Common to Body and Soul: Philosophical Approaches to Explaining Living Behaviour in Greco-Roman Antiquity

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Common to body and soul: philosophical approaches to explaining living behaviour in Greco-Roman antiquity

Edited by R. A. H. King

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

2006

Acknowledgments

This collection of essays owes its inception to a symposium held in Munich 8-10th September 2003, whose purpose was to bring together scholars working in the field to discuss some aspects of the philosophy of mind in antiquity that may conveniently be subsumed under the rubric “common to body and soul”. All but one of the papers presented here were read, in earlier versions, at the symposium, Thomas Johansen’s piece being the exception. None of them has appeared in its present form in print before. The editor has translated Pierre-Marie Morel’s and Thomas Buchheim’s papers into English. Many people and institutions were instrumental in making the symposium possible; the editor would like to express his gratitude to the following. The Fritz Thyssen Stiftung gave very generous financial support to the symposium. The Gesellschaft fürantike Philosophie also supported the undertaking. Ursula Steiner was most helpful in making the three days at Kardinal Wendel Haus, where the symposium was held, very en- joyable. Thomas Brunotte was of great assistance both at the symposium itself, and also in preparing the book for publication. He is responsible for the camera ready copy and the indexes to the volume. Its publication has been subsidised by Lehrstuhl III (Thomas Buchheim), Philosophie Department, LMU Munich. Sabine Vogt, who also took part in the symposium, has been exemplary as editor at de Gruyter. Finally, the volume’s editor would like to thank most warmly all participants in the symposium for their participation, and all contributors to this collection for their contributions.

R. A. H. King / Munich, September 2005

Contents

Introduction (R. A. H. King) ...... 1

Parmenides on Thinking (Edward Hussey) ...... 13

Parmenides on the Place of Mind (Roman Dilcher) ...... 31

Life Beyond the Stars: Aristotle, Plato and Empedocles (Denis O’Brien) ...... 49

Plato’s phaulon skemma: On the Multifariousness of the Human Soul (Thomas Buchheim) . . . 103

“Common to Soul and Body” in the Parva Naturalia (Pierre-Marie Morel) ...... 121

What’s New in the De Sensu? The Place of the De Sensu in Aristotle’s Psychology (Thomas K. Johansen) ...... 140

Common to Body and Soul: Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle (Robert W. Sharples) ...... 165

Interaction of Body and Soul: What the Hellenistic Philosophers Saw and Aristotle Avoided (Christof Rapp) ...... 187

Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism (Christopher Gill) ...... 209

Body and Soul in Galen (R. J. Hankinson) ...... 232

Contributors ...... 259

Index locorum ...... 261

General Index ...... 275

Introduction∗ R. A. H. King

Greco-Roman antiquity provides a wide variety of models of the relations between body and soul, and some of the most notable are associated with the phrase “common to body and soul”. This phrase is a commonplace of ancient philosophical psychology, that is the doctrines and investigations of the soul (psychê), both human and in general. Versions of the phrase occur in Plato, Aristotle, and finally in Plotinus. Epicureans, Stoics and Galen were intimately concerned with problems connected conceptually, if not linguistically, with things common to body and soul. The ten papers collected here present a snapshot of current research by workers in the field. No attempt has been made at a systematic coverage, for this would require not merely more of a history of philosophical psychology than is at present agreed on, but also more connections between ancient and modern thought than may safely be taken for granted. For example, substantial dualism cannot be understood independently of the doctrine of substance in question. As will be seen, alternative points of view are presented in the collection, and this introduction will not attempt a final adjudication. I begin with a brief sketch of the options discussed, and then present them in a little more detail. Soul (psychê) is, roughly, what distinguishes living things from other things. The importance of things common to body and soul lies in the fact that neither in philosophical nor everyday encounters are we usually faced with soul on its own. Body-soul couples, what they do and what they undergo, are much more in evidence. To see that this is so, we have only to consider the fundamental explananda of psychology – movement, including action, and cognition, more especially perception. This is not to suggest that there is no point in distinguishing between body and soul – all of the thinkers considered here do so in a variety of ways. Both what may be common to soul varies, as does what it means to be common to body and soul. The subjects which may be common are states, generally speaking, or more specifically functions. The whole life of the embodied substance may be involved. In contrast, it is in fact remarkably

∗ Many thanks to Thomas Buchheim for his comments on an earlier version. 2 R. A. H. King difficult to present mental activity in the absence of body – as becomes clear from the two papers which discuss such theories. Roman Dilcher’s view of Parmenides on thinking presents a transcendent intellect, whereas Denis O’Brien’s account discusses an early layer in Aristotle’s thought displaying bodiless gods living beyond the world. One approach to the varieties of partnership between body and soul envisaged by different theorists is through styles of explanation. From a modern perspective, causal interaction is the most obvious way in which things may be common to body and soul – here represented in antiquity by materialist theories of the soul. They differ from modern versions in that both aspects of the interaction only occur in the interacting whole. Body and soul are not considered as separable substances, but as aspects of a whole. Hellenistic philosophers are important representatives of this line of thought, as shown by Christof Rapp and Christopher Gill. Weaker versions of body soul partnership include co-variation as in Edward Hussey’s presentation of Parmenides. A second group of theories insists on teleological explanation for living things. Here, an important idea is that body is an instrument of the soul. Such a teleological relation is to be found in the theories of both Aristotle and Plato. In Plato, there are those things which can only be striven for by body-soul composites, such as the good life. Such striving only makes sense when there are active tendencies of the soul, which include bodily aspects, which can be ordered in the right way. For Aristotle the body is the organ of the soul, and so related to it as to a good or end. In both Plato and Aristotle, this insistence on teleology leaves room for much work interpreting what their positions actually imply for states and actions common to body and soul. In Parmenides either thought and perception are explained by the mixture of the body (Edward Hussey) or thought transcends body and so has nothing in common with it (Roman Dilcher). The first option corresponds to the view that Presocratics subscribe to a na¨ıve materialism, which holds that all there is, is in some way material; this is also the view of Love and Soul to be found in Empedocles (Denis O’Brien). For Plato the function of soul is to organise body, and corporeal life, in accordance with the idea of the good; and so it is neither form nor body (Thomas Buchheim). This is the purpose of his division of the soul into three active tendencies. Galen adopts this theory, but quite reasonably concludes that empirical investigation cannot establish if the soul is body or immaterial, although it can discover the soul’s locations and the material transmission of its powers (R. J. Hankinson). Introduction 3

Aristotle uses the rubric “common to body and soul” to describe a particular department of his psychology, but quite how this department is to be distinguished is not clear. Indeed he considers the option that all affections of the soul fall under it, using emotion as an example for something inseparably both psychic and corporeal (Christof Rapp). One option for distinguishing things common to body and soul from other psychic phenomena, is that in particular the physiological aspects come to the fore – the functional organisation of body, whose changes perform psychic activities (Pierre-Marie Morel). Or else while excluding merely thought, the concentration is on the concrete activities which distinguish the kinds of living things (Thomas Johansen). These subtleties are reflected in the range of stances adopted by Aristotle’s successors, which range from hylomorphism to materialism (Robert Sharples). Both Stoics and Epicureans lay great weight on the fact that if soul and body are to interact causally, then the former must be a body as well. But this principle leaves a variety of ways open for the co-affectability of body and soul to be understood (Christof Rapp). In this way vital activities are performed by matter only when contained in the whole living thing. In both cases this kind of explanation naturalises the soul, putting it in the context both of human life as we are familiar with it, and of the cosmos as a whole (Christopher Gill). The phrase “common to body and soul”1 refers to a central group of problems in ancient philosophical psychology, including not merely interaction between soul and body, but parallelism and teleological or functional relations. Furthermore it marks the point where philosophy and more empirically minded approaches meet, including both those of Aris- totle in Parva Naturalia and of medical writers. The present collection shows how this phrase and problems that may be associated with it produced a wide variety of explanatory models and epistemic stances to the relation between body and soul. It is a small part of the philosophy of mind (as it is now known), small but crucial. Indeed, the fertility of antiquity in conceptualising this partnership between body and soul suggests that there is a valuable philosophical resource to be drawn on here. Of course, caution is necessary: can one simply import concepts from antiquity over the divide represented by the philosophical revolution of the 17th century? For example, when the physis in question is the ancient concept, what does physicalism mean? To what extent can even continuity between modern and ancient theories of mind be posited? Broadly speaking, the approaches to the soul consid-

1 In Greek it would appear to have been natural to refer to soul before body (thus in Plato and Aristotle), so too in French, whereas in modern English and German this is not the case. 4 R. A. H. King ered here are naturalistic: the soul is seen in the context of nature, that is to say, above all, in relation to change and its principles. Here as everywhere in the philosophical reception of antiquity care is needed when applying what sound like modern categories to ancient thought: the fact that for Aristotle or the Stoics the soul was part of nature, a natural principle by no means gives it that status in the context of modern thought. That this is the case is of course part of the heritage of Descartes and his contemporaries. This is true with things “common to body and soul” even avant la lettre – in Parmenides, in all likelihood working before Heraclitus made the soul a central concern for philosophers.2 The question is whether Par- menides (in Diels Kranz 28 B 16) correlates mind (noos) with the mixture (krasis) of the body. The two papers presented here answer the question in radically different ways – Edward Hussey argues that mind is to be seen as varying with the mixture, whereas Roman Dilcher presents Par- menides as systematically committed to a mind that transcends all forms of changing reality, thus contrasting starkly with bodily existence. These two papers present classic views of the relation between mind and matter, one denying any partnership, and the other affirming a correlation. These are of course themes that accompany the philosophy of mind throughout its history. Hussey argues that Parmenides’ theory of mind and thinking was also a theory of sense-perception. Thus it is a “materialistic” theory of mind, as is often thought characteristic of Presocratic thinking: The theory of Par- menides was, in his view, an “inner model” theory, in which both thoughts and objects of perception were materially-constituted “scale models” located within the organ of thinking, the noos. In contrast, Dilcher’s paper presents the case for saying that Parmenides’ theory of thinking makes no claims about things common to body and soul: noos transcends space and time. Thus Parmenides is claiming that mind is preponderant over the mixture, that is the sensible world, as the division between Being and Mortal opinion in his poem might lead one to think. There is thus no mention of contents entering the mind through perception: it is cut off from contact with the world of sense, and operates merely with its own ingredients, while being loosely correlated with body. In this way, mind explains the developing mentality of a human life. The idea of a mixture of bodily elements (mixis or krasis), which we meet in an early form in Parmenides, is crucial to Empedocles, and indeed after him to Aristotle and other Perpatetics, the Stoics, and Galen in different ways. Denis O’Brien argues for an identification of the daimones in Empedocles with pieces of Love – again an example of Presocratic

2 See esp. Diels Kranz 22 B 23, 45, 67, 115. Introduction 5 materialism. Thus Empedocles himself is a part of Love bound to wander by his adherence to strife. For Love is extended, and so visible to the mind, and able to move through the cosmos. This view is supported by the fact that fr. 11 has a complete list of elements including the daimones – and only Love is missing from those listed in fr. 37. Furthermore, Aristotle asks the same questions about Soul and Love in De Anima I.4, namely whether they are something above and beyond the bodily proportion; hence one should conclude that for Empedocles, in Aristotle’s view, Love and Soul are identical. Aristotle cannot accept this ambiguity, which forms part of Empedocles’ unconscious materialism. O’Brien argues further that there is a relic of Aristotle’s early thought preserved in his cosmology, namely the thought that outside the cosmsos there are beings who have no body – these are related to Plato’s “world soul”, and, going further back, to Empedocles, speciﬁcally to his principle Strife. Plato makes this move in order not to be forced to adopt a principle of evil along the lines of Empedocles’ Strife – the world soul replaces Love as a cosmic principle, and is even beyond the cosmos, taking up the place where Empedocles banishes Strife to, when Love has brought the cosmos under her control. Thus Soul, or Love, reigns alone in Plato’s world. Aristotle’s divine beings are not subject to time, or movement, but located outside the heavens. In his mature theory these beings are replaced, to some extent, by the prime mover. Plato introduces the phrase “common to body and soul” only in a very late dialogue, the Philebus3 but the problems of how soul is involved with body are a central topic from the Phaedo onwards. It is sometimes said that Plato, at least from his middle period onwards (especially in the Phaedo) treats body and soul as two separate things, and hence in this loose sense as two substances. But this is far from clear. Does he really think that living bodies are separate from the form of life – in that they can exist without it? Surely the soul in providing life is an explanation of the body’s living. And as to the existence of the soul as a thing, it is hard to conceive of the soul as a thing in the Platonic systems, insofar as it is never a form. The well known image of the sea-god Glaucus towards the end of the Republic (X 611d-612a5) embodies the diﬃculties Plato sees in deciding what belongs to the soul itself, and what is mere accretion, due to its life in the body like the sea-weed and shells encrusting the god from his life in the sea.

3 Philebus 34a3-b8 – referred to by both Morel and Johansen in their papers as a source of the phrase. Platonists are not as well represented in this collection as would be desirable. For example, Plotinus in I 1 [53] discusses the question what “common to body and soul” means (ch. 9.16-20) and what it applies to, above all perception (esp. chs. 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10). 6 R. A. H. King

In a way a very simplistic reading of the phrase “common to body and soul” could be claimed for Plato – two independent things working in common to perform a single function, above all sense-perception. For example, talk of the soul using the body might suggest this view.4 But Plato’s controversial, and often criticised doctrine of the “tripartition” of the soul (as it is usually, and unhelpfully, known), into reason (logos), desire (epithumia) and spiritedness (thumos) is also a doctrine of the relation between body and soul, and so requires a much more subtle theory of this relation. And, indeed, Thomas Buchheim suggests a radically new interpretation of tripartition in the Republic: the soul has the function of combining body and the intelligible world – and the point is that it can only do this if it is neither one nor the other. Obviously, it is not body for Plato; it is sometimes assumed that it is a form. But if one is able to explain why the soul must be multifarious, much is to be gained by reflecting on why it is not a form. Instead of being a fixed unity, the soul is as it were an elastic composing factor, capable of producing different combinations of body and form. The main point is that the soul can realise the good only by ordering its internal tendencies and their actualisations in such way that corresponds to the order in the cosmos. A crucial resource in ancient explanations of the relation between body and soul is the concept of the good, or of function in general. It is from this perspective that Buchheim shows that the multifariousness of the soul in Plato is necessary for it to be possible for the individual soul to arrange itself in a good way. This would not be possible if there were a form of the soul prescribing just what a soul has to be. So the thorny question of the tripartition of the soul has to be seen in the context of the good, and the possibility of the soul arriving at an organisation that corresponds to that of the context of its embodiment. One can even see that embodiment itself serves a purpose in that without it there would be no achievement in arriving at the good arrangement. One of the most interesting features of Buchheim’s interpretation is his approach to thymos, which he sees in the context of the Republic in particular as reason’s goad or spur moving the soul with ambition or indignation to follow the dictates of reason, rather than being merely another set of more or less irrational desires. The expression “common to body and soul” occurs, as already mentioned, in a wide range of contexts and in many philosophers but there is also a philosophical project which has as its specific object those entities describable by the phrase – Aristotle’s so-called Parva Naturalia. It is a feature of recent work on Aristotle’s psychology that the treatises collected under this unflattering title into a single work are considered to be an integral part of the project. Two essays address this work and present

4 Alcibiades 129c-e. Introduction 7 two poles of interpretation of Aristotle available at present, namely as to whether mental activity, especially sense perception (aisthêsis), involves bodily change. Morel develops the idea that one has to see the way that body and soul form both a unity and a duality, namely as a substantial unity, which is formed by the duality of active and passive aspects, respectively: soul and body. “Common to body and soul” refers to those pathê, generally: states which involve both body and soul as Aristotelian causes. There is no interaction between body and soul, rather form and matter complement one another, above all as instrument and function. Aristotle thinks that sensation is the clue to understanding a wide range of actions as common to body and soul. The other activities of the living thing relate to the best activity of living things, and this can only be sensation or a life lead in virtue of sensation as the central activity, which provides the foundations of organic unity in the case of animals. Body and soul form a functional unity, that of a system of activities, of which sensation constitutes the teleological principle in animals. Thomas Johansen, concentrating above all on De Sensu, places the project of Parva Naturalia in a dialectical context; as he remarks, “common to body and soul” is used by Plato in connection with perception, like Aristotle. So Aristotle in adopting the phrase may be aiming at establishing agreement with Platonists for his theses about the phenomena common to body and soul. The De Sensu is a continuation of the “natural” (physikos) approach to embodied activities recommended by the De Anima; but this does not mean that in De Sensu more attention is paid to the physiological side of animals, in contrast to De Anima. There are no new physiological changes in De Sensu, not mentioned in De Anima to support the view of his theory of perception in which bodily changes accompany perception. So the rubric common to body and soul merely excludes thought from the Parva Naturalia: at least in some texts thought seems to be “peculiar to the soul”, a phrase which contrasts with “common to body and soul”. So much for what the phrase “common to body and soul” excludes; what does it include? On the one hand, apparently everything that falls under the most general account of the soul given in De Anima II.1 as the primary actuality of a natural body equipped with organs. On the other hand, the phrase broadens the remit beyond the fundamental faculties of the soul to a variety of novel affections such as memory and breathing. Here, Aristotle is particularly interested in those affections that are widespread among animals. The difficulties inherent in Aristotle’s approach to the soul, but also its productiveness appear in the way in which his successors adopted a variety of positions, as Robert Sharples shows, within a broad Peripatetic approach, ranging from hylomorphism to materialism. He begins his dis- 8 R. A. H. King cussion of the Peripatetics with an argument showing that some contrasts between body and soul are compatible with Aristotle’s hylomorphism and others are not. For example, body and soul can conflict if an organ of an individual cannot fulfil its task, or if faculties of the soul conflict in a way that impinges on the body. And activities may belong only to soul if they have no bodily correlate (perhaps: thought), and solely to body only if it is irrelevant whether the body is living or dead, for example, falling for a heavy, solid object. While it may seem odd that soul, which is a form, should use a material instrument, many passages in Aristotle himself li- cense this picture; but the soul cannot consistently be identified with that material instrument. Turning to the followers of Aristotle themselves, he examines how the topic of the use of the body by the soul as an instrument is treated in the work of Theophrastus, Strato, pseudo-Aristotle On Breath, the pseudo- Aristotle Problems, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and the pseudo-Alexander Problems. Of course, the textual evidence determines our ability to form judgements about the positions taken by these thinkers. For example, whether Strato and the author of On Breath had a materialist theory of the soul remains unclear. We might think that there is nothing more characteristic of Aristotle than the distinction between form and matter, and of soul and body, but Sharples shows how little Theophrastus was concerned with these contrasts. Dualism seems the obvious way of understanding the occasional mentions of the soul in the pseudo-Aristotle Problems. Like Aristotle, Alexander generally explains body using soul, rather than vice versa. In the Problems which are wrongly ascribed to this last thinker, a wide range of positions on the nature of the soul are adopted ranging from Platonic dualism to a gross materialism. Generally speaking, the very subtlety of Aristotle’s analysis of the relation between soul and body may explain why it was not maintained by the subsequent Peripatetic tradition. Christopher Gill’s chapter discusses body-soul relationships in Stoic and Epicurean Philosophy. Three main points of convergence of Epicurean and Stoic theories emerge: 1. their focus on natural human life and development between birth and death, including that of forms of sociability; 2. the theories apply to all humans; 3. the view of the soul combines ethics, physics and logic without any attempt to reduce e.g. ethics to physics. The surprising thing, given their traditional enmity, is the way that Stoics and Epicureans meet in what Gill calls their “substantial holism”. The theory is an inclusive and integrated theory of reality (“substance”), a view of body soul integration, itself integrated in turn in a view of the cosmos. Such a theory contrasts for example with that of the Phaedo in which there is meant to be a rigid difference in value and being between body Introduction 9 and soul, emotions and mind, forms and particulars. For Epicureans and Stoics, body and soul, mind and emotion are not contrasted in value – rather they are states of a single entity in a world conceived of in the same way. This holism is part of a larger conception of human nature: psychologically too, humans are viewed holistically and not as combinations of mind or reason and emotions or desires. In the Stoic conception of the soul, different levels are unified, starting from the basic tension (tenor, hexis), via the physical, that is the living, natural process up to the soul proper. These layers are “nested” in one another – the higher ones building on the lower and controlling their mode of operation. As Hierocles makes very clear, psychic processes are inherently physical ones. Indeed, one can claim, as Gill does, that the Stoics avoid the traditional divide between body and soul. So too for the Epicureans: since soul is a kind of body, the psyche-body contrast is to be given up in favour of a contrast between soul as a part of the whole and the whole itself. All psychic functioning from life itself upwards depends on the co-operation of body and soul. In common with the Stoics psychological functions are correlated with the body as a whole, also integrated, again as in Stoicism, with a view of the constitution of the whole cosmos, at least partially in that soul is a relatively complex form of structured matter, and the characteristics of animals kinds and kinds of humans is due to their specific mix of constituent soul atoms. The distinguishing quality of life functions (movement, rest, heat) are to be explained by reference to determinate kinds of atom. The soul is a blend of these kinds of atom, which makes the animal capable of complex functions such as sensation, but the person or animal is only to be explained as a system of atoms, made possible by the nexus of atoms; this is not an explanation by constituents, and thus is always psychological. So constituents never play the role of quasi independent parts. The Stoic-Epicurean view presupposes a form of explanatory physicalism in that all events are to be explained using physical ones: even complex psychic properties are properties of physical things. Perhaps mental explanation is possible alongside physical explanation, namely as part of a unified, holistic account. For these theories, at least in Epicurus’ view, to work all that is required is that we ourselves, or the “developments”, that is the living things developed out of atoms, play an important role in explanation, as opposed to the original natures of the atoms. The developed person is a cause of its own kind, and passes on this causality to the constituent atoms and so makes a cohesive whole; conscious effort can affect our make up, without making the conscious effort non-physical. Christof Rapp starts from the observation that the conception of things common to body and soul was much broader in antiquity than 10 R. A. H. King in modern times, and embraced co-operation, interaction and parallelism. Action, perception and emotion offer the most obvious cases of things common to body and soul, and Rapp focuses on emotion, showing the way in which Epicureans and Stoics tackled the problem of interaction between body and soul head on: only the bodily can act and be acted on, and emotions are causal interactions of body and soul, while Aristotle circumvents the difficulty by making soul and body not merely ontologically inseparable but conceptually as well. Alongside the features common to Stoics and Epicureans – the insistence that for a soul to be causally effective it has to be corporeal – differences in this area can be seen between them perhaps most clearly in terms of sympatheia, a term which, with its cognate verb, refers to the co-affectibility of body and soul. For the Epicureans sympatheia is due to a fifth element in the soul, and is especially involved in sensation. Sympatheia does not mean that the soul undergoes something caused by the body, but rather that body and soul are affected by the same things in similar ways, at the same time. Nonetheless, the body can affect soul and vice versa, and the possibility of the affection of only one of them is especially preserved by the distinction between mind and soul; the mind can be unwell while the body is thriving and vice versa. This distinction is paralleled by the Stoic one between pneuma as a sustaining element mixed with the whole body which it sustains and the commanding faculty, also working with pneuma but situated in the heart, and governing the whole living thing from there, the centre from which the other powers of the soul flow (the senses, speech and reproduction). While interaction (sympaschein) of body and soul, in sickness or through wounds, shows for them too that soul is a body, that is pneuma, they are not affected at the same time in the same way by the same thing. Rather, one thing is affected primarily, and then the other secondarily: primarily the body is cut, and secondarily the soul is affected. In this context, the interesting thing about emotions is the extent to which they can be described physiologically. On the one hand, an emotion is a fresh belief, which can be described as swellings and contractions of two of the generic emotions (appetite and fear, pleasure and distress). In the case of distress, the actual contraction is linked to the freshness of the belief; the pain can subside, while the belief remains. On the other hand, there seems to be no further physiological description beyond swelling and contraction available in Stoic theory. In the case of Aristotle we have the important programmatic question at the start of De Anima whether all the affections of the soul are common to body and soul; the star witnesses for an affirmative answer are the emotions. These are not to be explained by a two-component theory, an opinion and a physiological realisation, since the emotion just is a certain Introduction 11 movement of the blood: because of its causation and purpose. In other words they only occur in bodies with specific souls. Thus the full definition given by the student of nature is concerned with the composite. Because we are not dealing with two things we cannot be dealing with causal interaction – a result which chimes well enough with Morel’s result, in that body and soul do not interact, rather the body serves an end, and thus forms a unity with the soul. Emotions cannot be abstracted from a certain kind of bodily process; this is the way Rapp understands the famous conclusion to this passage, namely that affections of the soul are enmattered logoi. Whereas the Post-Cartesian account of emotions holds that there are two components – a mental judgement and a bodily affection – for Aris- totle the emotion is the kinêsis of the blood, namely a kind of representation. Hence the question of interaction does not arise. There are thus similarities between Aristotle and the materialist in that bodily states of living things such as anger cannot be described without their intensional objects. Thus classic modern problems with mind-body dualism do not arise for him. The limits of philosophical psychology are reached in Galen, in that on the one hand he uses Platonic resources to direct his researches into the location of vital function, and on the other he finds the substance of the soul inaccessible to his methods. James Hankinson’s contribution discusses Galen’s Platonism. This involves, perhaps surprisingly, the empirical side of the question, as with Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia, but offers in contrast a proof of tripartition, not seen now as an arrangement for moral purposes as in the Republic. Rather as a modern doctor might consider phenomena to be psychosomatic without taking a position on whether the soul is identical with (part of) the body, Galen pursues his empirical studies without committing himself as to what the substance of the soul is – whether it is mortal or immortal, corporeal or incorporeal. Primarily, he sees the soul as the cause of sensation and voluntary motion – it always occurs with body of a certain kind. Here, I think Galen is close to Aristotle, as he is in giving a functional account of soul: we ascribe soul to things on account of their powers; anatomical investigation can reveal location and mediation of these powers. Galen’s view combines a certainty that atomist-style reduction fails with the adoption of a providential teleology. Bodies as such are not capable of perception or any of the other functions which go with soul. There has to be more in perception than just alteration since otherwise we cannot say why everything altered does not thereby perceive. In his view, everyone agrees we have a soul since we are aware of its effects. This conclusion is supported by the “natural axiom”, that there must be a cause for any effects. He draws a sharp 12 R. A. H. King distinction between powers and substance. Talk of “powers” is in Galen’s view merely the first step in scientific investigation, before discovering the causes, and this can be done in part without establishing the substance of the soul. Bodily structures account for its distinctive powers. Because it is responsible for action, it cannot be merely an epiphenomenon (cf. Phaedo 93a). Thus the soul’s powers are consequent on bodily states, related to the locations of the three parts of the soul. He also thinks that one can prove with certainty that the various powers of the soul, in particular sensation and movement, are subject to control from the brain by way of the nervous system, transmitted by the psychic pneuma. This is the reason for Galen adopting his position on psychological states and dispositions: they are directly affected by physiological conditions, without inferences about the substance of the soul being possible. Despite Galen’s non-committal stance, he is inclined to think that there is no independent existence of the soul. His theory is thus a suitable end to the series of ancient theories about what is common to body and soul, looking both back to Plato and forward to modern neurophysiology and philosophy of mind. Edward Hussey Parmenides on Thinking

1. Parmenides fr. 16: some semantic questions

1.1. Parmenides fr. 16 Diels-Kranz, notoriously, presents a tangle of textual and syntactic problems. This paper starts by by-passing these problems (though it eventually returns to them). The aim is to explore the possibility of a certain kind of reading of Parmenides’ account of “mind” and “thinking” (nìoc, nìhma, fronèein) here. In the rest of section 1, I consider the archaic (principally Home- ric) usage of the words for “thinking” and “mind”. Section 2 outlines the proposed reading of Parmenides’ theory in the light of these linguistic considerations. Section 3 grapples with the greatest problem for that reading: the apparently contradictory testimony of Aristotle. Here it is necessary to use the rather diﬀerent testimony of Theophrastus, and a general hypothesis about Aristotle’s reading of the “materialistic” psychology of his predecessors. Section 4 considers the earlier theories of “perception of like by like”, of which Parmenides’ is one. I aim to show that these can be understood as involving an “inner model”. Finally, section 5 returns to Parmenides fr. 16, and shows how it may be read as an example of an “inner model” theory of mental activity.

1.2. The following text of the fragment, with brief apparatus, is given for reference. The witnesses to the text are: Alexander of Aphrodisias (in Metaph. 306.29-30 and 306.36-307.1 Hayduck); Aristotle (Metaph. 1009b22-25); Asclepius (in Metaph. 277.19-20 and 277.24-27 Hayduck); Theophrastus (Sens. 3). On the choice of readings, all that need be said here is that Aristotle’s citation (on which Alexander and Asclepius depend) is probably inaccurate, since: (1) parÐstatai is metrically anoma- lous; (2) polukmptwn, unlike poluplgktwn, lacks any obvious Parmeni- dean relevance and is not easily paralleled. The presumption is that Aris- totle is citing from memory, and that Theophrastus should be followed where his text diﬀers. 14 Edward Hussey

±c gr ákastìt> êqei krsin melèwn poluplgktwn, t°c nìoc njr¸poisi parèsthken; tä gr aÎtì âstin íper fronèei melèwn fÔsic njr¸poisin kaÈ psin kaÈ pantÐ; tä gr plèon âsti nìhma. 1: ákastìt(e) Aristotle (some mss), Theophrastus ékastoc Aristotle (some mss), Alexander ákstwi (or ékastoi) Aristotle (some mss.) ékaston Ascle- pius krsin all witnesses krsic cj. Stephanus poluplgktwn Theophrastus polukmptwn Aristotle (also Alexander, Asclepius) 2: parÐstatai Aristotle (also Alexander, Asclepius) parèsthken Theophras- tus

1.3. The key words nìoc, nìhma, fronèein are to be taken as signifying something like “mind”, “thought”, “think”. In order to see in more detail how they should be understood, we have to begin from archaic Greek usage. Parmenides’ vocabulary is mostly archaic. That is not to say that he uses only archaic words, or uses archaic words only in archaic senses. In this very fragment, the key word krsic is certainly being used in an up-to-date theoretical sense (see sec. 2 below). But in general, where there is no immediate reason to suppose otherwise, our assumption should be that his usage of words is closely and organically similar to that of the Homeric poems, whose very phrasing he so often echoes.

1.4. The Homeric usage of nìoc and its derivatives noèein and nìhma is not diﬃcult to describe in outline.1 One should not assume or seek to ﬁnd a single “fundamental” or “dominant” sense for any of these words; rather, as usual in natural languages, there are likely to be (one or more) principal focal areas of meaning, with intelligible genetic and semantic connections between them. Nìoc in Homer is (1) “mind”, the mind being conceived of as an organ of the body like any other. It is the organ by and in which a person (mortal or divine) has their thoughts, intentions, plans and imaginings. But the word (just like “mind” in English) often represents the mind’s state or activity in certain particularly important aspects. So it may be equivalent to (2) “character” or “disposition”: a long-term aspect of the mind. Here the particular reference is usually to dispositions determining one’s attitudes and behaviour towards other people. Or it may indicate (3) a short-term “state of mind” and especially an intention, or the having

1 An earlier survey and discussion of this linguistic field is found in von Fritz (1943) and von Fritz (1945/46); the second paper is reprinted in Mourelatos (1993, pp. 23- 85). Parmenides on Thinking 15 of a plan. It may also be a state of imagining. Here the emphasis is often on the nìoc as something creative and resourcefully inventive. It is a rather delicate matter to decide whether or not, in archaic usage, there is a further distinct sense: (4) the content of the state, i.e. the intention or the plan “in itself”, seen as something that is in principle separable from the particular mind that happens to contain it. Naturally, Homer is not usually much concerned to mark a difference between a particular state of intending or planning, and the “contents”, by which it is identified; in most cases it is artificial to insist on the distinction. Yet cases do occur, even in Homer, where the distinction is implicitly recognised, and sense (4) is clearly present.2

1.5 In the archaic usage of the verb noèein, there is an important difference between the present and the aorist forms (perfect forms do not occur). In its aorist forms, it is primarily and almost always a “success- verb”, meaning “become aware of, notice”, taking as a direct object, the specification of the person(s) or thing(s) noticed. (It can also have the specialised force of “noticing that something needs doing, and doing it”.) The present-tense forms, for the most part, correspond to the senses of nìoc. They sometimes, but rarely, signify being aware (as a permanent state); more usually, the having of dispositions or intentions, occasionally imaginings or even opinions. The direct objects of the verb are the spec- ifications of these. There seems also to be an “absolute” usage without direct object: “be generally aware”, “have sense”. Thus the distinction of tenses corresponds, as often, to a difference of linguistic aspect. While the aorist forms signify a mental act or event, the present forms indicate some mental state or disposition, and this state is not one of knowledge but of “thinking”.3

1.6. It is not surprising to ﬁnd that the derived noun nìhma exhibits much the same patterns of meaning as nìoc and the direct objects of the verb noèein. Corresponding to the senses of nìoc distinguished above, nìhma often signiﬁes either a disposition or state of mind (cf. senses (2) and (3) above). We might expect, then, that like nìoc, it would sometimes take on the sense of the content of the state of mind, which in Homer is usually a plan but sometimes a wish or imagining (cf. sense (4) above). This point is possibly of some importance for Parmenides. Unfortunately the evidence is indecisive; there are several places in Homer where we might think that

2 The clearest instances are: Iliad 9.104, 15.509; Odyssey 5.23, 24.479; more on the borderline are: Iliad 15.699, 23.149; Odyssey 14.490. 3 On this point see also Lesher (1994, p. 27 n. 54). 16 Edward Hussey nìhma signiﬁes a “content” abstracted from any particular mind; but in none of these places is the context such that this translation is enforced.4

1.7. Finally, the use of the verb fronèein is, overall, similar to that of noèein. But fronèein is more frequently used of settled dispositions of character and outlook; and otherwise perhaps with more suggestion of the deliberative and discriminatory aspects of mental activity. One question deserving mention here is whether, for Homer or for Parmenides, either nìoc and its derivatives, or fronèein, carry with them the implication of cognitive success. As mentioned, the aorist uses of noèein do carry that implication in archaic Greek; but they do not appear to be transferred to the other forms. So, in particular, fronèein in Parmenides should be taken as equivalent to “think”, not to “know”.

2. The notion of krsic and the outline of a general theory of mental states

2.1. If these observations of archaic usage may be taken as a guide, Parmenides fr. 16 is stating a theory about the general nature of what may loosely be called “mental states”. And however one translates it, the lines express some kind of explanation of differences between mental states and dispositions, the explanation being in terms of a krsic of the “limbs”. The differences between the nìoc of different people, and those between the same person’s nìoc at different times, are already of interest to Homer, particularly in the Odyssey. Hermann Fränkel noted5 the connection of this fragment with the moralising remark of Odysseus at Odyssey 18.136-7, and its echo in Archilochus (Archilochus 131 West; though it may be significant that Archilochus speaks in terms of jumìc, not nìoc). Evidently Parmenides is, at least, incidentally alluding to these earlier statements. It does not follow, though, as Fränkel seems to suppose, that the wording and thought of Parmenides here must have been more or less completely determined by those earlier passages.

2.2. Using a notion of krsic (“mixture”), to give a systematic and basically quantitative explanation of differences of states, within a complex organic unity, is decidedly a fifth-century phenomenon. In fact it is something that seems to originate around the mid-fifth century, and is found in

4 The occurrences in question are: Iliad 10.104, 18.328; Odyssey 2.121, 7.292. 5 Fr¨ankel (1960, pp. 173-4). Parmenides on Thinking 17

ﬁfth-century theorists with medical and biological interests: Empedocles and some Hippocratic writers.6 Parmenides fr. 16 may well be the earliest attested use of this theoretical device. (Parmenides in other fragments shows medical and biological interests; so he ﬁts the overall pattern of the krsic-theorists. The word temperiem in B 18, which is a close Latin rendering of some lines of Parmenides, also attests his use of the word.) Despite his archaic language of mental states, then, Parmenides is here up-to-date with a “cutting-edge” theory about them. This contrast is, in fact, a characteristic feature of the natural philosophy in the “Opinions of Mortals” section of Parmenides’ poem. The whole set of cosmological and physiological doctrines there expounded seems to be contrived as a mingling of “old” conceptualisations (for example the theogony and theomachy in Hesiodic style) and “new” theoretical aspects. One of its aims seems to be the reinterpretation of earlier “opinions” in “modern” terms.

2.3. Can we say anything useful in general about the use of a krsic- model here, in advance of closer textual and linguistic examination of the fragment? First, it is already clear that the theory is of a reductive kind, an example of what Aristotle saw as the early Presocratic habit of giving all explanations solely in terms of the (Aristotelian) “material cause”. In that sense it could be called a “materialist” theory. The entire explanation is in terms of a krasis of the “limbs” (mèlea). It makes no diﬀerence to this point whether we interpret “limbs” literally as the limbs of the body, or, in a transferred sense, as the basic constituents, Fire and Night; both senses may be intended. “Materialist” is here a term that is convenient but not wholly satisfactory, as the quotation marks are meant to suggest. There was no genuine materialism in early Greek natural philosophy, until the time came when a theorist expressly excluded anything mental or intentional from his list of basic constituents. Leucippus and Democritus may well have been true materialists; but there is no reason to take Parmenides in the “Opinions” to be one. The essential point is that his fundamental constituents, Fire and Night, were equipped from the outset with psychological properties. Fire is “gentle” or “gentle-minded” (it is almost certain that either ¢pion or some compound such as piìfron occurs at fr. 8.55; unfortunately the exact text is open to doubt). Night is “unknowing” (da¨: 8.59; admittedly only a negative psychological property).

6 Empedocles: frs 21.14, 22.4, 22.7 Diels-Kranz; [Hippocrates]: A¨er. 12; VM 5 (twice), 16, 19; Nat.Hom. 3, 4; Vict. 32, 35. Some doxographic reports on the later Presocratics, from Aristotle and Theophrastus onwards, also probably attest authentically Presocratic uses of the word and the concept. 18 Edward Hussey

The fact is that Parmenides’ theory (like others in the same period) takes those aspects of things that we might distinguish as “physical”/“material” and as “mental”, as both equally fundamental in ontology and in explanation, and as found entwined together everywhere. Hence the explanation of mental diﬀerences, between dispositions and states of mind, can well have been sought in quantitative diﬀerences between mixtures of ultimate constituents in the framework of the body. It remains to see how this was worked out in detail.

2.4. It is reassuring that the tentative conclusions, drawn (in sec. 1 above) from archaic word-usage, fit perfectly with these further tentative conclusions from the general theoretical use of krsic. That is: we are here dealing with a theory about differences, and these are differences between states and/or dispositions of the body or of parts of the body. A particular krsic is a particular proportionate mixture; as the proportions in the mixture are quantitatively different from case to case, or from time to time in the same case, so are the resulting observable phenomena of the complex unity. The notion of krsic is used thus to explain the unified living body’s variety of diseases, or the unified human mind’s variety of characters, or the varieties of human societies etc. It is a beautiful theoretical idea to explain this sort of variety in this way. Whether or not Parmenides invented this idea, he certainly seems to enjoy its power. The highly emphatic phrase “for all and for each” (kaÈ psin kaÈ pantÐ), at the beginning of line 4, can be taken as showing Parmenides underlining the key point: the notion of krsic enables him to establish a unity of explanation underlying the surface variety.

2.5. This reading therefore suggests a primary reading of the clause tä gr aÎtì . . . njr¸poisin: “it is the same thing that the limbs think, [the same] for all human beings and every one”. In other words, the same formula covers, and explains, all cases of thinking. Then íper is the grammatical object of fronèei. This in turn is naturally seen as picked up again by nìhma, since that standardly stands for something that can be a grammatical object of noèein. We have, therefore, the beginnings of an understanding of the particularly enigmatic ﬁnal clause: “for the full/more is (the) thought” (tä gr plèon âsti nìhma). As has been seen, the word nìhma in Homer does not certainly signify something logically “detachable” from the mind in which it occurs. So we may not translate it here as referring straightforwardly to the content of the thought. It is, rather, the particular state or act of thinking in a particular mind. Parmenides on Thinking 19

Nevertheless, this is not conclusive about the meaning of the ﬁnal clause. The point is that âsti here may quite naturally be read as a case of “constitutive” eÚnai, which is quite common in Homer as in later Greek. A nìhma in the sense explained is naturally identiﬁed and individuated in terms of its contents; and these are therefore naturally seen as constituting it.7

2.6. So the suggested reading leads naturally to the view that tä plèon should describe or characterise the grammatical object of fronèei, which is the nìhma; and this description can be taken, without linguistic odd- ity, in either of two ways. Either âsti makes an identity-statement: “the full/more is [= is identical with] the thought”; or it makes a statement of constitution: “the full/more is [= constitutes; i.e. is the content of] the thought”. This is still an embarrassing superﬂuity of possibilities, but it is not the aim of this paper to decide deﬁnitively between them. The points I wish to make here are two. (1) Part of the point of a krasis, in a typical krasis-theory, is that it suppresses more or less entirely the existence and characteristic properties of its lesser ingredients at the expense of the principal one or ones, i.e. of “the more”. Here then is a good reason to take tä plèon in that sense, regardless of how we read the âsti. (2) It may well be that Parmenides had both senses in mind.8

3. The testimony of Aristotle and Theophrastus

3.1. The foregoing discussion seems to justify a modest hope that the meaning of fr. 16 can be grasped, at least in outline. According to the reconstruction so far, fr. 16 expresses a theory of mental constitution, or mental states, whether short or long term, and very likely both. It is not, or not primarily, a theory of mental acts, reactions, or events. At this point a serious problem has to be faced: the apparently totally discrepant reading of fr. 16 given by Aristotle in Metaphysics IV.5, and, partially and indirectly, in several places in De Anima. To be sure, it is always possible to dismiss any one piece of Aristotelian testimony as the product of Aristotle’s misunderstanding of what he has

7 There are implicit references to the content of the nìhma as determining the reference at: Iliad 7.546, 18.295; Odyssey 2.121, 2.363, 7.292, 14.273, 15.326, 17.403, 23.30. 8 On the meaning of tä plèon, see further below, sec. 5.2 and 5.4; and for the case in favour of “the full”, see Laks (1990, pp. 7-9). It seems to me that the reading of tä gr aÎtì . . . pantÐ given above circumvents the stronger objections raised against the translation “the more”. 20 Edward Hussey read. Less charitably, it is sometimes claimed that he is deliberately twisting texts to suit the thesis he is himself propounding. More charitably, and usually more plausibly, one may suppose that he often uses or misuses his predecessors by introducing them, more or less aptly, as participants in his own dialectical discussions. In such cases, the historical truth about their theories is not even the purported aim. Whatever the outcome may be in any particular case, it is clear that there is in general a duty of “provisional charity” towards Aristotle. One is required to make out the best possible case for his remarks; and only if that turns out to be weak is one justiﬁed in resorting to the hypotheses of misunderstanding or deviousness. (Such hypotheses are in any case alarming: if Aristotle is really guilty of stupidity and/or dishonesty to the extent that some believe, one is left with very little reason to trust any piece of his testimony.)

3.2. Aristotle cites fr. 16 in the context of a much wider claim about earlier philosophers. At the beginning of Metaphysics IV.5, he has explained that two mistaken opinions naturally entail one another: (a) that contradictories are true together; and (b) that all opinions and appearances (dokounta kai phainomena) are true. At 1009a22 he then embarks upon a reconstruction of the ways in which earlier theorists were led to hold one or other of these opinions: 1009a22-38 explore the motivations for holding (a), and 1009a38-1010a15 those for holding (b). At 1009b12 he reaches what he considers the most general form of explanation for the holding of (b) in regard to sense-perception. This explanation is claimed to apply to “Empedocles and Democritus and more or less everyone else”, where the last phrase need only mean “almost everyone else who held that view”. According to Aristotle’s explanation, they reached the view (that sense-appearances were always true) because they supposed (1) that sense-perception was (a kind of) phronêsis; and (2) that this (phronêsis) was (a kind of) qualitative change (frìnhsin màn tn aÒsjhsin, taÔthn d> eÚnai lloÐwsin, 1009b13). Here the meaning of the first clause is not in doubt: the supposition that sense-perception must be a kind of phronêsis, i.e. some truth-grasping state,9 has been already motivated at 1009b2-9, and recurs at b28-31. It is this supposition that is at the logical centre of Aristotle’s reconstruction. It is the second clause that is problematic. While the reference of taÔthn is presumably frìnhsin, not aÒsjhsin, what is unclear is the rel-

9 As pointed out in sec. 1.6. above, fronèein in archaic Greek, and therefore presumably in Parmenides, does not imply any cognitive success; whereas frìnhsic in Aristotle does so. But there is no reason to suppose that this semantic shift, in itself, caused any confusion to Aristotle or Theophrastus. Parmenides on Thinking 21 evance of the supposition (2), under either construal, to the holding of opinion (b). It seems to be supposition (1), not (2), that is meant to require or support (b) (compare 1009b31-33). There is the further problem that the citations that follow do not at all seem to support Aristotle’s claim that the theorists cited held (2). It is at these citations that we must next look.

3.3. Apparently in support of his reconstruction, Aristotle cites (1009b17- 31) a string of texts: two fragments of Empedocles (frs 106 and 108 Diels- Kranz); our fragment of Parmenides; an alleged apophthegm of Anaxago- ras from an unnamed memoir; and an interpretation of the Homeric word llofronèwn as supposedly used of Hector. This is a strangely unimpressive collection, if it is meant to constitute Aristotle’s total evidence that his general reading of the earlier thinkers is correct.10 Indeed, once the question is raised, it is clear that these odds and ends cannot possibly have been meant by Aristotle to be used as proofs of the correctness of his far-reaching interpretation, or even as substantial supports for it. Their function, as is quite often the case when Aristo- tle cites earlier philosophers, is neither that of proof nor of substantial support, but simply of illustration; they are given as amusing and illuminating asides that enliven and humanise the exposition.11 That is why it evidently doesn’t matter much to Aristotle here whether, for example, the anecdote about Anaxagoras is well-attested; or whose was the remark about Homer and whether or not it is textually accurate (in the Iliad as we have it, it is Euryalos, not Hector, who is described as llofronèwn at 23.698; though Hector too is indeed knocked out earlier).12

3.4. How then are these citations meant to serve as illustrations of Aristotle’s thesis? The last two (the anecdote about Anaxagoras, and the explanation of Homer) are directed solely to point (1) above, that sense- perception was held to be a kind of “thinking”, a reality-grasping state or process. But what the quotations from Empedocles and Parmenides notably have in common is nothing to do with sense-perception, which they do not mention, but the thought that, as Aristotle puts it, change

10 Mansfeld (1996, p. 164) aptly calls it a “centon de citations”. 11 Anecdotes and chronological data are sometimes used in the same way. 12 Hector when unconscious is described as k¨r pinÔsswn (Iliad 15.10), which might be taken to imply the same alleged equation of perception and understanding. From De Anima I.2 404a27-31 and Theophrastus De Sensibus 58, it seems that the “Homeric” citation is due to Democritus; possibly Aristotle took the whole string of testimony from the same source. Theophrastus gives a clue as to the context in Democritus. Mansfeld (1996, p. 168), denies that Aristotle took the “Homeric” citation from Democritus, but does not mention the Theophrastus passage. 22 Edward Hussey of internal bodily state is what accompanies, and presumably causes (and perhaps even constitutes) “change of thinking” (metabllontac tn éxin metabllein fhsÈ tn frìnhsin of Empedocles, 1009b17-18).13 So far as that thought goes, it is comfortably in line with the outline theory that was attributed to Parmenides in section 2 above. Above all this formulation, and the accompanying citations, agree with the outline theory in seeing thinking as an internal state (hexin), not a process.

3.5. The strange fact, then, is that none of these citations gives any support at all to Aristotle’s second thesis: (2) that sense-perception and thinking were conceived of as processes or events (as “alteration” (al- loiôsis)14) and not as states. The kind of change that Parmenides and Empedocles speak of is change of thought-contents, which is seen as being determined by change of bodily state. This is a different thesis from the one, reported by Aristotle: that thinking itself is, or consists in, a change or process.15 Further, as already suggested, thesis (2) is not at all necessary for Aristotle’s purposes in Metaphysics IV.5. His main contention here is that sense-perception was thought to be necessarily true, on the grounds that there are great differences in the contents of aisthêsis or phronêsis, whether between different observers, or for the same observer at different times. It is in order not to give some indefensible privilege to some cases of aisthêsis or phronêsis as against others, that these thinkers, according to Aristotle, said that all sense-contents or thought-contents are “true”.16

3.6. Thus the little extra clause taÔthn d> eÚnai lloÐwsin is strangely hard to understand in the Metaphysics context. Yet Aristotle’s interpretative claim, so unsupported and out of place in Metaphysics IV, is not an isolated one. It recurs in De Anima, where it appears as an essential part of Aristotle’s reading of earlier psychology, applied to a broad range of earlier theorists.

13 The same pair of Empedocles citations appears also at de An. III.3 (see section 3.7 below). 14 The word lloÐwsic, as used here in reporting the alleged content of earlier opinions, seems to have the broad non-technical sense of “being affected” (i.e. as equivalent to psqein ti in De Anima I.5 410a25-26); cf. its use at 415b24 and 416b34-5, also in reporting generally-held opinions. 15 This is so, whether or not Aristotle read the metrically impossible parÐstatai in Parmenides. Fränkel (1960, p. 175), more probably supposes that this is scribal error (possibly Aristotle’s own) induced by parÐstato in the following Empedocles citation. 16 There is some affinity with the “doxography” offered by Socrates at Plato Theaete- tus 152d2-153a5, though the relationship is not straightforward. Parmenides on Thinking 23

The thesis is stated in its fullest generality at De Anima I.5 410a25-26: “They suppose that sense-perception is a being-aﬀected in some respect, and is a being-changed (psqein ti kaÈ kineØsjai); and likewise for thinking and having knowledge”. This thesis is ascribed by Aristotle to all who suppose that the mind is composed of the principles or elements: certainly Empedocles and Plato in the Timaeus; possibly also Heraclitus and Diogenes of Apollonia; presumably Parmenides too, though he is not mentioned here. At II.5 416b33-35 Aristotle claims more cautiously, in his own person, that “sense-perception comes about in being changed and in being acted upon”. This he apparently takes to be the correct and uncontroversial residue of the earlier theories and of “common sense”, since he adds: “for it is thought to be a kind of alloiˆosis” (echoing 415b24-25).17

3.7. A useful first step, for making sense of all this, is provided by yet another passage of De Anima: III.3 427a17-b6. Here we have, first (a19- 29), a nexus of theses attributed quite generally to “the ancients”: (A) thinking and perceiving are the same thing; (B) they are both corporeal; (C) they are both of like by like. Cited in support of this reading are the two Empedocles fragments used in Metaphysics IV, and the Homeric passage that is in the background of Parmenides fr. 16, namely Odyssey 18.136-137. Then (a29-b6), in a parenthesis, Aristotle adds that the difficulty of accounting for error on such a view drove “some” to suppose that (D) all phenomena were true. Thus, very much as in Metaphysics IV, the holding of (D) is accounted for by the holding of (A) and some subsidiary theses.18 In the Metaphysics, the subsidiary thesis is the one at the centre of our problem: that thinking and perceiving are a kind of change. Here in De Anima III, the subsidiary theses are (B) and (C).

3.8. In combination, all the passages so far mentioned show that Aristo- tle has a quite consistent line of interpretation. Yet they do not explain its motivation; on the contrary, the only evidence Aristotle cites as support seems rather to undermine the interpretation. There is, therefore, a fundamental problem aﬀecting the understanding of Aristotle’s evidence. We cannot proceed without, at least, some provisional hypothesis. Here

17 Compare de An. I.2 405a27-29, making a connection with the supposedly popular doctrine of “flux”; and GC I.8 324b25-29. 18 Mansfeld (1996, p. 165) takes the De Anima (A)-claim (“the ancients say that thinking and sense-perception are the same thing”) to be significantly stronger than the Metaphysics claim (“[they say that] sense-perception is a kind of thinking”). It seems easier and more plausible to suppose that these are merely two different ways of expressing the same thought: namely, that according to the ancients sense-perception and thinking are generically the same, both being cognitive states consisting in a certain kind of bodily state. 24 Edward Hussey then is such an hypothesis; it cannot be fully argued for within the limits of this paper.

3.9. The hypothesis is that Aristotle’s interpretation of the earlier theorists is driven by a combination of two thoughts. First, that the earlier theories of thinking and perception were cast in purely material terms (in the Aristotelian sense). Secondly, that the only possible kind of purely materialist theory of perception is an “impact” one: that is, one that supposes that it must be the impact (instantaneous, or prolonged) of some “external input” that constitutes perception and intelligent awareness of the world outside the mind. A “state” theory (that perceiving or thinking about something is constituted by being in a corresponding state) is, for Aristotle, ruled out from the outset by one simple observation. A purely material mind could perfectly well be in the appropriate state without having, or having had, any interaction with the outside world at all. But perceiving and thinking about the world outside must by deﬁnition involve some kind of interaction with it. A “state” theory would therefore not even qualify to be considered as a theory of perception at all. On this view, Aristotle’s interpretation of earlier theories of perception (and of thinking, so far as it was assimilated to perception) is driven by a combination of logic and interpretative charity.19 He takes it that, whatever they may have said that may seem to indicate a “state” theory, they must have meant to propound an “impact” theory. So, with some slight support in some of the Presocratic texts he cites,20 Aristotle is doing his best for the earlier theorists by attributing to them the view that knowing and perceiving are events or processes consisting of impacts.21 Even if we reject this interpretation, as we must, it still remains a problem for the interpreter of the Presocratic theories of the mind to explain how the “like by like” theories were meant to be understood.

3.10. As a footnote to all this, it should be remembered that by good chance we also have Theophrastus’ discussion of earlier psychology in De Sensibus.22 It is noteworthy that Theophrastus, without mentioning it, discards the Aristotelian claim altogether. Certainly he initially makes

19 As so often in his discussions of earlier theories. Interpretative charity is, of course, not exclusive of rigorous criticism of the doctrines so reconstructed; it is precisely because of the rigour that Aristotle’s charity is often not noticed or not understood. 20 Aristotle does not mention particular cases, but it seems at least that Empedocles described hearing as consisting in a process (see below, sec. 3.10, on Theophrastus). 21 This also explains why Aristotle claims that, for “most of those phusiologoi who talk about perception”, the objects of sense-perception must all be objects of touch (Sens. 4 442a29-b1; cf. GC I.8 324b25-29). 22 On Theophrastus’ criticism of Presocratic psychology generally, see Baltussen (2000). Parmenides on Thinking 25 the less strong claim that, for some earlier theorists, “sense-perception comes about in a process of alteration” (De Sensibus 1-2). Even this more cautious formulation is here attributed only, but not exclusively, to a subgroup of Presocratic theorists: to those who held that sense-perception was “by opposites”. Then, in the detailed reports on Empedocles and Plato’s Timaeus, hearing in particular seems to be constituted by a process of resonance inside the head. Likewise, discussing Empedocles, Theophras- tus implies that for him perception comes to be “in” a process of alloiôsis, and that therefore thinking must also do so. Again this is far from the flat equation of the one with the other that Aristotle attributes to Empedocles and others. There is a further quiet but total rejection of Aristotle’s general line at De Sensibus 58: where it is claimed that sense-perception was standardly thought of as constituted by a “disposition” (diathesis). Nor is there any contradiction with De Sensibus 72, where it is reported to be “a most ancient opinion” that thinking is “according to qualitative change” (kat tn lloÐwsin); this is evidently Theophrastus’ summary of the Homer and Archilochus passages, and he makes immediately clear that he does not take this as leading to an equation of thinking with alloiôsis, since he adds: “they make the thinking dependent on the disposition” (kat tn dijesin podidìasi tä froneØn).

4. An “inner model” theory of mind

4.1. The negative but useful result of the last section, if its hypothesis is accepted, is that, in elucidating Parmenides, we may set aside Aristotle’s claim (2b) in the Metaphysics IV.5 passage. Aristotle’s interpretation, on this view, arises from misplaced charity and is based on evidence that, in fact, points to a diﬀerent understanding.23 So there is no remaining good reason to suppose that Parmenides took either sense-perception or thinking to be a change or a process. That still leaves the other leading points from Metaphysics IV.5 and De Anima: (a) that Parmenides’ explanations were in “corporeal” terms, in terms of the material make-up of the soul; (b) that sense-perception was assimilated to “thinking” (phronein); (c) that perception and thought was “of like by like”; and (d) that “all phenomena are true”. These seem at least to be not obviously inconsistent with the tentative outline of a reconstruction given in 2.4 above. There is nothing in (a) that is surprising

23 For less favourable, or at least more sceptical, attitudes towards Aristotle’s interpretation, see Cherniss (1964, pp. 79-83), Laks (1999, pp. 255-262). On Aristotle’s treatment of his predecessors in the area of psychology, and Theophrastus’ relation to this treatment, see Mansfeld (1996). 26 Edward Hussey or that calls for further comment here (see section 2 above). But (b), (c) and (d) all demand further elucidation. The central idea, however it is to be understood, is (c): the perception and/or knowing “of like by like”. This is attested by both Aristotle and Theophrastus De Sensibus; though their testimony and their criticisms suggest strongly that they failed to see how this thesis was intended to be understood.24 For these reasons, a general hypothesis about the earlier “like by like” theories is in order.

4.2. Here then is an outline of the sort of theory I take Parmenides and Empedocles (there may well have been others) to have held. I shall call this type of theory an “inner model theory” of the mind. According to this theory, all mental states with some content, both states of perception and e.g. of assessing, planning, imagining etc., are essentially of the same kind and consist in having, inside the mind, a scale model of the situations that are perceived or imagined or planned. This is meant to hold of all mental states with content. And it is important that these models are made out of the same kinds of material as the outer world is: namely out of the same basic constituents. Hence these models can represent the outer world with accuracy good enough for all practical purposes at least. Naturally, something extra will then need to be said about sense- reception, as opposed to the inner state of perception. There is some mechanism by which we get, via the sense-organs and by “eﬄuences” or something else, indications from outside from which the inner model is constructed. But the details are not here important. There is, so far as I know, no direct evidence about any possible motivation for such a theory. But if the postulation of this kind of theory is not to seem quite gratuitous, something however minimal needs to be said. Here is an illuminating passage from a modern philosopher’s attack on analogous theories advanced in more recent times: Even in contemporary cognitive science, for example, it is the fashion to hypothesize the existence of “representations” in the cerebral computer. If one assumes that the mind is an organ, and one goes on to identify the mind with the brain, it will then become irresistible to (1) think of some of the “representations” as analogous to the classical theorist’s “impressions” . . . and (2) to think that these representations are linked to objects in the organism’s environment only causally, and not cognitively . . . (Put- nam, 1999, pp. 9-10).

24 Some of the diﬃculties of Theophrastus’ treatment of this principle in relation to Empedocles are explored in Sedley (1992) which outlines an ultra-sceptical solution (Theophrastus is the prisoner of a doxographical schematism inherited from Aristotle, and Empedocles did not actually subscribe to any such principle). Parmenides on Thinking 27

4.3. This type of theory gives us the correct sense of the thesis that perception is “by the similar”. It is not so much that e.g. something earthy in us perceives something earthy outside. What is meant, rather, is that in sense-perception something earthy outside stimulates us to form an earthy inner model. And (obviously) if we happen not to have any earth in our minds, we cannot form the model, and therefore cannot perceive the earthy things outside. There is then, at most, only an incidental connection here with the superﬁcially similar principle of “like to like” as used in explaining movements of bodies. Of course it may be that for some theorists (e.g. Empe- docles) “like to like” was part of the explanation of the mechanics of “perception of like by like”.

4.4. The theory also satisfactorily explains Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ claim that, for these theorists, sense-perception was a kind of phronein. All phronein consists of direct inner awareness of an inner model. But in the case of sense-perception the inner model is formed as a result of information coming in from outside. Does this intelligibly justify Aristotle’s further claim that these theorists “say that what appears in sense-perception is necessarily true”? It is clear that this sort of theory has to maintain that there can be no error involved in the “inner awareness”. For it is the ultimate stage in the whole process. Any error would be inexplicable. Phronein therefore is generically without error; and sense-perception is just a particular case of phronein. Of course, this still leaves open the possibility that the inner model, for some reason, does not always correctly represent the outside realities. Besides, it would seem that on any “inner model” theory, it is bound to be impossible in principle to draw a line between the mind and its contents. It is not that there is an observing mind on the one hand, and some “contents” being observed on the other hand. All perception, then, must be the mind’s own self -awareness, its direct and infallible awareness of its own state. The mind, like the rest of the body, is constituted by the things in it, whether these are single simple constituents or several such in krasis; these are its “contents”.

5. Consequences of the “inner model” interpretation for the understanding of fr. 16

5.1. Finally, here is a brief sketch of the interpretative gains oﬀered, by this hypothesis, for the understanding of fr. 16. Within the limits of this 28 Edward Hussey paper, there can be no attempt to consider even superﬁcially the questions that arise, and the discussions of them in the literature; hence there are also no references to those discussions.

5.2. It is not difficult to see, if Parmenides’ theory is indeed a theory involving an inner model with krasis, why he speaks of “the more”. It is a standard feature of krasis-theories that the overall character of the compound is determined by the quantitatively greater ingredients. Hence this holds true of perceptible qualities of the compound, as formulated by Anaxagoras: “That of which most is present, that is what each thing most manifestly is and was.” (ítwn dà pleØsta êni, taÜta ândhlìtata ãn ékastìn âsti kaÈ ªn: Anaxagoras fr. 12 DK). So human minds, whether in sense-perception or in any other case of “inner perception”, are restricted by this “predominance principle”. Inner perception is a direct self-awareness, and what we are aware of is that which predominates in the krasis. So noein, in the world of the doxai, is correct so far as it goes, but, necessarily, incomplete. There is, of course, a further and wider question, which I have not addressed at all: how, if at all, noein in the world of the doxai is meant to be related to noein in the account of alêtheiê.

5.3. In the light of this reconstruction, we can also understand why Theophrastus adds that for Parmenides “in general everything that is has some gnôsis”(kaÈ ílwc dà pn tä în êqein tin gnÀsin: De Sensibus 4). It seems that by gnôsis Theophrastus does not mean “knowledge” in any rigorous sense, but rather something like “awareness, perception, sentience”. Since the ultimate constituents, Fire and Night, have “mental” as well as “physical” basic properties, as mentioned earlier, it is not surprising that everything there is has at least a potential mental life. Such “pangnosis” is only another aspect of the “materialism” of Parmenides’ theory. Hence, too, even a corpse (though presumably only one with its sense organs and mind still in relatively good shape), even if unable to form most inner models because of lack of the fiery ingredients, will be able to have awareness at least of “darkness and silence”, as testified by Theophrastus (De Sensibus 4).25

5.4. Finally, at last we can begin to see why, even apart from the incidental textual doubts, the syntax and the translation of fr. 16 have proved so controversial. The lines seem to be deliberately so constructed as to express the ambiguities, the doublenesses of mental states. Because noein

25 As Laks puts it, “knowledge-sensation in Parmenides does not necessarily depend as such upon any mixture of the two elements” (Laks, 1990, pp. 12-3). Parmenides on Thinking 29 is self-awareness, the “thinker” and the “thought” are one and the same. Parmenides found in the spread of Homeric usage an implicit recognition of this: in particular noos and noˆema could be either “mind” or “mental content” or both. The syntactic ambiguity over íper fronèei (is íper subject or object?) is very likely also a deliberate ambiguity. Again it expresses the identity, on this kind of theory, of mind and its contents. Finally, we may once more consider the statement tä gr plèon âsti nìhma. It has been disputed whether plèon is to be taken in the sense of “more”, which is also the sense demanded by the general pattern of krasis- theories; or as “full”. Again there may be a great gain in understanding by taking it as meant both ways. The point of saying that “the full is the thought” would be that the mind simply consists of what it is full of, and that that is also what it is mentally “full of”: the thought. As an example of Parmenides’ use of language, these lines suggest that he is much closer to Heraclitus than is usually thought, in his exploitation of the archaic and the ambiguous for philosophical eﬀect.26

References

Baltussen, Han, 2000, Theophrastus against the Presocratics and Plato: peripatetic dialectic in the De Sensibus, Leiden: Brill. Cherniss, Harold, 1964, Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, New York: Octagon Books. Diels, Hermann / Kranz, Walther (eds), 1952, Die Fragmente der Vorso- kratiker, Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. Fränkel, Hermann, 1960, Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens, Munich: C.H. Beck. von Fritz, Kurt, 1943, “Noos and Noein in the Homeric Poems”, Classical Philology, 38, pp. 79-93. Hayduck, Michael (ed.), 1888, Asclepii in Aristotelis Metaphysicorum libros A-Z commentaria, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 6.2, Berlin: Georg Reimer. — (ed.), 1891, Alexandri Aphrodisiensis in Aristotelis Metaphysica commentaria, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 1, Berlin: Georg Reimer. Laks, André,1990, “‘The More’ and ‘The Full’: On the Reconstruction of Parmenides’ Theory of Sensation in Theophrastus de Sensibus 3-4”,

26 I acknowledge with gratitude the helpful and constructive observations of the participants in the Munich conference, and in particular of my respondent Roman Dilcher; see his paper in this volume for his interestingly diﬀerent approach to the problems of Parmenides on thinking. At a later stage, David Charles most kindly read and commented on this paper. 30 Edward Hussey

in: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 8, pp. 1-18. —, 1999, “Soul, Sensation, Thought”, in: A.A. Long (ed.), The Cam- bridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Lesher, James H., 1994, “The emergence of philosophical interest in cognition”, in: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 12, pp. 1-34. Mansfeld, Jaap, 1996, “Aristote et la Structure du De Sensibus de Th´e- ophraste”, in: Phronesis, 41, pp. 158-188. Mourelatos, Alexander P.D., 1993, The Presocratics: A Collection of Cri- tical Essays, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Putnam, Hilary, 1999, The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World, New York: Columbia University Press. Ross, William D., 1953, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sedley, David, 1992, “Empedocles’ Theory and Theophrastus De Sensi- bus”, in: W.W. Fortenbaugh / D. Gutas (eds), Theophrastus: His Psychological, Doxographical and Scientiﬁc Writings, Rutgers Uni- versity Studies in Classical Humanities, vol. 5, New Brunswick, Lon- don: Transaction Publishers, pp. 20-31. Stratton, George M., 1917, Theophrastus and the Greek Physiological Psy- chology Before Aristotle, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. and New York: The Macmillan Company. —, 1945/46, “Noos, Noein and their Derivatives in Presocratic Philoso- phy”, in: Classical Philology, 40, pp. 223-242 and 41, pp. 12-34. West, Martin L., 1989, Iambi et Elegi Graeci, editio altera, Oxford: Clar- endon Press. Roman Dilcher Parmenides on the Place of Mind

Parmenides seems to have no place in the history of the philosophical problems that are indicated by the phrase “common to body and soul”. While in Heraclitus we do find for the very first time a concept of soul as something distinct from the body that is responsible for thought, action and feeling, there is a basic dichotomy in Parmenides’ thought that also has a bearing on the question of a possible relation of “body” and “soul”: on the one hand the account of Being which involves the exercise of mind; on the other hand a theory of the physical world on the basis of the two elements Light and Night. The coherence of these two parts of Parmenides’ poem has been much debated in terms of the possible relation of Being to Doxa. Fr. 16, however, provides an account of mind in relation to the two elements of the doxastic world, and so it might contribute in a different way to a better understanding of how the two parts cohere. Given the general outlines of Parmenides’ thinking, what is to be expected is an account of mind that in some way explains its capacity to apprehend Being and so to reach out of the realm of Light and Night. In fr. 4, there is in fact an appeal to using mind in this way: “Behold absent things being in an equal way firmly present to the mind (leÜsse d> ímwc peìnta nìú pareìnta bebaÐwc). For it will not cut off being from holding fast to being, as either dispersing everywhere in regular order or as gathering.” Here, mind functions as a uniting capacity, or rather as a capacity directed at an original unity. The phrase “not cutting off” implies that there is a unity or continuity of Being prior to its appearance in a somehow separated state. To this, noÜc is, or can be, directed by its capacity to relate to absent things as if they were present. Everything can be equally present to the noÜc. While it is not clear in what context this important remark was made, the suggestion evidently is that of a transition: the dispersed state of some things being present and others being absent is apparently the situation in which we usually find ourselves, being located in space and time. The appeal of the Goddess to behold beings by noÜc is an appeal to a human being to proceed to that insight which the main part of the poem speaks about. 32 Roman Dilcher

Now when turning to fr. 16, the expectation to learn more about this transcending capacity of noÜc is clearly disappointed, at least on the face of it. It runs:1 ±c gr ákstot> êqei krsin melèwn polukmptwn t°c nìoc njr¸poisi parèsthken; tä gr aÎtì êstin íper fronèei melèwn fÔsic njr¸poisin kaÈ psin kaÈ pantÐ; tä gr plèon âstÈ nìhma. What this fragment presents is apparently an application of the idea of mixing of the two elements by which the constitution of the cosmos was accounted for. The first sentence refers to a mixture of or in the limbs (krsic melèwn) which is – as is implied by ákstote, “each time” – in a state of constant fluctuation, and this mixture is in some way correlated (±c – t¸c) to the appearance of noÜc. The second sentence then explains this correlation of bodily mixture and mind by way of stating some sort of identity (tä gr aÎtä ktl.). Now what it is that is said to be the same is by no means clear. The construction of this sentence is hotly disputed, and no less than nine different grammatical solutions have been proposed,2 the main problem being how to construe tä aÎtì. In any case, it seems clear that the relation between thinking and the bodily constitution established in the first sentence is elaborated, such that thinking, at least in some important respect, is made dependent on the varying states of the mixture of the limbs. Now, before considering the fragment in more detail, it may be worthwhile asking what this piece of theory is supposed to explain and what its scope might be. On this, there seems to be an almost universal acceptance of the interpretation given by Theophrastus in his De Sensibus, chs. 3-43 – not in every detail, but at least as a guideline to understanding, especially as he provides some further information. The topic of the De Sensibus is, as indicated by the title (PerÈ aÊsj sewn), perception, and the discussion of the various theories is structured by the two possible principles on which to account for perception, that is “like by like” (tÄ åmoÐú) or “by opposites” (tÄ ânantÐú).4 Parmenides is presented as the first thinker

1 As far as the wording is concerned, there seems to be general agreement now that Theophrastus’ version is to be preferred to Aristotle’s. For the textual problems see Coxon (Fragm. of Parm., 1986, fr. 17 and commentary pp. 247ff.). 2 For a useful survey see Wiesner (Parmenides. Der Beginn der Aletheia, 1996, pp. 51f.). The problems are discussed by Hölscher (AnfänglichesFragen, 1968, pp. 113ff.) and Heitsch (Parmenides, 1974, pp. 196ff.). 3 The full text still has to be read in the edition of Stratton (Theophrastus and the Greek Physiological Psychology, 1919). The two chapters on Parmenides are accessible in DK 28 A 46 and Coxon Test. 45. I shall refer to Theophrastus’ account by using the line numbering given in DK. 4 A comprehensive discussion of the De Sensibus (leaving out, though, the chapters on Parmenides) was recently undertaken by Balthussen (Theophrastus against the Parmenides on the Place of Mind 33 who conceived a theory of perception on the principle “like by like”, and it is on this basis that Theophrastus tries to make sense of Parmenides’ contribution. He apparently had the full text of the Parmenidean poem before him, but as he quotes B 16 for illustration or substantiation it is the fragment we have which serves as the main textual basis for his interpretation. What he sets forth is a coherent theory of mixture according to which all mental states are to be explained by whichever of the two elements – which he here calls the hot and the cold (l. 8) – is prevailing in this mixture. While it is clear how Theophrastus understood this mechanism, what does not emerge is that it actually pertains to perception. Theophrastus’ account in fact refers to cognition or mental states in general: he speaks not only of aÒsjhsic, but also of gnÀsic, dinoia, and froneØn, including, importantly, memory and oblivion (mn mh kaÈ l jh, l. 11). The explicit mention of perception comes in what is apparently a comment on B 16 itself: namely, that Parmenides took “perception” and “thinking” as identical (tä gr aÊsjnesjai kaÈ tä froneØn ±c taÎtä lègei, l. 10f.). Now, this claim is highly questionable. Persuasive as it may be to bring Parmenides in line with this well-known idea, there is a flaw in this interpretation. In B 16 we nowhere explicitly hear of a relation of – to use very broad terms – cognition and that which is apprehended in cognition. The essential link between knowledge, be it by noÜc or by the physical constitution, and the reality which gets known is not established, let alone accounted for.5 What is being explicitly discussed, is only the mixture of the limbs and its relation to thought (noÜc or froneØn). Of course, there have been several attempts to find in B 16 a reference to “outside” things in the world that are supposed to get known in perception; but, I believe, they all fail. The issue hangs on the construction of the disputed second sentence. The least convincing attempt to find a reference to the world is by understanding the mixture or nature of the limbs itself to be designating the two elements prevailing in the world.6 This is hardly what someone

Presocratics and Plato, 2000). 5 This central problem of the traditional interpretation is apparent in Tarán’sac- count as he on the one hand believes that B 16 is “implying only the notion that like is known by like” but then on the other hand states – inconsistently – that “thought is the result of the particular fÔsic melèwn at any given moment and that to every constitution of the body the same thought would result. There is, consequently, no mention of the object” (Tarán, Parmenides, 1965, p. 261). 6 So e.g. Schwabl (Sein und Doxa bei Parm., 1968, pp. 416ff.): “Wir müssenuns dabei klarmachen, daß die Schwierigkeit, unter den mèlea das eine Mal die ‘Elemente’, das andere Mal den menschlichen ‘Leib’ verstehen zu sollen, eine nur scheinbare ist”. Yet this is not so, as Schwabl’s interpretation in fact requires the mèlea to mean both at once in l. 1. 34 Roman Dilcher can “have” in his mixture êqei, with the supplement of tic, l. 1). The second attempt favoured by many interpreters is based on the following reading: “For it is the same what the nature of the limbs is thinking in all men”.7 The phrase “the same” is here however not understood, as would be natural, to be referring to some identical object which all men think. It is taken to refer back to the fÔsic melèwn, in the sense: “it thinks the same as it – the physical constitution – is itself”. It is doubtful whether this idea can be expressed by simple tä aÎtì. What is in fact understood is the Theophrastean idea that would have to be phrased in Greek as something like ímoion áautÄ, or (with Theophrastus) tÄ åmoÐú. And even if this were a possible construction, the main contention of the theory – that like is known by like – would be left unexpressed. More- over, the melèwn fÔsic must refer to the mixed state of the body, not separately to the elements that constitute it. So, if what is perceived or, more generally, gets known really is the same in kind as the apprehending mixture, this will imply that every perception or thought will be exactly as is the proportion of the two elements in the mixture. Thus, this reading would not even yield the desired result that each element in the mixture is responsible for apprehending what is like itself in the world. On the contrary, what is perceived would be entirely dependent on the varying states of the physical constitution, and not on what is the case outside. According to a third solution the reference to the object of perception is found in the phrase íper fronèei. According to this interpretation, we are to read: “For what it thinks – i.e. what is the object of thought – is the same as the nature of the limbs”.8 Now this seems impossible on grammatical grounds. What makes the construction of tä aÎtì so hard to understand is precisely the fact that we do not have a statement of the simple form: “A is the same as B” or “the same is A and B”. An example of this construction is Parmenides’ fragment 3: tä gr aÎtä noeØn âstÐn te kaÈ eÚnai. In fr. 16, by contrast, there simply is no connective kaÐ. So it will be otiose to look for possible As and Bs if there is no grammatically sound way they can be identified.9 And even if we had

