Nomos and Phusis in democritus and plato

Social Philosophy and Policy

Volumn 24, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 1-20

  Taylor, C C W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 34249806701     PISSN: 02650525     EISSN: 14716437     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0265052507070148     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. On the nomos-phusis contrast in general, see Felix Heinimann, Nomos und Physis: Herkunft und Bedeutung einer Antithese im Griechischen Denken des 5. Jahrhunderts (Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschnft 1) (Basel: Verlag Friedrich Reinhardt, 1945; reprinted 1965);
2. W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), chap. 4;
3. and Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Philosophy Before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts and Commentary (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), chap. 19.
4. Fragments and testimonia of Democritus are enumerated according to the systems employed in DK and in C. C. W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus: Fragments, A Text and Translation with a Commentary (Toronto, Buffalo, London: Toronto University Press, 1999). The latter will be abbreviated in the text as T, and each passage cited will be given its enumeration in both volumes, e.g., "DK68B9, TD1.6."
5. The term nomô(i) renders νόμω, the dative singular of νόμοζ, meaning "by convention." The character (i) represents the Greek iota subscript.
6. See Liddell and Scott, Creek-English Lexicon, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), νομιζειν and νόμοζ.
7. Skeptical philosopher, second century A.D.
8. Medical writer and philosopher, second century A.D.
9. Biographer, probably third century A.D.
10. The term "error theory" was introduced by J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
11. See Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 125: error theory ... a theory according to which everyday thought in some area is sufficiently infected by mistaken philosophical views to be widely in error.... The principal problem confronting an error theory is to say how our thinking ought to be remedied to free us of the error. One suggestion is wholesale eliminativism, counselling us to abandon the area entirely; other less radical moves would counsel various cleaning-up operations.
12. To say that this task is difficult is not to say that it is impossible. In various areas of philosophy, such as philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics, varieties of fictionalism seek to show that while certain theoretical statements are literally false, they are justified in view of their utility in making sense of the relevant phenomena. For a survey of different applications of this strategy, see M. E. Kalderon, ed., Fictionalism in Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005);
13. and for its application to moral statements, see M. E. Kalderon, Moral Fictionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). Applied to moral statements, the basic idea is that fictionalism achieves the theoretical advantages of noncognitivism without the implausibility of a nonrepresentational semantics. A moral statement such as "Infanticide is wrong" expresses a moral proposition, but someone who makes that statement sincerely does not express belief in that proposition (any more than someone who asserts "Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street" expresses the belief that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street) but some other attitude, such as disapproval of infanticide.
14. See note 1.
15. The singular nomos seems here to designate formal legal provisions in the abstract. A possible alternative is that it should be understood as "unless a formal legal provision, e.g., an oath, prohibits it." I am not, however, aware of any case of an oath or a treaty being designated as a nomos.
16. Compiler of an anthology of literary and philosophical excerpts, fifth century A.D.
17. For information on the sources of the ethical fragments of Democritus, see Taylor, The Atomists, 222-27.
18. For the text, see DK89; and for discussion, see Guthrie, A History of Greek Pliilosaphy, vol. 3, 71-74 and 314-15;
19. and Hellmut Flashar, ed., Die Philosophie der Antike 2/1, Sophistik, Sakrates, Sokratik, Mathematik, Medizin (Basel: Schwabe and Co. AG Verlag, 1998), 101-4.
20. A key text is Stobaeus II.7.3i (DK68A167, T189), quoting from a summary history of ethics by Arius Didymus (first century B.C.): Democritus and Plato both place blessedness in the soul. The former writes as follows: "Blessedness and wretchedness belong to the soul" (DK68B170, TD24); "Blessedness does not reside in herds or in gold; the soul is the dwelling-place of the guardian spirit" (DK68B171, TD25). And he calls blessedness cheerfulness and well-being and harmony, as well as proportion and freedom from trouble, and says that it arises from the distinction of pleasures, and this is the finest and most beneficial thing for people. For details, see Taylor, The Atomists, 227-30.
21. On conscience, see DK68B174, TD39; and DK68B215, TD79. On shame, see DK68B244, TD108; and DK68B264, TD128.
22. There is no conflict between this thesis and the assertion in DK68B181, TD46 that it is better to be persuaded not to do wrong than to be restrained by "law and necessity." The contrast there is not between nature and convention but between rational persuasion and coercion. See Taylor, The Atamists, 230. Nomos and nomoi designating legal enactments occur also in DK68B191, TD55 (nomoi) and DK68B262, TD126 (nomos). On DK68B264, TD128, see p. 1.8 below.
23. This is maintained by Gregory Vlastos, "Ethics and Physics in Democritus," in Daniel W. Graham, ed., Gregory Vlastos, Studies in Greek Philosophy, Volume 1, The Presocratics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 328-50, at 342.
24. This essay was originally published in Philosophical Review 54 (1945): 578-92, and 55 (1946): 53-64.
25. I retract an earlier criticism of Vlastos on this point (in Taylor, "Pleasure, Knowledge, and Sensation in Democritus," Phronesis 12 [1967]: 6-27, at 14-15)
26. in Taylor, The Atomists, 233.
