Unresolving Paradox: Heraclitus' Harmony of Holism and Individualism
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Unresolving Paradox: Heraclitus’ Harmony of Holism and Individualism Koen Vacano Bachelor Thesis University of Amsterdam, Department of Political Science, Political Theory Student ID: 10001554 E-mail: [email protected] Supervisor: Sebastiaan Tijsterman Second assessor: Martin van Hees January 2014 Unresolving Paradox: Heraclitus’ Harmony of Holism and Individualism Koen Vacano Who wrote these words? Did ‘I’ write them, a free person with the internal desire to pose this question? Or was it the social ‘me’ who wrote them, my role as a student observing the practice of writing a catchy and thought-provoking introduction? In short, who am I? Is my identity constituted by some personal essence or by social roles (Hollis, 1994)? Second, in what way am I responsible for the contents of this thesis? Am I responsible if I completely conform to the expectations of university, supervisor, and second assessor? Surely then it would not be my own words I wrote, so how could I be responsible for them? Still, if there were no academic regulations to answer to, how could I be held accountable for the contents? So is responsibility to be equated with accountability or individual discretion (Harmon, 1995)? These are just two examples of dichotomies, literally ‘cuts in two’, divisions into two mutually exclusive, opposed and contradictory categories that draw the battle lines for almost every conceptual debate in socio-political science: republican versus liberal citizenship (Bellamy, 2008), structure versus agency (Giddens, 1984), public versus private (Weintraub, 1997), positive versus negative liberty (Berlin, 1958) – though obviously diverse, these pervasive dichotomies are similar in one respect: they all “reflect the interminable struggle to define a proper relation of the individual to the collectivity,” the relation of part to whole (Harmon, 1995: 57). The perseverance of these debates rests upon the opposition of two irreconcilable definitions of this relation at the ontological- epistemological level. Holism on the one hand proceeds from the assumption that all individual behaviour is determined and thus explainable by collective social structures (Hollis, 1994). Individualism on the other hand maintains that society is nothing but an aggregate of individuals and consequently that all collective ‘structures’ or institutions must ultimately be explained by reference to individual human behaviour (Hollis, 1994). As long as there is no established way of deciding between these two mutually-exclusive fundaments, dichotomous debates are impossible to overcome, since every conclusion is intrinsically open to attack by reasoning from the opposite premise (MacIntyre in Harmon, 1995: 37). Making progress in any of these debates thus requires overcoming the central holism-individualism dichotomy, which is the purpose of this thesis. During the last three decades the development of such middle positions has increasingly enjoyed scientific interest. Most recently, Sawyer (2002) and List and Spiekerman (2013) have convincingly argued that certain aspects of holism are completely reconcilable with certain aspects of individualism. Regrettably, they do not try their hand at uniting holist and individualist ontology, and merely argue for the possibility of combining individualist ontology with holist methodology (List & Spiekerman, 2013: 629). The most influential attempt to unite the two ontologies remains Anthony Giddens’ theory of ‘structuration’ (1980), which argues significantly that structures and agents stand in a reciprocal relation, i.e. the one cannot exist without the other. Even Giddens however cannot avoid the dichotomous reasoning of the holist and individualist ontologies, and invokes in turn the dominance of the one to deny the dominance of the other (Callinicos, 1985, cf. §1). Giddens, as much as List and Spiekerman and the holist and individualist approaches, still assumes an utterly 1 rationalist ontology, which departs from the Aristotelian axiom that it is impossible “that the same thing is and is not”1 (Metaph. 