philosophy in fragments: cultivating philosophic thinking with the presocratics - daniel silvermintz

8/8/2019 PHILOSOPHY IN FRAGMENTS: CULTIVATING PHILOSOPHIC THINKING WITH THE PRESOCRATICS - DANIEL SILVERMINTZ

1/13


2/13


3/13


4/13


5/13


6/13


7/13


8/13

things) (Aristotle 1924, 983b). As it is believed that Thales did not recordhis investigations in writing, we are in the same predicament as Aristotlewhen it comes to making sense of his thought.

The pedagogical approach that I am proposing thus departs frompresentations that attempt to unearth the individual thinkers ideas intheir historical context. In contrast, I suggest treating the fragments asscientic claims that are to be assessed and defended by explanations thatcan be developed by the resources of our own time. One thus reads thehistory of philosophy as proposing claims that are to be veried orrejected by the standard of truth. Consider how Euclid does not merelyappropriate prior mathematical theorems but improves upon them withhis own reasoning: Euclid, who was not much younger than Hermoti-mus and Philippus, composed Elements , putting in order many of thetheorems of Eudoxus, perfecting many that had been worked onby Theaetetus, and furnishing with rigorous proofs propositions thathad been demonstrated less rigorously by his predecessors (Proclus,Commentary on Euclid , 1, qtd. in Cohen and Drabkin 1958, 37). Adoptingthe scientic model as our hermeneutic for reading the Presocraticfragments, let us consider how to use them to cultivate philosophicthinking in our students.

I ask students to puzzle out the meaning of the Presocratic thinkersusing nothing more than a terse statement of each thinkers theory. In theabsence of the thinkers own explanation, the students conjecture abouthis meaning may be just as valuable as Aristotle, Zeller, Burnet, Guthrie,Barnes, or Watereld. In fact, students who bring to this activity theirtraining in one of the scientic disciplines will certainly have specializedknowledge not possessed by many classical scholars. Students should beencouraged to draw on this knowledge and, in so doing, to regard thehistory of philosophy as a living and ongoing activity in which they canparticipate.

Students are asked to explain and support each of the Presocratictheories by using evidence, observation, and hypothetical experiments. 4

This line of investigation begins by simply noting the characteristics andqualities of each of the four primal elements. For example, one mightconsider how a students investigation of Thales argument regardingwater as the single explanatory cause might proceed. A student wouldbegin by simply observing waters qualities: it is colorless, though it canhave a green, blue, or brown tint; it has a wet and soft texture; it naturallyows downward; it lls containers of different sizes and shapes. Althougha good start, these observations all assume water is observed in its liquidstate. As ice, it is dry and hard and not malleable, though as snow it is soft

4

Although historians of science typically credit the experimental method as a moderndevelopment, see Burnet (2005, 27) for evidence of the Greeks anticipating modern scienticmethod.

r 2009 The AuthorJournal compilation r 2009 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd

DANIEL SILVERMINTZ696


9/13

and plastic with a white color. As gas, it naturally rises upward and is lesseasily detectable with the senses. It is particularly interesting to see thecontradictory qualities attributed to water (wet and dry, soft and hard,

ows down and rises up) once one has considered it in its various states.These observations already suggest how one substance can appear inquite different ways. The plasticity of water to ll containers of differentsizes and shapes and to assume the different states of matter lends furthersupport for why Thales might have posited water as the solitary substanceresponsible for the multiplicity of existing things.

Having catalogued all of waters qualities, students are now asked toconsider its various powers: it nourishes living organisms; cleanses andpuries; erodes solid matter. Students are further asked to provideverication of these claims by proposing hypothetical experiments. Forexample, the ability of water to both nourish and destroy can be studiedby the relative vitality of plants that are given various amounts of water,from absolute deprivation to overabundance.

After preparing an inventory of characteristics and powers for each of the primal causes ahead of time, students then work in groups duringclass time to compare notes and collectively prepare an argument to bepresented to the class in defense of one of the Presocratic theories. Thispart of the exercise attempts to show the dialectical character of philosophys development. As part of their presentation, the groupsmust address inadequacies of previous theories that are accounted forby the theory they are defending. Without any knowledge of who mighthave studied with whom, students come to appreciate how scientic ideasunfold as a developing process. Sometimes, as with Thales and Anaxi-menes, one sees subsequent thinkers offering competing theories that arepremised on assumptions similar to those of their predecessors. Anaxi-menes has clearly adopted Thales conception that a single substance canaccount for all things in spite of the fact that he defends a differentsubstance. In contrast, later thinkers such as Pythagoras, Anaxagoras,and Empedocles introduce causal agents (missing from the Ioniantheories) in order to explain how matter comes to be organized.

