From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays in Ancient Philosophy 0198868383, 9780198868385

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From Aristotle to Cicero

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/10/2021, SPi

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From Aristotle to Cicero Essays on Ancient Philosophy GISELA STRIKER

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Gisela Striker 2022 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2022 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2021945150 ISBN 978–0–19–886838–5 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

1. Aristotle on Syllogisms ‘from a Hypothesis’

vii ix

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2. Necessity with Gaps

18

3. Assertoric vs. Modal Syllogistic

34

4. Perfection and Reduction in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics

47

5. Aristotle and the Uses of Logic

60

6. Aristotle’s Three Theories of Argument

77

7. The ‘Analysis’ of Aristotle’s Analytics

88

8. A Note on the Ontology of Aristotle’s Categories, Chapter 2

102

9. Emotions in Context

112

10. Aristotle’s Ethics as Political Science

128

11. Two Kinds of Deliberation: Aristotle and the Stoics

142

12. Academics Fighting Academics

162

13. Scepticism as a Kind of Philosophy

178

14. Epicurean Epistemology

193

15. Mental Health and Moral Health. Moral Progress in Seneca’s Letters

210

16. Panaetius Peri tou kathēkontos in Cicero’s De Officiis

222

Bibliography Index of Names Index of Passages

245 251 253

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Acknowledgements Chapters 1–6, 8–10 and 12–15 were previously published as follows: Chapter 1 (orig. in German as ‘Aristoteles über Syllogismen aufgrund einer Hypothese’) in Hermes 107, 1979, 33–50. Chapter 2 (orig. in German as ‘Notwendigkeit mit Lücken’) in neue hefte für philosophie 24/25, 1985, 146–64. Chapter 3 in Ancient Philosophy 14, 1994, 39–51. Chapter 4 in M. Frede/G. Striker (ed.), Rationality in Greek Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, 203–20. Chapter 5 in J. Gentzler (ed.), Method in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, 209–26. Chapter 6 in D. Gicheva-Gocheva (ed.), The Challenge Aristotle, University Printing House St Kliment Ohridski, Sofia (Bulgaria), 2018, 99–110. Chapter 8 in B. Morison/K. Ierodiakonou (ed.), Episteme, etc., Oxford University Press, 2011, 141–50. Chapter 9 in A. O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, California University Press, 1996, 286–302. Chapter 10 in B. Reis/S. Haffmans (ed.), The Virtuous Life in Greek Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 127–41. Chapter 12 in B. Inwood/J. Mansfeld (ed.), Assent and Argument, Leiden: Brill, 1997, 257–76. Chapter 13 in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 83, 2001, 113–29. Chapter 14 in Ph. Mitsis (ed.) The Oxford Handbook on Epicurus and Epicureanism, Oxford University Press, 2020, 41–58. Chapter 15 in Fiona Leigh (ed.), Themes in Plato, Aristotle, and Hellenistic Philosophy, University of London Press, 2021, 121–30. I am grateful to the publishers for the permission to reprint and translate. Chapters 7, 11, and 16 have not been published before.

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Introduction This collection brings together different lines of research that I have been pursuing throughout my academic career: Aristotle’s logic and ethics, and Hellenistic epistemology and ethics. At the University of Göttingen, where I got most of my philosophical education, a doctoral degree in philosophy required the addition of two secondary fields, for which I chose the two classical languages, Greek and Latin, which I had already learned in high school. After receiving my doctoral degree with a dissertation on Plato’s Philebus, I continued to work on ancient philosophy, but turned to the Hellenistic period, a field less studied by scholars than the great classics, although it had an enormous influence on later European philosophy. Now, since teaching is not limited to one’s specialty, during the first fifteen years, while still in Göttingen, I was also teaching courses in contemporary philosophy—epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind—that kept me in touch with recent developments. Since I moved to the United States, I have been mostly responsible for teaching ancient philosophy, but I have continued to follow contemporary philosophy in the fields I was studying in the ancient authors. This seemed to me the best way to engage with historical texts, not limiting oneself to exegesis, but engaging in discussion with authors who often had a different perspective, not treating them merely as predecessors, but also to learn from them. So, for example, Greek ethics saw morality in the wider framework of a good human life, and the ancient Sceptics were not fascinated by questions about the existence of an external world, questions that seem to have been prevalent ever since the time of Descartes. A few years into my time in Göttingen, I was invited to produce a new German translation and commentary on Aristotle’s Analytics. Since I had long been interested in Aristotle’s logic, I accepted—vastly underestimating the difficulties of the task and the time it would take me to complete it. In the meantime, Hellenistic philosophy was having a kind of renaissance among philosophers interested in the history of their subject, who had until then more or less limited themselves to the study of the Presocratics and the two great classical philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. This led to a lively exchange of ideas between scholars, both philosophers and classicists, now working in this field. So I continued my research in both areas, slowly making my way through Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, first in German, then in English, while also publishing papers on Hellenistic epistemology and ethics.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.001.0001

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The present collection includes a number of essays on Aristotle’s logic that deal with questions in more detail than would have been appropriate for a commentary, including an, as yet unpublished, paper on the title ‘Analytica’ (chapter 7), and a short piece outlining the development of Aristotle’s theory of argument that might serve as a background to the paper on analysis (chapter 6). It was presented at a conference to celebrate Aristotle’s 2400th birthday in Sofia, Bulgaria. The first two chapters were originally published in German. I am very grateful for the meticulous translations of Joshua Mendelsohn. The four articles on Aristotle that follow those chapters are mainly the result of teaching these subjects for many years. The second part of the collection contains later studies in Hellenistic epistemology and ethics. After a lot of discussion and new contributions by other historians of philosophy who had begun to investigate Hellenistic philosophy in the preceding decades, I have been going beyond the earlier generation of Stoics and Epicureans and Sceptics, and also sometimes trying to correct my earlier views. The series ends with a, yet to be published, study of a work by Panaetius, a Stoic of the second century , whose book on appropriate action Cicero used as a model for his last philosophical work, the De Officiis. At a time when Cicero was still being read as a philosopher in his own right, that book, dedicated to his son, became a vademecum for young gentlemen from the Renaissance until at least the end of the eighteenth century. It was clearly read as a general book of morality and manners, not as a work of Stoic philosophy, and I was interested in the changes, if any, in Stoicism that made this book enormously influential, quite apart from the influence of Stoic philosophy in other fields. Special thanks are due to Peter Momtchiloff for giving me the opportunity to bring these papers together. Hamburg, March 2021

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1 Aristotle on Syllogisms ‘from a Hypothesis’ For Professor Jürgen Mau on the occasion of his 60th birthday, 26 September 1976

In chapters 23 and 44 of Prior Analytics I, Aristotle discusses arguments ‘from a hypothesis’ and claims that these include the reductio-arguments. His descriptions in both chapters show that what direct and indirect arguments of this group have in common is that the ‘hypothesis’ is not a part of the argument, but either an agreement to the effect that a certain proposition will be accepted as proven if another proposition has been proven, or—in cases of reductio ad impossibile—a logical principle for which no explicit agreement is needed.

I In chapters A 23 and A 44 of the Prior Analytics, Aristotle deals with a type of arguments that he calls syllogisms ἐξ ὑποθέσεως.¹ On neither occasion is his aim to ¹ Without wishing to enter the fray of the long-contested question as to what an Aristotelian syllogism actually is, I should like to clarify, so that I am not misunderstood, that by an Aristotelian syllogism I mean a valid argument or a deduction. T. Smiley (‘What is a Syllogism?’, J. Phil. Logic 2, 1973, 138) draws attention to the fact that one cannot identify syllogisms with arguments because the same syllogism may be used in various arguments. It seems to me doubtful, however, that Aristotle would have noticed this distinction—the definition of the syllogism in A 1.24b18–20, in any case, seems only to refer to deductions that occur as complete arguments. On this, see M. Frede, ‘Stoic vs. Aristotelian Syllogistic’, Archiv. f. Gesch. Phil. 56, 1974, 16ff. In the two chapters I am considering here, Aristotle uses the word συλλογισμός in a broad sense that seems to include all valid arguments, as well as in a narrower sense in which it only refers to an argument in one of the syllogistic moods. The context makes clear which sense he intends in each case, so I have not indicated this. For the sake of brevity, I will refer to syllogisms ἐξ ὑποθέσεως as ‘hypothetical arguments’ in what follows. This should not be taken to imply that they refer to what were later called hypothetical syllogisms. The moods of the Aristotelian syllogistic will be referred to in what follows using their traditional Latin names (Barbara, Celarent, etc.). These names provide information about the form of the premises as well as the conclusion of the syllogism in question. They each have three syllables whose vowels indicate the quantity and quality of a statement: a stands for a universal affirmative statement of the kind ‘A belongs to all B’ or ‘all B are A’, e for a universal negative (‘A belongs to no B’), i for particular affirmative (‘A belongs to some B’) and o for particular negative (‘A does not belong to some B’). Aristotle divides syllogistic moods into three figures (σχήματα) that differ in their placement of the middle term: In the first figure the middle term appears once as subject and once as predicate; in the second figure both times as predicate, in the third figure both times as subject. If one knows the figure of a mood, one can construct the corresponding syllogism using its name. The premises of the mood Barbara in the first figure, for instance, have the form ‘A belongs to all B’ and ‘B belongs to all C’, and

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0001

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2     characterize these arguments or to demonstrate their validity. In A 23, hypothetical syllogisms are treated in the context of completeness considerations. Following on from A 7, Aristotle attempts to show that every proof and every valid argument can be reduced to the universal moods of the first figure (Barbara and Celarent). In A 44 his object is to argue, seemingly in opposition to what he tries to prove in A 23, that hypothetical arguments cannot be put into syllogistic form. The apparent contradiction between the theses of the two chapters will not interest us further here—it is probably best solved by restricting the thesis of A 23 to the effect that every valid argument must contain at least one syllogism, which can then be reduced to Barbara or Celarent. Aristotle himself seems to have intended this restriction, since even in A 23 he describes hypothetical arguments as consisting of two parts, where only one of the parts is a syllogism. The question that will occupy us here is rather the following: What did Aristotle actually mean by a syllogism ἐξ ὑποθέσεως? The expression, which also shows up in the Topics (A 18,108b12), is explained neither here nor in any other place. This allows us to infer that it was presumed to be familiar, at least in the Academy. As Shorey has emphasized, Aristotle is probably referring to the procedure that is introduced by Plato in the Meno as investigation ἐξ ὑποθέσεως (Meno 86Eff.).² So Aristotle is here speaking of a kind of argument with which the reader or listener is already familiar, and which therefore need not be characterized more closely. Aristotle also counts reductio ad impossibile as a hypothetical argument (40b25). It is not entirely certain whether this classification was also already in place, since, first, Aristotle does mention it himself and, second, it seems to serve to completely classify all valid arguments under two headings. Aristotle begins his discussion of completeness with the claim (40b23) that every proof and every syllogism must demonstrate that something belongs or does not belong, either universally or particularly; and—the significant part for our purposes—either in the ostensive way (δεικτικῶς) or from a hypothesis (ἐξ ὑποθέσεως). The ostensive method of proof had been contrasted with proof διὰ τοῦ ἀδυνάτου in A 7 already (29a32, cf. also A 29,45b8, b14; B 14.62b29, b38); and since reductio ad impossible is one type of hypothetical argument, one might at first assume that it is the contrast between direct and indirect arguments that Aristotle intends. Aristotle does, in fact, use the expressions δεικτικὴ and δεικτικῶς in the sense of ‘direct’ or ‘directly’ in chapter B 14 (62b29ff.); he describes the difference

the conclusion ‘A belongs to all C’. For further details, see G. Patzig, Die aristotelische Syllogistik, 3rd ed., Göttingen 1969, 11–13; W. and M. Kneale, The Development of Logic, Oxford 1962, 67ff. See 232f. for a more precise explanation of the names. ² Cf. P. Shorey, ‘ΣΥΛΛΟΓΙΣΜΟΙ ΕΞ ΥΠΟΘΕΣΕΩΣ in Aristotle’, Amer. Journ. Philol. X, 1889, 460–2. On the Meno see R. Robinson, Plato’s Earlier Dialectic, 2nd ed., Oxford 1953, 114ff.

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   ‘    ’

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between ostensive proof and reductio ad impossibile as follows: ‘A demonstration that leads to an impossibility differs from an ostensive demonstration in that it puts as a premise what it wants to reject, leading away into an agreed falsehood, while an ostensive demonstration begins from agreed propositions.’ One could then explain why direct proof is characterized in this passage as ostensive, that is, as ‘showing something’, by saying that a direct proof presents states of affairs that make it necessary that the thing to be proven is the case, whereas indirect arguments only show why the opposite cannot be the case. However, first, ostensive proof is only contrasted with reductio ad impossibile here, not with hypothetical proof in general, and second, the hypothetical arguments that are treated in A 23 and 44 are not all indirect; this actually holds only for reductio arguments. The word ‘hypothesis’ might perhaps suggest the contrast between scientific proof from necessary premises and arguments from ‘merely’ hypothetical premises, which need not actually be true. However, this cannot be what Aristotle means here, for in this case, the distinction between ostensive and hypothetical arguments would have to coincide with the distinction between proofs in the strict sense (that is, syllogisms with necessary premises) and dialectical syllogisms, which Aristotle mentions briefly in A 1 (24a30–b15). But as we will see in what follows, Aristotle counts all arguments that are syllogistic in form as ostensive arguments, and we must therefore assume that Aristotle means to specify a formal property of certain arguments when he describes them as ἐξ ὑποθέσεως. In view of the ensuing completeness argument, it is certainly correct, as Bochenski³ and others have noted, that Aristotle classifies all non-syllogistic arguments as συλλογισμοὶ ἐξ ὑποθέσεως. This label is, however, clearly not a purely negative characterization, and so there remains the further question of what formal commonality of non-syllogistic arguments Aristotle had in mind when he used this expression. This question is complicated by the fact that Aristotle distinguishes in both chapters between hypothetical arguments through the impossible and other hypothetical arguments.⁴ An adequate interpretation needs, therefore, not only to show what formal difference there is between ostensive and hypothetical arguments; it also needs to show what the various types of hypothetical arguments that Aristotle distinguishes have in common and how they differ. In the best case, such an interpretation would put us in a position to determine what domain of arguments Aristotle’s completeness claim refers to and to what extent it is possible to accept it in light of this. ³ I.M. Bochenski, La Logique de Théophraste, Fribourg (Suisse) 1947, 105. Cf. also F. Solmsen, Die Entwicklung der aristotelischen Logik und Rhetorik, Berlin 1929, 64ff. ⁴ The fact that Aristotle has no special term for the ‘other’ cases seems to me to indicate that originally only these arguments were called (συλλογισμοὶ) ἐξ ὑποθέσεως. The Platonic argument in the Meno must have belonged to this class, and outside of the An.Pr. it is in any case only arguments of this sort that are called hypothetical.

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4    

II Studying the word ὑπόθεσις seems in this case not to be of any further help. Aristotle normally uses the term ‘hypothesis’ to refer to various kinds of underlying assumptions of arguments.⁵ The fact that an argument contains a hypothesis is certainly not sufficient to render it a hypothetical argument, since hypotheses can also occur in syllogisms. Our topic here is not merely arguments ‘with’ a hypothesis, but rather arguments ‘on the basis of ’ or ‘from’ (ἐξ) a hypothesis— that is, the expression refers not only to the fact that a hypothesis is used, but rather to the role of the hypothesis in the argument. Whereas it is reasonably clear what the hypothesis is for the ‘remaining’ hypothetical arguments (which Aristotle discusses second in A 23 and first in A 44), the inclusion of reductio ad impossibile arguments means that we still need to ask the question: What actually is the hypothesis on account of which all of these arguments are to count as hypothetical? To begin with the simpler case, direct hypothetical arguments: If one follows the example of A 44 (50a19–26), a typical argument of this form appears to be as follows. It begins with a hypothesis or agreement (ὁμολογία) that takes the form of an if–then sentence, for example: ‘If there is not a single power of contraries, then there is also not a single knowledge.’ There follows a syllogistic proof for the antecedent of the conditional—or in any case Aristotle says so. The proof that he alludes to in the text is, however, as Alexander rightly notes (in An.Pr. 387, 5–11) not a syllogism. Aristotle writes: ‘ . . . that not every power is a power of contraries: not, for example, of the healthy and the sick, for then the same thing would be healthy and sick at the same time.’ The proof sketched here seems to consist of a modus tollens argument and a syllogism (cf. Ross’s commentary ad loc.). Aristotle, however, evidently assumes that it can be put in syllogistic form. From the analogous example in B 26 (69b13ff.) one can infer, as the commentators explain, that he had in mind a syllogism in Felapton: ‘The healthy and the sick are not based on a single capacity; the sick and the healthy are opposites; therefore, not all opposites are based on a single capacity.’ This, however, does not fully capture the argument given in the text, and thus Alexander (387.1–5) and Philoponus (in An. Pr. 358,27–31) add another syllogism as a proof of the first premise.⁶ After establishing the antecedent of the conditional, one can proceed to the consequent, the demonstrandum, ‘on the basis of the hypothesis’. The transition is, as Aristotle emphasizes (50a24–26), necessary, but not syllogistic. ⁵ Cf. H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus, Berlin 1870, repr. Graz 1955, s. v. ὑπόθεσις, 796b59: ‘logice ὑποθέσεις eae sunt propositiones, sive demonstratae sive non demonstratae, quibus positis aliquid demonstratur.’ ⁶ The example makes clear that Aristotle’s remark about this type of hypothetical argument represents only a rough generalization. He had evidently not verified whether the analysis he points to—that such arguments consist of a syllogism and a hypothetical step—was really applicable in all cases. It is thus hardly surprising that he does not consider the possibility of proving the antecedent of the hypothesis other than by a syllogism. On this, see also pp. xxf. below.

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   ‘    ’

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What Aristotle describes here seems to be, to put it anachronistically, an argument in modus ponendo ponens supplemented with a syllogism for the second premise. Aristotle initially leaves it open whether this is the only possible form this type of argument can have. It certainly seems that the hypothesis describes the conditional premise, and it is thus natural to follow the usage of later logicians in viewing the use of a conditional premise as the reason for characterizing an argument as ἐξ ὑποθέσεως.⁷ This, however, does not fully explain Aristotle’s text, as one can see from the case of the reductio. As described in B 11 (61a27–31), an Aristotelian syllogism per impossibile proceeds as follows: One begins with a premise that is accepted as true and the assumption of the contradictory of the demonstrandum. From these two things a syllogistic conclusion is derived that is evidently false. Since the first premise was assumed to be true, the negation of the demonstrandum is shown to be false by the ‘impossible’ conclusion. Its contradictory is thus true by the law of excluded middle (B 11,62a13–15).⁸ The apagogical proofs of chapter A 5 and 6 (27a36–b1; 28b17–20) seem at first to present a different procedure. Here Aristotle begins with the premises of the mood to be established and then uses one of the premises together with the negation of the conclusion to derive the negation of the other premise. In this way he shows that the negation of the conclusion is incompatible with the premises and thus that the conclusion follows from the premises. The impossibility of the proposition derived arises in this case from the fact that its contradictory is taken as a premise. These proofs thus proceed according to the law of propositional logic: ðp&qÞ & ½ðq&sÞ > p > s In the syllogisms per impossibile that are treated in B 11–14, by contrast, the negation of the syllogistically derived conclusion does not seem to be one of the premises (61a24).⁹ That the derived proposition is ‘impossible’ seems to arise simply from the fact that its contradictory is evidently true (61a25; b14). Aristotle, however, adds in B 14 (62b33–37) that the proof through reductio ad impossibile proceeds from two propositions that are granted, namely from one of the premises of the syllogism and the negation of the derived conclusion. Accordingly, the difference seems to be a matter of where the respective premises are introduced. In ⁷ As does M. Kneale in The Development of Logic, Oxford 1962, 98 (or so it seems): ‘Here the subject-matter seems to demand an explicit discussion of the varieties of argument with one conditional premise.’ ⁸ Strictly speaking, of course, all that can be inferred from the ‘impossible’ conclusion is that one of the two premises must be false. From this, and the presupposition that one of the two premises is true, it then follows that the other is false. Aristotle makes clear at the outset which premise is to be given up by characterizing it as the ‘hypothesis’. ⁹ Smiley, op. cit., 153, n. 2.

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6     A 5 and 6 Aristotle carries out a deduction in order to show that a certain type of conclusion follows from certain premises, which therefore must naturally be supplied at the outset. In B 11, however, Aristotle is talking about how a particular type of conclusion can be proven. Now, a proof by reductio will be expedient to use only if the falsity of the derived statement is evident (cf. Top. Θ 2.157b34–158a2; An.Po. A 26,87a14–17) and its negation thus need not itself be assumed in advance. That, of course, does not mean that it is not one of the presuppositions from which the proposition to be proven follows. The proof of the incommensurability of the diagonal, mentioned as an example in A 24 and 44, points to a different type of reductio, of which Aristotle nowhere offers a detailed analysis (and which could hardly be put into syllogistic form). Here the procedure by all appearances seems to consist in deriving an explicit contradiction from an assumption, together with premises that have been proven or are known to be true. Accordingly, this form of reductio is based on the law of propositional logic [p > (q&–q)] > –p. That Aristotle uses this example, even though his own apagogical proofs normally proceed otherwise, seems to me to be evidence that he had not distinguished these two kinds of reductio proof. The incommensurability proof simply provides an especially clear example of a conclusion that is evidently impossible.¹⁰ I will thus assume in what follows that when Aristotle speaks of arguments through the impossible generally, he is referring to the standard case he initially describes. No conditional premise seems to appear in an argument of this sort. One could, of course, formulate the syllogistic part of the argument as an if–then premise, as the formula of propositional logic presented above suggests. However, if the expression ἐξ ὑποθέσεως referred to the use of a conditional premise, then Aristotle himself would be characterizing the syllogism as a hypothesis, and this is plainly not what he does. That rules out the possibility of explaining Aristotle’s terminology by speaking of hypothetical syllogisms in the way that later became common. In view of the type of arguments just described, three different interpretations have been proposed. These all have something going for them, but they also all face problems.

¹⁰ A further type, which Corcoran (‘Aristotle’s Natural Deduction System’, in J. Corcoran (ed.), Ancient Logic and its Modern Interpretations, Dordrecht 1974, 115) claims to find in A 29,45b1–3 and refers to as ‘abnormal reductio’, seems to me to be the result of a misunderstanding. Aristotle does not claim that one can transform a direct proof into an indirect one by taking the opposite of the conclusion as a hypothesis at the outset, deriving the conclusion and finally recognizing that one has assumed the opposite of the conclusion. He says only that if one already has an ostensive syllogism, then in every case, one can start from the contradictory opposite of the conclusion together with one of the premises and derive a false statement (namely the negation of the other premise) and so prove the conclusion per impossibile. It is evidently presupposed here that the truth of the ostensive premises is known, due to the use of the tables of premises.

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(A) On the oldest interpretation, due to Alexander of Aphrodisias,¹¹ the hypothesis on account of which reductio ad impossibile is classified as a hypothetical argument is the contradictory of the demonstrandum. The fact that Aristotle undeniably characterizes this proposition in many places expressly as a ὑπόθεσις (41a32, cf. especially B 11–14, B 17 passim) initially favours this interpretation. This use of language evidently corresponds to the fact that a proposition is assumed without one thereby wishing to commit oneself to its truth. To this extent, this interpretation seems to provide the most natural explanation. The characterization of reductio as a hypothetical syllogism can then be understood as follows: The proof of the demonstrandum relies on a hypothesis insofar as its ‘recognized falsity’ is derived, and on this basis one can then infer the contradictory of the hypothesis. Difficulties, however, arise for this interpretation when one attempts to describe the formal characteristic that allows such arguments to be treated together with the remaining hypothetical arguments. In the case of reductio, the hypothesis is, on this interpretation, a categorical premise that is assumed merely argumenti causa. In the remaining cases, however, it is one of the accepted premises of the argument, a premise that also has a different form. It is not easy to see why Aristotle would have wished to bring these two types of argument together under a single heading. The most conspicuous commonality, to which the characterization as hypothetical should at least be related in some way, is, of course, the occurrence of a non-syllogistic argumentative step. This is also what Aristotle seems to emphasize when, in both chapters, he describes hypothetical arguments as consisting in two steps (41a23–41b1 passim; 50a23–28, 30–32): They consist, 1. of a syllogism, and 2. of a step ἐξ ὑποθέσεως, which is indeed necessitated, but not syllogistic. According to the interpretation discussed here, however, the hypothesis in the reductio is precisely a part of the syllogism. One should, therefore, perhaps look for a different explanation, one on which the hypothesis is that which permits the transition to the demonstrandum. The difficulty that arises from the fact that Aristotle would be speaking of two different hypotheses within the reductio is perhaps not so severe when one considers that the classification of reductio arguments as hypothetical was perhaps introduced only in view of the complete classification of all valid arguments. Aristotle might thus have first used the term ‘hypothesis’ only for premises assumed argumenti causa in a reductio and then later have had the idea of bringing reductio arguments together with those which he had earlier called hypothetical arguments, which would then have led to the somewhat unfortunate double use of ‘hypothesis’. This brings us to the two other interpretations.

¹¹ In An.Pr. 256,18–25; cf. also N.M. Thiel, ‘Die Bedeutung des Wortes Hypothesis bei Aristoteles’, (Diss.), Freiburg 1919, 26ff.; H. Gomperz, Die deutsche Literatur über die . . . aristotelische Philosophie 1899 und 1900, Archiv. f. Gesch. Phil 16, 1903, 274f.; K. Ebbinghaus, Ein formales Modell der Syllogistik des Aristoteles, Hypomnemata 9, Göttingen 1964, 41ff.

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8     (B) According to Sigwart, Shorey, and, more recently, Mignucci,¹² the hypothesis is the negation of the ‘impossible’ conclusion. The assumption that this conclusion is false enables us to infer the opposite of the first hypothesis. This assumption is not explicitly characterized as (the) hypothesis by Aristotle, but he does say in B 14 (62b35–37) that one must assume the falsity of the conclusion. In addition to this, one might also appeal to the remark in A 44 (50a35–38), according to which one needs no prior agreement for reductio, ‘because the falsehood’ (scil. of the derived conclusion) ‘is evident’. With hypothetical arguments of the first type, one requires agreement as (or to) the hypothesis, but not with a reductio—thus the ‘evident falsehood’ must be that which is here characterized as a hypothesis. This interpretation seems quite plausible in view of the two-part structure of hypothetical arguments. Difficulties, however, arise again when we ask what the two types of hypothetical arguments have in common. Mignucci seems to assume that it is the unproven assumption that is characterized as a hypothesis in each case—the negation of the syllogistic conclusion in the case of reductio and the conditional premise in the other case, since a syllogistic proof is given for its antecedent, which forms the second premise of the modus ponens argument. We noted at the outset, however, that the characterization ἐξ ὑποθέσεως could not refer merely to the occurrence of an unjustified premise, since these also occur in ostensive syllogisms insofar as they are not required to count as proofs. Furthermore, it is questionable whether Aristotle, as Mignucci assumes, thought of the syllogistic part of the reductio as a proof of a conditional statement. What is ‘shown’, that is, derived in this specific case, is according to Aristotle the impossible conclusion, not, say, the sentence ‘if the diagonal is commensurable, then even and uneven numbers are equal’ (cf. 41a24, 28, 32f.; 50a31). And according to Aristotle’s own description in B 14 (62b32–35), a reductio presupposes two premises that are ‘admitted’ or recognized as true, namely one premise of the syllogism and the opposite of the conclusion—both of these are, of course, unproven within the argument. One thus arrives, at best, at the resigned judgement of Martha Kneale: ‘ “hypothesis” seems here to be his general name for a statement which plays an essential rôle in an argument but not as any part of a syllogism nor yet as the conditional formulation of a syllogism.’¹³ (C) On the third interpretation, which was first proposed by Pacius and has been defended more recently by Maier and Ross,¹⁴ the hypothesis is not one of the ¹² Ch. Sigwart, Beiträge zur Lehre vom hypothetischen Urteil, Tübingen 1871; Shorey, op. cit., 461; M. Mignucci, Aristotele, Gli Analitici Primi a cura di M.M., Naples 1969, 424. ¹³ Op. cit., 99. ¹⁴ Cf. I. Pacius, In Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Organum Commentarius Analyticus, Frankfurt 1597 (reprint Hildesheim 1966), 153; H. Maier, Die Syllogistik des Aristoteles, Bd. II 1, Tübingen 1900, 236ff.; W.D. Ross, commentary on ‘Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics’, Oxford 1949, 371f.

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premises, but rather the logical law that allows one to proceed from ascertaining the conclusion’s falsity to accepting the demonstrandum. This interpretation also has textual support: Aristotle says twice in A 23 that the initial thesis is inferred from a hypothesis ‘when’ (ὅταν) or ‘since’ (ἐπεί) its contradictory gives rise to something impossible. Ross understands this as an—admittedly inexact— formulation of the hypothesis, which, spelled out more fully, would say: ‘If from a proposition something impossible follows, this proposition is false and its contradictory true.’¹⁵ One need not necessarily take this formulation as an explicit description of the hypothesis—Ebbinghaus¹⁶ draws attention to the ὅταν, which seems to suggest that an inference ἐξ ὑποθέσεως is always possible when something impossible follows, without taking the hypothesis itself to be identified. These passages are, therefore, not conclusive evidence for this position. Whether, like Ross, one ought to rely on A 44, according to which a reductio needs no agreement—for the reason, according to Ross, that the hypothesis is a logical law—is questionable, for what is there characterized as evident is, of course, not the logical law, but rather the falsity of the conclusion. On the one hand it does seem plausible to ground the difference between the two types of hypothetical arguments in the fact that the transition to the demonstrandum is in one case made possible by a logical law and in the other by a conditional premise that requires agreement; we can, however, not be sure that Aristotle meant to claim this. Furthermore, on this interpretation we run into the difficulty, mentioned also by Ebbinghaus, that the hypothesis in the reductio is not a part of the argument, but rather a rule which justifies one of the steps of the proof, whereas in the other case it seems to be a premise. This last point brings us back to the arguments of the first type. So far we have been assuming that these are arguments in modus ponendo ponens. This is certainly true in view of the example given by Aristotle, but that does not yet show that Aristotle himself would have described the argument in this way. Now, it is well known that Aristotle neither explicitly recognized the conditional as a form of statement nor specifically investigated it. On the contrary: in the first chapter of the An.Pr. he seems to assume that all premises must be categorical

¹⁵ G. Patzig (Die aristotelische Syllogistik, 3. Aufl., Göttingen 1969, 158, 165) proposes that the law of excluded middle is the hypothesis. He does so by viewing the syllogism that leads to the impossible as a proof of the falsity of the first hypothesis (on this see e.g. B 11.62a14–15: δειχθέντος ὅτι οὐχ ἡ ἀπόφασις ἀνάνγκη τὴν κατάφασιν ἀληθεύεσθαι). Aristotle himself does, in fact, say (An.Po. A 11.77a22; cf. An.Pr. B 11.62a13) that the proof ad impossibile assumes (λαμβάνει) this law. The syllogism can, however, prove the falsity of the first hypothesis only if the falsity of the conclusion is assumed—that is, the step to the negation of the first hypothesis is, strictly speaking, no longer a step of the syllogistic part of the proof. However, according to Aristotle’s own description, what is ‘shown’ by the syllogism is not the falsity of the hypothesis but rather the false conclusion. At least in these two chapters the view of Ross and Maier thus seems to me to be more plausible. Since Aristotle nowhere explicitly formulates the hypothesis, it seems to me equally likely that he had not consciously distinguished between these two views. ¹⁶ Op. cit., 43, n. 1.

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   

statements. At least as conclusions of proofs, conditional statements seem not to be at issue if, as Aristotle holds, ‘every proof and every syllogism must show something as belonging or not belonging’ (40b23–24). If, however, in Aristotle’s view both the premises and the conclusions of all valid arguments must be categorical statements, one needs to ask whether he viewed the hypothesis of a hypothetical argument as a premise at all. In fact, some things do indicate that he thought of the hypothesis differently: namely as an agreement according to which one of two statements will count as proven when the other is.¹⁷ Those hypotheses are indeed usually formulated as conditional statements; in A 44, however, we also encounter the formulation ‘if it is proven that . . . , then . . . ’ (50a34–35; cf. also Top. A 18,108b16–17). The expression τὸ μεταλαμβανόμενον in A 23 suggests something similar. The μεταλαμβανόμενον is something that is substituted for something else—in the case of hypothetical arguments, a statement that takes the place of the demonstrandum. Underlying this seems to be the view that the proof of the substituted statement takes the place of the proof for the demonstrandum—in contrast to the contemporary view according to which one would have to say that the demonstrandum is derived or proven from the conditional premise together with the ‘substituted’ statement.¹⁸

III If one does not regard the hypothesis as a premise, then it can at least plausibly be explained why Aristotle treats the two types of hypothetical syllogisms as a single ¹⁷ Frede (op. cit. 29f.) also arrives at this result when considering the question why Aristotle seems by all appearances to have thought that only syllogistic arguments in the strict sense fall under his definition of the syllogism. Cf. also I. Mueller, ‘Greek Mathematics and Greek Logic’, in J. Corcoran (ed.), Ancient Logic . . . , op. cit. 56f. ¹⁸ In the view of some commentators, the μεταλαμβάνομενον in A 23 is a term that is substituted for another, not a statement. The word μεταλαμβανόμενα in A 29.45b18 does indeed doubtless refer to the added terms of the statement; in A 23, however, the juxtaposition of τὸ μεταλαμβανόμενον with τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς seems to indicate that Alexander is correct when he assumes that we are here dealing with the substituted statement. In any case, this makes no important difference to the interpretation of this passage. A further difficulty seems to me to stem from the commentators themselves—including Alexander: They assume that the words ἐν ἅπασι γὰρ . . . κτλ. (41a38) refer to all hypothetical arguments, thus also to reductio, and then they attempt to show how the syllogism of an apagogical argument also relates to a substitute. It is, however, equally natural to read ἐν ἅπασι as referring only to the ‘remaining’ hypothetical arguments. To support this reading further one may appeal to the place in A 29 mentioned above. There Aristotle characterizes direct hypothetical arguments as κατὰ μετάληψιν ἢ κατὰ ποιότητα, and if one follows the explanation of Alexander (324.22–24), μετάληψις refers to the substitution of one statement for another. This seems essential to the ‘remaining’ arguments, since Aristotle adds that one must search for the premises of these arguments in view of the substituted terms. The fact that Aristotle describes both the statement as well as the terms as μεταλαμβανόμενα is hardly surprising, since additional terms are, of course, introduced with an additional statement. In a reductio ad impossibile, on the other hand, one requires no μεταλαμβανόμενα, because the three syllogistic terms are all one needs.

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class: The formal commonality consists in the fact that, in both the apagogical arguments as well as in the others, a non-syllogistic rule of deduction is employed. That is, there is a step that is justified neither by conversion nor by one of the syllogistic moods. The distinction between the two types, on the other hand, consists in the fact that the hypothesis corresponds to a logical rule in the case of the reductio whereas it is a more or less ad hoc, non-logical rule that is agreed upon in the case of the other hypothetical syllogisms—which was then rightly treated as a premise by Aristotle’s successors. It is for just this reason that the second type requires an explicit agreement. This interpretation also explains the curious fact that Aristotle seems not to take pure modus ponens arguments into account at all, but rather tacitly assumes that a syllogism for the second premise—and only for this one—must be constructed. If one does not view the conditional hypothesis as a premise, then a pure modus ponens argument has only a single premise, and therefore, as Aristotle once again emphatically claims in A 23, cannot represent a complete argument. A proof of the conditional premise, as suggested by Alexander and Philoponus, can, of course, for this very reason not be at issue, since a conditional cannot appear as the conclusion of an argument. If Aristotle classified reductio ad impossibile as a hypothetical argument for the reason just given, then what was important for him was less the logical status of the hypothesis and more the type of logical step that it justifies. From the standpoint of formal logic, it would otherwise be more natural to separate formally valid methods of deduction—ostensive syllogisms and reductio ad impossibile—from formally invalid ones and then, within the group of formally valid arguments, to distinguish between direct and indirect deductions. For ostensive deductions, which, in addition to the arguments of the syllogistic moods, also include the direct conversion proofs of chapters A 4–6 (cf. A 7,29a30–34), what seems to be essential is that each step can be justified by recourse to the underlying relations of belonging that hold among the terms of the premises. For the evident validity of the perfect moods, Aristotle appeals to the meaning of the expressions κατὰ παντός and κατὰ μηδενός respectively (cf. A 4.25b39–40; 26a24, 27). For the imperfect moods, the necessity is made evident (cf. 24b24 and 27a17) by interposing statements between the premises and conclusion that are ‘necessary because of the terms laid down’ (24a25; cf. 28a6). This means, as one can see from the proofs of chapters A 4–6, that they are derived using the conversion rules. Aristotle adds for completeness in A 5,28a6–7 that the apagogical proofs use an additional ‘hypothesis’. These proofs are, however, not ostensive. For ostensive proofs it must, therefore, be the case that they only contain such statements as intermediate steps that are necessary ‘because of the terms’. Now, the conversion rules explicitly refer to specific relations among terms, and the perfect moods are also based on these relations, as we have seen. A difficulty for this view seems, however, to arise from the fact that some of the

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imperfect moods—Baroco in the second figure and Bocardo in the third—cannot be proven by means of conversion. Both are proven by Aristotle using reductio ad impossibile. In these cases one cannot say that the deduction uses only sentences that are ‘necessary because of the terms’. To put it another way, the proofs of these moods do show that the conclusion follows from the premises, but they do not show that the conclusion follows simply ‘on the basis of the terms assumed’. Strictly speaking, one should not therefore, it seems, consider these moods to be ostensive. Aristotle, however, clearly treats all syllogisms in the narrow sense as ostensive arguments. Alexander (24, 12–18) and Philoponus (37, 16–38, 29), who both address this question, try to make do with the observation that the additional hypothesis only serves to derive the impossibility, not the actual conclusion. But this hardly helps, since it shows precisely that the conclusion itself is, in these cases, derived ἐξ ὑποθέσεως. Elsewhere (318, 17ff.), Alexander entertains the possibility that, after one has proven the validity of a mood by reductio, one can then use this mood as an ostensive argument: ἢ καὶ ἐπὶ τούτων εἴη ἂν μετὰ τὴν πίστιν τὴν διὰ τῆς εἰς ἀδύνατον ἀπαγωγῆς τοῦ συλλογιστικὴν εἶναι τὴν συμπλοκὴν καὶ ἐκ τῶν κειμένων προτάσεων δεικτικῶς δεικνύμενον τὸ προκείμενον—that is, Aristotle could have understood δεικτικῶς in the sense of ‘direct’. As noted at the beginning, Aristotle in fact uses the expressions δεικτικῶς, δεικτικός etc. in some places to contrast with διὰ τοῦ αδυνάτου, and thus presumably in the sense of ‘direct’, while in other places he uses it as a contrast to ἐξ ὑποθέσεως. It is, therefore, possible that syllogisms might be viewed as ostensive in the first instance because they are direct arguments. That, however, would not justify Aristotle in viewing them all as ostensive rather than hypothetical, for if the validity of some moods can only be shown through a hypothetical argument, this would mean that the conclusion in these cases could not be derived solely by recourse to the relations assumed to hold between the terms. Aristotle does not address this problem himself, but he does mention in connection with the apagogical proof of Bocardo (A 6.28b20) that one can also carry out the proof without (!) reductio ad impossibile—namely by ἔκθεσις. The same holds of Baroco, although Aristotle does not actually say so. If one counts ἔκθεσις as an ostensive deductive step, then there is indeed an ostensive proof for every syllogistic mood within Aristotle’s system, and Aristotle is justified in treating every syllogism in the strict sense as an ostensive argument. That ἔκθεσις is an ostensive deductive step in the relevant sense is fairly clear, since the ‘setting out’ is grounded in the relation between terms contained in one of the premises. It makes no difference whether the thing ‘set out’ is to be understood as a term or as an individual constant.¹⁹ ¹⁹ On ἔκθεσις see Patzig, op. cit. 166ff. and W. Wieland, ‘Review of Patzig, Die aristotelische Syllogistik’, Philos. Rundschau 14, 1966, 24f.

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One can also not object that in this procedure a term is added ‘from outside’ (ἔξωθεν, 24b21), since what we have here is a term or individual that is subordinated to one of the given terms. The fact that ἔκθεσις can also appear in an indirect proof (as in the proof for the conversion of universal negative premises, A 2,25a14–17) also does not provide evidence against this view, since by ἔκθεσις Aristotle, of course, does not mean a procedure by means of which one might prove a given proposition, but rather—just as in the case of conversion—merely an operation that is applied to a particular premise. Neither conversion nor ἔκθεσις, therefore, count as deductive procedures on the same level as the syllogistic moods or reductio—on their own, they cannot be the basis for a complete argument. It is thus, incidentally, also entirely correct for Aristotle not to mention ἔκθεσις in his considerations regarding completeness in A 23. While, therefore, each step in an ostensive deduction can be justified by recourse to the relations among terms, it is characteristic of the hypothetical part of the reductio as well as of the remaining hypothetical arguments that the internal structure of the premises plays no role. The principle that a statement is false if something absurd follows from it clearly does not refer to any particular type of statement, and a conditional may contain arbitrary statements as its substatements. This suggests that Aristotle speaks of a hypothesis, rather than a syllogism in the stricter sense, precisely when a deductive step needs to be justified by recourse to the relations of implication between statements (of any sort) rather than by taking into account the term relations at hand. The combining of reductio with direct hypothetical arguments seems to show that the decisive point for characterizing a step of a proof as hypothetical is that the implication is independent of the relations among the terms. One could thus describe hypothetical arguments as those that employ a rule that is not grounded in the relations among its terms. This is not to say that Aristotle intended to characterize this kind of nonsyllogistic rule explicitly with the word ὑπόθεσις. In order to claim this, we would need to assume that he had consciously distinguished between premises and rules of deduction, and that seems rather doubtful.²⁰ Nevertheless, it can, I think, be shown that Aristotle does not treat the hypothesis as a premise, and in actual fact the hypothesis is best treated as a rule. We pointed out above that Aristotle probably took over the expression ἐξ ὑποθέσεως from the Academy. This label could hardly have originally referred to what Aristotle views as the relevant formal trait, for the simple reason that Aristotelian formal syllogistic did not yet exist. The later way of talking about hypothetical syllogisms shows that the characterization was taken to refer to the if–then form of the hypothesis. This is not a possible interpretation of Aristotle ²⁰ See, for example, An.Po. A 10,76b10–22 with the commentary of J. Barnes (Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Oxford 1975), 135, 138f.

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since his reductio arguments, at least, do not contain a conditional premise. Now, rules of inference are often formulated as if–then sentences, but this also applies to rules by which an inference is made in an ostensive syllogism, and therefore this cannot be viewed as the defining characteristic of hypothetical arguments either. It seems that what is important for Aristotle is that one goes from one proposition to another ‘on the basis of a hypothesis’ without taking into account the internal structure of these propositions. The status of this kind of convention is not something that Aristotle seems to have investigated.

IV In view of the completeness claim of chapter A 23, we still need to inquire into the extent to which Aristotle’s formal analysis is applicable to the sorts of arguments that he wants it to encompass. For reductio arguments it is easy to see that Aristotle’s description only applies to a certain type—namely syllogisms διὰ τοῦ ἀδυνάτου as described in B 11–14 and the indirect proofs of A 5 and 6. Even if we were to grant that every step of the proof of the incommensurability of the diagonal, which Aristotle uses as an example, could be put in syllogistic form, this argument, which seems to lead to an explicit contradiction, would still need to consist of at least two syllogisms and a hypothetical step. Aristotle, however, formulates the conclusion so imprecisely—‘odd numbers will be equal to even numbers’—that one is rather inclined to conjecture that he did not even try to apply his analysis to the mathematician’s incommensurability proof.²¹ Direct hypothetical arguments are, according to the passages discussed here, characterized not only by the fact that they make use of an ‘agreement’, but also by the fact that within them one proposition is substituted for another and proven, so to speak, in its place. The expression μεταλαμβανόμενον suggests that the substituted proposition is meant to be equivalent to the proposition whose place it takes, which would imply that it could also be refuted in place of the original thesis. This is precisely what seems to be the case with the example in Top. Γ 6, 119b35, and also in A 44, where the hypothesis is given once in the form ‘if not p, then not q’ and a second time in the form ‘if p, then q’ (cf. 50a19–20 and 34–35 respectively). However, this does not seem to hold true in all cases, for, as Aristotle himself notes (Top. Γ 6.119b21–24), arguments ἀπὸ τοῦ ἧττον (‘from the less so’) can be used ‘only for proving, not for refuting’—that is, the implication here holds only in one direction.²² ²¹ Cf. Mueller, op. cit., 56. ²² Alexander of Aphrodisias claims that arguments ἀπὸ τοῦ μᾶλλον καὶ τοῦ ἧττον καὶ ὁμοίου are hypothetical (265.30ff., 324.19f.). He identifies them with the arguments κατὰ ποιότητα in A 29.45b17. I see no reason to doubt Alexander’s interpretation, especially since Aristotle himself describes arguments ἀπὸ τοῦ ὁμοίου as ἐξ ὑποθέσεως in Top. A 18,108b12ff.

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The few remaining examples of this type of argument, which Aristotle explicitly characterizes as hypothetical (Top. A 18.108b12ff.; Γ 6,119b35ff.; An.Po. B 6,92a7ff., 20ff.), suffice to show that the formal analysis indicated represents a simplification, stemming primarily from the fact that Aristotle in each case only seems to be taking into consideration one part of the complete argument. This was noted above regarding the example from A 44. The other four cases can be characterized generally as follows: In each case Aristotle proceeds from a universal premise about a particular domain—for example, the domain of similar things, or pairs of opposites, or even of the class of objects to which the subject of the thesis in question belongs.²³ By using this premise the conditional proposition is then derived, which seems to play the role of a hypothesis. Now, if the antecedent of this conditional is proven, then the consequent must also count as proven. Clearly, Aristotle’s analysis can only be applied to the part of the argument that begins with the conditional ‘hypothesis’. In no case is a proof offered for its antecedent—according to A 23 and 44 this would have to be a syllogism, but this is, as the example of A 44 has already shown, highly dubious. According to the description of Top. A 18, an argument about ‘similar things’ would need to look something like this: (What holds of one of two similar things, holds of the other. a and b are similar to each other) If a is F, then b is also F. (hypothesis) P₁ P₂ a is F (μεταλαμβανόμενον; proven using a syllogism from P₁, P₂) (Conclusion)

b is F (from the hypothesis)

While the text of this passage seems to emphasize that the hypothesis is the conditional derived from the universal premise, Aristotle speaks in other cases as if the universal premise were itself the hypothesis. In An.Po. B 6,92a20ff., the part of the argument bracketed above is explicitly expounded; this argument proceeds as follows: (H) If A, B and C, D are opposites and A is defined by C, then B is defined by D. 1) a, b, and c, d are opposites 2) a is defined by c (C) b is defined by d.

²³ Cf. Top. A 18.108b13: ὥς ποτε ἐφ’ ἐνὸς τῶν ὁμοίων ἒχει, οὕτως καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν λοιπῶν; Top. Γ 6.119b35: ὁμοίως ἀξιώσαντα, εἰ ἑνί, καὶ πᾶσιν ὑπάρχειν ἢ μὴ ὑπάρχειν; An.Po. B 6.92a7: λαβόντα τὸ μὲν τί ἧν εἶναι τό ἐκ τῶν ἐν τῷ τί ἐστιν ἴδιον; 92a21: τὸ δ’ ἐναντίῳ τὸ τῷ ἐναντίῳ εἶναι.

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If one tries to apply the schema from A 44 to this argument, then one must presumably follow Maier²⁴ in viewing 2) as the μεταλαμβανόμενον. The hypothesis, which here, however, does not appear explicitly, would need to be: ‘If a is defined by c, then b is defined by d’. Aristotle seems, however, in this case to view the universal premise itself as the hypothesis. It is possible that Aristotle did not view the transition from the general to the particular hypothesis as a step of the derivation, but rather as a sort of contraction of the universal principle to the particular case, in the way he does for the ‘general principles’ of sciences (cf. An.Po. A 10,76a37–b2; A 11,77a22–24). Thus both the universal principle as well as the specific implicative premise can be characterized as (the) hypothesis. This is how, for example, Alexander (324,24–31; cf. 325,3–8) proceeds when he first gives the universal principle as what is assumed—‘it is assumed (ὑποτίθεται) that if what would seem to be more sufficient for happiness is not sufficient, then neither would what is less so than it be sufficient’ (εἰ ὃ μᾶλλον ἂν δόξαι αὔταρκες εἶναι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν, τοῦτο μή ἐστιν αὔταρκες, οὐδὲ τὸ ἧττον ἐκείνου εἴη ἂν αὔταρκες’), but then later the derived conditional ‘that wealth is not sufficient for happiness, given that even health is not, has been assumed (ὑπόκειται)’ (324.29–30: τὸ μὲν μὴ εἶναι τὸν πλοῦτον αὐτάρκη πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν, εἴ γε μηδὲ ἡ ὑγίεια, ὑπόκειται) without so much as indicating the difference.²⁵ Now, it is doubtless no coincidence that this example represents one of the typical forms of argument in the Topics.²⁶ The typical procedure of refutation by modus tollens, where a thesis is refuted by showing one of its consequences to be false, seems at first not to be captured by this sort of argument. However, one can, of course, transform a modus tollens argument into an argument in modus ponens by contraposition of the conditional premise; that is, instead of arguing ‘if p, then q; not q; therefore, not p’, one can start with the premise ‘if not q, then not p’. We may thus assume that Aristotle meant to bring together the arguments of the Topics under the rubric of syllogisms ἐξ ὑποθέσεως, which he evidently realized could not be put into syllogistic form. Although his analysis of these arguments represents, as we have seen, a simplification, it nevertheless at least appears to capture an important formal characteristic. Given the types of arguments Aristotle explicitly recognized, the completeness thesis of chapter An.Pr. A 23 is, of course, not justified. That Aristotle seems not to have noticed this may be due to the inexactness of his treatment, which, as he himself notes, is provisional; however, the more significant factor seems to be that ²⁴ Op. cit., 260, n. 1. ²⁵ Theophrastus seems to have distinguished things more clearly here in his definition of τόπος (apud Al.Aphr. in Top. 5.21–26). He defines a τόπος as a principle or element from which we extract the principles (i.e. premises?) about each kind of thing (ἔστι γὰρ ὁ τόπος, ὡς λέγει Θεόφραστος, ἀρχή τις ἢ στοιχεῖον, ἀφ’ οῦ λαμβάνομεν τὰς περὶ ἕκαστον ἀρχάς ἐπιστήσαντες τὴν διάνοιαν, τῇ περιγραφῇ μὲν ὡρισμένος . . . τοῖς δὲ καθ’ ἕκαστα ἀόριστος). Incidentally, the definition also seems to show that Theophrastus did not view the universal principle as a part of the argument. ²⁶ See J. Brunschwig, Introduction to: Aristote, Topiques, vol. I, Paris 1967, XLff.

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he did not recognize the conditional as a special sort of statement, and therefore treated the ‘hypothesis’ as an ‘agreement’ outside of the actual course of the proof rather than as one of its premises—or, to put it differently, he only took relations among terms into account as logical constants, not propositional connectives. In this way he could arrive at the claim at the end of A 23 that even hypothetical arguments are (dependent on) syllogisms insofar as each of them must at least contain a syllogism.²⁷

²⁷ I am grateful to Professors G. Patzig and W. Carl for criticism and discussion.

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2 Necessity with Gaps Aristotle on the Contingency of Natural Processes

In chapter A 13 of the Prior Analytics, Aristotle describes statements about what happens for the most part or by nature as contingency statements. He explains that in those cases the necessity has gaps, because natural processes may be interrupted. A few lines later he claims that there may be demonstrative knowledge of such cases, unlike mere coincidences. This clearly conflicts with his claim in the Posterior Analytics that only necessary truths can be known in the strict sense and that the premises of demonstrations must also be necessary. The apparent contradiction could be avoided if statements about natural events were understood as conditionals with an antecedent of the form ‘there is no obstacle’. But the limited syntax of Aristotle’s syllogistic did not allow him to see those statements as anything but contingently true.

Aristotle is the first philosopher to have given a precise definition of the contingent and thus to have introduced this as an explicit philosophical concept. His famous argument against determinism (de int. 9), with which he sought to defend the contingency of future events, has given rise to a flood of discussion and commentary since antiquity. By contrast, his formal theory of contingency statements in the Analytica Priora (An.Pr.) has garnered less attention—unsurprisingly, given that it seems to be an obvious failure and was rejected by Aristotle’s own students. The following contribution makes no attempt to render Aristotle’s modal syllogistic consistent and plausible—such an attempt could hardly succeed. It does, however, aim to show why Aristotle ever embarked on this difficult and ultimately unsuccessful undertaking. According to one of Aristotle’s well-known doctrines, there can be scientific knowledge in two domains: Of things that always behave in the same way, and of things that ‘for the most part’ (ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ) or ‘by nature’ (φύσει) behave in the same way. There can be no scientific knowledge of things that occur ‘by chance’ (ἀπὸ τύχης) (Met. E 2,1027a19–28; cf. An.Pr. A 13,32b18–22; Phys. B 5,197a19–20). This is because science refers to the universal and seeks out causes

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0002

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and explanations. Something that happens by sheer chance, like the fact that someone stumbles on treasure while digging in his garden (Met. Δ 30,1025a6), can receive no explanation that refers to just these occurrences under these descriptions. One could perhaps explain why someone is digging in the garden (e.g. to loosen soil for the plants) and also why there is treasure in this spot (because someone else buried it there years ago so as to hide it from plundering soldiers). Both, however, offer no general explanation for the fact that people find treasure while digging in the garden. The objects of most natural sciences belong to the domain of things that behave for the most part, but not always, in the same way. In particular, this is true of biology. The reason organisms do not always behave in the same way is clearly that the development of plants and animals depends on all sorts of external factors in such a way that unforeseeable disruptions may occur. Nevertheless, such disruptions are the exception and not the rule, and thus one can find explanations in this domain that apply to most cases even if not to all. So far, Aristotle’s theory is plausible and uncontroversial, or so it seems to me. In the context of Aristotle’s philosophy of science, however, this theory faces a difficulty. Namely, this theory stands in contradiction with the official doctrine of the Analytica Posteriora (An.Po.). According to the first chapters of the An.Po., the premises and theorems of each science must be universal necessity statements describing the objects of the particular science (the underlying genus) and their per se properties (that is, the properties they have on account of their definitions). Statements about what occurs ‘for the most part’ are, however, neither necessary nor universal in Aristotle’s view. How is it that they can nevertheless serve as scientific premises? What, for instance, could be the scientific status of the statement that grapevines lose their leaves in autumn? It may be that the striking contradiction arose in the course of the development of Aristotle’s theory. One may hold this whether, like Solmsen¹, one views the inclusion of natural sciences in his theory as a revolutionary innovation by a renegade Platonist or whether, like Barnes², one views them as the remnants of an earlier, more ‘liberal’ conception of science. This, of course, does not imply that Aristotle never noticed the problem. The conjecture of Joachim³ that statements that hold merely for the most part are to be reckoned as merely provisional and must be replaced by necessity statements in a ‘real’ science is not supported by Aristotle’s explicit pronouncements on the topic. It is also not straightforwardly compatible with the text of the An.Po. There, Aristotle expressly says in at least one place that ‘some principles (ἀρχαί) are necessary and others contingent’

¹ F. Solmsen, Die Entwicklung der aristotelischen Logik und Rhetorik, Berlin 1929,138–41. ² Proof and the Syllogism, in: E. Berti (ed.), Aristotle on Science: The “Posterior Analytics”, Padova 1981, 50ff. ³ H.H. Joachim, Aristotle on Coming-to-be and Passing-away, text, introduction and commentary by H.H.J., Oxford U.P. 1922, Introduction, xxviif.

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   

(88b7). This, of course, contradicts the claim of the earlier chapter, but that can hardly be explained by supposing that Aristotle did not intend to recognize ‘for the most part’ statements as genuine scientific statements. The most plausible explanation for the remark about the different kinds of scientific principles is no doubt that Aristotle is referring here to his statement regarding the status of natural scientific premises in An.Pr. A 13⁴. According to that chapter, statements about what occurs ‘for the most part’ or ‘by nature’ are to be counted among possibility statements in the strict sense of contingency statements. In that same passage, Aristotle also reiterates his claim that what occurs for the most part or by nature does admit of knowledge and even of syllogistic demonstration. This is also the only place where Aristotle speaks about the logical status of natural scientific generalizations. For these reasons, it seems plausible to begin with this passage in asking whether, and how, Aristotle meant to classify natural sciences as sciences in the strict sense, given the broader context of his philosophy of science. The passage in question (An.Pr. A 13,32a16–b23) occurs in the introduction to Aristotle’s treatment of syllogisms with possibility premises. It begins with the famous definition of the possible in the strict sense: ‘By “being possible” and “the possible” I mean that which, while not being necessary, will not lead to anything impossible when it is assumed to belong.’ With this definition, Aristotle commits himself to a ‘two-sided’ conception of possibility for the sequel: What is possible, in this sense, is what is neither necessarily so nor necessarily not so. The ‘onesided’ conception of possibility, which only rules out impossibility but includes necessity, it explicitly laid aside. (In the following, I will adopt the convention that ‘contingent’ always refers to two-sided possibility and I will use ‘possible’ for a one-sided possibility, except for quotations). The formulation of this definition shows that Aristotle is here thinking of the possible holding of predicates. He is defining the usage of ‘possible’ and ‘possibly’ in syllogistic statements of the form ‘A possibly belongs to every/some/not all/no B.’ Aristotle goes on to prove that there are special conversion rules for contingency statements thus defined, which apply neither to necessity statements nor to assertoric ones: Statements of the form ‘A possibly belongs to every B’ and ‘A possibly belongs to no B’ are, due to the definition of possibility, equivalent, and likewise for statements of the form ‘A possibly belongs to some B’ and ‘A possibly does not belong to some B’. Since Ross⁵, these rules have been referred to as the rules of complementary conversion. After the proof of complementary conversion, there then follows a remark concerning the domains in which contingency statements are employed (32b4–23): ⁴ Cf. J. Barnes, Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration’, Phronesis 14, 1969, 134,n.51. ⁵ In his commentary in W. D. Ross, ‘Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics’, ed. maior w. commentary, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1949.

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After these explanations, let us add that ‘being possible’ is said in two ways: in one way of what happens for the most part, when the necessity has gaps, such as that a man turns grey or grows or ages, or generally what belongs by nature. For this has no continuous necessity because a man does not exist forever, but while a man exists, it happens either of necessity or for the most part. In another way ‘being possible’ is said of what is indeterminate, that is, what is possible both this way and not this way, such as that an animal walks or that an earthquake happens while it walks, or, generally, what comes about by chance, for this is by nature no more this way than the opposite way. Both these kinds of being possible also convert with respect to opposite premises, but not in the same way. Rather, what is so by nature converts because it does not belong of necessity (for in this way it is possible for a man not to turn grey), while the indeterminate converts because it is no more this way than that. There is no knowledge or demonstrative syllogism of indeterminate things because the middle term is irregular, but there is knowledge of things that happen by nature, and by and large arguments and investigations are concerned with what is possible in this way. For the other sort a syllogism may come about, but one does not usually try to find one. These things will be explained more precisely later.

As the last sentence shows, this is a provisional note; Aristotle promises to return to the problem. The promise is, however, fulfilled neither in the Analytics nor in any other passage of Aristotle’s preserved corpus. For the question of the logical status of statements about what takes place ‘by nature’ or ‘for the most part’, we are thus confined to the terse remarks of this passage. Aristotle’s students and the ancient commentators evidently took Aristotle to be drawing a distinction between two meanings of ‘possible’ (contingent) in these clarificatory remarks, corresponding to the expressions ‘for the most part’ or ‘by nature’ and ‘by chance’ respectively. Accordingly, statements in which these expressions occur are contingency statements, and the same rules apply to them as do to explicit contingency statements. On this interpretation, the subsequent chapters, in which the theory of inferences with contingency premises is developed, are of scientific interest because they at once deliver a theory of inferences with ‘for the most part’ premises, which are needed in the natural sciences. This view has been defended more recently by Jonathan Barnes⁶; it appears, however, as Barnes himself concedes, to misfire from the outset on account of an obvious difficulty: Statements of the form ‘B’s are mostly A’ cannot in general be converted using the rule of complementary conversion, since from ‘B’s are mostly

⁶ Sheep Have Four Legs, Proceedings of the World Congress on Aristotle vol. III, Athens 1982, 113–119.

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A’ it clearly does not follow that ‘B’s are mostly not A’. Theophrastus and Eudemus are said to have rejected complementary conversion for this reason (Ps.—Amm. in An.Pr. 45.42–46.2). This shows, on the one hand, that they thought the syllogistic of contingency statements was meant to apply to premises of natural sciences; on the other hand, it shows that they found the conception of possibility developed by Aristotle unfit for this purpose. We need not concern ourselves here further with the alternatives that Theophrastus and Eudemus developed. It is hard to believe that Aristotle himself would have overlooked such an obvious objection, especially since he explicitly considers the question of complementary conversion. Nevertheless, as Becker (op. cit. 77) emphasized, the expressions ‘for the most part’ and ‘by nature’ do not occur again in the following chapters, while complementary conversion is used constantly. Becker inferred from this observation that the remark about the premises of natural sciences (32b18–22) presumably did not originate with Aristotle himself. Rather, Aristotle’s preceding note concerning complementary conversion was intended precisely to draw our attention to the fact that the syllogistic of contingency statements is not suited to function as a logic of ‘for the most part’ statements. This note could, however, have been inserted later, when Aristotle—perhaps prompted by the objections of his students—noticed the discrepancy. A later editor, according to Becker, failed to understand this and rewrote the text, resulting in the version that we have received. Needless to say, conjectures of inauthenticity are, particularly in the case of difficult texts, practically always a last resort. In this case, such a conjecture does not seem to me to be necessary. One can understand Aristotle’s thesis concerning the different usages of ‘possibly’ in a different way, as Hintikka⁷ has shown—not in the sense that ‘possibly’ has the same meaning as ‘for the most part’ or ‘by chance’, but rather as saying that statements of contingency hold in two types of case—when something happens ‘for the most part’ or ‘by nature’, and when something occurs by sheer chance. A statement of the form ‘all B’s are possibly A’ will then be true both when B’s are for the most part or by nature A, and when they are coincidentally A, without needing to claim that such contingency statements state the same thing as the statements ‘B’s are mostly A’ or ‘all B’s are coincidentally A’. This interpretation is, in substance at least, more plausible than the first one, and it is able to explain Aristotle’s remark about complementary conversion in the passage in question (32b13–18): It is not being claimed there that statements in which the expression ‘for the most part’ occurs can be converted (which would obviously be untenable). Rather, all that is being claimed is that, in both of the aforementioned sorts of case, ‘all B’s are possibly A’ as well as ⁷ J. Hintikka, ‘Aristotle’s Different Possibilities’, in: Hintikka, Time and Necessity, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, 34f.

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the equivalent ‘all B’s are possibly not-A’ holds, even if not for the same reason. In the first case, if a predicate applies by nature or for the most part, the conversion rule applies because it is not necessary that all B’s are A; in the second case, it applies because B’s could just as well be A as not-A. Even supposing this interpretation to be correct, there remains the question of whether Aristotle considered his possibility-syllogistic to be also a formal theory of scientific proof. Granting that Aristotle recognized expressions like ‘for the most part’ and ‘by nature’ do not mean the same as ‘possibly’, he could still have claimed that whenever we have ‘for the most part’ statements as premises, a syllogistic deduction taking the form of a syllogism from contingency premises can be constructed. This is, however, not a thesis with broad ramifications. It says merely that a contingency conclusion, at least, can be derived from ‘for the most part’ premises, and it remains unclear whether this conclusion can likewise be treated as a ‘for the most part’ statement. One could equally say that from necessity premises an assertoric conclusion can be deduced, because the necessary belongs to the domain of things that are in fact the case. It requires a further argument to establish the more important claim that a necessity follows as a conclusion from necessity premises. In the passage we are considering, however, it is precisely the possibility of a syllogistic deduction that seems to be at issue for Aristotle. One requirement for scientific knowledge—perhaps the most important one—is that one has a proof of what one claims to know. According to Aristotle, this proof must take the form of a syllogistic deduction. It is indeed a further condition that the premises must be necessity statements. Yet if one has only ‘for the most part’ statements available, as is plainly supposed to be the case in many natural sciences, it remains nevertheless important to establish that a syllogistic derivation is at least possible. One may then go on to ask whether from ‘for the most part’ premises ‘for the most part’ conclusions follow. In the end, Aristotle seems to suggest that in such cases there perhaps is a kind of necessity after all, even if not a continuous one. There is, rather, an ‘interrupted’ (32b6) necessity.⁸ I will return to this point below. It seems to me that there are indeed indications that Aristotle was attempting to demonstrate the possibility of syllogistic deductions in the domain of the contingent, and thus also in the domain of natural science. That Aristotle upheld the validity of syllogisms with contingency premises at all is at least as astonishing as the thesis that the premises of natural sciences are contingency statements. In a way, the former is actually much more surprising than the latter. Aristotle’s claim ⁸ Jonathan Barnes has drawn my attention to the fact that Aristotle’s expression can also be understood in such a way that an ‘interrupted’ necessity is no necessity at all, just like a cancelled race is not a race of a special kind, but rather no race. Two things, I think, speak against this: First, that Aristotle immediately goes on to speak of necessity again with regard to grey hair and signs of age. Second, that certain cases of natural necessity, which Aristotle himself characterizes in this way, can in fact hardly be understood in any other way than as cases of necessity with gaps (see below).

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that natural science makes use of contingency statements as premises stands in contradiction only with his own theory, a view which he might well have softened in response to the counterexample of natural science. By contrast, the assumption that one can syllogistically derive any conclusion at all from two contingency premises is in substance difficult to justify and seems, on first sight, to be entirely implausible. It seems almost easier to find counterexamples to the moods Aristotle accepts as valid than it is to find counterexamples to the moods whose invalidity is not immediately obvious⁹. And so McCall¹⁰ (88) laconically explains that Aristotle overlooked the fact that when two statements are each individually possible, it does not follow that their conjunction is also possible. This impression can hardly be avoided so long as one sticks to examples that are also contingency statements in the contemporary sense. If, however, one considers examples in which both premises are plausible statements of the form ‘all B’s are by nature A’, then counterexamples no longer seem to arise. Now, at the end of An.Pr. chapter A 13, Aristotle introduces an interpretation of universal contingency statements under which, as Becker (op.cit. 32–37) has shown¹¹, the moods of the first figure recognized as valid do in fact come out as formally valid inferences. Aristotle claims that one can understand a statement of the form ‘A possibly belongs to each B’ in such a way that it is not only claimed that A holds possibly of everything that is B, but rather that A holds possibly of everything that can be B (32b23–32). The assumption that the predicate term (possibly) covers everything possibly falling under the subject term may have to do with the fact that Aristotle was thinking of cases in which the one applies to the other by nature, even if not necessarily. That is, if B’s are taken to be A by nature, it is natural to assume that nothing can be B unless it at least could be A. The difference in meaning between ‘possibly’ and ‘by nature’ nevertheless remains intact, since if, for example, it should be the case that all B’s are possibly A (because they are A by nature), one can nevertheless still say that all B’s are possibly not-A—not, however, that they are not A by nature. A similar interpretative postulate to the one at the end of chapter A 13 is found in An.Pr. A 15 (34b7–18). There, Aristotle deals with a counterexample to the mood¹² AaB, QBaC > QAaC: One might have thought that the clearly invalid argument ‘everything that moves is human; every horse is possibly moving; therefore, every horse is possibly human’ was an instance of this mood. As with ⁹ Cf. W. and M. Kneale, The Development of Logic, Oxford U.P. 1962, 87–9. ¹⁰ S. McCall, Aristotle’s Modal Syllogisms, Amsterdam 1963, 88. ¹¹ See also J. Hintikka, ‘Aristotle’s Different Possibilities’, in: Hintikka, Time and Necessity, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, 38–40. ¹² In what follows, I use the notation which has now become standard for syllogistic statements: A and B stand for the predicate and subject term respectively, a, e, i, and o respectively for the expressions ‘belongs to all’, ‘belongs to no’, ‘belongs to some’, and ‘does not belong to some’. AxB stands for an arbitrary statement of one of these four forms. The modal operators are: N (necessarily), Q (contingently) and M (possibly).

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many of Aristotle’s examples of terms, this argument contains a premise that is not obviously true in a time-independent way, but which, rather, might hold at a particular time—specifically, in a situation in which it is only humans that move (34b12). Aristotle now postulates that the assertoric premises should not be ‘with a limitation of time’, and thus successfully excludes this and similar counterexamples. He also claims that one normally uses only temporally unrestricted assertoric premises in syllogisms (‘for it is through premises of this sort that we construct the syllogisms’, 34b9). This surely does not apply to the examples of terms that Aristotle himself constantly uses in the Analytics; it is more comprehensible if he is at this point thinking of a deduction in the context of a science, where temporally limited statements are indeed not permitted. In both A 13 and in A 15 one gets the impression that Aristotle has imposed a rule of interpretation after the fact in order to secure his theory against natural objections.¹³ In both cases, the added assumptions are intelligible if one supposes that Aristotle is thinking of premises of natural scientific arguments. Now, if, as we are assuming, Aristotle was clear that ‘for the most part’ and ‘by nature’ do not have the same meaning as ‘possibly’, and if it turned out to be so difficult to verify syllogisms with contingency premises as valid, why did he then not attempt to construct a syllogistic of ‘for the most part’ or ‘by nature’ statements? The answer to this question is, I think: Because these statements cannot, or can only with great difficulty, be brought into the form of syllogistic premises. Treating them as contingency statements probably seemed to Aristotle to be the only possibility for reducing them to a system of modal syllogisms. This could, in any case, be justified by the fact that they imply the corresponding contingency statements. The syllogistic requires statements in the four standard forms AaB, AeB, AiB, and AoB, with or without additional modal operators; at least one universal premise is required for each valid syllogism. Since Aristotle seemed in the first instance to envision scientific syllogisms only in the mood of Barbara, we can here restrict ourselves to the question of how one can formulate a ‘for the most part’ or ‘by nature’ statement as a universal affirmative statement of the form AaB. Here I will treat the two expressions ‘for the most part’ and ‘by nature’, which are, of course, not synonymous, separately. For the sake of brevity, I will use the letters Ω and Φ for ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ and φύσει respectively. It is not clear to what extent Aristotle himself took the difference of meaning into account in the Analytics. At A 3, 24b14 the two expressions are joined with an ¹³ After the fact: It would lead us too far astray to do so here, but it can be shown that Aristotle does not presuppose or take into account his postulates at the outset. This is especially clear, of course, in the case of his examples of terms. As regards the interpretation of universal contingency statements, it can be shown that they do indeed justify the moods treated in Α 14, but that other parts of the contingency syllogistic must then be invalid if this interpretation is to be taken across the board. On this see Becker, op. cit. 32–7, 57–9.

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‘and’ that is probably to be understood in an explicative sense; at A 13, 32b7 Aristotle summarizes his description of that which occurs for the most part with the phrase ‘or generally what belongs by nature’ (ἢ ὅλως τὸ πεφυκὸς ὑπάρχειν). This is not to say that Aristotle takes ‘for the most part’ and ‘by nature’ to be synonyms; it rather seems to show that he is discussing ‘for the most part’ statements insofar as ‘by nature’ statements belong to this class. He must have been primarily aiming to establish the latter such statements as premises of scientific argument, with an eye to the natural sciences. The expression ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ (for the most part) is, as with many of Aristotle’s semi-technical expressions, used in various contexts that suggest different interpretations¹⁴. In some places Ω is used as a kind of quantifier, like ‘all’ or ‘some’. It is clear that this usage does not suffice for a syllogistic of such statements, since, on this interpretation, one can at most obtain particular premises. Aristotle even seems to assume in certain places that universal statements are logically ruled out (Top. B 6,112b5–9; An.Po. II 12.96a10–11)¹⁵. In many places Ω appears alongside ἀεί (always) as a quantifier over times; these are above all the places mentioned at the opening of this essay, in which Aristotle distinguishes what is amenable to science from pure chance, of which there can be no scientific knowledge. This interpretation likewise fails to take universal statements into account, since ‘B’s are for the most part A’ clearly does not mean the same as ‘at most points in time, all B’s are A’s’, since the first statement can be true even when there is no point in time at which all B’s are A, and Aristotle seems even to assume himself that the B’s are never actually all A.¹⁶ Both quantitative usages occur together in the Rhetoric (A 2,1357a34–b1; B 25,1402b13ff.) in order to clarify the concept of the probable (εἰκός): If most B’s are, at most times, A, then it is likely that ‘the B’s’ are A. Even this, it seems to me, does not deliver any kind of universal statement. It is telling that Aristotle explains the concept of probability with reference to non-quantified statements of the form ‘the B’s are A’. One can indeed assume that such statements are treated in arguments like universal statements. Aristotle himself seems to confirm this when he says that the probable is related to that with regard to which it is probable as the universal is related to the particular (1357a36). Since, however, the quantitative expressions ‘for the most part’ and ‘most’ are introduced as an explication of ‘probable’ and not vice-versa, we learn from this claim only that a probable ¹⁴ cf. Becker op.cit. 79–81; M.Mignucci, ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ et nécessaire dans la conception Aristotélicienne de la science, in: E. Berti (ed.), Aristotle on Science: The ‘Posterior Analytics’, Padua 1981, 185ff. ¹⁵ On this point, cf. Becker, op.cit. 80; Barnes, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, translated with notes, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1975, 229, Mignucci , op.cit.187–90, 196. ¹⁶ Mignucci, who has developed a formal model for these temporal expressions of Ω, does say that such statements can include universal quantifiers but gives no examples. In passing, he indicates himself that his model perhaps provides an analysis of the Aristotelian term εἰκός (‘probably’) rather than φύσει. For natural science it is, of course, φύσει which is the central expression.

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universal statement must, strictly speaking, have the (non-syllogistic) form ‘most B’s are at most times A’. For this reason, also, as Aristotle says, one cannot refute such a probability premise simply by pointing to particular exceptions, but only by attempting to show that either most B’s are not A, or that at most times some B’s are not A, or both (i.e. that most B’s are at most times not A, 1402b35–1403a1). If, therefore, one wished to introduce Ω as a temporal modal operator, one would once again only obtain particular premises, which would not be sufficient for science. The only thing that can be said about all B’s in these cases seems in fact to be that they are possibly A—even if this does not, strictly speaking, follow, since it is, of course, possible that most B’s are A’s at most times while some are necessarily not A. Aristotle’s apparent failure to take this case into account may, once again, be connected with the fact that he is assuming that the B’s are A by nature. If something that is meant to be A by nature is in fact not A, then one might indeed assume that it at least could be A, thus that it is not necessarily not-A. Aristotle’s usage of the expression ‘by nature’ still needs to be considered. The first thing to observe is that Φ does not mean the same as Ω, although Aristotle’s frequent juxtaposition of the two expressions can give this impression. This may be seen, first, in the fact that Aristotle’s own conception of those things that occur by nature also includes some things that happen by necessity and always in the same way (cf. Phys. Β 8.198b36, GC 333b5; EE Θ 2.1247a32–35; Rhet. Α 10.1369a34–b2). Second, it is not sufficient, and perhaps not even necessary, that something occur in most cases for it to be the case by nature. From the fact that most people are bad, for example, it does not follow that they are naturally bad; and one could also claim without any obvious contradiction that people are naturally good, even though most of them are bad. This, in any case, was the view of the Stoics, although perhaps not Aristotle’s.¹⁷ Since, however, disruptions of the normal course of events are rather uncommon in nature—or at least, Aristotle takes them to be—one may assume that what occurs for the most part and in most cases is in accordance with nature. This, and no more, is what Aristotle is claiming when he says, for example, ‘in all cases where it is not impossible for things to be otherwise than they generally are but where they may so happen, still what is the general rule is what is according to nature’ (GA Δ 8.777a18–20). One thus need not assume that Aristotle equates the concept of what occurs by nature with the concept of what is the case for the most part, or that he wished to define the former by the latter. What he says can also be understood as an argument: Since that which happens by nature does not happen always, but rather only for the most part, that which is in accordance with nature belongs to the realm of the contingent. The expression ‘by nature’ seems better suited to be formulated in syllogistic premises than ‘for the most part’, since it can straightforwardly occur in universal ¹⁷ For the example, see Top B 6,112b11–12; for Aristotle’s own view on this point see EN II 1, 1103a18–26.

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statements, as one can see by looking at the famous opening sentence of the Metaphysics—‘all humans by nature desire to know’. One could thus try to construe Φ as a modal operator, which is what Aristotle himself suggests when he contrasts what occurs ‘for the most part and by nature’ with what is necessary. But does this new operator fit into the system of Aristotelian modalities? That universal Φ-statements are necessary seems ruled out by the fact that they hold only for the most part. They must also be weaker than assertoric universals, since AaB does not follow from Φ(AaB), but at most only AiB does. In the modal syllogistic, Aristotle seems, however, to use ‘necessarily’ as a primitive expression in order to define the concept of the possible.¹⁸ One can certainly assume that what occurs by nature is not impossible; but if one tries to define Φ using ‘necessary’, then Aristotle’s conception of the contingent does seem to suggest itself: neither necessary nor impossible. The alternative, to introduce Φ as a new, undefined modal operator, is something that Aristotle probably would not have considered. It also would have proven to be a dead end if one intended to try to combine premises of different modalities with one another, as Aristotle does in the modal syllogistic. Now, An.Pr. A 13 itself seems to show that Aristotle was not entirely satisfied with this solution, since he indicates that there is indeed a type of necessity in the realm of natural processes, albeit not a ‘continuous’ one. He speaks without hesitation about necessity in nature in his natural scientific works, but it evidently disturbs him that this necessity arises precisely where things behave mostly, but not always, in the same way. Needless to say, one would expect that necessary states of affairs, if they exist, are to be described in necessity statements. It may thus be worth pursuing the question that Aristotle does not: Could Φ-statements perhaps still be represented as N-statements? One can perhaps ascertain what Aristotle means when he says that this necessity is interrupted or has gaps on the basis of the examples he gives in An. Pr. A 13 (examples which he does not, however, treat in any detail). That (all) men go grey or grow up or get old is not necessary, since some die as children, or in any case before they have a chance to develop grey hair. On the other hand, one might think that men do necessarily grow up, and later show signs of aging if they live to be sufficiently old. The fact that they get grey hair is, however, not necessary—they might instead become bald—but it is nevertheless the case for the most part. As one can see from the description ‘either by necessity or for the most part’, Aristotle is introducing two different kinds of example, both of which are, however, cases of interrupted necessity. In the examples of growing and aging, the necessity arises because a condition is satisfied, namely the condition that men live long enough. With his third example, ¹⁸ I will assume that ‘impossible’ is understood to be equivalent to ‘necessarily not’, as Aristotle frequently does. Cf., for example, Met. Δ 12.1019b23–24.