7 E.g. Tarán(Parm., 1965, p. 169): “For the same thing is what the nature of the body thinks in each and all men”. Wiesner (Parm., 1996, p. 72): “Denn es ist genau dasselbe, was die Konstitution der Glieder bei den Menschen allen und jedem erfaßt”. Hölscher (Parmenides, 1969, p. 45): “Denn die Beschaffenheit der Körperteile ist dasselbe, was sie denkt” (altered in the second edition). 8 E.g. Verdenius (Parmenides, 1964, p. 15): “For with all mortals the fÔsic of the mèlea is the same as what it fronèei”. Vlastos (“Parmenides’ Theory of Know- ledge”, 1995, p. 153): “For to all men and to each the nature of the frame is the same as what it thinks”. Fränkel (Parmenidesstudien, 1986, p. 175): “(der Art nach) dasselbe wie das man denkt ist die Beschaffenheit der Glieder”. 9 Also Fränkel’s suggestion to construe a statement of identity by the common phrase tä aÎtä íper (loc. cit., also defended by Coxon (Fragm. of Parm., 1986, pp. 249f.)) Parmenides on the Place of Mind 35 some statement of identity – e.g. tä aÎtì âstin íper fronèei kaÈ melèwn fÔsic, as it is tacitly understood – even so this would still not provide what is needed, that is, a correlation between the physical constitution on the one hand and that which is apprehended on the other. If íper is construed as the accusative object to fronèei, it would still designate the content of “thinking”, as a so-called internal object, and not an object in the world that is apprehended. In other words, the clause íper fronèei will in any case stand for what is called nìhma in the last line, and cannot be equivalent – in Aristotelian language – to the nohtìn or, for that matter, aÊsjhtìn. It is not incidental that there is no word like fronhtìn in Greek, but only frìnhma and frontÐc. The contrast to the principle “like is known by like” comes out very clearly once we turn to Empedocles.10 Fr. 109 states the idea in its clearest fashion: “Through earth we see earth, through water water”, and so forth. Here, we find an explicit relation between the elements in the world and in the physical constitution in us, so as to establish some contact between that by which we are perceiving and that what is being perceived. The elements in us are here not presented as determining thought or perception but rather as being the condition for apprehending: they enable the reception of what is like them in the world. This was elaborated by Empedocles in detail by a theory of effluences from the things coming to us and being received via certain pores in the sensual organs. So, Empe- docles’ theory is a full account of how perceptive contact with the world takes place. The perceptive act itself is primarily determined not by the constitution of the organs or the body but – as is to be expected from a theory of perception – by its object. Preponderance of one element has no place in this explanation; on the contrary, if Empedocles locates thought in the blood around the heart (B 105), he does so presumably because he believes that blood has the most even blending of the elements.11 There- fore it is best suited to have full apprehension of the world consisting of manifold mixtures of those elements. By contrast, what is considered in Parmenides’ fr. 16 is solely the side of man – the relation between noÜc and the constitution of the limbs. No mention is made of anything in the perceptible world entering this constellation or conversely being attended to. In fact, this is positively excluded, at least on the standard understanding of the first sentence: “As one has the blending of the limbs each time, so noÜc comes upon men”. The phrase ákstote, as has often been noted, makes it clear that

is not borne out by the parallels, as Hölscher (Anf. Fragen, 1968, pp. 114f.) has shown; cp. also Heitsch (Parm., 1974, p. 197). 10 For a general account see Long (“Thinking and Sense-perception in Empedocles”, 1966, pp. 256-76). 11 So Theophrastus tells us, Sens. 10 (= DK 31 A 86). 36 Roman Dilcher it is not only the individual blending that may differ from one person to the next but that there is a constant change taking place in the limbs which accounts for different thoughts. (This will also be the meaning of poluplgktwn “vagrant, much wandering”: the limbs are not wandering around in the body or outside, but it is their very nature to be in a state of fluctuation.) So, if the noÜc under consideration is understood as being dependent on the ever varying blending then there is no place for the object of perception to take part in this process. If the gist of the fragment is to bind noÜc to the physical constitution then there is nothing more to it: the process in the limbs will suffice for what we believe to be an awareness of the world around us. The picture will be of a mind encapsulated in its body and shut off from all contact with the world. Or rather, if mind is nothing but the physical constitution, there will be a bodily mixture entertaining thoughts with no relation to reality. So instead of a theory of perception, we in fact obtain an account that makes perception virtually impossible. So it appears that we fare much better, and what is more, Parmenides fares much better, if the idea of a theory of perception is discarded altogether. It rests on Theophrastus’ assertion alone, and is not backed up by the original text. On the contrary, froneØn is, unlike aÊsjnesjai (or, for that matter, to a certain extent noeØn), not a verb of apprehension that goes with a direct object.12 Usually it just means “to have understanding, to be prudent”. If froneØn does take an accusative object, it is almost always an adjective in neuter form that characterises the mind of the person who is engaged in froneØn. So, if someone does fÐla froneØn, he does not see or recognise a friend, but he has friendly feelings towards someone. Likewise, mèga froneØn means to be high-minded, or even presumptious, but not to have a special awareness for big things. It is a characterisation of the content or mode of thought, be it practical considerations or the state of mind as a whole. It is in this way that also the Parmenidean phrase “what one thinks” (íper fronèei) should be understood.13 If one says in Greek, for instance, that someone fronèei dark and nightly things, this does not mean that anything dark, or the night itself, is perceived. The statement would rather amount to saying that the person has sinister intentions, or that he is in a somber mood, or even in a state of depression. This gives an indication of the way in which Parmenides’ theory ought to be interpreted. So, when Theophrastus, after quoting B 16, comments that Parmenides takes aÊsjnesjai and froneØn as the same (l. 10f.), he has a very good rea-

12 For a convenient survey, see Liddel/Scott/Jones, s.v. For the semantic development from Homer onwards, see esp. Snell (“frènec – frìnhsic”, 1978, pp. 53ff.). 13 With íper to be construed as an accusative object. The alternative rendering “what is thinking” is ruled out by the construction (by lack of a connective kaÐ, cp. above). Parmenides on the Place of Mind 37 son for making that comment. Apparently, he rightly felt that this sentence would not pertain to perception at all according to normal Greek usage. So his remark is to be understood to refer specifically to the usage of the words: “he uses them indiscriminately”. This assumption is not so much the result but on the contrary the very premise of his interpretation. Without this alleged equation of aÊsjnesjai and froneØn the fragment has no bearing whatsoever to the theory Theophrastus wants to find.14 When he claims that for Parmenides perceiving and thinking are the same, he is apparently twisting the word so as to suit his own needs. This claim should not be confounded with the parallel remarks by Aristotle, though they may sound very similar. What Aristotle has in mind, in Metaphysics IV as well as in De Anima,15 is a systematic point. What he means is that the early philosophers did not properly distinguish mind from perception, and so actually treated them on the same lines, with dubious philosophical consequences.16 To say they did not distinguish mind from the senses does not imply that they were not aware of certain differences. The point is that (with the notable exception of Anaxagoras) they failed to produce an appropriate account of mind as something completely separate, as Aristo- tle himself did. This view of the Presocratic attempts is certainly correct in general; whether it is correct also in the case of Parmenides remains to be seen. Thus, it might after all be no coincidence that neither perception nor the perceptible enter in any way Parmenides’ reasoning where we would expect. The basic dichotomy on which the lecture of the Goddess is built is consistently presented as that between l jeia and mortal dìxai. It is all too natural, in view of the predicates of Being – especially its being unmoved and changeless – to reconstruct this dichotomy on the broadly Platonic division of what is known by reason and what is known by the senses. This is how already Aristotle and the later commentators rephrase the Parmenidean dichotomy,17 and there is hardly a modern account that does not refer to the “Doxa” as the sensible or phenomenal world. While

14 It should be noted that Theophrastus begins his exposition on Parmenides as follows: ParmenÐdhc màn gr ílwc oÎdàn f¸riken ll mìnon ktl. (l. 6). This is an indication that his “report” involves a good deal of liberal reconstruction. For Theophrastus’ similar interpretative procedure in the case of Heraclitus, see Dilcher (Studies in Heraclitus, 1995, pp. 163ff.). 15 Metaph. IV.5 1009b12ff.; de An. III.3 427a17ff. 16 The crucial point for Aristotle can best be seen in his criticism of Democritus that “he made no use of mind as a faculty of truth” (oÎ d qr¨tai tÄ nÄ ±c dunmei tinÈ perÈ tn l jeian, de An. I.2 404b30f.). On Aristotle’s concern with his predecessors’ account see Caston (“Why Aristotle Needs Imagination”, 1996, esp. pp. 25ff.). 17 Metaph. I.5 986b27ff. (= T. 26 Coxon; DK 28 A 24): . . . nagkazìmenoc d> koloujeØn toØc fainomènoic kaÈ tä ãn màn kat tän lìgon, pleÐw dà kat tn aÒsjhsin Ípolambnwn eÚnai. Similarly De Caelo III.1 298b14ff. (= T. 20 Coxon; DK A 25). 38 Roman Dilcher this need not be altogether wrong, it is nonetheless conspicuous that Par- menides sees the point where the mortals go astray not in their clinging to the delusions of sense perception, but in an act of naming.18 Fr. 7, though, may appear to come close to the traditional distinction: the God- dess tells us to restrain thought (nìhma) from the erroneous path, adding: “don’t let habit force you upon this road, to ply an aimless eye (îmma) and echoing hearing (kou n) and tongue (glÀssan); but judge by reasoning (krØnai dà lìgwi)”. Still, we do here not only not have a general term for the cognitive approach that is to be avoided, it is even doubtful whether the peculiar combination of eye, hearing and tongue should be taken to stand collectively for perception of the sensual world. As the mention of the tongue certainly does not refer to tasting but to speaking, the point seems to be more specific. It is a situation of someone not comprehending: confronted with the choice between the two ways, the eyes turn aimless, the words one has heard are resounding, and the tongue is paralyzed and speechless. This is in fact a very adequate description of what a modern reader may also experience on the first encounter with the doctrine of Being. While the use of reasoning that is being appealed to here certainly implies that our normal experience of the world (as implied by the phrase êjoc polÔpeiron, B 7.3) can provide no criterion to judge upon the issue that the Goddess presents, this is still far from denouncing the use of the senses as being deceptive as such.19 There is, in the end, only one piece of evidence that seems to speak in favour of Theophrastus’ view. At the end of his report he says that according to Parmenides the dead also have some perception. Due to the lack of warmth, that is, of the form of fire, the dead are restricted to perceiving what belongs to the opposite side of night. Now, the question is again whether Theophrastus gives an accurate interpretation of the text which he draws upon. Certainly, the idea of the dead having perception is so extraordinary and idiosyncratic that Theophrastus cannot have been completely misled, and if the basic idea he reports is correct then, it appears, we here do have a piece of a theory “like is known by like”. Yet it all hinges on the question whether Theophrastus was right in attributing perception to the dead, and here there is again room for doubt. What the dead are specifically said to perceive is “the cold and silence” (yuqroÜ kaÈ siwp¨c aÊsjnesjai, l. 15). While we have a clear notion of what it means to perceive the cold, it is not clear what the perception of silence might possibly amount to. Both cold and silence may be said, with Aristotle, in a formal way to be the privation, of warmth and of voice respectively

18 B 8.38, B 8.53, B 9 and B 19. 19 For some cautioning remarks in respect of the terminology of perception, see Langerbeck (Doxis Epirhysmie, 1935, pp. 44ﬀ.). The contrary view was held e.g. by Tar´an(Parm., 1965, p. 80): “a rejection of all sense-perception”. Parmenides on the Place of Mind 39

(Theophrastus mentions both of them, together with light, as that which the dead do not perceive, l. 14). Still, this is not true phenomenologically, and therefore not true in a way that is relevant to perception. The perception of cold is not just perceiving the warm not being there, but it is a specific experience in itself. The same is evidently not true of silence. While hearing a voice implies perceiving various tones or noises, there are no degrees or varieties of silence to be noticed. Perceiving silence means that there is nothing to perceive. One could certainly make an effort to describe a certain mode of awareness that somehow corresponds to hearing silence, showing that silence is not just “nothing” but a negative phenomenon in its own right. Even so, what is decisive is that it is precisely the term “perception” that in this case appears peculiarly inept. Therefore, it seems more likely than not that Theophrastus, when reading Parmenides’ account of the dead, interpreted it on the same lines as he did B 16, namely that he took as perception what originally was phrased as froneØn or similar. A statement of this sort referring to a state of mind may be less extraordinary, but it gives a much better sense. The word nekrìc which Theophrastus uses is often rendered as “corpse”. But a corpse will soon disintegrate, and is therefore not likely to be the representative of that nightly side which essentially belongs to the fullness of the Parmenidean world. Also the dead souls in Hades to whom Odysseus pays a visit are called nèkuec or êjnea nekrÀn, “the people of the dead”.20 In the Nekyia in the Odyssey, this place is described as bereft of light and life, almost as if it were an incarnation of Parmenides’ negative principle: it is completely covered by “deadly night”, and Helios has never thrown a glance there.21 Its inhabitants, the yuqaÐ of the dead, are like shadows, without any power – and therefore, important to note, they need to drink blood in order to regain memory and voice. This Homeric Underworld provides the perfect background on which to reconstruct Parmenides’ remarks on the dead.22 So, considering the dead yields after all a rich picture. First of all, it shows that what Parmenides was concerned with was a theory of “mind” as a way of explaining not perceptual awareness of the world, but of accounting for different modes of human life. What the varying mixture of the two elements means on a human scale comes out most clearly in the case of the dead in whom there is no fire any more. In whichever way Parmenides may have formulated this “mental activity” of the dead, it is

20 Od. 10.526, 11.34ff. 21 Od. 11.13ff. 22 In addition, there is a report by Simplicius stating that Parmenides’ Daimon ordering the cosmos is also responsible for sending the souls from the visible to the invisible and back: kaÈ tc yuqc pèmpein potà màn âk toÜ âmfanoÜc eÊc tä eidèc, potà dà npalin, Simp. in Ph. 39.18f. (= DK before B 13, T. 207 Coxon). 40 Roman Dilcher clear that their “thinking” the cold and silence describes their specific way of being. It is, so to speak, a world of cold, darkness and silence they live in, and silence is in a way what they perform as their most characteristic act of being. Theophrastus reports that Parmenides explained also memory and oblivion (mn mh kaÈ l jh, l. 11) by reference to the two elements, and again l jh is what is above all connected with Hades and the dead. To be in a state of l jh or rather to be overtaken by l jh means a state of impercipience, such as we experience in sleep. So if the dead, by lack of the warm and light element, experience l jh, this cannot amount to saying that they have an awareness of a negative world which we as living beings cannot experience. It must mean that they are deprived of awareness as such. Whatever the connection of the krsic melèwn with noÜc in B 16, the two elements are apparently in themselves related to mind and thought. As constituents of the doxastic world they are explicitly said to be equipollent (B 9). In view of their epistemic relevance, this equipollence does however not hold, and it appears that knowledge must mainly if not entirely be connected with the form of light. As Theophrastus reports, the dinoia in which the warm (i.e. the positive element) preponderates is the better and purer (l. 8f.). Fortunately, we have on this point some textual evidence that supports the epistemic priority of light. When night is introduced as the form in all respects opposite to fire, the first of its attributes is da¨ (B 8.59), it is unknowing and ignorant. It is not easy for us to do justice to such a claim. It may seem plausible to call night the element of ignorance as the dark takes away most of our awareness of the world in that we cannot see any more and are reduced to our other senses. We can also speak of the night of ignorance in respect to a person in what we would call a metaphorical way of speaking. Conversely light is what grants us the best access to the world in all its differences. And again, light seems to be something like an absolute metaphor for characterising or even explaining the function of mind, from Plato and Aristotle onwards down to modern ideas like the lumen naturale, the light of reason and the talk of illumination, enlightenment, and so forth.23 So, it seems plausible to attach what we might call the positive mental functions to the working of light in the human constitution. If Theophrastus was right in coordinating memory and oblivion, then memory must stand for the way to knowledge in a broad sense. After all, it is by memory that absent things can be present, as was claimed in B 4 to be characteristic of noÜc. And what is more, if l jh characterises best the general lack in an epistemic sense

23 For the concept of absolute metaphors in philosophy, see Blumenberg (Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie, 1998); for the metaphor of light specifically, cp. Blumen- berg (“Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit”, 1957, pp. 435ff.). Parmenides on the Place of Mind 41 connected with night, then it follows that its opposite – light – is directed towards what is opposite to l jh. In Greek, this is called A-letheia. This epistemic role of the elements now gives the interpretation of B 16 a peculiar turn. If noÜc is correlated or even identified with the mixture of the limbs, this may first sound like an Archaic precursor to a modern nat- uralist or reductionist account of mind. A reductionist or identity theory of body and mind however works within a certain conceptual framework of the physical and the mental, which seems to follow, broadly speaking, the principal lines of Cartesian dualism. If in Presocratic philosophy (and beyond) there is no hesitation to attribute mental functions to what appears to us to be only physical elements, the meaning and the implications of such ascriptions will be very different. In the case of Parmenides, this makes it all the more difficult to see what precise point fr. 16 is trying to make. On the one hand, it is still hard to understand why and in which way noÜc can be related to the elements of the doxastic world if its prime task after all is to apprehend Being in a way unsplit into the two opposite forms. On the other hand, if light is intrinsically endowed with understanding, at least of some sort or to some extent, there will be almost no need for an explicit and almost emphatic correlation of noÜc and physical constitution, as presented by B 16. The point of correlating noÜc with the physical constitution of the body might be read as being directed against the Homeric idea that the gods in some way act on men’s mind, by taking off their frènec or putting some idea into them. Thus, it would proceed on a similar line as Xeno- phanes’ saying “What men call Iris is in fact a cloud” (DK 21 B 32). Still, the reinterpretation of Greek religion in terms of a natural theory does not give a plausible explanation here. While Parmenides apparently did account for many natural phenomena in terms of the two elements, this doesn’t seem directed against traditional religious beliefs, as it clearly was in Xenophanes. After all, Parmenides did account for the gods in the course of the cosmogony: The daimon “first of all the gods devised Eros” (B 13). In addition, if the idea of the gods’ acting on men were to be criticized, one would expect a statement that stresses man’s own responsibility – in the way that Heraclitus’ saying “Character is man’s daemon” (DK 22 B 119) has often been understood. Binding mind to the nature of the limbs will not do that. A different solution would be to let light do the job of mind. In fact, there is good reason for attributing all as it were positive mental functions to the working of light in the mixture of the limbs. Accordingly, one could postulate on the basis of B 16, in view of attaining Aletheia, “a state from which forgetfulness and error were absolutely excluded” as “the ratio of 42 Roman Dilcher light to darkness should be as one to zero”.24 The consequence of this construction would however be to identify light with Being and night with nothing. For various reasons, this is implausible, and instead of bridging the Parmenidean dichotomy it would in fact unbalance it. Also, it is not clear what being in a state of pure light might mean. If we talk of someone becoming fully enlightened, this is understandable as a metaphorical expression. It is not any more understandable if referred to the physical mixture of the limbs. If we are to be purified completely of our dark and heavy components, this would lead, at least from our earthly viewpoint, to a physical dissolution into pure light. One might well imagine death to be a mere separation of the mixture that constitutes the living being. However, that the doctrine of Being is to describe the experience that awaits the light constituents in us after death will hardly be convincing. Now, bearing these considerations in mind, it appears that the link established in B 16 between noÜc and the physical constitution of the body is not as straightforward as has often been thought. The first sentence just indicates a correlation of some sort: “As is the mixture at each time, so noÜc comes by”. It would be rash to conclude that the mixture’s state by itself gives rise to thought. ParÐstasjai does not mean “to be generated, to come about, to rise”, but literally “to stand by”. In later classical Greek this can mean just “to happen to someone”, sometimes even in the sense “to occur to one’s mind”.25 So, the phrase here could mean that thought in some way just occurs to men, rising out of the depth of their bodies without their own doing. This idea would accord with what is said of unknowing mortals in fr. 6: “. . . helplessness (mhqanÐh) directs in their breasts their distracted minds (plagktän nìon)”. Still, in Homeric language – to which Parmenides is usually close26 – parÐstasjai has a less abstract meaning, it usually means “to stand by the side of someone”, often with the implication of helping someone out in battle.27 There is, interestingly, also a special usage in Homer: it is fate that can parÐstasjai to someone, that is: come close or be imminent. So, Patroclus when being slain by Hector calls out: “Death and mighty fate have also come close to your side” (ll toi ¢dh gqi parèsthken jnatoc kaÈ moØra krataÐh, Il. 16.852f.), with the same expression parèsthken as in fr. 16.28 So, despite their being in some way correlated, there is a certain disparity in the way the physical constitution and the appearence of noÜc are presented. The mixture of the limbs is something one has apparently in a different way

24 Vlastos (“Parmenides’ Theory of Knowledge”, 1995, p. 159). Similarly Fränkel (Parm.stud., 1986, pp. 173ff.). 25 LSJ s.v. B IV. 26 See Coxon (Fragm. of Parm., 1986, pp. 9ff.). 27 LSJ s.v. B I.1 and 2. 28 Coxon also sees this verse as the model (Fragm. of Parm., 1986, p. 249). Parmenides on the Place of Mind 43 at each time (êqei here understood with the supplement of an indefinite tic, “someone”). Contrasting to the present tense in the first clause, noÜc appears here with a verb in the perfect tense. If we spell out the temporal implications, parèsthken could be translated: “it has come near and now stands close”, in a similar way as the presence of death in the Homeric line quoted. Thus, we rather have something like a permanent imminence, but not a noÜc changing all the time as the mixture is.29 This conspicuous divergence of their mode of appearance is a clear indication that there is no simple dependence. On the contrary, if noÜc has some permanent presence, as the perfect tense suggests, then we are to expect it as something enduring against the bodily changes. It can even not be excluded that noÜc is in fact the grammatical subject also of the first line.30 Instead of supplementing an indefinite tic who in some peculiar way “has” his own mixture, we would now have mind as holding together the mixture of the limbs, such that just as it contains the fluctuations each time, so it appears to men. Given that the first sentence presents a correspondence between mind and mixture rather than a dependence, the difficulties in construing tä aÎtì in the following sentence do not come any more as a surprise. The question is whether we actually have a statement of identity here. If we are not bound any longer by the Theophrastean premise, the most natural way to understand the phrase tä aÎtì would be to see it as simply stating that it is one and the same thing that . . . for each and every man.31 This reading conflicts with the expectation that it is individual differences of thought that are to be explained by one and the same mechanism. Still, there is a special emphasis on the fact that what is said is valid not just for men, but for all of them and each (kaÈ psin kaÈ pantÐ). This emphasis only makes sense if what is stated here is meant to hold despite all individual

29 The varia lectio parÐstatai in the present tense that Aristotle’s text offers is rightly rejected by almost all editors on metrical grounds. It is presumably occasioned by the preceding quotation of Empedocles’ fr. 108: ísson lloØoi metèfun, tìson r> sfÐsin aÊeÈ kaÈ tä froneØn lloØa parÐstatai (Metaph. IV.5 1009b20ff.; see Fränkel (Parm.stud., 1986, p. 175)). And here again it shows that there is only a superficial similarity between the two doctrines. While Empedocles in fact stresses the correspondence between different constitution and different thought, Parmenides turns out, by contrast, to be concerned with what is identical in all men. 30 This was already suggested by Diels (changed in DK), and accepted by Coxon (Fragm. of Parm., 1986, p. 248). 31 This is how Heitsch understood the sentence: “Denn was die Beschaffenheit der Körperteile begreift, ist bei den Menschen dasselbe und zwar bei allen und bei jedem” (Parmenides, 1974, p. 198). – Hölscher’s solution is to take the phrase in a merely demonstrative sense: “Denn dies eben ist es, was die Beschaffenheit der Glieder denkt” (Anf. Fragen., 1968, p. 115). – In principle, it would also be possible to construe tä aÎtì with dative case – and here this would have to be njr¸poisin. Thus the sentence would read: “For, what the nature of the limbs thinks is the same as men, all and each of them”. 44 Roman Dilcher differences. Taken this way, the perspective turns out to be not that we do have an explanation of how it is that our fluctuating limbs produce different thoughts, but rather that there is something identical in all of them. In order to see what this might amount to we eventually have to turn to the last sentence that says something about what thought itself is: tä gr plèon âstÈ nìhma – it is what is plèon. This is usually understood as referring to the krsic of the limbs, specifying in which way thought depends on this mixture. The question to be discussed is whether plèon means “what is more” (pleÐwn, as comparative to polÔ), or rather “the full” (the neuter of plèwc). Theophrastus seems to interpret it on the former construction:32 It is from this verse that he apparently derived the main contention concerning Parmenides’ theory: “according to what exceeds, cognition will come about” – kat tä Íperbllon âstÈn gnÀsic (l. 7), which is then explained as either the warm or the cold prevailing in the mixture. Now while this explanation is reasonable by itself, this is not quite what Parmenides is saying. If thought is what is more, then it is identified not with the mixture as a whole, but with the element that is prevailing in it. “What is more”, tä plèon, singles out one component against the other which is the lesser, the æligìteron. By way of rephrasing with the help of the preposition kat Theophrastus in fact changes the meaning so it can refer to the whole mixture in respect of the proportion of its components, and again the majority of modern scholarship has followed his lead. Yet, if thought is to be identified with the prevailing element, this implies that the lesser component is not part of thinking. This would not necessarily mean that there are just two thoughts to be entertained, one for each form respectively; there could be intensity and degrees of the prevailing element that account for varieties. It would imply, however, that it is not the mixture in itself, as varying in proportion of its ingredients, which is somehow correlated to thought. The result will be that we can “think” only one form at a time, completely separate from its opposite. The explanatory power of the theory of mixture to account for varieties will thus be gone. Thus, there is good reason to consider the other reading of tä plèon in the sense of “the full”.33 This reading also seems persuasive as it might establish a meaningful link to the two other occurences of tä plèon in the poem, the one in B 8.24, stating that “all is full of being”, and the other in fr. 9.3: “all is equally full of light and of unintelligent night”. On the reading “the full is the thought”, the fullness is interpreted to refer to the

32 For this issue cp. Wiesner (Parm., 1996, pp. 60ff.). A different account of Theophrastus’ reading was given by Laks (“Parménidedans Théophraste”,1988, pp. 262-80). 33 Advocated e.g. by Tarán(Parm., 1965, p. 258). Parmenides on the Place of Mind 45

“full” mixture. So, this alternative reading does in fact not provide an explanation different to the standard one, but rather proposes a different way to reach the desired result that the nìhma is not correlated only to the one element which is in excess, but again to the full blending of both forms. It is again doubtful, though, whether this idea can be expressed by “the full”. For what is meant is that the whole of the blending is responsible for thought, not just one part or ingredient. In Greek, this would require something like tä ílon (or maybe tä pn). Being full, by contrast, is not opposed to parts in respect to which it is the full, but to emptiness. What is excluded in the two Parmenidean instances involving the expression “the full” is precisely the idea that there are empty parts, within being and in between the two forms which cover the whole. However, because there is no emptiness for Parmenides anyway, it would make no sense to assert fullness here in respect to thought. Thus, there seems to be no satisfactory explanation of what thought being the full might mean. Neither translation of tä plèon accords with the standard explanation in respect of the mixture, as neither will actually yield the sense which Theophrastus has, with universal acceptance, drawn out of this phrase. So, there seems to be only one way left: to understand tä plèon in the sense “what is more” not in respect to the proportion within the mixture, but in respect to the mixture as such: it is that which is more than the mixture – plèon t¨c krsewc. In this way, the point will be quite the opposite to the traditional reading. Instead of identifying thought with the mixture and its ingredients, Parmenides will on the contrary be drawing a distinction. While admitting a certain connection of the various modes and states of human mind with the physical constitution, mind as such is separated from it. Human mental acts may variously be coloured by light and darkness, but in all of them there is something which is more than the two elements. So, out of the ruins of Theophrastus’ ill-conceived attempt to include Parmenides in a theory of perception there finally emerges an account of mind that is both more consistent and more adequate to Parmenides’ historical role. On this reading, Parmenides will not be engaged any longer with a theory of mind that fundamentally clashes with the role of noÜc in apprehending Being. While it is difficult enough to gain an adequate understanding how the two parts of the poem, Aletheia and Mortal Doxai, are to be related, the claim of B 16 as it is usually understood would effectively undermine any such attempt. If human noÜc is completely determined by the physical constitution, then there is no way it could possibly make a transition towards what transcends the realm of Doxa. As the claim of B 16 is most explicitly said to be valid for every human being, it would follow that the apprehension of Being presented as Aletheia could only be 46 Roman Dilcher gained by a divine mind that has no contact whatsoever with the human mind of B 16. On systematic grounds it would be excluded that we could ever achieve more than merely listening to the Goddess’s account – that is, that we could comprehend it. Once noÜc is liberated from its complete absorption into the wandering limbs, these inconsistencies cease to exist. Fr. 16 can now be seen as an attempt to show, on the one hand, that noÜc is present in man in having some intrinsic contact with the limbs’ mixture, while on the other hand not being restricted to it. Mind being that which stands by man will not be viewed as a somehow localised capacity in man. Whatever the claim of its constant presence may amount to – to say “thought is what is more than the bodily mixture” amounts to stating nothing less than the transcendence of mind – and at the same time to stating nothing more than just that it is transcendent. So, on this line of interpretation, fr. 16 will not give an account of mind – it rather is the attempt to give mind a place in the changeable world by showing that it has no place. To claim that in Parmenides we find the first vague formulation of the transcendence of mind may run counter to many preconceptions about ancient philosophy, and yet, it is not out of place. Anaxagoras envisaged a cosmogony that had noÜc as its guiding principle, and despite its involve- ment with the many things it is itself as it were untouched and separate: as he says, noÜc “is not mixed with any thing” (mèmeiktai oÎdenÈ qr mati, DK 59 B 12), and so it has absolute rule. The most systematic account of noÜc we have from antiquity takes up precisely this idea. To show in what way noÜc is to be understood as something “separate” (qwristìn) is the primary aim of Aristotle’s treatment in De Anima III chs. 4-5. His solution is to split noÜc into a passive and an active part.34 While thinking is what is produced, so to speak, by their cooperation, the passive and corruptible part falls on the side of man while the active noÜc is unmixed, eternal and in its essence actuality (just like the so-called unmoved mover in Meta- physics XII). The way of its presence is shown by a simile: just as light in a way produces colours, so the active noÜc enlightens the noetic realm. This use of the metaphor of light may shed also some light on Parmenides. On the one hand, it shows how the constant presence of noÜc can be understood as being something independent of human thought while still being in a way the condition for thinking. This way, the claim implicit in the phrase parèsthken may gain some sense. On the other hand, it might give a clue as to the role of light as a principle of knowledge. If this is Parmenides’ view, and if he still holds mind is what is more and beyond, then he is in fact very close to saying that light is just a metaphor for

34 For a more detailed account, see Dilcher (“Zur aristotelischen Noetik”, 1998, pp. 309-38). Parmenides on the Place of Mind 47 thinking – in his words that would be: a name that humans have posited. It is from this perspective that fr. 16 might provide fresh insights into the discourse on Being.

References

Baltussen, Han, 2000, Theophrastus against the Presocratics and Plato. Peripatetic Dialectic in the De sensibus, Leiden: Brill. Blumenberg, Hans, 1957, “Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit”, in: Studium generale, 10, pp. 435ff. —, 1998, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Caston, Victor, 1996, “Why Aristotle Needs Imagination”, in: Phronesis, 41. Coxon, Allan H., 1986, The Fragments of Parmenides, Assen: van Gor- cum. Dilcher, Roman, 1995, Studies in Heraclitus, Hildesheim: Olms. —, 1998, “Zur aristotelischen Noetik (De Anima III 4-5)”, in: Interna- tionale Zeitschrift fürPhilosophie, H. 2, pp. 309-38. Fränkel, Hermann, 1968, “Parmenidesstudien”, in: H. Fränkel, Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens, 3rd edn., München: Beck. Heitsch, Ernst (ed.), 1974, Parmenides. Die Anfängeder Ontologie, Logik und Naturwissenschaft, München: Heimeran. Hölscher, Uvo, 1968, AnfänglichesFragen. Studien zur frühengriechischen Philosophie, Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. — (ed.), 1969, Parmenides. Vom Wesen des Seienden, Frankfurt: Suhr- kamp. Laks, André,1988, “Parménidedans Théophraste, De sensibus 3-4”, in: La Parola del Passato, 43, pp. 262-80. Langerbeck, Hermann, 1935, Doxis Epirhysmie. Studien zu Demokrits Ethik und Erkenntnislehre, Berlin: Weidmann. Long, Anthony A., 1966, “Thinking and Sense-perception in Empedocles: Mysticism or Materialism?”, in: Class. Quart., 16, pp. 256-76. Schwabl, Hans, 1968, “Sein und Doxa bei Parmenides”, in: Hans-Georg Gadamer (ed.), Um die Begriffswelt der Vorsokratiker, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Snell, Bruno, 1978, “frènec – frìnhsic”, in: Bruno Snell, Der Weg zum Denken und zur Wahrheit, Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Stratton, George M. (ed.), 1919, Theophrastus and the Greek Physiologi- cal Psychology before Aristotle, London, repr. 1964, Amsterdam: Bonset. Tarán,Leonardo, 1965, Parmenides, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. Verdenius, Willem J., 1964, Parmenides, Amsterdam: A.M. Hakkert. 48 Roman Dilcher

Vlastos, Gregory, 1995, “Parmenides’ Theory of Knowledge”, in: D.W. Graham (ed.), Studies in Greek Philosophy I , Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wiesner, J¨urgen,1996, Parmenides. Der Beginn der Aletheia, Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. Denis O’Brien Life Beyond the Stars: Aristotle, Plato and Empedocles (De Caelo I.9 279a11-22)∗

Can there be a life which is not common to body and soul? More simply still: can there be life without a body? Students of Aristotle will need only to be reminded of the life led by the unmoved mover, as described in the Metaphysics and no doubt implied elsewhere, before answering that question, on Aristotle’s behalf, in the affirmative.1 But readers of Aristotle’s mature philosophy may not be prepared for a slightly different question: does Aristotle believe that there can be life, without a body, beyond the stars? The framing of that question may seem to have no obvious place in the philosophy familiar to us from Aristotle’s extant writings. It is, nonetheless, a question which, I shall argue, has to be faced in a passage of the De Caelo, where the Aristotle who speaks to us is not the voice familiar to us from the extant corpus, but an Aristotle whose thoughts are still heavily indebted to Plato’s Timaeus and, through Plato, to ways of thinking that had been characteristic of philosophers in the fifth century. Admittedly, a “presocratic” Aristotle does not usually find a place in histories of Greek philosophy. It is therefore with due diffidence that I shall put forward my explanation of a passage that has so far resisted all attempts at a more conventional style of exegesis. If, as is likely, my proposed “presocratic” reading of the text fails to convince on a first, and even on a second hearing, I would ask the doubting Thomas at least to

∗ Acknowledgement. My most grateful thanks are due to those who at various times have criticised and commented upon the written version of my contribution: Jean- Claude Picot, Marwan Rashed, Suzanne Stern-Gillet. 1 At Metaph. XII.7 1072b26-30, Aristotle not only attributes to the unmoved mover a “life” that is “the best” and “everlasting” (1072b28: zw rÐsth kaÈ òdioc); he also speaks of the unmoved mover as itself therefore “a living being” that is “everlasting” and “the best” (b29: zÄon òdion riston). In the Ethics, Aristotle again writes of the “life” of the gods in a passage usually taken to refer to the unmoved mover (EN X.8 1178b18-32). 50 Denis O’Brien recognise the problem and if he dislikes my interpretation, as he may well do, to provide another.

I. De Anima I.4 Aristotle’s criticism of Empedocles

I start from a curious criticism which Aristotle makes of Empedocles in chapter 4 of book one of the De Anima, as part of his general critique of the widespread and semi-popular belief that the soul is a harmony.2

Love as “Harmony” “Harmony” is one of the many names that Empedocles uses for his cosmic principle of Love (fr. 96.4).3 From various comments made by Aristotle, supported by quotations from Simplicius, we know that Love, including

2 Aristotle, De Anima I.4 407b27-408a30. Soul as “harmony” also figures largely in Plato’s Phaedo, 85e3-95b4 (see n. 19 below). In writing both of Plato and of Aristotle, I have kept to the translation of rmonÐa as “harmony”, despite Burnet’s objection (1911, p. 85), in his commentary on the Phaedo (ad 85e3), that rmonÐa does not mean what we call “harmony”. Applied to a lyre, and to the soul when compared to a lyre as in Plato’s dialogue, the word, so Burnet tells us, means “tuning” (cf. LSJ, s.v., IV 1: “in Music, stringing” (p. 244)), whereas “what we call ‘harmony’ is in Greek sumfwnÐa”. The distinction noted by Burnet is regularly repeated, in one form or another, by translators and commentators of the Phaedo (Hackforth, 1955, p. 97, n. 1; Gallop, 1975, p. 147; Dixsaut, 1991, pp. 358-359 (= n. 198); Rowe, 1993, p. 203), and is as regularly disregarded by translators and commentators of Aristotle’s De Anima (Hicks, 1907, p. 29 and pp. 265 sqq.; Smith, 1931, ad loc.; Ross, 1961, p. 195; Thillet, 2005, p. 330). The word and the concept is nonetheless in both places the same, and is not restricted to the action of “tuning” (Burnet) or “stringing” (LSJ). So it is that Socrates speaks of his “harmony” as a “combination” (cf. 92e4-93a1: rmonÐø « llù tinÈ sunjèsei), dependent upon the way in which the constituents are combined (93a1-2), as a result of their being “harmonised” (93a11-12). Similarly, Aristotle specifies his “harmony” as a lìgoc tic [. . . ] tÀn miqjèntwn « sÔnjesic (De Anima I.4 407b32-33), a specification which again applies not, or not only, to the activity which produces a “harmony”, but to the “proportion” (cf. lìgoc) or “combination” (cf. sÔnjesic) which thereafter inheres in the constituents. Since, as we shall see, it is the status of what inheres in the constituents (whether a “proportion” or “something other” than the proportion) which gives meaning to Aristotle’s criticism, I have kept the translation “harmony”, as more appropriate to a discussion that does not bear directly on the act by which potentially discordant constituents are made to be “in tune” (Burnet’s “tuning”, Hackforth’s and Rowe’s “attunement”), but looks rather to determine the outcome of that action. “Tuning” and “attunement” cease, once whatever constituents are in question have been “attuned”. But precisely what is it (so Aristotle will ask) that continues once the “tuning” has been completed? 3 For the multiplicity of names, see n. 9 below sub finem. Life Beyond the Stars 51

Love as Harmony, was especially responsible for making animal parts, specifically bones, blood and flesh, at the beginning of a zoogony that followed the total separation of the elements by Strife.4 When therefore, in the De Anima, Aristotle’s criticism of the soul as harmony leads him to object that, if by harmony we mean “the proportion of the mixture”, there would have to be a separate “soul” for each one of the animal parts, such as flesh and bone, we are hardly surprised that those words serve as a cue for Empedocles to be brought on stage.5 But what we may not be prepared for is the odd way in which Aristotle formulates his criticism of Empedocles, at this point.6

The proportion of the elements in bones, blood and flesh The passage starts off simply enough. If the proportion of the mixture were “soul and harmony”, says Aristotle, then one might want to question Empedocles. For Empedocles, so Aristotle continues, says that “each of them”, i.e. “each one” of the animal parts, flesh as well as bone, is what it is by reason of a certain “proportion”.7 We happen to know just what that means, since verses quoted later by Aristotle and elsewhere by Simplicius give specific figures for the “proportion” of the elements that made up blood, flesh and bone. Blood and flesh were made up from all four elements, in a more or less equal proportion (“more or less”, to account for the fluidity of blood as compared to the relative density of flesh).8 Bone was made up from four parts out of eight of fire, two parts of the “gleam of Nestis” (water, or water and air) and two parts of earth, all of these “joined by Harmony’s marvellous glues” (

4 For evidence and argument, see O’Brien (1969, pp. 200-203). 5 Aristotle, De Anima I.4 407b27-408a18. 6 Aristotle, De Anima I.4 408a18-23. 7 Aristotle, De Anima I.4 408a17-20: . . . å dà t¨c mÐxewc lìgoc rmonÐa kaÈ yuq . pait seie d> n tic toÜtì ge kaÈ par> >Empedoklèouc; ékaston gr aÎtÀn lìgú tinÐ fhsin eÚnai. “. . . the proportion of the mixture is harmony and soul. That is just the question (toÜtì ge) one might put to Empedocles too. For he says that each of them (sc. each of the animal “parts”, specifically flesh and bone, see 408a14-15) is (sc. what it is) in virtue of some proportion.” 8 See fr. 98, quoted by Simplicius, in Ph. 32.6-10. The fragment concludes (v. 5) âk tÀn aÙm te gènto kaÈ llhc eÒdea sarkìc. The meaning is not, as it is thought to be by Empedocles’ most recent editor (Inwood, 1992, p. 247), “blood” and “other kinds of flesh”, but “blood and flesh as well”. See LSJ, s.v. lloc, II 8 (p. 70). 9 See fr. 96, quoted by Aristotle, De Anima I.5 410a4-6 (vv. 1-3), and by Simplicius, in Ph. 300.21-24 (four verses). I adopt Sider’s jespesÐùsin (1984, p. 17) for the questionable form jespesÐhjen, recorded in the manuscripts of Simplicius. In the penultimate verse of the fragment, Empedocles writes: t d> æstèa leuk gènonto. Lloyd (1966, p. 274) translates “the white bones came into being”. This is almost certainly wrong: t dè is here much more likely to be, not the definite article, but a 52 Denis O’Brien

The “soul” and “Love”: Aristotle’s paired questions Aristotle continues with an intricate series of paired questions. A ﬁrst pair of questions relates to “soul”, De Anima I.4 408a20-21: pìteron oÞn å lìgoc âstÈn yuq , « mllon éterìn ti oÞsa âggÐnetai toØc mèresin? Very well, so (oÞn) is soul the proportion, or is soul rather something else, that comes to be present in the parts?10 This is followed by two pairs of questions, obviously intended as in some way an explicitation of the initial pair of questions relating to soul, but where Aristotle writes, not of soul, but of Love, 408a21-23: êti dà pìteron FilÐa t¨c tuqoÔshc aÊtÐa mÐxewc « t¨c kat tän lìgon, kaÈ aÕth pìteron å lìgoc âstÈn « par tän lìgon éterìn ti? What’s more (êti dè), is Love the cause of chance mixture or of proportionate mixture, and supposing she is the latter, is she (kaÈ aÕth) the proportion, or something else (éterìn ti), alongside and in addition to (par) the proportion?11

demonstrative pronoun, as frequently in Homer (cf. LSJ, s.v. å, , tì, A (p. 1194)), with “bones” as the complement, not the subject of the verb. The meaning will be that “these things” (t dè, i.e. the “parts” already named) “became bones”. Lloyd adds (1966, p. 274, n. 3): “The sentence may refer not to the creation of bones, but to their arrangement in the body.” This gives an impossible time sequence. The perfect participle (rhrìta) cannot but refer to an action prior to that of the leading verb (here gènonto). (See Goodwin (1897, p. 48, § 142).) The participle cannot therefore refer to “the arrangement” of bones “in the body” (cf. rhrìta) subsequently to their formation (cf. gènonto). It is the “parts” (cf. t dè), not the “bones”, that are “joined by the glues of Harmony” prior to their becoming bones. AfrodÐth (frs 71.4 and 87), Storg (fr. 109) and FilÐh (in the Strasbourg papyrus, d 3). Jean-Claude Picot will, I hope, soon be writing on the reference of the expression I have translated as “the gleam of Nestis” (v. 2: N stidoc aÒglhc). 10 The disjunction in the Greek is marked more strongly than it can be in a straightforward English translation. Aristotle writes: pìteron ... ¢ . . . Literally: “whether . . . or . . . ” The difficulty is that, in modern English, that form of disjunction is possible only in an indirect question. To admit the same disjunction in a direct question, one would have to resort to a heavy-handed paraphrase: “Very well then (cf. oÞn), which of two things is it going to be: is soul the proportion, or is soul rather something else, that comes to be present in the parts?” 11 Again, the explicitly disjunctive form of question (pìteron ... ¢ . . . ) is possible in English only for an indirect question. Aristotle first asks whether (pìteron ...) Love is cause of chance mixture or whether (¢ . . . ) she is cause of proportionate mixture, and secondly whether, if the latter (kaÈ aÕth pìteron . . . ), she is the proportion itself or whether (¢ . . . ) she is something else alongside and in addition to the proportion. The repetition brings out the proximity, at this point, of the two notions of Love as “cause of proportionate mixture” and as the “proportion” itself, in so far as an affirmative answer to the second member of the first question (Love as “cause of proportionate mixture”) is presupposed by the first member of the second question (Love as the “proportion” itself). Hence my translation of kaÈ Life Beyond the Stars 53

The question whether Love is cause of a chance mixture is in this context a mere side issue. Aristotle knows perfectly well that the elements which made up bone or flesh had to be mixed in a certain proportion to produce the required result. When several pages later he quotes the verses which specify the ingredients that make up bone (fr. 96), he prefaces his quotation with the obvious remark that the elements which produce bone cannot be mixed “any old how” (åpwsoÜn), but have to follow a specific formula.12 If therefore we leave aside what is clearly, at this point, a diversionary tactic, then the paired questions that Aristotle asks of “soul” and the second of the two pairs of questions that he asks of “Love” are to all intents and purposes the same. In the first question of each pair, Aristotle writes, first of the soul and then of Love, as the “proportion”. In the second question of each pair, he writes, first of the soul and then of Love, as “something else”, in addition to the proportion. The first question in each pair – Is soul the proportion (pìteron [. . . ] å lìgoc âstÈn yuq )? – Is Love the proportion (. . . kaÈ aÕth [sc. FilÐa] pìteron å lìgoc âstÐn)? The second question in each pair – Is soul “something else” (éterìn ti) that “comes to be present in the parts” (âggÐnetai toØc mèresin)? – Is Love “something else” (éterìn ti), “alongside and in addition to the proportion” (par tän lìgon)? The paired questions that Aristotle asks of Love are essentially no different from the paired questions he asks of soul. The repetition gives the game away. Seen through Aristotle’s eyes, Love and the soul, so the criticism of the De Anima implies, are in Empedocles’ philosophy the same. aÕth as “and supposing she is the latter, is she . . . ” See also the footnote but one following this. 12 Aristotle, De Anima I.5 410a1-3: oÎ gr åpwsoÜn êqonta t stoiqeØa toÔtwn ékas- ton, ll lìgú tinÈ kaÈ sunjèsei, kajper fhsÈ kaÈ >Empedokl¨c tä æstoÜn. “The elements that make up each of the animal parts are not arranged any old how. No, they have to be arranged in some specific proportion and combination, which is just what Empedocles for one does say of bone.” The expression lìgú tinÈ kaÈ sunjèsei (including the use of the indefinite pronoun, but with a different conjunction) is repeated from Aristotle’s description of harmony at I.4 407b32-33 (lìgoc tic [. . . ] « sÔnjesic). The repetition brings out the point that Aristotle does not take seriously the possibility that, in producing animal parts, Love was cause of a chance mixture (cf. 408a22). The allusion to chance is here more of a sideways glance at a much wider question, which Aristotle makes much of in the Physics and elsewhere, namely the question whether there is a cause higher than Love and Strife, a cause which determines their activity at any point in the cosmic cycle. See Ph. II.4 196a19-24; GC II.6 333b33-334a9. For the background to Aristotle’s criticism on this count, see O’Brien (1969, pp. 213-214). 54 Denis O’Brien

The principle which determines the mixture of the elements in animal bodies, and which Aristotle here casts as an (unsuccessful) candidate for soul, is what Empedocles calls Love.13

“Souls” and “daimones” That association of ideas is less strange than it may seem if we suppose that Aristotle has in mind Empedocles’ conception of the daimones. Empedocles’ account of transmigration in the Purifications ends with the poignant cry (fr. 115.13): “I too am now one of them, an exile from the gods and a wanderer.” The beings with whom Empedocles here associates himself are so many daimones (cf. v. 5), tossed from sky to sea, from sea to land and from land to “the rays of the shining sun” (vv. 9-11), as they “tread in turn the bitter paths of life” (v. 8), “born in the course of time” as all the different types of mortal creature that inhabit the different parts of the cosmos (cf. v. 7). Scholars have long puzzled over the identity of the transmigrating daimones of the Purifications. The simplest explanation is that they are isolated pieces of the cosmic principle of Love, the very principle portrayed as responsible for the making of animal parts in the poem On Nature. In both poems, Empedocles’ world will have comprised the same four elements (earth and water, air and fire) and the same two cosmic powers, Love and Strife, with the daimones, who appear in both poems, not some extraneous race of beings, but so many manifestations of Love when she has been subjected to the divisive power of Strife.14

13 Philosophically minded readers are liable to be distracted at this point by the distinction between soul as “proportion” (cf. 408a20) and Love as “cause” of the proportion (cf. 408a22). In the context of Aristotle’s argument, that distinction is subordinate to the difference between a principle which is the proportion (or cause of the proportion) and an entity which has an existence independently of that of which it is the proportion (or cause of the proportion). So much is clear from the sequence of thought in the two pairs of questions concerning Love (see the footnote but one preceding this). Aristotle first asks “whether Love is the cause of chance mixture or of proportionate mixture” (408a21-22: pìteron FilÐa t¨c tuqoÔshc aÊtÐa mÐxewc « t¨c kat tän lìgon). He continues: “and is she the proportion, or something else, alongside and in addition to the proportion?” (408a22-23: kaÈ aÕth pìteron å lìgoc âstÈn « par tän lìgon éterìn ti?) Whether Love is “the proportion” (pìteron å lìgoc âstÐn) summarises a supposedly affirmative answer to the question whether Love is “cause of proportionate mixture” (pìteron [. . . ] aÊtÐa mÐxewc [. . . ] t¨c kat tän lìgon), and exactly repeats the form of words used of soul in the lines immediately preceding (408a20: pìteron [. . . ] å lìgoc âstÈn yuq ). Love as “proportion” is opposed, not to Love as “cause” of the proportion, but to Love as “something else, alongside and in addition to the proportion”, in the same way that soul as “proportion” is opposed to soul as “something else, that comes to be present in the parts”. 14 I do no more than re-state the interpretation of daimones as parts or pieces of Love given in O’Brien (1969, pp. 325-336, and 1995, pp. 442-443). Cf. Martin and Life Beyond the Stars 55

So it is that, in the passage quoted from the De Anima, Aristotle can speak, in one and the same breath, of Love and the soul. The individual daimones, inhabiting successively the bodies of plants and animals, Aris- totle sees as so many transmigrating souls, a conﬂation of ideas which will become common coin in later accounts of Empedocles’ philosophy.15 Those same souls or daimones are none other than fragmented particles of the cosmic god of Love.

Aristotle’s impossible alternative No less significant than the obvious parallelism between “Love” and “the soul” (or daimon) is the answer to the question that Aristotle has asked. Is soul/is Love the proportion or something other than the proportion, something which exists “alongside the proportion” and which “comes to be present in the parts”? Aristotle presents his question as an alternative: which is it, one or the other? Empedocles’ answer would have been “both”.16 The Love which is “Harmony” (cf. fr. 96.4), and which joins the elements to form bones, flesh and blood, is herself a being extended in space and moving from place to place, including therefore, as we can infer from Aristotle’s passage, being “present in the parts” of mortal creatures.17 She is at once the “proportion”, or cause of the proportion, and herself present in the elements that are proportioned in the way that she desires them to be. So it is that, when Empedocles first seeks to impress upon Pausanias the existence and the importance of Love (fr. 17.20-26), he says both that Love is “embedded in mortal limbs” (v. 22), and that it is because of the presence of Love in their limbs that people “think kindly thoughts and accomplish deeds that fit well together” (v. 23). Love’s presence and Love’s influence would have seemed to Empedocles inseparable: Love produces

Primavesi (1999, pp. 90-95). 15 See especially Plutarch, De Exilio 17 607C-D, and Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, VII 29-31. For both texts, see O’Brien (2001). 16 As already noted, the edge to Aristotle’s question is more obvious in Greek than it is in English. In the sentences quoted above, the same explicitly disjunctive form of question (pìteron ... ¢ . . . ) is used once for “soul” (408a20-21) and twice for “Love” (408a21-23). The three successive uses of the same disjunction bring out Aristotle’s insistence that Empedocles has to choose. In the first and the last question of the series, Aristotle hammers home the point: Is soul – is Love – the proportion itself, or something other than the proportion? She has to be one or the other. She cannot be both. By the very form of his question, Aristotle has excluded what would have been Empedocles’ own answer. 17 Love is “a being extended in space”: see fr. 17.20, where Love is said to be “equal in length and breadth”. “Moving from place to place”: see fr. 35, where, as her power increases, Love follows close on the heels of Strife as he withdraws to “the outermost boundaries of the circle” (v. 10). 56 Denis O’Brien the effects she does because she is “embedded” in our limbs; because she is “embedded” in our limbs, she produces the effects that we can see. So it is in human behaviour (fr. 17.22-23); so it is also in the formation of bones (fr. 96), flesh and blood (fr. 98).18

Empedocles’ unconscious materialism For Aristotle, that mutual entailment betrays, nonetheless, an impossible conjunction of ideas. If Love is herself present as a éterìn ti, “a something other”, “a something extra”, in the limbs of man and beast, then she cannot also be the ratio, the logos according to which the elements that make up the limbs are ordered. So far as Aristotle is concerned, Love is either the logos, the proportion of elements that make up bones and ﬂesh, or “something other” than the proportion, a substance in her own right. She cannot be both. To Aristotle’s way of thinking, Love cannot, at one and the same time, be an independent entity somehow present in the mixture and the “proportion” of the mixture, both a “substance” and a “harmony”. But that is just what Empedocles did think she was, a divine power extended in space and moving from place to place, at once Harmony (a proper name) and cause of harmony. But Empedocles’ world, a world of unconscious materialism which we can still glimpse in the objections put forward by Simmias in the Phaedo, has so disappeared from view by the mid-fourth century that Aristotle can treat that whole cast of ideas with

18 Two qualifications are needed at this point. (1) In fr. 17, Empedocles is speaking to Pausanias. When he tells him to “see with the mind” (cf. v. 21: tn sÌ nìú dèrkeu) the Love that is “embedded in mortal limbs” (v. 22), he is therefore speaking of the present world. As noted above, Love’s production of animal parts, specifically including bone, was in all probability taken from the account given of Love’s activity in a world that follows the total separation of the elements and therefore in a world other than our own (see again O’Brien (1969, pp. 200-203)). I nonetheless assume the modalities of Love’s action (the way in which her influence is exercised) to be the same in either world. (2) In admitting – indeed in emphasising – that, in Aristotle’s words, the soul which will prove to be none other than Love “comes to be present in the parts” (De Anima I.4 408a21, as quoted above), I do not mean that Love comes to be present as an additional ingredient in the mixture, as one more in the list of elements that make up blood or bone. When Empedocles lists the eight “parts” that make up bone (fr. 96), “Harmony”, though essential to the formation of bone (cf. v. 4), is not included as one of the numbered “parts”. When Aristotle writes, in a different context (Metaph. XII.10 1075a38-b6), that Love is “a part of the mixture” (1075b4: mìrion [. . . ] toÜ mÐgmatoc), he again plays upon the ambiguity that underlies his questions in the De Anima. In so far as Love is “a part of the mixture” she has to be counted, in Aristotle’s eyes, as a material cause. But in that case, so Aristotle asks complainingly, how can she be, at the same time, a moving cause? The answer is, again, that Love may be, in Aristotle’s terms, a “part” of the mixture; she is not therefore an ingredient in the mixture, even though she is indeed present in the mixture. Life Beyond the Stars 57 what we may be tempted to think is feigned incomprehension, but what is perhaps more likely to be genuine lack of understanding.19

II. De Caelo I.9 Beings who live beyond the outermost circumference of the heavens

With so inauspicious a beginning, one might well expect the inﬂuence on Aristotle’s writings of what he considers to be Empedocles’ “soul” to be nil. And so indeed it very nearly is, except for one curious passage which has intrigued and puzzled commentators from Simplicius onwards. In chapter 9 of book one of the De Caelo, after having assured us, at length and in detail, that outside the heavens there is neither place, nor void, nor time, Aristotle continues with a lyrical description of beings who nonetheless have their home there, and who are all the better oﬀ for being unencumbered with body, beyond the reach of both place and time.

“Outside the heavens” The scene is set with a few deft moves (279a11-18). “Outside the heavens there is neither place, nor void, nor time.”20 For place, void and time all depend upon the presence of a body. Place is what can receive a body.21 Void, “or so they say”, is where there is no body, but where there might come to be one.22 Time is the measure of movement, and without a phys- 19 “Unconscious materialism” is a deliberately elliptical expression. Readers who would like to know more may care to glance at O’Brien (1989, 1990 and 1991); see also O’Brien (1969, pp. 237-251 (the final chapter of Empedocles’ cosmic cycle)). Simmias’ objection, in the Phaedo, that the soul is a “harmony” (85e3-86d4), reminds Echecrates of something that he had always believed or half-believed (cf. 88d3-6), words which may indicate that the belief in question was Pythagorean, even if not exclusively so (see Ebert (2004, pp. 288-289)). The burden of Socrates’ long reply (91c6-95b4) is precisely that the soul as “harmony” could not exist independently of whatever is “harmonised”; in the words of the De Anima, the soul as “harmony” is a lìgoc, and cannot therefore also be a éterìn ti. Aristotle’s criticism of Empedocles in the De Anima, taken together with Socrates’ reply to Simmias, and by implication to Echecrates, in the Phaedo, points to an earlier way of thinking which would have seen no need to keep the two arms of the disjunction apart. 20 De Caelo I.9 279a11-12: . . . oÎdà tìpoc oÎdà kenän oÎdà qrìnoc âstÈn êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ. 21 De Caelo I.9 279a12-13: ân panti gr tìpú dunatän Íprxai sÀma. I turn to a closer examination of these words later in my essay (§ III sub finem). 22 De Caelo I.9 279a13-14: kenän d> eÚnaÐ fasin ân Å m ânuprqei sÀma, dunatän d> âstÈ genèsjai. “Or so they say” (fasÐn), because Aristotle does not himself believe in the existence of a void (Ph. IV.6-9). 58 Denis O’Brien ical body there can be no movement.23 But “it has been shown that, outside the heavens, there neither is, nor can there come to be, a body”.24 “It is clear, therefore, that outside the heavens there is neither place, nor void, nor time.” Q. E. D.25 Enter the dramatis personae. Since, outside the heavens, there is neither place nor void nor time, those who have their home there, so Aristotle tells us, are not in place, De Caelo I.9 279a17-22: ... fanerän ra íti oÖte kenän oÖte qrìnoc âstÈn êxwjen; diìper oÖt> ân tìpú tkeØ pèfuken, oÖte qrìnoc aÎt poieØ ghrskein, oÎd> âstÈn oÎdenäc oÎdemÐa metabol tÀn Ípàr tn âxwttw tetagmènwn forn, ll> nalloÐwta kaÈ paj¨ tn rÐsthn êqonta zwn kaÈ tn aÎtarkestthn diateleØ tän panta aÊÀna. It is obvious therefore that, outside (sc. the heavens), there is neither place nor void nor time; so it is that the beings there are not of such a nature as to be in place, nor does time work upon them to age them, nor indeed is there any change of any kind for those who are ranged above and beyond (Ípèr) the outermost movement. Instead, dispensed from all alteration and immune to change, they continue in possession of the best life and the most self-sufficient for all eternity.26

23 De Caelo I.9 279a14-16: qrìnoc dà rijmäc kin sewc; kÐnhsic d> neu fusikoÜ s¸matoc oÎk êstin. Aristotle repeats (or anticipates) the definition of time as the measure of movement given in Ph. IV.10-14 (see esp. cap. 11 219b1-2). 24 De Caelo I.9 279a16-17: êxw dà toÜ oÎranoÜ dèdeiktai íti oÖt> êstin oÖt> ândèqetai genèsjai sÀma. The reference (dèdeiktai) is to the passage immediately preceding (278b21-279a11). 25 De Caelo I.9 279a17-18: fanerän ra íti oÖte tìpoc oÖte kenän oÖte qrìnoc âstÈn êxwjen. The closing sentence of the sequence repeats the opening sentence (279a11- 12, quoted above, n. 20). Hence my Q. E. D. 26 “Outside (sc. the heavens)”: êxwjen (279a18). The reference of the adverb has been clearly specified in the lines preceding (279a12: êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ, a16: êxw dà toÜ oÎranoÜ). “The beings there are not of such a nature as to be in place”: oÖt> ân tìpú tkeØ pèfuken (279a18). Guthrie (1939, p. 91) adopts the meaning “born”: “Wherefore neither are the things there born in place.” The reference to “birth” seems to me inappropriate for beings of whom we are told, at the end of the same sentence, that they continue forever (cf. diateleØ tän panta aÊÀna). The gods of Homer, it is true, have all been born and yet will never die. But in Aristotle’s universe it is surely much more probable that a being which continues forever has had no beginning. The implication of the verb in this context I therefore take to be that the beings in question are not “of such a nature” as to be in place, a use of the verb well attested in the classical period (see LSJ, s.v. fÔw, B, II (pp. 1966- 1967)). Aristotle’s point is not that “the beings there” were not “born in place” (leaving open the possibility that they might have been “born”, but not in place); his point is that beings which are “outside the heavens” (âkeØ = êxwjen = êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ) are not “of such a nature as to be in place”, since “outside the heavens” there is no “place”. The use of the verb is hardly different when Aristotle writes of a body (the aether) that is “of such a nature as to move in a circle”, De Caelo I.2 269b4-6: pèfuken [. . . ] kÔklú fèresjai, emphasising that it does so “according to nature”: kat fÔsin. Aristotle’s point is simply that the movement of the aether is “by nature” circular, not that the aether was ever “born” or ever came into Life Beyond the Stars 59

Discordant voices Those few sentences have roused a babel of discordant voices from An- tiquity to the present day. Jaeger claims the whole passage (from 279a17, the sentence preceding the introduction of tkeØ, to 279b3) as a verbatim extract from Aristotle’s De Philosophia, which is indeed referred to, by name, at one point in Simplicius’ commentary on the piece.27 Untersteiner therefore included the passage in his edition of the fragments of the De Philosophia, and added an extensive commentary.28 Others have been less impressed by Jaeger’s arguments. Cherniss protests that Simplicius’ reference “has no evidentiary value”.29 Elders dismisses Jaeger’s thesis as “baseless”.30 Unfortunately, neither Jaeger nor Jaeger’s adversaries have done much to clarify the content of the passage. Jaeger tells us merely that “the beings there” (279a18: tkeØ) are “the transcendental”, a remark which, unless we know what “the transcendental” is in the De Philosophia, serves merely to explain obscurum per obscurius.31 Since Jaeger believes that the theory of an unmoved mover found a place in the De Philosophia, the reader is perhaps intended to identify “the transcendental” with the unmoved mover (or perhaps, given the plural, with a plurality of unmoved movers). But Jaeger does not himself make that claim in the pages given over to his account of the passage from De Caelo I.9. Elders does at least put a name, or rather several names, on “the beings there” (279a18: tkeØ). They are, he tells us, “forms, mathematical entities or souls”.32 By casting his net so wide, Elders must have thought to satisfy even the most pernickety critic. But in fact none of his potential candidates ﬁts the bill at all easily. (1) The beings that Aristotle speaks of have “life” (279a21). To claim that Aristotle’s “forms” are alive is to have Aristotle anticipate the forms of Plotinus’ intelligible world, each of which is a living intellect – but does Elders really mean to claim so

being. We are specifically told that the movement of the aether will never end (cf. De Caelo I.9 279b1-3), and there is no implication that it could ever have begun. – My translation of tän panta aÊÀna (279a22) as “for all eternity” is of course a mere convenience. “Eternal” and “eternity” take their colour from the context (cf. O’Brien (1985)); the “eternity” of Aristotle’s aÊ¸n is that of an endless duration (cf. 279a22-28). 27 Jaeger (1923 (cf. 1955), pp. 316-320). Simplicius, in Cael. 289.1-2. 28 Untersteiner (1963, pp. 58-59, fr. 29, text and translation; pp. 285-295, commentary). 29 Cherniss (1944, p. 587). 30 Elders (1966, p. 149). Here and in the pages that follow, I am quoting only a fraction of the vast literature that, in one way or another, has to do with this passage. 31 Jaeger (1923, p. 317): “das Transzendente.” 32 Elders (1966, p. 144). 60 Denis O’Brien much?33 (2) The thesis that Aristotle’s “mathematical entities” have life is equally precarious. Xenocrates did indeed claim that soul was a number, but “a moving number”, whereas Aristotle’s supracelestial beings have no body and are not in movement. Are we therefore to suppose that Aristotle has taken over Xenocrates’ “self-moving numbers”, but deprived them of movement?34 (3) Hardly more plausible is Elder’s claim that the beings outside the heavens are “souls”. He presumably means disembodied souls. But even disembodied souls either have had, or presumably one day will have, a body. If, at some stage in their career, souls have been, or will be, joined to a body, how can it be that, “for all eternity”, they are “dispensed from all alteration and immune to change” (279a20-22, quoted above)?35 One can only smile when, with so many questions left unasked and unanswered, Elders awards his reading of the passage an alpha double- plus: “The chapter is an admirable piece of work, well written, clear and pleasant in its argumentation.”36 But Elders is not alone. Even serious scholars are led to deny the obvious meaning of the words before them. “In the De Caelo we are enabled to see a stage of Aristotle’s thought at which the sphere of the fixed stars, the highest corporeal entity, is at the same time the highest entity of all.”37 Whatever else we may be sure of, it is that the beings living beyond space and time, and free from movement, do not have a body, and yet are in no way inferior to beings that do have one. If the De Caelo bears witness to a “corporealist” stage in Aristotle’s philosophy, it also bears witness to its opposite. Guthrie earlier expresses the same conviction in terms not of body, but of matter: “Aristotle must have gone through a stage of pure materialism [. . . ], represented by at least the first book of the De Caelo.”38 To justify that interpretation, he claims that the sentences describing tkeØ are no

33 For each of Plotinus’ forms to be a living intellect is the natural reading of Enn. V 9 [5] 8.1-7. Gerson (1994, p. 55) disagrees. 34 Soul, for Xenocrates, was “a number moving itself”, according to Plutarch, De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo 1 1012D (Xenocrates, fr. 68 ed. Heinze; fr. 188 ed. Isnardi Parente). Aristotle is scathing in his criticism of the theory (De Anima I.4 408b32-409a30; cf. I.2 404b27-30). 35 But does Elders perhaps refer to the “souls” of the stars and therefore to souls that are forever in the same state (whether we count that as “embodied” or “disembodied”)? Possibly. But could it have been said of the souls of stars that they were “ranged above and beyond (Ípèr) the outermost movement” (279a20) and therefore that they were “ranged above and beyond” those very objects (sc. the stars) of which they were the soul? Hardly likely, one would have thought. Certainly, if that is what Elders meant, he should have said so. 36 Elders (1966, p. 149). 37 Guthrie (1939, p. xxix). Guthrie is commenting on several texts, notably the description of the aether in the continuation of the present passage, De Caelo I.9 279a30-b3. 38 Guthrie (1933, p. 169). Life Beyond the Stars 61 more than a “note”, designed to show that “if there is anything there (sc. “beyond the outermost sphere”), then the Platonists must have been right in assuming it to have been ageless and divine”.39 But why the “if”? There is no breath of a conditional clause at this point in the text of the De Caelo.

Alexander’s interpretation Guthrie observes, seemingly with some satisfaction, that his general interpretation is close to that of Alexander.40 The coincidence is hardly something to be proud of. Alexander (as reported at length by Simpli- cius) sought to read back the description of the circular movement of the aether at the end of the argument (279b1-3) into the account given of the supracelestial beings at the beginning of the passage (279a18-22).41 When Aristotle writes of the beatiﬁc beings as “beyond the outermost movement” (279a20: Ípàr tn âxwttw [. . . ] forn), his meaning, so Alexander would have us believe, is not that they lie totally outside the heavens, but merely that they lie beyond the rectilinear movement of the four sublunary elements (for as distinct from perifor), and that the supposedly supracelestial beings (279a18: tkeØ) are therefore none other than the rotating aether.42 Simplicius gives short shrift to so specious an argument.43 When Aris- totle claims that, outside the heavens, there is neither place nor void nor time, it is because he has already demonstrated that “outside the heavens there neither is, nor can there come to be, a body” (279a16-17). Whatever else the beatiﬁc beings may be, they are not bodily. And therefore they are not the aether. As for Alexander’s would-be distinction between for and perifor, a passage later in the De Caelo shows it to be groundless.44 For, in an obvious reference to the present passage, Aristotle switches to perifor in the place of for.45

39 Guthrie (1933, p. 168). 40 Guthrie (1939, p. xxxi, note a). 41 Simplicius, in Cael. 287.19-290.4. 42 Simplicius, in Cael. 287.30-288.6. 43 Simplicius, in Cael. 290.4-21. 44 Alexander’s distinction: ap. Simpl., in Cael. 287.30-288.6. Simplicius’ rejection of the same: in Cael. 290.14-18. Alexander’s distinction is repeated by Philoponus, in Ph. 556.29-557.1. 45 Aristotle writes, De Caelo II.4 287a12-13: dèdeiktai d> íti t¨c âsqthc periforc oÖte kenìn âstin êxwjen oÖte tìpoc. “It has been demonstrated that, outside the extreme rotation, there is neither void nor place.” The “demonstration” (cf. dèdeiktai) is rightly taken, by Tricot (1949, p. 78, n. 2) and by Moraux (1965, p. 65, n. 1 (= p. 159)), as a reference to De Caelo I.9 279a11-18. The expression t¨c âsqthc periforc [. . . ] êxwjen in book two therefore repeats Ípàr tn âxwttw [. . . ] forn from book one (quoted above). 62 Denis O’Brien

Pépin’s aether We may perhaps hope to avoid Simplicius’ all too obvious refutation of Alexander’s interpretation of the passage by adopting the variant of Alexander’s thesis put forward by Pépin.Aether, so Pépinclaims, in being distinguished from the four traditional elements, was not counted as a “body”.46 But even an “incorporeal” aether cannot, as Pépinsupposes, be identified with “the beings there” (279a18: tkeØ).47 For, whether or not aether is counted as incorporeal, it is undoubtedly in movement, whereas “the beings there” are specifically said to be not in time because they are not in movement.48 Pépin’serror is indeed so obvious as to be puzzling. Pépinobserves, correctly, that absence of change (cf. I.9 279a19-20: oÎd> âstÈn oÎdenäc oÎdemÐa metabol ) need not in itself imply lack of movement, since elsewhere in the De Caelo the heavens are specifically described as “unchanging” (II.6 288b1: metblhton).49 But when Pépinwrites, on the same page, that “aucune mention n’apparaˆıtde l’immobilitéde ce principe” (namely 279a18: tkeØ), he seems not to have noted that, in the lines immediately preceding the appearance of tkeØ, the denial of time is specifically tied to a denial of movement (cf. 279a11-18). It is much to be feared that, in seeking to discover the identity of “the beings there” (279a18: tkeØ), Pépinhas restricted his attention to that part of the text of the De Caelo that is excerpted by Untersteiner in his edition of the fragments of the De Philosophia. Untersteiner’s “fragment” runs from the sentence preceding the introduction of tkeØ (279a17 sqq.), and therefore subsequently to the mention of movement (279a14-16).50 But the words supposedly taken from the De Philosophia are introduced by a connective particle (279a17: fanerän ra . . . ), which cannot but imply that the opening lines of the supposed fragment, in the context in which they have come down to us, are intended as a continuation and a consequence of the lines immediately preceding (279a11-17). Time and movement have there been excluded, along with place and void.51

46 Pépin(1964, pp. 485-488). 47 Pépin(1964, pp. 469-471). 48 See again De Caelo I.9 279a14-17 (quoted above n. 23 and n. 24). 49 Pépin(1964, p. 470). 50 Untersteiner (1963, pp. 58-59 (fr. 29)), following in the footsteps of Jaeger (1923 (cf. 1955), pp. 316-320). 51 When Pépinreturns to his thesis some years later (1971, pp. 214-216) the reader’s perplexity only increases. This is not simply because Pépinhimself now refers to aether as a “body” (p. 216); still more perplexing is it that Pépinprefaces his new analysis (p. 214) with a summary of the lines which he had seemed to leave out of account in his earlier study (De Caelo I.9 279a11-17), and yet still clings to the identification of “the beings there” (279a18: tkeØ) with aether. But how can one Life Beyond the Stars 63

Unmoved movers? Are we therefore to suppose that the incorporeal and supracelestial beings in the De Caelo are none other than the unmoved mover, or the unmoved movers, known to us from Physics VIII and from Metaphysics XII? For all his criticism of Jaeger’s thesis, that is the interpretation adopted, with due circumspection, by Cherniss, and by numerous other commentators.52 The obstacle to such an interpretation lies in the continuation of the passage, where we are told that there is nothing “more powerful” that “will set in movement” (279a33-34: oÖte gr llo kreØttìn âstin í ti kin sei), and almost immediately afterwards that a body, not named but presumably the aether, is forever in movement (279b1: pauston d kÐnhsin kineØtai eÎlìgwc).53 On any straightforward reading of those two sentences, what is left unspecified as the object of the verb in the first sentence is none other than the subject of the verb in the sentence that follows. The body that is forever in movement (279b1: kineØtai) is not subjected to any more powerful agency that sets it in movement (cf. 279a34: kin sei). If that construal of the passage is correct, the eternal movement of the aether cannot easily be made dependent upon a mover that is itself unmoved. Whatever the incorporeal beings at the beginning of the passage may be (279a18-22),?? they cannot readily be identified as so many unmoved movers, cause of the endless movement of the aether.

possibly identify “un corps en mouvement incessant comme est l’éther”(p. 216), with beings who have been introduced as lacking body, time or movement, in the very sentences which Pépinhas summarised only two pages earlier (279a11-17; cf. p. 214)? Pépin’sclaim (p. 215) that his identification of “the beings there” with aether “rend raison d’àpeu prèstous les détailsdu texte” merely adds to one’s bewilderment. “Body” and “movement”, or their absence, one would hardly have thought could be discounted as mere “details”. 52 Cherniss (1944, pp. 587-588). (For Cherniss’ criticism of Jaeger’s thesis, see n. 29 above.) Cherniss writes, p. 588: “Aristotle did at this time believe in some kind of causal relation between them (sc. the “external entities”, i.e. tkeØ, 279a18) and the heavens.” He concludes that our passage (De Caelo I.9 279a11-b3) is “evidence rather for an unmoved mover than against it”. Among the “numerous other commentators” are Tricot (1949, p. 45, n. 3), Berti (1962, pp. 316-319) and Hussey (1983, p. 99), to name only a few. 53 I am not unmindful of Hahm’s strictures (1982) on using the word “aether” even when, as here (279b1-3), Aristotle writes only of a body which moves continuously in a circle. But scrupulosity can, I think, be taken too far. Aristotle himself sanc- tions the use of the word, if only on grounds of etymology (De Caelo I.3 270b20-24), and, although claiming that the word had been misused (see, for example, the continuation of the passage quoted, 270b24-25), he does not offer any alternative name to celebrate his (re)discovery of an element other than the traditional four. There seems to me little harm therefore in using “aether” to denote the “first body” or the body that moves always in a circle, provide that we do not ascribe repeated use of the word to Aristotle himself. 64 Denis O’Brien

Cherniss’ long parenthesis To circumvent that reading of the piece, and to restore the presence of the unmoved mover, or unmoved movers, at the beginning of the passage (De Caelo I.9 279a11-18), Cherniss has to suppose that the circular movement of the aether which is spoken of at the end of the passage (279b1-3) is directly derived from the absence of place, void and time outside the heavens, as described at the beginning of the passage (279a17-18). All the intervening material (279a18-35), or so he claims, including the denial of a cause that sets in movement (cf. 279a34: kin sei), is an extended parenthesis, which cannot therefore be taken as denying the existence of a cause of movement for the aether. But few readers will agree that the connection of thought given by this division of the text is as “plausible” as Cherniss claims it to be.54 Circular movement, so Aristotle argues (279b1-3), is endless because the place where it ends is no diﬀerent from the place where it begins. No little ingenuity would be needed to derive that conclusion from the lack of place outside the heavens (cf. 279a17-18).55

Simplicius’ interpretation: a diﬀerence of reading Like Cherniss, Simplicius seeks to identify the incorporeal and supracelestial beings who are to be found “outside the heavens” (279a18-22) with the unmoved mover, or the unmoved movers, cause of the unending movement of the aether. Unlike Cherniss, Simplicius has no doubt that, at the end of the argument (279a33-b1), the two sentences, as quoted (with kin sei and kineØtai), exclude the presence of an unmoved mover. To restore the unity of the passage, he therefore brings forward an alternative reading: kineØ in the place of kineØtai.56 With the active form of the verb, the sequence of thought is wholly diﬀerent. The clear implication of the passage, once we adopt Simplicius’ alternative reading, is that there is no higher power that can set in motion (279a34: kin sei) – not the body that is in movement (kineØtai), but – the agent that is cause of unending movement (279b1: kineØ). If the cause of unending movement (cf. 279b1: kineØ in the place of kineØtai) is not itself set in motion by any higher power (cf. 279a34: kin sei),

54 Cf. Cherniss (1944, p. 588). 55 Cherniss’ unspoken supposition is possibly that, since the outermost body (the aether) has no place outside the heavens whither it can direct its movement, therefore it has to turn back upon itself and pursue a circular movement. A pretty enough idea, but not one which has left any obvious trace in the ﬁrst two books of the De Caelo. 56 Simplicius, in Cael. 290.21-292.7 (restoring kÐnhsin at 291.16). For the diﬀerence of reading (kineØ in the place of kineØtai), see 291.24-32. Life Beyond the Stars 65 it can properly be counted a mover that is itself unmoved and can therefore be included among the incorporeal and supracelestial beings that appear at the beginning of the passage (279a18-22).

An impasse All well and good, one might think. But how far can we trust the alternative reading (279b1: kineØ in the place of kineØtai) that Simplicius found “in some manuscripts”?57 The active verb (kineØ) was not the reading that Alexander had before him, it was clearly not the reading of the manuscript or manuscripts that Simplicius relied on for the rest of his commentary, and it is not the reading found in any of our medieval manuscripts.58 D.J. Allan affords it a fortasse recte in his apparatus.59 But one can hardly do more. The modern reader is therefore faced with an impasse. If we adopt an active instead of a middle voice of the verb (kineØ in the place of kineØtai), we can indeed make some sense of the whole passage as an – admittedly exceptional – account of the beatific life of the unmoved mover, or unmoved movers, cause of the endless circular movement of the aether, and themselves “dispensed from all alteration and immune to change”, leading “the best life and the most self-sufficient for all eternity” (cf. 279a17-22). But however comfortable that reading of the passage may be ideologically, even Simplicius is no more than half-hearted in his espousal of the lectio facilior (kineØ in the place of kineØtai). If, instead, we keep to the lectio difficilior (kineØtai in the place of kineØ), and if we still hope to give a unitary meaning to the whole passage, we have to recognise that the incorporeal beings at the beginning of the passage are not unmoved movers, cause of movement of the aether, but some otherwise unknown incorporeal entities which, whatever their relationship (if any) with the endlessly moving aether, cannot be said to be the cause of its movement.

The puzzle of a “location” where there is neither place nor void At this point, therefore, the reader may be tempted to shrug his shoulders, to suppose that we have to do here, not with a single text (whether or not taken in part from the De Philosophia), but with a patchwork, put together from bits and pieces that Aristotle wrote at diﬀerent times and for diﬀerent purposes, with the description of the circular movement of the aether (279b1-3) perhaps simply tacked on to the end of the passage,

57 Simplicius, in Cael. 291.25 (ên tisin eÝron ntigrfoic). 58 For Alexander’s reading (kineØtai), see Simplicius, in Cael. 291.26. 59 Allan (1936, ad loc.). 66 Denis O’Brien with no continuous line of argument linking it to the material that goes before. However, before adopting that counsel of despair and turning our backs on any attempt at a more detailed understanding of the passage, I suggest that we return to look more closely at how it is that beings, whoever or whatever they may be, can be said to be “located” (cf. 279a18: tkeØ), despite the absence of both place and void.

