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Endoxic Method and Aristotelian Naturalism

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Endoxic Method and Aristotelian Naturalism ENDOXIC METHOD & ARISTOTELIAN NATURALISM FRITS GÅVERTSSON DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, LUND UNIVERSITY Room 312 Kungshuset, Lundagård, 222 22 Lund, SWEDEN e-mail: [email protected] Phone:+46768482707 The conception of ethical theory that underlies the approaches here considered belongs to a Socratic-Aristotelian tradition in moral philosophy. This tradition can be said to consist in a methodological stance—derived from a, possibly non-constructive, methodology classically attributed to Socrates (the method of elenchus) and further developed by Aristotle into the more constructive endoxic method—and a commitment to a form of naturalism (derived primarily from Aristotle that we therefore can label Aristotelian naturalism). The methodological stance and the naturalist commitment constitute perennial themes within western moral philosophy—ranging from ancient ethics to present-day analytic moral philosophy—that helps us to demarcate this tradition, our focal point of inquiry. While not all eudaimonists—in short those holding a position in substantive ethical theory according to which the telos (final end), or summum bonum (highest good), of human life and conduct is eudaimonia (happiness) and that the achievement of this goal is closely linked to the acquisition and exercise of moral virtue(s)—need accept either the naturalist commitment or the methodological stance the major systems, such as Epicureanism, Stoicism and Aristotelianism, developed in the Hellenistic era do.1 A central element of the methodological stance is traceable to what is commonly2 referred to as the Socratic3 elenchus (argument of refutation; cross-examining; to shame; to refute; to prove)4: Socrates’ method of argument in a number of dialogues which, partly for this reason of methodological consistency, are usually grouped together as Plato’s ‘Socratic’, ‘early’, or ‘elenctic’, dialogues (where Plato is taken to recreate the method and doctrines of the historical Socrates). 1 Plato is traditionally read as rejecting both the naturalist commitment and the methodological stance while retaining the basic tenents of eudaimonism, for instance. 2 Gregory Vlastos (in “The Socratic Elenchus”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Vol. 1: 27-58; 71-74, reprinted as “The Socratic Elenchus: method is all” in Vlastos, Gregory, Socratic Studies, Cambridge University Press 1994:1- 29n7) cites George Grote (1865) as the first to use the term as a label for Socrates’ method (closely followed by Lewis Campbell in 1867 and Henry Sidgwick in 1872 (in “the Sophists”, Journal of Philology Vol. 4:288-307)), however the term was first introduced to a Modern-day English speaking audience in 1941 via the first edition of Richard Robinson’s Plato’s Earlier Dialectic (Cornell University Press, 1941), the second edition of which had a huge influence on the scholarly community upon its release in Britain in 1953. The cementation of the term was made definite by Vlastos’ seminal 1983 paper. 3 Admittedly, this tradition is traceable even further back than Socrates. Lesher, James, H., ”Parmenidean Elenchos”, 19-35 in Scott, Gary Alan (ed.), Does Socrates Have a Method? Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002 (a revised reprint of “Parmenides’ Critique of Thinking: The Pouldēris Elenchos of Fragment 7”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984): 1-30) traces its Parmenidean roots (on this see also n14 below), and Hayden W. Ausland (in “Forensic Characteristics of Socratic Argumentation”, 36-60 in Scott, Gary Alan (ed.), Does Socrates Have a Method? Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002) argues that Socrates’ method is influenced by methods of persuasion derived from Greek poetry and rhetoric. 4 The term lacks an established etymology, but Lesher, James, H., ”Parmenidean Elenchos”: 19-28 makes a compelling case for a semantic slide from (i) “shame” and “disgrace” commonly associated with failure with regards to military (or semi-military) valour to (ii) the tests by means of which shame is incurred to (iii) a wide range of contests and tests other than (quasi-)military ones’ such as the testing of a poet’s works by public opinion. (iv) By mid 5th century the term (and its cognates) signify a test for a thing’s (true) nature or person’s mettle (vi) In, what we would call, a philosophical context after this point the focus is narrowed to (cross-) examination of a person’s words for truth or falsity. Even though it is far from clear how we are to properly understand Socratic elenchus5 Gregory Vlastos’ account of what he calls “standard elenchus”6, essentially a process wherein an interlocutor is asked to state a thesis (p)—usually a definition of an ethical concept—and Socrates goes on to show how its negation (¬p) follows from further propositions (q, r) asserted7 by Socrates that the interlocutor (and Socrates, for the most part8) assents to and that, thus, the conjunction (p & q & r) is false9, can serve as a point