Chris Howard's Writing Blog

For the love of...

Some people love money, some people love rock and roll, others it's ice cream, chocolate is often thought of amorously--or at least for a good fondling.  Hmmm.  I'm pretty fond of all those, but there's a special place in my heart for books.  (Just a little for books, and all the rest is for Alice). Old books.  I have some oldies. 

Here's the colophon and the first page of a Latin translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, printed in the wonderful city of Venice on June 25th, 1516.  We're talking a handful of years after Christopher Columbus set sail...uh...across the ocean blue.  This one's the oldest book on my shelves.  Printer's mark: The circle with a double cross with the letters O.S.M, the initials of Octavianus Scotus Modoetiensis--Ottaviano Scoto of Monza.

Click the pics to see rather large versions of them.

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Aristotle on the value of biology and Heraclitus taking a dump

Here's Aristotle trying to convince his largely aristocratic students that studying the "less valuable animals," such as fish and rodents and hen's eggs (Not just cavalry horses and lions) is a valuable pastime in itself.  There are things to learn about their actions, the habitats in which they thrive, their eating, sleeping, mating behavior.  Aristotle--before there was a science of biology--had to go out of his way to make it clear that examining all animals and their ways is a worthy exercise.

Read this passage from Parts of Animals (De Partibus Animalium):

(PA I 5, 645a4)  For this reason we should not be childishly disgusted at the examination of the less valuable animals. For in all natural things there is something marvelous. Even as Heraclitus is said to have spoken to those strangers who wished to meet him but stopped as they were approaching when they saw him warming himself at the oven—he bade them to enter without fear, ‘For there are gods here too’—so too one should approach research about each of the animals without disgust, since in every one there is something natural and good.

Here's what's really cool about this passage.  The phrase "warming himself at the oven" is thought to be slang referring to going to the bathroom, i.e., sitting on the pot, taking a dump.  "There are gods here too."  Heraclitus' use of "gods" doesn't refer to actual divinities, but to processes worth discovering, exploring--the idea that some value may be gained by studying what would be considered the lowest of functions of the body.

Of course, another quote--the very famous fragment--from Heraclitus has him saying, "Everything flows..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
http://www.non-contradiction.com/2007/09/on-the-parts-of.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/

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Writers Love Books

I'm a huge fan of ebooks.  I want them to succeed.  I've been using a Sony Reader (PRS-500) regularly for about ten months, and I love it.  I think it works, it fits in my hand, it has the right weight, the eInk display is so page-like.  It's not backlit like a computer screen.  It's like a real book--so much so that book lights work well with it.  I don't buy ebooks nearly as often as I buy print books, but I do shop at Fictionwise and Amazon (for ebooks as well as print).

And then again...it's not quite a real book.

I also collect books.  Real books.  I specialize in a few areas, but my prizes are all works of Aristotle.  I have well over two-hundred books by, on, about Aristotle, Aristotle's philosophical works, his place in the universe, on Aristotelian commentators.  I have books printed in 2007.  I have books printed in the early 1500's.  The oldest was printed on the 25th of July, 1516 by the family of the famous Venetian printer Ottaviano Scoto.   (The printer's mark of Ottaviano Scoto is a circle with a double cross with the letters O.S.M, the initials of Octavianus Scotus Modoetiensis--Ottaviano Scoto of Monza).

It's the oldest in my collection, but it's not my favorite, which is a 1550 Madius edition of Aristotle's Poetics.  I pulled it out of the bookcase tonight, which I don't do often enough, and I just flipped through the pages, smelled 457 years of book.  It's a big book, folio sized, with stiff end boards.  It's in Greek and Latin.  It is astoundingly beautiful--so beautiful in fact, that I cannot imagine it ever being supplanted by anything as square and plastic and electronic as an eReader.  Perhaps used in combination with devices able to store, search and display thousands of books, but not displaced.  Never displaced.

I have a pretty wild imagination, but I can't imagine it happening.

In case you're wondering, the name of this blog, Theophrastus, comes from the name of a friend and student of Aristotle.

IF: moon

Study the moon in ancient Athens.  Here's my entry for this week's Illustration Friday topic: moon.  Three Athenian gentleman trying to settle an argument over what causes the shadow on the moon.  Is it the earth blocking the rays of Helios? 

I thought it would be cool to knock out the Acropolis with the centered temple of Athena Parthenos against the night sky.  Not really sure if I pulled it off.  Watercolor on 300# hotpressed.  Detail view below.  Click the pics to see them larger.

Detail:

11k into Aristotle

Okay, I spent the weekend painting more than writing, but I'm back at it with the first four chapters of my YA Aristotle novel, a solid 11,000 words in the last week--and another 20k in pretty rough shape I've culled from an old Aristotle novel. Not sure how much of this stuff I'm going to use.

