's picture is no doubt idealized, and the
biographical material surely includes a measure of embellishment.
Collectively, however, these fragments and anecdotes add up to a
highly consistent portrait; it does not seem overconfident to take
this at least as reflecting an ideal towards which Pyrrho strived, and
which he achieved to a sufficient degree to have attracted notice.
What connections can be drawn between this portrait of Pyrrho's
demeanor and the philosophy expounded in the Aristocles passage? What
we have here, plainly, is a fuller specification of the
*ataraxia* that the Aristocles passage promised as the outcome
of the process of responding in the recommended way to the three
questions. (And it confirms that, even if the process of reaching
*ataraxia*, as explained in the Aristocles passage, was largely
Timon's rather than Pyrrho's, the ideal of
*ataraxia* itself was one to which Pyrrho adhered.) But
*why* should thinking as Pyrrho did, according to that passage,
yield *ataraxia*, and why should this outcome take the specific
form suggested by the material discussed in this section? Now is a
convenient point to address these questions (as we did not do in
initially examining the Aristocles passage). We may distinguish the
overall emotional tranquility depicted in the biographical material
and the particular tranquility, derived from the avoidance of
theoretical inquiry, that is emphasized in the fragments of Timon.
The most obvious explanation for the overall emotional tranquility
would seem to be along the following lines. If one adopts the position
recommended in the Aristocles passage, one will not hold any
definite beliefs, about any object or state of affairs, to the effect
that the object or state of affairs really is good, or valuable, or
worth seeking--or, on the other hand, bad or to be avoided. (This
will be true on either the metaphysical or the epistemological
interpretations of the Aristocles passage, and it will be true of
Pyrrho, given his answer to the first question, even if the rest is
Timon's development.) Hence one will attach far less importance to the
attainment or the avoidance of any particular objects, or the
occurrence or non-occurrence of any particular state of affairs, than
one would if one thought that these things really did have some kind
of positive or negative value; nothing will matter to one to anything
like the same extent as it matters to most people. If this is on the
right lines, then Pyrrho's route to *ataraxia* closely
resembles the one described in several places by Sextus Empiricus
(*PH* 1.25-30, 3.235-8, *M*
11.110-67); the account I have given is in fact modeled after
Sextus' explanation of how suspension of judgement produces
*ataraxia*. Indeed, it is difficult to see how else the process
is to be reconstructed. One difference, however, between the practical
attitudes of Pyrrho and Sextus is that Sextus attributes an important
role to convention in the shaping of one's behavior; more on
this in a moment.
As for the avoidance of theoretical inquiry and debate, if Pyrrho was
primarily a moralist and the Aristocles passage mostly contains
Timon's ideas, such inquiry and debate would simply have been
outside Pyrrho's sphere of interest. But if the Aristocles
passage as a whole represents Pyrrho's own thought, it is fair
to assume that he will have regarded such inquiry and debate as
troublesome because it is necessarily fruitless and interminable. If
the real nature of things is indeterminable by us, as the
epistemological interpretation would have it, then to attempt to
determine the nature of things, and to provide cogent grounds for the
superiority of one's own theories, is to attempt the impossible;
such matters are simply beyond our grasp. But if, as the metaphysical
interpretation would have it, the world is in its real nature
indefinite, then one is also attempting the impossible, though for a
different reason; one is attempting to determine a fixed character for
things that inherently lack any fixed character. Of course, the thesis
that reality is indefinite is itself a definite statement. But it
follows from this statement that any attempt to establish fixed and
definite characteristics for specific items in the universe is doomed
to failure. And it seems to be this kind of theoretical inquiry that
Timon represents Pyrrho as eschewing; as one fragment puts it
(addressing Pyrrho), "you were not concerned to inquire what
winds hold sway over Greece, from where everything comes and into what
it passes" (Diogenes Laertius 9.65). On this reading, then,
Pyrrho's avoidance of inquiry and debate resembles the disdain
for physical speculation that is apparent in some writings of Plato
(*Phaedo* for example); physical speculation is fruitless
because the physical world is not susceptible to rational inquiry.