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Aristotle seems to take into account a further caveat in view of the fact that some people do not develop grey hair even if they live to be old. In this case one could perhaps say that there is at least the necessity that men will either go grey or go bald. That the necessity has gaps can be explained, seemingly, by the fact that it does not extend to all specimens of the human species—some people do not grow old because they die too young. And the gaps arise because certain conditions must be satisfied that are not satisfied in all cases. This suggests that the statements in which these gappy necessities are described should be formulated as conditionals: For example, ‘all humans get old if they live long enough’, or, in symbols, (x) (Hx > (Bx > Ax)). The appearance of a certain condition in Aristotle’s examples might, at first, prompt the thought that one could produce a ‘continuous’ necessity simply through a qualification of the subject term: All older men get grey hair or show other signs of old age. That, however, does not give us any generally applicable formula for the gappy necessities of natural processes, since the appearance of natural alterations or the actualization of natural capacities, like sightedness, are not always connected with determinately specifiable conditions like being of a certain age. While humans are sighted by nature, some are blind from birth. Aristotle’s usage in a different place does, however, offer a more general formulation of what might be meant with ‘by nature’ (Phys. B 8.199b26, cf. 199a10, b18; Θ 4.255b7, 10–12, 19–21): what is the case by nature always happens in the same way ‘if nothing prevents it’ (ἂν μή τι ἐμποδίσῃ). If we use S as a symbolic abbreviation for the antecedent of a conditional, then universal statements in which the expression ‘by nature’ occurs can be formally represented as S > AaB (if nothing prevents it, then all B’s are A). One might well supply a statement of this form with a necessity operator, since it evidently holds in all cases. The gappy necessity of natural processes can thus, it seems, be explained as the constant necessity of certain conditional statements. As is well known, however, conditional statements are not syllogistic premises, and Aristotle also does not recognize them as statements of any other logical form. In the syllogistic he assumes that all statements that occur in any logically valid proof have the standard form AxB (with or without a modal operator) or can be put in this form. With regard to universal premises of natural scientific arguments, he could therefore only ask about the status of statements of the form (X)AaB, and these are, even when the corresponding implicative statement holds, still neither necessary nor impossible, and thus to all appearances contingent. In order to achieve syllogistic form, one could, however, use the expression N(S> . . . ) as a definition of a new modal operator Φ, since S is presumably considered to be a constant. In this way Φ would be connected with the necessity operator.¹⁹ This sort of introduction of Φ again, however, presupposes that conditional expressions

¹⁹ Jonathan Barnes made me aware of this possibility.

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are available, and in doing so goes beyond the formal resources of the Aristotelian syllogistic. If one assumes the formal representation of Φ-statements that I have suggested, then it is easy to show that Aristotle’s optimism regarding logical derivation with these sorts of premises was indeed justified. A ‘syllogism’ of the mood Barbara would, for instance, have the form N(S>AaB), N(S>BaC) N (S>AaC). It is easy to show that this is a valid deductive schema using the resources of modal propositional logic: From N(p>q), N(p>s), and N(q&s>r) (Barbara), N(p>r) follows.²⁰ Since Φ-statements can now be conceived of as necessity statements of a particular form, the difficulty with which we began disappears. According to Aristotle’s theory of science there is, on the one hand, scientific knowledge only of necessary states of affairs; on the other hand, there are meant to be sciences whose initial premises are contingency premises. The contradiction arises because Aristotle only considers statements of the form AxB with one of the modal operators N, M, or Q as candidates for premises of natural science. If AaB holds only with the qualification ‘by nature’, then, it seems, the corresponding premises of natural sciences can only be understood as contingency premises. The Φ-premises of natural sciences should, however, as closer analysis shows, be represented not as contingent universal statements but rather as necessity statements of the implicative form N(S>AaB). Aristotle would then not have had to say that one could know that all sheep have four legs by nature, even though this is a contingent fact; he could have said that all sheep normally have four legs, and that one can know this because it is necessary. Whether a certain sheep has four legs or whether all sheep have four legs remains, as Aristotle says, contingent; but in the realm of contingent natural processes there can be science because there is a sufficient number of normal cases. What is contingent in the particular cases holds of normal cases necessarily. The necessity that one refers to here—if one does want to follow Aristotle in speaking about necessity—is evidently not a logical one. What Aristotle had in mind when he spoke of necessity in nature must be inferred from his natural scientific writings. If we leave aside the unproblematic case of unchanging astronomical phenomena, there are two kinds of necessity to be distinguished. Both of these, it seems to me, fall under the concept of necessity under normal circumstances as characterized above. In his biological writings and in the Physics, Aristotle distinguishes between ‘hypothetical’ and ‘simple’ necessity.²¹ By ‘hypothetical’ necessity he understands ²⁰ If one omits the necessity operator, one can also justify syllogisms with one assertoric and one Φ-premise, which Aristotle seems to defend in An.Pr. A 15. If, however, one represents Φ-premises as statements of necessity, as seems to be Aristotle’s intention, then one requires a premise of necessity rather than an assertoric premise—which corresponds, conversely, to Aristotle’s postulate that assertoric premises apply without temporal restriction. ²¹ Cf. Phys. B 9.199b34–35; PA I 1.642a34–36. The interpretation of this distinction is the subject of much discussion; on this, see D.M. Balme, Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I, transl. with notes by D.M.B., Oxford 1972 ,76–84; U. Wolf, Möglichkeit und

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the necessity of certain means for a given end, in which case the means can be characterized as necessary, not in themselves, but in view of this goal. For example, in order for a house to come into being, there must necessarily be stones and beams available. Likewise, it is hypothetically necessary that humans have eyelids which protect their sensitive eyes from injury (PA II 13.657a25ff.). The necessity arises from the fact that eyes fulfil a specific function, and not, for example, that they consist of a certain material. Aristotle speaks of ‘simple’ or ‘natural’ necessity, by contrast, in connection with properties and types of behaviour that apply to certain materials like the elements ‘according to their nature’, for example the downward movement of stones (An.Po. B 11.95a2). This second type of necessity is subordinated to hypothetical necessity in the case of the coming into being of organisms because it can only be called upon to provide an explanation when a hypothetical necessity already dictates that certain materials are present. Thus, one can say, for example, that the front teeth of certain types of animals fall out owing to the constitution of the jaw at certain times (GA V 8.789a8–b8); the fact that just this sort of material is in this place must, however, be explained in turn on the basis of a hypothetical necessity. As this example shows, Aristotle uses the distinction between hypothetical and ‘simple’ or material necessity in order to prove the utility and indispensability of teleological explanations in the natural sciences. This point will not interest us further here. It seems to me that one can, however, show that both of the kinds of natural necessity Aristotle describes presuppose the existence of normal conditions. For hypothetical necessity this applies in the cases where something is viewed not as the necessary condition for something coming into being or the presence of a certain result, but rather as a necessary condition for something functioning correctly. It is, for example, without a doubt unqualifiedly true that if a person is to come into being or be present, flesh and bones must be present. One can, however, not say without qualification that people necessarily have eyelids, because as we all know there can—on account of developmental defects or injury—be people without eyelids. The necessity is interrupted in these cases, as Aristotle says; it seems, however, nevertheless reasonable to speak here of necessity, since the gaps evidently arise from the interruption of a natural process that can normally be taken for granted to an equal extent in all cases and that can be explained as necessary for the complete achievement of a predetermined goal.

Notwendigkeit bei Aristoteles und heute, Munich 1979, 90-8; R. Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame, London 1980, ch. IX, 143–54; J. Cooper, Aristotle on Natural Teleology, in: M. Schofield/M. C. Nussbaum (ed.), Language and Logos, Cambridge U.P. 1982,210 n. 8. My presentation relies on the more recent study by Cooper, ‘Hypothetical Necessity’, in: A. Gotthelf (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and Living Things, Mathesis Publications, Pittsburgh 1986, 151–167, in which he refines his earlier argumentation.

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Sheep with three legs are indisputably still sheep; but they are missing something which one may understandably view as necessary for healthy sheep. Above all, the ‘simple’ or ‘natural’ necessity of the behaviour of elements seems to be connected with normal conditions. Exceptions to naturally ‘necessary’ behaviour arise, for example, through the use of force: By their nature stones fall to the ground and in this sense necessarily, but, with force, they may also be moved upwards.²² Air necessarily expands when it warms, but one can prevent its expansion with force if one encloses it in a sufficiently airtight vessel. In these cases, too, it thus seems fitting to speak of necessity in light of normal conditions. What Aristotle has to say about the necessity of natural processes thus seems to me to confirm the proposed analysis of the type of statement in which something is described as such and such ‘by nature’. Such a statement is a matter of necessity with gaps; the gaps can, however, be represented by means of a conditional statement without requiring us to treat universal statements about natural processes as contingency statements. It thus becomes intelligible that natural processes can rightly be described, on the one hand, as necessary, while on the other hand, since they are liable to interruptions, they can be seen as contingent processes in the individual case. The section of the An.Pr. we began with concludes with the promise of a more precise discussion that Aristotle presumably never wrote. This is one of many places in the Analytics in which Aristotle, it seems, recognized that the framework of the syllogistic was too narrow for the domain that it was apparently intended to encompass—the realm of all formally valid arguments. A similarly unfulfilled promise is to be found in chapter A 44, at the conclusion of his treatment of syllogisms ‘from a hypothesis’, where Aristotle explicitly states that the arguments he has just described cannot be put into syllogistic form (50b2–3). It is hardly surprising that Aristotle was so impressed by his discovery of formal syllogistic— truly a great discovery—that he expected more from it than it was capable of delivering. But perhaps it speaks even more to the greatness of Aristotle that he was not misled by syllogistic into giving up prior commitments for which he thought he had good reasons. The thesis that there is scientific knowledge only of necessary states of affairs is independent of Aristotle’s formal logic.²³ One should thus—pace Barnes—also not count it among the formal shackles that the syllogistic cast on a theory of science that was originally not geared towards any particular formal logic (Barnes, op.cit. 1981, 58). The opposite in fact seems to be the case: Aristotle did not renounce this thesis even though his modal syllogistic ²² ἀνάγκη—the same Greek word that is used for necessity. This is, however, a different sort of necessity, as Aristotle notes (An.Po. B 11,94b37–95a2). ²³ For a defence of this thesis, see A. C. Lloyd, Necessity and Essence in the Posterior Analytics, in E. Berti (ed.) Aristotle on Science: The ‘Posterior Analytics’. Padua 1981, 157–71 and Sorabji, op.cit. ch. XIII, 209–22. I thank Jonathan Barnes, Wolfgang Carl, and Ulrich Nortmann for critical comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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seemed to force the conclusion that the premises of natural sciences must also include contingency statements. As I have attempted to show, the thesis that scientific statements are necessary truths can in fact be rendered compatible with the thesis that there can be a science of what occurs ‘for the most part and by nature’, but not always in the same way. However, Aristotle’s formal theory seems to have led him to the conclusion that the ultimate premises of some natural sciences can only be statements of contingency. We should not suppose that Aristotle never realized that his position was contradictory. However, he evidently preferred to leave the problem open and to think about it further rather than allowing his system to drive him to accept one position or the other. Taken together, Aristotle’s considerations regarding the necessity and contingency of natural processes offer us a framework for explaining why there can be science in the realm of the contingent: namely because the regular course of certain processes makes it possible to distinguish normal cases from exceptions or interruptions. Admittedly, though, what ought to count as normal in a given domain is a difficult problem, and one that still occupies scientists today.

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3 Assertoric vs. Modal Syllogistic This chapter argues that the inconsistencies in Aristotle’s modal syllogistic are probably due to the fact that he did not realize that the switch from the predication relations of the Topics to the quantitative term relations in the Analytics would lead to difficulties for the interpretation of his premises. The conversion rules regularly lead to what he calls (at An.Po. I 22.83a1–18) predication per accidens (as in ‘the white is a log’) and rules out for scientific proofs. Such cases do not affect the validity of assertoric syllogistic, but they do lead to unacceptable results in the case of de re—modalities. Aristotle notices such problems in a few places, but the solutions he offers hold only for the particular cases.

Aristotle’s assertoric syllogistic was a spectacular success; by comparison, his modal syllogistic was a failure. How could this happen? Just in case someone would want to object to the second claim, let me briefly remind you of the reason why I think it should be uncontroversial: Aristotle’s modal syllogistic is incoherent. Beginning with Alexander of Aphrodisias,¹ who was probably not the first to say this, we find commentators pointing out that if Aristotle had consistently applied his own methods of proof and refutation, his results would have been different—so different, indeed, that one may reasonably doubt whether he would have preferred to accept them or whether he would rather have changed his basic assumptions. There is, therefore, no hope in finding a consistent formal model to represent Aristotle’s modal syllogistic, and attempts to construct versions that capture as many as possible of the moods he accepts seem pointless. The important question ought to be what went wrong, and why. It appears from the ancient commentaries, and indeed from Aristotle’s text itself (A.Pr. I 15.34b5–18; I 17.37a9–31), that modal syllogistic ran into troubles from the very beginning. The first critics were Aristotle’s pupils and colleagues

¹ In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum I Commentarium, ed. M. Wallies, Berlin 1883, 144.32–145.4; 207.28–36; 213.11–27; 216.24–26. Among modern studies see, for example, J. Hintikka ‘An Aristotelian Dilemma’, Ajatus 22(1959), 87–92; J. van Rijen, ‘Aspects of Aristotle’s Logic of Modalities’ (Synthese Historical Library 39), Dordrecht: Reidel 1989, 194–9.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0003

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Theophrastus and Eudemus.² Theophrastus, it seems, was less interested in understanding Aristotle’s reasons for accepting certain theses than in trying to construct a system that would avoid some obvious difficulties. As a result, he rejected Aristotle’s special conversion rules for possibility-premises, and introduced a sweeping rule to determine the modality of conclusions: the conclusion will never be stronger than the weakest premise.³ These changes produced a simpler and superficially less paradoxical system. The first move substitutes the simpler concept of possibility proper (equivalent to ‘not impossible’ or ‘not necessarily not’) for Aristotle’s narrower concept of contingency (neither necessary nor impossible). This may not have been a bad idea from a systematic perspective but, of course, it does not help us in understanding Aristotle. The notorious peiorem rule, on the other hand, though intuitively appealing and certainly easy to apply, is really a non-logical rule, similar to the kind of thing one can find, for example, in Philoponus⁴ (and many later authors): ‘a syllogism must not have two negative or two particular premises’, and so on. Theophrastus seems to have argued for his rule by appealing to the analogy with assertoric syllogistic: if one ranks premises as stronger and weaker in the order a (universal affirmative), e (universal negative), i (particular affirmative), o (particular negative), then in assertoric syllogisms the conclusion will ‘always follow the weaker premise’ (Al.Aphr. in An.Pr. I 124,8–17). This happens to be a correct observation, but it is not a rule of deduction. According to Bochenski (La logique . . . 101) Theophrastus’s peiorem rule is not even correct for his own system. Theophrastus’s alternative, then, does not offer a clue to our question. The medieval logicians apparently used the de dicto/de re distinction to defend Aristotle’s decision, in An.Pr. I, to accept first-figure moods with necessary major and assertoric minor premise and necessary conclusion as valid while rejecting a necessary conclusion in cases of an assertoric major premise combined with a necessary minor.⁵ But they were primarily interested in constructing their own modal logics, and not in offering diagnoses as to why Aristotle might have proceeded the way he did. For sophisticated attempts to deal with the problems of Aristotle’s modal syllogistic we have to look at the work of twentieth-century scholars whose interest in the question was aroused by the pioneering studies of Lukasiewicz. I will not try to discuss the verdict of Lukasiewicz himself, who thought that Aristotle’s modal logic was a hopeless muddle. The first plausible attempt to explain what Aristotle did came from A. Becker⁶ who worked with

² See Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis, An.Pr. 1284.8–125.2; 173.33–174.3; 220.9–16, and 234.4–14. ³ For Theophrastus’ system, see I.M. Bochenski, La logique de Théophraste, Fribourg (Suisse) 1947, ch. V. ⁴ In Aristotelis Analytica Priora Commentaria, ed. M. Wallies, Berlin 1905, 70.1–71.17. ⁵ See W. Kneale, ‘Modality De Dicto and De Re’; in Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, ed. E. Nagel, P. Suppes, and A. Tarski, Stanford, CA 1962, 622–33. ⁶ Die Aristotelische Theorie der Möglichkeitsschlüsse, Berlin 1933.

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Heinrich Scholz, not incidentally a friend of Lukasiewicz. One of Becker’s most important findings was that Aristotle’s rules for the term-conversion of necessary premises are all right if the modal operator is assumed to range over the entire proposition, whereas they break down if it is construed as part of the predicate. On the other hand, Aristotle’s choice of valid and invalid moods in the first figure with mixed necessary and assertoric premises can be justified if the modal operator is construed as part of the predicate, but not if it ranges over the entire proposition (Becker, op. cit. 41–3). In other words, and using the medieval labels, the conversion rules require a de dicto reading, while the ‘mixed’ syllogisms of chapter I 9 must be construed de re. No wonder, then, that the resulting system is incoherent. Becker’s diagnosis still seems to me to be very plausible, at least as a first step, but it does not answer all the questions that one might legitimately ask. First of all, the de dicto/de re distinction is not Aristotle’s, and it might be more desirable to find some truly Aristotelian ambiguity at the root of the problem, if ambiguity there is. Second, a diagnosis in terms of possible formal renderings of Aristotle’s premises obviously will not tell us why Aristotle might have been inclined to adopt one or the other interpretation of modal premises. Now, modal syllogistic was presumably developed to serve as a deductive theory for the sciences as described in the An.Po.⁷ Hence it seems plausible to think that Aristotle’s views on science might offer some illumination about his understanding of modal syllogistic. Furthermore, the Analytics is, of course, not the only treatise in which Aristotle deals with necessity and possibility, so it should also be worthwhile to look at other passages—for example, in the Metaphysics, the Physics, the De Caelo—to see whether they throw some light on his theory of modal propositions. In this way one might hope to discover what Aristotle intended to do—what kinds of arguments he might have had in mind when talking about syllogisms with necessary or contingent premises.

⁷ Several people—John Corcoran, Ulrich Nortmann, Robin Smith—have suggested that modal logic should not be seen as the official logic for demonstrative science because the An.Po., as a matter of fact, seems to use assertoric syllogistic. Scientific demonstrations must indeed have premises that state necessary truths, but it does not follow that those premises must be explicitly modal, that is, contain modal operators. This is an attractive proposal with regard to the An.Po., given the scarcity of references in its text to modal syllogistic, and it would also seem to be corroborated by a passage in Rhet. II 25,1402b13ff., where Aristotle clearly envisages premises that hold only ‘for the most part’, but that are stated as universal propositions. However, it seems clear from the structure of An.Pr. that modal syllogistic was an afterthought, and so we cannot be sure that it was already available when Aristotle wrote the bulk of the An.Po. Aristotle’s remarks, at An.Pr. I 13,32b18–22 (on the possibility of demonstration for things that are ‘by nature and for the most part’) and at An.Po. I 6,75a1–10 (on necessary conclusions from necessary premises), seem to me to indicate, first, that it is not safe to ascribe to him the distinction between non-modal propositions stating necessary or contingent facts and explicitly modalized propositions; and second, that he probably intended his modal syllogistic to cover scientific argument, even though he may have worked it out only after (most of) the An.Po. was already written. Given that pure necessity syllogistic is supposed to work exactly like assertoric (An.Pr. I 8), he would not have needed to revise much in his theory of scientific demonstration.

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As it happens, three studies of this sort were published in 1989–90, by van Rijen, Patterson, and Nortmann.⁸ Two of these deal only with necessity; the third (Nortmann) also discusses syllogisms with contingent premises. It is perhaps reassuring to see that they seem to agree in several ways, though their conclusions are different. All three acknowledge the fundamental incoherence of Aristotle’s system as it stands. What they set out to do is to discover what kind of system Aristotle should have offered, given what he says elsewhere, notably in An.Po. I 1–4, about the premises of scientific demonstrations. On the basis of An.Po. I 4–6, van Rijen proposes an extremely restrictive interpretation for scientific premises, too complicated to set out here in detail. Roughly speaking, the idea is that such premises will be true only if they fulfil the conditions laid out in the An.Po. to the effect that the predicate must belong to the subject per se (καθ’ αὑτό). By these standards, a proposition like ‘all ravens are necessarily birds’ will qualify, but ‘some black things are necessarily birds’ will not be acceptable— ravens are birds qua ravens, not qua black. Given these restrictions, however, van Rijen can claim to have shown that the ‘inference base’ of Aristotle’s system of necessary and assertoric premises is sound (p. 210f.). That is to say, both the rules of term-conversion and the moods accepted as perfect will come out as correct in the same system. On the other hand, Aristotle himself does not observe the strictures imposed in An.Po. when he offers terms for counterexamples, and so his results do not cohere with his initial assumptions. Patterson’s interpretation is less restrictive. He points out that there is good Aristotelian evidence for accepting both types of necessity propositions illustrated above. We might call the first sort (‘all ravens are necessarily birds’) strict necessity propositions—they seem to hold both de re and de dicto—and the second pure de re propositions.⁹ If some black things are necessarily birds, this is not because being black has anything to do with being a bird, but because some things that can be correctly described as black are such as to be essentially birds. Patterson’s ‘strict’ necessity is similar to the only sort of necessity admitted by van Rijen, and both agree that term-conversion of necessary premises will work if this interpretation is ⁸ For van Rijen, see fn. 1 above. The others are R. Patterson, ‘The case of the two Barbaras’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 7, 1989, 1–40; U. Nortmann, ‘Über die Stärke der aristotelischen Modallogik’, Erkenntnis 32, 1990, 61–82. Nortmann is publishing preliminary results of a more extended study. ⁹ Patterson claims that it is misleading to apply the de re/de dicto distinction to Aristotelian propositions because Aristotle himself takes the modality to go with the copula—he says several times that ‘necessarily belonging’ or ‘possibly belonging’ function in the same way as ‘belonging’ or ‘being’ in assertoric propositions. Apart from the fact that the very same passages were cited earlier by the Kneales (W. Kneale, op. cit above, n. 5; M. Kneale, The Development of Logic, Oxford 1962, 83) as conclusive evidence of a de dicto reading, the objection that a de re reading treats the modality as part of the predicate term, which Aristotle manifestly does not do, seems to me to be a misunderstanding. The predicate-expression in a proposition of the form ‘B is A’, on a modern understanding of translation into symbolic notation, is ‘ . . . is A’, not just ‘A’, and so to say that the modal operator is treated as part of the predicate is not to say that it is part of the predicate term. Hence, I take it that Patterson’s ‘weak’ necessity can be understood as a kind of de re necessity; and that the passages about the alleged parallelism between the copula and modal ‘belonging’ are in themselves inconclusive.

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adopted. But Patterson thinks that the perfect moods of chapter I 9 can only be accepted as valid if the weaker reading is presupposed. Though Patterson does not proceed to offer a full formalized version of the desideratum he describes as a ‘truly Aristotelian modal syllogistic’ (p. 21), it is clear that this would have to be much more complicated than what we have in the An.Pr. Perhaps we would end up with two different but internally consistent systems instead of one incoherent one. For syllogisms with contingent premises, a similar approach can be offered, also based on a consideration of Aristotle’s conception of scientific theories. Although this does not agree with the official doctrine of the opening chapters of the An.Po., according to which demonstration must start from premises that are necessary, Aristotle tells us in An.Pr. I 13 (32b18–20) that ‘knowledge and demonstrative deduction’ are possible for things that are as they are only ‘by nature and for the most part’. He presumably refers back to this view at An.Po. I 32.88b7, where he says that the first principles (of a scientific theory) will be either necessary or possible. Propositions that state what happens ‘by nature and for the most part’ are classified by Aristotle as contingent, and so it would seem that he expected his modal syllogistic to provide a theory of deduction for sciences that start from contingent premises. Given that the biological sciences would probably belong to this group, Aristotle would surely have been interested in arguing that they could contain valid demonstrations. As I have argued in an earlier paper,¹⁰ some of the rather ingenious moves Aristotle makes in A.Pr. I 13 and I 15, ostensibly in order to salvage the validity of moods that might otherwise seem hopelessly invalid, can be taken to indicate that he was thinking of premises that describe cases in which the predicate belongs to the subject ‘by nature’. The arguments he seems to have in mind would appear to be valid—but their validity would not be adequately displayed in a straightforward rendering of Aristotle’s syllogisms with contingent premises, either de re or de dicto. It seems, rather, that their structure would be much more complicated that anything Aristotle explicitly considers. Nortmann has now tried to construct a formal model that captures Aristotle’s intuitions. He argues, again partly on the basis of An.Po. I 4, but also of passages in An.Pr. I 13 and I 15, that Aristotle’s remarks about the truth conditions of scientific and assertoric premises suggest that an adequate rendering of both his necessitypremises and his contingent premises requires more than one modal operator in each proposition. Again we find a version of strict necessity similar to those proposed by van Rijen and Patterson, but this time some of the strictures imposed upon interpretation are made explicit in the formal rendering of the propositions themselves. In mentioning some results of these recent attempts to develop a ‘truly Aristotelian’ modal syllogistic, my main point was not, however, to show that there might be some convergence of views about what such a logic would have to ¹⁰ ‘Notwendigkeit mit Lücken’, neue hefte für philosophie 24/25, 1985, 146–64. English translation ch. 2 in this volume.

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look like. The point I am interested in is, rather, this: in showing what kind of a system one should expect, given Aristotle’s own views in the An.Po. and elsewhere, each of these scholars is forced to say that there is a gulf between Aristotle’s ostensible requirements for modal propositions and many of the term examples he uses. Nortmann puts this perhaps most neatly: he claims that while a proper Aristotelian modal logic would have to be as strong as PL+S5, Aristotle’s examples will work only if one presupposes a weaker logic, probably PL+S4. I think it cannot be denied that there is a tension between Aristotle’s validity claims and the term examples he offers, mostly to show invalidity. In fact, the ancient commentators were already acutely aware of this tension. Both Alexander of Aphrodisias and Philoponus spend a lot of time discussing Aristotle’s examples, often trying to improve upon Aristotle by replacing them with what they consider to be more adequate ones. One can illustrate the difficulties that arise by an example that seems to be one of Aristotle’s favourites: white animals. These creatures make their first appearance in modal syllogistic in chapter I 9,30b5–6, with the premise (implied by a list of terms) ‘animal necessarily belongs to some white things’. Alexander explains this by reference to swans: they are (necessarily, though this is not relevant here) white—let us forget about Australian swans in this context, and assume that all swans are white—and they are necessarily animals. In the next chapter, however, we find Aristotle saying (30b35) ‘for it is possible for animal to belong to nothing white’. This serves to introduce the assertoric premise ‘animal belongs to nothing white’. Now, according to Aristotle’s own system this should be incompatible with the first proposition; so how could both examples be correct? Yet as Alexander notes (p. 140,3), Aristotle introduces the second proposition with a certain defiance (or ‘special pleading’, as Alexander seems to say: μετὰ παραμυθίας), as though he were saying: it is, after all, possible for animal to belong to nothing white. So he seems to have noticed the difficulty, but insists that it does not matter. How did he think this was possible? Later in the same chapter (I 10,31a14–17), Aristotle claims that the terms animal, human, white can be used to construct a counterexample to the mood Baroco NXN (2nd figure).¹¹ Alexander says that with these terms both premises will turn out to be necessary: animal necessarily belongs to all humans, animal necessarily does not belong to some white thing (namely snow, 144,18), and so he introduces a different example. At first one might think that Alexander has made a mistake: even if animal necessarily does not belong to snow, surely there would be other white things to which it does not necessarily not belong? But a little reflection shows that this can hardly be so, for how could anything be contingently not an animal? This should mean that whatever the subject is, it might or might not be an animal. In other words, the reference to snow is misleading, since the ¹¹ I use letters to indicate the modality of premises as follows: N for necessary, X for assertoric, Q for contingent, and P for possible in the weaker sense of ‘not impossible’.

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point should be that if anything is not an animal, then that is necessarily so.¹² But if Aristotle took his example seriously, he must have thought that the second premise was not necessary, even though he would presumably have agreed that snow is necessarily white and necessarily inanimate. And I think one can understand why: in both cases we have considered, there would be no problem if the modalities were construed de dicto. If it is not necessary that there be either swans or snow, it might be the case (when no swans are around) that animal belongs to nothing white; and if there were no snow, it might not be necessary for animal not to belong to certain white things. As one might expect, white animals have a role to play in examples for contingent premises as well. They show up in a term-example in I 14,33b6–9. If one fills in the premises, one gets (1) Animal contingently belongs to some white things (2) White contingently belongs to all humans The problematic case here is (1): Aristotle is using a substance-term in the predicate position of a contingent proposition. But surely, in an Aristotelian ontology, nothing can be contingently an animal, or for that matter a dog or a human being. Alexander, without stating his reason, replaces Aristotle’s terms with ‘white, walking, swan’ (171.30), thereby avoiding the difficulty. But if termconversion of particular contingent premises is legitimate, as Aristotle says it is (An.Pr. I 3), then (1) is just the equivalent of the innocent-sounding proposition ‘white contingently belongs to some animal’—and, by the way, (2) can be used to infer ‘human contingently belongs to some white thing’. (In a later passage, Alexander acknowledges this and reluctantly accepts a substance-term as predicate; 215,8–10). Again, as before, there would be no problem on a de dicto reading: it would seem to be neither impossible nor necessary for there to be some white animals. So far we have found two kinds of difficulty: (i) the propositions Aristotle uses seem to form an inconsistent set. This would not matter in assertoric syllogistic, of course (unless two incompatible premises were used in the same syllogism), but it does seem to matter in modal syllogistic, if one makes the plausible assumption that what holds of necessity must hold at all times or in all situations. For then any proposition incompatible with a necessary proposition would have to be necessarily false; (ii) some examples¹³ of contingent propositions involve substanceterms in predicate position, and this should be ruled out on metaphysical grounds.

¹² Aristotle himself makes this point in connection with the term-conversion of contingent universal premises, An.Pr. I 17.37a7–9: ‘It is not true to say that human possibly belongs to no white thing. For there are many things to which it necessarily does not belong, and the necessary was not possible.’ ¹³ For more examples of the same sort, see I 20,39b4–6.

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On the other hand, Aristotle’s examples do not look absurd or even implausible. If we switch for a moment to anachronistic terminology, we might say that in a possible world where there are no swans or snow, the first two examples might be accepted as correct (if construed de dicto); and there is nothing in Aristotle’s metaphysics, as far as I can see, to rule out such a world. Although Aristotle did believe that all existing species are eternal, it does not follow that he also thought that the world necessarily contained precisely those species. Substance-terms will inevitably show up as predicate terms in contingent premises as a result of termconversion, and so Aristotle must somehow have considered that to be acceptable. Also, there is some evidence to suggest that Aristotle did pay attention to his examples. I have already mentioned the special emphasis with which he seems to introduce the problematic premise in I 10, and in another passage (I 11,31b8–10), he notes that ‘all animals are good’ might not seem plausible, and proposes to replace the term ‘good’ by ‘being awake’ or ‘sleeping’. In another passage (I 15,35a2) he remarks ‘The terms should be better chosen’. Though this indicates that the terms just used were not well chosen, it also shows that Aristotle did not think this was unimportant. Hence one should not simply assume that Aristotle was careless, and that his examples can safely be set aside. It seems, rather, that he thought the difficulties that worried his commentators did not matter. Of course, they do matter, and he should not have been so confident, for one can use his own examples to construct counterexamples to the moods he accepts as valid. But we have already noted that his system is in fact incoherent. For the moment I would like to ask: why would he, at least initially, have thought that these examples were all right? To see why Aristotle might have assumed that funny examples would not make a difference, I propose to take a look at the examples in assertoric syllogistic. This was, after all, obviously the paradigm for modal syllogistic, both as regards basic assumptions and as regards proof procedures. Suppose for a moment that we did not know that assertoric syllogistic was a spectacular success, and were trying to see how well it fits the kinds of arguments Aristotle probably had in mind. It is clear that assertoric syllogistic was not specifically invented for scientific demonstrations; it was supposed to cover dialectical and rhetorical arguments as well. Therefore, it should at least accommodate the types of propositions grouped according to the ‘predicables’ (definition, genus, proprium, accident) in the Topics. Indeed, ‘mere belonging’ (ὑπάρχειν) is the most general expression for any kind of predicative relation (Top. VII 155a11–16; 31–36),¹⁴ and so Aristotle can claim with some justification that all types of dialectical theses (προβλήματα) can be deduced by syllogisms in the first figure (I 4,26b31–33). But ‘belonging’, in fact, covers even more than the predicables. In An.Po. I 22 (83a1–18) Aristotle tells ¹⁴ This presupposes the ‘inclusive’ interpretation of the predicables, for which see J. Brunschwig’s introduction to: Aristote, Topiques, vol. I, Paris 1967, lxxvi–lxxxiii.

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us that a proposition like ‘the white is a log’ does not present a real case of predication, properly speaking, although it may be true, because ‘white’ isn’t really the subject of the predication. ‘A log is white’ is a proper case of predication— ‘simple predication’ or ‘predication in an unqualified sense’ (κατηγορεῖν ἁπλῶς), as Aristotle says there; ‘the white is a log’ is at best a case of predication per accidens. In scientific demonstrations, only simple predications will be admissible.¹⁵ But, of course, given conversion, per accidens predication will occur all the time in assertoric syllogistic, and Aristotle has no qualms about that. ‘White’ occurs as a subject term in several examples (I 4,26b24–25; I 6,29a9–10), and indeed the previous examples from modal syllogistic had the same form. ‘Belonging’, then, covers not only proper predication but also predication per accidens. The metaphysical awkwardness clearly makes no difference to the validity of deductions. But from this awkwardness follows another: namely that Aristotle cannot offer a uniform interpretation for his syllogistic premises such that ὑπάρχειν has the same meaning throughout. In ‘white belongs to some animal’, white should be understood to be an attribute of animal, but in ‘animal belongs to some white’, ‘animal’ cannot stand for an attribute of white. Also, as Martha Kneale pointed out,¹⁶ there seems to be no way we can so interpret Aristotle’s categorical premises that the terms keep the same reference in both subject and predicate positions while ‘belonging’ has the same meaning throughout, even apart from accidental predication. In fact, the predication relations Aristotle discusses in the Topics are all asymmetrical, but the term relations customarily represented by e and i in assertoric syllogistic are symmetrical. For a modern reader, it is easy to interpret those syllogistic premises as referring to classes, and hence treat e as exclusion, i as overlap, which are indeed symmetrical relations. But in Aristotle’s ontology there seems to be no room for such classes as those of sleepers, white things, walkers, and the like. What he explicitly discusses are either genera, species, and individuals of various categories, or subjects (in the metaphysical sense) and attributes. But the class of sleepers is neither an attribute nor a genus nor a species. What this means, I think, is that assertoric syllogistic is, as it were, metaphysically neutral from the point of view of Aristotle’s ontology—and we can see that Aristotle accepted this when he admitted predication per accidens into his deductions. The premises of assertoric syllogistic just do not have a uniform Aristotelian semantics. Nevertheless, as I said before, assertoric syllogistic is entirely successful. Given this situation, it seems natural to expect that a modalized version of these premises will do the same for modal propositions as unqualified ‘belonging’ does for assertoric ones—namely allow one to construct a modal logic that will be

¹⁵ Hence van Rijen (op. cit., 205–9) stipulates that per accidens predication must not occur even in assertoric premises belonging to a scientific deduction. ¹⁶ Kneale, The Development of Logic, 63–7.

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metaphysically neutral, covering all the various sorts of necessity and possibility without corresponding to any specific case. Though it may be true that Aristotle needed to construct a modal syllogistic primarily for his theory of demonstrative science, it does not follow that he intended it to apply only to scientific reasoning. After all, necessity and possibility are not the exclusive domain of the scientist. Possibility, at least, looms large in practical reasoning, and rhetorical arguments will often have to use premises that hold only ‘for the most part’.¹⁷ It would therefore be desirable to have a deductive theory that does not contain restrictions that may be needed only in the sciences. We have already seen that assertoric syllogistic accommodates predication per accidens. Modal syllogistic seems to do the same—hence presumably the occurrence of substance-terms in the predicate position of contingent premises. But while, in the assertoric case, conversion produced metaphysically odd propositions that could still be recognized as true, in modal syllogistic it seems to lead to propositions that cannot be true—except perhaps on a de dicto reading. Though the examples I have so far discussed were all cases of predication per accidens, it seems clear that this was not the only difficulty. ‘White possibly belongs to no animal’ should be just as objectionable as ‘animal belongs to nothing white’, so long as one holds that some animals are necessarily white. Indeed, in An. Pr. I 16 one can detect the inconsistent pair ‘white possibly belongs to no animal’ (36a29–30) and ‘white necessarily belongs to some human’ (36b12–18), this time well hidden in lists of terms. Now, in An.Pr. I 13 we find Aristotle using a different strategy to bring widely divergent cases under the same rules (32b4–18): he explains that ‘is possible’ is said in two ways. That is to say, contingent premises will apply both to what happens ‘by nature and for the most part’ and what happens by chance and might just as well be otherwise. Complementary conversion, however, Aristotle insists, holds in both cases, though not for the same reasons. Furthermore, one can also construct deductions for both sorts of cases—though one usually does not bother to do this for things that happen by mere chance (32b21–22). It is a fair guess that Aristotle did not bother to try this out, either. He evidently expects demonstrations or deductions in both fields to take the form of syllogisms with contingent premises and conclusions. If one chooses the right premises, say about things that happen as they do ‘by nature’, the argument should amount to demonstration. And so it might seem. For example, one might argue: ‘All dogs are (by nature) runners; all runners have (by nature) sharp eyes; therefore, all dogs have (by nature) sharp eyes’. This is a valid argument—but not, I think, because it has the form of a syllogism in Barbara with contingent premises and conclusion. If this were so, we should also have to accept the following: ‘All Athenians may happen ¹⁷ See Rhetoric I 2,1357a22–b5; II 25,1402b13–1403a5. Note that both passages refer explicitly to the Analytics.

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to be white; all white things may happen to be swans; therefore, all Athenians may happen to be swans’. This is a syllogism about ‘what might as well be such as otherwise’. I would insist that it is a genuine counterexample to Barbara QQQ as initially introduced by Aristotle. To say that this mood represents a valid form of argument (provided that one sticks to the right interpretation of the premises) is like saying that ‘p and q, therefore s’ represents a valid form of argument. Of course it does, since any valid syllogism, for example, can be so represented. But this is not what we usually mean when we say that a formula represents a valid deduction—what we mean is that any argument that can be so formalized will be valid. Parodying Aristotle, we might offer the following argument to deal with the case of our white animals: ‘It is possible for animal to belong to nothing white’ is said in two ways—either because no white thing is necessarily an animal, or because, though some white things are necessarily animals, there may be no such animals around at a given time.’ Hence it is possible for animal to belong to nothing white, although not, of course, while there are any swans. (For the last sentence, compare An.Pr. I 10,30b37–38: ‘for it is possible for a man to become white, although not so long as animal belongs to nothing white’.) But how does one express, within the confines of Aristotle’s modal syllogistic, the proposition that it is not necessary for there to be animals that are necessarily white, as distinct from the proposition that no animals are necessarily white? On the one hand, one can see why Aristotle would not have wished to rule out the offending proposition: it can be true, though unfortunately not if taken in the de re sense that Aristotle seems to presuppose for his contingent premises. On the other hand, since we are given no clear distinction between what is necessary in one (the real) world and what is necessary in all possible worlds, there is nothing in Aristotle’s official theory to prevent one from constructing the following counterexample to the mood Celarent QNQ (accepted as perfect at I 16,35b23–26): Animal possibly belongs to nothing white; white necessarily belongs to all swans; therefore, animal possibly belongs to no swan.¹⁸ Now, I think that it was under pressure from just such counterexamples as I have cited that Aristotle introduced some additional requirements that seem to point in the direction of scientific premises. In the last paragraph of An.Pr. I 13 (32b25–32), he suddenly tells us that contingent universal premises can be understood in two ways: either so that the subject term refers to all that it actually belongs to, or so that the subject term refers to all that it possibly belongs to. As Becker pointed out (32–5), the second interpretation can be used to salvage the ¹⁸ This will not be a valid counterexample if one follows Nortmann, who considers Aristotle’s acceptance of the paradoxical results of term-conversion for contingent premises as an indication that he was prepared to countenance variants of the real world such that in some such variant ‘animal’ is not a predicate that does or does not belong, if at all, with necessity. But I am inclined to think that this definitely takes us too far away from Aristotle.

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allegedly perfect syllogisms with two contingent premises; but it will not work for all of Aristotle’s contingent propositions. What it does is, in effect, to rule out the kind of counterexample I have given for Barbara QQQ by postulating that the second premise (‘All white things may happen to be swans’) cannot be true. Since Aristotle probably added this requirement when he had already worked out a first draft of modal syllogistic, he did not check to see whether the required interpretation could be adopted in all cases, let alone whether his examples were in conformity with it. A similar thing happens in the well-known passage I 15 (34b7–18), where Aristotle explicitly considers a counterexample to Barbara XQP. There he stipulates that universal assertoric premises must be chosen ‘without qualification, and not as determined with respect to time’. In this way he eliminates the following example: ‘Man belongs to everything in motion [at some specific time]; it is possible for moving to belong to every horse; therefore, it is possible for man to belong to every horse.’ But as before, Aristotle’s examples both before and after this passage show that he did not envisage this requirement at the beginning—he keeps using exactly the sort of ‘temporally qualified’ premises that he rules out in this passage. In both these cases the additional requirements are ingenious and not arbitrary—as Aristotle himself indicates in the second passage, he seems to be adjusting his assumptions so that they fit certain valid arguments that he presumably had in mind when setting out to develop his modal syllogistic. But they cannot serve to show that Aristotle’s system as it stands is valid (or has a valid inference base) for a certain restricted interpretation. Rather, they point to a different system or systems that Aristotle did not develop—either a modal logic specifically adapted to his theory of science, as van Rijen postulates, or one that makes room for the apparently deviant propositions we have been considering, for example by introducing a distinction between de re and de dicto modalities. Such a system might be, in a sense, a ‘truly Aristotelian’ modal logic, but it is not to be identified with the extant Aristotelian modal syllogistic. Aristotle’s modal syllogistic was a failure—not because Aristotle did not pay attention to the requirements of his metaphysical theory, but because what worked so well in assertoric syllogistic did not work in modalibus. He failed to discover a general, metaphysically neutral deductive theory that covered both the respectable cases and the funny ones, as assertoric syllogistic works for both proper predication and predication per accidens. We might see this failure as just punishment for Aristotle’s Fall, as Geach has called the move away from the predicables in the Topics to the term-logic of the Analytics.¹⁹ Or we might emphasize the positive with Martha Kneale, saying that ‘fortunately philosophical obscurity is not an insuperable bar to logical progress’.²⁰ Given the fact that, to this day, logicians have not come to agree on one generally ¹⁹ See P.T. Geach, ‘History of the Corruptions of Logic’, in his Logic Matters, Oxford, 1972, 47–51. ²⁰ Kneale, The Development of Logic, 66.

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accepted system of modal logic, the second option seems both more charitable and more reasonable. Aristotle’s own system will not work as it stands, but it seems to contain the beginnings of the most important systems that were developed after him. Also, as I have tried to show, the difficulties that arise in his system were not the result of mere blunders. On the contrary, they seem to have provoked further investigations that led to important later developments, such as, indeed, the medieval distinction between modalities de dicto and de re. Hence, at the very least, Aristotle laid the foundations—which is, after all, what one would want to say about his assertoric logic as well.²¹

²¹ I am grateful for criticisms and suggestions from participants at the conference, and especially for the detailed written remarks of Ulrich Nortmann (who disagrees with most of what I say here).

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4 Perfection and Reduction in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics This chapter argues that perfecting a syllogistic mood is not the same as reducing it to another mood. To perfect a mood is to make its validity evident, which may or may not be done by reducing it to a perfect one; reduction works between moods of all figures, perfect or not. The epistemic priority of the first-figure moods led some later Peripatetics to claim that the imperfect moods owed their validity to the perfect ones and would not be valid without them. Boethus of Sidon (first century ) refuted them by arguing that all the valid moods are perfect, at least in some cases appealing to the terminology of parts and wholes that Aristotle himself uses at the beginning of chapter 4 of Prior Analytics I when introducing the moods of the first figure.

Ever since Łukasiewicz reinstated Aristotle as the founder of formal logic, there has been a wealth of studies of Aristotle’s syllogistic as a formal system. Against Łukasiewicz’s claim that syllogistic is a system in which certain theses function as axioms, others as theorems derived from these, it has been argued—convincingly, to my mind—that it would be historically more accurate to represent syllogistic as a system of natural deduction that starts from a set of primitive rules and demonstrates the validity of inferences by showing how their conclusions can be deduced from their premises.¹ However this particular dispute may be decided, both parties start from the assumption that syllogistic is a system, and then argue about what kind of a system it is. Now Aristotle, of course, did not start from the notion of a deductive system of one or another sort. He describes what he does in An.Pr.  1–2, 4–7 either as ‘perfecting’ syllogisms² or as ‘reducing’ one syllogism

¹ See K. Ebbinghaus, Ein formates Modell der Syllogistik des Aristoteles, Hypomnemata 9, Göttingen, 1964; T. Smiley, ‘What is a Syllogism?’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 2, 1973, 136–54; J. Corcoran, ‘Aristotle’s Natural Deduction System’, in Ancient Logic and its Modern Interpretations ed. Corcoran, Dordrecht 1974, 85–131. ² I use ‘syllogism’ as a convenient transliteration of Aristotle’s συλλογισμός, with the understanding that it does not mean a two-premise argument in one of the syllogistic moods but has the wider Aristotelian meaning ‘valid deductive argument’. The currently favoured translation ‘deduction’, though perhaps less misleading than ‘syllogism’, does not bring out the point that Aristotle takes syllogisms to be arguments. I shall also sometimes use the non-Aristotelian term ‘mood’ where Aristotle would have used συλλογισμός for a type of argument.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0004

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to another. Since it has seemed perfectly clear, in terms of modern formal logic, what Aristotle is doing in those chapters—namely, either deducing theorems from axioms, or proving the validity of rules of inference by showing how a certain kind of conclusion can be derived from a certain kind of premises using only the primitive rules of the system—the terminology of perfecting and reducing has not attracted too much attention. Most commentators seem to suppose that to perfect a syllogism is to reduce it to a perfect syllogism, and that, in turn, consists in showing that the mood so reduced is valid, given the perfect mood, which is already accepted as valid. Hence it is customary to describe the proofs in A 4–6 as ‘reductions’ of the second- and third-figure moods to the perfect moods of the first figure. It can hardly be disputed that what Aristotle does in these chapters is to prove the validity of second- and third-figure moods. But it seems to me that an investigation of the relations between perfection and reduction might help us to see more clearly how Aristotle arrived at the system that marks, after all, one of the most important differences between the Prior Analytics and the Topics. My claims will be (1) that perfecting a syllogism is not the same as reducing it to a perfect syllogism, in one or the other sense of ‘perfect’; and (2) that perfection and reduction together are what makes syllogistic a deductive system, as opposed to a mere collection of inference rules. Finally, there will be some speculation about why Aristotle’s system was largely ignored by the later tradition.³ The verb ἀνάγειν (to reduce) appears for the first time in the Prior Analytics in chapter A 7,29b1. Aristotle has just stated that ‘all imperfect syllogisms are perfected through the first figure’ (29a30–31). In the next paragraph, he continues: ‘But one can also reduce all syllogisms to the universal syllogisms in the first figure. For those in the second figure it is clear that they are perfected through these . . . ’. Obviously, Aristotle implies that if a syllogism S₁ can be perfected through another syllogism S₂, then it can be reduced to S₂. Now, since all the moods in A 6 were, in fact, perfected through the first figure, one might think that ‘reducing’ and ‘perfecting’ are simply synonyms. Accordingly, commentators since Alexander of Aphrodisias (113,5–9; among recent authors, Patzig⁴) have assumed that if the two particular moods of the first figure (Darii and Ferio) can be reduced to the universal ones (Barbara and Celarent), the universal syllogisms must somehow be more perfect, or perfect in a more stringent sense, than the particular ones. But the following sentence shows that Aristotle did not think so: he declares that Darii and Ferio are ‘perfect in themselves’ (literally, ‘perfected through themselves’), though they can also be proved indirectly through the second figure. That is to say, they ³ For the later ancient tradition I am relying on the excellent monograph by Tae-Soo Lee, Die griechische Tradition der aristotelischen Syllogistik in der Spätantike, Hypomnemata 79, Göttingen 1984. ⁴ Patzig, Die aristotelische Syllogistik, 3rd ed., Göttingen 1969, 77.

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can be reduced to second-figure moods that are themselves reducible to Barbara or Celarent. So, a perfect mood can be reduced to an imperfect one, according to this passage, and that should be enough to show that not every case of reduction has to be a case of perfection.⁵ But one might still hold that perfection is a special case of reduction, namely reduction to a perfect syllogism. I do not think this is correct either, but in order to show that, I will have to ask first what exactly Aristotle meant by ‘perfecting a syllogism’. The verbs τελειοῦν and ἐπιτελεῖν (to perfect) suggest that perfecting should be a way of transforming an imperfect syllogism into a perfect one. This has been understood in two ways, depending upon one’s interpretation of the adjective τέλειος (perfect). A perfect syllogism is one in which ‘nothing besides the assumptions is needed to make the necessity obvious’ (A 1.24b23–24). The difference between perfect and imperfect syllogisms lies in the fact that the validity of the perfect syllogisms is evident, which is not so for imperfect syllogisms. Aristotle declares the four moods of the first figure to be perfect (A 4), and proceeds in the following chapters to prove the validity of the remaining moods by means of deductions that include one of the perfect moods as a syllogistic step. If perfecting consists in turning an imperfect syllogism into a perfect one, then Aristotle apparently thought that the syllogism to be proved is transformed into the perfect syllogism that occurs in the proof. Patzig⁶ claims that this is indeed what Aristotle thought. When he comes to a syllogistic step involving a first-figure mood, he often says things like ‘the first figure has come about’ (γεγένηται). He also speaks several times of imperfect syllogisms as ‘possible syllogisms’, by which, since all syllogisms must be valid arguments, he can hardly mean anything but ‘possibly perfect syllogisms’. Patzig notes that this way of speaking is misleading, since an argument in Darapti, say, does not become an argument in Darii just because its conclusion can be deduced from its premises by a deduction that contains a syllogism in Darii. This would certainly be a justified complaint, but I think that Aristotle’s language does not imply this line of thought, and that it is, in fact, not plausible to attribute this view to him. When Aristotle says ‘the first figure has come about’, he need be taken to mean no more than that a premise-pair of the first figure has been reached in the deduction; and the phrase ‘possible syllogism’ can just as well be understood as ‘syllogism that can be perfected’ (δυνατὸς ἐπιτελεῖσθαι), which takes us back to the question of what Aristotle meant by ⁵ At A 23,40b17, in a reference back to A7, Aristotle says that (all) syllogisms in the second and third figure ‘are perfected through the universal syllogisms in the first figure and reduced to these’, apparently obliterating the distinction between perfecting and reducing. Alexander of Aphrodisias (in An.Pr. 255,1–17) notices the difficulty and suggests two solutions: either Aristotle just means to say that all second- and third-figure syllogisms are reduced to these (in which case Aristotle would be saying twice the same), or he is using καθόλου instead of ἁπλῶς, to say that second- and third-figure syllogisms are ‘generally’ perfected through first-figure ones. I am more inclined to think that Aristotle’s formulation is negligent—the statement at the end of A 23,41b3–5 is accurate. ⁶ Patzig, Die aristotelische Syllogistik, 140–3.

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‘perfecting’. What seems to me to be decisive, however, is the fact that it is wildly implausible to think of an imperfect syllogism as being transformed into the relevant perfect one in the case of indirect proofs. For while one can understand how Aristotle might have seen an argument in Cesare as merely another version of an argument in Celarent, this is certainly not so in a case where the syllogism that occurs in the deduction has as its conclusion the contradictory of one of the original premises. The proof for Baroco, for example, looks like this: Assume that M belongs to every N but does not belong to some X; then it will follow that N does not belong to some X. For if N belongs to every X and M belongs to every N, it follows (by Barbara, in the first figure) that M belongs to every X. But we assumed that it did not belong to some X (cf. A 5.27a36–b1). The first-figure syllogism has the form MaN, NaX / MaX (Barbara), and I do not see how this could, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as a different version of an argument in the form MaN, MoX / NoX. If ‘perfecting’ means ‘reducing to a perfect syllogism’, then it should mean no more than ‘prove to be valid by means of a perfect syllogism’. If we want to keep the supposition that perfecting must be a way of transforming an imperfect syllogism into a perfect one, the second interpretation of τέλειος looks more promising. John Corcoran⁷ has argued that the distinction between a perfect and an imperfect syllogism is that between a full deduction and a valid inference that needs filling out. An inference may be valid but not obviously so, and one can show that it is valid by deducing the conclusion from the premises using only primitive rules of deduction. Following this interpretation, Robin Smith, in his recent new translation of the An.Pr.,⁸ has decided to render τέλειος as ‘complete’ rather than ‘perfect’. This is a plausible suggestion, because what Aristotle does in chapters A 5–6 is just that—showing how the conclusion of an ‘incomplete’ or ‘imperfect’ syllogism can be deduced from its premises. Corcoran concludes that the long deduction will then count as a perfect syllogism. But this no longer agrees with Aristotle’s own explanation of the term τέλειος. He says that he calls a syllogism τέλειος if nothing besides the premises assumed is needed to make the necessity obvious (24b23–24; cf. also A 4.26b30; A 5.27a16–18; A 6.29a15–16; A 16.36a6–7). In general, he seems to think of a syllogism as consisting only of its premises and conclusion. True, at A 25.42a32 he says that every proof and every syllogism ‘will have two premises and no more—unless something is added, as we said in the beginning, for the purpose of perfecting (completing) the syllogisms’. Yet no amount of filling in will bring it about that the necessity of the conclusion is evident from the initial premises alone. Once the deductive steps have been filled in, it will be obvious that the conclusion follows from the premises, but not before; and this seems to be precisely the reason why Aristotle calls syllogisms that need filling in ‘imperfect’. Hence, I would argue that ⁷ Corcoran, ‘Aristotle’s Natural Deduction System’, 91–4. ⁸ Aristotle, Prior Analytics. Hackett, Indianapolis 1989.

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the remark in A 25 is meant simply to forestall the objection that the deductions in A 5–6 have more than two premises—they do not, Aristotle wants to say, because the additional steps in the deduction do not add any new assumptions. Furthermore, before we decide to translate τέλειος as ‘complete’, we should consider that every syllogism must be complete in the sense that ‘no further term is needed from the outside to bring about the necessity’ (24b21–22). Confusion between the two kinds of completeness apparently led some ancient commentators to suppose that second- and third-figure syllogisms were not even valid by themselves and needed some help to make the conclusion follow (Ammonius 31, 28–33). It might be better to indicate the second kind of completeness by the word ‘perfect’, since it is a feature that need not belong to every valid deductive argument. I think we should give up the supposition that perfecting consists in turning an imperfect syllogism into a perfect one. It is a procedure that serves to make it evident that a certain conclusion follows from certain premises. What is perfected is, strictly speaking, not the syllogism, but the obviousness of the necessity. And Aristotle actually comes close to saying that in A 5, 27a17, when he explains why second-figure syllogisms are not perfect: ‘for the necessity is perfected not just from the initial premises but also from others.’ To make it evident that the conclusion follows, one will presumably use only deductive steps that are themselves evidently valid—among them the perfect syllogisms. The proofs in A 5–6 each contain one of the perfect syllogisms, and that must be the reason why imperfect syllogisms are said to be ‘perfected through’ and ‘reduced to’ perfect syllogisms. We seem, then, to get the same result as before: to perfect a syllogism is to reduce it to a perfect one. But now one should note that in chapter A 6 Aristotle points out several times that certain moods (Darapti, Datisi, Bocardo) can also be proved by the procedure he calls ἔκθεσις. The ecthetic proof for Darapti is set out in 28a24–26: ‘if both P and R belong to every S, then if one takes one of the S, say N, both P and R will belong to it, so that P belongs to some R.’ If the letter N is here construed as standing for a general term, the proof coincides with the demonstrandum. Hence in this case, at least, one should take N to stand for the name of an arbitrarily chosen individual. But then the proof contains no syllogism (in the narrow sense) at all, which shows that perfecting need not take the form of proof through a perfect syllogism.⁹ The proofs for Datisi and Bocardo can be construed as

⁹ As Ian Mueller points out to me, one might object that it is not clear whether Aristotle considers all proofs of validity in A 6 as cases of perfecting. Ecthesis is mentioned only as an alternative method of proof, alongside reductio ad impossibile, and in A 7.29a30–31 Aristotle simply asserts that ‘all imperfect syllogisms are perfected through the first figure’, either directly or indirectly. But in his summaries at the end of chapters A 5 and A 6 (28a4–9; 29a14–18) he seems to refer back to the preceding proofs quite generally as cases of perfecting. The reason why ecthesis is not mentioned in A 7 is presumably that it does not lead to first-figure syllogisms and hence is not a method of reduction to the first figure.

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syllogistic without circularity, but if so, they probably do not contain one of the perfect syllogisms. In fact, in the one passage where Aristotle describes ecthetic proofs as syllogistic (A 8.30a9–14), he explicitly says that the syllogisms will be in the same figure as the syllogism to be proved, that is, second and third, respectively. So perfection is, in principle, independent of reduction to perfect syllogisms. It consists in proving the validity of a syllogistic mood by making it evident that the conclusion follows from the premises, by a deduction that may or may not contain one of the perfect syllogisms. I have already noted that reduction is also independent of perfection, since Aristotle acknowledges that some of the perfect moods can be reduced to imperfect ones. What, then does he mean by ‘reduction’? Here I would like to begin by looking at A 45, the other chapter in the An.Pr. in which Aristotle discusses the reduction of syllogistic moods to one another. A 45 comes at the end of a long section (A 32–45) in which Aristotle explains how ordinary-language arguments can be put into syllogistic form. A 32 states the topic: ‘how we are going to reduce (ἀνάγειν) syllogisms to the aforementioned figures.’ In the next sentence, Aristotle picks this up by saying ‘if we can resolve (ἀναλύειν) syllogisms which have been produced into the aforementioned figures’ (46b40–47a4). ἀνάγειν and ἀναλύειν are used interchangeably throughout this part of book A. As a special case of this sort of reduction or analysis, A 45 treats the question of how an argument that has already been put into syllogistic form can be ‘reduced to’ a syllogism in another figure—that is, reformulated as a syllogism in a mood from another figure. Aristotle considers only pairs of syllogisms that have the same form of conclusion. He notes at the beginning (50b8–9) that this kind of reduction is possible only for some, not for all, moods. For example, Barbara is not mentioned at all, because it is the only mood with a universal affirmative conclusion. Aristotle goes through the figures and shows how, by conversion of one or both premises, first-figure syllogisms can be transformed into second-figure ones, second-figure ones into first-figure ones, third-figure ones into first-figure ones and vice versa, and so on.¹⁰ The only operation considered here is conversion— understandably, since the indirect proofs in A 5–6 did not lead to other syllogisms with the same conclusion as the one to be proved. Though it is true, of course, that a syllogism that can be reduced to another in this way can also be proved to be valid by the same method if the mood to which it is reduced is already accepted as valid, this does not seem to be the point in which ¹⁰ In those cases where Aristotle converts a universal affirmative premise to a particular one, such as Darapti to Darii, Felapton to Ferio, the premises of the second syllogism are weaker than those of the first, and one might object that this can no longer count as a reformulation of the original argument, while it remains the case that the first syllogism can be reduced to the second in the sense of ‘proyed’. However, it is still true that, given the premises of Darapti or Felapton, one can always use the same terms to produce a syllogism in Darii or Ferio. The fact that Aristotle limits himself to syllogisms with the same conclusion, and also his use of ἀναλύειν, seem to me to support the interpretation that he is thinking of reformulating a given argument, or using the information given in its premises to produce another argument for the same conclusion, rather than proving validity.

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Aristotle is interested here. The words ‘perfect’ and ‘perfecting’ do not occur at all, since, after all, this sort of reduction works in both directions between moods of all three figures. Rather than read this chapter as trying out different axiomatizations for syllogistic (as suggested, for example, by Patzig¹¹), I would suggest that we should compare the reductions performed here with a kind of ἀναγωγή that occurs elsewhere in Aristotle’s treatises, and which consists in trying to classify a larger number of cases under a few general headings. So, for example, Aristotle repeatedly claims that all pairs of opposites can be reduced to ‘the one and the many’ as genera or principles (Metaph. Γ4,1055b26–29; cf. Γ 2,1054b27–1055a2). The mysterious reduction of opposites is always assumed as given, but there is an extended example of this kind of reduction in GC 2.2,329b15ff., where Aristotle shows how all the differentiae of tangible bodies can be ‘reduced’ to the four primitive ones, hot and cold, wet and dry, by being explained as special forms of them. An example that is closer in subject matter to An.Pr. A 45 occurs at Sophistici Elenchi 6,168a17–20. Aristotle has just listed and classified various types of fallacies. Then he remarks ‘One must either classify (διαιϱετέον) apparent syllogisms and refutations in this way, or else reduce (ἀνακτέον) them all to ignoratio elenchi, taking that as the starting point (ἀϱχή). For all the ways (of fallacious reasoning) we mentioned can be resolved (ἀναλῦσαι) into the definition of refutation’. That is to say, every type of fallacy can be described as a case of ignoratio elenchi because it will violate one of the conditions in the definition of a valid refutation. Here, as in An.Pr. A 45 ἀνάγειν and ἀναλύειν are used as synonyms.¹² This suggests that the kind of reduction Aristotle had in mind in A 45 consisted in seeing whether syllogisms from one figure could be subsumed under the heading of a mood from another figure as being different versions of it. If this is what he was doing, then what he shows in that chapter is, among other things, that reduction in the sense of analysis does not offer a way of ordering the syllogistic moods or figures in such a way that the moods of any two figures can be subsumed under those of one other figure. There is also no way in which one of the figures can be said to be prior to the others on the ground that their moods can be reduced to its moods, but not the other way around.¹³

¹¹ Patzig, Die aristotelische Syllogistik, 55. ¹² For ἀναλύειν alone in connection with classification under genera, see Metaph. Δ 28.1024b9–16: ἕτεϱα δὲ τῷ γένει λέγεται ὧν τε ἕτεϱον ὑποκείμενον καὶ μὴ ἀναλύεται θάτεϱον εἰς θάτεϱον μηδ’ ἄμϕω εἰς ταὐτόν . . . ¹³ Robin Smith (‘Some Studies of Logical Transformations in the Prior Analytics’, History and Philosophy of Logic 2, 1981, 1–9) has suggested that A 45 is one of several chapters in the An.Pr. that contain attempts by Aristotle to find some general principles for syllogistic before he discovered the method of perfecting. In his commentary (1989), he says that the topic of A 45 might be stated as ‘Is indirect proof necessary?’. I do not think this is an accurate statement of the topic, since reformulation is not the same as proving validity. But it might be that Aristotle had at first hoped to unify the system of syllogisms by grouping all valid moods under some most general ones, preferably from the same figure.

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By contrast, the method of reduction discussed in A 7 serves to do precisely that. If reduction is construed, not as a way of transforming a syllogism in one figure into a syllogism in another figure, but as proving its validity by a deduction that uses a syllogism from another figure, then all the other moods can be reduced to those of the first figure—or indeed, as Aristotle shows in A7, to the two universal moods of the first figure alone. Aristotle evidently knew that this second form of reduction is not the same as the method he considers in A 45, for at the end of that chapter he says: ‘It is now clear that the same syllogisms cannot be resolved in these figures [sc. second and third] that could also not be resolved into the first; and that when we reduce the syllogisms to the first figure, these are the only ones that are brought to a conclusion by reductio ad impossible.’ But the exercises in transformation of A 45 would certainly also have shown him that reduction in the sense of proving validity through another syllogism does not suffice to single out one particular figure or set of moods as the one to which all the others should be reduced. Once indirect deductions are admitted, it is just as easy to reduce all first- and second-figure moods to those of the third figure as it is to reduce second- and third-figure moods to those of the first. This is, after all, why Aristotle was said to be trying out different axiomatizations for syllogistic in A 45. Reduction to another syllogism will show that one mood is valid if the other is, but since it works in both directions between each pair of figures, it will not establish any order of priority among the figures. This is the point at which the notion of perfection comes, as it were, to the rescue. If one set of syllogisms can be singled out as being perfect, that is, evidently valid and not in need of proof, then this offers a non-arbitrary way of determining which moods should count as basic, so that the others should be reduced to them and not vice versa. By combining reduction and perfection, then, Aristotle managed to unify syllogistic in such a way that it can be called a deductive system. Now, since the first-figure moods are chosen as primitive on epistemological grounds, it is tempting to see Aristotle as devising axioms for his deductive theory. The validity of the perfect syllogisms is supposed to be immediately evident, just as, it seems, the principles of a demonstrative science are supposed to be grasped without proof. Furthermore, the word ἀνάγειν itself suggests that what something is reduced to should be a kind of principle (ἀϱχή).¹⁴ Yet, as far as I know, Aristotle himself never describes the perfect moods as ἀϱχαί.¹⁵ It should also be kept in mind that a modern formal model of his syllogistic would treat at least one of the conversion rules as primitive alongside the perfect moods. Aristotle never ¹⁴ For the association of ἀνάγειν with άϱχή, cf. the passage quoted above from the Sophistic Elenchi, and also, for example, Physics B 3,194b22–23; Rhet. A 4,1359a38; EN 3.5,113b19–20; Metaph. E 3.1027b14–15. ¹⁵ When he speaks of ‘syllogistic principles’ (συλλογιστικαὶ ἀϱχαὶ) at Metaph. Γ 3.1005b7, he is clearly thinking of the principles of non-contradiction and excluded middle presupposed by all deductive arguments.

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considered this, I think, because he did not set out with the idea of devising a deductive system, either axiomatic or natural deduction, in which certain theses or rules were to function as primitive. He seems to have been interested, rather, in establishing an order of priority among the moods, and so A 7 talks only about reducing all other moods to those of the first figure. What Aristotle created was, in fact, a deductive system, but not because he set out to create one from the very start. There is also a deeper reason why, even on the unlikely assumption that he considered the first-figure moods as propositions, Aristotle should quite properly have hesitated to call the perfect syllogisms principles of the others: namely that they do not stand to the derived moods in the relation in which the principles of an Aristotelian demonstrative science must stand to the theorems derived from them. In spite of some attempts by Aristotle to fit it into his theory, the relation of logical consequence or implication, which exists between the premises and conclusion of a valid argument, but also between certain syllogistic moods considered as theses, is not one of the four explanatory relations set out in the doctrine of the Four Causes. Although Aristotle wishes to say that the premises are somehow the cause of the conclusion, he wavers about how the relation fits into his scheme. At Physics B 3,195a18–19 (= Metaph. Δ 2,1013b20), he claims that the premises are the material cause of the conclusion; but in Physics B 9,200a15–30, he suggests, rather, that the conclusion is related to the premises as matter to form, or means to end. The second suggestion is actually the more plausible of the two, since it is based on the consideration that the end implies the means as the premises imply the conclusion, but not vice versa. But it would obviously not be plausible to say that the premises consist of the conclusion, or that the conclusion is there for the sake of the premises. As a matter of fact, the first premises of an Aristotelian science must be ‘causes of the conclusion’ (An.Po. A 2,71b22) in two ways: they must imply the conclusion, of course, but they must also state the reason why what is asserted in the conclusion is the case (cf. Alex.Aphr. in An.Pr. 21,12–18). But one cannot claim that Barbara and Celarent, say, explain why Baroco and Camestres are valid. Arguments in all four moods are valid because their conclusions follow from their premises or, as one might also say, they satisfy the definition of ‘syllogism’. But this explains very little, and, of course, does not show that the validity of any of the moods can be deduced from that definition. So syllogistic is indeed a deductive system, but it is not an Aristotelian science.¹⁶

¹⁶ None the less, there is some evidence that Aristotle might have thought of the Analytics as offering a science of arguments. In Rhet. A 4.1359b10, for example, he refers to ἀναλυτικὴ ἐπιστήμη. More important than this phrase, which might after all be non-terminological, is Robin Smith’s observation (‘The Mathematical Origins of Aristotle s Syllogistic’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 19, 1978, 201–9) that the language in which Aristotle expounds syllogistic in the systematic chapters of the An. Pr. is strikingly similar to the language in which theses are formulated and proved in Euclid’s Elements. Since mathematics is Aristotle’s paradigm of a demonstrative science, however inadequate syllogistic

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Aristotle himself never explains why he finds it important to show that all syllogisms can be reduced to the perfect moods of the first figure. But later Peripatetics raised the question, and this led to the dispute about perfect syllogisms that I mentioned before. This debate must go back at least to the time of Boethus of Sidon in the first century .¹⁷ Ammonius (31,13–25) reports that Boethus ‘rightly thought, and indeed proved, that all syllogisms in the second and third figure are perfect (τέλειοι)’ and that he was followed by Porphyry, Iamblichus, Maximus, Syrianus, Proclus, Hermias the father of Ammonius— and, of course, Ammonius himself. Now, a few pages before (14,28–29) Ammonius has explained the word τέλειος as ‘self-sufficient, not in need of anything in order to be (a syllogism)’; hence one might think that Boethus was merely defending the view that second- and third-figure syllogisms are valid in themselves.¹⁸ No wonder that Ammonius, who claims at first that Boethus was contradicting Aristotle, ends up by pointing out that Boethus’s view can in a way be derived from Aristotle’s own words (33,18–21). But in fact the story seems to have been more complicated. Some of the background to Ammonius’s remarks can be found in Themistius’s treatise ‘In reply to Maximus about the reduction of the second and third figures to the first’.¹⁹ In this treatise, Themistius argues against Maximus’s claim that ‘the categorical syllogisms in the second and third figure are perfect in themselves and do not need either demonstration or reduction to the first figure’. Themistius defends the supposedly Aristotelian view that the first figure is naturally prior to the others (168,30–36) because it is their ‘cause et génératrice’ (? αἰτία καί γένεσις, 167,2). The second and third figures, he says, are ‘generated’ by the first by conversion, that is, changing the order of terms in the first and second premise,

may be to represent its deductive structure—this similarity is at least an indication that Aristotle tried to set out the theory of syllogisms in the form of a demonstrative science. The use of the word ἀπόδειξις to refer to the proofs of validity in chapters A5 and A6 points in the same direction. But what corresponds to Euclid’s exposition of geometry is not the system of syllogisms considered in A 7, but rather the metatheory of deductive argument, whose theorems are not themselves syllogisms but statements about syllogisms such as the one with which Aristotle introduces the valid moods of the first figure in A 4,25b32–35. This metatheory would seem to include the (non-syllogistic) proofs given for the conversion rules in A 2, and also the definitions of a- and e-premises in A 1.24b28–30, to which Aristotle appeals for the claim that the first-figure moods are evidently valid, that is, perfect. As Ian Mueller points out to me, these definitions could indeed be said to explain why Barbara and Celarent are valid—which is presumably the reason why the ‘dictum de omni et nullo’ was later considered as the first principle of syllogistic. However, the underlying logic of ‘analytics’ as a metascience would have to be considerably stronger than ‘syllogistic’. (I take this point from Ian Mueller’s unpublished paper ‘Interpreting Syllogistic’. ¹⁷ For the (uncertain) date of Boethus, see P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, Berlin, 1973, 143. ¹⁸ So Moraux, 167. ¹⁹ Published in a French translation from an Arabic source by A. Badawi, La Transmission de la philosophie grecque au monde arabe, Paris 1968, 166–80. The text seems confused in several places, and I cannot decide where this is due to Themistius, to the Arabic translation, to the French translation, or to a combination of these. I think, however, that the passages I am using here are clear enough.

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respectively (170,27–171,26);²⁰ and the valid moods of those figures derive their validity from those of the first (167,40–168,5; 169,13; 176,9–10; 179,22). Obviously, Themistius—unlike Aristotle—did take the first-figure moods to be ‘principles’ of the others. Maximus had argued for the view of Boethus and other Peripatetics (171.3–5), mainly, it seems, on the basis of the two theses (1) that first-figure moods can be reduced to second- and third-figure ones just as well as the other way around (166.28–32; 169.16–17), and (2) that the second- and thirdfigure moods can be shown to be valid without recourse to the first figure (170,4–5; 176,11–12; 177,2–3). For (1) he probably appealed to An.Pr. A 45— Themistius grants the point and hence does not discuss it. In support of (2), Maximus, and before him Boethus, apparently produced various methods of proving the validity of second- and third-figure moods without reduction to the first figure. One of these, not surprisingly, was ecthesis (177, 4).²¹ The second, however, is very interesting: it consists in showing that certain moods can be seen to be valid by appeal to the sort of consideration that Aristotle himself uses in An. Pr. A4 to show that the first-figure moods are perfect. Themistius repeatedly ascribes to Maximus the principle ‘what is totally separate is also separate in all its parts’ (172,25–26; 173,34–35; 174,17–18). The proof for Festino (second figure), based on this principle, is set out as follows: ‘une partie de C est contenue en A, tout A est séparé de B, ce qui en lui est partie de C est done séparé de B’ (173,21–22). The reasoning seems to be: if A is totally separate from B (second premise), then the part of it that is a part of C (first premise) must also be separate from B. Similar proofs were apparently offered for Cesare, Camestres, and Baroco, but the text is more confused in those passages. In the case of Darapti (third figure), the reasoning seems to be: if the middle term is a part of both extremes (e.g. B and C are both said of all A), then the major will be said of a part of the minor (B will be said of a part of C, namely A); cf. 174,35–39. It appears that Boethus and his followers were elaborating upon the terminology of wholes and parts that Aristotle uses only occasionally,²² but after all quite prominently. For example, this is how Aristotle first introduces the perfect syllogisms in Barbara and Celarent, A.Pr. A 4.25b32–35: ‘When three terms are related in such a way ²⁰ This is not nonsense, as Lee thinks (Die griechische Tradition, 123), but trivial: ‘conversion’ in the sense in which it is used here is not a logical operation. It should be noted that Themistius uses ‘reduction’ only in the sense in which it is synonymous with ‘analysis’. So he says (173,41–44): ‘Aristote, quoiqu’il ne lui soit pas arrivé de réduire le quatrième mode (de la deuxième figure) à la première figure, de toute façon il le démontre au moyen de la première figure, car la réduction à l’absurde se fait dans cette figure.’ He seems to think that the imperfect syllogisms become valid only after being transformed into first-figure ones; cf. 175,18–29. ²¹ The French translation has ‘hypothèse’ here, but the Arabic text must have had a word translating ἔκθεσις, as is clear from an earlier passage, 175.34, where Themistius quoted An.Pr. A 6,28b14–15—not A 7.29b7–8, as the translator claims. There is also a method of reductio ad absurdum, ascribed to Boethus (177,7ff.), that I will not try to discuss. ²² For Boethus, see 178.11–12, where Themistius claims that he explained the expression ‘dans tout’ (ἐν ὅλῳ) in a different way from Aristotle’s.

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that the last is in the middle as a whole and the middle is or is not in the first as a whole, there will necessarily be a perfect syllogism of the extremes.’ In A1, ‘being (or not being) in something as a whole’ appears twice—among the expressions to be explained (24a13), and at the end of the chapter, where Aristotle declares that for one thing to be in another as in a whole is the same as for the second thing to be said of every of the first (24b27–29). There follows Aristotle’s explanation of the phrase ‘to be predicated of every’, and in the rest of the treatise the expression ‘in something as a whole’ occurs hardly at all, except for chapter A 4. Aristotle evidently came to prefer the locutions ‘to be predicated of every/no’ and ‘to belong to every/no’. However, the standard expressions for particular and universal premises, ἐν μέϱει and καθόλου, also show that wholes and parts must have played some role in the prehistory of syllogistic. The sentence just quoted from An.Pr. A 4 invites the idea that syllogistic premises should be interpreted in terms of wholes and parts. Aristotle himself suggests that the perfect syllogisms can be seen to be valid by reflecting upon the expressions ‘said of every/no’ (A 4,25b9–40, 26a27–28; cf. also A 14,32b40–33a5, 33a24–25). Similarly, one might suggest that the validity of syllogisms can be seen by reflecting upon the meaning of the phrases ‘in something as in a whole’ and ‘separated from something as a whole (a phrase not used by Aristotle himself, who has the rather misleading ‘not to be in something as a whole’). Since this is exactly the kind of procedure Aristotle employs to argue for perfection, one could then also claim that syllogisms recognized as valid in this way should count as perfect. This second sort of argument, then, shows why Boethus would indeed have disagreed with Aristotle’s claim that only the first-figure moods are perfect. Thesis (2), I think is correct—the validity of second- and third-figure moods can be established independently of reduction to the first figure, and Boethus was right in claiming that all valid moods are perfect, or at least that there are more perfect moods than the four that Aristotle had singled out.²³ Aristotle’s reasons for declaring the four first-figure moods to be perfect may have been stronger than one realizes at first sight,²⁴ but he certainly did not state them very clearly. One might suspect, indeed, that he found it rather convenient to have all perfect syllogisms assembled in one and the same figure and did not bother to look further. For a modern reader, Boethus’s and Maximus’s principles about wholes and parts are reminiscent of Euler diagrams,²⁵ which can be used precisely to make the validity of certain inferences evident. It is no accident, for example, that ²³ Themistius suggests in one passage (172,8–10) that Boethus did not claim perfection for all the moods of the second and third figures. Given that Boethus used several methods of proof, including ecthesis and reductio ad absurdum, I am inclined to think that this is correct. To show that the validity of all syllogistic moods can be established without reduction to the first figure is not the same as showing that they are all perfect, though Boethus’s opponents may have thought so, and Maximus apparently did make the stronger claim. ²⁴ See Patzig, Die aristotelische Syllogistik, ch. 3. ²⁵ See Lee, Die griechische Tradition, 129, n. 20.

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Themistius complains that on Maximus’s principles the moods Celarent, Cesare, and Camestres would seem to coincide (171,38–172.8): the corresponding Euler diagrams would be the same. If such methods count as establishing validity, reduction to the first figure will not be needed for the purpose. Now, Euler diagrams might not be considered as proofs,²⁶ precisely because they are not deductions. Yet they could surely be used to demonstrate the validity of syllogisms much in the way in which truth-tables are used in present-day propositional logic. To show that most or all syllogistic moods can be seen to be valid by Euler diagrams, or by reflecting upon the meaning of the logical constants used in syllogistic premises, should be sufficient to establish that they are not dependent on first-figure syllogisms for their validity. In this sense, they do not need demonstration. Now, if more than the four moods chosen by Aristotle count as perfect, then one has to admit that the choice of one set of syllogisms rather than another as primitive is, to some extent, arbitrary. But this does not mean that there is no point in developing a deductive system to exhibit the logical—as opposed to epistemological—relations between syllogistic moods. By contrast, the result of proving validity piecemeal, as it were, using different methods for different cases, will not be a deductive system. Themistius is right to complain that Maximus’s and Boethus’s procedure lacks generality (173,35–38; 177,5–7). Ammonius’s and Themistius’s reports are not full enough to allow us to decide whether Boethus’s main aim was just to refute the misunderstandings of those who claimed that the first-figure moods were the ‘cause and origin’ of all others, or whether he set out to criticize Aristotle. If it was the second, Boethus may have failed to see the point that reduction to the first figure is a method not only of proving validity, but also of unifying syllogistic in a way that his methods would not achieve. However that may be, it seems obvious that the emperor Julian was right to decide the dispute between Maximus and Themistius in favour of Maximus (Ammonius 31,18–22). As we saw, all the major Neoplatonists agreed with him. Unfortunately, the arguments of Boethus and his followers seem to have led to the view that reduction to the first figure is unimportant, since it is not indispensable as a method of proving validity. Perhaps this was the main reason why Aristotle’s own deductive system fell into neglect and was eventually replaced by the notorious rules of the syllogism.²⁷

²⁶ It should be noted, however, that Aristotle himself occasionally refers to the appeal to the meaning of ‘predicated of every’ as a proof (ἀπόδειξις, A 14.33a27 and A 9.30b2, where the words ‘the proof is the same’ presumably mean that a syllogism is perfect). ²⁷ I am grateful to the participants in the Berlin conference held in honour of Günther Patzig on 25 July 1991 for objections and advice. Special thanks are due to Ian Mueller for his detailed comments on the chapter and for letting me read his unpublished article ‘Interpreting Syllogistic’.