I've done something a little different this time.  I wrote my query letter early.  It's done.  I expect to rewrite it at some point, and it will get a few more passes--more than most of my query letters do.  What's strange is that it was much easier to write.  Not sure if it's because I'm just getting better at building a query letter or if there's something about tapping into all the this-is-going-to-be-the-coolest-story-ever energy at the beginning stages of a novel.

25 Editions

A week ago or so I blogged about the number of fiction writing books I have on the shelves, but I left out the greatest of them all:  Aristotle's Poetics, which, even in its incomplete state, has a lot to say on plotting, characterization, and the nature of art.  Because it's Aristotle, I've gone crazy and, over the years, have purchased just about every edition I could find, at least twenty-five of them, different translations and texts.

The folio on the bottom is the prize of my collection, the 1550 Madius edition of the Poetics.  Just above that is Twining's two volume translation with commentary (1700's).  I have an 1830's Bekker edition.  I have a dozen and a half more.  I'm missing some from the pic.  I have a Castelvetro edition that's somewhere on the shelves.  I also left out a 1597 Riccobono Latin trans.  I didn't include any of the pure commentaries or volumes on the Poetics—if they didn't include a translation.  However, that Averroes' Middle Commentary slipped in somehow when I was selecting the books.

If you want to read some online editions:  http://www.non-contradiction.com

Plato was right!

Well, sort of.  There is no world of the Forms, no other place stuffed with reified abstractions that reflect dimly into our world.  That part of it's nonsense. 

Aristotle understood the nature of things.  I'm thinking of Raphael's School of Athens where Plato is pointing up to some imaginary World of Forms and Aristotle is holding his hand level, basically telling his teacher, "Settle down there, old man.  You don't need to wander off to another world.  It's all right in front of you.  You just have to get out of your cave once in a while." 

Yup.  Perfection is here in the real world.  You just have to look for it.  But sometimes chance throws you one and you stumble on it.

 

My son, Christopher, has proof.  He found the Form of Acorn in the woods.  He found the archetype.  This is the acorn that all other acorns in the universe strive to become.  This is the Form of Acorn.  This is the Parmenidean One of Acorns.  This acorn says "look on me and despair all you other acorns, for you will never be as pure or perfect as me.  You may share in my acornness, but don't push it."  This acorn, as beautiful as it is, has an attitude.   

I can't wait to see the oak!

If only. . .

this wasn't a Photoshop trick.  Aristotle action figure.  I particularly like "Aris-Total Destruction."

http://www.geocities.com/krinklyman2/aristotle.html

Romanian language Aristotle site

Claudiu Mesaroş has launched www.aristotel.ro, a Romanian language site with translated works of Aristotle, biographical information, quotes, and news (see Lyceum archeological project).

I don't post as often as I used to on Aristotle, but if you're interested: http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/the0phrastus/aristotle/index.html

Or see my Aristotle site:  non-contradiction.com

Aristotle Rediscovered

My wife just brought home a book with the long title, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages by Richard E. Rubenstein. 

I've just opened it, read the cover, haven't really gotten into it yet, but it looks like fun. 

There's another book I'm thinking about picking up that looks into the actual migration of the texts called,  The Aristotle Adventure: A Guide to the Greek, Arabic, & Latin Scholars Who Transmitted Aristotle's Logic to the Renaissance by Burgess Laughlin

I don't know that much about the transmission of Aristotle's works from the library shelves of the Lyceum to the Dark Ages, not much more than the general history that every intro to Aristotle devotes to the story of the works.  I think this is a fascinating subject.  Unfortunately, I only have so much time to spare on Aristotle, and what little I have I mainly focus in the Metaphysics, Poetics and his biological works.

I've read some accounts of the origins of specific texts.  The Greek Manuscripts of Aristotle's Poetics by Lobel (1933) contains the probable lineage based on philological data and handwriting analysis of the oldest existing manuscripts, but like most accounts its focus is on the derivation of the modern version of the Poetics, not on what happened to the text after Aristotle left Athens.

There are new evaluations of Aristotle's works from a philological perspective all the time, and occasional discoveries (like the scrolls at Herculaneum) that may shed new light on these questions. I have heard everything from the possibility of lost works in monasteries to the library of Tehran, hidden troves in Istanbul, etc., and there are dozens of mysterious hints of works now lost to us in various Renaissance translations.  Madius, in the introduction to his 1550 edition of the Poetics, talks about a manuscript he used while compiling his work that modern scholars are unable to track down, and there’s Victorius who, while searching the Aristotelian texts in Ridolfi’s library, came across an   "extremely ancient codex."  Makes you wish we could travel back in time.

New stuff at non-contradiction.com

A couple new things to see over at non-contradiction.com, an essay on Sophocles by Schlegel and the full Greek text of Aristotle's Poetics with Latin translation by Antonio Riccobono from Operum Aristotelis, Guillelmo Laemario edition, Lyon, 1597

Cat. 7a

In my last reading of the Categories I came across a curious line at
7a18, "Many animals, indeed, have no head."   I wonder if it carries any weight as far as when Aristotle's biological interests began?

