theophrastus

[theophrastus]

Thiodolf Rein & Hermann Lotze

Fragment from Lauri Kallio's Thiodolf Rein, Hermann Lotze and the rise of empiricism in Finland

"Furthermore, Czolbe’s attempt to explain all thinking on the basis of sense perception is misguided, because it is impossible to trace the unity of consciousness back to sense perception. The recognition of the unity of consciousness is the starting point of psychology. Lotze takes it as evident that there is a soul substance, since otherwise it would be simply impossible to explain fundamental mental phenomena like the unity of consciousness. His contention that materialism cannot explain the unity of consciousness is based on his critique of the materialist concept of matter. He argues that the clarity of the concept of matter (and also the clarity of the concept of the interaction between material entities), which is provided by the natural sciences, is 'only a pragmatic clarity'. Yet, Lotze’s point is not to abandon that concept but to argue that this concept does not replace the metaphysical concept of matter. Rein adopts Lotze’s critique of Czolbe. According to their view, a materialist can explain neither the unity of consciousness nor how our consciousness combines representations. Rein explains that we can have, for example, two seemingly identical representations of one and the same thing, and that our consciousness can keep these two representations separate and make a combination of them. Neither of these is explainable within the materialist framework, since they have no counterpart in the physical world. Having two identical representations in the physical world means that they lose their independency, or that there would be only one representation. This testifies that the essence of consciousness is irreducible to physical events."

"Rein thinks that the epistemological foundation of materialism is essentially the same as it was in the eighteenth century and, in fact, the materialist worldview is essentially the same as it was in Ancient Greece. The only thing that has changed is the concept of matter. Rein also thinks that the modern concept of matter is vague to some extent. This is precisely what Lotze suggests: the concept of matter has only a pragmatic clarity."

"Monism is impossible on empirical grounds alone. It is possible to overcome the dualism of the mental and the physical only with a third element, Rein argues. This element must be ‘over-empirical’ (öfverempirisk), it is a matter of metaphysics."

Source: LK_2_version_C-5. Kallio (210713).pdf (utupub.fi)

#philosophy #history

[theophrastus]

History of Monism

Excerpt from Arthur Drew's Geschichte des Monismus im Alterturm (History of Monism in Antiquity)

"A 'history of ancient monism' in the sense discussed here will not need to justify its appearance in our 'monistic century'. Modern monism itself has as great an interest as its opponents in tracing the traces of the monistic way of thinking in history. And just the attempts of antiquity to lift up the multiplicity of phenomena into a unified concept of the world do not only have the attraction of youth for themselves, but possess at the same time a high philosophical value also for the present monism, if only because they present monism in its typical manifestations, which are still fundamental also for the present, and these in their relatively simplest and most impressive form. There might be quite a few among those who call themselves monists at present, whose standpoint in philosophical respect has not yet essentially reached beyond the pre-Socratic philosophy of nature...Perhaps there is no better means to bring to modesty and to "reason" the naturalistic monism that today behaves so pretentiously than the reference to the role that this standpoint has played so far in the history of human thought, and the proof of how the inadequacy necessarily attached to it led already more than two millennia ago to its being lifted into a higher idealistic standpoint. The overcoming of the prevailing naturalism, however, is the most important task, which today's monism has to solve, in order to be able to take up as an equal world view with that of the positive religions, yes, to be able to carry off the victory over them."

#history #philosophy

[theophrastus]

Trendelenburg's remarks on Personhood

Excerpt from Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg's A Contribution to the History of the Word Person: A Posthumous Treatise

"In Justinian's time the doctrine obtained that slaves were not persons; for Theophilus, the Greek translator of the Institutes, says a slave is aprosopos [un-personal] a term already defined for which a corresponding Latin expression, such as impersonalis, did not arise."

"Savigny observes that this theory developed comparatively late. Since Justinian it has been established that the legally qualified man is a person and none other. The slave is a thing. Persona est homo statu civili praeditus [A person is a man possessed of civil standing] and freedom is exclusively an attribute of a person. Should we inquire further what is freedom, Roman law explains it as the natural power to do what you please unless you are prevented by force or by law."

"In this concept of person there is implied more than in the previous conceptions of the word which Kant made use of to express the ethical idea of man. [If that which is] merely a means [is called a thing], then a being that is a rational end unto itself [may never be merely a means and] must be a 'person.'"

