Non-rational perception in the Stoics and Augustine

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy

Volumn 22, Issue , 2002, Pages 253-307

  Brittain, Charles ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61449333709     PISSN: 02657651     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
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References (37)

1. There are many studies of Augustine's views on perception and memory, but few have much to say about the scope of non-rational content. The most interesting modern discussion is G. O'Daly, Augustine's Philosophy of Mind [Mind] (Berkeley, 1987) chs. 3-5, summarized in his entry 'Anima, animus' in C. Meyer (ed.), Augustinus-Lexicon, i (Basel, 1986-94), 315-40
2. Augustine's views on how animals should be treated are not examined in this paper. Two brief and unsympathetic accounts are G. Clark, 'The Fathers and the Animals: The Rule of Reason?', in A. Linzey and D. Yamamoto (eds.), Animals on the Agenda (London, 1998), 67-79
3. and R. Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals [Animal Minds] (Ithaca, NY, 1993), ch. 14
4. Porphyry's views on animals in the extant De abstinentia are summarized in U. Dierauer, Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike (Amsterdam, 1977)
5. Another is that Porphyry's psychological theory is still very obscure, despite the excellent preliminary studies by A. Smith, Porphyry's Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition (The Hague, 1974)
6. and W. Deuse, Untersuchungen zur mittelplatonischen und neuplatonischen Seelenlehre (Wiesbaden, 1983)
7. G. O'Daly, 'Sensus interior in St. Augustine, De libera arbitrio 2. 3. 25-6. 51', Studia Patristica, 16, Texte und Untersuchungen, 129 (1985), 528-32 (revised in Mind, 102-5), shows how the main lines of the Augustinian doctrine of 'inner sense' discussed below might be owed to Plotinus. But the scattered Plotinian passages he cites do not amount to a theory Augustine could have learnt from, although they maybe consistent, and could stem from a theory Plotinus held; and what Plotinus does say probably differs in at least one important respect from Augustine's theory - see n. 100 below
8. As O' Daly, Mind, 102-5, points out, the works in which Augustine developed his views on non-rational perception are heavily influenced by Platonism. De quantitate animae, for instance, depends primarily on Porphyry's Mixed Questions - see J. Pépin,' Une nouvelle source de saint Augustin: le Zêtêmata de Porphyre "Sur l'union de l'âme et du corps'", Revue des études anciennes, 66 (1964), 53-107. It is quite possible, and also consistent with the claims of this paper, that the Stoic elements in Augustine's views were mediated by Porphyry
9. Most of the non-abilities ascribed to animals below are discussed in more detail by J.-L. Labarrière in two articles: 'De la "nature phantastique" des animaux chez les Stoïciens' ['Nature phantastique'], in J. Brunschwig and M. Nussbaum (eds.), Passions and Perceptions (Cambridge, 1993), 225-49
10. and 'Logos endiathetos et logos porphorikos', in B. Cassin and J.-L. Labarrière (eds.), L'Animal dans l'antiquité (Paris, 1997), 259-79
11. see also Sorabji, Animal Minds, chs. 4-7
12. Origen, Contra Celsum 4. 81 (SVF iii. 368)
13. Only impression and impulse: Hierocles, Elements of Ethics [St. Eth.] 1. 31-3
14. Plut. Soll. an. 960 F, 961 E-F
15. D.L. 7. 52 (SVF ii. 84). R. Sorabji, 'Perceptual Content in the Stoics' ['Perceptual Content'], Phronesis, 35 (1990), 307-14, denies that Sextus reports a Stoic view (311-12)
16. See M. Frede, 'The Stoic Conception Of Reason' ['Reason'], in K. Boudouris (ed.), Hellenistic Philosophy, ii (Athens, 1994) 50-63
17. id., 'Stoics and Skeptics on Clear and Distinct Impressions' ['Stoics and Skeptics'], in M. Burnyeat (ed.), The Skeptical Tradition (Berkeley, 1983), 65-93, esp. 68-9; and n. 34 below
18. G. Lesses, 'Content, Cause and Stoic Impressions' ['Content'], Phronesis, 43 (1998), 1-25
19. Here I follow Frede, 'Reason', 53. See the texts listed in nn. 12 and 15. On this account, the Stoic criteria for concept-possession and belief are, of course, extremely rigorous in comparison with some modern views; see e.g. R. Stalnaker, Inquiry (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 62-8
20. Aetius 4. 12. I (SVF ii. 54): ('An impression is an affection occurring in the soul, which shows in itself what made it as well. For example, when we observe something white through sight, what occurs in the soul through our vision is an affection; and on the basis of this affection we are able to say that there is a white thing moving us (and similarly [when we observe something] through touch or smell). Impressions get their name from "light", because just as light shows itself and the other things contained in it, so impressions show themselves and what made them'). The text is uncertain-see H. Diels, Doxographi Graeci (Berlin, 1879) 401, for some of the manuscript readings in Nemesius and pseudo-Plutarch - but the light analogy shows that this characterization was intended to indicate that an impression 'shows itself in some sense, as well as something else
21. Hierocles, St. Eth. 6. 1-6: The text is from A. A. Long and G. Bastianini, 'Hierocles', in Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini, 1, vol. i(Florence, 1992), 334
22. See Drad Inwood, 'Hierocles: Theory and Argument in the Second Century AD', OSAP 2 (1984), 151-84, at 166
