![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 16th, 2008 04:33 pmThe article on Stoic ekpyrôsis was rejected by the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Looking at the comments from the reviewers, and the essay's history thus far, I’d have to consider it shelved, along with a broader project of which it was a part.
One element of my broader project in ancient philosophy—thankfully, not the principal one—has been the notion that because the ideas of nature, of matter and of body were so different in antiquity than today, that univocal ‘materialistic’ readings of ancient Stoics and Atomists are anachronistic. We tend to read ancient philosophical cosmologies as outdated theories of natural science. In fact, I would argue, these philosophers’ statements about nature ought to be regarded as primarily metaphysical rather than physical.
In practice, this means that instead of reading an atomist like Lucretius as having an incorrect theory about what we call atoms, we ought to read him and look for his atoms in our world. The concern in this approach is with the functional relationships established by concepts, rather than matching entities with the same names. And so when Thales says (if indeed he said this) that ‘water’ is the principle of all things, instead of thinking of him as having peculiar beliefs about what we call water, we would work to identify what he calls ‘water’ according to what he says ‘water’ does.
I see this approach as an extension of the hermeneutical 'principle of charity' (Donald Davidson): we ought to interpret speakers as holding true beliefs to the degree possible. People might legitimately regard this principle as faulty, but in the case of these ancient natural philosophers, it is the difference between thinking of them as having something meaningful to say and thinking of them as mere historical curiosities.
The practicality, however, is that this thesis is seen as highly provocative by specialists in these fields, and if I am going to make the case for it, it will have to be on a broad scale, like I’ve done it here, and not in the form of interventions concerning specific philosophers or schools of philosophy. Unless and until I decide to make that sort of argument, it doesn’t make sense to do the necessary research on, e.g., atomism or Stoicism that it would take to make such essays credible for publication. But for better or for worse, I don’t like doing propaedeutics. I’ve always been troubled by the tendency for philosophers to write introductions that end up being regarded as the project itself.
One element of my broader project in ancient philosophy—thankfully, not the principal one—has been the notion that because the ideas of nature, of matter and of body were so different in antiquity than today, that univocal ‘materialistic’ readings of ancient Stoics and Atomists are anachronistic. We tend to read ancient philosophical cosmologies as outdated theories of natural science. In fact, I would argue, these philosophers’ statements about nature ought to be regarded as primarily metaphysical rather than physical.
In practice, this means that instead of reading an atomist like Lucretius as having an incorrect theory about what we call atoms, we ought to read him and look for his atoms in our world. The concern in this approach is with the functional relationships established by concepts, rather than matching entities with the same names. And so when Thales says (if indeed he said this) that ‘water’ is the principle of all things, instead of thinking of him as having peculiar beliefs about what we call water, we would work to identify what he calls ‘water’ according to what he says ‘water’ does.
I see this approach as an extension of the hermeneutical 'principle of charity' (Donald Davidson): we ought to interpret speakers as holding true beliefs to the degree possible. People might legitimately regard this principle as faulty, but in the case of these ancient natural philosophers, it is the difference between thinking of them as having something meaningful to say and thinking of them as mere historical curiosities.
The practicality, however, is that this thesis is seen as highly provocative by specialists in these fields, and if I am going to make the case for it, it will have to be on a broad scale, like I’ve done it here, and not in the form of interventions concerning specific philosophers or schools of philosophy. Unless and until I decide to make that sort of argument, it doesn’t make sense to do the necessary research on, e.g., atomism or Stoicism that it would take to make such essays credible for publication. But for better or for worse, I don’t like doing propaedeutics. I’ve always been troubled by the tendency for philosophers to write introductions that end up being regarded as the project itself.