Edghill's translation (starting about 7a16) goes something like this:

A head will be more accurately defined as the correlative of that which is 'headed', than as that of an animal, for the animal does not have a head qua animal, since many animals have no head.

During that reading of the Categories I wrote in the margin, "Off the top of your head how many headless animals can you think of?--not many."  Of terrestrial animals, I can think of worms, some insect larvae, but not many.  The majority of headless animals probably belong to the marine invertebrates: all of the Coelenterates (corals, sea anemones), all Echinoderms (sea urchins, sea stars), some of the Mollusks (bivalves, not the cephalopods: octopus, squid, etc.)

I can imagine a marine biologist casually adding to some scientific discussion, "...of course, many animals do not have heads."  But without an abiding biological interest I cannot imagine anyone making a statement like that, and especially in an off-hand manner in a non-biological treatise. 

(I can picture a young Aristotle tossing that line out at a lecture and some of the stuffier members of the Academy looking at each other with questioning stares, "Did he just say, 'animals without heads?'")

The references to the location names in HA are often used to conclude that much of Aristotle's biological study began during the so-called middle period, later on in life, decades after the Categories is typically thought to have been written. I looked through the index locorum of Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology and Cat 7a wasn't listed.  It's probably too small a reference to make any kind of case for Aristotle starting his biological studies much earlier than is usually presumed.  Still, I think an interesting remark.

Notes on Aristotle's Categories

1a…

Things are said to be named equivocally when two things have a common name (you use the same word to refer to each) but the definition differs for each.  Here's something like Aristotle’s example: we use the word “man” when referring to me and when referring to a picture of a man, Orestes, for example, in Bouguereau’s Orestes pursued by the Furies.  But when it comes to defining the referents, they differ.  A man is the animal with logos, and Orestes (in the painting) is a two-dimensional representation of a human figure.  Bouguereau’s Orestes is not a rational animal but the representation of one in a specific medium, oil paint on canvas.  (Their definitions are different, therefore they are equivocal or “homonymous’).

1a6…

Things are said to be named “univocally” when they share the same name and definition.  If you looked at a man and an ox (again, Aristotle’s example), and said both of these things are animals, you would be using animal in exactly the same way for both.  A man is an animal and so is an ox.  A man is an animal in exactly the same way an ox is an animal.

1a12…

Things are said to named “derivatively” which derive their names from some other, related name…but differ from it in termination.  Aristotle’s example is a grammarian derives his name from the word, “grammar.”  The brave from bravery, hero from heroic.  Aristotle is saying that a derivative is dependent, that you cannot have a “grammarian” without grammar.

The traditional translations of equivocal, univocal and derivative are sometimes brought into English as homonymy, synonymy and paronymy.  Harold P. Cooke, who did the Loeb edition translates the three in the traditional form but suggests that it may be helpful for the reader to substitute “ambiguous” and “unambiguous” for equivocal and univocal when thinking through the text.  He does add that “univocal” has the advantage of being a positive term.  (From Cooke’s notes: Zw,=on had two meanings, a living creature and the representation of a living creature.  We have no corresponding ambiguous noun, although we use the word, “living” of real living things and for certain artworks that are “true to life”).

1a17…

Forms of speech are either simple or composite.  Aristotle’s examples of composite are “the man runs” or “the man wins.”  His simple examples are, “man”, “ox”, “runs”, “wins.”

One aspect of Aristotle’s genius is his method of reducing high-flung abstractions down to reality, to simple, concrete things, which are then simpler to deal with.  Above all else, he understood that clarity is the primary requirement when discussing, arguing, analyzing, experimenting and just plain dealing with existence—that it is of no use arguing if we are not arguing about the same thing.  Unlike Plato, with his mystical preoccupations, Aristotle knew that we live in the only real world, that there is no supernatural realm on which to waste contemplative energy.  If there are divine things then they exist in the universe with us.  (This was, in fact, the typical Greek cultural perspective, a unique phenomenon). His purpose in the Categories is simple: to lay out the types of ways we can comprehensively describe something, real things, the things we can see, hear and touch.  He would say you have an understanding of a thing if you can analyze it in terms of the categories, most important of which is “ousia” (traditionally translated by the ambiguous term, substance), a car, man, piece of legislation.  The other categories are quantity, quality, relative, where, when, being in position, having, acting on, and being affected by.  When you apply the categories to something you come away with a thorough understanding.  When you use the categories consistently you can proceed in any direction on firm ground.  An example would be Aristotle’s son, Nikomachus is six years old, weighs one Attik talent (approx. 26kg), has brown hair and is the only son of Herpyllis (although possibly of Pythias of Artarneos).  He is at the temple of Apollo a little after dawn at the beginning of the month of Posideon (6^th month), standing on the steps, wearing a sleeveless tunic.  He is hitting a marble column with an olive branch and Aristotle is holding his shoulder so that he does not fall down the steps.