III. Physics IV.1-5 Aristotle’s deﬁnition of “place”

First let us ask: is the account which Aristotle gives here of “place” (279a12-13: “in every place it is possible for there to be a body”) the same as, or at least compatible with, the definition given of place in the course of his detailed discussion and definition of place in book four of the Physics? The answer to that question is not as simple as one might think it would be, if only because the definition of place given in Physics IV has itself been misunderstood by commentators, both ancient and modern. Before comparing the two conceptions of place (in De Caelo I.9 and in Physics IV.1-5), we have therefore to establish precisely how it is that Aristotle defines place in the Physics.60

The supplement to the definition At the start of his analysis, Aristotle outlines the model of a recipient, which he later conveniently specifies as an amphora, filled in turn with air and with water. It is “obvious”, so Aristotle claims, that “the place and the space, into which and out of which there passed in turn the water and the air, is something other than those two bodies”.61

60 I do no more than summarise my understanding of the analysis of place put forward in Ph. IV.1-5 208a27-213a11. I plan to publish a more detailed study elsewhere. In writing of Aristotle’s “definition”, I refer only to the first definition (Ph. IV.4 212a5- 6a, quoted below), not to the revised version of the definition given later in the same chapter (212a20-21). 61 Ph. IV.1 208b6-8: . . . ¹ste d¨lon ±c ªn å tìpoc ti kaÈ q¸ra éteron mfoØn [sc. toÜ èroc kaÈ toÜ Õdatoc], eÊc £n âx ©c metèbalon. The expression ªn ti picks up the existential use of êstin at the beginning of the passage (IV.1 208b1: íti màn oÞn êstin å tìpoc . . . ). I therefore translate the past tense (ªn) by a present, on the supposition that this is a “philosophical” use of the imperfect (see LSJ, s.v. eÊmÐ [sum], F (p. 489)). Were it not so, the past tense would have to be adapted to the time sequence of the movement of air and water, into and out of the receptacle Life Beyond the Stars 67

So much is perhaps clear enough. What is not immediately clear is the use that the model is put to in the pages following, not least when, at the end of his preliminary analysis of the various candidates for “place”, Aristotle offers as his own definition, Ph. IV.4 212a5-6a: tä pèrac toÜ perièqontoc s¸matoc ç sunptei tÄ perieqomènú>. The supplement, printed here between angular brackets, is not to be found in any extant manuscript of the Physics. It has nonetheless left its mark in the Latin version of a translation of the Physics into Ara- bic, a translation roughly contemporary with the oldest of our surviving manuscripts (ninth century).62 It is also quoted, or referred to, in all three of the ancient commentaries that have survived, by Simplicius, Philoponus and Themistius.63 The supplement is firmly anchored in the text by the sentence that follows, 212a6a-7: lègw dà tä perieqìmenon sÀma . . . . “By the body that is contained I mean . . . ”, a form of words which clearly requires the pres-

(metèbalon). Each time that air and water moved in and out of the recipient (cf. metèbalon), “the place and the space” provided by the recipient “was something other than the air or the water”. Possible perhaps, but awkward. For metabllw used to describe alternating actions (208b8: metèbalon, “there passed in turn”), see Bonitz (1870), s.v. metabllein, 459a11-13; cf. LSJ, s.v. metabllw A, III 2 (p. 1110). Hussey seems not to have taken account of this use of the verb. His rendering (1983, p. 20) of metèbalon (208b8) as “they moved in moving about”, is so awkward in English as to be almost meaningless. 62 See the apparatus to Ross (1936, ad loc.) and the note in his commentary (p. 575). See also Mansion (1923, p. 24). For the Latin text, Mansion refers (cf. pp. 13-14) to an edition of Aristotle’s works, in Latin, published in Venice in 1560 (details at the end of the Bibliography). See tomus iv, folio 114 recto c, linea 2 ab imo (textus 38, not, as Mansion claims, textus 39). For the Greek text (presumably taken from the commentators, see below), Mansion refers to a posthumous printing of Erasmus’s edition of Aristotle’s works, published at Basel in 1550 (again, details at the end of the Bibliography). See [tomus i], p. 161, linea 5. For the background to the Arabic translation, see Peters (1968, pp. 57-67). For more recent information, see Pellegrin (2003, pp. 265-271), and my forthcoming study (see n. 60 above). 63 See again the apparatus to Ross (1936, ad loc.). Lang (1998, pp. 91-92) is wrong in claiming that the additional words “appear only in the Arabo-Latin translation” and doubly wrong when she writes (ibid.) of the “complete absence” of the words “from the Greek tradition”. Since the additional words are to be found (quoted or paraphrased) in the commentaries of Simplicius, Philoponus and Themistius, they clearly form part of a “tradition” and a “tradition” that cannot but be “Greek” (see Ross’ Introduction, p. 103). Lang has perhaps failed to grasp the signiﬁcance of the sigla used at this point in Ross’ edition of the Physics. S = Simplicius, who records the additional words at in Ph. 580.3, 582.30 and 584.20. T = Themistius, who records the additional words (but with kajä in the place of kaj> í and with the addition of s¸mati at the end of the sentence) at in Ph. 118.8-9. P = Philoponus, who, here as elsewhere, aims to provide no more than a paraphrase and therefore writes kajä perièqei tä perieqìmenon in the place of kajä sunptei tÄ perieqomènú. See in Ph. 585.13-14, and no less than three places in the Corollarium de loco (563.32-33, 567.4-5 and 6-7). 68 Denis O’Brien ence of an expression referring to “the body that is contained” (cf. tÄ perieqomènú [sc. s¸mati]) in the sentence preceding.64

Ross’ interpretation of the supplement But what precisely is the meaning of the supplement? If we adopt the translation-cum-paraphrase given in Ross’ editio maior and to be found frequently elsewhere, Aristotle defines “place” as “the limit of the containing body at which it is in contact with the contained”.65 Ross has presumably taken “the limit” (tä pèrac) as the antecedent of the relative pronoun (kaj> í) and “body” (sÀma) as the subject of the verb that follows (sunptei). With this construal of the sentence, “place” is “the limit of the containing body at which (sc. limit) it (sc. the containing body) is in contact with the contained”. That understanding of Aristotle’s definition has been taken from Sim- plicius’ commentary on the passage. The point of the supplement, so Sim- plicius believes, is to provide a specification of the limit that constitutes “place”. “Place” is the inner, concave limit of the surrounding body (the amphora), as opposed to the outer, convex limit of that same body. Only the inner, concave limit is in contact with the body that is contained (air, wine or water); only the inner, concave limit serves therefore as the “place” of the body that at any one time fills the amphora.66

A statement of the obvious But surely to say so much (or so little) is to state the obvious. Can Aris- totle really have thought to warn his reader, at this late stage of his argument, that the “place” of the body that is contained is the inner, concave surface of the containing body, as opposed to the outer, convex surface of that same body? Can any reader or student have been tempted to think, following Aris- totle’s repeated use of the model of the amphora, that the outer, convex

64 Lang (1998, p. 91) claims that, in the sentence following the definition (212a6-7), dè “is probably adversative”. Wrong again. The expression lègw dè . . . occurs very frequently in Aristotle’s writings. The Physics alone provides some twenty examples (easily recoverable from the computerised Thesaurus Linguae Graecae). None is adversative. 65 Ross (1936, p. 375). There is essentially the same translation in Hardie and Gay (1930, ad loc.): “the boundary of the containing body at which it is in contact with the contained body”; and in Hussey (1983, p. 28): “the limit of the surrounding body, at which it is in contact with that which is surrounded.” 66 To make his point, Simplicius, in Ph. 579.37-580.6, compares the two surfaces of the sphere of the moon. An outer, convex surface faces the planet Mercury. An inner, concave surface faces the body below the moon, and therefore constitutes the “place” of the sublunary world. Life Beyond the Stars 69 surface of the amphora constituted the place of whatever body (water, wine, air) finds itself, at any one time, inside the amphora? Simplicius’ reading of the definition may not falsify Aristotle’s intention. But it surely gives emphasis where none is needed.

A new translation of the supplement The meaning of the supplement I take to be quite other. Aristotle’s definition of “place” I suggest should be translated: “The limit of the containing body in as much as it (sc. the limit) is in contact with the body that is contained.” The subject of the verb in the subordinate clause (sunptei) is not “body” (cf. toÜ [. . . ] s¸matoc), but “limit” (cf. tä pèrac). It is “the limit” of the containing body that is “in contact with” (sunptei) the body that is contained and which therefore fulfils the role of “place” in Aristotle’s definition. That translation of the supplement requires only that we give to kaj> í the meaning “in as much as”, so allowing tä pèrac to be taken, not as the antecedent of the relative pronoun, as in Ross’ translation (kaj> í = kat tä pèrac), but as the subject of the verb that follows (sunptei). This is not only a perfectly well attested use of the expression;67 it is none other than the meaning that has to be given to the supplement if, in the place of kaj> í, we adopt the reading kajì, as given in the editions of Themistius and Philoponus.68

The purpose of the supplement Read in this way, the supplement serves to bring out the purpose of Aris- totle’s deﬁnition, in its context. Aristotle had laid down, as one of the preliminary conditions for a successful deﬁnition, that place should be neither larger nor smaller than the object whose place it is.69 At the

67 Cat. 12 14a26-28 (an example chosen at random): kaj> ç presbÔteron éteron átèrou kaÈ palaiìteron lègetai. One thing is said to be “prior” to another primarily with reference to time, “in as much as one thing is said to be older and more ancient than another”. 68 Ross prints kaj> í from Diels’ edition of Simplicius (1882, in Ph. 580.3, 582.30 and 584.20). The editions of Themistius (ed. Schenkl, 1900, in Ph. 118.8) and Philo- ponus (ed. Vitelli, 1888, in Ph. 585.13) have kajì. Kajì (one word) as opposed to kaj> í (two words) may be no more than a difference of spelling (see LSJ, s.v. kajì, I (p. 855); cf. s.v. kat, B, IV 2 (p. 883)); even so, use of the contracted form (kajì) excludes the translation that Ross has adopted, since it excludes the reference to a specific antecedent for the relative pronoun (kaj> í = kat tä pèrac). The contracted form of the expression, as recorded in the editions of Themistius and Philoponus (kajì), cannot but have the meaning that I have given to it (kajì = quatenus, prout). 69 “We require that primary place should be neither smaller nor larger (sc. than the body whose place it is)” (Ph. IV.4 210b34-211a2: xioÜmen d [. . . ] tän prÀton [sc. 70 Denis O’Brien same time, place has to be separable from that of which it is the place.70 Those two, seemingly almost contradictory requirements, are satisfied by defining place as a two-dimensional surface, “the limit of the surrounding body”. Since a surface has length and breadth, but no depth, two surfaces that are in contact, along the whole of their length and breadth, are no different in size. Provided that there is no void, as in Aristotle’s system there cannot be, the inner surface of the amphora is therefore necessarily of the same dimension as the outer surface of the air or water that fills the amphora. Even so, “place” can be separated from that of which it is the place, in so far as the inner surface of the amphora will continue to exist, even when the air that it contains has been replaced by water, or vice versa. Air and the “place” of air (or water and the “place” of water) are therefore not the same. Nonetheless, “place”, defined as the “limit” or surface of the surrounding body, is neither smaller nor larger than that of which it is the place. Those two features of Aristotle’s characterisation of place give point to the wording of the supplement: place is “the limit of the containing body in as much as it is in contact with the body that is contained”. “The limit”, and not “the body”, is the subject of the verb that follows the conjunction (kaj> ç sunptei . . . , “in as much as it (sc. the limit) is in contact . . . ”), precisely because it is the “limit” or surface of the containing body which is in contact with the body that is contained. Because it is “in contact” with the body which it contains, “the limit” fulfils the condition that place should be neither larger nor smaller than the object whose place it is, even while being separable from it, since “the limit” of the definition is the limit of the containing body and not the limit of the body that is contained.

The paradox of place Aristotle’s deﬁnition of place rests, nonetheless, on a paradox. How can a two-dimensional surface be the “place” of a three-dimensional body? It may seem obvious to the modern reader, as it did to Philoponus, that

tìpon] m t> âlttw m te meØzw). What will prove to be place “is neither a part of (sc. and therefore smaller than) the thing that is in it, nor larger than the dimension (sc. of the thing that is in it), but equal” (Ph. IV.4 211a32-33: oÖte âstÈ mèroc toÜ ân aÎtÄ oÖte meØzon toÜ diast matoc [sc. toÜ ân aÎtÄ] ll> Òson). 70 “Place” can be separated from that of which it is the place (Ph. IV.2 209b21-24). It does not “belong to the thing” (cf. IV.4 211a1: mhdàn toÜ prgmatoc). It is “left behind” when the body that it contains departs, and is in that sense “separable” from the body that it contains (cf. 211a2-3: poleÐpesjai ákstou kaÈ qwristän eÚnai). Life Beyond the Stars 71

“place” must be, not the two-dimensional surface of the surrounding body, but the three-dimensional volume circumscribed by the two-dimensional surface of the recipient. But Aristotle is adamant that that is not so. It is true that, in his list of initial aporiai, Aristotle states both that “place” has three dimensions and that it is not a body.71 But the aporia lies precisely in the conﬂict between those two statements. A “limit” that was both three-dimensional and bodiless would be, for Aristotle, a contradiction in terms. A point is the “limit” of a line. A one-dimensional line is the limit of a two- dimensional surface. A two-dimensional surface is the limit of a three- dimensional body. But there is (certainly in Aristotle’s sublunary world) no three-dimensional object that is “bodiless”, nor any four-dimensional object which we could suppose to be bounded by a three-dimensional “limit”.72 The solution that Aristotle oﬀers to his aporia is precisely that “place” is a two-dimensional “limit” (a surface therefore) which circumscribes a three-dimensional object. Aristotle does not therefore suppose that “place” is itself three-dimensional. The only three-dimensional extension surrounded by the two-dimensional surface that is “place” is that of whatever body it is that is surrounded by the surface of the recipient. The three-dimensional extension of the body that is surrounded does not itself constitute a “place” (as Simplicius will claim it does), nor is place a three-dimensional void that persists whether or not it is occupied by body (this will be Philoponus’ conception of “place”). “Place”, for Aristotle, is constituted exclusively by the two-dimensional surface of the surrounding body. The three-dimensional volume circumscribed by a two-dimensional surface has no existence other than as the extension of whatever body is contained by the inner surface of the recipient.73

71 “Place has three dimensions, length, breadth and depth, by which every body is defined” (Ph. IV.1 209a4-6: diast mata màn oÞn êqei trÐa, m¨koc kaÈ pltoc kaÈ bjoc, oÙc årÐzetai pn sÀma) is followed immediately by: “But it is impossible for place to be a body” (209a6: dÔnaton dà sÀma eÚnai tän tìpon). The two sentences are clearly flagged as constituting an aporia. See, in the lines immediately preceding, porÐan (209a2-3), and at the end of the passage poreØn (209a30). 72 The existence, and even the possibility, of a fourth dimension is explicitly discounted in the opening chapter of the De Caelo (I.1 268a9-b10). 73 Lang (1998, pp. 66-121 (see esp. pp. 71-72 and pp. 103-110)) argues at length, and forcefully, against the view that the “limit” in Aristotle’s definition of “place” is a two-dimensional surface. This is because she has taken the two terms of Aristo- tle’s aporia (IV.1 209a4-6) at their face value, and has therefore concluded that the “limit” of Aristotle’s definition (IV.4 212a5-6) is both three-dimensional and bodiless. A three-dimensional, bodiless “limit” would have been, for Aristotle, a meaningless, if not an impossible, conception. 72 Denis O’Brien

Aristotle’s misleading example It is true that Aristotle has been, in a way, his own worst enemy, in so far as the detailed description of a recipient with which he launches his analysis has almost inevitably led commentators to suppose that “place” is indeed in some way three-dimensional, answering to the three-dimensional volume running from wall to wall of the amphora and occupied successively by air and by water or wine.74 But Aristotle is not unaware of the danger since, in the chapters following, he has done his best to correct the erroneous impression that the initial statement of his example might seem to suggest. So it is that he writes, Ph. IV.4 211b14-17: di tä metabllein pollkic mènontoc toÜ perièqontoc tä perieqìmenon kaÈ diùrhmènon, oÙon âx ggeÐou Õdwr, tä metaxÌ eÚnaÐ ti dokeØ disthma, ±c în ti par tä sÀma tä mejistmenon. Since the body that is surrounded and that is divided (sc. from the receptacle) frequently changes position to make way for another, as water does when it leaves the vessel (sc. that contained it), while the surrounding body stays put, what is in between (i.e. what is in between the limits of the containing body) seems to be an extension of some sort, as being something in addition to the body that changes position.75 Those words spell out clearly the conception that Aristotle’s analysis is designed to correct. They are followed (211b18) by a resounding tä d> oÎk êstin. “But that is not so.” Aristotle does not allow that there can be, within the amphora, an extension other than that of the body that fills the amphora at any one time. A fortiori no such extension can be called upon to fulfil the role of “place”. Exactly the same point is made in lines immediately preceding the definition. Place is neither form nor matter, “nor is it an ever-present extension of some kind, different from and in addition to the extension of the object that changes position” (Ph. IV.4 212a3-5: disthm ti eÈ Íprqon éteron par tä toÜ prgmatoc toÜ mejistamènou).76

74 Ph. IV.1 208b1-8 (air and water). Cf. IV.3 210a30-31 (wine). 75 The description of the body that is contained as “divided” (211b16: diùrhmènon) is no more than the converse of Aristotle’s earlier point that “place” can be separated from that of which it is the place (Ph. IV.2 209b21-24, see n. 70 above). The two bodies, container and contained, despite being in contact, remain distinct. “Division” will allow them to be separated one from the other without change of nature or identity. 76 “Different from and in addition to”: éteron par (212a4). For this translation of the expression, see, for example, Aristotle’s account of his “rediscovery” of aether, De Caelo I.3 270b20-22: átèrou tinäc întoc toÜ pr¸tou s¸matoc par g¨n kaÈ pÜr kaÈ èra kaÈ Õdwr. “There being a distinctive (cf. tinìc) primary body, different from and in addition to earth and fire and air and water.” Life Beyond the Stars 73

What “appears” to be so, is not so That explicit denial explains the two sentences which follow Aristotle’s definition of place, Ph. IV.4 212a10-12 and 13-14: ândèqesjai gr faÐnetai eÚnai disthma metaxÌ llo ti tÀn kinoumènwn mege- jÀn. It appears that in between there can be an extension other than the mag- nitudes that are in movement. faÐnetai gr oÎ mìnon t pèrata toÜ ggeÐou eÚnai å tìpoc, ll kaÈ tä metaxÌ ±c kenän <în>. Place appears to be not only the limits [i.e. the inner limits] of the vessel, but also what is in between, as though it were a void. Commentators have been misled by Aristotle’s repeated use of faÐnetai (212a10-11 and 13). Aristotle is not here acknowledging that his definition of place as a “limit” is misleading or inadequate. He is not conceding that “place” is in some way to be identified with the “extension” that “lies between” the inner limits of the containing body. For Aristotle’s point is not that what “appears” to be so, is so. On the contrary, his point is that what “appears to be so”, is not so. So much is clear once we remember his vigorous retort, 211b18: tä d> oÎk êstin. “Place” may “seem” to be the extension that “lies between” the inner walls of the amphora. “But that is not so.” “Place”, for Aristotle, is not a three-dimensional volume circumscribed by a two-dimensional surface, “the limit of the containing body”.77 There is, within the amphora, no three-dimensional extension other than that of the body that occupies a place. The “place” that it occupies is constituted exclusively by the two-dimensional “limit”, the inner surface, of the body by which it is surrounded.78

77 “Seems” (211b17: dokeØ) and “appears” (212a10-11 and 13: faÐnetai) are therefore both used of what is not in fact so. The two uses of faÐnesjai (what appears to be so, and is not so, what appears to be so, and is so) are clearly distinguished by Bonitz (1870), s.v. faÐnein, 808b37-41. 78 King (1950, pp. 87-88) has failed to take the measure of the two sentences following Aristotle’s deﬁnition. Referring to the second of the two sentences (Ph. IV.4 212a13-14), he writes that Aristotle “occasionally refers to Place as simply a two-dimensional locus”, only to add that “in the course of discussion he becomes aware that he is assuming more than this”. He continues: “You cannot speak of the bound of a container without implying some contained, not a particular contained body, but a disthma ±c kenìn, receptive of all body. Of course, Place is not a mere disthma, an extension over and above the extended bodies, as Aristo- tle says; but tä metaxÌ ±c kenìn cannot be divorced from the notion of Place as the bound of a container.” (The expression tä metaxÌ ±c kenìn is to be found at Ph. IV.4 212a14. The expression disthma ±c kenìn is King’s own invention.) The conception which King claims “cannot be divorced from the notion of Place as the bound of a container” is precisely the conception that Aristotle aims to eschew. 74 Denis O’Brien

Conflicting conceptions of “place” A clear understanding of that distinction is essential when we return to the brief account given of place in De Caelo I.9, to be told that “in every place it is possible for there to be a body”.79 On a first reading, those words could indeed be seen as happily adapted to Aristotle’s initial use of the example of the receptacle in Physics IV. The receptacle provides “the place and the space” into which and out of which there pass in succession water and air.80 What more natural therefore, or so one might think, than to say that “place” is that in which “it is possible for there to be a body”? An obvious enough description, we may be tempted to conclude, of what happens when air and water occupy successively “the place and the space” provided by the receptacle. But that is not Aristotle’s view of the matter. With the definition that Aristotle will give of his own concept of place, in Physics IV, the inner surface of the recipient does indeed exist independently of whatever three-dimensional body (air, water, wine) it may contain at any one time. However, Aristotle does not therefore think that the three-dimensional extension, circumscribed by the two-dimensional boundary of the containing body, can properly be thought of independently of whatever body fills the recipient. The inner surface of the recipient does not, as it were, mark out a three-dimensional place waiting to be filled, nor does it mark out a place that, when the body which filled it has departed, somehow continues as a ghostly outline of the place that it once was. And yet that would appear to be the conception of “place” which Aristotle appeals to in De Caelo I.9: “In every place it is possible for there to be a body.” Those words are most simply taken as implying, indeed as expressing, the very view which the discussion of the Physics sets to one side. “Place”, in the Physics, is not a three-dimensional place which a body can leave behind it, nor is it a predetermined three-dimensional place which it can come to occupy. But how else are we to understand the words of the De Caelo “in every place it is possible for there to be a body” (279a12-13)? Aristotle’s words would here seem to imply the very conception of place which the analysis of the Physics is designed to correct. “In every place it is possible for there to be a body” fairly clearly implies that a three-dimensional place exists prior to, and independently of, the body that may come to be present in it.

79 De Caelo I.9 279a12-13 (quoted above n. 21). 80 Ph. IV.1 208b6-8 (quoted above n. 61). Life Beyond the Stars 75

Aristotle’s change of mind Should we therefore conclude that the concept of place which Aristotle by implication appeals to, in denying that there can be place outside the heavens (De Caelo I.9), is deliberately introduced as not his own? I think not. It is true that, when Aristotle introduces the parallel denial of void (De Caelo I.9 279a13-14), he lets it be seen (by the addition of a tiny fasÐn) that the void which he denies can exist outside the heavens is not a void that he himself believes can exist even inside the cosmos. But the same can hardly be true of “place”. Aristotle does not deny the existence of “place” as such. He is concerned only to deny its existence outside the heavens. There would be little point in his denial of a conception of place that he himself did not believe in. Admittedly, in the text of the De Caelo following the denial of place (cf. I.9 279a12-13), there is a denial of time (279a14-16), which is cast precisely in terms of the definition of time worked out in the Physics (IV.10- 14, esp. cap. 11 219b1-2: time as the measure of movement). The “time” which Aristotle denies can be found “outside the heavens” is “time” as defined in Physics IV, “time” as Aristotle himself conceives of it. Nonetheless it seems to me reasonably clear that when, in the De Caelo, Aristotle denies that there can be place “outside the heavens”, the concept of place which he appeals to does not answer at all easily to the definition of place which he will establish in the Physics. On the contrary, the “place” that Aristotle alludes to in De Caelo I.9 answers to the concept of place which the discussion of the Physics is designed to correct. I conclude therefore, quite simply, that the “place” which Aristotle denies can exist “outside the heavens” is “place” as he himself conceives of it at the time of writing, but that the conception of place taken for granted in De Caelo I.9 has been abandoned by the time that Aristotle came to work out the definition of place put forward in the Physics.81

81 In deference to “the hermeneutical circle” I should perhaps acknowledge as a possibility that, having worked out his own deﬁnition of place in the Physics, Aristotle reverted, in the De Caelo, to the common or garden conception of place that he had earlier abandoned. Possible, perhaps. Probable, no. – Remarkably, neither Al- gra (1995) nor Lang (1998) make any mention of the concept of place adopted in De Caelo I.9. (Lang’s line reference (1998, p. 116) does not match her quotation.) The omission is the more remarkable in Algra’s book, in that the author ﬁnds a “loose” and “unorthodox” use of topos in De Caelo book two, but fails to recognise that the passage he has quoted is a reference to De Caelo I.9. When Aristotle writes that “it has been demonstrated that there is neither void nor place outside the extreme circumference” (De Caelo II.4 287a12-13: dèdeiktai d> íti t¨c âsqthc periforc oÖte kenìn âstin êxwjen oÖte tìpoc), he does not, as Algra supposes, refer to a “fact” which is “here taken for granted” (Algra, 1995, p. 185). On the contrary, far from taking the point “for granted”, Aristotle claims that it has been 76 Denis O’Brien IV. De Caelo I.7 “Outside the heavens”: an inconsistency

The distinction on which that conclusion is founded may perhaps seem over-subtle. The statement that “in every place it is possible for there to be a body” (De Caelo I.9 279a12-13) may seem a mere fa¸conde parler, which it is wrong to seek to pit against the intricacies of Aristotle’s analysis of place in Physics book four. Not at all so subtle is the contradiction between what Aristotle writes of place in De Caelo I.9 and what we read only two chapters earlier in the same treatise.

Aristotle’s “disconnected jotting” Aristotle is here concluding a first series of arguments (De Caelo I.5-7) designed to disprove the existence of a body infinite in extent. Since Aris- totle’s cosmos is finite, such a body, were it to exist, could be found only outside the heavens. Hence the form taken by the conclusion to the first set of arguments: “Outside the heavens, there is therefore no body that is infinite.”82 That conclusion is followed by a short additional argument which has baffled commentators, and which Guthrie goes so far as to call “a disconnected jotting”.83 Despite Guthrie’s comment, the connection of thought with the passage preceding is as clear as could be when Aristotle picks up from his initial conclusion by writing, 275b8-9: ll mn oÎdà mèqri tinìc. “Nor yet is there any body which stretches for a certain distance (sc. beyond the heavens).” The introductory pair of particles (ll m n) falls squarely within the range of meaning noted by Denniston: “Progressive: proceed- ing to a new item in a series, introducing a new argument, or marking a new stage in the march of thought.”84 Aristotle is here starting off on a separate, but connected train of argument. Having proved, to his own satisfaction, that there cannot be an infinite body outside the heavens, he now intends to show that, outside the heavens, there cannot be a body which, though not infinite, stretches to a certain distance (cf. mèqri tinìc). Aristotle obviously does not want it to be thought that his denial of an extra-cosmic body infinite in extent might have left open a loop-hole

“demonstrated” (287a12: dèdeiktai), a transparent reference to I.9 279a11-18 (as noted by Tricot and by Moraux, see n. 45 above). 82 De Caelo I.7 275b7-8: oÎk êstin ra sÀma peiron êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ oÎjèn. The repeated negation (untranslatable in English) acquires additional force from the placing of the two negations as the first and the last words of the sentence (oÎk [. . . ] oÎjèn). 83 Guthrie (1939, p. 62, note c). 84 Denniston (1959, s.vv., (4) p. 344). Life Beyond the Stars 77 for an extra-cosmic body that was finite in extent. Hence his statement in the sentence immediately following, 275b9: oÎjàn ra ílwc sÀma êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ. “Therefore there is simply no body at all outside the heavens.” Outside the heavens there cannot be a body that is infinite (275b7-8); there cannot be a body that is finite (cf. mèqri tinìc, 275b8-9); therefore – the obvious conclusion – there is no body at all outside the heavens (275b9), i.e. no body at all, either infinite or finite.

Darkness impenetrable If I so labour Aristotle’s introductory remarks (275b8-9), it is simply to bring out how remarkable it is that Guthrie should write as he does of the three lines that follow. When Aristotle has stated in advance (cf. 275b9) what will be the conclusion to his argument with such blazing clarity, how can it be that the argument which he will advance to support that conclusion should appear to an intelligent reader no more than “a disconnected jotting”? The answer to that question is to be found in the opening words of Aristotle’s argument. Aristotle writes, 275b9-10: eÊ màn gr nohtìn, êstai ân tìpú. Guthrie translates: “If it be intelligible, it will still be in a place.”85 With Guthrie’s translation of Aristotle’s words, the darkness that falls upon the passage is indeed impenetrable. For, with Guthrie’s translation, the two parts of Aristotle’s argument are impossibly out of step. Throughout the series of arguments where Aristotle aims to prove that there cannot be an infinite body outside the heavens (De Caelo I.5-7), it is repeatedly stated that the body in question, were it to exist, would be a body perceptible to the senses. So it is that, only two lines before our present passage, Aristotle frames his argument as that “it is impossible for an infinite body to be perceptible”.86 If Aristotle is now to argue (275b9-10) that the body which might be thought to stretch for a limited distance outside the heavens cannot be an “intelligible” body (nohtìn [sc. sÀma], in Guthrie’s translation), then he cannot conclude that “there is simply no body at all outside the heavens” (275b9), i.e. no body at all, whether infinite or finite. For “no body at all” would have to rest on the joint exclusion of (1) a body that was infinite but sensible (in the earlier arguments) and (2) a body that was finite but intelligible (in the additional argument).

85 Guthrie (1939, p. 63). 86 De Caelo I.7 275b6: dÔnaton sÀma peiron aÊsjhtän eÚnai. I translate aÊsjhtìn (275b6) as “perceptible”. But in my commentary I write of a “sensible body” or of a “body perceptible to the senses”, in order to being out the opposition between “sensible” and “intelligible” (nohtìn, in Guthrie’s translation). 78 Denis O’Brien

An impossible conjunction of ideas To grasp the anomaly of that impossible conjunction of ideas, we do not even have to agree, with Guthrie, that “intelligible body” is “a contradiction in terms”.87 (The opposition of “intelligible” and “sensible” body is in fact to be found in both the Physics and the Metaphysics.88) For whatever Aristotle may be thought to mean, in the De Caelo, by that expression, it is certainly true that, in Guthrie’s words, Aristo- tle’s argument would be “scarcely tenable for a moment” if it collapsed the distinction between “sensible body” and “intelligible body”. From the absence of an infinite sensible body and from the absence of a finite intelligible body, Aristotle cannot conclude to the absence, outside the heavens, of any body at all, finite or infinite. Such a form of argument, far from allowing Aristotle to claim that “outside the heavens, there is simply no body at all” (cf. 275b9), would throw open his argument to the four winds, by inviting the objection: Can there be, outside the heavens, a finite body that is sensible? or even: Can there be an infinite body which is intelligible?

A change of syntax But we have no need to follow the argument along those slippery paths, for a simple change in the syntax of the sentence gives Aristotle’s words a wholly different meaning, and one that is entirely appropriate to the context. When Aristotle writes eÊ màn gr nohtìn, êstai ân tìpú (275b9- 10), there is no reference to an “intelligible body” (finite or infinite). The adjective nohtìn, should be taken, unusually but not impossibly, as part of an impersonal construction: “For if it is conceivable (sc. that there should be a body outside the heavens), it will be in place.”89 So understood, the sentence introduces an argument that is immediately seen to be adapted to the context. For only two lines earlier Aristotle had asserted that “whatever bodies are in place, are all perceptible” (De Caelo I.7 275b6-7: ll mn kaÈ ísa ge s¸mata ân tìpú, pnta aÊsjht).

87 Guthrie (1939, p. 62, note c). 88 Ph. III.5 204b5-7: eÊ gr âsti s¸matoc lìgoc tä âpipèdú ±rismènon, oÎk n eÒh sÀma peiron, oÖte nohtän oÖte aÊsjhtìn. “If ‘what is bounded by surface’ is a deﬁni- tion of body, then there could not be a body that is inﬁnite, whether intelligible or perceptible.” “Intelligible body” is here the object of mathematics (including geometry). See Ross (1936, ad loc. (pp. 548-549)). The sentence is repeated almost word-for-word in Metaph. XI.10 1066b22-24. 89 “Unusually but not impossibly.” See Parmenides, fr. 8.8-9: oÎ gr fatän oÎdà nohtìn / êstin ípwc oÎk êsti. “It cannot be said, nor thought, that ‘is not’.” I repeat the translation given by O’Brien (1987, ad loc. (p. 35)). The absence of a subject for oÎk êsti (“is not”), here and in Parmenides, fr. 2.5, is dealt with at length in the commentary accompanying the translation. Life Beyond the Stars 79

That assertion allows Aristotle to conclude that the body which we may think of as outside the heavens (cf. 275b9-10: eÊ màn gr nohtìn), since it is in place (cf. 275b10: êstai ân tìpú), will necessarily be a body that is perceived by the senses. Hence the conclusion, stated explicitly in the lines that follow, 275b11: . . . ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn. “Consequently it will be perceptible.” With the corrected translation of nohtìn, the argument unfolds with disarming ease. (1) A body that is in place (ân tìpú) is necessarily perceptible (cf. 275b6-7). (2) If it is conceivable that there should be a body outside the heavens, that body will be in place (275b9-10: ân tìpú). (3) Therefore the body which we may think of as being outside the heavens, if there is such a body, will be perceptible (cf. 275b11: . . . ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn).

The ﬁnal sentence of the argument In the ﬁnal sentence of his argument Aristotle writes, 275b11: aÊsjhtän d> oÎjàn m ân tìpú. “There is no perceptible body that is not in place.” It is true that, at this moment, the sequence of thought is not immediately apparent. The assertion that “there is no perceptible body that is not in place” (275b11) cannot be taken as leading to the conclusion that a body which is in place is therefore perceptible (cf. 275b11: . . . ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn).90 But Aristotle obviously thinks of his two main propositions as convertible. (1) “Whatever bodies are in place, are all perceptible” (275b6-7). (2) “There is no perceptible body that is not in place” (275b11). Having concluded that the body which we may think of as outside the cosmos will be perceptible (275b11: . . . ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn), he therefore adds, inconsequentially but truly, 275b11: “There is no perceptible body that is not in place.”91

90 Cancelling out the double negation: from the fact that every body that is perceptible is in place (cf. “there is no perceptible body that is not in place”), it does not follow (though it may be true) that every body that is in place is perceptible. Returning to the double negation: from the fact that no-one who is a citizen of the United Kingdom (cf. 275b11: aÊsjhtän d> oÎjèn) is not a subject of Her Majesty (cf. 275b11: m ân tìpú), it does not follow that whoever is a subject of Her Majesty (cf. 275b10: êstai ân tìpú) is a citizen of the United Kingdom (cf. 275b11: . . . ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn). He may be a citizen of Canada or Australia. 91 If it is true (1) that everyone who is a member of the college has a vote on the college council (cf. 275b6-7: ísa ge s¸mata ân tìpú, pnta aÊsjht) and (2) that no-one who has a vote on the college council is not a member of the college (cf. 275b11: aÊsjhtän d> oÎjàn m ân tìpú), then someone who concludes, from (1), that, since so-and-so is a member of the college (cf. 275b10: êstai ân tìpú), therefore he has a vote on the college council (cf. 275b11: . . . ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn), may add, inconsequentially but truly, that (2) no-one who has a vote on the college council is 80 Denis O’Brien

The implied conclusion Aristotle cuts short his argument at this point. But that is only because the final stage of his argument is sufficiently obvious to be left unstated. “Sensible body”, for Aristotle, cannot be other than the bodies we do already perceive, fire and earth, air and water, with the frequent addition (in the first two books of the De Caelo) of aether. The “natural” movements of those bodies, as Aristotle has demonstrated at length in the preceding chapters of his treatise, are such that they can be found only within a cosmos (fire and earth move to circumference and centre respectively, air and water take up intermediate positions, while aether, when included in the scheme, is the only one of the elements to have a circular movement). A “sensible body” cannot therefore be found outside the confines of the heavens. The finite body which we may think to conceive of as outside the heavens, since it is in place, cannot but be a sensibly perceptible body (cf. 275b9-11). But if it is a sensibly perceptible body, then it must be one or other of the bodies that lie within the cosmos. Therefore there cannot be, outside the heavens, a sensibly perceptible body that is finite. Given Aristotle’s preceding arguments, that there cannot be, outside the heavens, an infinite body that is sensibly perceptible, the conclusion happily follows (cf. 275b9) that there cannot be, outside the heavens, a sensibly perceptible body, infinite or finite. Q. E. D.

“The transcendent intelligible entities of Platonism” Taken in this way, Aristotle’s use of the word nohtìn, far from introducing, as Guthrie and others have supposed, an “intelligible” as opposed to a “sensible” body, serves, in the context, precisely the opposite purpose. Aristotle’s proof that, outside the heavens, there cannot be a ﬁnite body, turns on the point that the body which we might think of as existing outside the heavens, since it would be in place, could not but be a sensible body. Aristotle expects his reader to draw the conclusion (unexpressed in the text, but suﬃciently implied by Aristotle’s previous arguments) that, since the body in question would have to be a sensibly perceptible body, it would have to exist within the cosmos. The body which we might think of as existing outside the cosmos cannot in fact do so.

not a member of the college. – I am not trying to prove that the sequence of thought at the end of the argument (275b11: ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn. aÊsjhtän d> oÎjàn m ân tìpú) is logical, if the second sentence is taken as a demonstration of the ﬁrst, only that the sequence of thought is natural enough, once the two propositions (275b7: ísa ge s¸mata ân tìpú, pnta aÊsjht, and 275b11: aÊsjhtän d> oÎjàn m ân tìpú) are taken to be convertible (both propositions are true, and either one is taken to imply the other). Life Beyond the Stars 81

There is no reference here to an “intelligible body”, still less any reference to “the transcendent intelligible entities of Platonism”.92

A missing link So much, I would like to think, is clear enough. But I have not yet touched upon the most curious feature of Aristotle’s argument. With the translation proposed above, Aristotle asserts that “if it is conceivable (sc. that there should be a body outside the heavens), then it will be in place” (275b9-10: eÊ màn gr nohtìn, êstai ân tìpú). He will go on to argue that, since it is in place, and since every body that is in place is sensibly perceptible (cf. 275b6-7), therefore the body in question cannot but be a body that is sensibly perceptible (cf. 275b11: . . . ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn). But there is still a missing link in Aristotle’s argument. For why, in conceiving of a body outside the heavens, do we have to suppose that it would be “in place”? As proof of that point, essential to the pursuance of his argument, Aristotle writes, 275b10: tä gr êxw kaÈ êsw tìpon shmaÐnei. “For ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ designate place.” The additional step enables the argument to continue. (1) If a body is “outside” the heavens, then it is necessarily in place (275b10). (2) It has already been established (275b6-7) that “whatever bodies are in place, are all perceptible”. (3) Therefore the body that we may think of as being outside the heavens, since it is in place, cannot but be perceptible (cf. 275b11: . . . ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn). The whole passage runs, De Caelo I.7 275b7-11: oÎk êstin ra sÀma peiron êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ oÎjèn. ll mn oÎdà mèqri tinìc. oÎjàn ra ílwc sÀma êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ. eÊ màn gr nohtìn, êstai ân tìpú; tä gr êxw kaÈ êsw tìpon shmaÐnei. ¹st> êstai aÊsjhtìn. aÊsjhtän d> oÎjàn m ân tìpú. Outside the heavens, there is therefore no body that is inﬁnite. Nor yet is there any body which stretches for a certain distance (sc. beyond the heavens). Therefore there is simply no body at all outside the heavens. For if it is conceivable (sc. that there should be a body outside the heavens), it will be in place. For “inside” and “outside” designate place. Consequently it will be perceptible. There is no perceptible body that is not in place.93

92 Guthrie (1939, p. 62, note c): “This parenthesis [i.e. De Caelo I.7 275b9-11] is no more than a disconnected jotting. The objection which it meets is scarcely tenable for a moment, since “intelligible body” is so obviously a contradiction in terms. But A[ristotle] is constantly aware of the transcendent intelligible entities of Platonism, and constantly in fear of being thought to have overlooked, rather than consciously rejected them.” There follows the inevitable reference to the Íperournioc tìpoc of the Phaedrus. As already noted (n. 88 above) the expression “intelligible body” (sÀma nohtìn) is not, as Guthrie supposes, a contradiction in terms. 93 I have kept to an impersonal construction for nohtìn, 275b9-10: eÊ màn gr nohtìn. “If it is conceivable (sc. that there should be a body outside the heavens).” It 82 Denis O’Brien

A flagrant contradiction The additional step to the argument (275b10: “‘inside’ and ‘outside’ designate place”) would perhaps be unremarkable, were it not that it is in flagrant contradiction with what Aristotle will state only two chapters later, namely that there are beings who are “outside” the heavens and who are not “in place” (De Caelo I.9 279a18: diìper oÖt> ân tìpú tkeØ pèfuken). When he wrote those words, Aristotle cannot have remembered, or cannot yet have written, the claim made in his demonstration against the possibility of a finite, sensible body existing outside the heavens. If “‘outside’ designates place” (cf. 275b10), then the beings who are said to be “outside the heavens” cannot be said to be not in place.

A “metaphor”? Desperate causes require desperate remedies. So it is when King asserts that, in De Caelo I.9, Aristotle’s language, and speciﬁcally his reference to “the beings there” (279a18: tkeØ), is merely “metaphorical”.94 One has only to read Aristotle’s expression in its context to see that that is not so. In the lines immediately preceding the reference to “the beings there” (279a11-18), Aristotle repeatedly uses the expression “outside the heavens” (275a12 and 16: êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ, see also 275a18: êxwjen). When he continues with the demonstrative adverb (279a18: tkeØ), the reference cannot but be to the repeated use of êxw and êxwjen in the lines preceding. So it is also in the lines immediately following. Aristotle writes of the beings who are “there” (279a18: tkeØ) as “ranged above and beyond the outermost movement” (cf. 279a20: tÀn Ípàr tn âxwttw tetagmènwn forn). “Above and beyond” (Ípèr) cannot but look back to the demonstrative use of the adverb three lines earlier (279a18). It is true that, at this point in the De Caelo (I.9 279a18-22), Aristotle’s words can hardly be made consistent with the detailed analysis of “place”

would be possible to arrive at essentially the same meaning by adopting a personal construction and putting the adjective in the predicative position, 275b9-10: eÊ màn gr nohtìn, êstai ân tìpú. “For if such a body [i.e. a body ‘outside the heavens’] is conceivable, it will be in place.” In either case, I keep the “real” form for both protasis and apodosis (êstai in the apodosis, âsti “understood” in the protasis). Given the flexibility of conditional sentences in Greek, it would no doubt be possible to cast the protasis in an “unreal” mode (eÊ màn gr nohtìn [sc. ªn]), despite the presence of a trenchant future as the first word of the apodosis (êstai). “If it were conceivable . . . ” (or if the personal construction is preferred: “If such a body were conceivable . . . ”). 94 King (1950, p. 81): “‘Beyond’ [cf. 279a18: tkeØ] is a metaphor for the supra- natural” (King’s own italics). Life Beyond the Stars 83 given in book four of the Physics. It is true also that they are in flagrant contradiction with what Aristotle writes of “place” two chapters earlier in the De Caelo. But the remedy is not therefore to dismiss his words as “metaphorical”.95

A change of perspective Instead, I would suggest, we need to look outside the corpus for an explanation of what Aristotle may have in mind when, in De Caelo I.9, beings, presumably divine, are said to be “outside the heavens”. That is not as chimerical a project as it may seem. When Aristo- tle writes of the unity of the cosmos, ﬁnite and spherical, a text is ever present to his mind, a text which he both loves and hates, a text which he constantly seeks to criticise, but which in more ways than one acts as a blue-print for his own cosmology – Plato’s Timaeus.

V. Timaeus 34b4 and 36e3 Plato’s criticism of Empedocles

The Timaeus, or so I shall suggest, provides part of the explanation of what Aristotle has in mind in De Caelo I.9. For the same puzzle, the puzzle of a being or beings who live beyond the extreme outer boundary of the heavens, recurs in a passage of the Timaeus. However, the parallel is not one that it is easy to take the measure of. For Plato’s words in the Timaeus, no less than Aristotle’s words in the De Caelo, have given endless trouble to the more thoughtful of his commentators, in Antiquity as in the modern world.

Plato’s world-soul In the Timaeus, Plato starts, just as Aristotle has done, by seeming to lead his reader up the garden path.96 Aristotle said that the whole body

95 The adverb can, of course, be used metaphorically. It is so used by Plotinus, who regularly writes of the intelligible world as the world that is “there” or “yonder” (âkeØ). See Sleeman and Pollet (1980, s.v., d, col. 347.40-349.11). But to appeal to Plotinus at this point would be a confession of failure. To attempt to read back Plotinus’ repeated use of âkeØ into an isolated passage of Aristotle’s De Caelo would be an anachronism so blatant that I hesitate even to suggest what I nonetheless suspect to be true – that the language of the Enneads may have been at the back of King’s mind when he writes of Aristotle’s use of âkeØ as “metaphorical”. (Since King refers at some length (1950, pp. 92-93) to Simplicius and Damascius, I assume that he is familiar with the technical and semi-technical language of Neoplatonism.) 96 For the analysis that follows, see O’Brien (2003). 84 Denis O’Brien of the universe contained within the extreme outer circumference comprised all the “physical and sensible” body that there was, “because there neither is nor can there come to be body outside the heavens” (êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ).97 Aristotle, we now discover, is merely repeating, in different words, what Plato had said in the Timaeus. In making the body of the world, the demiurge uses up every scrap of material available to him, “leaving no part nor power of any one of the elements outside”.98 The adverb (êxwjen, “outside”) is then repeated no less than three times in the pages that follow. There is nothing “outside” the world that might crash in on the world and destroy it (33a4: êxwjen). The living creature that is the universe has no hands, feet or mouth, because there is nothing “outside” itself to be seen or heard, nothing that the living creature could possibly need or get hold of (33c2: êxwjen). The world is therefore made perfectly smooth all the way round “on the outside” (33c1: êxwjen). Just as in the De Caelo, the reader might well think that that was an end to it. Outside the universe, there is nothing. But no: once again, there follows a complete volte face. Just as, in the De Caelo, we discover that, where there is neither body nor place nor void nor time, there are nonetheless beings who lead a beatific life, so too, in the Timaeus, we discover that beyond the outermost heavens, despite the total absence of body, there is nonetheless soul. The demiurge, so we learn, placed soul in the centre of the world, stretched it throughout the body of the cosmos, and then wrapped it all round the outside of that body as well, Ti. 34b4: êti êxwjen tä sÀma aÎt¬ [sc. yuq¬] periekluyen [sc. å dhmiourgìc]. Lit- erally: “he encircled the body with soul, even on the outside.” And just in case you might think that that detail was a mere lapsus calami and of no intrinsic significance, Plato goes out of his way to repeat the point, no less emphatically, two pages later. Soul is stretched throughout the whole body of the world all the way from the centre “to the outermost ouranos” (36e2: präc tän êsqaton oÎranìn) and then goes on to wrap itself all around the world “in a circle on the outside”, Ti. 36e3: kÔklú te aÎtän [sc. tän oÎranìn] êxwjen perikalÔyasa [sc. yuq ].99

Alcinoos and Cornford Commentators, ancient and modern, have done their best to whittle away the clear and indisputable meaning of Plato’s words. Alcinoos, in the ﬁrst

97 Aristotle, De Caelo I.9 278b21-279a11, and the passage already quoted, 279a16-17 (see n. 24 above): êxw dà toÜ oÎranoÜ dèdeiktai íti oÖt> êstin oÖt> ândèqetai genèsjai sÀma. 98 Ti. 32c7-8: mèroc oÎdàn oÎdenäc oÎdà dÔnamin êxwjen Ípolip¸n. 99 For the syntactical difference between the two sentences, with “the demiurge” subject of periekluyen (34b4) and “soul” the subject of perikalÔyasa (36e3), see O’Brien (2003, pp. 135-143). Life Beyond the Stars 85 or second century of our era, took Plato’s reference to the ‘outside’ of the world to be a reference to the circle of the Same.100 It is true that, in describing the circle of the Same, Timaeus does twice use the adverb êxw.101 But Alcinoos’ attempt to align Plato’s two uses of êxw (when writing of the circle of the Same) with his two uses of êxwjen (when writing of soul) fails when we appreciate that, in the description of the circle of the Same, êxw takes its meaning from the contrast with ântìc in the description of the circle of the Other. The circle of the Same is “outside” the circle of the Other which is therefore “inside”. As Cornford has seen, the circle of the Same is in fact none other than the sphere of the fixed stars.102 The soul which animates the sphere of the fixed stars does not find itself, in doing so, “outside” the extreme circumference of the heavens. It is (or it animates) the extreme circumference of the heavens. Alcinoos’ explanation fails. But Cornford does no better. For all that Cornford does is assert the contrary of what is to be found written explicitly in Plato’s text. Cornford writes: The statement [. . . ] that the soul is wrapped round the body of the world “on the outside” does not mean that the soul extends beyond the body, but only that it reaches the extreme circumference.103 What Cornford says that Plato does not say is exactly what Plato does say. In the second passage I have quoted, Timaeus says that the soul reached “the outermost ouranos” (36e2: tän êsqaton oÎranìn) and then wrapped itself all round on the outside as well, Ti. 36e3: kÔklú te aÎtän [sc. tän oÎranìn] êxwjen perikalÔyasa [sc. yuq ]. Plato’s world-soul, however odd it may seem, does stretch beyond the body of the heavens in order to wrap itself all round the outside as well. There is a soul therefore even where there is no body, just as, in the De Caelo, there are divine beings “outside” – an “outside” where there is neither body, nor place nor void nor time. The adverb in both places is the same: êxwjen.104 So too is the reference of the adverb. Plato’s soul is to be found even beyond the outermost heavens (36e2: tän êsqaton oÎranìn). Aristotle’s divine beings are to be found “beyond the extreme circumference” (279a20: Ípàr tn âxwttw [. . . ] forn). Aristotle is clearly following in the footsteps of Plato. However, before looking to explore that convergence of ideas, a more immediate question obtrudes itself. Let us allow that Aristotle picks up from Plato. But why does Plato write as he does?

100 Alcinoos, Didaskalikos, cap. XIV (p. 33.4-20 ed. Whittaker). 101 Ti. 36c3-5. 102 Cornford (1937, p. 58). 103 Cornford (1937, p. 58). 104 Plato, Ti. 34b4 and 36e3 (êxwjen). Aristotle, De Caelo I.9 279a18 (êxwjen). 86 Denis O’Brien

Plato’s precosmic movement To find the answer to that question, we need to look at a much later passage in the Timaeus, which, because of the convoluted architecture of Plato’s exposition, nonetheless describes the time before the construction of soul by the demiurge. In the pre-cosmic world, before the appearance of soul, there were already “traces” of the elements, moving “without reason and without measure” (53a8: lìgwc kaÈ mètrwc). That description of precosmic, disordered movement is, again, a well-worn crux in the interpretation of the Timaeus. How can there be movement, when there is as yet no soul? Does Plato no longer believe what he states, so explicitly and so firmly, in both the Phaedrus and the Laws, namely that all movement is caused by soul?105 And why should the movement that seemingly has no cause be discordant and disordered movement? Once again in order to answer those questions, Cornford is driven to asserting exactly what Plato denies. Cornford writes: If you abstract Reason and its works from the universe what is left will be irrational Soul, a cause of wandering motions.106 But that is not at all what Timaeus says. For Timaeus says that the elements are in discordant movement “when god is absent” from the world (cf. Ti. 53b3-4: . . . ¹sper eÊkäc êqein pan ítan p¬ tinoc jeìc). Cornford’s “irrational Soul” is no soul at all. But Cornford’s “irrational Soul” is not therefore a mere fiction. For when Plutarch writes of our passage, in the De Facie, echoing Plato’s very words on the absence of god (. . . ±c êqei pn oÝ jeäc pesti kat Pltwna), he compares the disordered movement of Plato’s precosmic elements with the time when, in Empedocles’ cycle, the elements have been fully separated, and therefore no longer form a cosmos, and yet are in movement.107 The difference between the erratic movement of the elements in the precosmic world of the Timaeus and the movement of the elements in the non-cosmic world of Empedocles is precisely that Empe- docles’ non-cosmic movement does have a cause – not quite Cornford’s “irrational Soul”, but something very close to it, a divine force of evil: the god of Strife.108

105 Leges X, 896b1: metabol¨c te kaÈ kin sewc pshc aÊtÐa pasin [sc. yuq ]. Phaedrus 245c9: toØc lloic ísa kineØtai toÜto [sc. yuq ] phg kaÈ rq kin sewc. 106 Cornford (1937, p. 203). 107 Plutarch, De Facie Quae in Orbe Lunae Apparet cap. 12 926E-927A. For the time of total separation in Empedocles’ “cyclic” history of the world, see O’Brien (1969, pp. 146-155 (chapter 7), and 1995, pp. 405-429). 108 For the association of Strife with evil (and of Love with goodness), see Aristotle, Metaph. I.4 985a4-7 (“If you follow up what Empedocles means to say and not what he comes out with in baby talk, you will ﬁnd that Love is cause of good things and Strife of things that are evil”). Life Beyond the Stars 87

Plato’s tacit correction of Empedocles Hence Plato’s insistence that, at the time of his precosmic movement, god is “absent” from the world. As in the myth of the Politicus, the cause of evil – of discordant and disorderly motion – is not the presence of an evil god, but the absence of a good god. The disorderly movement of Plato’s precosmic world is the disorderly movement of a world as it would have been, or as it was, if left to its own devices, without, or before, the advent of soul. The words that Plutarch has seized on (. . . ítan p¬ tinoc jeìc) are therefore significant, not because they affirm the presence of an “irrational Soul”, but for exactly the opposite reason. Plato’s insistence on the absence of god is his tacit correction of Empedocles’ belief in the presence of a god of evil.109 The same criticism, or so I would suggest, is implicit in the description of the world-soul wrapped around the body of the world “even on the outside” (34b4; cf. 36e3). I have already remarked on how, in Empedocles’ universe, Love moves from place to place. The same is true of Strife. When Love’s power is increasing, she moves out from the centre of the universe towards the circumference, before being driven back to the centre when Strife’s power increases. Conversely, when Strife’s power is increasing, he moves inwards from the circumference towards the centre, before being driven back to the circumference when Love’s power increases.110 So it is that, following the separation of the elements, Love drives Strife “to the outermost boundaries of the circle” (fr. 35.10: âp> êsqata tèrmata kÔklou). When therefore Love rules supreme, we are to imagine Strife extruded from the body of the elements, driven beyond the “outermost boundaries of the circle” within which the elements have been made into one by the power of Love. Hence, again, Plato’s correction of Empedocles. For Plato, there is, and can be, no evil god, no “irrational Soul”. But, to ensure that that is so, Plato has the world-soul occupy the place that, in Empedocles’ world, had been taken up by Strife. Plato’s world-soul, as Empedocles’ Love during the time of her domination, occupies the whole of space from the centre to the circumference, but with the crucial difference that Plato’s world-soul extends beyond the circumference, taking up the place therefore that had been occupied by Strife, as proof that there is and can be no divine force of evil. The place that Strife had occupied has been entirely taken up by Love.111 109 For exploration of this theme, see O’Brien (1997 and 1999). 110 For this account of the successive positions taken up by Love and Strife in the course of the “cycle”, see O’Brien (1969, pp. 104-126 (chapter 5), and 1995, pp. 416-421). 111 The critical reader may have noted that, in the preceding pages, I allow myself various periphrases when writing of Strife: “a god of evil”, “a divine power”, “a divine force of evil”. My writing of Strife as a deity and as divine is not matched 88 Denis O’Brien VI. Empedocles’ hidden influence

In the light of that conclusion, I return to the coincidence of the beings who ﬁnd themselves beyond the outermost reaches of the cosmos, in Plato’s Timaeus as in Aristotle’s De Caelo.112

A repeated anomaly Plato’s insistence that the world-soul stretches beyond the outermost circumference of the heavens may be explained by his tacit criticism, and rejection, of Empedocles’ god of Strife. Even so, there remains the anomaly, in the Timaeus, that a part of the world-soul is to be found even beyond “the outermost ouranos” (cf. 36e3), despite Timaeus’ assurance (32c7-8) that, “outside” the heavens, there is “no part nor power of any one of the elements”. There is a (part of) the soul of the world even where there is no “world” for it to be the soul of. Plato, or so I would suggest, has been willing to tolerate (has indeed deliberately introduced) that anomaly for the sake of its ideological over- tones (a tacit repudiation of Empedocles’ god of Strife). But why should Aristotle have been willing to tolerate what would seem to be a not dissimilar anomaly? Plato’s world-soul extends beyond the body of the heavens, where there is “no part nor power of any one of the elements” (32c7-8); Aristotle has made a not dissimilar claim for the beings who ﬁnd themselves “ranged above and beyond the outermost movement” (De Caelo I.9 279a20), again despite the ﬁrm assurance that, outside the heavens, there is neither body nor place nor void nor time (cf. 279a17-18). Why does he do so?

in the fragments. If, in the present context, I allow myself these expressions it is because, in Plato’s eyes, both Love and Strife are “gods”. So much at least may be inferred from his writing, in the Politicus, of dÔo tinà je° fronoÜnte áautoØc ânantÐa (270a1). The reference to “a pair of gods” with “opposite thoughts and purposes” is almost certainly an allusion to Empedocles’ Love and Strife. The addition of an indefinite pronoun (tinè) may well indicate that Plato deliberately declines to put a name on “the pair of gods” (cf. LSJ, s.v. tic, ti, A, II 3 (p. 1796)), by way of indicating his dismissal of the notion of two gods who might be thought to be “opposed”. In a not dissimilar spirit he writes, in the Sophist, di neØkìc ti (243a1-2), where the use of the article (pace Bollack (1965-1969, t. i, p. 124, n. 1)) is plainly depreciative (cf. LSJ, s.v. tic, ti, A, II 6, a (p. 1796)). 112 Contrast Solmsen (1960, p. 169): “Outside the Cosmos, Plato and Aristotle agree, there is nothing, simply nothing.” Really? I hope that readers of the preceding pages will find this as implausible as I do. For Solmsen’s apparent volte face, fifteen years later, see n. 123 below. Nonetheless, Solmsen’s earlier view persists. See Morison (2002, p. 18 n. 31): “there is nothing outside the heavens” (referring specifically to De Caelo I.9 279a11-18, but seemingly taking no account of the lines that follow). Life Beyond the Stars 89

An uneasy question The question is made no easier if we seek to take account of Aristotle’s assertion, at the beginning of the discussion of “place” in the Physics: “Ev- eryone takes it for granted that things that exist are somewhere (pou).”113 Admittedly Aristotle does not have to include himself among the “everyone”. Indeed he makes clear allowance for one exception in the ﬁnal chapter of his discussion of place: the universe itself (“the all”), since it has nothing to surround it, is not “somewhere”.114 But no sooner has Aristotle made that point than he hastens to add that “there is nothing apart from the all and the whole, nothing outside the all”.115 And lest one should think to quibble that “the beings there” of the De Caelo, in being “outside the heavens”, are perhaps not outside “the all”, he continues: “And that is why all things are within the heavens, for the heavens are, I suppose, the all.”116 Why has Aristotle so clearly dissociated himself from such a view in the De Caelo when he claims that the beings who lead “the best life and the most self-suﬃcient for all eternity” (cf. 279a17-22) are “outside the heavens” and are not “in place”? If they are not in place, does it follow that they are not “somewhere” (pou)? But if they are not “somewhere”, then how can it be said of them that they are “there” (âkeØ)?

A ﬁrst dismissal: Aristotle’s unmoved movers The answer, I would suggest, is a very simple one. If they are not “outside” the heavens, then where else are Aristotle’s gods to go? To readers of Physics book VIII, the reaction to that question may well be a snort of dismissal, if not derision. The very posing of the question, so it may be objected, betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of Aristotle’s “gods”, if we choose so to name the unmoved mover, or the unmoved movers, whose

113 Ph. IV.1 208a29: t ge gr înta pntec Ípolambnousin eÚnaÐ pou. 114 Ph. IV.5 212b14: tä dà pn oÖ pou. 115 Ph. IV.5 212b16-17: par dà tä pn kaÈ ílon oÎdèn âstin êxw toÜ pantìc. I repeat “nothing” simply for the sake of the translation, and to bring out the point that the reference of the two expressions introduced by par and by êxw is, in effect, the same. 116 Ph. IV.5 212b17-18: kaÈ di toÜto ân tÄ oÎranÄ pnta; å gr oÎranäc tä pn Òswc. I translate tä pn as “the all”, despite paraphrasing the same expression as “the universe” in my commentary (cf. LSJ, s.v. pc, D, III 1, b (p. 1345)). The paraphrase should not be taken for granted. The specification of “all there is” as tä pn is a philosophical innovation, whose origins we can trace in Empedocles’ borrowings from Parmenides, and which becomes a standard expression only in Plato. See O’Brien (2005). Hence, in the lines quoted, Aristotle’s writing initially of tä pn (212b14), but having recourse to the dual expression tä pn kaÈ ílon (212b16), “the all and the whole”, when, as here, he needs to give emphasis to the all-embraciveness of his conception of tä pn. 90 Denis O’Brien existence Aristotle has been at such pains to demonstrate in Physics VIII as in Metaphysics XII. The unmoved mover is “indivisible” (diaÐreton) and “without parts” (merèc).117 This is not because it is an exception to Aristotle’s rule that all body is divisible and therefore at least potentially has parts, but for the more radical reason that the unmoved mover is quite simply not corporeal.118 Equally, the unmoved mover is neither finite nor infinite in extent. Again, this is not because those two terms do not provide an exclusive disjunction for anything and everything that has size, but for the more radical reason that the unmoved mover has no size at all.119 With no body and with no “size”, the unmoved mover, so one might well think, has no “place” at all, and is therefore not the kind of being of which we can ask the question ”where?”. The same, or so it may be claimed, is true of the divine beings of De Caelo I.9, which are specifically said to have no “body”, and whom we may therefore perhaps assume to have no “size”. Without body and without size, these are not the kind of things, so it may be urged, of which we can legitimately ask the question “where?”, nor therefore things of which we can give, in any literal sense, the answer “there”.

The “place” of the unmoved mover However, even when it is a question of the unmoved mover, that dis- claimer does not wholly match the facts. For, although without body and without size, the unmoved mover is not wholly without position, in so far as its inﬂuence, so Aristotle tells us, is most apparent at the outermost circumference of the heavens, where movement is fastest (cf. Ph. VIII.10 267b7-9), with the result, in Aristotle’s own words, that the un-

117 This is the burden of Physics VIII.10. See especially merèc at the beginning of the chapter (266a10-11), and in the final sentence of the treatise (267b25-26), where the unmoved mover is also said to be diaÐreton. 118 This is not stated explicitly in the final chapter of Physics VIII, but it seems to me the clear implication of Aristotle’s argument. The assertion that the unmoved mover is “without parts” and “indivisible” is repeated in Metaph. XII.7 1073a5-7, where the unmoved mover is also said to be “a substance separate from things perceptible” (1073a4-5: oÎsÐa tic [. . . ] keqwrismènh tÀn aÊsjhtÀn). By contrast, body is “what is everywhere divisible” (De Caelo I.1 268a7: tä pntù diairetìn). Every magnitude (and therefore every body) and every period of time is “endlessly divisible” (cf. Ph. VI.6 237b20-21: eÈ diaret). In the De Caelo, a brief argument, clearly referring to the unmoved mover (II.6 288a27-b7), states explicitly that the mover, as distinct from the object moved, is “bodiless” (288b6: s¸maton). 119 This is stated explicitly at the beginning and at the end of the chapter, Ph. VIII.10 266a10-11: mhdàn êqein mègejoc, and 267b26: oÎdàn êqon mègejoc. For the argument that the unmoved mover has no “size” because it is neither finite nor infinite in extent, see 267b17-24. The argument is repeated in Metaph. XII.7 1073a5-11. Life Beyond the Stars 91 moved mover may be said to be “there” (267b9-10: . . . toiaÔth d> toÜ kÔklou kÐnhsic; âkeØ ra tä kinoÜn). Does it then follow that the unmoved mover can be in some way located? An obvious reply is that, in Physics VIII, the adverb (267b10: âkeØ) does not mark the location of the unmoved mover itself, but only the place where its influence is felt to the greatest effect. True enough, perhaps. But what then are we to make of the adverb introduced in the sentence immediately preceding: “The fastest movement is that of bodies that are nearest to the mover” (267b7-8: tqista kineØtai t âggÔtata toÜ kinoÜntoc)? How can the movement of the outermost sphere be said to be “nearest” to the unmoved mover, if the unmoved mover is not itself in some way spatially located? In this context, is the relationship of “nearness” somehow not reciprocal?

A misleading parallel Whatever the answer to that question (if there is one), we need to recognise that the reference of the adverb (âkeØ), in the two passages (De Caelo I.9 and Physics VIII.10), is not the same. (1) In Physics VIII, the adverb is employed simply with reference to the place where the influence of the unmoved mover is most immediately manifest. The unmoved mover has “position” or “location” (cf. âkeØ) only to the extent that its influence is especially marked in a specific region of the universe, the outermost sphere of the revolving heavens, whatever further implications there may be lurking in Aristotle’s description of the outermost sphere as “nearest” or “closest” (cf. âggÔtata) to the unmoved mover. (2) By contrast, in De Caelo I.9, the reference of the adverb is no longer to the visible cosmos and applies directly to the divine beings themselves, and not only to the place where their influence (if any) is strongest. The adverb therefore may be the same (âkeØ), but the difference in its application is too great for whatever account we may wish to give of the unmoved mover to be transferred, without more ado, to the divine beings of De Caelo I.9. I return therefore to the question of how we are to understand the adverb in the passage from the De Caelo. And to answer that question, I again ask: if they are not “outside” the heavens, then where else are the divine beings, in the De Caelo, to go?

A second dismissal: Plato’s “dream” Such a question may still arouse a mere gesture of dismissal, but for a diﬀerent reason from the one already adumbrated. There is no reason, it may be said, for such beings to “go” or to “be” anywhere. Plato, in the Timaeus, had clearly and emphatically put forward the idea that “to 92 Denis O’Brien be” is not necessarily to be “somewhere”. It is only “in a dream”, says Timaeus, that we assume that “what is” has to be “somewhere”. So it is when we direct our gaze towards what will be called “the nurse of becoming”, 52b3-5: präc ç d kaÈ æneiropoloÜmen blèpontec kaÐ famen nagkaØon eÚnaÐ pou tä ïn pan ên tini tìpú kaÈ katèqon q¸ran tin, tä dà m t> ân g¬ m te pou kat> oÎranän oÎdàn eÚnai.120 . . . we are in a dream and we claim that everything that there is must needs be somewhere, in a particular place and taking up a deﬁnite space, and that what is neither on earth nor anywhere in the heavens is nothing. In the light of that passage, so it may be urged, beings who lead a life untrammelled by body, place or time, as in De Caelo I.9, do not have to be anywhere. To suppose that the divine beings have to be “somewhere” (cf. pou) is to suppose that Aristotle has failed to take account of what Plato says, so emphatically and so clearly, in the Timaeus.

Plato’s “dream” and the myth of the “Phaedrus” The parallel with the Timaeus may seem to be reinforced if we take account of what is said in the Phaedrus.121 When Plato has Timaeus allude, if only by implication, to what is not “in a particular place and taking up a deﬁnite space”, the reference, in the context of the Timaeus, is clearly to the forms. In the myth of the Phaedrus, justice and prudence and other such realities, also no doubt forms, are to be seen in their true splendour, so we are told (247d5-e4), occupying a “place beyond the heavens” (247c3: tän dà Íperournion tìpon . . . ), also called “the plain of truth” (248b6). Why not suppose that the same is true of forms in the Timaeus? They may not be “anywhere in the heavens”, but that is only because, as in the Phaedrus, they occupy a “place beyond the heavens”. The latter expression, it may be said, is all part of Plato’s “myth”, and no less “mythical” therefore will be Aristotle’s reference to his divine beings existing “outside the heavens”, “above and beyond the outermost movement”.122

Aristotle on the “place” of forms Aristotle, it may even be said, recognises as much when he states that Plato’s forms are not “outside the heavens” and are “not anywhere”, Ph.

120 Ti. 52b3: präc ç d [. . . ] blèpontec. The antecedent to the relative pronoun is the “third kind” (52a8), what Timaeus will call, in the lines following, “the nurse of becoming” (52d4-5). 121 The comparison of the Phaedrus and the Timaeus, in the paragraphs that follow, is introduced argumenti causa, not because I believe it to be true. 122 The comparison of the myth of the Phaedrus with De Caelo I.9 is a great favourite with the commentators. Among writers already quoted, see Guthrie (1939, p. 62, note c (cf. n. 92 above)). For Solmsen’s interpretation, see the footnote following. Life Beyond the Stars 93

III.4 203a8-9: Pltwn dà êxw màn [sc. toÜ oÎranoÜ] oÎdàn eÚnai sÀma, oÎdà tc Êdèac, di tä mhdè pou eÚnai aÎtc. In the myth of the Phaedrus, the realities contemplated by the gods are speciﬁcally said to be “outside the heavens” (cf. 247c2: t êxw toÜ oÎranoÜ). If, in the passage quoted, Aris- totle remembered those words, he obviously did not take them literally. Indeed the passage from the Physics sounds very much as though it were intended to explain (or perhaps to correct) the myth of the Phaedrus in the light of Plato’s “dream” in the Timaeus. The forms of the Timaeus are not to be found “somewhere” (cf. 52b4 and 5: pou) for the simple reason that they are not such as to be extended in space. The same is true (so the words of the Physics would lead us to believe) of the forms of the Phaedrus, which are not “outside the heavens” in any literal sense. Why not suppose that the same is true of Aristotle’s own divine beings in the De Caelo? When Aristotle writes of divine beings “outside the heavens”, he does no more than echo the words of the Phaedrus, but with the proviso made explicit in the Physics. The forms are not “somewhere” and are not therefore, in any literal sense, “outside the heavens”.123

A crucial distinction The comparison is possible, only if we are willing to set aside a crucial distinction. Plato’s forms are not alive; it can hardly be said of the forms

123 I am still writing argumenti causa. I have already remarked that I find little merit in King’s “metaphorical” interpretation of the language of the De Caelo (§ IV above sub finem). As will be seen in what follows, I find a “mythical” interpretation (even if the “myth” is corrected by the proviso made explicit in the Physics) no more appealing. – The main exponent of a “mythical” (or semi-mythical) interpretation of Aristotle’s words in the De Caelo is Solmsen, but his treatment of the question is so elliptical and allusive that I hesitate even to attempt a summary. (1) Solm- sen originally stated, in no uncertain terms (1960, p. 169 (cf. n. 112 above)), that “Outside the Cosmos, Plato and Aristotle agree, there is nothing, simply nothing”. (2) When he returns to the subject, fifteen years later, he nonetheless locates the divine beings of the De Caelo “in the area outside the heavens” (1976, p. 29), since this was precisely the area no longer occupied by the forms of the Phaedrus (p. 30): “Since the entities previously associated with this realm (sc. the area outside the heavens) were for him (i.e. Aristotle) non-existent, his own supreme realities might as well succeed to the honor.” (3) The transposition, Solmsen tells us (p. 31), has been made “philosophically safe”, because, although “outside the Heavens” (Solm- sen’s use of the capital varies), the divine beings of the De Caelo, unlike the forms of the Phaedrus, are no longer “in place”. (4) Even so (cf. p. 31), Aristotle’s divine beings are not the same as the forms described in the Physics, since, although not “in place”, they are “outside the heavens”, whereas the forms alluded to in the Physics are not “outside the heavens”. – Despite these intricacies, Solmsen nowhere alludes to what I see as the major difference between Aristotle’s divine beings and Plato’s forms, set out below (a difference which makes any comparison between Aristotle’s gods and the forms, whether of the Phaedrus or the Timaeus, tenuous in the extreme). 94 Denis O’Brien that, “dispensed from all alteration and immune to change, they continue in possession of the best life and the most self-sufficient for all eternity”.124 It is true that later philosophers (and notably Plotinus) will not shrink from claiming that beings that are fully living exist in a world that is exempt from both space and time. But does it follow that Aristotle, before his discovery of the existence of an unmoved mover, took such a step? If we adopt the perspective, not so much of the philosopher as of the historian of philosophy, the answer to that question is far from being a foregone conclusion. Plato, in the Timaeus, has established a clear distinction between “being” and “being somewhere”, but he has done so only for beings (the forms) that are not endowed with life. It does not at all follow that the same distinction will have been immediately applicable to beings that do have life, nor therefore that the distinction implied by Plato’s “dream” can be applied to the beings of the De Caelo who “continue in possession of the best life and the most self-sufficient for all eternity”.

Plato’s forms and Aristotle’s supracelestial beings It does not at all follow therefore that, for an early reader of the Timaeus, beings who “continue in possession of the best life and the most self- sufficient for all eternity” can be said to exist, as do the forms for Plato, “neither on earth nor anywhere in the heavens”, and that they can therefore be said to exist, as do Plato’s forms, not “in a particular place” and not “taking up a definite space”. The question, “Where are such beings to go?”, is not therefore, his- torically, the foolish question that it may perhaps seem at first to be. Plato’s Timaeus does provide a model for beings that “are” but are not “somewhere”, but it is a model that, in the Timaeus, is applied to beings which, however “real”, are not said to be alive. Since the supracelestial beings of Aristotle’s De Caelo are specifically said to have “life”, it does not at all follow that the precedent of Plato’s forms can be applied to such beings, and that the question of their location therefore simply does not arise.125 124 De Caelo I.9 279a17-22 (quoted § II above). 125 Bis repetita placent. The divine beings of De Caelo I.9, as also the forms of the Timaeus, are not “in place” (De Caelo I.9 279a18: oÖt> ân tìpú, cf. Ti. 52b4: ên tini tìpú). In the Timaeus, that denial is tied to a denial that the forms are “anywhere in the heavens” (52b5: m te pou kat> oÎranìn), a denial which, if what Aristotle writes in Physics III is true, includes the denial that they are “outside the heavens” (III.4 203a8-9: êxw mèn [sc. toÜ oÎranoÜ]), which is exactly what is asserted of Aristotle’s divine beings in the De Caelo (cf. 279a16: êxw dà toÜ oÎranoÜ). Plato’s forms (not said to be alive) and Aristotle’s gods (“in possession of the best life and the most self-sufficient for all eternity”) are not therefore, in the same sense, “non spatial”. – In claiming that Plato’s forms are “not said to be alive”, I leave aside the tricky question of the conclusion to be drawn from the Life Beyond the Stars 95

The model of the world-soul “outside” the cosmos However, the Timaeus provides another, and a different, model for beings that are not part of the cosmos, namely the extension of world-soul beyond the outermost limits of the visible world. It is that model, I venture to suggest, that Aristotle has adopted, and adapted, when he writes of beings who, “dispensed from all alteration and immune to change, continue in possession of the best life and the most self-sufficient for all eternity”, and who therefore find their home “outside” the heavens, “above and beyond the outermost movement”. Admittedly, the model will have to have been not only adapted, but heavily adapted, since, for all his indebtedness to Plato, Aristotle has no world-soul. A remarkable omission when one reflects that it is the presence of a world-soul, together with the activity of the demiurge, that gives point and purpose to the whole of Plato’s cosmology, in the Timaeus. At the same time, the omission is inevitable, given Aristotle’s theory of natural movement and of the stratification of the elements as resulting, not from soul, but from physis. Aristotle’s definition of soul as the principle of a physical and organic body (cf. De Anima II.1 412a27-b6) is incompatible with – is virtually designed to exclude – Plato’s belief in the existence of a demiurge and a world-soul. But Aristotle’s throwing over the notion of a world-soul does not entail his disbelief in the existence of divine beings, beings who lead a life untrammelled by time or body or movement – but beings who, for all the loose talk of “transcendence” by Jaeger and others, are not therefore necessarily to be thought of, like Plato’s forms, as not existing “somewhere”. It is, I would suggest therefore, in that (to us) strange, half-way world, that the passage from De Caelo I.9 finds its place. Aristotle’s divine beings are not subject to time or movement, they have no body and they have no “place”, and they are therefore not to be found within the visible universe. But that does not mean that, like Plato’s forms, they have no location at all, for Aristotle’s divine beings are living, whereas Plato’s forms are not. They are therefore to be found “outside the heavens”, “above and beyond the outermost movement”.

Aristotle’s debt to Empedocles? It is at that point, or so I would venture to suggest, that we see the paradox of Empedocles’ inﬂuence on Aristotle. As is clear from his criticism of Empedocles in the De Anima, Aristotle has no time for what he sees

conjunction of movement, life and thought with “what is fully real”, envisaged at one point in the Sophist (248e6-249a3). The discussion, in the lines immediately following (249a4-b1), bears on the soul, not on forms. 96 Denis O’Brien as the ambiguity of Empedocles’ conception of Love or the “soul”.126 Indeed, the very model that Aristotle has taken from the Timaeus, for the “localisation” of his divine beings, is a model that in its original context, in the Timaeus, had been intended as a criticism and a refutation of Empedocles. Despite the disagreement, the Empedoclean link is nonetheless not entirely fortuitous. Empedocles’ philosophy is innocent of any notion of a being which is not extended in space. There are no “forms” in Empedo- cles’ world (no “forms” of the Platonic kind), nor do Empedocles’ divine powers, Love and Strife, have their being in a world free from the confines of space and time. It is indeed because the good god of Love is extended throughout the Sphere that in the Timaeus she reappears, transmuted, as a world-soul, stretched throughout the cosmos from centre to circumference (cf. Ti. 34b3-6, 36d7-e5) and ensuring, by her presence, that the whole is “joined in friendship, sufficient unto itself” (34b7-8: fÐlon ÉkanÀc aÎtän aÍtÄ). And it is because Plato has deliberately cast Empedocles’ god of Love as a foreshadowing of his own world-soul that he is led to correct the borrowing by ensuring that his own stand-in for the god of Love has no direct rival to her power and is therefore extended beyond the outermost boundary of the heavens, so occupying the terrain of her (now non-existent) adversary. Aristotle, in his criticism of Empedocles in the De Anima and elsewhere, persistently opposes that whole world of unconscious materialism to his own. Empedocles’ world – and the world of the presocratic philosophers in general – is not one that he will recognise as his own, even though he will, on occasion, acknowledge the first tentative steps that were taken by earlier thinkers towards the recognition of a moving cause, or even towards the recognition of “form” as a principle determining the proportion of elements in sensible particulars.127 But, as so often, we are the victims of those we criticise. When he writes of beings in the De Caelo who lead a life free from time and place and movement, Aristotle has, no doubt all unconsciously, drawn on the world of implicit materialism that Plato had put before him in his description of the world-soul as extending and existing beyond the cosmos.