27. Note in particular his highly pejorative description of the process of moral education, and his eulogy of those who reject it: We manipulate the strongest and best amongst us, taking them young like lions and enslaving them with incantations and spells, telling them that one should have equality and that this is what is fine and just. But if someone is naturally capable of shaking off all that and breaking through it and escaping, trampling underfoot our edicts and mumbo-jumbo and incantations and all our unnatural laws, then from being our slave he stands forth as our master, and in him what is naturally just shines out. (Gorg. 483e4-484b1)
28. See my "Popular Morality and Unpopular Philosophy," in Elizabeth Craik, ed., "Owls to Athens": Essays on Classical Subjects for Sir Kenneth Dover (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 233-43, at 238-39.
29. In his note on 483e3, E. R. Dodds points out that this is the earliest recorded use of the expression "law of nature"; see Dodds, Plato, Gorgias: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 268. But the thought, though not the precise terminology, had been anticipated by Thucydides, who has the Athenians say, in defense of their extermination of the population of the island of Melos in 416 B.C., As far as the gods are concerned we believe, and as far as men are concerned it is apparent, that by a universal natural necessity they exercise mastery over what they have in their power. We neither laid down this law nor were the first to make use of it once it had been laid down, but we found it in existence and make use of it in the knowledge that it will continue for ever. (V.105.2)
30. There has been much debate on the interpretation of Thrasymachus, including the question of whether, as maintained here, he maintains a consistent immoralist stance, or whether he shifts from a position of inverted moralism to immoralism. For a penetrating discussion, see Rachel Barney, "Callicles and Thrasymachus," in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2004/entries/callicles-thrasymachus/.
31. Phusis occurs at 320e3, in the course of the description of Epimetheus's assignment of different natural capacities to the various animal species: "for those to whom he had assigned an unarmed nature (i.e. those lacking claws, fangs etc.) he devised some other power for their preservation." Nomos occurs at 322d4, in the context of Zeus's commands to Hermes: "lay down on my authority a law that whoever cannot share in conscience and justice is to be killed as a plague on the city."
32. By contrast, the pair "aidôs and dikê " (or "dikê and aidos") occurs four times in eleven lines at 322c2-d5.
33. The principal speakers in the Protagoras and their audience come from many Greek cities (31.5a-d).
34. There is a very similar thought in Antiphon, DK87B44, fragment B, as emended by Jonathan Barnes, "New Light on Antiphon," Polis 7, no. 1 (1987),
35. reporting a new papyrus fragment published by Maria Serena Funghi in Oxyrhynchus Papyri 51 (1984): The laws of our neighbours we know and revere: the laws of those who live afar we neither know nor revere. Thus in this we have been made foreigners with regard to one another. For by nature we are all in all respects similarly endowed to be foreign or Greek.
36. Aidôs and dikê are "principles of organization of cities and bonds which associate people in friendship" (Prof. 322c3).
37. The literature on Glaucon is considerable. See esp. Christopher Kirwan, "Glaucon's Challenge," Phronesis 10 (1965): 162-73;
38. and Christopher Shields, "Plato's Challenge: The Case against Justice in Republic II," in Gerasimos Santas, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Plato's Republic (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 63-83. The latter item contains a bibliography of the topic.
39. On traces of social contract in Greek writers of the fifth and fourth centuries, see Charles H. Kahn, "The Origins of Social Contract Theory," in G. B. Kerferd, ed., The Sophists and Their legacy (Hermes Einzelschriften 44) (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1981), 92-108.
40. See Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 302-3.
41. See Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958);
42. and Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), chap. 9.
43. I count both the innate capacity for socialization and the acquired dispositions which realize that capacity as natural. Aristotle gets the point exactly: "[T]he virtues do not come to us by nature nor contrary to nature, but it is natural to us to be receptive of them, and we are perfected in them through habit" (EN 1103a23-6). What "comes to us by nature" is the capacity for socialization, and it is natural for us to realize this capacity by acquiring good dispositions; hence, those dispositions, once acquired, are themselves natural. Protagoras's myth seems to me to anticipate Aristotle on this point. See note 35 below.
44. Gorg. 494b1-2, c2-3.
45. A notable example is that of Hitler, a teetotaler, a frugal vegetarian, virtually asexual, whose only sensual indulgence seems to have been a fondness for cream cakes.
46. Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1993), chap. 4. A particularly telling passage is the following: By giving through the emotions a sense of who one is and of what one does, it [i.e., shame] mediates between act, character, and consequence, and also between ethical demands and the rest of life. Whatever it is working on, it requires an internalised other, who is not designated merely as a representative of an independently identified social group, and whose reactions the agent can respect. (1.02)
47. This is the point of Protagoras's observation (Prof. 323c5-6) that people think that moral virtue is neither natural nor self-generated, but that it is something taught. People do not become good unless they are educated to be so. The point of the myth, in my view, is that it is natural for human beings to develop the social feelings and the institutions which allow that education to occur. The myth does not restrict the natural capacities either to the gifts of Epimetheus or to those together with the gifts of Prometheus; the gifts of Zeus are the mythical representation of the perfection of human nature via social conditioning. For a fuller discussion, see my commentary in Plato, Protagoras: Translated with Notes, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 79-81.
48. See the passages cited in note 1.6 above.
49. I discuss it more fully in my essay "Platonic Ethics," in Stephen Everson, ed., Companions to Ancient Thought 4: Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 49-76, at 63-71.
50. See the discussion cited in the preceding note.