The Emergence of Reflexivity in Greek Language and Thought: From Homer to Plato and Beyond Edward Jeremiah Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2010 School of Historical Studies The University of Melbourne Abstract The chief claim of this thesis is that the development of specialised complex reflexive pronouns in Ancient Greek is linked to changing notions of self, and that the formation of reflexive concepts using the pronominal system, many of which would later become crucial to the development of the West, contributed in an important way to the thought and culture of Greek society. According to Lehmann’s (1974) reconstruction, PIE had no reflexive pronouns. Sometime during the Archaic age Greek grammaticalised a new complex reflexive comprising a synthetic fusion of a personal pronoun and the intensifier αὐτός. Previously αὐτός had been added independently to mark unexpected coreferential use of the simple pronoun, but through comparison with better documented cases of the same grammaticalisation process in English and other languages, we can extrapolate yet an earlier stage in which the personal pronouns could function reflexively without the addition of the intensifier. This development indicates an increased use of the pronominal reflexive system as an extension of, and alternative to, the timeworn verbal approach of middle reflexivity inherited from PIE. There are subtle but crucial semantic differences between pronominal and middle reflexive representations which must be grasped if we are to appreciate the implications of the new pronominal approach. My thesis looks at the way in which the Greeks, and in particular the early philosophers, exploit this system and its capabilities to form fundamental and culturally important reflexive concepts such as political autonomy, self-respect, care of self, and conscience. As the English word self suggests, in origin a nominalisation of its reflexive morpheme, reflexivity ties in closely with views on the nature and identity of the person. Ultimately I argue that the development of the pronominal reflexive system, and the Greeks’ experimentation with it, assists the construction of the self as a concept rather than a complex, and as a being whose agency is typically directed towards itself in various ways. This new construction is supported by changes in the socio-economic structure of Greece that promote a sharper individuation of the human agent. My approach is therefore a productive avenue for accessing and characterising the radical social change that gave us the Classical age. Within the wider framework these results bear on current debates concerning the relation of language and thought, and here I weigh in, with qualification, on the side of neo-Whorfianism; within Classics they seek to ground in contemporary grammaticalisation theory Gantar’s (1980: 41) speculation that ‘[d]ie Entdeckung dieser inneren Welt scheint mit dem Vorkommen der Reflexivpronomina auf das engste verbunden zu sein’; within intellectual history they reveal the way in which the Greeks’ use of reflexivity has influenced and conditioned the emergence of subjectivity in the Western tradition. ἀπὸ τοῦ συγγράφοντος πρὸς τὴν ἁρμονίαν Πλάτωνος καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους· ὁ μὲν θεός ἐστιν ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη τοῦ ζῆν, ἡ δὲ ζωὴ τὸ τέλος τοῦ θεοῦ, ἡμεῖς δ’ οἱ δυνάμει ἄνθρωποι μόνον, μὴ γενόμενοι ἡ ἔμψυχος ζήτησις τοῦ εἶναι τοῦ εἶναι. Declaration This is to certify that i. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, ii. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, iii. the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables and bibliography. Signed........................................................(candidate) Date............................................................ Acknowledgements Many thanks to K.O. Chong-Gossard, David Runia and Chris Mackie for their valuable supervision and advice towards completion of this thesis. Notes Unless otherwise stated, Greek passages are read according to the relevant Oxford Classical Text edition. Abbreviations BU = Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, tr. Olivelle (1998). CU = Chandogya Upaniṣad, tr. Olivelle (1998). CW = Colson F.H. and Whitaker G.H., eds. and trs. (1929) Philo, 10 vols. (Loeb Classical Library, London: William Heinemann). DK = Diels H. and Kranz W., eds. and trs. (1952) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker6, 3 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann). LSJ = Liddell H.G. and Scott R., eds. (1940) A Greek-English Lexicon9, revised and augmented by H.S. Jones with the assistance of R. McKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press). LP = Lobel E. and Page D., eds. (1955) Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta (Oxford: Clarendon Press). L&S = Lewis C.T and Short C., eds. (1879) A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press). PCG = Kassel R. and Austin C., eds. (1983-2001) Poetae Comici Graeci, 8 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter). TrGF = Snell B., Kannicht R., Radt S., eds. (1981) Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta, 5 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). TU = Taittiriya Upaniṣad, tr. Olivelle (1998). Contents 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 1.1.1 Overview .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1.2 Methodology .................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Thought and language ............................................................................................. 9 1.2.1 The controversy of Homeric psychology ......................................................... 9 1.2.2 Pronouns constructing identity ....................................................................... 13 1.2.3 Grammaticalisation ........................................................................................ 20 1.2.4 Semantic motivation in the shift to pronominal reflexivity ........................... 22 1.2.5 The transcendental self generated by pronominal reflexivity ........................ 28 1.3 Breakdown of argument ........................................................................................ 39 2 Homer ......................................................................................................................... 41 2.1 Typology of Homeric reflexives ........................................................................... 41 2.1.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 41 2.1.2 Non-possessive reflexives .............................................................................. 45 2.1.3 Possessive reflexives ...................................................................................... 50 2.2 Semantics of αὐτός in Homer .............................................................................. 53 2.2.1 External differentiation .................................................................................. 53 2.2.2 Internal differentiation ................................................................................... 56 2.3 The idea of ψυχή and its connection to the reflexive ........................................... 59 2.4 Conclusions .......................................................................................................... 63 3 Early lyric, iambus and elegy ................................................................................... 65 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 65 3.2 Complex reflexives in early poetry ....................................................................... 68 3.3 Simple αὐτός as reflexive (Theognis and Pindar) ................................................ 75 3.4 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 78 4 The Presocratics ......................................................................................................... 80 4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 80 4.2 Heraclitus .............................................................................................................. 81 4.3 The cosmology/ontology of Parmenides and Anaxagoras .................................... 85 4.4 Antiphon the sophist ............................................................................................. 90 4.5 Democritus ............................................................................................................ 96 4.6 The roots of reflexive ἀρχαί in the Presocratics and their legacy ....................... 105 4.7 The gnomic tradition ........................................................................................... 110 4.7.1 Pythagoras and the Seven Wise Men ........................................................... 110 4.7.2 The Delphic dictum ...................................................................................... 113 4.8 Conclusions ......................................................................................................... 116 5 Conscience and the reflexivisation of σύνοιδα ...................................................... 119 6 Tragedy and comedy ..............................................................................................