1005b). Therefore, if this thesis is to succeed in its ambition of transcending the holism-individualism divide, it must start from a different perspective than the rational basis of thought in which something cannot be its opposite. Indeed, this approach would need to be paradoxical, both in its original Greek meaning of ‘against-assumptions’ and in its modern meaning of a ‘self-contradictory thing, situation or statement’ (Harmon, 1995: 72-73). Such paradoxical philosophy has been rare2; so rare indeed that its primary proponent may still be found in the sixth century BC3, in the presocratic Heraclitus. Called ‘the obscure’ by Aristotle (Mu.396.b20) and a ‘cuckoo-like, mob-reviling riddler’ by Timon (D. L. 6.1) because of the incomprehensible aphorisms he wrote, the Ephesian philosopher was always destined to remain non-canonical. The central claim of this thesis however is that precisely this ‘obscure’ thinking and the concomitant appreciation of paradox as a legitimate social and scientific category – both in ontology and epistemology – offers a perspective on the individualism-holism dichotomy that has the power to transcend the current polarised debate. Although Heraclitus has been an inspiration to many eminent philosophers such as Nietzsche, Hegel and Heidegger, who have consequently developed interesting perspectives on the relationship between individual and collective of their own, it is necessary to limit the current inquiry to Heraclitus. This is not only because the approximately 130 extant fragments prove sufficiently numerous and difficult to interpret; it is also because, while those inspired by Heraclitus have generally used his thought as an asset to their own moral, ontological and historical theories, Heraclitus’ philosophy completely centres on the present issue. Like all presocratic philosophy, Heraclitus is concerned with the basics, with the nature or ‘physis’ of reality as a whole: what is and what is not? What can we know and how can we know it? What is the world made of and how does it change? Since the answers to these basic questions are the primary source of disagreement between holism and individualism, a new perspective on the debate can only be arrived at by reconsidering these fundamentals. Because of the obscurity of the fragments, their reception through texts of later authors only, and the minimal quantity of reliable secondary sources, interpreting Heraclitus is not an easy task. Still there may be some methodological footholds to start from. First, although the fragments apparently concern a great variety of subjects, Heraclitus consistently refers to the truth he reveals, the ‘logos’, in the singular4. Any interpretation of the fragments should therefore at least attempt to construe a coherent vision of reality which flows from them5 by (following standard hermeneutic practice) continually relating part to whole and vice versa (cf. Curd, 1991: 533-534, Dilcher, 1995: 7-8, Kahn, 1 Translations in this thesis are my own, unless otherwise mentioned. 2 Hegel is another thinker who can be said to propose a paradoxical philosophy, which, as he himself admits, is greatly inspired by Heraclitus (1892: 279). His take on paradox and Heraclitus will be discussed in §4. 3 Although the dating is a matter of some controversy, Appolodorus is generally followed in placing Heraclitus’ ‘akmè’ (someone’s ‘prime’ at the age of forty) around 500 BC (Hussey, 2006: 88, Kirk, 1954: 3). 4 However it should be noted that he uses the plural ‘logoi’ to refer to other authors’ works (DK 108). 5 From varying perspectives philosophers have disagreed with this idea. In a post-modernist vein for example, Waugh claims: “The style and content of Heraclitus’ sayings, as well as the notion that philosophy as we know it had yet to emerge, suggests we should be wary of reading too much philosophy, let alone philosophical profundity into these fragments” (Waugh, 1991: 614). Though her emphasis on “word-play, riddling, puns, orational style and exploitation of popular sayings” (614) is valuable to interpreting the fragments, there is no evidence to support that this makes Heraclitus less serious about his philosophical message. 2 1979: 95). Second, the fragments are inescapably intentionally paradoxical (Dilcher, 1995: 7, Kahn, 1979: 91-2, Maly, 1980: 45, Waugh, 1991: 614); ingenious linguistic tinkering – “the bow [βιός] has the name of life [βίος], but the function of death” (DK 48) – shows that much effort has been put in making the text intrinsically counter-intuitive. Interpretation should therefore not start with, as one is inevitably eager to, trying to solve the paradoxes, but with explaining why the fragments are paradoxical in the first place (Kahn, 1979: 20). Third, accepting the post-structuralist ‘death of the author’, this thesis has no intention of singling out a Grundbedeutung of the fragments (following Kahn, 1979: 88). Instead, recognizing the multiplicity of possible meanings, it undertakes the more modest but by no means less difficult attempt of construing from the fragments a coherent perspective on the relation between collective and individual, which has explicit relevance to modern readers. The acceptance of historical context as a legitimate limit to interpretation – it would be folly to attribute concepts such as ‘holism’ and ‘individualism’ to Heraclitus – does not preclude reading him with present-day applicability. The contents of this thesis are divided into four parts: §1 explicates