Ackrill’s translation is one of the most easily understood (from Arisotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione, tr. with notes by J.L.. Ackrill, Oxford 1963).

1a20-1b10  (usually corresponds to Chapter 2)

Of things that are (a) some are said of a subject but are not in any subject.  For example, man is said of a subject, the individual man [Sokrates], but is not in any subject.  (b) Some are in a subject but are not said of any subject. (By “in a subject” I mean what is in something, not as a part, and cannot exist separately from what it is in).  For example, the individual knowledge-of-grammar is in a subject, the soul, but is not said of any subject; and the individual white is in a subject, the body (for all color is in a body), but is not said of any subject.  (c) Some are both said of a subject and in a subject, for example, knowledge is in a subject, the soul, and is also said of a subject, knowledge-of-grammar.  (d) Some are neither in a subject nor said of a subject, for example, the individual man or individual horse—for nothing of this sort is either in a subject or said of a subject.  Things that are individual and numerically one are, without exception, not said of any subject, but there is nothing to prevent some of them from being in a subject—the individual knowledge-of-grammar is one of the things in a subject.

            Here’s a great quote from Ackrill’s notes on the Categories: “The fourfold classification of “things there are” relies on two phrases, “being in something as a subject” and “being said of something as a subject”, which hardly occur as technical terms except in the Categories.  But the ideas they express play a leading role in nearly all of Aristotle’s writings.”

Classification of “things there are”

1. “…being in something as a subject” – distinguishes, from substances, the dependent categories: qualities, quantities, etc. What is in something as a subject?  Red in an apple.
2. “…being said of (or predicable of) something as subject” - distinguishes species and genera from individuals.  Distinguishes types of things and classes of things from particulars, man and animal from Sokrates. What is said of something as subject? Sokrates is a man.

Aristotle’s four groups:

1. species and genera in the category of substance
2. individuals in categories other than substance
3. species and genera in categories other than substance
4. individuals in the category of substance

With this in mind, let’s look at what Aristotle says:

Of things themselves some are predicable of a subject, and are never present in a subject. Thus 'man' is predicable of the individual man, and is never present in a subject.  By being 'present in a subject' I do not mean present as parts are present in a whole, but being incapable of existence apart from the said subject.  (tr. Edghill).

Aristotle is saying that when we call Sokrates a man we are saying he is a man, not that man is a quality of Sokrates.  Rather, man is predicable of Sokrates.  Man is said of Sokrates.  Man is what Sokrates is.  Man is not an attribute of Sokrates.  We would never say man is “present in” Sokrates, like height or color.  You cannot have “height” without something possessing height, but you can have man without Sokrates, or any individual men.

Some things, again, are present in a subject, but are never predicable of a subject. For instance, a certain point of grammatical knowledge is present in the mind, but is not predicable of any subject; or again, a certain whiteness may be present in the body (for color requires a material basis), yet it is never predicable of anything.  (tr. Edghill).

Aristotle is saying that height is present in Sokrates but Sokrates is not height.  No individual thing can be “height”.  Height will always be something that is present in a thing but never predicable or said of a thing.

Other things, again, are both predicable of a subject and present in a subject. Thus while knowledge is present in the human mind, it is predicable of grammar. (tr. Edghill).

Aristotle is saying that “knowledge” is one of those things that can be something that is predicable or said of a subject and can also be something that is present in (an attribute) of a subject.  In terms of attribution, knowledge is in Sokrates just as height is in Sokrates.  In terms of predication, knowledge-of-grammar is something that can exist whether there is an individual there that knows grammar or not.

[There is, lastly, a class of things that] are neither in a subject nor said of [predicable of] a subject, for example, the individual man or individual horse.  For nothing of this sort is either in a subject or said of a subject.  Things that are individual and numerically one are, without exception, not said of any subject, but there is nothing to prevent some of them from being in the subject:  the individual knowledge-of-grammar is one of the things in a subject. (tr. Ackrill).

Aristotle is simply saying that individuals (particulars) cannot be said of something.  (Even if you use the word, Aristotelian, you are not attributing “Aristotle” to someone but the characteristics of Aristotle’s methods, etc. to someone.  There is only one Aristotle).

Aristotle and Plato have soul

Looking at some differences between Plato and Aristotle, their views of existence and life.  These are essentials.  (No need to open up the De Anima 3.5 can of worms). There are a few arguably contradictory elements in Aristotle’s treatment of existence and the separability of mind and body, but these are unimportant in the face of the overwhelming view in Aristotle’s works: that only particulars exist, and that the mind and body are aspects of one entity, distinguishable but not separable. 