23. Stob. 2. 86 (SVF iii. 169): ('What moves impulse is nothing other than a hormetic impression of something immediately "appropriate"; and impulse is generically a motion of the soul towards something. The two species of impulse are the kind that occurs in rational animals and the kind in non-rational animals; but these do not have names ("desire" is not rational impulse, but a subspecies of rational impulse)'). It is unfortunate that the only evidence for this vital part of Chrysippus' theory is Stobaeus; but it is fairly clear that this was Chrysippus' theory; see B. Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism [Ethics] (Oxford, 1985), 55-7
24. Cf. Labarrière, 'Nature phantastique', 235-8. It is not at all clear in the brief account in Aetius 4. 11 (SVF ii. 83) what it is about children that enables them to develop concepts out of perception, memory and experience - i.e. out of quasiconcepts, on my view. I offer one suggestion in n. 57
25. This is suggested by Aetius 4. 11 fin. (SVF ii. 83): ('Conceptual objects are phantasms of the thought of a rational animal - i.e. when a phantasm occurs to a rational soul it is called a "conceptual object" (its name derives from "intellect"). So the ones that occur to non-rational animals are just phantasms; but the ones that occur to us and to the gods are generically phantasms and specifically conceptual objects'). Aetius is no doubt wrong to identify all human phantasms as 'conceptual objects', as A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge 1987), ii. 185, note. But his point is apparently that abstract thoughts in general, and specifically the rational concepts he is concerned with in 4. 11, supervene on representational images of some kind. His mistake about need not colour this claim
26. See A. A. Long, 'Hierocles on Oikeiosis and Self-Perception', Stoic Studies (Cambridge, 1996), 250-63 at 256-61. 'Proprioception' is the monitoring of the body which occurs in the central nervous system, in virtue of which one 'knows' e.g. where one's leg is
27. I presuppose here that animal impressions are restricted to the first stage identified in cols. 7-8, contra Long and Bastianini, 'Hierocles', 444-8, ad loc. Others concur because they think that we can rule out the possibility that animals have cataleptic impressions (the third stage above); see e.g. Labarrière, 'Nature phantas-tique', 234. But this is not clear; no doubt animals cannot have catalepsis, but that does not imply that they cannot have cataleptic impressions, only that they cannot assent to them and hence form judgements or have knowledge. Human children must be able to achieve cataleptic impressions, since their 'natural concepts' become criteria of truth when they finally appear at the age of 7 (or 14), and hence must derive from cataleptic impressions. These considerations also suggest one way to distinguish the perception of human children from animal perception: children may be conscious more often or of more of their perceptual content
28. The idea here is to tie the features Hierocles and Seneca mention to the known properties of cataleptic impressions. On the latter, see Frede, 'Stoics and Skeptics', 71-8
29. I think that O'Daly, Mind, wavers between (a) and the two interpretations of (b) at p. 86. But his claim that 'Augustine repeatedly stresses that sense perception is the perception of images of bodies (imagines corporum), and not of the bodies themselves' (p. 95) looks like a firm endorsement of the image variant of (b). The latter is standard; see e.g. R. Nash, The Light of the Mind: St Augustine's Theory of Knowledge (Kentucky, 1969), 54
30. and Labarrière, 'Nature phantastique', 237 n. 21. But this depends on two mistakes: not realizing that the theory of explains only general animal behaviour patterns; and not seeing that Plut. Soll. an. 961 C - D rules out only animal possession of rational memory
31. J. Cooper, 'Posidonius on the Emotions', in J. Sihvola and T. Engberg-Pedersen (eds.), The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy (Dordecht, 1998), 71-111, esp. 85-90, examines the more complex, but similar, theory of 'affective motions' developed by Posidonius
32. This is a point not made explicit by the two interesting discussions of this argument by G. Matthews, Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartes (Ithaca, NY, 1992), ch. 9, esp. 121-3, and T. McNulty, 'Augustine's Argument for the Existence of Other Souls', The Modern Schoolman, 48 (1970), 19-24, esp. 23-4
33. There are some interesting discussions of Augustine's views of heaven in CD 22. 29-30, most notably H, Marrou and A.-M. La Bonnardière, 'La dogme de la résurrection des corps et la théologie des valeurs humaines selon l'enseignement de saint Augustin', Revue des études augustiniennes, 12 (1966), 111-36
34. K. Börresen, 'Augustin interprète du dogme de la résurrection: Quelques aspects de son anthropologie dualiste', Studia Theologica: Scandinavian Journal of Theology, 23 (1969), 141-55
35. and M. Miles, Augustine on the Body (Missoula, 1979), ch. 8
36. and M. Alfeche, 'The Transformation from Corpus Animale to Corpus Spirituale according to Augustine', Augustiniana, 42 (1992), 239-310
37. see Ep. 147 and R. Teske, 'St. Augustine and the Vision of God', in F. Van Fleteren, J. Schnaubelt, and J. Reino (eds.), Collectanea Augustiniana: Augustine Mystic and Mystagogue (New York, 1994), 287-308