126 Aristotle, De Anima I.4 407b27-408a23. See § I above. 127 For Aristotle’s acknowledgement of the steps taken by earlier thinkers towards the recognition of a moving cause, see Metaph. I.3 984a16-b18. (On the priority, chronological and philosophical, accorded here to Anaxagoras, see O’Brien (1968, pp. 97- 106).) For Aristotle’s grudging recognition of Empedocles’ approximation to a concept of “form”, see Metaph. I.10 993a15-24, and the implicit denial, a few pages earlier, I.7 988a34-b5. There is a passing allusion in De Anima I.5 410a1-3 (see n. 12 above). Life Beyond the Stars 97

The last flickerings of Empedocles’ daimonology “Influence” is no doubt too simple a term to describe such a relationship. Empedocles’ conception of Love, as constituting at once a cosmic principle and individual souls or daimones, is easily and obviously comparable to Plato’s conception of soul, present at once as a world-soul and (in an inferior form) as individual souls.128 When Aristotle, in his criticism of Empedocles in the De Anima, casts Love in the role of “soul”, and when he asks whether Love, whether the soul, is present in the “parts” of living beings, his remarks are most simply read in the context of that comparison.129 It is a context wholly alien to Aristotle’s own way of thinking. A world-soul, the world-soul of Plato’s Timaeus and its precursor in Empe- docles’ god of Love, finds no parallel in Aristotle’s distinction between the physis of the elements and the souls of organic bodies. But the contours of Aristotle’s universe may not always have been so clearly drawn. For how else are we to explain the tantalising glimpse of divine beings in De Caelo I.9? These are beings fully endowed with life – they lead “the best life and the most self-sufficient for all eternity” – who nonetheless have no place in the visible cosmos, but who continue to live beyond the outermost boundary of the heavens, the very position that Plato’s world-soul had occupied when it was no longer coterminous with the body of the world (and therefore no longer stricto sensu the soul of the world), ensuring nonetheless by her presence, beyond the outermost boundary of the heavens, Plato’s total disavowal of a world subjected to equal and opposite powers of good and evil – the world of Empedocles. So it is that the source of Empedocles’ daimonology, the cosmic god of Love, does perhaps find, in the divine beings living beyond the outermost circumference of the heavens in the De Caelo, the last flickerings of a world-soul that has otherwise been ousted by a combination of physis, of soul that is no longer a world-soul and of the unmoved mover, a cosmic force, but no longer a soul.

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Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R., 1966, Polarity and analogy, Two types of argumentation in early Greek thought, Cambridge: University Press. Mansion, Augustinus, 1923, “Etude´ critique sur le texte de la Physique d’Aristote (l, I-IV)”, Revue de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes, annéeet tome 47, pp. 5-41. Martin, Alain / Primavesi, Oliver, 1999, L’Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. gr. Inv. 1665-1666 ), Introduction, éditionet commentaire, with an English summary, Strasbourg: BibliothèqueNationale et Universitaire; Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. Moraux, Paul (ed.), 1965, Aristote ‘Du ciel’, Texte établiet traduit par P. M., dans la Collection des Universitésde France publiéesous le patronage de l’Association Guillaume Budé, Paris: Les Belles Let- tres. Morison, Benjamin, 2002, On location, Aristotle’s concept of place, in the series Oxford Aristotle studies, Oxford: Clarendon Press. O’Brien, Denis, 1968, “The relation of Anaxagoras and Empedocles”, Journal of hellenic studies 88, pp. 93-113. —, 1969, Empedocles’ cosmic cycle, A reconstruction from the fragments and secondary sources, in the series Cambridge classical studies, Cambridge: University Press. —, 1985, “Temps et éternitédans la philosophie grecque”, in Mythes et représentationsdu temps, ‘recueil préparépar Dorian Tiffeneau’, in the series Phénoménologie et herméneutique, ‘dirigéepar Paul Ricœur et Dorian Tiffeneau’, Paris: Editions´ du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, pp. 59-85. —, 1987, Etudes´ sur Parménide, ‘sous la direction de Pierre Aubenque’, Tome i, Le poèmede Parménide,Texte, traduction, essai critique, in the series Bibliothèqued’histoire de la philosophie, Paris: Vrin. —, 1989, “Heraclitus on the unity of opposites”, in Konstantin J. Bou- douris (ed.), Ionian philosophy, in the series Studies in Greek philosophy, Athens: International Association for Greek Philosophy, pp. 298-303. —, 1990, “Héracliteet l’unitédes opposés”, Revue de métaphysiqueet de morale 95, pp. 147-171. —, 1991, “Comment écrirel’histoire de la philosophie? Héracliteet Em- pédoclesur l’un et le multiple”, Rue Descartes [Cahiers du Collège international de philosophie] 1-2, pp. 121-138. —, 1995, “Empedocles revisited”, Ancient philosophy 15, pp. 403-470. —, 1997, “L’Empédocle de Platon”, Revue des études grecques 110, pp. 381-398. —, 1999, “Plato and Empedocles on evil”, in John J. Cleary (ed.), Tra- ditions of Platonism, Essays in honour of John Dillon, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 3-27. Life Beyond the Stars 101

—, 2001, “Empedocles: the wandering daimon and the two poems”, Ae- vum antiquum n.s. 1, pp. 79-179. —, 2003, “Space and movement: two anomalies in the text of the Timaeus”, in Carlo Natali and Stefano Maso (eds), Plato physicus, Cosmologia e antropologia nel ‘Timeo’, in the series Supplementi di Lexis 17, Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, pp. 121-148. —, 2005, “Le Parménidehistorique et le Parménide de Platon”, in Aleˇs Havl´ıˇcekand Filip Karf´ık(eds), Plato’s ‘Parmenides’, Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, Prague: OIKOUMENH, pp. 234-256. Pellegrin, Pierre, 2003, “Aristote de Stagire, La Physique”, in Richard Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, Supplément, Paris: CNRS éditions,pp. 265-271. Pépin,Jean, 1964, “L’interprétationdu De philosophia d’Aristote d’après quelques travaux récents”, Revue des étudesgrecques 77, pp. 445- 488. —, 1971, Idéesgrecques sur l’homme et sur Dieu, in the series Collec- tion d’étudesanciennes, publiéesous le patronage de l’Association Guillaume Budé, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Peters, Francis E., 1968, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian tradition in Islam, in the series New York University, Studies in Near Eastern civilization 1, New York: New York University Press; Lon- don: University of London Press. Pollet, Gilbert, see Sleeman, John H. / Pollet, Gilbert, 1980. Primavesi, Oliver, see Martin, Alain / Primavesi, Oliver, 1999. Ross, William D. (ed.), 1936, >Aristotèlouc Fusik krìasic, Aristotle’s ‘Physics’, A revised text with introduction and commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press (‘from corrected sheets of the first edition’, 1955). — (ed.), 1961, Aristotle ‘De anima’, Edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rowe, Christopher J., 1993, Plato ‘Phaedo’, in the series Cambridge Greek and Latin classics, Cambridge: University Press. Schenkl, Henricus (ed.), 1900, Themistii in Aristotelis Physica paraphra- sis, in the series Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, edita consilio et auctoritate Academiae Literarum Regiae Borussicae, vol. v pars 2, Berolini: Typis et impensis G. Reimeri. Sider, David, 1984, “Empedocles B 96 (462 Bollack) and the poetry of ad- hesion”, Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca classica Batava, series iv, vol. 37, pp. 14-24. Sleeman, John H. / Pollet, Gilbert, 1980, Lexicon plotinianum, in the series Ancient and medieval philosophy, De Wulf-Mansion Centre, series 1, no 2, Leiden: E. J. Brill; Leuven: University Press. 102 Denis O’Brien

Smith, John A., 1931, Translation of the De anima in William D. Ross (ed.), The works of Aristotle translated into English under the editorship of W. D. R., vol. iii, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Solmsen, Friedrich, 1960, Aristotle’s system of the physical world, A comparison with his predecessors, in the series Cornell studies in classical philology 33, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. —, 1976, “‘Beyond the heavens”’, Museum helveticum 33, pp. 24-32. Thillet, Pierre, 2005, Aristote ‘De l’âme’,traduit du grec par P. T., édition établie,présentéeet annotéepar P. T., in the series Collection, Folio essais, [Paris]: Gallimard. Tricot, Jules, 1949, Aristote, Traité‘Du ciel’ suivi du traité pseudo- Aristotélicien‘Du monde’, Traduction et notes par J. T., in the series Bibliothèquedes textes philosophiques, Paris: Vrin. Untersteiner, Mario, 1963, Aristotele, ‘Della filosofia’, Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento esegetico di M. U., in the series Temi e testi 10, Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Vitelli, Hieronymus (ed.), 1888, Ioannis Philoponi in Aristotelis Physico- rum libros quinque posteriores commentaria, in the series Commen- taria in Aristotelem graeca, edita consilio et auctoritate Academiae Literarum Regiae Borussicae, vol. xvii, Berolini: Typis et impensis G. Reimeri. Whittaker, John (ed.), 1990, Alcinoos, Enseignement des doctrines de Pla- ton, Introduction, texte établiet commentépar J. W. et traduit par Pierre Louis, in the series Collection des Universitésde France, publiéesous le patronage de l’Association Guillaume Budé, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. I have also quoted two early editions of Aristotle’s works: >Aristotèlouc panta, Aristotelis summi semper philosophi [. . . ] opera quaecumque hactenus extiterunt omnia [. . . ] per Des[iderium] Eras[mum] Roterodamum [i.e. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam], Basileae, per Io[an- nem] Beb[elium] [i.e. Johann Bebel] et Mich[aelem] Ising[rinium] [i.e. Mi- chael Isengrin], 2 tomi, 1550. I have consulted the copies held in the Bib- liothèqueNationale, Paris (class-mark R 632), and in the library of the Sorbonne (class-mark L.G. f 12). Aristotelis [. . . ] omnia quae extant opera [. . . ], 11 tomi. Tomus iv, Venetiis, apud Cominum de Tridino [i.e. Comin da Trino], Montis Ferrati, 1560. I have consulted the copy held in the BibliothèqueNationale, Paris (class- mark R 1622). Thomas Buchheim Plato’s phaulon skemma: On the Multifariousness of the Human Soul∗

There does not seem to be one definite idea of the soul in Plato’s philosophy. For an idea would have to be always one and the same, whereas the soul appears to be a Proteus: It is sometimes the one, and sometimes the other; sometimes many in quarrelsome conflict, and then again a harmonious unity out of many. The soul changes its appearances and constitutions.1 That is why it is a “thorny investigation” (phaulon skemma) as Plato says in the Republic (435c) to discover “whether the soul has the same three ideas [as a polis] or not.” This paper is devoted to this “thorny investigation”, and follows Plato’s arguments and explains them as far as possible. I have not been able to find the expression “the idea of the soul” or “the eidos of the soul” in Plato’s texts2 used without any explicit reservations.3 Plato does, however, frequently distinguish several eidê in the soul, as I have just said, and he also asks if they are the same as the eidê in the state or complete community. There are also formulations of Plato’s, which unify all the different aspects or capacities of the soul “in only one idea”.4 But it is precisely such expressions that show that, for Plato, it is not at all self-evident to see the soul in unity with itself; and this is surely the least that one has to be able to claim about a genuine idea. ∗ Many thanks to R.A.H. King for translating this paper, and for some comments on an earlier draft. 1 Cf. Phdr. 246b: pasa psychê. . . allot’ en allois eidesi gignomenê. 2 What we do find is “the idea of life”, (Phd. 106d). But this passage tells us that we may not identify soul (psychê) with life (zôê), because life is only a certain quality or disposition which is provided by having a soul (cf. ibid. 105d). On the question whether or not the soul is a form in the Phaedo cf. Schiller (1967, pp. 50-58). 3 Such as in Phdr. 246a: instead of finally explaining “the idea of that thing [sc. Soul]” what it is really like, Socrates tells us just another myth as a “simile” of it (cf. below fn. 28). See the excellent interpretation of the whole passage, and esp. the meaning of the term “idea of the soul” by Griswold (1986, pp. 88-89). 4 Ti. 35a; Tht. 184d; cf. sumphuton dunamis, Phdr. 246a. 104 Thomas Buchheim

Furthermore, it is not right to equate the question about the different eidê that a soul may have with the question about the different parts of the soul, as the tradition of interpreting Plato usually does. For parts are usually taken to be elements, of the same kind and the same quality, that can exist independently of one another and out of which the whole in question is constituted. But in the case of ideas, the conditions of having a shared character and of being independent from one another are not fulfilled, and hence there is no composition5 of a divisible whole out of them, for example, the definition of a circle appears to include the ideas of a central point and the circumference, which is equidistant from it, without the circle being composed of these “parts”. For the circumference is not a circumference without the central point, and the central point is not a central point without the circumference. But the circle cannot exist without these various aspects, although Plato would certainly call it monoeides, that is to say, a single idea, which can be analysed through dialectic into several features or factors, and thus defined. To return to the thorny investigation in the Republic, whether the soul includes the same three ideas as the polis or not: Plato distinguishes “a longer route” to answering this question from “a shorter one, that is at present being pursued” (435c-d), which unfortunately cannot lead to a precise (akribôs) result, as he goes on to say. Obviously, we would prefer the longer route, in order to decide the question clearly.6 Fortunately, Plato appears to return to the problem, and even to remind us expressly of the prospect of a longer route to this insight, when, later in the Republic, he talks about his most important doctrine, “the idea of the good”: We said that there is a longer way to gain the finest insight, so that it becomes obvious to whoever takes it; however, it was [only] possible to add on the demonstrations that followed what had been said before. (504b1-4) The real “standard” (metron, 504c1,3) by which this question can be decided, he continues, had not then come into view, and is connected with the most important topic of Platonic philosophy, which is only now being discussed: So a Guardian should take the longer way. (504c9-d1) Since the curious reader certainly wants to become acquainted with this route – even if he is not meant to become a Guardian – he hopes that the question about the human soul will be unambiguously decided and so become clear to him. But Plato would not be Plato if he were to make 5 Cf. Phd. 78c-d: a uniform ousia is also non-composite (axuntheton). 6 Most of the more detailed discussions of the tripartition of the soul in the Republic fail to take into account that the first route is only one of two routes to the same “thorny” investigation of the soul; they only consider the first one (e.g. Graeser (1992, pp. 151ff.)). Plato’s phaulon skemma 105 his most important doctrine accessible for someone who merely opens a book to pick it up – without himself taking the longer route and so being suited to be a Guardian. All we get are similes and vague curricula for philosopher kings, which do not really communicate the doctrine; they merely offer a distant view of it. So it is fitting that at the end of the massive Republic, Plato, still full of doubt, announces that the question about the soul – whether it is uniform (monoeidês) or multifarious (polyeidês) – still remains unclear (611b-612a, esp. a3-4).7 Here Plato himself compares the soul with a kind of Proteus, more exactly with the sea deity Glaucus, who has become so encrusted with shells, seaweed and stones through his life in the sea that one cannot see what really belongs to him and what does not. Similarly, the soul has plunged into the sea of corporality and has become so encrusted with corporeal concerns, that one cannot recognise its “original nature” (611d2) in this state. But the attempt to cast a little more light onto the “longer route” does not imply that we think we are actually taking the longer route, merely that it seems possible to extract an implicit message which in some way goes beyond what Plato appears to say explicitly. First, we have to reconstruct briefly which method is employed on the shorter route that Plato actually uses. Secondly, the general characteristics of the longer route have to be contrasted with those of the shorter one, and have to be applied to the special case of the soul’s structure. Finally, our conclusions will be supported by some references to other dialogues.

The “shorter” route

The shorter route, which the reader takes to begin with, consists in providing the apparently necessary conditions for a clearly marked cognitive aim; in this way, the plausibility and coherence of the approach can be appreciated. In the present case, the aim is the deﬁnition of justice, prudence, wisdom and courage as possible qualities of the human soul, once they have been presented and understood as possible qualities of a polis. In the case of the polis, these virtues are based on the existence of three “natures” in it, and their relations to one another, namely the artisans, auxiliaries and the philosophical leaders of the community, as it were the reason of the state.

7 In the Phd. 78d-79d the soul is not said to be uniform, as is sometimes thought. Rather, Plato explains that the soul is that one of the two components of humans (body and soul) which is more or most similar to the uniform ousia of the ideas. See Graeser (1992, p. 58). 106 Thomas Buchheim

So the question that Plato asks, is whether the soul itself also contains a manifold of different “ideas” or “natures”, if the virtues are in the soul and not in the state. In a series of steps, he shows that it really does seem to be the case. Firstly, the abilities or capacities which are connected with these virtues can only exist in the city if they are exercised by individuals, and hence actually possessed by individual humans. Because humans desire things, they have to earn their living; because humans spur themselves and others on to activity and arm themselves with courage the polis can be secured against internal and external disturbances; and because humans pursue the sciences, there is wisdom and rational guidance in the state. If, then, individuals exercise such capacities, then: do we learn with the one thing in us, goad ourselves with another and desire with a third [. . . ] or else do each of them with the whole soul, when we are moved to act? This is difficult to decide with a decent argument. (436a9-b3) Hence in the second step Plato works with an argument that he had already used in a variety of ways both in the Republic and in other dialogues, namely an argument using a principle of contradiction: One thing cannot, in the same respect and at the same time, undergo or perform contraries. If, then, one could show that we act in a contrary fashion in the psychic activities named here, then it is clear that the activities – learning, spurring oneself on, desire – can only be exercised with different things in us, and not with one and the same thing. The third step in the argument guarantees that every psychic capacity only can perform that towards which it is directed. Being thirsty is a desire for drink, not for food or specially for a hot drink. An additional modification of the thing desired requires an additional modification of the desiring capacity; and a wholly different modification, a wholly different desire. Hence it is clear that one and the same capacity can never be contrary to itself, for example by simultaneously desiring and avoiding one and the same thing. For avoiding something is not merely the desire for something else, but the desire for a contrary. If the individual capacities in themselves never lead to contraries, then, when we find contrary tendencies with a view to one and the same thing, there are several psychic elements or capacities involved. The fourth step in the argument consists in pointing to such situations: For example, we often find ourselves drawn to the object of desire but also restrained by the thought of the consequences.8 But the same capacity in the soul cannot cause both; hence desire and rational foresight are two different capacities and corresponding eidê in the soul. Similarly, when we are angry about

8 See Plato’s example, R. 439c. Plato’s phaulon skemma 107 our own irresistible desires and as it were fly into a rage about them: This happens neither in unison with desire nor is it an expression of reason, since when we give in to desire with great pleasure, we are still indignant and annoyed about it.9 Hence such a temperamental, blazing element in us is identical neither with desire nor with reason in our soul:10 it is something else. It is notoriously difficult to convey accurately the meaning of the Pla- tonic expressions thymoeides or thymoumenon. It is best to be guided by the examples that Plato himself gives to explain the phenomenon. The first example (439e) is of someone with necrophily, who gives in to his desire and at the same time disassociates himself from it and is indignant about it: so the thymoeides is a kind of vociferous partisanship, which openly disagrees with one’s own overwhelming inclinations; the second example (440b), an alliance with rational obligation against some unnamed desires, is also a form of goad in the interest of rationality against irrationality.11 So it is a kind of spur or stimulus for reason, which makes us flare up, when we do or suffer something wrong in our own judgement. In those cases when we think we are acting rightly it provides the zeal and energy to pursue the project to the end.12 Depending on the context, the best German translations seem to me to be Ansporn (spur, stimulus, goad) or Empörung (indignation): neither is used of something which we take to be unreasonable or for anything that happens automatically, like pleasure in following one’s own inclinations. Rather they mean something exact- ing, something we think reasonable, which requires that we disentangle ourselves from our momentary state.13 It is worthwhile emphasising that Plato’s argument, in the four stages we have described, does not merely depend on the fact that different functions are performed by the soul, like desire and thought, and that it therefore has to have different capacities. Instead, the soul displays contradictory tendencies, on the basis of those capacities relating to the one thing. Hence the soul becomes involved in a real conflict with itself.14 The

9 Again, Plato’s own example 439e. 10 Characterising the “thymos” as blazing and “indignant”, as I do in the main text, is parallel to a text in the Laws 863b: “the thymos, whether it is a state or part of the soul’s nature, grown into the soul like a quarrelsome possession that is hard to master, and that causes much confusion with its irrational violence”; but it is insufficient in the context of the Republic where Plato is concerned to emphasise the covert connection between reason and thymoeides. 11 See R. 440c-d, and the summary of of the thymoeides as “that part which, in the conflict of the soul, takes up arms for reason” (440e). 12 See R. 440d êdiapraxetai êteleutêsê. 13 Classic uses of the term suggest an interpretation along these lines, e.g. Parmenides DK B 1.1, Heraclitus DK B 85. 14 So too the text mentioned above from the Laws (863b-864b), where Plato says in talking about thymos, hêdonê and agnoia: “Each of them forces everyone to their 108 Thomas Buchheim premise for the argument was, however, that one and the same thing can never in the same respect have simultaneously contradictory predicates. So, in such a situation, it cannot be one factor in the soul that grounds or has the different tendencies. It would not be a problem for one and the same thing to have different capacities or fulfil contradictory functions – e.g. a carpenter’s hammer has the capacity to be used to hammer nails into wood or to extract them. The difficulty lies in the fact that the contradiction has to be real, in the one thing and caused by the one thing. So it is only the tendencies derived from the functions, and not the functions themselves, which make the three eidê of the soul necessarily different. This point has been missed in the literature.15 To conclude this section, let us sum up the shorter route: it is clear that in at least two places Plato pursues a hypothetical method: we try to find the conditions necessary for a given description or characterisation, and take the latter to be true on the basis of these conditions. The same capacities and their relations to one another are relevant for the same virtues of the soul, as they are for the virtues of the polis. And the contrary tendencies along with the corresponding activities assume the difference of the grounds of each activity. The “method pursued at present”, at least in this part of the Republic, is that discovered by Socrates, and described in the Phaedo as typically Socratic: drawing conclusions from hypotheses16 that are assumed to be true. Both the conditions that are discovered are the “hypotheses” i.e. assumptions behind a claim we wish to make; but also the unexamined starting points are hypotheses for further conclusions which can be drawn from them. Looking back at the shorter route, when he is turning to the longer one, Plato characterises the earlier method as one in which “it is possible to attach conclusions on to what has already been said” (504b3- 4).

will, although every one of us is at the same time drawn in the opposite direction” (863e). 15 An exception is the very intricate and scrupulous discussion of the passage by Woods (1987, pp. 23-48); the problem with Woods’ interpretation lies in his neg- lecting the fact that according to Plato there are two different routes to answering one and the same question; and these routes have significantly different results. 16 “Instead, it seemed to me that I had to take refuge in the logoi and contemplate the truth of things in them . . . . So I directed my steps thither, and by assuming (hypothemenos) that logos which I judge to be strongest, I take that to be true which agrees with the logos, whether with reference to the cause or to something else; whatever does not agree with it, I take to be not true” (99e-100a). See also Plato’s Crito 46b. Plato’s phaulon skemma 109 The “longer” route

Now let us try to present at least some of the features of “the longer route”, which alone, according to Plato, gives us certain and precise insights into the elements of the soul and their number. Before embarking on this step, I want to emphasise that this route is incomplete in the text as we have it, insofar as Plato nowhere says that and how the insight aimed at is arrived at by this route. Plato’s train of thought begins from the consideration that for a prospective Guardian a vague, that is, a not entirely clear and precise (akribês), understanding of this question is entirely unacceptable. For if he did not grasp the facts of the matter, then the Guardian of the polis could not possess a standard for all the measures that he has to undertake for the arrangement of the community (cf. R. 504b-d). Naturally, the structure of the human soul is the standard meant here, according to which the relations in a community are designed and preserved by the Guardians. So the prospective Guardian should take the longer route and he must try no less hard at learning than at sport; otherwise he will never reach the end of that field of study which is particularly appropriate for him. – Are these things not just the most important ones but also more important than justice and [the other virtues] we discussed? (504c9-d5) Namely, as Socrates says a little later, the idea of the good (505a2), and our knowledge of it. Two things are clear at the outset: Firstly, the person who takes the longer route is only described in terms of knowledge and learning, i.e. just one of the three kinds of human activity, whose relations allow one to define justice and prudence in the city and the individual. So if one wished to follow the oversimplified logic of the shorter route, which is all too easy to misunderstand – that a particular function requires a separate capacity of the soul – then only one capacity and idea in the soul would exercise this activity. Secondly, the formulation in the sentence quoted makes it quite certain that the other two functions of the soul – the epithumêtikon and the thumoeidês – are involved in this cognitive activity – and have to be. For the aim is at a distance, and is to begin with merely the object of a desire; at the same time, one has to goad oneself into action unremittingly, to track down the object of this desire. Following the route to the highest kind of knowledge is all the way along an affair for all three psychic eidê.17

17 Cf. also R. 580d-581d where Plato describes how the whole soul of a human sub- ordinates itself to one of the three eidê and fulfils all three functions; correspond- ingly, different types of human can be classified according to the dominant eidos as philosophoi, philonikoi and philokerdai. 110 Thomas Buchheim

Just as Plato thought he could conclude from the conflict within the soul with respect to a single object that the soul has to include different aspects, one could here conclude from their harmony with respect to a single object that all different aspects arise from a single source in our soul. In reality, however, both conclusions are much too weak, and have no satisfactory basis. There can be many other causes for one person having different attitudes to the one thing; and also many causes for the concentration of one’s powers towards one single object. This quotation also makes clear that the effort to learn about the good is meant to surpass and ground the knowledge of justice that has already been acquired. It is not just a matter of questions like: when is a state or a person just? Rather the question is: when is something or someone good? And they are good not merely because they are just – e.g. if the just person were ill, and if there were no medicine to make him healthy again; or if he were just, but used his justice inappropriately on trivialities. In both cases the just man would not be good in every respect. The good is thus more comprehensive than the just, or anything else which promises an advantage. For justice, like everything else, is only able to develop its value within and in connection with a good organisation and balance with many other factors. For this reason Plato defines the good provisionally as follows: You have often been told that the most important thing to learn is the idea of the good, since through it the just and everything else which one needs besides it becomes useful and advantageous. (505a2-4) The good produces utility of the second order, in such a way that, to any thing like the just, an organising framework has to be added, within which, and relative to which, the thing becomes useful. Neither the good in itself, taken on its own, is really useful for anyone nor any thing without such an organising framework, in which it is embedded. It develops, in all its advantageous variants, only through suitable composition and the co- ordination of several things in a fruitful association. In the Gorgias we have the terse formulation: Being good can be attributed to any entity, if a certain proper order (kosmos oikeios) is realised in it. (506e2-4) This order orders the thing itself and arranges it at the same time within an encompassing context – which for just this reason is called cosmos, or a taxis18 as Plato says in the same text.19 Through this kind of development and repetition of the same order in itself, the good exists in the first place.20

18 E.g. Grg. 506d. 19 Grg. 508a. 20 According to Plato’s thesis in his last work, the Laws, the whole cosmos is completely, and with reference to all its parts, organised in such a way that “the best for each part is the best for the whole and for each part, through the coming to be Plato’s phaulon skemma 111

But the nature of the good is not our subject now. It only had to be sketched here in order to make clear to what extent the use of everything good is possible only through arrangement and a greater or lesser amount of unification in a properly ordered system. If the good is to be actually useful, then a context, a larger or smaller world, as it were, must be created in which one thing is useful for another. The good itself never belongs to such a context, but it assembles the world as its cause or principle. This is confirmed by the similes of the good that Plato continues with: Sight and every other sense organ develops its specific usefulness only in relation to certain given objects, which the organ itself cannot produce. In the case of sight, the connecting element, which organises the context of seeing and being seen, light, can also be seen, so that in this special case, the principle or first cause is recognisable in a way in the context which it organises, although, as the cause, it really is outside the context. The sun, because its light is experienced as the condition of using sight, is seen as the cause of seeing on the part of the thing which is most similar to it, namely on the part of the eye, the second cause of seeing.21 Similar mediating contexts provide the line in the second image with its orientation towards the good as the principle of the whole line. For we see both pictures and the things they portray. So we see both the difference and the relation between picture and thing. This fact enables us to repeat the relation in a particular way and, as Plato says, “use” things in the visible region “as pictures” (510b4-5) of the invisible region that is only to be grasped by thought. Only through the manifold interactions and relations between the several different capacities of the soul and their objects is the good able to put us on its tracks. That is to say, we are led to a path of cognition which can finally lead to the good itself as the megiston mathêma. To sum up the decisive point of this complicated train of thought: it is not a blind stroke of fortune or misfortune that we first have perception and then knowledge; and first desire perceptible things before we want clearer knowledge and strive for higher aims. Rather, it is only thus that we can be directed and orientated, that is, placed within an order that leads us to something which, in itself, without a context caused and organised by it, would not be knowable at all. The several capacities of our soul and their dependence on a sensible, corporeal world are a necessary arrangement, so that the longer route, which leads to knowledge of the good, exists in the first place and can be followed. On the one hand, the indispensable advantage of such a composition of our soul out of several eidê related to one another consists in the possibility that we can be inte-

shared by all” (903d). 21 See R. 508a11-b10. 112 Thomas Buchheim grated in the external organisation of things in relation to their principle – the idea of the good; that way, we can be led to that principle. On the other hand, the unavoidable disadvantage is that to begin with, weighed down by perception and bodily desires “as though by lead weights”, as Plato expresses it once (R. 519a8-b1), we can all too easily be led in the wrong direction. An atomic soul would be neutral towards the orientation of the whole; only a composite soul can orientate itself, and hence also, unfortunately, look the wrong way. It is interesting and significant that after the three similes, which illustrate the idea of the good and its importance as the organising principle for all things, Plato calls precisely this effect of conversion or turning around (periagôgê) of the whole human soul the significant event during the intellectual education of the future guardians; that is to say, this is the longer route towards an answer to our question: The present argument implies that this capacity and organ for knowledge, present in the soul of each individual, behaves as if the eye were not able to turn towards brightness from the darkness except with the whole body: thus this capacity must be turned around with the whole soul from becoming until it becomes capable of standing and looking towards being and the brightest aspect of being. We call this the good. (518c4-d1) I do not think that one could say any more clearly that the shorter route, which suggested that just one of the different elements of the soul exercises knowledge, and not the whole soul (436a-b),22 did not hit on the truth about the soul, but merely set up a very wobbly hypothesis. Our capacity for knowledge is not an apparatus for cognitive activity besides other soul modules for desiderative and courageous activity: Knowledge that deserves the name reforms the whole structure of the soul and integrates its order properly in the order of the whole. We see things differently, desire differently, and make an effort differently, when we have gained genuine knowledge. In such knowledge the whole soul is a unity and harmonious, even if it had been a split soul in its preliminary cogni- tions, perceptions, various desires and impetus. The division of the soul that we have discussed, not merely into different eidê, but into different, incompatible kinds of motivation, does not happen because of its different functions, but because of the contrary tendencies, which imperfect use of the soul entangles us in down here, that is, in the Cave. The good not merely makes the different things and states of affairs, which constitute a

22 If the eye were not capable of looking at the light unless the whole body turns, in Plato’s simile, the whole body would of course not be able to see. So too the soul: if it knows with the whole soul, after its “conversion”, then that does not mean that the faculty of desire has turned into a cognitive faculty. Rather, desire is exclusively directed at that which the soul knows. I am grateful to Myles Burnyeat for insisting that this point has to be made clear. Plato’s phaulon skemma 113 useful world, harmonious and, in a way, one – rather, in knowledge, the good makes the individual soul one with itself, and a whole. The longer route to “precise” understanding of the question, whether the soul consists of three different natures or not, does not merely draw conclusions from facts and hypotheses, it changes the knower in such a way that he acquires his knowledge with his whole soul and not with a supposedly isolated part of the soul. The longer route, if someone were to take it in all seriousness, would change the object of knowledge, (the soul of the subject of the knowledge), in this special but important case for Plato.23 That explains why the question whether the soul is uniform or not, is hard for us to answer – since we are unchanged, and prefer the first route. But it is possible to point to a general difference between the provisional method and knowledge attained by the longer route. Plato emphasises this difference himself in his account, although this consists of images and abstract curricula. Whilst the provisional method always proceeds by hypotheses, as we have seen, the method of the longer route is described clearly by Plato as unhypothetical or better as bringing hypotheses to an end. In the following well known text, at the high point of the simile of the line, Plato hints what it means to know something with pure reason or dialectic: Logos itself grasps this through the capacity of dialectic, not by making hypotheses into principles, but as real hypotheses, like steps and rungs, so that it comes up to the unhypothetical and to the principle of everything; and once it has grasped this, and holding on to the things that depend on the principle, it descends to the end, making no use whatever of perception, just of ideas themselves, getting at ideas through ideas; and finishing up with ideas. (511b4-c2) Through the connection with an unhypothetical principle – such as the idea of the good has to be according to Plato – hypotheses are converted into ideas and these fit together to make up the states of affairs that are the object of a dialectical investigation. Something from the perceptible world which was taken to be true, as being thus and so, for example, the situation in which our soul contradicts itself, is converted into an ideal form, which really does belong to the state of affairs.24 This happens when it is reconstructed starting from the unhypothetical principle using pure ideas. The three similes of the good merely use as components, firstly, the structure of the human soul, located between perception and thought,

23 This is the way Plato describes this state of affairs in the Phaedo 80e-82b: a soul that is in love with the body cannot free itself from the body, and sinks again and again back into bodily chaos, whilst the happy, philosophical and good soul finds the way to peace with the divine. 24 See also 533c: Plato says that a dialectical investigation never leaves the hypotheses unchanged, since without a change no justification can be given for them. 114 Thomas Buchheim secondly, the orientation of these two capacities towards one another and, thirdly, their common ascent to its true self from the imprisonment in the perceptible world, towards the idea of the good through pure, dialectical thinking.25 And so if someone were really to take this cognitive route, and not merely read a book, then his soul would turn into a single idea, unified with itself, since it would then be beyond all conflict with itself in the perceptible world. All in all, the similes provide a picture of this longer route to the knowledge of the structure of the soul, on which the soul itself is directed towards itself, that is, to unity and harmony with itself.26

The human soul – one or many?

According to Plato’s dialectical views, expressed clearly in many places in his works, an idea may have several eidˆe in itself, and still be uniform, that is monoeidˆes.27 In contrast to that “ideal” compatibility of one and many, we have seen that Plato leaves undecided at the end of the Republic whether the soul is uniform or multifarious: This can give us an argument for saying that the soul is not a form, but the activity of mediating between cognisable ideas and perceptible bodies,28 an activity that has to be carried out again and again. As long as we ourselves are encrusted with the shells and seaweed of becoming and pleasure, then we are unable to see how we can liberate our torn soul from the divergent claims of the perceptible world and lead it to unity with itself.

25 The same dialectical project is summed up at 533c-d. 26 Cf. Griswold (1986, p. 122): “The point of all this is that [a human soul’s] self- knowledge possesses a “practical” dimension; it is a matter of a person’s acting in a certain manner, of living his life in a certain way. As we shall see, the soul’s original character type (represented by a god) is really potentiality for being a certain character; a soul does not become its character type until it lives out the character and acts accordingly. [. . . ] Nor could an earthly soul in this life perfectly follow a god, for the god is, after all, divine [. . . ]. That is, even character remains a telos that is never quite fulfilled.” 27 In footnotes 36-37 below I list further texts which show that for Plato there is no absolute difference between unity and plurality, as long as one investigates ideas as such using dialectic. Rather the logôntechnê must practice both “a synoptic leading to one idea” as well as “the dissection according to natural members”, in order to discover what the nature of something is (Phdr. 265c-266c). 28 According to Plato’s argument in the Phaedrus the soul’s constitution before its embodiment is like a sumphutos dunamis of two chariot horses and their driver. Like Ostenfeld (1992, pp. 324-328) I take this description to follow on the account of the soul given immediately before it, as a self-moving prime cause of motion. The soul can only be such a self mover in combination with a body. Later in the dialogue (271a) Plato repeats his question about the uniformity or multifariousness of the soul, and associates the latter with behaviour kata sômatosmorphên. Plato’s phaulon skemma 115

From our discussion of the longer route it has become clear, however, that a decision about this question, strictly speaking, depends on the behaviour of the individual soul itself, and the life it leads – if Plato’s megiston mathêma is true. For if all faculties of the soul are in harmony with one another, and if a person recognises what he desires and what he would goad himself into doing, then his soul is “friends” with itself, as Plato puts it, and hence at one with itself. According to the end of the Republic, the soul is immortal in both cases – whether it is at peace in the highest state of eternal knowledge of the good, or restless and torn through the evils of bodily existence. For something like the soul which cannot be killed by its own particular evil cannot perish through alien evils,29 with which it is burdened again and again because of rebirth. The particular evil of the soul is, according to Plato, injustice; the adversities of the sensible world are alien to the soul, and in any case it is exposed to them repeatedly. For if the soul lives correctly, and knows the good, then it will enjoy the time of separation from the body as a reward, and then make the right decision for a new way of life in sensual existence. But if the soul is unjust and does not know what is good, then it has to suffer from every injustice, and finally blindly chooses again the wrong life. In this way, the soul remains torn or its situation becomes even worse through an even more tyrannical life that it chooses, and hence becomes even less of a friend to itself. None of those making the choice notices, Plato says, “the order of the soul”,30 because this order can only be realised by a new corporeal life,31 which is the soul’s chosen lot.32 The order of the soul is its vice or virtue33 – virtue or being good (aretê), when the soul manages to integrate itself through its own achievements in the cosmos of things,34 that is not to be torn apart, to be at one with itself.35

29 R. 610e5-8. 30 R. 618b2-4. 31 So the soul continues to exist, once it has been created, in its three eidˆe, which make it possible for the soul to perform the task of more or less successfully unifying perceptible body with the intelligible realm of ideas, after each rebirth. Since the continued existence of the soul includes the cycle of life and death, one cannot say simply that the soul is immortal or eternal: it is merely imperishable (cf. Lg. 904a). In contrast, Plato makes it quite clear in the Timaeus that only nous, i.e. the thinking eidos of the soul, is “immortal” or “divine” (Ti. 89e-90c, 69c-d, cf. also 41c-d). So I agree entirely with J.V. Robinson (1990, pp. 103-110): Robinson shows that such a view is in harmony with Plato’s conception of the soul. 32 Both Republic Bk. X and Laws Bk. X describe the choices of the soul in similar fashion (see Lg. 904c-905d). 33 Grg. 506d, quoted above. 34 Cf. Lg. 904b-d. 35 My account of the Glaucus passage and the soul’s being one or many according to its own virtues and vices is in full accordance with T.M. Robinson (1970, pp. 50-54). 116 Thomas Buchheim

There is no absolute difference between one and many. Something that is monoeidês does not, on that account, have to be one dimensional and absolutely simple, without any inner differentiation.36 At many places in his works,37 Plato describes dialectical knowledge, by saying that it always investigates one and the same eidos as one and as many, and analyses it and unifies it again. Hence every entity is at once many and one, especially in its ideal constitution. However, the problem of the corporeal, sensible world, which souls have to continually connect with the truly knowable world, consists in the fact that the multiplicity of a perceptible thing involves “the Nature of difference” (thaterou physin: Ti. 35a7f.) in such a way as to be in danger of being torn apart by its own opposing tendencies. I understand that to mean that a perceptible thing not only is constituted by different components and characteristics, but that these very characteristics cause their own tendencies or natures to be different from the thing they constitute at the moment. In this way, a perceptible thing possesses not merely different factors, but divergent ones, which, unless they are overcome by a dominant unity, tear the thing apart and so destroy it. Among Ideas, unity and multiplicity are compatible, and remain dialectically unified; but in the perceptible world, they diminish and hamper one another. For every factor in a multiplicity pursues its own path of becoming and alteration in the perceptible world, unless a more powerful unity holds it together. Every corporeal thing decays into something different from itself. Among ideas, that is not the case: the integrated manifold that forms the unity, pursues just that unity which gives the thing as a whole its character.38 This is the reason, as Plato says in the Timaeus, that the soul, which in itself connects both orders – that of sensation and that of true knowledge – only in its best state, namely as world soul or (perhaps) as the soul of

36 The locus classicus describing ideas as uniform (monoeidê) is Symposium 211a-b. 1) Change 2) relation and 3) localisation are excluded from the idea of beauty; only then is it described as “in itself and uniform with itself, eternally being”. The three things excluded concern possible relations to things other than the idea itself, and not its own essence or constitution. Other texts show that this constitution is not simple, but rather constructed from several essential aspects, e.g. Prm. 143a; 144e et passim; Phlb. 64e-65a, 66a-b, together with 16c-d. 37 Some of the most important passages on the dialectic of unity and multiplicity are Sph. 253d; Plt. 278b-c; Phlb. 16d; Phdr. 265c, 266b; Lg. 965c. 38 Bob Sharples has pointed out to me that Plotinus presents an identical conception of the difference between the dialectical unity of things in nous and the divergence of their characteristics within the perceptible world (see Ennead III 2 [47] 2, and III 3 [48] 7). Both of these Enneads concern providence (pronoia), the “preconception” of the world in the divine nous. Many allusions in Plotinus’ presentation shew that he thinks he is giving an interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. I agree entirely with Plotinus’s view, without being able to argue the point here. See Sharples (1994, pp. 171-181). Plato’s phaulon skemma 117 the wise, forms “one idea of everything” – that is, of being (ousias eidos), of the nature of Sameness and the nature of Difference. Each of these three components consists in turn of a indivisible element as an idea, and a divisible form of existence in a body. In the Timaeus, Plato sees the essence of the soul in its capacity to unify everything, even as he emphasises, out of the “nature of Difference, hard as it was to mingle, which is forced into union with Samenes” (35a6-8). This is the reason that it is worthwhile for Plato to give the world a soul, for it connects that which is definitively different into the unity of the world. What is definitively different? As Plato repeatedly says, and as is emphasised right at the start of the description of the world in the Timaeus, on the one hand, eternal being, that is, the ideas, and on the other, that which is always in process of becoming, the region of sensible bodies. Since the soul manages to make “one idea out of everything”, even if with great difficulty, it is the factor that mediates between eternal being and becoming. Whilst ideas belong to thinking, that is, all together they constitute nous, and becoming is body, soul mediates the two, according to Plato: “nous is in the soul, and the soul in body, so that the whole comes into being” (Ti. 30b4-5). It is a consequence of this construction of Plato’s, which can only be sketched briefly here,39 that the soul quite clearly cannot be an idea, if it is to fulfil its function; hence, there cannot be an idea of the soul according to Plato, as I remarked at the start of my paper. For the soul always has to integrate the difference of the world of becoming, which can only be mixed with difficulty. If the soul did not do this, then there would be no route from the world of bodies to any idea, including the idea of the good. But if the soul in this way integrates the other that is in process of becoming, then one can really have a long argument as to whether the soul itself is uniform or not. For this is precisely the question whether this other, which the soul again and again has to integrate into a unity with itself and nous, in the final analysis is part of the soul or not, that is, whether it remains something really different. Nonetheless, the question could well be put why a soul has to take on the tough business of unifying the perceptible world, which is divided in itself, and the unassailable harmony of nous: wouldn’t it be simpler to renounce entirely the corporeal world? If one did, then no one would know

39 For a more comprehensive account cf. Johansen (2004, esp. ch. 7). Johansen distinguishes two successive stages of the partition of the soul. First, the integration of the “Nature of Difference” and consequently of a “circle of difference” besides the “circle of the same” of pure nous before the individual embodiment; second, the confrontation and unification of the individual soul with the rectilinear movements of body at the embodiment in an individual human. Only this confrontation causes the potential division in rational and irrational parts to be actualised as a tripartition (see esp. p. 144f., 158 f.), which in turn can be used by the individual to actualise the good for him- or herself in the perceptible world. 118 Thomas Buchheim the good, and no one would be able to follow a route to this knowledge, except perhaps eternal nous itself, which, because it is eternal, never follows a route anywhere. So the business of the soul, however arduous it may be, is the multiplication of the chances of knowledge and the realisation of the good in the world, if the soul achieves a good life, that is, if it is able to repeat the order of the world in itself. At the end of the Timaeus, Plato describes at some length this task, which individual humans with a soul have to perform: The therapy for each [element in the soul] is in each respect, just the one: give each its proper nutriments and motions. The motions in us that are related to the divine are the thoughts and revolutions of the whole; each of us must follow these, and using learning, correct the harmonies and revolutions, by destroying the revolutions in the head connected with becoming: that which knows must be made like that which it knows, corresponding to its original nature, so that once it has become the same it attains the best life, as prescribed by the gods for men, as its end, both now and in the future. (Ti. 90c6-d7) In order to perform this task we need in any case three different eidê in our souls, whether they plunge us into contradictions and we never get our heads clear of the “revolutions connected with becoming” or whether the three eidê finally lead us to a realisation of the order of the whole in ourselves and we can enjoy the harmony of the whole both in ourselves and in the cosmos. For present purposes we can leave it open whether that would really be worth the effort or not.

Summary of the main theses

1. The human soul always has the three eidˆe of desire, indignation, and reason. For “soul in general”, from which human soul comes (see Timaeus), has the task of connecting the sensible world of becoming with the eternal intelligibles, and in this way to attain the good, and knowledge of the good. 2. Hence the soul cannot have reached its aim right from the start; rather it sets out towards its aim by way of desire and stimulus. The better organised it is the more eﬀective and the smoother is the achievement of this end. 3. Insofar as the soul fundamentally mediates between the sensible world of becoming and the ideal-intelligible, “the other that is re- sistant to mixing” has been added to the soul “by force”. For this reason, soul cannot be an idea. For an idea has the formal characteristic of being monoeides in a harmonious manner, as a dialectical Plato’s phaulon skemma 119

unity out of many aspects which deﬁne the idea and hence belong together from the outset.

4. The human soul can fulfil the functions of its three eidê either in a confused and conflicting manner or in a clear and harmonious one. In the first case, the soul tends towards a “polyeidetic” state, in the second, to a “monoeidetic” one. A stable, monoeidetic constitution of the human soul is only attainable via the successful passage from the sensible world to the idea of the good. But even then Plato thinks that the soul has to return to a new test, in a life the soul chooses for itself, and which has to be returned to the harmony of a good life from the divergent and divisive claims of our world.

5. If the soul is in a monoeidetic state, then it desires, goads itself and knows “with the whole soul”, without thereby removing the differences between the three forms of the soul. In this state, the human soul fits its inner order (psychêstaxis) correctly in the order of the cosmos. According to Plato that is what the soul’s virtue (arêtê) consists in, that is, its good. 6. Truly philosophical knowledge, i.e. knowledge gained on “the longer route”, does not merely aim at knowledge of objectively true states of affairs, but also at a “turning round of the whole soul” from internal and external distraction to a harmonious orientation towards the good.

References

Graeser, Andreas, 1969, Probleme der platonischen Seelenteilungslehre, Munich: Beck. Griswold, Charles L. (Jr.), 1986, Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus, New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Johansen, Thomas K., 2004, Plato’s Natural Philosophy. A Study of the Timeaus-Critias, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ostenfeld, Erik N., 1992, “Self-Motion, Tripartition and Embodiment”, in: L. Rosetti (ed.), Understanding the Phaedrus, Proceedings of the II. Symposium Platonicum, Sankt Augustin, pp. 324-328. Robinson, Thomas M., 1970, Plato’s Psychology, Toronto: Univ. Press. Robinson, James V., 1990, “The tripartite soul in the Timaeus”, in: Phro- nesis, 35, pp. 103-110. Schiller, Jerome, 1967, “Phaedo 104-105: Is Soul a Form?, in: Phronesis, 12, pp. 50-58. 120 Thomas Buchheim

Sharples, Robert W., 1994, “Plato, Plotinus and Evil”, in: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 39, pp. 171-181. Steiner, Peter, 1992, Psychˆebei Platon, G¨ottingen:Vandenhoeck & Rup- recht. Woods, Michael, 1987, “Plato’s Division of the Soul”, in: Proceedings of the British Academy, 73, pp. 23-48. Pierre-Marie Morel “Common to Soul and Body” in the Parva Naturalia (Aristotle, Sens. 1 436b1-12)

In both De anima (de An.) and Parva Naturalia (PN ) Aristotle speaks of states common to soul and body.1 But, given that the soul is a subject for the natural philosopher, who is able to take account at once of matter and form – in this case body and soul – this subject lies at the heart of Aristotelian psychology. However, this expression is not very clear, for two reasons. On the one hand, the genus of what is common to soul and body is not clearly identified; on the other, the meaning of “common” is not stated. Let us start with the first point. Aristotle gives a list of the X which are common to soul and body (sensation, memory, impulse, appetite, desire, pleasure and pain; waking and sleep, youth and old age, breathing in and out, life and death).2 A few lines earlier3 he has spoken of actions (praxeis) and indicated that some are proper to some species, while others are common to some species. However, he uses the expression about “the most important X”, using a neuter plural (ta megista). One could take this to refer to “functions” (erga), but youth and old age, life and death are not functions, properly speaking. So we have to stick to very general terms, using the wide semantic range provided by pathos, used in one of the formulations of the expression:4 “affections” or “accidental properties”, or, still more generally, “states”. 1 See de An. I.1 403a3-4; III.10 433b20; Sens. 1 436a7-8; Somn.Vig. 1 453b11-13 (in the form of a question). The qualification “common to soul and body” refers to the subject of PN . It appears on the first page of Sens. in a passage fixing in a general way the programme for all of the treatises. I would like to thank Myles Burnyeat, for his useful comments after reading a previous version of this paper, and R. A. H. King for his translation of my text. 2 Sens. 1 436a7-15. 3 436a4. 4 De An. I.1 403a3-4: “there is a difficulty about the states of the soul (t pjh t¨c yuq¨c), that is, to know if they are all equally common to that which has a soul or if there are some which are proper to the soul itself”. The expression “that which has a soul” (in italics) refers to the body. 122 Pierre-Marie Morel

The second source of unclarity is due to the fact that the term koinos in Aristotle is not opposed to idios in a single way. The adjective “common” means to begin with a property which one can attribute by analogy to two distinct entities. This is the way it is used at the beginning of the text when Aristotle mentions the praxeis of different living things; and often in the biology.5 Hence swimming, flight, walking are common to different animal species. Yet there is no causal relation between these common things. However, koinos can also mean a state or a movement which implies correlatively the two entities – or a number n of entities – and may apply to an operation that they perform together. This is the case for example with the interest or common good which citizens produce by their effective and correlative participation in the life of the city.6 If, in “common to the soul and body”, we understand “common” in the previous sense, we are already tending implicitly towards a kind of parallelism, according to which soul and body, undergo affections each on their own, which are associated, but discontinuous, and constitute two substantially distinct entities. In fact, such a strict parallelism is not supported by the texts. Furthermore, strictly speaking, the soul as such does not undergo affections: it is not the soul that experiences pity or reflects, but the man “by his soul”.7 So the second sense appears to be required, all the more so as the soul and the body, like citizens of the same city, form a koinônia.8 It is hard to know what Aristotle means exactly by this term, but it is clear that by using it he means that soul and body do not merely have some features in common: they have a common existence. However, even if we take koinos in the second sense we are still able to think that the two entities are really, i.e. substantially distinct – each working in common operations which are merely accidents of each. Thus D. Ross is of the opinion that PN belong to a period of Aristotle’s psychology which is still dualist, and that they derive from “a two-substance view” which is incompatible with the hylomorphism of book II of de An.9 It is true that nowadays this kind of interpretation is considered outmoded, and that there is general support for the view that PN is compatible with the thesis that soul and body form a matter-form composite, that is to say a really unified whole. Since the ’sixties several commentators e.g. Block

5 See e.g. PA I.5 645b22. 6 See e.g. the expression to koinon to tônpolitôn, Pol. III.13 1283b41. 7 De An. I.4 408b15. Furthermore as we will see, “common” is not the only term opposed to “proper” in the de An. For Aristotle makes clear right from the beginning of the treatise that some pathê are proper to the soul, whereas others affect animals – as wholes – “because of the soul” (di> âkeÐnhn, de An. I.1 402a9-10). 8 De An. I.3 407b18; Long. 2 465a31. 9 Ross (1955, p. 16). “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 123

(1961), Siwek (1963), Kahn (1966), have supported the thesis convincingly that PN could have been edited at a time when Aristotle’s psychological doctrine had been definitively fixed. Most researchers who currently are working on PN share this view.10 Nonetheless, it is useful to look more closely at something which causes problems in the eyes of a commentator on Aristotle as well-informed as Ross. What’s more, “developmentalist” hypotheses have the advantage of putting the emphasis on the peculiar nature of the subject of PN and of drawing attention to the physiological considerations in Aristotle’s conception of life. Other passages in the PN, e.g. those where Aristotle says the soul is “set alight” in the area round the heart11 confirm this orientation. In any case, to the extent that “common to soul and body” appears in de An., the problem of the expression’s meaning affects the whole doctrine of soul and body.12 But according to this doctrine, as is well known, it is very artificial to draw a real distinction between body and soul, even if this is to determine what they have in common, given that the living body is by definition ensouled. It is not even helpful to ask if soul and body are a single thing or two, since it is useless to ask this question about matter and the actualised thing of which it is the matter, e.g. about wax and its form.13 However, is it enough to say that soul and body, understood as form and matter, are in reality a single thing, considered either from the point of view of act or from that of power?14 The expression “common to soul and body” really assumes a distinction which is not simply conceptual.15 In other words, the use of the expression leads to a form of duality,16 although its intention is clearly to insist in the unity of body and soul. So the question is twofold: what kind of duality does the expression imply? And, conversely, what kind of unity does it attempt to define? To answer this question, it is fitting to turn to PN , for three reasons. Firstly, as we have already seen, these treatises have a more marked

10 Van der Eijk (1994), King (2001); I refer the reader here to the arguments in the introduction to my translation (Morel, 2000). 11 Juv. 4 469b13-17; Resp. 8 474b13, 16 478a28-30. 12 I assume that Book II of de An., where hylomorphism is most explicit, is coherent with Books I and III, where the expression under discussion appears. 13 De An. II.1 412b6. 14 For this view see Metaph. VIII.6 1045b17-20. 15 Everson (1997, p. 234) underlines this difficulty very clearly: “The problem now is to see how there can be a common affection of two things, when these cannot in fact be affected separately.” 16 That is, a form of dualism, to take up a point made by Menn (2002, pp. 100-1). He thinks that the expression is not designed to avoid dualism, but to preserve the soul from the mutability which affects the body. It goes without saying, as Menn shows, that the notion of dualism may not be used here without reservations. 124 Pierre-Marie Morel physiological dimension than de An., so that they would appear to take properly bodily aspects of what is “common to soul and body”. The following discussion will, according to me, confirm that point.17 Secondly, de An. leaves us unequipped to deal with the question despite the rich- ness of its theory. Furthermore, the preamble to PN , where the expression appears, suggests that PN completes de An. on just this point. Thirdly, PN introduce a new element in comparison to what we learn about the expression in de An.: the functional pre-eminence of sensation among all the functions and states of the composite. For the use of the expression in PN is intended to designate a criterion of what is common to body and soul. The criterion in question, at least as far as animals are concerned, is sensation.18 In our examination of it we will see not only that “common to soul and body” does not imply the substantial distinction that some commentators would like to see, but also that PN give to this question a more precise meaning than mere unity of matter and form. They put emphasis on the material, and thus corporeal, conditions of internal movements, of which the soul is the principle, in the composite. Let us begin by looking at the way PN justify the expression “common to soul and body”, and why sensation plays a crucial role here. Aristotle say several times that sensation defines animals, and that it is their principal activity.19 The great diversity of texts in which this doctrine appears shows that it is neither marginal nor dependent merely on context. Indeed this doctrine corresponds to one of the fundamental theses about the ty- pology of living things, in that sensation is proper to animals as opposed to plants.20 It is logical that PN which treats living things in general but as a matter of fact favours animals, starts from sensation to examine the states common to soul and body. Aristotle makes the choice explicitly: It is not unclear that all the (states) mentioned are common to body and soul. For all of them occur either with or through sensation. Some are actually affections of sensation, others are ways of being of sensation, others guarantee its protection and preservation. That sensation arises in the soul through the body is clear both from argumentation and without it. But we have shown in the treatise on the soul, what sensation and sensing is, and

17 Contra, about De Sensu, see Johansen in this volume. 18 Sens. 1 436b1-12. 19 Not only Sens. 1 436b10-12, but also: Somn.Vig. 1 454a8-10, b24; Juv. 3 469a18- 20; de An. II.2 413b2; PA II.1 647a21, III.4 666a34-35; GA I.23 731a33, b4-5. This list is not exhaustive. See also Metaph. VII.10 1035b16-18: no part of the body can be defined without mentioning its function (ergon) which in turn cannot exist without sensation. 20 Thus, the definition of animals by sensation is clearer and more fundamental than that by self-motion, in that some animals do not move although they possess sensation. The difficulties Aristotle runs into when he tries to explain exactly what he means by “self-motion” are familiar. This problem cannot be tackled in this paper. “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 125

through what this affection occurs in animals. Sensation belongs necessarily to animals insofar as each is an animal. For it is by this that we distinguish between that which is an animal and that which is not. (Sens. 436b1-12)21 In the course of this text, two transitions are performed – that between de An. and PN and between the introduction to De sensu and the specific analysis of the different senses. An aim of de An., according to this text, was defining sensation and giving its cause (ti esti kai dia ti), which does not mean that the De sensu does not offer any causal explanation, but that it examines the senses separately, whereas de An. emphasises rather what they have in common. Nonetheless, our text adopts the generalising perspective of de An., since it refers to sensation in general or as a faculty. It establishes that sensation presents the common factor of the different properties or functions tackled in PN . Sensation is even the criterion of that which is common to soul and body, since it is as far as they participate in sensation, in one way or another, that these states are common to soul and body (436b1-3). The presence of sensation in the case of any living individual testifies to the fact that we are dealing with an animal and not a plant. To justify the fact that all the states mentioned above belong to soul and body, Aristotle distinguishes in 436b3-4 two general ways of being related to sensation: some occur “with” (meta), others “through” (dia) sensation. This means at least that none of them is produced “apart (chôris) from sensation”, to take up Alexander of Aphrodisias’ remark.22 That allows one to exclude the activities of intellect, if it is true that it is really separable. However, this phrase does not enable us to explain the expression “common to soul and body”, of which it is merely the negative formulation. Alexander (Wendland, 1901, 7.19-22) gives several examples of states produced with sensation: the state of waking, pleasure and pain, health and sickness. Waking is closely linked to sensation in the treaty On sleep: It is thought that he who has sensation is awake and that every waking individual has sensation of a certain movement, internal or external. If, then, being awake consists simply of having sensation, it is clear that it is that by which one has sensation which makes waking individuals awake and sleeping ones sleep. (Somn.Vig. 1 454a2-7) Sensation here is to be seen as a realised activity and not only as 21 íti dà pnta t leqjènta koin t¨c te yuq¨c âstÈ kaÈ toÜ s¸matoc, oÎk dhlon. pnta gr t màn met> aÊsj sewc sumbaÐnei, t dà di> aÊsj sewc, ênia dà t màn pjh taÔthc înta tugqnei, t d> éxeic, t dà fulakaÈ kaÈ swthrÐai, t dà fjoraÈ kaÈ ster seic: d> aÒsjhsic íti di s¸matoc gÐgnetai t¬ yuq¬, d¨lon kaÈ di toÜ lìgou kaÈ toÜ lìgou qwrÐc. ll perÈ màn aÊsj sewc kaÈ toÜ aÊsjnesjai, tÐ âsti kaÈ di tÐ sumbaÐnei toØc z¼oic toÜto tä pjoc, eÒrhtai prìteron ân toØc perÈ yuq¨c. toØc dà z¼oic, màn zÄon ékaston, ngkh Íprqein aÒsjhsin; toÔtú gr tä zÄon eÚnai kaÈ m zÄon diorÐzomen. 22 Alexandri in librum de sensu commentarium (Wendland, 1901, 7.16, 18). 126 Pierre-Marie Morel a determinate power or a natural disposition. It cannot then show itself completely except when the animal actualises its faculties, that is to say, in the state of waking. We know from the first lines of the Metaphysics,23 but also from De Anima, that pleasure and pain accompany sensation. Sensation is accompanied by the perception of pleasure and pain, and is hence directly tied to desire: If there is sensation, there is also imagination (phantasia) and desire (orexis), for if there is sensation, there is also pain and pleasure and therefore necessarily appetite (epithumia).24 True, the presence of phantasia in this list poses a problem, if the aim were to enumerate the states which only occur “with” (meta) sensation, in the narrow sense of simultaneity, to the exclusion of all other relations. I will return to this point shortly. The final example given by Alexander, health and sickness, is certainly not the most convincing: if he is saying that the living body is necessarily healthy or sick, there is no need to mention sensation, unless for the reason that it is the specific activity of the animal body. Besides Aristotle contents himself, a few lines before, by saying that neither health nor disease are to found in entities deprived of life.25 The class encompassed by the phrase di’aisthêseôs is also very broad. Alexander gives as an example youth and old age,26 which define a certain state of the sensitive faculty, but one could just as well say that as the living thing is necessarily young or old, these states are present “with” sensation. Besides, if the relation dia is a relation denoting the agent, we have to say that sensation is not itself the agent of youth or old age, but that it is on the contrary the agent of other states. So the logical suggestion has been made27 that Aristotle is thinking of memory and, more generally, phantasia. This latter can accompany actual sensation, but its definition presents it basically as a process derived from sensation and brought about by it – a relation which can be expressed by dia. For imagination is a “movement which is produced under the influence of actual sensation”.28 The sensation precedes and makes possible the phantasia, not only because it is the first to grasp a form which the imagination will be able to preserve and revive, but also because it is the first term of a series of movements of which actual imagination – the internal representation of a phantasma – is the last in time. The alteration of the sense

23 I.1 980a21-26. 24 De an. II.2 413b23, see also 3 414b4-6. 25 436a18-19. 26 7.22-23. 27 Notably by Ross (1906, p. 127), Siwek (1963, p. 70). 28 De An. III.3 429a1-2; Insomn. 1 459a17-18; see also de An. III.3 428b11-12. “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 127 organ during sensation29 spontaneously produces a kinetic effect and a trace, a sensible impression (aisthêma). Apparently, aisthêmata become phantasmata under the influence of the common sense faculty and move in the direction of the heart. In this way, the appearance of dreams, because it is just a “rising” of the images,30 is the ultimate consequence of this process of which actual sensation is the prime mover. Aristotle is merely applying the Platonic conception of repercussion (antiperistasis), despite his criticism of the idea, to explain how movement can be produced in the absence of the mover.31 In the case of projectiles, the medium – air, water or something else – receives the capacity to move from the mover after the mover has exercised its movement. This model proves particularly fertile in PN since it allows an explanation of the secondary effects of sensation: memory, dreams,32 but also a certain number of dysfunctions, like those which bring about melancholy.33 The causal relation expressed by dia is clearly justified since the two classes of phantasmata which constitute memory and dreaming are produced after the actual sensation of the object, of which they preserve the trace – and on account of the fact of this sensation. Although one should not be satisfied with a definition of phantasia as the simple degradation of actual sensation, above all if one bears in mind the variety of functions which Aristotle attributes to phantasia, nonetheless the latter remains, both in its origin and dynamically, dependent on actual sensation. The various passages in PN which deal with imagination are to be seen from this perspective. So as not to get involved in the complicated debate on the real status of phantasia – is it in itself a faculty with its own specific properties or a simple kind of movement originating in the faculty of sensation – I will content myself with remarking that the context of PN favours the holders of the second position. Phantasia, whether it produces dreaming or memory, is really closely bound up with the common sense

29 I am not going to broach the much discussed question whether this alteration should be taken literally as a physiological modification of the sense organ or if sensation itself implies no physiological process. The reader may be referred to the status quaestionis presented by M. Burnyeat (2002), an opponent of the literalist reading. At any rate, it is clear that the formation of images by phantasia presupposes the preservation of a sense trace which is not merely the (immaterial) form of the object grasped by sensation: it is a physiological trace. This is the reason that even if one does not reckon that sensation in itself implies a physiological process, it seems to me certain that it is the cause of a number of such processes. 30 See Insomn. Ch. 3. 31 See Ph. VIII.10 266b28-267a20, IV.8 215a15, where the term antiperistasis is reserved for the theory expounded at Timaeus 59a, 79e-80c. See also Cael. III.2 301b23-30. 32 For a description of the process, see especially Insomn. 2 459a23-b7. 33 Mem. 2 453a14-31; Somn.Vig. 3 457a27; Insomn. 3 461a22; Div.Somn. 2 463b17, 464a32, and Pr. XXX.1. 128 Pierre-Marie Morel faculty. Hence “dreaming originates in the faculty of sense, but insofar as it is imaginative (phantastikon)”.34 In addition we can also say that desire (orexis) is produced di’ aisthê- seôs. For it is given the double status of moving and of being moved in the De Motu Animalium, for the animal moves under the influence of desire and choice, having been altered by imagination or thought.35 Moreover Aristotle notes that “desire is produced through sensation or imagination or thought”36 and the preposition used here is again dia. This first system of classifications is completed by new headings, beginning at line 436b4. The dichotomy meta/dia appears to be a real dichotomy, designed to include the other headings. This is suggested by the symmetry ta men met’ aisthêseôs. . . ta de di’ aisthêseôs. When he introduces the list given at 436b4-6 by enia de Aristotle analyses the dichotomy further by introducing new headings which are not on the same level: pathos, hexis, protection, preservation, destruction and privation are not abstract causal connections, but rather real modalities or states of the living thing. As we shall see, in one way or another all may be subsumed under the initial dichotomy. Alexander of Aphrodisias is therefore not wrong to put a full stop at the end of the phrase “all in fact occur with sensation or through sensation”, and to make the dichotomy exhaustive in this way.37 The first heading of the new list is affection (pathos): certain properties are affections of sensation. The text does not allow us to decide between the two senses of pathos – accident or change under the influence of an agent. Alexander tends towards the second solution, when he takes sleep as an example of an affection of sensation and when he describes the internal process by which animals fall asleep and cease to exercise actual sensation.38 Aristotle shows at any rate very clearly that sleep and waking constitute an affection (pathos) of the sensitive faculty as a whole.39 Thus sleep is a certain affection (pathos ti) of the sensitive part, like a bond and an immobilisation (akinêsia) such that of necessity every animal that sleeps possesses the sensitive part.40

34 Insomn. 1 459a21-22; for memory, see Mem. 1 449b15-30. 35 MA 6 701a1-6. 36 7 701a35-6. 37 7.19. 38 7.25-8.2. The process in question is described in Somn.Vig. 3: nutrition is transformed into blood, producing a warming passed onto the heart, which is the starting point of the blood towards the rest of the organism. Since heat naturally rises, it ﬂows back in a second cycle towards the heart. Furthermore, the heart is the centre of the sensitive faculty. The heat weighs down on the heart, which is thereupon prevented from performing its sensitive functions, until the other parts cool down and lose some of their force. 39 Somn.Vig. 2 455a26-b2. 40 Somn.Vig. 1 454b9-12. “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 129

This example, which has the authority of Aristotle’s text, is nonetheless equivocal, if one refers it back to he meta-dia dichotomy. For sleep does not really occur (simultaneously) with actual sensation, but it does not occur either through sensation as an intermediary, except in a very indirect way, in the sense that the activity of waking – and consequently sensation – produces tiredness. Nonetheless, the analysis of dreams shows that the absence of sensitivity is not complete in sleep and that even if the common sensitive faculty does not achieve its optimal functioning, it is not totally inactive. In any case this example obliges us to extend the relation meta beyond actual sensation, i.e. that in complete action to intermediary forms of sensitive activity. Other states of the animal are dispositions or ways of being (hexeis) of sensation. Alexander (Wendland, 1901, 8.2) remarks that sensation itself is a hexis. If we consider it here as a faculty, sensation is in fact a determinate, natural disposition, and not a power (dynamis) of the first order, i.e. a power of contraries.41 However, hexis can refer here to a way of being actual for the subject of which it is the property, and not merely a disposition, and there is no doubt that it is for this reason that youth and old age may be thought to fall under this category.42 In addition, memory is a hexis or a pathos of sensation or judgement when time has passed, not to be confused with one of these states.43 However, this example is a bit tricky for Aristotle’s classification. On the one hand, we can note that the boundary between pathos and hexis is pretty porous. On the other hand, the relation to the generic dichotomy is none too clear. The relation “a is a hexis of b” should in principle be subsumed under the general relation “x exists with y”. However, the relation between memory and sensation – we have seen this already and Aristotle establishes the point very firmly44 – is not one of simultaneous accompaniment, but rather a relation of the type “x exists through y”, memory is not sensation, but comes about after it and by virtue of the fact that it occurred previously. Alexander (Wendland, 1901, 8.3-4) for his part prefers to classify memory and recollection among the states which protect and preserve sensation, while he sees in destruction and privation allusions to forgetting and death, which creates an asymmetry in the passage, since he then has to put life in the first of the two classes. In fact, sensation depends on everything which combines to preserve the life of the animal, like respiration, which is treated at length in PN , since it balances the heat in the heart and so protects at the same time the thermal balance of the animal and the preservation of the heart itself, that is of the organic principle of sen-

41 De An. II.5 417a31-b16. 42 Ross (1906, p. 128). 43 Mem. 1 449b24-25. 44 449b24: “memory is therefore neither sensation nor judgement . . . ”. 130 Pierre-Marie Morel sation.45 These headings seem to find their place under the relation meta, although the example given by Alexander is misleading, since memory and recollection obviously do not occur at the same time as the sensation from which they originate, unless one takes meta in a very broad sense.46 In 436b7 Aristotle adds the second term necessary to the demonstration: in order to establish that the states examined are common to soul and body, one has to assume that they are all dependent on sensation, but also that sensation is an activity common to body and soul. However, since it is a faculty of the soul which cannot be exercised without the body being altered, in the sense organs, it is “produced in the soul, through the body”.47 In fact the preceding lines have already prepared the ground for the argument, since certain organic functions, like the functioning of the heart or breathing are necessary conditions for sensation. Aristotle alludes to two kinds of proof: “it is obvious both by argumentation and without argumentation” – the proof dia logou is perhaps a proof by deduction, based on a definition: sensation, by definition – or at least according to a possible definition – consists in grasping sensibles through the mediation of the sense organs.48 The continuation of De sensu, in ch. 2, will examine precisely the material properties of the sense organs and the corresponding sensibles. In a more general way, we know from de An. that the study of the soul and its faculties is the business of the natural philosopher, that is, of someone who takes account of both form and matter, and that sensations, like all the affections of the composite are logoi enuloi, reasons involved in matter.49 As for the proof tou logou chôris, it is probably due to the experience itself of sensation: this shows of itself its own “affective” nature, and hence its own corporality. It

45 See Ross (1906, p. 128); Siwek (1963, p. 70) adds health. 46 Alexander’s commentary is probably influenced by the passage in the Philebus, 34a3-b8, which is perhaps the origin of our passage in Sens. Socrates claims there not only that memory and recollection guarantee the safety (sôteria) of sensation, but also that sensation is the affection during which soul and body are moved together. See King (2001, p. 36, n. 22) in favour of this connection. 47 As M. Burnyeat has pointed out to me, one could equally take the dative t¬ yuq¬ as dative of means (by the soul), following the example of de An. I.4 408b15: the human pities by his soul. In fact it is true that the soul is the first principle and, consequently, the real agent. The body acts merely as an intermediary for the action of this principle. But this is not the point Aristotle is emphasising here, in that he appears to want to say that the sensation arrives at the soul by the intermediary of the body. There is a text in PN along these lines, namely Somn.Vig. 1 454a7-11: “Since on the other hand the act of sensation is proper neither to the soul nor to the body (for that of which it is the power, is that of which it is the activity; and what one calls sensation, as activity, is a certain movement of the soul through the body), it is clear that this affection does not belong to the soul and that neither a body without a soul is capable of sensation.” 48 Alexander’s explanation (Wendland, 1901, 8.12-13). 49 Or logoi en hulê according to other Mss: de An. I.1 403a25. “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 131 is “in itself obvious”50 that sensations come about through the mediation of sense organs. So Aristotle can rely51 on what he has said in de An. about sensation in general as a foundation and conclude that animal is defined by sensation not only because it is specified by it, but also because all its states and internal movements are bound up with it in one way or another. However, this result is fairly unsatisfactory, in that it has been reached at the price of a number of approximations. Alexander’s interpretative hypotheses only confirm this. As we have seen, they are due to this impreci- sion and the extreme diversity of the categories considered as defining the relation between sensation and the other faculties and states. The connection with sensation does not positively explain in what way desire, life death, youth, old age and respiration are states common to body and soul; rather, this characterisation is passed on to these states from sensation by various forms of transitivity, which are sometimes vague. More generally, listing these categories only indirectly contributes to the elucidation of the expression, namely via the psychosomatic characterisation of sensation. Strictly speaking, one may admit that Aristotle has succeeded in showing by transitivity that the states concerned are common to body and soul. At any rate, our passage does not tell us which body-soul duality is presupposed by the expression “common to soul and body”. Our attention has been drawn to the fact, but the modalities of this duality remain obscure. In this respect, our text is deceptive, at least on the first reading, to the extent that it uses sensation as a simple criterion to identify what is common to soul and body. Aristotle would no doubt have done better to stick to the laconic formulation of Metaphysics VII.10: no part of the body can be defined without its function, which in turn would be nothing without sensation. However, perhaps we should leave these approximations on one side, and ask if the essential point is not to be found elsewhere – not in the exact nature of the connection with sensation, but in the fact that there is this connection; not in the positive explanation of the interactions between sensation and other states, but in the principle of the interdependence between the faculties or states of the composite, dominated by sensation. Furthermore one should notice that sensation is being considered here merely as a faculty in abstraction from its objects: It is because of the organic side to sensation, not the intentional or cognitive side (cognition of something) that it serves as a criterion to evaluate what is common to soul and body. Aristotle makes quite clear that the definition of sensation

50 To translate Alexander’s expression autothen enarges (Wendland, 1901, 8.10). 51 Sens. 1 436b8-10. 132 Pierre-Marie Morel and the reasons for its existence have been given in de An..52 So that is not the issue in the preamble to the PN , just the simple fact that there is an essential relation between sensation and the other faculties or states. Our text provides a very important clue on this point, when it says precisely that sensation “comes about in the soul through the body”: in this way it indicates that that which allows sensation to play the role of criterion is the kind of causality which explains it. But this causality is complex. As I have just remarked, Aristotle does not allow the causation exercised by the sensible object as such on the faculty of sensation, that is to say by the external agent of sensation, to play a role here. Instead, he emphasises the internal causality and the fact that the body plays an essential role. As the phrase “through the body” suggests, the body cannot be the prime mover of sensation, not only because the latter depends on the presence of an external agent, but also because the soul alone among the internal principles of motion can be a prime mover. In fact, saying that sensation arrives at the soul through the body does not mean that it is passive in relation to its objects and in relation to the body. Sensation can be either potential or actual, and it is at once passive since it has to be realised by the presence of sensible objects, and active precisely because it actualises itself as a faculty of the soul.53 In turn, there is no sensation if the soul itself is not a mover in the exercise of this faculty. Under these conditions, conforming to the proposition on which Aristotle’s argument hinges: sensation is produced in the soul through the body – the body can only be the instrument of the prime mover which constitutes the soul of the animal.54 This comes down to saying that sensation is a faculty which the soul exercises, when sensibles are present, by acting both on the body and through the body. Hence the idea of a community between body and soul gains a more precise meaning: sensation is common to body and soul not merely because it requires sense organs to be exercised, as Alexander says, but also because sensation presents a situation in which the relation between soul and body is that between agent and patient. The de An. stipulates explicitly that the community (koinˆonia) between body and soul implies a dynamic relation between agent and patient, and between mover and moved:

52 Sens. 1 436b8-10. 53 De An. II.5 417a13-14. 54 The question of the theoretical legitimacy of an instrumentalist interpretation of the body-soul relation in Aristotle’s psychology – the body as organon of the soul (I.3 407b26; II.1 412b1, 12; II.4 415b19) – is complex and much debated. Menn (2002) produces new arguments in favour of the compatibility of this conception with hylomorphism. He thinks that the canonic deﬁnition of the soul as the primary entelecheia of an organic body means that the soul uses the body as an organon in the sense of an instrument or as a collection of organa. By taking this relation as one between agent and patient within the one substance, I intend to free it of any notion of substantial dualism. “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 133

for because of their community, the one acts and the other undergoes, the one is moved and the other moves, and none of these mutual relations obtains between chance terms. (de An. I.3 407b17-19) Thus the body can only “act” because action is delegated to it, in that the states involving not only the soul but also the whole animal are always acts depending on the primary causation exercised by the soul.55 The heart, as De Motu Animalium shows, is the organic principle of this delegated mobility. It is striking that the relation between mover and moved which connects the soul to the body, and of which the heart is the hinge or the pivot is just what makes Aristotle say that the movement brought about by desire arises from “operations common to soul and body”.56 So we reach our first conclusion: “common to soul and body” implies the duality of agent and patient, of mover and moved. But this duality is legitimate, not problematical for it does not go against the substantial unity of the composite: the act of the agent and the act of the patient are one and the same act. When agent and patient are two powers of a single substance, the same substance acts on itself qua another,57 in contrast to what happens in technical activity which requires a real duality between agent and patient. Now it remains for us to try to understand which unity it is that is presupposed by the expression “common to soul and body”. PN suggest a decisive answer to this question. For the text shows that the agent-patient relation is exercised thanks to the functional relation which unifies all the operations and states involved.58 Sensation is not simply a common feature. If that were the case, it would be difficult to understand why Aris- totle uses it to define animal. As we have seen, the terse parenthesis from Metaphysics VII.10 sees in sensation not merely a common feature but the necessary condition for the existence of the other operations or functions. Furthermore, Aristotle justifies the definition of animal in On the Gener- ation of Animals with the excellence of sensation. Sensation is not merely one useful function among others – it is the best of the animals’ functions. Although sensation only possesses a negligible value in comparison with the use of the rational faculty, “if one compares it with insensibility it is the best thing”59 when the animal only fulfils its function as a living

55 See De An. I.1 402a9-10: “among the states of the soul, some appear to be proper to it, while the others involve, because of the soul, the whole animal.” 56 III.10 433b19-28. 57 Metaph. IX.1 1046a11-13. 58 Menn (2002) in his analysis of the expression “common to soul and body” uses the agent-patient relation, which, according to him allows us to understand the kind of dualism we are dealing with. 59 GA I.23 731a34-731b2. 134 Pierre-Marie Morel thing, in mating “it becomes like a species of plant”.60 So in virtue of the principle that the better and the end are identical, sensation should be considered as the final activity of all the animal’s internal activities, insofar as it characterises pre-eminently the animal soul. De Sensu 436b1-12 is precisely remarkable for not distinguishing between the nutritive and sensitive faculty: the relations of interdependence between faculties or states defined there are indifferent as to the distinction between nutritive and sensitive. Hence, it is very probable that the existence of faculties which take part in the preservation and protection of sensation presupposes that the latter is the final cause of the former, not merely its accompaniment. If one considers that our text, taken on its own, says little on this point, we may extend the analysis to its immediate context namely the PN . These treatises are concerned indirectly but constantly with the question of final causality, because they pay particular attention to the physiological processes and the mechanical circuits which make the performance of the functions of the soul possible. The relation to the final cause corresponds obviously to hypothetical or conditional necessity, as Aristotle understands it. This causal category is called on to give an account of sleep: this is justified by the need for rest,61 in the same way that an axe has to be made of a hard metal so as to be able to cut.62 Beyond the particular case of rest, all of the strictly vital functions, from the point of view of hypothetical necessity, combine to bring about the characteristic mode of life of the animal. Given a) the repetition of the definition of animal by the possession and exercise of sensation and b) the value of sensation in comparison with the other faculties, this activity can only be sensation or a life lead in virtue of sensation. This does not prevent sensation from being in some cases a moving cause. Thus in bringing about spontaneously a movement of the imagination, and independently of its representative content – as sensation of something – it brings about a series of movements. Equally, it can play the role of the instrument or means in the realisation of natural processes: in particular it is a necessary condition of animal movement. Sensation instructs desire of the good to be pursued or of the danger to be avoided, and in this sense it is necessary to the animal’s preservation.63 Thus touch,

60 731b5-8. 61 Somn.Vig. 2 455b26. 62 See esp. PA I.1 642a9-13; Ph. II.9 200a30-32. 63 One could object that the case of sensation is a little more complicated, insofar as Aristotle, while maintaining very firmly the idea of a fundamental unity of faculties, distinguishes purely cognitive faculties (sensation, imagination, intellect) from the desiderative faculty: there can be no movement without desire, so that from this point of view sensation is not a mover in itself. However, it is a mover when it comes to internal movements, as we have just seen. “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 135 a sense shared universally by all animals, “must of necessity belong”64 to the animal capable of locomotion, in order to be able to guarantee its preservation. This situation conforms to the doctrine in de An., which associates the final and formal causality of the soul with its motive power.65 At any rate it appears that the causal relation between sensation and the other properties of the soul is a circular one: sensation is at once their end and their pre-condition. So sensation appears in turn as a final and as a moving cause.66 In this sense, sensation is the best criterion possible for something belonging to body and soul for those functions which depend on it, that is, for all organic functions. The beginning of De sensu provides a further valuable indication of the subject of PN and indirectly, of the kind of pre-eminence belonging to sensation: it is a matter of studying, in the case of living things in general, which are the actions (praxeis) proper to them and which are the actions common to them.67 This theme is echoed in a passage in On Sleep: After that we have to say through which kinds of movements and actions (praxeis) internal to the body waking and sleep come about.68 Moreover the study of internal actions, which PA is also devoted to,69 cannot merely list the actions, they must be integrated with one another: internal actions cannot be explained separately, because they are both continuous and coherent. They are continuous to the extent that the action of one part works towards the achievement of the action of the part on which it depends, right up to the realisation of the overall activity of the animal. This makes up the unity of the multiple activities and internal movements of the animal, by assigning to them their final end, as is shown by a passage from PA: Since on the one hand every instrument (organon) is for the sake of something (heneka tou), and every part of the body is for the sake of something; and since on the other hand that which is for the sake of something is an action (praxis tis), it is clear that the whole body is constituted for the sake of a complete action. Indeed, (the action of) sawing is not performed for the sake of sawing, but the saw is made for the sake of (the action of) sawing for this is a kind of using (chrêsis). Consequently the body itself is in some way for the sake of the soul, and the parts are equally for the sake of functions which belong naturally to each of them.70

64 anagnkêhuparchein, de An. III.12 434b25-26, Sens. 1 436b15. 65 II.4 415b21-28. 66 As shown well by Carbone (1998). 67 Sens. 1 436a4. 68 Somn.Vig. 2 455b28. 69 See esp. I.5 645b19-22. On this point see the arguments presented in my (Morel, 2002). 70 I.5 645b14-20. “Complete action”: I accept the reading plêrous, in the majority of Mss, following Balme (1972, p. 124). Louis (1956) prefers the reading polumêrous (complex) from the single Ms P. The action being discussed may be called “com- 136 Pierre-Marie Morel

This practical continuity implies also practical coherence, in the sense that the different actions of the animal are not only in certain cases narrowly united, but also related to one principle. On the one hand they are related to the heart in various ways. On the other hand, the praxis of a single anhomoiomerous part mobilises a plurality of properties which “combine with one another” (sugkeimenas allêlais).71 Each homoiomer- ous part has a determinate dynamis – softness, hardness, moisture etc. – whereas the anhomoiomerous parts have several different properties, which are however, functionally compatible: a hand can open or shut. Sensation is the ultimate praxis of the animals organism and thus unifies all the internal movements. Above and beyond strictly organic processes, sensation is essential to the form of life belonging to an animal – its behavioural praxis – because it indicates what it should pursue and avoid. One could object at this point, in view of the distinction established elsewhere72 by Aristotle between kinêsis and praxis, that if sensation is a praxis – and it is really a praxis in the sense in which it is an energeia, i.e. a process which reaches its end immediately – then sensation is distinguished from movements in the strict sense, which are always incomplete processes. However, I wish to make two remarks on this point. Firstly, the distinction between praxis and kinêsis is not always so rigorous, and gets forgotten sometimes, especially in the biological works.73 Secondly, it is perfectly conceivable that a praxis, even a praxis in the narrow sense – a deliberated action that is morally significant – includes a series of connected movements, even if it is not identical with their sum.74 Thus the internal dispositions of the internal organs and even of the sense organs can vary and affect sensation: I can wake up progressively – and this corresponds to a gradual modification of my internal thermal balance and to a purification of my blood, once digestion is completed75 and thus I can gain sensory acuity. Nonetheless, it remains true that at every stage of the sensory process, when there is sensation, there is effective sensation, that is to say, actual sensation, which is not exactly a movement. This does not mean that sensation exhausts all the activities common to body and soul. In the first place, it is not necessary, if sensation is to fulfil its unifying function, that it is present in every point of the organism. Furthermore, organic unity, even if it is governed by sensation, is not a

plex”, but one can just as well call it “complete”, without having to choose the less well supported reading, for it makes up the unity of the multiple internal activities of the animal. 71 PA II.1 646b22. 72 See esp. Metaph. IX.6 1048b18-36. 73 Besides, even if not all movement is an action, all action is a movement, understood in a broad sense. 74 See Natali (2002). 75 Somn.Vig. 3 458a10-25. “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 137 perfect unity: the animal depends on its environment, on the medium (water or air) in which it lives, on the nutrition which it can find, and its relations with other animals; it produces residues, some of which are useless, falls ill and always ends by dying. Aristotle does not claim that sensation is the activity of the animal in each of its parts, but that each of its parts, mediated by the functions that animate them, are connected to sensation. However, sensation is not at fault in this point, because it is enough for it to be the principle activity of the animal. For the principle does not have to be present immediately in all the parts of which it is the principle in order to play its role. That is no doubt the main justification for the relation between the heart and sensory activity. For the heart is the triple principle of life, movement and sensation76 and as such it constitutes only the starting point and the terminus of the various internal movements of the animal: the arrival of nutrition or sensible impressions, the departure of blood, images, internal breath and vital heat. This idea is expressed very clearly in De Motu Animalium, using the image of a well governed city, in which the governing factor – both the heart and the soul – does not have to be present in every place.77 The spontaneous sequence between the internal movements is sufficient guarantee for the effectiveness of their principle. In this sense, sensation is not a diffuse principle, present in each part of the organism, but a central activity, to which the different parts and functions are connected without being reduced to it.78 The use of the expression “common to soul and body” in PN allows one to draw decisive conclusions about the foundation of organic unity. It would appear that in the first place it requires an internal duality, that of the mover and the moved, without which Aristotle’s position would not be distinguishable from a radical monism, which he cannot subscribe to, given the differences between the properties of body and soul. At the same time, the actual unity of soul and body leads us to take the duality in question as teleologically determined: Organic unity is never reducible

76 See e.g. PA III.3 665a11-13. 77 10 703a29-b2. 78 Perhaps it will be objected that the status of noetic activity and of its relation to sensation present a crucial problem: how can one apply to the human being the idea of unification through sensation as its pre-eminent faculty, to the extent that sensation is not its pre-eminent faculty. However, we should note that it is not Aristotle’s aim to distinguish the species within the genus animal. He is rather trying to give a definition valid of the genus as such. Furthermore, the aim is to understand what makes up the unity of the faculties common to body and soul; the question if intellect belongs among these faculties, which is tricky enough for Aristotle himself, refers to a different issue. Finally, if one admits that the soul does not think without images and that because of this fact, it depends necessarily on the body, at least to begin with (see de An. I.1 403a3-16), we could well think that the intellectual faculty too comes about “by sensation”, in a way appropriate to itself. 138 Pierre-Marie Morel to simple material cohesion, to a kind of more or less tough stitching together of tissues and organs. It is always a functional unity, that of a system of activities, of which sensation constitutes the architectonic principle in animals.