4. Presocratics in the Courtroom

Once students have assessed the scientic merits of each cosmologicalclaim, they are prepared to consider the political and social ramicationsthat follow from the assumptions of Presocratic metaphysics. I thus havestudents reconsider each of the Presocratic fragments with regard to howone might formulate theories of human behavior if one accepts thepremises of each of the cosmological theories. As the rst part of the

assignment is meant to draw on the expertise of the science majors in theclass, this part of our study of the Presocratics attempts to engage thepsychology, sociology, political science, religion, and legal studies majors.


PHILOSOPHY IN FRAGMENTS 697


10/13

To help students in their consideration of the relationship betweenmetaphysics and human affairs, I have them read Aristophanes Clouds .Caricaturing Socrates as a natural scientist and sophist, the playwright

has him undermining the existence of the gods by reducing their powers tothe meteorological phenomena along the lines of Xenophanes. Boldlyproclaiming that Zeus does not exist, Socrates offers a rationalistexplanation for the cause of thunder and rain: The clouds full of waterfall into each other and clap because of their density (Aristophanes 1998,384). While such an explanation may seem perfectly rational to us, it iscompletely shocking to a practitioner of Greek religion who believes thatthe forces of nature are acts of the gods used to mete out justice. Thecharacter Strepsiades cannot, therefore, accept an explanation of light-ning that divorces it from its role in enforcing justice: But teach mewhere the thunderbolt, bright with re, comes from, which burns us toashes when it strikes, and scorches the living. For it is apparent indeedthat Zeus hurls it at perjurers (Aristophanes 1998, 39597). Aristo-phanes is attempting to show that accepting Presocratic rst principlesleads to the sophistic conception of politics and ethics. 5 Representing thesophists position, he has the character Unjust Speech declare: For Iquite deny that Justice even exists (Aristophanes 1998, 902).

Aristophanes insightfully brings to light the difculty of justifyingethics when one accepts a materialist epistemology. Understood in thisway, the sophists merely draw out the consequences for social andpolitical thought that follow from the premises laid down by thePresocratic natural scientists. If all reality is understood solely withregard to its material constituents, then human behavior would seem tobe dictated by nothing more than the play of forces, relegating ethics tophysics. Like our modern psychophysiologists, the ancients working froma materialist conception reduced human behavior to its chemical basis asdetermined by the relative presence of one of the four humors: bloodcausing cheerfulness; phlegm causing sluggishness; choler causing anger;black bile causing melancholy. In contrast to the majority of Presocraticthinkers, Anaxagoras and Pythagoras offer noteworthy conceptions of the natural world insofar as they allow for a conception of humanbehavior that does not discount human agency. For these thinkers,humans are not merely a product of their biochemistry; on the contrary,the possession of a rational mind affords the individual the ability to tunethe soul in such a way so as to bring harmony to the respective humors.

The discussion about the ethics and politics of Presocratic thoughtnaturally leads to the foundational dispute concerning whether humanspossess free will and agency or whether human behavior is predetermined.This conict is most evident in the attempt to harmonize the Democritean

5 For additional ideas on using Aristophanes to teach the sophists, see Porter 2003,7987.




11/13

fragments on ethics with their authors ideas on physics. In spite of thefact that Democritus afrms that atoms move by necessity, he urges mento seek instruction and to follow the path of the good man. If the

moralistic fragments attributed to Democritus are authentic, then theymust be construed so that the agency granted to human action does notviolate the determinism of a being composed solely of atoms. 6

I attempt to show the contemporary relevance of this foundationaldebate by having students stage a mock trial for an infamous serial killer.The American legal system assumes that individuals possess free will andthat the state is justied in punishing a criminal act when it has beencommitted voluntarily. The prosecution must prove that the individualhas both acted of his own volition (actus reus) and with the intention tocreate the resulting act (mens rea). While the law assumes that humanbeings are for the most part in control of their actions, it also acknowl-edges mitigating circumstances such as an epileptic seizure or sleepwalk-ing, in which the criteria of actus reus would not be satised, or mentalinsanity, in which the criteria of mens rea would not be satised.