Plato is the arch-advocate of the mind-body dichotomy.  In his view, the spiritual and physical stand opposed to each other, real and unreal, good and evil, the pure and the polluted.  He started with his super-reality of reified abstractions (the world of Forms), and then proceeded to throw every kind of expression of hate at anything related to the physical world: the body, the senses and sex are packaged as distortions, primitive urges, evil.  Plato began from the adult perspective and turned his back on the formative elements of man and life.  He ignored the progression, went right to abstractions, the universals, and awarded them the prize of reality.  Everything else, what we see around us, what we touch, smell and hear became unreal, mere shadows of the Platonic Forms.  Life, to Plato, was the physical flesh of the body, the grotesque, aging, rotting, uncontrollable stuff that burdens the soul.  If the Forms are the only real things—that which is never becoming but always is, then the body is always becoming but never is.  The body is a limited, half-existence that must be forcibly controlled, beaten down, enslaved, destroyed.  Life is physical.  Death is the release of the spirit from its physical yoke, the body.  Death is the ideal.

Aristotle, in contrast, worked his way up from the origin of knowledge hierarchically.   He studied the next step, the next piece of knowledge and physical growth that flowered out of preceding steps.  He wanted to know why we understand things as we do, and he started where one must start: with the only real world, the world around us.  He started with real things, existents, and analyzed the progression in man’s mind to abstractions.  In direct opposition to everything Plato stood for, Aristotle showed that individual things, a chair, a statue, the Parthenon, a tree are the only real things.  Abstractions are not real.  Plato’s Forms are not real.  They are simply the method that man employs to understand the world around him.  And of all the wonderful things that exist, none is more wonderful than man.  Aristotle loved life, the power and purpose of a living organism, from the lowest to the highest.  But most of all Aristotle loved man.  Man is the highest creature, the animal with logos, the most able dualizer, who can act alone and in cooperation; the only being that can create a political organization, great works of culture, travel the earth, study the skies and depths of the seas. The only being that can love wisdom.  And fundamental to Aristotle's view is that man is a living, physical being, and not some vague reflection of the Form of man.  Life is motion, and man is alive and real and acts in this world.  The mind and the body are two elements of one living being that can be distinguished but never separated.  Only the living can act.  Life is the ideal.

The Soul

For Aristotle the soul is the characteristic activity (primary function) of man, not a separable part.  If an axe had a soul it would be chopping.  You could not separate out "chopping" from the axe.  It is the function of the axe.  You cannot separate out the soul from man.  It is the function of man.  (Ari. Nicomachean Ethics, T. Irwin, notes on soul).

Give the world back

A great quote from Aristotle the Desire to Understand, Jonathan Lear, p 7-8.:

The world as such is meant to be known (by beings like us) and it invites man to fulfill his role as a systematic understander of the world.  Imagine how frustrating it would be to be born with the desire to understand in a world which did not cooperate!  The world would remain incomprehensible, and yet we would obsessionally keep bumping our heads against it.  Aristotle had great faith in the world: indeed, his philosophy is an attempt to give the world back to creatures who desire to understand it.

Kings and Poets

solus aut rex aut poeta non quotannis nascitur
[It is only king and poet who is not born every year.  From Annius Florus (circa 130 A.D.)] 

I think I got that right.   For Plato, the two rivals for philosophy, rivals for the minds of men, were kings and poets.  Plato's philosopher kings had absolute authority--and those damned poets are going to wish they'd never been born.

For Plato, those who grasp the Forms were always going to be a small group who must control, enslave, direct, think for those who do not grasp the Forms, vast numbers of them, the masses, artists, etc.  The ratio between the two groups was never going to change.  For Aristotle, those who are nurtured in a functioning polis (civilized) are an ever-growing group and percentage of the whole.  The uncivilized groups of men--"barbarians" of today did not have to remain so tomorrow.  They could join villages into a polis and in a few generations could be every bit as civilized as any Greek polis--regardless of race.  Aristotle's often accused of having an elitist us and them, Greek and non-Greek, attitude toward civilization.  But this is false.  He was familiar with most of the Greek poleis, Macedon, the satraps and cities along what is now the western Turkish coast, many of the isles in the Aegean, Persia and its holdings, Egypt, and many other Mediterranean cities.  He did not simply regard the Greeks as civilized and everyone else uncivilized.  For example, he held the Carthaginians in high regard, and Carthage was a North African city state with a population of mostly Phoenician decent.  They were non-Greek, but they were civilized, they had a polis, they had laws.  Aristotle also thought there were uncivilized Greeks, and then there's his constant harping on Athenians and others, but that's another post.

A man with a bunch of names

Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece, and that's why he's sometimes referred to as the Stagyrite (also, Stagirite).   He was called Notre Doctor (Our Doctor) by the great French Classicist, Pierre Cornielle.  He was The Master of Them Who Know to Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy.  He was The Philosopher to the Medievals.

A closer transliteration of his name would be Aristoteles.  It's often shortened to Ari. (Aristotle Onassis was Ari, Telly is also short for Aristoteles--Telly Savalas' full first name was Aristoteles).