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5 Aristotle and the Uses of Logic This chapter argues that although Aristotle was clearly interested in logical theory, he did not consider his syllogistic as a science in its own right. He saw it as part of a general theory of argument, optimistically expecting it to cover the entire field of valid deductive argument. Such a theory would provide not only scientists, but also speakers in political debates or in court as well as philosophers, with methods of constructing proofs, refuting arguments, and discovering fallacies. This is illustrated by passages from the Prior Analytics beyond the exposition of the formal system of syllogistic.

Aristotle, as we all know, invented formal logic. Over the last fifty years or so, scholars have learned to recognize that what he presented in the first few chapters of the Prior Analytics (An.Pr.) is the real thing—a system of formal logic, whether or not the inspiration for the discovery of the syllogism had anything to do with Platonic division. We no longer hear about the magical force of the middle term or the alleged demonstrative power of first figure syllogisms as opposed to, say, the superficial subtleties of Stoic logic. Although Aristotle’s syllogistic covers only a small part of the field of modern mathematical logic, what he offered contained all the elements of a formal deductive system. He introduces the system of syllogistic moods by defining its technical terms, stating and justifying the primitive rules, and then providing formally correct proofs of the derivative rules. In other words, he developed a complete system of natural deduction, limited indeed by the assumption that all propositions must be simple subject–predicate sentences, but otherwise flawless.¹ Aristotle was rightly proud of his discovery, and so it is not surprising that he greatly overestimated its power, apparently thinking that syllogistic would be sufficient to represent the deductive structure of demonstrative sciences, including geometry or mathematics in general. It is only natural that the modern logicians who vindicated Aristotle’s position in the history of their subject should have gone on to find Aristotle also pursuing other interests of his modern successors, such as proof theory and other parts of logical theory. For

¹ This summarizes the conclusion of J. Corcoran, ‘Aristotle’s Natural Deduction System’, in J. Corcoran (ed.), Ancient Logic and Its Modern Interpretations, Dordrecht 1974, 122–3.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0005

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example, Jonathan Lear in his Aristotle and Logical Theory² sets out to show that Aristotle was ‘not only the father of logic, but also the (grand)father of metalogic’ (preface p. 1), and an article by Robin Smith describes ‘Aristotle as Proof Theorist’.³ I do not wish to deny that these subjects can be found in the Analytics, but it seems to me that some of his more recent commentators have been inclined to ascribe to Aristotle an interest in the formal theory of deduction independent of the wider purposes of the Analytics, thus painting him as more of a logician in the modern sense than he probably was. Just as there was a dispute in late antiquity over whether logic was a part or merely an instrument of philosophy,⁴ so there is some uneasiness today about whether logic properly belongs to philosophy or not. Logic has developed into a formidable technical discipline that may perhaps better be seen as a branch of mathematics—certainly one needs to be a trained mathematician to do any significant work in the field. But most philosophy departments still require their students to take at least a course in elementary logic. Even if the connection between informal argument and formal logic has become harder to see, it is still the case that we need a clear understanding of such notions as consistency, inference, and validity; and though philosophical arguments usually are not deductive proofs, they had better not be logical fallacies. Furthermore, formalization can often help us to clarify distinctions that are hard to detect in ordinary language, even if we do not believe that formalized languages are in some way better or more scientific than natural ones. So, a part of logic at least continues to be an instrument of philosophy—or rather of any discipline that makes use of reasoning and argument. Aristotle was interested both in logic as a theory and in its more humdrum uses in philosophical or indeed everyday argument, and more than half of the text of the An.Pr. is concerned with the uses of logic in argument rather than with either the exposition of a formal system or what we would call logical theory. This is what one should expect, since Aristotle invented formal logic for the purposes of his general theory of argument, not just as a formal theory of deductive proof or an ‘underlying logic’⁵ for demonstrative science. In order to show how the perspective of a general theory of argument differs from that of logical theory, I will argue that although syllogistic can be shown to be complete in the modern logician’s sense, it was not considered by its author to be complete in the sense relevant to his project. A deduction system is complete in

² J. Lear, Aristotle and Logical Theory, Cambridge 1980, 1. ³ R. Smith, ‘Aristotle as Proof Theorist’, Philosophia Naturalis 21,1984, 590–7. ⁴ See, for example, Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum I Commentarium, ed. M. Wallies (CAG 2.1, Berlin 1883), 1,1–6,12, and the discussion of the debate by T.-S. Lee, ‘Die griechische Tradition der aristotelischen Syllogistik in der Spätantike’, Hypomnemata 79, 1984, 44–54. ⁵ So Corcoran, loc. cit. n. 1, 98.

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the modern sense if it allows one to deduce all (and only) the valid formulae. What Aristotle had in mind when he set out to show that ‘every deductive argument (συλλογισμός) . . . is in one of the (syllogistic) figures’ (A 23,40b20–22) was the claim that every valid deductive argument can be formulated as one or more syllogisms in the narrow sense. This, as Aristotle recognized, is not the case (A 44,50b2–3). However, I will also argue that he thought syllogistic captured at least a necessary component of every valid deductive argument, and perhaps that it was indeed sufficient as an account of the logical form of scientific demonstration. Finally, I will illustrate the role of formal syllogistic in the theory of argument by a few examples from the second half of An.Pr. A and from book B.

I The system of syllogisms is introduced in An.Pr. A 4 (25b28–31; cf. A 1,24a22– b15) as part of a general theory of valid deductive argument, more general than the theory of scientific proof, which is set out in the Posterior Analytics (An.Po.). Formal logic is only a part of such a general theory, and that is why, after presenting the system of syllogisms as an account of the valid forms of deductive argument, Aristotle goes on to discuss heuristics—how to find premises for theses that one wants to prove—and what he calls analysis, that is, how to discover the syllogistic structure of premises and terms in arguments formulated in ordinary language (cp. A 32,46b38–47a2). The title of the whole work, Ἀναλυτικά, refers to this part of the treatise, not the formal theory set out in its opening chapters. Much of book B can be seen as concerned with argumentative strategies and the detection of fallacies, and its last five chapters contain the sketch of a theory of rhetorical argument. So, although the introductory lines of the An.Pr. describe the treatise as a preliminary to the treatment of demonstrative science, the general theory developed here should serve the practitioner of dialectic and rhetoric as well as the scientist or philosopher. In the context of such a general theory, the system developed in A 1–22 is only a beginning, not the complete account of valid deductive argument that Aristotle in his more optimistic moments claims to have found, and that too many of his later followers have taken it to be. We do not have to think that Aristotle would have agreed with the arguments Alexander of Aphrodisias presents for not pursuing the subject of valid inference for its own sake.⁶ But it may be that Aristotle developed his formal theory only to the extent that he thought he needed it for his account of demonstration, leaving many loose ends that seem to have been picked up by his students Theophrastus and Eudemus. That may be the reason why, for example, ⁶ Alexander argues that the study of inferences that cannot be used as arguments is useless, 2,33–4,29.

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he did work out a system of modal syllogistic, but did not try to offer a formal account of the second type of valid deductive argument he recognizes in chapter A23—what he calls ‘argument (syllogism) based on a hypothesis’—although he saw that it was not covered by the system of the syllogistic figures. The point that Aristotle himself considered his formal logic as incomplete may have been obscured by the fact that he actually purports to offer a completeness proof, and that the first half of this proof can be read as a completeness proof in the modern technical sense.⁷ In order to show in what sense formal syllogistic was not complete, then, I have to draw attention to some differences between the system of syllogisms as described and developed by Aristotle in An.Pr. A 1–7 and its best modern models. I take it to be generally agreed by now that formal syllogistic is best represented as a system of natural deduction rather than an axiomatized theory. Aristotle explicitly introduces all the elements of such a system, and several scholars have shown that within its limits it is complete—that is, allows one to deduce all and only the valid formulae.⁸ Nonetheless, I think it is misleading to assume that Aristotle regarded formal syllogistic as a system of deductive inference. Although it would be correct to say that he uses such a system, it is not what he is talking about when he sets out to prove completeness, or when he shows, in A 7, that all syllogistic moods can be reduced to the two universal moods of the first figure, rather than the four he had introduced as perfect in A 4. This is so because Aristotle is focusing on the notion of valid argument, not logical consequence or valid inference in general. His definition of ‘syllogism’ (A 1,24b18–20) stipulates that a syllogism must have at least two premises, and that the conclusion must not only follow, but also be different from the premises. This shows, I think, that he thought of syllogisms as arguments or argument-forms, not just valid deductions or inferences. The notion of a valid deductive argument may be hard to define precisely, but it is clear that it is narrower than the notion of a valid deduction. For example, any proposition can be validly deduced from itself, but no one would wish to present an inference of p from p as an argument. When Aristotle says, as he does several times (e.g. A 15,34a17–18; A 23,40b35; B 2,53b18–20), that nothing follows of necessity from a single proposition, he should not be taken to deny that any proposition implies itself, or to maintain that nothing can be inferred from a single premise. After all, in A 2 he actually proves the validity of four types of single-premise inference—the conversion rules he is going to use in his proofs in chapters A 5 and A 6. But he apparently thought that such inferences could not be used as arguments because their conclusions would not state

⁷ See T. Smiley, ‘Aristotle’s Completeness Proof ’, Ancient Philosophy 14, 1994, 25–38. ⁸ See, for example, J. Corcoran, ‘Completeness of an Ancient Logic’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 37, 1972, 696–702; P. Thom, The Syllogism, Munich 1981, 181–92; R. Smith, ‘Completeness of an Ecthetic Syllogistic’, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 24, 1983, 224–32.

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anything different from their premises (cp. An.Po. A 3,73a7–11), and hence they would be question-begging.⁹ The syllogistic moods Barbara and Celarent have a different status, and when it comes to showing that the two particular moods of the first figure can be reduced to them, Aristotle does not mention any of the other rules of his system, but speaks as though all syllogistic moods could be derived from Barbara and Celarent alone. So he is not trying to establish the minimal number of primitive rules of inference for the system he uses, but the number of primitive forms of argument presupposed by it. What he thought about the deduction rules—conversion, reductio, ecthesis—we do not know, since he never discusses their status. Again, the first half of the completeness proof in A 23 takes the form of showing that any direct deductive argument with two or more syllogistic premises can be transformed into a chain of two‑premise syllogisms which will, therefore, consist entirely of arguments in one of the syllogistic figures. This can be read as a completeness proof in the modern sense, but it is actually only one half of Aristotle’s own purported proof. The second half sets out to show that all arguments ‘based on a hypothesis’, and most importantly all reductio-arguments, will also fall into the figures; and this part is a failure.¹⁰ Aristotle first offers an analysis of hypothetical arguments according to which such arguments consist of a syllogistic deduction plus one more step, which he describes as ‘based on a hypothesis’. This is the step that distinguishes hypothetical arguments from normal direct syllogisms. In the reductio‑arguments discussed almost exclusively in A 23, the step would appear to be the move from ‘p implies a falsehood’ to ‘p is false’, and hence to the assertion of not-p. In the direct hypothetical arguments analysed in A 44, the step seems to be, in modern parlance, an application of the rule of modus ponens. In any case, the hypothetical arguments are clearly not complete without the last step that leads to the conclusion, and so it is astonishing to see Aristotle assert, at the end of A 23, that these arguments too will be in one of the figures. The most he can say at this point—and he has not proved that either—is that such arguments must contain a syllogism in one of the figures. And at the end of A 44 he does acknowledge that this type of argument cannot be analysed as a syllogism in the narrow sense. With regard to the modern formal models of syllogistic, this should show that although the natural deduction system Aristotle uses can indeed be shown to be complete, Aristotle’s syllogistic as a formal theory of valid deductive argument is not complete, and Aristotle did not think it was. The divergence between Aristotle and his modern commentators arises, I think, because they treat reductio as a deduction‑rule, the validity of which need not be proved within the system.

⁹ For this point, see M. Frede, ‘Stoic vs. Aristotelian Syllogistic’ [1974] in his Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Hackett,Minneapolis 1987, esp. 114–15. ¹⁰ I have argued in detail for the account of hypothetical argument I presuppose here in ‘Aristoteles über Syllogismen “aufgrund einer Hypothese” ‘, Hermes 107, 1979, 33–50; chapter 1 in this volume.

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Aristotle so uses it himself in chapters A 2, A 5 and A 6, but in A 23 he considers reductio as a distinct type of argument, and he is right in pointing out that it is not covered by the syllogistic moods. This is not a minor omission in Aristotle’s projected theory. For it appears from A 44 that the class of hypothetical arguments is supposed to contain most, if not all, of the argument-forms treated in the Topics, and Aristotle emphasizes that these need to be investigated and clearly distinguished (50a39–40). But it seems that he left this task to his students. Now, the explicit recognition that hypothetical argument is not syllogistic comes much later than the completeness proof in A 23, and so one might be tempted to fall back on a developmental explanation, saying that Aristotle believed what he claims in A 23 and came to realize only later that hypothetical argument will not fit into the figures. But speculation about chronology should obviously be a last resort, and it would seem particularly implausible in this case. The Analytics are among the works that Aristotle himself cites by their traditional title, and though they are obviously not a polished treatise and do seem to contain sections (such as modal syllogistic) that were inserted into already existing drafts, there is good reason to think that it was Aristotle himself who put together the materials collected in the four books. Moreover, the argument of A 23 actually shows that hypothetical arguments are not strictly speaking in the figures. Hence it seems more plausible to suppose that Aristotle was content with the weaker claim that every proof or every valid deductive argument must at least contain a syllogistic deduction. If this were true, then anyone who tried to produce a formally valid argument would need to rely on the syllogistic moods, even if the argument consisted of a hypothetical step in addition to the syllogism. But why did Aristotle think that hypothetical arguments had to contain a syllogism in the narrow sense? This assumption appears unargued in both chapters A 23 and A 44, and that in spite of the fact that the example Aristotle gives in A 44 might actually be taken to show just the opposite. I think that the reason why Aristotle still thought he did not have to argue for his claim has to do with his conception of syllogistic necessity: he thought that the necessity that forces one to accept the conclusion of a hypothetical argument depends upon the necessity of the preceding syllogism. Aristotle did not have the notion of a propositionally complex sentence or proposition. He thought that one should in principle be able to reformulate any given valid argument as a series of categorical propositions in which ‘one thing is said of one thing’. Simple sentences are not contrasted with complex ones formed by logical connectives, such as conjunctions, conditionals etc., but with sentences that express more than one categorical predication. For Aristotle, what we would call a conjunction appears to be a set of two propositions, and similarly for the other complex sentence-forms. An Aristotelian syllogism in one of the figures consists of at least two categorical premises and a categorical conclusion which is said to result of necessity because what is asserted in the premises is (supposed to

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be) the case (τῷ ταῦτα εἶναι, 24b20). But the premises assert that some one thing holds or does not hold of all or some of some other thing, and so the conclusion will follow necessarily only if the term-relations asserted to hold in the premises necessitate the term-relation asserted in the conclusion. In a hypothetical argument, on the other hand, it will indeed be necessary to accept the conclusion, but not because one has asserted some premises such that the term-relations asserted necessitate the term-relation in the conclusion. The conclusion is accepted because its contradictory has been shown to be false or because some other proposition has been proved and one has agreed beforehand to accept a proof for that proposition in lieu of a proof for the conclusion. Aristotle contrasts the two sorts of necessity in A 44 by saying that ‘it is necessary to agree [sc. to the conclusion]; not on the basis of (ἐκ) a syllogism, however, but on the basis of a hypothesis’ (50a25–26).¹¹ An anachronistic way of describing the difference would be to say that in the strictly syllogistic case, the inference is justified by the term-relations asserted in the premises, while in the case of hypothetical argument it is justified only by the (assumed) relations between the truth-values of the propositions involved. Aristotle did not realize that truth-value relations could in fact be asserted in complex propositions such as conditionals, and so he thought that the conclusion of a hypothetical argument, though validly established, had not been reached in the same way as the conclusion of a proper syllogism. This does not yet show, of course, why a hypothetical argument would have to contain a syllogism, but one can see why Aristotle would have thought so from looking at his description of the two types of hypothetical argument he recognizes. One type is described as follows: One begins with an agreement to the effect that a proof for a proposition q will be accepted in lieu of a proof for another proposition p, the original demonstrandum. One then produces a proof for q, and because of the initial agreement, the interlocutor will have to agree that p has been proved as well. An example of this type of argument—no doubt the paradigm case that accounts for the label ‘hypothetical’—would be Socrates’ argument ‘from a hypothesis’ in the Meno. Socrates and Meno agree that if they can show that virtue is knowledge, they will have shown that virtue can be taught. Socrates then sets out to find a proof for the thesis that virtue is knowledge, and it is clear that if he had found such a proof, he and Meno would have been satisfied that virtue is indeed teachable. Aristotle calls the proposition for which a proof is to be offered the ‘substitute’ (μεταλαμβανόμενον)—the thesis that virtue is knowledge is substituted, as it were, for the original demonstrandum—and he claims that it must be proved by a direct syllogism. Now, unfortunately his example in A 44 does not ¹¹ The same point is made in A 23 ,41a24–25: ‘For all those who come to a conclusion through an impossibility deduce (συλλογίζονται) the falsehood, but prove (δεικνύουσι) the original thing from an assumption’ (Robin Smith’s translation); cp. also 41a32–34.

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bear him out, for he clearly envisages an indirect proof for the substituted thesis, as the ancient commentators already point out (cp. Al.Aphr. 387,1–11). But this will not invalidate his general claim that every valid deductive argument must contain a syllogism if it can be shown that every reductio-argument contains a syllogism; so we must look at the other type of hypothetical argument. A reductio is an argument in which one derives a falsehood or absurdity from the contradictory of the demonstrandum, and then concludes that the demonstrandum must be true because its contradictory has been shown to be false. In order to derive the absurdity, one cannot use another indirect argument, since presumably nothing absurd can be derived from the thesis to be proved. Given that all premises are assumed to be categorical, it would seem that the absurdity can only be deduced by a categorical syllogism, as Aristotle maintains. For since Aristotle does not recognize the possibility of a direct modus ponens— argument, he cannot consider the option of deriving either the so-called substitute proposition or the falsehood in a reductio from a conditional together with the proposition that forms the antecedent. The necessity involved in hypothetical argument thus seems to be parasitic upon syllogistic necessity in the narrow sense, because the final step can only be reached if a proof has been given, either for the falsity of the contradictory or for the substitute thesis, and that proof cannot itself be hypothetical, on pains of a regress. So much for Aristotle’s claim that every valid deductive argument must contain at least one syllogism. It would assure him that he had established the indispensable core of a general theory of argument, and although he could not in fact prove the ambitious thesis of A 23, the first half of his argument there—the completeness-proof for direct syllogistic deductions—retained its importance as a proof that the core theory was indeed complete. Furthermore, he may have thought that this part would provide all that was needed for scientific demonstration, even if it did not adequately cover the wider field of dialectical argument, or indeed scientific reasoning in general, because demonstration in the strict sense would not have to rely upon hypothetical argument. Though both forms of hypothetical argument recognized by Aristotle may have been taken over by the philosophers from Greek mathematics,¹² Aristotle may have thought that they belonged to a heuristic or preliminary stage of scientific investigations. Plato’s Socrates (Meno 86E–87A) claims to have learned the hypothetical method of reasoning from the mathematicians, although the geometrical example he uses to explain the method is notoriously much harder to understand than the dialectical procedure it allegedly serves to illustrate. It seems clear, however, that the example does not illustrate a method of proof, but a heuristic strategy. The Meno’s argument about virtue and knowledge ¹² I am indebted to Henry Mendell for reminding me of this point, and driving it home with examples.

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appears, together with another geometrical example (not Plato’s), in An.Pr. B 25, the chapter dealing with ‘leading away’ (ἀπαγωγή). This procedure clearly serves a heuristic purpose, namely to ‘lead away’ from a given problem that appears for the moment intractable to another one that can be more easily solved. Aristotle describes the Meno example as follows: ‘ . . . let A be teachable, B stand for science, and C justice. That science is teachable, then, is obvious, but it is unclear whether virtue is a science. If, therefore, BC is equally convincing as AC, or more so, it is a leading away . . . ’ (69a24–27, tr. R. Smith). It seems that this will bring us ‘closer to scientific understanding’ (69a23–24) because it shows us that if we can find a proof for the minor premise (BaC), then we will have a (syllogistic) proof for the desired conclusion, ‘virtue is teachable’ (AaC). It is interesting to note that the argument considered here is not ‘hypothetical’ in the sense of A 23 or A 44; the additional assumption is simply the minor premise in a regular syllogism. What was earlier described as a hypothesis or agreement—‘If (we can prove that) virtue is knowledge, then (we have shown that) virtue is teachable’—turns out to link the minor premise and conclusion of a proper syllogism. The hypothesis, then, was by no means arbitrarily chosen, and the example invites the consideration that in the direct case, at least, one might try to eliminate the need for an agreement by finding an additional premise that will turn the hypothesis into a syllogism. Thus direct hypothetical argument might be thought to figure in scientific reasoning only as a preliminary to the discovery of syllogistic proof. That still leaves indirect argument, and Aristotle obviously knew that this was in fact quite common in Greek mathematics—his own favourite example of a reductio-argument is the proof for the incommensurability of the diagonal with the side of a square. Nevertheless, he maintains in several places (A 29,45a23–28; B 1,63b12–16) that any indirect argument can be replaced by a direct one, so that reductio could in principle be dispensed with. The argument for this claim, as far as I can see, comes from his treatment of syllogism ‘through an impossibility’ (διὰ τοῦ άδυνάτου συλλογισμός) in B 11–14.¹³ There he describes indirect argument as an argumentative strategy, to be employed if an opponent is not willing to accept a premise one needs to derive the conclusion one is aiming at. An indirect argument, Aristotle explains in B 14 (62b29–31), is one in which one assumes what one wants to refute and leads on from there to an agreed falsehood. So if the opponent will not agree to p, you ask him to accept its contradictory—he can hardly refuse to do that if he has rejected the original proposition (cp. B 11,62a15–17)—and then try to derive an obvious falsehood from this assumption together with some other, already accepted premise. This will serve to show that the contradictory of the premise you tried to introduce must be false, and hence allow you to use the desired premise after all. In the simple cases ¹³ In An.Po. A 26,87a1–17 he uses the distinction between ‘deictic’ and ‘per impossibile’—syllogisms discussed in these chapters to characterize the difference between direct and indirect proofs in general.

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Aristotle considers in B 11–14, it is also true that the desired proposition could have been derived from the contradictory of the ‘obvious falsehood’ together with the other accepted premise, and so Aristotle concludes that the same terms can (always) be used to construct either a direct or an indirect argument (B 14,62b38–40; 63b12–13). When one tries to discover a scientific proof, as opposed to refuting an opponent in a dialectical debate, one will presumably not have to resort to such stratagems, and hence indirect proof will be dispensable. Since the difference between direct and indirect argument thus seems to be merely strategic, and the same terms will be used in both cases, Aristotle thinks that the heuristic devices used for constructing direct syllogistic deductions will be sufficient to cover indirect argument as well. The hitch is, of course, that not every indirect argument will be as simple as the ones Aristotle analyses in B 11–14. The examples he has in mind there probably do not come from mathematics, but from the indirect proofs he himself had offered in A 5 and A 6, where the ‘impossibility’ arises in each case because the contradictory of one of the assumed premises has been derived from the ‘hypothesis’ (i.e. the contradictory of the conclusion that follows from the premises). It is probably significant that Aristotle does not seem to distinguish between deriving an ‘obvious falsehood’, that is, a patently absurd but not logically false proposition, and deriving a contradiction. Only belatedly, in B 15, does he acknowledge that one might need more than one syllogism to derive a contradiction (64b17–27)—namely in those cases where one has not assumed the contradictory of the derived proposition in advance. But it is not clear that this would have led him to revise his view about the dispensability of indirect proof. He knew that such proofs were common in mathematics, and hence he found it important to show that his theory could deal with them, but he probably did not try to derive, for example, the incommensurability theorem from the premise ‘no number is both odd and even’ together with other mathematical truths. Aristotle may also have thought that in a truly scientific system of demonstrations, indirect proofs should be replaced by direct ones. He thought that direct arguments were preferable to indirect ones for epistemological reasons: as he points out in An.Po. A 26 (87a20–30), when one derives a falsehood in an indirect argument, the premises of the syllogistic deduction one uses will not state the facts on which one’s eventual conclusion is based, and hence will not be ‘prior to the conclusion’ in the way required for demonstration.¹⁴ Only when the argument has been transformed into a direct syllogism which uses the contradictory of the ‘obvious falsehood’ as a premise will the correct order of epistemological priority be restored. I suspect that what Aristotle disliked about indirect proofs was that they do not do what an Aristotelian demonstration is supposed to do, namely explain why the conclusion must be true. The incommensurability-proof does ¹⁴ For my interpretation of this difficult and corrupt passage, see Striker, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 31, 1977, 317–18.

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show that the diagonal in a square cannot be commensurable with the side, but one can hardly say that it explains or states a reason why the diagonal must be incommensurable, least of all by providing an appropriate middle term. So perhaps Aristotle hoped that, in principle at least, demonstration could proceed without indirect proof.¹⁵ However that may be, even if formal syllogistic did not provide the comprehensive theory Aristotle had promised at the beginning of A 4, the system of the figures would be the foundation of all valid deductive arguments, whether scientific or not, and its applications in heuristics and analysis would be as important for dialectic or rhetoric as for science or philosophy. In the rest of the An.Pr., after A 26 and before he turns to his official treatment of demonstration, Aristotle is concerned to show how formal syllogistic should be used to construct or to criticize arguments, and his main focus appears to be on dialectic. I will now briefly illustrate these uses of logic by a few examples.

II In An.Pr. A 27–31, Aristotle describes an ingenious method for finding premises for any given categorical conclusion. Once one has the complete list of valid syllogistic moods provided in A 4–6, one will no longer have to collect and memorize long lists of propositions about various fields, as Aristotle had recommended in the Topics. Instead, one can construct lists of terms that either follow, or are followed by, a given term. The thesis under discussion—the πρόβλημα, as Aristotle calls it here (A 28, 44a37), using the terminology of the Topics—will have to contain two terms; hence by looking for terms that occur in the lists for both of the requisite terms, one will be able to find an appropriate middle term to construct one’s syllogism. Alexander of Aphrodisias (301,12ff.) illustrates the procedure by a delightful example: lists of terms one can use to argue that pleasure is or is not a good, as the occasion demands. Aristotle’s system is more efficient and economical than Platonic division, which is therefore demoted to ‘a small part’ of heuristics in A 31 (46a31); and Aristotle insists that his method is the only one guaranteed to locate all the premises that can be used to construct valid

¹⁵ As Robert Bolton points out to me, at Top. 8.2.157b34–158a2, Aristotle seems to say the opposite, namely that indirect proofs are just as good as direct ones in a scientific context, but that they should be avoided in a dialectical debate. His reason is that the opponent might refuse to acknowledge the ‘impossibility’ unless the falsehood is overwhelmingly evident, and hence also refuse to accept the desired conclusion. This indicates, I think, that the passage was probably written before Aristotle had developed the formal analysis of reductio-arguments that he offers in An.Pr. A 23; for even a debater could hardly deny the ‘impossibility’ of an explicit contradiction. On the other hand, Aristotle was well aware that indirect proofs were common in science (that is, in mathematics)—his own preference for direct demonstrations is based on epistemological considerations, not on reasons of formal validity.

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syllogisms (A 29,45b36–46a2). At the same time, it may also show, depending on the exhaustiveness of the lists, where a syllogism cannot be found. Another advantage, not emphasized by Aristotle himself, is that it is arguably more general in its scope¹⁶ and certainly much easier to use than the system of the predicables that Aristotle had used to organize his materials in the Topics. It is hard to imagine an orator holding forth about questions of genus, species, and definition, while it is clear that she would be interested in the quantity or quality of her premises—whether some predicate is or is not true of some or all members of a given class. Syllogistic shows that the formal validity of an argument can be established or checked regardless of the specific type of predication that occurs in its premises and conclusion.¹⁷ Hence special conditions regarding the different types of predication can be treated separately from a general account of deductive validity. This certainly simplifies the task of the orator, who can now just study the system of the syllogistic moods (she might, indeed, memorize them with the help of mnemonic verses, as the medievals did) instead of delving into the arcane metaphysical questions that fill so many pages of the Topics. It is not surprising that Aristotle seems to replace references to dialectic as a general theory of syllogisms by references to the Analytics in the chapters that deal with argument in the Rhetoric:¹⁸ Syllogistic provides all that the orator needs in order to construct valid arguments; she does not have to study up on the predicables. This does not mean that the orator will have to learn about scientific proof instead of dialectical argument, of course. The syllogistic figures will have to be part of the equipment of the dialectician as well; and given that the Analytics do not offer a detailed account of hypothetical argument, the Topics may still be needed as a handbook for the orator. What is missing from the Analytics is an account of the so-called ‘general’ ¹⁶ More general: In the Topics (1.4,101b13–25) Aristotle maintains that all subject–predicate propositions will contain one of the four types of predication he has distinguished. This claim is actually the basis of a kind of completeness‑proof in Top. 1.8,103b2–19. However, given term‑conversion, syllogistic will also cover non‑standard cases of predication such as predication per accidens (e.g. ‘The white is a log’, An.Po. A 22,83a5, a14–17), and An.Pr. A 36 may indicate that Aristotle thought it could deal with propositions that might not fit into the schema of the predicables. ¹⁷ Contrast Top. 1.6,102b27–103a5, where Aristotle acknowledges that there might be considerable overlap in the treatment of arguments according to the predicables, but insists that one should not try to find one general method to apply to all forms of proposition. Such a thing would not only be hard to find, but altogether imprecise (ἀσαφής) and of little use for the present enterprise (102b36–38). ¹⁸ In Rhet. A 2,1356a25–27, Aristotle says that rhetoric is an offshoot of dialectic and political science, because the orator must be able to construct arguments and must also have some knowledge of character and the passions. The dialectician has been mentioned just before (1356a22; cp. also 1355b16–17) as the person who knows how to produce deductive arguments (συλλογίσαθαι δυνάμενος). In A 4,1359b8–12, explicitly referring back to his earlier remark, Aristotle describes rhetoric as consisting of ‘the science of analytics’ (ἀναλυτικὴ ἐπιστήμη) and ethics (ἣ περὶ τὰ ἤθη). He continues: ‘and it resembles partly dialectic, partly sophistical argument.’ This passage shows, I think, that knowledge of the (Prior) Analytics is now supposed to be common to dialectic and to rhetoric. Both the dialectician and the orator must know the syllogistic moods in order to construct and criticize arguments. Rhetoric still resembles dialectic, and indeed sophistry, rather than demonstrative science, in that its premises are ἔνδοξα, plausible or generally accepted rather than necessarily true. But general expertise about syllogisms now belongs to ‘the science of analytics’, not dialectic.

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or subject-neutral topoi. In the framework of the classification of argument-forms Aristotle uses in An.Pr. A 23, these should probably be described as general types of ‘hypothesis’ that one might expect one’s interlocutor or one’s audience to agree to.¹⁹ (An example might be: ‘what holds of one of two similar things, will hold of the other also’.) The sketch of a formal treatment of arguments concerning things preferable to their opposites in An.Pr. B 22 may show that Aristotle at some point planned to work out a formal theory of such arguments, but he evidently did not get around to this project. However, it invites the suggestion that a revised handbook for dialecticians might have paid less attention to the predicables than the Topics does. The Topics, as we have it, is largely a handbook for Academic dialecticians; a manual based on the syllogistic moods, by contrast, could equally well have been used by people who had no special interest in genus, definition, or proprium. Hence the method of heuristics introduced in An.Pr. A 27–31 is at least as important for dialectic and rhetoric as for the theory of scientific proof. In fact, although Aristotle does briefly discuss the use of his method in the context of science in A 30, it seems rather obvious to me that lists of terms are more likely to be used by a dialectician than by a scientist. A science, as Aristotle says (46a22–28), will have to begin by assembling, as completely as possible, the observed facts about its subject-matter. These will have to form most of the premises and conclusions of its demonstrations, and at this stage it may be helpful to look for common terms in order to find out what can or cannot be derived from what. But as the An.Po. shows, this will hardly be enough to establish, for example, the correctness of a proposed definition, or the claim that a thing’s being F is to be explained by its being G rather than the other way around. Alexander was right, I think, to illustrate the use of heuristics by an example from the dialectician’s repertoire. The next section of An.Pr. A 32–46, deals with ‘analysis’—that is, the question of how to reduce given arguments to syllogistic form. Aristotle declares at the beginning (47a5–8) that his previous claims about the universal scope of the syllogistic figures will be confirmed if it can be shown that it is indeed possible so to analyse any given argument. This is no doubt correct, but unfortunately the following chapters do not in fact confirm Aristotle’s optimism. Since it is already clear how one has to deal with explicitly categorical propositions, this section concentrates on difficult or recalcitrant cases—examples of obviously valid ¹⁹ I realize that this suggestion needs more argument than I can give it here, and it may be based on the commentators more than on Aristotle’s explicit remarks. The argument would be roughly this: Rhet. A 2 (1358a10–17) decribes the ‘common topoi’ as being subject-neutral, as opposed to the socalled εἴδη, which seem to be plausible premises concerning the fields that rhetoric is supposed to deal with, for example, virtue, good and evil, pleasure etc. The examples given for common topoi tend to coincide with the ones that Alexander of Aphrodisias cites for hypothetical arguments (e.g. 265,30ff.) It might be that the common topoi are schemata from which one could derive appropriate ‘hypotheses’, for example (assuming that A and B are similar) ‘If A is F, then B is F also’. See Striker, op.cit. fn.10, chapter 1 in this volume.

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arguments that are not syllogistic in form, or fallacies that appear to be formally valid syllogisms but are not really so because, as Aristotle wants to maintain, their premises have not been correctly analysed. Aristotle never shows any serious doubt about the adequacy of the syllogistic moods to capture the form of all valid arguments, but he often emphasizes the difficulty of uncovering the proper structure, and the need for more detailed investigations. From a modern point of view, several of these chapters could almost be read as collections of counterexamples to demonstrate the inadequacy of syllogistic. But Aristotle evidently did not see things this way. Chapter A 36 may show most clearly why he was so confident: There he declares that the technical term ὑπάρχειν (belonging) covers much more than straightforward cases of predication. It appears that his method of analysis allows him to treat just about any sort of proposition as a categorical premise.²⁰ In other words, he thinks that he knows what the ‘logical form’ of an argument has to be, and does not consider formalization, as modern logicians might, as a way of exploring or discovering different logical structures. The shortcomings of syllogistic as a way of representing complicated arguments are too well known to need spelling out in detail. With respect to the possible usefulness of syllogistic, however, it seems more important to emphasize that, in spite of the difficulties so candidly discussed by Aristotle himself, analysis or reduction to syllogistic form can be very helpful in cases where the form of the premises presents no problem. This comes out most clearly, perhaps, in the discussion of rhetorical arguments from ‘signs’ (B 27) and the Rhetoric’s brief treatment of λύσις—dissecting an opponent’s arguments (Rhet. B 25)—which refers back to the Analytics. Aristotle shows that all but one of the customary types of sign-argument are formally invalid, so that an orator who has studied the Analytics will know exactly how to show that the argument, even if it has some merit, will not be sufficient to establish its alleged conclusion. Also, given some acquaintance with modal premises, one may be able to show that an apparently cogent objection is not in fact conclusive. For example, if an orator has used what appears to be a universal premise, say ‘Those who walk around late in the night are thieves’, and the objection is raised that the generalization does not hold without exception, one can retort that what one was actually claiming was only that all those who walk around late at night are likely to be thieves—a proposition much harder to disprove, since one might have to show that the alleged suspects are in fact more likely not to be thieves than to be thieves (cp. Rhet. B 25,1402b25–1403a2. Aristotle does not give an example in this passage). Despite its limitations, then, syllogistic can be quite successfully used at times to identify types of invalid argument, and in this respect it can serve an

²⁰ Henry Mendell has recently shown in detail how Aristotle might have thought this worked for mathematical proofs. See his ‘Making Sense of Aristotelian Demonstration’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1993.

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important function that modern logic also fulfils—namely to spot faulty inferences or gaps in arguments. I should admit, however, that Aristotle’s attempts to trace fallacies to faulty ways of rendering the supposedly categorical structure of premises do not look like an improvement over the treatment of fallacy in the Sophistici Elenchi. Now, the use of syllogistic as a diagnostic instrument to discover weaknesses or faults in arguments seems, as in the case of heuristics, more important for those who engage in debate or in courtroom pleading than for those who try to construct scientific proofs. Presumably a serious scientific researcher will carefully try to avoid fallacious inferences, and therefore use only forms of argument that she knows to be valid. Given Aristotle’s preconceived notion that proofs just have to be syllogistic in form, it is not likely that the chapters on analysis were meant to persuade the reader that mathematical proofs, for example, could be presented in syllogistic form. Aristotle’s examples tend to be of the sort known from the Topics, and what is being confirmed, to the extent that anything can be said to be confirmed here, would seem to be the claim that the syllogistic figures are adequate to deal with all sorts of arguments beyond the field of scientific demonstration. The sections on heuristics and analysis in An.Pr. A complete a project to which Aristotle briefly adverts in the opening paragraph of A 32 (46b38–47a2).²¹ The three parts he mentions there are probably the system of the syllogistic moods, heuristics, and analysis. The contents of book B are more difficult to classify, partly no doubt because the book contains some notes or sketches that do not cohere very well with their context. For example, the book begins with a chapter that seems to offer some corollaries to formal syllogistic and in effect bring in the syllogistic moods that were later classified as belonging to the fourth figure (Aristotle notoriously has only three). At the beginning of B 23 (68b9–13) Aristotle makes a remark that indicates that he has so far been dealing with dialectical and demonstrative syllogisms and is going to extend his investigation by applying the doctrine of the syllogistic moods to rhetorical argument as well; but he does not indicate precisely what was the point of the preceding chapters. Still, it seems fairly clear that these chapters belong to the general theory of argument as opposed to the special theory of demonstration. They either try to establish metatheorems regarding deductive argument in general, or deal with questions of argumentative strategy. I have already mentioned the unfortunate theorem to the effect that an indirect argument can always be replaced by a direct one. But there are better examples as well. One theorem of which Aristotle was ²¹ ‘It is evident from the things which have been said, then, [1] what all demonstrations come from, and how [ἐκ τίνων . . . καὶ πῶς] and [2] what things one should look to in the case of each problem. But after these things, we must explain [3] how we can lead syllogisms back into the figures stated previously [πῶς ἀνάξωμεν τοὺς συλλογισμουσ εἰς τὰ εἰρημένα σχήματα], for this part of our inquiry still remains’ (tr. R. Smith, with ‘syllogism’ instead of ‘deduction’).

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understandably proud is proved in B 2–4, namely that a true conclusion can be validly derived from false premises.²² One may find it pedantic and tedious that Aristotle goes through all the syllogistic moods to show how this is possible in each case, with one or both premises false, when two examples would have sufficed to establish the general claim. But this should not divert our attention from the fact that Aristotle’s proof is a considerable achievement. It is one thing merely to assert that the truth of the conclusion tells us nothing about the truth of the premises, another to offer a rigorous proof to show that this is so. Aristotle also shows that if a false conclusion is derived from apparently true premises, then either one or more of the premises is false, or the conclusion does not follow. These are points that may appear trivial to readers trained in modern logic, but they still need to be made in any introductory class on reasoning and argument, and Aristotle was the first not just to state, but to prove them. The chapters on the so-called conversion of syllogisms (B 8–10) may look like a debater’s exercise (cp. Top. 8.14,163a32–36): showing how a given set of propositions and their negations can be combined in different ways to deduce different conclusions. But once again it is important to note that formal syllogistic enables Aristotle to prove his claims, not just to tell his students that they should try out various combinations to see if anything follows. Finally, as Myles Burnyeat has pointed out,²³ the last section (on rhetoric) shows how syllogistic enabled Aristotle to distinguish clearly between two sorts of things that would ordinarily have been called proofs, by Aristotle as well as by his contemporaries, namely valid deductive arguments and formally inconclusive but relevant evidence used to support or corroborate a given thesis. Although Aristotle did not go on to develop a theory of evidence, he obviously recognized that not every thesis can or should be justified in the same way, and even that formally inconclusive evidence may be just as convincing as an elaborate deductive proof (cp. Rhet. A 2,1356b22–24). Despite its obvious limitations as a general theory of deduction, formal syllogistic allowed Aristotle to establish a number of fundamental points in the theory of argument. The crucial step, of course, was Aristotle’s discovery that the validity of an argument depends on the form of its premises and conclusion, not their content or the peculiarities of the subject matter under discussion. For a general theory of argument, the distinction between formal validity and truth may well be

²² He refers to this theorem three times in other works (Top. 8.11,162a8–11; An.Po. A 12,78a6–13; EE 1.6,1217a10–17), which is relatively often for a single thesis, and the EE passage emphasizes its importance: Aristotle explains at length that it makes sense to consider the reasons given separately from the conclusion derived, because what is supposed to have been shown may often be true, but not for the reasons given in the argument. ²³ ‘The origins of non-deductive argument’, in J. Barnes et al. (eds.), Science and Speculation, Cambridge U.P. 1982, 193–238. I suspend judgement on his more recent claim that rhetorical syllogisms are based on probable rather than necessary consequence (see Burnyeat, ‘Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Logic of Persuasion’, in D.J. Furley and A. Nehamas, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Princeton, NJ 1994, 3–55).

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more important than the notion of a deductive system or an axiomatized theory. I hope to have shown that Aristotle’s formal logic need not be seen exclusively as an attempt either to provide the underlying logic for an axiomatized theory or to develop a system of deductive inference. It is at least as much a contribution to a theory of valid argument in general, and in this role it was correctly described by the ancient commentators as a tool of philosophy.²⁴

²⁴ Thanks are due to the students in my spring 1993 seminar for discussing the questions raised in this chapter with me, and in particular to Mitzi Lee for her criticisms of the first draft; to Henry Mendell for his detailed and helpful comments at the Princeton Classical Philosophy Colloquium in December 1993; to James Allen for his friendly comments at the Methodos conference; and to the participants on both occasions for further questions and clarifications.

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6 Aristotle’s Three Theories of Argument This chapter presents a brief outline of the development of Aristotle’s theories of argument from dialectic in the Topics through the Rhetoric to formal logic in the Analytics.

At a conference celebrating Aristotle’s birth 2400 years ago, it is no doubt appropriate to dedicate a session to Aristotle as the inventor of formal logic. Aristotle’s syllogistic was one of his most important and influential achievements—so successful, indeed, that it, supplemented by some elements of Stoic propositional logic, was seen as the whole of logic until at least the end of the eighteenth century. After the nineteenth century, syllogistic seemed to be eclipsed by the new discipline of mathematical logic, but then the modern logicians rediscovered Aristotle as a genuine predecessor. Naturally, most of their interest was focused on the work that contains Aristotle’s exposition of syllogistic in the Prior Analytics. But since we are here to celebrate its author, it may be worthwhile to take a look at what one might call the pre-history of formal syllogistic in Aristotle’s works. For the invention of formal logic did not come to Aristotle as a sudden inspiration out of the blue. Just like Archimedes’ famous ‘heureka!’, it was preceded by years of study, and in this particular case we can to some extent follow its chronology. The Analytics are the third in a series of treatises on argument that Aristotle wrote, probably still as a member of Plato’s Academy, for the disciplines of dialectic, rhetoric, and finally scientific demonstration. All three treatises use virtually the same definition of ‘syllogism’ (valid deductive argument), and their chronological order is apparent from the fact that the general theory of the syllogism, presented in the first seven chapters of the Prior Analytics, plays no role in either the Topics or the Rhetoric (apart from a few passages that are probably later insertions), while in the Analytics Aristotle explicitly announces that his general theory covers all three fields. The Rhetoric refers for its theory of argument back to the Topics, so it is clear that the Topics came first, then the Rhetoric, and only after that

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0006

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the Analytics.¹ I think that a look at this sequence of works will also show some of the differences between Aristotle and his modern successors.

The Topics: Dialectic The first treatise opens with a grand announcement: The aim of this study is to find a method with which we shall be able to construct deductive arguments (συλλογίζεσθαι) from acceptable premises concerning any problem that is proposed, and when submitting to argument ourselves, not to contradict ourselves. (Top. I 1,100a18–21)

This is followed by the definition of syllogism: A syllogism is an argument in which, certain things being posited, something other than what was laid down results of necessity because of what was laid down. (I 1,100a25–26)

But the modern reader soon discovers that the scope of the theory is much more limited than one might expect. It is a manual for a debating exercise that deals with a very specific kind of thesis. The theses and the premises used to confirm or refute them must be plausible or reputable (ἔνδοξα), that is, such that they are either believed by most people or by the experts. Aristotle assumes that all propositions used in a deduction will be simple subject–predicate statements, in which the predicate will signify either an accident (or attribute, συμβεβηκός), or the genus (γένος), or a unique property (ἴδιον), or the definition (ὅρος) of the ¹ This chronology of Aristotle’s logical works was first presented by Friedrich Solmsen in his book Die Entwicklung der aristotelischen Logik und Rhetorik (Berlin 1929); for a recent discussion, see J. Allen, ‘Aristotle on Disciplines of Argument: Rhetorik, Dialectic, Analytics’, Rhetorica 25, 2007, 87–108. My treatment of these works here is evidently sketchy and simplified; for more detailed introductions to each, see, for example, J. Brunschwig’s introduction to the first volume of his Budé edition (Aristotle, Topiques I–IV, Paris 1967), C. Rapp’s introduction to his translation and commentary on the Rhetoric (Aristoteles: Rhetorik, Erster Halbband, Berlin 2002), and R. Smith’s introduction to his translation with notes of the Prior Analytics (Aristotle, Prior Analytics, Indianapolis 1989) or, for readers who are familiar with formal logic, P. Thom’s The Syllogism, Munich 1981. For some of the passages from the Analytics mentioned in this chapter, see also the commentary to my translation of Prior Analytics book I (Aristotle: Prior Analytics, Book I, translated with introduction and commentary by G. Striker, Oxford 2009). I have used the following standard texts of Aristotle’s works: J. Brunschwig, Aristote, Topiques, Budé, Paris, vol. 1, 1967, vol. 2 , 2007; R. Kassel, Aristotelis ars rhetorica, Berlin 1976; W.D. Ross, Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics, Oxford 1949. Translations from Topics book I are by R. Smith (Aristotle, Topics I, VIII and Selections, Oxford 1997), with modifications; from the Rhetoric by J.H. Freese in the Loeb series (Aristotle, The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, Loeb vol. 193, 1926 and later), also with modifications. Translations from the Analytics are my own.

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subject. These four types of predicates were called ‘predicables’ in the later tradition. The debate would take place between two persons: the answerer or defender of a thesis, and the questioner. At the beginning, the answerer would choose a thesis from a pair of contradictories—for example, ‘Is knowledge the genus of virtue, or not?’. The thesis the answerer would have to defend would be either ‘virtue is knowledge’ or ‘virtue is not knowledge’. The questioner would then propose further propositions that the answerer could either accept or reject, answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’, unless he could object that the proposition was ambiguous or in fact consisted of more than one statement. The aim of the questioner was to get the answerer to accept a proposition that contradicted or was incompatible with the initial thesis. As the name ‘dialectic’ (derived from the verb διαλέγεσθαι, to have a conversation) indicates, this was a systematized version of the kind of question-andanswer exchange that one finds in Plato’s dialogues, including rules both for Socrates’ famous method of examining and refuting another person’s beliefs and for his ways of trying to find definitions. The predicables, as Aristotle himself points out (Top. I 6,102b27–103a5), are all involved in the search for definitions, which are supposed to be formed by genus and differentia. The so-called topoi (τόποι) or ‘places’, listed in books II to VII of the Topics according to the predicables, are considerations or rules that a questioner may use to find the premises he needs to reach the desired conclusion, or the answerer to avoid accepting propositions that might lead to the contradictory of his thesis. For example, if the subject A of the answerer’s thesis is similar to some other thing B, the questioner might suggest that what holds of one of two similar things will hold of the other one also. Then he asks the answerer to agree that if B is F, A will be F too. Next, he proceeds to show that B is F, and thereby also proves that A is F (cf. Top. I 18,102b12–19). The rule here would be ‘what holds of one of two similar things will hold of the other one too’, from which the debater derives what Aristotle calls the ‘hypothesis’ that ‘if B is F, A will be F too’. Since such ‘hypotheses’ are usually stated in the form of a conditional, it is tempting to think that the arguments based on the topoi would be in the forms of either modus ponens (‘if p, then q; p; therefore, q’) or modus tollens (‘if p then q; not q; therefore, not p’). This is what J. Brunschwig confidently asserts in the introduction to the first volume of his Budé edition of the Topics (Paris 1967, xli–xlii), and it is indeed correct from the point of view of modern propositional logic, but it is not likely to be what Aristotle had in mind. Propositional logic had yet to be invented, and Aristotle did not recognize complex sentences like conditionals, conjunctions, or alternations as single propositions that could function as premises in a deduction. He explicitly stated that both premises and conclusions in dialectical debates would be simple predicative propositions. So he described the ‘hypotheses’ stated in the form of if . . . then—sentences as a kind of agreement between the partners

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in a debate, to the effect that a proof for (what we would call) the antecedent would be accepted as a proof of the consequent. The agreement itself is not a part of the proof, but rather a kind of licence to infer the consequent once the antecedent has been proved.² A good example of this kind of ‘argument based on a hypothesis’ can—not coincidentally—be found in Plato’s Meno (87B–96C): Socrates proposes an attempt to answer Meno’s question ‘Can virtue be taught?’ with the help of a hypothesis—if virtue is knowledge, then it is teachable. Meno agrees to the hypothesis, and Socrates then offers an argument to show that virtue is knowledge, but when Meno is ready to accept the conclusion that virtue can indeed be taught, Socrates turns around and proceeds to argue at great length that virtue cannot be taught. The result is, as so often in Plato’s dialogues, an impasse (ἀπορία). I take it that this type of argument was the model for Aristotle’s collection of topoi. The argument in the Meno could be summarized as consisting of a modus ponens followed by a modus tollens, but this would leave out the main part of what Socrates has to say. Similarly, a dialectical argument ‘based on a hypothesis’ derived from a topos would mainly consist in establishing a proposition from which the desired conclusion could eventually be inferred. Aristotle never discusses the form of those ‘syllogisms based on a hypothesis’ in the Topics, perhaps for the good reason that, as the example of the Meno shows, they would not have to be uniform at all. It remains an open question exactly how one can decide whether a deductive argument is valid. In his book on fallacies, usually cited separately as Sophistici Elenchi but clearly meant to be the last book of the Topics, Aristotle explains that deductive arguments will be only apparent, not real syllogisms if they are invalid (ἀσυλλόγιστοι), that is, if their conclusion does not follow of necessity from what was laid down, but he does not explain any further (168a21–23). In An.Pr. I 32,47a22–35, where he sets out to show that syllogisms not formulated in the canonical form of the figures can also be reduced to syllogisms in the three recognized figures, he offers a few examples of arguments that necessitate a conclusion, but are not properly formulated, and also remarks that ‘the necessary extends beyond the syllogism’ (here, of course, understood in the narrow sense). In chapter 44 (50a16–b4) he turns to the ‘syllogisms (sic) based on a hypothesis’ and ends up recognizing that those arguments cannot be put into the form of his new official syllogisms in one of the figures, although he admits that it is necessary to accept their conclusion—‘though not on the basis of a syllogism, but on the basis of a hypothesis’ (50a24–26). There he also states, as he had already done in the chapters on heuristics (A 29,45b19–20), that the arguments from a hypothesis ² For a detailed account of this interpretation, see my article—G. Striker, ‘Aristoteles über Syllogismen “aufgrund einer Hypothese” ’, Hermes 107, 33–50. English translation chapter 1 of this volume.

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ought to be examined and clearly marked (50b2–3). It seems, then that Aristotle eventually realized that his high hopes for his general theory were exaggerated. It is a pity that he seems never to have come back to the subject. So much for the Topics.

The Rhetoric: Rhetorical Argument Next in the chronology is Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Since it contains much more than a treatment of arguments, and since its last book deals with style and delivery of speeches, in the traditional order of Aristotle’s works it is listed alongside the Poetics and not included in the so-called Organon with the other works considered to belong to logic. However, in the first book Aristotle insists that argument is actually the most important means of persuasion, and his account of rhetorical argument there offers an illuminating contrast to the Topics and also contains some new elements. The Rhetoric opens with the statement: Rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic; for both have to do with matters that are in a manner within the cognizance of all men and not confined to any special science. (Rhet. I 1,1354a1)

Rhetoric and dialectic correspond to one another like the first and last part of a Greek choral ode; they are similar though not identical. Another similarity consists in the fact that ‘Rhetoric and dialectic alone of all the arts prove opposites; for both are equally concerned with them’ (I 1,1354b31). But the two disciplines have different aims: the Topics is only concerned with refuting or defending given theses, regardless of context, while rhetoric, of course, aims at persuading an audience. So Aristotle defines rhetoric as ‘the faculty (δύναμις) of considering what may be persuasive in reference to any subject whatever’ (I 2,1355b). Aristotle describes rhetoric in this book as ‘an offshoot of dialectic and the study of character’ (i.e. ethics) (I 2,1356a). Dialectic, as it were, provides the part that consists in constructing or refuting arguments; ethics provides the knowledge of human character that is needed to adapt the speech to its audience. But though Aristotle refers to the Topics (and sometimes the Analytics, probably in passages that were inserted later than the first version of the Rhetoric) for the technicalities of argument, he also adapts this part to its new purpose. One important difference between the subject matter of rhetoric and dialectic as described in the Topics lies in the fact that rhetoric usually deals with individuals—persons, actions, policies— while the theses of the Topics are usually general statements. Also, the orator in a political assembly will often be advising about future actions to be taken, where the result is not entirely predictable, or discuss the actions of a defendant in a trial

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that may or may not show her guilt. Aristotle keeps the fundamental distinction between deduction and induction: Just as dialectic possesses two modes of argument, induction and the syllogism, real or apparent, the same is the case in rhetoric; for the example (παράδειγμα) is induction, and the enthymeme (ἐνθύμημα) a syllogism, and the apparent enthymeme an apparent syllogism. Accordingly I call an enthymeme a rhetorical syllogism, and an example rhetorical induction. (I 2,13556a35–b7)

But then he offers a slightly modified definition of the syllogism: When, certain things being the case, something different results alongside of them from their being true, either universally or in most cases, such an argument in dialectic is called a syllogism, in rhetoric an enthymeme. (I 2,1356b16–19)³

Since many of the arguments an orator uses will have premises that state likelihoods rather than known facts, their conclusions will also be likely, that is, hold only for the most part (cf. I 2,1357a29–b20). Furthermore, while in dialectic all premises should be made explicit, this is not necessary in rhetoric and might indeed sometimes appear pedantic. An ‘enthymeme’ (literally, something to keep in mind), though it can be recognized as a deductive argument, may therefore sometimes be stated in an abbreviated form, omitting a premise that the audience will see as obvious. The rhetorical counterpart of an inductive argument is called an example (παράδειγμα), because it may consists only in mentioning one or two examples of particular cases similar to the one under discussion to suggest that what holds in those cases might also hold in this one, as in Aristotle’s example: ‘to prove that Dionysius is aiming at tyranny because he asks for a bodyguard, one might say that Pisistratus before him and Theagenes of Megara did the same, and when they obtained what they asked for made themselves tyrants’ (1357b31–35). Again, this is no doubt due to the fact that orators are speaking about individuals, while inductive arguments in the Topics were usually based on a number of kinds. Perhaps the most significant addition to the orator’s repertory of argument types are what Aristotle calls ‘signs’ (σημεῖα)—observable facts that may indicate ³ Aristotle omits the phrase ‘of necessity’ (ἐξ ἀνάγκης) in this definition. M.F. Burnyeat has argued in an influential paper (‘Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Logic of Persuasion’, in Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays, ed. D.J. Furley and A. Nehamas, Princeton 1994), that this means that Aristotle here recognized that there could be a weaker link than logical necessity in a deduction: the premises make the conclusion probable, but it does not strictly follow. Given that Aristotle regarded the necessity of the consequence as the main characteristic of syllogisms in the Topics, I doubt that he would even have called enthymemes rhetorical syllogisms. Besides, the subsequent statement that ‘what happens for the most part or what is merely possible can only be deduced from similar propositions’ (1357a 27–30) seems to me to confirm the interpretation that Aristotle does not mean to say that the conclusion need not logically follow, but only that it may be weaker than a straightforward assertion.

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some unobserved cause. Signs will occur in the form of inferences, such as ‘This woman has milk in her breasts; therefore, she must have given birth’ which can easily be understood as deductive syllogisms (adding the unstated premise that all women who have milk in their breasts have given birth). Aristotle notes that only some such signs provide conclusive evidence: Among signs, some are related as the particular to the universal; for instance, if one were to say that all wise men are just, because Socrates was both wise and just. Now this is a sign, but even if the particular statement is true, the argument can be refuted, because it cannot be reduced to syllogistic form. But if one were to say that it is a sign that a man is ill, because he has a fever, or that a woman has had a child because she has milk, this is a necessary sign. This alone among signs is a tekmērion; for only in this case, if the fact is true, is the argument irrefutable. (1357b10–20)⁴

But he does not want to exclude the use of inconclusive signs—evidence, even if not conclusive, can obviously play an important role in court cases. What is important to note here, then, is that Aristotle is including evidence as a factor in argument that need not be deductively valid. What is entirely absent from the Rhetoric, however, is the theory of the predicables—understandably enough, since one would hardly expect a public orator to talk about genus and species or definitions. Instead, we find in the Rhetoric chapters about the most important subjects with which orators will have to deal in the three kinds of speeches that Aristotle distinguishes: speeches in political deliberation, accusation or defence in court, and speeches of praise (or blame) such as, for instance, Pericles’ famous speech about the young Athenians who had died in battle. In those chapters, Aristotle assembles plausible or widely accepted views about what is good or bad, expedient or harmful for deliberative rhetoric, what is just or unjust for forensic rhetoric, and what counts as noble or shameful for speeches of praise or blame, along with a few general argumentschemata like those in the Topics, which, however, he finds less important for rhetoric (cf. Rhet. I 2,1358a10–28). The collections of plausible views are not only presented as means for finding premises of a particular form, since those beliefs can obviously be used in various contexts, not only in argument—for example, in descriptions of the expected results of particular policies, or the character of persons. So those chapters provide the orator with material for his speeches, and, in this sense, they have the same function as the lists of topoi in the Topics.

⁴ This is one of the passages in which Aristotle is probably relying on his chapter on sign inferences in the Analytics (An.Pr. II, ch. 27), to which he refers for a more detailed treatment. This explains the emphasis on the validity or invalidity of those syllogisms.

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But Aristotle must evidently have realized that the predicables did not belong to a theory of argument in general, as he seems to suggest at the beginning of the Topics, but only to the very special kind of dialectic that was presumably practised in the Academy. This distinction between the theory of argument and the subject matter to be discussed is, I think, an important step in the direction of the truly formal theory of valid deductive argument we eventually find in the Prior Analytics.

Prior Analytics: Scientific Demonstration In the Analytics, Aristotle turns to the demonstrative (or apodeictic) syllogism. But this time he explicitly separates the general treatment of deductive argument from the specific subject of his inquiry: Syllogism must be discussed before demonstration, because syllogism is more universal than demonstration; for a demonstration is indeed a kind of syllogism, but not every syllogism is a demonstration. (An.Pr. I 4,25b28–31)

Syllogism in general is treated in the Prior Analytics, scientific demonstration and scientific knowledge in the Posterior Analytics. Aristotle distinguishes, as he had already done in the Topics, different kinds of syllogism by the status of their premises—dialectical and rhetorical premises must be plausible, but need not be true, while demonstrative premises have to be true, either as principles of a science or correctly derived from those principles. But the form of the premises is the same: ‘a syllogistic premise in general will be an affirmation or a denial of something about something’ (cf. An.Pr. I 1,24a28–b3). However, the fundamental innovation in the Analytics is a new analysis of the simple predicative proposition. Aristotle introduces his new terminology on the first page of the Prior Analytics. Instead of four different predication relations all represented by the copula ‘is’ (or ‘are’), he now introduces four quantitative relations that appear explicitly in the proposition: ‘A premise, then, is a sentence that affirms or denies something of something, and this is either universal or particular or indeterminate. By ‘universal’ I mean belonging to all or to none of something; by ‘particular’, belonging to some, or not to some, or not to all; by ‘indeterminate’, belonging without universality or particularity, as in ‘of contraries there is a single science’ or ‘pleasure is not a good’. (I 1.24a16–22)

(The premises here classified as ‘indeterminate’ are typical examples of dialectical premises from the Topics.)

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The subject and predicate of each sentence are now equally described as ‘terms’ (ὅροι—a word that Aristotle had used in the sense of ‘definition’ in the Topics): ‘I call a “term” (ὅρος) that into which a premise is resolved, that is, what is predicated and what it is predicated of, with the addition of “to be” or “not to be” ’. The definition of syllogism remains the same as in the Topics, apart from a stylistic variation in its last clause: ‘And a syllogism is an argument in which, certain things being posited, something other than what was laid down results of necessity because these things are so’ (1,24b16–20). Whether it was the realization that the four predicables belong to the subject matter of (Academic) dialectic rather than to the theory of deductive argument in general, or whether Aristotle saw that he needed an account of syllogistic validity for a theory that was to cover demonstrative deductions as well as dialectical ones, we do not know. But his new analysis—which I think gave the work its title— allowed him to introduce the rules of term-conversion which he could use to prove the validity of arguments in the form of the now canonical ‘syllogism’, that is, arguments with two categorical premises that have one of their terms in common. He states the rules of conversion in the second chapter: . . . it is necessary for the universal privative premise of belonging to convert with respect to its terms. So, for instance, if no pleasure is a good, then neither will any good be a pleasure. And the positive premise converts necessarily, though not universally, but to the particular; for instance, if every pleasure is a good, it is necessary that some good is also a pleasure. Of the particular premises the affirmative necessarily converts to the particular, for if some pleasure is a good, then some good will also be a pleasure; but for the privative premise this is not necessary. For it is not the case that if man does not belong to some animal, then animal also does not belong to some man. (An.Pr. I 2,25a5–14)⁵

Term-conversion would not work for propositions that are taken to express one of the predicable relations, for example, if B is an attribute of A, A cannot be an attribute of B. If one disregards the specific predication-relation, as in the quantified propositions Aristotle adopts in the Analytics, conversion leads to sentences that do not fit the Topics pattern; so, for instance, the proposition ‘all swans are white’ converts to ‘some white (things) are swans’, where the predicate signifies the subject—in the metaphysical sense—in which the attribute whiteness resides. In the Posterior Analytics (A 22,83a1–23) Aristotle calls this ‘accidental predication’—and rules it out for propositions that occur in demonstrations. In the first seven chapters of the Prior Analytics, Aristotle presented what is now recognized as the first instance of a logical calculus; a system very limited in ⁵ Conversion is evidently Aristotle’s favourite method for the proofs of validity in the Prior Analytics; he resorts to indirect proof or ecthesis only where conversion alone will not do.

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scope, but flawless from the point of view of modern formal logic. Together with a few rules of the propositional logic invented by the Stoics in the century after Aristotle, Aristotle’s syllogistic was seen for centuries as all of logic in general. It is tempting to see the system of syllogistic as a shining example of a science as Aristotle himself describes it in the Posterior Analytics—an axiomatized system of deductions in which every theorem is derived from a few axioms. This is indeed how Jan Lucasiewicz presented it in his path-breaking book Aristotle’s Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic (2nd edn Oxford 1957), which revived the interest of logicians and philosophers in Aristotle’s logic. But there are good reasons for thinking that this is not the way Aristotle himself saw it. Soon after the publication of Lucasiewicz’s book, several logicians⁶ pointed out that a better formal model of Aristotle’s syllogistic would be a natural deduction system, which is based on primitive rules rather than axioms. Apart from the fact that he would have had to recognize propositional deductions as valid in order to treat some of the syllogistic moods as axioms, Aristotle seems to have continued to regard syllogistic, just like dialectic and rhetoric, as a method or skill (τέχνη) that can be used by scientists, lawyers, orators—indeed in any discipline that has to do with argument and proof—but that does not have a specific subject matter of its own. He presents his final and most rigorous version as a kind of introductory study to the theory of demonstration and scientific knowledge in the Posterior Analytics, and though he was obviously also interested in the system of syllogisms itself, proving, for instance, in An.Pr. I 7 that all valid moods in the syllogistic figures could be derived with the help of the two universal ones in the first figure alone, or that it is possible to derive a true conclusion from false premises (An.Pr. II 2–4), his interests even in the later chapters of the Prior Analytics were mostly epistemological. One indication of this is that he thought that any syllogism would have to have at least two premises—not because nothing follows from a single proposition, although he misleadingly says so in An.Pr. I 23,40b35–36, but probably because he saw the single-premise inferences represented, for example, by the rules of conversion as not leading to a conclusion ‘different from what was laid down’ as stipulated in the definition of syllogism, and hence not useable as arguments. The chapters on heuristics in the Prior Analytics (An.Pr. I 27–29) are much shorter than in either the Topics or the Rhetoric, and intended for aspiring scientists who can only use true premises. Instead of patterns for finding possible premises, Aristotle recommends that for each of the two terms contained in a proposition one should consult lists of terms that either ‘follow’ or ‘are followed by’ the respective term, that is, terms that are truly and universally predicated of the term, or of which the term is truly predicated. He expects that the relevant ⁶ See T. Smiley, ‘What is a Syllogism?’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 2, 1973, 136–54; and for a formal model, J. Corcoran, ‘Aristotle’s Natural Deduction System’, in J. Corcoran (ed.), Ancient Logic and its Modern Interpretations, Dordrecht 1974, 85–131.

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terms for each science will be found by experience and observation (An.Pr. I 30,46a17–30). Obviously, unlike modern logicians, Aristotle did not see his syllogistic as one among several ways of formalizing ordinary language arguments. All three of Aristotle’s treatises on argument are intended for specific disciplines; they all contain sections on finding appropriate premises, and also chapters on fallacies—subjects that one would not necessarily expect to find in a modern logic book. On the other hand, a modern logic book would presumably begin with a complete list of axioms or rules of deduction. But, of course, Aristotle was not writing a logic textbook—he was quite literally introducing formal logic for the first time. And although he eventually realized that the formal syllogistic of his Analytics was not as all-encompassing as he had hoped, it may well be that he did not return to the problem of the recalcitrant syllogisms ‘based on a hypothesis’ because he thought that such arguments would not occur in a scientific demonstration. So the ancient commentators were probably right in describing Aristotle’s logical works as an Organon—a tool or instrument for philosophers as well as other scientists. And in this role, elementary logic has remained a part of the curriculum of every philosopher. Aristotle was indeed the founder of formal logic, but the reinvention of logic as a science in its own right and a branch of mathematics came only many centuries later.

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7 The ‘Analysis’ of Aristotle’s Analytics ‘Analytica’ is one of the few titles in Aristotle’s works that the author himself used. It is not clear what kind of analysis Aristotle had in mind, but it is usually thought that the title refers to the section at the end of Prior Analytics I (chapters 32–46) where he discusses ways of putting ordinary language arguments into the form of syllogistic moods. However, that section consists mainly in the discussion of recalcitrant examples and is not very successful. It may be more plausible to think that the title refers to the analysis of propositions into terms and their quantitative relations that replaced the classification of propositions according to the ‘predicables’ in the Topics.

Aristotle was the founder of formal logic. But his own name for the new discipline of constructing deductive arguments on any given subject, of which he was quite proud, was not ‘logic’—this label was already in use in the Academy for one of the three parts of philosophy (the others were ethics and physics; see Topics A 14,105b20–25), and that included not only everything to do with language and reasoning, but also epistemology. Aristotle’s theory of argument developed in stages, two of which we can still recognize in the extant works. First came the Topics, a manual of dialectic, the debating technique of defending or refuting given theses, which probably included the treatise on fallacies; then the four books entitled ‘Analytics’, associated with scientific demonstration. In the later ancient tradition, the four books of the Analytics were divided into two parts of two books each, referred to as the Prior Analytics and the Posterior Analytics, respectively. The first half of the work contains Aristotle’s most celebrated achievement: the system of figures and moods now usually referred to as syllogistic; the second half contains his theory of scientific proof (demonstration) and scientific knowledge. Now, the title ‘Syllogistic’, that is, ‘On deductive argument’, would have fit both the Analytics and the Topics. They both use the same definition of syllogism (valid deductive argument), but the Topics does not yet have the schematic representations of propositions and the proofs of validity that make the Prior Analytics easily recognizable as a treatise of formal logic. So Aristotle himself distinguished between the two treatises by using the title ‘Topics’ for the manual of dialectic, and ‘Analytics’ for the treatise on scientific demonstration. Why did he choose the

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0007

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label ‘Analytics’ for the second work, and what exactly did he mean by analysis in this context?¹ Analysis of arguments is first explicitly mentioned in chapter A 32 of the Prior Analytics as the third part of a project that begins in chapter 4, where Aristotle explains why he has to deal with syllogism in general before going on to scientific demonstration: ‘a demonstration is indeed a kind of syllogism, but not every syllogism is a demonstration’ (25b26–31). At the beginning of chapter 32, Aristotle notes that two parts of the investigation have been completed; it remains now to show how all syllogisms can be reduced to the figures: For if we have considered how syllogisms come about, have the ability to find them, and then also to analyse existing syllogisms according to the aforementioned figures, our initial project should have come to an end. At the same time it will turn out that what we have said before is confirmed through what we are about to say now, and it will become even more evident that things are as we say. For all that is true must agree with itself in every way. (An.Pr. A 32.47a1–9)

Aristotle’s tone is confident and almost triumphant. Rhetorical flourishes like this are decidedly rare in the Analytics. However, the following chapters hardly justify Aristotle’s optimism.

¹ An interpretation according to which Aristotle took over the technical term ‘analysis’ from the Greek geometers, and therefore meant a procedure for finding premises for a given conclusion, was presented by Patrick H. Byrne (Analysis and Science in Aristotle, New York 1997). But finding the premises for given conclusions is precisely the procedure discussed in the Topics, whereas the Prior Analytics begin with what Philoponus aptly describes as synthesis—the composition of valid deductive arguments. In the Prior Analytics the emphasis is on validity, not heuristics. In two recent articles, M. Crubellier (‘The Programme of the Aristotelian Analytics’, in Dialogues, Logics and Other Strange Things, London 2008, 121–47) and M. Wesely (ΑΝΑΛΥΣΙΣ ΠΕΡΙ ΤΑ ΣΧΗΜΑΤΑ, Peitho vol. 3, 2012, 83–113) have addressed the question what Aristotle means by ‘analysis’, but both seem to me to go in the wrong direction. Crubellier, who bases his interpretation on a passage in Met. Δ 2 (1013b20–21 = Phys. II 3,195a16–19. For this passage see now: M. Malink, ‘Aristotle on Principles as Elements’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy LIII, 2017, 163–213) in which Aristotle describes the premises as the material cause of the conclusion, suggests that analysis consists in finding premises for an intended conclusion by dividing the conclusion ‘into two distinct propositions by choosing a convenient middle term . . . freely introduced by the analyst’ (p. 126). But the claim that the premises are the material of the conclusion is puzzling and highly problematic, since the premises are clearly not a constituent part contained in the conclusion, and so could hardly be discovered by ‘analysing’ the conclusion. Apart from this, I have not been able to find a passage in which Aristotle uses the word ‘analysis’ or its corresponding verb in this sense. Wesely considers only the ‘analysis into the figures’ in the Prior Analytics. He takes this to be analogous to geometrical analysis, and claims that the diagrams to which Aristotle occasionally refers were used to illustrate the validity of syllogistic moods in the same way as the construction diagrams of the Greek geometers illustrated their proofs. But this is a mistake: the diagrams show only the figures, not the moods, and since there are more inconclusive moods in each figure than conclusive ones, they show nothing about validity. Fortunately for the modern reader, the proofs of validity are found in the deductions of chapters 4 to 6 of the An.Pr. and are independent of the diagrams.

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Analysis, as the commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias tells us, consists in resolving a composite whole into its constituent parts or elements. This can be done in different ways for different purposes—from ‘analysing’ a composite organic body into simple bodies or elements, to analysing a sentence into words, then words into syllables and syllables into letters. On the epistemological side, as, for example, in geometry, analysis is the converse of synthesis, which is the way from the principles to what comes from them, while analysis is the way back from the end to the principles (see Al. Aphr. In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum commentarium ed. M. Wallies, CAG II, Berlin 1883, 7.11–22). Analysing existing arguments into the syllogistic figures, according to Aristotle, consists in finding the parts that determine to which of the figures an argument belongs, and to see whether the alleged syllogism is valid or not. Aristotle does not have a special word for moods as opposed to figures, but by ‘analysis into the figures’ he clearly also means determining the mood of an argument and its validity or otherwise. Throughout this and the following chapters, Aristotle uses the verbs ‘to analyse’ and ‘to reduce’ (ἀνάγειν) interchangeably, but one should keep in mind that ‘reduce’ does not here have the sense of proving validity as in the systematic chapters 5 to 7, but rather subsuming or classifying as belonging to a figure or mood.² Analysis in this sense is, of course, perfectly easy so long as the argument consists only of simple categorical propositions, and Aristotle’s instructions for this case are brief and to the point: . . . first find the two premises, then divide them into their terms, and take as middle term the one that is said in both premises; for that the middle term occurs in both premises is necessary in all the figures. (47a37–40)

The position of the middle term shows to which figure the argument belongs, and once one has the premises, one can see which one is universal, which particular, which affirmative, and which negative. This is presumably why Aristotle does not list the quantifiers or the copula (if there is one) as another part to be identified in the analysis. A special and particularly simple case of analysis is treated in chapter A 45: analysing a mood from one of the figures into a mood from another figure. Aristotle goes through all the valid moods except Barbara and shows how a mood can be transformed into another with the same conclusion by converting one or two propositions. Validity is not at issue here, of course, but the procedure suggests what one would have to do in the case of an argument that is not ² For the different senses of ‘reduce’, see my paper ‘Perfection and Reduction in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics’, in M. Frede and G. Striker (eds.), Rationality in Greek Thought, Oxford 1996, 203–20, ch. 4 in this volume.

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formulated in the canonical way: one would have to transform premises and conclusion into equivalent categorical propositions. And this, as it turns out, can be quite difficult. Indeed, Aristotle’s first exposition of the steps needed for analysis turns into a longish digression about the difficulties: sometimes a premise may not have been stated; sometimes one might think that an argument must be a syllogism because something follows of necessity from some assumptions, but the argument is not properly formulated, as in this example: ‘if being a man, a thing is necessarily an animal, and if an animal, a substance, then being a man, it is necessarily a substance’ (47a28–30). In general, says Aristotle, ‘necessity extends beyond the syllogism; for while every syllogism is necessary, not everything necessary is a syllogism. Thus, if something results from certain assumptions, one should not try to reduce it [scil. to the figures] right away . . . ’. This statement is sometimes cited as the admission that syllogistic does not cover all valid deductive arguments, though in this context it may mean no more than that one sometimes encounters what appears to be a valid argument, but finds it hard to discern the corresponding syllogistic mood. The following chapters from A 33 to A 46 then deal with some of these difficulties. Aristotle’s examples are of the kind one finds in the Topics: most of them have no quantifiers, and some contain singular terms. To a modern reader, the recalcitrant cases that Aristotle considers look like a collection of counterexamples to show that the proposed method of analysis will not work, and one suspects that some of the examples go back to Aristotle’s colleagues in the Academy. It would take too long to go through all these chapters (some of them are merely brief remarks); so I will concentrate on chapters 36 and 34 for the analysis of premises, and chapter 44 for the analysis of arguments. One of the terminological characteristics of the Analytics consists in the prevalent use of the Greek verb ὑπάρχειν³—usually translated as ‘to belong’—in the representation of syllogistic premises instead of the more natural forms of ‘to be’ as copula. This may seem to be just a matter of linguistic convenience (no switch from singular to plural forms of ‘to be’), but some of the difficulties Aristotle discusses also stem from the difference between ‘is’ and ‘belongs to’. So in chapter A 34, Aristotle is faced with an apparent counterexample to one of his valid moods: . . . for example, if A is health, what is designated by B, illness, and what is designated by C, man. One may truly say that A cannot belong to any B (for health belongs to no illness), and that B belongs to every C (for every man is ³ ὑπάρχειν also occurs in the Topics, though less frequently—for example, where Aristotle wishes to distinguish between different modes of predication.

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    susceptible of illness). Now it would seem to follow that health cannot belong to any man. The reason is that the terms have not been well set out in their expression, for if one substitutes the terms corresponding to the respective states, there will be no syllogism (that is, if one puts healthy instead of health, and instead of illness, being ill). For it is not true to say that being healthy cannot belong to what is ill; but if this is not assumed, no syllogism comes about, except perhaps for a possibility. But this is not impossible, for it is possible that health should belong to no man. (48a1–15)

Here Aristotle in effect proposes a reinterpretation of the first premise, presumably based on the fact that the proposition ‘illness belongs to every man’ is equivalent to ‘every man is ill’, not to ‘every man is illness’. The details of the example are obscure, but it incidentally also shows that ‘to belong’ does not always stand for the copula ‘is’.⁴ In chapter A 36, Aristotle actually suggests that this may be an advantage. At the beginning of the chapter, he declares: That the first belongs to the middle, and this to the extreme, should not be taken to mean that the terms will always be predicated of one another, or the first of the middle in the same way as the middle of the extreme; and similarly for not belonging. Rather, one must think that ‘to belong’ signifies in as many ways as ‘to be’ is said, or as ‘it is true to say’ the same thing. (48a40–b4)

This does not yet show that the use of ὑπάρχειν extends beyond cases of predication, for the ways in which ‘to be’ is said are presumably the categories (as Aristotle himself says in chapter A 37, which reads like a preliminary note for A 36), and those are, as the Greek word indicates, kinds of predication; and what can truly be said of something should also be predicable of the same thing. But the example Aristotle then offers shows what he has in mind: For example, of contraries there is a single science. Let A be ‘there being a single science’; let the things contrary to one another be designated by B. Now A belongs to B, not in the sense that contraries are there being a single science of them, but that it is true to say of them that there is a single science of them. (48b4–9)

⁴ It is not so clear that the first premise is equivalent to ‘nothing that is ill can be healthy’—it probably means that health cannot be illness. The example is likely to come from a Platonist who remembered that contraries may belong to the same thing, but cannot possibly belong to each other (see Plato, Phaedo 102B–103A). Aristotle notes at 48a20–22 that ‘this does not agree with what we said before since when it was possible for several things to belong to the same subject, they could also belong to each other’—that is, the mood Darapti QQQ would be invalid.