Here another difference may be discerned from the Pyrrhonism of Sextus
Empiricus. For although Sextus certainly does not claim to have
definite answers of his own concerning the nature of things, he has no
qualms about engaging with his opponents in debate, or about pitting
them against one another. Indeed, the Pyrrhonism of Sextus depends on
a constant interplay of competing arguments on as many topics as
possible. One's suspension of judgement results from one's
experience of the 'equal strength' (*isostheneia*)
of the competing considerations on all sides of a given issue; but
this requires that one be regularly exposed to such competing
considerations, and the works of Sextus are themselves bountiful
sources for this. Sextus may agree with Pyrrho that such debates are
interminable, but they have an important role in later Pyrrhonist
practice nonetheless. Pyrrho's own practice is quite different,
because his *ataraxia* flows not from an ongoing practice of
intellectual juggling, but from a *conclusion* about the nature
of things, as reported in the Aristocles passage. As we have seen,
this conclusion may be interpreted in several different ways, but
however we interpret it, it is a firm view of his.
We have seen that Pyrrho was unconcerned, or aspired to be
unconcerned, about things that most of us care about very deeply. But
how does one make any decisions at all, if one adopts this kind of
attitude? Unless we are to believe the stories of Pyrrho as a madman
depending on his friends to rescue him from precipices and dogs, we
are entitled to expect an answer to this question. There is some
evidence to suggest that the answer proposed--if not by Pyrrho
himself, then at least by Timon--was that one relies on the
appearances. If this is correct, we have another link, at least at a
general level, with the Pyrrhonism of Sextus, for whom appearances are
what he calls the "criterion of action". One difference,
as mentioned earlier, is that Sextus lists laws and customs as one of
the four main varieties of appearances that one may use to guide
one's behavior; on Sextus' account, then, certain courses
of action will appear to one as desirable or undesirable given that
they are approved or disapproved of by the prevailing mores. But
Pyrrho seems to have been thoroughly unconventional in some aspects of
his behavior. It is impossible to say specifically what kinds of
phenomena were included for him and Timon under the heading of
'the appearances' -- or whether they had anything
very precise in mind here. Nevertheless, it looks as if the early or
proto-Pyrrhonist answer to the question of how one acts and makes
decisions is that one does so in light of the way things appear to
one. Depending on how we read the Aristocles passage, this might
amount to "in light of the characteristics that things seem to
have (but, for all we know, may not really have)", or it
might amount to "in light of the temporary and contingent
characteristics that things manifest on any given occasion (but that
are no part of how they *really are*, since how they really are
is indefinite)". In either case, the way in which one mistrusts
sensations and common-sense opinions, as the Aristocles passage
recommends, is not that one pays no attention to them in one's
everyday behavior; one mistrusts them simply in that one does not take
them as a guide to the underlying nature of things.
## 6. "The Nature of the Divine and the Good"
There is one further, highly problematic fragment of Timon that seems
to belong in the area of practical philosophy. This is a set of four
lines of verse that make reference to "the nature of the divine
and the good". There is no consensus on how to translate these
lines, and different translations yield very different consequences
for interpretation. The first two lines can be rendered either
| | |
| --- | --- |
| (A) | "For I will say, as it appears to me to be,
A word of truth, having a correct standard:" |
| or | |
| (B) | "For I will say, as it is plain to me that it is,
A word of truth, having a correct standard:" |
The second two lines can be rendered either
| | |
| --- | --- |
| (C) | "That the nature of the divine and the good is eternal,
From which a most even-tempered life for a man is derived." |
| or | |
| (D) | "That the nature of the divine and the good is at any time
That from which life becomes most even-tempered for a man." |
There are numerous other disputes over the translation, but these
alternatives put on display most of the central options for
interpretation.
The lines are quoted by Sextus Empiricus (*M* 11.20); there is
no further trace of them in the surviving record. The context in which
Sextus introduces them shows that he is inclined to understand the
first couplet according to reading (A) rather than reading( B); but he
suggests that he is not sure about this. The speaker into whose mouth
Timon put these lines is never identified, but it has generally been
assumed to be Pyrrho.
If one understands the second couplet according to reading (C), then
the speaker is apparently endorsing a position that attributes
definite natures to things; and this appears flatly inconsistent with
the Pyrrho of the Aristocles passage, on any of the readings we
have considered. The tension is especially bad if one reads the first
couplet according to reading (B), in which case the speaker is
insisting that he is in possession of the truth. But even on reading
(A), where the effect is to weaken the assertion to one about what
appears to the speaker to be the case, the statement about "the
nature of the divine and the good" seems strikingly out of
keeping with the rest of what we hear about Pyrrho's philosophy.
It has been suggested that Pyrrho made an exception, in the case of
the divine and the good, to his general prohibition on attributing
definite natures to things; but it is hard to see the motivation for
such a move, and this interpretation has not been generally accepted.