"In his letter to Wagner (De vi activa corporis, de anima et de anima brutorum [On the Active Bodily Energy, on the Soul and the Soul of Animals]) Leibniz applied the legal concept of person to the deeper characterization of what is human. He considers that consciousness of self and capacity for communion with God are privileges of the human soul, and thinks that when once it has participated in this communion it will never relinquish the person of a citizen in the commonwealth of God (Sentio nunquam eas deponere personam civis in republica Dei). The right of a person to citizenship in the commonwealth of God appears in this connection as the special dignity of mankind."

#history #personhood

[theophrastus]

Age of the Early Christian Apologists

excerpts from Earl Morse Wilbur's Our Unitarian Heritage.

"After all the immediate disciples of Jesus had passed away, and the Apostolic Age had come to an end with the close of the first century, there followed for something more than a hundred years what is known as the Age of the Apologists, during which Christians had to defend their new religion against the attacks of Jews or of Pagans, and were trying to prove it superior to the older religions.  The writers who made this defense are known as the Apologists.  Some of their writings have come down to us, and form the earliest Christian literature after the New Testament.  They themselves were the earliest Christian theologians, trying to state their religious beliefs in systematic form; and, their writings therefore serve to show us how Christian doctrines were taking shape.  The problem they were all earnestly trying to solve, in order to state the philosophy of Christianity in such a way that educated Greeks might accept it, was this: How was the Logos (now fully accepted as a fixed item in Christian thought) related to the infinite and eternal God on the one hand, and to the man Jesus of Nazareth on the other? They could not hope to see Christianity make much progress in the Greek world until this problem was satisfactorily solved.  Yet it was a difficult problem, for the nearer they made him to God, the more unreal his human life seemed to be; while the more fully they recognized his humanity, the farther be seemed to be from God.  It is these Apologists that take the next steps leading from the simpler teaching of the New Testament, far toward the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, as we shall now see by looking briefly at what four of the most prominent of them wrote."

"Justin Martyr had been a Greek philosopher before his conversion to Christianity. As a Christian he wrote at Rome, some time after the year 140, two Apologies and other writings in defense of Christianity.  In these he teaches that the divine Reason, or Logos, was begotten by God, as his first-born, before the creation of the world. Through him God created the world.  He was a distinct person from God, and inferior to him, yet he might be worshiped as a divine being. He became a man upon earth in the person of Jesus."

"Irenaeus, who had been born in Asia Minor, went as missionary to southern Gaul, and there in 178 he became Bishop of Lyons.  He wrote a book against heresies, in which he taught that the Logos existed before the creation of the world, and was God’s first-born Son.  The Logos was thus truly divine, although distinct from God and inferior to him; and he became a man in Jesus, and suffered as a man, in order to bring mankind nearer to God."

"Clement of Alexandria was born in the Greek religion, but after his conversion to Christianity he became the most eminent Christian philosopher of his time, and had great influence on the thought of the Eastern Church.  In works written after 190 he teaches that the Logos was in the beginning with God, and was somehow God, and hence deserved to be worshiped; and yet he was below the Father in rank.  In Jesus he became a man, that we might learn from him how a man may become God.   Clement also took a further step toward the doctrine of the Trinity, when he spoke of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a 'holy triad.'"

"Tertullian was born at Carthage about 150, and was a pagan in religion until middle life; but after his conversion to Christianity he became as influential in the thought of the Western Church as Clement was in the Eastern.  In his writings he teaches that the Son (or Logos) existed before creation, and was of one substance with God, though distinct from him and subordinate to him.  He was born upon earth as Jesus; and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mysteriously united into a trinity — a term which Tertullian was the first to introduce."

"These four examples are enough to show what was going on in Christian thought during the century after the fourth Gospel appeared.  There was a growing tendency, while still insisting that Christ was less than God, to regard him more and more as divine.  Yet in this tendency there were two dangers. As theologians speculated upon the Logos, they were more and more losing sight of the human character of Jesus, and there was a fear lest Christianity should presently find itself worshiping two divine beings instead of one God. This latter danger was keenly felt by those who regarded the religion of the Roman Empire, in which it was customary to deify and worship the Emperors. So that in opposition to the beliefs we have above noticed as growing up, a contrary tendency also asserted itself, and spread widely, under the name of Monarchianism. The Monarchians were strict monotheists. They objected that if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all divine, then Christianity had three Gods; and they insisted instead that God was one person as well as one being. There were two persons closely associated with this opposing view whose names deserve to be mentioned and remembered in a history of Unitarianism. One was Paul of Samosata. He became in 260 Bishop of Antioch, the most important see in the Eastern Church. He taught that though Jesus was originally a man like other men, he gradually became divine, and finally became completely united with God. He was accused of heresy by theological and political enemies, and after three trials was at length deposed from his office and excommunicated from the Church, about 268. Various Unitarians in later times held views more or less resembling his, and they were therefore sometimes called Samosatenians or Paulianists. More famous yet, though of his life little is now known, was Sabellius, whose teaching proved very attractive to large numbers. He sought to preserve the unity of God, and at the same time to make the mystery of the Trinity more easy to comprehend, by teaching that the one God manifested himself in three different ways, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But this teaching seemed to his opponents to make Christ unreal, a mere reflection of another being, and it was therefore condemned as a heresy, and Sabellius himself was excommunicated from the church at Alexandria about 260. Sabellianism, however, did not become extinct, for it has often reappeared in Christian history down to this very day. Not only have Unitarians often held Sabellian views, and often been called Sabellians by the orthodox, but professed Trinitarians have often given their explanation of the Trinity in Sabellian terms, and have thus really been heretical. The great popularity of these Monarchian views in the third century shows that the movement toward the doctrine of the Trinity did not go on without much opposition; and Tertullian complains of how in his time the majority of Christians, being ignorant (of philosophical speculations), still hold to the simple unity of God, and are mistrustful of the Trinity."