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So far so good, one might say—one could still reconstruct this as a predicative proposition with a complex predicate, for example, ‘contraries are the object of a single science’. But although Aristotle had just pointed out that terms need not always be single words (A 35), he seems to be thinking of the sentence ‘a single science belongs to contraries’, which could (in Greek as well as in English) be used to express the more complicated proposition above without linguistic impropriety, and so in the subsequent examples of complete arguments he treats only the nouns as terms. Now, the verb ὑπάρχειν can, of course, often be used in lieu of the copula, but in ordinary Greek it also functions, like the English ‘have’, as a standin for various relations, from having a house to having a lawyer to having the measles. This is why it can also replace the existential use of ‘to be’ with the genitive, as in the phrase ‘there is an A of B’; but, of course, this does not turn the relevant sentence into a categorical proposition. Nonetheless, in the following examples of arguments, Aristotle proceeds as though it did. Here is his first example: It happens sometimes that the first is said of the middle, but the middle is not said of the third. For example, if wisdom is a science, and of the good wisdom is (scil. the science), the conclusion is that of the good there is a science. Now the good is not a science, but wisdom is a science. (48b10–14)

There are no quantifiers, but I think it is clear that the premises (which contain a singular term) should be treated as universal affirmatives. Using only the nouns as terms, and ‘belongs to’ instead of ‘is’, we would get the following version of the argument: ‘Science belongs to wisdom, wisdom belongs to the good, therefore, (a) science belongs to the good.’ Here only the first premise represents a proper predication, and for all one can see, ‘belongs to’ in the second premise and conclusion stands for whatever relation holds between a science and its object— such as ‘studies’, perhaps. But the term-relations of syllogistic were defined as predications, and so this argument, in spite of appearances, cannot count as a case of Barbara. What is true of the good is that it is studied by or an object of wisdom, but if one uses ‘object of wisdom’ as a predicate term in the second premise, then the argument no longer has the form of a proper syllogism because it lacks a middle term. Needless to say, Aristotle’s argument as first stated is valid, but his syllogistic does not have a rule that justifies the inference from ‘x is an object of wisdom’ and ‘wisdom is a science’ to ‘x is an object of science’. The other examples in this chapter all illustrate the existential use of ‘is’, in affirmative as well as in negative propositions, for example, ‘there is no sign of a sign’. They could in fact be transformed into valid syllogisms by using predicate terms such as ‘has a sign’, but Aristotle never does this. He seems to think he has shown what he said—namely that syllogistic premises may have a form that is not straightforwardly predicative. But if he were right, one would have to accept the

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following argument as valid: ‘Of every master there is a slave; of every slave there is a master; therefore: of every slave there is a slave’ (borrowing an example from Paul Thom⁵). At the end of the chapter, Aristotle generalizes, suggesting that there might be other cases—presumably of ‘is’ with the dative or some other inflected form of a noun—that could be treated in the same way: “For this we say generally about all cases, that the terms must always be set out in the nominative, such as ‘man’ or ‘good’ or ‘contraries’, not ‘of man or ‘of the good’ or ‘of contraries’, but the premises must be taken in accordance with the inflections of each.” Paul Thom charitably interprets this as Aristotle’s ‘brilliant intuition’ that such propositions are only acceptable as premises if the terms can be put back in the nominative—as would be the case if one used phrases for predicate-terms—but I think this might be taking charity too far. Chapter 36 is perhaps the most intriguing. Most of the other chapters that deal with premises take off from some error that might lead one to think that a paradoxical conclusion could be derived (33, 34), or that an argument could not be analysed (38). Aristotle offers some interesting interpretations of premise forms, for instance ones that contain his notorious qualifier ‘insofar as’ (often transliterated from the Latin as ‘qua’) as in ‘the good insofar as it is good’, or ‘being qua being’ (chapter 38), and a distinction between the forms ‘A belongs to everything to which B belongs’ and ‘A belongs to everything to all of which B belongs’ as possible interpretations of ‘A belongs to every B’ in chapter 41, as well as the notorious distinction between ‘is not A’ and ‘is not-A’ in chapter 46. These chapters, then, do not look like a systematic attempt to classify different types of proposition or to show how they should be transformed into categorical premises; they look more like a discussion of specific difficulties that might have come up in conversations between Aristotle and his colleagues or students. We hear from Alexander of Aphrodisias (379,9–11), for example, that Theophrastus adopted the interpretation ‘A belongs to everything to all of which B belongs’ for propositions of the form ‘of what B is said, A is said’—that is, probably for universal affirmative propositions. Aristotle still seems to have no doubt that all premises could in principle be stated as categorical propositions; and, of course, there is no mention of propositionally composite forms like disjunctions or conditionals, since Aristotle did not recognize these as distinct forms of proposition. However, he quietly admits that his grand generalization does not hold up once he comes to the analysis of an argument-type rather than a kind of premise, namely what he calls ‘syllogisms from a hypothesis’ in chapter 44. In modern terminology, these would be described as arguments in modus ponens or modus tollens on the one hand, indirect argument or reductio ad impossibile on the other. ⁵ The example comes from P. Thom, The Syllogism, Munich 1981, 78; for the medieval treatment of arguments with such premises, see also P. Thom, ‘Termini Obliqui and the Logic of Relations’, Archiv f. Geschichte der Philosophie 59, 1977, 143–55.

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The ancient commentators, all equally familiar with Stoic logic as with Aristotelian syllogistic, describe the first without hesitation as arguments with one ‘hypothetical’ premise—that is, a conditional—and one categorical premise. But Aristotle did not know propositional logic. Here is his account: Furthermore, one should not try to reduce the syllogisms from a hypothesis, since they cannot be reduced from what has been laid down. For they have not been proved by a syllogism, but are all accepted on the basis of an agreement. For example, if one had assumed the hypothesis that if there is no single power of contraries, there is also not a single knowledge, and then one went on to argue that not every power is a power of contraries—not, for example, of the healthy and the unhealthy, for then the same thing would be healthy and unhealthy at the same time. Now that there is not a single power for all contraries has been proved, but that there is not a single knowledge has not been shown. And yet it is necessary to agree to this—though not on the basis of a syllogism, but on the basis of a hypothesis. This part, then, cannot be reduced, but the argument that there is not a single power can be, for this was perhaps a syllogism after all, while that was a hypothesis. (50a16–28)

Aristotle had already offered the same account for arguments by reductio ad impossibile in chapter A 23: they are a combination of a hypothesis or agreement and a syllogistic deduction.⁶ The hypothesis or agreement—presumably between the partners in a dialectical debate—is to the effect that if a certain proposition has been proved, another proposition must be accepted. In chapter 23, Aristotle had also said that the first proposition is substituted (μεταλαμβανόμενον) for the demonstrandum—that is to say, it is agreed that a proof for this proposition will count as establishing the second. Aristotle clearly saw that what he calls the hypothesis is a part of the argument, and that it is, therefore, (logically) necessary to accept the conclusion. He points out in chapter 44 that in cases of reductio, no explicit agreement is needed, ‘because the falsehood [sc. of the syllogistically derived proposition] is evident’. But he does not go on to investigate this nonsyllogistic type of argument. The conclusion of chapter 44 is one of his unfulfilled promises: Many other arguments are brought to conclusion from a hypothesis, and these should be examined and clearly marked. Now what the differences are between these and in how many ways a syllogism from a hypothesis comes about, we will say later. For the moment so much should be evident, namely that syllogisms of ⁶ For a detailed defence of this interpretation, see my ‘Aristoteles über Syllogismen “aufgrund einer Hypothese” ’; Hermes 107, 1979, 33–50. English translation in chapter1 of this volume.

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    this kind cannot be analyzed into the figures. And we have said what is the reason for this. (50a39–b4)

Now, arguments in modus ponens or modus tollens are common in the Topics—so much so that one sometimes wonders why Aristotle did not discover propositional logic as well as categorical syllogistic. So it is probably no accident that the chapter on arguments from a hypothesis appears in a section that seems to be concerned with showing that the arguments discussed in the Topics could also be dealt with by the new theory of the figures. Chapter 44 shows that this is not the case—and the triumphant tone of the introduction to chapter 32 is gone. This section, and also the first book of the An.Pr., seems to end in chapter A 45 with the brief remark ‘How one must reduce syllogisms, then, and that the figures can be analysed into one another, is evident from what has been said’ (51b3–5). Chapter A 46 was perhaps added at the end because it deals with the correct interpretation—or analysis—of certain propositions. In the summary at the beginning of book B, there is not even a mention of analysis. Throughout book B, Aristotle considers only arguments with categorical premises. This brings me back to my initial question: why did Aristotle choose the title ‘Analytics’ for his work? How plausible is it to think that the book got its name from this third part of the investigation? Philoponus raises the question in the introduction to his commentary (5,15–6,1): ‘We must find the reason for the title—why it is “Analytics” and not “On Syllogism”? . . . If a syllogism is a composition (σύνθεσις), that is, an assembling of several sentences, not an analysis, it is worth asking why Aristotle should have entitled his treatise on syllogisms Analytics, for it should rather have been entitled “Synthetics”.’ Philoponus’ first answer is weak—‘because analysis is more important and more perfect than synthesis, since by analysis every syllogism is found to have its proper figure’, but the second answer sounds more plausible: ‘He who knows the analysis also knows the synthesis; for what he has analysed [i.e. resolved into parts] it is not difficult to put together. But the reverse does not hold. For even a layman knows how to complete the composition of nouns and verbs into a sentence and to say, for instance, “Socrates is taking a walk” (περιπατεῖ), yet he does not know, nor can he say, which word is the noun and which is the verb.’ In any case, I think he is bringing out the point of analysis to the figures: people may be able to produce valid arguments, but that does not mean that they can explain why those arguments are valid, or not, as the case may be. But once you have assigned an argument to a syllogistic mood, you can clearly decide about its validity or otherwise. Analysis ‘to the figures’ as described in chapter A 32 presupposes the system of syllogistic and could, therefore, only come as the final and perhaps crowning part of Aristotle’s project. I have so far concentrated on chapters 32 to 45 because it is only there that Aristotle explicitly uses ‘analysis’ as a technical term, but this

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should not mislead us into thinking that analysis consists only in the transformation of premises into categorical form. After all, analysis applies to entire arguments, and though the case of syllogisms from a hypothesis shows that the strong claim that all valid deductive arguments can be assigned to the syllogistic moods does not hold up, this should not blind us to the fact that analysis works very well indeed for arguments with categorical premises. There are three passages in the Prior Analytics where Aristotle claims to show that all syllogisms whatsoever are in the figures: chapters A 23, A 32, and B 23; and all three illustrate the use of analysis. The first passage actually comes before the section on analysis: in chapter A 23, Aristotle presented a completeness-proof for direct deductions with categorical premises by showing that all deductions with more than two categorical premises could be transformed into a series of twopremise syllogisms that would then be in the figures.⁷ Here, as in chapter 44, he recognizes that this will not work for syllogisms from a hypothesis, but he considers only reductio as an argument from a hypothesis, and at the end includes it in his general claim by maintaining that it must contain at least one proper syllogism. In this chapter, the completeness-claim is the main point, but in the later chapters of both books A and B the focus is more often on assessing validity. Transforming existing premises into the right categorical form is a preparatory step that may be needed before one can decide whether an argument is valid. Chapters A 32 to A 46 mainly illustrate the difficulties of this procedure, and perhaps Aristotle thought he might get back to those problems. At the end of book B, however, comes another short section of five chapters in which Aristotle announces that ‘It should now be explained that not only the dialectical and demonstrative syllogisms come about through the aforementioned figures, but also the rhetorical ones, and quite generally any means of persuasion in any kind of discipline’ (B 23.68b9–13). He then goes through several types of argument that come up in his Rhetoric—induction, paradigm, apagogic argument, ‘objection’ (that is, proof of the contradictory of an opponent’s assumption), and ‘sign’ (an argument in which a certain fact is taken to indicate another) and explains them all in terms of categorical syllogisms. The words ‘analysis’ and ‘analyse’ are absent, but clearly what Aristotle does here should count as analysis as described in book A. There is no further discussion of premises that do not have the proper form. But chapter B 27 (70a3–38) illustrates another form that analysis may take: there Aristotle reconstructs what he calls signs—that is, arguments that are usually stated simply as inferences from a single premise such as ‘she has milk in her breasts, so she must be pregnant’—as complete syllogisms to bring out their tacit

⁷ For a formal version of the proof sketched by Aristotle, see T. Smiley, ‘Aristotle’s Completeness Proof ’, Ancient Philosophy XIV, 1994, 25–38. At A 42, 50a8 Aristotle explicitly mentions the reduction of longer arguments that contain more than one two-premise syllogism to chains of basic syllogisms as a case of analysis.

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presuppositions. He shows that only inferences that can be construed as firstfigure syllogisms may count as proofs of their conclusion, others—such as ‘wise men are good men, for Pittakos is wise’—may contain some truth, but are not valid as inferences. The tacit premises (‘all women who have milk in their breasts are pregnant’ in the first example; ‘Pittakos is a good man’ in the second) are indeed obviously assumed by those who use the sign arguments, and Aristotle’s analysis shows why the first one is incontrovertible if the premises are true, while the second can be refuted even if the conclusion is true—from the fact that Pittakos is both a good man and a wise man, it does not follow that all wise men are good.⁸ That chapter has been deservedly praised for its distinction between deductive proof and possibly relevant but inconclusive evidence.⁹ References to the Prior Analytics in other works also show that judging the validity of arguments is the function of analysis—so, for example, at Posterior Analytics (91b13) Aristotle refers to ‘the analysis concerned with the figures’¹⁰ for the statement that Platonic division cannot prove the truth of a definition, and at Rhet. (II 25) he appeals to the Analytics for the inconclusiveness of certain signinferences. Analysis as a method of assessing the formal validity of arguments, both in constructing one’s own and in arguing against others, no doubt constitutes what Aristotle calls—just once, in the Rhetoric (1359b10)—‘analytical science’, and regards as an indispensable part of properly technical rhetoric. In order to decide about an argument’s validity, one must bring it into canonical form. Sometimes this may require reformulating premises, sometimes supplying a premise that has not been stated, and sometimes it means transforming a long deduction with many categorical premises into a series of basic two-premise syllogisms. As a method of judging the validity of arguments, formal logic has remained on the curriculum of all students of philosophy, not just mathematicians. And this function of logic also explains, I think, why Aristotle chose the title ‘Analytics’ for his work on the general theory of valid deductive argument. This accounts for the title of what we now call the Prior Analytics, but what about the second half of the work, now called the Posterior Analytics? Here epistemology comes very much to the fore, since Aristotle now deals with demonstration, that is, scientific proof, and scientific knowledge, both in the sense of scientific theory and in the sense of an intellectual capacity. For the inclusion of this part, it is not enough to appeal to chapter A 4 of the An.Pr., where Aristotle

⁸ This passage should be compared with the similar discussion of sign inferences in Rhet. I 2.1357b1–1358a2. ⁹ See M. Burnyeat, ‘Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Rationality of Rhetoric’, in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Oakland, CA 1996, 88–115. On Aristotle’s sign-inferences in general, see J. Allen, Inference from Signs, Oxford 2001, study I, 13–86. ¹⁰ The passage he refers to is chapter A 31 of the An.Pr., but since the chapter divisions are not Aristotle’s own, this may well be a reference to the first book of the Analytics as a whole.

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states that syllogism in general must be studied before scientific demonstration because every demonstration will be a syllogism, but not every syllogism is a demonstration. After all, he could have called the first part Analytics, the second Apodeictic, as some of the Greek commentators do,¹¹ and there are plausible reasons to think that the two halves of our Analytics originally formed two separate treatises.¹² Yet there can be no doubt that it was Aristotle himself who decided to put them together under the title Analytics, since references to this work are as often to the Posterior as to the Prior Analytics. There is no ‘analysis into the figures’ comparable to the last chapters of An.Pr. book I in the Posterior Analytics. Aristotle assumes throughout that all propositions of a scientific theory would be categorical in form, and that all demonstrations, regardless of their length, would consist in a sequence of syllogistic steps. Now, ‘analysis into the figures’ could only be treated in the Prior Analytics after the systematic chapters A 4–6, where Aristotle establishes the list of valid moods in all three figures. Once an argument has been put into canonical form, its validity or invalidity can be easily determined by comparing it with the list. But as we saw before, this does not mean that there had been no analysis in the earlier chapters, or that analysis consists only in transforming arguments into canonical form. Aristotle himself refers back to his proof of completeness in chapter A 23 as a case of analysis (A 42, 50a5–10, cp. above p. 97, n. 7). And, indeed, the most important case of analysis in the sense of identifying the logical structure of an argument must have been—the discovery of the figures and moods themselves. This was the analysis of ordinary language arguments with categorical premises and conclusion, and it began with a new account—or, as one might as well say, a new analysis—of simple propositions that distinguishes the Analytics from the de Interpretatione. In the de Interpretatione, a declarative sentence is said—following Plato—to consist of a name (ὄνομα) and a verb (ῥῆμα; literally just an utterance or a saying, but adapted for the purpose of distinguishing the subject from the predicate expression). Aristotle makes it clear that these are two distinct and mutually exclusive kinds of expression, so that a name cannot function as a predicate, nor a verb as a subject. In the Analytics, the terminology of names and verbs has disappeared. Instead, Aristotle now describes a proposition as ‘a sentence that affirms or denies something of something, and this is either universal or particular or indeterminate. By

¹¹ See Philoponus, In Aristotelis Analytica Posteriora commentaria, 334–5. Philoponus also claims that the word ‘analysis’ is used in a different sense in the Posterior Analytics, but the various senses he lists there are implausible, and the proposals were no doubt prompted by the absence of explicit discussions of analysis in these books. ¹² For a recent discussion of this question, see J. Barnes, ‘Proof and the Syllogism’, in E. Berti (ed.), Aristotle on Science: The ‘Posterior Analytics’, Padua1981, 17–59; and R. Smith, ‘The Relationship of Aristotle’s Two Analytics’, Classical Quarterly 32, 1982, 327–35.

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“universal” I mean belonging to all or to none of something; by “particular”, belonging to some, or not to some, or not to all’ (An.Pr. A 1.24a16–17). These propositions consist of what he now calls terms: ‘I call a term that into which a proposition is resolved (διαλύεται), that is, what is predicated and what it is predicated of, with the addition of “to be” or “not to be” ’.¹³ Terms, unlike names or verbs, can function as either subject or predicate. The phrases ‘belonging to all’, ‘belonging to none’ etc. replace the four ‘predicables’ distinguished in the Topics— definition, genus, proprium, and accident. With these two changes, Aristotle has introduced the terminology of his general theory of deductive argument, which covers all types of predication and overrides the difference in function of names and verbs. His new account of simple propositions allowed Aristotle to assign the shortest forms of argument—those with two premises that have a term in common—to exactly three ‘figures’ according to the position of the terms in the premises: either AB/, or BA/BC, or AB/CB. And the switch to terms that can function in both subject and predicate position also allowed him to introduce the deduction-rules of conversion: if A belongs to no B, then B belongs to no A; if A belongs to some B, then B belongs to some A; if A belongs to all B, then B belongs to some A. Conversion was Aristotle’s favourite method of proving the validity of moods beyond the first-figure ones, which he took to be evidently valid given the meaning of the expressions ‘belongs to all’ and ‘belongs to none’. With a complete list of possible two-premise arguments (in later terminology, the moods) and the rules of conversion and reductio ad impossibile, he could establish the list of valid moods that he later used as a standard of validity. Or, in anachronistic words, he could show that the validity of an argument depends on what is now called its logical form¹⁴—that is, in the case of syllogistic, the relations between the terms, not the objects referred to or described by them. In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle used the system of syllogistic itself in the investigation of deductive arguments from an epistemological perspective. Assuming that all scientific proofs must be syllogistic in form, he could characterize the indemonstrable first premises of demonstration as ‘immediate’ (ἅμεσα), that is, such that no term could be found that might serve as a middle term in a demonstration of the relevant proposition, and he then tried to prove that any chain of syllogistic inferences must have a limit both in the upward sense (to premises of greater generality) and in the downward sense, ending with indivisible species.¹⁵ In fact, such epistemological uses of syllogistic occur already in the Prior Analytics, for example, in book B, where Aristotle proves that though a false proposition cannot be inferred from true premises, a true proposition can be ¹³ The Greek text seems to be corrupt at this point; for the difficulties, see my note ad loc. in G. Striker, Aristotle, Prior Analytics Book I, Oxford 2009. ¹⁴ For the notion of logical form, see J. Barnes, ‘Logical Form and Logical Matter’ (1990); repr. in J. Barnes, Logical Matters, Oxford 2012, 43–143. ¹⁵ For this proof, see J. Lear, Aristotle and Logical Theory, Cambridge 1980, chapter 2.

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derived from false premises (An.Pr. B 2–4), and in book I, where he shows that the Platonic method of division cannot be used to prove a definition (A 31, to which he refers back at An.Po. B 5.91b12–14). As these examples show, the Posterior Analytics as we have them cannot be understood without the general syllogistic, which allowed Aristotle to develop an account of scientific knowledge and demonstration that is far more detailed and precise than the outlines one can find in Plato. Aristotle had good reasons for treating the Prior Analytics and the Posterior Analytics as a single work. And though we cannot be sure whether the ancient commentators were right or wrong in thinking that the common title is derived from the section on analysis in the first book of An.Pr., it is at least as plausible to think that Aristotle chose his title with a view to the fundamental analysis that made it possible to develop his formal system of syllogistic.¹⁶

¹⁶ I am gratefull to Alex Crager and Stephen Menn for discussing an earlier version of this paper with me.

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8 A Note on the Ontology of Aristotle’s Categories, Chapter 2 This chapter argues that the description of Aristotle’s ontological classes in chapter 2 of the Categories contains an implicit criticism of Plato by distinguishing between the relations of belonging to a species or genus and having an attribute. This distinction is then used in chapter 5 of the Categories to argue for the ontological primacy of individual substances.

Let me begin with a few points about the Categories that seem to be agreed among scholars: this fragmentary little treatise, which seems to be largely concerned with ontology, nevertheless belongs to the Organon, the set of works that make up what one might call Aristotle’s theory of argument, and the Organon (all of it, I am inclined to think) was written while Aristotle was still in the Academy. The traditional title Categories is probably late and the treatise is clearly not a finished work, but the alternative title ‘Introduction to the Topics’ (πρὸ τῶν τόπων) confirms that what we have is associated with the Topics.¹ The Topics, in turn, is pretty clearly an Academic production—a manual for dialectical exercises focused on definitions and their parts. But the Topics also seems to have a thoroughly un-Platonic ontology, and so it would not be surprising if Aristotle had provided a kind of metaphysical preface—preferably one in which he offered some arguments for his departure from the Platonic scheme of Forms vs. particulars. In fact, the reason why many of us still find it convenient to begin a lecture course on Aristotle’s metaphysics with the first five chapters of the Categories is precisely that these chapters seem to present so clearly the contrast between Aristotle and his teacher: Aristotle bestows the honorific label οὐσία—usually translated as ‘substance’ or ‘essence’ in Aristotle’s works, ‘being’ or ‘what really is’ in Plato’s—on just those things that Plato tended to treat as less real, less enduring etc. than his Forms.

¹ For these points, see M. Frede, ‘The Title, Unity, and Authenticity of the Aristotelian Categories’, in M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Minneapolis 1987.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0008

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Now, there is no explicit attack on Plato in the Categories, and chapter 5 begins with a bold assertion announcing the reversal of priorities. Aristotle does, of course, then go on to offer quite a series of arguments to defend his claim, using the terminology he has introduced for this purpose in chapters 2 to 3. But this might be seen as question-begging—the terminology seems to stack the cards in favour of particular subjects as the only ‘independent’ kind of entities, and so one might be tempted to think that the dispute about what counts as basic has no clear answer. Gail Fine, for example, at the end of her meticulous examination of the arguments from Aristotle’s lost treatise on the Platonic Forms (Περὶ ἰδεῶν),² concludes that whether one should side with Plato or with Aristotle may often be hard to decide and could be a matter of different intuitions. That may be true in a way, though I would be inclined to say it is not so much because of different intuitions as because the question of priority may itself be a little antiquated or odd: why insist on singling out precisely one class of entities as basic when it makes most sense to start with—at least—two? So I will not try to argue here that Aristotle should be regarded as the winner in this particular debate. All I would like to point out is that while there is indeed no explicit polemic against Plato, the somewhat self-serving terminology of Categories chapter 2 can be seen as raising a legitimate question about Plato’s two world—ontology that justifies at least another look at Plato’s enthusiasm for the ontological priority of the Forms. What Aristotle points out in chapter 2, and what a fellow member of the Academy would probably have recognized, is that the technical term ‘participation’ (μέθεξις), and some of the others that Plato uses for the same purpose in his dialogues, actually cover two distinct relations that do not coincide, so that Plato should, in fact, have recognized four classes of entities instead of his customary two. Aristotle introduces his fourfold classification of ‘things there are’ as follows (2.1a20–b6): Of things there are, some are said of a subject but are not in any subject; man, for example, is said of a subject, the individual man, but is not in any subject. some are in a subject but are not said of any subject . . . for example, the individual grammatical knowledge is in a subject, the soul, but is not said of any subject Some things are both said of a subject and in a subject— knowledge, for example, is in a subject, the soul, and is also said of a subject, grammatical knowledge

² See G. Fine, On Ideas, Oxford 1993, 28–9 and 241.

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Some things are neither in a subject nor said of a subject— for example, the individual man or horse, for nothing of this sort is either in a subject or said of a subject. (emphasis mine)

Both ‘being in a subject’ and ‘being said of a subject’ are defined more narrowly here than in other contexts. Aristotle explains that something is said to be ‘in something as a subject’ if it is ‘in something not as a part and cannot exist separately from what it is in’; and something is ‘said of a subject’ in the sense assumed here if ‘all things said of what is predicated will be said of the subject too’ (3.1b11–12). Commentators from ancient times on have been quick to translate the cumbersome and unusual terminology of ‘in a subject’ and ‘said of a subject’ into Aristotle’s customary technical terms: the first class comprises species and genera of substances, the second, individual attributes, the third, universal attributes, and the fourth, individual substances. Ackrill³ points out that the two phrases Aristotle uses here hardly occur as technical terms except in the Categories—and there, one might add, mainly in chapter 5, where Aristotle discusses substance. Some ancient commentators noticed that Aristotle’s terminology was designed to focus on the two different relations, as shown by Simplicius’s comment (In Cat. 45.19–23): But why did Aristotle not use the customary expressions, speaking of ‘universal substance’ or ‘particular attribute’ and so on? Perhaps because he gave an outline of each in clearer words; for ‘being in a subject’ conveys the essence of attribute, as ‘ of a subject’ conveys that of universal.⁴

To be ‘in’ something as a subject is to be an attribute, to be ‘said of something as a subject’ is to be a universal. What Simplicius does not say, of course, is that this might have anything to do with Platonic μέθεξις—but then Simplicius was a Neoplatonist, who presumably assumed that Plato and Aristotle agreed in their metaphysical doctrines. If we focus on the two relations of being a universal and being an attribute, we get the following descriptions of the four classes: (1) (2) (3) (4)

universals that are not attributes attributes that are not universals attributes that are universals individuals that are neither attributes nor universals

³ J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione, Oxford 1963, 74. ⁴ Τί δήποτε δὲ μὴ κατὰ τὸ σύνηθες ἐχρήσατο τοῖς σημαινομένοις ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης, καθόλου οὐσίαν λέγων καὶ μερικὸν συμβεβηκὸς καὶ τὰ λοιπά; ἢ ὅτι δι ̓ ἐμφανικωτέρων ὀνομάτων ὑπογραφὴν ἑκάστου παρέδωκεν: τὸ γὰρ ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ εἶναι τὴν οὐσίαν τοῦ συμβεβηκότος παρίστησιν, ὥσπερ τὸ καθ ̓ ὑποκειμένου τὴν τοῦ καθόλου.

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The technical terms ‘universal’ (καθόλου) and ‘attribute’ (συμβεβηκός) are also Aristotle’s, not Plato’s, but re-stating his classification in this way brings out the point that he is introducing two relations where Plato apparently saw only one. Both species-terms and attribute-terms are predicated of subjects, and Plato used to describe the underlying fact or state of affairs as a case of a thing participating in a Form. The order in which Aristotle introduces his four classes highlights his criticism of the Platonic story. The first class, natural kinds or species of Aristotelian primary substances, is a class of universals that are not attributes. Now, the Phaedo seemed to introduce forms precisely as attributes—see Phd. 74a9–c10; and note the comments at 103a4–22: ‘Then, my friend, we were talking about things that have the opposites, calling them by the names they take from them; whereas now we are talking about the opposites themselves from whose presence in them the things so called derive their names.’⁵ But if participation is the subject–attribute relation, where do Forms like man (ἄνθρωπος) go? And if Socrates is a man because he participates in humanness, what in the world is Socrates, the subject, if not a man? In Plato’s Parmenides, Socrates confesses that he is not sure whether he should assume that there are Forms of man, fire, water, and so on (130c4–d8), but it is clear that Plato eventually decided that there must be such Forms, given that Forms are supposed to be what is common to many things that are described by the same word.⁶ Perhaps, then, one should say that Forms are primarily universals—what many things called by the same name have in common and the objects of definition; and perhaps μέθεξις should be seen as the relation of particular to universal, so that the class of Forms should comprise both attributes and kinds? Now look at the description of Aristotle’s second class: there seem to be some attributes, such as individual instances of literacy, that are not universals; so one cannot say that the particular–universal relation is fundamental and attributes are a subclass of universals.⁷ In other words, the two distinctions Plato uses to mark the contrast between Forms and the things that participate in them do not yield only the two classes Plato seems to recognize; he should admit at least four. Aristotle’s last two classes—universal attributes and particular subjects—are, in effect, the ones that Plato usually does recognize, and hence, I suppose, they are put at the end of the list, with some special emphasis for the last item provided by the terminology Aristotle has chosen to use. This

⁵ τότε μὲν γάρ, ὦ φίλε, περὶ τῶν ἐχόντων τὰ ἐναντία ἐλέγομεν, ἐπονομάζοντες αὐτὰ τῇ ἐκείνων ἐπωνυμίᾳ, νῦν δὲ περὶ ἐκείνων αὐτῶν ὧν ἐνόντων ἔχει τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν τὰ ὀνομαζόμενα. ⁶ See, for example, Rep. 10,596A6–7: ‘For surely we usually posit one Form for each multitude of things to which we apply the same name’ (εἶδος γάρ που τι ἓν ἕκαστον εἰώθαμεν τίθεσθαι περὶ ἕκαστα τὰ πολλά, οἷς ταὐτὸν ὄνομα ἐπιφέρομεν). ⁷ I realize that there is a dispute among scholars as to whether individual attributes should be taken to be instances of attributes in individual subjects or maximally specific properties that can occur in several subjects. If, as I suggest, these entities were introduced in the context of Platonic division, it would be most plausible to take them as instances in individual subjects. For a detailed discussion of the controversy, see M. Wedin, Aristotle’s Theory of Substance, Oxford 2000, 38–66.

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terminology is, as it were, a mirror image of Plato’s, with the accent on the participants: where Plato would say that particulars bear the names of the Forms in which they participate or are ‘called after’ them (ἐπωμυμίαν ἔχει), Aristotle prefers to say that attributes and kinds are either ‘in’ or ‘said of ’ subjects. That Aristotle was thinking of Platonic ‘participation’ is confirmed by a definition of the verb ‘to participate’ (μετέχειν) he uses several times in the Topics (4.121a11–12; cf. 5.132b35–133a11; 4.126a17–25). It shows, I think, that Aristotle was not the first nor the only member of the Academy to point out the difference between attributes and universals: μετέχειν is defined as ‘admitting the definition of the thing in which something participates’,⁸ and that is exactly how Aristotle uses the phrase ‘to be said of something as a subject’ (cf. Cat. 5,2a19–21: ‘It is clear from what has been said that if something is said of a subject, it is necessary that both its name and its definition be predicated of the subject’⁹). This definition of participation should be Academic rather than one introduced by Aristotle himself, since μετέχειν is not one of Aristotle’s own technical terms. But the definition rules out cases of participation such as Socrates’ participating in similarity (Prm. 129A) or in plurality (Prm. 129C), since the definitions of similarity or plurality clearly cannot be predicated of a particular person. The definition seems to show that Aristotle and some of his colleagues decided to opt for the particular–universal relation rather than the subject–attribute relation in defining participation, and this might, for example, be due to the emphasis on division of genera into species (διαίρεσις), evident in Plato’s late dialogues. Aristotle’s class of individual attributes would offer a plausible answer to a question that naturally arises from Plato’s insistence in the Philebus (16C5–E2) that Forms or genera are both one and indefinitely many. What, one might ask, are the many that participate, say, in colour—things that have colour, or the instances of colour ‘in’ those things? If one is thinking of division, it might be plausible to opt for individual instances of colour rather than the things that have the colour, given that neither Plato nor Aristotle seem to make a clear distinction between the relations of individuals to their species and species to their genus. Plato himself, on the other hand, had spoken of tallness and the like being ‘in’ persons in the Phaedo, so that it would have appeared plausible to use the ‘in’-locution for attributes. But if one settles for a definition of μετέχειν that excludes the subject–attribute relation, then Socrates’ ‘participating’ in similarity becomes more complicated—we would now have to say that he has in himself an item that participates in similarity. Now, a Platonist might conceivably be willing to recognize a new class of particulars, but the puzzles raised about participation in the Parmenides would no doubt have been exacerbated by recognizing two different kinds of participation. ⁸ ὅρος δὲ τοῦ μετέχειν τὸ ἐπιδέχεσθαι τὸν τοῦ μετεχομένου λόγον. ⁹ φανερὸν δὲ ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων ὅτι τῶν καθ ̓ ὑποκειμένου λεγομένων ἀναγκαῖον καὶ τοὔνομα καὶ τὸν λ όγον κατηγορεῖσθαι τοῦ ὑποκειμένου.

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To return to the chapter of Aristotle’s Categories from which we started: the Aristotelian twist, as it were, comes with Aristotle’s insistence that Socrates’ relation to the kind humanity cannot be explained by saying that he has an instance of humanness in himself—presumably for the good reason that Socrates already is a man. In other words, things’ being what they are cannot be explained in the same way as their having certain distinguishable features, and they must already be something determinate and identifiable in order to admit of the kind of explanation that Plato offers in the Phaedo for ‘coming-to-be-and-passing-away and being’. Attributes appear to be dependent on determinate subjects, and the relation between these subjects and the species to which they belong cannot be understood on the model of the subject–attribute relation. This, I would like to suggest, is the point where a question of ontological priority could legitimately be raised—and we know, of course, that Aristotle wanted to decide it in favour of particular subjects. Let me now briefly turn to chapter 5 of the Categories to see how far he gets. Aristotle’s first and most general argument, from 2a34 to 2b6, ends with the triumphant conclusion ‘ . . . all the other things are either said of the primary substances as subject or are in them as subjects. So in the absence of primary substances it is impossible for any of the other things to be’.¹⁰ This conclusion is notoriously overstated. If we take it to mean, as one naturally would at first sight, that all other things depend on primary substances (particular subjects) because they cannot exist without them, but particular subjects can exist without the rest, the argument seems to fail dismally. For not only would we have subjects without attributes—‘bare particulars’, as they have been called by some brave philosophers in the last century—but since the species and genera of substances are included in ‘all the others’, we would be left with what Locke aptly calls ‘something we know not what’, since whatever it is that is ‘bare’ could not even be described as a particular.¹¹ This cannot be what Aristotle had in mind, since his primary substances, as we can see from his examples, are particulars of determinate kinds, such as individual persons or horses, and those will necessarily have some attributes, though not necessarily a fixed set. If Aristotle wanted to maintain that in some sense everything else depends upon particular subjects that are neither attributes nor universals, he had to be more specific about the relations he had in mind. As far as existence goes, the dependence appears to be mutual. Since we know that he continued to hold on to the primacy of his individual substances, I propose that we look at other parts of this chapter to see whether there might be some better grounds for his priority-claim. It seems to me that once ¹⁰ . . . τὰ ἄλλα πάντα ἤτοι καθ’ ὑποκειμένων τῶν πρώτων οὐσιῶν λέγεται ἢ ἐν ὑποκειμέναις αὐταῖς ἐστιν. μὴ οὐσῶν οὖν τῶν πρώτων οὐσιῶν ἀδύνατον τῶν ἄλλων τι εἶναι. ¹¹ Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book II, ch. 23, s. 2. Compare Aristotle’s own thought experiment in Met. Z 3.1029a9–30: if we took away all attributes from a substance, we would be left with nothing, except perhaps a matter that has no determinate properties of its own.

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again the distinction between attributes and kinds (genera and species) had a role to play. I would suggest that Aristotle’s main reason for counting all attributes as dependent entities shows up in the section about the proprium of substance, at 4a10–22, which is said to be the fact that only a (primary) substance is such that it may ‘receive contraries’ while remaining one and the same thing.¹² This is not presented as an argument for the primacy of particular subjects, but it points to a fact that was crucial in Plato’s own first introduction of the distinction between things and their attributes, namely that the same particular thing may appear to be characterized by opposite attributes. Plato concluded—rightly—that the attributes must be distinct from the things that have them, but then he went on to elevate the attributes over their subjects, on the grounds that attributes (taken as universals) are changeless and eternal (timeless), while subjects can and do change: when we paint the green fence black, we do not thereby destroy the colour green. Aristotle, on the other hand, seems to say: when we have painted the fence, the green colour is gone, but the fence is still there, and for any colour to come to be, there has got to be some body in which it can be instantiated. Now, this will not establish the dependent status of all attributes, since some of them, notably the differentiae of a species, the characteristics that distinguish them from all other species of the same genus, are such that a subject cannot persist while losing them. But Aristotle’s discussion of attributes seems to be concerned mainly with contingent ones—he notes that there is a difficulty with differentiae and decides that they are not ‘in’ a subject (Cat. 5.3a21–29). This is not a plausible move, since it works only because Aristotle uses the adjectives ‘two-footed (sc. animal)’ (δίπουν) and ‘(animal) living on land’ (πεζόν), which make it possible to predicate the definition of the subject as well. But it would seem natural to say, for example, that rationality (λόγος) rather than ‘being rational’ (λόγον ἔχον) is the differentia of humans,¹³ and clearly the definition of rationality cannot be predicated of people. However the difficulty with differentiae or essential attributes is to be solved, we might agree that particular contingent attributes do depend on their subjects for their existence, since it is possible for a subject to exist without having them, but not vice versa. So while it is not possible for a thing to have no attributes at all, it is possible for a subject to change its attributes while remaining the same, but not for a particular attribute to change subject. If one thinks of attributes in the context of change, as Aristotle evidently does in this passage, one can at least understand Aristotle’s view about their dependent status. So much, then, for the status of attributes. But what about natural kinds and their genera? Here I would be inclined to say that the dependence is indeed mutual—you can’t have a thing that is one without being one of a kind. Aristotle seems to recognize this to some extent—he grants ¹² Μάλιστα δὲ ἴδιον τῆς οὐσίας δοκεῖ εἶναι τὸ ταὐτὸν καὶ ἕν ἀριθμῷ ὂν τῶν ἐναντίων εἶναι δεκτικόν. The phrase ἕν ἀριθμῷ (one in number) shows that he is speaking of primary substances only. ¹³ For this point, see An.Pr. A 34.47b40–48a15.

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the status of substance to the species and genera of individual subjects, but he also relegates them to the status of secondary substances, no doubt because though they may be seen as (generic) subjects of (generic) attributes, they are still universals, that is, such as to be said of something as of a subject, and thus not ultimate subjects. And this means that they fail to be ‘a this’ (τόδε τι), as Aristotle argues at 3b10–21. This criterion for substance-hood remains constant throughout Aristotle’s works, but it is interesting to see that it is here introduced as a commonly held view (δοκεῖ, 3b10). Perhaps it also came up first in discussions in the Academy? For example, in the Sophistici Elenchi. (178b36–179a10) Aristotle claims that the Third Man puzzle arises because one has erroneously admitted that ‘what is predicated of all [sc. men] in common’ is a this.¹⁴ Aristotle paraphrases the expression τόδε τι by ‘individual (ἄτομον) and one in number’. Species and genera, at least in this treatise, are not one in number.¹⁵ Words like ‘man’ or ‘horse’ cannot be used by themselves to pick out an individual subject without some demonstrative, and it is presumably true that you cannot point to a universal. Also, one might say that while sensible particulars can be identified independently of their species (saying, for example, ‘the white thing there’, cp. Top. A 7,103a30), it would be difficult even to explain what a species is supposed to be without reference to its members. However, Aristotle’s subsequent attempt to assimilate these species and genera to the category of quality (or some other; see the Soph. El. passage) sounds hesitant and half-hearted, and would surely be a bad idea, since it would obliterate the distinction between attributes and species that seemed to be at the basis of Aristotle’s revision of Platonic ontology. What does not seem to occur to Aristotle, either here or elsewhere, is that species and genera might be seen as classes or sets, although one should think that this is actually suggested at least by the word γένος. But in the chapter on γένος in Met. Δ, Aristotle explicitly distinguishes between the use of the word for a family or group of animals of the same species, such as mankind, and its use as a generic term that is the subject of the differentiae (Met. Δ 28.1024a29–b9). And, of course, so long as one assumes that the genus can be predicated of the species, this interpretation is ruled out—mankind is not an animal, nor would Aristotle have thought so. So the status of species and genera of substances remains unclear in this chapter,¹⁶ and their demotion to secondary status may simply be an early indication of Aristotle’s reluctance to accept any kind of universals as entities in their own right.

¹⁴ Καὶ ὅτι ἔστι τις τρίτος ἄνθρωπος παρ ̓ αὐτὸν καὶ τοὺς καθ ̓ ἕκαστον· τὸ γὰρ ἄνθρωπος καὶ ἅπαν τὸ κοινὸν οὐ τόδε τι ἀλλὰ τοιόνδε τι ἢ ποσόν ἢ πρός τι ἢ τῶν τοιούτων τι σήμαινει. ¹⁵ But see Top. A 7.103a23–31, where Aristotle cites the cases of coat and cloak, two-footed terrestrial animal, and man as examples of unity in number. ¹⁶ For the ambiguous status of ‘secondary substances’ in the Categories, see most recently C. Perin, ‘Substantial Universals in Aristotle’s Categories’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 33, 2007, 125–44.

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This is as far as Aristotle gets in the Categories. If I am right about the Platonic inspiration of chapter 2, then the ontology of this treatise is thoroughly Academic indeed—the sort of thing one could hope for from a critical Platonist who sees the point of Plato’s theory, but who thinks it might need some modifications. Which only goes to show that Aristotle was surely the best Platonist ever. As for the dispute about priorities, I would be inclined to agree about the dependent status of attributes: even if not all of them are accidental, one could invoke the—admittedly epistemological—argument from conceptual priority that Aristotle himself uses in Met. Z 1 (roughly: in order to define ‘walking’ or ‘healthy’ or indeed ‘two-footed’, you have to mention animals, but not vice versa; Z 1,1028a34–36) to argue for some kind of secondary status, but this does not happen in the Categories. Not so for natural kinds, though—and one might suspect that the reason for the disappearance of the terminology of secondary substances from Aristotle’s vocabulary was that he himself was not satisfied with the arguments of Cat. 5. However, the ontology of chapter 2 is exactly what he uses in the Topics, where species and genera have a much more important role than concrete individuals. In fact, the distinction between primary and secondary substances is not even mentioned there. The question of ontological priority is reopened only in the central books of the Metaphysics. At this point, it has become much more complicated due to the introduction of the correlative concepts of matter and form, of which there is no trace in the Categories. Without wishing to delve into the labyrinth of interpretations of the ‘substance books’, I would like to draw attention to a statement that appears in the ‘summary’ of chapters 1–2 of book H and also at De Anima 2.1 (412a6–9), and that seems to be a result, however reached, of those tortuous investigations: Aristotle repeatedly declares that sensible substance is ‘in one sense matter, in another form, and in a third, the thing that is constituted by these (τὸ ἐκ τούτων)’. Matter is substance as underlying subject, though only potentially a ‘this’; form is a ‘this’, but separable only in thought; the third is the only thing that comes to be and passes away, and that is separable without qualification (H 1.1042a26–31). Aristotle does not rank these—presumably for the good reason that they exist, if and when they do, only together. It seems to me that this line could in a way be read as a vindication of the basic status of the concrete individuals designated as primary substances in Cat. 2. Once matter and form have been identified as the ‘principles’ of natural substances, they count as substances as well insofar as they are principles of the generally recognized substances.¹⁷ And the relation between the form of a concrete particular and the particular itself is not the same as that between a concrete particular and its

¹⁷ This may not be a plausible assumption from a modern point of view, since matter and form are theoretical entities, but it seems to follow from Aristotle’s view that the ‘principles’ of a thing must be ‘prior’ to it. At least that is how I would understand a line like Met. Z 3,1029a30–32.

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attributes: it is either identity (if the form is seen as the actuality of the thing) or that of a constituent inseparable from the individual itself. Separability or independent existence did not come up explicitly in the Categories (implicitly perhaps in the first argument for the primacy of primary substances), but in Met. Z it is listed as one of the features of substance (Z 1,1028a33–34), and in H 1 it seems to confirm the basic status of concrete individuals. But while the form–matter analysis offers a clear distinction between the relations of subject to attribute on the one hand, particular to form on the other, the individual forms of Met. Z and H can no longer be identified with the species-universals of the Categories. In Z 13, Aristotle argues at length that no universal can count as a substance. What members of the same species have in common, it seems, is not a metaphysical entity in which they might be said to participate, but simply the fact that the same definition holds for all of them—a form of words that is synonymous with the general term that signifies the form and is, therefore, truly predicable of all corresponding individuals. We might say that these individuals are all tokens of the same type—but the type itself is no longer seen as a metaphysical entity in its own right. The genus, in turn, is no longer considered as a whole of which the species are parts (as originally suggested by the word καθόλου); rather it is now described as (analogous to) matter that underlies the differentiae (see e.g. Met. Δ 28, cited above). The analogy is perhaps understandable,¹⁸ but not very helpful, since it does not leave room for the relations of inclusion, overlap, or exclusion between classes that are so obviously represented in the divisions of a genus into species—not to mention the four term-relations that underlie Aristotle’s syllogistic.¹⁹ At this point, then, the Platonic-Academic conception of ‘participation’ has completely disappeared from Aristotle’s ontology, and it seems that he never became interested in the ontology of classes. Whether this is to be regretted or not, I think we still have reason to be grateful to the medieval philosophers who bequeathed to us the distinctions between substance and essence, form and species.

¹⁸ For this point, and the difference between the relations of form to matter and attributes to subjects, see the classic article by J. Brunschwig, ‘La forme prédicat de la matiere’, in P. Aubenque (ed.), Etudes sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, Paris 1979, 131–66. ¹⁹ Interpreters tend to assume that the schematic letters in the syllogistic stand for class-terms. But Aristotle might have considered them as names of kinds: thus P. Thom, for example, assumes that Aristotelian kinds (εἴδη) are a special sort of sets (namely such that all their members fall necessarily or essentially under the kind term); terms such as ‘white’ or ‘walking’ he calls quasi-Kind terms. See P. Thom, The Logic of Essentialism, Dordrecht 1996, 316–17.

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9 Emotions in Context Aristotle’s Treatment of the Passions in the Rhetoric and His Moral Psychology

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle considers emotions in two different contexts: as motives for wrongdoing in book I, and as influences on judgement in book II. In the long chapter on pleasure in book I, he adopts a Platonic framework, treating pleasure as the fulfilment of a painful lack. In book II, he describes emotions as caused by impressions (φαντασίαι) of either good or bad things, suggesting a theory that would classify them as either pleasures or pains. The Stoics developed a theory of emotion along these lines, with the difference of insisting that impressions that lead to emotions are always mistaken.

Aristotle’s Rhetoric contains the most detailed and extensive treatment in the Aristotelian corpus of what the Greeks called the affections of the soul—the pathē, ‘passions’ or ‘emotions’.¹ This is a strange and remarkable fact, given the importance of emotional dispositions in Aristotle’s theory of the moral virtues, and indeed in his moral psychology in general. The nonrational part of the soul whose virtues are the virtues of character (NE 1.13,1103a3–10) can be regarded as primarily the seat of the emotions. Hence, one would expect to find a full account of the emotions either in the treatises on ethics or in De Anima; and indeed the first chapter of De Anima (403a29ff.) seems to promise a proper scientific account of the subject. But it appears that Aristotle never got around to this task. In the absence of a systematic treatment of this part of his psychology, we may therefore turn to the Rhetoric to supplement what Aristotle says in other places. However, evidence from this work must be treated with caution. Quite a few chapters in the Rhetoric are meant to provide the aspiring orator with materials for

¹ I will use these two terms interchangeably in what follows. The point of using both is, I think, not just that they are both common translations of the same Greek word, but also that they seem to emphasize two different aspects of the subject. While ‘emotion’ would seem preferable in an Aristotelian context, ‘passion’ is more appropriate in the Stoic context. But it is important to realize that Aristotle and the Hellenistic philosophers were talking about the same thing.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0009

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speeches on topics of general relevance—for example, the virtues for speeches of praise; human happiness or goods in general for giving advice; and so on. What Aristotle offers in these passages ought to be regarded as a collection of commonly acceptable theses that are likely to convince a not very educated audience, rather than as Aristotle’s own considered views about the subject. Now, the chapters about the emotions in book II of the Rhetoric are supposed to tell the orator how to produce (or to avoid, as the case may be) emotions or emotional attitudes in his audience. This means that they should in principle be telling him the facts about psychology, not just what ordinary people might be inclined to believe. Yet, what we find in these chapters does not look like a treatise on psychology. Aristotle usually begins each chapter with a definition and then tries to derive from it the answers to the questions ‘from what, regarding whom, and in what kind of state of mind’ an emotion will arise. He offers no general definition of what a pathos is, and he usually does not try to argue for the correctness of his definitions. Most commentators have therefore concluded that the exposition in the Rhetoric is an exercise in dialectic, based on ‘reputable opinions’ (endoxa) rather than scientific psychology.² But that would be odd, since these chapters are supposed to tell the orator how to arouse or calm the passions, not how to talk about them. What matters is not what people think about emotion but what is in fact the case. John Cooper,³ who notices the difficulty, suggests an ingenious solution: perhaps Aristotle thought that since rhetoric itself is not a science, and an orator may well be ignorant of the principles of the scientific disciplines relevant either to his craft or to the topics he discusses, an exposition of psychological matters written for orators should not be based on the findings of scientific disciplines, but proceed from plausible or respectable assumptions, as do the arguments of the orator himself. After all, such common or respectable views also form the starting point of a serious philosophical investigation, and they may be presumed to contain at least some truth, even if not clearly expressed. I do not find this consideration entirely persuasive. It seems to me that there is a simpler, if somewhat trivial, solution to the puzzle. We should accept, I think, the point that in order to arouse or to prevent emotions, the orator should in principle know the truth about psychology, so far as it may be available, and not just some plausible or popular views. But this does not imply that he needs to be an expert psychologist himself. Much like present-day lawyers or judges, he may be content with accepting the results of scientific research without worrying about their

² See, however, W.W. Fortenbaugh, ‘Aristotle’s Rhetoric on Emotions’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 52, 1970, 40–70. ³ In his ‘Rhetoric, Dialectic, and the Passions’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 11, 1993, 178–84.

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theoretical foundations or justifications—for example, judges and lawyers may surely accept the expert opinions of engineers or architects regarding the construction of a bridge without having to study engineering themselves, so Aristotle’s orator should rely upon the results of scientific psychology, just as he is also supposed to rely upon the results of Aristotle’s logical investigations in Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics. What we should expect to find in the Rhetoric is not science or philosophical theory, but theory-based results. This is what we do find where Aristotle refers to the Topics or the Analytics: he will mention a theorem or result and then refer the reader to the technical treatises for explanation or proof.⁴ There are no comparable references to a technical treatment of the emotions—for the good reason, I take it, that Aristotle did not have a proper scientific account, either his own or somebody else’s. Aristotle seems to think (1.10,1369b31–32) that what he needs for his purposes in the Rhetoric is definitions, and those may again have to be adapted so as to be ‘neither unclear nor too precise’.⁵ The Rhetoric would obviously not be the place to develop a theory of the emotions, so Aristotle turns to the best available substitute: theories developed in the Academy, either by Plato or by Aristotle’s fellow students, no doubt with some contributions from Aristotle himself. There is quite a bit of evidence in the Topics to show that various definitions of particular emotions were proposed and discussed in the Academy,⁶ and Plato’s Philebus contains something like a sketch of a more general theory in the section on ‘mixed’ or ‘impure’ pleasures (47C–50E), but it does not seem that the definitions Aristotle uses belong to an already established theory.⁷ Now, since philosophical views can also figure as premises in dialectical debates, Aristotle’s definitions will not have more than the status of respectable assumptions, but I think we can be fairly confident that he chose those definitions or theses that he himself would have been

⁴ See, for example, 1.2,1356b9, 1.2,1356b12, 1.2,1357a30, 1.2,1357b22–25; 2.25,1403a4–5, 2.25,1403a12. ⁵ This passage should be compared with NE 1.13,1102a23–26, where Aristotle says that the student of politics will have to study psychology as well, but only to the extent that it is needed for the purpose at hand: it might be tedious to go into greater detail. An example of a definition that would be ‘too precise’ might be one that mentions the physiological side of an emotion as well as its formal account, such as the definition of anger discussed at DA 1.1,403a29ff. ⁶ For discussions about the definition of particular emotions in the Topics see, for example, on anger: 2.113a35–113b3, 4.125b28ff., 4.126a6–12 (also mentions fear and shame), 127b27–32, 6.151a14–19, 8.156a32–33; on calmness or mildness (praotēs): 4.125b20–27; on indignation and envy: 2.109b35–110a4 (this should be compared with the lengthy disquisition about their opposition to pity at the beginning of Rhetoric 2.9). ⁷ Here I would disagree with Fortenbaugh (Aristotle on Emotion, New York 1975), who argues that Aristotle is working with a ‘bipartite’ (human) psychology that replaces the Platonic ‘tripartite’ theory in order to accommodate the emotions. Difficulties with the Platonic schema do surface in an interesting passage in the Topics (4.5,126a6–12), but I doubt that this is sufficient to speak of a new psychological theory. Plato’s distinctions are clearly based on types of desire, while the distinction between the ‘reasoning part’ and the part that can listen to or obey reason is based on the beliefs or judgements that can be attributed to the relevant ‘parts’. One does not have to see these ‘divisions’ as necessarily incompatible.

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inclined to accept. As a technical handbook for orators, the Rhetoric is neither an exercise in dialectical argument nor a piece of philosophical theorizing. Given this kind of background, it is not surprising to find that Aristotle’s treatment of the emotions in the Rhetoric does not proceed from a unified theoretical framework. As a matter of fact, I think that his brief discussion of emotions as motives, along with the long chapter on pleasure and ‘passionate desire’⁸ (epithumia) in 1.10–11, is close to Plato’s theories in the Republic and the Philebus, whereas the long section in 2.2–11, which deals with emotions as influencing judgement, seems to go in a different direction—towards a theory that invites comparison with the Stoic one. I do not have the space here to substantiate these claims in detail, but I will try to indicate what I take to be the main differences between the two treatments of the emotions by a few examples. In the second part of the chapter, I will turn to a brief comparison with the Stoics, which will inevitably take us out of the primarily psychological and morally neutral context of the Rhetoric and into moral psychology. I think that this comparison will also shed some light on the dispute between Stoics and Aristotelians about the relation between virtue and the emotions.

Passions as Motives and as Influencing Judgement: Books I and II of the Rhetoric The pathē come up in two different contexts in the Rhetoric: first, in the section on forensic speeches, they are mentioned as motives for wrongdoing, and one particularly important motive, epithumia or ‘passionate desire’, is treated in 1.11—a long chapter about pleasure and what is pleasant. For anger, the other motive explicitly mentioned—and presumably for any other passions, such as jealousy, that might provide a motive for wrongdoing—the reader is referred to book II. This second, and main, treatment of the emotions considers them, in accordance with Aristotle’s plan outlined in 1.2,1356a1–20, insofar as they have an influence on the attitudes and judgements of the listeners (2.1,13783a20ff.). As is his custom in the Rhetoric, Aristotle avoids repetition by dealing with a subject only once, even if it should be considered from different perspectives.⁹ So he does

⁸ I avoid the usual translation of epithumia as ‘appetite’, in this case, because Aristotle explicitly distinguishes belief-based desires from the purely irrational cravings like hunger and thirst, which have their origin in the body; see 1.11,1370a18–27. ⁹ The most striking example of this kind of economy is character as a ‘means of persuasion’: instead of explaining how speakers may convince an audience of their moral wisdom and reliable character, Aristotle simply refers the reader back to his collection of common views about the virtues for speeches of praise or blame in 1.9, saying that ‘one would use the same things to establish one’s own good character as one would for another person’ (2.1.1378a16–19). He can hardly mean that the best way to present oneself as a morally good person consists in extolling one’s own virtues, and so the reader is left with the task of adapting the materials given in 1.9 to a different purpose for which some further advice

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not pick up epithumia again in book II,¹⁰ and he does not emphasize the role of the passions as motives for action in the longer section, leaving it to the reader to figure out how passionate desire may influence judgement (2.1,1378a4) or how envy or fear, for example, would lead to action. Apart from its prominence as a motive for wrongdoing, there may be yet another reason for the separate treatment of epithumia in book I, namely, that book II focuses exclusively on emotions as relating to other people. Passionate desire or appetite may often be directed at other things that one would like to have rather than at persons, and so it might not fit very well into the schema that Aristotle uses in dealing with the other emotions. Be that as it may, Aristotle’s division of labour between books I and II has the interesting effect of separating, as it were, the desiderative from the cognitive aspects of emotion. I will come back to this point later; let me first take a look at the two ‘theoretical frameworks’ that seem to emerge from the different sections. In 1.10,1368b32–1369a7, Aristotle introduces anger (orgē) and epithumia as two kinds of irrational desire (alogos orexis) on a list of seven possible ‘causes (aitiai) of action’. One might, at first, find it odd that Aristotle mentions these two but not, say, the passions in general on a list that contains, as its other items, chance or accident (tuchē), nature, force or compulsion (bia), habit, and calculation or reasoning (logismos). But then one notices that orgē (anger) is used as a synonym of thumos (spirit), and thumos and epithumia (spirit and appetite) are, of course, the names of two of Plato’s ‘parts of the soul’ in the Republic. Since thumos as a synonym of orgē is normally used by Aristotle in a narrower sense than in Plato, where it is associated with a desire for honour, not primarily revenge, the two kinds of irrational desire still do not seem to be on the same level of generality—anger is a particular emotion, while ‘passionate desire’ as 1.11 shows, seems to cover a number of different emotional states. However, at 1.10,1369a18, the expression di’alogon orexin (1369a2–3) is picked up by dia pathos, and so one might conclude that all the passions are supposed to be covered by ‘spirit and appetite’, and that they are all to be seen as irrational desires. The Platonic psychology definitely seems to be in the background. The same is true, I think, of the chapter on pleasure and the pleasant, which opens with a definition of pleasure as ‘a movement by which the soul as a whole is consciously brought into its normal state of being’ (tr. R. Roberts)—a definition patently borrowed from Plato’s Philebus (31Dff.). Many commentators¹¹ have taken this as a sure indication that what Aristotle presents here cannot be his own might well have been helpful. The chapters 10–11 in book I probably also serve a double purpose: both to instruct the orator about likely causes of wrongdoing and to tell him what motives he may plausibly ascribe to wrongdoers. ¹⁰ Stephen Leighton (‘Aristotle and the Emotions’, Phronesis 27, 1982, 162–5) argues that Aristotle probably intended to exclude epithumia from the realm of the passions because it is entirely irrational. But he overlooks the crucial passage in 1.11 in which Aristotle distinguishes between emotional epithumiai and bodily cravings, as well as the mention of epithumia as influencing judgement in 2.1. ¹¹ See J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure, Oxford 1982, 194–9.

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view: after all, Plato’s theory is explicitly rejected in Aristotle’s official discussions of pleasure (NE 7 and 10). But this, I think, is a mistake. Pleasure is treated in the Rhetoric as the correlative of epithumia. ‘Whatever is passionately desired is pleasant, for epithumia is the desire for what is pleasant,’ says Aristotle (1.11,1370a16–18). By contrast, Aristotle’s official theory in the Ethics makes real pleasure independent of epithumia and lupē (NE 7.12,1152b36). Nonetheless, in spite of Aristotle’s official doctrine, pleasure as desire fulfilment is not absent from the Ethics either. The pleasures involved in continence and weakness of will, or those adequately indulged by the temperate person, can hardly be taken as pleasures of Aristotle’s preferred sort. Temperance is typically concerned with those ‘animal pleasures’ (NE 2.10,1118a24–25) to do with food, drink, and sex; and we do not hear of cases of weakness of will that consist in playing the piano for an excessive amount of time, or neglecting one’s children for the sake of solving yet another philosophical puzzle, although I would not object to seeing these as genuine cases of akrasia. Aristotle might have avoided some confusion in the Ethics if he had explicitly recognized at least two kinds of pleasure—desire-fulfilment on the one hand, and enjoyment of activity on the other. Instead, he decided to demote desire-fulfilment to the status of ‘accidental’ pleasure (kata sumbebēkos, NE 7.12,1152b33–1153a2). In a discussion of motives for wrongdoing, however, the pleasures that correspond to passionate desire are clearly more relevant than the more refined activity pleasures that take pride of place in the Ethics. So we do not have to invoke chronological considerations— such as the view that the Rhetoric is probably an early work—to argue that Aristotle’s adoption of Plato’s definition should be taken seriously. The survey of pleasures seems to be indebted to the Philebus in yet another way: namely, in treating the emotions that fall under epithumia, such as, for example, erotic love, as involving both pleasure and pain. The parallels between Plato’s suggestive sketch of an account of emotional states as mixtures of pleasure and pain (Philebus 47C–50C) and Aristotle’s chapter on pleasure in the Rhetoric have been investigated in detail by Dorothea Frede,¹² to whom I am indebted for this point. To the extent that Aristotle is following Plato here, then, one might expect him to develop a view that treats emotions as ‘mixed feelings’—appetite (epithumia), as Aristotle casually says in NE 3.11,1119a4, goes with pain; on the other hand, the prospect of fulfilment will be pleasant. But as we will see, this is not what actually happens in book II. Already in 1.11, the fit between some of Aristotle’s examples and the definition of pleasure as a conscious or perceptible return to the natural state is somewhat tenuous. When he speaks of the pleasure that comes from victory or from the impression that one is superior to others (phantasia huperochēs 1370b33–34)—I suppose we might call this a kind of pride?—it is ¹² See her ‘Mixed Feelings in Aristotle’s Rhetoric’, in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, London 1996, 258–85.

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difficult to regard the desire to excel as a perceived lack or disturbance of the natural state, unless, of course, one takes it that being superior to others is everybody’s natural condition. And while feeling inferior might count as distressing, leading to a desire to surpass or at least be even with one’s peers or competitors, such feelings need not inevitably precede or accompany the pleasure of feeling superior: some people clearly enjoy competition and feel quite confident that they will succeed. Obviously, we might declare passionate desire to be always painful by definition, but these examples would seem to throw doubt upon such an assumption. Whether or not Aristotle endorsed an account of the passions as mixed feelings at some point of his career, we cannot tell. However, he tends to use the phrase ‘accompanied by pain and (or) pleasure’ (hois hepetai lupē kai hēdonē, 2.1.1378a21; hois hepetai hēdonē ē lupē, NE 3.1105b23; cp. EE 2.2.1220b13) to characterize the class of pathē in general, after giving a few examples, and this may be an indication that he started out from something like the Platonic account. But the theoretical framework that seems to emerge from the longer treatment in book II is different. For now, only three of the emotions are defined as forms of desire (anger, love or friendly feeling, and hate¹³), while no less than six out of ten are explicitly defined as forms of distress or pain (lupē). While some of the ‘painful’ emotions may be associated with certain pleasures (e.g. fear with the hope of salvation), it seems clear that these pleasures are not seen as a necessary ingredient in ‘mixed feelings’. More important, although most emotions classified as forms of distress will evidently lead to desires—such as the desire to escape an imminent danger, in the case of fear—those desires do not form a part of their definition. What serves as the defining feature—the differentia specifica, as it were—is in almost all cases an impression or appearance (phantasia)—that a terrible evil is near, that someone has suffered an undeserved misfortune, that one has been treated with disrespect, and so on—which causes the pain or disturbance. It is evident that Aristotle is deliberately using the term ‘impression’ rather than, say, ‘belief ’ (doxa) in his definitions in order to make the point that these impressions are not to be confused with rational judgements. Emotions are caused by the way things appear to one unreflectively, and one may experience an

¹³ The treatment of the last two is exceptional in several ways: philia (and presumably also, by implication, its opposite) is defined in terms of ‘wishing’ (boulesthai), a verb that is elsewhere reserved for rational desire; and Aristotle seems to contrast hate with anger as being ‘without distress’, unemotional rather than emotional, as it seems. It may be that the awkwardness arises simply from the fact that Aristotle is using definitions formulated for a different purpose. One way in which one might wish to set these two off from the rest would be to say that they seem to be emotional dispositions rather than occurrent emotions—hexeis rather than kinēseis, in Aristotle’s terms. Still, whether or not a person is seen as a friend or an enemy will no doubt have an influence on the audience’s emotional attitude, and so the treatment of these dispositions would seem to be appropriate in its place. But it is perhaps not surprising that friendship or goodwill and hate do not quite fit into the pattern used for the other emotions.

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emotion even if one realizes that the impression that triggered it is, in fact, mistaken. An emotion is classified as a form of distress if the impression is negative—that something bad has happened or is about to happen—and one would expect that a positive impression, that something good has happened or is about to happen, should lead to the classification of the corresponding emotion as a form of delight or pleasure. This is not, in fact, the case for any of the explicitly discussed emotions in book II, although one might have thought that the ‘opposites’ of anger, pity, and fear mentioned at the beginning (2.1,1378a20–23) would be the pleasant feelings contrasting with these forms of pain or distress. But most of the alleged ‘opposites’ of the emotions treated in these chapters are not the emotional states that might correspond to the impression that some good thing has happened or will happen, but rather the state of mind corresponding to the absence of the specific distress. So calmness is opposed to anger, confidence (rather than relief) to fear, shamelessness (rather than, say, pride) to shame, while pity, rather than being opposed to something like taking pleasure in other people’s good fortune, is opposed to two different forms of distress: righteous indignation (nemesis) and envy or jealousy (phthonos). The system of ‘opposites’, as these examples already show, does not work very well. No doubt Aristotle introduces it because an orator may be out to prevent or restrain an emotion just as much as to provoke one, but it does not seem to be true that preventing or restraining a given emotion will automatically lead one to produce an opposite emotion. Another reason for the absence of pleasant emotions in book II may lie in the fact that some of them show up, although not explicitly described as emotions, in the chapter on pleasures, 1.11. I have already mentioned the example of pride; others might be the feelings of lightheartedness and freedom from care (1370a14–15), or the pleasures of anticipation as well as relief (1370a32–1370b10).¹⁴ The best candidate for a pleasant emotion in book II might seem to be gratitude (charin echein, 1385a18), but here Aristotle works with a definition of charis (the favour for which gratitude would be felt) instead of describing or defining the actual emotion.¹⁵

¹⁴ It is worth noting that chapter 1.11 already shows the characteristic use of phainesthai or phantasia to indicate the impression that causes an emotion; see 1370b8, b13, b33; 1371a9, a19, a23–24. A definition of epithumia parallel to that of orgē can perhaps be inferred from 1.10,1369b15–16 together with 1.11,1370a17–18: orexis meta lupēs phainomenou hēdeos. ¹⁵ Translators and commentators alike take chapter 2.7 to be dealing with ‘kindliness’ or benevolence, the feelings of people who do favours to others, rather than the gratitude of those who see themselves as receiving a favour. But the Greek phrase charin echein normally means ‘to be grateful’, and once we realize that this is the topic of the chapter, it is also clear that Aristotle is following his usual schema, dealing with people ‘towards whom’, ‘on account of what’, and ‘in what state of mind’ gratitude is felt. (See Cooper, ‘Rhetoric, Dialectic, and the Passions’, 1993, 184–5, for the difficulties involved in reading the chapter in the usual way.) Aristotle presumably resorts to a definition of favour (charis) because no formal definition of gratitude (charin echein) was available. His advice about the ‘opposite’ is clearly meant to show how one can persuade people that they have no reason to be grateful. Hence, I propose to translate the opening sentences of 2.7 as follows: ‘To whom people feel grateful, on account

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It would be an exaggeration to say that Aristotle develops a systematic theoretical framework that classifies emotions as forms of pleasure or pain according to the positive or negative evaluative impressions that cause them, but he seems to be going in that direction, and at the same time moving away from the—possibly Platonic—view that treated the passions as irrational desires involving a mixture of pleasure and pain. If pleasure and pain are to serve as genera, then their species can hardly be treated as mixtures of both. This does not rule out mixed feelings, of course; but instead of describing each emotion as itself a mixture of pleasure and pain, one would now speak—quite plausibly—of mixtures of emotions: hope and fear, for example. It seems to me to be no accident that this apparent change in theoretical outlook comes with the change of perspective from passions as motives for wrongdoing to passions as influences on judgement. An orator who seeks to produce a certain attitude in his audience need not, and in most cases does not, intend to get his listeners to proceed to immediate action. His aim is to make them see the case at hand in a certain way: to look favourably upon his client or upon the orator himself, or to take a negative view of his opponent. Which attitude they have will depend crucially, as Aristotle says, on the emotions they feel towards the persons involved in the case. And so his focus on judgement leads Aristotle to distinguish the emotion itself from the desire that may be caused by it. As I have already indicated, I take this to be a valid and important distinction. Even though nobody would wish to deny that emotions often lead to desires and hence motivate actions, most emotions are not only, or not essentially, desires or motives for action. Some emotions, such as pity and shame, can be present without leading to any specific desire at all, as when one feels pity for the hero of a tragedy or embarrassed about some foolish behaviour of one’s own. (I take it that the wish that things had turned out otherwise or that we had not behaved in such a stupid manner does not count as desire in the Aristotelian sense of orexis.) Fear will lead to a desire to escape the imminent danger, if that is possible, but it should still not be identified with that desire, for the desire may be there without the emotion, and perhaps a brave person will experience fear, but—if facing the danger is the courageous thing to do—still not even desire to run away. Finally, positive emotions like pride and relief would seem to be, or be based on, desire-fulfilments, not themselves desires. I assume, then, that it makes sense to distinguish in principle between emotions and desires (notwithstanding the fact that a few emotions are indeed defined by Aristotle as desires, and that epithumia is, of course, a form of desire), and that the

of what, and in what state of mind, will be clear when we have defined favour. Let favour, then—that with regard to which the person who has received it is said to be grateful—be a service rendered to someone in need, not in return for something, but . . . ’.

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essential feature common to all the passions lies in the fact that they are caused by an evaluative impression or appearance. To show how the Rhetoric’s account of the emotions fits into the moral psychology of Aristotle’s Ethics, I turn now to a comparison with the Stoics, whose theory of the passions can in a way be seen as an elaboration of Aristotle’s views, but who also arrived at diametrically opposed conclusions with regard to the relation of the emotions to moral virtue.

Emotions in Moral Psychology: Aristotle and the Stoics Aristotle’s discussions of the passions in the Rhetoric stay mainly on the level of straightforward psychology and away from moral evaluations, for the obvious reason that the orator has to be able to argue either side of a case. His purpose is to persuade and influence judgement, not to educate or, for that matter, to corrupt the audience. Hence, Aristotle explains what will make people feel angry or embarrassed, grateful or jealous, rather than when or whether they ought to feel angry or grateful. The doctrine of the mean is conspicuously absent. For the Stoics, however, there could hardly have been such a thing as a morally neutral psychology of the emotions, since they considered emotions not as a normal and natural part of human experience but as disturbances or illnesses of the rational soul. Nonetheless, their account of the passions has much in common with Aristotle’s, and in order to see how the theory adumbrated in book II of the Rhetoric might have been developed into a systematic account of the emotions, including the positive ones and not limited to emotions relating to other people, it is instructive to take a look at the Stoic classification of the passions.¹⁶ If we disregard for the moment the—admittedly crucial—difference between mere impression and fullfledged belief, we can see the Stoic schema as a plausible elaboration of Aristotle’s sketch. What is common to all emotions is that they are based on (or, according to some sources, actually consist in) an evaluative belief. ‘Pleasure’ and ‘pain’ are used as generic terms for emotions, due to the belief that something good or bad is present, while ‘passionate desire’ (epithumia) and ‘fear’ (phobos) are generic labels for emotions based on the belief that some good or bad thing is imminent or near. The elevation of passionate desire and fear to the generic level, where Aristotle seemed to operate only with pleasure and pain, seems to me to be a plausible move, and one which alerts one to some peculiarities of Aristotle’s less systematic treatment. We have already seen that the chapter on pleasure (1.11) seemed in fact ¹⁶ For the general outline of the Stoic classification, see the testimonia in H. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta III, 1903; reprint, Stuttgart 1964, 377–420. I have offered a more detailed account of the Stoic position in ‘Following Nature’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 9, 1991, 1–71, especially 61ff. (reprinted in Striker, Essays on Hellenistic epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge University Press 1996).

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to cover a number of different emotions under the headings of epithumia and hēdonē, and it is surely plausible to suggest that longing for one’s beloved, for example, is different from the desire to win, just as the pleasure of seeing one’s beloved is different from pleasure taken in victory. In the case of fear, it appears that Aristotle consciously opted for a rather narrow notion, linking fear exclusively with the prospect of great physical harm. He acknowledges elsewhere (NE 3.6,1115a10ff.; cp. EE 3.1,1229a31–1229b22) that people are afraid of other things as well, such as embarrassment, and he occasionally uses what appears to be an already current definition of shame (aidōs) as ‘fear of disrepute’ (phobos adoxias, NE 4.9,1128b12–13). But he may have preferred the narrower definition in order to keep fear as the emotion relevant to courage. Once again, I find the Stoic version plausible. Fear of physical destruction may be the most prominent case, but it still seems more accurate to describe other forms of anxiety as types of fear rather than simply as forms of distress. The Stoic system, based as it is on types of evaluative belief, also shows up the distance between Plato’s distinctions of types of motivation in the Republic, which seemed to underlie Aristotle’s treatment of anger or ‘spirit’ and passionate desire as motives, and a theory of the emotions taken by themselves. In the Stoic classification, all forms of passionate desire (including, notably, anger) are grouped together under epithumia. The other three kinds, by implication, should presumably not be understood as forms of desire, even though the general Stoic definition describes passion or emotion (pathos) as a kind of impulse (hormē). What is indicated by this term would seem to be rather a kind of concern, inclination or aversion as the case may be, that may, but need not, lead to immediate action. For the Stoics, as for Aristotle in a few passages, the emotions are primarily a kind of disturbance. So far I have emphasized what I take to be striking similarities between the Aristotelian and the Stoic account of the emotions. But as is well known, Stoics and Aristotelians assigned very different places to the emotions in their respective moral psychologies. In terms of psychological theory, the decisive difference lies in the view the Stoics take of the impressions or beliefs that underlie the emotions. While Aristotle seems to regard emotion as a spontaneous and natural response to the way things appear to us,¹⁷ the Stoics maintain that passion arises only when an impression is assented to and accepted as a truth. Because emotion is tied in this way to reason’s ability to accept or reject an impression, the Stoics deny that young children are even capable of emotion. The evaluative responses and the desires of children are accounted for by a natural instinct for self-preservation and for concern for other human beings, which regulates their lives until reason can

¹⁷ See NE 2.5,1105b19–1106a4 for the points that the capacity for emotion is natural and that emotions are involuntary.

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take over. In this psychological picture, the emotions seem to be superfluous: the action-guiding role they are said to have on the Aristotelian theory is filled first by natural instinct, then by reason. According to the Stoics, there is no need to postulate yet another natural capacity or source of motivation in the human soul in order to explain human behaviour and action, including morally right action. If the emotions were natural, one would have to assume that they somehow contribute to the human good—but the Stoics insisted that far from being natural, the passions were a deplorably common aberration of reason,¹⁸ an illness of the soul that arises from the error of ascribing real value or disvalue to the external objects that we are made to seek out or avoid by our instinctive inclinations and aversions. Now it is true, of course, that on the Aristotelian theory, one and the same action or belief may be explained by reference to two or three different human capacities; and virtuous action in particular is explicitly said to require that reason and emotion be in agreement about the best way to act. But this is not because Aristotle gratuitously invokes two motives where one might be sufficient. It seems clear that Aristotle is not thinking in terms of theoretical economy. He is offering an account of what he takes to be observed facts, including the fact that normal human beings experience emotions; and he follows Plato in distinguishing emotions from both bodily urges and rational decisions or judgements. This seems to be the commonsensical line to take: given that emotions appear to be normal in the sense that every human being experiences them, Aristotle assumes that they are a part of our natural endowment and tries to make sense of them on the basis of that assumption. The Stoic theory, on the other hand, seems to be motivated at least as much by moral as by psychological considerations. The Stoics apparently thought that both moral badness and human unhappiness have their origin in an excessive concern for things beyond a person’s control—either passionate attachments to other people or strong desires and aversions towards those things that are relevant to self-preservation, and that humans as well as other animals will pursue or avoid under the guidance of their natural instincts. Human beings should indeed continue to follow the pattern of pursuit and avoidance set by nature, but a truly rational human being would eventually come to see that success in obtaining those things has no weight at all compared to the real goodness that is to be found in perfect rationality, as present in human virtue and in the divine order of the universe. A person who had reached this insight would attain both peace of mind and perfect moral virtue. What prevents most people from attaining this goal,

¹⁸ The Stoics realized, of course, that it was paradoxical to maintain both that humans are made by nature to achieve perfect virtue and that just about every human being in fact turns out to be morally bad. It is not clear that they offered a convincing solution to the problem of the origin of evil. For some source materials on this question, see A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge 1987, vol. 1, s. 65, 410–23.

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according to the Stoics, is precisely their liability to passion—that is to say, their tendency to ascribe real goodness or badness to external things. Once reason has assented to the impression that one of the objects of our natural instinct is truly good, the effect, according to the Stoics, will be devastating. The erroneous belief will inevitably have an influence on subsequent impressions and judgements, and it will eventually lead to overwhelming and insatiable desires as well as inner turmoil caused by the frustration of those desires. If the passions are thus to be regarded as the source of all evils in human life, they can hardly be considered as part of nature’s plan; and since, as we saw before, human action could in principle be accounted for in terms of reason and instinct alone, the Stoics felt justified in advocating the complete extirpation of the passions. One might have some doubts about the Stoics’ sweeping indictment of passion as the source of all the evils of human life, pointing out that cold-blooded crime seems to be at least as widespread, and arguably more horrifying, than the more spectacular variety of crimes of passion. It is not very plausible to suggest, for example, that the crimes of concentration camp doctors were motivated by an obsessive attachment to external goods of any sort. But in ancient times, defenders of the Aristotelian position seem to have focused rather on the claim that passion or emotion is unnatural and superfluous. Plutarch, for example, argues that the Stoic psychology is mistaken, as evidenced by the common phenomenon of inner conflicts between reason and emotion (De Virtute Morali 445a–447c), and that, furthermore, the moderate, allegedly unemotional impulses recognized as legitimate by the Stoics are really nothing but what Aristotelians would call a moderate degree of emotion (De Virtute Morali 449a–449b). The Stoics had convincing replies to both of these objections: they pointed out that ‘inner conflicts’ can be construed as reason’s wavering between different options rather than as a battle between opposed forces inside the soul, and that emotion is not needed to account for ordinary, everyday action. The debate between the advocates of Peripatetic metriopatheia (a moderate degree of emotion), on the one side, and of Stoic apatheia (freedom from emotion), on the other, as described by Plutarch, looks like something of a stalemate.¹⁹ While the one side insists that emotion is natural and has to be accommodated even though it may occasionally lead to excess, the other side persists in its view that the passions, once admitted, will inexorably lead to disaster and should, therefore, be avoided. Both sides agree that virtue and right action must be explained in terms of reason’s correct judgements and decisions. So long as the capacity to experience emotions is seen as just one more source of motivation that may either support or hinder reason, it seems unclear, at the least, why it should be needed for virtue, regardless of whether or not it can be avoided.

¹⁹ For a detailed discussion of this debate as presented in other ancient authors, see Martha Craven Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, Princeton 1994, chapters 10–12.