It is true that Cicero speaks of Pyrrho as holding that virtue is the
sole good, and that no distinctions of value are to be drawn among
things other than virtue and vice. However, as was mentioned earlier,
Cicero always attributes this view to Pyrrho alongside the unorthodox
Stoic Aristo of Chios; he never gives any details about Pyrrho's
thinking specifically. We know from other sources that Aristo did hold
this position; and, as we have seen, there is good reason to think
that Pyrrho did refrain quite generally from attributing positive or
negative value to ordinary objects of concern (things other than
virtue and vice), which is one part of the position Cicero attributes
to him and Aristo. So it looks as if Cicero has been misled (probably
by the sketchiness of the information in his source) into thinking
that Pyrrho agreed with Aristo in both parts of his position rather
than in just one part. At any rate, Cicero cannot be regarded as
offering any credible support for an interpretation of Pyrrho that has
him believing in a natural good; again, this is just too discordant
with the remainder of the evidence.
Reading (D) of Timon's second couplet (which is due, with minor
modifications, to Burnyeat (1980)) is intended to eliminate the
troublesome reference to an eternal real nature. According to this
interpretation, the phrase "the nature of the divine and the
good" refers simply to a characteristic that is attributed to
Pyrrho, and labeled by poetic hyperbole as 'divine', in
another fragment of Timon, namely his extraordinary tranquility; the
couplet as a whole, then, is saying that tranquility is the source of
an even-tempered life. And if one combines this with the less dogmatic
reading (A) of the first couplet, this yields a set of remarks that
are not obviously in conflict with anything else in the record on
Pyrrho.
The acceptability of the translation in reading (D) is not beyond
question. There is also some question whether the claim that
tranquility is the source of an even-tempered life is anything more
than vacuous. However, if one assumes that Pyrrho is the speaker of
these lines, then this interpretation or something close to it seems
to be the only way to rescue his thought (as reported by Timon) from
inconsistency. Another possibility, an interpretatively less
burdensome one, is to drop the assumption that Pyrrho is the speaker;
in this case, there is no reason to assume that the thought expressed
by the lines must be consistent with what we know of Pyrrho's
philosophy. But if one takes this option, one must devise an
alternative explanation for why Timon would have written these
lines--including some account of who else the speaker might be.
This challenge has recently been taken up in Clayman (2009), chapter
2. Clayman argues that the speaker is Timon himself, and that the
lines serve a programmatic function at the opening of the poem; in
light of parallel passages in other early Hellenistic poetry, the
reference to truth is understood as an allusion to poetic
verisimilitude rather than to anything philosophically problematic.
Finally, it has been suggested (in Svavarsson 2002) that
*muthon*, rendered in both readings (A) and (B) by
"word", should rather be understood as "myth"
in the sense of "fiction" (and "of truth"
linked instead, as is linguistically quite possible, with
"standard"). In this case, again, there is no difficulty
in understanding the second couplet as expressing a dogmatic position;
indeed, such a reading is only to be expected, since the position is
being debunked, not advocated. Green (2017) has extended
Svavarsson's suggestion by proposing that "word of
truth" and "correct standard" are to be understood
sarcastically rather than at face value, making fun of other
thinkers' belief in these things (which would also render the
thought less dogmatic; it would not simply be a declaration of
falsehood). But whether the word *muthos*, all by itself, can
carry this weight of significance--or whether, if that is what
Timon had intended, he would not have chosen some less ambiguous means
of expressing it--is open to question. It is fair to say that no
resolution of these matters is in sight.
## 7. Influences on Pyrrho
Many different philosophical antecedents have been claimed for Pyrrho.