Almost lost in translation...but you're not allowed to read it anyway

Plato on censorship (Republic 386b).  Plato's arguing that his Republic must censor (expurgate, stifle, purge, repress, etc.)  anything that makes death look bad.  According to Plato, death must be seen as a release, a good thing, "ours is not to reason why," something you really look forward to if you're to get your soldiers to the point where they fear nothing, even death:

But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away [386b] the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

Certainly not, he said.

And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?

Impossible.

Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile, but rather to commend the world below, intimating to them [386c] that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.

That will be our duty, he said.

Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses,

"I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man than rule over all the dead who have come to naught."  (Odyssey II .489 sq.)

Achilles tells Odysseus this when his ghost is called up from Hades' halls.  (Hades is the god, you go to his halls when you die).  Basically, being dead sucks, it's boring, painful, gray, dull, don't do it, live as long as you can, Odysseus my man.

It's interesting to see how the translations differ.  See Perseus for the Greek.

Samuel Butler's trans:

I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above
ground than king of kings among the dead.

Sir Desmond Lee (Penguin Classics):

I would rather be a serf in the house of some landless man, with little enough for himself to live on, than king of all dead men that have done with life;

WHD Rouse trans:

I would rather be a serf or labouring man
Under some yeoman on a little farm
Than be king paramount of all the dead

Francis Cornford:

I would rather be on earth as the fired servant of another, in the house of a landless man with little to live on, than be king over all the dead.

Chaos just isn't nice

Aristotle, following Pythagoras--as well as your typical Athenian in the street--thought the unlimited, the infinite, was evil, and the limited good.  Evil is unordered, chaotic.   The good is ordered and finite.

Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited, as the Pythagoreans conjectured, and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult- to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue;  For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

Nichomachean Ethics 1106b29, W.D. Ross Trans.

Infinitely supernatural

The concept "infinity" is a troublesome word that can be lumped in with "non-being" and "supernatural."  It can be used properly to refer to a potential, to some measurement from which the size has been abstracted, usually something very large or very small, but can never refer to an actual.  In its proper usage infinity means of indeterminate size or length.  In the context of a particular problem it may not be necessary to know the width, length or boundary of something. Unfortunately, its use spills over into the physical world and it is misapplied to existing things.  Something that is actually infinite cannot exist because it would possess no identity.  All existents must ultimately be determinate, possess a shape or be identifiable in some way. Something without bounds, without end, cannot be identified. The use of infinity in this manner would allow me to make absurd statements like, "I have a ball of string that has an indeterminate length.  No matter how much you try you cannot measure it.  There will always be more string."

Kids:  Yeah, yeah, dad.  Got it.  No infinite lengths of string.  How can you have something with a shape but without any edges?

Um...I stammer something about inverse spheres...Great question!  We'll discuss that on another day, I say, fully intending to never broach the subject again, and hoping it doesn't come up until I have some time to research it more.

A bit more supernatural

I threw this into a comment, but might as well make it a post.

Here I am, a fantasy writer, nit picking over the word.  I write about people using magic, weird things happening, entities with the power of gods, etc.  Blogging brings out the extreme Aristotelian in me.  (As does arguing with my kids).  I would say that Aristotle would say that there's nothing outside nature.  If you witnessed something unexplainable, when, if or however you end up explaining it, it would still have to be within nature.  Also, Ari would probably concede that there are proper uses of the word, supernatural, just as there are proper mathematical uses of the word, infinity, even though he put a lot of effort into proving that there's no such thing as an actual infinity.

Supernatural

Back on the topic of a couple days ago...

We can make up nonsense words like "supernatural" which means beyond nature--beyond existence, but if existence is implied in every word and concept we use how can we validly use a concept that refers to something above, prior or outside of existence?  This reveals the ridiculousness of debating about supernatural "entities" that allegedly create something out nothing and exist beyond and before existence.

Another bit of wackiness that has been around at least since the time of the Atomists (one thread was started by some of the reactionary students of Parmenides) is the notion of "non-existence" or "non-being."  What exactly is "non-being" supposed to be?  It's not like "anti-matter" which is just a term for the mirrored or opposite attributes of certain real subatomic particles.  "Non-being" is one of those ungraspable, empty concepts, like "supernatural" that theologians, philosophers and Hollywood actresses run to when they cannot fit the universe into the unrealistic package they have contrived.  To quote one of Aristotle's criticisms of Anaxagoras, "He introduces Mind to create the world mechanically, as a god is introduced on the stage in a play.  When Anaxagoras is confronted with the difficulty of explaining why a thing is of necessity, he drags Mind in sideways; in other explanations where he has a reasonable view of the cause, he uses everything rather than Mind to account for the facts."  (Met. 985a18-22.  Tr. Richard Hope).  It is interesting to note that Aristotle's rejection of "non-being" was abandoned by the third scholarch of the Lyceum, Strato of Lampaskus.  Strato did offer a rather childish explanation for his departure from Aristotle, but nothing that can be called an experiment. Strato, it seems, did not think to ask how one goes about establishing experimental criteria for demonstrating the existence of non-existence.   How would you?