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But once we realize that Aristotle, if not all of his later followers, distinguishes between the emotion as an affection of the soul caused by an evaluative impression and the desire, if any, that may arise from it—the cognitive and the motivational aspect of emotion—we can perhaps see more clearly what underlies his notorious thesis (NE 6.12,1144a29–1144b1) that moral virtue is required for the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom or intelligence (phronēsis). As the Rhetoric makes clear, emotions will have an influence on the way we see and judge other people and their actions as well as our own future prospects. Now, if emotional dispositions are what underlies virtue of character, the influence of emotion on judgement cannot be regarded as merely distorting, a distraction, as it were, from rational thought. An orator’s attempt to arouse or dispel emotions should also not be seen as mere manipulation, or as an attempt to produce conviction by illegitimate means.²⁰ If morally good people can be expected to have certain characteristic emotional responses, then the influence of emotion may sometimes be what is needed to see things in the right way. For example, it may be perfectly appropriate for a speaker to remind the people in the audience of services rendered to the community by his client, so as to make them feel grateful; and it may be equally legitimate to arouse pity for the victim of an undeserved misfortune. If the audience were impervious to such feelings, it might well arrive at an unfair or overly harsh verdict. Since emotion will have an influence on how we see and judge people and their actions, the right kind of emotional disposition may be what enables us to see things in the right moral perspective. If we had not been brought up to detest cruelty, for example, we might not even notice it as a bad thing and so would act cruelly or let cruelty pass without interfering. Again, if we had not learned to feel distress at the suffering or unfair treatment of others, we might overlook it or fail to be moved by compassion or indignation to try to prevent or alleviate suffering or to redress an injustice. What is at issue here is not the ability to figure out that cruelty or undeserved suffering are bad or undesirable in general. The Stoics would, of course, have insisted that their ‘wise man’ was well aware of such things and would respond appropriately. The role of emotion as described by Aristotle seems rather to be that of directing one’s attention to the practically or morally relevant features of a situation: ‘Fear makes people good at deliberation,’ as he puts it in Rhetoric 2.5,1383a6–7. The person of practical wisdom, as Aristotle says in a famous passage (NE 6.12,1144a31–36), must start reasoning from the premise that such-and-such, whatever it may be, is ‘the end and the best’. But unless she is a (morally) good person, this will not appear to her (touto d’ ei mē tōi agathōi, ou phainetai).

²⁰ On the ‘appeal to emotion’ as a legitimate part of the orator’s performance, see Alan Brinton, ‘Pathos and the “Appeal to Emotion”: An Aristotelian Analysis’, History of Philosophy Quarterly 5, 1988, 207–19.

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It seems to me significant that the verb translated as ‘appear’ here is phainesthai— precisely the one that occurred (either as a verb or in its cognate noun phantasia) in the definitions of the emotions in book II of the Rhetoric. Aristotle’s concise remark can be understood in two ways, both of which may well be intended. First, a bad person might fail to notice what would be the best course of action in a given situation. For example, she might simply not perceive her neighbour as a person who has suffered an undeserved misfortune and who is, therefore, in need of help. Second, even if it were pointed out to her that help was required, she might not see that as the best course to take—it may not appear attractive to her, even if she ends up doing it. The first interpretation brings out the cognitive element; the second, the motivational role of emotional dispositions for moral character. It is the right kind of emotional disposition that enables the morally virtuous person to see or recognize what is the best in any situation. A bad person, by contrast, might be described as morally blind: not only will she fail to notice the relevant aspects of a situation but even if someone told her ‘what is best’, she might fail to recognize it as the best. If this is correct, then the Aristotelians have a stronger argument to use against those who would rid us of our passions than just that emotions seem to be a natural phenomenon. They could claim that our capacity for emotional responses is what alerts us to morally important features of situations that we need to take into account in attempting to arrive at a rational judgement. In the context of deliberation, an emotional response can be described as one that is in proportion to the good or evil perceived, and hence adequate, if the initial impression holds up under reflective scrutiny. Aristotle no doubt expects a virtuous person’s emotions to be in line with ‘what the person of practical wisdom would determine’ (NE 2.6,1107a1) because her spontaneous reactions will not be independent of her education, her previous experience, and the advice of others.²¹ The fact that emotions are not the result of rational decision does not mean that they are mere reflexes—after all, Aristotle quite rightly distinguishes them from completely irrational appetites like hunger and thirst. Emotions are not based on reasoning, but, as Aristotle puts it, they (that is, the ‘part of soul’ to which they belong) can be persuaded by reason (see NE 1.13,1102b25–1103a3). This means not only that we can sometimes be talked out of an emotion by arguments to show that our first impression was mistaken; it also means that our reason-based beliefs and convictions will make us disposed to be impressed in certain ways and to have the corresponding emotional responses. If Aristotle is right on this point, then the Stoic ‘argument from excess’ loses much of its force. Aristotle would be the last to deny that passions can lead to excess—excess is, after all, what is essential to one sort of vice, like cowardice or greed. What Aristotle does deny is that emotion

²¹ For a fuller discussion of Aristotle’s views on the education of the emotions, see Nancy Sherman, ‘The Role of Emotions in Aristotelian Virtue’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 9, 1993, 1–33.

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must lead to excess. Given Aristotle’s view of the interaction between reasoning (both one’s own and that of others) and emotion, I do not see why this should be regarded as unfounded optimism. It is true that Aristotle does not offer a recipe for avoiding the dangers of excess once and for all. But, as I have tried to show, he offers us some good reasons to think that in getting rid of the passions, we might lose more than we can hope to gain.²²

²² In writing this chapter, I have incurred debts to many people: first and foremost, to the graduate students in my spring 1994 seminar on book II of the Rhetoric; to Dorothea Frede, for a lively and illuminating discussion of her own paper in that seminar; to the Discussion Club at Cornell, for a stimulating debate about a half-baked version of this chapter; and to Mitzi Lee, Nancy Sherman, and John Cooper for helpful comments and criticism of the penultimate version.

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10 Aristotle’s Ethics as Political Science Aristotle sees his Ethics as a part of political science—the part that sets out an account of the best human life, and so the goal at which a good ruler would aim for all of his citizens. This chapter argues that the practical reasoning of virtuous agents will be guided by the rules of what Aristotle calls (in EN V 1) justice in the sense of obedience to law, and also describes as complete virtue in relation to others. Those rules should be found in the laws of a well-ordered community, and hence readers of the Ethics will be expected to read the Politics as well.

Anyone who has read the first few chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics will know that Aristotle considers his treatise on ethics as a contribution to the science of politics. The claim is stated prominently at the beginning (e.g. 1.2,1094b10–11; cp. 1.13,1102a7–13); we are reminded of it in the discussion of practical wisdom in book VI (e.g. 6.8,1141b23ff.), and the last chapter of the EN announces the transition to the inquiry into politics proper—forms of government and the ideal state. But few scholars who have written on the Ethics¹ pay more than passing attention to these statements. This is understandable: not only has the treatise on politics come down to us as a separate work; politics also plays hardly any role in the treatises on ethics and, after all, the two disciplines have been treated as distinct since ancient times. Furthermore, ethics has stubbornly remained a part of philosophy, while political science now officially purports to be a social science—one which seems, however, to be largely a combination of history and philosophical theory (much like Aristotle’s Politics, by the way). Besides, Aristotle’s Politics may come as something of a shock for readers who begin with the Ethics. It is much more obviously a product of its time in history and advocates views that are now thoroughly unacceptable: it defends slavery, assumes the natural inferiority of women to men, and argues for a rather elitist form of government. Finally, it is

¹ I use Ethics to refer to Aristotle’s ethical treatises in general, that is, both the Eudemian Ethics (EE) and the Nicomachean Ethics (EN). Unless otherwise noted, translations are from the Revised Oxford Translation of Aristotle’s Complete Works (J. Barnes (ed.), Princeton 1984), with occasional minor modifications.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0010

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certainly a disappointment to discover that Aristotle thought his plausible and attractive model of the best human life could be realized only in politics or in pure research.² We can see why Aristotle thinks that politicians should study his theory of the human good, since the aim of a ruler should be to provide the best life for the lucky few who are capable of living it and (therefore) have the right to participate in government. This also explains why Aristotle insists on the necessity of legal rules for education (as already announced in EN 10.9,1179b34). But beyond this, a modern reader might be forgiven if she decides that Aristotle’s conclusions in the Politics do not follow from the premises laid out in the Ethics. The Politics contains a large number of false empirical assumptions that a reader of the Ethics may safely ignore. I sympathize with this attitude, even though, on closer inspection, the Politics turns out to be less outrageous than one might think. But while Aristotle’s political theory does indeed play little or no role in the Ethics, one should perhaps keep in mind that Aristotle’s plan for two interconnected treatises may have led to some gaps in the first one that may seem hard to understand if one limits oneself to the Ethics. I think, in fact, that some recent scholarly controversies may be due to the tendency to consider the Ethics as a work that is complete by itself. It seems to me that some of the difficulties that have led to these controversies can be resolved—whether or not one is satisfied with the solution—if one considers the Ethics as only a part of the larger enterprise.

Ethics as an Aristotelian Science But before I return to these questions, let me first take a look at Aristotle’s claim that ethics as a branch of politics is a science in his sense of the word. One might have some doubts about this on the ground that Aristotle contrasts both ethics and politics with exact sciences like geometry in a famous passage (EN 1.3,1094b11–27; see also 2.2,1103b34–1104a11) in which he reminds the reader that the subject matter of politics—what is noble and just—presents much variation and diversity; so much so that some people have maintained that it is only a matter of convention or custom. The same is true of goods—the subject matter of ethics. Therefore, Aristotle says, one should be content with an investigation that indicates the truth only roughly and in outline: the subject is such that generalizations will hold only for the most part, and so will the corresponding conclusions. Hence an educated person will not expect strict demonstrations in ethics. Indeed, to ask a public speaker for formal proofs would be just as silly as to accept merely persuasive arguments from a mathematician.

² It might be worth noting that Cicero still seems to think in the same way (De Off. I 69–73). Choosing a profession was presumably not a part of the leisured classes’ lifestyle, since they did not usually have to earn a living.

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It is unclear whether this verdict should be taken to cover absolutely everything that Aristotle has to say later. I find it hard to believe, for instance, that he takes his definition of eudaimonia as a rough and ready generalization. On the other hand, the notorious ‘doctrine of the mean’ is a thesis that offers guidance, if any, only in a vague and general way. I think, in fact, that Aristotle is running together two distinct points in these passages: first, he wants to say that certain generalizations admit of exceptions (such as that wealth is a good thing), second, he also wants to point out that the general theses he argues for are so general that they need to be complemented with a lot of detail to provide any actual guidance for action. This is obviously true of the thesis about the mean, but it could be said also of the definition of the human good. But even if we insisted that all of Aristotle’s theory is to be understood in this way, it would not follow that the investigation he is about to begin could not be what he calls a science: a theory that explains a set of more or less agreed facts by finding general principles that will help one understand why the facts are as they are. And a few paragraphs further down (1.4,1095a31–b8) Aristotle describes his procedure as following the familiar pattern of scientific investigation by starting out from the things ‘better known to us’ and leading up to principles that are ‘better known in themselves’. One difference between a purely theoretical science like mathematics and a science concerned with action lies in the fact that the second is—in our, not Aristotle’s terminology—an applied science that deals with individual cases. Here the analogy with medicine which Aristotle frequently invokes, notably in EN VI, can be helpful. Doctors treat individual patients whose condition varies so much that any textbook knowledge will have to be supplemented with experience. But this does not mean, of course, that the general theory of health and illness or of the human body that informs the doctors’ diagnoses and therapies is not a science. There remains a gap between the scientific theory and the treatment of actual cases that only extensive experience can bridge—and the same holds for ethics and practical wisdom. But the most important difference between ethics and the theoretical sciences lies in a point that Aristotle mentions just after the remarks about its lack of precision—namely that the aim of the investigation is not just knowledge, but action (1095a5–6). Here the contrast between ethics and medicine is more significant than their similarity. Both ethics and medicine have an aim that goes beyond finding the truth. But while the good to be achieved by medicine— health—is uncontroversial and largely accessible to observation, as are the individual facts and low-level generalizations collected by the doctors, the facts to be considered in ethics can only be securely grasped by persons who have received the proper education (1.4,1095b4–7). Aristotle devotes the first book of each of his treatises on ethics to the establishment of a definition of the human good. But he realizes that such a definition will not be sufficient to lead an agent to adopt the proposed conception of the good, and to act accordingly. For, unlike an

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anthropologist who wants to learn about the moral code of a tribe she does not know well—for example, mafiosi or golf players—the student who is to benefit from lectures in political science or ethics must have learned to value the things she recognizes as good or noble and see them as desirable ends of action, so that she may use the explanations offered by the science not only as explanations, but also as justifications of her own way of acting. The anthropologist need not adopt the moral code she is studying, while the student of ethics is trying to arrive at a better understanding of her own moral judgements. The education Aristotle has in mind here has to do, as he explains in book II (3,1104b8–27; see also 10.9,1179b23–31), with pleasures and pains. That is to say, children are trained by praise and blame, rewards and punishments to like and dislike the right things, as Plato memorably put it. This will lead them to see the right things as good and bad, and to aim at things that are good because they are good. The requirement for a good education marks the difference between a science of action (πρᾶξις in Aristotle’s strict sense of that word) and a productive science, or for that matter a theoretical science as well. Both doctors and botanists have to be keen observers, but they can collect the information they need regardless of their moral character, and there is no principled reason why a child might not begin to study botanics by the age of eight. Quite the contrary—he may become a better scientist the earlier he starts. In ethics, however, the facts do not become clear through mere observation of people’s behaviour. Aristotle is surely right in thinking that systematic reflection on the values one has been taught to appreciate will not make one a better agent unless one also endorses those values. Ethics, then, is not what we would call an empirical science. While both ethics and empirical science start from a collection of facts that one tries to understand, the peculiar nature of the facts one needs to be familiar with in order to study ethics also explains why one’s initial collection of putative facts may turn out to be an incoherent set. Reflection on moral questions may sometimes lead one to revise one’s initial judgement, while the observations of doctors and biologists are not usually expected to need revision. I emphasize this because Aristotle has sometimes been accused, on account of his method, of being hopelessly conservative. Yet he himself points out early on that judgements about what is good or noble may be controversial—not, I presume, because he shares the view of those who maintain that there are no facts to be found in this field, but because it may take some reflection to sort out the controversies. To continue with the outline of the proposed investigation: the plan of the Nicomachean Ethics can be compared, for example, with that of the De Anima. Aristotle begins by establishing a definition of the subject—the human good—and shows that it is supported by the common beliefs (or intuitions, as they are now called) that we already have about it. As with the (second) definition of the soul in the DA (2.413b10–13; 414b19–415a13), he then goes on to analyse the elements

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that go into the definition: in the case of the soul, the various capacities that define it; in the case of the human good, virtue and action. Since virtue of character is defined as a disposition to make the right choices in accordance with reason, we also get a discussion of choice and deliberation. One would then expect the book on the intellectual virtues, EN VI, to shed further light on the notion of ‘right reason’—which is indeed what Aristotle promises at its beginning (1,1138b32–34). After the virtues comes an investigation of the less desirable states of character— self-control, weakness of will, and viciousness. The rest of the plan is less clearly tied to the definition, but can be connected to the conditions Aristotle had set out in the first book for any candidate for the human good: pleasure is not only one of the traditional candidates for the human good, it must also be a part of the best life because, as Plato had pointed out in the Philebus (21D6–E5), no one would be content with a life devoid of all pleasure. Friendship is relevant because Aristotle had also noted that the good life for an individual will have to include the wellbeing of her family, friends, and fellow citizens as well (EN 1.7,1097b8–11). The final chapters of the EN return to a question left open in book I (7,1098a16–18)— should we say that the best life consists in activity in accordance with all the virtues, or only with the best among them?—and apparently answers it in favour of the second option: the best virtue, namely excellence in pure theoretical thought, is what makes for the best life. Aristotle notes that his present project has been completed (10.9,1179a33–35), at least as far as writing can contribute to it, and proposes to proceed to the investigation of legislation and forms of government. However, in terms of the avowed purpose of making us better agents, most readers might be forgiven for feeling somewhat disappointed. Barring the radical conclusion that we should all try to become philosophers or mathematicians, we seem to be left with very little indeed in terms of advice for acting as we should. This is, of course, because book VI, in spite of its initial promise, has little or nothing specific to say about the content of our deliberations. Aristotle talks a lot about the differences between theoretical and practical reasoning, which is exercised in deliberation. Its end is, as he puts it, ‘truth in accordance with right desire’ (2,1139a29–31), reminding us of the requirement for a good upbringing; and the general aim of the agent is ‘acting well’ (εὐπραξία). What he does not tell us is just how we determine what constitutes ‘acting well’ in each particular situation. So it is understandable that many of Aristotle’s readers have argued that the apparent gap must be filled by what we already have.

Practical Reasoning: Rules or No Rules? With apologies for oversimplification, let me outline the solutions that have been proposed in the last few decades. They fall roughly into two types: the first and

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most widely accepted view is that the practically wise person’s deliberations and decisions will be guided by her conception of the human good. There is an ongoing controversy over whether this means that she must have studied the Ethics to acquire the relevant clear and specific conception of the best human life, or whether this conception is largely implicit, arising initially from her (good) upbringing and becoming more articulate over the course of her life³—a process that would no doubt be helped along by a study of the Ethics, but that would not presuppose it. If we assume the more plausible second version of this interpretation, the suggestion is that, according to Aristotle, a good education would lead a young man ([sic] that is, after all, what he is talking about) to opt for a life of virtue—as opposed to, say, honour and glory, or pleasure (see EN 1.5)—and to have acquired an attachment to the relevant values, so that he takes pleasure in virtuous activity and detests viciousness. Such a person would have a fairly good idea of what counts as virtuous or evil action in his society, and this would enable him to see, in each particular situation, ‘what the practically wise man would choose’. So he would set himself the right aims—say, defending his country, contributing to public enterprises, helping the poor—and then figure out the right way of achieving them. This, then, is what Aristotle has in mind when he claims that the good and wise person will act ‘for the sake of the noble’. The second proposal comes from interpreters who tend to see Aristotle’s ethics as a kind of polar opposite of modern theories of morality, and Kant’s theory in particular.⁴ Their view is that there is no gap in Aristotle’s account of practical wisdom. Aristotle does not think that the good person’s deliberations or decisions rely on any kind of rule, nor a blueprint of the kind provided by his own account of the human good. Though one might still say that the good person’s decisions express her conception of the best life, this conception is not explicitly invoked in any deliberation, being entirely the result of her good upbringing. After all, Aristotle compares the wise person’s deliberative ability to perception informed by experience (see EN 6.8,1142a23–30; 11,1143a35–b14). Decisions, just like perceptions, concern particulars, and this is taken to mean that the virtuous man will simply ‘see’ what needs to be done, without appeal to any rules. So, defenders of this anti-Kantian view insist that Aristotle offers no rules or standards of rightness for decisions because he thinks there can be no such thing. It seems to me that neither party to this dispute can be entirely right. For the first view is open to another objection, less frequently mentioned in this context: it is not at all clear how an Aristotelian conception of the best life—whether ³ For those different interpretations, see: J.M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, Indianapolis 1975; repr. 1986; S. Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle, New York 1991; R. Kraut, ‘In Defense of the Grand End’, Ethics 103, 1993, 361–74. ⁴ The most vigorous exponent of this view is J. McDowell—see, for example, his ‘Deliberation and Moral Development in Aristotle’s Ethics’, in S. Engstrom and J. Whiting, Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics, Oxford 1996, 19–35.

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articulate or implicit—could help one in figuring out what should be done. Aristotle’s version of eudaimonism is not a theory like utilitarianism in which we can use the conception of the good to find out what is right, simply because Aristotle’s conception of the human good includes moral virtue. The agent who wants to do the right thing will hardly be helped by the advice that she should do what the virtuous person would do, since what she wants to know is precisely what it is that the virtuous person would do. If Aristotle’s account of the human good only tells her to do what virtue requires, this is not much better than being told ‘in case of doubt, do the right thing’.—But before we conclude that, therefore, the opposite party must be right, we should remember that Aristotle also keeps referring to the wise person’s knowledge of ‘the universal’ (that is, as his examples indicate, the universal premise of a practical syllogism). He tends to illustrate this by his woefully trivial examples of practical syllogisms, typically taken from medicine, like this one: All heavy liquids are bad; this is a heavy liquid . . . (6.8,1142a20–23). Presumably the conclusion is that I should not drink this liquid. To use an example that looks more like moral reasoning: suppose I see that someone has been injured in a car accident. I reason like this: People who are injured need help; in particular, they need to see a doctor; so, let me take this person to a hospital. It might plausibly be argued that most of us would indeed ‘see’ immediately that the accident victim should be taken to a hospital. But one might equally plausibly retort that this is because we know, quite generally, that accident victims should be assisted, and that they need medical help. And this kind of general rule is surely what an agent would appeal to if asked to justify or explain her action. It is difficult to understand how, on the ‘no rules’ view, there could be any meaningful controversy about the rightness or wrongness of specific ways of acting. I should hesitate to ascribe such a view to an author who clearly thinks that questions about what is good or bad, just or unjust, can not only be discussed but also, in most cases, correctly answered. What I want to suggest instead is that Aristotle does not spell out the universal premises of practical deliberation because he takes it to be obvious what they must be—namely rules of justice in the wide sense in which, as Aristotle tells us in EN V, justice is ‘complete virtue in relation to others’. Aristotle believed that most, if not all, of those rules can be found in the laws of a well-ordered city, and the Greeks traditionally understood justice in this wide sense as obedience to law (τὸ νόμιμον, 1129a34, b11–25). Here is how Aristotle introduces his distinction between general and specific justice (EN 5.1,1129a26–1130a9): Now ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’ seem to be ambiguous, but because the homonymy is close, it escapes notice . . . Let us then ascertain the different ways in which a man may be said to be unjust. Both the lawless man and the grasping and unfair man are thought to be unjust, so that evidently both the law-abiding and the fair man

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will be just. The just, then is the lawful and the fair, the unjust the unlawful and the unfair . . . Since the lawless man was seen to be unjust and the law-abiding man just, evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just acts; for the acts laid down by the legislative are lawful, and each of these, we say, is just. Now the laws in their enactments on all subjects aim at the common advantage either of all or of the best or of those who hold power, or something of the sort; so that in one sense we call just those acts that tend to produce and preserve happiness and its components for the political society. And the law bids us do both the acts of the brave man (e.g. not to desert our post or to take flight and throw away our arms) and those of the temperate man . . . and similarly with regard to the other virtues and forms of wickedness, commanding some acts and forbidding others; and the rightly framed law does this rightly, and the hastily conceived one less well. This form of justice, then is complete virtue—not absolutely, but in relation to others . . . And it is the most complete form of virtue, because it is the actual exercise of complete virtue . . . Justice in this sense, then is not a part of virtue but virtue in its entirety . . .

Aristotle’s distinction between general justice in this wide sense and the specific virtue he discusses in EN V—what we might call fairness as opposed to selfish greed (πλεονεξία)—has not attracted a lot of scholarly attention in recent debates, and one has to admit that Aristotle himself does not make much use of it. Indeed, one might argue that the lines between general and specific justice get blurred even in book V itself, once Aristotle turns to questions of what he calls ‘political justice’ in chapter 10; and as far as I know, the Politics does not even mention the distinction. The opening chapter of EN V may well be one of many instances of implicit criticism of Plato: Aristotle notes that while greed is traditionally described as the contrary of justice,⁵ it is actually not the case that every instance of injustice is a case of greed. Plato sets out the traditional contrast between (allegedly natural) selfishness and justice at the opening of Rep. II (358B–367A), but what he then defends in the rest of the book is not only fairness, but moral virtue as a whole—righteousness, as one might call it with a slightly antiquated term. Remember, for example, that justice is defined in book IV as each part (of society as well as of the soul) doing its proper job, which shows that justice presupposes the other virtues. What is at issue in the Republic is indeed justice as lawfulness or obedience to the law—the notion of justice attacked by Thrasymachus in book I. But justice in this wide sense is a matter of politics, as ⁵ Before Plato, see the fragment On Truth by the sophist Antipho (DK 87B44); for Plato, Gorgias and Rep. I–II.

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is the law. As Aristotle puts it succinctly in Pol. 1.2, ‘justice is a political thing.⁶ For it is the order of the political community; and a judge’s verdict is a determination of what is just’ (transl. GS). So in the Ethics Aristotle limits himself to a discussion of the virtue of fairness, leaving the discussion of justice as determined by the law for the treatise on politics. But what the law (if good) prescribes is precisely morally good conduct, as the lines preceding this passage show: ‘For man, if perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, the worst of all; since armed injustice is the most dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and virtue, which can be used for the best as well as the worst ends.’ I suggest that if there is a term in the Greek vocabulary that corresponds to our ‘morality’, it is δικαιοσύνη, not ἀρετή (virtue) or even καλόν⁷ (noble or fine). It is, after all, generally acknowledged that the Greek word ἀρετή covers more than what we would call moral virtue—I suppose this lies behind the recent tendency to translate it as ‘excellence’. The same is true of καλόν, translated as ‘noble’ or ‘fine’ in the context of moral philosophy, ‘beautiful’ in the context of aesthetic evaluation. Aristotle agrees with Plato’s view that the aim of the true politician is to make the citizens ‘good and obedient to the law’ (EN I.13, 1102a7–10). He tells us that the law prescribes conduct in accordance with all the virtues (5.1,1129b19–25, quoted above; also 1130b22–24)—not, of course, by telling the citizens to act temperately or courageously, but by prescribing ways of acting that require courage or temperance. Courage, for instance, consists not simply in facing dangers, but in facing them for a noble reason such as defending one’s city. Temperance consists not simply in refraining from pleasure, but in not pursuing pleasure when doing so would cause harm—in the case of adultery, the harm would be done to another person, in cases like drunkenness, to ourselves by making us unable to function as reasonable and responsible agents. In this way, the law also indicates what counts as ‘the mean’ or what one ought to do (ὡς δεῖ) in certain types of situation. In other words, if there are principles of morality to be found in Aristotle’s works, they should be looked for under the heading of justice, not practical wisdom. Now, legislation is clearly a part of politics proper, and it can be done well or badly. As Aristotle says in Pol. III 4 (1277b7–32), in the best city—and only there—the virtue of the good man will coincide with that of the good citizen. Hence, the place for a discussion of moral principles is presumably not the Ethics, but the Politics. ⁶ ἡ δὲ δικαιοσύνη πολιτικόν· ἡ γὰρ δίκη πολιτικῆς κοινωνίας τάξις ἐστίν, ἡ δὲ δίκη τοῦ δικαίου κρί σις. The text is difficult, and some editors (notably Ross in his OCT) have emended it. My translation is an attempt to capture what I take to be the point Aristotle wants to make. ⁷ Here I am indebted to T. Irwin’s study ‘Aristotle’s Conception of Morality’ (Proc. of the Boston Coll. in Ancient Phil. I, 1986, 115–43), though I want to go beyond Irwin in claiming that ‘justice’ in the sense of obedience to law actually is Aristotle’s term for what we now call morality. It seems unfortunate to me that in making his case against Bernard Williams’ claim that there is no such notion in Aristotle, Irwin draws almost exclusively on the Rhetoric rather than the Politics.

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I cannot here enter into a detailed discussion of what Aristotle has to say about justice in the Politics, but what he says about the aim of good legislators in both the Ethics and the Politics seems to me to confirm the view that he sees morality as a matter of the order of society and the relations between citizens. In the opening chapter of EN V, Aristotle asserts that legislators prescribe action in accordance with all the virtues. In the Politics, this claim is supported by the argument that the end of the civic community is ‘living well’ (Pol. 1.2)—and we already know from the Ethics that this means leading a life of virtue. This point is taken up again in III 9 (1280b7–12), where Aristotle rejects the idea of law as a mere contract aimed at guaranteeing protection from mutual harm, but not concerned with making the citizens good and just people. As I have already suggested, legislators or rulers will try to achieve this aim by giving their citizens reasons to act for noble ends. For example, a citizen would be expected to contribute to the common good—not just by paying taxes, but also (in ancient Athens) by financing dramatical performances or erecting public monuments, thus exercising the virtues of generosity or magnificence. Again, citizens will have to serve in the army and go to battle to defend their country, which requires courage and bravery. Their ability for practical reasoning will be developed in an education that teaches them both to be ruled and to rule—and ruling over equals is seen by Aristotle as the highest exercise of practical wisdom. In this way, then, engaging in the activities of a citizen enables the members of a community to lead an active life in accordance with virtue—as laid down in Aristotle’s definition of the human good. It is true that in EN VI (8,1141b29–1142a10), after having said that political expertise and practical wisdom are the same disposition (though not the same ‘in being’, i.e. in definition), Aristotle mentions that the label ‘practical wisdom’ is usually thought to apply only to the wisdom exercised in looking after one’s own individual affairs, because politicians tend to be seen as busybodies. But he immediately adds: ‘but no doubt one cannot run one’s own life well without some expertise in household management or without some form of government’, and notes that how one should manage one’s own life is an open question that should be investigated (1142a10–11). This may be a rare concession to the view that one could also lead a good life without being involved in the political life of the city, but in the Politics Aristotle clearly thinks that acting on a larger scale is more admirable. The only exception is the intellectual virtue of pure theoretical thought, which requires little or no cooperation. But even here Aristotle says explicitly that the rulers must provide room for it (EN 6.13,1145a6–9). The aim of making citizens virtuous is also implicit in the requirement that legislators must seek to establish (civic) friendship among the citizens. This friendship manifests itself in intermarriages between families and shared activities of citizens such as religious ceremonies, which show the citizens’ decision to lead their lives in common (3.9,1280b35–39).

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The relation between justice and friendship is perhaps best illustrated in a slightly paradoxical passage from EN VIII (1,1155a22–28): Friendship would also seem to be what holds states together, and legislators to be concerned about it even more than about justice. For unanimity seems to be something like friendship, and this is their main aim, while they fend off civil conflict most of all as being a kind of hatred. And when people are friends they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well; and the highest form of justice is thought to hold between friends.

This passage might seem at first to speak against the identification of morality with justice, but I think the contrast which Aristotle appears to draw first between justice and friendship, then to deny again by saying that friendship is the highest form of justice is actually meant to be the distinction between morally correct conduct—which is all that the law can prescribe—and the moral attitude of a person who accepts justice as a good and hence goes beyond what the law requires. Friendship includes, but goes beyond mere moral obligation, one might say, remembering that for Aristotle the truly virtuous person is the one whose inclinations are in perfect harmony with her sense of duty. One might protest at this point that morality has a much larger scope than legislation (and vice versa, of course). Aristotle does occasionally acknowledge this, as, for example, in EN X (9,1180a34–b2) where he says that it makes no difference whether the laws are written or unwritten. But the insouciance of this remark should remind us of two historical facts: first, that the Greek word νόμος means both ‘law’ and ‘custom’, and second, that the discipline of jurisprudence either did not exist or was, at best, in its infancy when Aristotle wrote. It is no accident that ‘jurisprudence’ is a Latin word. Even though in speaking of legislation Aristotle must surely have been thinking of officially enacted laws, he may not have spent much time asking himself what kinds of things should or could be prescribed or prohibited by law, and what should—whether for reasons of principle or of practicality—be beyond the scope of legislation. Like Plato, Aristotle considers the law as a means of moral education—education, that is, for those who are capable of seeing the point of the rules, coercion for those who are allegedly unable to control their base impulses (EN 10.9,1180a4–5). Law and custom, then, will provide some rules of morality. But neither of these offer rules that can be applied ‘mechanically’, as is sometimes suggested by anti-Kantians. Again like Plato, Aristotle is acutely aware of the fact that legal rules are generalizations that will not always fit all the relevant features of a particular situation. Legislators aim at the common good and at harmony among the citizens, and they formulate their laws with these aims in mind. But they cannot provide for all possible circumstances in advance, and so the application of the law– as any judge or lawyer knows very well—requires more than a reading of books. This is why Aristotle

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insists on the need for experience. What he has in mind is not the kind of experience—systematic empirical observation—that forms the basis of skills and theories and can be passed on to others, but rather personal experience that will help one to find the appropriate response in a given situation. This is what is needed to act ‘at the right time, on the right occasions, in relation to the right persons, for the right reason, in the right way’ (EN 2.6,1106b21–22)—all the qualifications Aristotle attaches to his formulation of the ‘mean’. The analogy with medicine holds here, too: a well-educated young person who begins to be an independent agent is in a situation similar to that of a student of medicine who begins his internship. This kind of experience is indeed not codifiable. Each person has to acquire it for herself—not in the absence of rules, but because it is needed to apply the rules in the right way. Young people who have been brought up in the right way will have acquired some knowledge of what counts as good and right, and they will also have formed emotional attachments to these values that will enable them to notice the morally significant features of a given situation. When Aristotle says, as he does both with respect to medicine and to ethics, that experience without theory is better than theory without experience, he is clearly thinking of personal experience. (For medicine, see Met. A 1, 981a12–24; for ethics, EN 6.7,1141b14–22.) It is because of their personal experience that we ‘ought to pay attention to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom no less than to demonstrations’, as Aristotle says, ‘for having acquired an eye from experience, they see aright’ (EN 6.11,1143b13–14). One might be surprised to find unargued experience placed on the same level as scientific demonstration, but Aristotle is acknowledging a familiar fact: namely that although experience may rank below scientific knowledge in the order of understanding, it also vastly exceeds the scope of what we can explain, and even what we can clearly articulate. The comparison of experience in this sense with perception is very much to the point. We do not study psychology to make some sort of sense of what others do, and we do not study decision theory to weigh the consequences of different ways of acting. One result of such experience is what Aristotle calls ἐπιείκεια (equity or decency) in book V—the ability to see when and why strict adherence to the letter of the law would be a mistake. In other contexts we might call it tact, or patience, or psychological astuteness—abilities that depend on a sense of the character of a person or the special features of a situation, and that go beyond what is captured by general rules. So practical wisdom, like medicine, will be guided by general rules, but—also as in medicine—these rules have to be supplemented by personal experience. Even if we consult others—experts or friends, as the case may be—our decisions will in the end depend on our overall judgement of the circumstances and the persons affected by our actions, and this part cannot be covered by any textbook.

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To return now to the controversies I mentioned above: it seems to me that those who maintain that Aristotle deliberately offers no rules at all are concentrating exclusively on the part played by personal experience, while those who think that deliberation must be guided by the agent’s conception of the final good, overlook the crucial role of justice in moral deliberation. What distinguishes Aristotle— and, for that matter, other Greek philosophers—from modern authors like Kant is not that he thinks there can be no rules of morality, but that he does not clearly distinguish between moral and legal rules, and therefore definitely sees moral rules as rules of society. One might perhaps find a precursor of the modern distinction in the difference between written and unwritten laws, and an even clearer approximation in the Stoic distinction between the laws of universal reason that apply to all human beings as opposed to the specific legal codes of actual states. But it took many more centuries before morality could be described as autonomy in the modern sense—giving laws to oneself. If I am right about the place of general justice in the larger scheme of Aristotelian political science, it should be clear that the aim of becoming better agents will not be achieved by reading only the Ethics. This also means that individual morality, according to Aristotle, cannot be studied in isolation from the political framework in which we live as agents. Only in the best city will the virtue of good men in general coincide with the virtue of the best citizens, and hence the best life can only be realized in the best social order. It follows that it is probably a misunderstanding to see the Ethics as a book that is meant to advise its readers about their individual ‘rational life plans’, to use Rawls’ phrase. One might be led to think so because of the remarks in the opening chapters of both the EE and the EN about the usefulness of knowing what eudaimonia consists in, and in particular by the line in the EE (1.2,1214b10–11) which says that ‘it is a sign of great folly not to have one’s life organized with a view to some end’. It is not very clear from the context in which these remarks occur what kind of end Aristotle is thinking of, but I suspect he may mean not much more than that one should have a clear idea of what one values most in life—virtue or pleasure, as the traditional alternatives tended to be presented by the Greeks, with the Platonic addition of pure theoretical thought. Aristotle’s general account of the best life for humans can hardly provide much in terms of individual decisions. What Aristotle sets out in both his treatises could be better described as the conditions that make a good human life possible. This general theory is of importance primarily for the politician and legislator who can have a direct influence on the organization of the lives of his fellow citizens. Now, Aristotle may very well have thought of his audience as consisting of potential legislators, but even apart from that, he is no doubt right in thinking that systematic reflection on this topic may make every one of us better as moral agents. Even if one does not need to refer to the general theory in every deliberation, both one’s actions and one’s life plan (if one has one) will be influenced by

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this kind of reflection. Furthermore, even a good education will probably not provide one with a lot of insight about how the various things one has learned to value hang together, or how they should be ranked. Understanding this may well serve to strengthen the moral character of people who are already inclined to think and act in the right way. Education and the law provide, as it were, the facts which an Aristotelian science sets out to understand and explain, and I think that both the Ethics and the Politics serve precisely this purpose. By showing us why we have good reason to think that moral virtue is essential to a good human life or why good rulers should act in the interest of the common good and try to foster a spirit of friendship among the citizens, and how they might go about doing that, we gain a better understanding of what might be good or bad in our own lives and communities, and that, one hopes, might also contribute to making us better agents. So a prospective student of Aristotle would be well advised to attend both semesters of the course on what Aristotle calls, at the end of the EN, ‘the philosophy of human affairs’ (ἡ περὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπεια φιλοσοφία, 10.9,1181b15).⁸

⁸ Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the annual Ancient Philosophy conference in Chicago, at the Political Philosophy workshop at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. I am grateful to Paula Gottlieb for her detailed comments on a very rough first draft, and to the audiences at Johns Hopkins and UCLA for helpful criticism and suggestions for improvement. Dorothea Frede also read an early draft and encouraged me to continue.

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11 Two Kinds of Deliberation: Aristotle and the Stoics Both Aristotle and the Stoics developed accounts of deliberation; but while Aristotle focused almost exclusively on finding the best way to reach a given goal, the Stoics were above all interested in deliberation about right and wrong. The first part of this chapter discusses the various meanings of the word προαίρεσις and argues that the result of deliberation is often a plan for action. By distinguishing between theoretical and practical reasoning, Aristotle also showed that there are two different intellectual virtues. The Stoics did not take over this distinction, including practical wisdom in wisdom in general, and describing it as concerned with what ought or ought not to be done. Stoic deliberation aims at determining what it is appropriate to do (or not to do) according to both human and universal nature, but since the success of an action does not affect its moral character, they did not find effective means– ends reasoning necessary for virtue.

Deliberation is a kind of reasoning in which one engages to answer the question what should I do? This question can be understood in at least two different ways, depending on the situation. It may mean: what should I do to reach a certain goal? Or it may mean: should I do this, or not? Both kinds of deliberation are forms of practical reasoning, distinguished from theoretical reasoning by the fact that it should lead to action, whereas theoretical reasoning aims at the discovery or demonstration of truth. The distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning appears first in Aristotle’s Ethics. Plato does not yet have it, though examples of both kinds of deliberation occur in his dialogues. He seems to have thought that an expert in either a science or a technical skill will understand his subject well enough not only to give an account of it, but also to produce it if it is something that can be produced. A doctor, for instance, would know what health is, and this would enable him as far as possible to restore or to preserve the health of his patients. The most conspicuous example of this conception of expert knowledge appears in the Republic, where Plato assumes that the philosophers who have attained

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0011

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knowledge of the Good will be the best rulers, able to make the city and its citizens good. As the examples show, this is a questionable view, and it might well be one of the things that led Aristotle to his distinction between practical and theoretical thought. For, unlike Plato, Aristotle did not think that philosophers would be the best politicians. He agreed that good rulers should indeed have quite a lot of knowledge (what he calls ‘political science’) but insisted that even more important for political expertise is experience, since politicians have to deal with particular persons and actions. Their primary virtue is practical, not theoretical wisdom, and the exercise of practical wisdom consists in good deliberation. So we find in both of Aristotle’s Ethics explicit discussions of deliberation, and also the distinction between the two intellectual virtues—theoretical and practical wisdom (σοφία and φρόνησις, respectively). After Aristotle, the Stoics also developed a theory of deliberation, of which we find a relatively late and probably somewhat unorthodox version in Cicero’s De Officiis, based on a work by the Stoic Panaetius (second century ). Comparing the two theories, one notices that, while Aristotle’s official account of deliberation in the Ethics deals only with deliberation about how to reach given ends,¹ the Stoics focused almost exclusively on questions about whether or not one should do a proposed action. Why this difference? I will argue that it reflects different conceptions of a successful life of action.

Aristotle—Deliberation as Planning Aristotle describes practical deliberation in chapters III 2 and 3 of the Nicomachean Ethics (EN) and chapter II 10 of the Eudemian Ethics (EE), where he distinguishes merely voluntary action from action on the basis of reasoning. In order to characterize action based on reasoning, he introduces the concept of προαίρεσις. The Greek word is usually translated as either ‘choice’ or ‘decision’, but I will leave it untranslated for the moment. Aristotle explains that προαίρεσις is ‘thought to be most closely bound up with virtue, and to discriminate characters better than actions do’(EN 3.2,1111b5–6). As Gauthier and Jolif note in their commentary on the EN (II,189–90), προαίρεσις was a novelty in the vocabulary of philosophy and even to some extent in ordinary Greek at the time, but perhaps because Aristotle goes on to discuss the views of other philosophers about προαίρεσις, they do not ask what might have motivated the innovation. Aristotle goes through a number of possible candidates ¹ For a detailed defence of this point in a different context, see K.M. Nielsen, ‘Deliberation as Inquiry’, Phil. Review 120, 2011, 383–421.

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among psychical phenomena that could perhaps be treated as representing or including προαίρεσις, namely all three forms of desire recognized by Plato and his followers and also judgement or belief (δόξα). In the EE he describes this procedure as trying to determine the genus, which could be either desire or judgement. In each case, Aristotle argues that these things could not be identified with προαίρεσις. It seems that προαίρεσις did not easily fit into the psychological vocabulary of the Academy, and so Aristotle ends up with the somewhat awkward solution that it must be a combination of desire and thought—either a deliberate desire for something in our own power, as he puts it in EN III 3 (1113a11; cp. VI 2, 1139a23) and EE II 10 (1226b17), or desiderative thought (EN VI 2, 1139b5), leaving it open whether desire or thought should be considered as the genus. Aristotle has more to say about this in EN VI 2, but the formula remains the same. προαίρεσις is also described as the final point of deliberation and the starting point of action (EN III 3.1113a3–7), but again this does not clearly show what it is supposed to be. A mental act, perhaps, as suggested by the English words ‘choice’ and ‘decision’? But then why would Aristotle assume without argument that it must be preceded by deliberation? We do not actually have a text from a philosopher before, or contemporary with, Aristotle that argues for any one of the alleged alternative views. There is no discussion of προαίρεσις in Plato. According to des Places (Lexique), the word occurs only once, namely at Prm. 143C2 (also cited by LSJ), in a passage that has nothing to do with deliberation or decision. The word just means ‘picking up’ or selecting from a list of items, with no implication of preference. There are a few more occurrences of the corresponding verb, mostly in the same neutral sense, though sometimes in the sense of preferential choice. Given that we have very little of the philosophical writings of Aristotle’s contemporaries, it is, of course, possible that others—presumably members of the Academy, since Aristotle’s list of candidates looks thoroughly Academic—had offered accounts of προαίρεσις. But again, this does not seem very likely: there is no mention of προαίρεσις as opposed, for example, to ἐπιθυμία, βούλησις, or δόξα in the Topics, which often reflects the interests of Aristotle’s early colleagues. It is at least as plausible to think that here, as elsewhere, Aristotle is simply reporting the views of others in his own terminology, saying no more than that others dealt with what he would call προαίρεσις in connection with one or the other form of desire, or with judgement. Hence it makes sense to ask why Aristotle thought it important to find a place for προαίρεσις in the vocabulary of moral psychology. Now, since the word seems to mean either simply choice or preferential choice, one might at first suppose that Aristotle intended to mark a gap between desire and action, or between thought and action, as the Stoics did with their notion of assent. It is one thing to desire something, another to act on the desire, and also to think that one should do something and to actually do it. And in the case of rational animals, one might say that the step from desire or thought to action

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consists in choice or decision. But this cannot have been Aristotle’s reason for introducing the notion of προαίρεσις, since he makes it perfectly clear that people can and often do act from appetite or emotion without προαίρεσις. On the other hand, Aristotle assumes throughout and without further argument that προαίρεσις requires deliberation and reasoning, which is why he holds that children and nonhuman animals do not act from it. Why would he take it to be so obvious that choice or decision requires deliberation? This brings us to the often-noted point that neither ‘choice’ nor ‘decision’ seem to be entirely adequate (English) translations of the Greek term. After all, even young children do make preferential choices—for example, preferring chocolate ice cream to vanilla; and they also, I would say, make decisions—for example, about what to wear on a cold day—that may lead to protracted discussions with their parents. Some scholars have, therefore, resorted to translations such as ‘deliberate choice’ or the like to indicate what Aristotle seems to have in mind. But why did he take the word προαίρεσις to express this? Anthony Kenny² has recently proposed ‘resolution’, taking into account cases in which proairesis does not result in a particular action, as, for example, the resolution of self-controlled persons not to give in to certain kinds of temptation. Yet none of these translations explains why Aristotle takes it for granted that a proairesis must be based on deliberation: choices and even decisions can be made by children who are not yet capable of deliberation, and New Year’s resolutions usually are not the result of lengthy reflection, though one may indeed assume that they have been preceded by some relevant thought. At this point it helps, I think, to return to the dictionary. LSJ list quite a few different meanings of προαίρεσις, though they begin with (preferential) choice. The most relevant ones, I think, are these: (1) (2) (3) (5b)

choosing one thing before another; resolution purpose, plan, scope of action (in political language) deliberate course of action, policy sect or school of music or philosophy

As Gauthier and Jolif note in their commentary,³ the word προαίρεσις has the process/product ambiguity familiar from other Greek nouns ending in -σις: αἴσθησις may mean both the act of perceiving and the impression received; διήγησις may mean both the telling of the story and the story itself, and notoriously, αἵρεσις means not just a choice, but also what is chosen—namely a sect or party (as in ‘heresy’). Similarly, then, προαίρεσις may also mean both the choice ² ‘Practical Truth in Aristotle’ in Episteme, etc., ed. B. Morison/K. Ierodiakonou, Oxford 2011, 277–84. ³ R.E. Gauthier and J.Y. Jolif, L’Éthique a Nicomaque, 2nd ed., Louvain/Paris 1970, vol. I, 189–90.

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and what is chosen. And Gauthier/Jolif point out that the second sense is actually more common in the fourth century orators than the first. Aristotle himself also uses the word in several of these senses, as a few examples show: EN X 9.1179a33–35: If these matters and the virtues, and also friendship and pleasure, have been dealt with sufficiently, are we to suppose that our project [i.e. the present investigation] has reached its end? Ἆρ’ οὖν εἰ περί τε τούτων καὶ τῶν ἀρετῶν, ἔτι δὲ καὶ φιλίας καὶ ἡδονῆς, ἱκανῶς εἴρηται τοῖς τύποις, τέλος ἔχειν οἰητέον τὴν προαίρεσιν; Rhet. I 1,1355b17–21: . . . for sophistry lies not in the capacity, but in the purpose, . . . and in dialectic a man is a sophist with respect to the purpose, but a dialectician not with respect to the purpose, but with respect to the capacity. (i.e. sophist and dialectician use the same skill, but differ in their purpose or plan) σοφιστὴς μὲν κατὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν, διαλεκτικὸς δὲ οὐ κατὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν δύναμιν. See also Met. Γ 2,1004b24–25: sophistry differs from dialectic τοῦ βίου τῇ προαιρέσει [life plan] For the connection with deliberation, see EN V 8,1135b19–27: When someone acts with knowledge but not after deliberation, it is an act of injustice—e.g. the acts due to anger or to other passions necessary or natural to man . . . But when a man acts from a plan, he is an unjust man and a vicious man. Hence acts proceeding from anger are rightly judged not to be done of malice aforethought . . . ὅταν δὲ εἰδὼς μὲν μὴ προβουλεύσας δέ, ἀδίκημα, οἷον ὅσα τε διὰ θυμὸν καὶ ἄλλα πάθη . . . οὐ μέντοι πω ἄδικοι διὰ ταῦτα οὐδὲ πονηροί· . . . ὅταν δ’ ἐκ προαιρέσεως, ἄδικος καὶ μοχθηρός. Διὸ καλῶς τὰ ἐκ θυμοῦ οὐκ ἐκ προνοίας κρίνεται· οὐ γὰρ ἄρχει ὁ θυμῷ ποιῶν, ἀλλ’ ὁ ὀργίσας. (cp. EN V 8,1136a1; Rhet. I 13,1374a9–16) When deliberation consists, as Aristotle describes it, in searching for a way to bring about a certain end, finishing when one has reached the kind of action that can be done without further preparation, this means, not necessarily that one will immediately take the first step, but simply that one’s plan is now complete and can be put into practice when the occasion arises. And what is chosen or decided upon at the end of deliberation should be, as the above examples indicate, a plan or policy rather than a particular action. Deliberation ends, as Aristotle says, when one has reached something that the agent can do without further preparation.

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This will then be the first step in the realization of the plan; but that is not to say that deliberation must lead to immediate action. As has often been noted, in the case of the acratic and the self-controlled person, their resolution, say, to resist temptations to inappropriate pleasures will have been made before such an occasion arises—it is a choice of policy. If we take the act of προαίρεσις to be the adoption of an action plan or policy, it is easier to understand what Aristotle means when he says such things as that ‘the virtues are a sort of προαίρεσις, or not without προαίρεσις’ (EN II 5,1106a2–4: Ἔτι ὀργιζόμεθα μὲν καὶ φοβούμεθα ἀπροαιρέτως, αἱ δ᾽ ἀρεταὶ προαιρέσεις τινὲς ἢ οὐκ ἄνευ προαιρέσεως): the conduct of a morally virtuous person could plausibly be understood as being based on the adoption of a set of action policies or moral principles. Or ‘the προαίρεσις of living together is friendship’: people who have chosen a policy of living together are friends (Pol. III 9, 1280b38 ἡ γὰρ τοῦ συζῆν προαίρεσις φιλία). Again, an acratic person is acting against her usual policy (perhaps even in choosing to make an exception), whereas the self-controlled person sticks to her policy in the face of temptation. So far I have said nothing about the so-called ‘practical syllogisms’⁴ (not Aristotle’s own term) that are sometimes taken to be typical examples of practical deliberation. Aristotle himself says that the conclusion of this kind of reasoning is an action, as in the following example: I need a drink; here is a drink—at once he drinks (de Motu Animalium 7,701a32–33). However, such quasi-syllogisms obviously do not represent a search for means and ways to reach a given end, as Aristotle describes deliberation in the Ethics; rather, they serve to illustrate the transition from a plan or a desire to action. This is the question Aristotle addresses in the chapter of the de Motu in which he compares practical thinking to a theoretical syllogism (701a7–12): how is it that thinking sometimes leads to action, sometimes not, and that an animal sometimes moves and sometimes does not move? In the case of humans, the transition still involves practical reasoning, but this is not strictly speaking a part of deliberation; the second premise in the ‘syllogism’ consists in noticing an occasion where a policy should be applied, or the presence of available means for taking action. In EN III 3 (1112b33–1113a2), Aristotle says that just as ends are not the subject of deliberation, so neither are the particulars that belong to perception. He emphasizes the role of perception in his discussion of practical wisdom in EN VI: the ability to recognize what can and should be done in a particular situation is a matter of experience, not knowledge, and this kind of recognition is compared to the role of νοῦς (insight) in the theoretical sciences, which recognizes the truth of first principles that must be known without demonstration (EN VI 8,1142a14–30;

⁴ For this interpretation of practical syllogisms, compare K. Corcilius, ‘Two Jobs for Aristotle’s Practical Syllogisms?’, Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 11, 2008, 163–84; and P. Fernandez, ‘Reasoning and the Unity of Aristotle’s Account of Animal Motion’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 47, 2014, 151–204.

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11,1143a32–b5 for νοῦς). προαίρεσις provides only the first premise in the ‘syllogism’; the second must come from perception or experience. Aristotle’s examples illustrate action more broadly, including but not limited to the implementation of an action plan. They show how the thought of a desirable type of object together with the perception of a token of the type may lead to action: the agent is thirsty and wants to drink; she sees a glass of water and proceeds to drink it. Hence Aristotle’s analogy can also be generalized to animal action: just as a thirsty person who sees a glass of water will drink it, so a hungry lion who sees a gazelle will go for it. A plan or a resolution is the starting point of action in the sense of leading to a psychological state in which an animal—human or otherwise—will take action once it perceives an opportunity to fulfil a desire or an occasion for putting a policy into action. This is why Aristotle can say that the courageous man will typically be ready to respond quickly to sudden and unforeseen events without having to engage in reasoning (EN III 8,1117a17–22). He is still acting from proairesis, because he has already adopted the right principles, helped by education and the law, so that he will act immediately once he recognizes a situation where the relevant principle applies. The interpretation of deliberation as resulting in a plan for action is confirmed, I think, by Aristotle’s treatment of practical wisdom in EN VI. Aristotle begins the chapter that leads to the definition of φρόνησις by considering what kind of person one would describe as φρόνιμος: the man who is good at deliberating about what is good or beneficial for him with respect to living well in general (VI 5,1140a25–28). Having defined practical wisdom as ‘the disposition to act, based on true reasoning, with regard to what is good or bad for humans’,⁵ Aristotle gives his one and only concrete example of such a person in that book—he says that ‘this is why we think that people like Pericles are practically wise, because they are capable of considering (θεωρεῖν) what is good for themselves and for humans in general. And we take these people to be managers of households or politicians’ (VI 5,1140b7–11). Later (VI 8,1141b23ff), Aristotle declares that practical wisdom and political expertise are the same, though not in definition, and that this holds despite the common tendency to think that practical wisdom belongs only to private individuals because politicians tend to be busybodies who are out for their own advantage. Aristotle’s extremely simple examples of practical syllogisms tend to obscure the fact that deliberation, and especially political deliberation, is actually quite difficult and requires a lot of factual background knowledge. A survey of the requirements for politicians can be found in the section on deliberative speeches in Rhet. I 4,1359b20ff. They include the state’s financial resources and all its expenses; its actual and potential military power; what wars it ⁵ EN VI 1140b4–5: λείπεται ἄρ’ αὐτὴν εἶναι ἕξιν ἀληθοῦς μετὰ λόγου πρακτικὴν περὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπῳ ἀγαθὰ καὶ κακά; reading ἀληθοῦς instead of ἀληθὴ with Susemihl.

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has fought and how, and the same for neighbouring states and possible enemies; next, one needs to know what the defences of the country are and of what kind and size; furthermore, how much is needed for food to support the city, what is produced at home and what has to be imported or exported; and finally, one needs to know about legislation—that is, the forms of government and what is expedient for each of those. If this reads a bit like a table of content for Aristotle’s Politics, that is, of course, no accident. Aristotle concludes this chapter of the Rhetoric by pointing out that all of these topics properly belong to political science rather than to rhetoric (I 4,1360a37). The speaker needs to know the particular facts about the given situation; he is not expected to have the more general knowledge about economics, or military strategy, or constitutional arrangements that the trained politician should have. But I think that this knowledge of particular facts is the kind of experience that Aristotle has in mind when he says that ‘one should listen to the unproven pronouncements of experienced, older and wise persons no less than to demonstrations, since experience has given them an eye so that they see aright’ (EN VI 11,1143b11–14). I am emphasizing the large scope of experience here in order to show why Aristotle regards practical wisdom as equal in importance and difficulty to theoretical knowledge. This could hardly be the case if it consisted just in making the right decisions in everyday life suggested by Aristotle’s concrete examples. In fact, the examples in EN VI typically serve to point out possible errors or deficiencies in practical reasoning at the point of acting, not to illustrate the deliberations of political rulers or even of private citizens. The achievement of a wise ruler lies in devising a plan for action that will be beneficial to the community, feasible under the circumstances, and successful. This is why practical wisdom counts as an intellectual virtue, attained only by the best individuals. In the Politics Aristotle even goes so far as to claim that φρόνησις is the one virtue that properly belongs (ἴδιος) only to rulers—their subjects may just need true belief (Pol. III 4,1277b25–30). In the Ethics, he concedes that there is deliberation also about private affairs, but he sets that aside for the time being, saying that ‘it is unclear how one ought to manage one’s own affairs, and this should be investigated’ (VI 8,1142a10). It is one of the promises that he apparently did not fulfil. Now, planning—looking for the best available way to reach a goal—is just the kind of reasoning that Aristotle describes as a kind of search or inquiry, by contrast with scientific or demonstrative reasoning. Ends do not imply specific means, nor do means imply the end. Practical inquiry is concerned with causal relations and in this respect also different from mathematical analysis, with which Aristotle occasionally compares it⁶ (EN III 3,1112b20–25). The mathematician is trying to find a way of deriving a theorem from another theorem or axiom and will ⁶ EN III 3.1112b21–23, where Aristotle also says that not every inquiry is a deliberation; not, for instance, mathematical inquiries. Cp. EN VI 9,1142a312.

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then be able to construct a deductive proof. The deliberator typically considers several possible ways of reaching an end and then tries to find out what will be the best under the circumstances; and the result is, of course, not a proof, but a plan that may or may not turn out to work. What, then about the other kind of deliberation, where a person has to decide whether or not to take a particular proposed action? I do not want to suggest that Aristotle has simply overlooked this, or that he would not call it deliberation. Quite the contrary: in the Rhetoric (I ,1358b8–10), Aristotle tells us that deliberative speeches will consist mainly in arguing for and against—presumably given proposals in the assembly; but these proposals are judged as possible means or methods to reach the overarching aim of benefiting the community. Questions of just or unjust, noble or shameful may also come up, but, as Aristotle drily remarks, only in a minor role (1358b20–25). So the weighing of alternatives is treated as a part of the process of deliberation that leads to the adoption of an action plan. A public deliberation will end in a vote on something that can be done (EN VI 8,1141b27). What is accepted by such a vote is usually a policy or a plan for some action that is expected to contribute to the common good. The final decision may indeed be made by a preferential choice, but it is a choice between better or worse plans, not whether or not to take a particular action. Again, in the deliberations of individuals, several means or ways of attaining the goal, if available, will no doubt be considered, but the final decision will consist in accepting what seems to be the best plan. So Aristotle was quite right in saying at the end of EN III 2 (1112a16) that the very word προαίρεσις seems to indicate that it is something chosen in advance, ‘before other things’. In his official discussions of deliberation in EN III and VI, Aristotle restricts his use of the word to a specific kind of deliberation, which does not mean that he could not use it in a wider sense in other contexts.⁷ In fact, he does this in the very next book of the Ethics, in his treatment of self-control and weakness of will. The resolutions of the self-controlled or the weak-willed, and for that matter also of the unrestrained pleasure-seeker, can hardly be based on deliberation in the sense introduced in book III: one does not need to look for ways and means to avoid adultery or drunkenness. It is sufficient to understand the reasons for these policies, namely that adultery and so on would be harmful, to others or to oneself. Yet these resolutions still count as προαίρεσις because they are consciously—or, as we also say, deliberately—chosen, adopted before the particular occasions in which they are applied. In books III and VI of the EN, Aristotle describes as deliberation only the type of reasoning that he takes to be most characteristic of the practically wise person. ⁷ The word φρόνησις is a similar case: Aristotle uses it in the restricted sense of practical wisdom in the discussion of the intellectual virtues, but elsewhere also in the wider sense of intelligence or thought (e.g. Met. Γ 5, 1009b12: διὰ τὸ ὑπολαμβάνειν φρόνησιν μὲν τὴν αἴσθησιν . . . ).

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Decisions about whether or not to do something have to be made by everybody almost every day, and even if the decision was between right and wrong, Aristotle may have thought that it would not be very difficult for people with the right kind of education and character. As Protagoras remarks in his great speech in Plato’s dialogue (327E–328A): there are no teachers of justice because children learn it from everybody around them, just as they learn their language. But there is also a more general reason for neglecting this second kind of deliberation—namely that only planning involves a kind of reasoning that is clearly distinct from theoretical thought. Questions that arise in cases of deciding whether or not to act in a certain way would have to be answered by arguments for and against doing the action, not by looking for ways to do it. The agent is seeking a justification for one or the other option. She will do what she recognizes as right, or beneficial, or healthy, and so her action depends on the correctness of her judgement. A person who argues for or against a certain way of acting is trying to establish the truth or falsity of a particular judgement (in ancient times, it had not yet occurred to philosophers to think that value-judgements might be neither true nor false). The skill needed for this kind of deliberation would be what Aristotle calls dialectic—the ability to find and evaluate arguments on both sides of a question. This is what orators contribute to public deliberation or court cases where a jury has to weigh the evidence for and against a verdict of guilty or not guilty. Dialectic is a skill that can be used in many different kinds of situation, including philosophy; it is not specifically concerned with decisions about action. Being good at dialectic does not count as a virtue. The virtue involved in decisions for or against a kind of action is virtue of character, not intellectual virtue: the greedy person will choose what is more profitable even if it is not fair, the good person will do what is fair even if it is not profitable. If there is one type of reasoning that is specifically directed at action, it is finding ways and means to given goals, or planning. Now, the ability to make plans effectively and successfully is not dialectic, but what Aristotle calls δεινότης—cleverness or cunning (EN VI 12,1144a23–b1). Cleverness is included in good deliberation, but being good at planning is not identical with the virtue of practical wisdom. As Aristotle says—‘if the aim is noble, the ability is praiseworthy, but if the aim is bad, it is mere cunning’. Moral virtue makes the end right in both kinds of deliberation. But Aristotle may well have been right in singling out planning as a special kind of reasoning, and the ability to do this successfully for the right ends as an intellectual virtue.

The Stoics: Moral Problems If we now turn to the Stoics, we find a very different picture. The Stoics seem to be exclusively concerned with questions about what one should or should not do,

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both in general and in particular situations. Unlike Aristotle, they could not rely on education, and even less on pleasure and pain as means of inculcating the right moral attitudes. Quite the contrary—the Stoics thought that children would almost inevitably be corrupted by their social environment, so as to develop attachments to the wrong things and then fall into the kind of mental disturbances they called passions or emotions.⁸ For a Stoic, the path to virtue would begin, in most cases, with the painful realization that most of one’s beliefs and the corresponding conduct were thoroughly misguided. Only then could a proper education to virtue begin—and for the Stoics as self-declared followers of Socrates, all human virtues were kinds of knowledge. So Stoic education would consist mainly in instruction, not habituation. In one of their many definitions of the good, it is defined as the perfection of rational beings insofar as they are rational—that is, the virtue of rational beings (presumably including the gods; see DL VII 94, cp. also Cicero, Fin. 3. 33). Human wisdom, which comprises all other virtues, consists in the knowledge of things divine and human, and the kind of knowledge that pertains to action is knowledge of what to do and what not to do. The wise person will be living in agreement with universal nature, the divine reason that organizes and administers the world, and agreement with nature is what the Stoics regarded as the highest human good, that is, εὐδαιμονία.⁹ The reason that governs the universe is also described as a law ‘which commands what ought to be done and prohibits its opposite’ (Cicero Lgg. I 18). But how does one find out what those commands are? The Stoic answer was: by observing human nature, that is, the way Nature has designed human beings to behave (DL VII 87, Chrysippus). Natural behaviour, for humans as for other animals, is based on two original impulses or instincts. There is first the instinct for self-preservation, which enables animals to recognize and pursue what they need to keep themselves alive and healthy, and to avoid what threatens to harm or to destroy them. Second, many animals, and humans in particular, also have a natural impulse towards sociability, caring for others of the same species and wanting to live together with them. We can assume, then, that Nature intends for us to act according to these two basic tendencies. But recognizing these two natural impulses does not provide much guidance for everyday action. We need to know exactly what we should do or avoid doing in pursuit of self-preservation, and also how exactly we should or should not behave towards others. In Stoic terms, we need to know what counts as appropriate action (καθῆκον). The Stoics defined appropriate action as ‘an action that has a reasonable justification’ (DL VII 107; cp. Cicero, Off. 1.8 and Fin. 3.58). A reasonable justification should consist in ⁸ See DL VII 89 and the chapter ‘de perversione rationis’ in SVF III, 53–6. ⁹ This is, of course, a very rough sketch of the Stoic doctrine. For more detail, see, for example, A. A. Long, ‘Stoic Eudaimonism (1989)’; repr. in Long, Stoic Studies, Cambridge 1996, 179–201or G. Striker, ‘Following Nature’ (1991); repr. in Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge 1996, 221–80.

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showing that one’s action conforms to one or the other of our original natural impulses—and that, it turns out, is not always easy. Stoic deliberation, therefore, consists in finding the right justification for whatever one might consider doing, and since the justification is not always obvious, we should not be surprised to find the title ‘On appropriate action’ on the lists of works for all the major Stoics from Zeno on. One problem with finding a justification was that philosophers (not to mention ordinary people) had different conceptions of what belongs to human nature. Zeno, no doubt influenced by his Cynic teacher Crates, seems to have held a very restrictive view of what is needed for self-preservation: the bare necessities of life, such as food, drink, and shelter, would be sufficient. Also like the Cynics, he rejected many venerable customs as mere conventions, and hence not based on nature. So, for instance, in Zeno’s ideal city, marriage would be superfluous, and men and women would be free to have sex with whomever they liked. Money and political institutions would not be needed, since communities living in the natural way would be held together by mutual friendship.¹⁰ Chrysippus apparently still shocked his audience by arguing that he could not find anything wrong with incest (Sextus Empiricus, PH III 246), and so on. Later Stoics would argue for a more expansive notion of what is natural for humans. After all, the arts and crafts that had led to a more comfortable lifestyle were due to the natural intelligence and inventiveness of humans, and hence could be accepted as natural too. In the end, these Stoics would accept most of the actual institutions of human states— government, marriage, and commercial relations included. Panaetius and, following him, Cicero explicitly rejected the Cynic lifestyle (Off. 1,128, 148), but for other Stoics the ascetic life of a Cynic remained an option—either as a ‘shortcut to virtue’ (Apollodorus of Seleucia ap. DL VII 121, perhaps commenting on Zeno) or, as Epictetus describes it in his portrait of the ideal Cynic (Diss. 3. 21), as a kind of prophet or divine messenger, reminding people of the errors of their ways and setting an example of a truly natural life. A second difficulty arose from the fact that general rules of conduct would have exceptions. For instance, the rule that one should not physically harm others would not hold for self-defence or the punishment of criminals, and the rule that one should keep oneself healthy might be overridden in situations where it was to one’s advantage not to be healthy—as in draft evasion. (But the example comes from Zeno’s pupil Aristo of Chios, see SE, M XI 66.) Perhaps the most remarkable exception of this kind was the Stoic doctrine of ‘reasonable exit’, that is, suicide, in situations in which there was no longer any possibility of acting appropriately in other ways (see e.g. Cicero Fin. III 60–61).

¹⁰ For Zeno, see M. Schofield, The Stoic Idea of the City, Cambridge 1991, chapters 1 and 2.

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Third, and perhaps most menacing, it might happen that the two basic tendencies were in conflict, self-preservation pulling in one direction, concern for others in the other. For all these reasons, advice about appropriate ways of acting would be helpful for those who had not reached the blessed state of wisdom—and that means almost everybody. In order to provide this sort of advice in a systematic way, one would have to show how certain ways of acting followed from one or the other of the basic natural impulses and could, therefore, be considered as in accordance with human nature, and one should also indicate what might justify an exception from those normal ways of acting. We no longer have any of the early Stoic treatises on appropriate action, but Cicero’s De Officiis I and II, adapted from a book by the Stoic Panaetius, may at least provide an impression of the contents of such treatises. This is not entirely unproblematic, because Panaetius, who was writing for readers like the educated Roman aristocrats of his time, avoided the complicated technical terminology of his school, which would no doubt have seemed awkward and pedantic to such readers. As we know from Cicero’s own exposition in de Finibus III and many other sources, the Stoics distinguished between appropriate action (καθῆκον) and right or virtuous action (κατόρθωμα). Appropriate action—the subject of deliberation—was for them correct action, but not necessarily morally virtuous action. Virtue requires not only doing the right thing, but also doing it from the right motive, namely the desire to live in agreement with nature, and hence ordinary people who lacked virtue could also act correctly following their natural impulses without counting as virtuous. Orthodox Stoics would describe deliberation about appropriate ways of acting as concerned with ‘selection (as opposed to choice) of what is in accordance with nature and rejection of what goes against it’. The objects of this selection—that is, whatever contributes to self-preservation or self- development, but also what belongs to social life—were called ‘indifferent’, that is, neither good nor bad, in contrast to virtue and vice as the only real goods or evils. Yet those ‘indifferents’ did have different values—they were called ‘preferred’ or ‘dispreferred’, depending on whether they were in accord with human nature or not. Strictly speaking, then, Stoic deliberation was not concerned with what is morally right or wrong, or even what is really useful or not, but simply with what is or is not in accord with human nature, both with respect to self-preservation and self-development and with respect to concern for others and sociability. However, judging from Cicero, Panaetius seems to have set aside the terminological distinctions between the two kinds of value. Instead, he had complicated the schema for the case of rational animals by introducing specifically human natural impulses for each of the four cardinal virtues—in his version, wisdom, justice, magnanimity including courage, and decorum or temperance (Off. I.15)—based

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respectively on the desire for knowledge, the desire for social life, the desire for freedom and great achievements, and the uniquely human desire for beauty. Those four were treated under the label of the honourable, while the impulse for selfpreservation, which in other expositions of Stoic doctrine (including Cicero’s de Fin. III) would include at least the desire for knowledge, was limited in Panaetius’s version to the ‘comforts of life’ such as health, wealth, and power, and treated under utility. As a result, Panaetius’s classification of problems did not match the old distinction between the two basic natural impulses towards concern for oneself and concern for others, since the desire for knowledge (and probably also the desire for leadership and freedom, the motive leading to magnanimity; I 13), discussed in the section on the honourable, would normally fall under concern for oneself.¹¹ But this allowed Panaetius to discuss deliberation according to the old contrast between morality and material self-interest, and to represent possible conflicts between concern for oneself and concern for others as conflicts between morality and self-interest. According to Panaetius (Off. 3.7; cp. 1.9), deliberation about appropriate action was concerned with three kinds of questions: first, is the action under consideration honourable¹² or dishonourable? Second, is it useful or useless? And third, how should one decide when what appears to be honourable conflicts with what appears to be useful? Panaetius’s work was organized according to this list. It dealt first with questions of what is honourable or not, devoting a chapter each to wisdom, justice and beneficence, magnanimity and courage, and decorum or ‘fittingness’—virtues that were based on one of the four natural human impulses. Next came questions of utility, limited—presumably with a view to Panaetius’s and Cicero’s expected audience—to the most important factor, namely the affection and support of other people. The last book should have dealt with conflicts between morality and utility; but though Panaetius himself had promised this, as Cicero insists (Off. 3.7–10), for reasons that left his successors guessing, Panaetius never wrote the final book. Cicero tried to fill the gap, partly by his own efforts and partly by using books by other Stoics later than Panaetius. For the purposes of this chapter it will be sufficient to consider Cicero’s chapters on the social virtues of justice and beneficence, meant to show what kind of action corresponds to the human impulse towards concern for others and

¹¹ It is probably no accident that knowledge (scientia, not sapientia) is treated rather perfunctorily in two short paragraphs (I 18–19), where Cicero limits himself to the discussion of theoretical knowledge rather than wisdom in the all-embracing sense in which it would be equivalent to virtue. We do not know, of course, whether this was the same in Panaetius’s book. The section on magnanimity (I 61–91) is longer because it also covers courage and contains an extended discussion of the relative merits of military versus civil achievements. ¹² honestum—I prefer the translation ‘honourable’ to ‘morally good’, since the honestum includes more than moral virtue—for instance, theoretical wisdom and ‘great deeds’. Unless otherwise indicated, in this as in most quotations in the text I follow the translation by E.M. Atkins in M.I. Griffin and E.M. Atkins, Cicero, On Duties, Cambridge UP 1991, with occasional modifications.

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living in a community with them, and his treatment of the concern for ‘the comforts of life’ (commoda vitae, 2.9) in book II, which clearly belongs to the impulse for self-preservation, and a few examples of conflicts from book III. Cicero begins his exposition on justice with two basic principles: ‘Of justice, the first task (munus) is that no man should harm another unless provoked by injustice; the next that one should treat common goods as common, and private ones as one’s own’ (Off. I 20). The first principle can easily be accepted as a necessary requirement of communal living, but what about the second? Here Cicero has to add an argument: ‘No property is private by nature, but rather by long occupation (as when men moved into some empty territory in the past) or by victory (when they acquired it in war), or by law, by settlement, by agreement, or by lot . . . The distribution of private property is similar to this. Consequently, since what becomes each man’s own comes from what had in nature been common, each man should hold on to whatever has fallen to him. If anyone should seek any of it for himself, he will be violating the law of human fellowship’ (Off. I 21). The reasoning is less than convincing, especially with respect to things acquired by victory—and one might add that the naturalness of private property is still a matter of debate today. Cicero is clearly speaking from concerns of his own at the time of civil war. The other main principle introduced under justice is good faith in promisekeeping, with the usual exceptions (promises made under the threat of violence are not valid, etc.), and finally the rules of war, where Cicero treats wars over territory between empires as a kind of competition among rivals which should be regulated by rules of fairness (Off. I 38–41). Under beneficence, he introduces and explains three rules: ‘Next I must do as I proposed and speak about beneficence and liberality. Nothing is more suited to human nature than this, but there are many caveats. First, one must see that kindness harms neither the people whom one seems to be treating kindly, nor others; next, that one’s kindness does not exceed one’s capabilities; and then, that what is bestowed on each person is according to his worth. Indeed, that is fundamental to justice, to which all these things ought to be referred’ (Off. I 42). The third rule actually echoes a formula that is often cited as a definition of justice: to each according to desert or worth (ἀξία). The connection of these rules with human nature is not made entirely clear, but Panaetius’s exposition was no doubt much more thorough. However, the references to human nature at the beginning of each chapter and occasionally throughout the discussion show what was intended: Panaetius (or Cicero) was offering these rules of justice and beneficence as interpretations of the very general theses that human beings care for each other and want to live in a community, in order to show what it means in practice to live in accordance with the basic natural impulses of humans. If the interpretations are sometimes questionable and their justification unconvincing, this just goes to show that the command to follow

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human nature in one’s dealings with others leaves ample room for interpretation, and therefore also for deliberation. This point is perhaps even more evident in book III, where Cicero discusses cases of apparent conflict between what is honourable and what is useful or advantageous. Since Panaetius never wrote this part of his work, Cicero had looked at several books by other Stoics to fill the gap, which shows that there was a lively debate among Stoics about such problem cases. One famous example is a dilemma that may well go back to Carneades’ criticism of Stoic ethics:¹³ imagine two men after a shipwreck, trying to hold on to a plank that will support only one. What should the wise man do? Pushing the other man off seems to go clearly against justice, but if both cede the plank to the other, they will both perish, as much as if they both hold on. Cicero mentions several responses from a book by the Stoic Hecato (a pupil of Panaetius), who tried to suggest solutions based on the relative merits of the two persons, ending with the proposal that something like the lot should decide if both men were equally wise and important to their communities (Off. III 89–90). In another case, Cicero reports that the eminent Stoics Antipater of Tarsus and Diogenes of Babylon disagreed about the solution: ‘suppose that a good man had brought a large quantity of corn from Alexandria to Rhodes at a time when corn was extremely expensive among the Rhodians because of shortage and famine. If he also knew that several more merchants had set sail from Alexandria, and had seen their boats on the way, laden with corn and heading for Rhodes, would he tell the Rhodians? Or would he keep silent and sell his corn at as high a price as possible?’ (Off. III 50–53). The question is clearly about fair pricing, and Cicero may be too eager to agree with Antipater, who appealed to ‘principles of human nature’ to support the view that the merchant should ‘not conceal from men the advantages and resources that are available to them’.¹⁴ One example that Cicero cites from Hecato’s book (Off. III 90) incidentally shows that conflicts could also arise between different moral obligations: should a son whose father is stealing from a temple or digging a tunnel to the treasury denounce the father to the magistrates? The first answer is that this would be impious, since citizens should revere their parents; but when the story is changed to the father trying to impose a tyranny or betraying his country, the answer is that the claims of the community should take precedence over filial piety. Again, these cases demonstrate that deliberation about right and wrong may often be necessary, and that even eminent philosophers could disagree about what constitutes a reasonable justification.

¹³ It appeared in Cicero’s report of Carneades’ famous speech against justice (de rep. III 51, Lactantius) and also in the Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus, probably written in the first century . ¹⁴ On this debate, see J. Annas, ‘Cicero on Stoic Moral Philosophy and Private Property’, in M. Griffin and J. Barnes (eds.), Philosophia Togata, Oxford 1989.

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One might think that the other kind of deliberation—looking for ways and means to reach a goal, or planning—might find its place in the second book of De Officiis that deals with obtaining the ‘comforts of life’. Panaetius, who was clearly writing for upper-class gentlemen, limited his discussion in this field to the most important safeguard of human life—the support of other people, setting aside questions about health care and economics, which had obviously been treated as belonging to the subject by other Stoics (Off. II 86). The topic of that book, then, is how to win the hearts and minds of others (II 19), but still the relevant questions are repeated by Cicero in the same form as before: what is useful or not useful, with the additional question: which among useful things are more so than others, which are the most useful (II 1). Ways of acting are evaluated as possible means to the end of a safe and comfortable life, as in the public deliberations that Aristotle considers in the Rhetoric; with the difference that Cicero always insists that immoral means are ruled out—presumably, injustice can never be justified. So the emphasis is, as before, on justification, not on planning. This is actually not surprising in a book about appropriate action. The advice given to readers has to be general, that is, concern types or ways of acting and their effectiveness or legitimacy, not the particular situations emphasized by Aristotle, where all one can do is to list the various aspects that have to be taken into consideration. The ability of planning ahead and making the best decisions in particular circumstances is mentioned only once—as a means of winning the trust of others. This passage is worth quoting in full, since it presents an interesting parallel to Aristotle’s discussion of practical wisdom in EN VI: That people have trust in us can be achieved by two things—namely, if we are considered to possess practical sense together with justice. For we trust those whom we take to be more knowledgeable than ourselves; whom we believe to have foresight and to be able, when matters have reached a critical point, to act effectively and to make the decision that suits the circumstances. For this is what men think of as truly useful practical sense. Just people—that is, good men—are trusted insofar as there is no suspicion of deceit or injustice about them. Hence, we think that these are the persons to whom our safety, our fortunes, and our children may be most rightly entrusted. Of these two, justice has more power to instil trust, given that it has sufficient authority even without practical sense, while practical sense without justice has no way of inspiring trust. For, the more shrewd and cunning a man is, the more odious and suspect will he be once his reputation for integrity (probitas) is gone’. (Off. II 33–34; my translation)

The Latin word I have translated by ‘practical sense’ is prudentia—the term normally used to translate Greek φρόνησις. It is here obviously used in a morally neutral sense, but Cicero hastens to add that he does not mean to suggest that the

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virtues could exist separately; he is following Panaetius’s example in speaking with the vulgar (II 35). In EN VI 12,1144a23–29, the same capacity to get things done efficiently is described by Aristotle as δεινότης—cleverness or shrewdness. ‘There is a capacity people call cleverness, and this is the ability to do what leads to the aim one has set oneself, and to reach it. Now, if the aim is noble, the ability is praiseworthy, but if the aim is bad, it is mere cunning. This is why we call even the practically wise clever and cunning. Practical wisdom is not this capacity, but it does not come without it.’ But whereas Aristotle sees such cleverness as indispensable for good deliberation, Cicero mentions it merely as a helpful means of winning trust. Looking back from the Stoics to Aristotle, one might say that once you start thinking about a justification for your actions, it seems that a good education and good laws may not be enough. Some of the difficulties that arise in questions of fairness or justice are discussed in EN V, and the Rhetoric shows that Aristotle was quite aware that the evaluation of means to political ends requires serious discussion, but it seems that he saw the devising of successful plans or policies as the main achievement of practical wisdom. The Stoics’ advice to ordinary people about applying rules of justice, whether by appealing to nature or to some other fundamental principles, was certainly not superfluous and had a long-lasting influence on the later legal tradition. On the other hand, the Stoics apparently paid little attention to the kind of skill needed for successful planning. But the contrast between Aristotle and the Stoics is not just a matter of emphasis—what underlies it is ultimately the difference in their respective theories of the human good and their very different conceptions of what counts as success in action. Aristotle accepted the traditional triad of goods: of the soul, of the body, and ‘external’ goods. He defined the human good as a life of rational activity according to virtue, thus clearly ranking the good of the soul above the others, but he also acknowledged that the best human life requires at least some of the other goods as well—either as means or prerequisites of virtuous activity or because the absence of health, beauty, or friends would mean that a life was not complete or perfect and could still be improved. As Aristotle points out in the Rhetoric, virtuous action is possible on many different levels. At the minimum, an action may count as καλόν—‘noble’ would be too strong a word here—simply because not doing it, or doing the opposite, would be shameful (Rhet. I 9,1367a6–8). But the most noble and admirable actions are those that are difficult or risky and that also lead to beneficial results for others—the more so, the greater the number of people affected (cf. Rhet. I 9.1366b3–7). This is why Aristotle holds that the greatest opportunities for virtuous action come with the role of ruler, and why he sometimes even describes practical wisdom as a virtue of rulers only. It is not that those virtuous actions are noble only because of their results. What makes them noble

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is—for example—the selfless effort and willingness to take risks on behalf of others; but clearly a community will want to have political leaders who have not only noble aims, but also the ability to reach them. Good rulers are praised not only for their admirable intentions, but also for their ability to put them into practice. Aristotle realized that the achievements of great statesmen are not based on scientific or theoretical thought alone, and this probably led him to the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning, and between deliberation and explanation or justification. Just as theoretical thinking should result in insight (νοῦς), but then also in explanation and deductive proof, so good deliberation should result not only in a plan, but also in reaching the goal one has set oneself, and that means that ‘cleverness’, the ability for effective planning, is a necessary prerequisite for practical wisdom. The Stoics, on the other hand, declared all bodily and external advantages and disadvantages as indifferent with respect to the human good and could therefore not consider the results of virtuous actions as good in their own right. All that counts as good is doing the right thing for the right reason, regardless of effort or outcome. In fact, the Stoics held that there could be no degrees of goodness, just as there are no degrees of rightness. This reflects, of course, the difference between strictly moral judgement and a wider evaluation that also takes into account the effort and achievement of the agent. It is true that the swimmer who tries and fails to save the drowning child has acted just as nobly as the swimmer who succeeds in saving the child. And sometimes a noble failure may be even more admirable than a relatively easy success—so, to use a Greek example, in the case of the Spartan soldiers at the Thermopylae. Yet it is odd to deny that the survival of a child is a good thing, or to maintain that the dead Spartans at the Thermopylae were in the end as happy as the surviving Athenians after the victory at Marathon. However, the very word κατόρθωμα, which means both right action and success,¹⁵ indicates that success, for the Stoics, meant only doing the right thing. So the skill of effective planning, while possibly helpful in everyday life, was not seen as making a difference to the virtue of an agent. The Stoics did not take over Aristotle’s distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning. Practical wisdom (φρόνησις) was for them a branch of wisdom in general, distinguished from other branches of knowledge only by its subject matter. This is understandable, given that in their view, both theoretical reasoning and practical deliberation were aimed at establishing the truth.