References

Balme, David M., 1972, Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium I and De Gen- eratione Animalium I , Translated with notes, Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press. Block, Irving, 1961, “The Order of Aristotle’s Psychological Writings”, in: American Journal of Philology, 82, pp. 50-77. Burnyeat, Myles, 2002, “De anima II 5”, in: Phronesis, 47, pp. 28-90. Carbone, Andrea L., 1998, “La sensazione come tratto distintivo dell’ animale nella zoologia aristotelica”, in: Rivista di Estetica, 1998-2, pp. 95-112. van der Eijk, Philip, 1994, Aristoteles. Uber¨ Träume. Uber¨ Weissagung im Schlaf , übersetzt und erläutert,in: E. Grumach / H. Flashar (eds), Aristoteles Werke in dt. Ubersetzung¨ , Band 14, Teil III, Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Everson, Stephen, 1997, Aristotle on Perception, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Kahn, Charles, 1966, “Sensation and Consciousness in Aristotle’s Psy- chology”, in: Archiv fürGeschichte der Philosophie, 48, pp. 43-81. King, Richard A.H., 2001, Aristotle on Life and Death, London: Duck- worth. Louis, Pierre, 1956, Aristote. Les Parties des Animaux, texte établiet traduit, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Menn, Stephen, 2002 “Aristotle’s Definition of the Soul and the Program- me of the De Anima”, in: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 22, pp. 83-139. Morel, Pierre-Marie, 2000, Aristote. Petits traités d’histoire naturelle (Parva naturalia), trad. fr., intr. et notes, Paris. —, 2002, “Action humaine et action naturelle chez Aristote”, in: Philoso- phie, 73, pp. 36-57. Natali, Carlo, 2002, “Actions et mouvements chez Aristote”, in: Philoso- phie, 73, pp. 12-35; reprinted in: L’Action efficace. Etudes´ sur la philosophie de l’action d’Aristote, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2004. Ross, George R.T., 1906, Aristotle. De Sensu and De Memoria, Text and Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. “Common to soul and body” in the Parva Naturalia 139

Ross, William D., 1955 Aristotle. Parva naturalia, Text with Intr. and Comm., Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siwek, Paul, 1963, Parva naturalia Graece et Latine, edidit, versione auxit, notis illustravit P. S., coll.: Philosophica Lateranensis, 5, Rome. Wendland, Paulus (ed.), 1901, Alexandri in librum de sensu commentarium, in: CAG, III, 1, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Thomas K. Johansen

What’s New in the De Sensu? The Place of the De Sensu in Aristotle’s Psychology

The opening of the De Sensu et Sensibilibus (Sens.) suggests a new beginning in Aristotle’s psychology: Since definitions have been made concerning the soul with respect to itself and about each of its faculties with respect to parts, the next stage is to inquire about animals and all the living beings what their specific and what their common activities (praxeis) are. Let’s take what was said about the soul as established, and let’s speak about what remains and let’s speak first about the things come first. It is clear that the greatest [attributes],1 both those that are common and those that are specific to animals, are common to soul and body, such as sense-perception, memory, anger, appetite and generally desire, as well as pleasure and pain. For these belong to almost all animals. But in addition to these some are common to all that participate in life, whilst others belong only to some of the animals. The greatest of these happen to form four pairs, namely waking and sleeping, youth and old age, inhalation and exhalation, and life and death. We need to consider, concerning these, what each of them is and by what causes they happen. It belongs to the natural philosopher to know the first causes of health and disease. For neither health nor disease can occur in those that are deprived of life. That is why most of the natural philosophers complete their inquiry with medical principles and those doctors who pursue their art more philosophically begin their studies with the principles of natural philosophy. It is clear that all the [attributes] mentioned are common to the soul and the body. For they all either occur with (meta) perception, or through (dia) perception, and some happen to be affections (pathê) of perception, others states (hexeis), some are protections (phulakai) or preservations (sôtêriai) [of perception], and yet others destructions (phthorai) and privations (sterêseis)

1 I supply “attributes” as a complement for “greatest” and again at 436b2 with pnta t leqjènta without implying any categorical restrictions (though clearly prxeic should be taken as included). “Aﬀections” is an alternative term which I will use elsewhere, but I avoid using it here to prevent possible confusion with pjh at 436b4, which, in its contrast with éxeic, seems to carry a more speciﬁc sense. What’s New in the De Sensu? 141

[of perception]. That perception happens to the soul through the body is clear both with and without argument. But we spoke earlier in the de An. about the sense and perceiving, what it is and why this affection happens to animals. (436a1-b10) It is possible to see this passage as introducing the topics not only of the Sens. but also, if rather incompletely, the rest of the Parva Naturalia (PN ). So perception is discussed in the Sens. itself. The four pairs of opposites coincide with the topics of three or four other works in PN : sleep and waking, youth and old age, life and death and inhalation and exhalation are dealt with respectively in the De Somno, De Iuventute et Senectute, De Vita et Morte and De Respiratione.2 One might add the De Memoria from 436a8’s mention of memory, while dreaming (as well as memory) is plausibly included in the attributes mentioned as in various ways involving perception (De Insomniis, De Divinatione).3 Finally, 436a18-9 suggests an interest in the first causes of health and disease (rather than the causes of particular diseases), a subject which may be seen as addressed by the discussion of the causes of life and death in the De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae.4 It is clear from the passage that Aristotle sees the inquiry into these topics as following (ekhomenon) the inquiry in the De Anima (de An.). It is less clear, however, how he sees the two inquiries as related, specifically how he sees the inquiry introduced by the Sens. as differing from that of the de An. This paper attempts to offer some clarification. In response to what I take to be some mistaken attempts to offset the Sens. from the de

2 For the question of how many works we should count here, see R. King (2001, pp. 38-40). 3 Alexander takes the reference to health and disease at 436a17-b1 to a planned work which, if written, had been lost already at his time. 4 All or most of the PN seems then to be introduced by Sens. 1. But are other texts introduced as well? The MA in many manuscripts follows immediately after the Div.Somn. Locomotion is not explicitly mentioned as one of the activities in the introduction, though the MA has things to say about orexis, which is mentioned. Moreover, the Introduction at 436b18-437a1 assumes animal locomotion in the teleology of the distance senses. Alexander (4.1) goes one step further in taking Sens. 1 to introduce also the PA and the HA: “For there is utility in the examination and division concerning animals with reference to the activities which are peculiar to each species of animal and to their parts”. One good reason for connecting the Sens. with the biological works is that, as Lloyd (1992, pp. 147-167) has shown, the biological works rely on the psychological works in the priority assigned to perception in the accounts of animal parts and behaviours. In this regard, the introduction’s claim that most of the activities of animals are through or with perception might be thought to be programmatic also for the biological works. The position of the work on perception and its objects as ﬁrst in the PN could plausibly be seen as reﬂecting the fundamental role that perception plays in the psychology to come not just in the PN but also in subsequent biological works. On the question of the continuity between Aristotle’s psychology and biology, see (in addition to Lloyd op.cit.) van der Eijk (1997, pp. 231-259), especially at 234. 142 Thomas K. Johansen

An., I start by stressing what I see as points of continuity between the two works. I then proceed to offer what I think are the genuine innovations in the Sens. One possible answer to the question, “What is new in the Sens.?”, is to say, “The focus on the material side of the activities of living beings”. This change of focus seems to be suggested by Aristotle’s focus on attributes “common to body and soul”. So we might take Aristotle to say in the first line that whilst he defined the soul in itself in the de An. he now wants to account for the attributes that living beings have insofar as the soul is embodied. However, there are two kinds of point one might take to be involved here. One is to say that the de An. showed little interest in the body when it defined the soul and its parts. However, this point does not seem to do justice to the recommendation of de An. I.1 that we account for those affections that are “with the body” in the manner of the natural philosopher, the physikos. As physikoi (unlike the mathematicians) we define the affections as forms that occur in matter, as formulae in matter, logoi enhuloi. Sens. 1 436a18-b2 suggests that the affections of the soul to be treated in Sens. are the domain of the physikos. Indeed, Sens. 1 seems in its formulation of the sorts of affections to be studied (if not the individual examples) to echo de An. I.1. So at de An. 403a16-9 we read: “And it seems that the affections (pathê)5 of the soul are with the body, anger, gentleness, fear, hope, enthusiasm, and further joy and both loving and hating, for at the same time as these the body is somehow affected”. Compare with this Sens. 436a6-10: “it seems that the greatest [attributes], both those that are common and peculiar to animals, are common to body and soul, such as perception, memory, anger, appetite, and generally desire, and in addition to these pleasure and pain”. We may therefore take it as a point of continuity between the de An. and Sens. that affections that are common to body and soul are to be approached as such, in the manner of the physikos.6 Another way of understanding the claim that the Sens. pays greater attention to the material basis of psychological attributes is to say that whilst the de An. does bring in the body as a necessary element in the natural philosopher’s account of living beings, it does not give much detail. I assume that it is something like this point that Michael Wedin (1988, p. 3) has in mind when he writes that: “Sens.’s distinctly physiological emphasis suggests that the difference between de An. and the PN consists in the fact that the former shows little interest in physiological details”.

5 Aristotle’s examples suggest that pjh here carries a quite general sense of “attribute”, cf. note 1 above. 6 For a similar emphasis on the continuity with de An. I.1, cf. King (op.cit., pp. 34-5). What’s New in the De Sensu? 143

Such a view of the relationship between the de An. and the Sens. would seem grist to the mill of those interpreters of Aristotle who argue that perception for Aristotle requires material changes in the organs of perception. They might say that the impression that there are no such necessary changes is in part a function of the definitional, more abstract approach of the de An., whereas the Sens., with the rest of the PN , will tell us more about the material processes by which perception is realized. Yet as far as proper perception and Sens. go, there seems to be little added in the Sens. to what we are told in de An. about what happens in the sense- organs in perception proper.7 It is, for example, the de An. that tells us that the sense-organ of taste (422b4-5) is made wet in tasting and therefore should have the right degree of liquidity prior to perception, not Sens. It is the de An. that describes the organ of hearing as a chamber containing a bounded mass of air that resonates in hearing (420a17-19); it is the de An. (421b28-422a6) which points to the presence of a “nose-lid” in the organ of smell, lifted in smelling, (discussed also at Sens. 444b22-28 but with little added information, see below). In other words, we don’t have to wait for the Sens. to tell us about what happens in the sense-organs when we perceive: whether or not we take these literally to be material changes is of course another matter. Certainly Aristotle discusses the material basis of perception in sufficient detail to bear out his intention in de An. I.1 to approach affections of the soul such as perception in the manner of the physikos. In the Sens. focused discussion of the sense organs is limited to Chapter 2. As far as any material changes in actual perception is concerned, Aristotle critically engages in Sens. 2 with theories such as Empedocles’ and Democritus’ which do involve material changes in the medium and the eye. But Aristotle himself does not clearly identify any material changes in the eyes over and above those one might or might not have inferred from his discussion of sight in de An. There is a passage in Sens. 6 446b6-9 (the transformation of the letters) that might be taken to imply material changes in the mediation of hearing.8 However, one can hardly say that this passage suggests that Sens. as a whole emphasizes the role of material changes in perception in a way de An. did not. It

7 The situation may differ when we turn to post-perceptual processes of the sort discussed in the De Somno or the De Insomniis. Yet the anti-literalist is generally happy to admit that there are material changes involved in non-standard perceptual processes, such as dreams, since these are activities that are not part of the form and proper function of the sense-faculties. The more accurate formulation of the anti-literalist interpretation is that there are no changes in the sense organs that stand as matter to form in the definition of sense-perception proper. That there are material changes involved in post-perceptual processes falls outside the scope of this claim. 8 Cf., however, Myles Burnyeat’s (1992, p. 430) argument against a literalist reading of the passage. 144 Thomas K. Johansen is hard, then, to find evidence for a new “physiological” approach to the perceptual changes in the Sens. in the relatively limited new information we learn from the Sens., compared to the de An., about the material side of perception. The question whether the Sens. adds to our information of any necessary material changes in actual perception is a somewhat different issue from whether it adds to our knowledge of the sense organs. The overall conclusion of the Sens. 2, that the five senses can be correlated with the four simple bodies, adds little to what we already knew from de An. III.1, where Aristotle also attempted a correlation of the organs with the elements, though admittedly with slightly different outcomes. The eye is the only sense organ that receives extended discussion in Sens. 2, which establishes not only that the seeing part is made of water but also that the surface of the eye is smooth, that its seeing part lies inside the eye, that it has a black and white part, and is attached to passages (poroi). However, the fact that there is no corresponding discussion of the other sense organs and that the account of the sense organs as a whole occupies such a relatively small part of the Sens., with the bulk devoted to the sense objects, should make us suspicious of any claim that the exploration of the material basis of perception provides the fundamental motivation for this work. My own view is that the talk in Sens. 1 of activities that are common to the soul and the body is not in itself meant to indicate a shift towards a greater focus on material explanation. Rather it is meant to mark off the subject-matter so as both to exclude certain topics that were also discussed in the de An. and to include certain topics, not touched on the de An., which we may not know whether to include in the inquiries of a physikos. What is excluded are the affections of the soul referred to in de An. as “peculiar” (idia) to the soul, that is, by the antonym of “common” (koina). The first use in the de An. of idia in this sense is at de An. I.1 402a9-10, where Aristotle observes that some of the affections appear to be idia of the soul, “whilst others belong because of the soul also to the animals”. Again at 403a3-11 he asks whether all of the affections of the soul are common also to the body, or whether there is some affection that is peculiar to the soul. Aristotle answers by saying that intellectual thought (noein) is most like something that is idion to the soul, which is why it may be possible for the soul in respect of the intellect to be separated from the body.9 At 413b24-27 he further suggests that it is, specifically, the theoretical intellect that is most likely to be separable from the other capacities of the soul, and by implication from the body.

9 Cf. also PA I.1 641a32-b10. What’s New in the De Sensu? 145

The phrase “common to body and soul” thus stands in contrast to the phrase “peculiar to the soul”, which in the de An. primarily applies to the theoretical intellect. It seems reasonable therefore to take “common to body and soul” also in the Sens. as meant to exclude the theoretical intellect.10 This exclusion thus leaves us with all the affections of soul that comply with the account of soul as the first actuality of a living body. In other words, by concentrating on the affections common to body and soul we seem to be left with all those affections of the soul that fall under Aristotle’s “most common” account of the soul. By indicating that he will focus on affections common to body and soul, Aristotle seems, then, to have said little more than that he will not talk about the theoretical intellect. However, alongside excluding the theoretical intellect, the phrase “common to body and soul” also serves in Sens. 1 to introduce a range of affections which were not accounted for in the de An. The de An. focused on the affections of the soul that defined the main parts of the soul such as the nutritive, the perceptual, the intellectual and the locomotive. The Sens. announces the study of affections such as sleeping and respiration, which were not dealt with by the de An. Introducing these affections in Sens. 1 as “common to the body and soul” suggests to the reader of the de An. that Aristotle’s approach to them will be that of the physikos, just as the approach to nutrition and perception was in the de An. However, Aristotle also means to indicate in Sens. 1 that the range of this kind of affection is much wider than one might have suspected simply from reading the de An. He thus introduces the affections that are common to the body and the soul in Sens. 1 by first stressing their prevalence: “the greatest (ta megista) [affections], both the common ones and the ones specific to animals, seem to be common to body and soul” (436a6-7). “Greatest” could mean “most important” but I think its primary sense here is that of “having the widest extension”. For having illustrated the greatest affections by perception, memory and so on, Aristotle adds “for these belong to almost all animals”. Meanwhile, other affections belong to all living beings, and yet others only to some animals. He thus promotes the study of affections common to body and soul by highlighting how widespread they are amongst living beings and animals.

10 It is of course true that the biological works, which one may also see Sens. 1 as a first introduction to (cf. note 3 above), discuss various kinds of intellect in connection with animals. So a kind of phronêsis, or perhaps phronêsis of a kind, is ascribed to animals at Parts of Animals II.2 648a2ff. where degrees of intelligence is explained by reference to the thinness and coolness of blood. At History of Animals 588a27- 30 animals are given wisdom by analogy with human beings. How exactly to take this attribution of phronêsis to animals is debated (cf. van der Eijk, op.cit., with Coles (1997)). However, it seems unlikely that any of these discussions attribute theoretical intellect to animals. 146 Thomas K. Johansen

Now Aristotle uses perception as part of his strategy to show that these affections are indeed common to the body and soul: It is clear that all the affections mentioned are common to the soul and the body. For they all either happen with (meta) perception, or through (dia) perception, and some happen to be affections (pathê) of perception, others states (hexeis), some are protections (phulakai) or preservations (sôtêriai) [of perception], and yet others destructions (phthorai) and privations (sterêseis) [of perception]. That perception happens to the soul through the body is clear both with and without argument. (436b2-8) One consequence of using “involving perception” in this way as an index of being common to body and soul would seem to be to put pressure on Aristotle to show the way or ways in which perception involves both body and soul. For if our assent to the claim that all the affections mentioned are common to body and soul relies on our accepting that perception is common to body and soul, it seems that Aristotle had better have a good story to tell about how perception is common to body and soul. However, it is noteworthy how Aristotle sidesteps this question in Sens. 1. All he says is “that perception happens to the soul through the body is clear both with and without account (logos)” (436b6-8). No doubt part of Aristotle’s confidence that we will accept the claim comes from the account he gave in the de An. of the faculties of perception as the first actualities of their sense organs, and perhaps this is the sort of account or logos referred to here. The reader of the de An. will know the specific sort of hylomorphic account that Aristotle would offer to show how perception is common to body and soul. However, Aristotle is also clear that you do not have to accept this account, or indeed any account, to accept that perception is common to body and soul. Here it is important to note Aristotle’s peculiar wording at 436b6-8. He says “that perception happens to the soul through the body”. What is peculiar about the wording is its Platonic ring. Socrates argued at Theaetetus 184c that the sense organs were that through which, rather than that with which, we perceived, whereas the soul itself was that with which we perceived. This preference for thinking that the soul perceives through the body is reflected in other Platonic works. So at Timaeus 43c4-5 Timaeus refers to perception as a motion that arrives at the soul “through the body” (cf. also 45d2, 64b3-6). The implication of this idiom for Plato seems to be that the body is a con- duit for what the soul perceives rather than an integral part or aspect of that which perceives. Now Aristotle’s use of the idiom of perceiving through the body at Sens. 436b6-7 need not be taken as inconsistent with his own hylomorphism: Aristotle too would accept that there is a way in which sense impressions are mediated through the sense organs to a What’s New in the De Sensu? 147 central sensorium.11 Nonetheless, we may say that the expression is significantly chosen because it keeps a door open to a Platonic conception of the relationship between soul and body in perception. Aristotle’s point I take to be this: even if you are a Plato and therefore the sort of person who is most likely to think that the soul undergoes a considerable number of important affections on its own apart from the body, you will accept that perception is an affection common to body and soul.12 For even Plato speaks of perception happening together with the body. Indeed, it is he who may be said not only to have introduced the notion of affections “common to body and soul” in the Philebus 34a3-b8 but to have done so in the particular context of perception. Aristotle’s phrasing reminds us of this Platonic background. It thereby underlines how Aristotle takes the claim that perception is common to body and soul to be uncontentious: you do not have to accept my hylomorphic account to accept the claim; indeed be a Platonist, and you will still accept it. So, in this context, it is not important for Aristotle what story you want to tell of the relationship between the body and the soul in perception; what is important is that you have some story according to which perception is common to body and soul, be it a Platonist one or an Aristotelian one. I think that this conclusion underscores that Aristotle in Sens. 1 does not hang methodological weight on the expression “common to body and soul” itself. “Common to body and soul” marks off a subject-area, paradigmatically illustrated by perception, whose existence we can agree on, even if we are Platonists; whilst the expression to a reader of de An. suggests the explanatory framework of natural philosophy, its Platonic background shows that it is not itself the mark of any distinctively Aristotelian method of psychological explanation. Now I think it is because it is agreed on all sides that perception is common to body and soul that whether an affection involves perception is such a useful marker for deciding whether that affection is common to body and soul. Aristotle wants to use the agreement with Plato that

11 Cf., for example, Aristotle’s stipulation of passages (poroi) that extend from the proper sense organs to the heart in GA II.6 743b35-744a5. The lack of vision caused by severing some of the ophthalmic poroi behind the eye suggests that these (if not all the poroi connected to the eye) have some mediating function in vision, cf. Sens. 438b8-16. For a full discussion of the complex evidence see Lloyd (1978, pp. 215-239), especially at p. 220, and Johansen (1998, pp. 67-95) with Sharples (2005, pp. 349-357). 12 Note the similar phrasing at Somn.Vig. 454a7-11: âpeÈ dà oÖte t¨c yuq¨c Òdion tä aÊsjnesjai oÖte toÜ s¸matoc (oÎ gr dÔnamic, toÔtou kaÈ ânèrgeia; dà legomènh aÒsjhsic ±c ânèrgeia kÐnhsÐc tic di toÜ s¸matoc t¨c yuq¨c âsti), fanerän ±c oÖte t¨c yuq¨c tä pjoc Òdion, oÖt> yuqon sÀma dunatän aÊsjnesjai. As in Sens. 1 so in this passage the dialectical appeal of Aristotle’s claim that perception is common to body and soul is widened by a phrasing acceptable to a Platonist. 148 Thomas K. Johansen perception is common to body and soul as a tool with which to establish that a much wider range of affections than might be thought, particularly by the Platonist, are common to the body and soul. It is in this way that the two claims made in the introduction, that there is a very wide group of affections – the greatest (ta megista) indeed – that are common to body and soul, and that these involve perception, come together. We can demonstrate, Aristotle is saying, that the affections common to body and soul have a great extension because there are so many of them that, in various ways, involve perception. This should of course not be taken it to imply that Aristotle thinks that just because an affection does not involve perception it is therefore not common to body and soul. Aristotle would clearly take the nutritive processes as common to the body and the soul. However, the nutritive processes seem so clearly to involve the body that it is hard to imagine anybody disputing this case: nutrition, after all, maintains or changes the body. Similarly, we might take it that there are emotional affections that clearly engage the body, such as Aristotle’s star example in de An. I.1 403a26-7, anger. There are other cognitive states, however, such as imagination, dreaming, memory, and forms of thinking where the question of their embodiment is much less obvious. It is particularly in these cases that it seems helpful to have a criterion such as “if X is an affection of the soul involving perception, then X is common to body and soul”. In de An. I.1 403a8-10 we saw how this sort of criterion might be used to make even thinking depend on the body: Aristotle suggested that if thinking turned out not to happen without phantasia, then thinking too would not be without the body. It would seem then that even thinking by implication would be “common to the body and soul” (cf. koina kai tou ekhontos, 403a4).13 The Platonist should clearly be unhappy with this conclusion. It seems that his acceptance that perception is common to body and soul has been used as the thin end of the wedge to force the conclusion that even thinking, the activity characteristic of “the soul by itself”, may be an activity shared by the body. Whilst Sens. 1 does not mention thinking, the same tendency to use perception as a lever to expand the domain of affections common to body and soul is in play in the Sens. We can see therefore see Aristotle’s promotion in Sens. 1 of the activities common to body and soul not only as an attempt to stake out the limits of psychological enquiry in the manner

13 It is likely that Aristotle here assumes a further dependency of phantasia on perception (to be fully articulated in de An. III.3 429a1-2). Such a dependency would explain why Aristotle can go from saying, in lines 403a5-7, that the majority of affections do not happen without the body, “such as being angry, courageous, appetitive and generally perceiving”, to saying in the next lines, 403a8-10, that if thinking doesn’t happen without phantasia, then it doesn’t happen without the body either. What’s New in the De Sensu? 149 of the physikos, but also as the attempt to show vis-à-visa Platonist how many psychological phenomena he must accept will be amenable to this sort of inquiry, given his agreement that perception is common to the body and soul. This argument is worth making again in the Sens. given that Aristotle will from now on be addressing a whole range of psychological activities not dealt with in the de An. and of which one might reasonably ask if they too are to be approached in the manner of the physikos. So far my argument has been mainly negative, as directed against the suggestion that the Sens. represents a turn to material explanation of perception of a sort not anticipated or accommodated by the de An. I have stressed the paucity of new information about the material side of perception offered by the Sens. given what the de An. had already told us, and I have emphasized the continuity between the de An. and the Sens. on the claim that there is a class of affections common to the body and soul that are to be studied as such. Moreover, I have pointed to the endoxic nature of the idea that perception belongs to this class and I have argued that this idea is used by Aristotle to establish how comprehensive the class is. Compared to the de An., the novelty in Aristotle’s approach in the Sens. to the affections common to the body and soul lies, it seems, not in a greater emphasis on the bodily side of these affections, but in a greater emphasis on the extension of this class. However, I want now to make a more substantive proposal about the difference between the two works. Again my starting point is the opening lines of Sens. 1. The first sentence suggests two kinds of contrast with the de An. We are told that the de An. offered definitions concerning the soul in itself and concerning each of its several faculties, whereas we will now go on to consider concerning animals and living beings what their proper and common activities are. The first contrast here is between the faculties of the soul itself that have been defined (diôristai) in the de An. and the activities (praxeis) of animals to be considered in what follows. The phrase “the soul itself ” underlines its status as an object of definition in the de An. To say that the de An. was concerned with defining the soul through its faculties is a fair reflection of key programmatic passages in de An. such as II.4 415a14-22. The first contrast which emerges between the de An. and the Sens. is, then, that the de An. considered the faculties of the soul in the context of defining the soul, whereas the Sens. assumes those definitions (cf. 436a5). The second contrast is that the de An. defined the soul itself by its faculties or potentialities (dunameis), whereas the Sens. promises to consider the praxeis of animals and other living beings. The contrast with dunamis suggests that praxis here implies “actuality” (energeia).14 Compare, for this use of praxis to contrast with

14 As read by Alexander of Aphrodisias (ad loc.) : “he [Aristotle] has used the word 150 Thomas K. Johansen dunamis, de An. II.4 415a18-20 where Aristotle says that “the actualities and actions (energeiai kai praxeis) are prior in account (kata ton logon) to the potentialities (dunameis)”.15 However, if the job of defining the faculties of the soul has been done in the de An., as Aristotle suggests, then the point of bringing up the activities (praxeis) in the Sens. is clearly not to use them to define those faculties again. In the Sens. we no longer have the definitional constraint which we had in the de An. whereby we are primarily interested in the activities of the soul insofar as they help us define the characteristic potentialities of the soul. The absence of the definitional constraint in the Sens. has two implications. Firstly, we would expect that where the Sens. and subsequent works discuss the activities of the soul, perception for example, that may define a faculty of the soul, those activities will not be discussed insofar as they serve to define the soul. Secondly, the absence of the definitional outlook gives us reason to think that those activities that the Sens., and works introduced by Sens. 1, will consider will not exclusively be those activities that may serve to define the faculties of the soul. Put differently, given that the Sens. is no longer concerned with activities of living being insofar as they will help us define the faculties of the soul we would expect a wider range of activities to be considered than just those that enter into the definitions of the various kinds of faculty constitutive of the major kinds of living being. These expectations are borne out, I think, by two further points in Sens. 1. The first is that when Aristotle talks about activities at 436a4 it is as activities of animals and living beings, whereas in the previous lines he spoke of the potentialities or faculties of the soul itself as having been defined in the de An. An- imals clearly engage in a lot of activities that do not define their souls. Secondly, the impression that the Sens. and subsequent works will tackle non-definitional activities is confirmed by the examples Aristotle gives which include sleeping and waking, youth and old age, inhalation and exhalation. These are activities that whilst prevalent amongst living beings do not define any of the main kinds of soul in the de An. (nutrition, locomotion, perception, intellect). If we consider the subject-matters of the theses forming the PN : memory and recollection, sleep, dreams (and divination through dreams), longevity, youth and old age, life and death, and respiration, none of these are activities that define faculties of the

‘action’, praxis, here, just as he is accustomed to elsewhere, as a more common alternative to ‘activity’, energeia”. 15 It is may also be worth keeping in mind the wider use of praxeis in PA I.5 645b15ff. and HA VII for characteristic activities of animals. (Praxis of course need not be the same as the human rational agency discussed in NE I.1 1094a1, IV.2 1139a31ff., cf. Cael. II.12 292a22). This wider use is compatible with taking praxeis in the sense of energeiai. What’s New in the De Sensu? 151 sort that will enter into the definitions of any of the major kinds of soul or life forms in the de An. That is of course not to say that they do not relate importantly to these kinds of soul. So, both dreams and memory are affections or activities of the perceptual faculty. However, they are not activities that help define the perceptual faculty. And that is why the consideration of these activities belongs to a new stage of Aristotle’s psychology, the stage initiated by the Sens. Nor should saying that the Sens. introduces the study of affections that do not define the soul be taken to mean that Aristotle will not offer definitions of these activities. On the contrary, he clearly announces at 436a16-17 that we should consider what the conjunctions (suzugiai) waking and sleeping, youth and old age, in- spiration and expiration, life and death each are and why they happen. However, these affections do not play a part in the definition of soul itself or any of its main types. I take it that is why none of them were accounted for in the de An. What about perception itself though? Perception was the centerpiece of Aristotle’s account of the soul in the de An. But if the Sens. is required to complete Aristotle’s account of perception does that not show that the de An.’s definitions of the perceptual faculties were somehow incomplete? No. Again we should distinguish between what Aristotle wants to say about perceptual activities in the context of defining the faculty and what he wants to say about perceptual activities more widely. Attention to Aristotle’s directions to his audience in the Sens. confirms this distinction. Consider, again, how perception is brought in at Sens. 436b1-10: It is clear that all the [attributes] mentioned are common to the soul and the body. For they all either occur with (meta) perception, or through (dia) perception, and some happen to be affections (pathê) of perception, others states (hexeis), some are protections or preservations [of perception], and yet others destructions and privations [of perception]. That perception happens to the soul through the body is clear both with and without argument. But we spoke earlier in the de An. about the sense (aisthêsis) and perceiving (aisthanesthai), what it is (ti estin) and why this affection happens to animals. Aristotle is in effect saying to his audience here: “Don’t ask me now what perception itself is. In the de An., I defined the faculty and the actuality of perception. I also explained why perception belongs to animals (cf. de An. III.12-13). What we shall now deal with are affections that the animals have as a consequence of having perception. These are affections that arise with or through perception, or are in some way states or affections of perception. So in the context of accounting for these affections I will be talking also about perception, but whatever I will be saying won’t alter the account I gave in the de An. of what perception is; rather that account will be assumed and used as the basis for my accounts of the other 152 Thomas K. Johansen affections.” Read in this way the passage confirms that Aristotle wishes to distinguish the inquiry to be conducted in the Sens. and subsequent works into activities involving perception from the inquiry that provided the definition of the faculty and activity of perception in the de An. As we have seen, Sens. 1 presents the next topic after the de An. as the activities of living beings common to body and soul, as they are common and specific to different kinds of living being. Yet the remainder of the Sens. has as its explicit subject matter the sense organs and the sense objects. Indeed, the conclusion of the Sens. at 449b1-3 says simply “it has been said concerning the sense organs and the sense objects in what way they are disposed generally or in relation to each sense organ.” It is hard to recognize the introduction to the Sens. in these lines. We can see a motivation for tackling the two subjects of the sense organs and the sense objects together after the de An.: for if the de An. talked about the sense objects only insofar as they helped define the potentialities of perception and if it talked about the sense organs only insofar as they provided potentialities of perception, then we can understand why one might be curious to know more both about the sense objects and about the sense organs themselves, that is to say apart from their role in defining the sense faculties. However, if we accept this as a plausible motivation for tackling the sense organs and the sense objects together in the work following the de An., then it becomes all the more curious why Aristotle introduces this work in Sens. 1 as one concerned with the various activities of living beings and with the distribution of these activities across living beings.16 What I want to do in the rest of this paper is therefore to consider the discussions of the sense organs and sense objects in the Sens. with a view to showing the relevance of these discussions to the inquiry into the activities of living beings and their distribution. The answer I shall suggest is that the accounts of the sense organs and the sense objects provide Aristotle with the resources for accounting for the non-defining activities of living beings and differences and similarities amongst these activities.17 I have suggested that Sens. 1 sets up the inquiry into activities of living beings that rely on but do not define the main faculties of the soul. I have further suggested that the lifting in the Sens. of what I have called “the definitional constraint” (activities are studied insofar as they allow us to define the major faculties and parts of soul) allows Aristotle to explore

16 As noted above, Sens. 1 may be read as the introduction to all of the PN and we may think that the introduction’s emphasis on activities and their distribution is quite appropriate to the rest of the PN . My point here is that we also have to make sense of Sens. 1 as an introduction to the Sens. itself. 17 Cf. van der Eijk (op.cit., p. 233): “the material bodily embedding of psychic functions accounts for the occurrence of variations (diaphora) both in the distribution of these functions over various kinds of animals and in their exercise.” What’s New in the De Sensu? 153 differences in the ways in which the same faculties are realized in different living beings. The contrast with the definitional approach of the de An. is highlighted by the introduction to each of the main themes of the Sens., the sense organs in Sens. 2 and the sense-objects in Sens. 3. Chapter 2 introduces the discussion of the sense organs as follows: “We have already spoken about the faculty (dunamis) which each of the senses has. But as to the parts of the body in which the sense organs naturally occur, some seek to find them in accordance with the elemental bodies” (437a18-20). Again this seems to be a back-reference to the de An. as having defined the sense faculties. The reference is meant to allow Aristotle to move on to a new subject-matter, the composition of the sense organs. When Sens. 2 concludes by saying that the perceiving parts of the body have now been defined, we can take Aristotle to imply that we have now defined not only the perceptual faculty, in the de An., but also its bodily parts, in Sens. 2. Sens. 3, in turn, begins as follows: Concerning the sensibles that correspond to each sense organ, I mean for example colour, sound, odour, flavour and the tangible, we have spoken generally about these in the de An., what their function (ergon) is and what the activity (to energein) is according to each of the sense-organs. But we need to inquire what we should say that each of them is, for example what colour is or what sound is or what odour is or flavour, and similarly concerning touch but firstly we should inquire about colour. For each of them is said in two ways, the one as actuality, the other as potentiality. We said in the de An. how colour and sound are the same as or different from the senses in actuality, such as seeing and hearing. But let’s now say what each of them is such that it will produce perception and its actuality. (439a6-17) The approach to the sense objects underlines the difference between the de An. and the Sens. In the de An. the sense objects were discussed insofar as their actuality allowed us to determine the actuality of the senses. The thought in de An. II.4 415a16-21 was that since actuality is prior in account (logos) to potentiality and the actuality of the sense object is prior to the actuality of the sense faculty, we need to consider the actuality of the sense object first when defining the sense faculties. That was why the discussions of the five senses in de An. Book II, Chapters 7-11 began with an account of the proper object of each sense faculty. Aristotle’s interest in the sense objects in the de An. was thus determined by their role in defining the sense faculties, a role they had because they were in actuality what the senses were in potentiality. Accordingly, in the passage just quoted Aristotle suggests that the de An. said what colour and sound were in actuality in their relation to the senses but not what they were in potentiality. The reason, it now seems clear, why he only said in de An. what the sense objects were in actuality was that it was the actualities of the sense objects that he needed to identify in 154 Thomas K. Johansen order to define the sense faculties. Now we might think that if we know the actuality of the sense object then we can also now easily state its potentiality insofar as the potentiality of the sense object to be perceived is explained by its actuality (just as the potentiality of the sense faculty is explained by its actuality). However, Aristotle makes it clear in the next sentence that by considering the sense objects in potentiality he means considering what the sense object is such that it has the potentiality to bring about perception: “let’s now say what each of the sense objects is so as to bring about perception in actuality”. In other words, what Aristotle wants now is an account of the sense objects which explains why they are capable of bringing about perceptions.18 If this account is to be genuinely explanatory, the sense objects’ role in perception cannot itself feature in the account. Rather what we are looking for is some understanding of features of the sense object in which the capacity to cause perception is, as we might say, grounded. There will, then, be two sides to accounting for the sense objects in the Sens.: one is to show what the sense objects are as such, the other to show the consequences of the sense objects’ being such for perception. Notice again the difference between this approach to the sense objects and that of the de An.: the Sens. does not approach the nature of the sense objects from the point of view of simply defining the sense faculties; rather it enjoins us to describe, first, the nature of sense objects independently of perception, and then the consequences for perception and its actuality (tênaisthêsinkai tênenergeian, 439a17) of the sense objects’ having this nature. A good example of how the Sens. differs in just this way from the de An. is the discussion of colour. In the de An. II.7 colour was said by nature to have the power to change the actually transparent (418a31-b1, 419a9-11). This account of colour was clearly linked to the role of colour in vision, insofar as vision happens when the sense of sight is affected by the colour through the actually transparent medium.19 Moreover, the account of colour in de An. II.7 was generic. Aristotle did on other occasions in the de An. mention species of colour as well as species of other sensibles (422b10-16, 426b8-12). His reason for mentioning different species of sensible on these occasions was to indicate the range of qualities that the sense faculty in question had the potentiality to assume in perception (so 422b10-16). This information was particularly called for by Aris- totle’s conception of the sense-faculty as a potentiality to discriminate (krinein), where “discriminating” means discriminating between species

18 In tÐ dà ékaston aÎtÀn ïn poi sei tn aÒsjhsin kaÈ tn ânèrgeian at 439a16-17 the participle în is causal/explanatory. 19 This link is not enough to make Aristotle’s definition of vision in terms of colour circular: the medium of vision, like the sense organ of vision, is actually transparent, but neither is part of the meaning of “the actually transparent”. What’s New in the De Sensu? 155 within a genus of sensible (421a26-b2, 426b8-16). However, the de An. provided no account of colour independently of vision, nor of the different species of colour. In contrast, Aristotle in Sens. 3 offers us the following account of colour that allows us to explain the different species of colour and thereby the different species of colour vision. So, we are told, colour is “the boundary of the transparent in a bounded body” (439b11-12). Given our understanding of light and darkness in unbounded bodies like air and water in terms of the actuality or privation of transparency, we can now understand white and black as analogous states of transparency in bounded objects (439b14-18). On that basis, Aristotle thinks we can explain the other colours as mixtures of white and black according to certain ratios. Finally, we can explain the different kinds of colour perception as the result of the agency of the different colours on the faculty of sight. On this last point too the Sens. is of course fully consistent with the de An.: it was after all in the de An. that we learnt that the faculty of sight has the ability to be changed by colour as such and that the faculty is in potentiality what the colour is in actuality. So to be told that there are seven kinds of colour perception because there are seven kinds of colour is fully in line with the de An.’s understanding of the relationship between sense object and sense perception. Indeed, if the de An. was right in ascribing causal priority to the sense objects over the actuality of the senses, then Aristotle positively has to differentiate the different kinds of colour if he wants to differentiate the different kinds of vision. For, given the causal priority of colour over vision, it would only be if there were different kinds of colour that we could explain why colour on different occasions acts so as to bring about different kinds of colour vision. However, it is only in the Sens., and not in the de An., that Aristotle explains the different kinds of colour and thereby the different kinds of colour vision, for the reason that these differences were not relevant to the definition of sight as such in the de An. So the fact that are seven species of colour was not relevant to the definition of sight, whereas it is relevant to our understanding of the different kinds of perception that animals engage in, given that they have the faculty of sight.20 The species of colour explain a further aspect of our perceptions, namely, their pleasantness or painfulness. Now which perceptions are pleasurable or painful is clearly an important factor in explaining animal behaviour. We are told in de An. II.2 413b23-4 (cf. 414b4) that wherever there is perception, there are pleasure and pain, and wherever there are

20 If Myles Burnyeat (2004, pp. 177-180) is right to say that the material on sound originally included in the Sens. was moved to de An. II.8, then one of the changes made to the material seems to be a drastic reduction in the discussion of the different kinds of sound. All we get on this subject in de An. II.8 is a brief discourse (420a26-b4) on the analogies between sharp and flat in sound and in touch. 156 Thomas K. Johansen pleasure and pain, there is also appetite. The connection between perception and desire is further explored in the account of animal motion in de An. III.9-11. It seems that animals come to desire and pursue objects when they have perceived them as pleasurable and shun them when they have perceived them as painful. However, with the possible exception of taste,21 pleasantness and painfulness play no role in defining the various kinds of perception in the de An.22 The pleasantness and painfulness of sense objects are features that do not play a role in the definition of the sense faculties in Book 2 of the de An. That role is performed by the proper objects of the senses. Pleasantness and painfulness are, however, features of the sense objects that arise out of their nature and which significantly affect our perceptions. In other words, features that are just the job for the Sens. Aristotle accounts for the pleasantness of colours and flavours in terms of the ratios in which their ingredients, white and black, are mixed. So there are seven pleasant colours because there are seven colours mixed from white and black according to definite ratios expressible by numbers (440a1, 442a12-19). The colours that are mixed according to indefinite ratios are less pleasant. Similarly, in the case of sounds, the pleasant ones are concords (sumphôniai) of high and low in accordance with numerical ratios (439b25-440a6). It is, then, by understanding how colours, sounds, and flavours are mixed that we come to understand why some perceptions are pleasant and others not. We have another example, I submit, of how a fuller characterization of the sense objects than that provided by the de An. allows Aristotle in the Sens. to explain aspects of perception not included in the definition of the sense faculties. I have given examples from the Sens. of how differences in the sense objects explain aspects of perception other than those used to define the senses in the de An. Is there any evidence in the Sens. of Aristotle’s using his account of the sense objects also to demonstrate likenesses and differences between living beings? The discussion of smell in Sens. 5, I think, presents a paradigm of how characteristics of the sense objects, as well as the sense organs, allow Aristotle to establish significant differences and similarities between the perceptual activities of different animals. It may be correct, with W.D. Ross and Philip van der Eijk, to give a low

21 tä dÔ and tä luphrìn are mentioned as objects of taste at de An. III.13 435b23, whilst the proper object of taste, flavour (qumìc), is described at de An. II.3 414b13 as a kind of seasoning (¡dusm ti). However, neither ¡dusma nor dÔ is mentioned as a proper object of taste in the definition of taste in de An. II.10. tä glukÔ is mentioned as one of the species of flavour at de An. III.2 426b11, but whether the sweet flavour is also pleasant would seem to depend on one’s attitude to food and drink at a given time. 22 The pleasantness of odours was also mentioned in connection with the object of smell (421a11-13), but this showed our inadequate access as human beings to the proper object of smell. What’s New in the De Sensu? 157 estimate of the amount of comparative psychology offered by the PN in general and the Sens. in particular.23 Nonetheless, the discussion of smell in Sens. 5 provides a significant example of the sort of inquiry into the differences and similarities between animal activities which will be pursued on a much larger scale in the Parts of Animals, History of Animals and Generation of Animals. The difference in smell in humans and other animals is discussed at some length in Chapter 5 (443b17-444b7). The account of this difference is driven, as we would expect from the causal priority of the sense objects, by an account of the differences within the sense object, odour. Aristotle explains that there are two different kinds of odour, one that is pleasant in itself, another that is pleasant only accidentally. Odours that are pleasant accidentally are pleasant only if the perceiver has a desire to eat or drink the odorous object, whereas odours that are pleasant in themselves are pleasant irrespective of our desires to eat and drink. Only humans perceive the odours that are pleasant in themselves, a form of perception that has salutary effects only on humans. It is clear that such differences do not imply that the animals and humans do not have the same sense of smell; what we have rather is a differentiation of two species within the object of smell (cf. 443b17) and thus a differentiation of two species of smelling, one of which is available only to humans. The de An.’s definition of smell as a faculty therefore remains generally true for both humans and other animals. Notice how in the discussion of the differences between human and animal smell Aristotle returns to the distinction between what is special and what is common, introduced in the opening lines of Sens. 1. So the perceptions of odours that are accidentally pleasant are said to be “common to all animals” (443b24-26),24 whereas the smelling of odours that

23 David Ross (1955, p. 18) observes that “His [Aristotle’s] psychology aims at being comparative, and at being psycho-physical. Comparative psychology is not very prominent in what follows, until we come to the Long. and the Juv.”. Ross notes the elements of comparative psychology in other treatises in the PN (e.g. in the discussion of smell in Sens. 5), though these are slim pickings by comparison with the PA and the HA. However, it may be more proper to say, not that comparative psychology is not prominent in the PN , but that it is comparative psychology in its capacity of establishing the common activities of animals that comes to the fore in the PN , whereas comparative psychology in its capacity of showing the differences is more in evidence in the works that in our editions follow the PN . So van der Eijk (op.cit., p. 235) “One might say that History of Animals VII-IX and Generation of Animals V discuss the differences that manifest themselves among different species of organisms with regard to, i.a., to their perceptual apparatus, whereas in de An. and PN Aristotle focuses on what all living beings possessing sense-perception have in common” (his italics). 24 ¹ste aÝtai [sc. aÉ æsmaÐ] mèn, kajper eÒpomen, kat sumbebhkäc êqousi tä dÌ kaÈ luphrìn, diä kaÈ pntwn eÊsÈ koinaÈ tÀn z¼wn; cf. 444b5-6. 158 Thomas K. Johansen are pleasant in themselves is “special to the nature of man” (444a28-29).25 Smelling in general is of course an activity that is special to some animals (those moving in space), whilst smelling of the per se pleasant odours is special to a subgroup of these animals. The differentiation of two species of odour in Sens. 5 is an innovation compared to the treatment of smell in the de An. and one that allows Aristotle, as we have seen, to identify one sort of olfaction that is special to one group of living beings, humans, as well as another sort that is common to all animals. We have, then, a clear example from the Sens. of how the inquiry into the sense objects allows Aristotle to identify some perceptual activities as special to some animals, and others as common to a larger group of animals. We have, in other words, a clear example of the study into the sense objects deliver- ing what Sens. 1 promised, an account of activities that are common and special to animals. It is in order to show that the smelling of the accidentally pleasant odours is truly a common activity that Aristotle brings in the case of non-breathing animals: But that creatures which do not breathe have the olfactory sense is evident. For fishes, and all insects as a class, have, thanks to the species of odour correlated with nutrient, a keen olfactory sense of their proper food from a distance, even when they are very far away from it; such is the case with bees, and also with the class of small ants, which some denominate knipes. Among marine animals, too, the murex and many other similar animals have an acute perception of their food by odour. (444b7-15, revised Oxford translation by J.I. Beare) There is a parallel discussion in de An. II.9 421b9-422a7 of smell in non- breathing animals. The de An. passage is much less specific than here in identifying the various species of non-breathing animals, and that in itself may be taken as evidence of the greater interest in comparative psychology in the Sens. However, there is nonetheless sufficient similarity between the two discussions to threaten my claim that the Sens. has a different approach from the de An. to the activities of perception. So let me briefly highlight the difference between the ways in which the two works discuss the case of non-breathing animals. Firstly, what is noticeable in the de An. is that the smell of non-breathing animals was brought up as a problem: given that smell happens in humans through inhalation but not so in the non-breathing animals is what we call smell in fact two senses (421b20- 1)? No, answered Aristotle, for the non-breathing animals respond to the same odours as we. Since they perceive the same “smellable” (osphran- ton) as we, the sense by which they respond to it must be smell, for the sense of smell just is the sense by which we perceive the smellable. In the

25 Òdion t¨c toÜ njr¸pou fÔsewc; cf. 444a3. What’s New in the De Sensu? 159

Sens., meanwhile, the case of non-breathing animals is not used to raise a definitional question about the sense of smell. It is simply stated as “evident” that the non-breathing animals perceive odours, and this is a point made in order to show that they (despite their different mechanisms of smelling) like other animals are attracted to odours on the basis of their relationship to food and drink. In Sens. 5 the case is thus used to underline that the odours that are pleasant accidentally are so to all animals: wherever there is smell, animals perceive odours as pleasant insofar as they attracted to the odorous object as food or drink, even in the case of non-breathing animals. So far I have said a good deal about how differences within the sense objects allow Aristotle to explain both different kinds of perceptual activity and differences in those activities between different animals. What about the sense organs? How, if at all, do they enter into the explanation of perceptual activities in the Sens.? Do the sense organs too lend themselves to comparative psychology? Let us return firstly to Sens. 2. As already mentioned, this chapter revisits the assignment of the sense organs to the four elements in de An. III.1. In de An. III.1 Aristotle was concerned to show that there was no other sense faculty than the five considered in Book II. His argument was that since all of the four elements were represented in our sense organs, and all the sensible properties were properties of the four elements, we had by virtue having of those sense organs the ability to perceive all the sensible properties. In Sens. 2 Aris- totle again correlates the elements with the organs, though with minor alterations: smell, for example, is assigned to fire in Sens. 2 but to air or water in de An. III.1. In the Sens. Aristotle’s interest, however, is not in the completeness of the senses as defined in de An. Book II; it is in the composition of the sense organs themselves. In the case of the eye, it is clear that the Sens. 438b2-5 assumes the lesson of de An. II.7 that what is to be changed by colour has to be transparent in order to be acted on by colour. It was implied here that the sense organ of sight too had to be transparent. However, in the context of defining sight de An. II.7 did not itself draw the implication that the eye had to be made of water or any particular kind of transparent matter. That the organ of sight is made of water is something we learn only later in de An. III.1. This omission in de An. II.7 should not surprise us since the identification of the particular transparent matter of the sense organ of sight is not called for by the definition of the definition of sight as a faculty. The identification, however, is a job for the Sens. 2, given its concern for the composition of the sense organ in themselves. Aristotle establishes the watery composition of the eye by reference to a range of phenomena or events. It is tempting to label this section of Sens. 2 “things that do and do not befall the organ of sight 160 Thomas K. Johansen by virtue of its composition”.26 He thus starts with an affection (pathos) of the eye which has led people to identify the matter of the eye with fire by their ignorance of its true cause.27 This is the affection of the flash that appears when one’s eyes are rubbed. The flash is not to be explained by any fire in the eye, but rather by its smoothness. There are other aspects of the organ of sight that the fiery composition thesis does not explain: that sight does not see itself, that it does not see without light, and that we see in wet conditions and in the cold. There is also the phenomenon of reflections of objects in the eye, which to some suggests that the eye sees those objects by means of the reflections, but which is in fact to be explained again by the smoothness of the eye. More generally, Aristotle calls for a proper understanding of optics, which will explain why the eye as a smooth object behaves such as to give rise flashes or reflections. Other aspects of the composition of the eye are brought in to support the watery composition of the seeing part, such as the fact that the white of the eye is fat and oily. This explains why the water in the eyes is resis- tant to cold,28 and so, presumably why our sight is able to function even in freezing conditions, a point that the fiery composition thesis failed to explain (437b21-22). These are all accidents of the eye that are explained by the fact that the eye is made of water, and which cannot be explained on the alternative fiery composition thesis. We find in the watery composition of the eye, then, explanations of various aspects of sight, and it is the fact that the watery composition thesis explains these aspects that for Aristotle recommends it to us rather than the fiery composition thesis. Where de An. II.7 only brought us to the point of appreciating that the organ of sight would have to be transparent, Sens. 2 has shown us an eye that is not only transparent but watery, smooth, and in parts oily. These are features that allow us better to understand a range of affections of the eye, some relevant to vision, others not. As far as comparative psychology goes, the discussion of the matter of the sense organs does provide material for comparisons between different animals. At 438a22-25 the fact that the white of the eyes of blooded animals is fat and oily explains why they do not freeze in the cold, whereas the eyes of bloodless animals have hard skin to provide similar protection. An explanation of why both blooded and bloodless animals can see in cold conditions thus follows from a consideration of different, but functionally

26 Time and again Aristotle refers in the discussion to what does or does not happen (sumbainei, 437a25, a29, 437b2, b5, b23, 438a7, a13, 438b12, b17). 27 Sens. 437a22-23: poioÜsi dà pntec tn îyin puräc di tä pjouc tinäc gnoeØn tn aÊtÐan. 28 Sens. 438a21-4: íper di toÜt> âstÐ, präc tä diamènein tä Ígrän phkton, kaÈ di toÜto toÜ s¸matoc rrigìtaton å æfjalmìc âstin; oÎdeÈc gr pw tä ântäc tÀn blefrwn ârrÐgwsen. What’s New in the De Sensu? 161 analogous, features of their eyes. The discussion in Sens. 5 provides further examples. The peculiar human ability to perceive odours that are pleasant in themselves is related to the peculiar coldness of man’s brain. Since these odours are hot they rise through inhalation to the brain and prevent it from getting too cold. Alongside this peculiar feature of man’s physiology, which helps explain the peculiar way in which smell happens in humans, our organ of smell also has features shared with all other blooded animals. Blooded animals smell only through breathing, the reason being that their organ of smell is covered by a lid, comparable to the eye-lid, which is removed only through inhalation of air. The fact that blooded animals breathe only through inhalation naturally leads Aristotle to wonder what the organ of smell could be in non-breathing animals. This is a question that has been on the cards since Sens. 2. Aristotle suggested in Sens. 2 438b25 that smell could be correlated with fire since odour was a smoke- like exhalation. But in Sens. 5 443a30 he explicitly retracted this claim because “a smoke-like exhalation cannot occur in water and water animals too smell”. Given this retraction the puzzle at 444b15, “it is not equally certain what the organ is whereby they [non-breathing animals] perceive (odours)”, is entirely appropriate. Aristotle’s solution is to explain the difference between the organs of smell in breathing and non-breathing animals by analogy with the difference in the eyes between soft-eyed animals with eye-lids, like man, and hard-eyed animals with none. This difference in the organs further shows why breathing animals only smell when they breathe but the non-breathing ones are able to smell at all times, “on the basis of what is possible for them from the start” (444b27-8). It is true that there is a considerable overlap between the comparative material on smell mentioned in Sens. 5 and in de An. II.9. De An. II.9, like Sens. 5, points both to the inferiority of human smell and the superiority of human touch. However, the reason why Aristotle in de An. II.9 talked about the difference between human and animal smell is that he wanted to underline the difficulty for us as humans in identifying the proper object of smell and therefore the difficulty we find when trying to define the sense of smell by its proper object: Smell and its object are much less easy to determine than what we have hitherto discussed; the distinguishing characteristic of smell is less obvious than those of sound and colour. The reason for this is that our power of smell is less discriminating and in general inferior to that of many species of animals. (421a7-10) All of this made good sense as an exploration of why we have peculiar difficulties in defining smell compared to the other senses. Aristotle then (421a10-b8) proceeded to explain why human smell is inaccurate (because of its organ), how it is imprecise (we have only access to odours based on the pleasant and painful and name them after flavours), and he naturally 162 Thomas K. Johansen drew comparisons with the relative accuracy of our other senses. He also argued (421b9-422a7) that smell is a mediated sense and in this context he brought in the difference between blooded animals which smell by breathing in air and animals that smell in the medium of water. He explained why smell happens by inhalation in blooded animals: we have a sort of “nose-lid” comparable to the eye-lid that is lifted when we breathe in. However, the key point for Aristotle in deploying the comparative material in de An. II.9 was to show that the sense of smell can defined as the same irrespective of the mechanisms by which animals smell. Smell is whatever sense we perceive odours by, whether by inhalation or not. Moreover, smell is always a mediated sense whether we smell in water or air; there is, therefore, no danger of smell collapsing into a form of taste.29 The comparative material is thus used in the de An. to show the difficulty of defining smell and the universality of the definition of smell. In contrast, the comparative material does not relate in Sens. 5 to the definition of the faculty of smell; rather it was used highlight differences as well as similarities between the sense objects and the sense organs, differences which in turn we could use to explain the modalities of olfaction in different animals. What I hope to have shown here is that, whilst Sens. 5 revisits some of the comparative material from de An. II.9, it does so in a manner that is consistent with the distinctive concerns of the Sens. with the nature of the sense-objects (cf. the distinction between two species of odour) and the composition of the sense-organs (cf. the difference between the organ of smell in breathing and non-breathing animals).30 These concerns are distinct from the question that marked Aristotle’s discussion in de An. II.9, namely, that of the implications of non-breathing olfaction for the definition of the faculty of smell as a distinct and unitary faculty. How, finally, do the aporiai in chapters 6 and 7 of the Sens. tie in with this interpretation? The aporiai concern the sense objects. However, it is clear that Aristotle wishes to draw the implications for actual perception from these aporiai. So he asks whether the power of the sense-objects is infinitely divisible, and says that if so, then our perception of the sense objects too should also be infinitely divisible in the sense that there should be a perception of every part of what is infinitely divisible. He resolves the aporia by showing how, although the sense object is infinitely divisible,

29 On Aristotle’s difficulties in defining smell in a manner that makes it distinct from the contact senses, see Johansen (1996). 30 Indirectly, there is support here for my earlier claim that the Sens. provides relatively little new information about the sense organs compared to the de An.: what is striking, in cases such as the correlation of the senses with the elements and the human “nose-lid”, is how the Sens. recycles material on the sense organs from the de An. to reflect its own distinctive concerns. What’s New in the De Sensu? 163 each part need only be actually perceptible as part of the whole to which it belongs. We can divide one “ten-thousandth part in a grain of millet” and this part will be actually perceptible as part of the millet grain, but not on its own where it is only potentially visible (445b7-446a20). The aporia is thus dealt with by drawing the appropriate distinction on the side of the sense object between perceptible in potentiality and perceptible in actuality. Another question explicitly raised as a question about the sense perceptions (peri tas aisthêseis, 447a12) is whether “it is possible or not that one should perceive two objects simultaneously in the same indivisible time” (447a12-14). This aporia is dealt with by understanding how the same sense object can be qualified by different attributes at the same time (449a13-20). Again, in these aporiai the explanation of the accidents of perception proceeds from a fuller understanding of the modalities of the sense objects. In conclusion, I take it as a recommendation of my interpretation that it makes sense of two pressing questions about the Sens. The first is the relationship between the de An. and the Sens. The claim that the reference in Sens. 1 to the study of affections common to the body and soul heralds a turn to a more “physiological” style of inquiry does not reflect the contents of either the Sens. or the de An. Already the de An. was concerned with the affections common to body and soul and provided material about the bodily aspect of these affections as and when it was relevant to defining the faculties of the soul. Indeed, we have seen a significant amount of this material recycled in the Sens. 2 and Sens. 5 in order to account for the sense organs. My alternative interpretation said that the study of the sense organs and the sense objects in the Sens. was motivated by Aristotle’s wish to explain these independently of their roles in defining the sense faculties, the roles according to which they had been accounted for in the de An. The other question concerns the relevance of the introduction of Sens. 1 to the main business of the Sens., the discussion of the sense organs and the sense objects. The explanation I have given is that, on the principle that the sense objects are causally prior to the acts of perception, we can account for the variety of sensory activities by providing a fuller account of the sense objects than that required to define the sense faculties as such. Moreover, we can use our understanding of the nature of the sense organs to explain a range of features of perception (such as how we can see in the cold or how we smell by breathing) – which do not enter into our definitions of the senses. Since attributes of perception that do not define the senses were such that creatures with the same senses might differ with respect to them, we could meaningfully pursue questions as to which of these attributes where shared by which species and why. The key suggestion, then, was to draw the contrast between the de An. and 164 Thomas K. Johansen

Sens. in terms of the de An. being a work meant to deﬁne the faculties, and thereby the main kinds of soul, and the Sens. a work that sets out to account for the various activities of various living beings that do not deﬁne those faculties but which they engage as a result of having those faculties. In this way, the Sens. reads, as it should, as a stage in Aristotle’s psychology premised on, but also distinct from, that of the de An.

References

Burnyeat, Myles, 1992, “How much happens when Aristotle sees red or hears middle C? Remarks on De Anima 2.7-8”, in: M.C. Nussbaum / A.O. Rorty (eds), Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, Oxford: Oxford University Press. —, 2004, “Aristotelian Revisions: The Case of De Sensu”, in: Apeiron, 37, pp. 177-180. Coles, Andrew, 1997, “Animal and Childhood Cognition in Aristotle’s Biology and the Scala Naturae”, in: W. Kullmann / S. Föllinger (eds), Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, pp. 287-324. van der Eijk, Philip J., 1997, “The Matter of Mind: Aristotle on the Bi- ology of ‘Psychic’ Processes”, in: W. Kullmann / S. Föllinger(eds), Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, Stutt- gart: Steiner Verlag, pp. 231-259. Johansen, Thomas K., 1996, “Aristotle on the Sense of Smell”, in: Phro- nesis, 41, pp. 1-19. —, 1998, Aristotle on the Sense-Organs, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press. King, Richard A.H., 2001, Aristotle on Life and Death, London: Duck- worth. Lloyd, Geoffrey E.R., 1978, “The Empirical Basis of the Physiology of the Parva Naturalia”, in: G.E.R. Lloyd / G.E.L. Owen (eds), Aris- totle on Mind and the Senses, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 215-239. —, 1992, “Aspects of the Relationship Between Aristotle’s Psychology and his Zoology”, in: M.C. Nussbaum / A.O. Rorty (eds), Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 147-167. Sharples, Robert W., 2005, “Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Nature and Location of Vision”, in: R. Salles (ed.), Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought. Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji, Ox- ford: Clarendon Press. Wedin, Michael V., 1988, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle, Yale: New Haven. Robert W. Sharples Common to Body and Soul: Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle∗

An examination of how Aristotle’s successors in the Peripatos dealt with phenomena that are “common to body and soul” seems appropriate, because those who regarded themselves as in some sense in an Aristotelian tradition were, to a varying extent, building upon aspects of what Aris- totle said, and in some cases trying to arrive at an interpretation of what he had meant – the same task, mutatis mutandis, on which we are now engaged. I do not indeed want to claim that examination of the writings of Aristotle’s successors will necessarily add anything to our understanding of Aristotle himself that we could not work out for ourselves by studying Aristotle’s writings alone. The interest of the texts I shall be looking at is essentially historical, though I hope that does not prevent its being philosophical as well. I should also say at the outset that I am not making great claims for any of the texts or authors I shall be considering; none of them is, arguably, in the ﬁrst rank of importance. Even the most humble, however, may provide some grist for the mill of discussion. I am thinking here of the pseudo-Aristotle treatise On Breath, a text which Julia An- nas, who is more open-minded than some scholars about the interest of the more obscure texts of classical antiquity,1 has described as a “dismal little work”.2 In terms of innovative thinking or systematic treatment of the topic that is true, but the treatise, if we can call it that, is essentially

∗ This is a version of the paper given at Munich on 9th September 2003, revised in the light of discussion at the conference and other comments thereafter; I am grateful to all who have contributed comments, and in particular to Andrew Barker, Victor Caston, Jim Hankinson, Johannes H¨ubner,Edward Hussey, Thomas Jo- hansen, Christof Rapp and Robert Temple. Translations except where otherwise acknowledged are my own. 1 For example in her statement (Annas, 1993, pp. 144-145), which I believe to be correct though some have challenged it, that Alexander, Mantissa 156-9, “does a much better job” than Aristotle in the Ethics of demonstrating the existence of a single natural justice which is best everywhere. Cf. Sharples (2005). 2 Annas (1992, p. 27). 166 Robert W. Sharples a series of aporetic discussions relating to the origin and various aspects of the functioning of pneuma in animal bodies, and so may at least serve to indicate, explicitly or implicitly or indeed by omission, some possible perspectives on the issue with which we are concerned.3 In relating the later discussions to Aristotle’s own doctrine I take it that the latter has the following implications:

(A) Any contrast between body and soul, or between their activities or functions, must fall under one of the following three descriptions.

(A1) It is a contrast between two ways of looking at a single phenomenon, for example at anger which is both the boiling of blood around the heart (matter) and the desire to hurt another in return (form).4

Or else (A2) it is a contrast between those phenomena that involve both body and soul, on the one hand, and, on the other, those which involve only the body, behaving in a way that an inanimate body could equally well behave – for example if, when I am pushed oﬀ a cliﬀ, my body falls and lands on top of someone, just as a rock would.5

Or else (A3) it is a contrast between those phenomena that involve both body and soul, on the one hand, and, on the other, activities of soul that do not involve the body at all, if there are any – the only candidate for Aristotle being the activity of intellect, though even here there are well-known issues about whether intellect can in fact function without phantasia.6

3 Cf. Roselli (1992, pp. 8-9). It does not seem entirely inappropriate to compare the manner adopted in this text to that of Theophrastus’ so-called Metaphysics, for all that the range of issues covered in De Spiritu is both much narrower and of much less general philosophical import; one particular feature that the treatise shares with Theophrastus is the view that causes or principles should only be inquired into up to a certain point (485a4-5; cf. Theophrastus, Metaphysics 8 9b1-24, and fr. 158-159 in (Theophrastus, 1992) [henceforth abbreviated as FHS&G]). 4 Aristotle, de An. I.1 403a29-b7. 5 Alexander may provide a better example of something involving only the body and not the soul, later in this paper: see below, at p. 183. 6 And cf. Caston (1997, p. 334, n. 57): “Unless Aristotle believes that there could be something exactly like a human in all other respects, but lacking this power [the intellect] . . . then he must allow the ability to think to supervene on the body as a whole.” Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 167

(I suppose there is a fourth logical possibility, combining the second member of A2 with the second of A3, but it is harder to think of contexts in which this would naturally arise; engaging in theoretical contemplation while falling oﬀ a cliﬀ, perhaps.) What there ought not to be room for is

(X) a contrast, stated as one between body and soul, which is in fact a contrast between one function and another of an ensouled living body as such, the lower function being described as bodily and the higher as due to soul. (In this connection, it is striking how often translators feel impelled to render psukhe by “mind” rather than by “soul”; I will be noting some examples.)7 There is however room for (B1) a contrast, and even a conﬂict, between body and soul which is to be analysed in terms of an insuﬃciency in the material bodily organ hindering the activity of a function of soul.