The mock trial is employed as a means of highlighting the competingclaims concerning human agency and determinism that underlie the legalsystem. Students are given the fact pattern of a crime in which there is nodispute that the defendant committed the crime; what is in dispute iswhether the defendant committed it with volition and intentionality. Theclass is divided into two teams responsible for either prosecuting thedefendant by demonstrating her volition and intentionality or defendingher by demonstrating the mitigating circumstances. Using a biographicalsketch of the defendant, the defense team might argue that their clientsbehavior was determined by her biochemical makeup, abusive childhood,socialization, socioeconomic status, or cultural inuences. In response,the prosecution must use the same biographical facts to show how thedefendant could have overcome any mitigating factors and still acted of her own volition. Initiated by consideration of the ethical consequences of Presocratic metaphysics, the mock trial ultimately engages the mostcontemporary debates in the social sciences that conceive of humanbehavior as a product of biochemistry, economic and social conditioning,and cultural formation.

Let us, then, reappropriate the Presocratic fragments as a storehouseof living ideas relevant to contemporary discussions in both the naturaland the social sciences rather than an archaeological site of ruins from alost civilization! Would that the ideas of great men and women were not

6 Although Democritus offers the most extensive and explicit discussion of morals of anyof the Presocratics, scholars such as Guthrie are suspicious of the authenticity of thesefragments on account of the difculty of harmonizing them with his atomistic physics. Fordiscussion, see Vlastos 1945, 1946; Guthrie 1965, 48992; Edmunds 1972; Kahn 1985;Warren 2002.




12/13

lost to posterity; yet we need not fear if these thinkers of the past hadindeed seen a truth for all times. For just as the Presocratics believed thatmatter does not perish in the process of generation and corruption, so too

the truth is always there to contemplate.

Daniel SilvermintzUniversity of Houston-Clear Lake2700 Bay Area Blvd., Box 371Houston, TX [email protected]

References

Aristophanes. 1998. Clouds . In Four Texts on Socrates , translated byThomas G. West and Grace S. West. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UniversityPress.

Aristotle. 1924. Metaphysics . Translated by W. D. Ross. Oxford:Clarendon Press.

Bennet-Clark, H. C., and E. C. A. Lucey. 1967. The Jump of the Flea: AStudy of the Energetics and a Model of the Mechanism. Journal of Experimental Biology 47:5976.

Bernal, Martin. 1987. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 17851985 . NewBrunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

. 1991. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization,vol. 2, The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence . New Brunswick,N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

. 2006. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization,vol. 3, The Linguistic Evidence . New Brunswick, N.J.: RutgersUniversity Press.

Burnet, John. 2005. Early Greek Philosophy . Boston, Mass.: AdamantMedia.

Cohen, Morris Raphael, and Israel Edward Drabkin. 1958. A SourceBook in Greek Science . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Diogenes Laertius. 1969. Lives of the Philosophers . Translated byA. Robert Caponigri. Chicago: Regnery.

Edmunds, Lowell. 1972. Necessity, Chance, and Freedom in the EarlyAtomists. Phoenix 26:34257.

Guthrie, W. K. C. 1965. A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kahn, Charles. 1985. Democritus and the Origins of Moral Psychol-

ogy. American Journal of Philology 106:131.Lefkowitz, Mary R. 1996. Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Becamean Excuse to Teach Myth as History . New York: Basic Books.


mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


13/13

Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Guy MacLean Rogers, eds. 1996. Black AthenaRevisited . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Plato. 1921. Theaetetus, Sophist . Translated by H. N. Fowler. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press. . 2003. Platos Meno. Translated by George Anastaplo andLaurence Berns. Newburyport, Mass.: Focus.

Porter, David. 2003. An Undergraduate Course on the Sophists andAristophanes. Classical World 97:7987.

Snell, Bruno. 1962. The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought . Translated by T. G. Rosenmeyer. New York:Harper Torch.

Vlastos, Gregory. 1945. Ethics and Physics in Democritus. Philosophi-cal Review 54:57892.

. 1946. Ethics and Physics in Democritus. Philosophical Review55:5364.

Warren, James. 2002. Epicurus and Democritean Ethics: An Archaeologyof Ataraxia . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



philosophy in fragments: cultivating philosophic thinking with the presocratics - daniel silvermintz

Documents