¹⁵ LSJ list ‘right action’ as a special sense of the word, which in fact usually means success. Literally, of course, it means ‘getting things straight’, and it seems obvious that the Stoics exploited the etymology of the word in making it a technical term.

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They would probably not have denied that strategic planning requires deliberation,¹⁶ but as far as we can see, the kind of deliberation that they discussed as philosophers had to do with justification, not with strategy. This reminds us of the fact that Aristotle and the Stoics discussed deliberation in the context of ethics. Each theory is focused on the kind of deliberation most relevant for their conception of the human good. For Aristotle, the distinction between two different kinds of reasoning supports the claim that there are two distinct intellectual virtues. For the Stoics, only questions of right and wrong were relevant to the success of any kind of action. And so the two theories reflect two very different conceptions of human happiness.

¹⁶ In fact, the first book of the De Officiis even contains some advice about career planning—in the particular case of a young Roman embarking on a political career, so probably due to Cicero, not Panaetius.

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12 Academics Fighting Academics The arguments of the former Academic Sceptic Antiochus against the ‘Roman books’ of his teacher Philo of Larissa, reported in Cicero’s Lucullus, indicate that his understanding of Stoic epistemology was influenced by his Academic background, and in particular by the arguments of Carneades. These arguments also allow a plausible guess at the new position Philo defended in the Roman books.

I When I read Cicero’s Lucullus for the first time many years ago, I read it as a straightforward account of the epistemological controversy between the Stoics and the Academic sceptics. That is, after all, what Cicero promises, although he makes it clear that his own information comes from a late stage in the debate, when the positions of both schools had presumably evolved and shifted in response to objections from the other side. But Cicero explicitly distinguishes between several different positions within the sceptical Academy, and in the Lucullus he sets aside the most recent among them, that of Philo’s ‘Roman books’, in order to concentrate on the arguments of Arcesilaus and Carneades (Luc. 12). Antiochus, on the other hand, is introduced as an orthodox representative of the Stoic view, which he apparently adopted lock, stock, and barrel as a ‘correction’ of the doctrines of the early Academy (Ac. 1.35). The somewhat petty dispute about Academic pedigrees reported in the Varro looked like a less important side issue that could be safely ignored if one was mainly interested in the philosophical arguments. Over the last twenty years, however—thanks above all to the books by J. Glucker¹ and H. Tarrant²—the figures of Antiochus of Ascalon and Philo of Larissa began to take on more definite features, and I also realized that the doctrine of Philo’s Roman books—pace Cicero—was of great interest not just historically (which has been doubted), but also from a twentieth-century point of

¹ ‘Antiochus and The Late Academy’, Hypomnemata 56, Göttingen 1978. ² Scepticism or Platonism?, Cambridge University Press 1985.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. ?DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0012

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view. It appears that Philo was the first to formulate a modest conception of knowledge that can be compared to contemporary versions of fallibilism, dropping the requirement of certainty that has bedevilled so many epistemological debates both before and after his time. It is a great pity that the Roman books did not survive, not even in the summary version of the report that Cicero apparently gave in the lost Catulus. We cannot hope to recover Philo’s own arguments, but I think that the indications offered by Cicero about the main epistemological issue in the dispute with Antiochus, and about Philo’s previous position, allow us at least to make an educated guess at the reasoning behind Philo’s revolutionary move. One factor that has so far received less attention than it deserves seems to me to be the fact that the Sosus affair was a dispute among Academics—not just with respect to the tradition of their school, but also, I think, in terms of the epistemological arguments of both sides. Given Cicero’s emphasis on the novelty of the views expressed in Philo’s Roman books, all commentators have, of course, been careful to distinguish Philo’s Roman views from earlier versions of Academic scepticism. But most have also followed Cicero in taking Antiochus’s version of Stoic epistemology at face value—and this may actually be rather imprudent. Antiochus never became a member of the Stoa, and while he probably did get first-hand information from his Stoic contemporaries in Athens (Mnesarchus and Dardanus, according to Cicero, Luc. 69), it is likely that his understanding of Stoicism was strongly influenced by his education as a member of the sceptical Academy. We may therefore expect him to rely on an Academic interpretation of Stoic doctrine, whether he realized it or not, and we should not assume without further ado that this was exactly the interpretation the Stoics themselves would have wished to defend. Having raised some suspicions about Antiochus’s Stoic credentials, let me begin by listing the information Cicero provides in the Lucullus about the main point at issue between Philo and Antiochus. (1) In Luc. 18, the speaker for Antiochus briefly refers to Philo’s innovations. He mentions two objections: first, Philo is said to tell ‘manifest lies’, for which he had been taken to task by Catulus the father (that is, in the lost first book); second, Antiochus showed that he (Philo) found himself in exactly the position that he feared: . . . et aperte mentitur ut est reprehensus a patre Catulo, et ut docuit Antiochus in id ipsum se induit quod timebat. The ‘manifest lie’ had been mentioned before (12): it consisted in denying that the Academics had ever held the view that was defended by Catulus the day before, namely (as we can safely assume) the claim that nothing can be known (ἀκαταληψία).³ The second point ³ A note on translation: in this chapter, I translate the Greek verb καταλαμβάνειν (literally ‘to grasp’) and its derivatives (κατάληψις, καταληπτόν) as ‘to know’, ‘knowledge’ and so on, except for the

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is explained in the following lines. According to Antiochus, when Philo attacked Zeno’s definition of the cognitive impression (καταληπτικὴ φαντασία), he did away with the criterion of what is known and unknown, from which it followed that nothing can be known—the position that Philo was trying to avoid. So, Philo rejected the Zenonian definition of the cognitive impression, and he did not wish to accept the thesis, argued by his Academic predecessors, that nothing can be known. The connection between these two points is brought out by Sextus Empiricus: Philo said that as far as the Stoic criterion is concerned, nothing can be known; but as far as the nature of things themselves is concerned, they can indeed be known⁴ (PH I 235 ὅσον μὲν ἐπὶ τᾦ Στωικῷ κριτηρίῳ τουτέστι τῇ καταληπτικῇ φαντασίᾳ, ἀκατάληπτα εἶναι τὰ πράγματα, ὄσον δὲ ἐπὶ τῃ φύσει τῶν πραγμάτων, καταληπτά) (2) Philo’s new doctrine was one that had not been held by any Academic before, including Philo himself at an earlier stage. Philo, of course, maintained that everybody from Plato on had held his view, but Antiochus’s claim to the contrary was apparently confirmed by Heraclitus of Tyre, another Academic said to have been present at the debate in Alexandria (Luc. 11). (3) Before the Roman books, Philo held a position of mitigated scepticism or probabilism shared by other Academics, notably Metrodorus (Luc. 78).⁵ These

adjective καταληπτική, which is translated as ‘cognitive’. It seems to me that this is the best way of making it clear what these philosophers were arguing about. I am, of course, aware of the fact that the Stoics reserved the ordinary Greek verb for ‘knowing’, ἐπίστασθαι, for the intellectual state of the expert or the sage who has a systematic understanding of a given field, while using καταλαμβάνειν and its cognates for the act of coming to know something or for an individual piece of knowledge. But English does not have a convenient pair of terms such as the German ‘Erkenntnis’ and ‘Wissen’ to mark this distinction, and the term of art ‘cognition’, used in English translations of Kant, has not become part of everyday philosophical language. The English equivalent of ‘Erkenntnistheorie’ is ‘theory of knowledge’, not ‘theory of cognition’. ⁴ This interpretation was first proposed by R. Hirzel (Untersuchungen zu Cicero’s philosophischen Schriften, III, Leipzig 1883, 196–200) and accepted by most later scholars, most recently, for example, Barnes (‘Antiochus of Ascalon’, in J. Barnes and M. Griffin, Philosophia Togata, Oxford 1989, 51–96); Lévy (C. Lévy, Cicero Academicus, Rome 1992); and Bächli and Graeser (notes in C. Schäublin, A. Graeser, and A. Bächli, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Akademische Abhandlungen: Lucullus, Hamburg 1995). I see no reason to read the second clause of this statement as the strong claim that the nature of things can be known (so R.J. Hankinson 1995, 119). The thought is, I believe, simply that if there is an impediment to knowledge, it lies in the Stoic conception, not in the nature of things themselves. This does amount to the claim that we may have objective knowledge of things (because they are not of such a nature as to be unknowable), but not that we can come to know their nature. A different interpretation has been suggested by David Sedley (‘The End of the Academy’, Phronesis XXVI, 1981, 72): Philo said that the (sensible) world is unknowable to us because of the lack of an infallible criterion such as the Stoics postulate, but that the truth about the sensible world is accessible to god. It seems to me that this cannot be read into Sextus’s statement. The phrase ὄσον ἐπί indicates a limitation of the claim that things cannot be known to those who accept the Stoic criterion, not to humans in general. ⁵ I take it that when Cicero says in the dedicatory epistle to Varro (Ep. ad familiares 9.8) that he himself is playing the part of Philo, he is referring to the position Philo held before the innovations of the Roman books. This would agree with the stance Cicero adopts explicitly in his last speech in the Luc. (112–113): he endorses the Stoic definition of the cognitive impression as well as the claim that nothing can be known, and concludes that he (unlike the wise man) will hold opinions. The disagreement with Philo and Metrodorus about Carneades mentioned at Luc. 78 seems to concern

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philosophers thought that the Stoic definition of the cognitive impression was correct, but that its conditions could not be met. So, they endorsed the thesis that nothing can be known; but they also maintained—following, as they saw it, the great Carneades—that it was legitimate, even for the wise man, to hold probable or plausible opinions, both about everyday matters and concerning philosophical investigations and arguments. Given Philo’s own claim of continuity within the Academic tradition, it is not likely that he came up with a radically new epistemology.⁶ The most economical assumption about his ‘revolutionary’ claims would seem to be that he decided that he himself and his fellow Academics had been too modest and overly impressed by the Stoic doctrine. The thesis that nothing can be known was a consequence only of the excessively high standards set by the Stoics. Once one sees this point, one can claim not just reasonable opinion, but knowledge, though not the infallibility that the Stoics demanded for their wise man. What Philo rejected, then, was the requirement of certainty contained in the last clause of the Stoic definition of cognitive impression: an impression that provides knowledge must be such that it could not arise from what is not so. If this hypothesis about Philo’s innovations is correct, then we have at least one set of arguments directed against Philo’s position insofar as it was similar to the view of those Academics who held that the Stoic criterion was not needed for the conduct of life or for philosophical argument, since one could rely on probable impressions. These people were offering a substitute for Stoic cognitive impressions, and the difference between Philo’s earlier and later epistemological position would have consisted simply in the claim that the substitute he offered was good enough to justify claims to knowledge. In Luc. 32–36, Lucullus/Antiochus argues that the alleged substitute will not do. These arguments must be either Antiochus’ own or those of contemporary Stoics, since they attack the views of Carneades’ successors. The arguments are not very impressive, but they reveal, I think, what Antiochus took the Stoic position to be. As far as I can see, Antiochus offers two⁷ main arguments: (a) those who claim that true and false impressions cannot be distinguished cannot even claim to have the notions of truth and falsehood (Luc. 32–33). Let us disregard the polemical formulation of the Academic thesis: they did not hold that only the point that even the sage will hold opinions. But Cicero also tells us in the Varro (Ac. 1.13) that he heard Philo expound the doctrines of the Roman books, and I think one can see some traces of their influence in this speech, esp. at 146 (see below n. 17). ⁶ Such as the doctrine ascribed to him by Tarrant, who introduces two new elements that are found nowhere in Cicero—nor for that matter in other sources, I think. See my review of H. Tarrant, Scepticism or Platonism? Cambridge 1985, in Ancient Philosophy 11, 1991, 202–6. ⁷ I skip the argument that the wise man will need to trust his own convictions and hence must have a reliable ‘mark of truth’, briefly alluded to in 36. This point seems to me to belong to the moral side of the dispute; see Luc. 23–24.

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true and false impressions could not be distinguished at all, but only that no true impression was such that an exactly similar one could not, in principle, be false. Antiochus may have thought that this was tantamount to the statement that there was no difference at all. But there is no reason to agree with him that one cannot form a concept unless one is able to decide with certainty whether it has been correctly applied. Faced with the question whether Antiochus is a man or a warship, anyone would no doubt assert that he was a man, and that it is false to say that he was a warship. Unless we want to go for rampant self-contradiction, we will take what we believe to be true and its contradictory to be false. But this does not imply that we have a general method for deciding what is true and what is false (hence the frequent disagreements among ordinary people as well as philosophers). Cicero’s attitude to this argument is a little ambiguous (Luc. 111). On the one hand he calls it a particularly admirable point by which—according to Antiochus(!)—Philo was greatly disturbed. On the other hand, he rejects it with a somewhat perfunctory remark: ‘we recognize both truths and falsehoods, but this only goes as far as approving⁸—we do not have a sign of knowledge.’ Perhaps he was sufficiently impressed by Antiochus’s boasting that he did not see exactly how the argument could be refuted; but his brief remark seems to show that other Academics were not greatly disturbed. (b) Antiochus’ second argument is based on the assumption that in order to distinguish between true and false impressions, one must have a mark (nota) or sign (signum) of truth.⁹ There seem to be two versions of such an argument in Luc. 32–36, but the first may be intended to be the same as the second. The first version ⁸ The text is: nam tam vera quam falsa cernimus. sed probandi species est, percipiendi signum nullum habemus. The phrase probandi species est is difficult, and my rendering is tentative. Reid (followed by Rackham) claims that species is a translation of φαντασία—as it may, but need not be (see n. 321, 276 in Schäublin, Bächli and Graeser 1995). The sentence would then say, according to Reid’s paraphrase, that an impression may lead to approval, but will not warrant a knowledge claim. But how would this be a reply to the objection? Cicero should say something to the effect that one can make the distinction without having an infallible criterion. Given that species may also be used to translate εἶδος (see e.g. Luc. 58, discussed below), I would suggest that this sentence should be closely connected with the preceding one (reading a comma after cernimus), and understood as saying ‘this (i.e., our recognition of truths and falsehoods) is only a kind of approval, (since) we do not have a sign for knowledge’. I do not know what sense to make of Hankinson’s literal translation (R.J. Hankinson, The Sceptics, London/New York 1995, 117) ‘the impression is of approval’, but it underlines the fact that the usual rendering is not very close to the Latin. ⁹ Plasberg lists both nota and signum as translations of the Greek σημεῖον in his index, and I think he is right. It is tempting to suppose that nota must be a translation of ἰδίωμα or χαρακτήρ, words used by Sextux Empiricus in his report on the epistemology of the later Stoics for the alleged peculiar feature that characterizes cognitive impressions (so e.g. Schäublin, Bächli and Graeser 1995, n. 92, 216), while only signum translates σημεῖον. But a look at the relevant passages shows, I think, that this will not do. In several passages the nota must be the Stoic criterion, that is, the cognitive impression itself (e.g. 84: eius modi notam quae falsa esse non possit, and non ea nota iudicabis qua dicis oportere ut non possit esse eiusdem modi falsa), and Cicero seems to switch freely between nota and signum in 33–36. In Ac. 1.32, nota is combined with argumentum just as is signum in Luc. 36. There is only one passage where it seems better to take nota to refer to a feature of the impression rather than the impression itself, Luc. 58

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appears in Luc. 33–34: if a cognitive impression has its features in common with a false one, there will be no criterion, because a peculiar fact cannot be indicated by a common sign (in eo autem si erit communitas cum falso, nullum erit iudicium, quia proprium in communi signo notari non potest). What this seems to say is that if anything is a sign both of x and y, then it cannot be used as a sign of either separately. For example, if fever is a sign of both pneumonia and meningitis, it cannot be used to diagnose either of these diseases. The point about ‘common signs’ is, of course, correct, but it does not seem to apply to the situation it is supposed to illustrate. An impression that p, even if it is compatible with the truth of not-p, will still be an indication (if at all) of p only, not of not-p. So perhaps Antiochus is using the terminology known from Philodemus (De Signis I 1–17), according to which a common sign is one that may be present even if the thing signified is not. This is the point made at Luc. 36: ‘what could be more absurd than their way of speaking: “this is indeed a sign or argument of such-and-such a thing, and that is why I follow it; yet it is possible that what is indicated be either false or nothing at all”.’ (quid autem tam absurde dici potest quam cum ita locuntur: ‘est hoc quidem illius rei signum aut argumentum, et ea re id sequor, sed fieri potest ut id quod significatur aut falsum sit aut nihil sit omnino’.) But what ‘they’ say is not absurd at all. In the absence of any evidence for not-p, I may take an impression that p as evidence for p, and act accordingly, even though it is (logically) possible that p is false.¹⁰ So much for Antiochus’s arguments against the probable impression as a substitute for the Stoic criterion. What is most remarkable about the last argument is that Antiochus describes the Stoic criterion as a ‘mark’ or ‘sign’ of truth. I very much doubt that any real Stoic would have used such language. For cognitive impressions were supposed to provide precisely those basic truths that are not established by inference—the evident starting points of proofs, from which one could then infer further non-evident truths. Cicero’s concise rendering of the argument shows, I think, that the choice of terms here is no accident: ‘peculiar feature’ (proprium, Greek ἴδιον) and ‘common sign’ (commune signum, κοινὸν σημεῖον) were technical terms in the debate about sign-inferences reported, for example, by Philodemus and Sextus Empiricus. Whatever notion of a sign is involved here—and there is no further explanation in Cicero’s text—its use implies at least that the ‘sign’ can be observed independently of the thing signified, and this is a point that no Stoic worth his salt should have admitted about cognitive impressions. On the other hand, the conception of impressions as signs or evidence for underlying facts fits very well with the role ascribed to

(discussed below): quasi vero non specie visa iudicentur; quae fidem nullam habebunt sublata veri et falsi nota. But there the special character of cognitive impressions seems to be indicated by the word species rather than nota. ¹⁰ For a brief discussion of the argument, see Barnes (n. 2 above), 84f.

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impressions in the Carneadean ‘theory of criteria’ in Sextus’s report (M 7.159–189).¹¹ Although the technical language of sign-inference is absent, impressions are clearly treated as evidence—for example, they are compared to messengers (163) or witnesses (184) who may or may not be reliable. In order to be infallible guides to the truth, cognitive impressions, on this model, would have to be conclusive evidence, and if this is what Antiochus took them to be, then he could quite correctly describe them as proper signs of the facts they represent. But this conception does not fit the—presumably Stoic¹²—comparison of sense impressions with light, according to which sense impressions show us the objects of perception in the way in which light reveals both itself and the objects of sight. I do not infer that there is a table in front of me from the fact that I can see one in broad daylight. The presence of daylight may make me confident that I can trust my eyes, but it is not a sign of the presence of tables. Nonetheless, the light-analogy appears side by side with Carneades’ theory in a revealing passage in Sextus (M 7.163–164): Just as light shows itself and all that is in it, so the impression, being the starting point of knowledge in the living creature, must, like light, reveal itself and also be indicative of the evident thing that produced it. But since it does not always indicate the truth, but often deceives and disagrees with the things that sent it forth, the way bad messengers do, it followed necessarily that one could not accept every impression as a criterion of truth, but only, if any, the true one. Again, since there is no true impression of such a sort that it could not be false, . . . the criterion will be found in an impression that is common to the true and the false.

By switching from the light-analogy to the messenger-analogy, this passage puts a distance between the impression and the object or fact that caused it. What the observer receives is the impression, which may or may not correctly represent its object. While the light-analogy seemed to stress the point that the impression and its object are grasped simultaneously, the messenger-analogy suggests that the impression offers only a report and does not provide direct access to the object. The description of the criterion as a sign obviously fits the second analogy, but not the first. There is, then, some reason to think that Antiochus’s interpretation of Stoic epistemology was Academic rather than genuinely Stoic. Yet, since Antiochus himself professed his acceptance of the Stoic doctrine of cognitive impressions, we ¹¹ It is not necessary for my argument to assume that Antiochus himself is the source of Sextus’s report, as has been argued by several scholars (first by Hirzel 1883, III 493–524; more recently, Tarrant 1985, 89–114; Sedley (‘Sextus Empiricus and the Atomist criteria of truth’, in Elenchos 13, 1992, 19–56; contra, see Barnes 1989, 65), but this would, of course, offer a convenient explanation of the similarities between Luc. 33–34 and M 7.163–164. ¹² Ps.—Galen ascribes it to Chrysippus, cf. SVF II 54; Diels, DG 401.11ff.

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must presume that he took himself to be advocating the Stoic view. In order to see how Antiochus or his Academic predecessors arrived at this interpretation of Stoic doctrine, we should go back, I think, to the beginnings of the debate with Zeno and Arcesilaus. The story of this debate has been told in greater detail elsewhere, so I will mention only what I take to be directly related to Antiochus’s interpretation.

II In an anecdote that is no doubt too good to be true, Cicero tells us (Luc. 77) that the debate began when Arcesilaus, impressed by Zeno’s novel claim that the wise man would hold no mere opinions, inquired of Zeno how this would be possible if the wise man could not attain any knowledge. Zeno confidently replied that the sage would not need to have any opinions because he could indeed attain knowledge: namely of things grasped by cognitive impressions. He then produced the following definition of the cognitive impression: ‘an impression that arises from what is, imprinted and sealed and rendered exactly as the thing is’. Arcesilaus next asked whether this would still be the case if the true impression were such that it might also be false. Zeno saw the point of the question and added another clause to his definition: ‘such as could not arise from what is not that existing thing.’ From then on, the Academics produced a series of arguments to show that there cannot be a true impression of such a sort that there could not be a false one of exactly the same sort. This story puts the long debate in a nutshell, which makes it unlikely to be historical. But apart from the issue whether one could live without assent, which Cicero rightly sets aside in Luc. 78, the epistemological discussion between the two schools was indeed centred around the third clause of the Stoic definition. Now, even if it is true, as the story suggests, that this clause was added to forestall Academic objections (so also SE, M 7. 252), it is likely that Zeno or his successors would have thought of the addition only as a clarification, not as a new and logically independent requirement. As the subsequent debate shows, the third clause can be taken in either of these ways, which I will call, for brevity’s sake, the weaker and the stronger interpretation.¹³ On the weaker interpretation, the third clause makes explicit what is already implied by the second, namely that the cognitive impression will represent its object with such precision and accuracy that it could not come from any other thing. In other words, Zeno assumed that a sufficiently precise and accurate impression of any given object would capture all its peculiar features in such a

¹³ M. Frede (‘Stoics and Skeptics on Clear and Distinct Impressions’, 1983; repr. in Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Minneapolis 1987, 151–76) notes the ambiguity (p. 165), but then settles for the stronger interpretation.

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way that it was necessarily different from any impression that might have come from a different object. On the strong interpretation, however, the third clause stipulates that a cognitive impression must be different in kind from any non-cognitive one, so that the reason it could not arise from any other thing would lie in the fact that it is not the kind of impression that could misrepresent the object that caused it. Hence, cognitive impressions would have to be of a type that distinguishes them from all others, regardless of their content. If one looks at the Stoics’ replies to the various kinds of counterexamples and objections put forward by their Academic opponents, one can see, I think, that they tried to rely on the weaker interpretation, but that they were pushed by the Academic objections to adopt the stronger one. It is this stronger interpretation that eventually led to the version we find in Antiochus. The examples introduced by the Academics to support their notorious thesis of ἀπαραλλαξία—the claim that for any true impression one can describe conditions such that a false one would be exactly alike and hence indistinguishable—were roughly speaking of three different kinds: (a) Kinds of similar objects: eggs, coins, identical twins, impressions from the same seal (cf. Luc. 54, 56–57, 84–86). The Academics suggested that these objects were so similar to one another that it would be impossible to distinguish them by any perceptible features. The Stoics replied by appealing to the metaphysical principle that individuals of any given kind will necessarily have peculiar features that distinguish them from all other individuals of the same kind (Luc. 50, 85). They supported this claim by examples of experts like the famous Delian poultry farmer who was allegedly able to tell which egg came from which hen. If one accepts the general principle, then this would go to show that any two individuals, however similar, must in principle be distinguishable, though it may take considerable experience and skill in some cases to make the correct distinctions. The Stoic sage, who would not have to be a poultry farmer, would presumably refrain from making assertions about the identity of individual eggs or coins, considering that he lacks the requisite expertise (cf. Luc. 57). So, error can be avoided either by exercising due caution or by acquiring the relevant skill. (b) Dreamers and madmen (Luc. 48, 51–53, 88–90). When dreaming or in a state of mental derangement, people may have less than accurate or even wildly false impressions, but they will not be able to realize that this is the case, and hence be unable to distinguish cognitive from non-cognitive impressions. In fact, as the Academics urged, such people may be quite confident that their sense impressions are accurate; so, it would seem that error could not be avoided in this kind of situation. Here the Stoics replied, first, that the impressions of madmen and dreamers are, in fact, unlike clear impressions received in the waking state, as witness the hesitation and bewilderment expressed sometimes by people on the

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verge of derangement, as well as the readiness with which one rejects a dream impression once one wakes up (Luc. 51–52). Second, a state of lethargy, drunkenness, or madness may indeed be such that the normal capacity to exercise due caution is temporarily lost. Hence it might be that even the sage would not be able to avoid all error in such a state. The question of the sage’s powers of judgement in abnormal states was, I think, what triggered the dispute over the question whether virtue can or cannot be lost (see the testimonia in SVF III, 237–244, 56ff). It is probably significant that Chrysippus, unlike Cleanthes, is said to have held that virtue may be temporarily lost in states of disease or madness.¹⁴ These counterexamples, then, can be avoided by restricting the claim of distinguishability, as seems quite reasonable, to the case of healthy and sober perceivers. So far, I think, the Stoic defences rely on the weak interpretation. The cognitive character of an impression is supposed to be due to its precision and accuracy, and in situations where one knows that such accuracy is hard to come by, as with eggs or coins, one will avoid error by refraining from judgement. The appeal to the principle of peculiar features of individuals makes it clear that the distinctness of an impression is assumed to be due to the distinctness of its object, not to any special feature characterizing cognitive impressions as such. The examples of madness and similar states can be set aside if one is willing to grant that these are passing episodes, recognizable as abnormal once one has returned to the normal state. The argument here would be, then, that impressions received in a deranged state of mind are not accurate enough to be trusted. The Academic objection merely shows that one will make mistakes while in such a state, not that one cannot avoid error while sane and sober. It appears that the more general question as to whether and how one can tell at any given time that one is not dreaming or deluded did not play an important role in the dispute.¹⁵ This may seem surprising to a modern reader, but it will appear less strange once one realizes that the relevant point was covered by the third and, I think, most damaging kind of examples. (c) Tricks and deception. Two early instances of this type of argument show up in the biographies of Zeno’s pupils Aristo and Sphaerus (DL 7.162 and 7.177 respectively), both presented as designed to refute the thesis that the wise man will not have opinions. In the first story, Persaeus—himself a Stoic—‘refutes’ Aristo by sending one of two twin brothers to deposit a sum of money with Aristo, and

¹⁴ DL 7.127: καὶ μὴν τὴν ἀρετὴν Χρύσιππος μὲν ἀποβλητὴν, Κλεάνθης δὲ ἀναπόβλητον· ὁ μὲν ἀποβλητὴν διὰ μέθην καὶ μελαγχολίαν, ὁ δὲ ἀναπόβλητον διὰ βεβαίους καταλήψεις. Cp. Simplicius, In Cat. 402,22–26: according to the Stoics, in states of derangement virtue is lost together with the entire ‘rational disposition’, which does not mean that vice takes its place, but that its ‘firmness’ is relaxed. ¹⁵ See Luc. 54, where Lucullus/Antiochus points out that if there were no difference between the impressions of sane and insane people, one could not even be sure of one’s own sanity. He treats this as an absurd consequence of the Academic position, not as a point raised by the Academics themselves.

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having the deposit collected by the other twin. It may be, as A.M. Ioppolo argues (in Opinione e scienza, Naples 1986, 82f.), that the ‘refutation’, coming from a Stoic, was aimed only at Aristo’s claim to be a sage himself; but it still raises the question how a real sage would have avoided the mistake. The same goes for the anecdote about Sphaerus. King Ptolemy Philopator is said to have trapped him with a practical joke by ordering wax pomegranates to be served at the dinner table. Sphaerus was apparently deceived into thinking they were real pomegranates, and the king triumphantly pointed out that he had assented to a false impression. Sphaerus then replied that he had assented only to the impression that it was reasonable to think these were real pomegranates. Now, if this is supposed to represent the reaction of a wise man, then it begins to look like a retreat to the position advocated by Arcesilaus, namely that in the absence of (any) cognitive impressions, the sceptic will be guided by ‘the reasonable’ (SE, M 7.158). If it is not what the sage would say, the question arises once again how he would have avoided error in such a situation. What distinguishes these two examples from the kinds of cases mentioned before is that—as far as one can tell—the observer is sane, sober, in full possession of his perceptual faculties, and well placed to get a clear and accurate impression of the object. He has no reason to think he might be hallucinating. But he also has no reason to exercise special caution, as in the case of eggs or coins, because he does not know, and has no reason to suspect, that he is dealing with objects of a sort that might come in several very similar species or exemplars. In order to defend the claim that the wise man will nevertheless not be taken in even in such situations, the Stoics might say, as Sphaerus’s reply suggests, that the sage will always exercise caution, never taking a sense impression to be true unless he has thoroughly investigated the object, but being guided by reasonable assumptions when a full investigation is not practicable. (After all, it would have been very impolite of Sphaerus to examine the fruit at the king’s table to make sure it was real.) Aristo should perhaps have accepted a deposit only from a person he knew well enough to be certain that he had no identical twin. Alternatively, the Stoics might have claimed that the sage has extraordinary powers of perception such that he will immediately recognize a fake pomegranate or a previously unknown twin brother because his impressions (and his memory) are so precise and accurate that he will notice the slightest deviation. This is not a very plausible move, however, given that the Stoics themselves seem to have pointed out that precise perceptual discrimination between similar objects requires special training or experience, as with the Delian farmer or the mother who can tell her twins apart (Luc. 57). Caution would seem more appealing, and one might also argue that practical jokes are not all that ubiquitous—in most cases of unimpeded perception, what it would be reasonable to assume will really be so. This is not enough, however, to guarantee infallibility. What is disconcerting about examples of this sort is that even though cases of trickery or accidental resemblance may be rare, they cannot

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be predicted. Since Arcesilaus is already said to have argued for the general thesis of ἀπαραλλαξία (SE, M 7.154), I would assume that he based his generalization on this kind of case. Now, caution will definitely have to lead to complete suspension of assent if there is reason to think that deceit might be ubiquitous—and that is exactly what was suggested, presumably by Carneades, in the notorious soritesargument about the deceiver god (Luc. 47 and 49). The Stoics apparently responded to the suggestion that such a god could produce a false impression indistinguishable from a cognitive one just as Descartes did many centuries later, by saying that a god would not do such a thing even if he could. They may also have thought that not even a god could bring it about that there was no difference at all between two distinct individuals, so that impressions produced by different objects would necessarily have to be distinct (Luc. 50). But this is not enough to solve the problem. The Academics might even grant the assumption that any two distinct objects, however similar, must produce different impressions (Luc. 85); for once it had been shown that any true impression could conceivably be very similar to a false one, the Stoic sage would have to exercise caution in every single case. That is to say, he would either have to refrain from assent in every case or acquire an incredible amount of technical skill (Luc. 86). It is at this point, I think, that the Stoics would have been tempted to resort to the stronger interpretation of the clause ‘such as could not arise from what is not that existing thing’, by postulating a peculiar feature that distinguishes cognitive impressions as a class from non-cognitive ones. Antiochus, for example (Luc. 46, 51), maintains that all ‘empty’ impressions lack the perspicuousness that characterizes cognitive impressions. This may be plausible for dreams and hallucinations, but what, for example, would have prevented Aristo from getting a clear and accurate impression of the twin brother who came to collect the deposit? At Luc. 58, Antiochus rejects an argument ‘occasionally’ (interdum) used by the Academics, according to which they did not wish to maintain that there was no difference between the impressions themselves, but only that there was no difference between the ‘species et quasdam formas eorum’¹⁶. The expression is difficult to understand, since it sounds like ‘appearance of an appearance’, but the combination species et forma may indicate that Cicero is rendering the Greek εἶδος (for a similar use of species, compare perhaps Luc. 99 specie probabile and 111 probandi species). The Academic argument would then be that the impressions themselves might be granted (for the sake of argument: 85) to be distinct, given that they arise from different objects, but since there is no difference in kind between cognitive and non-cognitive impressions, they may still not be distinguishable (cf. Luc. 40). Lucullus/Antiochus responds by insisting, indignantly, that impressions have to

¹⁶ See also Luc. 40 and 84, where the same argument seems to be mentioned, but without the words species et forma.

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be judged by their species, and that this implies the availability of a ‘mark of truth and falsehood’. But what exactly might be the feature or set of features that characterizes cognitive impressions as a kind? Sextus, in one passage (M 7.252), says that according to the Stoics, cognitive impressions differ from all others in the way in which horned snakes differ from all other kinds of snakes. This is, I think, an unfortunate move.¹⁷ Not only do we never find a more specific account of the alleged special feature of cognitive impressions, but the suggestion that there is such a feature also invites a regress argument: if we recognize cognitive impressions by their special mark, then how do we recognize the mark? By another cognitive impression? And how do we recognize that? (cf. M 7.427–429). On the other hand, the snake story has an attractive aspect that makes it similar to the light-analogy discussed above: horns are an intrinsic feature of horned snakes, and one obviously does not need an inference to get from seeing a snake that has horns to the belief that one is seeing a horned snake. But the truth of an impression must be a relational property—as pointed out, once again, by Carneades, SE, M 7.168— and hence any intrinsic feature could at best be necessarily linked to truth. Since Sextus’s remark about the distinguishing feature has no parallels elsewhere, it is more likely that most Stoics simply insisted that cognitive impressions were recognizably more clear, accurate, and vivid than any others. This would mean that the distinguishing characteristic of a cognitive impression was not some additional feature, like a blue ribbon or perhaps a watermark, discernible only with due training. Rather, the distinguishing feature or features would be ones that are present in all presentations to a certain degree, such as clarity and precision. There would be indubitable cases at both ends of the range—impressions that are overwhelmingly clear or very murky—but there would also be an intermediary range in which it was arbitrary or impossible to decide whether a given impression was to count as a cognitive or not. The suggestion that the distinguishing feature comes in degrees would seem to be confirmed by Chrysippus’s notorious advice for responding to a sorites-argument (Luc. 93). Finally, Sextus discusses two possible sets of ‘characteristics’ (ἰδίωμα) that are obviously a matter of degree: clarity and force (ἐναργές, ἔντονον) or accuracy and precision (κατὰ χαρακτῆρα καὶ κατὰ τύπον, M 7.408). Needless to say, the Academics reacted by arguing that true and false impressions may have all of these characteristics to the same degree. The suggestion of the special character of cognitive impressions as a kind, however, invites the sort of account that we find in the Lucullus: it seems that we can separate the content of an impression from its characteristic features as an impression of a certain kind, and maintain that it is the special features that

¹⁷ The comparison with different kinds of snakes may have been inspired by the example, presented as a difficulty for the Stoics, of snakes in a covered basket who look out one by one, so that one cannot tell whether it is the same or a different snake raising its head each time: SE, M 7.410.

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guarantee its truth. Hence, the situation could be described by saying that we infer the truth of an impression from its characteristic ‘mark of truth’. The result is, however, an awkward combination of alleged self-evidence with knowledge reached by inference. I do not wish to suggest, of course, that the Stoics themselves ever explicitly described their criterion as a sign of truth. But, given the strong interpretation of the third clause in their definition of the cognitive impression, it seems to me that the Academic interpretation was not unfair.

III I assume that it was this version of their epistemology that both Philo and Antiochus attributed to the Stoics. Antiochus apparently accepted it because he had come to think that it was absurd to maintain that knowledge is impossible, but continued to believe, with other Academics, that the Stoic definition was correct. Philo, on the other hand, remained convinced by the Academic arguments purporting to show that the kind of impressions postulated by the Stoics could not be found. And once the cognitive impression had come to be considered as a sign, that is, a piece of evidence from which to infer the truth of the corresponding proposition, Carneades’ arguments would indeed seem to be compelling: to show that an impression is reliable may justify its acceptance, but it cannot constitute a demonstration of its truth. Or to put it in the terms of Sextus’s report: even the most reliable witness may occasionally go wrong, and there is no way of guaranteeing, in any given case, that he has not made a mistake. Now, Philo and other Academics had for quite a while been advocating the view that knowledge cannot be attained, and that we must therefore be content with fallible opinions. But the Academy after Carneades had also developed a sophisticated account of more or less reasonable opinions. Philosophers were not supposed to accept just any impression that might strike them as convincing; they were expected to exercise caution, to ascertain that the situation was normal in all relevant respects, and that there was no countervailing evidence from other impressions or background beliefs to indicate the contradictory of the proposition under scrutiny. The opinions one would arrive at in this way would be based on impressions that could be considered reliable, even though there could be no guarantee of their truth. Moreover, these opinions would coincide for the most part with what a Stoic might say he had grasped by a cognitive impression.¹⁸ Hence one might come to think that the difference between the ‘probable’ opinions of the Academics and some rash and inconsiderate beliefs was far ¹⁸ See Luc. 105: sed ea quae vos percipi comprehendique eadem nos, si modo probabilia sint, videri dicimus, and cf. Allen, ‘Academic Probabilism and Stoic Epistemology’, 1994, 104.

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more significant than the elusive line between the reasonably justified but fallible opinions claimed by the followers of Carneades and the allegedly certain knowledge guaranteed by the Stoic criterion. Why not, then, follow ordinary life and redraw the line between knowledge and mere opinion so as to separate wellfounded judgements from superficial beliefs?¹⁹ I would suggest that this was the consideration that led Philo to his Roman innovations. He concluded, plausibly enough, that the Stoics had set their standards too high. It was unnecessary modesty on the part of the Academics to concede that all they could hope for was opinion, not knowledge. Our sources unfortunately do not permit us to say exactly how Philo would have re-defined knowledge (κατάληψις), if indeed he explicitly offered a new account. There seem to be two options: (a) Philo might have said that a plausible and thoroughly ‘tested’ impression was sufficient to warrant the inference to its truth. This would mean that he continued to adhere to the Academic way of treating impressions as evidence or ‘messengers’ rather than as sources of non-inferential information. This line, however, would be implausible, given that the Academic arguments for indistinguishability—which Philo apparently continued to accept—were designed precisely to show that such an inference could never be warranted. (b) The second option would be to deny that any inference is needed to acquire true and reliable information through the senses. One may use the procedures outlined by Carneades to make sure that an impression is reliable, but it is a mistake to think that one then goes on to infer the impression’s truth from its reliability. The impression that there is a table in front of me, together with the observation that this impression was received under standard conditions, may justify my claim to know that there is a table. But if this claim is correct, it is because, as the Stoics might have put it, my senses have revealed the presence of the table and thus provided me with true and accurate information—or, in today’s fashionable jargon, because I am in the right causal relation to the table. My knowledge is not based on the spurious inference from ‘I have the impression that p, and p is a reliable impression’ to ‘p is true’. If this was the option Philo chose, he may have been the first to distinguish clearly between justifying acceptance and offering a proof. He would also have preserved the distinction between ‘evident’ truths grasped without inference and other true propositions that may be derived from them by argument and ¹⁹ A consideration of this sort appears at Luc. 146, where Cicero points out that accomplished artists like the painter Zeuxis or the sculptors Phidias and Polyclitus would be rather offended if told (by a Stoic) that they had no knowledge. They would look more kindly upon the Academics, realizing that they ‘reject only what can never be found, but leave in place all that is needed for their crafts’. Cicero presumably means that they would be content with having their knowledge re-described as probable opinion; but one might also think that it is absurd to deny that these people have a kind of knowledge.

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inference—the distinction that underlies the theory of inference from signs. In other words, he would have offered something that could be called a criterion of truth—a non-inferential means of grasping what is the case—though not an infallible one. Even though we do not have any positive testimony, then, I am inclined to believe that this would have been Philo’s view. Once he had taken this step, he could also say that he was just reverting to a conception of knowledge that had been held by the great founders of the Academy, Plato and Aristotle.²⁰ For, even though they obviously thought, just as did Philo himself, that the knowledge of an expert must consist of truths or even necessary truths, they did not claim that an expert could never make a mistake. Cicero tells us several times (Luc. 77, 113) that no one before Zeno had put forward the view that the wise man will have no opinions, and I think this is historically correct. If an expert did make a mistake, this would show simply that his claim to knowledge was false in this instance, not that he had no knowledge at all.²¹ This would still not show that the Academy had always agreed with Philo’s Roman views, of course, for Arcesilaus and Carneades, as far as we can see, had followed the Stoics in arguing that the wise man should not assent unless he was certain he had grasped the truth. But Philo’s version of the ‘true Academic line’ seems to me to have no less plausibility as regards the early Academics than Antiochus’s picture of a thoroughly Stoicized dogmatic orthodoxy. In the famous summary of Photius (Bibl. cod. 212, 170a16), Aenesidemus is said to have described the Academics of his day as ‘Stoics fighting Stoics’. The dispute between Cicero’s teachers Philo and Antiochus was actually a case of one Academic arguing against another Academic, but if my interpretation of Philo’s Roman views is somewhere near the truth, then there would not be much to choose between these two descriptions. Both parties to the dispute were dogmatists, differing only in their greater or lesser modesty; both held theories that can be seen as versions or variants of Stoic epistemology; and neither of them could any more be called a sceptic.²²

²⁰ For this point, see also Fin. V 76: nihil enim est aliud quam ob rem mihi percipi nihil posse videatur, nisi quod percipiendi vis ita definitur a Stoicis, ut negent quicquam posse percipi nisi tale verum, quale falsum esse non possit. itaque haec cum illis est dissensio, cum Peripateticis nulla sane. ²¹ For Aristotle see, for example, Physics II 8.199a33–35: ἁμαρτία δὲ γίγνεται καὶ ἐν τοῖς κατὰ τέχνην (ἔγραψε γὰρ οὐκ ὀρθῶς ὁ γραμματικός, καὶ ἐπότισεν οὐκ ὀρθῶς ὁ ἰατρὸς τὸ φάρμακον). ²² I am grateful to James Allen for discussion and criticism of the first draft, and to David Sedley for giving me a written version of his objections at Utrecht.

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13 Scepticism as a Kind of Philosophy An examination of Sextus Empiricus’ claim that Pyrrhonist Scepticism is a kind of philosophy different from both positive and negative dogmatism. What Sextus describes in the first book of Outlines of Scepticism as the Pyrrhonist way of life is not a different kind of philosophy, but a way of using reasoning and argument not only to undermine philosophy itself, but even any kind of judgement based on reasons. The label ‘investigators’ does seem to apply to the Academic Sceptics, but theirs is not a different kind of philosophy; it is simply an undogmatic version that abandons claims to certainty.

Scepticism has been one of the standard problems of epistemology in modern times. It takes various forms—the most general one being the thesis that knowledge is impossible, but equally prominent are such versions as the notorious doubt about the existence of an external world, inaugurated by Descartes’ Meditations, or doubts about the existence of objective values. Philosophers who undertake to refute scepticism—still a very popular exercise—try to show that knowledge is possible after all, or to prove the existence of an external world, and so on. Sceptics, generally speaking, are seen as radical doubters—philosophers who call into question assumptions that are usually taken for granted by ordinary people as well as by other philosophers. Those doubts have to be refuted by showing that they are in some way unjustified. It was not always so. In ancient times, when the label Scepticism was introduced together with a variety of others, Sceptics were seen primarily as philosophers who suspend judgement, refrain from making any assertions, either about philosophical problems or about anything whatsoever, including everyday statements of fact. The word ‘sceptic’ literally means ‘investigator’ or ‘searcher’, not ‘doubter’. Here, to illustrate the point, is the opening chapter of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism, entitled ‘The most fundamental difference among philosophies’: When people are investigating any subject, the likely result is either a discovery, or a denial of discovery and a confession of inapprehensibility, or else a continuation of the investigation. This, no doubt, is why in the case of philosophical investigations, too, some have said that they have discovered the truth, some

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0013

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have asserted that it cannot be apprehended, and others are still investigating. Those who are called Dogmatists in the proper sense of the word think that they have discovered the truth—for example, the schools of Aristotle and Epicurus and the Stoics, and some others. The schools of Clitomachus and Carneades, and other Academics, have asserted that things cannot be apprehended. And the Sceptics are still investigating. Hence the most fundamental kinds of philosophy are reasonably thought to be three: the Dogmatic, the Academic, and the Sceptical. (PH 1.1–4)¹

Sextus presents scepticism as a kind of philosophy, distinguished from others not by the content of its doctrines (there are none), but apparently by its attitude to philosophical problems and theses. Modern so-called sceptics would fall into Sextus’s second category—negative dogmatists, people who argue for the view that knowledge is impossible on the basis of specific assumptions about what knowledge would have to be. A Pyrrhonist Sceptic would suspend judgement about the premises of such arguments as much as about their conclusions, and hence not assert that knowledge is impossible, or that we do not know whether there is an external world, and so on. In this chapter I propose to take a look at Sextus’s claim that Scepticism is not a doctrine at all, but rather a different kind of philosophy. Sextus’s tripartition is probably an expansion of a simpler twofold division that can be found in Diogenes Laertius (1.16): ‘Of the philosophers some were dogmatists, others ephectics [suspenders of judgement].’ Diogenes’ classification contrasts philosophers who have doctrines with others who suspend judgement, but his subsequent explication of the two labels already begins to look like the modern contrast between philosophers who believe they can find the truth and sceptics who say one cannot: ‘dogmatists are those who make assertions about things as being apprehended; ephectics are those who suspend judgement about things as being inapprehensible’—that is, maintain that things cannot be known. Sextus’s version is more sophisticated. He (rightly) treats the view that nothing can be known as a philosophical doctrine, and hence puts the Academics on the side of dogmatism as opposed to his own school, which professes to be simply continuing the search. Now, if Sceptics are investigators who have no answers to propose, in what sense do they count as philosophers? Sextus’s answer should be contained in the general account of Pyrrhonism he offers in the first book of his Outlines. It will emerge, I think, that ‘perpetual investigator’ is actually not a very apt description of a Pyrrhonist—but, as I shall argue later, an accurate description of the Pyrrhonists’ ancient rivals, the

¹ Tr. J. Annas and J. Barnes in Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism, Cambridge 1994. I use this translation for passages from PH unless otherwise indicated.

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Academics (precisely those philosophers whom Sextus stigmatizes as negative dogmatists). But let us look first at Pyrrhonism. Sextus’s books were written towards the end of a long tradition of nondogmatic philosophy, going back at least to the end of the fourth century , the lifetime of the founder and figurehead Pyrrho of Elis. The historical development of what we now call Greek Scepticism is obscure, owing to the fact that virtually everything that was written before Sextus has been lost, but one can at least say that Sextus’s version of Pyrrhonism does not represent a uniform view that was preserved through the centuries. Apart from Pyrrho himself, who may have had many admirers during his lifetime, but apparently did not have many disciples (apart from the notorious Timon²), we should include the ‘sceptical’ period of Plato’s Academy as well, at least from Arcesilaus in the third century down to Carneades (second century ), because Aenesidemus, the reviver of the Pyrrhonist sect in the first century , seems to have been an Academic who left his school to found a rival enterprise, apparently because he found the Academics of his own time insufficiently sceptical.³ Another influence, documented by the— no doubt fictitious—‘genealogy’ of the Sceptical school from Timon to Sextus’s pupil Saturninus in DL (9.115–116), which contains the names of several distinguished physicians, is that of the Empiricist school of medicine. The famous Empiricist doctor Heraclides actually appears on DL’s list as the immediate predecessor of Aenesidemus. The medical Empiricists from the third century  on had an ongoing debate with the so-called Rationalists (λογικοί), doctors who believed that one should try to understand and treat diseases by discovering their (often unobservable) causes. Our main source for the disputes among the physicians is Galen, who treats the Empiricists as (philosophical) Sceptics; as the surname ‘Empiricus’ shows, Sextus himself must have been a member of this school, and we know that he actually wrote a book on Empirical medicine (see M 1.61), which has unfortunately been lost. The form of Sextus’s exposition is obviously influenced by the style of the philosophical historiographers and commentators of his own time: he follows the pattern that would be used for the account of a school that had doctrines in the three traditional ‘parts’ of philosophy—physics, logic, and ethics. So, we get first some notes on the name of the school and its origins, including the question whether Pyrrhonism can count as a school or sect (αἵρεσις) at all—to which the

² Timon of Phlius (approx. 325–230 ), best known for his satirical attacks on other philosophers, is probably the ultimate source of all the surviving evidence about Pyrrho, since Pyrrho himself, as one might expect, wrote nothing. ³ This has recently been doubted by Fernanda Decleva Caizzi (‘Aenesidemus and the Academy’, Classical Quarterly 1992, 176–89), but see the reply by J. Mansfeld, ‘Aenesidemus and the Academics’, in L. Ayres (ed.), The Passionate Intellect, Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities vii, New Brunswick/London 1995, 235–48.

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answer is a guarded yes (PH 1.16–17). Then Sextus appears to summarize the position of his school in the three traditional fields (chapters 9, 11, 12). He has nothing to offer under physics. In the brief chapter entitled ‘Do Sceptics study natural science?’ (PH 1.18), he candidly admits that Sceptics engage in the discussion of questions from this field only for the purpose of exhibiting undecidable conflicts of opinion in order to reach or perhaps preserve their peace of mind. He adds that they deal with logic and ethics in the same way. But as a matter of fact, he does have things to say under the rubrics ‘The criterion of Scepticism’ (PH 1.9 21–24) and ‘What is the end of Scepticsm?’ (25–30), topics that would normally be considered to belong to epistemology (‘logic’) and ethics, respectively. Of course, the Sceptics do not have a philosophical view about either the criterion of truth or the ultimate goal of life, but it turns out that they do use (if not argue for) what they call a criterion for action, and they also have an ultimate aim, namely tranquillity, which they claim to achieve by practising their philosophical method. It looks as though the Pyrrhonists had at least a quasi-system. But in lieu of the more detailed exposition of doctrines that would have followed such a summary in the account of a dogmatic school, we get the extended presentation of the famous Modes—a large collection of materials to be used in setting up conflicts of opinions about all sorts of subjects, followed by an ingenious set of epistemological meta-arguments, the Modes of Agrippa, designed to thwart any attempt by dogmatically inclined philosophers to resolve the controversies that surround philosophical as well as everyday questions. After that, we get a highly scholastic series of short chapters about the slogans or utterances (φωναί) through which the Sceptics expressed their attitude or, as they might prefer to say, the affection (πάθος) that results from the exercise of their argumentative skills. Here Sextus describes a variety of ways in which these utterances can be seen not to be assertions of any sort—for that, of course, would count as dogmatism. This section is a good illustration of the multiple strands of tradition behind Sextus’s account of Scepticism. Some of the slogans, such as οὐ μᾶλλον (‘no more this than that’), go back beyond Pyrrho to Democritus and Plato; others are attempts to avoid even the appearance of assertion by using, for example, the form of a question, but there are also phrases like ‘I have no apprehension’ (ἀκαταληπτῶ) and even ‘Everything is inapprehensible’ that derive from the Stoic–Academic debate about the possibility of knowledge. Finally, there are six chapters in which Sextus endeavours to refute the claim, presumably made by other philosophers, that Pyrrhonism is identical with some other school, notably the Academic and medical Empiricism. What are we to make of this portrait of a self-proclaimed group of philosophers-without-answers? In chapter 8, Sextus had told us that while the Sceptics do not have a school or sect in the standard sense of being adherents of some system of philosophical doctrines that contains assertions about obscure matters, they do belong to a school if by that word one understands ‘a way of life

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(αἵρεσις)⁴ which, to all appearances, coheres with some account (λόγος), the account suggesting how it is possible to live correctly (where “correctly” is taken not only with reference to virtue, but more loosely, and extends to the ability to suspend judgment)’ . . . ‘For’ (he continues) ‘we coherently follow, to all appearances, an account which shows us (or ‘suggests’, ὑποδείκνυσι) a life in conformity with traditional customs and the law and ways of life and our own feelings’. I take it that all of book I, and not just the brief chapter about the criterion for action, can be seen as a version of this account—or story, as I might be inclined to translate here, to distinguish it from either a doctrine or an argument. The story begins, I think, in chapter 6, with the ‘principles’ of Scepticism. According to this chapter, the initial motivation of the Pyrrhonist is the hope of reaching tranquillity, to free himself from the disturbances that befall a person who observes ‘the general disorder of things’. ‘Men of noble character’, faced with ubiquitous conflicts of perceptual appearances as well as opinions or doctrines, feel impelled to investigate what is true and what is false. What leads the Sceptic into philosophical investigations is disturbance and confusion, but he engages in the search for truth, not just in order to find answers to puzzling questions, but in order to attain peace of mind. Contrast this picture with Plato’s and Aristotle’s description of the philosopher as someone who starts out from bewilderment, indeed, but then desires to find the truth for its own sake. It is true, of course, that the Hellenistic schools advertised their doctrines, and hence the study of philosophy, as a way of reaching happiness as well, and Epicurus is even reported to have said that the study of nature would be useless if it did not lead to tranquillity. But this was precisely because philosophy was taken to be a way of finding the truth. The conception of philosophy as a search for truth was also used in the first chapter of the Outlines quoted above, but here we are told that a Pyrrhonist philosopher is interested in finding the truth only as a way of reaching peace of mind. This is why, when he finds himself unable to discover the truth, but nevertheless relieved of his worries once he has given up on the project, the Sceptic also loses interest in the investigation of philosophical problems. Scepticism itself, indeed, was defined accordingly in chapter 4, as ‘an ability to set out oppositions among things which appear and are thought of in any way at all, an ability by which, because of the equipollence in the opposed objects and accounts, we come first to suspension of judgment and afterwards to tranquillity’ (PH 1.8). The Sceptic’s subsequent investigations are undertaken in order to exhibit the equal strength of arguments ⁴ Annas and Barnes (1994) translate this word as ‘persuasion’, which I find misleading, especially for readers without Greek, who would naturally take it as translating a word like πίστις. I use ‘way of life’ for lack of a better term. As Roberta Ioli has shown (in Ἀγωγή and related terms in Sextus Empiricus, MPhil thesis, Cambridge 1999, the use of the word in a philosophical context and in contrast to αἵρεσις suggests following a lead—either a person or a set of instructions. So in its second occurrence here (l.23) it seems to correspond to the phrase διδασκαλία τεχνὦν (teaching of kinds of expertise) in the description of the ‘everyday observances’ followed by the Sceptics (PH 1.9.24). For ‘way of life’, see the explication of the word by Sextus at PH 1.145.

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on both sides of each conflict, which will lead the investigator to suspend judgement; and suspension of judgement is supposed to lead to tranquillity. Sextus explains how this allegedly happens in his chapter about the goal of Scepticism, PH 1.9.25–30, by telling an anecdote: What is said to have happened to the painter Apelles befalls the Sceptic too. They say that Apelles was painting a horse and wanted to represent the foam at the horse’s muzzle. He was so unsuccessful that he gave up and hurled at the picture the sponge he used to wipe the paints off his brush. The sponge touched the picture and produced a representation of the foam.

So, for the Sceptic, tranquillity follows unexpectedly, not upon the discovery of truth, but upon giving up the search. The Sceptic finds himself unable to decide between conflicting appearances or opinions and suspends judgement—and then notices, to his surprise, that his previous worries have left him together with the attempt to arrive at a decision. This is clearly not a philosophical theory about the goal of life, but it is a story about the aim of the Sceptical philosopher as a person, and an explanation of his way of life. If we take this as a part of the story mentioned in chapters 4 and 8, it tells us that a Pyrrhonist will use his skill to construct a situation of equipollence whenever he encounters a conflict of doctrines or appearances, which will then lead him to abandon the project of finding answers, and consequently be no longer troubled by the problem. But we were also told that the Sceptical story suggests a way of living correctly— and that is the point taken up in the chapter about the Sceptical criterion. It contains the Pyrrhonists’ answer to the charge, brought against those who claim to suspend judgement on all matters at least since the time of Pyrrho, that a person who refrains from making any judgements at all will be unable to act, since action implies a decision or belief about whether things are one way rather than another.⁵ Obviously, the Sceptic cannot base any judgements or decisions on a principled method of establishing the truth or making moral decisions. Having given up the attempt to find guidance in reason and argument, he might be at a loss as to how to conduct his life—or indeed, as the dogmatist opponents claimed, unable to act at all. But this, as Sextus points out, is not the case, for instead of reason-based judgements the Sceptic will make use of appearances—he will respond to the way things appear to him, act as his instincts such as hunger or thirst impel him to act, without thinking that he is right about any view with which another person might disagree.

⁵ I have discussed some sceptical replies to this argument in ‘Sceptical Strategies’ (in M. Schofield et al. (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism, Oxford 1980, 54–83), repr. in Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics.

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I will not go into the vexed question whether the Pyrrhonists’ ‘appearances’ are to count as some kind of beliefs or not. It seems to me that the debate about this question⁶ has suffered to some extent from a failure to distinguish between different senses of ‘belief ’. It may be taken in the strong sense of ‘judgement’, meaning assent to a proposition justified by appropriate reasons one is prepared to produce in order to defend the truth of one’s assertion, but it can also be used in a much weaker, dispositional sense, according to which it is sufficient for the ascription of a belief to an agent that she acts or behaves in a certain way. If I avoid an approaching car, for example, I thereby show that I believe that there is a dangerous heavy object coming towards me that might kill me if I don’t get out of the way. I could no doubt offer reasons, both for the belief and for the action, but I probably didn’t think of them. In fact, my dog might have reacted in exactly the same way, though it cannot offer reasons to justify its ‘belief ’. I would say that the Pyrrhonist conception of ‘following appearances’ is on the model of this kind of behaviour, and it is a matter of terminological choice whether we want to speak of belief here or not. Appearances and natural urges arise passively and involuntarily (PH 1.22) and hence are not based on judgements as to what is or is not the case, ought or ought not to be done, but they are sufficient to keep the Sceptic going, as it were. A simple version of this reply to the dogmatic objection may go back to Pyrrho himself and was later elaborated in the sceptical Academy. But while earlier answers addressed only the question of how a Sceptic can orient himself in a particular situation, Sextus’s version purports to show that we can make do with appearances in every aspect of ordinary life. Following appearances or, as he calls it, ‘everyday observances’ (βιωτικὴ τήρησις PH 1.23) has four parts: first, ‘guidance by nature’, which provides the Sceptic with sense-impressions and thoughts;⁷ second, ‘necessitation of feelings’, such as hunger and thirst, which will lead the Sceptic to go for food and drink; third, the ‘handing down of laws and customs’, which leads the Sceptics to accept, for example, piety as good ‘in an everyday fashion’, and impiety as bad; and fourth, ‘teaching of kinds of expertise’, which will permit the Sceptic to practice the crafts in which he has been trained. So, Sextus can claim that the Sceptic will lead a perfectly ordinary life, including conformity to the moral views of his community, and that he will even be able to make a living as a practitioner of some craft by following the instructions of his teachers. None ⁶ For the debate see, for example, the essays by M.F. Burnyeat, M. Frede, and J. Barnes reprinted in M.F. Burnyeat and M. Frede, The Original Sceptics, Indianapolis 1997. ⁷ The Greek text is: ‘ὑφηγήσει μὲν φυσικῇ καθ’ἣν φυσικῶς αἰσθητικοὶ καὶ νοητικοί ἐσμεν. M. Frede (‘The Empiricist Attitude towards Reason and Theory’, in Apeiron xxi, 1988, 95) finds in this passage the recognition of reason as a natural human capacity, but I think one should be careful not to conclude that this means reasoning. The word νοητικοί should probably be taken only in the minimal sense of being able to think and understand language, as, for example, in PH 2.10, where Sextus seems to refer back to this passage. There can be no question, of course, that the Pyrrhonists made use of reasoning in their arguments against other philosophers, but I think they kept it out of their sceptical way of living.

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of this, or so we are invited to believe, requires any reasoned decision about the truth or falsity of potentially controversial views, and hence the Sceptic never needs to be disturbed. But in case he should find himself tempted to enter a dispute, he will presumably use his Sceptical technique of argument to rid himself of the desire to find out how things really are. Such, in outline, is the account that guides the Sceptic’s way of life—one that coheres remarkably well with the anti-rationalism of the Empirical doctors, though avoiding, at least in Sextus’s book, their dogmatic assertion that nothing can be known about things non-evident (PH 1.236). There is, however, a complication in Sextus’s case, arising from his frequent use of the Modes of Agrippa (PH 1.164–177). This set of argument-forms is no doubt an effective device to stop people from trying to solve puzzles by justifying some particular view about how things really are, but it is not a method for reaching equipollence as advertised in the definition of Scepticism. It is, in fact, a piece of negative dogmatism designed to convince dogmatists that no judgement can ever be sufficiently justified to count as an instance of knowledge. And, pace Jonathan Barnes,⁸ it seems to me to be just as questionable as the older Academic argument for the impossibility of knowledge against the Stoics. Briefly, the dubious assumptions here are (1) that no judgement can be accepted as a piece of knowledge without the backing of reasons; and (2) that every judgement can be disputed. The argument overlooks the vast number of facts we claim to know unhesitatingly without having the faintest idea of how we would defend or justify them if challenged, and without consciously relying on any reasons. Examples would be not only everyday perceptual beliefs, but also such things as knowing who our parents are, in what city we are living, etc., and generalities such as that cats are animals, books are made for reading, and humans are language-users. The first sort can occasionally be called into question when there is reason to suspect delusion or trickery, but the default-option, as it were, is truth. To say that we are never justified in making even such modest claims is to introduce the method of Unreasonable (‘hyperbolic’) Doubt made famous by Descartes, and I see no reason to follow Descartes on this point. Aristotle was right, I think, to say that if there is to be knowledge, some truths must be known without proof. Since he was interested in scientific knowledge, not justification of knowledge-claims in general, he then went on to consider the first principles of demonstration, rather than humdrum bits of everyday knowledge (the knowledge we need to have in order to follow any kind of systematic instruction: An.Po. A 1.71a1–2). But his move, though never intended as a Refutation of Scepticism, seems to me to be the right response to the later sceptics as well. A Refutation of Scepticism is no doubt a hopeless enterprise once we accept the sceptic’s premises,

⁸ J. Barnes, The Toils of Scepticism, Cambridge 1990.

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but why should we not consider his argument as a reductio ad absurdum of its premises? Sextus’s fondness for this technique is understandable if one considers that the old set of ten Modes contains quite a few weak items and so is not likely to convince a dogmatist that no question is ever decidable. Sextus may be using Agrippa’s arguments only ad hominem, assuming that the dogmatist will agree with their premises, but to the extent that he seems to think they will have no escape, his practice threatens to undermine the claim that the Pyrrhonist will lead a life without dogmatic assent. Now, since Sextus’s definition of Scepticism appeals to equipollence, and Agrippa’s Modes must have been introduced after Aenesidemus,⁹ let me set this question aside for the moment and consider only the official account of the Sceptical way of life. Is it also a kind of philosophy? Yes and no, I think. If by philosophy we mean a search for truth, successful or otherwise, the Sceptical way of life can hardly qualify. Contrary to Sextus’s initial claim that the Sceptic goes on investigating, philosophical investigations seem to be precisely what the Sceptic’s way of life is designed to avoid. The impressive apparatus of the Sceptical modes is supposed to be used for one purpose only—namely to rid us of the foolish attachment to settling questions by reason and argument. Or, as one might put it, to bring out the paradoxical nature of the Pyrrhonist enterprise, reasoning and argument are used only to undermine themselves. But this vehement antirationalism seems to be based upon a rationale itself—the Sceptics’ claim that no controversies will ever be settled; that abandoning the search for truth will give you peace of mind; and that there is no need to fall back on reason and argument in everyday life because all of it can be conducted by following the appearances that come to us involuntarily, untainted by the influence of reason. One might be tempted to call this set of claims a philosophical theory, however rudimentary— but in fairness to the Sceptics, one has to recognize that Sextus takes great care to make sure that it is not mistaken for one. No part of the set is presented as the conclusion of an argument. Sextus carefully qualifies the claim that the attempt at settling a dispute always ends in a stalemate by saying that it refers only to the cases investigated by the Sceptic so far. The full formulation of the Sceptical slogan ‘there is an equally strong argument opposed to every argument’¹⁰ would have to run as follows: ‘To every argument I have scrutinized which purports to establish something in dogmatic fashion, there appears to me to be opposed another ⁹ Nothing is known about Agrippa, and the only source that ascribes the Five Modes to him is DL (9.88). F. Caujolle-Zaslawsky (Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, ed. R. Goulet, Paris 1989, vol. I, 71) suggests that Agrippa might in fact have been simply a character in a book by the Sceptic Apellas (see DL 9.106), a man about whom we also do not know anything else. Still, both Sextus and Diogenes say that the Five Modes were introduced later than Aenesidemus’ Ten Modes. ¹⁰ Here I prefer the translation ‘argument’ for λόγος to Annas and Barnes’ ‘account’, because the slogan was, after all, not invented by the Sceptics—it goes back, minus the significant word ἴσος (equal), to the sophist Protagoras.

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argument, purporting to establish something in dogmatic fashion, equal to it in convincingness or lack of convincingness’ (PH 1. 203). And to make sure that even this very cautious formulation not be taken as an assertion, Sextus will insist that any utterance by a Sceptic should only be seen as an expression of the way he is affected. The claim that tranquillity follows upon suspension of judgement is presented in the form of a biographical anecdote—no promise is made that the experience can easily be repeated, or that tranquillity necessarily must follow suspension (although I must say that the phrase ‘as a shadow follows a body’, used by both Sextus (PH 1.29) and Diogenes Laertius (9.107), sounds a little suspicious). The ‘everyday observances’ that Sextus offers as guidance for the Sceptic’s way of life are a set of replies to dogmatic claims that this or that activity might require reasoned judgement and deliberation. Sextus points out, in each case, that no reasoning is needed to perform in (allegedly) normal ways; he does not try to defend the view that it is right or reasonable to follow appearances. Hence a Pyrrhonist would probably not be impressed if one objected to him that his overall story is neither very plausible nor very appealing. For example, a dogmatist would be likely to object that several of the Ten Modes seem to present only apparent conflicts. To take a simple example: if A likes apples and B does not, this need not (and usually does not) lead to a dispute as to whether apples are good-tasting or not; having a good taste is not a property of apples taken by themselves, but only of apples as tasted by people. Again, if eating apples is healthy for humans but unhealthy for cats, this is no reason for dispute, because these facts are relational—but they seem to be pretty well-established facts. So, the Sceptic’s claim that things in general are full of conflicting appearances seems to be vastly exaggerated, making his remedy for getting rid of these conflicts seem less urgently needed. But even if we consider only genuine controversies such as those among dogmatic philosophers, it seems to be false to say that no dispute can ever be resolved, since some views at least are generally agreed to be mistaken. Obviously, dogmatists would (and did) also object to Sextus’s claim that dogmatic belief about real goods or evils will inevitably lead to insufferable troubles. And finally, why should one believe that giving up the search for answers will lead to tranquillity rather than to profound gloom? But Sextus, as I said, does not purport to rely on argument to convert others to Pyrrhonism. He is not in the business of arguing that everybody should, let alone ought to, become a Pyrrhonist. His comments on the Sceptical slogans describe them as being like a purgative that removes itself from the body along with the bad humours (PH 1.206).¹¹ This is, I think, an apt description of Sextus’s arguments,

¹¹ For this description as a parody of the dogmatists’ model of philosophy as a therapy of the soul, see A.J. Voelke, ‘Soigner par le logos: la thérapeutique de Sextus Empiricus’, in ‘Le Scepticisme Antique’, Cahiers de la revue de théologie et de philosophie 15, 1990, especially 192–4. He quotes the following

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for, taken as a philosophical theory, Pyrrhonism is self-defeating—an argument to show that arguments are useless. The Pyrrhonist story thus has a tenuous status, being presented as nothing more than an expression of the Sceptic’s—possibly temporary—state of mind. But then one should admit that, in Sextus’s version at any rate, the story is presented with great vigour and vivacity. Going through an interminable array of arguments that appear to leave one stymied again and again may well have the intended or promised effect of making the reader think that the dogmatists’ enterprise is doomed to failure. And if you happened to be an anti-rationalist (who recognizes, as Sextus explicitly does, that Empiricism is just another theory, PH 1.236)—what else could you do to get your message across? So much for Sextus’s version of the Pyrrhonist account. If this is what was meant by Scepticism as a kind of philosophy, then it is a philosophy in a peculiar sense—a discipline that uses argument and reasoning, not as a method to discover the truth, but only as a therapeutic device to deter people from trying to be guided by reason. But why would anyone wish to describe this as a continuation of the ordinary philosopher’s search for truth? I do not know, of course, whether the anti-rationalism of the Outlines was characteristic of the entire Pyrrhonist movement from Aenesidemus on—though it fits in rather well with Photius’ summary of Aenesidemus’ books, and with the set of Modes against causal explanations ascribed to him at PH 1.180–185. But it certainly was not a part of the Pyrrhonists’ Academic inheritance—and I suspect, indeed, that the label ζητητικός (inquirer) was taken over from the Academy. It is well known that Sextus’s description of the Academics as negative dogmatists is not entirely fair, at least as far as the sceptical Academy from Arcesilaus to Carneades was concerned.¹² Cicero repeatedly tells us in his Academica that neither Arcesilaus nor Carneades wished to claim that they knew that nothing could be known, nor even that they themselves knew nothing, as Socrates allegedly did (Ac. I 45). But the same Cicero also informs us that in the generation after Carneades there were philosophers in the Academy who did accept the conclusion of the celebrated anti-Stoic argument to the effect that nothing can be known (ἀκαταληψία) and proposed to make do with plausible opinion rather than knowledge. These were presumably Aenesidemus’s contemporaries, and if Aenesidemus himself was an anti-rationalist, it is easy to see why

comment by Plutarch: οὐ γὰρ ὡς ἐλλέβορον, οἶμαι, δεῖ θεραπεύσαντα συνεκφέρειν τῷ νοσήματι τὸν λόγον, ἀλλ’ ἐμμένντα τῇ ψυχῇ συνέχειν τὰς κρίσεις καὶ φυλάσσειν· φαρμάκοις γὰρ οὐκ ἔοικεν ἀλλὰ σιτίοις ὑγ εινοῖς ἡ δύναμις αὐτοῦ . . . de cohib. ira 453 D–E: ‘For I do not think that reason should be used in one’s cure as we use hellebore, and be washed out of the body together with the disease, but it must remain in the soul and keep watch and ward over the judgements. For the power of reason is not like drugs, but like some wholesome food . . . ’ tr. W.C. Helmbold). ¹² For this point see my earlier paper ‘Über den Unterschied zwischen den Pyrrhoneern und den Akademikern’, Phronesis 26, 1981, 153–71 (English tr. in G. Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge 1996). At that time, however, I did not sufficiently appreciate the importance of Pyrrhonist anti-rationalism.

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he would have been dissatisfied with their position. For the appeal to the greater or lesser plausibility of impressions, accompanied by a set of rules for the confirmation or testing of candidate impressions would, of course, reinstate the enterprise of trying to get somewhere near the truth by finding good reasons for one’s beliefs. From the point of view of an enemy of reason, it would hardly make a difference whether your claims were modest or arrogant, claiming just a reasonable degree of plausibility or claiming certainty. Sextus makes this point in his chapter about the difference between his own school and the Academy. But there he also recognizes that not all Academics took this line. He exempts Arcesilaus—who, as one realizes at this point, had not been mentioned in the introductory chapter—from the charge of dogmatism and goes so far as to say that his way of life (ἀγωγή) is virtually the same as ours. For he is not found making assertions about the reality or unreality of anything, nor does he prefer one thing to another in point of convincingness or lack of convincingness, but he suspends judgment about everything. And he says that the aim is suspension of judgment, which, we said, is accompanied by tranquillity. He also says that particular suspensions of judgment are good and particular assents bad. (PH 1.232–233)

The first sentence distinguishes Arcesilaus from Carneades and later Academics who treated the convincingness or otherwise of impressions as a criterion for action. This theory was invented by Carneades, who offered it as a reply to the argument that it is impossible to act without belief, though not as his own serious proposal for the conduct of life or for philosophical investigations. Arcesilaus, as we hear from Plutarch (adv. Col. 1122A–F), had given a different reply: he suggested that assent, and hence judgement, was not necessary for action, since people could act by simply responding to sense-impressions and corresponding impulses in the way that, according to the Stoics themselves, other animals do. This is, indeed, very similar at least to the first part of the ‘Sceptical criterion’. But Sextus does not here mention what he reports elsewhere (M 7.158), namely that in another context Arcesilaus also offered a different ‘criterion’: that the wise man, in the absence of cognitive impressions, that is, knowledge, may regulate his actions by appeal to ‘the reasonable’ (τὸ εὔλογον). This omission is no doubt significant, for it shows that Arcesilaus could, on other occasions, admit the appeal to reason that the Pyrrhonists so strenuously avoided. Sextus, it seems, is trying to paint Arcesilaus as a predecessor of his own anti-rationalist stance.¹³ The second sentence is a little puzzling, since it appears to ascribe to Arcesilaus a view about the aim of life (τέλος) that he is not likely to have held. But the ¹³ Mansfeld (‘Aenesidemus . . . ’, n. 2 above) makes the intriguing suggestion that this attempt to turn Arcesilaus into a Pyrrhonist might actually go back to Aenesidemus, who might have tried to win over some fellow Academics to his new school.

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remark that suspension of judgement is accompanied by tranquillity is, of course, Sextus’s own addition, and it seems more likely that Arcesilaus might have said that suspension of judgement was the aim of philosophical discussion, which would also explain why he approved of particular acts of suspension, and disapproved of particular acts of assent. This would not mean that he saw suspension of judgement as a means to attain happiness or tranquillity, but that he considered it as the appropriate attitude for a philosopher. Cicero tells us that both Arcesilaus and Carneades invested a lot of effort into keeping their interlocutors and students from rash assent. He even describes Carneades as performing a ‘Herculean labour’ (Luc. 108), given the human propensity to go down the slippery slope of assenting to one impression after another. We are also told that the Academics used to hold back with their own views in a debate in order to avoid the undue influence of a teacher’s authority on their students (Luc. 60). What seems to lie behind these efforts is not the hope for tranquillity, but rather an appeal to intellectual honesty or the norms of rational inquiry—not to make a firm assertion unless you are sure that it is sufficiently justified, and to avoid error as far as possible. This appeal to intellectual honesty and avoidance of rashness was a part of the Academics’ Socratic and Platonic heritage, and it seems clear from Cicero’s report that they considered it as a norm of philosophical investigation. They advocated suspension of judgement as a matter of rational caution, not because they regarded it as the inevitable outcome of any controversy, philosophical or otherwise. If they tried to reach a situation of equipollence, this would be an effective way of keeping people from assenting to a philosophical view just because they found it plausible or appealing, but even in the absence of strong counterarguments, the Academics would no doubt have recommended suspension of judgement. I take it that Carneades’ ingenious critical arguments in many fields of philosophy were designed to show, against the best philosophers of his day, that the questions remained open, however convincing a dogmatic theory like the Stoic might have looked. As far as we can see, the Academics also did not resort to epistemological meta-arguments of the sort of Agrippa’s Modes in order to establish the undecidability of controversies quite generally and regardless of subject matter. Of course, Agrippa’s Modes were introduced a long time after either Arcesilaus or Carneades, but the argument-forms of these Modes could be found already in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (A 3), to which Arcesilaus at least would no doubt have had access. However, Agrippa’s Modes are ways of blocking the attempt to resolve a dispute by further investigation, purporting to show that no resolution can ever be reached. The Academics, by contrast, seem to have been interested precisely in keeping investigation going, and the arguments ascribed to Arcesilaus, and particularly to Carneades, always address specific issues, often advancing the discussion by suggesting improvements that their opponents would, at times, be happy to take over. In short, Academic suspension of judgement seems to have been motivated by philosophical considerations rather than the sheer inability to decide

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between equally strong arguments for conflicting views. Hence, it is not surprising to see that Carneades’ reply to the inactivity-argument looks so very different from the Pyrrhonist one. He had no specific objection to the use of reason to arrive at a belief, and so he offered a modest alternative to the Stoic demand for cognitive certainty. Provisional, fallible assent will be enough for everyday life and compatible with suspension of judgement if, by judgement, one means an assertion that purports to be based on certainty, but we do not need to be content with the involuntary appearances that we find ourselves having apart from any activity of reason. So, the Academics present a rationalist version of Scepticism, and one that can properly be described as a matter of leaving all philosophical questions open and continuing the search for truth. Their advocacy of refraining from judgement would itself be based on argument—and one such argument, ironically, has found its way into Sextus’s text: . . . when someone propounds to us an argument we cannot refute, we say to him: ‘Before the founder of the school to which you adhere was born, the argument of the school, which is no doubt sound, was not yet apparent, although it was really there in nature. In the same way, it is possible that the argument opposing the one you have just propounded is really there in nature but is not yet apparent to us; so we should not yet assent to what is now thought to be a powerful argument.’ (PH 1.33–34)

Sextus presents this as an example of opposing ‘present to past or future things’, but clearly the ‘future thing’ is not yet available. Hence, we do not have a situation of equipollence—as Sextus admits, since he begins by saying that the Sceptic cannot refute an argument presented to him. Why then does the Sceptic not acquiesce for the time being, as Sextus himself suggests in a similar passage (M 8.473–475)? If he refuses to give his assent, this is not because he is unable to decide which side is the more convincing. For Sextus, this argument presumably serves the same purpose as Agrippa’s set—it blocks either assent or further investigation and thus preserves the Sceptic’s peace of mind. But like Agrippa’s Modes, it belies the claim that suspension of judgement comes to him ‘passively’ and is a mere affection. Sextus might no doubt retort that he is using the argument only ad hominem, to show his dogmatic opponent that he, the dogmatist, should not take it that he has established anything with certainty. But there is no suggestion in Sextus’s text that the Sceptic is inviting his opponent to join him in further investigation, or to go looking for flaws in the proposed argument. Rather, he appears to rely on an inductive argument to show that even the most compelling philosophical theory might one day be overthrown, and to suspend judgement because he wants to avoid rash assent. Hence, he seems for once to go against his passive affections and to follow reason.