After all, that imperfections in the matter can hinder the realisation of the form is good Aristotelian doctrine. Moreover, (B2), any talk of body hindering the activity of soul should be at least implicitly analysable in terms of bodily factors affecting the organ or instrument of a particular soul-faculty in such a way that it cannot perform its function so well, as in Aristotle, On the Soul I.4 408b18-25: T1. Intellect seems to become present as some substance, and not to be destroyed. It would be destroyed above all by being dulled in old age, but as it is what happens is as with the sense-organs; if an old man could get an eye of a certain sort, he would see like a young one. So old age is not due to something happening to the soul, but to that in which it is, as in drunkenness and disease. Thinking and contemplation is dulled when something else within is destroyed, but it is not affected itself. – where we may note that in the case of sense-perception, as well as in that of intelligence, Aristotle is prepared to speak of the soul itself as unaffected. As (B2) suggests, an analysis of psychological processes, and of the interactions between such processes, in materialistic terms is not necessarily un-Aristotelian, provided it does not suggest that those processes can be fully explained in such terms; and that is so even if a text does not specifically refer to soul at all, though the absence of such

7 Cf. the translation of Plutarch, De Tuenda Sanitate 27 137DE, by Babbitt in (Plutarch, 1928, p. 293). 168 Robert W. Sharples a reference may well suggest that the relation between soul and body is not uppermost in the author’s mind. It might seem that the identification of the soul as the form of the body should also exclude talk of (C1) the soul using the body, or a specific part of the body (i.e. the connate pneuma) as its instrument; such language suggests that the soul is a separate thing, as a human agent is separate from the tools he or she uses. But Aristotle is himself ready to use such language.8 An analogy may, or may not, be helpful here: if houses built themselves, they would use bricks or stones to do it.9 And perhaps one can even press the house analogy, inadequate though it is, to suggest that some of the parts of a house are more suitable for use as instruments by a self-building house than others would be; the roofing materials, for example, would not be very good candidates for this role, if the roof is not the first part of a self-building house to develop. Where there will be divergence from Aristotle is if (C2) talk of the soul using an instrument is allowed to suggest a conception of body and soul as two distinct things; though in principle it is going to be difficult to distinguish between (C1) and (C2) in cases where the texts do not make the distinction clear. It also goes without saying that there is a divergence from Aristotle in cases where (D) the soul is identified with pneuma and contrasted with the body as one body with another.10

Theophrastus’ work On Creatures that Change Colour is known to us only from a summary by Photius, which does not as it happens include

8 Body as instrument: de An. I.3 407b25, II.4 415b19. Pneuma as instrument: MA 10 703a20; cf. de An. III.10 433b18: Peck in Aristotle (1942, p. 578). See Menn (2002, especially pp. 138-139), where he argues that the emphasis laid on the soul using the body as an instrument means that the relation between soul and body is not to be reduced to that which applies between form and matter generally. 9 [Aristotle], Spir. 485b6-7 notes that while the crafts use fire as an instrument, nature uses it both as instrument and as matter. 10 Menn (2002, p. 84) indeed sees rejection of a dualism in which soul and (the rest of the) body are contrasted as one body to another as Aristotle’s main concern in his de An., where as he points out discussion of harmonia theory plays a relatively small part. The same is true of Alexander’s de An., where opposition to the Stoic theory is a major factor; see below, p. 181. Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 169 the point that will particularly concern us here, and from the following second-hand reports: T2. Why does the octopus change its colour? Is it, as Theophrastus thought, by nature a cowardly creature? So when it is alarmed, there is a change in the pneuma in it, and its colour changes along with this – as with a human being. Plutarch, Aetia Physica 19 916B (= Theophrastus, fr. 365C FHS&G).11 T3. For the chamaeleon changes (colour) not by any design, nor concealing itself, but does so from fear and to no purpose, being naturally frightened by noise and cowardly. And in accordance with this, too, is the great amount of pneuma (in it), as Theophrastus says; for almost the entire body of the creature is filled by its lungs, and from this he infers that it is full of pneuma and for this reason liable to change (colour). But the change (of colour) of the octopus is something that it does, rather than something that happens to it; for it changes (colour) deliberately, using this as a device both to hide from (the creatures) it fears and to capture (those) on which it feeds. Plutarch, De Sollertia Animalium 27 987E-F (= Theophrastus, fr. 365D FHS&G) T4. Theophrastus, in On (Creatures) that Change Colour, says that the octopus takes on the colour chiefly, or only, of stony places, doing this through fear and for the sake of self-protection. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 17.104 317F (= Theophrastus, fr. 365B FHS&G) In an earlier discussion12 I suggested that the explanation of the apparent conflict over whether the octopus’ reaction is deliberate (in T3 and T4) or an automatic reaction due to fear (in T2 and T4) is that for Theophras- tus, at the level of irrational animals, physical reactions and deliberate behaviour are two descriptions of the same phenomenon. Plutarch will then be imposing a distinction of his own that Theophrastus would not recognise. That, however, is a point about whether the behaviour in question is deliberate or an emotional reaction. What is significant for our present purpose is that T2 recognises in the case of the octopus, and T3 in the case of the chamaeleon, that the same reaction can be described both in psychological terms, as due to fear, and in physiological terms. So too does Aristotle in describing the chamaeleon in PA IV.11 629a20.13

11 Translation (as in T3, T4 and T6) from (Theophrastus, 1992); I am grateful to E.J. Brill and Co. for permission to reproduce it here. 12 Sharples (1995, pp. 40-41, pp. 93-96). 13 The description of the chamaeleon in HA II.11, which has been argued by some to be a later insertion there, discusses only the physiological aspect of the process, but that may be explained by its being the report of a dissection. I am grateful to Robert Temple for this point. 170 Robert W. Sharples

Apollonius, Historia Mirabilium 49.1-3, reports Theophrastus (fr. 726A FHS&G) as saying that music can cure afflictions of the soul and the body, the examples given being fainting, fright, mental disturbances, sciatica and epilepsy. There is no explicit allocation of the examples between soul and body, and if any contrast between soul and body is intended here it is not emphasized;14 moreover, we are dealing with a second-hand report. More questionable is Historia Plantarum 9.18.3, where Theophrastus says that herbs can affect not only the body, in such things as health, disease, death and fertility,15 but also the soul; 9.19.1 cites, among effects on the soul – translated “mind” by Hort in Theophrastus (1926, p. 311) – madness and a mild and cheerful temper. A pedant might argue that Theophrastus should have recognised that for Aristotle health, disease and death have as much to do with the soul as madness does; but in the context it is reasonable to suppose that he is simply using the contrast between body and soul in a conventional way. Theophrastus is cited by Plutarch, by pseudo-Plutarch On Desire and Grief , and by Porphyry16 as saying that the soul “pays the body a high rent”; the first two contrast this with Democritus’ statement, which they approve, that the body has more justification in complaining about the soul’s misuse of it. What is significant here is that pseudo-Plutarch describes the cost the body imposes on the soul in terms of emotions: grief, fear, desire and envy. If this goes back to Theophrastus himself,17 the point is clearly not that emotion has no psychic component – if it did not, there would be no cost to the soul, or not a cost of the same type – but that activities of the soul that have a bodily component are being contrasted with those that do not. Albertus Magnus, De XV Problemati- bus 9 41.11-14, 42-50 Geyer, in the context of arguing that we are able to resist our desires, compares those who deny this to Theophrastus,18 saying that they liken passions of the soul to physical passions, or perhaps better “affections”; the implication seems to be that even if physical affections

14 On the other hand, I am not sure that poll tÀn âpÈ yuqn kaÈ tä sÀma gignomènwn pajÀn is to be read as implying that all the phenomena mentioned involve both body and soul, even if strict hylomorphism requires this (sciatica affecting the functioning of the locomotive faculty, and perhaps of others too); it is unclear whether the effect of music is supposed to be through a mechanism which is psychological in our sense of that term. Cf., perhaps, p. 183 below. I am grateful to Jim Hankinson for raising these issues and to Andrew Barker for discussion of them. 15 The last item being in the part of the text omitted by Hort in Theophrastus (1926) apparently for reasons of decorum; see Preus (1988, p. 88, p. 96, n. 14). 16 Plutarch, De Tuenda Sanitate 24 135DE; [Plutarch], De Libidine et Aegritudine 2 52.10-53.4 Ziegler; Porphyry, De Abstinentia 4.20 265.22-266.4 Nauck: respectively Theophrastus fr. 440B, 440A and 440C FHS&G. 17 For the relation between the passages, and the likelihood that the fuller account in pseudo-Plutarch preserves Theophrastean material, cf. Fortenbaugh (1984, pp. 152- 154). 18 fr. 439 FHS&G. Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 171 cannot be resisted passions of the soul, and in particular desires, can be. The basis of the reference to Theophrastus is unclear; but Albertus’ citation of Nicomachean Ethics VII as showing the possibility of resisting the passions prompts comparison with the fact that Aristotle’s own discussion of akrasia culminates in an appeal to physiology: T5. As to how the ignorance is removed and the person who lacks self- control comes to have understanding again, the same account applies also to the one who is drunk or asleep, and it is not peculiar to this experience; and we should go to the physiologists for it. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII.3 1147b6-9 Simplicius, in Ph. 964.29-965.6 (= Theophrastus, fr. 271 FHS&G), provides evidence that Theophrastus recognised movements of the mind which have no connection with the body at all: T6. These views also find favour with the chief of Aristotle’s colleagues, Theophrastus, who says, in the first book of his On Motion, that “desires and appetites and feelings of anger are bodily motions, and have their starting-point in this [the body], but as for decisions and speculations, it is not possible to refer these to something else, but in the soul itself is their starting-point and activity and completion. But if indeed the intellect is also something better and more divine,” since it comes from outside and is all-perfect * * *. And to these words he adds: “About these (decisions and speculations), further, we must enquire whether it involves some separation which is relevant to the definition, since it is agreed that these too are motions.” The context in Simplicius is a contrast between bodily and psychic movements, in response to a point raised by Alexander of Aphrodisias about how an incorporeal and unextended soul can move; there is much that could be said about that debate,19 but fortunately it need not concern us here. Nor need the question, also debated, about where the quotation from Theophrastus ends, and about why the text apparently (unless emended) breaks off ungrammatically. For the first part of the quotation in any case shows that Theophrastus distinguished between movements that begin in the body and those that do not involve it at all. The latter are clearly those that take place in the intellect. The question whether there are or are not movements in the intellect is one that will recur later in this discussion.20

19 Simplicius says Alexander is (964.15) “dragging everything to serve his own thesis that the soul is inseparable from the body”, but Mantissa 2 shows that Alexander answers the problem where intellect is concerned by denying that intellect coming from outside involves spatial motion. Cf. Rashed (1997). 20 “Movements”, indeed, can and I think should be understood here in a wide sense; one might argue for the translation “changes”, if that did not risk implying a radical transformation from one state to another (cf. Aristotle, de An. II.5 417b2-418a5). 172 Robert W. Sharples

These may seem meagre gleanings from Theophrastus. But that very fact is I think signiﬁcant. He discusses physiological processes and phenomena – for example Sweat, Dizziness and Fatigue – but does so without explicitly referring to the soul as such; and while we have numerous reports of his views on the soul, they appear to accept the hylomorphic analysis rather than to discuss it. To judge from the admittedly fragmentary remains of Theophrastus’ work, the point that some processes have both a material and a psychological aspect did not particularly interest him, except negatively in criticising Presocratic theories. This apparent lack of interest in the hylomorphic analysis of the relation between the soul and the body is not surprising, for Theophrastus seems in general remarkably uninterested in the whole issue of the relation between form and matter. But that is an issue I intend to discuss elsewhere.

III

Simplicius goes on from T6 to cite Strato for a similar contrast between motions of the soul alone and those that are started by the body: T7. And Strato of Lampsacus agrees that it is not only the irrational soul that is moved but also the rational, saying that the activities of the soul too are motions. So he says in On Motion . . . and before this statement he has written, “since most of the movements are the same,21 those with which the soul moves by itself in thinking and those in which it was moved by the senses22 previously. This is clear; for it is not able to think of any of those things which it has not seen previously.” Simplicius, in Ph. 965.7-16 (= Strato, fr. 74 Wehrli). Konstan in the notes to his translation of Simplicius23 argues that if the motions of intellect originate and end in it then the intellect will be separable from the body. That is indeed the conclusion that Simplicius himself wants to draw, but I am not sure that it follows if the motions of the soul that do not themselves involve the body are dependent on others that do involve it, if for example speculation derives the concepts it uses from imagination and ultimately on sensation. Or perhaps the body can be dispensed with once the intellect has acquired the concepts? Strato has often been castigated as a materialist. He is reported by Tertullian, De Anima 14 (= Strato fr. 108 Wehrli), as having compared the soul with breath in a pipe, which could suggest a materialistic view of the soul:

21 aÉ aÎtaÐ Poppelreuter: aÒtiai vel aÊtÐai vel aÒtion codd. Cf. Repici (1988, pp. 33-34). 22 aÊsj sewn Ald.: kin sewn codd. Repici, loc. cit. 23 Simplicius (1989, p. 61 n. 46, 48); Konstan cites Aristotle, de An. I.1 403a3-b9 and I.4 408b15-19. Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 173

T8. But indeed from the many limbs a single body is fashioned, so that that division is rather a combination. Think of the most prodigious contribution of Archimedes, I mean the water-organ: so many parts . . . and all will make up a single structure. Just so the breath, which gasps there from the pressure of the water, will not be separated in the different parts just because it is directed through the parts; it is united in its substance, though divided in its activity. This example is not very different from Strato and Aenesidemus and Heraclitus; for they too preserve the unity of the soul, which is spread out through the whole body and itself everywhere springs forth in various ways through the sense-organs, like the breath in a pipe through the cavities; it is not so much divided up as distributed. Annas argues24 that this passage could be read either as identifying soul and pneuma or as expressing hylomorphism, with pneuma as the immediate vehicle of soul; but the idea of the form of an organic body having a particular part of that body as its “vehicle” seems even more counter- intuitive than its having a particular part of that body as its instrument, and even if the latter is acceptable in Aristotelian terms I am not sure the former is. Annas gives the citation of Heraclitus and Aenesidemus as a reason for not pressing the implications of this passage; there is also, as Repici has pointed out,25 a question how far an analogy should be pressed in any case. That is, T8 may not necessarily tell us anything about the relation between pneuma and soul in Strato’s view. In Aetius 5.4.2-3 (= Strato, fr. 94 Wehrli) Strato is contrasted with Aristotle as holding that the power of the seed is corporeal; this could be cited as supporting the view that he regarded soul in general as corporeal, but we should not perhaps build too much on this isolated reference without a context.26 Later on, as is well known, Critolaus was to argue that the soul was made of the same substance as the heavens, and Cicero attributes such a view to Aris- totle; whether this reflected something in Aristotle’s early works which we do not now possess, or whether it originated in a misunderstanding, need not concern us here.27

24 Annas (1992, p. 29). Solmsen (1961, p. 568 and n. 34) says that “there is every reason for agreeing with Wehrli’s remarks that the comparison receives its point in the deﬁnition of soul as pneuma” (emphasis mine). 25 Repici (1988, pp. 29-30). 26 Wehrli in Strato (1969, p. 70) speculates that Strato may be rejecting Aristotle’s doctrine that intellect has no bodily substrate, or that materialism may lead him to abandon the view that male seed conveys form. 27 Critolaus, fr. 17-18 Wehrli. Cf. Moraux (1963, p. 1206, pp. 1229-1230); Easterling (1964). 174 Robert W. Sharples IV

More problematic is the case of the pseudo-Aristotle treatise On Breath, De Spiritu. It does not make many references to soul, and those that it does, like much else in the treatise, are not exactly clear. At 482b29- 36 a contrast which resembles that familiar from Aristotle’s own works, between the explanation of some feature of a living creature in terms of mechanical causation and that in terms of purpose,28 is expressed in a way that does not make explicit reference to soul or indeed to purpose: T9. The pulse is something individual besides these [sc. respiration and nutrition as processes in the arteries], which in one way seems to be accidental, if, when there is a great quantity of heat in a liquid, it is necessary for what is vaporised, because it is trapped, to produce a pulsation. But it is at the beginning and primary, because it is cognate with what is primary; for it is most of all and primarily in the heart, from which [it is present] also in the rest, and perhaps it is necessary for this to follow (parakoloujeØn) with a view to (prìc) the underlying substance of the living creature which results from the actuality. At 483a3-5, in the course of arguing that the pulse is not affected by the rate of breathing, the author asserts that the pulse is uneven and inten- sified “in certain affections of the body and in fears, hopes and anguish of the soul”; but this is a commonplace antithesis, of a sort we have frequently seen, and while the very fact that the pulse is affected indicates an interaction between body and soul, it is difficult to infer from this passage any indication of the exact relation between them. 481a17, “Purer is the (part of pneuma) which is akin to the soul”, is neutral as to whether soul itself is thought of as corporeal or not. 483b8-15 apparently argues that soul-pneuma is contained in the arteries rather than in the nerves or sinews, as the former are finer in texture than the latter: T10. Or is it necessary for [the air which becomes breath] to be mixed in some way, since it moves among moisture and bodily masses? So it is not most rare, since it is mixed. And yet it is reasonable that the first recipient of soul [should be most rare], unless indeed the soul too is like this [i.e. mixed?], and not pure and unmixed. [So] the artery alone [will] be receptive of breath, but not the sinew. They differ in that the sinew has a tautness, while the artery is swiftly torn, like the vein. (The text goes on to adopt Erasistratus’ theory of triplokÐa; flesh is made up of arteries, veins and nerves or sinews.) If “the soul too is like this” is endorsed by the author, the soul is corporeal; even if the soul is “pure and unmixed” after all, it could be argued, but need not be, that this too is corporeal language – one is reminded of the controversy over whether Anaxgoras’ Mind, “the finest and purest of all things”, was corporeal or not.29 On the other hand, the account of

28 Cf. e.g. GA II.4 738a33ff. 29 Anaxagoras, fr. 12; cf. e.g. Guthrie (1965, pp. 276-278). Roselli (1992, p. 74) says Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 175 respiration in 482b21-25 need not imply that soul is regard as itself a body, unless we interpret “other” as meaning that the soul too is a mixture of bodies: T11. It is clear that respiration has its origin/principle from within, whether this [the principle] should be called a power of soul, or soul, or some other mixture of bodies, which cause an attraction like this through themselves. The nutritive [faculty] would seem to [derive] from respiration;.... That the nutritive faculty (of soul, presumably) arises from breathing need not rule out hylomorphism either, for that doctrine does not deny that the soul has a necessary material basis and that an account can be given of how the soul-faculties develop – it simply insists that the material aspect is not primary in explanation. In 483a23-b4 too it is far from clear that the author wants to insist that the soul is simply air that has undergone some sort of purely material change: T12. There is also a puzzle concerning sense-perception. For if the artery alone perceives, is it by the breath in it, or with its bulk, or with its body? Or if air is the first thing after soul, [is sensation] by what is more sovereign and prior? What then is the soul? They say that the cause of such a motion is a power. Is it clear [then] that you will not be right to reproach those [Platonists who speak of] the rational and spirited [parts of the soul]? For they too speak [of these] as powers. But if the soul is in this air, [air] is common. So it is reasonable that being affected and altered in some way ... [the air] is carried towards what is akin to it and like is increased by like. Or not? For [the soul as a whole] is not air, but the air is something which contributes to this power. Or not . . . [but] what makes [the soul],30 and it is what has made this that is the principle and starting point? In the case of creatures that do not respire, [this is so that the air in them] should not mix with that outside. Or [is this] not [the case,] but it mixes in some other way? What then is the difference between the [air] in the artery and that outside? It is reasonable, perhaps even necessary, that it should differ in rarity. Roselli (1992, p. 101) argues that the author is here rejecting identification of soul and air and defining soul rather as a power. The reference to “what makes [the soul]” does however suggest that the soul is regarded as secondary and generated, what gives rise to it being the true principle. If the latter were bodily elements in a certain state, we would have a position like that of Andronicus and Alexander (below), with the crucial difference that the bodily elements would be primary and the power secondary; in other words, a type of harmonia-theory of the soul. However, the context31

that T9 shows that soul is being thought of as corporeal. 30 Reading in a34 « oÎ *** tä taÔthn poioÜn with Roselli, who posits a lacuna. « oÖtw taÔthn, “or [air] in this way makes [the soul]”, Dobson, Hett, Tricot: « oÎ, <ll> tä taÔthn, “or not, what makes [the soul]” Bussemaker, Jaeger. 31 Unless we adopt Dobson’s conjecture; see the previous note. 176 Robert W. Sharples suggests rather that the “principle” is what turns air into soul, and it seems more natural to interpret this as some sort of immaterial principle. The general impression given, at any rate, is that the treatise is aporetic on the whole issue of the status of soul.

Physiological issues are extensively discussed in the pseudo-Aristotle Prob- lems; what then, if anything, is said there explicitly about the issue of what is common to body and soul? Well, the answer is: explicitly, very little. Soul is rarely mentioned in the Problems, and where it is, it is in the context of the body affecting the soul, and of the soul affecting, or failing to affect, the body. Forster in the Oxford translation throughout translates psukhe by “mind” rather than by “soul”. The explanations in question could be analysed in terms of physical effects on the bodily instrument of the affected soul-faculty, thus satisfying (B2) above; but there seems nothing to compel such an interpretation rather than one in more dualistic terms. T13. Why does the tongue of those who are drunk stumble? . . . Or is it because in drunkenness the soul is affected in sympathy and stumbles? So when the soul is affected in this way it is reasonable that the tongue be affected in the same way as well; for it is from [the soul] that speech has its origin. And for this reason even in the absence of drunkenness, when the soul is affected in some way, the tongue too is affected in sympathy, for example when people are frightened. [Aristotle], Problems III.31 875b19-33 This Problem is concerned with the effect of drunkenness on speech. The first three solutions involve physiological effects on the tongue directly, the fourth – and preferred – solution, quoted here, is in terms of the effect of drunkenness on the psukhe and hence on speech, supported by the parallel case of the effect of fear on speech. What is missing is a reference to the precise relationship between the psychological faculty affected and its own material basis, if indeed it has one.32 Problem V.15 882a33-39 explains the fact that muscles continue to quiver after exercise by saying that psukhe can lose control of certain parts of the body, e.g. the heart and the sexual organs, and the lower lip when it trembles in anger, because heated breath is still present:

32 Similarly at Problems XI.38, where stammering and lisping due to melancholia and drunkenness are explained by the claim that in these conditions the psukhe responds to phantasia too quickly and speech cannot keep up with it. Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 177

T14. The soul often controls the body as a whole but not its parts, when they are moved in a certain way, as with the heart and the genitals. The reason is that much pneuma is burned up around the sinews, and is not cooled down as soon as one stands still [after running]. This causes vibration, as if drawing down [the remaining pneuma] by its movement, and drags it down, and causes there to be least control of the most remote parts, such as the heels, like the lower lip in those who are angry. In effect, the answer given is that the bodily instrument of soul can take on an impetus of its own.33 At Problem X.10 the claim that human children differ from one another more than do the young of other animals is explained by the fact that in humans the condition of the soul (yuq , translated by Forster as “mental condition”) varies more during intercourse, while other animals are wholly absorbed in the act. This is clearly an appeal to the idea that the embryo is affected by the mental state of the parents during intercourse; but there is no indication as to what sort of mechanism is imagined as explaining the effect. The same idea is used at pseudo-Alexander, Problems 1.28 Ideler, as an explanation for wise people having foolish children and vice versa: the wise ones, we are told, are thinking about other things during intercourse, so not so much “soul power” (yuqik dÔnamic) gets into the seed. The implication seems to be that thought about other things affects the relation between the psukhe and the seed, but it is again not clear what mechanism we are to suppose. [Aristotle], Physiognomonica 1 805a1-14, argues not only that body can affect soul and vice versa, but even that each causes most of the pathemata of the other: T15. Thoughts accord with bodies, and are not isolated, unaffected by movements in the body. This is altogether clear in drunkenness and ill-health; for thoughts are clearly greatly altered by what happens to the body. And conversely, that the body is affected in sympathy with the affections of the soul becomes clear in love and fear and grief and pleasure. Moreover in the things that come about by nature one could observe more [clearly] that body and soul are united with each other by nature in such a way that they are the causes of most of each other’s affections. For no living creature has ever come to be such as to have the form of one creature and the thought of another, but body and soul are always those of the same creature [in each case], so that it is necessary for a certain sort of thought to go with a certain sort of body.

33 Flashar, in his comment on this passage in (Aristotle, 1991, pp. 475-476), cites the reference to involuntary movements of the heart and sexual organs at MA 11 703b6 as evidence that for Aristotle too the soul is not in control of every part of the body; but Aristotle himself there speaks only of movements contrary to reason. 178 Robert W. Sharples

This is compatible with a hylomorphic analysis of the relation between body and soul, but the author’s words suggest a more straightforward body-soul dualism.

Andronicus and Alexander regard the soul as the power which results from or supervenes on the mixture of the bodily elements: T16. ,34 in general I praise him for having the courage to declare that the being of the soul is as a tempering or power of the body, [speaking] like a free man and not veiling the matter in obscurities (for I find him to be like this in many other matters); but in that he says that it is either a tempering or the power which follows on the tempering, I criticise the addition of “the power.” Galen, Quod Animi Mores 4, IV.782.15-783.3 Kühn(= 44.12-20 Müller) T17. [The soul] has its origin (gènesic) in a certain sort of mixture and tempering of the primary bodies, as was shown. Alexander, De Anima 24.3-4 T18. Soul is not a certain sort of tempering of bodies, as a harmonia was, but the power that is created (gennwmènh) supervening on a certain sort of tempering. ibid. 24.21-3 This is not to be interpreted as making body primary and soul secondary; for Aristotle too a certain type of soul requires a certain bodily composition, and for Aristotle too soul as a whole can be described as a power: T19. Being awake is actuality like cutting or seeing, but the soul [is actuality] like sight and the power of the organ. Aristotle, de An. II.1 412b27-413a1 What will make soul secondary is to read gènesic in T17 and gennwmènh in T18 as implying that this is the whole story, or the important story, about the origin of soul. But to do so would be to take T17 and T18 out of context; they need to be read (a) in the context of Alexander’s whole discussion of soul as form in the first part of his de An.,35 and (b) in their specific context in the rejection of the theory of soul as harmonia. As Donini and Caston have both pointed out, Alexander is best interpreted as resisting an interpretation that would reduce the soul to being nothing more than a description of the arrangement of the matter.36 A human

34 The addition is confirmed by the Arabic version. 35 Cf. Sharples (1993, pp. 87-88); (1999, p. 81). 36 Donini (1971); Caston (1997, pp. 347-354). As Jim Hankinson has pointed out (this volume, p. 249f.) Galen’s point in T16 is that soul cannot be both a substance and a power; but Aristotle would disagree, as T19 shows, given that for Aristotle (and Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 179 being or a giraffe needs a certain type of body to live the life of a human being or a giraffe, and it has that type of body in order to live that sort of life; but it is also true that having the type of body it has means that there is only a certain type of life it can live, more or less well. There are indeed questions to be asked about this reciprocal implication. Aristotle in Physics II.9 200a5-15 describes a certain form as necessi- tating certain matter, but is not prepared to say that matter necessitates form. That may however be because of the point, stressed by Balme,37 that natural processes can be interrupted, and more generally because an efficient cause is required. Nevertheless, just because a particular configuration of matter needs to be explained by a form of a particular type, the fact that a particular configuration has come to exist implies, though it does not explain, the presence of the form – even in those cases where generation is due to chance. One might indeed ask how this applies in the case of anger. Does boiling of the blood – or boiling of a particular type – never occur without the presence of anger, so that the presence of anger could in principle be inferred from the observation of a particular type of boiling?38 The following two passages are relevant here: T20. (discussing the effect of the body on the emotions): when nothing frightening is occurring, [people] are affected [in the same way as] one who is afraid (ân toØc pjesi gÐnontai toØc toÜ foboumènou). Aristotle, de An. I.1 403a22-24 T21. So, when something frightening is announced, if it finds the temperament rather cold, the result is cowardice; for it has prepared the way for fear, and fear chills. Those who are very afraid show this; for they tremble. But if [the temperament] is hotter, fear puts it in a moderate condition, in control of itself and dispassionate. Similarly with regard to day-to-day despondency; for we are often in a condition of distress (oÕtwc êqomen ¹ste lupeØsjai), though we could not say over what; and at other times we are cheerful, though it is not clear for what reason. Such affections and those spoken of earlier happen to everyone to a small degree, for all have some admixture of the power [of black bile]; but those to whom [it happens] in a profound way, these belong to a certain character-type. [Aristotle], Problems XXX.1 954b10-21 On the face of it, these texts seem to suggest that a completely groundless emotion-like state falls short of being an instance of the actual emotion.39

for Alexander: de An. 6.2-4) form is substance. 37 Balme (1939) and in (Aristotle, 1972, p. 82-83). 38 Cf. Christof Rapp’s paper in this volume, p. 205. The way I have stated the question presupposes indeed that the type of boiling can in principle be described independently without reference being made to the presence of anger. 39 I take it that what is being described in these passages is a mood of anxiety in the one case, and dejection in the other, which has no speciﬁc ground or object, 180 Robert W. Sharples

However, Caston argues (1997, p. 333, n. 55) that ân toØc pjesi . . . toØc toÜ foboumènou does not imply that only the bodily condition of fear is present while the psychological aspect is absent, on the grounds that when Aristotle wants to make such a point he refers explicitly to the pathê of the body.40 Returning to the question of the direction of explanation, one passage in Alexander stands out – at first sight anyway – as diverging at one point from the general insistence that it is to form that we must look for explanation.41 T22. The soul, being actuality, [extends] throughout the whole body, for every part of what has soul has soul. And soul is actuality not in the way that shape is [the actuality] of things that have been shaped, nor as position and arrangement [is the actuality] of things that have been put together, nor as some disposition and being affected, nor as mixture or blending (for pleasure and pain are being affected or disposition, but soul is none of these). Certainly these come to be present in the body, for it is through these that [there exist] the organs which soul uses; but [soul] itself is some capacity and substance which supervenes on these. The body and its blending are the cause of the soul’s coming-to-be in the first place. This is clear from the difference between living creatures in respect of their parts. For it is not the souls that fashion their shapes, but rather the different souls follow on the constitution of these being of a certain sort, and change with them. For the actuality and that of which it is the actuality are related reciprocally. And that difference in soul follows on a certain sort of blending in the body is shown also by wild animals, which have an [even] more different sort of soul deriving from the blending in their body being of a certain sort. Alexander, Mantissa 104.21-3542 In general, to say that a certain type of body necessitates a certain type of soul does not threaten the priority of soul; the necessity is reciprocal, and for that very reason says nothing about priority in explanation. The statement that “the body and its blending are the cause of the soul’s coming-to-be in the first place” thus does not seem objectionable in itself; it can at a pinch be understood as describing a process in which soul and body develop together, even if it omits the more important aspect of the relationship as understood by Aristotle, namely that the nature of the

and that the parallel in the case of anger would not be irascibility which attaches itself groundlessly to objects that do not merit it, but an unfocussed feeling of anger with no specific object. Admittedly, the Problems formulation is in terms of a subjective inability to state the cause, while the de An. leaves it open (but does not require) that there is an imagined cause even when there is no actual one. 40 I am grateful to Victor Caston for drawing my attention to his discussion of this issue and for further correspondence thereon. 41 Most of the Mantissa, and in particular the first section, from which this passage comes, is apparently Alexander’s own work. See Sharples (2004b). 42 Translation from (Alexander of Aphrodisias, 2004). I am grateful to Gerald Duck- worth and Co. for permission to reproduce it here. Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 181 body is explained by that of the soul rather than vice versa. What does seem exceptional is the categorical assertion that “it is not the souls that fashion their shapes”.43 That seems flatly to contradict Aristotle’s claim that the soul is needed to explain why plants maintain their structure rather than separating into their constituent elements, each following its natural tendency:44 T23. For it seems on the contrary that it is rather soul that holds body together; for when [soul] departs [body] is dispersed and rots. Aristotle, de An. I.5 411b7-9 T24. In addition to these points, what is it [in the bodies of plants], that holds together the fire and the earth which travel in opposite directions? For they will be torn apart, if there is not something that prevents [this]. But if there is, this is the soul, [that is] the cause of growth and nourishment. ibid. II.4 416a6-9 For the growth of a body and its maintenance are two aspects of the same process. To say that the souls do not fashion their shapes seems to go beyond claiming that given types of soul require given types of body as well as vice versa. A clue may however be given by the very strength of the term I have rendered “fashion”, diaplssein, “mould” or “form”. If we distinguish three possible positions (among many): (a) soul fashions body from matter which is in itself completely inert and contributes nothing to the process; (b) the process of the growth of a body can be described both in material and in formal terms (but explanation in terms of soul is primary); (c) the process can be described in material terms in a way that gives a complete causal account; soul may be a convenient shorthand but actually adds nothing further by way of explanation;45 then Alexander may intend the denial that souls “fashion” bodies only as a denial of (a); the danger is that those focussed on the issue of (b) versus (c) will see it is a denial of the last clause of (b) as well. (a) could be seen as adopting a Stoic view of the relation between the active and passive principles, in which case it is not surprising to find Alexander opposing it. Moreover, the term is used by Alexander in his attack on the Stoic god as an immanent craftsman in his De Mixtione 11 226.24-30 (= SVF 2.1048): T25. How is it not unworthy of our notion of divinity to say that God passes through the whole of the matter that underlies all things, and remains in it,

43 Cf. Sharples (1994, p. 168, n. 20), challenged by Caston (1997, p. 348, n. 95). I am grateful to Victor Caston for further discussion of this issue. 44 Rightly emphasised by Caston (1997, p. 329). 45 In Caston’s terms, (c) is epiphenomenalism at best, (b) is emergentism, (a) is presumably a type of dualism. 182 Robert W. Sharples

whatever quality it has, and has as his primary task constantly producing and fashioning (diaplssein) the things that can come to be from it, and to make God the craftsman of grubs and mosquitoes, absolutely like some model-maker devoting his time to clay and making it into everything that can come to be from it? There is however a complication here. diaplssein is a regular term for the shaping of the embryo in the womb,46 apparently with no particular implication that it is fashioned from completely formless matter.47 In particular, Jim Hankinson has drawn my attention to the following text, which bears a striking similarity to T25, even though “grubs” (skwl¨kec) are the only lowly form of life mentioned in both: T26. When one of my Platonist teachers said that the soul that extends throughout the whole world fashions the foetuses, I thought the skill and power [involved] worthy of it, but I could not bear to think that scorpions and spiders, flies and gnats, serpents and grubs are fashioned by it, thinking that such a view came close to impiety. Galen, De Foetuum Formatione IV.700.17-701.6 Kühn It is difficult to resist the suggestion that diaplssein is used in T22 simply because it is the standard term for embryonic development; moreover, if T25 has been influenced by T26 or similar texts, the use in connection with the Stoics in T25 may itself reflect embryological discussions. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to read T22 as a rejection of (a) rather than of (b). Alexander follows Aristotle, as one might expect, in insisting that it is the person, rather than the soul, who performs the activities made possible by soul.48 Sensation is not to be reduced to material changes:49 T28. For what is heated becomes hot itself and becomes matter for the affection, and this does not apply either to sensation or to intellect. For even if sensation comes about through certain bodily effects, sensing itself is not being affected, but judging. Alexander, de An. 84.3-6 And – contrary to what we saw in Theophrastus and Strato – the soul itself is unmoved:

T29. For the living creature perceives and thinks and walks in virtue of its soul, but without the soul being moved itself in order to cause movement. For it is not necessary, just because the dancer moves in virtue of the art of dancing, that the art of dancing too should be moved in itself. For the

46 Already in Aristotle, GA II.4 740a36, citing Democritus. 47 Though Edward Hussey has suggested to me that dia- may indicate the thorough- ness of the process. 48 De An. 23.2-24.3 (note especially 23.24-26, “Nor is it true that these activities are those of the soul using the body as an instrument”); Mantissa 104.35-105.2. 49 Cf. Sorabji (1991, pp. 228-230). Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 183

soul is not in us in the way the rower50 is in the ship, but as a form and perfection, as has been shown. ibid. 79.15-21 Mantissa 117.9-22 emphasises the unity of soul and body – “nor is the soul affected along with the body as something which is other and separate, . . . but what is affected is the compound, for example the living creature, composed of soul and body, which is cut in respect of its body, but feels pain in respect of its soul” – and distinguishes between purely bodily affections and those which are common to body and soul;51 this passage says nothing about any affections that are confined to the soul, even though Alexander elsewhere insists that the intellect has no bodily organ, and indeed improves upon Aristotle’s comparison of its initial condition to a blank writing-tablet by comparing it rather to the blankness of the tablet.52

VII

The pseudo-Alexander Medical Problems, edited by Ideler (1841), are unlikely to derive from Alexander or his immediate followers. There is much that could be said about their origin and transmission, and about their relation to the various parts of the two further books edited by Usener in (Alexander of Aphrodisias, 1859), but that is an issue I intend to discuss elsewhere.53 In the present context I will simply note that the texts in the collection diﬀer in the interpretation of soul they adopt. Some show clear Platonist inﬂuence:54 thus 1.121 appeals to Plato’s theory of recollection, and the prologue to book 2 asserts the immortality and impassivity of soul. 2.63 says that the rational soul is in the head and is impassive. Others of these Problems however interpret the soul in grossly materialistic terms: thus in 1.26 small people are said to be more intelligent because their souls

50 Rather than the sailor of Aristotle, de An. II.1 413a9. The change is rightly connected by Accattino and Donini in (Alexander of Aphrodisias, 1996, p. 266) with de An. 15.9ﬀ., where Alexander distinguishes between two readings of the image of the helmsman in the ship, as standing for the art of navigation – in which case the image would be acceptable – or as a distinct ensouled individual, and argues that in the latter case the soul would be a separate thing within the body moving it by force, which is how the rower in T28 moves the ship. In other words, the substitution of the rower for the helmsman blocks any possibility of understanding the image as metaphorical for the presence of form in body simply. 51 See above, at p. 166. 52 Alexander, de An. 84.24-27. 53 On one particular aspect relating to the problems edited by Usener see Sharples (2004a). On the general issue see Kapetanaki and Sharples, forthcoming. 54 Cf. Rose (1863, p. 219). 184 Robert W. Sharples are compressed into a smaller space – though we may note that [Aristotle], Problems XXX.3, says that people with small heads have greater practical wisdom, without giving this physical reason. At [Alexander] 2.22 the inwards and outwards movement of the soul is said to explain respectively why the eyes are sunken in grief but bulge in anger. These arguments could perhaps be reconciled with orthodox Aristotelianism by saying that soul here really stands for pneuma as the instrument of soul; but there is no attempt to make this point, though pneuma is so described elsewhere in the collection.55 In 1.21 groaning and sighing in emotional states are explained by the soul being distracted from providing a motive force to the chest-muscles, and the heart (and subsequently: nature) compelling soul to make good the lack in such a way as to catch up, as it were. The contrast between nature and the soul is striking, but the argument does recognise soul as the source of movement in the body generally. Finally, one may note a contrast between the activities of soul and body in 2.27, where melancholy is said to aﬀect the former but not the latter. Here we are surely dealing with a contrast in the terms of ordinary speech.

VIII

Is there a general moral that can be drawn from this discussion? This at least: Aristotle’s notion of the relation between soul and body is a highly sophisticated one which requires careful expression if it is not to be dis- torted. It is hardly surprising that formulations by those who are in some sense followers of Aristotle do not always adhere to it. The most sophisticated and faithful treatment we have is that by Alexander. However, in comparing Alexander on the one hand with Theophrastus and Strato on the other we need to bear in mind the very fragmentary nature of our evidence for the latter.

References

Alexander of Aphrodisias, 1859, Alexandri Aphrodisiensis quae feruntur Problematorum libri 3 et 4 , Hermann Usener (ed.), Berlin: Typis Academiae regiae. —, 1996, Alessandro di Afrodisia: L’anima, Paolo Accattino / Pierluigi Donini (eds), Rome, Bari: Laterza.

55 2.64 explains dizziness in this way (cf. 1.131, but there without reference to pneuma as instrument), and similar references to pneuma as the instrument of soul occur in 2.67 and 3.10-11. Peripatetic Approaches After Aristotle 185

—, 2004, Supplement to On the Soul, Robert W. Sharples (tr.), London: Duckworth. Annas, Julia E., 1992, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press. —, 1993, The Morality of Happiness, New York: Oxford University Press. Aristotle, 1942, Generation of Animals, Arthur L. Peck (ed.), London, Cambridge (Mass.): Heinemann and Harvard University Press. —, 1972, De partibus animalium I and De generatione animalium I , D.M. Balme (tr.), Oxford: Clarendon Press. —, 1991, Problemata Physika (1st ed. 1962), Hellmut Flashar (tr.), Aris- toteles Werke in Deutscher Ubersetzung,¨ vol. 19, Berlin: Akademie Verlag. — (pseudo-), 1992, De spiritu, Amneris Roselli (ed.), Pisa: ETS. Balme, David M., 1939, “Greek Science and Mechanism I: Aristotle on Nature and Chance”, in: Classical Quarterly, 33, pp. 129-138. Caston, Victor, 1997, “Epiphenomenalisms, Ancient and Modern”, in: Philosophical Review, 106, pp. 309-363. Donini, Pierluigi, 1971, “L’anima e gli elementi nel De Anima di Alessan- dro di Afrodisia”, in: Atti dell’ Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, 105, pp. 61-107. Easterling, H. John, 1964, “Quinta natura”, in: Museum Helveticum, 21, pp. 73-85. Fortenbaugh, William W., 1984, Quellen zur Ethik Theophrasts, Amster- dam: Grüner. Guthrie, William Keith Chambers, 1965, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ideler, J.L., 1841, Physici et medici graeci minores, vol. 1, Berlin: Reimer. Kapetanaki, Sophia / Sharples, Robert W., forthcoming, Aristotle: Sup- plementary Problems, Berlin: De Gruyter. Menn, Stephen, 2002, “Aristotle’s Definition of Soul and the Programme of the De anima”, in: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 22, pp. 82-139. Moraux, Paul, 1963, “Quinta essentia”, in: A.F. von Pauly / G. Wissowa (eds), Realenkyklopädieder Altertumswissenchaft, vol. 24.1, Stutt- gart: Metzler, cols. 1171-1263. Plutarch, 1928, Moralia, vol. 2, Frank C. Babbitt (ed.), London, New York: Heinemann and G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Preus, Anthony, 1988, “Drugs and Psychic States in Theophrastus’ His- toria Plantarum 9.8-20”, in: William W. Fortenbaugh / Robert W. Sharples (eds), Theophrastean Studies, New Brunswick: Transac- tion, Rutgers Univ. Studies in Classical Humanities, 3, pp. 76-99. 186 Robert W. Sharples

Rashed, Marwan, 1997, “A ‘new’ text of Alexander on the soul’s motion”, in: Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle and After, London: Institute of Classical Studies (Bulletin, suppl vol. 68), pp. 181-195. Repici, Luciana, 1988, La natura e l’anima: saggi su Stratone di Lamp- saco, Torino: Tirrenia. Rose, Valentin, 1863, Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, Leipzig: Teubner. Sharples, Robert W., 1993, Review of H. Blumenthal / H. Robinson (eds), Aristotle and the Later Tradition, Oxford Studies in Ancient Phi- losophy, Suppl. Vol., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, in: Classical Review, 43, pp. 87-89. —, 1994, “On Body, Soul and Generation in Alexander of Aphrodisias”, in: Apeiron, 27, pp. 163-170. —, 1995, Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence, Commentary volume 5, Sources on Biology, Leiden: Brill. —, 1999, “On being a tode ti in Aristotle and Alexander”, in: Méthexis, 12, pp. 77-87. —, 2004a, “Evidence for Theophrastus On Hair, On Secretion, On Wine and Olive-Oil?”, in: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 47, pp. 141-151. —, 2004b, “Alexander of Aphrodisias: what is a mantissa?”, in: Peter Adamson et al. (eds), Philosophy, Science and Exegesis, London: Institute of Class. Studies, Bulletin, Suppl. Vol. 83.1, pp. 51-69. —, 2005, “An Aristotelian Commentator on the Naturalness of Justice”, in: Christopher Gill (ed.), Virtue, Norms and Objectivity: Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 279-293. Simplicius, 1989, On Aristotle Physics 6 , David Konstan (tr.), London: Duckworth. Solmsen, Friedrich, 1961, “Greek Philosophy and the discovery of the nerves”, in: Museum Helveticum, 18, pp. 169-197; reprinted in id., Kleine Schriften, vol. 1, Hildesheim: Olms, 1968, pp. 536-582. Sorabji, Richard, 1991, “From Aristotle to Brentano; the development of the concept of intentionality”, in: Henry Blumenthal / Howard Robinson (eds), Aristotle and the Later Tradition, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Suppl. Vol., pp. 227-259. Strato, 1969, “Straton von Lampsakos”, in: Fritz Wehrli (ed.), Die Schule des Aristoteles: Texte und Kommentare, vol. 5, 2nd ed., Basel: Schwa- be. Theophrastus, 1926, Enquiry into Plants, vol. 2, Arthur Hort (ed.), Lon- don, Cambridge (Mass.): Heinemann and Harvard University Press. —, 1992, Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence, William W. Fortenbaugh et al. (eds), Leiden: Brill. Christof Rapp

Interaction of Body and Soul: What the Hellenistic Philosophers Saw and Aristotle Avoided

Anti-dualistic philosophers of mind often refer to the problem of interaction between body and soul. If we understand body and soul as two different substances and if, like Descartes for example, we combine these two substances with different or even incompatible characteristics, such as “being extended” and “having awareness”, then, indeed, it seems difficult to explain how one of these two substances can causally act upon the other. With some phenomena, however, it is hard to deny that some kind of interaction takes place; for example in sensual perception some information must be transmitted from the sense organs to the soul, and in intentional action the decision of the soul must somehow be communicated to the bodily limbs that have to carry out the intended action. Thus the obvious interaction between body and soul raises serious difficulties. In early modern philosophy, the most famous, though perhaps not the most attractive, responses to these difficulties are occasionalism, various kinds of parallelism, and monism of the Spinozist type. It is remarkable that also ancient philosophers often refer to phenomena that are, at least, “common to body and soul”, though, of course, their context is quite different. Whereas the modern critics and successors of Descartes are primarily interested in the possibility of causal interaction, the ancient concept of being common to body and soul is much broader. In addition to causal affections, it comprises relations like mere cooperation, simultaneous affections of body and soul, mere co-variation, epiphenomenal reaction, etc. The examples of cooperation or interaction between body and soul are taken mainly from three domains: perception (in various senses), action, and emotion. In the long run, I think, it would be worthwhile to collect and classify the various examples that have been given of the interaction of body and soul together with the various conclu- 188 Christof Rapp sions that the adherents of the various philosophical schools have drawn from these examples. Of course, there is no chance to compress such a project into a few pages. So I have decided to treat only one of these three domains, the domain of emotions. I have picked emotions for several reasons. The most important is that the emotions are often used as the paradigmatic case of the interaction or cooperation between body and soul. In many passages discussing the question whether there are states or properties of the soul that affect the body too, philosophers refer to the example of emotions. Obviously, they want to remind their readers of the non-controversial experience that things like anger and fear – though they are undoubtedly affections of the soul – are combined with immediate reactions of the body. When we are angry, the blood surges through our veins, when we are frightened, we become pale and start shivering, etc. References to this kind of examples can be found in Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius, and some Stoic sources as well. Comparing the different uses the various philosophers make of these examples I found that there is one point which is important or even crucial for the Hellenistic philosophers, but is completely absent from the relevant passages in Aristotle: While the former ones assume that the psychosomatic character of emotions requires causal interaction and that causal interaction cannot be explained within a non-monistic system, Aristotle’s account of more or less the same examples completely abstains from the terminology of causal interaction. This seems to be remarkable in itself; but if it were possible to extend the significance of this observation beyond the example of emotions it would even have a major impact on the interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of the soul. The remainder of this paper is centered around this observation; for strategic reasons I start with the discussion of the Hellenistic philosophers to sketch the background of their causal account of interaction between body and soul; in the later parts of the paper I am going to introduce the Aristotelian approach and to draw some more general conclusions.

Epicurus and Lucretius

The Epicurean philosophy of mind centers on the argumentative target that the soul is mortal. Since his opponents who advocate the immortality of the soul have made incorporeality the most important precondition of the immortality of the soul, Epicurus has to argue that the soul is corporeal. According to his general atomistic physics, this corporeal- Interaction of Body and Soul 189 ity implies that the soul is a fine-grained body that is diffused through the whole aggregate that constitutes the living thing. Epicurus carefully avoids bringing body and soul into plain opposition; instead of speaking of body and soul, he prefers the formulation “the soul and the remaining part of the aggregate”.1 This, however, does not mean that he regards the concept of soul as redundant, nor that the function of the soul can be equated with the rest of the body. On the contrary, it is the soul that is responsible for some essential capacities, for example perceiving, thinking, feeling, mobility, and “those features whose loss would mean our death”2, i.e., the vital functions. When the soul has been separated from the rest of the aggregate, what remains cannot have one of these capacities. On the other hand, the soul must be contained by the rest of the aggregate in order to display these functions. Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus, in which he outlines his essential assumptions about the soul, is not very explicit about the material constitution of the soul. He compares the relation of body and soul to the blending of wind and heat and adds that there must be something beside wind and heat that is even finer than they are; this additional finest element is mere co-affectability (sumpatheia) with the rest of the aggregate, which again is especially useful in sense perception.3 What starts as a mere comparison in the Letter to Herodotus is taken up by the later testimonies and Epicureans in a literal way, identifying wind and heat as elements of the soul. According to Aëtius,the Epicurean soul is a blend consisting of one fire-like, one air-like, one wind-like, and a fourth element, which is unnamed. This fourth element is responsible for sensation because of its unique fineness.4 Therefore, the fourth element in the report of Aëtius reminds us of the third element that Epicurus himself mentions in the Letter to Herodotus. Lucretius confirms the doctrine of the four elements of the soul,5 but is also eager to show that these four components are blended in a specific way such that no one element can be distinguished and no capacity can be separated;6 together they make up a homogeneous body with multiple capacities. It is by no means clear what this assertion amounts to; on the one hand, it seems as if the four elements of the soul are somehow melted together and blended to an entirely new stuff that is no longer governed by the principles of elementary change. On the other hand, in some contexts, Lucretius still makes use of the original powers of fire, air, and wind, for example when he says that the element of fire

1 Letter to Herodotus 64 (= LS 14A 3). As usual, ‘LS’ refers to: Long/Sedley (1987). 2 Letter to Herodotus 63 (= LS 14A 2). 3 Letter to Herodotus 63 (= LS 14A 1). 4 Aëtius4.3.11 (= LS 14C). 5 Lucretius 3.231-245. 6 Lucretius 3.262-273 (= LS 14D 1). 190 Christof Rapp prevails in the minds of irritable persons, while cold wind prevails in the minds of the cowards and the timorous people. We have said that, for Epicurus, the soul is responsible for all capacities involving any sort of consciousness, such as perceiving, thinking, feeling, but that, at the same time, the soul is responsible for all vital functions, thus qualifying itself as a principle of life. In Lucretius, these two aspects of the soul reappear in a technical distinction between animus or mens, on the one hand, and anima, on the other. Lucretius concen- trates the controlling faculties in the animus; the animus is like the head, he says, and it dominates the entire aggregate. But while the anima, or as he sometimes says, the rest of the anima (hereby using anima as the broader term, which includes the more specific term animus) is distributed throughout the body, Lucretius insists that the animus itself is firmly located in the central place of the chest.7 This information may strike us as odd, for one could wonder why the animus needs a well-defined place at all, and one could also wonder how Lucretius could find the location of the animus. The answer to the first question is that, according to Lucretius, it often happens that the body is sick while the mind is in a pleasant state or that – conversely – someone has a poor state of mind, but flourishes in his body. Lucretius’ point is that if the animus were distributed throughout the body, it could not remain unaffected by what the body undergoes, hence it must have its own separate location. The answer to the second question is that we can feel where the animus is located, since the animus is the place where fear leaps up and where joys caress us. Because we can feel that these affections arise in our chest, we know that this is the place of the animus.8 This is the background against which we must see the following arguments. Since the animus is spatially relatively separated, it is possible that the animus itself possesses its own understanding and its own joys, without any affection of the rest of the aggregate. And this in turn means that the rest of the anima and the body are not co-affected. But this is only one half of the story. Like other philosophers before him, Lucretius introduces the example of emotions to elucidate the connection between the soul and the body. Obviously the pure joy that can be entertained by the animus itself is not what we usually take to be a fully-fledged emotion. An ordinary strong emotion is expected to have an impact on the body, too. This is why Lucretius says that in the case of a powerful fear, for example, we see the whole anima throughout the limbs share its (the animus’) sensation, with sweat and pallor arising over the whole body, the tongue crippled and the voice choked, the eyes darkened, the

7 Lucretius 3.140. 8 Lucretius 3.141ff. (= LS 14B 1). Interaction of Body and Soul 191 ears buzzing, the limbs buckling. Sometimes, he says, we even see men collapse from the mind’s (animus’) terror.9 According to the simple atomistic theory of the soul, one could easily explain these phenomena by saying that the soul is distributed throughout the body and hence has no problem to co-affect the different parts of the soul. But since Lucretius insists that the animus must have a determinate limited location within the body, one additional step in the argument is needed. The first thing we can conclude from the observation of these strong bodily reactions to an affection of the animus, is, according to Lucretius, that the animus is closely linked with the anima or the rest of the anima, which is spread all over the body. The anima is directly impelled by the animus’ power and it hastens to forward this impulse to the surrounding parts of the body. Commenting on the processing of the impulse between animus and anima, Lucretius even says that together they constitute a single nature. This again could raise the question why some affections of the animus are forwarded to the anima and some are not. Anyway, he draws a second conclusion from the description of strong emotions; he says: This same reasoning proves the nature of the animus and the anima to be corporeal. For when it is seen to hurl the limbs forward, to snatch the body out of sleep, to alter the face, and to govern and steer the entire man – and we see that none of these is possible without touch, nor touch without body – you must surely admit that the animus and the anima are constituted with a corporeal nature.10 It is this kind of interaction between the anima and the body that deserves our attention. Epicurus himself formulated one of the premises of this argument. In his Letter to Herodotus, he writes that we cannot think of the incorporeal per se except as void. The void cannot be acted upon, but it is clear that the soul can be acted upon. Hence the soul must be corporeal, because otherwise it could not be acted upon and could not suffer anything at all.11 For Epicurus, the corporeality of the soul is not only the condition for its interaction with the rest of the bodily aggregate, but is also the precondition for its affectability tout court. This again presupposes that if there is an affection at all, it must be of the kind that is typical of bodily affections. When he speaks of sumpatheia, co-affectability, his point, then, is not that the soul undergoes something caused by the body, but rather that body and soul are affected by the same thing at the same time in a similar way. In Lucretius, the anima takes on the properties of the animus at once, since, strictly speaking, they share one and the same nature. The contact between anima and body is made possible by touch. This again strongly suggests that, in

9 Lucretius 3.152-158 (= LS 14B 2). 10 Lucretius 3.161-167 (= LS 14B 3). 11 Letter to Herodotus 67 (= LS 14A 7). 192 Christof Rapp the case of strong emotions, the body is causally affected by the animus. Therefore, the term “sumpaschein” not only means that body and soul are affected by the same thing in a similar way, but also that one of them is affected by the other. This must be seen against the background that the quoted passage12 is immediately followed by a description of the inverse situation, namely that the body is hurt, for example by a spear, and the animus suffers together with the body.13 In this inverse case, Lucretius’ description points in another direction: the injury does not proceed from a part of the body to the animus; rather he emphasizes that the animus is affected together with the body in a similar way. Now, even if we assume that in the case of strong emotions there is a causal interaction from the animus to the soul, we can add one important qualification: Since the animus and the bodily parts that are moved in the course of strong emotions share the same bodily nature and since the preservation of the original quality is guaranteed by the fact that parts of the body and the soul are in touch, the body can be affected in the same way as the soul, and vice versa. This specific kind of interaction is illustrated when Lucretius says that, in the state of fear, the animus is filled with cold wind, which stimulates the shuddering and shivering of the limbs.14 Though, of course, it is not clear how to extend this mechanism beyond the three elements wind, air, and fire, it seems plausible, according to the Epicurean premises, that the sort of alteration that an emotion causes in the body must have the same quality as the alteration that took place in the soul.15

The Stoics

According to Stoic physics, all things that are something (to ti) can be divided into corporeal and non-corporeal beings. In the class of non- corporeal beings, we can find the lekta, the void, place and time, while the soul is listed among the corporeal beings. The material of the soul is identified as breath (pneuma), which is composed of two elements, air and fire. All elements, i.e., water, earth, air, and fire, are subject to reciprocal change. The mutual transformation is performed either by condensation or expansion. Since the stuff of the soul is a blending of ordinary elements, at least some of the alterations that happen in the soul are governed by the principles of elementary change. Though there is a report by Galen saying that the Stoics distinguished three different kinds of breath, of which

12 Cf. footnote 10. 13 Lucretius 3.170-176. 14 Lucretius 3.290f. 15 For a full account of the Epicurean concept of soul see: Annas (1991). Interaction of Body and Soul 193 the psychical breath is only one kind,16 it seems that at least Chrysippus said that we live and breathe with one and the same natural breath.17 According to general physical laws, the elements of the soul – fire and air – are the two sustaining elements, while everything else, especially water and earth, must be sustained by something else. This, in turn, leads to the opposition of the breath-substance that has the power to sustain and the material substance that must be sustained by the breath-substance. Ensouled things have the principle of their motion in themselves and are moved by themselves. Just as the Epicureans distinguished between the animus or mind, which is firmly located in the breast, and the anima, which is distributed throughout the entire body, there is a certain ambiguity in the Stoic concept of the soul, as well. Sextus Empiricus even says that for the Stoics the word “soul” has two meanings: on the one hand, that which sustains the entire compound; on the other hand, the commanding faculty, which in the case of human beings is the deliberative part of the soul. If we say that man is a compound of body and soul or that death is the separation of body and soul, we particularly refer to the commanding faculty and not to the broader sense of “soul”.18 The commanding faculty is located in the heart, where an immediate contact between the soul and the blood system of the body is guaranteed. Though Stoics and Epicureans differ slightly on the exact place of the central part of the soul, the Stoics’ reasons for assuming that the soul must be in the heart are quite similar to what the Epicureans said. According to Chrysippus, we came to think that the soul is in the heart through our awareness “of the emotions that affect the mind happening to them in the chest and especially in the region where the heart is placed. This is so particularly in the case of distress, fear, anger, and, above all, excitement.”19 Besides the commanding faculty, there are several parts of the soul that “flow from their seat in the heart, as if from the source of a spring, and spread through the whole body. They continually fill all the limbs with vital breath and rule and control them with countless different powers – nutrition, growth, locomotion, sensation, impulse to actions.”20 One source mentions seven such parts of the soul: “From the commanding faculty, there are seven parts of the soul that grow out and stretch out into the body like tentacles of an octopus.”21 Five of these parts are the

16 Galen, Introductio seu medicus XIV.726.7-11 (= LS 47N). 17 Calcidius 220 (= LS 53G 1-2). 18 Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 7.234 (= LS 53F). 19 Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines III.1.25 (= LS 65H). For Galen’s report of Chrysippus’ theory of emotion see the admirable study by Teun Tieleman (2003). 20 Calcidius 220 (= LS 53G 6). 21 Aëtius4.21.1-4 (= LS 53H 2). 194 Christof Rapp senses sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Sight can be described as breath that extends from the commanding faculty to the eyes, hearing as breath that extends from the commanding faculty to the ears, etc. The number of seven parts can be reached only by counting seed and the use of language as parts of the soul, too; in these cases the breath also extends to the genitals and the tongue. But obviously, even Chrysippus and Cleanthes disagree whether these faculties must be regarded as parts of the soul.22 It also seems to be controversial whether there are different kinds of breath leading from the central seat of the soul to the different senses. The assumption that there are no incorporeal beings beside the lekta and the void is deeply rooted in Stoic physics. Nevertheless, there are some explicit attempts to argue for the corporeality of the soul. And these arguments are remarkably similar to what we already know from the Epicureans. The premise is again that it is impossible that something incorporeal should be the agent of anything, and that only a body is capable of acting or of being acted upon.23 This premise is taken for granted in the following report that Nemesius gives about Cleanthes: He (Cleanthes) also says: no incorporeal interacts with a body, and no body with an incorporeal, but one body interacts with another body. Now the soul interacts (sumpaschei) with the body when it is sick and being cut, and the body with the soul, thus when the soul feels shame and fear, the body turns red and pale respectively. Therefore the soul is a body.24 In this argument, “sumpaschei” obviously does not mean that a and b are simultaneously affected by the same thing. Rather, there is in both cases one thing that is primarily affected and another thing whose being affected follows the first primary affection. When someone is being cut, then it is the body that is primarily affected, while the affection of the soul occurs as a secondary affection. In the case of emotions, it is the soul that is primarily affected, while the affection of the body is dependent on the soul being affected. The visible bodily symptoms of an emotion like shame or fear are used to demonstrate that the soul can act directly upon the body, and this, in turn, implies that the soul must be corporeal, since otherwise it could not act upon something else. Now, on the one hand, the psychosomatic character of emotions is being used to argue for the corporeality of the soul; but if we have come to assume that the soul is a body, then, on the other hand, it seems somehow odd to say that in the case of emotions the body is co-affected

22 Seneca, Letters 113.23 (= LS 53L). 23 Cicero, Academia 1.39 (= LS 45A), Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 8.263 (= LS 45B). 24 Nemesius, 78.7-79.2 (= LS 45C). Interaction of Body and Soul 195 with the soul, if the soul is a body, too. Is it still practicable to distinguish between the bodily and psychological aspects of an emotion? In what sense is becoming red or pale more peculiar to the body than the belief that something frightening is about to happen? And if we came to the conclusion that the emotion is no more then one bodily act, then we no longer need a causal impact of the soul on the body. But originally it was exactly this kind of impact for whose sake the emotions were introduced. Do the Stoics just keep the conventional vocabulary when they say that some aspects of the emotions belong to the soul and some to the body? Or is the difference just a matter of different degrees of complexity?25 To shed some light on those questions, we have to say a little bit about the Stoic theory of emotions: There are several Stoic definitions of the emotions; we start with the most famous one: A passion is an impulse that is excessive and disobedient to the dictates of the reason, or a movement of soul that is irrational and contrary to nature.26 An excessive impulse is generated if we evaluate something as good or bad when it is actually adiaphoron. Since the wise or sage would never approve of an adiaphoron, he cannot have emotions. Since an opinion or belief is the result of the approval (sunkatathesis) we give to an impression, and since the excessive impulse is generated by an active consent to an adiaphoron, emotions are also said to be beliefs. Strictly speaking, they are called “weak” or “fresh beliefs”.27 The term “weak” indicates that the approval given to an impression is contrary to the approval a wise man would give. The judgments of a wise man are always firm, in- variable and about kataleptic phantasiai, so the approval of the unwise person is always infirm, variable, and sometimes of non-kataleptic phantasiai. But what is much more relevant in our context is the concept of a “fresh belief” (prosphaton).28 That the belief a Stoic emotion consists in is fresh means that “it is the stimulus of an irrational contraction or swelling”.29 To understand this definition of “fresh”, we have to keep in mind that there are four generic emotions: appetite and fear, pleasure and distress.30 Appetite is directed toward what appears good in the future, fear to what appears bad in the future, pleasure arises when we obtain the objects of appetite and avoid the objects of fear, and distress arises

25 As Christopher Gill has suggested, cf. his contribution to this volume; see also his The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought, Oxford, forthcoming. 26 Stobaeus, 2.88,8-90,6 (= LS 65A 1). 27 Stobaeus, 2.88,22-89,3 (= LS 65C). 28 I am indebted to Katja Maria Vogt for referring me to this context; a full and thorough account of those issues can be found in her (2004, pp. 69-93). 29 LS 65C; cf. Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines IV.2.1 (= LS 65C). 30 Cf. Stobaeus 2.90,19-91,9 (= LS 65E). 196 Christof Rapp in the opposite case. Now, swelling or expansion and contraction or condensation are just these two types of process that happen between the elements of the soul, so that swelling and contraction are the physiological description of two of the generic emotions. I postpone for the moment the question whether there also is an appropriate physiological description of the remaining two generic emotions in order to outline two situations in which the physiological aspect of an emotion becomes relevant. The first situation is this: If I feel grief about the death of a friend, I have the fresh opinion that the death of my friend is something bad. As long as this is a fresh opinion there is a corresponding contraction. When after months the feeling of distress or grief becomes weaker and finally disappears, it is not because I altered my opinion on the point that the death of my friend is something bad, but because the contraction has disappeared.31 The inverse constellation is the case of inertia, which Stoic philosophers also mention: people remain in states of emotion, even if they realize or are taught to realize that one should not feel distress or fear, for example, because they are “controlled by the tyranny of the emotions”.32 If we want to explain this sort of tyranny, it is tempting to assume that the inertia of the bodily contraction or swelling keeps us in the state of emotion – even if we have already altered our opinion. In these two situations, the bodily dimension of emotions clearly provides an explanatory advantage. However, the problem arises that, in the first case, we hold opinions that, after the contraction has disappeared, no longer have a corresponding bodily state. A similar problem occurs with respect to the remaining generic emotions, appetite and fear. The very section that told us that pleasure and distress are swelling and contraction merely describes appetite and fear as stretching (orexis) and shrinking (ekklisis). These two terms have no place in Stoic physics. Nevertheless, it would be strange to assume that there is no bodily alteration that corresponds to appetite and fear. The problem, I think, is that, beyond the level of swelling and contraction, Stoic physics does not provide an appropriate description that could cover the physiological aspect of these two emotions. What do we learn from all this about the distinction between bodily and psychological aspects of an emotion? We haven’t reached a clear answer yet. But it seems to me that the bodily reactions of becoming red or pale are regarded as belonging to the body because they are just secondary affections of the respective emotions. If the processes of contraction and swelling are attributed to the soul, it is partly because these are states with direct intentional objects, namely what is apparently good and what

31 Cf. Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s Doctrines IV.7.12-17 (= LS 65O). 32 Stobaeus, 2.88,8-90,6 (= LS 65A 8). Interaction of Body and Soul 197 is apparently bad. Another reason why those processes are attributed to the soul became obvious in the discussion about the location of the soul: they belong to the soul partly because we can feel them and because it is not one of the sense organs where we feel them.

Interim conclusion: What the Hellenistic philosophers saw

There are, of course, many important diﬀerences between the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophy of mind. Above all, the Epicurean account of emotions is far from the elaborated theory of the various Stoic philosophers. But regardless of these diﬀerences the Stoic and the Epicurean accounts of emotions converge on one important point: They acknowledge that emotions are common to body and soul and they assume that this relation must be understood as causal interaction between both. Further, they take for granted that causal interaction always takes place between bodies so that the soul must be corporeal too. And this, again, is taken as a proof in favor of anti-dualism. It is obvious, then, that the Hellenistic anti-dualists envisage their opponents as assuming that body and soul are related to each other as two separate entities, of which one is corporeal and one is not, but even the non-corporeal one is separate in a similar way as the corporeal is. But once we think of body and soul as two separately existing entities it is challenging to assume, as the Hellenistic philosophers actually did, that whatever is common to body and soul must be mutu- ally exchanged or communicated by causal interaction. The only problem for the dualists, then, is that one of the two involved agents is incorporeal, and, no matter what the precise meaning of that is, it is clear that what is incorporeal cannot be causally acted upon and cannot causally act upon something else. – This seems to be coherent as it stands, the only problem is that the alternative between an Epicurean or Stoic materialism on the side and a na¨ıve dualism (as the dualism that the Hellenistic schools ascribe to their opponents) on the other side does not exhaust the theoretical options for describing to relation between body and soul.

Aristotle

In a well-known section at the beginning of De Anima that raises the question whether all so-called affections of the soul are common to body and soul or whether there are some affections that belong exclusively to 198 Christof Rapp the soul, Aristotle places great emphasis on the role of emotions.33 The example of emotions helps him formulate some general points about how to define psychological states within the frame of hylomorphism. The celebrated outcome of this section is that the student of nature and the dialectician define different aspects of the same thing, since the former describes a bodily state, for example the boiling of the blood around the heart in the case of anger, while the latter adds the reasons why people get angry as well as the target the angry person aims at.34 This is an important point for hylomorphism, and it is striking that of all the affections of the soul, he picks out emotions, especially since the emotions – unlike nutrition, sense perception, or phantasia – will not play a major role in the remaining parts of the book. The reason he chooses the emotions must be that he thinks the emotions provide the most telling and most persuasive example of the fact that some of the affections that are attributed to the soul are combined with bodily movements. Let us take a closer look at this very interesting passage. In 403a3, Aristotle says that there is a difficulty concerning the pathê of the soul, whether they are common to that which have it or whether some of them are peculiar to the soul. This is an aporia, he says, that is not easy to overcome. He continues that seemingly (phainetai) most of them are not undergone without the body, and he adds as examples: being angry, being confident, desiring, and perceiving generally.35 In this sentence, Aristotle mentions emotions among those cases in which there is no doubt that the body must be somehow involved; but they are not the only examples, since he also mentions perceptions, which can be subsumed under ta pathê têspsuchês, but not under emotions. If there is something at all that is peculiar to the soul, he continues, thinking would be the best candidate, but even thinking, which is possibly peculiar to the soul, cannot be without body, if it does not occur without phantasia. Next he tells us that the soul cannot be separable if there is nothing that is peculiar to it36 – leaving open, in my view, the possibility that thinking is separable, though under normal circumstances it is somehow dependent on the contribution of phantasia, which in turn implies a bodily alteration. A few lines later, in 403a16, he gets back to what he said before his digression on thinking, now claiming that seemingly (eoike) all affections of the soul (ta têspsuchêspathêpanta) are together with the body (einai meta sômatos), and his examples are now: anger, gentleness, fear, pity, confidence, joy, and loving and hating. In all these cases, he says, the body undergoes something simultaneously with them (hama toutois paschei ti

33 De An. I.1 403a3-5. 34 De An. I.1 403a27-403b2. 35 De An. I.1 403a5-7. 36 De An. I.1 403a8-12. Interaction of Body and Soul 199 to sôma).37 Before we proceed to his evidence in support of his assertion, I would like to highlight some minor observations. First, how can he say that “seemingly” or “obviously” all pathê of the soul are together with the body? Just a few lines ago he was at least sympathetic to the view that thinking could be an exception, and he also told us that this question leads to a serious aporia. The obvious solution is that now the formula “pathêtêspsuchês” is more restricted and only refers to emotions, as the given examples clearly indicate. This terminological confusion mirrors the fact that Aristotle has no single word to select this subset of “pathê têspsuchês” that we call ‘emotion’. Therefore, every time he wants to introduce the emotions he has to specify what he means by “pathê” with a list of typical emotions. So I am inclined to think that for Aristotle “pathêtêspsuchês” is not a technical term. He uses this formula to talk about phenomena that are usually ascribed to the soul. Hence the issue at stake is not whether phenomena that primarily belong to the soul are accompanied by bodily movements; rather, the point is that phenomena that are usually called “affections of the soul” belong to the body, too. My second minor observation is this: The wording “the body suffers something simultaneously with them (hama toutois paschei ti to sôma)” sounds a bit strange, if we take it literally: then it seems to indicate that there are some definite and identifiable entities, called “the pathê of the soul”, that are immediately followed by distinct and also identifiable processes or occurrences, called “what the body undergoes”. However, we should keep in mind that the passage is taken from a preliminary discussion in the very first chapter of the book. This could explain why Aristotle chooses such a rough and ready way of speaking. In what follows, Aristotle gives us three pieces of evidence for his assertion that the pathê of the soul are combined with an affection of the body. The common background of these pieces of evidence is the observation that emotions are typically accompanied by bodily changes: people become pale when they are in fear and they have foam at the mouth when they are angry. But Aristotle’s examples are more specific: “This is shown by the fact,” he says, “that sometimes when severe and manifest pathêmata occur we do not get angry and do not feel fear, while at other times we are moved by small and feeble pathêmata, when the body is already in a state of tension and behaves as it does in anger.”38 These are two different cases, though they must be read together. In the first case we have clear and strong pathêmata, but no corresponding emotions. Though Aristotle sometimes uses the word “pathêma” almost synonymously with “pathos” to refer to emotions, here it is clearly distinct from pathos in the sense of emotion, since it is the very point of the first example that there can be manifest pathêmata without pathê. So I take

37 De An. I.1 403a16-19. 38 De An. I.1 403a19-22. 200 Christof Rapp pathêmata here to mean something like “appearance” or “impression of the soul” in a non-technical sense – as it is used, for example, in the first paragraph of De Interpretatione. According to this reading, Aristotle wants to say that in the first case there is a clear impression either of something that is frightening or of something that is apt to evoke anger, for example an injustice or an insult done to me and my family or a humiliating treatment by someone who is not entitled to inflict it. Now, the text does not tell us explicitly why the pathê fear and anger do not occur in the first case; but, since the second case obviously is meant to describe the inverse situation and since in this second case the body is already in the state of fear or anger, we can infer that there are no pathê in the first case, because the body is not in a state of fear or anger. Aristotle does not explain how something like this can happen, but we can easily adopt some elucidating examples from his Rhetoric. In the second book of the Rhetoric, for example, he says: People become calm whenever they have spent their anger on someone else, which happened in the case of Ergophilus; for though the Athenians were more angry at him than at Callisthenes, they let him go because they had condemned Callisthenes to death on the previous day.39 The underlying idea seems to be the following: It is possible to vent one’s anger on somebody, but then it takes time to recover the energy that is needed for a new eruption of anger. Now imagine that what we just called energy is something that affects the state of the body as well; then it can happen that we have a clear impression of something that should, under normal circumstances, cause our anger, but that we are nevertheless not able to feel anger – either no anger at all or not enough anger – because our body has already spent its aggressive energy on something or someone else. Another, less intricate, example can be derived from the statement that older people are cowardly and fearful, because they are chilled or cooled. Here “being chilled” or “cooled” must not be taken metaphorically; in addition to other factors, old people do not tend to courageous and aggressive emotions because their bodies are cooled down and for the most part do not produce the heat that is needed for such emotions. Therefore it can happen that an old person is faced with a situation that would have evoked her anger some years before, but now no anger occurs because the body is not in the appropriate state, i.e., does not provide enough of the specific heat.40 These remarks conclude my comments on the first case: if the absence of certain bodily conditions can prevent someone from being angry or feeling fear, even though the reasons for those emotions are given, then, indeed, we have a proof of the assertion that the pathê of the soul affect

39 Rh. II.3 1380b10-13. 40 Rh. II.13 1389b31-33. Interaction of Body and Soul 201 the body, too. The second case, as I have already mentioned, describes the inverse constellation: The pathêmata are small and feeble, but they are enough to arouse an emotion, because the body already behaves in the way that is typical for the respective emotion. So if, for example, a previous event has already made someone’s blood surge through her veins, an insignificant insult or the vague and obscure suspicion that such an insult could have taken place can suffice for a new episode of anger. In De Insomniis, Aristotle even says that the more someone is under the influence of an emotion, the less similarity with the proper object of this kind of emotion is required to give rise to such emotions.41 If this is an apposite reading, then this description is even closer to our everyday experiences than the first case. That we usually regard emotional behaviour as irrational is mostly due to the observation that emotional reactions tend to be neither consistent nor appropriate, and this again especially applies to situations in which persons overreact. But Aristotle’s example works only if he can expect that his readers are familiar with the thought that these phenomena of emotional overreaction often occur as a result of a bodily disposition. Aristotle adds a third case that is said to be even more convincing: Even when nothing happens that is frightening, people find themselves in the pathê of someone who actually feels fear (en tois pathesi ginontai tois tou phoboumenou).42 It is clear that in this case no external cause or object of the respective emotion is given. Everything else in this description is open to various interpretations. That there is no external object or cause does not, strictly speaking, exclude the possibility that there is an internal object of the fear; for example, Aristotle tells us in De Motu Animalium, that we often start to shudder and are frightened when we merely think of something.43 Or does Aristotle’s wording “nothing frightening” also rule out a frightening thought or phantasma of something that is absent? The next difficult point is that Aristotle does not explicitly say that people actually suffer the emotion of fear despite the absence of a proper object; he only says that they are affected like someone who actually feels fear. This indirect description avoids ascribing a fully-fledged emotion to the person; rather, the state in question is merely compared with the condition of someone who actually has the emotion. The reason for distinguishing the present situation from the fully-fledged emotion could be that, for Aristotle, a fully-fledged emotion requires the appropriate or allegedly appropriate cause or object of this type of emotion, so that where no cause or object

41 Insomn. 2 460b1-15. 42 De An. I.1 403a22-24. 43 MA 7 701b21-22. 202 Christof Rapp is given at all, we cannot speak of an emotion in the strictest sense. I am inclined to think that this would be a plausible point, since we are used to thinking and talking about most of our emotions as being directed towards a certain object or cause; this is why we hesitate to speak of a regular emotion if we cannot identify a possible cause. In Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, there is a passage where the protagonist Hans Castorp complains about the exaggerated activity of his heart until he discovers that if he relates the beating of his heart to his thinking of Madame Chauchat, the activity of his body receives a target and hence becomes a Gemuetsbewegung or affection of the soul. Anyway, the third case makes us think of a person whose body displays all the symptoms of fear (she pales, goes weak in the knees, her teeth chatter) without any visible cause or without any cause at all. So the point of this third case seems to be that sometimes the body itself brings about either an emotion or at least the state that is equivalent to a fully- fledged emotion, and this in turn would support Aristotle’s point that the pathê of the soul are affections of the body, too. The celebrated conclusion he draws from these three cases is: From all this it is obvious that the affections of the soul are enmattered logoi.44 Consequently their definitions are, for example, as follows: Being angry is a particular movement of such and such a body or part or faculty (of the body), as result of this or that cause and for the sake of this or that end.45 The two aspects of this definition correspond with the division of labour between the student of nature and the dialectician – the former emphasizing the material aspect, the latter the form or logos. Therefore the dialectician would define anger, for example, as the desire for retaliation or something like that, but the student of nature would include into his definition that anger is also the boiling of the blood and hot stuff surrounding the heart. This conclusion, again, is subject to widely differing interpretations. Before outlining my own preferences, some comments on the definition of emotions might be in order. Ample evidence of Aristotelian definitions of emotions can be found in the second book of the Rhetoric. There, in the Rhetoric, Aristotle does not attempt to describe the bodily changes that occur during the episode of an emotion. That is one of the reasons why some authors have felt encouraged to think that in the Rhetoric an emotion is nothing but a judgment. But after all, the absence of bodily processes in the Rhetoric is by no means surprising. First, the Rhetoric

44 De An. I.1 403a25. 45 De An. I.1 403a26-27. Interaction of Body and Soul 203 stresses several times its affinity to dialectic, so that it also uses the definitions of the dialectician, and not of the student of nature (not to mention the point that a complete list of the bodily changes that constitute the several emotions is one of the ultimate aims of psychology and cannot be given off-hand). And second, it would be of no use for the orator to know the bodily changes that are involved in each type of emotion; for him it is important to know the causes and objects of the different emotions, because he can make the audience think that the cause of a certain pathos is given, but, of course, he has no means to modify the bodily conditions of his audience directly. The definitions given in the Rhetoric better fit what Aristotle has called the formal aspect of such a definition. So the general scheme, according to which an emotion occurs “as the affection of this or that cause and for the sake of this or that end”, can more or less be exemplified by the definitions of the Rhetoric. Anger is the emotion that fits very well in this scheme, since it is defined as desire (orexis), accompanied by pain, for conspicuous retaliation because of a conspicuous insult that was directed, without justification, against oneself or those near to one.46 In this definition we have a cause, the unjustified insult, and an end or purpose, which is the revenge that the angry one desires to take on the person who is responsible for the undeserved insult. The purpose of anger can easily be identified, because anger is defined as desire with a certain direction. But anger is the only emotion that is defined as desire, other emotions are defined as pain or agitation or wanting. Hence they do not have any built- in impulse for a certain course of action, and therefore it is more difficult to say for the sake of what end they exist. Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that the definitions given in the Rhetoric tell us the form or the logos of the various emotions as required in De Anima, insofar as all definitions include the specific cause or object of a certain kind of emotion; for example the object of fear is a future destructive or painful evil, the object of pity is an undeserved misfortune, the object of shame is the evil that seems to bring a person into disrepute, the object of gratitude is a favor that releases us from or prevents a painful situation, etc. I am even inclined to think that, on closer examination, those emotions that are not defined by a certain impulse have a teleological dimension, too: Probably there are purposes that are not explicit in the definition of an emotion and of which the respective person is not aware. Most of them are directed either toward the preservation of one’s existence or are associated with the task of maintaining one’s self-esteem in a social context. Finally a word on pleasure and pain. Most of the emotions the Rhetoric deals with are defined as pain. But, unlike Plato’s Philebus, Aristotle does

46 Rh. II.2 1378a30-32. 204 Christof Rapp not try to use pleasure and pain as the genus of all emotions. This becomes clear, for example, from the definition of anger, which is not said to be a kind of pain, but only to be connected with pain. The definitions of some emotions do not even mention “pain”; these are the definitions of loving (philein), hating, and gratitude (charin echein). Aristotle explicitly says that hate is without pain.47 Nevertheless, all of them are somehow – in a vague sense – related to pleasure and pain: For example, if we have the emotion of philia, then we feel pleasure and pain together with our friend when something good or bad happens to him. Gratitude is also connected with pleasure and pain, since the favor we are grateful for liberates us from a painful situation, etc. Pleasure and pain are interesting for our purpose, because they imply an immediate bodily change, as Aristotle tells us, for example, in De Motu Animalium: the painful and the pleasant are nearly always accompanied by chilling and heating. This is clear from the passions. For feelings of confidence, fears, sexual excitement, and other bodily affections, painful and pleasant, are accompanied by heating and chilling.48 However, it is important to note that these bodily affections are not identical with the alterations mentioned in the material definition of an emotion, because the painful and the pleasant have uniform bodily reactions, while different emotions are thought to be the activity of different parts of the body.