#religion #history

[theophrastus]

Shelley as Literary Critic

"Shelley’s attitude in this matter, as expressed in [A Defence of Poetry], is very clear: he believes that poetry acts in a different way from that in which the ethical sciences act, that the highest type of poetry does not inculcate morals directly, and that those poets who seek to do the latter are artists of an inferior order. He expresses admiration for Milton because of the latter's 'bold neglect of a direct moral purpose.' In his Preface to The Cenci he says, concerning the treatment of the drama; 'There must also be nothing attempted to make the exhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose.' He criticizes dramas which have for their purpose 'a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral truths…'"

excerpt from Margaret Adah Beede's Shelley as a literary critic, 1937.

#poetry #history #critique

[theophrastus]

Excerpt from Gravelle's "The Latin-Vernacular Question and Humanist Theory of Language and Culture"

"Most fifteenth-century humanists chose to write in Latin because of their conviction of its superiority to the vernacular for prose composition. This conviction was based on their misgivings about certain features of the vernacular admitted even by its advocates. Leon Battista Alberti, Cristoforo Landino, and Lorenzo de' Medici acknowledged flaws in the vernacular but believed these flaws came not from inherent inferiority but from historical neglect. Their opinion derived from the humanist study of the historical nature of language, not from the opposition of the partisans of the Volgare [vulgar-vernacular] to the classicism of humanism."

"The Volgare was judged inferior to Latin on two counts: vocabulary and grammar. First, its vocabulary was thought to be meager compared to the copia of Latin. The defense of the vernacular had to reckon with the charge that it could only express thought in a crude and clumsy way. These discussions of vocabulary contributed to a theory that linked the growth of language and intellectual capacities. The second count against the vernacular was that it was ungrammatical, an idea inherited from earlier philology and shared by at least one humanist. According to this idea, the modern languages were disordered and ungrammatical; the ancient, regular and grammatical. Before the Volgare could be treated on an equal footing with Latin, the humanists had to come to a better understanding of grammar. And pursuing this inquiry into the nature of grammar, some humanists would link grammar and the structure of thought."

"Although there are a few similarities, fifteenth-century comparisons are different from earlier ones, as Dante's and Boccaccio's ideas about the relative merits of the two languages show. Both see the greater use and currency of the vernacular as an asset, as do later humanists. Indeed, for Dante the vernacular is more noble than Latin because of its greater use. Both Dante and Boccaccio believe its defect to be want of grammar, art, and regularity. Dante justifies his use of the vernacular in the Convivio by saying that the work in Latin would be as useless as gold and pearls buried in the ground. In his Life of Dante Boccaccio praises Dante's decision to write the Divine Comedy in the Volgare for the benefit of his fellow citizens, who had been abandoned by the learned. To write for them in Latin would be like giving a newborn a crust of bread to swallow. Boccaccio says that Dante considered but rejected a Latin version, of which three lines are cited. Still, Dante's choice of the vernacular is not altogether praiseworthy to Boccaccio. The Comedy is likened to a peacock. The peacock's distinctive features are flesh that will not rot, gorgeous form and 'foul feet and noiseless tread.' Where one expects Boccaccio to liken the content of the Comedy to the flesh and its form to the feathers, one is surprised to find the vernacular form compared to the 'foul feet and noiseless tread!'. Moreover, Boccaccio says in his Commentary on Dante that the Comedy would have been 'much more full of art and more sublime in Latin because Latin speech has much more of art and dignity than the maternal speech.'"