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Whether or not the argument Sextus uses here ultimately goes back to the Academy we cannot tell. But it has always seemed very persuasive to me, and it spells out a plausible general reason for the cautious attitude of the Academics. This is an argument that applies specifically only to judgements based on elaborate theoretical justifications, since it would be preposterous to claim that most of our particular factual beliefs turn out by hindsight to have been mistaken. But as regards philosophical theories, it seems to me that the inductive basis for this argument has grown continually over subsequent centuries of philosophy. Still, I would not wish to say that the attitude of open-minded, perpetual investigation distinguishes the Academic philosophers from their more dogmatically inclined rivals so drastically as to deserve to be called a different kind of philosophy. The division into dogmatists and suspenders of judgement is in the end probably just a polemical move, introduced to highlight a difference in attitude but definitely not in method or subject matter. Few philosophers these days call themselves sceptics, because Scepticism has come to be identified with negative dogmatism. But the attitude adopted by the ancient Academics may actually be more widespread these days than it ever was in antiquity. In the philosophy department at Harvard University hangs a portrait of the psychologist and philosopher William James holding a book with the faint inscription EVER NOT QUITE. Now, William James was not a Sceptic, either in the ancient or in the modern sense—indeed, one of his most famous essays bears the title The Will to Believe (1896). He writes there about religious belief in particular, but among other arguments he makes a point that would be a significant objection to the attitude of suspending judgement advocated by the Academics. James insists that the injunctions to avoid error and to go on looking for the truth should be kept distinct, and that the search for truth may sometimes require taking the risk of believing something of which one is not, nor cannot be, certain. So, William James was not a Sceptic—but he was, of course, an academic.¹⁴

¹⁴ Thanks are due to James Allen for reading and commenting on the first draft of this chapter. Earlier versions were read at Cornell University and the University of Sheffield. I am grateful for discussion and advice on both occasions, and in particular for Gail Fine’s set of written comments.

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14 Epicurean Epistemology This chapter presents Epicurus’s theory of knowledge as a response to the epistemological pessimism of Democritus. The first section discusses the three ‘criteria of truth’—sense-impressions, preconceptions, and the feelings of pleasure and pain; and also Epicurus’s account of perceptual error, by which he tried to show that the senses do after all offer true and consistent, if sometimes fragmentary, information. The second section deals with Epicurus’s scientific method, that is, the confirmation and refutation of beliefs or theoretical hypotheses. In a final section, I briefly discuss the role of the feelings as criteria in ethics, and the kind of reasoning Epicurus used to call ἐπιλογισμός.

Epicurus was perhaps the first Greek philosopher who found it useful or necessary to begin the exposition of his natural philosophy with a chapter on epistemology. He had set aside the part labelled logic or dialectic, the theory of reasoning and argument, along with its technical terminology, as a superfluous distraction (DL 10.31) and replaced it by a treatise on how to find and establish the truth. By the end of the fourth century , the question whether philosophers could establish the truth of their theories had become more pressing than ever. Earlier cosmologists had often rejected the senses as a source of reliable information because they seemed to offer conflicting evidence. But the theories of the philosophers, allegedly based on reason, had also been challenged by Pyrrho, an older contemporary of Epicurus, because the philosophers contradicted one another just as much as did the senses. Even Epicurus’s predecessor in atomism, Democritus, had expressed deep pessimism about the possibility of attaining knowledge. He had accepted the impossibility of deciding which among the conflicting sense-impressions might be true, but at the same time acknowledged the senses as our basic source of information about the world, expressing the dilemma in the vivid image of a dialogue between the mind and the senses, in which the senses address the mind by saying ‘Wretched mind! Do you take your evidence from us and then overthrow us? Our overthrow is your downfall’ (Democritus fr. B 125; tr. Barnes). Epicurus had to show a way out of this dilemma, and he did so in a treatise (now lost) entitled Canon or About the Criterion that served as introduction to his

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0014

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natural philosophy. His work was obviously influential, and for several centuries after Epicurus, epistemology was discussed by the Hellenistic philosophical schools alongside logic—for those who did not reject it—in terms of the question of the criterion or criteria of truth.

The Criteria The word ‘criterion’—literally, instrument of judgement—had been used occasionally by Plato and Aristotle to refer to a cognitive faculty, either reason or the senses. This usage continued throughout the Hellenistic period, including in Epicurus’s own writings, and did not belong to any particular school.¹ Thus Epicurus speaks of criteria in this sense when he urges repeatedly that the student of nature must consider the available evidence from all the criteria, both the mind and the senses (Letter to Herodotus 38; 82). Epicurus’s innovation consisted in speaking of criteria of truth as means of determining or deciding about the truth of beliefs or scientific theses. He had probably taken over the title ‘Canon’ from Democritus, who wrote a work entitled Canons, but Epicurus may have been the first to take literally the metaphor implied by the word. A canon was a mason’s rule or straightedge, an instrument used to determine the straightness or otherwise of walls or beams etc. This instrument had to be straight itself to serve as a standard of straightness for other things. Following this model, Epicurus designated as criteria of truth kinds of basic or irrefutable truths that could serve to assess the truth of beliefs. Diogenes Laertius introduces the three letters of Epicurus included in Book 10 of his Lives of Eminent Philosophers with a brief summary of the Canon. Not surprisingly, it suggests that the treatise was mainly concerned to argue for the truth of Epicurus’s criteria: In the Kanon, Epicurus says that the criteria of truth are sensations, preconceptions, and feelings (the Epicureans also include the applications of the mind to an impression) . . . ²

¹ For the notion of a criterion in Hellenistic philosophy see G. Striker κριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας, Göttingen 1974, and ‘The problem of the criterion’(1990), both repr. in Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge University Press 1996. ² A note on translation: I follow most recent Epicurus scholars in translating the word αἴσθησις by ‘sensation’ where it is not used to refer to one of the sense faculties. I use ‘impression’ or ‘senseimpression’ to render φαντασία and adjectives derived from it, as in the phrase φανταστικὴ επιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας (‘application of the mind to an impression’). Note that the interpretation of this phrase is controversial; for different interpretations, see for example A.A.Long and D.N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press 1987, vol. 1, 90) and E. Asmis, ‘Epicurean Empiricism’ in J. Warren (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, Cambridge 2009, 94.

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For, he says, all sense perception is irrational and does not accommodate memory. For neither is it moved by itself, nor when moved by something else is it able to add or subtract anything. Nor is there anything that can refute the senses: neither can like sense refute like, because of their equal validity, nor unlike unlike, since they are not judges of the same things; nor can reason, since all reason depends on the senses; nor can an individual sensation refute another, since we pay attention to all of them. (DL 10.31–32; tr. Long and Sedley with modifications)

The first argument emphasizes the passivity of the senses: they can only receive or register what moves them, but neither add nor omit anything. This in itself would not be enough to show that the information they receive must be correct, but the mention of memory indicates what Epicurus had in mind: memory is a function of thought, not of perception, and it may be used to modify the incoming information. In this way Epicurus could explain what others would describe as perceptual errors as the result of interference by the mind. Instead of rejecting a senseimpression as false, one should distinguish between what is already given and the modifications one has inadvertently made, leading to a false belief. As Epicurus puts it succinctly in Key Doctrine 24: If you reject any single sensation absolutely and do not distinguish in an opinion between what is still awaited and what is already present according to sensation and feelings and any application of the mind to an impression, you will throw into confusion even your other sensations by your foolish opinion, so that you will be rejecting the criterion altogether. (DL 10.147, tr. Long and Sedley with modifications)

The distinction between the actual content of a sensation and a perceptual judgement based on it allowed Epicurus to deny the claim that the senses offer conflicting evidence. According to him, individual sensations provide only partial information about external objects; this information is correct, but it may not be sufficient to justify a judgement about the object itself as opposed to its appearance. So, for example, a tower looks small and round when seen from afar, though one may find out that it is actually square and large when one comes closer. An oar seen through water does look crooked even though one knows that it is straight. The sound of a trumpet is not as loud coming from far away as it would be if one were standing next to the trumpeter, and so on. These are familiar facts about sense perception—and indeed the argument from conflicting appearances would not have been so successful if people had not been familiar with them. But people quickly learn to adjust their judgements to the circumstances, taking into account their distance from the tower, or the fact that the oar is seen through water, and

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suspending judgement when they realize that they do not have enough information. The alleged contradictions arise only on the level of perceptual judgement, because we are prone to forming such beliefs based on very little information. Again, this is not surprising, since things observed nearby under normal conditions tend to be just as they appear or are perceived to be. One might, therefore, be inclined to go in the direction the Stoics took by trying to distinguish true from false sense-impressions. But as Democritus and others had already argued, this will not work, since there is no standard of judgement above the senses. The next argument in Diogenes’ summary of the Canon repeats this point and also emphasizes the limitations of the senses. The claim that the senses cannot refute one another because they do not judge the same things can only hold with respect to the proper sensibles—colour, shape, and motion for sight, sound for hearing, hardness and softness for touch and so on (see Lucretius. DRN 4.486–499). If something looks like honey, but then turns out to taste and smell like soap, one might argue that the senses of taste and smell have refuted sight; but it is still true that the thing has the colour of honey, and that is all that the eyes could tell one. Here Epicurus seems to endorse the most restrictive conception of sense perception advocated by Plato in the Theaetetus (184B–186E). A passage in Lucretius’s long discussion of optical illusions confirms this. Lucretius has just explained that the shadow may appear to be an object that follows the body around, but that it seems to move only because the moving body is blocking light in different places. Yet this does not show that the eyes deceive us—it is up to the mind, not the eyes, to determine whether the shadow is a single moving thing or just the result of the body blocking the light (DRN 4.379–387). But unlike Plato in the Theaetetus, who goes on to argue that there is no truth to be found in the senses, Epicurus insists that reason cannot refute the senses, since it is entirely dependent on them. For, as Diogenes explains a few lines further down, ‘all our notions also derive from the senses, by encounter or analogy or similarity or composition, with some contribution from the mind as well’ (10.32). A true perceptual judgement such as ‘This is honey’ will then be the result of an ‘application of the mind’—an act of attention to the content of many sensations that leads to a complex impression. Epicurus’s second criterion, the preconceptions (προλήψεις), is described by Diogenes in a rambling paragraph that uses terminology from various schools: Preconception, they say, is as it were a cognition (κατάληψις), or a correct opinion, or conception, or universal notion stored inside, that is, a memory of what has frequently appeared from outside, e.g., ‘Such and such a thing is a man’. For as soon as the word ‘man’ is uttered, immediately its outline also comes to mind by means of preconception, the senses leading the way. Thus what primarily underlies each name is something evident.

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And we would not inquire about the things we investigate if we had not had prior knowledge of them. For example, ‘Is what’s standing over there a horse or a cow?’ For one must at some time have come to know the form of a horse and of a cow by means of preconception. Nor would we have named something if we had not previously learnt its outline by means of preconception. (DL 10.33, tr. Long and Sedley)

Diogenes’ attempt to capture the sense of the word ‘preconception’ with many different terms no doubt reflects the fact that Epicurus did not like to give definitions; but it also incidentally shows that by the time of Diogenes Laertius, a rich vocabulary was available to describe what he had in mind. General concepts played a role in the theories of all the Hellenistic schools, though their origin and epistemological status were seen in different ways. According to Cicero (ND 1.44), the term prolepsis was introduced by Epicurus himself. The prefix pro- indicates that these concepts must be grasped prior to something else, and this in two different ways. First, general concepts are associated with words and must be known before one can understand or use the corresponding word. In this role, the preconceptions do not function as criteria of truth, since general terms are used in true and false statements alike. In fact, these concepts presumably furnish the mind with the memories it sometimes uses to modify the content of a sensation to arrive at an erroneous perceptual judgement. The role of preconceptions in investigations, illustrated by Diogenes with the rather trivial example of a horse or cow, is explained by Epicurus himself at the beginning of the Letter to Herodotus: First, then, Herodotus, we must grasp the things which underlie words, so that we may have a reference point against which to judge matters of opinion, inquiry and puzzlement, and not have everything undiscriminated for ourselves as we attempt infinite chains of proofs, or have words which are empty. For the primary concept corresponding to each word must be seen and need no additional proof, if we are going to have a reference point for matters of inquiry, puzzlement and opinion. (Ep.Hdt. 37–38, tr. Long and Sedley)

The preconceptions represent Epicurus’s solution to the notorious puzzle raised in Plato’s Meno: how can you investigate something if you do not know at all what it is? (Meno 80D). The answer consists in a distinction: we must indeed know what it is that we are investigating in the sense of understanding the corresponding word, but this is not the same as having an expert’s knowledge of its nature. This understanding must be given at the start of an investigation and not be in need of any proof, since such a requirement would involve us in an infinite regress, or else we would be left with meaningless words. The suggestion that one

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must understand the terms one uses probably also comes from the Meno (see 75B–76A). But Epicurus adds that this pre-existing knowledge must also serve as a reference point for the results of an investigation. Here he is introducing a label for a practice that was (and is) common among philosophers: our conception of a thing sets adequacy conditions for possible accounts of its nature. A theory of the soul, for example, must explain how it enables animals to move and to perceive, and will be rejected if it implies consequences incompatible with our initial assumptions. In this sense, then, the preconceptions function as criteria. Aristotle counts such presuppositions among what he calls phainomena or endoxa—generally accepted beliefs, including facts of observation. Epicurus reserved the term phenomena (φαινόμενα) for perceptual observations. This is a useful clarification by contrast to Aristotle, whose wide class of phenomena included common opinions, empirical observations, and even the views of philosophers. But the comparison with Aristotle may also cast some doubt on Epicurus’s claim that the preconceptions must not only be accepted without further proof, but also themselves be evident truths. The argument here seems to be the same as in the case of sense-impressions: we have no higher standard to which we could appeal to establish the truth of our preconceptions, and therefore we must accept them all as true. Now, it is surely correct to insist that some of the assumptions that underlie our use of general terms must be kept constant—it will not do, for instance, to claim that cows are made by sculptors, or that numbers can walk. However, this does not rule out the possibility that a scientific investigation might end up modifying our initial conception. A trivial example of this would be that whales, according to the zoologists, are mammals, not fish. Here one might say that the common conception of fish is wider and less precise than the scientific one. But it is probably no surprise that Epicurus’s most famous theological thesis, according to which anger and concern about human affairs are incompatible with the preconception of the gods as blessed and immortal beings, did not find many adherents outside the Epicurean school, even though offering physical explanations of phenomena like thunder and lightning might have had some effect against superstitious beliefs in supernatural powers. In the case of the sensations, Epicurus could eventually try to vindicate his claim that they are all true by offering explanations of optical illusions or different sensations of taste in terms of atomism. In cases of concepts like those of the gods or of justice—concepts that obviously involve some contributions of the mind, not just perceptual observation—this kind of explanation was not available. The evidence provided by preconceptions, even if they are formed on the basis of true perceptions, is more limited than Epicurus seems to have assumed. The third kind of criterion, feelings of pleasure or pain, are described by Diogenes as criteria of choice and avoidance rather than of truth. This is indeed their role in Epicurean ethics, but several passages in the Letter to Herodotus show that they also functioned as criteria of truth. They are usually mentioned

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alongside the sensations and presumably have the same role, except that they are impressions of bodily states rather than of external objects. ‘Pleasure’ and ‘pain’ are used as generic terms, not only for physical affections, but also for positive or negative emotions such as joy, fear, or anger. Diogenes’ error is understandable, since pleasure and pain are primarily mentioned as showing what is good or bad for a person, though Epicurus emphasizes that this does not mean that everything pleasant is to be pursued or everything painful to be avoided. Like the sensations, they do not reveal the nature of the states that cause them. What brings about the pleasant life is not the enjoyment of luxuries, but ‘sober reasoning that seeks out the causes of all choice and avoidance’ (Letter to Menoeceus (Ep.Men.) 132). The greatest pleasure, according to Epicurus, consists in the absence of all pain and distress, but it takes philosophy to find this out. In the context of Epicurus’s philosophy of nature, the feelings can be subsumed under perception, as indeed they seem to be in some later sources.³ Epicurus’s account of the criteria and their truth offers a sophisticated theory of the relations between the two cognitive faculties, reason or thought (διάνοια) and the senses. Sense perception is the foundation of all knowledge because it is the only way we can come in contact with the world around us. But the information furnished by the senses may seem confusing and even self-contradictory. This led philosophers to the argument from conflicting appearances, and to the contempt, expressed by many of Epicurus’s predecessors, for perceptual beliefs. Democritus had insisted on the fundamental role of the senses, but he had also apparently accepted the conclusion that they offer conflicting information, and hence cannot reveal the truth. Epicurus’s response was different: though he agreed that we have no higher faculty that could distinguish between true and false sense-impressions, he distinguished—like Plato—between sensations and perceptual judgements and argued that we should recognize the limitations of the senses. We need to use reason to organize the information we receive through the senses, and also to understand the way the sense organs are functioning. Memory is needed for the formation of general concepts and the development of language to communicate what we experience. Concepts are formed by the mind from a multitude of senseimpressions, usually from several senses. Even a simple concept like that of a cow or horse includes not only the visual appearance of those animals, but also the facts that they move, eat grass, make characteristic noises, and so on. These concepts are not separately existing abstract objects like Platonic Forms, accessible only to thought. Reason, therefore, remains dependent on the senses both for the formation of its concepts and for observations of the natural world. But, as Lucretius puts it, ‘the eyes cannot take cognizance of the real nature of things’ (DRN 4.385).

³ See, for example, Cicero, Fin. 1.30–31.

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The discovery of the causes and explanations of natural phenomena—in particular, of course, the concepts of atoms and void, the elements of atomism that cannot be perceived by the senses—is the domain of the mind. This theory itself is independent of atomism—as should be expected if it was to serve as the epistemological foundation of Epicurus’s philosophy of nature. However, at this point we must take a look at a rival interpretation of Epicurus’s thesis about the truth of sense-impressions that came up already in antiquity. In Sextus Empiricus’s report on Epicurus’s epistemology (Adversus Mathematicos (M) 7.203–216) we find the following: But some are deceived by the difference between the impressions which seem to be derived from the same object of sense—for instance a visible object—because of which the object appears of another colour or of another shape, or altered in some other way. For they have supposed that of the impressions thus differing and conflicting, one of them must be true and the opposing one false. This is silly, characteristic of people who do not understand the nature of things. For it is not the whole solid body that is seen—to base our argument on objects of sight—but the colour of the solid body. And of the colour, some is on the solid body itself, as when one sees things from close up or from a moderate distance, and some is outside the solid body and exists in the adjacent spaces, as in the case of things seen from a great distance. And this is altered in the intervening space and takes on its own shape, which produces an impression corresponding to what it really is like. And just as neither the sound in the brass instrument that is struck, nor the sound in the mouth of the man who shouts, is what we hear, but the sound that reaches our sense; and just as no one says that the person who hears a faint sound from a distance is mishearing because, on coming close, the same sound is perceived as louder—so I would not say that vision is deceived because it sees the tower as small and round from a great distance, but from close at hand as larger and square. Rather, I would say that it is telling the truth because when the object of sense appears to it small and of that shape, it really is small and of that shape, since the edges of the images are rubbed away as they travel through the air; and again when it appears large and of a different shape, it is correspondingly large and of a different shape, since it is no longer the same object that is both at once. For it is left to the distorted opinion to believe that the object of vision seen from close at hand is the same as that seen from a distance. (M 7.206–209; tr. Bury with modifications)

This argument is obviously based on Epicurus’ theory of perception. He held that the perceptions of the distance senses—vision, hearing, and smell—are caused by atomic films or emanations constantly streaming from the surfaces of things. In

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the case of vision, these ‘images’ (εἴδωλα) may be damaged or distorted when coming from a longer distance, and hence produce impressions different from those received close at hand. In the last lines of Sextus’s report, it turns out that the objects of vision are taken to be those images themselves rather than the objects from which they come, and the truth of sense-impressions is thus guaranteed by their correspondence to the images. This might look like a shortcut to truth, but, of course, it means that what we perceive is not the external object we naturally take it to be. Contrast this with Lucretius’s explicit statement at DRN 4,256–258: ‘In this connection, you should not consider it strange that, although the images that impinge on our eyes are not visible, the objects themselves are seen.’ In other words, the images are the means of perception, not its objects. Lucretius, the faithful Epicurean, is more likely than Sextus to report Epicurus’s doctrine accurately, and a passage in Plutarch’s treatise Against Colotes (adv.Col.) 1121B–D) may actually show how the rival interpretation arose. Plutarch claims that Colotes was unwilling to accept the consequences of the view that all sense-impressions are true—namely the doctrine of the Cyrenaics, according to which we can only perceive our own affections (πάθη): ‘For those who say that when we encounter a round image, or another one that is bent, the sense receives a true impression, but who will not let it declare as well that the tower is round or the oar is bent, insist on their own affections and appearances, but will not agree that the external objects are like that . . . ’ Imagining a dialogue, Plutarch then has an Epicurean say ‘By Zeus, but when I come closer to the tower or touch the oar, I will declare that the oar is straight, the tower angular, whereas this man [sc. the Cyrenaic] will only agree that it seems and appears so, even when he gets close.’ Plutarch replies: ‘By Zeus indeed—for he is better at seeing and preserving the consequences of the claim that every sense-impression alike is trustworthy in itself, and none more than any other, but to an equal degree.’ Plutarch obviously thinks that the Epicurean is taking the impression received near the tower to be more reliable than the one received from a distance, and hence goes against his own principle. But this is to misunderstand the Epicurean view about the limitations of sense perception. The impression one receives from afar is vague—as Lucretius puts it, ‘they [the towers] do not look like objects close at hand that are really round, but resemble them in a shadowy fashion’ (DRN 4.362–363), and so an Epicurean would refrain from making a judgement about the exact shape of the tower while he can only see it from a distance. That is the point of the distinction between what is already present and what is still awaited. One might perhaps say that one sees a tower in the distance, but that one cannot yet discern its shape. Lucretius admits that it may be difficult to observe the distinction, and so people will sometimes make mistakes, but the error lies in the judgement of the mind, not the senses: ‘nothing is more difficult than to separate

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patent facts from the dubious opinions that our mind at once adds of its own accord’ (4.466–467). It is understandable that superficial or hostile readers of Epicurus would take his theory of perception as evidence in support of the truth of sense-impressions, but this reverses the order of the argument. Epicurus argues for the existence of the images that reach the eye in order to explain the functioning of the sense organs (see e.g. Ep.Hdt. 46–48), and he assumes that those images may be damaged or distorted en route in order to explain why things look different when observed from different distances. These differences between impressions are among the phenomena a scientific theory must seek to explain—as science does to this day, though not in Epicurean terms. It is better, then, to side with the faithful Epicurean Lucretius. Epicurus’s theory can be best understood as a response to the problems raised by his predecessors who seemed to despair of the senses as a source of knowledge. And Epicurus, in fact, agrees with one of the less pessimistic statements ascribed to Democritus. Here is Sextus quoting from Democritus’s Canons: These are his words: Of knowledge (γνώμη) there are two forms, the one legitimate, the other bastard; and to the bastard belong all these: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. And the other is legitimate, and separated from that. Then preferring the legitimate to the bastard, he continues: When the bastard can no longer see anything smaller, or hear, or smell, or taste, or perceive by touch . . . (*but more fine*) Thus according to him too, reason, which he calls legitimate knowledge, is a criterion. (M 7.139, Democr. fr. B 11; tr. Barnes) The text is corrupt at the end of the second quotation, but it seems clear that Democritus went on to say that reason, the legitimate form of knowledge, must take over, for example, to discover that the world is made up of atoms and void. We do not know whether Democritus had found a way to answer his own reproach of the senses I quoted at the beginning of this chapter, but Epicurus, as I have tried to show, did so. Epicurus’s Canon was intended as an introduction to the science of nature, and he was surely right to insist that perceptual observation is indispensable. Even though it might be difficult to avoid perceptual errors in individual cases, the ‘manifest facts’ (φαινόμενα) to which he appealed in his physics were not individual sense-impressions. One does not need to look for a special type of senseimpression that is infallibly correct, as the Stoics did; it is enough, as Epicurus says many times, to pay attention to all the available evidence.

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Scientific Method At the beginning of the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus reminds Herodotus of the rules to keep in mind for a scientific inquiry: first, it must be clear ‘what underlies words’, that is, one must have grasped the preconceptions that belong to the subject under inquiry; this was discussed above. The next rule indicates how the evidence furnished by the cognitive faculties must be used to construct opinions or theories about things not accessible to direct observation: Second, we should observe everything in accordance with the sensations and in general the present applications of the mind or of any of the discriminatory faculties, and likewise also in accordance with the feelings which exist in us, in order to have a basis for sign-inferences about what is still awaited and about the non-evident. (Ep. Hdt. 38, following the passage about preconceptions quoted above; emphasis added)

It is characteristic of passages like this one that Epicurus speaks of the evidence coming from all the available sources of evident truths. Here we also find the ‘applications of the mind’ that the later Epicureans counted among the criteria (DL 10.31). We do not have a definition of the phrase, but the contexts in which it appears suggest that what is meant is a conscious attempt of the mind to arrive at accurate information—in other words, careful observation as opposed to casual looking or listening that might lead to errors. So Epicurus explains at Ep. Hdt. 51 that ‘error would not exist if we did not have in ourselves another movement connected with the application to an impression, but distinct from it’. Since the evidence obtained by an application of the mind still comes through the senses, Epicurus himself probably did not treat it as an additional criterion. The ways of testing the truth or falsity of opinions are briefly described in the next sentence: ‘by this movement, falsehood arises if it is not attested or contested, but when it is attested or not contested, the truth.’ A more detailed exposition appears in Sextus Empiricus: Of opinions, then, according to Epicurus, some are true, some false. True are those attested and those uncontested by what is evident. Attestation is perception through an evident impression of the fact that the object of opinion is such as it was believed to be. For example, if Plato is approaching from far off, I form the conjectural opinion, owing to the distance, that he is Plato. But when he has come close, there is further testimony that he is Plato, now that the gap is reduced, and it is attested by the evident itself. Non-contestation is for the non-evident thing posited and believed to follow from the evident appearance. For example, Epicurus, in saying that there is void, which

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is non-evident, confirms this through the evident fact of motion. For if void does not exist, there ought not to be motion either, since the moving body would lack a place to pass into as a result of everything’s being full and solid. Therefore the non-evident thing believed is uncontested by the evident appearance, since there is motion. Contestation, on the other hand, is something which conflicts with noncontestation. For it is the elimination of the evident appearance by the positing of the non-evident thing. For example, the Stoics say that void does not exist, judging something non-evident; but once this is posited about it, the evident appearance, namely motion, ought to be co-eliminated with it. For if void does not exist, necessarily motion does not occur either, according to the method already demonstrated. Likewise, too, non-attestation is opposed to attestation, being confrontation through what is evident of the fact that the object of opinion is not such as it was believed to be. For example, if someone is approaching from far off, we conjecture, owing to the distance, that he is Plato. But when the gap is reduced, we recognize through that which is evident that it is not Plato. That is what nonattestation is like: the thing believed was not attested by the evident appearance. Hence attestation and non-contestation are the criterion of something’s being true, while non-attestation and contestation are the criterion of it’s being false. And that which is evident is the foundation and basis of everything. (M 7.211–216; tr. Long and Sedley with modifications, emphasis added)

Sextus is clearly not quoting from Epicurus directly, and his report is influenced by later discussions,⁴ but it offers at least some examples to illustrate the method. For purposes of discussion, it is easier to organize the text by types of opinion rather than by truth or falsehood. Judgements or opinions about observable objects can be accepted as true if they are ‘attested’ by perception, false if they are ‘not attested’. This sounds odd, for why should a belief for which one does not have confirmatory evidence count as false? After all, there will inevitably be many things or events that cannot be revisited to obtain additional evidence—for instance, the end of a horse race, or a bird flying past. But Sextus’s example shows what appears to be intended: opinions about observable objects must be rejected as false if subsequent perception shows that things are not as they were believed to be. Epicurus’s method serves to verify or falsify perceptual judgements, and so beliefs about things or events that cannot be so verified fall outside the scope of the method. This is understandable, since the inquirer into nature is not primarily interested in particular facts or ⁴ For a more detailed discussion of the anachronisms in this passage see D.N.Sedley, ‘On Signs’ in J. Barnes et al. (ed.), Science and Speculation, Cambridge/Paris 1982, 239–272.

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events, but in types of things or events that occur regularly and can be perceived by many observers, such as the waxing and waning of the moon, or indeed the appearance of oars in and out of water. These are what Epicurus calls the phenomena or ‘common perceptions’ (Ep.Hdt. 82)—observable facts that are confirmed by everybody’s repeated experience. It is these that form the evidential basis for his theory: for example, the indisputable fact that there are bodies, ‘attested by the senses everywhere’ (Ep.Hdt. 39), and the equally public fact that there is movement, are the phenomena to which Epicurus appeals for the fundamentals of atomism, atoms, and void. For hypotheses about unobservable objects—things that are either too small to be perceived, like atoms, or too distant to be carefully observed, such as the stars or the phenomena of meteorology—direct confirmation or disconfirmation is impossible, and so they must be tested through their relation to observable facts, that is, contestation or non-contestation by the phenomena. An opinion about the unobservable is false if it has an observable consequence that conflicts with an observable phenomenon. The standard example here, also used by Sextus, is Epicurus’s argument for the existence of void: ‘if there were not what we call void or place or the untouchable, the bodies would not have anything through which to move, as they are plainly seen to move’ (Ep.Hdt. 40). The movement of bodies, therefore, is a sign of the existence of void. A hypothesis can be accepted as true if it is not contested by the phenomena. As in the case of false beliefs about perceptible objects, this condition might seem too generous: lots of hypotheses, for example, about events in the distant past are consistent with the phenomena, but that is no reason to accept them all as true. However, once again, the scope of the method is narrower than the general term ‘opinion’ suggests. The method is intended to test hypotheses about the unobservable causes of phenomena, and as Epicurus’s practice in the letters shows, those will count as conflicting with the phenomena if they either fail to explain what they are supposed to explain or, in the case of celestial events and objects, if they are inconsistent with the ways in which similar events or things that can be closely observed are produced. The evidence gained through the senses thus shows us what kinds of hypotheses are possible, and in this sense the phenomena form the basis of sign-inferences for what we cannot directly observe. In some cases, such as the existence of void, Epicurus maintains that there is only one possible explanation, and hence only one way of agreeing with the phenomena. In the case of celestial motions or meteorological phenomena such as thunder or lightning, however, the phenomena around us indicate that there are several ways in which events like lunar eclipses, the waxing and waning of the moon, or the noise in the clouds that we hear as thunder, can come about, since similar effects can be produced in more than one way. Each of the several hypotheses consistent with the phenomena will then represent at least a possible explanation. Since we cannot verify or falsify the hypotheses by direct observation, scientific method, according

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to Epicurus, requires that we list them all and accept them as possible—or perhaps even as true, if not in our world, then in others. Lucretius illustrates this with an example: There are some phenomena for which it is not sufficient to state one cause: you must mention several causes, though only one of these will be the true cause. Let me illustrate this point. If you saw a lifeless human body lying at some distance, you would naturally enumerate all the possible causes of death, to ensure that you mentioned the one true cause. For you could not be certain that the victim had perished by the sword, or by cold, or by disease, or maybe by poison. But we do know that it is something of this kind that has occasioned the death. And the same applies to numerous phenomena. (DRN 6.703–711)

By listing all the possible causes of death, we can be sure to have captured the actual cause, though we cannot determine which one it was. In the case of meteorological or celestial phenomena, Epicurus often admits that the list of possible causes might be longer, but he insists that it is unscientific to name only one cause, because the observable phenomena call for several possible ones. Astronomers who try to settle on a particular cause are wasting their time—and they also open the door to the possibility of divine intervention, which makes them lapse into mythology (Ep.Pyth. 113). The gods, of course, are excluded by Epicurus’s theological doctrine—but also, I think, because Epicurus assumed that there must be an observable model or analogue for any acceptable explanation, and divine intervention has never been observed. The claim that hypotheses must be based on observable models is not trivial, since it sets further limits on possible theories, as can be seen in Epicurus’s polemic against other theories that do not involve supernatural agents. For example, here is Epicurus’s argument against the claim that the soul is incorporeal: There is the further point to be considered, that according to the most common usage we apply the term ‘incorporeal’ to that which can be conceived as existing by itself. But it is impossible to conceive anything that is incorporeal except the void; and the void cannot act or be acted upon, but merely allows bodies to move through it. Hence those who call the soul incorporeal are silly, for if it were so, it could neither act nor be acted upon. But as it is, both these properties evidently belong to the soul. (Ep.Hdt. 67)

Aristotle, for one, certainly thought that his theory of the soul agreed with the observable phenomena—this was after all a requirement of his own philosophical method. But for Epicurus, the only conceivable incorporeal entity was the void. Anything that could affect or move a body had to be a body itself, and so he concluded that the soul must be a body consisting of extremely fine particles that

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made it too fine to be directly perceived. Here it is the metaphysics of atomism, not the phenomena, that rules out an alternative theory. Epicurus was confident that the concepts we acquire through perceptual experience and observation of the world around us must, in principle, be sufficient for understanding everything that goes on in the universe: what is inconceivable cannot exist.

Epistemology and Ethics What we have considered so far is a general outline of epistemology and a method for natural science that is narrower in scope. Those of Epicurus’s arguments for atomism that involve only a single way of agreement with the phenomena could well be regarded as proofs, although Epicurus seems to avoid the term for his own arguments. But they were treated as proofs in later discussions of inferences from signs between Epicureans and Stoics.⁵ They are not demonstrations in the Aristotelian sense, where the premises of a proof not only imply, but also explain the conclusion. Epicurus’s arguments are what would now be called inferences to the best explanation—a label that may be misleading because those inferences are not formally valid. This does not mean that the arguments are bad or unacceptable. The claim that there must be empty space if there is to be motion may well be true or at least well supported by the evidence, but the existence of empty space cannot be logically deduced from the possibility of motion. But sign-inferences are not the only kind of argument used in philosophy or elsewhere, and Epicurus’s general account of the relations between reason and perception need not be taken to be merely a preface to the methodology of atomist physics. Inferences from signs occur in arguments from perceptual evidence and so belong, for example, to the natural sciences or to trial cases. But what, for instance, about arguments in ethics? Here we have very little information in the remaining fragments of Epicurus’s work, and it seems likely that there was no explicit discussion of the subject in the Canon. The only apparently technical term that seems to refer to some kind of philosophical reasoning is epilogismos (ἐπιλογισμός), a word that tends to be translated differently in different contexts. In a study of its use, Schofield⁶ has suggested ‘appraisal’ or ‘assessment’ as a general translation, and this seems plausible, since it does not imply any particular method. Epicurus speaks of epilogismos once in a side remark about the study of time in the letter to Herodotus (72–73). The argument seems to be that we do not ⁵ For those later discussions about sign-inferences, some of them preserved in a papyrus fragment of Philodemus’s treatise On signs, see D.N. Sedley (op. cit.1982), J. Barnes, ‘Epicurean Signs’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy suppl. vol., 1988, 91–134, and J. Allen, Inference from Signs, Oxford University Press, 2001, study IV. ⁶ Schofield, M.‘Epilogismos: An Appraisal’, in M. Frede and G. Striker (eds.) Rationality in Greek Thought. Oxford University Press 1996, 221–37.

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have a preconception of time as an independently existing object, and that we should, therefore, consider the observable events in relation to which we speak of much or little time. We would then realize that we think of time as a property of days and nights and their parts, periods of motion and rest, and so on. This insight, he says, does not require proof, but epilogismos—by which he means perhaps a reflection on what we think of when we use phrases like ‘a long time’ and the like. One might call the reasoning involved consideration, reflection, or assessment, but one would hardly call it a method. A more revealing passage can be found, I think, in the letter to Menoeceus (133). This passage is close to the end of the letter, after an exposition of the best life according to Epicurean hedonism that concludes with a praise of practical wisdom (φρόνησις). Then comes the triumphant rhetorical finale: For who, do you think, is superior to the man who holds only pious beliefs about the gods, who is forever free from the fear of death, and who has found out by reasoning (ἐπιλελογισμένου) the end established by nature? He discerns that the highest limit of goods is easy to fulfil and easy to acquire, that bad things have their limit in being either short in duration or easy to bear . . . (Ep.Men. 133)

It seems clear that this person has not just thought about the goal of life, but arrived at the correct (Epicurean) conception, and he has reached this insight by epilogismos. I would suggest that the reasoning is sketched out in the preceding pages—a summary of what was no doubt set out in more detail in Epicurus’s lost treatise about the goal of life (Περὶ τέλους, mentioned at DL 10.28). It leads from the basic premise that goodness and badness consist in pleasure and pain via a consideration of the differences between necessary and unnecessary, natural and unnatural desires to the conclusion that once all the natural and necessary desires are fulfilled, all pain and distress are gone and one has reached a state where no good is lacking—that is, happiness. This philosophical argument is one that owes something to Plato (regarding the desires) and to Aristotle (regarding happiness as the state where no good is lacking). One could also describe it as an assessment of the facts of psychology and biology, though I suspect that epilogismos was simply the term Epicurus used for any kind of philosophical reasoning that is not a form of deduction or inference from signs. But one should note that the argument’s first and most important claim—that the good is pleasure—comes from Epicurean epistemology: pleasure is the first thing we naturally recognize as good by perception, and our notions of good and bad are derived from the feelings of pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain must, therefore, serve as our guides in choice and avoidance. The criterion of the feelings thus guarantees that hedonism in some version must be true; but we still need reason to understand the nature of pleasure and desire, and what this means for the happy life.

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As in natural philosophy, so in ethics: the basic facts and concepts derive from the senses, but philosophical argument and reflection must be used to arrive at the true conception of happiness. Epicurus has often been described as an empiricist—no doubt by contrast to Plato, for whom the Forms were the true objects of scientific understanding. This is plausible to the extent that Epicurus, like Democritus, clearly saw in sense perception the necessary foundation for scientific knowledge of the world. But the labels ‘empiricism’ and ‘rationalism’ did not yet exist in Epicurus’s time⁷—in fact, they first appeared in the methodological debates of the Hellenistic doctors—and neither Democritus nor Epicurus seems to have thought that all knowledge must in the end go back to sense perception. Humans have two faculties for attaining knowledge, and Epicurus, reasonably enough, followed Democritus in arguing that they needed to use both.

⁷ See J. Allen, ‘Experience as a source and ground of theory in Epicureanism’, Apeiron 37, 2004, 89–106, and Asmis , op. cit. (2009).

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15 Mental Health and Moral Health Moral Progress in Seneca’s Letters

This chapter examines the Stoic conception of moral guidance or education as a kind of psychotherapy, exemplified by the moral progress of Seneca’s friend Lucilius as described in the Epistulae Morales. The Stoic project of moral reform goes beyond the more modest aims of modern psychotherapy, but it can be quite plausibly described as requiring the assistance of others— friends or teachers—much as the recovery from illness requires the assistance of a doctor.

I The Stoic conception of philosophical teaching as a kind of therapy of the soul has received a good deal of attention in recent years, due not only to Martha Nussbaum’s The Therapy of Desire,¹ but also to a revived interest in the role of the emotions and their relation to moral character.² Because the Stoics regarded all emotions as illnesses and made much of their methods designed to get rid of them in order to attain the ideal state of freedom from passion (apatheia), most of the discussion has focused on the treatment of the passions. I do not intend to rehearse that subject here, but instead to draw attention to the later stages of Stoic moral education, which begins when the worst excesses of the passions— uncontrollable propensities to emotional outbursts such as fits of rage or inconsolable grief—have been left behind. Philosophical therapy will no doubt have to begin with the passions because they are the cause of the most violent and dangerous diseases of the soul, according to the Stoics; but once a person has come to realize this and begun to work towards her psychic health, there is still a long and difficult way to go. One might say that such a person will have reached a minimal level of sanity, but she is still far from the ideal, and not just because she is in danger of relapsing. This second part of Stoic moral education, or spiritual

¹ M. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, Princeton, NJ 1993. ² See M. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, Chicago 2007, with extensive bibliography.

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. ?DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0015

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guidance as one might also call it, is the main subject of Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius Epistulae Morales (ep. mor.), which present the reader with a case history, as it were, of advanced Stoic therapy. Seneca makes it clear at the beginning of the series that both Lucilius and he himself are past the worst dangers and temptations, partly no doubt because they are both of an age—beyond fifty—where some of the passions, at least, no longer constitute a perpetual threat. It seems to me that a look at this part of the therapeutic programme might shed some light on an intriguing question raised by the analogy between medical treatment and philosophical training: namely the relation between mental and moral health (if there is such a thing). Modern psychotherapists do not usually promise to improve the moral character of their patients. Though the notion of mental health is notoriously murky, it seems safe to say that the aim of contemporary psychotherapy is the modest one of making people able to function ‘normally’ in everyday life, where this includes, say, the ability to work, have reasonably good relations with others, and enjoy one’s life to the extent that it might be enjoyable. Still, even if mental health is clearly not the same as moral virtue, there seem to be some connections. Think of the case of certain criminals who are considered to be psychologically disturbed, such as child abusers or wife beaters. It would seem that normal social functioning includes a minimal sense of morality, and psychotherapists who deal with such patients are at least also trying to improve their patients’ moral behaviour. Perhaps one could suggest that mental health is a prerequisite for moral improvement. But there seems to be at least some overlap between psychotherapy and moral education, and so one might ask whether the Stoic—or more generally, the Hellenistic—conception of ‘caring for the soul’ might still have a point. I should begin by acknowledging that the modern distinction between mental health and moral virtue is, of course, no innovation. The Stoic slogan ‘All fools are madmen’ was a paradox, intended to shock rather than to be taken literally. So Cicero remarks at Tusculan Disputations (Tusc.) IV 30 ‘there is a kind of mental health that may belong also to fools, as when a mental disturbance is removed by medical treatment and purgation’. The point of the Stoic slogan was that moral depravity is just as bad as lunacy. But since the ancient notion of mental disturbance was no doubt much narrower than ours, modern psychotherapists might still find themselves in the same field as their ancient counterparts—witness, for example, the contemporary notion of ‘emotional disturbance’. And while the aims of modern psychotherapists are more modest than those of the ancients, they are still similar in that ancient moralists as well as modern psychotherapists are in the business of helping their patients to lead better or happier lives. The main difference seems to lie in the fact that happiness is no longer supposed to have much to do with morality. But with this, of course, most ancient philosophers strongly disagreed. Perhaps a look at the Stoic ideal can also help us to understand why they thought moral virtue would guarantee psychological wellbeing as well.

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II To demarcate the earlier stages of Stoic therapy, mainly concerned with the extirpation of the passions, from the more advanced stages, it is useful to begin with a distinction that Cicero introduces in Tusc. IV 29–32, and which shows that the Stoics extended the analogy between the treatment of the body and the treatment of the soul to cover not only the cure of diseases, but also the part that Plato (in the Gorgias 464B–465D) called ‘gymnastics’. Doctors are needed to treat disorders of the vital functions of the body; trainers will start with basically healthy bodies and aim at strength and beauty. The Stoic therapist has both functions: he will have to deal with outright ‘diseases’, mainly the passions, in the first place, but once the patient has recognized these as the illnesses they allegedly are and has gained some degree of control over them, his further education will aim at strength and beauty as well: As in the body a certain fitting shape of the limbs together with a certain lovely coloring is called beauty, so in the mind we speak of beauty with respect to an evenness of beliefs and judgments combined with constancy, firmness and stability, such as follows virtue or comprises virtue itself. Likewise, strength of soul resembling the strength and sinews and effectiveness of the body is also described by similar terms. (Tusc. IV 31)

Virtue, then, is not just mental health, but inner beauty and strength as well. This should come as no surprise, since the Greek word used for moral goodness in Hellenistic times is precisely to kalon—beauty. But how exactly are we to understand this notion of virtue as beauty of the soul? Seneca offers some clues in ep. mor. 120, which deals with the question of how we acquire the (correct Stoic) notion of the good. This notion, he tells us there, comes from observation and analogy—namely, the analogy between body and soul: I will tell you what this analogy is. We had come to know the health of the body: from this we came to think that there is also a health of the mind. We had come to know the strength of the body: from this we inferred that there is a vigor of the mind as well. Certain actions that were kind, humane, courageous had amazed us: we began to admire them as though they were perfect.³ ³ Quae sit haec analogia dicam. Noveramus corporis sanitatem: ex hac cogitavimus esse aliquam et animi. Noveramus vires corporis: ex his collegimus esse et animi robur. Aliqua benigna facta, aliqua humana, aliqua fortia nos obstupefecerant: haec coepimus tamquam perfecta mirari (4–5). Seneca probably took over the analogy between outer and inner beauty from the Stoic Panaetius; cp. Cicero, Off. I 14: Itaque eorum ipsorum quae aspectu sentiuntur nullum aliud animal pulchritudinem, venustatem, convenientiam partium sentit; quam similitudinem natura ratioque ab oculis ad animum transferens multo etiam magis pulchritudinem constantiam ordinem in consiliis factisque conservandam putat.

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Beauty appears in the picture after a longish portrait of the virtuous man. Here Seneca says: From what then did we come to understand virtue? It revealed itself to us by its order, its grace and constancy, the harmony of all actions among themselves, and a greatness that rises above everything else.⁴

This is a description of beauty, given that the notion of beauty, familiar at least from Plato on, was indeed one of orderliness and symmetry. Seneca has switched from the good to virtue because he can already assume, at this stage in the correspondence, that these two are the same. Once we have grasped the analogy between body and soul, it seems, we are prepared to observe the inner beauty of the virtuous person. He then goes on to explain that this impression is produced by a threefold consistency. There is, first, the fact that the virtuous man never curses his fate, always accepts whatever happens without complaint—so there is no conflict between his thoughts and desires and the course of events ordained by Nature (12–13). Second, the virtuous man is unwavering in his judgements—a consistency that is due to his unfailing adherence to the truth (Vero tenor permanet, falsa non durant, 19). Third and last, the wise man is at one with himself, he is the only one who is truly one person or who performs only a single role: Magnam rem puta unum hominem agere. Praeter sapientem autem nemo unum agit. (cf. Epictetus, Dissertationes IV 2.10). The wise man is exactly as he wants to be (22). In other words, there is consistency between inner and outer events, consistency among what we would call beliefs due to their truth, and complete congruence between the person’s moral standards and her actual performance. The first kind of consistency is postulated, of course, on the basis of Stoic metaphysics—their belief in the rationality and goodness of the world order. I take it that this part is difficult to make sense of from a contemporary point of view, given that hardly anyone, with the possible exception of some very religious people, would be inclined to share the Stoics’ metaphysical or cosmological convictions. The second and third kinds are more interesting. With regard to the second, we have to keep in mind that the judgements or beliefs in question will include value judgements and moral principles, and that the Stoics assumed that desires are to be identified with value judgements. The inner harmony and peace that is supposed to go with the sage’s infallibly correct judgement is due to the (No other animal, therefore, perceives the beauty, the loveliness, and the harmony of parts, of the things that sight perceives. Our rational nature transfers this by analogy from the eyes to the mind, thinking that beauty, constancy and order should be preserved, and much more so, in one’s decisions and in one’s deeds. Tr. E.M. Atkins, with minor modifications). ⁴ Ex quo ergo virtutem intelleximus? ostendit illam nobis ordo eius et decor et constantia et omnium inter se actionum concordantia et magnitudo super omnia efferens sese (11).

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absence of conflicting aims as well as factual beliefs. Since a Stoic would be firmly convinced that only moral goodness has any real value at all, he would never be inclined to go against his moral principles, and the Stoics evidently thought that this would rule out all inner conflicts. We might find this over-optimistic—there may be situations in which even moral obligations do clash and there is no clear way of making the right decision. Nonetheless, it is plausible to think that a high degree of consistency in one’s value judgements and moral beliefs would be a desirable thing indeed, saving one from agonizing doubts or guilty feelings. It is also plausible to think that a person who is not plagued by doubts and indecision might be liked and admired by many others—assuming, of course, that her beliefs and principles are reasonable and well founded. The third kind of consistency may be the hardest to achieve, but is probably crucial for the Stoic claim that virtue will make one happy. Perhaps the best contemporary term for this inner state might be ‘integrity’—if by this one means a character that will not admit the all-too-common compromises between one’s considered judgements and one’s actual behaviour. Notoriously, people are apt to judge others more harshly than themselves, and when challenged on this point, can be very ingenious in finding excuses to defend themselves against the charge of having broken the rules they expect others to follow. A person of integrity might be one who will not do this—either because she does in fact always behave in the way she thinks is right, or because she is willing to admit her mistakes. The unity ascribed to the Stoic sage is obviously of the first sort—he is supposed to be above all temptations, unhesitatingly and confidently following his rational judgement. I assume that the unity Seneca has in mind here is distinct from the previous sort of consistency because it is possible that a person might be entirely consistent in judgement as well as in action, yet find it difficult to abide faithfully by her own standards (cp. Chrysippus, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (SVF) III 510). The ideal Stoic, by contrast, will never feel tempted to stray from the path of virtue; he is sure of himself, calm and serene, and, according to Seneca at least, even joyful in the thought that no evil can befall him. This, then, is the state of character and mind that Seneca and his friend aspire to. Its beauty lies in its harmony and regularity, its strength in its constancy; and both of these can only be achieved when all illnesses and disturbances of the passions have been removed.

III Let me now turn to ep. mor. 75, the letter in which Seneca sets out a Stoic ranking of the last stages of moral progress before full virtue. Seneca’s description (75.9–14) starts from the top—the class of people who are closest to wisdom but do not yet fully possess it. They have already left behind all vices and passions, and

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they have learned what is really to be embraced; they are also beyond the danger of backsliding. All they lack is self-confidence—as Seneca puts it, ‘they do not know that they know’ (scire se nesciunt). This is because they have not yet tested their own strength sufficiently. Only experience, it seems, can show them that they are actually beyond all danger. Before we return to this point, let me look at the other stages. On the second level are those who no longer suffer from any ‘diseases’ (ingrained emotional dispositions that have become part of one’s character), though there are still some episodes of affection. A person may, for example, occasionally get angry but will no longer be irascible, or she may feel fear of death or of pain, but she will no longer be obsessed with it, and so on. Since there are these episodes, the danger of relapsing is still present, and the person is still on the slippery slope (in lubrico) where one episode may lead on to the next and thus reintroduce the emotional dispositions the Stoics called diseases. Clearly, these people are below the level of the first group. The third group consists of those who have shed some but not all of their emotional diseases, and who are obviously also still liable to occurrent emotions, presumably of all kinds. This third rank, Seneca says, is probably the best he and Lucilius can hope for, and it already requires considerable effort. There may be some hope for them to advance even further, but Seneca fears that they will be held back by their vices, which make them treat their efforts at moral improvement as a kind of leisure time occupation (quantum vacat, 16). Yet the rewards, if they should manage to overcome their laziness, so to speak, are truly magnificent—and Seneca concludes with one of his many vignettes of the blessed state of the Stoic sage. The three ranks I have just described are I think the ones Seneca wants to distinguish, but his presentation is somewhat confused because it emerges in §10 that some Stoics did not recognize Seneca’s first stage—sages who do not yet know they are sages—and hence described the level closest to perfection as the one Seneca wants to rank second.⁵ It is easy to see why some Stoics would have refused to recognize Seneca’s first rank as a stage of progress, for people at this stage actually are already sages, whether they know it or not, so why count them still among those who are making progress? ‘Nobody is beyond the danger of badness unless he has shed it entirely; but nobody has shed badness unless he has replaced it by wisdom’, as Seneca

⁵ The side-remark about the alternative view of the first stage leads him to offer a brief explanation of the difference between what the Stoics called ‘diseases’ (morbi)—ingrained emotional dispositions— and ‘affects’ (adfectus)—episodes of emotion that he claims to have often mentioned before. In fact, the relevant passage only comes later (ep. 85.10ff.), and I suppose this paragraph was inserted here before Seneca’s own succinct description of the second rank in s.13. What has happened, I think, is that he has combined a three-stage schema with one that has only two, lacking his own first rank; but then the first rank of the other schema should simply count as his own second.

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reports their view (10). So these people would put Seneca’s first rank on the side of wisdom, but they would probably not deny that there is a period during which a person who has reached wisdom would not yet be aware of it, since the claim that the transition from folly to wisdom will not be noticed by the sage-to-be was a well-known—and sometimes ridiculed—bit of Stoic doctrine (see SVF III 539–542). The doctrine itself is curious and may well have been introduced in response to some epistemological puzzle raised by Diodorus Cronus, as David Sedley has suggested.⁶ However, what interests me at this point is not why the Stoics held this view, but what Seneca makes of it. It seems fairly clear from the few brief passages that report the Stoic view that the Stoics did not think of the transitional period as being very long, so as to count as a distinct stage on the way to the ultimate end. Their point was probably just that even the sage would not be able to discern exactly the moment in which he makes the transition to complete wisdom—after all, it would be the step from making no mistakes to being infallible. More importantly, one would expect the aspiring sage to be more concerned with practising virtue than with observing his own progress at every moment. I suspect that the reason why Seneca wants to see the transitional period as a stage before the final end is that a person who had not yet realized that he had become a sage would also not yet enjoy what Seneca elsewhere (de vita beata 3.3–4; 4.4–5; 15.2) describes as the ‘supervenient’ consequences of wisdom— tranquillity, security, and a sense of freedom. At the beginning of the correspondence with Lucilius (ep. mor. 9.21), Seneca quotes with approval, as expressing a kind of natural common notion, the line of an unknown comic poet: He is not happy who does not believe he is (non est beatus esse se qui non putat). The person who thinks he lacks something cannot count as being content with his life, even if he is mistaken in his belief. A sage who does not yet realize that he is one could not be certain that he has achieved wisdom,⁷ and this would prevent him from enjoying the tranquillity and the sense of liberation that come with the thought that one has left all dangers behind. Knowing that you have reached the goal is crucial for happiness. And so while Seneca sometimes emphasizes the point that joy and tranquillity are consequences, not constituents of the end, which is simply living in agreement with nature, he also often identifies the happy life itself with the inner state that results from perfect virtue. This is not a deviation from orthodox Stoicism, I think. The Stoics would insist on the distinction between virtue and its psychological consequences in order to make the point that virtue must be desired for its own sake, not for the pleasures it brings—this is the

⁶ See his ‘Diodorus Cronus and Hellenistic Philosophy’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, N.S. 23, 1977, 94–5. ⁷ See the descriptions in Plutarch, mor. progr. 75D (SVF III 539): ἀγνοεῖ καὶ ἀμφιδοξεῖ and Stoic. repugn. 1043A: τὸν ἐκ φαύλου γενόμενον σπουδαῖον . . . τῆς ἀρετῆς μὴ αἰσθάνεσθαι παρούσης ἀλλ’ οἴεσθαι τὴν κακίαν αὑτῷ παρεῖναι.

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argument Seneca makes in the De vita beata. But once virtue has been achieved, it cannot fail to bring the joy and security that make happiness complete. The picture that Seneca offers here gives a fairly clear account of the path of moral reform that leads from the initial recognition of one’s wretched and corrupt state to the supreme self-assurance and serenity of the Stoic sage. It is strikingly different from the better-known Aristotelian account of moral education which begins in childhood and leads, if all goes well, to a stage of maturity at which the individual has acquired a solid moral character and feels secure and competent in the exercise of his rational capacities in virtuous action. The Stoic story requires a break in a person’s development that can only come at the adult stage. It seems inevitable, according to the Stoics, that a child should initially develop into a creature of more or less uncontrolled emotion, due mainly to the corrupting influence of parents and family (the very people whom Aristotle would expect to watch over the natural and orderly development to virtue). Hence the Stoics thought that a conversion would be needed to set one on the path to virtue. This is, of course, why Stoic spiritual guidance is presented as analogous to medical treatment. Aristotle’s more optimistic picture, one might say, covers only the part that is parallel to gymnastic training. But while Aristotle seems to think that if the natural talents are given, and the external circumstances are favourable, education to virtue will work fairly smoothly, the Stoics hold that even after the initial conversion, striving for virtue is a perpetual struggle against the everpresent dangers of the passions. It is no wonder that the Stoic theory should have been so much more influential than the Aristotelian one among Christians who believed in original sin. Nevertheless, the Stoic story also includes the steps that lead to moral and intellectual perfection, and so can be compared not just to a cure, but also to the training that produces strength and beauty in the body. By treating this process as a case of recovery, however, the Stoics may be offering a more insightful account of what is meant by such old adages as that virtue is hard to attain. They emphasize the fact that one’s performance often falls short of one’s own standards and expectations. Where Aristotle suggests that practising the right way of acting, under the guidance of parents and teachers, will make morally good conduct almost a matter of instinct, the Stoics ask us first to recognize our faults, and then to be always on the alert against possible temptations. They harp upon the distance between most people’s professed moral ideals and their everyday ways of living—one of the reasons, no doubt, why the almost superhuman figure of the Stoic sage plays so important a role in their teaching. Where Aristotle seems to think that intelligent upper-class males should have no great difficulties in becoming practically wise adults (phronimoi), the Stoics, being less elitist and aristocratic, insist that it takes reflection and conscious effort as well as practice to become morally good. It may be that the Stoic Panaetius, an aristocrat and well-known admirer of Aristotle, tried to strike a compromise here by focusing on the rules of conduct for

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good men in an ordinary and less exalted sense (Cicero, de Officiis (Off.) I 46; III 13–16) as opposed to the ideal of perfection represented by the sage. But he did not, therefore, deviate from orthodox Stoic doctrine—the ideal, and hence also the conception of the human good, remains perfect moral virtue alone. However, those who might be regarded as having achieved that ideal now become heroes or saints—rare exceptions from the ordinary run of people rather than the respectable good citizens Aristotle seems to envisage for his ‘polity’ (and Cicero for the Roman senate). There certainly is a point to this move. Embracing the accepted standards of the upper classes can easily lead to complacency, and this is one danger of which later Stoics at any rate seem to be acutely aware. Epictetus cites as a sign of moral progress that a man will never claim to be worth much or to possess any knowledge; and he advises those who are on the path to virtue to keep a watchful eye on themselves as though they were their own enemy lying in wait (Encheiridion 48.2–3). Seneca’s letters are full of self-deprecating remarks, constantly reminding himself and his friend of the long distance that lies between them and the ideal. As a result of the Stoics’ insistence on ordinary people’s deficiencies, their conception of the human good turned into something that appears to be so far beyond most people’s reach that one is tempted to write it off as a conception of human happiness. The Stoics claimed that nothing short of perfection can make us happy, but also, of course, that moral perfection would be sufficient to guarantee happiness. If one looks at Seneca’s enthusiastic descriptions of the inner state of the sage, one might be inclined to agree with him on this last point. What Seneca imagines and describes with all his literary and poetic skills is a state in which a person is completely at one with herself and willing to accept whatever happens, including the worst misfortunes, in the belief that all that she is responsible for, and all that really matters, is her own moral integrity, and that nothing inflicted by others or simply happening by accident can deprive her of this. It seems plausible to think that such a person would be free from ordinary people’s daily anxieties and worries—she is not deeply attached to anything that lies beyond her own control, but she is disposed to appreciate whatever small, good things come along. (The dark side of this portrait, as I have argued elsewhere,⁸ is the implied lack of attachment to other people, friends as well as humankind in general). The best examples I can think of that might show how this could be seen as a form of happiness are the Stoics’ own favourite, Socrates, on the one hand, Christian saints and martyrs on the other. Moral heroes and saints, indeed—but how plausible is it to claim that only such people can be happy? The Stoics were given to arguing that wisdom and happiness can be achieved only if a person firmly believes that virtue is the only good, so that no trade-off ⁸ In Following Nature (1991); repr. in Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge 1996, 278–80.

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between moral and other alleged goods is possible. I do not think one has to agree with the Stoics on this point. As far as I can see, it should be sufficient if a person is convinced that serious moral evil outweighs all other evils, so that she would hate herself and be miserable if she committed a grave moral wrong. Moral virtue may require difficult sacrifices, however—and that, more prosaically speaking, is presumably the reason why saints and heroes are rare exceptions. One may appreciate the role that moral ideals can play in keeping one from becoming complacent, but there is also something to be said for putting up with some (not all) of one’s own weaknesses—for example, the ones one is prepared to forgive or overlook in one’s own friends and everyday companions. This should not be confused with complacency: to say that one has made a forgivable mistake is not the same as saying that one should go on cheerfully doing more of the same, rather than trying to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Taking this into account, one might arrive at a more modest conception of a satisfactory human life while still acknowledging that most of us could and should try to do better than we actually do. I suppose this is why Seneca thinks that he and Lucilius might find it quite an achievement already to have reached even the third rank on his scale of progress⁹—but this would obviously be no reason for self-congratulation.

IV Whether we accept the Stoic ideal of perfection and happiness or not, I think we might agree that the Stoic account of moral reform adds some important features to an account of moral education, features that are missing from Aristotle’s optimistic portrait of education as well as from the pessimistic view that both Plato and Aristotle take of the chances of progress for anyone below the level of a chosen few. It also seems plausible to compare moral reform to something like recovery from illness or, later on, gymnastic training, if one starts from the assumption that the person who is trying to improve her moral character begins with a kind of conversion that makes her see herself as weak and perhaps even despicable. Which brings me back to the analogy between mental and moral health from which I began. We have seen how Stoic moral therapy goes beyond the mere restoration of ‘normal’ mental and social functioning by aiming at a state of inner harmony and contentment that may appear desirable indeed, but that also probably lies beyond what most of us could ever hope to achieve. Stoic moral therapy also has a much larger scope than any version of psychotherapy in that it ⁹ Compare Seneca’s defence of his modest achievement at vita beata 17.3–4: Exige itaque a me, non ut optimis par sim, sed ut malis melior: hoc mihi satis est, cotidie aliquid ex vitiis meis demere et errores meos obiurgare.

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includes the attempt to make people realize that they need treatment that we find, for example, in many of Epictetus’s little sermons. So the Stoics are obviously much more ambitious than modern psychotherapists, who hope at best to help their patients to fit in with the rest of us, being no worse, but also no better off than their fellow humans. On the other hand, Stoic moral therapy in its first stage after the necessary conversion appears to be curiously one-sided and limited in treating the emotions as the single cause of all vices and disturbances. Modern psychotherapy recognizes a host of other factors that may lead to psychic disorders, including some that have grave moral consequences. Some patients such as so-called sociopaths seem, in fact, to suffer from a lack of ordinary emotional capacities rather than excess. The same is likely to be true of cold-blooded criminals like concentration-camp doctors: while it might be possible to concoct a story according to which their crimes are not due to a lack of human feeling, but only to some excessive attachment to a misguided idea of science, or an ideology of racism or whatever, this would seem to be an attempt to make the facts fit the theory. Other psychological disorders will nowadays be blamed on traumatic experiences such as the death of a close relative, or abuse by parents—and so on. This makes it difficult even to compare the Stoic account with the much more complicated one we would be given now. If there is overlap, it must be limited to a few specific cases. But perhaps it might make sense to compare the Stoic convert who is trying to reform herself to a person who is depressed through lack of self-esteem. Modern psychotherapists would probably see their task as one of reconciling a patient with her own shortcomings, making her feel better about herself by giving up exaggerated expectations. This applies, for example, to the case of anorexic young women who think they are fat and ugly, but also (more common among graduate students) to people who fall into utter despair because they are not geniuses. On the Stoic side, I suppose, this would be described, not as adjusting one’s standard to one’s feeble performance, but as learning to accept things as they are when one cannot change them, and realizing, perhaps, that the situation is not as bad as one might have believed. When it comes to moral standards, though, it is at the very least questionable whether a psychotherapist should try to make her patient feel better about herself by being content with what may be a rather nasty character (not to mention outright criminal impulses). The first adjustment could be described as taking a more realistic view—it isn’t, after all, a disaster if you are not very slim, let alone if you are not a genius; the second, however, might end up fostering unjustified complacency and self-deception. But the idea of living up to certain standards, both of society at large and of one’s own, seems to play a significant role in both cases. So, I would suggest that even a modern psychotherapist may have to observe a distinction between accepting one’s own limitations and accepting one’s moral faults by making them look like excusable weaknesses. However, this is a point where a modern psychotherapist might well decide that she is no longer

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responsible and be content with the avoidance of actual criminal wrongdoing. Yet her patient might still feel the need for further help, being really contrite and unhappy with the kind of person she is. It seems to me that something like Stoic moral therapy might well be what such a patient would be looking for—and the analogy with training would not be inappropriate in that it emphasizes the need for guidance and support. Here is Seneca once again (ep. mor. 52.2–3): No man by himself has sufficient strength to rise above [his folly]; he needs a helping hand, and someone to extricate him. Epicurus remarks that certain men have worked their way to truth without anyone’s assistance, carving out their own passage . . . Again, there are others who need outside help, who will not proceed unless someone leads the way, but who will follow faithfully . . . We ourselves are not of that first class, either; we shall be well treated if we are admitted into the second. Nor need you despise a man who can gain salvation only with the assistance of another; the will to be saved means a great deal, too. (tr. R.M. Gummere)¹⁰

The point where psychotherapy and moral education overlap, then, is perhaps also the point where they were later separated, one becoming a branch of medicine, the other of education, both having gone together for a long time in the old role of the confessor or spiritual adviser. If this is correct, then the kind of moral guidance the Stoics offered might legitimately be seen as a close ally or complement of ordinary psychotherapy. It would be part of a more comprehensive perspective on what is needed for a satisfactory human life. Mental health is no doubt a prerequisite, but another important factor may well be living up to one’s own standards, and the process that makes one able to do this may, though it need not, take a form that is still quite illuminatingly compared to a kind of therapy.¹¹

¹⁰ Nemo per se satis valet ut emergat; oportet manum aliquis porrigat, aliquis educat. Quosdam ait Epicurus ad veritatem sine ullius adiutorio exisse, fecisse ipsos viam . . . quosdam indigere ope aliena, non ituros si nemo praecesserit, sed bene secuturos . . . Nos ex illa prima nota non sumus; bene nobiscum agitur, si in secundum recipimur. Ne hunc quidem contempseris hominem qui alieno beneficio esse salvus potest: et hoc multum est, velle servari. ¹¹ Earlier versions of this chapter were read at the University of Siena, Cornell University, and as a Keeling lecture in London, 2004. Since I have been working on other subjects in the following years, I have not attempted to bring this essay up to date with respect to the many publications on Stoic ethics and Stoic psychology of the intervening years. As far as I can see, it still raises a point that might be of interest.

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16 Panaetius Peri tou kathēkontos in Cicero’s De Officiis This chapter presents a study of Panaetius’s best-known innovation in Stoic ethics—the notion of decorum in both a wider and a narrower sense. In its wider sense, decorum appears on a list of four natural human starting points for virtue. Based on the uniquely human sense of beauty and the analogy between visible beauty and beauty of mind, it is the outer manifestation of virtue that leads humans to recognize virtue as a good and to strive to become virtuous. In the narrower sense, it includes moderation, the traditional fourth cardinal virtue, but also, motivated by the human desire to win the approval of others, socially pleasant behaviour. Decorum in this sense goes beyond morally correct conduct; it may be a social virtue, but not a moral one.

Stoic Ethics without Metaphysics? Cicero’s De Officiis (Off.) has not attracted much attention from philosophers in the last few decades. The rediscovery of Hellenistic philosophy has been focused mainly on the theories of the earlier period of each school, with the exception perhaps of the Sceptics. For Stoic ethics, Cicero’s other book, De Finibus (Fin.), contains much more information than the De Officiis, which is based on the work of the second-century Stoic Panaetius On appropriate action (Περὶ τοῦ καθήκοντος) and does not include an exposition of the general theory. And while Panaetius used to be described in the 1920s and 1930s as an innovator or perhaps even a heretic in his school, most scholars now agree that there is no good reason to think that he diverged from the central tenets of Stoic ethics, or presented something like a second-class moral doctrine for people who might find the ideal of the Stoic Sage too demanding. Panaetius could hardly have been the head of the Stoic school if he had been seen as a heretic. But in the Περὶ τοῦ καθήκοντος he was, after all, writing about appropriate action—correct but not necessarily virtuous, and such action is, according to the Stoics themselves, common to both sages and fools, virtuous and vicious persons. In a work that offers advice for everyday life, the theoretical foundations could be left largely in

From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy. Gisela Striker, Oxford University Press. © Gisela Striker 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868385.003.0016

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the background, as Cicero himself suggests (Off. I.7). Compared to books like the Academica, De Finibus or even the Tusculans, Off. contains little philosophical argument. Furthermore, the advice Panaetius offered was clearly intended for upper-class gentlemen, sounding sometimes rather offensive to modern, more egalitarian readers, at other times quaint or even hilarious, as when Cicero mentions singing in the forum as an obvious impropriety (1.145). One would not recommend this work to an aspiring politician today—although it was apparently used in just this way in Europe until the eighteenth century. On the other hand, given that Cicero explicitly asserts that he was mainly following a single author and work in the first two books of Off., we probably have more precise information about this work of Panaetius than about the books of any other Stoic author before the first century —that is, before Seneca and Epictetus. Panaetius was clearly much admired during his life and in the following century. Though he may not have departed from Stoic orthodoxy in his ethics, he did apparently introduce some innovations, and he is known to have shown some independence in other fields, for example, rejecting the belief in divination, and the notorious doctrine of cyclical conflagration and eternal return—perhaps under the influence of Plato and Aristotle. So I thought it might be worthwhile to take a closer look at Off. and comparing it, where possible, with the third book of the Fin. and other sources on earlier Stoic ethics. I do not intend to engage in Quellenforschung here, trying to distinguish fragments of Panaetius’s work from additions by Cicero—this was done, with more or less success, by the philologists of the earlier twentieth century and the editors of collections of testimonia about Panaetius, and continued in the recent commentary by A. Dyck.¹ But I will assume that the general structure of Cicero’s first two books, and their main theoretical or programmatic passages, go back to Panaetius. It seems to me that a study of Panaetius’s way of presenting an account of appropriate action reveals an interesting and indeed probably innovative way of dealing with Stoic ethics that may also explain some of the influence of Cicero’s book in early modern times. One reason why Cicero chose Panaetius’s famous work as a model was no doubt the fact that Panaetius wrote in elegant literary Greek, avoiding the awkwardness of the technical terminology that Cicero is at pains to explain in Fin. III. We do not hear, for example, of the ‘selection’ of ‘preferred’ or ‘dispreferred’ ‘indifferents’ as distinct from the choice of real goods; the Stoic sage is barely mentioned, and then mainly as an unattainable ideal. Appropriate actions or duties are classified under the rubrics of what is honourable or virtuous and what is useful or expedient, using a common distinction that had probably not been obliterated in spite of the efforts of philosophers from Socrates on. To the

¹ See M. Van Straaten, Panétius, sa vie, ses écrits, Amsterdam 1946; F. Alesse, Panezio di Rodi: Testimonianze, Elenchos XXVII, Naples 1997; A.R. Dyck, A commentary on Cicero’s De Officiis, Ann Arbor, MI 1996; J. Annas, ‘Ethics in Stoic Philosophy’, Phronesis LII, 2007, 58–87.

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dismay of some other Stoics, Panaetius had even promised to discuss cases where the honourable and the useful would appear to conflict, though in fact he never wrote this last book of his treatise. Orthodox Stoics protested that such conflicts could not possibly arise, since the honourable and the useful must always coincide, and Cicero spent some pages of his own last book confirming that Panaetius had indeed announced his plan to write about those conflicts, and emphasizing that the conflicts would be only apparent, due to the difficulties that ordinary non-wise people might sometimes find in trying to decide about the right way to act. It is a pity that we do not have Panaetius’s own introduction to his treatise. What we find in Cicero is first, of course, a dedicatory epistle to his son, then a brief statement emphasizing the importance of the subject to be discussed. Cicero also mentions that he will be mainly following Stoic doctrine, though not without using his own judgement, as usual. But then follows a section of rather pedantic criticisms of Panaetius’s treatise—though neither the author nor the title of his work had been mentioned before. Cicero complains that Panaetius did not begin with a definition of appropriate action ‘as one should, in order for the reader to understand what the subject is’ (I 7). He briefly states the Stoic definitions of both right action and appropriate action (κατόρθωμα and καθῆκον) as ‘perfect’ and ‘middle’ duty (I 8), without trying to explain the reason for the distinction; then he continues by criticizing Panaetius’s organization of the treatise for omitting some sub-sections (I 10). I doubt that Cicero would have left this somewhat ill-tempered set of notes as it is, had he found the time to revise his work and polish up its style. At the very least he would have mentioned the author and the title of the work he is following, and probably praised Panaetius for his elegant style rather than complaining about his way of organizing the book.² All one can learn from this section is that Panaetius saw his treatise as an aid to deliberation (I 9) and organized it around the three main considerations that arise in making a decision: one would consider first whether a proposed action is honourable or not, then whether it is useful, and sometimes one would face difficulties when those criteria appear to be in conflict.³ Panaetius’s (and Cicero’s) work was organized around these three problems. A technical definition of appropriate as opposed to right action might not have been much help in the absence of the general theory that explains and motivates the distinction, but Panaetius did, of course, offer explanations of the main criteria for decision—the honourable (honestum⁴) and the useful, each apparently at the beginning of the relevant discussion. ² See the compliments to Panaetius at the end of Fin. IV 79. ³ Note the order in which these considerations are mentioned, which might imply a ranking: if a proposed action is not honourable (i.e. dishonourable), it might be ruled out, so that conflicts would not arise. ⁴ I use the translation ‘honourable’ rather than ‘morally good’, since the honestum includes more— for instance, theoretical wisdom and ‘great deeds’. Unless otherwise indicated, in this as in most quotations in the text I follow the translation by E.M. Atkins in M.I. Griffin and E.M. Atkins, Cicero, On Duties, Cambridge 1991, with occasional modifications and two terminological changes: officium is mostly rendered as ‘appropriate action’ rather than ‘duty’, decorum as ‘fitting’ (a term still used in aesthetic theory) rather than ‘seemly’.

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Cicero turns to Panaetius’s exposition after his critical remarks, with the description of the honourable (I 11–17). It seems to begin just like the general exposition of Stoic ethics in Fin. III, with the subject of οἰκείωσις—the natural instinct for self-preservation that enables living things to seek out what they need to sustain and perfect themselves, and the equally natural instinct for social living, exemplified by the desire for a partner to produce offspring and the standard example of parental care for children. These are impulses that all animals are said to have in common. It may be worth noting, however, that Cicero’s exposition in Fin. III 16–19 describes only the instinct for self-preservation, introducing the social instinct only much later (III 62–68). Here, the two natural impulses are simply mentioned, and then we turn to the special case of the natural concerns of humans as rational animals. In book I, Cicero describes four natural tendencies or desires, each based on specifically human capacities. The development of these capacities and the achievement of the aims of the associated desires is said to lead to what appear to be the four cardinal virtues, or versions of them, which together constitute the honestum—‘what is honorable even if it is not admired, and what we may truly call worthy of praise, even if it is not praised by anyone’ (1.14). Panaetius’s procedure is well illustrated by a simile explicitly ascribed to him by Stobaeus: Panaetius said that what happens in the case of the virtues is similar to a situation in which many archers have a single target, and this target contains lines of different colors. Now each of the archers has the aim of hitting the target, but one by hitting the white line, another the black one, and yet another aiming at a line of some other color. For just as these archers make it their ultimate end to hit the target, but different archers choose different ways of achieving this, so all the virtues make happiness their end, which lies in living in agreement with nature, but each of them arrives at it in a different way.⁵

The virtues have a common goal, namely happiness or the best human life, but they reach it by aiming at different parts of it. So the four starting points or resources (ἀφορμαί)⁶ that Panaetius ascribed to rational animals would lead them to pursue different aims, the attainment of which would make them virtuous. This

⁵ Ὅμοιον γὰρ ἔλεγεν εἶναι ὁ Παναίτιος τὸ συμβαῖνον ἐπὶ τῶν ἀρετῶν, ὠς εἰ πολλοῖς τοξόταις εἷς σκο ὸς εἴη κείμενος, ἔχοι δ’ οὖτος ἐν αὑτῷ γραμμὰς διαφόρους τοῖς χρώμασιν· εἶθ’ ἕκαστος μὲν στοχάζοιτο τοῦ τυχεῖν τοῦ σκοποῦ, ἥδη δ’ ὁ μὲν διὰ τοῦ πατάξαι εἰς τὴν λευκὴν εἰ τύχοι γραμμήν, ὁ δὲ διὰ τοῦ εἰς τὴν μελαίναν, ἄλλος δὲ διὰ τοῦ εἱς ἄλλο τι χρῶμα γραμμῆς. Καθάπερ γὰρ τούτους ὡς μὲν ἀνωτάτω τέλος π ιεῖσθαι τὸ τυχεῖν τοῦ σκοποῦ, ἤδη δ’ ἄλλον κατ’ ἄλλον τρόπον προτίθεσθαι τὴν τεῦξιν, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ τὰς ἀρετὰς πάσας ποιεῖσθαι μὲν τὲλος τὸ εὐδαιμονεῖν, ὅ ἐστι κείμενον ἐν τῷ ζῆν ὁμολογουμένως τ ῇ φύσει, τούτου δ’ ἄλλην κατ’ ἄλλον τυγχάνειν. (Stob. ecl. II p. 63, 10–64, 12 Wachsmuth/Hense; test. 54 Alesse; SVF III 280). Panaetius may have been inspired by Aristotle; see EN 1.1094a23–24. ⁶ The Greek word that Panaetius used, ἀφορμαί, can be translated in both ways. F. Alesse prefers ‘resource’; presumably the Greek term covers both.