What Aristotle avoided

What can we infer from these examples and how do they illuminate the expression “common to body and soul”? The initial question for the discussion of the pathê of the soul in De Anima I.1 was whether some of those affections belong exclusively to soul. Perhaps we are inclined to think so because we are used to call them “affections of the soul”, but the discussion of the emotions clearly shows that this initial question must be answered in the negative: they are not peculiar to the soul, but common to body and soul. This result would still allow us to think of emotions as combinations of two separately existing components, one psychic or mental and one material. For a post-Cartesian philosopher, it is tempting to think of Aristotelian emotions as consisting of two such components, but this is not exactly what we find in the text of De Anima I.1:

47 Rh. II.4 1382a11-13. 48 MA 7 701b37-702a4. Interaction of Body and Soul 205

First of all, Aristotle refers to certain impressions or perceptions we have, but he nowhere says that these impressions are the mental or psychic component of the emotion and he nowhere contrasts them with a merely physiological component. He does not attempt to describe in a terminological vocabulary how these impressions are presented to us: whether we have perceptions or phantasmata of, say, frightening things or whether we judge that something frightening is about to happen. But if he were interested in sketching a two-component-model it would have been crucial for him to show that it is the representation of frightening objects which play the role of the merely psychic component in his story (this, again, would have been astonishing since it is clear that within Aristotle’s theory of the soul perceptions and phantasmata involve bodily changes so that they cannot be taken as the paradigm for purely mental states). This is also important for the claim that the full definition of an emotion includes a formal and a material part, e.g., that anger is the boiling of blood around the heart as the result of an insult for the sake of revenge: If, as we said, the impression that some insult has happened is not meant as representing the psychic component of an emotion which causes an adequate reaction of the body, then it is not likely that the formal part of that definition “as the result of an insult for the sake of revenge” is meant to represent the respective impression, opinion, or judgment in the sense of a purely psychic or mental process which acts upon a certain part of the body. Further, Aristotle does not say that the movement of the blood is affected by something that belongs to the soul. He clearly maintains that the emotion is a certain movement of the blood. And what makes this movement a full-fledged emotion is the fact that it is a movement with certain causes and purposes. True, it must be some kind of representation of the insult that is likely to evoke the anger. But the passage’s point is not that a sort of opinion or judgment representing the presence of an unjustified insult acts upon a purely material system, the body. This can be seen from the fact that the emotion is not the movement of some blood, but the movement of a certain portion of blood located in a certain place of an ensouled body. Hence, what happens in the ensouled body when the blood starts to boil is not due to the laws of elementary change, but rather something that only happens in a specific body formed by a specific sort of soul.49 For that simple reason it would be inappropriate to say that in the definition of anger as “boiling of blood around the heart as the result of an insult for the sake of revenge”, the first part describes a purely physical and second part a purely psychic or mental component of the full-fledged

49 This point has also been stressed by Alan Code; cf. Code/Moravcsik (1992, pp. 129- 146). 206 Christof Rapp emotion, since the boiling of the blood is a change that can only happen in an ensouled body; consequently, it would be odd to understand the remaining part of the definition as a description of what kind of mental process the soul undergoes while the blood in the bodily parts of the same person is boiling. The formal part of such definitions specifies the causes under which this particular emotion occurs; it does not determine the psychic capacity by which we understand or imagine that the relevant kind of insult has happened and, hence, it does not pick out a psychic component of the emotion as opposed to a physical or physiological one. It could be objected that the boiling of blood is something that is separately identifiable and hence counts as a separate occurrence or entity with or without the specific causes and purposes of anger. I think that the wording of the third case provides a clear counterexample. If Aristotle says that one is “in the state of someone” who actually feels anger or fear, this seems to be a clear indicator that it is not possible to refer to this specific bodily state without mentioning anger or the form and purpose that define anger or fear. Hence, in this context, the emotions are described as a specific bodily activity, informed by certain causes and purposes, and not as a complex phenomenon which consists of two separate components. This is confirmed by Aristotle’s discussion of the third case, that even when nothing happens that is frightening, people find themselves in the pathê of someone who actually feels fear: If his intention had been to argue that each emotion is composed of a bodily and a psychic component he should have stressed that in the present case the specific mental or psychic contribution is missing. But he makes no further comment on whether something is missing in this case; he rather confines himself to the point that even without visible causes the relevant changes in the body can come about so that emotions cannot exclusively belong to the soul. Finally, the outcome of the comparison between the two types of definition, the dialectical and the material one, is not that both types of definitions are complete in relation to different purposes: With respect to the dialectical definition, or logos, Aristotle says that it must be necessarily in a certain kind of hulê50 so that the definition remains incomplete if we do not add in which kind of hulê it is. And with respect to the student of nature (phusikos) Aristotle does not want say that he could be content with the material definition alone. On the contrary, at the end of the chapter51 it seems that, properly understood, the student of nature is concerned with the composite, matter and form, and not with mere physiological descriptions.

50 De An. I.1 403b2-3. 51 De An. I.1 403b7-16. Interaction of Body and Soul 207

If this analysis is correct so far we have identified a remarkable difference to the discussion of the same phenomena in the Hellenistic schools: Aristotle fully acknowledges, as they did, the psychosomatic character of emotions, but the question of how a psychic part could act upon a merely bodily part – i.e., the question of causal interaction – does not even arise in the context of Aristotle’s discussion. And the presumable reason why this question does not arise is that he does not even attempt to distinguish two relatively separate components. But as long as we do not have separate components or agents there is no need to relate these components via causal interaction. The idea of such an interaction between body and soul does not occur until we think of the soul as a more or less separate entity which is like a second body – with the only difference that it is incorporeal. Certainly, this is how the Hellenistic philosophers have envisaged their predecessors; but in the light of what we have said about Aristotle and his discussion of emotions in De Anima I.1, it seems that at least Aristotle would not even have accepted the setting in which the problem of causal interaction arises and the arguments of the Hellenistic philosophers against the immaterial soul become applicable. A question to end with could be the following: Did Aristotle deliberately avoid the distinction between two more or less separate components of the emotion or did he just fail to see the problems of psychosomatic compounds which the Hellenistic philosophers clearly saw? A full and reliable answer to this question would certainly require a detailed interpretation of De Anima II and III. But a first hint can also be found in our chapter De Anima I.1: The discussion of emotions and the different types of definitions is finally concluded by the following remark: We have said that the pathê of the soul are inseparable from the physical hulê of living beings in the way in which anger and fear are inseparable and not in the way in which line and plane are.52 This conclusion is remarkable for several reasons: First, it becomes clear that the emotions just served as a paradigm and that the results that we derived from this discussion can be extended beyond the special case of emotions. Second, it is important that Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of inseparability:53 Lines and planes are inseparable in existence, since they could not exist beside or over and above the enmattered exemplifications. But they are still separable in thought, because they do not require a specific type of matter and because their essence can be defined without reference to such a specific type of matter. Now, the point of Aristotle’s conclusion is that anger and fear are inseparable in a different way, i.e. they turned out to be even inseparable in thought. Applying the example

52 De An. I.1 403b17-19. 53 I owe this point to David Charles. He elaborates on this distinction in his unpublished paper “Aristotle’s Psychological Theory”. 208 Christof Rapp of lines and planes we must conclude that anger and fear can never be abstracted from a specific type of matter or specific type of material process. This confirms our dismissal of a two-component-reading: That emotions are inseparable in thought implies, at least, that they are not composed of two separately identifiable components but are psycho-physical units. If this is the major outcome of Aristotle’s discussion of emotions in De Anima I.1 he marks his own account off from two theoretical alternatives: firstly, from the assertion that some states of the soul can exist without the body and, secondly, from the assumption that the states of the soul are inseparable from the body for their existence, but that they can be separated in thought, i.e. that they are separable for their essence or identity. If someone accepts one of these two accounts he is bound to think that, in principle, the two components involved could interact as other separately existing substances would do. Since Aristotle carefully argues against these theoretical alternatives and pleads, instead, for the model of emotions as psycho-physical units it seems safe to conclude that he deliberately avoids a setting which allows of causal interaction between body and soul.

References

Annas, Julia, 1991, “Epicurus’ philosophy of mind”, in: S. Everson (ed.), Companions to Ancient Thought 2: Psychology, Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, pp. 84-101. Charles, David, unpublished, ”‘Aristotle’s Psychological Theory”’. Code, Alan / Moravcsik, Julius, 1992, “Explaining Various Forms of Liv- ing”, in: M.C. Nussbaum / A.O. Rorty (eds), Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 129-146. Gill, Christopher, forthcoming, The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Ro- man Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vogt, Katja Maria, 2004, “Die Stoische Theorie der Emotionen”, in: Bar- bara Guckes (ed.), Zur Ethik der älteren Stoa, Göttingen:Vanden- hoeck & Ruprecht , pp. 69-93. Long, Anthony / Sedley, David (eds), 1887, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2. vols., Cambridge: Cambridge Universtiy Press. Tieleman, Teun, 2003, Chrysippus’ On Affections: Reconstruction and In- terpretation, Leiden: Brill. Christopher Gill

Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism

1. Converging Types of Holism

Despite their radically divergent versions of the world and human beings, Epicurus, many Stoics, and the more significant early Hellenistic physicians share a constellation of convictions concerning soul and body . . . . [This] includes, for example, that all psychê is sôma but not all sôma is psychê; that only what is spatially extended, three-dimensional, and capable of acting or being acted upon exists; that the soul meets these criteria of existence; that this corporeal psychê, like the rest of the body, is mortal and transient; that the psychê is generated with the body; that it neither exists before the body nor exists eternally after its separation from the body – that is, the soul does not exist independently of the body in which it exists. In this incisive survey, Heinrich von Staden (2000, p. 79) identifies a series of reasons for thinking that the idea “common to body and soul” is central for Hellenistic thought and that this idea is conceived there in a particularly strong form. I agree, in substance, with his appraisal. My aim in this chapter is to illustrate in Stoic and Epicurean thought this shared belief in the fundamental unity of body and psyche. In the first instance, I explore how they reach this shared view in spite of other major differences, and how this idea fits within their larger philosophical outlooks and objectives.1 In approaching this topic, modern scholars, perhaps inevitably, combine two kinds of method. One is that of characterising ancient ideas about the body-psyche relationship in terms of modern categories such as

1 This chapter is an independently formulated version of ideas explored more fully in various sections of Gill (2006), especially in ch. 1. I am grateful to Richard King for organising the stimulating colloquium on which this volume is based. 210 Christopher Gill materialism or physicalism (or variants such as substantial dualism or reductive materialism).2 Another is that of trying to identify the distinctive intellectual project that underlies the way that this relationship is understood in a specific ancient theory or theories. It is important, I think, to try to deploy both types of method in a co-ordinated way. The modern categories provide a means of defining ancient ideas with some degree of intellectual precision. But, as Myles Burnyeat has underlined, there is also a danger of conceptual mismatch and anachronism. The “mind-body” distinction, in particular, tends to have Cartesian and post-Cartesian con- notations which are, arguably, irrelevant to the issues central to ancient – and indeed, a good deal of contemporary – philosophy.3 So it is important to combine our use of modern concepts with an attempt to reconstruct the larger project of the ancient theories involved. Hence, I begin by outlining a set of ideas on which, in my view, Stoic and Epicurean approaches converge. This outline bears on their conception of human nature and personality in general; but it also provides a framework for analysing their thinking on what is common to body and psyche. Both theories embrace, I think, a combination of types of holism and naturalism with certain striking and paradoxical “Socratic” ethical claims. In both cases, we find a unified or holistic conception of human personality, understood as a psychophysical and psychological organism or unit, rather than as a combination of (separate or independent) psyche and body, or of mind/reason and emotions/desires. This holistic conception is combined with a naturalistic approach, which has at least three strands. One is a focus on the natural (birth-to-death) life of human beings as embodied rational animals. Another is a conception of natural development as being open, in principle, to all human beings and including the expression of (natural forms of) sociability. A third is what might be called “rich naturalism”, in which the picture of nature offered depends on the combination or synthesis of ethics, physics and logic and not on – for instance – trying to reduce ethics to physics. These types of holism and naturalism are coupled – in a way that may seem surprising – with certain strong ethical claims, which seem to be based, directly or indirectly, on Socratic thinking. One is that the achievement of complete happiness is “up to us”, through the exercise of virtue and rational reflection, in a way that is not constrained by our inborn nature or by contingent features of our upbringing and social environment. A second is that happiness involves an invulnerable, time-independent, perfection of character, marked

2 For a range of such categories, see Irwin (1991, p. 57) (applied to Aristotle). 3 See Burnyeat (1992), and, for a related claim, (1982). See also Everson (1991), introduction (pp. 1-12), Gill (1991). On the contrast between Cartesian-style thought about mind (centred on ‘I’-centred self-consciousness) and ancient psychology, see also text to nn. 23-4 below. Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 211 by freedom from distress or passion. A third is that only the fully rational and virtuous (or “wise”) person is completely integrated and coherent, while non-wise people are psychologically and ethically incoherent and lead incoherent lives.4 My focus here, in fact, is only on the first of these shared features, their psychophysical holism, which expresses a larger outlook which I call “substantial holism”. But it is useful, none the less, to locate this feature within a nexus of (shared) ways of thinking about human personality, to give a fuller picture of the framework of ideas which underlies their thinking about what is common to body and psyche. Before defining further what is meant here by psychophysical and substantial holism, it is worth confronting possible scepticism about the assertion that these two Hellenistic philosophical schools, which are, in many ways, intellectual opponents, share a single complex of ideas of the sort outlined. My response, in broad terms, is that, despite their different philosophical starting-points, these schools converge in adopting psychophysical (and substantial) holism, even though they do not explicitly agree with each other and co-operate as intellectual partners. The differences in their world-view are obvious and widely recognised. For instance, Epicurus begins from the assumption that all phenomena, including psychological ones, can be explained as the outcome of random conjunctions of atoms moving in void. This position involves a reaction against the Platonic teleological and providential world-view in the Timaeus, as well as against traditional ideas about divine intervention in the natural and human sphere.5 The Stoics, by contrast, maintain that the universe is a self-sustaining unified organism, pervaded by innate purposive reason. Plato’s Timaeus, perhaps in combination with Aristotle’s causal framework, may have played a key role in shaping the Stoic causal principles as well as their teleogical world-view.6 However, there are reasons for thinking that the way the two theories responded to their main influences brought them closer to each other and led each one to adopt a version of substantial holism. Specifically, Epicureanism can be seen as a non-reductive version of Democritean atomism, while Stoicism can be interpreted as a naturalised version of Platonism. Epicurus seems to have rejected the “reductive” approach of Democritus, which treats all explanation at the supra-atomic level as merely conventional.7 He adopts a version

4 See further on this set of Stoic-Epicurean ideas, Gill (2006), especially chs. 2-3. Socrates was a direct and explicit influence on Stoicism, but seems also to have influenced Epicureanism more indirectly. 5 See Long/Sedley (1987) (= LS), 13, especially F-G (LS references are to sections and paragraphs unless otherwise stated). Texts cited from LS use their translation except as indicated. 6 See LS 46, 54, also LS, vol. 1, p. 319. 7 See especially Democritus DK, fr. B 9 (= Sextus Empiricus M. VII.135): “By convention (nomos) sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention 212 Christopher Gill of atomism that recognises the reality, intelligibility and coherence of the macroscopic, supra-atomic world.8 The Stoics, on the other hand, seem to have recast the main features of Plato’s Timaeus into a world-view that is thoroughly naturalistic and ontologically unified. Plato’s transcendent craftsman-god reappears as an immanent principle of rationality, agency and purpose, working within natural processes. Plato’s Timaeus, perhaps with other influences, helps to shape the Stoic two-fold set of principles, active and passive or god and matter, both of which are conceived as physical or as “bodies” and as being only conceptually distinguishable from each other within the material universe.9 Hence, despite their different starting-points and main influences, Epicureanism and Stoicism converge in presenting the universe as an essentially unified, material entity which is fully intelligible both as a whole and in its component perceptible manifestations. It is, thus, plausible to suggest that Epicureanism and Stoicism could have converged in adopting a unified or holistic world-view, in a way that informs their conception of what is common to body and psyche. What, in broad terms, are the marks of this holistic world-view? Why should one speak about substantial holism? The holistic character of the theories derives, in part, from the fact that they offer an inclusive but integrated account of the world or reality (or “substance”) and of the entities within the world. The contrast is most marked with the kind of (substantial) dualism we find in Plato’s Phaedo, in which there is an emphatic contrast in level of being and value between Forms and particulars, body and psyche, mind and emotions or desires. There is a contrast of a different kind with Democritean thought (notably, DK fr. B 9), in which the phenomenal world has become reduced to the atomic or eliminated altogether as a serious candidate for being and truth.10 Although Epicureanism and Sto- icism also treat as fundamental the polarity between atoms and void or the active and passive principles, these are seen as co-ordinate features of reality rather than as opposed dimensions within a framework of substantial dualism. Instead of body and psyche, or mind and desire/emotion, being placed on one or other side of a dichotomy of being and value, they are seen as (more or less complex and structured) states of a single entity or whole within a universe that is similarly conceived.11 This is a suffi-

colour, but in truth (etos) atoms and void”, trans. Warren (2002, p. 7). 8 See further Sedley (1999, pp. 379-82), Hankinson (1999, pp. 498-503), Warren (2002, pp. 67-71, pp. 193-5). 9 LS 44-5, also (vol. 1, pp. 277-8, 319, 331). See further Reydams-Schils (1999, chs. 1- 2), Sedley (2002), Dillon (2003, pp. 168-74). 10 See nn. 7-8 above. 11 For the contrasting (part-based or “core-centred”) way of thinking about body and psyche or psychic parts, see Gill (2006, 1.2), referring to, e.g., Pl. R. 611d-612a, Pl. Alc. 129c-130c, 132c-133c, Arist. EN 1168a28-31, 1177b30-1178a4, 14-21. See Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 213 ciently systematic feature of Epicureanism and Stoicism for us to suppose that it is a deliberate, even programmatic, dimension of their thought, which expresses a partial reaction against earlier ideas, even though some previous thought also contributed to their holistic outlook.12 I now develop in more detail this way of understanding these two theories. I explore leading features of Stoic and Epicurean theory that seem to me to reﬂect their psychophysical holism. In connection with Epicureanism, especially, I consider how their thinking should be analysed in terms of modern categories, in particular, whether their holistic outlook presupposes “physicalism” and in what sense.

2. Stoicism

In Stoicism, it is especially clear how a unified world-view provides a basis for a holistic picture of relations between psyche and body. The universe as whole, and all determinate entities within it, are regarded as the combination of an active, animating principle (identified with pneuma by Chrysippus, the most important Stoic theorist) and matter (hulê). The relationship between pneuma and hulê is presented as that of “total blending”, in which the two elements, while thoroughly interpenetrated, retain their nature and can, in principle, be recovered.13 The active element has the role of “sustaining” or “holding together” (sunechein) matter in a way that gives determinate objects their form and structure. It does this by producing tonos, “tension” or “tensility”, that is, the capacity of objects to maintain stability, shape and distinctness.14 Hence, “unified bodies” (henômena), including “grown together” (sumphua) or organic bodies, form a spectrum according to the degree of tension of the active, sustaining principle. This spectrum is presented by Philo in these terms (LS 47P): Intelligence (nous) . . . has many powers, the tenor kind, the physical, the psychic, the rational, the calculative . . . . Tenor (hexis) is also shared by lifeless things, stones and logs, and our bones, which resemble stones, also participate in it. Physique (phusis) also extends to plants, and in us there

also Plato’s famous argument for separate psychic parts, R. 435d-441c; on later ancient readings of this argument, see Gill (2006, 5.2). For “substantial dualism” in the early Academy, centred on the contrast between One and Indeﬁnite Dyad, see Dillon (2003), index under “Dyad”. 12 In addition to Plato’s Timaeus, Aristotle’s “hylomorphism” (on which see van der Eijk (2000, pp. 63-9)), and Hellenistic medical thought (von Staden, 2000) are possible salient inﬂuences. 13 LS 47-8, also LS, vol. 1, pp. 286-9, Long (1996, pp. 230-1), von Staden (2000, pp. 99- 100). 14 LS 47G, also LS, vol. 1, pp. 288-9. 214 Christopher Gill

are things like plants – nails and hair. Physique is tenor in actual motion. Soul (psuchê) is physique which has acquired impression and impulse. This is also shared by irrational animals. This passage shows how differing degrees of tension determine the character of more or less complex types of entity and also how these causes supervene on each other within a single entity. For instance, in human beings and other animals, the structure of bones is the work of “tenor” (hexis), while growth and nutrition come from “physique” or “nature” (phusis), and more complex functions such as impression and impulse derive from psyche. The spectrum includes some of the typical associations in Greek thought of body or psyche, for instance, physical shape (linked with hexis), organic process (linked with phusis), and impression and impulse (linked with psyche). But these are seen as aspects of a single scale of types of tension, rather than being placed in a dichotomy of fundamentally different types of entity. Thus, what I am calling “psychophysical holism” forms part of a larger holism, applying to all determinate objects. Since a given object, for instance a human being, embodies different degrees of tension, the question arises how the cohesion or wholeness of this object is produced. The answer to this question is particularly significant, since it highlights a general difference between a holistic framework and a more dualistic or part-based one. The cohesion of a complex entity is secured by a combination of the addition of types of tension, the fact that these types supervene on each other and are transformed by this process. A third factor is that of systematic co-ordination. In a human being, for instance, the types of tension illustrated in LS 47P, cited earlier, are added together and form what one might call a “layered” or “nested” set of functions. The higher functions build on the lower ones and also modify their mode of operation, as indicated in this passage. Nature (phusis) . . . is no different in regard to plants and animals [when it directs both] without impulse and sensation, and in us certain processes of a vegetative kind take place. But . . . animals have the additional faculty of impulse, through the use of which they go in search of what is appropriate to them . . . . And since reason, by way of a more perfect management, has been bestowed on rational beings, to live correctly in accordance with reason comes to be natural for them. For reason supervenes (epiginetai) as the craftsman of impulse.15 This passage brings out how functions supervene on each other and are transformed in the process. Animals share with plants phusis, which shapes nutrition and growth. But the operation of these processes is, in animals, further informed by capacities such as sensation and impulse, which are shaped by psyche. Reason (logos) is a further dimension of “tension”

15 Diogenes Laertius 7.86 (trans. LS 57A 4-5), with omissions and added italics. Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 215

– not a separate psychological “part” or essential “core” of human nature, as it is in some other Greek theories.16 Reason “supervenes” on the other types of tension and transforms their operation, “by way of a more perfect management” and “as the craftsman of impulse”. For instance, reason does so by “rejecting some of these [impressions] and accepting others, in order that the [rational] animal may be guided accordingly” (LS 53A 5). Another example of this idea is that the birth of an animal embryo is presented (by Hierocles) as bringing about the change (metabolê) of phusis into psyche. This means that the embryo gains psyche in addition to phusis, but also that the functions of phusis are transformed by this addition.17 The cohesiveness of determinate entities is also secured through assuming the systematic co-ordination of functions. In animals, this is brought about by a unitary “control-centre” (hêgemonikon), an idea thought to be a Stoic innovation.18 The control-centre has its own specific functions (those of impression, assent, impulse and perception) as well as the role of co-ordinating the other seven psychic functions (the five senses, ut- terance and reproduction). The Stoics use various images to convey the co-ordinating role of the control-centre: a tree-trunk and its branches, an octopus and its tentacles, and a spider at the centre of a web (LS 53G 7, 53H). The control-centre is allocated a physical location, namely the heart, and the linked system of communication, though seen as based on pneuma, is taken to operate through the veins and arteries. The Stoic choice of location was criticised extensively by Galen, a prime source for the theory, especially for the failure to take account of the discovery (through vivisection) of the function of the brain and nerves by the Hellenistic doctors Herophilus and Erasistratus.19 However, Chrysippus’ main aim, in adopting one of the two longstanding candidates for the location of the ruling part, was, probably, to identify the most plausible single location to explain the cohesiveness of the animal, considered as a psychophysical organism. His picture, though based on an inaccurate view of human anatomy, can be seen as expressing better than Galen’s three-location account the unified picture of animal psychology that he aims to convey.20 The cohesive character of the Stoic picture, and also the assumption of psychophysical unity, comes out vividly in this passage by the second- century AD Stoic, Hierocles:

16 See n. 11 above. 17 LS 53B 2-3; see also Long (1996, pp. 236-9), and, on Hierocles, see further below. 18 See Annas (1992, pp. 61-4), Long (1999, p. 572). 19 This is a central theme in Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato (PHP), Books 2-3; see Tieleman (1996). 20 See Mansfeld (1991), Annas (1992, pp. 69-70), Long (1999, pp. 567-70). 216 Christopher Gill

Since an animal is a composite (suntheton) of body and psyche, and both of these are tangible and impressible and of course subject to resistance, and also blended through and through, and one of them is a sensory faculty (dunamis aisthêtikê) which undergoes movement . . . it is evident that an animal perceives itself continuously. For by stretching and relaxing, the psyche makes an impression on all the body’s parts, since it is blended with them all, and in making an impression it receives an impression in response. For the body, just like the psyche, reacts to pressure; and the outcome is a state of their joint pressure upon, and resistance to, each other . . . [this outcome] travels . . . to the control-centre, with the result that there is an awareness (antilêpsis) both of all the body’s parts and of those of the psyche. This is equivalent to the animal’s perceiving itself.21 The fact that “psyche” is distinguished from “body” here should not be taken as implying that these are fundamentally different kinds of entity. On the contrary, the emphasis, throughout the passage, is on the idea that psychological processes are also, and inherently, physical ones. This emphasis is combined with a stress on the throughly cohesive or unified character of the workings of the animal as a psychophysical whole. This is conveyed, in part, by the idea of animal self-perception, one which seems to be, to some degree, an innovation of Hierocles.22 This idea might seem to anticipate Cartesian and post-Cartesian ideas about consciousness or self-consciousness as a permanent accompaniment of human psychological processes. But, in fact, the contrast with Cartesian self-consciousness is stark. A.A. Long suggests that the Stoics, like modern neurologists, are “interested in the principle that enables animals to function internally as well-organised wholes, coordinating their movements and ensuring that the deployment of their bodily parts is appropriate to their environment” (1996, pp. 258-9). Hierocles’ “self-perception” is comparable, rather, with the modern idea of “proprioception”, a partly unconscious process of internal psychophysical cohesion, rather than with Cartesian-style self- consciousness, which is linked with assumptions about mind-body dualism and ‘I’-centred mental states and subjectivity.23 The capacity of any animal to perceive itself from birth is a sign that it operates from the start as a cohesive psychophysical organism.24 In the passage cited earlier, the combined ideas of psychophysical unity and of cohesive (psychophysical) functioning are conveyed especially by the suggestion that, in self-perception, “the psyche makes an impression on all the body’s parts”

21 Hierocles 4.38-53 (= LS 53B 5-9), translation slightly modified. 22 In other Stoic treatments, the idea stressed is self-awareness: e.g. Diog. Laert. 7.85, Cic. Fin. 3.16; on Hierocles, see further Inwood (1984), Long (1996, ch. 11). 23 Long (1996, pp. 257-61), referring especially to the theory of C. Sherrington. On the general contrast between ancient and Cartesian psychology, see n. 3 above. 24 LS 47N, 48C 9-10, 53G-H; also Long (1996, pp. 240-2). Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 217 and that “there is an awareness both of all the body’s parts and of those of the psyche.” Stoic thinking on what is common to psyche and body draws on a complex background of earlier ideas. For instance, the attempt to correlate psychological functions with animal and human physiology and to identify a control-centre and communication-system goes back to Plato’s Timaeus.25 The use of a scala naturae, a spectrum of psychological capacities, against which to locate human and animal functions, recalls Aristotle.26 But the distinction between phusis and psyche is very un- Aristotelian, and may reflect analogous contrasts between psychic and natural capacities drawn by Herophilus and Erasistratus.27 Despite these possible influences, the Stoic theory emerges as a strikingly original analysis of psychophysical holism. As illustrated earlier, this is best seen as one aspect of a larger holistic world-view. The key categories are sub- divisions of a scale of types of sustaining cause and degrees of tension. These distinctions, such as between psyche and “nature” (phusis), do not correspond with those between living and non-living entities or between different natural kinds. In their concern to chart a mode of analysis applying to all determinate objects, the Stoics, in effect, dispense with the psyche-body distinction altogether, as traditionally conceived,28 although this distinction can be redeployed in terms of their theory, as is clear in the passage cited from Hierocles. “Holism”, in a different sense, is evident in their concern to define the cohesive character of human beings, and other animals, as psychophysical and psychological wholes. Wholeness is analysed, in part, in terms of the combination and “layering” of functions, from hexis to logos, which are also seen as degrees of tension in the shaping of matter by pneuma. Wholeness is also characterised by reference to the (psychophysical) co-ordination associated with the unitary control-centre and by ideas such as “self-perception”. A salient contrast with much other ancient thinking is that different psychological functions, including perception, motivation, emotion and reason, are all seen as functions of a unified psychophysical organism, rather than being associated with quasi-independent psychic “parts” or with (more or less) “core” or “essential” aspects of our personality.29

25 Pl. Ti. 69c-71e, taken with Gill (1997). 26 See Inwood (1985, pp. 9-41). 27 Aristotle follows earlier Greek usage in seeing “psyche” as a product of all life- functions, including those of plants. See Everson (1991, introduction, pp. 3-4); on the possible inﬂuence of medical ideas on the Stoic distinction between phusis and psyche, see von Staden (2000, p. 98) (also 90, pp. 95-6). 28 In LS 47P, cited earlier, “body” as such is not a category: see further Long (1996, pp. 227-34, especially pp. 231-2). 29 See n. 11 above. 218 Christopher Gill 3. Epicureanism

In the case of Epicureanism, I begin by considering certain points of similarity with Stoicism and then (in Section 4) I take up the question of how to analyse their conception of the psyche-body relationship in terms of modern categories. The two points in Stoicism mainly stressed here are that animals, including humans, are conceived as cohesive psychophysical (as well as psychological) wholes and that psychophysical unity is seen as part of a larger holistic world-view. Similar themes can be found in Epicureanism, despite other important differences between the two philosophical outlooks. The corporeal nature of the psyche, and the integral link between the (corporeal) psyche and (the rest of) the body are emphasised in the relevant section of Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus (63-7). This closes with this programmatic statement: The “incorporeal”, according to the prevailing usage of the word, is applied to that which can be thought of in itself. But it is impossible to think of the incorporeal in itself except as void. And void can neither act nor be acted upon, but merely provides bodies with motion through itself. Consequently, those who say that the psyche is incorporeal are talking nonsense.30 Here, Epicurus abruptly dismisses any type of psyche-body dualism of the kind found, for instance, in Plato’s Phaedo. The only non-corporeal determinate entity he recognises is void, and void is simply space through which body moves. As in Stoicism, the ability to act and be acted on is taken as the criterion of independent existence.31 This general claim underlies his characterisation of the body-psyche relationship, presented here in von Staden’s ultra-literal translation:32 The psyche is a fine-textured body (sôma), which is spread along the whole of the aggregate (athroisma); [psyche is a body] most similar to breath (pneuma) which has a certain blending (krasis) of warmth, and [psyche is a body] in one way similar to the former [breath], in another way to the latter [warmth]. But [psyche] is the part (meros) [of the whole aggregate] which, by virtue of the fineness of its parts, has acquired a great difference, even from these things themselves [breath and warmth], yet it [the psyche] is liable to co-affection (sumpathes), more so with the former [breath], but also with the rest of the aggregate. The capacities of the psyche make all this evident, and so do its affections, mobilities, acts of thinking, and the

30 LS 14A 7, translation modiﬁed (per se replaced by “in itself”, twice). 31 See LS 5, also, on Stoic thinking on body, LS 45, especially C-E. 32 Epicur. Ep.Hdt. 63-4. See von Staden (2000, p. 81, p. 85); I have modiﬁed his lay- out, repunctuated, and made other minor changes and omissions but have used his translation and some of his explanatory glosses in square brackets. For an alternative translation, see LS 14A 1-4. Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 219

things deprived of which we die. And we must hold on to (the fact) that the psyche bears the greatest responsibility for sense perception (aisthêsis): psyche would not have acquired perception if it were not somehow covered by the rest of the aggregate. The rest of the aggregate, having provided the psyche with this responsibility [for perception], itself in turn acquired from it [the psyche] a share in such an accidental property (sumptôma)– though not a share of all the attributes which the psyche has obtained and possesses. For this reason, when the psyche has been removed, it [the rest of the aggregate] does not have perception. Strongly stressed here is the idea that psyche is a form of “body” (sôma). Hence, the conventional “psyche-body” contrast needs to be abandoned; and it is replaced by the contrast between the psyche, viewed as one “part” (meros) of the whole, and “the rest (to loipon) of the aggregate (to athroisma)”, the latter being Epicurus’ new term for the whole (psychophysical) body. Epicurus also stresses that psychic functions such as perception, and indeed life itself, depend on the co-working of the (corporeal) psyche and “the rest of the aggregate”. This is expressed by the repeated use of “with-” or sun-compounds, such as “liable to co-affection” (sumpathes, 63), “born together at the same time” (hama sungegenêmenon, 64), “contiguity and co-affection” (sumpatheia, 64). It is also conveyed by the point that functions such as perception are not essential properties of either psyche or the rest of the aggregate but are accidental properties. More precisely, they are shared accidental properties, whose existence depends on the two aspects being engaged in the various shared activities (indicated in the sun-compounds) that make up psychophysical life.33 The stress on the idea that animal psychological functions are also physical ones is similar to that in Hierocles’ description of self-perception, cited earlier. We also find an analogue for the related Stoic idea that an animal constitutes a cohesive psychophysical unit, with psychological functions forming a system which is correlated with the body as a whole. Both theories assume a pattern with a heart-based psychological centre and a communication-system running through the body. Lucretius characterises these two aspects as animus and anima (“mind” and “spirit”). He stresses that these two aspects are closely bonded with each other and the rest of the body. . . . the mind and spirit are firmly interlinked and constitute a single nature (unam naturam), but the deliberative part which we call the mind is, as it were, the chief, and holds sway throughout the body. It is firmly located in the central part of the chest. For that is where fear and dread leap up, and where joys caress us; therefore it is where the mind is. The remaining

33 See von Staden (2000, pp. 85-6). On “essential” and “accidental” properties, see Epicur. Ep.Hdt. 68-73, Lucr. 1.445-82, Sedley (1999, pp. 380-2). 220 Christopher Gill

part of the psyche [i.e. the spirit], which is distributed throughout the body, obeys the mind and moves at its beck and call.34 Lucretius’ main focus is on the interconnection of “mind and spirit” – typically characterised as a linked pair – with body. For instance, when the animus experiences intense fear, the anima “shares the feeling” (consentire), thus producing powerful psychophysical effects such as simultaneous pallor and sweating. Actions initiated by the animus (which stimulate cognate responses from the anima and body) and also physical states such as being wounded (which have an impact on the animus) show the fundamental integration of the animus-anima complex with (what Epicurus would call) the rest of the body.35 In Stoicism, I highlighted the way in which the body-psyche relationship is located in a larger framework in which all determinate entities are conceived in terms of degrees of “tension” of the operation of pneuma on hulê, a framework which forms part of their unified or holistic world-view. There is at least a partial analogue for this pattern in Epicureanism in the idea that psyche is a relatively complex form of structured matter (specifically, of atoms) and the related idea that the distinctive characters of animal species and human individuals are a product of the mix of their constituent psyche-atoms. The analogy derives from the shared (Stoic and Epicurean) assumption that a single explanatory system can be applied in the case of a whole series of types of entity, in a way that locates psyche and psychological characteristics (treated as also physical ones) in a unified (holistic) world-view. The atomic basis of the distinctive character of the psyche is presented in one source (LS 14C) in this way: Epicurus [said that the psyche is] a blend (krama) consisting of four things, of which one is fire-like, one air-like, one wind-like, while the fourth is something which lacks a name . . . . The wind . . . produces movement in us, the air produces rest, the hot one produces the evident heat of the body, and the unnamed one produces sensation in us. This passage implies two salient themes. One is that the distinctive quality of psychological functions – more broadly, “life-functions”, such as movement, rest, and heat, are to be explained by reference to determinate types of atom. The other is that the psyche consists in a “blend” (krama) of these types of atom, and that this blend or synthesis enables complex

34 Lucr. 3.136-44 (= LS 14B 1), translation slightly modified. 35 Lucr. 3.145-76 (= LS 14B 2-3), especially consentire (153), “the spirit is interlinked (coniunctam) with the mind” (159), “the nature of the mind and spirit [is] corporeal” (161-2), “mind and spirit are constituted (constare) with a corporeal nature” (166-7), “the mind is affected jointly with (consentire) the body, (169, also 175- 6). Cf. the con-compounds with the sun-compounds (body and psyche) in Epicur. Ep.Hdt. 63-4. Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 221 psychophysical functions such as sensation. The second feature is clarified by Lucretius:36 The primary particles of the elements so interpenetrate each other in their motions that no one element can be distinguished and no capacity spatially separated, but they exist as multiple powers of a single body (unius corporis) . . . heat, air and the unseen force of wind when mixed form a single nature (unam naturam), along with that mobile power [the unnamed fourth element] which transmits the beginning of motion from itself to them, the origin of sense-bearing motions through the flesh. What this passage suggests is that the completeness of the blend of these atomic types enables the relatively advanced capacity of sensation. Producing this cohesive unity is the special role of the “fourth element”, whose nature and function is otherwise rather mysterious. Just as the psyche as a whole pervades and animates the body, so the fourth element pervades and unifies the mix of psyche-atoms and is in this sense “the psyche of the psyche” (anima animae), though it is also corporeal and has an effect on the body as a whole.37 This conception of what is distinctive about the atomic nature of psyche can also be related to the holistic approach characteristic of Epicureanism and Stoicism. Epicurus stresses that psychological functions depend on the integration or co-operation of (corporeal) psyche and body (the rest of the aggregate). Analogously, the distinctive role of psychic atoms is ascribed to their being specially integrated (a “blend”), and the fourth element has a special role in effecting this integration and so creating what Lucretius calls a “single nature” (unam naturam).38 The general form of explanation is to identify what gives a complex unit (here, the psyche) its cohesion and wholeness, and thus what enables advanced or sophisticated functions. There is a strong contrast with the type of thinking sometimes found in Plato, Aristotle, and elsewhere in ancient thought, in which advanced functions are attributed to some part, core, or essence of the person, which is sometimes also treated as virtually or actually separate from the human being or animal as a whole.39 One further idea, expressing the same line of approach, is that Epi- curean thought sees natural species as having stable psychological characteristics which reflect the predominant type of psychic atom, within the overall “blend” in each species.40 Relatedly, individual human beings,

36 Lucr. 3.262-5, 268-72 (= LS 14D 1), cf. 282-7 (= LS 14D 3). 37 Lucr. 3.273-81 (= LS 14D 2), noting the repeated phrase “in the whole body”, corpore toto, 276, 281. 38 On the “fourth nature” and its consistency with Epicurean physicalism, see Annas (1992, pp. 139-40). 39 See n. 11 above. 40 Lucr. 3.282-306 (= LS 14D 3-4). 222 Christopher Gill like animal species, are seen as differentiated by innate (atomically based) inclinations, which reflect the predominance of heat or cold in their make- up. Hence, “one man will . . . plunge hastily into bitter anger, another may be assailed too readily by fear, or the third type . . . be over-indulgent in tolerating certain things.”41 This point can be taken as reflecting a more general feature of Epicurean thought, of which Stephen Everson offers a suggestive formulation. Epicurus’ version of atomism does not mean that explanation in atomic terms must be at the level of atomic constituents. Epicurus also holds that “certain systems of atoms cannot be understood other than as systems of atoms”, and that “one cannot understand the behaviour of certain systems of atoms – i.e. humans – without describing it as the behaviour of a system – i.e. of the person – and so as having psychological causes”.42 Several of the features noted here can be taken as illustrating this idea. One is that the four types of psychic atom form a unified nexus or “blend” (krama) which enables an animal to function as a complex system which has advanced capacities such as sensation. Another is that the animus-anima complex forms a psychological system which is integrated with physiology and physical functioning. The claim that animal species, and individual human beings, represent distinctive psychological configurations with an atomic basis can be taken as a further instance of this line of thought. Everson’s suggestion also has potential implications for understanding Epicurean thinking on animal development and free will, a topic considered shortly. This aspect of Epicureanism can be associated with the holistic approach, especially its concern to define the characteristics of animals as cohesive psychophysical wholes rather than as combinations of separate and quasi-independent parts.

4. Categories and Issues

So far in this discussion, the focus has been on trying to locate Epicurean and Stoic thinking about what is common to body and psyche in a larger framework, namely the holistic approach and world-view, on which they converge, though from diﬀerent intellectual starting-points. I now consider how their thought, as understood here, relates to modern categories. In particular, I examine a speciﬁc question in this area, which relates to a well-marked scholarly debate about Epicurean thought, though one also has implications for understanding Stoic ideas.

41 Lucr. 3.311-13 (= LS 14D 4), with omissions. Presumably, the variations reflect differing proportions of psychic atoms, e.g. fire-like or wind-like. 42 Everson (1999, p. 549 and p. 557), his italics. For a similar suggestion, see O’Keefe (2002, pp. 159-60). Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 223

The relevant question is this. Does the kind of psychophysical holism that I attribute to these Hellenistic theories presuppose physicalism? This question, however, needs to be specified further. The meaning of “physicalism” can be taken very broadly. Its typical ancient form, Annas suggests, is holding that “everything that exists, including the psyche, falls under phusikê, enquiry into the constituents and structure of the universe.”43 But this conception of physicalism leaves things very open, particularly as both Stoicism and Epicureanism also maintain, in different ways, that the findings of physics are also compatible with those of ethics (and logic).44 The issue becomes more acute if physicalism is defined more narrowly. Physicalism is often taken to imply materialism, that is, “that all individual substances are composed of matter” (Everson, 1999, p. 546). It is also often taken to involve explanation in terms of physical properties, for instance, mass, motion and space, by contrast with mental properties. At least, even if both kinds of properties are considered, physicalism “must give some sort of priority to the physical over the mental” (Ever- son, 1999, p. 547). Everson draws a further relevant distinction, between “ontological” and “explanatory” physicalism: . . . according to [ontological physicalism], mental events are a species of physical event and themselves satisfy physical descriptions. Explanatory physicalism, in contrast, does not require that mental events should be identical with physical events – merely that all events should be explicable by reference to physical events.45 This outline of possible senses of “physicalism” enables me to specify more fully the question I have in view, namely whether or not psychophysical holism, as understood here, also presupposes physicalism. The question refers to “physicalism”, in the narrower, modern sense, which assumes materialism and gives priority to physical over mental explanation, with the choice between “explanatory” or “ontological” physicalism being left open at present. If we raise this question in connection with Stoicism and Epicureanism, as so far characterised here, there are, I think, two possible answers. One is that their psychophysical holism presupposes (at least) explanatory physicalism. The Stoic-Epicurean view diverges from, for instance, Platonic substantial dualism in analysing even complex and high- level functions (psychological or mental ones) as the properties of material objects. Even if these properties are not themselves material entities, they are seen as amenable to explanation in physical terms. The other possible view is that psychophysical holism allows scope for mental alongside

43 Annas (1992, p. 3), “soul” revised to “psyche”; see also her 2-9. 44 See Algra et al. (1999, xii-xvi); on the implications for interpreting Stoic and Epi- curean psychology, see Gill (2006, 3.5). 45 Everson (1999, p. 558, cf. pp. 546-50). 224 Christopher Gill physical explanation, though as part of a unified (holistic) account. One might argue, for instance, that both Stoicism and Epicureanism, while maintaining that all independently existing (per se) entitities have body, also allow the possibility of non-material properties. The Stoics explicitly recognize a category of “incorporeals” (place, void, time, and lekta), that is, “the content of rational impressions” (Diog. Laert. 7.63), which are “an ineliminable part of the world’s structure” (Sedley, 1999, p. 402). Another relevant idea is that the Stoic god “considered in abstraction from matter . . . is an intelligent energizing power” (LS, vol. 1, p. 278).46 Analogously, in Epicureanism, the only per se existents are (material) bodies and void, while other entities are classed as qualities or properties of these material entities.47 But it has been argued that Epicurus believes that the (material) psyche has non-material “emergent properties” (Sedley, 1983, 1988). It could also be maintained that the non-material, mental properties in each theory provide the basis for a non-physicalist mode of explanation. On this view, then, psychophysical holism would constitute an inclusive type of analysis, allowing the possibility of physicalist explanation for independently existing entities, and of non-physicalist explanations for (at least) some mental and incorporeal properties.48 I now consider this question in connection with the issue on which scholarly debate in this area has especially focused. This is how to interpret certain recently deciphered Epicurean texts on free will and animal development. After citing the key relevant sources, I outline the main opposing interpretative positions. I then return to the question just posed, whether psychophysical holism, as deployed in Epicureanism, presupposes physicalism.49 Here are two central passages for this issue. From the very outset we always have seeds directing us towards these, some towards those, some towards these and those, actions and thoughts and characters, in greater and smaller numbers. Consequently, that which we develop – characteristics of this or that kind – is at first absolutely up to us; and the things which of necessity flow in through our passages from that which surrounds us are at one stage up to us and dependent on beliefs of our own making.50 Many [developments] which have a nature which is capable of becoming productive of both this and that through themselves do not become productive, and it is not because of the same cause in the atoms and in them-

46 See further Sedley (1999, pp. 383-4, pp. 395-402). 47 Sedley (1999, pp. 366-71, pp. 379-82). 48 The second line of thought has been suggested to me by David Sedley, in response to reading a draft of Gill (2006, ch. 1). 49 For brief discussion of this issue in Stoicism, see the end of this section. 50 LS 20C 1, trans. LS; On Nature 34.26 Arrighetti (1973). Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 225

selves. These in particular we combat and rebuke . . . in accordance with their nature which is disturbed from the beginning, as is true of all animals. For in their case the nature of the atoms has contributed nothing to some of their actions, and to the extent of their actions and dispositions, but the developments themselves contain all or most of the cause of some of these things. As a result of that nature some of the atoms’ motions are moved in a disturbed way, not in every way through the atoms, but through what enters . . . from the environment into the natural . . . combating and advising many people together, which is opposed to the necessary cause of the same kind. Thus when something develops which has some distinctness among the atoms in a differential way, which is not like that from a different distance, it acquires a cause from itself, then transmits it at once to the primary natures and in some way makes all of it one.51 The main themes of the discussion from which these extracts come are relatively clear. Epicurus claims that human beings are properly held responsible for their actions because of the way they develop, by contrast with wild non-human animals. In the continuation of the first passage cited, he argues against the idea that human action is necessitated in a way that undermines responsibility (LS 20C 2-12). A well-marked feature of these and related passages is the idea that “we ourselves” or “the developments” (ta apogegenêmena) play a major role as causes. Another is the contrast between “we” or “developments”, on the one hand, and “atoms” (or “the nature of the atoms”) or “nature” (or “original constitution”).52 Scholarly debate has centred on the question of the theoretical framework implied by these contrasts and by the passages as a whole. David Sedley, whose work has done much to bring out the importance of these texts, has argued that the framework implied is that of “emergent dualism”. Given a certain level of material complexity, mental capacities “emerge”, which are distinct from, and causally independent of, the material make-up of the entity concerned. The contrasts noted earlier are seen by Sedley as suggesting that “self-determining animals (including humans)” develop “selves which are not identical with their constituent atoms”. “The self becomes responsible as soon as the animal develops a certain type of characteristic over and above his atomic make-up”. “In Epicurus’ view matter in certain complex states can take on non-physical qualities which in turn bring genuinely new behavioural laws into operation.”53

51 LS 20B 1-6, On Nature 34.21-2 Arrighetti (1973). Translation as in Annas (1993, pp. 56-7); for diﬀerences from the translation in LS, based partly on the readings of Laursen (1988) (cf. Laursen (1998)), see Annas’s footnotes. 52 See Annas (1993, pp. 57-8). 53 Quotations from Sedley (1983, pp. 38-409); see also Sedley (1988, pp. 321-2), and LS, vol. 1, p. 110. 226 Christopher Gill

However, some other scholars have expressed scepticism about this view, arguing, instead, that Epicurus’ position reflects – what we should call – “ontological physicalism” or “token identity physicalism” (according to which each mental event is identical with a physical event).54 The contrasts noted earlier are taken, from this standpoint, as identifying different stages in the development of the animal, understood as a mental- cum-physical unit. The main contrast is thought to be between the developing or developed personality and the original or earlier nature or state. The passages cited are seen as challenging the claim that human beings are properly exempted from responsibility for the moral quality of their actions and character because of the “necessity” imposed on them by their inborn nature or social upbringing. In the first passage cited (LS 20C 1), the stress falls on the idea that the way we develop is “from us” or “up to us” (par’ hêmas) and that we respond to environmental factors because of our belief-set at any one time. In the second passage, development is presented as being the process by which the person chooses one or other action or way of life out of those made possible by the congenital or environmentally shaped background. The developing person “acquires a cause from itself” which he or she transmits to the “primary natures” (pre-existing natural traits) and makes all this into “one” or a cohesive character.55 In other words, what both passages present is understood as the process by which we (as mental-cum-physical) units shape our pre- existing characters by thought and conscious effort, rather than as an exercise of purely mental causation on our physical make-up (as Sedley argues).56 The issues involved turn partly on the interpretation of difficult and fragmentary texts. For instance, in the last sentence of the second passage cited, there is debate about whether the phrase heterotêtatônatomôn means “distinctness from the atoms”, as Sedley thinks, or “distinctness among the atoms”, as is supposed by some other scholars. Also in this sentence, Sedley takes prôtônphuseôn to mean primary natures in the sense of “atoms”, whereas others take it to mean the pre-existing (mental-cum- physical) “original character”.57 Another salient factor is the interpretation of the rationale of Epicurus’ argument. Sedley has argued that the main, though implicit, target of the argument consists in certain post-

54 For these categories, see Everson (1999, p. 547), cited earlier, and Annas (1993, p. 59, n. 30, point (1)). Other discussions dissenting from Sedley’s analysis include Hankinson (1998, pp. 226-32), Bobzien (2000), O’Keefe (2002). 55 LS 20B 6, cited earlier in the translation of Annas (1993, pp. 56-7), ﬁnal sentence. 56 See further Annas (1993, pp. 57-64), Bobzien (2000). 57 See Sedley (1983, p. 37), also LS 20B 5. Contrast the view of Laursen (1988, p. 9, pp. 12-13), Annas (1993, pp. 56-7), Bobzien (2000, pp. 326-7), O’Keefe (2002, pp. 173-9). Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 227

Democritean thinkers, who suppose that human actions are determined by physical (atomic) causes in a way that negates responsibility. Epicurus’ use of (in modern terms) “emergent dualism” is seen as part of a response designed to counteract Democritus’ “reductionist” thesis, noted earlier, that “in truth” (by contrast with “convention”), there are only atoms and void.58 Other scholars, while accepting Sedley’s account of Epicurus’ overall aim, dispute the idea that Epicurus’ response to the Democritean (or post-Democritean) view requires a breach in the physicalism which they see as characteristic of his approach. Everson, for instance, argues that, on several grounds, it is plausible to attribute to Epicurus the strong position of “ontological” (as distinct from “explanatory”) physicalism. But he argues that this does not mean that Epicurus offers a “reductionist” account of human action or freedom. A crucial feature of Everson’s interpretation, noted earlier, is that Epicurus conceives humans, and other animals, not just as atomic constituents, but also as “systems of atoms”. Analysis of what is sometimes seen as the “mental” dimension of human life can be given effectively in physicalist terms, provided that we recognise the relatively complex and structured character of certain “systems of atoms” and draw out the implications of this fact for ascribing responsibility for character and action.59 Although both of these interpretations can credibly be maintained, the second (physicalist) one seems to me more convincing. This is, mainly, because the physicalist interpretation of the rationale of Epicurus’ position seems to match better the full range of relevant evidence. For instance, the passages cited earlier from Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus (63-7) appear to express a strong, and indeed programmatic, form of physicalism. Relevant also are the ideas that the psyche consists of a determinate type of atoms and that animal species and human individuals have characters based on their atomic make-up. These features reflect what Everson calls “ontological”, rather than “explanatory”, physicalism.60 Sedley’s view would be more persuasive if it were clear that Epicurus (like Kant, for instance) held that moral agency and responsibility require us to postulate purely mental

58 DK fr. B 9 (n. 7 above). See Sedley (1983, pp. 29-36); also, on Epicurus’ response to Democritean “reductionism”, Warren (2002, especially pp. 193-200), von Staden (2000, p. 86, n. 11). 59 Everson (1999, p. 549, p. 557). See also O’Keefe (2002, pp. 158-60, p. 167), who, however, sees Epicurus’ position as reductionist (by contrast with the “eliminative materialism” of Democritus). 60 See discussion of these features in Section 3 above, and Everson (1999, pp. 550- 3), who also refers also to Lucretius’ explanation in atomic terms of the role of images in stimulating movement (4.877-91) and of the onset of emotion (3.288-93). Other features in Epicurean thought lend themselves better to analysis in terms of explanatory physicalism; see further Hankinson (1999, pp. 501-2). 228 Christopher Gill

(non-physical) capacities or properties.61 But this would be a difficult thesis to maintain. The arguments on moral responsibility in On Nature 25 can be credibly interpreted on the assumption that we are both “systems of atoms” and moral agents;62 and this reading seems more consistent with Epicurean theory overall. There are good grounds, then, for concluding that, if Epicurean thought constitutes a form of psychophysical holism, as maintained here, this is compatible with what is – in modern terms – physicalism, rather than emergent dualism. Physicalism (again, in the modern sense) also seems more in line with the holistic outlook, as I have presented this in Epi- curean and Stoic thought. I have suggested that, in a holistic approach, even complex or advanced functions are seen as belonging to the person as a (psychophysical) whole, rather than as belonging to a psychic “part” or “core”. The latter line of thought is characteristic, rather, of a certain strand in Platonic or Aristotelian thought; and it is a strand against which Epicureanism and Stoicism seem to react, in their convergence on substantial holism.63 Separate argument would be needed to show that Stoic theory also assumes or advocates physicalism. However, I am not persuaded that the features noted earlier (as regards “incorporeals” such as lekta or god as an intelligent agent) imply that the Stoics take a non- physicalist approach to the question of the psyche-body relationship.64 There is little to suggest that the Stoics conceive the psyche as being analogous to lekta, that is, as a non-physical property of a physical entity.65 Rather, as illustrated earlier, psyche, like the other modes of “tension”, including “nature” and “reason”, seems to be conceived as a (physical) instantiation of the combination of pneuma and hulê. This explains Hiero- cles’ presentation of animal functions such as self-perception as those of a unified entity, whose psychological properties are at the same time physical ones (Section 2 above). However, as noted earlier, there are grounds for questioning whether the mind-body distinction in general can be mapped effectively on to the ancient distinction between psyche and sôma. So, to the extent that modern categories such as physicalism and emergent dualism presuppose the (modern) mind-body distinction, some questions still remain about how far Stoic-Epicurean thought is best described as “physicalist”. It is partly for this reason that I have mainly focused in

61 For Kant’s argument that moral autonomy requires freedom of the will, and that this requires the postulate of a purely intelligible (non-sensual) standpoint, see Groundwork, Prussian Academy Edition, vol. 4, pp. 446-59. 62 See Everson (1999, pp. 549-50, p. 557). 63 See n. 11 above. Debate between these two strands of thought continues throughout Hellenistic-Roman thought, e.g. in Plutarch’s essay, On Ethical Virtue, and Galen PHP Books 4-5; see further Gill (2006, ch. 4). 64 See text to n. 41 above. 65 On lekta (“sayables”), see LS 33. Psychophysical Holism in Stoicism and Epicureanism 229 this chapter on the idea of (psychophysical) holism which seems to me to reﬂect the (converging) philosophical projects of the Stoics and Epicure- ans, as conceived from their own standpoint.66 However, in so far as the (modern) notion of physicalism is applicable to their frameworks, it seems to me clear that they hold a physicalist, rather than dualist, conception of psyche, and that this follows from their overall outlook of (psychophysical) holism.

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Galen acknowledged an immense philosophical debt to Plato,1 just as he avowed his medical allegiance to Hippocrates.2 In both cases the acknowledgements may have outweighed the actual debts; but however that may be, he composed his massive De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (PHP: De Lacy (1978-84)) in order to demonstrate how, on all important matters of method and doctrine, his two great masters spoke with one voice. And central to Plato’s doctrines are those regarding the soul, pre-eminently its tripartition and its (at least partial) immortality. In PHP, Galen devotes an immense amount of time to demonstrating (as he sees it) the truth of tripartition, and the facts regarding the physical locations of the parts, doctrines which he expressly attributes to Plato: While I am not so foolish as to make rash assertions about these things [i.e. the substantial nature and possible immortality of the soul], still I do claim to have proofs that the forms of the soul are more than one, that they are located in three different places, that one of them (the reasoning part) is divine, while the other two are concerned with affections, such that we are angry with one of them, and desire those pleasures that come through the body with the other (which we share with plants) – and further that one of these parts is situated in the brain, one in the heart, and one in the liver.3 These facts can be demonstrated scientifically. (1: PHP V.793 Kühn,(= 598.27-600.4 De Lacy))

1 See De Lacy (1973) for a brief account of his Platonism. 2 On Galen’s Hippocratism, see Smith (1979); it is even more extreme than his Platonism. Indeed he thinks that Plato owed much to his medical predecessor: “he was a follower of Hippocrates, if anyone was, and took his most important doctrines from him”: De usu partium corporis humani (UP) III.16 Kühn(= 11.21- 3 Helmreich (1907)); cf. De methodo medendi (MM ) X.17 Kühn.Texts of Galen are cited mainly by way of Kühn(1821-33); but where later and better texts exist (notably in the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum [CMG], and the three volumes of Galeni Scripta Minora [SM ]), I generally refer to them as well. 3 But while Galen thus expressly places the appetitive soul in the liver, Plato more vaguely situates it “between the diaphragm and the navel” (Ti. 70e, cf. 77b), with the liver constructed as a special part of it designed to receive divinatory information from the gods (Ti. 70a-71b). Body and Soul in Galen 233

Thus he rails at the folly of those who refuse to accept that the soul has separate spirited and appetitive parts in addition to the rational, rehearsing and defending the classical Platonic arguments on the subject drawn from the Republic and the Timaeus, reserving particular scorn for the unitary psychology of the Stoics.4 Moreover, that the rational soul is located in the brain and not in the heart is, he holds, irrefutably demonstrable on the basis of anatomical investigation. Towards the beginning of PHP,5 discussing the various different views about the origin of sensation and intellection in the human body, Galen attacks those (primarily Aristotle, the Stoics and the doctor Praxagoras) who suppose that the heart is the seat of reason (the attack is pressed home vigorously and at length in the succeeding books), castigating their inability to realise that the nerves are the bearers of sensation and voluntary motion and that they have their origin in the brain. Chrysippus’s error, Galen somewhat backhandedly says, is excus- able, since he admitted he knew nothing of anatomy; but for Aristotle and Praxagoras to say, in the face of the evidence available to them, that the heart is the source of the arteries deserves censure (PHP V.187 Kühn(= 80.21-6 De Lacy)). Galen first deals with Praxagoras’s views that nerves are the thinned- out ends of arteries – and hence are to be associated with the heart – at typical length (V.188-200 Kühn(= 80.33-90.25 De Lacy)); and then he turns to Aristotle, who “twice spoke confusedly and imprecisely about the origin of the nerves” (V.200 Kühn(= 90.28-9 De Lacy)); but he failed to “point out how the nerves ramified from it [sc. the heart] to every part of the body, as we have just now done in the case of the arteries” (ibid. (= 90.30-2 De Lacy)). Galen then quotes from Parts of Animals III.4 666b14-16: “it is reasonable that the heart has a large number of nerves, since movements originate from it, and are accomplished by their tension and relaxation”;6 and he points out the inadequacy of such an argument: mere numbers of a particular structure in a certain organ doesn’t establish that that organ is the source of the structures; but in any case the heart is not particularly well-endowed with nerves (201-2 (= 92.2-21)). Rather “it contains certain nerve-like outgrowths; but these are in no way actually nerves”, a fact which, Galen says, can be demonstrated according

4 On the anti-Stoic arguments, see Hankinson (1991a, 1993); see also Tielemann (1996). 5 At least of the surviving part – most of Book One of the treatise has been lost, and the passage in question occurs towards the end of that book. 6 Quite how the nerves do manage to transmit their power to the muscles was a vexed question in antiquity even among the anatomically lettered like Galen, who wrote a treatise on the subject (De motu musculorum (Mot.Musc.) IV.367-464 Kühn). 234 R. J. Hankinson to Aristotle’s own principles (ibid. (= 92.21-3)).7 This passage encapsulates Galen’s methodological predilections with regard to questions involving the soul: to the extent to which detailed physiological investigation can enable us to push forward the inquiry into the soul’s nature, location, and modes of functioning, then such investigations are neglected at our peril; and any attempt to elaborate a theory of the soul and its relations with the body that does not make use of (or at least make itself consistent with) the results of the best such investigations is scientifically unfounded and philosophically worthless. Galen’s own detailed explorations in dissection and vivisection, and his experiments on live animals to demonstrate the effects of spinal sections and the ligature of various nerves, need no rehearsal here.8 The crucial point is that he holds, and holds it to have been securely established, that the nervous system (properly so-called, and not merely anything that Aristotle and his predecessors, including Hippocrates, might have lumped together under the general heading of neura: see n. 7 above) is the means by which those powers characteristic of the soul, or more precisely of the rational soul, are transmitted. Indeed, or so Galen at least thinks, it can be shown, or at the very least rendered highly plausible, that this transmission takes place by means of psychic pneuma, a highly volatile fluid to which was attributed a wide variety of different functions by different ancient doctors and philosophers.9

7 Of course the word Aristotle uses, neuron, did not at his time have the precise sense of “nerve” that it was later to acquire, as a result of the anatomical advances of the Alexandrians; Galen was probably well aware of this, but his failure to point this out here does not affect the substantial point of his argument. 8 See however Hankinson (1991a, 1994a); and most recently Rocca (2003). 9 Pneuma is mentioned in various Hippocratic texts in a variety of contexts (cf. in particular On Breaths; but see also, e.g., Sacred Disease 7, 10); it plays an important, if somewhat obscure, role in Aristotle’s physiology and psychology, where it appears, among other things, to be the vehicle of the soul’s power (GA II.3 736b30- 37a8; cf. PA II.7 652b8-15; on the role of “connate (sumphuton) pneuma”, see MA 10 703a4-27; GA II.6 741b37-42a15; see Peck (1942, pp. 576-93)); and it is central to the Stoics’ account of the structure and coherence of the material world (see LS 47C-J, L-Q; 53B, G-H, K-L). Post-Aristotelian doctors distinguish between “psychic” and “vital” pneuma, substances of different constitutions responsible for different effects (Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Praxagoras); and one later, Stoic- influenced school, that of Athenaeus, was actually designated “Pneumatist”. For Galen’s views regarding psychic pneuma, see De utilitate respirationis (Ut.Resp. IV.470-511 Kühn); De usu pulsuum (Us.Puls. V.149-80 Kühn).In Christian hands pneuma even comes to represent the Holy Spirit. Evidently, the concept (or concepts) is made to do a wide variety of work in different circumstances – and there was much dispute even as to its physical constitution. Whether there was any physical evidence adduced for the existence of such stuff, and if so of what type it was and how it was deployed, is a major, and vexed question, one which is obviously related to the subject-matter of this paper but which I am unable to pursue further here. Body and Soul in Galen 235

The Alexandrians, pre-eminently Herophilus, had distinguished the sensory from the motor nervous system, and had established that the nerves ramify from the brain.10 Moreover, Galen also follows a long tradition (one which in this case too probably includes Herophilus)11 in supposing that these psychic powers and affects are mediated through the nervous system by pneuma. Galen’s own grounds for subscribing to such a theory, and what precisely he took pneuma to be, are difficult to determine and would require a separate study of their own. But it is at least clear that he thinks that psychic pneuma, which is to be distinguished (following the Stoics and others)12 from the coarser vital pneuma associated with the heart and the arterial system out of which (he supposes – he describes the account as eulogon) it is distilled in the ventricles of the brain, is at most the vehicle of transmission for the motor and sensory powers characteristic of the rational soul. Thus, even if the term functions only as a sort of place-holder, pneuma plays a significant role in his account of the soul. But he explicitly refuses to go along with the Stoic claim that the pneuma actually is the soul; and he has an empirical argument to back up this claim: On the basis of these phenomena13 one might suppose, concerning the pneuma in the ventricles of the brain, one of the two following possibilities: if the soul is incorporeal, it [sc. the pneuma] is as one might say its primary dwelling-place; but if it is a body, this very pneuma is the soul. But when it occurs that, shortly after the ventricles have been closed up, the animal perceives and moves again, one can maintain that neither of these alternatives is true regarding the pneuma. It is thus better to suppose that the soul dwells in the actual body of the brain, whatever it might turn out to be as regards its essence (for our inquiry has not yet got to that point)14 and that its [sc. the soul’s] primary instrument [organon] in regard to all the animal’s sensations, and its voluntary movements as well,

10 Although Galen castigates him and other Alexandrians for not determining precisely the neural pathways and their origins; on the Herophilean evidence, see von Staden (1989, esp. pp. 155-61, pp. 247-59). 11 See von Staden (1989, pp. 251-7). 12 The distinction between psychic and vital pneuma may well be owed to the Alexan- drian Erasistratus; at any rate according to Galen he rightly refused to allow that the two pneumas were derived directly from the heart (as the Stoics apparently held), but had the vital pneuma originate in the heart, a portion of which was then further elaborated in the meninges into the more refined psychic pneuma: see Galen, Ut.Resp. IV.502 Kühn; An in arteriis sanguis contineatur IV.703 Kühn; PHP V.280-1 Kühn(= 164.8-16 De Lacy). See also PHP V.602-11 (= 440.9-448.6 De Lacy); Ars medica I.406 Kühn(= 386.11-12 Boudon). 13 Sc. that an animal does not lose sensation or motion while undergoing brain surgery until the ventricles themselves are damaged: PHP V.604-5 (= 442.19-35 De Lacy). For Galen’s hair-raising experiments in cerebral anatomy, see now Rocca (2003). 14 The Greek might be taken to imply that we will eventually get there; but it may simply mean that no such progress has yet been made. The ordinary sense favours the former; Galen’s aporetic pronouncements elsewhere incline one towards the latter interpretation. 236 R. J. Hankinson

is this pneuma, and for this reason when it is emptied out, and until it is collected again, the animal does not lose its life, but is rendered incapable of sensation and motion, whereas if it really were the substance of the soul, the animal would die immediately it was emptied out. (2: PHP V.605-6 (= 442.36-444.11 De Lacy); cf. 280-4, 287-9, 609 Kühn(= 164.8-166.23, 170.6- 27, 446.11-15 De Lacy); De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus (SMT XI.731 Kühn; Ut.Resp. IV.501-2 Kühn). Thus, while a catastrophic loss of pneuma through a wound can result in a failure of psychic abilities such as that of voluntary motion, these abilities can be recovered once the pneuma has been given a chance to regenerate; pneuma is thus a necessary medium of transmission (like the fluid in a hydraulic system), and perhaps also a fuel for the movement,15 but not the source of the motion itself: and so it is not the substance of the soul. Whatever its obscurities may be, then, Galen’s pneuma-theory is none the less both distinct from that of the Stoics and, clearly enough, at least compatible with the doctrine of tripartition. And, as we have noted, Galen thinks tripartition can be demonstrated by anatomical investigation informed by a proper understanding of the nature of causal connections. The same thing, however, does not apply in the case of Plato’s other signature doctrines regarding the soul, namely those of its immateriality and immortality. And these are the issues with which I am most concerned at present. At the very end of his life, Galen wrote a summary of his views on what he took to be the most important and difficult questions of medicine and philosophy, De propriis placitis (Prop.Plac.), which has come down to us by a more than usually tortuous process.16 In an early chapter, he writes: As for the soul, I see that it exists, and I know regarding it that we have a soul, just as everyone does; for I see that all men call the cause of voluntary motion and sensation the soul. But I do not claim to know the soul’s substance, and a fortiori I should not claim to know whether it is mortal.