Again, this shows how silly it is to say something like "there is non-existence outside the universe."  To make my point obvious replace the word "is" with "exists" and the phrase "the universe" with "everything that exists," and you wind up with "there exists non-existence outside of everything that exists."  With lunacy like this at the forefront of modern philosophy and physics it's difficult to distinguish science from slapstick.  It's as if the allegedly serious thinkers of our day have invited the three stooges onto the cognitive stage--and not as some sort of comic relief but in the role of a philosophic deus ex machina. If you dig down to the foundations of the modern physical views you will find many are long chains of arguments, high inferences built on nothing--"non-existence."

Still can't convince my kids, though.

No I will not give it a rest

It is likely that Plato's pejorative use of mimesis was influenced by the works of the Sophist, Gorgias, who used the word, apate (deception) to describe the artist's effect on the audience. (Hutton, James, Aristotle's Poetics, 1982, p 8.)   However, Gorgias' use of deception did not include an ethical aspect.  Deception was simply the method that must be employed by the artist if he is to create a successful work.  To Gorgias, artistic deception was the creation of a "dramatic illusion" for the audience.  The spectators' pleasure is directly related to the artist's deceptive skill.

Plato held up mimesis as the focus of art, but its meaning took on the full moral connotation of copying to deceive.  Mimesis became an affront to truth. The artist was a deceiver, a cheat, a poisoner of minds.  To understand Plato’s hatred of art you must understand something about the foundation of his philosophy, the so-called theory of Forms (Blogged about this last week or so).  For Plato, the world in which we live and act, the world of particulars, is sort of a shadowy copy or reflection of the world that really exists.  Only the Forms truly exist.  The Forms are the archetypes—singularly existing things—that are to be found off in their own world.  Plato’s dualistic metaphysics redounded throughout his philosophy, splitting everything in two, the physical and the spiritual, the world of Forms and this unreal world, good and evil.  Anything remotely physical or dependent on the physical was a deception that had to be purged from the mind, destroyed.

Since art is a copy of a particular thing in this world, mimesis is one step away from the world of particulars and two steps away from the Forms.  Something like this:

Real        The world in which we live        Art

Form --> Shadowy copy of Form  -->  Copy of a copy

A particular is an imperfect copy of the Form, but an artwork is even more degrading, depicting imperfect copies of particulars.  Plato twisted the mimetic effect of pleasure, the Greek cultural view, into mental poison. To Plato, the artist was moving even further away from the truth.  This is his primary reason for despising artists and their products. 

Don't get me started on Plato...

Oh, all right.

But before I start, let me say that I like Plato for a lot of reasons.  Maybe this is bordering on blasphemy for an Aristotelian, but I think Plato established the most extraordinary organization in history: the Academy.  The Academy under Plato was a playground for thinkers.  Under Plato, his organization tolerated opposing views--as long as they stood up to scrutiny.  The Academy drew the world's greatest thinkers, some of them escaping tyranny to live in Athens.  In the Academy, Eudoxus was allowed to teach what he thought was right.  In the Academy, Aristotle was allowed to openly criticize Plato and others.  Looking at the progression of ideas from the Republic to the Laws, the Academy was a place where even the teachers could learn from their students.  (After Plato died, Speusippus dorked the whole thing up--that's my view anyway).

In Plato's philosophy, what we roughly call the real world isn't real at all, but just a shadowy copy of the world of the Forms.  The particulars, the things of this world, can only be real to the extent that they "participate in the Forms."  Something that's considered beautiful merely participates in the Form of Beauty to some extent.  There aren't just Forms for complex concepts like beauty and justice, but for man as well. 

Somewhere, according to Plato, is a perfect Man of which we are all just imperfect reflections.  The world of the Forms is a supernatural realm populated with the ideal structures of particular things: universals.  These two separate worlds come together in the mind of a man only to the extent that he can remember the Forms from some inter-life stage in his development.  (Plato believed in an eternal transmigratory soul that moves from body to body through birth, death and rebirth--an eastern import.  The ancient Greek man on the street would have laughed at this--I'll see you in Hades' Halls!).  Plato's version of rationality consists of being able to "see" the participation of the universal in the particulars that "exist" in this shadowy world in which we (allegedly) live.  If you're rational in the Platonic sense then you can look at a beautiful human, Achilles, and "see" that his body participates more in the Form of beauty (is closer to perfect beauty) than the body of an ugly man, Thersites, who, according to Homer, was "the ugliest man who came beneath Ilion." 

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, how we know things, how knowledge gets into our heads.