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does seem to be an innovation, but not a heresy—the human virtues, not surprisingly, are based on human rationality. It is, first of all, the source of the desire for knowledge, which leads to wisdom, but also—given human language—the desire to communicate and live together with others—the tendency that is perfected by justice. (Here Panaetius appears to be inspired by Aristotle’s Politics I 2.1253a9ff.) The desire to find the truth is then also said to be linked to ‘a certain desire for leadership’, as a result of which ‘a mind well equipped by nature is not willing to obey anyone except a person who offers advice or teaching, or whose commands are given justly and legitimately for the sake of some benefit’. Evidently, animals do not deliberate about right and wrong, and so the desire to make one’s own decisions as far as possible is also based on rationality. This desire is said to be the source of magnanimity and contempt for merely human things. Here Panaetius has replaced the virtue of courage by magnanimity—a change that does not seem to have been unusual, though normally greatness of soul is listed by the Stoics as subordinate to courage. Next comes what was probably Panaetius’s most important innovation. We are told that The power of nature is not insignificant in this too, that this one animal alone perceives what order there is, what is fitting, what limit there is in words and deeds. No other animal, therefore, perceives the beauty, the loveliness, and the congruence of parts of the things that sight perceives. Man’s rational nature then leads him to transfer those qualities by analogy from the eyes to the mind, [a transfer that would seem easier in Greek than in Latin, since the word for aesthetic beauty and excellence of character and action was the same, καλόν] and he thinks that beauty, constancy and order should be preserved, and much more so, in one’s decisions and in one’s actions. He is careful also to do nothing in an indecent or effeminate way, in all his opinions and actions not to think or do anything driven by lust. (I 14)⁷

This passage takes the place of the fourth cardinal virtue, temperance or moderation, and indeed in the following paragraph Cicero says that modesty and temperance are contained in this one of the four ‘parts’ of the honestum from which everything honourable arises. But as the long chapter devoted to this virtue will show, it is not identical with moderation (σωφροσύνη).

⁷ Nec vero illa parva vis naturae est rationisque, quod unum hoc animal sentit quid sit ordo, quid sit quod deceat, in factis dictisque qui modus. Itaque eorum ipsorum quae aspectu sentiuntur nullum aliud animal pulchritudinem, venustatem, convenientiam partium sentit; quam similitudinem natura ratioque ab oculis ad animum transferens multo etiam magis pulchritudinem constantiam ordinem in consiliis factisque conservandam putat, cavetque ne quid indecore effeminateque faciat, tum in omnibus et opinionibus et factis ne quid libidinose aut faciat aut cogitet.

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Cicero does not give a name to the virtue that arises from the desire for inner beauty. At this point, we might note that the analogy between visible beauty and the beauty of mind does not seem to apply to a particular part of virtue, but to human virtue as a whole. Yet the desire for inner beauty is distinct from the three starting points mentioned before, and so it can indeed be seen as another resource that might lead humans to virtue. The relation to moderation or temperance in particular remains unclear. The substitution of magnanimity for courage, and decorum—as I will call it for lack of a proper term—for temperance, could be explained by the fact that it might be difficult to find specific desires that lead to courage (to face great risks?) or temperance (to avoid excess?), and indeed courage appears in the long chapter on magnanimity (I 61ff.), along with a desire for freedom (I 68) in the sense of selfdetermination, which explains the ‘desire for leadership’ mentioned before, and temperance, of course, reappears in the chapter on the decorum. The four specifically human desires or ‘resources’ (ἀφορμαί) are the starting points of appropriate action in the sense that one can figure out how one should act by considering what should be done in order to achieve the aims of these desires. The impulse to self-preservation, common to all animals, is treated in book II, indicating that self-interest should be considered only after virtue. But in this chapter I am more interested in the cognitive side of the human sense of beauty—the ability to recognize beauty in both the aesthetic and the moral sense, which turns out not only to lead to a desire for order and moderation in one’s own actions, but also to enable humans to recognize and appreciate virtue in all its forms. Cicero explains the wider function of the sense of beauty at the beginning of the chapter in which he deals with the appropriate actions derived from the fourth virtue, I 93: Next we must discuss the one remaining part of honorableness. Under this appear a sense of shame and what one might call the ordered beauty of life, restraint and modesty, a calming of all the agitations of the mind and the due measure in all things. Under this heading is included what in Latin may be called decorum; the Greek for it is πρέπον. The essence of this is that it cannot be separated from what is honorable, for what is fitting is honorable, and what is honorable is fitting. It is easier to understand than to explain what the difference is between the honorable and the fitting.⁸

⁸ Off. 1 93: sequitur ut de una reliqua parte honestatis dicendum sit, in qua verecundia at quasi quidam ornatus vitae, temperantia et modestia omnisque sedatio perturbationum animi et rerum modus cernitur. hoc loco id quod dici latine decorum potest, graece enim πρέπον dicitur decorum. Huius vis ea est ut ab honesto non queat separari; nam et quod decet, honestum est et quod honestum est, decet; qualis autem differentia sit honesti et decori, facilius intellegi quam explanari potest.

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Τὸ πρέπον was Panaetius’s term, a word that had long been used in Greek aesthetic theory for the beauty of works of art, in literature as well as in music and the visual arts.⁹ Cicero probably mentions it only in his longer treatment, since initially he had just wanted to give a list of the four cardinal virtues. One difficulty that resulted from the inclusion of decorum and the language of aesthetics was terminological: πρέπον was used as an explication or synonym for the Greek word καλόν, which describes not only beauty in its aesthetic form, but anything that one might find admirable, and was also the standard term for moral goodness or nobility. This may explain why Cicero finds it ‘easier to understand than to explain’ the difference between decorum and honestum. We can find a much more detailed account of the analogy invoked by Cicero in his first description of the decorum in Seneca’s Letter to Lucilius 120, where Seneca explains how we arrive at our first notion of the good. Seneca describes how we recognize virtue in others in just the terms by which Cicero characterizes beauty: virtue is ‘revealed to us by its order and decorousness (decor), its constancy and the harmony of all actions among themselves . . . ’ (Epistulae Morales 120.11). Here is Cicero’s attempt at explanation: For whatever it is that is fitting, it becomes apparent when the honorable has preceded it. Therefore what is fitting manifests itself not only in the part of the honorable that we are now to discuss, but in the three earlier ones as well . . . Therefore, the fitting of which I am speaking relates to everything that is honorable, and in such a way that it does not take subtle reasoning to discern it, but that it is in plain view. For there is such a thing as what is fitting, and it is understood in every virtue and can be separated from virtue in thought rather than in fact. Just as the loveliness and beauty of the body cannot be separated from health, so the fitting of which we are speaking is entirely blended with virtue, but can be distinguished by thought and reflection. (I 94–95, emphasis added)

The analogy between the—alleged—relation between health and beauty and that between virtue and what is fitting shows what is meant by the phrase ‘when the honorable has preceded it’: as good looks follow upon health of the body, so what is fitting will be apparent when virtue is present in the soul. In other words, fittingness is the outer appearance of inner beauty. Clearly, this is not a description of a fourth virtue, but of a quality that goes with virtue and virtuous action in general. So, after this passage Cicero acknowledges that there are two senses of the word ‘decorum’:

⁹ The best survey of the history of this term before and up to Panaetius is still the article by M. Pohlenz, τὸ πρέπον (1933); repr. in his Kleine Schriften 1 (ed. H. Dörrie), Hildesheim 1965, 100–39.

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Now this has two senses: first, we understand a fittingness of a general kind, involved with honorable behavior as a whole; secondly, something subordinate to this, which relates to individual parts of what is honorable.¹⁰ (I 96)

Cicero goes on to illustrate what is meant by decorum by comparing it with the decorum sought after by poets and playwrights who have to match the words they give to the personages in their plays to the character of the people represented, and in the later discussion of the individual decorum he keeps coming back to examples from literature to illustrate proper conduct in social life. In I 97–98 he explains that nature herself has assigned their roles to humans, where the first corresponds to the definition of the general decorum, the second to that of the subordinate, which is then further described and forms the subject of the whole chapter. What follows is the famous doctrine of the four personae or roles that every human individual has to play in life. However, let me for the moment stay with the epistemological role of the general notion. Behind the description of decorum/πρέπον as the outward manifestation of inner beauty lies its brief appearance in Plato’s Hippias Maior as a candidate for the definition of beauty (293Dff.). It comes up as a friendly suggestion from Socrates’ double, and after several failed attempts of his own, Hippias accepts it enthusiastically. But Hippias as portrayed by Plato is exceedingly obtuse, and so it is no surprise that he is unable to defend this proposal against the objections raised by Socrates—just as Nicias in the Laches (194Dff.) is unable to defend the Socratic view that courage is a kind of knowledge. When Socrates asks whether τὸ πρέπον is what makes things appear beautiful or what makes them be so, Hippias opts for appearing, which leads to his defeat. Socrates proceeds to interpret appearance as mere and possibly deceptive appearance and argues that this cannot be what they were looking for, namely what accounts for things being really beautiful and not just appearing to be beautiful. Panaetius, though, was not Hippias, and he knew to avail himself of a distinction that seems to be missing in Plato’s dialogue—the distinction between appearance as outer manifestation and appearance as mere deceptive semblance. To use the analogy cited by Cicero, if physical beauty is the outward appearance of physical health, the fact that it may be imitated by cosmetics does not show that it must always be a mere semblance. Similarly, if the constancy and order of conduct is the manifestation of inner beauty, one cannot exclude the possibility that it is mere appearance, but it will still be what makes inner beauty recognizable by others. And that, I think, is the function of the general decorum: it allows people to appreciate virtue and to try to

¹⁰ Est autem eius descriptio duplex; nam et generale quoddam decorum intellegimus, quod in omni honestate versatur, et aliud huic subiectum, quod pertinet ad singulas partes honestatis.

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attain it without having a deeper understanding of the inner state that is the cause of the observable conduct. Let me now take a step back and compare Panaetius’s treatment of the honestum with the more conservative exposition of Stoic ethics in Fin. III 21ff. Both begin, as I said, with οἰκείωσις, but Cato, Cicero’s speaker in Fin. III, mentions only the two natural instincts that humans have in common with other animals—self-preservation and concern for others. Cato outlines the psychological development of a human being that begins by following the impulse for self-preservation, trying to obtain the things that will keep it alive and healthy and avoiding what might harm it. At some stage of this way of living—probably with the advent of reason, that is, at the age of fourteen or so—the human being is supposed to form a conception of the good by realizing that it was orderliness and harmony that made her own (and perhaps also other people’s) conduct good. This realization then leads her to see order and harmony as the only real good and to relegate the objects of her previous choices to the status of mere ‘indifferents’, things that are pursued only because nature wants us to pursue them, not because they have any intrinsic value by themselves. Cicero’s Cato does not explain the reasoning that is supposed to lie behind this radical change—and in book IV (26–28) of the Fin., Cicero as speaker criticizes it as an unintelligible break in what ought to be the pursuit of human perfection, including not just self-preservation, but the virtues as goods of the soul as well. Panaetius’s account of what one might call specifically human οἰκείωσις provides a way of avoiding the dramatic change postulated in Cato’s story. But it did not follow the alternative urged upon the Stoics in Fin. IV, namely including the desire for virtue in the general aim of self-perfection. Instead, Panaetius introduced four specifically human desires, the fulfilment of which would constitute virtue itself. Virtue is recognized as a good due to the human sense of beauty, and it can be attained by acting in accordance with natural human tendencies. The objects of the natural instinct for self-preservation are not among those specifically human aims—in Panaetius’s scheme, they appear under the rubric of the useful, the pursuit of which is indeed appropriate, but not necessarily admirable. This is reflected in the difference between the definitions of the highest good ascribed to Panaetius’s immediate predecessors, Diogenes of Babylon and Antipater: while they defined the end in terms of the reasonable selection of natural things—the objects of the original impulses given to animals by nature—Panaetius is said to have defined it as ‘living according to the resources (ἀφορμαί) given to us by nature’.¹¹ In this way he avoided another objection to the Stoic theory, probably going back to the Academic sceptic Carneades, namely that the Stoics were postulating two goals of life rather than one. According to the theory as set out ¹¹ Clement Alex. Stromata II 21: Παναίτιος τὸ ζῆν κατὰ τὰς δεδομένας ἡμῖν ἐκ φύσεως ἀφορμὰς τέλος ἀπεφήνατο.

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in Fin. III, humans strive for agreement with the rationality and order of the universe by trying to obtain the ‘natural things’, while at the same time treating them as indifferent with regard to happiness. In Panaetius’s theory, the four special aims of rational animals are also admirable, so that achieving those aims will be tantamount to virtue. It remains the case that the appropriate actions derived from those aims can be described as reasonable selections of things that are not moral goods—for example, giving money to the poor rather than spending it all on one’s own amusements. However, an ‘orthodox’ Stoic like Cato would no doubt object that Panaetius had given up the crucial distinction between two sorts of values that motivated the terminological distinction between preferred and dispreferred indifferents on the one hand, real goods and evils on the other. In Panaetius’s book, the so-called natural advantages or preferred indifferents are treated under the rubric of the useful or beneficial, separately from the honourable, that is, virtue, but there are appropriate actions derived from the useful in this sense as well as from the honourable. Now, according to orthodox Stoic doctrine, what is useful cannot be separated from what is good, and only what is honourable is really useful—and that should mean that the ‘natural advantages’ should not be described as useful, but precisely as indifferent. Yet Cicero assures us (Off. III 11–12) that Panaetius did not abandon the central Stoic thesis that virtue is the only good,¹² and that he also held that nothing can be useful that is not honourable. Panaetius was evidently following ordinary usage in treating moral values separately from prudential values, but one might think that this can no longer be seen merely as a matter of ‘speaking with the vulgar’. Or can it? Let me first point out how close the theory, as presented by Cicero, comes to a number of Stoic theses connected with the distinction between goods and indifferents. The thought that material goods do not count towards the real good that lies in virtue comes up in many places in Off. I, beginning with the introductory outline of the honourable. It is implicit in the description of the virtue of magnanimity that takes the place usually given to courage: magnanimity or greatness of spirit is said to lead to ‘contempt for merely human things’ (I 14; cf. 66–67). This seems to me to capture what the Stoics expressed by calling such things ‘preferred indifferents’: they are worth taking when easily available without injustice to others, but they will be disregarded where the aim is some great deed or if they can be obtained only by the sacrifice of liberty and personal independence. The notorious rejection of all emotions (as due to mistaken value judgements) appears as a prerequisite to virtuous action, especially in the chapter on the ¹² Μόνον τὸ καλόν ἀγαθόν—more literally translated, ‘only what is honourable is good’, which includes not only virtue, but also virtuous action.

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special decorum, where Cicero emphasizes that one’s impulses to action (appetitus, used by Cicero to translate ὁρμή) must always be in accord with reason (I 101–102), and notes that anger and excessive desire, as well as fear and excessive pleasure, distort not only the mind but even the body. Needless to say, this is not as clear as an explicit statement that any degree of emotion is dangerous and to be avoided, just as the phrase ‘contempt for merely human things’ does not say that material or physical advantages never contribute anything that could make one’s life better. What is missing is not only explicitness, but mainly a clear explanation and justification of the alleged contempt for merely human things, or of the general dangerousness of emotion—such as one could find in more technical Stoic treatises on ethics. The one Stoic claim that seems incompatible with Panaetius’s exposition is precisely the thesis that the good, and hence the honourable, coincides with the useful. Once virtue is identified with the pursuit of the specifically rational aims and utility with the ‘comforts of life’ (I 9; II 11) such as health, material possessions, power, and the support of others, this coincidence can no longer be maintained, however much Cicero may protest (II 9–10; III 11–12) that honestum and utile should never have been seen as separable from one another. Sacrificing one’s life for one’s country, to take the most extreme case, or even spending a lot of time and money on helping the poor, are not useful activities in the sense of making one’s own life more comfortable, or even advancing one’s career—the factor most prominent in book II. Nonetheless, one could still maintain that conflicts between the honourable and the useful are merely apparent by arguing that any alleged advantage that could be derived from immoral action would be outweighed by the harm inflicted upon oneself by committing a crime. In order to defend the view that nothing immoral can be useful, one does not need to claim that every virtuous activity is useful in the ordinary sense, nor, for that matter, that every useful activity must also be virtuous or praiseworthy—it is enough that it should be appropriate and permissible. Furthermore, the problems that Panaetius described as apparent conflicts between virtue and utility could not be simply eliminated by terminological legislation— they had, in fact, already been taken up by Panaetius’s predecessors, but presumably as conflicts between the two natural impulses of self-preservation and concern for others. One need not adopt the paradoxical claim of the Stoics that the honourable coincides with the useful in order to interpret the Stoic formula ‘living in agreement with nature’ in the way that Cicero understands Panaetius: ‘always conform with virtue, and select the rest of natural things provided that they do not conflict with virtue’ (III 13¹³).

¹³ Etenim quod summum bonum a Stoicis dicitur, convenienter naturae vivere, id habet hanc, ut opinor, sententiam, cum virtute congruere semper, cetera autem, quae secundem naturam essent, ita legere si ea virtuti non repugnarent.

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But what about the most famous Stoic thesis, that virtue is the only good? One could easily read the Off. as showing that virtue is the greatest good, but not what the Stoics wanted to claim, namely that it is sufficient for happiness. On the other hand, that thesis is also not ruled out—it is neither explicitly argued nor implicitly denied by what one finds in Cicero’s book. The reason for this absence comes out, I think, in the passage immediately after Cicero’s emphatic defence of Panaetius’s Stoic orthodoxy, Off. III 13–15. It has often been pointed out by commentators that this passage is not very well integrated in its context, and in fact it might have been more helpful if it had appeared in the introduction to the entire work (which Cicero had omitted). Cicero explains that perfect virtue, according to the Stoics, can only be found in the wise, but that ordinary people can make moral progress by acting in the appropriate way—and appropriate action is the same for sages as for fools. He then somewhat abruptly tells us that ordinary people are likely to see those who act in appropriate ways as shining examples of perfection and praise them as paradigms of virtue. This is similar to the aesthetic judgements of the inexperienced—they will recognize some admirable features in works of art but overlook the flaws that experts might detect. The connection between these two points can, I think, be understood by looking again at Seneca’s letter 120 where he explains the analogy by which we arrive at our first notion of the good (ep. mor. 120.5). Given that real sages are as rare as the phoenix, ordinary people will, in fact, arrive at their conception of the morally good by looking at less than perfect examples. But this will be enough to inspire admiration and presumably the desire to imitate them. However, where Seneca goes on to say that nature herself leads us to overlook the defects and arrive at a conception of the good, as it were, by idealization, Cicero—or, I would say, Panaetius—says that the inexperienced can easily be made to change their judgement when instructed by experts. What this suggests, I think, is that Panaetius saw his book about appropriate action not as a kind of second-class morality for fools, but as an introduction to Stoic ethics that leaves the more complicated theoretical parts for more advanced students. A person who had read his book might be prepared to receive more precise instructions from experts—that is, Stoic philosophers—and might then also see that appropriate action is not all there is to virtue. By coming to a deeper understanding of the inner state that underlies the conduct she has learned to admire, such a person might also come to accept the claim that virtue is sufficient for happiness. But this requires some effort and philosophical learning. It is one thing to adopt a terminology that makes virtue and virtuous action the only things that deserve to be called good, another to convince people that this is not just a verbal manoeuvre—as Cicero has his Peripatetic speaker say at Fin. V 88–89. If one believed that virtue alone and by itself is sufficient for happiness, one might also come to believe that its value is not just greater, but different in kind from other values, so that the terminology makes sense. But the specious syllogisms that Cicero puts on display in Tusculans V (43–53) will hardly do the trick. Seneca’s

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lyrical descriptions of the freedom and serenity of the wise¹⁴ that comes with thinking that nothing external can harm you any more may be better, but still not quite enough—they only show the subjective side of happiness, not the thoughts that lead to it. The more substantial arguments come from Stoic cosmic teleology and the thesis that the universe is the work of a supremely rational and benevolent divinity. This belief might well inspire admiration and the wish to be part of that rational order. But a person who has reached this kind of faith would probably be a Stoic sage—and that means that only perfect virtue is truly sufficient for happiness. However, perfect virtue is beyond the reach of almost all ordinary mortals, as the Stoics were the first to admit. Nevertheless, they also held that one should not despise the moral achievements of ordinary decent people—what Cicero calls the boni, true gentlemen who are, however, not philosophers (Off. III 17). To get back to Panaetius: we need not doubt Cicero’s emphatic assertions that he never gave up the Stoic dogma that virtue is the only good. He could surely also use the esoteric lingo of his school, including preferred indifferents, selection as distinct from choice, and so on. But when addressing educated laymen—such as Cicero’s son, whose philosophy teacher was after all a Peripatetic, not a Stoic—he may not have found it necessary or helpful to insist on it. Now, let us imagine an eighteenth-century reader brought up on Cicero’s book—‘Tully’s Offices’, as it was often referred to, either as part of the philosophy curriculum or simply as an edifying manual of advice for future leaders. Such a person might well have found that this book contains all one needs from a moral theory. It explains how and why people come to admire and strive for moral virtue: they have a moral sense that enables them to appreciate it. The manual then shows how the virtues are grounded in human nature and goes on to develop detailed practical rules for justice and beneficence, warns us against excessive ambition but praises selfless actions that require great courage, and finally advises us about how to find the approval of others by polite conduct and good taste. The second book, under the rubric of the useful, instructs the reader about the single most important thing that will make life secure and comfortable, namely the help and support of other men (here Cicero is clearly writing for young aristocrats). Then, at least in Cicero’s book though not in Panaetius’s, there is advice about decisions in difficult situations where one’s self-interest might conflict with concern for others. What more should one expect from a moral theory? Eighteenth-century readers were not Stoics. They did not hold the most famous Stoic thesis, that virtue is the only good, nor did they expect a moral theory to have the form of the ancient Greek theories, at least since Aristotle: starting from a determination of what counts as the highest good in action—εὐδαιμονία—and ¹⁴ See, for example, at ep.mor. 59.16: Talis est sapientis animus qualis mundus super lunam: semper illic serenum est.

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then explaining how one should try to live in order to enjoy the best possible human life. So these readers might not miss an account of happiness as the highest good, nor expect it in a book of practical moral advice. The famous claim that virtue is the only good and, therefore, sufficient for happiness plays no role in the Off.; and I think it is significant that Cicero defends Panaetius’s orthodoxy as a Stoic against other Stoics, who maintained that conflicts between virtue and utility could not arise, by repeatedly asserting that Panaetius did hold this fundamental thesis, and that the conflicts between the honourable and the useful would be only apparent. Later readers of the Off. could well come away with the view that self-love and benevolence are equally natural for humans, and that the ‘comforts of life’ such as health, wealth, good looks and, of course, friends, would be quite relevant to human happiness. What Panaetius treated in his book was—as the title indicates—only a part of Stoic ethics; it was probably intended as an introduction for educated gentlemen that might perhaps inspire some of them to go on to study with the experts. Judging by Cicero’s version, it is quite remarkable to what extent the technicalities of the Stoic theory could be left out, and how much of Stoic doctrine could still be at least suggested without the Stoic terminology. But in order to argue for the Stoic conception of the highest good—seeing rational humans as members of a community that also included the gods, and accepting the rational order of the universe as the only thing that really deserves to be called good—more would have been needed, including the distinctions between real goods and evils and so-called ‘preferred’ or ‘dispreferred’ indifferents: the distinction between appropriate action and right or virtuous action, and also Stoic theology, which describes the universe as a home for gods and men governed by a supreme reason. Nevertheless, since Stoic theology also does not have an important place in the much more detailed exposition of Stoic ethics in Fin. III,¹⁵ some scholars have argued that the theological part is not needed to justify the Stoic view of happiness.¹⁶ In the de Finibus, the transition from the pursuit of the things needed for self-preservation and self-development (οἰκείωσις) to the recognition of rational order and harmony—that is, virtue—as the only real good is introduced very early on, when only self-love, but not the instinct for communal living has been described. Cicero says that after living in the natural way for a long time, one eventually begins to understand what really deserves to be called good and arrives ‘by insight and reasoning’ (cognitione et ratione collegit) at the conclusion that the highest good is what the Greeks call ὁμολογία—consistency or ¹⁵ Cicero adds this point, almost like a footnote, at the end of his exposition, Fin. III 73, where he explains that a person who is going to live in agreement with nature will have to start from the universe and its administration, that is, Stoic cosmology. ¹⁶ See J. Annas, ‘Ethics in Stoic Philosophy’, Phronesis LII, 2007, 58–87. She agrees that Stoic ethics can be connected with Stoic physics (which includes their theology), but simply because all parts of Stoic philosophy are interconnected.

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convenientia, as Cicero proposes to translate it—and from then on one considers virtue (here equated with ὁμολογία) as the only real good (Fin. III 20–21). The reasoning that leads to this conclusion is not spelled out, and the change of values therefore sounds rather mysterious. T. Irwin thinks that what underlies it is the recognition of moral beauty that we find in the Off.,¹⁷ but surely this is not enough to make one think that nothing but virtue is good at all. As far as I can see, the conviction that agreement with both one’s own and universal nature—as Chrysippus is said to have held (DL VII 87–88)—is the only real good can only be motivated by Stoic theological cosmology. Seneca seems to agree. We should remember that in ep.mor. 120 he only speaks about our first notion of the good; in ep.mor. 124.14, he arrives at an explication of the human good: There are four natures we should mention here: of the tree, animal, man, and god. The last two, having reasoning power, are of the same nature, distinct only by virtue of the immortality of the one and the mortality of the other. Of one of these—namely god—it is nature that perfects the good; of the other—namely man—pains and study do so. All other things are perfect only in their particular nature, and not truly perfect, since they lack reason. Indeed, to sum up, that alone is perfect which is perfect according to nature as a whole, and nature as a whole is possessed of reason.¹⁸ (tr. R.M. Gummere, 1925)

So Panaetius’s book about appropriate action may well be read as an account of ethics without metaphysics, but perhaps not quite of Stoic ethics without metaphysics.

Decorum as a Virtue Turning now to the specific virtue falling under decorum, let me begin with a quotation from Hume: It is the nature and, indeed, the definition of virtue that it is a quality of the mind agreeable or approved of by everyone who considers or contemplates it.¹⁹

¹⁷ See T. Irwin, ‘Stoic Naturalism and its Critics’, in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge 2003, 345–64. ¹⁸ quattuor hae naturae sunt, arboris, animalis, hominis, dei: haec duo, quae rationalia sunt, eandem naturam habent; illo diversa sunt, quod alterum immortale, alterum mortale est. ex his ergo unius bonum natura fecit, dei scilicet, alterius cura, hominis. cetera tantum in sua natura perfecta sunt, non vere perfecta, a quibus abest ratio. hoc enim demum perfectum est, quod secundum universam naturam perfectum. universa autem natura rationalis est. ¹⁹ David Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press 1902 , s. VIII, fn. 1, 261 and Appendix IV, 312–23. For a reference to Cicero see p. 266, p. 318.

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In an appendix, Hume later defends his wide definition against more restrictive views by appealing to the ancients in general, and explicitly to Cicero’s Offices in particular, insisting that the various ways that had been proposed to distinguish virtues, for example, from talents, vices from defects etc., amounted to no more than verbal disputes. Whether or not we are willing to accept Hume’s definition, he is certainly right about the wider conceptions of virtue among the ancients. Indeed, some recent translators of Aristotle have switched to ‘excellence’ as a translation of Greek ἀρετή, in recognition of the fact that theoretical knowledge, for instance, can hardly be seen as a moral virtue. What Cicero and Panaetius described as a virtue concerned with ‘the fitting’ or decorum, then, should be seen in this ancient framework. In the introduction of the four parts of the honourable, the word decorum itself did not occur, though we find the verb decere, the adverb indecore, and finally the noun decus. So the long chapter that deals with the fourth virtue (Off. I 93–151) opens with an explanation of what is meant by decorum. Cicero begins with an explanation of the sense that goes with the analogy between outer and inner beauty to which he appealed in the earlier chapter by describing the uniquely human sense of beauty that inspires it. But as we noted before, this does not fit a particular virtue, since beauty of the soul is virtue as a whole. So now he adds the distinction between two senses of the word, the second finally identifying the specific virtue that will be treated in this chapter: Now this has two senses: first, we understand a fittingness of a general kind, involved with honorable behavior as a whole; secondly, something subordinate to this, which relates to individual parts of what is honorable. The first tends to be defined something like this: fitting is what agrees with human excellence in the respect in which human nature is different from that of other living things. The part that is subordinate to the genus they define so as to say that fitting is what agrees with nature in such a way that it shows moderation and temperance together with the kind of appearance that belongs to a free man.²⁰ (Off. I, 96)

Unfortunately, this is still less than clear. We can find the first sense by going back to the earlier passage in which the virtues were introduced: what distinguishes humans from other animals is rationality, and its excellence is presumably ²⁰ Est autem eius descriptio duplex; nam et generale quoddam decorum intellegimus, quod in omni honestate versatur, et aliud huic subiectum, quod pertinet ad singulas partes honestatis. Atque illud superius sic fere definiri solet, decorum id esse quod consentaneum sit hominis excellentiae in eo in quo natura eius a reliquis animalibus differat. Quae autem pars subiecta generi est, eam sic definiunt ut id decorum velint essequod ita naturae consentaneum sit ut in eo moderatio et temperantia appareat cum specie quadam liberali (Off. I 96).

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constancy and the harmony between thought and action that Cicero emphasized before—what the Greek Stoics called ὁμολογία, the consistency of the Stoic Sage, and what we might also, with a Latin term, describe as integrity. This is what one will aim at once one has accepted the analogy between outer and inner beauty. But for the particular virtue to be discussed here, we have once again moderation and temperance, with the addition of ‘the kind of appearance that belongs to a free man’.²¹ The addition provides, I think, a clue to the specific aim of the particular virtue. In 1.14, Cicero had concluded his initial description of the four parts of the honestum by saying that ‘even if it is not accorded acclaim, it is still honorable and, as we truly claim, even if no one praises it, it is by nature worthy of praise’. In the later chapter, however, the accent is on the fact that what is fitting delights others and attracts their applause, as in a play, where the poet’s words fit the character of the person represented. Returning to the analogy with beauty, Cicero says for just as the eye is aroused by the beauty of a body, and is delighted just because all its parts are in graceful harmony, so this fittingness, shining out in one’s life, arouses the approval of one’s fellows, because of the order and constancy and moderation of every word and action.²²

Though virtue in general does not depend on praise or recognition by others, moderation and the outward appearance of a free man are also what will make a person attractive to others. The specific aim of the last virtue, then, is the approval of one’s fellow humans: Thus we must exercise a kind of reverence towards men, both towards the best of them and also towards the rest. To neglect what others think of oneself is the mark not only of arrogance, but also of utter laxity.²³

Though virtue itself does not depend on the praise of others, decorum in the specific sense does. And we can now also see why Panaetius would have wanted to keep the twofold sense of the word—the second goes with another aspect of beauty, attractiveness, to which he had not appealed before. This was not uncontroversial among Stoics, as we can see from a passing remark in Fin. III 57: ²¹ Atkins translates this phrase pointedly as ‘along with the appearance of a gentleman’—no doubt what Cicero had in mind. ²² Ut enim pulchritudo corporis apta compositione membrorum movet oculos et delectat hoc ipso, quod inter se omnes partes cum quodam lepore consentiunt, sic hoc decorum, quod elucet in vita, movet approbationem eorum, quibuscum vivitur, ordine et constantia et moderatione dictorum omnium atque factorum (I 98). ²³ Adhibenda est igitur quaedam reverentia adversus homines, et optimi cuiusque et reliquorum. Nam neglegere quid de se quisque sentiat non solum adrogantis est, sed etiam omnino dissoluti (I 99).

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As far as good reputation is concerned (what they call eudoxia; it is more suitable in the present context to translate it as good reputation than as glory), Chrysippus himself and Diogenes used to say that, aside from any usefulness it may have, it was not worth lifting a finger for. I absolutely agree. But their successors, unable to withstand Carneades, declared that a good reputation is advantageous and worthy of adoption in its own right. One who is free-born and well educated would want to be well thought of by parents, relatives, and good people in general, and this for its own sake, not just because it is useful.²⁴ (tr. R. Woolf with modifications)

Panaetius is not mentioned here—the speaker is Cato, not Cicero—but the Stoic successors of Diogenes of Babylon were Antipater of Tarsus and Panaetius. The debate about this point is not reported anywhere else, but it seems clear to me that Panaetius, at least, would have been meant. Among the four traditional cardinal virtues, it might indeed be moderation that is most likely to make a person a welcome member of social gatherings, but of course much more is added under the label of decorum. An important addition was verecundia (Greek αἰδώς; respect or a sense of shame), which had not been mentioned in the earlier passage, but appears in the first sentence of the chapter on decorum. As is well known, the moral doctrines of the early Stoics, including the founder Zeno, were quite close to those of the Cynics, whose hallmark was precisely the opposite of a sense of shame, namely ἀναίδεια or ἀναισχυντία, shamelessness. Panaetius was clearly eager to rule out such tendencies, and explicitly declared that Cynicism was to be avoided—with due exception being made for Socrates: No one should be led into the error of thinking that because Socrates or Aristippus did or said something contrary to custom or civic practice, that is something he may do himself. For those men acquired such freedom on account of great, indeed divine, goodness. But the reasoning of the Cynics must be entirely rejected, for it is hostile to a sense of shame, and without that nothing can be right, and nothing honorable.²⁵ (Off. I 148; see also 128)

²⁴ De bona autem fama (quam enim appellant εὐδοξίαν aptius est bonam famam hoc loco appellare quam gloriam), Chrysippus quidem et Diogenes detracta utilitate ne digitum quidem porrigendum esse dicebant; quibus ego vehementer adsentior. Qui autem post eos fuerunt, cum Carneadem sustinere non possent, hanc quam dixi bonam famam ipsam propter se esse sumendam dixerunt, esseque hominis ingenui et liberaliter educati velle bene audire a parentibus, a propinquis, a bonis etiam viris, idque propter rem ipsam, non propter usum (Fin. III 57). ²⁵ Nec quemquam hoc errore duci oportet, ut, si quid Socrates aut Aristippus contra morem consuetudinemque civilem fecerint locutive sint, idem sibi arbitrentur licere; magnis illi et divinis bonis hanc licentiam adsequebantur. Cynicorum vero ratio tota est eicienda, est enim inimica verecundiae, sine qua nihil rectum esse potest, nihil honestum.

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Having introduced verecundia, respect for others and their judgements about oneself, Cicero adds a significant qualification: There is a difference between justice and respect in considering persons. The part of justice is not to harm a man, that of respect not to offend him, which shows most clearly the meaning of decorum.²⁶ (99)

This brings me to a point of translation: the traditional English rendering of Cicero’s title De Officiis is ‘On Duties’. But, as Dyck correctly points out in the introduction to his commentary (pp. 7f.), ‘duty’ is not a good translation for officium in this book, let alone of the Greek καθῆκον. A more adequate rendering of both would be ‘appropriate action’—the usual translation for the Greek term. Cicero himself makes a distinction between what is obligatory and what is fitting in the context of discussing what is fitting in the style of speeches, at Orator 22.73–74: . . . there is a big difference between saying that something is fitting and saying that it is obligatory; for ‘obligatory’ indicates a perfect duty (officium) that must be followed always and by all persons, while ‘fitting’ means that something is as it were appropriate and consistent with the occasion and the person.²⁷

Of course, some officia will be duties, as this quotation actually shows, but what Cicero discusses in this treatise is the wider class of appropriate actions. So another difference between justice and respect is that while rules of justice must always be observed by all persons, lack of respect, rude remarks, tasteless jokes, or excessive bragging may be offensive, but they are not prohibited; while immoral actions are never allowed, offensive ones may even sometimes be commendable, for instance as intentional provocations—witness Socrates. What Cicero offers in this chapter under the label of decorum, then, is not a set of moral prescriptions, but rules of good manners and advice for socially pleasing conduct. Disregarding such advice brings no legal sanctions, but social ones, ranging from reproach, for example, for a rude remark, to ridicule, as in the case of bad poetry or garish clothing. In setting out the appropriate actions associated with decorum, Panetius used an image that had been around among the Stoics (and other philosophers) for a long time: the comparison of a person’s conduct with the role played by an actor in drama. This comparison could be used in two ways: either to illustrate the ²⁶ Est autem quod differat in hominum ratione habenda inter iustitiam et verecundiam. Iustitiae partes sunt non violare homines, verecundiae non offendere, in quo maxime vis perspicitur decori. ²⁷ . . . aliudque totum sit, utrum decere an oportere dicas; oportere enim perfectionem declarat officii, quo et semper utendum est et omnibus, decere quasi aptum esse consentaneumque tempori et personae (Orator 22.73–74).

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consistency between the words and actions of a person throughout his life, corresponding to the consistent representation of the character of the person he is playing that a good actor should provide; or the ability of a wise man to find the right way of acting in different circumstances, similar to the ability of an actor to adapt to different roles in different plays.²⁸ Panaetius made use of both these options. Cicero explains that Nature has assigned two roles to all humans. The first is common to all of them as rational beings, the second belongs to each individual in particular, and is given by his character and talents (107). The first and common role had already been mostly covered in the preceding chapters on the other virtues; it remained here just to add the virtue of moderation by emphasizing, as a Stoic would, that one’s impulses should always be controlled by reason—that is, one ought to avoid emotions, all of which were considered by the Stoics as excessive impulses. This clearly belongs to the role common to all humans, and the accent lies on consistency (constantia); as Seneca puts it, ‘Consider it as a great thing to play the role of a single man’,²⁹ rather than adopting many different characters from day to day, as we all allegedly do. Cicero adds a point derived from the superiority of rational over irrational animals by warning against succumbing to the allure of pleasures—this may be natural for cattle and other beasts who are guided only by pleasure and pain, but human dignity requires that one should look down upon bodily pleasures and care for one’s body only with regard to health and strength (101–106). Then he goes on to the particular roles, dealing with individual personality and talents. The many variations in personality are illustrated with examples of famous people both Greek and Roman to show that what fits one type of character may not be appropriate for another. Some of the Greek examples (probably taken from Panaetius) are morally rather dubious, but Cicero does not consider the question of possible conflicts between personal traits and the common role of man, except for remarking that one should hold on to one’s personal talents and dispositions ‘so long as they are not vicious’ (Off. I 110). In this way one will avoid the awkwardness that may come from trying to play roles for which one has no talent, and also preserve consistency. He then adds yet another two roles, given by social status and by one’s choice of occupation in life—a topic obviously important for a young man at the beginning of his career. There follow some more aspects of social life, including age, external appearance in public, and the like, and even a nice little excursion on the right style of conversational speech as opposed to public orations (132–135). This section is not very well organized—after all, this was Cicero’s last book, which he never had a chance to revise. It might be amusing, but also a little

²⁸ For the use of the actor simile by earlier Stoics, see A.M. Ioppolo, Aristone di Chio e lo Stoicismo antico, Naples 1980, 188–207. ²⁹ magnam rem puta unum hominem agere. Praeter sapientem autem nemo unum agit, ceteri multiformes sumus’ (ep. mor. 120.22).

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tedious to go through all the various sections here that add up to the detailed portrait of a Roman gentleman. Good manners and good taste, as Hume puts it— the kind of conduct that will bring the approval and perhaps also the affection of others. But would adherence to the decorum in this sense also add up to a virtue? One might agree with Panaetius that the desire to be appreciated by others is natural for humans as social animals, exceptions like Diogenes the Cynic notwithstanding. But the problem with good manners seems to lie in the fact that, unlike inner beauty and integrity, winning the approval of one’s fellow humans is not in itself a noble aim. In this case one is actually aiming at the appearance of good character; and just as healthy good looks may be an indication of bodily health, but can also be imitated by cosmetics, so good manners may be an expression of good character, but they can also be acquired without it. To cite an example close to Cicero himself: Julius Caesar, for all we know, may well have been the perfect example of a Roman gentleman as far as good manners are concerned, and he evidently managed at least to attract the admiration and loyalty of his troops. But Cicero would certainly not want to recognize him as an honourable man. In this chapter, Cicero considers good manners only as the expression of what might be considered as its legitimate source (and, of course, also what impostors want to suggest). But then, good manners could also be used to manipulate or to deceive others. What this shows, I think, is that some of the starting points for virtue on Panaetius’s list were indeed no more than that— starting points or resources, not reliable guides to virtue. A philosopher less optimistic about human psychology—such as Hobbes—might, for instance, have described the desires for ‘a certain kind of leadership’, or for great deeds, as desires for power and glory. These desires, natural as they may be for some ‘minds well endowed by nature’, will only lead to virtue if they arise within the context of a commitment to justice. In other words, morality comes in only with justice, not from the desire itself. This is why we find Cicero in the chapter on magnanimity insisting that courage and the willingness to take great risks or make heroic efforts must always be linked to justice: However, if the loftiness of spirit that reveals itself amid danger and toil is empty of justice, if it fights not for the common safety but for its own advantages, it is a vice. It is not merely not virtuous; it is rather a savagery which repels all civilized feeling. Therefore the Stoics define courage well when they call it the virtue which fights on behalf of fairness. (62ff.)³⁰

³⁰ Sed ea animi elatio quae cernitur in periculis et laboribus, si iustitia vacat pugnatque non pro salute communi sed pro suis commodis, in vitio est; non modo enim id virtutis non est, sed est potius immanitatis omnem humanitatem repellentis. Itaque probe definitur a Stoicis fortitudo cum eam virtutem esse dicunt propugnantem pro aequitate (Off. I 62).

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The special status of justice among the virtues is emphasized by Cicero in many places, also and especially in book II, where he talks about winning the love and support of other people. In book III (28) he calls justice domina et regina virtutum, ‘the mistress and queen of virtues’. But its role as the source of moral obligations is actually somewhat obscured by Panaetius’s introduction of the concern for the community of men as simply one of four resources for humans as rational beings. The older Stoic theory of οἰκείωσις had only two natural instincts, common to humans but also to most other animals. Justice was founded on the social instinct, and justice in the sense of obedience to the laws of Nature could be seen as the basis of all moral virtues. But Panaetius was writing for an audience of educated laymen, not for philosophers. The theory of the laws of nature that we can find in Cicero’s De Legibus I would, no doubt, have been too much for his readers, and the Stoic account of wisdom as the knowledge of things divine and human which includes the account of the community of gods and men is only briefly mentioned in Off. I 153—mainly to insist that action is more important than the theoretical study of nature. Panaetius avoided the complicated terminology of Stoic ethics and used the commonsensical distinction between what is useful and what is honourable, to the horror of some fellow Stoics—but then we are told that even Chrysippus sometimes accepted the language of the vulgar.³¹ The ‘natural resources’ for magnanimity and the desire for beauty in human nature could be easily understood. But the desire for leadership and great deeds, and also the desire for a good reputation, need to be restrained by justice, while in the older theory courage could be defined as based on justice. Also, by replacing courage by magnanimity, temperance by decorum, Panaetius gave the Stoic theory a decidedly male and aristocratic turn. Women were definitely not expected to try for great deeds, let alone self-determination, and in the long chapter on the decorum they are mentioned only once, in a clause that states that loveliness in outer appearance is appropriate for women, while men should show dignity (Off. I 130). Panaetius’s ‘starting points’ should be compared to what Aristotle describes as ‘natural virtues’—character traits that dispose some people especially to develop certain virtues, such as bravery, but that need to be perfected by practical wisdom (EN VI ch. 13)—or, in the Stoic context, by justice—to make a person truly virtuous. To return to the decorum as the expression of a virtue: what Cicero, and presumably also Panaetius (in a less specifically Roman version) lists under the label of decorum/πρέπον is in fact a rather mixed bag. Arguably, one might say that respect for others is not just fitting, but required or obligatory—a requirement that stems from justice as much as from the desire to be liked by others. But much of the advice for aspiring gentlemen, whom Cicero includes in this chapter, can

³¹ See, for example, Plutarch, De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1048A.

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hardly count as moral instruction, though it may be quite sensible in terms of advancing one’s social career. So, for example, choosing an occupation for which one has no talent is surely not a good idea, but it is simply a mistake, not a crime and not even an offence (119–120). Elegant style and good taste, again, are no doubt desirable advantages, but lacking them does not make one an outcast. Striving for the ideal of integrity or consistency between one’s words and actions may help one to become virtuous, but the desire, however natural, to please others is, as it were, morally neutral in itself. It may lead to politeness, tact, and patience, but it may also turn into flattery. In other words, the two forms of decorum that Cicero distinguishes, general and special, need not necessarily go together. It may be no accident that Seneca in his epistle adopts the analogy between outer and inner beauty in explaining how we arrive at our first idea of the good that is virtue, but not, as far as I can see, the special version of decorum as based on the desire for a good reputation. Where does this leave us with respect to decorum as a virtue? We might perhaps say that integrity is indeed a moral virtue, but though good manners are pleasant and attractive, they cannot by themselves count as a virtue. Or we might accept Hume’s more liberal view and count good manners and good taste as a virtue—just not a moral one.

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Shorey, P. ‘ΣΥΛΛΟΓΙΣΜΟΙ ΕΞ ΥΠΟΘΕΣΕΩΣ in Aristotle’, American Journal of Philology X, 1889 Sigwart, Ch. Beiträge zur Lehre vom hypothetischen Urteil. Tübingen 1871 Smiley, T. ‘What is a Syllogism?’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 2, 1973, 136–54 Smiley, T. ‘Aristotle’s Completeness Proof ’, Ancient Philosophy XIV, 1994, 25–38 Smith, M.F. Lucretius, On the nature of things. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett 2001 Smith, R. ‘The Mathematical Origins of Aristotle’s Syllogistic’, Archive for the History of Exact Sciences 19, 1978, 201–10 Smith, R. ‘Some Studies of Logical Transformations in the Prior Analytics’, History and Philosophy of Logic 2, 1981, 1–9 Smith, R. ‘The Relationship of Aristotle’s two Analytics’, Classical Quarterly 32, 1982, 327–35 Smith, R. ‘Completeness of an Ecthetic Syllogistic’, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 24, 1983, 224–32 Smith, R. ‘Aristotle as Proof Theorist’, Philosophia Naturalis 21, 1984, 590–7 Smith, R. Aristotle, Prior Analytics.Hackett, Indianapolis 1989 Smith, R. Aristotle, Topics I, VIII and Selections. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997, 193–238 Solmsen, F. Die Entwicklung der aristotelischen Logik und Rhetorik. Berlin 1929 Sorabji, R. Necessity, Cause and Blame. Duckworth, London 1980 Striker, G. Review of J. Barnes, Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. Oxford 1975; Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 31, 1977, 317–8 Striker, G. review of H. Tarrant, Scepticism or Platonism?, in Ancient Philosophy 11, 1991, 202–6 Striker, G. κριτήριον τῆς ἀληθείας, (Orig. in German, 1974; English transl. in Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics. Cambridge University Press 1996, 22–76) Striker, G. ‘The Problem of the Criterion’, in S. Everson (ed.) Epistemology (Companions to Ancient Thought 1). Cambridge 1990, 143–60; also repr. in Striker, Essays 1996 Striker, G. Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996 Striker, G. Aristotle: Prior Analytics, Book I, transl. w. notes. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2009 Tarrant, H. Scepticism or Platonism? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985 Thiel, N.M. Die Bedeutung des Wortes Hypothesis bei Aristoteles (Diss.). Freiburg 1919 Thom, P. ‘Termini Obliqui and the Logic of Relations’, Archiv f. Geschichte der Philosophie 59, 1977, 143–55 Thom, P. The Syllogism. Munich: Philosophia 1981 Thom, P. The Logic of Essentialism. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1996 von Arnim, H. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta III, 1903; reprint, Stuttgart 1964 van Rijen, J. Aspects of Aristotle’s Logic of Modalities, Synthese Historical Library 39. Dordrecht: Reidel 1989 Van Straaten, M. Panétius, sa vie, ses écrits . . . Amsterdam 1946 Voelke, A.J. ‘Soigner par le logos: la thérapeutique de Sextus Empiricus’, in ‘Le Scepticisme Antique’, Cahiers de la revue de théologie et de philosophie 15, 1990 Wedin, M. Aristotle’s Theory of Substance. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000 Wesely, M. ΑΝΑΛΥΣΙΣ ΠΕΡΙ ΤΑ ΣΧΗΜΑΤΑ, Peitho 3, 2012, 83–113 Wieland, W. ‘Review of Patzig, Die aristotelische Syllogistik’, Philos. Rundschau 14, 1966, 24–5 Wolf, U. Möglichkeit und Notwendigkeit bei Aristoteles und heute. Munich 1979

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Index of Names Ackrill, John Lloyd 104 Aenesidemus 177, 180, 186, 188–9 Agrippa 181, 185, 186, 190, 191 Alexander of Aphrodisias 4, 10 n.18, 11, 12, 14 n.22, 16, 34, 39, 40, 49 n.5, 62, 70, 72, 90 Ammonius 56, 59 Annas, Julia 235 n.16 Antiochus 162–9 passim, 173, 175, 177 Antipater of Tarsus 157, 230, 239 Antipho 135 n.5 Apellas 186 n.9 Apollodorus of Seleucia 153 Arcesilaus 162, 169, 172, 173, 177, 180, 188, 189–90 Aristo of Chios 153, 171–2, 173 Aristotle ix, x, 179, 182, 185, 194, 198, 206, 218, 219, 237, 243 Analytica Posteriora 19, 36, 37, 38, 71, 72, 98–101, 114 Analytica Priora 1–77 passim, 84–101, 114 Categories 102–11 De Anima 112, 131 De Interpretatione 99 De Motu Animalium 147 Ethics (Eudemian and Nicomachean) 117, 121, 128–41, 142–51, 159 Metaphysics 109, 110 Physics 30 Politics 128–9, 135–7, 141, 149 Rhetoric 71, 73, 77, 81–4, 97, 112–27, 148–9, 150, 158, 159 Sophistici Elenchi 74, 80, 109 Topics 41, 42, 48, 71, 72, 77, 78–81, 88, 96, 102, 110, 112, 114, 144 Barnes, Jonathan 19, 21, 23 n.8, 29 n.19, 32 Becker, Albrecht 22, 24, 35–6, 44 Bochenski, Józef Maria 3, 35 Boethus of Sidon 47, 56–9 passim Bolton, Robert 70 n.15 Brunschwig, Jacques 79 Burnyeat, Myles 75, 82 n.3 Byrne, Patrick H. 89 n.1 Carneades 157, 162, 165, 168, 173–7 passim, 179, 180, 188–91 passim, 230, 239 Cato 230, 231, 239

Caujolle-Zaslawsky, Françoise 186 n.9 Chrysippus 152, 153, 168 n.12, 171, 174, 214, 236, 239, 243 Cicero x, 129 n.2, 152, 153, 159 Academica (Varro) 162, 188 Catulus 163 De Finibus 154, 155 De Natura Deorum 197 De Officiis 143, 154–8, 218, 222–44 Lucullus 162–74 passim, 176 n.19, 177, 190 Tusculan Disputations 211, 212 Clitomachus 179 Cooper, John 31 n.21, 113 Corcoran, John 6 n.10, 36 n.7, 50, 60 n.1 Crates 153 Crubellier, Michel 89 n.1 Dardanus 163 Democritus 181, 193, 194, 196, 199, 202, 209 Descartes, René 173, 178, 185 Diodorus Cronus 216 Diogenes Laertius 179, 187, 194–9 passim Diogenes of Babylon 157, 230, 239 Dyck, Andrew 223, 240 Ebbinghaus, Kurt 9 Epictetus 153, 218, 220 Epicurus 179, 182, 193–209, 221 Euclid 55 n.16 Eudemus 22, 35, 62 Fine, Gail 103 Fortenbaugh, William W. 114 n.7 Frede, Dorothea 117 Frede, Michael 10 n.17, 169 n.13, 184 n.7 Galen 180 Gauthier, René Antoine 143, 145, 146 Geach, Peter Thomas 45 Glucker, John 162 Hecato 157 Heraclides 180 Heraclitus of Tyre 164 Hermias 56 Hintikka, Jaakko 22 Hirzel, Rudolf 164 n.4

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Hobbes, Thomas 242 Hume, David 236–7, 242, 244 Iamblichus 56 Ioli, Roberta 182 n.4 Ioppolo, Anna Maria 172 Irwin, Terence 136 n.7, 236 James, William 192 Joachim, Harold H. 19 Jolif, Jean-Yves 143, 145, 146 Kant, Immanuel 133 Kenny, Anthony 145 Kneale, Martha 5 n.7, 8, 37 n.9, 42, 45 Kneale, William 37 n.9 Lear, Jonathan 61 Lee, Tae-Soo 48 n.3, 57 n.20 Leighton, Stephen 116 n.10 Locke, John 107 Lucretius 196, 199, 201–2, 206 Łukasiewicz, Jan 35, 47, 86 McCall, Storrs 24 Maier, Heinrich 8, 16 Mansfeld, Jaap 189 n.13 Maximus 56–9 passim Mendell, Henry 67 n.12, 73 n.20 Metrodorus 164 Mignucci, Mario 8, 26 n.16 Mnesarchus 163 Mueller, Ian 51 n.9, 56 n.16 Nortmann, Ulrich 36 n.7, 37, 38, 39, 44 n.18 Nussbaum, Martha 210 Pacius, Julius 8 Panaetius 143, 153–9 passim, 212 n.3, 217, 222–44 Patterson, Richard 37–8 Patzig, Günther 9 n.15, 48, 49, 53 Philo of Larissa 162–6 passim, 175–7 Philodemus 167, 207 n.5 Philophonus 4, 11, 12, 35, 39, 89 n.1, 96, 99 n.11 Places, Édouard des 144 Plasberg, Otto 166 n.9 Plato ix, 79, 101, 102–11 passim, 123, 131, 132, 136, 144, 180, 181, 182, 194, 199, 209, 219 Gorgias 212 Hippias Maior 229

Laches 229 Meno 2, 3 n.4, 66, 67–8, 80, 197–8 Parmenides 105, 106, 144 Phaedo 105, 106, 107 Philebus 106, 114, 115, 116, 117, 132 Protagoras 151 Republic 115, 116, 122, 135, 142 Theaetetus 196 Plutarch 124, 188 n.11, 189, 201, 216 n.7 Porphyry 56 Proclus 56 Protagoras 151, 186 n.10 Pseudo-Galen 168 n.12 Pyrrho of Elis 180, 184, 193 Reid, James S. 166 n.8 Ross, William David 4, 8, 9 Saturninus 180 Schofield, Malcolm 207 Scholz, Heinrich 36 Sedley, David 164 n.4, 216 Seneca 210–21, 228, 233–4, 236, 241, 244 Sextus Empiricus 164, 166 n.9, 167, 174, 175, 178–92 passim, 200, 204 Shorey, Paul 2, 8 Sigwart, Christoph von 8 Simplicius 104 Smiley, Timothy 1 n.1 Smith, Robin 36 n.7, 50, 53 n.13, 55 n.16, 61 Socrates 66, 67, 79, 80, 105, 107, 188, 218, 229, 239 Solmsen, Friedrich 19, 78 n.1 Sphaerus 171, 172 Stobaeus 225 Syrianus 56 Tarrant, Harold 162, 165 n.6 Themistius 56–7, 59 Theophrastus 16 n.25, 22, 35, 62, 94 Thom, Paul 94, 111 n.19 Timon of Phlius 180 van Rijen, Jeroen 37, 38, 42 n.15, 45 Wesely, Michael 89 n.1 Williams, Bernard 136 n.7 Zeno of Citium 153, 164, 169, 177, 239

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Index of Passages As these passages appear in essays that were published in a number of different journals over many years, different styles of citation have been used in the text. However, for simplicity and ease of use, all citations have been consolidated under one style in this index. Alexander of Aphrodisias In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum I Commentarium 1,1–6 61 n.4 1,12 61 n.4 2,33–4,29 62 n.6 7,11–22 90 21,12–18 55 24,12–18 12 113,5–9 48 124,8–17 35 124,8–125,2 35 n.2 140,3 39 144,18 39 144,32–145,4 34 n.1 171,30 40 173,33–174,3 35 n.2 207,28–36 34 n.1 213,11–27 34 n.1 215,8–10 40 216,24–26 34 n.1 220,9–16 35 n.2 234,4–14 35 n.2 255,1–17 49 n.5 256,18–25 7 n.11 265,30 14 n.22 265,30ff. 72 n.19 301,12ff. 70 318,17ff. 12 324,19f. 14 n.22 324,22–24 10 n.18 379,9–11 94 387,1–5 4 387,1–11 67 387,5–11 4 In Aristotelis Topica commentaria 324,24–31 16 324,29–30 16 325,3–8 16 Ammonius In Aristotelis Analytica Priora Commentarium 14,28–29 56

31,13–25 56 31,18–22 59 31,28–33 51 33,18–21 56 45,42–46,2 22 Antipho On Truth DK 87B44 135 n.5 Aristotle Categories/Categoriae 2 102, 103, 110 2.1a20–b6 103 3.1b11–12 104 5 102, 103, 104, 107, 110 5.2a19–21 106 5.2a34–2b2 107 5.3a21–29 108 5.3b10–21 109 5.4a10–22 108 Eudemian Ethics/Ethica Eudemia 1.2,1214b10–11 140 1.6,1217a10–17 75 n.22 2.2.1220b13 118 2.10 143 2.10,1226b17 144 3.1,1229a31–1229b22 122 8.2,1247a32–35 27 Metaphysics/Metaphysica A 1,981a12–24 139 Γ 2,1004b24–25 146 Γ 2,1004b27–1005a2 53 Γ 3,1005b7 54 n.15 Γ 4,1005b26–29 53 Γ 5,1009b12 150 n.7 Δ 2,1013b20 55 Δ 2,1013b20–21 89 n.1 Δ 12,1019b23–24 28 n.18 Δ 28 111 Δ 28,1024a29–b9 109 Δ 28,1024b9–16 53 n.12 Δ 30,1025a6 19

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Aristotle (cont.) E 2,1027a19–28 18 E 3,1027b14–15 54 n.14 Z 1 110 Z 1,1028a33–34 111 Z 1,1028a34–36 110 Z 3,1029a9–30 107 n.11 Z 3,1029a30–32 110 n.17 Z 13 111 H 1 111 H 1–2 110 H 1,1042a26–31 110 Nicomachean Ethics/Ethica Nicomachea 1.1,1094a23–24 225 n.5 1.2,1094b10–11 128 1.3,1094b11–27 129 1.4,1095a5–6 130 1.4,1095a31–b8 130 1.4,1095b4–7 130 1.5 133 1.7,1097b8–11 132 1.7,1098a16–18 132 1.13,1102a7–10 136 1.13,1102a7–13 128 1.13,1102a23–26 114 n.5 1.13,1102b25–1103a3 126 1.13,1103a3–10 112 2.1,1103a18–26 27 n.17 2.2,1103b34–1104a11 129 2.3,1104b8–27 131 2.5,1105b23 118 2.5.1105b19–1106a4 122 n.17 2.5,1106a2–4 147 2.6,1106b21–22 139 2.6,1107a1 126 3 150 3.2 143 3.2,1111b5–6 143 3.2,1112a16 150 3.3 143 3.3,1112b20–25 149 3.3.1112b21–23 149 n.6 3.3,1112b33–1113a2 147 3.3,1113a3–7 144 3.3,1113a11 144 3.5,1113b19–20 54 n.14 3.6,1115a10ff. 122 3.8,1117a17–22 148 3.10,1118a24–25 117 3.11.1119a4 117 4 135 4.9,1128b12–13 122 5 134–5, 137, 159 5.1 128 5.1,1129a26–1130a9 134–5

5.1,1129a34 134 5.1,1129b11–25 134 5.1,1129b19–25 136 5.1,1130b22–24 136 5.8,1135b19–27 146 5.8,1136a1 146 6 130, 132, 147, 148, 149, 150, 158 6.1,1138b32–34 132 6.2 144 6.2,1139a23 144 6.2,1139a29–31 132 6.2,1139b5 144 6.5,1140a25–28 148 6.5,1140b4–5 148 n.5 6.5,1140b7–11 148 6.7,1141b14–22 139 6.8,1141b23ff. 128, 148 6.8,1141b27 150 6.8,1141b29–1142a10 137 6.8,1142a10 149 6.8,1142a10–11 137 6.8,1142a14–30 147 6.8,1142a20–23 134 6.8,1142a23–30 133 6.9,1142a312 149 n.6 6.11,1143a32–b5 148 6.11,1143b11–14 149 6.11,1143b13–14 139 6.11,1143a35–b14 133 6.12,1144a23–29 159 6.12,1144a23–b1 151 6.12,1144a29–1144b1 125 6.12,1144a31–36 125 6.13 243 6.13,1145a6–9 137 7 117 7.12,1152b33–1153a2 117 7.12.1152b36 117 8.1,1155a22–28 138 10 117 10.9,1179a33–35 132, 146 10.9,1179b23–31 131 10.9,1179b34 129 10.9,1180a4–5 138 10.9,1180a34–b2 138 10.9,1181b15 141 On the Generation of Animals/De Generatione Animalium Δ 8.777a18–20 27 E 8.789a8–b8 31 On Generation and Corruption/De Generatione et Corruptione 2.2,329b15ff. 53 2.6,333b5 27

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   On Interpretation/De Interpretatione 9 18 On the Motion of Animals/De Motu Animalium 7,701a7–12 147 7,701a32–33 147 On the Parts of Animals/De Partibus Animalium 2.1,642a34–36 30 n.21 2.13,657a25ff. 31 On Sophistical Refutations/Sophistici Elenchi 6,168a17–20 53 6,168a21–23 80 22,178b36–179a10 109 On the Soul/De Anima 1.1,403a29ff. 112, 114 n.5 2.1,412a6–9 110 2.2,413b10–13 131 2.3,414b19–415a13 131 Physics/Physica B 3,194b22–23 54 n.14 B 3,195a16–19 89 n.1 B 3,195a18–19 55 B 5,197a19–20 18 Β 8,198b36 27 B 8,199a10 29 B 8,199a33–35 177 n.21 B 8,199b18 29 B 8,199b26 29 B 9,199b34–35 30 n.21 B 9,200a15–30 55 Θ 4,255b7 29 Θ 4,255b10–12 29 Θ 4,255b19–21 29 Politics/Politica 1.2 136, 137 1.2,1253a9ff. 226 3.4,1277b7–32 136 3.4,1277b25–30 149 3.9,1280b7–12 137 3.9,1280b35–39 137 3.9,1280b38 147 Posterior Analytics/Analytica Posteriora A 1–4 37 A 1,71a1–2 185 A 2,71b22 55 A 3 190 A 3,73a7–11 64 A 4 38 A 4–6 37 A 6,75a1–10 36 n.7 A 10,76a37–b2 16 A 10,76b10–22 13 n.20 A 11,77a22 9 n.15 A 11,77a22–24 16

A 12,78a6–13 75 n.22 A 22,83a1–18 34, 41 A 22,83a1–23 85 A 22,83a5 71 n.16 A 22,83a14–17 71 n.16 A 26,87a1–17 68 n.13 A 26,87a14–17 6 A 26,87a20–30 69 A 32,88b7 20, 38 B 5,91b12–14 101 B 5,91b13 98 B 6,92a7ff. 15 B 6,92a20ff. 15 B 6,92a21 15 n.23 B 11,94b37–95a2 32 n.22 B 11,95a2 31 B 12,96a10–11 26 Prior Analytics/Analytica Priora A 1–2 47 A 1–7 63 A 1–22 62 A 1,24a13 58 A 1,24a16–17 100 A 1,24a16–22 84 A 1,24a22–b15 62 A 1,24a25 11 A 1,24a28–b3 84 A 1,24a30–b15 3 A 1,24b16–20 85 A 1,24b18–20 1 n.1, 63 A 1,24b20 66 A 1,24b21 13 A 1,24b21–22 51 A 1,24b23–24 49, 50 A 1,24b24 11 A 1,24b27–29 58 A 1,24b28–30 56 n.16 A 2 63, 65 A 2,25a5–14 85 A 2,25a14–17 13 A 3 40 A 3,25b14–15 25 A 4 47, 49, 57, 58, 63, 70, 89, 98–9 A 4–6 11, 48, 70, 89 n.1, 99 A 4–7 47 A 4,25b9–40 58 A 4,25b26–31 89 A 4 25b28–31 62 A 4,25b28–31 84 A 4,25b32–35 56 n.16, 57 A 4,25b39–40 11 A 4,26a24 11 A 4,26a27 11 A 4,26a27–28 58 A 4,26b24–25 42

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Aristotle (cont.) A 4,26b30 50 A 4,26b31–33 41 A 5 6, 14, 63, 65, 69 A 5–6 50, 51, 52 A 5,27 11 A 5,27a16–18 50 A 5,27a17 11, 51 A 5,27a36–b1 5, 50 A 5,28a4–9 51 n.9 A 5,28a6 11 A 5,28a6–7 11 A 6 6, 14, 51, 63, 65, 69, 89 n.1 A 6,28a24–26 51 A 6,28b14–15 57 n.21 A 6.28b17–20 5 A 6,28b20 12 A 6,29a9–10 42 A 6,29a14–18 51 n.9 A 6,29a15–16 50 A 7 2, 49 n.5, 51 n.9, 54, 55, 63, 86 A 7,29a30–31 48, 51 n.9 A 7,29a30–34 11 A 7,29a32 2 A 7,29b1 48 A 7,29b7–8 57 n.21 A 8 36 n.7 A 8,30a9–14 52 A 9 36, 38 A 9,30b2 59 n.26 A 9,30b5–6 39 A 9,30b35 39 A 10 41 A 10,30b37–38 44 A 10,31a14–17 39 A 11,31b8–10 41 A 13 18–33 passim, 38 A 13,32a16–b23 20 A 13,32b4–18 43 A 13,32b4–23 20 A 13,32b6 23 A 13,32b7 26 A 13,32b13–18 22 A 13,32b18–20 38 A 13,32b18–22 18, 22, 36 n.7 A 13,32b21–22 43 A 13,32b23–32 24 A 13,32b25–32 44 A 14 25 n.13 A 14,32b40–33a5 58 A 14,33a24–25 58 A 14,33a27 59 n.26 I 14,33b6–9 40 A 15 30, 38

A 15,34a17–18 63 A 15,34b5–18 34 A 15,34b7–18 24, 45 A 15,34b9 25 A 15,34b12 25 A 15,35a2 41 A 16,35b23–26 44 A 16,36a6–7 50 A 16,36a29–30 43 A 16,36b12–18 43 A 17.37a7–9 40 n.12 A 17.37a9–31 34 A 20,39b4–6 40 n.13 A 23 1–17 passim, 63, 64–5, 67, 70 n.15, 72, 95, 97, 99 A 23–46 91 A 23,40b17 49 n.5 A 23,40b20–22 62 A 23,40b23 2 A 23,40b23–24 10 A 23,40b25 2 A 23,40b35 63 A 23,40b35–36 86 A 23,41a23–41b1 7 A 23,41a24 8 A 23,41a24–25 66 n.11 A 23,41a28 8 A 23,41a32 7, 8 A 23,41a32–34 66 n.11 A 23,41a38 10 n.18 A 23,41b3–5 49 n.5 A 24 1, 6 A 25 51 A 25,42a32 50 A 27–29 86 A 27–31 70, 72 A 28,44a37 70 A 29,45a23–28 68 A 29,45b1–3 6 n.10 A 29,45b8 2 A 29,45b14 2 A 29,45b17 14 n.22 A 29,45b18 10 n.18 A 29,45b19–20 80 A 29,45b36–46a2 71 A 30 72 A 30,46a17–30 87 A 30,46a22–28 72 A 31 98 n.10, 100 A 31,46a31 70 A 32 52, 89, 96, 97 A 32–45 52 A 32–46 72, 88, 97 A 32,46b38–47a2 62, 74

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   A 32,46b40–47a4 52 A 32,47a1–9 89 A 32,47a5–8 72 A 32,47a22–35 80 A 32,47a28–30 91 A 32,47a37–40 90 A 33 94 A 33–46 91 A 34 91, 94 A 34,47b40–48a15 108 n.13 A 34,48a1–15 92 A 34,48a20–22 92 n.4 A 35 93 A 36 71 n.16, 73, 92, 94 A 36,48a40–b4 92 A 37 92 A 37,48b4–9 92 A 37,48b10–14 93 A 38 94 A 41 94 A 42,50a5–10 99 A 42,50a8 97 n.7 A 44 1–17 passim, 32, 64–6, 94, 95, 96 A 44,50a16–28 95 A 44,50a16–b4 80 A 44,50a19–20 14 A 44,50a19–26 4 A 44,50a23–28 7 A 44,50a24–26 4, 80 A 44,50a25–26 66 A 44,50a30–32 7 A 44,50a31 8 A 44,50a34–35 10, 14 A 44,50a35–38 8 A 44,50a39–b4 95–6 A 44,50b2–3 32, 62, 81 A 45 52, 53, 54, 57, 90 A 45,50b8–9 52 A 45,51b3–5 96 A 46 94, 96 B 100 B 2,53b18–20 63 B 2–4 75, 86, 101 B 8–10 75 B 11 6 B 11–14 5, 7, 14, 68–9 B 11,61a24 5 B 11,61a25 5 B 11,61a27–31 5 B 11,62a13 9 n.15 B 11,62a13–15 5 B 11,62a14–15 9 n.15 B 11,62a15–17 68 B 11,61b14 5

B 14,62b29 2 B 14,62b29–31 68 B 14,62b32–35 8 B 14,62b33–37 5 B 14,62b35–37 8 B 14,62b38 2 B 14,62b38–40 69 B 14,63b12–13 69 B 14,63b12–16 68 B 15 69 B 15,64b17–27 69 B 17 7 B 22 72 B 23 97 B 23,68b9–13 74, 97 B 25 68, 73 B 25,69a23–24 68 B 25,69a24–27 68 B 26.69b13ff. 4 B 27 73, 83 n.4 B 27,70a3–38 97 Rhetoric/Rhetorica 1 112, 115–21 1.1,1354a1 81 1.1,1354b31 81 1.1,1355b17–21 146 1.2,1355b 81 1.2,1355b16–17 71 n.18 1.2,1356a 81 1.2,1356a1–20 115 1.2,1356a22 71 n.18 1.2,1356a25–27 71 n.18 1.2,1356a35–b7 82 1.2,1356b9 114 n.4 1.2,1356b12 114 n.4 1.2,1356b16–19 82 1.2,1356b22–24 75 1.2,1357a22–b5 43 n.17 1.2,1357a29–b20 82 1.2,1357a30 114 n.4 1.2,1357a34–b1 26 1.2,1357a36 26 1.2,1357b1–1358a2 98 n.8 1.2,1357b10–20 83 1.2,1357b22–25 114 n.4 1.2,1357b31–35 82 1.2,1358a10–17 72 n.19 1.2,1358a10–28 83 1.2,1358b20–25 150 1.3,1358b8–10 150 1.4,1359a38 54 n.14 1.4,1359b8–12 71 n.18 1.4,1359b10 55 n.16, 98 1.4,1359b20ff. 148

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Aristotle (cont.) 1.4,1360a37 149 1.9 115 n.9 1.9,1366b3–7 159 1.9,1367a6–8 159 1.10–11 115 1.10,1368b32–1369a7 116 1.10,1369a2–3 116 1.10,1369a18 116 1.10,1369b15–16 119 n.14 1.10,1369b31–32 114 1.10,1369a34–b2 27 1.11 115, 116, 117, 119, 121 1.11,1370a14–15 119 1.11,1370a16–18 117 1.11,1370a17–18 119 n.14 1.11,1370a18–27 115 n.8 1.11,1370a32–1370b10 119 1.11,1370b8 119 n.14 1.11,1370b13 119 n.14 1.11,1370b33 119 n.14 1.11,1370b33–34 117 1.11,1371a9 119 n.14 1.11,1371a19 119 n.14 1.11,1371a23–24 119 n.14 1.13,1374a9–16 146 2 112, 113, 115–21 2.1 116 n.10 2.1,1378a4 116 2.1,1378a16–19 115 n.9 2.1,1378a20ff. 115 2.1,1378a20–23 119 2.1,1378a21 118 2.2–11 115 2.5,1383a6–7 125 2.7 119 n.15 2.7,1385a18 119 2.9 114 n.6 2.25 73, 98 2.25,1402b13ff. 26, 36 n.7 2.25,1402b13–1403a5 43 n.17 2.25,1402b25–1403a2 73 2.25,1402b35–1403a1 27 2.25,1403a4–5 114 n.4 2.25,1403a12 114 n.4 Topics/Topica 1.1,100a18–21 78 1.1,100a25–26 78 1.4,101b13–25 71 n.16 1.6,102b27–103a5 71 n.17, 79 1.6,102b36–38 71 n.17 1.7,103a23–31 109 n.15 1.7,103a30 109 1.8,103b2–19 71 n.16 1.14,105b20–25 88

1.18 15 1.18,108b12–19 79 1.18,108b12 2 1.18,108b12ff. 14 n.22, 15 1.18.108b13 15 n.23 1.18,108b16–17 10 2.2,109b35–110a4 114 n.6 2.6,112b5–9 26 2.6,112b11–12 27 n.17 2.7,113a35–113b3 114 n.6 3.6,119b21–24 14 3.6, 119b35 14, 15 n.23 3.6, 119b35ff. 15 4.1,121a11–12 106 4.5,125b20–27 114 n.6 4.5,125b28ff. 114 n.6 4.5,126a6–12 114 nn.6 and 7 4.5,126a17–25 106 4.5,127b27–32 114 n.6 5.4,132b35–133a11 106 6.13,151a14–19 114 n.6 7.5.155a11–16 41 7.5.155a31–36 41 8.1,156a32–33 114 n.6 8.2,157b34–158a2 6, 70 n.15 8.11,162a8–11 75 n.22 8.14,163a32–36 75 Cicero Academica 1.13 165 n.5 1.32 166 n.9 1.35 162 I 45 188 De Finibus 1.30–31 199 n.3 3.33 152 3.58 152 3 154, 155, 223, 225, 230, 231, 235 3.6–19 225 3.20–21 236 3.21ff. 230 3.57 238–9 3.60–61 153 3.62–68 225 3.73 235 n.15 4 230 4.76 177 n.20 4.26–28 230 4.79 224 n.2 5.88–89 233 De Legibus I 18 152 De Natura Deorum 1.44 197

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   De Officiis 1 154, 161 n.16, 231 1.7 223, 224 1.8 152, 224 1.9 155, 224, 232 1.10 224 1.11–17 225 1.13 155 1.14 212 n.3, 225, 226, 231, 238 1.15 154 1.18–19 155 n.11 1.20 156 1.21 156 1.38–41 156 1.42 156 1.46 218 1.61ff. 227 1.61–91 155 n.11 1.62ff. 242 1.66–67 231 1.68 227 1.69–73 129 n.2 1.93 227 1.93–151 237 1.94–95 228 1.96 229, 237 1.97–98 229 1.98 238 n.22 1.99 238 n.23, 240 1.101–102 232 1.101–106 241 1.107 241 1.110 241 1.119–120 244 1.128 153, 239 1.130 243 1.132–135 241 1.145 233 1.148 153, 239 1.153 243 2 154, 227, 232, 243 2.1 158 2.9 156 2.9–10 232 2.11 232 2.19 158 2.33–34 158 2.35 159 2.86 158 3 155, 157 3.7 155 3.7–10 155 3.11–12 231, 232 3.13 232 3.13–15 233

3.13–16 218 3.17 234 3.28 243 3.50–53 157 3.89–90 157 3.90 157 De Re Publica III 51 157 n.13 Epistulae ad familiares 9.8 164 n.5 Lucullus 11 164 12 162, 163 18 163 23–24 165 n.7 32–33 165 32–36 165, 166 33–34 167 33–36 166 n.9 36 165 n.7, 166 n.9, 167 40 173 46 173 47 173 48 170 49 173 50 170, 173 51 173 51–52 171 51–53 170 54 170, 171 n.15 56–57 170 57 170, 172 58 166 nn. 8, 9, 173 60 190 69 163 77 169, 177 78 164, 169 84 166 n.9, 173 n.16 84–86 170 85 170, 173 86 173 88–90 170 93 174 99 173 105 175 n.18 108 190 111 166, 173 112–113 164 n.5 113 177 146 165 n.5, 176 n.19 Orator 22.73–74 240 Tusculan Disputations IV 29–32 212 IV 30 211

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Cicero (cont.) IV 31 212 V 43–53 233 Clement of Alexandria Stromata II 21 230 n.11 Democritus fr. B 11 202 fr. B 125 193 Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 1.16 179 7.87 152 7.87–88 236 7.89 152 n.8 7.94 152 7.107 152 7.121 153 7.127 171 n.14 7.162 171 7.177 171 9.88 186 n.9 9.106 186 n.9 9.107 187 9.115–116 180 10.28 208 10.31 193, 203 10.31–32 194–5 10.32 196 10.33 196–7 10.35 194 Letter to Herodotus 10.37–38 197 10.38 194, 203 10.39 205 10.40 205 10.46–48 202 10.51 203 10.67 206 10.72–73 207 10.82 194, 205 Letter to Pythocles 10.113 206 Letter to Menoeceus 10.132 199 10.133 208 10.147 195 Epictetus Dissertationes III 22 153 IV 2.10 213 Encheiridion 48.2–3 218

Lucretius De rerum natura 4.256–258 201 4.362–363 201 4.379–387 196 4.385 199 4.466–467 202 4.486–499 196 6.703–711 206 Philodemus De Signis I 1–17 167 Philoponus In Aristotelis Analytica Posteriora commentaria 334–5 99 n.11 In Aristotelis Analytica Priora Commentaria 5,15–6,1 96 37,16–38 12 37,29 12 358,27–31 4 Photius Bibliotheca cod. 212, 170a16 177 Plato Gorgias 464B–465D 212 Hippias Maior 293Dff. 229 Laches 194Dff. 229 Meno 75B–76A 198 80D 197 86Eff. 2 86E–87A 67 87B–96C 80 Parmenides 129A 106 129C 106 130C4–D8 105 143C2 144 Phaedo 74A9–C10 105 102B–103A 92 n.4 103A4–22 105 Philebus 16C5–E2 106 21D6–E5 132 31Dff. 116 47C–50C 117 47C–50E 114

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   Protagoras 327E–328A 151 Republic 2,358B–367A 135 10,596A6–7 105 n.6 Theaetetus 184B–186E 196 Plutarch Against Colotes/Adversus Colotem 1121B–D 201 1122A–F 189 De cohibenda ira 453D–E 188 n.11 De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1043A 216 n.7 1048A 243 n.31 De Virtute Morali 445A–447C 124 449A–449B 124 Moralia 75D (SVF III 539) 216 n.7 Seneca De vita beata 3.3–4 216 4.4–5 216 15.2 216 17.3–4 219 n.9 Epistulae morales ad Lucilium 9.21 216 52.2–3 221 59.16 234 n.14 75 214–15 75.9–14 214 75.10 215, 216 75.13 215 n.5 75.16 215 85.10ff. 215 n.5 120 212, 228, 233, 236 120.4–5 212 n.3 120.5 233 120.11 213 n.4, 228 120.12–13 213 120.19 213 120.22 213, 241 n.29 124.14 236 Sextus Empiricus Against the Mathematicians/Adversus Mathematicos 1.61 180 7.139 202 7.154 173 7.158 172, 189 7.159–189 168

7.163 168 7.163–164 168 7.168 174 7.184 168 7.203–216 200 7.211–216 203–4 7.206–209 200 7.252 169, 174 7.408 174 7.410 174 n.17 7.427–429 174 8.473–475 191 11.66 153 Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.1–4 178–9 1.8 182 1.9.21–24 181 1.9.24 182 n.4 1.9.25–30 181, 183 1.16–17 181 1.18 181 1.22 184 1.23 184 1.29 187 1.33–34 191 1.145 182 n.4 1.164–177 185 1.180–185 188 1.203 187 1.206 187 1.232–233 189 1.235 164 1.236 185, 188 2.10 184 n.7 3.246 153 4 182 Simplicius In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium 45,19–23 104 402,22–26 171 n.14 Stobaeus Eclogae II p. 63, 10–64, 12 Wachsmuth-Hense 225 n.5 Themistius Reply to Maximus, French translation 166,28–32 57 167,2 56 167,40–168,5 57 168,30–36 56 169,13 57 169,16–17 57 170,4–5 57

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Themistius (cont.) 170,27–171,26 57 171,3–5 57 171,38–172.8 59 172,8–10 58 n.23 172,25–26 57 173,34–35 57 173,35–38 59 173,41–44 57 n.20 174,17–18 57 174,35–39 57 175,18–29 57 n.20

175.34 57 n.21 176,9–10 57 176,11–12 57 177,2–3 57 177,4 57 177,5–7 59 177,7ff. 57 n.21 178,11–12 57 n.22 179,22 57 Theophrastus Topics 5.21–26 16 n.25