Since we know very little about which philosophical currents Pyrrho
may have been acquainted with, such claims are bound to be in large
measure speculative. There are, however, a couple of exceptions to
this; as noted at the outset, Pyrrho was associated with Anaxarchus
and was reported to have encountered some unnamed Indian thinkers. The
little that we know of Anaxarchus seems to suggest that his philosophy
had a good deal in common with Pyrrho's. Diogenes Laertius
(9.60) ascribes to him an attitude of *apatheia* and
*eukolia*, 'freedom from emotion' and
'contentedness'; as noted earlier, *apatheia* is
used in some sources to describe Pyrrho's attitude as well, and
the combination of the two terms seems to describe something close to
the state cultivated by Pyrrho. We also hear from Sextus Empiricus
that Anaxarchus "likened existing things to stage-painting and
took them to be similar to the things which strike us while asleep or
insane" (*M* 7.88). This has often been taken as an early
expression of a form of epistemological scepticism. But it may also be
taken as an ontological comment on the insubstantiality of the world
around us; it is *things* (as opposed to our impressions of
things) that are assimilated to stage-sets and the contents of dreams
and fantasies. Either way, the remark looks like an anticipation of
the position expounded in the Aristocles passage; the first
reading conforms to the epistemological interpretation of that
passage, and the second to the metaphysical interpretation. It
appears, then, that Pyrrho may have borrowed to a considerable extent
from Anaxarchus, especially if the Aristocles passage as a whole
represents Pyrrho's thought.
We do not know the identity of the "naked wise men" whom
Pyrrho met in India, or what they thought. There are reports of other
meetings between Indian and Greek thinkers during Alexander's
expedition, and these tend to emphasize the Indians'
extraordinary impassivity and insensitivity to pain and hardship. It
is not unlikely that Pyrrho, too, was impressed by traits of this
kind. Though precedents for his ideal of *ataraxia* exist in
earlier Greek philosophy as well, his reported ability to withstand
surgery without flinching is exceptional in the Greek context (and
quite distinct from anything in later Pyrrhonism); if we believe this
story, it is tempting to explain it by way of some form of training
from the Indians. Some scholars have sought to establish more detailed
links between the thought of the Aristocles passage and various
currents in ancient Indian philosophy; and Beckwith (2015) finds in
Pyrrho an authentic representative of early Buddhism. But there is at
least room for debate about how far these similarities really go. From
an opposing perspective, some have suggested that the linguistic
barriers would have ruled out an interchange of any great
philosophical subtlety between the Indians and Pyrrho. But this may be
overly pessimistic; the expedition lasted a number of years, and some
people manage to learn new languages remarkably quickly.
Beyond these figures with attested connections to Pyrrho, it is
plausible to suppose a certain influence on Pyrrho from Democritus.
Pyrrho is reported to have had a special admiration for Democritus
(Diogenes Laertius 9.67, citing Pyrrho's associate Philo);
Democritus is one of the few philosophers besides Pyrrho himself who
seems to escape serious criticism in Timon's *Lampoons*;
and Anaxarchus belonged in the tradition of thinkers stemming from
Democritus. The influence may have been mainly in the ethical area;
Democritus, too, had an ethical ideal that is recognizably a
forerunner to Pyrrho's *ataraxia*. If one adopts the
epistemological interpretation of Pyrrho's philosophy, one may
see an additional area of influence in Democritus' sceptical
pronouncements about the prospects for knowledge of the world around
us.
Alternatively, if one interprets Pyrrho along metaphysical lines, one
may be inclined to look to Plato and the Eleatics as possible
influences. Timon's verdicts on these figures in the
*Lampoons* are at least partially favorable; and, as was hinted
at earlier on, the dim view of sensibles that is suggested by a number
of Plato's dialogues--but also anticipated by the
Eleatics--seems to have something in common with Pyrrho's
view of reality (on the metaphysical interpretation) as indeterminate.
The difference, of course, is that Pyrrho does not suggest any higher
level of reality such as Plato's Forms or the Eleatic Being.
## 8. Pyrrho's Influence
Pyrrho's relation to the later Pyrrhonists has already been
discussed. Given the importance of Pyrrhonism in earlier modern
philosophy, Pyrrho's indirect influence may be thought of as
very considerable. But beyond his being adopted as a figurehead in
later Pyrrhonism--itself never a widespread philosophical
movement -- Pyrrho seems to have had very little impact in the
ancient world after his own lifetime. Both Cicero and Seneca refer to
Pyrrho as a neglected figure without a following, and the surviving
testimonia do not contradict this impression. It is possible that he
had some influence on the form of scepticism adopted by Arcesilaus and
other members of the Academy; the extent to which this is so is
disputed and difficult to assess. It is also possible that the
Epicureans, whose aim was also *ataraxia*, learned something
from Pyrrho; there are indications of an association between Pyrrho
and Nausiphanes, the teacher of Epicurus. But if so, the extent of the
Epicureans' borrowing was strictly limited. For them,
*ataraxia* is to be attained by coming to understand that the
universe consists of atoms and void; and the Epicureans'
attitude towards the senses was anything but one of mistrust. |