15 This is suggested by Us.Puls. V.154-6 K¨uhn,where Galen describes ligating the carotid arteries of some animal, and then being surprised by its ability to continue running around for some time before keeling over; he attributes this ability to its being able to draw on a reserve of psychic pneuma stored in the “retiform plexus” of the brain until this is ﬁnally exhausted (Wilkie, in Furley and Wilkie (1984, pp. 48- 50), refers to the animal as a dog; but this is nowhere made explicit in this text, and seems to be a slip, deriving from the fact that Sir Astley Cooper’s similar, but more radical experiment of 1836, which Wilkie also refers to, was performed on a dog). 16 For details of the composition and transmission (via Syriac, Arabic, Latin, and – occasionally – Greek: a small fragment from the end survives under the name De substantia facultatum naturalium fragmentum (Subst.Nat.Fac.)) of Prop.Plac., see Nutton (1999, pp. 14-50). Body and Soul in Galen 237

I composed a book On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato . . . . But I made no claim anywhere in it as to whether the soul was mortal or immortal, corporeal or incorporeal. (3: Prop.Plac. 3.1-2, 58.22-60.11 Nutton; trans. here and elsewhere after Nutton) Indeed he did not – in fact he deliberately and consistently disavowed the possibility of making such claims at any rate with the sort of scientific, demonstrative certainty which he demands in medicine and physiology. At PHP V.779-82 (= 586.34-600.11 De Lacy) Galen notes that knowing the location of the parts of the soul is important to the doctor, but irrelevant to the moral philosopher; while other sorts of inquiry are appropriate only to “theoretical” philosophy (i.e. speculative metaphysics), for example “whether there is anything after this cosmos, and if so what it is like, and whether this cosmos is self-contained, and whether there is more than one of them, and indeed very many of them, and if it is generated or ungenerated, and if generated whether by a god, or whether rather there is no artisan-god which made it, but only some irrational and unskilled cause . . . ” (780 (= 588.9-14 De Lacy); cf. Prop.Plac. 13.7, 14.5, 15.5, 108.11-110.3, 114.19-116.1, 120.4-12 Nutton (= Subst.Nat.Fac. IV.759-60, 761-2, 764 Kühn).On the other hand, the question of whether or not the universe is providentially organized, Galen holds, matters to both science and natural philosophy. In fact, he thinks, it is demonstrable that it is (783-91 (= 590.20-596.29 De Lacy)), although science cannot (and does not need to) determine what form and number the divinities take (781 (= 588.22-5 De Lacy)).17 But if questions regarding the divine substance are philosophically and scientifically intractable, that regarding its existence he thinks is not; it is evident on the basis of the senses properly interpreted that the universe is under divine, providential control, and hence that some god or gods exist. Exactly the same state of affairs obtains, he thinks, with regard to the soul. That it exists is uncontroversial; what it is, and how long it lasts, are altogether different and knottier problems. And this, of course, creates a difficulty for Galen’s Platonism, since Plato seems to hold unequivocally that the soul is both immaterial and immortal. Galen seizes on Plato’s claims in the Timaeus 29c-d that his account extends only as far as the “plausible and reasonable” (Galen’s characterization: PHP V.792 (= 598.9 De Lacy); cf. ibid. 791-3 (= 598.2- 27 De Lacy); cf. Prop.Plac. 13.4-7, 104.15-110.3 Nutton (= Subst.Nat.Fac. IV.757-60 Kühn));and he notes that nowhere in his own discussion of the soul and its location did he so much as discuss the issue of whether the claim of the Timaeus 69c-e that the lower parts of the soul are mortal

17 Equally undecidable are questions involving the existence of an extramundane void: PHP V.766 Kühn(= 576.27-578.1 De Lacy); see also Prop.Plac. 2.1, 56.12- 20 Nutton. 238 R. J. Hankinson is to be taken literally or metaphorically (794 (= 600.7-10 De Lacy));18 and this is the position he espouses in Prop.Plac. There is a scholarly issue as to whether Galen’s views on the soul remain completely consistent throughout his oeuvre (elsewhere, as we shall see, he is more forthright in rejecting the possibility of the lower parts of the soul being immortal: text 15 below) and in particular as to how far in some places he seems committed to an anti-substantialist, functionalist view of the soul as a locus of powers attributable to particular bodily structures;19 but at all events it seems impossible to make him into any sort of orthodox Platon- ist in spite of his own evident desire to minimize his differences with the master (or at any rate to place the two of them in the same methodological camp). In an aside in De symptomatum causis (Symp.Caus.) VII.191 Kühn,he remarks: “perhaps in some other work I will dare to make some pronouncement regarding the substance of the soul”: but it seems that he never did so. A little later in Prop.Plac. he addresses those issues which he thinks cannot be settled with scientific certainty: I have refused all claims to knowledge (scientia) of whatever the substance of the soul might be, and whether it is mortal or immortal, insofar as it seems to me to be possible for the soul to inhabit the body even if it were immortal and incorporeal; none the less, it seems probable to me that the body, upon receiving it [sc. the soul] should become perceptive, since it [the body] is controlled by it [the soul] in its dispositions in which it [the body] ought properly to be, and in virtue of which we say20 that an eye is seeing, an ear hearing and a tongue speaking. I also say that the generation of the body depends upon a certain mixture21 which is the same as the mixtures of the elements; and if the soul arrives at the same time as the body, then its generation is also from the four elements. But it is impossible that the soul should come from one thing and the perceptive body from another, because the substance of the soul is not something which exists on its own account (per se), but is found along with the species (by which I mean the form) of the body. (4: Prop.Plac. 7.1-2, 76.25-78.10 Nutton)

18 This is of course a vexed issue in Platonic scholarship – at times it looks as though only the rational soul ought to be immortal, and yet the mythological passages seem strongly to suggest that the tripartite soul survives as a whole. Galen leans towards the view that Plato only supposed the rational soul to survive bodily death: see Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur (QAM ) IV.772-9 K¨uhn(= SM 2, 36.9-42.2) discussed further below. 19 See Donini, forthcoming. 20 Nutton (79,4) translates “just as we say”; but the point is surely that it is in virtue of being ensouled that we say that an eye is capable of seeing, etc. 21 Or “temperament”: krasis in the original Greek. A krasis is a blending of the fundamental elements or properties that make something up, and it is what is responsible for the thing’s particular characteristics; see further below, p. 250. Body and Soul in Galen 239

This passage is in many ways typical of Galen’s remarks about the soul; and it is not untypically difficult to determine its exact import. None the less, the final sentence appears to assert relatively unequivocally that the soul is always at least associated with a body, and with a body of a particular type (this is what it is to be “found along with . . . the form of the body”). The talk of bodies “receiving” souls might seem to imply their separate, substantial existence, but Galen can have meant there to be no such implication, even if, as he says in the first sentence, he holds such a state of affairs to be possible. All he means to do is to distinguish conceptually between the idea of the soul and its properties, and that of the body, conceived purely as such. Nothing whatever is supposed to follow from this regarding the soul’s ontological status; the soul is separable in account, as Aristotle would have put it, but not necessarily in actuality. Still, 4 does at least commit Galen to some sort of functional account of the soul. We ascribe soul to things in virtue of the various capacities they possess; and we can discover important facts about the location and mediation of those capacities by way of anatomical investigation. But to go any further than that is to enter the realm of speculation, and while that need not necessarily be unfounded or irrational speculation, it still forms no part of legitimate science. And it is in unpacking the last idea that the subtlety and intrinsic interest of Galen’s position becomes patent. Let us, then, look at some of the claims of that last passage a little more closely. First of all, it is the soul that makes the body perceptive. Bodies as such, we may infer, are not capable of perception, nor (presumably) of any of the other functions traditionally attributable to the soul. Bodies may possess soul, or not, as the case may be; but they are not by nature ensouled. Galen thus rejects any form of panpsychism, and (consequently) any of the sorts of reductionism that go along with it. One of his objections to the views of the atomists and other materialist reductionists is that they cannot account for the qualitative phenomenology of perception. Of course perception involves physical alterations of a certain type; but it is unreasonable to suppose that it is identical with those alterations: He [sc. Plato]22 says that the body of the universe was made from fire and earth so that it might be visible and tangible; so for this reason in animals’ bodies too the tactile organ is earthy and the visual one fiery; but while they could undergo alteration without perceiving it if they had no nerves, since they do have them, they can perceive the alteration. For perception is not identical to alteration, as some say, but it is the discernment of alteration [emphasis added]. Nor is it enough for the generation of pleasure or pain that a smooth or a rough motion should occur in the body;23 rather sensation needs to be added to each of these motions. I do not care if you choose to

22 Timaeus 31b. 23 This being the view of various materialists, notably the Cyrenaics: DL 2.86. 240 R. J. Hankinson

call the condition (diathesis) itself “pain” or “suffering”;24 I only urge you to remember that there is a difference between the condition which grips bodies which have departed from their natural state, and the perception of it. (5: PHP V.635-6 Kühn(= 468.10-22 De Lacy)) Bodies as such may suffer alteration; but only those endowed with some further set of soul-attributes may be supposed capable of being aware of that fact. At De naturalibus facultatibus (Nat.Fac.) II.26-30 Kühn(= 119.25-122.16 Helmreich (1983)), Galen distinguishes between two types of theorists: those who hold that “substance subject to generation and destruction is completely unified [i.e. continuous] and capable of alteration [i.e. purely qualitative change]” and those who think that substance is “unchangeable, unalterable, divided into fine bodies which are separated from one other by intervening empty spaces”. The latter of course are the atomists; and since for them all alteration is epiphenomenal only,25 “those adhering to the second party think that there is no substance or power peculiar to nature or the soul, but that these result from some sort of concatenation of these primary, unaffectible bodies”. Their opponents (of whom Galen is one) make nature on the other hand a primary principle, prior to and responsible for material arrangements, rather than simply being emergent upon them. Nature is a skilful artisan who generates living creatures and endows them with certain faculties by which they can maintain themselves and their kind. By contrast, the pure materialists refuse to accept any such account of a formative Nature, and deny the existence of any such faculties or innate ideas in the soul; they are hardline empiricists, deriving all ideas and reason from sensation; indeed “some of them have expressly claimed that there is no power in the soul by which we reason, but that we are led like cattle by the affections of our senses, and have no capacity of refusal or dissent” (this latter view, Galen thinks, does away with the virtues of courage, practical reason, temperance and self-control, and as such is both abhorrent and unacceptable). Whether or not he is right to think that atomist-style reductionism can give no satisfactory non-eliminative account of such properties is not an issue I can explore here. But the battle lines are clearly drawn: and it

24 Galen regularly insists that naming itself is conventional, and that it doesn’t matter what you choose to name things as long as you do so consistently. On the other hand he usually does not endorse such solecisms; much better to speak normal Greek if you can (cf. PHP V.521-2 (= 374.9-21 De Lacy); MM X.80-1 Kühn;and see Hankinson (1994b)). Here, however, he is concerned to vindicate Hippocrates, who appeared to allow for pains which were not felt by their “sufferers” (Aph. 2.6, IV 470 Littré);cf. Galen, In Hippocratis aphorismos commentarius XVII.B.460 Kühn; De temperamentis (Temp.) I.676-7 Kühn(= 104.22-1055 Helmreich (1904)). 25 Cf. Democritus, fr. DK 68 B 125: “by convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour: in reality atoms and the void”. Body and Soul in Galen 241 is evident that Galen thinks that in the case of the soul, just as elsewhere, the atomists’ explanatory resources are hopelessly poverty-stricken. So something is needed over and above a pure material reductionism. But what? Here Galen is particularly cagey, and his views are hard to pin down, but not because of any dissimulation or lack of frankness on his part. Rather he himself is genuinely puzzled about what to say about the soul – and it is that puzzlement which I want to follow out here. Galen’s crucial claim is that italicized in text 5: there must be more to perception (and consciousness) than simply the fact of alteration, otherwise there will be no good reason not to suppose that every alteration is accompanied by an associated perception of it on the part of the thing altered – but that, Galen evidently supposes, is simply too much to swal- low. And it is indeed hard to avoid such panpsychist conclusions if one adheres to some sort of na¨ıve reductionism here,26 conclusions which are, as we shall see, anathema to Galen. Moreover, one might also invoke here on his behalf the sort of “open question” argument frequently deployed by non-reductionists in these contexts: no matter how we describe in physical terms the alterations which take place in some system (in modern contexts the standard examples of such alterations are computational, and the systems computer hardware and software), it is still an open question whether or not the systems are conscious of what they are doing, much less that they understand it. But it is one thing, however, to feel uncomfortable with eliminative materialism, and to feel that the categories of the soul cannot be simply reduced out of existence; it is another altogether to be able to say something positive about just what such distinctively psychic powers consist in. Thus, in spite of his enormous admiration for Plato’s philosophy, Galen will endorse neither his immaterialism nor his view that part at any rate of the soul is immortal. What, then, can he say about the soul? First of all, in spite of his castigation of Aristotle for his empirical shortcomings in regard to the nature of the nerves and the cardiocentric doctrine, Galen owns himself an adherent of the Stagirite’s method, Since it was he who taught us to look to the function (chreia) and the activity (energeia) of each of the parts, and not merely to its structure, whenever we are concerned with determining what it essentially is; thus if we were asked what it is for something actually to be an eye, we would answer “to be an organ capable of seeing” . . . every part is distinguished by its activity and function, and not by its physical shape . . . For if it is an organ capable of seeing, it is an eye, even if it is differently constructed in humans and in crabs . . . But if this is the case, dearest Aristotle, then

26 E.g. of the sort apparently espoused by Empedocles: see the report in Plato, Meno 76c-d. 242 R. J. Hankinson

you must distinguish nerves not by their physical form, as do the majority, untrained as they are in logic, but by activity and function. (6: PHP V.202-3 Kühn(= 92.23-94.10 De Lacy)) Nerves resemble other structures (tendons and ligaments), at least super- ficially; but they do quite different things and perform totally distinct roles in the overall economy of the animal (ibid. 203-6 (= 94.11-96.11 De Lacy); cf. Mot.Musc. IV.368-9, 374-6 Kühn),and it is function which is important, rather than superficial structure.27 What matters is what things do (their energaiai); and what they do them for (their chreiai); and it is equally important to get clear about the nature of powers (dunameis) and their products (erga): We will investigate . . . how many and of what kind are the powers of nature, and what product (ergon) each of them is such as to produce. By “product” I mean what has been generated and brought to completion by their [sc. the powers’] activities. e.g. blood, flesh or nerve. And I call an “activity” the active motion, and the cause of it a “power”. Thus in turning food into blood, the passive motion is that of the food, while the active is the motion of the vein;28 just as when the limbs change position, the muscle does the moving while the bones are moved. Thus I call the motion of the muscles an activity, while that of the foods and of the bones is an effect (sumptôma) or an affection (pathêma) – the former being altered, while the latter are transported. So it is possible to refer to an activity as also being a product of nature (e.g. digestion, uptake [anadosis],29 and haematopoiesis),30 although not every product is an activity: for flesh is a product of nature, albeit not an activity. (7: Nat.Fac. II.6-7 Kühn(= SM 3, 105.10-106.1)) The picture is completed a couple of pages later: Each separate power falls under the category of relations: for it is primarily the cause of the activity [sc. of the particular organ] but incidentally31 of its product. But given that the cause is relative to something, being the cause of what results from it alone, and of nothing else, it is obvious that the power also falls under the category of relation. And so long as we do not know the essence of the activating cause we call it a power [emphasis

27 Galen’s views on the relationship between structure and function in biology are interesting and sophisticated: see Hankinson (1988); see also the essay by Wilkie in Furley and Wilkie (1984, pp. 58-69). 28 Galen supposed that food was metabolized by the stomach and then the liver into nutritive blood that was carried by the venous system: see Nat.Fac. II.20-27, 89, 102-7, 154-7, 159-68 Kühn(= SM 3, 115.10-120.6, 165.20-166.7, 175.24-178.21, 212.21-214.20, 216.17-222.18); etc. 29 The process of absorption of the elaborated gastric juices, or chyle, into the liver: see n. 28 above. 30 Later on, Galen distinguishes “bone-producing”, “nerve-producing” and “cartilage- producing” powers: ibid. 13. 31 “Incidentally (kata sumbebêkos)” is here equivalent to “derivatively” or “indirectly”; it is a technical term in Galen’s vocabulary of causal analysis: see De symptomatum differentiis (Symp.Diff.) VII.47-9 Kühn;Hankinson (1994b; 2003). Body and Soul in Galen 243

added]: thus we say that there is in the veins a haematopoietic power, a digestive power in the stomach, a pulse-creating power in the heart, and in each of the other parts a specific power corresponding to its activity. So if we are to investigate methodically how many and what sort of powers there are, we need to start from the products – for each product comes from a certain activity, and some cause precedes each of the latter. (8: Nat.Fac. II.9-10 Kühn(= SM 3, 107.11-22)) These passages from the methodological exordium to Nat.Fac. spell out with clarity Galen’s position vis-à-visthe postulation of powers; and the italicized clause of 8 is crucial. Talk of powers is not intended to replace or pre-empt the search for a proper causal explanation, but simply to be the first stage of conceptual clarification which is required before such an investigation can be seriously mounted. This methodology is in evidence, along with an important further stipulation and clarification, in the following passage of PHP which is directly relevant to our concerns: Indeed the liver is the source of the same type of power that even plants possess. For the moment, let us call it a “power”, although since we will later show that the liver is the source of many powers, it would be better and more accurate to call what is contained within each of these three organs a substance rather than a power of the soul: a rational one in the brain, a spirited one in the heart, and a desiderative one in the liver, or, as Aristotle and his followers call it, nutritive, vegetative or generative, the name being derived in each case from one of its activities, from growth vegetative, from nourishing nutritive, from generating generative. Plato called it “desiderative” on account of the multiplicity of its desires. The Stoics on the other hand do not call what governs plants a soul at all, but rather nature. (9: PHP V.521 Kühn(= 374.9-19 De Lacy)) This distinction between powers and substance is crucial. It recalls the concerns of 3-4 above, and leads us into another central text also written towards the end of his life, Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur, the probandum of which is adequately indicated by its title.32 Even so, the word translated “follow” (hepesthai) is artfully indetermi- nate: it might, but need not, indicate causal consequence; the connection may be one of mere conjunction (in Galen’s own technical terminology, the soul’s powers will be sumptômata of bodily states);33 and he commits himself only to the conclusion that it is the soul’s powers (in the sense outlined above and to be clarified below) that are so consequent. None the less, Galen thinks, empirically determinable facts about the relationship between physiological and mental states, plus some commonsensical views

32 This “title” is in fact the first line of the treatise; it is rendered in Singer (1997) as “The Soul’s Dependence on the Body” – but this may be too strong. 33 For this terminology, see MM X.63-7, 78, 81, 85-6 Kühn;Hankinson (1991c, pp. 150-3); and see also the treatises Symp.Diff. (VII.42-84 Kühn,esp. 42-9) and Symp.Caus. (VII.85-272 Kühn). 244 R. J. Hankinson regarding the nature of causal connection (never precisely spelled out, but easily inferable from the contexts), will render it extremely plausible that psychological states and dispositions are, at least some of the time, directly affected by physiological conditions. And that fact in turn has important, albeit not demonstrative, consequences for a proper understanding of the nature of the soul. “The starting point of the whole subsequent inquiry”, Galen says, “is knowledge of the differences between the evident actions and affections of the soul in small children, on the basis of which its powers become evident” (QAM IV.768 Kühn,(= 32.14-17 Müller)).Different children display radically different traits of character from very early ages, and so these differences cannot be due to differences in upbringing;34 rather

This shows that completely opposite powers of the three forms and parts of the soul exist by nature in children, from which one may deduce that the nature of the soul is not the same for everyone . . . . For if the substance of their souls were not different, they would perform the same activities and suffer the same affections as a result of the same causes [emphasis added]. So it is clear that children differ from one another as regards the substance of their souls insofar as their activities and affections differ; and if this is the case, their powers will differ too. (10: QAM IV.768-9 Kühn(= SM 2, 33.5-16))

The italicized passage makes an important causal claim: if the initial conditions and inputs are the same, then the outputs will be the same (this contention is put to further use towards the end of QAM where Galen attacks the Stoic conception of the innate goodness of all men: 816-21 Kühn (= SM 2, 74.20-78.23 Müller)).35 Thus, even though as yet we know nothing concrete about the soul’s substance, we do know that it must differ substantially among individuals on the basis of empirically available facts about the natures of their several powers. Still, many philosophers have misunderstood the idea of “powers”, taking them to be “things which inhabit substances in the same way as we inhabit houses” (cf. 14 below); as we have seen (7-9 above), powers are causal postulates, invoked relative to specific, determinate effects. Thus there will be as many “powers” as there are particular effects, and one substance can have several distinct

34 This is Galen’s version of the “cradle argument” (on which see Brunschwig (1986)): children have certain features by nature, and their characters are not entirely determined by environmental influences (Galen is attacking the Stoics here: for further discussion, see Hankinson (1993); but Chrysippus too argued that the fact that children resemble their parents in regard to both physical and character traits indicates that the soul is generated, and generated after the body: SVF 2.806 (= LS 53C)). 35 One may compare contemporary studies of separated identical twins in the “nature/nurture” debate. Body and Soul in Galen 245 powers: thus aloe may both cleanse and dry (ibid. 769-70 Kühn(= SM 2, 33.19-34.8)). So, while powers are defined provisionally and in relational terms, the substances which exemplify them are not; which is of course why one and the same substance may be possessed of several distinct powers (although it need not be): and this applies equally to the concept of the soul. Thus to say of the rational soul that it can perceive through the sense organs, and on the basis of those percepts remember, and through its own resources analyze and determine the coherence and conflict in things36 is to say no more than that it “has several powers: perception, memory and understanding, along with all the others” (QAM IV.770-1 Kühn(= SM 2, 34.16-25)). But these powers themselves can be divided into their various species; moreover, the other parts of the soul are similarly well endowed with faculties,37 although all of them (and not merely the lowest part: 771-2 (= 35.3-36.8)) may in a sense be said to be desiderative.38 But, he continues, while “Plato at any rate is also clearly convinced that of these types and parts of the whole soul, the rational part is immortal; but I am unable determine either that it is or that is not” (772-3 (= 36.12-16)). Here again Galen re-iterates his agnosticism regarding the possibility of the immortality even of the rational part of the soul. But if Galen is, even in QAM , officially at least agnostic, here he clearly leans towards a more dogmatic form of skepticism: If it is immortal, as Plato wants, he would have done well to tell us why it should be separated [sc. from the body] when the brain is excessively cooled, or overheated, dried, or moistened . . . . For death occurs, according to Plato, when the soul is separated from the body. I would very much like to learn from Plato himself, if only he were alive, why a massive loss of blood, or a draught of hemlock, or a raging fever, should separate it. But he is no longer with us, and none of my Platonist teachers ever gave me any reason why the soul should be separated from the body as a result of the things I have mentioned. (11: QAM IV.775 Kühn(= 38.4-16 Müller)) The remark about Plato’s no longer being around to explain his account of immortality is no doubt ironically humorous (as is often the case with Galen’s comments on life and death). But behind the jocularity is a deeply serious point. How can something supposedly incorporeal and simple be

36 Cf. PHP V.720-3 (= 540.4-542.20 De Lacy). 37 Galen makes similar points in regard to physical powers and their relations in Nat.Fac.: II.10-20 Kühn(= SM 3, 107.24-115.9); and see Hankinson, forthcoming. 38 In QAM at least Galen skates over an obvious difficulty: if one and the same substance may have different powers, why suppose that the soul is a Platonic aggregate of three separate substances? Galen’s answer is to be found in PHP, and it is fundamentally Platonic: the facts of phenomenology force us to accept that the soul is subject to conflicting drives and desires at the same time; and one and the same thing cannot simultaneously be affected in contradictory ways (PHP V.795-805 Kühn(= 600.21-608.29 De Lacy)). 246 R. J. Hankinson affected by physical alterations? Galen thus raises the conceptual problem of making sense of interaction between physical and non-physical substances which was to plague the Cartesian project. Much of the remainder of QAM is devoted to pressing this case, and to emphasizing the fact that Plato too allows for such psychophysical (or perhaps better in these cases physicopsychic) interactions. It is a matter of self-evidence that the soul’s parts are affected by purely physical alterations; but more devastatingly still, they may in fact be nothing more than functions of physical aggre- gations of material. Galen is committed, as we have seen, to there being a determinate spatial location for the various parts of the soul; and the organs wherein it resides are physical structures. Thus, notwithstanding his repeated professions of ignorance as to the essential nature of the soul, he remarks that each of the organs in which it is located have their own substance, and all substances are composites of matter and form, and their material components are reducible to the four basic qualities, hot, cold, wet and dry (773 (= 36.19-37.2 Müller)),39 from which are elaborated such stuffs as bronze and gold, but also

Flesh, sinew, fat and gristle, and in general all those things called “ﬁrstborn” by Plato,40 and “uniform”41 by Aristotle. For this reason, since Aristotle himself says that the soul is the form of the body,42 we should enquire of him, or at any rate of his followers, whether by “form” he means the shape,43 as for instance in the case of the organic bodies, or whether rather he means some other principle of natural bodies, one which produces that uniform and simple bodily structure which has no sensible organic composition. And they will surely reply that it is this other principle, if indeed the activities belong primarily to these . . . . Now given that all such bodies are composed of matter and form, and, as Aristotle himself thinks, when the four qualities are generated in the matter of physical things, bodily mixture is generated out of them, he must posit this latter as the form; and so the substance of the soul must be some sort of mixture of the four: of wet and dry, cold and hot if you want to call them qualities, or, if you prefer, of the wet, hot, cold and dry bodies; and hence we will show that the powers of the soul are consequent upon its substance, and so too are its activities. So if the

39 This is the basis of the physics Galen outlines in De elementis ex Hippocrate, I.413- 508 Kühn(= De Lacy (1996)), and Temp., I.509-694 Kühn(= Helmreich (1904)); it is one of the things Galen holds to be securely known in Prop.Plac. 15.1, 116.5-24 Nutton, even though the precise details may remain uncertain. 40 Cf. Politicus 288e-9a. 41 homoiomerê: cf. PA II.1 646a13-b27, II.2 647a10-648a19. 42 Cf. de An. II.1 412a19-21. 43 Not of course just the shape: but the idea is that in organic bodies it is not just the type of stuffs involved, but their arrangements, that make them the bodies they are. Body and Soul in Galen 247

rational part is a form of the body,44 it will be mortal. (12: QAM IV.773-4 Kühn(= SM 2, 37.3-38.1)) This text finds Galen clearly leaning towards some version of Aristotle’s view that the soul is the form of the body; and if it is, in the manner described, then it is hard to imagine its existing independently of any body. At first sight, this may seem to sit badly with text 4 from Prop.Plac. (7.1-2, 78.2-10 Nutton), above, where Galen’s agnosticism seems more pronounced: it is still possible, he thinks there, that the soul be incorporeal and immortal. But this discrepancy is more real than apparent, since even in the latter passage Galen writes that “the substance of the soul is not something which exists on its own account, but is found along with the species (by which I mean the form) of the body”. That is, I think, best interpreted as an empirical claim, to the effect that we have no good reason for believing that souls ever exist independently of physical bodies (Galen apparently does not believe in ghosts); as he goes on to say, “even if45 the soul is immortal and incorporeal, yet we find it co-existing with the body and it is possible that46 it works through the medium of its [sc. the body’s] natural activities“ (Prop.Plac. 7.3, 78.13-15 Nutton). Thus, while there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Galen’s acknowledgements of the possibility of the soul’s being incorporeal and immortal, he is none the less convinced both by empirical evidence and by Aristotelian metaphysical analysis that it must be very closely tied to physical organs, perhaps to the extent of being identical with their form (although it is worth here remembering Aristotle’s remark, at the end of de An. II.1 in which he develops the idea that the soul is the form of the body, that for all that has been established so far, the soul might yet be the form of the body “as the sailor is of the ship”: de An. II.1 413a3-9). How then could it be immortal? Presumably only by way of transmigration; the soul, as an incorporeal entity, would persist, but only by associating with successive

44 Reading “tou sômatos” for “têspsuchês”. This emendation, although questioned by some of my audience in Munich, still seems to me to be certain; for there seems to be no obvious point here in expressing the tautologous supposition that the rational part is a part (and this is what “eidos” would have to mean here, rather than “form [sc. of underlying matter]” which has been its sense earlier in the passage; of course it can on occasion have such a sense: cf. 10 above) of the soul. On the other hand, what is at issue is precisely the conditions under which the rational part will turn out to be mortal – and its being a form of the body is here argued to be just such a condition. 45 Nutton here translates “although” – but this has the unfortunate effect of making it appear that Galen is in fact committed to the Platonist position on immortality. 46 This is awkward, although Nutton’s translation of the Latin version of Galen’s original text (“et possibile est quod ipsa operetur mediantibus operationibus naturalibus”) seems reasonable enough; the Latin may however hide an original that read “it is capable of doing what it does through the medium, etc.”. 248 R. J. Hankinson physical bodies.47 More strongly, as the last sentence of 12 shows, if the rational soul really is to be identified with the form of physical body, then it cannot be immortal.48 So what exactly does Galen think? In Prop.Plac., he is scrupulously careful to distinguish between what he thinks he knows securely, and what, following Plato (he thinks – or at rate claims), must be relegated to the realm of the merely plausible; and in this context once again he resorts to the postulation of powers. Everyone agrees that we have a soul, since we are all aware of its effects (Prop.Plac. 14.1, 110.4-10 Nutton); moreover, We know on the basis of an axiom that commends itself naturally to all of us that there is some cause for these actions: for we know that nothing occurs without a cause.49 But because of our ignorance as to exactly what the cause of these things might be, we assign it a name on the basis of its being able to do what it does, namely “a power of producing everything which comes to be”. (13: Prop.Plac. 14.1, 110.10-21 Nutton (= Subst.Nat.Fac. IV.760 Kühn)) But in a manner by now familiar, we cannot with security say more than that about the actual nature of the soul. Galen gives examples of physical powers: everyone agrees that scammony is a laxative, medlar the opposite (ibid. 110.21-4 Nutton); but “those versed in so-called natural science” disagree about how precisely they work: Some have asserted (ia) that incorporeal powers inhabit sensible substances, while others say (ib) that the [physical] substances act themselves according to their own particular nature, which arises either from a mixture of the four elements or from some conjunction of the primary bodies (which some say to be atoms, others unlinked, indivisible or homogenous particles). Indeed some think (iia) that our soul itself is some incorporeal substance, others (iib) that it is pneuma, others (iic) that it has no independent existence of its own, but is rather a particular property of the substance of the body, which is said to possess the powers of doing what it is such as to be able to do; and these latter do not themselves do not have the specific nature of particular substances, but rather the [physical] substance, which acts in its own right, is said to possess the powers for doing what it is such as to be able to do in regard to those things which come to be through it and as a result of it. (14: Prop.Plac. 14.2-3, 110.24-114.5 Nutton (= Subst.Nat.Fac. IV.760-1 Kühn))

47 Galen has little time for speculations about metempsychosis: Prop.Plac. 15.2, 118.5-10 Nutton. 48 This contention implies some substantive principles of continuant identity: if there is nothing more to the soul than the form of a body, then even if some type- identical physical condition is realized in some other matter, this cannot constitute the re-appearance of the original form; this in turn raises interesting and diﬃcult metaphysical issues, but they cannot be followed out here. 49 For this and other causal “axioms”, and the claim that they are self-certifying, see MM X.33-7 K¨uhn;see Hankinson (1991c, pp. 18-20, pp. 117-29). Body and Soul in Galen 249

In such matters, Galen says, “I adopt a middle course”, allowing that he certainly knows some things, is totally ignorant of others, while in some cases he can do no more than form a plausible opinion (14.4, 114.6-19 Nutton (= Subst.Nat.Fac. IV.761 Kühn)).Text 14 considers two questions (which I label (i) and (ii)): what is the nature of a power? And what is the nature of the soul? For all Galen’s agnosticism, we can infer from what we have seen elsewhere that he favours (ib) over (ia), and that he rejects (iib); and while not entirely ruling out (iia), he clearly leans towards (iic) in preference to it. Let us briefly recapitulate what has been established so far. It is obvious that we have souls, since that amounts to no more than the truism that we are capable of performing certain distinctive activities (3, 10, 13); equally clearly, there must be some cause for the existence of these activities, since everything has a cause (8, 10, 13). Moreover, the structural form of each type of physical thing explains in some sense its distinctive powers; and at the very least, certain determinable physical structures are required in order for those activities constitutive of the existence of a rational soul (or at any rate an important subset of them: perception and memory) to be exemplified. Yet even so it is still an open question what that soul is. That the soul is in some sense “responsible” for making a living body alive, and for its functions and activities qua living is clear (12); but Galen explicitly refuses to draw Plato’s conclusion from this that since anything so responsible must be prior to any arrangement of physical elements, the soul cannot simply be epiphenomenal upon them (cf. Phaedo 93a). Much of the latter part of QAM seeks to support the view that all the “parts” of the soul, whatever they may turn out actually to be, are clearly affected (in their activities and capacities) by the states of the body – and this is just as true of our reasoning abilities as it is of emotion and desire. Wine is a physical substance producing physiological effects; but equally obviously some of it effects are psychological in character, while even Plato allows that regimen has an effect on the functioning of the soul (QAM IV.805-14 Kühn(= SM 2, 64.19-73.2)).50 Galen goes further, indeed, in this text than he does elsewhere in his remarks about the substance of the soul: So since the rational part of the soul, which has a substance single in form, undergoes change along with that of the mixture of the body, what should we say befalls the mortal part of it? Is it not clear that it is in every way subservient to the body? Indeed it is better to say not that it is subservient to it, but rather this, the mixture of the body, actually is the mortal part of

50 Galen quotes selectively, and not always entirely fairly, from Timaeus and the Laws in the service of his syncretizing interpretation; on Galen’s strategy and reliability, see; Lloyd (1988); Singer (1991). 250 R. J. Hankinson

the soul (for it was demonstrated earlier51 that the mortal soul is a mixture of the body). Thus the mixture52 of the heart is the irascible (thumoeides) part of the soul, that of the liver what is called the desiderative by Plato (epithumêtikon), the nutritive or vegetative (threptikon de kai phutikon) by Aristotle. And Andronicus the Peripatetic actually dared to state that it was the substance of the soul, without any shilly-shallying, and I praise and welcome this man’s words . . . . But when he calls it “either mixture, or a power consequent upon the mixture”, I take issue with his addition of “a power”, since, while the soul has many powers it is a substance, as Aristotle rightly said . . . : for while “substance” can mean either matter, form, or a composite of the two,53 he held that soul was substance in the sense of form.54 (15: QAM IV.782-3 Kühn(= SM 2, 44.2-45.2)) This text sees Galen at his most forthright, at least in regard to the two lower parts of the soul: he seems unequivocally to adopt an identity- theory regarding them. These parts of the soul really must be the appropriate (physical) mixtures, with the powers that result from them being attributes of the souls rather than the souls themselves. Souls, after all, are supposed to be substances, things which exemplify certain powers rather than being those powers themselves (3, 8, 10, 12). Scholars55 have won- dered why Galen should be apparently more willing to commit himself here than elsewhere on substantial questions: but however we might answer that, his avowed reasons for so doing are interesting and important. If soul is form (and he never actually explicitly asserts this, even though he very strongly implies it), then it must be an elaboration of some basic (not necessarily physical) elements: for that is what form is.56 So the substance of the soul should not be identified with its activities, nor yet with any powers which we attribute to it in virtue of which it is able to act in this way: rather it should be the source for and basis of those powers. But now one may well wonder why Galen does not go all the way and claim that at the very least it is plausible that the rational soul too is

51 The reference is presumably to QAM IV.773-4 Kühn(= SM 2, 37.3-38.1): 12 above. 52 Or perhaps better here “temperament”: see n. 21 above. 53 See e.g. Aristotle Metaph. VII.3. 54 Galen proceeds to assimilate the Stoic doctrine to this general pattern too, holding that their pneuma, which is for them the soul, is itself a krasis of the fundamental elements of air and fire which make it up (QAM IV.783-4 Kühn(= 45.4-46.7 Müller)).For the Stoics’ account of pneuma, see e.g. frs 46A, 47F-P Long and Sedley; for Galen’s views, see PHP V.602-11 (= 440.9-448.6 De Lacy); and see n. 21 above. 55 Most recently Donini, forthcoming. 56 This idea that the form of things is a matter of their exhibiting certain ratios of elements goes back to Empedocles (e.g. frs DK 31 B 96, 98) and the Pythagoreans; and compare Aristotle’s account of the formal cause at Ph. II.3 194b26-9 where the example given is of the ratio 2:1 being the form of the octave. Body and Soul in Galen 251 nothing more than material elements arranged in specific ways such that the characteristic activities of the soul emerge. It is possible, of course, that his residual Platonism, his acknowledgement of Plato as his master in all matters philosophical, simply moves him to do so pietatis causa. But Galen is never a simple sectarian – indeed he explicitly disavows sectarianism as such, writing a text De optima secta57 on the subject (De ordine librorum suorum XIX.51-2 Kühn(= SM 2, 81.13-82.3)) – and in any case I think there are philosophically more interesting (and respectable) reasons for his refusal to commit himself. That psychological conditions are responsive to (and perhaps directly affected by) physiological conditions (and not merely when the individual is in a state of ill-health as some Platonists suppose: QAM IV.805 Kühn (= SM 2, 64.19-23)) is, as we have seen, something he thinks securely establishable by observation and experiment. Moreover, physical affections can even cause the departure of the soul from the body, something which as we saw Galen finds puzzling on the supposition that the soul is, as Plato holds, something incorporeal (11). Indeed, certain physical conditions must be satisfied in order for a body to be receptive of soul:

None the less it is clear to me that even if the soul merely takes up residence in bodies, it is still subservient58 to their natures, which arise, as I said, out of some mixture of the four elements . . . for the body must be in a suitable condition for receiving the soul, while if it undergoes some major alteration in regard to its mixture (such as a severe chilling as a result of the evacuation of blood, or through the ingestion of refrigerant drugs, or when the ambient atmosphere is very cold, or when the body is excessively heated by fever or by inhaling ﬂame or through the ingestion of heating drugs) the soul immediately departs. And it is not only when the mixture of the body is altered in such a way that we see the soul depart from the body, but also when it is totally deprived of breath,59 since here too an alteration occurs

57 Not the treatise of that name surviving under his name: I.106-223 Kühn. 58 The metaphor of subservience (douleuein) is of course a causally powerful one; in addition to text 15, see QAM IV.779, 787 Kühn(= SM 2, 41.15-18, 48.5-12). 59 Galen’s views on the function of respiration, and on its necessity for life, are peculiar (although not particularly for the time); he claims to have demonstrated by experiment that humans can live without inspiring air into the windpipe for several hours (Ut.Resp. IV.504-5 Kühn(= 124 Furley/Wilkie)); respiration for him, as for Aristotle, fulfils primarily a cooling function (ibid. 492-3, 506-11). Heat and life are intimately linked for Galen; it is the gradual extinction of the animal’s innate heat which is ultimately responsible for its dying of old age (Temp. I.582 Kühn(= 46.15-47.2 Helmreich)), although as this passage shows, other sorts of pathological unbalancing can also prove fatal. At this point we may also note a text that might seem to run counter to everything that has been established so far. At De tremore, palpitatione, convulsione et rigore (Trem.Palp.) VII.616-7 Kühn,Galen describes this innate heat as the substance of the soul, ousia têspsuchês: but I think that all he need mean by this is that it is its substance in a material sense (cf. Aristotle 252 R. J. Hankinson

in the body. (16: Prop.Plac. 15.2-3, 116.26-118.29 (= Subst.Nat.Fac. IV.763 Kühn)) This “subservience” (or rather enslavement) of the soul to the body is also emphasized in QAM (see n. 58), where a little elbow room is still left for the Platonic view (QAM IV.785 Kühn(= SM 2, 46.9-47.2)): having noted again that excessive coldness can destroy all psychic functions, he writes: This clearly establishes the probandum of this treatise, namely that the actions and affections (erga kai pathê) of the soul follow upon the mixtures of the body. For if the soul is the form of a uniform (homoiomeres) body, we will have a most scientific demonstration on the basis of its very substance; but if we suppose it to be incorporeal and to possess its own particular nature, as Plato held, it must still be agreed that even on his account it is mastered by and subservient to the body, on the grounds of the sense- lessness of infants, and of those who rave in old age, and of those who are driven to delirium, mania and seizure by administrations of drugs, or by the accumulation within them of harmful humours. For since such things follow upon these things to the point of unconsciousness, raving, paralysis and insensibility, one would say that the soul has suffered impediment as a result of them in regard to the exercise of its natural powers . . . . So this is a powerful incentive for supposing, in regard to the whole substance of the soul, that it is not incorporeal. For how could it be forced into the opposite of its natural condition as a result of its association with the body, unless it is either a quality, a form, an affection, or a power of the body? (17: QAM IV.777-8 Kühn(= SM 2, 47.22-48.25)) The form of the claim regarding the possibility of having “a most scientific demonstration on the basis of its very substance” is very important – if it can be established that soul really is as the Aristotelians say it is, then we could have a proper, scientific demonstration, starting from a spelling out of the essence of the thing; but Galen will not commit himself firmly to that point of view. The available evidence, although strongly inclining in that direction, is not conclusive – it is not enough to establish the proposition that the soul is the form of the body (in this sense) beyond any reasonable doubt.60 Still, it does allow Galen to promote a provisional hypothesis, to the effect that such an assumption will make excellent sense of the phenomena (and here perhaps we see a glimpse of a later, more familiar scientific method). Moreover, the soul is not only subject to physical causal effects; it is itself a cause, and the best avail-

Metaph. VII.3 1029a2-27). 60 For the key aspects of Galen’s epistemology here, in particular that science should be founded on axioms which are “compelling on their own account” whether to the intellect or the senses, see Hankinson (1991b, 1992b); Frede (1981). Body and Soul in Galen 253 able models61 for causal interaction make the causes of corporeal eﬀects62 themselves corporeal, and causation something brought about by physical contact. But, in spite of the suggestiveness of this argument, Galen is still not entirely convinced. We have already noted his distrust of extreme reductionism in psychology; what is more, he distrusts it in physics too. He is, as we also saw, a convinced teleologist and providentialist; and throughout his works he hymns the artistic skill of a productive Nature,63 not least in regard to the thorny problem of precisely how living organisms grow and reproduce. Moreover, his Nature is not the disembodied intrinsic teleological tendency of the world; it is closely allied with (perhaps even identical with) a designer God whom Galen, following Plato, calls the “Demiurge”.64 His objections to the atomism of Epicurus and his followers go far beyond mere dissatisfaction with their eliminativism; their refusal to accept the overwhelming (as he sees it) evidence in favour of the adoption of some form of teleology also counts heavily against them.65 Moreover, their refusal to admit qualities into their explanatory ontology forces them to appeal to purely mechanical principles to account for the basic bodily processes of growth and metabolism. But in Galen’s view (expounded and defended at length in Nat.Fac.), any account that simply involves the transportation and rearrangement of unchanging material corpuscles will be explanatorily inadequate. Thus digestion cannot simply be a process of grinding and attrition of the ingested food (Nat.Fac. II.152-5 K¨uhn(= SM 2, 211.11-213.20); cf. 160-8 (= 217.10-222.18)), but must involve qualita-

61 The only ones, according to some, e.g. the Stoics: “every cause is a body which becomes a cause to a body of something incorporeal: for instance, the scalpel is the cause to the flesh of being cut” (Sextus, Against the Professors 9.211 (= SVF 2.341; = LS 55B); “being cut”, the predicative designation being in their terminology an “incomplete lekton”, or sayable (cf. Diogenes Laertius, 7.63.1-4 (= LS 33F-G); cf. Long and Sedley (1987, pp. 195-202)). 62 Not that for the Stoics, strictly speaking, effects themselves are corporeal (they are rather incorporeal lekta: n. 61 above): but they subsist in corporeal objects. 63 In particular in his major treatise on biological design and function De usu partium corporis humani III.1-IV.366 Kühn(= Helmreich (1907-9)); but such sentiments are found in abundance elsewhere, not least in Nat.Fac., where Erasistratus and Asclepiades in particular are berated for failing to see the clear evidence of an artistic nature at work; see Hankinson (1988a, 1989). 64 Again, see Hankinson (1988a, 1989). 65 Equally culpable is the failure, as he sees it, of Erasistratus (his principal medical opponent in Nat.Fac.) and his sectators to pay more than lip-service to its principles. Erasistratus, on Galen’s account, adopts Aristotle’s principle that nature does nothing in vain in name only (Nat.Fac. II.91-2 Kühn(= SM 2, 167.2-23); cf. 78, 81, 87, 88, 100, 101-2, 106, etc.); in practice, he seeks to account for physiological processes in terms of material principles of fluid dynamics, such as that of horror vacui. 254 R. J. Hankinson tive alteration (ibid. 20-6 (= 115.10-119.24); cf. 88-93, (= 165.7-169.5)). Such postulates are necessary in non-physiological cases too. Galen spends some time exposing the absurdity, as he (rightly) sees it, of the Epicurean account of magnetism (ibid. 44-53 (= 133.11-139.21); cf. Lucretius VI.906- 1089): no story involving the streaming, rebounding, and intertwining of small particles can explain the facts of an attractive force transmitted in- stantaneously, through a succession of contiguous iron bodies, in a variety of different directions (47-51 (= 135.11-138.18)). The Epicurean corpuscularian explanation cannot account (or so Galen thinks – no doubt there are replies available to the Epicurean) for either the speed or the multi- directionality of the effect. And if one detailed type of hypothesis won’t work, we need to substitute another one. Further, the point of the appeal to magnetism in Nat.Fac. is precisely to make plausible the case for his own preferred, as yet unanalyzed powers, of attraction, retention, assim- ilation and expulsion, as being at least provisionally basic in physiology – in just the same way that the materialists’ account of magnetic attraction is hopelessly inadequate, so too is their attempt to account for the internal processes of the body on the basis of primitive corpuscularian mechanics and dynamics. In De locis affectis (Loc.Aff.) VIII.421-2 Kühn, Galen makes a similar point about the mysteriousness of magnetic action, and adds another example of apparent causal transmission without material transfer, that of the torpedo fish, which can send a numbing shock through the solid bronze of a fisherman’s trident. The point is that one can’t argue with the reality of the effect (although certain shameless “sophists” in Galen’s view seek to do exactly that) – and the upshot is (or at least ought to be) a preference for an unprejudiced empiricism. If we come across examples of a phenomenon that cannot be accounted for on the basis of our best available models, then so much the worse for those models. And it is this, I think, which underlies Galen’s consistent (as I see it) agnosticism with regard to the question of the substance of the soul. Soul is clearly very closely associated with the body;66 but that association need not of itself imply that the soul is physical. Galen grapples, equally aporetically, with these issues in his late treatise De foetuum formatione (Foet.Form. IV.652-702 Kühn (= CMG V 3.3 (Nickel, 2001)): the complexity and organization of the processes involved in the construction of physical parts, in particular in

66 It is worth noting in this context that, again on empirical grounds, Galen thinks the association can go the other way too; At De praenotatione ad Posthumum XIV.634 Kühn(= 104.9-15 Nutton (1979)), he says that some diagnoses escape doctors, even though they are empirically obvious, because they have no thorough understanding (diagnosis) of how the mind affects the body. He also believes in the possibility of altering our basic emotional make-up (and hence our physical mixtures) by cognitive therapy, and he devotes a short treatise (De cognoscendis curandisque animi morbis V.1-57 Kühn(= Marquardt (1883, pp. 1-44), = de Boer (1937)) to developing this view; see Hankinson (1993). Body and Soul in Galen 255 the embryo, strongly suggest that it is, at least at some remove, under intelligent control, and for this reason the view of the Peripatetics that something irrational like the nutritive soul, or of the Stoics that it is not even soul at all, but simply blind nature, is responsible for its production seems equally inadequate (Foet.Form. IV.700 (= 104.16-24 Nickel)). Yet, on the other hand, Galen cannot bring himself to accept the view “of one of my Platonist teachers” that the World Soul, permeating the entire universe, is directly responsible for moulding the foetus, for it seems to him almost blasphemous to make such a divinity responsible for scorpions, spiders, vipers and the like (700-1, (= 104.25-106.2 Nickel)). In fact, As I have said, never having found a single opinion scientifically demonstrated about it, I confess myself at a loss regarding the soul’s substance, and am unable to advance even to plausibility regarding it. So I confess myself at a loss regarding the moulding cause of the foetus. (18: Foet.Form. IV.700 Kühn(= 104.12-16 Nickel)) This certainly seems more aporetic than the position of QAM ; but is not ultimately incompatible with it. The failure of reductionism, and the adoption of a providential teleology (as opposed to one of the immanen- tist, Aristotelian type), carries along with it important implications, ones which are also relevant to the case of the soul – but they do not point unequivocally in the direction of any of the non-reductionist alternatives on offer. So it is precisely Galen’s openness to the possibility of there being different forms of causal interaction, ones which might not involve corporeality, or at all events might not involve it in the gross, mechanist fashion of the reductive materialists, that makes him ultimately unable to commit himself on the side of a thoroughgoing materialism of mind, for all that he sees the force of the arguments in its favour. It is this combination of care, caution, and an avoidance of dogmatic commitment to idéesre¸cues that makes Galen’s approach to issues in philosophical psychology so admirable; and, as I suggested above, at least hints at something far more like what we might recognize as a scientific method than that with which he is usually credited – or perhaps rather, unfairly, debited – today.67

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Thomas Buchheim, Professor of Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians- University, Munich

Roman Dilcher, Assistent at Philosophisches Seminar, Ruprecht- Karls-University, Heidelberg

Christopher Gill, Professor of Ancient Thought, University of Exeter

R. J. Hankinson, Professor of Philosophy and Classics, University of Texas at Austin

Edward Hussey, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

Thomas K. Johansen, Reader in Philosophy, University of Edinburgh

R. A. H. King, Privatdozent in Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians- University, Munich

Pierre-Marie Morel, Maˆıtrede conférences,UniversitéParis 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne

Denis O’Brien, Directeur de Recherche, Centre National de la Recherche Scientiﬁque, Paris

Christof Rapp, Professor of Philosophy, Humboldt University, Berlin

Robert W. Sharples, Professor of Classics, University College London

Index locorum

Abbreviations, where possible, follow Liddell/Scott/Jones Greek-English Lexicon.

Aenesidemus, 173 De Mixtione 216.14-218.16, 216 A¨etius 226.24-30, 181 4.3.11, 189, 220 Problemata 4.21.1-4, 193, 215, 216 1.21, 184 5.4.2-3, 173 1.26, 183 1.28, 177 Albertus Magnus 1.121, ?? De XV Problematibus 2.22, 184 9 41.11-14, 170 2.27, 184 9 41.42-50, 170 2.63, 183 2.64, 184 Alcinoos 2.67, 184 Didaskalikos 3.10-11, ?? cap. xiv, 85 In Aristotelis Metaphysica Com- Alexander of Aphrodisias, 61, 168, mentaria (in Metaph.) 171, 175, 178, 184 306.29-30, 13 De Anima (de An.) 306.36-307.1, 13 6.2-4, 179 In Librum De Sensu Commen- 15.9ﬀ., 183 tarium (in Sens.) 23.2-24.3, 182 7.16-18, 125 24.3-4, 178 7.19, 128 24.21-23, 178 7.19-22, 125 79.15-21, 183 7.25-8.2, 128 84.3-6, 182 8.2, 129 84.24-27, 183 8.3-4, 129 Mantissa 8.10, 131 104.21-35, 180 8.12-13, 130 104.35-105.2, 182 Anaxagoras, 21 117.9-22, 183 B 12, 28, 46, 174 156-159, 165 262 Index locorum

Andronicus, 178, 250 I.4 407b27-408a30, 50 I.4 407b32-33, 53 Apollonius I.4 408a17-20, 51 Historia Mirabilium I.4 408a18-23, 51, 97 49.1-3, 170 I.4 408a20, 54 I.4 408a20-21, 52 Archilochus I.4 408a21, 56 131, 16 I.4 408a21-23, 55 I.4 408a22-23, 54 Aristotle, 19, 22, 46, 168, 170, 182, I.4 408b15, 122, 130 217, 234, 250, 251, 253 I.4 408b15-19, 172 De Anima (de An.) I.4 408b18-25, 167 I.1 402a9-10, 122, 133, 144 I.4 408b32-409a30, 60 I.1 403a3-4, 121 I.5 410a1-3, 53, 96 I.1 403a3-5, 198 I.5 410a4-6, 51 I.1 403a3-11, 144 I.5 410a25-26, 22 I.1 403a3-16, 137 I.5 411b7-9, 181 I.1 403a3-b9, 172 II.1 412a19-21, 246 I.1 403a4, 148 II.1 412a27-b6, 95 I.1 403a5-7, 148, 198 II.1 412b1-12, 132 I.1 403a8-10, 148 II.1 412b6, 123 I.1 403a8-12, 198 II.1 412b27-413a1, 178 I.1 403a16, 198 II.1 413a3-9, 247 I.1 403a16-19, 142, 199 II.1 413a9, 183 I.1 403a19-22, 199 II.2 413b2, 124 I.1 403a22-24, 179, 201 II.2 413b23, 126 I.1 403a25, 130, 202 II.2 413b23-24, 155 I.1 403a26-27, 148, 202 II.2 413b24-27, 144 I.1 403a27-403b2, 198 II.3 414b4, 155 I.1 403a29-b7, 166 II.3 414b4-6, 126 I.1 403b2-3, 206 II.3 414b13, 156 I.1 403b7-16, 206 II.4 415a14-22, 149 I.1 403b17-19, 207 II.4 415a18-20, 150 I.2 404a27-31, 21 II.4 415a16-21, 153 I.2 404b27-30, 60 II.4 415b19, 132, 168 I.2 404b30f., 37 II.4 415b21-28, 135 I.2 405a27-29, 23 II.4 415b24, 22 I.3 407b17-19, 133 II.4 415b24-25, 23 I.3 407b18, 122 II.4 416a6-9, 181 I.3 407b25, 168 II.5 416b33-35, 23 I.3 407b26, 132 II.5 416b34-35, 22 I.4 407b27-408a18, 51 II.5 417a13-14, 132 I.4 407b27-408a23, 96 II.5 417a31-b16, 129 Index locorum 263

II.5 417b2-418a5, 171 I.9 279a12-13, 66, 74, 76 II.7 418a31-b1, 154 I.9 279a13-14, 75 II.7 419a9-11, 154 I.9 279a14-16, 75 II.8 420a17-19, 143 I.9 279a14-17, 62 II.8 420a26-b4, 155 I.9 279a16, 94 II.9 421a7-10, 161 I.9 279a16-17, 61 II.9 421a10-b8, 161 I.9 279a17-20, 88 II.9 421a11-13, 156 I.9 279a17-22, 58, 65, 94 II.9 421a26-b2, 155 I.9 279a17-b3, 59, 61 II.9 421b9-422a7, 158, 162 I.9 279a18, 82, 94 II.9 421b28-422a6, 143 I.9 279a18-20, 85 II.9 422b4-5, 143 I.9 279a18-22, ??, 82 II.10 422b10-16, 154 I.9 279a18-b1, 64 III.2 426b8-12, 154 I.9 279a19-20, 62 III.2 426b8-16, 155 I.9 279a20-22, 60 III.2 426b11, 156 I.9 279a30-b3, 60 III.3 427a17ff., 37 I.9 279a33-34, 63 III.3 427a17-b6, 23 I.9 279b1, 65 III.3 428b11-12, 126 I.9 279b1-3, 63 III.3 429a1-2, 126, 148 II.4 287a12-13, 61, 75 III.10 433b18, 168 II.6 288a27-b7, 90 III.10 433b19-28, 133 II.6 288b1, 62 III.10 433b20, 121 II.12 292a22, 150 III.12 434b25-26, 135 III.1 298b14ff., 37 III.13 435b23, 156 III.2 301b23-30, 127 De Caelo (Cael.) Categoriae (Cat.) I.1 268a9-b10, 71 12 14a26-28, 69 I.2 269b4-6, 58 De Divinatione per Somnia I.3 270b20-22, 72 (Div.Somn.) I.3 270b20-24, 63 2 463b17, 127 I.7 275b6, 77 2 464a32, 127 I.7 275b6-11, 78, 79, 81 Ethica Nicomachea (EN ) I.7 275b7-9, 76 I.1 1094a1, 150 I.7 275b7-11, 81 IV.2 1139a31ff., 150 I.7 275b9-10, 77, 78 VII.3 1147b6-9, 171 I.7 275b11, 79 IX.8 1168a28-31, 212 I.9 278b21-279a11, 84 X.7 1177b30-1178a4, 212 I.9 278b21-279a22, 58 X.8 1178a14-21, 212 I.9 279a11-18, 57, 61, 62, 76, X.8 1178b18-32, 49 82, 88 De Generatione Animalum (GA) I.9 279a11-20, 62 I.23 731a33-b5, 124 I.9 279a11-b3, 63, 64 I.23 731a34-731b2, 133 264 Index locorum

I.23 731b5-8, 134 IV.5 1009b13, 20 II.3 736b30-37a8, 234 IV.5 1009b17-31, 21 II.4 738a33ff., 174 IV.5 1009b17-18, 22 II.4 740a36, 182 IV.5 1009b20ff., 43 II.6 741b37-42a15, 234 IV.5 1009b22-25, 13 II.6 743b35-744a5, 147 IV.5 1009b28-31, 20 De Generatione et Corruptione IV.5 1009b31-33, 21 (GC ) VII.3 1029a2-3, 250 I.8 324b25-29, 23, 24 VII.3 1029a2-27, 252 II.6 333b33-334a9, 53 VII.10 1035b16-18, 124 Historia Animalium (HA) VIII.6 1045b17-20, 123 VIII.1 588a27-30, 145 IX.1 1046a11-13, 133 De Insomniis (Insomn.) IX.6 1048b18-36, 136 1 459a17-18, 126 XI.10 1066b22-24, 78 1 459a21-22, 128 XII.7 1072b26-30, 49 2 459a23-b7, 127 XII.7 1073a5-7, 90 2 460b1-15, 201 XII.7 1073a5-11, 90 3 461a22, 127 XII.10 1075a38-b6, 56 De Interpretatione De Motu Animalium (MA) 1 16a3, 200 6 701a1-6, 128 De Juventute (Juv.) 7 701a35-6, 128 3 469a18-20, 124 7 701b21-22, 201 4 469b13-17, 123 7 701b37-702a4, 204 De Longaevitate (Long.) 10 703a4-27, 234 2 465a31, 122 10 703a20, 168 De Memoria (Mem.) 10 703a29-b2, 137 1 449b15-30, 128 11 703b6, 177 1 449b24-25, 129 De Partibus Animalium (PA) 2 453a14-31, 127 I.1 641a32-b10, 144 Metaphysica (Metaph.) I.1 642a9-13, 134 I.1 980a21-26, 126 I.5 645b14-20, 135 I.3 984a16-b18, 96 I.5 645b15ff., 150 I.4 985a4-7, 86 I.5 645b19-22, 135 I.5 986b27ff., 37 I.5 645b22, 122 I.7 988a34-b5, 96 II.1 646a13-b27, 246 I.10 993a15-24, 96 II.1 646b22, 136 IV.5 1009a22, 20 II.2 647a10-648a19, 246 IV.5 1009a22-38, 20 II.1 647a21, 124 IV.5 1009a38-1010a15, 20 II.2 648a2ff., 145 IV.5 1009b2-9, 20 II.7 652b8-15, 234 IV.5 1009b12, 20 III.3 665a11-13, 137 IV.5 1009b12ff., 37 III.4 666a34-35, 124 Index locorum 265

III.4 666b14-16, 233 Problemata IV.11 692a20, 169 III.31 875b19-33, 176 Physica (Ph.) V.15 882a33-39, 176 II.3 194b26-29, 250 XI.38, 176 II.4 196a19-24, 53 XXX.1 954b10-21, 179 II.9 200a5-15, 179 XXX.3, 184 II.9 200a30-32, 134 De Respiratione (Resp.) III.4 203a8-9, 93, 94 8 474b13, 123 III.5 204b5-7, 78 16 478a28-30, 123 IV.1-5 208a27-213a11, 66 Rhetorica (Rh.) IV.1 208a29, 89 II.2 1378a30-32, 203 IV.1 208b1, 66 II.3 1380b10-13, 200 IV.1 208b1-8, 72 II.4 1382a11-13, 204 IV.1 208b6-8, 66 II.13 1389b31-33, 200 IV.1 208b8, 67 De Sensu (Sens.) IV.1 209a4-6, 71 1 436a1-b10, 141 IV.2 209b21-24, 70, 72 1 436a4, 121, 135, 150 IV.3 210a30-31, 72 1 436a5, 149 IV.4 210b34-211a2, 69 1 436a6-7, 145 IV.4 211a2-3, 70 1 436a6-10, 142 IV.4 211a32-33, 70 1 436a7-8, 121 IV.4 211b14-17, 72 1 436a7-15, 121 IV.4 211b18, 72, 73 1 436a16-17, 151 IV.4 212a3-5, 72 1 436a17-b1, 141 IV.4 212a5-6a, 67 1 436a18-19, 126 IV.4 212a6a-7, 67 1 436a18-b2, 142 IV.4 212a10-14, 73 1 436b1-10, 151 IV.4 212a13-14, 73 1 436b1-12, 124, 125, 134 IV.5 212b14, 89 1 436b2-8, 146 IV.5 212b16-17, 89 1 436b4-6, 128 IV.5 212b17-18, 89 1 436b6-8, 146 IV.8 215a15, 127 1 436b7, 130 IV.11 219b1-2, 58, 75 1 436b8-10, 131, 132 VIII.10 266a10-11, 90 1 436b10-12, 124 VIII.10 266b28-267a20, 127 1 436b15, 135 VIII.10 267b7-10, 91 1 436b18-437a1, 141 VIII.10 267b17-26, 90 2 437a18-20, 153 VIII.10 267b25-26, 90 2 437a22-23, 160 Physiognomonica 2 437a25-438b17, 160 1 805a1-14, 177 2 437b21-22, 160 Politica (Pol.) 2 438a21-4, 160 III.13 1283b41, 122 2 438a22-25, 160 266 Index locorum

2 438b2-5, 159 8 485a4-5, 166 2 438b8-16, 147 9 485b6-7, 168 2 438b25, 161 3 439a6-17, 153 Asclepiades, 253 3 439a16-17, 154 3 439b11-12, 155 Asclepius 3 439b14-18, 155 in Metaph. 3 439b25-440a6, 156 277.19-20, 13 3 440a1, 156 277.24-27, 13 4 442a12-19, 156 Athenaeus (Medicus), 234 4 442a29-b1, 24 5 443a30, 161 Athenaeus 5 443b17-444b7, 157 Deipnosophistae 5 443b24-26, 157 17.104 317F, 169 5 444a28-29, 158 5 444b7-15, 158 Calcidius 5 444b15, 161 220, 193, 215, 216 5 444b22-28, 143 5 444b27-8, 161 Chrysippus, 193, 194, 233 6 445b7-446a20, 163 2.806, 244 6 446b6-9, 143 7 447a12, 163 Cicero 7 447a12-14, 163 Academia 7 449a13-20, 163 1.39, 194 7 449b1-3, 152 De Finibus De Somno et Vigilia (Somn.Vig.) 3.16, 216 1 453b11-13, 121 1 454a2-7, 125 Cleanthes, 194 1 454a7-11, 130, 147 Critolaus 1 454a8-b24, 124 frs. 17-18, 173 1 454b9-12, 128 2 455a26-b2, 128 Democritus, 21, 17, 20, 143, 170, 2 455b26, 134 182, 2 455b28, 135 B 9, 211, 212, 227 3 457a27, 127 B 125, 240 3 458a10-25, 136 De Spiritu (Spir.) Diocles, 234 1 481a17, 174 4 482b21-25, 175 Diogenes Laertius 4 482b29-36, 174 7.63, 224 4 483a3-5, 174 7.63.1-4, 253 4-5 483a23-b4, 175 7.83, 214 5 483b8-15, 174 7.85, 216 Index locorum 267

2.86, 239 Erasistratus, 217, 234, 235, 253

Empedocles, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 97, Galen, 178 143, 241 An in arteriis sanguis continea- B 17, 52, 56 tur B 17.20, 55 IV.703, 235 B 17.20-26, 55 Ars medica B 17.22-23, 56 I.406, 235 B 21.14, 17 De cognoscendis curandisque an- B 22.4, 17 imi morbis B 22.7, 17 V.1-57, 254 B 27.3, 52 De elementis ex Hippocrate B 35, 55 I.413-508, 246 B 35.10, 87 De foetuum formatione B 71.4, 52 (Foet.Form.) B 73.1, 52 IV.652-702, 254 B 75.2, 52 IV.700-701, 255 B 87, 52 IV.700.17-701.6, 182 B 95, 52 In Hippocratis aphorismos com- B 96, 51, 53, 56, 250 mentarius B 96.4, 50, 55 XVII.B.460, 240 B 98, 51, 56, 250 Introductio seu medicus B 98.3, 52 XIV.726.7-11, 193, 216 B 105, 35 De locis aﬀectis (Loc.Aﬀ.) B 106, 21 VIII.421-2, 254 B 108, 21, 43 De methodo medendi (MM ) B 109, 35, 52 X.17, 232 B 115.5-13, 54 X.33-37, 248 X.63-86, 243 Epicurus, 188, 190, 253 X.80-81, 240 Epistula ad Herodotum (Ep.Hdt.) De motu musculorum 63, 189 (Mot.Musc.) 63-64, 220 IV.367-464, 233 63-67, 218, 227, 229 IV.368-376, 242 64, 189 De naturalibus facultatibus 67, 191 (Nat.Fac.) 68-73, 219 II.6-7, 242 De Rerum Natura II.9-10, 243 25, 228 II.10-20, 245 34.21-22, 225 II.20-26, 254 34.26, 224, 226 II.20-27, 242 34.26-30, 225 II.26-30, 240 II.44-53, 254 268 Index locorum

II.47-51, 254 V.795-805, 245 II.89, 242 De praenotatione ad posthumum II.91-92, 253 XIV.634, 254 II.102-7, 242 De propriis placitis (Prop.Plac.) II.152-155, 253 2.1, 237 II.154-7, 242 3.1-2, 237 II.159-68, 242 7.1-2, 238, 247 De optima secta 7.3, 247 I.106-223, 251 13.4-7, 237 De ordine librorum suorum 13.7-15.5, 237 XIX.51-52, 251 14.1, 248 De placitis Hippocratis et Pla- 14.2-3, 248 tonis (PHP) 14.4, 249 III.1.25, 193 15.1, 246 IV.2.1, 195 15.2, 248 IV.7.12-17, 196 15.2-3, 252 V.187, 233 Quod animi mores corporis tem- V.188-200, 233 peramenta sequantur (QAM ) V.200, 233 IV.768, 244 V.201-202, 233 IV.768-769, 244 V.202-203, 242 IV.769.770, 245 V.203-206, 242 IV.770-771, 245 V.280-281, 235 IV.771-772, 245 V.280-284, 236 IV.772-773, 245 V.287-289, 236 IV.772-779, 238 V.521, 243 IV.773, 246 V.521-522, 240 IV.773-774, 247, 250 V.602-611, 235 IV.775, 245 V.604-605, 235 IV.777-778, 252 V.605-606, 236 IV.779, 251 V.609, 236 IV.782-783, 250 V.635-636, 240 IV.782.15-783.3, 178 V.720-723, 245 IV.783-784, 250 V.766, 237 IV.785, 252 V.779-782, 237 IV.787, 251 V.780, 237 IV.805, 251 V.781, 237 IV.805-814, 249 V.783-791, 237 IV.816-821, 244 V.791-793, 237 De simplicium medicamentorum V.792, 237 temperamentis et faculta- V.793, 232 tibus (SMT ) V.794, 238 XI.731, 236 Index locorum 269

De substantia facultatum natu- B 115, 4 ralium fragmentum B 119, 41 (Subst.Nat.Fac.) IV.757-760, 237 Herophilus, 217, 234, 235 IV.759-764, 237 Hierocles, 217, 228 IV.760-761, 248 1.5-33, 215 IV.761, 249 4.38-53, 216 De symptomatum causis (Symp.Caus.) Hippocrates, 234 VII.85-272, 243 De Aere Aquis Locis (Aër.) VII.191, 238 12, 17 De symptomatum differentiis Aphorismi (Aph.) (Symp.Diff.) 2.6, 240 VII.42-84, 243 De Morbo Sacro (Sacred Dis- VII.47-9, 242 ease) De temperamentis (Temp.) 7.10, 234 I.509-694, 246 De Natura Hominis (Nat.Hom.) I.582, 251 3, 17 I.676-677, 240 4, 17 De tremore, palpitatione, con- De Victu (Vict.) vulsione et rigore 32, 17 (Trem.Palp.) 35, 17 VII.616-617, 251 De Vetere Medicina (VM ) De usu partium corporis humani 5, 17 (UP) 16, 17 III.1-IV.366, 253 19, 17 III.16, 232 De usu pulsuum Hippolytus V.149-80, 234 Refutatio Omnium Haeresium V.154-156, 236 VII 29-31, 55 De utilitate respirationis (Ut.Resp.) Homer IV.470-511, 234 Ilias (Il.) IV.492-511, 251 7.546, 19 IV.501-502, 236 9.104, 15 IV.502, 235 15.10, 21 15.509, 15 Heraclitus, 4, 29, 173 15.699, 15 B 23, 4 16.852f., 42 B 45, 4 18.295, 19 B 67, 4 23.149, 15 B 85, 107 23.698, 21 270 Index locorum

Odysseia (Od.) De Principiis 2.121, 19 3.1.2-3, 215 2.363, 19 5.23, 15 Parmenides 7.292, 19 B 1.1, 107 10.526, 39 B 2.5, 78 11.13ff., 39 B 3, 34 11.34ff., 39 B 4, 40 14.273, 19 B 6, 42 14.490, 15 B 7, 38 15.326, 19 B 7.3, 38 17.403, 19 B 8.8-9, 78 18.136-137, 16, 23 B 8.24, 44 23.30, 19 B 8.38, 38 24.479, 15 B 8.53, 38 B 8.55, 17 Leucippus, 17 B 8.59, 17, 40 B 9, 38, 40 Lucretius, 188 B 9.3, 44 3.136-144, 220 B 13, 41 3.140, 190 B 16, 13-29, 31-47 3.141ff., 190 B 16.4, 18 3.145-176, 220 B 17, 44 3.152-158, 191 B 18, 17 3.161-167, 191 B 19, 38 3.170-176, 192 3.231-245, 189 Philo 3.262-265, 221 Legum Allegoriae 3.262-273, 189 2.22-23, 213 3.273-281, 221 3.282-306, 221 Philoponus 3.288-293, 227 In Aristotelis Physica Commen- 3.290f., 192 taria (in Ph.) 3.311-313, 222 556.29-557.1, 61 3.417-462, 211 563.32-33, 67 3.445-482, 219 567.4-7, 67 3.624-633, 211 585.13, 69 4.877-891, 227 585.13-14, 67 6.906-1089, 254 Plato, 25, 147, 183, 203, 249, 250 Nemesius Alcibiades (Alc.) 78.7-79.2, 194 129c-e, 6 Origen 129c-130c, 212 Index locorum 271

132c-133c, 212 Philebus (Phlb.), 203 Critias (Cri.) 16c-d, 116 46b, 108 16d, 116 Gorgias (Grg.) 34a3-b8, 5, 130, 147 506d, 110, 115 64e-65a, 116 508a, 110 66a-b, 116 Leges (Lg.) Politicus (Plt.) 863b-864b, 107 270a1, 88 896b1, 86 278b-c, 116 903d, 111 288e-289a, 246 904a, 115 Republica (R.) 904b-d, 115 435c, 103, 104 904c-905d, 115 435c-d, 104 965c, 116 435d-441c, 213 Meno (Men.) 436a-b, 112 76c-d, 241 436a9-b3, 106 Parmenides (Prm.) 439c, 106 143a, 116 439e, 107 144e, 116 440c-d, 107 Phaedo (Phd.), 5, 212, 218 440d, 107 78c-d, 104 504b-d, 109 78d-79d, 105 504b1-4, 104 80e-82b, 113 504b3-4, 108 85e3-86d4, 57 504c9-d1, 104 85e3-95b4, 50 504c9-d5, 109 91c6-95b4, 57 505a2, 109 93a, 249 505a2-4, 110 99e-100a, 108 506e2-4, 110 106d, 103 508a11-b10, 111 Phaedrus (Phdr.) 510b4-5, 111 245c9, 86 511b4-c2, 113 246a, 103, 103 518c4-d1, 112 246b, 103 519a8-b1, 112 247c2, 93 533c, 113 247c3, 92 533c-d, 114 247d5-e4, 92 580d-581d, 109 248b6, 92 610e5-8, 115 265c, 116 611b-612a, 105 265c-266c, 114 611d-612a, 212 266b, 116 611d-612a5, 5 271a, 114 611d2, 105 618b2-4, 115 272 Index locorum

Sophistes (Sph.) 79e-80c, 127 243a1-2, 88 89e-90c, 115 248e6-249b3, 95 90c6-d7, 118 253d, 116 Symposium (Symp.) Plotinus, 83 211a-b, 116 Enneades Theaetetus (Tht.) I 1 [53] 9.16-20, 5 152d2-153a5, 22 I 1 [53] 5-7, 9-10, 5 184c, 146 III 2 [47] 2, 116 184d, 103 III 3 [48] 7, 116 Timaeus (Ti.), 212 V 9 [5] 8.1-7, 60 29c-d, 237 30b4-5, 117 Plutarch 31b, 239 Aetia Physica 32c7-8, 84, 88 19 916B, 169 33a4, 84 De Animae Procreatione in Timaeo 33c1-2, 84 1 1012D, 60 34b3-36e5, 96 De Communibus Notitiis Con- 34b4, 85, 87 tra Stoicos 34b7-8, 96 1085C-D, 213 35a, 103 De Virtute Morali, 228 35a1-36d7, 97 De Exilio 35a6-8, 117 17 607C-D, 55 35a7f., 116 De Facie Quae in Orbe Lunae 36c3-5, 85 Apparet 36e3, 84, 85 12 926E-927A, 86 41c-d, 115 De Libidine et Aegritudine 41d4-42e4, 97 2 52.10-53.4, 170 43c4-5, 146 De Sollertia Animalium 45d2, 146 27 987E-F, 169 52b3-5, 92 De Tuenda Sanitate 52b4-5, 93, 94 24 135D-E, 170 52d4-5, 92 27 137D-E, 167 53a8, 86 Porphyry 53b3-4, 86 De Abstinentia 59a, 127 4.20 265.22-266.4, 170 64b3-6, 146 69c-d, 115 Praxagoras, 233, 234 69c-e, 237 69c-71e, 217 Seneca 70a-71b, 232 Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales 70e, 232 113.23, 194 77b, 232 Index locorum 273

Sextus 14, 172 Adversus Mathematicos (M.) 7.135, 211 Themistius 7.234, 193 In Aristotelis Physica Paraphra- 7.263, 194 sis (in Ph.) 9.211, 253 118.8, 69 118.8-9, 67 Simplicius, 51, 172 In Aristotelis de Caelo Com- Theophrastus, 19, 24, 32, 32, 36, mentaria (in Cael.) 40, 184 287.19-290.4, 61 fr. 158-159, 166 287.30-288.6, 61 fr. 271, 171 289.1-2, 59 fr. 365B, 169 290.4-21, 61 fr. 365C, 169 290.14-18, 61 fr. 365D, 169 290.21-292.7, 64 fr. 439, 170 291.25-6, 65 fr. 440A-C, 170 In Aristotelis Physica Commen- fr. 726A, 170 taria (in Ph.) Metaphysica (Metaph.) 32.6-10, 51 8 9b1-24, 166 39.18f., 39 Historia Plantarum 300.21-24, 51 IX.18.3, 170 579.37-580.6, 68 IX.19.1, 170 580.3, 67, 69 De Sensibus (Sens.) 582.30, 67, 69 1-2, 25 584.20, 67, 69 3, 32 964.15, 171 4, 28 964.29-965.6, 171 8f., 40 965.7-16, 172 10, 35 10-15, 38 Stobaeus 11, 40 2.88,8-90,6, 195, 196 58, 21, 25 2.88,22-89,3, 195 72, 25 2.90,19-91,9, 195 Xenocrates Strato, 184 fr. 68, 60 fr. 74, 172 fr. 188, 60 fr. 108, 172 Xenophanes Tertullian B 32, 41 De Anima

General Index

For ancient authors see Index locorum. action, 121, 135–136, 140, 187, 227 intelligible)(sensible, 78, 80 )(undergoing, 133–134, 252 receiving soul, 239, 251 activity, 31, 123, 125, 133, 135, 136, body)(soul, 166–168 149, 150, 152, 158, 159, 164, as system, 222 218, 241, 242, 244 co-affection, 22, 170, 176, 177, actuality, 149, 174, 180 187, 191, 218–219, 244, 251 )(potentiality, 153 co-ordination, 125, 214, 217 aether, 62, 63, 80 co-variation, 187 affections, 121, 128, 142, 151, 177, common to b./s., 1, 3, 6, 31, 179, 180, 199, 202, 218, 242, 49, 121, 123–131, 133, 137, 244 142, 145–148, 151, 176, 183, akrasia, 171 187, 197, 204, 209, 211, 217 all, the, 89 composite, 1, 122, 133, 247 anatomical investigation, 233, 239 conflict, 171 anger, 148, 166, 171, 177, 179, 188, cooperation, 187 200, 203, 204, 208 correlation, 181, 213, 254 animal criterion of c.b.s., 124, 125, 131, parts of, 51 135 psycho-physical composite, 216 distinction, 1, 31, 217 rational, 210 dualism, 1, 41, 122, 123, 197, antiperistasis, see repercussion 212, 214, 223, 227, 229 atomism, 240, 253 duality, 123, 133, 137, 187, 216 identity, 41 becoming, 118 interaction, 123, 187, 188, 194, being, 37, 44, 45, 47, 117 197, 207, 221, 246, 253 )(being somewhere, 92 unity, 123, 124, 137, 209, 210 blending, see mixture brain, 215, 233 blood, 51, 128, 193, 205, 206 breathing, see pneuma, 173–175, 192, body, 57 218, 251 bodily movements, 198, 204 generation of, 238 capacity, power inanimate, 28, 166 incorporeal, 248 infinite in extent, 76 of physical things, 249 276 General Index

powers of nature, 242, 243 dynamis, see capacity )(substance, 243 transmission of, 234 effect, 242 category elements, 28, 40, 41, 53, 55, 86, 97, relation, 242 144, 189, 192, 205, 250 causation, see cause )(aether, 62 cause eliminativism, 253 activating, 242–243 embryo, 182, 215, 255 causal explanation, 2, 125, 181, emergence, 225, 227 188–197, 243 emotions, 31, 170, 179, 188, 190, 194, causal interaction, 2, 187, 253 195, 197–199, 201, 202, 204, efficient, 134, 179 217 final, 134, 135, 174 definition of, 203, 205 formal, 134, 135, 206 movement of blood, 205 mental, 226 teleology, 203 without material transfer, 254 two component model, 205–208 change energeia, see actuality, activity material, 143, 171, 192 epiphenomenalism, 187, 240, 249 )(movement, 62 physis into psyche, 215 fear, 169, 179, 194, 200, 201, 208 character, 14, 41, 227 flesh, 51, 174, 221, 242 cognition, 33, 131 food, see nutrition colour, 154–155, 169 form, 92–94, 122, 124, 166, 205, 213, common, 121, 122, 144, 158 246, 249, 250 )(peculiar, 144, 145 function, 6, 121, 124, 127, 131, 133– contradiction, principle of, 106 135, 137, 167, 220, 223, 241, cosmogony, 41, 46 246 courage, 240 generation, 243 cradle argument, 244 God, 87, 181, 211, 212, 224, 228, daimones, 54, 97 237, 253 death, 40, 42, 137, 141, 170, 189, good, 6, 109–111, 118 219 growth, 193, 214, 253 soul’s separation from body, 245 happiness, 210 demiurge, 86 harmony, 50, 56 Descartes, 4, 41, 187, 210, 216, 246 health, disease, 126, 141, 170, 190 desire, 107, 128, 142, 156, 170, 171, heart, 123, 128, 133, 137, 166, 184, 203, 243, 250 193, 198, 202, 205, 215, 219, development, 225, 226 233 dialectic, 113, 116, 202, 206 heat, cold, 200, 204, 220, 251 disposition, 15, 129, 201 holism, 210, 211, 214, 228 dissection, 234 hylomorphism, 122, 132, 146, 170, dreams, 127, 129, 141, 151 175, 178, 198 General Index 277 identity, 35 content of, 15 imagination, 126, 127, 134, 137, 148, model theory of, 25–27 166, 198, 201, 205, 214, 224 )(spirit, 167, 219 impression, see imagination state of, 15 impulse, 191, 193, 203, 214 theory of mental states, 16–19 innate ideas, 240 transcendence of, 43, 45, 46 instrument, 132, 133, 135, 167, 168 mixture, 16–19, 27, 28, 32, 35, 43– intellect, see thinking 46, 51, 53, 175, 178, 180, 189, 220, 222, 238, 246, 250– judgement, 202 252 modern categories, 209, 222 Kant, 227, 228 motivation, 217 kinêsis, see change movement, see change, 86, 171, 172 )(praxis, 136 caused by the soul, 86 knowledge disordered, 86 like by like, 35 koinos, see common naturalism, 210, 212 krasis, see mixture nature, 184, 213, 214, 217, 243, 253, 255 life, 39, 49, 141 as artisan, 240 beyond the stars, 49, 94 natural philosopher, 142–144, 147, light, 40–42, 44–46, 111, 155 149, 202, 206 locomotion, 145, 193 nerves, 215, 233–235, 242 logos nutrition, 137, 145, 174, 175, 193, enmattered, 202 198, 214, 243, 250, 255 Love, 50–56 as cause, 54 organ, 14, 137, 151–162, 180, 183, as harmony, 55 187, 246 cosmic principle of, 54 organism, 211, 213–215 materialism, 24, 210, 240 organon, see instrument eliminative, 241 panpsychism, 239, 241 unconscious, 56, 95 passages, 144, 147 matter, 122, 124, 144, 149, 166, 178, passions, 195 205, 206, 212, 213, 223, 250 pathos, see affections memory, 39, 40, 126, 127, 129, 141, perception, 37, 111, 124, 125, 131, 142, 148, 150, 151, 245 133, 137, 141, 142, 145, 147, metabolism, 253 151, 156, 159, 163, 193, 198, mind, 14, 27, 170, 176, 190 205, 217, 219, 221, 238–239 and modes of life, 39 and alteration, 22, 25, 175, 182, apprehending being, 31 239–241 as character, 14 co-affection, 189 as light, 41 as organ, 14 faculty of, 153, 163, 216, 245 278 General Index

impact theory of, 24 reduction, 210, 211 in soul through body, 132, 146 reductionism, 239, 253, 255 in the dead, 38–39 repercussion, 127 like by like, 32, 175 respiration, see breathing object of, 36, 152–154, 156, 162, responsibility, agency, 225, 227 163 sense organs, 130, 136, 143, 144, self, 225 146, 152, 153, 162, 173 self-awareness, 28 state theory of, 24 sensation, see perception phantasia, see imagination sense-perception, see perception physical constitution, 34, 41, 42, 180 separability, 207, 210, 239 physicalism, 3, 210, 223, 226–229 sight, 159–160 ontological vs. explanatory, 223, simple bodies, see elements 227 sleep, 128, 134, 135, 141, 150 physiology, 124, 127, 161, 163, 169, smell, 161, 162 171, 172, 176, 196, 217, 234, soul (psychê) 254 account of, 7 physis, see nature and change, 172 place, 57, 66–75 and choice, 115 pleasure, pain, 126, 142, 156–157, as body, 178 161, 180, 183, 203, 239 as form, 5, 178, 246, 247, 250, pneuma, see breathing, 137, 165, 166, 252 168, 169, 173, 174, 177, 184, as principle of life, 1, 5, 114, 192–193, 213, 215, 218, 228, 190 234–236, 248 as proportion, 52, 53 poroi, see passages as pneuma, 173, 174, 218, 228, potential, see capacity 235, 248 potentiality capacities of, powers, faculties, )(actuality, 153 106, 107, 109, 115, 123, 145, power, see capacity 146, 149, 150, 171, 177, 189, praxis, see action 217, 220, 234, 236, 243–245, )(kinêsis, 136 248, 250 product (ergon), see function commanding faculty, 182, 193, properties 215 emergent, 224 composite, 106, 109, 111, 112, mental, 227 206 non-material, 224 construction by the demiurge, psychology, 169, 172, 176, 233, 255 86 comparative, 159–160 corporeal, 174, 189, 191, 192, materialistic, 13 218, 252 definition of, 149, 150, 173, 214, reason, 107, 113, 177, 214, 217, 233 218 recollection, 183 dependent existence, 248 General Index 279

elements of, 189 )(capacity, 243 functional account of, 239 dualism, 132 harmonia theory of, 50, 168, 175, sympatheia, see body)(soul / co-aﬀection, 178 176, 189, 191, 194, 219 idea of, 103 immateriality of, 236, 237 taste, 162 immortality of, 183, 232, 236, teleology, see cause / ﬁnal, 2, 211, 237, 241, 245, 247, 248 253, 255 incorporeal, 60, 171, 174, 192, thinking, 14, 31, 44, 137, 144, 145, 197, 247, 248 148, 166, 167, 172, 177, 198, location of, 190, 191, 193–194, 213, 218 232, 234, 237, 246 act of, 18 mens)(animus, 190 and alteration, 25 mortality of, 188, 237, 247 and constitution of limbs, 35 parts of, 145, 150, 233, 237, 246, as internal state, 22 250 impact theory of, 24 peculiar to, 144–145, 198 state theory of, 24 rational/irrational, 172, 183, 198, transcendence of, 45 233, 234, 245, 248 thymos, 250 striving for the good, 115, 117 time, 57 substance of, 238, 244, 252 touch, 161 tripartite, 108, 109, 115, 232, understanding, 245 236 universe uniform/multifarious, 105, 114 organization, 237 unity of, 103, 114, 115, 117, 173 unmoved mover, 49, 63–65, 89–91 world s., 83–88, 116, 255 species, 221, 227, 247 virtues, 106, 210 state, 22, 121, 124, 125 vivisection, 234 with intensional objects, 196 void, 57, 191 substance, 122, 174, 180, 187, 211, 248, 250 youth, old age, 126, 141 as composite, 246, 250