NEW BOOKS 307 Two Studies in the Greek Atomists. By DAVID J. FDRLEY. Princeton University Press, 1967. Pp. viii+256. 60s. THIS volume has a more general interest than its title might suggest. For the two Epicurean doctrines which Professor Furley investigates were attempts to deal with serious philosophical problems, and he is concerned Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LXXIX/314/307/1173624 by guest on 27 September 2021 not only to decide precisely what these doctrines were but also to make them intelligible as responses to previous discussion. His particular claim is that Epicurus was decisively influenced in these matters by his knowledge of some of the works of Aristotle. The first and much the longer of the two Studies in this book deals with the theory of' minimal parts ' of atoms. After a close analysis of the rele- . vant texts of Epicurus and Lucretius, Furley traces the development of problems about divisibility and movement from the Eleatics to Epicurus. His treatment is scholarly but not forbidding: the important texts are translated into English, and he never loses sight of the purpose of his research—to understand and illuminate a sequence of philosophical theories and arguments. The writing is clear and forceful, and difficult topics are expounded with great skill. The discussions of Zeno and of Aristotle's critique of atomism are particularly rewarding. Furley's conclusion about Epicurus may be summed up as follows. Epicurus seeks to meet the arguments of Aristotle's Physics Z, not by claiming that a magnitude may contain an infinite number of actual parts, nor by adopting the notion of a potential infinite, but by affirming the existence of parts which have extension but are ' theoretical minima', units of minimum extension. He accepts as a corollary that there must be indivisible units of time and motion also. Accepting Aristotle's proof that difference of speed implies the divisibility of time and distance, he holds that there are no real differences of speed: atoms all move at the same (inconceivable) speed, it is only compounds that present the appearance of moving at different speeds, and this is because of the variety of directions in which the component atoms move. Furley does not pretend to examine all the obscurities and difficulties in this set of views, but he succeeds brilliantly in showing that they fill an intelligible place in the history of a certain key problem in Greek philosophy. In a brief chapter on Epicurus and Hume he brings out the affinities between the Epicurean theory of indivis- ibles and Hume's theory of space and time. The second Study asks how the notorious Epicurean doctrine of the atomic swerve was supposed to save libera voluntas and to provide for the possibility of moral appraisal within the framework of atomic determinism. It is evidently implausible to posit a separate uncaused swerve for each individual action, and to make that the ground for holding the agent responsible for the act. What part then does the swerve play in safe- guarding moral responsibility? Lucretius recognises two threats to freedom, the external force of atomic collisions and an inner necessity. A fragment of Epicurus supplements this: ' admonishing and combating and reforming each other, as having the cause in themselves, and not just in their initial constitution and in the automatic necessity of that which surrounds and enters.' Furley finds that these two factors correspond to two threats to responsibility that Aristotle deals with in N.E. Ill, the claim that the features of external things determine what we do, and the claim that our own character determines what we do. Aristotle says that one cannot blame externals, for how we react to them depends upon our character; and we cannot disclaim responsibility for what our character 308 NEW BOOKS leads us to do, because we ourselves did—and need not have done—the things that built up our character. Epicurus meets the first point in the same way, except that where Aristotle speaks of character or heads he refers to the physical structure or pattern of a man's soul-atoms. The swerve is Epicurus' answer to the second point: it provides the break in causal continuity which Aristotle had implied to be necessary if responsibility Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LXXIX/314/307/1173624 by guest on 27 September 2021 were not to be passed back indefinitely. ' The theory of the swerve asserts merely that our actions are not caused conjointly by the environ- ment and our parentage.' So my responsibility for my actions depends ultimately on there being at least one feature of my original make-up which was not causally determined by the antecedent dance of the atoms. Not one swerve per action, but one swerve per agent. Furley points out that if this is the role of the swerve in Epicurean ethics it is not surprising that there is no mention of it in Lucretius' close account of the psychology of action; by the same token Aristotle does not go on about a man's responsibility for building up bis character when he gives in De Motu Animalium his detailed psycho-physical account of action. It may well seem that there must be something wrong with the project of saving responsibility if it can be done or must be done by postulating for each free agent an early uncaused atomic swerve. One is reminded of attempts to exploit the Indeterminacy principle in defence of free-will. But Aristotle's position is less clearly unsatisfactory only because it is less clear: the status of agent and acts in the formative period of life is left unexplained. Plato put the issue vigorously at Timae.ua 87 ab; and elsewhere in the Ethics (X.9) Aristotle himself emphasises the crucial influence of natural endowment and environmental influence upon the growth of character—without re-opening the question of personal res- ponsibility. In an obscure passage of the Eudemian Ethics (1248al5-29) he seems to raise a question about the original source of difference between different individuals, and to attribute it to ' the divine in us '. This is grand talk, but it is only a dodge and not a solution to the problem about personal responsibility. This book is admirably printed and produced. It contains a full bibliography and Indices. J. L. AOKBIIX.

Parmenides: a Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays. By LEONARDO TABAN. Princeton University Press, 1965. Price 80s. AMONG the Presocratics Parmenides occupies a special place. Others are proto-scientists, but he is the first who could be counted a philosopher according to our modern division of disciplines. He belongs not only to the history of ideas but to the history of problems; and bis problem has two marks of the philosophical—it concerns the acceptability of a paradox, and the paradox is arrived at by a priori argument in absolutely general terms. This pioneering role was better understood, or at least more clearly indicated, by Plato than by the historically influential Aristotle, who named Zeno, Parmenides' pupil and fellow Eleatic, the inventor of dialectic (Diogenes Laertius, 9.5.25), and consigned Parmenides himself to the succession of cosmogonists surveyed in Metaphysics A and Physics A (in neither of which is Zeno mentioned). Dr. Taran pays close attention to the arguments of the first and more