"Dante and Boccaccio are both sure that Latin is richer than the Volgare, and therefore many more things can be conceived in Latin."

"The humanist debates about grammar are the foundations of a new theory of language and culture. This is perhaps most clearly understood by contrast with some prehumanist ideas of grammar and language. The question of grammatical inferiority is different from the question concerning copia. The first considers vocabulary, the second the structure of language. Again it is instructive to compare humanist and prehumanist ideas, as before in the question of copia. In Dante's words, Latin is "perpetual and incorruptible" because grammatical. Grammar is an art that was devised to arrest change and variety. In De Vulgari Eloquentia he says that change motivated 'the inventors of the art of grammar, which is nothing else but a kind of unchangeable identity of speech in different times and places.'"

"Dante believes the vulgar tongue to be governed by mutable usage, to which Latin is impervious because established by art and grammar. Art and grammar give it regularity, and this regularity makes it more beautiful than the vernacular: 'Therefore that language is the most beautiful in which the parts correspond most perfectly as they should, and they do so in Latin more than in the vulgar tongue, because custom regulates the latter, art the former; wherefore it is granted that Latin is the more beautiful, the more excellent, and the more noble.'"

"Poverty of language is a flaw also frequently imputed to the vernacular in the fifteenth century. However, because of a better understanding of the historical nature of language, the humanists began to argue that the Volgare could become sufficiently copious. Moreover, from the discussions of copia comes a theory of culture: as language grows through certain stages, so do the intellectual powers of a civilization. Valla calls copia "a faculty and a power."" Copia is an important idea in humanist philosophy of language, a concept used to demonstrate the nexus of language and thought. Besides this epistemological motive, copia is used in [theories] of culture."

"Dante's idea is relevant here for two reasons. The first pertains to the question of the two languages, the second to a wider issue of language and reality. The immutability of ancient languages, an ahistorical idea, is described in the first pages of De Vulgari Eloquentia. There he discusses the origin of speech in Eden. He says that language is only necessary to man; neither God nor the angels have need of it. They communicate their ineffable meanings without the clumsiness of speech. Their glorious thoughts are exchanged silently, mind to mind. Only man has need of words: 'Nor does it happen that one man can enter into the mind of another by spiritual insight, like an angel, because the human spirit is hindered by the grossness and opacity of its mortal body.'"

"Dante then conjectures about who spoke the first word and in what speech. He says that the biblical story says Eve spoke the first word but then dismisses the idea that the first recorded speech was made by a woman as contrary to common sense and reason. Adam spoke first; he was moved to utter certain words rendered distinct by Him who has distinguished greater things. Dante says that the first language was Hebrew. Divinely instituted, the connection of word and thing was not arbitrary but established by God, as was the grammar: 'We assert that a certain form of speech was created by God together with the first soul. And I say, 'a form,' both in respect of the names of things and of the grammatical construction of these names, and of the utterance of this grammatical construction.'"

"The unity of language and reality was destroyed at Babel, although Hebrew survived so that Christ 'might use not the language of confusion but of grace.' To measure the originality of humanist philosophy of language, Valla's comments about language, Adam, and Babel should be compared with the passage from De Vulgari Eloquentia. To Valla all meaning is created by man and history, not God and nature: 'Indeed, even if utterances are produced naturally, their meanings come from the institutions of men. Still, even these utterances men contrive by will as they impose names on perceived things … Unless perhaps we prefer to give credit for this to God who divided the languages of men at the Tower of Babel. However, Adam too adapted words to things, and afterwards everywhere men devised other words. Wherefore noun, verb, and the other parts of speech per se are so many sounds but have multiple meanings through the institutions of men.'"

"An idea akin to Dante's of the identity of grammar and Latin persisted in the Quattrocento, when it was rejected by most humanists. In the famous debate about the vernacular in ancient Rome, Bruni takes a position reminiscent of Dante's. This debate took place in 1435 in the antechamber of Eugenius IV among Bruni, Antonio Loschi, Flavio Biondo, Cencio dei Rustici, Andrea Fiocco, and Poggio. The issue was whether there was a vernacular in ancient Rome. Bruni maintained that bakers and gladiators could not have mastered grammar and Latin. Loschi agreed; the others did not. Later other humanists, Guarino, Valla, and Filelfo, heard of the debate and wrote against Bruni. Salvatore Camporeale, among others, has discussed this debate, which is important in the story of humanist thought about grammar and the rival claims of authority and common usage as determinants of language. The debate is one instance of the confrontation of two different concepts of rhetoric. The first concept is that of Antonio Loschi: rhetoric is a formal art, higher than ordinary discourse. He says: 'Eloquence is a higher thing [than the conventions of daily speech] and more removed from vulgar speech and, even if it often concerns uncertainties and common things, still it is contained in its own peculiar and certain principles.' The second concept of rhetoric emphasizes the semantic and linguistic science of speech. The opponents of Loschi and Bruni argue that meaning arises from the historical and mutable conventions of ordinary usage, although they all admit the importance of literate authority in establishing usage. Thus the creative force in language is general cultural conventions."