Epistemology for Plato required the innate ability to "see" the supernatural world of Forms.  Those few with the clearest sight of the Forms would, with extensive training, become the absolute dictators--the philosopher kings--in Plato's utopian state.  A few more of the population, those with some, but not the complete ability, would hold somewhat lower positions.  Everyone else is relegated to total slavery, dominated completely, treated like mindless animals, which they are according to Plato's epistemology--these people had no access to the Forms, and therefore had to be told what to do by those who did.   Keep in mind that the majority, the masses, the "herd" were not born with the ability to grasp the Forms at all. 

Incidentally, for Plato there's a group even lower than the herd: those damn artists.  (Worthless, soul-destroying lying bastards, the lot of them).  At least the mindless animals with human shapes could be directed to perform manual labor--you know, rake the leaves, take out the trash, etc.--and labor of this kind wasn't harmful to the Republic and its "citizens." Plato denounced the effect of art as "a crippling of the mind." (Rep. 595b5).  Artists would be banished from Plato's utopia.  (He'll keep a couple guys around to write military marches and funeral dirges.  The rest of you--OUT!).

A thought on selectivity in art

Plato swept art from the realm of human activity.  Aristotle made a clean start in the field of esthetics with little Platonic baggage.  Aristotle's distinction is that mimesis is much more than mere copying.  Aristotle is not advocating naturalism. Nowhere does he say that the detail of the mimesis is supremely important. Mimesis as applied to art is a process of filtering out the non-essential and showing only what is necessary to tell the story.  He praises Homer for the pinpoint focus of the Iliad.  The genius of the artist is not in the details but in the selectivity.

More on Aristotle and Mimetic Activity

The origin of the word mimesis as an esthetic term in Aristotle's works can be traced directly to Plato's works, but it was probably part of the philosophical vernacular of the Academy, and perhaps extended to the Greek world at large.  (See Stephen Halliwell's discussion of mimesis in Aristotle's Poetics (1998) where he counters some of the claims that the term originated with Plato.  He cites the Herdotodean passage (2.78) about the Egyptian custom of carrying a miniature wooden effigy of a corpse that is "extremely realistic (memimemnon) in both painting and carving.")  Although probably not the first to tie mimesis to art, Plato must be credited with bringing the term to the forefront of esthetics, a position it held until the destruction of Romanticism in the twentieth century when art became "non-representational" and the concept of art was stripped of all meaning.  Plato, however, was not a defender of mimetic activity, denouncing the effect of art as "a crippling of the mind" (Rep. 595b5).   Artists would be banished from Plato's utopian state.  In fact it was Plato's hatred of art, so antithetical to the prevalent Classical Greek view, that popularized the subject with later Neo-Platonists (Plotinus, Proclus) and scholars of the Renaissance, and almost certainly provoked Aristotle to write a dialogue defending art. (Janko, Richard,  Aristotle Poetics I with the Tractatus Coislinanus, a Hypothetical Reconstruction of Poetics II, the Fragments of the On Poets (1987), p xiii-xiv.   "Aristotle made public his refusal to accept Plato's views on poetry in his dialog On Poets . . . The On Poets was a polished work intended for a wide audience.  Aristotle most probably published it while Plato was still alive; some of Plato's late works may even respond to the ideas it contained."  See also fragments).

Art, Mimesis and Aristotle

Our word, mimic, is rooted in the ancient Greek term, mimesis, which has also entered the English language.  From the Encarta Dictionary:  Mimesis, the imitation of life or nature in the techniques and subject matter of art and literature

Aristotle demonstrated that mimesis is the characteristic that distinguishes art from craft--the fine arts from all other productive technologies.  Mimesis is the skill the artist employs to produce a work of art, the representation of specific slices of reality--slices chosen--carefully selected--by the artist.   Aristotle develops this view of mimesis throughout the Poetics, and in typical fashion explores just about every aspect of its use in producing art. 

Plato was probably the first to lead Aristotle down the path of esthetics--the study of art.  As was often the case, Aristotle grasped the theme that his teacher introduced and explored it more thoroughly and beyond the scope of anything dreamt of by anyone at the Academy, many times in direct opposition to Platonic philosophy. 

This is the general view--that Aristotle learned much of what he was to later develop from Plato and the philosophical talk at the Academy, a view that I accept only to a certain degree.  There's little evidence that this was always the case, and in his study of art as well as biology there are other factors that probably influenced Aristotle.   He was the son of the physician and--according to tradition--friend to King Amyntus of Macedon (Father to Philip, grandfather to Alexander the Great).  Aristotle certainly had read and listened to performances of Homer and others long before leaving the North.  From early childhood, Aristotle may have spent time at the Macedonian court in Pella, and it's known that Euripides was welcomed there generations before.  With this connection and the possibility of a library of Euripidean works--and maybe some esthetic studies going on at Pella--one can at least speculate that Aristotle learned quite a bit about Greek drama prior to going to Athens.