of departure. At this point interpretations divide between those who argue that the elenchus ends here (all that has been show is that {p & q & r} is inconsistent)10 and those who argue that the elenchus continues and establishes one of the conjuncts (usually, though not always, p) as false due to the fact that the others enjoy some special status (they are prima facie plausible, instances of endoxa, believed by Socrates, etc.).11 Plato is, to borrow a terminology from Arius Didymus, at least poluphōnos (of many voices) if not poludoxos (of many opinions or doctrines).12 Whatever position one is compelled to take with regards to the “Socratic problem”, Plato’s usage of the dialogue form, the ordering of the dialogues, and other issues—all of which makes problematic the attribution of a systematic ethical theory to either Socrates or Plato—it would appear that cross-examinations (elenchi) classically attributed to Socrates questioned common conceptions of the fundamental values of human life and everyday notions such as’ ‘virtue’ in a way that necessitated a widening of the scope of inquiry. This widening of scope led to the inclusion of not only scrutiny of common opinion and socio-political conditions of morality but also its metaphysical, epistemological and logical grounding leading to the development of explicit systematic ethical theory. This development, in turn, necessitated the formulation of more constructive dialectical methodological approaches such as Plato’s Maieutics.13 This scrutiny of common opinion carried 5 The Platonic dialogues give varying accounts and presentations of this central element (that is never baptized by either Socrates or Plato) and seem lacking in explicit meta-philosophical discussion. See Vlastos, Gregory, ”The Socratic Elenchus”, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 79 No. 11, 711-714: 712). Even if Vlastos is here perhaps stretching the rational reconstruction somewhat in attributing to the historical Socrates (and Plato) a clear distinction between ethical inquiry, meta-ethics and meta-philosophical theorizing even though passages such as Apology 19b, Sophistical refutations 183b7 and Metaphysics 987b1 hints at something akin to such a distinction.) 6 Vlastos, Gregory, ”The Socratic Elenchus”. See also Frede, Michael, “Plato’s Arguments and the Dialogue Form.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Supplementary volume. Methods of Interpreting Plato and his Dialogues where it is argued that Vlastos’ forth step is incompatible with the aphorentic nature of the early dialogues. 7 Here the Socratic elenchus differs from its earlier predecessor the Zenonian paradox, in which the refutands are unasserted counterfactuals and instances of reductio ad absurdum. A common element to both methodologies, under the assumption that Zeno targets common beliefs rather than some technical Pythagorean stance (as argued, most influentially, by Tannery, P., ‘Le Concept Scientifique du continu: Zenon d'Elee et Georg Cantor’, Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger, 20(1885): 385, and more recently by Matson, W. I., ‘Zeno Moves!’, in A. Preus (ed.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy VI: Before Plato, State University of New York Press, 2001), is a drive towards the re-valuation of commonly voiced opinions. 8 Euthyphro 7b2-4 provides a notable exception. 9 Ex. Charmides 160e2-161b4: p: self-control (sōphrosunē) is a sense of shame (aidōs)(160e2-5); (q) self-control is fine (kalon) and good (160e13); (r) Homer was right to say that a sense of shame is not always a good thing (161a2-4). 10 Main problems for this ”non-constructivist” group are (i) to account for passages (such as Gorgias 479e, 505e, 509a, Crito 46b-e, Charmides 166d, 165b) where Socrates apparently takes his elenchus to have constructive results. (ii) How is Socrates able to defend positive convictions granted that the elenchus constitutes his sole philosophical method? (iii) How is the distinction between eristic (debate seen as a form of pastime without any aim for truth) and elenchus to be maintained? 11 The main problem for the constructivist is, of course, to make sense of Socrates’ famous disavowal of knowledge. 12 Arius Didymus Introdution to Ethics (if he is indeed the author), preserved in Strobaeus Eclogae 2. 13 It is possible to tell a story similar to the Aristotelian one we are currently concerned with about the development of this Platonic-ironic branch of the western philosophical tradition that would presumably trace the roots of the maieutic method to Pythagorean doctrines concerned with cleansing (catharsis) and reminiscence (that develop into Plato’s technical usage of recollection (anamnesis)) and practices, rites and poetry of Ancient Orphism and include thinkers such as Kierkegaard (who, in his master’s thesis The Concept of Irony, argues that Socratic midwifery is only possible as an element within, or at least in constant conjunction with Socratic irony), over to Aristotle’s philosophical method, where an extensive review of pre-existing opinions on a given subject precedes Aristotle’s statement of his own view.
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