#philology #history

[theophrastus]

Excerpts from Gravelle's article of Lorenzo Valla

"[Valla's] critique of one of these transcendentals, being, contains an important comment on Greek. On the words...being, ens and essentia, Valla cites Quintilian. Quintilian says that, if these words are ugly like some others borrowed from Greek, they are still necessary. We should not refuse to use them unless we wish to spite ourselves with "poverty of speech" (paupertas sermonis). Valla uses them but takes care to establish a precise and consistent usage; he condemns Boethius's usage as arbitrary and inconsistent. Boethius sometimes uses essentia when he should use substantia. Boethius's error makes nonsense of his philosophy but, Valla argues, it stems from a want of clarity in Aristotle's own usage. He counts at least four completely different meanings for the one word in Aristotle and exclaims, 'What wonder is this, Aristotle? What prodigy, Greece,… to call or rather confound with one name… these things so diverse?'"

"If Aristotle cannot teach us the meaning of essentia, neither can any other Greek. As Valla says, Plato says essence is soul; Xenocrates, number; Pythagoras and Philolaus, harmony; Posidonius, idea; Hippocrates, spirit; Heraclitus, light; Asclepiades, Zeno, Democritus, and Critolaus have still other definitions."

"The other word for being, ens, is barely tolerable to Valla. He says it must mean "that thing which is" (ea res quae est). He continues: 'that thing which is' is only properly said of God. 'Ens is said ineptly of any thing other than God, and therefore the great among the Latins spurned this word not without reason.'"

"[Valla] devotes several paragraphs to show that ens is a meaningless abstraction unless said of God. By avoiding its use Latin authors are more concrete than Greeks. But the Greeks may be forgiven because they do not have a word equivalent to res and therefore cannot know that ens is nothing more than ea res quae est [that thing which is]. Valla says of res: 'I think it is better than that word of the Greeks which is usually translated negotium.'"

"The foundation of Valla's empiricism is his reduction of Aristotle's transcendentals to res. That the Greeks have no equivalent word is of great significance to Valla. To him it means that empiricism is more easily arrived at through Latin than Greek. He warns that philosophy should never borrow empty and abstract words from Greek....in 1457, shortly before his death, he repeats the idea in his Encomium of Thomas Aquinas. The Fathers of the Church were better philosophers than the scholastics because, like the great Latin authors of antiquity, they avoided certain Greek words: 'But in the matter of words, how different is the situation of the Greek language from that of the Latin. This might be a matter for more extended discussion, but it is an inquiry which has nothing to do with this occasion. Suffice it to say this, that these Latin doctors of the Church avoided the terms which they saw had never been taken over by the Latin authors, that is, their own masters in eloquence, who were very learned in Greek literature. The new theologians always drag in these terms - being, entity, quiddity, identity, real, essential, one's own being - and those verbs which are used- to be amplified, to be divided, to be composed -and other words of this sort.'"

"Among Valla's contributions to humanism were an original theory of knowledge and a theory of culture. His comparative discussion of Greek and Latin was meant as a proof of both theories. Through a fairly detailed study of characteristics of the Greek language he sought not only to respond to the charge of intellectual inferiority of the Romans but also to prove his idea that language is a key factor in the diversity of culture. Although he surpassed earlier thinkers, Valla was indebted to them. Humanist debates posed the questions and assembled some of the evidence on both sides of the quarrel of Latins and Greeks. While Guarino and his students, Barbaro and Decembrio, espoused the superiority of the Greeks in this contest, others like Bruni were provoked to defend the Latins. Trebizond, unmoved by the opinions of Bruni and Valla, continued to maintain the superiority of Greek to Latin. Humanists may have been divided in opinion but their arguments are similar in one significant way. With varying degrees of persuasiveness, they all argue that the differences of the languages in part explain the differences of the cultures. This acknowledgment and study of diversity was an important contribution of humanist philology to historical consciousness."

from "Lorenzo Valla's Comparison of Latin and Greek and the Humanist background" by Sarah Stever Gravelle

#philology #renaissance